A Blot on the Scutcheon Part 3

"My mother wept," said Michael slowly, "whenever I asked concerning him. Yet I do not think he is dead."

"And why not?"

"A letter came once, not long since. The messenger who brought it was from abroad. My mother did not welcome him very warmly, and afterwards she cried. The messenger went away laughing, and that maddened me. I ran after him, demanding that he should fight, but he caught me by the wrist, looking down for a long time into my face.

"'Your father's son? Impossible!' he mocked. 'Impossible save for that big nose of yours and the set of your shoulders. Ha, ha! So you would not run away in face of an enemy? Morbleu! A game c.o.c.kerel, I protest.'

"So, making me a very mocking bow, he went away. And my mother wept again very sorely and very often, till the day she died."

"Saying nought of him?"

"As I knelt beside her, at the last, she put her arms around me closely.

"'Pray G.o.d you may not meet him!' she moaned, 'or, if you do, pray G.o.d you may save him from----' But she died before she finished her words."

Sir Henry's chin was sunk on his breast. The reopening of an unhealable wound is sore enough work.

Let it be closed henceforth.

Yet, being open, he would tell the lad all now, before forbidding mention of such subject again. "Come," he said, rising, clutching at his ebony stick with the sudden weakness of age. "You shall see his likeness, and then--well, it is good that the dead past buries its dead."

Sir Henry Berrington did not believe in ghosts. Yet they haunted the picture-gallery up there. Ah yes! Curse he might and did, yet the ghosts laughed and sang with merry, boyish voices, shouting in glee as they romped with Chieftain and Bride, the great deerhounds, crying aloud to tell father or mother of some youthful sport, carolling out some brave, rollicking ditty of gallant deeds.

Ah, yes! It was not the old mother alone who had wept on the neck of these ghosts, holding out wide, empty arms to embrace shadows, and turning away--alone.

But the old man's step was firmer now as he trod the gallery floor, head erect and shoulders set as he pa.s.sed between rows of smiling or frowning ancestors, followed by a lean, dark-browed boy, whose head was a trifle bent and his eyes deprecating as they met the fixed stare of painted ones around.

Was it _his_ fault that the scutcheon they left so fair was stained and blotted by a foul and treacherous deed?

The setting sun sent a flare of light through the great window, with its blazonment of arms and rich colouring, at the end of the gallery.

It shone strangely on the dusty curtain which hung there over the last picture on the wall.

Force himself though he would, Sir Henry's hand trembled as he drew back the velvet folds.

And Michael, looking, saw the picture of a young man, dressed in the extravagant fas.h.i.+on of a period twenty years earlier. Rich setting to rich beauty.

Stephen Berrington, aged twenty-two, was a son any mother might have been proud of.

Surely it was no traitor's face, but rather that of a very pretty gentleman. Weak? Yes; chin and mouth proved that--a youth to be led rather than born to rule. And Satan had led him to his own destruction. So Sir Henry said, even whilst Stephen's mother wept for her son on her knees. A woman puts love before honour where a brave man makes the latter his deity.

Thus Michael looked on his father's face and found scorn overcoming the pity.

A traitor--and his father!

No wonder Morice Conyers had mocked him. Yet he would prove that a man can be a traitor's son, and yet no traitor himself. The blood drummed in his head and through his pulses at the thought.

Yes, he would prove that, and, by his own deeds, wipe out the stain which seemed ready to tear his shrinking soul.

The curtain fell back into its place. Sir Henry turned to his grandson.

They did not speak, but stood there in the dying sunlight, whilst grey eyes alone spoke their promise to sunken blue ones.

Then the old, withered hand fell on the lad's shoulder.

"You understand?" he said simply.

Michael understood.

CHAPTER IV

ON THE COACH FROM OXFORD

A rough night, cold and wet, with a thin sleet falling and the wind blowing from the north-east full against the great coach which lumbered on its way from Oxford to London.

Pa.s.sengers inside huddled together, stamping benumbed feet and wis.h.i.+ng for the journey's end. Pa.s.sengers outside poured anathemas against the weather and the slowness of the horses into the depths of fur-lined coats, wherein their faces were buried.

Only two or three of the younger men perched near the driver were able to crack occasional jokes, whilst one alone strove huskily to troll a stanza of some popular ditty.

Insulting! Positively insulting to sing of drinking and being jolly, or drowning melancholy either, in face of such a gale, and the coach an hour behind time! Even his comrades upbraided him, whilst one beetroot-nosed individual near looked positively murderous.

But Michael Berrington was made that way, and--so an Oxford wag declared--would have found food for laughter with a noose around his neck.

"Hi, there! Hi! hi. For Heaven's sake, my masters! Hey----"

Michael leant over the side of the coach and called aloud to the driver to pull up.

A man, in holland smock, and face as white as chalk, had burst through the hedge on their left and was running frantically after them.

"Hey, hi, for Heaven's----"

He was breathless before he reached them, and the anathemas of the beetroot-nosed pa.s.senger rose high above his fur collar.

But Michael--nimble now as when, ten years before, he had scaled a high garden wall with a child's ball--had swung himself down on to the ground beside the man.

"Come," he cried gaily; "you've been running. Have a drink, my friend, and tell us the merry news afterwards. I'll wager it's worth the hearing."

The man gulped down the contents of the extended flask readily enough, and proceeded to tell his tale in crescendo tones.

He had been working yonder with the mangels for Farmer Benton's sheep, and had just stepped into the copse near, when he heard voices on the other side of it, and the jingling of bits.

Gentlemen of the road they were,--three of them, black-masked, and dainty in their dress as any lords. How they laughed too, little dreaming of the mangel-digger, as they discussed how they and the rest of their band meant to rob the Oxford coach at Craven's Hollow, not far from Reading. Seven was the hour, and the prey secure. A lonely place, my masters, and rich booty. They had news of a certain gentleman whose valise was worth risking their necks for.

The man told his tale in the broad Berks.h.i.+re dialect, but the outline of it was enough for those who rode on the Oxford coach.

Marry! What a to-do there was! Gabbling, crying, cursing,--one urging this thing, one the other, whilst the excitement of the beetroot-nosed pa.s.senger caused more than one to wonder what his valise contained.