The Weavers Part 42

As she did not answer the last words of the d.u.c.h.ess, the latter said presently: "When do you expect Eglington?"

"Not till the week-end; it is a busy week with him," Hylda answered; then added hastily, though she had not thought of it till this moment: "I shall probably go up to town with you to-morrow."

She did not know that Eglington was already in the house, and had given orders to the butler that she was not to be informed of his arrival for the present.

"Well, if you get that far, will you come with me to the Riviera, or to Florence, or Sicily--or Cairo?" the other asked, adjusting her gold-brown wig with her babyish hands.

Cairo! Cairo! A light shot up into Hylda's eyes. The d.u.c.h.ess had spoken without thought, but, as she spoke, she watched the sudden change in Hylda. What did it mean? Cairo--why should Cairo have waked her so?

Suddenly she recalled certain vague references of Lord Windlehurst, and, for the first time, she a.s.sociated Hylda with Claridge Pasha in a way which might mean much, account for much, in this life she was leading.

"Perhaps! Perhaps!" answered Hylda abstractedly, after a moment.

The d.u.c.h.ess got to her feet. She had made progress. She would let her medicine work.

"I'm going to bed, my dear. I'm sixty-five, and I take my sleep when I can get it. Think it over, Sicily--Cairo!"

She left the room, saying to herself that Eglington was a fool, and that danger was ahead. "But I hold a red light--poor darling!" she said aloud, as she went up the staircase. She did not know that Eglington, standing in a deep doorway, heard her, and seized upon the words eagerly and suspiciously, and turned them over in his mind.

Below, at the desk where Eglington's mother used to write, Hylda sat with a bundle of letters before her. For some moments she opened, glanced through them, and put them aside. Presently she sat back in her chair, thinking--her mind was invaded by the last words of the d.u.c.h.ess; and somehow they kept repeating themselves with the words in the late Countess's diary: "Is it only the mother in me, not the love in me?"

Mechanically her hand moved over the portfolio of the late Countess, and it involuntarily felt in one of its many pockets. Her hand came upon a letter. This had remained when the others had been taken out. It was addressed to the late Earl, and was open. She hesitated a moment, then, with a strange premonition and a tightening of her heart-strings, she spread it out and read it.

At first she could scarcely see because of the mist in her eyes; but presently her sight cleared, and she read quickly, her cheeks burning with excitement, her heart throbbing violently. The letter was the last expression of a disappointed and barren life. The slow, stammering tongue of an almost silent existence had found the fulness of speech.

The fountains of the deep had been broken up, and Sybil Eglington's repressed emotions, undeveloped pa.s.sions, tortured by mortal sufferings, and refined and vitalised by the atmosphere blown in upon her last hours from the Hereafter, were set free, given voice and power at last.

The letter reviewed the life she had lived with her husband during twenty-odd years, reproved herself for not speaking out and telling him his faults at the beginning, and for drawing in upon herself, when she might have compelled him to a truer understanding; and, when all that was said, called him to such an account as only the dying might make--the irrevocable, disillusionising truth which may not be altered, the poignant record of failure and its causes.

"... I could not talk well, I never could, as a girl," the letter ran; "and you could talk like one inspired, and so speciously, so overwhelmingly, that I felt I could say nothing in disagreement, not anything but a.s.sent; while all the time I felt how hollow was so much you said--a cloak of words to cover up the real thought behind. Before I knew the truth, I felt the shadow of secrecy in your life. When you talked most, I felt you most secretive, and the feeling slowly closed the door upon all frankness and sympathy and open speech between us. I was always shy and self- conscious and self-centred, and thought little of myself; and I needed deep love and confidence and encouragement to give out what was in me. I gave nothing out, nothing to you that you wanted, or sought for, or needed. You were complete, self-contained. Harry, my beloved babe Harry, helped at first; but, as the years went on, he too began to despise me for my little intellect and slow intelligence, and he grew to be like you in all things--and secretive also, though I tried so hard to be to him what a mother should be. Oh, Bobby, Bobby--I used to call you that in the days before we were married, and I will call you that now when all is over and done--why did you not tell me all? Why did you not tell me that my boy, my baby Harry, was not your only child, that there had been another wife, and that your eldest son was alive?

"I know all. I have known all for years. The clergyman who married you to Mercy Claridge was a distant relative of my mother's, and before he died he told me. When you married her, he knew you only as James Fetherdon, but, years afterwards, he saw and recognised you. He held his peace then, but at last he came to me. And I did not speak. I was not strong enough, nor good enough, to face the trouble of it all. I could not endure the scandal, to see my own son take the second place--he is so brilliant and able and unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, so sure of winning a great place in the world, surer than yourself ever was, he is so calculating and determined and ambitious! And though he loves me little, as he loves you little, too, yet he is my son, and for what he is we are both responsible, one way or another; and I had not the courage to give him the second place, and the Quaker, David Claridge, the first place. Why Luke Claridge, his grandfather, chose the course he did, does not concern me, no more than why you chose secrecy, and kept your own firstborn legitimate son, of whom you might well be proud, a stranger to you and his rights all these years. Ah, Eglington, you never knew what love was, you never had a heart--experiment, subterfuge, secrecy, 'reaping where you had not sowed, and gathering where you had not strawed.' Always, experiment, experiment, experiment!

