WITH Mr. Pouncet’s letter in his pocket—that self-betraying document, which he had estimated at once at its due value—Horace set out the next day for Kenlisle. Yet not for Kenlisle direct: the young man, with the oddest, uncharacteristic trifling, stopped half-way, to visit a remarkable cathedral town which lay in his road. What did Horace Scarsdale care for cathedrals? Yet he paused, in that most anxious and exciting moment, to inspect this one, and marched doggedly round and about it, as if to persuade himself that he was interested. In his progress he paused before an apothecary’s shop—but did not enter there, nor till hours after, when he rushed in on his way to the railway, and made certain purchases. In haste to get his train, he did not permit himself time to look at the things he had bought, but hurried them into his pocket, and rushed on again as though it had been only a sudden thought which moved him. Yet he had never looked so darkly pale and dangerous as when, seated in the railway-carriage, he felt in his pockets these little sealed packets. That day was a Mayday, warm and bright; but Horace shivered in his corner with a chill that went to his heart. For a moment the colour went out of his face, and the light out of his eye; he gave a stealthy glance round—a glance full of the intolerable terrors of guilt. Did any one guess what he had in his pocket? Could any one tell what he had in his heart?
The next morning he presented himself to the troubled eyes of Mr. Pouncet, an image of conscious power. That unfortunate man of character knew by this time of the death of Stenhouse, and had spent a day or two of agony wondering into whose hands his letter was likely to fall. The advent of Horace was a relief for the moment: here he had, at least, an assistant, who could do any further lying that might be necessary, without burdening Mr. Pouncet’s personal conscience. That was a great point gained. But the answer to his first eager question was far from satisfactory.
“Your letter was put into my hands by Mrs. Stenhouse,” said Horace; “and you know who she is—Roger Musgrave’s mother.”
Mr. Pouncet scratched his head in dismay. “She could not understand two words of it!” he exclaimed, at last, endeavouring to re-assure himself.
“Perhaps not—but one word, most likely, is enough. She is alarmed, and curious, and knows very well that something is wrong, though she cannot tell what; and that to expose you is for the interest of her son.”
“To expose me!” cried Mr. Pouncet, with a gasp of rage and mortification.
“Yes,” said Horace, coolly; “but,” he added, producing that document out of his pocket, “I managed, fortunately, to bring away your letter.”
Mr. Pouncet writhed silently under this persecution, which he dared not resent; for it was quite true that the story of that past transaction, once laid open to the world, would empty those solemn boxes labelled with his clients’ names, which made his private office look so important, and would banish him at once from Armitage Park, and many another great house. The unfortunate lawyer was at his wit’s end. That secret would have died with Stenhouse but for the discovery of this cold-blooded and unmanageable young man; and Mr. Pouncet cursed the day when, in defiance of all accustomed rules, he admitted Horace to his office. What was a romance of possible expectations to him?
“Have you ever learnt anything more of your own circumstances and the fortune,” said Mr. Pouncet, with a slight sneer, “which you expected when I saw you last?”
But when Horace answered—as he did at once, having previously resolved upon it—with a very succinct account, quite unencumbered by any reflections or exhibitions of feeling, of what he had discovered, the lawyer opened his eyes. The heir of such a heap of money, penniless though he was at the present moment, was a very different individual from the poor Horace Scarsdale, with nothing but his cunning wits and unscrupulous mind to help him on in the world. The revelation reconciled Mr. Pouncet even to himself. It was no longer so sadly humiliating to acknowledge himself in the young man’s power.
“And what will you do?” he asked, breathlessly, with already a difference in his tone. One does not speak to an attorney’s clerk, even when he knows one’s cherished secret, as one speaks to the heir of a good many thousands a-year.
“What can I do?” said Horace, rising in due proportion, and tasting the first sweetness of his wealth. “Forbidden to borrow—debarred from all ordinary means of reaping some present advantage; unless—I can be of use to you, if you make it worth my while—unless you can help me, Pouncet. You can if you please.”
Mr. Pouncet winced a little at this familiar address. “Had you not better try,” he suggested, “to make some arrangement with your father?”
