T. W. Speight

“ In spite of himself the old man’s heart warmed imperceptibly towards him, and when it so happened that business took Tom away from home for two or three days, then the Squire grew so fretful and peevish that all Jane’s tact and good temper were needed to make life at all endurable. She tried her best to persuade him to invite some of his old friends to come and see him, or go himself and call up on some of them, but in vain. Bristow he wanted, and no one but Bristow would he have. He looked upon himself as a ruined man, as a man whom it behoved to economize in every possible way. ”

“ To admire the ring is the first step: to ask to look at it the second.”
A quarter of an hour later Lionel gripped Tom suddenly by the arm. “Bristow,” he whispered, “I have just remembered something. Osmond had that ruby ring on his finger the night before he was murdered! I have a distinct recollection of seeing it on his hand when we were playing that last game of billiards together.”
“If this ring,” said Tom, “prove to be the one you believe it to be, the finding of it will be another and a most important link in the chain of evidence.” ”

“ The moon was just rising above the tree-tops, bathing the upper part of the quaint old house in its white glory, but as yet the shrubbery and the garden-paths lay in deepest shadow. Nowhere could they discern the figure of the man whom they had come out to follow; but the Wizard’s Fountain was a good half mile from the Hall, so they struck at once into the nearest footway that led towards it. A few minutes’ quick walking took them there. Lionel knew the place well. It had been a favourite haunt of his when living at Park Newton during the few happy weeks that preceded the murder. ”

“ I ought to have told you years ago—ay—before you ever grew to be a man. But I loved you so, and had such pride in you, that I couldn’t bear the thought of telling you, and it’s only now when I’m on my deathbed that the secret forces itself from me. But it will go no farther, never you fear that. No living soul but you will ever hear it from my lips; and you have only got to keep your own lips tightly shut, and you will live and die as Kester St. George. ”

“ Through what strange ambushes, through what dusky by-paths, doth Fate oft-times overtake us! We look back along the broad highway we have been traversing, and seeing no black shadow dogging our footsteps, we go rejoicing on our way; when suddenly, from some near-at-hand shrub, is shot a poisoned arrow, and the sunlight fades from our eyes for ever.
“And now, after this little skirmish,” said Skeggs, “we come back to my first question: What can you afford to give me for the document in my pocket?”
“Suppose I say that I will give you nothing—what then?” said Kester, sullenly. ”

“ Bristow, this conversation is to me most interesting,” said the widow. “Your views are thoroughly original, but, at the same time, I feel that they are perfectly correct.”
“The sphere of your intellectual activity is far too narrow and confined,” resumed Tom; “your brain has not sufficient pabulum to keep it in a state of healthy activity. You want to mix more with the world—to mix more with clever people like yourself. It was never intended by nature that you should lose yourself among the narrow coteries of provincial life: the metropolis claims you: the world at large claims you. ”

“ Knowing what he knew, that Richard was none other than Lionel, and knowing the quest on which he was engaged, and that, sooner or later, the climax must come, he might well wish to be away from Park Newton when that most wretched day should dawn—a day which would prove the innocence of one nephew at the price of the other’s guilt. Therefore did General St. George accept his old friend’s invitation to stay with him for an indefinite length of time—till, in fact, Kester should have left Park Newton, or till the tangled knot of events should, in some other way, have unravelled itself. ”

“ The Titus Culpepper of to-day was a broken-down gambler—a gambler who had madly speculated with his daughter’s fortune, and had lost it. Broken-down, too, was he in health, in spirits, and in temper; and, worst sign of all, a man who no longer found any pleasure in the company of his own thoughts, and who began to dislike to sit alone even for half an hour at a time. Of this change in himself the Squire knew and suspected nothing: how few of us do know of such changes! ”

“ A few premonitory flakes of snow were darkening the air as Kester St. George and Mr. Skeggs started on their way back across Burley Moor, the latter with a thick comforter round his neck and the bottle of gin stowed carefully away in the tail pocket of his coat. The cold seemed more intense than ever, but the wind had fallen altogether.
“We are going to have a rough night,” said Skeggs as he stepped sturdily out. “We must contrive to get across the moor before the snow comes down very thick, or we shall stand a good chance of losing our way. ”

“ But Lionel would have nothing to do with him, and when Janvard could be made to comprehend this, his face became a study of mortification and surprise. His feelings, such as they were, were evidently hurt. He never could be made to understand why Monsieur Dering had refused so positively to take up his quarters at the Lion d’Or.
In a world that is full of permutation and change, there are happily a few things that change not. One of these is the friendship between Lionel and Tom, which neither time nor absence, nor the growth of other interests has power to alter in the least. ”

“ Very bleak and cold was that walk across the desolate, lonely moor, but Kester St. George, buried in his own thoughts, hardly felt or heeded anything of it. All the sky was clouded and overcast, but far away to the north a still darker bank of cloud was creeping slowly up from the horizon.
The wind blew in hollow fitful gusts. Any one learned in such lore would have said that a change of weather was imminent.
When about half-way across the moor he halted for a moment to gather breath. On every side of him spread the dull treeless expanse. Nowhere was there another human being to be seen. ”

“ Then his eyes fixed themselves on the brandy. Tom interpreted the look and poured some into a glass. He drank it greedily and then he spoke.
“What you have just been told,” he said, “is nothing but a cruel, cowardly; devilish lie! Where is this man who accuses me? Why does he hide himself? He hides himself because he is a liar—because he dare not face either you or me. We all know who was the murderer—we all know that Lionel Dering——”
“Lionel Dering is here to answer for himself. It is he who tells you to your face that you are the murderer of Percy Osmond!” ”

