Part 57 (1/2)
”You go into the next room, Grant,” he said, ”and wait there till I call you.”
Donal obeyed, took a book from the table, and tried to read. He heard the door to the pa.s.sage open and close again, and then the sounds of voices. By degrees they grew louder, and at length the earl roared out, so that Donal could not help hearing:
”I'll be d.a.m.ned soul and body in h.e.l.l, but I'll put a stop to this!
Why, you son of a snake! I have but to speak the word, and you are--well, what--. Yes, I will hold my tongue, but not if he crosses me!--By G.o.d! I have held it too long already!--letting you grow up the d.a.m.nablest ungrateful dog that ever snuffed carrion!--And your poor father periling his soul for you, by G.o.d, you rascal!”
”Thank heaven, you cannot take the t.i.tle from me, my lord!” said Forgue coolly. ”The rest you are welcome to give to Davie! It won't be too much, by all accounts!”
”d.a.m.n you and your t.i.tle! A pretty t.i.tle, ha, ha, ha!--Why, you infernal fool, you have no more right to the t.i.tle than the beggarly kitchen-maid you would marry! If you but knew yourself, you would crow in another fas.h.i.+on! Ha, ha, ha!”
At this Donal opened the door.
”I must warn your lords.h.i.+p,” he said, ”that if you speak so loud, I shall hear every word.”
”Hear and be d.a.m.ned to you!--That fellow there--you see him standing there--the mushroom that he is! Good G.o.d! how I loved his mother! and this is the way he serves me! But there was a Providence in the whole affair! Never will I disbelieve in a Providence again! It all comes out right, perfectly right! Small occasion had I to be breaking heart and conscience over it ever since she left me! Hang the pinchbeck rascal!
he's no more Forgue than you are, Grant, and never will be Morven if he live a hundred years! He's not a short straw better than any b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the street! His mother was the loveliest woman ever breathed!--and loved me--ah, G.o.d! it is something after all to have been loved so--and by such a woman!--a woman, by G.o.d! ready and willing and happy to give up everything for me! Everything, do you hear, you d.a.m.ned rascal! I never married her! Do you hear, Grant? I take you to witness; mark my words: we, that fellow's mother and I, were never married--by no law, Scotch, or French, or Dutch, or what you will! He's a d.a.m.ned b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and may go about his business when he pleases. Oh, yes! pray do! Marry your scullion when you please! You are your own master--entirely your own master!--free as the wind that blows to go where you will and do what you please! I wash my hands of you. You'll do as you please--will you? Then do, and please me: I desire no better revenge! I only tell you once for all, the moment I know for certain you've married the wench, that moment I publish to the world--that is, I acquaint certain gossips with the fact, that the next lord Morven will have to be hunted for like a truffle--ha! ha! ha!”
He burst into a fiendish fit of laughter, and fell back on his pillow, dark with rage and the unutterable fury that made of his being a volcano. The two men had been standing dumb before him, Donal pained for the man on whom this phial of devilish wrath had been emptied, he white and trembling with dismay--an abject creature, crushed by a cruel parent. When his father ceased, he still stood, still said nothing: power was gone from him. He grew ghastly, uttered a groan, and wavered.
Donal supported him to a chair; he dropped into it, and leaned back, with streaming face. It was miserable to think that one capable of such emotion concerning the world's regard, should be so indifferent to what alone can affect a man--the nature of his actions--so indifferent to the agony of another as to please himself at all risk to her, although he believed he loved her, and perhaps did love her better than any one else in the world. For Donal did not at all trust him regarding Eppy--less now than ever. But these thoughts went on in him almost without his thinking them; his attention was engrossed with the pa.s.sionate creatures before him.
The father too seemed to have lost the power of motion, and lay with his eyes closed, breathing heavily. But by and by he made what Donal took for a sign to ring the bell. He did so, and Simmons came. The moment he entered, and saw the state his master was in, he hastened to a cupboard, took thence a bottle, poured from it something colourless, and gave it to him in water. It brought him to himself. He sat up again, and in a voice hoa.r.s.e and terrible said:--
”Think of what I have told you, Forgue. Do as I would have you, and the truth is safe; take your way without me, and I will take mine without you. Go.”
