CHAPTER XXVII.

MAKING IT UP.

There was rejoicing in the house of Robert Gates, as over a prodigal returned, when Richard Ferrier avowed that he had been mistaken all through in his quarrel with his brother, and that he was now only anxious to acknowledge his error, and to do his best to set things going again on the old footing. But he had some days to wait before he could make his confession.

Thornsett Edge had remained unoccupied, for there was some difficulty in letting a furnished house near a deserted village. People did not seem to care about the vicinity of all those empty shells of homes. So Roland had decided to occupy it again, and he was coming down there to get things ready for his aunt's reception, and was making a few visits to old friends on his way. He had written down to the old couple in charge to have the place ready, as he might come down any day.

Two days passed and he had not come, and Richard was getting tired of the constant inquiries and congratulations which assailed him at The Hollies. He thought he would go home, and be there to welcome Roland when he arrived. So he sent over his portmanteau, and took up his quarters in his old room at Thornsett Edge. He was in a very tender and remorseful frame of mind in those days. He wandered all over the old house, full filled of memories of the time when he and his brother played together there as children; of the time when, later, they thrashed each other as schoolboys, with right good will. There were haunting thoughts of the dissension that had grown up between them, and of the shadow that the knowledge of it had cast upon their father's deathbed. The necessity which he felt himself to be under of keeping a sharp look-out for John Hatfield, fortunately served as a kind of antidote to the rush of memories and associations which came over Richard, now that he was once again in his home.

He walked down to the village to seek out the few 'hands' who had clung like rooks to their old haunts, and there he saw sad sights and heard sad stories enough to have driven him mad had he not known that it would soon be in his power to set things in some degree right again. He resolved, and felt sure of Roland's co-operation in his scheme, to seek out as many of the old 'hands' as could be got word of, and to give each of them enough to get a home together again.

Of course he thought often of Miss Stanley; but the past months of unusual action and changed surroundings had altered his feeling for her, which was fortunate for him, since he had falsely accused his own brother to her--a meanness which he knew it to be quite impossible for such a woman as Clare ever to forget or forgive. He thought of her now without any of the old passion, as he might have thought of one who had died long before, or of one whom he had loved in some other life.

This did not prevent him from feeling furiously jealous of Litvinoff, to whom he seemed to have transferred all the anger that had burned in him against his brother, intensified by a galling consciousness of the complete success which Litvinoff had achieved in his attempt to deceive and mislead him. There should be a reckoning for that, Richard thought. He felt glad he had always mistrusted the man. It showed that his judgment was worth something sometimes, and this pleased his self-love.

On the third day came a telegram from Matlock, which said that Roland would be at home that evening. Richard roamed about the house in restless impatience all day. How should they meet? He should not dare to go to the door to greet his brother lest he should imagine that it was a renewal of hostilities, not a welcome home, that was intended. Richard had no eye for dramatic effects, nor any leaning thereto, but he charged the old people to say nothing of his presence, and to leave him to announce himself to his brother when he should think well.

His brother would have done exactly the same thing from absolutely opposite motives.

So when Roland walked up to his home in the teeth of the wild March wind the only welcome that met him was that of the old woman in charge, and this seemed to him to be so inconsequently effusive, and the good lady herself seemed so unreasonably radiant, that he was quite flattered. It was pleasant to him to be appreciated and admired, even by a 'person in charge.'

'The fire's i' the dining-room, Mr Roland,' she said; 'an' I'll dish ye up the supper in less nor half a minute, sir. It's a glad day for Thornsett as sees yer back agen.'

Mrs Brock's son had worked in the mill--a fact which made the anticipated reconciliation peculiarly interesting to her.

Richard from his ambush in his own room heard the greeting, heard the well-known voice giving orders about rugs and hat-boxes in the well-known tones. Then he heard doors open and close. After a while a savoury smell from the hot supper that was being carried in rose to his altitude. The dining-room door was opened, and shut several times. At last it was closed with a more decided touch, and in the noise of its closing was a settled sound as of a door that did not mean to open again just yet. Richard knew that the supper had been cleared away, and that Roland was most likely assisting digestion with tobacco and grog. This would be the time, he decided, to put in an appearance and to get through his proposed reconciliation. He went softly downstairs, and paused a moment with his hand on the dining-room door. The house was very still. As he stood there he heard a cinder fall from the fire in the dining-room, and the great hall clock at the foot of the stairs ticked louder than usual, as it seemed. He turned the handle and went in. Roland was sitting in the big arm-chair by the fire where their father had been used to sit. As the door opened he looked up with a sort of displeased curiosity to see who it was that had the assurance to enter unannounced. When he saw who it was he gave a start, and the expression of his face changed to something deeper and sterner.

He got up.

'I understood from Gates,' he said, 'that you renounced all claim to be in this house so long as half the possible rent was paid you. I mean to pay you your half. May I ask, then, what you want here?'

'I want to beg your pardon,' began Richard, his hand still on the lock--when his brother interrupted him with,--

'Hadn't you better close the door? I suppose you don't want all the world to hear anything you may have to say.'

His tone was so icily cold that the other found it hard to go on as he had intended. He did his best, however.

'I am very sorry for all that happened in the autumn. I was quite deceived and misled, and I beg your pardon. I can't say more, and I hope you'll let bygones be bygones.'

