When he left Melville Gardens, Sir Arthur did not go straight home. He
knew that Vane would not be awake for two or three hours yet, and after
a few moments' hesitation he decided to go and call on his old friend,
Godfrey Raleigh, with whom he had been dining the night before, and, if
he found him at home, put the whole case frankly before him and ask his
advice.
He had just retired with a well-earned K.C.S.I. from the Bench of the
Supreme Court of Bengal, but he was one of those men on whom neither
years nor climate seem to take any effect, and at sixty-five his body
was as vigorous and his brain as active and clear as they had been at
thirty-five. He had married rather late, and Enid, the Helen of that
Iliad of the Wheelhouse, was his only child--and therefore naturally the
very apple of his eye and the idol of his heart.
Her engagement to Vane had seemed to both the fathers and to her mother
the most natural and the most desirable arrangement that could have been
made. Vane would take a brilliant degree, he would enter the Diplomatic
Service under the best of auspices, and when Enid had completed her
education with a couple of years on the Continent they were to be
married on her twentieth birthday. That was the promise of these two
bright young lives. What would the fulfilment be?
Sir Godfrey was, as he believed, the only one of his acquaintance in
England who knew the truth of the tragedy of his life. They had been
chums at Eton and Oxford. They had gone out to India together, Sir
Godfrey with a judicial appointment, and Sir Arthur as Political Agent
to one of the minor Independent States, both of them juniors with many
things to learn and many steps to climb before they took a really active
and responsible part in the propulsion of that huge and complicated
machine which is called the Indian Government.
The Fates had thrown them a good deal together, and they had got to know
each other well, not quickly, because men who are men need a great deal
of knowing; but as the months had grown into years, and the years into a
decade or more, they had really learnt to know each other. They had gone
home together on the same ship to marry the girls who had been waiting
for them since their troths had been plighted during their university
days. They had come back with their brides on the same ship to India;
Godfrey Raleigh had been godfather to his friend's first-born son. Three
years later, after the shadow had fallen upon his own life, he had
performed the same office for his friend's daughter, the successor of a
baby girl who had died during the Rains.
These two children were now the youth and maiden who, within the next
two or three years were to be man and wife. But after the events of the
last twelve hours or so, Sir Arthur felt that it would not be either
loyal to his old friend, or just to him and his daughter not to go and
tell him frankly what he had learnt, and to take, not only his opinion,
but also his advice on the subject.
He found Sir Godfrey at home, and the judge quickly saw that he had not
called upon any ordinary concern, so he asked him to come and smoke a
pipe in his den, and there Sir Arthur, taking up the thread where it had
been dropped years before, told him in a few straight, short sentences
the rest of the story to the end of his interview with Miss Carol.
"Of course, you will understand, Raleigh," he said, when he had
finished, "I have told you this because I thought it was only right to
do so. My boy is engaged to marry your girl. It is quite plain, I am
sorry to say, that this alcoholic taint is in him, and as I have told
you this Miss Carol Vane, charming and all as I must confess her to be
from what I have seen of her, is after all Vane's half-sister, and she
is also what I told you she was."
"Well, my dear Maxwell, I must confess that that is a very difficult
problem indeed for us to decide. Very difficult indeed," Sir Godfrey had
replied.
"You see, to put it quite plainly, and, if as an old lawyer I may say
so, from the judicial point of view, there are two courses open to us.
First, we may or, I would rather say, we _might_ adopt the strictly
scientific view of the matter and say that, since the unfortunate woman
who was once your wife has apparently transmitted the taint of
alcoholism to your son, it would therefore be improper for him to marry
Enid for fear that he should further transmit this taint to his own
offspring.
"That, I suppose, is the way in which a coldblooded scientist would put
it; but on the other hand I think the matter should also be considered
from the purely human point of view, and here, I speak again as an old
judge. When you married your wife you had no notion that she had
inherited this taint of insanity, as we may well call it, from some
unknown ancestor. Now the same thing might have happened with my wife,
or in fact, with any other woman.
"It is perfectly well known that this poison, as one is obliged to call
it, may lie latent for generations; may, in fact, die out altogether. On
the other hand, what might have been only a vice in the grandfather or
the father may develop as insanity in the grandson or the son. It is not
for us to decide these things, at least, that is my view.
