This utterance seemed to kindle in my friend a generous opposing zeal. ‘She shall know at least the tale of Mistress Margaret,’ he cried, and walked rapidly away in search of her.
Mr Searle and I pursued our march through the lighted rooms. ‘You’ve found a cousin,’ I said, ‘with a vengeance.’
‘Ah, a vengeance?’ said my host, stiffly.
‘I mean that he takes as keen an interest in your annals and possessions as yourself.’
‘O, exactly so!’ and Mr Searle burst into resounding laughter. ‘He tells me,’ he resumed, in a moment, ‘that he is an invalid. I should never have fancied it.’
‘Within the past few hours,’ I said, ‘he’s a changed man. Your place and your kindness have refreshed him immensely.’
Mr Searle uttered the little shapeless ejaculation with which many an Englishman is apt to announce the concussion of any especial courtesy of speech. He bent his eyes on the floor frowningly, and then, to my surprise, he suddenly stopped and looked at me with a penetrating eye. ‘I’m an honest man!’ he said. I was quite prepared to assent; but he went on, with a sort of fury of frankness, as if it was the first time in his life that he had been prompted to expound himself, as if the process was mightily unpleasant to him and he was hurrying through it as a task. ‘An honest man, mind you! I know nothing about Mr Clement Searle! I never expected to see him. He has been to me a – a –’ And here Mr Searle paused to select a word which should vividly enough express what, for good or for ill, his kinsman had been to him. ‘He has been to me an amazement!’ I have no doubt he is a most amiable man! You’ll not deny, however, that he’s a very odd style of person. I’m sorry he’s ill! I’m sorry he’s poor! He’s my fiftieth cousin! Well and good! I’m an honest man. He shall not have it to say that he was not received at my house.’
‘He, too, thank heaven! is an honest man!’ I said, smiling.
‘Why the deuce, then,’ cried Mr Searle, turning almost fiercely upon me, ‘has he established this underhand claim to my property?’
This startling utterance flashed backward a gleam of light upon the demeanour of our host and the suppressed agitation of his sister. In an instant the jealous soul of the unhappy gentleman revealed itself. For a moment I was so amazed and scandalised at the directness of his attack that I lacked words to respond. As soon as he had spoken, Mr Searle appeared to feel that he had struck too hard a blow. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he hurried on, ‘if I speak of this matter with heat. But I have seldom suffered so grievous a shock as on learning, as I learned this morning from my solicitor, the monstrous proceedings of Mr Clement Searle. Great heaven, sir, for what does the man take me? He pretends to the Lord knows what fantastic passion for my place. Let him respect it, then. Let him, with his tawdry parade of imagination, imagine a tithe of what I feel. I love my estate; it’s my passion, my life, myself! Am I to make a great hole in it for a beggarly foreigner, a man without means, without proof, a stranger, an adventurer, a Bohemian? I thought America boasted that she had land for all men! Upon my soul, sir, I have never been so shocked in my life.’
I paused for some moments before speaking, to allow his passion fully to expend itself and to flicker up again if it chose; for on my own part it seemed well that I should answer him once for all. ‘Your really absurd apprehensions, Mr Searle,’ I said at last, – ‘your terrors, I may call them, – have fairly overmastered your common-sense. You are attacking a man of straw, a creature of base illusion; though I’m sadly afraid you have wounded a man of spirit and of conscience. Either my friend has no valid claim on your estate, in which case your agitation is superfluous; or he has a valid claim –’
Mr Searle seised my arm and glared at me, as I may say; his pale face paler still with the horror of my suggestion, his great keen eyes flashing, and his flamboyant hair erect and quivering.
‘A valid claim!’ he whispered. ‘Let him try it!’
We had emerged into the great hall of the mansion and stood facing the main doorway. The door stood open into the porch, through whose stone archway I saw the garden glittering in the blue light of a full moon. As Mr Searle uttered the words I have just repeated, I beheld my companion come slowly up into the porch from without, bare-headed, bright in the outer moonlight, dark then in the shadow of the archway, and bright again in the lamplight on the threshold of the hall. As he crossed the threshold the butler made his appearance at the head of the staircase on our left, faltered visibly a moment on seeing Mr Searle; but then, perceiving my friend, he gravely descended. He bore in his hand a small plated salver. On the salver, gleaming in the light of the suspended lamp, lay a folded note. Clement Searle came forward, staring a little and startled, I think, by some fine sense of a near explosion. The butler applied the match. He advanced toward my friend, extending salver and note. Mr Searle made a movement as if to spring forward, but controlled himself. ‘Tottenham!’ he shouted, in strident voice.
