HOLCROFT DEPARTS.
It was a considerable relief to Holcroft's mind to perceive that this
second abrupt disappearance of Allan excited more surprise than alarm
in his family circle; and in her own thoughts Lady Aberfeldie
secretly connected it with some lovers' quarrel between him and
Olive; it was so like their past relations that some such folly
should intervene.
The bell for dinner sounded much earlier than usual, as Mr. Holcroft
was to depart for the south that evening, and to see him in the
drawing-room dressed _de rigueur_ in black, with spotless shirt-front
and diamond studs, with tie and collar perfect, his hair brushed with
precision and the ends of his tawny moustache waxed out to sharp
points, who could have imagined him an actor in that scene in the
distant arched passage, or connected him with what was lying at the
bottom of that deep, dark oubliette!
Holcroft always thought that great games involved serious hazards;
but now this was a hazard beyond all his previous calculations.
The greatest chance of fortune he had ever seen in his varied life
seemed to be slipping--or to have speedily slipped--away from him,
when Olive Raymond and her cousin suddenly appeared on such amicable
terms; savage emotions of mingled disappointment and revenge filled
his heart, and certainly he had given full swing to them!
Now, what he had done was over; the rubicon had been passed. He
was--what he dared not name himself: the thought of all that Allan
Graham must endure ere he died (if he was not already dead) was--at
times, but at times only--maddening even to his destroyer; and he
felt that he could not too soon place miles upon miles between
himself and Dundargue; and that, happen what might, he would never
set foot in Dundargue again.
Seated at that luxurious table with the hospitable father, the
patrician-like mother, the tender sister and brilliant _fiancée_ of
him he had slain, with stately-liveried valets in attendance, while
longing for the conveyance or carriage that was to take him to the
station, he _did_ feel more than once as if he would go mad if it
lasted much longer--this acting--this tension of the heart--but, as
we say, for a time only. He was too near the scene of his awful
crime not to feel his soul shrink with selfish horror and dismay,
which made him nervously twist up, roll, and unroll his _serviette_,
as it is called in Scotland.
Was it only a few hours since he had heard that terrible _thud_ amid
the darkness and the clash of the oak trap-door? And there were
_his_ family all seated with him--Holcroft--at the same table, all
unconscious of what was lying within a few yards of them, and yet not
considering him the blackest criminal in the world, but a departing
guest to be treated with kindness and courtesy.
Thank heaven he would be far away from them ere Allan would be found
to be hopelessly gone, and he would see nothing of their growing
misery.
To drown thought, care, and memory, Holcroft, after the ladies
retired to the drawing-room, imbibed systematically more than usual.
Ere this, Olive had thought his manner excited--strange only. Unused
to see men under the influence of wine, she thought no more of it.
But, as Holcroft took to 'lacing' his clicquot with brandy when
occasion served, that may account for some of the peculiar remarks to
Olive yet to be recorded.
From an early period Eveline had conceived a shuddering kind of
aversion of Holcroft--an emotion not rare in certain nervous
organisations like hers; nor could she have explained why more
particularly _now_ his presence, though at table as usual, had filled
her with an undefined distrust and dread; yet so it was.
But in the drawing-room her own thoughts came more than ever back to
her, and these were all of Evan Cameron.
'He is gone!' she was always whispering to herself; 'too probably for
ever and for ever. We shall never meet again. How dull my world
will seem without Evan, and how old and queer I begin to feel
already!'
But poor Eveline knew not what a small place the world is--now-a-days
especially.
'You seem rather out of sorts,' said Lord Aberfeldie, who had been
eyeing 'his old friend's son,' while pushing the decanters towards
him; 'I hope there is nothing wrong with you, especially as this is
your last evening here.'
'No, nothing very wrong,' stammered Holcroft, scarcely knowing what
to say, but driven to shelter himself under what was his normal
condition; 'it is only--only----'
'What?'
'I have had more than one annoying letter,' he said, with a kind of
gasp, and paused.
'About money--of course?' said Lord Aberfeldie.
