AN ODD RECOGNITION
I was so stunned, so amazed by this sudden and utterly unexpected
turn of events, that, for a time, only a monstrous sense of
indignation could make room for its consideration in my brain. That
another should be found to have a title equal with mine, and a
knowledge obviously greater, to claim those preserves of retribution
which I had considered my exclusive property, was sufficiently
disturbing; that I should be brought to realise how, to all the
intents and purposes of this inquisition, I was suddenly confessed the
confederate, the mean subordinate even, of a common blackmailer, was
infinitely, sickeningly worse. For the first time I was awake to a
healthy scorn of myself for ever having condescended to a habit of
espionage. That it should have reduced me to something the level of
this fellow!--no outright, hard-fisted burglar, as, to his better
credit, I had assumed him to be, but just an obscene Jerry Sneak! It
had been awful to me to see that cold exclusive beauty writhing in the
grip of such a scoundrel. I felt fouled, humiliated, ashamed. There
and then I swore an oath that I would let Lady Skene understand, on
the first reasonable opportunity, the nature of my claim on her--not
to bleed her pocket but her heart.
And, in the meanwhile, how to engineer my discovery? Should I use it
to my more crushing indictment of a guilty woman--a bludgeon in my
already loaded hand? A gentle son! a human merciful spirit! To admit
myself one in purpose with this vulgar conspirator? Never, never! To
convince her, rather, of her insensibility to the means for reprisal,
for defence, at least, which lay ready to her hand. What was her sin
to me, if only she would once expiate it in a word, a look of remorse?
I asked for no more. Yet, lacking it, she must lack a faithful
Paladin. I had thought I hated her; and it had needed only this menace
from another quarter to reawaken all my maddest cravings. She was my
mother, and in direful peril. The pity and the sorrow of it quite
blinded me for the moment to all subordinate issues.
Yet Luck again had served me well for these. I remembered, when the
passing of my moody grief left room for other thoughts, how it had put
into my hands the one and very clue I needed. I knew at length where
to find the old creature--godmother, grandmother, what you will--who
alone, it seemed to me, could be induced, or bought, to make the
revelation which I desired. Well, even so, that secret were safer in
my keeping than solely in a villain’s. Though shared by another, or
others, its possession by me could hardly weaken my position as a
threatened mother’s champion. For all my wild pity, I was inexorably
resolved to take an early opportunity of putting that discovery to the
test.
And so I fell upon harder reflections. Who was this plausible dog,
with his soft voice, his sentimental gaze, his compelling personality?
Who was this astute villain--yet none so clever, nevertheless, but
that Luck, my Luck, had been able easily to hoodwink him? His hold on
Lady Skene must be a substantial one--one so potential of profit, it
would appear, that, after all this lapse of years, it was still worth
his while to take a house--a gambling office, one might call it--in
the neighbourhood, for the sole purpose of exploiting her. How and
where had he acquired an incriminating knowledge of her so damning?
Alas! had I not learned enough already of her “maiden meditations” to
be sceptical of their singleness? She had been an actress--on the
stage, at least--and presumably a true child of her traditions. I
could not forget Sir Maurice Carnac’s roguish innuendoes--his
allusions to my stepfather’s feet “netted” to matrimony in their
intended frolic over a wilder course; his sly maudlin reference to me
as a pledge of “widowed respectability.” Likely enough he too had
known, or guessed, the truth. Likely enough Lord Skene himself had not
been so blind to it as the pious throwers of dust in his eyes had once
assumed. Nor did I feel convinced that the question of it would much
have affected his lordship in those days of his relapse from virtue,
so long as its pretensions appeared to justify, in the worldly view,
his marriage with the beautiful creature who had ravished his heart.
