The Weavers, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"She secretive? No, Eglington," she rejoined gravely, "she was congealed.
She lived in too cold an air. She was not secretive, but yet she kept a
secret--another's."
Again Eglington had the feeling which possessed him when he entered the
room. She had changed. There was something in her tone, a meaning, he had
never heard before. He was startled. He recalled the words of the Duchess
as she went up the staircase.
What was it all about?
"Whose secrets did she keep?" he asked, calmly enough.
"Your father's, yours, mine," she replied, in a whisper almost.
"Secret? What secret? Good Lord, such mystery!" He laughed mirthlessly.
She came close to him. "I am sorry--sorry, Harry," she said with
difficulty. "It will hurt you, shock you so. It will be a blow to you,
but you must bear it."
She tried to speak further, but her heart was beating so violently that
she could not. She turned quickly to the portfolio on the desk, drew
forth the fatal letter, and, turning to the page which contained the
truth concerning David, handed it to him. "It is there," she said.
He had great self-control. Before looking at the page to which she had
directed his attention, he turned the letter over slowly, fingering the
pages one by one. "My mother to my father," he remarked.
Instinctively he knew what it contained. "You have been reading my
mother's correspondence," he added in cold reproof.
"Do you forget that you asked me to arrange her papers?" she retorted,
stung by his suggestion.
"Your imagination is vivid," he exclaimed. Then he bethought himself
that, after all, he might sorely need all she could give, if things went
against him, and that she was the last person he could afford to
alienate; "but I do remember that I asked you that," he added--"no doubt
foolishly."
"Read what is there," she broke in, "and you will see that it was not
foolish, that it was meant to be." He felt a cold dead hand reaching out
from the past to strike him; but he nerved himself, and his eyes searched
the paper with assumed coolness-even with her he must still be acting.
The first words he saw were: "Why did you not tell me that my boy, my
baby Harry, was not your only child, and that your eldest son was alive?"
So that was it, after all. Even his mother knew. Master of his nerves as
he was, it blinded him for a moment. Presently he read on--the whole
page--and lingered upon the words, that he might have time to think what
he must say to Hylda. Nothing of the tragedy of his mother touched him,
though he was faintly conscious of a revelation of a woman he had never
known, whose hungering caresses had made him, as a child, rather peevish,
when a fit of affection was not on him. Suddenly, as he read the lines
touching himself, "Brilliant and able and unscrupulous.... and though he
loves me little, as he loves you little too," his eye lighted up with
anger, his face became pale--yet he had borne the same truths from Faith
without resentment, in the wood by the mill that other year. For a moment
he stood infuriated, then, going to the fireplace, he dropped the letter
on the coals, as Hylda, in horror, started forward to arrest his hand.
"Oh, Eglington--but no--no! It is not honourable. It is proof of all!"
He turned upon her slowly, his face rigid, a strange, cold light in his
eyes. "If there is no more proof than that, you need not vex your mind,"
he said, commanding his voice to evenness.
A bitter anger was on him. His mother had read him through and
through--he had not deceived her even; and she had given evidence against
him to Hylda, who, he had ever thought, believed in him completely. Now
there was added to the miserable tale, that first marriage, and the
rights of David--David, the man who, he was convinced, had captured her
imagination. Hurt vanity played a disproportionate part in this crisis.
The effect on him had been different from what Hylda had anticipated. She
had pictured him stricken and dumfounded by the blow. It had never
occurred to her, it did not now, that he had known the truth; for, of
course, to know the truth was to speak, to restore to David his own, to
step down into the second and unconsidered place. After all, to her mind,
there was no disgrace. The late Earl had married secretly, but he had
been duly married, and he did not marry again until Mercy Claridge was
dead. The only wrong was to David, whose grandfather had been even more
to blame than his own father. She had looked to help Eglington in this
moment, and now there seemed nothing for her to do. He was superior to
the situation, though it was apparent in his pale face and rigid manner
that he had been struck hard.
She came near to him, but there was no encouragement to her to play that
part which is a woman's deepest right and joy and pain in one--to comfort
her man in trouble, sorrow, or evil. Always, always, he stood alone,
whatever the moment might be, leaving her nothing to do--"playing his
own game with his own weapons," as he had once put it. Yet there was
strength in it too, and this came to her mind now, as though in excuse
for whatever else there was in the situation which, against her will,
repelled her.
