“Call me, and I will com’,” he said; “spik to me, and I will obey. Zat is for my lov’ and duty to you for the eternity of all times. Now I sank you and go. I go again on my way wiz a great heart, rich in the thought of the help which vouchsafe itself to a poor dog wizout one doubt or inquiration.”
I laughed.
“That’s all nonsense,” I said. “You aren’t in a state to take the road again; and anyhow I’m not going to commit you to the risk. Here you stop, you know, till it’s safe for you to move on.”
He came to me at once, and, lifting my hand and kissing it again—but this time with a formal gravity—stood away, and looked at me with glistening eyes.
“There was wonse a good man, signore,” he said, “who find a fellow lying senseless by ze way; and he pour in wine and oil to his wounds; and he ask nozzing—nozzing what the fellow be, or how he deserve what he get, so he may just take the chance to help him. But I say I will not com’ to you, signore, so noble and clementeenious, on the lie which is not to spik. I say you shall know zis fellow, where he leave and what he deserve, lest your goodness presently shall curse the folly of itself. I am from prison—since twent-y year, signore, I have live in prison, and zis is the first long travel I take from it when you save me.”
He stopped, and bowing his head and clasping his hands, stood meekly to receive my denunciation. And I do not deny that I was startled—dumfoundered even for a moment. But the candour and honesty of the confession overcame me.
“That’s all one,” I said. “There are many men we have to accept and hobnob with who have a better title than you, I daresay, to the law’s attentions. Well, you are a ticket-of-leave man, I suppose?”
He shook his head.
“No. I serve my term.”
I regarded him curiously. Circumstance was bringing me acquainted which some queer house mates.
“A long one,” I said. “You must have deserved well of the law. Do you mind telling me your name?”
“Ah! my name, signore,” he said. “Yes—Smit, that it is—yes, Smit is my name.”
“Now you see,” I answered, “you make a show of speaking the truth to me, and then you go and tell me that. I don’t believe it, of course. What were you in for? I suppose you’ll say for shop-lifting, or turnip-pulling, or sleeping out of doors, or something equally convincing.”
“I was in for nozzing at all. It was a false charge; it was made by a devil.”
“Of course. That’s even less than I imagined. And you are on your way now to bring that devil to book for it, I suppose?”
“Yes, I am on my way, when the snow take me into its cold pillows, and I die in zat bed but for you.”
The quietness of his manner impressed me in spite of myself.
“Why did you call yourself Smith—come now?” I said.
“I tell you a lie,” he answered at once. “It was just zat he might miss to hear of me—not guess the truce of the vengeance which arrives to him at last.”
“He? Who?” I asked apprehensively. This matter was assuming a more sinister complexion than I quite liked. “I say, my friend, I hope your looks are belying you. You haven’t got a knife in your pocket, have you?”
“Signore,” he said earnestly, almost piteously, “I beg zat you not force of me, your servant, to answer. For myself I will confess the truce that I lie. My name is Antonio Geoletti.”
What chord of memory was suddenly touched in my brain? For a moment I could not identify it—and then, all in a flash, it had leapt upon me out of the dark. Geoletti! the name of the Italian guide mentioned in Charlie Skene’s letter!
I looked at the man stupidly. Some dim association of ideas was already quickening, very little and deep, in my brain. It was the seed of a certain deductive reasoning—the stirring of a green shoot which, like the Indian juggler’s mango-tree, would push through the soil in a little and break into sudden leaf, and take my soul with knowledge.
“Geoletti?” I exclaimed at last, in a voice sharp with astonishment. And then in one leap light came in, and the tree burst into flower.
It was Mark Dalston whom this avenger was tracking to his doom!
He bowed sombrely. After a little pause I went nearer to him. Here was, as I have said, no coincidence; but the stupendousness of the destiny quite awed and humbled me. What was I worth, without this directing hand of Fate to guide me?
“Geoletti,” I said, looking at him intensely, but speaking very quietly, “I think—perhaps—it may be—I can tell you something about yourself.”
“Si, signore?” he answered as quietly, almost indifferently, for he can have had no apprehension of what was to come.
“You were a guide, once upon a time, in the Italian Alps, were you not?”
“Si, signore.” His eyelids flicked up swiftly, and were lowered again. His lips gasped a little.
“You knew a Mr Cecil Delane there. He offended you somehow. It is to be revenged on him, under his proper name of Mark Dalston, that you are now come into this part of the country. Is not this all so?”
I thought he would have fallen. He caught himself steady by the sofa end, and stood staring and gulping at me.
“Now, wait,” I said. “You wonder how I can know this. The puzzle of Destiny makes a very simple map when it is put together, Geoletti. Some time ago I happened to come across part of a letter in a book. You were mentioned in it; Mr Dalston was mentioned in it, and one or two others. But leave them out. It was just the association of the two names, yours and his, then and now, that has made me jump to a conclusion. Wait while I show you.”
I went and fetched the letter, and held it out under his eyes.
“Can you read?”
“Si—yes, yes.”
“Read, then.”
Eagerly, gluttonously, triumphantly, his eyes travelled down the sheet, and rested on the name at its foot. He thrust out a rigid finger, and pointed to it.
“Carlo, si! Buono Dio! Challie Skene—yes.”
