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The Prophet's Mantle
What fearful blunders he had made—what a horrible muddle he had got everything into—what irretrievable mischief he had done! But, though he blamed himself deeply and bitterly, he still, not unnaturally, blamed Litvinoff with still more bitter earnestness. One thing only was clear to him. He must find Roland at once, tell him all the circumstances, and beg his pardon. It would be all right again between him and his brother, towards whom he now felt a rush of reactionary affection. But how about the mill hands, now scattered far and wide beyond recall—beyond the reach of his help—through this same mad folly of his? In an impulse to do something for at least one of those who had suffered through him, he turned off from the hospital and took a hansom to his rooms, where he unlocked his desk, and, taking a five-pound note from his slender stock of money, enclosed it in an envelope, which he addressed to Mrs Hatfield at the address she had given him, in a hand not his own. He would do more for them when he and his brother had begun to work the mill again. That would be one big result of his new knowledge. His medical studies would be at an end, and he would be once more Ferrier of Thornsett. But that was poor compensation for all the rest.
When Mr Gates' answering telegram came it was a wet blanket on Richard's longing to make his confession and talk things over with Roland—for it ran thus:—'Robert Gates, The Hollies, Firth Vale, to Richard Ferrier, Guy's Hospital.—Don't know his address—he is expected here in a few days. Has left Chelsea, and is making visits on his way here. Glad you want him. Letter follows.'
So he could not see Roland that day, after all, and there was nothing for it but to possess his soul in patience until he heard again from Gates. So he spent the evening with some congenial acquaintances who had diggings in Trinity Square, and managed to get through the night without being driven to distraction by his remorseful self-tormenting thoughts. But the next morning he remembered, with a start, for the first time, that, not content with believing his brother to be guilty of a disgraceful action, he had accused him of it to Clare Stanley, and, worse than that, to Alice's own mother. He felt he could never face Clare again after that, come what might. But the Hatfields? At least it would be only fair to make what reparation he could by undeceiving them. He would go down to Dartford that very day, and tell them how mistaken he had been. He went by the same train which had carried Mrs Hatfield thither on the preceding day.
Arrived at Dartford the Dismal, Richard betook himself to the address that had been given him, which, after some difficulty, he found to be one of a row of small, ill-favoured, squalid cottages a little way out of the town. There were a good many children about, who stared at him with open-eyed curiosity, and did dreadful things to their mouths with their grimy little fingers in the excitement of seeing a gentleman stop at No. 5 Earl's Terrace. The battered, blistered green door had no knocker. The handle of Richard's umbrella afforded an impromptu one, and, in answer to the spirited solo which he proceeded to execute with it, the door was opened, and by his foster-mother herself.
She looked very pale and worried, and had evidently been crying. She didn't seem surprised to see him; she was in that state of mind when nothing seems worth being surprised about.
'Come in, lad,' she said. 'Ah got thi kind token. Ah know'd 'twas thee as sent it, and m'appen Ah'll need it more nor tha thowt when tha sent it, for t' maister's giv' up his work an' gone off.'
She had set a chair for him, and as she finished this speech she sat down herself and looked hopelessly at him.
'Gone—gone! Left you! Why, he must be out of his mind.'
'His mind's right enough; it's his soul as Ah'm feared about, Dick. He's gone to have it out wi' Rowley, and get at the rights of it.'
'But where is Roland? Where's he gone to?'
'He's gone to Thornsett.'
'Why, Roland isn't there.'
'Thank God! God be praised, if it'll on'y please His good providence to keep 'em fra meetin'!'
'But how came he to go? How did it happen? Tell me all about it?'
It seemed that when her husband had met her at Dartford Station, she, pleased with having met Richard, had told him of the rencontre. That he had closely questioned her, and when at last he had learned every word that had passed between them, he had turned suddenly on her, and told her that this was the first time he had ever even thought of such a thing being possible as that Roland had been the cause of Alice's ruin, and that now he did know he would not lose a day in facing him with the accusation.
'Do you mean to say,' said Richard, 'that it's through me he thinks that Roland took her away?'
