So we find him even now, his main emotion pity for Sir Richard, who sat silent for some moments, reviewing that thirty-year dead past, until the tears scalded his old eyes. The baronet made a queer noise in his throat, something between a snarl and a sob, and he flung himself suddenly back in his chair.
Justin sat down, a becoming gravity in his countenance. “Tell me all,” he begged his adoptive father. “Tell me how matters stand precisely — how you propose to act.”
“With all my heart,” the baronet assented. “Lord Ostermore, having turned his coat once for profit, is ready now to turn it again for the same end. From the information that reaches me from England, it would appear that in the rage of speculation that has been toward in London, his lordship has suffered heavily. How heavily I am not prepared to say. But heavily enough, I dare swear, to have caused this offer to return to his king; for he looks, no doubt, to sell his services at a price that will help him mend the wreckage of his fortunes. A week ago a gentleman who goes between his majesty’s court at Rome and his friends here in Paris brought me word from his majesty that Ostermore had signified to him his willingness to rejoin the Stuart cause.
“Together with that information, this messenger brought me letters from his majesty to several of his friends, which I was to send to England by a safe hand at the first opportunity. Now, amongst these letters — delivered to me unsealed — is one to my Lord Ostermore, making him certain advantageous proposals which he is sure to accept if his circumstances be as crippled as I am given to understand. Atterbury and his friends, it seems, have already tampered with my lord’s loyalty to Dutch George to some purpose, and there is little doubt but that this letter” — and he tapped a document before him— “will do what else is to be done.
“But, since these letters were left with me, come you with his majesty’s fresh injunctions that I am to suppress them and cross to England at once myself, to prevail upon Atterbury and his associates to abandon the undertaking.”
Mr. Caryll nodded. “Because, as I have told you,” said he, “King James in Rome has received positive information that in London the plot is already suspected, little though Atterbury may dream it. But what has this to do with my Lord Ostermore?”
“This,” said Everard slowly, leaning across toward Justin, and laying a hand upon his sleeve. “I am to counsel the Bishop to stay his hand against a more favorable opportunity. There is no reason why you should not do the very opposite with Ostermore.”
Mr. Caryll knit his brows, his eyes intent upon the other’s face; but he said no word.
“It is,” urged Everard, “an opportunity such as there may never be another. We destroy Ostermore. By a turn of the hand we bring him to the gallows.” He chuckled over the word with a joy almost diabolical.
“But how — how do we destroy him?” quoth Justin, who suspected yet dared not encourage his suspicions.
“How? Do you ask how? Is’t not plain?” snapped Sir Richard, and what he avoided putting into words, his eloquent glance made clear to his companion.
Mr. Caryll rose a thought quickly, a faint flush stirring in his cheeks, and he threw off Everard’s grasp with a gesture that was almost of repugnance. “You mean that I am to enmesh him....”
Sir Richard smiled grimly. “As his majesty’s accredited agent,” he explained. “I will equip you with papers. Word shall go ahead of you to Ostermore by a safe hand to bid him look for the coming of a messenger bearing his own family name. No more than that; nothing that can betray us; yet enough to whet his lordship’s appetite. You shall be the ambassador to bear him the tempting offers from the king. You will obtain his answers — accepting. Those you will deliver to me, and I shall do the trifle that may still be needed to set the rope about his neck.”
A little while there was silence. Outside, the rain, driven by gusts, smote the window as with a scourge. The thunder was grumbling in the distance now. Mr. Caryll resumed his chair. He sat very thoughtful, but with no emotion showing in his face. British stolidity was in the ascendant with him then. He felt that he had the need of it.
“It is... ugly,” he said at last slowly.
“It is God’s own will,” was the hot answer, and Sir Richard smote the table.
“Has God taken you into His confidence?” wondered Mr. Caryll.
“I know that God is justice.”
“Yet is it not written that ‘vengeance is His own’?”
“Aye, but He needs human instruments to execute it. Such instruments are we. Can you — Oh, can you hesitate?”