“What about Charles Skene?”
“Dalston murder him, signore.”
Itwas a monstrous tale that he unfolded to me, scarce credible for the guile, the inhuman persecution, the infernal callousness which it revealed. And yet I could not but accept it as consistent and convincing. There are men born, one knows, without the moral bias—brutes “thrown back” on the primordial instincts for lust and blood. But that learning and culture could be acquired merely to the exploiting of such primitive passions was a stupendous enlightening. There is a horrible tale of Hawthorne’s, which depicts the agony of a clean and sensitive soul upon discovering accidentally thatallthe brother and sister souls of his familiar intercourse are on secret midnight terms with the powers of darkness. I think I experienced something of that ghastly disillusionment now. Where was the good of refining and refining on our natures, if at the end such bestiality remained possible to them? Better the snake and the lion, hunting their prey on the plain issues of hunger.
My blood became water as I listened; the knees of my soul grew sick under me. What had this man not suffered of unspeakable persecution, if his story were to be believed! And I saw no reason to doubt it. The perspective it appeared to open out to me of revelations affecting my own interests was obscured for the moment in the contemplation of his wilder wrongs. And yet I could not but admit he had deserved badly of Fate. If his spirit of vengeance was justified, the spirit which had involved him in it was vile. Yet assuredly, sinner as he was, he had atoned a hundredfold. His back (he showed it me) was scored with ineffaceable marks of that discipline. His soul (and he showed me that too) was still deeper scored. He was delivered, had delivered himself, a fearful brand of retribution into my hand.
I talked with him till late that night, and far into the following morning. I had made him up a bed on the sofa, and there had become no question but that he was to remain with me until this riddle of our common destiny was resolved. I found in him, or believed I had found, a minister, a witness, a testifier to things potential but unspeakable. They will be touched upon in due time. In the meanwhile he dwelt suspended between a mortal hatred on the one side and a blind devotion on the other.
“What,” I said once to him, “if I were to tell you, Geoletti, that this man Dalston is my friend?”
He rose to his feet, and begged me, in great emotion, to unsay my question; to reassure him; not to drive him mad.
“Very well,” I said; “but you must consider that revenge is nothing if it involves the avenger in the ruin of his victim. We have enough evidence and over to put the noose about this fellow’s neck; but the law doesn’t hang on moral testimony; and until we have the material, sifted and compact, it behoves us to move with caution. He isn’t one, I gather, to overlook a false step made by an enemy. And there’s to be no knifing, mind.”
He assured me earnestly that he would be secret, circumspect, always entirely at my disposal and commands. And with that I had to rest content.
After lunch on that second day, restless beyond endurance, I left him to an hour’s siesta while I went for a walk in the bitter weather. I wanted to think my thoughts alone, to decide upon a plan of campaign, to clear my mind for battle. It was snowing again, and the wind was wilder than ever—a furious stimulant to action. I went down first of all into the road, and saw it swept as clean as a curling rink, though the drifts on the wood side were piled six feet deep against the bank. But, bethinking myself that Dalston, or even his uncanny lady, might chance to come that way, I altered my mind, and, turning again into the Caddle, went off northward towards Hags Lane.
It was stiff enough work while the trees protected me; but once out in the open, lungs, muscle, and resolution had to make a common cause of it. There was no thinking of anything here but just how to set one foot before the other and hold on. The wind was like a chaff cutter, whirling off ends of snow that stung one’s skin like straw points; the fields went up and down in tossed billows of white, with the ground frozen deep green in the troughs of them; leaden sky and spinning flakes and the dim tracery of trees were all wrought together in one’s view, as if life had got into that inextricable tangle which must mean the end of things. A wild enough day for a constitutional, one might have thought; and yet, it seemed, I was not the only, nor the weakest vessel, which had been driven to venture abroad in it. For, beating at length into the comparative harbourage of Hags Lane, I saw, come there before me in pursuit of shelter, the figure of a solitary young lady.
She stood under a white-streaked hawthorn which, protruding from the bank, afforded her a certain cover. In her hand was a broken umbrella, which dangled like a shot rook with its pinions flopping. Her face looked very white and her eyes preternaturally large.
I went up to her. “Miss Christmas,” I said, “are you out of your senses?”
I could have thought that some soft sound, even like a suppressed sob, came from her lips. If I was not mistaken, she hastened to convince me at least that the fact of my arrival had nothing to do with it. Her answer was as cold as the falling snow.
“I don’t think so. I am quite capable of taking care of myself, thank you.”
“You are not, if you can venture out alone on such a day as this. I must take you home at once.”
She curled her lip magnificently.
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you. I wish you would go to another tree. There is plenty of room in this lane for both of us.”
“If I go, I shall go altogether.”
She turned her shoulder on me.
“I don’t want to be rude,” she said.
Now, whatever the meaning of her presence here, her escapade was the maddest thing conceivable. I was quite at a loss how to account for it or persuade her from it, when suddenly the devil put a suspicion, half tormenting, half mocking, into my head, and I spoke recklessly, on the spur of it.
“Mr Dando has gone away,” I said, “if it was any hope of running across him that brought you here.”
She started—turned swiftly—and I saw that look on her face which I had seen once before.
