They buried Matthew Lanyon in the quiet churchyard at Ayresford next
to the woman who in everything but law had been his wife. Half the small
town thronged about the grave in sorrow. All felt that one of the chosen
had dwelt in their midst, and that they were poorer by the loss of the
kindness of his simple heart and the wisdom of his grey head. The four
chief mourners stood a little way apart, close together. Sylvester held
the child Dorothy tight by the hand, finding unspeakable comfort in the
tiny clasp, and let the tears fall fast and unheeded down his face. The
grave seemed a chasm that separated them from the rest of the world. The
child, Agatha Lanyon, Ella, and himself stood alone, curiously remote,
and united by a new and strange bond. For the first time for many years
he felt the preciousness of human relationship. Of aught save this and
his irreparable loss, he was unconscious. The crowd was a vague mass
dimly seen through a mist of tears. He scarcely heard the old rector's
voice reciting the familiar words. But when the first clod of earth
clattered sharply upon the coffin-lid, he turned away with a sob; then
meeting Ella's swimming eyes, he sought her right hand with his left and
holding it turned again. And never so much as at that moment did he need
the strength of human tenderness; for looking up he saw standing at
the foot of the grave, his ignoble figure defined against the old grey
church, Usher wagging his bare head in simulated sorrow and gazing at
the last that was visible of his enemy. Then the old man stooped down
and threw a lump of earth into the pit; and as he rose Sylvester saw an
expression of indescribable malice pass over his face. Quivering at the
supreme insult, the young man turned to Ella.
“Thank God,” he said; “nothing can hurt him now.”
The reference was too pointed for her not to comprehend. She questioned
him dumbly, feeling suddenly brought to the brink of a revelation.
“It is selfish to wish him back,” said Sylvester.
They remained a few moments longer. The crowd was slowly disappearing
through the grey of the early winter twilight. The rector came up with
a few words of sympathy and crossed the churchyard towards the rectory.
The grave was nearly full.
“Come,” said Ella, gently, and they went to the path where the mourning
coach awaited them. They spoke but little. Miss Lanyon cried softly to
herself. Ella leaned back on the cushion with closed eyes. She was very
weary, spent with emotion; yet the evil spirit of unrest was laid within
her. The past upheaval had been phantasmagoric, in which her integral
self had been lost amid a whirling army of unreal shapes. Now, brought
into contact with an elemental reality, death, and with a deep and
simple grief, it had emerged clear and definite. For the first time
for many months the vibrations of her soul rang true, soothing her
like sweet, sad music after devil's discord. Sylvester's words by the
graveside had moved her. She remembered now a pain that had often come
into the old man's eyes, and she wondered reverently. Sylvester sat
opposite, his arm around Dorothy, who looked up shyly yet gladly into
his face, unable to explain to her childish mind this revulsion of
passionate love. To him it was a happiness that flooded his soul. The
parched places drank it in like the river of life. He was a new man,
able to feel in all its sacredness the sorrow that had come.
His temperament had undergone a curious transmutation. Instead of
flying, as used to be his wont, to solitude, to brood over his grief, a
newly awakened instinct drove him imperiously to companionship.
“Come down soon,” he said to the two ladies when, on their arrival at
the house, they went upstairs to take off their things. And they all
sat together for the rest of the long evening, and while he talked, Ella
wondered at his gentleness.
At ten o'clock the ladies retired. He accompanied them to the hall and
lit their candles. Miss Lanyon bade him good-night and disappeared up
the staircase. Ella held out her hand. He kept it in his for a moment.
“Won't you stay up with me a little longer?” he asked humbly. The light
of the candle played amid the dark gold of her hair and lit up her face,
that gleamed very pale in contrast with her high black dress. His eyes,
resting upon her, found her stately and sweet. He forgot that only a
few days ago he had despised her, classing her with the wanton of an
inferior sex. She stood before him something noble, helpful, mysterious.
In her calm gaze he read the certainty of a high companionship. He was
dismayed by the sudden revelation of his loss.
“Willingly,” she said. “But I am so tired.”
