A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time

Greta lifted her eyes with a look of inquiry.

"What? Has he not even yet told you all?" said Hugh. "No matter. What has he done to earn your love that I have not done? What has he suffered? What has he sacrificed?"

"If this is love, it is selfish love," said Greta, in a broken voice.

"Selfish? – be it so. All love is selfish."

"Leave me – leave me!"

Hugh Ritson paused; the warmth of his manner increased. "I will leave you," he said, "and never seek you again; I will go from you forever, and crush down the sorrow that must be with me to the end, if you will promise me one thing."

"What is it?" said Greta, her eyes on the ground.

"It is much," said Hugh, "but it is not all. If the price is great, think of the misery that it buys – and buries. You would sacrifice something for me, would you not?"

His voice swelled as he spoke, and his pale face softened, and the light of hopeless love was in his great eyes.

"Say that you would – for me – me!" He held out his arms toward her as if soul and body together yearned for one word, one look of love.

Greta stood there, silent and immovable. "What is it?" she repeated.

"Let me think that you would do something for my sake – mine," he pleaded. "Let me carry away that solace. Think what I have suffered for you, and all in vain. Think that perhaps it was no fault of mine that you could not love me; that another woman might have found me worthy to be loved who had not been unworthy of love from me."

"What is it?" repeated Greta, coldly, but her drooping lashes were wet with tears.

"Think that I am of a vain, proud, stubborn spirit; that in all this world there is neither man nor woman, friend nor enemy, to whom I have sued for grace or favor; that since I was a child I have never even knelt in prayer in God's house that man might see or God might hear. Then think that I am at your feet, a miserable man."

"What is it?" said Greta, again.

Hugh Ritson paused, and then added, more calmly: "That you should take the vows and the veil, and stay here until death."

Greta lifted her eyes. Hugh's eyes were bent upon her.

"No, I can not. I should be false to my marriage vows," she said, quietly.

"To be true to them is to be false to yourself, to your husband, and to me," said Hugh.

"I love my husband," said Greta, with an eloquent glance. "To be true to them is to be true to him."

There was a pause. Hugh Ritson's manner underwent a change. It was the white heat of high passion that broke the silence when he spoke again.

"Greta," he said, and his deep voice had a strong tremor, "if there is any truth in what that priest told us to-night – if it is not a dream and a solemn mockery made to enchant or appal the simple – if there is a God and judgment – my soul is already too heavily burdened with sins against you and yours. I would have eased it of one other sin more black than these; but it was not to be."

"What do you mean?" said Greta. Her face was panic-stricken.

Hugh Ritson came a step nearer.

"That your husband is in my hands – that one word from me would commit him to a doom more dreadful than death – that if he is to be saved as a free man, alive, you must renounce him forever."

"Speak plain. What do you mean?" said Greta.

"Choose – quick! Which shall it be? You for this convent, or your husband for lifelong imprisonment?"

Greta's mind was in a whirl. She was making for the door in front of them. He stepped before her.

"I parted you with a lie," he said, "but to me it was not always a lie. I believed it once. Do you think I should have denied my self my inheritance, and let a bastard stand in my place, if I had not believed it?"

"What further lie is this?" said Greta.

"No matter. Heaven knows. And all I did was for love of you. Is it so guilty a thing that I have loved you – to all lengths and ends of love? I meant to put a hemisphere between you – to send him to Australia, and you back home to Cumberland. What if the lie had then been outfaced? I should have parted you, and that would have been enough."

"And now, when your revenge falls idle at your feet, you come to me on your knees," said Greta.

"Revenge? That was but a feeble revenge," said Hugh. "He would have learned the truth and come back to claim you. There would have been no peace for me while he was alive and free. Do I come to you on my knees? Yes; but it is to pray of you to save your husband. Is it so much that I ask of you? Think what is earned by it. If you have no pity for me, have you none for him?"

She was struggling to pass him.

"Greta," he said, "choose, and at once. It is now or never. To-night – to-morrow will be too late. You for a holy life of self-renouncement, or your husband to drag out his miserable days in penal servitude."

"This is only another lie. Let me pass," she said.

"It is the truth, as sure as God hears us," said Hugh.

"I shall never believe it."

