_ PART II CHAPTER LIII. 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. _