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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d27598c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #50188 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50188) diff --git a/old/50188-0.txt b/old/50188-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f8db198..0000000 --- a/old/50188-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8719 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Invisible Foe, by Louise Jordan Miln - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Invisible Foe - A Story Adapted from the Play by Walter Hackett - -Author: Louise Jordan Miln - -Release Date: October 12, 2015 [EBook #50188] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVISIBLE FOE *** - - - - -Produced by Mardi Desjardins & Alex White and the online -Distributed Proofreaders Canada team -(http://www.pgdpcanada.net) from page images generously -made available by HathiTrust Digital Library -(https://www.hathitrust.org/digital_library) and Google -Books - - - - - - THE - - INVISIBLE FOE - - A STORY ADAPTED FROM THE PLAY - BY WALTER HACKETT - - BY - LOUISE JORDAN MILN - (MRS. GEORGE CRICHTON MILN) - - - - - - NEW YORK - FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY - PUBLISHERS - - - - - _Copyright, 1918, 1920, by_ - FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY - _All rights reserved_ - - - - - * * * * * - - “_Blind, blind, blind_” - - * * * * * - - CONTENTS - - BOOK I The Children - BOOK II The Dark - BOOK III The Quest - BOOK IV The Light - - Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook. - - - - - BOOK I - - - THE CHILDREN - - - CHAPTER I - -Stephen lay on his stomach, one sharp elbow comfortable in a velvet bed -of moss, his chin cupped in his palm, his beautifully shaped head thrown -back, his alert face lifted to the sky, his eager eyes following -hungrily the flight of a bird. - -Hugh, crunched up against the big oak tree, was making a chain of -blossoms, and making it awkwardly enough, with many a restless boy-sigh, -many a destruction of delicate spring wild flower. - -Helen was playing by herself. - -Nothing could have been more characteristic of the three children than -their occupations of the moment. - -Stephen usually was watching birds fly, when he was out of doors, and -birds were to be seen. And the only time his uncle Richard had ever laid -a hand (except in rare caress or in approbation) on the orphan boy, had -been when Stephen, three months after his arrival at Deep Dale, had -opened its cage, and lost Helen her pet canary—all because he “wanted -to see just how he flies.” - -“And I did see, too,” he had told Hugh an hour after his stoically -endured caning. “It was worth more than a few smacks. Bet I can fly too, -some day. You wait.” - -Hugh had said nothing. He was used to Stephen and Stephen’s vivid -ambitions. And he was stolid. - -Stephen had suffered his slight chastisement proudly—if not quite -gladly—but with each faltering fall of his uncle’s cane a seed of -bitterness had entered the child’s soul. He never had felt the same to -“Uncle Dick” since—which was no small pity, for the orphan boy was -love-hungry, and Richard Bransby his best friend. - -The small punishment bred deceit but worked no cure. The men in the -fowl-yard could have told sad tales of staid hens aggravated to -indignant, fluttering flight, and the old gardener of peacocks goaded to -rise from their self-glorified strutting and preening to fly stiff and -screaming the few spaces which were their farthest. But neither the farm -hands nor the gardener told. Why—it is not easy to say. They did not -particularly like Stephen—few people did. But they feared him. He -mastered their wills. A solitary child, not half so happy as childhood -has every right to be, the boy met few he did not influence sharply. His -was a masterful nature. Little altogether escaped his subtle dominance. - -Stephen was not essentially cruel. His cruelty was corollary and -accessory to his passion—a passion for power and for the secrets of -aerial skill. He bore the birds no ill-will. He simply was obsessed to -see their flight, and to study it, garnering up in his odd, isolated, -accretive child’s mind—and heart—every vibrant curve and beat of their -wings, every angle and bend of their bodies. - -Stephen usually was watching the flight of a bird, or scheming some -mechanical imitation of it. - -Hugh usually was doing something for wee Helen, doing it with perspiring -and sighful awkwardness and for scant thanks—or for none. - -Helen usually was playing by herself, and pretending, as now, to be -sharing the sport of some playfellow, perfectly tangible to her, but -invisible, non-existent to the boys—a form of persistent “make believe” -which greatly amused Hugh and as greatly irritated Stephen. - -“Don’t pretend like that; it’s a simpleton way of going on,” the older -boy called to her now, without moving his head or his eyes. - -“It’s nothing of the kind,” the girl replied scornfully. “You’re blind, -that’s what’s the matter—blinder’n a bat, both of you.” And she -continued to laugh and chat with her “make-believe” playmates. - -An elfin child herself, the children of her own delicate myth did seem -the more suitable fellows for her dainty frolic than either queer -Stephen or stolid, clumsy Hugh. - -The little girl was very pretty, a queenly little head heavy with vivid -waves of gold-red hair, curved red lips eloquent of the history of -centuries of womanhood, wide blue eyes, and the prettiest hands and arms -that even feminine babyhood (and English babyhood, Celtic-dashed at -that) had ever yet achieved; every pink-tipped finger a miracle, and -each soft, beautifully molded elbow, dimpled and dented with witching -chinks that simply clamored for kisses—and often got them; a sunny, -docile child, yielding but unafraid, quiet and reserved, but hiding -under its rose and snow robe of provocatively pretty flesh, a will that -never swerved: the strongest will at Deep Dale—and that says everything -of it—for both Stephen Pryde, fourteen years old, and his uncle, -nearing fifty, had stronger wills than often fall to us weak mortals of -drift and vacillation. These two masculine strengths of will lay rough -and prominent on the surface and also sank soul-deep. The uncle’s never -abated. Circumstances and youth curbed the boy’s, at times—but neither -chilled nor softened it. Helen’s will lay deep and still. Her pretty, -smiling surface never showed it by so much as a gentle ripple. She kept -it as a sort of spiritual “Sunday best” laid away in the lavender and -tissue of her secret self. As yet only her old Scotch nurse even -suspected its existence and of all her little, subservient world, only -that old Scotch nurse neither laughed at Helen’s dream friends—nor -scoffed. In her sweet six years of life her father’s will and hers had -never clashed. That, when the almost inevitable clash of child and -parent, old and young, cautious experience and adventurous inexperience, -came, Helen’s should prove the stronger will, and hers the victory, -would have seemed absurd and incredible to all who knew them—to every -one except the nurse. - -Stephen and Hugh, in their different boyish ways, loved the girl-child, -and wooed her. - -She tolerated them both, patronized, tyrannized, and cared little for -either. - -Hugh was thick-set and had sweaty hands. Often he bored her. - -Stephen’s odd face, already at fourteen corrugated by thought, ambition -and strident personality painfully concealed, repelled her—even -frightened her a little, a very little; for her cherished life and -serene soul gave her little gift of fear. - -Their wills clashed daily—but almost always over things about which she -cared little or less than little, and did not trouble to be insistent. -She yielded over such trifles—out of indifference and almost -contemptuous good-nature sheerly. And the boy, “blind” here at least, -misread it. But on one point Stephen never could prevail against her. -She would neither renounce her invisible playmates nor even concede him -that they were indeed “make-believe.” - -Her will and Hugh’s never clashed. How could they? He had no will but -hers. - -Hugh was her slave. - -Stephen, loving her as strongly and as hotly, sought to be her master. -No conscious presumption this: it was his nature. - -Deep Dale was all simmering blue and green to-day—with softening -shadows and tones of gray; blue sky, green grass, trees green-leafed, -gray-trunked—green paths, gray and green-walled, blue roofed, the early -spring flowers (growing among the grasses but sparsely as yet, and being -woven, too often broken-necked, into Hugh’s devoted jewelering) too tiny -of modest bud and timid bloom to speck but most minutely the picture -with lemon, violet or rose. The little girl’s wealth of red hair made -the glory and the only emphatic color of the picture. Hugh’s hair was -ash brown and dull—Stephen’s darker, growing to black—but as dull. -Even the clothes of these three children painted in perfectly with the -blue and green of this early May-day, Nature’s spring-song. The lads, -not long out of mourning, were dressed in sober gray. Helen’s frocks -came from Hanover Square, when they did not come from the _Rue de -Rivoli_, and to-day her little frock of turquoise cashmere was -embroidered and sashed with green as soft and tender as the pussy -willows and their new baby leafage. - -But the sun—a pale gray sun at best all day—was slipping down the -sky’s blue skirt. Helen, tiring of her elvish play, or wholesomely -hungry for “cambric” tea and buns, slid off the tree trunk, smiled back -and waved her hand—to nothing, and turned towards the house. Hugh -trotted after her, not sorry to suspend his trying toil, not sorry to -approach cake and jam, but carrying his stickily woven tribute with him. -But Stephen, enthralled, almost entranced, lay still, his fine chin -cupped in his strong hand, his eyes—and his soul—watching a flock of -birds flying nestward towards the night. - - - CHAPTER II - -Richard Bransby had few friends because he tolerated few. Unloving -towards most, rather than unlovable, his life and his personality cut -deep, but in narrow channels. To him pictures were—canvas and paint, -and a considerable item of expense; for he was too shrewd a business man -to buy anything cheap or inferior. Knowing his own limitations as few -men have the self-searching gift to do, he took no risks with his -strenuously earned sovereigns, lavishly as he spent them. He spent -magnificently, but he never misspent. He had too much respect to do -that—respect for his money and for himself and for the honest, -relentless industry with which that self had amassed that same money. He -never selected the pictures for which he paid, nor even their frames. -Latham did all that for him. Horace knew almost as much about pictures -and music as he did about nerves, and could chat with as much suave -authority about Tintoretto and Liszt, _motif_ and _chiaro-oscuro_ as he -could about diphtheria or Bell’s palsy, and was as much at his old -friend’s service in matters of art as in matters of cerebellum and -aorta. Bransby cared nothing for horses, and liked dogs just “well -enough”—out of doors. He was a book-worm—with one author, scarcely -more. He was indifferent to his dinner, and he cared nothing at all for -flowers. This last seems strange and contradictory, for the women he had -loved had each been peculiarly flowerlike. But who shall attempt to -gauge or plumb the contradictorinesses of human nature, or be newly -surprised at them? - -Richard Bransby had loved three women passionately, and had lost them -all. He was no skeptic, but he was rebel. He could not, or he would not, -forgive God their death, and he grudged