The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck Part 29

"Why, only _au revoir_, I believe. I am leaving at a rather unG.o.dly hour to-morrow and won't see you, but I hope to return within the week."

"I hope so, Jack."

"And, after all, it is too late to be reading. I shall go back to bed and take more trional. And then, I dare say, I shall sleep. So good-by, Rudolph."

"Good-night, Jack."

"Oh, yes--! I meant good-night, of course."

The colonel sighed; then he spoke abruptly:

"No, just a moment, Jack. I didn't ask you to come here to-night; but since you have come, by chance, I am going to follow the promptings of that chance, and strike a blow for righteousness with soiled weapons.

Jack, do you remember suggesting that my father's correspondence during the War might be of value, and that his desk ought to be overhauled?"

"Why, yes, of course. Mrs. Musgrave was telling me she began the task,"

said Charteris, and smiled a little.

"Unluckily; yes--but--well! in any event, it suggested to me that old letters are dangerous. I really had no idea what that desk contained. My father had preserved great stacks of letters. I have been going through them. They were most of them from women--letters which should never have been written in the first place, and which he certainly had no right to keep."

"What! and is 'Wild Will's' love-correspondence still extant? I fancy it made interesting reading, Rudolph."

"There were some letters which in a measure concern you, Jack." The colonel handed him a small packet of letters. "If you will read the top one it will explain. I will just go on with my writing."

He wrote steadily for a moment or two.... Then Charteris laughed musically.

"I have always known there was a love-affair between my mother and 'Wild Will.' But I never suspected until to-night that I had the honor to be your half-brother, Rudolph--one of 'Wild Will's' innumerable b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

Charteris was pallid, and though he seemed perfectly composed, his eyes glittered as with gusty brilliancies. "I understand now why my reputed father always made such a difference between my sister and myself. I never liked old Alvin Charteris, you know. It is a distinct relief to be informed I have no share in his blood, although of course the knowledge comes a trifle suddenly."

"Perhaps I should have kept that knowledge to myself. I know it would have been kinder. I had meant to be kind. I loathe myself for dabbling in this mess. But, in view of all things, it seemed necessary to let you know I am your own brother in the flesh, and that Patricia is your brother's wife."

"I see," said Charteris. "According to your standards that would make a great difference. I don't know, speaking frankly, that it makes much difference with me." He turned again to the bookshelves, so that Musgrave could no longer see his face. Charteris ran his fingers caressingly over the backs of a row of volumes. "I loved my mother, Rudolph. I never loved anyone else. That makes a difference." Then he said, "We Musgraves--how patly I catalogue myself already!--we Musgraves have a deal to answer for, Rudolph."

"And doesn't that make it all the more our duty to live clean and honest lives? to make the debt no greater than it is?" Both men were oddly quiet.

"Eh, I am not so sure." John Charteris waved airily toward Sebastian Musgrave's counterfeit, then toward the other portraits. "It was they who compounded our inheritances, Rudolph--all that we were to have in this world of wit and strength and desire and endurance. We know their histories. They were proud, brave and thriftless, a greedy and lecherous race, who squeezed life dry as one does an orange, and left us the dregs. I think that it is droll, but I am not sure it places us under any obligation. In fact, I rather think G.o.d owes us an apology, Rudolph."

He spoke with quaint wistfulness. The colonel sat regarding him in silence, with shocked, disapproving eyes. Then Charteris c.o.c.ked his head to one side and grinned like a hobgoblin.

"What wouldn't you give," he demanded, "to know what I am really thinking of at this very moment while I talk so calmly? Well, you will never know. And for the rest, you are at liberty to use your all-important doc.u.ments as you may elect. I am John Charteris; whatever man begot my body, he is rotten bones to-day, and it is as such I value him. I was never anybody's son--or friend or brother or lover,--but just a pen that someone far bigger and far n.o.bler than John Charteris writes with occasionally. Whereas you--but, oh, you are funny, Rudolph!" And then, "Good-night, dear brother," Charteris added, sweetly, as he left the room.

And Rudolph Musgrave could not quite believe in the actuality of what had just happened. In common with most of us, he got his general notions concerning the laws of life from reading fiction; and here was the material for a Renaissance tragedy wasted so far as any denouement went.

Destiny, once more, was hardly rising to the possibilities of the situation. The weapon chance had forged had failed Rudolph Musgrave utterly; and, indeed, he wondered now how he could ever have esteemed it formidable. Jack was his half-brother. In noveldom or in a melodrama this discovery would have transformed their mutual dealings; but as a workaday world's fact, Musgrave would not honestly say that it had in any way affected his feelings toward Jack, and it appeared to have left Charteris equally unaltered.

"I am not sure, though. We can only guess where Jack is concerned. He goes his own way always, tricky and furtive and lonelier than any other human being I have ever known. It is loneliness that looks out of his eyes, really, even when he is mocking and sneering," the colonel meditated.

Then he sighed and went back to the tabulation of his lists of wills.

V

The day was growing strong in the maple-grove behind Matocton. As yet, the climbing sun fired only the topmost branches, and flooded them with a tempered radiance through which birds plunged and shrilled vague rumors to one another. Beneath, a green twilight lingered--twilight which held a gem-like glow, chill and lucent and steady as that of an emerald. Vagrant little puffs of wind bustled among the leaves, with a thin pretense of purpose, and then lapsed, and merged in the large, ambiguous whispering which went stealthily about the grove.

Rudolph Musgrave sat on a stone beside the road that winds through the woods toward the railway station, and smoked, nervously. He was disheartened of the business of living, and, absurdly enough, as it seemed to him, he was hungry.

