would know from you what it all means. It is you, not I, to whom
Hartsbourne belongs, then? You are the master, and I am the guest?"
"For the present, yes; but a welcome guest, none the less," spoke the
older man with a repulsive leer. "The situation, my bold young cousin,
is easily understood. Your father loved not the old family house. I did
love it. Could he have sold it, it would have been mine long since; but
he had not the power to alienate it from the title. But he did all else
that was possible. He raised mortgage upon mortgage upon it--first on
the house, then on the land. I came to live in the house, and paid him
rent for it once. Then I supplied him with money and took up the
mortgages. He and I had been boys together. The tie between us was
strong. I verily believe he was glad to have me here, and when he was
sick and smitten with mortal disease he came hither to die, and I was
with him to the last. He was grateful for my devoted service. He was
glad to think that I should live on here afterwards. 'It is no life for
a young man,' he said almost at the last. 'Grey will carve out a career
for himself. Here he could only rot and starve like a rat in a hole.'
And I pointed out that you were my natural heir, and that you might not
have very long to wait before coming a second time into your
inheritance."
Grey sat silent and baffled. It was little he knew of the law; but he
had heard before this of men who had left nothing save debts and
troubles for those who came after them. Many a fair manor and estate
passed into alien hands for years, or even for generations, when trouble
fell upon the owners. He understood only too well how it had been here
at Hartsbourne--everything squeezed out of the estate, nothing put in,
till at last the house was falling into ruin, and the rights of the lord
of the manor had passed away from the owner. It was no consolation to
Grey that a Dumaresq had supplanted him. He was cut to the heart by the
selfish extravagance of his father, and the way in which he had played
into the hands of this schemer. He saw how impossible it would be to
attempt to live here himself, even if he could establish a legal right
to do so. He was not certain if his father could have done anything
which should actually hinder him from claiming possession of the house
which was his, but to find money to pay off the mortgages--he might as
well have sought for money to buy the moon! And even then, how could he
live in a house without money, without servants, without friends? No;
he must seek to carve out a fortune for himself. His fair dream of a
peaceful life in England as a country squire was shattered into a
thousand pieces. Some day perhaps--some day in the dim and distant
future, when fortune and fame were his--he might come back to take
possession of his own. It should be his dream--the goal of his
ambition--to dwell at Hartsbourne as its lord and master. But for the
present he could call nothing his own save the good horse cropping the
lush June grass in the paddock, and that casket so carefully hidden
beneath the hearthstone of old Jock's living-room. He would look at the
papers. He would make careful study of them. He would take notes as to
the amount necessary to clear the estate and make him master in reality.
And then he would go; he would not be beholden to this kinsman, whose
shifty face he distrusted heart and soul, though his words were smooth
and fair. He would ride forth into the fair world of an English
midsummer, and would see what the future held there for him.
It was not an exhilarating hour which he spent over the parchments
spread out before his eyes, which were eagerly explained to him by the
lynx-eyed kinsman, who seemed half afraid to trust them out of his own
claw-like clutches. But Grey perused them with attention, making notes
the while; and after studying these at the close, whilst the deeds were
being locked away, he said,--
"Then when I return with thirty thousand pounds in my pocket, I can take
over Hartsbourne, house and lands and all, and be master of my own
estate in deed as well as in word?"
"And how are you to come by this thirty thousand pounds, fair coz?"
asked Mr. Dumaresq, with something slightly uneasy in his shifty glance.
"Right gladly would I receive mine own, and make way for a gallant
gentleman like you; but where are these riches of Aladdin to come from?"
"Perchance from the same source as yours did come, sir," answered Grey,
looking full at his interlocutor. "The Dumaresqs have not ranked as a
wealthy family since the days of the Civil War, when they lost so much.
But you seem to have found fortune's golden key; and if you, why not I?"
Did he shrink and cower under these words, or was it only Grey's fancy
that he did so? The young man could not be sure, though he had his
suspicions. At any rate he spoke suavely enough.
