CHAPTER XX—“OH, WHITE DOVE OF THE PITY DIVINE”
But a few minutes had passed since Usher's departure; yet to Sylvester they represented a great chasm of time,—a living self on the one side, a dead self on the other. He walked aimlessly about the room in a curious apathy. That which had been vital to him, his love and reverence for those two,—father and mother,—had been plucked away from him, and it seemed merely some reflex action that maintained organic existence.
On the wall facing the fireplace were two companion water-colour portraits in old-fashioned oval frames. He paused before them and looked dully from one to the other. These had been his sacred images in the house, the ikons of his gods. His mother smiled down upon him. Her hair, banded obliquely on either side over her forehead, gave an idea of Madonna-like purity to the delicate contours of her face. That of Botticelli's fair girl-mother betrayed less a soul at war with itself. And it was not the artist's contemporaneous delight in investing feminine portraiture with angelic sentimentality that was at fault. The son remembered her thus in the flesh, though older,—a rare, flower-like woman, with hands that, when they touched him as a boy, seemed holy. She was dead. That other, the young man bright and strong, looking unflinchingly at the world over his absurd black neckcloth, was now an old man, dying. And all that they left was a heritage of shame.
Their lives had been a hollow, hideous lie,—the lives of his gods. A fortiori, the lives of common mortality were false. He seemed to stand apart from the world, dispassionately regarding a race corrupt to its core, and shrinking from the step that would bring him again into its midst. Without Phariseeism he appeared to be the one clean man in a miry universe; the sense whereof brought with it something of the appalling. Whither should he turn without rubbing against contamination?
He moved away from the pictures and looked about the room. The familiar, old-fashioned furniture, which the old man loved to keep in memory of her who was once queen of the little space, seemed tainted with the unutterable. He became aware of a physical feeling of nausea. The room reeked. He flung open one of the French windows with an instinctive craving for a breath of the cold December air that was blown across the dripping lawn.
He brushed aside his hair, and tried to think. He stood as a judge; that he realised. Those two were brought before the bar, accused of the sin that his organic temperament pronounced unforgivable. The pleas in extenuation would be weakness and folly; and weakness and folly he despised. He was called upon to pass sentence for the shame of which he himself was the child; and in passing it on the sinful pair he was condemning himself to a living death. The man did not see that he had been working all his life towards this doom.
The slamming of the door behind him caused him to turn round with a start. His Aunt Agatha came towards him, wrapping a woollen shawl tightly around her lean shoulders.
“Oh, how can you have the windows open on a day like this?” she asked shivering.
He closed the window in silence and looked at her inquiringly.
“Your father has been awake a long time, dear, and is asking so for you.”
“A long time?” he echoed.
“Yes; before Mr. Usher came. Didn't you know? He addressed the envelope of the letter he sent down to you. Didn't you get it?”
“Yes. I got it,” said Sylvester.
“What's the matter with you, Syl? Aren't you going to him?”
“Oh, of course,” he replied. “Of course—yes.”
He went out slowly and mounted the stairs with limbs as heavy as lead. He turned the handle of his father's door and entered. The kind grey eyes of the old man, propped on his pillows, met him as he crossed the threshold, and a smile flickered over the wan lips.
“I was afraid you had forgotten me,” whispered the old man, feebly holding out his hand, which his son pressed in silence.
Ella was standing in the light of the window, medicine bottle and glass in hand. Until the liquid was poured out, she paid no attention to Sylvester. Then she came to the bedside and looked across at him somewhat defiantly before handing the glass to his father.
“What is the use of this solemn little comedy?” said the latter, whimsically, his voice, a whispered echo of the cheeriness of days past. “It won't make me any better. Simmons knows it and you know it and I know it. All the king's horses and all the king's men! And Humpty Dumpty doesn't want to be set up again. He's been on his wall long enough.”
He drank the draught, however, making a wry face. Ella bent over to wipe his lips, but he motioned her away with characteristic independence.
“I can do that for myself. I can't do much, but I can do that. You don't know how she bullies me, Syl.”
“Uncle Matthew wouldn't have the nurse when she came to relieve me,” explained Ella.
“I want those I love best by me, as now, eh, Syl?” said the old man.
Sylvester did not answer, but stood by the bedside dumb, vainly seeking some formula of speech whereby to simulate emotion. Ella set the wine-glass on the table and smoothed the pillows and counterpane, then lingered by the sick man, looking down upon him with a puckering of the brow, as a woman will, counting over the little tale of duties specified by the forth-driven nurse, so as to make certain of no omission. But her presence there filled Sylvester with dull resentment.
“My father has something particular to say to me,” he said stiffly. “Do you mind?”
