The Lion's Skin Part 20

"Besides, it is a little late for that," cut in the duke.

"Your grace," cried Rotherby, "is this affair yours?"

"No, I thank Heaven!" said his grace, and sat down.

Rotherby scowled at the man who until ten minutes ago had been his friend and boon companion, and there was more of contempt than anger in his eyes. He turned again to Mr. Caryll, who was watching him with a gleam of amus.e.m.e.nt--that infernally irritating amus.e.m.e.nt of his--in his gray-green eyes.

"Well?" he demanded foolishly, "have you naught to say?"

"I had thought," returned Mr. Caryll, "that I had said enough." And the duke laughed aloud.

Rotherby's lip was curled. "Ha! You don't think, now, that you may have said too much?"

Mr. Caryll stifled a yawn. "Do you?" he inquired blandly.

"Ay, by G.o.d! Too much for a gentleman to leave unpunished."

"Possibly. But what gentleman is concerned in this?"

"I am!" thundered Rotherby.

"I see. And how do you conceive that you answer the description?"

Rotherby swore at him with great choice and variety. "You shall learn,"

he promised him. "My friends shall wait on you to-night."

"I wonder who will carry his message?" ventured Collis to the ceiling.

Rotherby turned on him, fierce as a rat. "It is a matter you may discover to your cost, Sir Harry," he snarled.

"I think," put in his grace very languidly, "that you are troubling the harmony that is wont to reign here."

His lordship stood still a moment. Then, quite suddenly, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up a candlestick to hurl at Mr. Caryll. But he had it wrenched from his hands ere he could launch it.

He stood a moment, discomfited, glowering upon his brother. "My friends shall wait on you to-night," he repeated.

"You said so before," Mr. Caryll replied wearily. "I shall endeavor to make them welcome."

His lordship nodded stupidly, and strode to the door. His departure was observed in silence. On every face he read his sentence. These men--rakes though they were, professedly--would own him no more for their a.s.sociate; and what these men thought to-night not a gentleman in town but would be thinking the same tomorrow. He had the stupidity to lay it all to the score of Mr. Caryll, not perceiving that he had brought it upon himself by his own aggressiveness. He paused, his hand upon the doork.n.o.b, and turned to loose a last shaft at them.

"As for you others, that follow your bell-wether there," and he indicated his grace, whose shoulder was towards him, "this matter ends not here."

And with that general threat he pa.s.sed out, and that snug room at White's knew him no more.

Major Gascoigne was gathering up the cards that had been flung down when first the storm arose. Mr. Caryll bent to a.s.sist him. And the last voice Lord Rotherby heard as he departed was Mr. Caryll's, and the words it uttered were: "Come, Ned; the deal is with you."

His lordship swore through his teeth, and went downstairs heavily.

CHAPTER X. SPURS TO THE RELUCTANT

Before Mr. Caryll left White's--which he did at a comparatively early hour, that he might be at home to receive Lord Rotherby's friends--not a man present but had offered him his services in the affair he had upon his hands. Wharton, indeed, was not to be denied for one; and for the other Mr. Caryll desired Gascoigne to do him the honor of representing him.

It was a fine, dry night, and feeling the need for exercise, Mr. Caryll set out to walk the short distance from St. James's Street to his lodging, with a link-boy, preceding him, for only attendant. Arrived home, he was met by Leduc with the information that Sir Richard Everard was awaiting him. He went in, and the next moment he was in the arms of his adoptive father.

Greetings and minor courtesies disposed of, Sir Richard came straight to the affair which he had at heart. "Well? How speeds the matter?"

Mr. Caryll's face became overcast. He sat down, a thought wearily.

"So far as Lord Ostermore is concerned, it speeds--as you would wish it.

So far as I am concerned"--he paused and sighed--"I would that it sped not at all, or that I was out of it."

Sir Richard looked at him with searching eyes. "How?" he asked. "What would you have me understand?"

