Tongues of Conscience Part 48

The Father remembered instantly Guildea's description of that former night, that night of Advent, and a sensation of horror-stricken curiosity stole through him.

Was there then really something that had indeed come to the Professor?

And had it finished its work, fulfilled its desire and gone back to its former existence?

The Father hesitated a moment in the doorway. Then he stepped out resolutely and crossed the road, keeping his eyes fixed upon this black or dark object that leaned so strangely upon the bench. He could not tell yet what it was like, but he fancied it was unlike anything with which his eyes were acquainted. He reached the opposite path, and was about to pa.s.s through the gate in the railings, when his arm was brusquely grasped. He started, turned round, and saw a policeman eyeing him suspiciously.

"What are you up to?" said the policeman.

The Father was suddenly aware that he had no hat upon his head, and that his appearance, as he stole forward in his ca.s.sock, with his eyes intently fixed upon the bench in the Park, was probably unusual enough to excite suspicion.

"It's all right, policeman," he answered, quickly, thrusting some money into the constable's hand.

Then, breaking from him, the Father hurried towards the bench, bitterly vexed at the interruption. When he reached it nothing was there.

Guildea's experience had been almost exactly repeated and, filled with unreasonable disappointment, the Father returned to the house, entered it, shut the door and hastened up the narrow stairway into the library.

On the hearthrug, close to the fire, he found Guildea lying with his head lolled against the armchair from which he had recently risen. There was a shocking expression of terror on his convulsed face. On examining him the Father found that he was dead.

The doctor, who was called in, said that the cause of death was failure of the heart.

When Father Murchison was told this, he murmured:

"Failure of the heart! It was that then!"

He turned to the doctor and said:

"Could it have been prevented?"

The doctor drew on his gloves and answered:

"Possibly, if it had been taken in time. Weakness of the heart requires a great deal of care. The Professor was too much absorbed in his work.

He should have lived very differently."

The Father nodded.

"Yes, yes," he said, sadly.

THE LADY AND THE BEGGAR.

THE LADY AND THE BEGGAR.

Nothing in life is more rare than the conversion of a person who is "close" about money into one generous, open-handed and lavish. The sparrow will sooner become the peac.o.c.k than the miser the spendthrift.

And if this is so, if such a transformation seldom occurs in life, it is even more unusual for a man or woman to leave behind in dying a manifesto which contradicts in set terms the obvious and universally recognised tendency of their whole existence. Naturally, therefore, the provisions of Mrs. Errington's will surprised the world. Old gentlemen in Clubs stared upon the number of the Ill.u.s.trated London News which announced the disposal of her money as they might have stared upon the head of Medusa. The fidgety seemed turned to stone as they read. The thoughtless gaped. As for the thoughtful, this will drove them to deep meditation, and set them walking in a maze of surmises, from which they found no outlet. One or two, religiously inclined, recalled that saying concerning the rich individual and the pa.s.sage of a camel through a needle's eye. Possibly it had come home to Mrs. Errington upon her death-bed. Possibly, as her end drew near she had perceived herself tower to camel size, the entrance to Paradise shrink to the circ.u.mference which refuses to receive a thread manipulated by an unsteady hand. Yes, yes; they began to expand in unctuous conjecture that merged into deliberate a.s.sertion, when some one remarked that Mrs.

Errington had died in exactly three minutes of the rupture of a blood-vessel on the brain. So this comfortable theory was exploded. And no other seemed tenable. No other explained the fact that this wealthy woman, notorious during her life for her miserly disposition, her neglect of charity, her curious hatred of the poor and complete emanc.i.p.ation from the tender shackles of philanthropy, bequeathed at death the greater part of her fortune to the dest.i.tute of London, and to the honest beggars whom fate persistently castigates, whom even Labour declines to accept as toilers at the meanest wage.

Only Horace Errington, the dead woman's sole child, and Captain Hindford, of the Life Guards, exactly knew the truth of the matter. And this truth was so strange, and must have seemed so definite a lie to the majority of mankind, that it was never given to the world. Not even the rescued poor who found themselves received into the Errington Home as into some heaven with four beautiful walls, knew why there had sprung up such a home and why they were in it. The whole affair was discussed ardently at the time, argued about, contested, and dropped. Mystery veiled it. Like many things that happen, it remained an inexplicable enigma to the world. And finally, the world forgot it. But Horace Errington remembered it, more especially when he heard light-hearted people merrily laughing at certain strange shadows of things unseen which will, at times, intrude into the most frivolous societies, turning the meditative to thoughts deep as dark and silent-flowing rivers, the careless to frisky sneers and the gibes which fly forth in flocks from the dense undergrowths of ignorance.

