Forgetting totally for the time all lesser projects, and suffering Mr.
Pouncet and old Adam, Roger Musgrave and his lost property, to fall
behind him into complete oblivion, though it was the Kenlisle lawyer's
sovereigns which paid his fare to London, Horace set out to seek his
fortune. He had never been so confident in his expectations; and if any
one had informed him during that journey of the suspicions which his
uncle and Susan discussed slightly and pondered deeply, the doubts of
his own honour and uprightness which both entertained, and the inquiries
which were likely to be set on foot to satisfy them, he would have
laughed his laugh of supreme disdain, spurning that past transaction as
too insignificant to help or harm him. Adam Brodie, and the "power"
over Mr. Pouncet and Mr. Stenhouse which his story gave, had been
sufficiently important to Horace a short time before; but the young man
was in an elevated and dizzy state of mind. He was going to find out an
unknown fairy fortune; the crock of gold was almost visible; he did not
feel sure that he should return to Harliflax in less than a
coach-and-six, with an old-fashioned braggadocio of triumph; and what
were all the previous schemes and expedients of his humble fortune to
the exultant heir who was coming to his kingdom? By dint of constant
thought on the subject and intense desire, he had succeeded in
convincing himself that this kingdom only awaited discovery, and was
just about to fall into his full possession. A hundred Adam Brodies
could not harm Horace, and what was Mr. Pouncet and his secret to him?
In this condition of mind, though growing somewhat anxious as the moment
of certainty approached, Horace, in strong but restrained excitement,
pale with the fire that burned in his veins and withdrew the blood from
his cheek, hastened from the City tavern, where he had found a lodging,
round the quiet side of St. Paul's, to that strange old den of fortune,
where tragic family secrets by the thousand lie recorded, and where the
domestic history of a whole nation accumulates in silence. He
disappeared beneath the archway, anxious yet confident; the blaze of his
triumph ready to burst forth, his thoughts rushing forward in spite of
him to the splendours which lay almost within reach, to his marriage
with Amelia, to all the pleasures and domination of sudden wealth. An
hour or two afterwards he came out again a different man. He had found
his fortune--but it was passion, and not triumph, that burned in his
downcast eyes. His face was no longer pale, but red with a sullen flush
of impotent resentment and hatred. He went through the crowd elbowing
his way like a man who had a quarrel with all the world; he went
straight across the crowded streets, and pushed his way among waggons
and omnibuses with a certain fierce defiance of accident, and impulse of
opposition. When he got to his tavern, the first thing he did was to
call a cab, into which he flung his little carpet-bag, as if that homely
conveniency had done him mortal injury, and in a voice of passion
desired to be driven instantly to the railway. Alas! that was no
coach-and-six, either morally or visibly, in which Horace returned to
Harliflax, and to the clerk's life in Mr. Stenhouse's office, which this
morning he regarded with lordly and lofty disdain. He sat back, an image
of silent and self-consuming rage, in his corner of the second-class
railway carriage; rage which dried up every comfortable sensation out of
his mind; rage at himself, who had been thus deceived; at the dead man
who had left him, in the first place, this bitter vexation and
disappointment, and at the living man, who lived to thwart him, and keep
him out of his rightful possessions. Not a remorseful thought of the
lifelong wrong which had soured his father's spirit and destroyed his
life occurred to the congenial temper of his father's son. A true
Scarsdale, Horace proved his legitimacy by the unmixed self-regard which
plunged him into that sudden passion. From his own point of view he
took up the expressions of his father's letter. They were rivals to the
death. That event, long ago accomplished, which Horace knew for the
first time to-day, had abrogated the bonds of nature between them at the
very beginning of the son's life; and already a horrible impatience of
the father's existence stole unawares over the mind of the young man.
