when harold carnegie was finally married to isabel walters, ernest stopped away from the wedding, and would have nothing whatever to say either to bride or bridegroom. he would leave his unnatural brother, he said, solely and entirely to the punishment of his own guilty conscience.
still, he couldn't rest quiet in his father's house after harold was gone, so he took himself small rooms near the hospital, and there he lived his lonely life entirely by himself, a solitary man, brooding miserably over his own wrongs and harold's treachery. there was only one single woman in the world, he said, with whom he could ever have been really happy—isabel walters: and harold had stolen isabel walters away from him by the basest treason. once he could have loved isabel, and her only; now, because she was harold's wife, he bitterly hated her. yes, hated her! with a deadly hatred he hated both of them.
months went by slowly for ernest carnegie, in the dull drudgery of his hopeless professional life, for he cared nothing now for ambition or advancement; he lived wholly in the past, nursing his wrath, and devouring his own soul in angry regretfulness. months went by, and at last harold's wife gave birth to a baby—a boy, the exact image of his father and his uncle. harold looked at the child in the nurse's arms, and said remorsefully, "we will call him ernest. it is all we can do now, isabel. we will call him ernest, after my dear lost brother." so they called him ernest, in the faint hope that his uncle's heart might relent a little; and harold wrote a letter full of deep and bitter penitence to his brother, piteously begging his forgiveness for the grievous wrong he had wickedly and deliberately done him. but ernest still nursed his righteous wrath silently in his[pg 160] own bosom, and tore up the letter into a thousand fragments, unanswered.
when the baby was five months old, edie carnegie came round hurriedly one morning to ernest's lodgings near the hospital. "ernest, ernest," she cried, running up the stairs in great haste, "we want you to come round and see harold. we're afraid he's very ill. don't say you won't come and see him!"
ernest carnegie listened and smiled grimly. "very ill," he muttered, with a dreadful gleam in his eyes. "very ill, is he? and i have had nothing the matter with me! how curious! very ill! i ought to have had the same illness a fortnight ago. ha, ha! the cycle is broken! the clocks have ceased to strike together! his marriage has altered the run of his constitution—mine remains the same steady striker as ever. i thought it would! i thought it would! perhaps he'll die, now, the mean, miserable traitor!"
edie carnegie looked at him in undisguised horror. "oh, ernest," she cried, with the utmost dismay; "your own brother! your own brother! surely you'll come and see him, and tell us what's the matter."
"yes, i'll come and see him," ernest answered, unmoved, taking up his hat. "i'll come and see him, and find out what's the matter." but there was an awful air of malicious triumph in his tone, which perfectly horrified his trembling sister.
when ernest reached his brother's house, he went at once to harold's bedside, and without a word of introduction or recognition he began inquiring into the nature of his symptoms, exactly as he would have done with any unknown and ordinary patient. harold told him them all, simply and straightforwardly, without any more preface than he would have used with any other doctor. when ernest had finished his diagnosis, he leaned back carelessly in his easy chair, folded his arms sternly, and[pg 161] said in a perfectly cold, clear, remorseless voice, "ah, i thought so; yes, yes, i thought so. it's a serious functional disorder of the heart; and there's very little hope indeed that you'll ever recover from it. no hope at all, i may say; no hope at all, i'm certain. the thing has been creeping upon you, creeping upon you, evidently, for a year past, and it has gone too far now to leave the faintest hope of ultimate recovery."
isabel burst into tears at the words—calmly spoken as though they were perfectly indifferent to both speaker and hearers; but harold only rose up fiercely in the bed, and cried in a tone of the most imploring agony, "oh, ernest, ernest, if i must die, for heaven's sake, before i die, say you forgive me, do say, do say you forgive me. oh, ernest, dear ernest, dear brother ernest, for the sake of our long, happy friendship, for the sake of the days when we loved one another with a love passing the love of women, do, do say you will at last forgive me."
