Skene

“ She had all the instincts of an infantile parvenue, and all the hypocrisy of an embryo Pharisee. Her precocious sharpness was early in discovering the disfavour with which Lady Skene regarded me, and in affecting a sympathy with the reasons for that dislike. I was bad, sullen, one of the unelect on her little tripping red tongue. I had no gratitude for the gifts of Providence in so raising me from the mire to a position which was none of my deserts, and which had come to be mine purely through the instrumentality of an evangelical mother. ”

“ I have lived alone, Lady Skene,—untaught, unacknowledged, conforming to the pattern of my surroundings. If that moulded me to secrecy, who was to blame? If to be watchful and observant in the midst of enemies is a crime, I plead guilty to it with all my heart. There was always this much, this one unhappy riddle, to exercise my mind—why I, who longed for love so much, was denied my most natural claim to it; why my mother, of all the mothers in the world, could never bring herself to be a mother to the child who worshipped her. ”

“ It had been awful to me to see that cold exclusive beauty writhing in the grip of such a scoundrel. I felt fouled, humiliated, ashamed. There and then I swore an oath that I would let Lady Skene understand, on the first reasonable opportunity, the nature of my claim on her—not to bleed her pocket but her heart.
And, in the meanwhile, how to engineer my discovery? Should I use it to my more crushing indictment of a guilty woman—a bludgeon in my already loaded hand? A gentle son! a human merciful spirit! To admit myself one in purpose with this vulgar conspirator? Never, never! ”

“ I owe Lord Skene very much, if I owe his lady very little. He’s been a good second father to me, if she’s been an indifferent first mother. All I want to find out is why she has been. I want to know why, Johnny; and I want to know who my first father was, and how this man Dalston knows what I don’t know, and why he is able to make such crushing use of his knowledge. That’s all it comes to at present; and you mustn’t be looking for reasons in their company, but behave just like an ordinary polite little Johnny as you are. There’ll be time enough to discuss our campaign by-and-by. ”

“ She is a humbug here as she was a humbug in my lodge. It is nothing but her puckish instinct to play a part to desire.
I never came to the house but of nights to dine, conforming only, in its strictly literal sense, with Lord Skene’s expressed wish; and then I would dawdle out an impatient hour in the drawing-room, and the moment the clock struck ten be off to my woods again. Lady Skene had accepted my reappearance with no comment but the briefest greeting; but I thought her manner to me was more chilling than ever. She seemed resolved upon disallowing my last claim to her consideration. ”

“ But I have ceased to be a boy—there’s the devil of it, Mr Pugsley. If you don’t know who my father was, does Lord Skene know?”
He shook his head, with an odd little gasp. I saw him making for the pill-box again.
“What!” cried I. “Did he, too, accept me as a pledge?”
Something in his face enlightened me. The man was too shallow to hide a guilty self-consciousness. ”

“ Miss Christmas, sir, has been offered a husband by her guardian.”
“What husband?”
“O, not you, sir—don’t think it. It is Lord Sycamore. He is very tall, and very silly, but only fairly well off; and he has no roof to his mouth, or to his head—I forget which; but anyhow, if it was the dome of St Paul’s, I shouldn’t want him.”
“I should hope not. And Lord Skene thinks to impose this ass on you?”
“Richard, don’t shout so. Yes; and he is enormously angry over my refusal.”
“I owe a debt to my grandfather for it. He seems determined to add to my obligations to him. And Lady Skene, Ira?” ”

“ And yet it was a coincidence, as strange as any that the annals of villainy can record. But then Coincidence is the father of Luck.
This strange, strange letter! this old young voice from the clouds, dropping upon me all in an unexpected moment like a ghostly message from Thibet. It must have its meaning in the sequences of Fate—must have been meant to have. That the fellow should have been young Skene’s tutor—his monitor, great God! a vulgar intrigant, with a past, hardly past indeed, and caught, in despite of it, making eyes at “you-know-who”! You-know-who? ”

