Heriot's Choice Part 62

'Rex, dear, have you got into trouble?' she asked, gently. 'No, do not turn from me, do not refuse to answer me; there must be some reason for this strange behaviour, or you would not shun your best friends.'

He shook his head, but did not answer.

'It cannot be anything very wrong, but we must look it in the face, Roy, whatever it is. Perhaps your father or Richard could help you better than I could, or even--' she hesitated slightly--'Dr. Heriot.'

Roy started convulsively.

'He! don't mention his name. I hate--I hate him,' clenching his hand, his white artist hand, as he spoke.

Mildred recoiled. Was he sane? had he been ill and they had not known it? His fevered aspect, the restless brilliancy of his eyes, his incoherence, filled her with dismay.

'Roy, you frighten me,' she said, faintly. 'I believe you are ill, dear--that you do not know what you are saying;' but he laughed a strange, bitter laugh.

'Ill! I wish I were; I vow I should be glad to have done with it. The life I have been leading for the last six weeks has been almost unbearable. Do you recollect you once told me that I should take trouble badly, that I was a moral coward and should give in sooner than other men? Well, you were a true prophet, Aunt Milly.'

'Dear Roy, I am trying to be patient, but do you know, you are torturing me with this suspense.'

He laughed again, and patted her hand half-kindly, half-carelessly.

'You need not look so alarmed, mother Milly,' his pet name for her; 'I have not forged a cheque, or put my name to a bill, or got into any youthful sc.r.a.pe. The trouble is none of my making. I am only a coward, and can't face it as d.i.c.k would if he were in my place, and so I thought I would come and have a look at you all before I went away for a long, long time. I was pretty near you all the time you were at dinner, and heard all Dad's stories. It is laughable, isn't it, Aunt Milly?' but the poor lad's face contracted with a look of hopeless misery as he spoke.

'My dear, I am so glad,' returned Mildred in a rea.s.sured tone; 'never mind the trouble; trouble can be borne, so that you have done nothing wrong. But I feared I hardly know what, you looked and spoke so mysteriously; and then, remember we have heard nothing about you for so long--even Polly's letters have been unanswered.'

'Did she say so? did she mind it? What does she think, Aunt Milly?'

'She has not complained, at least to me, but she has looked very wistful I notice at post-time; once or twice I fancied your silence a little damped her happiness.'

'She is happy then? what an a.s.s I was to doubt it,' he groaned; 'as though she could be proof against the fascinations of a man like Dr.

Heriot; but oh! Polly, Polly, I never could have believed you would have thrown me over like this,' and Roy buried his face in his hands with a hoa.r.s.e sob as he spoke.

Mildred sat almost motionless with surprise. Strange to say, she had not in the least realised the truth; perhaps her own trouble had a little deadened her quick instinct of sympathy, or Roy's apparently brotherly affection had deceived her, but she had never guessed the secret of his silence. He had seemed such a boy too, so light-hearted, that she could hardly even now believe him the victim of a secret and hopeless attachment.

And then the complication. Mildred smiled again, a little smile; there was something almost ludicrous, she thought, in the present aspect of affairs. Was it predestined that in the Lambert family the course of true love would not run smooth? Richard, refused by the woman he had loved from childhood, she herself innocent, but self-betrayed, wasting strangely under the daily torture she bore with such outward patience, and now Roy, breaking his heart for the girl he had never really wooed.

'Rex, dear, I have been very stupid, but I never guessed this,' waking up from her bitter reverie as another and another hoa.r.s.e sob smote upon her ear. Poor lad, he had been right in a.s.serting himself morally unfit to cope with any great trouble; weak and yet sensitive, he had succ.u.mbed at once to the blow that had shattered his happiness. 'Hush, you must hear this like a man for her sake--for Polly's sake,' she whispered, bending over him and trying to unclench his fingers. 'Rex, there is more than yourself to think about.'

'Is that all you have to say to me?' he returned, starting up; 'is that how you comfort people whose hearts are broken, Aunt Milly? How do you know what I feel, what I suffer, or how I hate him who has robbed me of my Polly? for she is mine--she is--she ought to be by every law, human and divine,' he continued, in the same frenzied voice.

'Hush, this is wrong, you must not talk so,' replied Mildred, in the firm soothing voice with which she would have controlled a pa.s.sionate child. 'Sit down by me again, Rex, and we will talk about this,' but he still continued his restless strides without heeding her.

'Who says she loves him? Let him give me my fair chance and see which she will choose. It will not be he, I warrant you. Polly's heart is here--here,' striking himself on the breast, 'but she is too young to know it, and he has taken a mean advantage of her ignorance. You have all been against me, every one of you,' continued the poor boy, in a tone so sullen and despairing that it wrung Mildred's heart. 'You knew I loved her, that I always loved her, and yet you never gave me a hint of this; you have been worse than any enemy to me; it was cruel--cruel!'

