CHAPTER XXXII--LEWIS MAKES A DISCOVERY AND GETS INTO A “STATE OF MIND.

The end of the room at which Lewis had seated himself lay in shadow, so that Leicester, who shortly made his appearance wrapped in a dressing-gown, could merely distinguish the outline of his figure.

“Why, Arundel,” he began, “is anything the matter? Here has Wilson been and roused me out of my first sleep, with a face like that of the party who ‘drew Priam’s curtains i’ the dead o’ the night.’ Where’s Governor Grant, and how is it that you’re home first?”

“It’s no joking matter, Mr. Leicester,” returned Lewis faintly, and without raising his head. “The poachers have given us more trouble than we expected, and in attempting to capture Hardy the General has been thrown from his horse. His right arm is broken in two places, and when I came away he was still insensible.”

From the position in which Lewis sat (his elbows resting on a table and his forehead supported by his hands) he was unable to perceive anything that might be going on in the apartment, consequently he had continued his speech, ignorant that a third person had joined them. Annie (for she it was who, pale as some midnight ghost, had glided noiselessly into the room) laid her hand on Leicester’s arm to prevent his calling attention to her presence, while eager and trembling she listened to Lewis’s account of her father’s accident; and overcome for the moment by these evil tidings, she remained speechless, leaning against a chair for support. Lewis, surprised at Leicester’s silence, raised his head languidly, and the first object that met his eyes was Annie Grant’s sinking figure. With an exclamation of dismay he attempted to start up, but he was becoming so weak from loss of blood that he failed to accomplish his purpose. Roused by the action, Annie recovered herself, and as a new idea struck her, she asked--

“Where, then, is poor papa? Have they brought him home? I must go to him instantly!”

“He is not yet arrived, Miss Grant,” returned Lewis in a low voice that trembled with conflicting emotions; “his own servants are carrying him, and a surgeon will be here instantly. I----” he paused abruptly, for Annie, drawing herself up, advanced towards him, and with flashing eyes exclaimed--

“Is this then the way in which you have fulfilled your promise, Mr. Arundel? I trusted so implicitly to your assurance that you would watch over him and protect him; and now you have not only failed him in the moment of danger but deserted him in his necessity, and secured your own safety by coming home to break my heart with these evil tidings. Oh, I am ashamed of you--grieved--disappointed!”

“Hush, my dear Annie,” observed Leicester soothingly. “Arundel might not be able to prevent this accident--you are too hasty.”

“No, no!” returned Lewis in a low, broken voice, “I deserve her reproaches. I ought never to have quitted him, and yet I did so believing that I left him in perfect safety. I could not bear to stand inactive when other men were about to face danger; besides, I had pledged myself to assist in capturing this poacher.” He paused, then added, “I have been to blame, Miss Grant, but I am not quite the poltroon you imagine me. I did indeed leave your father that I might accompany the attacking party into the wood, but I strained every nerve to come up with Hardy before General Grant encountered him; and although that was impossible, I arrived in time to prevent him from forcing the horse to trample the life out of the fallen man, and wounded as I am, I engaged with and captured, at the risk of my own life, the ruffian who had injured your father; nor should I have been here now, but that it was necessary for some one to procure assistance and summon a surgeon, and I rode back at speed to my own injury, that I might leave a more efficient man with the General.”

As he ceased speaking the butler entered the room, bearing in his hand a lamp, and for the first time the light fell upon Lewis’s figure. Leicester, as he beheld him, uttered an exclamation of surprise and horror, which his appearance was well calculated to call forth. His face was deadly pale, save a red line across the forehead, where some bramble had torn the skin; his dark hair, heavy with the night dew, clung in wild disorder around his temples; and his clothes, stained with mud, bore traces of the severity of the struggle in which he had been engaged; the sleeve of his left arm, which still rested on the table, was soaked with gore, while the momentary excitement which had animated him as he spoke had given way to a return of the faintness produced by the loss of blood, which was by this time very considerable. As this ghastly figure met her sight Annie uttered a slight shriek--then a sense of the cruel injustice of her own reproaches banished every other consideration, and springing towards him, she exclaimed--

“Oh, Mr. Arundel, what can we do for you? how shocked, how grieved I am!--will you, can you forgive me?”

