There was a motion of the lid of the fast-glazing eye; but the terrible face of hatred came back, with the audible words, ‘I tell you, you old fool, none of the Mays are to come prying about my place.’
Appalled by the deadly malice of the imprecation and the look that accompanied this partial recognition of his voice, Tom was nerving himself to speak again, when the dying man, as if roused by the echo of his own thought, burst out, ‘Who? What is it? I say Dr. May shall not be called in! He never attended the old man! Let him mind his own business! I was all night at the Three Goblets. Yes, I was! The new darling will catch it—going off with the money upon him—’ and the laugh made their blood run cold. ‘I’ve got the receipt;’ and he made an attempt at thrusting his hand under the pillow, but failing, swore, shouted, howled with his last strength, that he had been robbed—the pocket-book—it would hang him! and with one of the most fearful shrieks of despair that had perhaps ever rung through that asylum of pain, woe, and death, the wretched spirit departed.
Tom May turned aside, made a few steps, and, to the infinite surprise of every one, fell helplessly down in a swoon. A nature of deep and real sensibility, though repressed by external reserve and prudence, could not with entire impunity undergo such a scene. The sudden discovery, the vehement excitement forced down, the intense strain of expectation, and finally, the closing horror of such a death, betraying the crime without repenting of it, passing to the other world with imprecations on the lips, and hatred in the glare of the eye, all the frightfulness enhanced by the familiarity of the allusions, and the ghastly association of the tones that had tempted and tyrannized over his childhood, altogether crushed and annihilated his faculties, mental and bodily.
Oh, when our very hearts burn for justice, how little do we know how intolerable would be the sight of it! Tom’s caution and readiness returned as soon as—after a somewhat long interval—he began to distinguish the voices round him, and perceive the amazement he had created. Before he was able to sit up on the couch, where he had been laid out of sight of the scene which had affected him so strongly, he was urging his friend to set down all that had been spoken, and on Gaspard’s writing a separate deposition. The pocket-book, and other effects, were readily ceded to the British authority, and were carried away with them.
How Tom got through the remaining hours of the day and the night he never recollected, though he knew it must have been in the bustle of preparation, and that he had imparted the tidings to Leonard’s friend Brown, for when he and his friend had attended that which answered to an inquest on the body, and had obtained a report of the proceedings, he was ready to start by the night train, bearing with him the attestations of the death-bed scene at the Hotel Dieu, and the long-lost memorandum-book, and was assured that the next mail would carry an official letter to the Home Office, detailing the circumstances of Samuel Axworthy’s decease. Brown came to bid him farewell, full of gladness and warm congratulation, which he longed to send to his friend, but which Tom only received with hasty, half-comprehending assents.
Late in the afternoon he reached Stoneborough, found no one come in, and sat down in the fire-light, where, for all his impatience, fatigue had made him drop asleep, when he was roused by Gertrude’s voice, exclaiming, ‘Here really is Tom come, as you said he would, without writing. Here are all his goods in the hall.’
‘Is it you, Tom!’ cried Ethel. ‘Notice or no notice, we are glad of you. But what is the matter?’
‘Where’s my father?’
‘Coming. Charles Cheviot took him down to look at one of the boys. Is there anything the matter?’ she added, after a pause.
‘No, nothing.’
‘You look very odd,’ added Gertrude.
He gave a nervous laugh. ‘You would look odd, if you had travelled all night.’
They commented, and began to tell home news; but Ethel noted that he neither spoke nor heard, only listened for his father. Gertrude grew tired of inattentive answers, and said she should go and dress. Ethel was turning to follow, when he caught hold of her cloak, and drew her close to him. ‘Ethel,’ he said, in a husky, stifled voice, ‘do you know this?’
On her knees, by the red fire-light, she saw the ‘L. A. Ward,’ and looked up. ‘Is it?’ she said. He bowed his head.
And then Ethel put her arm round his neck, as he knelt down by her; and he found that her tears, her rare tears, were streaming down, silent but irrepressible. She had not spoken, had asked no question, made no remark, when Dr. Mays entrance was heard, and she loosed her hold on her brother, out without rising from the floor, looked up from under the shade of her hat, and said, ‘O, papa! it is found, and he has done it! Look there!’
Her choked voice, and tokens of emotion, startled the Doctor; but Tom, in a matter-of-fact tone, took up the word: ‘How are you, father?—Yes. I have only met with this little memorandum.’
Dr. May recognized it with a burst of incoherent inquiry and exclamation, wringing Tom’s hand, and giving no time for an answer; and, indeed, his son attempted none—till, calming himself, the Doctor subsided into his arm-chair, and with a deep sigh, exclaimed, ‘Now then, Tom, let us hear. Where does this come from?’
‘From the casualty ward at the Hotel Dieu.’
‘And from—’
‘He is dead,’ said Tom, answering the unspoken question. ‘You will find it all here. Ethel, do I sleep here to-night? My old room?’ As he spoke, he bent to light a spill at the fire, and then the two candles on the side-table; but his hand shook nervously, and though he turned away his face, his father and sister saw the paleness of his cheek, and knew that he must have received a great shock. Neither spoke, while he put one candle conveniently for his father, took up the other, and went away with it. With one inquisitive glance at each other, they turned to the papers, and with eager eyes devoured the written narratives of Tom himself and of the attache, then, with no less avidity, the French reports accompanying them. Hardly a word was spoken while Ethel leant against her father’s knee, and he almost singed his hair in the candle, as they helped one another out in the difficulties of the crooked foreign writing.
‘Will it be enough?’ asked Ethel, at last, holding her breath for the answer.
‘If there is justice in England!’ said Dr. May. ‘Heaven forgive me, Ethel, this business has tried my trust more than anything that ever befell me; but it will all be right now, and righter than right, if that boy comes out what I think him.’
‘And oh, how soon?’
‘Not a moment longer than can be helped. I’d go up by the mail train this very night if it would do any good.’
Tom, who reappeared as soon as he had spared himself the necessity of the narration, was willing and eager to set out; but Dr. May, who by this time had gathered some idea of what he had gone through, and saw that he was restless, nervous, and unhinged, began to reconsider the expedience of another night journey, and was, for once in his life, the person cool enough to see that it would be wisest to call Bramshaw into their counsels, and only that night to send up a note mentioning that they would do themselves the honour of calling at the Home Office the next day, on matters connected with the intelligence received that morning from the British Embassy at Paris.
Tom was disappointed; he was in no mood for sitting still, and far less for talking. As a matter of business, he would elucidate any question, but conversation on what he had witnessed was impossible to him; and when Gertrude, with a girl’s lightness, lamented over being balked of a confession and explanation, he gravely answered, that she did not know what she was talking of; and his father led away from the subject. Indeed, Dr. May was full of kindness and consideration, being evidently not only grateful for the discovery, but touched by his entire absence of exulting triumph, and his strong sense of awe in the retribution.