CHAPTER XXVTHE PARTING OF THE WAYS
A minute after Guy had peeped into her bedroom Myra awakened. Her sleep had been short and she awoke unrefreshed. She arose mechanically and was surprised that her maid was not there, that her bath was not ready. She looked at a clock and saw that the hour was not yet five. She lay down again upon her bed and watched the clouds chasing each other across the sky. She fell to counting them as they crossed her field of vision, bounded by the two sides of the window frame. In the first hour there were seventy-two, between six and seven, twenty-one, between seven and eight, only three. When the maid came at half past eight the sky had been untarnished for a whole half hour.
She told the girl to make the bath hot. The hot water was very comforting. She found a physical satisfaction in the caress of the warm water. As a child she had always delighted in her bath. She recalled her childish delight. Anything to keep thought at bay.
After the bath she dressed slowly. The maid was exasperated, but Myra was quite heedless of the fact. The day was hardly begun, and there were so many hours in the day to be filled somehow with anything that would stave off thought. At eleven she ordered breakfast and sat down alone to it. The dishes went away untouched. She took a newspaper into the drawing-room, but she gotno further than the door. It was there Guy had rejected the love she had offered him. She had no feeling of shame, only she could not remain there. She went instead to Lynton Hora's study. The room awakened another thought. What would the Commandatore say? He had told her to keep Guy, and Guy had gone. She remembered Hora's unuttered threat, but she had not great fear of his anger. Still she knew he would be angry, for Guy had offered to marry her, and she had refused the offer. It was not marriage she wanted, only to be loved, and she was compelled to refuse. But the Commandatore would blame her, for Guy had gone. Her lips drooped at the thought. Her spirit was broken.
Lynton Hora returned. She heard his step in the hall, the firm footstep followed by the shuffle of his lamed leg. But she did not attempt to move. He came straight to his own room. She did not even glance up as he entered.
"Where's Guy?" His voice was harsh.
"Gone," she replied without lifting her eyes.
For a minute no other word was spoken. Hora paced the room, up and down from door to window, and every time he turned to face Myra the scowl on his face deepened. Her manifest distress awakened no pity in him. He even marvelled that he had ever thought her beautiful. Her face was dull and expressionless, the lustre had gone from her hair, her figure drooped despondently. She recalled to his mind a dropsical old woman, clad in rags, with a palsied hand grasping at a bottle of gin in a dilapidated outhouse in Fancy Lane.
"When is he coming back?" he snarled again.
"Never."
Did her lips fashion the word? She had no warrant for making so definite a reply, but she knew that it was true.
Hora's anger nearly loosened a torrent of invective. But he refrained. What was the use? Myra had failed. Guy was lost to him. She was of no use to him now.
"If Guy has gone, you had better take yourself off, too," he said deliberately.
She did not appear to hear him, and he repeated the command with growing irritation.
He was surprised to see the tears trickle down her cheeks and the corners of her mouth turn downwards. There had been no snivelling about Myra in the past.
"I could not help Guy going. He does not love me," she said meekly.
Hora's scorn could no longer be restrained. "Love," he sneered. "The world is mad on the subject, the besotted idiocy of immature brains. Because a girl would and a boy won't a man's plans and schemes are to be wrecked. I'll be alone in future. You can take yourself off as soon as you like."
"Where am I to go?" she asked.
Hora shrugged his shoulders. "You have the whole world to choose from," he sneered. "Go where you like; your native gutter is about the only place which is really suitable, but I don't care where you go so long as you do not cross my path again."
For the first time Myra looked up. She met his glance, and so fierce an anger blazed in his eyes that a thrill of physical fear passed through her. Had she been in her normal condition the anger would have awakened an answering flame in herself. But she was broken in spirit.She shrank from meeting his anger. She rose listlessly from her chair and went out of the room. She supposed that she must obey. She had always obeyed Hora. But it was very hard to be turned out thus. Where to go? That was a difficult question to decide at a moment's notice. Perhaps the Commandatore was right, and that her proper place was the gutter. The Commandatore was usually right.
She gathered together some of her jewels, and dressed herself in one of her smartest frocks. She had a vague idea that she was doing unwisely, but the bright colour attracted her. Her brain had room for only one thought. She pinned on her hat carefully and went quietly out. She did not cast one glance backwards. The bracelet Guy had had made for her from the stones which had originally encircled the miniature was still clasped upon her arm.
