CHAPTER XXI
David ate his three cutlets and, both as regards appetite and in otherways, was a great success at the little luncheon party. Afterwards,they finished the bottle of Marsala under a cedar tree, and whilst theColonel indulged in reminiscences, Sylvia's eyes rested more than onceupon the automobile drawn up before the door. It was quite anadventure in her rather humdrum life, and, after all, there was noreason why a fairy prince shouldn't be an American millionaire and comein a Rolls-Royce.
"I am sure I hope you'll like Broomleys, Mr. Thain," the Colonel said,as David rose to make his adieux. "I am delighted to leave the placein the hands of such a good tenant. It makes one almost sorry to goaway when one realises what one is missing in the shape of neighbours,eh, Sylvia?"
Sylvia was unaccountably shy, but she raised her eyes to David's for amoment.
"It is most disappointing," she agreed. "Mr. Thain is such asympathetic shopper."
David drove off a little gloomily.
"Why the devil couldn't I fall in love with a nice girl like that," hemuttered to himself, "instead of--"
He pulled up short, set his heel upon that other vision, and bracedhimself for the immediate task before him. He drove around the park,drew up outside the cottage, and, descending from the car, approachedthe low hedge. At the further end of the garden he could hear hisuncle's sonorous voice. He was seated in a high-backed chair, theBible upon his knee, reading to himself slowly and with greatdistinctness the Ten Commandments. On the ground by his side were theremnants of another chair. As David came up the little path, his uncleconcluded his reading and laid down the Bible.
"Bring out a chair and sit with me, David," he invited.
David pointed to the ground.
"Your furniture seems--"
"Don't jest," his uncle interrupted. "That chair I have broken topieces with my own hands because of the woman who sat upon it not manyhours since."
David frowned.
"You mean Marcia?"
"I mean Marcia--the woman who was my daughter," was the stern reply,"the woman of whose visit you warned me."
"Come into the house with me," David begged, turning his back uponMandeleys. "You sit and look at that great drear building and broodovermuch. I want to talk with you."
Richard Vont rose obediently to his feet and followed his visitor intothe little parlour. David looked around him curiously.
"This place seems to have the flavour of many years ago," he said."Sometimes I can scarcely realise that I have ever eaten my meals offthat oak table. Sometimes it seems like yesterday."
"Time passes, but time don't count for much," the old man sighed."Mary Wells will be up from the village soon, and she'll make us a cupof tea. Sit opposite me, lad. Is there any more news?"
"None!"
"Them shares, for instance?"
"There will be no change in them," David replied. "In two months' timehe will know it."
"And he'll have forty thousand pounds to find, eh?--forty thousandpounds which he will never be able to raise!" Richard Vont muttered,his eyes curiously bright. "There isn't an acre of land here thatisn't mortgaged over and over again."
"You'll make him a bankrupt, I suppose," David said thoughtfully.
"Ay, a bankrupt!" his uncle repeated, lingering over the word with afierce joy. "But there's something more as'll fall to your lot,David," he went on,--"something more--and the time's none so far off."
David moved in his chair uneasily.
"Something more?"
"Ay, ay!" the old man assented. "You'll find it hard, my boy, butyou'll keep your word. You've got that much of the Vonts in yourblood. Your word's a bond with you."
"Tell me," David begged, "about that something more?"
"The time's not yet," his uncle replied. "You shall know, lad, in goodseason."
David was silent for a moment, filled with nameless and displeasingapprehensions. He was brave enough, prepared to meet any ordinaryemergency, but somehow or other the vagueness of the task which laybefore him seemed appalling. Outside was Mandeleys, a grim and silentremembrance. Inside the cottage everything seemed to speak ofchangeless times. The pendulum of the tall clock swung drowsily, as ithad swung thirty years ago. The pictures on the wall were the same,the china, the furniture, even its arrangement. And the man who sat inhis easy-chair was the same, only that his whiskers and hair were whitewhere once they had been black.
