Suddenly they heard a sound, they started--a tearing aside of the turning boughs--a sound, strong, positive, angry--then a gentle rustling of the leaves, a soft movement of the feathery fern--and Lady Greystock had let go her father's arm, and was standing with her hand on the head, between the antlers, of a huge old deer--Dapple--"Don Dapple," as the children had called him--and speaking to him tenderly--"Oh, Dapple, do you know me? Oh, Dapple--alas! poor beast--did you do it--that awful thing? Are you so fierce, poor beast--were you the terrible avenger?" How her tears fell! How her whole frame trembled! How the truth came on her as she looked into the large, tearful eyes of the once tame buck, that had grown fanciful and fierce in its age, and of whom even some of the keepers had declared themselves afraid. Mr. Brewer took biscuit from his coat-pocket, chance scraps from lunches, secreted from days before, when he had been out on long rounds through the farms. These old Dapple nibbled, and made royal gestures of satisfaction and approval--and there, viewing his stately head in the water, where his spreading antlers were mirrored, they left him to walk home, with one wonder out of their hearts, and another--wondering awe at the thing that had happened among them--to by their for ever.
They came back, they called the doctors, they examined the torn clothes. They wondered they had never thought of the truth before.
Time went on. And at last, when Horace could speak, and they asked him about the old deer at the pond, he said that it was so--it was as they had thought. It had been an almost deadly struggle between man and beast; and Horace was to bear the marks upon the face and form that had been loved so well to his life's end. A broken-featured man, lame, with a stiff arm, and a sightless eye--and the story of his ruined life no longer a secret--known to all.
Lady Greystock and Mrs. Evelyn remained at Beremouth. Mary Lorimer was left at her grandmother's under the care of the trusty Jenifer. James O'Keefe had returned to Ireland, leaving his niece and her history in good guardianship with Father Daniels and Mr. Brewer; and Freddy, being at school, had been happily kept out of the knowledge of all but the surface facts, which were no secrets from anybody, that a man who had been seen in the park and was a stranger in the neighborhood had been suspected of being the perpetrator of the injuries of which the old deer had been guilty. Poor old deer--poor aged Dapple! It was with a firm hand and an unflinching determination that the kindest man living met the beast once more at the deer-pond, and shot him dead. Mr. Brewer would trust his death to no hand but his own--and there in the thicket where he loved to hide a grave was dug, and the monarch of the place was buried in it.
Lady Greystock and Eleanor kept their own rooms, and lived together much as they had done latterly at Blagden. When Horace Erskine was fit to leave his bed-room, he used to sit in a room that had been called "Mr. Brewer's." It was, in fact, a sort of writing-room, fitted up with a small useful library and opening at the end into a bright conservatory. He had seen Lady Greystock. He knew of Eleanor being in the house. He knew also that his former relations with her were known, and he never denied, or sought to deny, the fact of their Catholic marriage.
No one ever spoke to him on the subject. The subject that was first in all hearts was to see him well and strong, and able to act for himself. One thing it was impossible to keep from him; and that was the anger of Mr. Erskine, his unde, an anger which Lucia his wife did not try to modify. Mrs. Brewer wrote to her sister; Mr. Brewer pleaded with his brother-in-law. Not a thing could they do to pacify them. Horace was everything that was evil in their eyes; his worst crime in the past was his having made a Catholic marriage with a beautiful Irish girl, and their great dread for the future was that he would make this marriage valid by the English law. They blamed Mr. Brewer for keeping Eleanor in the house; they were thankless to Mr. Brewer for still giving to Horace care, kindness, and a home. Finally, the one great dread that included all other dreads, and represented the overpowering woe, was that contained in the thought that Horace might repent, and become a Papist.
Mr. Brewer, when it came to that, set his all-conquering kindness aside for the time, or, to adopt his wife's words when describing these seeming changes in her husbands's character, "he clothed his kindness in temporary armor, and went out to fight." He replied to Mr. and Mrs. Erskine that for such a grace to fall on Horace would be the answer of mercy to the prayer of a poor woman's faith--that he and all his household joined in that prayer; that priests at the altar, and nuns in their holy homes, were all praying for that great result; and that for himself he would only say that for such a mercy to fall upon his house would make him glad for ever.
There was no disputing with a man who could so openly take his stand on such a broad ground of hope and prayer in such direct opposition to the wishes of his neighbors. The Erskines became silent, and Mr. Brewer had gained all he hoped for; peace, peace at least for the time.
At last Horace was well enough to move, and Freddy's holidays were approaching, and there was an unexpressed feeling that Horace was not to be at Beremouth when the boy came back. Mr. Brewer proposed that Horace should go for change of air to the same house in which Father Dawson was lodging, just beyond Clayton, where the sea air might refresh him, and the changed scene amuse his mind; and where, too, he could have the benefit of all those baths, and that superior attendance, described in the great painted advertisement that covered the end of the lodging-houses in so promising a manner. Horace accepted the proposal gladly. He grew almost bright under the expectation of the change, and when the day came he appeared to revive, even under the fatigue of a drive so much longer than any that he had been before allowed to venture upon.
Mr. Dawson was to be kind, and to watch over him a little; and Father Daniels was to visit him, and write letters for him, and be his, adviser and his friend. Before he left Beremouth he had asked to see Lady Greystock. She went with her father to his room quite with the old Claudia Brewer cheerfulness prettily mingling with woman's strength and woman's experience. He rose up, and said, "I wished to ask you to forgive me, Lady Greystock--to forgive me my many sins toward you!" She trembled a little, and said, "Mr. Erskine, may God forgive me my pride, my anger, my evil thoughts, which have made me say so often I could never see nor pardon you." It seemed to require all her strength to carry out the resolution with which she had entered that room. "Of course," she went on, "the personal trial that you brought upon me, here, in my young days, I know now to have been a great blessing in a grief's disguise. Though not--not yet--a Catholic, I know you were then, as now, a married man." Horace Erskine never moved; he was still standing, holding by the heavy writing-table, and his eyes were fastened on the carpet. She went on: "Since then your wife, a beautiful and even an accomplished woman, has become my own dear friend. We are living together, and until she has a home of her own, we shall probably go on living together. I have nothing, therefore, to say more, except--except--" Here her voice trembled, and changed, and she was only just able to articulate her last words so as to be understood by her hearers, "Except about my dear husband's death--better death than life under misapprehension. That too was a blessing perhaps. Let us leave it to the Almighty Judge. I forgive you; if you wish to hear those words from my poor erring lips, you may remember that I have said them honestly, submitting to the will of him who loves us, and from whom I seek mercy for myself."