CHAPTER VIIITHE HEAVY HANDITwas on the following day that Lord Balnillo stood in front of a three-quarter length canvas in the improvised studio; Archie had begun to put on the colour that morning, and the judge had come quietly upstairs to study the first dawnings of his own countenance alone. From the midst of a chaos of paint his features were beginning to appear, like the sun through a fog. He had brought a small hand-glass with him, tucked away under his velvet coat where it could not be seen, and he now produced it and began to compare his face with the one before him. Flemington was a quick worker, and though he had been given only two sittings, there was enough on the canvas to prompt the gratified smile on the old man’s lips. He looked alternately at his reflection and at the judicial figure on the easel; Archie had a tactful brush. But though Balnillo was pleased, he could not help sighing, for he wished fervently that his ankles had been included in the picture. He stooped and ran his hand lovingly down his silk stockings. Then hetook up the glass again and began to compose his expression into the rather more lofty one with which Flemington had supplied him.In the full swing of his occupation he turned round to find the painter standing in the doorway, but he was just too late to catch the sudden flash of amusement that played across Archie’s face as he saw what the judge was doing. Balnillo thrust the glass out of sight and confronted his guest.“I thought you had gone for a stroll, sir,” he said rather stiffly.“My lord,” exclaimed Flemington, “I have been searching for you everywhere. I’ve come, with infinite regret, to tell you that I must return to Ardguys at once.”Balnillo’s jaw dropped.“I have just met a messenger on the road,” said the other; “he has brought news that my grandmother is taken ill, and I must hurry home. It is most unfortunate, most disappointing; but go I must.”“Tut, tut, tut!” exclaimed the old man, clicking his tongue against his teeth and forgetting to hope, as politeness decreed he should, that the matter was not serious.“It is a heart-attack,” said Archie.“Tut, tut,” said Balnillo again. “I am most distressed to hear it; I am indeed.”“Imaybe able to come back and finish the picture later.”“I hope so. I sincerely hope so. I was just studying the admirable likeness when you camein,” said Balnillo, who would have given a great deal to know how much of his posturing Flemington had seen.“Ah, my lord!” cried Archie, “a poor devil like me has no chance with you! I saw the mirror in your hand. We painters use a piece of looking-glass to correct our drawing, but it is few of our sitters who know that trick.”Guilty dismay was chased by relief across Balnillo’s countenance.“You are too clever for me!” laughed Flemington. “How did you learn it, may I ask?”But Balnillo had got his presence of mind back.“Casually, Mr. Flemington, casually—as one learns many things, if one keeps one’s ears open,” said he.A couple of hours later Archie was on his way home. He had left one horse, still disabled, in the judge’s stable, and he was riding the other into Brechin, where he would get a fresh one to take him on. Balnillo had persuaded him to leave his belongings where they were until he knew what chance there was of an early return. He had parted from Archie with reluctance. Although the portrait was the old man’s principal interest, its maker counted for much with him; for it was some time since his ideas had been made to move as they always moved in Flemington’s presence. The judge got much pleasure out of his own curiosity; and the element of the unexpected—that fascinating factor which had been introduced into domestic life—was a continualjoy. Balnillo had missed it more than he knew since he had become a completely rural character.Archie saw the Basin of Montrose drop behind him as he rode away with a stir of mixed feelings. The net that Logie had, in all ignorance, spread for him had entangled his feet. He had never conceived a like situation, and it startled him to discover that a difficulty, nowhere touching the tangible, could be so potent, so disastrous. He felt like a man who has been tripped up and who suddenly finds himself on the ground. He had risen and fled.The position had become intolerable. He told himself in his impetuous way that it was more than he could bear; and now, every bit of luck he had turned to account, every precaution he had taken, all the ingenuity he had used to land himself in the hostile camp, were to go for nothing, because some look in his face, some droop of the eyes, had reminded another man of his own past, and had let loose in him an overwhelming impulse to expression.“Remember what I told you yesterday,” had been James’s last words as Flemington put his foot in the stirrup. “There must be no more challenges.”It was that high-coloured flower of his own imagination, the picture of himself in the servants’ hall, that had finally accomplished his defeat. How could he betray the man who was ready to share his purse with him?And, putting the matter of the purse aside, his painter’s imagination was set alight. The glow of the tulips and the strange house by the winding water, the slim vision of Diane de Montdelys, the gallant background of the Scots Brigade, the grave at Bergen-op-Zoom—these things were like a mirage behind the figure of James. The power of seeing things picturesquely is a gift that can turn into a curse, and that power worked on his emotional and imaginative side now. And furthermore, beyond what might be called the ornamental part of his difficulty, he realized that friendship with James, had he been free to offer or to accept it, would have been a lifelong prize.They had spent the preceding day together after the sitting was over, and though Logie had opened his heart no more, and their talk had been of the common interests of men’s lives, it had strengthened Archie’s resolve to end the situation and to save himself while there was yet time. There was nothing for it but flight. He had told the judge that he would try to return, but he did not mean to enter the gates of Balnillo again, not while the country was seething with Prince Charlie’s plots; perhaps never. He would remember James all his life, but he hoped that their ways might never cross again. And, behind that, there was regret; regret for the friend who might have been his, who, in his secret heart, would be his always.He could, even now, hardly realize that he hadbeen actually turned from his purpose. It seemed to him incredible. But there was one thing more incredible still, and that was that he could raise his hand to strike again at the man who had been stricken so terribly, and with the same weapon of betrayal. It would be as if James lay wounded on a battle-field and he should come by to stab him anew. The blow he should deal him would have nothing to do with the past, but Archie felt that James had so connected him in mind with the memory of the woman he resembled—had, by that one burst of confidence, given him so much part in the sacred kingdom of remembrance wherein she dwelt—that it would be almost as if something from out of the past had struck at him across her grave.Archie sighed, weary and sick with Fate’s ironic jests. There were some things he could not do.The two men had avoided politics. Though Flemington’s insinuations had conveyed to the brothers that he was like-minded with themselves, the Prince’s name was not mentioned. There was so much brewing in James’s brain that the very birds of the air must not hear. Sorry as he was when Flemington met him with the news of his unexpected recall, he had decided that it was well the young man should go. When this time of stress was over, when—and if—the cause he served should prevail, he would seek out Archie. The “if” was very clear to James, for he had seen enough of men and causes, of troops and campaigns and the practical difficultiesof great movements, to know that he was spending himself in what might well be a forlorn hope. But none the less was he determined to see it through, for his heart was deep in it, and besides that, he had the temperament that is attracted by forlorn hopes.He was a reticent man, in spite of the opening of that page in his life which he had laid before Flemington; and reticent characters are often those most prone to rare and unexpected bouts of self-revelation. But when the impulse is past, and the load ever present with them has been lightened for a moment, they will thrust it yet farther back behind the door of their lips, and give the key a double turn. He had enjoined Flemington to come to him as he would come to a brother for assistance, and it had seemed to Archie that life would have little more to offer had it only given him a brother like James. A cloud was on his spirit as he neared Brechin.When he left the inn and would have paid the landlord, he thrust his hand into his pocket to discover a thin sealed packet at the bottom of it; he drew it out, and found to his surprise that, though his name was on it, it was unopened, and that he had never seen it before. While he turned it over something told him that the unknown handwriting it bore was that of James Logie. The coat he wore had hung in the hall at Balnillo since the preceding night, and the packet must have been slipped into it before he started.As he rode along he broke the seal. The paperit contained had neither beginning nor signature, yet he knew that his guess was right.