“I was on the point of going,” she replied, somewhat surprised at feeling hurt by his tone, for she had thought that the successive emotional shocks of the past four and twenty hours had killed all feeling within her for ever. Recovering herself, she bent over the old man, kissed him, and crossed to the door. Sylvester met her there and accompanied her into the passage and closed the door behind him.
“How much does my father know of Roderick Usher's affairs?”
She looked at him bravely enough.
“Nothing. I believe he guesses. I have told him he was summoned abroad suddenly.” She moved away.
“Stop,” said he. “There is something else.” She drew a step nearer. “I can't bear much more,” she said quietly.
“It may relieve your mind to know that I have withdrawn the charge entirely. He is perfectly free.”
She stared at him for a moment, then grew deadly white and fainted. The girl's overtaxed strength had given way at last. Sylvester caught her in his arms and prepared to carry her to her room not far off along the passage; but at that moment Miss Agatha Lanyon with Simmons turned the corner, and he gave Ella into their charge.
“I'm staying with my father,” he said to Simmons. “Come in later.”
On the other side of his father's door he forgot the recent scene. Of what importance was a girl's fainting compared with the death hovering in this chamber and the death enthroned in his heart? He approached the bed. Matthew looked up at him wistfully.
“You can't expect me to live for ever, you know. I really have had enough of it, so don't fret.”
A thrush fluttered against the window for a moment. Matthew started.
“What was that?”
“Only a bird beating against the pane, attracted by the fire, perhaps.”
“We do that all our lives long. The invisible barrier. Oh, it's time to go, Syl, when a man begins to moralise. The moral always comes at the end of the story. Sit down on the bed, my son. I want to talk to you.” Sylvester obeyed. An expression of pain crossed his face. The old man's undismayed serenity moved his admiration. He would have given worlds to have uttered the cry of grief and love that would have been possible an hour ago.
“You are a brave man, father,” he forced himself to say.
“No; a coward. A pitiable old coward. You received my letter this morning?”
“Yes. It is all right.”
“You found a cheque yesterday—thought it forged—stopped Ella's marriage?”
“Yes, and brought her back with me.”
“But you will believe that I wrote the cheque?”
“If you wish me to,” said Sylvester.
There was a silence broken only by the crackling of the fire and the sobbing of the wind outside among the bare trees. Matthew gazed at the patch of sky framed by the window—it was one of his little obstinacies to have the fullest daylight in his room—and watched the scudding clouds. Presently, without turning,—
“Syl,” he said.
“Yes, father.”
“Something is breaking my heart. It has been the dream of my life to leave you a little fortune to make you independent, but I have lost it all, nearly all.”
“You must not be distressed at that,” replied Sylvester. “I am earning a good income and am putting by money. In twenty years I shall be a wealthy man.”
Matthew turned a face of intense anxiety, and it was some seconds before he could speak in his feeble voice.
“But Woodlands will have to go. It is heavily mortgaged,—a debt I owe to Usher. Forgive me, Syl; I tried so hard to keep it. You'll find Usher and Roderick in my will, you the residuary legatee; but there will be nothing. I will explain a little.”
He paused, thinking of some explanation, a debt incurred to Usher long ago. But Sylvester, imagining the story to be the one of sickening shame he had just heard, sought to save the old man unnecessary pain.
“Don't say anything. Usher has told me.”
Matthew looked at him wide-eyed.
“Usher told you?”
“Yes.”
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“From the beginning?”
“Yes. This morning.”
“You were threatening Roderick with a prosecution?”
“Yes. When I learned that he was—my brother, I instructed my solicitor to withdraw the charge.”
“Merciful God, have pity on me!” murmured the old man, with closed eyes.
The tremendous irony of existence crushed him. To save his son this knowledge, he had endured over thirty years of abject humiliation. The son by his own act had brought the knowledge upon himself. It is an awful thing when a strong man comes face to face with the futile result of all his strength.
Presently he opened his eyes and looked wearily at Sylvester.
“Forgive me, Syl. Don't judge after the penalty has been paid. Even common law cannot sentence a man twice for the same offence. And I 've served my time, and so did she. My God! we served it twice over. And no one knew or pitied us. I would have killed myself cheerfully to spare you the knowledge.”
His voice weakened, and he murmured an inaudible sentence, then lay back exhausted on his pillows. Sylvester looked at the kind, strong face, now so ashen and aged, and a gleam was revealed to him of the spirit's tragedy beneath; confused and blurred, it is true, but still a gleam that filled him with vague disquietude. It dimly suggested possibilities of life beyond the jealously guarded gates of his soul.
“You must have pity, my son,” whispered Matthew.
