AT that moment when Susan, full of tenderness and compunction, knelt by her father’s bedside, and Mr. Scarsdale’s hand still trembled upon her hair—token, all too late, of the love which might have been—the door of the room opened stealthily for a moment, and Horace looked in. Whether it was that Mr. Scarsdale had preserved the sense of hearing as distinctly as he seemed to do that of sight, or that a strange magic of hostility drew his eyes to that quarter, it is impossible to say; but when Horace’s gaze fell upon the bed and its ghastly inhabitant, his father’s eyes met his, with a look which all the world and all its pleasures could never efface from the young man’s mind. He staggered back, startled out of all self-control, and uttering, in spite of himself, a cry, half of defiance, half of horror; while the unhappy father of these two children, thrusting, with the force of extremity, Susan’s fair head away from him, swayed round, by a desperate impulse, his half-lifeless body, and turned his face to the wall. Startled out of her filial delusion, and with her faculties confused by the sudden thrust away, which was given with feverish force, Susan stumbled to her feet in sudden terror. Horace was standing ghastly pale by the door, his bloodless lips apart, his eyes dilated, his manner so frightfully excited and unnatural, that Susan’s first impulse was to interpose the frail protection of her own body between the helpless father and the frantic son. As she stood alarmed, protecting the bed, Horace gave a ghastly sneer at her, and said, “Too late!” hoarsely out of his throat. He saw well enough that she was afraid of him, and meant to defend her father; but nothing in the world could have initiated Susan into the horrible meaning of that “too late.” When she thought of it, she supposed her brother to mean too late to be recognized, to ask his father’s pardon—perhaps to gain his father’s blessing, as she had done; and with that idea her feeling changed.
“Not too late, Horace,” said poor Susan—“he is sensible—he knows me. But oh! before you speak to him, call Peggy first, and bid her tell the doctor. The doctor said he was to be called whenever papa moved.”
“The doctor! What doctor?—what does he want with a doctor?” said Horace, in his hoarse, dreadful voice.
“The doctor is in the house—Uncle Edward would not let him go away. He has moved—he has all but spoken! Oh! call the doctor, Horace!” cried Susan, eagerly; “perhaps it may be a sign for the better! Call Peggy—she will tell you where he is!”
But Horace stood still on the threshold of the fatal room, looking round with wild, investigating eyes, as anxious, as desperate, as the sufferer’s own. Where was it?—where was that little medicine-chest, which had dealt a slower death than he expected, but which, if it were found, might snatch the cup from his own lips, and abridge his lifelong punishment? Where was it? The dying man upon that bed, dreadful as was his son’s curiosity about him, and terrible as the shock had been when their eyes met, was less important now than that chest and its tell-tale contents. He gazed around with his wild eyes—so like his father’s—looking at everything but his father, who lay motionless, his dread eyes closed now, and his face turned towards the wall. Susan, in wild impatience, stamped her foot upon the floor, hoping by that means to attract somebody. There was a stir below, as of some one who heard her; and Horace, roused by the sound, approached the bedside cautiously. “He is dead!” her brother whispered in Susan’s ears. It was the middle of the night, dark and still; and the poor girl, standing here between the dying man—who, perhaps, had died in that dreadful moment—and the living man, who looked like a maniac, lost all her self-command. She cried aloud in the extremity of her fear and anguish. Was Horace mad? And in that miserable moment, with his rebel son returned to vex his soul, had her father passed away?
The stamping of Susan’s foot on the floor, the sound of some commotion in the sick-room, and at last her voice calling out in uncontrollable terror, brought all the other inmates of the house to the room—Peggy, the doctor half awake, the nurse, and Uncle Edward, all of whom, at Susan’s earnest instance, had lain down to seek an hour’s sleep. Among all these anxious people Horace looked still more like a spectre—but after another moment spent in inquisitive inspection of the room, he turned to the doctor and overpowered him with questions. As if in braggadocio and daring exhibition of his want of feeling, he urged the surgeon into descriptions of the complaint: what it was—and how it came on—and what were its particular features. While the astonished doctor replied as shortly as possible, and turned his back upon the heartless questioner, Horace hovered more and more closely about his father’s bed. Another fit produced by the sudden appearance of his son had almost completed the mortal work which was going on in the emaciated frame of the recluse. It did not matter to anybody now that those eyes were faintly open, which a little while ago were full of unspeakable things; the force and the life had ebbed out of those windows of the soul, and the patient no longer knew anything of the agitated consultations going on over him, or of the hideous curiosity with which his son thrust into those, asking questions which horrified the hearers. When the doctor said that there were complications in this case, which made it difficult to treat, the young man laughed a short, hoarse, horrible laugh, and asked “how long do you think he will last?” in a tone which made them shudder. They were all afraid of his haggard figure as it swayed to and fro about the bed.
“You’ve been drinking, sir,” said the doctor, in authoritative disgust. “You can’t do any good here—be quiet and go to bed. He distresses the patient; some of you take him away.”
“Mr. Horry, come with me,” said Peggy, laying her hand upon his shoulder. He followed her out of the room without saying anything. He was mad, crazed, intoxicated; but with a deadlier poison than was ever distilled from corn or vine!
The old woman took him into his own room and left him there. She shook her head at him in sad displeasure, but understood nothing of the tragic misery which made him mad.
“I bid ye not to grieve,” she said, reproachfully. “The Lord knows he’s been little of a father to you, that you should break your heart for him; but be dacent, Mr. Horry, be dacent; if it’s no for love’s sake, as is no possible, yet have respect to death.”
When Peggy left him Horace buried his haggard face in those hands which had grown thin and sharp like the claws of a bird of prey. “Have respect to death!”—to the death which he had invoked—to the destruction he had made. He sank down prostrate upon the floor, and lay there in a heap, helpless, overcome by the horror of what he had done. The strength of an army could not have kept him from Marchmain at that terrible crisis and climax of his fate; but now when he was here, he could but lie prostrate in the wildest hopeless misery, or, mad with his guilt, peer like a ghoul about his father’s death-bed. It was easier to do that, noting horribly every slow step of the approaching presence, than it was to lie here in the dismal creeping silence, with that footstep creaking on the stair, and chilling the night, and a hundred deadly sprites of vengeance shouting Murder! murder! all night long, into his miserable ear.