The Light of Scarthey: A Romance

"Can you ask, my fair cousin?" he sneered. "Do you not see me overcome with joy? Am I not indeed especially favoured by Providence, for is not this the second time that a beloved being has been restored into my arms like Lazarus from the grave?"

I was indignant at the heartlessness of his cynicism, and so the answer that leaped to my lips was out before I had time to reflect upon its unladylikeness.

"Ay," said I, "and each time you have cried in your soul, like Martha, 'Behold, he stinketh.'"

My cousin laughed aloud.

"You have a sharp tongue," he said, "take care you are not cut with it yourself some day."

Just then the footmen who had been unpacking Tanty's trunks from the first carriage laid a great wooden box upon the porch, and one of them asked Rupert which room they should bring it to.

Rupert looked at it strangely, and then at me.

"Take it where you will," he exclaimed at last. "There lies good money-value wasted – though, after all, one never knows."

"What is it?" said I, struck by a sinister meaning in his accents.

"Mourning, beautiful Molly – mourning for you – crape – gowns – weepers – wherewith to have dried your sister's tears – but not needed yet, you see."

He bared his teeth at me over his shoulder – I could not call it a smile – and then paused, as he was about to brush past into the hall, to give me the pas, with a mocking bow.

He does not even attempt now to hide his dislike of me, nor to draw for me that cloak of suave composure over the fierce temper that is always gnawing at his vitals as surely as fox ever gnawed little Spartan. He sees that it is useless, I suppose. As I went upstairs to greet Madeleine, I laughed to myself to think how Fate had circumvented the plotter.

Alas, how foolish I was to laugh! Rupert is a dangerous enemy, and I have made him mine; and in a few hours he has shuffled the cards, and now he holds the trumps again. For that there is du Rupert in this sudden departure of my knight, I am convinced. Of course, his reasons are plain to see. It is the vulgarest ambition that prompts him to oust his brother for as long as possible – for ever, if he can.

And now, I am outwitted. Je rage.

I have never been so unhappy. My heart feels all crushed. I see no help anywhere. I cannot in common decency go and seek Sir Adrian upon his island again, and so I sit and cry.

Immediately upon his arrival Tanty was closeted with Sir Adrian in the chamber allotted to her for so long a space of time that Rupert, watching below in an inward fever, now flung back in his chair biting his nails, now restlessly pacing the room from end to end, his mind working on the new problem, his ears strained to catch the least sound the while, was fain at last to ring and give orders for the immediate sounding of the dinner bell (a good hour before that meal might be expected) as the only chance of interrupting a conference which boded so ill to his plans. Meanwhile Madeleine sobbed out the story of her grief and joy on Molly's heart; and Miss Sophia, who thus inconsiderately arrested in the full congenial flow of a new grief, was thrown back upon her old sorrows for consolation, had felt impelled to pay a visit to the rector's grave with the watering-can, and an extra pocket-handkerchief.

Never perhaps since that worthy clergyman had gasped out his last struggling breath upon her bosom had she known more unmixed satisfaction than during those days when she hovered round poor prostrate Madeleine's bed and poured into her deaf ear the tale of her own woes and the assurances of her thoroughly understanding sympathy. She had been looking forward, with a chastened eagerness, to the arrival of the mourning, and had already derived a good deal of pleasure from the donning of certain aged weeds treasured in her wardrobe; it was therefore a distinct though quite unconscious disappointment when the news came which put an untimely end to all these funereal revels.

At the shrill clamour of the bell, as Rupert anticipated, Adrian emerged instantly from his aunt's room, and a simultaneous jingle of minor bells announced that the ladies' attention was in all haste being turned to toilet matters.

Whatever had passed between his good old relative and his sensitive brother, Rupert's quick appraising glance at the latter's face, as he went slowly down the corridor to his own specially reserved apartment, was sufficient to confirm the watcher in his misgiving that matters were not progressing as he might wish.

Sir Adrian seemed absorbed, it is true, in grave thought, but his countenance was neither distressed nor gloomy. With a spasm of fierce annoyance, and a bitter curse on the meddling of old females and young, Rupert had to admit that never had he seen his brother look more handsome, more master of the house and of himself, more sane.

A few minutes later the guests of Pulwick assembled in the library one by one, with the exception of Sophia, still watering the last resting-place of the Rev. Herbert Lee.

Adrian came first, closely followed by Tanty, who turned a marked shoulder upon her younger nephew and devoted all her attention to the elder – in which strained condition of affairs the conversation between the three was not likely to be lively. Next the sisters, attired alike in white, entered together, bringing a bright vision of youth and loveliness into the old room.

At sight of them Adrian sprang to his feet with a sudden sharp ejaculation, upon which the two girls halted on the threshold, half shy, half smiling. For the moment, in the shadow of the doorway, they were surprisingly like each other, the difference of colouring being lost in their curious similarity of contour.

My God, were there then two Céciles?

Beautiful, miraculous, consoling had been to the mourner in his loneliness the apparition of his dead love restored to life, every time his eyes had fallen upon Molly during these last few blessed days; but this new development was only like a troublous mocking dream.

Tanty turned in startled amazement. She could feel the shudder that shook his frame, through the hand with which he still unconsciously grasped at the back of her chair. An irrepressible smile crept to Rupert's lips.

