mr. edwin barley, standing with his back to the door, his thumbs in the button-holes of his waistcoat, as a man at complete ease, wheeled round at the words. sir harry chandos waited for him to speak, never inviting him to sit.
"good morning, mr. chandos."
"good morning," coldly returned sir harry. "to what am i indebted for the honour of this visit?"
"i will tell you. one object of it is to demand an explanation of your treatment of mrs. penn. she has brought her wrongs to me; her only living relative, as she puts it. i suppose, as such it lies with me to ask it. mrs. penn was engaged by lady chandos; engaged as a lady: and you have turned her away as a menial, subjecting her to gross indignity."
sir harry stared at the speaker, scarcely crediting his own ears. the exceeding impudence of the proceeding, after mrs. penn's treacherous conduct, was something unique.
"you will obtain no explanation from me, sir; you can apply to mrs. penn herself if you require one. i am disgusted at the wickedness, the false deception of the whole affair, and will not condescend to recur to it. you are not welcome in this house, mr. edwin barley, and i must request you to quit it. i cannot conceive how you could have dared to come here."
"the explanation, sir," persisted mr. edwin barley. "fine words will not enable you to evade it."
he spoke as though he really required the explanation. sir harry did not understand, and a few sharp words passed on either side. both were labouring under a mistake. sir harry assumed that all mrs. penn had done in the house had been under the express direction of mr. edwin barley. mr. edwin barley, on his side, was not aware that she had done anything wrong. they were at cross-purposes, and at that angry moment did not arrive at straight ones.
"treachery?" echoed mr. edwin barley, in answer to a word dropped by sir harry. "the police will soon be in charge of one, guilty of something worse than treachery. a criminal lying under the ban of the law is not far off."
"you allude to my brother, mr. edwin barley. true. he is lying not far-off--very near."
the quiet words--for sir harry's voice had dropped to a strange calmness--took edwin barley by surprise. in this ready avowal, could it be that he foresaw fear to doubt that george heneage had already again made his escape? drawing aside the white blind, he saw one of the police officers under the trees opposite; the other of course being at the back of the house. and it reassured him. never more could george heneage escape him.
"your brother shall not elude me, mr. chandos. i swear it. i have waited for years--for years harry chandos--to catch him upon english ground. that he is on it now, i know. i know that you have him in hiding: here in the west wing of your house. will you resign him peacefully to the two men i have outside? revengeful though you may deem me, i would rather spare disturbance to your mother. the fact of his apprehension cannot be concealed from her: that is impossible; but i would spare her as far as i can, and i would have wished to see her to tell her this. if you do not give him up quietly, the policemen must come in."
"i think--to save you and the police useless trouble--you had better pay a personal visit to my brother," said sir harry. "you have rightly said that he has been in hiding in the west wing; he is there still."
"your brother!--george!" exclaimed mr. edwin barley, quite taken aback by the invitation, and suspecting some trick.
"my brother george," was the quiet answer. "did you think i was speaking of sir thomas? he, poor fellow, is no longer in existence."
"as i hear: and i am sorry for it. your servant wished to assure me that you had succeeded to the honours; he calls you 'sir harry.' i told him better," concluded mr. edwin barley, with a cough that said much.
"i do succeed to them--more's the pity. i wish thomas had lived to bear them to a green old age."
"let me advise you not to assume them, at any rate, harry chandos the time has not come for it, and the world might laugh at you. george chandos, fugitive-criminal though he has been, would succeed until proved guilty. wait."
"you are wasting my time," rejoined sir harry. "will you pay a visit to the west wing?"
"for what purpose? you are fooling me!"
"i told you the purpose--to see my brother george. you shall see him, on my word of honour."
the answer was a gesture of assent, and sir harry crossed the hall to ascend the stairs. mr. edwin barley slowly followed him, doubt in his step, defiance in his face. that he was thoroughly perplexed, is saying little; but he came to the conclusion as he walked along the gallery that george heneage was about to beseech his clemency. his clemency! hill opened the west wing. seeing a stranger, she would have barred it again, but sir harry put her aside with calm authority, and went straight to one of the rooms. turning for a moment there, he spoke to his visitor.
"we have not been friends, mr. barley; the one has regarded the other as his natural enemy, still i would not allow even you to come in here without a word of warning, lest you should be shocked."