"Thrift and care, my young friend, care and thrift--these qualities are
better than any golden key of hazard. My father was a careful, saving
man, and at his death bequeathed me greater wealth than I dreamed he did
possess. I followed in his footsteps until, for your father's sake, I
elected to prop the falling fortunes of the house rather than live in
selfish affluence on my own revenues. Well, I did what seemed right;
and my reward shall be the hope of seeing Hartsbourne one day restored
to its former glories. But for the present I must needs live like a
poor man, though that is no trouble to one who has ever made thrift the
law of life."
Grey went forth from the presence of his kinsman with a cloud on his
brow and a fire in his heart.
"Why doth he speak of himself as poor?" he asked of himself. "He takes
to himself all the revenues of the estate; and when I was a boy, I
always heard that the farms were prosperous, the land fertile, the
timber fine, game and deer plentiful, and the tenants able to pay their
dues. If all that comes in goes into his pocket, wherefore doth he live
like a miser? wherefore doth he let the house fall into decay? he ruined
himself for my father's sake? Tush! A man with that face sacrifice
himself for another! Nay; but he is hoarding up gold for himself, or I
greatly mistake me. Truly do I believe that he is playing some deep
game of his own. Well, I can but wait and see what time will bring
forth. It is a shame that the old house should be left to go to ruin
like this, with its revenues falling regularly into the hands of a
Dumaresq! Why doth he not spend them upon the fine old structure, to
make it what it was before? Why, now I see. He thinks it would
stimulate me to fresh desire to make myself master. He may haply think
that I care not for a habitation given up to rats and ghosts and
cobwebs. He little thinks that every fallen stone seems to cry out
aloud to me, and that the lower falls the old house in ruin and neglect,
the more urgent is the voice with which it urges me to come and save
it."
The young man was walking up and down the grass-grown avenue as he thus
mused. From thence he could see in perspective the long south front,
with its many mullioned windows, its beautiful oriels, and the terrace
up and down which he had raced in the days of his happy childhood.
Straight in front was the eastern portion of the house, with its great
entrance doors, led up to by a fine double stairway, beneath which a
coach could stand, and its occupants in wet weather enter by a lower
door. But the stone work was chipped and broken; the balustrade had
lost many of its balls, which lay mouldering in the long grass that grew
up to the very walls. Moss and lichen and stone-crop clothed all, and
the creepers which clung about the house itself were wild and tangled,
and in many cases had completely overgrown the very windows, so that
scarce a trace of them could be seen.
Yet even in its decay the old house was strangely beautiful, and Grey's
heart was stirred to its depths. He wandered through the tangled garden,
and out towards the fish-ponds beyond and then by a winding pathway he
made his way to the churchyard, and stood bare-headed at his mother's
grave.
"I will win it back, mother; I will win it back!" He spoke the words
aloud, in a low-toned, earnest voice. "You loved the place, and you
taught me to love it. For that alone I would seek to call it one day
mine own. I will win it back, and methinks your heart will rejoice when
your son is ruling there at last."
Grey had meant to leave that very day; but there was much he longed to
see, and his kinsman had given him an earnest invitation to pass the
night beneath the old roof-tree. Repugnant as this man was to him, and
bitterly as he resented his conduct and distrusted his motives, it was
not in the young man's nature to be churlish. Every hour of daylight he
spent wandering about the place, revisiting his boyish haunts, and
chatting with old Jock, who, without being able to give any exact reason
for it, distrusted and despised the present master as heartily as Grey
himself.
"The old master did too, at the last. I am main sure of it," he said;
"else for why should he have given me yon box, sir? And why should he
have bidden me hide it and guard it, and let none see it till Sir Grey
should claim it himself? For years he had thought him a friend; but I
trow he knew him for a false one at the last. You'll best him yet, Sir
Grey--see if you don't. A villain always outwits himself in the end.
You'll be master here one day, please God, or my name's not Jock
Jarvis!"
Grey had taken out the casket, and found that it contained three hundred
golden guineas--the remnant of his father's fortune, and all that he had
been able to preserve to his son of what had once been a fine estate. A
few words cautioned Grey to be careful of the hoard, and let no one know
of its existence--"no one" plainly meaning his kinsman. It also
contained a few faintly traced words of farewell, and just a plea for
forgiveness--evidently written when mortal weakness was upon the
writer--which brought sudden tears to the eyes of the son, and blotted
out the bitterness of heart which had been growing up as he mused upon
his fallen fortunes and his lost inheritance.