Grant all that, and it made no difference in the present
situation--offered Lady Skene no less a bait to vile persecution. If
her husband had not been blind, she had been blind to his shrewd
seeing. If he knew, she did not know he knew, and her ignorance of
that inference of his, did it actually exist, constituted her real
accessibility by scoundrelism. She never thought, one must conclude,
but that she possessed a secret which, if revealed, would spell her
social and domestic ruin; and, so long as she could be kept in that
belief, the bloodsuckers might have their way with her. Had she not
the traditions of eighteen or so years of a spotless and dignified
wifehood to vindicate? It was for the very reason that she had
justified her exaltation so nobly, that she figured such a helpless
victim to the beasts of prey. She was a woman of position--a fact of
which her religious world took strict account; and she had come to
pledge herself to that world, and to be quoted for its local light. It
was there, I knew, and she knew probably, that her downfall would be
criticised most ruinously. Her husband, it was conceivable, she might
win over to her sin’s condonement; that narrow world never. There, in
any question of her victimising by a blackguard, was confessed her
main vulnerable point--or it had been. For, indeed, at the last there
had come to expose itself one more infinitely sensitive. She had borne
a son, heir to his mother’s fame or infamy.
I declare that my heart bled for her, as I reviewed her present
position, or such as I presumed it to be. What was it to me that she
had been a sinner--even a reckless sinner? Circumstance makes evil, as
it makes virtue. Let the righteous plume themselves on circumstance.
If I were a child of sin, I would be loyal to the maternity which
suffered for me. Only I wanted time to think and plan.
I dreaded more than I can describe the ordeal of the dinner hour that
night. Yet I was resolved to put in an appearance at the table. As
likely as not Miss Christmas had spoken of my return; and what
reflections would that induce in Lady Skene! and, if I kept away, how
would she regard my absence--with what suspicion, what fearful
apprehensions for her secret’s safety! For had she not believed me far
removed from the scene of her recent humiliation? I must face the
music, at once and boldly.
I faced it; and with what immediate result? As I entered the
dining-room, she was standing by her chair before taking her seat,
and, as I passed her by, going to my own, withdrew her skirts from my
contact. It was the instinctive act of a moment, and regretted, I
think, as soon as done; but it hurt me so cruelly, that my devil, for
an instant, returned uppermost. “Very well,” I thought, “if you _will_
have me your Nemesis!”
Lord Skene greeted me kindly but abstractedly. He made no comment on
my late absence, except to ask me where I had been gone these three or
four days.
“To Clapham, sir,” I said, perfectly self-possessed. “It occurred to
me to explore the field of Mr Pugsley’s early ministrations. I am
thinking of writing his life.”
He grinned first; then looked a little startled, glancing across
uneasily at his wife. She had suddenly put down her spoon, I observed,
leaving her soup unfinished.
“What!” said his lordship. “Are you thinking of turning author?”
“No, sir,” I answered. “Only of studying truth and godliness at first
hand.”
“Well,” he said, “you might occupy yourself worse.”
He was fairly puzzled, I could see, and, to protect himself, turned
the talk in other directions, leaving me to my own cogitations. Miss
Christmas, sitting opposite me, seized the opportunity to engage him
to herself--no great task, for the old man was genuinely attached to
her.
“What do you think of my frock, dear?” she said. “I want your opinion,
because you are a judge, you know.”
But he accepted her banter seriously. He was in an oddly sober mood.
“I think,” he said, “that, like charity, it covers a multitude of
sins.”
“O!” she cried, “how terribly severe! I am only a whited sepulchre
after all. In the midst of life we are in death.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” I said. “It sounds like one of Mr
Pugsley’s original reflections. But of course we are. Don’t you feel
it, my lady?”
I don’t know what demon was urging me. Lord Skene suddenly exclaimed:
“Georgina! is anything the matter?”
She was leaning back in her chair, looking white and faint; but she
rallied immediately.
“Nothing whatever,” she said. “What makes you think so? Go on with
your dinner--please do.”
He obeyed uneasily. I saw Miss Christmas steal her hand under the
cloth, and “poor” her hostess’s with a little lovely look of sympathy.
