Chapter Thirty Nine.
More credit is given to heroism which arises from physical courage than is accorded usually to moral bravery. Yet the standard of physical courage, however loudly acclaimed, ranks no higher. To win a victory over one’s self demands greater strength of purpose than is required for the defeat of an ordinary foe. To obey a sense of right from motives other than discretion necessitates courage of a superior order. And it is through this courage, this quiet self-denial, that the world is kept a little better, a little sweeter, than would be possible if each individual set-out with the poor determination to gratify his every desire.
Prudence had won a victory; but she did not feel triumphant; there was no conscious elation in her heart. If the night air struck fresher and purer by reason of this restraint, it also struck very chill. Its cold breath enveloped her. She was weary and sad at heart.
Steele, too, was silent and dispirited. He parted from her in the road outside the gate, parted in almost apathetic calmness, and turned and walked quickly away down the hill. He did not once look back to where Prudence waited at the gate and watched him with sad eyes, tearless now, until the night enfolded him and hid him from her view. Then she let herself into the house and went wearily up to bed.
That was the beginning and the end of her romance. All the fine thinking in the world could not reduce the feeling of irreparable loss which she experienced in the knowledge that he had passed out of her life for ever. She had sent him away; and all her happiness went with him, all her love. If for a moment she regretted the triumph of virtue, it was but a transitory regret; but she did regret, passionately, that life had come between her and the realisation of love. She believed that she could never feel happy any more. She also believed that she could not return to her husband. The thought of living again beneath his roof was hateful to her.
Then merciful sleep overtook her, and the darkness closed down upon the misery of her thoughts.
The morning brought no relief. Heavy-eyed and languid, Prudence went downstairs, to find that she was late for prayers. She was aware of William’s gaze, as she slipped quietly into the room and took her seat, fixed upon her with a curious, it seemed to her, even a suspicious scrutiny. He paused in the reading and waited with a sort of aggressive patience until she was seated. Then he continued in his sonorous voice reading the lesson for the day.
Upon the finish of prayers breakfast followed, after which Mr Graynor repaired to the library with Prudence who since her return read the papers to him because of his failing sight. William prepared to start out on the day’s business. From the library Prudence could hear him calling loudly for his boots, and demanding of the servant who brought them why they were not in their accustomed place. It transpired that he had omitted to put them outside his bedroom door on the previous night and thereby caused delay in the cleaning of them. He muttered something in response, and hastily proceeded to draw them on.
The servant meanwhile went to the front door in answer to an imperative ring. Commotion followed upon the opening of the door. Mr Graynor looked round at these unexpected interruptions and signed to Prudence to cease reading. She sat with the newspaper open in her hands and listened to the sound of angry voices without.
Some one had entered and was talking loudly and defiantly to William in the hall. William was doing his utmost to eject the intruder and to talk her down at the same time—two impossible feats. The noise of their voices raised in fierce altercation drew nearer; and, attracted by the disturbance, Agatha made her appearance from the morning-room and stood, pink and trembling with indignation, looking upon the scene in incredulous amazement.
“What is that—creature doing here?” she asked of her brother.
He seemed to find some difficulty in answering her, and, evading her eyes, glared furiously at the defiant young woman, who, holding a child by the hand, maintained her stand with an air of assurance which refused to be cowed by his lowering scowl.
“You tell ’er what I want,” she said. “I don’t mind.”
“Go away,” he shouted. “Do you hear? Go away!”
“It isn’t difficult to ’ear you,” she retorted sharply. “I want a word with you, William Graynor; and I’m not going away until I’ve ’ad it.”
“Turn her out,” Miss Agatha exclaimed, shocked and affronted. “How dare she speak to you like that?”
“Why don’t you tell ’er,” the insolent voice insisted, “what I’ve come for, and why I speak as I do? Seems as if you was afraid of ’er.”
She looked round suddenly, and caught sight of Mr Graynor, standing with the library door open, surveying the scene. She shrank back, quailing before the cold anger of his look. But he had recognised her, and spoke now in a voice of sharp command.
“Come in here, girl,” he said; and to his son he added fiercely: “William, bring that woman inside, and shut the door.”
