At this speech Mr. Menemon stood up again, and paced the room; his head was bent, and he had the appearance of one in deep perplexity. From time to time he raised his hand and stroked his back hair. And as he walked Eden continued, but her tone was gentler than before:
"Father, you can never know. As you say, there are things of which it is not well to speak. But let me tell you: In marrying I thought my husband like yourself, one whom I could believe, whom I could honor, and of whom I should be proud. He was too old for me, people said. But my fear was that I should seem too young for him. Others insisted that I knew nothing of him, and all the while I hoped that he would not find me lacking. I wanted to aid, to a.s.sist. I was ambitious. He seemed possessed of the fibres of which greatness is the crown. I saw before him a future, a career which history might note. I dreamed that with the wealth which he had acquired and the power that was in him, he could win recognition of men and fame of time. It would be pleasant, I thought, to be the helpmate of such an one. How did it matter that he was an alien if I were at home with him? Father, I was proud of him. I was glad to be younger than he. What better guide could I find? Yes, I was glad of his years, for I had brought myself to think that when two people equally young and equally favored fall in love, it is nature that is acting in them. Whereas I loved not the man, but the individual, and that, I told myself, that is the divine. That is what I thought before marriage, and now I detect him in a vulgar intrigue. Is it not hideous? It took him six months to walk through my illusions, and one hour to dispel them.
See, I have nothing left. Nothing," she added pensively, "except regret."
She remained silent a little s.p.a.ce, then some visitation of that renegade Yesterday that calls himself To-morrow, seemed to stir her pulse.
"Father," she pleaded, "tell me; I can be free of him, can I not? You will keep him from me? you will get me back my liberty again?"
Mr. Menemon had resumed his former place at the table, and sat there, his head still bent. But at this appeal he looked up and nodded abstractedly, as though his attention were divided between her and someone whom he did not see.
"You are overwrought," he said. "Were you yourself, you would not speak in this fashion about nothing."
A sting could not have been more sudden in its effect. She gasped; a returning gust of anger enveloped her. She sprang from her seat as though impelled by hidden springs. "Nothing?" she cried. "You call it nothing to unearth a falsehood where you awaited truth, treachery where honesty should be, deceit instead of candor! You call it nothing to harbor a knight and discover him a knave, to give your trust unfalteringly and find that it has reposed on lies! Nothing to be jockied of your love, cozened of your faith! To wage a war with blacklegs and mistake that war for peace! Do you call it nothing to drown a soul, to make it a sponge of shadows that can no longer receive the light? Is it nothing to hold out your arms and be embraced by Judas?
Is it nothing to be loyal and be gammoned for your innocence? Is it nothing to be juggled with, to be gulled, cheated, and decoyed? Is it nothing to grasp a hawser and find it a rope of sand? To pursue the real and watch it turn into delusion? Nothing to see the promise vanish in the hope? Is it nothing to take a mirage for a landscape, nothing to be hoodwinked of your confidence, to see high noon dissolve into obscurest night, a diamond into pinchbeck? Tell me, is it nothing to have trust, sincerity, and love for heritage, and wake to find that you have p.a.w.ned them to a Jew? Do you think it nothing to be mated to a living perjury, a felony in flesh and blood? Is this what you call nothing? Is this it?
Then tell me what something is."
For a moment she stared at her father, her lips still moving, her small hands clenched, then, exhausted by the vehemence of her speech, she sank back again into the chair which she had vacated.
"No, Eden, not that," her father answered; but he spoke despondently, with the air of a man battling against a stream, and conscious of the futility of the effort. "No, not that; you misunderstand. I mean this: you have confounded suspicion with proof. Whoever this woman is, Usselex"s relations with her may be irreproachable. Mind you, I don"t say they are; I say they may be. I will question him, and he will answer truthfully."
"Truthfully? You expect him to answer truthfully. In him nothing is true, not even his lies."
"Eden, I will question him. If it is as you expect, he will tell me and you will forgive."
"Forgive? yes, it is easy to forgive, but forget, never! Besides, he will not tell the truth; he will deceive you, as he has deceived me."
"No, Eden," Mr. Menemon answered, "you are wrong." For a moment he hesitated and glanced at her. "I suppose," he continued, "I may tell you now. Perhaps it will help to strengthen your confidence."
Again he hesitated; but presently something of his former serenity seemed to return. "H"m," he went on, "it"s a long story and an odd one.
