CHAPTER XXXVI

THE COIL IN ITS BEGINNING

SOME twenty-eight years before the date of this tale James Randolph, the then owner of Castle Hill, with his wife, spent a winter in the south of France, being ordered there for health. At the same place, staying also, was his brother-in-law, Geoffry Keith. Keith's first wife, the sister of James, had died years earlier; and his second wife, "née" Cecil Reeves, was an attractive young woman.

Mrs. Randolph and Mrs. Keith became warm friends. Then, unexpectedly, Geoffry Keith died, leaving his widow totally unprovided for. Her child, Colin, was born before arrangements for her future could be discussed, and the Randolphs saw that she had everything she needed.

Six weeks after the birth of Colin Keith, Giles Randolph was born; and less than a month later Mrs. Randolph died. Her husband, distracted by the blow, decided to travel in the east. He implored the handsome young widow to take pity on his forlorn little child, and she responded with open arms.

"I shall be gone at least three years," he said, after explaining that, so long as she had charge of the boy, she should have annually the sum of eight hundred pounds. "By-and-by we must arrange something for your future, but I have no heart now for business. If you need more, write to Mr. Penrhyn. My boy must have the best of everything."

Mrs. Keith remained where she was till spring, then took the babes to Switzerland. She loved the Continent, and Randolph had left her free to follow her own devices. Mr. Penrhyn ran out to inspect the child, and wrote a good report to the father. "A pretty intelligent little chap, slight and pale, but healthy," he said.

Randolph never had this letter. An attack of fever carried him off, and Giles was an orphan.

Mr. Penrhyn already held the reins of government at Castle Hill. He was Giles' guardian, but no question existed about leaving the little boy where his father had placed him.

A second winter was passed in the south of France, the baby-boys flourishing. When spring arrived, they were about sixteen months old, bonny blue-eyed children—Giles slim and active, Colin sturdy and robust.

On account of gaieties which she did not like to miss, Mrs. Keith remained imprudently long in the south, and then she was met by the great temptation of her life; the fiery testing of will and principle which comes sooner or later to most, though with some it is spread, diluted, through many years, with others is concentrated into one tremendous pull. It came, as such trials often do, just so shaped as to make a fall easy.

Cecil Keith had not trained herself to be habitually true in word and deed, neither was she a woman of high integrity. James Randolph had not discovered this.

Giles, always sensitive to heat, failed in health, and was ordered to a cooler climate. Mrs. Keith started, travelling by easy stages for the sake of the little invalid; and when a day or two later the nurse fell ill, she was left behind. Mrs. Keith, feverishly anxious, would wait for nothing, but hurried on—perhaps too fast, for Giles grew worse. When two more stages had been accomplished, he sank so rapidly that she summoned a local German doctor, who told her all hope was at an end—Giles was dying.

He promised to call again in an hour or two; and she sat beside the bed, watching the small changed face, realising what this meant to herself. Giles dying, and the responsibility hers! For her own pleasure she had stayed in the south, when she ought to have gone north; and though it might be called only an error in judgment, she would be blamed.

Worse still—if Giles died, her income ceased. While he lived, she was comfortably off, and if he should grow to manhood, she might expect not to be left in the lurch. But his death meant the stoppage of her income. The estate would pass to a distant relative, and Mr. Penrhyn would be powerless.

She shrank with bitter dread from the thought of grinding poverty, and then came the temptation. At first a mere suggestion, almost formless, but it grew into shape. Why not transpose the boys' names? Why not put Colin for Giles, and Giles for Colin? If the little one recovered, the names could be reversed. If die he must, why should not her boy, as Giles, enjoy the wealth which otherwise must pass to strangers? It would mean ease for herself and him. And it need not be for always. Some day she would put things right—would slip out of it. She did not pause to consider how this might be possible.

The change looked simple. No one here knew her or the boys. Their nurse she could get rid of, sending a month's wages by post and dismissing her. Except Mr. Penrhyn and Mr. Dugdale, nobody from home had seen the children, and they not for months. Little ones alter so much in the first year or two that the exchange would never be detected. And if Giles got well, it would not last. It was a precautionary step only, in view of what might happen.

