When he entered the darkened room, with its faint chloroform odor, theboy lay like one dead, his bright hair scattered on the pillow, hischest bare, and his right arm broken and splintered. The deathlike comawas but the result of the chloroform; but Cecil never stayed to ask orremember that; he was by the couch in a single stride, and dropped downby it, his head bent on his arms.
"It was my fault. I should have looked to him."
The words were very low; he hated that any should see he could still besuch a fool as to feel. A minute, and he conquered himself; he rose,and with his hand on the boy's fair tumbled curls, turned calmly tothe medical men who, attached to the household, had been on the spot atonce.
"What is the matter?"
"Fractured arm, contusion; nothing serious, nothing at all, at his age,"replied the surgeon. "When he wakes out of the lethargy he will tell youso himself, Mr. Cecil."
"You are certain?"--do what he would his voice shook a little; his handhad not shaken, two days before, when nothing less than ruin or ransomhad hung on his losing or winning the race.
"Perfectly certain," answered the surgeon cheerfully. "He is notoverstrong, to be sure, but the contusions are slight; he will be out ofthat bed in a fortnight."
"How did he fall?"
But while they told him he scarcely heard; he was looking at thehandsome Antinous-like form of the lad as it lay stretched helplessand stricken before him; and he was remembering the death-bed of theirmother, when the only voice he had ever reverenced had whispered, as shepointed to the little child of three summers: "When you are a man takecare of him, Bertie." How had he fulfilled the injunction? Into how muchbrilliantly tinted evil had he not led him--by example, at least?
The surgeon touched his arm apologetically, after a lengthened silence:
"Your brother will be best unexcited when he comes to himself, sir;look--his eyes are unclosing now. Could you do me the favor to go to hislordship? His grief made him perfectly wild--so dangerous to his life athis age. We could only persuade him to retire, a few minutes ago, on theplea of Mr. Berkeley's safety. If you could see him----"
Cecil went, mechanically almost, and with a grave, weary depression onhim; he was so unaccustomed to think at all, so utterly unaccustomed tothink painfully, that he scarcely knew what ailed him. Had he had hisold tact about him, he would have known how worse than useless it wouldbe for him to seek his father in such a moment.
Lord Royallieu was lying back exhausted as Cecil opened the door of hisprivate apartments, heavily darkened and heavily perfumed; at the turnof the lock he started up eagerly.
"What news of him?"
"Good news, I hope," said Cecil gently, as he came forward. "Theinjuries are not grave, they tell me. I am so sorry that I never watchedhis fencing, but--"
The old man had not recognized him till he heard his voice, and hewaved him off with a fierce, contemptuous gesture; the grief for hisfavorite's danger, the wild terrors that his fears had conjured up, hisalmost frantic agony at the sight of the accident, had lashed him intopassion well-nigh delirious.
"Out of my sight, sir," he said fiercely, his mellow tones quiveringwith rage. "I wish to God you had been dead in a ditch before a hair ofmy boy's had been touched. You live, and he lies dying there!"
Cecil bowed in silence; the brutality of the words wounded, but they didnot offend him, for he knew his father was in that moment scarce betterthan a maniac, and he was touched with the haggard misery upon the oldPeer's face.
"Out of my sight, sir," re-echoed Lord Royallieu as he strode forward,passion lending vigor to his emaciated frame, while the dignity of hisgrand carriage blent with the furious force of his infuriated blindness."If you had had the heart of a man, you would have saved such a child asthat from his peril; warned him, watched him, succored him at least whenhe fell. Instead of that, you ride on and leave him to die, if deathcomes to him! You are safe, you are always safe. You try to killyourself with every vice under heaven, and only get more strength, moregrace, more pleasure from it--you are always safe because I hate you.Yes! I hate you, sir!"
No words can give the force, the malignity, the concentrated meaningwith which the words were hurled out, as the majestic form of theold Lord towered in the shadow, with his hands outstretched as if inimprecation.
Cecil heard him in silence, doubting if he could hear aright, while thebitter phrases scathed and cut like scourges, but he bowed once morewith the manner that was as inseparable from him as his nature.
"Hate is so exhausting; I regret I give you the trouble of it. May I askwhy you favor me with it?"
"You may!" thundered his father, while his hawk's eyes flashed theirglittering fire. "You are like the man I cursed living and curse dead.You look at me with Alan Bertie's eyes, you speak to me with AlanBertie's voice; I loved your mother, I worshiped her; but--you are hisson, not mine!"
The secret doubt, treasured so long, was told at last. The bloodflushed Bertie's face a deep and burning scarlet; he started with anirrepressible tremor, like a man struck with a shot; he felt like onesuddenly stabbed in the dark by a sure and a cruel hand. The insult andthe amazement of the words seemed to paralyze him for the moment, thenext he recovered himself, and lifted his head with as haughty a gestureas his father's, his features perfectly composed again, and sterner thanin all his careless, easy life they ever yet had looked.
"You lie, and you know you lie. My mother was pure as the angels.Henceforth you can be only to me a slanderer who has dared to taint theone name holy in my sight."
And without another word, he turned and went out of the chamber. Yet,as the door closed, old habit was so strong on him that, even in his hotand bitter pain, and his bewildered sense of sudden outrage, he almostsmiled at himself. "It is a mania; he does not know what he says," hethought. "How could I be so melodramatic? We were like two men at thePorte St. Martin. Inflated language is such bad form!"
But the cruel stroke had not struck the less closely home, and gentlethough his nature was, beyond all forgiveness from him was the dishonorof his mother's memory.