He held out his hand. At this point in the scene Dick had fancied that his brother would clasp his hand with reciprocating affection, and all would be forgiven and forgotten. But the other actor evidently intended a different 'reading' of the part assigned him. He made no movement to meet the outstretched hand. On the contrary, he put his hands in his pockets with a too expressive gesture, and was silent.

'Come, Roland,' said Dick, who, knowing himself to have been in the wrong, displayed a patience which surprised himself; 'make it up, old man.'

'I am not sure,' said the other slowly, 'that I care to make it up, as you call it. No "making-up" can alter all that has gone wrong through your foolishness. I've gone through the worst of the trouble now, and, to tell you the truth, I'm not inclined to lay myself open to any more experiences of this kind. You might be "deceived and misled" again.'

Richard, who had remained standing, gave the slightest possible stamp of impatience, which his brother did not observe.

'And as for the money,' he went on, 'I dare say I can do as well without it as with it.'

'Look here,' said Dick, his face flushing hotly; 'if you suppose I care a straw about the dirty money, you're mistaken; only one of us can't have any without the other now. Come, Roland, be friends, if it's only for the old dad's sake.'

Roland seemed to have what the children call the 'black dog on his shoulder,' but this appeal was not lost. He made an effort to overcome the resentment and bitterness that filled him, and after a moment held out his hand, saying,--

'Very well, I'll shake hands. I suppose we shall manage to scrape along together as well as a good many brothers.'

And this was the reconciliation that Richard had had his heart full of for the last three or four days. It was piteously unlike his dreams of it.

When they had shaken hands, Dick sat down. There was a silence--a very awkward silence. Roland passed the whisky along the table, and the other mechanically helped himself.

'I think,' Roland said presently, 'that you owe me an explanation of all this.'

'Of course I do,' assented Richard eagerly; 'but you are so--well, unapproachable; but I'll tell you every word about it,' which he did, omitting no particulars which bore on the case.

'So he called her Mrs Litvinoff, did he?' was Roland's comment on the Petrovitch-Ferrier episode at London Bridge. 'I should think she had just taken the name by chance, but for one thing.'

'And that is?'

'You say she lived in that house I saw Litvinoff go into the day we split. It must have been Litvinoff, and he must have been going to her; but it's very strange how he ever knew her. And was this really _all_ the ground you had for doing what you did?' There was contempt in his tone.

'No,' said Richard. 'You went away on a "mysterious holiday" just when she disappeared, and that set all the village tongues wagging, and first made me wonder and suspect. Now I _know_ I was wrong; but if you don't mind, Roland, I wish you'd tell me _why_ you went just then. I've told you everything.'

'The whole thing is over and done with now,' he answered; 'and after to-night I don't want to ever speak about it; but I will tell you if you like. I went away because I saw you were beginning to care for Clare Stanley, and I was beginning to care too, and I thought that if I went away I could pull through it, and that you would make the running and be happy with her, but I found I couldn't do it, and I came back and did my best to cut you out, as you did by me.'

'Oh, Roland, what a good fellow you were to think of such a thing!' said Dick, to whom a generous action like this, even though only attempted, could not fail to appeal most strongly. 'But how is it now?' he went on, stung by a host of conflicting feelings. 'Have _you_ made the running? Have you won her?'

'No!' he answered bitterly. 'The closing of the mill settled that for me as well as for you. Some one else has had as good a chance as ours, though, and has made a better use of it. Count Litvinoff is a constant visitor at the house where she is, and I don't doubt she will marry him; unless, indeed, he is married already. I think we ought to try and find that out.'

'Married or not, he is a damned scoundrel!' cried Richard; 'and he shall not marry her. She would never look at me again, I know; but I hope you may win her yet, Roland.'

'My chance is gone for ever. I wish I'd never had that Litvinoff down here. But who could have foreseen this?'

'We've both been fools.'

Roland did not seem to relish this broad statement.

'I can't think how,' he was beginning, when Mrs Brock came in with coals, and almost purred with pleasure at seeing the two amicably drinking their whisky at the same hearth. When she had left the room Richard rose.

'Look here, old man,' he said; 'I'm as sorry as a fellow can be about all this, and I can't think how I could have been such a fool. That's what you were going to say, wasn't it? But since we're agreed on that, don't let's say any more about it. Forgive and forget, and I hope you will be happy yet--with Miss Stanley. Let's agree to let this subject alone for a bit. I think I'll have a run round the garden before I turn in. Good-night.'

'Good-night,' Roland answered, but in a manner whose evident effort after cordiality made the failure of that effort the more painful. 'I shall go to bed; I'm dead beat--been knocking about all day.' Then they shook hands again, and Richard went out.

He had thought that Roland would have met his apologies with ready acceptance--his revived brotherly love with equal enthusiasm--and the nature of the reconciliation jarred upon him. And yet, as he told himself, he thoroughly deserved it all. No doubt time would soften his brother's sense of injury, and some day they might be as good friends again as they had been before Clare Stanley's prettiness had come, like a will-o'-the-wisp, to lead them into all sorts of follies. He tried to think he would be glad if she married Roland. Anything, he thought, rather than that she should marry Litvinoff. He passed the limits of the garden and strolled down the road, deep in thought. It was only when he had nearly reached the mill that he remembered with a start that he had told his brother nothing about John Hatfield and his revengeful projects. However, Roland could come to no harm now--he was probably safe in bed--and he could tell him in the morning. So he strolled on, smoking reflectively, and with a heart not light.