"Yes--I remember."
"Even if I did bully you sometimes. Remember how I used to twist your
arm to make you write my Latin exercises, Jack?"
"I liked to have you do that," Charteris said, simply. "It hurt a great
deal, but I liked it."
He had come up behind the colonel, who was still seated. "Yes, that was
a long while ago," said Charteris. "It is rather terrible--isn't it?--to
reflect precisely how long ago it was. Why, I shall be bald in a year or
two from now. But you have kept almost all your beautiful hair,
Rudolph."
Charteris touched the colonel's head, stroking his hair ever so lightly
once or twice. It was in effect a caress.
The colonel was aware of the odor of myrrh which always accompanied
Charteris and felt that the little man was trembling.
"Isn't there--anything you want to tell me, Jack?" the colonel said. He
sat quite still.
There was the tiniest pause. The caressing finger-tips lifted from
Musgrave's head, but presently gave it one more brief and half-timid
touch.
"Why, only _au revoir_, I believe. I am leaving at a rather ungodly hour
to-morrow and won't see you, but I hope to return within the week."
"I hope so, Jack."
"And, after all, it is too late to be reading. I shall go back to bed
and take more trional. And then, I dare say, I shall sleep. So good-by,
Rudolph."
"Good-night, Jack."
"Oh, yes--! I meant good-night, of course."
The colonel sighed; then he spoke abruptly:
"No, just a moment, Jack. I didn't ask you to come here to-night; but
since you have come, by chance, I am going to follow the promptings of
that chance, and strike a blow for righteousness with soiled weapons.
Jack, do you remember suggesting that my father's correspondence during
the War might be of value, and that his desk ought to be overhauled?"
"Why, yes, of course. Mrs. Musgrave was telling me she began the task,"
said Charteris, and smiled a little.
"Unluckily; yes--but--well! in any event, it suggested to me that old
letters are dangerous. I really had no idea what that desk contained. My
father had preserved great stacks of letters. I have been going through
them. They were most of them from women--letters which should never have
been written in the first place, and which he certainly had no right to
keep."
"What! and is 'Wild Will's' love-correspondence still extant? I fancy it
made interesting reading, Rudolph."
"There were some letters which in a measure concern you, Jack." The
colonel handed him a small packet of letters. "If you will read the top
one it will explain. I will just go on with my writing."
He wrote steadily for a moment or two.... Then Charteris laughed
musically.
"I have always known there was a love-affair between my mother and 'Wild
Will.' But I never suspected until to-night that I had the honor to be
your half-brother, Rudolph--one of 'Wild Will's' innumerable bastards."
Charteris was pallid, and though he seemed perfectly composed, his eyes
glittered as with gusty brilliancies. "I understand now why my reputed
father always made such a difference between my sister and myself. I
never liked old Alvin Charteris, you know. It is a distinct relief to be
informed I have no share in his blood, although of course the knowledge
comes a trifle suddenly."
"Perhaps I should have kept that knowledge to myself. I know it would
have been kinder. I had meant to be kind. I loathe myself for dabbling
in this mess. But, in view of all things, it seemed necessary to let you
know I am your own brother in the flesh, and that Patricia is your
brother's wife."
"I see," said Charteris. "According to your standards that would make a
great difference. I don't know, speaking frankly, that it makes much
difference with me." He turned again to the bookshelves, so that
Musgrave could no longer see his face. Charteris ran his fingers
caressingly over the backs of a row of volumes. "I loved my mother,
Rudolph. I never loved anyone else. That makes a difference." Then he
said, "We Musgraves--how patly I catalogue myself already!--we Musgraves
have a deal to answer for, Rudolph."
"And doesn't that make it all the more our duty to live clean and honest
lives? to make the debt no greater than it is?" Both men were oddly
quiet.
"Eh, I am not so sure." John Charteris waved airily toward Sebastian
Musgrave's counterfeit, then toward the other portraits. "It was they
who compounded our inheritances, Rudolph--all that we were to have in
this world of wit and strength and desire and endurance. We know their
histories. They were proud, brave and thriftless, a greedy and lecherous
race, who squeezed life dry as one does an orange, and left us the
dregs. I think that it is droll, but I am not sure it places us under
any obligation. In fact, I rather think God owes us an apology,
Rudolph."
