CHAPTER XX.REVELATIONSAs it happened, Edith had just left London for a week to stay with friends in Cornwall, and therefore could not obey Lord Devene’s summons till after her return. When at length she did arrive, she was shocked at the change in his appearance.“You think that I look ill?” he said, reading her mind.“Yes, I must say that I do, Cousin George,” she answered, as she contemplated his snow-white hair, shrunken figure, and thin face worn with sorrow and weariness.“Well, you see, I am no longer young. Threescore and ten are the full years of man, and I have just completed them. But that’s not the worst of it; the old sleeplessness is back upon me with a vengeance. I have scarcely closed my eyes for six nights. This last job, the loss of my poor boy, has finished me, and now I don’t care how quickly I follow him into the dark; the sooner the better, I think; yes, the sooner the better.”“Don’t say that,” said Edith gently. “I hope that you have a good many years before you.”“No, no, nor months, nor perhaps weeks,” he added slowly. “My treadmill is nearly finished, the accursed wheel is going to stop. But,” he went on swiftly, as though to prevent her answering him, “I have sent for you to talk about your affairs, not mine. Why will you not marry Dick Learmer?”“Do you consider him a desirable man for a woman to marry, Cousin George?”“No, I don’t. He has gone all to bits of late, and he doesn’t exactly give off an odour of sanctity, does he? In fact, if you ask me my private opinion as his relative, who has had the honour of supporting him more or less for many years, I should say that he was about as big a blackguard as you could find in London, and I have always wondered how you could care twopence about him.”“And yet you suggest that I should marry him.”“Well, you know he is going to be a rich man, and you might as well have your share. But I understand that you won’t.”“No,” said Edith decidedly, “I won’t. He did fascinate me rather once, but I have got over that, and now I dislike him. It is curious how we change in these matters—only I wish I had seen the truth earlier.”“Yes, so do I. If you had, perhaps you would have gone to Egypt when you thought fit to stay at home. Well, if you won’t commit bigamy, which I admit is an awkward thing to do, why not make it up with Rupert?”Edith gasped and sank back in her chair.“How do you—I mean, what do you know?” she exclaimed. “Has Dick told you?”“Ho!” said this wise old man, drawing his white eyebrows together, “so Master Dick has a finger in this pie too, has he? He has not only murdered Rupert; he has buried him also.”“Murdered!”“What else do you call it whenhegot him sent off to Egypt on his wedding day upon a particularly dangerous mission, and when, on the failure of that mission and his reported death,heeven took the opportunity to poison the minds of his chiefs and so blacken his memory.”“So he really did those things?” remarked Edith reflectively.“Certainly; I will give you chapter and verse for it if you like. But about Rupert.” He paused, and drew a bow at a venture. “What happened when you saw him?”“So Dickhastold you,” she said. “Well, if he will lie about one thing, he will lie about another. But why force me to repeat the story?”“Because I should like to hear it first-hand. What happened, and when?”“Over seven years ago,” answered Edith hoarsely, “Rupert came back, on New Year’s Eve, a Sunday, after Dick had been to lunch. He was dressed in horrible rough clothes, and his hair was long and tangled like that of a wild man. His foot had been cut off, and his left eye put out by those savages there in the Soudan. They tortured him because he would not become a Mahommedan.”“Ah!” said Lord Devene, “personally I think that the Mahommedan religion has points, but—plucky fellow, Rupert; it might have recommended him to some women. Well?”“Well, he was horrible to me. As a friend I could scarcely have borne him, but as a husband—oh! you know.”“I think you said that Dick had been to luncheon, did you not? Now, had he perhaps suggested himself as what on a Board of Directors is called an alternative?”“He had asked me to marry him,” replied Edith, dropping her head.“With the usual concomitants, I suppose, and perhaps had not been too roughly rebuffed. He was better-looking then, wasn’t he? Well, under the circumstances, no doubt, a mere martyr in badly fitting clothes, and without a foot, would have seemed horrible to any refined young woman. Husbands often assume that appearance to wives who chance to have followed their finer instincts, and fallen in love with somebody else. But what became of our martyr? Is he now preaching Christianity among the benighted Mahommedans?”“You are cruel to me,” said Edith, with something like a sob.“Then learn patience from the example of the martyr, who seems to have suffered much without complaining, for conscience’ sake—like you, dear Edith, and—answer the question.”“I told him,” she said, in a low voice, “that as he was dead, he had better remain dead. He went away; I don’t know what became of him, or whether he is alive or not.”“Then allow me to reassure your anxious heart upon that point. To the best of my belief, unless I am very much mistaken, the admirable Rupert is at present living in an oasis called Tama, somewhere in the desert, not far from the Soudan; I don’t know the exact locality, but doubtless it can easily be ascertained. Moreover, he has prospered better than most martyrs do, for with characteristic folly, he has paid back £2,000, which he did not owe, to the Government, in some particularly stupid and roundabout fashion. By the way, you never claimed his insurance, did you? No. Well, that’s lucky, for you might have been prosecuted. To return—in this happy oasis, as I believe, Rupert lives at ease, assisting its fair ruler to govern some primitive community, who apparently grow dates and manufacture salt for his and her benefit, for he seems to have relaxed his iron principles sufficiently to allow himself to contract a morganatic marriage, of which, under the circumstances, you will be the last to complain.”“I don’t believe it,” said Edith, with some energy. “It’s not like Rupert to break his word.”“It would be like a born idiot if he didn’t. Why should you have a monopoly in that respect?” Lord Devene answered, with withering sarcasm. “But perhaps the best thing to do would be to go and find out. Look here, Edith,” he said, dropping his bitter, bantering tone, “I have never set up for virtue; I hate the name of it as it is commonly used, but I must tell you that I think you an exceedingly wicked woman. What business have you to treat the man whom you had married in this way, just because you had been philandering with that accursed Dick, and because he had lost his leg and his prospects of a title? Well, his leg won’t grow again, but the title is sprouting finely. Hadn’t you better make haste and secure it? Lady Devene sounds better than Mrs. Ullershaw, relict of a forgotten colonel in the Egyptian army. Also, perhaps you would be happier as the wife of an honourable man than as the friend of Dick Learmer.”