THE BEGINNING OF THE LAST PLOT.
When Mr. Scarborough had written the check and sent it to Mr. Grey, he
did not utter another word on the subject of gambling. "Let us make
another beginning," he said, as he told his son to make out another
check for sixty pounds as his first instalment of the allowance.
"I do not like to take it," said the son.
"I don't think you need be scrupulous now with me." That was early in
the morning, at their first interview, about ten o'clock. Later on in
the day Mr. Scarborough saw his son again, and on this occasion kept him
in the room some time. "I don't suppose I shall last much longer now,"
he said.
"Your voice is as strong as I ever heard it."
"But unfortunately my body does not keep pace with my voice. From what
Merton says, I don't suppose there is above a month left."
"I don't see why Merton is to know."
"Merton is a good fellow; and if you can do anything for him, do it for
my sake."
"I will." Then he added, after a pause, "If things go as we expect,
Augustus can do more for him than I. Why don't you leave him a sum of
money?"
Then Miss Scarborough came into the room, and hovered about her brother,
and fed him, and entreated him to be silent; but when she had gone he
went back to the subject. "I will tell you why, Mountjoy. I have not
wished to load my will with other considerations,--so that it might be
seen that solicitude for you has been in my last moments my only
thought. Of course I have done you a deep injury."
"I think you have."
"And because you tell me so I like you all the better. As for
Augustus--But I will not burden my spirit now, at the last, with
uttering curses against my own son."
"He is not worth it."
"No, he is not worth it. What a fool he has been not to have understood
me better! Now, you are not half as clever a fellow as he is."
"I dare say not."
"You never read a book, I suppose?"
"I don't pretend to read them, which he does."
"I don't know anything about that;--but he has been utterly unable to
read me. I have poured out my money with open hands for both of you."
"That is true, sir, certainly, as regards me."
"And have thought nothing of it. Till it was quite hopeless with you I
went on, and would have gone on. As things were then, I was bound to do
something to save the property."
"These poor devils have put themselves out of the running now," said
Mountjoy.
"Yes; Augustus with his suspicions has enabled us to do that. After all,
he was quite right with his suspicions."
"What do you mean by that, sir?"
"Well, it was natural enough that he should not trust me. I think, too,
that perhaps he saw a screw loose where old Grey did not; but he was
such an ass that he could not bring himself to keep on good terms with
me for the few months that were left. And then he brought that brute
Jones down here, without saying a word to me as to asking my leave. And
here he used to remain, hardly ever coming to see me, but waiting for my
death from day to day. He is a cold-blooded, selfish brute. He certainly
takes after neither his father nor his mother. But he will find yet,
perhaps, that I am even with him before all is over."
"I shall try it on with him, sir. I have told you so from the beginning;
and now if I have this money it will give me the means of doing so. You
ought to know for what purpose I shall use it."
"That is all settled," said the father. "The document, properly
completed, has gone back with the clerk. Were I to die this minute you
would find that everything inside the house is your own,--and everything
outside except the bare acres. There is a lot of plate with the banker
which I have not wanted of late years. And there are a lot of trinkets
too,--things which I used to fancy, though I have not cared so much about
them lately. And there are a few pictures which are worth money. But the
books are the most valuable; only you do not care for them."
"I shall not have a house to put them in."
"There is no saying. What an idiot, what a fool, what a blind,
unthinking ass Augustus has been!"
"Do you regret it, sir,--that he should not have them and the house too?"
"I regret that my son should have been such a fool! I did not expect
that he should love me. I did not even want him to be kind to me. Had he
remained away and been silent, that would have been sufficient. But he
came here to enjoy himself, as he looked about the park which he thought
to be his own, and insulted me because I would not die at once and leave
him in possession. And then he was fool enough to make way for you
again, and did not perceive that by getting rid of your creditors he
once again put you into a position to be his rival. I don't know whether
I hate him most for the hardness of his heart, or despise him for the
slowness of his intellect."
