Under False Pretences. Sergeant Adeline
inclined to go back by the way that he had come; but the butler—an old Englishman who had been in the Luttrell family before Edward Luttrell ever thought of marrying a Scotch heiress and settling for the greater part of every year at Netherglen—this said butler, whose name was William Whale, caught sight of the young fellow and accosted him by name.
"Mr. Hugo, sir, there's been many inquiries after you," he began in a lugubrious tone of voice.
"After me, William?" Hugo looked frightened and uneasy. "What for?"
"You won't have heard of the calamity that has come upon the house," said William, shaking his head solemnly; "and it will be a great shock to you, no doubt, sir; a terrible shock. Stand back, you men, there; let Mr. Hugo pass. Come into the housekeeper's room, sir. There's a fire in it; the night has turned chilly. Go softly, if you please, sir."
Hugo followed the old man without another question. He looked haggard and wearied; his clothes were wet, torn and soiled; his very hair was damp, and his boots were soaked and burst as though from a long day's tramp. Mrs. Shairp, the housekeeper, with whom he was a favourite, uttered a startled exclamation at his appearance.
"Guid guide us, sirs! and whaur hae ye been hidin' yoursel' a' this day an' nicht, Mr. Hugo? We've baen sair trouble i' th' hoose, and naebody kent your whaurabouts. Bairn! but ye're just droukit! Whaur hae you hidden yoursel' then?"
"Hidden!" Hugo repeated, catching at one of the good woman's words and ignoring the others. "I've not hidden anywhere. I've been over the hills a bit—that's all. What is the matter?"
He seated himself in the old woman's cushioned chair, and leaned forward to warm himself at the fire as he spoke, holding out first one hand and then the other to the leaping blaze.
"How will I tell you?" said Mrs. Shairp, relapsing into the tears she had been shedding for the last two hours or more. "Is it possible that ye've heard naething ava? The laird—Netherglen himsel'—oor maister—and have you heard naething aboot him as you cam doun by the muir? I'd hae thocht shame to let you gang hame unkent, if I had been Jenny Burns at the lodge."
"I did not come that way," said Hugo, impatiently. "What is the matter with the laird?"
"Maitter?—maitter wi' the laird? The laird's deid, laddie, and a gude freend was he to me and mine, and to your ain sei' forbye, and the hale kintra side will be at the buryin'," said the housekeeper, shaking her head solemnly. "An' if that were na enow for my poor mistress there's a waur thing to follow. The laird's fa'en by his ain brither's han's. Mr. Brian shot him this verra nicht, as they cam' thro' the wud."
"By mistake, Mrs. Shairp, by mistake," murmured William Whale. But Hugo lifted his haggard face, which looked very pale in the glow of the firelight.
"You can't mean what you are saying," he said, in a hoarse, unnatural voice. "Richard? Richard—dead! Oh, it must be impossible!"
"True, sir, as gospel," said Mrs. Shairp, touched by the ring of pain that came into the young man's voice as he spoke. "At half-past eight, by the clock, they brought the laird hame stiff and stark, cauld as a stane a'ready. The mistress is clean daft wi' sorrow; an' I doot but Mr. Brian will hae a sair time o't wi' her and the bonny young leddy that's left ahent."
Hugo dropped his face into his hands and did not answer. A shudder ran through his frame more than once. Mrs. Shairp thought that he was shedding tears, and motioned to William Whale, who had been standing near the door with a napkin over his arm, to leave the room. William retired shutting the door softly behind him.
Presently Hugo spoke. "Tell me about it," he said. And Mrs. Shairp was only too happy to pour into his ears the whole story as she had learned it from the keeper who had come upon the scene just after the firing of the fatal shot. He listened almost in silence, but did not uncover his face.
"And his mother?" he asked at length.
Mrs. Shairp could say little about the laird's mother. It was Dr. Muir who had told her the truth, she said, and the whole house had heard her cry out as if she had been struck. Then Miss Vivian had gone to her, and had received the news from Mrs. Luttrell's own lips. They had gone together to look at Richard's face, and then Miss Vivian had fainted, and had been carried into Mrs. Luttrell's own room, where she was to spend the night. So much Mrs. Shairp knew, and nothing more.
"And where is Brian?"
"Whaur should he be?" demanded the old woman, with some asperity. "Whaur but in's ain room, sair cast doun for the ill he has dune."
"It was not his fault," said Hugo, quickly.
"Maybe no," replied Mrs. Shairp, with reserve. "Maybe ay, maybe no; it's just the question—though I wadna like to think that the lad meant to harm his brother."
"Who does think so?"
"I'm no saying that onybody thinks sae. Mr. Brian was aye a kind-hearted lad an' a bonny, but never a lucky ane, sae lang as I hae kent him, which will be twenty years gane at Marti'mas. I cam' at the term."
Hugo scarcely listened to her. He rose up with a strange, scared look upon his face, and walked unsteadily out of the room, without a word of thanks to Mrs. Shairp for her communications. Before she had recovered from her astonishment, he was far down the corridor on his way to the other portion of the house.
In which room had they laid Richard Luttrell? Hugo remembered with a shiver that he had not asked. He glanced round the hall with a thrill of nervous apprehension. The drawing-room and dining-room doors stood open; they were in darkness. The little morning-room door was also slightly ajar, but a dim light seemed to be burning inside. It must be in that room, Hugo decided, that Richard Luttrell lay. Should he go in? No, he dare not. He could not look upon Richard Luttrell's dead face. And yet he hesitated, drawn by a curious fascination towards that half-open door.
While he waited, the door was slowly opened from the inside, and a hand appeared clasping the edge of the door. A horrible fancy seized Hugo that Richard had risen from his bed and was coming out into the hall; that Richard's fingers were bent round the edge of the open door. He longed to fly, but his knees trembled; he could not move. He stood rooted to the spot with unreasoning terror, until the door opened still more widely, and the person who had been standing in the room came out. It was no ghostly Richard, sallying forth to upbraid Hugo for his misdeeds. It was Brian Luttrell who turned his pale face towards the boy as he passed through the hall.
Hugo cowered before him. He sank down on the lower steps of the wide staircase and hid his face in his hands. Brian, who had been passing him by without remark, seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and stopped short before his cousin. The lad's shrinking attitude touched him with pity.
"You are right to come back," he said, in a voice which, although abstracted, was strangely calm. "He told you to leave the house for ever, did he not? But I think that—now—he would rather that you stayed. He told me that I might do for you what I chose."
The lad's head was bent still lower. He did not say a word.
"So," said Brian, leaning against the great oak bannisters as if he were utterly exhausted by fatigue, "so—if you stay—you will only be doing—what, perhaps, he wishes now. You need not be afraid."
"You are the master—now," murmured Hugo from between his fingers.
It was the last speech that Brian would have expected to hear from his cousin's lips. It cut him to the heart.
"Don't say so!" he cried, in a stifled voice. "Good God! to think that I—I—should profit by my brother's death!" And Hugo, lifting up his head, saw that the young man's frame was shaken by shuddering horror from head to foot. "I shall never be master here," he said.
Hugo raised his head with a look of wonder. Brian's feeling was quite incomprehensible to him.
"He was always a good brother to me," Brian went on in a shaken voice, more to himself than to his cousin, "and a kind friend to you so long as you kept straight and did not disgrace us by your conduct. You had no right to complain, whatever he might do or say to you. You ought to mourn for