Chapter IV: "my Only Son, Donovan."

So drives self-love through just, and through unjust,
To one man's pow'r, ambition, lucre, lust.
POPE.

On the following evening the little inn-parlour witnessed a very different scene. Donovan, who had known perfectly well what to expect, had, after a night and day of misery, settled down into a stony speechless sorrow, largely mingled now with bitterness, for the meeting with his mother had been most painful.

The trouble had sharpened Mrs. Farrant, and in the selfishness of her grief she made not the slightest allowance for the feelings of other people. Without intentional cruelty, without indeed thinking at all, she was absolutely merciless. Donovan had tried hard to meet her affectionately. Even his stiff reserve had melted in the greatness and honesty of his desire to comfort her. Anyone not entirely absorbed in self, must have seen and accepted such very real sympathy, but Mrs. Farrant saw nothing, thought of nothing, but wearied with her journey, unnerved by the sudden shock, vented her petulant grief on the only victim at hand.

It was a very grievous scene. On the sofa lay the widow, a beautiful and still young-looking woman, her face distorted now, however, by passionate sorrow, and wet with tears--that violent stormy grief which is soon spent, and which even already was mixed with angry reproaches. Standing by the window, in an attitude expressing rigid endurance, was the son, his face very still and quiet in contrast to his mother's, but with an indescribable bitterness about it which almost overpowered the sadness. He had learnt quickly that his presence was irritating instead of comforting to his mother. In a sort of proud hopelessness he moved away from her, and stood looking out across the dreary street to the grey sea beyond, while, as if in a sort of dream, he heard all that was going on: the ceaseless drip of the rain, the distant breaking of the waves upon the shore, the weary reiteration of sobs and reproaches from within. Harder and harder grew his face as he listened, just because his heart was anything but hard, and ached and smarted under that "continual dropping." How long it went on he had not the faintest idea, but it seemed to him that he had heard many times of his "disgrace," had often winced at the mention of his father's name, had silently listened to many unjust accusations, had long felt the grating incongruity of this stormy passion with the silent room of death above. It was a relief when at length, exhausted with her sorrow, Mrs. Farrant fell asleep. He drew nearer then, and stood silently watching her, looked at her soft brown hair, her faultless features, her singularly delicate complexion. It seemed incredible that one so beautiful and gentle-looking could have uttered such cruel reproaches, but it was by no means surprising to Donovan. He had been quite prepared for it, had learnt many years ago that his mother was a mother only in name, that the outgoing love of true motherhood was not in her, that the most he could ever expect for himself or Dot was a ghastly shadow in place of a reality. He had been a fool to think of comforting her! He would waste no more hopes on anything so hopeless. He flung back to the window, yet returned to spread a shawl over her feet.

The wretched evening wore on, Mrs. Farrant awoke, and with scarcely a word went upstairs to bed. Once more the room was lonely and still--infinitely more lonely even than it had been on the previous evening, for now Donovan's whole being was crying out at the injustice of its loneliness. Why, when he would willingly have shown tenderness and love, was he coldly repulsed? Why was he cut off from all sympathy? What was the meaning of the pain which had relentlessly pursued him from his very childhood? To these questions what answer could he make?--all seemed to him hopeless confusion and injustice. If for a moment his mind did revert to the thought of a Providence ruling over all, it was only to be as quickly repelled by the vision of the God presented to him in his childhood, for it was always to this teaching that he recurred when he allowed the subject to enter his thoughts at all. Mrs. Doery's misrepresentation had left its impress on his mind, while in later years the truths he had heard had always been so resolutely and speedily rejected that they had failed to leave their mark.

The room began to grow intolerable to him; he rushed out into the open air, and breathed more freely as the cold night wind blew upon him. The rain was still falling fast, but he scarcely noticed it as he strode on recklessly. The mere mechanical exercise was in itself soothing, and he might have trudged along the muddy road for an indefinite time, had not his attention been attracted by a distant sound of music. Drawing nearer, he found that the house from which it proceeded was Dr. Tremain's, and instinctively he approached one of the windows, and looked through the half-opened Venetian blind at the scene within.

Not a detail of that picture escaped him. A soft light falling through the opal lamp globe illumined the room, the pale French grey walls, the running oak-leaf patterned carpet, the deep crimson curtains, all harmonized to perfection. Seated at the piano was Gladys Tremain, her bright hair gathered back from her face, and her complexion, which was at times almost too highly coloured, looking absolutely perfect in the mellow lamp-light. She wore a very simple white dress, and her small soft hands seemed to touch the keys almost caressingly.

Donovan forgot his sorrow for a moment, and felt vexed when, as she stopped playing, the spell which had bound him was for the time broken by a voice which came from within the room.