“Ira,” I cried, “don’t say it!”
She threw away the dislocated umbrella, burst into tears, and ran out into the snow. But she had not gone ten paces, when she stumbled and sank to her knees. In an instant I was beside her. I did not know what had happened to me. Is this sort of thing after all a stroke—or perhaps a sudden possession? Something like a fiery pulse was hammering in my brain. I felt furious, savage, half suffocated—reckless with a lust of pain, to inflict it and invite it. We were Pan and Syrinx in the blasting weather. I was crazy to make a reed of her sweet red mouth, and breathe my soul of passion into it. This frenzy may have been long germinating in me. Its delivery came in a roar of flame—why at this moment more than at another I cannot say. Perhaps it was the sudden sense of my isolation, alone with her in that cold soft world—her helplessness—the appeal of her young troubled face—my own much troubled soul. I had no claim on her, nor hope nor right of claim that could be held to exonerate me. Who was I to cull such a flower to my bastardy? And yet I could not control this sudden insane feeling, nor deny myself the mad indulgence of it. Come what would, I would take for my own so much of her as my lips would carry. I lifted her in my arms, while she struggled weakly to repulse me.
“No use,” I said fiercely. “I am strong, and a brute perhaps, and I am going to use my strength to rob your lips. They have insulted me often enough to deserve that toll. Scream if you like. It can hurt no one but yourself. Why did you think I made that remark about Johnny Dando? I myself hardly knew at the moment; but now I know. I was jealous—wickedly, horribly jealous. I had no right to be, I own—no right to think at all of you. But I do, Ira—I can’t help it; no more can you. I think of you, I am thinking of you now, in a way that would make you blush if you knew. Be quiet; it is useless your struggling. I want just that much of you—your mouth, and I intend to have it. Then I will let you go, and you can punish me as you like. Only this one thing you will never be able to say again—that your lips are virgin lips to the man who shall come to court and win you. You had better say nothing about it to him. That will be always the secret between you and me, Ira; and I will promise for my part to hold it inviolate.”
Something in the word, perhaps, drove me beyond myself. I bent my face down towards hers.
She had lain all this time like a wounded fawn in my arms, her eyes closed, her lips a little parted, the breath fluttering in her tender side. Now suddenly, to my wonderment, she looked up at me with a wistful smile.
“Richard,” she said, “you do not want me to die, do you? I thought I was going to; and then you came, and I could have cried with delight. I was so cold, and I had lost myself, and my heart seemed to fly out to your warmth and strength; and I thought, He is going to help me, though I have been so foolish; and suddenly I felt quite safe and happy.”
The madness died down in me, like a flame on which fragrant spices have been thrown. I seemed to myself to gasp for breath. She had seen me coming to her in her peril, and had felt safe.
“No, Ira,” I said, in a low choking voice, “I do not want you to die.”
“Then why do you threaten me with this killing shame?”
“I must have some of you. I never knew my own mad need until this moment.”
“Are you in love with me, Richard?”
“Yes. Now you mention it, I suppose that’s it.”
“And do you want to shame the thing you love?”
“No, Ira, if you would only love me too a little. Will you?”
She gave a thread of a smile.
“How can I help it, if it is to save myself?”
I gathered her furiously to my breast, and rose to my feet, holding her so. My arms were crushed about her; I set my teeth, snarling, to the demons of the storm. Let death and hate try to come to conclusions with me for this my possession. Not a breath should enter to despoil her, if I knew her really for my own. I looked with wonder once more into her face. The very veins in it were things to love like flowers; the snowflakes crisped upon her hair; her eyes were closed again, and happily, it seemed to me.
“My God!” I said. “It can’t be true—it can’t. Answer me, Ira. Are you not offended?”
“I don’t think so, Richard.”
“Oh, my love! You said your heart flew out to me.”
“You mustn’t be too exacting,” she whispered.
“Why don’t you open your eyes, Ira? I am mad to read them.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
I held her closer still.
“Ira, I shall never kiss you now, until you give me leave with your own lips.”
She did not answer. Suddenly I saw a smile flicker on her mouth, and her long lids opened—just a crevice.
“Richard!” she panted, “they never gave you leave.”
“Yes, they did, they did. O! the world has gone by us, Ira, and we are left alone together in the old first heaven of things.”
We sat together presently, very unwisely, in the snow under the old hawthorn—at least I sat on the snow and Ira on me. But we were both content.
“My poor umbrella,” she said. “It was blown to pieces in my hand.”
“What made you do such an insane thing—come out at all?”
“Are you sorry I did?”
“Sorry! Supposing I had not taken a walk? Supposing the cold had killed you?”
“Would you have mindedverymuch, Richard?”
This fond stichomythia! these amorous anglings for assurance and reassurance of love’s blisses! They are not for the wise to understand. I had not understood them myself an hour ago. Let me hide their memory away in that old old tabernacle of nature, where only the foolish and the selfsame smitten shall steal in to contemplate and adore.
Ira accounted to me for her rashness. The sight of Lady Skene’s restless anguish—for the child, though better from that dread attack of two nights ago, was still in a parlous state—had in the end proved too much for her, and she had hurried out to forget herself in exercise and fresh air. Then, wandering on blindly in the snow, she had suddenly awakened to the knowledge that she was lost, and very cold, and that the wind and rushing flakes seemed all at once to have become things of animate wickedness, shutting her round and in, and barring every exit with spears of ice.
