CHAPTER XLVI

OVER A TEA-TABLE

Winefred accompanied her father to his lodgings. These were comfortable and well-situated, spacious and elegantly furnished; clearly not chosen with a view to economy.

He bowed and made her enter, with old-fashioned courtesy, and then ordered tea.

A certain amount of constraint existed between them, and yet he had lost much of his timidity of manner since he had been forced to avow the nature of his relation to Jane. The Rubicon was passed. He had dismissed his ships.

It may, however, be questioned whether even when shaken to the undoing of his cravat and the loosening of his teeth he would have made the admission but for two considerations.

In the first place, he had become warmly attached to his daughter, of whom, moreover, he was vastly proud, so that he had felt the deprivation when she had gone back to Axmouth; and secondly, he was aware that he was afflicted with an incurable complaint, and the thought of dying in solitude without a loving hand to smooth his pillow filled him with dismay.

During the absence of Winefred he had thought much of this.

'Miss Jesse was wrong,' said he, 'in her allusion to my head of hair. I do not wear a wig. I have my hair dressed by a French barber before I leave the house, but it is my own hair. You may pull a lock if you doubt my word. I am positively not so old as some persons are disposed to make me. I may look a little aged――of late. I have had a trying life; and recent troubles of mind――relative to what the doctors have told me――have had their effect on me. May I ask you to favour me by pouring out the tea?'

Presently he said, 'I like crumpets. They crunch like hard biscuits, but have no deleterious effect on the teeth.'

'Are you fond of hard biscuits, father?'

'Of Abernethies I have always been fond. I even enjoyed a ship-biscuit once, when the world was young, and when――when I first knew your mother.' He sighed deeply.

'Were you thinking of her, papa?'

'To be honest, of Abernethy biscuits. I did relish them. I shall never eat one again.'

'Why not?'

'Because my teeth are gone. I have at least some that are not my own. Miss Jesse would have shaken them into my mouth on to my tongue――had I not spoken. That, you see, would have been humiliating.'

'Father, you said something of being ill.'

'Yes, I am ill, but not very. That is to say I am threatened, but do not suffer seriously at present. I do not like to think about it, still less to speak of it――but to you it is another matter. You must know about it. When I came here I had some hopes. But the doctors afford me none. Let the subject drop. I have enough of that when alone, and at night. Then it haunts me and will not let me rest. During the day, and with company, I shake it off. I like crumpets. When I hear the crumpets crackle it carries me back to the time when I ate Abernethies and had no false teeth.'

'Tell me about your marriage with my mother,' said Winefred, desirous of drawing him from crumpets and Abernethies to matters of more enduring interest. 'Father, how was it that she did not take your name?'

'Well, well, my dear, the story is painful, but it must come out now. The facts were these. We were married privately by a rogue of a parson at St. Pancras Church at Rousdon. It is ruinous, but it had a rector, who lived in Lyme, and did no duty, as there were no parishioners. I do not think he was unfrocked. It would have been hardly worth the bishop's while to do that, you see, as he did no duty, and there was no roof on the church. For my sake, and at my request, the marriage was kept secret. When young, your mother was a beautiful woman; you remind me of her greatly. In fact you get your good looks from her.'

'But, father, why were you――――'

'I know what you would say. Why were we separated? You see the marriage was not known, and I was given a place in the Foreign Office, and as every one supposed that I was calculated by character and capacities to get advancement in it I began to see that my marriage presented serious difficulties.'

He began to fumble with the teaspoon at his tongue, and spoke accordingly indistinctly.

'I mean this――that I feared it might prevent my preferment, and then again it would alienate all my family from me. I had an aunt who was wealthy, and she doted on me; but she was ambitious, and would not have forgiven me. So I got your mother to keep our marriage dark, and then――then――――'

'Then you were appointed Governor-General of Tierra del Fuego.'

'No――come――no. That was not really the case. I believe poor Jane――I mean your mother――was led to think I had gone abroad, lest she should come to town after me and make scenes. She had a violent temper.'

'So you parted with my mother for the sake of your prospects with an aunt and for preferment in the Foreign Office?'

'I would not put it quite in that way. Of course they could not turn me out because I had married your mother, but they would have seen that she was not wholly qualified to shine in a Foreign Embassy. You see she could speak neither French nor Chinese. You comprehend――it would have caused difficulties, embarrassments.'

