CHAPTER XXI. THE MESSAGE KENNETH BORE
In bewilderment Crispin took the outstretched hand of his oldfellow-roysterer.
"Oddslife," he growled, "if to have me waylaid, dragged from my horseand wounded by those sons of dogs, your myrmidons, be your manner ofexpressing gratitude, I'd as lief you had let me go unthanked."
"And yet, Cris, I dare swear you'll thank me before another hour issped. Ough, man, how cold you are! There's a bottle of strong watersyonder--"
Then, without completing his sentence, Hogan had seized the black jackand poured half a glass of its contents, which he handed Crispin.
"Drink, man," he said briefly, and Crispin, nothing loath, obeyed him.
Next Hogan drew the torn and sodden doublet from his guest's back,pushed a chair over to the table, and bade him sit. Again, nothingloath, Crispin did as he was bidden. He was stiff from long riding, andso with a sigh of satisfaction he settled himself down and stretched outhis long legs.
Hogan slowly took the seat opposite to him, and coughed. He was at aloss how to open the parlous subject, how to communicate to Crispin theamazing news upon which he had stumbled.
"Slife' Hogan," laughed Crispin dreamily, "I little thought it was toyou those crop-ears carried me with such violence. I little thought,indeed, ever to see you again. But you have prospered, you knave, sincethat night you left Penrith."
And he turned his head the better to survey the Irishman.
"Aye, I have prospered," Hogan assented. "My life is a sort of parableof the fatted son and the prodigal calf. They tell me there is greaterjoy in heaven over the repentance of a sinner than--than--Plague on it!How does it go?"
"Than over the downfall of a saint?" suggested Crispin.
"I'll swear that's not the text, but any of my troopers could quote ityou; every man of them is an incarnate Church militant." He paused,and Crispin laughed softly. Then abruptly: "And so you were riding toLondon?" said he.
"How know you that?"
"Faith, I know more--much more. I can even tell you to what house yourode, and on what errand. You were for the sign of the Anchor in ThamesStreet, for news of your son, whom Joseph Ashburn hath told you lives."
Crispin sat bolt upright, a look of mingled wonder and suspicion on hisface.
"You are well informed, you gentlemen of the Parliament," he said.
"On the matter of your errand," the Irishman returned quietly, "I ammuch better informed than are you. Shall I tell you who lives at thesign of the Anchor--not whom you have been told lives there, but whoreally does occupy the house?" Hogan paused a second as though awaitingsome reply; then softly he answered his own question: "Colonel Pride."And he sat back to await results.
There were none. For the moment the name awoke no recollections,conveyed no meaning to Crispin.
"Who may Colonel Pride be?" he asked, after a pause.
Hogan was visibly disappointed.
"A certain powerful and vindictive member of the Rump, whose son youkilled at Worcester."
This time the shaft went home. Galliard sprang out of the chair, hisbrows darkening, and his cheeks pale beyond their wont.
"Zounds, Hogan, do you mean that Joseph Ashburn was betraying me intothis man's hands?"
"You have said it."
"But--"
Crispin stopped short. The pallor of his face increased; it becameashen, and his eyes glittered as though a fever consumed him. He sankback into his chair, and setting both hands upon the table before him,he looked straight at Hogan.
"But my son, Hogan, my son?" he pleaded, and his voice was broken as noman had heard it yet. "Oh, God in heaven!" he cried in a sudden frenzy."What hell's work is this?"
Behind his blue lips his teeth were chattering now. His hands shook ashe held them, still clenched, before him. Then, in a dull, concentratedvoice:
"Hogan," he vowed, "I'll kill him for it. Fool, blind, pitiful fool thatI am."
Then--his face distorted by passion--he broke into a torrent ofimprecations that was at length stemmed by Hogan.
"Wait, Cris," said he, laying his hand upon the other's arm. "It is notall false. Joseph Ashburn sought, it is true, to betray you into thehands of Colonel Pride, sending you to the sign of the Anchor with theassurance that there you should have news of your son. That was false;yet not all false. Your son does live, and at the sign of the Anchor itis likely you would have had the news of him you sought. But that newswould have come when too late to have been of value to you."
Crispin tried to speak, but failed. Then, mastering himself by aneffort, and in a voice that was oddly shaken:
"Hogan," he cried, "you are torturing me! What is the sum of yourknowledge?"