"Uncle," he begged, "let me know the worst now?"
"You'll know in good time and not before," was the almost fierce reply."Don't weary me to-night, lad," Vent continued, his voice breaking alittle. "The day has been full of trials for me. 'Twas no lightmatter to have a strange woman here--the strange woman, David, that wasonce my daughter."
David frowned a little.
"Uncle," he said, "I don't wish to pain you, but I am sorry aboutMarcia."
"You don't need to be, lad. She isn't sorry for herself. She ispuffed up with the vanity of her brain. She came here in fine clothesand with gentle manners, and a new sort of voice. She has madeherself--a lady! Poor lass, her day of suffering is to come! Maybe Iwas hard on her, but I couldn't bear the sight of her, and that's thetruth. She talked to me like one filled with wisdom. It was me whomshe thought the ignorant one. Put Marcia out of your mind, David. Wewill talk of other things."
David leaned forward in his chair. His eyes were bright, his toneeager.
"Let us have this out, uncle," he begged. "I've been thinking ofit--perhaps as much as you lately. They may have been wrong, thosetwo; they may be sinners, but, after all, the world isn't a place forholy people only. The Bible tells you that. For nearly twenty yearshe has stood by her and cared for her. There has been no meanness, nobacking out on his part. He is as much to her to-day as ever he was."
"Ay," his listener interposed scornfully, "she talked that way. Do youreckon that a man and woman who sinned a score of years ago are any thebetter because they are going on sinning to-day? Faithfulness to goodis part of the Word of God. Faithfulness in sin is of the Devil'shanding out."
David shook his head.
"I am sorry, uncle," he said earnestly, "I have come to look on thesethings a little differently. Many years ago, in America, I used towonder what it was that kept you apart from every one else, kept thesmile from your lips, made you accept good fortune or ill without anysign of feeling. I was too young to understand then, but I realiseeverything now. I know how you denied yourself to send me to schooland college. I know how you left yourself almost a beggar when yougave me the chance of my life and trusted me with all your savings.These things I shall never forget."
"One word, lad," Vont interrupted. "It's the truth you say. I trustedyou with well-nigh all I had that stood between me and starvation, butI trusted you with it on one condition. Do you mind that condition?We sat outside the little shanty I'd built with my own hands, up in theAdirondacks there, and before us were the mountains and the woods andthe silence. We were close to God up there, David. You remember?"
"I remember."
"You'd come hot-foot from the city, and you told me your story. I satand listened, and then I told you mine. I told you of the shame thathad driven me from England, and I told you of the thoughts that weresimmering in my mind. As we sat there your wrath was as mine, and theoath which I had sworn, you swore, too. I lent you the money over thatoath, boy. Look back, if you will. You remember the night? There wasa hot wind--cool before it reached us, though--rushing up from theearth, rushing through the pine trees till they shook and bowed aroundus; and a moon, with the black clouds being driven across it, lookingdown; and the smell of the pines. You remember?"
"I remember," David repeated.
"We stood there hand in hand, and there was no one to hear us exceptthose voices that come from God only knows where, and you swore on yoursoul that you would help me as soon as the time came to punish the manwho had blasted my life. In my way you promised--not yours.
Thereshould be no will but mine. For this one thing I was master and youwere slave, and you swore."
"I swore. I am not denying it," David acknowledged. "Haven't I made astart? Haven't I deceived the man at whose table I sat and laid a plotto ruin him? And I have ruined him! Do you want more than this?"
"Yes!" was the unshaken reply.
"Then what, in heaven's name, is it?" David demanded. "Out with it,for God's sake! I carry this whole thing about with me, like a weightupon my soul. Granted that you are master and I am slave. Well, I'vedone much. What is there left?"
"That you will be told in due season."
"And meantime," David continued passionately, "I am to live in a sortof prison!"
