The Weird Sisters: A Romance. Volume 3 of 3. Dowling Richard
the unclean rottenness of excess. All things perishable in the vegetable domain were now melting down into the ground, there to lie until the spring-hunger of the seed and root moved and drank them in, to thrust them once more whence they lay into the green-giving air.
In the warm weather these juices, as they move about through the earth, are caught in the webs of roots and budding seeds, and are pushed upwards through the crust of earth, and by the sun dyed into a coat of many colours to keep excessive heat from the under earth.
In the winter they are shorn of their beauty, and thrust down into all the crevices of earth, there standing incorruptible sentinels of ice to prevent the penetration of the cold.
The coming and going of these juices through the mould is the respiration of the earth. The breathing of all things grows less frequent as they increase in size. Man breathes twelve times a minute, the earth once a year. Can the heat of all earth's time be its share of one fiery expiration of the sun?
Grey stood gazing vacantly at the skeleton trees and the mounds of red-yellow leaves.
Of late he had observed that his thoughts came much more slowly than of old, and this was a mercy. This morning they scarcely moved at all.
"Like a skeleton," he thought. "The grove is like a skeleton from the bones of which the flesh has rotted, fallen through, and is lying down there under the ribs."
He shuddered, put his hand to his head, muttering: "No, no; I must not think of that; I must not think of that. I must think of anything but that. Of course, the exposure – it is nearly three months there now – has – has – and there is nothing left but – Oh, God! No, no, no; I must not think."
It took him a long time to collect his thoughts latterly. This morning he was much slower than usual. It was those sleepless nights that made him so dull of mornings now. He had such thoughts and visions in the night that in the mornings he felt weary, worn out, jaded.
His mother!
Yes. He had not thought of that until now. That was bad, very bad. These blows were coming too quickly and too heavily, and that one was the heaviest of all. He had sought her in his sorest trouble, his direst fear, and she had spurned him, cast him off, expelled him from her presence for ever. She – she – she had been cruel to him – cruel to him. She was all now left to him in the world. He had squandered everything else in the world but her love and his love for her. He went to her in his direst need, and confessed a small crime and a little sin, an embezzlement and a lie only, and she had spurned him – more, it seemed to him, for the lie than the embezzlement. This was too bad. If she had spurned him for these, what would she do if he had told her of – of the other thing? Called the police perhaps. Well, after all, the police were not so terrible to him now, for there was no one in all the world he cared for who cared for him, and he was free.
All things had gone well with him until now, until the funeral of the baronet. Since then he had learned he was not the absolute guardian of Maud, he had found out Maud had an admirer, and he had lost the affection and esteem of his mother for ever.
The blows were too fast and too heavy.
What should he do? He could not go on in this way. He should break down if he did not get relief. There was no use in going to the castle while that young fellow was there, and even if the young fellow were gone, the thinker was in no state of mind to push forward his fortunes with Maud. Indeed, there was absolute danger in going near the castle. In his present state of mind he might betray his designs on Maud, and that would be ruin beyond retrieval. That young fellow was not likely to propose to the orphan a few days after her father's death. He, the thinker, would take a week's holiday, and come back invigorated for the game.
That day he went to the Bank and arranged everything for an absence of a week or ten days. He wrote a note to Miss Midharst, saying he was compelled by ill-health to leave Daneford for a week or so. He expressed his hope that while he was away Mrs. Grant would advise in any little matter on which Miss Midharst might in the usual course look to him for guidance; as to any matter of importance, they would have his address at the Bank, and a messenger should call every day at the castle for any message, letter, or telegram she might please to send to him. He would send her his address; but he did not know how long he might stay in London, where he was going first, as change was what he needed most.
To Sir William he wrote courteously and blandly to the effect that he hoped Sir William would not forget his promise of drawing on the Daneford Bank for the twenty thousand spoken of, and any further sum the baronet might stand in need of. The banker regretted he was obliged to go away so soon after the sad event at the castle; but he was absolutely done up, and rest was the only thing to restore him to vigour. The writer hoped to be back in Daneford in time to say God speed Sir William, on the baronet's setting out for Egypt. While the banker was away, Mr. Matthew Aldridge, manager of the Daneford Bank, would be delighted to do anything in his power for Sir William.
Grey wrote a few lines to Mrs. Grant. That note was the shortest of the three, and took him the longest time to write. He tore up two copies. Nothing could be simpler or more guileless than the one he sent. It ran:
"Dear Mrs. Grant,
"I am obliged by my health, to take a few days' rest in a new scene. I hope to be no longer than a week or ten days from home. I hope you will not think absenting myself so soon after Sir Alexander's death shows want of devotion to Sir Alexander's child. My first duty in life is to her. I need not say I leave her with implicit confidence in your care. I know you will always be loyal to the wishes of her father, herself, and yours very faithfully,
When these letters had been disposed of and a few other business matters attended to, he took train for the south-east and arrived in London that night.
The journey fatigued him; and change of air, even when from a good into a worse atmosphere, being beneficial, he slept soundly that night, and awoke with less sense of distraction, less difficulty in collecting his thoughts.
In Grey's youth he had spent much time in London, and knew portions of the town, those west of Tottenham Court Road and Trafalgar Square, very well. But he had little acquaintance with the City, and none with the east. He had been frequently in the City on banking business, and knew the ten streets confluent round the Bank. But the bulk of the City was an unknown land to him.
Change was what he sought. Novelty without solitude. Therefore, instead of the quiet hotel in Jermyn Street, where he usually put up, he found himself this morning in a large City hotel not a bow-shot from the cathedral of St. Paul.
A while he lay awake listening to the tremulous mutter of the City traffic. What a contrast, these groans of wheels and clatters of hoofs with the morning silence about the Manor House. Here, the walls vibrated, the solid ground shook, the air fluttered against the window-panes with the sway of bodies moving ceaselessly hither and thither. There, no sound came in upon the desert realms of the morning silence but the faint twitter of a bird or the far-off crack of a carter's whip or a sportsman's gun.
Would it not be better for him to stop here always?
Here were no suggestions of the disastrous past. No one knew him here. Suppose he burnt down the Manor House, took twenty thousand pounds out of the Bank, changed his name, disguised himself, and came to live in the middle of roaring London? Ambition he would abandon. Blows had come so heavily and so quickly, the ambition had been beaten out of him. Security and peace were what he yearned for. Security and peace. Peace.
If he lived in this great whirlpool in the ocean of Man, the shoutings of his fellows would drown the memories of his ears. Who could hear the whisperings of a woman's dress in the tumult of this great city, with its turmoil of multitudinous wheels and clangour of innumerable bells? Here he could take his ease for the rest of his life, and drown the vague hideous whispers of the dead in the loud-toned wrangles of the living.
There was, however, no necessity for his now changing his name or adopting disguises. He had some days to rest and recruit. When these had passed it would be time enough for him to think of precautions.
He went out after breakfast, and strolled along streets he had never been in before.
He moved west through