Mr. Caryll clenched his hands hard. “Do it,” he answered through set teeth. “Do it! I shall approve it when ’tis done. But find other hands for the work, Sir Richard. He is my father.”
Sir Richard remained cool. “That is the argument I employ for insisting upon the task being yours,” he replied. Then, in a blaze of passion, he — who had schooled his adoptive son so ably in self-control — marshalled once more his arguments. “It is your duty to your mother to forget that he is your father. Think of him only as the man who wronged your mother; the man to whom her ruined life, her early death are due — her murderer and worse. Consider that. Your father, you say!” He mocked almost. “Your father! In what is he your father? You have never seen him; he does not know that you exist, that you ever existed. Is that to be a father? Father, you say! A word, a name — no more than that; a name that gives rise to a sentiment, and a sentiment is to stand between you and your clear duty; a sentiment is to set a protecting shield over the man who killed your mother!
“I think I shall despise you, Justin, if you fail me in this. I have lived for it,” he ran on tempestuously. “I have reared you for it, and you shall not fail me!”
Then his voice dropped again, and in quieter tones
“You hate the very name of John Caryll, Earl of Ostermore,” said he, “as must every decent man who knows the truth of what the life of that satyr holds. If I have suffered you to bear his name, it is to the end that it should remind you daily that you have no right to it, that you have no right to any name.”
When he said that he thrust his finger consciously into a raw wound. He saw Justin wince, and with pitiless cunning he continued to prod that tender place until he had aggravated the smart of it into a very agony.
“That is what you owe your father; that is the full extent of what lies between you — that you are of those at whom the world is given to sneer and point scorn’s ready finger.”
“None has ever dared,” said Mr. Caryll.
“Because none has ever known. We have kept the secret well. You display no coat of arms that no bar sinister may be displayed. But the time may come when the secret must out. You might, for instance, think of marrying a lady of quality, a lady of your own supposed station. What shall you tell her of yourself? That you have no name to offer her; that the name you bear is yours by assumption only? Ah! That brings home your own wrongs to you, Justin! Consider them; have them ever present in your mind, together with your mother’s blighted life, that you may not shrink when the hour strikes to punish the evildoer.”
He flung himself back in his chair again, and watched the younger man with brooding eye. Mr. Caryll was plainly moved. He had paled a little, and he sat now with brows contracted and set teeth.
Sir Richard pushed back his chair and rose, recapitulating. “He is your mother’s destroyer,” he said, with a sad sternness. “Is the ruin of that fair life to go unpunished? Is it, Justin?”
Mr. Caryll’s Gallic spirit burst abruptly through its British glaze. He crushed fist into palm, and swore: “No, by God! It shall not, Sir Richard!”
Sir Richard held out his hands, and there was a fierce joy in his gloomy eyes at last. “You’ll cross to England with me, Justin?”
But Mr. Caryll’s soul fell once more into travail. “Wait!” he cried. “Ah, wait!” His level glance met Sir Richard’s in earnestness and entreaty. “Answer me the truth upon your soul and conscience: Do you in your heart believe
that it is what my mother would have had me do?”
There was an instant’s pause. Then Everard, the fanatic of vengeance, the man whose mind upon that one subject was become unsound with excess of brooding, answered with conviction: “As I have a soul to be saved, Justin, I do believe it. More — I know it. Here!” Trembling hands took up the old letter from the table and proffered it to Justin. “Here is her own message to you. Read it again.”
And what time the young man’s eyes rested upon that fine, pointed writing, Sir Richard recited aloud the words he knew by heart, the words that had been ringing in his ears since that day when he had seen her lowered to rest: “‘Never let him learn that Justin exists unless it be to punish him by the knowledge for his cruel desertion of me.’ It is your mother’s voice speaking to you from the grave,” the fanatic pursued, and so infected Justin at last with something of his fanaticism.
The green eyes flashed uncannily, the white young face grew cruelly sardonic. “You believe it?” he asked, and the eagerness that now invested his voice showed how it really was with him.
“As I have a soul to be saved,” Sir Richard repeated.
