The Master of the Ceremonies

The touch and the voice seemed to galvanise the prisoner, who started upright, gazing wildly at his son, and then shrank back against the wall with his hands outstretched to keep him off.

There was a terrible silence for a space, during which Fred Denville remained upon his knee, then slowly joining his hands as he looked pleadingly in his father’s face, he said slowly:

“Yes, I know I have been a bad son; I have disgraced you. But, father, can you not forgive me now?”

The old man did not speak, but shrank against the wall, looking upon him with loathing.

“Father,” said Fred again, “you are in such trouble. It is so dreadful. I could not stay away. Let us be friends once more, and let me help you. I will try so hard. I am your son.”

Again there was that terrible silence, during which the old man seemed to be gathering force, and the look of horror and loathing intensified as he glared at the man humbling himself there upon his knee.

“Do you not hear me?” cried Fred, piteously. “Father: I am your son.”

“No!” exclaimed Denville, in a low, hoarse whisper that was terrible in its intensity. “No: you are no son of mine. Hypocrite, villain – how dare you come here to insult me in my misery?”

“Insult you, father!” said Fred softly. “No, no, you do not know me. You do not understand what brings me here.”

“Not know? – not understand?” panted Denville, still in the same hoarse whisper, as if he dreaded to be heard. “I tell you I know all – I saw all. It was what I might have expected from your career.”

“Father!”

“Silence, dog! Oh, that I had strength! I feel that as I gave you the life you dishonour, I should be doing a duty to take you by the throat, and crush it out from such a wretch.”

“He’s mad,” thought the young man as he gazed on the wild distorted face.

“You thought that you were unseen – that your crime was known but to yourself; but such things cannot be hidden, such horrors are certain to be known. And now, wretch, hypocrite, coward, you have brought me to this, and you come with your pitiful canting words to ask me for pardon – me, the miserable old man whom you have dragged down even to this – a felon’s cell from which I must go to the scaffold.”

“No – no, father,” panted Fred. “Don’t – for God’s sake, don’t talk like this. I’ve been a great blackguard – a bad son; but surely you might forgive me – your own flesh and blood, when I come to you on my knees, in sorrow and repentance, to ask forgiveness, and to say let me try and help you in your distress. Come, father – my dear old father – give me your hand once more. Let the past be dead, for Claire’s sake, I ask you. I am her brother – your boy.”

“Silence! Wretch!” cried the old man. “Leave this place. Let me at least die in peace, and not be defiled by the presence of such a loathsome, cowardly thing as you.”

“And you,” said Fred softly, as he held out his hands; “you, I can remember it well, used to hold these hands together, father, and teach me to say, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.’ Father, have I sinned so deeply as all this?”

“Sinned!” cried the old man starting forward, and catching his son by the throat. “Sinned? Blasphemer! coward! hypocrite! You dare to say this to me! Go, before I try to strangle you, for I cannot contain myself when you are here.”

“Father!” cried Fred, kneeling unresisting as the old man clasped him tightly by the throat, “are you mad?”

“Would to God I were before I had lived to see this day,” cried Denville, still in the same hoarse whisper. “But go – I have done ill enough in my wretched life without adding murder to the wrong. Go, and coward that you are, escape to some far-off land where your crime is not known, and there try and repent, if you can. No, there can be no repentance for the coward who destroys one wretched, helpless life, and then to save his own worthless body – he can have no soul – sends his poor, worn-out, broken father to the scaffold.”

Fred did not move, but gazed pityingly in his father’s face.

“You cannot be a man,” continued Denville, “a man as other men. You do not speak – you do not speak. Fool! Murderer! Do you think that your crime was not known?”

Fred still remained silent, gazing in the convulsed face, with the veins in the temples throbbing, the eyes glaring wildly, and the grey hairs seeming to rise and move.

“Speak, since you have forced it upon me, though I would have gone to the scaffold without a word, praying that my sacrifice might expiate my own child’s crime. Speak, I say: do you still think it was not known?”

Fred Denville remained upon his knees, but neither spoke nor resisted.

“I tell you that when I awoke to the horrors of that night, I said to myself, ‘He is my own son – my own flesh and blood – I cannot speak. I will not speak. I will bear it.’ And I have borne it – in silence. Wretch that you are – listen. I have, to screen you, borne all with my lips sealed, and let that sweet, pure-hearted girl shrink from me, believing – God help me! – that mine was the hand that crushed out yon poor old creature’s life.”

“Father, you are raving,” cried Fred hoarsely.

