A BLIND ATONEMENT
Sir Stephen Berrington sat alone in the library at the Manor of Varenac.
Not that he was fond of his own company. Peste! He hated it. But
there was no alternative just now.
Morry's sister had gone to Kernak with that young fool Michael to keep
her company, and Morry himself had not arrived.
Too bad that! If it had not been for Morry's over-persuasion he would
never have left town.
He was none too fond of my Lord Denningham's company. The fellow was
all right at the card-table, but otherwise he was a demned wet blanket.
Yes; a demned wet blanket!
Sir Stephen yawned, helped himself to another glass of punch from the
bowl at his elbow, and continued to bewail his lot.
Where was Denningham? Wet blanket or no, even he would be better than
no one in this old barn.
It was beginning to grow dusk, and Steenie was not fond of moping in
the twilight.
Memory and he were ill friends.
Yet memory, unbidden, came and perched herself beside him.
A small fire of logs crackled on the hearth. Autumn winds were cold,
and he was not so young as he used to be.
It is wonderful how old a fit of loneliness can make one.
At that moment the light-hearted Steenie Berrington of Carlton House
was an old man.
The hand that carried the glass to trembling lips shook.
An old man!
It must be so since he had taken to looking back.
He had been young once.
Lost youth stood mocking him in the shadows. Laughter, love, hope, and
strength,--all had been his.
A mother's hand seemed stretching out from the past years to smooth the
fair hair from his forehead, whilst mother-eyes looked into his own
laughing ones.
Those mother eyes! Had they ever looked anything but tenderly into
his, though they had often been tear-dimmed in pain?
Pain he had inflicted carelessly enough, and, as carelessly, turned
away.
Memory had bitter stabs for an old man sitting alone in the twilight.
Sir Stephen gulped down his punch and tried to hum a line of his
favourite rhyme.
"Let's drink and be jolly, and drown melancholy;
So merrily, then, let us joy, too, and sing,
So fill up your bowls, all ye loyal----"
The song broke off, snapped by another of memory's shafts.
Where had he heard that song first?
At Dublin town.
Ah! Dublin held memories too.
A gay ballroom. A girl's sweet face. A kiss, passionate and long.
Norah, Norah--smiling, merry Norah.
He had loved her, too, for a short time--all too short for Norah.
And the boy?
Well! he had not been cut out for domesticity, and after a time Norah's
tears bored him far more than Norah's smiles had ever charmed him.
Yet he had felt a pang of remorse when he heard she was dead. He might
even have sought out his son had not the old man, his father, adopted
him. It was better for Michael to be brought up at Berrington.
And, meantime, Steenie was finding that when one has a handsome face
and jolly humour, it is easy to live by one's wits, even though honour
be in the mire.
So the years rolled by. He watched them go as the wood spattered and
burnt on the hearth, spurting out little jets of flame or leaping up
the chimney in long, red tongues of fiery heat.
Michael, his son! _His son_. His father, it seemed at times, for here
was Sir Henry over again, save for sudden fits of wild, rollicking
devilry, which came of an Irish birthright, and delighted Sir Stephen
hugely.
Mike and he might have been the jolliest of comrades were it not for
the young fool's absurd ideas of honour.
Again Sir Stephen filled up his glass. He would at least drown
melancholy and memory too.
After all, he hoped spoil-sport Mike would stay at Kernak. The lad
took life like an old man, and left his father behind in the merry
ranks of youth.
Yes! of youth. He was not old--_would_ not be old. He was
young--merry. Laughter on his lips--in his heart, now the ghosts of
the past were laid.
Confusion to memory! Con----
How darkly the shadows fell.
And behind him one was moving forward, nearer--nearer--nearer.
A stooping shadow, with a cap--blood-red in the dying light--on its
head, and a face twisted and mocking.
But Sir Stephen was looking into the embers and seeing long years of
laughter and song therein.
Oh, that stooping shadow! How stealthily it advanced.
Confusion to memory! Con----
An arm raised swiftly, and as swiftly descending.
Confusion----!
What followed? What followed?
A sudden, terrible pain, a suffocating sense of agony, a blinding rush
of memories, of fear, of terror; and then a figure lurched forward,
slipping sideways from the chair across the hearth, overturning a
half-filled bowl of punch in its fall.
But Marcel Trouet stood cursing volubly in hot anger and dismay, for
the features, upturned to his, were not those of Morice Conyers after
all.
* * * * *
The moments crept by leaden-footed. But Marcel Trouet stood
still--very still--looking down at that white face, those stiffening
lips.
