THE PRODIGAL SON
ALISTAIR walked past the lights of Palace Yard, and turned into the
broad avenue of Parliament Street, bordered by the vast offices of the
British Empire. When he had gone half-way to Charing Cross, he turned
aside again, and presently found himself in front of a high and sombre
house, one of a row whose windows overlooked the river and the bridge.
It stood back in a bleak garden enclosed in tall iron railings, where
nothing grew but grass and trees and ivy, all of the same shade of
soot-encrusted green. This was Colonsay house, a relic of the days when
the Thames had been a glorious highway between the cities of London and
Westminster, a highway lined with the dwellings of great nobles, and
bright with painted barges and fluttering banners.
Now a slight air of decay hung over the old house, and it seemed
conscious that it had outlived its generation. The tide no longer
washed the foot of its lawn, and rich brocades and jewelled sword-hilts
no longer sparkled under its trees. It stood there with its few
neighbours, isolated among the encroaching buildings of a newer age,
and waiting its own turn to be devoured.
Stuart hesitated for a moment as he stood outside the door. There had
been a time when he would have walked through that door as of right.
But it was long since he had lived under his brother’s roof, and more
than a year since he had passed this doorway last. During the time that
he had been living in Chelsea he had shunned all intercourse with his
family. His mother had written to him more than once, but her letters
had remained unanswered. The letters were entreaties to him to abandon
the woman who was dragging him down, and he had not abandoned her.
He raised his hand to the bell, and jerked it roughly. Then he stood
waiting, half ashamed to encounter the gaze of his brother’s servants,
and resenting their curiosity in advance.
“Is the Duke in?” he asked of the man who opened the door. He had no
wish to meet his brother that night.
In the first moment the footman did not recognize his questioner. The
next his face lit up with an expression of respectful sympathy.
“No, my lord; his Grace is at the House of Lords. But will your
lordship come in?”
As he threw the door wider the butler, an old family retainer, stepped
forward. His face wore the same expression as the footman’s, a little
less subdued, and he ventured on a word of welcome.
“I hope I see your lordship well? Her Grace is upstairs, and I believe
would be very glad to see your lordship.”
“Very well, Stokes,” said Stuart shortly, giving the footman his hat
and stick. “I’ll go up.”
The servants fell back with faces of demure congratulation as he passed
between them to the foot of the staircase. It was evident that they
viewed this home-coming of the prodigal as the pleasant and appropriate
ending to a deeply interesting history. Perhaps Lord Alistair’s
transgressions had aroused in their breasts a secret fellow-feeling
such as they could never have for their upright, decorous master. The
conduct which had disgraced Lord Alistair in the eyes of his equals had
made him a hero in theirs. Disgrace, after all, is a relative term;
what is ignominy in the schoolroom is often glory in the playground.
Alistair reached the first floor, and took his way to the
well-remembered little drawing-room, where his mother always sat when
she was alone. Tapping softly on the panel, he opened the door and went
in.
It was an old-fashioned room with narrow Georgian windows, and the
walls were decorated with painted panels, set in elaborate gilt
scrollwork, with small tail-pieces underneath, in the style of an
Italian altar-piece. A picture of sportsmen in a coppice was completed
by a dead pheasant below, and a sea-piece was similarly finished off
with a group of shells. In contrast with this eighteenth-century
elegance the furniture was of that ungraceful, stereotyped pattern
which has not yet been out of date long enough to be esteemed for its
curiosity. It was the work of an age which valued the useful above the
beautiful, and preferred the accurate production of machinery to the
irregular handiwork of the craftsman. It was the age of the political
economists, when Free Trade was the gospel of humanity, and the world’s
ideal took shape in a huge bazaar. It was an age in which England ruled
the world, and the shopkeeper ruled England, and men deemed that the
millennium could not be far away.
The religion of this age was Evangelical Christianity. The work
of Wellesley and Whitefield still leavened the national life from
the cottage to the throne. The Catholic conspiracy had not become
formidable; the rising tide of knowledge had not yet sapped the
foundations of the old beliefs. A miscellany of Hebrew literature, half
savage, half sublime, bound up with the cryptic legends of the Roman
catacombs, and rendered into English by the intellect of the sixteenth
century, was accepted as the personal composition of the Creator,
inspired, infallible, and irrevocable, from the first letter in the
word _Genesis_ to the last in the word _Amen_. Salvation by faith was
the watchword of the Churches; the unbeliever was assured that his
best actions were but additional sins until he had gone through that
spiritual experience which brought him within the pale of the redeemed.
Yet this strait, remorseless creed educated women who were gracious
and beautiful in their lives, and of such women Caroline, Duchess
of Trent, was one. She accepted her creed, as the scientist accepts
the law of cause and effect, without understanding it, but her logic
was able to reconcile it with hope and charity, and with a tireless
devotion to the good of all about her.
