The leading fact, at any rate, and the key to all the mischief, was, that the entail had never been barred at all: the legal process (called a "recovery") which was to have had that effect, being null and void through some absurd informality. They told me something about a tenant to a precipice, but they must have made a mistake, for there was no precipice on the estate, unless some cliffs near the church could be called so, and they were never let.
Be that as it may, my father"s will was declared to be waste paper, except as regarded what they called the personalty, or, in good English, the money he had to bequeath. And of this there was very little, for, shortly before his death, he had spent large sums in drainage, farm-buildings, and other improvements. Furthermore, he had always maintained a profuse hospitality, and his charity was most lavish. The lawyers told us that, under the circ.u.mstances (a favourite expression of theirs when they mean some big robbery), a court of equity would perhaps consider our application to be "recupped," as they called it, out of the estate, for the money laid out in improvements under a false impression.
But we had been cupped enough already. Grossly plundered by legal jargon, robbed by statute, and scourged by scriveners" traditions, we flung away in disgust the lint the bandits offered, and left them "all estate, right, t.i.tle, interest, and claim, whether at law or in equity, in to or out of" the licking of our blood.
But now my long suspicions, and never-discarded conviction of my guardian"s guilt, were, by summary process, not only revived, but redoubled. This arose partly from the discovery of the stake he had on my father"s life, and partly, perhaps, from a feeling of hatred towards our supplanter. That he knew not till now the flaw in our t.i.tle, and his own superior claim, was more than I could believe. I felt sure that he had gained this knowledge while in needy circ.u.mstances and sharp legal practice, brought, as he then most probably was, into frequent contact with the London agents who had the custody of the doc.u.ments.
To be in the same room with him, was now more than I could bear, and it became impossible that we should live any longer in the same house. He, indeed, wished, or feigned to wish, that we should remain there, and even showed some reluctance to urge his unrighteous rights. But neither my mother (who bore the shock with strange resignation) nor myself would hear of any compromise, or take a farthing at his hands, and he was too proud and stern to press upon us his compunctions.
Statements of our case had been prepared and submitted to three most eminent conveyancers, and the three opinions had been found to agree, except upon some trivial points. More than two months had been thus consumed, and it was now once more the anniversary of my father"s death.
I had spent the time in narrowly watching my ex-guardian"s conduct, though keeping aloof, as much as possible, from any intercourse with him.
One night, I stole into the room which he called his study, and where (with a child"s simplicity) I believed him to keep his private doc.u.ments. Through Thomas Kenwood, to whom I now confided almost everything, and whose suspicions were even stronger than mine, I obtained clandestine possession of the keys of the large bureau. As I stood before that ma.s.sive repository in the dead of night, the struggle within me was intense and long. What letters, what journals, doc.u.ments, or momentous relics of a thousand kinds, might be lurking here, waiting only for a daughter"s hand to turn the lock, and cast the light she bore on the death-warrant of her father! How easy then to s.n.a.t.c.h away the proof, clutching it, though it should burn the hand or bosom, to wave it, with a triumph wilfully prolonged, before the eyes of justice"s dull-visioned ministers; and then to see, without a shudder or a thrill of joy, but with the whole soul gazing, the slow, struggling, ghastly expiation. As this thought came crawling through my heart, lighting up its depth as would a snake of fire, the buhl before me grew streaks of blood, and the heavy crossbars a gallows. I lifted my hand to open the outer lock. Already the old cruciform key was trembling in the silver scutcheon. I raised the lamp in my left hand to show the lunette guard which curved above the hole, when a heavy ma.s.s all cold and dark fell across my eyes. I started, and thought for the moment, in my strong excitement, that it was my father"s hand. One instant more, and, through the trembling of my senses, I saw that it was only a thick fold of my long black hair, shaken down on the face by my bending and quivering posture. But the check was enough. A Vaughan, and that the last one of so proud and frank a race, to be prowling meanly, with a stolen tool, to violate confidence, and pry through letters! No suspicion, however strong, nothing short of certainty (if even that) could warrant it. Driven away by shame combined with superst.i.tion, I glided from the cold silent room, and restored the keys to my faithful friend, whom I had left in the pa.s.sage, ordering him at once to replace them, and never touch them again.
"Well, miss," he whispered, with a smile, "I knew you couldn"t do it, because I seemed, somehow, it wasn"t like a Vaughan."
We were already preparing to quit the house, no longer ours, when our dismissal became abrupt, through another act of mine. What drove me to such a wild deed I can scarcely tell. Shame, perhaps, for the furtive nature of my last attempt hurried me into the other extreme; and now I was so shaken by conflicting impulse, that nothing was too mad for me.
On the seventh anniversary of my father"s death, and the last which I was likely ever to spend beneath that roof, I pa.s.sed the whole day in alternate sadness and pa.s.sion, in the bedroom where he died. All the relics I possessed, both of his love and of his death, I brought thither; and spread them out, and wept upon the one, and prayed upon the other. I also brought my choicest histories of murder and revenge, and pored over them by the waning daylight and the dull lamp, and so on through the night, until my mind became the soul"s jetsam.
Then I procured four very large wax candles, and lit them at the head of the bed, two on each side, and spread a long white cloth between, as if my father were lying in state; and hung a row of shorter lights above, to illuminate the letters of blood. Then I took a small alarum clock, given me by dear father, that I might rise for early walks with him, and set it upon a chest by the door, and fixed it so as to ring five minutes before the hour at which the murder befell. A cold presentiment crawled through me that, at the fatal time, I should see the a.s.sa.s.sin. After all these arrangements I took my volume again, and sat in the shade of the curtain, with a strong light on the page. I was deep in some horrible record, and creeping with terror and hope, when the clear bell rang a long and startling peal. I leaped up, like one shot through the heart, and what I did was without design or purpose. My glance fell on the dagger; I caught it up, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the lamp, and hurried down corridor and staircase, straight to my guardian"s private room.