“Raving! It is true. Claire, my own darling, has gone, too, with sealed lips, loathing me, and only out of pity and belief in her duty as a child borne with my presence – poor sweet suffering saint – believing me a murderer, and I dare not tell her I was innocent, and that it was the brother she loved, who had come in the night, serpent-like, to the room he knew so well, to murder, and to steal those wretched bits of glittering glass.”

“My dear father!”

“Silence, wretch!” cried Denville. “I tell you, knowing all, I said that I could not speak, for I was only a broken old man, and that my son might repent; that I could not condemn him and be his judge. And, my God! it has come to this! I have borne all. I have suffered maddening agony as I have seen the loathing in my poor child’s eyes. I have borne all uncomplaining, and when, as I dreaded, the exposure came, I unmurmuringly suffered myself to be taken, and I will go to the scaffold and die, a victim – an innocent victim for you, so that you may live; but let me die in peace. Free me from your presence, and I will wait till, in a better world, my darling can come and say, ‘Forgive me, father; I was blind.’”

“Heaven help me! What shall I say?” muttered Fred. “Poor old fellow! It has turned his brain.”

The old man was in the act of throwing him off and shrinking from him when Fred caught his hands.

“My dear old father,” he said tenderly, “neither Claire nor I believe that you could commit this terrible crime. You must be cleared from all suspicion, and – come – come – let us be friends. You will forgive me, father – all the past?”

“Forgive you? No, I cannot. It is impossible. I have tried. Sitting here alone in this awful silence, with the shadow of the gallows falling across me, I have tried, but it is impossible. I will suffer for your crime. I have told you that I will, but upon one condition, that you never go near Claire again. She thinks me guilty, but she has fought hard and striven to forgive me. Do not pollute her with your presence, but go far away from here. Go at once, lest in the weakness of my nature I should be tempted to try and save myself from death by confessing all.”

“Heaven help me!” said Fred again; “he is mad.”

He had spoken aloud, shaping his thoughts unconsciously, and the old man took up his words.

“God help me! I wish I were,” he said pitifully, “for the mad must be free from the agony which I have to bear.”

Fred rose to his feet and looked at the old man aghast. Then, as if for the first time, he seemed to realise that his father was not wandering in his mind, and clasping the thin arms tightly, he pressed him back into a sitting position upon the bed, bending over him, and, in his great strength, holding him helplessly there, as he said quickly, and with a fierce ring in his voice:

“Why, father, do you know what you are saying? You do not think I killed Lady Teigne?”

“Hypocrite!” cried the old man fiercely.

“Speak out, man!” cried Fred, as fiercely now. “What do you mean? How dare you charge me with such a crime!”

“Hypocrite!” panted the old man again. “You cannot shield yourself now. It is a punishment for my weakness that day – that night. I would not have done it,” he cried wildly, “but I was at my last gasp for money. Everything was against me. I had not a shilling, and there all that day the devil was dancing the jewels of that miserable old woman before my eyes.”

“Father!” cried Fred, “for God’s sake, don’t tell me you killed her – for God’s sake don’t. No, no; it is not true.”

“Silence! hypocrite! murderer!” cried the old man. “Listen. I tell you that all that day the devil was dancing those diamonds before my eyes. I saw them in the glittering waters of the sea. I turned to Claire, and her eyes shone like diamonds. The night came, and the sky was all studded with gems, and they were sparkling and reflected in the water. Diamonds – always diamonds; and above stairs, in that room, a casket with necklet and bracelets, all diamonds, and the devil always whispering in my ear that I had but to get two or three taken out and replaced with paste, while I pledged the real stones for a few months, and redeemed them as soon as I could turn myself round. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you,” said Fred, with a strange look of horror intensifying in his face.

“I fought against the temptation. I struggled with it, as I said that I had always been a weak, foolish fashion-seeker, but an honest gentleman. I swore that I would not defile myself by such a crime; but there were my bills; there was the demand for money for a score of pressing necessities, and the fiend whispered to me that it would not be a crime, only taking them from that miserable old worldly creature as a loan.”

“Go on,” said Fred hoarsely; “go on.” And he stared with horror in the old man’s upturned face.

“Then the night came, and my children went to their beds innocent of the agony I suffered, for there was the temptation stronger than before. I went to my room, and looked out. The sea and sky were all diamonds; and I tore back the blind, and I said that I must have two or three of the wretched stones – that I would have them – borrow them for a time, and be free.”

“Oh, father, father!” groaned Fred; and Denville went on excitedly.

“I said I would have them, and I waited till it would be safe to go. I knew that the old woman would have taken her sleeping-draught, and that it would be easy enough to go in and get her keys – I knew where she kept them – take out the diamond cross, get the stones changed, and replace it before she would miss it the next afternoon.”