Chapter 24

FATHER AND SON

None of the three spoke for a moment.

Then Mary drew her breath sharply as she saw Ralph’s face, for it had hardened during that moment into a kind of blind obstinacy which she had only seen once or twice in her life before.

As he stood there he seemed to stiffen into resistance. His eyelids drooped, and little lines showed themselves suddenly at either side of his thin mouth. His father saw it too, for the hand that he had lifted entreatingly sank again, and his voice was tremulous as he spoke.

“Ralph--Ralph, my son!” he said.

Still the man said nothing; but stood frozen, his face half-turned to the windows.

“Ralph, my son,” said the other again, “you know why we have come.”

“You have come to hinder my business.”

His voice was thin and metallic, as rigid as steel.

“We have come to hinder a great sin against God,” said Sir James.

Ralph opened his eyes wide with a sort of fury, and thrust his chin out.

“She should pack a thousand times more now than before,” he said.

The father’s face too deepened into strength now, and he drew himself up.

“Do you know what you are doing?” he said.

“I do, sir.”

There was an extraordinary insolence in his voice, and Mary took a step forward.

“Oh! Ralph,” she said, “at least do it like a gentleman!”

Ralph turned on her sharply, and the obstinacy vanished in anger.

“I will not be pushed like this,” he snarled. “What right is it of yours to come between me and my work?”

Sir James made a quick imperious gesture, and his air of entreaty fell from him like a cloak.

“Sit down, sir,” he said, and his voice rang strongly. “We have a right in Margaret’s affairs. We will say what we wish.”

Mary glanced at him: she had never seen her father like this before as he stood in three quarter profile, rigid with decision. When she looked at Ralph again, his face had tightened once more into obstinacy. He answered Sir James with a kind of silky deference.

“Of course, I will sit down, sir, and you shall say what you will.”

He went across the room and drew out a couple of chairs before the cold hearth where the white ashes and logs of last night’s fire still rested. Sir James sat down with his back to the window so that Mary could not see his face, and Ralph stood by the other chair a moment, facing her.

“Sit down, Mary,” he said. “Wait, I will have candles.”

He stepped back to the door and called to the portress, and then returned, and seated himself deliberately, setting his cane in the corner beside him.

None of the three spoke again until the nun had come in with a couple of candles that she set in the stands and lighted; then she went out without glancing at anyone. Mary was sitting in the window seat, so the curtains remained undrawn, and there was a mystical compound of twilight and candle-light in the room.

She had a flash of metaphor, and saw in it the meeting of the old and new religions; the type of these two men, of whom the light of one was fading, and the other waxing. The candlelight fell full on Ralph’s face that stood out against the whitewashed wall behind.

Then she listened and watched with an intent interest.

* * * * *

“It is this,” said Sir James, “we heard you were here--”

Ralph smiled with one side of his mouth, so that his father could see it.

“I do not wish to do anything I should not,” went on the old man, “or to meddle in his Grace’s matters--”

“And you wish me not to meddle either, sir,” put in Ralph.

“Yes,” said his father. “I am very willing to receive you and your wife at home; to make any suitable provision; to give you half the house if you wish for it; if you will only give up this accursed work.”

He was speaking with a tranquil deliberation; all the emotion and passion seemed to have left his voice; but Mary, from behind, could see his right hand clenched like a vice upon the knob of his chair-arm. It seemed to her as if the two men had suddenly frozen into self-repression. Their air was one of two acquaintances talking, not of father and son.

“And if not, sir?” asked Ralph with the same courtesy.

“Wait,” said his father, and he lifted his hand a moment and dropped it again. He was speaking in short, sharp sentences. “I know that you have great things before you, and that I am asking much from you. I do not wish you to think that I am ignorant of that. If nothing else will do I am willing to give up the house altogether to you and your wife. I do not know about your mother.”

Mary drew her breath hard. The words were like an explosion in her soul, and opened up unsuspected gulfs. Things must be desperate if her father could speak like that. He had not hinted a word of this during that silent strenuous ride they had had together when he had called for her suddenly at Great Keynes earlier in the afternoon. She saw Ralph give a quick stare at his father, and drop his eyes again.

“You are very generous, sir,” he said almost immediately, “but I do not ask for a bribe.”

“You--you are unlike your master in that, then,” said Sir James by an irresistible impulse.

Ralph’s face stiffened yet more.

“Then that is all, sir?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon for saying that,” added his father courteously. “It should not have been said. It is not a bribe, however; it is an offer to compensate for any loss you may incur.”

“Have you finished, sir?”

“That is all I have to say on that point,” said Sir James, “except--”

“Well, sir?”

“Except that I do not know how Mistress Atherton will take this story.”

Ralph’s face grew a shade paler yet. But his lips snapped together, though his eyes flinched.

“That is a threat, sir.”

“That is as you please.”

A little pulse beat sharply in Ralph’s cheek. He was looking with a kind of steady fury at his father. But Mary thought she saw indecision too in his eye-lids, which were quivering almost imperceptibly.

“You have offered me a bribe and a threat, sir. Two insults. Have you a third ready?”

Mary heard a swift-drawn breath from her father, but he spoke quietly.

“I have no more to say on that point,” he said.

“Then I must refuse,” said Ralph instantly. “I see no reason to give up my work. I have very hearty sympathy with it.”

The old man’s hand twitched uncontrollably on his chair-arm for a moment; he half lifted his hand, but he dropped it again.

“Then as to Margaret,” he went on in a moment. “I understand you had intended to dismiss her from the convent?”

Ralph bowed.

“And where do you suggest that she should go?”

“She must go home,” said Ralph.

“To Overfield?”

Ralph assented.

“Then I will not receive her,” said Sir James.

Mary started up.

“Nor will Mary receive her,” he added, half turning towards her.

Mary Maxwell sat back at once. She thought she understood what he meant now.

Ralph stared at his father a moment before he too understood. Then he saw the point, and riposted deftly. He shrugged his shoulders ostentatiously as if to shake off responsibility.

“Well, then, that is not my business; I shall give her a gown and five shillings to-morrow, with the other one.”

The extraordinary brutality of the words struck Mary like a whip, but Sir James met it.

“That is for you to settle then,” he said. “Only you need not send her to Overfield or Great Keynes, for she will be sent back here at once.”

Ralph smiled with an air of tolerant incredulity. Sir James rose briskly.

“Come, Mary,” he said, and turned his back abruptly on Ralph, “we must find lodgings for to-night. The good nuns will not have room.”

As Mary looked at his face in the candlelight she was astonished by its decision; there was not the smallest hint of yielding. It was very pale but absolutely determined, and for the last time in her life she noticed how like it was to Ralph’s. The line of the lips was identical, and his eyelids drooped now like his son’s.

Ralph too rose and then on a sudden she saw the resolute obstinacy fade from his eyes and mouth. It was as if the spirit of one man had passed into the other.

“Father--” he said.

She expected a rush of emotion into the old man’s face, but there was not a ripple. He paused a moment, but Ralph was silent.

“I have no more to say to you, sir. And I beg that you will not come home again.”

As they passed out into the entrance passage she turned again and saw Ralph dazed and trembling at the table. Then they were out in the road through the open gate and a long moan broke from her father.

“Oh! God forgive me,” he said, “have I failed?”