The end of the room at which Lewis had seated himself lay in shadow,
so that Leicester, who shortly made his appearance wrapped in a
dressing-gown, could merely distinguish the outline of his figure.
“Why, Arundel,” he began, “is anything the matter? Here has Wilson been
and roused me out of my first sleep, with a face like that of the party
who ‘drew Priam’s curtains i’ the dead o’ the night.’ Where’s Governor
Grant, and how is it that you’re home first?”
“It’s no joking matter, Mr. Leicester,” returned Lewis faintly, and
without raising his head. “The poachers have given us more trouble than
we expected, and in attempting to capture Hardy the General has been
thrown from his horse. His right arm is broken in two places, and when I
came away he was still insensible.”
From the position in which Lewis sat (his elbows resting on a table and
his forehead supported by his hands) he was unable to perceive anything
that might be going on in the apartment, consequently he had continued
his speech, ignorant that a third person had joined them. Annie (for she
it was who, pale as some midnight ghost, had glided noiselessly into the
room) laid her hand on Leicester’s arm to prevent his calling attention
to her presence, while eager and trembling she listened to Lewis’s
account of her father’s accident; and overcome for the moment by these
evil tidings, she remained speechless, leaning against a chair for
support. Lewis, surprised at Leicester’s silence, raised his head
languidly, and the first object that met his eyes was Annie Grant’s
sinking figure. With an exclamation of dismay he attempted to start
up, but he was becoming so weak from loss of blood that he failed to
accomplish his purpose. Roused by the action, Annie recovered herself,
and as a new idea struck her, she asked--
“Where, then, is poor papa? Have they brought him home? I must go to him
instantly!”
“He is not yet arrived, Miss Grant,” returned Lewis in a low voice that
trembled with conflicting emotions; “his own servants are carrying him,
and a surgeon will be here instantly. I----” he paused abruptly, for
Annie, drawing herself up, advanced towards him, and with flashing eyes
exclaimed--
“Is this then the way in which you have fulfilled your promise, Mr.
Arundel? I trusted so implicitly to your assurance that you would watch
over him and protect him; and now you have not only failed him in the
moment of danger but deserted him in his necessity, and secured your own
safety by coming home to break my heart with these evil tidings. Oh, I
am ashamed of you--grieved--disappointed!”
“Hush, my dear Annie,” observed Leicester soothingly. “Arundel might not
be able to prevent this accident--you are too hasty.”
“No, no!” returned Lewis in a low, broken voice, “I deserve her
reproaches. I ought never to have quitted him, and yet I did so
believing that I left him in perfect safety. I could not bear to stand
inactive when other men were about to face danger; besides, I had
pledged myself to assist in capturing this poacher.” He paused, then
added, “I have been to blame, Miss Grant, but I am not quite the
poltroon you imagine me. I did indeed leave your father that I might
accompany the attacking party into the wood, but I strained every nerve
to come up with Hardy before General Grant encountered him; and although
that was impossible, I arrived in time to prevent him from forcing the
horse to trample the life out of the fallen man, and wounded as I am, I
engaged with and captured, at the risk of my own life, the ruffian who
had injured your father; nor should I have been here now, but that it
was necessary for some one to procure assistance and summon a surgeon,
and I rode back at speed to my own injury, that I might leave a more
efficient man with the General.”
As he ceased speaking the butler entered the room, bearing in his hand
a lamp, and for the first time the light fell upon Lewis’s figure.
Leicester, as he beheld him, uttered an exclamation of surprise and
horror, which his appearance was well calculated to call forth. His face
was deadly pale, save a red line across the forehead, where some bramble
had torn the skin; his dark hair, heavy with the night dew, clung in
wild disorder around his temples; and his clothes, stained with mud,
bore traces of the severity of the struggle in which he had been
engaged; the sleeve of his left arm, which still rested on the table,
was soaked with gore, while the momentary excitement which had animated
him as he spoke had given way to a return of the faintness produced by
the loss of blood, which was by this time very considerable. As this
ghastly figure met her sight Annie uttered a slight shriek--then a
sense of the cruel injustice of her own reproaches banished every other
consideration, and springing towards him, she exclaimed--
“Oh, Mr. Arundel, what can we do for you? how shocked, how grieved I
am!--will you, can you forgive me?”