From force of habit, perhaps too because he recognised that there was no possible chance of evading explanations, William obeyed the order. He allowed Bessie Clapp to precede him, and following her into the room, shut the door sharply behind him, and stood with his back against it in an attitude of gloomy anger. Once he looked at Prudence, seated opposite their father with the newspaper in her lap, regarding the woman and child with pitiful understanding eyes. He would have liked to suggest the advisability of her retiring; but his natural effrontery had deserted him, and he remained silent.
Bessie Clapp also looked at Prudence. The sight of the quiet figure, the light of friendly interest in the blue eyes, proved heartening: the hardness melted from her own face. Standing a few steps inside the door against which William leaned, superb in her magnificent beauty, with the child clinging nervously to her hand, she confronted Mr Graynor, who, reseating himself, remained staring at her fixedly across the writing-table upon which he rested his shaking hand.
The stillness of their various poses, for with the closing of the door each had maintained a rigid immovability, was fraught with significance. There was no need for a verbal explanation of the presence of the woman with her child in that house. Mr Graynor knew, Prudence knew, as surely as William and the girl, what brought her there. Nevertheless Mr Graynor, leaning heavily upon the table, with his cold eyes upon the girl’s frightened face, demanded the reason of her noisy intrusion.
“I told her not to come,” William interposed sullenly. “I dared her to come here annoying you.”
Mr Graynor silenced him with a gesture, never once removing his gaze from the nervous, but still defiant, face. His question had been addressed to the girl, and he waited for her to answer him. She drew the child closer to her, and looked into the cold unsympathetic face of her questioner, and answered with a sort of sulky shame:
“I’ve brought William Graynor’s son ’ome.”
William made a move, taking a quick step towards her as though he would have silenced her with force; but no one looked in his direction; and he shrank back to his former position by the door.
“You make a serious charge,” Mr Graynor said, speaking harshly. “It will go hard with you if you cannot prove your words.”
“I can prove them all right,” she answered sulkily.
“I do not believe you,” Mr Graynor said. “This sort of thing has been tried often enough. It is an audacious lie. I say it is a lie. Give me your proof.”
Bessie Clapp smiled faintly. Her manner was growing more assured; the nervousness which the unexpected sight of him had caused her, was less apparent now.
“You can’t ’ave looked at the boy,” she said, and bent down and removed the cap from the child’s head and turned his face towards the man who questioned the truth of her statement.
Mr Graynor had given only a cursory glance at the child; he looked now more closely, and, staring with dim eyes fierce with passionate anger into the small face, beheld as in the days of his own youth the features of his elder son faithfully reproduced. There could be no dispute as to the likeness. A sickening sense of the truth of the woman’s claim, which before he had not so much doubted as refused to admit, held him dumb. He put his hand before his eyes to shut out the sight of the child’s face; and the little fellow, thoroughly frightened now, began to whimper. His mother held him and hushed his cries.
“You see,” she said, watching Mr Graynor curiously, fascinated and somewhat awed by his evident emotion; “that’s my proof. One ’as only to look at ’im to see who’s ’is father.”
A groan escaped Mr Graynor’s lips. He took his hand from before his eyes, and pushed aside some papers on the table, and rested his arms on it as before.
“How dare you bring him here?” he asked in low shaking tones. “Why do you bring him—now—after all this time? You want money, I suppose?”
Bessie Clapp turned a resentful gaze from him to William, who, furtively watching her, remained with his shoulders hunched dejectedly, scowling malevolently at her, and at the child whose claim upon him she sought to establish.
“’E knows why I came,” she said, indicating William with a brief nod. “I gave ’im ’is chance; but ’e wouldn’t ’elp me. I asked ’im to take the child off my ’ands, and ’e refused. ’E thought the work’ouse good enough for ’is son. But the work’ouse don’t ’elp these cases; and anyway I wouldn’t care for ’im to go there. And I can’t keep ’im no longer I’m going to be married. My man’s joined up, and I’ll draw the separation allowance. But ’e don’t want ’is child.”