The little interlude could not have lasted more than a few seconds when Molly, recovering her usual self-possession, came boldly forward, leading her sister by the tips of her fingers.

"Cousin Adrian," she said, "my sister Madeleine has many things to say to you in thanks for your care of my valuable person, but just now she is too bashful to be able to utter one quarter of them."

As the girls emerged into the room, and the light from the great windows struck upon Madeleine's fair curls and the delicate pallor of her cheek; as she extended her hand, and raised to Adrian's face, while she dropped her pretty curtsey, the gaze of two unconsciously plaintive blue eyes, the man dashed the sweat from his brow with a gesture of relief.

Nothing could be more unlike the dark beauty of the ghost of his dreams or its dashing presentment now smiling confidently upon him from Tanty's side.

He took the little hand with tender pressure: Cécile's daughter must be precious to him in any case. Madeleine, moreover, had a certain appealing grace that was apt to steal the favour that Molly won by storm.

"But, indeed, I could never tell Sir Adrian how grateful I am," said she, with a timidity that became her as thoroughly as Molly's fearlessness suited her own stronger personality.

At the sound of her voice, again the distressful nightmare-like feeling seized Sir Adrian's soul.

Of all characteristics that, as the phrase is, "go in families," voices are generally the most peculiarly generic.

When Molly first addressed Sir Adrian, it had been to him as a voice from the grave; now Madeleine's gentle speech tripped forth upon that self-same note – Cécile's own voice!

And next Molly caught up the sound, and then Madeleine answered again. What they said, he could not tell; these ghosts – these speaking ghosts – brought back the old memories too painfully. It was thus Cécile had spoken in the first arrogance of her dainty youth and loveliness; and in those softer tones when sorrow and work and failure had subdued her proud spirit. And now she laughs; and hark, the laugh is echoed! Sir Adrian turns as if to seek some escape from this strange form of torture, meets Rupert's eye and instinctively braces himself into self-control.

"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, in her comfortable, commonplace, cheerful tone: "This dinner bell of yours, Adrian, has raised false hopes, which seem to tarry in their fulfilment. What are we waiting for, may I ask?"

Adrian looked at his brother.

"Rupert, you know, my dear aunt," he said, "has the ordering of these matters."

"Sophia is yet absent," quoth Rupert drily, "but we can proceed without her, if my aunt wishes."

"Pooh, yes. Sophia!" snorted Miss O'Donoghue, grasping Sir Adrian's arm to show herself quite ready for the march, "Sophia! We all know what she is. Why, my dear Adrian, she'll never hear the bell till it has stopped this half hour."

"Dinner," cried Rupert sharply to the butler, whom his pull of the bell-rope had summoned. And dinner being served, the guests trooped into that dining-room which was full of such associations to Sir Adrian. It was a little thing, but, nevertheless, intensely galling to Rupert to have to play second gentleman, and give up his privileges as host to his brother. Usually indeed Adrian cared too little to stand upon his rights, and insisted upon Rupert's continuing to act in his presence as he did in his absence; but this afternoon Tanty had left him no choice.

Nevertheless, as Mr. Landale sat down between the sisters, and turned smiling to address first one and then the other, it would have taken a very practised eye to discern under the extra urbanity of his demeanour the intensity of his inward mortification. He talked a great deal and exerted himself to make the sisters talk likewise, bantering Molly into scornful and eager retorts, and preventing Madeleine from relapsing into that state of dreaminess out of which the rapid succession of her recent sorrow and joy had somewhat shaken her.

The girls were both excited, both ready to laugh and jest. Tanty, satisfied to see Adrian preside at the head of the table with a grave, courteous, and self-contained manner that completely fulfilled her notions of what family dignity required of him, cracked her jokes, ate her dinner, and quaffed her cup with full enjoyment, laughing indulgently at her grand-nieces' sallies, and showing as marked a disfavour to Rupert as she deemed consistent with good manners.

The poor old lady little guessed how the workings in each brother's mind were all the while, silently but inevitably, tending towards the destruction of her newly awakened hopes.

There was silence between Sir Adrian and Rupert when at last they were left alone together. The elder's gaze wandering in space, his absent hand softly beating the table, his relaxed frame – all showed that his mind was far away from thought of the younger's presence. The relief to be delivered from the twin echoes of a haunting voice – once the dearest on earth to him – was immense. But his whole being was still quivering under the first acuteness of so disturbing an impression.

His years of solitude, moreover, had ill prepared him for social intercourse; the laughter, the clash of conversation, the noise on every side, the length of the meal, the strain to maintain a fit and proper attitude as host, had tried to the utmost nerves by nature hypersensitive.

Rupert, who had leisure to study the suddenly lined and tired lineaments of the abstracted countenance before him, noted with self-congratulation the change that a few hours seemed to have wrought upon it, and decided that the moment had come to strike.

"So, Adrian," he said, looking down demurely as he spoke into the glass of wine he had been toying with – Rupert was an abstemious man. "So, Adrian, you have been playing the chivalrous rôle of rescuer of distressed damsels – squire of dames and what not. The last one would have ascribed to you at least at this end of your life. Ha," throwing up his head with a mirthless laugh; "how little any of us would have thought what a blessing in disguise your freak of self-exile was destined to become to us!"

At the sound of the incisive voice Adrian had returned with a slight shiver from distant musing to the consciousness of the other's presence.