"I will swear it." He laid a strong hand on her wrist. "I will swear it at the very foot of God's altar."

He tried to draw her back into the church. She resisted.

"Let me go; I will cry for help."

He dropped her wrist, and fell back from her. She drew herself up in silence, and walked slowly away.

He stood a moment alone in the sacristy. Then he went out through the church. It was empty and all but dark. The sacristan, with a long rod, was putting out the lights one by one. He turned, with arm uplifted, to look after the halting figure that passed down the aisle and out at the west porch.

CHAPTER XIII

Abbey Gardens, the street in front, was dark and all but deserted. Only a drunken woman went reeling along. But the dull buzz in the distance, and the white sheet in the sky, told that, somewhere near, the wild heart of the night beat high.

Hugh Ritson looked up at the heavy mass of the convent building as he crossed the street. The lights were already out, and all was dark within. He went on, but presently stopped by a sudden impulse, and looked again.

It was then he was aware that something moved in the deep portico. The lamp on the pavement sent a shaft of light on to the door, and there, under the gas-light, with the face turned from him, was the figure of a woman. She seemed to cast cautious and stealthy glances around, and to lift a trembling hand to the bell that hung above her. The hand fell to her side, but no ring followed. Once again the hand was lifted, and once again it fell back. Then the woman crept totteringly down the steps and turned to go.

Hugh Ritson recrossed the street. Amid all the turmoil of his soul, the incident had arrested him.

The woman was coming toward him. He put himself in her path. The light fell full upon her, and he saw her face.

It was Mercy Fisher.

With a low cry, the girl sunk back against the railings of the convent, and covered her face with her hands.

"Is it you, Mercy?" said Hugh.

She made no answer. Then she tried to steal away, but he held her with gentle force.

"Why did you leave Hendon?" he asked.

"You did not want me," said the girl, in a tone of unutterable pain. And still her face was buried in her hands.

He did not reply. He let her grief spend itself.

Just then a drunken woman reeled back along the pavement and passed them close, peering into their midst, and going by with a jarring laugh.

"What's he a-doing to ye, my dear, eh?" she said, jeeringly. "Sarve ye right!" she added, and laughed again. She was a draggled, battered outcast – a human ruin, such as night, the pander, flings away.

Mercy lifted her head. A dull, weary look was in her eyes.

"You know how I waited and waited," she said, "and you were so long in coming, so very long." She turned her eyes aside. "You did not want me; in your heart you did not want me," she said.

The wave of bitter memory drowned her voice. Not unmoved, he stood and looked at her, and saw the child-face wet with tears, and the night breeze of the city drift in her yellow hair.

"Where have you been since?" he said.

"A man going to market brought me up in his wagon. I fainted, and then he took me to his home. He lives close by, in the Horse and Groom Yard. His wife is bedridden, and such a good creature, and so kind to me. But they are poor, and I had no money, and I was afraid to be a burden to them; and besides – besides – "

"Well?"

"She saw that I was – she saw what was going to – being a woman, she knew I was soon – "

"Yes, yes," said Hugh, stopping another flood of tears with a light touch of the hand. "How red your eyes look. Are they worse?"

"The man was very good; he took me to the doctors at a hospital, and they said – oh, they said I might lose my sight!"

"Poor little Mercy!" said Hugh.

He was now ashamed of his own sufferings. How loud they had clamored awhile ago; yet, what were they side by side with this poor girl's tangible sorrows! Mere things of the air, with no reality.

"But no matter!" she burst out. "That's no matter."

"You must keep up heart, Mercy. I spoke angrily to you the other night, but it's over now, is it not?"

"Oh, why didn't you leave me alone?" said the girl.

"Hush, Mercy; it will be well with you yet." His own eyes were growing dim, but even then his heart was bitter. Had he not said in his wrath that passion was the demon of the world? He might say it in his sorrow, too. The simple heart of this girl loved him, even as his own lustier soul loved Greta. He had wronged her. But that was only a tithe of the trouble. If she could but return him hate for wrong, how soon everything would be right with her! "What brought you here, Mercy?"

"One of the sisters – they visit the sick – one of them visited the house where they gave me lodgings, and I heard that they sometimes took homeless girls into the convent. And I thought I was homeless, now, and – and – "

"Poor little woman!"