Donal went. Forgue did not move.
What was Donal to do or think now? Perplexities gathered upon him.
Happily there was time for thought, and for prayer, which is the highest thinking. Here was a secret affecting the youth his enemy, and the boy his friend! affecting society itself--that society which, largely capable and largely guilty of like sins, yet visits with such unmercy the sins of the fathers upon the children, the sins of the offender upon the offended! But there is another who visits them, and in another fas.h.i.+on! What was he to do? Was he to hold his tongue and leave the thing as not his, or to speak out as he would have done had the case been his own? Ought the chance to be allowed the nameless youth of marrying his cousin? Ought the next heir to the lords.h.i.+p to go without his t.i.tle? Had they not both a claim upon Donal for the truth?
Donal thought little of such things himself, but did that affect his duty in the matter? He might think little of money, but would he therefore look on while a pocket was picked?
On reflection he saw, however, that there was no certainty the earl was speaking the truth; for anything he knew of him, he might be inventing the statement in order to have his way with his son! For in either case he was a double-dyed villian; and if he spoke the truth was none the less capable of lying.
CHAPTER XLIX.
FILIAL RESPONSE.
One thing then was clear to Donal, that for the present he had nothing to do with the affair. Supposing the earl's a.s.sertion true, there was at present no question as to the succession; before such question could arise, Forgue might be dead; before that, his father might himself have disclosed the secret; while, the longer Donal thought about it, the greater was his doubt whether he had spoken the truth. The man who could so make such a statement to his son concerning his mother, must indeed have been capable of the wickedness a.s.sumed! but also the man who could make such a statement was surely vile enough to lie! The thing remained uncertain, and he was a.s.suredly not called upon to act!
But how would Forgue carry himself? His behaviour now would decide or at least determine his character. If he were indeed as honourable as he wished to be thought, he would tell Eppy what had occurred, and set himself at once to find some way of earning his and her bread, or at least to become capable of earning it. He did not seem to cherish any doubt of the truth of what had fallen in rage from his father's lips, for, to judge by his appearance, to the few and brief glances Donal had of him during the next week or so, the iron had sunk into his soul: he looked more wretched than Donal could have believed it possible for man to be--abject quite. It manifested very plainly what a miserable thing, how weak and weakening, is the pride of this world. One who could be so cast down, was hardly one, alas, of whom to expect any greatness of action! He was not likely to have honesty or courage enough to decline a succession that was not his--even though it would leave his way clear to marry Eppy. Whether any of Forgue's misery arose from the fact that Donal had been present at the exposure of his position, Donal could not tell; but he could hardly fail to regard him as a dangerous holder of his secret--one who would be more than ready to take hostile action in the matter! At the same time, such had seemed the paralysing influence of the shock upon him, that Donal doubted if he had been, at any time during the interview, so much aware of his presence as not to have forgotten it entirely before he came to himself. Had he remembered the fact, would he not have come to him to attempt securing his complicity?
If he meant to do right, why did he hesitate?--there was but one way, and that plain before him!
But presently Donal began to see many things an equivocating demon might urge: the claims of his mother; the fact that there was no near heir--he did not even know who would come in his place; that he would do as well with the property as another; that he had been already grievously wronged; that his mother's memory would be yet more grievously wronged; that the marriage had been a marriage in the sight of G.o.d, and as such he surely of all men was in heaven's right to regard it! and his mother had been the truest of wives to his father!
These things and more Donal saw he might plead with himself; and if he was the man he had given him no small ground to think, he would in all probability listen to them. He would recall or a.s.sume the existence of many precedents in the history of n.o.ble families; he would say that, knowing the general character of their heads, no one would believe a single n.o.ble family without at least one unrecorded, undiscovered, or well concealed irregularity in its descent; and he would judge it the cruellest thing to have let him know the blighting fact, seeing that in ignorance he might have succeeded with a good conscience.