The Weavers Part 43

He had great self-control. Before looking at the page to which she had directed his attention, he turned the letter over slowly, fingering the pages one by one. "My mother to my father," he remarked.

Instinctively he knew what it contained. "You have been reading my mother's correspondence," he added in cold reproof.

"Do you forget that you asked me to arrange her papers?" she retorted, stung by his suggestion.

"Your imagination is vivid," he exclaimed. Then he bethought himself that, after all, he might sorely need all she could give, if things went against him, and that she was the last person he could afford to alienate; "but I do remember that I asked you that," he added--"no doubt foolishly."

"Read what is there," she broke in, "and you will see that it was not foolish, that it was meant to be." He felt a cold dead hand reaching out from the past to strike him; but he nerved himself, and his eyes searched the paper with a.s.sumed coolness-even with her he must still be acting. The first words he saw were: "Why did you not tell me that my boy, my baby Harry, was not your only child, and that your eldest son was alive?"

So that was it, after all. Even his mother knew. Master of his nerves as he was, it blinded him for a moment. Presently he read on--the whole page--and lingered upon the words, that he might have time to think what he must say to Hylda. Nothing of the tragedy of his mother touched him, though he was faintly conscious of a revelation of a woman he had never known, whose hungering caresses had made him, as a child, rather peevish, when a fit of affection was not on him. Suddenly, as he read the lines touching himself, "Brilliant and able and unscrupulous.... and though he loves me little, as he loves you little too," his eye lighted up with anger, his face became pale--yet he had borne the same truths from Faith without resentment, in the wood by the mill that other year.

For a moment he stood infuriated, then, going to the fireplace, he dropped the letter on the coals, as Hylda, in horror, started forward to arrest his hand.

"Oh, Eglington--but no--no! It is not honourable. It is proof of all!"

He turned upon her slowly, his face rigid, a strange, cold light in his eyes. "If there is no more proof than that, you need not vex your mind,"

he said, commanding his voice to evenness.

A bitter anger was on him. His mother had read him through and through--he had not deceived her even; and she had given evidence against him to Hylda, who, he had ever thought, believed in him completely. Now there was added to the miserable tale, that first marriage, and the rights of David--David, the man who, he was convinced, had captured her imagination. Hurt vanity played a disproportionate part in this crisis.

The effect on him had been different from what Hylda had antic.i.p.ated.

She had pictured him stricken and dumfounded by the blow. It had never occurred to her, it did not now, that he had known the truth; for, of course, to know the truth was to speak, to restore to David his own, to step down into the second and unconsidered place. After all, to her mind, there was no disgrace. The late Earl had married secretly, but he had been duly married, and he did not marry again until Mercy Claridge was dead. The only wrong was to David, whose grandfather had been even more to blame than his own father. She had looked to help Eglington in this moment, and now there seemed nothing for her to do. He was superior to the situation, though it was apparent in his pale face and rigid manner that he had been struck hard.

She came near to him, but there was no encouragement to her to play that part which is a woman's deepest right and joy and pain in one--to comfort her man in trouble, sorrow, or evil. Always, always, he stood alone, whatever the moment might be, leaving her nothing to do--"playing his own game with his own weapons," as he had once put it. Yet there was strength in it too, and this came to her mind now, as though in excuse for whatever else there was in the situation which, against her will, repelled her.

"I am so sorry for you," she said at last.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"To lose all that has been yours so long."

This was their great moment. The response to this must be the touchstone of their lives. A--half dozen words might alter all the future, might be the watch word to the end of all things. Involuntarily her heart fas.h.i.+oned the response he ought to give--"I shall have you left, Hylda."

The air seemed to grow oppressive, and the instant's silence a torture, and, when he spoke, his words struck a chill to her heart--rough notes of pain. "I have not lost yet," were his words.

She shrank. "You will not hide it. You will do right by--by him," she said with difficulty.

"Let him establish his claim to the last item of fact," he said with savage hate.

"Luke Claridge knew. The proofs are but just across the way, no doubt,"

she answered, almost coldly, so had his words congealed her heart.

Their great moment had pa.s.sed. It was as though a cord had snapped that held her to him, and in the recoil she had been thrown far off from him.

Swift as his mind worked, it had not seen his opportunity to win her to his cause, to asphyxiate her high senses, her quixotic justice, by that old flood of eloquence and compelling persuasion of the emotions with which he had swept her to the altar--an altar of sacrifice. He had not even done what he had left London to do--make sure of her, by an alluring flattery and devotion, no difficult duty with one so beautiful and desirable; though neither love of beauty nor great desire was strong enough in him to divert him from his course for an hour, save by his own initiative. His mother's letter had changed it all. A few hours before he had had a struggle with Soolsby, and now another struggle on the same theme was here. Fate had dealt illy with him, who had ever been its spoiled child and favourite. He had not learned yet the arts of defence against adversity.