“ A week later, the Squire happened to be riding on his white pony along the high road that fringed one side of Knockley Holt, when, to his intense astonishment, he heard the regular monotonous puffing and saw the smoke of a steam engine that was apparently hard at work behind a clump of larches in the distance. Riding up to the spot, he found some score or so of men all busily engaged. They were excavating a hole in the hill-side, filling-in stout timber supports as they got deeper down; the engine on the top being employed to hoist up the earth in big bucketfuls as fast as it was dug out. ”

“ The Squire was getting into the way of not being astonished at anything that Tom might say, but he did look across at him for a moment or two in blank amazement.
“Well, you are a queer fish, and no mistake!” were his first words. “And pray, my young shaver, how come you to be possessed of twelve hundred pounds?”
“Oh, I’m worth a little more than twelve hundred pounds,” said Tom, with a smile. “Why, only the other week I cleared a thousand by one little stroke in cotton.”
“Well done, young one,” said the Squire, heartily. “You are not such a fool as you look. ”

“ When the man should learn that Mother Mim was dead, which he probably would do in the course of a few days, and when the restraining power which had doubtless kept him silent should be removed for ever, what was to prevent him from telling all that he knew, or, at least, from giving such broad hints as to the information in his possession as might lead to inquiry—to many inquiries, perchance: to far more than Kester would care to encounter—unless he should ever be so unfortunate as to be driven to bay? ”

“ Instead of spending so many pounds per annum in entertaining a number of people for whom he cared little or nothing, would it not be better to add the amount, trifling though it might seem, to that other trifling amount—only some few hundreds of pounds when all was told—which he had already managed to scrape together as a little nest-egg for Jane when he should be gone from her side for ever, and Pincote could no longer be her home? ”

“ All things considered, it was certainly unadvisable that he should leave Park Newton yet awhile.
Day after day he waited with smothered impatience for some further tidings of Mother Mim. But day after day he waited in vain. Most men, under such circumstances, would have gone to the place and have made personal inquiries for themselves. This was precisely what Kester St. George told himself that he ought to do, but for all that he did not do it. He shrank, with a repugnance which he could not overcome, from the thought of any further contact with either Mother Mim or her surroundings. ”

“ But that we—we—should so change, becoming a burden to ourselves and a trial to those around us, with our queer, cross-grained ways, our peevish, variable tempers, and our general belief that the sun shines less brightly, and that the world is less beautiful than it was a little while ago—that is altogether impossible. The change is always in others, never in our immaculate selves.
The Squire was a man who, all his life, had preferred men’s company to that of the opposite sex. ”

“ McDermott’s second letter, Squire Culpepper was on his way to Sugden’s bank. His heart was heavy, and his step slow. He had never had to borrow a farthing from any man—at least, never since he had come into the estate—and he felt the humiliation, as he himself called it, very bitterly. There was something of bitterness, too, in having to confess to his friend Cope how all his brilliant castles in the air had vanished utterly, leaving not a wrack behind. ”

“ Cope was not long in perceiving that he had committed a grave error of judgment in refusing Mr. Culpepper the assistance he had asked for. There would be a splendid fortune for Jane after all. It was enough to make a man tear his hair with vexation—only Mr. Cope hadn’t much hair to tear—to think what a golden chance he had let slip through his fingers. ”

“ A marriage between two such people would have been a most incongruous one.”
“Thank Heaven! it’s broken now and for ever.”
“I’ve broken off your engagement to Edward Cope,” whispered the Squire to Jane in the hall, as he kissed her. “Are you glad or sorry, dear?”
“Glad—very, very glad, papa,” she whispered back as she rained a score of kisses on his face. Then she began to cry, and with that she ran away to her own room till she could recover herself.
“Women are queer cattle,” said the Squire, turning to Tom, “and I’ll be hanged if I can ever make them out.” ”

“ I know no man who deserves it more than you do. Yes, Bristow, I congratulate you, though I can’t help saying that I wish that I had had a friend to have told me what was told you before I let you have the ground. For want of such a friend I have lost a fortune.”
“That is just what I have come to see you about, sir,” said Tom, as he rose and pushed back his chair. The Squire looked up at him in surprise. “Although I bought Knockley Holt from you as a speculation, I had a pretty good idea when I bought it as to what I should find below the surface. ”

“ No one could be possessed by a more burning desire than the Squire himself to know the meaning of the works at Knockley Holt, but having asked once and asked in vain, his pride would not allow him to make any further direct inquiry. Not a day passed on which he saw Tom, that he did not try, by one or two vague hints, to lead up to the subject, but when Tom turned the talk into another channel, then the old man would see that the time for him to be enlightened had not yet come. ”

“ The widow held up a warning finger. There was silence in the room till the Squire’s gentle long-drawn snores announced that he was again happily fast asleep.
“Very few of us are so specially gifted,” resumed Tom. “But every special gift necessitates a special obligation in return. You, with your massive brain, must find that brain plenty of work to do—a sufficiency of congenial employment—otherwise it will inevitably turn upon itself, grow morbid and hypochondriacal, and slowly but surely deteriorate, till it ends by becoming—what I hardly like to say.” ”

“ No one appreciated the value of a bribe better than Dobbs, or worked harder or more conscientiously to deserve one. There was a crooked element in his character which made whatever money he might earn by indirect means, or by tortuous working, seem far sweeter to him than the honest wages of everyday life. Kester St. George was not the kind of man ever to try to attach his inferiors to himself by any tie of gratitude or kindness. ”