"Sing something, Gladys; I'm tired of those old 'songs without words,'" and the speaker crossed the room, and came close to the piano, so that Donovan could see he was a boy of about his own age, of slight build and fair complexion, but not sufficiently like Gladys to be any relation, he fancied.

"You dare to grow tired of Mendelssohn!" said Gladys, with a fine show of indignation. "You boys have no taste whatever; one might as well play to--to----" She paused for a comparison.

"To the heathen Chinee," suggested her companion. "'What a lot of chop-sticks, bombs, and gongs!'--you remember the song, of course. That's Chinese art, you know."

Gladys laughed, and there was a merry little squabble carried on, as the two tried to play the air of the old nursery rhyme.

"Well, now will you sing after all?" said the boy at last; "we will allow, if you like, that it's a case of pearls before swine."

"Don't, Stephen," and Gladys really looked vexed.

"Why, isn't even that allowable? I didn't know you were such a little Puritan."

"You know I can't bear that kind of thing; it is such a pity to use----"

"A fellow can't be always picking his words--I'm sure it's as good as a proverb now," interrupted Stephen. "If you only knew what it was to have such a strait-laced mother as I have, you----"

"Find me a song," said Gladys, handing him a portfolio, and, though she spoke sweetly, there was a certain grave dignity in her tone.

The choice was soon made, but Donovan was so absorbed in watching Gladys that he scarcely noticed the first verse of the song, until a mournful refrain of "Strangers yet" recalled him painfully to himself. With strained attention he listened to the remaining verses:--

"After childhood's winning ways,
After care and blame and praise,
Counsel asked and wisdom given,
After mutual prayers to heaven,
Child and parent scarce regret
When they part are strangers yet.

"Will it evermore be thus,
Spirits still impervious?
Shall we never fairly stand
Soul to soul and hand to hand?
Are the bonds eternal set
To retain us strangers yet?"

"Absurdly impossible," was Stephen's comment at the end. "I had no idea it meant that kind of strangers--very dull too."

"The song or the parents?" asked Gladys, laughing. "In either case your answer will be equally rude. Here is papa," she continued, as Dr. Tremain came into the room. "I shall tell him what a teaze you are, Stephen; you're really getting worse than Dick."

"What is that doleful song?" asked the doctor, putting his hand on her shoulder as he bent down to look at the piece of music. "'Strangers yet!' Who were the strangers?"

"A parent and child, papa, and Stephen declares that it's absurdly impossible."

"Of course it is!" said Stephen, hotly. "Why, do you think when my father returns from his voyages that he feels a stranger to me, or that my mother doesn't know everything about me--rather too much, perhaps, sometimes."

The doctor could not help smiling at the rueful tone of the last sentence.

"Well, Stephen, I think in your case it would be 'absurdly impossible,'" he said, laughingly, "but I am afraid perfect comprehension between parents and children is not so universal as it ought to be, or as you seem to think it. Here comes the mother to give her opinion. But how is this?" for Mrs. Tremain had in her arms a clinging, four-year-old boy in the tiniest of white night-shirts.

"Jackie had a very bad dream, and the only thing that would set him right was just to come downstairs and see all the world again," she explained, smiling at the general exclamation.

In a moment the suffering Jackie became the hero of the evening, and was allowed to confide all his terrors to "papa," how a great tiger from the "Shosical Dardens" had come close to his bed to eat him up, till just at the supreme moment "mother" had heard his screams and had rescued him. A little re-assuring talk on the safety of tiger's cages, and a laughing affirmative to the question "And 'oo is very strong, isn't 'oo?" soon set Jackie's mind at rest, his sleepy eyelids began to close, and, having kissed everyone with drowsy solemnity, he cuddled up again to his mother and was carried off to bed.

"There is no doubt that those two understand each other," said the doctor, smiling thoughtfully.

"No, indeed!" said Gladys and Stephen, emphatically.

"No, indeed!" echoed Donovan, under his breath, and he turned quickly away with burning tears in his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the little home drama any longer.

Mr. Ellis Farrant happened to be in town when the news of his cousin's death reached him. It was the time of year when he found that it answered best to be in town, a time when he was sure of plenty of amusement, and could reckon on getting most of his dinners out. He was a man without any settled profession, of moderate income, but expensive habits, and, in order to reconcile these conflicting elements, he found it necessary to live as much as possible on his friends. It was not until late on Saturday afternoon that, on returning from his usual saunter in the park, he found Donovan's letter, with its brief formal intimation of his father's death. Ellis Farrant was startled, awed; he did not like being confronted with anything so gloomy yet so inevitable as death, it was a subject he invariably dismissed from his mind as quickly as possible, and now his cousin had died with an awful suddenness, and Ellis, whether he would or not, found his thoughts turning to his own death, that dismal goal which awaited him in the future. Where should he die, and how, and--and _when_?