the Heaven, to which he doubted -not they had gone, their presence. Nothing could reconcile or console -him—although two strong affections (and beside which he had no other) -remained to him; and with them—and his books—he patched his life and -kept his heart just alive. - -He loved the great ship-building business he had created, and steered -through many a financial tempest, around rocks of strikes and quicksands -of competition, into an impregnably fortified harbor of millionairedom, -with skill as devoted and as magnificent as the skill of a Drake or the -devotion of a Scott, steering and nursing some great ship or tiny bark -through the desperate straits of battle or the torture perils of polar -ice floes. - -And he loved Helen whom he had begotten—loved her tenderly for her own -sweet, lovable sake, loved her more many times, and more quickly, for -the sake of her mother. - -He cared nothing for flowers, but he had recognized clearly how markedly -the three women he had adored (for it had amounted to that) had -resembled each a blossom. His mother had been like a “red, red rose that -blooms in June”—a Jacqueminot or a Xavier Olibo. And it was from her he -had inherited the vivid personality of his youth. She had died -suddenly—when he had been in the City, chained even then to the great -business he was creating—boy of twenty-three though he was—and his hot -young heart was almost broken; but not quite, for Alice, his wife, had -crept into it then, a graceful tea-rose-like creature, white, -pink-flushed, head-heavy with perfume. Violet, his only sister, had been -a pale, pretty thing, modest and sweet as the flower of her name. Helen -he thought was like some rare orchid, with her elusive piquant features, -her copper-red hair, her snow face, her curved crimson lips, her -intangible, indescribable charm—irregular, baffling. - -Alice had died at Helen’s birth, but he blamed God and turned from Him, -blamed not or turned from the small plaintive destroyer who laughed and -wailed in its unmothered cradle. The young wife’s death had unnerved, -and had hardened him too. It injured him soul-side and body: and the -hurt to his physical self threatened to be as lasting and the more -baneful. A slight cardiac miscarriage caught young Dr. Latham’s trained -eye on the very day of Alice Bransby’s death—and the disturbance it -caused, controlled for six silent years by the one man’s will and the -other man’s skill, had not disappeared or abated. Very slowly it grimly -gained slight ground, and presaged to them both the possibility of worse -to come. - -Only yesterday Richard Bransby had taken little Helen on his knee, and -holding her sunny head close to his heart had talked to her of her -mother. He often held the child so—but he rarely spoke to her of the -mother—and of that mother to no one else did he ever speak. Only his -own angry heart and the long hungry nights knew what she had been to -him—only they and his God. God! who must be divine in pity and -forgiveness towards the rebel rage of husbands so sore and so faithful. - -Yesterday, too, he had told the child of how like a flower his Alice, -her mother, had been, and seeing how she caught at the fancy (odd in so -prosaic a man) and liked it, he had gone on to speak of his own mother, -her “granny,” for all the world like a deep, very red rose, and of -Violet, her aunt. - -Helen wriggled her glowing head from the tender prison of his hands, -looked up into his sharp, tired face, clapped her own petal-like little -palms, and said with a gurgling laugh and a dancing wink of her fearless -blue eyes, “And you—Daddy—are just like a flower, too!” - -He shook her and called her “Miss Impudence.” - -“Oh! but yes, you are. I’ll tell you, you are that tall ugly cactus that -Simmons says came from Mexicur—all big prickles and one poor little -lonely flower ’way up at the top by itself, grown out of the ugly leaves -and the ugly thorns, and not pretty either.” - -Bransby sighed, and caught her quickly closer to him again—one poor -insignificant attempt of a blossom lonely, alone; solitary but for -thorns, and only desirable in comparison with them, and because it was -the flowering—such as it was—of a plant exotic and costly: a magenta -rag of a flower that stood for much money, and for nothing else! - -The baby went on with the parable—pretty as he had made it, grotesqued -now by her. “An’ Aunt Carline’s anover flower, too. She’s a daleeah.” - -Bransby laughed. Caroline Leavitt was rather like a dahlia; neat, -geometrically regular, handsome, cut and built by rule, fashionable, -prim but gorgeous, as far from poetry and sentiment as anything a flower -could be. - -Mrs. Leavitt was his widowed cousin and housekeeper—called “Aunt” by -the children. Richard and Violet had been the only children of John and -Cora Bransby. - -Violet, several years younger than Richard, had married six years -earlier—married a human oddity, half-genius, half-adventurer, -impecunious, improvident, vain. He had misused and broken her. His death -was literally the only kindness he had ever done her—and it had killed -her—for weak-womanlike she had loved him to the end. Perhaps such -weakness is a finer, truer strength—weighed in God’s scales—than -man-called strength. - -Violet Pryde, dying five years after Alice’s death, left two children; -the boys playing with six-year-old Helen under the oak trees. Bransby -had been blind to his sister’s needs while Pryde had lived; but indeed -she had hidden them with the silence, the dignity and the deft, quiet -subterfuge of such natures—but at her husband’s death Bransby had -hastened to ask, as gently as he could (and to the women he loved he -could be gentleness itself), “How are you off? What do you need? What -would you like best? What may I do?” pressing himself to her as suitor -rather than almoner. But she had refused all but friendship, indeed -almost had