Still his soul fed upon the sovereign hour
That had been or that should be:
—SWINBURNE.
Michael in the meanwhile was running through the deserted streets like a man possessed. Cloakless and hatless he ran, bending his head to the gusts of wind which tore down the narrow byways in the neighbourhood of the Strand.
Fitful clouds chased one another over his head, obscuring the moon, and from time to time descending in sharp showers of icy rain.
But Michael loved the wind and cared naught for the wet. The rags he wore were soon soaked through, but he did not attempt to take shelter beneath the various yawning archways which he passed from time to time; on the contrary he liked the cold douches of these winter showers which seemed to cool his head, burning with inward fever.
Michael Kestyon, the gambler, the adventurer, the wastrel, had begun the fight against his own soul.
For the space of a few seconds, there in the over-heated tavern room in the midst of all those drunkards, those profligates—scums of humanity—dying honour had called out in its agony: "Wilt sell me for gold?" but Michael had laughed out loud and long, and smothered those warning cries with the recklessness of the soldier of fortune who stakes his all on the winning card.
His claim, his rights! His and those of that patient old soul dying of want in a lonely cottage, the while she should be living in the lap of luxury and of ease.
She was dying of want, of actual hard, bitter starvation. Michael knew it and could do naught to help, and in the midst of the dissolute life of the town had vainly striven to forget that even at the cost of his life's blood, which he would have given gladly drop by drop, he could not purchase for her a soft bed on which she would finally go to her eternal sleep.
His claim! His rights! Her happiness! The happiness of the one being in the whole wide world who had clung to him, who loved him for what he was and did not despise him for what he had become: this he could purchase for one hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
Had not Sir John Ayloffe himself said that 'twas a fortune which would tempt a king.
The lawyers had told Michael that only money was wanted to bring his claim before the Lords' House of Parliament now, and once publicly debated, justice could not stand against it.
Michael had oft laughed at those two words, "Only money!"
Only money! and when he sought and got a sword thrust that nearly killed him, he was given twenty crowns as blood-money. He reckoned at this rate that his miserable body would have to be as full of holes as a sieve, before he obtained enough money wherewith to satisfy the first lawyer who would condescend once more to take up his case.
But now all that—lawyers' fees, fees for a first hearing, for a second and for a third, for pleadings, interrogatories and affidavits, for petitions to the King and for briberies to obtain a private audience—all that would be within his reach.
The price? A woman's honour and his own self-respect.
Once—very long ago, these would have mattered to him a great deal; in those days he had believed in men's honour and in women's virtue.
But now? He had lost so much self-respect already—what mattered if a few more shreds of it went the way of all his other ideals.
He had once boldly said that he would give his life's blood drop by drop, endure every agony, undergo every torture to see his mother installed at Maries Castle, her rightful and proper place.
Well, that had been easy to say! These things were not asked of him, and he had gone through so much, suffered often so terribly from hunger, wounds and fatigue that the sacrifice of his life or the endurance of most bitter tortures would have been an easy sacrifice. He was hard and tough—what nerves he had had been jarred beyond all sensibility long ago.
But now something was asked of him. Fate had spoken in no uncertain accents. She had said: "Make a sacrifice of thine honour, and thy most cherished wish will be gratified!"
If those former bold words—offers of blood and life—were not the talk of a weak-kneed braggart, then, Michael Kestyon, thou shouldst not hesitate!
Dost prize those paltry remnants of self-respect so highly that thou wouldst see thy mother starve ere thou sell them?
Starve, remember, starve!—in the direct, absolute, unmitigated sense of the word. If thou canst not provide her with the necessities of life, she must starve sooner or later, in a month, in a year, in two mayhap, that would depend how charitably inclined the neighbours happened to be. But starve she must, if thou, her son, dost naught for her.
And Fate had whispered: "Money, power, justice await thee, at the price of thy self-respect and the honour of a woman who is a stranger to thee."
