“I wondered if it would ever be said,” said Graham. “When have hours held so much?”
“They are to hold more,” said Walter, in a low tone. “You must be ready for it.”
“It cannot be said yet,” said Simon, standing still and seeming to hold his voice from defining his words. “I must keep you for a while. There is something else to be said. It is I who must say it. It will take only a moment. It is what will follow, that may be long. I dread it. I have reason to. I have thought of it for twenty-four years. I see now that I have. I trusted the time might never come. But it is here, and we must face it. It is I who have brought it on us. It is I who face the most.”
“Then say it, my son,” said Julia. “Do not ask more of yourself and us. A word is soon said, and waiting for it must be what it is. We shall imagine more than the truth, and the picture may never quite fade. Let us face it and forget it. That is best.”
“If it can be so,” said Simon. “But it cannot be. It is because it cannot be forgotten, that it must be said. It throws its light on much that has been dark, on much that has been so today. You have felt the need of light. — Hamish is my son. He is Rhoda’s child and mine. We were together in my uncle’s house after their marriage. They did not live as man and wife. My uncle accepted the child as his. He was its legal father. He has been one in every sense. He will remain so. Hamish will be his heir. But we must know the truth that lies beneath. There can be no marriage between Hamish and my daughter. They are half-brother and sister as well as sisters’ children. The dangers would be too great.”
There was a pause.
“I thought my father was different,” said Hamish, as if the words broke out. “Not as other fathers were. I see it now. I see it all. But he will be my father.”
“I shall,” said Sir Edwin. “You will be my son. You have been so in spite of the difference. There has been no difference in you. We shall not change to each other. That is, you will not to me. For me of course there is no change.”
“Mother, you are my mother!” said Hamish.
“My son, how much more that I have harmed you! That I have taken from you something that was yours! That I have made for you the difference you have seen! I am doubly so.”
“Naomi, I am your father,” said Simon. “And more so for what you know.”
Naomi did not speak.
“We shall be the closer for the threat to us,” said Hamish, moving to her. “And it is no more than a threat. There is no need to act on a truth that might never have emerged. It would not have in most cases, should not have, to my mind. Many must lie unsaid. We can put it from us and go forward.”
There was a pause, as the denial of this seemed stronger, that it was silent.
“Simon, there has been this between us,” said Fanny. “This in your mind through all our years. The truth is taken from our marriage, more than if you had told it. You lost your inheritance. Now you have lost your wife. How much you have lost!”
“My dear, I should not have had you for a wife. Or I might not, and you know it. Your own words prove it, show the risk we should have run. And it was better that we should marry, for you as well as for me.”
“My sister!” said Rhoda. “How I have longed to tell you, needed your sympathy and your reproach! How much better I should have been for both! But it might have done harm to so many, prevented so much. It might have prevented much for you.”
“It might have been right to prevent it. The truth should have been allowed to take its course. But there are my five children. What is there for me to say?”
“That you are glad it did not take it,” said Simon, “glad you did not know. There is nothing else to be said.”
“My son,” said Julia, “I am always your mother. I am not less so for what I have heard. But I must say today what I never thought to say. I am glad your father is not with us.”
“If he were, nothing would have happened, nothing of good or ill. My uncle would not have married. Hamish would not exist. Fanny might not have wanted to leave her sister. It has all followed from his death. And we can hardly wish it all undone. And of course you are less my mother, when that is what you say to me, at this moment in your life and mine. I hope I may not be less your son.”
“I suppose you knew, Walter?” said Julia. “You have always known?”
“I knew before Hamish was born, before Uncle Edwin knew. You see it was my right.”
“When Uncle Edwin knew!” said Ralph, before he thought. “That must have been a moment.”
“It was not what you think,” said Walter.
“It was not,” said Simon. “And you can surely think again. Your great-uncle is what you know.”
“Ah, how I have found it!” said Rhoda. “How I find it still! How I look always to find it!”
“What have you to say to me, Graham?” said Simon.
“What one man must say to another, sir. I understand it, regret it, feel for you that it has had to be revealed. That is a piece of ill fortune many would escape.”
“I did not look for talk from man to man,” said Simon, after a pause. “Speak to me as a son to his father. That is what I meant.”
“Then I feel that your words have meant little, sir. And always less than they should have. I can hardly feel anything else, or expect to be believed, if I said it.”
“What have you to say to me, Ralph? Speak without temper, so that I can judge of it.”
“Very much what Graham has said, sir. It is the only thing we can say. I have thought you hard and self-righteous; and I now feel you were both, and should have been neither.”
“Hard and self-righteous! So that is what you feel we should not be,” said Simon, looking at his sons.
“This was only one stumble,” said Graham. “We must not judge it as more than it is.”
“Again as man to man,” said his father.
“Simon, if you ask for opinions, you will hear them,” said Fanny. “And what did you look to hear?”
“My Naomi, what do you feel?” said Simon.
“I think this should be forgotten, that it should not have been revealed. Men keep their early troubles to themselves. They behave as if they had not been. And in some times and places children of one father have married.”
“My dear, do not make it worse for me. It is bad enough. If you knew how I tried to take that view, how hardly I gave it up! It is for you, not for myself, that I have told the truth. For myself should I have done so? For myself I kept silence for twenty-four years. Thought of you has forced me to break it. And it was only one stumble, as my kind son has said.”
“I think he was kind, Father. I think you are not to them, that you often have not been.”
“Then be kind to me now. You judge the want of kindness. And it is true that I have been embittered by the turn of my life, and betrayed it in dealing with theirs. Show me kindness now in my need of it.”
“Why were you so embittered? Hamish was your son. And everything would have gone to a son in the end.”
“I will tell the truth. I wanted for myself what was always to have been mine. The thought was the foundation of my boyhood. And I had looked to leave it to an acknowledged son. You think it all looms too large to me. I know it does. I do not deny or explain it. I accept it even from myself. I must be what I am.”
“I do not want the inheritance,” said Hamish. “I have not cared for the place in that measure. Your feeling for it makes it yours. And I have no real right to it. Yours is the first claim. When my father dies — you know whom I mean by my father — he will leave it to you, and make me a small provision. My needs will be slight. I shall never marry, as I cannot marry Naomi. I could not accept anyone else in her stead. I could never think of her as my sister. It is no help to me to feel she is that. It startles me that anyone should think so. That is my last word, the only one I have to say.”