“ Is Lady Skene so very unapproachable, Ira?”
She stopped me suddenly, clinging to me, with a pained line come between her eyes.
“What does it all mean, Richard? There is something more than the child—I am sure of it; and it fills me with fear and anxiety.”
I held her silent a little, turning my face away in a gloom of irresolution.
“Yes, Ira, there is something more,” I said presently, and very softly—“something terribly serious and terribly upsetting.”
“I was certain of it,” she whispered. “And you know what it is? I can never forget her face that evening I found you, together. ”

“ She approached me again, curiously.
“Eh!” she wondered. “So this is my Georgie’s child, is it, the deuce? And how does your mammy treat you, my pretty?”
“Lady Skene has got another son now,” I said. “Didn’t you know it?”
“I hear nothing, and I know nothing in these days, dovey the devil,” she answered. “So long as I’m given my little provision as her mother, Georgie’s welcome to make out her own life as she pleases for me. We usen’t to get on very well together, not always, her and me. She’d come to me in her troubles, she would, like her father’s own gal; but most times we lived apart.” ”

“ Yet I was sorry that Fate had imposed on Lady Skene so vulgar a confederate; for I could not but think the man vulgar, ordained priest as he was, and quite sincere, I believe, in his evangelicism. But, apart from him, and her subscription to his ugly phraseologic cant, she was so lovelily one of those presences whom age cannot wither (the rest of the quotation hardly applied to her) ; so perpetual a provocation—and aggravation—to the worshipper of beauty; so serene a thing, so coldly tantalising, so refinedly a figure for the sweet altitudes of romance! ”

“ To whose possible interest could it have been to substitute a living child for a dead one? Not to his assuredly—a piece of good fortune it would have appeared to him in those days, that fruit of his villainy perished and removed. To his victim’s, then? to her mother’s? There was more plausibility there. Yet I could not conceive Lady Skene a party to any such fraud; and yet again his discovery of the imposition, had it been committed, would not have weakened his hold on her—rather substantiated it. ”

“ Sir Maurice Carnac was fallen heaped back into his chair, his shapeless old face all wryed as if in an exhaustion of horrible laughter, incoherent sounds coming from his lips.
“Carnac!” cried Lord Skene.
For to-morrow we die!
“This is my business,” said Mr Pugsley, in an agitated voice. All honour to his creed so far, for he was terribly unnerved.
The stricken man was carried upstairs by the servants, followed by the minister and his lordship. We all waited, huddled into a silence unbroken but for the whimpering of the women. Only Mrs Dalston remained quite passionless and unmoved. ”

“ And at the end, “Lord Skene,” I said, “judge all this as you will. There is still the worst to come—the corner-stone to such a monument of villainy as I never dreamed of unveiling when I started. I beg, sir, with all the passion of entreaty I can command, that you will brace yourself to hear a very dreadful truth. I told you, on that former occasion, that I had come by accident upon part of a letter written by your son to Mr Thesiger. ”

“ She had been an actress—on the stage, at least—and presumably a true child of her traditions. I could not forget Sir Maurice Carnac’s roguish innuendoes—his allusions to my stepfather’s feet “netted” to matrimony in their intended frolic over a wilder course; his sly maudlin reference to me as a pledge of “widowed respectability.” Likely enough he too had known, or guessed, the truth. Likely enough Lord Skene himself had not been so blind to it as the pious throwers of dust in his eyes had once assumed. ”

“ She did not move, however, but turned as pale as her frock.
“Richard!—O, Richard!” she implored. “Don’t hit me like that. You are so strong; and I am only a girl. I had no right to say it; it might have meant nothing; and Lady Skene has always been so good to me.”
“What reason have you—or has she, for that matter—to expect any consideration from me? I will know the truth.”
“Richard, make some allowance. You had insulted me too, you know.” ”

“ She recalled vividly the face of Malcolm Skene, and his eyes, that were soft yet full of power, more frequently grave than merry, and his firm lips. He was a man whose features and bearing would have been remarkable amid any group of men, and the first to arrest a woman's attention and arouse her interest. ”

