CHAPTER II.

IN THE SYCAMORE WALK.

The Park Newton clocks, with more or less unanimity as to time, had just struck ten. It was a February night, clear and frosty, and Lionel Dering sat in his dressing-room in slippered ease, musing by firelight. He had turned out the lamp on purpose; it was too garish for his mood to-night. He was back again in thought at Gatehouse Farm. Again he saw the gray old cottage, with its moss-grown eaves—the cottage that was so ugly outside, but so cosy within. Again he saw the long low sandhills, where they stretched themselves out to meet the horizon, and, in fancy, heard again the low, monotonous plash of the waves, whose melancholy music, heard by day and night, had at one time been as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice. What a quiet, happy time that seemed as he now looked back to it—a time of soft shadows and mild sunshine, with a pensive charm that was all its own, and that was lost for ever in the hour which told him that he was a rich man! Riches! What had riches done for him? He groaned in spirit as he asked himself the question. He could have been happy with Edith in a garret—how happy none but himself could have told—had fortune compelled him to earn her bread and his own by the sweat of his strong right arm.

His musings were interrupted by a knock at the door. “Come in,” he called out mechanically; and in there came, almost without, a sound, Dobbs, body-servant to Kester St. George.

“Oh, Dobbs, is that you?” said Lionel, a little wearily, as he turned his head and saw who it was.

“Yes, sir, I have made bold to intrude upon you for a few seconds,” said Dobbs, with the utmost deference, as he slowly advanced into the room, rubbing the long lean fingers of one hand softly with the palm of the other. “My master has not yet got back from Duxley, and there’s nobody about just now.”

“Quite right, Dobbs,” said Lionel. “Anything fresh to report?”

“Nothing particularly fresh, sir, but I thought that you might perhaps like to see me.”

“Very considerate of you, Dobbs, but I am not aware that I have anything of consequence to say to you to-night.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Dobbs, with a faint smile and an extra rub of his fingers. “Master’s still very queer, sir. No appetite worth speaking about. Obliged to screw himself up with brandy in a morning before he can finish his toilet. Mutters and moans a good deal in his sleep, sir.”

“Mutters in his sleep, does he?” said Lionel. “Have you any idea, Dobbs, what it is that he talks about?”

“I’ve tried my best to ascertain, sir, but without much success. I have listened and listened for hours, and very cold work it is, sir; but there’s never more than a word now and a word then that one can make out. Nothing connected—nothing worth recollecting.”

“Does Mr. St. George still walk in his sleep?”

“He does, sir, but not very often—not more than two or three times a month.”

“Keep your eyes open, Dobbs, and the very next time your master walks in his sleep come to me at once—never mind what hour it may be—and tell me.”

“I won’t fail to do so, sir.”

“In these sleep-walking rambles does Mr. St. George always confine himself to the house, or does he ever venture out into the park or grounds?”

“He generally goes out of doors, sir, at such times. Three times out of four he goes as far as the Wizard’s Fountain, in the Sycamore Walk, stops there for a minute or two, and then walks back home. I have watched him several times.”

“The Wizard’s Fountain, in the Sycamore Walk! What should take him there?”

“Then you know the place, sir?”

“I know it well.”

“Can’t say what fancy takes him there, sir. Perhaps he doesn’t know hisself.”

“In any case, let me know when he next walks in his sleep. I have no further instructions for you to-night, Dobbs.”

“Thank you, sir. I have the honour to wish you a very good night, sir.”

“Good-night, Dobbs. Keep your eyes open, and report everything to me.”

“Yes, sir, yes. You may trust me for doing that, sir.” And Dobbs the obsequious bowed himself out.

In his cousin’s valet Lionel had found an instrument ready to his hand, but it was not till after long hesitation and doubt that he made up his mind to avail himself of it. The necessities of the case at length decided him to do so. No one appreciated the value of a bribe better than Dobbs, or worked harder or more conscientiously to deserve one. There was a crooked element in his character which made whatever money he might earn by indirect means, or by tortuous working, seem far sweeter to him than the honest wages of everyday life. Kester St. George was not the kind of man ever to try to attach his inferiors to himself by any tie of gratitude or kindness. At different times and in various ways he suffered for this indifference, although the present could hardly be considered as a case in point, seeing that it was not in the nature of Dobbs to resist a bribe in whatever shape it might offer itself, and that gratitude was one of those virtues which had altogether been omitted from his composition.

