CHAPTER XII.
[PHILIP RAY AT RICHMOND.]
Once Philip Ray started on any course he was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. All his time was not at his disposal. He was in the Custom House, and for several hours a day he was chained to his desk.
No sooner were his duties discharged on the day following the arrival of the boy at Boland's Ait than he hastened to Ludgate Hill railway station and took the first train to Richmond.
He had not worked out any definite plan of search. His mind was not a particularly orderly one. Indeed, he was largely a creature of impulse, and in setting out he had only two ideas in his head. First, to find the man who had caused all the shame and misery; and, second, to execute summary vengeance on that man the moment he encountered him.
He did not seek to justify himself morally in this course; he did not consider the moral aspect of his position at all. When his blood was up he was impulsive, headlong. He had made up his mind three years ago that John Ainsworth deserved death at his hands for the injury done, and neither during any hour of these three years nor now had he the slightest hesitancy or compunction.
He had sworn an oath that he would kill this man if ever he could get at him, and kill him he would now in spite of consequences. People might call it a cowardly murder if they pleased. What did he care? This man deserved death, and if they chose to hang him afterwards, what of that? He was quite prepared to face that fate. Kate was dying or dead; the honourable name of Ray had been disgraced for ever; the life of the man he loved best in all the world had been blasted by a base, vicious scoundrel, and he would shoot that scoundrel just as he would shoot a mad dog or a venomous snake. He was inexorable.
No thought of seeking his sister entered his mind. She was, doubtless, dead by this time. From the moment she left her husband's roof she had been dead to him. In the presence of Frank, and with that letter before him, he had held his tongue regarding her. But his mind was completely unchanged. The best thing that could happen to her was that she should die. A woman who could do what she had done deserved no thought of pity, had no place in the consideration of sane people; a woman who could leave Frank Mellor, now known as Francis Bramwell, for John Ainsworth, deserved no pity, no human sympathy. She had sinned in the most heinous way against loyalty; let him show that all the blood of the family was not base and traitorous. He would sin on the other side to make matters even.
He knew that such forms of vengeance were not usual in this time and country. So much the worse for this time and country. What other kind of satisfaction was possible? The law courts? Monstrous! How could the law courts put such a case right? By divorcing those who had already been divorced! By a money penalty exacted from the culprit! Pooh, pooh! If a man shot a man they hanged him, put him out of pain at once. But if a man was the cause of a woman's lingering death from shame and despair, and imposed a life of living-death on an innocent human being, they let the miscreant go scot-free; unless, indeed, they imposed a fine such as they would inflict for breach of an ordinary commercial contract. The idea that treatment of this sort had even the semblance of justice could not be entertained by a child or an idiot!
Before setting out from Ludgate Hill and on the way down to Richmond nothing seemed more reasonable than that he should take the train to that town, and without any serious difficulty find John Ainsworth. The town was not large, and he could give any one of whom he asked aid the man's name and a full description of his appearance. He possessed, moreover, the additional fact that Ainsworth had shaved his face, taken off his beard, whiskers, and moustache. He should be on his track in an hour, and face to face with Ainsworth in a couple of hours at the outside.