“Humour him,” said the doctor under his breath.
“Oh, doctor, is he so very, very bad?” cried poor foolish Mrs. Stenhouse, losing the morsel of heart she had picked up from Horace’s words.
“He is very much excited—humour him,” said the doctor authoritatively; “just now do exactly what he says. Thank heaven, there can’t be much harm done in this way even by a spoiled child. The law don’t recognize testators of ten years old.”
“Doctor, go home to bed, and don’t come if mamma should send for you again,” said little Edmund; “I can die all the same without you looking at me; but first I’ll make my will; I shall—and then I’ll die; doctor, go home to bed.”
“Thank you, I will,” said the doctor, yawning; “but don’t you be so very sure about dying, my young hero. I’ll see him to-morrow, Mrs. Stenhouse. Mind what I say, humour him—he’s very much excited, but he’s no worse. Get him to sleep as soon as you can. Good night.”
The doctor went away, and the unnecessary commotion subsided a little. The lingering housemaid went to bed, feeling somewhat defrauded of her tears, and tragically disappointed that the end was not coming to-night to poor little Edmund’s tragi-comedy of life. So did Stevens, moralizing and very much disgusted at the interruption of his rest—“three nights all a-running!” said that injured man to himself, “and master, from he was took bad till he died, was only twenty-four hours;” while in the meanwhile a strange scene was taking place in the invalid’s parlour. There, in the close stifling atmosphere and under the subdued sick-room light, sat Horace writing—Horace with murder in his heart and a personal burden too overpowering to allow him to remember the share he had taken in his employer’s fraud, setting down mechanically, scarcely alive enough for a gleam of derision, the impotent will from the lips of that innocent, imperative, despotic child. Amelia herself had glanced into the room and withdrawn again contemptuously, without her lover perceiving her; but the youngest and gentlest of the three sisters was with Mrs. Stenhouse, to help her in her watching, and had already begun to slumber peacefully in a chair. The mother herself sat at the foot of the sofa watching her boy, with eyes enlarged and dilated by many a vigil, and by that constant fear and scrutiny of his face; while, propped up among his pillows, Edmund half sat, half lay, dictating, with many a digression, his arbitrary, generous intentions. The will was still incomplete, when sleep stole over the would-be testator. He drooped back among the cushions, and could no longer keep his fiery little eyes open. Was he dying with that last flutter of words, “my brother Roger,” about his lips? No, only falling safe into the restless sleep of a sick child. When his sharp little voice had died away, and all was silent in the room, the two by his bedside looked strangely into each other’s faces. What brought you here with your black thoughts, oh! dangerous, guilty man? He rose up alone in the still house inhabited of women, feeling for an instant a vague sensation of that power and freedom which the strong, unfettered by either law or virtue, may feel among the weak. What was to hinder him from ending by a touch that frail child’s life?—he could have done it. What was to hinder him from going up in the darkness, and lifting out of her safe rest that beautiful Amelia? He stood looking for a moment at the timid woman before him, with a hundred suggestions and possibilities of additional guilt pricking him into life. What was it to him now what he did, he who had made the plunge and done the deepest crime of nature? But he only looked at her a moment, with a savage consciousness of his power to outrage and devastate; and then laughed a short wild laugh, and went out as suddenly as he had come. Poor Mrs. Stenhouse stole out to fasten the door after him, with a momentary sensation of relief, as though she had escaped from a wild beast; and, coming back again, relapsed into an anxious study once more of Edmund’s little pale sharp face. Edmund’s will, magnificent and powerless, his last toy and plaything, lay on the table beside him. Was Edmund to live or to die?
CHAPTER XVIII.