Late one afternoon, a few days after the interview between Lionel and Dobbs, Kester St. George had his horse brought round, and rode out unattended, and without leaving word in what direction he was going, or at what hour he might be expected back. The day was dull and lowering, with fitful puffs of wind, that blew first from one point and then from another, and seemed the forerunners of a coming storm. Buried in his own thoughts, Kester paid no heed to the weather, but rode quickly forward till several miles of country had been crossed. By-and-by he diverged from the main road, and turned his horse’s head into a tortuous and muddy lane, which, after half an hour’s bad travelling, landed him on the verge of a wide stretch of brown treeless moor, than which no place could well have looked more desolate and cheerless under the gray monotony of the darkening February afternoon. Kester halted for awhile at the end of the lane to give his horse breathing time. Far as the eye could see, looking forward from the point where he was standing, all was bare and treeless, without one single sign of habitation or life.

“Whatever else may be changed, either with me or the world,” he muttered, “the old moor remains just as it was the first day that I can remember it. It was horrible to me at first, but I learned to like it—to love it even, before I left it; and I love it now—to-day—with all its dreariness and monotony. It is like the face of an old friend. You may go away for twenty years, and when you come back you know that you will find on it just the same look that it wore when you went away. Not that I have ever cared to cultivate such friendships,” he added, half regretfully. “Well, the next best thing to having a good friend is to have a good enemy, and I can thank heaven for granting me several such.”

He touched his horse with the spur, and rode slowly forward, taking a narrow bridle path that led in an oblique direction across the moor. “This ought to be the road if my memory serves me aright,” he muttered, “but they are all so much alike, and intersect each other so frequently, that it’s far more easy to lose one’s way than to know where one is.”

“I suppose I shall have the rough side of Mother Mim’s tongue when I do find her,” he went on. “I’ve neglected her shamefully, without a doubt. But such ties as the one between her and me become tiresome in the long run. She ought to have died off long ago, but she’s as tough as leather. Poor devils in this part of the country, that haven’t a penny to bless themselves with, think nothing of living till they’re a hundred. Is it a superfluity of ozone, or a want of brains, that keeps them alive so long?”

He rode steadily forward till he had nearly crossed one angle of the moor. At length, but not without some difficulty, he found the place he had come in search of. It was a rudely-built hut—cottage it could hardly be called—composed of mud, and turf, and great boulders all unhewn. Its roof of coarsest thatch was frayed and worn with the wind and rain of many winters. Its solitary door of old planks, roughly nailed together, opened full on to the moor.

At the back was a patch of garden-ground, which was supposed to grow potatoes in the season, but which had never yet been known to grow any that were fit to eat. Mr. St. George looked round with a sneer as he dismounted.

“And it was in this wretched den that I spent the first eight years of my existence!” he muttered. “And the woman whom this place calls its mistress was the first being whom I learned to love! And, faith, I’m rather doubtful whether I’ve ever loved anybody half so well since.”

Putting his horse’s bridle over a convenient hook, and dispensing with the ceremony of knocking, Kester St. George lifted the latch, pushed open the door, stooped his head, and went in. Inside the hut everything was in semi-darkness, and Kester stood for a minute with the door in his hand, striving to make out the objects before him.

“Come in and shut the door: I expected you,” said a hollow voice from one corner of the room; and the one room, such as it was, comprised the whole hut.

“Is that you, Mother Mim?” asked Kester.

“Ay—who else should it be?” answered the voice. “But come in and shut the door. That cold wind gives me the shivers.”

Kester did as he was told, and then made his way to a wretched pallet at the other end of the hut. Of furniture there was hardly any, and the aspect of the whole place was miserable in the extreme. Over the ashes of a wood fire crouched a girl of sixteen, ragged and unkempt, who stared at him with black, glittering eyes as he passed her. Next moment he was standing by the side of a ragged pallet, on which lay the figure of a woman who looked ill almost unto death.

“Why, mother, whatever has been the matter with you?” asked Kester. “A little bit out of sorts, eh? But you’ll soon be all right again now.”

“Yes, I shall soon be all right now—soon be quite well,” answered the woman grimly. “A black box and six feet of earth cure everything.”

“You mustn’t talk in that way, mother,” said Kester, as he sat down on the only chair in the place, and took one of the woman’s lean, hot hands in his. “You will live to plague us for many a year to come.”

