Vane was utterly insensible either to voice or touch. His father knelt
over him and loosened his tie and collar, for his breath was coming hard
and irregularly. Then he rose to his feet, looked down at him for a few
moments, and went away to summon Koda Bux, his old Pathan bearer, to
help him to take him up to bed. He knew that he could trust him not to
gossip, and he would not for worlds have had it said about the house the
next day that Master Vane had been carried to bed drunk.
Koda Bux was awake the moment his master touched his shoulder. He rose
at once and followed him. When they reached the library Sir Arthur
pointed without a word to where Vane lay. He looked at him and then at
the decanters, and said, without moving a feature save his lips:
"Truly, Huzur, the young sahib is exceeding drunk, and he must sleep.
To-morrow the fires of hell will be burning in his brain and in his
blood. It is a thing that no others should know of. He shall sleep in
his bed, and thy servant shall watch by him until he is well, and
neither man nor woman shall come near him."
"That is my wish, Koda," said Sir Arthur. "Now I will help you to take
him upstairs."
"There is no need that thou, O protector of the poor, shouldst trouble
thyself. This is but one man's work."
With that he stooped down, got his arms under Vane's knees and
shoulders, and lifted him up as easily as if he had been a lad of ten.
Sir Arthur took up the candle which he had brought down with him, and
went in front to his son's room.
Koda laid him on the bed, and at once went to work with the deft
rapidity of a practised hand to remove his clothes. He saw that he could
do no more good, so, after laying his hand for a moment on Vane's wet,
cold brow, he turned away towards the door with a deep sigh, which was
not lost on Koda.
"Trust him to me and sleep in peace, Huzur," he said. "I know how to
fight the devil that is in him and throw him out. To-morrow Vane Sahib
shall be as well as ever."
"Do your best for him, Koda. This is the first time, and I hope the
last. Good-night."
"Good-night, friend of the friendless," replied the Pathan, standing up
and stretching out his hands palms downwards. "Fear nothing. May your
sleep be as the repose of Nirvana."
But there was neither rest nor sleep for Sir Arthur Maxwell that night.
That vision of the girl's face looking out of the cab had been to him a
vision half of heaven and half of hell. It was the face of the girl he
had wooed and worked for and won nearly thirty years before--a girl
whose hands for a brief space had opened the gates of Paradise to him.
But it was also the face of a woman who had brought into his life
something worse than the bitterness of death.
As he paced up and down his bedroom through the still, lonely hours of
the night, he asked himself again and again what inscrutable fate had
brought this girl, the fresh, bright, living image of the woman who was
worse than dead, and his son Vane, the idol of his heart, and the hope
of his life, together.
Why had this girl, this outcast bearing the name which he both loved and
hated, been the first to see in his son's eyes that fatal sign which he
knew so well, a sign which he had himself seen in eyes into which he had
once looked as a lad of twenty-four with anxious adoration to read his
fate in them. For years that flickering, wavering light had been to him
like the reflected glare from the flames of hell, and now this girl had
seen it as he had seen it, mocking and devilish in the eyes of his only
son.
It would have been better--he saw that now--to have braced himself to
the task of telling Vane the whole of the miserable, pitiful story at
once, as soon, indeed, as Vane's own story had convinced him that he had
not escaped the curse which some dead and gone ancestor of his mother's
had transmitted to his unborn posterity.
But it was a hard thing for a father to tell his son of his mother's
shame. As hard, surely, as it had been for Jephtha to keep his rash vow
and drive the steel into his daughter's breast. He had hoped that the
resolves which Vane had taken, enforced by a serious and friendly talk
the next day, would have been enough to avert the danger.
He did not know, as he knew now, that the demon of inherited alcoholism
laughs at such poor precautions as this. Measures infinitely more
drastic would be needed, and they must be employed at no matter what
cost either to himself or Vane.
And yet it was an awful thing to do. Year after year he had shrunk from
it, hoping that it would never be necessary; but now the necessity had
come at last. There could be no doubt of that. He had left his son sane
and strong, with brave, wise words on his lips. An hour after he had
gone back and found him a senseless thing, human only in shape. There
could be no hesitation after that. It must be done.
Like many men of his kind, men whose lives have been passed in wrestling
with the barbarisms, the ignorance and the superstitions of lower races,
as well as with the blind forces of nature and the scourges of
pestilence and famine in distant lands, Arthur Maxwell was a man of deep
though mostly silent religious convictions, and if ever there was a time
when such a man could find strength and guidance in prayer surely this
was such a time, and yet he had walked up and down his room, which since
he had entered it had been his Gethsemane, for hours before he knelt
down by his bedside and lifted up his heart, if not his voice, in
prayer.
