James Cabell - The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck. A Comedy of Limitations

"There were some letters which in a measure concern you, Jack." The colonel handed him a small packet of letters. "If you will read the top one it will explain. I will just go on with my writing."

He wrote steadily for a moment or two…. Then Charteris laughed musically.

"I have always known there was a love-affair between my mother and 'Wild Will.' But I never suspected until to-night that I had the honor to be your half-brother, Rudolph—one of 'Wild Will's' innumerable bastards." Charteris was pallid, and though he seemed perfectly composed, his eyes glittered as with gusty brilliancies. "I understand now why my reputed father always made such a difference between my sister and myself. I never liked old Alvin Charteris, you know. It is a distinct relief to be informed I have no share in his blood, although of course the knowledge comes a trifle suddenly."

"Perhaps I should have kept that knowledge to myself. I know it would have been kinder. I had meant to be kind. I loathe myself for dabbling in this mess. But, in view of all things, it seemed necessary to let you know I am your own brother in the flesh, and that Patricia is your brother's wife."

"I see," said Charteris. "According to your standards that would make a great difference. I don't know, speaking frankly, that it makes much difference with me." He turned again to the bookshelves, so that Musgrave could no longer see his face. Charteris ran his fingers caressingly over the backs of a row of volumes. "I loved my mother, Rudolph. I never loved anyone else. That makes a difference." Then he said, "We Musgraves—how patly I catalogue myself already!—we Musgraves have a deal to answer for, Rudolph."

"And doesn't that make it all the more our duty to live clean and honest lives? to make the debt no greater than it is?" Both men were oddly quiet.

"Eh, I am not so sure." John Charteris waved airily toward Sebastian Musgrave's counterfeit, then toward the other portraits. "It was they who compounded our inheritances, Rudolph—all that we were to have in this world of wit and strength and desire and endurance. We know their histories. They were proud, brave and thriftless, a greedy and lecherous race, who squeezed life dry as one does an orange, and left us the dregs. I think that it is droll, but I am not sure it places us under any obligation. In fact, I rather think God owes us an apology, Rudolph."

He spoke with quaint wistfulness. The colonel sat regarding him in silence, with shocked, disapproving eyes. Then Charteris cocked his head to one side and grinned like a hobgoblin.

"What wouldn't you give," he demanded, "to know what I am really thinking of at this very moment while I talk so calmly? Well, you will never know. And for the rest, you are at liberty to use your all-important documents as you may elect. I am John Charteris; whatever man begot my body, he is rotten bones to-day, and it is as such I value him. I was never anybody's son—or friend or brother or lover,—but just a pen that someone far bigger and far nobler than John Charteris writes with occasionally. Whereas you—but, oh, you are funny, Rudolph!" And then, "Good-night, dear brother," Charteris added, sweetly, as he left the room.

And Rudolph Musgrave could not quite believe in the actuality of what had just happened. In common with most of us, he got his general notions concerning the laws of life from reading fiction; and here was the material for a Renaissance tragedy wasted so far as any dénouement went. Destiny, once more, was hardly rising to the possibilities of the situation. The weapon chance had forged had failed Rudolph Musgrave utterly; and, indeed, he wondered now how he could ever have esteemed it formidable. Jack was his half-brother. In noveldom or in a melodrama this discovery would have transformed their mutual dealings; but as a workaday world's fact, Musgrave would not honestly say that it had in any way affected his feelings toward Jack, and it appeared to have left Charteris equally unaltered.

"I am not sure, though. We can only guess where Jack is concerned. He goes his own way always, tricky and furtive and lonelier than any other human being I have ever known. It is loneliness that looks out of his eyes, really, even when he is mocking and sneering," the colonel meditated.

Then he sighed and went back to the tabulation of his lists of wills.

The day was growing strong in the maple-grove behind Matocton. As yet, the climbing sun fired only the topmost branches, and flooded them with a tempered radiance through which birds plunged and shrilled vague rumors to one another. Beneath, a green twilight lingered—twilight which held a gem-like glow, chill and lucent and steady as that of an emerald. Vagrant little puffs of wind bustled among the leaves, with a thin pretense of purpose, and then lapsed, and merged in the large, ambiguous whispering which went stealthily about the grove.

Rudolph Musgrave sat on a stone beside the road that winds through the woods toward the railway station, and smoked, nervously. He was disheartened of the business of living, and, absurdly enough, as it seemed to him, he was hungry.

"It has to be done quietly and without the remotest chance of Anne's ever hearing of it, and without the remotest chance of its ever having to be done again. I have about fifteen minutes in which to convince Patricia both of her own folly and of the fact that Jack is an unmitigated cad, and to get him off the place quietly, so that Anne will suspect nothing. And I never knew any reasonable argument to appeal to Patricia, and Jack will be a cornered rat! Yes, it is a large contract, and I would give a great deal—a very great deal—to know how I am going to fulfil it."

At this moment his wife and Mr. Charteris, carrying two portmanteaux, came around a bend in the road not twenty feet from Musgrave. They were both rather cross. In the clean and more prosaic light of morning an elopement seemed almost silly; moreover, Patricia had had no breakfast, and Charteris had been much annoyed by his wife, who had breakfasted with him, and had insisted on driving to the station with him. It was a trivial-seeming fact, but, perhaps, not unworthy of notice, that Patricia was carrying her own portmanteau, as well as an umbrella.

The three faced one another in the cool twilight. The woods stirred lazily about them. The birds were singing on a wager now.

"Ah," said Colonel Musgrave, "so you have come at last. I have been expecting you for some time."

Patricia dropped her portmanteau, sullenly. Mr. Charteris placed his with care to the side of the road, and said, "Oh!" It was perhaps the only observation that occurred to him.

"Patricia," Musgrave began, very kindly and very gravely, "you are about to do a foolish thing. At the bottom of your heart, even now, you know you are about to do a foolish thing—a thing you will regret bitterly and unavailingly for the rest of time. You are turning your back on the world—our world—on the one possible world you could ever be happy in. You can't be happy in the half-world, Patricia; you aren't that sort. But you can never come back to us then, Patricia; it doesn't matter what the motive was, what the temptation was, or how great the repentance is—you cannot ever return. That is the law, Patricia; perhaps, it isn't always a just law. We didn't make it, you and I, but it is the law, and we must obey it. Our world merely says that, leaving it once, you cannot ever return: such is the only punishment it awards you, for it knows, this wise old world of ours, that such is the bitterest punishment which could ever be devised for you. Our world has made you what you are; in every thought and ideal and emotion you possess, you are a product of our world. You couldn't live in the half-world, Patricia; you are a product of our world that can never take root in that alien soil. Come back to us before it is too late, Patricia!"