“What I said is quickly explained,” answered the captain; and he rose to his feet.
Does the reader remember a familiar toy of childhood composed of pretty birds, with feathers stuck in them, strung on horsehair or wires so as to form a sort of cage, but with this difference, that the cage did not contain the birds? When this toy was set down, all the little figures quivered slowly, uncertainly, to the bottom, and, when it was reversed, the same process was repeated. It was so with the captain’s speech. His words were threaded on the tremulous strings of his vocal organ, and not only quivered from a high pitch down, but also went up from a low one with much vibration on high. A voice of this quality is provocative of sympathy; as, when a violoncello string is touched, a piano chord trembles responsive. Such voices make not the voices, but the hearts of other men to tremble. I know a slater who, when I am ordering of him slates, brings tears into my eyes by asking if I will have “Duchess” or “Rag.”
“My words are quickly explained,” said Stephen Saltren. “I have never regarded you as my son—have never treated you as such. You know that I have shown you no fatherly affection, because I knew from the beginning that not a drop of my blood flowed in your veins. But never, before this evening, have I allowed you, or any one else, to suspect what I knew, lest the honour of your mother should suffer. Now, and only now, has the entire truth been disclosed to me. I did not suspect it, no, not when you were christened and given the name you bear. I thought it was a compliment paid through a fancy of your mother’s to the family in which she had lived, that was all. A little flickering suspicion may have been aroused afterwards, when his lordship, to save you from consumption, sent you abroad; but I put it angrily from me as unworthy of being harboured. I had no real grounds for suspicion; since then it has come up in my heart again and again, and I have stamped down the hateful thought with a kind of rage and shame at myself for thinking it. Only to-night has the whole story been told me, and I find that your mother was not to blame—that no real dishonour stains her—that all the fault, all the guilt, lies on and blackens—blackens and degrades his soul!”
“I did not mean to say—that is, I did not wish—” began Mrs. Saltren in a weeping, expostulating tone.
“Marianne, say nothing,” Captain Saltren turned to her. “It is not for you to justify yourself to your child. The story shall be told him by me. I will spare you the pain and shame.”
“But, mother,” said Jingles, shutting the door behind him and leaning his back against it, “I must be told the whole truth. I must have it at least confirmed by your lips.”
“My dear,”—Mrs. Saltren’s voice shook—“I would not make mischief, for the world. I hate above everything the mischief-makers. If there be one kind of people I abhor it is those who make mischief; and I am, thank heaven, not one of such.”
“Quite so,” said her son, gravely; “but I must know what I have to believe, for I must act on it.”
“Oh, my dear, do nothing! Let it remain, if you love me, just as if it had never been told. I should die of shame were it to come out.”
“It shall not come out,” said Giles; “but I must know from your lips, mother, whether I am—I cannot say it. My happiness, my future depend on my knowledge of what my real parentage is. You can understand that?”