Later in the day he took occasion to congratulate both the young folk, with the old-fashioned courtesy which became him so well, nor did he fail at dinner to drink to their health and happiness in a bumper of the rare old Madeira which was reserved for very special occasions. It was evident to everyone that the Baronet was in high good-humour, and that for the time at least he had succeeded in throwing off the gloom to which late events seemed to have hopelessly condemned him.
It was not till the second day after Sir Gilbert’s visit to the Tower that Martin Rigg and his daughter got back home. Within an hour of his return he was summoned to proceed at once to the Chase, where Sir Gilbert received him in his study. Scarcely had he limped slowly into the room before Sir Gilbert, turning quickly upon him with bent brows and an assumption of his most minatory manner, said: “Rigg, how many days ago is it since you last saw my son, Mr. John Alexander Clare?”
That the keeper was utterly taken aback he himself would have been the first to admit. He turned hot and then cold almost as quickly as it takes to write the words. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and then back again, and so crushed his hard felt hat between his fingers that it was never fit to wear again. For a moment or two his gaze went up to a corner of the ceiling, only to be drawn irresistibly back to the stern face and deep-set eyes of the one man of whom he had ever stood in awe.
“When did I set eyes on Mr. Alec last, sir?” he stammered.
“You heard my question. I said, how many days is it—not years, mind you—since you saw my son last? Now, let me have no prevarication, Rigg. You know that is what I would never put up with either from you or anyone else. I have a right to know the truth in this matter, and I demand to know it. Speak, and dare to tell me a lie at your peril!”
“I have never been in the habit of telling lies, Sir Gilbert, either to you or anybody else,” replied the keeper stiffly. “Since you force me to speak, I can’t help myself, though I bound myself under a promise not to do so. Sir, I parted from Mr. Alec Clare five days ago, just before I left home to go and bury my brother.”
A low cry broke from Sir Gilbert; his figure suddenly lost its rigidity and he sank back in his easy-chair, while his face blanched like that of a man at the point of death. Martin, terrified, made a step forward, but Sir Gilbert, tremblingly held up one hand. “Leave me alone,” he murmured, “I shall be better presently.” To those of his time of life the shock of sudden joy is oftentimes almost as trying as that of sudden grief.
“Sit down, Rigg,” said the Baronet presently, mindful even at such a moment of the man’s lameness. Then, as he lay back with closed eyes, little by little the colour ebbed back into his cheeks. It was true, then; his instinct had not led him astray, and his Alec was still in the land of the living! A great fountain of love and gratitude welled up in his heart—of reverent thankfulness and gratitude that it had pleased the Inscrutable Power who sways the destinies of mankind to vouchsafe him this crowning mercy so far beyond his deserts. What happiness to know that his firstborn—he whom, when young, he had so hardly treated that for years his memory of him had been an unending remorse—had been given back to him as it were, indeed, from the tomb, and that a season of reparation might still be granted him! But let us not pry too curiously into all that passed through his mind at this, one of the supreme moments of his life. Let his white hairs and his many sorrows not appeal to us in vain.
After a time he began to question Rigg, eagerly and closely, about all that he knew with reference to Alec. A summary of the information which he elicited piece-meal from the keeper is all that need be given here.
It appeared that “Master Alec,” as Martin still, from old habit, persisted in calling him, had been in hiding at the Tower for upwards of a month, in fact, ever since about two days before—quite unintentionally on his part—he so frightened Bessie Ogden on the terrace. The upper room of the old structure, ordinarily used by Martin as a bedroom, had been fitted up with a few extra articles of furniture and given up to his use; while Dulcie, the keeper’s daughter, had looked after his meals. More than once Martin had heard him asseverate that he had only returned to the Chase in order to right a great wrong—to send fraud and villainy to the right-about, and that as soon as the task he had set himself was accomplished he should go back to the place from whence he had come. What he had meant thereby Martin did not know. During the day Alec had never stirred out of the Tower; only after nightfall had he ventured abroad, and then only in the traditional guise of the Grey Monk—a character which in his younger days, when home from school or college, he had assumed more than once out of sheer love of mischief. As to the means by which Alec had been enabled to obtain access to the Chase after the household had retired for the night, that was his own secret, and one which he had never divulged to the keeper.