CHAPTER IV.
AFTER THE SILENCE OF YEARS.
“COME in,” said the Squire. He was sitting among his books, working with such a genuine sense of importance as was strange to see. Mary did not know that she thought anything in the world (except this present mission of hers) so important as he thought his search into the heraldic fortunes of the family. He was in full cry after a certain “augmentation” which had got into the Musgrave arms no one well knew how. It was only the Musgraves of Penninghame who bore this distinction, and how did they come by it? It appeared in the thirteenth century—in the age of the Crusades. Was it in recollection of some feat of a Crusader?—that was the question. He put down his pen and laid one open book upon another as she came in. He had no consciousness in his mind to make him critical or inquiring. He did not observe her paleness, nor the special glitter in her eyes. “I am busy,” he said, “so you must be brief. I think I have got hold of that ‘chief’ at last. After years of search it is exciting to find the first trace of it; but perhaps it is best to wait till I have verified my guesses—they are still not much more than guesses. What a satisfaction it will be when all is clear!”
“I am glad you are to have this satisfaction, papa.”
“Yes, I know you take little interest in it for itself. Ladies seldom do; though I can’t tell why, for heraldry ought to be an interesting science to them and quite within their reach. Nothing has happened about the dinner, I hope? I notice that is your general subject when you come into my room so late. Law business in the morning, dinner in the evening—a very good distribution. But I want a good dinner to-night, my dear, to celebrate my success.”
“It is not about dinner. Father, we have been living a very quiet life for many years.”
“Thank Heaven!” said the old man. “Yes, a quiet life. A man of my age is entitled to it, Mary. I never shrank from exertion in my time, nor do I now, as this will testify.” He laid his hand with a genial complaisance upon the half-written paper that lay before him. Then he said with a smile, “But make haste, my dear. There is still an hour before dinner, and I am in the spirit of my work. We need not occupy our time, you and I, with general remarks.”
“I did not mean it for a general remark,” she said with a tremble in her voice. “It is that I have something important—very important to speak of, and I don’t know how to begin.”
“Important—very important!” he said, with the indulgence of jocular superiority for a child’s undue gravity. “I know what these important matters are. Some poaching rascal that you don’t know how to manage, or a quarrel in the village? Bring them to me: but bring them to-morrow, Mary, when my mind is at rest—I cannot give my attention now.”
“It is neither poaching nor quarrelling,” she said. “I can manage the village. There are other things. Father, though we have been quiet for so many years, it is not because there has been nothing to think of—no seeds of trouble in the past—no anxieties—— ”
“I don’t know what you are thinking of,” he said, pettishly. “No anxieties? A man has them as long as he is in the world. We are mortal. Seeds of trouble? I have told you, Mary, that you may spare me general remarks.”
“Oh, nothing was further from my mind than general remarks,” she cried. “I don’t know how to speak. Father—look here—read it; it will tell its own story best. This is what, after the silence of years, I have received to-day.”
“The silence of years!” said the Squire. He had to fumble for his spectacles, which he had taken off, though he carefully restrained himself from betraying any special interest. A red colour had mounted to his face. Perhaps his mind did not go so far as to divine what it was; but still a sudden glimmering, like the tremble of pale light before the dawn, had come into his mind.
And this was the thunderbolt that suddenly fell upon him in his quietness after the silence of years:—
“MY DEAR SISTER MARY,—This will be given to you by my little daughter Lilias. The sight of my handwriting and of the children will be enough to startle you, so that I need not try to soften the shock which you must have already received. I claim from my father shelter for my children. Their mother is dead; so are the others of my family whose very names will never be known to my nearest relations. Never mind that now. I am a man both sick and sorry, worn by the world, lonely, and not much better than an adventurer. These children are the last of our race, and the boy, however reluctant you may be, is my father’s heir. I claim for them the shelter of the family roof. I have no home to give them, nor can I give them the care they require. Mary, you are a good woman: you are blameless one way or another. I charge you with my children. God do so to you and more also, according as you deal with them. Some time or other before I die I will drag myself home. That you may be sure of, unless God cuts short my life by the way, of which, if He will, I shall not complain.
“Your brother,
“JOHN MUSGRAVE.”
