“Gracious heavens! my lord! What words are these?”
“Ah, ’tis not the sound man that praises the glory of health, but the sick. Not the sober Christian sees the full radiance of the jewel of purity, but the libertine. I never let thee guess that here, in this town, now dissolving in fire, I had won me the name of Rakehell Rockhurst.”
With paling cheek and a starting eye, the son had listened. Now he winced as if his father had struck him.
“Rakehell Rockhurst—Rakehell! And I smote Lionel Ratcliffe on the mouth for daring to couple the name to yours—!” Then, on a fierce revulsion of feeling, he caught the pale hand close to him and kissed it passionately. “Wherefore tell me this? Father, as I have ever known you, so must I ever love and honour you.”
“The Rakehell—” repeated the Lord Constable; and once more, out of the very pain of his avowal, came harshness into his tone—“that was my name in men’s mouths. His Majesty had another, a kinder one, for me; he called me in jest his merry Rockhurst. You have been reared in ripe veneration of the King’s Grace; yet, had you known life by my side (as once you yearned), you would have learned that the one name and the other meant, in Whitehall, at least, the same thing. Rakehell—aye, I may have had black perdition in my heart many a time; yet believe this, Harry, that when like Lucifer I fell, I sinned like Lucifer with pride, arrogance, recklessness, what you will—never with baseness. Merry, my good liege called me. To find me so mad, yet see me wear so grave a face, it gave him a spur to laughter. Merry? Nay; he loved me, in chief, because in his sad heart he knew mine. Both sad hearts, sickened of life. Forever striving to find a blossom in the dust, a jest in the weary round, to taste of a fruit that was not ashes on the tongue. And there you have the secret of my life and his.… Then came Diana.”
“Ah, hush, my lord!” Harry rose from his seat, in violent agitation, and stood a second, pressing his hands against his breast. “With me, you know, wounds heal slowly,” he went on, striving to speak calmly. “Do not touch upon that hurt, lest the bleeding begin afresh.”
The father rose, too, followed his son to the parapet, and, again laying a hand upon his shoulder, compelled his attention. The splendour of the sunset pageant had faded, and with it all beauty from the sky. Only the glow, the gloom, the belching smoke remained.
“I knew her ere ever you did,” said the Lord Constable, his eye fixed as upon an inner vision, fair and fresh and pure. “Aye, you never knew it. She spoke not of it again, nor did I; for you had come between us!… She entered into my life one winter’s night; and across the snow I set her again on her sheltered way, knowing what I was—and seeing what she was. But from the instant of our parting (’twas all in the snow, lad, and above us a sky of stars; scarce I touched her hand; not a word exchanged but a God be wi’ ye), from that instant she was never from my thoughts—She, the might-have-been, the one woman for me! Aye, you stare, your grave father! Your old father! I was a strong man, then, and life ran potent in my veins. Dost remember how I met her again, in the Peacock Walk at home, and you prating of your love for her, with beardless lip?”
“Oh, father, father, father!” cried the poor lad. “For God’s sake!… You are all I have left!”
“Hush! Look on these white hairs, sign among so many that life has done with me. Nay, I know full well I am not old in years, scarce double thine own; but the vital spring is dying. Listen, Harry, you are a man; I have a trust to lay upon you. Since that terrible dawn, when, crying out, ‘Diana’s dead!’ you fell, bleeding of your old wound, into swoon upon swoon, and thereafter into mortal sickness, you know her name has never passed your lips nor mine. It was better, in sooth, you should believe her dead.”