“You will be surprised at finding this,” he read, “but I wish you to read it when there are some miles between us. In these disturbed days it is not possible to tell when we may meet again. Should you return, I may be here or I may be gone God knows where, and for reasons of which I need not speak, my brother may be the last man to know where I am. But for the sake of all I spoke of yesterday, I ask you to believe that I am your friend. Do not forget that, in any strait, I am at your back. Because it is true, I give you these two directions: a message carried to Rob Smith’s Tavern in the Castle Wynd at Stirling will reach me eventually, wheresoever I am. Nearer home you may hear of me also. There is a little house on the Muir of Pert, the only house on the north side of the Muir, a mile west of the fir-wood. The man who lives there is in constant touch with me. If you should find yourself in urgent need, I will send you the sum of one hundred pounds through him.“Flemington, you will make no hesitation in the matter. You will take it for the sake of one I have spoken of to none but you, these years and years past.”And now he had to go home and to tell Madam Flemington that he had wantonly thrown away all the advantages gained in the last three days,that he had tossed them to the wind for a mere sentimental scruple! So far he had never quarrelled with his occupation; but now, because it had brought him up against a soldier of fortune whose existence he had been unaware of a few weeks ago, he had sacrificed it and played a sorry trick on his own prospects at the same time. He was trusted and valued by his own party, and, in spite of his youth, had given it excellent service again and again. He could hardly expect the determined woman who had made him what he was to see eye to eye with him.Christian Flemington had kept her supremacy over her grandson. Parental authority was a much stronger thing in the mid-eighteenth century than it is now, and she stood in the position of a parent to him. His French blood and her long residence in France had made their relationship something like that of a French mother and son, and she had all his confidence in his young man’s scrapes, for she recognized phases of life that are apt to be ignored by English parents in dealing with their children. She had cut him loose from her apron-strings early, but she had moulded him with infinite care before she let him go. There was a touch of genius in Archie, a flicker of what she called thefeu sacré, and she had kept it burning before her own shrine. The fine unscrupulousness that was her main characteristic, her manner of breasting the tide of circumstance full sail, awed and charmed him. For all his boldness and initiative, his devil-may-careindependence of will, and his originality in the conduct of his affairs, he had never freed his inner self from her thrall, and she held him by the strong impression she had made on his imagination years and years ago. She had set her mark upon the plastic character of the little boy whom she had beaten for painting Mr. Duthie’s gate-post. That was an episode which he had never forgotten, which he always thought of with a smile; and while he remembered the sting of her cane, he also remembered her masterly routing of his enemy before she applied it. She had punished him with the thoroughness that was hers, but she had never allowed the minister to know what she had done. Technically she had been on the side of the angels, but in reality she had stood by the culprit. In spirit they had resented Mr. Duthie together.He slept at Forfar that night, and pushed on again next morning; and as he saw the old house across the dip, and heard the purl of the burn at the end of his journey, something in his heart failed him. The liquid whisper of the water through the fine, rushlike grass spoke to him of childhood and of the time when there was no world but Ardguys, no monarch but Madam Flemington. He seemed to feel her influence coming out to meet him at every step his horse took. How could he tell his news? How could he explain what he had done? They had never touched on ethical questions, he and she.As he came up the muddy road between theash-trees he felt the chilly throe, the intense spiritual discomfort, that attends our plunges from one atmosphere into another. It is the penalty of those who live their lives with every nerve and fibre, who take fervent part in the lives of other people, to suffer acutely in the struggle to loose themselves from an environment they have just quitted, and to meet an impending one without distress. But it is no disproportionate price to pay for learning life as a whole. Also, it is the only price accepted.He put his horse into the stable and went to the garden, being told that Madam Flemington was there. The day was warm and bright, and as he swung the gate to behind him he saw her sitting on a seat at the angle of the farther wall. She rose at the click of the latch, and came up the grass path to meet him between a line of espalier apple-trees and a row of phlox on which October had still left a few red and white blossoms.The eighteen years that had gone by since the episode of the manse gate-post had not done much to change her appearance. The shrinking and obliterating of personality which comes with the passing of middle life had not begun its work on her, and at sixty-one she was more imposing than ever. She had grown a great deal stouter, but the distribution of flesh had been even, and she carried her bulk with a kind of self-conscious triumph, as a ship carries her canvas. A brown silk mantle woven with a pattern of flower-bouquetswas round her shoulders, and she held its thick folds together with one hand; in the other she carried the book she had been reading. Her hair was as abundant as ever, and had grown no whiter. The sun struck on its silver, and red flashes came from the rubies in her ears.She said nothing as Archie approached, but her eyes spoke inquiry and a shadow of softness flickered over so slightly round her broad lips. She was pleased to see him, but the shadow was caused less by her affection for him than by her appreciation of the charming figure he presented, seen thus suddenly and advancing with so much grace of movement in the sunlight. She stopped short when he was within a few steps of her, and, dropping her book upon the ground without troubling to see where it fell, held out her hand for him to kiss. He touched it with his lips, and then, thrusting his arm into the phlox-bushes, drew out the volume that had landed among them. From between the leaves dropped a folded paper, on which he recognized his own handwriting.“This is a surprise,” said Madam Flemington, looking her grandson up and down.“I have ridden. My baggage is left at Balnillo.”The moment of explanation would have to come, but his desire was to put it off as long as possible.“There is your letter between the pages of my book,” said she. “It came to me this morning, and I was reading it again. It gave me immense pleasure, Archie. I suppose you have come tosearch for the clothes you mentioned. I am glad to see you, my dear; but it is a long ride to take for a few pairs of stockings.”