And so Drumcarro House was once more, but with a deepened mystery and terror, left with its dead. Mr. Douglas did not leave his room all the evening. The call to supper made first by Marg’ret, then by Glendochart knocking cautiously at his door, produced only the response of a growl from within. No light was visible from under the door. No sound was heard in the room. To all appearance he remained without moving or even lighting his candle, until late at night his heavy step was heard going up stairs to bed. Without a light, that was the strangest thing of all to the keen but silent observers. There could be nothing on the master’s mind or he could never have sat all the evening through knowing what it was that lay in his wife’s room up stairs, without a light. They could not imagine indeed how in any circumstances Drumcarro, an old man, could have had anything to do with the death of Lord John, a young one, nor what reason there could be for seeking his death, yet an uneasy fear was in the air, and there was no one else who could be thought of. But that circumstance cleared him. Without a light no man could sit who had been instrumental in causing a man’s death, while that man lay dead in the same house. Glendochart, whose mind was disturbed by many miserable surmises, was comforted by this thought, though almost unconsciously to himself.
And nobody knew what thoughts were going on in the dark in that closed room. They were not thoughts specially about Lord John. They were the bewildering circling of a mind suddenly driven into tragic self-consciousness, about the entire chapter of his life now perhaps about to be brought to an end. The sudden pang of the moment, his clutch upon his victim (his hand hurt him still from the strain, and still now and then he raised it to his mouth, to blow his hot breath upon it), the whirl of that figure through the air, came back at intervals like a picture placed before his eyes. But between those intervals there surged up all manner of things. Old scenes far off and gone, incidents that had taken place in the jungle and swamp, cries and sounds of the lash, and pistol shots all long over and forgotten. One face, not white like Lord John’s, but grey in its blackness, like ashes, came and wavered in the darkness before him more distinct than the others. No ghost, he had no faith in ghosts, nothing outside of him. Something within from which even if they should hang him he knew he would not get free. Lord John,—he thought very little of Lord John! And yet his hand hurt him, the picture would come back, and the scene re-enact itself before his eyes. Sometimes he dozed with his head in his hands. The chief thing was that he should not be disturbed, that no one should come in to question him, to interfere with his liberty, that night at least. That he should be quiet that night if nevermore.
CHAPTER XXII.
The Duke arrived with his eldest son as soon as post-horses could bring him. He had been in the north, not very far away, so that the interval, though it represented much more difficult travelling than the journey from one end to the other of Great Britain nowadays, was not very long. Lord John had been a trouble to his family all his life. He had followed none of the traditions of prudence and good sense which had made his race what they were. The scrapes in which he had been were innumerable, and all his family were aware that nothing but embarrassment and trouble was likely to come to them from his hand. Sometimes this state of affairs may exist without any breach of the bonds of natural affection; but perhaps when a man is a duke and accustomed to have many things bow to his will, the things and persons that cannot be made to do so become more obnoxious to him than to a common man. No doubt a shock of natural distress convulsed the father’s mind at the first news of what had happened, but after a while there came, horrible as it seems to say it, a certain relief into the august mind of the Duke. At least here was an end of it; there could be no more to follow, no new disgraces or inconveniences to be encountered. Scarcely a year had come or gone for many years past without some fresh development of John’s powers of mischief. Now, poor fellow! all was over; he could do no more harm, make no more demands on a revenue which was not able to bear such claims, endanger no more a name which indeed had borne a great deal in its day without much permanent disadvantage. On the whole there was thus something to set against the terrible shock of a son’s sudden death by accident. A few questions thrown into the air as it were, a general demand upon somebody for information burst from the Duke during that long drive. “Where is this linn, do you know? What could he have wanted there? On the land of that old ruffian, Drumcarro? And what did he want there?” But to the last question at least no one could make any reply. Even to speak of Drumcarro’s lovely daughter as an inducement would have been a jarring note when the poor fellow was so recently dead. And the Duke could answer his own question well enough; any petty intrigue would be reason enough for John, the worse the better. His only fear was that some dark story of seduction and revenge might unfold itself when he got there.
It was Glendochart who received his chief when he reached his journey’s end, and told him the little there was to tell. It was supposed that Lord John had somehow missed his footing when at the head of the linn. Some one had heard the sound of a fall, and the body had been found below at the foot of the waterfall. This was all that could be discovered at the end of two or three days which had elapsed. The Duke saw, with a natural pang, his dead son laid out upon the mistress’s bed, and then he visited the scene of the tragedy. He inspected everything with a clouded countenance, asking brief, sharp questions from time to time. To Glendochart he seemed suspicious of violence and foul play, a suspicion which was lurking in Glendochart’s own mind, with strange surmises which he could not put into words, but which his mind was on the alert to find some clue to. This, however, was scarcely the Duke’s frame of mind. After he had visited the spot where the body had been found, and looked up the foaming fall of the linn, and heard everything that could be told him, he put a sudden question which dismayed Glendochart. “Have you any suspicions?” he said. “Has there been any suggestion—of violence?”
“The idea has no doubt been suggested,” Mr. Campbell replied, “but I can find nothing to give it any countenance. There were signs as of stamping of feet at one place near the fallen tree, but the man who found the body accounted for that as having slipped and fallen there.”
“It has been suggested then?” said the Duke, with another cloud coming over his face. “Glendochart, I may speak freely to you that would bring no discredit on the name. Was there any story, any reason for his staying here?”
Glendochart felt his countenance redden, though it was of that well-worn colour which shows little. He suddenly realised, with a sense of relief unspeakable, what it would have been had Lord John lived and thriven, to have intimated to the chief that his son had married Drumcarro’s daughter. Glendochart had himself been flattered by the idea. He saw the reverse of the medal now.
“I know of none,” he said, “my Lord Duke. He was more at this house than at any other house round about.”
“And there was no story—no lass, disappointed perhaps—or angry father? You know what I mean, Glendochart. One of my own name, and not so far from me in blood, I know that I can trust you. You know, too—what my poor boy was.”