CHAPTER IX.

WHAT TO DO NEXT?

Not to every one among the children of men is given the power, the faculty, to act as comforter to others. To listen to another’s sorrow, to be told the history of another’s trouble, is one thing: to be able to give back comfort is another. That delicate intuitive sympathy with another’s woe which draws away the sting even while listening to it, which makes that woe its own property as it were, which sheds balm round the sufferer in every word and look and touch: this is surely as much a special gift as the gift of song or the poet’s fine phrenzy, and without it the world would be a much poorer place than it is.

This rare gift of sympathy was possessed by Edith Dering in a pre-eminent degree. She was at once emotional and sympathetic. To Lionel in his dire trouble she was a comforter in the truest sense of the word. It was she who preserved his mental balance—the equipoise of his mind. But for her sweet offices he would have become a monomaniac or a misanthrope of the bitterest kind. Naturally she had him with her as much as possible, but still his home was of necessity at Park Newton. To the world he was simply Richard Dering, the unmarried nephew of General St. George. It would not do for him to be seen going to Fern Cottage sufficiently often to excite either scandal or suspicion. He could only visit there as the intimate friend of Mrs. Garside and her niece. Sometimes he took his uncle with him, sometimes Tom, in order to divert suspicion. For him to enter the garden gate of Fern Cottage was to cross the threshold of his earthly paradise. Edith and he had been married in the depth of a great trouble—troubles and danger had beset the path of their wedded life ever since. Owing, perhaps, to that very cause week by week, and month by month, their love seemed only to grow in depth and intensity. As yet it had lost nothing of its pristine charm and freshness. The gold-dust of romance lingered about it still. They were man and wife, they had been man and wife for months, but to the world at large they seemed nothing more than ordinary friends.

But all Edith’s care and watchful love could not lift her husband, except by fits and starts, out of those moods of gloom and depression which seemed to be settling more closely down upon him day by day. As link after link was added to the chain of evidence, each one tending to incriminate his cousin still more deeply, his moods seemed to grow darker and more difficult of removal. With his cousin Lionel associated no more than was absolutely necessary. They rarely met each other till dinner-time, and then they met with nothing more than a simple “How do you do?” and in conversation they never got beyond some half-dozen of the barest commonplaces. Lionel always left the table as soon as the cloth was drawn.

On Kester’s side there was no love lost. That dark, stern-faced cousin was a perpetual menace to him, and he hated him accordingly. He hated him for his likeness to his dead and gone brother. He hated him because of the look in his eyes—so coldly scrutinizing, so searching, so immovable. He hated him because it was a look that he could in nowise give back. Try as he might, he could not face Lionel’s steady gaze.

For some two or three weeks after his return from Bath with Janvard’s written confession, Lionel was perfectly quiescent. He took no further action whatever. He was, indeed, debating in his own mind what further action it behoved him to take. There was no need to seek for any further evidence, if, indeed, any more would have been forthcoming. All that he wanted he had now got; it was simply a question as to what use he should make of it. Day and night that was the question which presented itself before his mind: what use should he make of the knowledge in his possession? His mind was divided this way and that; day passed after day, and still he could by no means decide as to the course which it would be best for him to adopt. Of all this he said not a word to Edith: he could not have borne to discuss the question even with her; but it is possible that she surmised something of it. She knew that she had only to wait and everything would be told her. Perhaps to Bristow, who knew all the details of the case as well as he did, he might have said something as to the difficulty by which he was beset, but as it happened, Tom was not at home just then. Much of his time was spent by Lionel in long solitary walks far and wide through the country. He could think better when he was walking than when sitting quietly at home, he used to say; and, indeed, the country folk who encountered him often turned to look at him, as he stalked along, with his eyes set straight before him, gazing on vacancy, and with lips that moved rapidly as he whispered to himself of his dreadful secret.

But, little by little, the need of counsel, of sympathy, grew more strongly upon him. He was still as much at a loss as ever as to the step which he ought to take next.

“They shall decide for me,” he said at last; “I will put myself into their hands: by their verdict I will abide.”