The Erringtons were magnets, and irresistibly attracted gold instead of steel. Mr. Errington died comparatively young, overwhelmed by the benefits showered upon him by Fortune, which continued to dog persistently the steps of his widow, whom he left with one child, Horace. This boy was destined by his father's will to be a millionaire, and had no need of any money from his mother, so that, eventually, Mrs.

Errington did him no wrong by the bequest which so troubled the curious.

She was a brilliant and an attractive woman, sparkling as a diamond, and apparently as hard. That she loved Horace there was no doubt, and he had adored her. Yet he could not influence her as most only sons can influence their mothers. She was liberally gifted with powers of resistance, and in all directions opposed impenetrable barriers to the mental or spiritual a.s.saults of those with whom she came in contact. It seemed impossible for Mrs. Errington to receive, like a waxen tablet, a definite impression. She was so completely herself that she walked the world as one clad in armour which turned aside all weapons. This might have been partly the reason why men found her so attractive, partly, also, the reason why Horace considered her, even while he was not yet acquainted with trousers, as so very wonderful among women.

Among many indifferences, Mrs. Errington included a definite indifference to the sufferings of those less fortunate than herself.

Legacies came to her as often as mendicants to Victor Hugo's Bishop of D----. She received them with a quiet greediness so prettily concealed at first that n.o.body called it vulgar. As time went on this greediness grew to gluttony. Mrs. Errington began to feel that fatal influence which came upon the man who built walls with his gold, and each day longed to see the walls rise higher round him. A pa.s.sion for mere possession seized her and dominated her. Even, she permitted the world, always curiously nosing, like a dog, in people's gutters, to become aware of this pa.s.sion. This beautifully dressed, gay and clever woman was known to be an eager miser by her acquaintance first, and last by her own son Horace. It is true that she spent money on the so-called "good things" of life, gave admirable dinners, and would as soon have gone without clothes as without her opera-box. But she practised an intense economy in many secret and some public ways, and, more especially, she was completely deaf to those appeals of suffering, and sometimes of charlatanry, which besiege our ears in London, so full of wily outcasts and of those who are terribly in need. Mrs. Errington's name figured in no charitable lists. She seldom even gave her patronage to a bazaar, and, above all things, she positively abhorred the beggars who make the streets and parks their hunting-grounds, who hover before doorsteps, and grow up from the ground, like mustard-seeds, when a luggage-laden cab stops or a carriage unblessed with a groom pauses before a shop.

Horace knew this hatred very well, so well that, although his nature was as lavish as his mother's was mean, he seldom sought to rouse any pity in her pitiless heart, or to strike the rock from which experience had taught him that no water would gush out. Every habit of conduct, is, however, broken through now and then, when the moment is exceptional and the soul is deeply stirred. And this reticent mood of the boy when with his mother one day received a shock which drove him into a contest with her, and moved him to strive against the obedience which his love for her habitually imposed upon him.

It was spring-time. Horace, now sixteen, and long established at Eton, was at home for the Easter vacation, which he was spending with Mrs.

Errington, not at their country place, but in her town house in Park Lane. One morning, when the City was smiling with sunshine, and was so full of the breath of the sweet season that in quiet corners it seemed in some strange and indefinite way almost Countrified, Horace went into Mrs. Errington's boudoir and begged her to come out for a walk in the Park, where he had already been bicycling before breakfast. When there was no question of money she was always ready to accede to any request of the boy's, and she got up at once from her writing-table--she was just sending a short note of refusal to subscribe to some charity pressed upon her attention by a hopeful clergyman--and went to her room to put on her hat. Five minutes later she and Horace set forth.

Weather may have a softening or a hardening influence on the average person. On Mrs. Errington it had neither. She felt much the same essentially in a thunderstorm or in midsummer moonlight, on a black, frost-bound winter's day, or on such a perfect and tender spring morning as that on which she now pa.s.sed through the park-gate with her son. She never drew weather into her soul, but calmly recognised it as a fact suitable for ill.u.s.tration on the first page of the Daily Graphic. Now she walked gaily into the Row with Horace, looking about her for acquaintances. She found some, and would not have been sorry to linger with them. But Horace wanted her to go further afield, and accordingly they soon moved on towards the Serpentine. It was when they were just in sight of the water that they met Captain Hindford, already alluded to as a man who had eventually more knowledge than other people of the events which led to the drawing-up of Mrs. Errington's strange will. He was one of the many men who admired Mrs. Errington while wondering at her narrow and excommunicative disposition. And he stopped to speak to her with the eager readiness which is so flattering to a woman. The spring, so much discussed, was lightly discussed again, and, by some inadvertence, no doubt, Captain Hindford, who was almost as genial as if he had lived in the days of d.i.c.kens, was led to exclaim--