"It has to be done quietly and without the remotest chance of Anne's ever hearing of it, and without the remotest chance of its ever having to be done again. I have about fifteen minutes in which to convince Patricia both of her own folly and of the fact that Jack is an unmitigated cad, and to get him off the place quietly, so that Anne will suspect nothing. And I never knew any reasonable argument to appeal to Patricia, and Jack will be a cornered rat! Yes, it is a large contract, and I would give a great deal--a very great deal--to know how I am going to fulfil it."

At this moment his wife and Mr. Charteris, carrying two portmanteaux, came around a bend in the road not twenty feet from Musgrave. They were both rather cross. In the clean and more prosaic light of morning an elopement seemed almost silly; moreover, Patricia had had no breakfast, and Charteris had been much annoyed by his wife, who had breakfasted with him, and had insisted on driving to the station with him. It was a trivial-seeming fact, but, perhaps, not unworthy of notice, that Patricia was carrying her own portmanteau, as well as an umbrella.

The three faced one another in the cool twilight. The woods stirred lazily about them. The birds were singing on a wager now.

"Ah," said Colonel Musgrave, "so you have come at last. I have been expecting you for some time."

Patricia dropped her portmanteau, sullenly. Mr. Charteris placed his with care to the side of the road, and said, "Oh!" It was perhaps the only observation that occurred to him.

"Patricia," Musgrave began, very kindly and very gravely, "you are about to do a foolish thing. At the bottom of your heart, even now, you know you are about to do a foolish thing--a thing you will regret bitterly and unavailingly for the rest of time. You are turning your back on the world--our world--on the one possible world you could ever be happy in. You can't be happy in the half-world, Patricia; you aren't that sort. But you can never come back to us then, Patricia; it doesn't matter what the motive was, what the temptation was, or how great the repentance is--you cannot ever return. That is the law, Patricia; perhaps, it isn't always a just law. We didn't make it, you and I, but it is the law, and we must obey it. Our world merely says that, leaving it once, you cannot ever return: such is the only punishment it awards you, for it knows, this wise old world of ours, that such is the bitterest punishment which could ever be devised for you. Our world has made you what you are; in every thought and ideal and emotion you possess, you are a product of our world. You couldn't live in the half-world, Patricia; you are a product of our world that can never take root in that alien soil. Come back to us before it is too late, Patricia!"

Musgrave shook himself all over, rather like a Newfoundland dog coming out of the water, and the grave note died from his voice. He smiled, and rubbed his hands together.

"And now," said he, "I will stop talking like a problem play, and we will say no more about it. Give me your portmanteau, my dear, and upon my word of honor, you will never hear a word further from me in the matter. Jack, here, can take the train, just as he intended. And--and you and I will go back to the house, and have a good, hot breakfast together. Eh, Patricia?"

She was thinking, unreasonably enough, how big and strong and clean her husband looked in the growing light. It was a pity Jack was so small.

However, she faced Musgrave coldly, and thought how ludicrously wide of the mark were all these threats of ostracism. She shudderingly wished he would not talk of soil and taking root and hideous things like that, but otherwise the colonel left her unmoved. He was certainly good-looking, though.

Charteris was lighting a cigarette, with a queer, contented look. He knew the value of Patricia's stubbornness now; still, he appeared to be using an unnecessary number of matches.

"I should have thought you would have perceived the lack of dignity, as well as the utter uselessness, in making such a scene," Patricia said.

"We aren't suited for each other, Rudolph; and it is better--far better for both of us--to have done with the farce of pretending to be. I am sorry that you still care for me. I didn't know that. But, for the future, I intend to live my own life."

Patricia's voice faltered, and she stretched out her hands a little toward her husband in an odd gust of friendliness. He looked so kind; and he was not smiling in that way she never liked. "Surely that isn't so unpardonable a crime, Rudolph?" she asked, almost humbly.

"No, my dear," he answered, "it is not unpardonable--it is impossible.

You can't lead your own life, Patricia; none of us can. Each life is bound up with many others, and every rash act of yours, every hasty word of yours, must affect to some extent the lives of those who are nearest and most dear to you. But, oh, it is not argument that I would be at!

Patricia, there was a woman once--She was young, and wealthy, and--ah, well, I won't deceive you by exaggerating her personal attractions! I will serve up to you no praises of her sauced with lies. But fate and nature had combined to give her everything a woman can desire, and all this that woman freely gave to me--to me who hadn't youth or wealth or fame or anything! And I can't stand by, for that dear dead girl's sake, and watch your life go wrong, Patricia!"

"You are just like the rest of them, Olaf"--and when had she used that half-forgotten nickname last, he wondered. "You imagine you are in love with a girl because you happen to like the color of her eyes, or because there is a curve about her lips that appeals to you. That isn't love, Olaf, as we women understand it."

And wildly hideous and sad, it seemed to Colonel Musgrave--this dreary parody of their old love-talk. Only, he dimly knew that she had forgotten John Charteris existed, and that to her this moment seemed no less sardonic.

Charteris inhaled, lazily; yet, he did not like the trembling about Patricia's mouth. Her hands, too, opened and shut tight before she spoke.

"It is too late now," she said, dully. "I gave you all there was to give. You gave me just what Grandma Pendomer and all the others had left you able to give. That remnant isn't love, Olaf, as we women understand it. And, anyhow, it is too late now."

Yet Patricia was remembering a time when Rudolph's voice held always that grave, tender note in speaking to her; it seemed a great while ago.

And he was big and manly, just like his voice, Rudolph was; and he looked very kind. Desperately, Patricia began to count over the times her husband had offended her. Hadn't he talked to her in the most unwarrantable manner only yesterday afternoon?