The Sleeping Fury (20 page)

Lord Mardale received Eric's letter next day by the midday post. Carson brought it to him, among others, in his study. It was the only one among them which appeared to be a personal letter, and Lord Mardale dealt with the others first. Then he took up Eric's. He tore it open, and, not knowing the clear, neat handwriting, turned the page and glanced at the signature. Then he began to read it through. As he read, his face contracted with pain, and, having come to the end, he laid the letter down and sat gazing unseeingly in front of him. Then he took it up and read it slowly through again.

His first thought was for Sylvia. What a cruel thing this was for her, for it was out of the question now that she should marry Eric. The thought of suddenly destroying her happiness appalled him. And how terribly upset Charlotte would be too. The fresh eagerness of the love of these two young people had touched him and Charlotte deeply. They had felt as if life at Haughton had blossomed all at once into a new spring, and now this dreadful secret had raised its head and the spring had withered. And what a terrible thing for the boy, and such a very nice boy too. From the first Alfred had liked him; in his charming openness and simplicity he had recognised a rare goodness of heart. How typical of him it was now to write at
once and confess this terrible secret, knowing, as he must know, poor boy, that by doing so he was ruining his hopes of Sylvia. And not only had he lost Sylvia, but he had suddenly found himself branded with this slur, and all utterly undeserved. This, with a vengeance, was visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children. He must go to the boy at once. He would run up to London by the afternoon train and send him a wire to meet him. How horribly painful it would be! But he could not write; he must talk to him, assure him, face to face, of his sympathy and his deep regret. He rose to his feet. He must show the letter to Charlotte and arrange about going up to London. For the moment they would say nothing to Sylvia. Charlotte would break it to the poor child when she thought best.

• • • • • • • •

Eric, on his return from the office, found Lord Mardale's telegram giving the name of a London hotel and asking him to meet him there that evening. Did that mean that Lord Mardale had got his letter or not? He had said nothing to Eric on the previous day about coming to London; and yet, would there have been time for him to receive the letter and arrive in London already? And would he have troubled to come expressly because of the letter? And if he had, what did that imply?

Eric's mind wearied itself out with these troubled conjectures. At last he gave up thinking and went out. It would be more endurable to walk than to sit still until the hour of his appointment. He walked along the western edge of Regent's Park, where the
sedate classic terraces look out upon the canal and lawns and the trees among whose bare branches now the blue winter twilight was beginning to curdle. Then, leaving the Park behind, he crossed the Marylebone Road and continued his walk down the whole length of Baker Street.

When the appointed hour came, and he enquired for Lord Mardale at his hotel, he was taken at once to a private sitting-room.

Lord Mardale was sitting idle by the fire. A closed book lay on a table near the window; but for that, the room was bare of everything but the hotel furniture. Lord Mardale stood up as Eric was shown in, and took him by the hand.

“My boy,” he said, “your letter arrived by the midday post; it just gave me time to catch the afternoon train. I couldn't write to you; letters are such crude things. I felt I must say to you what I have to say. And yet, Eric, it's terribly hard to say. I can't tell you how I appreciate your writing to me at once as you did, when you must have realised what the result, the inavoidable result, would be. That was very generous of you. You do realise, don't you, my dear boy …”

Lord Mardale paused, overcome by the painful-ness of what he had to say.

“That I can never marry Sylvia, sir? Yes, I … I supposed it would be … out of the question. I quite see it.” His lip trembled as he spoke.

“Life plays strange tricks sometimes, Eric. It is hard, very hard, at such times as these, to believe that life is good, and that in some indescribable way this thing that has happened must be for our
good. Yet I believe it must be so, and I hope you try to do so too.”

Eric hung his head. “Yes, sir,” he said, almost in a whisper. His voice, and the sight of his despair, wrung Alfred's heart. His youth and beauty seemed made, by the very law of nature, for happiness and love, and in Alfred's ears, his own attempts to comfort him sounded the emptiest pedantry. But what else could he do? His heart urged him to try to express the deep sympathy he felt, and to show Eric that his feelings towards him were entirely unaltered.