General St. George at this time was away from Park Newton. As has been already stated, he had been summoned to the sick-bed of a very old and valued friend. The illness was a long and tedious one, and at the request of his friend the General stayed on and kept him company. Truth to tell, he was by no means sorry to get away from Park Newton for awhile. Of late his position there had been anything but a pleasant one. The silent, deadly feud between his two nephews troubled him not a little. If Kester would only have gone away, then, so far, all would have been well. But having pressed him so earnestly to visit Park Newton, he could not, with any show of conscience, ask him to go till he was ready to do so of his own accord. Knowing what he knew, that Kester was all but proved to have been the murderer of Percy Osmond, he might well not care to live under the same roof with him, hiding his feelings under a mask, and, while pretending to know nothing, to be in reality cognisant of the whole dreadful story. Knowing what he knew, that Richard was none other than Lionel, and knowing the quest on which he was engaged, and that, sooner or later, the climax must come, he might well wish to be away from Park Newton when that most wretched day should dawn—a day which would prove the innocence of one nephew at the price of the other’s guilt. Therefore did General St. George accept his old friend’s invitation to stay with him for an indefinite length of time—till, in fact, Kester should have left Park Newton, or till the tangled knot of events should, in some other way, have unravelled itself.

When, at length, Lionel had decided that he would take the advice of his friends as to what his future course should be, he was obliged to await Tom Bristow’s return before it was possible to do anything. Then, when Tom did get back home, the General had to be written to. When he understood what he was wanted for, he agreed to come on certain conditions. He was to come to Fern Cottage, spend one night there, and go back to his friend’s house next day. No one, except those assembled at the cottage, was to know anything of his journey. Above all, it was to be kept a profound secret from Kester St George.

Thus it fell out that on a certain April evening there were assembled, in the parlour of the cottage, Edith, Mrs. Garside, General St. George, Tom Bristow, and Lionel. It was a very serious occasion, and they all felt it to be such.

The General would sit close to Edith, whom he had not seen for a little while; and several times during the evening he took possession of one of her hands, and patted it affectionately between his own withered palms.

“You are not looking quite so well, my dear, as when I saw you last,” had been his first words after kissing her. Her cheeks were, indeed, just beginning to look in the slightest degree hollow and worn, nor did her eyes look quite so bright as of old. The wonder was, considering all that she had gone through during the last twelve months, that she looked as fair and fresh as she did. Of Mrs. Garside, whom we have not seen for some little time, it may be said that she looked plumper and more matronly than ever. But then nothing could have kept Mrs. Garside from looking plump and matronly. She was one of those people off whom the troubles and anxieties of life slip as easily as water slips off a duck’s back. Although she had a copious supply of tears at command, nothing ever troubled her deeply or for long, simply because there was no depth to be troubled. She was always cheerful, because she was shallow; and she was always kind-hearted so long as her kindness of heart did not involve any self-sacrifice on her part. “What a very pleasant person Mrs. Garside is,” was the general verdict of society. And so she was—very pleasant. If her father had been hanged on a Monday for sheepstealing, by Tuesday she would have been as pleasant and cheerful as ever.

But we must not be unjust to Mrs. Garside. She had one affection, and one only, her love for Edith. During all the days of Edith’s tribulation, her aunt had never deserted her—had not even thought of deserting her; and now, for Edith’s sake, she had buried herself alive in Fern Cottage, where her only excitement was a little mild shopping, now and then, in Duxley High Street, under the incognito of a thick veil, or a welcome visit once and again from Miss Culpepper. Under these depressing circumstances, it ought perhaps to be put down to the credit of Mrs. Garside, rather than to her discredit, that her cheerfulness was not one whit abated, and that her face was a picture of health and content.

“I think you know why I have asked you to meet me here to-night,” began Lionel. “I want your advice: I want you to tell me what step I must take next. You know what the purpose of my life has been ever since the night I escaped from prison. You know how persistently I have pursued that purpose—that I have allowed nothing to deter me or turn me aside from it. The result is that there has grown under my hands a fatal array of evidence, all tending to implicate one man—all pointing with deadly accuracy to one person, and to one only, as the murderer of Percy Osmond. I have but to open my mouth, and the four walls of a prison would shut him round as fast as ever they shut round me; I have but to speak of half I know and that man would have to take his trial for Wilful Murder even as I took mine. But shall I do this thing? That is the question that I want you to help me to answer. So long as the chain of evidence remained incomplete, so long as certain links were wanting to it, I felt that my task was unfinished. But at last I have all that I need. There is nothing more to search for. My task, so far, is at an end. Knowing, then, what I know, and with such proofs in my possession, am I to stop here? Am I to rest content with what I have done, and go no step farther? Or am I to go through with it to the bitter end? What that end would involve you know as well as I could tell you.”