He rose from his knees with clearer sight and greater strength to see
and face the terrible task which lay before him. It was quite plain to
him now that the task must be faced and carried through, and he was more
strongly determined than ever that before the next day was over Vane
should know everything that he could tell him. Still, there was no rest
for him yet, and for hours longer he walked up and down the room
thinking of the past and the future; but most of the past.
About seven sheer physical fatigue compelled him to lie down on his bed,
and in a few minutes he fell off into an uneasy sleep. Just about this
time Vane woke--his mouth parched, his brain burning and throbbing, and
every nerve in his body tingling. As soon as he opened his eyes he saw
Koda Bux standing by his bedside.
"What on earth's the matter, Koda?" he said in a voice that was half a
groan. "Great Scott, what a head I've got! Ah, I remember now. It was
that infernal whiskey. What the devil made me drink it?"
"You are right, Vane Sahib," said Koda sententiously; "it was the
whiskey, which surely is distilled from fruits that grow only on the
shores of the Sea of Sorrow. Now your head is wracked with the torments
of hell, and your mouth is like a cave in the desert; but you shall be
cured and sleep, and when you wake you shall be as though you had never
tasted the drink that is both fire and water."
He went away to the dressing-table, shook some pink powder out of a
little bottle into a glass, and came back to the bedside with the glass
in one hand and the water-bottle in the other. Then he poured the water
on to the powder and said:
"Drink, sahib, and sleep! When you wake you will be well."
The water seemed to turn into something like pink champagne as the
powder dissolved. Vane seized the glass eagerly, and took a long,
delicious drink. He had scarcely time to hand the glass back to Koda and
thank him before his burning brain grew cool, his nerves ceased to
thrill, a delightful languor stole over him, and he sank back on the
pillow and was asleep in a moment. The Pathan looked at him half sternly
and half sorrowfully for a few moments, then he laid his brown hand upon
his brow. It was already moist and cool.
He turned away, and set to work to put the room in order and get out
Vane's clothes and clean linen for the day. Then he went downstairs and
brewed Sir Arthur's morning coffee as usual. This was always the first
of his daily tasks. When he took it up he found Sir Arthur still fully
dressed, lying on the bed, moving uneasily in his sleep.
"The follies of the young are the sorrows of the old!" he murmured. "He
has not slept all night; still, this is a sleep which rests not nor
refreshes. His coffee will do him more good, and then he can bathe and
rest."
He laid his hand lightly on Sir Arthur's shoulder. He woke at once and
drank his coffee. Then he asked how Vane was, and when he knew that he
was sleeping again, and would not wake for some hours, he got up,
undressed, and had a bath and dressed again.
Then, after a not very successful attempt at breakfast, he went out and
turned into the Hammersmith Road in the direction of Brook Green. He
remembered the address that Miss Carol had given Vane just as he
remembered every other word of the conversation. He had determined to
call upon her, and to make as sure as possible that his dreadful
suspicions were correct before he told Vane the truth.
He found No. 15, Melville Gardens, one of a row of neat little detached
houses; not much more than cottages, but cosy and comfortable-looking,
each with a tiny little plot of ground in front and behind, and with a
row of trees down each side of the road which seemed to stand in
apologetic justification of the title of gardens.
The door was opened by a neatly-dressed, motherly-looking woman of about
forty instead of by the dishevelled, smutty-faced maid-of-all-work that
he half expected to find.
"Does Miss Carol Vane live here?" he asked, with a curious feeling of
nervousness.
"Yes, sir, she and Miss Murray are just finishing breakfast. Will you
come in and sit down, sir? Miss Vane won't be long."
"Thank you, yes," he said, going in. "I wish to see her rather
particularly."
"What name shall I say, sir?" said the woman, as she showed him into a
prettily-furnished little sitting-room opening out into the back garden
with French windows.
"Sir Arthur Maxwell," he replied. "If you will give my compliments to
Miss Vane, and tell her that she will do me a great service by giving me
about half-an-hour's conversation, I shall be much obliged to you."
The housekeeper made something like a little curtsey as she left the
room. She was distinctly impressed by the stately presence and old-world
courtesy of this bronzed, white-haired gentleman. He was so very
different from the general run of visitors at No. 15; but she had half
guessed his errand before she knocked at the door of the front room in
which Miss Carol and her friend and house-mate, Dora Murray, were
finishing their last cup of tea.
