CHAPTER XL.
And so for the second time, on this strange Sunday evening, I was called on to recount what I had heard and seen in the sad, blood-stained little house down at Chelsea. And having done so, I withdrew, Hartover making no effort to detain me. For I felt, and I think he felt also, whatever remained to be said must be said behind closed doors, since it would be both unworthy and impolitic to subject this proud woman and great lady to further mortification. I left the two alone, the more willingly as the boy had proved himself, kept his head, kept his temper, shown himself at once astute and fearless. I could trust him to strike a bargain—for, as he said, between himself and her ladyship a bargain, and a hard one, it henceforth must be—discreditable neither to honour nor to justice. I could trust him not to be vindictive. He had not been so towards Fédore. He would not be so towards his stepmother.
I went downstairs and into the dining-room again, where I found William still making a pretence of clearing the table, though it was close on midnight.
‘His lordship ate no dinner to call a dinner, sir,’ he said tentatively; ‘and after travelling all day too!’
But I refused to be drawn. William’s curiosity would, in all probability, be satisfied by the contents of the morning papers; and meanwhile I, unused to such strenuous demands upon my imagination and nervous energy, stood sorely in need of some rest.
Finding me a hopeless subject, the faithful fellow, to my relief, departed, permitting me to meditate undisturbed.—What of the future, Hartover’s future? He had borne himself well and manfully throughout the evening; but would the events, now so deeply affecting him, make more than a passing impression? Would he, a few months hence, return to his former unprofitable ways? Would the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life prove too strong after all, and work the undoing of this modern Alcibiades? And what of my own future? Should I go back to the untroubled scholarly life of Cambridge to live and die a college don? Or, supposing he and I continued, in some sort, our renewed intimacy of these last few days, had I the strength and wisdom to guide him? Were we quite at one, moreover, Hartover and I, or had Halidane succeeded in sowing discord, a suspicion which would remain and rankle in the dear boy’s mind?
My thoughts were far from cheerful as I sat there alone, the great house quiet within, and London hushed to midnight stillness without. Would good come out of all this evil upon which, shrinking and aghast, I had so lately looked? Deeper question yet—is it possible that evil ever can breed good? And my thought wandered homelessly through labyrinths of speculation regarding dualism, that apparently eternal inter-relation, inter-action of evil and of good, as manifested in nature, in history, in national and personal character, alike. Is there, verily, no good without alloy of evil, no evil lacking a strain of good? I thought of Fédore, as an example, at once befriending and devouring Hartover—whereby this mystery of dualism appeared painfully deepened and increased.
But then—unable, I suppose, to support the sorrow of its own homelessness any longer—my thought turned to the sheltered corner of the garden at Westrea—where the high red-brick wall forms an angle with the mellow red-brick house front—to which, in the sweet May mornings, the neat box-edged borders gay with spring flowers, the brimming water, the avenue of oaks and the pasture gently sloping upward to the sky-line, so pleasantly set out before us, Nellie Braithwaite would bring her sewing and I the book from which to read aloud.—Ah! surely this—this had been wholly without alloy, purely and perfectly good! I pictured the scene in all its details, felt again the emotions engendered by it, and received comfort to my soul—for—not for very long, alas!
The door opened. Hartover swung in. His face was still drawn and thin, but a spot of colour burned on either cheek and his eyes were extraordinarily bright.
‘That’s over,’ he said. ‘It has been damnable, utterly damnable. But it is done with. Now, please God, we start afresh—don’t move, Brownlow.’
This as I prepared to rise.
‘I must talk,’ he went on—‘talk to you now while the hot fit is still on me, so that you may register and, later, whip me up if I check or show any sign of running slack. Remind me of—of to-night. I have got what I bargained for—my clear stage and no favour. My stepmother signs a truce, under compulsion of—oh! yes, I know how ugly it sounds!—compulsion of fear, the fear of exposure and social ruin. If she interferes between me and my father, he shall be told certain facts. If, after his death, I find she has played tricks with the property, I shall go to law, which will be equivalent to publishing those same facts to all the world. If she keeps faith with me, I will stand by her and do everything in my power to shield her name from scandal and disgrace.—For, Brownlow, those who sold her, as a little more than a child, to a man nearly twice her age, and a weak-brained, dyspeptic valetudinarian at that, did a very cruel thing.—All the same, the Rusher has to vanish. As long as my father lives he shall never darken these doors, or those of Hover, again. That is absolute.’
While he spoke, Hartover roamed up and down the room restlessly, working off his excitement. Now he came and, sitting down on the arm of my chair, laid his hand gently on my shoulder.
‘Dear old friend, forgive me,’ he said. ‘I ought to have known better. It was only for an instant I distrusted you; but I was so knocked about. The road to freedom—for it is freedom, through all this shame and misery, this horror of crime and violence, I recognise that—has been very frightful to tread. Nothing can ever look quite the same again. I am new born, not only to man’s estate, but to a new vision and understanding of what I may and will, God helping me—I don’t shy at a little bit of piety for once!—do with my life. Only the pains of that new birth have been as the pains of hell, dear old man.’
And here I think the tears came, for the boy’s hand went up hastily to his eyes, and he turned away his face—from which I opined it would be some time before he and youth parted company, even yet!
‘Gad!’ he said, ‘I believe I should be thankful never to set eyes on a petticoat again, as long as I live; but,’ with a rather weary little laugh, ‘I suppose the misogynist attitude of mind won’t last, whatever else does! Look here, Brownlow, how soon can you be ready to go up to Hover with me? I hear the grouse promise well this season, and I’ll be hanged if Colonel Jack puts a ha’porth of shot into a solitary one of them. And, oh! dear me, I want to get away from London, away to the clean wind and the open moors and—forget.’
I took no reading party to North Wales that summer, but rode Warcop’s horses and tramped the fells with Hartover instead. And when I went back to Cambridge at the beginning of the October term, the boy—having sent in his papers on his twenty-first birthday—went back with me, thus carrying out his old wish of passing at least one year at the university.
And Marsigli never came to trial, but died by his own hand in gaol, to Lady Longmoor’s immense relief, as I imagine; but to Detective Inspector Lavender’s immense disgust and discouragement of belief in his luck.
‘The authorities may ignore it, sir,’ he said to me; ‘but I can’t. That affair hammered more nails into the coffin of my professional reputation, or ought to have done so if every man had his deserts, than I care to count.’