The struggle went on in silence. She did not move from her seat nor change her position. Her eyelids scarcely quivered as she gazed steadily at the coals of the dying wood fire. Behind her,
“She knew that life could never be the same again, if she could not believe her son.” — Vol. II., 142.
John Ralston slowly paced the room, following the pattern of the carpet, and glancing at her from time to time, unconscious of pain or fatigue, for he knew as well as she herself that his soul was in the balance of her soul’s justice. But the silence was becoming intolerable to him. As for her, she could not have told whether minutes or hours had passed since he had spoken. The trial was going against him, and she almost wished that she might never hear his voice again.
The questions and the arguments and the evidence chased each other through her brain faster and faster, and ever in the same vicious circle, till she was almost distracted, though she sat there quite motionless and outwardly calm. At last she dropped both hands upon her knees; her head fell forward upon her breast, and a short, quick sound, neither a sigh nor a groan, escaped her lips. It was finished. The last argument had failed; the last hope was gone. Her son had disgraced himself — that was little; he had lied on his word of honour — that was greater and worse than death.
“Mother, you’ve always believed me,” said John, standing still behind her and looking down at her bent head.
“Until now,” she answered, in a low, heart-broken voice.
John turned away sharply, and began to pace the floor again with quickening steps. He knew as well as she what it must mean if he did not convince her then and there. In a few hours it would be too late. All sorts of mad and foolish ideas crossed his mind, but he rejected them one after the other. They were all ridiculous before the magnitude of her conviction. He had never seen her as she was now, not even when his father had died. He grew more and more desperate as the minutes passed. If his voice, his manner, his calm asseveration of the truth could not convince her, he asked himself if anything could. And if not, what could convince Katharine to-morrow? His recollections were all coming back vividly to him now. He remembered everything that had happened since the early morning. Strange to say, — and it is a well-known peculiarity of such cases, — he recalled distinctly the circumstances of his fall in the dark, and the absence of all knowledge of the direction he was taking afterwards. He knew, now, how he had wandered for hours in the great city, and he remembered many things he had seen, all of which were perfectly familiar, and each of which, at any other time, would have told him well enough whither he was going. He reconstructed every detail without effort. He even knew that when he had fallen over the heap of building material he had hurt one of his fingers, a fact which he had not noticed at the time. He looked at his hand now to convince himself. The finger was badly scratched, and the nail was torn to the quick.
“Will nothing make you change your mind?” he asked, stopping in the middle of the room. “Will nothing I can do convince you?”
“It would be hard,” answered Mrs. Ralston, shaking her head.
“I’ve done all I can, then,” said John. “There’s nothing more to be said. You believe that I can lie to you and give you my word for a lie. Is that it?”
“Don’t say it, please — it’s bad enough without any more words.” She rested her chin upon her hand once more and stared at the fire.
“There is one thing more,” answered John, suddenly. “I think I can make you believe me still.”
A bitter smile twisted Mrs. Ralston’s even lips, but she did not move nor speak.
“Will you believe the statement of a good doctor on his oath?” asked John, quietly.
Mrs. Ralston looked up at him suddenly. There was a strange expression in her eyes, something like hope, but with a little distrust.
“Yes,” she said, after a moment’s thought. “I would believe that.”
“Most people would,” answered John, with sudden coldness. “Will you send for a doctor? Or shall I go myself?”
“Are you in earnest?” asked Mrs. Ralston, rising slowly from her seat and looking at him.
“I’m in earnest — yes. You seem to be. It’s rather a serious matter to doubt my word of honour — even for my mother.”
Being quite sure of himself, he spoke very bitterly and coldly. The time for appealing to her kindness, her love, or her belief in him was over, and the sense of approaching triumph was thrilling, after the humiliation he had suffered in silence. Mrs. Ralston, strange to say, hesitated.
“It’s very late to send for any one now,” she said.
“Very well; I’ll go myself,” answered John. “The man should come, if it were within five minutes of the Last Judgment. Will you go to your room for a moment, mother, while I dress? I can’t go as I am.”
“No. I’ll send some one.” She stood still, watching his face. “I’ll ring for a messenger,” she said, and left the room.
By this time her conviction was so deep seated that she had many reasons for not letting him leave the house, nor even change his clothes. He was very strong. It was evident, too, that he had completely regained possession of his faculties, and she believed that he was capable, at short notice, of so restoring his appearance as to deceive the keenest doctor. She remembered what had happened on Monday, and resolved that the physician should see him just as he was. It did not strike her, in her experience, that a doctor does not judge such matters as a woman does.
During her brief absence from the room, John was thinking of very different matters. It did not even strike him that he might smooth his hair or wash his soiled and blood-stained hands, and he continued to pace the room under strong excitement.
“Doctor Routh will come, I think,” said Mrs. Ralston, as she came in.