“You should see Balnillo’s hose!” exclaimed Flemington hurriedly. “I’ll be bound the old buck’s spindle-shanks cost him as much as his estate. If he had as many legs as a centipede he would have them all in silk.”“And not a petticoat about the place?”“None nearer than the kitchen.”“He should have stayed in Edinburgh,” said Madam Flemington, laughing.She loved Archie’s society.“I hear that this Captain Logie is one of the most dangerous rebels in Scotland,” she went on. “If you can lay him by the heels it is a service that will not be forgotten. So far you have done mighty well, Archie.”They had reached the gate, and she laid her hand on his arm.“Turn back,” she said. “I must consult you. I suppose that now you will be kept for some time at Balnillo? That nest of treason, Montrose, will give you occupation, and you must stretch out the portrait to match your convenience. I am going to take advantage of it too. I shall go to Edinburgh while you are away.”“To Edinburgh?” exclaimed Flemington.“Why not, pray?”“But you leave Ardguys so seldom. It is years——”“The more reason I should go now,” interruptedshe. “Among other things, I must see my man of business, and I have decided to do it now. I shall be more useful to you in Edinburgh, too. I have been too long out of personal touch with those who can advance your interests. I had a letter from Edinburgh yesterday; you are better thought of there than you suspect, Archie. I did not realize how important a scoundrel this man Logie is, nor what your despatch to Montrose implied.”He was silent, looking on the ground.She knew every turn of Archie’s manner, every inflection of his voice. There was a gathering sign of opposition on his face—the phantom of some mood that must not be allowed to gain an instant’s strength. It flashed on her that he had not returned merely to fetch his clothes. There was something wrong. She knew that at this moment he was afraid of her, he who was afraid of nothing else.She stopped in the path and drew herself up, considering where she should strike. Never, never had she failed to bring him to his bearings. There was only one fitting place for him, and that was in the hollow of her hand.“Grandmother, I shall not go back to Balnillo,” said he vehemently.If the earth had risen up under her feet Madam Flemington could not have been more astonished. She stood immovable, looking at him, whilst an inward voice, flying through her mind like a snatch of broken sound, told her that she mustkeep her head. She made no feeble mistake in that moment, for she saw the vital importance of the conflict impending between them with clear eyes. She knew her back to be nearer the wall than it had been yet. Her mind was as agile as her body was by nature indolent, and it was always ready to turn in any direction and look any foe squarely in the face. She was startled, but she could not be shaken.“I’ve left Balnillo for good,” said he again. “I cannot go back—I will not!”“You—will not?” said Christian, half closing her eyes. The pupils had contracted, and looked like tiny black beads set in a narrow glitter of grey. “Is that what you have come home to say tome?”“It is impossible!” he cried, turning away and flinging out his arms. “It is more than I can do! I will not go man-hunting after Logie. I will go anywhere else, do anything else, but not that!”“There is nothing else for you to do.”“Then I will come back here.”“That you will not,” said Christian.He drew in his breath as if he had been struck.“What are you that you should betray me, and yet think to force yourself on me without my resenting it? What do you think I am that I should suffer it?”She laughed.“I have not betrayed you,” said he in a husky voice.The loyal worship he had given her unquestioningthrough the long dependence and the small but poignant vicissitudes of childhood came back on him like a returning tide and doubled the cruelty of her words. She was the one person against whom he felt unable to defend himself. He loved her truly, and the thought of absolute separation from her came over him like a chill.“I did not think you could speak to me in this way. It is terrible!” he said. His dark eyes were full of pain. He spoke as simply as a little boy.Satisfaction stole back to her. She had not lost her hold on him, would not lose it. Another woman might have flung an affectionate word into the balance to give the final clip to the scale, but she never thought of doing that; neither impulse nor calculation suggested it, because affection was not the weapon she was accustomed to trust. Her faith was in the heavy hand. Her generalship was good enough to tell her the exact moment of wavering in the enemy in front, the magic instant for a fresh attack.“You are a bitter disappointment,” she said. “Life has brought me many, but you are the greatest. I have had to go without some necessities in my time, and I now shall have to go without you. But I can do it, and I will.”“You mean that you will turn from me altogether?”“Am I not plain enough? I can be plainer if you like. You shall go out of this house and go where you will. I do not care where you go.But you are forgetting that I have some curiosity. I wish to understand what has happened to you since you wrote your letter. That is excusable, surely.”“It is Logie,” said he. “He has made it impossible for me. I cannot cheat a man who has given me all his confidence.”“He gave you his confidence?” cried Madam Flemington. “Heavens! He is well served, that stage-puppet Prince, when his servants confide in the first stranger they meet! Captain Logie must be a man of honour!”“He is,” said Archie. “It was his own private confidence he gave me. I heard his own history from his own lips, and, knowing it, I cannot go on deceiving him. I like him too much.”Madam Flemington was confounded. The difficulty seemed so strangely puerile. A whim, a fancy, was to ruin the work of years and turn everything upside down. On the top, she was exasperated with Archie, but underneath, it was worse. She found her influence and her power at stake, and her slave was being wrested from her, in spite of every interest which had bound them together. She loved him with a jealous, untender love that was dependent on outward circumstances, and she was proud of him. She had smiled at his devotion to her as she would have smiled with gratified comprehension at the fidelity of a favourite dog, understanding the creature’s justifiable feeling, and knowing how creditable it was to its intelligence.“What has all this to do with your duty?” she demanded.“My duty is too hard,” he cried. “I cannot do it, grandmother!”“Too hard!” she exclaimed. “Pah! you weary me—you disgust me. I am sick of you, Archie!”His lip quivered, and he met her eyes with a mist of dazed trouble in his own. A black curtain seemed to be falling between them.“I told him every absurdity I could imagine,” said he. “I made him believe that I was dependent upon my work for my daily bread. I did not think he would take my lies as he did. His kindness was so great—so generous! Grandmother, he would have had me promise to go to him for help. How can I spy upon him and cheat him after that?”He stopped. He could not tell her more, for he knew that the mention of the hundred pounds would but make her more angry; the details of what Logie had written could be given to no one. He was only waiting for an opportunity to destroy the paper he carried.“We have to do with principles, not men,” said Madam Flemington. “He is a rebel to his King. If I thought you were so much as dreaming of going over to those worthless Stuarts, I would never see you nor speak to you again. I would sooner see you dead. Isthatwhat is in your mind?”“There is nothing farther from my thoughts,” said he. “I can have no part with rebels. I ama Whig, and I shall always be a Whig. I have told you the plain truth.”