The tone wrung the young man's heart like a material grip. It was the first sign of returning power of sensation. He cleared his throat and said constrainedly,—
“Don't talk like that, father. I am your son and must always honour you.”
Matthew again turned his head and watched the grey sky. He knew his son to be a stern man, and the austere sound of his words chilled him more than the death he felt approaching.
“What can I do?” he murmured, dispirited. “It was a long, long penance. Don't turn from me, my son.”
“But—father,” said Sylvester, brokenly, “everything seems to have left me.”
The numbness had gone, and the whole sensitive man writhed in sudden pain, with loss of faith. His mother, whom he had deemed holy as a saint, his wife whom he had worshipped as a star,—both to have been false wives, women of shame! The old torture revived, intensified tenfold. The sight of the once revered being who lay dying in utter sadness before his eyes, and for whom the old love was now fighting within him for mastery, raised the torture's poignancy to such a pitch that at last it broke through the reserve of a lifetime and found vent in a great cry,—
“My own wife was unfaithful to me. How, can I judge my mother?”
A flush of life entered the dying man's cheeks. He turned quickly; his eyes were luminous.
“Constance? I did not think you knew—till the other night. And then I hoped against hope.”
“Did you know? How long? I only learned it after her death—Leroux's last illness. My God! does all the country-side know?”
“No, Syl. I alone.”
He sought his son's hand on the coverlet, and then continued in the calm, assured tone that Sylvester knew had given strength and comfort to so many. The voice had grown suddenly strong.
“She came to me herself, and told me, a soul-stricken woman,—just after. She loved the man, Syl, and had always loved him. Circumstances estranged them, they thought for ever. And then—she was a brave woman, Syl—she fancied she could make a good man's life happy,—yours. But the mistake was cleared up, and he returned. She loved him,—my boy, we can't kill love,—but she was proud of her honour and scorned running from temptation; relied on her strength too far, until one day, only one day, Syl, it failed her, in a whirl of madness. She came to me to ask what she should do. I have never seen such frantic grief in a human soul. And a good many have brought their troubles to me,” he added with one of his rare smiles.
“That is true,” said Sylvester. And a sudden impulse made him add, “God bless you!”
For the thought, of a soul in pain flying instinctively to the sympathy of those kind eyes brought a gush of tenderness. He saw him again as the wise counsellor, the generous friend, the child-hearted lover of all things, great and small.
“And you told her—?” he queried in a low voice, deeply moved.
“A greater judge than I set the precedent. She was the truest wife to you thereafter.”
“Tell me, father,” said Sylvester, huskily, “when was it? Dorothy?”
“Your own flesh and blood,” said the old man, gripping his hand. “My poor boy, how you must have suffered!”
He lay back again, prostrated by his sustained effort of speech, and closed his eyes. Sylvester leaned forward, half reclining on the bed, still holding his father's hand. And as he sat there silent, a veil seemed to be drawn from before his vision.
“She—Constance must have suffered,” he said at last.
Matthew opened his eyes and met his son's gaze wistfully.
“Don't we all? If the stainless like you suffer, what of us poor sinners who struggle towards the light! Think of the agony of that pure and delicate soul who bore you, my son. Pray for all poor souls, Syl.”
His voice had grown singularly faint. The tears leaped to Sylvester's eyes. He tried to speak, but his throat was clogged with unaccustomed sobs. With instinctive ashamedness he buried his face in the pillow next to his father, still holding his hand. He lay there a long time, his heart aching with the returning love as a limb to which the tourniquet has been applied aches with the returning blood. Once the old man whispered a prayer for the son's forgiveness, and when Sylvester pressed his hand, relapsed into his half-sleep as if reassured. Time went by. Presently Sylvester heard him murmuring in a scarcely audible voice. Gradually the sense of the words came to him. The old man was repeating scraps of verse:—
“Freres humains, qui apres nous vivez,
N'avez les cueurs contre nous endurciz,
Car, si pitié de nous pouvres avez,
Dieu en aura plustost de vous merciz.
Ne soyez done de nostre confrairie,
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre!”
There was a great pathos in the broad English accent with which he murmured the old French words, and for the first time in all his life Sylvester understood them. He raised his head and saw his father's lips moving dumbly. After a little the voice came again, broken and faint, and only by a word here and there could he gather the meaning. It was from Swinburne's “Garden of Proserpine:”
“... Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea,”
He repeated the couplet two or three times. He had never been a great reader of poetry, but of some half-dozen poems he was particularly fond, and had made them his own, and had woven them into the texture of his life. Among them were such dissimilar things as Villon's “Ballade,” Macaulay's “Battle of Ivry,” Tennyson's “Brook,” “The Ancient Mariner,” and Sylvester had often smiled indulgently at this little anthology, his father's simple spiritual equipment. Especially had he wondered at his assimilation of this poem of Swinburne's, so remote in feeling from his steadfast outlook upon life, and his intolerance of cowardly shrinking from its responsibilities.
