"I shall do so," said he, and turned again to his lordship. "I had no cause to love you that morning, nor at any time, my lord; I had no cause to think--as even you in your heart must realize, if so be that you have a heart, and the intelligence to examine it--I had no cause to think, my lord, that I should be doing other than a good deed by letting drive my blade. That such an opinion was well founded was proven by the thing you did when I turned my back upon you after sparing your useless life."
Rotherby broke in tempestuously, smiting the desk before him. "If you think to move us to mercy by such--"
"Oh, not to mercy would I move you," said Mr. Caryll, his hand raised to stay the other, "not to mercy, but to horror of the thing you contemplate." And then, in an oddly impressive manner, he launched his thunderbolt. "Know, then, that if that morning I would not spill your blood, it was because I should have been spilling the same blood that flows in my own veins; it was because you are my brother; because your father was my father. No less than that was the reason that withheld my hand."
He had announced his aim of moving them to horror; and it was plain that he had not missed it, for in frozen horror sat they all, their eyes upon him, their cheeks ashen, their mouths agape--even Hortensia, who from what already Mr. Caryll had told her, understood now more than any of them.
After a spell Rotherby spoke. "You are my brother?" he said, his voice colorless. "My brother? What are you saying?"
And then her ladyship found her voice. "Who was your mother?" she inquired, and her very tone was an insult, not to the man who sat there so much as to the memory of poor Antoinette de Maligny. He flushed to the temples, then paled again.
"I"ll not name her to your ladyship," said he at, last, in a cold, imperious voice.
"I"m glad ye"ve so much decency," she countered.
"You mistake, I think," said he. ""Tis respect for my mother that inspires me." And his green eyes flashed upon the painted hag. She rose up a very fury.
"What are you saying?" she shrilled. "D"ye hear the filthy fellow, Rotherby? He"ll not name the wanton in my presence out of respect for her."
"For shame, madam! You are speaking of his mother," cried Hortensia, hot with indignation.
"Pshaw! "Tis all an impudent lie--a pack of lies!" cried Rotherby. "He"s crafty as all the imps of h.e.l.l."
Mr. Caryll rose. "Here in the sight of G.o.d and by all that I hold most sacred, I swear that what I have said is true. I swear that Lord Ostermore--your father--was my father. I was born in France, in the year 1690, as I have papers upon me that will prove, which you may see, Rotherby."
His lordship rose. "Produce them," said he shortly.
Mr. Caryll drew from an inner pocket of his coat the small leather case that Sir Richard Everard had given him. From this he took a paper which he unfolded. It was a certificate of baptism, copied from the register of the Church of St. Antoine in Paris.
Rotherby held out his hand for it. But Mr. Caryll shook his head. "Stand here beside me, and read it," said he.
Obeying him, Rotherby went and read that authenticated copy, wherein it was declared that Sir Richard Everard had brought to the Church of St.
Antoine for baptism a male child, which he had declared to be the son of John Caryll, Viscount Rotherby, and Antoinette de Maligny, and which had received in baptism the name of Justin.
Rotherby drew away again, his head sunk on his breast. Her ladyship was seated, her eyes upon her son, her fingers drumming absently at the arms of her chair. Then Rotherby swung round again.
"How do I know that you are the person designated there--this Justin Caryll?"
"You do not; but you may. Cast your mind back to that night at White"s when you picked your quarrel with me, my lord. Do you remember how Stapleton and Collis spoke up for me, declared that they had known me from boyhood at Oxford, and had visited me at my chateau in France? What was the name of that chateau, my lord--do you remember?"
Rotherby looked at him, searching his memory. But he did not need to search far. At first glance the name of Maligny had seemed familiar to him. "It was Maligny," he replied, "and yet--"
"If more is needed to convince you, I can bring a hundred witnesses from France, who have known me from infancy. You may take it that I can establish my ident.i.ty beyond all doubt."
"And what if you do?" demanded her ladyship suddenly. "What if you do establish your ident.i.ty as my lord"s b.a.s.t.a.r.d? What claim shall that be upon us?"
"That, ma"am," answered Mr. Caryll very gravely, "I wait to learn from my brother here."
CHAPTER XXI. THE LION"S SKIN
For a spell there was utter silence in that s.p.a.cious, pillared chamber.
Mr. Caryll and her ladyship had both resumed their chairs: the former spuriously calm; the latter making no attempt to conceal her agitation.
Hortensia leant forward, an eager spectator, watching the three actors in this tragicomedy.
