COMING TO MEET HIS DOOM.
The passage from Dieppe to Newhaven was of the roughest. Lucius beheld
his fellow voyagers in the last stage of prostration, and prescribed
for more than one forlorn female on whom the sea malady had fastened
with alarming grip. The steamer was one scene of suffering, and
Lucius, being happily exempt from the common affliction, did his best
to be useful, so far as the limited means of treatment on board the
vessel enabled him. The wind was high, and the passengers on board
the Newhaven boat, who had never seen the waves that beat against the
rock-bound coast of Newfoundland, thought that shipwreck was within
the possibilities of the voyage, and asked the captain with doleful
countenances if he thought they should ever reach Newhaven.
It was late in the evening when the train from Newhaven deposited
Lucius at London-bridge. But late as it was, he took a cab, left his
bag at his own door, and then went on to Cedar House. His first duty,
he told himself, was to Homer Sivewright, the old man who had so fully
trusted him, and so reluctantly parted with him.
As he drove towards the house, he had that natural feeling of anxiety
which is apt to arise after absence from any scene in which the
traveller is deeply interested—a vague dread, a lurking fear that
although, according to human foresight, all should have gone well, yet
some unforeseen calamity, some misfortune unprovided against, may have
arisen in the interval.
The night was cloudy and starless, cold too. The wind, which had been
rising all day, now blew a gale, and all the dust of the day’s traffic
was blown into the traveller’s face as he drove along the broad and
busy highway. That north-east wind shrieked shrilly over the housetops
of the Shadrack district, and one might prophesy the fall of many a
loose slate and the destruction of many a flowerpot, hurled untimely
from narrow window-sills, ere the hurricane exhausted its fury. The
leaden cowls that surmounted refractory chimneys spun wildly round
before the breeze, and in some spots, where tall shafts clustered
thickly and cowls were numerous, seemed in their vehement gyrations to
be holding a witch’s Sabbath in honour of the storm.
That north-easter had a biting breath, and chilled the blood of the
Shadrackites till they were moved to dismal prophecies of a hard
winter. ‘We allus gets a hard winter when the heckwinockshalls begins
hearly,’ says one gentleman in the coal-and-potato line to another. And
the north-easter howls its dreary dirge, as if it said, ‘Cry aloud and
lament for the summer that is for ever gone, for southern breezes and
sunny days that return no more.’
Cedar House looked more than usually darksome after the brighter skies
and gayer colours of a French city. Those dust and smoke laden old
trees, lank poplars, which swayed and rocked in the gale, that gloomy
wall, those blank-looking windows above it, inspired no cheering
thoughts. There was no outward sign to denote that any one lay dead in
the house; but it seemed no fitting abode for the living.
As the hansom came aground against the curbstone in front of the tall
iron gate, Lucius was surprised to see a stout female with a bundle
ring the bell. She clutched her bundle with one hand, and carried a
market-basket on the other arm, and that process of ringing the bell
was not performed without some slight difficulty. Lucius jumped out of
the cab and confronted the stout female.
‘Mrs. Milderson!’ he exclaimed, surprised, as the woman grasped her
burdens and struggled against the wind, which blew her scanty gown
round her stout legs, and tore her shawl from her shoulders, and
mercilessly buffeted her bonnet.
‘Yes, sir, begging your parding, which I just stepped round to my place
to get a change of linen, and a little bit of tea and an odd and end of
groshery at Mr. Binks’s in Stevedor-street; for there isn’t a spoonful
of decent tea to be got at the grosher’s round about here, which I
tell Mrs. Magsby when she offers uncommon kind to fetch any errands I
may want. The wind has been that strong that it’s as much as I could
do to keep my feet, particklar at the corners. It’s blowin’ a reglar
gale. Hard lines for them poor souls at sea, I’m afeard, sir, and no
less than three hundred and seventy-two immigrins went out of the
Shadrack-basin this very day to Brisbian, which my daughter Mary Ann
saw the wessle start—a most moving sight, she says.’
