"Your reasons, have you?" a.s.shlin laughed harshly. "Then I'll have my answer. What do you mean by it?"

For a second the older man remained silent and unmoved; then a light gleamed in his colourless eyes.

"All right!" he said. "You shall have it. Perhaps it is as well. I came here expecting to see the boy I had known grown into a genial, hospitable, honourable gentleman; instead, I find him an undisciplined, tyrannical egotist."

He said it quickly in a rush of unusual vehemence. All his antic.i.p.ations, all his suspicions, and their subsequent justification--coupled with the new sense of protection towards the children of his early friend--found voice in these words.

"You are an egotist, Denis," he repeated distinctly. "A weak, worthless egotist--not fit to have children--not fit to have a friend----"

a.s.shlin stared at him for a moment in speechless surprise; then indignation surmounted every other feeling. With a fierce gesture he took another step forward, his eyes blazing, his hand menacingly clenched.

"How--how dare you?" he stammered. "How dare you? By G.o.d, if you were a bigger man I'd--I'd----"

He paused, choked by his fury.

"I know--I know. But I'm not afraid of you. I'm not to be bullied into subjection."

Milbanke's temper, difficult to rouse, was stirred at last. He gave his host glance for glance.

"You realise what you have said?" a.s.shlin's dark face was distorted, his voice came unsteadily.

"Yes. I regret that I have to say it, but I do not regret saying it. It is wholesome for a man to hear the truth."

"Oh, it's wholesome to hear the truth, is it?"

"Yes; and I won't see you go to pieces for want of a word. You are a man with obligations, and you are neglecting your obligations. There are other things in life besides cards and horses----"

a.s.shlin suddenly threw back his head.

"By G.o.d, you're right!" he cried. "And the other things are a d.a.m.n sight worse. I'd put a good horse before a self-righteous preacher any day."

Milbanke's usually pallid face flushed.

"You mean that for me?" he asked quietly.

a.s.shlin shrugged his shoulders.

"If you like," he said. "If the cap fits----" For a moment Milbanke said nothing; then once again he straightened his small, thin figure.

"Very well, Denis," he said, "I quite understand. With your permission I will say good-bye to you now, and to-morrow morning I will catch the earliest train from Muskeere."

He looked at his host steadily. Then, through the temper that still mastered him, a twinge of regret, a sense of parting and loss obtruded themselves. With all his intolerable faults, a.s.shlin still stood within the halo and glamour of the past.

"Denis!" he exclaimed suddenly.

But the appeal was made too late. Uncontrollable fury--the one power which could efface his sense of hospitality--possessed a.s.shlin. His pulses pounded; his senses were blurred. With a seething consciousness of insult and injury, he turned again upon his guest.

"You can go to h.e.l.l for all I care!" he cried savagely.

For a second Milbanke continued to look at him; then without a word he turned, crossed the room, and pa.s.sed into the hall.

_PART II_

CHAPTER I

It was on a windy March morning three years after his summarily ended visit to Ireland, that James Milbanke stood in the bedroom of his London flat. A perturbed frown puckered his forehead and he held an open letter in his hand.

Outside, the dark sky and cold searching breeze proclaimed the raw English spring; inside, the partly dismantled walls of the room, the emptied drawers and wardrobe, the trunks, bags, and rugs standing ready strapped, all suggested another and more inviting climate. Milbanke was bound for the south.

Three months earlier he had come to the momentous conclusion that a solitary life in London--spent no matter how comfortably--becomes a colourless and somewhat empty thing after a thirty-three years'

experience. He had his club and his friends, but he was not a clubman born, and friends must be very intimate to be all-sufficing. The restlessness that sometimes unexpectedly attacks the middle-aged bachelor had fallen upon him. The suggestion that he craved new surroundings and new fields of interest had been slow in coming, and his acceptance of it had been slow. But steadily and inevitably it had grown into his consciousness, maturing almost against his will, until at last the day had dawned on which he had admitted to himself that a change was indispensable. The subsequent events had followed in natural order. His hobby had urged him to leave his own country for one richer in a.s.sociation; the damp cold of the English winter, coupled with the chilled blood of advancing age, had inclined him to the idea of Southern Europe. The result of his triple suggestion was that he stood in his room on that spring morning in the last stages of preparation for a journey to Italy.

He stood there, with the discomfort of packing pleasantly accomplished, and his belongings neatly surrounding him; yet his att.i.tude and expression were those of a man who is faced by an unlooked-for difficulty. With a nervous gesture, he shook out the letter that he held, and began to read it hastily for the fourth time. It was a long letter, written in a careless, almost boyish hand on thin paper, and bore the address of "Orristown, Ireland." It was dated two days earlier, and began:

"DEAR MR. MILBANKE,--

"You will be very much surprised to get this, but I write for father, not for myself. He had a bad accident yesterday while out riding, and is terribly hurt and ill. The doctor from Carrigmore is with him all the time, and my aunt--as well as Nance and I; so he is well cared for. But he seems to get worse instead of better, and we are dreadfully frightened about him.

"There is one thing he constantly craves for--and that is to see you. Ever since that night, three years ago, when you and he quarrelled and you went away, I think he has been fretting about you. Of course, he has never spoken of it, but I don't think he has ever forgotten that he treated you badly.

"This morning he talked a great deal about the time when you and he were young together; so much so, that I asked him if he would like to see you. The moment I spoke his face lighted up, but then at once it clouded over again, and he muttered something about never giving any man the chance of refusing him a favour.

"Dear Mr. Milbanke asking you to come here, but I feel differently.

I would risk anything a hundred times over on the chance of bringing you to him. And if you are in London, please do come, if only for one night. Don't refuse, for he is very, very bad. Any time you send me a telegram, the trap can meet you either at Muskeere or Dunhaven.

"This is a dreadful letter, but I have been up all night, and scarcely know what I am writing.

"Answer as soon as possible,

"Yours,

"CLODAGH a.s.sHLIN."

Milbanke scanned the letter to the last line; then, as he reached the signature, the inertia that had pervaded his mind was suddenly dispersed. His own shock of sorrow and dismay, his own interrupted plans faded from his consideration; and in their place rose the picture of a great white house on the lonely Irish coast; of a sick--perhaps a dying--man; of two frightened children and a couple of faithful, inefficient servants. With an energy he had not evinced for years he crossed the room, stumbling over straps and parcels, and rang the bell with imperative haste.

When a surprised maid appeared at the door he turned to her with unwonted excitement.

"I have a telegram to send," he said; "one that must go at once."

The rest of that day, with its suddenly altered plans, its long railway journey from Paddington to New Milford, and its stormy night crossing from the latter point to the town of Waterford, was too beset with haste and confusion to contain any definite recollections for Milbanke.

It was not until he had taken his seat at eight o'clock next morning in the small and leisurely train that transports pa.s.sengers from Waterford to the seaport of Dunhaven that he found time to realise the significance of his journey; and not until he descended from his carriage at this latter station and was greeted by old Burke, the Orristown retainer, that he fully appreciated the gravity of the incident that had occasioned it.