This was the letter which the Squire placed upon his mouldy books, over the statement he had been writing. He did not speak, but read it steadily to the end, betraying no emotion except by the glow of colour that rose over his weather-beaten face. Who that has sat by, anxious, watching the effect of such a letter, needs to be told with what intense observation Mary Musgrave noted every sign of the rigid control he kept upon himself—the tight clutch of one hand upon the table, the tremor of the other which held the letter? But the Squire said nothing, not even when he had visibly come to the end. He held it before him still for some minutes; then he began to fold it elaborately—but said nothing still. The shadow of his head with its falling locks of white hair shook a little upon the wall. There is a peculiar tremble which shows the very severity of restraint, and this was of that kind.
“Father! have you nothing to say?”
“I thought it was a subject put aside, not to be mentioned between us,” he said. “I may be wrong—if I am wrong you can inform me; but I supposed this and all cognate subjects to be closed between us—— ”
“How can this be closed; I have ceased to importune you, but this is a new opening. And there is more than the letter—the children—— ”
“Ah!” He gave a slight cry. If he could it would have been an exclamation of scorn, but this was too much for him; the cry was sharp with impatient pain.
“I could not keep them a secret from you, father.”
“I hate secrets,” he said; “nevertheless there are few families in which they are not necessary. When he had said this he pushed the letter towards her, drew forward his heraldry books, and took his pen in his hand.
“Will you say nothing to me?” she cried. “Will you give me no answer? What am I to do?”
“Do! It seems to me quite an unnecessary question. It is a long time since I have given up exercising any control over you, Mary,” he said.
“But, father, have a little pity. The house is not mine to do as I like with.”
“That is unfortunate,” he said with a cold precision which made it doubtful whether he spoke satirically or in earnest. “But it is not my fault. You cannot expect me to make place voluntarily for another; and even if I did, as you are a woman, it would be of very little use to you. You cannot be the heir—— ”
“And this boy is!” she said with a gesture of appeal.
Mr. Musgrave said nothing. He shook his head impatiently, pushed the letter to her with an energy that flung it into her lap, and resumed his writing. She stood by while he deliberately returned to his description of the “chief,” turning up a page in his heraldry book, where all the uses and meanings of that “augmentation” were discussed. According to all appearance his mind took up this important question exactly where he had left it; and he resumed his writing steadily, betraying agitation only by a larger, bolder, and firmer handwriting than usual. His daughter stood for a moment by his side, and watched him speechless—then went out of the room without another word. The Squire went on writing for a full minute more. The lines he wrote had not been so bold, so firm, so well-defined for years. Was it because he had to put forth the whole force that remained in him, soul and body, to get them upon the paper at all? When all sound of her departing steps had died out, he stopped suddenly, and, putting down his pen, let his head drop upon the open book and its figured page. An augmentation of honour! The days were over in which such gifts came from heralds and kings. And instead, here were struggles of a very different kind from those which won new blazons. But the most insensible, the most self-controlled of men, could not take such an interruption of his studies with absolute calm. He had never been in such desperate conflict with any man as with this son, and here his enemy, whom nature forbade to be his enemy, his antagonist, had come again after the silence of years and confronted him. To see such a one pass by could not but excite a certain emotion; but to meet him thus as it were face to face! The passion of parental love has been often portrayed. There is no passion more fervent, none perhaps even that can equal it; but there is another passion scarcely less intense—that which rises involuntarily in the bosom of a man between whom and his son there are no ties of mutual dependence, when the younger has become as the elder, knowing good and evil, and all the experiences of life; when there is no longer any question of authority and obedience, and natural affection yields to a strain of feeling which is too strong for it. Many long years had passed now since young Musgrave ceased to be his father’s pride and boyish second in everything. He had grown a man, his equal, and had resisted and held his own in the conflict half a lifetime ago. All the embitterment which close relationship gives to a deadly quarrel had been between them, and though the father had so far got the better as to drive the rebel out of his sight, he had not crushed his will or removed him from his standing-ground. He was the victor, though the vanquished. His son had not yielded, nor would ever yield. When Mr. Musgrave raised his head his face was pale, and his head shook with a nervous tremor; all the broken redness of his cheeks shone like pencilled lines through his pallor, increasing it. “This will never do,” he said to himself, and rising, went to an old oak cupboard in the corner, and poured himself a small glass of the strongest of liqueurs. Not for all that remained of the Musgrave property would he have shown himself so broken, so overcome. This other man who was no younger, but only stronger than himself, was at the same time his successor, ready to push him out of his seat; waiting for a triumph that must come sooner or later. He had been able to forget all about him for years; to thrust out the thought of him when it recurred; but here the man stood once more confronting him. The Squire was wise in his way, and knew that there was nothing in the world so bad for the health, or so likely to give his antagonist an advantage, as the indulgence of emotion—therefore he crushed it “upon the threshold of the mind.” He would not give him so much help towards the inevitable eventual triumph. He went back to his writing-table when he had fortified himself with that potent mouthful; but, knowing himself, tried his pen upon a stray bit of paper before he would resume his writing. What he wrote was in the quivering lines of old age. He tore it into pieces. No one should see such a sign of agitation in the manuscript which was to last longer than he. He took up the most learned of his books, and began to read with close attention. Here, at all events, the adversary should not get the better of him; or, at least, if thoughts did surge and rise, obliterating the old escutcheon altogether and the lion on its “chief,” nobody should be the wiser.
