Chapter 10 The Lion's Skin by Rafael Sabatini
SPURS TO THE RELUCTANT
Before Mr. Caryll left White's—which he did at a comparatively early hour, that he might be at home to receive Lord Rotherby's friends—not a man present but had offered him his services in the affair he had upon his hands. Wharton, indeed, was not to be denied for one; and for the other Mr. Caryll desired Gascoigne to do him the honor of representing him.
It was a fine, dry night, and feeling the need for exercise, Mr. Caryll set out to walk the short distance from St. James's Street to his lodging, with a link-boy, preceding him, for only attendant. Arrived home, he was met by Leduc with the information that Sir Richard Everard was awaiting him. He went in, and the next moment he was in the arms of his adoptive father.
Greetings and minor courtesies disposed of, Sir Richard came straight to the affair which he had at heart. “Well? How speeds the matter?”
Mr. Caryll's face became overcast. He sat down, a thought wearily.
“So far as Lord Ostermore is concerned, it speeds—as you would wish it. So far as I am concerned”—he paused and sighed—“I would that it sped not at all, or that I was out of it.”
Sir Richard looked at him with searching eyes. “How?” he asked. “What would you have me understand?”
“That in spite of all that has been said between us, in spite of all the arguments you have employed, and with which once, for a little while, you convinced me, this task is loathsome to me in the last degree. Ostermore is my father, and I can't forget it.”
“And your mother?” Sir Richard's tone was sad, rather than indignant; it spoke of a bitter disappointment, not at the events, but at this man whom he loved with all a father's love.
“It were idle to go over it all again. I know everything that you would—that you could—say. I have said it all to myself again and again, in a vain endeavor to steel myself to the business to which you plighted me. Had Ostermore been different, perhaps it had been easier. I cannot say. As it is, I see in him a weakling, a man of inferior intellect, who does not judge things as you and I judge them, whose life cannot have been guided by the rules that serve for men of stronger purpose.”
“You find excuses for him? For his deed?” cried Sir Richard, and his voice was full of horror now; he stared askance at his adoptive son.
“No, no! Oh, I don't know. On my soul and conscience, I don't know!” cried Mr. Caryll, like one in pain. He rose and moved restlessly about the room. “No,” he pursued more calmly, “I don't excuse him. I blame him—more bitterly than you can think; perhaps more bitterly even than do you, for I have had a look into his mind and see the exact place held there by my mother's memory. I can judge and condemn him; but I can't execute him; I can't betray him. I don't think I could do it even if he were not my father.”
He paused, and leaning his hands upon the table at which Sir Richard sat, he faced him, and spoke in a voice of earnest pleading. “Sir Richard, this was not the task to give me; or, if you had planned to give it me, you should have reared me differently; you should not have sought to make of me a gentleman. You have brought me up to principles of honor, and you ask me now to outrage them, to cast them off, and to become a very Judas. Is't wonderful I should rebel?”
They were hurtful words to Sir Richard—the poor fanatic whose mind was all unsound on this one point, who had lived in contemplation of his vengeance as a fasting monk lives through Lent in contemplation of the Easter plenty. The lines of sorrow deepened in his face.
“Justin,” he said slowly, “you forget one thing. Honor is to be used with men of honor; but he who allows his honor to stand a barrier between himself and the man who has wronged him by dishonor, is no better than a fool. You speak of yourself; you think of yourself. And what of me, Justin? The things you say of yourself apply in a like degree—nay, even more—to me.”
“Ah, but you are not his son. Oh, believe me, I speak not hastily or lightly. I have been torn this way and that in these past days, until at moments the burden has been heavier than I could bear. Once, for a little while, I thought I could do all and more than you expect of me—the moment, indeed, in which I took the first step, and delivered him the letter. But it was a moment of wild heat. I cooled, and reflection followed, and since then, because so much was done, I have not known an instant's peace of mind; I have endeavored to forget the position in which I am placed; but I have failed. I cannot. And if I go through with this thing, I shall not know another hour in life that is not poisoned by remorse.”
“Remorse?” echoed Sir Richard, between consternation and anger. “Remorse?” He laughed bitterly. “What ails thee, boy? Do you pretend that Lord Ostermore should go unpunished? Do you go so far as that?”