That lonely, miserable, misanthrope's life which the recluse endured at
Marchmain kept the heir out of his inheritance--kept the youth from his
will--the bridegroom from his bride; and Horace set his teeth, thinking
of it. In that chain of resentful and selfish cogitations one idea
followed another too rapidly to be checked. Horace could not help it,
and was scarcely aware at first how the thought, vexatious and galling,
stole into his mind, that Mr. Scarsdale was still in the fulness of his
days, and might live to thwart him for many a long year. The red colour
flushed deeper to his face, and his hand clenched involuntarily as the
idea occurred to him. Day after day, and year after year, till his own
youth had died out of his veins; till Amelia Stenhouse was out of his
reach, and life and wealth had lost half their charms; that unlovely
existence might linger on at Marchmain, and keep him out of his
inheritance. What sudden rush of breathless suggestion, not daring to
breathe in shape of words or definite expressions, flooded his mind for
one violent moment after that we will not venture to say; but the next
instant Horace wiped his wet forehead, on which great drops of moisture
hung, and threw open the window to draw breath, and hide himself from
himself. When he looked in again, he had made a violent effort, and
turned his mind into another channel. Crime or madness--heaven knows
which--lay the way he had been going, and the first glance had sickened
him with mortal terror. He turned away from the dread unwilling thought
with the first conscious effort against evil which he had ever made. The
evil was monstrous, and appalled him: he was not bad enough to cogitate
_that_, even in his most secret thoughts.
But here stood the facts, certain and unchangeable. Fortune, as dazzling
as he had ever hoped for, lay within Horace's sight, his lawful
inheritance; but between him and that glorious vision stood the black
figure of the disinherited--his father, through whose lineal hands the
family wealth ought to have flowed. What did he live for--that unhappy,
solitary man?--what was the good of an existence which dragged its
melancholy days out after such a fashion? Horace understood now what was
the meaning of "posthumous punishment and vengeance," and what bitter
effect the disappointed man had given to his father's cruel will; but
the heir was not sorry for the hermit of Marchmain. Pity found no
entrance into the self-absorbed mind of Horace; he saw his own position
merely and no other, and thought as little of Mr. Scarsdale's lifelong
tragedy as if the recluse had been a wooden image; a scarecrow to keep
him off his enchanted land. Yet something more; though he resisted it,
the dark thought would return to increase the turmoil of his mind. His
father was still young, a strong man in the vigour and flush of life.
Again and again that dark red flush rose to the young man's cheek, and
the dew hung heavy on his forehead. Ten years, twenty years--who could
prophesy how long that dreary life might hang and linger out yonder on
the dreary moor? The good, the just, the lives most loved and prized,
fade out of human ways; but the man accursed and excommunicated lives
on. This man, perhaps, whose death would scarcely call a tear to any
eye, would die most likely a very patriarch of disappointment, hatred,
and misery; while his son, the heir, lingered out the blossom of his
life in daily drudgery, unconsidered and poor.
This idea pertinaciously clinging to his mind might have crazed a better
heart than that of Horace; him it persecuted with a shuddering chill of
inarticulate suggestions which paled his cheeks, yet stirred his mind
with the wild excitement of temptation and crime. Crime! he was familiar
enough with wickedness; but that ruffian whispering in his ear sickened
him to the heart, yet moved his pulses with a tingle of passion. Wealth
beyond his reckoning, power, riches, and Amelia, and only one desolate
life standing between his strong arm and that threefold prize. The
whisper which horrified him, but which he still listened to, stole into
his heart as he went on; he had not closed his door against it. Already
a fiercer excitement than he had ever known grew upon him and consumed
him: he was innocent--he had never lifted his hand against life, nor
shed blood; yet the passion and horror took hold upon him as if he were
already guilty. How the hours and miles of his journey passed he was
ignorant; when he had mechanically alighted at Harliflax he called
himself fool not to have gone on; on, he did not know why, to that
charmed spot, charmed by enmity and hostile passions, where his father,
his hinderer, the bitter obstacle between him and fortune, dragged
through his melancholy days. There was no influence upon the miserable
young man to dispel the gloom of incipient murder from his heart; his
very love, such as it was, urged him instead of staying him. He went on
to the lodging which he had left yesterday with such different thoughts,
in a brooding fit of hatred and disgust with himself and everybody else,
afraid of the dreadful thought which made his pulses leap and his veins
tingle, yet yielding to its fierce excitement, and permitting its fire
of hideous temptation to light his path. A ghastly light; but it strung
his nerves so high, and excited his mind so intensely, that by-and-bye
the intoxicating influence was all that he was aware of, and the idea
growing familiar ceased to horrify him. What was it?--but not even in
the deepest silence could the coward crime shape itself into words. It
was there, and he knew it. That was enough for the devil who had led,
and the spirit which followed. He went through the darkness and the
peaceful streets with this deadly inspiration within him; his thoughts
hovering like so many spies, and closing in dark battalions round the
house on the moor, where childhood and youth had passed for Horace. He
had still almost a week's freedom--what was he to do?