An Isle of Surrey: A Novel. Dowling Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes. By a desperate effort he was calming his own tumultuous passions.

      At last Bramwell wound his arms round his head, as though to shut out some intolerable sight, to close his ears to some maddening sounds, to shield his head from deadly, infamous blows.

      "Bear with me, Philip!" he cried huskily, at length. "Bear with me, my dear friend. I am half mad-whole mad for the moment. Bear with me! God knows, I have cause to be mad."

      He was staggering and stumbling about the room, avoiding by instinct the table on which the lamp burned.

      Ray said nothing, but set his teeth and breathed hard between them.

      "I did not think," went on Bramwell, unwinding his arms and placing his hands before his face, as he went on unsteadily to and fro, "that anything could break me down as this has done. I thought I had conquered all weakness in the matter. I cannot talk quite steadily yet. Bear with me awhile, Philip!"

      The younger man hissed an imprecation between his set teeth.

      Bramwell took down his hands from his face and tore the collar of his shirt open.

      "What you told me," he resumed in a gentler voice, a voice still shaken by his former passion of wrath, as the sea trembles after the wind has died away, "brought it all back upon me again. How I worshipped her! How I did all in my power to make her love me! How I hoped in time she would forget her young fancy for him! I thought if she married me I could not fail to win her love, and then when the child was born I felt secure. But the spell of his evil fascination was too strong for her feeble will, and-and-and he had only to appear and beckon to her to make her leave me for ever; and to go with him-with such a man as John Ainsworth! O God!"

      Ray drew a long breath, brought his lips firmly together, but uttered no word. His eyes were blazing, and his hands clutched with powerful strenuousness the elbows of his chair.

      "I am calmer now," resumed Bramwell.

      "I am not," breathed Ray, in a whisper of such fierceness and significance that the other man arrested his steps and regarded the speaker in a dazed way, like one awakening from sleep in unfamiliar surroundings.

      "I am not calmer now," went on Ray, in the same whisper of awful menace, "unless it is calmer to be more than ever resolved upon revenge."

      "Philip-"

      "Stop! I must have my say. You have had yours. Have I no wrongs or sorrow? Am I not a partner in this shame thrust upon us?"

      "But-"

      "Frank, I will speak. You said a while ago, 'Bear with me.' Bear you now with me."

      Bramwell made a gesture that he would hear him out.

      "In the first wild burst of your anger you would have strangled this miscreant if you could have reached his throat with your thumbs-would you not?"

      He was now speaking in his full voice, in tones charged with intense passion.

      "I was mad then."

      "No doubt; and I am mad still-now. I have never ceased to be mad, if fidelity to my oath of vengeance is madness. You know I loved her as the apple of my eye, and guarded her as the priceless treasure of my life; for we were alone-she was alone in the world only for me. Him I knew and loathed. I knew of his gambling, his dishonourableness, his profligacy. I knew she was weak and flighty, vain and headlong, open to the wiles of a flatterer, and I shuddered when I found she had even met him once, and I forbade her ever to meet him again. She promised, and although my mind was not at rest, it was quieted somewhat. Then you came. I knew you were the best and loyalest and finest-souled man of them all. Let me speak. Bear with me a little while."

      "My life is over. Let me be in such peace as I may find." Bramwell walked slowly up and down the room with his head bowed and his eyes cast on the floor.

      "And why is your life over-at thirty? Because of him and his ways of devilish malice; he cared for her really nothing at all. When he came the second time, a year after the marriage, he set his soul upon ruining you and her. He thought of nothing else. Do not stop me. I will go on. I will have it out for once. You would never listen to me before. Now you shall-you shall!"

      He was speaking in a loud and vehement voice, and swinging his arms wildly round him as he sat forward on his chair.

      "Go on."

      "Well, I liked you best of all; you had everything in your favour: position, money, abilities, even years. You were younger than the scoundrel, and quite as good-looking. You had not his lying smooth tongue for women, or his fine sentiment for their silly ears. I thought all would be well if she married you. She did, and all went well for a year, until he came back, and then all went wrong, and she stole away out of your house, taking your child with her."

      "I know-I know; but spare me. I have only just said most of this myself."

      "No doubt; but I must say what is in my heart-what has been in my heart for years. Well, we know he deserted her after a few months. He left her and her child to starve in America, the cowardly ruffian! What I have had in my mind to say for years, Frank, is that of all the men in this world, I love and esteem you most; that I love and esteem you more than all the other men in this world put together, and that it drives me mad to think shame and sorrow should have come upon you through my blood."

      "Do not speak of her, Philip. What has been done cannot be undone."

      "No; but the shame which has come upon you through my blood can be washed out in his, and by-, it shall! and here I swear it afresh."

      With a sudden movement forward he flung himself on his knees and threw his open right hand up, calling Heaven to witness his oath.

      Bramwell paused in his walk. The two men remained motionless for a moment. Suddenly Bramwell started. There was a loud knocking at the door.

      CHAPTER VIII.

      FATHER AND SON

      Ray rose to his feet and bent forward.

      "I did not know you expected any visitor," said he in a tone of strong irritation.

      "I do not expect any visitor. I never have any visitor but you," said Bramwell, looking round him in perplexity, as though in search of an explanation of the sound. He was beginning to think that his ears must have deceived him, and that the knock had not been at the door. "Did you," he asked, "draw back the stage when you got here?"

      "Yes, but I did not fasten it. Any one on the tow-path might have pulled it across again. I hope no one has been eavesdropping."

      "Eavesdropping! No. Who would care to eavesdrop at my door?"

      "HE!"

      "Philip, you are mad? If you trifle with your reason in this way you will hurt it permanently. I do not believe there was any knock at all. It may have been a stone thrown by some boy from the tow-path."

      "Well, open the door and see. There can be no harm in doing that."

      Ray stretched out his hand to recover the revolver which he had placed on the table. Bramwell snatched it up, saying:

      "What folly, Philip! I will have no nonsense with such tools as this. We are in England-not the West of America." He dropped the revolver into the pocket of his jacket.

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