'One was a threat from a tailor,' replied Holcroft, making a terrible
effort to appear facetious, 'who says if I don't pay him he will take
means to make me do so.'
'And you?'
'Wrote back that I was delighted to hear he had the means, as this
was more than I had.'
'Well, my dear fellow, your father was one of my oldest friends; for
his sake can I square it for you?'
'Oh, Lord Aberfeldie, don't think of that!'
'What's the total?'' asked the other, opening a davenport.
'Close on £500,' said Holcroft, with an effort, which certainly was
an emotion, but not gratitude.
'There, Holcroft--pay me when you can, or choose,' said Lord
Aberfeldie, throwing down his pen, closing the davenport, and handing
a cheque for the sum named to his guest, to stop whose thanks he
plunged at once into the inevitable story of the charge of the Black
Watch along the Kourgané Hill; how he fell wounded; and how, but for
Holcroft's father, 'a squad of infernal Russians,' _et cetera_, and
so forth.
'Another glass of Moët, and then we shall join the ladies.'
'Life is a hard game with some of us now,' said Holcroft, as he
pocketed his cheque. 'As some one has written, "Men cannot go
freebooting or looting now, except in business; and it is quite a
question whether a modern _promoter_ is not quite as respectable a
member of society as a riever used to be, in the old days when right
was might."
'And Dundargue was built,' added Lord Aberfeldie, laughing.
'I did not say so.'
'Ah, but you thought it.'
And now they rose from the table.
Holcroft was not the better, but rather the worse for his potations.
He had eaten little and drunk much. Thus he looked very pale--almost
ghastly; and a strange fixed grimness replaced occasionally the usual
restlessness of his shifty pale eyes and freckled face.
Curiously enough he had hovering in his mind a kind of vengeance just
then at Olive. But for her sudden, and, as he thought, capricious
preference for her cousin, and throwing _him_ so completely over, the
deed he had committed would never have been done.
Eveline had withdrawn to her room, whither her mother had followed
her, bent on worry and expostulation no doubt; Lord Aberfeldie was
required by his steward, and Holcroft found Olive seated alone in a
bay window of the drawing-room, watching the last rays of the sun
fading out behind the Sidlaw Hills.
'Another hour--even less, Miss Raymond--and my place here will be
vacant,' said he, in a low and unnatural voice, while attempting to
hang over her chair in his old fashion.
'I got back my bangle, thanks,' said she, a little irrelevantly, but
feeling a necessity for saying something.
'Have you forgotten all that passed between us before and after you
allowed me to retain it.'
'I never allowed you to retain it, nor aught of mine, save perhaps a
bud from a bouquet. I have not forgotten that you, apparently,
sought to do me a great honour, Mr. Holcroft; but I scarcely thought,
even then, that you were serious.'
'Serious! Did you not know that I loved you better than my own life.'
'I cannot listen to this kind of thing,' said she, rising with
positive hauteur and annoyance in her face and manner; 'you forget
yourself.'
'When with you I always do--forgive me!'
'I cannot forgive you for talking to me thus.'
'You used not to dislike me, I know; and now there is no sacrifice I
would not make to win your love----'
'Permit me to pass!' exclaimed Olive, but he barred her way, and now
a glow of half-tipsy rage seemed to possess him.
'Listen, Olive Raymond,' said he, in a low, concentrated and almost
fierce tone; 'I have dared and risked much for you--more than you can
conceive. There has seldom been aught that I have sworn to possess
that has not in time been mine--mine, do you hear! To those who
wait, their time and turn always come. I have sworn to possess you,
and woe to the man who comes between us.'
She regarded him with a haughty and scared yet scornful eye. She saw
now that this melo-drama was the result of wine.
'Do you think you could compel me to love you?' she asked, with a
provoking smile.
'No.'
'What then?'
'To marry me.'
'Under what pressure, sir?'
'That is my secret---in time you may find it out,' he added, bowing
to her with ominous, not mock, politeness, as she passed him with a
haughty stare, and left the room. 'She forgets that I have yet her
photo, with her own name written on the back in her own hand; and if
ever man put the screw on a woman by such a little thing as that, I
shall put it on you, Olive Raymond, if you continue to play my Lady
Disdain to me!'