They who are willing to sacrifice themselves will never want those who
are willing to accept the sacrifice. In her girlhood Caroline had been
a maid of honour in the Court of Queen Victoria, and she had ever since
been one of that small circle whom the widowed monarch counted as her
personal friends. The needs of selfish parents had forced her into an
early marriage with a sickly old man whom she nursed faithfully and
kindly, but whom she could not love. He died before she was thirty,
leaving her with enough wealth to attract Lord Alexander Stuart, the
penniless younger son of a great but impoverished house.
To this man, as handsome as he was worthless, she gave her heart and
her fortune, in accordance with the common law which mates the best
with the worst, and he had become the father of her children before she
made the discovery that he was an irreclaimable drunkard and gambler.
For their own sakes she consented to part with her children, and she
passed the next ten years of her life in accompanying the man to whom
she believed herself bound, from Continental hotel to hotel, keeping up
a hopeless struggle against the vices which were dragging him down to
the grave.
Her loyalty, and perhaps some relic of her love, survived him, and no
word of hers had ever betrayed his memory to his sons. In the face of
the younger she found a resemblance to his father which had insensibly
gained on her affection, and although she had tried to disguise it from
them, and from herself, both the boys soon knew that Alistair was their
mother’s favourite. When the courtesy rank of Duchess was conferred on
her by royal patent, she did not value the distinction for herself,
but her mother’s heart felt a secret pride that her handsome, naughty
Alistair should be given the style of Lord.
The catastrophe which opened her eyes to the meaning of heredity
rendered her frantic with grief and shame. That likeness between
Alistair and his father which had fascinated her for so long now became
a source of terror. The handsome boyish face, with its ruddy cheeks and
bright eyes and clustering curls, which had gladdened her sight, was
now a dreadful chart in which she read prophecies of evil to come.
Under the stress of panic she took that step which she had since
bitterly regretted, which had cost Alistair his religion, and had cost
her his confidence. Ever since that miserable time mother and son had
remained apart, gazing at each other wistfully across a chasm which
neither could bridge.
The life which he had been leading since his manhood seemed to her a
dangerous, if not an evil one. She saw him moving in a world which was
wholly strange to her, a world in which her own ideals of conduct were
ignored or despised. She heard that he had written poems which she was
advised not to see. Trent told her they were unfit for any decent woman
to read, and the Archbishop added that they were blasphemous. When she
ventured on a remonstrance with Alistair he replied by telling her that
art was above morality, and that a poet must be a law unto himself.
Like all the mothers of her generation, she would fain have shut her
eyes to one side of her son’s life. But even she could not help but
hear of such a portent as Molly Finucane. The Archbishop felt it
his duty to warn her. Trent openly complained that his brother was
disgracing the family, and threatened to forbid him the house. He might
have carried out the threat if Alistair had not ceased his visits of
his own accord.
By this time sorrow had helped her sixty years to make the Duchess an
old woman. Her figure was still upright, but her hair was silvered. Her
face, at once sweet and venerable, was marked by a settled sadness. Her
elder son had been as great a comfort to her as his brother had been a
trial, and she had learned to value him more and more. Yet not all her
pride in Trent’s career could soothe her inward grief and yearning over
the marred life of the son who had gone astray.
Alistair came in softly, and found his mother in tears. At the sound
of his footstep on the threshold her face flushed, and she rose up,
breathing fast, and went quickly to meet him, with a great joy shining
in her eyes.
“My boy!” she cried hysterically. “My boy Alistair!”
They stood there silently for a space, with their arms round one
another’s necks, and both felt comforted, for these two loved each
other very tenderly, and they had not met for a long time.
Such moments do not last. The first gush of affection spent, they were
left face to face, two natures belonging to different worlds.
While Alistair led his mother to a seat he asked anxiously:
“When is Trent likely to be back? I don’t want to see him.”
The Duchess looked troubled.
“He won’t be in till late, I expect. He is introducing a Bill in the
House to-night, and he told me not to sit up for him. I think there is
another debate on first, about the Church.”
Alistair heard her listlessly. The doings of the House of Lords sounded
in his ears just then like the fretting of phantoms on a stage. He had
struck his foot for the first time against reality. What does anyone
know of life who has never risen in the morning wondering under what
roof he shall lay his head at night?
“But you ought to see him,” the mother went on to say. “He is your
brother--neither of you should ever forget that. You want his help,
dear, and I am sure he will help you if you will only let him.”
“He should have helped me before,” Alistair returned in a resentful
tone. “I know Trent; he would not lift a finger to save me from being
hanged unless he were afraid of what people would say.”
“Don’t be bitter,” the mother pleaded. “Your brother means well by you,
I am sure.”
“Nonsense, mother; he would be only too glad to get rid of me
altogether. I have always been a thorn in his side. He looks upon me
as the black sheep of the family, and always will. Trent would like to
pack me off to the Klondike for the next ten years, I expect.”