"You've no need to find it such," the old man declared doggedly.
David sprang to his feet. The time had come for his appeal. The wordsseemed to rush to his lips. He was full of confidence and hope.
"Uncle," he began, "you must never let a single word that I may sayseem to you ungrateful, but I beseech you to listen to me. Life islike a great city in which there are many thoroughfares. It is animmense, insoluble problem which no one can understand. You never openanother book except your Bible. You have never willingly exchangedspeech with any human being since you left here. In America youshunned all company, you lived in the gloomiest of solitudes. Thislittle corner of the earth is all you know of. Perhaps there is morein life even than that Book can teach you."
"Marcia talked like this," Richard Vont said quietly. "She spoke ofanother world, a world for cleverer folk than I. Are you going to tryand break my purpose, too?"
"I would if I could," David declared fervently. "This man is what hisancestors and his education have made him. He has led a simple,ignorant, and yet in some respects a decent life. He is too narrow tounderstand any one's point of view except his own. When he took Marciaaway, she was the village girl and he the great nobleman. To-dayMarcia holds his future in her hands. She is the strong woman, and heis the weak man. She has achieved fame and made friends. She haslived a happy life, she is at the present moment perfectly content.Every promise he made her he has kept. Well, why not let it go atthat?"
"So you are another poor child who knows all about this wonderful worldof which I am so ignorant," Richard Vont said bitterly. "Yet, my lad,I tell you that there's one great truth that none of you can get over,and that is that sin lives, and there is nothing in this world, saveatonement, can wash it out."
"There's a newer doctrine than that, uncle," David insisted. "You talkwith the voice of the black-frocked minister who dangles Hell in frontof his congregation. There is something else can clear away sin, andthe Book over which you pore, day by day, will teach it you, if youknow where to look for it. There's love."
"Was it love, then, that brought him down through the darkness todishonour my daughter?" Vont demanded, with blazing eyes.
"It didn't seem like it, but love must have been there," Davidanswered. "Nothing but love could have kept these two people togetherall this time, each filling a great place in the other's life. Ihaven't thought of these things much, uncle, but I tell you frankly,I've read the Bible as well as you, and I don't believe in this blackogre of unforgivable sin. If these two started in wrong fashion,they've purified themselves. I hold that it's your duty now to leavethem alone. I say that this vengeance you still hanker after is theeye for an eye and limb for a limb of the Old Testament. There hasbeen a greater light in the world since then."
"Have you done?" Vont asked, without the slightest change in his toneor expression.
"I suppose so," David replied wearily. "I wish you'd think over itall, uncle. I know I'm right. I know there is justice in my point ofview."
"I'll not argue with you, lad," his uncle declared. "I'll ask youno'but this one question, and before you answer it just go back in yourmind to the night we stood outside my shack, when the wind was blowingup from the valleys. Are you going to stand by your pledged word orare you going to play me false?"
The great clock ticked drearily on. From outside came the clatter ofteacups. David walked to the latticed window and came back again.Richard Vont was seated in his high-backed chair, his hands graspingits sides. His mouth was as hard and tightly drawn as one of his ownvermin traps, but his eyes, steadfastly fixed upon his nephew, werefilled with an inscrutable pathos. David remembered that passionateoutburst of feeling on a far-distant night, when the tears had rolleddown this man's cheeks and his voice was choked with sobs. And heremembered--
"I shall keep my word in every way," he promised solemnly.
Vont rose slowly to his feet. His knees were trembling. He seemed tobe looking into a mist. His hands shook as he laid them on David'sshoulders.
"Thank God!" he muttered. "David, boy, remember. This light talk islike an April shower on the warm earth. Goodness and sin are the samenow as a thousand years ago, and they will be the same in a thousandyears to come. We may pipe a new tune, but it's only the Devil'schildren that dance to it--sin must be punished. There's no gettingover that! Forgiveness later maybe--but first comes punishment."