The Ship of Stars Part 40

"Spendigo for a fiver!--and well found, by the tune of it," cried Sir Harry. "See that patch of grey wall, Rablin--there, in a line beyond the Master's elbow? I lay you an even guinea that's where my gentleman comes over."

But honest reprobation mottled the face of Mr. Rablin, squireen; and as an honest man he spoke out. Let it go to his credit, because as a rule he was a sn.o.b and inclined to cringe.

"I did not expect"--he cleared his throat--"to see you out to-day, Sir Harry."

Sir Harry winced, and turned on them all a grey, woeful face.

"That's it," he said. "I can't bide home. I can't bide home."

Honoria bided home with her child and mourned for the dead.

As a clever woman--far cleverer than her husband--she had seen his faults while he lived; yet had liked him enough to forgive without difficulty. But now these faults faded, and by degrees memory reared an altar to him as a man little short of divine. At the worst he had been amiable. A kinder husband never lived. She reproached herself bitterly with the half-heartedness of her response to his love; to his love while it dwelt beside her, unvarying in cheerful kindness.

For (it was the truth, alas! and a worm that gnawed continually) pa.s.sionate love she had never rendered him. She had been content; but how poor a thing was contentment! She had never divined his worth, had never given her worship. And all the while he had been a hero, and in the end had died as a hero. Ah, for one chance to redeem the wrong! for one moment to bow herself at his feet and acknowledge her blindness! Her prayer was ancient as widowhood, and Heaven, folding away the irreparable time, returned its first and last and only solace--a dream for the groping arms; waking and darkness, and an empty pillow for her tears.

From the first her child had been dear to her; dearer (so her memory accused her now) than his father; more demonstratively beloved, at any rate. But in those miserable months she grew to love him with a double strength. He bore George's name, and was (as Sir Harry proclaimed) a very miniature of George; repeated his shapeliness of limb, his firm shoulders, his long lean thighs--the thighs of a born horseman; learned to walk, and lo! within a week walked with his father's gait; had smiles for the whole of his small world, and for his mother a memory in each.

And yet--this was the strange part of it; a mystery she could not explain because she dared not even acknowledge it--though she loved him for being like his father, she regarded the likeness with a growing dread; nay, caught herself correcting him stealthily when he developed some trivial trait which she, and she alone, recognised as part of his father's legacy. It was what in the old days she would have called "contradictions," but there it was, and she could not help it; the nearer George in her memory approached to faultlessness, the more obstinately her instinct fought against her child's imitation of him; and yet, because the child was obstinately George's, she loved him with a double love.

There came a day when he told her a childish falsehood. She did not whip him, but stood him in front of her and began to reason with him and explain the wickedness of an untruth. By-and-by she broke off in the midst of a sentence, appalled by the shrillness of her own voice.

From argument she had pa.s.sed to furious scolding. And the little fellow quailed before her, his contrition beaten down under the storm of words that whistled about his ears without meaning, his small faculties disabled before this spectacle of wrath. Her fingers were closing and unclosing. They wanted a riding-switch; they wanted to grip this small body they had served and fondled, and to cut out-- what? The lie? Honoria hated a lie. But while she paused and shook, a light flashed, and her eyes were open and saw--that it was not the lie.

She turned and ran, ran upstairs to her own room, flung herself on her knees beside the bed, dragged a locket from her bosom and fell to kissing George's portrait, pa.s.sionately crying it for pardon.

She was wicked, base; while he lived she had misprised him; and this was her abiding punishment, that not even repentance could purge her heart of dishonouring thoughts, that her love for him now could never be stainless though washed with daily tears. "'_He that is unjust, let him be unjust still_.' _Must_ that be true, Father of all mercies? I misjudged him, and it is too late for atonement. But I repent and am afflicted. Though the dead know nothing--though it can never reach or avail him--give me back the power to be just!"

Late that afternoon Honoria pa.s.sed an hour piously in turning over the dead man's wardrobe, shaking out and brushing the treasured garments and folding them, against moth and dust, in fresh tissue paper. It was a morbid task, perhaps, but it kept George's image constantly before her, and this was what her remorseful mood demanded. Her nerves were unstrung and her limbs languid after the recent tempest. By-and-by she locked the doors of the wardrobe, and pa.s.sing into her own bedroom, flung herself on a couch with a bundle of papers--old bills, soiled and folded memoranda, sporting paragraphs cut from the newspapers--sc.r.a.ps found in his pockets months ago and religiously tied by her with a silken ribbon.

