All the way back to his house St. George's wrath kept him silent. He had
rarely been so stirred. He was not a brawler--his whole life had been
one of peace; his whole ambition to be the healer of differences, and
yet there were some things he could not stand. One of these was cruelty
to a human being, and Rutter's public disowning of Harry was cruelty of
the most contemptible kind. But one explanation of such an outrage
was possible--the man's intolerable egoism, added to his insufferable
conceit. Only once did Temple address Harry, walking silently by his
side under the magnolias, and then only to remark, more to himself than
to his companion--“It's his damned, dirty pride, Harry--that's what it
is!”
Harry also held his peace. He had no theories regarding his father's
conduct: only facts confronted him, one being that he had purposely
humiliated him before the men who had known him from a boy, and with
whom his future life must be cast. The end had come now. He was adrift
without a home. Even Kate was lost. This last attack of his father's
would widen the breach between them, for she would never overlook this
last stigma when she heard of it, as she certainly must. Nobody would
then be left on his side except his dear mother, the old house servants,
and St. George, and of these St. George alone could be of any service to
him.
It had all been so horrible too, and so undeserved--worse than anything
he had ever dreamed of; infinitely worse than the night he had been
driven from Moorlands. Never in all his life had he shown his father
anything but obedience and respect; furthermore, he had loved and
admired him; loved his dash and vigor; his superb physique for a man of
his years--some fifty odd--loved too his sportsmanlike qualities--not a
man in the county was his equal in the saddle, and not a man in his own
or any other county could handle the ribbons so well. If his father had
not agreed with him as to when and where he should teach a vulgarian
manners, that had been a question about which gentlemen might differ,
but to have treated him with contempt, to insult him in public, leaving
him no chance to defend himself--force him, really, into a position
which made it impossible for him to strike back--was altogether a
different thing, and for that he would never, never forgive him.
Then a strange thing happened in the boy's mind. It may have been the
shifting of a grain of gray matter never called into use before; or it
may have been due to some stranded red corpuscle which, dislodged by the
pressure he had lately been called upon to endure, had rushed headlong
through his veins scouring out everything in its way until it reached
his thinking apparatus. Whatever the cause, certain it was that the
change in the boy's view of life was as instantaneous as it was radical.
And this was quite possible when his blood is considered. There had
been, it is true, dominating tyrants way back in his ancestry, as well
as spend-thrifts, drunkards, roysterers, and gamesters, but so far as
the records showed there had never been a coward. That old fellow De
Ruyter, whose portrait hung at Moorlands and who might have been his
father, so great was the resemblance, had, so to speak, held a shovel in
one hand and a sword in the other in the days when he helped drown out
his own and his neighbors' estates to keep the haughty don from gobbling
up his country. One had but to look into Harry's face to be convinced
that he too would have followed in his footsteps had he lived in that
ancestor's time.
It was when the boy, smarting under his father's insult, was passing
under the blossoms of a wide-spreading magnolia, trying to get a glimpse
of Kate's face, if by any chance she should be at her window, that this
grain of gray matter, or lively red corpuscle--or whatever it might
have been--forced itself through. The breaking away was slow--little
by little--as an underground tunnel seeks an opening--but the light
increased with every thought-stroke, its blinding intensity becoming so
fierce at last that he came to a halt, his eyes on the ground, his whole
body tense, his mind in a whirl.
Suddenly his brain acted.
To sit down and snivel would do no good; to curse his father would
be useless and wicked; to force himself on Kate sheer madness.
But--BUT--BUT--he was twenty-two!--in perfect health and not ashamed
to look any man in the face. St. George loved him--so did his precious
mother, and Alec, and a host of others. Should he continue to sit in
ashes, swaddled in sackcloth--or should he meet the situation like
a man? Then as his mental vision became accustomed to the glare, two
things stood out clear in his mind--to win Kate back, no matter at what
cost--and to compel his father's respect.
His mother was the first to hear the music of this new note of
resolve, and she had not long to wait. She had come to town with the
colonel--indeed it was at her request that he had ordered the coach
instead of coming in on horseback, as was his custom--and was at the
moment quietly resting on St. George's big sofa.
“It is all over, mother,” Harry cried in a voice so firm and determined
that his mother knew at once something unusual had happened--“and you
might as well make up your mind to it--I have. Father walked into the
club five minutes ago, looked me square in the face, and cut me dead;
and he insulted Uncle George too, who gave him the greatest dressing
down you ever heard in your life.” He had learned another side of his
uncle's character--one he should never cease to be grateful for--his
outspoken defence of him before his equals.
Mrs. Rutter half rose from her seat in blank astonishment. She was
a frail little woman with pale-blue eyes and a figure like a curl of
smoke.
“Your--father--did not--speak--to--you!” she exclaimed excitedly. “You
say--your father--But how dare he!”
“But he did!” replied Harry in a voice that showed the incident still
rankled in his mind--“and right in the club, before everybody.”
“And the other gentlemen saw it?” She stood erect, her delicate body
tightening up. There was a strain of some old-time warrior in her blood
that would brook no insult to her son.
“Yes, half a dozen gentlemen saw it. He did it purposely--so they COULD
see. I'll never forgive him for it as long as I live. He had no business
to treat me so!” His voice choked as he spoke, but there was no note of
surrender or of fear.
