The Weird Sisters: A Romance. Volume 2 of 3

CHAPTER VI

THE TYRANNICAL PAST

When Mrs. Grant went out of the drawing-room she sought and found Mr. Grey in the waiting-room off the grand entrance-hall. She closed the door, and going up to the banker in haste said:

"I want to have a few private words with you, Mr. Grey."

"I am completely at your service, Mrs. Grant," answered the banker, in his most amiable manner.

He looked worn and haggard to-day. The strain was telling on him. He now knew what sleepless nights were, and days haunted by the phantoms of memory, and slight rustling sounds of hideous import. He had learned to start suddenly and look hastily over his shoulder. It was not the dread of the hangman disordered his peace, but the faint rustle of a woman's dress, and the plunge into the darkness and the sense of suffocation under a burden, and the strange twanging of the arteries in his temples.

"You know," began Mrs. Grant in an excited manner, "that I love Miss Midharst, and would do anything I could for her."

Mrs. Grant had been very much shocked and excited by what had passed between Maud and her about Sir William, and the excitement still survived.

"I am quite confident of that," answered the banker, with a grave look. He saw Mrs. Grant had something serious to say.

"Will you promise me to keep what I say to yourself?" she asked quickly.

He paused awhile and looked down.

"My position is peculiar," he said. "Although I am not Miss Midharst's guardian in the usual signification of the word, I really feel bound by my promise to Sir Alexander to do all I can for her, and that being so I could not undertake to keep to myself anything which it might be to her advantage to disclose."

He said this in his most deliberate manner, and with his eyes fixed solemnly on the face of the widow.

"I know I may trust you, Mr. Grey. My only reason for asking you not to speak is, that if you mentioned my name in the matter I should be in an awkward position."

"I promise you not to mention your name in connection with anything you may say to me."

"That will do. I want to speak about Sir William Midharst."

"The new baronet!" cried Mr. Grey, with a start and suddenly intensified interest.

"Yes. Do you know anything of him?"

"No. Nothing. He has not yet established his identity, but there can be no doubt he is the right man. As what you have to say concerns him, and as I am under no pledge to guard his interests (though of course I should not sit still and see them injured), you may speak quite freely. I promise to mention what you say to no one."

They were sitting by the table. As Mr. Grey spoke he drew his chair closer to his companion's, and, by his manner, showed he had sincerely resolved to respect her confidence, and attend most carefully to anything she might say.

"Have you any idea that Sir William is in want of money?"

Mr. Grey started. A more unexpected or disquieting question could hardly have been addressed to him. This was the first time Mrs. Grant had mentioned the word money to him, and now she uttered it in connection with this young man who had already to a great extent come between him and the heiress. He answered:

"I may tell you in strict confidence he has applied to me for a large sum of money, and of course I promised it. May I know your reason for asking?"

"I'll tell you my reason by-and-by. The money he asked you for is not to come out of Miss Midharst's fortune?"

Again Grey started. Then he knit his brows and braced himself together, and, fixing his eyes resolutely on the carpet, answered in a firm voice:

"No; I could not think of touching Miss Midharst's money for anyone but Miss Midharst herself."

He did his best to control himself, still at the words "but Miss Midharst herself" he shuddered. Had Mrs. Grant discovered anything about the Midharst Consols? She was the last person of his acquaintance he would imagine likely to come upon a clue to the fact. But no one could tell who might pick up the thread. If he had known matters would take turns like these he should never have touched those Consols. He would have shut the door first. What a fool, what a poor fool he had been not to have taken his mother's advice and shut the door.

"But if he wants money he must be poor?"

"He will have a fine income now."

"Miss Midharst has a large fortune, Mr. Grey."

"Very large."

"And you are the guardian of it."

"Yes." What on earth was she driving at?

"Well, I think it only right to tell you that if Sir William is now in want of money which is not Miss Midharst's fortune, he will very soon be in want of the money which is." She rose and fixed her excited eyes upon him.

He rose too, passed his hand absently across his brow, grew pale, and said in a voice of perplexity:

"I forget part of it. I forget part of it. But you know I was looking at the Witch's Tower of the Castle, the Tower of Silence, when the steamboat blew up."

"So I have heard," whispered Mrs. Grant in a tone of awe. The change in his face was terrible.

"And they never found the body of Bee. They never looked in the right place. It is on the top of the Tower of Silence, blown there when the boiler of the Rodwell burst. I saw the body blown up there through the smoke and steam."

"Mr. Grey! Mr. Grey! are you ill?" said Mrs. Grant, when she could find her voice.

Gradually the fixed look left his eyes. The hands, which had been feebly beating on the table, ceased to move, the sensation of tightness left his forehead, and pale and with a gentle sigh he sank on a chair.

"Are you ill, Mr. Grey?" asked Mrs. Grant, in a less alarmed tone now that she saw his mind was clear again.

He answered feebly:

"I have not been very well, and of late I suffer from sleeplessness, a very bad thing for a business man, because when he lies awake at night he is always thinking of his business, and that wears one greatly. Did I faint?"

"No."

"Pray do not ring. I am all right now. I do not want anything. I feel quite well again. It was only a passing weakness. You would greatly oblige me if you will not speak of what has occurred to Miss Midharst, or to any one else. Did I say anything?"

"Something I did not catch. You spoke of the sad death of Mrs. Grey in the Rodwell. You said, I think, that you saw the Rodwell, in which your wife was, blow up. Really, I was too much alarmed for yourself to think of what you said."

"Ah," sighed Grey in a tone of profound relief. "You were telling me something that interested me very much when I had the misfortune to interrupt you. Let me see. What was it?"