"I am so sorry for you," she said at last.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"To lose all that has been yours so long."
This was their great moment. The response to this must be the touchstone
of their lives. A--half dozen words might alter all the future, might be
the watch word to the end of all things. Involuntarily her heart
fashioned the response he ought to give--"I shall have you left, Hylda."
The air seemed to grow oppressive, and the instant's silence a torture,
and, when he spoke, his words struck a chill to her heart--rough notes of
pain. "I have not lost yet," were his words.
She shrank. "You will not hide it. You will do right by--by him," she
said with difficulty.
"Let him establish his claim to the last item of fact," he said with
savage hate.
"Luke Claridge knew. The proofs are but just across the way, no doubt,"
she answered, almost coldly, so had his words congealed her heart.
Their great moment had passed. It was as though a cord had snapped that
held her to him, and in the recoil she had been thrown far off from him.
Swift as his mind worked, it had not seen his opportunity to win her to
his cause, to asphyxiate her high senses, her quixotic justice, by that
old flood of eloquence and compelling persuasion of the emotions with
which he had swept her to the altar--an altar of sacrifice. He had not
even done what he had left London to do--make sure of her, by an alluring
flattery and devotion, no difficult duty with one so beautiful and
desirable; though neither love of beauty nor great desire was strong
enough in him to divert him from his course for an hour, save by his own
initiative. His mother's letter had changed it all. A few hours before he
had had a struggle with Soolsby, and now another struggle on the same
theme was here. Fate had dealt illy with him, who had ever been its
spoiled child and favourite. He had not learned yet the arts of defence
against adversity.
"Luke Claridge is dead," he answered sharply. "But you will tell--him,
you will write to Egypt and tell your brother?" she said, the conviction
slowly coming to her that he would not.
"It is not my duty to displace myself, to furnish evidence against
myself--"
"You have destroyed the evidence," she intervened, a little scornfully.
"If there were no more than that--" He shrugged his shoulders
impatiently.
"Do you know there is more?" she asked searchingly. "In whose interests
are you speaking?" he rejoined, with a sneer. A sudden fury possessed
him. Claridge Pasha--she was thinking of him!
"In yours--your conscience, your honour."
"There is over thirty years' possession on my side," he rejoined.
"It is not as if it were going from your family," she argued.
"Family--what is he to me!"
"What is any one to you?" she returned bitterly.
"I am not going to unravel a mystery in order to facilitate the cutting
of my own throat."
"It might be worth while to do something once for another's sake than
your own--it would break the monotony," she retorted, all her sense
tortured by his words, and even more so by his manner.
Long ago Faith had said in Soolsby's but that he "blandished" all with
whom he came in contact; but Hylda realised with a lacerated heart that
he had ceased to blandish her. Possession had altered that. Yet how had
he vowed to her in those sweet tempestuous days of his courtship when the
wind of his passion blew so hard! Had one of the vows been kept?
Even as she looked at him now, words she had read some days before
flashed through her mind--they had burnt themselves into her brain:
"Broken faith is the crown of evils,
Broken vows are the knotted thongs
Set in the hands of laughing devils,
To scourge us for deep wrongs.
"Broken hearts, when all is ended,
Bear the better all after-stings;
Bruised once, the citadel mended,
Standeth through all things."
Suddenly he turned upon her with aggrieved petulance. "Why are you so
eager for proof?"
"Oh, I have," she said, with a sudden flood of tears in her voice, though
her eyes were dry--"I have the feeling your mother had, that nothing will
be well until you undo the wrong your father did. I know it was not your
fault. I feel for you--oh, believe me, I feel as I have never felt, could
never feel, for myself. It was brought on you by your father, but you
must be the more innocent because he was so guilty. You have had much out
of it, it has helped you on your way. It does not mean so much now.
By-and-by another--an English-peerage may be yours by your own
achievement. Let it go. There is so much left, Harry. It is a small thing
in a world of work. It means nothing to me." Once again, even when she
had given up all hope, seeing what was the bent of his mind--once again
she made essay to win him out of his selfishness. If he would only say,
"I have you left," how she would strive to shut all else out of her life!
He was exasperated. His usual prescience and prudence forsook him. It
angered him that she should press him to an act of sacrifice for the man
who had so great an influence upon her. Perversity possessed him.
Lifelong egotism was too strong for wisdom, or discretion.