As for Rotherby, he stood with bent head and furrowed brow. It was for him to speak, and yet he was utterly at a loss for words. He was not moved at the news he had received, so much as dismayed. It dictated a course that would interfere with all his plans, and therefore a course unthinkable. So he remained puzzled how to act, how to deal with this unexpected situation.
It was her ladyship who was the first to break the silence. She had been considering Mr. Caryll through narrowing eyes, the corners of her mouth drawn down. She had caught the name of Maligny when it was uttered, and out of the knowledge which happened to be hers--though Mr. Caryll was ignorant of this--it set her thinking.
"I do not believe that you are the son of Mademoiselle de Maligny," she said at last. "I never heard that my lord had a son; I cannot believe there was so much between them."
Mr. Caryll stared, startled out of his habitual calm. Rotherby turned to her with an exclamation of surprise. "How?" he cried. "You knew, then?
My father was--"
She laughed mirthlessly. "Your father would have married her had he dared," she informed them. ""Twas to beg his father"s consent that he braved his banishment and came to England. But his father was as headstrong as himself; held just such views as he, himself, held later where you were concerned. He would not hear of the match. I was to be had for the asking. My father was a man who traded in his children, and he had offered me, with a jointure that was a fortune, to the Earl of Ostermore as a wife for his son."
Mr. Caryll was listening, all ears. Some light was being shed upon much that had lain in darkness.
"And so," she proceeded, "your grandfather constrained your father to forget the woman he had left in France, and to marry me. I know not what sins I had committed that I should have been visited with such a punishment. But so it befell. Your father resisted, dallying with the matter for a whole year. Then there was a duel fought. A cousin of Mademoiselle de Maligny"s crossed to England, and forced a quarrel upon your father. They met, and M. de Maligny was killed. Then a change set in in my lord"s bearing, and one day, a month or so later, he gave way to his father"s insistence, and we were wed. But I do not believe that my lord had left a son in France--I do not believe that had he done so, I should not have known it; I do not believe that under such circ.u.mstances, unfeeling as he was, he would have abandoned Mademoiselle de Maligny."
"You think, then," said Rotherby, "that this man has raked up this story to--"
"Consider what you are saying," cut in Mr. Caryll, with a flash of scorn. "Should I have come prepared with doc.u.ments against such a happening as this?"
"Nay, but the doc.u.ments might have been intended for some other purpose had my lord lived--some purpose of extortion," suggested her ladyship.
"But consider again, madam, that I am wealthy--far wealthier than was ever my Lord Ostermore, as my friends Collis, Stapleton and many another can be called to prove. What need, then, had I to extort?"
"How came you by your means, being what you say you are?" she asked him.
Briefly he told her how Sir Richard Everard had cared for him, for his mother"s sake; endowed him richly upon adopting him, and since made him heir to all his wealth, which was considerable. "And for the rest, madam, and you, Rotherby, set doubts on one side. Your ladyship says that had my lord had a son you must have heard of it. But my lord, madam, never knew he had a son. Tell me--can you recall the date, the month at least, in which my lord returned to England?"
"I can, sir. It was at the end of April of "89. What then?"
Mr. Caryll produced the certificate again. He beckoned Rotherby, and held the paper under his eyes. "What date is there--the date of birth?"
Rotherby read: "The third of January of 1690."
Mr. Caryll folded the paper again. "That will help your ladyship to understand how it might happen that my lord remained in ignorance of my birth." He sighed as he replaced the case in his pocket. "I would he had known before he died," said he, almost as if speaking to himself.
And now her ladyship lost her temper. She saw Rotherby wavering, and it angered her; and angered, she committed a grave error. Wisdom lay in maintaining the att.i.tude of repudiation; it would at least have afforded some excuse for her and Rotherby. Instead, she now recklessly flung off that armor, and went naked down into the fray.
"A fig for"t all!" she cried, and snapped her fingers. She had risen, and she towered there, a lean and malevolent figure, her head-dress nodding foolishly. "What does it matter that you be what you claim to be? Is it to weigh with you, Rotherby?"
Rotherby turned grave eyes upon her. He was, it seemed, not quite rotten through and through; there was still in him--in the depths of him--a core that was in a measure sound; and that core was reached. Most of all had the story weighed with him because it afforded the only explanation of why Mr. Caryll had spared his life that morning of the duel. It was a matter that had puzzled him, as it had puzzled all who had witnessed the affront that led to the encounter.
Between that and the rest--to say nothing of the certificate he had seen, which he could not suppose a forgery--he was convinced that Mr.