Quitting the window, he sat down at the table and bent his forehead upon his hand. Never in his whole life had anything so affected him as this death: and it was perhaps natural that he should set himself to see whether, or not, any sort of excuse might be found for the anonymous writer.
He began by putting himself in idea in the writer's place, and argued the point for him: for and against. Chiefly for; it was on that side his bias leaned. It is very easy, as the world knows, to find a plea for those in whom we are interested or on whom misfortune falls; it is so natural to indulge for their sakes in a little sophistry. Such sophistry came now to the help of the physician.
"What need had Edmund North to fly into a furious passion?" ran the self-argument. "Only a madman might have been expected to do so. There was nothing in the letter that need have excited him, absolutely nothing. It was probably written with a very harmless intention; certainly the writer never could have dreamt that it might have the effect of destroying a life."
Destroying a man's life! A flush passed into Oliver Rane's face at the thought, dyeing neck and brow. And, with it, recurred the words of Hepburn--that the writer was a murderer and might come to be tried for it. A murderer! There is no other self-reproach under heaven that can bring home so much anguish to the conscience. But--could a man be justly called a murderer if he had never had thought or intention of doing anything of the kind?
"Halt here," said Dr. Rane, suddenly speaking aloud, as if he were a special pleader arguing in a law court. "Can a man be called a murderer who has never had the smallest intention of murdering--who would have flown in horror from the bare idea? Let us suppose it was--Mrs. North--who wrote the letter? Alexander suspects her, at any rate. Put it that she had some motive for writing it. It might have been a good motive--that of stopping Edward North in his downward career, as the letter intimated--and she fancied this might be best accomplished by letting his father hear of what he, in conjunction with Alexander, was doing. According to Alexander, she does not interfere openly between the young men and their father; it isn't her policy to do so: and she may have considered that the means she took were legitimate under the circumstances. Well, could she for a moment imagine that any terrible consequences would ensue? A rating from Mr. North to his son, and the matter would be over. Just so: she was innocent of any other thought. Then how could she be thought guilty?"
Dr. Rane paused. A book lay on the table: he turned its leaves backwards and forwards in abstraction, his mind revolving the subject. Presently he resumed.
"Or--take Alexander's view of the letter--that it was written to damage him with Mr. North and the neighbourhood generally. Madam--say again--had conceived a dislike to Alexander, wished him dismissed from the house, but had no plea for doing it, and so took that means of accomplishing her end. Could she suspect that the result would be fatal to Edmund North? Would she not have shrunk with abhorrence from writing the letter, had she foreseen it? Certainly. Then, under these circumstances, how can a man--I mean a woman--be responsible, legally or morally, for the death? It would be utterly unjust to charge her with it. Edmund North is alone to blame. Clearly so. The case is little better than one of unintentional suicide."
Having arrived at this view of the subject--so comforting for the unknown writer--Dr. Rane rose briskly, and began to wash his hands and brush his hair. He took a note-case from his pocket, in which he was in the habit of entering his daily engagements, to see at what hour he could most conveniently visit the brick-fields, in compliance with the message received. The sick woman was in no danger, as he knew, and he might choose his own time. In passing through the ante-room--a room, by the way, generally distinguished as the Drab Room, from the unusual colour of the hideous walls--he took up one of the glass jars, requiring it for some purpose downstairs. And then he noticed something that displeased him.
"Phillis!" he called, going out to the landing: "Phillis!" And the woman, a very active little body, came running up.
"You have been sweeping the Drab Room?"
"It was so dirty, sir."
"Now look here," he cried, angrily. "If you sweep out a room again, when I tell you it is not to be swept, I'll keep every place in the house locked up. Some of the glass here is valuable, and I won't run the risk of having it broken with your brooms and brushes."
Down went Phillis, taking the reproof in silence. As Dr. Rane crossed the landing to follow her, his eyes fell on his mother's house through the large window. The window opposite was being cleaned by one of the servants: at the window of the dining-room underneath, his mother was sitting. It reminded Dr. Rane that he had not been in to see her for nearly two days; not since Edmund North----
Suddenly a sense of the delusive nature of the sophistry he had been indulging, flashed into his brain, and the truth shone out distinct and bare. Edmund North was dead; had been killed by the anonymous letter. But for that fatal letter he had been alive and well now. A sickening sensation, as of some great oppression, came over Oliver Rane, and his nerveless fingers dropped the jar.
Out ran Phillis, lifting her hands at the crash of glittering particles lying in the passage. "He has broken one himself now," thought she, referring to the recent reproof.
"Sweep the pieces carefully into a dust-pan, and throw them away," said her master as he passed on. "The jar slipped out of my fingers."
Phillis stared a minute, exhausting her surprise, and then turned away for the dust-pan. The doctor went on to the front-door, instead of into the dining-room, as Phillis expected.
"Sir," she called out, hastening after him, "your dinner's waiting. Will you not take it now?"
But Dr. Rane passed on as though he had not heard her, and shut the door loudly.
He turned into his mother's house. Not by the open window; not by stepping over the slight fence; but he knocked at the front-door, and was admitted as an ordinary visitor. Whether it was from having lived apart for so many years of their lives, or that a certain cordiality was wanting in the disposition of each, certain it was that Dr. Rane and his mother observed more ceremony with each other than usually obtains between mother and son.
Mrs. Cumberland sat at the open dining-room window just as he had seen her from his staircase landing; a newspaper lay behind her on a small table, as if just put down. Ellen Adair, as might be heard, was at the piano in the drawing-room, playing, perhaps from unconscious association, and low and softly as it was her delight to play, the "Dead March in Saul." The dirge grated on the ears of Dr. Rane.
"What a melancholy performance!" he involuntarily exclaimed; and Mrs. Cumberland looked up, there was so much irritation in his tone.
He shook hands with his mother, but did not kiss her, which he was not accustomed to do, and stood back against the broad window, his face turned to it.
"You are a stranger, Oliver," she said. "What has kept you away?"
"I have been busy. To-day especially. They had an accident at the works--two men were nearly drowned--and I have been with them all the morning."
"I heard of it. Jelly brought me in the news; she seems to hear everything. How fortunate that you were at hand!"
He proceeded, rather volubly for him, to give particulars of the accident and of the process he adopted to recover the men. Mrs. Cumberland looked and listened with silent, warm affection; but that she was a particularly undemonstrative woman, she would have betrayed it in her manner. In her eyes, there was not so fine and handsome and estimable a man in all Dallory as this her only son.
"Oliver, what a dreadful thing this is about Edmund North! I have not seen you since. Why did you not come in and tell me the same night?"
He turned his eyes on her for a moment in surprise, and paused.
"I am not in the habit of coming in to tell you when called out to patients, mother. How was I to know you wished it?"
"Nonsense, Oliver! This is not an ordinary thing: the Norths were something to me once. I have had Edmund on my knee when he was a baby; and