She sat down where she had been sitting before, in the small easy chair before the fire. She leaned back and folded her hands, in the attitude of a person resigned to await events. John merely nodded as she spoke, and did not stop walking up and down. He was thinking of the future now, for he knew that he had made sure of the present. He was weighing the chances of discretion on the part of the two men who had been witnesses of his struggle with Bright in the hall of the club. As for Bright himself, though he was the injured party, John knew that he could be trusted to be silent. He might never forgive John, but he could not gossip about what had happened. Frank Miner would probably follow Bright’s lead. The dangerous man was Crowdie, who would tell what he had seen, most probably to Katharine herself, and that very night. He might account for his absence from the dinner-party to which he had been engaged, and from the ball, on the ground of an accident. People might say what they pleased about that, but it would be hard to make any one believe that he had been sober when he had so suddenly lost his temper and tripped up the pacific Hamilton Bright in the afternoon.
He knew, of course, that his mother’s testimony would have counted for nothing, even if she had believed him, and bitterly as he resented her unbelief, he recognized that it was bringing about a good result. No one could doubt the evidence of such a man as Doctor Routh, and the latter would of course be ready at any time to repeat his statement, if it were necessary to clear John’s reputation.
But when he thought of Katharine, his instinct told him that matters could not be so easily settled. It was quite true that he was in no way to blame for having fallen over a heap of stones in a dark street, but he knew how anxiously she must have waited for him at the ball, and what she must have felt if, as he suspected, Crowdie had given her his own version of what had taken place in the afternoon. It was not yet so late but that he might have found her still at the Assembly rooms, and so far as his strength was concerned, he would have gone there even at that hour. Tough as he was, a few hours, more or less, of fatigue and effort would make little difference to him, though he had scarcely touched food that day. He was one of those men who are not dependent for their strength on the last meal they happen to have eaten, as the majority ar
e, and who break down under a fast of twenty-four hours. In spite of all he had been through, moreover, his determined abstinence during the last days was beginning to tell favourably on him, for he was young, and his nerves had a boundless recuperative elasticity. Hungry and tired and bruised as he was, and accustomed as he had always been to swallow a stimulant when the machinery was slackened, he did not now feel that craving at all as he had felt it on the previous night, when he had stood in the corner at the Thirlwalls’ dance. That seemed to have been a turning-point with him. He had thought so at the time, and he was sure of it now. He felt that just as he was he could dress himself, and go to the Assembly if he pleased, and that he should not break down.
But his appearance was against him, as he was obliged to admit when he looked at himself in the mirror. His face was swollen and bruised, his eyes were sunken and haggard, and his skin was almost livid in its sallow whiteness. Others would judge him as his mother had judged, and Katharine might be the first to do so. On the whole, it seemed wisest to write to her early in the morning, and to explain exactly what had happened. In the course of the day he could go and see her.
He had reached this conclusion, when the sound of wheels, grating out of the snow against the curb-stone of the pavement, interrupted his meditations, and he stopped in his walk. At the same moment Mrs. Ralston rose from her seat.
“I’ll let him in,” she said briefly, as John advanced towards the door.
“Let me go,” he said. “Why not?” he asked, as she pushed past him.
“Because — I’d rather not. Stay here!” In a moment she was descending the stairs.
John listened at the open door, and heard the latch turned, and immediately afterwards the sound of a man’s voice, which he recognized as that of Doctor Routh. The doctor had been one of the Admiral’s firmest friends, and was, moreover, a man of very great reputation in New York. It was improbable that, except for some matter of life and death, any one but Mrs. Ralston could have got him to leave his fireside at midnight and in such weather.
“It’s an awful night, Mrs. Ralston,” John heard him say, and the words were accompanied by a stamping of feet, followed by the unmistakable soft noise of india-rubber overshoes kicked off, one after the other, upon the marble floor of the entry.
John retired into his room again, leaving the door open, and waited before the fireplace. Far down below he could hear the voices of his mother and Doctor Routh. They were evidently talking the matter over before coming up. Then their soft tread upon the carpeted stairs told him that they were on their way to his room.
Mrs. Ralston entered first, and stood aside to let the doctor pass her before she closed the door. Doctor Routh was enormously tall. He wore a long white beard, and carried his head very much bent forward. His eyes were of the very dark blue which is sometimes called violet, and when he was looking directly in front of him, the white was visible below the iris. He had delicate hands, but was otherwise rough in appearance, and walked with a heavy tread and a long stride, as a strong man marches with a load on his back.
He stopped before John, looked keenly at him, and smiled. He had known him since he had been a boy.
“Well, young man,” he said, “you look pretty badly used up. What’s the matter with you?”
“Have I been drinking, doctor? That’s the question.” John did not smile as he shook hands.
“I don’t know,” answered the physician. “Let me look at you.”
He was holding the young man’s hand, and pressing it gently, as though to judge of its temperature. He made him sit down under the bright gas-light by the dressing table, and began to examine him carefully.
Mrs. Ralston turned her back to them both, and leaned against the mantelpiece. There was something horrible to her in the idea of such an examination for such a purpose. There was something far more horrible still in the verdict which she knew must fall from the doctor’s lips within the next five minutes — the words which must assure her that John had lied to her on his word of honour. She had no hope now. She had watched the doctor nervously when he had entered the room, and when he had spoken to John she had seen the smile on his face. There had been no doubt in his mind from the first, and he was amused — probably at the bare idea that any one could look as John looked who had not been very drunk indeed within the last few hours. Presently he would look grave and shake his head, and probably give John a bit of good advice about his habits. She turned her face to the wall above the mantelpiece and waited. It could not take long, she thought. Then it came.