That evening Grey supped with his kinsman in a corner of the despoiled
library, which seemed the only room in the house now lived in. He had
walked through some of the other state apartments, denuded of their
pictures and the best of the furniture, and looking ghostlike with
closed shutters and overgrown windows. He had not had heart to pursue
his investigations far; and all that he carried away with him were
saddened memories, and one little mouldering volume of poems, with his
mother's name on the fly leaf, which he had found lying in a corner of
the little room with the sunny oriel, where she had passed the greater
part of her time. He thought he even remembered the book in her hands;
and he slipped it into his breast as though it were some great treasure.
The sneering smile of his kinsman as he bade him keep the volume, and
saw where he placed it, did not endear him any the more. He wished he
could get rid of his companionship, but that seemed impossible; and Grey
soon gave up the tour of the house, and let himself be led back to the
library.
"No, I have no plans," he said briefly, as they sat at their frugal
supper, to which, in honour of the occasion, a small flagon of wine had
been added. "I think I shall remain in England. I have been a wanderer
something too long. A homely saying tells us that the rolling stone
gathers no moss. I have youth and health and strength, and the world
lies before me. Men have won success with more against them before
this, and why not I?"
"I should have thought the battlefield would have tempted you. There is
honour and renown to be won there, to say nothing of the spoils of a
vanquished foe," spoke Mr. Dumaresq, looking at him in a peering, crafty
fashion. "Surely a gallant young gentleman of your birth and training
would not lack for opportunities of distinction amid the perils and
glories of war!"
Suddenly Grey became aware that his kinsman was anxious for him to go
and fight in the cause of the Allies. It could not be that he had heard
of the happy chance which had made Marlborough his friend, for he had
spoken of that to none; and even if Dicon had boasted to old Jock,
neither cared to have aught to do with the deaf and cross-grained
serving-man who waited upon the master within doors. A moment more and
Grey had found the clue, and realized that his own death would make
Bartholomew Dumaresq not only absolute master of Hartsbourne, but a
baronet to boot; and in every battle thousands of brave soldiers were
left dead upon the field, whilst many fell victim to wounds and the
ravages of disease caught during the hard weeks of campaigning.
"I think I shall remain in England," he answered quietly. "I have seen
something of war, but a career of peace has more attractions for me;"
and he smiled to see the look of chagrin which played for a moment over
the crafty face of his kinsman.
Grey did not find it easy to sleep when he had climbed up into the great
canopied bed in the guest chamber allotted to him. He scarcely
remembered this room. It was very large, and before he went to rest
Grey drew aside all the mouldering draperies from the windows, and
opened every casement wide to the summer night. Even so the place felt
musty. There were strange creakings and groanings of the furniture, and
the owls without hooted and hissed in the ivy wreaths. More than one
bat flew in and out, circling over his head in uncanny flight; and had
it not been that the previous night had been an almost sleepless one,
Grey would scarce have closed an eye. As it was, he grew drowsy
gradually, and felt a strange swimming in his head to which he was a
stranger. He was just wondering whether the wine he had taken at
supper, the taste of which seemed curious to him at the time, could have
anything to do with this, when sleep suddenly fell upon him like a pall,
and for a space he could not gauge he remained lapped in the
unconsciousness of oblivion.
What was it roused him? Or was he indeed awake? The moonlight streamed
into the room, and lay like bars upon the floor. Its radiance was
sufficient to light every corner of the room, and Grey found himself
lying still as a stone, yet sweeping every corner with his gaze, for
surely he was not alone. He felt some presence close beside him, yet
where could it be?
Suddenly his gaze travelled upwards, and for a few awful seconds he lay
gazing as the bird before the gaze of the snake.
A shining poniard hung, as it were, over his head. He saw the gleaming
silver of the blade. Its haft was grasped by a hand--a lean, claw-like
hand. Its point was aimed at his own heart.
For a few endless seconds Grey lay staring up helplessly. Then the
blade moved swiftly downwards. With a motion as swift, the young man
threw himself sidewise out of bed and upon the floor, and turning,
sprang to his feet to meet the murderous foe.
Behold there was nothing! He was alone in the great moonlit room. The
curtains behind the bed's head were slightly shaken--nothing more.
