It was the evening of the day on which Jack Newcombe had parted from
Gideon and Una, and the young moon fell peacefully on the irregular pile
of the ancient mansion known familiarly for twenty miles of its
neighborhood as The Hurst.
The present owner was one Ralph Davenant, or Squire Davenant, as Jack
Newcombe had called him, and as he was called by the county generally.
He was an old man of eighty, who had lived one-half his life in the
wildest and most dissipated fashion, and the other half in that most
unprofitable occupation known as repenting thereof.
I say "known as," for if old Squire Davenant had really repented, this
story would never have been written.
If half the stories which were told of him were true, Ralph Davenant,
the present owner of Hurst, deserves a niche in the temple of fame--or
infamy--which holds the figures of the worst men of his day. He had been
a gambler, a spendthrift, a rogue of the worst kind for one half his
life; a miser, a cynic, a misanthrope for the other.
And he now lay dying in his huge, draughty bed-chamber, hung with the
portraits of his ancestors--all bad and filled with the ghosts of his
youth and wasted old age.
As it was, he lay quite still--so still that the physician, brought down
from London at a cost of--say, ten guineas an hour, was often uncertain
whether he was alive or dead.
There was a third person in the room--a tall, thin young man, who stood
motionless beside the bed, watching the old man, with half-closed eyes
and tightly compressed lips. This was Stephen Davenant, the old man's
nephew, and, as it was generally understood, his heir. Stephen Davenant
was called a handsome man, and at first sight he seemed to merit that
description. It was not until you had looked at him closely that you
began to grow critical and to find fault. He was dark; his hair, which
was quite black, was smooth, and clung to his head with a sleek, slimy
closeness that only served to intensify the paleness, not to say pallor,
of the face. Pallor was, indeed, the prevailing characteristic, his lips
even being of a subdued and half-tinted red; they were not pleasant
lips, although for every forty minutes out of the sixty they wore a
smile which just showed a set of large and even teeth, which were, if
anything, too faultless and too white. Jack said that when Stephen
smiled it was like a private view of a cemetery.
In short, to quote the Savage again, Stephen Davenant was an admirable
example, as artists would say, of "a study in black and white."
As he stood by the bed, motionless, silent, with the fixed regard of his
light gray eyes on the sick man, he looked not unlike one of those sleek
and emaciated birds which one sees standing on the bank of the Ganges,
waiting for the floating by of stray dead bodies.
And yet he was not unhandsome. At times he looked remarkably well; when,
for instance, he was delivering a lecture or an address at some
institute or May meeting. His voice was low and soft, and not seldom
insinuating, and some of his friends had called him, half in jest, half
in earnest, "Fascination Davenant."
It will be gathered from this description that to call all the race of
Davenants bad was unfair; every rule has its exception, and Stephen
Davenant was the exception to this. He was "a good young man."
Fathers held him up as a pattern to their wayward sons, mothers
patronized and lauded him, and their daughters regarded him as almost
too good to live.
The minutes, so slow for the watchers, so rapid to the man for whom they
were numbered, passed, and the old cracked clock in the half-ruined
stables wheezed out the hour, when, as if the sound had roused him, old
Ralph moved slightly, and opening his eyes, looked slowly from one
upright figure to the other.
Dark eyes that had not even yet lost all their fire, and still shone out
like a bird's from their wrinkled, cavernous hollows.
Stephen unlocked his wrist, bent down, and murmured, in his soft, silky
voice:
"Uncle, do you know me?"
A smile, an unpleasant smile to see on such a face, glimmered on the old
man's lips.
"Here still, Stephen?" he said, slowly and hollowly. "You'd make a
good--mute."
A faint, pink tinge crept over Stephen's pale face, but he smiled and
shook his head meekly.
"Who's that?" asked Ralph, half turning his eyes to the physician.
"Sir Humphrey, uncle--the doctor," replied Stephen, and the great doctor
came a little nearer and felt the faint pulse.
"What's he stopping for?" gasped the old man. "What can he do, and--why
don't he go?"
"We must not leave you, uncle, till you are better."
A faint flame shot up in the old man's eyes.
"Better, that's a lie, you know. You always were----" Then a paroxysm of
faintness took him, but he struggled with and overcame it.
"Is--is--Jack here?" he asked.
"I regret to say," he replied, "that he is not. I cannot understand the
delay. I hope, I fervently hope, that he has not willfully----"
"Did you tell him I was dying?" asked Ralph, watching him keenly.
"Can you doubt it?" murmured Stephen, meekly. "I particularly charged
the messenger to say that my cousin was not to delay."
The old man looked up with a sardonic smile.
"I'll wait," he muttered, and he closed his eyes resolutely. The minutes
passed, and presently there was a low knock at the door, and a servant
crept up to Stephen.
"Mr. Newcombe is below, sir."
Stephen looked warningly at the bed, and stole on tiptoe from the
room--not that there was any occasion to go on tiptoe, for his ordinary
walk was as noiseless as a cat's--down the old treadworn stairs, into
the neglected hall, and entered the library.
Bolt upright, and looking very like a Savage indeed, stood Jack
Newcombe.
With noiseless step and mournful smile, Stephen entered, closed the
door, and held out his hand.
"My dear Jack, how late you are!"
With an angry gesture Jack thrust his hands in his pockets, and glared
wrathfully at the white, placid face.
"Late!" he echoed, passionately. "Why didn't you tell me that he was
dying?"
"Hush!" murmured Stephen, with a shocked look--though if Jack had
bellowed in his savagest tone, his voice would not have reached the room
upstairs. "Pray, be quiet, my dear Jack. Tell you! Didn't my man give
you my message? I particularly told him to describe the state of my
uncle's health. Slummers is not apt to forget or neglect messages!"