At last the Irishman produced Ashburn's letter to Colonel Pride.
"My men," said he, "are patrolling the roads in wait for a malignantthat has incurred the Parliament's displeasure. We have news that he ismaking for Harwich, where a vessel lies waiting to carry him to France,and we expect that he will ride this way. Three hours ago a young manunable clearly to account for himself rode into our net, and was broughtto me. He was the bearer of a letter to Colonel Pride from JosephAshburn. He had given my sergeant a wrong name, and betrayed suchanxiety to be gone that I deemed his errand a suspicious one, and brokethe seal of that letter. You may thank God, Galliard, every night ofyour life that I did so."
"Was this youth Kenneth Stewart?" asked Crispin.
"You have guessed it."
"D--n the lad," he began furiously. Then repressing himself, he sighed,and in an altered tone, "No, no," said he. "I have grievously wrongedhim! have wrecked his life--or at least he thinks so now. I can hardlyblame him for seeking to be quits with me."
"The lad," returned Hogan, "must be himself a dupe. He can have had nosuspicion of the message he carried. Let me read it to you; it will makeall clear."
Hogan drew a taper nearer, and spreading the paper upon the table, hesmoothed it out, and read:
HONOURED SIR,
The bearer of the present should, if he rides well, outstrip anothermessenger I have dispatched to you upon a fool's errand, with a letteraddressed to one Mr. Lane at the sign of the Anchor. The bearer of thatis none other than the notorious malignant, Sir Crispin Galliard, bywhose hand your son was slain under your very eyes at Worcester, whosecapture I know that you warmly desire and with whom I doubt not you willknow how to deal. To us he has been a source of no little molestation;his liberty, in fact, is a perpetual menace to our lives. For someeighteen years this Galliard has believed dead a son that my cousin borehim. News of this son, whom I have just informed him lives--as indeed hedoes--is the bait wherewith I have lured him to your address. Forewarnedby the present, I make no doubt you will prepare to receive himfittingly. But ere that justice he escaped at Worcester be meted outto him at Tyburn or on Tower Hill, I would have you give him that newstouching his son which I am sending him to you to receive. Inform him,sir, that his son, Jocelyn Marleigh...
Hogan paused, and shot a furtive glance at Galliard. The knight wasleaning forward now, his eyes strained, his forehead beaded withperspiration, and his breathing heavy.
"Read on," he begged hoarsely.
His son, Jocelyn Marleigh, is the bearer of this letter, the man whomhe has injured and who detests him, the youth with whom he has, by acurious chance, been in much close association, and whom he has known asKenneth Stewart.
"God!" gasped Crispin. Then with sudden vigour, "Oh, 'tis a lie," hecried, "a fresh invention of that lying brain to torture me."
Hogan held up his hand.
"There is a little more," he said, and continued:
Should he doubt this, bid him look closely into the lad's face, and askhim, after he has scrutinized it, what image it evokes. Should he stilldoubt thereafter, thinking the likeness to which he has been singularlyblind to be no more than accidental, bid them strip the lad's rightfoot. It bears a mark that I think should convince him. For the rest,honoured sir, I beg you to keep all information touching his pa
rentagefrom the boy himself, wherein I have weighty ends to serve. Within afew days of your receipt of this letter, I look to have the honour ofwaiting upon you. In the meanwhile, honoured sir, believe that while Iam, I am your obedient servant,
JOSEPH ASHBURN
Across the narrow table the two men's glances met--Hogan's full ofconcern and pity, Crispin's charged with amazement and horror. A littlewhile they sat thus, then Crispin rose slowly to his feet, and withsteps uncertain as a drunkard's he crossed to the window. He pushed itopen, and let the icy wind upon his face and head, unconscious of itssting. Moments passed, during which the knight went over the last fewmonths of his turbulent life since his first meeting at Perth withKenneth Stewart. He recalled how strangely and unaccountably he had beendrawn to the boy when first he beheld him in the castle yard, and how,owing to a feeling for which he could not account, since the lad'scharacter had little that might commend him to such a man as Crispin, hehad contrived that Kenneth should serve in his company.