"You and I have more experience, more judgment; but I think that your
son and my daughter will have more accurate instincts and keener
intuitions. My own judgment I reserve entirely, and I advise you to do
the same.
"Go home and tell Vane everything. Don't spare yourself or him, for in a
case like this truth, the whole truth, is, after all, the greatest
mercy. I will tell my wife the whole story this afternoon, and she will
tell Enid when she gets back from Paris. Then I think the best that we
can do will be to leave them to find a solution of the problem between
them. Depend upon it that, whatever solution they do arrive at, it will
be more accurate and will stand the test of time better than any
arbitrary action which you or I might take."
And so ended the only false--utterly and hopelessly false--judgment
which Sir Godfrey Raleigh had ever delivered.
Sir Arthur took it as gospel, it all seemed so clear and so logical, so
fair to everybody; just the sort of judgment, in fact, which might have
been expected from a man of such vast and varied experience. Both of
them had the best of intentions, for were not the happiness, the
earthly fates of their two only children bound up in it?
Under such circumstances, though the advice might be mistaken, it was
absolutely impossible that it could be anything else but honest and
sincere. It was not for them to see into the future, nor yet to solve
those impossibly intricate problems of human passion, of human strength
and weakness, which, in defiance of all laws human and divine, break
through the traditions of ages, make a mockery of all commonplace laws,
and finally solve themselves with an accuracy as pitiless as it is
precise.
Sir Arthur left his friend's house with the firm conviction that the
only thing to be done under the circumstances was to follow his advice.
When he got back to his house in Warwick Gardens, the door was opened by
Koda Bux, and the first thing he said to him was:
"Is Mr. Vane awake?"
"Sahib, he is, and well. He is even as though he had never drunk of the
liquor of fire. He is in the library awaiting your return."
It was then getting on for one o'clock, the lunch-time of Sir Arthur's
household, and the table was already laid in what was called the
breakfast-room, that is to say a room looking out upon one of the long,
back gardens which are attached to the houses in Warwick Gardens.
Vane was sitting in the library waiting, something in shame and
something in fear, for his father's return. He more than half-expected
that his father would come in and begin at once to haul him over the
coals on account of what had happened the night before. He did not feel
altogether satisfied about his adventure with Miss Carol, and he was
very much ashamed of himself, indeed, for what had happened afterwards.
But as yet, he had no suspicion of the terrible secret which in the
almost immediate future was to decide his destiny in life. The dreadful
fact of inherited alcoholism was yet to be revealed to him. He thought
that his father was simply going to rate him for having exceeded the
bounds of prudence during his night out, for coming home in a cab with
such a person as Miss Carol, and then, worse than all, to tell him that
he had made a beast of himself by beginning to drink whiskey when he was
alone after having refused to take anything while his father was in the
room. It was that that he was really afraid of.
He had no idea of what had happened since the time that he had fallen
from his chair on to the hearth-rug, saving only the brief awakening in
his bed with Koda Bux standing beside him, the drinking of the
crimson-coloured effervescing liquid, and then the long, calm sleep
which had spread itself like a gulf between the agony of the one
awakening and the peace of the next.
He was sitting in one of the big arm-chairs in the library when his
father came in. He got up and stood before him, something as a criminal
might do before his judge, expecting to hear something like a sentence
from his lips. He was very much ashamed of himself, and being so was
perfectly prepared to take his punishment which would probably come in
the shape of a few cold words of reproof, and a hard look in his
father's eyes which he had seen before. But, instead of that, when he
got up out of the arm-chair, and began somewhat falteringly:
"Dad, I'm awfully sorry----" his father stopped him, and said with a
look at the clock on the mantel-piece: "I think it is about lunch time,
isn't it? Yes, there is the gong. How's your appetite?"
"Well, better than I thought it would be," said Vane, "better, in fact,
than it deserves to be. That stuff that Koda gave me this morning has
worked wonders----"
"Very well, then," said Sir Arthur, cutting him short, "I think we may
as well go and have some lunch."
