"Why is that old house shut up?"
"Who would occupy it?" I said. "Of course, if I could get a tenant--"
"I'll take it," he rejoined quickly. "You can let me some shooting with
it, can't you?"
"But," I began; and then I stopped. I had an instinct to keep the old
Manse empty, but I fought it, merely because it struck me as
unreasonable. How seldom are our instincts unreasonable! God--how
seldom!
"I've been looking out for a shooting-box," Hugh said. "That house would
suit me admirably."
"All right," I answered. "I shall be very glad to have you for a
tenant."
So it was arranged. When Kate heard of the arrangement, I observed her
to go very pale; but she made no objection. Hugh Fraser rented the
house, furnished it, engaged servants, a gardener, enlarged the stables,
and took up his abode there. Doctor Wedderburn's old study was now his
den. When I looked in at the window through which I had seen the doctor
die, I saw Fraser smoking, or playing with his setters. I don't know
why, but the sight turned me sick.
My relations with Kate, of which I have said nothing, were rather cold
and distant. My passion, such as it was, had died before marriage. Hers
seemed to languish afterwards. I believe that she had really loved me,
but that the shame of being with me, after I had wedded her actually
against my will, struck this sentiment to the dust. When one feeling
that has been very strong dies, its place is generally filled by
another. Sometimes I fancied that this was so with Kate, that the
bitterness of shattered self-respect gradually transformed her nature,
that a cruel frost bound the tendernesses, the warm vagaries of what had
been a sweet woman's heart. But, to tell the truth, I did not trouble
much about the matter. My affairs were prospering so greatly, my health
was so abounding, I had so much beside the mere egotism of brilliant
physical strength to occupy me, that I was heedless, reckless--at first.
Yet, I had moments of a dull alarm connected with the dweller at the
Manse.
If Hugh Fraser changed as he read that fateful letter in London, he
changed far more after he came to live at the Manse. And it seemed to me
that there were times when--how shall I put it?--when he bore a curious,
and, to me, almost intolerable likeness to--some one who was dead. A
certain old man's manner came upon him at moments. His body, in sitting
or standing, assumed, to my eyes, elderly and damnable attitudes. Once,
when I glanced in at the study window before entering the Manse, I
perceived him lounging over a table facing me, a pen in his hand and
paper before him, and the spectacle threw all my senses into a violent
and most distressing disorder. Instead of going into the house, as I had
intended, I struck sharply upon the glass at the window. Fraser looked
up quickly.
"What--what are you writing?" I cried out.
He got up, came to the window, and opened it.
"Eh? What's the row, man?" he said. "Why don't you come in?"