He broke off suddenly; for at those fatal words, Colonel Kelmscott’s face, fiery red till then, grew instantly blanched and white with terror. “Oh, what have I done?” the unhappy man cried, seeing his son’s eyes read some glimpse of the truth too clearly in his look. “Oh, what have I said? Forget it, Granny, forget it! I didn’t mean to go so far as I did in my anger. I was a fool—a fool! I gave way too much. For Heaven’s sake, my boy, forget it, forget it!”
The young man looked across at him with a dazed and puzzled look, yet very full of meaning. “I shall never forget it,” he said slowly. “I shall learn what it means. I don’t know how things stand; but I see you meant it. Do as you like about the entail. It’s no business of mine. Take your pound of flesh, your twelve thousand down, and pay your hush-money! I don’t know whom you bribe, and I have nothing to say to it. I never dragged the honour of the Kelmscotts in the dust. I won’t drag it now. I wash my hands clean from it. I ask no questions. I demand no explanations. I only say this. Until I know what you mean—know whether I’m lawful heir to Tilgate Park or not, I won’t marry the girl I meant to marry. I have too much regard for her, and for the honour of our house, to take her on what may prove to be false expectations. Break the entail, I say! Raise your twelve thousand. Pay off your bloodhounds. But never expect me to touch a penny of your money, henceforth and for ever, till I know whether it was yours and mine at all to deal with.”
Colonel Kelmscott bent down his proud head meekly. “As you will, Granville,” he answered, quite broken with remorse, and silenced by shame. “My boy, my boy, I only wanted to save you!”
CHAPTER XII. — IN SILENCE AND TEARS.
When he had time to think, Colonel Kelmscott determined in his own mind that he would still do his best to save Granville, whether Granville himself wished it or otherwise. So he proceeded to take all the necessary steps for breaking the entail and raising the money he needed for Guy and Cyril.
In all this, Granville neither acquiesced nor dissented. He signed mechanically whatever documents his father presented to him, and he stood by his bargain with a certain sullen, undeviating, hard-featured loyalty; but he never forgot those few angry words in which his father had half let out his long-guarded life secret.
Thinking the matter over continually with himself, however, he came in the end to the natural conclusion that one explanation alone would fit all the facts. He was not his father’s eldest son at all. Colonel Kelmscott must have been married to some one else before his marriage with Lady Emily. That some one else’s son was the real heir of Tilgate. And it was to him that his father, in his passionate penitence, proposed, after many years, to do one-sided justice. Now Granville Kelmscott, though a haughty and somewhat head-strong fellow, after the fashion of his race, was a young man of principle and of honour. The moment this hideous doubt occurred to his mind, he couldn’t rest in his bed till he had cleared it all up and settled it for ever, one way or the other. If Tilgate wasn’t his, by law and right, he wanted none of it. If his father was trying to buy off the real heir to the estate with a pitiful pittance, in order to preserve the ill-gotten remainder for Lady Emily’s son, why, Granville for his part would be no active party to such a miserable compromise. If some other man was the Colonel’s lawful heir, let that other man take the property and enjoy it; but he, Granville Kelmscott, would go forth upon the world, an honest adventurer, to seek his fortune with his own right hand wherever he might find it.
Still, he could take no active step, on the other hand, to hunt up the truth about the Colonel’s real or supposed first marriage. For here an awful dilemma blocked the way before him. If the Colonel had married before, and if by that former marriage he had a son or sons—how could Granville be sure the supposed first wife was dead before the second was married? And supposing, for a moment, she was not dead—supposing his father had been even more criminal and more unjust than he at first imagined—how could he take the initiative himself in showing that his own mother, Lady Emily Kelmscott, was no wife at all in the sight of the law? that some other woman was his father’s lawful consort? The bare possibility of such an issue was too horrible for any son on earth to face undismayed. So, tortured and distracted by his divided duty, Granville Kelmscott shrank alike from action or inaction.