"lead on, sir," was the imperative answer. and sir harry went in without further delay.
on the bed, laid out in his shroud, sleeping the peaceful sleep of death, was the emaciated form of george heneage chandos. mr. edwin barley gazed at him, and the perspiration broke out on his forehead.
"by heaven! he has escaped me!"
"he has escaped all the foes of this world," answered sir harry, lowly and reverently. "you perceive now, mr. edwin barley, that were you to bring the whole police force of the county here, they would only have the trouble of going back for their pains. he is at rest from persecution; and we are at rest from suspense and anxiety."
"it has destroyed my life's aim," observed mr. edwin barley.
"and with it your thirst for revenge. when a man pursues another with the persistent hatred that you have pursued him, it can be called nothing less than revenge."
"revenge! what do you mean? he did commit the murder."
"his hand was the hand that killed philip king: but it was not intentional murder. he never knew exactly--at the time or since--how he fired the gun, save that his elbow caught against the branch of a tree when the gun was on cock. some movement of his own undoubtedly caused it; he knew that; but not a wilful one. he asserted this with his dying lips before taking the sacrament."
"wilful or not wilful, he murdered philip king," insisted mr. edwin barley.
"and has paid for it. the banned life he has been obliged to live since was surely an expiation. his punishment was greater than he could bear; it was prolonged and prolonged, and his heart broke."
mr. edwin barley had his eyes fixed on the dead face, possibly tracing the likeness to the handsome young man of nine or ten years ago.
"of other crime towards you he was innocent," pursued sir harry. "he never injured you or yours; there might have been folly in his heart in the heyday of his youth and spirits; there was no sin. you have been unreasonably vindictive."
"i say no," returned mr. edwin barley, striving to suppress an emotion that was rising and would not be suppressed. "had i ever injured george heneage, that he should come into my home and make it desolate? what had my wife or my ward done to him that he should take their lives? he killed both of them: the one deliberately, the other indirectly, for her death arose out of the trouble charlotte delves--mrs. penn now, of whom you complain,--lost her only relative, saving myself, when she lost philip king. and for me? i was left in that same desolate home, bereft of all i cared for, left to go through life alone. few men have loved a wife as i loved mine: she was my one little ewe lamb, harry chandos. vindictive! think of my wrongs."
looking there at each other, the dead face lying between them, it might be that both felt there was much to forgive. certainly harry chandos had never until that moment realized the misery it had brought to edwin barley.
"i see; we have an alike suffered. but he who caused the suffering is beyond reproach now."
"as things have turned out the game is yours, sir harry," said mr. edwin barley, who was too much a man of the world to persist in denying him the title, now that he found it was beyond dispute his. "for my actions i am accountable to none; and were the time to come over again, i should do as i have done."
he turned to quit the room as he spoke, and mr. chandos followed him downstairs. a word exchanged at their foot caused mr. barley to inquire what it was mrs. penn had done: and then sir harry gave him the full particulars, with the additional information that she was assumed to have been acting for him, edwin barley.
"she was not," said mr. barley, shortly. "i knew nothing of this. placed in the house by me, sir harry? she placed herself in the house, as i conclude; certainly i did not place her."
"you have met her in secret in the grounds."
"i have met her accidentally, not secretly. twice, i think it was: or three times, i am not sure. she chose to repeat things to me; i did not ask for them. not that they were of any worth--as the unmolested retirement of george heneage here proves."
he had been moving to the hall-door gradually. sir harry put a sudden question to him, quite upon impulse, he told me afterwards, just as the thought occurred.
"has your wife's will ever been found?"
"what is that to you?" asked mr. edwin barley, turning to face him.
"little indeed. i am sorry to have mentioned it: it was not in any wish to add to the discomforts of the day. as i have, i will ask you to remember that there are others in the world as capable of error, not to say crime, as was poor george heneage."
"do you insinuate that i suppressed the will?" demanded mr. edwin barley.
"no. the will could not disappear without hands; but i should be sorry to give the very faintest opinion as to whose hands they were that took it. with your great fortune, it seems next door to an impossibility that you could have suppressed it: on the other hand, you alone derived benefit. the thing is a puzzle to me, mr. edwin barley."
"but that you seem to speak honestly in saying so, without sinister insinuation, i would knock you down, sir harry chandos," was edwin barley's answer.
