"It is not necessary," said he, embarra.s.sed.
"In any case," she said, with a sigh, "you have answered my question.
If you could do this for my girl I am sure of your love for her.
There could be no greater test. I shall take a little more time before answering your question. There are one or two more things I must say to you before I come to that,--and then, if you like, we will take up this story of Isaac Stain"s. Kenneth, the time may come,--I feel that it is sure to come, when--" She stopped. A sound from above caught her ear,--a regular, rhythmic thumping on the floor. After a few seconds she remarked:
"It is all right. That is a rocking-chair. She is getting impatient."
Nevertheless she lowered her voice and leaned forward in her chair.
"The time is sure to come when Viola will learn the truth about herself and me,--and you, as well. I feel it in my bones. It may not come till after I am dead. But no matter when it comes, I want to feel sure now,--to-night, Kenneth,--that you will never undertake to deprive her of the lands and money I shall leave to her."
He stared at her in astonishment. "What is this you are saying?"
She slowly repeated the words. "Why, how could I dispossess her?
It is yours to bequeath as you see fit, madam. Do you think I am a mercenary scoundrel,--that I would try to take it away from her?
I know she is not my father"s daughter, but--why, good heaven, I would never dream of fighting for what you--"
"Your love for her,--though unrequited,--aye, even though she became embittered toward you because of what happened years ago,--you love her enough to stand aside and allow her to hold what I shall leave to her?"
"You are talking in riddles. What on earth are you driving at?" "You will not fight her right, her claim to my estate?" she insisted, leaning still closer.
"Why, of course not!" he exclaimed, angrily.
"Even though the law might say she is not ent.i.tled to it?"
"The law can take no action unless I invoke its aid," said he. "And that is something I shall never do," he added, with finality.
"I wish I could be sure of that," she murmured, wistfully.
He came to his feet. "You may be sure of it," he said, with dignity.
"Possess your soul in peace, if that is all that is troubling it."
"Sit down," she said, a strange huskiness in her voice. He obeyed her. "Your father left a certain part of his fortune to me. There was no provision made for Viola. You understand that, don"t you?"
"Yes. I know all about that," said he, plainly bewildered. "On the other hand, he did not impose any restrictions upon you. You are at liberty to dispose of your share by will, as you see fit, madam.
I am not likely to deny my step-sister what is rightfully hers.
And that reminds me. She is not my blood relation, it"s true. But she is my step-sister. That settles another point. I could not ask my step-sister to be my wife. The law would--"
"Now we have come to the point where I shall answer the question you asked a while ago," she interrupted, straightening up in her chair and regarding him with a fixed, steady light in her eyes that somehow seemed to forewarn him of what was about to be revealed.
"I said it would prove two things to me. One of them was that you are the same kind of man that your father was before you. I mean if you had said you could not ask Viola to be your wife." She paused, and then went on slowly, deliberately. "I lived with your father for nearly twenty years. In all that time he never asked me to be his wife."
At first he stared blankly at her, uncomprehending.
Then a slow, dark flush spread over his face. He half-started up from his chair.
"You--you mean--" he stammered.
"He never asked me to be his wife," she repeated without emotion.
He sank back, incredulous, dumbfounded. "My G.o.d! Am I to understand that you--that you were never married to my father?"
"Yes. I waited twenty years for him to ask me to marry him,--but he never did."
He was still somewhat stupefied. The disclosure was so unexpected, so utterly at odds with all his understanding that he could not wholly grasp its significance. Somewhat footlessly he burst out:
"But surely you must have demanded--I mean, did you never ask him to--to marry you?"
Her eyebrows went up slightly.
"How could I?" she inquired, as if surprised by the question. "I had not sunk so low in my own estimation as that, Kenneth Gwynne.
My bed was made the day I went away with him. Some day you may realize that even such as I may possess the thing called pride.
No! I would have died rather than ask him to marry me. I chose my course with my eyes open. It was not for me to demand more than I gave. He was not a free man when I went to him. He made no promises, nor did I exact any."
She spoke in the most matter-of-fact way. He regarded her in sheer wonder.
"But he SHOULD have made you his wife," he exclaimed, his sense of fairness rising above the bitter antipathy he felt toward her.
