Chapter XXII: A Visit From Mr Dalston

After Paradise the Deluge. But I held my head high, and laughed at the lowering heavens. I had enough faith in me to float an ark, with my heart for dove in it, waiting confidently in expectation of the green promise. Such deep and full content in myself I had never dreamed were possible. I was become another being in the prospect of my close relations with that pure and beautiful child. When I awoke on the morrow of my joy, it was surely to the same earth I had gone to sleep on; but whither translated--to what halcyon climate? I could have believed it had caught in the train of some passing comet during the night, and been swept into a starrier, balmier region. The frost had gone; the birds were singing; a sweet and melting tenderness had usurped the places of terror. No doubt, at the same time, some clinging villainies had been brought away with it; but their necessary clearance figured no longer as the paramount interest. They were of first moment only in their menace to my love’s innocent feet; they must be cut and weeded away only that the garden of my love’s soul be made perfect to her.

That was how I felt at last; and let all old dry misogamists and scornful Benedicks jeer their fill at me. I was of you once myself, O, sapless brotherhood! until that thing came to happen which made it impossible for me ever to be of you again. Now, I say, I would rather hear a lover rant of love than a wise man discourse on wisdom; would rather, for all the world is worth, be the sinning penitent than the sinless priest who grudges him absolution. How is Solomon most remembered? Why, by the love rhapsody which is called his Song--no better.

It was strange how all the passion and the melancholy of my revengeful past were dimmed suddenly in the radiance of this new feeling. Day had risen behind the sullen flaming rick and absorbed it. Still, if inclination to my task of retribution was much lessened, duty yet impelled me on to that task. Such tragic and momentous issues hung upon my conduct of it. Though a mother’s pined-for recognition no longer drove me forward, there was the question no less of an unhappy woman’s persecution to make my blood run fury. Besides, I could not shut my eyes to the fact that all this accumulation of evidence put me, so long as I remained its sole depository, in the position of an accessory. Wherefore, everything considered, I was resolved to go this very day, with my witness, to Lord Skene, and make clean my breast to him, poor man, of all its “perilous stuff.”

It was a resolve, indeed, not to be regarded lightly; for with what thunderbolts did it not threaten that old unconscious head! Into the peaceful chamber of his meditations I was to flounce with fire and brimstone--murder, blackmail and, worst of all, to some minds, sick dishonour. For, as to that last, my determination to speak the truth was one with all the rest. Lady Skene had laid no embargo on me, but had rather implied, I thought, an acquiescence in my possible advocacy of her cause. And, indeed, it was out of all my heavy duty the task I feared the least, since, I believed, it would prove the one the least disturbing to his lordship; and that for reasons given long ago. The lesson of that deceit, I suspected, would lack all but a roguish moral in his eyes.

But, for his boy; his murdered heir! How would he take that ghastly revelation, and how decide to deal with it?

Yet there was no other course--none that I could see; and I confess, for myself, that the prospect of shifting the whole burden of my responsibilities to the shoulders of that shrewd legal understanding was not, in my then state of exaltation, an unwelcome one. I wanted freedom in myself for the range of lovelier thoughts. Why should I retain for ever the sole thankless wardenship of that secret? I was quite ready to forego my part of principal there, and decline upon the humbler rank of scout or agent to his lordship.

Yet, when it came to the prick of decision, I lingered and lingered out the moments. The old man had been good to me. He was happy and secure in his ignorance. Would he hold the profits of this débâcle to compensate its losses, and thank me for an interference, which could bring no gains to him but disillusionment? The substantial gains, indeed, were more for me than him--and so for Ira. I owed them, after all, to her. Though I hated my iconoclastic part, it was that tender debt must hold me inexorably to it.

I had informed Geoletti of my purpose; and he had answered “It is well, signore. That which you decide is good, is good.” Then he bestirred himself to do my household work, and, when all else was finished, retired into the little kitchen to scrub pots and pans.

Lulled by the sound of his soft movements behind the near-closed door, my thoughts took dreamy wing, and floated out incontinently into the open. Were my Ira’s speeding to join issue with them above that lovely hawthorn valley mistermed Hags Lane? What flowers should come to blossom there in spring? I believed I could write a poem on the subject, and tinglingly I got out paper and pencil, and sharpened the latter to a point of tenderest wit, and in a little was absorbed in my task. Shame, that lover’s rapture should be “held up” over a rhyme! What was inspiration to these cold laws of prosody? But at last I appropriated one--“tiara”--the Lord forgive me--and then it was easy, comparatively, to fit my crown of blossoms to it. Nevertheless it struck eleven from the little clock on the mantelpiece while I was still fitting it; and at that same instant I became aware of a presence in the room.

