Some days had passed since this night of avowal when, very early one morning, Henry was awakened from sleep by the sound of wheels and of knocking at the inn door. A strange apprehension took hold of him, and he rose from his bed and limped to the window. Then he saw that the carriage which had arrived was the old Rosham shooting brake, a long plain vehicle with deal seats running down its length on either side, constructed to carry eight or nine sportsmen to and from the more distant beats. Knocking at the door was none other than Edward Milward, and Henry guessed at once that he must have come to fetch him.
“Well, perhaps it is as well,” he thought to himself grimly; then again his heart was filled with fear. What had happened? Why did Milward come thus, and at such an hour?
In another minute Edward had entered the room, followed by Mrs. Gillingwater.
“Your father is dying, Graves,” he blurted out. “I don’t know what it is; he collapsed suddenly in the middle of the night. If you want to see him alive—and you had better, if you can, while he has got his senses—you must make shift to come along with me at once. I have brought the brake, so that you can lie in it at full length. That was Ellen’s idea: I should never have thought of it.”
“Great Heaven!” said Henry. Then, assisted by Mrs. Gillingwater, he began to get into his clothes.
In ten minutes they were off, Henry lying flat upon a mattress at the bottom of the brake. Once he lifted his head and looked through the open rails of the vehicle towards the door of the house. Mrs. Gillingwater, who was a shrewd woman, interpreted the glance.
“If you are looking for Joan, sir, to say good-bye to her, it is no use, for she’s in her room there sleeping like the dead, and I couldn’t wake her. I don’t think she is quite herself, somehow; but she’ll be sorry to miss you, and so shall I, for the matter of that; but I’ll tell her.”
“Thank you, thank you—for everything,” he answered hastily, and they started.
The drive was long and the road rough, having been much washed by recent rains; but after a fashion Henry enjoyed it, so far as his pressing troubles of mind would allow him to enjoy anything, for it was a lovely morning, and the breath of the open air, the first that he had tasted for many weeks, was like wine to him. On the way he learned from his companion all that there was to be told about his father. It appeared, as Henry had heard already, that he had been unwell for the last two months—not in a way to give alarm, though sufficiently to prevent him from leaving the house except on the finest days, or at times his room. On the previous day, however, he seemed much better, and dined downstairs. About ten o’clock he went to bed, and slept soundly till a little past midnight, when the household was aroused by the violent ringing of Lady Graves’s bell, and they rushed upstairs to find that Sir Reginald had been seized with a fit. Dr. Childs was sent for at once, and gave an opinion that death might occur at any moment. His treatment restored the patient’s consciousness; and Sir Reginald’s first words expressed the belief that he was dying, and an earnest wish to see his son, whereupon Edward, who chanced to be spending the night at Rosham, was despatched with the brake to Bradmouth.
At length they reached the Hall, and Henry was helped from the vehicle; but in ascending the stone steps, which he insisted upon doing by himself, one of his crutches slipped, causing the foot of his injured limb to come down with some force upon the edge of the step. The accident gave him considerable pain, but he saved himself from falling, and thought little more of it at the time.
In the dining-room he found Ellen, who looked pale, and seemed relieved to see him.
“How is my father?” he asked.
“Insensible again just now. But I am so glad that you have come, Henry, for he has been asking for you continually. All this business about the property seems to weigh more upon his mind now than it has done for years, and he wants to speak to you on the subject.”
Then his mother came down, and her eyes were red with weeping.
“You have returned to a sad home, Henry,” she said kissing him. “We are an unlucky family: death and misfortune are always at our doors. You look very white, my dear boy, and no wonder. You had better try to eat something, since it is useless for you to attempt to see your poor father at present.”
So Henry ate, or made a pretence of doing so, and afterwards was helped upstairs to a room opposite to that in which his father lay dying, where he settled himself in an invalid chair which Sir Reginald had used on the few occasions when he had been outside the house during the past weeks, and waited. All that day and all the next night he waited, and still his father did not recover consciousness—indeed, Dr. Childs now appeared to be of opinion that he would pass from coma to death. Much as he wished to bid a last farewell to his father, Henry could not repress a certain sense of relief when he heard that this was likely to be the case, for an instinct, coupled with some words which Ellen had let fall, warned him that Sir Reginald wished to speak to him upon the subject of Miss Levinger.