“I’m not his friend,” replied Edith indignantly, “—now after what you have told me, for it was base to try to blacken the reputation of a dead man. Also, I don’t like him at all; his ways of life and even his appearance disgust me.”“I am glad to hear it,” said Lord Devene.“As for your reproaches about poor Rupert,” she went on, “you find it convenient to forget that it was you who forced me into that marriage. I never pretended to be in love with him, although it is true that now, when I am older, I see things in a different light, and have more regard for him than ever I had before.”“Now, when you have escaped from the blighting shadow of the other man’s influence, you mean, Edith. But, whatever the reason, better late than not at all. You blame me for having, by a gift of £25,000, etc., ‘forced’ you into the marriage. Well, would you like to know why I did so?”“Yes; I should very much.”“Then I see no reason why I should not tell you—now. It was because you happen to be my daughter, Edith.”She gasped again, then said: “Is that the truth, or one of your bad jokes?”“The truth. I would rather not enter on the subject with you, but you can have your mother’s statement to read afterwards, if you like, and I don’t know that the fact need distress you.”“It distresses me very much,” answered Edith bitterly. “Hitherto I always thought that my mother was honest, and that my father was a good if a foolish man. Now those illusions have gone, like the rest, and now, too, I understand where all that is bad in me came from, and that my odd dislike of Rupert was inherited—for I have heard that story from Dick.”Even the hardened Lord Devene winced a little beneath these bitter shafts.“It would seem, my dear Edith,” he said, “that your powers of offensive speech are at least your own, since mine, which some people think considerable, are put to the blush by them.”“I pay you back in your own coin, that is all. For an hour you have sat there mocking and insulting me, tearing me to pieces and stamping on me, ending up with the information that I am—what I am. Do you wonder, then, that I retaliate? Cousin—I beg your pardon, but how do you wish me to address you in future? Well,” she went on, without waiting for an answer, “I am glad that Rupert knew nothing about it, for at any rate, as I think you once said, he was the only respectable man in the family, and he might have felt aggrieved under all the circumstances.”“It is highly probable that he did. Do you remember a letter which the footman gave to him at the train when he was starting for Egypt after your marriage? Yes? Well, that letter informed him of our exact relationship, leaving it optional with him to pass on the facts to you, or not, as he liked.”“He never said a word,” exclaimed Edith. “No, not even in that scene when we parted, and he might so easily have used what he knew to hurt me. Oh! he is different to us all—he is different.”“Quite so, and that is why I wished you to marry him. Also, then as now he was going to get the title and the property, and, unnatural creature though you think me to be, I had, as it happened, a wish that you should share those temporalities. Indeed I have it still, and that is why I desire and implore that you should make it up with Rupert if he is still living. Listen, Edith!” he went on earnestly, “you are still a beautiful and admired woman, but you are now well past your youth, and soon the admirers will fall away and you haven’t many real friends, and can’t marry anyone else to protect and look after you. So I suggest that for your own sake you should take refuge with a husband in whom you yourself admit that there is much to esteem. Edith, my days are almost done; it is very probable that I shall have no further opportunity of talking to you upon this or any other subject. I urge you therefore as one who, being responsible for your presence in the world, has your welfare most earnestly at heart, to promise me that you will make inquiries, and if you find that Rupert is living, as I believe, that you will go to him, for he will certainly not come to you, and ask his pardon for the past. Will you do it?”“I—think so,” she answered slowly, “and yet, after all that has been—oh! how can I? And how will he receive me?”“I am not sure,” answered Lord Devene. “Were I in his place, I know how I should receive you,” he added, with a grim little laugh, “but Rupert is a forbearing creature. The trouble is that he may have formed other ties. All I can suggest is that you should be patient and try to work upon his feelings and sense of duty. Now I have said all I can, and shall say no more who have other things to think of. You have made your own bed, Edith, and if you can’t re-make it, you must lie on it as it is, that’s all. Good-bye.”She rose and held out her hand.“Before you go,” he said, with a nervous little clearing of the throat,—“it seems weak I know, but I should like to hear you say that you forgive me, not about the Rupert business, for there I am sure I did the best I could for you, but for bringing you into this world at all. So far, I admit, whoever’s the fault may be, you do not seem to have made a great success of it, any more than I have. As you know, I am troubled by no form of the common superstitions of our age, holding as I do that we are the purest accidents, born like gnats from the life-creating influences of sun and air and moisture, developed out of matter and passing back into matter, to live again as matter, whereof our intellect is but a manifestation, and no more. Still I cannot help acknowledging, after many years of observation, that there does seem to be some kind of fate which influences the affairs of men, and at times brings retribution on them for their follies and mistakes. If that is so, Edith, it is this fate which you should blame,” and the old man looked at her almost appealingly.“No,” she answered, in a cold voice. “Once I remember, when I did not know that you were my father, I told you that I loved you—I suppose that the kinship of our blood prompted me. Now when I know how close that kinship is, and in what way it came about, by the disgrace of my mother during the life-time of her husband, I love you no more. It is not the fate that I blame, but you, you—its instrument, who were free to choose the better part.”