LITMIR.BIZ

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“Do you suppose anyone would have forgotten to tell me if your man had told them that the squire was dying? I don’t if you do, and I don’t believe you do. You’re no fool, Stephen, though you have made one of me,” and he moved toward the door.

      “Stay,” said Stephen, laying his white hand gently on Jack’s arm. “Will you wait a few minutes? Though by some unfortunate accident you were not told how ill my uncle is, I assure you that he is too ill now to be harassed——”

      “Oh, I know what you mean without so many words,” interrupted Jack, scornfully. “Make your mind easy, I am not going to split upon you. Bah!” he added, as Stephen shook his head with sorrowful repudiation. “Do you suppose that I don’t know that your man was instructed to keep it from me? What were you afraid of—that I should cut you out at the last moment? You judge me by your own standard, and you make a vast mistake. It isn’t on account of the money—you are welcome to that—and you deserve it, for you’ve worked hard enough for it; no, it’s not on that account, it’s—but you wouldn’t understand if I told you. I am going up now,” and he sprang up the stairs quickly.

      Stephen followed him, and entered the room close behind him. The old man looked up, motioned with his hand to Jack, looked at the other two and quietly pointed to the door.

      Stephen’s eyes closed and his lips shut as he hesitated for a moment, then he turned and left with the physician.

      “I think,” said Sir Humphrey, blandly, and looking at his watch—one of a score left him by departed patients, “I think that I will go now, Mr. Davenant; I can do no good and my presence appears only to irritate your uncle.”

      The great doctor departed, just thirty guineas richer than when he came, and Stephen went into the library and closed the door, and as he did so it almost seemed as if he had taken off a mask and left it on the mat outside.

      The set, calm expression of the face changed to one of fierce, uncontrollable anxiety and malice. With sullen step he paced up and down the room, gnawing—but daintily—at his nails, and grinding the white tombstones.

      “Another half hour,” he muttered, “and the fool would have been too late? Will he tell the old man? Curse him; how I hate him! I was a fool to send for him—an idiot! What is he saying to him? What are they doing? Thank Heaven, that old knave Hudsley isn’t there! They can’t do anything—can’t, can’t! No, I am safe.”

      Stephen Davenant need not have been so uneasy; Jack was not plotting against him, nor was the old man making a will in the Savage’s favor.

      Jack stood beside the bed, waiting for one of the attacks of faintness to pass, looking down regretfully at the haggard, death-marked face, recalling the past kindnesses he had received from the old man, and remorsefully remembering their many quarrels and eventful separation.

      “Bad lot” as he was, no thought of lucre crossed the Savage’s mind; he forgot even Stephen and the cowardly trick he had played him, and remembered only that he was looking his last on the old man, who, after his kind, had been good, and so far as his nature would allow it, generous to him.

      At last old Ralph opened his eyes.

      “Here at last,” he said; and by an effort of the resolute will, he made himself heard distinctly, though every word cost him a breath.

      “I’m sorry I’m so late,” he said; and his voice was husky. “I didn’t know——”

      The old man looked at him shrewdly.

      “So Stephen didn’t send? It was just like him. A good stroke.”

      “Yes, he sent,” said Jack; “but——”

      The old man waved his hand to show that he understood.

      “A sharp stroke. A clever fellow, Stephen. You always were a fool.”

      “I’m afraid so, sir,” he said quietly.

      “But Stephen is a knave, and a fool, too,” murmured the old man. “Jack, I wish—I wish I could come back to the funeral.”

      “To see his face when the will’s read,” explained old Ralph, with a grim smile.

      Jack colored, and, I am ashamed to say, grinned.

      A sardonic smile flitted over the old man’s face.

      “Be sure you are there, Jack; don’t let him keep you away.”

      “Not that you will be disappointed—much,” said the old man.

      “Don’t think of me, sir,” said Jack, with a dim sense of the discordance in such talk from such lips.

      “I have thought of you as far—as—as I dared. Jack, you are an honest fool. Why—why did you give that post obit?”

      “I don’t know,” said Jack, quietly. “Don’t worry about that now.”

      “Stephen told me,” said the old man, grimly. “He has told me every piece of wickedness you have done. He is a kind-hearted man, is—Ste—phen.”

      “We never were friends, sir,” he said. “But don’t talk now.”

      “I must,” murmured the old man. “Now or never, and—give me your hand, Jack.”

      “I’ve had yours ever since I came in,” said Jack, simply.

      “Oh, I didn’t know it. Good-by, boy—don’t—don’t end up like this. It—and—for Heaven’s sake don’t cry!” for Jack emitted a suspicious little choking sound, and his eyes were dim. “Good-by; don’t be too disappointed. Justice, Jack, justice. Where is Stephen?—send him to me. I”—and the old sardonic smile came back—“I like to see him—he amuses me!”

      The eyes closed; Jack waited a moment, then pressed the cold hand, and crept from the room.

      Half way down the stairs he leaned his arm on the balustrade and dropped his face on it for a minute or two, then choking back his tears, went into the library—where Stephen was sitting reading a volume of sermons—and pointed up-stairs.

      “My uncle wants me?” murmured Stephen. “I will go. Might I recommend this book to you, my dear Jack; it contains——”

      Jack, I regret to say, chucked the volume into a corner of the room, and Stephen, with a mournfully reproachful sigh, shook his head and left the room.

CHAPTER VI.

       Table of Contents

      “Villains,” says an old adage, “are made by accident.” Now mark how accident helped to make a villain of the good Stephen Davenant.

      He passed up the stairs and entered the bedroom. As he did so his foot struck against a chair and caused a little noise. The dying man heard it, however, and opening his eyes, said, almost inaudibly:

      “Is that you, Hudsley?”

      Stephen was about to reply, “No, it is I—Stephen,” but stopped, hesitated, and as if struck by a sudden idea, drew back behind the bed-curtains.

      Whatever that idea was, he was considerably moved by it; his hands shook, and his lips trembled during the interval of silence before the old man repeated the question:

      “Is that you, Hudsley?”

      Then Stephen, wiping his lips, answered in a dry voice utterly unlike his own, but very remarkably resembling that of the old solicitor, Hudsley:

      “Yes, squire, it’s Hudsley.”

      The dying man’s hearing was faint, his senses wandering and dimmed; he caught the sense of the words, however, for with an effort he turned his head toward the curtains.

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