“Can he have committed suicide?” Craven Black asked himself, with a sudden fluttering at his heart. “He was desperate enough, but I hardly think he could have been such a fool as that.”
He shook the door loudly, but eliciting no reply, he stooped to the key-hole, and cried, in a clear, hissing whisper:
“Rufus, open this door, or I’ll break it in! I’ll arouse the whole house. Quick, I say! Be lively!”
There was a faint stir within the room, as if a tortured wild beast were sluggishly turning in his cage, and then an unsteady step crossed the floor, and an unsteady hand groped feebly about the door, seeking the key. The bolt suddenly shot back, and then the unsteady steps retreated a few paces.
Craven Black opened the door and entered the room, closing the portal behind him. He set down his lamp, and his light eyes then sought out the form of his son.
Rufus stood in the centre of the room, his eyes covered with one hand to shade them from the sudden light, his figure drooping and abject, his head bowed to his breast, his mouth white and drawn with lines of pain. It seemed as if years had passed over his head since the morning. It would have been scarcely possible to trace in this spiritless, slouching figure, in this white, haggard face, the boy artist who had left his young wife that morning. All the brightness, elasticity and youth seemed gone from him, leaving only a poor broken wreck.
The cynical smile that was so characteristic of Craven Black’s countenance came back to his lips as he looked upon his son. He read in the changed aspect of the boy that he had achieved a victory over Rufus.
“I have come for your decision, Rufus,” he said. “What is it to be? Disgrace, imprisonment, a blasted name? Or will you turn from your low-born adventuress and accept the career I have marked out for you? Speak!”
The hand that shaded the artist’s eyes dropped, and he looked at his father with a countenance so wan, so woeful, so despairing, that a very demon might have pitied him. Yet his father only smiled at what he deemed the evidence of the lad’s weakness.
“Oh, father,” said the young man hollowly, “will you not have mercy upon me—upon her?”