“You must have been thinking very deeply, Ira, to have come so far without noticing. I wonder what about?”
“Yes, Richard. When—when we think a good deal of something, I suppose something is a good deal in our thoughts, isn’t it?”
“How aggravating of you! I was already pluming myself on a nice compliment. Well,youhave been inmythoughts enough, I can tell you.”
“Have I? That is why I have felt cold for such a time, I suppose.”
“It sha’n’t be my fault if you feel cold ever again. Do you know what fools we are to sit here? I’m in a fine glow, myself; but how about you?”
“O! your arms are about me.”
“You ought to feel them like stove pipes, if they come anywhere near expressing their own ardour.”
“Please be a little less violent in your language, Richard. Do you know you are rather a savage creature altogether.”
“You shall tame me. I have had my excuses, Ira—I really have.”
“I know, my dear lord. How shouldn’t I know indeed!”
She put up a penitent mouth. Her sweetness and submission quite overcame me.
“Richard,” she whispered, with her face very close to mine, “do you know that, when you—when you cried out to stop me just now, it was the first time in all your life you had called me Ira?”
“Was it? I don’t know why I called you so then. It came out involuntarily.”
“Yes; so I supposed; and it was that that made me burst out crying and run away.”
“I don’t understand why.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You must be a woman first.”
“Like you, you chit, I suppose you mean. But something occurs to me that I want to ask you. Do you remember that kiss I gave you long ago?”
“Perhaps I do—if I flog my memory very hard.”
“Ira, did you hate me for it?”
“N-o-o—I think not.”
“What then?”
“You can imagine nothing but extremes. Isn’t there something—I only put it to you, you know—between hate, and—love?”
“No; nothing whatever.”
“O! then I suppose I didn’t hate you for it.”
“You dear! What would you have thought of Johnny Dando if he had dared such a thing?”
“Mr Dando? I should have been furious—outrageously furious; and then spoilt all the effect by laughing myself into hysterics, I expect. But it’s too absurd to think of for a moment. He’s much too good-mannered, for one thing.”
“O, Ira!”
“Does that hurt you, Richard? You have insulted me often enough to deserve that toll, dear. Don’t you remember your own words? But, there! It’s very helpful, sometimes, to be taken by storm.”
“I have been very cruel to you, you lovely soft thing.”
Her young arms stole sweetly about my neck.
“How nice to hear your flattery, Richard. You might beat me ten times a day, if you would always end by saying such things to me. And you have the air of believing them.AmI pretty—to you, I mean?”
“As if you didn’t know it.”
“That is to say you think me spoilt.”
“Well, young lady, a cherry’s only the sweeter for having a little bruise in it. But you’ve come on finely in these years. To think what a detestable little prig you used to be!”
“Now you want to make me cry.”
“Cry away. There aren’t many women to whom tears are becoming, but I expect you are one of the few.”
“What a Sultan you are; but not very wise to flatter me there. Think what it would mean to have a crying wife!”
A wife! The words struck a sudden chill into me. My arms, strained passionately about the child, relaxed a little.
“Ira,” I groaned, “I swear that until this moment I have never realised my madness.”
She did not answer; but her eyes canvassed me with a sudden piteous wonder.
“That I should dream of such a monstrous thing—dream that any claim of mine to you would be listened to for a moment!”
She gave a heart-won happy sigh, and her face was summer again.
“HaveInot listened to you, Richard—with all my ears and heart?”
“Yes; but your guardian? The world?”
“What are they to us? I shall soon be my own mistress.”
“Yes, but—O, Ira! I wish I could say I shall soon be my own master.”
“You are master of me, and I am you, Richard. O, dear! are you going to break my heart after all you’ve said?”
I caught her to me once more in a rapture.
“You dear passionate baby! Do you realise to what, to whom you are binding yourself?”
“Yes, to my Richard, if you please; and if you abuse him any more, I shall cry in good earnest.”
How could I answer but in the terms of that lovers’ text-book which has endured since Eden? A silence fell between us; and then suddenly I felt myself shivering.
“We are a couple of fools, young woman,” I said, “love-making out here in the snow. That is not the way to provide against troubles that will need all our strength to meet them.”
She bestirred herself in quick alarm.
“O dear! what a selfish wretch! You have been keeping me warm all this time at your own cost. O, come away, Richard—come away at once, before it is too late.”
She pulled frantically at me. I laughed.
“I expect you will have to carrymenow, Ira. I feel as stiff as a gun barrel.”
“Richard!”
“There, Miss Christmas—nothing but my chaff; but on my word we ought to be moving. Will you come and sit with me a little in my own lodge?”
“O! you mustn’t ask me, Richard.”
“But, supposing I do, and insist?”
“Then I shall obey, of course.”
“And be very unhappy, of course; and a sweet dutiful devoted child. I am learning by degrees, Ira. But I must take you that way, though not to stop, because, with all my ardour, the prospect of that climb back by the fields doesn’t appeal to me, and the road is swept clean by the wind, so that we can walk on it easily, and get back by the main entrance. Come along, child.”