“Just ten minutes,” he pleaded. “I hate to be alone.”
“You?” Surprise was in her tone.
“I have been alone so much,” he replied simply.
She blew out her candle and went back with him into the library. Then
she sat down in Matthew's great leathern chair and watched him as he
stirred the fire. Much of her bitter resentment against him had died by
the old man's death-bed. The common sorrow had brought them once more
on to the plane of old relations. The sudden change in his attitude had
helped the promptings of her nobler nature, and generously she had given
him the dumbly craved sympathy. Besides, the old man's tenderness was
too fresh a memory for her to be harsh now to Sylvester.
The fire burst into a blaze. Sylvester drew himself up and stood on the
hearth-rug looking at her, and all the hardness had gone from his face.
Suddenly he spoke.
“I am a poor creature, Ella. I know it now. You have every right to
think ill of me; but try to think as well as you can--for the old man's
sake.”
“The last few days have changed so much,” she answered.
“Could they bring you to forgive me for all the pain and suffering I
have caused you?”
She drew a little sharp breath. “We need never speak of that again. It
is behind us.”
“But it is beginning to be very present with me,” he answered gravely.
“Lately my eyes have been opened to many things. Some day I may find it
in my power to tell you how. I have wronged you cruelly and unjustly. I
would give much to make atonement--but one can never atone. One can only
crave forgiveness--and pity for a blind man. I feel I can ask it of you
now. Since you have been here you too have shown me things I never knew
of. For nearly two years I have given you every reason to hate me. You
have put all aside, treated me with a sister's gentleness, given me all
your sympathy and tenderness. I am not accustomed to perceive large and
generous natures.... I will make a confession. In my morbid arrogance
and folly, I put myself upon a pedestal and regarded you, God forgive
me, as something beneath me. You are as far above me as he whom we
buried today. I had to tell you.”
For a few moments she could not find words to reply. She had never known
him to humble himself like this. It was hard to reconcile him with the
grim, pitiless man who had sat opposite her on that nightmare journey
from London.
“I did hate you--bitterly,” she said at last. “I don't think I do so
now. It is easy to say 'I forgive you,' but I don't quite know what it
implies. As for one of us being higher than the other, you are a great
physician, and I am just an ignorant girl with a miserable set of
unregulated emotions--”
“You should thank God for them,” he interrupted.
“They haven't brought me much happiness,” she said, with a little shrug
of her shoulders.
“See, I am frank! No, I won't say I forgive, but I'll think kindly of
you, Syl, I promise.”
“It is all I dare hope for,” he said. And so the enmity came to an end.
For the next two or three days, Sylvester was busy with his father's
affairs. The will provided for a large sum to be paid to Usher, another
to Roderick, while Sylvester was the residuary legatee, charged with a
yearly allowance to Miss Lanyon and certain minor bequests. But after
deducting the legacies to the Ushers, there was nothing left in the
estate but Woodlands itself, and that was heavily mortgaged, and
the mortgage had been bought up by Usher. Sylvester reviewed his own
financial position.
His professional income was fairly large, and showed every prospect of
increasing year by year, but of capital he had little. Dorothy's future
had to be provided for. Miss Lanyon must receive the amount specified in
the will. Could he afford to pay the interest on the mortgage and keep
up a large country house and grounds as well? He could not. Woodlands
would have to go. The three thousand pounds which Roderick had
fraudulently drawn from the estate would have made a considerable
difference in Sylvester's calculations.
From his father's books he discovered that this sum roughly represented
the sale of certain stock a day or two before the cheque was forged, and
lay at the bankers awaiting reinvestment. How did the knowledge of this
reach Roderick? Sylvester was puzzled, for a man does not usually keep
a balance of three or four thousand pounds to his credit account, and
Roderick was too shrewd to run the risk of so large a cheque unless he
knew there would be an adequate sum to meet it. Rightly he concluded
that Mr. Usher had given his son the information. But whether Roderick
was acquainted with the blackmailing secret he could not tell. An
instinct of generosity, newly awakened, prompted the conjecture of
Roderick's ignorance. On this assumption he arrived at what happened to
be the correct solution: Roderick in desperate need of money had applied
to Usher; the latter had refused; had suggested the forgery, knowing
of the sale of stock, and had given him the cheque which he himself had
once abstracted from Mr. Lan-yon's cheque-book so as to meet any sudden
emergency, at the same time assuring his son against any unpleasant
risks on the discovery of the forgery. Roderick's silence on the point
Sylvester could only put down to his credit.