But the doctor was mistaken; for about six o’clock in the morning, nearly twenty-four hours after he had reached the house, Henry was awakened by Ellen, who came to tell him that their father was fully conscious and wished to see him at once. Seating himself in the invalid chair, he was wheeled across the passage to the red bedroom, in which he had himself been born. The top halves of some of the window-shutters were partly open, and by the light that streamed through them into the dim death-chamber, he saw his father’s gaunt but still stately form propped up with pillows in the great four-post bed, of which the red curtains had been drawn back to admit the air.
“Here comes Henry,” whispered Lady Graves.
The old man turned his head, and, shaking back his snowy hair, he peered round the room.
“Is that you, my son?” he said in a low voice, stretching out a trembling hand, which Henry took and kissed. “You find me in a bad way: on the verge of death, where you have so lately been.”
“Yes, it is I, father.”
“God bless you, my boy! and God be thanked that you have been able to come to listen to my last words, and that I have recovered my senses so that I can speak to you! Do not go away, my dear, or you, Ellen, for I want you all to hear what I have to say. You know, Henry, the state of this property. Mismanagement and bad times have ruined it. I have been to blame, and your dear brother, whom I hope soon to see, was to blame also. It has come to this, that I am leaving you beggars, and worse than beggars, since for the first time in the history of our family we cannot pay our debts.”
Here he stopped and groaned, and Lady Graves whispered to him to rest awhile.
“No, no,” he answered. “Give me some brandy; I will go on; it does not matter if I use myself up, and my brain may fail me at any moment. Henry, I am dying here, on this spot of earth where so many of our forefathers have lived and died before me; and more than the thought of leaving you all, more than the memory of my sins, or than the fear of the judgment of the Almighty, Whose mercy is my refuge, the thought crushes me that I have failed in my trust, that my children must be beggared, my name dishonoured, and my home—yes, and my very grave—sold to strangers. Henry, I have but one hope now, and it is in you. I think that I have sometimes been unjust to you in the past; but I know you for an upright and self-denying man, who, unlike some of us, has always set his duty before his pleasure. It is to you, then, that I appeal with my last breath, feeling sure that it will not be in vain, since, even should you have other wishes, you will sacrifice them to my prayer, to your mother’s welfare, and to the honour of our name. You know that there is only one way of escape from all our liabilities for I believe you have been spoken to on the subject; indeed, I myself alluded to it by a marriage between yourself and Emma Levinger, who holds the mortgages on this property, and has other means. Her father desires this, and I have been told that the girl herself, who is a good and a sweet woman, has declared her affection for you; therefore it all rests with you. Do you understand me?”
“Say yes, and that you will marry her on the first opportunity,” whispered Ellen into Henry’s ear. “He will kill himself with talking so much.” Then she saw her brother’s face, and drew back her head in horror. Heavens! could it be that he was going to refuse?
“I will try to make myself plain,” went on Sir Reginald after a pause, and swallowing another sip of brandy. “I want you to promise, Henry, before us all, that nothing, except the death of one of you, shall prevent you from marrying Emma Levinger so soon as may be possible after my funeral. When I have heard you say that, I shall be able to die in peace. Promise, then, my son, quickly; for I wish to turn my mind to other matters.”
Now all eyes were bent upon Henry’s face, and it was rigid and ashen. Twice he tried to speak and failed; the third time the words came, and they sounded like a groan.
“Father, I cannot!”
Ellen gasped, and Lady Graves murmured, “! cruel, cruel!” As for the dying man, his head sank back upon the pillow, and he lay there bewildered. Presently he lifted it and spoke again.
“I do not think—my hearing—I must have misunderstood. Did you say you could not promise, Henry? Why not? With everything at stake, and my dying prayer—mine, your father’s. Oh! why not? Are you married, then?”
The sweat broke from Henry’s brow and rolled down his face in large drops, as he answered, always in the voice that sounded like a groan,—
“I am not married, father; and, before God, sooner than be forced to refuse you I would lie as you lie now. Have pity, I beseech you, on my cruel strait, between my honour and the denial of your wish. I cannot promise that I will marry Emma Levinger, because I am bound to another woman by ties that may not be broken, and I cannot be so base as to desert her.”
“Another woman? I am too late, then?” murmured his father more and more feebly. “But stay: there is still hope. Who is she? At least you will not refuse to tell me her name.”
“Her name is Joan Haste.”
“Joan Haste? What! the girl at the inn? The bastard! My son, my only remaining son, denies his dying father, and brings his mother and his name to disgrace and ruin, because he is bound in honour to a village bastard!” he screamed. “Oh, my God! that I should have lived to hear this! Oh, my God! my God!”
