Part 13 (1/2)

”Arthur!” This time it was James who called, and the door-handle was shaken impatiently. ”Are you asleep?”

Arthur looked round the room, saw that everything was hidden, and unlocked the door.

”I should think you might at least have obeyed my express request that you should sit up for us, Arthur,” said Julia, sweeping into the room in a towering pa.s.sion. ”You appear to think it the proper thing for us to dance attendance for half an hour at your door----”

”Four minutes, my dear,” James mildly corrected, stepping into the room at the end of his wife's pink satin train. ”I certainly think, Arthur, that it would have been more--becoming if----”

”What do you want?” Arthur interrupted. He was standing with his hand upon the door, glancing furtively from one to the other like a trapped animal. But James was too obtuse and Julia too angry to notice the look.

Mr. Burton placed a chair for his wife and sat down, carefully pulling up his new trousers at the knees. ”Julia and I,” he began, ”feel it to be our duty to speak to you seriously about----”

”I can't listen to-night; I--I'm not well. My head aches--you must wait.”

Arthur spoke in a strange, indistinct voice, with a confused and rambling manner. James looked round in surprise.

”Is there anything the matter with you?” he asked anxiously, suddenly remembering that Arthur had come from a very hotbed of infection. ”I hope you're not sickening for anything. You look quite feverish.”

”Nonsense!” Julia interrupted sharply. ”It's only the usual theatricals, because he's ashamed to face us. Come here and sit down, Arthur.” Arthur slowly crossed the room and sat down on the bed. ”Yes?” he said wearily.

Mr. Burton coughed, cleared his throat, smoothed his already immaculate beard, and began the carefully prepared speech over again:

”I feel it to be my duty--my painful duty--to speak very seriously to you about your extraordinary behaviour in connecting yourself with--a--law-breakers and incendiaries and--a--persons of disreputable character. I believe you to have been, perhaps, more foolish than depraved--a----”

He paused.

”Yes?” Arthur said again.

”Now, I do not wish to be hard on you,” James went on, softening a little in spite of himself before the weary hopelessness of Arthur's manner. ”I am quite willing to believe that you have been led away by bad companions, and to take into account your youth and inexperience and the--a--a--imprudent and--a--impulsive character which you have, I fear, inherited from your mother.”

Arthur's eyes wandered slowly to his mother's portrait and back again, but he did not speak.

”But you will, I feel sure, understand,” James continued, ”that it is quite impossible for me to keep any longer in my house a person who has brought public disgrace upon a name so highly respected as ours.”

”Yes?” Arthur repeated once more.

”Well?” said Julia sharply, closing her fan with a snap and laying it across her knee. ”Are you going to have the goodness to say anything but 'Yes,' Arthur?”

”You will do as you think best, of course,” he answered slowly, without moving. ”It doesn't matter much either way.”

”Doesn't--matter?” James repeated, aghast; and his wife rose with a laugh.

”Oh, it doesn't matter, doesn't it? Well, James, I hope you understand now how much grat.i.tude you may expect in that quarter. I told you what would come of showing charity to Papist adventuresses and their----”

”Hush, hus.h.!.+ Never mind that, my dear!”

”It's all nonsense, James; we've had more than enough of this sentimentality! A love-child setting himself up as a member of the family--it's quite time he did know what his mother was! Why should we be saddled with the child of a Popish priest's amourettes? There, then--look!”

She pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of her pocket and tossed it across the table to Arthur. He opened it; the writing was in his mother's hand, and was dated four months before his birth. It was a confession, addressed to her husband, and with two signatures.

Arthur's eyes travelled slowly down the page, past the unsteady letters in which her name was written, to the strong, familiar signature: ”Lorenzo Montanelli.” For a moment he stared at the writing; then, without a word, refolded the paper and laid it down. James rose and took his wife by the arm.