As this was one of the suggestions which had actually fallen from the
Duke’s lips that day, when the news of his brother’s insolvency had
been brought to the house, the Duchess found it difficult to answer.
“Klondike would be better for you than the life you have been leading
here,” she said as gently as she could. “Don’t you think it would be
better for you to leave London and go abroad for a time out of the
reach of temptation?”
The young man frowned. He knew very well what was meant by the word
“temptation.”
“I can’t go without money,” he said shortly.
“I could let you have a little, dear, and James, I know, will let
you have as much as you want, as long as he knows that it won’t be
spent”--she hesitated an instant--“in bad ways.”
Alistair scowled.
“What business is it of his how I spend my money?”
His mother raised her hand with a certain quiet dignity.
“It is my business, at all events, to know what kind of life my boy is
living, and to sorrow when I know that he is living in open sin and
shame.”
To this speech Alistair made no answer. He could have made none that
would not have added to his mother’s pain.
“How much do you want?” the Duchess asked presently in a weary tone. It
was not the first conversation between them that had ended at the same
point.
The young man started up.
“Look here, mother, I didn’t come here to ask for money; I’m past that
now. It doesn’t matter to me whether I stay in London or go abroad.
Trent can decide for himself about that. Anyway, I must go under for
a time, I suppose, and I don’t much care if I ever come up again. I
was out on Westminster Bridge just now, wondering whether it wouldn’t
be the easiest way to drop over, and put an end to it all; and then I
thought of you, and felt sorry for your sake more than my own; and so I
made up my mind to come and see you--and here I am.”
The poor lady shook a good deal as she listened to this speech; and,
remembering her prayer just before Alistair came in, she breathed a
silent thanksgiving, and the tears came back into her eyes.
“Oh, my poor boy, can’t you see that all this is the result of the life
you have chosen!” She would have liked to make a more direct reference
to her religious belief, but feared to do so. She had learnt by this
time that her son and she had no common ground in that direction.
“Why--why don’t you leave that wicked woman, and start a new life? She
is ruining you, body and soul.”
Alistair frowned impatiently.
“I can’t let you say that, mother. It’s not her fault, Heaven knows!
The poor little thing has tried to do her best for me. She is a great
deal better than some of your good women, who would draw their skirts
aside if they passed her in the street.”
He spoke roughly, but not disrespectfully.
The Duchess sighed heavily.
“My unhappy boy, you know nothing about good women. You never meet
them; you might be a different man if you did. If I could only bring
you under the influence of some really good, devoted girl, such as I
know”--a name rose to the Duchess’s lips, but she deemed it wiser not
to pronounce it at that moment--“who would love you well enough to
overlook the past, she might redeem you even now.”
Alistair sighed, too, at the picture called up by his mother’s words.
He thought of poor little neurotic Molly, with her spasms of utter
wretchedness, her hysterical fits, her occasional drunken outbreaks
in which all the gutter in her blood came to the surface; he thought
of her perpetual, feverish craving for excitement, of her secret
hatred of his intellectual pursuits, of their ill-managed, disorderly
household, with insolent servants going and coming every month. And
then he contrasted the portrait with that of some sweet and gracious
maiden--such a girl as his mother must have been in her youth--who
would bring peace into his life, whose presence would be soothing as
the sound of church bells heard at evening across the autumn fields,
who would guide and rule their home through happy years of wedded
friendship. Alistair sighed.
His mother heard and drew courage from the sigh. Already her mind was
busy in working out a scheme for her boy’s salvation. Her eagerness led
her to make a false step at the outset.
“If you will go away even for a short time I shall feel happier,” she
pleaded. “Won’t you try to separate yourself from this woman? If you
like to go abroad I could come with you, perhaps. You have often said
that you should like to visit Rome?”
Alistair shook his head stubbornly.
“I cannot go away without Molly.”
The Duchess of Trent flushed. It seemed to her that this answer was an
insult, even though she had in a manner forced it from him.
“I wonder that you dare say that to me,” she said, with a touch of
anger.
“I beg your pardon, mother. But it’s no good our discussing such
things. I can’t expect you to understand how I feel about her. She has
given up everything--you may say she has reformed--for my sake, and if
I were to send her adrift now I should feel myself a blackguard. Why,
God help me, I believe the poor little thing’s been selling her jewels
to pay the housekeeping bills for the last few months. If she’d been my
wife she couldn’t have done more than that.”
His mother started, and a look of dreadful apprehension came into her
eyes.
“Don’t talk like that, Alistair! I’m getting old, and it frightens me.
Promise me, promise me, my own dear son, that you will never _marry_
her?”
In her agitation the poor lady rose and went to him, laying a pleading
hand on his shoulder as she looked into his face.
“No, I don’t suppose I shall ever do that,” he said.
But he spoke in a tone of dejection, like a man not certain of himself,
and the mother’s fear was not relieved.