“Kester St. George, this is the last time you and I will meet in this world.”

“I hope not, with all my heart,” said Kester, feelingly.

“I know what I know, and I know that what I say is true,” answered Mother Mim. “You would not have come now if I had not worked a spell strong enough to bring you here even against your will. I worked it four nights ago, at midnight, when that young viper there”—pointing a finger at the girl, who was still cowering over the ashes—“was fast asleep, and there were no eyes to see but those of the cold stars. Ah! but it was horrible! and if it had not been that I felt I must see you before I died, I could never have gone through with it.” She paused for a moment, as though overcome by some dreadful recollection. “Then, when it was over, I crept back to bed, and waited quietly, knowing that now you could not choose but come.”

“I ought to have come and seen you long ago—I know it—I feel it,” said Kester. “But let bygones be bygones, and I give you my solemn promise never to neglect you again. I am rich now, mother, and you shall never want for anything as long as you live.”

“Too late—too late!” sighed the woman. “Yes, you’re rich now, rich enough to bury me, and that’s all I ask you to do.”

“Don’t talk like that, mother,” said Kester.

“If you had only come to see me!” said the woman. “That was all I wanted. Just to see your face, and squeeze your hand, and have you to talk to me for a little while. I wanted none of your money—no, not a single shilling of it. It was only you I wanted.”

Kester began to feel slightly bored. He squeezed Mother Mim’s hand, and then dropped it, but he did not speak.

“But you didn’t come,” moaned the woman, “and you wouldn’t have come now if I hadn’t worked a charm to bring you.”

“There you wrong me,” said Kester, decisively. “Your charm, or spell, or whatever it may have been, had no effect in bringing me here. I came of my own free will.”

“Self-conceited, as you always were and always will be,” muttered the woman. Then, half raising herself in bed, and addressing the girl, she cried: “Nell, you hussy, just you hook it for a quarter of an hour. The gent and I have something to talk about.”

The girl rose sullenly, went slowly out, and banged the door behind her.

Kester wondered what was coming next. He had dropped the woman’s hand, but she now held it out for him to take again. He took it, and she pressed his hand passionately to her lips three or four times.

“If the great secret of my life is to be told at all on this side the grave, the time to tell it is now come. I always thought to die without revealing it, but somehow of late everything has seemed different to me, and I feel now as if I couldn’t die easy without telling you.” She paused for a minute, exhausted. There was some brandy on the chimney-piece, and Kester gave her a little. Again she took his hand and kissed it passionately.

“You will, perhaps, curse me for what I am about to tell you,” she went on, “but whether you do so or not, so may Heaven help me if it is anything more than the simple truth! Kester St. George, you have no right to the name you bear—to the name the world knows you by!”

Kester was so startled that for a moment or two he sat like one suddenly stricken dumb. “Go on,” he said at last. “There’s more to follow. I like boldness in lying as in everything else.”

“Again I swear that I am telling you no more than the solemn truth.”

“If I am not Kester St. George,” he said with a sneer, “perhaps you will kindly inform me who I really am.”

“You are my son!”

He flung the woman’s hand savagely from him, and sprang to his feet with an oath. “Your son!” he said. “Ha! ha! ha! Your son, indeed! Since when have your senses quite left you, Mother Mim? A dark cell in Bedlam and a strait waistcoat would be your best physic.”

“I am rightly punished,” moaned the woman—“rightly punished. I ought to have told you years ago—ay—before you ever grew to be a man. But I loved you so, and had such pride in you, that I couldn’t bear the thought of telling you, and it’s only now when I’m on my deathbed that the secret forces itself from me. But it will go no farther, never you fear that. No living soul but you will ever hear it from my lips; and you have only got to keep your own lips tightly shut, and you will live and die as Kester St. George.”

She sank back with the exhaustion of speaking. Mechanically, and almost without knowing what he was doing, Kester again gave her a little brandy. Then he sat down; and Mother Mim, finding his hand close by, took possession of it again. He shuddered slightly, but did not withdraw it.

Although Mother Mim had advanced no proofs in support of the strange story she had just told him, there was something in her tone which carried conviction to his inmost heart.

“I must know more of this,” he said, after a little while, speaking almost in a whisper.