ernest rose and fumbled nervously for a second with the edge of his hat. "harold carnegie," he said at last, in a voice trembling with excitement, "i can never forgive you. you acted a mean, dirty part, and i can never forgive you. heaven may, perhaps it will; but as for me, i can never, never, never forgive you!"
harold fell back feebly and wearily upon the pillows. "ernest, ernest," he cried, gasping, "you might forgive me! you ought to forgive me! you must forgive me! and i'll tell you why. i didn't want to say it, but now you force me. i know it as well as if i'd seen you do it. in my place, i know to a certainty, ernest, you'd have done exactly as i did. ernest carnegie, you can't look me straight in the face and tell me that you wouldn't have acted exactly as i did."
that terrible unspoken truth, long known, but never confessed, even to himself, struck like a knife on ernest's heart. he raised his hat blindly, and walked with unsteady[pg 162] steps out of the sick-room. at that moment, his own conscience smote him with awful vividness. looking into the inmost recesses of his angry heart, he felt with a shudder that harold had spoken the simple truth, and he dared not lie by contradicting him. in harold's place he would have done exactly as harold did! and that was just what made his deathless anger burn all the more fiercely and fervidly against his brother!
groping his way down the stairs alone in a stunned and dazzled fashion, ernest carnegie went home in his agony to his lonely lodgings, and sat there solitary with his own tempestuous thoughts for the next eight-and-forty hours. he did not undress or lie down to sleep, though he dozed a little at times uneasily in his big arm-chair; he did not eat or drink much; he merely paced up and down his room feverishly, and sent his boy round at intervals of an hour or two to know how the doctor thought mr. harold carnegie was getting on. the boy returned every time with uniformly worse and worse reports. ernest rubbed his hands in horrid exultation: "ah," he said to himself, eagerly, "he will die! he will die! he will pay the penalty of his dirty treachery! he has brought it all upon himself by marrying that wicked woman! he deserves it every bit for his mean conduct."
on the third morning, edie came round again, this time with her mother. both had tears in their eyes, and they implored ernest with sobs and entreaties to come round and see harold once more before he died. harold was raving and crying for him in his weakness and delirium. but ernest was like adamant. he would not go to see him, he said, not if they went down bodily on their knees before him.
at midday, the boy went again, and stayed a little longer than usual. when he returned, he brought back word that mr. harold carnegie had died just as the clock was striking the hour. ernest listened with a look of terror and dismay, and then broke down into a terrible fit[pg 163] of sobbing and weeping. when edie came round a little later to tell him that all was over, she found him crying like a child in his own easy chair, and muttering to himself in a broken fashion how dearly he and harold had loved one another years ago, when they were both happy children together.
edie took him round to his brother's house, and there, over the deaf and blind face that lay cold upon the pillows, he cried the cry that he would not cry over his living, imploring brother. "oh, harold, harold," he groaned in his broken agony, "i forgive you, i forgive you. i too sinned as you did. what you would do, i would do. it was bound up in both our natures. in your place i would have done as you did. but now the curse of cain is upon me! a worse curse than cain's is upon me! i have more than killed my brother!"
for a day or two ernest went back, heart-broken, to his father's house, and slept once more in the old room where he used to sleep so long, next door to harold's. at the end of three days, he woke once from one of his short snatches of sleep with a strange fluttering feeling in his left side. he knew in a moment what it was. it was the same disease that harold had died of.
"thank heaven!" he said to himself eagerly, "thank heaven, thank heaven for that! then i didn't wholly kill him! his blood isn't all upon my poor unhappy head. after all, his marriage didn't quite upset the harmony of the two clocks; it only made the slower one catch up for a while and pass the faster. i'm a fortnight later in striking than harold this time; that's all. in three days more the clock will run down, and i shall die as he did."
and, true to time, in three days more, as the clock struck twelve, ernest carnegie died as his brother harold had done before him, with the agonized cry for forgiveness trembling on his fevered lips—who knows whether answered or unanswered?
