"You here, Morton?"
"Yes. Don't look at me like that, Claire, pray don't. You can't think
what I've suffered."
"What you've suffered?" said Claire coldly, as she recalled how she had
taken a mother's place to this boy for so many years till he had
obtained his advancement in life, when he had turned from her. He had
made some amends on the night of Mrs Pontardent's party; but after that
he had heard some whispered scandal, and had kept aloof more and more
till the great trouble had fallen, and their father had been arrested,
when he had stayed away and made no sign.
It had seemed so hard. When a few words on paper would have been so
consolatory and have helped Claire in her agony and distress, Morton had
not even written; and now he came to her at last to tell her she did not
know what he had suffered.
"You don't know," he continued, with the tears in his eyes. "It was bad
enough to be in the regiment with Payne and Bray, always ready to chaff
me and begin imitating the old man, and that beast Rockley sneering at
me; but when people began to talk as they did about you, Clairy--"
"Silence!" cried Claire, flashing up as she rose from her seat, and
darted an indignant glance at the boy. "If you have come only to insult
your sister--go."
"Don't talk like that, Clairy dear," cried the boy. "Don't be so hard
upon a fellow. I suffered horribly, for they did talk about you
shamefully, and I was very nearly calling Sir Harry out, only the
Colonel wouldn't let me fight. I'm sure I behaved well enough. Every
one said I did."
"Why have you come this morning?" said Claire coldly.
"Why have I come? Hark at her!" said Morton piteously. "Oh, dear, I
wish I were a boy again, instead of an officer and a gentleman, and
could go down and catch dabs with Dick Miggles off the pier."
"Officer--gentleman? Morton, is it the act of a gentleman to side with
the wretched people who made sport of your sister's fame? To stand
aloof when she is almost alone and unfriended, and this dreadful
calamity has befallen us? Oh, Morton, are you my brother to act like
this? Is it your manliness of which you made a point?"
"Claire--sis--dear sis," he cried, throwing himself on his knees, and
clasping her waist as he burst into a boyish fit of passionate weeping.
"Don't be so cruel to me. I have fought so hard. I have struggled
against the pride, and shame, and misery of it all. You don't know what
a position mine has been, and I know now I ought to have taken your part
and my father's part against all the world. But I've been a coward--a
miserable, pitiful, weak coward, and it's a punishment to me. You, even
you, hate me for it, and--and I wish I were dead."
Claire's face softened as she looked down upon the lad in his misery and
abasement, and after a momentary struggle to free herself from him she
stood with her hands stretched out over the head that was buried in the
folds of her dress, and a tender yearning look took the place of the
hard angry glance that she had directed at him.
"I have fought, God knows how hard," he went on between his sobs, "but
I'm only a boy after all, sis, and I hadn't the strength and manliness
to stand up against the fellows at the mess. I've shut myself up
because I've been ashamed to be seen, and I've felt sometimes as if I
could run right away and go somewhere, so that I could be where I should
not be known."
Claire's hands trembled as they were very near his head now--as if they
longed to clasp the lad's neck and hold him to her breast.
"I've been coming to you a hundred times, but my cursed cowardice has
kept me back, and everything has been against me. There has been your
trouble."
Claire's hands shrank from him again.
"Then it was bad enough about father without this horrible charge."
Claire's face grew hard and cold, and in a moment she seemed ten years
older.
"Then there was poor Fred: Rockley's servant in my regiment. You don't
know what a position mine has been."
Claire made no movement now. Her heart seemed to be hardening against
the lad, and she shrank from him a little, but he clung to her tightly
with his face hidden, and went on in the same piteous, boyish wail.
"I've been half mad sometimes about you and your troubles--"
Claire's hands began to rise again and tremble over his head.
"Sometimes about myself, and I've felt as if I was the most unlucky
fellow in the world."
There was a pause here, broken by the lad's passionate sobs.
"There: you hear me," he said. "I'm only a boy blubbering like this,
but I feel pain as a man. I tell you, Clairy, dear sis, it has driven
me nearly mad to know that this false charge was hanging over my father,
and that he was in prison. The fellows at the mess have seemed to
shrink from me, all but the Colonel, but whenever he has said a kind
word to me I've known it was because the old man was in prison, and it
has been like a knife going into me. I couldn't bear it. I hated
myself, and I fought, I tell you, to do what was right, but I couldn't.