"I shall be gone in a few hours--I feel it, but before I go I must try to do right, and to warn you. I have had such bad dreams about you and Harry--they haunt me--that I am sure you will suffer terribly, will have some awful tragedy, unless you undo what was done long ago, and tell the truth to the world, and give your t.i.tles and estates where they truly belong. Near to death, seeing how little life is, and how much right is in the end, I am sure that I was wrong in holding my peace; for Harry cannot prosper with this black thing behind him, and you cannot die happy if you smother up the truth. Night after night I have dreamed of you in your laboratory, a vague, dark, terrifying dream of you in that laboratory which I have hated so. It has always seemed to me the place where some native evil and cruelty in your blood worked out its will. I know I am an ignorant woman, with no brain, but G.o.d has given me clear sight at the last, and the things I see are true things, and I must warn you. Remember that...."

The letter ended there. She had been interrupted or seized with illness, and had never finished it, and had died a few hours afterwards; and the letter was now, for the first time, read by her whom it most concerned, into whose heart and soul the words sank with an immitigable pain and agonised amazement. A few moments with this death-doc.u.ment had transformed Hylda's life.

Her husband and--and David, were sons of the same father; and the name she bore, the home in which she was living, the estates the t.i.tle carried, were not her husband's, but another's--David's. She fell back in her chair, white and faint, but, with a great effort, she conquered the swimming weakness which blinded her. Sons of the same father! The past flashed before her, the strange likeness she had observed, the trick of the head, the laugh, the swift gesture, the something in the voice. She shuddered as she had done in reading the letter. But they were related only in name, in some distant, irreconcilable way--in a way which did not warrant the sudden scarlet flush that flooded her face.

Presently she recovered herself. She--what did she suffer, compared with her who wrote this revelation of a lifetime of pain, of bitter and torturing knowledge! She looked up at the picture on the wall, at the still, proud, emotionless face, the conventional, uninspired personality, behind which no one had seen, which had agonised alone till the last. With what tender yet pitiless hand had she laid bare the lives of her husband and her son! How had the neglected mother told the bitter truth of him to whom she had given birth! "So brilliant and able, and unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, sure of winning a great place in the world... so calculating and determined and ambitious.... That laboratory which I have hated so. It has always seemed to me the place where some native evil and cruelty in your blood worked out its will...."

With a deep-drawn sigh Hylda said to herself: "If I were dying to-morrow, would I say that? She loved them so--at first must have loved them so; and yet this at the last! And I--oh, no, no, no!" She looked at a portrait of Eglington on the table near, touched it caressingly, and added, with a sob in her voice: "Oh, Harry, no, it is not true! It is not native evil and cruelty in your blood. It has all been a mistake.

You will do right. We will do right, Harry. You will suffer, it will hurt, the lesson will be hard--to give up what has meant so much to you; but we will work it out together, you and I, my very dear. Oh, say that we shall, that...." She suddenly grew silent. A tremor ran through her, she became conscious of his presence near her, and turned, as though he were behind her. There was nothing. Yet she felt him near, and, as she did so, the soul-deep feeling with which she had spoken to the portrait fled. Why was it that, so often, when absent from him, her imagination helped her to make excuses for him, inspired her to press the real truth out of sight, and to make believe that he was worthy of a love which, but through some inner fault of her own, might be his altogether, and all the love of which he was capable might be hers?

She felt him near her, and the feelings possessing her a moment before slowly chilled and sank away. Instinctively her eyes glanced towards the door. She saw the handle turn, and she slipped the letter inside the portfolio again.

The door opened briskly now, and Eglington entered with what his enemies in the newspaper press had called his "professional smile"--a criticism which had angered his wife, chiefly because it was so near the truth.

He smiled. Smiling was part of his equipment, and was for any one at any time that suited him.

Her eyes met his, and he noted in her something that he had never seen before. Something had happened. The d.u.c.h.ess of Snowdon was in the house; had it anything to do with her? Had she made trouble? There was trouble enough without her. He came forward, took Hylda's hand and kissed it, then kissed her on the cheek. As he did so, she laid a hand on his arm with a sudden impulse, and pressed it. Though his presence had chilled the high emotions of a few moments before, yet she had to break to him a truth which would hurt him, dismay him, rob his life of so much that helped it; and a sudden protective, maternal sense was roused in her, reached out to shelter him as he faced his loss and the call of duty.

"You have just come?" she said, in a voice that, to herself, seemed far away.

"I have been here some hours," he answered. Secrecy again--always the thing that had chilled the dead woman, and laid a cold hand upon herself--"I felt the shadow of secrecy in your life. When you talked most I felt you most secretive, and the feeling slowly closed the door upon all frankness and sympathy and open speech between us."