Lewis smiled and attempted to reply, but the words died away upon his lips, and completely overcome by faintness, he would have fallen from the chair had not Leicester supported him. Fortunately, at this moment the surgeon arrived, and Annie quitting the apartment, Lewis’s sleeve was cut open, his wound temporarily bound up, and his temples bathed with some stimulating essence which dispelled his faintness, before the surgeon’s services were required for General Grant. The latter gentleman had recovered consciousness ere he reached Broadhurst, and though suffering acute pain from his broken arm, appeared cool and collected. His first question had been “whether Hardy had escaped,” and he seemed to revive from the moment he was informed of his capture. His next inquiry was who had taken him, and on learning it was Lewis, he was much pleased, muttering, “Brave lad, brave lad! pity he’s not in the army.” He recognised Annie and spoke kindly to her, gave orders for the safe custody of Hardy, demanded of the surgeon who examined his arm whether he wished to amputate it, as he felt quite equal to the operation, and in short, under circumstances which would have overpowered any man of less firmness of character, behaved like a gentleman and a brave old soldier, as he was. Fortunately the surgeons (for a second, attracted by the rumour of an accident, as vultures are if a camel dies in the desert, had come to test the truth of the old proverb that two heads are better than one) succeeded in setting the arm, pronounced amputation unnecessary, and after careful examination, gave it as their opinion that, with the exception of a few contusions of little consequence, the General had sustained no further injury. Having come to this satisfactory conclusion, they found time to direct their attention to Lewis. After much whispered consultation and considerable exchange of learned winks and profound nods, they informed him that he had been wounded by a shot from a pistol (which, by the way, he could have told them), and that they had very little doubt that the ball remained in the wound, in which case it would be necessary to extract it. To this Lewis replied, “The sooner the better.” Accordingly they proceeded to put him to great agony by probing the wound to find the ball, after which they hurt him still more in extracting it, performing both operations with such easy cheerfulness of manner and utter disregard of the patient’s feelings, that a bystander would have imagined they were carving a cold shoulder of mutton rather than the same joint of live humanity. But surgeons, like fathers, have flinty hearts, unmacadamised by the smallest grain of pity for the wretched victims of their uncomfortable skill; their idea of the “Whole Duty of Man” being that he should afford them “an interesting case” when living, and become a “good subject” for them when he has ceased to be one to the Queen. After the ball was extracted, Lewis requested it might be handed to him; it was small, and from its peculiar shape he perceived that it must have been discharged from a pistol with a rifle barrel.

“If you will allow me,” he said, “I shall keep this bit of lead as a memorial of this evening’s entertainment.”

“Oh, certainly,” replied the most cheerful surgeon, “by all means; if it had but gone an eighth of an inch farther,” he added, rubbing his hands joyously, “only an eighth of an inch, it would have injured the spinal cord, and you would have been--droll how these things occur sometimes--you’d have been paralysed for life.”

Lewis shuddered, and wished devoutly he were for the time being Caliph Haroun Al’Raschid, in which case the facetious surgeon would have added a practical acquaintance with the effects of the bastinado on the sole of the human foot to his other medical knowledge.

“I don’t think,” resumed the doctor meditatively, “I don’t think you need apprehend any very unpleasant result, as far as I can as yet see into the case. Of course,” he continued with hilarity, “erysipelas might supervene, but that is seldom fatal, unless it affects the brain; and I should hope the great effusion of blood will prevent that in the present instance. You feel very weak, don’t you?”

Lewis replied in the affirmative, and his tormentor continued--

“Well, you need not be uneasy on that score; I don’t apprehend a return of syncope, but if you should feel an unnatural deficiency of vital heat, or perceive any symptoms of approaching collapse, I would advise your ringing the bell, and I’ll be with you instantly. Scalpel’s obliged to be off; he’s got a very interesting broken leg--compound fracture--waiting for him down at the village, besides some dozen agreeable minor casualties, the result of to-night’s work. Keep up your spirits, and go to sleep--your shoulder is easier now?”

“It feels as if the blade of a red-hot sword were being constantly plunged into it,” returned Lewis crossly.

“Delighted to hear it,” replied Dr. Bistoury, rubbing his hands; “just what I could have wished; nothing inert there! I would recommend your bearing (which word he pronounced bea-a-a-ring) it quietly, and rely upon my looking in the first thing to-morrow.” So saying he rubbed his hands, chuckled, and departed.

In spite of his wound, which continued very painful, Lewis contrived to get a few hours’ sleep, and awoke so much refreshed that he resisted all attempts to keep him in bed, and though stiff and weak to an excessive degree, made his way to the study and cheated Walter out of the holiday he had expected--a loss which he scarcely regretted in his joy at finding that the wicked poachers had not seriously injured his dear Mr. Arundel. And then Annie could not be happy till she had caught Charles Leicester and made him accompany her on a penitential visit to Lewis, to tell him how grieved she was at the recollection of her injustice to him; it seemed so dreadfully ungrateful, when in fact he had just saved her father’s life; and she looked so pretty and good and pure in her penitence, that Lewis began to think women were brighter and higher beings than his philosophy had dreamed of, and for the first time it occurred to him that he had been guilty of an unpardonable absurdity in despising the whole race of womankind because he happened to have been jilted by a little, coquettish, half-educated German girl; and he forgave Annie so fully in his heart that with his lips he could scarcely stammer out half-a-dozen unmeaning words to tell her so.

