Chapter XVI: The Truth at Last

So the parts were cast, and the new life begun in earnest. What was over was prologue; the real business of the house dated from this moment. Its members fell into their places; the weeds were gathered from the Court; the giant in short time, putting his great back into the job, brought order out of Chaos in the garden, and the whole place began to assume an aspect of more homeliness than it had shown for years. Not that on slender means it was to be reclaimed to the prosperity it had once enjoyed; it was ever in Brion’s time a thin estate, a half vacant building; but at least the worst of its desolation was amended to a plausible patchwork, and the cheeriness and devotion of its denizens made up in volume for the emptiness that echoed them in unfurnished rooms.

At first the boy was restless under this transformation of surroundings which, however dreary, had been associated with some sweet times. A weight, moreover, was upon his mind, which, until he could find occasion to shift it, must still oppress and agitate him. If only he could put the question he longed to put, he would feel, he thought, whatever the nature of the answer, a more resigned harmony with his lot than ever he could attain to while that question was pending. And at length the opportunity he sought came to him, and he seized it.

Every morning he read with his uncle in the Classics--Livy’s History, Isocrates’ Pleadings, Cicero on Friendship and Old Age, or the Tragedies of Sophocles--showing a mind so well balanced and informed that the tutor, finding himself in danger of being surpassed by his pupil, fell more and more into the negative rôle of assenter rather than proposer, until there came a day when he withdrew unostentatiously from the partnership, leaving the boy to conduct his own education after the manner he thought best.

There was another sentiment, however, associated with this relinquishment which was neither so sagacious nor so humorous. Despondency, combined with mental inquietude and the means he took to allay them, were encouraging in Quentin Bagott at this time a habit of moody solitariness, which from an indulgence was to become an obsession, and which, in its extreme phases, only Brion could invade with impunity. The truth was that, in spite of all he had acclaimed, and wished to believe, to the contrary, an existence of pastoral seclusion and inaction, after the busy forceful life he had led, was impossible to the man, and had become only the more unendurable as his mind was gradually relieved of its apprehensions regarding a possible impeachment. A veritable _mal du pays_ ensuing, he had had recourse for its alleviation to a remedy already only too familiar to him as a begetter of dreams and oblivion. Pride, too, and the bitter chagrin of a fallen power, conscious of his neighbours’ knowledge of his own equivocal position, and of the means they were not slow to take to enforce that knowledge on him, helped to aggravate the double evil, and to drive him ever more upon himself and the means to forgetfulness. He might profess to scorn, in his own self-contained strength and the devoted efficiency of his household, the ‘slings and arrows’ of extraneous malice: his professions could gain no confirmation from his habits. Whatever the case, however, it became soon enough patent to all about him that, of the great store of wine and strong waters had over from the _Golden Lion_ in Ashburton, by far too great a proportion found its way to the ex-Judge’s table or, worse, into his private closet. And the effect was not long in revealing itself, or in pointing its own miserable moral of debasement. There is tragedy in the still smouldering ruins of a house, but only squalor in them quenched and sodden.

But long before this evil had become a thing to whisper and remark on, Brion had learned all that he was destined to learn about his own history. He was with his Uncle one day, reading, at the table (to love both books and sport is to be the admirable youth) from Melancthon’s _Confession_, and looking up occasionally to ask the other, who sat in his big chair by the escritoire, to expound for him some knotty passage from the gentle Reformer, when suddenly a look came into his eyes, and a thrill to his heart, with the knowledge that he had reached the way. He rose, breathing hard, his eyes shining, to his feet.

‘Uncle Quentin,’ he said.

‘Nephew,’ was the response.

‘May I ask you a question--a personal one?’--he just touched the volume before him.

The heavy brows were bent upon him, suspicious, inquiring. ‘What question?’

‘Are you of the Reformed Church?’

‘Why should you doubt it?’

‘I do not. It is only the evidence of so many of your books that moiders me.’

‘It befits a Judge of law, child, to hear the evidence on both sides, and it befits a judge of beauty to prize beauty above dogma. I am not so stern a convert but I can allow some virtues to the faith I have abandoned.’

‘You were once a Papist, then? And was Jane Middleton a convert too?’

He had said it, and boldly, stiffening his neck; yet he might have hesitated, had he foreseen its effect upon the other. Quentin Bagott rose with a staggering motion from his chair; his features worked painfully; he stood breathing heavily, a hand to his throat.

‘Uncle!’ cried the boy, aghast.

‘What was that you said?’

‘Clerivault once told me you had a sister--but she died. Was she not called so?’

‘What if she were?’

‘I meant no harm. But, O, Uncle, I am sick to know! I found her name in the little Book of Hours: Jane Middleton Bagott, it was writ; and--and my name is Brion Middleton.’

He leaned forward passionately, a sobbing flutter in his throat. ‘Uncle!’ he cried again.

And over his own clenched hand the other bowed his head, lower, lower, and, holding it so, sank down into the chair from which he had risen. At that the boy ran and flung himself on his knees before him, pleading in a desperate voice:--

‘What have I said! I never thought to hurt you so.’

The hand unclasped itself to an impatient gesture.

‘Let out! You would know--what?’

The beat was going fast in the boy’s throat. He struggled with himself to control it, but it yielded to an irresistible cry:--

‘If she was my mother.’

A long silence followed; and then suddenly Bagott lifted his head, and looked straight and haggard into the eyes before him.

‘She was thy mother,’ he said.

The lad gave a little gasp; but he knelt up manly to receive the stroke he felt was threatening. The other did not alter his fixed gaze.