“And nowIwill tell you the plain truth,” said Madam Flemington. “While I am alive you will not enter Ardguys. When you cut yourself off from me you will do so finally. I will have no half-measures as I have no half-sentiments. I have bred you up to support King George’s interests against the whole band of paupers at St. Germain, that you may pay a part of the debt of injury they laid upon me and mine. Mary Beatrice took my son from me. You do not know what you have to thank her for, Archie, but I will tell you now! You have to thank her that your mother was a girl of the people—of the streets—a slut taken into the palace out of charity. She was forced on my son by the Queen and her favourite, Lady Despard. That was how they rewarded us, my husband and me, for our fidelity! He was in his grave, and knew nothing, but I was there. I am here still, and I remember still!”The little muscles round her strong lips were quivering.Archie had never seen Madam Flemington so much disturbed, and it was something of a shock to him to find that the power he had known always as self-dependent, aloof, unruffled, could be at the mercy of so much feeling.“Lady Despard was one of that Irish rabble that followed King James along with better people, a woman given over to prayers and confessions and priests. She is dead, thank God! Itwas she who took your mother out of the gutter, where she sang from door to door, meaning to make a nun of her, for her voice was remarkable, and she and her priests would have trained her for a convent choir. But the girl had no stomach for a nunnery; the backstairs of the palace pleased her better, and the Queen took her into her household, and would have her sing to her in her own chamber. She was handsome, too, and she hid the devil that was in her from the women. The men knew her better, and the Chevalier and your father knew her best of all. But at last Lady Despard got wind of it. They dared not turn her into the streets for fear of the priests, and to save her own son the Queen sacrificed mine.”She stopped, looking to see the effect of her words. Archie was very pale.“Is my true name Flemington?” he asked abruptly.“You are my own flesh and blood,” said she, “or you would not be standing here. Their fear was that the Chevalier would marry her privately, but they got him out of the way, and your father seduced the girl. Then, to make the Chevalier doubly safe, they forced him to make her his wife—he who was only nineteen! They did it secretly, but when the marriage was known, I would not receive her, and I left the court and went to Rouen. I have lived ever since in the hope of seeing the Stuarts swept from the earth. Your father is gone, and you are all I have left, but you shall go too if you join yourself to them.”“I shall not do that,” said he.“Do you understand now what it costs me to see you turn back?” said Madam Flemington.The mantle had slipped from her shoulders, and her white hands, crossed at the wrists, lay with the fingers along her arms. She stood trying to dissect the component parts of his trouble and to fashion something out of them on which she might make a new attack. Forces outside her own understanding were at work in him which were strong enough to take the fine edge of humiliation off the history she had just told him; she guessed their presence, unseen though they were, and her acute practical mind was searching for them. She was like an astronomer whose telescope is turned on the tract of sky in which, as his science tells him, some unknown body will arise.She had always taken his pride of race for granted, as she took her own. The influx of the base blood of the “slut” had been a mortification unspeakable, but to Madam Flemington, the actual treachery practised on her had not been the crowning insult. The thing was bad, but the manner of its doing was worse, for the Queen and Lady Despard had used young Flemington as though he had been of no account. The Flemingtons had served James Stuart whole-heartedly, taking his evil fortunes as though they had been their own; they had done it of their own free will, high-handedly. But Mary Beatrice and her favourite had treated Christianand her son as slaves, chattels to be sacrificed to the needs of their owner. There was enough nobility in Christian to see that part of the business as its blackest spot.She had kept the knowledge of it from Archie, because she had the instinct common to all savage creatures (and Christian’s affinity with savage creatures was a close one) for the concealment of desperate wounds. Her silks, her ruby earrings, her physical indolence, her white hands, all the refinements that had accrued to her in her world-loving life, all that went to make the outward presentment of the woman, was the mere ornamental covering of the savage in her. That savage watched Archie now.Madam Flemington was removed by two generations from Archie, and there was a gulf of evolution between them, unrealized by either. Their conscious ideals might be identical; but their unconscious ideals, those that count with nations and with individuals, were different. And the same trouble, one that might be accepted and acknowledged by each, must affect each differently. The old regard a tragedy through its influences on the past, and the young through its influences on the future. To Archie, Madam Flemington’s revelation was an insignificant thing compared to the horror that was upon him now. It was done and it could not be undone, and he was himself, with his life before him, in spite of it. It was like the withered leaf of a poisonous plant, a thing rendered innocuous bythe processes of nature. What process of nature could make his agony innocuous? The word ‘treachery’ had become a nightmare to him, and on every side he was fated to hear it.Its full meaning had only been brought home to him two days ago, and now the hateful thing was being pressed on him by one who had suffered from it bitterly. What could he say to her? How was he to make her see as he saw? His difficulty was a sentimental one, and one that she would not recognize.Archie was not logical. He had still not much feeling about having deceived Lord Balnillo, whose hospitality he had accepted and enjoyed, but, as he had said, he could not go “man-hunting” after James, who had offered him a brother’s help, whose heart he had seen, whose life had already been cut in two by the baneful thing. There was little room in Archie’s soul for anything but the shadow of that nightmare of treachery, and the shadow was creeping towards him. Had his mother been a grand-duchess of spotless reputation, what could her virtue or her blue blood avail him in his present distress? She was nothing to him, that “slut” who had brought him forth; he owed her no allegiance, bore her no grudge. The living woman to whom he owed all stood before him beloved, admired, cutting him to the heart.He assented silently; but Christian understood that, though he looked as if she had carried her point, his looks were the only really unreliable partof him. She knew that he was that curious thing—a man who could keep his true self separate from his moods. It had taken her years to learn that, but she had learnt it at last.For once she was, like other people, baffled by his naturalness. It was plain that he suffered, yet she could not tell how she was to mould the hard stuff hidden below his suffering. But she must work with the heavy hand.“You will leave here to-morrow,” she said; “you shall not stay here to shirk your duty”; and again the pupils of her eyes contracted as she said it.“I will go now,” said he.
ITwas on the following day that Lord Balnillo stood in front of a three-quarter length canvas in the improvised studio; Archie had begun to put on the colour that morning, and the judge had come quietly upstairs to study the first dawnings of his own countenance alone. From the midst of a chaos of paint his features were beginning to appear, like the sun through a fog. He had brought a small hand-glass with him, tucked away under his velvet coat where it could not be seen, and he now produced it and began to compare his face with the one before him. Flemington was a quick worker, and though he had been given only two sittings, there was enough on the canvas to prompt the gratified smile on the old man’s lips. He looked alternately at his reflection and at the judicial figure on the easel; Archie had a tactful brush. But though Balnillo was pleased, he could not help sighing, for he wished fervently that his ankles had been included in the picture. He stooped and ran his hand lovingly down his silk stockings. Then hetook up the glass again and began to compose his expression into the rather more lofty one with which Flemington had supplied him.
