The Pillar of Light Part 46

"Enid," he said brokenly, "my words to you must be few. Good fortune needs but slight explanation. The proofs of my statement I do not possess, but Mr. Traill's letter to me could not have been written by such a man if he were not sure of his facts. Here it is. Read it aloud."

He handed her her father's plain-spoken communication. Constance, incapable of deeper depths of amazement than those now probed, looked over her sister's shoulder. Together they deciphered the somewhat difficult handwriting of a man whose chief task for years had been to sign his name.

This drawback was good in its result. They persevered steadily to the end. Then Enid, the comforter, broke down herself.

"It cannot be true, dad," she cried. "I have been one of your daughters all my life. Why should I be taken from you now?"

"I believe it is quite true," said Brand quietly, and the need there was to console her was beneficial to himself. "Mr. Traill speaks of proofs.

You have met him. I exchanged barely a word, a glance, with him, but it is not believable that he would make these solemn statements without the most undeniable testimony."

"Indeed, Enid," murmured Constance, "it sounds like the truth, else he would never have spoken so definitely of my father's first claim on your affections."

Brand stroked the weeping girl's hair.

"One does not cry, little one, when one is suddenly endowed with a wealthy and distinguished relative. Now, I did not spring this revelation on you without a motive. If a cleavage has to come let us, at least, face every consideration. Providence, by inscrutable decree, ordained that my wife and I should meet after twenty-one years. That cannot have been a purposeless meeting. In my careless youth, when I a.s.signed all things their scientific place, I have scoffed at presentiments and vague portents of coming evils. I retract the immature judgment then formed. During the height of the hurricane, when I feared the very lantern would be hurled into the sea, I was vouchsafed a spiritual warning. I could not read its import. These things baffle a man, especially one whose mind leans towards materialism. Nevertheless, I knew, though not in ordered comprehension, that my life was tending towards a supreme crisis. As the storm died, so I became normal, and I attributed a glimpse of the unseen to mere physical facts. I was wrong.

The coming of that ill-fated vessel was heralded to me. I lacked the key of the hidden message. Now I possess it. On board that s.h.i.+p, Constance, was your mother. How strange that her advent should be bound up also with the mystery of Enid's parentage!"

"Father, dear, if you can bear it, tell me of my mother. She knew me, and that is why she asked me to kiss her."

"She asked you to kiss her?" Each word was a crescendo of surprise.

"Yes. One night she came to me. Oh, I remember. She wished Mr. Pyne to telegraph to his uncle. When he quitted us to take the message she, too--how weird it all seems now--admitted that she experienced something of the intuitive knowledge of the future you have just spoken of."

"I am not surprised. Poor Nanette! She was always a dreamer, in a sense.

Never content, she longed for higher flights. She was a woman in ambition 'ere she ceased to be a child. When I married her, she was only eighteen. I was ten years older. My thought was to educate her to a somewhat higher ideal of life than the frivolities of a fas.h.i.+onable world. It was a mistake. If a girl harbors delusions before marriage the experience of married life is not a cure but an incentive. A less tolerant man would have made her a safer husband."

Constance would listen to nothing which would disparage him.

"I hate to be unjust to her even in my thoughts, but where could she have found a better husband than you, dad?"

"Millionaire indeed!" protested Enid, breaking in with her own tumultuous thoughts. "I would not exchange you for twenty millionaires."

"My methods cannot have been so ill-considered if they have brought me two such daughters," he said, with a mournful smile. "But there! I am only deluding myself into a postponement of a painful duty. My secret must out--to you, at any rate. When I married your mother, Constance, I was an attache at the British Emba.s.sy in Paris. Her maiden name was Madeleine Nanette de Courtray. Her family, notwithstanding the French sound of her name, was almost wholly English. They were Jersey people, recruited from British stock, but two generations of English husbands were compelled to a.s.sume the style de Courtray owing to entailed estates on the island. There is something quaint in the idea, as it worked out.

