THE QUESTIONER
"What has thee come to say?"
Sitting in his high-backed chair, Luke Claridge seemed a part of its
dignified severity. In the sparsely furnished room with its uncarpeted
floor, its plain teak table, its high wainscoting and undecorated walls,
the old man had the look of one who belonged to some ancient consistory,
a judge whose piety would march with an austerity that would save a human
soul by destroying the body, if need be.
A crisis had come, vaguely foreseen, sombrely eluded. A questioner was
before him who, poor, unheeded, an ancient victim of vice, could yet
wield a weapon whose sweep of wounds would be wide. Stern and masterful
as he looked in his arid isolation, beneath all was a shaking anxiety.
He knew well what the old chair-maker had come to say, but, in the
prologue of the struggle before him, he was unwittingly manoeuvring for
position.
"Speak," he added presently, as Soolsby fumbled in his great loose
pockets, and drew forth a paper. "What has thee to say?"
Without a word, Soolsby handed over the paper, but the other would not
take it.
"What is it?" he asked, his lips growing pale. "Read--if thee can
read."
The gibe in the last words made the colour leap into Soolsby's face, and
a fighting look came. He too had staved off this inevitable hour, had
dreaded it, but now his courage shot up high.
"Doost think I have forgotten how to read since the day I put my hand to
a writing you've hid so long from them it most concerns? Ay, I can read,
and I can write, and I will prove that I can speak too before I've done."
"Read--read," rejoined the old man hoarsely, his hands tightly gripping
the chair-arm.
"The fever caught him at Shendy--that is the place--"
"He is not dead--David is not dead?" came the sharp, pained
interruption. The old man's head strained forward, his eyes were misty
and dazed.
Soolsby's face showed no pity for the other's anxiety; it had a kind of
triumph in it. "Nay, he is living," he answered. "He got well of the
fever, and came to Cairo, but he's off again into the desert. It's the
third time. You can't be tempting Providence for ever. This paper here
says it's too big a job for one man--like throwing a good life away.
Here in England is his place, it says. And so say I; and so I have come
to say, and to hear you say so, too. What is he there? One man against
a million. What put it in his head that he thinks he can do it?"
His voice became lower; he fixed his eyes meaningly on the other. "When
a man's life got a twist at the start, no wonder it flies off madlike to
do the thing that isn't to be done, and leave undone the thing that's
here for it to do. Doost think a straight line could come from the
crooked line you drew for him?"
"He is safe--he is well and strong again?" asked the old man painfully.
Suddenly he reached out a hand for the paper. "Let me read," he said, in
a voice scarce above a whisper.
He essayed to take the paper calmly, but it trembled in his hands. He
spread it out and fumbled for his glasses, but could not find them, and
he gazed helplessly at the page before him. Soolsby took the paper from
him and read slowly:
". . . Claridge Pasha has done good work in Egypt, but he is a
generation too soon, it may be two or three too soon. We can but regard
this fresh enterprise as a temptation to Fate to take from our race one
of the most promising spirits and vital personalities which this
generation has produced. It is a forlorn hope. Most Englishmen familiar
with Claridge Pasha's life and aims will ask--"
An exclamation broke from the old man. In the pause which followed he
said: "It was none of my doing. He went to Egypt against my will."
"Ay, so many a man's said that's not wanted to look his own acts straight
in the face. If Our Man had been started different, if he'd started in
the path where God A'mighty dropped him, and not in the path Luke
Claridge chose, would he have been in Egypt to-day wearing out his life?
He's not making carpets there, he's only beating them."
The homely illustration drawn from the business in which he had been
interested so many years went home to Claridge's mind. He shrank back,
and sat rigid, his brows drawing over the eyes, till they seemed sunk in
caverns of the head. Suddenly Soolsby's voice rose angrily. Luke
Claridge seemed so remorseless and unyielding, so set in his vanity and
self-will! Soolsby misread the rigid look in the face, the pale
sternness. He did not know that there had suddenly come upon Luke
Claridge the full consciousness of an agonising truth--that all he had
done where David was concerned had been a mistake. The hard look, the
sternness, were the signals of a soul challenging itself.