The meal was eaten in a somewhat awkward silence, broken by odds and
ends of talk which were obviously spoken and replied to, not for the
purpose of conversation, but to fill up time. Both father and son were
as unhappy as men could very well be, and yet the ancient custom which
forbids the Anglo-Saxon race to talk about unpleasant things at
meal-times, prevented Sir Arthur from saying what he had to say, and
Vane from asking what he wanted to ask.
At last, when Koda came in and said that coffee was served in the Den
they got up, both of them feeling a certain sense of relief, although
both knew that the worst was yet to come.
When they got into the Den, Sir Arthur said to Koda in Urdu:
"The house is empty. There is no one here. The door is bolted. No one
must enter, till I say so."
He opened the door, spread the palms of his hands outwards, inclined his
head, and said in the same language: "Thou art obeyed, Huzur. It is
already done." Then he backed out of the door and shut it.
Sir Arthur got up out of his chair, turned the key in the lock, and said
to Vane in a tone whose calmness astonished him almost as much as the
words did:
"Vane, why did you drink that whiskey last night? You know I asked you
to have some, and you said that although you had never disobeyed me
before, if I had ordered you to have some you would not have done it.
And yet, after I had left the room you emptied the decanter. Why was
that?"
Vane had expected anything but this, for his father had spoken as
quietly as if he had been asking him about the most ordinary concern of
their daily life. He remembered dimly those few dreadful minutes after
the subtle aroma from the whiskey decanter had reached his nostrils, the
swift intoxication, the brilliant series of visions which had passed
before his eyes, and then the dead, black night which had fallen over
his senses, and after that nothing more until he had awakened with
parched mouth and burning brain, and Koda standing by his bedside.
"I'm afraid, dad, I was very drunk last night, but why, I don't know. I
was sober enough when I came in, you know that yourself. But somehow,
just when you had gone out of the room and told me to put the spirit
case away, I took up the whiskey decanter and smelt it. There seemed to
be some infernal influence in it which made me simply long to drink. I
did not want to in the ordinary way, and as I had been having brandy and
soda and champagne before, of course, whiskey was the very worst thing I
could possibly have drunk. Yet it seemed somehow to get hold of me. I
felt as though I _had_ to drink. It didn't matter what it was so long as
it was alcohol. It was the smell of it that intoxicated me first, and
when I had once smelt it I went on, till I was dead drunk, and I suppose
that is the way that you found me. That is all that I know about it. I
am horribly ashamed of myself, and I can only promise you that, if I
can help it, it will never occur again."
"Sit down, Vane, and let us talk this over," said Sir Arthur, seating
himself in the arm-chair on the other side of the fire-place. "I suppose
you thought when I came back that I was going to give you the usual sort
of lecture that a father would give his son under the circumstances.
Well, I am not going to do that. I am sorry to say that it is a great
deal more serious than that."
"What do you mean, dad?" said Vane, getting up out of the arm-chair into
which he had thrown himself, as though resigned to receive his sentence.
"More serious than that? Surely it is bad enough for a fellow to come
home as I did last night, and then get drunk on whiskey and have to be
carried to bed. There can't be anything very much worse than that."
"There might have been," said Sir Arthur, "if you had not stopped the
cab where you did. What would you say if I told you that that girl--you
remember what you said to me about her likeness to yourself--what would
you say if I were to tell you that that girl is your sister?"
"Good God! Dad, you don't mean that, do you? It can't be. I never had a
sister. You have always told me that I am the only child. Mother died
twenty years ago, didn't she? And that girl was only about nineteen. No,
you can't mean it!"
"Yes," said Sir Arthur, in a tone which seemed very strange to his son.
"I do mean it. When I told you that your mother had died a few months
after you were born, I did not tell you the truth. She died to me and to
you, but that was all. She is alive still. That girl that you drove up
in the cab with last night was her daughter, but not mine."
No more terrible words than these could have Vane turned white to his
lips as he heard them, and for a moment he looked into his father's grey
stern face with a glance that had something of hate in it. His fists
even clenched and his shoulders squared as though the impulse was on him
to raise his hands against him. But there was such an infinite sadness
in Sir Arthur's eyes and such an expression of unspeakable suffering on
his hard-set features, that as he looked at him the anger died out of
Vane's eyes and his hands fell limp and open by his side.
