by Grant Allen
‘Go to your room, miss,’ my mother said, ‘and don’t dare to answer me back.’ And in three weeks’ time, whether I wished it or not, she had me married to Colonel Egremont.”
Hubert still rocked himself up and down. “It was a dishonor to yourself,” he said, “and a wrong to me. Epilepsy, insanity, drunkenness, paralysis — how could you burden your son with such legacies as those, mother?”
Mrs. Egremont trembled. “If you had known my mother, you would understand, Hubert,” she answered at last, with an effort.
“And even if you once married him,” Hubert went on, “how could you continue to live with him? And how could you bring children of your own into the world for him — half his, half yours — hereditary drunkards, hereditary madmen?”
Mrs. Egremont buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. “Hubert, Hubert,” she cried, “for heaven’s sake, spare me!”
Just at that moment there came a knock at the door. “May I come in?” Sir Emilius asked, half opening it.
Mrs. Egremont raised her head. “Yes, come in, dear,” she said hurriedly. She was glad of the interruption — glad of some one who would help her to bear the brunt of Hubert’s unutterable horror.
“My boy,” the elder man said, coming forward and taking his hand, almost as if he had heard what they had both been saying — though in truth he only read it with his accustomed skill in their faces—” don’t reproach her with it; oh, don’t! Surely she has suffered more than enough already.”
“I know it,” Hubert cried, seizing her hand and smoothing it. “Oh, dear mother, I know it.” Remorse came over him.
“He wasn’t so bad at first as he became later,” Sir Emilius went on, in a softer voice than Hubert could have conceived of his using. “She left him as soon as she could — left him by my advice and assistance. He did things — fortunately — which made it impossible for him to show his face in England again; broke the law, and rendered himself liable to serious punishment. Your mother very properly bought him off on an agreement never to come within two hundred miles of her. He has skulked for years, sometimes under his own name, sometimes under another, up and down on the Continent.”
“But he went too late,” Hubert cried, in his misery. “And — Fede and I must suffer for it.”
“Not necessarily,” Sir Emilius put in. “You are a strong and well-built fellow, Hubert. It’s unusual, I admit, for such a man to be the father of a sound child; but I’ve never seen one trace in you, at least, of the inherited temperament.”
Hubert shook his head once more. “No, no,” he said gloomily, “it’s no use your trying to comfort me, uncle. I know the truth too well. That man’s children must be hopelessly mad before they’re thirty.”
“I dispute your prognosis,” Sir Emilius answered. He spoke with authority. “These cases are so elusive. The moral qualities lie on the surface of heredity. There isn’t a sign in you of alcoholic tendency.”
“But I know it all so deeply,” Hubert cried, leaning back, “as well as any doctor. The symptoms often remain latent till twenty-five or thirty, and then they come out suddenly. His children couldn’t escape. I have seen with my eyes. He’s too far gone in alcoholic mania to doubt it.”
“Hubert,” Sir Emilius said, looking hard at him, “in spite of all you say, my advice to you is to marry Fede.”
Hubert moaned from his place. “How can I burden Fede with such a future?” he cried in his despair.
Mrs. Egremont leant forward with a sudden burst of speech. “My darling,” she cried, “take my word for it still. You will not believe it, but your father had once many great and noble qualities.”
Her brother stared at her. He knew that Julia had misled her son on this point for many years past, but he was hardly prepared for such a wildly improbable declaration at such a moment.
“Then again, I can never break it to her,” Hubert went on, in utter dejection. “I can never make her feel how impossible it would be for me to dream of marrying her!”
Sir Emilius meanwhile had felt his nephew’s pulse. “My boy,” he said suddenly, “you are sinking from inanition. You have neither slept nor eaten. This mood, I see, is partly physical. You must have some breakfast at once.” He took a flask from his pocket and poured some liquid out of it into the cup at its base. “Here, drink this,” he said, handing it to him; “you need it sorely.”