'I don't say it was thy fault, lad. I'm more to blame than thee. I should a-kept my clattering tongue quiet, and I should a-known my own man better after a' these years nor to think that if he had a-thowt it was Rowley he wouldna ha' faced him wi' it long sin'.'
'This is devilish pleasant!' said Richard, rising and taking a stride across the little room; but how did he go?'
It appeared he had started off with but a pound, or little more, in his pocket, intending to walk the greater part of the way, and only telling her that she wouldn't hear of him until she saw him back again.
'And what do you think will happen when they do meet?' he asked.
'Oh, Ah'm feared to think!' she said, wringing her hands and beginning to weep.
'I'll tell you what I'll do,' said Richard. 'I'll go straight down to Thornsett now, and keep a look-out for Hatfield. I'll stop any more mischief, any way. I think I can promise you that nothing much will happen if they do meet.'
She caught hold of his hand, and began to thank him.
'Oh, don't thank me!' he said; 'the whole sad business has been my fault from beginning to end. I found out yesterday, almost directly I left you, that Rowley was as innocent of doing any harm to Alice as I am, and I found out, too, that she is well and pretty happy, and, I heard, married. If it hadn't been for me, Hatfield wouldn't have gone off on this wild-goose chase. But I must get back now; my train goes in twenty minutes, and I want to catch the three o'clock train for Firth Vale.'
He caught the three o'clock train to Firth Vale, having managed, by a very hurried farewell, to escape the torrent of questions Mrs Hatfield would have liked to pour out. He felt that, all things considered, the less he said about the matter the better. He had been wrong too often, and too much.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MAKING IT UP
THERE was rejoicing in the house of Robert Gates, as over a prodigal returned, when Richard Ferrier avowed that he had been mistaken all through in his quarrel with his brother, and that he was now only anxious to acknowledge his error, and to do his best to set things going again on the old footing. But he had some days to wait before he could make his confession.
Thornsett Edge had remained unoccupied, for there was some difficulty in letting a furnished house near a deserted village. People did not seem to care about the vicinity of all those empty shells of homes. So Roland had decided to occupy it again, and he was coming down there to get things ready for his aunt's reception, and was making a few visits to old friends on his way. He had written down to the old couple in charge to have the place ready, as he might come down any day.
Two days passed and he had not come, and Richard was getting tired of the constant inquiries and congratulations which assailed him at The Hollies. He thought he would go home, and be there to welcome Roland when he arrived. So he sent over his portmanteau, and took up his quarters in his old room at Thornsett Edge. He was in a very tender and remorseful frame of mind in those days. He wandered all over the old house, full filled of memories of the time when he and his brother played together there as children; of the time when, later, they thrashed each other as schoolboys, with right good will. There were haunting thoughts of the dissension that had grown up between them, and of the shadow that the knowledge of it had cast upon their father's deathbed. The necessity which he felt himself to be under of keeping a sharp look-out for John Hatfield, fortunately served as a kind of antidote to the rush of memories and associations which came over Richard, now that he was once again in his home.
He walked down to the village to seek out the few 'hands' who had clung like rooks to their old haunts, and there he saw sad sights and heard sad stories enough to have driven him mad had he not known that it would soon be in his power to set things in some degree right again. He resolved, and felt sure of Roland's co-operation in his scheme, to seek out as many of the old 'hands' as could be got word of, and to give each of them enough to get a home together again.
Of course he thought often of Miss Stanley; but the past months of unusual action and changed surroundings had altered his feeling for her, which was fortunate for him, since he had falsely accused his own brother to her—a meanness which he knew it to be quite impossible for such a woman as Clare ever to forget or forgive. He thought of her now without any of the old passion, as he might have thought of one who had died long before, or of one whom he had loved in some other life.
This did not prevent him from feeling furiously jealous of Litvinoff, to whom he seemed to have transferred all the anger that had burned in him against his brother, intensified by a galling consciousness of the complete success which Litvinoff had achieved in his attempt to deceive and mislead him. There should be a reckoning for that, Richard thought. He felt glad he had always mistrusted the man. It showed that his judgment was worth something sometimes, and this pleased his self-love.
