Part 28 (1/2)

Geoffrey--Geoffrey left you!”

Millicent did not desire candles, but gently drew herself away.

Anthony Thurston's tenderness had touched her, and, with sudden compunction, she remembered that she had deceived a dying man. He believed her, but she did not wish him to see her face. She drew a chair towards the bed, and for a moment looked about her, striving to collect her scattered thoughts. Framed by the stone-ribbed window, the afterglow still s.h.i.+mmered, a pale luminous green, and one star twinkled over the black shoulder of Crosbie Fell. Curlews called mournfully down in the misty mosses, and when she turned her head the sick man's face showed faintly livid against the darker coverings of the bed. For a moment she felt tempted to make full confession, or at least excuses for Geoffrey, but Anthony Thurston spoke again just then and the moment was lost.

”I asked are you happy in Canada, Millicent,” he repeated, and there was command as well as kindness in his tone. Anthony Thurston, mine owner and iron works director, was dying, but he had long been a ruler of stiff-necked men, and the habit of authority still remained with him. It struck Millicent that he was in many ways very like Geoffrey.

”I am not,” she admitted. ”I would not have told you if you had not insisted. It is the result of my own folly, and there is no use complaining.”

Anthony Thurston stretched out a thin, claw-like hand and laid it on one of her own. ”Tell me,” he said.

”We are poor. That is, my husband's position is precarious, and it is a constant struggle to live up to it.”

”Then why do you try?”

Millicent sighed as she answered:

”It is, I believe, necessary or he would lose it, while he aims at obtaining sufficient influence to win him a connection, if he resumed his former land business.”

”From what I know it is a rascally business; but there is more than this. My time is very short, Millicent, but it seems such a very little while since a bright-haired girl who atoned for another's injury sat upon my knee, and for the sake of those days I can still protect you. Your husband treats you ill?”

There was a vibration in the strained voice which more strongly reminded the listener of Geoffrey's, and awoke her bitterness against the man she had married. It was so long since she had taken a living soul into her confidence, that she answered impulsively: ”There is no use hiding the truth from you. He does not treat me well.”

Then she related the story of her married life, and Anthony Thurston listened gravely, comprehending more than she meant to tell him, for when she had finished he commented: ”You have neither been over loyal nor over wise--too quick to see the present gain, blind to the greater one behind--but it is my part to help, not blame you, and I will try to do so. It is dark now. Please ask for my draught and the candles.

Then I want you to tell me about Geoffrey. You have met him in Canada.”

Millicent, retiring, stood for a few minutes looking down from a narrow window in the bare stone corridor on to the moor. There was no moon, but the night was luminous, for the stars twinkled with a windy glitter that was flung back by a neighboring tarn. The call of the curlew seemed more mournful, the crying of lapwing rose from the meadow land, and she started at a hollow hoot as an owl swept by on m.u.f.fled wing.

The night voices filled her with an eerie sensation--there was, she recollected, always something creepy about Crosbie Ghyll, and, for Millicent was superst.i.tious, she s.h.i.+vered again at the reflection that she had cheated a dying man. But she could make partial reparation to the living at least, and when she came back with the candles there was resolve in her face.

”You asked me about Geoffrey. He has no reason to be ashamed of his record in Canada,” she said. ”I will tell you what I know from the beginning--and I hope I shall tell it well.”

It was a relief to do so, and the story of Geoffrey's struggle and prospective triumph was a stirring one as it fell from the lips of the woman who had thrice wronged him. She guessed how her husband's employers had plotted, having gathered much from the talk of his guests, and the old man listened eagerly, until he struck the coverlet when she concluded. Grim satisfaction was stamped upon his twitching face.

”It is a brave story. I thank you, Millicent; you told it very well.

Ay, the old blood tells--and I was proud of the lad. Went his own way in spite of me--he is my kinsman, what should I expect of him?

Standing alone for a broken master, with cunning and wealth against him and his last dollar in the scheme! Quite in keeping with traditions, and there'll be broken crowns before they beat him down.”

The dying man, who had fought perhaps as stubbornly all his life long, gasped once or twice before he added, ”You must go now, Millicent.

Send Halliday to me.”

Millicent went out with a throbbing pulse and downcast eyes, and when the lawyer came in Thurston said: ”Read over that partly completed will.”

”Had you not better rest until to-morrow, sir?” was the answer. ”Dr.

Maltby warned you----”

”You ought to know by this time that I seldom take a warning, and to-morrow may be too late. Write, and write quickly. After payment of all bequests above, balance of real estate to yourself and Forsyth as trustees, to apply and use for the individual benefit of Millicent Leslie. If her husband lays hands upon it, I'll haunt you. You have power to nominate Geoffrey Thurston as your co-trustee. G.o.d knows what may happen, and her rascally husband may get himself shot by somebody he has swindled some day. What I wished for mightn't follow then? I'm paying you to make my will and not dictate to me. Repeat it as many times as may appear necessary to let my meaning show clearly through your legal phraseology.”

”I have got it down, sir,” the writer told him presently.