refused it, since it had never been given her dead. Her -loyalty survived Pryde’s disloyal life, and even dwarfed and stunted her -mother-instinct to do her utmost for her boys: her boys and Pryde’s. But -her own death had followed close upon her husband’s, and then Richard -Branbsy had asserted himself. He had gathered up into his own capable -hands the shabby threads of her affairs—mismanaged for years, but—even -so—too scant to be tangled, and the charge of her two orphaned boys. - -He had brought Stephen and Hugh at once to Deep Dale and had established -them there on an almost perfect parity with Helen—a parity impinged by -little else than her advantage of sex and charm and presumable heirship. - -Such was—in brief—the home and the home folk of Deep Dale, the -millionaire shipbuilder’s toy estate a mile or two from Oxshott. - -And Helen ruled it—and them. - -Caroline Leavitt housekept, but small Helen reigned. Her reign was no -ephemeral sovereignty—not even a constitutional queenship; it was -autocracy gracious and sunshiny, but all of autocracy for all that. -Helen ruled. - - - CHAPTER III - -Richard Bransby had amassed a fortune and perfected a fad, but he had -amassed no friends. In the thirty-five years in which he had gathered -and nursed his fortune (for he began at fifteen) he had made but the one -friend—Latham. And even this sole friendship was largely professional -and in small degree quick or vibrant. - -Helen might have had twenty playmates, but she greatly cared for none -but her dear “make believes,” and tolerated no others but her cavalierly -treated cousins. - -Mrs. Leavitt gave tea to the well-to-do of the neighborhood, and took it -of them. Very occasionally she and Richard dined with them alternately -as hosts and guests. But none of it ran to friendship, or shaped towards -intimacy. She was too fussy a woman for friendship, he too embittered -and too arrogant a man. - -The vicinity of Claygate and Oxshott teemed with the stucco and ornate -wood “residences” of rich stockbrokers and successful business -men—living elaborately in the lovely countryside—but not of it: of -London still, train-catching, market-watching, silk-hatted, -bridge-playing. - -Bransby rarely hatted in silk, and he preferred Dickens to bridge. He -nodded to his rich fellow-villagers, but he clasped them no hand-clasp. - -He, too, was in the country but not of it, he too was Londoner to the -core; but both in a sense quite different from them. - -Deep Dale was a beautiful excrescence—but an excrescence—an elaborate -florescence of his wealth, but he had never felt it “home,” except -because Alice had rather liked it, and never would feel it “home” again -except as Helen and his books might grow to make it so. - -There was a flat, too, in Curzon Street Alice had liked it rather more -than she had Deep Dale, and while she lived he had too; except that they -had been more alone, and in that much more together, at Oxshott, and for -that he had always been grateful to Deep Dale, and held it, for that, in -some tenderness still. And Helen had been born there. - -But to him “Home” meant a dingy house in Marylebone, in which he had -been born and his mother died. He avoided seeing it now (an undertaker -tenanted the basement and the first floor, a dressmaker, whose -_clientèle_ was chiefly of the slenderly-pursed _demimonde_, the other -two floors), but he still held it in his stubborn heart for “home.” - -In business Bransby was hard, cold and implastic. He had great talent in -the conduct of his affairs, indefatigable industry, undeviating -devotion. Small wonder—or rather none—that he grew rich and steadily -richer. But had he had the genius to rule kindlier, to be friend as well -as master, to win, accept and use the friendship of the men he employed -(and now sometimes a little crushed of their best possibility of service -by the ruthlessness of his rule and by the unsympathy of his touch), his -might well have grown one of the gigantic, wizard fortunes. - -Even as things were, Morton Grant, head and trusted clerk, probably -attained nearer to friendship with Richard Bransby than did any one else -but Latham. - -For Grant nothing was relaxed. He was dealt with as crisply and treated -as drastically as any office boy of the unconsidered and driven all. -Bransby’s to order; Grant’s to obey. But, for all that, the employer -felt some hidden, embryonic kindliness for the employee. And the clerk -was devoted to the master: accepted the latter’s tyranny almost -cordially, and resented it not even at heart or unconsciously. - -The two men had been born within a few doors of each other on the same -long, dull street. That was a link. - -Grant cherished and doted on the business of which he was but a servant -as much as Bransby did—not more, because more was an impossibility. He -rose for it in the morning. He lay down for it at night. He rested—so -far as he did rest—on the Sabbath and on perforced holidays for it. He -ate for it. He dressed for it. He went to Margate once a year, second -class, for it. That was a link. - -Unless it involves some form of rivalry—as cricket, competitive -business, acting, popular letters, desire for the same woman, two men -cannot live for the selfsame thing without it in some measure breeding -in them some tinge of mutual liking. - -And these two reserved, uncommunicative men _had_ loved the same woman, -and contrary to rule, that too was a link—perhaps the strongest of the -three—though Bransby had never even remotely suspected it. - -Morton Grant could not remember when he had not loved Violet Bransby. He -had yearned for her when they both wore curls and very short dresses. He -had loved her when, short-sighted and round-shouldered then as now, he -had been in her class at dancing school and in the adjacent class at the -Sunday School, in which the pupils, aged from four to fourteen, had been -decently