Fallen Fortunes

Grey sat silent and baffled. It was little he knew of the law; but he had heard before this of men who had left nothing save debts and troubles for those who came after them. Many a fair manor and estate passed into alien hands for years, or even for generations, when trouble fell upon the owners. He understood only too well how it had been here at Hartsbourne – everything squeezed out of the estate, nothing put in, till at last the house was falling into ruin, and the rights of the lord of the manor had passed away from the owner. It was no consolation to Grey that a Dumaresq had supplanted him. He was cut to the heart by the selfish extravagance of his father, and the way in which he had played into the hands of this schemer. He saw how impossible it would be to attempt to live here himself, even if he could establish a legal right to do so. He was not certain if his father could have done anything which should actually hinder him from claiming possession of the house which was his, but to find money to pay off the mortgages – he might as well have sought for money to buy the moon! And even then, how could he live in a house without money, without servants, without friends? No; he must seek to carve out a fortune for himself. His fair dream of a peaceful life in England as a country squire was shattered into a thousand pieces. Some day perhaps – some day in the dim and distant future, when fortune and fame were his – he might come back to take possession of his own. It should be his dream – the goal of his ambition – to dwell at Hartsbourne as its lord and master. But for the present he could call nothing his own save the good horse cropping the lush June grass in the paddock, and that casket so carefully hidden beneath the hearthstone of old Jock's living-room. He would look at the papers. He would make careful study of them. He would take notes as to the amount necessary to clear the estate and make him master in reality. And then he would go; he would not be beholden to this kinsman, whose shifty face he distrusted heart and soul, though his words were smooth and fair. He would ride forth into the fair world of an English midsummer, and would see what the future held there for him.

It was not an exhilarating hour which he spent over the parchments spread out before his eyes, which were eagerly explained to him by the lynx-eyed kinsman, who seemed half afraid to trust them out of his own claw-like clutches. But Grey perused them with attention, making notes the while; and after studying these at the close, whilst the deeds were being locked away, he said, —

"Then when I return with thirty thousand pounds in my pocket, I can take over Hartsbourne, house and lands and all, and be master of my own estate in deed as well as in word?"

"And how are you to come by this thirty thousand pounds, fair coz?" asked Mr. Dumaresq, with something slightly uneasy in his shifty glance. "Right gladly would I receive mine own, and make way for a gallant gentleman like you; but where are these riches of Aladdin to come from?"

"Perchance from the same source as yours did come, sir," answered Grey, looking full at his interlocutor. "The Dumaresqs have not ranked as a wealthy family since the days of the Civil War, when they lost so much. But you seem to have found fortune's golden key; and if you, why not I?"

Did he shrink and cower under these words, or was it only Grey's fancy that he did so? The young man could not be sure, though he had his suspicions. At any rate he spoke suavely enough.

"Thrift and care, my young friend, care and thrift – these qualities are better than any golden key of hazard. My father was a careful, saving man, and at his death bequeathed me greater wealth than I dreamed he did possess. I followed in his footsteps until, for your father's sake, I elected to prop the falling fortunes of the house rather than live in selfish affluence on my own revenues. Well, I did what seemed right; and my reward shall be the hope of seeing Hartsbourne one day restored to its former glories. But for the present I must needs live like a poor man, though that is no trouble to one who has ever made thrift the law of life."

Grey went forth from the presence of his kinsman with a cloud on his brow and a fire in his heart.

"Why doth he speak of himself as poor?" he asked of himself. "He takes to himself all the revenues of the estate; and when I was a boy, I always heard that the farms were prosperous, the land fertile, the timber fine, game and deer plentiful, and the tenants able to pay their dues. If all that comes in goes into his pocket, wherefore doth he live like a miser? wherefore doth he let the house fall into decay? he ruined himself for my father's sake? Tush! A man with that face sacrifice himself for another! Nay; but he is hoarding up gold for himself, or I greatly mistake me. Truly do I believe that he is playing some deep game of his own. Well, I can but wait and see what time will bring forth. It is a shame that the old house should be left to go to ruin like this, with its revenues falling regularly into the hands of a Dumaresq! Why doth he not spend them upon the fine old structure, to make it what it was before? Why, now I see. He thinks it would stimulate me to fresh desire to make myself master. He may haply think that I care not for a habitation given up to rats and ghosts and cobwebs. He little thinks that every fallen stone seems to cry out aloud to me, and that the lower falls the old house in ruin and neglect, the more urgent is the voice with which it urges me to come and save it."