“Arrangement with my father? What for? He has less power than you have: the will is expressly constructed so as to make arrangement impossible, and shut him out entirely,” cried Horace, with a certain suppressed exultation of enmity. “Besides, he hates me, and I’d much rather arrange with you. Look here, Pouncet—I want to get married. Give me a thousand a-year, and I’ll give you my best services, and my word of honour to pay you a reasonable sum, by way of acknowledgment, when I come into my property. Will you? There is no use lingering over it—say Yes or No.”
“A thousand a-year!” cried Mr. Pouncet, in dismay.
“Less would be useless,” said Horace, in his high-flying arrogance. “Besides, I could earn half as much anywhere, without asking any favour from you.”
Poor Mr. Pouncet took his hand out of his pocket, and grinned at the young man with a helpless spite and disdain. Words were so incapable of expressing all the mingled mockery and mortification with which he heard that last speech, that the unfortunate lawyer would have made derisive faces at him had he dared. As it was, he turned away to his desk, and growled under his breath, “Catch me giving you fifty if you hadn’t known,” by way of relieving his feelings. Stifled as it was, the expression did him good. He turned round again with only some spasmodic remains of that grin agitating the corners of his mouth.
“And you’re going to marry? Any money—eh?” he said.
“I don’t think it,” said Horace—“but I should like to know your decision at once, for I have some arrangements to make.”
“A thousand a-year for the whole term of your father’s life? Why, I suppose he is no older than I am?—he may live for twenty years,” said the unhappy lawyer, rubbing up the scanty hair upon his head.
“He may,” said Horace, briefly; but, as he spoke, a terrible throb convulsed, in spite of himself, the young man’s heart, upon which those deadly packets seemed to press like an intolerable weight.
“He may! And you ask me, a man in my senses, to undertake paying you an income of a thousand a-year for, perhaps, twenty years!”
“I ask you only to consider the matter, and what I might be able to do for you at the end of my probation,” said Horace, loftily—“not to say my services for the present time. Don’t do anything against your will. A lawsuit promoted by young Musgrave—by that time most likely my brother-in-law—would, I have no doubt, be quite as profitable to me.”
The lawyer gave a gasp of rage and derision beyond words. “You could conduct it, you suppose?” he cried aloud—“you!”—which was very imprudent, but a burst of nature. Then he cooled himself down, with a little shiver of passion: he dared not irritate this remorseless, immovable boy.
“I could, easily, with all these facts in my possession,” said Horace, with a careless gesture; and Mr. Pouncet saw his whole substance, his business, and, worst of all, his reputation, falling like so many card-houses at the touch of that unpitying hand.
But the interview did not end so. Mr. Pouncet consented at last, with many a grudge and inward compunction, to pay Horace the large stipend he claimed, on the tacit understanding that one-half of it was to be repaid to him when the young man came to his fortune; and the lawyer, though he had guessed rightly when he judged Mr. Scarsdale to be about his own age, notwithstanding, with the reckless boldness of humanity, began to reckon in his mind all the chances against the recluse’s life. The wonder seemed to be that such a man, in such circumstances, could last so long: there could not be much vigour of existence left in him. A very short time now should surely make an end of these deplorable, hopeless years. So reckoned the lawyer, who cared nothing about Mr. Scarsdale; while that unhappy hermit’s son, with all the desperation of an unnatural enmity, cherished a darker kind of speculation in his hard heart.
The conclusion of all was, however, that Mr. Pouncet wrote a placid business letter to Sir John Armitage, informing him that he had just dispatched a confidential clerk, in whom he could place the most perfect reliance, to make the fullest investigation throughout the district. Mr. Pouncet very much regretted that Sir John could not furnish him with particulars, or indeed any clue whatever to the name and residence of the suspected old man; but had every confidence, if there was any such person, in the abilities of his clerk, who would leave no means untried for finding him out.
Sir John thought this epistle so completely satisfactory, that he forwarded it to Colonel Sutherland, with some uncomplimentary suggestions about a “cock-and-a-bull story,” and feminine powers of imagination, which the Colonel did not read to Susan; and all the parties concerned were comfortably lulled out of their anxiety by the prospect of so complete an investigation. What might not be hoped from the researches of Mr. Pouncet’s confidential clerk?