Again she gave a nod indicating William, and then brought her gaze back to Mr Graynor’s face. The sight of the pained humiliation of his look caused a softening in her voice and manner. She had not wanted to distress him; she was not vindictive. She only required that the father of her child should make provision for it. He was wealthy enough to do so.
“I am sorry to ’ave ’ad to come,” she said. “I didn’t mean no ’arm. If ’e ’adn’t treated me mean, I wouldn’t ’a come. But I’ve got a chance now to start fair. I want to place the child somewheres. Plenty would take ’im if I could get the money guaranteed. But ’e,” with another nod at William, “won’t do nothing. That’s why I came. I warned ’im all right.”
The red of William’s face deepened to purple. He looked at the woman as if he would have killed her had he dared; but he did not move, did not utter a word even in his own defence. His animus against this girl, who had been his mistress, arose from the fact that she had broken with him. Had the initiative been his he might have acted differently. He hated her while he listened to her scornful denunciation of himself, and the sordid story of his meanness which she mercilessly unfolded. Not a word of what she uttered but had the ring of truth in it, and not a word in the miserable recital reflected any credit upon himself. He shifted his feet uneasily, and turned his furtive eyes from the spectacle of her standing there in her dark and tragic beauty, with the boy clinging timidly to her skirt, hiding his tear-stained face in her dress in fear of the old man who sat and glared at him and spoke to his mother in harsh angry tones. They frightened him, these strange people. He wanted to go away from the big house, and this fierce old man, and the red-faced man, whom he knew slightly but did not like. The red-faced man so often made his mother cry. But the mother took no heed of the small hands tugging at her dress; her thoughts were intent on other matters than the child’s distress.
Mr Graynor, his face transformed with anger, turned to his son, and, in a voice broken with emotion, with shame for that son’s dishonourable conduct and most despicable meanness, bade him speak.
“You stand there and say nothing to these charges,” he cried. “Why don’t you speak? Have you nothing to say in answer to what this woman alleges?”
“What is there to say?” William returned. “No doubt the child is mine. But I don’t flatter myself that I have been more favoured than others. She is a loose woman; and she is lucky enough to have forced a claim on me.”
“You lie, William Graynor,” she said fiercely. “And you know that you lie. From the time you pursued me, when I worked in the factory, a girl of sixteen, to the moment when I met the man I am going to marry, I never looked at another man. You are a mean liar, that’s what you are.”
Mr Graynor, ignoring the speaker and still looking towards his son, struck the table violently with his hand in an access of indignant anger.
“You admit the paternity of this child, and, instead of sharing the responsibility, meanly try to shift it, and impugn the morality of a woman whose immorality you brought about! How dare you utter these things in my hearing?”
“I’ve paid her,” William excused himself, and fingered his collar nervously as though it were too tight. “I kept her so long as—” He broke off abruptly; and added in a savage voice: “She’s had money enough from me.”
“I’m not complaining of what’s past,” the girl interposed. “If you ’adn’t stopped the payments I shouldn’t be ’ere now. I can’t afford to keep the child. ’E’s as much yours as mine.”
“There,” Prudence broke in to the general astonishment, for she had remained so quiet until now that they had almost forgotten her presence, “you are mistaken. The law protects the man in these cases.”
“Then the law’s rotten bad,” said Bessie Clapp bitterly.
Whether the sudden recollection of his daughter’s presence decided Mr Graynor to bring the interview to a close, or if he felt unequal to further discussion is uncertain, but at this point he waved the girl to silence, and unlocking a drawer in the table, took out his cheque book and wrote a cheque and tore it out and passed it across the table to her.
“I will see that my son makes suitable provision for the child,” he said quaveringly.
Bessie Clapp took the cheque and stood with it in her hand, looking at him out of her dark, sombre eyes.
“I’m sorry I come,” she said falteringly. “I’m going right away from ’ere. You won’t see me no more.”
Then suddenly Prudence rose. She left her place by the fire, and crossing to where the other girl stood beside the table, she bent over the child and took the little fellow by the hand and drew him to her.
“I am a childless woman,” she said, in a sweet voice full of sympathy, “and I love children. Give him to me.”