They were mementoes of a sort, and George had written few letters while wooing--not half a dozen first and last.

Two or three receipted bills lay together in the middle of the packet--one a saddler's, a second a nurseryman's for pot-plants (kept for the sake of its queer spelling), a third the reckoning for an hotel luncheon. She was running over them carelessly when the date at the head of this last one caught her eye. "August 3rd "--it fixed her attention because it happened to be the day before her birthday.

August 3rd--such and such a year--the August before his death; and the hotel a well-known one in Plymouth--the hotel, in fact, at which he had usually put up. . . . Without a prompting of suspicion she turned back and ran her eye over the bill. A steak, a pint of claret, vegetables, cheese, and attendance--never was a more innocent bill.

Suddenly her attention stiffened on the date. George was in Plymouth the day before her birthday. But no; as it happened, George had been in Truro on that day. She remembered, because he had brought her a diamond pendant, having written beforehand to the Truro jeweller to get a dozen down from London to choose from. Yes, she remembered it clearly, and how he had described his day in Truro. And the next morning--her birthday morning--he had produced the pendant, wrapped in silver paper. He had thrown away the case; it was ugly, and he would get her another. . . .

But the bill? She had stayed once or twice at this hotel with George, and recognised the handwriting. The bookkeeper, in compliment perhaps to a customer of standing, had written "George Vyell, Esq." in full on the bill-head, a formality omitted as a rule in luncheon-reckonings. And if this sc.r.a.p of paper told the truth-- why, _then George had lied!_

But why? Ah, if he had done this thing nothing else mattered, neither the how nor the why! If George had lied? . . . And the pendant--had that been bought in Plymouth and not (as he had a.s.serted) in Truro? He had thrown away the case. Jewellers print their names inside such cases. The pendant was a handsome one.

Perhaps his cheque-book would tell.

She arose, stepped half-way to the door, but came back and flung herself again upon the couch. No; she could not . . . this was the second time to-day . . . she could not face the torture again.

Yet . . . if George _had_ lied!

She sat up; sat up with both hands pressed to her ears to shut out a sudden voice clamouring through them--

"_And why not? A son's a son--curse you!--though he was your man!_"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A L'OUTRANCE.

Lizzie Pezzack had put Joey to bed and was smoothing his coverlet when she heard someone knocking. She pa.s.sed out into the front room and opened to the visitor.

On the doorstep stood a lady in deep black--Honoria. Beyond the garden wall the lamps of her carriage blazed in the late twilight.

The turf had m.u.f.fled the sound of wheels, but now the jingle of shaken bits came loud through the open door.

"Ah!" said Lizzie, drawing her breath back through her teeth.

"I must speak to you, please. May I come in? I have a question . . ."

Lizzie turned her back, struck a match, and lit a candle.

"What question?" she asked with her back turned, her eyes on the flame as it sank, warming the tallow, and grew bright again.

"It's . . . it's a question," Honoria began weakly; then shut the door behind her and advanced into the room. "Turn round and look at me. Ah, you hate me, I know!"

"Yes," Lizzie a.s.sented slowly, "I hate you."

"But you must answer me. You see, it isn't for me alone . . . it's not a question of our hating, in a way . . .

it concerns others. . . ."

"Yes?"

"But it's cowardly of me to put it so, because it concerns me too.

You don't know--"

"Maybe I do."

"But if you did--" Honoria broke off and then plunged forward desperately. "That child of yours--his father--alone here--by ourselves. . . . Think before you refuse!"

Lizzie set down the candle and eyed her.

"And _you_," she answered at length, dragging out each word-- "_you_ can come here and ask me that question?"

For a moment silence fell between them, and each could hear the other's breathing. Then Honoria drew herself up and faced her honestly, casting out both hands.

"Yes; I _had_ to."

"_You!_ a lady!"

"Ah, but be honest with me! Lady or not, what has that to do with it? We are two women--that's where it all started, and we're kept to that."

Lizzie bent her brows. "Yes, you are right," she admitted.

"And," Honoria pursued eagerly, "if I come here to sue you for the truth--it is you who force me."

"I?"