In the full swing of his occupation he turned round to find the painter standing in the doorway, but he was just too late to catch the sudden flash of amusement that played across Archie’s face as he saw what the judge was doing. Balnillo thrust the glass out of sight and confronted his guest.
“I thought you had gone for a stroll, sir,” he said rather stiffly.
“My lord,” exclaimed Flemington, “I have been searching for you everywhere. I’ve come, with infinite regret, to tell you that I must return to Ardguys at once.”
Balnillo’s jaw dropped.
“I have just met a messenger on the road,” said the other; “he has brought news that my grandmother is taken ill, and I must hurry home. It is most unfortunate, most disappointing; but go I must.”
“Tut, tut, tut!” exclaimed the old man, clicking his tongue against his teeth and forgetting to hope, as politeness decreed he should, that the matter was not serious.
“It is a heart-attack,” said Archie.
“Tut, tut,” said Balnillo again. “I am most distressed to hear it; I am indeed.”
“Imaybe able to come back and finish the picture later.”
“I hope so. I sincerely hope so. I was just studying the admirable likeness when you camein,” said Balnillo, who would have given a great deal to know how much of his posturing Flemington had seen.
“Ah, my lord!” cried Archie, “a poor devil like me has no chance with you! I saw the mirror in your hand. We painters use a piece of looking-glass to correct our drawing, but it is few of our sitters who know that trick.”
Guilty dismay was chased by relief across Balnillo’s countenance.
“You are too clever for me!” laughed Flemington. “How did you learn it, may I ask?”
But Balnillo had got his presence of mind back.
“Casually, Mr. Flemington, casually—as one learns many things, if one keeps one’s ears open,” said he.
A couple of hours later Archie was on his way home. He had left one horse, still disabled, in the judge’s stable, and he was riding the other into Brechin, where he would get a fresh one to take him on. Balnillo had persuaded him to leave his belongings where they were until he knew what chance there was of an early return. He had parted from Archie with reluctance. Although the portrait was the old man’s principal interest, its maker counted for much with him; for it was some time since his ideas had been made to move as they always moved in Flemington’s presence. The judge got much pleasure out of his own curiosity; and the element of the unexpected—that fascinating factor which had been introduced into domestic life—was a continualjoy. Balnillo had missed it more than he knew since he had become a completely rural character.
Archie saw the Basin of Montrose drop behind him as he rode away with a stir of mixed feelings. The net that Logie had, in all ignorance, spread for him had entangled his feet. He had never conceived a like situation, and it startled him to discover that a difficulty, nowhere touching the tangible, could be so potent, so disastrous. He felt like a man who has been tripped up and who suddenly finds himself on the ground. He had risen and fled.
The position had become intolerable. He told himself in his impetuous way that it was more than he could bear; and now, every bit of luck he had turned to account, every precaution he had taken, all the ingenuity he had used to land himself in the hostile camp, were to go for nothing, because some look in his face, some droop of the eyes, had reminded another man of his own past, and had let loose in him an overwhelming impulse to expression.
“Remember what I told you yesterday,” had been James’s last words as Flemington put his foot in the stirrup. “There must be no more challenges.”
It was that high-coloured flower of his own imagination, the picture of himself in the servants’ hall, that had finally accomplished his defeat. How could he betray the man who was ready to share his purse with him?
And, putting the matter of the purse aside, his painter’s imagination was set alight. The glow of the tulips and the strange house by the winding water, the slim vision of Diane de Montdelys, the gallant background of the Scots Brigade, the grave at Bergen-op-Zoom—these things were like a mirage behind the figure of James. The power of seeing things picturesquely is a gift that can turn into a curse, and that power worked on his emotional and imaginative side now. And furthermore, beyond what might be called the ornamental part of his difficulty, he realized that friendship with James, had he been free to offer or to accept it, would have been a lifelong prize.
They had spent the preceding day together after the sitting was over, and though Logie had opened his heart no more, and their talk had been of the common interests of men’s lives, it had strengthened Archie’s resolve to end the situation and to save himself while there was yet time. There was nothing for it but flight. He had told the judge that he would try to return, but he did not mean to enter the gates of Balnillo again, not while the country was seething with Prince Charlie’s plots; perhaps never. He would remember James all his life, but he hoped that their ways might never cross again. And, behind that, there was regret; regret for the friend who might have been his, who, in his secret heart, would be his always.
He could, even now, hardly realize that he hadbeen actually turned from his purpose. It seemed to him incredible. But there was one thing more incredible still, and that was that he could raise his hand to strike again at the man who had been stricken so terribly, and with the same weapon of betrayal. It would be as if James lay wounded on a battle-field and he should come by to stab him anew. The blow he should deal him would have nothing to do with the past, but Archie felt that James had so connected him in mind with the memory of the woman he resembled—had, by that one burst of confidence, given him so much part in the sacred kingdom of remembrance wherein she dwelt—that it would be almost as if something from out of the past had struck at him across her grave.
Archie sighed, weary and sick with Fate’s ironic jests. There were some things he could not do.
The two men had avoided politics. Though Flemington’s insinuations had conveyed to the brothers that he was like-minded with themselves, the Prince’s name was not mentioned. There was so much brewing in James’s brain that the very birds of the air must not hear. Sorry as he was when Flemington met him with the news of his unexpected recall, he had decided that it was well the young man should go. When this time of stress was over, when—and if—the cause he served should prevail, he would seek out Archie. The “if” was very clear to James, for he had seen enough of men and causes, of troops and campaigns and the practical difficultiesof great movements, to know that he was spending himself in what might well be a forlorn hope. But none the less was he determined to see it through, for his heart was deep in it, and besides that, he had the temperament that is attracted by forlorn hopes.
He was a reticent man, in spite of the opening of that page in his life which he had laid before Flemington; and reticent characters are often those most prone to rare and unexpected bouts of self-revelation. But when the impulse is past, and the load ever present with them has been lightened for a moment, they will thrust it yet farther back behind the door of their lips, and give the key a double turn. He had enjoined Flemington to come to him as he would come to a brother for assistance, and it had seemed to Archie that life would have little more to offer had it only given him a brother like James. A cloud was on his spirit as he neared Brechin.