"I came the night before last, but saw your brother Paul walking here in front. So I went away."

"Paul?"

"Then I came last night, and he was here again. So I went away once more, and to-night I came earlier, and he wasn't here, but just as I was going to ring the bell, and say that I had no home, and that my eyes were growing worse, something seemed to say they would ask if I had a father, and why I had left him; and then I couldn't ring – and then I thought if only I could die – yes, if only I could die and forget, and never wake up again in the morning – "

"Hush, Mercy. You shall go back home to your father."

"No, no, no!"

"Yes; and I shall go with you."

There was silence. The bleared eyes looked stealthily up into his face. A light smile played there.

"Ah!"

A bright vision came to her of a fair day when, hand in hand with him she loved, she should return to her forsaken home in the mountains, and hold up her head, and wipe away her father's tears. She was in the dark street of the city, then; she and her home were very far apart.

He laughed inwardly at a different vision. In a grim spirit of humor he saw all his unquenchable passion conquered, and he saw himself the plain, homely, respectable husband of this simple wife.

"Was Paul alone when you saw him?" said Hugh.

"Yes. And would you tell them all?"

The girl's sidelong glance was far away.

"Mercy, I want you to do something for me."

"Yes, yes."

Again the sidelong glance.

Hugh lifted the girl's head with his hand to recall her wandering thoughts.

"Paul will come again to-night. I want you to wait for him and speak to him."

"Yes, yes; but won't he ask me questions?"

"What if he does? Answer them all. Only don't say that I have told you to speak to him. Tell him – will you remember it? – are you listening? – look me in the face, little woman."

"Yes, yes."

"Tell him that Mr. Christian – Parson Christian, you know – has come to London and wishes to see him at once. Say he has looked for him at the hotel in Regent Street and not found him there, and is now at the inn in Hendon. Will you remember?"

"Yes."

"Where were you going, Mercy – back to your poor friends?"

"No. But will he be sure to come to-night?"

"No doubt. At what time was he here last night?"

"Ten o'clock."

"It is now hard on nine. Tell him to go to Hendon at once, and when he goes, you go with him. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Don't forget – to-night; to-morrow night will not do. If he does not come, you must follow me to Hendon and tell me so. I shall be there. Don't tell him that – do you hear?"

The girl gave a meek assent.

"And now good-bye for an hour or two, little one."

He turned away, and she was left alone before the dark convent. But, she was not all alone. A new-born dream was with her, and her soul was radiant with light.

CHAPTER XIV

Hugh Ritson walked rapidly through Dean's Yard in the direction of the sanctuary. As he turned into Parliament Street the half moon rose above the roof of Westminster Hall. But the night was still dark.

He passed through Trafalgar Square and into the Haymarket. The streets were thronged. Crowds on crowds went languidly by. Dim ghosts of men and women, most of them, who loitered at this hour in these streets. Old men, with the souls long years dead within them, and the corruption reeking up with every breath to poison every word, or lurking like charnel lights in the eyes to blink contagion in every glance. Young girls hopping like birds beside them, the spectres of roses in their cheeks, but the real thorns at their hearts. There had been no way for them but this – this and one other way: either to drift into the Thames and be swallowed up in the waters of death, or to be carried along for a brief minute on the froth of the waves of life.

Laughing because they might not weep; laughing because their souls were dead; laughing in their conscious travesty of the tragedy of pleasure – they tripped and lounged and sauntered along. And the lamps shone round them, and above them was the glimmering moon.

As Hugh Ritson went up the steep Haymarket, his infirmity became more marked, and he walked with a sliding gait. Seeing this, a woman who stood there halted and limped a few paces by his side, and pretending not to see him, shouted with a mocking laugh, "What is it – a man or a bat?"

How the wild, mad heart of the night leaped up!

A man passed through the throng with eyes that seemed to see nothing of its frantic frenzy and joyless joy – a stalwart man, who strode along like a giant among midgets, his vacant eyes fixed before him, his strong white face expressionless. Hugh Ritson saw him. They passed within two paces, but without recognition. The one was wandering aimlessly in his blind misery toward the Convent of St. Margaret, the other was making for the old inn at Hendon.