I had to carry her through the lane, nevertheless, and so on mostly until we reached the woods, where I could trust her to her own pretty feet. And there we walked in security, like authorised lovers.
“Now,” I said, “I have been forgetting everything but just our two selves. Is Lady Skene so very unapproachable, Ira?”
She stopped me suddenly, clinging to me, with a pained line come between her eyes.
“What does it all mean, Richard? There is something more than the child—I am sure of it; and it fills me with fear and anxiety.”
I held her silent a little, turning my face away in a gloom of irresolution.
“Yes, Ira, there is something more,” I said presently, and very softly—“something terribly serious and terribly upsetting.”
“I was certain of it,” she whispered. “And you know what it is? I can never forget her face that evening I found you, together. Am I not to know, Richard? It is not for my curiosity, indeed.”
“I am sure of it, dear,” I said. “It is your love for her. But I have a greater claim on your love now, Ira, and I must ask you, for the sake of that claim, to forbear questioning me at present. The secret is not my own—at least, not all my own—though it affects my interests very closely. Sometimes, even, I dare to hope of it a better claim to you than I possess now. But you mustn’t ask me, dear. There are ordeals, and interviews, and all sorts of unhappy explanations to be gone through with before I can trust myself to reveal it to you. But you mustn’t suppose, in the meantime, that I am Lady Skene’s enemy. Indeed, if that is true which I expect to be true, my interference will benefit her—in one way, at least. I am trying to circumvent a scoundrel, Ira, and chance has put some very wonderful evidence in my hands. I must not tell you more than that.”
“You are not in any danger—you yourself, Richard?” she asked fearfully.
“No, you love,” I said—“not more that most people who set themselves to battle against the forces of villainy. And now I am double-armoured in your love. It will be such a joy to me, Ira, to put it all out of mind when I am alone, and let your little image in to talk with me, and laugh with me, and sleep with me, too, for you can’t help it.”
She gazed into my face a little longer in great doubt and trouble, until the tears coming into her eyes made her blink, and she turned away.
“I wish,” she said woefully, “I could be thought strong enough to bear the burden with you—to help you, Richard.”
“Help me?” I cried—“never so much as by holding yourself and your dear love apart from all this debasing atmosphere of gloom and secrecy. I want to think of you out in the sunshine, Ira—something sweet and unspoiled for my heart to rest on. Now be a sensible dear. I shall come up to the house to see you to-morrow.”
“You will?” she whispered, brightening through her grief. “Come early, Richard.”
“Why not?” I cried cheeringly. “Small profits and quick returns, Ira, as Johnny would say. I sha’n’t let the grass grow under my feet, lest you change your mind.”
She gave me a lovely tremulous smile in reassurance for that, and we went on together again. The wind had dropped, almost suddenly, and the cold white woods were full of a wonderful stillness. As we passed by the darkling lodge, I thought of the figure hidden away within its shadows, and a glow of mighty triumph went through my veins, picturing that confederacy of love and death out of which was to be wrought for me a new manhood and a name.
AfterParadise the Deluge. But I held my head high, and laughed at the lowering heavens. I had enough faith in me to float an ark, with my heart for dove in it, waiting confidently in expectation of the green promise. Such deep and full content in myself I had never dreamed were possible. I was become another being in the prospect of my close relations with that pure and beautiful child. When I awoke on the morrow of my joy, it was surely to the same earth I had gone to sleep on; but whither translated—to what halcyon climate? I could have believed it had caught in the train of some passing comet during the night, and been swept into a starrier, balmier region. The frost had gone; the birds were singing; a sweet and melting tenderness had usurped the places of terror. No doubt, at the same time, some clinging villainies had been brought away with it; but their necessary clearance figured no longer as the paramount interest. They were of first moment only in their menace to my love’s innocent feet; they must be cut and weeded away only that the garden of my love’s soul be made perfect to her.
That was how I felt at last; and let all old dry misogamists and scornful Benedicks jeer their fill at me. I was of you once myself, O, sapless brotherhood! until that thing came to happen which made it impossible for me ever to be of you again. Now, I say, I would rather hear a lover rant of love than a wise man discourse on wisdom; would rather, for all the world is worth, be the sinning penitent than the sinless priest who grudges him absolution. How is Solomon most remembered? Why, by the love rhapsody which is called his Song—no better.
It was strange how all the passion and the melancholy of my revengeful past were dimmed suddenly in the radiance of this new feeling. Day had risen behind the sullen flaming rick and absorbed it. Still, if inclination to my task of retribution was much lessened, duty yet impelled me on to that task. Such tragic and momentous issues hung upon my conduct of it. Though a mother’s pined-for recognition no longer drove me forward, there was the question no less of an unhappy woman’s persecution to make my blood run fury. Besides, I could not shut my eyes to the fact that all this accumulation of evidence put me, so long as I remained its sole depository, in the position of an accessory. Wherefore, everything considered, I was resolved to go this very day, with my witness, to Lord Skene, and make clean my breast to him, poor man, of all its “perilous stuff.”