Leicester asked him in the course of the conversation whether he had any idea which of the gang of poachers had fired the pistol, adding that two others had been taken besides Hardy. Lewis paused for a moment ere he replied, “That his back had been turned towards the man who shot him, and that it was too serious a charge to bring against any one without more certain knowledge than he possessed on the subject.” And having said this, he immediately changed the conversation.

As soon as Annie and her cousin withdrew, Millar the gamekeeper made his appearance, full of congratulations on Lewis’s gallant conduct and sympathy in regard to his wound.

“I can’t imagine vitch o’ ther warmints could have had a pistol; it worn’t neither o’ ther two as we captiwated, for I sarched ’em myself, and never a blessed harticle had they got about ’em except ther usual amount o’ bacca and coppers hin ther breeches’ pockets.”

“Did you have any more fighting after I left you to follow Hardy?” asked Lewis.

“Veil, we did ’ave one more sharpish turn,” was the reply. “When the blackguards see me down, they made a rush to recover the sack with the game, and almost succeeded, only Sam Jones pulled me out of the crowd and set me on my legs again, and I was so mad a-thinking that Hardy had got clear away that I layed about me like one possessed, they do tell me; so we not only recovered the game, but bagged two o’ ther chaps themselves. By ther bye,” he continued, “Sam Jones came here with me; he wants to see yer when I’ve done with yer; he says he’s picked up somethin’ o’ yourn, but he won’t say what--he’s a close chap when he likes, is Sam. Howsomdever, I suppose he expects you’ll tip him a bob or so, for it was he as ketched yer when Hardy first flung yer off. You’ve paid _him_ for it sweetly, and no mistake; he’d got a lovely black hye, and his right wrist was swelled as big as two ven we marched him hoff to H---------- gaol this morning. And now I’ll vish yer good arternoon, Mr. Arundel, and send Sam hup, if you’re agreeable.”

Lewis, with a smile at the equivocal nature of the phrase, signified his agreeability, and the keeper took his departure. In another minute the sound of heavy footsteps announced the approach of Sam, who, having obeyed Lewis’s injunction to “come in,” vindicated his title to the attribute of “closeness” by carefully shutting the door and applying first his ear and then his eye to the keyhole ere he could divest his cautious mind of a dread of eavesdroppers. He then crossed the room on tip-toe, partly from a sense of the grave nature of his mysterious errand, partly from respect to the carpet, the richness of which oppressed him heavily during the whole of his visit, restricting him to the use of one leg only the greater portion of the time.

“You have found something of mine, Millar tells me,” began Lewis, finding that, ghost-like, his visitor appeared to consider it a point of etiquette not to speak first.

“You’re very kind, Mr. Arundel,” returned his visitor, who, catching sight at the moment of the gilt frame of an oil painting which hung over the chimney, and believing it firmly to be pure gold, became so overpowered between that and the carpet that he scarcely dared trust himself to speak in such an aristocratic atmosphere. “I’m much obliged to you, sir. Yes, I have found something, sir, but I don’t know disactly as it’s altogether yourn.”

“What is it, my good fellow?” inquired Lewis, half amused and half bored by the man’s bashfulness.

A consolatory mistrust of the sterling value of the picture-frame had by this time begun to insinuate itself into Sam’s mind, and reassured in some degree by the doubt, he continued--

“I beg pardon, sir, but I hopes you don’t feel so bad as might be expected; you looks shocking pale, surely.”

Lewis thanked him for his inquiry, and said he believed the wound was going on favourably.

“I’m sure I’m very glad to hear it, which is a mercy to be thankful for; you looking so bad, too,” returned this sympathising visitor; then leaning forward so as to approach his lips to Lewis’s ear, he continued in a loud whisper--

“Have ye any notion who it was as fired the shot?”

Lewis started, and colouring slightly, fixed his eyes on the man’s face as he inquired abruptly--

“Have you?”

Forgetting his veneration for the carpet in the excitement of the conversation, the suspicious under-keeper walked to the door and again tested the keyhole ere he ventured to answer the question; then approaching Lewis, he thrust his hand into a private pocket in his shooting-jacket, and drawing thence something carefully wrapped in a handkerchief, he presented it to the young tutor, saying--

“That’s what I’ve been and found, sir; I picked it up in the wood, not twenty yards from the place where you stood when you was shot, Mr. Arundel.”