Mrs. Milderson talked rather with the air of a person who wishes
to ward off a possible reproof by the interesting nature of her
conversation. But Lucius was not to be diverted by Brisbane emigrants.
‘I don’t think it was in our agreement that you were to leave your
patient, Mrs. Milderson,’ said he; ‘above all, during my absence.’
‘Lor bless you, Dr. Davoren, I haven’t been away an hour and a half,
or from that to two hours at most. I only just stepped round to my own
place, and took the grosher’s coming back. I’d scarcely stop to say
three words to Mary Ann, which she thought it unkind and unmotherly,
poor child, being as she has one leg a little shorter than the other,
and was always a mother’s girl, and ‘prenticed to the dressmaking at
fourteen year old. Of course if I’d a’ knowed you’d be home to-night,
I’d have put off going; but as to the dear old gentleman, I left him as
comfortable as could be. He took his bit of dinner down-stairs in the
parlour, and eat the best part of as prime a mutton-chop as you could
wish to set eyes on; but he felt a little dull-like in that room, he
said, without his granddaughter, “though I’m very glad she’s enjoying
the fresh country air, poor child,” he says; so he went up to his
bedroom again before seven o’clock, and had his cup of tea, and then
began amusing of his self, turning over his papers and suchlike. And
says I, “Have I your leaf to step round to my place for a hour or so,
to get a change of clothes, Mr. Sivewright?” says I; and he says yes
most agreeable; and that’s the longs and the shorts of it, Dr. Davoren.’
Lucius said nothing. He was displeased, disquieted even, by the
woman’s desertion of her post, were it only for a couple of hours.
Mrs. Magsby had opened the gate before this, and half Mrs. Milderson’s
explanation had taken place in the forecourt. It had been too dark
outside the house for Lucius to see Mrs. Magsby’s face; but by the dim
lamplight in the hall he saw that she was unusually pale, and that her
somewhat vacant countenance had a scared look.
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ she began at once hurriedly, ‘I hope I
haven’t done wrong. I haven’t forgot what you told me and my husband
about not admitting nobody in your absence; but—’
‘If you _have_ admitted anybody, you have done very wrong,’ said Lucius
decisively. ‘What does it all mean? I find Mrs. Milderson returning
from a two-hours’ absence, and you in a state of alarm. What is the
matter?’
A straight answer was beyond Mrs. Magsby’s power to give; she always
talked in circles, and began at the outermost edge of the centre she
wanted to reach.
‘I’m sure, Dr. Davoren, I shouldn’t have dreamt of doing it if it
hadn’t been for the order.’
‘Shouldn’t have dreamed of doing what? What order?’ demanded Lucius
impatiently.
‘When first he came to the gate—which he rang three times, for my good
man was taking a stretch after his tea, and baby was that fractious
with the spasms I couldn’t lie him down—I told him it was against my
orders, and as much as my place was worth, being put in charge by a
gentleman.’
‘Who came to the gate?’ demanded Lucius; but Mrs. Magsby rambled on,
and was not to be diverted from her circuitous path by any direct
question.
‘If the order hadn’t been reglar, I shouldn’t have give way; but it
was perfeckly correck, from Mr. Agar, the house-agent, which has put
me into many a house hisself, and his handwriting is well beknown to
me. The gentleman wanted to buy the house of the owners, with a view to
turnin’ it into a factory, or works of some kind, which he explained
hisself quite affable.’
‘_That_ man!’ cried Lucius aghast. ‘You admitted that man—the very man
of all others who ought to have been kept out of this house—to prevent
whose admittance here I have taken so much trouble? You and your
husband were put into this house to defend it from that very man.’
‘Lor, sir, you must be dreaming surely,’ exclaimed Mrs. Magsby. ‘He
was quite the gentleman, and comin’ like that with the intention to
buy the house, which I have heard Mr. Agar say as how the owners
wanted to get rid of it, and with the border to view in Mr. Agar’s own
handwriting, how was I to—’
‘This house belongs to Mr. Sivewright, so long as he occupies it and
pays the rent,’ said Lucius indignantly. ‘You had no right to admit any
one without his permission.’