It was a resolve, indeed, not to be regarded lightly; for with what thunderbolts did it not threaten that old unconscious head! Into the peaceful chamber of his meditations I was to flounce with fire and brimstone—murder, blackmail and, worst of all, to some minds, sick dishonour. For, as to that last, my determination to speak the truth was one with all the rest. Lady Skene had laid no embargo on me, but had rather implied, I thought, an acquiescence in my possible advocacy of her cause. And, indeed, it was out of all my heavy duty the task I feared the least, since, I believed, it would prove the one the least disturbing to his lordship; and that for reasons given long ago. The lesson of that deceit, I suspected, would lack all but a roguish moral in his eyes.
But, for his boy; his murdered heir! How would he take that ghastly revelation, and how decide to deal with it?
Yet there was no other course—none that I could see; and I confess, for myself, that the prospect of shifting the whole burden of my responsibilities to the shoulders of that shrewd legal understanding was not, in my then state of exaltation, an unwelcome one. I wanted freedom in myself for the range of lovelier thoughts. Why should I retain for ever the sole thankless wardenship of that secret? I was quite ready to forego my part of principal there, and decline upon the humbler rank of scout or agent to his lordship.
Yet, when it came to the prick of decision, I lingered and lingered out the moments. The old man had been good to me. He was happy and secure in his ignorance. Would he hold the profits of this débâcle to compensate its losses, and thank me for an interference, which could bring no gains to him but disillusionment? The substantial gains, indeed, were more for me than him—and so for Ira. I owed them, after all, to her. Though I hated my iconoclastic part, it was that tender debt must hold me inexorably to it.
I had informed Geoletti of my purpose; and he had answered “It is well, signore. That which you decide is good, is good.” Then he bestirred himself to do my household work, and, when all else was finished, retired into the little kitchen to scrub pots and pans.
Lulled by the sound of his soft movements behind the near-closed door, my thoughts took dreamy wing, and floated out incontinently into the open. Were my Ira’s speeding to join issue with them above that lovely hawthorn valley mistermed Hags Lane? What flowers should come to blossom there in spring? I believed I could write a poem on the subject, and tinglingly I got out paper and pencil, and sharpened the latter to a point of tenderest wit, and in a little was absorbed in my task. Shame, that lover’s rapture should be “held up” over a rhyme! What was inspiration to these cold laws of prosody? But at last I appropriated one—“tiara”—the Lord forgive me—and then it was easy, comparatively, to fit my crown of blossoms to it. Nevertheless it struck eleven from the little clock on the mantelpiece while I was still fitting it; and at that same instant I became aware of a presence in the room.
“A thousand apologies, my dear fellow!” said an unfamiliar voice. “I wouldn’t have interrupted you for the world in such a romantic task, if I had known.”
I sat for a minute quite rigid and motionless. It never occurred to me that here, perhaps, was the best testimony I could have wished to the effectiveness of my own secret dealings. It seemed only an impossible piece of insolence that could have brought this man to seek my company, and at such a moment. But I did not reveal myself. A long habit of self-repression came to my aid.
“Mr Dalston?” I said at last.
He nodded brightly.
“We have met before. I hope we shall meet again—and on terms of a better understanding.”
I rose to my feet, at least perfectly cool in seeming.
“Meaning—what?” I asked.
“Nothing cryptic, of course,” said he.
He glanced about the room. His manner was very alert and vivacious. His teeth and glittering eyes seemed, when he turned his face again, to take possession of me.
“The tragedy of that first meeting,” he said, “put any pleasant understanding between us two at the time out of the question, didn’t it?”
“You use an odd word, Mr Dalston,” I said; “and take an odd way—you will excuse me—for a stranger.”
“Why, as to that,” he answered, smiling, “I found the door open, and took what I supposed to be the proper woodland way with hermits. Men of your principles love secrecy, don’t they? and quiet comings and goings, and visits unawares? I only borrowed a leaf out of your book, you see.”
Now, though he was so gay and debonair, I recognised on the instant some sinister meaning behind his words, and knew that he was aware, in some measure at least, of the watchful part I had been playing, and knew, moreover, that he wanted me to know that he knew. I could not guess his purpose, beyond the fact that it appeared to imply some menace and a warning; but I could be as cool as he, and his equal, as I thought, in cunning.
“You referred to an understanding between us,” I said rather drawlingly. “Well, I can only repeat that it seems to me an odd word to use.”
“Does it?” he answered; “does it really? Well, say it may be held to imply, in general terms, a motto—Vive et vivas; or, to put it specifically, If you don’t interfere with me, I won’t interfere with you.”
“Ah! now you puzzle me entirely—as much, I confess, as the strangeness of your being down here, alone at eleven o’clock in the morning, puzzles me.”
“Why, that is easily explained,” he said. “I have just been walking with Lady Skene in that delightful bower—a little cold just now—called the Baby’s Garden, and I took this path upon leaving her, as being the shortest and the most private.”
“O! Why as the most private, may I ask?”
He leaned upon his stick, hat in hand, conning me with a smiling archness.
“Don’t you know? Don’t you know, indeed, my dear boy? But of course you do; or why should I be here?”
“That is for you to say.”
“You have inherited frankness, I see. I have always been a model of frankness myself. I am glad to hear you pay that debt to your inheritance, Richard.”