His hand trembled a little as he again took up Donovan's letter, and strove to banish the uneasy reflections which were troubling him by a fresh perusal of the startling news; he found himself, however, gazing vacantly at the handwriting, rather than reading the sense conveyed by the firm, clear, somewhat cramped letters. Then his mind wandered off to Donovan himself, perhaps something in the writing reminded him of the clever, strong-willed, self-reliant boy who had so often been his companion. He had been expelled from school, the letter stated, the very absence of further comment or explanation showing how deeply the disgrace had galled the proud nature. Well, he would pass from disgrace to ease and pleasure, for was not he his father's heir? Ellis Farrant reflected for a few minutes on his good luck. Then with a sudden and vehement exclamation, he started to his feet. No, it was not so--he recollected now his cousin's simple will at the time of his marriage,--Donovan was not his father's heir, everything had been left to Mrs. Farrant. It had been little more than "All to my wife." He had laughed over the story of the shortest will long ago, he could not recall where or with whom, but he remembered clearly that Colonel Farrant's will had been to that effect, and the remembrance seemed to excite him strangely.

"In another year I shall be forty," he mused to himself, "what the world will call a middle-aged man. I hate that term middle-aged; but anyhow, I shall not look it, and I am tolerably--yes, really decidedly handsome."

He rested his elbows on the mantel-piece and surveyed himself critically in the mirror. In colouring and general outline of face he was sufficiently like Colonel Farrant and Donovan to show near relationship, but his features and expression were entirely different. The eyes of very dark steel-grey lacked the peculiar admixture of brown in the iris, which was so noticeable in Donovan's; they were hard, bold-looking eyes, unpleasant to meet. The firm well-shaped chin was contradicted by a weak mouth, which was only partially concealed by a bristling black moustache. But, in spite of these defects, he was, as he had said, a handsome man, or, at any rate, he was possessed of a certain brilliancy which generally passed for good looks.

Satisfied apparently with his own reflection, he turned at length from the mirror, and, sitting down to the table, dispatched first a telegram to Donovan announcing his intention of coming to Porthkerran the following day, and, secondly, the advertisement of Colonel Farrant's death to the _Times_, with an elaborately-worded eulogy and feeling description of the grief of the family. After that he relapsed into a profound reverie, from which he only roused himself to calculate what was the probable value of the Oakdene estate.

Donovan's Sunday at Porthkerran was almost as trying a day as the previous one at school had been. Possibly his grief and wretchedness might have induced him to enter the church, had not his recollections of the last Sunday deterred him. Never could he forget the slow torture to which he had then been subjected! The intolerable length of the day, the two services, the sermons with their direct reference to the sin which he had promoted, their unsparing condemnation of the ringleader, the sudden turning of all eyes to his place, the struggle between his sense of shame and his pride, the angry resentment of the injustice and exaggeration. He lived it all over again as he walked gloomily along the Porthkerran cliffs, and the silent repressed indignation did him no good.

It was with his very worst expression that he went to meet Ellis Farrant; his face was dark and proud and cold, yet even then the contrast between the cousins was very marked. Donovan's, though the more hopeless face of the two, had a certain nobility nowhere traceable in Ellis's bold, self-satisfied mien; the one face expressed a restless craving for something beyond self, restrained only by a powerful will, the other expressed little but self-satisfaction, and a sort of defiance and bravado.

Yet the sympathy which Ellis expressed so readily and fluently both to Donovan and to his mother was not altogether artificial; he was by no means heartless, although undoubtedly he was a selfish scheming man, bent upon furthering his own interests. In the pursuance of his own aims, however, he occasionally felt kindly disposed towards others, and he admired, even liked, Donovan.

On the Monday all was changed, however. The simple and beautiful burial service had fallen with little effect on the ears of the two chief mourners; all that remained of Colonel Farrant had been laid in the little churchyard of Porthkerran. The two cousins and the doctor had returned in silence to the inn, and then, as soon as Donovan was out of earshot, Dr. Tremain took Ellis Farrant aside.

"There is but one more duty, Mr. Farrant, which I have to discharge, and that is to put you in possession of the will which Colonel Farrant executed just before his death. I should have given it you earlier in the day, only there has been no opportunity, for I promised the Colonel that his son should know nothing of the transaction."

