Done at Sunset.
The warm June sun rode gaily in the bright-blue skies, and the sweet
June Roses were in bloom. Mrs. Andinnian, entirely unconscious of the
blight that had fallen on her younger son, was placidly making the
home happiness (as she believed) of the elder. Had she known of Karl's
sorrow, she would have given to it but a passing thought.
There was peace in the home again. The vexation regarding their young
lady-neighbour had long ago subsided in Mrs. Andinnian's mind. She had
spoken seriously and sharply to Adam upon the point--which was an
entirely new element in his experience; telling him how absurd and
unsuitable it was, that he, one of England's future baronets, and
three-and-thirty years of age already, should waste his hours in
frivolous talk with a girl beneath him. Adam heard her in silence,
smiling a little, and quite docile. He rejoined in a joking tone.
"All this means, I suppose, mother, that you would not tolerate Miss
Turner as my wife?"
"Never, Adam, never. You would have to choose between myself and her.
And I have been a loving mother to you."
"All right. Don't worry yourself. There's no cause for it."
From this time--the conversation was in April, at the close of Karl's
short visit to them--the trouble ceased. Adam Andinnian either did not
meet the girl so much: or else he timed his interviews more
cautiously. In May Miss Turner went away on a visit: Adam seemed to
have dismissed her from his mind: and Mrs. Andinnian forgot that she
had ever been anxious.
Never a word of invitation had come from Sir Joseph. During this same
month, May, Mrs. Andinnian, her patience worn out, had written to
Foxwood, proffering a visit for herself and Adam. At the end of a
fortnight's time, she received an answer. A few words of shaky
writing, in Sir Joseph's own hand. He had been very ill, he told her,
which was the cause of the delay in replying, as he wished to write
himself. Now he was somewhat better, and gaining strength. When able
to entertain her and her son--which he hoped would be soon--he should
send for them. It would give him great pleasure to receive them, and
to make the acquaintance of his heir.
That letter had reached Mrs. Andinnian the first day of June. Some
three week's had elapsed since, and no summons had come. She was
growing just a little impatient again. Morning after morning, while
she dressed, the question always crossed her mind: will there be a
letter to-day from Foxwood? On this lovely June morning, with the
scent of the midsummer flowers wafting in through the open chamber
window, it filled her mind as usual.
They breakfasted early. Adam's active garden habits induced it. When
Mrs. Andinnian descended, he was in the breakfast-room, scanning the
pages of some new work on horticulture. He wore a tasty suit of grey,
and looked well and handsome: unusually so in his mother's eyes, for
he had only returned the past evening from a few days' roving absence.
"Good morning, Adam."
He advanced to kiss his mother: his even white teeth and his grey eyes
as beautiful as they could well be. Mrs. Andinnian's fond and admiring
heart leaped up with a bound.
"The nonsense people write whose knowledge is superficial!" he said,
with a gay laugh. "I have detected half a dozen errors in this book
already."
"No doubt. What book is it?"
He held it out to her, open at the title-page. "I bought it yesterday
at a railway-stall."
"What a nice morning it is!" observed Mrs. Andinnian, as she was busy
with the cups.
"Lovely. It is Midsummer Eve. I have been out at work these two
hours."
"Adam, I think that must be the postman's step," she remarked
presently. "Some one is going round to the door."
"From Karl, perhaps," he said with indifference, for he had plunged
into his book again.
Hewitt came in; one letter only on the silver waiter. He presented it
to his master. Adam, absorbed in his pages, took the letter and laid
it on the table without looking up. Something very like a cry from his
mother startled him. She had caught up the letter and was gazing at
the address. For it was one that had never before been seen there.
"Sir Adam Andinnian, Bart."
"Oh my son! It has come at last."
"_What_ has come?" cried he in surprise. "Oh, I see:--Sir Joseph must
be dead. Poor old fellow! What a sad thing!"
But it was not exactly Sir Joseph's death that Mrs. Andinnian had been
thinking of. The letter ran as follows:--
"FOXWOOD, _June 22nd_.