I was gathering, at last, something of his drift. He was feeling his way to my sense of filial duty. I could have struck my fist into his accursed dandy face. No doubt he had heard from Lady Skene the facts of that interview between us in her boudoir, and had assumed, as she had assumed, that the knowledge of my parentage was a revelation to me. Let him rejoice then, and scheme on that premise, and set the trap to his own damnation. It was for me now, with all that frenzy of hatred tingling at my finger-ends, to nurse his delusion for him, and play the double hypocritical part. I was surprised, even, at the resources of Machiavellianism I discovered in myself.
“Mr Dalston,” I said, “as you flatter me for candour, I will be as candid as you could wish. I am aware, as you imply, that you have been drawing upon Lady Skene for money, and I know the reason.”
“That’s capital,” he said—“that’s very capital and engaging. Well, now, consider, Richard; love-children are not generally regarded in the light of very eligible partis, are they? especially when franked by no financial recommendations. Lord Skene would hardly look upon such a one as a suitable match for a ward-at-law—and a particularly charming and well-endowed ward-at-law, I will say. I only put it to you that the revelation of such a suitor’s legal status would hardly appeal favourably to a guardian. Now would it? Better, at least, for him, I think, to make no boast of his moral disability. It is nothing but a question of terms, after all; but upon such, alas! are our ridiculous conventions founded.”
How could I listen to him, and not spring at his murderous, lying throat? His very nameless reference to the subject of my most sacred hopes was a blasphemy scarce tolerable. But I kept my sense of the enormous issues that hung upon my self-command, and I dealt him back his double-dealing to the hilt.
“I am to understand, then, I conclude,” I said, and with a manner, I do believe, of helpless conviction, “that, if I give you away, I may expect to be given away myself?”
He laughed.
“You put it with a boyish crudeness; but the method has its fascinations. Why not, rather, call it a little family understanding, Richard? We are all in the same boat; we all have our crying needs of the moment. Yes, call it that; and our family motto—Vive et vivas.”
“Well, you must give me a little time,” I said. “This comes as rather a shock on one, you see?”
“Time!” he cried—“time, if you wish it, to indite fifty immortal sonnets to your mistress’s eyebrow. I am never in a hurry, my dear fellow. Let the thought germinate and take root at its leisure. What a charming retreat, to be sure. And you live here all alone?”
“Yes, all alone.”
“Not even an Abigail to minister the needs?—but of course not, in our present transcendent altitudes. I wonder if I might pry a bit?”
Should I let him? I thought how during all this interview the door giving into the kitchen had stood ajar; I recalled how, even before the fact of his presence in the room had been borne in upon me, all sound of Geoletti’s movements hard by had suddenly ceased. I pictured a deadly figure crouching behind the door, saw a mincing step pass on and in, heard a sudden wild-beast snarl and rush, and then a scream, my God, freezing one’s blood—and for one instant I was half minded to bid him on his way, and end thus swiftly at a blow the story of his villainies.
It was a ghastly temptation—almost paralysing in its suddenness. I had even stirred involuntarily to make way for him, when the thought that not vengeance, but retribution, was to be the first exaction, came to save me. I put my hand across my forehead, and felt it wet. For a moment I could not command my voice. If my agitation was obvious, however, he could find his own reasons to account for it. No doubt he was pluming himself, the blind fool, on his unnerving conquest of a boy.
“I’d rather, if you don’t mind,” I said at length, “be left to myself just now. You’ve a bit upset me, as you may guess, and I’m not quite in the mood to play cicerone.”
“Why, of course,” he rejoined at once and cheerily. “It was inconsiderate of me. Bye-bye, then, till we meet again, my dear boy. No, don’t trouble; I can find my own way out,” and he went, smiling, and waving his hand back to me, and humming a pleasant tune.
The moment he was well gone, I stepped swiftly to the kitchen door, and stood to obstruct its passage. But the precaution was unnecessary. No sound or movement came from within.
I stood for a little, triumphing in my own triumphant duplicity. The dog had thought to force my hand, and had only succeeded in betraying the pretentious emptiness of his own. He had discovered nothing of importance, for all his midnight craft; had no suspicion, even, of that most momentous betrayal of him by his own and nearest, or surely he would have intimated his knowledge of it to me. I ground my hands into one another, grinding my teeth. To what had I not been forced to listen, and, in appearance, to subscribe? A family understanding? No doubt, granting the hypothesis of my success on the score of it,myblackmailing was to follow as a necessary consequence. It was defilement merely to have encountered him—aye, and countered him, too—with his own weapons. I felt as if I could never be entirely self-respecting again until I had come to terms about him with the hangman.
With the thought, I turned, and with a guarded caution tiptoed into the kitchen. My eyes were expectant of the vision of other eyes, yellow and catlike, crouched near the boards; of a gathered catlike shape; of a claw of steel protruding from catlike folds. But there was nothing of the sort awaiting them. Geoletti was nowhere to be seen.
But suddenly, even as I stood in indecision, the oddest sound greeted my ears. It was like the little sibilant yap of a dog in distressed dreaming; and it appeared to come from under the dresser.
“Geoletti!” I whispered, amazed.
He came crawling out on all fours, actually like an abject dog, and, when he reached me, rose up on his knees, fawning with both hands, and his eyes bright with madness.