"i insinuate nothing; and i say neither more nor less than i have said. it was a paltry sum to run a risk for, whoever might have been guilty of the abstraction. not only that: no blessing--or luck, as the world would call it--ever yet attended one who robbed the orphan."
"you would wish me to make a merit of generosity, and offer miss hereford a present of the money," said mr. edwin barley, a ring of mockery in his tones.
"by no means," hastily replied sir harry. "miss hereford's future position in life will preclude her feeling the want of it. you informed me the last time i had the honour of speaking to you, that you were miss hereford's only relative: as such, allow me to acquaint you with the fact that she is to be my wife."
"i expected it would end in that," was mr. edwin barley's answer. "and i tell you honestly that i would have removed her from here in time to prevent it, had it been in my power. i liked the child; my wife loved her; and i had rather she married any one in the world than a chandos. it is too late now."
"quite too late. although i am a chandos, i shall hope to make her happy, mr. edwin barley. i will do my best for it."
hickens went into the hall at that juncture and the colloquy came to a close. mr. edwin barley moved rapidly to the door, which hickens opened, and went away with a quick step.
"i have no further orders," he said to the policeman, who was standing at an angle watching the back of the house and part of the avenue. "the prisoner has escaped."
"escaped, sir! it must have been before we came on then. shall we search for him?"
"no. he is gone where search would not reach him."
mr. edwin barley strode on with the last words. the man, somewhat mystified, stared after him, and then crossed the lawn to give notice to his fellow that their mission to chandos seemed to be over.
"le diable n'est pas si noir que l'on dit," runs the idiomatic saying in france. we have it also in english, as the world of course knows; but it sounds better, that is, less wrong, to give it in the former language. we girls at school there said it often; had one of us ventured on the english sentence at miss fenton's, that lady's eyes would have grown round with horror.
it might be applied to mr. edwin barley. looking back dispassionately, bringing reason to bear on the retrospect, i could not trace one single act or word in him that would justify me in having thought him so bad a man. taking the colouring from my first view of him, when his dark and certainly ugly face peeped out from the avenue at hallam, frightening me terribly; and from the dreadful events that followed, in which my childish imagination mixed him up as the worst actor, this prejudice had lived and grown in my mind. he had really done nothing to merit it. there was the abstracted will, but it was not proved that he had taken it; probably he had not. i had been too young to realize the terrible blow brought upon him through george heneage. and, as we got to know later, the vindictive feeling with which he had pursued him all through these years had its rise in self-defence as well as in a desire to inflict punishment. the semi-doubt cast, or to himself seeming to be cast, on mr. edwin barley at the time, in the remarks that he had been the only one to profit, and that largely, by philip king's death, had rankled in his mind, implanting there a burning anxiety, apart from other considerations, to bring to light the real criminal. for his own part, he had never for a moment doubted that it had been intentional, deliberate, cruel murder. and i have grown to think that the exaggeration he imparted to philip king's dying words arose unwittingly in the confusion of the moment; that he was not conscious he did so exaggerate. a passive listener hears words more clearly than an actor.
altogether, the "diable" was not so black as my fancy had painted him; indeed, i began, as days went on, to doubt whether the word would apply to mr. edwin barley at all. one does not grow wise in an hour; no, nor even in a year: youth clings to its prejudices, and it takes experience and age, and sober judgment, to subdue them.
mr. edwin barley went home after quitting chandos. seated there, her things off; and a luncheon tray before her, with no trace of her luggage to be seen, was charlotte delves--mrs. penn of late years. was she intending to take up her present quarters at his house? the question mentally occurred to mr. edwin barley, and it did not tend to his gratification. not if he knew it; he had not been upon cordial terms with charlotte delves for years; and what he had now heard of her line of conduct at chandos vexed him.