It was some time before he was able to command his voice sufficiently to
shape coherent words, but at length he managed to say in a hard,
half-choking tone:
"Of course it is impossible that you could tell me anything but the
truth, dad. And so I am the son of a disgraced woman, am I? Poor Eny,
what will she think of me now? Of course it will be all over between
us?"
His instinct had spoken, as Sir Godfrey Raleigh had said it would, and
spoken truly. But Sir Arthur said quickly:
"No; my boy. It is bad enough, God knows, but it may not be as bad as
that. I have been to see Miss Vane this morning, and when I had
satisfied myself of the relationship between you, I went on to Raleigh
and told him the whole story, as I thought it was only right to do. He
said, very properly I think, that it was a matter for you and Enid to
decide between yourselves, for after all it is the happiness of your
lives which is in question, and therefore the decision ought to rest
with you."
"I don't see how there can be any decision but one," said Vane, who had
sat down again, and, with his elbows on his knees and his face between
his hands, was staring with blank eyes down at the carpet. "And so I am
the son of that girl's mother, am I? Well, it couldn't be very much
worse than that, and yet, God help us, she is my mother after all."
Then he threw himself back in his chair, let his hands fall limply over
the arms and stared up at the ceiling.
"You may as well tell me the whole of the story, now dad," he went on,
in a broken, miserable voice. "You had better tell me, and then I shall
know where I am."
His father looked at him for a moment or two in silence, and then he
said, with a note of reproof in his tone:
"That is a hasty judgment, Vane, but a natural one, I admit. When I have
told you the story you will see what I mean. The mother who bore you was
as good and pure a woman as ever lived when she became your mother, and
this girl, from what I have seen of her this morning, I am perfectly
certain is thoroughly good and honest in herself. I am satisfied that it
is her fate that has made her what she is; not her fault."
"Yes," said Vane, "I was wrong. After all I have no right to judge my
mother. I remember nothing about her, and as for Carol, she is a good
girl whatever else she may be. Can't something be done for her, dad? I
mean something to get her out of that horrible life. It is too awful to
think of, isn't it? We must do something."
"That's just what I should have expected you to say, Vane," said his
father, "and anything that I can do shall be done. But I'm afraid it
won't be very easy. I did suggest something of the sort, of course, but
she cut me short very quickly. She simply said that she could not
discuss the subject then, and there was an end of it. I am quite certain
that anything which had even a suggestion of charity about it would be
quite out of the question."
"Of course it would," said Vane, almost angrily. "After all, she is my
sister. However, that can wait. Now tell me what you were going to tell
me. How did all this begin? Do you know who the man was, because if so I
want to go and see him?"
"No, I don't, Vane," his father replied, slowly. "To tell you the truth,
I never even attempted to find out. We were living at Simla at the time,
and Simla is, as perhaps you know, not the most moral of places. You
were nearly three years old, and for about a year your mother had shown
signs of what doctors call now Alcoholic Insanity. I shall never forget
the first time that I found her drunk----"
"Never mind that, dad," Vane interrupted, with a sharp catch in his
voice, "I don't want to hear about it, it's bad enough already. Was
Carol right about that light which she used to see in her eyes and which
I suppose you saw in mine last night?"
"Yes, perfectly," replied Sir Arthur. "I used to think it beautiful
once, before I knew what a dreadful meaning it had. When she had had a
glass or so of champagne, her eyes--and they were just like yours and
Carol's--used to light up marvellously. People used to speak of them as
the most beautiful eyes in the East; but afterwards, that light in them
began to burn brighter, and when at last she gave way completely, it
became something horrible, although, somehow, it was still
beautiful--damnably beautiful."
"Well, one night," Sir Arthur went on, leaning back in his chair and
staring into vacancy, "she went out to spend the evening, as she told
me, with a friend; as a matter of fact it was Raleigh's sister. She had
been drinking a little during the afternoon, but I felt that she would
be safe there, for both Raleigh and his sister knew of this miserable
failing of hers. Unfortunately, I had a lot of work to do that evening,
and I was unable to go with her. I went about eleven o'clock to bring
her home. I found she had not been there at all. I went back and sat up
the whole night, I needn't tell you Vane what my thoughts were. She
didn't come. She never came.