“If you’re not careful, my boy—” the doctor began, and stopped.
“What?” asked John, rather anxiously.
Mrs. Ralston felt as though she must stop her ears to keep out the sound of the next words. Yet she knew that she must hear them before it was all over. “You’ll injure yourself,” said Doctor Routh, completing his sentence very slowly and thoughtfully.
“That’s of no consequence,” answered John. “What I want to know is, whether I have been drinking or not. Yes or no?”
“Drinking?” Doctor Routh laughed contemptuously. “You know as well as I do that you haven’t had a drop of anything like drink all day. But you’ve had nothing to eat, either, for some reason or other — and starvation’s a precious deal worse than drinking any day. Drinking be damned! You’re starving — that’s what’s the matter with you. Excuse me, Mrs. Ralston, forgot you were there—”
Mrs. Ralston had heard every word. Her hands dropped together inertly upon the mantelpiece, and she turned her head slowly toward the two men. Her face had a dazed expression, as though she were waking from a dream.
“Never mind the starvation, doctor,” said John, with a hard laugh. “There’s a Bible somewhere in the room. Perhaps you won’t mind swearing on it that I’m sober — before my mother, please.”
“I shouldn’t think any sane person would need any swearing to convince them!” Doctor Routh seemed to be growing suddenly angry. “You’ve been badly knocked about, and you’ve been starving yourself for days — or weeks, very likely. You’ve had a concussion of the brain that would have laid up most people for a week, and would have killed some that I know. You’re as thin as razor edges all over — there’s nothing to you but bone and muscle and nerve. You ought to be fed and put to bed and looked after, and then you ought to be sent out West to drive cattle, or go to sea before the mast for two or three years. Your lungs are your weak point. That’s apt to be the trouble with thoroughbreds in this country. Oh — they’re sound enough — enough for the present, but you can’t go on like this. You’ll give out when you don’t expect it. Drinking? No! I should think a little whiskey and water would do you good!”
While he was speaking, Mrs. Ralston came slowly forward, listening to every word he said, in wide-eyed wonder. At last she laid her hand upon his arm. He felt the slight pressure and looked down into her eyes.
“Doctor Routh — on your word of honour?” she asked in a low voice.
John laughed very bitterly, rose from his chair, and crossed the room. The old man’s eyes flashed suddenly, and he drew himself up.
“My dear Mrs. Ralston, I don’t know what has happened to you, nor what you have got into your head. But if you’re not satisfied that I’m enough of a doctor to tell whether a man is drunk or sober, send for some one in whom you’ve more confidence. I’m not used to going about swearing my professional opinion on Bibles and things, nor to giving my word of honour that I’m in earnest when I’ve said what I think about a patient. But I’ll tell you — if I had fifty words of honour and the whole Bible House to swear on — well, I’ll say more — if it were a case of a trial, I’d give my solemn evidence in court that Master John Ralston has had nothing to drink. Upon my word, Mrs. Ralston! Talk of making mountains of mole-hills! You’re making a dozen Himalayas out of nothing at all, it seems to me. Your boy’s starving, Mrs. Ralston, and I daresay he takes too much champagne and too many cocktails occasionally. But he’s not be
en doing it to-day, nor yesterday, nor the day before. That is my opinion as a doctor. Want my word of honour and the Bible again? Go to bed! Getting your old friend away from his books and his pipe and his fire at this hour, on such a night as this! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, young lady! Well — if I’ve done you any good, I’m not sorry — but don’t do it again. Good night — and get that young fellow out of this as soon as you can. He’s not fit for this sort of life, anyhow. Don’t take thoroughbreds for cart horses — they stand it for a bit, and then they go crack! Good night — no, I know my way all right — don’t come down.”
John followed him, however, but before he left the room he glanced at his mother’s face. Her eyes were cast down, and her lips seemed to tremble a little. She did not even say good night to Doctor Routh.
CHAPTER XXIII.
IT WAS NEARLY one o’clock when John Ralston let Doctor Routh out of the house and returned to his own room. He found his mother standing there, opposite the door, as he entered, and her eyes had met his even before he had passed the threshold. She came forward to meet him, and without a word laid her two hands upon his shoulders and hid her face against his torn coat. He put one arm around her and gently stroked her head with the other hand, but he looked straight before him at the bright globe of the gas-light, and said nothing.
There was an unsettled expression on his pale face. He did not wish to seem triumphant, and he did wish that his anger against her might subside immediately and be altogether forgotten. But although he had enough control of his outward self to say nothing and to touch her tenderly, the part of him that had been so deeply wounded was not to be healed in a moment. Her doubt — more, her openly and scornfully outspoken disbelief had been the very last straw that day. It had been hard, just when he had been doing his best to reform, to be accused by every one, from Hamilton Bright, his friend, to the people on the horse-car; but it had been hardest of all to be accused by his mother, and not to be believed even on his pledged word. That was a very different matter.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 688