Hubert glanced at it for a second. It was brandy. The very smell of the vile liquor gave him at that moment a revulsion of disgust. He took the cup in his hands, and dashed it, brandy and all, to the other end of the room. “Never!” he cried. “Never! It is that hateful stuff that has brought all this upon us! As long as I live, not one drop of it shall ever pass my lips again!” He flung down the flask. “If I can’t escape the effects,” he said, in his frenzy of despair, “at least I can avoid the cause of all this misery.”
“That’s your son, Julia,” Sir Emilius murmured below his breath. “Not a trace of Walter Egremont!”
Hubert rose and wrung his hands. “Sophistry!” he answered. “Sophistry! mere verbal sophistry. We can’t escape the sins of our fathers so easily. Every man inherits one-half of his traits from either parent; from that creature I inherit inevitable insanity.”
As he spoke, there came once more a gentle tap at the door. “Can I come in? “a low voice asked pleadingly.
“You can,” Sir Emilius answered, moving across to the door. “A seasonable tonic!
The precise treatment I was just about to prescribe for him!”
He opened the door, and Fede entered, very pale, and with eyes red from crying. The Marchese would have considered her presence at that moment a most imprudent proceeding.
She took his hand frankly. “Dearest,” she murmured, leaning forward and kissing him, “I couldn’t stop away. I was obliged to come. I have thought of you all night long. I knew how you must feel about that — that dreadful creature.”
Hubert recoiled from her kiss. “Oh, don’t, Fede,” he cried, as if he shrank from her purity. “I feel I am polluted — not fit for such as you. You must never again kiss me.”
She drew back, astonished. “Why not, my darling?”
“Because that man’s my father. Because I am his son. Because I inherit from him a deadly taint. Because I shall most likely be mad and paralyzed before I’m thirty.”
With a wild burst of emotion, Fede flung her arms round him. “Hubert! Hubert!” she cried, “what is all that to me, dearest? I am a woman — no more. I love you — I love you! No matter what might happen to you, I still would marry you!”
He tried to unwind her arms. A ghastly sense of his own inherited impurity came over him. “Fede,” he cried, “you mustn’t — not to that man’s son! What you say is quite right — quite right for you, dearest. A woman should take these things so; I see that very well: no good woman could take them otherwise. But a man must be strong. A man must fight against it. A man must guard the woman he loves against herself and her womanly-instincts. A man must know when and how to deny himself. He must refuse to marry the girl of his choice — if marriage would mean to her inevitable misery.”
Fede clung to him passionately. “But it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t,” she cried. “I know you better than you know yourself, Hubert. My name is Fede, and Fede means faith. I have faith in you, darling. You’re not that man’s son — not in the sense you mean it. You’re so good, so gentle, as well as so clever. I can trust you, Hubert — body and soul I can trust you.” He gave a gesture of dissent; but she clung to him still, and cut him short with a wave of her hand. “My intuition tells me so,” she said, “and I know I can rely upon it. My name against your doubts! My faith against your fear! My heart against your brain! My instinct against your reason!”
She tried to kiss him once more — tried to kiss him passionately. Hubert drew back with a wild look of terror. He held out his hand as if to protect her against himself.
“No, darling, no!” he cried. “Not me — not me
! You have kissed me for the last time! Never again, Fede — never!”
Fede dragged him down to her lips with a fierce burst of passion. “Yes, you shall,” she exclaimed, clasping him hard. “You shall! You must, my darling!” And she drew him to her bosom.
At that inopportune moment the door opened suddenly, and Colonel Egremont entered.
CHAPTER XII.
THE POINT OF VIEW.
HE stood for some seconds just within the doorway, with his mock-military air, twirling his grizzled mustache, and surveying complacently the whole family group whom he had thrown by his action into this state of misery. The eyeglass, screwing up that bloated face, made him more hideous than even he would have been by nature. Then he spoke very jauntily. “Sorry to intrude, I’m sure,” he said with a hateful grin, “upon this domestic party, — and at such a moment! But after all, we must remember, I’m the Head of the House — and” — spreading his hands pathetically—” what is Home without a Father?”
