A Valiant Ignorance (Vol. 1-3). Victorian Romance
have heard the term ‘moral insanity,’ of course,” said Falconer slowly and distastefully, ignoring the doctor’s last, purely æsthetic sentence, “but it has always seemed to me, doctor, if you’ll pardon my saying so, a very dangerous tampering with things that should be sacred even from science. I cannot believe that any man is actually incapable of knowing right from wrong.”
“The difficulty is,” said the doctor drily, “that the words right and wrong sometimes convey nothing to him, as the words red and blue convey nothing to a colour-blind man, and the endearments of his wife convey nothing to the lunatic who is convinced that she is trying to poison him.” He paused a moment, and then said abruptly: “Are there any children?”
Falconer glanced at him and changed colour slightly.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “One boy!”
The keen, shrewd face of the elder man softened suddenly and indescribably under one of those quick sympathetic impulses which were Dr. Aston’s great charm.
“Heaven help his mother!” he said gently.
Falconer moved quickly and protestingly, and there was a touch of something like rebuke in his voice as he said:
“Doctor, you don’t mean to say that you think——”
“You believe in heredity, I suppose?” interrupted the doctor quickly. “Well, at least, you believe in the heredity you can’t deny—that a child may—or rather must—inherit, not only physical traits and infirmities, but mental tendencies; likes, dislikes, aptitudes, incapacities, or what not. Be consistent, man, and acknowledge the sequel, though it’s pleasanter to shut one’s eyes to it, I admit. Put the theory of moral insanity out of the question for the moment if you like; say that Romayne was a pronounced specimen of the common criminal. Why should not his child inherit his father’s tendency to crime, his father’s aptitude for lying and thieving, as he might inherit his father’s eyes, or his father’s liking for music—if he had had a turn that way? You’re a religious man, Falconer, I know. You believe, I take it, that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children. How can they be visited more heavily than in their reproduction? You mark my words, my boy, that little child of Romayne’s—unless he inherits strong counter influences from his mother, or some far-away ancestor—will go the way his father has gone, and may end as his father has ended!”
There was a slight sound by the door behind the two men as Dr. Aston finished—finished with a force and solemnity that carried a painful thrill of conviction even through the not very penetrable outer crust of dogma which enwrapped Dennis Falconer—and the latter turned his head involuntarily. The next instant both men had sprung to their feet, and were standing dumb and aghast face to face with Mrs. Romayne. She was standing with her hand still on the lock of the door as if her attention had been arrested just as she was entering the room; she had apparently recoiled, for she was pressed now tightly against the door; her face was white to the very lips, and a vague thought passed through Falconer that he had never seen it before. It was as though the look in her eyes, as she gazed at Dr. Aston, had changed it beyond recognition.
There was a moment’s dead silence; a moment during which Dr. Aston turned from red to white and from white to red again, and struggled vainly to find words; a moment during which Falconer could only stare blankly at that unfamiliar woman’s face. Then, while the two men were still utterly at a loss, Mrs. Romayne seemed gradually to command herself, as if with a tremendous effort. Gradually, as he looked at her, Falconer saw the face with which he was familiar shape itself, so to speak, upon that other face he did not know. He saw her eyes change and harden as if with the effort necessitated by her conventional instinct against a scene. He saw the quivering horror of her mouth alter and subside in the hard society smile he knew well, only rather stiffer than usual as her face was whiter; and then he heard her speak.
With a little movement of her head in civil recognition of Dr. Aston’s presence, she said to Falconer:
“My book is on that table. Will you give it to me, please?”
Her voice was quite steady, though thin. Almost mechanically Falconer handed her the book she asked for, and with another slight inclination of her head, before Dr. Aston had recovered his balance sufficiently to speak, she was gone.
The door closed behind her, and a low ejaculation broke from the doctor. Then he drew a long breath, and said slowly:
“That’s a remarkable woman.”
Falconer drew his hand across his forehead as though he were a little dazed.
“I think not!” he said stupidly. “Not when you know her!”
“Ah!” returned the doctor, with a shrewd glance at him. “And you do know her?”
If Falconer could have seen Mrs. Romayne an hour later, he would have been more than ever convinced of the correctness of his judgement. The preparations for departure were nearly concluded; she had dismissed her maid and was finishing them herself with her usual quiet deliberation, though her face was very pale and set.
But it might have perplexed him somewhat if he had seen her, when everything was done, stop short in the middle of the room and lift her hands to her head as though something oppressed her almost more heavily than she could bear.
“End as his father ended!” she said below her breath. “Ruin and disgrace!”
She turned and crossed the room to where her travelling-bag stood, and drew from it a letter, thrust into a pocket with several others.
It was the blotted little letter which began “My dear Mamma,” and when she returned it to the bag at last, her face was once again the face that Dennis Falconer did not know.
CHAPTER VI
There are two diametrically opposed points of view from which London life is regarded by those who know of it only by hearsay; that from which life in the metropolis is contemplated with somewhat awestruck and dubious eyes as necessarily involving a continuous vortex of society and dissipation; and that which recognises no so-called “society life” except during the eight or ten weeks of high pressure known as the season. Both these points of view are essentially false. In no place is it possible to lead a more completely hermit-like life than in London; in no place is it possible to lead a simpler and more hard-working life. On the other hand, that feverish access of stir and movement which makes the months of May and June stand out and focus, so to speak, the attention of onlookers, is only an acceleration and accentuation of the life which is lived in certain strata of the London world for eight or nine months in the year. A large proportion of the intellectual work of the world is done in London; to be in society is a great assistance to the intellectual worker of to-day on his road to material prosperity; consequently a large section of “society” is of necessity in London from October to July; and, since people must have some occupation, even out of the season, social life, in a somewhat lower key, indeed, than the pitch of the season, but on the same artificial foundations, goes on undisturbed, gathering about it, as any institution will do, a crowd of that unattached host of idlers, male and female, whose movements are dictated solely by their own pleasure—or their own weariness.
It was the March of one of the last of the eighties. A wild March wind was taking the most radical liberties with the aristocratic neighbourhood of Grosvenor Place, racing and tearing and shrieking down the chimneys with a total absence of the respect due to wealth. If it could have got in at one in particular of the many drawing-room windows at which it rushed so vigorously, it might have swept round the room and out again with a whoop of amusement. For the room contained some twelve ladies of varying ages and demeanours, and, with perhaps one or two exceptions, each lady was talking at the top of her speed—which, in some cases, was very considerable—and of her voice—which as a rule was penetrating. Every speaker was apparently addressing the same elderly and placid lady, who sat comfortably back in an arm-chair,