He was sitting at the table, for he never pa.s.sed that night in bed. At the sound of the lock he leaped up, and pointed a pistol, then hid it.
Straight up to him I went, as swiftly and quietly as a spirit, and spoke:
"Seven years ago, at this very moment, my father was killed. Do you know this dagger?" He started back, as if I had stabbed him with it, then covered his eyes with both hands.
"You know it, then?" I said, with a triumph chill all over me. "It was your hand that used it."
Another moment, and I should have struck him with it. I lifted it in my frenzy; when he looked at me by some wonderful effort, calmly, steadily, even coldly. "Yes," he said, "I have seen that weapon before. Alas my poor dear brother!"
Whether it was true feeling that made his voice so low and deep, or only fierce self-control, I knew not then, nor tried to think.
"You know who owned it?" I asked, with my life upon his answer.
"Yes. I know who owned it once; but many years ago. And I know not in the least what is become of him now."
The baffled fury and prostrate hope--for at the moment I fully believed him--were too much for my reeling brain and fasting body. For one minute"s command of my faculties, I would have sold them for ever; but I felt them ebbing from me, as the life does from a wound. The hemispheres of my brain were parting one from the other, and a grey void spreading between them. I tried to think, but could not. I strove to say _anything_, but failed. Fainter and fainter grew the room, the lamp, the ceiling, the face at which I tried to look. Things went to and fro with a quicker quiver, like flame in the wind, then, round and round like whirling water; my mouth grew stiff, and the tongue between my teeth felt like a glove; and with a rush of sound in my brain and throat, and a scream pent up, yet bursting, I fell, as I thought, through the earth. I was only on the floor, in a fit.
When I came to myself, I was in my own bed, and my own dear mother bending over me, pale, and haggard, and full of tears. The broad daylight was around us, and the faint sunshine on her face. She had been with me ever since. In my weakness, I looked up at her with a pang of self-reproach, to think how little I had valued her love; and I vowed to myself to make up for it by future care and devotion.
That violent convulsion, and the illness after it, changed me not a little both in mind and body.
CHAPTER XI.
It was indeed high time for me to cherish my mother. Her pain at leaving the place where she had known her little all of happiness--for her childhood had been overcast with trouble--her pain was so acute and overpowering that all my deep impa.s.sioned feelings sunk reproved before it.
My guardian now seemed much embittered against me, and anxious for our departure. He came once or twice, in my illness, to ask for and to see me; and he brought back, unperceived by any one, the weapon for which I raved. But ere I was quite recovered, he wrote, requesting to see me on business in his study. I could not speak yet without pain, having bitten my tongue severely.
"Your mother shall have a home here," he said, "as long as ever she wants one; but as for you, malignant or mad, I will try no more to soften you. When first I saw you in your early childhood, you flew at me as a murderer. Soon after you ransacked my cupboards and stole my boots, to compare them with some impressions or casts you kept. Yes, you look astonished. I never told you of it, but I knew it for all that. Of those absurdities I thought little, for I regarded them as the follies of a mad child, and I pitied you deeply, and even liked you for your filial devotion. But now I find that you have grown up in the same belief, and you dare even now to avow it. You know that I have no fear of you."
"Then why had you got that pistol?"
I saw that he was vexed and surprised at my having perceived it.
"In a house like this, where such deeds have been done, I think it right to be armed. Do you think if I had feared you, or your evidence, I would have restored that dagger?"
"Whose was it?"
"I told you the other night that I once saw a weapon like it, for which at first I mistook it, but closer examination convinced me of the difference."
"How does it differ?"
"In this. There was no snake on the handle of the other, though there was the cross on the blade."
"And where did you see the other?"
"Some day I will tell you. It is not right to do so now."
"Not convenient to you, I suppose you mean."
"I have also shown you that the lock of hair found in your poor mother"s hand is much finer and more silky than mine; and you know that I cannot draw on my foot a boot so small as the one whose impression you have.
But I am ashamed of myself for having stooped to such proofs as these.
Dare you to look at me and suppose that I with my own hand could have stabbed my brother, a brother so kind and good to me, and for whose sake alone I have borne so long with you?"
He tried to look me down. I have met but one whose gaze could master mine; and he was not that one.
"So, you doubt me still? Are your things packed?"
"Yes, and my mother"s."
"Then if your mother is well enough, and will not let you leave her, you had better go next week."
"No," I replied, "we will go to-morrow."
"Wilful to the last. So be it. Take this; you cannot refuse it in duty to your mother."
He put in my hand an order for a large sum of money. I threw it into the fire.
"There have been criminals," I exclaimed, "who have suffered from a life-long fear, lest the widow and orphans, starved through their crime, should compa.s.s their dying bed. Though we starve in a garret, we touch no bread of yours."
"Bravo, Miss Melodrame. You need never starve in the present state of the stage."
"That I don"t understand; but this I do. It is perhaps the last time I shall ever see you living. Whether you did that deed or not is known to G.o.d, and you, and possibly one other. But whether you did it or not, I know it is on your soul. Your days are wretched, your nights are troubled. You shall die as your brother died, but not so prepared for death."