"Our life is but a chain of many deaths."
Young.
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For a few days things went on to all outward intents as if the letter
which Marmaduke destroyed had never existed. Once or twice he had a
feeling as if it were indeed nothing more than a dream through which he
had passed, for the act struck himself as so unlike his usual languid
easy-going nature, that even to him there was an unreality mingled with
it, and he was inclined at all events to compassionate himself for the
crisis which had forced anything so repugnant upon him. On the sixth
day there arrived a telegram announcing Mr Tregennas's death.
Mr Miles, Anthony, and Marmaduke started at once. A sort of restraint
had grown up between the two young men, which was, perhaps, although it
began only by reflection, more perceptible in Anthony's manner than in
that of Marmaduke, for the former was at all times quickly conscious of
the feelings of others towards himself, and apt to throw them back. He
was sensitive, moreover, to external influences; there was heavy rain
falling, a damp chill in the air, and, as they drove down the road
towards Trenance through woods in which the wild garlic was beginning to
scent the air, the mournfully heavy drip of the rain through scantily
clothed trees, the coarse sodden grass, the dreary moss-grown little
paths that led away as it seemed into some dismal wilderness, the house
with its shut and blinded windows lying under a pall of low clouds,
deepened the disturbed expression of his face. No one spoke after they
left the station. The carriage that had been sent for them, with its
old moth-eaten cushions, rolled slowly along, the coachman not thinking
very kindly of his load: a probable heir can scarcely expect a welcome
from old servants who have grown fat and masterful under the weakened
hands of age. The place had always seemed oppressed with a weight of
silence, but now, as they drove up, the very wheels jarred upon the
excessive stillness, broken only by the ceaseless dripping of the rain.
Nevertheless, Marmaduke's spirits rose as soon as he found himself in
the house; and while Anthony, with a pale and troubled face, flung
himself down in the dreary drawing-room, which looked uglier and more
uninviting than ever, he went about from room to room, only avoiding
that which an awful Presence guarded. It was Mr Miles who went there
first, and when he came down again he held a little miniature in his
hand.
"It was found under his pillow," he said. "There is Margaret Hare, as
she must have been in the old days before the unhappy quarrel. It makes
me hope that he may, after all, have remembered her child."
"I shall go up to him," said Anthony, starting up. He had a shrinking
from the sight of death and all painful things, but at this moment he
could only remember the old man who had been kind to him after his
fashion. "Marmaduke, will you come?"
"No," said Marmaduke carelessly, "it can do no good now. You can tell
me if anything has to be arranged, and I will see about it."
He spoke with an easy assumption of authority, which stirred Anthony's
anger. All that Marmaduke said or did seemed to jar upon him, upon the
time, the quiet, the sadness; for, after all, although there is not so
much to stir our sympathy, perhaps no death can be so sad as that of a
forlorn and unlovely old age.
There were no relations to come to the house; all the orders were given
by Mr Pitt, Mr Tregennas's lawyer, a little withered red-faced man
with shrewd eyes, who was there when they arrived, and who kept himself
in the library, away from them all, until the day of the funeral.
Perhaps a more silent four could hardly have been found than the men who
were gathered in the old damp house, although with Marmaduke the silence
was rather compulsion than choice. Anthony was very grave and subdued.
When the funeral came they were all together almost for the first time,
rumbling along the desolate overgrown road, with two or three empty
carriages crawling behind them, which had been sent by the neighbours
with a vague belief that it was an easy method of doing honour to the
dead. The rain was falling still as they all rumbled back again, and
gathered in the library to hear Mr Pitt read the will. It was soon
done. A few annuities were bequeathed to the old servants, five
thousand pounds free of legacy duty to his great-nephew, Marmaduke Lee,
and the remainder, half in entail and half unreservedly, to the
great-nephew of his second wife, Anthony Miles. William Miles, clerk,
was appointed executor.
Mr Pitt's monotonous reading was interrupted by Marmaduke Lee, with a
white, quivering face,--
"I protest against such a will as a fraud. I can prove it to be a
fraud," he cried, lifting his hand and letting it fall tremulously on
the table.
Anthony neither turned towards him nor moved. Mr Miles said, a little
hurriedly,--
"When Mr Pitt has finished, my son has something to say."
The lawyer, looking quietly from one to the other, took up his sing-song
again, and went on as if there had been no break. Marmaduke had shrunk
into his chair like a man who had received a heavy blow, his very
passion was too weak to support him at this crisis, he scarcely heard
the formal words running on in set rounded phrases: what he did hear at
last was Mr Miles asking,--
"Is there no mention whatever of Miss Harford in the will?"