“So be it,” replied Lord Devene quietly. “Apply those words to your own life, Edith, and by them let it be judged as you have judged me.”Then they parted.Edith kept her promise. Going to a great lawyer, famous for his investigations of difficult matters, she told him merely that rumours had reached her to the effect that her husband, who for many years had been supposed to be dead, was in reality alive in the Soudan, or in its bordering desert, and suggested that he should put himself in communication with Lord Southwick and the Egyptian authorities with the object of ascertaining the truth, and if necessary send someone out to Egypt. The lawyer made notes, said that the matter should be followed up, and that he would keep her advised as to the results of his inquiries. Thereupon Edith, who, after their last bitter and tragic interview, did not wish to see anything more at present of the man whom she must believe to be her father, left town, as indeed it was her custom to do during the month of August, and went away to Scotland. When she had been there nearly six weeks, she received one morning a telegram from Lady Devene, which was dated from Grosvenor Square and read:Come here at once. Your Cousin George is no more. I want your help.Shocked by this news she managed to catch the midday train to London. At Rugby she saw the placard of an evening paper. On it, among other news’ headings, was printed: “Sad death of a well-known peer.” She bought the paper, and after some search found a short paragraph which said:“We regret to announce that Lord Devene was found dead in bed at his house in Grosvenor Square this morning. The cause of his death is not yet known.” Then followed some biographical details and these words: “As Lord Devene lost his only son some months ago, it is believed that the peerage becomes extinct. The settled property, however, passes to his cousin, Richard Learmer, Esq., M.P.”From the station Edith drove direct to Grosvenor Square and was received by Tabitha in the drawing-room. There she sat in her black dress, sad-faced, calm, imposing, like an incarnation, Edith thought, of that fate whereof her father had spoken to her at their last interview. They embraced each other without warmth, for at heart these two women were not friends.“How did it happen?” asked Edith.“He died as her first ladyship died,” answered the widow, “by an overdose of chloral. You know he could never sleep.”“How did he come to take an overdose?” asked Edith again.“I do not know,” she answered meaningly; “perhaps the doctors they can tell you. Would you like to see him?”“No,” said Edith, with a shudder; “I had rather not.”“Ach!” said Lady Devene, “I forgot; you did always run away from the sick and fear the dead; it is your nature.”“Are you sorry?” said Edith curiously, perhaps to change the conversation.“Yes; for his soul which goes to its reward I am sorry, for he did not repent before he died, who had many things of which he should repent. For myself I am not sorry, for I have done my duty by him, and now at last the chains do fall off my neck and God has set me free to give me time to make my peace with Him before I die also.”Then saying that she must get some food, Edith left her, for she did not wish to pursue this painful conversation.If the doctors of whom Lady Devene had spoken suspected anything unusual, they were singularly reticent upon the point. All they could or would say was that Lord Devene, who for many years had been in the habit of taking chloral to combat his constitutional sleeplessness, had on this particular night taken too much. So the usual verdict was returned: “Death from misadventure, the cause being an overdose of chloral,” and many comments were made on the curious fact that Lord Devene and his first wife should have come to a precisely similar end.The will, which had been executed after the death of the little boy, was found to be very short. It made no mention of the entailed property, leaving the next heir to establish his claim, and after stating that the testator’s wife was provided for by settlement, appointed Edith Ullershaw residuary legatee without restrictions. This sounded simple enough, but when matters came to be looked into it was found that Edith took real and personal estate to the value of £200,000. Subject to the life-interest of the widow, even the house in Grosvenor Square was hers, so she was now a rich woman.“Ach! my dear Edith,” said Lady Devene, when she learned that she had a right to continue to live in the great mansion, “take it, take it at once. I hate the place. Two thousand pounds a year, that is plenty for me—£500 to live on, and £1,500 to give away. Yes, at last the poor shall get some of all those monies which have been collected out of their toil and their drink-vices.”Needless to say, the exultant Dick swooped upon the settled property like a famished hawk, demanding to be declared its rightful possessor. But then arose a most unpleasant hitch, for just at this time there came a letter to Edith from her lawyers, announcing that they had received telegraphic advices from the agent whom they had despatched to Egypt, informing them that it appeared to be almost certain that the white man who was living in the oasis Tama was none other than that Colonel Rupert Ullershaw who was supposed to have been killed many years before. The lawyers added that, on their own responsibility, and on behalf of her husband, whom they believed to be alive and the present Lord Devene, they had made representations in the proper quarter, as a result of which no one would be allowed to touch the settled property until the matter was thoroughly investigated.Of course all this strange story soon found its way into the newspapers, and many were the rapturous congratulations which Edith received, even from persons with whom she had the very smallest acquaintance. Meanwhile the lawyers had again been in communication with their agent, who was established at Wady-Halfa. A second telegram was received from this capable and enterprising person, announcing that with great difficulty he had succeeded in reaching the oasis, and in sending a message to Colonel Ullershaw, informing him of his accession to the title, adding, however, that all his lordship had replied was, that he did not want the title, and refused to leave the place.“It would appear,” went on their letter to Edith, covering this cable, “that his lordship has suffered somewhat mentally from long confinement among these savages, who, we are informed, have cut off his foot to prevent his escaping, as they regard him as a god who has brought them great prosperity which would vanish if he left them. We presume, therefore, that your ladyship will proceed to Egypt as soon as possible and use your personal influence to withdraw him from his unhappy situation. We are informed that the people of the oasis are peaceable, but, if necessary, that the authorities will give you any assistance which may be required.”Now the whole thing was out, and became a subject of general conversation at a hundred dinner tables. Moreover, it was rumoured that some years before Rupert Ullershaw had actually been seen in London. General Sir Alfred Alltalk declared that he had met him upon the steps of the Army and Navy Club, and a further ill-natured tale was whispered that he had come to see his wife, who would have nothing to do with him, because at that time he had ceased to be heir to the peerage. This story, which Edith was not wrong in ascribing to the indiscreet or malicious utterances of Dick, who was furious with disappointment and thirsting for revenge, soon reached her ears. Of course she contradicted it, but equally of course she had now no alternative but to go to Egypt.