The place was only a small farm. When we were married the stipulation lapsed, because it was more advisable for me to retain my own name. I was then the heir to a t.i.tle I can now claim. I am legally and lawfully Sir Stephen Brand, ninth baronet, of Lesser Hambledon, in Northumberland."

"And you became a lighthouse-keeper!"

It was Enid who found breath for the exclamation. Constance braced herself for that which was to come. That Stephen Brand was a well-born man was not a new thing in their intelligence.

"Yes, a cleaner of lamps and transmitter of s.h.i.+p's signals. Have we been less happy?" A most vehement "No!" was the answer.

"Don't run away with the idea that I was, therefore, endowed with ample means. There are baronets poorer than some crossing-sweepers. The estate was enc.u.mbered. During my father's life, during my own until five years ago, it yielded only a thousand a year. Even now, after fifteen years of retrenchment--you both forget that whilst I was stationed at Flamborough Head I was absent for a few days to attend my father's funeral--it produces only a little over three thousand. Enough for us, eh, to enjoy life on? Enough to satisfy Lady Margaret's scruples, Enid, as to her son's absurd notion of matrimony? Enough, too, Constance, to mate you to the man of your choice, whatever his position?"

"Dad," murmured Constance, "is there no hope of the old days coming back again?"

"Who can tell? These things are not in mortal ken. I need hardly say that my allowance of one third of the family revenues was barely sufficient to maintain a junior in the diplomatic service. Yet I married, Heaven help me, in the pursuance of an ideal, only to find my ideal realized, after much suffering, on lonely rocks and bleak headlands. With strict economy, we existed happily until you were born.

My wife, at first, was sufficiently delighted to exchange Jersey society for Paris and the distinguished circle in which we moved there. But you were not many months old until a change came. A Frenchman, a rich fop, began to pay her attentions which turned her head. I do not think she meant any harm. People never do mean harm who accomplish it most fatally. I did that which a man who respects himself loathes to do--I protested. There was a scene, tears, and wild reproaches. Next day the crash came. She endeavored to mislead me as to an appointment. G.o.d knows I only wished to save her, but it was too much to ask me to pa.s.s over in silence the schemes of a libertine, though he, too, was infatuated by her beauty. I discovered them in a clandestine meeting, and--and--my blood was hot and the country was France. We fought next morning, and I killed him."

Constance bent her head and kissed his right hand. Here, at least, was a lineal descendant of nine generations of border raiders, who held their swords of greater worth than musty laws.

Brand's eyes kindled. His voice became more vehement. The girl's impulsive action seemed to sanctify the deed.

"I did not regret, I have never regretted, the outcome of the duel. He was mortally wounded, and was carried to his house to die. I fled from Paris to escape arrest, but the woman in whose defence I encountered him behaved most cruelly. She deserted me, and went to him. Ask Mrs.

Sheppard. She was your English nurse at the time, Constance. It was she who brought you to England. I never met my wife again. I believe, on my soul, that she was innocent of the greater offence. I think she rebelled against the thought that I had slain one who said he wors.h.i.+ped her.

Anyhow, she had her price. She remained with him, in sheer defiance of me, until his death, and her reward was his wealth. Were it not for this we might have come together again and striven to forget the past in mutual toleration. The knowledge that she was enriched with that man's gold maddened me. I could not forget that. I loathed all that money could give, the diamonds, the dresses, the insane devices of society to pour out treasure on the vanities of the hour. By idle chance I was drawn to the lighthouse service. It was the mere whim of a friend into whose sympathetic ears I gave my sorrows. It is true I did not intend to devote my life to my present occupation. But its vast silences, its isolation, its seclusion from the petty, sordid, money-grabbing life ash.o.r.e, attracted me. I found quiet joys, peaceful days, and dreamless nights in its comparative dangers and privations. Excepting my loyal servant and friend, Mrs. Sheppard, and the agent and solicitors of my estate, none knew of my whereabouts. I was a lost man, and, as I imagined, a fortunate one. Now, in the last week of my service--for I would have retired in a few days and it was my intention to tell you something, not all, of my history, largely on account of your love-making, Enid--the debacle has come, and with it my wife."