'For shame, Rex, how dare you speak to Aunt Milly so!'--and Richard suddenly turned the angle of the wall and confronted his brother.

'I heard your voice and the last sentence, and--and I guess the rest, Rex,' and Richard's wrathful voice softened, and he laid his hand on Roy's shoulder.

The other looked at him piteously.

'Are they all with you? have you brought them to gloat over my misery?

Speak out like a man, d.i.c.k, is Dr. Heriot behind that wall? I warn you, I am in a dangerous mood.'

'No one is with me,' returned Richard, in a tone of forced composure, 'they are in the woods a long way off still; I came back to see what had become of Aunt Milly. You are playing us a sorry trick, Rex, to be hiding away like this; it is childish, unmanly to the last degree.'

'Ah, you nearly found me out once before, d.i.c.k; Polly was with you. I had a good sight of her sweet face then, the little traitor. I saw the diamonds on her finger. You little knew who Leonard was. Ah, ha!' and Roy wrenched himself from his brother's grasp as he had done from Mildred's, and resumed his restless walk.

'We must get him away,' whispered Mildred.

Richard nodded, and then he went up and spoke very gently to Roy.

'I know all about it, Rex; we must think what must be done. But we cannot talk here; some one else will be sure to find us out, and you are not in a fit state for any discussion; you must come home with me at once.'

'Why so?'

Richard hesitated and coloured as though with shame. Rex burst again into noisy laughter.

'You think I am not myself, eh! that I have had a little of the devil's liquor,' but Richard's grave pitying glance subdued him. 'Don't be hard on me, d.i.c.k, it was the first time, and I was so horribly weak and had dragged myself for miles, and I wanted strength to see her again. I hated it even as I took it, but it has answered its purpose.'

'Richard, oh, Richard!' and at Mildred's tone of anguish Richard went up to her and put his arms round her.

'You must leave him to me, Aunt Milly. I must take him home; he has excited himself and taken what is not good for him, and so he cannot control himself as well as usual. Of course it is wrong, but he did not mean it, I am sure. Poor Rex, he will repent of it bitterly to-morrow if I can only persuade him to leave this place.'

But Mildred's tears had already sobered Roy; his manner as he stood looking at them was half ashamed and half resentful.

'Why are you both so hard on me?' he burst out at last; 'when a fellow's heart is broken he is not always as careful as he should be. I felt so deadly faint climbing the hill in the sun that I took too much of what they offered as a restorative; only d.i.c.k is such a saint that he can't make allowances for people.'

'I will make every allowance if you will only come home with me now,'

pleaded his brother.

'Where--home? Oh, d.i.c.k, you should not ask it,' returned Roy, turning very pale; 'I cannot, I must not go home while she is there. I should betray myself--it would be worse than madness.'

'He is right,' a.s.sented Mildred; 'he must go back to London, but you cannot leave him, Richard.'

'Yes, back to London--Jericho if you will; it is all one and the same to me since I have lost my Polly. I left my traps at an inn five miles from here where I slept, or rather woke, last night. I shouldn't wonder if you have to carry me on your back, d.i.c.k, or leave me lying by the roadside, if that faintness comes on again.'

'I must get out the wagonette,' continued Richard, in a sorely perplexed voice, 'there's no help for it. Listen to me, Rex. You do not wish to bring unhappiness to two people besides yourself; you are too good-hearted to injure any one.'

'Is not that why I am hiding?' was the irritable answer, 'only first Aunt Milly and then you come spying on me. If I could have got away I should have done it an hour ago, but, as ill-luck would have it, I fell over a stone and hurt my foot.'

'Thank Heaven that we are all of the same mind! that was spoken like yourself, Rex. Now we have not a moment to lose, they cannot be much longer; I must get out the horses myself, as Thomas will be at his sister's, and it will be better for him to know nothing. Follow me to the farm as quickly as you can, while Aunt Milly goes back to the glen.'

Roy nodded, his violence had ebbed away, and he was far too miserable and subdued to dispute his brother's will. When Richard left them he lingered a moment by Mildred's side.

'I was a brute to you just now, Aunt Milly, but I know you will forgive me.'

'It was not you, my dear, it was your misery that spoke;' and as a faint gleam woke in his eyes, as though her kindness touched him, she continued earnestly--'Be brave, Rex, for all our sakes; think of your mother, and how she would have counselled you to bear this trouble.'

They were standing side by side as Mildred spoke, and she had her hand on his shoulder, but a rustling in the steep wooded bank above them arrested all further speech--her fingers closed nervously on his coat-sleeve.

'Hus.h.!.+ what was that! not Richard?'