“Ach!” said the Dowager Lady Devene, when Edith expatiated to her upon the hardship and dangers of the journey which she must undertake alone—“ach! if that is all, I will come with you as a companion. I am not afraid, and I have always wished to see the land where Pharaoh oppressed the Israelites. We will start next week, and in a month I hope to see my dear Rupert again—almost as much as you do,” she added, looking at Edith sideways.Now as this speech was made before several other people, Edith had no choice but to acquiesce, and indeed it had come to this—she also wished to see Rupert. Even in her somewhat flinty heart remorse had been at work of late years; also, she had wearied of her lonely life, and wished to put a stop to the scandals that were floating about concerning her, which, as she foresaw, would soon culminate in her being exposed to much annoyance from Dick. In fact, he was already threatening to blackmail her and making unpleasant remarks as to certain indiscreet letters that she had written to him after Rupert’s visit to London, in which that visit and other matters showing the extreme intimacy which existed between them were alluded to not too obscurely. So she arranged to depart for the East, accompanied by Lady Devene.Before they sailed, she received a packet from the late Lord Devene’s bankers, which, they stated by the mouth of a confidential clerk, they had been directed to deliver to her one month after his death, and not before. On opening it she found that it contained that statement concerning herself made by her mother, to which Lord Devene had alluded. Also, there were two letters from him, one addressed to her and the other to Rupert, the latter being left open that she might read it.That to herself was brief, and ran:I have given you all I can. Accept this wealth as a make-weight to the initial wrong I did to you by becoming your father. I was weak enough to hope that when I revealed that fact to you, you would show some affection towards a lonely and broken-hearted man. You, however, took another view, irritated perhaps by our previous somewhat acrimonious conversation. I grieve to say that on such argumentative occasions I have never been quite able to master my tongue, and as you remarked, you seem to have inherited the weakness. At least I have not cared to expose myself to a second rebuff. I do not blame you, but it is true that from that day forward I made up my mind to end an existence which has become hateful to me. If its dregs could have been sweetened by the love of one who is, after all, my child, I should probably have been content to endure its physical and mental miseries whilst awaiting their natural termination. But it has been destined otherwise, so like some of those old Romans whom I so much admire, my day done, I go from this hated scene out into the utter darkness whence I came. Good-bye! May you be happier than your father,D.It was a horrible letter for a daughter to receive from the author of her being, but fortunately it did not affect Edith so much as would have been the case with many women. She felt that there was a certain injustice about the thing. To begin with, her father had taken her at her word after the incomprehensible male habit. Then she had spoken when utterly irritated, first by his bitter gibes and sarcasms, and secondly by being suddenly informed that she was quite another person than she had supposed herself to be for over thirty years. Still, now when it was too late, she felt grieved. It was generally Edith’s lot to be grieved—too late. Yes, she was grieved, no more, when others might have been paralysed with horror and unavailing remorse.Afterwards, she took out of its envelope and read the letter to Rupert. Here it is:DEAR DEVENE,—For I give you the name which will be yours when you read this, if you should ever do so.I have learned all your story, or if not all of it, at least enough to show me how accurate was the estimate which I formed of you long ago. Had not fortune fought against you, you would have been a great man, if such a creature really exists, which I doubt, since in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, ‘great’ is only a popular translation of the vulgar word ‘successful.’I write now to express the sincere hope that if, as I believe, you are still living, you and Edith, forgetting your previous diversities, and many another trouble and sorrow, will agree to live together in the accustomed, time-hallowed fashion, and if possible leave children behind you to carry on the race. Not that it is worth carrying on, except, perhaps, for certain qualities of your own, but one must make sacrifices upon the altars of habit and sentiment. For what other possible reason can the populations of the earth be continued? Yet there is one—Nature—(perhaps in the wilderness you have found out what that word means)—commands what the good sense of her most cultivated children condemns as entirely useless and undesirable. Perhaps there is some ultimate object in this, though personally I can see none. To me it appears to be nothing more than a part of the blind brutality of things which decrees the continuance, at any rate for a little while, of the highly nervous, overbred and unsatisfactory animal called Man. Well, soon or late he will die of his own sufferings, that increase daily as he advances in the scale of progressive degeneracy, which he dignifies by the name of civilisation. Then perhaps Nature (God is your name for it) will enjoy a good laugh over the whole affair, but as human tears will have ceased to fall, what will that matter?Edith will tell you of the fashion of my end; how, worn out at length by grief—one of the worst gifts of the said civilisation, for the savage feels little—and bodily weakness—the worst gift of our primeval state, I have determined to put an end to both, though this is a fact which there is no need for you to blazon abroad.I can see you solemnly lifting your eyes and saying: ‘Lo! a judgment. What the man drove that unfortunate woman to has fallen back upon his own head. (Under the circumstances “unfortunate” is the exact word that you will use, tempered by a romantic sigh, whereas, in fact, poor Clara was but a very ordinary and middle-class kind of sinner, who did not even shrink from the ruin of the boy whom she pretended to love.) How wonderful is the retribution of Providence! The same death, the same means of death!’Well, you will be quite wrong. Whether one suffers from sleeplessness or from the fear of intolerable exposure does not matter. One takes the most convenient method to end it, and in this case they happen to be identical. There is no Providence, no poetic justice about the business, nothing but what novelists, or rather their critics, call the ‘long arm of coincidence.’Good-bye! I wonder what you have been doing all these years in the Soudan. I should like to hear the story from you; I am sure that it must be interesting. But I am quite convinced that I shall never have the chance. Nothing is absolutely certain except the absolute nothingness that awaits us all.—Believe me, my dear Devene, yours more sincerely than you may think,Devene.“What an odd letter,” thought Edith, as she returned the sheets to their envelope. “I don’t quite understand all of it, but I think that under other circumstances my father might have been a very different man. I wonder if we are quite responsible for what we do, or if the circumstances are responsible? If so, who makes the circumstances?”
