He could be out of spirits and reserved without being either ill-tempered or ironical; and Ethel, with this as the upshot of her week's observations, was rea.s.sured as to the hopes of the father and son working together without collisions. As soon as the die was cast, and there was no danger of undue persuasion in 'stroking him down,' she indulged herself by a warmly-grateful letter, and after she had sent it, was tormented by the fear that it would be a great offence. The answer was much longer than she had dared to expect, and alarmed her lest it should be one of his careful ways of making the worst of himself; but there was a large 'Private,' scored in almost menacing letters on the top of the first sheet, and so much blotted in the folding, that it was plain that he had taken alarm at the unreserve of his own letter.

'My Dear Ethel,

'I have been to Portland. Really my father ought to make a stir and get Ward's health attended to; he looks very much altered, but will not own to anything being amiss. They say he has been depressed ever since he heard of Minna's death. I should say he ought to be doing out-of-doors work--perhaps at Gibraltar, but then he would be out of our reach. I could not get much from him, but that patient, contented look is almost more than one can bear. It laid hold of me when I saw him the first time, and has haunted me ever since. Verily I believe it is what is bringing me home! You need not thank me, for it is sober calculation that convinces me that no success on earth would compensate for the perpetual sense that my father was wearing himself out, and you pining over the sight. Except just at first, I always meant to come and see how the land lay before pledging myself to anything; and nothing can be clearer than that, in the state of things my father has allowed to spring up, he must have help. I am glad you have got me the old house, for I can be at peace there till I have learnt to stand his unmethodical ways. Don't let him expect too much of me, as I see he is going to do. It is not in me to be like Norman or Harry, and he must not look for it, least of all now. If you did not understand, and know when to hold your tongue, I do not think I could come home at all; as it is, you are all the comfort I look for. I cross to Paris to-morrow.

That is a page I am very sorry to close. I had a confidence that I should have hunted down that fellow, and the sight of Portland and the accounts from Ma.s.sissauga alike make one long to have one's hands on his throat; but that hope is ended now, and to loiter about Paris in search of him, when it it a plain duty to come away, would be one of the presumptuous acts that come to no good. Let them discuss what they will, there's nothing so hard to believe in as Divine Justice! And yet that uncomplaining face accepts it! You need say nothing about this letter. I will talk about Leonard with my father when I get home.

'Ever yours, 'Thomas May.'

CHAPTER XXV

But soon as once the genial plain Has drunk the life-blood of the slain, Indelible the spots remain; And aye for vengeance call, Till racking pangs of piercing pain Upon the guilty fall.

AEschylus. (Translated by Professor Anstice.)

If Tom May's arrival at home was eagerly antic.i.p.ated there, it was with a heavy heart that he prepared for what he had never ceased to look on as a treadmill life. He had enjoyed Paris, both from the society and the abstract study, since he still retained that taste for theory rather than practice, which made him prefer diseases to sick people, and all sick people to those of Stoneborough. The student life, in the freedom of a foreign capital, was, even while devoid of license and irregularity, much pleasanter than what he foresaw at home, even though he had obtained a separate establishment. His residence at Paris, with the vague hope it afforded, cost him more in the resignation than his prospects in London. It was the week when he would have been canva.s.sing for the appointment, and he was glad to linger abroad out of reach of Sir Matthew's remonstrances, and his father's compunction, while he was engaged in arranging for a French translation of Dr.

Spencer's book, and likewise in watching an interesting case, esteemed a great medical curiosity, at the Hotel Dieu.

He was waiting in the lecture-room, when one of the house surgeons came in, saying, 'Ah! I am glad to see you here. A compatriot of yours has been brought in, mortally injured in a gambling fray. You may perhaps a.s.sist in getting him identified.'

Tom followed him to the accident ward, and beheld a senseless figure, with bloated and discoloured features, distorted by the effects of the injury, a blow upon the temple, which had caused a fall backwards on the sharp edge of a stove, occasioning fatal injury to the spine.

Albeit well accustomed to gaze critically upon the tokens of mortal agony, Tom felt an unusual shudder of horror and repugnance as he glanced on the countenance, so disfigured and contorted that there was no chance of recognition, and turned his attention to the clothes, which lay in a heap on the floor. The contents of the pockets had been taken out, and consisted only of some p.a.w.nbroker's duplicates, a cigar-case, and a memorandum-book, which last he took in his hand, and began to unfasten, without looking at it, while he took part in the conversation of the surgeons on the technical nature of the injuries.

