“Well, I don’t think it’s wise for you to see it all,” replied Mr. Carlaw. “But he sends a message to you which will probably explain matters more clearly than I could do.” He turned to the letter and presently came upon the passage he wanted. “Ah, here we are. ‘Tell her that I think, under all the circumstances, she will have no great cause to regret me. It is a question which has been discussed on many occasions, and as regards the solution of which I am still in doubt: Whether men of genius should marry? It is, perhaps, a little late in the day to raise the point; but my duty to a world which demands of me my best compels me to gain experience of both sides of every question. I have tried the one with no very definite success, and as I hold that ordinary laws and rules do not govern the man who is beyond all laws, so I feel that I have a perfect right to take my life again into my own hands and to shape it anew. You may tell her, if you think it necessary, that I leave her as free, from my point of view, to contract any other alliance as I shall feel on my part. In a word, I’—I don’t think, on the whole,” added Mr. Carlaw, folding up the letter, “that it is necessary for you to hear any more.”
The face she turned to him almost frightened him; the change in it in the past few minutes was pitiful. “Then there is something else?” she asked. “Haven’t I the right to know that also?”
Mr. Robert Carlaw shrugged his shoulders. “As you will,” he said. “To put it in a few words, my son Brian, with that irresponsibility which has ever characterized him, and which I believe characterizes most men of brilliant parts, has taken this sudden journey—well, not unaccompanied. Do you follow me?”
She nodded and her lips moved, although no sound came from them.
“I felt you would,” responded Mr. Carlaw. “You see, the lady—for she is a lady, in that sense—has long cherished a great admiration for him and for his work; she is extremely wealthy and I am not——”
He stopped suddenly and made a step toward her, for she had cried out and had closed her eyes and had swayed blindly toward a chair. But she waved him off as he came near her, and sat down quietly, staring straight in front of her.
“You see, the question remains,” went on Mr. Robert Carlaw airily, “what are we to do? Personally, I am a Bohemian, a wanderer—some might even say a wastrel; a cup of water and a crust will suffice for me, and I am happy. Frankly, I prefer wine and well-cooked dishes, but in an emergency the simpler fare will do for me. But to be reduced, as we are now, to beggary in a moment—well, it’s trying to a man’s nerves.”
“Are we reduced to beggary?” she asked in a low voice, and in a tone which suggested that that was the smallest part of the matter.
“Of course we are; but for that we should probably still have my erring son among us. The money being gone, and the source from which it was derived gone also, my poor boy lost his head. You see, it has been a maxim of mine throughout life to walk in the softest and shadiest places in search of the brightest flowers, and I rather fear that my poor son has caught the trick of the business from me. Finding that the sun has gone out in one quarter, he naturally turns to another where it is still shining, and where fresh flowers nod to him in a new breeze, as it were. Really, I suppose we ought not to blame him.”
“And he has left—left me nothing in the world?” she asked. “Not that that matters in the least; but I don’t quite understand what you mean.”