Sir Bale brushed by the housekeeper as he strode into her sanctuary, and there found Philip Feltram awaiting him dejectedly, but with no signs of agitation.
If one were to judge by the appearance the master of Mardykes presented, very grave surmises as to impending violence would have suggested themselves; but though he clutched his cane so hard that it quivered in his grasp, he had no notion of committing the outrage of a blow. The Baronet was unusually angry notwithstanding, and stopping short about three steps away, addressed Feltram with a pale face and gleaming eyes. It was quite plain that there was something very exciting upon his mind.
“I’ve been looking for you, Mr. Feltram; I want a word or two, if you have done your — your — whatever it is.” He whisked the point of his stick towards the modest tea-tray. “I should like five minutes in the library.”
The Baronet was all this time eyeing Feltram with a hard suspicious gaze, as if he expected to read in his face the shrinkings and trepidations of guilt; and then turning suddenly on his heel he led the way to his library — a good long march, with a good many turnings. He walked very fast, and was not long in getting there. And as Sir Bale reached the hearth, on which was smouldering a great log of wood, and turned about suddenly, facing the door, Philip Feltram entered.
The Baronet looked oddly and stern — so oddly, it seemed to Feltram, that he could not take his eyes off him, and returned his grim and somewhat embarrassed gaze with a stare of alarm and speculation.
And so doing, his step was shortened, and grew slow and slower, and came quite to a stop before he had got far from the door — a wide stretch of that wide floor still intervening between him and Sir Bale, who stood upon the hearthrug, with his heels together and his back to the fire, cane in hand, like a drill-sergeant, facing him.
“Shut that door, please; that will do; come nearer now. I don’t want to bawl what I have to say. Now listen.”
The Baronet cleared his voice and paused, with his eyes upon Feltram.
“It is only two or three days ago,” said he, “that you said you wished you had a hundred pounds. Am I right?”
“Yes; I think so.”
“Think? you know it, sir, devilish well. You said that you wished to get away. I have nothing particular to say against that, more especially now. Do you understand what I say?”
“Understand, Sir Bale? I do, sir — quite.”
“I daresay quite” he repeated with an angry sneer. “Here, sir, is an odd coincidence: you want a hundred pounds, and you can’t earn it, and you can’t borrow it — there’s another way, it seems — but I have got it — a Bank-of-England note of ￡100 — locked up in that desk;” and he poked the end of his cane against the brass lock of it viciously. “There it is, and there are the papers you work at; and there are two keys — I’ve got one and you have the other — and devil another key in or out of the house has any one living. Well, do you begin to see? Don’t mind. I don’t want any damned lying about it.”
Feltram was indeed beginning to see that he was suspected of something very bad, but exactly what, he was not yet sure; and being a man of that unhappy temperament which shrinks from suspicion, as others do from detection, he looked very much put out indeed.
“Ha, ha! I think we do begin to see,” said Sir Bale savagely. “It’s a bore, I know, troubling a fellow with a story that he knows before; but I’ll make mine short. When I take my key, intending to send the note to pay the crown and quit-rents that you know — you — you — no matter — you know well enough must be paid, I open it so — and so — and look there, where I left it, for my note; and the note’s gone — you understand, the note’s gone!”
Here was a pause, during which, under the Baronet’s hard insulting eye, poor Feltram winced, and cleared his voice, and essayed to speak, but said nothing.
“It’s gone, and we know where. Now, Mr. Feltram, I did not steal that note, and no one but you and I have access to this desk. You wish to go away, and I have no objection to that — but damn me if you take away that note with you; and you may as well produce it now and here, as hereafter in a worse place.”
“O, my good heaven!” exclaimed poor Feltram at last. “I’m very ill.”
“So you are, of course. It takes a stiff emetic to get all that money off a fellow’s stomach; and it’s like parting with a tooth to give up a bank-note. Of course you’re ill, but that’s no sign of innocence, and I’m no fool. You had better give the thing up quietly.”
“May my Maker strike me ——”
“So He will, you damned rascal, if there’s justice in heaven, unless you produce the money. I don’t want to hang you. I’m willing to let you off if you’ll let me, but I’m cursed if I let my note off along with you; and unless you give it up forthwith, I’ll get a warrant and have you searched, pockets, bag, and baggage.”
“Lord! am I awake?” exclaimed Philip Feltram.
“Wide awake, and so am I,” replied Sir Bale. “You don’t happen to have got it about you?”
“God forbid, sir! O, Sir — O, Sir Bale — why, Bale, Bale, it’s impossible! You can’t believe it. When did I ever wrong you? You know me since I was not higher than the table, and — and ——”
He burst into tears.
“Stop your snivelling, sir, and give up the note. You know devilish well I can’t spare it; and I won’t spare you if you put me to it. I’ve said my say.”
Sir Bale signed towards the door; and like a somnambulist, with dilated gaze and pale as death, Philip Feltram, at his wit’s end, went out of the room. It was not till he had again reached the housekeeper’s door that he recollected in what direction he was going. His shut hand was pressed with all his force to his heart, and the first breath he was conscious of was a deep wild sob or two that quivered from his heart as he looked from the lobby-window upon a landscape which he did not see.
All he had ever suffered before was mild in comparison with this dire paroxysm. Now, for the first time, was he made acquainted with his real capacity for pain, and how near he might be to madness and yet retain intellect enough to weigh every scruple, and calculate every chance and consequence, in his torture.
Sir Bale, in the meantime, had walked out a little more excited than he would have allowed. He was still convinced that Feltram had stolen the note, but not quite so certain as he had been. There were things in his manner that confirmed, and others that perplexed, Sir Bale.
The Baronet stood upon the margin of the lake, almost under the evening shadow of the house, looking towards Snakes Island. There were two things about Mardykes he specially disliked.
One was Philip Feltram, who, right or wrong, he fancied knew more than was pleasant of his past life.
The other was the lake. It was a beautiful piece of water, his eye, educated at least in the excellences of landscape-painting, acknowledged. But although he could pull a good oar, and liked other lakes, to this particular sheet of water there lurked within him an insurmountable antipathy. It was engendered by a variety of associations.
There is a faculty in man that will acknowledge the unseen. He may scout and scare religion from him; but if he does, superstition perches near. His boding was made-up of omens, dreams, and such stuff as he most affected to despise, and there fluttered at his heart a presentiment and disgust.
His foot was on the gunwale of the boat, that was chained to its ring at the margin; but he would not have crossed that water in it for any reason that man could urge.
What was the mischief that sooner or later was to befall him from that lake, he could not define; but that some fatal danger lurked there, was the one idea concerning it that had possession of his fancy.
He was now looking along its still waters, towards the copse and rocks of Snakes Island, thinking of Philip Feltram; and the yellow level sunbeams touched his dark features, that bore a saturnine resemblance to those of Charles II, and marked sharply their firm grim lines, and left his deep-set eyes in shadow.
Who has the happy gift to seize the present, as a child does, and live in it? Who is not often looking far off for his happiness, as Sidney Smith says, like a man looking for his hat when it is upon his head? Sir Bale was brooding over his double hatred, of Feltram and of the lake. It would have been better had he struck down the raven that croaked upon his shoulder, and listened to the harmless birds that were whistling all round among the branches in the golden sunset.