Everyman's Land. C. N. Williamson
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a desperate case—owing to his strong constitution—he was delirious for weeks. Two months passed before he was well enough to look for me, and by that time all trace of us was lost. Brian and I had gone to England long before. Jim's friend—the one with whom he had the bet—wired to the Becketts that he was ill, but not dangerously, and they weren't to come over to France. It was only when he reached home that they knew how serious the trouble had been.
While I was listening, learning that Jim had really loved me, and searched for me, it seemed that I had a right to him after all: that I was an honest girl, hearing news of her own man, from his own people. It was only when Mr. Beckett began to draw me out, with a quite pathetic shyness, on the subject of our worldly resources that I was brought up short again, against the dark wall of my deceit. It should have been exquisite, it was heartbreaking, to see how he feared to hurt my feelings with some offer of help from his abundance. "Hurt my feelings!" And it was with the sole intention of "working" them for money that I'd written to the Becketts.
That looks horrible in black and white, doesn't it, Padre? But I won't try to hide my motives behind a dainty screen, from your eyes or mine. I had wanted and meant to get as much as I could for Brian and myself out of Jim Beckett's father and mother. And now, when I was on the way to obtain my object, more easily than I had expected—now, when I saw the kind of people they were—now, when I knew that to Jim Wyndham I had been an ideal, "his dream come true." I saw my own face as in a mirror. It was like the sly, mean face of a serpent disguised as a woman.
I remember once saying to you, Padre, when you had read aloud "The Idylls of the King" to Brian and me as children, that Vivien was the worst cad I ever heard of since the beginning of the world! I haven't changed my mind about her since, except that I give her second place. I am in the first.
I suppose, when I first pictured the Becketts (if I stopped to picture them at all) I imagined they would be an ordinary American millionaire and millionairess, bow-fronted, self-important creatures; the old man with a diamond stud like a headlight, the old lady afraid to take cold if she left off an extra row of pearls. In our desperate state, anything seemed fair in love or war with such hard, worth-their-weight-in-gold people. But I ought to have known that a man like Jim Beckett couldn't have such parents! I ought to have known they wouldn't be in the common class of millionaires of any country; and that whatever their type they would be unique.
Well, I hadn't known. Their kindness, their dear humanness, their simplicity, overwhelmed me as the gifts of shields and bracelets from the Roman warriors overwhelmed treacherous Tarpeia. And when they began delicately begging me to be their adopted daughter—the very thing I'd prayed for to the devil!—I felt a hundred times wickeder than if Jim hadn't set me on a high pedestal, where they wished to keep me with their money, their love, as offerings.
Whether I should have broken down and confessed everything, or brazened it out in spite of all if I'd been left alone to decide, I shall never know. For just then the door opened, and Brian came into the room.
CHAPTER V
Why Brian's coming should make all the difference may puzzle you, Padre, but I'll explain.
Ours is an amateurish hotel, especially since the war. Any one who happens to have the time or inclination runs it: or if no one has time it runs itself. Consequently mistakes are made. But what can you expect for eight francs a day, with pension?
I said that a very young youth brought up the news of the Becketts' arrival. He'd merely announced that "un monsieur et une dame" had called. Apparently they had given no names, no cards. But in truth there were cards, which had been mislaid, or in other words left upon the desk in the bureau, with the numbers of both our rooms scrawled on them in pencil. Nobody was there at the time, but when the concierge came back (he is a sort of unofficial understudy for the mobilized manager) he saw the cards and sent them upstairs. They were taken to Brian and the names read aloud to him. He supposed, from vague information supplied by the garçon (it was a garçon this time) that I wished him to come and join me in the salon with my guests. He hated the thought of meeting strangers (the name "Beckett" meant nothing to him), but if he were wanted by his sister, he never yet left her in the lurch.
He and I both knew the house with our eyes shut, before the war; and now that Brian is blind, he practises in the most reckless way going about by himself. He refused to be led to the salon: he came unaided and unerring: and I thought when he appeared at the door, I'd never seen him look so beautiful. He is beautiful you know! Now that his physical eyesight is gone, and he's developing that mysterious "inner sight" of which he talks, there's no other adjective which truly expresses him. He stood there for a minute with his hand on the door-knob, with all the light in the room (there wasn't much) shining straight into his face. It couldn't help doing that, as the one window is nearly opposite the door; but really it does seem sometimes that light seeks Brian's face, as the "spot light" in theatres follows the hero or heroine of a play.
There was an asking smile on his lips, and—by accident, of course—his dear blind eyes looked straight at Mrs. Beckett. We are enough alike, we twins, for any one to know at a glance that we're brother and sister, so the Becketts would have known, of course, even if I hadn't cried out in surprise, "Brian!"
They took it for granted that Brian would have heard all about their son Jim; so, touched by the pathos of his blindness—the lonely pathos (for a blind man is as lonely as a daylight moon!) Mrs. Beckett almost ran to him and took his hand.
"We're the Becketts, with your sister," she said. "Jimmy's father and mother. I expect you didn't meet him when they were getting engaged to each other at St. Raphael. But he loved your picture that he bought just before the war. He used to say, if only you'd signed it, his whole life might have been different. That was when he'd lost Mary, you see—and he'd got hold of her name quite wrong. He thought it was Ommalee, and we never knew a word about the engagement, or her real name or anything, till the letter came to us at our hotel to-day. Then we hurried around here, as quick as we could; and she promised to be our adopted daughter. That means you will have to be our adopted son!"
I think Mrs. Beckett is too shy to like talking much at ordinary times. She would rather let her big husband talk, and listen admiringly to him. But this wasn't an ordinary time. To see Brian stand at the door, wistful and alone, gave her a pain in her heart, so she rushed to him, and poured out all these kind words, which left him dazed.
"You are very good to me," he answered, too thoughtful of others' feelings, as always, to blurt out—as most people would—"I don't understand. Who are you, please?" Instead, his sightless but beautiful eyes seemed to search the room, and he said, "Molly, you're here, aren't you?"
Now perhaps you begin to understand why his coming, and Mrs. Beckett's greeting of him, stopped me from telling the truth—if I would have told it. I'm not sure if I would, in any case, Padre; but as it was I could not. The question seemed settled. To have told the Becketts that I was an adventuress—a repentant adventuress—and let them go out of my life without Brian ever knowing they'd come into it was one thing. To explain, to accuse myself before Brian, to make him despise the only person he had to depend on, and so to spoil the world for him, was another thing.
I accepted the fate I'd summoned like the genie of a lamp. "Yes, Brian, I'm here," I answered. And I went to him, and took possession of the hand Mrs. Beckett had left free. "I never told you about my romance. It was so short. And—and one doesn't put the most sacred things in letters. I loved a man, and he loved me. We met in France before the war, and lost each other.
"Afterward he came back to fight. A few days ago he fell—just at the time when his parents had hurried over from America to see him. I—I couldn't resist writing them a letter, though they were strangers to me. I——"
"That's not a word I like to hear on your lips—'strangers'," Mr. Beckett broke in, "even though you're speaking of the past. We're all one family now. You don't mind my saying