To and fro the brothers hurried, staring in the faces of the wounded, or turning the dead upon their backs. They must have thus examined forty people, and still there was no word of Uncle Joseph. But now the course of their search brought them near the centre of the collision, where the boilers were still blowing off steam with a deafening clamour. It was a part of the field not yet gleaned by the rescuing party. The ground, especially on the margin of the wood, was full of inequalities--here a pit, there a hillock surmounted with a bush of furze. It was a place where many bodies might lie concealed, and they beat it like pointers after game. Suddenly Morris, who was leading, paused and reached forth his index with a tragic gesture. John followed the direction of his brother's hand.
In the bottom of a sandy hole lay something that had once been human. The face had suffered severely, and it was unrecognizable; but that was not required. The snowy hair, the coat of marten, the ventilating cloth, the hygienic flannel--everything down to the health boots from Messrs Dail and Crumbie's, identified the body as that of Uncle Joseph. Only the forage cap must have been lost in the convulsion, for the dead man was bareheaded.
'The poor old beggar!' said John, with a touch of natural feeling; 'I would give ten pounds if we hadn't chivvied him in the train!'
But there was no sentiment in the face of Morris as he gazed upon the dead. Gnawing his nails, with introverted eyes, his brow marked with the stamp of tragic indignation and tragic intellectual effort, he stood there silent. Here was a last injustice; he had been robbed while he was an orphan at school, he had been lashed to a decadent leather business, he had been saddled with Miss Hazeltine, his cousin had been defrauding him of the tontine, and he had borne all this, we might almost say, with dignity, and now they had gone and killed his uncle!
'Here!' he said suddenly, 'take his heels, we must get him into the woods. I'm not going to have anybody find this.'
'O, fudge!' said John, 'where's the use?'
'Do what I tell you,' spirted Morris, as he took the corpse by the shoulders. 'Am I to carry him myself?'
They were close upon the borders of the wood; in ten or twelve paces they were under cover; and a little further back, in a sandy clearing of the trees, they laid their burthen down, and stood and looked at it with loathing.
'What do you mean to do?' whispered John.
'Bury him, to be sure,' responded Morris, and he opened his pocket-knife and began feverishly to dig.
'You'll never make a hand of it with that,' objected the other.
'If you won't help me, you cowardly shirk,' screamed Morris, 'you can go to the devil!'
'It's the childishest folly,' said John; 'but no man shall call me a coward,' and he began to help his brother grudgingly.
The soil was sandy and light, but matted with the roots of the surrounding firs. Gorse tore their hands; and as they baled the sand from the grave, it was often discoloured with their blood.
An hour passed of unremitting energy upon the part of Morris, of lukewarm help on that of John; and still the trench was barely nine inches in depth. Into this the body was rudely flung: sand was piled upon it, and then more sand must be dug, and gorse had to be cut to pile on that; and still from one end of the sordid mound a pair of feet projected and caught the light upon their patent-leather toes. But by this time the nerves of both were shaken; even Morris had enough of his grisly task; and they skulked off like animals into the thickest of the neighbouring covert.
'It's the best that we can do,' said Morris, sitting down.
'And now,' said John, 'perhaps you'll have the politeness to tell me what it's all about.'
'Upon my word,' cried Morris, 'if you do not understand for yourself, I almost despair of telling you.'
'O, of course it's some rot about the tontine,' returned the other. 'But it's the merest nonsense. We've lost it, and there's an end.'
'I tell you,' said Morris, 'Uncle Masterman is dead. I know it, there's a voice that tells me so.'
'Well, and so is Uncle Joseph,' said John.
'He's not dead, unless I choose,' returned Morris.
'And come to that,' cried John, 'if you're right, and Uncle Masterman's been dead ever so long, all we have to do is to tell the truth and expose Michael.'
'You seem to think Michael is a fool,' sneered Morris. 'Can't you understand he's been preparing this fraud for years? He has the whole thing ready: the nurse, the doctor, the undertaker, all bought, the certificate all ready but the date! Let him get wind of this business, and you mark my words, Uncle Masterman will die in two days and be buried in a week. But see here, Johnny; what Michael can do, I can do. If he plays a game of bluff, so can I.
If his father is to live for ever, by God, so shall my uncle!'
'It's illegal, ain't it?' said John.
'A man must have SOME moral courage,' replied Morris with dignity.
'And then suppose you're wrong? Suppose Uncle Masterman's alive and kicking?'
'Well, even then,' responded the plotter, 'we are no worse off than we were before; in fact, we're better. Uncle Masterman must die some day; as long as Uncle Joseph was alive, he might have died any day; but we're out of all that trouble now: there's no sort of limit to the game that I propose--it can be kept up till Kingdom Come.'
'If I could only see how you meant to set about it' sighed John.
'But you know, Morris, you always were such a bungler.'
'I'd like to know what I ever bungled,' cried Morris; 'I have the best collection of signet rings in London.'
'Well, you know, there's the leather business,' suggested the other. 'That's considered rather a hash.'
It was a mark of singular self-control in Morris that he suffered this to pass unchallenged, and even unresented.
'About the business in hand,' said he, 'once we can get him up to Bloomsbury, there's no sort of trouble. We bury him in the cellar, which seems made for it; and then all I have to do is to start out and find a venal doctor.'
'Why can't we leave him where he is?' asked John.
