The corner of Sir John’s mouth twitched.
“I would rather punish her than have Jack punished for the rest of his life.”
“Et moi?” she snapped impatiently.
“Ah!” with a gesture learnt in some foreign court, “I can only ask your forgiveness. I can only remind you that she is not your daughter—if she were she would be a different woman—while he is my son.”
Lady Cantourne nodded as if to indicate that he need explain no more.
“How did you do it?” she asked quietly.
“I did not do it. I merely suggested to Guy Oscard that he should call on you. Millicent and her fiancé—the other—were alone in the drawing-room when we arrived. Thinking that I might be de trop I withdrew, and left the young people to settle it among themselves, which they have apparently done! I am, like yourself, a great advocate for allowing young people to settle things among themselves. They are also welcome to their enjoyment of the consequences so far as I am concerned.”
“But Millicent was never engaged to Guy Oscard.”
“Did she tell you so?” asked Sir John, with a queer smile.
“Yes.”
“And you believed her?”
“Of course—and you?”
Sir John smiled his courtliest smile.
“I always believe a lady,” he answered, “before her face. Mr. Guy Oscard gave it out in Africa that he was engaged to be married, and he even declared that he was returning home to be married. Jack did the same in every respect. Unfortunately there was only one fond heart waiting for the couple of them at home. That is why I thought it expedient to give the young people an opportunity of settling it between themselves.”
The smile left his worn old face. He moved uneasily and walked to the fireplace, where he stood with his unsteady hands moving idly, almost nervously, among the ornaments on the mantelpiece. He committed the rare discourtesy of almost turning his back upon a lady.
“I must ask you to believe,” he said, looking anywhere but at her, “that I did not forget you in the matter. I may seem to have acted with an utter disregard for your feelings—”
He broke off suddenly, and, turning, he stood on the hearthrug with his feet apart, his hands clasped behind his back, his head slightly bowed.
“I drew on the reserve of an old friendship,” he said. “You were kind enough to say the other day that you were indebted to me to some extent. You are indebted to me to a larger extent than you perhaps realise. You owe me fifty years of happiness—fifty years of a life that might have been happy had you decided differently when—when we were younger. I do not blame you now—I never have blamed you. But the debt is there—you know my life, you know almost every day of it—you cannot deny the debt. I drew upon that.”
And the white-haired woman raised her hand.
“Don’t,” she said gently, “please don’t say any more. I know all that your life has been, and why. You did quite right. What is a little trouble to me, a little passing inconvenience, the tattle of a few idle tongues, compared with what Jack’s life is to you? I see now that I ought to have opposed it strongly instead of letting it take its course. You were right—you always have been right, John. There is a sort of consolation in the thought. I like it. I like to think that you were always right and that it was I who was wrong. It confirms my respect for you. We shall get over this somehow.”
“The young lady,” suggested Sir John, “will get over it after the manner of her kind. She will marry someone else, let us hope, before her wedding-dress goes out of fashion.”
“Millicent will have to get over it as she may. Her feelings need scarcely be taken into consideration.”
Lady Cantourne made a little movement towards the door. There was much to see to—much of that women’s work which makes weddings the wild, confused ceremonies that they are.
“I am afraid,” said Sir John, “that I never thought of taking them into consideration. As you know, I hardly considered yours. I hope I have not overdrawn that reserve.”
He had crossed the room as he spoke to open the door for her. His fingers were on the handle, but he did not turn it, awaiting her answer. She did not look at him, but past him towards the shaded lamp with that desire to fix her attention upon some inanimate object which he knew of old.
“The reserve,” she answered, “will stand more than that. It has accumulated—with compound interest. But I deny the debt of which you spoke just now. There is no debt. I have paid it, year by year, day by day. For each one of those fifty years of unhappiness I have paid a year—of regret.”
He opened the door and she passed out into the brilliantly lighted passage and down the stairs, where the servants were waiting to open the door and help her to her carriage.
Sir John did not go downstairs with her.
Later on he dined in his usual solitary grandeur. He was as carefully dressed as ever. The discipline of his household—like the discipline under which he held himself—was unrelaxed.
“What wine is this?” he asked when he had tasted the port.
“Yellow seal, sir,” replied the butler confidentially.
Sir John sipped again.
“It is a new bin,” he said.
“Yes, sir. First bottle of the lower bin, sir.”
Sir John nodded with an air of self-satisfaction. He was pleased to have proved to himself and to the “damned butler,” who had caught him napping in the library, that he was still a young man in himself, with senses and taste unimpaired. But his hand was at the small of his back as he returned to the library.
He was not at all sure about Jack—did not know whether to expect him or not. Jack did not always do what one might have expected him to do