and discreetly segregated of sex. He had loved her on her -wedding-day, and wept the hard scant tears of manhood defeated, denied -and at bay, until his dull, weak eyes had been bleared and red-rimmed, -and his ugly little button of a nose (he had almost none) had flamed -gin-scarlet. And for that one day the beloved business had been to him -nothing. He had loved her when she lay shrouded in her coffin—and now, -a year after, he loved her dust in its grave—and all so silently that -even she had never sensed it. For the old saying is untrue: a woman does -not _always_ know. - -This poor love of his was indeed a link between the man and his -master—and all the stronger because Richard had been as suspicionless -as Violet herself. For Bransby would have resented it haughtily, but -less and less hotly than he had resented her marriage with that -“mountebank” (the term is Bransby’s and not altogether just)—but of the -two he would greatly have preferred Grant as a brother-in-law. - -Under Helen’s sway, Grant had never come. She was not Violet’s child. He -would rather even that Bransby were childless and his fortune in entire -keeping for Violet’s boys. For herself he neither liked nor disliked the -little girl. But he was grateful to her for being a girl. That left the -business undividedly open for Stephen and Hugh—for their future -participation and ultimate management at least. And he hoped that of so -large a fortune an uncle so generous to them, and so fond of Violet, -would allot the brothers some considerable share. - -Unlike Mr. Dombey and many other self-made millionaires, Richard Bransby -had never wished for a son. Not for treble his millions would he have -changed her of sex: Helen satisfied him—quite. - -And perhaps unconsciously he was some trifle relieved that no son, -growing up to man’s assertion, could rival or question his sole headship -of “Bransby’s.” - - - CHAPTER IV - -As Helen and Hugh came singing up the path, Bransby was driving Grant -from the door. It was no friendliness that had led him to speed his -visitor so far, but a desire to see if Helen were not coming. The sun -was setting, and the father thought it high time she came indoors. - -Grant was in disgrace. He had come unbidden, forbidden, in fact—and so -unwelcome. - -Advised by Latham (still a youthful, but daily growing famous physician) -and enforced by his own judgment, Bransby was taking a short holiday. -Thorough in all things, the merchant had abandoned his business affairs -and their conduct entirely—for the moment. Grant had been ordered to -manage and decide everything unaided until the master’s return, and by -no means to intrude by so much as a letter or a telegram. - -He had disobeyed. - -That it was the first turpitude of thirty years of implicit, almost -craven, fealty in no way tempered its enormity. “Preposterous!” had been -Bransby’s greeting. “Preposterous,” was his good-by. - -Something had gone wrong at the office, or threatened to go wrong, so -important that the faithful old dog had felt obliged to come for his -master’s personal and immediate decision. But he had come trembling. For -his pains he had had abuse and reprimand. But he had gained his point. -He had got his message through, and learned Bransby’s will. And he was -going away—back to his loved drudgery, not trembling, but alert and -reassured. - -And though Bransby abused, secretly he approved. The link was -strengthened. - -Bransby was angry—but also he was flattered. He was not, concerning his -business at least, and a few other things, altogether above flattery. -Who is? Are you? - -In his quaint way he had some interior warm liking for his commonplace -factotum. He trusted him unreservedly; and trust begets liking more -surely and more quickly than pity begets love. After Horace Latham, -Morton Grant stood to Bransby for all of human friendship and of living -comradeship. - -Bransby had adopted Violet’s boys, out of love for her and out of a -nepotism that was conscience rather than instinct—and, too, it was -pride. - -They had been with him nearly a year now, and because he counted them as -one of his assets, possible appanages of his great business—and because -of their daily companionship with Helen—he watched them keenly. He did -not suspect it, as yet, but both little fellows were creeping slowly -into a corner of the heart that still beat true enough and human under -his surface of granite and steel. And Stephen began to interest him -much. Indisputably Stephen Pryde was interesting. He had personality -beyond Nature’s average dole to each individual of that priceless though -dangerous quality. And the personality of the boy, in its young way, had -no slight resemblance to that of the uncle. Stephen was an eccentric -in-the-making, Richard an eccentric made and polished. Each hid his -eccentricity under intense reserve and a steely suavity of bearing. That -this should be so in the experienced man of fifty, disciplined by time, -by experience and by personal intention, was natural, and not unusual in -such types. That it was so in the small boy untried and untutored was -extraordinary—it spoke much of force and presaged of his future large -things good or bad, whichever might eventuate, and one probably as apt -to eventuate as the other, and, whichever came, to come in no small -degree. And truly the lad had force even now: perhaps it was his most -salient quality, and stood to him for that useful gift—magnetism—which -he somewhat lacked. - -As Grant went out the two children came in. Helen took her father’s -hand, and led him back to the room he had just left—and Hugh followed -her doglike. The word is used in no abject sense, but in its noblest. - -“Ring the bell,” Richard said to the boy, sitting down in the big chair -to which his tiny mistress had propelled him. She climbed into her -father’s lap and snuggled her radiant head against his