Black is White 4

Black is White 4

“Oh, it’s really nothing, I suppose. Just an unexpected jolt, that’s

all. I was angry for a moment----”

 

“You are still angry,” she said, placing her hand on his arm. She was a

tall, slender girl. Her eyes were almost on a level with his own. “Don’t

you want to tell me, dear?”

 

“He never gives me a thought,” he said, compressing his lips. “He thinks

of no one but himself. God, what a father!”

 

“Freddy, dear! You must not speak----”

 

“Haven’t I some claim on his consideration? Is it fair that I should be

ignored in everything, in every way? I won’t put up with it, Lydia! I’m

not a child. I’m a man and I am his son. But I might as well be a dog in

the street for all the thought he gives to me!”

 

She put her finger to her lips, a scared look stealing into her dark

eyes. Jones was conducting the two old men to their room on the floor

below. A door closed softly. The voices died away.

 

“He is a strange man,” she said. “He is a good man, Frederic.”

 

“To everyone else, yes. But to me? Why, Lydia, I--I believe he hates me.

You know what----”

 

“Hush! A man does not hate his son. I’ve tried for years to drive that

silly notion out of your mind. You----”

 

“Oh, I know I’m a fool to speak of it, but I--I can’t help feeling as I

do. You’ve seen enough to know that I’m not to blame for it, either. And

then--oh, what’s the use whining about it? I’ve got to make the best of

it, so I’ll try to keep my mouth closed.”

 

“Where is the message?”

 

“I threw it into the fire.”

 

“What!”

 

“I was furious.”

 

“Won’t you tell me?”

 

“What do you think he has done? Can you guess what he has done to all of

us?” She did not answer. “Well, I’ll tell you just what he said in that

wireless. It was from the _Lusitania_+, twelve hundred miles off Sandy

Hook--relayed, I suppose, so that the whole world might know--sent at

four this afternoon. I remember every word of the cursed thing, although

I merely glanced at it.

 

“‘Send the car to meet Mrs Brood and me at the Cunard pier Thursday.

Have Mrs Desmond put the house in order for its new mistress. By the

way, you might inform her that I was married last Wednesday in Paris.’

It was signed ‘James Brood,’ not even ‘father.’ What do you think of

that for a thunderbolt?”

 

“Married?” she gasped. “Your father married?”

 

“‘Put the house in order for its new mistress,’” he almost snarled.

“‘Inform her that I was married last Wednesday’! Of course he’s married.

Am I not to inform your mother? Isn’t the car to meet Mrs Brood and him?

Does he say anything about his son meeting him at the pier? No! Does he

cable his son that he is married? No! Does he do anything that a real,

human father would do? No! That message was a deliberate insult to me,

Lydia, a nasty, rotten slap in the face. I mean the way it was worded.

Just as if it wasn’t enough that he had gone and married some cheap

show-girl or a miserable foreigner or Heaven knows----”

 

“Freddy! You forget yourself. Your father would not marry a cheap

show-girl. You know that. And you must not forget that your mother was a

foreigner.”

 

“I’m sorry I said that,” he exclaimed hoarsely. Then fiercely: “But

can’t you see what all this will come to? A new mistress of the house!

It means your mother will have to go--that maybe you’ll go. Nothing will

be as it has been. All the sweetness gone--all the goodness! A woman in

the house who will also treat me as if I didn’t belong here! A woman

who married him for his money, an adventuress. Oh, you can’t tell me; I

know! ‘You might inform Mrs Desmond that I was married’! Good Lord!”

 

He began to pace the floor, striking one fist viciously in the palm of

the other hand. Lydia, pale and trembling, seemed to have forgotten his

presence. She was staring fixedly at the white surface of a door down

the hall, and there was infinite pain in her wide eyes. Her lips moved

once or twice; there was a single unspoken word upon them.

 

“Why couldn’t he have wired me last week?” the young man was muttering.

“What was his object in waiting until to-day? Wouldn’t any other father

in the world have telegraphed his only son if he were going to--to bring

someone home like this? ‘Have the car meet Mrs Brood and me’! If that

isn’t the quintessence of scorn! He orders me to do these things. He

doesn’t even honour me with a direct, personal message. He doesn’t tell

_me_ he is married. He asks me to inform someone else.”

 

Lydia, leaning rather heavily against the door, spoke to him in a low,

cautious voice.

 

“Did you tell Mr Dawes and Mr Riggs?”