He spoke with quaint wistfulness. The colonel sat regarding him in
silence, with shocked, disapproving eyes. Then Charteris cocked his head
to one side and grinned like a hobgoblin.
"What wouldn't you give," he demanded, "to know what I am really
thinking of at this very moment while I talk so calmly? Well, you will
never know. And for the rest, you are at liberty to use your
all-important documents as you may elect. I am John Charteris; whatever
man begot my body, he is rotten bones to-day, and it is as such I value
him. I was never anybody's son--or friend or brother or lover,--but just
a pen that someone far bigger and far nobler than John Charteris writes
with occasionally. Whereas you--but, oh, you are funny, Rudolph!" And
then, "Good-night, dear brother," Charteris added, sweetly, as he left
the room.
* * * * *
And Rudolph Musgrave could not quite believe in the actuality of what
had just happened. In common with most of us, he got his general notions
concerning the laws of life from reading fiction; and here was the
material for a Renaissance tragedy wasted so far as any dénouement went.
Destiny, once more, was hardly rising to the possibilities of the
situation. The weapon chance had forged had failed Rudolph Musgrave
utterly; and, indeed, he wondered now how he could ever have esteemed it
formidable. Jack was his half-brother. In noveldom or in a melodrama
this discovery would have transformed their mutual dealings; but as a
workaday world's fact, Musgrave would not honestly say that it had in
any way affected his feelings toward Jack, and it appeared to have left
Charteris equally unaltered.
"I am not sure, though. We can only guess where Jack is concerned. He
goes his own way always, tricky and furtive and lonelier than any other
human being I have ever known. It is loneliness that looks out of his
eyes, really, even when he is mocking and sneering," the colonel
meditated.
Then he sighed and went back to the tabulation of his lists of wills.
V
The day was growing strong in the maple-grove behind Matocton. As yet,
the climbing sun fired only the topmost branches, and flooded them with
a tempered radiance through which birds plunged and shrilled vague
rumors to one another. Beneath, a green twilight lingered--twilight
which held a gem-like glow, chill and lucent and steady as that of an
emerald. Vagrant little puffs of wind bustled among the leaves, with a
thin pretense of purpose, and then lapsed, and merged in the large,
ambiguous whispering which went stealthily about the grove.
Rudolph Musgrave sat on a stone beside the road that winds through the
woods toward the railway station, and smoked, nervously. He was
disheartened of the business of living, and, absurdly enough, as it
seemed to him, he was hungry.
"It has to be done quietly and without the remotest chance of Anne's
ever hearing of it, and without the remotest chance of its ever having
to be done again. I have about fifteen minutes in which to convince
Patricia both of her own folly and of the fact that Jack is an
unmitigated cad, and to get him off the place quietly, so that Anne will
suspect nothing. And I never knew any reasonable argument to appeal to
Patricia, and Jack will be a cornered rat! Yes, it is a large contract,
and I would give a great deal--a very great deal--to know how I am going
to fulfil it."
At this moment his wife and Mr. Charteris, carrying two portmanteaux,
came around a bend in the road not twenty feet from Musgrave. They were
both rather cross. In the clean and more prosaic light of morning an
elopement seemed almost silly; moreover, Patricia had had no breakfast,
and Charteris had been much annoyed by his wife, who had breakfasted
with him, and had insisted on driving to the station with him. It was a
trivial-seeming fact, but, perhaps, not unworthy of notice, that
Patricia was carrying her own portmanteau, as well as an umbrella.
The three faced one another in the cool twilight. The woods stirred
lazily about them. The birds were singing on a wager now.
"Ah," said Colonel Musgrave, "so you have come at last. I have been
expecting you for some time."
Patricia dropped her portmanteau, sullenly. Mr. Charteris placed his
with care to the side of the road, and said, "Oh!" It was perhaps the
only observation that occurred to him.
