Tanner nodded without speaking.
“Of my early life,” went on Austin, “I do not think I need say much. I expect”—he looked at Tanner—“you know all about it. You know that, while we never had an open breach, my father and I did not pull well together. We looked at things from such different points of view that our intercourse only produced irritation. My father wished me to read for the bar with the idea of entering Parliament, and trying for a seat in the Ministry. I was not ambitious in that direction, but preferred literary work, and scientific research. Therefore, as you no doubt are aware, I found it irksome at home, and I set up my own establishment in Halford. But that we remained good friends was proved by my father’s moving to Luce Manor at my suggestion. With my mother I was always in sympathy. She was easygoing, and deferred without protest to my father’s decisions, but never at any time was there the slightest cloud between us. So things had gone on for years, and so they went on until this terrible business began.”
Austin moved nervously in his chair, glancing quickly round the little group.
“On ,” he resumed, “occurred the first event of this unhappy tragedy, so far as I was concerned. I received by that morning’s post a letter from my father, saying he wished to see me on very private business, and asking me to dine and spend that evening with him. He directed me to destroy his letter, and not refer to the matter to anyone.
“Considerably surprised, I burnt the note, and duly went out to Luce Manor in time for dinner. When the meal was over my father and I retired to his study, and there when our cigars were alight, he said he had a very grievous and terrible secret to impart to me which would doubtless give me considerable pain. He locked the door, then sitting down he told me what I believe you already know.
“ ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘we have not perhaps pulled it off together as well as I could have wished, and when you hear what I have to tell you, I fear you may be tempted to think more bitterly of me than I deserve. But I can assure you on my honour, that in this terrible affair I acted in perfectly good faith all through. Until four years ago I was as ignorant as you are still that there was anything wrong.’
“ ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
“ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘but you will soon.’
“Then he told me of his early life, and that of the two Dales; of his falling in love with my mother, Ethel Osborne; of the rivalry between himself and Tom Dale for her hand; of Dale’s success; of the miserable married life of the couple; of Dale’s mission to Canada, and of his presumed death in the Numidian disaster, and of my father’s own marriage with the widow. All this I had known more or less vaguely before, and I could not understand why my father recited the circumstances in such detail. But he soon made it clear to me.
“ ‘As you know,’ he went on, ‘your dear mother and I have lived happily together ever since. She had her time of suffering, but thank God, she has enjoyed her afterlife, and please God, she shall never learn what I am about to tell you.’
“ ‘Some four years ago,’ continued my father, ‘I happened to be in London, and walking down Cheapside I met a man whose face seemed vaguely familiar. He was short and slight, with small features, rather delicately moulded, white hair, and a short goatee beard. He saw me at the same time, and his eyes fixed themselves on my face with an expression of almost incredulous recognition. For a few seconds we stood facing each other, while I racked my brains to recall his identity. And then suddenly I knew him. It was Tom Dale!’
“My father paused, but for some seconds I did not grasp the full meaning of his statement. Then gradually its significance dawned on me. I need not repeat it. You have heard what it involved. I was appalled and horrified. Though upset on my own account, I ask you to believe that what distressed me most was its possible effect on my mother and sister. Of my mother I just couldn’t bear to think, and it also hurt me beyond words to believe that any such secret should have power to throw a shadow over Enid’s life.”
“Did you speak to your father on this particular point?” Tanner interjected.
“Speak? I should rather think so. I was beside myself with horror.”
“Can you recollect the exact words you used?”
Austin considered.
“I hardly think so,” he said at last, “though every detail of the scene is fixed in my memory; I said as the thing began to dawn on me, ‘And my mother—it can’t be that she—?’ I did not wish to speak the words, and my father completed my sentence for me. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’s no escape from it; she is the wife of that drunken ruffian.’ Then I cried, ‘Good Heavens! She can’t be,’ or something to that effect, and he answered that it was only too true.”
“Might the words you used have been, ‘My God, sir, she isn’t?’ ”
“Yes, I believe those were the words. That was the sense anyway.”
“Continue, please.”
“It appeared that upon their recognition there was a scene between my father and Dale. Eventually, however, they took a private room at a neighbouring bar, and there talked the matter over. Then to my father’s amazement it came out that Dale had not known of my mother’s second marriage. But when the latter realised
