At that moment when Susan, full of tenderness and compunction, knelt by
her father's bedside, and Mr. Scarsdale's hand still trembled upon her
hair--token, all too late, of the love which might have been--the door
of the room opened stealthily for a moment, and Horace looked in.
Whether it was that Mr. Scarsdale had preserved the sense of hearing as
distinctly as he seemed to do that of sight, or that a strange magic of
hostility drew his eyes to that quarter, it is impossible to say; but
when Horace's gaze fell upon the bed and its ghastly inhabitant, his
father's eyes met his, with a look which all the world and all its
pleasures could never efface from the young man's mind. He staggered
back, startled out of all self-control, and uttering, in spite of
himself, a cry, half of defiance, half of horror; while the unhappy
father of these two children, thrusting, with the force of extremity,
Susan's fair head away from him, swayed round, by a desperate impulse,
his half-lifeless body, and turned his face to the wall. Startled out of
her filial delusion, and with her faculties confused by the sudden
thrust away, which was given with feverish force, Susan stumbled to her
feet in sudden terror. Horace was standing ghastly pale by the door, his
bloodless lips apart, his eyes dilated, his manner so frightfully
excited and unnatural, that Susan's first impulse was to interpose the
frail protection of her own body between the helpless father and the
frantic son. As she stood alarmed, protecting the bed, Horace gave a
ghastly sneer at her, and said, "Too late!" hoarsely out of his throat.
He saw well enough that she was afraid of him, and meant to defend her
father; but nothing in the world could have initiated Susan into the
horrible meaning of that "too late." When she thought of it, she
supposed her brother to mean too late to be recognized, to ask his
father's pardon--perhaps to gain his father's blessing, as she had done;
and with that idea her feeling changed.
"Not too late, Horace," said poor Susan--"he is sensible--he knows _me_.
But oh! before you speak to him, call Peggy first, and bid her tell the
doctor. The doctor said he was to be called whenever papa moved."
"The doctor! What doctor?--what does he want with a doctor?" said
Horace, in his hoarse, dreadful voice.
"The doctor is in the house--Uncle Edward would not let him go away. He
_has_ moved--he has all but spoken! Oh! call the doctor, Horace!" cried
Susan, eagerly; "perhaps it may be a sign for the better! Call
Peggy--she will tell you where he is!"
But Horace stood still on the threshold of the fatal room, looking round
with wild, investigating eyes, as anxious, as desperate, as the
sufferer's own. Where was it?--where was that little medicine-chest,
which had dealt a slower death than he expected, but which, if it were
found, might snatch the cup from his own lips, and abridge his lifelong
punishment? Where was it? The dying man upon that bed, dreadful as was
his son's curiosity about him, and terrible as the shock had been when
their eyes met, was less important now than that chest and its tell-tale
contents. He gazed around with his wild eyes--so like his
father's--looking at everything but his father, who lay motionless, his
dread eyes closed now, and his face turned towards the wall. Susan, in
wild impatience, stamped her foot upon the floor, hoping by that means
to attract somebody. There was a stir below, as of some one who heard
her; and Horace, roused by the sound, approached the bedside cautiously.
"He is dead!" her brother whispered in Susan's ears. It was the middle
of the night, dark and still; and the poor girl, standing here between
the dying man--who, perhaps, had died in that dreadful moment--and the
living man, who looked like a maniac, lost all her self-command. She
cried aloud in the extremity of her fear and anguish. Was Horace _mad?_
And in that miserable moment, with his rebel son returned to vex his
soul, had her father passed away?
The stamping of Susan's foot on the floor, the sound of some commotion
in the sick-room, and at last her voice calling out in uncontrollable
terror, brought all the other inmates of the house to the room--Peggy,
the doctor half awake, the nurse, and Uncle Edward, all of whom, at
Susan's earnest instance, had lain down to seek an hour's sleep. Among
all these anxious people Horace looked still more like a spectre--but
after another moment spent in inquisitive inspection of the room, he
turned to the doctor and overpowered him with questions. As if in
braggadocio and daring exhibition of his want of feeling, he urged the
surgeon into descriptions of the complaint: what it was--and how it came
on--and what were its particular features. While the astonished doctor
replied as shortly as possible, and turned his back upon the heartless
questioner, Horace hovered more and more closely about his father's bed.
Another fit produced by the sudden appearance of his son had almost
completed the mortal work which was going on in the emaciated frame of
the recluse. It did not matter to anybody now that those eyes were
faintly open, which a little while ago were full of unspeakable things;
the force and the life had ebbed out of those windows of the soul, and
the patient no longer knew anything of the agitated consultations going
on over him, or of the hideous curiosity with which his son thrust into
those, asking questions which horrified the hearers. When the doctor
said that there were complications in this case, which made it difficult
to treat, the young man laughed a short, hoarse, horrible laugh, and
asked "how long do you think he will last?" in a tone which made them
shudder. They were all afraid of his haggard figure as it swayed to and
fro about the bed.
"You've been drinking, sir," said the doctor, in authoritative disgust.
"You can't do any good here--be quiet and go to bed. He distresses the
patient; some of you take him away."
"Mr. Horry, come with me," said Peggy, laying her hand upon his
shoulder. He followed her out of the room without saying anything. He
_was_ mad, crazed, intoxicated; but with a deadlier poison than was ever
distilled from corn or vine!
The old woman took him into his own room and left him there. She shook
her head at him in sad displeasure, but understood nothing of the tragic
misery which made him mad.
"I bid ye not to grieve," she said, reproachfully. "The Lord knows he's
been little of a father to you, that you should break your heart for
him; but be dacent, Mr. Horry, be dacent; if it's no for love's sake, as
is no possible, yet have respect to death."
When Peggy left him Horace buried his haggard face in those hands which
had grown thin and sharp like the claws of a bird of prey. "Have respect
to death!"--to the death which he had invoked--to the destruction he had
made. He sank down prostrate upon the floor, and lay there in a heap,
helpless, overcome by the horror of what he had done. The strength of an
army could not have kept him from Marchmain at that terrible crisis and
climax of his fate; but now when he was here, he could but lie
prostrate in the wildest hopeless misery, or, mad with his guilt, peer
like a ghoul about his father's death-bed. It was easier to do that,
noting horribly every slow step of the approaching presence, than it was
to lie here in the dismal creeping silence, with that footstep creaking
on the stair, and chilling the night, and a hundred deadly sprites of
vengeance shouting Murder! murder! all night long, into his miserable
ear.