The subtle temptation had entered into Michael's heart like an insinuating poison which killed every objection, every argument, every moral rebellion in his soul. And the temptation assailed him just at this time when his whole being ached with the constant buffetings of life, when he longed with all the maddening strength of defiant impotence to hit right and left at the world which had derided him, to begin again a new life of action, of combat, of lofty aspirations.
Try and pity him, for the temptation was over-great; pity him because Fate had struck him one blow after another, each more and more difficult to bear since his soul, his mind, his entire self had scarcely time to recover from one before the next came crashing down, leaving him with one hope the less, one more ideal shattered, one more misery to bear.
One hundred and twenty thousand pounds!—Michael kept repeating the half dozen wonderful words to himself over and over again as he walked.
Thus tottering, buffeted by the wind, drunk with the magic of the thought which the words evoked, he reached his lodgings at last.
He rapped loudly at a low door with his knuckles, but had to wait some time before it was opened. A gnome-like figure wrapped in a tattered dressing gown and wearing a cotton night-cap appeared in the doorway. It was difficult to distinguish if the figure was that of man or woman. In brown and wrinkled hands it held a guttering tallow dip which threw a trembling light on the dank walls of the narrow passage and feebly illumined the approach to the rickety stairs beyond.
Michael paid no heed to the muttered grumblings of the creature, but walked straight past it along the passage, and then up the creaky stairs which led to the garret above. As he reached the several landings he nearly fell over various prostrate bundles made up of human rags from out of which issued sleepy oaths, as Michael's foot stumbled against them.
His own garret was not much better than those open landings across which he had tottered and fumbled in the dark. Here the roof sloped down to the tiny dormer window, innocent of curtains, and made up of some half dozen tiny panes, mostly cracked and covered with thick coatings of grime.
Along the low wall opposite the window a row of ragged bundles—human only in shape—and similar to those which encumbered the landings, told their tale of misery and of degradation. There were some half dozen of these bundles lying all of a row against the wall. They were Michael's room companions, the wreckages of man and womankind, with whom he had lived now for close on eighteen months.
Snores and drunken oaths, blasphemy too and noisome words spoken in sleep came from these bundles, greeting Michael's somewhat stormy entrance into this den.
He shut the rickety door behind him, and made his way to the little window, through which the light of some street lanthorn opposite came shyly peeping through.
Michael threw the casement open, allowing that feeble light to enter more fully, then he turned and surveyed his surroundings,—those bundles along the floor, the wooden boards across which a crowd of vermin were scrampering out of sight, the two chairs, innocent of seats, the wooden packing case in lieu of table, the walls dank and grey, covered with obscene writing scribbled with shaky fingers dipped in grime!
Michael looked at it all, as if he had never seen it before. In an angle of the room was the straw paillasse still empty which awaited him, and around which the dying instincts of gentle birth had caused him to erect a kind of unseen barrier between that corner and the rest of the room. Here the floor was clean, the straw was fresh; above the paillasse the wall had been carefully wiped clean and rubbed over with lime, and on an overturned wooden case beside the miserable bed there were one or two books, and a small metal crucifix which profane fingers had apparently never dared to touch.
But these very trifling attempts at cleanliness were the only luxury which had come within Michael's reach, ever since he came home from that last campaign in Brandenburg and sent his last crown to his mother in Kent. And remember that such garrets, such degrading propinquity, such misery and such dirt represented the only kind of life which London offered in those days to the poor, to the outcast and the homeless. There was nothing else except the gutter itself.
Michael stood in the centre of this garret and looked upon the picture—his life! His life such as it had been for the past eighteen months, such as it would continue to be until he became too old and too feeble to drag himself up from that straw paillasse in the corner. Then he would lie there sick and starving until he was taken away feet foremost down the rickety stairway to the paupers' graveyard out beyond St. Paul's.
With arms akimbo, hands resting on his hips and feet firmly planted on the dust-covered floor, Michael looked and laughed; not bitterly or mirthlessly. Bitterness had gone—strangely enough—at sight of the picture. He laughed, mocking himself for the few scruples which had assailed him awhile ago, for having conjured up—yes! conjured up himself—those phantoms of honour which accused him of selling his self-respect.