“Don't imagine, Eric,” he went on, “that we have changed towards you. We haven't. But, if I were to consent to your marrying Sylvia, I should be countenancing the breaking of God's law, even though you are quite blameless. It would be contrary to my faith, Eric, and my conception of what is right, and for that reason I believe it would be bad for Sylvia. So I ask you—and I know it is a very hard thing to ask—to help me by not trying to hold on to Sylvia. Will you?”

“Yes, sir, I will. But you'll let her know, won't you, that … that … You see, I couldn't bear her to think I had changed.”

“No, she shall not think that, Eric. In fact, if you both wish, you shall meet and talk once again. After that, it would be better, perhaps, not to see each other for some time. If you do, it will only make it more difficult, I'm afraid. Later, when you have both got over it, you will be able to meet again as usual, I hope. Meanwhile, don't forget that Lady Mardale and I are your friends. We shall want to meet you when we can. You will come and see me,
won't you, when I come up to London, as I do from time to time?”

“You're very kind, sir. And now I think I'd better go.” He held out his hand, and Lord Mardale shook it in silence. Neither could trust himself to speak, and Eric went to the door and disappeared without another word.

Alfred dropped back into his chair. He had had no doubts of the rightness of what he had done, but he felt as if he had condemned to exile a good and innocent young man.

John Pennington received a letter, not a telegram, from Eric, telling him of the Mardales' favourable reception of his proposal to Sylvia, and, immediately after it another, telling him very briefly that all was off, and giving no reason. “I will tell you when we can talk about it,” was all he said; and John, full of sympathy, at once set off for London and telegraphed to Eric to dine with him at his club.

Eric's appearance, when he arrived, shocked John, but he said nothing.

“How glad I am to see you, John,” he said, and it seemed to John that even his voice was changed.

“Did you come specially?”

“Of course I did, my dear chap.”

“It's awfully good of you.”

“Nonsense. Is it likely I should have sat at home twiddling my thumbs? Come, you must first have a drink. What is it to be? Cocktail? Gin and bitters? Sherry? I think you ought to have a large brown sherry; it's more of a tonic than any of the others.”

Eric, as if relieved that John had saved him the trouble of choice, said he would have a sherry.

“When we've finished our drinks,” said John, “I'll take you to a room that's generally empty, where we can talk undisturbed.”

They sat sipping the sherry, John full of a sympathy that he could not express. “That will do you
good,” he said, watching Eric drink. “I have read somewhere that sherry has twice the vinosity of any other wine.”

“And what exactly does that mean?” asked Eric.

“I haven't an idea; but it sounds convincing, doesn't it? Ever since I learned it I've regarded sherry with a greater respect.”

To John's relief, Eric laughed. They finished their sherries simultaneously, and John took Eric upstairs to a room labelled “Small Writing-Room.”

The room, as they had hoped, was empty, and there was a bright fire. Near it was a sofa, into which they settled themselves.

“So they changed their minds, Eric?” said John, to save him any difficulty he might have in starting.

“Yes, but they had a perfectly good reason, John, and they were as nice as they could be about it. You see, on the very evening I got back here my mother told me something … that … well, that was bound to spoil everything. She told me that I am the illegitimate son of herself and Sir John Danver.”

His eyes were fixed on John's face as he spoke. What he read there, to his great relief, was mere concern; there was not the smallest sign that John was shocked.

“My dear chap,” he said, ” and you felt it your duty …?”

“Of course; to write at once and tell Lord Mardale.”

“Yes,” said John, “I suppose it was.” He considered the case for a moment; then his lip curled. “And he didn't feel it his duty, apparently,
to show you the same generosity as you had shown him?”

“He was as generous as he could be, John. He came straight up to town to see me the moment he got my letter. No one could have shown greater kindness.”

“Except by shaking off a rotten prejudice and taking the trouble to be really honest.”

