“You don’t think he has done anything very wrong, Uncle Edward?” said Susan, trembling and crying more and more.
For looking down upon that face, all darkly pale in its sleeping passion, with its deep-drawn lines of pain and stealthy curves about the closed eyes, it was hard to think of misery inflicted by other people. Misery self-made, and guilt actual and personal, lay even in the sleep of Horace Scarsdale’s face. Susan’s mind did not take in or comprehend that statement about her grandfather and his wealth, and “one of the richest men in England.” The words had no meaning to her at that melancholy moment. She thought only of the brother of her childhood in that heavy sleep of exhaustion and misery, thrown down in a heap like one who had not even heart enough to stretch himself out in common comfort; and her heart yearned over him, whatever he might have done.
“I think, perhaps,” said the Colonel, with hesitation, “that the journey and the excitement, and, perhaps, taking something he was not used to, overcame him last night. Sleep is the best thing for him; let us leave him quiet—he will be better when he wakes.”
And so they left him; Colonel Sutherland really believing that to brave himself for a scene which must excite him painfully, but where real grief was not to be expected from him, Horace had come intoxicated to his father’s death-bed, and Susan half-disgusted, half-comforted to believe that his maniac looks of last night might be attributed to such a cause. They went away, the Colonel to take an hour’s sleep after his long visit, and Susan to weep out her heart, thinking over that one touch of natural sympathy, which, beyond death and the grave, gave her more hold of love upon her father, than she had ever before felt herself to possess. The morning was kindling over the moor, brightening the golden-blossomed gorse, and glowing over the purple beds of heather; but the blinds were drawn down and the shutters closed in Marchmain; the obscure and gloomy atmosphere of death reigned in the house. Peggy sat by the kitchen-fire, with her white apron thrown over her head—her mind lost in long trains of recollection, sometimes her wearied frame yielding to a half-hour’s sleep, sometimes her troubled thoughts overflowing in a few natural tears. The woman who had come to be nurse and household assistant dozed on the other side of the fire. Colonel Sutherland, very grave, and full of the thoughts which death brings in his train, sat alone in the darkened dining-room, taking an hour’s sleep as he said—though in reality the old soldier had only read his morning chapter in his old Bible, and was composing himself with the tender strength of these words of God; while Susan, withdrawn in her own room, gave the dead man his dues, and paid that duty of nature, a woman’s lamentations, to the concluded life.
In this languor and stillness of the death-consecrated house, where no agony of living grief reigned, but only the natural pathos and the natural rest, Horace awoke at bright mid-day from his unnatural sleep. Accustomed to the noises of a town, and to the perpetual wasting of his own burning thoughts, the stillness struck him strangely, with a chill calm which he could not explain. He sat up mechanically, and put the lank disordered hair from his face, trying to recollect where he was and what had happened. Looking round at that room, strange yet familiar, the shelter of all his youthful years, he could almost have supposed that everything else was but a hideous dream, and that he himself was nothing worse or guiltier than the rebellious lad who once slept and dreamt within these homely walls. But then bit by bit the light brightened upon him; he traced out the whole black history line by line; the first suggestion of this guilt at which he had shuddered—the returning thoughts which grew familiar to him—the deed itself, black and breathless in its stealthy and secret crime; and now the consummation had come! At that thought he started from his bed, all his pulses beating with the strength of fear. What was he thinking of?—the great stakes he had played for and won? the big inaccessible fortune which made him this day, in this obscure house, as Uncle Edward said, one of the richest men in England? the wealthy inheritance, which was all his own? He thought of no such thing, poor madman, in his frightful success and triumph; far from that ruined soul and miserable house were now the delusions of love and fortune which had wiled him into crime; no exultant thought of fortune gained—no lover’s fancy of Amelia won, warmed him in the first sharp access of misery. He thought of one thing, and one only, in the abject horror of that guilt, which he himself knew, though no one else did. The fatal box in which he had laid his train of destruction—the medicine chest where his father had gone to seek healing and had found death. Where was it? He saw it in his burning imagination a far more dread obstacle than had been that life which he had destroyed, standing between him and all the objects of his ambition; he could not look anywhere but that fatal vision glided before him, clear with its brass-bound corners, its tiny phials, and the lock which closed with such a horrible jar. It haunted his miserable eyes, a guilty spectrum—where was it?—had the doctor perhaps taken possession of if already to detect the secret felon, lurking murderous under its seeming innocence?—had the vindictive victim of that snare given it over into some one’s hand, a witness not to be intimidated against the parricide? The heavy drops rained from his white face, his limbs trembled like palsy, his very youth and strength forsook him in that dread emergency. By a dark intuition he knew that his father was dead, that all was over; that, so far as superficial appearances went, the fortune and the triumph were his own; and so got up—God help him!—in a fever of hopeless misery, to look for that fatal token which might, his excited fancy supposed, turn all the tide against him, and take his very life. He went out trembling and feeble, out of the shelter of his room—afraid of the daylight, of the stillness, of everything about and around him—trembling, like a felon as he was, at his own dreary and hideous success. This was how Horace Scarsdale came into his fortune, in faithful fulfilment of his grandfather’s wicked will!
