After a few moments Guy recalled himself from his despair, and, turning
his face to the light of the open window, began, with what courage he
might, to consider the situation. A shameful charge had been brought
against him, and an untrue one, and yet the truth was so inexpressibly
galling to him that he could hardly bring himself to contradict the
falsehood.
Drinking, especially in secret, was a degrading vice; but, however
sinful, it was natural, being shared by thousands of poor miserable
fellows. But the secret curse of Guy's life was, he thought, peculiar
to himself, alien from and repugnant to happier folk. It was worse than
wicked, it was abnormal. He himself would have pitied, but he would not
have liked, certainly not have respected, another man who--Even to
himself he would not think the fact in quotable words. That he could
and did bear his hard fate in secret was all that preserved for him a
shadow of self-respect.
A crisis had now, however, come, and his instinctive decisions must be
reconsidered. He got up, and, unlocking his desk, took from its most
secret corner a little pen-and-ink drawing, and, laying it on the table,
sat down, and leaning on his elbows, looked it full in the face. For it
was a face "written down," as he had phrased it to Florella Vyner,--a
face almost identical with his own, and with the picture of his unhappy
namesake, but neither framed by the close-cut hair of the present day
nor by the powdered peruke of the Guy who was too late, but set in wild,
fair locks that hung loosely round it, while, through the misery of the
large, mournful eyes, there was a look of malice, fitting the Guy
Waynflete who had betrayed his friend, and whose apparition had, by
tradition, caused the second Guy to die disgraced and ruined. The
present Guy sat and gazed at it, till the likeness grew in his own face,
and he tried to force his trembling lips into the contemptuous smile
which he felt himself to deserve. Once, as he believed, he had seen
this fatal face with his bodily eyes, and since then the fear of it, the
sense of its unseen presence, the influence of it, was enough to shake
his manhood and shatter his nerves, was altogether irresistible to him.
He never knew when he might wake from sleep with this awful dread upon
him. Never had he been able to stand up against it.
The code of the British schoolboy, backed by the reserve of proud and
canny Yorkshire, is not calculated to deal with an abnormal strain on a
delicate nervous system.
When Guy first "saw the ghost," if it may be so phrased, at Waynflete,
he had felt its effect upon him simply as a disgrace; and, though he
knew somewhat better now, his instincts had never allowed him to treat
it otherwise. A reasonable man might have consulted a doctor, and found
out how to deal with his own nerves; but down below all Guy's opinions
on the subject, all the explanations which he gave himself, there was an
awful conviction of the personality and reality of this thing, which
seemed half his double and half his evil genius; and what could any
doctor do for that?--while he entertained the most utter disbelief in
the genuineness of all modern scientific inquiries into such matters.
What! analyse this frightful thing for other people's benefit?--have his
experiences printed?--be regarded as a person possessing an enviable
faculty denied to others? No; no one who knew what "seeing a ghost" was
like could undergo such torture! They were all humbugs. While, as for
religious help or consolation, Guy feared spiritual impressions or
spiritual efforts; and whether his trouble was the work of his own
fancy, a possession of the devil, or a revelation from the unseen, it
put him in a different relation to all supernatural questions to that of
his fellows. He kept altogether apart from the subject, never joined in
religious discussions, nor let himself speculate on religious questions.
He feared, also, all his finer impulses; they touched on the terrible
and tender point.
As he was liable to nervous headaches on other occasions than when the
fear of a spiritual presence overwhelmed him, he usually attributed all
disturbance that he could not conceal to such a cause. Nobody troubled
about a headache. Fainting or palpitations might lead to questions, and
be supposed to be dangerous. Of course all this was crude and young and
foolish in the extreme; but it was instinctive to a nature, one part of
which was so antagonistic to the other. It never could have continued
if he had belonged to people of ordinary insight or experience; but the
spiritual terrors, to which he was subject, were very uncertain in their
recurrence, and, in fact, were usually apt to come upon him at some
crisis which excited his nerves; and, in his ordinary life at college,
he had suffered less from them than at home, when, certainly, his
grand-aunt and his brother were not likely to suspect them.
But what was he to do now? If he told, if he could so far oppose his
instincts, his aunt would think him a liar, like the other Guy--or mad?
That last might be. It was a view of the matter which had not escaped
him. As for drinking, well, he might be driven to that before the end.
There were times when the brandy was tempting. That was another
ancestral ghost that might be more dreadful than the first.
But he could not confute the charge, and, besides--here a much simpler
part of the Waynflete nature came into play--he was not going to notice
such confounded insolence on Cooper's part, or such suspicious mistrust
on that of his great-aunt.
He locked up the picture, and then, perceiving that it was still only
five o'clock, and that the mill had not yet "loosed," he took up his hat
and went down there, walking in upon the astonished John Cooper, with as
cool a manner as if nothing had passed.
"Step into my room, will you?" he said. "There are two or three letters
that I left this morning."
Then, as the old manager took up and turned over the letters indicated,
not knowing what to say, and feeling his statements to Mrs Waynflete
considerably invalidated by the young gentleman's look and manner, Guy
deliberately unlocked the cupboard, took out the brandy-bottle, and held
it up to the light.
"Nearly empty," he said, in his soft, mocking voice. "Here, Joe Cass,"
to the office boy, "just run down to the Lion, and ask for a bottle of
the best French brandy--for me. Bring it back with you."
"Lord! sir!" exclaimed Cooper, as the boy departed staring; "if you _do_
want brandy, you'd a deal better bring it down from the house yourself,
than send the boy on such errands!"
"Perhaps Mrs Waynflete wouldn't give it to me; and you see, I like to
have it, to `put to my lips, when I feel so dispoged.' Take half a
glass of the remains of this? No? Then I will. Now, as to that
colonial contract--"
Guy poured out the remainder of the brandy and drank it off. He felt
revived by it, and went on with the details of the colonial contract
with the most accurate clearness, till the boy came back, when he took
the bottle, locked it up, put the key in his pocket, and gave Joe the
old bottle to throw away.
"Well, Mr Guy," said Cooper, desperately; "I ask your pardon if I
mistook your condition; but I'd as soon see my own son with a locked-up
brandy-bottle as you--at your age. Eh, my lad, it's a grand mistake
ye're making."
"I shan't let the business go to the dogs in consequence, if I've ever a
hand in it," said Guy, but with more softness; "but just make up your
mind that I don't care a--" Here Guy used an expression which appeared
to Cooper almost as bad a breach of business propriety as the brandy,
and added with much bathos, "I don't care a brass farthing what any one
thinks."
This act of schoolboy defiance was the refuge of Guy's manhood, which
had not learned a better mode of self-assertion. His soft eyes had a
somewhat evil look as he watched his routed enemy, and then went back to
the house, where he was unusually lively at dinner, and through the
evening.
But either the brandy or the excitement revenged itself next day with a
real headache, so violent that he could not lift up his head, and which
left him pale and languid and without spirits for any more defiance of
consequences. Moreover, Mrs Waynflete decreed that he was to go with
her to Waynflete.
Guy resented the proposal as an act of mistrust, and dreaded it from the
bottom of his soul. He resisted it, and offended his aunt more bitterly
than he had ever done before, since he could only put forward
indifference to and contempt of Waynflete and its interests.
And after all, Howarth, the second manager, had a violent attack of
gout, and Guy's presence at Ingleby could hardly be dispensed with. So
he remained, in semi-disgrace, with Cousin Susan Joshua to keep house
for him. Jeanie went up to Waynflete with the rest of the party.
He had got no answer to his proposals, and no definite authority for the
mill. Nevertheless, he made his presence felt there, and people began
to feel that he was master.