‘Yes, sir!’ said Tottenham, halting.
‘Stand where you are. For whom is that note?’
‘For Mr Clement Searle,’ said the butler, staring straight before him as if to discredit a suspicion of his having read the direction.
‘Who gave it to you?’
‘Mrs Horridge, sir.’ (The housekeeper.)
‘Who gave it Mrs Horridge?’
There was on Tottenham’s part just an infinitesimal pause before replying.
‘My dear sir,’ broke in Searle, completely sobered by the sense of violated courtesy, ‘isn’t that rather my business?’
‘What happens in my house is my business; and mighty strange things seem to be happening.’ Mr Searle had become exasperated to that point that, a rare thing for an Englishman, he compromised himself before a servant.
‘Bring me the note!’ he cried. The butler obeyed.
‘Really, this is too much!’ cried my companion, affronted and helpless.
I was disgusted. Before Mr Searle had time to take the note, I possessed myself of it. ‘If you have no regard for your sister,’ I said, ‘let a stranger, at least, act for her.’ And I tore the disputed thing into a dozen pieces.
‘In the name of decency,’ cried Searle, ‘what does this horrid business mean?’
Mr Searle was about to break out upon him; but at this moment his sister appeared on the staircase, summoned evidently by our high-pitched and angry voices. She had exchanged her dinner-dress for a dark dressing-gown, removed her ornaments, and begun to disarrange her hair, a heavy truss of which escaped from the comb. She hurried downward, with a pale, questioning face. Feeling distinctly that, for ourselves, immediate departure was in the air, and divining Mr Tottenham to be a butler of remarkable intuitions and extreme celerity, I seized the opportunity to request him, sotto voce, to send a carriage to the door without delay. ‘And put up our things,’ I added.
Our host rushed at his sister and seized the white wrist which escaped from the loose sleeve of her dress. ‘What was in that note?’ he demanded.
Miss Searle looked first at its scattered fragments and then at her cousin. ‘Did you read it?’ she asked.
‘No, but I thank you for it!’ said Searle.
Her eyes for an instant communed brightly with his own; then she transferred them to her brother’s face, where the light went out of them and left a dull, sad patience. An inexorable patience he seemed to find it; he flushed crimson with rage and the sense of his unhandsomeness, and flung her away. ‘You’re a child!’ he cried. ‘Go to bed.’
In poor Searle’s face as well the gathered serenity was twisted into a sickened frown, and the reflected brightness of his happy day turned to blank confusion. ‘Have I been dealing these three hours with a madman?’ he asked plaintively.
‘A madman, yes, if you will! A man mad with the love of his home and the sense of its stability. I have held my tongue till now, but you have been too much for me. Who are you, what are you? From what paradise of fools do you come, that you fancy I shall cut off a piece of my land, my hom
e, my heart, to toss to you? Forsooth, I shall share my land with you? Prove your infernal claim! There isn’t that in it!’ And he kicked one of the bits of paper on the floor.
Searle received this broadside gaping. Then turning away, he went and seated himself on a bench against the wall and rubbed his forehead amazedly. I looked at my watch, and listened for the wheels of our carriage.
Mr Searle went on. ‘Wasn’t it enough that you should have practised against my property? Need you have come into my very house to practise against my sister?’
Searle put his two hands to his face. ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ he softly roared.
Miss Searle crossed rapidly and dropped on her knees at his side.
‘Go to bed, you fool!’ shrieked her brother.
‘Dear cousin,’ said Miss Searle, ‘it’s cruel that you are to have to think of us so!’
‘O, I shall think of you!’ he said. And he laid a hand on her head.
‘I believe you have done nothing wrong!’ she murmured.
‘I’ve done what I could,’ her brother pursued. ‘But it’s arrant folly to pretend to friendship when this abomination lies between us. You were welcome to my meat and my wine, but I wonder you could swallow them. The sight spoiled my appetite!’ cried the furious little man, with a laugh. ‘Proceed with your case! My people in London are instructed and prepared.’