As it happened, Edith had just left London for a week to stay with friends in Cornwall, and therefore could not obey Lord Devene’s summons till after her return. When at length she did arrive, she was shocked at the change in his appearance.
“You think that I look ill?” he said, reading her mind.
“Yes, I must say that I do, Cousin George,” she answered, as she contemplated his snow-white hair, shrunken figure, and thin face worn with sorrow and weariness.
“Well, you see, I am no longer young. Threescore and ten are the full years of man, and I have just completed them. But that’s not the worst of it; the old sleeplessness is back upon me with a vengeance. I have scarcely closed my eyes for six nights. This last job, the loss of my poor boy, has finished me, and now I don’t care how quickly I follow him into the dark; the sooner the better, I think; yes, the sooner the better.”
“Don’t say that,” said Edith gently. “I hope that you have a good many years before you.”
“No, no, nor months, nor perhaps weeks,” he added slowly. “My treadmill is nearly finished, the accursed wheel is going to stop. But,” he went on swiftly, as though to prevent her answering him, “I have sent for you to talk about your affairs, not mine. Why will you not marry Dick Learmer?”
“Do you consider him a desirable man for a woman to marry, Cousin George?”
“No, I don’t. He has gone all to bits of late, and he doesn’t exactly give off an odour of sanctity, does he? In fact, if you ask me my private opinion as his relative, who has had the honour of supporting him more or less for many years, I should say that he was about as big a blackguard as you could find in London, and I have always wondered how you could care twopence about him.”
“And yet you suggest that I should marry him.”
“Well, you know he is going to be a rich man, and you might as well have your share. But I understand that you won’t.”
“No,” said Edith decidedly, “I won’t. He did fascinate me rather once, but I have got over that, and now I dislike him. It is curious how we change in these matters—only I wish I had seen the truth earlier.”
“Yes, so do I. If you had, perhaps you would have gone to Egypt when you thought fit to stay at home. Well, if you won’t commit bigamy, which I admit is an awkward thing to do, why not make it up with Rupert?”
Edith gasped and sank back in her chair.
“How do you—I mean, what do you know?” she exclaimed. “Has Dick told you?”
“Ho!” said this wise old man, drawing his white eyebrows together, “so Master Dick has a finger in this pie too, has he? He has not only murdered Rupert; he has buried him also.”
“Murdered!”
“What else do you call it whenhegot him sent off to Egypt on his wedding day upon a particularly dangerous mission, and when, on the failure of that mission and his reported death,heeven took the opportunity to poison the minds of his chiefs and so blacken his memory.”
“So he really did those things?” remarked Edith reflectively.
“Certainly; I will give you chapter and verse for it if you like. But about Rupert.” He paused, and drew a bow at a venture. “What happened when you saw him?”
“So Dickhastold you,” she said. “Well, if he will lie about one thing, he will lie about another. But why force me to repeat the story?”
“Because I should like to hear it first-hand. What happened, and when?”
“Over seven years ago,” answered Edith hoarsely, “Rupert came back, on New Year’s Eve, a Sunday, after Dick had been to lunch. He was dressed in horrible rough clothes, and his hair was long and tangled like that of a wild man. His foot had been cut off, and his left eye put out by those savages there in the Soudan. They tortured him because he would not become a Mahommedan.”
“Ah!” said Lord Devene, “personally I think that the Mahommedan religion has points, but—plucky fellow, Rupert; it might have recommended him to some women. Well?”
“Well, he was horrible to me. As a friend I could scarcely have borne him, but as a husband—oh! you know.”
“I think you said that Dick had been to luncheon, did you not? Now, had he perhaps suggested himself as what on a Board of Directors is called an alternative?”
“He had asked me to marry him,” replied Edith, dropping her head.
“With the usual concomitants, I suppose, and perhaps had not been too roughly rebuffed. He was better-looking then, wasn’t he? Well, under the circumstances, no doubt, a mere martyr in badly fitting clothes, and without a foot, would have seemed horrible to any refined young woman. Husbands often assume that appearance to wives who chance to have followed their finer instincts, and fallen in love with somebody else. But what became of our martyr? Is he now preaching Christianity among the benighted Mahommedans?”
“You are cruel to me,” said Edith, with something like a sob.
“Then learn patience from the example of the martyr, who seems to have suffered much without complaining, for conscience’ sake—like you, dear Edith, and—answer the question.”
“I told him,” she said, in a low voice, “that as he was dead, he had better remain dead. He went away; I don’t know what became of him, or whether he is alive or not.”
“Then allow me to reassure your anxious heart upon that point. To the best of my belief, unless I am very much mistaken, the admirable Rupert is at present living in an oasis called Tama, somewhere in the desert, not far from the Soudan; I don’t know the exact locality, but doubtless it can easily be ascertained. Moreover, he has prospered better than most martyrs do, for with characteristic folly, he has paid back £2,000, which he did not owe, to the Government, in some particularly stupid and roundabout fashion. By the way, you never claimed his insurance, did you? No. Well, that’s lucky, for you might have been prosecuted. To return—in this happy oasis, as I believe, Rupert lives at ease, assisting its fair ruler to govern some primitive community, who apparently grow dates and manufacture salt for his and her benefit, for he seems to have relaxed his iron principles sufficiently to allow himself to contract a morganatic marriage, of which, under the circumstances, you will be the last to complain.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Edith, with some energy. “It’s not like Rupert to break his word.”
“It would be like a born idiot if he didn’t. Why should you have a monopoly in that respect?” Lord Devene answered, with withering sarcasm. “But perhaps the best thing to do would be to go and find out. Look here, Edith,” he said, dropping his bitter, bantering tone, “I have never set up for virtue; I hate the name of it as it is commonly used, but I must tell you that I think you an exceedingly wicked woman. What business have you to treat the man whom you had married in this way, just because you had been philandering with that accursed Dick, and because he had lost his leg and his prospects of a title? Well, his leg won’t grow again, but the title is sprouting finely. Hadn’t you better make haste and secure it? Lady Devene sounds better than Mrs. Ullershaw, relict of a forgotten colonel in the Egyptian army. Also, perhaps you would be happier as the wife of an honourable man than as the friend of Dick Learmer.”