"Luke Claridge is dead," he answered sharply. "But you will tell--him, you will write to Egypt and tell your brother?" she said, the conviction slowly coming to her that he would not.

"It is not my duty to displace myself, to furnish evidence against myself--"

"You have destroyed the evidence," she intervened, a little scornfully.

"If there were no more than that--" He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"Do you know there is more?" she asked searchingly. "In whose interests are you speaking?" he rejoined, with a sneer. A sudden fury possessed him. Claridge Pasha--she was thinking of him!

"In yours--your conscience, your honour."

"There is over thirty years' possession on my side," he rejoined.

"It is not as if it were going from your family," she argued.

"Family--what is he to me!"

"What is any one to you?" she returned bitterly.

"I am not going to unravel a mystery in order to facilitate the cutting of my own throat."

"It might be worth while to do something once for another's sake than your own--it would break the monotony," she retorted, all her sense tortured by his words, and even more so by his manner.

Long ago Faith had said in Soolsby's but that he "blandished" all with whom he came in contact; but Hylda realised with a lacerated heart that he had ceased to blandish her. Possession had altered that. Yet how had he vowed to her in those sweet tempestuous days of his courts.h.i.+p when the wind of his pa.s.sion blew so hard! Had one of the vows been kept?

Even as she looked at him now, words she had read some days before flashed through her mind--they had burnt themselves into her brain:

"Broken faith is the crown of evils, Broken vows are the knotted thongs Set in the hands of laughing devils, To scourge us for deep wrongs.

"Broken hearts, when all is ended, Bear the better all after-stings; Bruised once, the citadel mended, Standeth through all things."

Suddenly he turned upon her with aggrieved petulance. "Why are you so eager for proof?"

"Oh, I have," she said, with a sudden flood of tears in her voice, though her eyes were dry--"I have the feeling your mother had, that nothing will be well until you undo the wrong your father did. I know it was not your fault. I feel for you--oh, believe me, I feel as I have never felt, could never feel, for myself. It was brought on you by your father, but you must be the more innocent because he was so guilty. You have had much out of it, it has helped you on your way. It does not mean so much now. By-and-by another--an English-peerage may be yours by your own achievement. Let it go. There is so much left, Harry. It is a small thing in a world of work. It means nothing to me." Once again, even when she had given up all hope, seeing what was the bent of his mind--once again she made essay to win him out of his selfishness. If he would only say, "I have you left," how she would strive to shut all else out of her life!

He was exasperated. His usual prescience and prudence forsook him. It angered him that she should press him to an act of sacrifice for the man who had so great an influence upon her. Perversity possessed him.

Lifelong egotism was too strong for wisdom, or discretion.

Suddenly he caught her hands in both of his and said hoa.r.s.ely: "Do you love me--answer me, do you love me with all your heart and soul? The truth now, as though it were your last word on earth."

Always self. She had asked, if not in so many words, for a little love, something for herself to feed on in the darkening days for him, for her, for both; and he was thinking only of himself.

She shrank, but her hands lay pa.s.sive in his. "No, not with all my heart and soul--but, oh--!"

He flung her hands from him. "No, not with all your heart and soul--I know! You are willing to sacrifice me for him, and you think I do not understand."

She drew herself up, with burning cheeks and flas.h.i.+ng eyes. "You understand nothing--nothing. If you had ever understood me, or any human being, or any human heart, you would not have ruined all that might have given you an undying love, something that would have followed you through fire and flood to the grave. You cannot love. You do not understand love. Self--self, always self. Oh, you are mad, mad, to have thrown it all away, all that might have given happiness! All that I have, all that I am, has been at your service; everything has been bent and tuned to your pleasure, for your good. All has been done for you, with thought of you and your position and your advancement, and now--now, when you have killed all that might have been yours, you cry out in anger that it is dying, and you insinuate what you should kill another for insinuating. Oh, the wicked, cruel folly of it all! You suggest--you dare! I never heard a word from David Claridge that might not be written on the h.o.a.rdings. His honour is deeper than that which might attach to the t.i.tle of Earl of Eglington."

She seemed to tower above him. For an instant she looked him in the eyes with frigid dignity, but a great scorn in her face. Then she went to the door--he hastened to open it for her.

"You will be very sorry for this," he said stubbornly. He was too dumfounded to be discreet, too suddenly embarra.s.sed by the turn affairs had taken. He realised too late that he had made a mistake, that he had lost his hold upon her.

As she pa.s.sed through, there suddenly flashed before her mind the scene in the laboratory with the chairmaker. She felt the meaning of it now.