Paul rose to his feet. "That is impossible. I cannot promise it," he said.
"Why?"
"Honor and justice require that my brother Hugh, and not I, should be my father"s heir--he, at least, must know."
"What honor, and what justice?"
"The honor of a true man--the justice of the law of England."
Mrs. Ritson dropped her head. "So much for your honor," she said. "But what of mine?"
"Mother, what do you mean?"
"That if you allow your younger brother to inherit, the world by that act will be told all--your father"s sin, your mother"s shame."
Mrs. Ritson raised her hands to her face, and turned aside. Paul stepped up to her and kissed her forehead reverently.
"You are right," he said. "Forgive me--I thought only of myself. The world that loves to tarnish a pure name would like to gloat over your sorrow. That it shall never! Man"s law may have been outraged, but G.o.d"s law is still inviolate. Whatever my birth, I am as much your son in the light of Heaven as Jacob was the son of Isaac, or David of Jesse. Come, let us go to him--he may yet live to acknowledge me."
It had been a terrible moment, but it was past. To live to manhood in ignorance of the dishonor of his birth, and then to learn the truth under the shadow of death--this had been a tragic experience. The love he had borne his father--the reverence he had learned at his mother"s knee--to what bitter test had they been put! Had all the past been but as the marble image of a happy life! Was all the future shattered before him! Pshaw! he was the unconscious slave of a superst.i.tion--a phantasm, a gingerbread superst.i.tion!
And a mightier touch awoke his sensibilities--the touch of nature.
Before G.o.d at that moment he was his father"s son. If the world, or the world"s law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving to be d.a.m.ned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim to his father"s name?
Paul took in love the hand of his mother. "Let us go in to him," he repeated, and together they walked across the room.
The outer door was flung open, and Greta entered, flushed and with wide-open eyes. At the same instant the inner door swung noiselessly back, and Hugh Ritson stood on the threshold. Greta was about to speak, but Hugh motioned her to silence. His face was pale, his hand trembled.
"Too late," he said, huskily; "he is dead!"
Greta sunk on to the settle in the window recess. Hugh walked to the hearth and paused with rigid features before the haunting mirror.
Paul stood for a moment hand in hand with his mother, motionless, speechless, cold at his heart. Then he hurried into the inner room. Mrs.
Ritson followed him, closing the door behind him.
The little oak-bound room was dusky; the lamp that burned low was shaded. Across the bed lay Allan Ritson, in his habit as he lived. But his lips were white and cold.
Paul stood and looked down. There lay his father--his father still! His father by right of nature--of love--of honor--let the world say what it would.
And he knew the truth at last: too late to look into those gla.s.sy eyes and read the secret of their long years of suffering love.
"Father," Paul whispered, and fell to his knees by the deaf ear.
Mrs. Ritson, strangely quiet, strangely calm, stepped to the opposite side of the bed, and placed one hand on the dead man"s breast.
"Paul," she said, "come here."
He rose to his feet and walked to her side.
"Lay your hand with mine, and pledge to me your solemn word never to speak of what you have heard to-night until that great day when we three shall stand together before the great white throne."
Paul placed his hand side by side with hers, and lifted his eyes to heaven.
"On my father"s body, by my mother"s honor--never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act or her shame--always to bear myself as their lawful son before man, even as I am their rightful son before G.o.d--I swear it! I swear it!"
His voice was cold and clear, but the words were scarcely uttered when he fell to his knees again, with a subdued cry of overwrought feeling.
Mrs. Ritson staggered back, caught the curtains of the bed, and covered her face. All was still.
Then a shuffling footfall was heard on the floor. Hugh Ritson was in the darkened room. He lifted the shaded lamp from the table, approached the bedside, and held the lamp with one hand above his head. The light fell on the outstretched body of his father and the bowed head of his brother.
_BOOK II._
THE COIL OF THE TEMPTATION.
CHAPTER I.
It was late in November, and the day was dark and drear. h.o.a.r-frost lay on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only a fibrous vagueness was visible.
In an old pasture field by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an elderly man, st.u.r.dy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun.
There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed the expression of gentleness and easy good-nature. It was a fine old face, with the beauty of simplicity and the sweetness of content.
A boy in front led the horses, and whistled. The parson hummed a tune as he turned his furrows. Sometimes he sung in a drawling tone--
"Bonny la.s.s, canny la.s.s, wilta be mine?
Thou"s nowder wesh dishes nor sarra the swine."
At the turn-rows he paused, and rested on his plow handles. He rested longest at the turn-rows on the roadside of the field. Like the shivering mists that grouped about the open doors, he was held there by light and warmth.
The smithy stood at the opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the smith"s hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker"s sledge echoed in unseen recesses of the hills beyond.
This smithy of Newlands filled the function which under a higher propitiousness of circ.u.mstance is answered by a club. Girded with his leather ap.r.o.n, his sleeves rolled tightly over his knotty arms, the smith, John Proudfoot, stood waiting for his heat. His striker, Geordie Moore, had fallen to at the bellows. On the tool chest sat Gubblum Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the gate. The miller, d.i.c.k of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o"
Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point by many similar applications.
"Nay, I can make nowt of him. He"s a changed man for sure," said the blacksmith.
Gubblum removed his pipe and muttered sententiously:
"It"s die-spensy, I tell thee."
"Dandering and wandering about at all hours of the day and night,"
continued the blacksmith.