The young man was walking up and down the grass-grown avenue as he thus mused. From thence he could see in perspective the long south front, with its many mullioned windows, its beautiful oriels, and the terrace up and down which he had raced in the days of his happy childhood. Straight in front was the eastern portion of the house, with its great entrance doors, led up to by a fine double stairway, beneath which a coach could stand, and its occupants in wet weather enter by a lower door. But the stone work was chipped and broken; the balustrade had lost many of its balls, which lay mouldering in the long grass that grew up to the very walls. Moss and lichen and stone-crop clothed all, and the creepers which clung about the house itself were wild and tangled, and in many cases had completely overgrown the very windows, so that scarce a trace of them could be seen.

Yet even in its decay the old house was strangely beautiful, and Grey's heart was stirred to its depths. He wandered through the tangled garden, and out towards the fish-ponds beyond and then by a winding pathway he made his way to the churchyard, and stood bare-headed at his mother's grave.

"I will win it back, mother; I will win it back!" He spoke the words aloud, in a low-toned, earnest voice. "You loved the place, and you taught me to love it. For that alone I would seek to call it one day mine own. I will win it back, and methinks your heart will rejoice when your son is ruling there at last."

Grey had meant to leave that very day; but there was much he longed to see, and his kinsman had given him an earnest invitation to pass the night beneath the old roof-tree. Repugnant as this man was to him, and bitterly as he resented his conduct and distrusted his motives, it was not in the young man's nature to be churlish. Every hour of daylight he spent wandering about the place, revisiting his boyish haunts, and chatting with old Jock, who, without being able to give any exact reason for it, distrusted and despised the present master as heartily as Grey himself.

"The old master did too, at the last. I am main sure of it," he said; "else for why should he have given me yon box, sir? And why should he have bidden me hide it and guard it, and let none see it till Sir Grey should claim it himself? For years he had thought him a friend; but I trow he knew him for a false one at the last. You'll best him yet, Sir Grey – see if you don't. A villain always outwits himself in the end. You'll be master here one day, please God, or my name's not Jock Jarvis!"

Grey had taken out the casket, and found that it contained three hundred golden guineas – the remnant of his father's fortune, and all that he had been able to preserve to his son of what had once been a fine estate. A few words cautioned Grey to be careful of the hoard, and let no one know of its existence – "no one" plainly meaning his kinsman. It also contained a few faintly traced words of farewell, and just a plea for forgiveness – evidently written when mortal weakness was upon the writer – which brought sudden tears to the eyes of the son, and blotted out the bitterness of heart which had been growing up as he mused upon his fallen fortunes and his lost inheritance.

That evening Grey supped with his kinsman in a corner of the despoiled library, which seemed the only room in the house now lived in. He had walked through some of the other state apartments, denuded of their pictures and the best of the furniture, and looking ghostlike with closed shutters and overgrown windows. He had not had heart to pursue his investigations far; and all that he carried away with him were saddened memories, and one little mouldering volume of poems, with his mother's name on the fly leaf, which he had found lying in a corner of the little room with the sunny oriel, where she had passed the greater part of her time. He thought he even remembered the book in her hands; and he slipped it into his breast as though it were some great treasure. The sneering smile of his kinsman as he bade him keep the volume, and saw where he placed it, did not endear him any the more. He wished he could get rid of his companionship, but that seemed impossible; and Grey soon gave up the tour of the house, and let himself be led back to the library.

"No, I have no plans," he said briefly, as they sat at their frugal supper, to which, in honour of the occasion, a small flagon of wine had been added. "I think I shall remain in England. I have been a wanderer something too long. A homely saying tells us that the rolling stone gathers no moss. I have youth and health and strength, and the world lies before me. Men have won success with more against them before this, and why not I?"