‘I have a fancy,’ I said to Searle, ‘that your case has vastly improved since you gave it up.’
‘Oho! you don’t feign ignorance, then?’ and he shook his flaming chevelure at me. ‘It is very kind of you to give it up!’ And he laughed resoundingly. ‘Perhaps you will also give up my sister!’
Searle sat in his chair in a species of collapse, staring at his adversary. ‘O miserable man!’ he moaned at last. ‘I fancied we had become such friends!’
‘Boh! you imbecile!’ cried our host.
Searle seemed not to hear him. ‘Am I seriously expected,’ he pursued, slowly and painfully – ‘am I seriously expected – to – to sit here and defend myself – to prove I have done nothing wrong? Think what you please.’ And he rose, with an effort, to his feet. ‘I know what you think!’ he added, to Miss Searle.
The carriage wheels resounded on the gravel, and at the same moment the footman descended with our two portmanteaus. Mr Tottenham followed him with our hats and coats.
‘Good God!’ cried Mr Searle; ‘you are not going away!’ This ejaculation, under the circumstances, had a grand comicality which prompted me to violent laughter. ‘Bless my soul!’ he added; ‘of course you are going.’
‘It’s perhaps well,’ said Miss Searle, with a great effort, inexpressibly touching in one for whom great efforts were visibly new and strange, ‘that I should tell you what my poor little note contained.’
‘That matter of your note, madam,’ said her brother, ‘you and I will settle together!’
‘Let me imagine its contents,’ said Searle.
‘Ah! they have been too much imagined!’ she answered simply. ‘It was only a word of warning. I knew something painful was coming.’
Searle took his hat. ‘The pains and the pleasures of this day,’ he said to his kinsman, ‘I shall equally never forget. Knowing you,’ and he offered his hand to Miss Searle, ‘has been the pleasure of pleasures. I hoped something more was to come of it.’
‘A deal too much has come of it!’ cried our host, irrepressibly.
Searle looked at him mildly, almost benignantly, from head to foot; and then closing his eyes with an air of sudden physical distress: ‘I’m afraid so! I can’t stand more of this.’ I gave him my arm, and crossed the threshold. As we passed out I heard Miss Searle burst into a torrent of sobs.
‘We shall hear from each other yet, I take it!’ cried her brother, harassing our retreat.
Searle stopped and turned round on him sharply, almost fiercely. ‘O ridiculous man!’ he cried.
‘Do you mean to say you shall not prosecute?’ screamed the other. ‘I shall force you to prosecute! I shall drag you into court, and you shall be beaten – beaten – beaten!’ And this soft vocable continued to ring in our ears as we drove away.
We drove, of course, to the little wayside inn whence we had departed in the morning so unencumbered, in all broad England, with either enemies or friends. My companion, as the carriage rolled along, seemed utterly overwhelmed and exhausted. ‘What a dream!’ he murmured stupidly. ‘What an awakening! What a long, long day! What a hideous scene! Poor me! Poor woman!’ When we had resumed possession of our two little neighbouring rooms, I asked him if Miss Searle’s note had been the result of anything that had passed between them on his going to rejoin her. ‘I found her on the terrace,’ he said, ‘walking a restless walk in the moonlight. I was greatly excited; I hardly know what I said. I asked her, I think, if she knew the story of Margaret Searle. She seemed frightened and troubled, and she used just the words her brother had used, “I know nothing”. For the moment, somehow, I felt as a man drunk. I stood before her and told her, with great emphasis, how sweet Margaret Searle had married a beggarly foreigner, in obedience to her heart and in defiance of her family. As I talked the sheeted moonlight seemed to close about us, and we stood in a dream, in a solitude, in a romance. She grew younger, fairer, more gracious. I trembled with a divine loquacity. Before I knew it I had gone far. I was taking her hand and calling her “Margaret!” She had said that it was impossible; that she could do nothing; that she was a fool, a child, a slave. Then, with a sudden huge conviction, I spoke of my claim against the estate. “It exists, then?” she said. “It exists,” I answered, “but I have forgone it. Be generous! Pay it from your heart!” For an instant her face was radiant. “If I marry you,” she cried, “it will repair the trouble.” “In our marriage,” I affirmed, “the trouble will melt away like a rain-drop in the ocean.” “Our marriage!” she repeated, wonderingly; and the deep, deep ring of her voice seemed to shatter the crystal walls of our illusion. “I must think, I must think!” she said; and she hurried away with her face in her hands. I walked up and down the terrace for some moments, and then came in and met you. This is the only witchcraft I have used!’