'But did you get an Embassy?'

'No, no; I remained in the office.'

'Then you threw her over for nothing!'

'No; not quite that. My aunt died a year ago at an advanced age, and has left me very comfortably provided for. I have applied for a pension, and am really in easy circumstances at present――now, just at the time when――――' He shivered, and his weak mouth fell. 'It is too tragic to contemplate. I did hope that the Bath waters might have expelled the poison from my veins, but my disorder remains unarrested. It may be rapid in its course, and my dissolution may be near, or it may be slow. I cannot tell. The doctors give me very little hope, in fact, to be candid, none at all. O Winefred, you will nurse me through it?'

'Yes, father, and so will mother.'

'But she hates me. She can never forgive me――and then she is a violent woman. She frightened me years ago. I dislike rough ways and strong tempers. I always did at the time when I was young and strong. Now I cannot endure the least roughness.'

'She is not rough, she is vastly tender. But her strong heart has had its beatings stayed, and her ideas have become twisted about.'

'Ah, yes――she is a passionate woman.'

'She loves passionately, but has had her heart wounded and bruised.'

'Yes, I suppose she has suffered――so have I.'

'She has suffered, therefore she can have compassion.'

He remained silent, and shook his head dubiously.

'Tell me about yourself,' he said at last. No doubt he had undergone stormy scenes with Jane that had frightened him, and left on him an impression that could not be eradicated.

'What shall I tell you?' asked Winefred.

'About your youth, and where you lived, and how?'

'We got along, mother and I, as best we could, she hawking tapes and needles, and I――collecting pebbles.'

'There was really no necessity for that.'

'We must live. We had a cottage on the cliffs, but it went to pieces as the cliff cracked and made a chasm. So we were obliged to leave it, and then we had a very bad time, for no one would take us in.'

'You should have gone into lodgings. Your mother had means.'

'Hardly any. One may earn a few pence by the sale of combs and laces, thread and needles, but not much. And I was indeed proud if I got ninepence for a cornelian.'

'I do not understand. Why did you go to that man――that captain――I do not recall his name?'

'Oh, you mean Captain Rattenbury. He took us in one night when we were in despair, wet to the bone, and had no shelter for our heads, and every door was shut against us.'

'But if you had asked Olver Dench, he would have provided for you.'

'He! he is our worst enemy.'

'That cannot be.'

'He is. Mother cannot endure him. He does not love us.'

'I see no reason for this. He has been my paymaster.'

'What do you mean, father?'

'I have sent him money every quarter for your mother. I have done so for eighteen or nineteen years.'

'You have sent him money!' exclaimed Winefred in amazement. 'I am certain that my mother has received nothing.'

'Impossible that he can have withheld it!' said Mr. Holwood, really aghast. 'Did your mother not tell you that she had an allowance from me?'

'My mother hid nothing from me. At times, when we had sold nothing, we really had not enough to eat. I am positive that she never had anything from Olver Dench.'

Mr. Holwood beat his brow.

'I am innocent in this matter,' he said. 'Write to your mother and explain. I am innocent indeed. I have wronged her in many ways, but not in this. I sent her money when I could ill afford to part with it, but I never failed to send regularly. Whenever my salary came in, I transmitted a share to her before I spent anything on myself. But Olver said――――' He hesitated, and looked down.

'What did Olver Dench say?'

'He――he did not speak well of your mother. He led me to――to think; but I will enter into no particulars.'

'Olver is our mortal enemy. I do not know wherefore, unless it be that he has been filching the money all these years. He hates mother, and he dislikes me. If he has dared to speak against _her_, he shall be called to account. There is one whom I can trust'――she held up her head――'one who will take him by the throat and make him unsay every word.'

Mr. Holwood knew that she did not refer to himself, and he was humbled at the thought that his child should look to another to vindicate her mother's good name.

'No,' said Winefred, with heightened colour and sparkling eyes, and speaking with vehemence, 'my dear mother has done nothing to forfeit your esteem, nothing to dishonour your name. She has been poor, and has huxtered tapes and packets of pins, and has trudged through rain and mire, and there is none in all the country round who can say an ill word against her that has in it a spice even of truth.'

'And she is now in poverty?'

Then, and not till this moment, did the recollection of the one great and terrible fault committed by her mother recur to Winefred.

She suddenly dropped her head and covered her face with her hands.