Lewis smiled and attempted to reply, but the words died away upon his
lips, and completely overcome by faintness, he would have fallen from
the chair had not Leicester supported him. Fortunately, at this moment
the surgeon arrived, and Annie quitting the apartment, Lewis’s sleeve
was cut open, his wound temporarily bound up, and his temples bathed
with some stimulating essence which dispelled his faintness, before the
surgeon’s services were required for General Grant. The latter gentleman
had recovered consciousness ere he reached Broadhurst, and though
suffering acute pain from his broken arm, appeared cool and collected.
His first question had been “whether Hardy had escaped,” and he seemed
to revive from the moment he was informed of his capture. His next
inquiry was who had taken him, and on learning it was Lewis, he was much
pleased, muttering, “Brave lad, brave lad! pity he’s not in the army.”
He recognised Annie and spoke kindly to her, gave orders for the safe
custody of Hardy, demanded of the surgeon who examined his arm whether
he wished to amputate it, as he felt quite equal to the operation, and
in short, under circumstances which would have overpowered any man of
less firmness of character, behaved like a gentleman and a brave old
soldier, as he was. Fortunately the surgeons (for a second, attracted
by the rumour of an accident, as vultures are if a camel dies in the
desert, had come to test the truth of the old proverb that two heads
are better than one) succeeded in setting the arm, pronounced amputation
unnecessary, and after careful examination, gave it as their opinion
that, with the exception of a few contusions of little consequence,
the General had sustained no further injury. Having come to this
satisfactory conclusion, they found time to direct their attention to
Lewis. After much whispered consultation and considerable exchange of
learned winks and profound nods, they informed him that he had been
wounded by a shot from a pistol (which, by the way, he could have told
them), and that they had very little doubt that the ball remained in the
wound, in which case it would be necessary to extract it. To this Lewis
replied, “The sooner the better.” Accordingly they proceeded to put him
to great agony by probing the wound to find the ball, after which they
hurt him still more in extracting it, performing both operations with
such easy cheerfulness of manner and utter disregard of the patient’s
feelings, that a bystander would have imagined they were carving a cold
shoulder of mutton rather than the same joint of live humanity. But
surgeons, like fathers, have flinty hearts, unmacadamised by the
smallest grain of pity for the wretched victims of their uncomfortable
skill; their idea of the “Whole Duty of Man” being that he should afford
them “an interesting case” when living, and become a “good subject”
for them when he has ceased to be one to the Queen. After the ball was
extracted, Lewis requested it might be handed to him; it was small, and
from its peculiar shape he perceived that it must have been discharged
from a pistol with a rifle barrel.
“If you will allow me,” he said, “I shall keep this bit of lead as a
memorial of this evening’s entertainment.”
“Oh, certainly,” replied the most cheerful surgeon, “by all means; if it
had but gone an eighth of an inch farther,” he added, rubbing his hands
joyously, “only an eighth of an inch, it would have injured the
spinal cord, and you would have been--droll how these things occur
sometimes--you’d have been paralysed for life.”
Lewis shuddered, and wished devoutly he were for the time being Caliph
Haroun Al’Raschid, in which case the facetious surgeon would have added a
practical acquaintance with the effects of the bastinado on the sole of
the human foot to his other medical knowledge.
“I don’t think,” resumed the doctor meditatively, “I don’t think you
need apprehend any very unpleasant result, as far as I can as yet see
into the case. Of course,” he continued with hilarity, “erysipelas might
supervene, but that is seldom fatal, unless it affects the brain; and I
should hope the great effusion of blood will prevent that in the present
instance. You feel very weak, don’t you?”