He recalled how at first--aye, and often afterwards even--he had soughtto win the boy's affection, despite the fact that there was naughtin the boy that he truly admired, and much that he despised. Wasit possible that these his feelings were dictated by Nature to hisunconscious mind? It must indeed be so, and the written words of JosephAshburn to Colonel Pride were true. Kenneth was indeed his son; theconviction was upon him. He conjured up the lad's face, and a cry ofdiscovery escaped him. How blind he had been not to have seen before thelikeness of Alice--his poor, butchered girl-wife of eighteen years ago.How dull never before to have realized that that likeness it was haddrawn him to the boy.
He was calm by now, and in his calm he sought to analyse his thoughts,and he was shocked to find that they were not joyous. He yearned--as hehad yearned that night in Worcester--for the lad's affection, and yet,for all his yearning, he realized that with the conviction that Kennethwas his offspring came a dull sense of disappointment. He was not sucha son as the rakehelly knight would have had him. Swiftly he put thethought from him. The craven hands that had reared the lad had warpedhis nature; he would guide it henceforth; he would straighten it outinto a nobler shape.
Then he smiled bitterly to himself. What manner of man was he to traina youth to loftiness and honour?--he, a debauched ruler with a nicknamefor which, had he any sense of shame, he would have blushed! Again heremembered the lad's disposition towards himself; but these, he thought,he hoped, he knew that he would now be able to overcome.
He closed the window, and turned to face his companion. He was himselfagain, and calm, for all that his face was haggard beyond its wont.
"Hogan, where is the boy?"
"I have detained him in the inn. Will you see him now?"
"At once, Hogan. I am convinced."
The Irishman crossed the chamber, and opening the door he called anorder to the trooper waiting in the passage.
Some minutes they waited, standing, with no word uttered between them.At last steps sounded in the corridor, and a moment later Kenneth wasrudely thrust into the room. Hogan signed to the trooper, who closed thedoor and withdrew.
As Kenneth entered, Crispin advanced a step and paused, his eyesdevouring the lad and receiving in exchange a glance that was full ofmalevolence.
"I might have known, sir, that you were not far away," he exclaimedbitterly, forgetting for the moment how he had left Crispin behind himon the previous night. "I might have guessed that my detention was yourwork."
"Why so?" asked Crispin quietly, his eyes ever scanning the lad's facewith a pathetic look.
"Because it is your way, I know not why, to work my ruin in all things.Not satisfied with involving me in that business at Castle Marleigh, youmust needs cross my path again when I am about to make amends, and soblight my last chance. My God, sir, am I never to be rid of you? Whatharm have I done you?"
A spasm of pain, like a ripple over water, crossed the knight's swartface.
"If you but consider, Kenneth," he said, speaking very quietly, "youmust see the injustice of your words. Since when has Crispin Galliardserved the Parliament, that Roundhead troopers should do his bidding asyou suggest? And touching that business at Sheringham you are over-hardwith me. It was a compact you made, and but for which, you forget thatyou had been carrion these three weeks."
"Would to Heaven that I had been," the boy burst out, "sooner than paysuch a price for keeping my life!"
"As for my presence here," Crispin continued, leaving the outburstunheeded, "it has naught to do with your detention."
"You lie!"
Hogan caught his breath with a sharp hiss, and a dead silence followed.That silence struck terror into Kenneth's heart. He encounteredCrispin's eye bent upon him with a look he could not fathom, and muchwould he now have given to recall the two words that had burst from himin the heat of his rage. He bethought him of the unscrupulous, deadlycharacter attributed to the man to whom he had addressed them, and inhis coward's fancy he saw already payment demanded. Already hepictured himself lying cold and stark in the streets of Waltham witha sword-wound through his middle. His face went grey and his lipstrembled.
Then Galliard spoke at last, and the mildness of his tone filled Kennethwith a new dread. In his experience of Crispin's ways he had come tolook upon mildness as the man's most dangerous phase:
"You are mistaken," Crispin said. "I spoke the truth; it is a habit ofmine--haply the only gentlemanly habit left me. I repeat, I have hadnaught to do with your detention. I arrived here half an hour ago, asthe captain will inform you, and I was conducted hither by force, havingbeen seized by his men, even as you were seized. No," he added, with asigh, "it was not my hand that detained you; it was the hand of Fate."Then suddenly changing his voice to a more vehement key, "Know you onwhat errand you rode to London?" he demanded. "To betray your fatherinto the hands of his enemies; to deliver him up to the hangman."