there must be a word or two of retrospect. shortly after selina's death, mr. edwin barley went abroad. not a place on the european continent but he visited, one feverish object alone swaying him--the discovery of george heneage. the detective police were at work in england with the same view: all in vain. at the end of three years he came back home; and almost close upon it there occurred some rupture between him and charlotte delves, who had remained at hallam all that time as the house's mistress. people thought she cherished visions of becoming the house's bona fide mistress, its master's wife; if so, she was lamentably mistaken. mr. edwin barley was wedded to selina and her memory; he had no intention whatever of exalting another into her place. whether charlotte found out this in too sudden a manner; whether the cause was totally unconnected with this, certain it was a rupture occurred; and charlotte threw up the housekeeping, and quitted the house. she took the same kind of service with an old man, a connexion also, of the name of penn. he had married late in life, and had a young daughter, lottie, who had been named after charlotte delves. very much to the world's surprise--her little world--it was soon announced that charlotte delves was going to marry him. mr. edwin barley, hearing of it, wrote to tell her what he thought of it in his own outspoken fearlessness: "old penn was quite a cripple, and three parts an idiot since he fell into his dotage. she would be better without him than with him, and would only make herself a laughing-stock if she married him." the gratuitous advice did not tend to heal the breach. charlotte delves did marry mr. penn, and very shortly afterwards was called upon to bury him. the young girl, lottie, by whom her stepmother seemed to have done a good part, died within a year; and mrs. penn, left with a slender income, chose to go out in the world again. she became companion to a lady, and the years passed on.
time softens most thing's. mrs. penn grew to forget her fleeting marriage and with it the episodes of her middle life; and went back to her old likings and prejudices. her heart's allegiance to edwin barley returned; she was of his kin, and the wrongs inflicted by george heneage, temporarily forgotten, resumed all their sway within her. while she was at marden (travelling about from place to place with mrs. howard) some accidental occurrence caused her to suspect that george heneage, instead of being abroad, was in concealment in england, and within a drive of chandos. she at once wrote news of this to mr. edwin barley, with whom she had held no communication since the advent of that letter of his at her marriage. it caused him to remove himself, and four or five of his household, to the vicinity of chandos. there he took up his abode, and spent his time watching the house and the movements of mr. chandos, in the hope to gain some clue to the retreat of george heneage. with this exception, the watching, which caused him to stroll at unorthodox hours into the groves and private paths, to peer in at windows by night, his watching was inoffensive. mrs. penn, on her side, seized on the opportunity afforded by mrs. freeman's illness (it was as though fortune favoured her), and got into chandos. my presence in it might have been a serious counter-check, only that i did not recognise her. she did not recognise me in the first interview, not until the day when i sent in my name at mrs. marden's. of course mrs. penn's object after that was to keep me in ignorance. she had really been to nulle for a week or two; it was the autumn i first went there; had seen me at church with the school, and so tried to persuade me it was there i had seen her. much as she wanted me away from chandos in the furtherance of her own ends, cruel as were the means she used to try to effect it, she had, strange to say, taken a liking for me; and in her dislike to mr. chandos she had not much cared what wild untruths she told me of him, hoping to separate us effectually.
of her effecting an entrance into chandos as companion, edwin barley knew nothing. after she was settled there she looked out for him, and waylaid him in the grounds. while mr. edwin barley had been ignorant of her life and doings for some years, there was no doubt she had contrived to keep herself acquainted with his, including his removal to the gates of chandos. in this interview with him, which i had partially overheard--and i now think it was the first she held with him--she told him what her object was: the finding out all there was to be found out about george heneage. with the change in mrs. penn's person and the remarkable change in her hair, mr. edwin barley had some difficulty in believing it to be charlotte delves. the hair was an unhappy calamity. mrs. penn, beguiled by fashion and confidential advertisements to wish to turn her light flaxen hair to gold colour, had experimented upon it: the result was not gold, but a glowing, permanent, scarlet-red. she told him she was watching at chandos for his sake. mr. edwin barley, an implacable man when once offended, was cool to her, declining, in a sense, to accept her services. if she made discoveries that could assist in the tracking of george heneage, well and good; she might bring them to him: and so the interview ended.
mrs. penn might have made a discovery to some purpose but for two things. the one was that she was a real coward, and believed the ghost haunting the pine-walk to be a ghost: the other was that she took up a theory of her own in regard to the west wing. she assumed that lady chandos had become mad; to this she set down all the mystery enacted in it; and this view she imparted to mr. edwin barley. he neither asked her to bring tales to him, nor encouraged her to do it; if she worked, she worked of her own accord; and his doors remained closed to her. at least, mrs. penn did not choose to try whether they would be open. until this day: and her entering of them now could not be said to be of her own seeking.
she sat taking her luncheon, cold partridge and sherry. mr. barley entered in silence, and stood with a dark expression on his lips. charlotte knew it of old, and saw that something had not pleased him. things had very much displeased him; firstly, the escape of the long-sought-for prisoner; secondly, madam charlotte's doings at chandos. mr. edwin barley might have winked at the peering and prying, might have encouraged the peeping into letters: but to steal things (even though but in appearance) he very much disapproved of, especially as he was looked upon as having instigated her.