‘Which I should have ast his leaf, sir, if the dear old gentleman
hadn’t been asleep. Mrs. Milderson had took up his cup of tea not a
quarter of a hour before, and she says to me as she goes out of this
very hall-door, she says, which Mrs. Milderson herself will bear
witness, being too much of a lady to go from her word, she says, “Don’t
go for to disturb the old gentleman, as I’ve left him sleepin’ as quiet
as an infant.” And as for care of the property, sir, it wasn’t possible
to be more careful, for before I showed the gentleman over the place,
outbuildins, and suchlike, which he was most anxious to see, bein’ as
it was them he wanted for his factory, I calls my husband and whispers
to him, “Look sharp after the property, Jim, while I go round the place
with this gentleman;” and with that my husband kep in the room where
the chaney and things is the whole time I was away.’
‘How long did the man stay?’ asked Lucius briefly.
‘Well, sir, that’s the puzzling part of it all, and what’s been
worritin’ me ever since. I never see him go away. But I make no doubt
he went out the back way—down by them barges, as is easy enough, you
know, and him as active a gentleman as I ever see.’
‘You did not see him leave? Why, then, he is in the house at this
moment,’ cried Lucius. ‘Why should he leave? His object was to remain
here in hiding.’
‘I’ve been over every nookt and corner in the house, sir, since he
gave me the slip, as you may say, for want of better words to express
it, though too much a gentleman, I’m sure, to do anything underhanded,
and so has my husband, up-stairs and down-stairs till our legs ached
again. The gentleman asks me to show him the back premises first—his
object bein’ space for his works, as he says—and so I took him through
the kitchen and round by the washhouse and brewhouse, and I opens the
door into the back garden and shows him that, and I opens the outside
shutters of the half-glass door leadin’ into the back parlour, meanin’
to take him through the house that way, when I looks round, after
openin’ the shutters for him to foller me, and he was gone. There
wasn’t a vestige of him—whether he’d gone back to the hall and let
hisself out quietly, havin’ seen all as he wanted to see, and p’raps
found as the place didn’t meet his views, or whether he’d gone down the
garden and got over the wall to the barges, is more than I can tell;
but gone he was and gone he is, for me and my husband has exploded
every hinch of the ’ouse from garret to cellar.’
‘Did you look at that little back staircase I told you of?’
‘Lor, no, sir; as if any one callin’ hisself a gentleman and dressed
beautiful would go in that hole of a place, among cobwebs and rotten
plaster, and dangerous too I should think on such a night as this, with
the wind roaring like thunder.’
‘Give me a candle,’ said Lucius; ‘no, I’ll go up-stairs without one.’
He pulled off his boots and ran rapidly and lightly up the old
staircase and along the corridor. He opened the door of the little
dressing-room where Lucille had slept, with a noiseless hand, and crept
in. The door of communication between this room and Mr. Sivewright’s
bedchamber stood ajar, and Lucius heard a familiar voice speaking
in the next room—speaking quietly enough, in tones so calm that he
stopped by the door to listen.
It was a voice which he could not hear without a shudder—a voice which
he had last heard in the hut in the American pine-forest, that silent
wood where never came the note of song-bird.
‘Father!’ said the voice, with a quiet bitterness keener than the
loudest passion. ‘Father! in what have you ever been a father to me?
Who taught me to rob you when I was a child? My mother, you say! I say
it was you who taught me that lesson—you who denied us a fair share of
your wealth—who hid your gains from us—who hoarded and scraped, and
refused us every pleasure!’