Horrified and bewildered, Grey dashed them aside. Behind was a wall
panelled like the rest of the room in black oak. Was it his fancy, or
had he heard just as he sprang to his feet the click as of a closing
spring? Grey passed his hand over and over the woodwork, but could find
nothing to give a clue. Old memories of secret sliding panels, unknown
passages to hiding-places, and ghostly visitants to sleeping guests,
rose in succession before him. But this was something more than an
ordinary ghostly visitor. Grey saw again the murderous gleam of cold
steel over his head--saw the claw-like hand in its faded russet sleeve,
the fierce downward sweep of the weapon.
"It was my kinsman, and he sought to do me to death--here in the haunted
chamber, where perhaps some infernal machinery exists whereby the corpse
could have been quickly and quietly removed and heard of no more. Who
would care save Dicon, and what could a poor varlet like that do if the
master of Hartsbourne were to assert that his kinsman had ridden off in
the early hours of the morning, he knew not whither? Did he drug the
wine? Was this in his head all the while? Or was the idea suggested
only by my refusal to place my neck in peril at the wars? O Barty,
Barty Dumaresq, a pretty villain art thou! Before this I might perhaps
have been tempted to return to the Duke, and seek to win my spurs at his
side; but now--no. I will take the safer, if the slower, path to fame
and fortune, and I will live to make you rue the day you sought to rid
yourself, by secret assassination, of the man in whose shoes you hope
some day to stand."
*CHAPTER IV.*
*ON THE ROAD.*
With the first streak of midsummer dawn Grey Dumaresq was in the
paddock, looking well to the condition of his horse, and grooming the
soft, satin coat lovingly with his own hands.
"We must be up and away, my beauty, ere the sun be high. This is no
place for either you or me, albeit every foot of ground is mine own, and
it will go hard if I let that weasel-faced scoundrel filch it altogether
from me. I know him now in his true colours. Heaven send the day may
come when I shall repay with interest that which I owe him."
The horse tossed his head and neighed as though in response; and perhaps
Dicon heard the sound from where he slept, for almost at once he was at
his master's side; and old Jock came cautiously out by the doorway
leading towards the house, and looked relieved and gratified to see the
young master abroad.
"Eh, but I have been sore troubled with bad dreams this night," he said,
as he shambled up. "Yon house is full of such, I take it. How slept
you, my master? and how fare you this morn? It is good to see you
looking so spruce and sound. Bad luck to the dreams that drove sleep
from my pillow at last."
"I had my dreams too, Jock, and I have not slept since," answered Grey,
with a significant glance at the old man. "Tell me, good fellow, what
know you of the panelled guest-chamber, with the row of windows looking
south over the park? Ha! why look you so, man? What know you of the
chamber?"
"Did he put you there, my master? Then Peter lied to me, the
false-tongued knave. If I had known that! No wonder the dreams were
bad that came to me. The haunted room! Tush! it is not ghosts that
hurt, but men who come and go at will and leave no trace behind."
"I thought so," spoke Grey composedly. "Then there is a secret way of
entrance into that room?"
"Ay, behind the bed. I do not know the trick, but I have heard of it.
Men have been done to death in that room ere this, and none the wiser
for it. Oh if I had but known!"
Grey's eyes were fixed full upon the pallid face of the old man. He put
the next question gravely and almost sternly.
"Tell me truly, my friend. Think you that this kinsman of mine would
plot to do me hurt? He made profession of friendship."
"He made the same to Sir Hugh," answered Jock in a trembling voice, "and
for long the master believed in him. But methinks he never would have
died as he did, had he not come to live here with Mr. Barty at
Hartsbourne."
Grey started and changed colour, clinching his hand,
"You think that this kinsman of ours compassed his death?"
Jock looked over his shoulder as though fearful of listening ears. He
drew a step nearer; and Dicon, with fallen jaw and staring eyes, came up
close to listen.
"How can I tell? I was seldom in the house. I work in the garden, and
because I am a cheap servant, asking no money, but making a pittance by
what I can sell, Mr. Barty has kept me here where he found me. But when
the old master came, he often sent for me. Before he became too ill, he
sometimes crawled to my little cottage yonder for a bit of chat. He told
me the doctors and leeches told him he had but to rest and live simply
in the country for a few years to be a sound man again. But for all
that he dwindled and dwindled away, and was gone in two months."