He ceased, and for a little while they all sat in silence. General St. George was the first to speak. “Lionel knows, and you all know, that from the very first he has had my heartfelt sympathy in this unhappy business. He has not had my sympathy only, he has had my help, although I have seen for a long time the point to which we were all tending, and the terrible consequences that must necessarily ensue. Me those consequences affect with peculiar force. One nephew can only be saved at the expense of the irretrievable ruin and disgrace of the other. It is not as though we had been searching in the dark, and had there found the bloodstained hand of a stranger. The hand we have so grasped is that of one of our own kin—one of ourselves. And that makes the dreadful part of the affair. Still, I would not have you misunderstand me. I am as closely bound to Lionel—my sympathy and help are his as much to-day as ever they were, and should he choose to go through with this business in the same way as he would go through with it in the case of an utter stranger, I shall be the last man in the world to blame him. More: I will march with him side by side, whatever be the goal to which his steps may lead him. Such unparalleled wrongs as his demand unparalleled reparation. For all that, however, it is still a most serious question whether there is not a possibility of effecting some kind of a compromise: whether there is not somewhere a door of escape open by means of which we may avert a catastrophe almost too terrible even to bear thinking about.”

“What is your opinion, Bristow?” said Lionel, turning to Tom. “What say you, my friend of friends?”

“I have a certain diffidence in offering any opinion,” said Tom, “simply on account of the relationship of the two persons chiefly involved. To tell the world all that you know, would, undoubtedly, bring about a family catastrophe of a most painful nature. It therefore seems to me that the members of that family, and they alone, should be empowered to offer an opinion on a question so delicate as the one now under consideration.”

“Not so,” said Lionel, emphatically. “No one could have a better right, or even so great a right, to offer an opinion as you. But for you, I should not have been here to-night to ask for that opinion.”

“Nor I here but for you,” interrupted Tom.

“I will put my question to you in a different form,” said Lionel; “and so put to you, I shall expect you to answer it in your usual clear and straightforward way. Bristow, if you were circumstanced exactly as I am now circumstanced, what would you do in my place?”

“I would go through with the task I had taken in hand, let the consequences be what they might,” said Tom, without a moment’s hesitation. “Nothing should hold me back. I would clear my own name and my own fame, and let punishment fall where punishment is due. You are still young, Dering, and a fair career and a happy future may still be yours if you like to claim them.”

Tom’s words were very emphatic, and for a little while no one spoke. “We have yet to hear what Edith has to say,” said the General. “Her interests in the matter are second only to those of Lionel.”

“Yes, it is my wife’s turn to speak next,” said Lionel.

“What my opinion is, you know well, dearest, and have known for a long time.”

“My uncle and Bristow would like to hear it from your own lips.”

“Uncle,” began Edith, with a little blush, “whatever Lionel may ultimately decide to do will doubtless be for the best. The last wish I have in the world is to lead him or guide him in any way in opposition to his own convictions. But I have thought this: that it would be very terrible indeed to have to take part in a second tragedy—a tragedy that, in some of its features, would be far more dreadful than that first one, which none of us can ever forget. No one can know better than I know how grievously my husband has been sinned against. But nothing can altogether undo the wrong that has been done. Would it make my husband a happy man if, instead of being the accused, he should become the accuser? Let us for a few moments try to imagine that this second tragedy has been worked out in all its frightful consequences. That my husband has told everything. That he who is guilty has been duly punished. That Lionel’s fair fame has been re-established, and that he and I are living at Park Newton as if nothing had ever happened to disturb the commonplace tenor of our lives. In such a case, would my husband be a happy man? No. I know him too well to believe it possible that he could ever be happy or contented. The image of that man—one of his own kith and kin, we must remember—would be for ever in his mind. He would be the prey of a remorse all the more bitter in that the world would hold him as without blame. But would he so hold himself? I think not—I am sure not. He would feel as if he had sought for and accepted the price of blood.” Overcome by her emotion, she ceased.

