"NOBLESSE OBLIGE"
Grouped about the hall--a splendid example of Tudor architecture with
its oak wainscoting and great, open fireplace--were several people
chatting and drinking tea. Calamity recognised some of them immediately
as people he had known in the old days. Life had dealt gently with them,
and they had changed but little despite the intervening years. They had
lost the rude vitality and adventurous spirit of youth, and had become
sleek and soft and habit-governed; but otherwise they were essentially
the same, living the same clean, sheltered, uneventful lives.
As Calamity entered with Lady Betty, these people gathered about him
with words of welcome. He was, after all, one of themselves, and in the
years which had passed the old story of the forged cheque had almost
faded into a legend of doubtful authenticity. Calamity, despite the
bitter memories which his home-coming had brought back, knew that these
greetings were not insincere; that these friends of a by-gone period
regarded him as a wanderer returned to the fold.
When everyone had settled down again to drink tea and chatter, Calamity
seated himself between Lady Betty and an eminent politician for whom he
had "fagged" at Eton, while Elfrida stood near, watching him with the
grave deliberation of childhood. During a momentary pause in the
conversation she drew closer to him and placed a beseeching hand on his
knee.
"Oh, Uncle John," she said breathlessly, "do tell us about fighting the
pirates. Were you afraid?"
Calamity smiled almost genially as he turned to the eager little
questioner.
"No, Elfrida, I wasn't afraid. A pirate is a person I thoroughly
understand. In fact, I came very near being hanged for a pirate,
myself."
Elfrida clapped her hands with delight and the others smiled tolerantly
at what they took for granted was a joke.
"Isn't he sweet?" murmured a motherly dowager to McPhulach, who was
sitting near her.
The engineer started.
"Eh?" he ejaculated.
"Isn't he sweet?" repeated the dowager, shouting at him a little in the
belief that he was deaf.
McPhulach did not answer for a moment. Before him there arose a vision
of the Captain of the _Hawk_ smashing right and left among his mutinous
crew with a capstan-bar, and another picture of the same man as he led
his rabble followers up the bullet-swept slope of the German island.
"Weel," he replied at last, "I wouldna go sae far as tae say that. He's
a michty quare mon, ye'll ken."
The dowager's comment had been overheard by Lady Betty, and it set her
thinking. Was it only to her eyes that this man whom she had once
promised to marry seemed so grim and terrible? Lady Mitford had called
him "sweet," Elfrida obviously adored him, and the others seemed to be
at their ease with him. Why was it that his terrific personality seemed
to disquiet her alone?
The matter was still exercising her mind when she came down that
evening, dressed for dinner. She had heard Calamity go down a little
earlier and had hastened her dressing in order to snatch a quiet talk
with him before the others left their rooms. But he was in neither the
smoking-room nor the library, and so she made her way to the gallery,
where his ancestors gazed down from the walls in painted stiffness.
Here she found him, pacing up and down, apparently in a brown study. He
looked up as she entered, and Lady Betty, after a second's hesitation,
went to him and laid her hand upon his arm.
"I was sure you'd be here," she said softly. "I know you so well."
She looked very delicate and sweet in the shaded light, and the fire,
suddenly flaming up, glinted on the gold of her hair.
He laughed, a little bitterly.
"Know me, do you?" he asked. "Is that why you married my brother after
promising to marry me?"
She looked at him silently for a moment, affronted by his tone yet not
knowing what to say.
"It is cruel of you to take that tone," she said at last. "You know very
well that after what happened I--I couldn't----"
"Be decent to me again," he concluded for her. "You don't seem to find
it so difficult to-day, although the charge against me has not been
disproved."
"It's so long ago. You must see, yourself, that it's different now."
"Since I've become head of the family?" he suggested.
She drew herself up haughtily and walked towards the fireplace, where
she stood looking down into the blaze.
"What would you have had me do?" she asked without looking round.
"Believe in my innocence!"
She shook her head.
"I couldn't do that," she answered. "But if I had been that kind of--of
fool, what then?"
He shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. Standing there in the
firelight, Lady Betty looked unquestionably beautiful, and yet Calamity
felt a great weariness of her and of this scene. His mind took a leap
through time and space, and he saw himself once more upon the deck of
the _Hawk_, facing, not this delicately nurtured woman, but a girl with
fearless eyes and wind-swept hair; a girl who would have believed in him
against the world.
Lady Betty crossed to him.
"You are unjust to me," she said.
"You were unjust to me," he replied.
She gave a weary little sigh. It seemed hopeless to try and make him see
her point of view.
"Suppose I told you that I could now prove my innocence," he said,
turning on her abruptly, "how would you feel about the past?"
"It's--it's impossible."
"Impossible! Not a bit of it. I suppose you wondered why I brought that
Scotchman here? Well he's one of the witnesses to a confession signed by
a confederate of the real criminal. Vayne will be coming to-night
bringing that confession with him. I told him that we would all adjourn
to the library after dinner to hear him read it."
Fifteen years ago when her lover had declared his innocence, Lady Betty
had not believed him; now, when he told her that he could prove himself
guiltless, she knew intuitively that he spoke the truth.
"John, I--I'm very glad," she said, her face colourless and stricken.
He nodded and moved away. To him, also, the moment was poignant.
Presently he became aware of her hand on his arm, and turning, saw her
standing beside him with bowed head.
"John, what can I say? Words are so useless--now."
"You haven't asked me who did it?"
"What does that matter?" she asked, wondering at the passion in his
face.
"For fifteen years," he went on as though he had not heard her, "I have
known the truth and hated him. When, by chance, I met the man who made
this confession, I determined to clear my name no matter how others
might suffer in consequence."
He paused and then, with a contemptuous laugh, went on,
"Now, at the last moment--the moment of triumph--the traditions of this
house are too strong for me. I can't do it."
While she looked at him wonderingly, he seized her by the arm and led
her to the portrait of his brother, her late husband.
"There," he said, pointing violently at it, "George, Viscount Redhurst,
forger and liar! As unworthy to take his place among these noble members
of a noble race as I should be if I proved his guilt."
He released her arm, and, turning away, paced up and down the room, his
face working. Lady Betty groped her way to one of the window-seats,
and, sinking into it, covered her face with her hands. Of the two she,
perhaps, was suffering more at that moment than the victim of her dead
husband's crime, for her world seemed to be crashing about her ears. The
husband whom she had respected, if not loved, a forger and worse than a
forger; the man whom she had loved and whom she knew at that moment she
still loved, guiltless and perhaps extending to her the hatred he bore
his dead brother. What, indeed, was left to her?
She raised her head to find him standing before her, with no trace in
his face of the passion of a moment ago.
"Don't be afraid," he said, "there will be no meeting in the library
to-night, and to-morrow I leave for California."
"California?" she repeated blankly.
"Yes," he answered; "what is there to keep me here? This place is no
more home to me now than when my father turned me out of it."
A revelation of what the sacrifice he was making meant to this man came
to her, and she mentally saw him set out again from the home of his
boyhood, an exile and still bearing the burden of another's guilt.
"Are you doing this for me?" she asked in a trembling voice, dreading
his answer.
"No."
"Then why----"
"Partly Elfrida, partly these," and he moved his arm to indicate his
ancestors in their frames. "_Noblesse oblige_, you know."
"But--California." Her voice was a husky whisper.
"California, Betty. I----" he paused a moment and smiled as if at some
unspoken thought. "I am interested in fruit-farming."
But here Lady Betty's self-control gave way. She knew that he meant what
he said, and that if he left England she would probably never see him
again. She began, incoherently:
"Oh, John, I can't let you leave me. Do you understand, I can't----"
A deafening clangour arose close at hand and drowned her words. When it
had ceased Calamity did not wait for her to continue.
"The dinner-gong," he said. "Shall we go?"
_Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld.,
London and Aylesbury._