"Well, Mrs. Ford," said Miss Carol, looking up from the letter she was
reading, "who might that be? This is pretty early for a morning call."
"The gentleman's name is Sir Arthur Maxwell, Miss."
"What!" said Miss Carol, colouring up and rising quickly from her chair.
"Sir Arthur Maxwell. What on earth does _he_ want?"
"He said, miss, that he'd be very much obliged to you if you could give
him the pleasure of half-an-hour's conversation."
"Oh, dear, I suppose he was the gentleman who stopped at the corner last
night just when my new acquaintance got out. His father, of course. I
suppose he's come to row me about making friends with his son and heir
last night."
"One of the penalties of your fascinations, dear," said Dora, with a
smile which parted a pair of eminently kissable lips and showed a very
pretty set of teeth behind them.
Dora was nearly a couple of inches taller than Miss Carol, and some
three years older. She had soft, lightish-brown hair, brown eyebrows, a
trifle browner, perhaps, than nature had painted them, and dark blue
eyes, which made a very pretty contrast.
"Well," she went on, "I suppose there's nothing for you but to go and
interview the irate papa. But whatever did young hopeful want to go and
tell him all about it for, and even give him your address!"
"If you'll excuse me, Miss," said the housekeeper, "I don't think that's
it. The gentleman isn't at all angry. He was as polite and nice to me as
ever could be. Such a _nice_ gentleman."
"Dear me, Mrs. Ford, you seem quite impressed," said Miss Carol,
gathering up her correspondence. "Well, I'd better go and have it over,
whatever it is. I don't suppose I shall be very long. Meanwhile, Dora,
you may as well make yourself useful and dust the bikes. The old
gentleman won't eat me, I suppose. In fact, if Master Vane told him
everything, he ought to be very much obliged to me for my virtuous
reserve."
And then, with a saucy smile at her own reflection in the glass as she
passed the mantelpiece, she walked towards the door.
Carol, being a young lady of many and various experiences, did not often
find herself in a situation, however awkward it might be, which gave her
much cause for embarrassment. There were not many circumstances under
which she did not feel capable of taking perfect care of herself. Still,
she confessed to Dora afterwards that when she went into the little
sitting-room and faced the stately old gentleman who was waiting for her
she felt distinctly nervous--in short, "in something very like a
tremble," as she put it later on.
The moment she looked at his face she could see his likeness to Vane,
and therefore in a measure to herself. She had, of course, nothing to be
afraid of, and therefore there was no cause for fear, but for some
reason or other she felt less at ease than she had done in many more
difficult situations.
The same was almost equally true of Sir Arthur. In fact, when the door
opened and Miss Carol, looking exquisitely neat and pretty in a dainty,
grey, tailor-made cycling costume, walked into the room, he was unable
to restrain a very visible start. It was, indeed, as much as he could do
to keep himself from uttering an exclamation of astonishment.
As he looked at her, more than thirty years vanished in a second, and he
saw himself a lad of twenty-four with his brand new Oxford degree, and
his first place on the Indian Civil Service list only just published,
walking down a country lane by the side of a girl, who, but for the
difference in costume, might have been this very girl standing before
him.
"Good morning! Our housekeeper tells me that you wish to speak to me."
Yes, the voice was the same, too, and so were the expression, the
intonation, the attitude, everything. But the words brought him back to
the present, and to the recollection of all that had happened since that
walk in the country lane.
"Yes, Miss Vane," he heard himself saying, "I have taken the liberty of
calling to ask you if you would have any objection to a little
conversation with me. I won't detain you more than half an hour."
"With pleasure," she said; "but won't you sit down?" she went on,
seating herself on the sofa. "I suppose I am right in thinking that you
are Mr. Vane Maxwell's father, and I suppose, too, you are the gentleman
who was at the corner of Warwick Gardens when he got out of the cab? I'm
afraid you were a good bit shocked," she continued, smiling rather
faintly.
"I was not by any means so much shocked as astonished," Sir Arthur
replied gravely, "and, to avoid any misunderstanding, I had better say
at once that, though I was naturally a little bit startled, I was
infinitely more astonished, by the marvellous likeness----"
"What, to him!" said Miss Carol, interrupting him with a pretty little
gesture of deprecation. "Yes, of course, I can quite understand that a
gentleman like you would be a bit disgusted to find a likeness between
your son and a girl like me, for I suppose he told you all about me? I
mean, you know the sort of disreputable person that I am?"
