The Lion's Skin. Rafael Sabatini
Your father, you say!” He mocked almost. “Your father! In what is he your father? You have never seen him; he does not know that you exist, that you ever existed. Is that to be a father? Father, you say! A word, a name—no more than that; a name that gives rise to a sentiment, and a sentiment is to stand between you and your clear duty; a sentiment is to set a protecting shield over the man who killed your mother!
“I think I shall despise you, Justin, if you fail me in this. I have lived for it,” he ran on tempestuously. “I have reared you for it, and you shall not fail me!”
Then his voice dropped again, and in quieter tones
“You hate the very name of John Caryll, Earl of Ostermore,” said he, “as must every decent man who knows the truth of what the life of that satyr holds. If I have suffered you to bear his name, it is to the end that it should remind you daily that you have no right to it, that you have no right to any name.”
When he said that he thrust his finger consciously into a raw wound. He saw Justin wince, and with pitiless cunning he continued to prod that tender place until he had aggravated the smart of it into a very agony.
“That is what you owe your father; that is the full extent of what lies between you—that you are of those at whom the world is given to sneer and point scorn's ready finger.”
“None has ever dared,” said Mr. Caryll.
“Because none has ever known. We have kept the secret well. You display no coat of arms that no bar sinister may be displayed. But the time may come when the secret must out. You might, for instance, think of marrying a lady of quality, a lady of your own supposed station. What shall you tell her of yourself? That you have no name to offer her; that the name you bear is yours by assumption only? Ah! That brings home your own wrongs to you, Justin! Consider them; have them ever present in your mind, together with your mother's blighted life, that you may not shrink when the hour strikes to punish the evildoer.”
He flung himself back in his chair again, and watched the younger man with brooding eye. Mr. Caryll was plainly moved. He had paled a little, and he sat now with brows contracted and set teeth.
Sir Richard pushed back his chair and rose, recapitulating. “He is your mother's destroyer,” he said, with a sad sternness. “Is the ruin of that fair life to go unpunished? Is it, Justin?”
Mr. Caryll's Gallic spirit burst abruptly through its British glaze. He crushed fist into palm, and swore: “No, by God! It shall not, Sir Richard!”
Sir Richard held out his hands, and there was a fierce joy in his gloomy eyes at last. “You'll cross to England with me, Justin?”
But Mr. Caryll's soul fell once more into travail. “Wait!” he cried. “Ah, wait!” His level glance met Sir Richard's in earnestness and entreaty. “Answer me the truth upon your soul and conscience: Do you in your heart believe that it is what my mother would have had me do?”
There was an instant's pause. Then Everard, the fanatic of vengeance, the man whose mind upon that one subject was become unsound with excess of brooding, answered with conviction: “As I have a soul to be saved, Justin, I do believe it. More—I know it. Here!” Trembling hands took up the old letter from the table and proffered it to Justin. “Here is her own message to you. Read it again.”
And what time the young man's eyes rested upon that fine, pointed writing, Sir Richard recited aloud the words he knew by heart, the words that had been ringing in his ears since that day when he had seen her lowered to rest: “'Never let him learn that Justin exists unless it be to punish him by the knowledge for his cruel desertion of me.' It is your mother's voice speaking to you from the grave,” the fanatic pursued, and so infected Justin at last with something of his fanaticism.
The green eyes flashed uncannily, the white young face grew cruelly sardonic. “You believe it?” he asked, and the eagerness that now invested his voice showed how it really was with him.
“As I have a soul to be saved,” Sir Richard repeated.
“Then gladly will I set my hand to it.” Fire stirred through Justin now, a fire of righteous passion. “An idea—no more than an idea—daunted me. You have shown me that. I cross to England with you, Sir Richard, and let my Lord Ostermore look to himself, for my name—I who have no right to any name—my name is judgment!”
The exaltation fell from him as suddenly as it had mounted. He dropped into a chair, thoughtful again and slightly ashamed of his sudden outburst.
Sir Richard Everard watched with an eye of gloomy joy the man whom he had been at such pains to school in self-control.
Overhead there was a sudden crackle of thunder, sharp and staccato as a peal of demoniac laughter.
CHAPTER II. AT THE “ADAM AND EVE”
Mr. Caryll, alighted from his traveling chaise in the yard of the “Adam and Eve,” at Maidstone, on a sunny afternoon in May. Landed at Dover the night before, he had parted company with Sir Richard Everard that morning. His adoptive father had turned aside toward Rochester, to discharge his king's business with plotting Bishop Atterbury, what time Justin was to push on toward town as King James' ambassador to the Earl of Ostermore, who, advised of his coming, was expecting him.
Here at Maidstone it was Mr. Caryll's intent to dine, resuming his journey in the cool of the evening, when he hoped to get at least as far as Farnborough ere he slept.
Landlady, chamberlain, ostler and a posse of underlings hastened to give welcome to so fine a gentleman, and a private room above-stairs was placed at his disposal. Before ascending, however, Mr. Caryll sauntered into the bar for a whetting glass to give him an appetite, and further for the purpose of bespeaking in detail his dinner with the hostess. It was one of his traits that he gave the greatest attention to detail, and held that the man who left the ordering of his edibles to his servants was no better than an animal who saw no more than nourishment in food. Nor was the matter one to be settled summarily; it asked thought and time. So he sipped his Hock, listening to the landlady's proposals, and amending them where necessary with suggestions of his own, and what time he was so engaged, there ambled into the inn yard a sturdy cob bearing a sturdy little man in snuff-colored clothes that had seen some wear.
The newcomer threw his reins to the stable-boy—a person of all the importance necessary to receive so indifferent a guest. He got down nimbly from his horse, produced an enormous handkerchief of many colors, and removed his three-cornered hat that he might the better mop his brow and youthful, almost cherubic face. What time he did so, a pair of bright little blue eyes were very busy with Mr. Caryll's carriage, from which Leduc, Mr. Caryll's valet, was in the act of removing a portmantle. His mobile mouth fell into lines of satisfaction.
Still mopping himself, he entered the inn, and, guided by the drone of voices, sauntered into the bar. At sight of Mr. Caryll leaning there, his little eyes beamed an instant, as do the eyes of one who espies a friend, or—apter figure—the eyes of the hunter when they sight the quarry.
He advanced to the bar, bowing to Mr. Caryll with an air almost apologetic, and to the landlady with an air scarcely less so, as he asked for a nipperkin of ale to wash the dust of the road from his throat. The hostess called a drawer to serve him, and departed herself upon the momentous business of Mr. Caryll's dinner.
“A warm day, sir,” said the chubby man.
Mr. Caryll agreed with him politely, and finished his glass, the other sipping meanwhile at his ale.
“A fine brew, sir,” said he. “A prodigious fine brew! With all respect, sir, your honor should try a whet of our English ale.”
Mr. Caryll, setting down his glass, looked languidly at the man. “Why do you exclude me, sir, from the nation of this beverage?” he inquired.