“A thousand apologies, my dear fellow!” said an unfamiliar voice. “I wouldn’t have interrupted you for the world in such a romantic task, if I had known.”

I sat for a minute quite rigid and motionless. It never occurred to me that here, perhaps, was the best testimony I could have wished to the effectiveness of my own secret dealings. It seemed only an impossible piece of insolence that could have brought this man to seek my company, and at such a moment. But I did not reveal myself. A long habit of self-repression came to my aid.

“Mr Dalston?” I said at last.

He nodded brightly.

“We have met before. I hope we shall meet again--and on terms of a better understanding.”

I rose to my feet, at least perfectly cool in seeming.

“Meaning--what?” I asked.

“Nothing cryptic, of course,” said he.

He glanced about the room. His manner was very alert and vivacious. His teeth and glittering eyes seemed, when he turned his face again, to take possession of me.

“The tragedy of that first meeting,” he said, “put any pleasant understanding between us two at the time out of the question, didn’t it?”

“You use an odd word, Mr Dalston,” I said; “and take an odd way--you will excuse me--for a stranger.”

“Why, as to that,” he answered, smiling, “I found the door open, and took what I supposed to be the proper woodland way with hermits. Men of your principles love secrecy, don’t they? and quiet comings and goings, and visits unawares? I only borrowed a leaf out of your book, you see.”

Now, though he was so gay and debonair, I recognised on the instant some sinister meaning behind his words, and knew that he was aware, in some measure at least, of the watchful part I had been playing, and knew, moreover, that he wanted me to know that he knew. I could not guess his purpose, beyond the fact that it appeared to imply some menace and a warning; but I could be as cool as he, and his equal, as I thought, in cunning.

“You referred to an understanding between us,” I said rather drawlingly. “Well, I can only repeat that it seems to me an odd word to use.”

“Does it?” he answered; “does it really? Well, say it may be held to imply, in general terms, a motto--_Vive et vivas_; or, to put it specifically, If you don’t interfere with me, I won’t interfere with you.”

“Ah! now you puzzle me entirely--as much, I confess, as the strangeness of your being down here, alone at eleven o’clock in the morning, puzzles me.”

“Why, that is easily explained,” he said. “I have just been walking with Lady Skene in that delightful bower--a little cold just now--called the Baby’s Garden, and I took this path upon leaving her, as being the shortest and the most private.”

“O! Why as the most private, may I ask?”

He leaned upon his stick, hat in hand, conning me with a smiling archness.

“Don’t you know? Don’t you know, indeed, my dear boy? But of course you do; or why should I be here?”

“That is for you to say.”

“You have inherited frankness, I see. I have always been a model of frankness myself. I am glad to hear you pay that debt to your inheritance, Richard.”

I was gathering, at last, something of his drift. He was feeling his way to my sense of filial duty. I could have struck my fist into his accursed dandy face. No doubt he had heard from Lady Skene the facts of that interview between us in her boudoir, and had assumed, as she had assumed, that the knowledge of my parentage was a revelation to me. Let him rejoice then, and scheme on that premise, and set the trap to his own damnation. It was for me now, with all that frenzy of hatred tingling at my finger-ends, to nurse his delusion for him, and play the double hypocritical part. I was surprised, even, at the resources of Machiavellianism I discovered in myself.

“Mr Dalston,” I said, “as you flatter me for candour, I will be as candid as you could wish. I am aware, as you imply, that you have been drawing upon Lady Skene for money, and I know the reason.”

“That’s capital,” he said--“that’s very capital and engaging. Well, now, consider, Richard; love-children are not generally regarded in the light of very eligible partis, are they? especially when franked by no financial recommendations. Lord Skene would hardly look upon such a one as a suitable match for a ward-at-law--and a particularly charming and well-endowed ward-at-law, I will say. I only put it to you that the revelation of such a suitor’s legal status would hardly appeal favourably to a guardian. Now would it? Better, at least, for him, I think, to make no boast of his moral disability. It is nothing but a question of terms, after all; but upon such, alas! are our ridiculous conventions founded.”

How could I listen to him, and not spring at his murderous, lying throat? His very nameless reference to the subject of my most sacred hopes was a blasphemy scarce tolerable. But I kept my sense of the enormous issues that hung upon my self-command, and I dealt him back his double-dealing to the hilt.

“I am to understand, then, I conclude,” I said, and with a manner, I do believe, of helpless conviction, “that, if I give you away, I may expect to be given away myself?”

He laughed.

“You put it with a boyish crudeness; but the method has its fascinations. Why not, rather, call it a little family understanding, Richard? We are all in the same boat; we all have our crying needs of the moment. Yes, call it that; and our family motto--_Vive et vivas_.”

“Well, you must give me a little time,” I said. “This comes as rather a shock on one, you see?”

