Chapter XIX: Lady Skene Kneels to Me

His that is just written passes as an _entr’acte_, the fooling of a clown before the curtain, the merry jigging of the fiddles. It ends; and the lights are down once more, the dark curtains heave and lift, waste glooms and sorrows repossess the stage--and only now, always in their deep midmost, travels a little bloody star, the soul of a murdered child.

Winter has gripped the land in earnest, and, screaming upon the heavy dawns, come winds and ashy flights of snow. They are like tempests of defiance, hissing down and heaping at my feet to dispute my way. But I shout them back their blasphemies, and spurn them and drive on. I have a deadly purpose at my heart, and I am not to be deterred by bluster. The right shall be vindicated and the guilty soul stripped naked, whatever befall of frost or storm. On and on, to the relentless end!

Down in my damp holt that winter the cold became intense--not crisp and dry as in the open, but mortal chill, penetrating to one’s bones like the sodden embrace of a vampire. The ice underfoot there had always a spongy crackle, and the snow in the leafy hollows a cankered scar about its centre. I had hard ado to keep my resolution thawed at blazing fires; but I heaped the coal on lavishly, recklessly, drawing from a plentiful store which had been packed into a shed close by; and presently my lodge was like a charcoal-burner’s covert in a forest. Coming down to it at night, I could feel the radiations of its warmth a rod away. I sometimes wonder now it never leapt into roaring flame before my eyes.

This balmy southern climate had not known such a visitation in all my memory of it; nor, in all my memory of it, had I so rejoiced to cross its moods. If, as it appeared, it had rallied itself greatly to the cause of villainy, throttling, delaying, stultifying, so much greater, relatively, was the force of doggedness it evoked in me. A point gained was a gain triumphant, if won through buffeting winds and drifts of snow. And the most sinister gain of all was to be won from its deepest drift.

I had delayed going up to the house until the receipt of Johnny’s final telegram set my mind and conscience at rest. Then, having written to the dear boy, I turned at once to face the ordeal which awaited me.

The atmosphere of the dining-room that night seemed one of curious quiet and reserve. Lord Skene appeared to ruminate, rather than discuss the good fare with his usual honest relish; his lady only trifled with her food; Miss Christmas was not present. We talked desultorily of things, obviously the remotest from our mind hauntings. I put it all down to the glamour of the fatality which was obsessing my own brain. It seemed right, somehow, that I should exhale a spirit of omen and unrest. But there was a reason for it beyond my knowledge. Minister of retribution as I considered myself, I could hardly have had the heart to pursue my purpose at the moment, had I guessed. The child was ill, and the shadow of his trouble lay upon the household. All other shadows were become as nothing in it.

Why did they not tell me? Had he, my little brother as they thought him, _no_ claim upon my sympathy? Was _no_ right mine to share the burden of their disquiet? As they denied me, so was I justified in my purpose--doubly, trebly justified. And yet I might have taken him into my arms, and wept to hold him so, and kissed and kissed some measure of my own exuberant strength into his little flower of a soul. But they held me, held me always as a thing apart; and on their heads lie the issue!

I had been apprehensive that Lord Skene, anxious to probe me further in the matter we had last discussed, would welcome our being left alone together; but, rather to my surprise, he made no effort to detain me when her ladyship withdrew, and appeared to sink at once absorbed in his own reflections. It gave me the opportunity I desired--that was enough for me--and I availed myself of it instantly.

She was standing at the foot of the stairs, preparing to ascend, when I accosted her.

“Lady Skene, may I have a word with you?”

She turned, with such a sudden terrified look as I could hope never to awaken on her face again.

“With me? Not now? O, Richard!” she whispered.

The name, the significance and agony of its utterance, pierced me to the heart. But I had put my hand to the plough, and must go forward.

“Yes, now,” I said. “There is nothing can be gained by temporising.”

She seemed to totter a moment; her white jewelled hand caught at the banisters. But almost with the act she had recovered herself.

