Authors: Rafael Sabatini
Rotherby drew away again, his head sunk on his breast. Her ladyship was seated, her eyes upon her son, her fingers drumming absently at the arms of her chair. Then Rotherby swung round
again.
"How do I know that you are the person designated there—this Justin Caryll?"
"You do not; but you may. Cast your mind back to that night at White's when you picked your quarrel with me, my lord. Do you remember how Stapleton and Collis spoke up for me, declared that they
had known me from boyhood at Oxford, and had visited me at my château in France? What was the name of that château, my lord—do you remember?"
Rotherby looked at him, searching his memory. But he did not need to search far. At first glance the name of Maligny had seemed familiar to him. "It was Maligny," he replied, "and
yet——"
"If more is needed to convince you, I can bring a hundred witnesses from France, who have known me from infancy. You may take it that I can establish my identity beyond all doubt."
"And what if you do?" demanded her ladyship suddenly. "What if you do establish your identity as my lord's bastard? What claim shall that be upon us?"
"That, ma'am," answered Mr. Caryll very gravely, "I wait to learn from my brother here."
CHAPTER XXI
THE LION'S SKIN
FOR a spell there was utter silence in that spacious, pillared chamber. Mr. Caryll and her ladyship had both resumed their chairs: the former spuriously calm; the latter making
no attempt to conceal her agitation. Hortensia leant forward, an eager spectator, watching the three actors in this tragi-comedy.
As for Rotherby, he stood with bent head and furrowed brow. It was for him to speak, and yet he was utterly at a loss for words. He was not moved at the news he had received, so much as
dismayed. It dictated a course that would interfere with all his plans, and therefore a course unthinkable. So he remained puzzled how to act, how to deal with this unexpected situation.
It was her ladyship who was the first to break the silence. She had been considering Mr. Caryll through narrowing eyes, the corners of her mouth drawn down. She had caught the name of Maligny
when it was uttered, and out of the knowledge which happened to be hers—though Mr. Caryll was ignorant of this—it set her thinking.
"I do not believe that you are the son of Mademoiselle de Maligny," she said at last. "I never heard that my lord had a son; I cannot believe there was so much between them."
Mr. Caryll stared, startled out of his habitual calm. Rotherby turned to her with an exclamation of surprise. "How?" he cried. "You knew, then? My father was——"
She laughed mirthlessly. "Your father would have married her had he dared," she informed them. "'Twas to beg his father's consent that he braved his banishment and came to England. But his
father was as headstrong as himself; held just such views as he, himself, held later where you were concerned. He would not hear of the match. I was to be had for the asking. My father was a man
who traded in his children, and he had offered me, with a jointure that was a fortune, to the Earl of Ostermore as a wife for his son."
Mr. Caryll was listening, all ears. Some light was being shed upon much that had lain in darkness.
"And so," she proceeded, "your grandfather constrained your father to forget the woman he had left in France, and to marry me. I know not what sins I had committed that I should have been
visited with such a punishment. But so it befell. Your father resisted, dallying with the matter for a whole year. Then there was a duel fought. A cousin of Mademoiselle de Maligny's crossed to
England, and forced a quarrel upon your father. They met, and M. de Maligny was killed. Then a change set in in my lord's bearing, and one day, a month or so later, he gave way to his father's
insistence, and we were wed. But I do not believe that my lord had left a son in France—I do not believe that had he done so, I should not have known it; I do not believe that under such
circumstances, unfeeling as he was, he would have abandoned Mademoiselle de Maligny."
"You think, then," said Rotherby, "that this man has raked up this story to——"
"Consider what you are saying," cut in Mr. Caryll, with a flash of scorn. "Should I have come prepared with documents against such a happening as this?"
"Nay, but the documents might have been intended for some other purpose had my lord lived—some purpose of extortion," suggested her ladyship.
"But consider again, madam, that I am wealthy—far wealthier than was ever my Lord Ostermore, as my friends Collis, Stapleton and many another can be called to prove. What need, then, had I
to extort?"
"How came you by your means, being what you say you are?" she asked him.