He had evidently been drinking even more than usual, and his voice was thick; but he had still a strange air of affected bonhomie, and a triumphant manner.
Hubert sprang up with a fierce gesture. “How dare you enter this room, sir?” he cried, moving forward.
The Colonel advanced a step, blustering.
“Upon my soul,” he said, bridling up, “pretty sort of treatment for a long-lost parent! My own flesh and blood to assault me in that fashion! Am I to be debarred from access to my wife’s rooms, and violently attacked by my son on the threshold? If I were not the best-natured old reprobate in the world, by George, sir, I tell you, I’d lose my temper.” He gave a little start, and took a long look through his eyeglass at Fede. “What, a joy forever?” he exclaimed, with one of his odious leers. “So this is your fiancee, then, is it, Mr. Hubert? Why, I’ve been hearing all about her downstairs from the head waiter. Good morning, my dear! Delighted, I’m sure, to make your acquaintance! A deuced good-looking young woman she is too, Hubert. As pretty as they make ’em! But the Egremonts were always famous for their taste in their choice of their womankind. I was a connoisseur myself in female beauty once. Look at your mother, my boy; devilish fine girl she was when she was a girl; and devilish handsome woman she is to this day, at forty odd — devilish handsome woman, though a trifle haughty!”
“Sir,” Hubert cried, unable to endure it, and placing himself full in front of the creature, with one fist raised warningly.
“Hot-tempered, isn’t he, my dear?” the Colonel continued with a nod to Fede. “Can’t restrain his emotions. But, children, you should never let — fie, fie, Mr. Hubert! Allow me to introduce myself, my dear, as your prospective papa-in-law. We’re to be relations, you know. My name is Walter Egremont; my address — Europe.” He moved suddenly forward, with a curious lurch, as if to kiss her.
Fede shrank back in terror. “Oh, Hubert, don’t let him come near me!” she cried, retreating, with a face of fierce repugnance.
Hubert caught the man in his arms and flung him bodily back. “Stand off, sir!” he cried, growing red in the face. “How dare you?”
Sir Emilius laid one hand on the intruder’s shoulder. “Now, restrain yourself, Walter,” he said. “This is not a pot-house. Leave the room instantly, if you know what’s good for you. I will talk matters over with you in the garden quietly.” For he was used to the insane, and he saw at a glance that the Colonel’s mood was not far off from alcoholic insanity.
As for Colonel Egremont, he drew back a pace, reeling slightly as he did so, not so much from drink as from his nervous affection, and scanned Fede and Hubert up and down solemnly. “A pretty pair,” he mused aloud, in a judicial tone. “A very pretty pair! Upon my soul, I’m proud of them. Julia, my dear, this son of mine’s a handsome, well-grown, upstanding young Egremont. The very model of the race! I always did believe in the doctrine of heredity!”
“Then how dare you become the father of a son?” Hubert burst out bitterly. “How dare you reproduce your own vile image?”
The Colonel measured him up and down with his eye, and smiled. “That’s pretty straight, that is!” he answered slowly, as if trying to take it in. “One in the eye for me! Pretty hot and strong! Prepare to receive cavalry! Julia, you haven’t brought your boy up to respect his parents. Train up a child in the way he should go — you know Mr. Solomon. Signorina Marchesa, do you allow this young fellow to speak in such very unparliamentary terms of your future father?”
He took a step towards her again. Hubert darted upon him wildly. “Leave this room, sir,” he cried, lifting the Colonel bodily and carrying him to the door. “You’re not fit to remain under the same roof with my mother and this lady. Though you were fifty times my father, if you speak like that, by God, sir, you shall answer for it.”
The Colonel, however, was still imperturbable. “Go on, young man,” he cried, in a half-angry, half-mocking voice; “go on! Pray don’t be shy. Don’t mind my feelings — a father’s feelings! Say just what you please! Curse me to slow music!”