“Not so. He has made others suffer, and it is just—as we understand justice—that he should suffer in his turn. Though, when all is said, he is but a poor egotist, too dull-witted to understand the full vileness of his sin. He is suffering, as it is—cursed in his son; for 'the father of a fool hath no joy.' He hates this son of his, and his son despises him. His wife is a shrew, a termagant, who embitters every hour of his existence. Thus he drags out his life, unloving and unloved, a thing to evoke pity.”
“Pity?” cried Sir Richard in a voice of thunder. “Pity? Ha! As I've a soul, Justin, he shall be more pitiful yet ere I have done with him.”
“Be it so, then. But—if you love me—find some other hand to do the work.”
“If I love you, Justin?” echoed the other, and his voice softened, his eyes looked reproachfully upon his adoptive child. “Needs there an 'if' to that? Are you not all I have—my son, indeed?”
He held out his hands, and Justin took them affectionately and pressed them in his own.
“You'll put these weak notions from your mind, Justin, and prove worthy the noble lady who was your mother?”
Mr. Caryll moved aside again, hanging his head, his face pale and troubled. Where Everard's arguments must fail, his own affection for Everard was like to conquer him. It was very weak in him, he told himself; but then his love for Everard was strong, and he would fain spare Everard the pain he knew he must be occasioning him. Still he did battle, his repugnance up in arms.
“I would you could see the matter as I see it,” he sighed. “This man grown old, and reaping in his old age the fruits of the egotism he has sown. I do not believe that in all the world there is a single soul would weep his lordship's death—if we except, perhaps, Mistress Winthrop.”
“And do you pity him for that?” quoth Sir Richard coldly. “What right has he to expect aught else? Who sows for himself, reaps for himself. I marvel, indeed, that there should be even one to bewail him—to spare him a kind thought.”
“And even there,” mused Mr. Caryll, “it is perhaps gratitude rather than affection that inspires the kindness.”
“Who is Mistress Winthrop?”
“His ward. As sweet a lady, I think, as I have ever seen,” said Mr. Caryll, incautious enthusiasm assailing him. Sir Richard's eyes narrowed.
“You have some acquaintance with her?” he suggested.
Very briefly Mr. Caryll sketched for the second time that evening the circumstances of his first meeting with Rotherby.
Sir Richard nodded sardonically. “Hum! He is his father's son, not a doubt of that. 'Twill be a most worthy successor to my Lord Ostermore. But the lady? Tell me of the lady. How comes she linked with them?”
“I scarce know, save from the scraps that I have heard. Her father, it would seem, was Ostermore's friend, and, dying, he appointed Ostermore her guardian. Her fortune, I take it, is very slender. Nevertheless, Ostermore, whatever he may have done by other people, appears in this case to have discharged his trust with zeal and with affection. But, indeed, who could have done other where that sweet lady was concerned? You should see her, Sir Richard!” He was pacing the room now as he spoke, and as he spoke he warmed to his subject more and more. “She is middling tall, of a most dainty slenderness, dark-haired, with a so sweet and saintly beauty of face that it must be seen to be believed. And eyes—Lord! the glory of her eyes! They are eyes that would lead a man into hell and make him believe it heaven,
“'Love doth to her eyes repair
To help him of his blindness.'”
Sir Richard watched him, displeasure growing in his face. “So!” he said at last. “Is that the reason?”
“The reason of what?” quoth Mr. Caryll, recalled from his sweet rapture.
“The reason of these fresh qualms of yours. The reason of all this sympathy for Ostermore; this unwillingness to perform the sacred duty that is yours.”
“Nay—on my soul, you do me wrong!” cried Mr. Caryll indignantly. “If aught had been needed to spur me on, it had been my meeting with this lady. It needed that to make me realize to the bitter full the wrong my Lord Ostermore has done me in getting me; to make me realize that I am a man without a name to offer any woman.”
But Sir Richard, watching him intently, shook his head and fetched a sigh of sorrow and disdain. “Pshaw, Justin! How we befool ourselves! You think it is not so; you try to think it is not so; but to me it is very plain. A woman has arisen in your life, and this woman, seen but once or twice, unknown a week or so ago, suffices to eclipse the memory of your mother and turns your aim in life—the avenging of her bitter wrongs—to water. Oh, Justin, Justin! I had thought you stronger.”
“Your conclusions are all wrong. I swear they are wrong!”
Sir Richard considered him sombrely. “Are you sure—quite, quite sure?”
