ARMED by the extremity of his alarm, Horace ventured, no one being near to spy upon him, to enter, in his miserable search, the chamber of death itself. He dared not look towards the bed, on which lay that rigid outline of humanity, all covered and dressed with white. He could scarcely contain the horror of his trembling as he stood, dismayed and powerless, in the presence of his victim; but, after his first pause of involuntary homage, he turned—though still not daring to turn his back to the bed, overpowered with a terror which he could not explain—to pursue his search. Stealthily moving about, with his head bent, and his step shuffling as if with age, he examined every corner, peering into the wardrobe, where his heart thrilled desperately to see the well-remembered garments which it was so hard to believe could never be worn again; and turning over familiar articles of daily use with awed and trembling fingers, as though they could betray him; but he could not find any trace of the object of his search. Its very absence seemed to him significant and terrible. Had some enemy taken it to testify against him? Had the dead man himself taken measures to secure his own revenge? Heavy, cold, clammy beads of moisture hung upon the young man’s face; a chill as of death entered into his heart; deep to the very centre of his being he himself knew and felt his own guilt—and now another mysterious, gnawing misery was added to his own self-consciousness. Some one else knew also; some one meaning him evil had withdrawn that dreadful instrument of death and vengeance. He had played his horrible game, but the great stakes were further off than ever. Already, in his miserable, excited imagination, he saw, instead of fortune and Amelia, a trial and a scaffold, and the dread name of parricide. A wild agony of impatience and intolerable suffering came over him. Rather than wait till this slow, deadly avenger of blood had found him out, he would rush forth somewhere, and denounce himself, and have it over. His punishment was more than he could bear!
But all was silent in the death-stricken house; not a sound, save the loud ticking of the clock downstairs, and the deep throbs of his own heart, could Horace hear as he stood, stealthy and desperate, at the door of his father’s room. Susan’s face, innocent and wondering; Uncle Edward’s benign countenance, disapproving and sad; and, still more dangerous, Peggy’s troubled eyes, watching where he went and what he did, haunted his imagination. He could fancy them all grouped together under covert somewhere, watching that guilty, stealthy pause of his—watching his secret, clandestine footsteps as he stole downstairs. But still he did go down, in the breathless cowardice of his conscious crime; fearing everything, yet with all his mind fixed, in an intensity which was half insane, upon that dumb witness against him. He did not expect to find it. He could have supposed it possessed by some malicious spirit, and with an actual animate will working against him; but he could not rest till he had, through every corner, sought it out—if, perhaps, it could be found.
When he had got downstairs he paused again to consider where he should go; a faint sound of Peggy’s voice in the kitchen, and the slight stir made now and then for a moment by Colonel Sutherland in the dining parlour, confused and stopped him in his course. He stood for a moment irresolute and breathless, not seeing what to do, and then almost involuntarily opened the closed door of Mr. Scarsdale’s study. The recluse was dead, and could harm no man now; but he was alive when his guilty son stepped into that room so deeply instinct with his presence, where now more than ever he lived and had his sure abode. Almost more awful than the actual presence of the dead was that presence unseen and terrible, the invisible life of life, which death could not touch, and which should remain here for ever. Horace dared scarcely breathe the air of this deserted room. An hour’s imprisonment in it, in his present state of mind, would have driven him into mad superstition, if not to positive frenzy; but he saw something there, set out almost with ostentation on the table, which would have drawn him through fire and water. There it stood, solemnly by itself, the books and papers cleared away from its immediate vicinity, in malign and mischievous state, calling the attention of everyone who entered. Horace made his shuddering way forward, and seized upon it with the grasp of desperation. Yes, there it was, with all its evidence within his own reach, and safe, if he willed it so, to harm him no more!