His face was gradually regaining its ordinary look; the haggard aspect of a while ago did not come back so strongly marked, still he looked worn.

"Perhaps you are not quite well enough to-day to be troubled with what may after all be only a wrong guess of mine. But I feel it strange, when I come to think of it, that Miss Midharst should accept a man Sir Alexander did not like as a guardian, when all knew Sir Alexander wished you to have all the power he would give to any one. I spoke to Miss Midharst, and she certainly means to take the advice of Sir William in matters regarding herself. Well, then, I thought, Sir Alexander has stripped the land and the town house and this place, and has rack-rented and injured the estates, and saved up the money, with your help, for his daughter. Then I wondered to myself if Sir William was in want of money; for if he is in want of money, what could be better for him than to make himself agreeable to Miss Midharst, insist upon her staying in this place, become her guardian and – marry her."

"Aha!" exclaimed Mr. Grey in a half cough, half groan. "But do you think there is a likelihood of such a thing occurring?"

"Do you, Mr. Grey, believe in love at first sight?"

"Yes; that is, I believe in something which may grow into love."

"Well, this may be a case of it."

"But have you any reason for thinking Miss Midharst has conceived a – a tender feeling towards her cousin in so short a time?"

"No, no. I don't say Miss Midharst is in love with her cousin, but she told me this morning he interests her, and that is a good beginning. You know she has never met a young man of her own rank closely. Beyond a bow and half-hour's chat once a month when she and I slipped into town, she has met no one but you and her father. She has a craze about Egypt, and this cousin is just home from Egypt – that's another thing in his favour. I don't want any one to marry Maud for her money only, and this is the reason I speak to you. She's too good and beautiful to be married for anything but her own amiable lovely self, and I hope you will prevent any fortune-hunter from snatching her up before the grave is closed over her father."

"I – I – I," stammered Mr. Grey, "I do not feel quite well. I fear I am growing dizzy again."

The door opened.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Grant. Good-day, Mr. Grey, I may not meet you again to-day. You are not looking very well. Miss Midharst will be delighted to see you. She told me to tell you so. Go to her. You will find her in her own little drawing-room; the Lancaster room I think they call it. I hope your knee is better. By the way, when and how did you hurt it?"

"I – I am a little tired."

"The leg?"

"Yes."

"How did you do it?"

"Strained it."

"Long ago?"

"The night my wife was lost." He shuddered and leaned upon the back of the chair.

"It is his head that troubles him and not his knee," whispered Mrs. Grant.

"Take my arm and come into the air. The air will do you good," said the young man in a voice of grave solicitude and kindness.

"Thank you," said Grey, accepting the offer.

The two left the room together, the banker upon the baronet's arm.

Neither the knee nor the head of Grey was suffering at that moment; but he felt a deadly faintness come over him when Mrs. Grant made the appeal to him to protect Miss Midharst against fortune-hunters.

"The blows come too quickly and too heavily; too quickly and too heavily; too quickly and too heavily for me."

The open air and soothing landscape calmed Grey. He always felt better out of doors now than between walls. Rooms had furniture, and furniture cast shadows, and no matter what part of a room you sat in you could not command a view of the whole. The atmosphere indoors was heavy, depressing, and often laden with scents a man's wife might use, had used once; and these perfumes, coming suddenly upon the sense of smell, brought memories of long ago and half-awakened expectation of seeing a certain woman of pleasing aspect the love-bearer of one. But with the dying breath of the perfume the loved familiar figure of the olden time faded away, and in its place came a ghastly face with open dead eyes and open dead lips, and temples dark with the blue veins of suffocation.

When that thing came in the house no one could avoid it. It seemed in all places at the same time, and if one raised eyes no matter to what, that thing met the eyes somewhere. Even when it had not followed the dying perfume of the musk, so long as one was in the house one might come upon it anywhere, leaning against the wall in the darkness between the double doors, huddled in the shadow of the great oak chimney-piece in the hall, lying across the mat on one's bedroom-door when one was retiring for the night.

Across the threshold of that bedroom-door this jaw-dropped thing never came. That room was one's only sanctuary. The old love of the long ago never left that place with the dying of the perfume. Here one's wife moved about the room and stood by the bedside as God had made her, comely, and as love had made her, happy; not as indifference had made her, wretched, and the devil's agent had made her, dead.

And yet to live in that sanctuary for happy memories was almost worse than wandering with a dim light through corridors against the walls of which stood shrouded indictments for the intolerable crime. It was hard to wake and smell the musk, and find one's young wife standing at the glass, with the golden-topped vial in her hand, and a smile upon her face, then to see her fade slowly away, to spring up, ask why she was taken from young and loving arms, and to be able to get no answer; until one opened the door, and found there one's own middle age, and that terrible thing across the threshold.

Yes; the open air was much better than the house. Out of doors one could keep at a distance from shadows, and, when there is the rustle of a dress, soon find out it is not hers. Then, when the worst comes to the worst, one, when out of doors, could run. Indoors, you cannot run any distance, and jumping through a window would attract attention and inquiry, neither of which could be endured now.

Leaning heavily on the arm of the young baronet, Grey walked up and down the terrace in front of the northern face of the Castle. In about a quarter of an hour he said:

"I am very much obliged to you, Sir William. You have been exceedingly kind to me. May I ask you to do one more little favour for me?"

"Certainly."

"Will you kindly make my excuses to Miss Midharst, and say that I will not intrude upon her to-day. I – I – I do not feel quite equal to it. I am unstrung a little. I shall drive home; and a drive always does me good."

His voice was unsteady and his manner restless.

The baronet saw the banker safely into the ferry-boat, and then returned to the Castle with the message.

Wat Grey got into his fly, thinking, "I'll go to see my mother."