The Light of Scarthey Part 34

"Rupert--!" exclaimed Sir Adrian stepping back a pace, too amazed, at the instant, for indignation.

"Now, in your turn, hear me, Adrian," continued Mr. Landale with his blackest look. "I have listened to your summing up of our respective cases with perfect patience, notwithstanding a certain a.s.sumption of superiority which--allow me to insist on this--is somewhat ridiculous from you to me. You complain of my misunderstanding you. Briefly, this is absurd. As a matter of fact I understand you better than you do yourself. On the other hand it is you that do not understand me. I have no wish to paraphrase your little homily of two minutes ago, but the heads of my refutation are inevitably suggested by the points of your indictment. To use your own manner of speech, my dear Adrian, I have no wish to a.s.sume injured disinterestedness, when speaking of my doings with regard to you and your belongings and especially to this old place of yours, of our family. You have only to look and see for yourself...."

Mr. Landale made a wide comprehensive gesture which seemed to embrace the whole of the n.o.ble estate, the admirably kept mansion with walls now flushed in the light of the sinking sun, the orderly maintenance of the vast grounds, the prosperousness of its dependencies--all in fact that the brothers could see with the eyes of the body from where they stood, and all that they could see with the eyes of the mind alone: "Go and verify whether I fulfilled my duty with respect to the trust which was yours, but which you have allowed to devolve upon my shoulders, and ask yourself whether you would have fulfilled it better--if as well. I claim no more than this recognition; for, as you pointed out, the position carried its advantages, if it entailed arduous responsibility too. It was my hope that heirs of my body would live to perpetuate this pride--this work of mine. It was not to be.

Now that you step in again and that possibly your flesh will reap the benefits I have laboured to produce, ask yourself, Adrian, whether you, who s.h.i.+rked your own natural duties, would have buckled to the task, under _my_ circ.u.mstances--distrusted by your brother, disliked and secretly despised by all your dependants, who reserved all their love and admiration for the 'real master' (oh, I know the cant phrase), although he chose to abandon his position and yield himself to the stream of his own inertness, the real master who in the end can find no better description for these years of faithful service than 'hostility' and 'ingrat.i.tude.'"

Sir Adrian halted a pace, a little moved by the speciousness of the pleading. The incidental reference to that one grief of his brother's life was of a kind which could never fail to arouse generous sympathy in his heart. But Mr. Landale had not come to the critical point of his say, and he did not choose to allow the chapter of emotion to begin just yet.

"But," he continued, pursuing his restless walk, "again to use your own phraseology, I am not merely recriminating. I, too, wish you to understand me. It would be useless to discuss now, what you elect to call my hostility in past days. I had to keep up the position demanded by our ancient name; to keep it up amid a society, against whose every tenet almost--every prejudice, you may call them--you chose to run counter. My antagonism to your mode of acting and thinking was precisely measured by your own against the world in which the Landales, as a family, hold a stake. Let that, therefore, be dismissed; and let us come at once to the special hostility you complain of in me, since the troublesome arrival of Aunt Rose and her wards. As the very thing which I was most anxious to prevent, if possible, has, after all, come to pa.s.s, the present argument may seem useless; but you have courted it yourself."

"Most anxious to prevent--if possible...!" repeated Sir Adrian, slowly. "This, from a younger brother, is almost cynical, Rupert!"

"Cynical!" retorted Mr. Landale, with a furious laugh. "Why, you have given sound to the very word I would, in anybody else's case, have applied to a behaviour such as yours. Is it possible, Adrian," said Rupert, turning to look his brother in the eyes with a look of profound malice, "that it has not occurred to you yet, that _cynical_ will be the verdict the world will pa.s.s on the question of your marriage with that young girl?"

Sir Adrian flushed darkly, and remained silent for a pace or two; then, with a puzzled look:

"I fail to understand you," he said simply. "I am no longer young, of course; yet, in years, I am not preposterously old. As for the other points--name and fortune----"

But Rupert interrupted him with a sharp exclamation, which betrayed the utmost nervous exasperation.

"Pshaw! If I did not know you so well, I would say you were playing at candour. This--this unconventionality of yours would have led you into curious pitfalls, Adrian, had you been obliged to live in the world. My 'hostility' has saved you from some already, I know--more is the pity it could not save you from this--for it pa.s.ses all bounds that you should meditate such an unnatural act, upon my soul, in the most natural manner in the world. One must be an Adrian Landale, and live on a tower for the best part of one's life, to reach such a pitch of--unconventionality, let us call it."

"For G.o.d's sake," exclaimed Sir Adrian, suddenly losing patience, "what are you driving at, man? In what way can my marriage with a young lady, who, inconceivable as it may be, has found something to love in me; in what way, I say, can it be accounted cynical? I am not subtle enough to perceive it."