The poor fellow was at once so excited and so exhausted by the day’s events, that I fancied he would get little sleep. Conscious, on my own part, of a stubborn wakefulness, I but partly undressed, set my fire a blazing, and sat down to do some writing. I heard the great clock in the little parlour below strike twelve, one, half past one. Just as the vibration of this last stroke was dying on the air the door of communication into Searle’s room was flung open, and my companion stood on the threshold, pale as a corpse, in his nightshirt, standing like a phantom against the darkness behind him. ‘Look at me!’ he said, in a low voice, ‘touch me, embrace me, revere me! You see a man who has seen a ghost!’
‘Great heaven, what do you mean?’
‘Write it down!’ he went on. ‘There, take your pen. Put it into dreadful words. Make it of all ghost-stories the ghostliest, the truest! How do I look? Am I human? Am I pale? Am I red? Am I speaking English? A ghost, sir! Do you understand?’
I confess, there came upon me, by contact, a great supernatural shock. I shall always feel that I, too, have seen a ghost. My first movement – I can’t smile at it even now – was to spring to the door, close it with a great blow, and then turn the key upon the gaping blackness from which Searle had emerged. I seized his two hands; they were wet with perspiration. I pushed my chair to the fire and forced him to sit down in it. I kneeled down before him and held his hands as firmly as possible. They trembled and quivered; his eyes were fixed, save that the pupil dilated and contracted with extraordinary force. I asked no questions, but waited with my heart in my throat. At last he spoke. ‘I’m not frightened, but I’m – O, EXCITED! This is life! This is living! My nerves – my heart – my brain! They are throbbing with the wildness of a myriad lives! Do you feel it? Do you tingle? Are you hot? Are you cold? Hold me tight – tight – tight! I shall tremble awa
y into waves – waves – waves, and know the universe and approach my Maker!’ He paused a moment and then went on: ‘A woman – as clear as that candle. – No, far clearer! In a blue dress, with a black mantle on her head, and a little black muff. Young, dreadfully pretty, pale and ill, with the sadness of all the women who ever loved and suffered pleading and accusing in her dead dark eyes. God knows I never did any such thing! But she took me for my elder, for the other Clement. She came to me here as she would have come to me there. She wrung her hands and spoke to me. “Marry me!” she moaned; “marry me and right me!” I sat up in bed just as I sit here, looked at her, heard her, – heard her voice melt away, watched her figure fade away. Heaven and earth! Here I am!’
I made no attempt either to explain my friend’s vision or to discredit it. It is enough that I felt for the hour the irresistible contagion of his own agitation. On the whole, I think my own vision was the more interesting of the two. He beheld but the transient, irresponsible spectre: I beheld the human subject, hot from the spectral presence. Nevertheless, I soon recovered my wits sufficiently to feel the necessity of guarding my friend’s health against the evil results of excitement and exposure. It was tacitly established that, for the night, he was not to return to his room; and I soon made him fairly comfortable in his place by the fire. Wishing especially to obviate a chill, I removed my bedding and wrapped him about with multitudinous blankets and counterpanes. I had no nerves either for writing or sleep; so I put out my lights, renewed the fire, and sat down on the opposite side of the hearth. I found a kind of solemn entertainment in watching my friend. Silent, swathed and muffled to his chin, he sat rigid and erect with the dignity of his great adventure. For the most part his eyes were closed; though from time to time he would open them with a vast steady expansion and gaze unblinking into the firelight, as if he again beheld, without terror, the image of that blighted maid. With his cadaverous, emaciated face, his tragic wrinkles, intensified by the upward glow from the hearth, his drooping black moustache, his transcendent gravity, and a certain high fantastical air in the flickering alternations of his brow, he looked like the vision-haunted knight of La Mancha, nursed by the Duke and Duchess. The night passed wholly without speech. Towards its close I slept for half an hour. When I awoke the awakened birds had begun to twitter. Searle sat unperturbed, staring at me. We exchanged a long look; I felt with a pang that his glittering eyes had tasted their last of natural sleep. ‘How is it? are you comfortable?’ I asked.