“Nothing could have made it a humdrum house,” said the penitent. He was not thinking of Mr. Charles’s pictures: he was thinking of—something else.
Just then an unexpected summons came to the door.
“Miss Heriot’s compliments, and would the gentleman step over to the north room?” the maid said, who waited, curtseying, to show the way.
Mr. Charles’s countenance clouded over.
“That’s poor Tom’s room,” he said. “I’ll go with the gentleman myself—and yet, no; on second thoughts I’ll not go. You two may have something to consult about, that I should not meddle with; or Marjory may think there is something. Go, as she has sent for you, Mr. Fanshawe; you can come back to me another time.”
With a curious little thrill of interest, Fanshawe went, threading the turret staircase down from Mr. Charles’s rooms, and the windy passages, wondering what she could want with him. Marjory received him in a room of a very different description. It was in the back of the house, looking across the gardens to the level line of the ploughed land, and the low hills on the horizon. It was a long, narrow room, with a door opening from each end; and its decorations were of a kind as different from Mr. Charles’s study as was its form. On the walls hung two crossed swords, some old guns carefully arranged according to their antiquity, a collection of whips, fishing-rods, clubs for playing golf—worn out traces of a boyhood not yet so very long departed. In one corner was a bookcase, full of old classics, thumbed and worn, the school-books of the two boys whose progress in polite letters Pitcomlie had once been so proud of. The pictures on the walls were of the most heterogeneous character; languishing French “Etudes” in chalk, were mingled with sporting subjects, heads of dogs, portraits of sleek race-horses led by sleeker grooms, and one staring view of Pitcomlie, painted in water-colours, with very lively greens and blues, and signed “Ch. Hay-Heriot,” in bold boyish characters.
No contrast could have been greater than this mass of incongruous elements, seen after the careful collection of Mr. Charles; and yet this, too, was not without its attraction. It looked like the chaos of a boy’s mind, a hopeless yet innocent confusion; all sorts of discordant things connected together by the sweet atmosphere of youth and possibility, out of which all harmonies might come. In the midst of this schoolboy chamber sat Marjory. She had a writing-case placed before her on a table, the key of which she held in her hand. Fanshawe recognised it at once. It was one which Tom had used constantly, which he had carried about with him everywhere. Tom’s sister looked up at him with a wistful and anxious glance.
“Mr. Fanshawe,” she said, “this has been brought to me to open. My father cannot bear to look at anything, and I—I feel as if we had no right to search into his secrets. It seems dishonourable, when he cannot defend himself—when he is in our power.”
Fanshawe went round to Marjory’s side, and took into his own the hand which, half unconsciously, she held out, appealing to him, and touched the fingers with his lips. Her eyes were full of tears, and the look she turned to him, asking for counsel and sympathy, went to his very heart. A slight colour came to her face at this answer to her appeal; but Marjory was not vain, and took it in no other light than as an impulse of sympathy.
“Must I do it?” she asked.