Kenneth's eyes grew wide; his mouth fell open, and a frown of perplexitydrew his brows together. Dully, uncomprehendingly he met Sir Crispin'ssad gaze.
"My father," he gasped at last. "'Sdeath, sir, what is it you mean? Myfather has been dead these ten years. I scarce remember him."
Crispin's lips moved, but no word did he utter. Then with a suddengesture of despair he turned to Hogan, who stood apart, a silentwitness.
"My God, Hogan," he cried. "How shall I tell him?"
In answer to the appeal, the Irishman turned to Kenneth.
"You have been in error, sir, touching your parentage," quoth hebluntly. "Alan Stewart, of Bailienochy, was not your father."
Kenneth looked from one to the other of them.
"Sirs, is this a jest?" he cried, reddening. Then, remarking at lengththe solemnity of their countenances, he stopped short. Crispin cameclose up to him, and placed a hand upon his shoulder. The boy shrankvisibly beneath the touch, and again an expression of pain crossed thepoor ruffler's face.
"Do you recall, Kenneth," he said slowly, almost sorrowfully, "the storythat I told you that night in Worcester, when we sat waiting for dawnand the hangman?"
The lad nodded vacantly.
"Do you remember the details? Do you remember I told you how, when Iswooned beneath the stroke of Joseph Ashburn's sword, the last wordsI heard were those in which he bade his brother slit the throat of thebabe in the cradle? You were, yourself, present yesternight at CastleMarleigh when Joseph Ashburn told me Gregory had been mercifullyinclined; that my child had not died; that if I gave him his life hewould restore him to me. You remember?"
Again Kenneth nodded. A vague, numbing fear was creeping round hisheart, and his blood seemed chilled by it and stagnant. With fascinatedeyes he watched the knight's face--drawn and haggard.
"It was a trap that Joseph Ashburn set for me. Yet he did not altogetherlie. The child Gregory had indeed spared, and it seems from what I havelearned within the last half-hour that he had entrusted his rearing toAlan Stewart, of Bailienochy, seeking afterwards--I take it--to wed himto his daughter, so that s
hould the King come to his own again, theyshould have the protection of a Marleigh who had served his King."
"You mean," the lad almost whispered, and his accents were unmistakablyof horror, "you mean that I am your--Oh, God, I'll not believe it!" hecried out, with such sudden loathing and passion that Crispin recoiledas though he had been struck. A dull flush crept into his cheeks to fadeupon the instant and give place to a pallor, if possible, intenser thanbefore.
"I'll not believe it! I'll not believe it!" the boy repeated, as ifseeking by that reiteration to shut out a conviction by which he wasbeset. "I'll not believe it!" he cried again; and now his voice had lostits passionate vehemence, and was sunk almost to a moan.
"I found it hard to believe myself," was Crispin's answer, and hisvoice was not free from bitterness. "But I have a proof here that seemsincontestable, even had I not the proof of your face to which I havebeen blind these months. Blind with the eyes of my body, at least. Theeyes of my soul saw and recognized you when first they fell on you inPerth. The voice of the blood ordered me then to your side, and thoughI heard its call, I understood not what it meant. Read this letter,boy--the letter that you were to have carried to Colonel Pride."
With his eyes still fixed in a gaze of stupefaction upon Galliard'sface, Kenneth took the paper. Then slowly, involuntarily almost itseemed, he dropped his glance to it, and read. He was long in reading,as though the writing presented difficulties, and his two companionswatched him the while, and waited. At last he turned the paper over,and examined seal and superscription as if suspicious that he held aforgery.
But in some subtle, mysterious way--that voice of the blood perchanceto which Crispin had alluded--he felt conviction stealing down upon hissoul. Mechanically he moved across to the table, and sat down. Without aword, and still holding the crumpled letter in his clenched hand, he sethis elbows on the table, and, pressing his temples to his palms, he satthere dumb. Within him a very volcano raged, and its fires were fed withloathing--loathing for this man whom he had ever hated, yet never as hehated him now, knowing him to be his father. It seemed as if to allthe wrongs which Crispin had done him during the months of theiracquaintanceship he had now added a fresh and culminating wrong bydiscovering this parentage.