Miss Carol said this with a distinct note of defiance in her voice. A
note which seemed to say, "I know what I am, and so do you, and if you
don't want to talk to me any longer you needn't." But she was
considerably astonished when Sir Arthur, leaning forward in his chair
and speaking very gravely, said:
"My dear child--you are younger than Vane, you know, and I may call you
that without offence--I do know what you are, or perhaps it would be
more just to say what circumstances have made you. I don't want you to
think that I have come here to preach at you. That is no business of
mine. Still, I am deeply grieved, though I daresay you have no notion
why--I mean no notion of the real reason. I am afraid I am expressing
myself very awkwardly, but just now I don't quite seem to be able to
keep my thoughts in order."
There was something in the gentle gravity of his tone and manner which
inspired Miss Carol with an unaccountable desire to go away and cry. She
didn't exactly know why, but she was certainly experiencing a very
uncomfortable feeling which was more like apprehension than anything
else. She couldn't think of anything else to say at the moment, and so
she said simply:
"I don't know why you should be grieved, I mean in particular about me.
There are plenty of others like me, you know, a good many thousands in
London alone, I believe, and I suppose you would feel sorry for any of
them. There are lots worse off than I am, I can tell you. But why should
you be sorry for me particularly?"
As she said this she crossed her legs and folded her hands over her
knee, leaning forward slightly and looking keenly at him.
"Because," he replied, with a little quaver in his voice, but looking
steadily into her eyes, "because you are the living image of the woman
who was once my wife. A little over thirty years ago--by the way, may I
ask how old you are?"
"I was eighteen last September," she said, "that is to say, I am getting
on for nineteen."
"And your birthday?" he said. "You will forgive me asking you so many
questions, I know, when I tell you why I ask them; but of course, you
needn't answer them unless you choose."
"There is no reason why I shouldn't," she said, "as far as I know. I was
born on the twentieth of September. What were you going to say?"
"I was going to say that if my wife, I mean I should rather say the
woman who was my wife, could be put beside you now as she was thirty
years ago, dressed as you are now, it would be almost impossible to tell
the difference between you. You told my son, I think, that you take your
name Vane from your mother."
"Yes," replied Miss Carol, "she told me that that was her name. I don't
know whether I was ever really christened or not, but an English
musician in Dresden, one of my mother's friends, called me Carol when I
was quite a little mite of a thing because I was always singing, and as
that was as good a name as any other, I suppose it stuck to me."
"Do you know whether your mother was ever married?"
"She had been, because she used to talk about it and about all she had
lost and all that sort of thing, you know, when she was drunk," replied
Miss Carol with a simple directness which went straight to Sir Arthur's
heart. "Of course, that was when I was quite a little thing, about eight
or nine. Then I was sent to a sort of boarding-school, half a school and
half a convent, and I didn't like that, so I ran away from it, as I told
your son last night."
"I went home and found the house shut up. The concierge told me that my
mother had gone away in a carriage with two gentlemen--he said one
looked like a police agent--nearly a month before. He didn't know where
she'd gone to, and from that day to this I've never heard anything more
of her. I told your son the rest of it and I daresay he has told you,
so there's no need for me to go over it again."
"Yes," said Sir Arthur, nodding slowly, "Vane told me, so if you please
I will ask you one or two more questions, and then I won't detain you
any longer."
"I am in no hurry," she replied. "Please ask me any number you like."
Her manner was now one of deep interest, for a suspicion was already
forming in her mind that this bronzed, grave-faced man had once been her
own mother's husband.
"Thank you," he said. "I should like to ask you first whether you happen
to have any photograph of your mother?"
Miss Carol shook her head decisively, and said:
"No. I had one once in a locket, but when I went home and found she'd
gone away and left me all alone in Paris--that's where we were then--I
was so angry that I took it out and tore it up. I daresay it was very
wrong of me, but I couldn't help it, and to tell you the honest truth, I
can't say that I ever was as fond of her as a daughter should have
been."
"I don't wonder at it," said Sir Arthur, with a sigh.
Miss Carol looked up wonderingly as he said this, but he took no notice
and said:
"But I suppose you would recognise a photograph of her if you saw one?"
"Yes, if it was taken anywhere about the time that I knew her."