Briefly he told her how Sir Richard Everard had cared for him, for his mother's sake; endowed him richly upon adopting him, and since made him heir to all his wealth, which was considerable.
"And for the rest, madam, and you, Rotherby, set doubts on one side. Your ladyship says that had my lord had a son you must have heard of it. But my lord, madam, never knew he had a son. Tell
me—can you recall the date, the month at least, in which my lord returned to England?"
"I can, sir. It was at the end of April of '89. What then?"
Mr. Caryll produced the certificate again. He beckoned Rotherby, and held the paper under his eyes. "What date is there—the date of birth?"
Rotherby read: "The third of January of 1690."
Mr. Caryll folded the paper again. "That will help your ladyship to understand how it might happen that my lord remained in ignorance of my birth." He sighed as he replaced the case in his
pocket. "I would he had known before he died," said he, almost as if speaking to himself.
And now her ladyship lost her temper. She saw Rotherby wavering, and it angered her; and angered, she committed a grave error. Wisdom lay in maintaining the attitude of repudiation; it would at
least have afforded some excuse for her and Rotherby. Instead, she now recklessly flung off that armor, and went naked down into the fray.
"A fig for't all!" she cried, and snapped her fingers. She had risen, and she towered there, a lean and malevolent figure, her head-dress nodding foolishly. "What does it matter that you be what
you claim to be? Is it to weigh with you, Rotherby?"
Rotherby turned grave eyes upon her. He was, it seemed, not quite rotten through and through; there was still in him—in the depths of him—a core that was in a measure sound; and that
core was reached. Most of all had the story weighed with him because it afforded the only explanation of why Mr. Caryll had spared his life that morning of the duel. It was a matter that had
puzzled him, as it had puzzled all who had witnessed the affront that led to the encounter.
Between that and the rest—to say nothing of the certificate he had seen, which he could not suppose a forgery—he was convinced that Mr. Caryll was the brother that he claimed to be.
He gathered from his mother's sudden anger that she, too, was convinced, in spite of herself, by the answers Mr. Caryll had returned to all her arguments against the identity he claimed.
He hated Mr. Caryll no whit less for what he had learnt; if anything, he hated him more. And yet a sense of decency forbade him from persecuting him now, as he had intended, and delivering to
the hangman. From ordinary murder, once in the heat of passion—as we have seen—he had not shrunk. But fratricide appeared—such is the effect of education—a far, far graver
thing, even though it should be indirect fratricide of the sort that he had contemplated before learning that this man was his brother.
There seemed to be one of two only courses left him: to provide Mr. Caryll with the means of escape, or else to withhold such evidence as he intended to supply against him, and to
persuade—to compel, if necessary—his mother to do the same. When all was said, his interests need not suffer very greatly. His position would not be quite so strong, perhaps, if he but
betrayed a plot without delivering up any of the plotters; still, he thought, it should be strong enough. His father dead, out of consideration of the signal loyalty his act must manifest, he
thought the government would prove grateful and forbear from prosecuting a claim for restitution against the Ostermore estates.
He had, then, all but resolved upon the cleaner course, when, suddenly, something that in the stress of the moment he had gone near to overlooking, was urged upon his attention.
Hortensia had risen and had started forward at her ladyship's last words. She stood before his lordship now with pleading eyes, and hands held out. "My lord," she cried, "you cannot do this
thing! You cannot do it!"
But instead of moving him to generosity, by those very words she steeled his heart against it, and proved to him that, after all, his potentialities for evil were strong enough to enable him to
do the very thing she said he could not. His brow grew black as midnight; his dark eyes raked her face, and saw the agony of apprehension for her lover written there. He drew breath, hissing and
audible, glanced once at Caryll; then: "A moment!" said he.
He strode to the door and called the footmen, then turned again.
"Mr. Caryll," he said in a formal voice, "will you give yourself the trouble of waiting in the ante-room? I need to consider upon this matter."
Mr. Caryll, conceiving that it was with his mother that Rotherby intended to consider, rose instantly. "I would remind you, Rotherby, that time is pressing," said he.
"I shall not keep you long," was Rotherby's cold reply, and Mr. Caryll went out.
"What now, Charles?" asked his mother. "Is this child to remain?"