Thus the old man sat, with a desperate courage worthy a better object, and mastered the furious excitement in his mind. But he was not thinking of the children as perhaps the reader of this story may suppose. He was not resisting the thrill of natural interest, the softening of heart which might have attended that sudden arrival. He did not even realize the existence of the children. His thoughts were of conflicts past, and of the opponent against whom he had striven so often: the opponent whom he could not altogether dismiss or get rid of, his rival, his heir, his successor, his son. There was nothing he had wished as a father, as a Musgrave, as the head of a great county family, which this man had not done his best to undo: and as he had by ill-fortune thirty years the advantage of his father, there was no doubt that he would, some time or other, undo and destroy to an extent of which he was incapable now; unless indeed he was prevented in the most disgraceful way, incapacitated by public conviction of crime—conviction, which was only too probable, which hung over his banished head and prevented his return home. What would there be but pain in the thought of such a son—an opponent if he were innocent, if he were guilty a disgrace to the family name? The more completely the Squire could banish this thought from his mind, the happier he was; and he had banished it with wonderful success for many years past. He had done all he could to evade the idea that he himself would one day be compelled to die. Many men do this who have no painful consciousness of the heir behind who is waiting to dispossess them; and Mr. Musgrave had, to a great degree, attained tranquillity on this point. The habit of living seems to grow stronger with men as they draw near the end of their lives. It has lasted so long; it has been so steady and uninterrupted, why should it ever cease? But here was the death’s-head rising at the feast; the executioner giving note of his presence behind backs. John! he had dismissed him from his mind. He had exercised even a kind of Christianity in forgetting him. But here he was again, incapable of being forgotten. What a tremor in his blood—what undue working of all that machinery of the heart which it was so essential to keep in calm good order had this interruption caused! he who had no vital energy to spare; who wanted it all for daily comfort and that continuance which with younger people is so lightly taken for granted. How much of that precious reserve had been consumed by this shock! It had been done on purpose, perhaps, to try what the effect of such a shock upon his nerves and fibres would be.
Mr. Musgrave pushed back his chair again from the table, and gave all his faculties to the task of calming himself down. He would not allow himself to be overcome by John. But it took him a long time to accomplish this, to get his pulse back to its usual rate of beating. When he relaxed for a moment in his watch over himself, old recollections would come back, scenes of the long warfare, words that were as swords and smote him over again with burning and stinging wounds. He had to calm it all down and still memory altogether if he would recover his ordinary composure. It wanted about an hour of dinner when he began this process. Up to that time it did not so much matter except for wearing him out and diminishing his strength. But it was his determination that no one should know or see this agitation which he had not been able to master. His daughter thought she had a harder task before her when she left him and hurried back to the ghostly half-lighted hall where she had left the children; but what was her work, or the commotion of her thoughts, in comparison to that which raged within the bosom of the old man in his solitude, defying Heaven and nature, and all gentler influences—whose conflict was for himself only, as it was carried on unhelped and unthought of by himself alone?