‘Falsehood—injustice,’ cried the tremulous tones of the old man;
‘falsehood and injustice from first to last. Because I was laborious,
you would have it that I must needs be rich. Because I was careful,
you put me down as a miser. I tried to build up a fortune for the
future—Heaven knows how much more for your sake than for my own. You
plotted against me, joined with your mother to deceive and cheat me,
squandered in foolish dissipations the money which my care would have
quadrupled: and for you, mind—all for you. I never acquired the art
of spending money. I could make it, but I couldn’t spend it. The man
who does the first rarely can do the second. You would have inherited
everything. I told you that. Not once but many times. I tried to awaken
your mind to the expectation of the future. I tried to teach you that
by economy and some little self-denial in the present you could help me
to lay the foundation of a fortune which should not be contemptible.
You, with your consummate artifice, pretended to agree with me, and
went on robbing me. This was before you were twelve years old.’
‘The bent of my genius declared itself early,’ said the younger man,
with a cynical monosyllabic laugh. The very note Lucius remembered in
the log-hut.
‘You lied to me and you robbed me, but I still loved you,’ continued
Homer Sivewright, suppressed passion audible in those faltering tones
of age. ‘I still loved you—you were the only child that had been born
to gladden my lonely heart. I was estranged from your mother, and knew
too well that she had never loved me. What had I in the world but you?
I made excuses for your wrongdoing. It is his mother’s influence, I
said. What child will refuse to do what a mother bids him? She confuses
his sense of right and wrong. To serve her he betrays me. I must
get him away from his mother. On the heels of this came a hideous
revelation from you. You had quarrelled with your mother—you had taken
up a knife to use against her. It was time that I should part this
tigress and her cub. I lost no time—spared no expense—gave you the
best education that money could buy—I who wore a threadbare coat and
grudged the price of a pair of boots, even when my bare feet had made
acquaintance with the pavement. Education, and that of the highest
kind, made no change in you. It gave you some varnish of manner, but
it left you a thief and a liar. I need not pursue the story of your
career.’
‘The survey is somewhat tiresome, I admit, sir,’ said the prodigal,
carelessly. ‘Suppose we come to the point without farther recrimination
on either side. You have your catalogue of wrongs, your bill of
indictment; I mine. Let us put one against the other, and consider the
account balanced. I am ready to give you a full acquittance. You can
hardly refuse the same favour to an only son, whom you once loved, who
has passed through the purifying furnace of penury, who comes to you
remorseful and yearning for forgiveness—nay, even for some token of
affection.’
‘Don’t waste your breath, Ferdinand Sivewright. I know you!’ said the
old man, with brief bitterness.
‘Nay, I cannot conceive it possible that you should repulse me,’
replied the son in a tone of infinite persuasion. That power of music
and expression which was the man’s chief gift lent a strange magic
to his tones; only a deep conviction of his falsehood could arm a
father’s heart against him. ‘I have made my way to you with extremest
difficulty—indeed only by subterfuge—so closely was your door shut
against me—against me, your only son, returned, as if from the grave
itself, to plead for pardon.’
‘And to rob me,’ said Homer Sivewright, with a harsh laugh.
‘What opportunity have I had for that? I only arrived at Liverpool from
America three days ago. Why should I rob you of what, in the natural
course of events, must be my own by and by? Grant that I wronged you
in the past, all that I took was at least in some part my own, my own,
by your direct admission, in the future, if not mine in the present;
and could a boy perceive the nice distinction between actual and
prospective possession?’
‘You were not a boy when you drugged me in order to steal the key of
my iron safe,’ said the father in a tone that betrayed no wavering of
intention. ‘I might have forgiven the robbery. I swore at the time that
I would never forgive the opiate. And I mean to keep my oath. I said
then, and I believe now, that a man who would do that would, with as
little compunction, poison me.’
Ferdinand Sivewright was standing only a few paces from the half-open
door, so near that Lucius heard his quickened breathing at this point,
heard even the fierce beating of that wicked heart.
‘From that hour I formed my life on a new plan,’ continued the old man,
with a subdued energy that approached the terrible, a concentration
of purpose that seemed fierce as the glow of metal at a white heat.