"To any one but you," sneered the other, coming to his climax with a sort of cruel deliberation, "it would hardly require special subtleness to perceive that for the man of mature age to marry the _daughter_, after having, in the days of his youth, been the lover of the _mother_, is a proceeding, the very idea of which is somewhat revolting in the average individual.... There are many roues in St.

James' who would shrink before it; yet you, the enlightened philosopher, the moralist----"

But Sir Adrian, breathing quickly, laid his hand heavily on his brother's shoulder.

"When you say the mother's lover, Rupert," he said, in a contained voice, which was as ominous of storm as the first mutters of thunder, "you mean that I loved her--you do not mean to insinuate that that n.o.ble woman, widowed but a few weeks, whose whole soul was filled with but one lofty idea, that of duty, was the mistress--the mistress of a boy, barely out of his teens?"

Rupert shrugged his shoulders.

"I insinuate nothing, my dear Adrian; I think nothing. All this is ancient history which after all has long concerned only you. You know best what occurred in the old days, and of course a man of honour is bound to deny all tales affecting a lady's virtue! Even you, I fancy, would condescend so far. But nevertheless, reflect how this marriage will rake up the old story. It will be remembered how you, for the sake of remaining by Cecile de Savenaye's side, abandoned your home to fight in a cause that did not concern you; nay, more, turned your back for the time upon those advanced social theories which even at your present season of life you have not all shaken off. You travelled with her from one end of England to the other, in the closest intimacy, and finally departed over seas, her acknowledged escort. She on her side, under pretext of securing the best help on her political mission that England can afford her, selected a young man notoriously in love with her, at the very age when the pa.s.sions are hottest, and wisdom the least consideration--as her influential agent, of course.

Men are men, Adrian--especially young men--small blame to you, young that you were, if then ... but you cannot expect, in sober earnest, the world to believe that you went on such a wild pilgrimage for nothing! Women are women--especially young women, of the French court--who have never had the reputation of admiring bashfulness in stalwart young lovers...."

Sir Adrian's hand, pressing upon his brother's shoulder, as if weighted by all his anger, here forced the speaker into silence.

"Shame! Shame, Rupert!" he cried first, his eyes aflame with a generous pa.s.sion; then fiercely: "Silence, fellow, or I will take you by that brazen throat of yours and strangle the venomous lie once for all." And then, with keen reproach, "That you, of my blood, of hers too, should be the one to cast such a stigma on her memory--that you should be unable even to understand the nature of our intercourse....

Oh, shame, on you for your baseness, for your vulgar, low suspiciousness!... But, no, I waste my breath upon you, you do not believe this thing. You have outwitted yourself this time. Hear me now: If anything could have suggested to me this alliance with the child of one I loved so madly and so hopelessly, the thought that such dastardly slander could ever have been current would have done so. The world, having nothing to gain by the belief, will never credit that Sir Adrian Landale would marry the daughter of his paramour--however his own brother may deem to his advantage to seem to think so! The fact of Molly de Savenaye becoming Lady Landale would alone, had such ill rumours indeed been current in the past, dispel the ungenerous legend for ever."

There were a few moments of silence while Sir Adrian battled, in the tumult of his indignation, for self-control again; while Rupert, realising that he had outwitted himself indeed, bestowed inward curses upon most of his relations and his own fate.

The elder brother resumed at length, with a faint smile:

"And so, you see, even if you had spoken out in time, it would have been of little avail." Then he added, bitterly. "I have received a wound from an unforeseen quarter. You have dealt it, to no purpose, Rupert, as you see ... though it may be some compensation to such a nature as yours to know that you have left in it a subtle venom."

The sun had already sunk away, and its glow behind the waters had faded to the merest tinge. In the cold shadow of rising night the two men advanced silently homewards. Sir Adrian's soul, guided by the invidious words, had flown back to that dead year, the central point of his existence--It was true: men will be men--in that very house, yonder, he had betrayed his love to her; on board the s.h.i.+p that took them away and by the camp fire on the eve of fight, he had pleaded the cause of his pa.s.sion, not ign.o.bly indeed, with no thought of the baseness which Rupert a.s.signed to him, yet with a selfish disregard of her position, of his own grave trust. And it was with a glow of pride, in the ever living object of his life's devotion--of grat.i.tude almost--that he recalled the n.o.ble simplicity with which the woman, whom he had just heard cla.s.sed among the every-day sinners of society, had, without one grandiloquent word, without even losing her womanly softness, kept her lover as well as herself in the path of her lofty ideal--till the end. And yet she did love him: at the last awful moment, sinking into the very jaws of death, the secret of her heart had escaped her. And now--now her beauty, and something of her own life and soul was left to him in her child, as the one fit object on which to devote that tenderness which time could not change.