An hour later Hugh Ritson was standing in the bar of the Hawk and Heron. His mind was made up; his resolve was fixed; his plan was complete.

"Anybody with him?" he said to the landlady, motioning toward the stairs.

"Not as I knows on, sir, but he do seem that restless and off his wittals, and I don't know as I quite understands why – "

Hugh Ritson stopped her garrulous tongue. "I have found the girl. She will come back to you to-night, Mrs. Drayton. If she brings with her the gentleman who left these boxes in your care, take him to your son's bedroom and tell him the person he wishes to see has arrived, and will be with him directly."

With this he went up the stairs. Then, calling down, he added: "The moment he is in the room come up and tell me."

A minute later he called again: "Where's the key to this door? Let me have it."

The landlady hobbled up with the key to Drayton's bedroom; the room was empty and the door stood open. Hugh Ritson tried the key in the lock and saw that the wards moved freely. "That will do," he said, in a satisfied tone.

The old woman was hobbling back. Hugh was standing in thought, with head bent, and the nail of his forefinger on his cheek.

"By the way, Mrs. Drayton," he said, "you should get the girl to help you a little sometimes."

"Lor's, sir, I never troubles her, being as she's like a visitor."

"Nonsense, Mrs. Drayton. She's young and hearty, and your own years are just a little past their best, you know. How's your breathing to-day – any easier?"

"Well, I can't say as it's a mort better, neither, thanking you the same, sir," and a protracted fit of coughing bore timely witness to the landlady's words.

"Ah! that's' a bad bout, my good woman."

"Well, it is, sir; and I get no sympathy, neither – leastways not from him as a mother might look to – in a manner of speaking."

"Bethink you. Is there nothing the girl can do for you when she comes? Nothing wanted? No errand?"

"Well, sir, taking it kindly, sir, there's them finings in the cellar a-wants doing bad, and the boy as ought to do 'em, he's that grumpysome, as I declare – "

"Quite right, Mrs. Drayton. Send the girl down to them the moment she comes in, and keep her down until bed-time."

"Thank you, sir! I'm sure I takes it very kind and thoughtful of a gentleman to say as much, and no call, neither."

The landlady shuffled down-stairs, wagging gratefully her dense old noddle; the thoughtful gentleman left the key of Drayton's room in the lock on the outside of the door, and ascended a ladder that went up from the end of the passage. He knocked at a door at the top. At first there was no answer. A dull shuffling of feet could be heard from within. "Come, open the door," said Hugh, impatiently.

The door was opened cautiously. Drayton stood behind it. Hugh Ritson entered. There was no light in the room; the red, smoking wick of a tallow candle, newly extinguished, was filling the air with its stench.

"You take care of yourself," said Hugh. "Let us have a light."

Drayton went down on his knees in the dark, fumbled on the floor for a box of lucifers, and relighted the candle. He was in his shirt-sleeves.

"Cold without your coat, eh?" said Hugh. A sneer played about his lips.

Without answering, Drayton turned to a mattress that lay in the gloom of one corner, lifted it, took up a coat that lay under it, and put it on. It was the ulster with the torn lapel.

Hugh Ritson followed Drayton's movements, and laughed slightly. "Men like you are always cautious in the wrong place," he said. "Let them lay hands on you, and they won't be long finding your – coat." The last word had a contemptuous dig of emphasis.

"Damme if I won't burn it, for good and all," muttered Drayton. His manner was dogged and subdued.

"No, you won't do that," said Hugh, and he eyed him largely. The garret was empty save for the mattress and the blanket that lay on it, and two or three plates, with the refuse of food, on the floor. It was a low room, with a skylight in the rake of the roof, which sloped down to a sharp angle. There was no window. The walls were half timbered, and had once been plastered, but the laths were now bare in many places.

"Heard anything?" said Drayton, doggedly.

"Yes; I called and told the police sergeant that I thought I was on the scent."

"What? No!"

The two men looked at each other – Drayton suspicious, Hugh Ritson with amused contempt.

"Tell you what, you don't catch me hobnobbing with them gentry," said Drayton, recovering his composure.

