Karel Čapek - Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 7

“You shall repent this!” he mutters angrily. “Speranza, you should know better than to defy me. Have I not been a match for you twice? and, by God I if you do not do as I ask now I will be again.”

She shudders with horror as she hears his cold-blooded words, triumphing at his past deeds of brutality and crime. She pulls herself together, however. She is alone with him, and must keep him at bay. Speranza is no coward.

“I do not fear you,” she answers haughtily; “you cannot do me more evil than you have already. I am beyond the reach of your vengeance now. Nothing you can do can harm me!”

“I don’t know so much about that,” he replies savagely. “How about Hector D’Estrange?”

She starts, and the rich blood flushes to her face as she eyes him with evident terror. Can it be that he knows? that he will unveil the secret before—but no, it is impossible; she has it safe enough.

He notes the start, the crimson blush, and the look of terror, and he congratulates himself on having, by a chance shot, hit on the right point to cow her.

“You’re a fine person to play the prude and the proper,” he says, with a sneer. “They used to tell me that you were inconsolable over that ass Kintore, but the beauty of Hector D’Estrange appears to have effected a sudden cure. I congratulate you on your new conquest. You have aimed high. He is the rising man of his day, and you have thrown your net well to catch the golden fish. Are you not ashamed of yourself, however, woman,—you who are over the forties, to take up with a boy of twenty-one?”

She flushes again. Then he does not know? Thank God for that! How young she looks as she stands there in her unfading beauty, with a look in her blue eyes of contemptuous loathing. She will let him believe what he likes, so that he does not know the truth; that is all she desires to hide from him.

In pursuance of this desire she answers:

“Hector D’Estrange and I are friends. I am not ashamed to own it. Neither he nor I require your advice, however, as to how our friendship is to be conducted. And now I bid you leave me. I order you from my house, which I inhabit not by your charity.”

“No, but by the charity of Harry Kintore, you wanton!” he answers with an oath. “You knew pretty well what you were about when you got the fool to settle all his estates and money on you, which you now lavish on Hector D’Estrange, but——”

“Peace, devil! fiend in human shape!” she cries furiously, as she clenches her hands, and brings the right one down with a crash on the table beside her. He notices a flash on one of the fingers. All the others are ringless but this one, and on it sparkles two splendid diamonds and sapphires set deep in their .broad thick band of gold. He knows this ring of old. He saw it long ago, when she held the dying head of Harry Kintore in her hands, and he knows that it was the young man’s gift to her. That she should wear it, now that she has taken up with Hector D’Estrange, mystifies him.

He is about to reply, when the door of the room they are in opens, and Lord Westray finds himself face to face with Hector. He is a head and shoulders taller than the earl is this young man, and as he advances into the room the latter’s face falls slightly, and his fingers move nervously by his side. Like all bullies, Lord Westray is a coward, and doesn’t half fancy his position.

But there is no angry look in Hector D’Estrange’s eyes; only from their sapphire depths looks out a cold, calm expression of contempt.

“Lord Westray,” he remarks, in a voice impressive because of its very quietness, “for what reason have we the honour of your presence here? Allow me to inform you that this honour is not desired by Mrs. de Lara. Your brougham is at the door. I must request you to seek it.”

He says no more, but stands with the handle of the door in his hand, waiting for the earl to obey. This latter looks at him fiercely, the eyes of the two meet. Those of the bully and depraved coward cannot face the calm, disdainful look of Hector D’Estrange; they fall before it, and in another moment the earl is gone.

They listen to the wheels of the departing brougham as it rattles through the streets in the direction of South Kensington. As its echoes die away the young man turns to Speranza.

“Mother,” he exclaims, “has he been here to insult you? Ah, mother! God only knows the strain I put upon myself, or I would have shot him down where he stood, the brute, the fiend! I nearly lost control of myself, but I heard your last words, and understood what you were striving to hide from him. Thank God I did, or in a hasty moment I might have laid bare our secret.”

“And I, too, say thank God, Gloria. At one moment I fancied he was in possession of it, but I quickly found out that he was on another tack. Horrible as the idea was, it was better to let him foster it, than to give him a chance of learning the truth. Ah, Gloria dearest! if once the secret is in his hands, we need look for no mercy in that quarter.”

“I know it, mother,” answers Gloria, in other words Hector D’Estrange; for the reader must have had no difficulty in recognising in this latter, the beautiful girl who had made her vow to the wild sea waves, ten years previously on the sunny shores of the Adriatic, and who now, as Hector D’Estrange, is working out the accomplishment of that vow.

And she has worked well has Gloria de Lara, patiently and perseveringly, never losing an opportunity, never casting a chance aside. Her beauty and her genius have gone straight to the hearts of men, and she uses these gifts given her by God, not for vain glory and fleeting popularity, but in pursuit of justice and in furtherance of the one great aim of her life.

“Let us change the subject, my darling,” exclaims Speranza, with a shudder; “let us drive from our minds the thought of one so horrible and contemptible. Tell me, my precious child,” she continues, laying her hand on Gloria’s shoulder, and kissing her gently on the forehead, “how have you got on with the clubs today?”

“Excellently, mother. I came to tell you all about them, or I should not have been here until tomorrow,” answers Gloria, as she seats herself on a low stool at her mother’s feet.

It is the middle of May, the sun is shining brightly, and the sparrows are hopping and chirping merrily about in the square outside. The early green on the trees is as yet unclouded by the dust of London’s busy season, and all is fair, and soft, and young to look upon.

The large fortune and noble estates left to Speranza de Lara by young Harry Kintore have been well and wisely wielded by the woman, in whose heart the memory of her darling still shines as brightly as on the day he died. She has never misspent a farthing of the vast wealth that he confided to her care. It has been used in carrying out philanthropic works, alleviating suffering, and helping on the accomplishment of their child’s design, his child and hers.

They are busy over a new one just now. With her mother’s money at her command, Gloria, under the name of Hector D’Estrange, is establishing throughout London, and in the different large towns of Great Britain and Ireland, institutions where women and girls can meet each other, and for a mere nominal fee learn to ride, to shoot with gun and rifle, to swim, to run, and to indulge in the invigorating influences of gymnastics and other exercises, calculated to strengthen and improve the physique of those taking part therein. Classes, too, technical and otherwise, for the education of girls and women on an equality with boys and men, as well as free libraries, form part of these institutions, each of which, as it is founded, becomes crowded to overflowing.

In connection with these institutions Gloria has lately set on foot clubs, the members of which she is forming into volunteer companies, who are drilled by the hand of discipline into smartness and efficiency. The movement has been enthusiastically taken up by the women of Great Britain and Ireland, thousands of whom have been enrolled in these volunteer forces. Of course Hector D’Estrange has his enemies. The jealous and the narrow-minded; the old fogies who would have a great wrong continue for ever, rather than fly in the face of prejudice to right it; the women who love their degradation and hug their chains; the men who think the world must be coming to an end if women are to be acknowledged as their equals, have all fought tooth and nail against the splendid idea and the practical conception of Hector D’Estrange. Ridicule, abuse, calumny, false testimony, have been hurled against his giant work. They have each and all failed to disturb or harm it, for its foundation is built on the rock of justice, of right, and of nature.