"Strike! Kill me! Add parricide to your other crimes, dog, and set me
free of this weary life," cried the old man wildly, as he glared in the
fierce, distorted face of the sturdy soldier who held him back.
But it wanted not Claire's hand upon Fred Denville's arm to stay the
blow. The passionate rage fled as swiftly as it had flashed up, and he
tore himself away.
"You shouldn't have struck me," he cried in a voice full of anguish. "I
couldn't master myself. You struck her--the best and truest girl who
ever breathed; and I'd rather be what I am--scamp, drunkard, common
soldier, and have struck you down, than you, who gave that poor girl a
cowardly blow. Claire--my girl--God bless you! I can come here no
more."
He caught her wildly in his arms, kissed her passionately, and then
literally staggered out of the house, and they saw him reel by the
window.
There was again a terrible silence in that room, where the old man,
looking feeble and strange now, lay back in the chair where he had been
thrown, staring wildly straight before him as Claire sank upon the
carpet, burying her face in her hands and sobbing to herself.
"And this is home! And this is home!"
She tried to restrain her tears, but they burst forth with sobs more
wild and uncontrolled; and at last they had their effect upon the old
man, whose wild stare passed off, and, rising painfully in his seat, he
glared at the door and shuddered.
"How dare he come!" he muttered. "How dare he touch her! How--"
He stopped as he turned his eyes upon where Claire crouched, as if he
had suddenly become aware of her presence, and his face softened into a
piteous yearning look as he stretched out his hands towards her, and
then slowly rose to his feet.
"I struck her," he muttered, "I struck her. My child--my darling! I--
I--Claire--Claire--"
His voice was very low as he slowly sank upon his knees, and softly laid
one hand upon her dress, raising it to his lips and kissing it with a
curiously strange abasement in his manner.
Claire did not move nor seem to hear him, and he crept nearer to her and
timidly laid his hand upon her head.
He snatched it away directly, and knelt there gazing at her wildly, for
she shuddered, shrank from him, and, starting to her feet, backed
towards the door with such a look of repulsion in her face that the old
man clasped his hands together, and his lips parted as if to cry to her
for mercy.
But no sound left them, and for a full minute they remained gazing the
one at the other. Then, with a heartrending sob, Claire drew open the
door and hurried from the room.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?" groaned Denville as he rose heavily
to his feet. "It is too hard to bear. Better sleep--at once and for
ever."
He sank into his chair with his hands clasped and his elbows resting
upon his knees, and he bent lower and lower, as if borne down by the
weight of his sorrow; and thus he remained as the minutes glided by,
till, hearing a step at last, and the jingle of glass, he rose quickly,
smoothed his care-marked face, and thrusting his hand into his breast,
began to pace the room, catching up hat and stick, and half closing his
eyes, as if in deep thought.
It was a good bit of acting, for when Isaac entered with a tray to lay
the dinner cloth, and glanced quickly at his master, it was to see him
calm and apparently buried in some plan, with not the slightest trace of
domestic care upon his well-masked face.
"Mr Morton at home, Isaac?" he said, with a slightly-affected drawl.
"No, sir; been out hours."
"Not gone fishing, Isaac?"
"No, sir; I think Mr Morton's gone up to the barracks, sir. Said he
should be back to dinner, sir."
"That is right, Isaac. That is right. I think I will go for a little
promenade before dinner myself."
"He's a rum 'un," muttered the footman as he stood behind the curtain on
one side of the window; "anyone would think we were all as happy as the
day's long here, when all the time the place is chock full of horrors,
and if I was to speak--"
Isaac did not finish his sentence, but remained watching the Master of
the Ceremonies with his careful mincing step till he was out of sight,
when the footman turned from the window to stand tapping the
dining-table with his finger tips.
"If I was to go, there'd be a regular wreck, and I shouldn't get a penny
of my back wages. If I stay, he may get them two well married, and then
there'd be money in the house. Better stay. Lor', if people only knew
all I could tell 'em about this house, and the scraping, and putting off
bills, and the troubles with Miss May and the two boys, and--"
Isaac drew a long breath and turned rather white.
"I feel sometimes as if I ought to make a clean breast of it, but I
don't like to. He isn't such a bad sort, when you come to know him, but
that--ugh!"
He shuddered, and began to rattle the knives and forks upon the table,
giving one a rub now and then on his shabby livery.
"It's a puzzler," he said, stopping short, after breathing in a glass,
and giving it a rub with a cloth. "Some day, I suppose, there'll be a
difference, and he'll be flush of money. I suppose he daren't start
yet. Suppose I--No; that wouldn't do. He'll pay all the back, then,
and I might--"
Isaac shuddered again, and muttered to himself in a very mysterious way.
Then, all at once:
"Why, I might cry halves, and make him set me up for life. Why not?
She was good as gone, and--"
He set down the glass, and wiped the dew that had gathered off his brow,
looking whiter than before, for just then a memory had come into Isaac's
mental vision--it was a horrible recollection of having been tempted to
go and see the execution of a murderer at the county town, and this
man's accomplice was executed a month later.
"Accomplice" was an ugly word that seemed to force itself into Isaac's
mind, and he shook his head and hurriedly finished laying the cloth.
"Let him pay me my wages, all back arrears," he said. "Perhaps there is
a way of selling a secret without being an accomplice, but I don't know,
and--oh, I couldn't do it. It would kill that poor girl, who's about
worried to death with the dreadful business, without there being
anything else."
Volume One, Chapter XXIV.