Suddenly he caught her hands in both of his and said hoarsely: "Do you
love me--answer me, do you love me with all your heart and soul? The
truth now, as though it were your last word on earth."
Always self. She had asked, if not in so many words, for a little love,
something for herself to feed on in the darkening days for him, for her,
for both; and he was thinking only of himself.
She shrank, but her hands lay passive in his. "No, not with all my heart
and soul--but, oh--!"
He flung her hands from him. "No, not with all your heart and soul--I
know! You are willing to sacrifice me for him, and you think I do not
understand."
She drew herself up, with burning cheeks and flashing eyes. "You
understand nothing--nothing. If you had ever understood me, or any human
being, or any human heart, you would not have ruined all that might have
given you an undying love, something that would have followed you through
fire and flood to the grave. You cannot love. You do not understand love.
Self--self, always self. Oh, you are mad, mad, to have thrown it all
away, all that might have given happiness! All that I have, all that I
am, has been at your service; everything has been bent and tuned to your
pleasure, for your good. All has been done for you, with thought of you
and your position and your advancement, and now--now, when you have
killed all that might have been yours, you cry out in anger that it is
dying, and you insinuate what you should kill another for insinuating.
Oh, the wicked, cruel folly of it all! You suggest--you dare! I never
heard a word from David Claridge that might not be written on the
hoardings. His honour is deeper than that which might attach to the title
of Earl of Eglington."
She seemed to tower above him. For an instant she looked him in the eyes
with frigid dignity, but a great scorn in her face. Then she went to the
door--he hastened to open it for her.
"You will be very sorry for this," he said stubbornly. He was too
dumfounded to be discreet, too suddenly embarrassed by the turn affairs
had taken. He realised too late that he had made a mistake, that he had
lost his hold upon her.
As she passed through, there suddenly flashed before her mind the scene
in the laboratory with the chairmaker. She felt the meaning of it now.
"You do not intend to tell him--perhaps Soolsby has done so," she said
keenly, and moved on to the staircase.
He was thunderstruck at her intuition. "Why do you want to rob yourself?"
he asked after her vaguely. She turned back. "Think of your mother's
letter that you destroyed," she rejoined solemnly and quietly. "Was it
right?"
He shut the door, and threw himself into a chair. "I will put it straight
with her to-morrow," he said helplessly.
He sat for a half-hour silent, planning his course.
At last there came a tap at the door, and the butler appeared.
"Some one from the Foreign Office, my lord," he said. A moment afterwards
a young official, his subordinate, entered. "There's the deuce to pay in
Egypt, sir; I've brought the despatch," he said.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
A cloak of words to cover up the real thought behind
Antipathy of the lesser to the greater nature
Antipathy of the man in the wrong to the man in the right
Friendship means a giving and a getting
He's a barber-shop philosopher
Monotonously intelligent
No virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted
Of course I've hated, or I wouldn't be worth a button
Only the supremely wise or the deeply ignorant who never alter
Passion to forget themselves
Political virtue goes unrewarded
She knew what to say and what to leave unsaid
Smiling was part of his equipment
Sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home
Soul tortured through different degrees of misunderstanding
The vague pain of suffered indifference
There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do
Tricks played by Fact to discredit the imagination
We must live our dark hours alone
Woman's deepest right and joy and pain in one--to comfort
THE WEAVERS
By Gilbert Parker
BOOK IV.
XXVIII. NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW
XXIX. THE RECOIL
XXX. LACEY MOVES
XXXI. THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT
XXXII. FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE
XXXIII. THE DARK INDENTURE
XXXIV. NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK
CHAPTER XXVIII
NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW
Laughing to himself, Higli Pasha sat with the stem of a narghileh in his
mouth. His big shoulders kept time to the quivering of his fat stomach.
He was sitting in a small court-yard of Nahoum Pasha's palace, waiting
for its owner to appear. Meanwhile he exercised a hilarious patience. The
years had changed him little since he had been sent on that expedition
against the southern tribes which followed hard on David's appointment to
office. As David had expected, few of the traitorous officers returned.
Diaz had ignominiously died of the bite of a tarantula before a blow had
been struck, but Higli had gratefully received a slight wound in the
first encounter, which enabled him to beat a safe retreat to Cairo. He
alone of the chief of the old conspirators was left. Achmet was still at
the Place of Lepers, and the old nest of traitors was scattered for ever.