He sat and thought, and his soul grew sick. He probed for some flaw,sought for some mistake that might have been made. And yet the morehe thought, the more he dwelt upon his youth in Scotland, the moreconvinced was he that Crispin had told him the truth. Pre-eminentargument of conviction to him was the desire of the Ashburns that heshould marry Cynthia. Oft he had marvelled that they, wealthy, and evenpowerful, selfish and ambitious, should have selected him, the scion ofan obscure and impoverished Scottish house, as a bridegroom for theirdaughter. The news now before him made their motives clear; indeed, noother motive could exist, no other explanation could there be. He wasthe heir of Castle Marleigh, and the usurpers sought to provide againstthe day when another revolution might oust them and restore the rightfulowners.
Some elation his shallow nature felt at realizing this, but thatelation was short-lived, and dashed by the thought that this ruler, thisdebauchee, this drunken, swearing, roaring tavern knight was his father;dashed by the knowledge that meanwhile the Parliament was master,and that whilst matters stood so, the Ashburns could defy--could evendestroy him, did they learn how much he knew; dashed by the memory thatCynthia, whom in his selfish way--out of his love for himself--he loved,was lost to him for all time.
And here, swinging in a circle, his thoughts reverted to the cause ofthis--Crispin Galliard, the man who had betrayed him into yesternight'sfoul business and destroyed his every chance of happiness; the man whomhe hated, and whom, had he possessed the courage as he was possessedby the desire, he had risen up and slain; the man that now announcedhimself his father.
And thinking thus, he sat on in silent, resentful vexation. He startedto feel a hand upon his shoulder, and to hear the voice of Galliardevidently addressing him, yet using a name that was new to him.
"Jocelyn, my boy," the voice trembled. "You have thought, and you haverealized--is it not so? I too thought, and thought brought me convictionthat what that paper tells is true."
Vaguely then the boy remembered that Jocelyn was the name the lettergave him. He rose abruptly, and brushed the caressing hand from hisshoulder. His voice was hard--possibly the knowledge that he hadgained told him that he had nothing to fear from this man, and in thatassurance his craven soul grew brave and bold and arrogant.
"I have realized naught beyond the fact that I owe you nothing butunhappiness and ruin. By a trick, by a low fraud, you enlisted me intoa service that has proved my undoing. Once a cheat always a cheat. Whatcredit in the face of that can I give this paper?" he cried, talkingwildly. "To me it is incredible, nor do I wish to credit it, for thoughit were true, what then? What then?" he repeated, raising his voice intoaccents of defiance.
Grief and amazement were blended in Galliard's glance, and also, maybe,some reproach.
Hogan, standing squarely upon the hearth, was beset by the desire tokick Master Kenneth, or Master Jocelyn, into the street. His lip curledinto a sneer of ineffable contempt, for his shrewd eyes read to thebottom of the lad's mean soul and saw there clearly writ the confidencethat emboldened him to voice that insult to the man he must know for hisfather. Standing there, he compared the two, marvelling deeply how theycame to be father and son. A likeness he saw now between them, yeta likeness that seemed but to mark the difference. The one harsh,resolute, and manly, for all his reckless living and his misfortunes;the other mild, effeminate, hypocritical and shifty. He read it not ontheir countenances alone, but in every line of their figures as theystood, and in his heart he cursed himself for having been the instrumentto disclose the relationship in which they stood.
The youth's insolent question was followed by a spell of silence.Crispin could not believe that he had heard aright. At last he stretchedout his hands in a gesture of supplication--he who throughout histhirty-eight years of life, and despite the misfortunes that had beenhis, had never yet stooped to plead from any man.
"Jocelyn," he cried, and the pain in his voice must have melted a heartof steel, "you are hard. Have you forgotten the story of my miserablelife, the story that I told you in Worcester? Can you not understand howsuffering may destroy all that is lofty in a man; how the forgetfulnessof the winecup may come to be his only consolation; the hope ofvengeance his only motive for living on, withholding him fromself-destruction? Can you not picture such a life, and can you not pityand forgive much of the wreck that it may make of a man once virtuousand honourable?"
Pleadingly he looked into the lad's face. It remained cold and unmoved.
"I understand," he continued brokenly, "that I am not such a man as anylad might welcome for a father. But you who know what my life has been,Jocelyn, you can surely find it in your heart to pity. I had naughtthat was good or wholesome to live for, Jocelyn; naught to curb the evilmoods that sent me along evil ways to seek forgetfulness and reparation.
