Two Sides of the Face Part 19

In broken sentences he began to tell her.

"You have seen your father?" she asked, interrupting him.

"Not yet. I have seen n.o.body: I came straight to you."

"He is greatly aged."

There came a knock at the door, and Father Halloran stood on the threshold confounded.

The priest was a tall and handsome Irishman, white-haired, with a genial laughing eye, and a touch of grave wisdom behind his geniality.

"Walter, dear lad! For the love of the saints tell us--how does this happen?"

Walter began his story again. The mother gazed into his face in a rapture. But the priest's brow, at first jolly, little by little contracted with a puzzled frown.

"I don't altogether understand," he said. "They scarcely watched you at all, it seems?"

"Thank G.o.d for their carelessness!" put in Mrs. a Cleeve fervently.

"And you escaped. There was nothing to prevent? They hadn't exacted any sort of parole?"

"Well, there was a sort of promise,"--the boy flushed hotly--"not what you'd call a real promise. The fellow--a sort of prefect in a tricolour sash--had us up in a room before him, and gabbled through some form of words that not one of us rightly understood. I heard afterwards some pretty stories of this gentleman. He had been a contractor to the late Republic, in horse-forage, and had swindled the Government (people said) to the tune of some millions of francs. Marengo finished him: he had been speculating against it on the sly, which lost his plunder and the most of his credit. On the remains of it he had managed to sc.r.a.pe into this prefecture. A nice sort of man to administer oaths!"

Father Halloran turned impatiently to the window, and, leaning a hand on one of the stone mullions, gazed out upon the small garden.

Daylight was failing, and the dusk out there on the few autumn flowers seemed one with the chill shadow touching his hopes and robbing them of colour. He s.h.i.+vered: and as with a small s.h.i.+ver men sometimes greet a deadly sickness, so Father Halloran's s.h.i.+ver presaged the doom of a life's hope. He had been Walter's tutor, and had built much on the boy: he had read warnings from time to time, and tried at once to obey them and persuade himself that they were not serious--that his anxiety magnified them. If honour could be inherited, it surely ran in Walter's blood; in honour--the priest could a.s.sert with a good conscience--he had been instructed. And yet--

The lad had turned to his mother, and went on with a kind of sullen eagerness: "There were sixteen of us, including an English clergyman, his wife and two young children, and a young couple travelling on their honeymoon. It wasn't as if they had taken our word and let us go: they marched us off at once to special quarters--billeted us all in one house, over a greengrocer's shop, with a Government _concierge_ below stairs to keep watch on our going and coming. A roll was called every night at eight--you see, there was no liberty about it. The whole thing was a fraud. Father Halloran may say what he likes, but there are two sides to a bargain; and if one party breaks faith, what becomes of the other's promise?"

Mrs. a Cleeve cast a pitiful glance at Father Halloran's back. The priest neither answered nor turned.

"Besides, they stole my money. All that father sent pa.s.sed through the prefect's hands and again through the _concierge's_; yes, and was handled by half a dozen other rascals, perhaps, before ever it reached me.

They didn't even trouble themselves to hide the cheat. One week I might be lucky and pick up a whole louis; the next I'd be handed five francs and an odd sou or two, with a grin."

"And all the while your father was sending out your allowance as usual-- twenty pounds to reach you on the first of every month--and d.i.c.kinson's agents in Paris sending back a.s.surances that it would be transmitted and reach you as surely as if France and England were at peace!"

Father Halloran caught the note of anxious justification in Mrs. a Cleeve's voice, and knew that it was meant for him. He turned now with a half audible "Pis.h.!.+" but controlled his features--superfluously, since he stood now with his back to the waning light.

"Have you seen him?" he asked abruptly.

"Seen whom?"

"Your father."

"I came around by the east door, meaning to surprise mother. I only arrived here two minutes before you knocked."

"For G.o.d's sake answer me 'yes' or 'no,' like a man!" thundered Father Halloran, suddenly giving vent to his anger: as suddenly checking it with a tight curb, he addressed Mrs. a Cleeve. "Your pardon!" said he.

The woman almost whimpered. She could not use upon her confessor the card of weak nerves she would have played at once and unhesitatingly upon her husband. "I think you are horribly unjust," she said. "G.o.d knows how I have looked forward to this moment: and you are spoiling all! One would say you are not glad to see our boy back!"

The priest ignored the querulous words. "You must see your father at once," he said gravely. "At once," he repeated, noting how Walter's eyes sought his mother's.

"Of course, if you think it wise--" she began.

"I cannot say if it be wise--in your meaning. It is his duty."

"We can go with him--"

"No."

"But we might help to explain?"

Father Halloran looked at her with pity. "I think we have done that too often," he answered; and to himself he added: "She is afraid of him. Upon my soul, I am half afraid of him myself."

"You think his father will understand?" she asked, clutching at comfort.