"Patricia," Musgrave began, very kindly and very gravely, "you are
about to do a foolish thing. At the bottom of your heart, even now, you
know you are about to do a foolish thing--a thing you will regret
bitterly and unavailingly for the rest of time. You are turning your
back on the world--our world--on the one possible world you could ever
be happy in. You can't be happy in the half-world, Patricia; you aren't
that sort. But you can never come back to us then, Patricia; it doesn't
matter what the motive was, what the temptation was, or how great the
repentance is--you cannot ever return. That is the law, Patricia;
perhaps, it isn't always a just law. We didn't make it, you and I, but
it is the law, and we must obey it. Our world merely says that, leaving
it once, you cannot ever return: such is the only punishment it awards
you, for it knows, this wise old world of ours, that such is the
bitterest punishment which could ever be devised for you. Our world has
made you what you are; in every thought and ideal and emotion you
possess, you are a product of our world. You couldn't live in the
half-world, Patricia; you are a product of our world that can never take
root in that alien soil. Come back to us before it is too late,
Patricia!"
Musgrave shook himself all over, rather like a Newfoundland dog coming
out of the water, and the grave note died from his voice. He smiled, and
rubbed his hands together.
"And now," said he, "I will stop talking like a problem play, and we
will say no more about it. Give me your portmanteau, my dear, and upon
my word of honor, you will never hear a word further from me in the
matter. Jack, here, can take the train, just as he intended. And--and
you and I will go back to the house, and have a good, hot breakfast
together. Eh, Patricia?"
She was thinking, unreasonably enough, how big and strong and clean her
husband looked in the growing light. It was a pity Jack was so small.
However, she faced Musgrave coldly, and thought how ludicrously wide of
the mark were all these threats of ostracism. She shudderingly wished he
would not talk of soil and taking root and hideous things like that, but
otherwise the colonel left her unmoved. He was certainly good-looking,
though.
Charteris was lighting a cigarette, with a queer, contented look. He
knew the value of Patricia's stubbornness now; still, he appeared to be
using an unnecessary number of matches.
"I should have thought you would have perceived the lack of dignity, as
well as the utter uselessness, in making such a scene," Patricia said.
"We aren't suited for each other, Rudolph; and it is better--far better
for both of us--to have done with the farce of pretending to be. I am
sorry that you still care for me. I didn't know that. But, for the
future, I intend to live my own life."
Patricia's voice faltered, and she stretched out her hands a little
toward her husband in an odd gust of friendliness. He looked so kind;
and he was not smiling in that way she never liked. "Surely that isn't
so unpardonable a crime, Rudolph?" she asked, almost humbly.
"No, my dear," he answered, "it is not unpardonable--it is impossible.
You can't lead your own life, Patricia; none of us can. Each life is
bound up with many others, and every rash act of yours, every hasty word
of yours, must affect to some extent the lives of those who are nearest
and most dear to you. But, oh, it is not argument that I would be at!
Patricia, there was a woman once--She was young, and wealthy, and--ah,
well, I won't deceive you by exaggerating her personal attractions! I
will serve up to you no praises of her sauced with lies. But fate and
nature had combined to give her everything a woman can desire, and all
this that woman freely gave to me--to me who hadn't youth or wealth or
fame or anything! And I can't stand by, for that dear dead girl's sake,
and watch your life go wrong, Patricia!"
"You are just like the rest of them, Olaf"--and when had she used that
half-forgotten nickname last, he wondered. "You imagine you are in love
with a girl because you happen to like the color of her eyes, or because
there is a curve about her lips that appeals to you. That isn't love,
Olaf, as we women understand it."
And wildly hideous and sad, it seemed to Colonel Musgrave--this dreary
parody of their old love-talk. Only, he dimly knew that she had
forgotten John Charteris existed, and that to her this moment seemed no
less sardonic.
Charteris inhaled, lazily; yet, he did not like the trembling about
Patricia's mouth. Her hands, too, opened and shut tight before she
spoke.
"It is too late now," she said, dully. "I gave you all there was to
give. You gave me just what Grandma Pendomer and all the others had left
you able to give. That remnant isn't love, Olaf, as we women understand
it. And, anyhow, it is too late now."
Yet Patricia was remembering a time when Rudolph's voice held always
that grave, tender note in speaking to her; it seemed a great while ago.
And he was big and manly, just like his voice, Rudolph was; and he
looked very kind. Desperately, Patricia began to count over the times
her husband had offended her. Hadn't he talked to her in the most
unwarrantable manner only yesterday afternoon?