"But from to-night, Jocelyn, my life in you must find a new interest, anew motive. I will abandon my old ways. For your sake, Jocelyn, I willseek again to become what I was, and you shall have no cause to blushfor your father."
Still the lad stood silent.
"Jocelyn! My God, do I talk in vain?" cried the wretched man. "Have youno heart, no pity, boy?"
At last the youth spoke. He was not moved. The agony of this strong man,the broken pleading of one whom he had ever known arrogant and stronghad no power to touch his mean, selfish mind, consumed as it was by thecontemplation of his undoing--magnified a hundredfold--which this manhad wrought.
"You have ruined my life," was all he said.
"I will rebuild it, Jocelyn," cried Galliard eagerly. "I have friends inFrance--friends high in power who lack neither the means nor the will toaid me. You are a soldier, Jocelyn."
"As much a soldier as I'm a saint," sneered Hogan to himself.
"Together w
e will find service in the armies of Louis," Crispin pursued."I promise it. Service wherein you shall gain honour and renown. Therewe will abide until this England shakes herself out of her rebelliousnightmare. Then, when the King shall come to his own, Castle Marleighwill be ours again. Trust in me, Jocelyn." Again his arms went outappealingly: "Jocelyn my son!"
But the boy made no move to take the outstretched hands, gave no sign ofrelenting. His mind nurtured its resentment--cherished it indeed.
"And Cynthia?" he asked coldly.
Crispin's hands fell to his sides; they grew clenched, and his eyeslighted of a sudden.
"Forgive me, Jocelyn. I had forgotten! I understand you now. Yes, Idealt sorely with you there, and you are right to be resentful. What,after all, am I to you what can I be to you compared with her whoseimage fills your soul? What is aught in the world to a man, comparedwith the woman on whom his heart is set? Do I not know it? Have I notsuffered for it?
"But mark me, Jocelyn"--and he straightened himself suddenly--"even inthis, that which I have done I will undo. As I have robbed you of yourmistress, so will I win her back for you. I swear it. And when that isdone, when thus every harm I have caused you is repaired, then, Jocelyn,perhaps you will come to look with less repugnance upon your father, andto feel less resentment towards him."
"You promise much, sir," quoth the boy, with an illrepressed sneer. "Howwill you accomplish it?"
Hogan grunted audibly. Crispin drew himself up, erect, lithe andsupple--a figure to inspire confidence in the most despairing. He placeda hand, nervous, and strong as steel, upon the boy's shoulder, and theclutch of his fingers made Jocelyn wince.
"Low though your father be fallen," said he sternly, "he has never yetbroken his word. I have pledged you mine, and to-morrow I shall set outto perform what I have promised. I shall see you ere I start. You willsleep here, will you not?"
Jocelyn shrugged his shoulders.
"It signifies little where I lie."
Crispin smiled sadly, and sighed.
"You have no faith in me yet. But I shall earn it, or"--and his voicefell suddenly--"or rid you of a loathsome parent. Hogan, can you findhim quarters?"
Hogan replied that there was the room he had already been confined in,and that he could lie in it. And deeming that there was nothing to begained by waiting, he thereupon led the youth from the room and downthe passage. At the foot of the stairs the Irishman paused in the act ofdescending, and raised the taper aloft so that its light might fall fullupon the face of his companion.
"Were I your father," said he grimly, "I would kick you from one end ofWaltham to the other by way of teaching you filial piety! And were younot his son, I would this night read you a lesson you'd never live topractise. I would set you to sleep a last long sleep in the kennelsof Waltham streets. But since you are--marvellous though it seem--hisoffspring, and since I love him and may not therefore hurt you, Imust rest content with telling you that you are the vilest thing thatbreathes. You despise him for a roysterer, for a man of loose ways. Letme, who have seen something of men, and who read you to-night to thevery dregs of your contemptible soul, tell you that compared with you heis a very god. Come, you white-livered cur!" he ended abruptly. "I willlight you to your chamber."
When presently Hogan returned to Crispin he found the TavernKnight--that man of iron in whom none had ever seen a trace of fearor weakness seated with his arms before him on the table, and his faceburied in them, sobbing like a poor, weak woman.