Hora saw her leave, but he made no effort to check her. He had not intended to turn her from his door, and noting the frock and the hat he was quite easy in his mind. "She will return," he said to himself, and straightway began to think of Guy. If Guy was never going to return, Hora foresaw that he must seek him out. He acted upon the decision at once, and drove away to the Albany. He still had belief in his own powers of persuasion. The thought of using Guy as a tool for his revenge had passed entirely out of his mind. He wanted nothing but that Guy, the son of his adoption, should come back to him.
At the Albany he arrived to find the newly furnished chambers in confusion. Guy himself opened the door to admit him. He did not appear surprised at the visit.
Hora enquired why Guy had answered the door himself.
"I've got rid of my man," said Guy.
"Retrenchment?" asked the Commandatore.
"Yes," said Guy.
"I don't see the necessity," said Hora.
"I do," answered Guy with gravity.
Hora had followed him into the sitting-room and stood there expectantly. "Why?" he asked pointedly.
Guy hesitated. There was so much to explain that he did not know where to begin. Hora's next question did not make his task easier.
"Myra tells me that you have deserted us, is it true?" he asked.
"I can hardly say definitely. The answer in all probability will not rest with me," replied Guy.
He realised suddenly the whimsicality of the position in which he was momentarily placed—the position of defending himself from the charge of refusing to continue a criminal existence. The thought won a smile from his lips.
"You cannot tell me?" said Hora. "Have you considered thoroughly?" He stepped forward and laid his hand on the young man's arm. "Have you considered what such a decision would mean to me, Guy? I am getting on in years. You have always been with me. I might go far to meet your wishes, even to the extent of abandoning my profession, if I could keep you with me."
"It would not be enough." Guy's answer was stern and hard.
Hora was startled by the tone. "What more can you require?" he asked.
"What more?" said Guy bitterly. "What more?" His face flushed and he held up his hand. "Atonement," he replied, "atonement for the past."
There was accusation in Guy's tone, and Hora shrank under it, but he rallied his wits. "Why so melodramatic?" he sneered.
"Oh, I know it sounds ridiculous in your ears," he answered, "but I see no other way of regaining my own self-esteem." He turned fiercely on Hora. "Why did you bring me up differently from other boys? Why did you, day by day, week by week, and year by year, instil into my ears your lying philosophy? Why did you make your son a thief—a thief?"
All the concentrated bitterness of Guy's musings was infused into the concluding words. Hora's lips grew pale and his hands trembled as he listened. He recognised the emotion from which Guy suffered by the memory of his own experience when he had himself been branded in the light of day and the sight of all men. Still he strove to meet the point of view.
"I thought you had learned to place their true value upon conventional terms," he remarked.
"I have," said Guy, more bitterly than before. "I have learned that a thief is a thief whatever sophistry may be used to throw a glamour of romance over his actions."
"I never taught you otherwise," remarked Hora, "only that all men are thieves, only that the hypocritical many steal under the cloak of the law, and the intellectually honest few pursue their avocation in defiance of the law. Why reproach yourself for intellectual honesty?"
Guy made no reply and Hora plunged into argument."What is theft? Merely the acquisition of the desirable by unconventional means. Is it a virtue to gratify your desire by the same process as the dull souls that are presumably dignified by the name of common humanity? If so, virtue is a mere synonym for mediocrity. I thought you knew better, Guy. I thought that you had learned that man owes his chief duty to himself, that his desires are meant to be gratified, that the most courageous way of gratifying his desires is the only way for man to attain his highest development."
He pursued the theme with animation. Guy had seated himself, leaning his head on his hand. Hora thought that his attitude was one of deep attention. When he paused for breath Guy spoke:
"It is of no use, Commandatore. I have gone over the same arguments with myself a hundred times, but I can no longer persuade myself that they are anything but sheer sophistry."
Lynton Hora shrugged his shoulders. "I don't understand why your opinions should have undergone so sudden a change."
"And yet you have known a good woman's love?" said Guy suddenly.
The remark stung. Hora's eyes flashed and his lips closed tightly for a few seconds before he trusted himself to speak.