Only Nahoum and Higli were left, and between these two there had never
been partnership or understanding. Nahoum was not the man to trust to
confederates, and Higli Pasha was too contemptible a coadjutor. Nahoum
had faith in no one save Mizraim the Chief Eunuch, but Mizraim alone was
better than a thousand; and he was secret--and terrible. Yet Higli had a
conviction that Nahoum's alliance with David was a sham, and that David
would pay the price of misplaced confidence one day. More than once when
David's plans had had a set-back, Higli had contrived a meeting with
Nahoum, to judge for himself the true position.
For his visit to-day he had invented a reason--a matter of finance; but
his real reason was concealed behind the malevolent merriment by which he
was now seized. So absorbed was he that he did not heed the approach of
another visitor down an angle of the court-yard. He was roused by a
voice.
"Well, what's tickling you so, pasha?"
The voice was drawling, and quite gentle; but at the sound of it, Higli's
laugh stopped short, and the muscles of his face contracted. If there was
one man of whom he had a wholesome fear--why, he could not tell--it was
this round-faced, abrupt, imperturbable American, Claridge Pasha's
right-hand man. Legends of resourcefulness and bravery had gathered round
his name. "Who's been stroking your chin with a feather, pasha?" he
continued, his eye piercing the other like a gimlet.
"It was an amusing tale I heard at Assiout, effendi," was Higli's abashed
and surly reply.
"Oh, at Assiout!" rejoined Lacey. "Yes, they tell funny stories at
Assiout. And when were you at Assiout, pasha?"
"Two days ago, effendi."
"And so you thought you'd tell the funny little story to Nahoum as quick
as could be, eh? He likes funny stories, same as you--damn, nice, funny
little stories, eh?"
There was something chilly in Lacey's voice now, which Higli did not
like; something much too menacing and contemptuous for a mere
man-of-all-work to the Inglesi. Higli bridled up, his eyes glared
sulkily.
"It is but my own business if I laugh or if I curse, effendi," he
replied, his hand shaking a little on the stem of the narghileh.
"Precisely, my diaphanous polyandrist; but it isn't quite your own affair
what you laugh at--not if I know it!"
"Does the effendi think I was laughing at him?"
"The effendi thinks not. The effendi knows that the descendant of a
hundred tigers was laughing at the funny little story, of how the two
cotton-mills that Claridge Pasha built were burned down all in one night,
and one of his steamers sent down the cataract at Assouan. A knock-down
blow for Claridge Pasha, eh? That's all you thought of, wasn't it? And it
doesn't matter to you that the cotton-mills made thousands better off,
and started new industries in Egypt. No, it only matters to you that
Claridge Pasha loses half his fortune, and that you think his feet are in
the quicksands, and 'll be sucked in, to make an Egyptian holiday.
Anything to discredit him here, eh? I'm not sure what else you know; but
I'll find out, my noble pasha, and if you've had your hand in it--but no,
you ain't game-cock enough for that! But if you were, if you had a hand
in the making of your funny little story, there's a nutcracker that 'd
break the shell of that joke--"
He turned round quickly, seeing a shadow and hearing a movement. Nahoum
was but a few feet away. There was a bland smile on his face, a look of
innocence in his magnificent blue eye. As he met Lacey's look, the smile
left his lips, a grave sympathy appeared to possess them, and he spoke
softly:
"I know the thing that burns thy heart, effendi, to whom be the flowers
of hope and the fruits of merit. It is even so, a great blow has fallen.
Two hours since I heard. I went at once to see Claridge Pasha, but found
him not. Does he know, think you?" he added sadly.
"May your heart never be harder than it is, pasha, and when I left the
Saadat an hour ago, he did not know. His messenger hadn't a steamer like
Higli Pasha there. But he was coming to see you; and that's why I'm here.
I've been brushing the flies off this sore on the hump of Egypt while
waiting." He glanced with disdain at Higli.
A smile rose like liquid in the eye of Nahoum and subsided, then he
turned to Higli inquiringly.
"I have come on business, Excellency; the railway to Rosetta, and--"
"To-morrow--or the next day," responded Nahoum irritably, and turned
again to Lacey.