"DEAR SIR,-I am truly sorry to have to inform you of the death of my
old friend and many years' patient, Sir Joseph Andinnian. He had been
getting better slowly, but we thought surely; and his death at the
last was sudden and quite unexpected. I have taken upon myself to give
a few necessary orders in anticipation of your arrival here.
"I am, Sir Adam, very sincerely yours,
"WILLIAM MOORE.
Sir Adam Andinnian."
The breakfast went on nearly in silence. Mrs. Andinnian was deep in
thoughts and plans. Sir Adam, poring over his book while he ate, did
not seem to be at all impressed with the importance of having gained a
title.
"When shall you start, Adam?"
"Start?" he returned, glancing up. "For Foxwood? Oh, in a day or two."
"_In a day or two!_" repeated his mother, with surprised emphasis.
"Why, what do you mean?"
"Just that, mother."
"You should be off in half an hour. You must, Adam."
"Not I. There's no, need of hurry," he added, with careless good
humour.
"But there is need of it," she answered.
"Why? Had Sir Joseph been dying and wished to see me, I'd not have
lost a single moment: but it is nothing of the kind, poor man. He is
dead, unfortunately: and therefore no cause for haste exists."
"Some one ought to be there."
"Not at all. The Mr. Moore who writes--some good old village doctor, I
conclude--will see to things."
"But why should you not go at once, Adam?" she persisted. "What is
preventing you?"
"Nothing prevents me. Except that I hate to be hurried off anywhere.
And I--I only came back to the garden yesterday."
"The garden!--that's what it is," resentfully thought Mrs. Andinnian.
He read on in silence.
"Adam, if you do not go, I shall."
"Do, mother," he said, readily. "Go, if you would like to, and take
Hewitt. I hate details of all kinds, you know; and if you will go, and
take them on yourself, I shall be truly obliged. Write me word which
day the funeral is fixed for, and I will come for it."
Perhaps in all her life Mrs. Andinnian had never resented anything in
her favourite son as she was resenting this. _She_ had looked forward
to this accession of fortune with an eager anxiety which none could
suspect: and now that it was come, he was treating it with this cool
indifference! Many a time and oft had she indulged a vision of the day
when she should drive in to take possession of Foxwood, her handsome
son, the inheritor, seated beside her.
"One of my sons ought to be there," she said, coldly. "If you will not
go, Adam, I shall telegraph to Karl."
"I will telegraph for you," he replied, with provoking good-humour.
"Karl will be the very fellow: he has ten times the head for business
that I have. Let him act for me in all things, exactly as though it
were he who had succeeded: I give him carte blanche. It will save all
trouble to you."
Sir Adam Andinnian declined to be shaken out of his resolve and his
inertness. In what might be called a temper, Mrs. Andinnian departed
straight from the breakfast-table for the railway-station, to take the
train. Her son duly accompanied her to see her safely away: she had
refused to take Hewitt: and then he despatched a telegram to Karl,
telling him to join his mother at Foxwood. Meantime, while these, the
lady and the message, went speeding on their respective ways, the new
baronet beguiled away the day's passing hours amidst his flowers, and
shot a few small birds that were interfering with some choice
seedlings just springing up.
Lieutenant Andinnian received the message promptly. But, following the
fashion much in vogue amidst telegraphic messages, it was not quite as
clear as daylight. Karl read that Sir Joseph was dead, that his mother
was either going or gone to Foxwood; that she was waiting for him, and
he was to join her without delay. But whether he was to join her at
her own home and accompany her to Foxwood, or whether he was to
proceed direct to Foxwood, lay in profound obscurity. The fault was
not in Sir Adam's wording; but in the telegraph people's carelessness.
"Now which is it that I am to do?" debated Karl, puzzling over the
sprawling words from divers points of view. They did not help him: and
he decided to proceed _home_; he thought his mother must be waiting
for him there. "It must be that," he said: "Adam has gone hastening on
to Foxwood, and the mother is staying for me to accompany her. Poor
Uncle Joseph! And to think that I never once saw him in life!"