To the German doctor she had not mentioned that Giles was not her child; indeed, she recalled speaking of him as "my little boy." As to names, no difficulty existed. She had grown into the way of calling them "Mop" and "Top," seldom by their true names, and she could soon teach Colin to know himself as "Giles." It was all too fatally facile.

She did not look ahead, did not realise what the burden on her own conscience would be, but simply faced the present emergency, simply saw "wealth" and "poverty" thrown into the balance.

For an hour she wavered, and on the doctor's return she had not consciously made up her mind. But she had been playing with evil possibilities, and when he asked in German whether the two were twins, she found herself claiming the sick boy as her own, talking of the other as "her charge."

Terror then seized her. She had committed herself to a course of deceit, and no man could foretell whither it might lead.

Yet, when the doctor called a third time, she made no sign, took no step to undo what she had done.

All night the child seemed to be dying, but with morning there were tokens of a rally, and as hours passed this strengthened. The doctor would not believe himself mistaken, and still foretold a collapse, but he proved to be wrong. A young English doctor, Wallace by name, passing through the place, was called in to give a second opinion, and his was hopeful. He insisted upon a trained nurse, and telegraphed for one known to him. Mrs. Keith would have given much to avoid both doctor and nurse; but two or three English residents, hearing of a countrywoman in trouble, had called, and they arranged the whole, giving her no choice.

Of course doctor, nurse, and new acquaintances all believed Giles to be Colin, Colin to be Giles. The lie once told had to be repeated, and would have to be repeated, times without number.

At length the boy was pronounced out of danger, and Mrs. Keith found herself in a terrible position. It might be weeks before the little fellow could be moved. Moreover, soon after first arrival, she had written to Mr. Penrhyn, mentioning the severe illness of—not Giles but "Colin." She had woven a web around her own feet, and one way only of escape lay open, the way of confession.

To a proud nature, like hers, confession of such a deed seemed to lie beyond possibility.

She decided to wait, to see later what could be done. If the child grew well and strong, he must have his rights. In a few weeks she would get away from everybody, and would reverse her own work. Meanwhile, all she could do was to let things drift—a fatal policy!

The boy's recovery was tedious, and he clung to his new nurse, turning fractiously from Mrs. Keith. Mr. Wallace stayed longer than he had intended in the neighbourhood, and both he and the German doctor insisted on the child remaining where he was. Then Mr. Penrhyn appeared, and saw the children under their new names. He was not an astute man, and though he remarked how differently they had developed from what he would have expected, no suspicion entered his mind.

After this, reversion to the old order became a hundredfold more difficult, especially when Mr. Penrhyn, with new determination, insisted on the boy being brought to England and having a home near Castle Hill. Since he was guardian, Mrs. Keith dared not resist. It was evident that he no longer trusted her wisdom, after the mistake she had made in remaining so long in the south.

And still she said to herself that it was only for a while—that in time all must be put straight. Some way would open. Some opportunity would turn up. Speak now she "could" not! Shame herself in the eyes of her little world she "would" not! She did not see how perplexities would thicken, how her little world would widen, how explanation would become more impossible.

Thus soothing her conscience with the thought of "by-and-by," she became in a manner used to the state of affairs, though by fits and starts she underwent much misery. At seasons the deceit—the wrong to one child, the false position of the other—seemed awful beyond words. Then again for weeks she would acquiesce with a dull content, trying to persuade herself that things were just as well so, since Colin—the real Giles—was far from robust, and Giles—the real Colin—was vigorous in body and mind.

The little one's severe illness had altered him. In their infancy, though of different make, people had often said that the two might be taken for brothers. Nobody now spoke of them as alike, and this added to the extreme difficulty of reversion. No one who had seen them since that illness could be a second time deceived.

To make matters worse, the young doctor, Mr. Wallace, who had been called in to see the boy, took the practice at Castlemere, and thenceforward was always at hand. Perhaps it was hardly surprising, though he was not responsible, that Mrs. Keith detested him.

Thus coil within coil she was bound, and she drifted on till all idea of restitution was put off to a dim distance. Things were thus; and thus, she told herself, they had to remain.