During the time that these words had been spoken Miss Scarborough had
once or twice come into the room, and besought her brother to take some
refreshment which she offered him, and then give himself up to rest. But
he had refused to be guided by her till he had come to a point in the
conversation at which he had found himself thoroughly exhausted. Now she
came for the third time, and that period had arrived, so that Mountjoy
was told to go about his business, and shoot birds or hunt foxes, in
accordance with his natural proclivities. It was then three o'clock on a
gloomy December afternoon, and was too late for the shooting of birds;
and as for the hunting of foxes, the hounds were not in the
neighborhood. So he resolved to go through the house, and look at all
those properties which were so soon to become his own. And he at once
strolled into the library. This was a long, gloomy room, which contained
perhaps ten thousand volumes, the greater number of which had, in the
days of Mountjoy's early youth, been brought together by his own father;
and they had been bound in the bindings of modern times, so that the
shelves were bright, although the room itself was gloomy. He took out
book after book, and told himself, with something of sadness in his
heart, that they were all "caviare" to him. Then he reminded himself
that he was not yet thirty years of age, and that there was surely time
enough left for him to make them his companions.
He took one at random, and found it to be a volume of Clarendon's
"History of the Rebellion." He pitched upon a sentence in which he
counted that there were sixteen lines, and when he began to read it, it
became to him utterly confused and unintelligible. So he put it back,
and went to another portion of the room and took down Wittier's
"Hallelujah;" and of this he could make neither head nor tail. He was
informed, by a heading in the book itself, that a piece of poetry was to
be sung "as the ten commandments." He could not do that, and put the
book back again, and declared to himself that farther search would be
useless. He looked round the room and tried to price the books, and told
himself that three or four days at the club might see an end of it all.
Then he wandered on into the state drawing-room,--an apartment which he
had not entered for years,--and found that all the furniture was
carefully covered. Of what use could it all be to him,--unless that it,
too, might be sent to the melting-pot and brought into some short-lived
use at the club?
But as he was about to leave the room he stood for a moment on the rug
before the fireplace and looked into the huge mirror which stood there.
If the walls might be his, as well as the garnishing of them, and if
Florence Mountjoy could come and reign there, then he fancied that they
all might be put to a better purpose than that of which he had thought.
In earlier days, two or three years ago, at a time which now seemed to
him to be very distant, he had regarded Florence as his own, and as such
had demanded her hand. In the pride of his birth, and position, and
fashion, he had had no thought of her feelings, and had been imperious.
He told himself that it had been so with much self-condemnation. At any
rate, he had learned, during those months of solitary wandering, the
power of condemning himself. And now he told him that if she would yet
come he might still learn to sing that song of the old-fashioned poet
"as to the ten commandments." At any rate, he would endeavor to sing it,
as she bade him.
He went on through all the bedrooms, remembering, but hardly more than
remembering, them as he entered them. "Oh, Florence,--my Florence!" he
said, as he passed on. He had done it all for himself,--brought down
upon his own head this infinite ruin,--and for what? He had scarcely ever
won, and Tretton was gone from him forever. But still there might yet be
a chance if he could abstain from gambling.
And then, when it was dusk within the house, he went out, and passed
through the stables and roamed about the gardens till the evening had
altogether set in, and black night had come upon him. Two years ago he
had known that he was the heir to it all, though even then that habit
was so strong upon him he had felt that his tenure of it would be but
slight. But he had then always to tell himself that when his marriage
had taken place a great change would be effected. His marriage had not
taken place, and the next fatal year had fallen upon him. As long as the
inheritance of the estate was certainly his, he could assuredly raise
money,--at a certain cost. It was well known that the property was rising
in value, and the money had always been forthcoming,--at a tremendous
sacrifice. He had excused to himself his recklessness on the ground of
his delayed marriage, but still always treating her, on the few
occasions on which they had met, with an imperiousness which had been
natural to him. Then the final crash had come, and the estate was as
good as gone. But the crash, which had been in truth final, had come
afterward, almost as soon as his father had learned what was to be the
fate of Tretton; and he had found himself to be a bastard with a
dishonored mother,--just a nobody in the eyes of the world. And he
learned at the same time that Harry Annesley was the lover whom Florence
Mountjoy really loved. What had followed has been told already,--perhaps
too often.
But at this moment, as he stood in the gloom of the night, below the
porch in the front of the house, swinging his stick at the top of the
big steps, an acknowledgment of contrition was very heavy upon him.