“Then gladly will I set my hand to it.” Fire stirred through Justin now, a fire of righteous passion. “An idea — no more than an idea — daunted me. You have shown me that. I cross to England with you, Sir Richard, and let my Lord Ostermore look to himself, for my name — I who have no right to any name — my name is judgment!”
The exaltation fell from him as suddenly as it had mounted. He dropped into a chair, thoughtful again and slightly ashamed of his sudden outburst.
Sir Richard Everard watched with an eye of gloomy joy the man whom he had been at such pains to school in self-control.
Overhead there was a sudden crackle of thunder, sharp and staccato as a peal of demoniac laughter.
CHAPTER II. AT THE “ADAM AND EVE”
Mr. Caryll, alighted from his traveling chaise in the yard of the “Adam and Eve,” at Maidstone, on a sunny afternoon in May. Landed at Dover the night before, he had parted company with Sir Richard Everard that morning. His adoptive father had turned aside toward Rochester, to discharge his king’s business with plotting Bishop Atterbury, what time Justin was to push on toward town as King James’ ambassador to the Earl of Ostermore, who, advised of his coming, was expecting him.
Here at Maidstone it was Mr. Caryll’s intent to dine, resuming his journey in the cool of the evening, when he hoped to get at least as far as Farnborough ere he slept.
Landlady, chamberlain, ostler and a posse of underlings hastened to give welcome to so fine a gentleman, and a private room above-stairs was placed at his disposal. Before ascending, however, Mr. Caryll sauntered into the bar for a whetting glass to give him an appetite, and further for the purpose of bespeaking in detail his dinner with the hostess. It was one of his traits that he gave the greatest attention to detail, and held that the man who left the ordering of his edibles to his servants was no better than an animal who saw no more than nourishment in food. Nor was the matter one to be settled summarily; it asked thought and time. So he sipped his Hock, listening to the landlady’s proposals, and amending them where necessary with suggestions of his own, and what time he was so engaged, there ambled into the inn yard a sturdy cob bearing a sturdy little man in snuff-colored clothes that had seen some wear.
The newcomer threw his reins to the stable-boy — a person of all the importance necessary to receive so indifferent a guest. He got down nimbly from his horse, produced an enormous handkerchief of many colors, and removed his three-cornered hat that he might the better mop his brow and youthful, almost cherubic face. What time he did so, a pair of bright little blue eyes were very busy with Mr. Caryll’s carriage, from which Leduc, Mr. Caryll’s valet, was in the act of removing a portmantle. His mobile mouth fell into lines of satisfaction.
Still mopping himself, he entered the inn, and, guided by the drone of voices, sauntered into the bar. At sight of Mr. Caryll leaning there, his little eyes beamed an instant, as do the eyes of one who espies a friend, or — apter figure — the eyes of the hunter when they sight the quarry.
He advanced to the bar, bowing to Mr. Caryll with an air almost apologetic, and to the landlady with an air scarcely less so, as he asked for a nipperkin of ale to wash the dust of the road from his throat. The hostess called a drawer to serve him, and departed herself upon the momentous business of Mr. Caryll’s dinner.
“A warm day, sir,” said the chubby man.
Mr. Caryll agreed with him politely, and finished his glass, the other sipping meanwhile at his ale.
“A fine brew, sir,” said he. “A prodigious fine brew! With all respect, sir, your honor should try a whet of our English ale.”
Mr. Caryll, setting down his glass, looked languidly at the man. “Why do you exclude me, sir, from the nation of this beverage?” he inquired.
The chubby man’s face expressed astonishment. “Ye’re English, sir! Ecod! I had thought ye French!”
“It is an honor, sir, that you should have thought me anything.”
The other abased himself. “’Twas an unwarrantable presumption, Codso! which I hope your honor’ll pardon.” Then he smiled again, his little eyes twinkling humorously. “An ye would try the ale, I dare swear your honor would forgive me. I know ale, ecod! I am a brewer myself. Green is my name, sir — Tom Green — your very obedient servant, sir.” And he drank as if pledging that same service he professed.