A FEW days after this scene Roger Musgrave and Sir John Armitage arrived at Harliflax. Edmund was still living, and not less life-like than he had been for years, though his will was by this time signed and sealed. This will had been a ready means of renewing the flirtation, which was all the beautiful Amelia owned to maintaining with her father’s clerk. Amelia was sadly tired of her mourning, and its inevitable decorums; she was glad to throw herself in Horace’s way when he came to finish that child’s will, which he did next morning, for Amelia’s sake. Amelia wanted to ask him about this will; papa had been very unjust to the rest for Edmund’s sake, and now somebody told her that the little wretch (though she was sure she had cried her eyes out about him, and hoped with all her heart he would get better) was making a will, leaving everything to mamma’s son by her first marriage, whom none of them had ever seen. Was it true?—could a little spoiled monkey like that, only eleven years old, make a will?—had anybody any right to give papa’s property away from his children? Mr. Scarsdale knew it was not of herself she was thinking, but poor Eliza and Fanny—what was to become of them if some one did not think of their interests?—for mamma cared for nothing in the world but little Edmund and her other son. All this flood of question and statement poured upon Horace, who incautiously set the beautiful doubter’s mind at rest by telling her that Edmund’s will was as useless as any other toy of Edmund’s, if the child died. Horace proceeded immediately to enlarge upon his own prospects, and the income he had already secured, but Amelia’s heart was shut against him. She was not more cruel or cold-blooded than a great many other people; she did not wish Edmund’s death; but that being a thing which everybody calculated upon as “rather to be desired than otherwise for his own sake, poor child,” Amelia’s spirits rose a little with the idea of finding herself an heiress, and once more regaining command of the house. That sickly child made a vast difference in various matters to Amelia; without Edmund she could easily subdue her mother; with Edmund, she was only Mr. Stenhouse’s eldest daughter, with two or three thousand pounds; but without him she was the mistress of a very pretty fortune. Perhaps it was not much wonder if the thoughts of the ambitious and uneducated young beauty availed themselves of this prospect without too much delicacy, and thrust Edmund out of the way. However, Horace found it very difficult to arrest her attention to the expression of his own wishes and arrangements. She was supremely indignant at the thought of anyone speaking to her of marriage at such a time. “Look at my mourning, Mr. Scarsdale, and think of Edmund, poor, dear fellow!” cried the virtuous Amelia. If Amelia came in for her proper share of papa’s money, she saw no reason why she should make anything less than a very brilliant match. So after she had beguiled her tedium by means of Horace, as long as, in the circumstances of the house, that was permissible, she went away stately and affronted, though by no means casting him off even now. He was not afraid; he could not have been in less real alarm if she had been his wife, but he wanted sorely to get back to the old frenzy of his first love-passion; he wanted to linger about her and on her, and make sure that she belonged to him. For her and for fortune he had played these terrible stakes, which only he and God knew of; and it was tantalizing to have the prize of his wickedness drawn away from him, when, perhaps, if he but knew, the obstacle was removed already, and fortune incomprehensible and stupendous, big enough to have purchased twice an Amelia, was already in his hand.
But when Horace came next to the house he found a still greater barrier arisen between himself and Amelia. She no longer wanted to be amused—she was independent of him: he might come or he might go, and Amelia did not care. A new life had visited Mrs. Stenhouse’s roof and family. Roger, the unknown brother, was there like a son at home, charming the little invalid, who had left all his wealth to him, out of the feverish excitement and unwholesome primary place, which were killing Edmund; warming his mother’s heart into a late summer of peace and thankfulness; making himself acceptable even to the pretty sisters who admired him, and whom he admired. But it was not Roger who had displaced Horace with Amelia. A young man who was her brother, and, consequently, not to be fascinated, was of no account in the eyes of the beauty; but Sir John Armitage, if he was not very young, had many other qualities which made up for that want, and Sir John had already concluded to himself that he had seen no such fine woman since the days when he was young himself, and beauty was more abundant. Amelia did not lose an hour with the excellent baronet; she had not only baited the hook, but landed her fish long before anybody else suspected her; and as for Horace, though that pretty by-play roused another demon within him, he had still no suspicions of Amelia—or rather, so absolute was his own self-regard, that he did not believe it possible that he could be set aside for any man or woman in the world.
“Nephew of Colonel Sutherland—hum—Scarsdale—happy to make your acquaintance,” said Sir John, doubtfully. “We didn’t expect to meet you here of all places in the world; did we, Roger, boy? Got something to say to you by-and-bye, Mr. Scarsdale—if you’ll do us the honour—about that confounded fellow Pouncet, and this—this young fellow here.”