Thus he stood for some seconds, before, on the house surgeon asking if he had found any address, he cast his eyes on the pages which lay open in his hand.

'Ha! What have you found?--He does not hear! Is it the portrait of the beloved object? Is it a brother--an enemy--or a debt? But he is truly transfixed! It is an effect of the Gorgon's head!'

'July 15th, 1860. Received 120.

'L. A. WARD.'

There stood Tom May, like one petrified, deaf to the words around, his dazzled eyes fixed on the letters, his faculties concentrated in the endeavour to ascertain whether they were sight or imagination. Yes, there they were, the very words in the well-known writing, the school-boy's forming into the clerk's, there was the blot in the top of the L! Tom's heart gave one wild bound, then all sensation, except the sight of the writing, ceased, the exclamations of those around him came surging gradually on his ear, as if from a distance, and he did not yet hear them distinctly when he replied alertly, almost lightly, 'Here is a name that surprises me. Let me look at the patient again.'

'No dear friend?' asked his chief intimate, in a tone ready to become gaiety or sympathy.

'No, indeed,' said Tom, shuddering as he stood over the insensible wretch, and perceived what it had been which had thrilled him with such unwonted horror, for, fixed by the paralyzing convulsion of the fatal blow, he saw the scowl and grin of deadly malevolence that had been the terror of his childhood, and that had fascinated his eyes at the moment of Leonard's sentence. Changed by debauchery, defaced by violence, contorted by the injured brain, the features would scarcely have been recalled to him but for the frightful expression stamped on his memory by the miseries of his timid boyhood.

'Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' The awful thought, answering his own struggle for faith in Divine Justice, crossed him, as he heard the injury on the head defined, in almost the same scientific terms that had so often rung on his ears as the causes of Francis Axworthy's death; but this was no society where he could give vent to his feelings, and mastering himself with difficulty he answered, 'I know Him. He is from my own town.'

'Has he friends or relations?'

'Relations, yes,' said Tom, hardly able to restrain a trembling of the lip, half horror, half irony. 'None here, none near. They shall know.'

'And means?'

'Once he had. Probably none now.'

To Tom's great relief, a new case drew off general attention. There only remained the surgeon who had called him at first, and with whom he was particularly intimate.

'Gaspard,' he said, 'shall you have charge of this case?'

'Brief charge it will be, apparently! I will volunteer to watch it, if it is your desire! Is it friendship, or enmity, or simple humanity?'

'All!' said Tom, hastily. 'It is the clearing up of a horrible mystery--freedom for an innocent prisoner--I must tell you the rest at leisure. There is much to be done now in case of his reviving.'

This was remotely possible, but very doubtful; and Tom impressed on both Gaspard and the nursing sister the most stringent entreaties to summon him on the first symptom. He then gave the name of the unhappy man, and, though unwilling to separate himself from that invaluable pocket-book, perceived the necessity of leaving it as a deposit with the authorities of the hospital, after he had fully examined it, recognizing Leonard's description in each particular, the cipher F. A.

on the tarnished silver clasp, the s.h.a.green cover, and the receipt on a page a little past the middle. On the other half of the leaf was the entry of some sums due to the house; and it contained other papers which the guilty wretch had been evidently eager to secure, yet afraid to employ, and that, no doubt, were the cause that, like so many other murderers on record, he had preserved that which was the most fatal proof against himself. Or could it be with some notion of future relenting, that he had refrained from its destruction?

With brain still seeming to reel at the discovery, and limbs actually trembling with the shock, Tom managed to preserve sufficient coolness and discretion to bring back to mind the measures he had so often planned for any such contingency. Calling a cabriolet, he repaired to the police-station nearest to the scene of the contest, and there learnt that Axworthy had long been watched as a dangerous subject, full of turbulence, and with no visible means of maintenance. The officials had taken charge of the few personal effects in his miserable lodgings, and were endeavouring to secure the person who had struck the fatal blow.

His next measure was to go to the British Emba.s.sy, where, through his sister Flora's introductions, and his own Eton connections, he was already well known; and telling his story there, without any attempt to conceal his breathless agitation, he had no difficulty in bringing with him a companion who would authenticate the discovery of the receipt, and certify to any confession that might be obtained.

A confession! That was the one matter of the most intense interest.