In early days she had not been worried by fear of family likenesses. That came later, when she saw "Colin" fast expanding into a reproduction of the Randolph ancestor, inheriting the gift which she loathed, because she knew it to be a Randolph characteristic; when, too, she saw, year by year, her own son, known as Giles Randolph, growing into an exact copy of her brother, Jock Reeves, like in figure, in feature, in manner, in voice, even in handwriting. So marked was the latter resemblance that for years she had insisted on letters from her brother being addressed to her bankers', and forwarded to her under cover. Jock Reeves seldom wrote more than once a year, being a bad correspondent; and he had given in to the "whim," not troubling himself to oppose it.

But when he came home, and discovered that for no imaginable reason he was forbidden to present himself to her son or to Giles Randolph, matters became serious. She and her son were his only living relatives, and he had looked forward to being much with them. He was well off. He had planned spending the remainder of his years with her.

He had not written to announce his return to the old country. On first arrival in London, he learnt from her bankers that she was abroad, and that any letter coming from him was to be forwarded to a Thun address, there to wait till called for—a precaution doubtless taken because he usually wrote at about this date, for her birthday. Forthwith he travelled thither, took up his abode at Interlaken, sent a few lines to the address specified, and awaited a reply. That he had not long to wait was due to Mr. Forsyth's accidental discovery of his letter. It conveyed to Mrs. Keith her first intimation that the brother, whose advent she dreaded, was close at hand; a very "real" fainting-fit being the result.

A telegram from her next morning appointed an immediate meeting at Interlaken; and the outcome of this interview was that he found himself a tabooed individual, hysterically ordered never to show his face at Castle Hill, or to make the acquaintance of his nephew and his nephew's friend.

He demanded reasons in vain. For a time, he submitted, then came to the same conclusion as others—that she was "queer in the top-story;" and he decided to go to Castle Hill. If he should find the nephew and Randolph to be of her mind, he could but "sheer off."

With his appearance was levelled to the ground in one crash a structure of deceit, built up through twenty-seven years.

They had not been, could not be, happy years. They were shadowed by a perpetual dread. Hundreds of times she had bitterly regretted her own mad folly. But no way out of the tangled web had presented itself, save the one which she refused to face.

She did, indeed, keep in her mind a thought of final confession. Just at the last, when she had lived the life she preferred, when everybody would pity her, when she would not have to face earthly consequences—"then" she would speak out. It did not occur to her that she might not then be able to speak out, except in moments of fright, such as during the storm on the lake; and the impression made was wont to pass quickly.

More often she tried to think that it did not really matter; that Giles was quite as happy under the name of Colin; that his delicacy of health made him unfit for the position so ably filled by her son; that practically he had all he needed, since if he named a want it was supplied; that, after bringing up her own boy to ease and wealth, she would wrong him by speaking out. The latter was inconsistent with her proposed dying confession; but Mrs. Keith was not consistent. This way or that way she always reached the same conclusion, that the fiction must be continued.

One aim she had long had—to bring about a union between "Giles" and Phyllys. "Colin's" health was fragile. He might not be long-lived; and Phyllys stood next in succession. Should "Colin" die unmarried, the estate would by right pass to her; and if she were "Giles'" wife, she would then possess her own. It would matter little that she seemed in the eyes of the world to do so through her husband.

The incessant strain had told upon Mrs. Keith's health; and as time went by, hysterical tendencies amounted to something beyond hysteria. There was, no doubt, as more than one believed, a touch of "brain" in her excitement, in her powers of tortuous self-deception.

All these years, when recoiling with horror from the thought of exposure, the deepest dread in her mind had been lest Giles—her own boy, her Colin—should despise his mother. Anything rather than that! "His" contempt she could not endure.

But the look that broke her down, the look in those sombre blue eyes, with their drooping corners, which she loved, was not disdain. It was the overpowering shame, the bitter sorrow, that touched her heart; for she, his mother, had brought all this upon him, and she knew how her tale must look in the sight of the one being for whose sake she could almost have died. Not quite; a woman of her calibre dies—quite—for nobody. Self always ranks first. Still, she did love him passionately; and when she thought of her little child's clinging arms, and realised that she might have kept his loving trust in ever-growing measure to life's end, she could have cried with one of old, "My punishment is greater than I can bear."