Previous to your engagement, Meredith was here. I wish, instead of lying across the square in a coffin, he could be here now. However, he came to see me one day. I happened to mention Usselex"s name, and he told me certain rumors about him. The next afternoon I went to Usselex on the subject. "I have already written to you on the matter," he said; and sure enough, when I got back here, I found the letter waiting. Would you like to see it?"
Eden tossed her head. What had the letter to do with her?
"I will read it to you, then."
Mr. Menemon left his chair, went to a safe that stood in a corner, unlocked it, and after a fumble of a moment, drew out a ma.n.u.script, which he unfolded, and then resumed his former seat.
"It is not very long," he said, apologetically, and he was about to begin to read it aloud when Eden interrupted him.
"Tell me what is in it, if you must!" she exclaimed; "but spare me his phrases."
She had risen again and was moving restlessly about the room. Her father coughed in sheer despair.
"Well, I will tell it to you," he said. "But Eden, do sit down. Do wait at least until I can give you the gist of what he wrote."
"Go on; go on. Nothing matters now."
Hesitatingly and unencouraged, half to his daughter, and half to some invisible schoolmaster, whose lesson he might have learned by rote, Mr.
Menemon fluttered the letter and sought some prefatory word.
"You see, Eden," he began, "this was sent me just before he spoke to you, and just after he had acquainted me of his intentions. You understand that, do you not?"
"Go on," she repeated.
"Well, from what I had heard, and what he practically substantiates here, Usselex is a trifle out of the common run. His earliest recollections are of Cornwall, some manufacturing town there; let me see--" and the old man fumbled with the letter and with his gla.s.ses.
"Yes, yes; Market Dipborough, to be sure. Well, he was brought up there by his mother, who was of Swiss extraction, and by his father, who was at the head of a large shoe factory. I say his father and mother; but--However, he was brought up there. Well, to make a long story short, it appears that he was given a very good education; his people evidently were people of some means, and it was expected that he would study for the bar. He was put at some public school or other, the name is immaterial, and when he was on the point of entering Oxford, the Swiss lady or her husband, I forget which--at any rate, somebody died. Do you follow me, Eden? Well, he then learned that instead of being the son of the people by whom he had been brought up, he was not their son at all.
And now comes the curious part of it. It seems that the Swiss lady had been, in years gone by, companion or governess, or something of that sort, to the Grand-d.u.c.h.ess Thyra of Gothland, who, as you know, became the wife of the King of Suabia. She died, by the way, a year or two ago.
However, the Swiss lady was her companion or something of the kind, and in consequence was placed in close relations with her. In fact, she was, I suppose, what you might call a confidante. In any event, the Grand-d.u.c.h.ess happened to have for music-teacher a good-looking young German who took her fancy. The result of it all was that the Swiss lady agreed to pretend that the offspring was her own, and was handsomely rewarded for her pains. She left Gothland with the child, and it was not until she died that Usselex learned that instead of being her son, he was grandson of the Emperor. He had the bar-sinister, of course, but the ancestry was there all the same. I don"t know that I or any other man would envy him it; but perhaps it is better than none. However, as soon as Usselex learned the facts, he packed up and came over here. Now you have that part of his existence in a nutsh.e.l.l. What do you say to it?"
And Mr. Menemon coughed again, and glanced inquiringly at his daughter.
"I say he is so base I might have known he was of royal blood."
"Eden, you are singularly unjust."
"But what does his birth matter to me?" she cried. "It was not for the presence or absence of forefathers that I put my hand in his. It was for the man himself, for what he seemed to me, and when I find that I have been mistaken in him, when in return for my love I get deceit, when he leaves me for another woman, and has the infamy to ask me to receive that woman, then I say, that whether he be the son of a serf or the son of a king, our ways divide--"
"Eden--"
"Yes, our ways divide."
Urged by her irritation, she still paced the room, graceful as a leopard is, and every whit as unconstrained. But now, abruptly she halted before a portrait that hung from the wall. For a moment she gazed at it, then pointing to it with arm outstretched, she turned.
"Tell me," she asked, her sultry eyes flashing with vistas of victory.
