“I’m afraid, Renshaw,” he said, “you’ve gone your own way in that matter of Linda Herrick. No! Don’t deny it. You may not have seen her as often as before our last conversation, but you’ve seen her. She’s confessed as much to me herself. Now look here, Renshaw, you and I have known one another for some good few years. How long is it, man? Fifteen, twenty? It can’t be less. Long enough, anyway, for me to have earned the right to speak quite plainly and I tell you this, you must stop the whole business!”
His voice sank as he spoke to a formidable whisper. Brand glanced round at the others but apparently they were quite preoccupied. Mr. Traherne continued.
“The whole business, Renshaw! After this you must leave that child absolutely alone. If you don’t—if you insist on going on seeing her—I shall take strong measures with you. I shall—but I needn’t say any more! I think you can make a pretty shrewd guess what I shall do.”
Brand received this solemn ultimatum in a way calculated to cause the agitated man who addressed it to him a shock of complete bewilderment. He yawned carelessly and stretched out his long arms.
“As you please, Hamish,” he said, “I’m perfectly ready not to see her. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have seen her in any case. To tell you the truth, I’ve got a bit sick of the whole thing. These young girls are silly little feather-weights at best. It’s first one mood and then another! You can’t be sure of them for two hours at a stretch. So it’s all right, Hamish Traherne! I won’t interfere with her. You can make a nun of her if you like—or whatever else you fancy. All I beg of you is, don’t go round talking about me to your parishioners. Don’t talk about me to Raughty! I don’t want my affairs discussed by any one—not even by my friends. All right, my boy—you needn’t look at me like that. You’ve known me, as you say, long enough to know what I am. So there you are! You’ve had your answer and you’ve got my word. I don’t mind even your calling it ‘the word of a gentleman’ as you did the other night. You can call it what you like. I’m not going to see Linda for a reason quite personal and private but if you like to make it a favour to yourself that I don’t—well! throw that in, too!”
Hamish Traherne thrust his hand into his cassock thinking, for the moment, that it was his well-worn ulster and that he would feel the familiar form of Ricoletto.
It may be noted from this futile and unconscious gesture, how much hangs in this world upon insignificant threads. Had the priest’s fingers touched at that moment the silky coat of his little friend he would have derived sufficient courage to ask his formidable host point-blank whether, in leaving Linda in this way, he left her as innocent and unharmed as when he crossed her path at the beginning. Not having Ricoletto with him, however, and his fingers encountering nothing but his own woolen shirt, he lacked the inspiration to carry the matter to this conclusion. Thus, upon the trifling accident of a tame rodent having been left outside a library or, if you will, upon an eccentric parson having no pocket, depended the whole future of Linda Herrick. For, had he put that question and had Brand confessed the truth, the priest would undoubtedly, under every threat in his power, have commanded him to marry her and it is possible, considering the mood the man was in at that moment and considering also the nature of the threat held over him, he would have bowed to the inevitable and undertaken to do it.
The intricate and baffling complications of human life found further illustration in the very nature of this mysterious threat hinted at so darkly by Mr. Traherne. It was in reality—and Brand knew well that it was—nothing more or less than the making clear to Mrs. Renshaw beyond all question or doubt, of the actual character of the son she tried so conscientiously to idealize. For some basic and profound reason, inherent in his inmost nature, it was horrible to Brand to think of his mother knowing him. She might suspect and she might know that he knew she suspected, but to have the thing laid quite bare between them would be to send a rending and shattering crack through the unconscious hypocrisy of twenty years. For certain natures any drastic cleavage of slowly built-up moral relations is worse than death. Brand would have felt less remorse in being the cause of his mother’s death than of being the cause of her knowing him as he really was. The matter of Linda being thus settled between the two men, if the understanding so reached could be regarded as settling it, they both turned round, anxious for some distraction, to the quarter of the room where their friends had been conversing. But Philippa and the Doctor were no longer with them. Brand looked whimsically at the priest who, shrugging his shoulders, poured himself out a third glass from the decanter on the table. They then moved to the window which reached almost to the ground. Stepping over its low ledge, they passed out upon the terrace. They were at once aware of a change in the atmospheric conditions. The veil of mist had entirely been swept away from the sky. The vast expanse twinkled with bright stars and, far down among the trees, they could discern the crescent form of the new moon.