‘Who told you?’ he asked.

‘No one.’

‘Since when have you known--or guessed?’

‘I think, in my heart, from that day when she came and kissed me on the road after the Queen had passed.’ He spoke up steadily, putting force upon himself to do so.

‘What made you think that she that kissed you was your mother?’

‘I know not--some instinct. But the thought only grew to haunt me after years had gone, when once there returned upon me a memory of Clerivault’s message, and of how, in seeming response to it, my dear master had taken me apart that day to see the Queen go by, and of what had followed. And after, when I read the name in the book, and thought of how I called you Uncle, it all seemed to piece together, so that in a moment I felt the truth of it, and wept.’

‘Why should you weep?’ He said it harshly, with a sneer. ‘If she’s dead, the nobler parent lives. Are you not curious to know about him--your father?’

‘No; I hated him.’

‘Hated!’

‘He was an evil man. She feared him, sitting beside her. He looked at me, too, as if he hated me.’

‘God!’ An amazed, half startled look came into his eyes. ‘Speak soft. What it is to have so quick a wit! Thy father, that--was it? Do you know, then, what you are?’

‘I know what he called me.’

‘What?’

‘I will not speak if of myself.’

The eyes were piercing him; and then, all in a moment, a film seemed to come before them, and they were wonderfully dim and soft. An arm was put about his neck; the voice dropped to a moving tenderness, full of grief and pity.

‘I will not speak it of thee neither. A curse on him that made thee so! Ah, that day! She would importune me--child, she would importune me for a sight of thee--a little speech--one kiss, to ease her load of shameful yearning. And I, though I feared the issue, consented; I sent Clerivault to prepare the way. And he--that evil man--he looked on thee with hate, did he? And well he might, to see such evidences of his own villainy. She was ever sweet and trustful--nay, you shall hear it all--my Jane, my little sister--and he a smooth-tongued liar. It was at Mary’s Court they met, she a lady-in-waiting, and he, already a wedded man, just out from the Tower--would to God he had shared his father’s fate there--made Master of the Queen’s ordnance. A curse upon his house! But she ever believed in him--she died believing in him. Ah died, my girl! And we had been children here together--bred in the old faith--in her heart she never abandoned it--she clung to where she loved. It was that guided my choice of thy preceptor, thine adoptive father--a good old man, but weakly recusant, known to me by name and repute. A Protestant, forsooth? Neither that nor the other, but a Catholic with views moderated by the Reform movement. So were we all: so was the Queen herself, till Cecil drove her to intolerance: so was--no, he was never but a plausible time-server--a perjurer and false-swearer. Yet he gave thee life, Brion--he gave thee life.’

His voice broke: he had spoken spasmodically, and with great emotion, and the effort seemed to have exhausted him. But to Brion’s young soul the confession had brought a tragic resignation which was almost like peace after storm. Long half-suspecting the truth, he knew now what he was, and what he could never be. His brain was busy as he knelt. To make a name or inherit one--which was the nobler? He could be anything in the wide world but that one thing, and that one thing was the one thing in the wide world no child of earth could ever achieve for himself. There was no question of personal credit connected with it, and he would be a poor moralist who should hold him to blame for another man’s fault. So reasoned the sane young philosopher. He could be all that he chose, except the one thing in which he had no choice, and he was not debarred by that single exception from the best thing of all, which was certainly self-respect. For his own sweet erring mother he felt the tenderest love and pity; towards the instrument of her undoing nothing but animosity. No ethical qualms moved him there; bad was bad, by whatever name you called it.

‘He gave my mother to shame,’ he said, presently and quietly, in answer to his Uncle’s last appeal: ‘and I shall ever hate him for it.’

‘Hush, boy!’ said Bagott, lifting his head. ‘You know not what you say, or of whom you speak.’

‘Do I not, Uncle? His name was uttered that day by one that served him, and whom he struck for revealing it.’

‘My God! was it so? Nathless you must not hate him. It is not for the lamb to hate the bear--nay, the royal lion himself, as may come to hap. Forget him, an thou canst do naught else. On thy life never breathe his name in choler. The air is as full of ears as he of power. Have I not reason to hate him too; yet for thy sake will I put him and his misdeeds from my mind.’

Brion did not answer; but after a moment he rose to his feet, and stood erect before the seated figure. He would keep his own proud counsel thenceforth, in all matters affecting his honour and duty. His head was lifted, his eyes shone; before their authority the other’s blinked and were lowered.

‘Uncle,’ he said: ‘what for my sake thou mayst do I might not for my own. Yet for what for my sake thou hast done, my love and gratitude shall endeavour. Hast thou not been my better father, and from the first?’

‘From the first, boy: I made thee my charge to sorrow and to silence. Yet, though I planned to consign thee to oblivion, my thoughts pursued thee. Thou wert the last of us--her child. I could not forget that nor thee; and when curst Fortune made of my life a ruined waste--Ah, what disgrace on thee like mine! ’Twas then in bitter self-scorn I first claimed thee kinsman; for was I not done honour in the connexion?’

He spoke and bowed his head again. He had forgotten, in his emotion, that to this child his retirement figured as a voluntary exile. But Brion paid no heed, nor seemed to notice what he had said. His eyes still shone.

‘Uncle,’ he said; ‘now it is confessed and done with, I ask one only thing of thee--never to let word be uttered between us on this subject again. From this moment I would begin a new life--my own. I will make myself, who should be the best architect of mine own honour. Will you?’

And the compact was made; and from that hour kept unbroken between them.