To have turned, to have intercepted the creeping figure in its work, and thus have known definitely and forever which one of you had thus furtively visited my medicine cabinet before proceeding to my bedside, might have been the natural course with some; but it was not my course. I was not content just to interrupt. I wanted to know the full extent of what I had to fear. A remark which Dr. Bennett had once let fall recurred to me, transfixing me to my bed. "If you were not a careful man," he had said in diagnosing my present illness, "I should say that you had taken something foreign into your system; something which has no business there; something which under other circ.u.mstances and in another man's case I should denominate _poison_." It had seemed nonsense to me at the time, and I laughed at what I considered a fatuous remark, uttered with unnecessary gravity; but now that there was really poison in the house, and one of my own blood stood hiding behind the screen within a foot of my medicine gla.s.s, I could not but choke down the cry which this thought caused to rise in my throat and listen for what might come. Alas! I was destined to behold with my eyes as well as hear with my ears the next move made by my unknown visitant. By the grace of G.o.d or through some coincidence equally providential, the gas at this momentous instant was relit in the hall, and I perceived, amid the old shadows thus called out upon the wall, a new one--that of a hand holding a bottle, which, projecting itself beyond the straight line cast by the screen, was now stealing slowly but surely in the direction of the table on which stood my gla.s.s of medicine. I did not gasp or cry. Thought, feeling, consciousness even of my own unfathomable misery seemed lost in the one instinct--to watch that hand. Would it falter? Should I see it tremble or hesitate in its short pa.s.sage across the faintly illumined s.p.a.ce upon which my eyes were fixed? Yes, some monition of conscience, some secret fear or filial remembrance made it pause for an instant; but even as my heart bounded in glad relief and human feelings began to re-awake in my frozen breast, it steadied and pa.s.sed on, and though I could no longer see aught but a shadowy arm, I could hear one--two--three--a dozen drops falling into my drink--a sound which, faint as it was, made the guilty heart behind the screen quake; for the hand shook as it retreated, and I beheld distinctly outlined on the illumined s.p.a.ce before me the end of the semi-detached label which marked the special bottle on which the word _poison_ is printed in large letters.

No further doubt was possible. The medicine in my gla.s.s had been strengthened and by the hand of one of my sons.

Which one?

In the misery of the moment I felt as if I did not care.

That any of you should seek my death was an overwhelming grief to me. But as thought and reason returned, the wild desire to know just what and whom I had to fear seized me in the midst of my horror, mixed with another sentiment harder to explain, and which I can best characterise as a feeling of dread lest I should betray my suspicions and so raise between my children and myself an insurmountable barrier.

Subduing my emotion and summoning to my aid all the powers of acting with which I have been by nature endowed, I moved restlessly under the clothes, calling out in a sort of sleepy alarm:

"Who's there? Is it you, George? If so, reach me my medicine."

But no George stepped forth.

"Leighton?" I cried petulantly. "Surely I hear one of you in the room." But my son Leighton did not reply.

I did not call for Alfred. I could not! He was the last son of his mother.

Did I wrong the others in not uttering his name also?

Meantime all was quiet behind the screen. Then I heard a quick movement, followed by the shutting of a door, and I realised that an escape had been effected from the room in a way I had not calculated on--that is, by means of the dressing-room opening out of the alcove in which my bed stands.

I had thought myself a weak man up to that hour; but when I heard that door close, I bounded to my feet and attempted to reach the hall before the man who had thus escaped me could find refuge in any of the adjoining rooms. But I must have fallen insensible almost immediately, for when I came to myself I found the foot-board of the bed within reach of my hand, and the clock on the point of striking two.

I dragged myself up and staggered back to bed. I had neither the courage nor the strength to push the matter further at that time. Indeed, I felt a sort of physical fear, probably the result of illness, which made it quite impossible for me to traverse the halls and creep from room to room seeking for guilt in eyes whose expression up to this unhallowed hour had betrayed nothing worse than a reckless disregard of my wishes.