"Father," asked Constance, "is my mother still your wife by law?"

"She cannot be otherwise."

"I wonder if you are right. I am too young to judge these things, but she spoke of her approaching marriage with Mr. Traill in a way that suggested she would not do him a grievous wrong. She does not love him, as I understand love. She regards him as a man admirable in many ways, but she impressed me with the idea that she believed she was doing that which was right, though she feared some unforeseen difficulty."

Brand looked at her with troubled eyes. It is always amazing to a parent to find unexpected powers of divination in a child. Constance was still a little girl in his heart. What had conferred this insight into a complex nature like her mother's?

"There is something to be said for that view," he admitted. "I recollect now that Pyne told me she had lived some years in the Western States.

But he said, too, that her husband, the man whose name she bears, died there. My poor girls, I do, indeed, pity you if all this story of miserable intrigue, this squalid romance of the law-courts, is to be dragged into the light in a town where you are honored. Enid, you see now how doubly fortunate you are in being restored to a father's arms--"

"Oh, no, no!" wailed Enid. "Do not say that. It seems to cut us apart.

What have you done that you should dread the worst than can be said? And why should there be any scandal at all? I cannot bear you to say such things."

"I think I understand you, dad," said Constance, her burning glance striving to read his hidden thought. "Matters cannot rest where they are. You will not allow--my mother--to go away--a second time--without a clear statement as to the future and an equally honest explanation of the past."

This was precisely the question he dreaded. It had forced its unwelcome presence upon him in the first moment of the meeting with his wife. But he was a man of order, of discipline. The habits of years might not be flung aside so readily. It was absurd, he held, to inflict the self-torture of useless imaginings on the first night of their home-coming after the severe trials of their precarious life on the rock.

Above all else it was necessary to rea.s.sure Constance, whose strength only concealed the raging fire beneath, and Enid, whose highly strung temperament was on the borderland of hysteria.

He was still the arbiter of their lives, the one to whom they looked for guidance. He rebelled against the prospect of a night of sleepless misery for these two, and it needed his emphatic dominance to direct their thoughts into a more peaceful channel.

So he a.s.sumed the settled purpose he was far from feeling and summoned a kindly smile to his aid.

"Surely we have discussed our difficulties sufficiently tonight," he said. "In the morning, Constance, I will meet Mr. Traill. He is a gentleman and a man of the world. I think, too, that his nephew will be resourceful and wise in counsel beyond his years. Now we are all going to obtain some much-needed rest. Neither you nor I will yield to sleepless hours of brooding. Neither of you knows that, not forty-eight hours ago, I made myself a thief in the determination to save your lives and mine. It was a needless burglary. I persuaded myself that it was necessary in the interests of the Trinity Brethren, those grave gentlemen in velvet cloaks, Enid, who would be horrified by the mere suggestion. I refuse to place myself on the moral rack another time. In the old days, when I was a boy, the drama was wont to be followed by a more lively scene. I forbid further discussion. Come, kiss me, both of you. I think that a stiff gla.s.s of hot punch will not do me any harm, nor you, unless you imbibed freely of that champagne I saw nestling in the ice-pail."

They rose obediently. Although they knew he was acting a part on their account they were sensible that he was adopting a sane course.

Enid tried to contribute to the new note. She bobbed in the approved style of the country domestic.

"Please, Sir Stephen," she said, "would you like some lemon in the toddy?"

Constance placed a little copper kettle on the fire. Their gloom had given way to a not wholly forced cheerfulness--for in that pleasant cottage sorrow was an unwelcome guest--when they were surprised to hear a sharp knock on the outer door.

At another time the incident, though unusual at a late hour, would not have disturbed them. But the emotions of the night were too recent, their subsidence too artificially achieved, that they should not dread the possibilities which lay beyond that imperative summons.

Mrs. Sheppard and the servant had retired to rest, worn out with the anxious uncertainties of events reported from the lighthouse.

So Brand went to the door, and the girls listened in nervous foreboding.

They heard their father say: