Joseph's journey to London was occasioned by his very natural anxiety to
assure himself that Crispin was caught in the toils of the net he had so
cunningly baited for him, and that at Castle Marleigh he would trouble
them no more. To this end he quitted Sheringham on the day after
Crispin's departure.
Not a little perplexed was Cynthia at the topsy-turvydom in which that
morning she had found her father's house. Kenneth was gone; he had left
in the dead of night, and seemingly in haste and suddenness, since on
the previous evening there had been no talk of his departing. Her father
was abed with a wound that made him feverish. Their grooms were all
sick, and wandered in a dazed and witless fashion about the castle,
their faces deadly pale and their eyes lustreless. In the hall she had
found a chaotic disorder upon descending, and one of the panels of the
wainscot she saw was freshly cracked.
Slowly the idea forced itself upon her mind that there had been brawling
the night before, yet was she far from surmising the motives that could
have led to it. The conclusion she came to in the end was that the men
had drunk deep, that in their cups they had waxed quarrelsome, and that
swords had been drawn.
Of Joseph then she sought enlightenment, and Joseph lied right
handsomely, like the ready-witted knave he was. A wondrously plausible
story had he for her ear; a story that played cunningly upon her
knowledge of the compact that existed between Kenneth and Sir Crispin.
“You may not know,” said he--full well aware that she did know--“that
when Galliard saved Kenneth's life at Worcester he exacted from the
lad the promise that in return Kenneth should aid him in some vengeful
business he had on hand.”
Cynthia nodded that she understood or that she knew, and glibly Joseph
pursued:
“Last night, when on the point of departing, Crispin, who had drunk
over-freely, as is his custom, reminded Kenneth of his plighted word,
and demanded of the boy that he should upon the instant go forth with
him. Kenneth replied that the hour was overlate to be setting out upon
a journey, and he requested Galliard to wait until to-day, when he
would be ready to fulfil what he had promised. But Crispin retorted that
Kenneth was bound by his oath to go with him when he should require it,
and again he bade the boy make ready at once. Words ensued between them,
the boy insisting upon waiting until to-day, and Crispin insisting upon
his getting his boots and cloak and coming with him there and then. More
heated grew the argument, till in the end Galliard, being put out of
temper, snatched at his sword, and would assuredly have spitted the
boy had not your father interposed, thereby getting himself wounded.
Thereafter, in his drunken lust Sir Crispin went the length of wantonly
cracking that panel with his sword by way of showing Kenneth what he
had to expect unless he obeyed him. At that I intervened, and using my
influence, I prevailed upon Kenneth to go with Galliard as he demanded.
To this, for all his reluctance, Kenneth ended by consenting, and so
they are gone.”
By that most glib and specious explanation Cynthia was convinced. True,
she added a question touching the amazing condition of the grooms, in
reply to which Joseph afforded her a part of the truth.
“Sir Crispin sent them some wine, and they drank to his departure so
heartily that they are not rightly sober yet.”
Satisfied with this explanation Cynthia repaired to her father.
Now Gregory had not agreed with Joseph what narrative they were to offer
Cynthia, for it had never crossed his dull mind that the disorder of
the hall and the absence of Kenneth might cause her astonishment. And so
when she touched upon the matter of his wound, like the blundering fool
he was, he must needs let his tongue wag upon a tale which, if no less
imaginative than Joseph's, was vastly its inferior in plausibility and
had yet the quality of differing from it totally in substance.
“Plague on that dog, your lover, Cynthia,” he growled from the mountain
of pillows that propped him. “If he should come to wed my daughter after
pinning me to the wainscot of my own hall may I be for ever damned.”
“How?” quoth she. “Do you say that Kenneth did it?”
“Aye, did he. He ran at me ere I could draw, like the coward he is, sink
him, and had me through the shoulder in the twinkling of an eye.”
Here was something beyond her understanding. What were they concealing
from her? She set her wits to the discovery and plied her father with
another question.
“How came you to quarrel?”
“How? 'Twas--'twas concerning you, child,” replied Gregory at random,
and unable to think of a likelier motive.
“How, concerning me?”
“Leave me, Cynthia,” he groaned in despair. “Go, child. I am grievously
wounded. I have the fever, girl. Go; let me sleep.”
“But tell me, father, what passed.”
“Unnatural child,” whined Gregory feebly, “will you plague a sick man
with questions? Would you keep him from the sleep that may mean recovery
to him?”
“Father, dear,” she murmured softly, “if I thought it was as you say,
I would leave you. But you know that you are but attempting to conceal
something from me something that I should know, that I must know.
Bethink you that it is of my lover that you have spoken.”
By a stupendous effort Gregory shaped a story that to him seemed likely.
“Well, then, since know you must,” he answered, “this is what befell:
we had all drunk over-deep to our shame do I confess it--and growing
tenderhearted for you, and bethinking me of your professed distaste to
Kenneth's suit, I told him that for all the results that were likely
to attend his sojourn at Castle Marleigh, he might as well bear Crispin
company in his departure. He flared up at that, and demanded of me that
I should read him my riddle. Faith, I did by telling him that we were
like to have snow on midsummer's day ere he 'became your husband. That
speech of mine so angered him, being as he was all addled with wine and
ripe for any madness, that he sprang up and drew on me there and then.
The others sought to get between us, but he was over-quick, and before I
could do more than rise from the table his sword was through my shoulder
and into the wainscot at my back. After that it was clear he could
not remain here, and I demanded that he should leave upon the instant.
Himself he was nothing loath, for he realized his folly, and he misliked
the gleam of Joseph's eye--which can be wondrous wicked upon occasion.
Indeed, but for my intercession Joseph had laid him stark.”
That both her uncle and her father had lied to her--the one cunningly,
the other stupidly--she had never a doubt, and vaguely uneasy was
Cynthia to learn the truth. Later that day the castle was busy with the
bustle of Joseph's departure, and this again was a matter that puzzled
her.
“Whither do you journey, uncle?” she asked of him as he was in the act
of stepping out to enter the waiting carriage.
“To London, sweet cousin,” was his brisk reply. “I am, it seems,
becoming a very vagrant in my old age. Have you commands for me?”
“What is it you look to do in London?”
“There, child, let that be for the present. I will tell you perhaps when
I return. The door, Stephen.”
She watched his departure with uneasy eyes and uneasy heart. A fear
pervaded her that in all that had befallen, in all that was befalling
still--what ever it might be--some evil was at work, and an evil that
had Crispin for its scope. She had neither reason nor evidence from
which to draw this inference. It was no more than the instinct whose
voice cries out to us at times a presage of ill, and oftentimes compels
our attention in a degree far higher than any evidence could command.
The fear that was in her urged her to seek what information she could
on every hand, but without success. From none could she cull the merest
scrap of evidence to assist her.
But on the morrow she had information as prodigal as it was
unlooked-for, and from the unlikeliest of sources--her father himself.
Chafing at his inaction and lured into indiscretions by the subsiding of
the pain of his wound, Gregory quitted his bed and came below that
night to sup with his daughter. As his wont had been for years, he drank
freely. That done, alive to the voice of his conscience, and seeking to
drown its loud-tongued cry, he drank more freely still, so that in the
end his henchman, Stephen, was forced to carry him to bed.
This Stephen had grown grey in the service of the Ashburns, and amongst
much valuable knowledge that he had amassed, was a skill in dealing with
wounds and a wide understanding of the ways to go about healing
them. This knowledge made him realize how unwise at such a season was
Gregory's debauch, and sorrowfully did he wag his head over his master's
condition of stupor.
Stephen had grave fears concerning him, and these fears were realized
when upon the morrow Gregory awoke on fire with the fever. They summoned
a leech from Sheringham, and this cunning knave, with a view to adding
importance to the cure he was come to effect, and which in reality
presented no alarming difficulty, shook his head with ominous gravity,
and whilst promising to do “all that his skill permitted,” he spoke of a
clergyman to help Gregory make his peace with God. For the leech had no
cause to suspect that the whole of the Sacred College might have found
the task beyond its powers.