"By Jove, Mrs. Errington, this first sunshine's as seductive as a pretty child--makes one ready to do anything! Why, I saw an old crossing-sweeper just now sweeping nothing at all--for it's as dry as a bone, you see--and I had to fork out a sixpence; encouraged useless industry just because of the change in the weather, 'pon my word, eh?"

Mrs. Errington's lips tightened ever so little.

"A great mistake, Captain Hindford," she said drily.

Horace looked at his mother with a sort of bright, boyish curiosity.

Although he knew so well what her nature was like, it did not cease to surprise him.

"You think so?" said the Captain. "Well, perhaps, you're right; I don't know. Daresay I've been a fool. Still, you know a fool in sunshine is better than a wise man in a fog; 'pon my word, yes, eh?"

Mrs. Errington did not verbally agree, and they parted after the Captain had accepted an invitation to dine quietly in Park Lane that evening.

"Devilish odd woman, devilish odd!" was Hindford's comment. And he watched the mother's and son's retreating figures with a certain astonishment.

"Wonder what the boy thinks of her?" he muttered. "Jove, if there isn't a beggar going after them! She'll soon settle him!"

And he remained standing to watch the encounter. From where he stood he had seen the beggar, who had been half-sitting, half-lying, on a bench facing the water, glance up at Mrs. Errington and her son as they pa.s.sed, partially raise himself up, gaze after them, and finally rise to his feet and follow their footsteps. Hindford could only see the man's back. It was long, slightly bending, and apparently youngish. A thin but scrupulously neat coat of some poor shiny and black material covered it, and hung from the man's shoulders loosely, forming two folds which were almost like two gently rounded hills with a shallow valley running between them up to the blades of the shoulders. Certainly the coat didn't fit very well. The Captain watched, expecting to see this beggar address an appeal to Mrs. Errington or Horace. But apparently the man was nervous or half-hearted, for he followed them slowly, without catching them up, until the trio vanished from view on the bank of the Serpentine.

When this disappearance took place the Captain was conscious of an absurd feeling of disappointment. He could not understand why he felt any anxiety to see Mrs. Errington refuse a beggar alms. Yet he would gladly have followed, like a spy, to behold a commonplace and dingy event. Despite the apparent reluctance of the beggar to ply his trade, Hindford felt convinced that presently the man would approach Mrs.

Errington and be promptly sent about his business. Her negative would, no doubt, be eager enough even upon this exquisite and charitable morning. Wishing devoutly that, being a gentleman, he had not to conform to an unwritten code of manners, Hindford walked away. And, as he walked, he saw continually the back of the beggar with that black coat of the two hills and the valley between the shoulder-blades.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Errington and Horace, quite unaware that they were being followed, pursued their way. There were a few boats out on the water, occupied by inexpert oarsmen whose frantic efforts to seem natural and serene in this to them new and complicated art drew the undivided attention of the boy, a celebrated "wet Bob." Mrs. Errington was thinking about her latest investments and watching the golden walls grow higher about her. Mother and son were engrossed, and did not hear a low voice say, "I beg your pardon!" until it had uttered the words more than once. Then Horace looked round. He saw a tall and very pale young man, neatly though poorly dressed in dark trousers and a thin loose black coat that might have been made of alpaca, and fitted badly. This man's face was gaunt and meagre, the features were pointed, the mouth was piteous. His eyes blazed with some terrible emotion, it seemed, and when Horace looked round a sudden patch of scarlet burned on his white and bony cheeks. Horace's attention was pinned by his appearance, which was at the same time dull and piercing, as the human aspect becomes in the tremendous moment of an existence. This man's soul seemed silently screaming out in his glance, his posture, his chalk-white cheeks starred with scarlet spots, his long-fingered hands drooping down in the shadow of his ill-fitting coat, which fluttered in the breeze. Horace turned, looked, and stood still. The man also stood still. Mrs. Errington looked sharply round.

"What is it, Horace?" she said.

She glanced at the man, and her lips tightened.

"Come along, Horace," she said. "Come!"

But Horace, who seemed fascinated by the spectre that had claimed their attention, still hesitated, and the man, noticing this, half held out one hand and murmured in a husky voice--