The little medicine-chest was partially open, with the key in its lock; but this had been done of purpose, and was the result of no accident; and within lay something white—a sheet of paper—which assuredly was not there when he had opened it before. Almost too anxious to pay any attention to these elaborate marks of intention and design, Horace seized the box and the phial which he had filled. He could not pause even to look whether the leather which covered the cork had been removed, or any of the contents were gone, but hastened to the fireplace, where the ashes of a fire still lay in the grate, and with trembling hands broke the neck of the bottle against the grate, and emptied out its contents—for he dared not go outside, lest some one should see him. As he paused, kneeling on the hearth, breathless and with a beating heart, he tried to take comfort and re-assure himself. It was gone; no evidence existed now that the son had entered in, murderous and secret, to the father’s chamber. He tried to persuade himself that he breathed more freely; then he grovelled down upon the hearth, and hid his face in his hands. God help him! what did it matter though no one else suspected?—deep in the bottom of his heart did not he know?—and was there anything in heaven or earth which could wash the horror of that certainty out of Horace Scarsdale’s miserable mind? He had been selfish, malicious, unloving before; but never till now had he been a murderer—and, oh! the horrible difference, the change unspeakable, which that dread distinction made!
However, he got up at last, all shuddering and weak, with the remains of the phial grasped in his hand, and with a morbid curiosity returned again to examine the box. This time he set it open and took out the sheet of paper. He could scarcely distinguish the words at first, for the awe of looking at his father’s writing, and receiving thus, as it were, a direct message from the dead; but when the sense slowly broke upon him the effect was like a stroke of magic. He stood staring at the paper, his eyes starting from his head, his face flushing and paling with wild vicissitudes of colour; then he dropped down heavily on the floor, thrusting aside unconsciously Mr. Scarsdale’s chair, which stood in its usual place by the table. He could neither cry nor help himself; he fell heavily, like a man stunned by a sudden blow—voice, strength, consciousness went out of him; he lay prostrate, with his head upon the fleecy lambskin where his father’s feet had been accustomed to rest, no longer a self-defending, self-torturing, conscious parricide, with a brand upon his soul worse than that of Cain; a figure blind and helpless, an insensible, inanimate mass of dull flesh and blood, conscious of nothing in the world, not even that he lived and was a man.
The paper fell fluttering after him and covered his face. It was of the kind and colour which Mr. Scarsdale always used—a blue flimsy leaf, and had been carefully cut to fit the box in which it was placed. What had tempted the recluse to record thus his suspicions and his precaution, no one in the world could now ever tell; save as the expression of a vindictive sentiment, and secret triumph to himself in his solitude for discovering and baffling a secret enemy, there was no meaning in it, and the chances are that nothing would have brought these words from the unhappy father’s pen could he have known the overpowering transport of relief which at sight of them should overthrow all the strength and make useless the defences of the still more unhappy son. On the paper were written in large letters, in Mr. Scarsdale’s distinctest handwriting, the following words—
“Tampered with by some person to me Unknown, and the contents of this chest left untouched by me since the 3rd May, on which day I have reason to believe this was done.”
This was the date of Horace’s fatal visit to Marchmain; and the solemn statement of the dead man relieving him from the actual guilt with which he believed himself accursed, had overpowered him with an emotion beyond words—beyond thought. Enough was left to sting him all his life long with black suggestions of ineffaceable remorse, but so far as act and deed went, he was not guilty. He could say nothing in his unspeakable relief. The desperate tension of his misery had kept him alive and conscious by very consequence of its sufferings—but when the bow was unstrung it yielded instantly. There he lay senseless where his father’s feet had used to rest, smitten to the heart with an undeserved and unutterable consolation—guilty, yet not guilty, by some strange interposition of God. He could not even be thankful in this overpowering, unbelievable relief from his misery; he could only fall fainting, unconscious, rapt beyond all sense and feeling. He was deeply, miserably guilty; too deeply stained ever to be clear of that remembrance in this life; but he was not a parricide. In spite of himself he was saved from that horror, and human hope might be possible to him still.