He half turned the door handle. Hubert and Sir Emilius followed him up menacingly. At the same moment the door burst open suddenly, and the Marchese entered with a look of amazement.
“Why, what is this?” he inquired, looking about him, and taking it in. “Are we to explain in this way your unaccountable conduct, Mr. Egremont? What is this man doing here?
I suppose he’s the person you spoke about, Fede?”
The Colonel took advantage of the unexpected diversion to return to the room. “Yes,” he answered, with slow maliciousness, delighted to display himself to the utmost disadvantage before Fede’s father. “Every family of distinction has a skeleton in its cupboard, — and” — he adjusted his eyeglass— “I am the skeleton!”
The Marchese surveyed him with profound contempt from head to foot, and then held out one hand to keep him at a respectful distance.
“Well, and a precious ugly specimen too,” he answered, deliberately.
“Runs through the family,” the Colonel murmured, glancing with amusement from the Marchese to Fede. “If this is Italian politeness — give me the refined and courteous London costermonger.”
The Marchese turned to Sir Emilius. “If I judge rightly,” he said, in his coldest voice., “when I arrived you were just engaged in ejecting this — person?”
“We were,” Sir Emilius answered frankly.
“Then why does he come back?” the Marchese demanded, in a rather acrid tone.
Colonel Egremont bristled up. “Take care, sir,” he cried, blustering, “how you venture to touch a British soldier!”
The Marchese took his measure with a rapid glance. “Oh, if you elevate it to the dignity of an international contest,” he answered deliberately, “though Switzerland is neutral territory — well, evviva l’Italia!” And with a sudden and dexterous advance, he seized the intruder in his powerful arms — for he was a very strong man — lifted him clean off the floor, and bundled him out unceremoniously.
Sir Emilius, with the coolness of a doctor in trying circumstances, turned the key in the door the moment the Colonel was safely outside it.
The Marchese addressed himself to Hubert, evidently ruffled. “I hope, Mr. Egremont,” he said, “this awkward little episode may be made satisfactorily to account for your extraordinary absence at so critical a moment. My daughter has told me something of this creature. A most loathsome object! He lays some preposterous claim to being your father, doesn’t he? A madman, no doubt. But why should his conduct have driven you to absent yourself with such marked discourtesy at such a juncture?”
Sir Emilius glanced at Hubert imploringly. But Hubert was true to his principle of fidelity to the truth. “I must tell him, uncle,” he said, with a piteous shake of his head. “I can’t deny it! — Marchese, the man says what is simply true. He is my father!”
The Marchese smiled benignly. The avowal seemed rather to please him than otherwise. “Oh, of course,” he answered, appeased, “if he has
happened to turn up at an inconvenient moment and upset your arrangements, I can easily understand there may be some reason for your singular conduct. I gather that a certain degree of coldness seems to reign within the family.”
“Let me explain,” Sir Emilius said blandly, fearing that Hubert might make things worse in his present mood of despair. “This man, I regret to say, is really Mrs. Egremont’s husband. But I must also admit he is a rake and a drunkard. His financial transactions have also been — well, let us put it, imaginative. To say it in brief, he has disgraced the family. My sister is compelled to live alone, and to pension him off, on condition that he never comes nearer England than Nice or Lugano. As he generally lives under an assumed name, and has had nothing to do for years with my nephew, we didn’t feel bound to mention his existence heretofore to Hubert, who thought till now that his father was dead, and has only just learnt accidentally of his survival.”
The Marchese smiled a cynical smile. “Don’t apologize for that,” he answered. “It does not concern me. It is Mr. Hubert’s absence that calls for an explanation, which will, no doubt, be forthcoming. For my own part, I don’t like too much unity in a family circle. It’s entirely bourgeois — shows the relations have never had any Property worth speaking of to quarrel over. From what you told me, I gather Mrs. Egremont has, by English law, sole control of her own estate, and that this superfluous husband possesses no legal claim of any sort upon her.”
