ANOTHER RESPITE.
Jason stood looking stupidly down on the prostrate form, while I ran
to it and struggled to turn it over and up into a sitting posture.
“Father!” I cried, “I’m here--don’t you know me?”--then I turned
fiercely to my brother and bade him shift his position out of the
range of the staring eyes.
“What’s the matter?” he muttered, sullenly. “I’ve done no harm. Can’t
he see me, even, without going off into a fit?”
“Get further away; do you hear?”
He shambled aside, murmuring to himself. A little tremulous sigh
issued from the throat of the poor stricken figure. I leaned over,
seized the bottle of brandy from the bed, and moistened his lips with
a few drops from it.
“Does that do you good, dad?”
He nodded. I could make out that he was trying to speak, and bent my
head to the weak whisper.
“I saw somebody.”
“I know--I know. Never mind that now. Leave it all to me.”
“You’re my good son. You won’t let him rob me, Renny?”
“In an hour or two he shall be packed off. You needn’t even see him
again.”
“Is he back in England?”
“In London, yes.”
“What does he want?”
“To see us--that’s all.”
“Not money?”
“No, no. He isn’t in need of that just now. Can you move back to your
bed, do you think, if I help you?”
“You won’t let him come near me?”
“He shall go straight from this room out of the house.”
“Come,” he said, presently; “I’ll try.”
I almost lifted him to his feet, and he clung to my arm, stumbling
beside me down the passage to his room.
When he was lying settled on his bed, and at ease once more, I
returned to my brother.
He was sitting in a maudlin attitude by the window, and I saw that he
had been at the bottle again.
“Now,” I said, sternly, “let’s settle the last of this with a final
question: What is it you want?”
He looked up at me with an idiotic chuckle.
“Wand? What everybody’s always wanding, and I most of all.”
“You mean more money, I suppose?”
“More? Yes, mush more--mush more than you gave me last time, too.”
“Not so much, probably. But lest Zyp should starve I’ll send you what
I can in the course of a few days.”
He rose with a feebly menacing look.
“I’m not going till I get what I wand. I wand my part of the treasure.
I know where it’s hid, you fool, and I’m wound up for a try at it. Ge’
out of my way! I’ll go and help myself.”
He made a stumbling rush across the room and when I interposed myself
between the door and him he struck out at me with a blow as aimless
and unharmful as a baby’s.
“If you don’t knock under at once,” I said, “I swear I’ll tie you up
and keep you here for Duke’s next coming.”
He stood swaying before me a moment; then suddenly threw himself on
the bed, yelping and sobbing like a hysterical school-girl.
“It’s too cruel!” he moaned. “You take advantage of your strength to
bully me beyond all bearing. Why shouldn’t I have my share as well as
you?”
“Never mind all that. Give me your address if you want anything at
all.”
He lay some time longer yet; then fetched out a pencil and scrap of
paper and sulkily scrawled what I asked for.
“Now”--I looked at my watch--“there’s a train back to town in half an
hour. You’d best be starting.”
“Nice hospitality, upon my word. Supposing I stop the night?”
“You’re not going to stop the night, unless you wish to do so in the
street.”
“I’ve a good mind to, you beast, and bring a crowd about the place.”
“And Duke with it, perhaps--eh?”
His expression changed to one most fulsomely fawning.
“Renny,” he said, “you can’t mean to treat me, your own brother, like
this? Let’s have confidence in one another and combine.” He gave a
little embarrassed laugh. “I know where the treasure’s hid, I tell
you. S’posing we share it and----”
He stopped abruptly, with an alarmed look. Something in my face must
have forewarned him, for he walked unsteadily to the door, glancing
fearfully at me. Passing the brandy bottle on his way, he seized it
with sudden defiance.
“I’ll have this, anyhow,” he murmured. “You won’t object to my taking
that much away.”
Hugging it to his breast under his coat, he went from the room. I
followed him down the stairs; saw him out of the house; shut the door
on him. Then I listened for his shuffling footstep going up the yard
and away before I would acknowledge to myself that he had been got rid
of at a price small under the circumstances.
