“Yes, yes,” said Tuke. “That is not all unexpected.”
“It was a fearful wrong, sir, committed on a helpless girl; for she had flouted and dared him; and I it was that was born to be the shameful witness of my father’s violence, and the victim now of my mother’s hate and loathing, now of her furious caresses. She carried me with her into the hiding her profession secured her; for she was a bold horse-woman and popular in travelling shows. But when I was turned nine, she left me under care in a seaport town; and thereafter I saw her but at long intervals, and then to mark little but the hardening of her nature and the steady elimination from it of all kindly and social sentiments. Still, I was to learn from her own lips what, I think, a man can never find it in his sympathy to interpret—the inconsistency of a woman’s soul. No doubt that is like the figure called a parallax——”
“Oh! Dennis—confound your parallax. To my mind it is more like a parachute—an empty thing that any draught shall influence.”
“You don’t mean that, sir.”
“Don’t I?—Well, talk in English, you rascal. Your learning hips a simple country squire.”
“It is no learning, indeed; but a little love for books. She told me of my origin, sir. Judge of what the revelation was to me, who was ignorant as yet of any word of the wicked story. She told me all, and she told me—sir, she said to me, in a burst of wild defiance, that she was about to place herself under the protection of the very man who years before had wrought her that great evil.”
“Am I surprised, Dennis? I think not. I have gone to school in the world. Woman is the archetype of rebellion. She it was pulled down the angels. She must revolt against any restriction not imposed by herself, and she has always a fiercer joy in defying the social laws than she has pleasure in subscribing to them. She knows the world was her original birthright, I suppose, and has a secret admiration for the sort of crime that lost her her heritage. Cutwater scorned the conventions that ostracized her, and he had blackened his soul for her sake. Queer reasoning, maybe from our point of view; but—yes, I can understand her returning to him.”
“She did, sir; and for years I saw her no more. She returned to him, and, as I afterwards learned, soon wearied my father of her presence, and left him, taking with her the baby-daughter that she had borne to him. You know the rest—how, but a little before his death, my father, remembering the fact of my existence, summoned me to him and sought to practise on my simplicity. It was what I had dreaded ever since I had been acquainted of the cruel truth. It finished what my long anguish of suspense had begun. Constitutionally without fibre, I became the nerveless, haunted creature of your first knowledge.”
“And it was after his death that your mother brought the girl to burden you with its charge?”
“No burden, sir. I joyed to have the little thing. But she was uncanny. From near the first she showed herself instinctively attracted to the dreadful thing on the downs, and when the head fell and she could secure it, she came home with a posy face of delight. It was chance hearing of the story of his murder that brought my mother to me with the child; and at first she would give a little to its keep; but, as the years went on, and she herself become poorer and wilder, it was she also that must become in a measure my charge; though she would never set foot in his house, or take from me aught but the barest of necessaries.”