"Ay, you've had your own will," cried Soolsby mercilessly. "You've said
to God A'mighty that He wasn't able to work out to a good end what He'd
let happen; and so you'd do His work for Him. You kept the lad hid away
from the people that belonged to him, you kept him out of his own, and
let others take his birthright. You put a shame upon him, hiding who his
father and his father's people were, and you put a shame upon her that
lies in the graveyard--as sweet a lass, as good, as ever lived on earth.
Ay, a shame and a scandal! For your eyes were shut always to the
sidelong looks, your ears never heard the things people said--'A good-
for-nothing ship-captain, a scamp and a ne'er-do-weel, one that had a
lass at every port, and, maybe, wives too; one that none knew or ever had
seen--a pirate maybe, or a slave-dealer, or a jail-bird, for all they
knew! Married--oh yes, married right enough, but nothing else--not even
a home. Just a ring on the finger, and then, beyond and away!' Around
her life that brought into the world our lad yonder you let a cloud draw
down; and you let it draw round his, too, for he didn't even bear his
father's name--much less knew who his father was--or live in his father's
home, or come by his own in the end. You gave the lad shame and scandal.
Do you think, he didn't feel it, was it much or little? He wasn't
walking in the sun, but--"
"Mercy! Mercy!" broke in the old man, his hand before his eyes. He was
thinking of Mercy, his daughter, of the words she had said to him when
she died, "Set him in the sun, father, where God can find him," and her
name now broke from his lips.
Soolsby misunderstood. "Ay, there'll be mercy when right's been done
Our Man, and not till then. I've held my tongue for half a lifetime, but
I'll speak now and bring him back. Ay, he shall come back and take the
place that is his, and all that belongs to him. That lordship yonder--
let him go out into the world and make his place as the Egyptian did.
He's had his chance to help Our Man, and he has only hurt, not helped
him. We've had enough of his second-best lordship and his ways."
The old man's face was painful in its stricken stillness now. He had
regained control of himself, his brain had recovered greatly from its
first suffusion of excitement.
"How does thee know my lord yonder has hurt and not helped him?" he
asked in an even voice, his lips tightening, however. "How does thee
know it surely?"
"From Kate Heaver, my lady's maid. My lady's illness--what was it?
Because she would help Our Man, and, out of his hatred, yonder second son
said that to her which no woman can bear that's a true woman; and then,
what with a chill and fever, she's been yonder ailing these weeks past.
She did what she could for him, and her husband did what he could against
him."
The old man settled back in his chair again. "Thee has kept silent all
these years? Thee has never told any that lives?"
"I gave my word to her that died--to our Egyptian's mother--that I would
never speak unless you gave me leave to speak, or if you should die
before me. It was but a day before the lad was born. So have I kept my
word. But now you shall speak. Ay, then, but you shall speak, or I'll
break my word to her, to do right by her son. She herself would speak if
she was here, and I'll answer her, if ever I see her after Purgatory, for
speaking now."
The old man drew himself up in his chair as though in pain, and said very
slowly, almost thickly: "I shall answer also for all I did. The spirit
moved me. He is of my blood--his mother was dead--in his veins is
the blood that runs in mine. His father--aristocrat, spendthrift,
adventurer, renegade, who married her in secret, and left her, bidding
her return to me, until he came again, and she to bear him a child--was
he fit to bring up the boy?"
He breathed heavily, his face became wan and haggard, as he continued:
"Restless on land or sea, for ever seeking some new thing, and when he
found it, and saw what was therein, he turned away forgetful. God put it
into my heart to abjure him and the life around him. The Voice made me
rescue the child from a life empty and bare and heartless and proud.
When he returned, and my child was in her grave, he came to me in secret;
he claimed the child of that honest lass whom he had married under a
false name. I held my hand lest I should kill him, man of peace as I am.
Even his father--Quaker though he once became--did we not know ere the
end that he had no part or lot with us, that he but experimented with his
soul, as with all else? Experiment--experiment--experiment, until at
last an Eglington went exploring in my child's heart, and sent her to her
grave--the God of Israel be her rest and refuge! What should such high-
placed folk do stooping out of their sphere to us who walk in plain
paths? What have we in common with them? My soul would have none of
them--masks of men, the slaves of riches and titles, and tyrants over the
poor."