“Honest? But he was honest. He told me frankly what he felt. He feels, you see, that to let me marry Sylvia would be to … to condone adultery.”

“Yes, that's what I call dishonesty. Does he refuse the Duke's invitations and forbid the Duchess the house when she calls at Haughton? Not he. And yet he knows jolly well that the Duke can trace his descent only too directly from a bastard daughter of Charles the Second.”

“But he doesn't forbid
me
the house, either. He told me he hoped that when Sylvia and I had recovered, as he said, that I would go and see them often.”

“Then he's merely inconsistent. He doesn't know what he really thinks. But to return to the Duke for a moment; if Ilderston (he's the eldest son, you know) proposed to Sylvia, and she accepted him, would Lord and Lady Mardale refuse their consent? Not likely. They would jump at him.”

“Isn't that a little different, John?”

“Not in the least. Once you extend your disapproval beyond the adulterers themselves, to their descendants, you can make no distinctions. To plead lapse of time—three centuries, or whatever it is—is nothing but a contemptible subterfuge, and
to admit considerations of rank is to defy Christianity. In fact, I don't see that, as an honest man and a priest of the Church, he has a leg to stand on. I've always cherished the belief, as I told you, that Lord Mardale was a genuinely good man; but I was wrong. The peerage and the Church together are too much for his goodness. As for Lady Mardale, she, of course, would be a fearful stickler for the conventions. I like and admire her, as you know; but she's desperately cold and proud—one can see that. She, of course, will have been all out for the family dignity; she's not the daughter of that hardbitten old harridan, Lady Hadlow, for nothing. The noble blood of the Halnakers must be kept untainted at all costs—that's the slogan, I expect.”

“Well, and don't you think, John, that there's something to be said for it—for family dignity and blue blood, I mean?”

“Nothing whatever. It's an anachronism, Eric. These old ideals, fine in their day, are as dead as mutton. Look at the Rodmells. Lord Rodmell's mother is the daughter of a Yankee muck-merchant. If she hadn't been, they would have had to sell Rodmell Castle. The Combermeres made enough money to buy a viscounty out of some sort of stomach-ache pill that was sold at a four thousand per cent. profit. The only nobility nowadays, Eric, is personal nobility. Not blood, but mind.”

John's views, and the angry conviction with which he spoke, were very consoling to Eric, however he might try to dispute them. Though it neither made the case of himself and Sylvia more hopeful, nor altered his own feelings about the Mardales' refusal,
it cheered him to hear his good name so energetically vindicated. But he was not yet quite free from doubts.

“Then tell me this, John,” he said, studying his friend's face once more as he asked the question, “would you be quite undisturbed if you were told that you were, to put it flatly, a bastard?”

“If we allow ourselves to be frightened by ugly words, Eric, we can never even begin to be honest. Mankind has the curious and comical habit of constructing scarecrows and then running from them in terror.”

“But you haven't answered my question, John.”

Eric still scanned his friend's face. John thought for a moment.

“Yes, Eric,” he said at last, “I should be disturbed, but not because I believed in the scarecrow. I should be disturbed because I knew that so many other people believed in it.”

“Yes, that's it,” said Eric. “Many of my friends, if they knew, would be ashamed of me, and perhaps want to drop me.”

“Then I should let them drop me and be damned to them.” He was again silent for a moment. “Yes, my dear chap,” he went on, “it is bound to be rather a nuisance to you, or it would be if it were known. It amounts to this—that you carry about with you a kind of touchstone which would test your friends. Out of some it would bring the worst, but out of the best it would bring the best. But, after all, who
does
know? Almost nobody, I should think.”

“But that's just it. I feel that everyone ought to know. If it were not for my mother I would tell all
my friends, so that they should be free to choose. And I want you, John, to tell your father and mother.”

John stared at Eric. “My dear chap, I shall do nothing of the sort. It's none of their business. You're my friend; that's got to be enough for them.”

Eric smiled bitterly. “I'm afraid you feel, John, that they would mind.”