Barren Honour Part 22

"I can't guess at your object, but your manner is not to be mistaken. It is evident you come here with the deliberate purpose of insulting me.

I'm afraid I must disappoint you, Sir Alan. I decline to enter into your own affairs at all, and I consider our conversation ended here."

The other laughed scornfully, and his accent became harder and more _tranchant_ than ever.

"Bah!--you lose your head! There are two gross errors in that last speech. I don't come to insult, because, to insult a person, you must presume he has some t.i.tle to self-respect. I utterly deny your right to such a thing. And you will listen as long as I choose to speak; you may be sure I shall not use an unnecessary word. I come here to make certain accusations and to impose certain conditions--or penalties, if you like.

It's not worth while picking expressions."

Harding sat down, actually gnashing his teeth in impotent rage, leaning his elbows on his knees, and resting his chin on his clenched hands.

"Go on, then," he snarled, "and be quick about it."

"I accuse you," Alan answered, steadily, "of having played the part of common spy; of having composed, if you did not write, two anonymous letters to Lady Mildred and her daughter; afterwards, of having maligned a woman whom you never spoke to, by causing her handwriting to be forged; of having made a dear friend of mine, a gentleman of birth and breeding, unwittingly your accomplice, when he was brought so low that the Tempter himself might have spared him; of having done me, and perhaps my cousin, a mortal injury, when neither of us had ever hurt you by word or deed. I accuse you of having done all this for hire, for the specific sum of 5,000, paid you by Lord Clydesdale within a month after your villany was consummated. You need not trouble yourself to contradict one syllable of this, unless you choose to lie for the pleasure of lying. I have the written proofs here."

Knowles's head went down lower and lower while Wyverne was speaking; when he raised his face, it was fantastically convulsed and horribly livid, like one of those that we see in the ill.u.s.trations to the _Inferno_, besetting the path of the travellers through the penal Circles. He was too anxious to escape from his torture, to protract it by a single vain denial; but he would not throw one chance of palliation away.

"It was not a bribe," he gasped out, "it was a regular bet. Look, I can show it you."

He drew his tablets out and tore them open with a shaking hand; and, after finding the page with great difficulty, pointed it out to Wyverne.

The latter just glanced at the entry, and cast down the book with crushing contempt.

"Five thousand to fifty," he said; "I've been long enough on the turf to construe those odds. The veriest robber in the ring would not have dared to show your 'regular bet.' Now, answer me one question--'How far was Clydesdale cognizant of your plot?'"

"He has never heard one word of it, up to this moment," the other answered, eagerly. "I swear it. You may make any inquiries you like. I _can_ defy you there. But some one else did know of it, and approved it too; that was----"

Wyverne's tone changed savagely as he broke in.

"_Will_ you confine yourself to answering the questions you are asked? I don't want any confessions volunteered, I attach no real importance to them, after all; but it grates on one to hear people maligned unnecessarily. Now, I'll tell you what I mean to do about it. I thought at first of inducing you to cross the Channel, and giving you a chance of your life against mine there; but I gave that up, because I knew you would not come. Then I thought--a brutal, last resource--of beating you into a cripple, here. I gave that up, because I never could thrash a dog that lay down at the first cut, writhing and howling; I know so well that would have been your line. Do you want to say anything?"

A sudden change in Harding's countenance made Alan pause. You may have seen how utterly deficient he was both in moral and physical courage; but the last faint embers of manhood smouldered into sullen flame, under the acc.u.mulation of insult. He had risen to his feet with a dark devilish malice on his face, and made a step towards a table near him.

Wyverne's keen gaze read his purpose thoroughly, but never wavered in its freezing contempt.

"Ah, that's the drawer where you keep your revolver," he said. "If you drive a rat into a corner, he will turn sometimes. I don't believe you would have nerve to shoot; but I mean to run no risks. I came prepared after I gave up the bastinado. There's something heavier than wood in this malacca. I'll break your wrist if you attempt to touch the lock.

That's better; sit down again and listen. Then--I thought of bringing the matter before a committee of every club you belong to, suppressing all the names but my own. I could have done it; my credit's good for so much, if I choose to use it. I only gave up that idea three hours ago.

It was when I heard of the Rector's being so seriously ill. The fathers suffer for the sins of the children often enough; but I have not the heart to give _yours_ his death-blow. You will appreciate the weakness thoroughly, I don't doubt. On one condition I shall keep your treachery a secret from all, except those immediately concerned; that condition is, that you never show yourself in any company where, by the remotest chance, you could meet either Lady Clydesdale, Mrs. Lenox, any of the Dene family, or myself. I'll do my duty to society so far, at all events. Do you accept or refuse?"