I remained at my post for full assurance of his departure for many
minutes after he had left, and when at last I stole up to my father’s
room I found the old man fallen into a doze. Seen through the wan
twilight how broken and decaying and feeble he seemed!
I sat by him till he stirred and woke. His eyes opened upon me with a
pleased look at finding me beside him, and he put out a thin rugged
hand and took mine into it.
“I’ve been asleep,” he said. “I dreamed a bad son of mine came back
and terrified the old man. It was a dream, wasn’t it, Renny?”
“Only a dream, dad. Jason isn’t here.”
“I thought it was. It didn’t trouble me much, for all that. I learned
confidence in the presence of this strong good fellow here.”
“Dad, we’ve £30 left of the fifty I raised two months ago on that
Julian medallion. May I have ten of them?”
“Ten pounds, Renalt? That’s a mighty gap in the hoard.”
“I want it for a particular purpose. You can trust me not to ask you
if it were to be avoided.”
He gave a deep sigh.
“Take it, then. It isn’t in you to misapply a trust.”
He turned his face away with a slight groan. Poor old man! My soul
cried out with remorse to so trouble his confidence in me. Yet what I
proposed seemed to me best.
He would not rise and come down to supper when I suggested it.
“Let me lie here,” he said. “Sometimes it seems to me, Renalt, I’m
breaking up--that the wheel down there crows and sings for a victim
again.”
It was the first time I had ever heard him directly refer to this
stormy heart of the old place, that had throbbed out so incessantly
its evil influence over the lives shut within range of it. It was
plunging and murmuring now in the depths below us, so insistent even
at that distance that the soft whining of the stones in our more
immediate neighborhood was scarcely audible.
“It’s a bewildering discovery,” he went on, “that of finding oneself
approaching the wonderful bourne one has struggled toward so long. I
don’t think I’m afraid, Renalt, lying here in peace and watching my
soul walk on. Yet now, though I know I have done two great and wicked
deeds in my lifetime, I wouldn’t put off the moment of that coming
revelation by an hour.”
I stroked his hand, listening and wondering, but I made no answer.
“It’s like being a little child,” he said; “fascinated and compelled
toward a pleasant fright. When you were a toddling baby, if one came
at you menacing and growling in fun, you’d open your eyes in doubt
with fear and laughter; and then, instead of flying the danger, would
run at it half-way and be caught up in daddy’s arms and kissed. That
seems to illustrate death to me now. The heart of that grim, time-worn
playfellow may be very soft, after all. It’s best not to cry out, but
to run to him and be caught up and kissed into forgetfulness.”
Oh, my father! How in my soul did I echo your words!
He wandered on by such strange sidewalks till speech itself seemed to
intermingle with the inarticulate language of dream. Is there truth
after all in the senile visions of age that can penetrate the veil of
the supernal, though the worn and ancient eyes are dim with cataracts?
As I sat alone with my thoughts that night many emotions, significant
or pathetic, wrought changing phantoms of the shadows in the dimly
lighted room. Sometimes, shapeless and full of heavy omen, they
revolved blindly about that dark past life of my father, a little
corner of the curtain over which had that evening been lifted for my
behoof. Sometimes they thrilled with spasms of pain at the prospect of
that utter loneliness that must fall upon me were the old man’s quiet
foretelling of his doom to justify itself. Sometimes they took a red
tinge of gloom in memory of his words of self-denunciation.
What had been a worser evil in him than that long degrading of his
senses? Yet, of the “wicked deeds” he had referred to, that which
could hardly be called a “deed” was surely not one. Perhaps, after
all, they were nothing but the baseless product of a fancy that had
indulged morbidity until, as with Frankenstein, the monster it had
created mastered it.
Might this not be the explanation of all? Even of that eerily
expressed fear of his, that had puzzled me in its passing, that the
wheel was calling for a victim again?