Lewis replied in the affirmative, and his tormentor continued--
“Well, you need not be uneasy on that score; I don’t apprehend a return
of syncope, but if you should feel an unnatural deficiency of vital
heat, or perceive any symptoms of approaching collapse, I would advise
your ringing the bell, and I’ll be with you instantly. Scalpel’s
obliged to be off; he’s got a very interesting broken leg--compound
fracture--waiting for him down at the village, besides some dozen
agreeable minor casualties, the result of to-night’s work. Keep up your
spirits, and go to sleep--your shoulder is easier now?”
“It feels as if the blade of a red-hot sword were being constantly
plunged into it,” returned Lewis crossly.
“Delighted to hear it,” replied Dr. Bistoury, rubbing his hands; “just
what I could have wished; nothing inert there! I would recommend your
bearing (which word he pronounced bea-a-a-ring) it quietly, and rely
upon my looking in the first thing to-morrow.” So saying he rubbed his
hands, chuckled, and departed.
In spite of his wound, which continued very painful, Lewis contrived to
get a few hours’ sleep, and awoke so much refreshed that he resisted all
attempts to keep him in bed, and though stiff and weak to an excessive
degree, made his way to the study and cheated Walter out of the holiday
he had expected--a loss which he scarcely regretted in his joy at
finding that the wicked poachers had not seriously injured his dear Mr.
Arundel. And then Annie could not be happy till she had caught Charles
Leicester and made him accompany her on a penitential visit to Lewis,
to tell him how grieved she was at the recollection of her injustice to
him; it seemed so dreadfully ungrateful, when in fact he had just saved
her father’s life; and she looked so pretty and good and pure in her
penitence, that Lewis began to think women were brighter and higher
beings than his philosophy had dreamed of, and for the first time it
occurred to him that he had been guilty of an unpardonable absurdity in
despising the whole race of womankind because he happened to have
been jilted by a little, coquettish, half-educated German girl; and he
forgave Annie so fully in his heart that with his lips he could scarcely
stammer out half-a-dozen unmeaning words to tell her so.
Leicester asked him in the course of the conversation whether he had any
idea which of the gang of poachers had fired the pistol, adding that two
others had been taken besides Hardy. Lewis paused for a moment ere he
replied, “That his back had been turned towards the man who shot him,
and that it was too serious a charge to bring against any one without
more certain knowledge than he possessed on the subject.” And having
said this, he immediately changed the conversation.
As soon as Annie and her cousin withdrew, Millar the gamekeeper made
his appearance, full of congratulations on Lewis’s gallant conduct and
sympathy in regard to his wound.
“I can’t imagine vitch o’ ther warmints could have had a pistol; it
worn’t neither o’ ther two as we captiwated, for I sarched ’em myself,
and never a blessed harticle had they got about ’em except ther usual
amount o’ bacca and coppers hin ther breeches’ pockets.”
“Did you have any more fighting after I left you to follow Hardy?” asked
Lewis.
“Veil, we did ’ave one more sharpish turn,” was the reply. “When the
blackguards see me down, they made a rush to recover the sack with the
game, and almost succeeded, only Sam Jones pulled me out of the crowd
and set me on my legs again, and I was so mad a-thinking that Hardy had
got clear away that I layed about me like one possessed, they do tell
me; so we not only recovered the game, but bagged two o’ ther chaps
themselves. By ther bye,” he continued, “Sam Jones came here with me;
he wants to see yer when I’ve done with yer; he says he’s picked up
somethin’ o’ yourn, but he won’t say what--he’s a close chap when he
likes, is Sam. Howsomdever, I suppose he expects you’ll tip him a bob or
so, for it was he as ketched yer when Hardy first flung yer off. You’ve
paid _him_ for it sweetly, and no mistake; he’d got a lovely black hye,
and his right wrist was swelled as big as two ven we marched him hoff to
H---------- gaol this morning. And now I’ll vish yer good arternoon, Mr.
Arundel, and send Sam hup, if you’re agreeable.”
