"It don't matter what I wear," she murmured to herself. "'Taint looks I'm a-thinking of now, but I may as well look my best when I go to him.

Once he thought me pretty. That awful evening down by the brook when I gathered the forget-me-nots--I saw his thought in his eyes then--he thought well of me then. Maybe he will again this evening. Anyhow I'll wear the hat."

At dinner time Hetty once more resumed the role of an invalid, and Vincent was charmed to find her reclining on the settle and pretending to read the yellow-backed novel.

"Here's a brace of young pigeons," he said; "I shot 'em an hour ago. You shall have 'em cooked up tasty for supper. You want fattening and coaxing a bit. Ah, dinner ready; just what I like, corned beef and cabbage. I am hungry and no mistake."

Susan had now left the house to return to her ordinary duties, and the husband and wife were alone. Hetty declared herself much better; in fact, quite well. She drew her chair close to Vincent, and talked to him while he ate.

"Now I call this real cosy," he said. "Ef you try a bit harder you'll soon do the real thing, Het; you'll love me for myself."

"Seems like it," answered Hetty. "George, you don't mind my going down to see aunt this afternoon, do you?"

She brought out her words coolly, but Vincent's suspicions were instantly aroused.

"Turn round and look at me," he said.

She did so bravely.

"You don't go outside the farm to-day, and that's flat," he said. "We won't argufy on that point any more; you stop at 'ome to-day. Ef you're a good girl and try to please me I'll harness the horse to the gig this evening, and take yer for a bit of a drive."

"I'd like that," answered Hetty submissively. She bent down as she spoke to pick up a piece of bread. She knew perfectly well that Vincent would not allow her to keep her appointment with Squire. But that appointment must be kept; if in no other way, by guile.

Hetty thought and thought. She was too excited to do little more than pick her food, and Vincent showered attentions and affectionate words upon her. At last he rose from his seat.

"Well, I've 'ad a hearty meal," he cried. "I'll be in again about four o'clock; you might have a cup o' tea ready for me."

"No, I won't," said Hetty; "tea is bad for you; you're up so early, and you're dead for sleep, and it's sleep you ought to have. You come home about four, and I'll give you a gla.s.s o' stout."

"Stout?" said the farmer--he was particularly partial to that beverage--"I didn't know there was any stout in the house," he continued.

"Yes," she replied, laughing gayly, "the little cask which we didn't open at Christmas; it's in the pantry, and you shall have a foaming gla.s.s when you come in at four; go off now, George, and I'll have it ready for you."

"All right," he said; "why, you're turning into a model wife; quite anxious about me--at least, it seems like it. Well, I'll turn up for my stout, more particular ef you'll give me a kiss along wi' it."

He went away, and Hetty watched him as he crossed the farmyard; her cheeks were flushed, and her heart beat high. She had made up her mind.

She would drug the stout.

Vincent was neither a lazy nor a sleepy man; he worked hard from early morning until late at night, indulging in no excesses of any kind, and preferring tea as a rule to any other beverage; but stout, good stout, such as Hetty had in the little cask, was his one weakness; he did like a big draught of that.

"He shall have a sleep," said Hetty to herself. "It'll do him a power of good. The first time I swallered a few drops of aunt's toothache cure I slept for eight hours without moving. Lor! how bad I felt afore I went off, and how nice and soothed when I awoke. Seemed as if I couldn't be cross for ever so long. George shall sleep while I'm away. I'll put some of the nice black stuff in his stout--the stuff that gives dreams--he'll have a long rest, and I can go and return and he'll never know nothing about it."

She made all her preparations with prompt.i.tude and cunning. First, she opened the cask, and threw away the first gla.s.s she drew from it. She then tasted the beverage, which turned out, as she expected it would, to be of excellent quality. Hetty saw in imagination her husband draining off one or two gla.s.ses. Presently she heard his step in the pa.s.sage, and ran quickly to the pantry where the stout was kept, concealing the little bottle of laudanum in her pocket. She poured what she thought a small but safe dose into the jug, and then filled it up with stout. Her face was flushed, and her eyes very bright, when she appeared in the kitchen with the jug and gla.s.s on a tray. Vincent was hot and dead tired.

"Here you are, little woman," he cried. "Why, if you ain't a sort o'

ministering angel, I don't know who is. Well, I'm quite ready for that ere drink o' your'n."

Hetty filled his gla.s.s to the brim. It frothed slightly, and looked, as Vincent expressed it, prime. He raised it to his lips, drained it to the dregs, and returned it to her. She filled it again.

"Come, come," he said, smiling, and half-winking at her, and then casting a longing glance at the stout, "ain't two gla.s.ses o'er much."