‘From that hour I lived but in the expectation of such a meeting as
this. You left me poor. I swore to become rich, only for the sake of
such a meeting as this. I toiled and schemed; lent money at usury, and
was pitiless to the victims who borrowed; denied myself the common
necessities of life, ay, shortened my days; all for such an hour as
this. You would come back to me, I told myself, if I grew rich, as you
have come; you would crawl, as you have crawled; you would sue for
pardon, with hate and scorn in your heart, as you have sued; and I
should answer you as I do to-night. Not a sixpence that I have scraped
together shall ever be yours; not a penny that I have toiled for shall
buy a crust to ward off your hour of starvation. I have found another
son. I have made a will, safe and sure; not a will that your ingenuity
can upset when I am mouldering in my grave—a will leaving all I possess
away from you, and imposing on those that come after me the condition
that no sixpence of mine shall ever reach you. After death, as in life,
I will punish you for the iniquity that turned a father’s love to hate.’
‘Madman,’ cried Ferdinand Sivewright, ‘do you think your will shall
ever see the light of day, or you survive this night? I did not win
my way to this room to be laughed at or defied. You have disinherited
me, have you? I’m glad you told me that. You have adopted another man
for your son, and made a will in his favour. I’m very glad you told me
that. I wish him joy of his inheritance. You have chosen your fate. It
might have been life: I came here to give you a fair chance. You choose
death.’
There was a hurried movement, the swift flash of a narrow pointed
knife, that kind of knife by which Sheffield makes murder easy. But
ere that deadly point could reach its mark a door was flung open,
there came a hurried tread of feet, and two men were grappling with
each other by the bedside, with that shining blade held high above the
head of both. Rapid as Ferdinand’s movement had been towards the bed,
Lucius had been quick enough to intercept him. By the bedside of the
intended victim the two men struggled, one armed with that keen knife,
the other defenceless. The struggle was for mastery of the weapon.
Lucius seized the murderer’s right wrist with his left hand, and held
it aloft. Not long could he have retained that fierce grip, but here
his professional skill assisted him. His right hand was happily free.
While they were struggling, he took a lancet from his waistcoat-pocket,
and with one rapid movement cut a vein in that uplifted wrist.
The knife dropped like a stone from Ferdinand Sivewright’s relaxing
grasp, and a shower of blood came down upon the surgeon and his
adversary.
‘I think I have the best of you now,’ said Lucius.
The old man had been pulling a bell-rope with all his might during this
brief struggle, and the shrill clang of the bell sounded through the
empty house, sounded even above the shrill shriek of the wind in the
chimney.
Ferdinand Sivewright looked about him, dazed for an instant by that
sudden loss of blood, and with the wild fierce gaze of a trapped
animal. So had Lucius seen a wolverine stare at his captors from the
imprisonment of a timber trap. He looked round him, listened to the
bell, caught the sound of footsteps in the corridor, then with a
sudden rush across the room, threw himself with all the force of his
full weight against the oaken panel. The feeble old wood cracked and
splintered as that muscular form was flung against it, and that side of
the room rocked as the panel fell inwards. Another moment and Ferdinand
Sivewright had disappeared—he was on the secret staircase—he had
escaped them.
Lucius made for the door. He might still be in time to catch this
baffled assassin at the bottom of the staircase; but on the threshold
he stopped, arrested by a sound of unspeakable horror. That end of
the room by the broken panel still seemed to tremble; the wooden wall
swayed inwards. Then came a sound like the roar of cannon; it was the
fall of a huge beam that had sustained the wide old chimney shaft. That
mighty crash was succeeded by a rushing noise from a shower of loose
bricks and plaster; then one deep long groan from below, and all was
silent. The room was full of dust, which almost blinded its occupants.
There was a yawning gap in the splintered wainscot, where the sliding
panel had been. Pharaoh had tumbled from his corner, and sprawled
ignominiously on the floor. The huge square chimney, that ponderous
relic of mediæval masonry, which had been the oldest portion of Cedar
House, was down; and Ferdinand Sivewright lay at the bottom of the
house, buried under the ruins of the secret staircase and the chimney
of which it had been a part.