“ And the next moment she is prostrate at my feet.
“Richard! I will be poor—O, I will be poor!”
Hush! Who is this come suddenly upon us from the shadows, where Ira, hearing my step, had hidden her?
“Will you make my burden, Richard, more than I can bear?”
I turn in amazement. It is Lady Skene.
“I have dared much to come to you—to her,” she says, in a low agitated voice. “I knew from my husband that you could never win—not there—not in that Court. But here, Richard? O, it is great to be generous in triumph, but greater in defeat.”
“Generous! What have I left to give in all the world?” ”

“ You know, you were a very good-looking child, Richard; or perhaps you don’t know. I was horribly jealous of you, anyhow.”
“Well, well,” I said. “And how about Lady Skene, Miss Christmas? Are you still in favour with her and Mr Pugsley?”
“Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut,” she answered, laughing with a little twinkle through her tears. “She is a very beautiful woman, and therefore what she thinks must be right. I wish you would show me your poem after Mr Pugsley.” ”

“ O, you may take my word for it! and do what you like with the information. Lady Skene, I think, will hardly rush to establish her claim to that connection. And, even if she did, I’ve means of controlling Mother Carey. What if I say three hundred pounds?”
“You shall have it.”
“So I supposed. Then we’ll say five hundred.”
“Ruin me, if you will.”
“Hush, my dear! What an inference! To esteem me capable of such a blind villainy! You’re still a very beautiful woman, Georgie.” ”

“ There was a path running through that slope of the thickets which led up towards the house, and this path ended in the pleasant bosky sward known as the “Baby’s Garden” before mentioned. It was a lovely quiet spot, and thither the honourable Master Skene was often carried by his nurse for air and exercise. I could easily at will command a view of them without being seen myself. The life of the wild man had taught me many a trick of cunning concealment, and I never scrupled to practise an espionage which was, after all, only a necessary habit of savage precaution. ”

“ But you mustn’t suppose, in the meantime, that I am Lady Skene’s enemy. Indeed, if that is true which I expect to be true, my interference will benefit her—in one way, at least. I am trying to circumvent a scoundrel, Ira, and chance has put some very wonderful evidence in my hands. I must not tell you more than that.”
“You are not in any danger—you yourself, Richard?” she asked fearfully.
“No, you love,” I said—“not more that most people who set themselves to battle against the forces of villainy. ”

“ I have always been a model of frankness myself. I am glad to hear you pay that debt to your inheritance, Richard.”
I was gathering, at last, something of his drift. He was feeling his way to my sense of filial duty. I could have struck my fist into his accursed dandy face. No doubt he had heard from Lady Skene the facts of that interview between us in her boudoir, and had assumed, as she had assumed, that the knowledge of my parentage was a revelation to me. Let him rejoice then, and scheme on that premise, and set the trap to his own damnation. ”

“ It might be thought that Lady Skene would have wished to exalt her own, especially as she bore her husband no family. She was indifferent to me, however, and so I could not but be to her. We were not kindred spirits, and were antipathetic to one another. Her soul inhabited a chapel; mine the woods and mountains of a roaming fancy. I never felt “at home” with her; and I think she had writ me down early for one of the unelect. Predestination is a comfortable creed for those who would eschew parental responsibilities. It is vain carving a brand that is destined for the burning. ”

“ What the deuce did that mean?” demanded his lordship.
“My father invented ‘Grafto,’ sir,” said Johnny; “the—the hair-wash, you know. And he—his name was Dando, you see.”
Lord Skene stared bewildered, but Miss Christmas clasped her hands tragically.
“‘Grafto’!” she exclaimed. “Are you really the son of ‘Grafto’—the ‘Grafto’ that has crowned more heads than Warwick the Kingmaker?”
“Yes,” said Johnny. “That was one of the advertisements. There are lots of others as good or better.” ”

“ The discovery that my mother, and my mother’s mother (I could hardly bring myself to acknowledge the old bibulous harpy for my grandmother) had both been on the stage; the discovery that their name was Carey; the discovery that the elder had “come into money”—been pensioned off, belike, by Lord Skene—and that the younger had “found religion” at the hands of Mr Pugsley of the tin tabernacle—all these little enlightenments and confirmations made a certain definite “grounding,” on which I might hope to embroider that web which should catch Lady Skene’s feet tripping. ”