Both Ella and Miss Lanyon were acquainted with the terms of the will,
though neither as yet was informed of the financial condition of the
estate. The large sums bequeathed to Usher and Roderick had astonished
them. Sylvester explained vaguely that they were in payment of a great
debt of gratitude which his father had incurred when Mr. Usher and
himself were young men together in Australia. Miss Lanyon, who never
questioned such statements, took refuge in her grief from further
thoughts on the matter, like the gentle, simple lady she was. But Ella,
with Sylvester's words in the churchyard fresh in her mind, scented
a mystery. After the reading of the will, the subject was not openly
mentioned by her or by Sylvester. Roderick's name stood between them.
The silence was a restraint which each felt to be irksome. At last Ella,
with a woman's greater moral courage, or perhaps with a woman's love of
self-castigation, resolutely plunged into matters.
“Would you think it impertinent of me if I asked you to let me discuss
Uncle Matthew's will with you?”
She had stopped him by the library door, as he was entering after
breakfast.
“By no means,” he replied courteously, holding the door open for her.
“Come in.”
“What has happened to me during the last six months,” she said, when
they were seated, “will remain with me as a memory all my life. I
should like to know what to think about--Roderick.” She got the name out
bravely, after a second's hesitation. “He really did what you accused
him of?”
“He acknowledged it to me,” replied Sylvester.
“Has he always been--what men call a scamp, or was this a sudden
temptation?”
“He was in a desperate plight. That I know. I can't say what he was
before. I have had a bitter lesson in judging men. All my standards have
fallen away, and Heaven knows whom I dare judge. One doesn't know what's
resisted. Burns said that a hundred years ago. And one doesn't know what
remorse follows. The human soul is an awful thing. Men are better than
their deeds. There is good in Roderick. I believe it.”
“And his father?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, startled. “Your father's will,--all that
money to those two.”
“I explained to Aunt Agatha.”
“That was no explanation. From a hundred things I can remember now, I
can't help feeling that there was force in the matter--oh, a horrible
feeling--if it is as I suspect, you can understand--”
“I firmly believe Roderick to be innocent of any wrong of the sort.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And his father?” Sylvester rose and filled his
pipe without speaking. It seemed odd to him that he felt no resentment
at her questioning him. The chord in his temperament that once would
have vibrated sharply and jarringly seemed to have snapped. He could
only admire in a helpless way the strength of character that had carried
her through so terrible an ordeal, her magnanimity, and the acuteness of
her perception. But he filled his pipe with great deliberation, for to
answer was difficult.
“I told you, Ella, I was powerless to judge any man,” he said. “Take
my assurance as regards Roderick and forget it all. The answer to your
question I have no right to give to any but one being in the world. Then
it would be my duty.”
“Dorothy?”
“No. Another.”
Their eyes met for a moment. Hers lowered, and a faint spot of colour
came into her cheek.
“I understand. Forgive me,” she said. There was a slight pause. She rose
to go. Suddenly Sylvester detained her.
“I may as well tell you what all the world will know soon. After paying
these legacies there will be nothing left for the residuary legatee save
Woodlands, and that is heavily mortgaged. I shall have to sell it.”
“Sell Woodlands!” She looked at him aghast. “Why, I thought Uncle
Matthew was leaving you a small fortune. It was the dream of his life!”
“He has left me, thank God, an infinitely greater inheritance,” said
Sylvester.
She did not question him, only looked at him blankly, dimly
comprehending. Then she reverted to the more easily intelligible.
“But to sell Woodlands!” she reiterated. “Impossible! When we were tiny
children, he used to talk of your living here after him. You must.”
“I haven't the money,” he said sadly.