Lewis, with a smile at the equivocal nature of the phrase, signified his
agreeability, and the keeper took his departure. In another minute the
sound of heavy footsteps announced the approach of Sam, who, having
obeyed Lewis’s injunction to “come in,” vindicated his title to the
attribute of “closeness” by carefully shutting the door and applying
first his ear and then his eye to the keyhole ere he could divest his
cautious mind of a dread of eavesdroppers. He then crossed the room
on tip-toe, partly from a sense of the grave nature of his mysterious
errand, partly from respect to the carpet, the richness of which
oppressed him heavily during the whole of his visit, restricting him to
the use of one leg only the greater portion of the time.
“You have found something of mine, Millar tells me,” began Lewis,
finding that, ghost-like, his visitor appeared to consider it a point of
etiquette not to speak first.
“You’re very kind, Mr. Arundel,” returned his visitor, who, catching
sight at the moment of the gilt frame of an oil painting which hung
over the chimney, and believing it firmly to be pure gold, became so
overpowered between that and the carpet that he scarcely dared trust
himself to speak in such an aristocratic atmosphere. “I’m much obliged
to you, sir. Yes, I have found something, sir, but I don’t know disactly
as it’s altogether yourn.”
“What is it, my good fellow?” inquired Lewis, half amused and half bored
by the man’s bashfulness.
A consolatory mistrust of the sterling value of the picture-frame had
by this time begun to insinuate itself into Sam’s mind, and reassured in
some degree by the doubt, he continued--
“I beg pardon, sir, but I hopes you don’t feel so bad as might be
expected; you looks shocking pale, surely.”
Lewis thanked him for his inquiry, and said he believed the wound was
going on favourably.
“I’m sure I’m very glad to hear it, which is a mercy to be thankful
for; you looking so bad, too,” returned this sympathising visitor; then
leaning forward so as to approach his lips to Lewis’s ear, he continued
in a loud whisper--
“Have ye any notion who it was as fired the shot?”
Lewis started, and colouring slightly, fixed his eyes on the man’s face
as he inquired abruptly--
“Have you?”
Forgetting his veneration for the carpet in the excitement of the
conversation, the suspicious under-keeper walked to the door and
again tested the keyhole ere he ventured to answer the question; then
approaching Lewis, he thrust his hand into a private pocket in his
shooting-jacket, and drawing thence something carefully wrapped in a
handkerchief, he presented it to the young tutor, saying--
“That’s what I’ve been and found, sir; I picked it up in the wood,
not twenty yards from the place where you stood when you was shot, Mr.
Arundel.”
Lewis hastily unrolled the handkerchief, and drew from its folds a small
pocket-pistol; _on_ the stock, which was richly inlaid, was a silver
escutcheon with a coat of arms engraved upon it; from marks about the
nipple it had evidently been lately discharged, and on examination it
proved to have _a rifle barrel_. Lewis’s brow grew dark.
“It is then as I suspected,” he muttered; pausing, however, as a new
idea seemed to strike him. “It might be unintentional,” he continued,
“the mere result of accident. I must not jump too hastily to such a
conclusion;” then addressing the under-keeper, he inquired--“Have you
any idea to whom this pistol belongs?”
“P’r’aps I may have,” was the cautious reply, “but there’s some things
it’s best not to know--a man might get himself into trouble by being too
knowing, you see, Mr. Arundel.”
“Listen to me, my good friend,” returned Lewis, fixing his piercing
glance on the man’s face: “it is evident you more than suspect who is
the owner of this pistol, and you probably are aware by whom, and under
what circumstances, it was last night discharged. Now, if through
a selfish dread of consequences you wish to keep this knowledge to
yourself, why come here and show me the pistol? If, on the contrary, you
wish to enhance the value of your information in order to make a more
profitable bargain with me, you are only wasting time. I am naturally
anxious to know who wounded me, and whether the deed was accidental or
intentional; therefore, you have but to name your price, and if I can
afford it I will give it you. I say this because I can conceive no other
reason for your shilly-shallying.”