“You cannot guess how cruel you are,” she said. “But come if you will.”

She led the way up the first flight and into her boudoir. I had never entered this room in all my life before, had never more than assayed in chance glimpses the wealth and costliness of its appointments. Now, as she shut us in together among the rich hangings, the velvet-lined cabinets and tables glistening with china, and old silver, and infinite _bijouterie_, I felt as if Fate had imposed on me a sacrilege which no pretext of duty could condone. There were lighted girandoles on the walls, a carpet soft as turf beneath my feet, a great fire leaping on the hearth. She drew a low chair to it, and sank down, resting her chin on her hand and frowning into the glow. I went and stood before her.

“Lady Skene,” I said, “this is a beautiful room. It seems to embody in itself all that of comfort, and rich possession, and happy security for which so many of us are ready to barter away our souls.”

She never moved or raised her eyes.

“Happy!” she muttered.

“Why, are you not?” I said. “Hardly worth while, then, to risk so much to gain so little. Neither happy nor secure, perhaps?”

She looked up suddenly.

“What have you found out? Have you been spying?”

“Yes, I have been spying.”

She rose to her feet, her hands clinched against her skirts. I had never seen her look so wretched or so lovely.

“You can own it?”

“Why not?”

“So vile an admission!”

“Who has there ever been to teach me it was vile? I have lived alone, Lady Skene,--untaught, unacknowledged, conforming to the pattern of my surroundings. If that moulded me to secrecy, who was to blame? If to be watchful and observant in the midst of enemies is a crime, I plead guilty to it with all my heart. There was always this much, this one unhappy riddle, to exercise my mind--why I, who longed for love so much, was denied my most natural claim to it; why my mother, of all the mothers in the world, could never bring herself to be a mother to the child who worshipped her. Well, my watching has borne fruit. I have discovered why, at last.”

Her head had drooped, lower, lower. It was terrible so to stand before that love which had been my dream, and betray to it the fulness of my renunciation. Yet I had no choice.

“Lady Skene,” I said, “I was in the Baby’s Garden that night you had your interview with Mr Dalston.”

She was down now, crushed at my feet, her pride, her beauty, her queenly jewels, all in ruin before me. Was I not satisfied at last? The fire tinkled; the wind came like a hand on the casement; I could see by the motion of her fair shoulders how heavily she breathed.

“Lady Skene,” I began again--and suddenly she caught at me like one going under in deep waters.

“Not that--Richard--say it once--once--let me hear it on your lips.”

“It is too late.”

She moaned and moaned; then seemed to listen.

“Too late?”

My arms were held down in anguish, to entreat this dimming phantom as it fell from me.

“O! if you had but said it a year, a month, a week ago! Useless now. Why have you hated me so?”

“Not hated--no.”

“What then? Was it love forbade that word to pass my lips, or shame? It is not like a woman to make her child the scapegoat of her sin. Or perhaps it was only that you hated to be reminded through that spoken word of a falsehood to which its utterance would have seemed a perpetual rebuke? I was the pledge to you of nothing but the lie on which you had bartered--yes, I use the term to _you_--on which you had bartered away your soul?”

She shivered and sighed most miserably.

“Kill me with your scorn,” she muttered. “I have deserved it.”

“Did you not hate me?” I cried, in great emotion. “Do you not hate me now?”

“I feared you,” she said low. “I always feared you from the first. I think you have shown me why. You seemed strange--a thing I had no part in. I never felt like a mother to you--God knows I could not help it. It seemed hard I should be denied redemption for one so strange to me.”

I listened with a stricken heart. Had she been so much to blame after all, since some subtle instinct in her, unconscious of itself, had fore-read the truth? God knew, indeed, she could not help it.

“And now,” she went on dully, “have you not revenge enough? Look at me--think of me; my position, my example, my--my motherhood--and all at his mercy! You have me at your feet at last, Richard. You have watched to some purpose, as you say.”

“Yes, to some purpose,” I answered, “if only I can save you from the consequences of that deceit.”