Mr. Caryll observed him calmly and a thought indifferently. “Ye’re determined to honor me,” said he. “I am your debtor for your reflections upon whetting glasses; but ale, sir, is a beverage I don’t affect, nor shall while there are vines in France.”
“Ah!” sighed Mr. Green rapturously. “’Tis a great country, France; is it not, sir?”
“’Tis not the general opinion here at present. But I make no doubt that it deserves your praise.”
“And Paris, now,” persisted Mr. Green. “They tell me ’tis a great city; a marvel o’ th’ ages. There be those, ecod! that say London’s but a kennel to’t.”
“Be there so?” quoth Mr. Caryll indifferently.
“Ye don’t agree with them, belike?” asked Mr. Green, with eagerness.
“Pooh! Men will say anything,” Mr. Caryll replied, and added pointedly: “Men will talk, ye see.”
“Not always,” was the retort in a sly tone. “I’ve known men to be prodigious short when they had aught to hide.”
“Have ye so? Ye seem to have had a wide experience.” And Mr. Caryll sauntered out, humming a French air through closed lips.
Mr. Green looked after him with hardened eyes. He turned to the drawer who stood by. “He’s mighty close,” said he. “Mighty close!”
“Ye’re not perhaps quite the company he cares for,” the drawer suggested candidly.
Mr. Green looked at him. “Very like,” he snapped. “How long does he stay here?”
“Ye lost a rare chance of finding out when ye let him go without inquiring,” said the drawer.
Mr. Green’s face lost some of its chubbiness. “When d’ye look to marry the landlady?” was his next question.
The man stared. “Cod!” said he. “Marry the — Are ye daft?”
Mr. Green affected surprise. “I’m mistook, it seems. Ye misled me by your pertness. Get me another nipperkin.”
Meanwhile Mr. Caryll had taken his way above stairs to the room set apart for him. He dined to his satisfaction, and thereafter, his shapely, silk-clad legs thrown over a second chair, his waistcoat all unbuttoned, for the day was of an almost midsummer warmth — he sat mightily at his ease, a decanter of sherry at his elbow, a pipe in one hand and a book of Mr. Gay’s poems in the other. But the ease went no further than the body, as witnessed the circumstances that his pipe was cold, the decanter tolerably full, and Mr. Gay’s pleasant rhymes and quaint conceits of fancy all unheeded. The light, mercurial spirit which he had from nature and his unfortunate mother, and which he
had retained in spite of the stern training he had received at his adoptive father’s hands, was heavy-fettered now.
The mild fatigue of his journey through the heat of the day had led him to look forward to a voluptuous hour of indolence following upon dinner, with pipe and book and glass. The hour was come, the elements were there, but since he could not abandon himself to their dominion the voluptuousness was wanting. The task before him haunted him with anticipatory remorse. It hung upon his spirit like a sick man’s dream. It obtruded itself upon his constant thought, and the more he pondered it the more did he sicken at what lay before him.
Wrought upon by Everard’s fanaticism that day in Paris some three weeks ago, infected for the time being by something of his adoptive father’s fever, he had set his hands to the task in a glow of passionate exaltation. But with the hour, the exaltation went, and reaction started in his soul. And yet draw back he dared not; too long and sedulously had Everard trained his spirit to look upon the avenging of his mother as a duty. Believing that it was his duty, he thirsted on the one hand to fulfill it, whilst, on the other, he recoiled in horror at the thought that the man upon whom he was to wreak that vengeance was his father — albeit a father whom he did not know, who had never seen him, who was not so much as aware of his existence.
He sought forgetfulness in Mr. Gay. He had the delicate-minded man’s inherent taste for verse, a quick ear for the melody of words, the aesthete’s love of beauty in phrase as of beauty in all else; and culture had quickened his perceptions, developed his capacity for appreciation. For the tenth time he called Leduc to light his pipe; and, that done, he set his eye to the page once more. But it was like harnessing a bullock to a cart; unmindful of the way it went and over what it travelled, his eye ambled heavily along the lines, and when he came to turn the page he realized with a start that he had no impression of what he had read upon it.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 189