"Did no leech attend him here?" asked Grey breathlessly.
"Not till the very last, when they sent me to Edgeware to fetch one who
could do naught. Mr. Barty professed to know many cures, and the master
believed in him. He eased his pain, but he sank into an
ever-increasing, ever-mastering drowsiness, and he shrank away to skin
and bone. It went to my heart to see him. Many's the time when I have
wondered whether it would have ended so if he had not taken Mr. Barty's
simples and draughts."
"Was he poisoned, then?" asked Grey, between his shut teeth.
Jock looked nervously over his shoulder; the word seemed to frighten
him. He shook his old head from side to side.
"Nay, nay, how can I tell--a poor old ignorant man like me? But he used
to say that you would likely never come home again (travellers met such
a deal of peril, he would say), and then his eyes would gleam and
glisten, for there was but the old master's life and yours betwixt him
and the title and all."
Grey ground his teeth, and his eyes flashed. Somehow he did not doubt
for a moment that foul play had been used to compass his father's death.
Had he not escaped assassination himself that night only by the skin of
his teeth?
"Could any man living throw light upon this matter?" he asked. "The
leech from Edgeware, or any other?"
"I misdoubt me if any could, save wall-eyed Peter, Mr. Barty's man; and
I trow his master makes it worth while for him to hold his tongue and
know nothing."
"Gold will sometimes unloose a miscreant's tongue."
"Ay, ay, maybe; but Mr. Barty's purse is longer than yours, Sir Grey,
and his mind is crookeder and his ways more artful. Don't you go for to
anger him yet: hurt might come to you an you did. Get you gone from the
place, and that right soon; for the sooner you leave Hartsbourne behind
you, the safer it will be for you."
"Yes, my master; let us indeed be gone," pleaded Dicon earnestly. "This
is a God-forsaken hole, not fit for you to dwell in. Take the store of
gold pieces, and let us begone, for I trow that harm will come to you if
you linger longer here."
It took little to persuade Grey to be off and away. Old Jock provided
them with a meal, and they could break their fast at the old inn at
Edgeware, through which they would pass. He had no desire to go through
the farce of a farewell to his kinsman. He only desired to shake off
the dust of his feet against him; and ere the chimes of the church rang
out the hour of six, Grey was turning on the crest of a ridge of rising
ground, to look his last for the nonce upon the old home he had dreamed
of so many a time, and round which so many loving thoughts centred.
"Let kind Fortune but smile upon me, Dicon, and show me the way to
affluence and fame, and I will yet be lord and master there, and the
manor of Hartsbourne shall be one of the fairest in the land!"
"Why, so you shall, Sir Grey, and that right speedily!" cried honest
Dick, who had an unbounded admiration for his young master, and an
immense confidence in his luck, albeit no special good fortune had
befallen him since he had taken service with him.
Dick had led a seafaring life during his earlier years, and Grey had
picked him up in a shipwrecked, ragged, and starving condition on the
coast of Spain some two years previously. In those days ship-wrecked
sailors often had a hard time of it, even though the terrors of the
galleys or the Inquisition did not loom quite so perilously before them
as had been the case a century before. To find himself taken into the
service of a young English gentleman of quality, and to be the companion
of his travels, had been a piece of luck that Dick thanked Providence
for every day of his life. He had been one of four servants at the
outset; but as Grey's resources diminished, or his roving life took him
into perils for which some men had little stomach, he gradually lost his
retinue, till, for the past year, Dick alone had followed him, and the
two had become friends and comrades, as well as master and servant. Now
at their first halting-place, where they paused to let the horses
breathe after a steady half-hour's gallop, Grey opened the wallet at his
side, which he had filled with gold pieces from the casket (the rest he
had sewn carefully into his clothes for safety), and counted out a
certain number, which he shook in his fist as he spoke.
"Dicon, I am going to London to try my luck there. But, as I have
ofttimes heard, fortunes are as easily lost there as won, wherefore it
may be that I shall become a beggar instead of growing in wealth and
greatness."
"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Dick in passionate protest.