And for a moment he cast after her retiring figure a glance of
sardonic hate a devil might have emulated.
'Good-bye,' he muttered, mockingly, 'is an unpleasant thing to say;
with us let it be _au revoir_ rather; perhaps she may yet wave a damp
pocket-handkerchief from the outward wall as I ride away; who knows.'
'Sorry to say time is up, my dear fellow,' said Lord Aberfeldie,
entering the room with his hat and driving gloves; 'make your adieux
to the ladies. There is little doubt that Allan has gone to
Loganlee--the covers are first-rate there. I'll just drive over and
see, dropping you and your traps at the railway station _en passant_.'
A few minutes more and the pair were tooling down the avenue in a
smart mail phaeton, drawn by a pair of fine, high-stepping dark
greys. So Lord Aberfeldie drove 'the son of his oldest friend' to
the station, and, as the distance increased between himself and
Dundargue, Holcroft's spirits revived, as if nothing had happened
there at all; he actually said,
'And you think to find Allan at Loganlee?'
'I haven't a doubt of it--some tift with Olive, no doubt.'
'_Au revoir_, Lord Aberfeldie! and a thousand thanks for all your
kindness to me--never shall forget it, by Jove! but I shall have the
pleasure of seeing you all again in town, of course.'
To this expression of pleasure Lord Aberfeldie made no response, but
shook Holcroft's hand, whipped up his greys, and was off, thinking,
'I am glad _he_ has gone; he looks sadly strange and queer, poor
fellow.'
Holcroft was intensely relieved when the peer had left, and, making
straight for the railway buffet, imbibed glass after glass of pretty
potent Glenlivat, conversing affably the while with the young damsel
thereat.
'Of what are you thinking, sir, that you stare at me so?' she asked,
with a giggle.
'Only that your mother must have been a sweetly pretty girl!'
The train was late; thus he had to spend some time in staring
aimlessly at the flaming advertisements on the station wall--an
Anglo-American fashion now spread to Scotland--advertisements of some
one's cocoa, some one's corsets, some one's whisky, and so forth;
and, after glancing with a contemptuous malediction at the thick
bible left by the Scottish something society in the little
waiting-room, he smoked a cigar, had himself weighed, had a brandy
and soda, had some more chaff with the pretty girl at the buffet,
till the night train came snorting and clanking in, when he took his
seat, spread his rugs, and was off, as he thought, to security at
last!
Though he was not without reasonable and selfish dread for the
future, as the night train sped on its swift way, and left the Carse
of Gowrie far behind, he felt no genuine compunction for the atrocity
he had committed.
He did not possess a single spark of honour, gratitude, compunction,
or compassion. By unfair play he had rooked many; he had hocussed
horses; and once ruined a poor lad in the Lancers, on whom he
contrived to cast the suspicion of his own act. The Lancer was
dismissed the service by sentence of a court-martial, and shot
himself next day; and Hawke Holcroft took his luxurious luncheon
quietly in the same inn where the inquest was held, at the same time.
He had extorted money in many ways--he had never precisely robbed;
but never before had he been in the dark abyss of assassination and
death till now!
The annals of our courts of justice contain many a terrible tale of
guilt; but, says a novelist with truth, these would appear like
nothing with the history of undiscovered and unpunished crime. 'The
assassin who accomplishes his terrible purpose so craftily as to
escape detection is a cool and calculating fiend, by the side of
whose supreme villainy, the half-premeditated crime of the ordinary
shedder of blood, is dwarfed into insignificance.'
So on and on sped the swift night train, and there seemed every
probability that the deed of Holcroft would be one of the crimes
referred to, that are neither discovered nor punished.
He gave a last look into his pocket-book to assure himself that the
cheque and the photo of Olive were safe, and then tried to compose
himself to sleep.
Let us hope that the attempt was vain!
He could not help pondering over the remark of Allan about how foetid
the air of the oubliette was--that the door had not been opened for
an age, and no one ever thought of going near it.