CHAPTER XXIII.
ARMED by the extremity of his alarm, Horace ventured, no one being near to spy upon him, to enter, in his miserable search, the chamber of death itself. He dared not look towards the bed, on which lay that rigid outline of humanity, all covered and dressed with white. He could scarcely contain the horror of his trembling as he stood, dismayed and powerless, in the presence of his victim; but, after his first pause of involuntary homage, he turned—though still not daring to turn his back to the bed, overpowered with a terror which he could not explain—to pursue his search. Stealthily moving about, with his head bent, and his step shuffling as if with age, he examined every corner, peering into the wardrobe, where his heart thrilled desperately to see the well-remembered garments which it was so hard to believe could never be worn again; and turning over familiar articles of daily use with awed and trembling fingers, as though they could betray him; but he could not find any trace of the object of his search. Its very absence seemed to him significant and terrible. Had some enemy taken it to testify against him? Had the dead man himself taken measures to secure his own revenge? Heavy, cold, clammy beads of moisture hung upon the young man’s face; a chill as of death entered into his heart; deep to the very centre of his being he himself knew and felt his own guilt—and now another mysterious, gnawing misery was added to his own self-consciousness. Some one else knew also; some one meaning him evil had withdrawn that dreadful instrument of death and vengeance. He had played his horrible game, but the great stakes were further off than ever. Already, in his miserable, excited imagination, he saw, instead of fortune and Amelia, a trial and a scaffold, and the dread name of parricide. A wild agony of impatience and intolerable suffering came over him. Rather than wait till this slow, deadly avenger of blood had found him out, he would rush forth somewhere, and denounce himself, and have it over. His punishment was more than he could bear!
But all was silent in the death-stricken house; not a sound, save the loud ticking of the clock downstairs, and the deep throbs of his own heart, could Horace hear as he stood, stealthy and desperate, at the door of his father’s room. Susan’s face, innocent and wondering; Uncle Edward’s benign countenance, disapproving and sad; and, still more dangerous, Peggy’s troubled eyes, watching where he went and what he did, haunted his imagination. He could fancy them all grouped together under covert somewhere, watching that guilty, stealthy pause of his—watching his secret, clandestine footsteps as he stole downstairs. But still he did go down, in the breathless cowardice of his conscious crime; fearing everything, yet with all his mind fixed, in an intensity which was half insane, upon that dumb witness against him. He did not expect to find it. He could have supposed it possessed by some malicious spirit, and with an actual animate will working against him; but he could not rest till he had, through every corner, sought it out—if, perhaps, it could be found.
When he had got downstairs he paused again to consider where he should go; a faint sound of Peggy’s voice in the kitchen, and the slight stir made now and then for a moment by Colonel Sutherland in the dining parlour, confused and stopped him in his course. He stood for a moment irresolute and breathless, not seeing what to do, and then almost involuntarily opened the closed door of Mr. Scarsdale’s study. The recluse was dead, and could harm no man now; but he was alive when his guilty son stepped into that room so deeply instinct with his presence, where now more than ever he lived and had his sure abode. Almost more awful than the actual presence of the dead was that presence unseen and terrible, the invisible life of life, which death could not touch, and which should remain here for ever. Horace dared scarcely breathe the air of this deserted room. An hour’s imprisonment in it, in his present state of mind, would have driven him into mad superstition, if not to positive frenzy; but he saw something there, set out almost with ostentation on the table, which would have drawn him through fire and water. There it stood, solemnly by itself, the books and papers cleared away from its immediate vicinity, in malign and mischievous state, calling the attention of everyone who entered. Horace made his shuddering way forward, and seized upon it with the grasp of desperation. Yes, there it was, with all its evidence within his own reach, and safe, if he willed it so, to harm him no more!
The little medicine-chest was partially open, with the key in its lock; but this had been done of purpose, and was the result of no accident; and within lay something white—a sheet of paper—which assuredly was not there when he had opened it before. Almost too anxious to pay any attention to these elaborate marks of intention and design, Horace seized the box and the phial which he had filled. He could not pause even to look whether the leather which covered the cork had been removed, or any of the contents were gone, but hastened to the fireplace, where the ashes of a fire still lay in the grate, and with trembling hands broke the neck of the bottle against the grate, and emptied out its contents—for he dared not go outside, lest some one should see him. As he paused, kneeling on the hearth, breathless and with a beating heart, he tried to take comfort and re-assure himself. It was gone; no evidence existed now that the son had entered in, murderous and secret, to the father’s chamber. He tried to persuade himself that he breathed more freely; then he grovelled down upon the hearth, and hid his face in his hands. God help him! what did it matter though no one else suspected?—deep in the bottom of his heart did not he know?—and was there anything in heaven or earth which could wash the horror of that certainty out of Horace Scarsdale’s miserable mind? He had been selfish, malicious, unloving before; but never till now had he been a murderer—and, oh! the horrible difference, the change unspeakable, which that dread distinction made!