"Tell me how my mother would have acted, had such an indignity been put on her. Tell me," she repeated, "and through your knowledge of her, so will I act. Yes," she added, and then paused, amazed at the expression of her father"s face. It was as though some unseen hand had stabbed him from behind. The mouth twitched in the contraction of sudden pain, the nostrils quivered, and he bowed his head; then, his eyes lowered and turned from her, he answered in a voice that trembled just a little and yet was perfectly distinct:
"It was such a thing as this that marred your mother"s life; let it not mar your own."
For the moment Eden could not credit her hearing. The words seemed meaningless. She had caught them in a crescendo of stupor. "It is impossible," she murmured. She stared at her father, her eyes dilated, her heart throbbing, and every sense alert. "It is impossible," she repeated, beneath her breath. And as she stared, her father"s att.i.tude accentuated the words, reiterating that the avowal which had been wrung from him was not the impossible, but the truth. No, there was no mistake. She had heard aright, and presently, as the understanding of it reached her, she moved back and away from him. For the first time that day the tears came to her eyes. "I have drunk of shame," she sobbed; "now let me drink of death."
IX.
For some time father and daughter were silent. Eden suppressed her sob, and Mr. Menemon fidgeted nervously in his chair. The funeral across the way, he told himself, would be gayer than this, and for the moment he regretted that he had not taken time by its bang and gone to other lands. Grief was always distressing to him, and the grief of his daughter was torment. The idea that Usselex had been derelict, he put from him. He had an interpretation of his own for the incidents on which he had been called to sit in judgment. Trivialities such as they left him unaffected. His enervation came of an inability to cope with Eden.
She treated an argument like a cobweb. And besides, had he not in a spasm of discouragement disclosed a secret which for two decades he had kept close-locked and secure?
Truly, if Eden had come to him with a valid complaint, he would have taken arms in an instant. He was by no means one to suffer a child of his to be treated with contumely. The bit of lignum vitae which served him for a heart was all in all for her. A real grievance would have enraged him more than anyone else. In spite of his apparent indifference there was much of the she-wolf in his nature. He would have fought for Eden, he would have growled over her, and shown his false teeth at any a.s.sailant that might happen that way. But of danger there was not a trace. Listen as he might he could not catch the faintest rumor of advancing foes. And because she had met her husband in the street, because a woman had stared at her and some idiotic note had come into her hands, high-noon must change to night, and laughter into tears.
"She is her mother all over again," the old gentleman muttered. And in his discomfiture he regretted the funeral, the confidence that he had made, and fidgeted nervously in his chair.
And as he fidgeted, glancing obliquely the while at his daughter, and engrossed in the torturing pursuit of some plea that should show her she erred, and bring her to her senses again, Eden"s earlier griefs crackled like last year"s leaves. In this new revelation they seemed dead indeed.
Of her mother she had not the faintest recollection; but there had been moments when a breath, a perfume, something which she had just read, a sudden strain, the intoning of a litany, an interior harmony perhaps, or an emotion, had brought to her a whisper, the sound of her own name; and with it for one second would come the shadowy reminiscence of an anterior caress. For a second only would it remain with her, departing as abruptly as it had come, but leaving her to stroll for hours thereafter through lands where dreams come true. And at such times she was wont to feel that could she but clutch that fleeting second and detain it long enough to catch one further glimpse of the past, the key of memory would be in it, and the past unlocked. But that second was never to be detained; it was from her father only that she was able to learn something of that which was nearest to her heart, and again and again she had sat with him listening to anecdotes, absorbing repet.i.tions and familiar details with a renascent interest and a delight that no other chronicles could arouse. On the subject of her mother she had indeed been insatiable; she had wished to know everything, even to the gowns she preferred and the manner in which she had arranged her hair; and her father had taken evident pleasure in telling of one who had been wife to him and mother to her, and whose life she now learned for the first time he had marred.
Mr. Menemon meanwhile was still in pursuit of the plea; but nothing of any cogency presented itself. In truth he had builded better than he knew. Anger burns itself out; already its force was spent, and the revelation he had made had affected his daughter like a douche. In his ignorance, however, the safest and surest course that occurred to him was to hold his tongue, send for Usselex, and leave him to settle the matter as best he might. This course he was about to adopt, and he got out some paper preparatory to wording the message when a servant appeared with a card on a tray.
He picked it up, glanced at it, and then over at his daughter. She was still leaning against the book-case, her back was turned, and her face hidden in her arms. It seemed probable to him that she was unaware of the servant"s presence.