When he left the inn and would have paid the landlord, he thrust his hand into his pocket to discover a thin sealed packet at the bottom of it; he drew it out, and found to his surprise that, though his name was on it, it was unopened, and that he had never seen it before. While he turned it over something told him that the unknown handwriting it bore was that of James Logie. The coat he wore had hung in the hall at Balnillo since the preceding night, and the packet must have been slipped into it before he started.
As he rode along he broke the seal. The paperit contained had neither beginning nor signature, yet he knew that his guess was right.
“You will be surprised at finding this,” he read, “but I wish you to read it when there are some miles between us. In these disturbed days it is not possible to tell when we may meet again. Should you return, I may be here or I may be gone God knows where, and for reasons of which I need not speak, my brother may be the last man to know where I am. But for the sake of all I spoke of yesterday, I ask you to believe that I am your friend. Do not forget that, in any strait, I am at your back. Because it is true, I give you these two directions: a message carried to Rob Smith’s Tavern in the Castle Wynd at Stirling will reach me eventually, wheresoever I am. Nearer home you may hear of me also. There is a little house on the Muir of Pert, the only house on the north side of the Muir, a mile west of the fir-wood. The man who lives there is in constant touch with me. If you should find yourself in urgent need, I will send you the sum of one hundred pounds through him.“Flemington, you will make no hesitation in the matter. You will take it for the sake of one I have spoken of to none but you, these years and years past.”
“You will be surprised at finding this,” he read, “but I wish you to read it when there are some miles between us. In these disturbed days it is not possible to tell when we may meet again. Should you return, I may be here or I may be gone God knows where, and for reasons of which I need not speak, my brother may be the last man to know where I am. But for the sake of all I spoke of yesterday, I ask you to believe that I am your friend. Do not forget that, in any strait, I am at your back. Because it is true, I give you these two directions: a message carried to Rob Smith’s Tavern in the Castle Wynd at Stirling will reach me eventually, wheresoever I am. Nearer home you may hear of me also. There is a little house on the Muir of Pert, the only house on the north side of the Muir, a mile west of the fir-wood. The man who lives there is in constant touch with me. If you should find yourself in urgent need, I will send you the sum of one hundred pounds through him.
“Flemington, you will make no hesitation in the matter. You will take it for the sake of one I have spoken of to none but you, these years and years past.”
And now he had to go home and to tell Madam Flemington that he had wantonly thrown away all the advantages gained in the last three days,that he had tossed them to the wind for a mere sentimental scruple! So far he had never quarrelled with his occupation; but now, because it had brought him up against a soldier of fortune whose existence he had been unaware of a few weeks ago, he had sacrificed it and played a sorry trick on his own prospects at the same time. He was trusted and valued by his own party, and, in spite of his youth, had given it excellent service again and again. He could hardly expect the determined woman who had made him what he was to see eye to eye with him.
Christian Flemington had kept her supremacy over her grandson. Parental authority was a much stronger thing in the mid-eighteenth century than it is now, and she stood in the position of a parent to him. His French blood and her long residence in France had made their relationship something like that of a French mother and son, and she had all his confidence in his young man’s scrapes, for she recognized phases of life that are apt to be ignored by English parents in dealing with their children. She had cut him loose from her apron-strings early, but she had moulded him with infinite care before she let him go. There was a touch of genius in Archie, a flicker of what she called thefeu sacré, and she had kept it burning before her own shrine. The fine unscrupulousness that was her main characteristic, her manner of breasting the tide of circumstance full sail, awed and charmed him. For all his boldness and initiative, his devil-may-careindependence of will, and his originality in the conduct of his affairs, he had never freed his inner self from her thrall, and she held him by the strong impression she had made on his imagination years and years ago. She had set her mark upon the plastic character of the little boy whom she had beaten for painting Mr. Duthie’s gate-post. That was an episode which he had never forgotten, which he always thought of with a smile; and while he remembered the sting of her cane, he also remembered her masterly routing of his enemy before she applied it. She had punished him with the thoroughness that was hers, but she had never allowed the minister to know what she had done. Technically she had been on the side of the angels, but in reality she had stood by the culprit. In spirit they had resented Mr. Duthie together.
He slept at Forfar that night, and pushed on again next morning; and as he saw the old house across the dip, and heard the purl of the burn at the end of his journey, something in his heart failed him. The liquid whisper of the water through the fine, rushlike grass spoke to him of childhood and of the time when there was no world but Ardguys, no monarch but Madam Flemington. He seemed to feel her influence coming out to meet him at every step his horse took. How could he tell his news? How could he explain what he had done? They had never touched on ethical questions, he and she.
As he came up the muddy road between theash-trees he felt the chilly throe, the intense spiritual discomfort, that attends our plunges from one atmosphere into another. It is the penalty of those who live their lives with every nerve and fibre, who take fervent part in the lives of other people, to suffer acutely in the struggle to loose themselves from an environment they have just quitted, and to meet an impending one without distress. But it is no disproportionate price to pay for learning life as a whole. Also, it is the only price accepted.
He put his horse into the stable and went to the garden, being told that Madam Flemington was there. The day was warm and bright, and as he swung the gate to behind him he saw her sitting on a seat at the angle of the farther wall. She rose at the click of the latch, and came up the grass path to meet him between a line of espalier apple-trees and a row of phlox on which October had still left a few red and white blossoms.
The eighteen years that had gone by since the episode of the manse gate-post had not done much to change her appearance. The shrinking and obliterating of personality which comes with the passing of middle life had not begun its work on her, and at sixty-one she was more imposing than ever. She had grown a great deal stouter, but the distribution of flesh had been even, and she carried her bulk with a kind of self-conscious triumph, as a ship carries her canvas. A brown silk mantle woven with a pattern of flower-bouquetswas round her shoulders, and she held its thick folds together with one hand; in the other she carried the book she had been reading. Her hair was as abundant as ever, and had grown no whiter. The sun struck on its silver, and red flashes came from the rubies in her ears.
She said nothing as Archie approached, but her eyes spoke inquiry and a shadow of softness flickered over so slightly round her broad lips. She was pleased to see him, but the shadow was caused less by her affection for him than by her appreciation of the charming figure he presented, seen thus suddenly and advancing with so much grace of movement in the sunlight. She stopped short when he was within a few steps of her, and, dropping her book upon the ground without troubling to see where it fell, held out her hand for him to kiss. He touched it with his lips, and then, thrusting his arm into the phlox-bushes, drew out the volume that had landed among them. From between the leaves dropped a folded paper, on which he recognized his own handwriting.