Mr. Caryll's eyes fell, as the doubt now entered his mind for the first time that it might be indeed as Sir Richard was suggesting. He was not quite sure.
“Prove it to me, Justin,” Everard pleaded. “Prove it by abandoning this weakness where my Lord Ostermore is concerned. Remember only the wrong he has done. You are the incarnation of that wrong, and by your hand must he be destroyed.” He rose, and caught the younger man's hands again in his own, forced Mr. Caryll to confront him. “He shall know when the time comes whose hand it was that pulled him down; he shall know the Nemesis that has lain in wait for him these thirty years to smite him at the end. And he shall taste hell in this world before he goes to it in the next. It is God's own justice, boy! Will you be false to the duty that lies before you? Will you forget your mother and her sufferings because you have looked into the eyes of this girl, who—”
“No, no! Say no more!” cried Mr. Caryll, his voice trembling.
“You will do it,” said Sir Richard, between question and assertion.
“If Heaven lends me strength of purpose. But it asks much,” was the gloomy answer. “I am to see Lord Ostermore to-morrow to obtain his answer to King James' letter.”
Sir Richard's eyes gleamed. He released the other's hands, and turned slowly to his chair again. “It is well,” he said slowly. “The thing asks dispatch, or else some of his majesty's real friends may be involved.”
He proceeded to explain his words. “I have talked in vain with Atterbury. He will not abandon the enterprise even at King James' commands. He urges that his majesty can have no conception of how the matter is advanced; that he has been laboring like Hercules, and that the party is being swelled by men of weight and substance every day; that it is too late to go back, and that he will go forward with the king's consent or without it. Should he or his agents approach Ostermore, in the meantime, it will be too late for us to take such measures as we have concerted. For to deliver up Ostermore then would entail the betrayal of others, which is not to be dreamt of. So you'll use dispatch.”
“If I do the thing at all, it shall be done to-morrow,” answered Mr. Caryll.
“If at all?” cried Sir Richard, frowning again. “If at all?”
Caryll turned to him. He crossed to the table, and leaning across it, until his face was quite close to his adoptive father's. “Sir Richard,” he begged, “let us say no more to-night. My will is all to do the thing. It is my—my instincts that rebel. I think that the day will be carried by my will. I shall strive to that end, believe me. But let us say no more now.”
Sir Richard, looking deep into Mr. Caryll's eyes, was touched by something that he saw. “My poor Justin!” he said gently. Then, checking the sympathy as swiftly as it rose: “So be it, then,” he said briskly. “You'll come to me to-morrow after you have seen his lordship?”
“Will you not remain here?”
“You have not the room. Besides, Sir Richard Everard—is too well known for a Jacobite to be observed sharing your lodging. I have no right at all in England, and there is always the chance of my being discovered. I would not pull you down with me. I am lodged at the corner of Maiden Lane, next door to the sign of Golden Flitch. Come to me there to-morrow after you have seen Lord Ostermore.” He hesitated a moment. He was impelled to recapitulate his injunctions; but he forbore. He put out his hand abruptly. “Good-night, Justin.”
Justin took the hand and pressed it. The door opened, and Leduc entered.
“Captain Mainwaring and Mr. Falgate are here, sir, and would speak with you,” he announced.
Mr. Caryll knit his brows a moment. His acquaintance with both men was of the slightest, and it was only upon reflection that he bethought him they would, no doubt, be come in the matter of his affair with Rotherby, which in the stress of his interview with Sir Richard had been quite forgotten. He nodded.
“Wait upon Sir Richard to the door, Leduc,” he bade his man. “Then introduce these gentlemen.”
Sir Richard had drawn back a step. “I trust neither of these gentlemen knows me,” he said. “I would not be seen here by any that did. It might compromise you.”
But Mr. Caryll belittled Sir Richard's fears. “Pooh! 'Tis very unlike,” said he; whereupon Sir Richard, seeing no help for it, went out quickly, Leduc in attendance.
Lord Rotherby's friends in the ante-room paid little heed to him as he passed briskly through. Surveillance came rather from an entirely unsuspected quarter. As he left the house and crossed the square, a figure detached itself from the shadow of the wall, and set out to follow. It hung in his rear through the filthy, labyrinthine streets which Sir Richard took to Charing Cross, followed him along the Strand and up Bedford Street, and took note of the house he entered at the corner of Maiden Lane.