On the third day came a telegram from Matlock, which said that Roland would be at home that evening. Richard roamed about the house in restless impatience all day. How should they meet? He should not dare to go to the door to greet his brother lest he should imagine that it was a renewal of hostilities, not a welcome home, that was intended. Richard had no eye for dramatic effects, nor any leaning thereto, but he charged the old people to say nothing of his presence, and to leave him to announce himself to his brother when he should think well.
His brother would have done exactly the same thing from absolutely opposite motives.
So when Roland walked up to his home in the teeth of the wild March wind the only welcome that met him was that of the old woman in charge, and this seemed to him to be so inconsequently effusive, and the good lady herself seemed so unreasonably radiant, that he was quite flattered. It was pleasant to him to be appreciated and admired, even by a 'person in charge.'
'The fire's i' the dining-room, Mr Roland,' she said; 'an' I'll dish ye up the supper in less nor half a minute, sir. It's a glad day for Thornsett as sees yer back agen.'
Mrs Brock's son had worked in the mill—a fact which made the anticipated reconciliation peculiarly interesting to her.
Richard from his ambush in his own room heard the greeting, heard the well-known voice giving orders about rugs and hat-boxes in the well-known tones. Then he heard doors open and close. After a while a savoury smell from the hot supper that was being carried in rose to his altitude. The dining-room door was opened, and shut several times. At last it was closed with a more decided touch, and in the noise of its closing was a settled sound as of a door that did not mean to open again just yet. Richard knew that the supper had been cleared away, and that Roland was most likely assisting digestion with tobacco and grog. This would be the time, he decided, to put in an appearance and to get through his proposed reconciliation. He went softly downstairs, and paused a moment with his hand on the dining-room door. The house was very still. As he stood there he heard a cinder fall from the fire in the dining-room, and the great hall clock at the foot of the stairs ticked louder than usual, as it seemed. He turned the handle and went in. Roland was sitting in the big arm-chair by the fire where their father had been used to sit. As the door opened he looked up with a sort of displeased curiosity to see who it was that had the assurance to enter unannounced. When he saw who it was he gave a start, and the expression of his face changed to something deeper and sterner.
He got up.
'I understood from Gates,' he said, 'that you renounced all claim to be in this house so long as half the possible rent was paid you. I mean to pay you your half. May I ask, then, what you want here?'
'I want to beg your pardon,' began Richard, his hand still on the lock—when his brother interrupted him with,—
'Hadn't you better close the door? I suppose you don't want all the world to hear anything you may have to say.'
His tone was so icily cold that the other found it hard to go on as he had intended. He did his best, however.
'I am very sorry for all that happened in the autumn. I was quite deceived and misled, and I beg your pardon. I can't say more, and I hope you'll let bygones be bygones.'
He held out his hand. At this point in the scene Dick had fancied that his brother would clasp his hand with reciprocating affection, and all would be forgiven and forgotten. But the other actor evidently intended a different 'reading' of the part assigned him. He made no movement to meet the outstretched hand. On the contrary, he put his hands in his pockets with a too expressive gesture, and was silent.
'Come, Roland,' said Dick, who, knowing himself to have been in the wrong, displayed a patience which surprised himself; 'make it up, old man.'
'I am not sure,' said the other slowly, 'that I care to make it up, as you call it. No "making-up" can alter all that has gone wrong through your foolishness. I've gone through the worst of the trouble now, and, to tell you the truth, I'm not inclined to lay myself open to any more experiences of this kind. You might be "deceived and misled" again.'
Richard, who had remained standing, gave the slightest possible stamp of impatience, which his brother did not observe.
'And as for the money,' he went on, 'I dare say I can do as well without it as with it.'
'Look here,' said Dick, his face flushing hotly; 'if you suppose I care a straw about the dirty money, you're mistaken; only one of us can't have any without the other now. Come, Roland, be friends, if it's only for the old dad's sake.'
Roland seemed to have what the children call the 'black dog on his shoulder,' but this appeal was not lost. He made an effort to overcome the resentment and bitterness that filled him, and after a moment held out his hand, saying,—
'Very well, I'll shake hands. I suppose we shall manage to scrape along together as well as a good many brothers.'
