seemed not at first to know what was happening. Then he stooped and raised his mother to her feet.
"Mother, rise up," he said in a strange, hollow tone. "Who am I that I should presume to pardon you? I am your son – you are my mother!"
His vacant eyes gathered a startled expression. He glanced quickly around the room, and said in a deep whisper:
"How many know of this?"
"None besides ourselves."
The frightened look disappeared. In its place came a look of overwhelming agony.
"But I know of it; oh, my God!" he cried; and into the chair from which his mother had risen he fell like a wounded man.
Mrs. Ritson dried her eyes. A strange quiet was coming upon her now. Her voice gathered strength. She laid a hand on the head of her son, who sat before her with buried face.
"Paul," she said, "it is not until now that the day of reckoning has waited for me. When you were a babe, and knew nothing of your mother's grief, I sorrowed over the shame that might yet be yours; and when you grew to be a prattling child, I thought if God would look into your innocent eyes they would purchase grace for both of us."
Paul lifted his head. At that moment of distress God had sent him the gracious gift of tears. His eyes were wet, and looked tenderly at his mother.
"Paul," she continued, quite calmly now, "promise me one thing."
"What is it?" he asked, softly.
"That if your father should not live to make the will that must recognize you as his son, you will never reveal this secret."
Paul rose to his feet. "That is impossible. I cannot promise it," he said.
"Why?"
"Honor and justice require that my brother Hugh, and not I, should be my father's heir – he, at least, must know."
"What honor, and what justice?"
"The honor of a true man – the justice of the law of England."
Mrs. Ritson dropped her head. "So much for your honor," she said. "But what of mine?"
"Mother, what do you mean?"
"That if you allow your younger brother to inherit, the world by that act will be told all – your father's sin, your mother's shame."
Mrs. Ritson raised her hands to her face, and turned aside. Paul stepped up to her and kissed her forehead reverently.
"You are right," he said. "Forgive me – I thought only of myself. The world that loves to tarnish a pure name would like to gloat over your sorrow. That it shall never! Man's law may have been outraged, but God's law is still inviolate. Whatever my birth, I am as much your son in the light of Heaven as Jacob was the son of Isaac, or David of Jesse. Come, let us go to him – he may yet live to acknowledge me."
It had been a terrible moment, but it was past. To live to manhood in ignorance of the dishonor of his birth, and then to learn the truth under the shadow of death – this had been a tragic experience. The love he had borne his father – the reverence he had learned at his mother's knee – to what bitter test had they been put! Had all the past been but as the marble image of a happy life! Was all the future shattered before him! Pshaw! he was the unconscious slave of a superstition – a phantasm, a gingerbread superstition!
And a mightier touch awoke his sensibilities – the touch of nature. Before God at that moment he was his father's son. If the world, or the world's law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving to be damned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim to his father's name?
Paul took in love the hand of his mother. "Let us go in to him," he repeated, and together they walked across the room.
The outer door was flung open, and Greta entered, flushed and with wide-open eyes. At the same instant the inner door swung noiselessly back, and Hugh Ritson stood on the threshold. Greta was about to speak, but Hugh motioned her to silence. His face was pale, his hand trembled. "Too late," he said, huskily; "he is dead!"
Greta sunk on to the settle in the window recess. Hugh walked to the hearth and paused with rigid features before the haunting mirror.
Paul stood for a moment hand in hand with his mother, motionless, speechless, cold at his heart. Then he hurried into the inner room. Mrs. Ritson followed him, closing the door behind him.
The little oak-bound room was dusky; the lamp that burned low was shaded. Across the bed lay Allan Ritson, in his habit as he lived. But his lips were white and cold.
Paul stood and looked down. There lay his father – his father still! His father by right of nature – of love – of honor – let the world say what it would.
And he knew the truth at last: too late to look into those glassy eyes and read the secret of their long years of suffering love.
"Father," Paul whispered, and fell to his knees by the deaf ear.
Mrs. Ritson, strangely quiet, strangely calm, stepped to the opposite side of the bed, and placed one hand on the dead man's breast.
"Paul," she said, "come here."
He rose to his feet and walked to her side.
"Lay your hand with mine, and pledge to me your solemn word never to speak of what you have heard to-night until that great day when we three shall stand together before the great white throne."
Paul placed his hand side by side with hers, and lifted his eyes to heaven.
"On my father's body, by my mother's honor – never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act or her shame – always to bear myself as their lawful son before man, even as I am their rightful son before God – I swear it! I swear it!"
His voice was cold and clear, but the words were scarcely uttered when he fell to his knees again, with a subdued cry of overwrought feeling.
Mrs. Ritson staggered back, caught the curtains of the bed, and covered her face. All was still.
Then a shuffling footfall was heard on the floor. Hugh Ritson was in the darkened room. He lifted the shaded lamp from the table, approached the bedside, and held the lamp with one hand above his head. The light fell on the outstretched body of his father and the bowed head of his brother.
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
It was late in November, and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only a fibrous vagueness was visible.
In an old pasture field by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an elderly man, sturdy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun. There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed the expression of gentleness and easy good-nature. It was a fine old face, with the beauty of simplicity and the sweetness of content.
A