"There is nothing more than you have heard me read," said Mr Pitt, in
his dry voice.
The name seemed to recall Marmaduke's senses, and a rush of rage
stimulated him to burst out again,--
"It is false, and a lie! Anthony has taken advantage of his dotage. I
will dispute every word of it."
Anthony looked at him with a contemptuous darkness in his face, which it
was not pleasant to see, but he held his voice under repression as he
bent forward, folding his arms on the table, and saying slowly,--
"Dr Evans is the person to testify whether or not Mr Tregennas was in
the full possession of his senses. It was only a fortnight before his
death that I received a hint of his intentions, which were as unwelcome
to me as to Lee. I had fixed this very day for coming here to urge my
objections. No one could have thought it would all have ended so soon,"
said the young fellow, with his lips quivering. "All that I can do is
to make over to Lee that part of the property which is at my own
disposal,--not because of his words, but because he has a better right
to it than I."
Sometimes people get small thanks for large acts of generosity, and in
this case it is possible that Marmaduke was too stupefied or too sullen
for gratitude, Mr Pitt might have said something, but he only glanced
at Anthony with his shrewd eyes, and gathered and tied up his packets
silently. There was a chill about the whole business which struck
keenly on Anthony, who liked to be generous, but who also liked
acknowledgments, warm words, and hearty looks: he got up quickly and
went out of the room, leaving his father to settle what remained.
As for Marmaduke, it was not easy for his mind at that moment to grasp
the fact that things were not so crushing as he had dreaded. What might
have seemed much to him at another time now seemed nothing, and he hated
Anthony so much that his gift was an intolerable load. Was it for this
that he had done the wrong? For, after all, however cunningly a man may
disguise his sin beforehand, the disguise is but a poor helpless thing
that falls off when it has served the Devil's turn, and leaves what it
covered hideous. It was only before he opened the letter that he had
tried to deceive himself with dreams of fairness to Anthony. Ever since
it had been scourging him. And now a fierce rage was uppermost.
He went back to Thorpe the next morning alone, Mr Miles and his son
finding it necessary to remain and set matters in train, and before he
went he forced himself to say some ungracious words to Anthony about his
gift. Perhaps it would have been better had he gone away in silence,
for the words were not likely to do much towards healing the breach:
they were said, however, and the Vicar and Anthony stood at the door and
watched the carriage toiling away up the drive. The sky was a soft
dazzle of blue, everything was shooting and sprouting after the rain,
colours seemed full of light, there were young creatures leaping and
running, a spring glory brightening the ugly old house.
"It is almost a pity that it should be let," said Mr Miles, standing on
the steps with his hands behind him.
"I could not live here," Anthony answered, shrugging his shoulders.
There was a little silence. The Vicar was looking after the carriage,
and not really thinking much about the house. He said at last,
slowly,--
"I don't much like the spirit he has shown."
"It can't be helped," said Anthony, without much cordiality. "I don't
suppose he can do me any particular harm."
"Harm!" repeated Mr Miles, startled. Then, as his son did not reply,
he said, sighing, "I am thinking of poor Marion."
"She can be married now as soon as she likes, I suppose," said Anthony
shortly, turning away and going into the house. He was not feeling much
of that sweet sense of satisfaction which is held up to us as bringing a
quick reward for our good actions: he had behaved more generously
towards his cousin than ninety-nine men out of a hundred might have
done, but his generosity did not tend to make him ignorant of this fact,
and he had expected a certain reward which had not come. Mr Pitt's
manner had chilled him as much as Marmaduke's. He would have resented
the imputation that he was dependent upon external influences, yet there
was a certain side of his character which seemed almost at their mercy,
and a fortress is no stronger than its weakest point. If he made over
the fortune to Marmaduke as an act of justice, it is certain that his
mode of receiving it should have made no difference in Anthony's
determination; nevertheless, at this moment he half repented, and
perhaps would have undone it if he could.
Mr Miles stood where his son had left him, looking sadly up the road
along which Marmaduke had but now driven. Something, which was so
indefinable that only a woman might have noticed it, seemed to have
changed his face and his whole bearing ever since the day in which he
had spoken to Marion in his study: the shadow of a shade had now and
then, as it were, just touched him and passed, but during the last few
days it had rested longer. He was conscious of it himself, yet it was
so little beyond a vague something that he was inclined to smile at his
own fancifulness. Rousing himself at last, although with another sigh,
he went slowly down the steps and round to the front of the house,
instead of going into the library, where there were papers and accounts
to be looked over. Anthony was right. Marion might marry if she
pleased, now that there was enough money to make things easy to them.