"A month afterwards I got a letter from her written from Bombay. She
confessed that for over a year she had been deceiving me; that another
man had stolen her love from me; that she could never face me or look
upon you again, and that was all. She gave no address, no sign that I
could trace her by. If she had done I would have forgiven her and asked
her to come back for your sake. But it was over ten years before I saw
her again, and then it was in a house in a wretched street in Paris.
"Then she was a drunkard, a hopeless drunkard, lost to all sense and
shame. She had taken my name again and was making it infamous, and for
your sake I was forced to take some decided steps. I took proceedings in
the French Courts, and got authority to confine her in an asylum for
inebriates, and she is there now, almost an imbecile."
"And what about Carol?" said Vane, in a hard, strained voice, "doesn't
she know who her father is, and couldn't you have got a divorce?"
"Carol does not know for certain who her father is," said Sir Arthur.
"There was someone who went about the Continent a good deal with her
mother when she was very young, and she thinks that he was. It is quite
possible that he may have been the scoundrel, whoever he was, who took
her away from Simla. As for the divorce, of course I could have got one,
but I had no desire to marry again, and I preferred to let the thing
rest as it was, rather than drag our name through the cesspool of the
Divorce Court and the newspapers. Everybody was very good to me, and in
time I lived it down and it was forgotten. In fact, I suppose if it
hadn't been for that chance meeting of yours last night, it might never
have been heard of again."
"Then that," said Vane, "is, I suppose, the secret of my drinking the
whiskey last night, and the explanation of the light which Carol saw in
my eyes when I had drunk too much champagne. My blood is poisoned, and
so, when I've drunk a certain amount, the smell of alcohol is
irresistible. There's one thing perfectly certain, I don't like whiskey
and I never have liked it, and I'm quite sure I never wanted it less
than I did last night; and yet when I smelt it, the smell somehow seemed
to get up into my brain and force me to drink it.
"I tried my best to resist it. Honestly I did, dad, but it was no use. I
tasted it, and then I took a long drink of it, and then I took another.
I didn't seem to get drunk, I went mad. I saw some magnificent visions,
they seemed to be all round the room, nickering like the Biograph, then,
all of a sudden, they vanished, and I don't remember anything more
until I woke and found Koda standing beside me. Now was that the sort of
thing that used to happen to my mother?"
"It was," replied his father, "exactly, and when she came to her senses
after one of her bouts, she used to implore me to keep the smell, even
the sight, of liquor away from her. Of course I did. I gave up drinking
myself, and what I had in the house for friends I kept constantly under
lock and key. It seemed to be successful for a time, and then she began
to get liquor from somewhere else. I never could find out how or where
she did it. I had her watched, but it was no use. Weeks would pass and
she would be perfectly sober. Then, without the slightest warning, she
would go out for a walk or to pay some calls and come back, not drunk,
but getting drunk.
"We used to have some terrible scenes then, as you may believe. I
dismissed four butlers because she had either bribed or frightened them
into giving her the keys of the wine cellar. I had the best medical men
in India for her, and at last I got her to consent to go into a
Sanitorium. That, however, was merely a blind to keep my suspicions
quiet. It was only a few days before she was to have gone there that she
disappeared."
"And you never had any suspicion about the scoundrel that she went away
with? I expect if the truth was known, she got the liquor secretly
through him after you had stopped it. I am beginning already to have a
presentiment that I shall meet that man some day, and if I do, may God
have mercy on him, for I won't!"
"No, no, Vane, don't say that, my boy! Remember what is
written--'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.' Whoever he is his sin will
find him out, if it has not done so already."
Sir Arthur spoke with the absolute conviction of a deeply religious man.
He believed his own words honestly; and yet, if he could have seen how
his own prophecy was to be fulfilled, he would have given his right
hand, nay, he would even have shaken hands with the man who had so
deeply wronged him, rather than that they should have had so terrible a
fulfilment.
Indeed, even while he was speaking the wheels of Fate had already begun
to revolve.
When Carol and Dora returned from their ride Dora found a letter waiting
for her. She opened it, glanced quickly over the page and then said:
"Carol, how will this suit you for this evening? I think a night out
would do you good after your little shake-up this morning. Listen--
"DEAR DORA,
"Yesterday I became a happy bachelor for a fortnight. Encumbrances
gone to Folkestone. If you have nothing better to do, meet me at
the 'West End' at 7.30 this evening, and, if possible, bring Miss
Vane, as I am bringing a friend, who, after my description of
her--don't be jealous!--is quite anxious to meet her. He is good
looking and very well off, and I think she will like him.