A wild fear took Gregory in its grip. How could he die with such a load
as that which he now carried upon his soul? And the leech, seeing how
the matter preyed upon his patient's mind, made shift--but too late--to
tranquillize him with assurances that he was not really like to die, and
that he had but mentioned a parson so that Gregory in any case should be
prepared.
The storm once raised, however, was not so easily to be allayed, and the
conviction remained with Gregory that his sands were well-nigh run, and
that the end could be but a matter of days in coming.
Realizing as he did how richly he had earned damnation, a frantic terror
was upon him, and all that day he tossed and turned, now blaspheming,
now praying, now weeping. His life had been indeed one protracted course
of wrong-doing, and many had suffered by Gregory's evil ways--many a man
and many a woman. But as the stars pale and fade when the sun mounts the
sky, so too were the lesser wrongs that marked his earthly pilgrimage of
sin rendered pale or blotted into insignificance by the greater wrong
he had done Ronald Marleigh--a wrong which was not ended yet, but whose
completion Joseph was even then working to effect. If only he could save
Crispin even now in the eleventh hour; if by some means he could warn
him not to repair to the sign of the Anchor in Thames Street. His
disordered mind took no account of the fact that in the time that was
sped since Galliard's departure, the knight should already have reached
London.
And so it came about that, consumed at once by the desire to make
confession to whomsoever it might be, and the wish to attempt yet to
avert the crowning evil of whose planning he was partly guilty inasmuch
as he had tacitly consented to Joseph's schemes, Gregory called for his
daughter. She came readily enough, hoping for exactly that which was
about to take place, yet fearing sorely that her hopes would suffer
frustration, and that she would learn nothing from her father.
“Cynthia,” he cried, in mingled dread and sorrow, “Cynthia, my child, I
am about to die.”
She knew both from Stephen and from the leech that this was far from
being his condition. Nevertheless her filial piety was at that moment a
touching sight. She smoothed his pillows with a gentle grace that was
in itself a soothing caress, even as her soft sympathetic voice was
a caress. She took his hand, and spoke to him endearingly, seeking to
relieve the sombre mood whose prey he was become, assuring him that the
leech had told her his danger was none so imminent, and that with quiet
and a little care he would be up and about again ere many days were
sped. But Gregory rejected hopelessly all efforts at consolation.
“I am on my death-bed, Cynthia,” he insisted, “and when I am gone I know
not whom there may be to cheer and comfort your lot in life. Your lover
is away on an errand of Joseph's, and it may well betide that he will
never again cross the threshold of Castle Marleigh. Unnatural though I
may seem, sweetheart, my dying wish is that this may be so.”
She looked up in some surprise.
“Father, if that be all that grieves you, I can reassure you. I do not
love Kenneth.”
“You apprehend me amiss,” said he tartly. “Do you recall the story of
Sir Crispin Galliard's life that you had from Kenneth on the night of
Joseph's return?” His voice shook as he put the question.
“Why, yes. I am not like to forget it, and nightly do I pray,” she went
on, her tongue outrunning discretion and betraying her feelings
for Galliard, “that God may punish those murderers who wrecked his
existence.”
“Hush, girl,” he whispered in a quavering voice. “You know not what you
say.”
“Indeed I do; and as there is a just God my prayer shall be answered.”
“Cynthia,” he wailed. His eyes were wild, and the hand that rested in
hers trembled violently. “Do you know that it is against your father and
your father's brother that you invoke God's vengeance?”
She had been kneeling at his bedside; but now, when he pronounced those
words, she rose slowly and stood silent for a spell, her eyes seeking
his with an awful look that he dared not meet. At last:
“Oh, you rave,” she protested, “it is the fever.”
“Nay, child, my mind is clear, and what I have said is true.”
