A Blot on the Scutcheon Part 2

Outside the birds were singing carols of love to the roses after the joy of a summer shower. The scent of wet, brown earth was alluring to Michael, yet he sat still, knowing that something momentous stirred in the evening air.

The lines round Sir Henry's mouth were hardening.

"Who won?"

"I, sir."

"Ah!"

It was an enigmatical sound.

Michael plucked up courage and met the stare of cold blue eyes steadily.

"He had used his little sister roughly."

"What was that to you?"

"She is a playmate of mine, sir."

"_Playmate of yours!_"

"Yes, sir."

"A Conyers playmate to your father's son? What do you mean, boy?"

Michael drew himself up stiffly and told the tale in brief. He had played with little Gabrielle Conyers--and fought for her. He did not say how he was for ever and ever her true knight.

Yet when he had finished, the old man opposite was sneering.

"It was well for you her father knew nought of such play," said he sourly, "or I might have had to look farther for an heir."

Michael's eyes blazed.

"May I speak, sir?" he asked huskily, and never waited even for the curt nod of acquiescence.

"I would know about my father," he said slowly and very steadily. "My mother wept when I spoke of him, but she would say no word save that I should know well enough one day. Neither would she tell me whether he were alive or dead. But I am a child no longer, and will be at the mercy of no man who dares call my father foul names, whilst I have no knowledge to enable me to slit their tongues for such lies."

Silence in the wainscotted room.

How the bird-song without jarred.

"So you would know?" said Sir Henry dully. "Then I will tell you."

The proud, aristocratic old face was very hard and set.

"Your father," he said monotonously, "was my only son. He was handsome--you shall see his portrait presently. And I was proud of him. So was his mother. But she should not have hidden his faults from me. It is so with women: they weaken with their pampering where discipline should strengthen. I knew nothing of his gambling at Oxford, or his reputation later on at Arthur's and White's, where Stephen Berrington became, I believe, a notable figure--as a pigeon ready for plucking.

"I remained here and knew nothing, only picturing my son according to my fancy. Then the inevitable happened. He got mixed up in one of those bubble Jacobite plots which were for ever being blown by the friends of poor Prince Charlie. He and his bosom companion, Ralph Conyers, were burning, it seemed, with zeal for the royal exile. I do not say that I altogether disapproved, though warning them of the penalties of rashness.

"They did not listen--I hardly expected them to, though I warned them again before they set out on that fatal day to Ireland, where, in due course, their hero was to land.

"I need not tell you the story in detail. They failed. The cracking of an egg-sh.e.l.l was no harder than the quas.h.i.+ng of such a plot, though there were brave gentlemen concerned in it. Too much heart and too little brain is a bad mixture for success in such enterprises. Stephen was imprisoned at Dublin Castle with Ralph Conyers and others."

A long pause. Sir Henry's face was ashen, his old lips twitching nervously.

Michael's dark head was bent eagerly forward, but there was fear in his grey eyes.

"Yes," he muttered. "He was imprisoned?"

"For treason. When I heard the news I wept for my son, yet I honoured him, thinking he was giving his life for a gallant cause."

"He escaped?"

The old man's lips were twisted into that bitterly sarcastic smile of his.

"Ay," he replied. "Stephen Berrington escaped scot free by betraying his comrades."

Tick, tick, tick.

The solemn, monotonous chant of the great clock in the corner was the only sound in the room.

Michael sat, white and rigid as the stern old man opposite.

"Betrayed!"

"Betrayed. I learnt that the son I mourned as dead was alive--free; but the price was dishonour. I cursed him then, as I curse him now."

It was very terrible, the concentrated and undying fury in those quiet, even tones.

Michael shuddered, covering his face with his hands.

"The son of a traitor," he moaned--"a traitor! And he was right."

"Who?"

"Morice Conyers. Yet I would have killed him for calling me a traitor's son."

"He spoke truth. His father was one of those who suffered even more, perhaps, than those whom my son's words helped to send to the scaffold.

Ralph Conyers was imprisoned for ten years and came back a cripple, whose limbs were twisted and bent with rheumatism and ague. Do you wonder if he too curses the name of Berrington?"

"My father! And such an act!"

"You do well to tremble. It is an ill heritage for you, lad,--a stained and blotted scutcheon, with coward and traitor written across an unsullied sheet."

"And he--is still alive?"

"I do not know. Yet I pray Heaven he is not. I have never seen him since. And he knew better than to come whining to me. I would have had him whipped from the doors. His mother saw him by stealth once, and he told her a tale. I did not listen to it. She died soon after; I think of a broken heart. It did not help me to love my son better.

He wrote once to tell me of his marriage to an Irishwoman and of your birth. I did not answer. He has not written again."