"It is the child that is to remain," said his lordship. "Will your ladyship do me the honor, too, of waiting in the ante-room?" and he held the door for her.
"What folly are you considering?" she asked.
"Your ladyship is wasting time, and time, as Mr. Caryll has said, is pressing."
She crossed to the door, controlled almost despite herself by the calm air of purpose that was investing him. "You are not thinking of——"
"You shall learn very soon of what I am thinking, ma'am. I beg that you will give us leave."
She paused almost upon the threshold. "If you do a rashness, here, remember that I can still act without you," she reminded him. "You may choose to believe that that man is your brother, and so,
out of that, and"—she added with a cruel sneer at Hortensia—"other considerations, you may elect to let him go. But remember that you still have me to reckon with. Whether he prove of
your blood or not, he cannot prove himself of mine—thank God!"
His lordship bowed in silence, preserving an unmoved countenance, whereupon she cursed him for a fool, and passed out. He closed the door, and turned the key, Hortensia watching him in a sort of
horror. "Let me go!" she found voice to cry at last, and advanced towards the door herself. But Rotherby came to meet her, his face white, his eyes glowing. She fell away before his opening arms,
and he stood still, mastering himself.
"That man," he said, jerking a backward thumb at the closed door, "lives or dies, goes free or hangs, as you shall decide, Hortensia."
She looked at him, her face haggard, her heart beating high in her throat as if to suffocate her. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"You love him!" he growled. "Pah! I see it in your eyes—in your tremors—that you do. It is for him that you are afraid, is't not?"
"Why do you mock me with it?" she inquired with dignity.
"I do not mock you, Hortensia. Answer me! Is it true that you love him?"
"It is true," she answered steadily. "What is't to you?"
"Everything!" he answered hotly. "Everything! It is Heaven and Hell to me. Ten days ago, Hortensia, I asked you to marry me——"
"No more," she begged him, an arm thrown out to stay him.
"But there is more," he answered, advancing again. "This time I can make the offer more attractive. Marry me, and Caryll is not only free to depart, but no evidence shall be laid against him. I
swear it! Refuse me, and he hangs as surely—as surely as you and I talk together here this moment."
Cold eyes scathed him with contempt. "God!" she cried. "What manner of monster are you, my lord? To speak so—to speak of marriage to me, and to speak of hanging a man who is son to that
same father of yours who lies above stairs, not yet turned cold. Are you human at all?"
"Ay—and in nothing so human as in my love for you, Hortensia."
She put her hands to her face. "Give me patience!" she prayed. "The insult of it after what has passed! Let me go, sir; open that door, and let me go."
He stood regarding her a moment, with lowering brows. Then he turned, and went slowly to the door. "He dies, remember!" said he, and the words, the sinister tone and the sinister look that was
stamped upon his face, shattered her spirit as at a blow.
"No, no!" she faltered, and advanced a step or two. "Oh, have pity!"
"When you show me pity," he answered.
She was beaten. "You—you swear to let him go—to see him safely out of England—if—if I consent?"
His eyes blazed. He came back swiftly, and she stood, a frozen thing, passively awaiting him; a frozen thing, she let him take her in his arms, yielding herself in horrific surrender.
He held her close a moment, the blood surging to his face, and glowing darkly through the swarthy skin. "Have I conquered, then?" he cried. "You'll marry me, Hortensia?"
"At that price," she answered piteously, "at that price."
"Shalt find me a gentle, loving husband, ever. I swear it before Heaven!" he vowed, the ardor of his passion softening his nature, as steel is softened in the fire.
"Then be it so," she said, and her tone was less cold, for she began to glow, as it were, with the ardor of the sacrifice that she was making—began to experience the exalted ecstasy of
martyrdom. "Save him, and you shall find me ever a dutiful wife to you, my lord—a dutiful wife."
"And loving?" he demanded greedily.
"Even that. I promise it," she answered.
With a hoarse cry, he stooped to kiss her; then, with an oath, he checked, and flung her from him so violently that she hurtled to a chair and sank to it, overbalanced. "No," he roared, like a
mad thing now. "Hell and damnation—no!"