CHAPTER IX AN UNEXPECTED VISIT

During the next four years of my life there happened to me not one single incident worth recording. Our home had been broken up, and we had left Devonshire for ever. My father and mother were living abroad at a small country town in the south of France, Marian was at a boarding-school at Weymouth, and I—I was articled clerk to a very respectable firm of land agents and surveyors in Exeter.

To say that I was contented would be false, but, on the other hand, I was not absolutely miserable. The out-of-door life suited me, and I did not find the work unpleasant. But apart from that I was by no means satisfied. Day and night I carried with me the pale, unhappy face of my poor father, his proud spirit continually being lashed and mortified by the disgrace which falsely rested upon him. I thought of him wandering about in a foreign country, exiled from his proper place in the world, from the society of his fellows, from all things which men of his kind most esteem. I thought of him bearing always in his mind those cruel words of his father's, "Out of my house and out of my heart," and it seemed to me a disgrace that I should be leading a humdrum life in a quiet country town, instead of throwing all my heart and energies into the task which I had placed before me as a sacred mission. But how was I to commence it? The combined income of my father and mother was barely four hundred a year, out of which I received one hundred, besides a trifling salary, which, however, was soon to be increased. Out of this I had been able to save a little, but not much. Nothing which would be of the slightest service to me in commencing such a task as I had in view. And so I did not see what move I could possibly make in the matter which was nearest to my heart, although my present inaction was irksome, at times almost unbearably irksome, to me.

One night I was working late in my little sitting-room copying some plans, when I heard steps on the stairs and the door was quietly opened. I looked up in some surprise, for I never had visitors, and my landlady would scarcely have entered without knocking. But when I saw who it was standing on the threshold I dropped my compasses and sprang up with an eager, welcoming cry.

"Hugh, my boy!" and our hands were locked in a close grasp. Then all of a sudden the joy of this unexpected meeting was dispelled, and my heart sank cold within me. For from head to foot he was clothed in the deepest mourning, and the tears were standing in his hollow eyes.

"Something has happened!" I exclaimed, in a low voice. "Tell me! Mother——"

"Is dead!"

Then he sank down upon my hard little horsehair sofa, and covered his face with his hands, and I waited patiently, though with an aching heart, for surely his sorrow was greater than mine.

Presently he told me more—told me how she had caught a fever at a poor "ouvrier's" cottage, which had never been looked upon as serious until too late; and how she would not have either Marian or me sent for when she knew that she was dying, but had written us each a dying message, and had made him promise to bring the sad news to us himself, and not trust it to a letter. But all this has little to do with my story, so I pass it briefly over.

He had told me all that there was to tell, and then I ventured to speak to him of the future. I had hoped that he would have settled down in England somewhere with Marian and me, but it was a hope which he very soon dispelled.

"Your mother's death," he said, in a low tone when I first began to hint at my desire, "has left me free. I shall look to you to make a home for Marian, and I shall make over to you for that purpose three-quarters of my income. For myself I can never live in England. There is one place, and one place only, which I could call home, and there I cannot go. My life has been for a long time too sedentary a one to be pleasing to me. I am a man of action, and I can never forget that I was once a soldier. I must go where there is fighting."

His words were a blow to me, and for a moment or two I did not answer him. My heart was too hot for words, full of a burning indignation against the cruel slander which was sapping away his life. Notwithstanding the weary look in his eyes, and his wrinkled brow, he was still the finest-looking man I had ever, or ever have, seen. Handsome after the highest type of the patrician Englishman. He was tall, and though slight, magnificently shaped, with long, firm limbs and stately carriage. His features, though powerful and strongly defined, were delicately carved and of the most refined type, and though his hair and moustache were greyer even than when he had left Devonshire, he was still in the prime of life. There was the je ne sais quoi of a soldier about him, the air of command and military bearing. And yet there was nothing better for him to do with his life than go and throw it away amongst foreigners, fighting in a cause for which he could care nothing, and which glory and patriotism, the highest incentives of the soldier, could never make dear to him.

A curse upon that uncle of mine! I would have uttered it out loud, but for fear of raising a storm which I should not be able to quell. So I breathed it to myself, savagely, and none the less emphatically.

"Let me go with you, father," I begged, "I am sick of this humdrum life, and I cannot bear to think of you going wandering about the world by yourself; I can fight, and could soon learn the drill."

He shook his head—not vigorously, but decisively.

"It is good of you to want to come, Hugh," he said, kindly, "but it is quite out of the question. You have your sister to look after, and besides," he added, with a smile, "I do not think my career as a soldier of fortune will be a long one."

"Father, don't talk like that!" I cried, passionately. "They say that some time or other truth will always out, and I believe it! I believe that the day will come when your innocence will be made clear!"

He shook his head dejectedly, but not without emotion.

"Little hope of that," he said, with a deep sigh. "Two men alone amongst the living know the truth about that day, and, having once perjured themselves, they are not likely to recant."

"And those two are my uncle Rupert and his servant. What was the servant's name?"

"John Hilton, the man who was at the meeting at Porlock," my father answered, with a shudder at the recollection of that terrible night. "There was one other man who might have cleared me; but, as fate would have it, when I appealed for his evidence it was discovered that his name was on the missing list. He was either killed or taken prisoner."