Yet it was torment unspeakable to lie there in an uncertainty which threw a cloud over all my sons. For hours my thoughts ran the one gamut, George, Leighton, Alfred, clinging agonisedly to each beloved name in turn, only to drop into a dreadful uncertainty as I remembered the temptations besetting each one of you, and the readiness with which you all, from the oldest to the youngest, have ever succ.u.mbed to them. There was no determining point in the character of any of you which made me able to say in this solitary and awful communion with my own fears, "This one at least is innocent!" If I dwelt on George's generous good nature, I also recalled his wild extravagance and the debts he so recklessly heaps up at every turn he makes in this G.o.d-forsaken city; if some recollection of Leighton's strict ways in open matters of conscience came to soothe me, there instantly came with it the remembrance of the various tales which had reached my ears of certain secret attachments which drew him into circles where crime is more than a suggestion, and murder a possible attendant upon every feast. Then Alfred--youngest of all but the least youthful in his att.i.tude towards the world and his fellow-men--what honourable ambition had he ever shown calculated to give me solace at this awful time, and make the a.s.sociation of his name with a d.a.m.nable crime an impossibility and an outrage?

Meanwhile, my whole mental vision was clouded with the pictured remembrances of your faces as seen in childhood, in early youth, or at any other time, indeed, than the intolerable present. George's, when he brought home his first school medal; Leighton's, when he denied himself a new pair of skates that he might give the money to a crying street urchin; Alfred's, when the fever left him and his cheeks grew rosy again with renewed health. All these young and innocent faces crowded about me, awakening poignant suggestions of the change which a few short, short years had wrought in relations which once seemed warm and alive with promise. Then, a group of frank-eyed boys; now,--this awful question: _which?_

It was not till an hour had pa.s.sed that I remembered that the phial had not been returned to the cabinet. In whose possession would it be found? Should I have a search made for it? I turned cold in bed at the debasing, the intolerable prospect of acting as detective in my own house.

Then the poisoned gla.s.s! it still stood beside me; if I left it untouched it would show suspicion on my part, and suspicion might precipitate my doom. How could I avoid taking it without raising doubts as to my discovery of the trick which had been played so near me? In the feverish condition of my mind but one plan suggested itself. Throwing out my arm, I precipitated the gla.s.s to the floor, over which I heard it roll, with extraordinary sensations. Then I waited for daybreak, in much the same condition of mind in which a man awaits his last hour; for my heart yearned over my sons even while panting under the consciousness that one of them was a monster of ingrat.i.tude and innate depravity.

When Hewson and the girls came down, and I heard the stir of life in the house, I rang my bell and asked for Hope. She came in with beaming face and a smile full of happiness. She had risen from a beauty sleep and, possibly because my thoughts had been so dark, I had never seen her look so bright and lovely. But her cheeks paled as she approached my bedside and noticed my miserable appearance; and it was with sudden anxiety she cried:

"What a wretched night you must have had, uncle! You look poorly this morning. You should have sent for me before."

Again I summoned up all my powers of acting.

"I knocked over my medicine in the night. Perhaps that is why I look so wretched. I did not sleep after four. You can say so, if any of the boys ask after me at the breakfast table."

With a woman's solicitude she moved around to my side, where the screen stood.

"Why, what's this?" she exclaimed, stooping as her foot encountered some small object.

I expected her to lift the gla.s.s. Instead of that she lifted the bottle. It had been left there on the floor and not carried out of the room, as I had naturally supposed.

I endeavoured to look undisturbed and as if this bottle had been thrown over with the gla.s.s, but I failed pitiably. At the sight of her dear, womanly face and the affection beaming in every look, I broke down and raised my arms imploringly towards her.

"Come to my arms!" I prayed. "Let me feel one true head on my breast."

The next minute I was conscious of having said a word too much. Her look, which you all know and love, changed, and, while she submitted to my caresses and even warmly returned them, it was with an appearance of doubt which I almost cursed myself for having roused in that innocent breast.

"Why one true heart?" she repeated. "Are there not others in this house? George and Alfred love you devotedly; and little Claire--what child could show more fondness for a grandfather than she?"

Why had she not included Leighton?

I endeavoured to right myself with some mechanical phrase or other, but the attempt was not very successful, and she was leaving the room in great disturbance when I called her hurriedly back.