“But I have. I'll buy it. I shall. You needn't laugh. Who in the wide
world can prevent me?”
“My dear Ella,” he said with a smile, “how would that help matters? I
could not live in your house.”
“Dorothy and Aunt Agatha could. You could rent it. There are many
ways. Anyhow, Uncle Matthew would sooner have it in my hands than in a
stranger's. I have made up my mind. It will be my first investment.”
And so as to have the last word, she swept across the room and retired.
The swish of her skirts had hardly ceased to sound in Sylvester's ears
when a servant came in with a letter. It bore no stamp, and was in
Roderick's handwriting.
“Trotter from the White Hart brought it, sir,” explained the servant.
The letter ran:--
_Having received your solicitor's letter concerning the
legacy under Mr. Lanyon's will, I came down last evening to
see my father. In the course of conversation he revealed to
me facts which have literally stunned me. I must see you or
write to you. But as these things are best unwritten,
perhaps in the utterly unprecedented circumstances you would
be willing to bear the pain that such an interview might
cause you, and make an appointment to meet me today. I would
suggest this hotel. Perhaps I have little right to do so,
but, I earnestly beseech you to believe in my good faith.
Roderick Usher._
Sylvester read this letter, so uncharacteristic of the man as he had
known him, with a recrudescence of implacable feeling. To meet him was
hateful. The agony of the journey to Ayresford a week ago came upon him.
He crumpled the letter tight in his hand.
“He was to wait for an answer, sir,” hazarded the servant, after a time.
The commonplace, as it often does, brought reaction. He scribbled a
line, fixing the appointment at twelve.
*****
He found Roderick pacing up and down the stiffly furnished and somewhat
dingy private sitting-room of the White Hart Hotel. The two men brought
suddenly face to face remained for a while in an embarrassed silence,
each looking in the eyes of the other. For the first time Sylvester
realised in all its significance the blood tie that bound them. This man
was his brother. Grotesque and incongruous though it seemed, the fact
was driven home to him as by some mighty blow. This man's mother was his
mother,--the mother who had sung him to sleep as a little child, who had
listened to his boyish confidence, who had been inwoven in all his early
life, whose voice whose caress, whose fragrance, lingered vividly in
all his senses, whose body and soul were unalienably _his_. A horrible
jealousy seized him.
Roderick, though point-device in blue serge suit and saffron-silk tie,
looked aged and careworn. The lines under his eyes had deepened. He had
lost flesh, and his cheeks were flabby. He was the first to break the
silence.
“It may be absurd for a man of forty to talk about his mother, but if
I had had your advantages in that respect, I might have been a better
man.”
Then Sylvester's jealousy vanished, and he remembered the wrong that had
been done.
“My father did all that a human soul could do to make atonement,” said
he.
“And mine did everything in his power to prevent it. Will you sit down?”
Roderick motioned Sylvester to a chair, and sat down near him.
“I don't pretend to love my father. I never had reason to. I am a bad
lot, I know, but compared to him, I am the incarnation of virtue. When I
forged the cheque, I was given to understand for the first time that my
father had some mysterious hold over Mr. Lanyon. But, as God hears me,
I never dreamed until last night of the true nature of the case. Do you
believe me?”
“Yes,” said Sylvester; “I believe you.”
“Thank you,” returned Roderick; “now I know where I am.”
He lit a cigarette, having offered his case to Sylvester, who declined.
“It is now in my power,” said he, after enjoying the first two fragrant
whiffs, “to restore the money I stole from you. You observe I have the
grace to use the naked expression. Will you accept it?”
“Certainly,” said Sylvester. “It is but just.”
“Did you think I would repay you?”
“Frankly speaking, no.”
“And having heard my father's story last night, do you think I'll touch
a penny of your father's money?” he cried, bringing his hand with a
thump on the round centre-table. “My God! I would sooner die.”
“The balance above the three thousand is yours,” said Sylvester. “I
cannot accept a gift from you.”
Roderick puffed violently at his cigarette, threw it away, and rose to
his feet excitedly.