"I should have thought the battlefield would have tempted you. There is honour and renown to be won there, to say nothing of the spoils of a vanquished foe," spoke Mr. Dumaresq, looking at him in a peering, crafty fashion. "Surely a gallant young gentleman of your birth and training would not lack for opportunities of distinction amid the perils and glories of war!"

Suddenly Grey became aware that his kinsman was anxious for him to go and fight in the cause of the Allies. It could not be that he had heard of the happy chance which had made Marlborough his friend, for he had spoken of that to none; and even if Dicon had boasted to old Jock, neither cared to have aught to do with the deaf and cross-grained serving-man who waited upon the master within doors. A moment more and Grey had found the clue, and realized that his own death would make Bartholomew Dumaresq not only absolute master of Hartsbourne, but a baronet to boot; and in every battle thousands of brave soldiers were left dead upon the field, whilst many fell victim to wounds and the ravages of disease caught during the hard weeks of campaigning.

"I think I shall remain in England," he answered quietly. "I have seen something of war, but a career of peace has more attractions for me;" and he smiled to see the look of chagrin which played for a moment over the crafty face of his kinsman.

Grey did not find it easy to sleep when he had climbed up into the great canopied bed in the guest chamber allotted to him. He scarcely remembered this room. It was very large, and before he went to rest Grey drew aside all the mouldering draperies from the windows, and opened every casement wide to the summer night. Even so the place felt musty. There were strange creakings and groanings of the furniture, and the owls without hooted and hissed in the ivy wreaths. More than one bat flew in and out, circling over his head in uncanny flight; and had it not been that the previous night had been an almost sleepless one, Grey would scarce have closed an eye. As it was, he grew drowsy gradually, and felt a strange swimming in his head to which he was a stranger. He was just wondering whether the wine he had taken at supper, the taste of which seemed curious to him at the time, could have anything to do with this, when sleep suddenly fell upon him like a pall, and for a space he could not gauge he remained lapped in the unconsciousness of oblivion.

What was it roused him? Or was he indeed awake? The moonlight streamed into the room, and lay like bars upon the floor. Its radiance was sufficient to light every corner of the room, and Grey found himself lying still as a stone, yet sweeping every corner with his gaze, for surely he was not alone. He felt some presence close beside him, yet where could it be?

Suddenly his gaze travelled upwards, and for a few awful seconds he lay gazing as the bird before the gaze of the snake.

A shining poniard hung, as it were, over his head. He saw the gleaming silver of the blade. Its haft was grasped by a hand – a lean, claw-like hand. Its point was aimed at his own heart.

For a few endless seconds Grey lay staring up helplessly. Then the blade moved swiftly downwards. With a motion as swift, the young man threw himself sidewise out of bed and upon the floor, and turning, sprang to his feet to meet the murderous foe.

Behold there was nothing! He was alone in the great moonlit room. The curtains behind the bed's head were slightly shaken – nothing more.

Horrified and bewildered, Grey dashed them aside. Behind was a wall panelled like the rest of the room in black oak. Was it his fancy, or had he heard just as he sprang to his feet the click as of a closing spring? Grey passed his hand over and over the woodwork, but could find nothing to give a clue. Old memories of secret sliding panels, unknown passages to hiding-places, and ghostly visitants to sleeping guests, rose in succession before him. But this was something more than an ordinary ghostly visitor. Grey saw again the murderous gleam of cold steel over his head – saw the claw-like hand in its faded russet sleeve, the fierce downward sweep of the weapon.

"It was my kinsman, and he sought to do me to death – here in the haunted chamber, where perhaps some infernal machinery exists whereby the corpse could have been quickly and quietly removed and heard of no more. Who would care save Dicon, and what could a poor varlet like that do if the master of Hartsbourne were to assert that his kinsman had ridden off in the early hours of the morning, he knew not whither? Did he drug the wine? Was this in his head all the while? Or was the idea suggested only by my refusal to place my neck in peril at the wars? O Barty, Barty Dumaresq, a pretty villain art thou! Before this I might perhaps have been tempted to return to the Duke, and seek to win my spurs at his side; but now – no. I will take the safer, if the slower, path to fame and fortune, and I will live to make you rue the day you sought to rid yourself, by secret assassination, of the man in whose shoes you hope some day to stand."