“I’m not his friend,” replied Edith indignantly, “—now after what you have told me, for it was base to try to blacken the reputation of a dead man. Also, I don’t like him at all; his ways of life and even his appearance disgust me.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Lord Devene.
“As for your reproaches about poor Rupert,” she went on, “you find it convenient to forget that it was you who forced me into that marriage. I never pretended to be in love with him, although it is true that now, when I am older, I see things in a different light, and have more regard for him than ever I had before.”
“Now, when you have escaped from the blighting shadow of the other man’s influence, you mean, Edith. But, whatever the reason, better late than not at all. You blame me for having, by a gift of £25,000, etc., ‘forced’ you into the marriage. Well, would you like to know why I did so?”
“Yes; I should very much.”
“Then I see no reason why I should not tell you—now. It was because you happen to be my daughter, Edith.”
She gasped again, then said: “Is that the truth, or one of your bad jokes?”
“The truth. I would rather not enter on the subject with you, but you can have your mother’s statement to read afterwards, if you like, and I don’t know that the fact need distress you.”
“It distresses me very much,” answered Edith bitterly. “Hitherto I always thought that my mother was honest, and that my father was a good if a foolish man. Now those illusions have gone, like the rest, and now, too, I understand where all that is bad in me came from, and that my odd dislike of Rupert was inherited—for I have heard that story from Dick.”
Even the hardened Lord Devene winced a little beneath these bitter shafts.
“It would seem, my dear Edith,” he said, “that your powers of offensive speech are at least your own, since mine, which some people think considerable, are put to the blush by them.”
“I pay you back in your own coin, that is all. For an hour you have sat there mocking and insulting me, tearing me to pieces and stamping on me, ending up with the information that I am—what I am. Do you wonder, then, that I retaliate? Cousin—I beg your pardon, but how do you wish me to address you in future? Well,” she went on, without waiting for an answer, “I am glad that Rupert knew nothing about it, for at any rate, as I think you once said, he was the only respectable man in the family, and he might have felt aggrieved under all the circumstances.”
“It is highly probable that he did. Do you remember a letter which the footman gave to him at the train when he was starting for Egypt after your marriage? Yes? Well, that letter informed him of our exact relationship, leaving it optional with him to pass on the facts to you, or not, as he liked.”
“He never said a word,” exclaimed Edith. “No, not even in that scene when we parted, and he might so easily have used what he knew to hurt me. Oh! he is different to us all—he is different.”
“Quite so, and that is why I wished you to marry him. Also, then as now he was going to get the title and the property, and, unnatural creature though you think me to be, I had, as it happened, a wish that you should share those temporalities. Indeed I have it still, and that is why I desire and implore that you should make it up with Rupert if he is still living. Listen, Edith!” he went on earnestly, “you are still a beautiful and admired woman, but you are now well past your youth, and soon the admirers will fall away and you haven’t many real friends, and can’t marry anyone else to protect and look after you. So I suggest that for your own sake you should take refuge with a husband in whom you yourself admit that there is much to esteem. Edith, my days are almost done; it is very probable that I shall have no further opportunity of talking to you upon this or any other subject. I urge you therefore as one who, being responsible for your presence in the world, has your welfare most earnestly at heart, to promise me that you will make inquiries, and if you find that Rupert is living, as I believe, that you will go to him, for he will certainly not come to you, and ask his pardon for the past. Will you do it?”
“I—think so,” she answered slowly, “and yet, after all that has been—oh! how can I? And how will he receive me?”
“I am not sure,” answered Lord Devene. “Were I in his place, I know how I should receive you,” he added, with a grim little laugh, “but Rupert is a forbearing creature. The trouble is that he may have formed other ties. All I can suggest is that you should be patient and try to work upon his feelings and sense of duty. Now I have said all I can, and shall say no more who have other things to think of. You have made your own bed, Edith, and if you can’t re-make it, you must lie on it as it is, that’s all. Good-bye.”
She rose and held out her hand.
“Before you go,” he said, with a nervous little clearing of the throat,—“it seems weak I know, but I should like to hear you say that you forgive me, not about the Rupert business, for there I am sure I did the best I could for you, but for bringing you into this world at all. So far, I admit, whoever’s the fault may be, you do not seem to have made a great success of it, any more than I have. As you know, I am troubled by no form of the common superstitions of our age, holding as I do that we are the purest accidents, born like gnats from the life-creating influences of sun and air and moisture, developed out of matter and passing back into matter, to live again as matter, whereof our intellect is but a manifestation, and no more. Still I cannot help acknowledging, after many years of observation, that there does seem to be some kind of fate which influences the affairs of men, and at times brings retribution on them for their follies and mistakes. If that is so, Edith, it is this fate which you should blame,” and the old man looked at her almost appealingly.
“No,” she answered, in a cold voice. “Once I remember, when I did not know that you were my father, I told you that I loved you—I suppose that the kinship of our blood prompted me. Now when I know how close that kinship is, and in what way it came about, by the disgrace of my mother during the life-time of her husband, I love you no more. It is not the fate that I blame, but you, you—its instrument, who were free to choose the better part.”
“So be it,” replied Lord Devene quietly. “Apply those words to your own life, Edith, and by them let it be judged as you have judged me.”
Then they parted.