"Hoping you will both be able to come,
"Yours ever,
"BERNARD."
"That sounds promising," said Miss Carol. "If he's that sort, and nice
as well, and has plenty of the necessary, I shouldn't mind if he took me
on as a sort of permanence. Somehow, after last night and this morning,
I've got sick of this general knocking-about. Besides, it's no class.
All right, I'll come. A bit of a kick-up will do me good, I think. That
talk with the old gentleman this morning gave me quite a number 25 hump,
though the ride has worked a good bit of it off. Now let's feed, I'm
hungry enough to dine off cold boiled block ornaments."
Mr. Bernard Falcon, the writer of the letter to Dora, was principal
partner in the somewhat incongruously named firm of solicitors, Messrs.
Falcon and Lambe, of Mansion House Chambers, E.C. The firm did all sorts
of work, provided only that it paid; the highest class under their
style, and the other sorts--the money-lending and "speculative
business"--through their own "jackals," that is to say seedy and
broken-down solicitors who had made a failure of their own business, but
had managed to keep on the Rolls and were not above doing "commission
work" for more prosperous firms.
Mr. Lambe, away from his business, was a most excellent person; a good
husband and father, a regular church-goer, and a generous supporter of
all good works in and about Denmark Hill, where he lived. He was one of
those strangely constituted men--of whom there are multitudes in the
world--who will earn money by the most questionable, if not absolutely
dishonest, methods, without a qualm of conscience, and give liberally of
that same money without recognising for a moment that what they honestly
believe they are giving to God, is a portion of the Wages of Sin--which,
as good Christians, they ought never to have earned.
Mr. Bernard Falcon, on the other hand, in his private life, aimed at
nothing more than respectability in the worst sense of the word. His
wife and his two little girls went to church. He himself went on Sunday
mornings when he had no more pressing engagements. His name appeared
regularly on the subscription lists published in connection with St.
Michael's, Brondesbury, his parish church, and he also paid the rent of
No. 15, Melville Gardens, Brook Green, in addition to one hundred and
fifty pounds a year as what he would have called "a retainer" to Miss
Dora Russell--to say nothing of certain milliner's and jeweller's bills
which he liquidated, sometimes cheerfully and sometimes grudgingly,
according to his humour and their amount.
When Carol and Dora got out of their cab at the door of the "West End"
and went into the little vestibule-bar to the left, they found two men
in evening dress waiting for them. One of them--a man of about forty,
bald on the temples, of medium height, well-fed and well-groomed, and
not by any means bad-looking, though of an entirely mediocre type--Carol
greeted with the easy familiarity of old acquaintance, for she had known
him for nearly a year as Dora's 'particular friend.' The other, tall,
well-built, handsome, and with that unmistakable stamp of breeding on
him which Mr. Bernard Falcon totally lacked, she instantly recognised as
Reginald Garthorne, her intended companion for the evening.
The first thing he did when they had been introduced by Bernard Falcon,
was to apologise for what he had said in front of the Criterion the
night before. He did it with admirably calculated deference, and in such
perfectly chosen words, that it was quite impossible for her not to
accept his apology and "make friends."
During the evening he became completely fascinated, not only by her
beauty, but far more so by the extraordinary charm of her manner. He
was a man who, apart from his physical qualities and good looks, could,
when he chose, make himself very pleasing to women, and, without showing
a trace of effort, he did his very best to please Miss Carol, and
succeeded so completely, that when, a few days later, he made a proposal
of a partly domestic nature to her, she, after a brief consultation with
Dora, accepted it.
At the end of the month the house in Melville Gardens was to let, and
Carol and Dora were installed in a flat in Densmore Gardens, South
Kensington, for the rent of which Reginald Garthorne and Mr. Bernard
Falcon were jointly responsible--of course, under other names. The only
condition that Carol had made with Garthorne, was that, whatever
happened, he would not tell Vane of her change of address, and he, for
very good reasons of his own, had promised unconditionally.