Yet Luck again had served me well for these. I remembered, when the passing of my moody grief left room for other thoughts, how it had put into my hands the one and very clue I needed. I knew at length where to find the old creature—godmother, grandmother, what you will—who alone, it seemed to me, could be induced, or bought, to make the revelation which I desired. Well, even so, that secret were safer in my keeping than solely in a villain’s. Though shared by another, or others, its possession by me could hardly weaken my position as a threatened mother’s champion. For all my wild pity, I was inexorably resolved to take an early opportunity of putting that discovery to the test.
And so I fell upon harder reflections. Who was this plausible dog, with his soft voice, his sentimental gaze, his compelling personality? Who was this astute villain—yet none so clever, nevertheless, but that Luck, my Luck, had been able easily to hoodwink him? His hold on Lady Skene must be a substantial one—one so potential of profit, it would appear, that, after all this lapse of years, it was still worth his while to take a house—a gambling office, one might call it—in the neighbourhood, for the sole purpose of exploiting her. How and where had he acquired an incriminating knowledge of her so damning? Alas! had I not learned enough already of her “maiden meditations” to be sceptical of their singleness? She had been an actress—on the stage, at least—and presumably a true child of her traditions. I could not forget Sir Maurice Carnac’s roguish innuendoes—his allusions to my stepfather’s feet “netted” to matrimony in their intended frolic over a wilder course; his sly maudlin reference to me as a pledge of “widowed respectability.” Likely enough he too had known, or guessed, the truth. Likely enough Lord Skene himself had not been so blind to it as the pious throwers of dust in his eyes had once assumed. Nor did I feel convinced that the question of it would much have affected his lordship in those days of his relapse from virtue, so long as its pretensions appeared to justify, in the worldly view, his marriage with the beautiful creature who had ravished his heart. Grant all that, and it made no difference in the present situation—offered Lady Skene no less a bait to vile persecution. If her husband had not been blind, she had been blind to his shrewd seeing. If he knew, she did not know he knew, and her ignorance of that inference of his, did it actually exist, constituted her real accessibility by scoundrelism. She never thought, one must conclude, but that she possessed a secret which, if revealed, would spell her social and domestic ruin; and, so long as she could be kept in that belief, the bloodsuckers might have their way with her. Had she not the traditions of eighteen or so years of a spotless and dignified wifehood to vindicate? It was for the very reason that she had justified her exaltation so nobly, that she figured such a helpless victim to the beasts of prey. She was a woman of position—a fact of which her religious world took strict account; and she had come to pledge herself to that world, and to be quoted for its local light. It was there, I knew, and she knew probably, that her downfall would be criticised most ruinously. Her husband, it was conceivable, she might win over to her sin’s condonement; that narrow world never. There, in any question of her victimising by a blackguard, was confessed her main vulnerable point—or it had been. For, indeed, at the last there had come to expose itself one more infinitely sensitive. She had borne a son, heir to his mother’s fame or infamy.
I declare that my heart bled for her, as I reviewed her present position, or such as I presumed it to be. What was it to me that she had been a sinner—even a reckless sinner? Circumstance makes evil, as it makes virtue. Let the righteous plume themselves on circumstance. If I were a child of sin, I would be loyal to the maternity which suffered for me. Only I wanted time to think and plan.
I dreaded more than I can describe the ordeal of the dinner hour that night. Yet I was resolved to put in an appearance at the table. As likely as not Miss Christmas had spoken of my return; and what reflections would that induce in Lady Skene! and, if I kept away, how would she regard my absence—with what suspicion, what fearful apprehensions for her secret’s safety! For had she not believed me far removed from the scene of her recent humiliation? I must face the music, at once and boldly.
I faced it; and with what immediate result? As I entered the dining-room, she was standing by her chair before taking her seat, and, as I passed her by, going to my own, withdrew her skirts from my contact. It was the instinctive act of a moment, and regretted, I think, as soon as done; but it hurt me so cruelly, that my devil, for an instant, returned uppermost. “Very well,” I thought, “if you will have me your Nemesis!”
Lord Skene greeted me kindly but abstractedly. He made no comment on my late absence, except to ask me where I had been gone these three or four days.
“To Clapham, sir,” I said, perfectly self-possessed. “It occurred to me to explore the field of Mr Pugsley’s early ministrations. I am thinking of writing his life.”
He grinned first; then looked a little startled, glancing across uneasily at his wife. She had suddenly put down her spoon, I observed, leaving her soup unfinished.
“What!” said his lordship. “Are you thinking of turning author?”
“No, sir,” I answered. “Only of studying truth and godliness at first hand.”