During this speech the unfortunate Sam Jones shifted uneasily from leg
to leg, dropped his cap, stooped to pick it up again, bit his under-lip
with shame and indecision, and at last exclaimed--
“Bless’d if I can stand this hany longer! out it must come, and if I
loses my sitiation through it, I suppose there’s other places to be got;
they can’t say nuffin against my character, that’s one comfort. It ain’t
your money I wants, Mr. Arundel, sir; I’m able and willin’ to earn my
own livin’; but I’ve got a good place here, and don’t wish to offend
nobody: still right is right, and knowing what I knows, my conscience
wouldn’t let me rest till I’d come and told you--only I thort if you
would ha’ guessed it of yourself like, nothing needn’t ha’ come out
about me in the matter.”
“I understand,” returned Lewis with a contemptuous curl of the lip; “I
will take care not to commit you in any way; so speak out.”
“Well, if you remember, sir, I went with you and Millar up to the
barley-stack last night, and when you grabbed hold of Hardy he sung out
to the chap as was with him to come and help him, so I thort the best
thing for me was to pitch into him and prevent his doing so. Well, I
hadn’t much trouble with him, for he was a shocking poor hand with his
fists, and as soon as I’d polished him off I turned to lend you a help;
just at that minute I see the moon a-shining upon something bright, and
looking further, I perceived the figure of a man crouching close to the
stack with a cocked pistol in his hand. When fust I see him the pistol
was pointed at Hardy, but suddenly he changed his aim and fired straight
at you; as he let fly, the moonlight fell upon his face, and if ever a
man looked like a devil he did then.”
“And it was----?” asked Lewis eagerly.
“Lord Bellefield!” was the reply; “there’s none of ’em wears hair on
their top lip except the young lord, so it ain’t easy to mistake him, ye
see.”
“Are you quite sure he changed the direction of the pistol? Might not
the shot have been intended for Hardy?”
“I’ll take my oath it worn’t, Mr. Arundel; he pointed it straight at
your breast, and if Hardy hadn’t given a sudden wrench at the minute
and dragged you out of the line of fire, you’d have been a dead man long
before this.”
Seeing that Lewis continued silent, the keeper resumed--
“As soon as you was hit you let go and Hardy threw you off. I caught
you, expecting it was all up with you, but I still kept my eye on his
lordship, for I was curious to know how he’d act. When he saw you fall
he smiled, and then he looked more like a devil than he had done before.
As Hardy was a-cutting away he passed close to Lord Bellefield and
struck against his shoulder, accidently, and his lordship in a rage
flung the discharged pistol after him, and it would ha’ fetched him down
too if it hadn’t a-hit against a branch. However, I marked where it fell
pretty nigh, and as soon as it was light this morning I went and found
it. There’s his lordship’s arms upon it, same as them on his pheaton.”
Completely overpowered and amazed at this recital, Lewis, desiring to
be alone with his own thoughts, obtained from Sam Jones a promise of the
strictest secrecy in regard to the affair, and having liberally rewarded
him for his discreet behaviour, dismissed him. He then, concealing the
pistol in his pocket, withdrew to the privacy of his own apartment,
and locking the door, sat down to collect his ideas. At first he could
scarcely realise the fact with which he had become acquainted. True,
he had suspected that it was from Lord Bellefield’s hand that he had
received his wound, for he had previously observed the butt of a pistol
protruding from a pocket in his lordship’s greatcoat, his attention
being particularly called to the fact by the eagerness with which its
owner immediately hastened to conceal it more effectually. Still, he had
believed that he had been wounded by an accident, and that the shot had
been fired with the intention of disabling Hardy, in whose capture
Lord Bellefield appeared, for some mysterious reason, to be deeply
interested. The account he had just received proved that this was
evidently not the case, and Lewis could only conjecture that at the
moment Lord Bellefield was about to shoot Hardy some fiend had suggested
to him the opportunity of an easy revenge on the man he hated, and that,
in an impulse of ungovernable malice, he had altered the direction of
the pistol.