"Who was he?" I asked.

"Sergeant Fenwick. Without doubt he was killed, or he would have been delivered over to us at the peace. No, unless Rupert confesses, and one might as well expect the heavens to fall in, I shall die dishonoured and nameless," my father concluded, bitterly.

I stood up and drew a long breath.

"Father," I cried in a low, intense tone, "have you never felt that you must seek out this hound of a brother of yours, and hold him by the throat until he has confessed, or until the breath is gone out of his body? I should feel like that! I should want to stand face to face with him and wring the truth from his lying lips."

My father's eyes were sparkling, and his whole frame quivering with compressed excitement.

"Ah, Hugh, I have felt like that," he cried, "many and many a time. Do you remember the night when we met him on the moor near Dunkerry? If I had been alone that night I should have killed him. I know that I should. It is for that reason that I dare not seek him out. If I heard him utter that lie again, if I saw in his eyes one gleam of pity for me whose life he has hopelessly wrecked, no power on earth could keep me from strangling him, and so I do not seek to meet him. But if chance throws him in my way again, when we are alone, God have mercy on him and me!"

There was a long silence between us. Then I asked him further questions about his present plans.

"You must not think me unkind, Hugh," he said gently, "but mine is a very flying visit. I cannot breathe in this country. It chokes me! Everything reminds me so of home! To-night, in half-an-hour's time," he added, taking out his watch, "I leave here for Weymouth to see Marian. To-morrow afternoon I leave England, most likely for ever."

I tried entreaties, remonstrances, reproaches, but they were all in vain. He shook his head to all.

"I have called at London on my way here," he said, interrupting me in the midst of my appeal, "and have made over my account at Smith's to you. Here is the pass-book and a cheque-book. Mr. Malcolm, of 18, Bucklersbury, is my solicitor, and will pay you three hundred a year. If at any time you desire to re-invest the capital you can do so, for it stands in your name. Hugh, God knows it is my bitter sorrow that I can leave you nothing better than a tarnished name. But remember this: I believe that if you were to go to your grandfather, and tell him who you were, and that I had left England with a vow never to return, I believe then that he would receive you, and would make you his heir. So that——"

"Father, what do you take me for?" I interrupted, passionately. "I will live and die Hugh Arbuthnot, unless you before me bear the name and title of the Devereuxs. Can you imagine that I would seek out my grandfather and crave his recognition, whilst you were wandering about in miserable exile excluded from it? Father, you cannot think so meanly of me."

He held out his hand without speaking, but the gesture was in itself enough. Then he drew out his watch, and rose.

"Hugh, my boy, good-bye, and God bless you! Where I am going I cannot tell you, for I do not know myself. But I will write, and if at any time you have news for me and do not know my address, put an advertisement in the Times. Take care of Marian—and—and God bless you."

*****

He was gone, and save a dull, gnawing pain at my heart, and the letter which lay on the table before me, there was nothing to remind me of his recent presence. All through the long hours of the night I sat in my chair with my head buried in my hands, and—I see no shame in confessing it—many passionate tears falling on to my spoilt plans. Then, when the grey streaks of dawn commenced to rise in the eastern sky, and throw a ghastly light into my sitting-room, in which the gas was still burning, I fell into a drowsy sleep. When I awoke the sun was shining in a clear sky, and the cathedral bells were chiming the hour. It was eight o'clock.

I stood up half dazed. Then my eyes fell upon the letter which still lay before me, and I remembered with a cold chill all that had happened. I stretched out my hand for it, and tore it open.

The handwriting was weak and straggling, and the words were few; but I held it reverently, for it was a message from the dead.

"Farewell, my dearest Hugh, for before this reaches you I shall be dead. Take care of Marian always, and be good to her. With my last strength, Hugh, I am tracing these words to lay upon you a solemn charge. Your father is dying slowly of a broken heart. Year after year I have watched him grow more and more unhappy, as the memory of this cruel dishonour seems to grow keener and bitterer. He is pining away for the love of his old home, his father, and the name which he was once so proud to bear. Oh, Hugh, let it be your task, however impossible it may seem, to bring the truth to light, and clear his name and your own. Hugh, this is my dying prayer to you. With my last strength I write these words, and I shall die at peace, because I know that you will bear them ever in your heart, and carry them on with you to the end. Farewell! My strength is going fast, and my eyes are becoming dim. But thank God that I have been able to finish this letter. Farewell, Hugh!—From your loving MOTHER."

Word by word I read it steadfastly through to the end, and then, my heart throbbing with the fire of a great purpose, I threw open the window and looked out. Below me stretched the fair city of Devon, smiling and peaceful, basking in the early morning sunshine, and the air around was still ringing with the music of the cathedral chimes. Little it all matched with my mood, for my whole being was vibrating with an agony of hate, and with the fervour of a great resolution. With the letter clutched in my hands, I stretched them forth to the blue, cloudless sky, and swore an oath so fearful and blasphemous that the memory of it even now makes me shudder. But I kept it, and thank God, without sin.