“I think in a great measure as you think, my dear,” said the General. “What course do you propose that your husband should adopt?”

“It is not for me to propose anything,” answered Edith. “I can only suggest certain views of the question, and leave it for you and Lionel to adopt them or reject them, as may seem best to you.”

“Holding the proofs of his innocence in his hands as he does,” said the General, “is it your wish that Lionel should sit down contented with what he has already achieved, and knowing that the real facts of his story are in the keeping of you and me, and two or three trusted friends, rest satisfied with that and ask for nothing more?”

“No, I hardly go so far as that,” said Edith, with a faint smile. “I think that the man who committed the crime should know that Lionel still lives, and that he holds in his hands the proof at once of his own innocence and of the other’s guilt. Beyond that I say this: The world believes my husband to be dead: rather than re-open so terrible a wound, let the world continue so to believe. My husband and I can do without the world, as well as it can do without us. We have our mutual love, which nothing can deprive us of: against that the shafts of Fortune beat as vainly as hailstones against a castle wall. On this earth of ours are places sweet and fair without number. In one of them—not altogether dissevered from those ties of friendship which have already made our married life so beautiful—my husband and I could build up a new home, with no sad memories of the past to cling around it; and when this haunting shadow that now broods over his life shall have been brushed away for ever, then I think—I know—I feel sure that I can make him happy!” Her voice, her eyes, her whole manner were imbued with a sweet fervour that it was impossible to resist.

Lionel crossed over and kissed her. “My darling!” he said. “But for your love and care I should long ago have been a madman.”

“You, my dear, have put into words,” said the General, “the very ideas that for a long time have been floating about, half formed, in my own mind. Lionel, what have you to say to your wife’s suggestions?”

“Only this: that I have made up my mind to follow them. _He_ shall know that I am alive, and that I hold the proofs of his guilt, ready to produce them at a moment’s notice, should I ever be compelled to do so. Beyond that, I will leave him in peace—to such peace as his own conscience will give him. The world believes Lionel Dering to be dead and buried. Dead and buried he shall still remain, and ‘requiescat in pace’ be written under his name.”

The General got up with tears in his eyes and shook Lionel warmly by the hand. “Good boy! good boy! You will not go without your reward,” was all that he could say.

“The eighth of May will soon be here,” said Lionel—“the anniversary of poor Osmond’s murder. On that day he shall be told. But I shall tell him in my own fashion. On that day, uncle, you must promise to give me your company; and you yours, Tom. After that I shall trouble you no more.”

If Tom Bristow dissented from the conclusion thus come to, he said no word to that effect. There was one point, however, that struck his practical mind as having been altogether overlooked; and as soon as Edith and Mrs. Garside had left the room he did not fail to mention it.

“What about the income of eleven thousand a year?” he said. “You are surely not going to let the whole of that slip through your fingers?”

“Ah, by-the-by, that point never struck me,” said the General. “No, it would be decidedly unjust both to yourself and your wife, Lionel, to give up the income as well as the position.”

“Now you are importing a mercenary tone into the affair that is utterly distasteful to me. It looks as if I were being bribed to keep silence.”

“That is sheer nonsense,” said the General. “You have but to hold out your hand to take the whole.”

Lionel said no more, but went and sat down dejectedly on the sofa.

“You and I must settle this matter between us,” said the General to Tom. “It is most important. It shall be my place to see that whatever is agreed upon shall be duly carried out in the arrangement between the two men. I should think that if the income were divided it would be about as fair a thing as could be done. What say you?”

“I agree with you entirely,” said Tom. “The other one will have the name and position to keep up, and that can’t be done for nothing.”

“Then it shall be so settled.”

“There is one other point that I think ought to be settled at the same time. Who is to have Park Newton after _his_ death? Lionel may have children. _He_ may marry and have children. But, in common justice, the estate ought to be secured on Dering’s eldest child, whether the present possessor die with or without an heir.”

“Certainly, certainly. Good gracious me! a most valuable suggestion. Strange, now, that it never struck me. Yes, yes: Lionel’s eldest child must have the estate. I will see that there is no possible mistake on that score.”