The Tavern Knight Part 30

"You mean," the lad almost whispered, and his accents were unmistakably of horror, "you mean that I am your--Oh, G.o.d, I'll not believe it!" he cried out, with such sudden loathing and pa.s.sion that Crispin recoiled as though he had been struck. A dull flush crept into his cheeks to fade upon the instant and give place to a pallor, if possible, intenser than before.

"I'll not believe it! I'll not believe it!" the boy repeated, as if seeking by that reiteration to shut out a conviction by which he was beset. "I'll not believe it!" he cried again; and now his voice had lost its pa.s.sionate vehemence, and was sunk almost to a moan.

"I found it hard to believe myself," was Crispin's answer, and his voice was not free from bitterness. "But I have a proof here that seems incontestable, even had I not the proof of your face to which I have been blind these months. Blind with the eyes of my body, at least. The eyes of my soul saw and recognized you when first they fell on you in Perth. The voice of the blood ordered me then to your side, and though I heard its call, I understood not what it meant. Read this letter, boy--the letter that you were to have carried to Colonel Pride."

With his eyes still fixed in a gaze of stupefaction upon Galliard's face, Kenneth took the paper. Then slowly, involuntarily almost it seemed, he dropped his glance to it, and read. He was long in reading, as though the writing presented difficulties, and his two companions watched him the while, and waited. At last he turned the paper over, and examined seal and superscription as if suspicious that he held a forgery.

But in some subtle, mysterious way--that voice of the blood perchance to which Crispin had alluded--he felt conviction stealing down upon his soul. Mechanically he moved across to the table, and sat down. Without a word, and still holding the crumpled letter in his clenched hand, he set his elbows on the table, and, pressing his temples to his palms, he sat there dumb. Within him a very volcano raged, and its fires were fed with loathing--loathing for this man whom he had ever hated, yet never as he hated him now, knowing him to be his father. It seemed as if to all the wrongs which Crispin had done him during the months of their acquaintanceship he had now added a fresh and culminating wrong by discovering this parentage.

He sat and thought, and his soul grew sick. He probed for some flaw, sought for some mistake that might have been made. And yet the more he thought, the more he dwelt upon his youth in Scotland, the more convinced was he that Crispin had told him the truth. Pre-eminent argument of conviction to him was the desire of the Ashburns that he should marry Cynthia. Oft he had marvelled that they, wealthy, and even powerful, selfish and ambitious, should have selected him, the scion of an obscure and impoverished Scottish house, as a bridegroom for their daughter. The news now before him made their motives clear; indeed, no other motive could exist, no other explanation could there be. He was the heir of Castle Marleigh, and the usurpers sought to provide against the day when another revolution might oust them and restore the rightful owners.

Some elation his shallow nature felt at realizing this, but that elation was short-lived, and dashed by the thought that this ruler, this debauchee, this drunken, swearing, roaring tavern knight was his father; dashed by the knowledge that meanwhile the Parliament was master, and that whilst matters stood so, the Ashburns could defy--could even destroy him, did they learn how much he knew; dashed by the memory that Cynthia, whom in his selfish way--out of his love for himself--he loved, was lost to him for all time.

And here, swinging in a circle, his thoughts reverted to the cause of this--Crispin Galliard, the man who had betrayed him into yesternight's foul business and destroyed his every chance of happiness; the man whom he hated, and whom, had he possessed the courage as he was possessed by the desire, he had risen up and slain; the man that now announced himself his father.

And thinking thus, he sat on in silent, resentful vexation. He started to feel a hand upon his shoulder, and to hear the voice of Galliard evidently addressing him, yet using a name that was new to him.

"Jocelyn, my boy," the voice trembled. "You have thought, and you have realized--is it not so? I too thought, and thought brought me conviction that what that paper tells is true."

Vaguely then the boy remembered that Jocelyn was the name the letter gave him. He rose abruptly, and brushed the caressing hand from his shoulder. His voice was hard--possibly the knowledge that he had gained told him that he had nothing to fear from this man, and in that a.s.surance his craven soul grew brave and bold and arrogant.

"I have realized naught beyond the fact that I owe you nothing but unhappiness and ruin. By a trick, by a low fraud, you enlisted me into a service that has proved my undoing. Once a cheat always a cheat. What credit in the face of that can I give this paper?" he cried, talking wildly. "To me it is incredible, nor do I wish to credit it, for though it were true, what then? What then?" he repeated, raising his voice into accents of defiance.

Grief and amazement were blended in Galliard's glance, and also, maybe, some reproach.

Hogan, standing squarely upon the hearth, was beset by the desire to kick Master Kenneth, or Master Jocelyn, into the street. His lip curled into a sneer of ineffable contempt, for his shrewd eyes read to the bottom of the lad's mean soul and saw there clearly writ the confidence that emboldened him to voice that insult to the man he must know for his father. Standing there, he compared the two, marvelling deeply how they came to be father and son. A likeness he saw now between them, yet a likeness that seemed but to mark the difference. The one harsh, resolute, and manly, for all his reckless living and his misfortunes; the other mild, effeminate, hypocritical and shifty. He read it not on their countenances alone, but in every line of their figures as they stood, and in his heart he cursed himself for having been the instrument to disclose the relationship in which they stood.

The youth's insolent question was followed by a spell of silence.

Crispin could not believe that he had heard aright. At last he stretched out his hands in a gesture of supplication--he who throughout his thirty-eight years of life, and despite the misfortunes that had been his, had never yet stooped to plead from any man.