"A will--a codicil, I suppose," said Ellis Farrant, hurriedly taking the sheet of paper from Dr. Tremain and unfolding it. Though he was weak and impulsive, he was too thorough a man of the world not to have his facial expression in very fair command; he betrayed little but surprise as he read his cousin's most unwelcome change of purpose, and his voice was cool and steady as he again folded the paper and turned to Dr. Tremain. "I am named as my cousin's sole executor, I see; this must be referred to his lawyer in London. Many thanks to you, doctor, for your considerate help."

Dr. Tremain rose to take leave, and Ellis, accompanying him to the door, found Donovan in the passage outside, and left him to see the last of the guest.

"We leave early to-morrow," he began, hurriedly, "so I must wish you good-bye now, Dr. Tremain--thank you for your kindness."

"I hope we may meet again," said the doctor, shaking his hand warmly, and looking with grave compassion at the miserably hopeless face before him.

"Will you thank Mrs. Tremain for her kindness to me," continued Donovan, still with the air of one wearily discharging a duty of courtesy, "and for the flowers she kindly sent this morning?"

"Certainly, I will give her your message, and when next you come westward I hope we shall see you at Porthkerran. Good-bye!" And the doctor turned away rather sadly, and set out homewards.

Before he had gone far, however, he heard hurrying steps behind, and his late companion once more stood beside him.

"Forgive me," he said, hoarsely, "I was cold and ungrateful, I shall not forget your kindness, only now I'm too wretched to feel it. Don't think too hardly of me." And before Dr. Tremain could do more than show his answer by look and gesture, Donovan was half way back again to the inn.

During this time Ellis Farrant had been giving vent to his rage and disappointment within the house. That all his schemes should be frustrated by a paltry piece of note-paper, witnessed by a doctor and a servant, was inexpressibly galling. Had the will been elaborately drawn up, and duly besprinkled with meaningless legal phrases, it would not have caused him half the annoyance. It was the absurd littleness, the perfect simplicity of the thing which chafed him so. Was there no flaw to be detected?--no, not the very slightest even to his longing eye. Would it be possible to call his cousin's sanity into question? No, utterly impossible, there could be no doubt of that. There was a moment's pause in Ellis Farrant's thoughts, a pause in which he fully realised the defeat of his purpose; he heard Donovan return to the inn, and at the sound of his footsteps he hastily shuffled the will into his pocket, but the precaution was needless, for the footsteps passed by, and presently the door of Donovan's room was closed and locked. Again Ellis drew out the will and looked at it fixedly; it was a little crumpled now, he noticed the impression of his Indian-grass cigar-case upon it; what a frail, trumpery, perishable thing it was--he began to dwell on this thought with satisfaction instead of bitterness. Then he looked again at the signatures of the witnesses: "Thomas Tremain, Surgeon, Trenant, Porthkerran." "Mary Pengelly, Servant, Penruddock Arms Inn, Porthkerran."

A maid-servant and a doctor living in an obscure Cornish village, what had he to fear from them? And the boy upstairs? Why, he knew nothing, and never need know--never _should_ know, and with sudden resolution Ellis tore the sheet of paper in half, and in half again. Then a great horror seized upon him, he turned very cold, and fell back in his chair, shuddering violently. It was done, and there was no retrieving the deed! He mechanically fingered and counted the six fragments, looking at each with a vacant terror. By and by the terror began to take definite shape. What if the boy were to come down? He must completely destroy all remains of this detestable will, of this little heap of paper which had been the will. He was very cold, he would order a fire, and he crossed the room with unsteady steps to ring the bell, but paused with the caution of guilt when his hand was on the bell-rope. Supposing Mary Pengelly should come, supposing she caught sight of these fragments! he felt as if she would instantly perceive them in the securest hiding-place. No, he must light the fire himself, and with nervous haste he drew a box of fusees from his pocket, and with considerable difficulty succeeded in kindling the damp wood into a blaze. Then he carefully placed the little heap of paper in the very centre of the grate, and watched anxiously while gradually the edges curled upwards, the whiteness was scorched to brown, then to black, fringed with sparks of red, finally to a swift yellow blaze, while the last black shreds of Colonel Farrant's will were borne up the chimney by the sudden draught. Not quite the last, however, for one fragment had fallen to the side of the fireplace, and floated down on to the fender just as Ellis thought all was over. He snatched it up, and would once more have thrown it to the flames had not something forced him to look at it; scorched and half charred as were its edges, he could plainly read the words--"My only son Donovan." A swift pang of regret thrilled him for a moment; then a sound in the passage outside renewed his guilty terror, and, stooping down, he held the fragment to the blaze with his own fingers, scarcely feeling the near approach of the hot flames, in his relief that the last vestige of the will was finally disposed of.