As Higli's huge frame disappeared through a gateway, Nahoum motioned
Lacey to a divan, and summoned a slave for cooling drinks. Lacey's eyes
now watched him with an innocence nearly as childlike as his own. Lacey
well knew that here was a foe worthy of the best steel. That he was a
foe, and a malignant foe, he had no doubt whatever; he had settled the
point in his mind long ago; and two letters he had received from Lady
Eglington, in which she had said in so many words, "Watch Nahoum!" had
made him vigilant and intuitive. He knew, meanwhile, that he was
following the trail of a master-hunter who covered up his tracks. Lacey
was as certain as though he had the book of Nahoum's mind open in his
hand, that David's work had been torn down again--and this time with dire
effect--by this Armenian, whom David trusted like a brother. But the
black doors that closed on the truth on every side only made him more
determined to unlock them; and, when he faltered as to his own powers, he
trusted Mahommed Hassan, whose devotion to David had given him eyes that
pierced dark places.
"Surely the God of Israel has smitten Claridge Pasha sorely. My heart
will mourn to look upon his face. The day is insulting in its
brightness," continued Nahoum with a sigh, his eyes bent upon Lacey,
dejection in his shoulders.
Lacey started. "The God of Israel!" How blasphemous it sounded from the
lips of Nahoum, Oriental of Orientals, Christian though he was also!
"I think, perhaps, you'll get over it, pasha. Man is born to trouble, and
you've got a lot of courage. I guess you could see other people bear a
pile of suffering, and never flinch."
Nahoum appeared not to notice the gibe. "It is a land of suffering,
effendi," he sighed, "and one sees what one sees."
"Have you any idea, any real sensible idea, how those cotton-mills got
afire?" Lacey's eyes were fixed on Nahoum's face.
The other met his gaze calmly. "Who can tell! An accident, perhaps, or--"
"Or some one set the mills on fire in several places at once--they say
the buildings flamed out in every corner; and it was the only time in a
month they hadn't been running night and day. Funny, isn't it?"
"It looks like the work of an enemy, effendi." Nahoum shook his head
gravely. "A fortune destroyed in an hour, as it were. But we shall get
the dog. We shall find him. There is no hole deep enough to hide him from
us."
"Well, I wouldn't go looking in holes for him, pasha.
"He isn't any cave-dweller, that incendiary; he's an artist--no palace is
too unlikely for him. No, I wouldn't go poking in mud-huts to find him."
"Thou dost not think that Higli Pasha--" Nahoum seemed startled out of
equanimity by the thought. Lacey eyed him meditatively, and said
reflectively: "Say, you're an artist, pasha. You are a guesser of the
first rank. But I'd guess again. Higli Pasha would have done it, if it
had ever occurred to him; and he'd had the pluck. But it didn't, and he
hadn't. What I can't understand is that the artist that did it should
have done it before Claridge Pasha left for the Soudan. Here we were just
about to start; and if we'd got away south, the job would have done more
harm, and the Saadat would have been out of the way. No, I can't
understand why the firebug didn't let us get clean away; for if the
Saadat stays here, he'll be where he can stop the underground mining."
Nahoum's self-control did not desert him, though he fully realised that
this man suspected him. On the surface Lacey was right. It would have
seemed better to let David go, and destroy his work afterwards, but he
had been moved by other considerations, and his design was deep. His own
emissaries were in the Soudan, announcing David's determination to
abolish slavery, secretly stirring up feeling against him, preparing for
the final blow to be delivered, when he went again among the southern
tribes. He had waited and waited, and now the time was come. Had he,
Nahoum, not agreed with David that the time had come for the slave-trade
to go? Had he not encouraged him to take this bold step, in the sure
belief that it would overwhelm him, and bring him an ignominious death,
embittered by total failure of all he had tried to do?
For years he had secretly loosened the foundations of David's work, and
the triumph of Oriental duplicity over Western civilisation and integrity
was sweet in his mouth. And now there was reason to believe that, at
last, Kaid was turning against the Inglesi. Everything would come at
once. If all that he had planned was successful, even this man before him
should aid in his master's destruction.
"If it was all done by an enemy," he said, in answer to Lacey, at last,
"would it all be reasoned out like that? Is hatred so logical? Dost thou
think Claridge Pasha will not go now? The troops are ready at Wady-Halfa,
everything is in order; the last load of equipment has gone. Will not
Claridge Pasha find the money somehow? I will do what I can. My heart is
moved to aid him."