He then began to pace up and down more vehemently than before, fixing his eyes upon the ground, and seeming to think profoundly, with a quivering lip and knitted brow. "Hard, hard task for a father," he said—"God of heaven that I should ever dream of such a thing!—yet it might be a duty. What can Marlow be doing during this long unexplained absence? France—can he have discovered all this and quitted her, seeking, in charity, to make the breach as little painful as possible? Perhaps, after all," he continued, after a few moments' thought, "the man may have been mistaken when he told me that he believed that this young scoundrel was lying ill of a fall at this woman's cottage; yet at the best it was bad enough to quit a sick mother's bed-side for long hours, when I too was absent. Can she have done it to show her spleen at this foolish opposition to her marriage?"
There is no character so difficult to deal with—there is none which is such a constant hell to its possessor—as that of a moody man. Sir Philip had been moody, as I have endeavored to show, from his very earliest years; but all the evils of that sort of disposition had increased upon him rapidly during the latter part of his life. Unaware, like all the rest of mankind, of the faults of his own character, he had rather encouraged than struggled against its many great defects. Because he was stern and harsh, he fancied himself just, and forgot that it is not enough for justice to judge rightly of that which is placed clearly and truly before it, and did not remember, or at all events apply the principle, that an accurate search for truth, and an unprejudiced suspension of opinion till truth has been obtained, are necessary steps to justice. Suspicion—always a part and parcel of the character of the moody man—had of late years obtained a strong hold upon him, and unfortunately it had so happened that event after event had occurred to turn his suspicion against his own guiltless child. The very lights and shades of her character, which he could in no degree comprehend, from his own nature being destitute of all such impulsiveness, had not only puzzled him, but laid the foundation of doubts. Then the little incident which I have related in a preceding part of this work, regarding the Italian singing-master—Emily's resolute but unexplained determination to take no more lessons from that man, had set his moody mind to ponder and to doubt still more. The too successful schemes and suggestions of Mrs. Hazleton had given point and vigor to his suspicions, and the betrayal of his private conversation to the government had seemed a climax to the whole, so that he almost believed his fair sweet child a fiend concealed beneath the form of an angel.
It was in vain that he asked himself, What could be her motives? He had an answer ready, that her motives had always been a mystery to him, even in her lightest acts. "There are some people," he thought, "who act without motives—in whom the devil himself seems to have implanted an impulse to do evil without any cause or object, for the mere pleasure of doing wrong."
On the present occasion he had accidentally heard from the farmer, who was the next neighbor of Jenny Best, that he was quite certain Sir John Hastings, as he called him, was lying ill from a fall at that good woman's cottage. His horse had been found at a great distance on a wild common, with the bridle broken, and every appearance of having fallen over in rearing. Blood and other marks of an accident had been discovered on the road. Mr. Short, the surgeon, was seen to pay several visits every day to the old woman's house, and yet maintained the most profound secrecy in regard to his patient. The farmer argued that the surgeon would not be so attentive unless that patient was a person of some importance, and it was clear he was not one of Jenny Best's own family, for every member of it had been well and active after the surgeon's visits had been commenced.
All these considerations, together with the absence of John Ayliffe from his residence, had led the good farmer to a right conclusion, and he had stated the fact broadly to Sir Philip Hastings.
Sir Philip, on his part, had made no particular inquiries, for the very name of John Ayliffe was hateful to him; but when he heard that his daughter had gone forth alone to that very cottage, and had remained there for a considerable time in the same place with the man whom he abhorred, and remembered that the tale which had been boldly put forth of her having visited him in secret, the very blood, as it flowed through his heart, seemed turned into fire, and his brain reeled with anguish and indignation.
Presently the hall door was heard to open, and there was a light step in the passage. Sir Philip darted forth from his room, and met his daughter coming in with a sad and anxious face, and as he thought with traces of tears upon her eyelids.
"Where have you been?" asked her father in a stern low tone.
"I have been to Jenny Best's down the lane, my father," replied Emily, startled by his look and manner, but still speaking the plain truth, as she always did. "Is my mother worse?"
Without a word of reply Sir Philip turned away into his room again and closed the door.