Part 36 (1/2)

Lancelot turned to go.

'No--do not leave me! Not alone, for G.o.d's sake, not alone!'

Lancelot sat down. There was a fearful alteration in Bracebridge.

His old keen self-confident look had vanished. He was haggard, life-weary, shame-stricken, almost abject. His limbs looked quite shrunk and powerless, as he rested his head on the table before him, and murmured incoherently from time to time,--

'My own child! And I never shall have another! No second chance for those who--Oh Mary! Mary! you might have waited--you might have trusted me! And why should you?--ay, why, indeed? And such a pretty baby, too!--just like his father!'

Lancelot laid his hand kindly on his shoulder.

'My dearest Bracebridge, the evidence proves that the child was born dead.'

'They lie!' he said, fiercely, starting up. 'It cried twice after it was born!'

Lancelot stood horror-struck.

'I heard it last night, and the night before that, and the night before that again, under my pillow, shrieking--stifling--two little squeaks, like a caught hare; and I tore the pillows off it--I did; and once I saw it, and it had beautiful black eyes--just like its father--just like a little miniature that used to lie on my mother's table, when I knelt at her knee, before they sent me out ”to see life,” and Eton, and the army, and Crockford's, and Newmarket, and fine gentlemen, and fine ladies, and luxury, and flattery, brought me to this! Oh, father! father! was that the only way to make a gentleman of your son?--There it is again! Don't you hear it?-- under the sofa cus.h.i.+ons! Tear them off! Curse you! Save it!'

And, with a fearful oath, the wretched man sent Lancelot staggering across the room, and madly tore up the cus.h.i.+ons.

A long postman's knock at the door.--He suddenly rose up quite collected.

'The letter! I knew it would come. She need not have written it: I know what is in it.'

The servant's step came up the stairs. Poor Bracebridge turned to Lancelot with something of his own stately determination.

'I must be alone when I receive this letter. Stay here.' And with compressed lips and fixed eyes he stalked out at the door, and shut it.

Lancelot heard him stop; then the servant's footsteps down the stairs; then the colonel's treading, slowly and heavily, went step by step up to the room above. He shut that door too. A dead silence followed. Lancelot stood in fearful suspense, and held his breath to listen. Perhaps he had fainted? No, for then he would have heard a fall. Perhaps he had fallen on the bed? He would go and see. No, he would wait a little longer. Perhaps he was praying? He had told Lancelot to pray once--he dared not interrupt him now. A slight stir--a noise as of an opening box. Thank G.o.d, he was, at least, alive! Nonsense! Why should he not be alive?

What could happen to him? And yet he knew that something was going to happen. The silence was ominous--unbearable; the air of the room felt heavy and stifling, as if a thunderstorm were about to burst.

He longed to hear the man raging and stamping. And yet he could not connect the thought of one so gay and full of gallant life, with the terrible dread that was creeping over him--with the terrible scene which he had just witnessed. It must be all a temporary excitement- -a mistake--a hideous dream, which the next post would sweep away.

He would go and tell him so. No, he could not stir. His limbs seemed leaden, his feet felt rooted to the ground, as in long nightmare. And still the intolerable silence brooded overhead.

What broke it? A dull, stifled report, as of a pistol fired against the ground; a heavy fall; and again the silence of death.

He rushed upstairs. A corpse lay on its face upon the floor, and from among its hair, a crimson thread crept slowly across the carpet. It was all over. He bent over the head, but one look was sufficient. He did not try to lift it up.

On the table lay the fatal letter. Lancelot knew that he had a right to read it. It was scrawled, mis-spelt--but there were no tear-blots on the paper:--

'Sir--I am in prison--and where are you? Cruel man! Where were you all those miserable weeks, while I was coming nearer and nearer to my shame? Murdering dumb beasts in foreign lands. You have murdered more than them. How I loved you once! How I hate you now!

But I have my revenge. YOUR BABY CRIED TWICE AFTER IT WAS BORN!'

Lancelot tore the letter into a hundred pieces, and swallowed them, for every foot in the house was on the stairs.

So there was terror, and confusion, and running in and out: but there were no wet eyes there except those of Bracebridge's groom, who threw himself on the body, and would not stir. And then there was a coroner's inquest; and it came out in the evidence how 'the deceased had been for several days very much depressed, and had talked of voices and apparitions;' whereat the jury--as twelve honest, good-natured Christians were bound to do--returned a verdict of temporary insanity; and in a week more the penny-a-liners grew tired; and the world, too, who never expects anything, not even French revolutions, grew tired also of repeating,--'Dear me! who would have expected it?' and having filled up the colonel's place, swaggered on as usual, arm-in-arm with the flesh and the devil.

Bracebridge's death had, of course, a great effect on Lancelot's spirit. Not in the way of warning, though--such events seldom act in that way, on the highest as well as on the lowest minds. After all, your 'Rakes' Progresses,' and 'Atheists' Deathbeds,' do no more good than n.o.ble George Cruikshank's 'Bottle' will, because every one knows that they are the exception, and not the rule; that the Atheist generally dies with a conscience as comfortably callous as a rhinocerous-hide; and the rake, when old age stops his power of sinning, becomes generally rather more respectable than his neighbours. The New Testament deals very little in appeals ad terrorem; and it would be well if some, who fancy that they follow it, would do the same, and by abstaining from making 'h.e.l.l-fire' the chief incentive to virtue, cease from tempting many a poor fellow to enlist on the devil's side the only manly feeling he has left-- personal courage.

But yet Lancelot was affected. And when, on the night of the colonel's funeral, he opened, at hazard, Argemone's Bible, and his eyes fell on the pa.s.sage which tells how 'one shall be taken and another left,' great honest tears of grat.i.tude dropped upon the page; and he fell on his knees, and in bitter self-reproach thanked the new found Upper Powers, who, as he began to hope, were leading him not in vain,--that he had yet a life before him wherein to play the man.