"Not a bit of it," she answered. "You're to go to sleep, you know."

"Well, p'raps I can spare an hour, and I am a bit drowsy."

"You're to lie right down on the settle, and go off to sleep. I'll wake you when it is time."

He drank off another gla.s.s.

"You won't run away to that aunt o' your'n while I'm drowsing?" he said.

"No," she replied. "I would not do a shabby sort of trick like that."

He took her hand in his, and a moment later had closed his eyes. Once or twice he opened them to gaze fondly at her, but presently the great, roughly hewn face settled down into repose. Hetty bent over him, laid her cheek against his, and felt his forehead. He never stirred. She then listened to his breathing, which was perfectly quiet and light.

"He's gone off like a baby. That's wonderful stuff in aunt's bottle,"

muttered Hetty. Finally, she threw a shawl of her own over him, drew down the blind of the nearest window, and went on tiptoe out of the kitchen.

"He'll sleep for hours. I did," she said to herself.

She put the little bottle back into its place in the dairy and moved softly about the house. She was to meet the Squire at six. It was now five o'clock. It would take her the best part of an hour to walk to the Court. She went up to her room, put on her hat, and as she was leaving the house, once again entered the kitchen. Vincent's face was pale now--he was in a dead slumber. She heard his breathing, a little quick and stertorous, but he was always a heavy breather, and she thought nothing about it. She left the house smiling to herself at the clever trick she had played on her husband. She was going to meet the Squire now. Her heart beat with rapture.

CHAPTER XXI.

Awdrey's cure was complete; he had pa.s.sed right through the doom of his house, and got out on the other side. He was the first man of his race who had ever done that; the others had forgotten as he forgot, and had pined, and dwindled, and slipped and slipped lower and lower down in the scale of life until at last they had dropped over the brink into the Unknown beyond. Awdrey's downward career had been stopped just in time.

His recovery had been quite as marvellous as his complaint. When he saw his own face reflected in the pond on Salisbury Plain the cloud had risen from his brain and he remembered what he had done. In that instant his mental sky grew clear and light. He himself had murdered Horace Frere; he had not done it intentionally, but he had done it; another man was suffering in his stead; he himself was the murderer. He knew this absolutely, completely, clearly, but at first he felt no mental pain of any sort. A natural instinct made him desirous to keep his knowledge to himself, but his conscience sat light within him, and did not speak at all. He was now anxious to conceal his emotions from the doctor; his mind had completely recovered its balance, and he found this possible.

Rumsey was as fully astonished at the cure as he had been at the disease; he accompanied Awdrey back to London next day, and told Margaret what a marvellous thing had occurred. Awdrey remembered all about his son; he was full of grief for his loss; he was kind and loving to his wife; he was no longer morose; no longer sullen and apathetic; in short, his mental and physical parts were once again wide awake; but the strange and almost inexplicable thing in his cure was that his moral part still completely slumbered. This fact undoubtedly did much to establish his mental and physical health, giving him time to recover his lost ground.

Rumsey did not profess to understand the case, but now that Awdrey had quite come back from the borderland of insanity, he advised that ordinary remedies should immediately be resorted to; he told Margaret that in a few months her husband would be as fully and completely able to attend to the duties of life as any other man of his day and station.

He did not believe, he said, that the strange attack through which Awdrey had pa.s.sed was ever likely to return to him! Margaret and her husband shut up their house in town, and went abroad; they spent the winter on the continent, and day by day Awdrey's condition, both physical and mental, became more satisfactory. He slept well, he ate well; soon he began to devour books and newspapers; to absorb himself in the events of the day; to take a keen interest in politics; the member for Grandcourt died, and Awdrey put up for the const.i.tuency. He was obliged to return suddenly to England on this account, and to Margaret's delight elected to come back at once to live at the Court. The whole thing was arranged quickly. Awdrey was to be nominated as the new candidate for Grandcourt; he was to have, too, his rightful position as the Squire on his own property. Friends from all round the country rejoiced in his recovery, as they had sincerely mourned over his strange and inexplicable illness. He was welcomed with rejoicing, and came back something as a king would to take possession of his kingdom.

On the night therefore, that he returned to the Court, the higher part of his being began to stir uneasily within him. He had quite agreed to Margaret's desire to invite Mrs. Everett to meet them on their return, but he read a certain expression in the widow's sad eyes, and a certain look on Hetty's face, which stirred into active remorse the conscience which had suffered more severely than anything else in the ordeal through which he had lived. It was now awake within him, and its voice was very poignant and keen; its notes were clear, sharp, and unremitting.