She seemed to listen in wonder; then shook her head, working her hands together feverishly.

“I don’t know what you mean. These are the wages of sin. Death is the only thing that can cure my shame and my disgrace. O, where is the atonement in long years of lip service, if while we speak the penitence we live the lie! I told you once your touch contaminated your little brother--_I_ told you _that_! It was a wicked spite, and God has punished me for it. But _you_ haven’t forgiven me.”

I stooped and seized her hands fiercely into mine. She made no resistance, only hiding her face from me.

“If I have watched you through these long years,” I said, “what was it for but to study how to win your love? Did it never strike you how the little cold soul was shivering outside the window, crying for that warmth and comfort within? ‘Mother!’ Never to have spoken it--not once! Never to have the right to speak it now. Yes, it was a wicked, cruel word. I thought I should never forgive you for it--once I thought it; and now----”

Her tears ran hot over my hands. I felt a savage exultation in their flowing. Was she not melting to me at last? I clutched her still the fiercer.

“Now,” I said, “you are wretched and alone, and what you have refused to give to me I will give to you--love, and pity, and forgiveness most of all. You cannot claim them of me now, and now I will give them to you freely. Because you are in need, I will come to you; because in name you have had that right to my reverence and protection, I will honour that ghostly trust. I cannot put you from my heart so easily. Your shame is still my shame; your cause my cause. Be comforted. If, being bred to tenderness and recognition, I had not learned to watch, to spy, you would be without an arm well nerved to help you now. All things, I suppose, work to their appointed end. This man, at least--I say it--shall not have his damned way with you. Confide in me for once. Has he attempted to bleed you a second time?”

She made a very slight negative motion with her head.

“He will do it,” I said; “he will come again and again. Do you recognise that?”

“Yes.”

“How will you answer him?”

She did not speak, but I felt a little tremor run through the hands I held.

“Why,” I said, “do you not make a clean breast of it to your husband? If I know him, he would not judge that imposition hardly.”

“No,” she whispered. “It is not him I fear.”

“Who, then? Not me? Let him know me for what I am, for all I care.”

“Richard!”

“Why, I believe he’d think the better of us both for it.”

“Be as cruel to me as you will.”

“Insult you, you mean. But I know what is in your heart. Confess to him? How would that avert the greater catastrophe?--the scarlet letter--the ignominy of the moral exposure? And your persecutor knows it, no doubt, and builds his plans upon the ruin of your reputation, not as a wife, but saint.”

“O, my God!”

I must pause a little in the mad tumult of my emotions. To have her thus at my feet, broken, despairing, looking to me, the neglected and despised, for help and reassurance!--the madness beat like fire in my brain.

“Now listen,” I said at last. “This man--this reptile--he mines and mines, like the blind beast he is. He never thinks of his being undermined by another--his black burrow seems secure to him----” I felt her hands plucking at mine; but I held them tight. “He sets his snare, and never sees the noose awaiting his own neck. O! if I have spied--do you hear me?--I have spied to more effect than _you_ might dare to hope, or _he_, perhaps, to fear. Mother!--there, I will speak it for the first and last time--I have that in my hand to save you, and send him to the gallows.”

She tore her hands away at last, and rose, tottering, to her feet.

“Not that!” she cried insanely--“not that! You must not. It cannot be. Do you not know? Have you never guessed? Must I be the one to tell you?”

“What?”

“He is your father, Richard.”

With the word, there came a swift step at the door, and Miss Christmas hurried into the room, pale and disturbed. Her eyes met mine in one startled glance, and turned to Lady Skene.

“Aunt Georgie,” she said in an agitated voice, “I’m sorry; I thought you were alone; but--but I think you’d better come at once.”

How could I have known, or guessed? I could not even then. Only I recognised the urgency of some tragic call, and stepped aside to let her pass. For one instant her wild haunted eyes were turned on mine.

“O! God forgive me!” she whispered; but I think it was I who ought to have uttered that broken prayer.