He had killed the wrong man.
It was a matter of regret.
Hardened in crime though he was, murder in cold blood had never come
his way before, and the horror of a useless deed held him there,
actually trembling a little as he watched the slowly oozing blood
trickle across the white hearth.
And the twilight was deepening in the silent room.
The hasty opening of a door startled the watcher into uttering a low
cry of terror. But the terror passed at sight of Lord Denningham.
These two understood each other.
"Ah!"
"Unluckily I made a little mistake, mon ami. It was Morice
Conyers--the citizen Varenac--I came to find."
"Aha! I understand. A little unfortunate for Steenie! Poor devil!
But how go the affairs of State, friend Trouet?"
"It is I who should ask that. I hear that our good Moreece has become
indeed a Marquis."
"One born out of time then, though it is true that Conyers was ready to
play the fool. However, there is no reason to be anxious; I have
already settled matters with him."
"You----?"
"He will not trouble us again any more than poor Steenie here."
Lord Denningham was smiling, but Marcel Trouet wiped the sweat from his
forehead.
"Bon, bon. You are a patriot, my friend."
"And now----?"
"Well, it will be clear sailing, as you call it in England. The men of
Varenac did not see the dear Moreece?"
"Not a glimpse. They are waiting still."
"Excellent. Ah, ciel! what an idea! We shall have no trouble with
these blockheads, who are sometimes difficult. You, my dear milord,
will be Marquis, or--still better--the Citizen Varenac."
Jack Denningham stared for a moment. But he was not slow to catch the
drift of the other's meaning.
"The Citizen Varenac?" he echoed. "A charming idea, Marcel, only a
trifle difficult to practise."
"Difficult?"
"You forget I have been living here as Lord Denningham. The old
curmudgeon, Pierre Koustak, would give me away. He is Royalist and
Varenac to the backbone, and a gentleman of influence in these parts,
if I mistake not."
Trouet shrugged his shoulders.
"Ah, my friend, that is all easy enough. Where is this Pierre Koustak?"
"Below, no doubt, in the pantry, or poking his nose where it is not
wanted."
"Let him come here. We will deal with him according to justice."
"Justice!"
"Eh bien! There is a man lying murdered in the library of the Manor of
Varenac. We find him here, you and I. Who can be suspected but the
only man in the house? It is without doubt the work of a villain. We
will name that villain Pierre Koustak. You understand?"
"Perfectly. I will fetch him."
Pierre Koustak was not far away.
The last few days had made him anxious--very anxious. There were
things happening he could not understand, and Monsieur le Marquis had
not arrived at Varenac.
So he was ready enough to obey the summons to the library, even though
he did not like the fair-haired milord with the blue eyes which were
cold and hard as granite stones.
Yet perhaps he would hear something.
The worthy Pierre was not mistaken. He did hear something,--but not at
all what he expected.
Murder! Ah! how terrible.
The sight of the huddled figure on the hearth made his knees tremble in
very horror. But he knew nothing of it, had heard nothing. What did
it mean?
In utter bewilderment, he stared from one grim-faced accuser to the
other.
_He_ murdered the Englishman who laughed and drank all day?
Mother of Heaven! such a thought, such a suggestion, was impossible,
absurd.
But, where the prisoner is prejudged, argument is useless.
They refused to listen to the poor man's protestations, cries, and vows
of innocency. Sir Stephen Berrington lay here, lately murdered; he,
Pierre Koustak, was the only man in the Manor at the time, therefore
Pierre must have done the deed.
That was the summing up. Afterwards Pierre, still pleading and
imploring against such injustice, was bound, gagged, and carried to a
little room at the back of the house.
"He will be safe there," observed Jack Denningham, with a grin, as he
withdrew the key from the lock, placing it in his pocket. "And now for
the comedy, Citizen Marcel, since tragedy is done with--for the
present."
Marcel Trouet seemed thoroughly to appreciate the jest, for his sly
face--a little paler perhaps than usual--was twisted into a satisfied
grimace.
"You will wait here now, milord," he observed with a grand bow, "and I
will bring your obedient and altogether adoring people to listen to the
fatherly advice and counsel of the Citoyen Morice Varenac, ci-devant
Marquis and aristocrat, but now the friend of liberty and the great and
glorious Revolution."
He waved his red cap excitedly over his head as he spoke, laughing
uproariously.
One is merry when one's plans succeed beyond--if contrary
to--expectation. But it might have been observed that the
Revolutionary leader took care to avoid re-entering the library where a
dead man lay by a dying fire.