"what's the matter, mr. barley?" asked charlotte, helping herself to some more partridge. "he is there, is he not?"
"who?"
"george heneage. in the west wing."
"yes, he's there. i've seen him."
"ah, i knew it," she said, with a relieved sigh, and she suddenly poured out another glass of sherry, and lifted it to her lips. "here's to your health, george heneage! have the police got him?"
"no, the police have gone. i dismissed them."
charlotte flung down her knife and fork in a passion. "dismissed them! without taking him! are you going to show leniency at the eleventh hour, like a weak woman, mr. edwin barley? after what i have done to trace him!"
"you have done a little too much," returned mr. edwin barley. and, abandoning his short and crusty answers, he spoke at length his opinion of her acts at chandos. he was not in the humour to suppress any bitterness of tongue, and said some keen things.
charlotte went into a real passion.
what with the disappointment at finding mr. edwin barley in this mood, which seemed to promise badly for her semi-idea of prolonging her stay under his roof; what with his ingratitude after all her pains; what with her recent ignominious exit from chandos; and what with the good old sherry, that is apt to have its effects when taken at mid-day, mrs. penn lost control of her temper. prudence was forgotten in passion; and mr. edwin barley was doomed to listen to the wild ravings of an angry woman. reproach for the past, for things that she had deemed wrongs in the bygone years, came out all the more freely for having been pent up within her so long. she contrasted her conduct with his: her ever anxious solicitude for his interests; his neglect and cruel non-recognition of them. as the most forcible means of impressing his ingratitude upon him, she recapitulated the benefits she had wrought one by one; talking fast and furiously. mr. edwin barley, a cool man under petty grievances, listened in silence: he had said his say, said it with stinging coldness, and it was over. feeling very much inclined to stop his ears was he, when something further said by her caused him to open them, as ears had never perhaps been opened yet. charlotte had shot beyond her mark in her reckless rage; and was scarcely aware that she had done so until mr. edwin barley, his face and eyes alike ablaze, seized her wrists.
she had gone too for to retract, and she brazened out her avowal, making a merit of it, rather than taking shame.
it was she who had stolen mrs. edwin barley's will. she, charlotte delves. she had taken it as a duty--in her regard for his, edwin barley's interests. who was the child, anne hereford, that she should inherit what of right belonged to him? when she had appeared to find the keys in the china basket on the mantel-shelf, it was she who had put them there ready to be found.
there ensued no reproach from mr. barley's lips. at first she thought he was going to strike her, staring at her with his white and working face; but the minutes passed and he overcame his emotion. perhaps he feared he might be tempted to strike her if he spoke: it seemed as if a blow had fallen on him--as if the depth of feeling aroused by her confession were, not so much wrath, as a sense of awful injury to himself that could never be repaired.
"what became of the will?" was the only question he put when the silence was getting ominous to her ears.
"i burnt it. it was done for you. throughout my life i have had regard only to the interests of the barleys. and this is my recompense--reproach and base ingratitude!"
he quitted the room without speaking another word. this was the worst dose mr. edwin barley had received. he knew that the disappearance of the will had been set down by some people to his own hands. why, had not sir harry chandos hinted as much, but an hour ago? he had treated the past insinuations with contempt, always insisting that there had been no will to abstract--for he fully believed his wife had herself repented of the testament and destroyed it. he knew how capricious selina was; never keeping in the same mind two days together. and now he had to hear that the world was right and he wrong: the will had been abstracted. it did not tend to soothe him, the being told that it was taken out of regard to him and to his monied interests.
altogether he deemed it well to cut short his interview with mrs. penn. that lady, finding the house intended to show itself inexorably inhospitable, put her bonnet on and went forth to the railway station of her own accord, her luggage behind her. whether she should annoy mr. edwin barley by sundry letters of reproach, one of the reproaches being that he had never cared for any living being but his doll of a wife; or whether she should wash her hands of him altogether, and treat him henceforth with silent contempt, she had not determined in her mind. she inclined to the letters. taking her seat in a first-class carriage, she would have leisure to think of it and decide on her journey to london.
