CHAPTER X.

ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH.

Mr. Grey breakfasted early, Mrs. Grey late. Nothing was said by either to the other on the night of the 16th. On Friday morning, the morning of the 17th of August, 1866, Mrs. Grey was still sleeping when her husband left the house.

The morning was bright and clear, and as the banker strode on briskly to the city he hummed an air to keep him company. His voice was indifferent, his ear was indifferent, and yet it was more invigorating to hear him blundering out wild approximations to a tune than to listen to a moderately accomplished drawing-room vocalist. The banker seemed unable to keep the natural gladness of his nature within bounds; the accomplished vocalist follows an everyday handicraft or trade with the tools of which he is familiar and expert.

As Grey walked to his office that bright Friday morning he met many friends and acquaintances. He had a nod, a wave of the hand, a cheerful word, a kind enquiry, a jovial wish, a congratulation for each, according to person and circumstances.

He carried his black bag in his hand. In the black bag were some books, some papers, and the revolver. Nothing particular occurred to him on the way to the Bank. Nothing particular awaited him upon his arrival at the office. All was going on smoothly and prosperously--but very slowly, very slowly towards bringing back the baronet's money.

Two was his luncheon hour, and at two he went out. He lunched at his club, and then strolled down to the Chamber of Commerce to see the latest Exchange telegrams, and have a chat with some of the merchants and traders and shipowners of Daneford. He got back to the office at a little after three.

Nothing particular had occurred during his absence. He went into his private room and disposed of some routine affairs. Then, having no business to do, he threw up the window, and looking out, began to whistle softly a recitative of his own invention.

After a little while he stopped whistling, and thought: "I shall be here two hours by myself this evening. I don't think I could do anything better than burn that book." In a little while more he made up his mind. "Yes; I will burn it. It would tell against me in any case. Even suppose by any miracle I am able to get that money together again, the dates would betray me. Then it is better to have neither book nor Stock than a tell-tale book only. Dead men and burnt books tell no tales. Yes; up the chimney it shall go. If I am able to replace that money, the making of a new book will be an easy task, a graceful amusement."

Mr. Grey had always kept the Midharst (Consols) account in his own handwriting, and in a book to which none but himself had access. This was a small book bound in rough calf, having a patent lock and key. Before the Bank closed at four o'clock he went down to the strong-room and took up this book to his private office.

By about half-past four all the clerks had left the office, and Mr. Aldridge had gone out to pick up an appetite for dinner. Grey locked the two doors that led into his office, opened the little ledger, and having cut the book out of the cover, he locked up the cover in a safe in the wall of his own office. There were two reasons for doing this: 1. The cover was, with the appliances at his command, indestructible. 2. He could get new paper bound into the old cover; and those of his staff who were familiar with the outside of the book would not be able to detect any difference between the original and the counterfeit.

When the cover of the book had been concealed under lock and key he sat down in front of the grate, and began tearing up the book into single leaves, and burning each one separately in the empty grate.

As the record of the baronet's twenty years of grinding, exaction, and penurious living changed into flame and smoke and ashes, Grey's thoughts were busy with the awful aspects of his position, and now, for the first time, a new element of fear entered into the case.

He suddenly stopped in his work and looked round him with a ghastly smile. Last night he had been calculating that his only way of avoiding exposure lay through the freedom of himself to marry Maud. But suppose anything were to happen to his wife _now_. Suppose she died that very day; suppose she had died a week ago, a month ago; what would have occurred? He should then be a childless widower, younger in appearance and in manner than in years, and even young enough in years to be the suitor of any girl. Was it likely if he were so circumstanced Sir Alexander might not think of altering the will, of introducing into it another guardian, executor, or trustee? True, Sir Alexander was not an ordinary man, and had unlimited confidence in him, Grey; but surely he could not be such a fool as to leave his daughter and his daughter's fortune in the hands solely of a popular, good-looking, and an agreeable widower of forty-five?

The thought flurried him, and he gasped and covered his face with his handkerchief, and leaned upon the mantelpiece.