“Signore,” he urged hoarsely, “you not go in wiz him—my God! I say, you not go! Listen to wat I tell you. When two enter togezer, only won return. His smile on the face zat hide—what? His hand in his pocket zat hold—what? For you, so you follow him, zere shall be no smile never again—no face at all to smile wiz. Merciful God, signore! sink of her what wait you—the beautiful signora, and how on you depend her happiness. She sall die if evil come to you. Ecco! I know. Her state is not zat to endure it. Go back, signore! my God, go back!”
He struggled with me, his voice full of an entreating frenzy.
“Geoletti!” I cried, gripping him with force, “what is it? what is the matter with you? You heard and saw him. Was it not the man?”
He only writhed the harder.
“Signore, I see somsing—I hear somsing! But his eyes—my God! zey see everysing—his soul go into the deep places—zey look round the door when his voice spik, though he not move his body.”
Quite suddenly he swayed and fell over. I don’t know whether or not he was seized with a sort of fit. He lay rigid and staring, and foam appeared on his lips. But in a minute it was over. He came to himself, sane once more, but dazed and for the moment quite helpless and exhausted.
What devilish cantrip had so overthrown his reason? But, from whatever cause, the moral of his seizure was plain to me. Henceforth, on my shoulders alone must rest the main burden of the Nemesis.
Hours passed before the man was sufficiently himself again to justify my use of him for witness. And, in the meanwhile, how was my love accounting for my tardiness?
Shecame to me, dear love, the moment I had entered the house. Her sweet eyes, wet and wild, were full of sorrow and unmeant reproach. They gave one startled glance at the Italian, where he stood behind me, deferential in the shadows, and then came back in mute appealing to my face.
“Sit down here, Geoletti,” I said, “until I send for you.”
He obeyed, and I drew the girl into a room hard by, and shut the door, and held out impassioned arms.
“I could not help it, Ira; indeed, I could not. Things beyond my controlling have detained me.”
In a moment she had run to me—had abandoned herself to me, and was sobbing in my arms as if her heart would break.
“Richard, I have wanted you so! Such a dreadful thing!”
“Ira, my darling, what is this?”
“I don’t know what it is. You must go to him—you must go to him at once. He has been asking for you.”
“He? Who?”
“Lord Skene. O! she has gone away—left us! He has been questioning me—Uncle Charlie has—and I could tell him nothing. How could I? but you, Richard?”
“Hush, my dearest darling. Try and compose yourself. Who has gone away? Tell me in one word, now.”
“Aunt Georgie has.”
“She has gone away? run away, do you mean?”
“She left a letter. He will show it you. There must not be any scandal, Richard. Some plausible explanation must be given. She went away before lunch—on foot, and by herself. When I went to look for her, she was gone, and only the letter was left, and I took it to uncle, and he read it, and almost broke down before the servants. But you know what he is. In another moment no one would have thought anything was the matter—not until I had him alone. O, Richard! what is it? Everything seems dark and miserable. And you know, and you won’t tell me.”
“I will tell you if you ask me to; but you will not ask me, dear—not yet. I see another stroke of scoundrelism in this, perhaps. Why didn’t I send him to his death! I believe I should have, if I’d known—the smiling cursed devil!”
“Richard! Who?—you are terrifying me out of my senses.”
“My love, you must not. Look, little girl—little dear, dear girl. I am holding you—I am Richard, your lover—your lover who puts his strong arms about you, and tells you it shall all come right. Will you not trust me?”
“Yes, I will—I will, Richard. Only your violence makes me sick for you.”
“It makes me sick for myself, to think I cannot control it before my bird with her beating heart. Be quiet, little soft frightened heart! Now kiss me, Ira, as I hold you so; and then I will go to him without a moment’s more delay.”
Yet, for all my resolution, my own heart was beating violently as I went to seek the old man in his study, where he sat alone. He was at his desk, his head leaned upon his hand. The lights were lit, but not enough to flood the room, which lay in partial shadow. It gave me a pitiful shock, as he turned his face, to see how haggard it was, how unkempt his hair, so sprucely groomed in general, how all in a base moment his age had betrayed him. He started upon recognising me, and gave a heavy sigh, and rose as if to move, but, feeling his weakness, sank down again, with a forced laugh.
“Egad!” said he—“and I’ve drunk nothing. You must come to the mountain, Mahomet, as it can’t come to you.”
I took a chair by the desk, and, leaning forward, looked at him earnestly.
“Lord Skene,” I said low, “Miss Christmas has told me. You meant her to, I suppose?”
He hesitated an instant; then pushed an open letter towards me; but in the act withdrew it.
“One moment, my boy,” he said. “There are things that—the essentials are all you’ll need. Oblige me by reading only what I underline.”
He was busy a little, with a shaking hand; then thrust the letter towards me once more.
“There,” he said. “You’re her son anyhow. You’ll spare me any comments, Gaskett, but such as bear strictly upon the question of her flight and its reasons. I think it likely you’ll know more about those than I do. There seems a coincidence—damn it, boy, wasn’t there some damned conscious raven croaking in you the other day, when—there, read what I’ve underlined.”
He turned his face away impatiently as I took his letter, and read what he had marked:—