“Why are you so hard upon me?”
“Why? You ask me why—you, who let me live at your gates in meek dependence on your bounty, nameless, fatherless, living a life of miserable monotony with a heart-broken woman in whose frozen breast even maternal love was dead. You who patted me on the head once in half-a-year, and patronized me, and condescended to me, as if I were of another race and of a different clay. You, my father—you who could be content to let me grow from a child to a woman and never once let your heart go out to me, and never once be moved to clasp me in your arms and confess the tie between us. You who saw me come to your fine house and go away, and often pretended not to see me, or passed me with a side-glance and a little motion of your hand as if I were a dog that ran by you in the street. You, my father—you, whose friend saw me so friendless and alone that he could lie to me with impunity, knowing there was no one in this world to take my part or to call him to account for his lies. Had you been different, my fate might have been different.”
“He was a villain, Mercy. God knows, I have suffered enough on that score. I would have called him to account, I would have punished him; but I had to think of my wife. I dared not act—there was a monster in my path before which the boldest man sometimes turns coward—publicity. Who was it told you, Mercy—when was it that you discovered my secret?”
“He told me—taunted me with my mother’s story. He had guessed it, I think; but though he had no proofs to give me, instinct told me that it was true. My mother’s life and character had always been a mystery to me. I understood both by the light of that revelation.”
“He told you the truth, Mercy. Yes, all my life as regards you was a solemn sham. It was your mother’s determination to live at Cheriton, and nowhere else, which made me a stranger to my own child. Had your home been elsewhere—far from my wife and her surroundings—I might have acted in some wise a father’s part. I might have acknowledged our relationship—I might have seen you from time to time in the freedom of paternal intercourse—I could have interested myself in your education, watched over your welfare. As it was, I had to play my difficult part as best I might.”
“You would have had to reckon with my mother’s broken heart wherever she had lived,” answered Mercy. “Do you think I could have ever valued your fatherly interest, knowing the measure of her wrong? In my ignorance I looked up to you as our benefactor. You cheated me of my gratitude and respect—you, who were the cause of all our sorrows. I saw my mother’s mind growing more and more embittered as the years went by. My youth was spent with a woman whose lips had forgotten how to smile—with a mother who never spoke a motherly word, or kissed her child with a motherly kiss. And then when love came—or that which seemed love—can you wonder that I was weak and helpless in the hour of temptation—I, who had never known what tenderness meant before I heard his voice, before his lips touched mine? The only happiness I ever knew upon this earth was my happiness with him. It was short enough, God knows, but it was something. It was my only sunshine—the only year in all my life in which the world seemed beautiful and life worth living. Yes, it was at least a dream of loving and being loved; but it was followed by a bitter waking.”
“He was a scoundrel, Mercy. You were not his first victim; but his youth was past, and I believed in his reform. I should not have asked him to my wife’s house had I not so believed. When I heard that he had tempted you away from your mother I was in despair. I would have made any sacrifice to save you, except the one sacrifice of facing a hideous scandal, except the sacrifice of my social position and my wife’s happiness. Had you alone been in question I might have taken a bolder and more generous course, but you are right when you say I had to reckon with your mother. I might have confessed the existence of my daughter—might have secured my wife’s kindness and sympathy for that daughter—but how could I say to her, The woman who lives beside your gate is the woman who ought to have been my wife, and who for ten years was to me as a wife, and relied upon my promise that no other woman upon earth should ever occupy that place? I was fettered, Mercy, caught in the toils, powerless to act a manly part. I did what I could. I tried to trace you and Tremayne—failed, and never knew what had become of him till I read of his death in Afghanistan. He was a married man when he crossed your path, separated from his wife, who had not used him over well. It was the knowledge of his domestic troubles that inclined me to hold out the hand of friendship to him at that time. He behaved infamously to you, I fear, my poor girl.”
“He only did what most men do, I suppose, under the same circumstances. He only acted as you acted to my mother. He grew tired of me. Only his weariness came in less than ten years—in less than two. He took me roaming all over the world in his yacht. Those days and nights at sea—or lying off some white city, gleaming against a background of olive-clad hills—were like one long dream of beauty. Sometimes we lived on shore for a little while—in some obscure fishing village, where there was no one from England to ask who we were. We spent one long winter coasting about between Algiers and Tunis. I could hardly believe that it was winter in that world of purple sea and sky and almost perpetual sunshine. We spent half a year among the Greek islands—we stayed at Constantinople—and sailed from there to Naples. It was at Naples I caught a fever, and lay ill on board the yacht. It was a tedious illness, a long night of darkness and delirium. When I recovered Colonel Tremayne was gone. He had left the yacht on the first day of my unconsciousness, leaving me in charge of a sister of mercy and three sailors. He had sold the yacht, which was to pass into the new owner’s possession as soon as I was strong enough to go on shore. He left me a letter, telling me that he had deposited fifty pounds for me at the English bankers where he had been in the habit of cashing cheques. I had been at the bank with him on more than one occasion. He advised me to stay in the South, and get a situation as governess in an Italian family. He was obliged to go back to England on account of monetary difficulties, but he hoped to be able to meet me later. He did not even take the trouble to tell me where a letter would find him. He had abandoned me at the beginning of a dangerous illness—left me to live or die—friendless in a foreign land.”
CHAPTER XXXIV.
“Poor wretches that depend