Lewis hastily unrolled the handkerchief, and drew from its folds a small pocket-pistol; _on_ the stock, which was richly inlaid, was a silver escutcheon with a coat of arms engraved upon it; from marks about the nipple it had evidently been lately discharged, and on examination it proved to have _a rifle barrel_. Lewis’s brow grew dark.

“It is then as I suspected,” he muttered; pausing, however, as a new idea seemed to strike him. “It might be unintentional,” he continued, “the mere result of accident. I must not jump too hastily to such a conclusion;” then addressing the under-keeper, he inquired--“Have you any idea to whom this pistol belongs?”

“P’r’aps I may have,” was the cautious reply, “but there’s some things it’s best not to know--a man might get himself into trouble by being too knowing, you see, Mr. Arundel.”

“Listen to me, my good friend,” returned Lewis, fixing his piercing glance on the man’s face: “it is evident you more than suspect who is the owner of this pistol, and you probably are aware by whom, and under what circumstances, it was last night discharged. Now, if through a selfish dread of consequences you wish to keep this knowledge to yourself, why come here and show me the pistol? If, on the contrary, you wish to enhance the value of your information in order to make a more profitable bargain with me, you are only wasting time. I am naturally anxious to know who wounded me, and whether the deed was accidental or intentional; therefore, you have but to name your price, and if I can afford it I will give it you. I say this because I can conceive no other reason for your shilly-shallying.”

During this speech the unfortunate Sam Jones shifted uneasily from leg to leg, dropped his cap, stooped to pick it up again, bit his under-lip with shame and indecision, and at last exclaimed--

“Bless’d if I can stand this hany longer! out it must come, and if I loses my sitiation through it, I suppose there’s other places to be got; they can’t say nuffin against my character, that’s one comfort. It ain’t your money I wants, Mr. Arundel, sir; I’m able and willin’ to earn my own livin’; but I’ve got a good place here, and don’t wish to offend nobody: still right is right, and knowing what I knows, my conscience wouldn’t let me rest till I’d come and told you--only I thort if you would ha’ guessed it of yourself like, nothing needn’t ha’ come out about me in the matter.”

“I understand,” returned Lewis with a contemptuous curl of the lip; “I will take care not to commit you in any way; so speak out.”

“Well, if you remember, sir, I went with you and Millar up to the barley-stack last night, and when you grabbed hold of Hardy he sung out to the chap as was with him to come and help him, so I thort the best thing for me was to pitch into him and prevent his doing so. Well, I hadn’t much trouble with him, for he was a shocking poor hand with his fists, and as soon as I’d polished him off I turned to lend you a help; just at that minute I see the moon a-shining upon something bright, and looking further, I perceived the figure of a man crouching close to the stack with a cocked pistol in his hand. When fust I see him the pistol was pointed at Hardy, but suddenly he changed his aim and fired straight at you; as he let fly, the moonlight fell upon his face, and if ever a man looked like a devil he did then.”

“And it was----?” asked Lewis eagerly.

“Lord Bellefield!” was the reply; “there’s none of ’em wears hair on their top lip except the young lord, so it ain’t easy to mistake him, ye see.”

“Are you quite sure he changed the direction of the pistol? Might not the shot have been intended for Hardy?”

“I’ll take my oath it worn’t, Mr. Arundel; he pointed it straight at your breast, and if Hardy hadn’t given a sudden wrench at the minute and dragged you out of the line of fire, you’d have been a dead man long before this.”

Seeing that Lewis continued silent, the keeper resumed--

“As soon as you was hit you let go and Hardy threw you off. I caught you, expecting it was all up with you, but I still kept my eye on his lordship, for I was curious to know how he’d act. When he saw you fall he smiled, and then he looked more like a devil than he had done before. As Hardy was a-cutting away he passed close to Lord Bellefield and struck against his shoulder, accidently, and his lordship in a rage flung the discharged pistol after him, and it would ha’ fetched him down too if it hadn’t a-hit against a branch. However, I marked where it fell pretty nigh, and as soon as it was light this morning I went and found it. There’s his lordship’s arms upon it, same as them on his pheaton.”