Last night it had appeared to him nothing more advantageous to his fortune could arise than the death of his wife. Now that event seemed the most disastrous which could befall him. The more he looked at the whole situation the more hopeless his position appeared. What last night he regarded as the gateway to deliverance now was the cavern of ruin. Well, he had begun burning this book, and he might as well finish it. Destroying this could have no important influence for evil on the case, and might be beneficial or have a mitigating influence.

At last the whole book lay in a mass of black and blue ashes at his feet. He stood in front of the pile for a few moments thinking. "Between that book and me there is great similarity. It was once truthful, then it recorded a lie, and now it is burnt and black. I was once honest; I fell; and now my position, my prospects, and my hopes are in ashes. There is no chance of escape."

It was after five o'clock. He rang the bell; as he did so, he heard the street-bell ring also.

"Aldridge coming back from his constitutional." Then, correcting himself, he thought: "Of course, Aldridge doesn't ring."

He unlocked the doors, and in a few minutes the servant knocked and entered.

"I want you to tidy up that grate; I've been burning some old letters," said Grey.

"Yes, sir; a letter for you, sir, just come."

"All right; leave it on my table."

"Beg pardon, sir, but it's from the Castle, and marked immediate."

The banker took it and glanced at the superscription as the servant withdrew.

"From Mrs. Grant," he muttered. "What can it be now?"

He tore open the envelope and read the contents hastily. The note was very brief. Sir Alexander had had a bad night, and was rather worse this morning. He particularly wanted to see Mr. Grey _at once_. Would Mr. Grey be so good as to come _instantly_ upon receipt of this? The words in italics were underlined heavily three or four times.

"What can this be?" he thought. "The last time I got a note from Mrs. Grant asking me to go to the Castle I was in the final extremity of apprehension, and all came much better than I could have dared to hope. There seems no possibility of a favourable solution of the present situation. If the old man is sinking, that will give me only a year--and that is the least terrible thing can cause this hasty summons. Well, go I must, and at once."

He leaped lightly down the stairs, carrying his bag in his hand, and was soon driving rapidly towards Island Ferry.

Two miles lay between him and the city before he remembered his appointment with his wife on board the _Rodwell_.

"Never mind," he thought, "I'll board the steamboat as she passes the Island; that will make it all right."

By six o'clock he had reached Island Ferry. Without the loss of a moment he crossed over to the Island and ascended towards the Castle.

A servant at once conducted him to Mrs. Grant, who was waiting for him in the hall-room off the grand entrance-hall.

"O Mr. Grey, I am so glad you have come; we are in such fearful anxiety. Poor Sir Alexander has got worse and worse ever since I wrote to you. The doctors say this is what they have been dreading all along."

The little woman was in a state of the greatest excitement, and had completely lost all sense of proportion. The standards of her feelings had been broken by her agitation, and everything that went wrong seemed of equal importance and mischief.

"What is the matter now?" the banker asked, in a soft sympathetic voice. "I hope Miss Midharst," he added, before he gave the little widow time to answer, "is kept as free as possible from these sad and depressing scenes.

"Oh, yes; that is, I mean the poor child is fearfully distressed. She has been with her father all day. It's not good for her, but then she wouldn't come away. I think if you spoke to her it would do her good. She used to mind a good deal what I said to her, but all this day she sits there, staring as if the room was full of ghosts. I fear there's something bad the matter with the whole place; and only for darling Maud, I'm sure I shouldn't stop an hour. And to listen to him is something dreadful. He talks of nothing but his money and you and robbery----"

"What!" exclaimed Grey, loudly and sharply.

"Now," she cried, "you are offended with me just because I am nervous and excitable. Maybe _you'd_ be excited yourself, Mr. Grey, if he was turning to you every minute and saying you were a wolf in sheep's clothing, and that you wanted to rob his child of the fortune he had laid by for her. You wouldn't like to be called a robber, and you're a man, and I am only a nervous woman; and men are more used to that kind of language than women, although, until now, I did not know that gentlemen ever used such words."

Here Mrs. Grant broke down completely, and sobbed.