"I have no choice," the other muttered, hoa.r.s.ely and sullenly; "you have me in a vice, you know that."

"Then it is so understood," Wyverne went on. "You needn't waste your breath in promising and swearing. You'll keep your quarantine, I feel sure. If not,----" (it was a very significant pause). "After all, my forbearance only hangs on your poor father's life, and I fear that is a slender thread indeed."

The mention of Gilbert Knowles's name seemed to have no effect whatever upon his son; he did not even appear grateful for its mute intercession between him and public shame: but Alan's voice softened insensibly as he uttered it. When he spoke again, after a minute's silence, his tone was rather sad than scornful.

"If you wanted money so much, why, in G.o.d's name, did you not come to me? I would have sold my last chance of a reversion, and have begged or borrowed from every friend I had, sooner than have let Clydesdale outbid me. The plunge was taken, when you could once think of such infamy; you might as well have sold yourself to me. Those miserable thousands must have been your only motive, for you had no reason, that I know of, to dislike me."

For the first time since the interview began, Harding Knowles looked the speaker straight in the eyes: his face was still white as a corpse's, but its expression was scarcely human in its intense malignity.

"You're wrong," he said, between his teeth: "the money wasn't the only motive. Not dislike you! Curse you!--I've hated you from the first moment that we met. Do you fancy, I thank you for your forbearance now?

I'd poison you if I could, or murder you where you stand, if I dared. I hated your languid ways, and your quiet manner, and your soft speech, and your cool courtesy--hated them all. You never spoke naturally but once--on the hall-steps of Dene. Do you suppose I have forgotten that, or the look in your cousin's eyes? I tell you I hated you both. I felt you despised and laughed at me all the while, and you had no right to do so--then. It is different--different--now."

His brain, usually so calculating and crafty, for the moment was utterly distraught; he could not even command his voice, which rose almost into a shriek while he was speaking, and in the last words sank abruptly into a hollow groan. It was a terrible and piteous sight. But you have heard how implacable at certain seasons Alan Wyverne could be: neither the agony of the pa.s.sion, nor the misery of the humiliation, moved his compa.s.sion in the least; he watched the outbreak and the relapse, with a smile of serene satisfaction that had been strange to his face for some time past.

"So you really disliked my manner?" he said, in his own slow, pensive way. "I remember, years ago, an ancient d.u.c.h.esse of the Faubourg telling me it had a savour of the _Vieille Cour_. I was intensely flattered then, for I was very young. I am not sure that I ought not to be more gratified now. I think I am. The instincts of hate are truer than those of love. Mde. de Latreaumont was as kind as a mother to me, and might have been deceived. I have no more to say. You know the conditions: if you transgress them by a hair's breadth, you will hear of it--not from me."

He left the room without another word. It is doubtful if Knowles heard that last taunt, or knew that his visitor was gone. He had buried his face again in his hands; and so, for minutes sat motionless. All at once he started up, went to the outer "oak," and dropped the bolt which made his servant's pa.s.s-key useless, and then returned to his old seat, still apparently half stunned and stupefied.

Do you think the forger and traitor escaped easily? It may be so; but remember the exaggerated importance that Harding attached to his social position and advancement. I believe that many, whose earthly ruin has just been completed, have felt less miserable, and hopeless, and spirit-broken, than the man who sat there, far into the twilight, staring at the fire with haggard eyes, that never saw the red coals turn grey.

It is true, that when Nina Lenox heard from Alan a _resume_ of the day's proceedings, she decided at once that the retribution was wholly inadequate and unsatisfactory. But one need not multiply instances to prove the truism, if women are exacting in love, they are thrice as exacting in revenge. I cannot remember where I read the old romaunt of the knight who came just in time to save his lady from the burning, by vanquishing her traducer in the lists. The story is commonplace and trite to a degree. I only remember the one instance that made it remarkable. The conqueror stood with his foot on the neck of the enemy; his chivalrous heart melted towards the vanquished, who, after all, had done his devoir gallantly in an evil cause. He would have suffered him to rise and live, but he chanced to glance inquiringly towards the pale woman at the stake, and, says the chronicler, "by the bending of her brows, and the blink of her eyes, he wist that she bade him--'not spare!'" So the good knight sighed heavily, and, turning his sword-point once more to the neck of the fallen man, drove the keen steel through mail and flesh and bone.

Ah, my friend! may it never be your lot or mine, to lie p.r.o.ne at the mercy of a woman whom we have wronged past hope of forgiveness; be sure, that eyes and brows will speak as plainly as they did a thousand years agone, and their murderous message will be much the same.