“Time!” he cried--“time, if you wish it, to indite fifty immortal sonnets to your mistress’s eyebrow. I am never in a hurry, my dear fellow. Let the thought germinate and take root at its leisure. What a charming retreat, to be sure. And you live here all alone?”

“Yes, all alone.”

“Not even an Abigail to minister the needs?--but of course not, in our present transcendent altitudes. I wonder if I might pry a bit?”

Should I let him? I thought how during all this interview the door giving into the kitchen had stood ajar; I recalled how, even before the fact of his presence in the room had been borne in upon me, all sound of Geoletti’s movements hard by had suddenly ceased. I pictured a deadly figure crouching behind the door, saw a mincing step pass on and in, heard a sudden wild-beast snarl and rush, and then a scream, my God, freezing one’s blood--and for one instant I was half minded to bid him on his way, and end thus swiftly at a blow the story of his villainies.

It was a ghastly temptation--almost paralysing in its suddenness. I had even stirred involuntarily to make way for him, when the thought that not vengeance, but retribution, was to be the first exaction, came to save me. I put my hand across my forehead, and felt it wet. For a moment I could not command my voice. If my agitation was obvious, however, he could find his own reasons to account for it. No doubt he was pluming himself, the blind fool, on his unnerving conquest of a boy.

“I’d rather, if you don’t mind,” I said at length, “be left to myself just now. You’ve a bit upset me, as you may guess, and I’m not quite in the mood to play cicerone.”

“Why, of course,” he rejoined at once and cheerily. “It was inconsiderate of me. Bye-bye, then, till we meet again, my dear boy. No, don’t trouble; I can find my own way out,” and he went, smiling, and waving his hand back to me, and humming a pleasant tune.

The moment he was well gone, I stepped swiftly to the kitchen door, and stood to obstruct its passage. But the precaution was unnecessary. No sound or movement came from within.

I stood for a little, triumphing in my own triumphant duplicity. The dog had thought to force my hand, and had only succeeded in betraying the pretentious emptiness of his own. He had discovered nothing of importance, for all his midnight craft; had no suspicion, even, of that most momentous betrayal of him by his own and nearest, or surely he would have intimated his knowledge of it to me. I ground my hands into one another, grinding my teeth. To what had I not been forced to listen, and, in appearance, to subscribe? A family understanding? No doubt, granting the hypothesis of my success on the score of it, _my_ blackmailing was to follow as a necessary consequence. It was defilement merely to have encountered him--aye, and countered him, too--with his own weapons. I felt as if I could never be entirely self-respecting again until I had come to terms about him with the hangman.

With the thought, I turned, and with a guarded caution tiptoed into the kitchen. My eyes were expectant of the vision of other eyes, yellow and catlike, crouched near the boards; of a gathered catlike shape; of a claw of steel protruding from catlike folds. But there was nothing of the sort awaiting them. Geoletti was nowhere to be seen.

But suddenly, even as I stood in indecision, the oddest sound greeted my ears. It was like the little sibilant yap of a dog in distressed dreaming; and it appeared to come from under the dresser.

“Geoletti!” I whispered, amazed.

He came crawling out on all fours, actually like an abject dog, and, when he reached me, rose up on his knees, fawning with both hands, and his eyes bright with madness.

“Signore,” he urged hoarsely, “you not go in wiz him--my God! I say, you not go! Listen to wat I tell you. When two enter togezer, only won return. His smile on the face zat hide--what? His hand in his pocket zat hold--what? For you, so you follow him, zere shall be no smile never again--no face at all to smile wiz. Merciful God, signore! sink of her what wait you--the beautiful signora, and how on you depend her happiness. She sall die if evil come to you. Ecco! I know. Her state is not zat to endure it. Go back, signore! my God, go back!”

He struggled with me, his voice full of an entreating frenzy.

“Geoletti!” I cried, gripping him with force, “what is it? what is the matter with you? You heard and saw him. Was it not the man?”

He only writhed the harder.

“Signore, I see somsing--I hear somsing! But his eyes--my God! zey see everysing--his soul go into the deep places--zey look round the door when his voice spik, though he not move his body.”

Quite suddenly he swayed and fell over. I don’t know whether or not he was seized with a sort of fit. He lay rigid and staring, and foam appeared on his lips. But in a minute it was over. He came to himself, sane once more, but dazed and for the moment quite helpless and exhausted.

What devilish cantrip had so overthrown his reason? But, from whatever cause, the moral of his seizure was plain to me. Henceforth, on my shoulders alone must rest the main burden of the Nemesis.

Hours passed before the man was sufficiently himself again to justify my use of him for witness. And, in the meanwhile, how was my love accounting for my tardiness?