Chapter 4

The young lady, who had been sitting quietly, rose at last to see her guest out. She responded calmly.

“Please take care on your way.”

Melian, who had secretly been tense for fear that she might stop him, felt relieved by her unexpectedly simple response. At the same time, however, he felt a slight disappointment. Afraid of that feeling, which had arisen unconsciously, he awkwardly turned away from it. Even so, he could not completely cut out the remnants of emotion that had taken root like weeds.

The young lady held out one hand. Melian hesitated for a moment, then reached out and carefully took it.

They were both barehanded. When their palms pressed lightly together, it gave him a strange feeling. Melian hurriedly ended the handshake and pulled his hand away as though fleeing.

“Then I will be off.”

After dipping his head, Melian did not wait for a reply. He passed by the young lady, opened the door, and went out. The soles of his mud-stained boots left messy marks on the floor. Only then did Melian feel ashamed of his untidy appearance, but it was already too late anyway. He moved his feet to escape his futile regret.

The young lady did not stop him to the very end. Quietly despairing over the fact that he felt hurt by that, he fled farther away, and farther still.

* * *

It had been yesterday morning when he received the letter from his brother. After that, Melian spent an entire day in worry, and early this morning he took a stagecoach to go see Helena Millium.

To his father, he made the excuse that he had suddenly made plans with a friend. Melian still had not told his father about his brother’s situation.

He was afraid that if his father heard that his beloved eldest son had been detained in the watch house of a distant place for failing to repay gambling debts, he would be deeply shocked and collapse.

If he had succeeded today in borrowing money from Lady Millium, he had intended to keep it a secret to the very end. But now that he had failed to borrow the money, there seemed to be no way to resolve the situation on his own.

Now it was time to tell his father everything from beginning to end and seek a solution together. The very thought of it was enough to make it hard to breathe, and Melian kept sighing.

After leaving the ducal residence and boarding the stagecoach again, he did not arrive back at the village where he lived until evening. As he trudged home, he kept agonizing inwardly over how he should begin speaking to his father.

Then, when he rounded the bend in the narrow path and reached the place where the house came into view, he froze at the unexpected sight before him. His heart pounded with a dreadful premonition.

Melian stood rigid for an instant, then abruptly came to his senses and started running without a thought. As he ran, his mind was filled with confusion and fear.

‘What on earth happened?’

The state of the house was, at a glance, a complete disaster. The little gate attached to the fence had been torn off roughly.

When he passed through the dangling gate and entered the front yard, it was an even sorrier sight. The feed trough had been overturned, straw was scattered everywhere, and at some point the chicken coop door had been opened, so the chickens had all escaped in the meantime.

The vegetable garden that in the old days Melian’s father and brother had tended, and that Melian himself had carefully cultivated since last autumn, had become a graveyard of crushed greens trampled under someone’s merciless feet.

Melian stood stock-still in the front yard, staring blankly at the devastation around him. At least the pigs seemed to still be in place, since he could faintly hear oinking from somewhere.

‘……Father.’

Melian pulled himself together once more. More than the ruined vegetable patch and the missing livestock, he was far more worried about his family. He turned and ran inside. Throwing open the front door, he entered and called out loudly.

“Father? Father!”

“Lian……”

A faint groaning voice answered. Melian ran straight toward the sound.

Entering the sitting room, he sucked in a breath and froze in place. This place was as much of a wreck as the front yard. Amid shattered glass, broken porcelain, and books and paperweights strewn across the carpet, Melian’s father was sitting collapsed on the floor.

“Father!”

Melian rushed to Viscount Raison. When the man stretched out a trembling hand toward his son, Melian immediately clasped it and helped his father up.

After seating his father on the sofa, Melian picked up the cane that had fallen to the floor and placed it in his hand. The Viscount clutched the long wooden cane tightly as though it were a lifeline.

“Father, are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I am all right. I was only a little startled. The problem is your brother, that child……”

“My brother? Did word come from him?”

As his father murmured with a vacant expression, Melian felt his heart drop. Standing before the sofa with his fists clenched tightly, he waited for his father’s next words. Viscount Raison swallowed with difficulty.

“That child… apparently he owes money to people in the village.”

“What?”

“Before leaving the village, he borrowed money here and there. I did not know. He boasted that he would certainly pay it back and then left, but in the end he repaid some people while failing to repay the rest, so……”

“And then? What happened then?”

“And even from some of the few he repaid at first, he secretly came back to the village and borrowed money from them again without our knowledge. Since he had repaid them the first time, they trusted that he would repay them again this time as well. So they lent him a far larger amount the second time than the first, but after that they lost contact with him. Then recently, after making inquiries….”

“……They heard that he was locked in the watch house. That he got involved in gambling and even took out loan-shark money.”

Unable to continue and hesitating, his father faltered, and Melian finished the sentence for him with a heavy heart. The Viscount turned to his son with wide eyes.

“How did you know?”

“Because I received a letter. A letter arrived from my brother yesterday. I am sorry for hiding it, Father. I thought you would be too shocked if you knew.”

“Show it to me at once. Quickly, bring me the letter.”

The Viscount urged him in great agitation. Since there was no point any longer in hiding it from his father, Melian obediently went up to his room and came back down with the letter he had hidden there.

“Here it is.”

He held out the letter calmly. Faced with a situation he absolutely did not want to believe, the sense of reality had instead faded, leaving him outwardly strangely composed. There was not the slightest tremor in the hand with which he passed over the letter.

The Viscount, his face drained white, accepted the letter. Tearing open the envelope and pulling out the sheets, he quickly read through the scribbled writing of his eldest son. As the silent reading went on, his complexion turned steadily bluer.

“H-how could this boy…… He left saying he would restore the family somehow, so why in the world……”

After reading the entire letter, he trembled and let out a strangled lament. Melian remained silent. In this situation, neither defending his brother nor condemning him seemed as though it would help his father much.