“How well I remember everything about it! It seems only like yesterday that it all happened,” sighed the woman. “You—my own child, and he—the other one that was sent to me to nurse, were born within a few hours of one another. His father broke a blood-vessel about six weeks after the child was brought to me. The mother went with her husband to Italy to take care of him, and the child was left with me. A week or two afterwards he was taken suddenly ill, and died. Then the devil tempted me to put my own boy into the place of the lost heir. When Mrs. St. George came back from Italy she came to see her child, and you were shown to her as that child. She accepted you without a moment’s suspicion. They let you stay with me till you were eight years old, and then they took you away and sent you to school. My husband and my sister were the only two beside myself who knew what had been done, and they both died years ago without saying a word. I shall join them in a few days, and then you alone will be the keeper of the secret. With you it will die, and on your tombstone they will write: ‘Here lies the body of Kester St. George.’”

She had told her story with great difficulty, and with frequent interruptions to gather strength and breath to finish it. She now lay back, utterly exhausted. Her eyes closed, her hand relaxed its hold on Kester’s, her jaw dropped slightly, the thin white face grew thinner and whiter: it seemed as if Death, passing that way, had looked in unexpectedly, and had beckoned her to go with him. Kester rose quickly, and struck a match and lighted a fragment of candle that he found on the chimney-piece. His next impulse was to try and revive her with a little brandy, but he paused with the glass in his hand. Why try to revive her? Would it not be better for him, for her, for every one, if she were really dead? If such were the case, it would do away with all fear of her strange secret being ever divulged to any one else. Yes—in every way her death would be a welcome release.

It was not without a tremor, it was not without a faster beating of the heart, that Kester took the bit of cracked looking-glass from the wall and held it to the woman’s lips. His very life seemed to stand still for a moment or two while he waited for the result. It came. The glass clouded faintly. The woman was not dead. With a muttered curse Kester dashed the glass across the floor and put back the candle on the chimney-piece. Then he took up his hat. Where was the use of staying longer? She could tell him nothing more when she should have come to her senses than she had told him already: nothing, that is, of any consequence; and as for details, he did not want them—at least, not now. What he had been told already held food enough for thought for some time to come. He paused for a moment before going out. Was it really possible—was it really credible, that that haggard, sharp-featured woman was his mother?—that his father had been a coarse, common labouring man, a mere hedger and ditcher, who had lived and died in that mean hut, and that he himself, instead of being the Kester St. George he had always believed himself to be, was no other than the son of those two—the boy whose supposed death he remembered to have heard about when little more than a mere child?

Fiercely and savagely he told himself again and again that such a thing could not be—that what Mother Mim had told him was nothing more than a pack of devil’s lies—the invention of a brain weakened and distorted by illness and the clouds of coming death. It was high time to go. He put five sovereigns on the chimney-piece, went softly out, and shut the door behind him. The girl was sitting on the low mud-wall near the door, with the skirt of her dress drawn over her head as some protection from the bitter wind. Her black, glittering eyes took him in from head to foot as he walked up to her. “Go inside at once. She has fainted,” said Kester. The girl nodded and went. Then Kester mounted his horse and rode slowly homeward through the chilly twilight. Bitterest thoughts held him as with a vice. When he came within sight of the chimneys of Park Newton, he gave a sigh of relief, and put spurs to his horse. “That is mine, and no power on earth shall take it from me,” he muttered. “That and the money that comes with it. I am Kester St. George. Let those disprove who can!”

A few nights later, as Lionel Dering was sitting in his dressing-room, smoking a last cigar before turning in, there came three low, distinct taps at the door, which he recognized as the peculiar signal of Dobbs. It was nearly an hour past midnight, and in that early household every one had been long abed, or, at least, had retired long ago to their own rooms.

Lionel opened the door, and Dobbs slid softly in. Such visits were by no means infrequent, but they were usually paid at a somewhat earlier hour than on the present occasion.

“Come in, Dobbs,” said Lionel. “You are later to-night than usual.”

“Yes, sir, I am, and I must ask you to pardon me for intruding at such an hour; but, if you remember, sir, you told me, a little while ago, that I was to let you know without fail the very next time my master took to walking in his sleep.”

“Quite right, Dobbs. I am glad that you have not forgotten my instructions.”

“Well, sir, Mr. St. George left his rooms, a few minutes ago, fast asleep.”

“In which direction did he go?”

“He went down the side staircase, and through the conservatory, and let himself out through the little glass door into the garden.”

“And then which way did he go?”