"So that's the explanation," he said at last. "I thought as much. A woman is responsible for every man's folly, and you like the rest are ready to abuse your intellect at the bidding of some muling miss whose intelligence will never allow her to discern the asses' ears which adorn the image of the great divinity conventionwhich she worships in common with the majority of her feeble-minded fellows. Who is this wonder who has robbed you of the use of your brains? Am I right in guessing that she is of the family of that prince of hypocrites, Marven? I can see I am right. And for one of that brood you will cut yourself adrift from me, clothe yourself in the ready-made fustian of the dull herd! An honest woman's love! There was never an honest woman to be found amongst the Challys or Marvens——"
His anger had carried him out of himself, and too late Hora perceived that his virulent tongue had said too much.
Guy had drawn himself up, pale with anger.
"Sir," he said, "I must ask you to leave me to myself. I cannot listen to abuse of one who is more to me than anyone else in the world."
Hora strove to undo the effect of his words. "Chivalrous as ever, Guy," he remarked quietly, though despite his intention a sneer curled his lips at what appeared to him a ridiculous exhibition of sentimentalism.
Guy did not reply to the taunt. He continued steadily:
"I must ask you to leave me, yet before you go, I will give you fair warning of my intentions. You have learned of the alteration in my opinions. I have told you that only by atonement shall I feel that I can regain my self-esteem. There is only one atonement I can make."
"Yes," said Hora breathlessly.
"I intend to surrender myself to justice," said Guy, "within the next forty-eight hours."
Lynton Hora was stunned. The utter madness of the idea left him bereft of the power of speech for a moment,and when the capacity returned to him he could only think of one argument.
"You are not reckoning on Meriel Challys marrying you when you have 'atoned,' as you call it," he said.
Guy shook his head. "I have no hope," he said wearily. "Good-bye, Commandatore."
Hora made no answer. He knew that it was useless to argue with Guy any longer. The set of his lips, the angle of his jaw, the quietude with which he made the announcement were eloquent of determination. The door closed behind him and he went out into the street as one dazed. The first, a merely momentary impulse, was to leave Guy to his own devices. But that passed. He became possessed by fear—an overpowering fear of imminent danger to himself. He judged rightly that Guy's chivalry, the chivalry which was leading him to sacrifice himself to an ideal, would equally compel him to keep silence in regard to his confederate. But Guy's silence would not protect him if enquiries were pushed home in regard to either of the two adventures in which Guy had taken part. Lynton Hora knew that he could not escape suspicion, and suspicion once awakened he knew that his career would come to an end. There loomed before his mind the long days of dull routine, the still longer nights behind the locked doors, the coarse food of the prison, the horrible convict dress. Furtively he looked over his shoulder, for it seemed to him that a hand was almost outstretched to grasp him.
Pooh! There was nobody taking any notice of him. The pleasant-featured, sunburnt man who passed him at the moment could have no idea whose sleeve he had brushed. The Master crushed down his fear. Guy mustbe protected against himself, and there was no time to waste. A lunatic asylum? Certainly Guy was mad enough for one. But there would be many difficulties to be surmounted, and time was short. Hora's mind became active as it always did under stress of necessity. Was there no one who could prevail upon Guy to forego his intention, no argument which would appeal to him? Stay. There was one which might succeed. Supposing Guy were to learn his real parentage.
Lynton Hora hastened his steps. He saw one chance of saving Guy from the consequences of his folly, of saving himself also, and at the same time paying his debt of hatred. Captain Marven assuredly would never allow his son to consign himself to a gaol. Guy would be too chivalrous to smirch the fair fame of a family to which Meriel belonged. With his mind dwelling on this expedient, Hora looked behind him no more. He was not aware that the man with the sunburnt face kept him steadily in view until he disappeared into his own abode. He did not suspect that Detective Inspector Kenly, for he was the man who had brushed his sleeve, waited patiently until he reappeared again and followed him discreetly until he knocked at the door of Captain Marven's town house. The Inspector only saw in that fact one additional piece of evidence of Marven's guilty connection with the Horas. He saw that Hora put a package into the hands of the servant who opened the door, and he made a mental note of the fact. He guessed that the King's Messenger had arrived in town in obedience to the summons which had been sent him, and he assumed that he had communicated the fact of his arrival toHora. Still at the heels of his quarry he returned again to Westminster Mansions, and there he transferred the duty to one of his subordinates. The hour was two in the afternoon, and at three he was to be a fourth at the interview between Captain Marven and the Great Man and the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office.