And suddenly the old man flung his arms wide and fell back. Lady Graves and Ellen ran to him. Presently the former came away from the bed.
“Your father is dead, Henry,” she said. “Perhaps, after what has passed, you will feel that this is no fit place for you. I will ring for some one to take you to your room.”
But the last bitterness of these words, so awful from a mother’s lips, was spared to Henry, for he had swooned. As he sank into unconsciousness a solemn voice seemed to speak within his tortured brain, and it said, “Behold the firstfruits of iniquity.”
Henry did not attend his father’s funeral, for the good reason that he was ill in bed. In the first place, though he made light of it at the time, that slip of his on the stone steps had so severely affected his broken limb as to necessitate his lying by for at least another month; and in the second he had received a shock to his nerves, healthy as they were, from which he could not hope to recover for many a month. He was kept informed of all that went on by Thomson, the old butler, for neither his mother nor Ellen came near him during those dark days. He heard the footsteps of the carpenter who measured his father’s body, he heard the coffin being brought upstairs; and the day afterwards he heard the shuffling tramp of the tenants, who, according to ancient custom, bore down the corpse of the dead owner of Rosham to lie in state in the great hall. He heard the workmen nailing the hatchment of the departed baronet beneath his window; and then at last a day came when he heard a noise of the rolling wheels of carriages, and the sound of a church bell tolling, as his father was laid to rest among the bones of his ancestors.
So bitter was the resentment against him, that none had asked Henry to look his last upon his father’s face. For a while he thought it better that he should not do so, but on the second night after the death nature grew too strong for him, and he determined to do that alone which, under happier circumstances, it should have been his duty to do with his widowed mother and his sister at his side. Painfully he dragged himself from the bed, and, placing a candle and a box of matches in the pocket of his dressing-gown, he limped upon his crutches across the silent corridor and into the death-chamber, where the atmosphere was so heavy with the scent of flowers that for a moment it brought back his faintness. Recovering himself, he closed the door and made shift to light his candle. Then by its solitary light he approached the bed on which his father’s corpse was lying, half hidden by wreaths and covered with a sheet. With a trembling hand he drew down the wrapping and exposed the dead man’s face. It was calm enough now: there was no trace there of the tormenting grief that had been upon it in the moment of dissolution; it bore the seal of perfect peace, and, notwithstanding the snowy hair, a more youthful aspect than Henry could remember it to have worn, even in the days of his childhood.
In sad and solemn silence Henry gazed upon the clay that had given him life, and great bitterness and sorrow took hold of him. He covered his eyes with his hand, and prayed that God might forgive him for the pain which he had caused his father in his last hour, and that his father might forgive him too in the land where all things are understood, for there he would learn that he could not have spoken otherwise. Well, he was reaping as he had sown, and there remained nothing to him except to make amendment as best he could. Then with a great effort he dragged himself up upon the bed, and kissed his father’s forehead.
Having replaced the sheet, he extinguished the candle and turned to leave the room. As he opened the door he saw a figure draped in black, who stood in the passage listening. It was his mother. She advanced towards him with a cold, sad mien, and opened her lips as though to speak. Then the light fell upon his face, and she saw that it was torn by grief and stained with tears, and her look softened, for now she understood something of what her son’s sufferings must be. Still she did not speak, and in silence, except for the tapping of his crutches on the polished floor, Henry passed her with bowed head, and reached his room again.
In due course the family returned from the funeral, and, outwardly at any rate, a break occurred in the conspiracy of silence and neglect of which Henry was the object, for it was necessary that he should be present at the reading of the will. This ceremony took place in the bedroom of the new baronet, and gathered there were a representative from the London firm of lawyers that had managed, or mismanaged, the Graves’s affairs for several generations, the widow, Ellen, and Edward Milward. Bowing gravely to Sir Henry, the lawyer broke the seals of the document and began the farce for a farce it was, seeing that the will had been signed nearly five-and-twenty years before, when the position of the family was very different. After reciting the provisions of the entail that, by the way, had long been cut under which his deceased brother Reginald should have entered into the enjoyment of all the land and hereditaments and the real property generally, with remainder to his children, or, in the event of his death without issue, to Henry, the testator went on to deal with the jointure of the widow, which was fixed at eight hundred a year in addition to the income arising from her own fortune, that, alas! had long since been lost or muddled away. Then it made provision for the younger children,—ten thousand to Henry and eight thousand to Ellen,—to be paid out of the personalty, or, should this prove insufficient, to be raised by way of rent-charge on the estate, as provided for under the marriage settlement of Sir Reginald and his wife; and, after various legacies and directions as to the disposal of heirlooms, ended by constituting Reginald, or, in the event of his death without issue, Henry, residuary legatee.