Completely overpowered and amazed at this recital, Lewis, desiring to be alone with his own thoughts, obtained from Sam Jones a promise of the strictest secrecy in regard to the affair, and having liberally rewarded him for his discreet behaviour, dismissed him. He then, concealing the pistol in his pocket, withdrew to the privacy of his own apartment, and locking the door, sat down to collect his ideas. At first he could scarcely realise the fact with which he had become acquainted. True, he had suspected that it was from Lord Bellefield’s hand that he had received his wound, for he had previously observed the butt of a pistol protruding from a pocket in his lordship’s greatcoat, his attention being particularly called to the fact by the eagerness with which its owner immediately hastened to conceal it more effectually. Still, he had believed that he had been wounded by an accident, and that the shot had been fired with the intention of disabling Hardy, in whose capture Lord Bellefield appeared, for some mysterious reason, to be deeply interested. The account he had just received proved that this was evidently not the case, and Lewis could only conjecture that at the moment Lord Bellefield was about to shoot Hardy some fiend had suggested to him the opportunity of an easy revenge on the man he hated, and that, in an impulse of ungovernable malice, he had altered the direction of the pistol.

Rising and opening his dressing-case, Lewis took from a secret drawer the ball which had been extracted from his shoulder, and drawing the pistol out of his pocket, tried it; it fitted the barrel to a nicety. Replacing it, he muttered, “There is then _no_ doubt.” He paused, but immediately resumed, “ ’Tis well; he has now filled up the measure of his guilt; the time is come to balance the account.” His intention at that moment was to seek out Lord Bellefield, upbraid him with his treachery, threaten to expose him, and demand as a right that he should afford him satisfaction, forcing him by some means to meet him on the following morning. But even when carried away by passion, Lewis was not utterly forgetful of the feelings of others, and his friendship for Leicester and for Annie, consideration for the General in his present situation, and the interest he took in Walter, rose up before him, and he exclaimed--

“No, it is impossible; a thousand reasons forbid it while I remain under this roof. I must break off all intercourse with this family before I seek my just revenge. Well, the day of retribution is postponed then, perhaps for years; but it will come at last, I know; I feel that it will. That man is a part of my destiny. With what pertinacity he hates me! He fears me, too; he has done so ever since that affair of the glove. He read in my eyes that I had resolved on--on what? What will all this lead to? Am I at heart a murderer?” He sat down, for he was very weak, and trembled so violently from the intensity of his feelings that his knees refused to support him.

“No!” he continued, “it is an act of justice. This man insulted me--I bore it patiently; at least I did not actively resent it. He repeated his injurious conduct, he heaped insult on insult--I warned him; he knew what he was doing; he saw the fiend he was arousing in me, but he persevered--even yet I strove to forgive him; yes, for the sake of his brother’s kindness to me, for the sake of the fair girl who is betrothed to him, I had almost resolved to forego my right to punish him. Then he seeks my life, the cowardly assassin! and in so doing he has sealed his own doom.” He rose and paced sternly up and down the apartment. “Frere would say,” he resumed, “Frere would say that I ought to forgive him yet, but he would be wrong. He would quote the Scriptures that we should forgive a brother ’till seventy times seven.’ Yes, _if_ he turn and repent; repented sins only are forgiven either in heaven or on earth. Does this man repent? let him tell me so, and I will give him my hand in friendship; but if he glories in his wickedness? why then the old Hebrew law stands good, ‘An eye for an eye.’ He owes me a life already, and if I offer him fair combat, I give him a chance to which in strict justice he has no right; but _I_ am no mean assassin. And now to return his pistol and inform his lordship that I am aware of the full extent of my obligations to him.”

So saying, he drew pen and ink towards him and hastily wrote as follows:--

“Mr. Arundel presents his compliments to Lord Bellefield, and begs to return the pistol with which he did him the honour to attempt his life in the wood last night. Mr. Arundel reserves the pleasure of _returning the shot_ till some future opportunity.”

He then rolled up the note, and inserting it in the barrel of the pistol, formed the whole into a small parcel, which he carefully sealed, and ringing for Lord Bellefield’s valet, desired him to lay it on his master’s dressing-table before he prepared for dinner.

Reader, when your eye falls upon this page, which lays bare the heart of one whom we would fain depict, not as a mere picturesque brain-creation of impossible virtues and startling faults, but as an erring mortal like ourselves, swayed by the same passions, subject to the same influences for good or for evil--when you perceive how this one wrong feeling, permitted to take root in his mind, grew and flourished, till it so warped his frank, generous nature, that the fiend of sophistry, quoting scripture to his purpose, could blind his sense of right with such shallow reasoning as the foregoing,--resolve, if a single revengeful feeling lurk serpent-like in your bosom, to cast it from you at whatever sacrifice, lest when you pray “Our Father” which is in heaven to “forgive us our trespasses _as_ we forgive them that trespass against us,” you unawares pronounce your own condemnation.