She looked at him in a helpless sort of way. “But you didn't answer
back, did you, my son?” This came in a tone as if she feared to hear the
details, knowing the boy's temperament, and his father's.
“I didn't say a word; Uncle George wouldn't let me. I'm glad now he
stopped me, for I was pretty mad, and I might have said something I
would have been sorry for.” The mother gave a sigh of relief, but she
did not interrupt, nor did she relax the tautness of her body. “You
ought to have heard Uncle George, though!” Harry rushed on. “He told him
there was not a dog at Moorlands who would not have treated his puppy
better than he had me--and another thing he told him--and that was that
after to-day I was HIS son forever!”
St. George had been standing at the front window with his back to them,
looking out upon the blossoms. At this last outburst he turned, and said
over his shoulder:
“Yes--that's true, Annie--that's what I said and what I mean. There is
no use wasting any more time over Talbot, and I don't intend to.”
“But Mr. Rutter will get over his temper.” (She never called him by any
other name.)
“Then he will have to come here and say so. I shall never step foot in
his house until he does, nor will Harry. As to his forgiving Harry--the
boot is on the other leg; it is Talbot, not the boy he outraged, who
must straighten out to-day's work. There was not a man who heard him who
was not ashamed of him. Oh!--I have no patience with this sort of thing!
The only son he's got--his only child! Abominable--unforgivable! And it
will haunt him to his dying day! Poor as I am, alone in the world and
without a member of my family above ground, I would not change places
with him. No--Annie--I know how you feel, and God knows I have felt
for you all these years, but I tell you the end has come! It's
finished--over--I told him so to his face, and I mean it!”
The slight body sank back into her chair and her eyes filled with tears.
Harry knelt beside her and put his arms about her. This mother, frail
as she was, had always been his refuge and comfort: now he must do the
comforting! (Keep moving, old red corpuscle, there is a lot of work
ahead of you!)
“Don't worry, you dear little mother,” he said tenderly. “I don't know
how it's coming out, but it will come out somehow. Let father go: Kate
is the only thing that counts now. I don't blame her for anything she
has done, and I don't blame myself either. All I know is that everything
has gone wrong. But, wrong or right, I'm going to stay here just as long
as Uncle George will let me. He's been more of a father to me than my
own. It's you I can't get along without, you precious little mother,”
and he patted her pale cheeks. “Won't you come in every day--and bring
Alec too?” then, as if he had not yet asked her consent--“You don't mind
my being here, do you?”
She drew his head close to her lips and kissed his cheek. “No, my son,
I don't mind--I'm glad. Every night of my life I thank my Maker that
you are here.” She raised her eyes to St. George, who stood looking down
upon them both, and in a voice barely audible, an unbidden sob choking
her utterance, faltered--“It's only one more proof of your goodness, St.
George.”
He raised his hand in protest and a faint smile crossed his face. “Don't
talk that way. Annie.”
“I will--it's true. It is a proof of your goodness. I have never
deserved it. I don't now--but you never fail me.” Her voice was clearer
now--her cheeks, too, had regained some of their color. Harry listened
wonderingly, his arm still around her.
“I couldn't do anything else, Annie--nobody could under the
circumstances.” His voice had dropped almost to a whisper.
“But it was for me you did it, St. George. I would rather think of it
that way; it makes it easier. Say you did it for me.”
St. George stooped down, raised her thin white hand to his lips, kissed
it reverently, and without a word of any kind walked to the door of his
bedroom and shut it behind him.
Mrs. Rutter's hand dropped to her lap and a smile of intense relief
passed over her face. She neither looked after St. George, nor did she
offer any explanation to Harry; she merely bent forward and continued
her caresses, stroking the boy's glossy hair, patting the white temples
with her delicate fingers, smoothing the small, well-set ears and the
full brown throat, kissing his forehead, her eyes reading his face,
wondering if she had spoken too freely and yet regretting nothing: what
she had said had come straight from her heart and she was not ashamed of
it.
The boy lay still, his head against her breast. That his mother had been
stirred even in a greater degree over what St. George had said to her
than she had been by his father's treatment of him was evident in the
trembling movement of the soft hands caressing his hair and in the way
her breath came and went. Under her soothing touch his thoughts went
back to the events of the morning:--his uncle's defiant tones as he
denounced his father; his soft answer to his mother; her pleading words
in reply, and then the reverent kiss.
Suddenly, clear as the tones of a far-off convent bell sifting down
from some cloud-swept crag, there stole into his mind a memory of his
childhood--a legend of long ago, vague and intangible--one he could not
put into words--one Alec had once hinted at. He held his breath trying
to gather up the loose ends--to make a connected whole; to fit the parts
together. Then, as one blows out a candle, leaving total darkness, he
banished it all from his mind.
“Mother dear!--mother dear!” he cried tenderly, and wound his arms the
closer about her neck.
She gathered him up as she had done in the old days when he was a child
at her breast; all the intervening years seemed blotted out. He was her
baby boy once more--her constant companion and unending comfort: the one
and only thing in her whole life that understood her.
Soon the warmth and strength of the full man began to reach her heart.
She drew him still closer, this strong son who loved her, and in the
embrace there grew a new and strange tenderness--one born of confidence.
It was this arm which must defend her now; this head and heart which
must guide her. She was no longer adrift.
The two had not moved when St. George re-entered the room some moments
later. Harry's head still lay on her breast, the thin, transparent hands
tight about his neck.