It meant nothing, of course, but sex. What could she know of the
other’s real indisposition? But a sudden unaccountable pang of
jealousy shot through me witnessing the act.
I had put the girl utterly out of my mind. She had become nothing, and
less than nothing, in the tragic sequence of events. Now, all in a
moment, I was moved to reconsider her--wonderingly, even. I thought
her face was pale--white, with a sort of pathetic sickness which
follows after much crying; and I was sorry for her, sorry, with a
sudden strange turmoil of the heart, which spoke most, I think, of
sorrow for myself. What was she to me? Nothing. I had taken brutal
pains, indeed, to convince her of the fact; and she must surely feel
convinced at last, and hold herself acquitted of any further
obligations to me. Yet, is it not human nature to view with jealousy
another’s fond appreciation of the thing we have held too cheap for
our own use? The value of it, it may be, has never struck us until we
have lost it. I don’t mean to say that I had arrived, already and at
once, at that extravagant pitch of regret; but I was certainly awake,
and suddenly, to points of attraction about the girl which had never
appealed to me before. Her hair grew very prettily on her forehead,
dividing from it in wings of the softest fawn. There was an unspoiled
frankness in her face, for all its temptation to chartered coquetry,
and her eyes had grown honest. She had developed into a little being
quite remote from my early conception of her. Her complexion was of an
unsoiled purity, just the natural maturing of pink-skinned babydom,
when its cheeks have ripened to a contour and moulded themselves to a
meaning. Her lips were always as red as if a Cupid had just left
kissing them, and there was an attractive robin note in her voice,
whether it spoke or laughed.
Now, noting all this, a quick sharp feeling as of loss, as of an utter
loneliness never until this moment fully realised, smote into me. What
possible sympathy, in all this turmoil of my hates and loves and
grievances, had I willingly foregone! But it was of no use: I _had_
rejected it, and I must take the consequences. She was even at this
moment ostentatiously ignoring me, and I saw that my hold on her was
gone.
What did I care? Why should I? Yet, I confess, to see these gentle
feminine spirits leagued together in revolt against my brutality
wounded me smartly. I had thought myself their master, and I was
master of nothing but their fear. Bill Sikes could better me there.
Something gained from that consciousness--call it what you will--was
promising to educate me finely.
Not once during the dinner did either of the ladies speak to me. I
chose bitterly to put their neglect down to the presumption of a
“by-blow” in assuming a claim on their notice. I was glad, though with
an impotent rage of jealousy, when they rose and left me alone with my
stepfather.
There was a gravity that night about Lord Skene which was new in him.
The sudden death of his old comrade, taken with the glass of joy at
his lips, as it were, would seem to have had a curiously sobering
effect on him. No doubt the mood was fleeting; but it had all the
force of a reformation while it lasted. He questioned me more
seriously than he had ever done yet as to my prospects and intentions;
dwelling, even, upon the necessity of prayer as a medium for exhorting
from the Deity the truth as to one’s vocation. Once or twice, as I
noticed, he put out his hand to the decanter, and withdrew it empty.
And presently he fell into a fit of musing, in which I did not venture
to disturb him. Then suddenly he looked up.
“I haven’t seen you since that night, Gaskett,” he said. “What a
shocking experience! And to risk damnation with a joke on his lips!
But that was Maurice all over. Do you remember how he greeted you, my
boy? It ought to have warned us, perhaps, and----”
I was smiling at him, as I leaned, playing with a knife, on the table.
He broke off quickly, rose, not altogether steadily, to his feet, and
stood staring at me.
“By the Lord, Gaskett!” he said, “what was in your mother’s mind when
she pupped you?”
I was so taken aback that I could not utter a word in reply. And the
next instant he had recovered himself, and was forcing an embarrassed
laugh.
“I think since that night my brain’s full of ghosts,” he said. “Come
along now to the drawing-room.”