In his excellent physical and mental health his first impulse was to defy the voice of conscience, and to live down the deed he had committed. His first wish was to hide its knowledge from all the world, and to go down to his own grave in the course of time with his secret unconfessed. He did not believe it possible, at least at first, that the moral voice within could not be easily silenced; but even on the first night of his awakening he was conscious of a change in himself. The sense of satisfaction, of complete enjoyment in life and all its surroundings which had hitherto done so much for his recovery, was now absent; he was conscious, intensely conscious, of his own hypocrisy, and he began vehemently to hate and detest himself. All the same, his wish was to hide the thing, to allow Mrs. Everett to go down to the grave with a broken heart--to allow Everett to drink the cup of suffering and dishonor to the dregs.

Awdrey slept little during the first night of his return home. In the morning he arose to the full fact that he must either carry a terrible secret to his grave, or must confess all and bear the punishment which was now awarded to another. His strong determination on that first morning was to keep his secret. He went downstairs, putting a full guard upon himself. Margaret saw nothing amiss with him--his face was full of alertness, keenness, interest in life, interest in his fellow-creatures.

Only Mrs. Everett, at breakfast that morning, without understanding it, read the defiance, the veiled meaning in his eyes. He went away presently, and spent the day in going about his property, seeing his const.i.tuents, and arranging the different steps he must take to insure his return at the head of the poll. As he went from house to house, however, the new knowledge which he now possessed of himself kept following him. On all hands he was being welcomed and rejoiced over, but he knew in his heart of hearts he was a hypocrite of the basest and lowest type. He was allowing another man to suffer in his stead. That was the cruellest stab of all; it was that which hara.s.sed him, for it was contrary to all the traditions of his house and name. His mental health was now so perfect that he was able to see with a wonderfully clear perception what would happen to himself if he refused to listen to the voice of conscience. In the past, while the cloud was over his brain, he had undergone terrible mental and physical deterioration; he would now undergo moral deterioration. The time might come when conscience would cease to trouble him, but then, as far as his soul was concerned, he would be lost. He knew all this, and hated himself profoundly, nevertheless his determination grew stronger and stronger to guard his secret at all hazards. The possibility that the truth might out, notwithstanding all his efforts to conceal it, had not occurred to him, to add to his anxieties.

The day, a lovely one in late spring, had been one long triumph. Awdrey was a.s.sured that his election was a foregone conclusion. He tried to think of himself in the House; he was aware of the keenness and freshness of his own intellect; he thought it quite possible that his name might be a power in the future government of England. He fully intended to take his rightful position. For generations men of his name and family had sat in the House and done good work there--men of his name and family had also fought for their country both on land and sea.

Yes, it was his bounden duty now to live for the honor of the old name; to throw up the sponge now, to admit all now would be madness--the worst folly of which a man could be capable. It was his duty to think of Margaret, to think of his property, his tenants, all that was involved in his own life.

Everett and Mrs. Everett would a.s.suredly suffer; but what of that if many others were saved from suffering? Yes, it was his bounden duty to live now for the honor of the old name; he had also his descendants to think of. True his child was gone, but other children would in all probability yet be his--he must think of them. Yes, the future lay before him; he must carry the burden of that awful secret, and he would carry it so closely pressed to his innermost heart that no one should guess by look, word, manner, by a gloomy eye, by an unsmiling lip, that its weight was on him. He would be gay, he would be brave, he would banish grief, he would try to banish remorse, he would live his life as best he could.

"I must pay the cost some day," he muttered to himself. "I put off the payment, and that is best. There is a tribunal, at the bar of which I shall doubtless receive full sentence; but that is all in the future; I accept the penalty; I will reap the wages by and by. Yes, I'll keep my secret to the death. The girl, Hetty, knows about it, but she must be silenced."

Awdrey rode quickly home in the sweet freshness of the lovely spring evening. He remembered that he was to meet Hetty; the meeting would be difficult and also of some importance, but he would be guarded, he would manage to silence her, to quiet her evident fears. Hetty was a guileless, affectionate, and pretty girl; she had been wonderfully true to him; he must be good to her, for she had suffered for his sake. It would be best to make an excuse to send Hetty and her husband to Canada; Vincent, who was a poor man, would doubtless be glad to emigrate with good prospects. Yes, they must go; it would be unpleasant meeting Hetty, knowing what she knew. Mrs. Everett must also not again be his guest; her presence irritated him, he disliked meeting her eyes; and yet he knew that while she was in the house he dared not shirk their glance; her presence and the knowledge that her pain was killing her made the sharp voice within him speak more loudly than he could quite bear. Yes, Mrs. Everett must go, and Hetty must go, and--what was this memory which made him draw up his horse abruptly?--his lost walking-stick. Ridiculous that such a trifle should worry a man all through his life; how it had haunted him all during the six years when the cloud was over his brain.