"Quite so," said Sir Arthur, taking a leather letter-case out of his
pocket. "This was taken quite twenty years ago, a year or two after we
were married, in short. It is, or was, my wife."
As he took out the photograph he got up, crossed the room, and held it
out to her. Miss Carol got up too, and as she took it she saw that his
hand was trembling. She took the old-fashioned, faded photograph and
looked at it. He saw that her face flushed as she did so. She gave it
back to him and said simply:
"Yes, that is my mother."
As he took the photograph from her he looked at her with sad, grave eyes
across the gulf of sin and shame in which the one great love of his life
had been lost. She was the daughter of his wife, and yet she was not his
daughter--and she was an outcast. The sting of the old shame came back
very keenly. The old wound was already open and bleeding again. All the
pride and hope and love of his life were centred now on his brilliant
son. A few hours before he had learnt that his mother had transmitted to
him the terrible, perhaps the fatal taint of inherited alcoholism; and
now he had just proved beyond doubt that Vane's half-sister--for she was
that in blood if not in law--was what she had just so frankly, so
defiantly even, admitted herself to be.
And yet, how sweet and dainty she looked as she stood there before him,
a bright flush on her cheeks and a soft, regretful expression in those
big hazel eyes which were so wonderfully like _hers_! No one seeing her
and Vane together could possibly take them for anything but brother and
sister--and but for this marvellous likeness; but for the subtle
instinct of kindred blood which had spoken in this outcast's heart the
night before, would not a still deeper depth have opened in the hell of
that old infamy? There was at least that to be thankful for.
"I suppose you don't know where she is now--and don't care, most
likely?" Carol added, raising her eyes almost timidly to his.
"I do," he replied, slowly, "To tell you the truth, I was one of the men
who took her away from the house in the Rue St. Jean----"
"You were!" she exclaimed, recoiling a little from him. "Then it was
really you who turned me out homeless into the streets of Paris?"
"Yes, it was, I regret to say," he replied, almost humbly, "but I need
hardly tell you that I did it in complete ignorance. My ---- your mother
was making my name, my son's name, a scandal throughout Europe. She was
a hopeless dipsomaniac. I had, believe me, I had suffered for years all
that an honourable man could endure rather than blast my son's prospects
in life by taking proceedings for divorce, and so proclaiming to the
world that he was the son of such a woman."
"Yes," said Carol, quietly, with a little catch in her voice, "I
understand--such a woman as I suppose I shall be some day. Of course, it
was very hard on you and your son. And I don't suppose it made much
difference to me after all. She'd have sold me to someone as soon as I
was old enough; and instead of that I had to sell myself. When women
take to drink like that they don't care about anything. What did you do
with her?"
"The man with me," replied Sir Arthur, "was an officer of the French
Courts. He had a warrant authorising her detention in a home for chronic
inebriates. She is there still, little better than an imbecile, I regret
to say, and with no hope of recovery. The physicians I consulted told me
that she must have had the germs of alcoholic insanity in her blood from
her very birth. She told us that she had a daughter, and we traced you
to the school, though she obstinately refused to tell us anything that
would help us to find you. But we were too late; you had run away. We
hunted all Paris over for you, but you were utterly lost."
"Well," said Carol, gently, "I wish I'd stopped now, or that you'd found
me. Things might have been different; but, of course, it can't be helped
now."
"It was a terrible pity," he began, "but still, even now perhaps,
something may be done----"
"We won't talk about that now, if you please, sir," she interrupted, so
decisively that he saw at once that there was no discussion of the
subject possible.
"Pardon me," he said, quickly, "I fear I have annoyed you. Nothing, I
assure you, could be farther from my intention. Now I have troubled you
enough, and more than enough, and I am afraid I have recalled some very
unpleasant memories----"
"Not anything like as bad for me as for you, sir," she said, as he
paused for a moment. "If I have been of any service to you, I'm very
glad, though it's a miserable business altogether."
"Yes, and worse than miserable," he replied, with a slow shake of his
head. Then, glancing through the French windows he saw Dora rubbing one
of two bicycles down with a cloth in the little back garden, and he went
on: "But I see you are getting ready to go for a ride. I must not keep
you any longer, I am deeply grateful to you, believe me, and I hope our
acquaintance may not end here. And now, good-morning."
He held out his hand with the same grave courtesy with which he would
have offered it to the noblest dame of his acquaintance. She looked up
sharply as though to say, "Do you really mean to shake hands with _me_?"
Then her eyes dropped, and the next moment her hand was lying, trembling
a little, in his.