And this was the reconciliation that Richard had had his heart full of for the last three or four days. It was piteously unlike his dreams of it.
When they had shaken hands, Dick sat down. There was a silence—a very awkward silence. Roland passed the whisky along the table, and the other mechanically helped himself.
'I think,' Roland said presently, 'that you owe me an explanation of all this.'
'Of course I do,' assented Richard eagerly; 'but you are so—well, unapproachable; but I'll tell you every word about it,' which he did, omitting no particulars which bore on the case.
'So he called her Mrs Litvinoff, did he?' was Roland's comment on the Petrovitch-Ferrier episode at London Bridge. 'I should think she had just taken the name by chance, but for one thing.'
'And that is?'
'You say she lived in that house I saw Litvinoff go into the day we split. It must have been Litvinoff, and he must have been going to her; but it's very strange how he ever knew her. And was this really all the ground you had for doing what you did?' There was contempt in his tone.
'No,' said Richard. 'You went away on a "mysterious holiday" just when she disappeared, and that set all the village tongues wagging, and first made me wonder and suspect. Now I know I was wrong; but if you don't mind, Roland, I wish you'd tell me why you went just then. I've told you everything.'
'The whole thing is over and done with now,' he answered; 'and after to-night I don't want to ever speak about it; but I will tell you if you like. I went away because I saw you were beginning to care for Clare Stanley, and I was beginning to care too, and I thought that if I went away I could pull through it, and that you would make the running and be happy with her, but I found I couldn't do it, and I came back and did my best to cut you out, as you did by me.'
'Oh, Roland, what a good fellow you were to think of such a thing!' said Dick, to whom a generous action like this, even though only attempted, could not fail to appeal most strongly. 'But how is it now?' he went on, stung by a host of conflicting feelings. 'Have you made the running? Have you won her?'
'No!' he answered bitterly. 'The closing of the mill settled that for me as well as for you. Some one else has had as good a chance as ours, though, and has made a better use of it. Count Litvinoff is a constant visitor at the house where she is, and I don't doubt she will marry him; unless, indeed, he is married already. I think we ought to try and find that out.'
'Married or not, he is a damned scoundrel!' cried Richard; 'and he shall not marry her. She would never look at me again, I know; but I hope you may win her yet, Roland.'
'My chance is gone for ever. I wish I'd never had that Litvinoff down here. But who could have foreseen this?'
'We've both been fools.'
Roland did not seem to relish this broad statement.
'I can't think how,' he was beginning, when Mrs Brock came in with coals, and almost purred with pleasure at seeing the two amicably drinking their whisky at the same hearth. When she had left the room Richard rose.
'Look here, old man,' he said; 'I'm as sorry as a fellow can be about all this, and I can't think how I could have been such a fool. That's what you were going to say, wasn't it? But since we're agreed on that, don't let's say any more about it. Forgive and forget, and I hope you will be happy yet—with Miss Stanley. Let's agree to let this subject alone for a bit. I think I'll have a run round the garden before I turn in. Good-night.'
'Good-night,' Roland answered, but in a manner whose evident effort after cordiality made the failure of that effort the more painful. 'I shall go to bed; I'm dead beat—been knocking about all day.' Then they shook hands again, and Richard went out.