Tom considered whether to secure the presence of a clergyman, but suspected that this would put Axworthy on his guard rather than soften him, and therefore only wrote to the chaplain, begging him to hold himself in readiness for a summons to the Hotel Dieu, whither he drove rapidly back with his diplomatic friend, whom he wrought up well-nigh to his own pitch of expectation. He had already decided on his own first address--pitying, but manifesting that nothing, not even vengeance, could be gained by concealment; and then, according to the effect, would he try either softening or threatening to extort the truth.

Gaspard was eagerly awaiting them. 'I had already sent for you,' he said. 'The agony is commencing; he has spoken, but he has not his full consciousness.'

Tom hurried on, drawing after him the young diplomate, who would have hung back, questioning if there were any use in his witnessing the dying struggles of a delirious man.

'Come, come,' peremptorily repeated Tom, 'there must be some last words. Every moment is of importance.'

Yet his trust was shaken by the perception of the progress that death had made in the miserable frame during his absence. The fixed expression of malignity had been forced to yield to exhaustion and anguish, the lips moved, but the murmurs between the moans were scarcely articulate.

'He is almost past it,' said Tom, 'but there is the one chance that he may be roused by my voice.'

And having placed his friend conveniently, both for listening and making notes, he came close to the bed, and spoke in a tone of compa.s.sion. 'Axworthy, I say, Axworthy, is there anything I can do for you?'

There was a motion of the lid of the fast-glazing eye; but the terrible face of hatred came back, with the audible words, 'I tell you, you old fool, none of the Mays are to come prying about my place.'

Appalled by the deadly malice of the imprecation and the look that accompanied this partial recognition of his voice, Tom was nerving himself to speak again, when the dying man, as if roused by the echo of his own thought, burst out, 'Who? What is it? I say Dr. May shall not be called in! He never attended the old man! Let him mind his own business! I was all night at the Three Goblets. Yes, I was! The new darling will catch it--going off with the money upon him--' and the laugh made their blood run cold. 'I've got the receipt;' and he made an attempt at thrusting his hand under the pillow, but failing, swore, shouted, howled with his last strength, that he had been robbed--the pocket-book--it would hang him! and with one of the most fearful shrieks of despair that had perhaps ever rung through that asylum of pain, woe, and death, the wretched spirit departed.

Tom May turned aside, made a few steps, and, to the infinite surprise of every one, fell helplessly down in a swoon. A nature of deep and real sensibility, though repressed by external reserve and prudence, could not with entire impunity undergo such a scene. The sudden discovery, the vehement excitement forced down, the intense strain of expectation, and finally, the closing horror of such a death, betraying the crime without repenting of it, pa.s.sing to the other world with imprecations on the lips, and hatred in the glare of the eye, all the frightfulness enhanced by the familiarity of the allusions, and the ghastly a.s.sociation of the tones that had tempted and tyrannized over his childhood, altogether crushed and annihilated his faculties, mental and bodily.

Oh, when our very hearts burn for justice, how little do we know how intolerable would be the sight of it! Tom's caution and readiness returned as soon as--after a somewhat long interval--he began to distinguish the voices round him, and perceive the amazement he had created. Before he was able to sit up on the couch, where he had been laid out of sight of the scene which had affected him so strongly, he was urging his friend to set down all that had been spoken, and on Gaspard's writing a separate deposition. The pocket-book, and other effects, were readily ceded to the British authority, and were carried away with them.

How Tom got through the remaining hours of the day and the night he never recollected, though he knew it must have been in the bustle of preparation, and that he had imparted the tidings to Leonard's friend Brown, for when he and his friend had attended that which answered to an inquest on the body, and had obtained a report of the proceedings, he was ready to start by the night train, bearing with him the attestations of the death-bed scene at the Hotel Dieu, and the long-lost memorandum-book, and was a.s.sured that the next mail would carry an official letter to the Home Office, detailing the circ.u.mstances of Samuel Axworthy's decease. Brown came to bid him farewell, full of gladness and warm congratulation, which he longed to send to his friend, but which Tom only received with hasty, half-comprehending a.s.sents.

Late in the afternoon he reached Stoneborough, found no one come in, and sat down in the fire-light, where, for all his impatience, fatigue had made him drop asleep, when he was roused by Gertrude's voice, exclaiming, 'Here really is Tom come, as you said he would, without writing. Here are all his goods in the hall.'

'Is it you, Tom!' cried Ethel. 'Notice or no notice, we are glad of you. But what is the matter?'

'Where's my father?'

'Coming. Charles Cheviot took him down to look at one of the boys. Is there anything the matter?' she added, after a pause.

'No, nothing.'