"Why did you not see me--dine with me?" she asked. "What can the servants think?" Even in such a crisis the little things had place--habit struck its note in the presence of her tragedy.

"You had the d.u.c.h.ess of Snowdon, and we are not precisely congenial; besides, I had much to do in the laboratory. I'm working for that new explosive of which I told you. There's fame and fortune in it, and I'm on the way. I feel it coming"--his eyes sparkled a little. "I made it right with the servants; so don't be apprehensive."

"I have not seen you for nearly a week. It doesn't seem--friendly."

"Politics and science are stern masters," he answered gaily.

"They leave little time for your mistress," she rejoined meaningly.

"Who is my mistress?"

"Well, I am not greatly your wife," she replied. "I have the dregs of your life. I help you--I am allowed to help you--so little, to share so little in the things that matter to you."

"Now, that's imagination and misunderstanding," he rejoined. "It has helped immensely your being such a figure in society, and entertaining so much, and being so popular, at any rate until very lately."

"I do not misunderstand," she answered gravely. "I do not share your real life. I do not help you where your brain works, in the plans and purposes and hopes that lie behind all that you do--oh, yes, I know your ambitions and what positions you are aiming for; but there is something more than that. There is the object of it all, the pulse of it, the machinery down, down deep in your being that drives it all. Oh, I am not a child! I have some intellect, and I want--I want that we should work it out together."

In spite of all that had come and gone, in spite of the dead mother's words and all her own convictions, seeing trouble coming upon him, she wanted to make one last effort for what might save their lives--her life--from shipwreck in the end. If she failed now, she foresaw a bitter, cynical figure working out his life with a narrowing soul, a hard spirit unrelieved by the softening influence of a great love--even yet the woman in her had a far-off hope that, where the law had made them one by book and scrip, the love which should consecrate such a union, lift it above an almost offensive relation, might be theirs. She did not know how much of her heart, of her being, was wandering over the distant sands of Egypt, looking for its oasis. Eglington had never needed or wanted more than she had given him--her fortune, her person, her charm, her ability to play an express and definite part in his career. It was this material use to which she was so largely a.s.signed, almost involuntarily but none the less truly, that had destroyed all of the finer, dearer, more delicate intimacy invading his mind sometimes, more or less vaguely, where Faith was concerned. So extreme was his egotism that it had never occurred to him, as it had done to the d.u.c.h.ess of Snowdon and Lord Windlehurst, that he might lose Hylda herself as well as her fortune; that the day might come when her high spirit could bear it no longer. As the d.u.c.h.ess of Snowdon had said: "It would all depend upon the other man, whoever he might be."

So he answered her with superficial cheerfulness now; he had not the depth of soul to see that they were at a crisis, and that she could bear no longer the old method of treating her as though she were a child, to be humoured or to be dominated.

"Well, you see all there is," he answered; "you are so imaginative, crying for some moon there never was in any sky."

In part he had spoken the truth. He had no high objects or ends or purposes. He wanted only success somehow or another, and there was no n.o.bility of mind or aspiration behind it. In her heart of hearts she knew it; but it was the last cry of her soul to him, seeking, though in vain, for what she had never had, could never have.

"What have you been doing?" he added, looking at the desk where she had sat, glancing round the room. "Has the d.u.c.h.ess left any rags on the mult.i.tude of her acquaintances? I wonder that you can make yourself contented here with nothing to do. You don't look much stronger. I'm sure you ought to have a change. My mother was never well here; though, for the matter of that, she was never very well anywhere. I suppose it's the laboratory that attracts me here, as it did my father, playing with the ancient forces of the world in these Arcadian surroundings--Arcady without beauty or Arcadians." He glanced up at his mother's picture.

"No, she never liked it--a very silent woman, secretive almost."

Suddenly her eyes flared up. Anger possessed her. She choked it down.

Secretive--the poor bruised soul who had gone to her grave with a broken heart!

"She secretive? No, Eglington," she rejoined gravely, "she was congealed. She lived in too cold an air. She was not secretive, but yet she kept a secret--another's."

Again Eglington had the feeling which possessed him when he entered the room. She had changed. There was something in her tone, a meaning, he had never heard before. He was startled. He recalled the words of the d.u.c.h.ess as she went up the staircase.

What was it all about?

"Whose secrets did she keep?" he asked, calmly enough.

"Your father's, yours, mine," she replied, in a whisper almost.

"Secret? What secret? Good Lord, such mystery!" He laughed mirthlessly.

She came close to him. "I am sorry--sorry, Harry," she said with difficulty. "It will hurt you, shock you so. It will be a blow to you, but you must bear it."

She tried to speak further, but her heart was beating so violently that she could not. She turned quickly to the portfolio on the desk, drew forth the fatal letter, and, turning to the page which contained the truth concerning David, handed it to him. "It is there," she said.