arm. - -“Light the fire,” Bransby ordered the maid who answered the bell almost -as it rang. Bells always were answered promptly in Richard Bransby’s -house. In some ways Deep Dale was more of the office or counting-house -type than of the home-type, and had been so, at least, since Alice -Bransby’s death. - -But it was a pleasant place for all that, if somewhat a stiff, formal -casket for so dainty a jewel as the red-headed child who reigned there, -and life ran smoothly rather than harshly in its walls and its gates. - -Certainly this was a pleasant room; and it was the master’s own room. - -The fire took but an instant to catch. It was well and truly laid, and -scientifically nice in its proportions and arrangement of paper, -anthracite and ship’s-logs. - -If the novels of Charles Dickens had pride of place as Bransby’s one -fad, as they certainly had pride of place on his room’s book-full -shelves, open fires came near to being a minor fad. He was inclined to -be cold. - -But the late afternoon was growing chilly, and little Helen watched the -red and orange flames approvingly as they licked and leapt through the -chinks of the fuel. - -Hugh, a stocky, tweed-clad boy, as apt to be too warm as was his uncle -to be too cold, lay down on the floor at a discreet distance from the -hearth, but not unsociably far from the armchair. - -He did not move when Mrs. Leavitt came in, but he smiled at her -confidently, and she smiled back at him. - -Stephen, had he been there, would have risen and moved her chair, or -brought her a footstool, and she would have thanked him with a smile a -little less affectionate than the one she had just given negligent Hugh. - -As she sat down she glanced about the large room anxiously. Then she -sighed happily and fell to crocheting contentedly. Really the room was -quite tidy. One book lay open—face down—on a table, but nothing else -was awry, and that she would put in its place presently, when Richard -carried Helen up to the nursery, as at bedtime he always did. Two dolls, -one very smart, one very shabby, lay in shockingly latitudinarian -attitudes on the chesterfield. But those she could not touch: it was -forbidden. - -Caroline Leavitt was a notable housewife, but sadly fussy. But she -curbed her own fussiness considerably in Richard’s presence, and what of -it she could not curb he endured with a good humor not commonly -characteristic of him, for he appreciated its results of order and -comfort. He was an orderly man himself, and it was only by his books -that they often annoyed each other. He rarely left anything else about -or out of place. - -She very much wished that he strewed those on chair and window-seat less -often, and he very much wished that she would leave them alone. But they -managed this one small discord really quite admirably and amicably. To -do him justice he never was reading more than one volume at a time. To -do her justice she never moved that one except to put it primly where it -belonged on the shelves. And he knew the exact dwelling-spot of every -book he owned—and so did she. They were many, but not too many—and he -read them all—his favorites again and again. She never opened one of -them, but she kept their covers burnished and pleasant to touch and to -hold. There were five editions of Dickens, and Bransby was reading for -the tenth time his favorite author from the great-hearted -wizard-of-pathos-and-humor’s Alpha of “Boz” to his unfinished Omega of -“Edwin Drood”—Bransby’s book of the moment was “David Copperfield.” He -had been reading a passage that appealed to him particularly when he had -been interrupted by Grant’s intrusion. That had not served to soften the -acerbity of the employer’s “Preposterous!” - -“And what have you been doing?” Richard asked the dainty bundle on his -knee. - -“Playing.” - -“With your cousins?” - -She shook an emphatic head, and her curls glowed redder, more golden in -the red and gold of the fire’s reflection. “Wiv Gertrude.” - -Mrs. Leavitt stirred uncomfortably. But the father laughed tolerantly. -He regarded all his daughter’s vagaries (she had several) as part of the -fun of the fair, and quite charming. She rarely could be led to speak of -her “make-believe” playmates, but he knew that they all had names and -individualities, and that “Gertrude” was first favorite. And he knew -that many children played so with mates of their own spirit’s finding. -Gertrude seemed a virtuous, well-behaved young person, quite a suitable -acquaintance for his fastidious daughter. - -Servants carried high-tea in just then, and Stephen slipped into the -room with it. - -Caroline Leavitt rolled up her crocheting disapprovingly. She detested -having food carried all over the house and devoured in inappropriate -places, and she disliked high-tea. Crumbs got on the Persian carpet and -cream on the carved chairs, and once, when the hybrid refection had been -served in the drawing-room, jam had encrusted the piano. Caroline had -gained a prize for “piano proficiency” in her girlhood’s long-ago. Every -day at four-fifteen it was her habit to commemorate that old victory by -playing at least a few bars of the Moonlight Sonata. For some time after -the episode of the jam, whenever she touched the instrument’s ivory, -small bubbles of thickly boiled blackberry and apple billowed up on to -her manicured nails and her rings. No—she did not approve of -“high-tea”—and _such_ high-tea “all over the house.” But this was the -children’s hour at Deep Dale, and the children’s feast—and wherever -Helen chanced to be at that hour, there that meal was served. Helen -willed it so. Richard Bransby willed it so. Against such an adamant -combine of power and of will-force determined and arrogant, Caroline -knew herself a mere nothing, and she wisely withheld a protest she -realized hopeless. - -So now, she laid her lace-work carefully away, and addressed herself to -the