CHAPTER XXIII.

DIPLOMACY AT A DISCOUNT.

It would be rather difficult to define Wyverne's feelings after his interview with Knowles. I fear that the utter humiliation of his enemy failed entirely to satisfy him; but, on the whole, I think he scarcely regretted not having pushed reprisals to extremities. At least there was this advantage; he could sit with the Rector now, for hours, and strive to cheer the poor invalid, with a quiet conscience; he could never have borne to come to his presence with the deliberate purpose at his heart of bringing public shame on Gilbert's son.

At the beginning of the following week, Alan heard that the Squire and Lady Mildred were in town for a couple of days, on their way home from Devonshire. He knew the hour at which he was certain to find "my lady"

alone, and timed his visit accordingly. Now, though the family breach had been closed up long ago, and though Wyverne was with Lady Clydesdale perpetually, apparently on the most cousinly terms of intimacy, it somehow happened that he met his aunt very seldom. Still, it was the most natural thing that he should call, under the circ.u.mstances, and "my lady" was in no wise disconcerted when his name was announced. The greeting, on both sides, was as affectionate as it had ever been in the old times; it would have been impossible to say why, from the first, Lady Mildred felt a nervous presentiment of impending danger, unless it was--it might have been pure fancy--that Alan's manner did seem unusually grave. So she was not surprised when he said,

"Would you mind putting off your drive for half an hour? I will not keep you longer; but I have one or two things that I wish very much to say to you."

"I'll give you the whole afternoon if you wish it, Alan," she said, in the softest of her silky tones; "it is no great sacrifice; I shall be glad of an excuse for escaping the cold wind. Will you ring, and tell them I shall not want the carriage, and that I am not at home to anybody?"

So once again--this time without a witness--the trial of fence between those two began; it was strange, but all the prestige of previous victories could not make "my lady" feel confident now.

Alan broke ground boldly, without wasting time in "parades."

"Aunt Mildred, if some things that I have to refer to should be painful to you, try and realize what they must be to _me_; you will see then, that only necessity could make me speak. Do you remember when those wretched anonymous letters first came to Dene, I told you I would find out their author and thank him? I did both last week. More than this, I have seen and spoken with the man who wrote those letters which we all supposed came from Mrs. Rawdon Lenox. You never had a doubt on the subject, of course, Aunt Mildred? I thought you would be surprised; you will be still more so when you hear the forger's name--Harding Knowles."

"My lady" really did suffer from headaches sometimes--with that busy, restless brain it was no wonder--and she always had near her the strongest smelling-salts that could be procured; but she did not know what fainting meant, so she was absolutely terrified, when the room seemed to go round, and Wyverne's voice sounded distant and strange, as if it came through a long speaking-tube; the sensation pa.s.sed off in a few seconds, but while it lasted she could only feel, blindly and helplessly, for the jewelled vinaigrette which lay within a few inches of her elbow. Wyverne's eyes had never left her face for a moment; he caught up the bottle quickly and put it, open, into her hand, without a word.

"It--it is--nothing," Lady Mildred gasped (the salts must have been _very_ pungent.) "I have not been well for days; the surprise quite overcame me. But oh, Alan, are you quite--quite sure? I don't like Harding Knowles much; but it would be too cruel to accuse him of such horrors unless you have certain proofs."

"Make yourself easy on that score," Alan said, with his quiet smile; "no injustice has been done. I will give you all the proofs you care to see, directly. While you recover yourself, Aunt Mildred, let me tell you a short story. Years ago, when we were cruising about the Orkneys, they showed us a certain cliff that stood up a thousand feet clear out of the North Sea, and told us what happened there. A father and his son, sea-fowlers, were hanging on the same rope, the father undermost.

Suddenly they found that the strands were parting one by one, frayed on a sharp edge of rock. The rope might possibly carry one to the top--not two. Then quoth the sire, 'Your mother must not starve--cut away, _below_.' As he said, so was it done, and the parricide got up safely.

Do you see my meaning? You say you don't like Harding Knowles? I can well believe it; but if you cared for him next to your own children, I should still quote the stout Orkneyman's words--'cut away, _below_.'

Now, if you will look at these papers, you will see how clear the evidence is on which I rely."

There was silence for some minutes, while "my lady" pretended to read attentively; in real truth, she could not fix her attention to a line.

All her thoughts were concentrated on the one doubt--"How much does he know?" The suspense became unendurable; it was better to hear the worst at once. Suddenly she looked up and spoke.

"Is it possible? Can you believe that Clydesdale was mixed up with such a plot as this?"