Though he was prepared to go to law the moment that Augustus put himself
forward as the eldest son, he did recognize how long-suffering his
father had been, and how much had been done for him in order, if
possible, to preserve him. And he knew, whatever might be the result of
his lawsuit, that his father's only purpose had been to save the
property for one of them. As it was, legacies which might be valued at
perhaps thirty thousand pounds would be his. He would expend it all on
the lawsuit, if he could find lawyers to undertake his suit. His anger,
too, against his brother was quite as hot as was that of his father.
When he had been obliterated and obliged to vanish, from the joint
effects of his violence in the streets and his inability to pay his
gambling debts at the club, he had, in an evil moment, submitted himself
to Augustus; and from that hour Augustus had become to him the most
cruel of tyrants. And this tyranny had come to an end with his absolute
banishment from his brother's house. Though he had been subdued to
obedience in the lowest moment of his fall, he was not the man who could
bear such tyranny well. "I can forgive my father," he said, "but
Augustus I will never forgive." Then he went into the house, and in a
short time was sitting at dinner with Merton, the young doctor and
secretary. Miss Scarborough seldom came to table at that hour, but
remained in a room up-stairs, close to her brother, so that she might be
within call should she be wanted. "Upon the whole, Merton," he said,
"what do you think of my father?" The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"Will he live or will he die?"
"He will die, certainly."
"Do not joke with me. But I know you would not joke on such a subject.
And my question did not merely go to the state of his health. What do
you think of him as a man generally? Do you call him an honest man?"
"How am I to answer you?"
"Just the truth."
"If you will have an answer, I do not consider him an honest man. All
this story about your brother is true or is not true. In neither case
can one look upon him as honest."
"Just so."
"But I think that he has within him a capacity for love, and an
unselfishness, which almost atones for his dishonesty; and there is
about him a strange dislike to conventionality and to law which is so
interesting as to make up the balance. I have always regarded your
father as a most excellent man, but thoroughly dishonest. He would rob
any one,--but always to eke out his own gifts to other people. He has,
therefore, to my eyes been most romantic."
"And as to his health?"
"Ah, as to that I cannot answer so decidedly. He will do nothing because
I tell him."
"Do you mean that you could prolong his life?"
"Certainly I think that I could. He has exerted himself this morning,
whereas I have advised him not to exert himself. He could have given
himself the same counsel, and would certainly live longer by obeying it
than the reverse. As there is no difficulty in the matter, there need
be no conceit on my part in saying that so far my advice might be of
service to him."
"How long will he live?"
"Who can say? Sir William Brodrick, when that fearful operation was
performed in London, thought that a month would see the end of it. That
is eight months ago, and he has more vitality now than he had then. For
myself, I do not think that he can live another month."
Later on in the evening Mountjoy Scarborough began again. "The governor
thinks that you have behaved uncommonly well to him."
"I am paid for it all."
"But he has not left you anything by his will."
"I have certainly expected nothing, and there could be no reason why he
should."
"He has entertained an idea of late that he wishes to make what
reparation may be possible to me; and therefore, as he says, he does not
choose to burden his will with legacies. There is some provision made
for my aunt, who, however, has her own fortune. He has told me to look
after you."
"It will be quite unnecessary," said Mr. Merton.
"If you choose to cut up rough you can do so. I would propose that we
should fix upon some sum which shall be yours at his death,--just as
though he had left it to you. Indeed, he shall fix the sum himself."
Merton, of course, said that nothing of the kind would be necessary; but
with this understanding Mountjoy Scarborough went that night to bed.
Early on the following morning his father again sent for him.
"Mountjoy," he said, "I have thought much about it, and I have changed
my mind."
"About your will?"
"No, not about my will at all. That shall remain as it is. I do not
think I should have strength to make another will, nor do I wish to do
so."
"You mean about Merton?"
"I don't mean about Merton at all. Give him five hundred pounds, and he
ought to be satisfied. This is a matter of more importance than Mr.
Merton--or even than my will."
"What is it?" said Mountjoy, in a tone of much surprise.
"I don't think I can tell you now. But it is right that you should know
that Merton wrote, by my instructions, to Mr. Grey early this morning,
and has implored him to come to Tretton once again. There! I cannot say
more than that now." Then he turned round on his couch, as was his
custom, and was unassailable.