"Too late!--oh, not a bit of it!" Musgrave cried. His voice sank
persuasively. "Why, Patricia, you are only thinking the matter over for
the first time. You have only begun to think of it. Why, there is the
boy--our boy, Patricia! Surely, you hadn't thought of Roger?"
He had found the right chord at last. It quivered and thrilled under his
touch; and the sense of mastery leaped in his blood. Of a sudden, he
knew himself dominant. Her face was red, then white, and her eyes
wavered before the blaze of his, that held her, compellingly.
"Now, honestly, just between you and me," the colonel said,
confidentially, "was there ever a better and braver and quainter and
handsomer boy in the world? Why, Patricia, surely, you wouldn't
willingly--of your own accord--go away from him, and never see him
again? Oh, you haven't thought, I tell you! Think, Patricia! Don't you
remember that first day, when I came into your room at the hospital and
he--ah, how wrinkled and red and old-looking he was then, wasn't he,
little wife? Don't you remember how he was lying on your breast, and how
I took you both in my arms, and held you close for a moment, and how for
a long, long while there wasn't anything left of the whole wide world
except just us three and God smiling down upon us? Don't you remember,
Patricia? Don't you remember his first tooth--why, we were as proud of
him, you and I, as if there had never been a tooth before in all the
history of the world! Don't you remember the first day he walked? Why,
he staggered a great distance--oh, nearly two yards!--and caught hold of
my hand, and laughed and turned back--to you. You didn't run away from
him then, Patricia. Are you going to do it now?"
She struggled under his look. She had an absurd desire to cry, just that
he might console her. She knew he would. Why was it so hard to remember
that she hated Rudolph! Of course, she hated him; she loved that other
man yonder. His name was Jack. She turned toward Charteris, and the
reassuring smile with which he greeted her, impressed Patricia as being
singularly nasty. She hated both of them; she wanted--in that brief time
which remained for having anything--only her boy, her soft, warm little
Roger who had eyes like Rudolph's.
"I--I--it's too late, Rudolph," she stammered, parrot-like. "If you had
only taken better care of me, Rudolph! If--No, it's too late, I tell
you! You will be kind to Roger. I am only weak and frivolous and
heartlesss. I am not fit to be his mother. I'm not fit, Rudolph!
Rudolph, I tell you I'm not fit! Ah, let me go, my dear!--in mercy, let
me go! For I haven't loved the boy as I ought to, and I am afraid to
look you in the face, and you won't let me take my eyes away--you won't
let me! Ah, Rudolph, let me go!"
"Not fit?" His voice thrilled with strength, and pulsed with tender
cadences. "Ah, Patricia, I am not fit to be his father! But, between
us--between us, mightn't we do much for him? Come back to us,
Patricia--to me and the boy! We need you, my dear. Ah, I am only a
stolid, unattractive fogy, I know; but you loved me once, and--I am the
father of your child. My standards are out-of-date, perhaps, and in any
event they are not your standards, and that difference has broken many
ties between us; but I am the father of your child. You must--you _must_
come back to me and the boy!" Musgrave caught her face between his
hands, and lifted it toward his. "Patricia, don't make any mistake!
There is nothing you care for so much as that boy. You can't give him
up! If you had to walk over red-hot ploughshares to come to him, you
would do it; if you could win him a moment's happiness by a lifetime of
poverty and misery and degradation, you would do it. And so would I,
little wife. That is the tie which still unites us; that is the tie
which is too strong ever to break. Come back to us, Patricia--to me and
the boy."
"I--Jack, Jack, take me away!" she wailed helplessly.
Charteris came forward with a smile. He was quite sure of Patricia now.
"Colonel Musgrave," he said, with a faint drawl, "if you have entirely
finished your edifying and, I assure you, highly entertaining monologue,
I will ask you to excuse us. I--oh, man, man!" Charteris cried, not
unkindly, "don't you see it is the only possible outcome?"
Musgrave faced him. The glow of hard-earned victory was pulsing in the
colonel's blood, but his eyes were chill stars. "Now, Jack," he said,
equably, "I am going to talk to you. In fact, I am going to discharge an
agreeable duty toward you."
Musgrave drew close to him. Charteris shrugged his shoulders; his smile,
however, was not entirely satisfactory. It did not suggest enjoyment.