It was as if the devil were dragging at me to draw me away, till this
came, and then I felt that I could be a man, and now," he cried, raising
himself, and shaking his hair back, as he threw up his head proudly,
"forgive me, sis, or no--Damn my commission! Damn the regiment! Damn
the whole world! I'm going down to the prison to stand by my poor old
father, come what may."
"My darling!"
Claire's arms were round his neck, and for the space of a few minutes
she sobbed hysterically, as she strained him to her breast.
"What, sis? You forgive me?" he cried, as her kisses were rained upon
his face.
"Forgive you, my own brave, true brother? Yes," she cried. "Of course
I know what you have suffered. I know it all. It was a bitter
struggle, dear, but you have conquered, and I never felt so proud of you
as I feel now."
"Sis!"
The tears that stole down from Claire's eyes seemed to give her the
relief her throbbing brain had yearned for all these painful days, and
her face lit up with a look of joy to which it had been a stranger for
months.
"You will go to him then, dear?" she whispered, with the bright aspect
fading out again, to give place to a cold, ashy look of dread, as the
horror of their position came back, and the shadow of what seemed to
Claire to be inevitable now crossed her spirit.
"Yes, I'm going. Poor old fellow! It will be a horrible shock to him
about Fred."
"About Fred?"
"Yes. Had I better tell him?"
"Tell him?" faltered Claire.
"Yes. I thought not. He has enough to bear. I thought," said the lad
bitterly, "that I was doing a brave thing when they brought him in. I
said he was my poor brother: but I found that they all knew. Claire!
Sis!"
She had staggered from him, and would have fallen had he not held on to
her hand.
"Speak--tell me!" she cried. "No, no! I can't bear it! Don't tell me
there is some new trouble come."
"What! Didn't you know?"
She shook her head wildly, and wrung her hands and tried to speak, while
he held her and whispered softly:
"Oh, sis--sis--dear sis!"
"Something has happened to Fred," she panted at last. "Tell me: I can
bear it now. Anything. I am used to trouble, dear."
"My poor sis!" he whispered.
"Why do you not tell me?" she cried wildly. "Do you not see how you are
torturing me? Speak--tell me. What of Fred?"
Her imperious, insistent manner seemed to force the lad to speak, and he
said, slowly and unwillingly:
"He was going along the Parade, and ran up against Rockley, and Payne,
and Bray; poor chap, he did not salute them, I believe, and Rockley gave
him a cut with his whip."
"Major Rockley!" cried Claire, with ashy lips.
"Yes; and he knocked over Bray and that puppy Payne. Curse them! they
were like skittles to him. Fred's full of pluck; and, sis," cried
Morton excitedly, as his eyes flashed with pleasure, "he took hold of
that black-muzzled, blackguard Rockley, snatched his whip from him, and
thrashed him till he couldn't stand."
"Fred beat Major Rockley?" cried Claire, with a horrified look, as she
realised the consequences forgotten for the moment by the boy.
"Yes; thrashed the blackguard soundly; but they followed him with a
sergeant and a file or two of men to take him."
"Yes. Go on."
"They found him at Linnell's, talking to Richard Linnell and--"
Morton stopped with white face, and repented that he had said so much.
"I must know all," cried Claire, trembling. "I am sure to hear."
"I can't tell you," he said hoarsely.
"Is it not better that it should come from you than from a stranger?"
"It is too horrible, sis," said the lad.
"Tell me, Morton, at once."
Her words were cold and strange, and she laid her hands upon his
shoulders, and gazed into his eyes.
The boy winced and hung his head as he said slowly:
"They called upon him to surrender, but--"
The lad raised his head, and tossing it back, his eyes flashed as he
cried in a different tone:
"I can't help being proud of him--he was so full of pluck, sis. He
wouldn't surrender, but made a bold leap out of the window, and made a
run for it; but that beast Bray gave the order, and they shot him down."
"Shot him down!"
"Yes; but he's not dead, sis--only wounded; but--"
"But what? Why do you keep anything from me now?" cried Claire
piteously.
"It's court-martial, and--it's court-martial for striking your officer,
Claire, and he knows it; and, poor fellow, in a desperate fit, so as to
get into the hands of the magistrates instead of the officers, to be
condemned to death, he--he--Claire, I can't speak if you look at me in
that wild way."
"Go on!" she said hoarsely.
"He said--that it was not father--who killed Lady Teigne--but it was
he."
Volume Three, Chapter XIX.