“Ay, so many a man’s said that’s not wanted to look his own acts straight in the face. If Our Man had been started different, if he’d started in the path where God A’mighty dropped him, and not in the path Luke Claridge chose, would he have been in Egypt to-day wearing out his life? He’s not making carpets there, he’s only beating them.”
The homely illustration drawn from the business in which he had been interested so many years went home to Claridge’s mind. He shrank back, and sat rigid, his brows drawing over the eyes, till they seemed sunk in caverns of the head. Suddenly Soolsby’s voice rose angrily. Luke Claridge seemed so remorseless and unyielding, so set in his vanity and self-will! Soolsby misread the rigid look in the face, the pale sternness. He did not know that there had suddenly come upon Luke Claridge the full consciousness of an agonising truth—that all he had done where David was concerned had been a mistake. The hard look, the sternness, were the signals of a soul challenging itself.
“Ay, you’ve had your own will,” cried Soolsby mercilessly. “You’ve said to God A’mighty that He wasn’t able to work out to a good end what He’d let happen; and so you’d do His work for Him. You kept the lad hid away from the people that belonged to him, you kept him out of his own, and let others take his birthright. You put a shame upon him, hiding who his father and his father’s people were, and you put a shame upon her that lies in the graveyard—as sweet a lass, as good, as ever lived on earth. Ay, a shame and a scandal! For your eyes were shut always to the sidelong looks, your ears never heard the things people said—‘A good-for-nothing ship-captain, a scamp and a ne’er-do-weel, one that had a lass at every port, and, maybe, wives too; one that none knew or ever had seen—a pirate maybe, or a slave-dealer, or a jail-bird, for all they knew! Married—oh yes, married right enough, but nothing else—not even a home. Just a ring on the finger, and then, beyond and away!’ Around her life that brought into the world our lad yonder you let a cloud draw down; and you let it draw round his, too, for he didn’t even bear his father’s name—much less knew who his father was—or live in his father’s home, or come by his own in the end. You gave the lad shame and scandal. Do you think, he didn’t feel it, was it much or little? He wasn’t walking in the sun, but—”
“Mercy! Mercy!” broke in the old man, his hand before his eyes. He was thinking of Mercy, his daughter, of the words she had said to him when she died, “Set him in the sun, father, where God can find him,” and her name now broke from his lips.
Soolsby misunderstood. “Ay, there’ll be mercy when right’s been done Our Man, and not till then. I’ve held my tongue for half a lifetime, but I’ll speak now and bring him back. Ay, he shall come back and take the place that is his, and all that belongs to him. That lordship yonder—let him go out into the world and make his place as the Egyptian did. He’s had his chance to help Our Man, and he has only hurt, not helped him. We’ve had enough of his second-best lordship and his ways.”
The old man’s face was painful in its stricken stillness now. He had regained control of himself, his brain had recovered greatly from its first suffusion of excitement.
“How does thee know my lord yonder has hurt and not helped him?” he asked in an even voice, his lips tightening, however. “How does thee know it surely?”
“From Kate Heaver, my lady’s maid. My lady’s illness—what was it? Because she would help Our Man, and, out of his hatred, yonder second son said that to her which no woman can bear that’s a true woman; and then, what with a chill and fever, she’s been yonder ailing these weeks past. She did what she could for him, and her husband did what he could against him.”
The old man settled back in his chair again. “Thee has kept silent all these years? Thee has never told any that lives?”
“I gave my word to her that died—to our Egyptian’s mother—that I would never speak unless you gave me leave to speak, or if you should die before me. It was but a day before the lad was born. So have I kept my word. But now you shall speak. Ay, then, but you shall speak, or I’ll break my word to her, to do right by her son. She herself would speak if she was here, and I’ll answer her, if ever I see her after Purgatory, for speaking now.”