"Jocelyn," he cried, and the pain in his voice must have melted a heart of steel, "you are hard. Have you forgotten the story of my miserable life, the story that I told you in Worcester? Can you not understand how suffering may destroy all that is lofty in a man; how the forgetfulness of the winecup may come to be his only consolation; the hope of vengeance his only motive for living on, withholding him from self-destruction? Can you not picture such a life, and can you not pity and forgive much of the wreck that it may make of a man once virtuous and honourable?"

Pleadingly he looked into the lad's face. It remained cold and unmoved.

"I understand," he continued brokenly, "that I am not such a man as any lad might welcome for a father. But you who know what my life has been, Jocelyn, you can surely find it in your heart to pity. I had naught that was good or wholesome to live for, Jocelyn; naught to curb the evil moods that sent me along evil ways to seek forgetfulness and reparation.

"But from to-night, Jocelyn, my life in you must find a new interest, a new motive. I will abandon my old ways. For your sake, Jocelyn, I will seek again to become what I was, and you shall have no cause to blush for your father."

Still the lad stood silent.

"Jocelyn! My G.o.d, do I talk in vain?" cried the wretched man. "Have you no heart, no pity, boy?"

At last the youth spoke. He was not moved. The agony of this strong man, the broken pleading of one whom he had ever known arrogant and strong had no power to touch his mean, selfish mind, consumed as it was by the contemplation of his undoing--magnified a hundredfold--which this man had wrought.

"You have ruined my life," was all he said.

"I will rebuild it, Jocelyn," cried Galliard eagerly. "I have friends in France--friends high in power who lack neither the means nor the will to aid me. You are a soldier, Jocelyn."

"As much a soldier as I'm a saint," sneered Hogan to himself.

"Together we will find service in the armies of Louis," Crispin pursued.

"I promise it. Service wherein you shall gain honour and renown. There we will abide until this England shakes herself out of her rebellious nightmare. Then, when the King shall come to his own, Castle Marleigh will be ours again. Trust in me, Jocelyn." Again his arms went out appealingly: "Jocelyn my son!"

But the boy made no move to take the outstretched hands, gave no sign of relenting. His mind nurtured its resentment--cherished it indeed.

"And Cynthia?" he asked coldly.

Crispin's hands fell to his sides; they grew clenched, and his eyes lighted of a sudden.

"Forgive me, Jocelyn. I had forgotten! I understand you now. Yes, I dealt sorely with you there, and you are right to be resentful. What, after all, am I to you what can I be to you compared with her whose image fills your soul? What is aught in the world to a man, compared with the woman on whom his heart is set? Do I not know it? Have I not suffered for it?

"But mark me, Jocelyn"--and he straightened himself suddenly--"even in this, that which I have done I will undo. As I have robbed you of your mistress, so will I win her back for you. I swear it. And when that is done, when thus every harm I have caused you is repaired, then, Jocelyn, perhaps you will come to look with less repugnance upon your father, and to feel less resentment towards him."

"You promise much, sir," quoth the boy, with an illrepressed sneer. "How will you accomplish it?"

Hogan grunted audibly. Crispin drew himself up, erect, lithe and supple--a figure to inspire confidence in the most despairing. He placed a hand, nervous, and strong as steel, upon the boy's shoulder, and the clutch of his fingers made Jocelyn wince.

"Low though your father be fallen," said he sternly, "he has never yet broken his word. I have pledged you mine, and to-morrow I shall set out to perform what I have promised. I shall see you ere I start. You will sleep here, will you not?"

Jocelyn shrugged his shoulders.

"It signifies little where I lie."

Crispin smiled sadly, and sighed.

"You have no faith in me yet. But I shall earn it, or"--and his voice fell suddenly--"or rid you of a loathsome parent. Hogan, can you find him quarters?"

Hogan replied that there was the room he had already been confined in, and that he could lie in it. And deeming that there was nothing to be gained by waiting, he thereupon led the youth from the room and down the pa.s.sage. At the foot of the stairs the Irishman paused in the act of descending, and raised the taper aloft so that its light might fall full upon the face of his companion.

"Were I your father," said he grimly, "I would kick you from one end of Waltham to the other by way of teaching you filial piety! And were you not his son, I would this night read you a lesson you'd never live to practise. I would set you to sleep a last long sleep in the kennels of Waltham streets. But since you are--marvellous though it seem--his offspring, and since I love him and may not therefore hurt you, I must rest content with telling you that you are the vilest thing that breathes. You despise him for a roysterer, for a man of loose ways. Let me, who have seen something of men, and who read you to-night to the very dregs of your contemptible soul, tell you that compared with you he is a very G.o.d. Come, you white-livered cur!" he ended abruptly. "I will light you to your chamber."

When presently Hogan returned to Crispin he found the Tavern Knight--that man of iron in whom none had ever seen a trace of fear or weakness seated with his arms before him on the table, and his face buried in them, sobbing like a poor, weak woman.

CHAPTER XXII. SIR CRISPIN'S UNDERTAKING

Through the long October night Crispin and Hogan sat on, and neither sought his bed. Crispin's quick wits his burst of grief once over--had been swift to fasten on a plan to accomplish that which he had undertaken.

One difficulty confronted him, and until he had mentioned it to Hogan seemed unsurmountable he had need of a ship. But in this the Irishman could a.s.sist him. He knew of a vessel then at Greenwich, whose master was in his debt, which should suit the purpose. Money, however, would be needed. But when Crispin announced that he was master of some two hundred Caroluses, Hogan, with a wave of the hand, declared the matter settled. Less than half that sum would hire the man he knew of. That determined, Crispin unfolded his project to Hogan, who laughed at the simplicity of it, for all that inwardly he cursed the risk Sir Crispin must run for the sake of one so unworthy.

"If the maid loves him, the thing is as good as done."

"The maid does not love him; leastways, I fear not."

Hogan was not surprised.