"That in spite of all that has been said between us, in spite of all the arguments you have employed, and with which once, for a little while, you convinced me, this task is loathsome to me in the last degree.

Ostermore is my father, and I can't forget it."

"And your mother?" Sir Richard's tone was sad, rather than indignant; it spoke of a bitter disappointment, not at the events, but at this man whom he loved with all a father's love.

"It were idle to go over it all again. I know everything that you would--that you could--say. I have said it all to myself again and again, in a vain endeavor to steel myself to the business to which you plighted me. Had Ostermore been different, perhaps it had been easier.

I cannot say. As it is, I see in him a weakling, a man of inferior intellect, who does not judge things as you and I judge them, whose life cannot have been guided by the rules that serve for men of stronger purpose."

"You find excuses for him? For his deed?" cried Sir Richard, and his voice was full of horror now; he stared askance at his adoptive son.

"No, no! Oh, I don't know. On my soul and conscience, I don't know!"

cried Mr. Caryll, like one in pain. He rose and moved restlessly about the room. "No," he pursued more calmly, "I don't excuse him. I blame him--more bitterly than you can think; perhaps more bitterly even than do you, for I have had a look into his mind and see the exact place held there by my mother's memory. I can judge and condemn him; but I can't execute him; I can't betray him. I don't think I could do it even if he were not my father."

He paused, and leaning his hands upon the table at which Sir Richard sat, he faced him, and spoke in a voice of earnest pleading. "Sir Richard, this was not the task to give me; or, if you had planned to give it me, you should have reared me differently; you should not have sought to make of me a gentleman. You have brought me up to principles of honor, and you ask me now to outrage them, to cast them off, and to become a very Judas. Is't wonderful I should rebel?"

They were hurtful words to Sir Richard--the poor fanatic whose mind was all unsound on this one point, who had lived in contemplation of his vengeance as a fasting monk lives through Lent in contemplation of the Easter plenty. The lines of sorrow deepened in his face.

"Justin," he said slowly, "you forget one thing. Honor is to be used with men of honor; but he who allows his honor to stand a barrier between himself and the man who has wronged him by dishonor, is no better than a fool. You speak of yourself; you think of yourself. And what of me, Justin? The things you say of yourself apply in a like degree--nay, even more--to me."

"Ah, but you are not his son. Oh, believe me, I speak not hastily or lightly. I have been torn this way and that in these past days, until at moments the burden has been heavier than I could bear. Once, for a little while, I thought I could do all and more than you expect of me--the moment, indeed, in which I took the first step, and delivered him the letter. But it was a moment of wild heat. I cooled, and reflection followed, and since then, because so much was done, I have not known an instant's peace of mind; I have endeavored to forget the position in which I am placed; but I have failed. I cannot. And if I go through with this thing, I shall not know another hour in life that is not poisoned by remorse."

"Remorse?" echoed Sir Richard, between consternation and anger.

"Remorse?" He laughed bitterly. "What ails thee, boy? Do you pretend that Lord Ostermore should go unpunished? Do you go so far as that?"

"Not so. He has made others suffer, and it is just--as we understand justice--that he should suffer in his turn. Though, when all is said, he is but a poor egotist, too dull-witted to understand the full vileness of his sin. He is suffering, as it is--cursed in his son; for 'the father of a fool hath no joy.' He hates this son of his, and his son despises him. His wife is a shrew, a termagant, who embitters every hour of his existence. Thus he drags out his life, unloving and unloved, a thing to evoke pity."

"Pity?" cried Sir Richard in a voice of thunder. "Pity? Ha! As I've a soul, Justin, he shall be more pitiful yet ere I have done with him."

"Be it so, then. But--if you love me--find some other hand to do the work."

"If I love you, Justin?" echoed the other, and his voice softened, his eyes looked reproachfully upon his adoptive child. "Needs there an 'if'

to that? Are you not all I have--my son, indeed?"