And yet with the thought the shadow deepened.
For two days, however, he said nothing. But one evening when Anthony,
who had cast off some of his vexation, was planning changes in the
estate before it passed into the hands of tenants, his father remarked
slowly,--
"I think I shall go home to-morrow. Something ails me, and I don't know
what it is. Perhaps your mother will find out."
"Do you mean that you feel ill?" Anthony asked, looking up hastily.
"No, I don't mean anything of the sort I have no more to say about it
than just what I have said, so you need not alarm yourself. But I shall
go, and you can either remain behind or run down again next week."
"My mother will set you to rights, sir," said Anthony cheerfully.
"Yes. And Marion. And Marion," repeated the Vicar with a little
absence of manner.
"I'll go back with you, and come down again, as you suggest," his son
went on. "I should like to put two or three things straight before the
place is let. There must be a clean sweep of a good deal."
"Yes, yes," said Mr Miles, half impatient, half smiling, "your young
man's idea of a reformer is a Briareus with a broom in each hand. It's
lucky we don't all get treated in that fashion. Well, let me see your
plans."
Father and son went home the next day, as the Vicar desired, and the
shadow passed,--or so it seemed. It might have been Mrs Miles's little
doctorings, or the return to the old routine of habit, which had grown
into a second self; at any rate, the Vicar was apparently as well as he
had been during the long years of his residence at Thorpe Regis, nor was
there anything to distract his wife's interest from Marion's wedding
when that took place a little later. No one could give any reason for
delay strong enough to weigh down the girl's impetuous demand; that her
father and Anthony felt a vague uneasiness was not sufficient to do more
than perhaps excite her to a determined attitude of defiance. To
outward eyes there was everything that a wedding should have, youth and
love, sunshine, roses in the old garden, smiles, brightness. Yet it was
not all smooth. Marmaduke was restless, and his easy temper every now
and then broke down in fits of irritation, while there was a visible
restraint between himself and Anthony. Mr Miles was grave and sad
throughout the day. After it was over, and Anthony had walked up to
Hardlands to dinner, taking with him the few Vicarage guests, his father
stood in the drawing-room in a manner altogether unlike himself, and
looked wistfully at his wife.
"We have been happy together, Hannah," he said slowly.
Mrs Miles's eyes filled with tears at this sudden appeal.
"Very happy, William."
"You have been a good wife,--it would be better perhaps if poor Marion
were more like you. Somehow, I don't feel so sure about things now,--I
forget--"
"Forget? I am always forgetting," said Mrs Miles consolingly. "I am
sure you don't lose your spectacles half so often as I do, and where
they are now is more than I can really say. But it has all gone off as
well as possible."
"I wish I knew Marmaduke better."
"My dear, when you have seen him since he was no higher than the table!"
"Poor Marion! Poor child!"
"She is quite happy," said the mother, nodding her head sagaciously. "I
only warned her to take care that he has plenty of beef-tea, for he is
sadly thin."
The door was pushed open, and Sniff came running in, looking for Marion.
Somebody had tied a white favour round his neck, of which nothing was
left but a little ragged strip of ribbon. He had followed Anthony to
Hardlands, and not finding Marion there or here, flung himself exhausted
at Mr Miles's feet, with a piteous look of entreaty in his faithful
eyes. The Vicar stooped and patted him.
"Is she gone, poor fellow--" he said.
What stopped the words?--What spring of life suddenly failed?--Was it
the shadow, after all, no longer shadowy, but a presence, a reality?
Mrs Miles, running to him with a cry, caught him in her faithful arms,
and held him by an almost supernatural strength from falling forward on
his face.
"William, William!"
The servants in the kitchen heard the cry though he did not, and flocked
in, Anthony was sent for, another messenger despatched to Underham for
the doctor. All the doctors in the world could do him no good, but Mrs
Miles would not believe it as she sat by the bed where he was lying.
"He was so well, Anthony, all the morning. And I think Marion's wedding
made him remember our own, for do you know what he said just before?
`We have been very happy together, Hannah,' he said. I must tell him
when he is better that I did not say half enough."
I think the words have been told by this time like so many other of
those unspoken words which wait for our utterance, but he did not hear
them then. No more sounds apparently reached his ear where he lay
silent and motionless while the days passed slowly by, carrying his
moments with them, until the last came, when they scarcely expected it,
as quiet and gentle as his life had been throughout.