By this time Grey had recovered from the appalling shock caused by Mrs. Grant's association of himself with theft. He went up to the sobbing woman, and in his gentlest accents, having placed his hand reassuringly on her shoulder, said:

"Mrs. Grant, I am exceedingly sorry if my hasty exclamation has caused you any annoyance. Believe me, nothing was further from my intention than to disturb you under the distressing circumstance you describe, and in the very shattered condition in which your nerves must be. Forgive me, pray. Do say that you forgive me."

He pleaded in his most winning voice and manner; he looked upon the friendliness of Mrs. Grant towards him as of great importance.

"It wasn't your fault, Mr. Grey," said Mrs. Grant, quieting her sobs. "I know I am not fit for anything of this kind; it always knocks me up."

"No wonder. Of course, as you say, such expressions are never heard among gentlemen----"

She interrupted him.

"I hope I didn't say anything unbecoming to you; if I did, I didn't mean it. I am so worried and confused I don't know what I'm saying." By this time she had forgotten the cause of her tears. What Grey said made her believe she herself had uttered something offensive to the banker. "I wonder can it be that I have caught the fever from Sir Alexander, and am not in my right mind?"

"No, no, no," laughed Grey reassuringly. "You need not be afraid of that." He had no desire to recall to her memory the words which had drawn from him the abrupt and disconcerting exclamation. "And so," he said, in a bland voice, "poor Sir Alexander's head is wandering."

"Oh, yes. He began to be queer last night, and got worse all the night. This morning we sent for the doctors, and they came again in the afternoon. At the latter visit they said I had better send for you, as you were so much in Sir Alexander's mind, both when he was raving and when he wasn't."

"Then he has lucid intervals?"

"Oh, yes--or, at least, not quite lucid. There are times when he is less wild than others; but I think his mind is not quite free at any time. I have been keeping you here instead of taking you direct to him, as I should have done. You will excuse me; my poor head is quite gone too. Will you come with me to him now?"

"Yes," he answered, with a profound bow.

As he followed her through the dull stately passages that, although it was still full daylight, were dim and funereal, he tried to pierce the veil of the future. How would this sudden development of the old man's disease affect him? Was the old man in his comparatively lucid moments capable of altering his will? What was the cause of the old man's desire to see him? And, above all, how had this idea of theft come upon him?

So far as he could now form an opinion of the case, he did not feel reassured.

Suppose Mrs. Grant's account of the baronet's condition of mind in the less excited moments was overdrawn, and that while in his periods of delirium he was haunted by goblin fears of robbers, in his more collected phases he might be troubled with reasonable dread of theft or misappropriation or fraud. Did the old man desire to destroy or alter his will? That was the vital question. If he did, then surely the lead would overtake the gold.

The gold! That gold could never be won back, not in as many years as it took the baronet to save it up. Not in twice as many years, and he might have no more than one year. The gold could never overtake the lead now--that is, the gold, the Consols.

But the gold of a wedding-ring for Miss Midharst would balance the five-tons weight of the baronet's. Little over half an ounce of gold would outweigh five tons; a ring that cost no more than three guineas would balance a deficit of five hundred and fifty thousand pounds!

Mrs. Grant softly opened the door of the sick chamber, and motioning someone inside to come near, she said, as Miss Midharst approached:

"Maud, dear, here is Mr. Grey; he came at once."

The girl offered him her hand, and Grey took it respectfully, tenderly, and held it, saying:

"I am deeply grieved, Miss Midharst, at what Mrs. Grant tells me. I hope this may be only a temporary affection. How is Sir Alexander now?"

"Oh, he's very, very bad!" sobbed the girl, in a whisper. "It was kind of you to come. He talks of you always."

"I am, believe me, Miss Midharst, deeply grieved for him, and--you."

Nothing could be more kind and sympathetic than his voice and manner.

"He talks of nothing but you and the money," whispered the girl, through her tears.

At that moment a shrill shout came from the bed, followed by the words:

"Ah, Grey, is that you? You thieving scoundrel! Do you dare to come into my house, under my roof, after stealing my darling's fortune! Bring me my pistols, I say--some one bring me my pistols! I will shoot this miscreant banker Grey. My pistols, I say!"