 

He stopped short.

 

“No! And they waited up to see if they could be of any assistance to

him in an hour of peril! What a joke! Poor old beggars! I’ve never felt

sorry for them before, but, on my soul, I do now. What will she do to

the poor old chaps? I shudder to think of it. And she’ll make short

work of everything else she doesn’t like around here, too. Your mother,

Lydia--why, God help us, you know what will just have to happen in her

case. It’s----”

 

“Don’t speak so loudly, dear--please, please! She is asleep. Of course,

we--we shan’t stay on, Freddy. We’ll have to go as soon as----”

 

His eyes filled with tears. He seized her in his arms and held her

close.

 

“It’s a beastly, beastly shame, darling. Oh, Lord, what a fool a man can

make of himself!”

 

“You must not say such things,” she murmured, stroking his cheek with

cold, trembling fingers.

 

“A fine trick to play on all of us!” he grated.

 

“Listen, Freddy darling: your father has a right to do as he chooses.

He has a right to companionship, to love, to happiness. He has done

everything for us that man could----”

 

“But why couldn’t he have done the fine, sensible thing, Lydia? Why

couldn’t he have--have fallen in love with--with your mother? Why not have

married her if he had to marry someone in----”

 

“Freddy!” she cried, putting her hand over his mouth.

 

He was not to be stopped. He gently removed her hand.

 

“Your mother is the finest woman in the world. Perhaps she wouldn’t have

him, but that’s not the point. Good Lord, how I would have loved him for

giving her to me as a mother. And here he comes, bringing some devil of

a stranger into oh, it’s sickening!”

 

He had lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper, keeping his eyes fixed on

the door down the hall. The girl lay very still in his arms. Suddenly a

wild sob broke in her throat, and she buried her face on his shoulder.

 

“Why--why, don’t cry, dearest! Don’t!” he whispered miserably. “What a

rotter I am! Inflicting you with my silly imaginings! Don’t cry! I dare

say everything will turn out all right. It’s my beastly disposition.

Kiss me!”

 

She kissed him swiftly. Her wet cheek lay for a second against his own,

and then, with a stifled good night, she broke away from him. An instant

later she was gone; her door was closed.

 

Somewhat sobered, and not a little perturbed by her outburst, he stood

still for a moment, staring at the door. Then he turned and passed

slowly into his own room.

 

A fire smouldered in the grate. In this huge, old-fashioned house there

were grates in all of the spacious bedrooms, and not infrequently fires

were started in them by the capable Jones. Frederic stood for he knew

not how long above the half-dead coals, staring at them with a new

and more bitter complaint at the back of his mind. Was there anything

between Mrs Desmond and his father? What was back of that look of

anguish in Lydia’s eyes? He suddenly realised that he was muttering

oaths, not of anger, but of pain.

 

The next morning he came down earlier than was his custom. His night had

been a troubled one. Forgetting his own woes, or belittling them, he had

thought only of what this news from the sea would mean to the dear

woman he loved so well. No one was in the library, but a huge fire was

blazing. A blizzard was raging.

 

Once upon a time, when he first came to the house, a piano had stood in

the drawing-room. His joy at that time knew no bounds; he loved music.

For his age he was no mean musician. But one evening his father, coming

in unexpectedly, heard the player at the instrument. For a moment he

stood transfixed in the doorway watching the eager, almost inspired face

of the lad, and then, pale as a ghost, stole away without disturbing

him. Strange to say, Frederic was playing a waltz of Ziehrer’s, a Waltz

that his mother had played when the honeymoon was in the full. The

following day the piano was taken away by a storage company. The boy

never knew why it was removed.

 

Frederic picked up the morning paper. His eye traversed the front page

rapidly. There were reports of fearful weather at sea. Ships in touch

with wireless stations flashed news of the riotous gales far out on the

Atlantic, of tremendous seas that wreaked damage to the staunchest of

vessels. The whole seaboard was strewn with the wreckage of small craft;

a score of vessels were known to be ashore and in grave peril. The

movement of passenger-vessels, at the bottom of the page, riveted his

attention. The _Lusitania_ was reported seven hundred miles out, and in

the heart of the hurricane. She would be a day late.

 

The newspaper was slightly crumpled, as if someone else had read

it before him. He found himself wondering how he would feel if the

_Lusitania_ never reached New York! He wondered what his sensations

would be if a call for help came from the great vessel, if the dreadful