Gertrude Atherton - Ancestors

He had witnessed the descent of his grandfather and cousin into the vault of the chapel at Strathland Abbey two days before, and after the necessary interviews with stewards and family solicitors had returned this afternoon to Capheaton with his mother. Lady Victoria, even her dauntless soul sick with grief and horrors, had gone to bed at once, and after a funereal dinner, where he had made no response whatever to the feeble efforts of the girls to illuminate the darkness in which he moved, had gone to the smoking-room alone, wishing to think and plan, yet grateful that he could not.

He had known nothing of the weakness of his grandfather’s heart, and the old gentleman, as ruddy and debonair as ever, had just come in from the coverts when he arrived at the Abbey a few hours after Zeal’s departure from Capheaton. Always vain of his health and appearance since his complete recovery, now many years ago, Lord Strathland had turned a haughty back upon the one physician that had dared to warn him; not even his valet was permitted to suspect that he had been forced to pay to Time any debt beyond bleaching hair and an occasional twinge of gout. The care he had taken of himself in his delicate youth had given him a finer constitution than he would have been likely to enjoy had he been able to go the wild way of many of his family; and it was his familiar boast that he intended to live until ninety.

Elton’s visit roused no curiosity in his complacent breast, for the favorite seldom announced his coming, and it was quite in order that he should run down for congratulations, and delight his affectionate if disapproving relative with personal details of the great fight. He had come with the intention of being the one to break the news of his cousin’s death to his grandfather, should it be necessary; but he permitted himself to hope that Zeal would rise above his type. He had driven him to the station himself, dispensing with the groom as well, and pleaded with him to wait at least a month; to consider the matter more coolly and carefully than had hitherto been possible; begged him to return to Capheaton; offered to travel with him if he preferred to leave England. Whatever might threaten in the future there could be no immediate danger of arrest, for if the shot had carried beyond the private rooms of the Club there would have been evidence of the fact at once, and if the undertakers had suspected the truth and delayed giving information, their purpose was blackmail and could be dealt with.

And while he argued and pleaded he wondered, as he had during the hours he watched beside his cousin sleeping, if, in spite of certain principles which he had believed to be immutable, he could have found any other solution himself. Honor has many arbitrary inflections, and Zeal’s act, being wholly abominable, there must seem, in his code, to be no place for him among men. To walk among them unscathed, punished only by a conscience that time would inevitably dull, and the loss of a small fortune that his promised wife would more than replace, while some passionate creature without powerful friends or money for blackmail went to the noose, was an outrage abroad in the secret regions of the spirit even if it made no assault upon public standards. He deserved extinction, one way or another, and it would be almost as great an outrage were he to cover his family with his own disgrace. Certain men might, after such a lesson, live on to devote their lives to repentance and beneficent works, but not Zeal; and Gwynne had no great respect for a character made over after some terrifying explosion among its baser parts. And the question would always remain if the highest honor would not have commanded confession.

He made a deliberate effort to put himself in Zeal’s place, and after several failures accomplished the feat. He was willing to believe that his first impulse would have been to destroy himself, not so much through fear as through a blind sense of atonement, for when he endeavored to argue that the crime belonged to the law and the public, he swore at himself for a prig. Either way was suicide, and if the more deliberate might damn a man’s soul, no doubt he deserved nothing less, and at least he had done his duty by his family and his class. Gwynne had in the base of his character a puritanical stratum by no means mined as yet, but with too many outcroppings to have been overlooked. But the very strength it gave him served to confuse the simplicity of the religious instinct; and duty, like the code of honor, endures many interpretations in complex minds. He was quite sure that ultimately he would have decided with his cold intelligence; and he was equally sure that if he had doggedly determined to conquer life and be conquered by nothing, that the best part of his mental existence would have gone into the grave with his ideals.

Although there was still some confusion in his mind, he kept it out of his words, and as he drove home from the station he was sanguine enough to hope that he had at least dissuaded Zeal from precipitancy; for his cousin, flippant, cynical, appeared to be quite his usual self, and as he nodded from the window of the train bore little resemblance to the demoralized wretch of the night.

Nevertheless, he hastened to his grandfather, for he knew how little the mood of the moment may presage that of an hour hence; although he was reasonably sure that if Zeal lived until the following morning it would be some time before he brought himself to the sticking-point again. He announced to his mother and his guests that it was his duty to spend twenty-four hours with his grandfather, promising to return in time for two hours’ shooting on the morrow.

He took for granted that Zeal had gone to London. What then was his foreboding horror when Lord Strathland, as they sat alone at luncheon—the unmarried aunts were visiting—remarked with acerbity:

“Zeal arrived on the train before yours—went straight to his room, giving orders he was not to be called until dinner—has not honored me with so much as an intimation that he was in the house—Where are you going?”

Gwynne had half risen. He sat down hastily.

“I was afraid he might be ill,” he replied, coolly. “But doubtless he merely had a bad night and wants sleep.”

In a flash he had understood. It was like Zeal’s cynicism to die as close to the family vault as possible.

No meal had ever seemed as long as that last luncheon with his grandfather, who promptly dismissed the subject of his detested heir and asked a hundred questions about the campaign. A fierce sense of protecting the two men he loved best enabled Gwynne to answer as collectedly as if he had not been possessed with the sickening idea that the very bones had gone out of him. When luncheon was over he accompanied his grandfather to the library, then after smoking a third of a cigar, left him to his nap, frankly stating that he thought he had better look up Zeal, who had been rather seedy of late; he would risk being unwelcome.

He walked slowly up the stair and along the corridor to his cousin’s suite; he was in no hurry to reach it, but neither could he wait for the possible discovery of the servants at the dinner-hour.

He knocked at the door of the sitting-room. There was no answer. He turned the handle. The door was locked. Then he pounded and called. He was about to fling himself against the door when he heard a quick step in the corridor, and before he could retreat Lord Strathland was beside him. There was no defect in the old gentleman’s eyesight nor in his perceptions. Zeal’s abrupt arrival without servant or luggage, and his more than usual rudeness, had charged him with vague suspicions as well as annoyance. When Gwynne, in spite of his self-control, had turned livid upon hearing that Zeal was in the Abbey, and had risen as if to fly to his rescue, a dark if undefined foreboding had entered his grandfather’s mind. But Lord Strathland respected the reserve of his guests, no matter how nearly related, and, dismissing the subject, had forgotten his apprehension until Gwynne revived it by his untimely pilgrimage. Then Lord Strathland thought the time had come to hear the truth.