Edith kept her promise. Going to a great lawyer, famous for his investigations of difficult matters, she told him merely that rumours had reached her to the effect that her husband, who for many years had been supposed to be dead, was in reality alive in the Soudan, or in its bordering desert, and suggested that he should put himself in communication with Lord Southwick and the Egyptian authorities with the object of ascertaining the truth, and if necessary send someone out to Egypt. The lawyer made notes, said that the matter should be followed up, and that he would keep her advised as to the results of his inquiries. Thereupon Edith, who, after their last bitter and tragic interview, did not wish to see anything more at present of the man whom she must believe to be her father, left town, as indeed it was her custom to do during the month of August, and went away to Scotland. When she had been there nearly six weeks, she received one morning a telegram from Lady Devene, which was dated from Grosvenor Square and read:
Come here at once. Your Cousin George is no more. I want your help.
Shocked by this news she managed to catch the midday train to London. At Rugby she saw the placard of an evening paper. On it, among other news’ headings, was printed: “Sad death of a well-known peer.” She bought the paper, and after some search found a short paragraph which said:
“We regret to announce that Lord Devene was found dead in bed at his house in Grosvenor Square this morning. The cause of his death is not yet known.” Then followed some biographical details and these words: “As Lord Devene lost his only son some months ago, it is believed that the peerage becomes extinct. The settled property, however, passes to his cousin, Richard Learmer, Esq., M.P.”
From the station Edith drove direct to Grosvenor Square and was received by Tabitha in the drawing-room. There she sat in her black dress, sad-faced, calm, imposing, like an incarnation, Edith thought, of that fate whereof her father had spoken to her at their last interview. They embraced each other without warmth, for at heart these two women were not friends.
“How did it happen?” asked Edith.
“He died as her first ladyship died,” answered the widow, “by an overdose of chloral. You know he could never sleep.”
“How did he come to take an overdose?” asked Edith again.
“I do not know,” she answered meaningly; “perhaps the doctors they can tell you. Would you like to see him?”
“No,” said Edith, with a shudder; “I had rather not.”
“Ach!” said Lady Devene, “I forgot; you did always run away from the sick and fear the dead; it is your nature.”
“Are you sorry?” said Edith curiously, perhaps to change the conversation.
“Yes; for his soul which goes to its reward I am sorry, for he did not repent before he died, who had many things of which he should repent. For myself I am not sorry, for I have done my duty by him, and now at last the chains do fall off my neck and God has set me free to give me time to make my peace with Him before I die also.”
Then saying that she must get some food, Edith left her, for she did not wish to pursue this painful conversation.
If the doctors of whom Lady Devene had spoken suspected anything unusual, they were singularly reticent upon the point. All they could or would say was that Lord Devene, who for many years had been in the habit of taking chloral to combat his constitutional sleeplessness, had on this particular night taken too much. So the usual verdict was returned: “Death from misadventure, the cause being an overdose of chloral,” and many comments were made on the curious fact that Lord Devene and his first wife should have come to a precisely similar end.
The will, which had been executed after the death of the little boy, was found to be very short. It made no mention of the entailed property, leaving the next heir to establish his claim, and after stating that the testator’s wife was provided for by settlement, appointed Edith Ullershaw residuary legatee without restrictions. This sounded simple enough, but when matters came to be looked into it was found that Edith took real and personal estate to the value of £200,000. Subject to the life-interest of the widow, even the house in Grosvenor Square was hers, so she was now a rich woman.
“Ach! my dear Edith,” said Lady Devene, when she learned that she had a right to continue to live in the great mansion, “take it, take it at once. I hate the place. Two thousand pounds a year, that is plenty for me—£500 to live on, and £1,500 to give away. Yes, at last the poor shall get some of all those monies which have been collected out of their toil and their drink-vices.”
Needless to say, the exultant Dick swooped upon the settled property like a famished hawk, demanding to be declared its rightful possessor. But then arose a most unpleasant hitch, for just at this time there came a letter to Edith from her lawyers, announcing that they had received telegraphic advices from the agent whom they had despatched to Egypt, informing them that it appeared to be almost certain that the white man who was living in the oasis Tama was none other than that Colonel Rupert Ullershaw who was supposed to have been killed many years before. The lawyers added that, on their own responsibility, and on behalf of her husband, whom they believed to be alive and the present Lord Devene, they had made representations in the proper quarter, as a result of which no one would be allowed to touch the settled property until the matter was thoroughly investigated.
Of course all this strange story soon found its way into the newspapers, and many were the rapturous congratulations which Edith received, even from persons with whom she had the very smallest acquaintance. Meanwhile the lawyers had again been in communication with their agent, who was established at Wady-Halfa. A second telegram was received from this capable and enterprising person, announcing that with great difficulty he had succeeded in reaching the oasis, and in sending a message to Colonel Ullershaw, informing him of his accession to the title, adding, however, that all his lordship had replied was, that he did not want the title, and refused to leave the place.
“It would appear,” went on their letter to Edith, covering this cable, “that his lordship has suffered somewhat mentally from long confinement among these savages, who, we are informed, have cut off his foot to prevent his escaping, as they regard him as a god who has brought them great prosperity which would vanish if he left them. We presume, therefore, that your ladyship will proceed to Egypt as soon as possible and use your personal influence to withdraw him from his unhappy situation. We are informed that the people of the oasis are peaceable, but, if necessary, that the authorities will give you any assistance which may be required.”
Now the whole thing was out, and became a subject of general conversation at a hundred dinner tables. Moreover, it was rumoured that some years before Rupert Ullershaw had actually been seen in London. General Sir Alfred Alltalk declared that he had met him upon the steps of the Army and Navy Club, and a further ill-natured tale was whispered that he had come to see his wife, who would have nothing to do with him, because at that time he had ceased to be heir to the peerage. This story, which Edith was not wrong in ascribing to the indiscreet or malicious utterances of Dick, who was furious with disappointment and thirsting for revenge, soon reached her ears. Of course she contradicted it, but equally of course she had now no alternative but to go to Egypt.