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE ROAD

With the first streak of midsummer dawn Grey Dumaresq was in the paddock, looking well to the condition of his horse, and grooming the soft, satin coat lovingly with his own hands.

"We must be up and away, my beauty, ere the sun be high. This is no place for either you or me, albeit every foot of ground is mine own, and it will go hard if I let that weasel-faced scoundrel filch it altogether from me. I know him now in his true colours. Heaven send the day may come when I shall repay with interest that which I owe him."

The horse tossed his head and neighed as though in response; and perhaps Dicon heard the sound from where he slept, for almost at once he was at his master's side; and old Jock came cautiously out by the doorway leading towards the house, and looked relieved and gratified to see the young master abroad.

"Eh, but I have been sore troubled with bad dreams this night," he said, as he shambled up. "Yon house is full of such, I take it. How slept you, my master? and how fare you this morn? It is good to see you looking so spruce and sound. Bad luck to the dreams that drove sleep from my pillow at last."

"I had my dreams too, Jock, and I have not slept since," answered Grey, with a significant glance at the old man. "Tell me, good fellow, what know you of the panelled guest-chamber, with the row of windows looking south over the park? Ha! why look you so, man? What know you of the chamber?"

"Did he put you there, my master? Then Peter lied to me, the false-tongued knave. If I had known that! No wonder the dreams were bad that came to me. The haunted room! Tush! it is not ghosts that hurt, but men who come and go at will and leave no trace behind."

"I thought so," spoke Grey composedly. "Then there is a secret way of entrance into that room?"

"Ay, behind the bed. I do not know the trick, but I have heard of it. Men have been done to death in that room ere this, and none the wiser for it. Oh if I had but known!"

Grey's eyes were fixed full upon the pallid face of the old man. He put the next question gravely and almost sternly.

"Tell me truly, my friend. Think you that this kinsman of mine would plot to do me hurt? He made profession of friendship."

"He made the same to Sir Hugh," answered Jock in a trembling voice, "and for long the master believed in him. But methinks he never would have died as he did, had he not come to live here with Mr. Barty at Hartsbourne."

Grey started and changed colour, clinching his hand,

"You think that this kinsman of ours compassed his death?"

Jock looked over his shoulder as though fearful of listening ears. He drew a step nearer; and Dicon, with fallen jaw and staring eyes, came up close to listen.

"How can I tell? I was seldom in the house. I work in the garden, and because I am a cheap servant, asking no money, but making a pittance by what I can sell, Mr. Barty has kept me here where he found me. But when the old master came, he often sent for me. Before he became too ill, he sometimes crawled to my little cottage yonder for a bit of chat. He told me the doctors and leeches told him he had but to rest and live simply in the country for a few years to be a sound man again. But for all that he dwindled and dwindled away, and was gone in two months."

"Did no leech attend him here?" asked Grey breathlessly.

"Not till the very last, when they sent me to Edgeware to fetch one who could do naught. Mr. Barty professed to know many cures, and the master believed in him. He eased his pain, but he sank into an ever-increasing, ever-mastering drowsiness, and he shrank away to skin and bone. It went to my heart to see him. Many's the time when I have wondered whether it would have ended so if he had not taken Mr. Barty's simples and draughts."

"Was he poisoned, then?" asked Grey, between his shut teeth.

Jock looked nervously over his shoulder; the word seemed to frighten him. He shook his old head from side to side.

"Nay, nay, how can I tell – a poor old ignorant man like me? But he used to say that you would likely never come home again (travellers met such a deal of peril, he would say), and then his eyes would gleam and glisten, for there was but the old master's life and yours betwixt him and the title and all."

Grey ground his teeth, and his eyes flashed. Somehow he did not doubt for a moment that foul play had been used to compass his father's death. Had he not escaped assassination himself that night only by the skin of his teeth?