But now he comprehended that his father was a weary, weary man, and that one of the most beautiful of all utterances to the weary man's heart had brought him comfort.
“Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light;
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight;
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal;
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.”
The murmuring voice ended the poem. Sylvester drew the old man's withered brown hand to his lips.
“Forgive me for not understanding, father,” he said brokenly. “I am glad I know. I love you and my mother more than I have ever done. Would to God I had been a tenderer son to you!”
Matthew's clasp tightened, and a smile hovered over his face. He knew that the awkward words came from his son's heart.
“We understand each other, Syl. 'Tout comprendre, et cetera.... I am happy. I have never been so happy in all my life—'the burden has fallen from me—fallen into the sea.' I'm sleepy, Syl—stay by me—it comforts me.”
So Sylvester, still holding the dear hand in a warm clasp, and fearing to move lest he should disturb the quiet slumber into which the old man had fallen, remained by his father's side, his face hidden in the pillow. And as he lay, there was accomplished one of those integral spiritual changes that can only be wrought once in the lifetime of a man here and there. The White Dove of the Divine Pity overshadowed him with its wings, and he saw deeply into the mysteries of life. He beheld the unutterable pathos of man, his clogged aspirations, his heroic weakness, his piteous fortitude, his everlasting struggles. It was revealed to him that there may be more of the warm spiritual essence of humanity, in a single passionate sin than in a hundred austere virtues.
His father, mother, Constance, Leroux, Ella, all of whom he, the upright, stainless man, had condemned, stood before him clothed in a new light; and by reason of their warm humanity, their struggles, their sufferings, they stood higher in the scale of being than he.
He saw the loves of those two whom he had so cherished unfold in tragedy before his vision. They were two rare natures, he understood, fitted only one for the other, too fine for commoner clay. He knew the agony of the first early struggle, the eternal conflict between love and that which the world accepts as duty; the mother's heart torn asunder between the child of her body and the man of her heart's core; the ignoble husband a thing of horror in her thoughts. Then came their life together; the perfect union; the sweet community of noble end; but every step to happiness dogged by the footfall of pain. What must they have suffered, the two sensitives, with minds (in the son's fancy) of gods and hearts of little children! He remembered that there were times when his mother would stand by the window, lost to external things, and strain her vision through infinite space; and he knew now it was the yearning for the child that she had forsaken.
And then she died, the pure gold of her spirit worn thin by suffering. He remembered his father's ashen face; how he clung unspeaking to him, even as he himself in after years had clung to Dorothy. Then came the proud man's lonely penance; Usher's arrival with Roderick. He had wronged the man and wronged the boy; but what unwearying efforts to redeem in full! The weight of the burden fell upon Sylvester, and he knew its heaviness. He knew the scrupulous gentleman's revolt against the forced intimacy with the underbred egotist, lost to self-respect, the rapacious blackmailer, the vampire that sucked his heart's blood. He knew the sordid cares of money that had fallen on the old man, his struggles to leave his own son an independent fortune and the family home, and at the same time to carry out his chivalrous vow to give an exact equivalent to the wife's deserted child; the agony of effort to spare his son the knowledge. And all that had left untouched his tender, generous heart, which all men loved. A new reverence arose within Sylvester's soul.
And that other,—Constance? Had she not struggled, silently, indomitably, filling his existence with wifely devotion, battling night and day with the hydra-headed love that seemed unconquerable? Had she not fought and suffered and triumphed? And Leroux? Had he not shared in the battle and the suffering and the victory? Had she not, Ella, too, bravely striven, seeking light through the darkness that he had cast about her? And Roderick? Who was he that he should judge his fellow? The fierce hate died for ever in Sylvester's heart. The bewildering knowledge of man's infinite weakness, man's infinite strength and endurance, stirred his inmost soul with unutterable pity.
A touch on the shoulder aroused him. Instinctively he sought to free his hand; but the clasp that held it was singularly stiff and cold. He lifted his head with a start and looked round. Ella was standing behind him. Then he freed himself and leaped to his feet. Their eyes met, then turned to the figure on the bed. He bent over, looked intently into his father's face, felt his heart. The erring, beautiful life had ended in his sleep.
Without a word spoken, they straightened the limbs and smoothed the bed, the girl crying silently. As soon as this was done, she whispered,—
“I will leave you.”
But to her great wonder, he took her hand and raised it to his lips.
“No,” he said; “stay.”
CHAPTER XXI—HERITAGE
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. Lanyon'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:—