'Tis law as steadfast as the throne of Zeus--
Our days are heritors of days gone by.
ÆSCHYLUS: _Agamemnon_.
A little after five o'clock that day, Harold arrived at Transome Court.
As he was winding along the broad road of the park, some parting gleams
of the March sun pierced the trees here and there, and threw on the
grass a long shadow of himself and the groom riding, and illuminated a
window or two of the home he was approaching. But the bitterness in his
mind made these sunny gleams almost as odious as an artificial smile. He
wished he had never come back to this pale English sunshine.
In the course of his eighteen miles' drive he had made up his mind what
he would do. He understood now, as he had never understood before, the
neglected solitariness of his mother's life, the allusions and
innuendoes which had come out during the election. But with a proud
insurrection against the hardship of an ignominy which was not of his
own making, he inwardly said, that if the circumstances of his birth
were such as to warrant any man in regarding his character of gentleman
with ready suspicion, that character should be the more strongly
asserted in his conduct. No one should be able to allege with any show
of proof that he had inherited meanness.
As he stepped from the carriage and entered the hall, there were the
voice and the trotting feet of little Harry as usual, and the rush to
clasp his father's leg and make his joyful puppy-like noises. Harold
just touched the boy's head, and then said to Dominic in a weary voice--
"Take the child away. Ask where my mother is."
Mrs. Transome, Dominic said, was up-stairs. He had seen her go up after
coming in from her walk with Miss Lyon, and she had not come down again.
Harold throwing off his hat and greatcoat, went straight to his mother's
dressing-room. There was still a hope in his mind. He might be suffering
simply from a lie. There is much misery created in the world by mere
mistake or slander, and he might have been stunned by a lie suggested by
such slander. He rapped at his mother's door.
Her voice said immediately, "Come in."
Mrs. Transome was resting in her easy-chair, as she often did between an
afternoon walk and dinner. She had taken off her walking-dress and
wrapped herself in a soft dressing-gown. She was neither more nor less
empty of joy than usual. But when she saw Harold, a dreadful certainty
took possession of her. It was as if a long expected letter, with a
black seal, had come at last.
Harold's face told her what to fear the more decisively, because she had
never before seen it express a man's deep agitation. Since the time of
its pouting childhood and careless youth she had seen only the confident
strength and good-humored imperiousness of maturity. The last five hours
had made a change as great as illness makes. Harold looked as if he had
been wrestling, and had had some terrible blow. His eyes had that sunken
look which, because it is unusual, seems to intensify expression.
He looked at his mother as he entered, and her eyes followed him as he
moved, till he came and stood in front of her, she looking up at him,
with white lips.
"Mother," he said, speaking with a distinct slowness, in strange
contrast with his habitual manner, "tell me the truth, that I may know
how to act."
He paused a moment, and then said, "Who is my father?"
She was mute: her lips only trembled. Harold stood silent for a few
moments, as if waiting. Then he spoke again.
"_He_ has said--said it before others--that _he_ is my father."
He looked still at his mother. She seemed as if age were striking her
with a sudden wand--as if her trembling face were getting haggard before
him. She was mute. But her eyes had not fallen; they looked up in
helpless misery at her son.
Her son turned away his eyes from her, and left her. In that moment
Harold felt hard: he could show no pity. All the pride of his nature
rebelled against his sonship.