silver tea-pot. And she did it in a cheerful manner. She was not a -profound woman, but she was a wise one. The unprofound are often very -wise. And this is especially true of women. - - - CHAPTER V - -It was not a boisterous meal. There was not a naturally noisy person -there. Bransby was too cold, Stephen too sensitive, Hugh too heavy, to -be given to the creation of noise. Mrs. Leavitt thought it bad form, and -she was just lowly enough of birth to be tormentedly anxious about good -form. And she was inclined to be fat. Helen was ebullient at times, but -never noisily so; her voice and her motions, her mirth and her -reprovings, were all silvery. - -It was a homely hour, and they were all in homely and friendly mood. But -it was Stephen who made himself useful. It was Stephen who remembered -that Aunt Caroline preferred buttered toast to cream sandwiches, and he -carried her the plate on which the toast looked hottest and crispest. -And it was Stephen who checked her hand unobtrusively when she came near -to putting sugar in Bransby’s tea. - -Helen had slipped from her father’s knee—she was a hearty little -thing—and motioned Hugh to put one of a nest of tables before the chair -she had selected, and dragged close to Richard’s. - -“And what have you been doing all afternoon?” he asked Stephen, as the -boy brought him the cake. - -“Thinking.” - -“Story,” Helen said promptly, through a mouthful of cream and cocoanut -“You wus just watching the birds.” - -“Yes, so I was,” the boy said gently, “and thinking about them.” - -“What?” demanded Bransby. - -“Thinking how stupid it was to be beaten by birds.” - -“Beaten?” - -“They fly. We can’t.” - -“I see. So you’d like to fly.” - -“I’m not sure. I think I might. But I’d jolly well like to be _able_ -to.” - -The man followed the theme up with the boy. In his stern heart Hugh had -already found a warmer place than Stephen had, and Bransby’s kindliness -to the brothers was as nothing compared to his love of Helen. But it -was—of the three—to Stephen that he talked most often and longest, and -with a seriousness he rarely felt or showed in talk with the others. -Stephen Pryde interested his uncle keenly. Bransby did not think Hugh -interesting, and Helen not especially so—charming (he felt her charm, -and knew that others did who lacked a father’s prejudiced -predisposition), but not notably interesting as a mentality or even as a -character. - -She was not an over-talkative child. Bransby suspected that also she was -not over-thoughtful. And he was quite right. She felt a great deal: she -thought very little. And her small thinkings were neither accurate, -searching nor synthetic. - -But Stephen thought much and keenly, and the boy talked well, but not -too well. Stephen Pryde made few mistakes. When he did he would probably -make bad ones. He was not given to small blunders. And such few mistakes -as he did make he was gifted with agility to cover up and retrieve -finely. Richard enjoyed talking with Stephen. - -Helen was not interested in the flight of birds, and still less in its -possible application to affairs of mercantile profit, or of national -power. She interrupted them at a tense and interesting turn, and neither -the man nor the boy resented it. - -“What have you been doing?” she demanded of her father. - -“Reading ‘David Copperfield’ until Grant came.” - -“Is it a nice book?” - -“Yes—very.” - -“Is it a story book?” - -“Yes.” - -“Then I’ll let you read me some, and see if I like it.” - -Bransby pointed to the volume, and Stephen brought it to him, still open -at the passage he had been reading when his clerk had interrupted him. - -“Shall I begin at the beginning?” - -“No—I mayn’t like it. Do a bit just where you wus. Wait, till I get -back,” and she climbed daintily on to his knee. - -And Bransby read, smiling:—“‘“We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I -know,” I replied, “and I dare say we say and think a good deal that is -rather foolish. But we love one another truly, I am sure. If I thought -Dora could ever love anybody else, or cease to love me; or that I could -ever love anybody else, or cease to love her; I don’t know what I should -do—go out of my mind, I think?” “Ah, Trot!” said my aunt, shaking her -head, and smiling gravely, “blind, blind, blind!” “Some one that I know, -Trot,” my aunt pursued, after a pause, “though of a very pliant -disposition, has an earnestness of affection in him that reminds me of -poor Baby. Earnestness is what that Somebody must look for, to sustain -him and improve him, Trot. Deep, downright, faithful earnestness.” “If -you only knew the earnestness of Dora, aunt!” I cried. “Oh, Trot!” she -said again; “blind, blind!” and without knowing why, I felt a vague -unhappy loss or want of something overshadow me like a cloud.’” - -“Silly man!” exclaimed Helen. She was bored. “No one shouldn’t be blind. -I’m not blind—not a bit. I see.” - -“You! you’ve eyes in the back of your head,” Hugh said, speaking for the -first time in half an hour. In those early days he had a talent for -silence. It was by way of being a family gift. - -It seems a pity to feel obliged to record it of the one remark of a -person who so infrequently made even that much conversational -contribution, but Hugh was wrong. Helen was not a particularly observing -child. She felt, she dreamed; but she was as lax of observation as she -was indolent of thought. Perhaps she realized or sensed this, for she -said promptly, “I have not. I see with my front.” - -“What do you see now?” her father asked idly. - -She pointed to the glowing fire, and sighed dreamily: “I see things, in -there. I see Gertrude. Her face is in there all smiley. And she looks -sleepy.” - -Bransby smiled indulgently and cuddled the pretty head nestling in the -crook of his arm. - -“David Copperfield” slid to the floor. The opportunity was too good to -be neglected—too inviting. The volume was