“I can't touch it. I have been a damned villain, I know. I was hard put
to it, and I worked upon a girl's emotions so that I could marry her for
her money. Then, by Heaven, I began to love her, finished by loving her
madly, with an insensate passion. To get her, I committed a cowardly
crime. I broke my parole, as it were, with you. I deserve every epithet
of dishonour as regards that which you like to heap upon me, but to
carry on this horrible, hideous blackmail--by God, I can't do it.
Last night has turned me into a moral man. I'll forswear sack and live
cleanly for the rest of my life. I could vomit with disgust. It is
_écourant_,--makes one's heart retch! Do you know what I've found out?
You asked me once whether my father didn't make me an allowance. That
put me on the track last night. I cross-questioned, found out that for
years and years Mr. Lanyon, besides submitting to my fathers extortion,
had given him £400 a year to be handed to me as an allowance; and I've
never in my life received a penny of it, so help me God, never! Your
father has made atonement, every atonement. I learn that he has been
sucked dry, and that there is nothing left for you. It is I who now must
make atonement for my father. Could blackmail be more abject than
his? Consider for one ghastly moment the nature of it. In the name of
charity, for the sake of what is left of my manhood, take back all this
money.”
He had delivered this harangue with his old fervour and declamatory
gestures, and when he had ended he flung himself into an armchair and
wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Suddenly he started again to his
feet and seized a folded folio document lying on the table.
“See,” said he. “I've been down to Higginson the solicitor this morning,
and executed a deed of gift, making the whole thing over to you, less
the legacy duty. For Heaven's sake, take it and let me feel an honest
man again.”
Sylvester read through the document. Then he folded it up and put it in
his pocket.
“The three thousand I'll take,” he said. “The remainder, with your
permission, I'll give to the Prisoners' Aid Society; my father took a
keen interest in it.”
“Anything, so long as I don't touch it,” said Roderick, lighting another
cigarette. “Ha! Now I feel free, and can take up the threads of life
again. By the way, when you go, think as charitably of my father as you
can. I've done with him for ever and ever, but I've explained him to
myself. He is a perfect type of the non-moral being, the instinctive
criminal. There's a family history which you as a physician would find
interesting. To me as a poor devil of an artist, it is a bogey which
only walks abroad in the night of my mind. I suppose I have a share in
the family taint, but as I hope never to propagate my species, it will
die with me.”
He rattled on in his vehement way, and once more Sylvester fell under
the spell of his exuberant personality, preferring to listen than to
speak. Roderick launched out into a forecast of his future. He would
forswear sack, he repeated, and live cleanly, with Art for his chaste
mistress. “I got an idea for a picture, this morning, that is going to
revolutionise my existence,” said he. Sylvester's acceptance of the deed
of gift was like the removal of a heavy stone that had held prisoner
his elvish spirit. And the more he approached the Roderick of six months
ago, the more did Sylvester wonder at the nature of the man. Yet his
pocket held irrefutable proof of the man's sincerity. At last he rose
and held out his hand. Roderick looked at him, and looked at the hand in
astonishment; then he strode a pace forward and grasped it eagerly.
“You are a good fellow to shake hands with me,” said he.
The ring of genuine feeling touched Sylvester deeply.
“Let us bury the past,” he replied.
“On my side, God knows how willingly.”
“And whether we are friends or not, we'll remember that the same mother
bore us.” Roderick bowed, his quick perception divining the cost at
which the words were uttered.
“I shall always remember it,” he said soberly.
He accompanied his visitor down the stairs to the front porch of the
old-fashioned hotel. The men shook hands again. Roderick disappeared
in the gloom of the corridor, and Sylvester turned to see, on the other
side of the street, Ella, out on some small shopping errand, watching
him in amazement.
He crossed the road and walked by her side.
“Your question of this morning is answered,” he said.
“Thank you, Syl,” she replied.
“Perhaps I shall be able to keep Woodlands, after all.”
“I was praying for it,” she said significantly.
*****
Two days afterwards Ella left for the south of France with Lady Milmo,
and Sylvester returned to town to prepare his gloomy house for Dorothy's
reception.