“This is a surprise,” said Madam Flemington, looking her grandson up and down.
“I have ridden. My baggage is left at Balnillo.”
The moment of explanation would have to come, but his desire was to put it off as long as possible.
“There is your letter between the pages of my book,” said she. “It came to me this morning, and I was reading it again. It gave me immense pleasure, Archie. I suppose you have come tosearch for the clothes you mentioned. I am glad to see you, my dear; but it is a long ride to take for a few pairs of stockings.”
“You should see Balnillo’s hose!” exclaimed Flemington hurriedly. “I’ll be bound the old buck’s spindle-shanks cost him as much as his estate. If he had as many legs as a centipede he would have them all in silk.”
“And not a petticoat about the place?”
“None nearer than the kitchen.”
“He should have stayed in Edinburgh,” said Madam Flemington, laughing.
She loved Archie’s society.
“I hear that this Captain Logie is one of the most dangerous rebels in Scotland,” she went on. “If you can lay him by the heels it is a service that will not be forgotten. So far you have done mighty well, Archie.”
They had reached the gate, and she laid her hand on his arm.
“Turn back,” she said. “I must consult you. I suppose that now you will be kept for some time at Balnillo? That nest of treason, Montrose, will give you occupation, and you must stretch out the portrait to match your convenience. I am going to take advantage of it too. I shall go to Edinburgh while you are away.”
“To Edinburgh?” exclaimed Flemington.
“Why not, pray?”
“But you leave Ardguys so seldom. It is years——”
“The more reason I should go now,” interruptedshe. “Among other things, I must see my man of business, and I have decided to do it now. I shall be more useful to you in Edinburgh, too. I have been too long out of personal touch with those who can advance your interests. I had a letter from Edinburgh yesterday; you are better thought of there than you suspect, Archie. I did not realize how important a scoundrel this man Logie is, nor what your despatch to Montrose implied.”
He was silent, looking on the ground.
She knew every turn of Archie’s manner, every inflection of his voice. There was a gathering sign of opposition on his face—the phantom of some mood that must not be allowed to gain an instant’s strength. It flashed on her that he had not returned merely to fetch his clothes. There was something wrong. She knew that at this moment he was afraid of her, he who was afraid of nothing else.
She stopped in the path and drew herself up, considering where she should strike. Never, never had she failed to bring him to his bearings. There was only one fitting place for him, and that was in the hollow of her hand.
“Grandmother, I shall not go back to Balnillo,” said he vehemently.
If the earth had risen up under her feet Madam Flemington could not have been more astonished. She stood immovable, looking at him, whilst an inward voice, flying through her mind like a snatch of broken sound, told her that she mustkeep her head. She made no feeble mistake in that moment, for she saw the vital importance of the conflict impending between them with clear eyes. She knew her back to be nearer the wall than it had been yet. Her mind was as agile as her body was by nature indolent, and it was always ready to turn in any direction and look any foe squarely in the face. She was startled, but she could not be shaken.
“I’ve left Balnillo for good,” said he again. “I cannot go back—I will not!”
“You—will not?” said Christian, half closing her eyes. The pupils had contracted, and looked like tiny black beads set in a narrow glitter of grey. “Is that what you have come home to say tome?”
“It is impossible!” he cried, turning away and flinging out his arms. “It is more than I can do! I will not go man-hunting after Logie. I will go anywhere else, do anything else, but not that!”
“There is nothing else for you to do.”
“Then I will come back here.”
“That you will not,” said Christian.
He drew in his breath as if he had been struck.
“What are you that you should betray me, and yet think to force yourself on me without my resenting it? What do you think I am that I should suffer it?”
She laughed.
“I have not betrayed you,” said he in a husky voice.
The loyal worship he had given her unquestioningthrough the long dependence and the small but poignant vicissitudes of childhood came back on him like a returning tide and doubled the cruelty of her words. She was the one person against whom he felt unable to defend himself. He loved her truly, and the thought of absolute separation from her came over him like a chill.
“I did not think you could speak to me in this way. It is terrible!” he said. His dark eyes were full of pain. He spoke as simply as a little boy.
Satisfaction stole back to her. She had not lost her hold on him, would not lose it. Another woman might have flung an affectionate word into the balance to give the final clip to the scale, but she never thought of doing that; neither impulse nor calculation suggested it, because affection was not the weapon she was accustomed to trust. Her faith was in the heavy hand. Her generalship was good enough to tell her the exact moment of wavering in the enemy in front, the magic instant for a fresh attack.
“You are a bitter disappointment,” she said. “Life has brought me many, but you are the greatest. I have had to go without some necessities in my time, and I now shall have to go without you. But I can do it, and I will.”
“You mean that you will turn from me altogether?”
“Am I not plain enough? I can be plainer if you like. You shall go out of this house and go where you will. I do not care where you go.But you are forgetting that I have some curiosity. I wish to understand what has happened to you since you wrote your letter. That is excusable, surely.”
“It is Logie,” said he. “He has made it impossible for me. I cannot cheat a man who has given me all his confidence.”
“He gave you his confidence?” cried Madam Flemington. “Heavens! He is well served, that stage-puppet Prince, when his servants confide in the first stranger they meet! Captain Logie must be a man of honour!”
“He is,” said Archie. “It was his own private confidence he gave me. I heard his own history from his own lips, and, knowing it, I cannot go on deceiving him. I like him too much.”
Madam Flemington was confounded. The difficulty seemed so strangely puerile. A whim, a fancy, was to ruin the work of years and turn everything upside down. On the top, she was exasperated with Archie, but underneath, it was worse. She found her influence and her power at stake, and her slave was being wrested from her, in spite of every interest which had bound them together. She loved him with a jealous, untender love that was dependent on outward circumstances, and she was proud of him. She had smiled at his devotion to her as she would have smiled with gratified comprehension at the fidelity of a favourite dog, understanding the creature’s justifiable feeling, and knowing how creditable it was to its intelligence.
“What has all this to do with your duty?” she demanded.
“My duty is too hard,” he cried. “I cannot do it, grandmother!”
“Too hard!” she exclaimed. “Pah! you weary me—you disgust me. I am sick of you, Archie!”
His lip quivered, and he met her eyes with a mist of dazed trouble in his own. A black curtain seemed to be falling between them.
“I told him every absurdity I could imagine,” said he. “I made him believe that I was dependent upon my work for my daily bread. I did not think he would take my lies as he did. His kindness was so great—so generous! Grandmother, he would have had me promise to go to him for help. How can I spy upon him and cheat him after that?”