His voice grew hoarse and high, and his head bent forward. He spoke as
though forgetful of Soolsby's presence: "As the East is from the West, so
were we separate from these lovers of this world, the self-indulgent, the
hard-hearted, the proud. I chose for the child that he should stay with
me and not go to him, to remain among his own people and his own class.
He was a sinister, an evil man. Was the child to be trusted with him?"
"The child was his own child," broke in Soolsby. "Your daughter was his
lady--the Countess of Eglington! Not all the Quakers in heaven or earth
could alter that. His first-born son is Earl of Eglington, and has been
so these years past; and you, nor his second-best lordship there, nor all
the courts in England can alter that. . . . Ay, I've kept my peace,
but I will speak out now. I was with the Earl--James Fetherdon he called
himself--when he married her that's gone to heaven, if any ever went to
heaven; and I can prove all. There's proof aplenty, and 'tis a pity, ay,
God's pity! that 'twas not used long ago. Well I knew, as the years
passed, that the Earl's heart was with David, but he had not the courage
to face it all, so worn away was the man in him. Ah, if the lad had
always been with him--who can tell?--he might have been different!
Whether so or not, it was the lad's right to take his place his mother
gave him, let be whatever his father was. 'Twas a cruel thing done to
him. His own was his own, to run his race as God A'mighty had laid the
hurdles, not as Luke Claridge willed. I'm sick of seeing yonder fellow
in Our Man's place, he that will not give him help, when he may; he that
would see him die like a dog in the desert, brother or no brother--"
"He does not know--Lord Eglington does not know the truth?" interposed
the old man in a heavy whisper. "He does not know, but, if he knew,
would it matter to him! So much the more would he see Our Man die yonder
in the sands. I know the breed. I know him yonder, the skim-milk lord.
There is no blood of justice, no milk of kindness in him. Do you think
his father that I friended in this thing--did he ever give me a penny,
or aught save that hut on the hill that was not worth a pound a year?
Did he ever do aught to show that he remembered?--Like father like son.
I wanted naught. I held my peace, not for him, but for her--for the
promise I made her when she smiled at me and said: 'If I shouldn't be
seeing thee again, Soolsby, remember; and if thee can ever prove a friend
to the child that is to be, prove it.' And I will prove it now. He must
come back to his own. Right's right, and I will have it so. More brains
you may have, and wealth you have, but not more common sense than any
common man like me. If the spirit moved you to hold your peace, it moves
me to make you speak. With all your meek face you've been a hard, stiff-
necked man, a tyrant too, and as much an aristocrat to such as me as any
lord in the land. But I've drunk the mug of silence to the bottom.
I've--" He stopped short, seeing a strange look come over the other's
face, then stepped forward quickly as the old man half rose from his
chair, murmuring thickly:
"Mercy--David, my lord, come--!" he muttered, and staggered, and fell
into Soolsby's arms.
His head dropped forward on his breast, and with a great sigh he sank
into unconsciousness. Soolsby laid him on a couch, and ran to the door
and called aloud for help.
..........................
The man of silence was silent indeed now. In the room where paralysis
had fallen on him a bed was brought, and he lay nerveless on the verge of
a still deeper silence. The hours went by. His eyes opened, he saw and
recognised them all, but his look rested only on Faith and Soolsby; and,
as time went on, these were the only faces to which he gave an answering
look of understanding. Days wore away, but he neither spoke nor moved.
People came and went softly, and he gave no heed. There was ever a
trouble in his eyes when they were open. Only when Soolsby came did it
seem to lessen. Faith saw this, and urged Soolsby to sit by him. She
had questioned much concerning what had happened before the stroke fell,
but Soolsby said only that the old man had been greatly troubled about
David. Once Lady Eglington, frail and gentle and sympathetic, came, but
the trouble deepened in his eyes, and the lids closed over them, so that
he might not see her face.
When she had gone, Soolsby, who had been present and had interpreted the
old man's look according to a knowledge all his own, came over to the
bed, leaned down and whispered: "I will speak now."
Then the eyes opened, and a smile faintly flickered at the mouth.
"I will speak now," Soolsby said again into the old man's ear.