"I don't blame you for being what you are," Musgrave went on, curtly.
"You were born so, doubtless. I don't blame a snake for being what it
is. But, when I see a snake, I claim the right to set my foot on its
head; when I see a man like you--well, this is the right I claim."
Thereupon Rudolph Musgrave struck his half-brother in the face with his
open hand. The colonel was a strong man, physically, and, on this
occasion, he made no effort to curb his strength.
"Now," Musgrave concluded, "you are going away from this place very
quickly, and you are going alone. You will do this because I tell you to
do so, and because you are afraid of me. Understand, also--if you will
be so good--that the only reason I don't give you a thorough thrashing
is that I don't think you are worth the trouble. I only want Patricia to
perceive exactly what sort of man you are."
The blow staggered Charteris. He seemed to grow smaller. His clothes
seemed to hang more loosely about him. His face was paper-white, and the
red mark showed plainly upon it.
"There would be no earthly sense in my hitting you back," he said
equably. "It would only necessitate my getting the thrashing which, I
can assure you, we are equally anxious to avoid. Of course you are able
to knock me down and so on, because you are nearly twice as big as I am.
I fail to see that proves anything in particular. Come, Patricia!" And
he turned to her, and reached out his hand.
She shrank from him. She drew away from him, without any vehemence, as
if he had been some slimy, harmless reptile. A woman does not like to
see fear in a man's eyes; and there was fear in Mr. Charteris's eyes,
for all that he smiled. Patricia's heart sickened. She loathed him, and
she was a little sorry for him.
"Oh, you cur, you cur!" she gasped, in a wondering whisper. Patricia
went to her husband, and held out her hands. She was afraid of him. She
was proud of him, the strong animal. "Take me away, Rudolph," she said,
simply; "take me away from that--that coward. Take me away, my dear. You
may beat me, too, if you like, Rudolph. I dare say I have deserved it.
But I want you to deal brutally with me, to carry me away by force, just
as you threatened to do the day we were married--at the Library, you
remember, when the man was crying 'Fresh oranges!' and you smelt so
deliciously of soap and leather and cigarette smoke."
Musgrave took both her hands in his. He smiled at Charteris.
The novelist returned the smile, intensifying its sweetness. "I fancy,
Rudolph," he said, "that, after all, I shall have to take that train
alone."
Mr. Charteris continued, with a grimace: "You have no notion, though,
how annoying it is not to possess an iota of what is vulgarly considered
manliness. But what am I to do? I was not born with the knack of
enduring physical pain. Oh, yes, I am a coward, if you like to put it
nakedly; but I was born so, willy-nilly. Personally, if I had been
consulted in the matter, I would have preferred the usual portion of
valor. However! the sanctity of the hearth has been most edifyingly
preserved--and, after all, the woman is not worth squabbling about."
There was exceedingly little of the mountebank in him now; he kicked
Patricia's portmanteau, frankly and viciously, as he stepped over it to
lift his own. Holding this in one hand, John Charteris spoke, honestly:
"Rudolph, I had a trifle underrated your resources. For you are a brave
man--we physical cowards, you know, admire that above all things--and a
strong man and a clever man, in that you have adroitly played upon the
purely brutal traits of women. Any she-animal clings to its young and
looks for protection in its mate. Upon a higher ground I would have
beaten you, but as an animal you are my superior. Still, a thing done
has an end. You have won back your wife in open fight. I fancy, by the
way, that you have rather laid up future trouble for yourself in doing
so, but I honor the skill you have shown. Colonel Musgrave, it is to you
that, as the vulgar phrase it, I take off my hat."
Thereupon, Mr. Charteris uncovered his head with perfect gravity, and
turned on his heel, and went down the road, whistling melodiously.
Musgrave stared after him, for a while. The lust of victory died; the
tumult and passion and fervor were gone from Musgrave's soul. He could
very easily imagine the things Jack Charteris would say to Anne
concerning him; and the colonel knew that she would believe them all. He
had won the game; he had played it, heartily and skilfully and
successfully; and his reward was that the old bickerings with Patricia
should continue, and that Anne should be taught to loathe him. He
foresaw it all very plainly as he stood, hand in hand with his wife.
But Anne would be happy. It was for that he had played.