Morally, Ethel, Earl Gascoyne, was a matricide, the family chronicles deponing that his mother had died of grief at his crimes. He could not have been entirely destitute of natural affection, for he was apparently overwhelmed with sorrow at her death, as the inscription on the stately tomb which he erected to her memory in Hammerton chapel indicated.
I wandered after the gaping, chattering group hardly hearing what was said. How was it that I was so like this Gascoyne who was so singularly unlike his kinsmen, and who had put into practice the dreams I had dreamt? He had been right. Hammerton had been worth risking something for.
We visited the lonely tower where he was supposed to have spent the haunted evening of his days in searching for the elixir of life, and where the rats had left him a hideous, obscene corpse. The trippers seemed infected by the gloom of the story, for in silence they tramped through the spacious, echoing, upper chamber, where he was reputed to have studied the stars, and to have sold himself to the Evil One.
This old man who found it so difficult to die—he was nearly a hundred when the end came—spent his last years in a debauch of mystical speculation, remaining interesting to the end.
As we crossed the grassy lawn on our way out a carriage and pair drove in through the great gates. It in were seated a young man and woman of a surprising distinction of appearance. The young man was dark, but not as Ethel, Earl Gascoyne, had been dark. The hair, eyes and moustache were dark brown. The face itself was almost feminine in its delicacy of colouring. The flush of the cheeks and the redness of the lips might have been envied by a young girl. The suggestion of effeminacy, however, was negatived by the iron determination of the mouth. I don’t think I have ever seen so firm a face which did not suggest obstinacy. The eyes were keen, and looked out from beneath the finely pencilled eyebrows with a winning expression of kindliness. The face, however, was too sensitive to be designated by so stodgy an expression as good-natured.
The guide touched his cap, and turning to the group who stood waiting, said impressively: “That is his lordship.”
The excursionists gaped after the carriage as if my lord and my lady were a show.
I rode back to London in the cool of a perfect summer evening thinking deeply. I had seen enough of the world to be quite sure that luck or capital were the only two things which could bring wealth while a man was still young enough to enjoy it. The first could in the nature of things only come to one man in a thousand, and the chances of a stroke of luck really worth having were even more remote. As for capital, I had none, nor was there the least probability of my obtaining any. Therefore, unless I was content to work hard to make some other man rich I must step out of the conventional path.
I was unknown to all my aristocratic relatives. Should mine be the unseen hand which was to remove them from my path? And if so, was such a thing possible without risks disproportionate to the gain? It was a stupendous enterprise. The career of a murderer was not to be undertaken lightly and without reflection. The more I thought about it, however, the more convinced I became that I should decide on making a struggle for the Gascoyne title and the Gascoyne millions.
After all, the family was nothing to me. The member of it to whom I had appealed for assistance had refused even to see me, and should I persist in my design this would have been as well.