Captain Calamity Part 42

"For fifteen years," he went on as though he had not heard her, "I have known the truth and hated him. When, by chance, I met the man who made this confession, I determined to clear my name no matter how others might suffer in consequence."

He paused and then, with a contemptuous laugh, went on,

"Now, at the last moment--the moment of triumph--the traditions of this house are too strong for me. I can't do it."

While she looked at him wonderingly, he seized her by the arm and led her to the portrait of his brother, her late husband.

"There," he said, pointing violently at it, "George, Viscount Redhurst, forger and liar! As unworthy to take his place among these n.o.ble members of a n.o.ble race as I should be if I proved his guilt."

He released her arm, and, turning away, paced up and down the room, his face working. Lady Betty groped her way to one of the window-seats, and, sinking into it, covered her face with her hands. Of the two she, perhaps, was suffering more at that moment than the victim of her dead husband's crime, for her world seemed to be cras.h.i.+ng about her ears. The husband whom she had respected, if not loved, a forger and worse than a forger; the man whom she had loved and whom she knew at that moment she still loved, guiltless and perhaps extending to her the hatred he bore his dead brother. What, indeed, was left to her?

She raised her head to find him standing before her, with no trace in his face of the pa.s.sion of a moment ago.

"Don't be afraid," he said, "there will be no meeting in the library to-night, and to-morrow I leave for California."

"California?" she repeated blankly.

"Yes," he answered; "what is there to keep me here? This place is no more home to me now than when my father turned me out of it."

A revelation of what the sacrifice he was making meant to this man came to her, and she mentally saw him set out again from the home of his boyhood, an exile and still bearing the burden of another's guilt.

"Are you doing this for me?" she asked in a trembling voice, dreading his answer.

"No."

"Then why----"

"Partly Elfrida, partly these," and he moved his arm to indicate his ancestors in their frames. "_n.o.blesse oblige_, you know."

"But--California." Her voice was a husky whisper.

"California, Betty. I----" he paused a moment and smiled as if at some unspoken thought. "I am interested in fruit-farming."

But here Lady Betty's self-control gave way. She knew that he meant what he said, and that if he left England she would probably never see him again. She began, incoherently:

"Oh, John, I can't let you leave me. Do you understand, I can't----"

A deafening clangour arose close at hand and drowned her words. When it had ceased Calamity did not wait for her to continue.

"The dinner-gong," he said. "Shall we go?"