“True?” she echoed, no louder than a whisper, and her eyes grew round
with horror. “True that you and my uncle are the butchers who slew their
cousin, this man's wife, and sought to murder him as well--leaving him
for dead? True that you are the thieves who claiming kinship by virtue
of that very marriage have usurped his estates and this his castle
during all these years, whilst he himself went an outcast, homeless and
destitute? Is that what you ask me to believe?”
“Even so,” he assented, with a feeble sob.
Her face was pale--white to the very lips, and her blue eyes smouldered
behind the shelter of her drooping lids. She put her hand to her breast,
then to her brow, pushing back the brown hair by a mechanical gesture
that was pathetic in the tale of pain it told. For support she was
leaning now against the wall by the head of his couch. In silence she
stood so while you might count to twenty; then with a sudden vehemence
revealing the passion of anger and grief that swayed her:
“Why,” she cried, “why in God's name do you tell me this?”
“Why?” His utterance was thick, and his eyes, that were grown dull as a
snake's, stared straight before him, daring not to meet his daughter's
glance. “I tell it you,” he said, “because I am a dying man.” And he
hoped that the consideration of that momentous fact might melt her, and
might by pity win her back to him--that she was lost to him he realized.
“I tell you because I am a dying man,” he repeated. “I tell it you
because in such an hour I fain would make confession and repent, that
God may have mercy upon my soul. I tell it you, too, because the tragedy
begun eighteen years ago is not yet played out, and it may yet be mine
to avert the end we had prepared--Joseph and I. Thus perhaps a merciful
God will place it in my power to make some reparation. Listen, child.
It was against us, as you will have guessed, that Galliard enlisted
Kenneth's services, and here on the night of Joseph's return he called
upon the boy to fulfil him what he had sworn. The lad had no choice but
to obey; indeed, I forced him to it by attacking him and compelling him
to draw, which is how I came by this wound.
“Crispin had of a certainty killed Joseph but that your uncle bethought
him of telling him that his son lived.”
“He saved his life by a lie! That was worthy of him,” said Cynthia
scornfully.
“Nay, child, he spoke the truth, and when Joseph offered to restore the
boy to him, he had every intention of so doing. But in the moment of
writing the superscription to the letter Crispin was to bear to those
that had reared the child, Joseph bethought him of a foul scheme for
Galliard's final destruction. And so he has sent him to London instead,
to a house in Thames Street, where dwells one Colonel Pride, who
bears Sir Crispin a heavy grudge, and into whose hands he will be thus
delivered. Can aught be done, Cynthia, to arrest this--to save Sir
Crispin from Joseph's snare?”
“As well might you seek to restore the breath to a dead man,” she
answered, and her voice was so oddly calm, so cold and bare of
expression, that Gregory shuddered to hear it.
“Do not delude yourself,” she added. “Sir Crispin will have reached
London long ere this, and by now Joseph will be well on his way to see
that there is no mistake made, and that the life you ruined hopelessly
years ago is plucked at last from this unfortunate man. Merciful God! am
I truly your daughter?” she cried. “Is my name indeed Ashburn, and have
I been reared upon the estates that by crime you gained possession of?
Estates that by crime you hold--for they are his; every stone, every
stick that goes to make the place belongs to him, and now he has gone to
his death by your contriving.”
A moan escaped her, and she covered her face with her hands. A moment
she stood rocking there--a fair, lissom plant swept by a gale of
ineffable emotion. Then the breath seemed to go all out of her in one
great sigh, and Gregory, who dared not look her way, heard the swish of
her gown, followed by a thud as she collapsed and lay swooning on the
ground.
So disturbed at that was Gregory's spirit that, forgetting his wound,
his fever, and the death which he had believed impending, he leapt from
his couch, and throwing wide the door, bellowed lustily for Stephen. In
frightened haste came his henchman to answer the petulant summons, and
in obedience to Gregory's commands he went off again as quickly in quest
of Catherine--Cynthia's woman.
Between them they bore the unconscious girl to her chamber, leaving
Gregory to curse himself for having been lured into a confession that
it now seemed to him had been unnecessary, since in his newly found
vitality he realized that death was none so near a thing as that
scoundrelly fool of a leech had led him to believe.