“Ach!” said the Dowager Lady Devene, when Edith expatiated to her upon the hardship and dangers of the journey which she must undertake alone—“ach! if that is all, I will come with you as a companion. I am not afraid, and I have always wished to see the land where Pharaoh oppressed the Israelites. We will start next week, and in a month I hope to see my dear Rupert again—almost as much as you do,” she added, looking at Edith sideways.
Now as this speech was made before several other people, Edith had no choice but to acquiesce, and indeed it had come to this—she also wished to see Rupert. Even in her somewhat flinty heart remorse had been at work of late years; also, she had wearied of her lonely life, and wished to put a stop to the scandals that were floating about concerning her, which, as she foresaw, would soon culminate in her being exposed to much annoyance from Dick. In fact, he was already threatening to blackmail her and making unpleasant remarks as to certain indiscreet letters that she had written to him after Rupert’s visit to London, in which that visit and other matters showing the extreme intimacy which existed between them were alluded to not too obscurely. So she arranged to depart for the East, accompanied by Lady Devene.
Before they sailed, she received a packet from the late Lord Devene’s bankers, which, they stated by the mouth of a confidential clerk, they had been directed to deliver to her one month after his death, and not before. On opening it she found that it contained that statement concerning herself made by her mother, to which Lord Devene had alluded. Also, there were two letters from him, one addressed to her and the other to Rupert, the latter being left open that she might read it.
That to herself was brief, and ran:
I have given you all I can. Accept this wealth as a make-weight to the initial wrong I did to you by becoming your father. I was weak enough to hope that when I revealed that fact to you, you would show some affection towards a lonely and broken-hearted man. You, however, took another view, irritated perhaps by our previous somewhat acrimonious conversation. I grieve to say that on such argumentative occasions I have never been quite able to master my tongue, and as you remarked, you seem to have inherited the weakness. At least I have not cared to expose myself to a second rebuff. I do not blame you, but it is true that from that day forward I made up my mind to end an existence which has become hateful to me. If its dregs could have been sweetened by the love of one who is, after all, my child, I should probably have been content to endure its physical and mental miseries whilst awaiting their natural termination. But it has been destined otherwise, so like some of those old Romans whom I so much admire, my day done, I go from this hated scene out into the utter darkness whence I came. Good-bye! May you be happier than your father,
D.
It was a horrible letter for a daughter to receive from the author of her being, but fortunately it did not affect Edith so much as would have been the case with many women. She felt that there was a certain injustice about the thing. To begin with, her father had taken her at her word after the incomprehensible male habit. Then she had spoken when utterly irritated, first by his bitter gibes and sarcasms, and secondly by being suddenly informed that she was quite another person than she had supposed herself to be for over thirty years. Still, now when it was too late, she felt grieved. It was generally Edith’s lot to be grieved—too late. Yes, she was grieved, no more, when others might have been paralysed with horror and unavailing remorse.
Afterwards, she took out of its envelope and read the letter to Rupert. Here it is:
DEAR DEVENE,—For I give you the name which will be yours when you read this, if you should ever do so.
I have learned all your story, or if not all of it, at least enough to show me how accurate was the estimate which I formed of you long ago. Had not fortune fought against you, you would have been a great man, if such a creature really exists, which I doubt, since in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, ‘great’ is only a popular translation of the vulgar word ‘successful.’
I write now to express the sincere hope that if, as I believe, you are still living, you and Edith, forgetting your previous diversities, and many another trouble and sorrow, will agree to live together in the accustomed, time-hallowed fashion, and if possible leave children behind you to carry on the race. Not that it is worth carrying on, except, perhaps, for certain qualities of your own, but one must make sacrifices upon the altars of habit and sentiment. For what other possible reason can the populations of the earth be continued? Yet there is one—Nature—(perhaps in the wilderness you have found out what that word means)—commands what the good sense of her most cultivated children condemns as entirely useless and undesirable. Perhaps there is some ultimate object in this, though personally I can see none. To me it appears to be nothing more than a part of the blind brutality of things which decrees the continuance, at any rate for a little while, of the highly nervous, overbred and unsatisfactory animal called Man. Well, soon or late he will die of his own sufferings, that increase daily as he advances in the scale of progressive degeneracy, which he dignifies by the name of civilisation. Then perhaps Nature (God is your name for it) will enjoy a good laugh over the whole affair, but as human tears will have ceased to fall, what will that matter?
Edith will tell you of the fashion of my end; how, worn out at length by grief—one of the worst gifts of the said civilisation, for the savage feels little—and bodily weakness—the worst gift of our primeval state, I have determined to put an end to both, though this is a fact which there is no need for you to blazon abroad.
I can see you solemnly lifting your eyes and saying: ‘Lo! a judgment. What the man drove that unfortunate woman to has fallen back upon his own head. (Under the circumstances “unfortunate” is the exact word that you will use, tempered by a romantic sigh, whereas, in fact, poor Clara was but a very ordinary and middle-class kind of sinner, who did not even shrink from the ruin of the boy whom she pretended to love.) How wonderful is the retribution of Providence! The same death, the same means of death!’
Well, you will be quite wrong. Whether one suffers from sleeplessness or from the fear of intolerable exposure does not matter. One takes the most convenient method to end it, and in this case they happen to be identical. There is no Providence, no poetic justice about the business, nothing but what novelists, or rather their critics, call the ‘long arm of coincidence.’
Good-bye! I wonder what you have been doing all these years in the Soudan. I should like to hear the story from you; I am sure that it must be interesting. But I am quite convinced that I shall never have the chance. Nothing is absolutely certain except the absolute nothingness that awaits us all.—Believe me, my dear Devene, yours more sincerely than you may think,
Devene.
“What an odd letter,” thought Edith, as she returned the sheets to their envelope. “I don’t quite understand all of it, but I think that under other circumstances my father might have been a very different man. I wonder if we are quite responsible for what we do, or if the circumstances are responsible? If so, who makes the circumstances?”