Then, so much admitted, or assumed, was it not a consequent assumption that his secret knowledge of the fact that I was not Lady Skene’s child constituted Dalston’s hold over her? That would be to infer that he, at least, was cognisant of my true parentage. But would it be that she was? or, even more inexplicably, that he was practising upon her ignorance of the truth? But how could she be ignorant—how could she? The hypothesis appeared incredible, monstrous.
One only clear fact seemed to detach itself from the inextricable tangle of things—that I was not my supposed mother’s son.
Now—so perverse is human nature—I was no sooner self-assured of my moral quittance from the bonds which had held me so long and so wistfully to an imaginary grievance, than my soul rose in mutiny against my own emancipation. Was she not actually, then, my mother after all—this cold, beautiful spirit, whose countenance I had so longed to gain, whose aversion, so little concealed, had been the cruel pain of my life? It would appear so, indeed; it would appear that I had been wasting my heart on the shadow of a love—the blasphemy of a worship which God Himself had suddenly exposed for a sham. I was stripped in a moment even of the cold comfort of that false religion. I had no longer the right of natural appeal from an inhuman sentence.
And I had only myself to thank for my awakening. Wilfully, with my eyes open, I had gone about this business of my own damnation.
There was such an intolerable sting in the thought, that, in its last full realisation, I jumped to my feet, restless to pace away the agitation it caused me. As I did so, the book which I had taken from the shelf dropped roughly from my knees to the floor, and a folded paper fell from it.
I stooped mechanically to pick up the latter, as mechanically opened it out, and, two-thirds preoccupied, ran my eyes down the sheet. Instantly, with a little shock of amazement, they were caught and riveted to a name written thereon.
A sigh, as of one just awakened, came from me, What was to follow? I thought I could tell already. There was a signature at the foot of the paper, and I believed I knew whose it would be—the signature of Charlie Skene, his lordship’s dead son; and so it proved. It gave me an odd thrill to look at it—the boyish scrawl in its faded ink; and attesting—what? You shall hear. Walking on tiptoe, as if in some instinctive emotion towards secrecy, I carried my “find” to the lamp and examined it.
It was the half, the second half, of a sheet of foreign notepaper, and had been used evidently by some reader (probably the correspondent to whom it had been addressed) for a marker in the volume I had dropped. Heedless trifling with a thing so pregnant with destiny! Yet Luck, no doubt, had arranged it so. It ran as follows, starting on a broken sentence:—
“... right under the fall, and as secret as you could wish. You can see through, like as if you were behind a window and the rain coming down in sheets outside, and there’s no more sound to be heard than with that. It’s just shut away from there, the noise I mean, and all you can hear is a drone like a hive, and all you can see is the trees and the hills pulled crooked, like we saw ourselves in that looking-glass in the confectionier’s at Swanage don’t you remember how we laughed George? There is a fellow here Antonio Geoletti that acts as our guide and cetera and that would give his ears I expect to know of it for the sake of tips. But I’ve a fancy to keep it to myself such fun, and not tell anyone of it unless perhaps you-know-who, and perhaps if he’s good my tutor mister Cecil Mansel Delane oh lawk!—but wait a minute. Geoletti’s a great rascal but I like him—always a little attracted to rogues you know George, and he shall hear of it too before we go. But now I’ve got something to tell you only don’t blab to the Governor. George, my boy, I’ve found out that Delane isn’t my tutor’s name at all, but Dalston is—Mark Dalston. There was a young fellow Bruno Travers passed through here, and recognised him for a master he’d been under at some Grammar School or other Clapham I think it was, and he called him to his face and Delane had to own up. There was only us three together, and my tutor admitted that his name was Dalston right enough, and that he’d only taken up the other for its seeming more marketable to a man with his ambitions, sounded good familyish and all that, and he asked us not to give him away and we promised. But Travers didn’t believe a word of his reason, and told me so in private. He said he’d go nap that it was to escape the consequences of an intrigue with some girl in Clapham, this Mark Dalston being a pretty rapid lot, and known for it to some of the young gentlemen that he coached. I don’t know, but I’ve had my suspicions, especially in his making those eyes at you-know-who for her looks and the rest. But mum’s the word. I shall want all my nerve when the time comes for an explanation and it can’t be long now, oh lawky lawky!—Your affectionate friend,
Charles Skene.”