"It"s not only that you are born with qualities, definite characteristics, definite cravings, for which you are no more responsible than the man in the moon, and which are part of you. But there"s something else. How much of your character, how much of all your life to come is decided for you during the first ten or fifteen years of your life--decided for you, mind, not by you? Upon my soul, I think the whole of it. You don"t agree? Well, it"s an open question. I believe that at the age of fifteen the lines along which you will move are already drawn, your character formed, your conduct for the future a settled thing."
To that Sylvia gave no a.s.sent. But she did not disagree. She only looked at her father with a questioning and a troubled face. If it were so, she asked, why had she hated from the first the circle in which her mother and herself had moved. And the answer--or at all events _an_ answer--came as she put the question to herself. She had lived amongst her dreams. She was in doubt.
"Well, hear something of my boyhood, Sylvia!" cried her father, and for the first time his voice became embittered. "I was brought up by a respectable father. Yes, respectable," he said, with a sneer. "Everything about us was respectable. We lived in a respectable house in a respectable neighborhood, and twice every Sunday we went to church and listened to a respectable clergyman. But!--Well, here"s a chapter out of the inside. I would go to bed and read in bed by a candle. Not a very heinous offence, but contrary to the rule of the house. Sooner or later I would hear a faint scuffling sound in the pa.s.sage. That was my father stealing secretly along to listen at my door and see what I was doing. I covered the light of the candle with my hand, or perhaps blew it out--but not so quickly but that he would see the streak of light beneath the door. Then the play would begin. "You are not reading in bed, are you?"
he would say. "Certainly not," I would reply. "You are sure?" he would insist. "Of course, father," I would answer. Then back he would go, but only for a little way, and I would hear him come stealthily scuffling back again. Perhaps the candle would be lit again already, or at all events uncovered. Would he say anything? Oh, no! He had found out I was lying. He felt that he had scored a point, and he would save it up. So we would meet the next morning at breakfast, he knowing that I was a liar, I knowing that he knew that I was a liar, and both pretending that we were all in all to each other. A small thing, Sylvia. But crowd your life with such small things? Spying and deceit and a game of catch-as-catch-can played by the father and son! My letters were read--I used to know, for roundabout questions would be put leading up to the elucidation of a sentence which to any one but myself would be obscure! Do you think any child could grow up straight, if his boyhood pa.s.sed in that atmosphere of trickery? I don"t know. Only I think that before I was fifteen my way of life was a sure and settled thing. It was certain that I should develop upon the lines on which I was trained."
Garratt Skinner rose from his seat.
"There, I have done," he said. He looked at his daughter for a little while, his eyes dwelling upon her beauty with a certain pleasure, and even a certain wistfulness; he looked at her now much as she had been wont to look at him in the early days of the house in Dorsetshire. It was very plain that they were father and daughter.
"You are too good for your military man, my dear," he said, with a smile.
"Too pretty and too good. Don"t you let him forget it!" And suddenly he cried out with a burst of pa.s.sion. "I wish to G.o.d you had never come near me!" And Sylvia, hearing the cry, remembered that on the Sunday evening when she had first come to the house in Hobart Place, her father had shown a particular hesitation, had felt some of that remorse of which she heard the full expression now, in welcoming her to his house and adapting her to his ends. She raised her downcast eyes and with outstretched hands took a step forward.
"Father!" she said. But her father was already gone. She heard his step upon the stairs.
Chayne, however, followed her father from the room and caught him up as he was leaving the hotel.
"I want to say," he began with some difficulty, "that, if you are pressed at all for money--"
Garratt Skinner stopped him. He pulled some sovereigns out of one pocket and some banknotes out of another.
"You see, I have enough to go on with. In fact--" and he looked northward toward the mountains. Dimly they could be seen under the sickle of a new moon. "In fact, I propose to-morrow to take your friend Simond and cross on the high-level to Zermatt."
"But afterward?" asked Chayne.
Garratt Skinner laughed and laughed like a boy. There was a rich antic.i.p.ation of enjoyment in the sound.
"Afterward? I shall have a great time. I shall squeeze Mr. Jarvice. It"s what they call in America a cinch."
And with a cheery good-night Garratt Skinner betook himself down the road.