He stopped. He could not tell her more, for he knew that the mention of the hundred pounds would but make her more angry; the details of what Logie had written could be given to no one. He was only waiting for an opportunity to destroy the paper he carried.
“We have to do with principles, not men,” said Madam Flemington. “He is a rebel to his King. If I thought you were so much as dreaming of going over to those worthless Stuarts, I would never see you nor speak to you again. I would sooner see you dead. Isthatwhat is in your mind?”
“There is nothing farther from my thoughts,” said he. “I can have no part with rebels. I ama Whig, and I shall always be a Whig. I have told you the plain truth.”
“And nowIwill tell you the plain truth,” said Madam Flemington. “While I am alive you will not enter Ardguys. When you cut yourself off from me you will do so finally. I will have no half-measures as I have no half-sentiments. I have bred you up to support King George’s interests against the whole band of paupers at St. Germain, that you may pay a part of the debt of injury they laid upon me and mine. Mary Beatrice took my son from me. You do not know what you have to thank her for, Archie, but I will tell you now! You have to thank her that your mother was a girl of the people—of the streets—a slut taken into the palace out of charity. She was forced on my son by the Queen and her favourite, Lady Despard. That was how they rewarded us, my husband and me, for our fidelity! He was in his grave, and knew nothing, but I was there. I am here still, and I remember still!”
The little muscles round her strong lips were quivering.
Archie had never seen Madam Flemington so much disturbed, and it was something of a shock to him to find that the power he had known always as self-dependent, aloof, unruffled, could be at the mercy of so much feeling.
“Lady Despard was one of that Irish rabble that followed King James along with better people, a woman given over to prayers and confessions and priests. She is dead, thank God! Itwas she who took your mother out of the gutter, where she sang from door to door, meaning to make a nun of her, for her voice was remarkable, and she and her priests would have trained her for a convent choir. But the girl had no stomach for a nunnery; the backstairs of the palace pleased her better, and the Queen took her into her household, and would have her sing to her in her own chamber. She was handsome, too, and she hid the devil that was in her from the women. The men knew her better, and the Chevalier and your father knew her best of all. But at last Lady Despard got wind of it. They dared not turn her into the streets for fear of the priests, and to save her own son the Queen sacrificed mine.”
She stopped, looking to see the effect of her words. Archie was very pale.
“Is my true name Flemington?” he asked abruptly.
“You are my own flesh and blood,” said she, “or you would not be standing here. Their fear was that the Chevalier would marry her privately, but they got him out of the way, and your father seduced the girl. Then, to make the Chevalier doubly safe, they forced him to make her his wife—he who was only nineteen! They did it secretly, but when the marriage was known, I would not receive her, and I left the court and went to Rouen. I have lived ever since in the hope of seeing the Stuarts swept from the earth. Your father is gone, and you are all I have left, but you shall go too if you join yourself to them.”
“I shall not do that,” said he.
“Do you understand now what it costs me to see you turn back?” said Madam Flemington.
The mantle had slipped from her shoulders, and her white hands, crossed at the wrists, lay with the fingers along her arms. She stood trying to dissect the component parts of his trouble and to fashion something out of them on which she might make a new attack. Forces outside her own understanding were at work in him which were strong enough to take the fine edge of humiliation off the history she had just told him; she guessed their presence, unseen though they were, and her acute practical mind was searching for them. She was like an astronomer whose telescope is turned on the tract of sky in which, as his science tells him, some unknown body will arise.
She had always taken his pride of race for granted, as she took her own. The influx of the base blood of the “slut” had been a mortification unspeakable, but to Madam Flemington, the actual treachery practised on her had not been the crowning insult. The thing was bad, but the manner of its doing was worse, for the Queen and Lady Despard had used young Flemington as though he had been of no account. The Flemingtons had served James Stuart whole-heartedly, taking his evil fortunes as though they had been their own; they had done it of their own free will, high-handedly. But Mary Beatrice and her favourite had treated Christianand her son as slaves, chattels to be sacrificed to the needs of their owner. There was enough nobility in Christian to see that part of the business as its blackest spot.
She had kept the knowledge of it from Archie, because she had the instinct common to all savage creatures (and Christian’s affinity with savage creatures was a close one) for the concealment of desperate wounds. Her silks, her ruby earrings, her physical indolence, her white hands, all the refinements that had accrued to her in her world-loving life, all that went to make the outward presentment of the woman, was the mere ornamental covering of the savage in her. That savage watched Archie now.
Madam Flemington was removed by two generations from Archie, and there was a gulf of evolution between them, unrealized by either. Their conscious ideals might be identical; but their unconscious ideals, those that count with nations and with individuals, were different. And the same trouble, one that might be accepted and acknowledged by each, must affect each differently. The old regard a tragedy through its influences on the past, and the young through its influences on the future. To Archie, Madam Flemington’s revelation was an insignificant thing compared to the horror that was upon him now. It was done and it could not be undone, and he was himself, with his life before him, in spite of it. It was like the withered leaf of a poisonous plant, a thing rendered innocuous bythe processes of nature. What process of nature could make his agony innocuous? The word ‘treachery’ had become a nightmare to him, and on every side he was fated to hear it.
Its full meaning had only been brought home to him two days ago, and now the hateful thing was being pressed on him by one who had suffered from it bitterly. What could he say to her? How was he to make her see as he saw? His difficulty was a sentimental one, and one that she would not recognize.
Archie was not logical. He had still not much feeling about having deceived Lord Balnillo, whose hospitality he had accepted and enjoyed, but, as he had said, he could not go “man-hunting” after James, who had offered him a brother’s help, whose heart he had seen, whose life had already been cut in two by the baneful thing. There was little room in Archie’s soul for anything but the shadow of that nightmare of treachery, and the shadow was creeping towards him. Had his mother been a grand-duchess of spotless reputation, what could her virtue or her blue blood avail him in his present distress? She was nothing to him, that “slut” who had brought him forth; he owed her no allegiance, bore her no grudge. The living woman to whom he owed all stood before him beloved, admired, cutting him to the heart.
He assented silently; but Christian understood that, though he looked as if she had carried her point, his looks were the only really unreliable partof him. She knew that he was that curious thing—a man who could keep his true self separate from his moods. It had taken her years to learn that, but she had learnt it at last.
For once she was, like other people, baffled by his naturalness. It was plain that he suffered, yet she could not tell how she was to mould the hard stuff hidden below his suffering. But she must work with the heavy hand.
“You will leave here to-morrow,” she said; “you shall not stay here to shirk your duty”; and again the pupils of her eyes contracted as she said it.
“I will go now,” said he.