After a while, from the darkness by his side came the voice of his brother again, in altered, hardly recognisable accents.

"Adrian, those last words of yours were severe--unjust. I do not deserve such interpretation of my motives. Is it my fault that you are not as other men? Am I to be blamed for judging you by the ordinary standard? But you have convinced me: you were as chivalrous as Cecile was pure, and if needs be, believe me, Adrian, I will maintain it so in the face of the world. Yes, I misunderstood you--and wounded you, as you say, but such was not my intention. Forgive me."

They had come to the door. Sir Adrian paused. There was a rapid revulsion in his kindly mind at the extraordinary sound of humble words from his brother; and with a new emotion, he replied, taking the hand that with well-acted diffidence seemed to seek his grasp:

"Perhaps we have both something to forgive each other. I fear you did not misjudge me so much as you misjudged her who left me that precious legacy. But believe that, believe it as you have just now said, Rupert, the mother of those children never stooped to human frailty--her course in her short and n.o.ble life was as bright and pure as the light of day."

Without another word the two brothers shook hands and re-entered their home.

Sir Adrian sought Miss O'Donoghue whom he now found in converse with Molly, and with a grave eagerness, that put the culminating touch to the old lady's triumph, urged the early celebration of his nuptials.

Mr. Landale repaired to his own study where in solitude he could give loose rein to his fury of disappointment, and consider as carefully as he might in the circ.u.mstances how best to work the new situation to his own advantage.

Even on that day that had been filled with so many varied and poignant emotions for him; through the dream in which his whole being seemed to float, Sir Adrian found a moment to think of the humble followers whom he had left so abruptly on the island, and of the pleasure the auspicious news would bring to them.

It was late at night, and just before parting with the guest who was so soon to be mistress under his roof, he paused on the stairs before a window that commanded a view of the bay. Molly drew closer and leant against his shoulder; and thus both gazed forth silently for some time at the clear distant light, the luminous eye calmly watching over the treacherous sands.

That light of Scarthey--it was the image of the solitary placid life to which he had bidden adieu for ever; which even now, at this brief interval of half a day, seemed as far distant as the years of despair and vicissitude and disgust to which it had succeeded. A man can feel the suddenly revealed charm of things that have ceased to be, without regretting them.

With the dear young head that he loved, with a love already as old as her very years, pressing his cheek; with that slender hand in his grasp, the same, for his love was all miracle, that he had held in the hot-pulsed days of old--he yet felt his mind wander back to his nest of dreams. He thought with grat.i.tude of Rene, the single-minded, faithful familiar; of old Margery, the nurse who had tended Cecile's children, as well as her young master; thought of their joy when they should hear of the marvellous knitting together into the web of his fate, of all those far-off ties.

In full harmony with such fleeting thoughts, came Molly's words at length breaking the silence.

"Will you take me back to that strange old place of yours, Adrian, when we are married?"

Sir Adrian kissed her forehead.

"And would you not fear the rough wild place, child," he murmured.

"Not for ever, I mean," laughed the girl, "for then my mission would not be fulfilled--which was to make of Adrian, Sir Adrian, indeed. But now and again, to recall those lovely days, when--when you were so distracted for the love of Murthering Moll and the fear lest she should see it. You will not dismantle those queer rooms that received so hospitably the limping, draggled-tailed guest--they must again shelter her when she comes as proud Lady Landale! How delicious it would be if the tempest would only rage again, and the sea-mew shriek, and the caverns roar and thunder, and I knew you were as happy as I am sure to be!"

"All shall be kept up even as you left it," answered Sir Adrian moved by tender emotion; "to be made glorious again by the light of your youth and fairness. And Renny shall be cook again, and maid of all work. My poor Renny, what joy when he hears of his master's happiness, and all through the child of his beloved mistress! But he will have to spend a sobering time of solitude out there, till I can find a subst.i.tute for his duties."

"You are very much attached to that funny little retainer, Adrian!"

said Molly after a pause.

"To no man alive do I owe so much. With no one have I had, through life, so much in common," came the grave reply.

"Then," returned the girl, "you would thank me for telling you of the means of making the good man's exile less heavy, until you take him back with you."

"No doubt." There was a tone of surprise and inquiry in his voice.

"Why, it is simple enough. Have you never heard of his admiration for Moggie Mearson, our maid? Let them marry. They will make a good pair, though funny. What, you never knew it? Of course not, or you would not have had the heart to keep the patient lovers apart so long. Let them marry, my Lord of Pulwick: it will complete the romance of the persecuted Savenayes of Brittany and their helpful friends of the distant North."