"It depends upon what you mean by 'understanding.' It is better that Walter should go: afterwards I will speak to him." The priest seemed to hesitate before adding, "He loves the boy. By the way, Walter, you might tell us exactly how you escaped."

"The greengrocer's wife helped me," said Walter sullenly. "She had taken a sort of fancy to me, and--she understood the injustice of it better than Father Halloran seems to. She agreed that there was no wrong in escaping.

She had a friend at Yvignac, and it was agreed that I should walk out there early one morning and find a change of clothes ready. The master of the house earned his living by travelling the country with a small waggon of earthenware, and that night he carried me, hidden in the hay among his pitchers and flower-pots, as far as Lamballe. I meant to strike the coast westward, for the road to St. Malo would be searched at once as soon as the _concierge_ reported me missing. From Lamballe I trudged through St. Brisac to Guingamp, hiding by day and walking by night, and at Guingamp called at the house of an onion-merchant, to whom I had been directed. At this season he works his business by hiring gangs of boys of all ages from fourteen to twenty, marching them down to Pampol or Morlaix, and s.h.i.+pping them up the coast to sell his onions along the Seine valley, or by another route southward from Etaples and Boulogne. I joined a party of six bound for Morlaix, and tramped all the way in these shoes with a dozen strings of onions slung on a stick across my shoulders. At Morlaix I s.h.i.+pped on a small trader, or so the skipper called it: he was bound, in fact, for Guernsey, and laden down to the bulwarks with kegs of brandy, and at St. Peter's Port he handed me over to the captain of a Cawsand boat, with whom he did business. I'm giving you just the outline, you understand. I have been through some rough adventures in the last two weeks,"--the lad paused and s.h.i.+vered--"but I don't ask you to think of that. The Cawsand skipper sunk his cargo last night about a mile outside the Rame, and just before daybreak set me ash.o.r.e in Cawsand village.

I have been walking ever since."

Father Halloran stepped to the bell-rope.

"Shall I ring? The boy should drink a gla.s.s of wine, I think, and then go to his father without delay."

III.

"So far as I understand your story, sir, it leaves me with but one course.

You will go at once to your room for the night, where a meal shall be sent to you. At eight o'clock to-morrow morning you will be ready to drive with me to Plymouth, where doubtless I shall discover, from the Officer Commanding, the promptest way of returning you to Dinan."

The Squire spoke slowly, resting his elbow on the library table and shading his eyes with his palm, under which, however, they looked out with fiery directness at Walter, standing upright before him.

The boy's face went white before his brain grasped the sentence.

His first sense was of utter helplessness, almost of betrayal.

From the day of his escape he had been conscious of a weak spot in his story. To himself he could justify his conduct throughout; and by dint of rehearsing over and over again the pros and contras, always as an advocate for the defence, he had persuaded himself at times that every sensible person must agree with him. What consideration, to begin with, could any of the English _detenus_ owe to Bonaparte, who by seizing them had broken the good faith between nations? Promises, again, are not unconditional; they hold so long as he to whom they are given abides by his counter-obligations, stated or implied. . . . Walter had a score of good arguments to satisfy himself. Nevertheless he had felt that to satisfy his father they would need to be well presented. He had counted on his mother's help and Father Halloran's. Why, for the first time in his life, had these two deserted him? Never in the same degree had he wanted their protection. His mind groped in a void. He felt horribly alone.

And yet, while he sought for reasons against this sentence, he knew the real reason to be that he could not face it. He hated suffering: a world which demanded suffering of him was wholly detestable, irrational, monstrous: he desired no more to do with it. What had he done to be used so? He knew himself for a harmless fellow, wis.h.i.+ng hurt to no man.

Then why on earth could he not be let alone? He had never asked to be born: he had no wish to live at all, if living involved all this misery.

It had been bad enough in Dinan before his escape; but to tread back that weary road in proclaimed dishonour, exposed to contemptuous eyes at every halting-place, and to take up the burden again plus the shame--it was unthinkable, and he came near to a hysterical laugh at the command.

He felt as a horse might feel when spurred up to a fence which it cannot face and foresees it must refuse at the last moment.

"Return--return to Dinan?" he echoed, his white lips shaking on each word.

"Certainly you will return to Dinan. For G.o.d's sake--" The Squire checked himself, and his tenderness swelled suddenly above his scorn.

He rose from the table, stepped to the boy, and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Walter," he said, "we have somehow managed to make a mess of it. You have behaved disreputably; and if the blame of it, starting from somewhere in the past, lies at your mother's door or mine, we must sorrowfully beg your pardon. The thing is done: it is reparable, but only through your suffering. You are the last a Cleeve, and with our faults we a Cleeves have lived cleanly and honourably. Be a man: take up this burden which I impose, and redeem your honour. For your mother's sake and mine I could ask it: but how can we separate ourselves from you?

Look in my face. Are there no traces in it of these last two years?