Hugh Ritson made no other answer than a faint smile. As he looked into the face of Drayton, he was telling himself that no man had ever before been at the top of such a situation as that of which he himself was then the master. Here was a man who was the half-brother of Greta, and the living image of her husband. Here was a man who, despite vague suspicions, did not know his own identity. Here was a man over whom hung an inevitable punishment. Hugh Ritson smiled at the daring idea he had conceived of making this man personate himself.

"Drayton," he said, "I mean to stand your friend in this trouble."

"Tell you again, the best friend to me is the man as helps me to make my lucky."

"You shall do it, Drayton, this very night. Listen to me. That man, my brother, as they call him – Paul Ritson, as his name goes – is not my father's son. He is the son of my mother by another man, and his true name is Paul Lowther."

"I don't care what his true name is, nor his untrue, neither. It ain't nothing to me, say I, and no more is it."

"Would it be anything to you to inherit five thousand pounds?"

"What?"

"Paul Lowther is the heir to as much. What would you say if I could put you in Paul Lowther's place, and get you Paul Lowther's inheritance?"

"Eh? A fortune out of hand – how?"

"The way I described before."

There was a slight scraping sound, such as a rat might have made in burrowing behind the partition.

"What's that?" said Drayton, his face whitening, and his watchful eyes glancing toward the door. "A key in the lock?" he whispered.

"Tut! isn't your own key on the inside?" said Hugh Ritson.

Drayton hung his head in shame at his idle fears.

"I know – I haven't forgot," he muttered, covering his discomfiture.

"It's a pity to stay here and be taken, when you might as easily be safe," said Hugh.

"So it is," Drayton mumbled.

"And go through penal servitude for life, when another man might do it for you," added Hugh, with a ghostly smile.

"I ain't axing you to say it over. What's that?" Drayton cowered down. The bankrupt garret had dropped a cake of its rotten plaster. Hugh Ritson moved not a muscle; only the sidelong glance told of his contempt for the hulking creature's cowardice.

"The lawyer who has charge of this legacy is my friend and comrade," he said, after a moment's silence. "We should have no difficulty in that quarter. My mother is – Well, she's gone. There would be no one left to question you. If you were only half shrewd the path would be clear."

"What about her?"

"Greta? She would be your wife."

"My wife?"

"In name. You would go back, as I told you, and say: 'I, whom you have known as Paul Ritson, am really Paul Lowther, and therefore the half-brother of the woman with whom I went through the ceremony of marriage. This fact I learned immediately on reaching London. I bring the lady back as I found her, and shall ask that the marriage – which is no marriage – be annulled. I deliver up to the rightful heir, Hugh Ritson, the estates of Allan Ritson, and make claim to the legacy left me by my father, Robert Lowther.' This is what you have to say and do, and every one will praise you for an honest and upright man."

"Very conscientious, no doubt; but what about him?"

"He will then be Paul Drayton, and a felon."

Drayton chuckled. "And what about her?"

"If he is in safe keeping, she will count for nothing."

"So I'm to be Paul Lowther."

"You are to pretend to be Paul Lowther."

"I told you afore, as it won't go into my nob, and no more it will," said Drayton, scratching his head.

"You shall have time to learn your lesson; you shall have it pat," said Hugh Ritson. "Meantime – "

At that instant Drayton's eyes were riveted on the skylight with an affrighted stare.

"Look yonder!" he whispered.

"What?"

"The face on the roof!"

Hugh Ritson plucked up the candle and thrust it over his head and against the glass. "What face?" he said, contemptuously.

Again Drayton's head fell in shame at his abject fear.

There was a shuffling footstep on the ladder outside. Drayton held his head aside, and listened. "The old woman," he mumbled. "What now? Supper, I suppose."

CHAPTER XV

At that moment there was a visitor in the bar down-stairs. He was an elderly man, with shaggy eyebrows and a wizened face; a diminutive creature with a tousled head of black and gray. It was Gubblum Oglethorpe. The mountain peddler had traveled south to buy chamois leather, and had packed a great quantity of it into a bundle, like a panier, which he carried over one arm.

Since the wedding at Newlands, three days ago, Gubblum's lively intelligence had run a good deal on his recollection of the man resembling Paul Ritson, whom he had once seen in Hendon. He had always meant to settle for himself that knotty question. So here, on his first visit to London, he intended to put up at the very inn about which the mystery gathered.