Mr. Andinnian had no difficulty in obtaining leave of absence: and he
started on his journey. He was somewhat changed. Though only a month
had gone by since the severance from Lucy Cleeve, the anguish had told
upon him. His brother officers, noting the sad abstraction he was
often plunged in, the ultra-strict fulfilment of his duties, as if
life were made up of parades and drill and all the rest of it, told
him in joke that he was getting into a bad way. They knew naught of
what had happened; of the fresh spring love that had made his heart
and this earth alike a paradise, or of its abrupt ending. "My poor
horse has had to be shot, you know"--which was a fact; "and I can't
forget him," Mr. Andinnian one day replied, reciprocating the joke.
The shades of the midsummer night were gathering as Karl neared the
house of his mother. He walked up from the terminus, choosing the
field-path, and leaving his portmanteau to be sent after him. The
glowing fires of the departed sun had left the west, but streaks of
gold where he had set illumined the heavens. The air was still and
soft, the night balmy; a few stars flickered in the calm blue
firmament: the moon was well above the horizon. This pathway over the
fields ran parallel with the high road. As Mr. Andinnian paced it, his
umbrella in his hand, there suddenly broke upon his ears a kind of
uproar, marring strangely the peaceful stillness of the night. Some
stirring commotion, as of a mass of people, seemed to be approaching.
"What is it, I wonder?" he said to himself: and for a moment or two he
halted and stared over the border of the field and through the
intervening hedge beyond. By what his sight could make out, he thought
some policemen were in front, walking with measured tread; behind came
a confused mob, following close on their heels: but the view was too
uncertain to show this distinctly.
"Some poor prisoner they are bringing in from the county," thought Mr.
Andinnian, as the commotion passed on towards the town, and he
continued his way.
"This is a true Midsummer Eve night," he said to himself, when the hum
of the noise and the tramping had died away, and he glanced at the
weird shadows that stood out from hedges and trees. "Just the night
for ghosts to come abroad, and---- Stay, though: it is not on
Midsummer Eve that ghosts come, I think. What is the popular
superstition for the night? Young girls go out and see the shadowy
forms of their future husbands? Is that it? I don't remember. What
matter if I did? Such romance has died out for me."
He drew near his home. On the left lay the cottage of Mr. Turner. Its
inmates seemed to be unusually astir within it, for lights shone from
nearly every window. A few yards further Karl turned into his mother's
grounds by a private gate.
Their own house looked, on the contrary, all dark. Karl could not see
that so much as the hall-lamp was lighted. A sudden conviction flashed
over him that he was wrong, after all; that it was to Foxwood he ought
to have gone.
"My mother and Adam and all the world are off to it, no doubt," he
said as he looked up at the dark windows, after knocking at the door.
"Deuce take the telegraph!"
The door was opened by Hewitt: Hewitt with a candle in his hand. That
is, the door was drawn a few inches back, and the man's face appeared
in the aperture. Karl was seized with a sudden panic: for he had never
seen, in all his life, a face blanched as that was, or one so full of
horror.
"What is the matter!" he involuntarily exclaimed, under his breath.
Ay, what was the matter? Hewitt, the faithful serving man of many
years, threw up his hands when he saw Karl, and cried out aloud before
he told it. His master, Sir Adam, had shot Martin Scott.
Karl Andinnian stood against the doorpost inside as he listened; stood
like one bereft of motion. For a moment he could put no questions: but
it crossed his mind that Hewitt must be mad and was telling some fable
of an excited brain.
Not so. It was all too true. Adam Andinnian had deliberately shot the
young medical student, Martin Scott. And Hewitt, poor Hewitt, had been
a witness to the deed.
"Is he dead!" gasped Karl. And it was the first word he spoke.
"Stone dead, sir. The shot entered his heart. 'Twas done at sunset. He
was carried into Mr. Turner's place, and is lying there."
A confused remembrance of the lights he had seen arose to Karl's
agitated brain. He pressed his hand on his brow and stared at Hewitt
For a moment or two, he thought he himself must be going mad.
"And where is he--my brother!"
"The police have taken him away, Mr. Karl. Two of them happened to be
passing just at the time."
And Karl knew that the prisoner he had met in custody, with the
guardians of the law around and the trailing mob, was his brother, Sir
Adam Andinnian.