"The one blow has softened the other," she said. "I will never keep another secret after this. It was for Alicia's sake and for Petre's that I did it, and now see what has become of it. I shall send for Lord Saltire. The boy must have his rights, and shall, too."
So the brave old woman sat down and wrote to Lord Saltire. We shall see what she wrote to him in the proper place—not now. She sat calmly and methodically writing, with her kind old face wreathing into a smile as she went on. And Charles, the madman, left the house, and posted off to London, only intent on seeking to lose himself among the sordid crowd, so that no man he had ever called a friend should set eyes on him again.
CHAPTER XXX.
MR. SLOANE.
Charles Ravenshoe had committed suicide—committed suicide as deliberately as any maddened wretch had done that day in all the wide miserable world. He knew it very well, and was determined to go on with it. He had not hung himself, or drowned himself, but he had committed deliberate suicide, and he knew—knew well—that his obstinacy would carry him through to the end.
What is suicide, nine cases out of ten? Any one can tell you. It is the act of a mad, proud coward, who flies, by his own deed, not from humiliation or disgrace, but, as he fancies, from feeling the consequences of them—who flies to unknown, doubtful evils, sooner than bear positive, present, undoubted ones. All this had Charles done, buoying him up with this excuse and that excuse, and fancying that he was behaving, the cur, like Bayard, or Lieutenant Willoughby—a greater than Bayard—all the time.
The above is Charles's idea of the matter himself, put in the third person for form's sake. I don't agree with all he says about himself. I don't deny that he did a very foolish thing, but I incline to believe that there was something noble and self-reliant in his doing it. Think a moment. He had only two courses open to him—the one (I put it coarsely) to eat humble-pie, to go back to Cuthbert and Mackworth, and accept their offers; the other to do as he had done—to go alone into the world, and stand by himself. He did the latter, as we shall see. He could not face Ravenshoe, or any connected with it, again. It had been proved that he was an unwilling impostor, of base, low blood; and his sister—ah! one more pang, poor heart!—his sister Ellen, what was she?
Little doubt—little doubt! Better for both of them if they had never been born! He was going to London, and, perhaps, might meet her there! All the vice and misery of the country got thrown into that cesspool. When anything had got too foul for the pure country air, men said, Away with it; throw it into the great dunghill, and let it rot there. Was he not going there himself? It was fit she should be there before him! They would meet for certain!