"Could any man living throw light upon this matter?" he asked. "The leech from Edgeware, or any other?"

"I misdoubt me if any could, save wall-eyed Peter, Mr. Barty's man; and I trow his master makes it worth while for him to hold his tongue and know nothing."

"Gold will sometimes unloose a miscreant's tongue."

"Ay, ay, maybe; but Mr. Barty's purse is longer than yours, Sir Grey, and his mind is crookeder and his ways more artful. Don't you go for to anger him yet: hurt might come to you an you did. Get you gone from the place, and that right soon; for the sooner you leave Hartsbourne behind you, the safer it will be for you."

"Yes, my master; let us indeed be gone," pleaded Dicon earnestly. "This is a God-forsaken hole, not fit for you to dwell in. Take the store of gold pieces, and let us begone, for I trow that harm will come to you if you linger longer here."

It took little to persuade Grey to be off and away. Old Jock provided them with a meal, and they could break their fast at the old inn at Edgeware, through which they would pass. He had no desire to go through the farce of a farewell to his kinsman. He only desired to shake off the dust of his feet against him; and ere the chimes of the church rang out the hour of six, Grey was turning on the crest of a ridge of rising ground, to look his last for the nonce upon the old home he had dreamed of so many a time, and round which so many loving thoughts centred.

"Let kind Fortune but smile upon me, Dicon, and show me the way to affluence and fame, and I will yet be lord and master there, and the manor of Hartsbourne shall be one of the fairest in the land!"

"Why, so you shall, Sir Grey, and that right speedily!" cried honest Dick, who had an unbounded admiration for his young master, and an immense confidence in his luck, albeit no special good fortune had befallen him since he had taken service with him.

Dick had led a seafaring life during his earlier years, and Grey had picked him up in a shipwrecked, ragged, and starving condition on the coast of Spain some two years previously. In those days ship-wrecked sailors often had a hard time of it, even though the terrors of the galleys or the Inquisition did not loom quite so perilously before them as had been the case a century before. To find himself taken into the service of a young English gentleman of quality, and to be the companion of his travels, had been a piece of luck that Dick thanked Providence for every day of his life. He had been one of four servants at the outset; but as Grey's resources diminished, or his roving life took him into perils for which some men had little stomach, he gradually lost his retinue, till, for the past year, Dick alone had followed him, and the two had become friends and comrades, as well as master and servant. Now at their first halting-place, where they paused to let the horses breathe after a steady half-hour's gallop, Grey opened the wallet at his side, which he had filled with gold pieces from the casket (the rest he had sewn carefully into his clothes for safety), and counted out a certain number, which he shook in his fist as he spoke.

"Dicon, I am going to London to try my luck there. But, as I have ofttimes heard, fortunes are as easily lost there as won, wherefore it may be that I shall become a beggar instead of growing in wealth and greatness."

"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Dick in passionate protest.

"Well, Heaven watches over the undeserving as well as the virtuous, so there is e'en hope for me," answered Grey with his winning smile. "But look ye here, Dicon. You have been a faithful rogue, and have served me well, and I hope we may company together many a long day yet. But inasmuch as there are uncertainties in life, and we are going forth into a new world, where perchance I may sink rather than swim, I desire to give you six months' wage in advance, whilst I have my pockets lined with gold, so that should any untoward chance befall me, as it has befallen better men than myself, I shall not have to turn you adrift unrewarded, nor will you, if you can be a wise varlet, and husband your resources, be thrown on the world without some means of support."

Dick seemed about to protest, but either the look on his master's face or some idea which had entered his own head held him silent. He took the coins without counting them, and producing a greasy leathern pouch, such as sailors often carry with them, he dropped the gold pieces into it one by one, tied it up, and fastened it safely in an inner pocket.

"That pouch stuck by me when I lost everything else in the world, and well-nigh my own life," said the fellow with a grin. "My mother did give it me when I first went to sea, and she told me as a wise witch woman had given it her. She thought 'twas the caul of a child; and like enough it be, for salt water never hurts it, and I was the only one saved of all the crew that went down off the Spanish coast. I'd sooner part with the gold pieces than with the pouch that holds them."