“At last I felt it was time to end it. Peter had been in town some time then. I knew the senior Hibbault and he were coming to some understanding, but I guessed nothing of the nature of it. She never mentioned him to me at this time. She stood, poor girl, between the two of us like a trapped creature, and because she feared herself and neither of us, she overstepped one snare to fall into the other. Christopher, I don’t know what was in my mind when I went to her that last evening: I had not seen her for some 317 days, but when I stood before her I knew suddenly I loved her, and then, like a flash, I saw it was neither Peter nor her that stood between us, but my own evil self. I told her all—that she was the victor and I the conquered. I was proud of my new humbleness. For once I recognised myself and my true place in the order of the world. But she knew me better than I guessed, and she was afraid to tell me the truth. She put me off with gentle words, terrified lest I should guess before I left her—Don’t turn away, Christopher—At last she owned she had written me a letter and I should find it when I got back. Her attitude maddened me. The better self, if it ever existed, got stamped out. I told her nothing should come between us, that nothing short of death should keep me from her, while I could move hand or foot.”
The white scar on Aymer’s forehead was very plain and his face had grown thin and sharp. Christopher for the first time looked up at him and away again.
“I went home at last, Christopher, wild to get this mysterious letter to which she would refer me. I went back and took seven devils with me—my passion and love fighting for possession. Nevil and I had a room of our own on the ground floor. I think they use it for storing papers in now.”
Christopher gave a slight movement: he knew that well.
“I went straight in, knowing any letter for me would be taken there. Nevil was going upstairs as I crossed the hall and he called to me across the banisters that Wayband had sent back my revolver and he had opened it. Revolver shooting was a passion just then and I was accounted a crack shot. I answered him savagely and went on. The letter lay on the table. She had been married to Peter two days before at a Registrar’s office. I felt I must have known it from eternity, but it caught me on the crest 318 of my fury, it overwhelmed me in a torrent of mad shame and wild jealousy. I had failed—had been beaten at my own game—beaten and fooled by some God who had used my passion for his own ends. Those short minutes of purer love burnt my soul like fire till I raged at my folly. Christopher, I’d give all I have left to say I was mad. I wasn’t. I knew what I was doing. The revolver lay there on the table and an open box of cartridges by it. It was the coward’s way out of the agony, and I took it. I shot myself—the crack shot of Waybands Club missed his own life by a hair’s-breadth.”
Even then, after the long years, Christopher caught an echo of bitterness in the voice. He dully wondered at his own inability to move or speak or send out a thought of consolation to the man who had suffered so fiercely.
Aymer gave a little gasp and was still a moment Then he went on:
“That’s all my story, Christopher. Now comes your mother’s part of it. The first result of her marriage was that the Hibbaults’ name ceased to be a power for the Socialist party—became less than a power. James Hibbault severed his connection with them entirely. I think Peter gave him a place at one of his big affairs. He had bought them out, and for a time the party fell into disrepute. But Elizabeth, whom he had married, he had not bought. I think she believed she had and could influence him, that she could sway him without loss of her own being. I know she clung to her true personality with passionate strength. I had failed to break it down, but I think Peter failed here also. When she heard of her father’s and brother’s betrayal of their party—it was nothing else—she was nearly crazy with grief. It was some time before Peter could get her to acknowledge their marriage at all, and she never, I believe, spoke 319 of her people again. But at last he got her to Stormly. I know very little of what happened there. I believe he was willing she should play Lady Bountiful to his people if it pleased her—even made her a big allowance for the purpose. But she went amongst them and she would have none of it. She would make no compromise with what she regarded as wholly evil. She found Peter had only played with her regarding her creed—that he never had the least intention of altering his plan of life to suit it. She hated it all a hundredfold more than you did, Christopher, and the thought of bringing a child into an atmosphere that was rank poison to her, became a nightmare. Perhaps she was not wholly accountable then—there was no woman to stand by her or counsel patience. Anyhow, about six weeks before you were born, we believe she just disappeared. No one knows how Peter really felt about it. In the face of the world he shrugged his shoulders and went on with his life as if wife and expected child had never been. We suppose he tried to find her at first, but he always declared there was no need—she would come back when she had had enough of the world. Eventually a letter reached him saying you had come into the world and that, rather than put you under the power of your father and all he stood for, she would bring you up among the people she loved and pitied. My father tried all he could to make Peter seriously seek for his wife. We know now he had some false clue and that he believed she and you were living in Liverpool. But either from pride or indifference he would never see for himself these two whose fortunes he watched so closely. Saunderson tells me it was the younger Hibbault who supplied him with the false clue and found it to his advantage to keep up the fraud. They can’t trace either Hibbault now. They seem to have emigrated. My father once visited Peter, before Elizabeth left him. There 320 was some dispute at the works and a certain foreman named Felton protested against his orders. My father heard the interview between them, and the man made a strong appeal to him. He did his best as go-between and failed. Peter did not quarrel about it. He was just immovable in his heavy way, but your mother was greatly troubled over the whole business and was generously good to Felton and his wife in the face of Peter’s direct commands. Ten years afterwards this man, tramping from Portsmouth to London in search of work, met your mother again. He was evidently a man of strong memory, and he knew her.”
Christopher nodded. He remembered the little narrow paths in the tiny garden, the smell of the box edging, a pink cabbage rose that fell when the man’s sleeve brushed against it. The man and his mother had talked long and the old woman had asked him if he knew the man. The next day they were on the road again and he had felt a resentment towards this man as the cause. All these recollections crowded themselves into his mind.
“Felton seems to have been a man with some strength of character. He had easily promised your mother not to betray her existence to her husband, but the memory of her face and some uneasy sense of unfitness troubled him, I suppose. He remembered Mr. Aston, who had spoken for him, and that he was something to do with these people. He turned up here one day and Nevil had the sense to send him direct to us in London. It was just at the time when I was wanting to adopt a child. I had stopped cursing fate and myself, and I wanted something of my own almost as fiercely as I wanted my freedom.”