“I did not follow him any farther, but ran at once to tell you.”

“Have you any idea as to what direction he would be most likely to take?”

“There is little doubt, sir, but that he has gone towards the Wizard’s Fountain, in the Sycamore Walk. Three times already, that is the place to which he has gone.”

“We must follow him, Dobbs.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We must watch him, but be careful not to disturb him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I suppose there is little or no fear of his waking before he gets back to the house?”

“None whatever, sir, as far as my experience goes. As a rule, he goes quietly back to his own rooms, undresses himself as quietly and soberly as if he was wide awake, and gets into bed; and when he does really wake up in the morning, he never seems to know anything about what has happened over-night. But we must make haste, sir, if we wish to overtake him.”

“I will be ready in one minute.”

Lionel wrapped a warm furred cloak about him, and put a travelling-cap on his head. Three minutes later he and Dobbs stood together in the open air.

The night was clear, crisp, and cold. The moon was just rising above the tree-tops, bathing the upper part of the quaint old house in its white glory, but as yet the shrubbery and the garden-paths lay in deepest shadow. Nowhere could they discern the figure of the man whom they had come out to follow; but the Wizard’s Fountain was a good half mile from the Hall, so they struck at once into the nearest footway that led towards it. A few minutes’ quick walking took them there. Lionel knew the place well. It had been a favourite haunt of his when living at Park Newton during the few happy weeks that preceded the murder. Very weird and solemn the whole place looked, as seen by moonlight at that still hour of the night.

Although known as the Sycamore Walk, there were only two trees of that particular kind growing there, and they threw their antique shadows immediately over the fountain itself. The rest of the avenue consisted of beech, and oak, and elm. But all the trees were huge, and old, and fantastic: untended and uncared for—growing together year after year, whispering their leafy secrets to each other with every spring that came round, and standing shoulder to shoulder against the winds of winter: a hoary brotherhood of forest sages.

The fountain itself, whatever it might have been in years long gone by, was now nothing more than a confused heap of huge stones, overgrown with lichens and creepers. From the midst of them, and from what had doubtless at one time been a representation in marble of the head of a leopard or other forest animal, but which now was almost worn past recognition, trickled a thin stream of coldest water; which, falling into a broken basin below, over-brimmed itself there, and was lost among the cracks and interstices in the masses of broken masonry that lay scattered around.

“You had better, perhaps, wait here,” said Lionel to Dobbs, as they halted for a moment at the entrance to the avenue.

Dobbs did as he was bidden, and Lionel advanced alone, keeping well within the shade of the trees. When within a dozen yards of the fountain, he halted and waited. The low, ceaseless monotone of the falling water was the only sound that broke the moonlit silence.

From out the dense shadow of the trees on the opposite side of the avenue, and as if he himself were part of that shadow, Kester St. George slowly emerged. In the middle of the avenue, and in the full light of the moon, he paused. His right hand was thrust into the bosom of his vest, as if he were hiding something there. Standing thus, he seemed, as it were, to shrink within himself. Still hugging that hidden something, he seemed to listen—to listen as if his very life depended on the act. Then, with a slow, creeping motion, as though his feet were weighted with lead, he stole towards the fountain. He reached it. He grasped the stonework with one hand, and then he turned to gaze, as though in dread of some hidden pursuer. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, he seemed to draw something from within his vest, and, while still gazing furtively around him, he thrust his arm, elbow deep, into a crevice in the masonry, let it rest there for a single moment, and then withdrew it. With the same furtively restless look, and ears that seemed to listen more intently than ever, he paused for an instant. Then he stole swiftly back across the moonlit avenue, and so vanished among the black shadows from whence he had come.

So natural had been his actions, so unstudied his every movement, that it seemed impossible to believe that he was indeed asleep.

Hardly had Kester St. George disappeared before Lionel Dering was by the fountain, on the very spot where his cousin had stood half a minute before. He had noted well the place. There, before him, was the very crevice into which Kester had thrust his arm. Into that same crevice was Lionel’s arm now thrust—elbow deep—shoulder deep. His groping fingers soon laid hold of that which was hidden there. He drew out his arm quickly, and the something that he had found glittered steel-blue in the moonlight. With a cry of horror he dropped it, and it fell with a dull clash among the stones. Lionel Dering had recognized it in a moment as a dagger which he had last seen in the possession of Percy Osmond.