"I want you to smile as usual," I gravely enjoined.

"George's extravagances and Alfred's caprices are no new story to you. I have been thinking about them, that is all, but I had rather they did not know it."

I could not mention Leighton's name, either.

Meantime she was standing there with the poison bottle in her hand. I could not bear to look at it, and motioned her to restore it to the cabinet. As she did so, I perceived her turn with half-open lips, as if about to ask some question.

But she either lacked the courage or the will to do so, for she proceeded to the cabinet with the bottle, which she placed quietly on the shelf. But almost instantly she took it up again.

"Why, uncle," she cried, "there is not as much here as there ought to be! I am sure the bottle was half full last night."

And then I remembered it was she who prepared my medicine for me.

"And I left it on the shelf," she went on. "Uncle, how came it to be lying by the side of your bed? Did you try to strengthen the dose? You know you ought not to; Dr. Bennett said that three drops in half a gla.s.s of water were all you could take with safety."

I had not a word to say. My mind seemed a blank, and no excuse presented itself. The wish which I had openly cherished of seeing Hope married to one of my sons clogged my faculties. My protest confined itself to a slow shake of the head and a dubious smile she was far from understanding.

"I think I will stay with you," she gently suggested.

"Nellie will bring my breakfast up with yours, and we can have a _tete-a-tete_ meal at your bedside."

But this did not chime in with my plans.

"No," said I. "Nellie can stay with me if you wish, but I want you to go down. Your cousins will miss you if you are not there to pour the coffee for them. Alfred shows an astonishing punctuality of late, and George quite emulates his younger brother's precision and haste. Leighton was never late."

Her cheek grew the colour of a rose. Never before had I so much as suggested to her the secret wish you have one and all entertained ever since her beauty and affectionate nature brought sunshine into this cold dwelling.

I was glad to see this colour; at the same time I was made poignantly wretched by what it suggested. If Hope loved one of my sons, and he should be the one who had--I felt more than ever called upon to act warily. Here was someone besides myself to think of. Your mother is dead and in Paradise, but Hope is young and the crushing weight under which I staggered could not well be borne by her. For her sake if not for my own, I must locate the plague-spot that to my mind spread defilement over all my sons. I must know which of you to trust and which to fear; and that no mistake should follow my attempt at this, I made haste to insure that no warning should reach you through any change in Hope's manner. So I reiterated my old command.

"Let me see you smile," said I, "or I shall think you regard me as being in worse condition than I really am. Indeed, I am almost well, Hope. My disease has yielded to Dr.

Bennett's treatment, and when I can rise above these sickly fancies, which are the effect, no doubt, of the powerful remedies I have taken, I shall be quite like my old self.

After breakfast let me see you here again. I may have some letters requiring an immediate answer."

My natural tones rea.s.sured her. The force of my feelings had brought some colour into my cheeks, and I probably looked less ghastly. She turned away with a smile. Alas! her face renewed its brightness and shone with sweet expectancy as she approached the door.

Nellie brought me my breakfast and I forced myself to eat it. My mind was regaining its equilibrium and my will its power. Just as I was folding my napkin, Hewson came in. He had brought me an especial tid-bit, prepared in the chafing dish by Hope's own hands. But I could not eat it. The thought would rise that she had seen far enough into my mind to imagine I would dread eating anything she had not cooked for me herself. As Hewson was withdrawing, I asked if you were all well. His answer was an astonished Yes. At which I ventured to remark that I had heard someone up in the night.

"That was Miss Meredith," he explained. "I heard her tell Mr. George at the breakfast table that she came down to your door about one in the morning to listen if you were quiet.

She said she found the gas blown out in the hall, and that she lit it again. I had left the sky-light open; it don't do these windy nights, sir."

I was disturbed by this discovery. That she should have been at the door at a moment so fraught with danger and misery to myself was a thrilling thought; besides, might she not have been so happy or so unhappy as to have caught a glimpse of the man who crept out of my dressing-closet a moment later!

Overcome by a possibility which might settle the whole question for me, I let Hewson go in silence; and when Hope came back, drew her gently but resolutely down on the bed at my side and said to her with a smile: