And so as to have the last word, she swept across the room and retired. The swish of her skirts had hardly ceased to sound in Sylvester's ears when a servant came in with a letter. It bore no stamp, and was in Roderick's handwriting.
“Trotter from the White Hart brought it, sir,” explained the servant.
The letter ran:—
Having received your solicitor's letter concerning the
legacy under Mr. Lanyon's will, I came down last evening to
see my father. In the course of conversation he revealed to
me facts which have literally stunned me. I must see you or
write to you. But as these things are best unwritten,
perhaps in the utterly unprecedented circumstances you would
be willing to bear the pain that such an interview might
cause you, and make an appointment to meet me today. I would
suggest this hotel. Perhaps I have little right to do so,
but, I earnestly beseech you to believe in my good faith.
Roderick Usher.
Sylvester read this letter, so uncharacteristic of the man as he had known him, with a recrudescence of implacable feeling. To meet him was hateful. The agony of the journey to Ayresford a week ago came upon him. He crumpled the letter tight in his hand.
“He was to wait for an answer, sir,” hazarded the servant, after a time.
The commonplace, as it often does, brought reaction. He scribbled a line, fixing the appointment at twelve.
He found Roderick pacing up and down the stiffly furnished and somewhat dingy private sitting-room of the White Hart Hotel. The two men brought suddenly face to face remained for a while in an embarrassed silence, each looking in the eyes of the other. For the first time Sylvester realised in all its significance the blood tie that bound them. This man was his brother. Grotesque and incongruous though it seemed, the fact was driven home to him as by some mighty blow. This man's mother was his mother,—the mother who had sung him to sleep as a little child, who had listened to his boyish confidence, who had been inwoven in all his early life, whose voice whose caress, whose fragrance, lingered vividly in all his senses, whose body and soul were unalienably his. A horrible jealousy seized him.
Roderick, though point-device in blue serge suit and saffron-silk tie, looked aged and careworn. The lines under his eyes had deepened. He had lost flesh, and his cheeks were flabby. He was the first to break the silence.