The Prophet's Mantle. Эдит Несбит
paragraphs which date from St Petersburg appeared in several European papers. It was to the effect that Count Michael Litvinoff had been captured, after a desperate struggle, near the frontier, and that his private secretary, a young Englishman, had been shot in the fray.
But the French papers knew better, and that report was promptly contradicted.
The Débats, while confirming the news of the secretary's death, asserted that Count Michael Litvinoff was at that moment at the Hôtel du Louvre, and his bankers would have confirmed the statement.
And in the rooms of the Count at the Hôtel du Louvre a haggard, weary-faced man, almost worn out by the desperate excitement and the horrors of the last few weeks, was pacing up and down, unable to get away from the picture, that was ever before his eyes, of his friend's dead face, bloodstained and upturned from the snow, in the cold, grey morning light; unable to escape from that triumphant shout, 'Aha, Mr Secretary, you're done for, at any rate,' which seemed as if it would ring for ever in his ears.
'I would give ten years of my life to undo that night's work. I shall never meet another man quite like him. I wish the brute had shot me,' he said to himself over and over again.
CHAPTER I.
FATHER AND SONS
THE light was fading among the Derbyshire hills. The trees, now almost bare, were stirred by the fretful wind into what seemed like a passionate wail for their own lost loveliness, and on the wide bare stretch of moorland behind the house the strange weird cry of the plovers sounded like a dirge over the dead summer. The sharp, intermittent rain had beaten all the beauty out of the few late autumn flowers in the garden, and it was tender of the twilight to hasten to deepen into a darkness heavy enough to hide such a grey desolate picture.
Inside Thornsett Edge another and a deeper darkness was falling. Old Richard Ferrier was sick unto death, and he alone of all the household knew it. He knew it, and he was not sorry. Yet he sighed.
'What is it, Richard? Can I get you anything?'
A woman sitting behind his bed-curtain leaned forward to put the question—a faded woman, with grey curls and a face marked with deep care lines. It was his sister.
'Where are the boys?'
'Gone to Aspinshaw.'
'Both of them?'
'Yes; I asked Dick to take a note for me, and Roland said he'd go too.'
The old man looked pleased.
'Did you want either of them?' she asked.
'I want them both when they come in.'
'Suppose you are asleep?'
'I shall not sleep until I have seen my sons.'
'Art thee better to-night, Richard?' she asked in a tone of tender solicitude, dropping back, as people so often do in moments of anxiety, into the soft sing-song accent that had once been habitual to her.
'Ay, I'm better, lass,' he said, returning the pressure of the hand she laid on his.
'Wilt have a light?'
'Not yet a-bit,' he answered. 'I like to lie so, and watch the day right out,' and he turned his face towards the square of grey sky framed by the window.
There was hardly more pleasantness left in his life than in the dreary rain-washed garden outside. And yet his life had not been without its triumphs—as the world counts success. He had, when still young, married the woman he passionately loved, and work for her sake had seemed so easy that he had risen from poverty to competence, and from competence to wealth. Born in the poorest ranks of the workers in a crowded Stockport alley, he had started in life as a mill 'hand,' and he was ending it now a millowner, and master of many hands.
He had himself been taught in no school but that of life; but he did not attribute his own success to his education any more than he did the fatuous failure of some University men to their peculiar training; so he had sent his sons to Cambridge, and had lived to see them leave their college well-grown and handsome, with not more than the average stock of prejudices and follies, and fit to be compared, not unfavourably, with any young men in the county.
But by some fatality he had never tasted the full sweetness of any of the fruit his life-tree had borne him. His parents had died in want and misery at a time when he himself was too poor to help them. His wife, who had bravely shared his earlier struggles, did not live to share their reward. She patiently bore the trials of their early married life, but in the comfort that was to follow she had no part. She died, and left him almost broken-hearted. Her memory would always be the dearest thing in the world to him; but a man's warm, living, beating heart needs something more than a memory to lavish its love upon. This something more he found in her children. In them all his hopes had been centred; for them all his efforts had been made. They were, individually, all that he had dreamed they might be, and they were both devoted to him; and yet, as he lay on his deathbed, his mind was ill at ease about them. Did he exaggerate? Was it weakness and illness, the beginning of the end, that had made him think, through these last few weeks, that there was growing up between these two beloved sons a coolness—a want of sympathy, an indisposition to run well in harness together—which might lead to sore trouble?
There certainly had been one or two slight quarrels between them which had been made up through his own intervention. How would it be, he wondered, when he was not there any more to smooth things over? Somehow he did not feel that he cared to live any longer, even to keep peace between his boys. That must be done some other way. Truth to say, he was very tired of being alive.
The October day faded, and presently the sick-room was lighted only by the red flickering glow of the fire, which threw strange fantastic shadows from the handsome commonplace furniture, and made the portraits on the walls seem to look out of their frames with quite new expressions.
Old Ferrier lay looking at the pictures in a tremor of expectation that made the time seem very long indeed. At last his strained sense caught the faint click of the Brahma lock as it was opened by a key from without, and the bang of the front door as it was closed somewhat hurriedly from within.
'There they are,' he said at once. 'Send them up, Letitia.'
As she laid her hand on the door to open it, another hand grasped the handle on the other side, and a tall, broad-shouldered young fellow came in, with the glisten of rain still on his brown moustache, and on his great-coat, seeming to bring with him a breath of freshness and the night air.
'Ah, Dick! I was just coming down for you. Where is Roland?'
'He stayed awhile at Aspinshaw. How's father?'
'Awake, and asking for you,' said his aunt, and went away, closing the door softly.
'Well, dad, how goes it?' said the new-comer, stepping forward into the glow of the firelight.
'Light the candles,' said his father, without answering the question, and the young man lighted two in heavy silver candlesticks which stood on the dressing-table.
As their pale light fell on the white face lying against the hardly whiter pillow, Dick's eyes scrutinised it anxiously.
'You don't look any better,' he said, sitting down by the bed, and taking his father's hand. 'I wish I'd been at home when that doctor came yesterday.'
'I'm glad you weren't Dick; I'd rather tell you myself. I wish your brother were here.'
'I daresay he won't be long,' said the other, frowning a little, while the lines about his mouth grew hard and set; 'but what did the doctor say? Aunt Letitia didn't seem to know anything about it.'
'He told me I shouldn't live to see another birthday,' said the old man. He had rehearsed in his own mind over and over again how he should break this news to his boys, and now he was telling it in a way quite other than any that had been in his rehearsals.
'Not see another birthday!' echoed his son. 'Nonsense! Why, father,' he added, with a sudden start, 'your birthday's on Wednesday. How could he? I'll write to him.'
'My dear boy, I felt it before he told me. He only put into words what I've known ever since I've been lying here. There's no getting