He had thought that Roland would have met his apologies with ready acceptance—his revived brotherly love with equal enthusiasm—and the nature of the reconciliation jarred upon him. And yet, as he told himself, he thoroughly deserved it all. No doubt time would soften his brother's sense of injury, and some day they might be as good friends again as they had been before Clare Stanley's prettiness had come, like a will-o'-the-wisp, to lead them into all sorts of follies. He tried to think he would be glad if she married Roland. Anything, he thought, rather than that she should marry Litvinoff. He passed the limits of the garden and strolled down the road, deep in thought. It was only when he had nearly reached the mill that he remembered with a start that he had told his brother nothing about John Hatfield and his revengeful projects. However, Roland could come to no harm now—he was probably safe in bed—and he could tell him in the morning. So he strolled on, smoking reflectively, and with a heart not light.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
VENGEANCE ASTRAY
JOHN HATFIELD had left Dartford, his wife, and his work, driven by an impulse as vague as it was irresistible. He did not know what he meant to do; his one idea was that he must face his daughter's betrayer, and tax him with his crime. He did not very much care what came after. But the long tramp through England, broken though it was by many a lift from good-natured waggoners, had given him time for thinking. Reflection did not soften his resentment. On the contrary, the more he thought, the harder his heart felt, and each new hour of solitary musing left him more bitter, more vindictive, more angered than he had been the hour before. His wife's story convicted him of the one fault from which he had always believed himself to be free—blind stupidity. The loss of his daughter had never been out of his mind for half an hour at a time since she had gone away, and he had thought and thought, till his brain had seemed to spin round, over every least detail of her flight, and of the time just before it, in the hope of finding out who was her betrayer. And yet in all his thinking he had never come anywhere near the truth. Other people had, though; he knew that, as he remembered hints he had sneered at from some of the least brilliant of the hands—fools he had often called them. Yet, fools as they were, they had been able to see more clearly than he, the father, whose brain sharpest love and sorrow ought surely to have had power to quicken.
Added to all this, the thought that he had gone on working for, taking the money of, and, to a certain extent, living in a condition of dependence on, the man who had wronged him, and then had turned him out on to the world, stung his spirit almost to madness.
The spring woke early that year, and the weather was bright and glad, the air clear and sweet and joyous with a thousand bird-voices. The Midland woods and hedges that he passed were beginning to deck themselves in the fresh greenness of their new spring garments. Their beauty brought no peace to him. He but noticed them to curse their monotony and apparent endlessness. The only things he did notice with anything like satisfaction were the milestones and fingerposts, which told him that so much more ground had been got over. He put up at night at the cheapest and poorest-looking inns he could find. They were good enough to lie awake in, for his feverish longing and impatience to reach his end almost consumed him and made sleep an impossibility. Eager as he was to get on, he had self-restraint enough to spend none of his store of money—such a little store as it was—on travelling. Roland Ferrier might not be at Thornsett after all, and he might have to follow him, or mayhap return to Dartford and bide his time; and so, though his progress was straight and steady it was slow, and he did not reach Thornsett until the night that had witnessed the explanations between the brothers.
He had done more than twenty-five miles that day, and he was footsore and tired out when, as night was falling, he reached the top of the hill at whose foot lay the village which had been his home for thirty years. All along he had been determined to make straight for Thornsett Edge, and to confront Roland at once. He felt that the young man might be surprised into more admissions than he would choose to make if he were prepared. But physical fatigue is wonderfully effective in upsetting mental decision. Hatfield felt that neither in body nor in mind was he fit to go through at once with the part he had chosen. He must rest—sleep, if possible. He threw himself down on the heather by the pathside, and leaned his head on his arm, while he debated what to do. Nature decided for him, and he fell asleep.
When he woke, a young moon was shining coldly down upon him. He felt stiff, and not rested. The heather was wet with night-dew. How late was it? He thought by the moon about eight o'clock.
He would go down to the village and see who was left in the old place; perhaps he might get a lodging there. The Spotted Cow was closed, he had heard. He limped down the steep stony street. There were no lights to be seen. As he reached the house that had been his, he saw that it was empty, and a longing came over him to get inside it. Why not sleep there? So, turning aside, he went up the three stone steps and along the narrow paved pathway that ran under the windows separating the house from the tiny front garden. His hand fell on the latch of the door quite naturally, and it never occurred to him that it would not yield to his touch as it had been wont to do. But it did not yield. He was in that frame of mind when any resistance is intolerable. He drew back and then threw himself against the door with all his weight. It gave way noisily and he went in. He passed round the wooden screen, and stood in the middle of the flagged floor.
To return to a house where we have been happy, even if we have left it for greater happiness, is always sad if not painful; but to go back to a house that seems to hold within its desolate walls, not only all our memories but all our possibilities of happiness—when we have left it in sorrow, to take back to it an added load of new, unexpected, intolerable trouble—this, let us be thankful, is not given to many of us.