Rising and opening his dressing-case, Lewis took from a secret drawer
the ball which had been extracted from his shoulder, and drawing the
pistol out of his pocket, tried it; it fitted the barrel to a nicety.
Replacing it, he muttered, “There is then _no_ doubt.” He paused, but
immediately resumed, “ ’Tis well; he has now filled up the measure of
his guilt; the time is come to balance the account.” His intention
at that moment was to seek out Lord Bellefield, upbraid him with his
treachery, threaten to expose him, and demand as a right that he should
afford him satisfaction, forcing him by some means to meet him on the
following morning. But even when carried away by passion, Lewis was
not utterly forgetful of the feelings of others, and his friendship for
Leicester and for Annie, consideration for the General in his present
situation, and the interest he took in Walter, rose up before him, and
he exclaimed--
“No, it is impossible; a thousand reasons forbid it while I remain under
this roof. I must break off all intercourse with this family before I
seek my just revenge. Well, the day of retribution is postponed then,
perhaps for years; but it will come at last, I know; I feel that it
will. That man is a part of my destiny. With what pertinacity he hates
me! He fears me, too; he has done so ever since that affair of the
glove. He read in my eyes that I had resolved on--on what? What will all
this lead to? Am I at heart a murderer?” He sat down, for he was very
weak, and trembled so violently from the intensity of his feelings that
his knees refused to support him.
“No!” he continued, “it is an act of justice. This man insulted me--I
bore it patiently; at least I did not actively resent it. He repeated
his injurious conduct, he heaped insult on insult--I warned him; he
knew what he was doing; he saw the fiend he was arousing in me, but he
persevered--even yet I strove to forgive him; yes, for the sake of his
brother’s kindness to me, for the sake of the fair girl who is betrothed
to him, I had almost resolved to forego my right to punish him. Then he
seeks my life, the cowardly assassin! and in so doing he has sealed his
own doom.” He rose and paced sternly up and down the apartment. “Frere
would say,” he resumed, “Frere would say that I ought to forgive him
yet, but he would be wrong. He would quote the Scriptures that we should
forgive a brother ’till seventy times seven.’ Yes, _if_ he turn and
repent; repented sins only are forgiven either in heaven or on earth.
Does this man repent? let him tell me so, and I will give him my hand in
friendship; but if he glories in his wickedness? why then the old Hebrew
law stands good, ‘An eye for an eye.’ He owes me a life already, and if
I offer him fair combat, I give him a chance to which in strict justice
he has no right; but _I_ am no mean assassin. And now to return his
pistol and inform his lordship that I am aware of the full extent of my
obligations to him.”
So saying, he drew pen and ink towards him and hastily wrote as
follows:--
“Mr. Arundel presents his compliments to Lord Bellefield, and begs to
return the pistol with which he did him the honour to attempt his life
in the wood last night. Mr. Arundel reserves the pleasure of _returning
the shot_ till some future opportunity.”
He then rolled up the note, and inserting it in the barrel of the
pistol, formed the whole into a small parcel, which he carefully sealed,
and ringing for Lord Bellefield’s valet, desired him to lay it on his
master’s dressing-table before he prepared for dinner.
Reader, when your eye falls upon this page, which lays bare the heart of
one whom we would fain depict, not as a mere picturesque brain-creation
of impossible virtues and startling faults, but as an erring mortal like
ourselves, swayed by the same passions, subject to the same influences
for good or for evil--when you perceive how this one wrong feeling,
permitted to take root in his mind, grew and flourished, till it so
warped his frank, generous nature, that the fiend of sophistry, quoting
scripture to his purpose, could blind his sense of right with such
shallow reasoning as the foregoing,--resolve, if a single revengeful
feeling lurk serpent-like in your bosom, to cast it from you at whatever
sacrifice, lest when you pray “Our Father” which is in heaven to
“forgive us our trespasses _as_ we forgive them that trespass against
us,” you unawares pronounce your own condemnation.