Only One Love, or Who Was the Heir Part 8

He was an old man of eighty, who had lived one-half his life in the wildest and most dissipated fashion, and the other half in that most unprofitable occupation known as repenting thereof.

I say "known as," for if old Squire Davenant had really repented, this story would never have been written.

If half the stories which were told of him were true, Ralph Davenant, the present owner of Hurst, deserves a niche in the temple of fame--or infamy--which holds the figures of the worst men of his day. He had been a gambler, a spendthrift, a rogue of the worst kind for one half his life; a miser, a cynic, a misanthrope for the other.

And he now lay dying in his huge, draughty bed-chamber, hung with the portraits of his ancestors--all bad and filled with the ghosts of his youth and wasted old age.

As it was, he lay quite still--so still that the physician, brought down from London at a cost of--say, ten guineas an hour, was often uncertain whether he was alive or dead.

There was a third person in the room--a tall, thin young man, who stood motionless beside the bed, watching the old man, with half-closed eyes and tightly compressed lips. This was Stephen Davenant, the old man's nephew, and, as it was generally understood, his heir. Stephen Davenant was called a handsome man, and at first sight he seemed to merit that description. It was not until you had looked at him closely that you began to grow critical and to find fault. He was dark; his hair, which was quite black, was smooth, and clung to his head with a sleek, slimy closeness that only served to intensify the paleness, not to say pallor, of the face. Pallor was, indeed, the prevailing characteristic, his lips even being of a subdued and half-tinted red; they were not pleasant lips, although for every forty minutes out of the sixty they wore a smile which just showed a set of large and even teeth, which were, if anything, too faultless and too white. Jack said that when Stephen smiled it was like a private view of a cemetery.

In short, to quote the Savage again, Stephen Davenant was an admirable example, as artists would say, of "a study in black and white."

As he stood by the bed, motionless, silent, with the fixed regard of his light gray eyes on the sick man, he looked not unlike one of those sleek and emaciated birds which one sees standing on the bank of the Ganges, waiting for the floating by of stray dead bodies.

And yet he was not unhandsome. At times he looked remarkably well; when, for instance, he was delivering a lecture or an address at some inst.i.tute or May meeting. His voice was low and soft, and not seldom insinuating, and some of his friends had called him, half in jest, half in earnest, "Fascination Davenant."

It will be gathered from this description that to call all the race of Davenants bad was unfair; every rule has its exception, and Stephen Davenant was the exception to this. He was "a good young man."

Fathers held him up as a pattern to their wayward sons, mothers patronized and lauded him, and their daughters regarded him as almost too good to live.

The minutes, so slow for the watchers, so rapid to the man for whom they were numbered, pa.s.sed, and the old cracked clock in the half-ruined stables wheezed out the hour, when, as if the sound had roused him, old Ralph moved slightly, and opening his eyes, looked slowly from one upright figure to the other.

Dark eyes that had not even yet lost all their fire, and still shone out like a bird's from their wrinkled, cavernous hollows.

Stephen unlocked his wrist, bent down, and murmured, in his soft, silky voice:

"Uncle, do you know me?"

A smile, an unpleasant smile to see on such a face, glimmered on the old man's lips.

"Here still, Stephen?" he said, slowly and hollowly. "You'd make a good--mute."

A faint, pink tinge crept over Stephen's pale face, but he smiled and shook his head meekly.

"Who's that?" asked Ralph, half turning his eyes to the physician.

"Sir Humphrey, uncle--the doctor," replied Stephen, and the great doctor came a little nearer and felt the faint pulse.

"What's he stopping for?" gasped the old man. "What can he do, and--why don't he go?"

"We must not leave you, uncle, till you are better."

A faint flame shot up in the old man's eyes.

"Better, that's a lie, you know. You always were----" Then a paroxysm of faintness took him, but he struggled with and overcame it.

"Is--is--Jack here?" he asked.

"I regret to say," he replied, "that he is not. I cannot understand the delay. I hope, I fervently hope, that he has not willfully----"

"Did you tell him I was dying?" asked Ralph, watching him keenly.

"Can you doubt it?" murmured Stephen, meekly. "I particularly charged the messenger to say that my cousin was not to delay."

The old man looked up with a sardonic smile.

"I'll wait," he muttered, and he closed his eyes resolutely. The minutes pa.s.sed, and presently there was a low knock at the door, and a servant crept up to Stephen.

"Mr. Newcombe is below, sir."

Stephen looked warningly at the bed, and stole on tiptoe from the room--not that there was any occasion to go on tiptoe, for his ordinary walk was as noiseless as a cat's--down the old treadworn stairs, into the neglected hall, and entered the library.

Bolt upright, and looking very like a Savage indeed, stood Jack Newcombe.

With noiseless step and mournful smile, Stephen entered, closed the door, and held out his hand.

"My dear Jack, how late you are!"

With an angry gesture Jack thrust his hands in his pockets, and glared wrathfully at the white, placid face.

"Late!" he echoed, pa.s.sionately. "Why didn't you tell me that he was dying?"

"Hush!" murmured Stephen, with a shocked look--though if Jack had bellowed in his savagest tone, his voice would not have reached the room upstairs. "Pray, be quiet, my dear Jack. Tell you! Didn't my man give you my message? I particularly told him to describe the state of my uncle's health. Slummers is not apt to forget or neglect messages!"

"Messages!" said Jack, with wrathful incredulity; "he gave me none--left none, rather, for I was out. He simply said that the squire wanted to see me."

"Dear, dear me," murmured Stephen, regretfully. "I cannot understand it.

Do you think the person who took the message delivered it properly?

Slummers is so very careful and trustworthy."

"Oh," said Jack, contemptuously. "Do you suppose anyone would have forgotten to tell me if your man had told them that the squire was dying? I don't if you do, and I don't believe you do. You're no fool, Stephen, though you have made one of me," and he moved toward the door.

"Stay," said Stephen, laying his white hand gently on Jack's arm. "Will you wait a few minutes? Though by some unfortunate accident you were not told how ill my uncle is, I a.s.sure you that he is too ill now to be hara.s.sed----"

"Oh, I know what you mean without so many words," interrupted Jack, scornfully. "Make your mind easy, I am not going to split upon you.

Bah!" he added, as Stephen shook his head with sorrowful repudiation.

"Do you suppose that I don't know that your man was instructed to keep it from me? What were you afraid of--that I should cut you out at the last moment? You judge me by your own standard, and you make a vast mistake. It isn't on account of the money--you are welcome to that--and you deserve it, for you've worked hard enough for it; no, it's not on that account, it's--but you wouldn't understand if I told you. I am going up now," and he sprang up the stairs quickly.

Stephen followed him, and entered the room close behind him. The old man looked up, motioned with his hand to Jack, looked at the other two and quietly pointed to the door.

Stephen's eyes closed and his lips shut as he hesitated for a moment, then he turned and left with the physician.

"I think," said Sir Humphrey, blandly, and looking at his watch--one of a score left him by departed patients, "I think that I will go now, Mr.

Davenant; I can do no good and my presence appears only to irritate your uncle."

The great doctor departed, just thirty guineas richer than when he came, and Stephen went into the library and closed the door, and as he did so it almost seemed as if he had taken off a mask and left it on the mat outside.

The set, calm expression of the face changed to one of fierce, uncontrollable anxiety and malice. With sullen step he paced up and down the room, gnawing--but daintily--at his nails, and grinding the white tombstones.