"That was for him to decide," said she, calmly. "I respected his feelings in the matter,--and still do. He had no right to marry me when we went away together. He did not take me as a wife, Kenneth Gwynne. He took me as a woman. He had a wife. Up to the day he died he looked upon her as his wife. I was his woman. I could never take her place. Not even after she had been in her grave for twenty years. He never forgot her. I see the scorn in your eyes. He does not quite deserve it, Kenneth. After all is said and done, he was fair to me. Not one man in a thousand would have done his part so well as he.
"I don"t suppose you know what men do with their mistresses when they begin to feel that they are through with them and there is no legal bond to hold them. They desert them. They cast them off.
And then they turn to some honest woman and marry her. That is the way with men. But he was not like that. I can tell what you are about to say. It is on your lips to say that he deserted an honest woman. Well, so he did. And therein lies the secret of his constancy to me,--even after he had ceased to love me and the pa.s.sion that was in him died. He would never desert another woman who trusted him. He paid too dearly in his conscience for the first offence to be guilty of a second.
"You see I am laying bare my innermost soul to you. It hurts me to say that through all these years he loved and honoured and revered his wife,--and the memory of her. He was never unkind to me,--he never spoke of her. But I knew, and he knew that I knew. He loved you, his little boy. I, too, loved you once, Kenneth. When you were a little shaver I adored you. But I came to hate you as the years went by. It is needless to tell you the reason why. When it came time for him to die he left you half of his fortune. The other half,--and a little over,--he gave to me." Her voice faltered a little as she added: "For good and faithful service, I suppose."
During this long speech Kenneth had succeeded in collecting his thoughts. He had been shocked by her confession, and now he was mentally examining the possibilities that might arise from the aspect it bared.
First of all, Viola was not even his step-sister. He experienced a thrill of joy over that,--notwithstanding the ugly truth that gave her the new standing; to his simple, straightforward mind, Viola"s mother was nothing more than a prost.i.tute. (In his thoughts he employed another word, for he lived in a day when prost.i.tutes were called by another name.) Still, Viola was not to blame for that.
That could never be held against her.
"Why have you told me all this?" he asked bluntly. "I had no means of learning that you were never married to my father. There was never a question about it in my mind, nor in anybody else"s, so far as I know. You have put a very dangerous weapon in my hand in case I should choose to use it against you."
She was silent for a long time, struggling with herself. He could almost feel the battle that was going on within her. Somehow it appalled him.
The wind outside was rising. It moaned softly, plaintively through the trees. A shutter creaked somewhere at the back of the house and at intervals banged against the cas.e.m.e.nt. The frogs down in the hollow had ceased their clamour and no doubt took to themselves credit for the storm that was on the way in answer to their exhortations. The even, steady thump of the rocking-chair in the room overhead stopped suddenly, and Viola"s quick tread was heard crossing the floor. She closed a window. Then, after a moment, the sound of the rocking-chair again.
Rachel left her chair and walked over to the window to peer out into the night.
"It is coming from the west," she said, as if to test the steadiness of her voice.
A far-off flicker of lightning cast a faint, phosph.o.r.escent glow into the dimly lighted room, quivering for a second or two on the face of the woman at the window, then dying away with what seemed to be a weird suggestion of reluctance.
She stood before him, looking down. "I have at last obeyed a command imposed by Robert Gwynne when he was on his death-bed. Almost his last words to me were in the nature of a threat. He told me that if I failed to carry out his request,--he did not call it a command,--he would haunt me to my dying day. You may laugh at me if you will, but he HAS been haunting me, Kenneth Gwynne. If I ever cherished the notion that I could ignore his command and go on living in the security of my own secret, I must have known from the beginning that it would be impossible. Day and night, ever since you came, some force that was not my own has been driving at my resistance.
You will call it compunction, or conscience or an honest sense of duty. I do not call it by any of those names. Your father commanded me to tell you with my own lips,--not in writing or through the mouth of an agent,--he commanded me to say to you that your mother was the only wife he ever had. I have done this to-night. I have humbled myself,--but it was after a long, cruel fight."
She sat down, and it seemed to him that her very soul went out in the deep, long sigh that caused her bosom to flatten and her shoulders to droop forward.
"He was either an ingrate or a coward," said he harshly, after a short silence.
"It is not for you to pa.s.s judgment on my master," said she, simply. "May I beg you to refrain from putting your own judgment of him into words? Will you not spare me that?"
He stared at her in astonishment. He saw that she was in earnest, desperately in earnest. Choking back the words that had rushed to his lips, he got up from his chair and bent his head gravely.