John Hatfield could not bear it. He cast one look round at the dark, fireless hearth, the uncurtained window, turned, and came out. Sleep there? He would rather sleep on the bare hillside, or in the churchyard itself, for that matter.
The rush of memories drove him before it. He could not stay in the village. Every other house in it had been a home too, and was crowded with recollections almost as maddening as those that peopled his own home, in which—bitterest thought of all—Roland Ferrier had lisped out childish prattle, and climbed on his knee to share his caresses with baby Alice. And at the remembrance his resolution came back. He would go to Thornsett Edge then and there, let come what might. Weak as he was, he was strong enough to make his tired feet carry him so far, and once there his passion could be trusted to give him strength to say and do all that needed to be said and done. He clenched his nerves, as though the pain of his bruised feet would grow less by being despised, and he walked on. But when he reached the turn in the road that brought the mill in sight his mood altered again, and almost before he knew that his intention had changed he found himself limping painfully down the stone steps into the little hollow. As he caught sight of the door where Litvinoff had stood on the night of the fire he muttered a curse on the man who had stood between the 'hands' and their purpose that night. He felt faint and giddy. The many square windows of the mill seemed to look on him like eyes, and the broken panes in them lent them a sinister expression. The few past months had changed the face of the mill wonderfully. No one had repaired the damage done by the rioters, and the wind and rain had had their will of the place. It looked now, Hatfield thought, as though it had been deserted for years instead of months.
Everything was deadly still. The only sounds were the trickling of the stream as it flowed past, and his own heavy breathing. He was becoming unaccountably sleepy. Why should he not sleep here? He would go on to Thornsett in the morning. He stumbled downward till he reached the wall of the mill. He soon found a window that could be unfastened by passing his hand through one of its broken panes and turning round the primitive hasp. It was rusty, and moved, as it were, reluctantly. Still, it did move, and he opened the window and crept through it. He found himself on the edge of a huge stone tank, or vat. One more forward movement and he would have been plunged in the dark-looking water that half filled it. He shuddered. How could he have been such a fool as to forget the position of that tank? He crept round the edge of it, and reached the stone-paved floor of the basement. There lay a mass of something dark. It was the great stone that had thundered through the roof of the mill just after young Roland Ferrier had given the deputation their answer. Hatfield looked up at the ugly hole in the ceiling, a hole that repeated itself in the two upper floors and the roof, through which he could see the sky. The moon was shining brightly by this time, and the many-windowed building was lighted well enough for the man to find his way about. Had it been dark, he thought he should not have had much difficulty. He went up the stairs, and made his way to a room on the second storey, where he fancied there would be some soft rubbish he could lie down on. He was not disappointed, and, yielding to the utter weariness that had come to him, he lay down, and in a moment slept.
He had not been asleep three minutes when he awoke with a start to find himself sitting up and listening. What had he heard? The click of a door and a footstep. He was widely, nervously, intensely awake now. Had it been fancy, born of the utter desolation and loneliness of the place where he was? He listened strainedly. No. This at least was no fancy. There was a footstep resounding hollowly through the great empty rooms.
Some watcher, perhaps, from whom he ought to keep himself hidden if he did not want to be handed over to the constable as a vagrant. What an ending, that, to his journey! Yes, he must lie quiet, and yet, how could he? Suppose—and at the thought his blood ran coldly through his veins—suppose old Richard Ferrier had got up from under that white stone in Thornsett churchyard, and had come down to keep watch over what his sons had so little regarded. The footsteps came nearer, and Hatfield sprang to his feet and walked not away from, but towards, the sound. The impulse of a naturally brave man when he is frightened is to face the fearsome thing as speedily as may be. Hatfield opened the door. Then he sprang forward, for he saw no ghost, but, as it seemed to him, the object of his search—not old Richard, but young Roland, standing with his back to him. The bright moonlight lighting up the figure left no room in his mind for a doubt. At the sight, all his ideas of asking for explanation vanished in an instant, and left him with no impulse but to catch the young man by the throat and to squeeze the life out of him.