"Messages!" said Jack, with wrathful incredulity; "he gave me none--left
none, rather, for I was out. He simply said that the squire wanted to
see me."
"Dear, dear me," murmured Stephen, regretfully. "I cannot understand it.
Do you think the person who took the message delivered it properly?
Slummers is so very careful and trustworthy."
"Oh," said Jack, contemptuously. "Do you suppose anyone would have
forgotten to tell me if your man had told them that the squire was
dying? I don't if you do, and I don't believe you do. You're no fool,
Stephen, though you have made one of me," and he moved toward the door.
"Stay," said Stephen, laying his white hand gently on Jack's arm. "Will
you wait a few minutes? Though by some unfortunate accident you were not
told how ill my uncle is, I assure you that he is too ill now to be
harassed----"
"Oh, I know what you mean without so many words," interrupted Jack,
scornfully. "Make your mind easy, I am not going to split upon you.
Bah!" he added, as Stephen shook his head with sorrowful repudiation.
"Do you suppose that I don't know that your man was instructed to keep
it from me? What were you afraid of--that I should cut you out at the
last moment? You judge me by your own standard, and you make a vast
mistake. It isn't on account of the money--you are welcome to that--and
you deserve it, for you've worked hard enough for it; no, it's not on
that account, it's--but you wouldn't understand if I told you. I am
going up now," and he sprang up the stairs quickly.
Stephen followed him, and entered the room close behind him. The old man
looked up, motioned with his hand to Jack, looked at the other two and
quietly pointed to the door.
Stephen's eyes closed and his lips shut as he hesitated for a moment,
then he turned and left with the physician.
"I think," said Sir Humphrey, blandly, and looking at his watch--one of
a score left him by departed patients, "I think that I will go now, Mr.
Davenant; I can do no good and my presence appears only to irritate your
uncle."
The great doctor departed, just thirty guineas richer than when he came,
and Stephen went into the library and closed the door, and as he did so
it almost seemed as if he had taken off a mask and left it on the mat
outside.
The set, calm expression of the face changed to one of fierce,
uncontrollable anxiety and malice. With sullen step he paced up and down
the room, gnawing--but daintily--at his nails, and grinding the white
tombstones.
"Another half hour," he muttered, "and the fool would have been too
late? Will he tell the old man? Curse him; how I hate him! I was a fool
to send for him--an idiot! What is he saying to him? What are they
doing? Thank Heaven, that old knave Hudsley isn't there! They can't do
anything--can't, can't! No, I am safe."
Stephen Davenant need not have been so uneasy; Jack was not plotting
against him, nor was the old man making a will in the Savage's favor.
Jack stood beside the bed, waiting for one of the attacks of faintness
to pass, looking down regretfully at the haggard, death-marked face,
recalling the past kindnesses he had received from the old man, and
remorsefully remembering their many quarrels and eventful separation.
"Bad lot" as he was, no thought of lucre crossed the Savage's mind; he
forgot even Stephen and the cowardly trick he had played him, and
remembered only that he was looking his last on the old man, who, after
his kind, had been good, and so far as his nature would allow it,
generous to him.
At last old Ralph opened his eyes.
"Here at last," he said; and by an effort of the resolute will, he made
himself heard distinctly, though every word cost him a breath.
"I'm sorry I'm so late," he said; and his voice was husky. "I didn't
know----"
The old man looked at him shrewdly.
"So Stephen didn't send? It was just like him. A good stroke."
"Yes, he sent," said Jack; "but----"
The old man waved his hand to show that he understood.
"A sharp stroke. A clever fellow, Stephen. You always were a fool."
"I'm afraid so, sir," he said quietly.
"But Stephen is a knave, and a fool, too," murmured the old man. "Jack,
I wish--I wish I could come back to the funeral."
"To see his face when the will's read," explained old Ralph, with a grim
smile.
Jack colored, and, I am ashamed to say, grinned.
A sardonic smile flitted over the old man's face.
"Be sure you are there, Jack; don't let him keep you away."
"Not that you will be disappointed--much," said the old man.
"Don't think of me, sir," said Jack, with a dim sense of the discordance
in such talk from such lips.
"I have thought of you as far--as--as I dared. Jack, you are an honest
fool. Why--why did you give that _post obit_?"
"I don't know," said Jack, quietly. "Don't worry about that now."
"Stephen told me," said the old man, grimly. "He has told me every piece
of wickedness you have done. He is a kind-hearted man, is--Ste--phen."
"We never were friends, sir," he said. "But don't talk now."
"I must," murmured the old man. "Now or never, and--give me your hand,
Jack."
"I've had yours ever since I came in," said Jack, simply.
"Oh, I didn't know it. Good-by, boy--don't--don't end up like this.
It--and--for Heaven's sake don't cry!" for Jack emitted a suspicious
little choking sound, and his eyes were dim. "Good-by; don't be too
disappointed. Justice, Jack, justice. Where is Stephen?--send him to me.
I"--and the old sardonic smile came back--"I like to see him--he amuses
me!"
The eyes closed; Jack waited a moment, then pressed the cold hand, and
crept from the room.
Half way down the stairs he leaned his arm on the balustrade and dropped
his face on it for a minute or two, then choking back his tears, went
into the library--where Stephen was sitting reading a volume of
sermons--and pointed up-stairs.
"My uncle wants me?" murmured Stephen. "I will go. Might I recommend
this book to you, my dear Jack; it contains----"
Jack, I regret to say, chucked the volume into a corner of the room, and
Stephen, with a mournfully reproachful sigh, shook his head and left the
room.