Was this self-respect, this den of rogues, this herd of miserable ne'er-do-wells, these filthy walls, this life of misery, of wretchedness, of shifts—growing day by day more unavowable for obtaining bread for the morrow? Was this manhood to stand against such odds? Was this honour to endure such a life?
Bah! if it was, then far better sell it for the price of oak boards sufficient to make two coffins: one for the man, the other for the old woman living the same life and enduring the same misery.
Michael turned back to the window and with a brusque, impatient gesture tore open the second casement. A gust of wind found its way into the musty corners of the garret and scattered the vitiated air, the while the moon emerging triumphantly from her long imprisonment behind the clouds searched with bluish and ghostly rays the grey walls opposite, the drunken sleepers on the floor, the vermin scuttling between those litters of straw more fit for cattle than for human beings.
The blustering wind, as it tore at the rickety casements roused some of the sleepers from their dreams. Volleys of oaths were flung at Michael, but he heard nothing now. He leaned out of the narrow window—as far out as he could—and looked on the forest of chimney stacks, the irregular roofs and tall spires of this great and heartless city.
How peacefully she lay beneath the cool kiss of the moon! Invisible arms seemed to be stretched out toward the lonely watcher bidding him to come and conquer.
There was no longer any compunction in Michael's heart, and certainly no shame.
"I am a man," he said speaking to those unseen shadows, "and what I do, I do!"
The freshness of the air came as a bath of moral cleanliness to his soul; he felt an excitement, too, akin to that of a war horse when scenting the coming battle. To Michael now the whole transaction—to which on the morrow he would affix the seal of his pledged word—was but a mighty combat wherein a powerful weapon would be placed in his hand.
He would at last be able to hit right and left, to be even with that world which had buffeted him, which had scorned his efforts, but allowed his mother to starve.
Aye! He was a turbulent soul; a soul created to fight and not to endure.
And if at moments during that lonely watch above the chimney stacks and roofs of London there came floating to his mind the thought of the girl who was nothing to him, the stranger whom he would so bitterly wrong, then with a proud toss of the head, a joy which literally lighted up his whole being, he would send an unspoken challenge up to those swiftly-flying clouds which tended southwards, towards Paris.
"Go tell her!" he murmured, "that whoever she may be Michael Kestyon will serve her with gratitude and love all the days of his life. On his knees will he worship her, and devote his life to her happiness. And," he added mentally, whilst a quiver of excitement shook his broad shoulders, "tell her that an she desires to be Countess of Stowmaries, even that desire Michael Kestyon will gratify, for he will make her that—tell her—tell her that before next December's snows cover the earth there will be two Countesses of Stowmaries in England: Michael Kestyon's mother and Michael Kestyon's wife."
He did not attempt to go and rest on his miserable couch, but leant for hours up against the window watching the moon slowly drawing its peaceful course along the dark firmament, seeing the fleecy, silvered clouds fly madly across the sky, lashed by the wind into fantastic shapes of witches' heads and of lurid beasts. He watched the roofs and towers of many churches as gradually they were wrapped in the mist-laden mantle of approaching dawn.
He watched until far away above chimney stacks and pointed steeples a feeble rosy glow precursed the rising sun. He was too weary now to think any more, too weary to dream, too weary he thought even to live.
And through the gathering mist it seemed to him that the ghostly spectres of his tumultuous past came to him enwrapped in white palls, monstrous and majestic, towering above mighty London, and that walking slowly in their wake, tottering and shy was his mother, enfeebled by starvation and the wretchedness of her life. She held out emaciated arms to him in a mute appeal for help, whilst the ghosts of the past spoke with unseen lips of all that he had suffered, of the great sorrows and the tiny pin-pricks.
And with every word they uttered his soul sank more and more to rest, and even as his aching head sank down upon his outstretched arms, and his eyes closed in a dreamless sleep, his lips murmured with final defiance:
"I am a man! and what I do, I do.”