When he had finished reading this lengthy document, which he well knew not to be worth the paper on which it was written, the lawyer solemnly exhibited the signatures of the testator and of the attesting witnesses, and laid it down with a sigh. Three of the listeners were aware that the will might as well have affected to dispose of the crown of England as to devise to them these various moneys, lands and chattels; but the fourth, Edward Milward, who had never been admitted to full confidence as to the family position, was vastly pleased to learn that his future wife inherited so considerable a sum, to say nothing of her chance of succeeding to the entire estate should Henry die without issue. That there had been embarrassments and mortgage charges he knew, but these, he concluded, were provided for by life insurances, and had rolled off the back of the property on the death of the late owner. Indeed, he showed his pleasure so plainly in his face that the lawyer, guessing he was labouring under some such delusion, hesitated and looked at him pointedly before he proceeded to make remarks upon the document. Ellen, always on the watch, took the hint, and, laying her hand affectionately on Milward’s shoulder, said in a low voice:
“Perhaps you will not mind leaving us for a few moments, Edward: I fancy there are one or two matters that my mother would not like to be discussed outside her own family at present.”
“Certainly,” answered Edward, who, having learned all he wished to know, rejoiced at the chance of escape, seeing that funerals and will-reading exercised a depressing effect upon his spirits.
Lady Graves was at the other end of the room and looking out of an open window, so that she did not overhear these remarks. Henry, however, did hear them, and spoke for the first time.
“I think that you had better stay, Milward,” he said: “there is nothing to conceal,” and he smiled grimly at his own double-entendre.
“No, thanks,” answered Edward airily: “I have heard all I want to know, so I will go into the garden and smoke a cigarette.” And before Henry could speak again he was gone.
“You are probably aware, Sir Henry,” began the lawyer, “that all the main provisions of this document”—and he tapped the will with his knuckle—“fall to the ground, for the reason that the capital sums with which they dealt were exhausted some years since; though I am bound to tell you that, in my opinion, the legality of the methods by which some of those sums were brought into possession might even now be contested.”
“Yes,” answered Henry, “and good money thrown after bad.”
“Of course,” went on the lawyer, “you succeed to the estates, which have been little, if at all, diminished in acreage; but they are, I believe, mortgaged to more than their present value in favour of a Mr. Levinger, who holds the securities in trust for his daughter, and to whom there is a large sum due by way of back interest.”
“Yes, I am aware of it.”
“Hem,” said the lawyer. “Then I am afraid that there is not much more to say, is there? I trust that you may be able—to find means to meet—these various liabilities, in which case we shall be most happy to act for you in the matter. By the way, we still have a small sum in our hands that was sent to us by our late esteemed client to pay a debt of your late brother’s, which on enquiry was found not to be owing. This we propose to remit to you, after deducting the amount of our account current.”
“By all means deduct the account current,” said Henry; “for, you see, you may not get another chance of paying yourselves. Well, the carriage is waiting for you. Good afternoon.”
The lawyer gathered up his papers, shook hands all round, bowed and went.
“Well,” he thought to himself as he drove towards the station, “I am glad to be clear of this business: somehow it was more depressing than most funerals. I suppose that there’s an end of a connection that has lasted a hundred years, though there will be some pickings when the estate is foreclosed on. I am glad it didn’t happen in Sir Reginald’s time, for I had a liking for the old man and his grand last-century manners. The new baronet seems a roughish fellow, with a sharp edge to his tongue; but I dare say he has a deal to worry him, and he looks very ill. What fools they were to cut the entail! They can’t blame us about it, anyway, for we remonstrated with them strongly enough. Sir Reginald was under the thumb of that dead son of his—that’s the fact, and he was a scamp, or something like it. Now they are beggared, absolutely beggared: they won’t even be able to pay their debts. It’s not one man’s funeral that I have been assisting at—it is that of a whole ancient family, without benefit of clergy or hope of resurrection. The girl is going to marry a rich man: she knows which side her bread is buttered, and has a good head on her shoulders—that’s one comfort. Well, they are bankrupt and done with, and it is no good distressing myself over what can’t be helped. Here’s the station. I wonder if I need tip the coachman. I remember he drove me when I came down to the elder boy’s christening; we were both young then. Not necessary, I think: I sha’n’t be likely to see him again.”