He played his part admirably, was really happy during some of those frivolous hours, telling himself that the thing which had happened at Venice was a casualty for which Fate would not too cruelly punish him.
“Even Oedipus Rex had a good time of it after he killed his father at the cross roads,” he told himself mockingly. “It was not till his daughters were grown up that troubles began. He had a long run of prosperity. And so, Dame Fortune, give me my darling, and let her not know for the next twenty years that this right hand is red with her kindred’s blood. Let her not know! And after twenty years of bliss—well, let the volcano explode, and bury me in the ashes. I shall have lived my life.”
He parted with Eve in Bruton Street after tea. She was going to an evening service with Lady Hartley. They were to hear a famous preacher, while the mundane Sir Hubert dined at Greenwich with some men. Eve was to leave Waterloo Station early next morning, and as Lady Hartley was sending her maid to see the young lady and her luggage safely lodged at the Homestead, Vansittart was told he would not be wanted.
“This is a free country,” he said. “You will find me at the station to say goodbye.”
He went home to dine with his mother, a very melancholy dinner. Mrs. Vansittart’s pale cheeks bore traces of tears, and she was obviously unhappy, although she struggled to keep up appearances, talked about the weather, the sermon she had heard in the morning, the dinner, anything to make conversation while the servants were in the room.
Vansittart followed her to the drawing-room directly after dinner, and seated himself by her side in the lamplight, and laid his hand on hers as it turned the pages of the book upon her knee.
“Canon Liddon is a delightful writer, mother; logical, clearheaded, and eloquent, and you could hardly have a better book than his Bampton Lectures for Sunday evening; but you might spare a few minutes for your son.”
“As many minutes or as many hours as you like, Jack,” answered his mother, as she closed the book. “My thoughts are too full of you to give themselves to any book that was ever written. My dear son, what can I say to you? Do you really mean to persist in this miserable alliance?”
“Oh, mother, how cruel you are even in your kindness! How cruel a mother’s love can be! It is not a miserable alliance—it is the marriage of true minds. Remember what your Shakespeare says, ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’ Will you, mother, admit impediments here, where practically there is none?”
“Jack, Jack, love has made you blind. Is the existence of that wicked young man no impediment—a man who may at any day be tried for his life as a murderer?”
“Again, mother, I say he was no murderer. The utmost that can be urged against this wicked young man is that he was a hot-tempered athlete who killed a man in a scuffle. Let us forget his existence, if we can. There is nothing in this life more unlikely than that we shall ever hear of him again. From that night in the Venetian caffè he ceased to exist—at any rate for England and his kindred. Be sure, mother, that Harold Marchant will never be heard of again.”
“You believe what you wish to believe, Jack, and you forget the French proverb that nothing is so likely to happen as the unexpected.”
“No, I don’t, mother. That useful adage has been borne in upon me of late. But now, dearest and best, let us be at peace forever upon this question. I mean to marry my beloved, and I mean you to love her, second only to Maud and me. She is ready to love you with all her heart—with all the stored-up feeling of those motherless years in which she has grown from child to woman, without the help of a mother’s love. You are not going to shut your heart against her, are you, mother?”
“No, Jack, not if she is to be your wife. I love you too well to withhold my love from your wife.”
“That’s my own true mother.”
On this mother and son, between whom there had hung a faint cloud of displeasure, kissed, not without tears; and it was agreed that for these two henceforward the name of Harold Marchant should be a dead letter.
XVI
To Live Forgotten and Love Forlorn
Vansittart had made up his mind. Were that which he accounted but a dark suspicion to be made absolute certainty he meant still to cleave to the girl whom he had chosen for his wife, and who had given him her whole heart. He would marry her, even although his hand had shed her brother’s blood, that brother whom of all her kindred she loved best, with the romantic affection which clings round the image of a friend lost in childhood, when the feelings are warmest, and when love asks no questions.
Once, in