bound in calf, full limp -calf, and had all the Cruikshank’s illustrations finely reproduced. -Caroline got up very carefully and took up the book. Bransby saw her, -but he only smiled indulgently, and she seized the license of his humor, -and carried volume xi. to its own space on the shelves. - -Encouraged craftily by her amused father, Helen chatted on to her friend -Gertrude, and of her. Mrs. Leavitt was shocked, but did not dare show -it, and what would have been the use? Nothing! she knew. But she did so -disapprove of Richard’s encouraging the child in the habit of telling -“stories”—to name very mildly such baseless and brazen fabrications. - -Hugh was puzzled, but not unsympathetically so, and less puzzled than -might have been expected of so stolid a boy, and at so self-absorbed an -age. - -Stephen was uneasy and angry. _He_ thrilled somewhat to Helen’s fancy, -but he disliked both her claim and his own emotion to it. - -All three of these children (for why beat longer about our bush?) in -ways totally, almost antagonistically different, were somewhat -“psychic.” - -No one suspected it, much less knew it—and they themselves least of -all. Hugh could not. Stephen would not. Helen was too young. - -Psychic science or revelation had not, in those days, had much of a look -in socially. And in Oxshott it had barely been heard of—merely heard of -enough to give Ignorance a meaningless laugh. Spiritual planes and -delicate soul-processes would seem to have little vibration with that -environment of mundane interests and financial aggrandizement. But the -souls of the other plane peep in through odd nooks, and work in -seemingly strange ways. And, too, this one group of people, for all -their wealth and their luxuries, lived rather “apart”—they were in the -social swim—to an extent, and in the commercial ether up to their -necks, but even so, in it, they were in another, and perhaps a more real -and significant, way “cloistered” in it: apart. - -“Gertrude is sleepy. I am sleepy too. Gertrude says: ‘Good-night, -Helen.’ Good-night, Gertrude.” - -Bransby swung her up to his shoulder and carried her off to bed. And -Hugh, at a gesture of an imperious little hand, gathered up the two -dolls, and followed after with them carefully. Helen was a motherly -little thing—intermittently, and had her children to sleep with -her—sometimes. The chain of flowers lay dying and forgotten. - - - CHAPTER VI - -Stephen was not happy. He was loving but not lovable—on the surface at -least. He was sensitive to a fault, brooding, secretive. He had loved -his mother dearly, and Hugh had been her favorite. But that had soured -and twisted him less than had the marriage-misery of her last years. He -had seen and understood most of it; and it had aged and lined his young -face almost from his perambulator days. His two earliest memories were -of her face blistered with tears, and a tea-table on which there had -been no jam, and not too much bread. Secure at Deep Dale, he had jam, -and all such plenties, to spare. And he intended to command jam of his -very own—and cut-glass dishes to serve it in—before he was much older, -and as long as he lived. His days of jam-shortage were past. And they -had left but little scar—if only he could forget that she had shared -and hated it. But the tear-scars on her face, and on her heart, could -never be erased—or from his—or forgotten. - -Small boy as he was, all the future lines of his character were clearly -drawn, and Time had but to give them light and shade—and color: there -was nothing more to be done—the outline and the proportions were -complete and unalterable. And at fourteen and a few months he was the -victim of two gnawing wants: heart-hunger and ambition. Few boys of -fourteen are definitely and greatly ambitious, or, if they are, greatly -disturbed as to the feasibility and the details of its fulfillment. -Fourteen is not an age of masculine self-distrust. Masculine -self-depreciation and under-apprisement come slowly, and fairly late in -life. There are rare, notable men to whom they never come. Such men -carry on them a visible and easily-to-be-recognized hall-mark. Their -vocabulary may be scant or Milton-much, but invariably its every seventh -word is “I” or “me” or “my” or “mine.” - -Stephen Pryde had no doubt of his own ability to earn success. But his -mind was wide-eyed and clear-eyed, and he doubted if circumstances would -not thwart, much less abet him. Already he saw that he could gain a -great deal through his uncle and in his uncle’s way. The man had said as -much. But Stephen was no disciple, and he was ill-content to win even -success itself in subordination to any other, or in imitation of others -or of their methods. He longed to carve and to climb unaided and alone. -He wished to cleave uncharted skies—as the birds did. Ah! yes, there he -was meek to imitate—to follow and imitate the birds, but not any other -man. - -Partly was this ingrained; firm-rooted independence, egoism, partly it -came from the poor opinion he had already formed of his own sex. He -thought none too well of men: his own father had done that to him. -Towards all women he had a sort of pitying, tender chivalry. That his -mother had done to him. He did not over-rate female intellect or -character (like the uncle, whom he resembled so much, intellect in -womenkind did not attract him, and he prized them most when their -virtues were passive and not too diverse), but he bore them one and all -good-will, and the constant small attentions he paid Mrs. Leavitt, and -even the maid-servants, were almost as much a native tenderness as a -calculated diplomacy. Mrs. Leavitt and the maids were not ungrateful. -Women of all sorts and of all conditions are easiest purchased, and -held, with small coins. A husband may break all the commandments, and -break them over his wife’s very back roughly, and be more probably -forgiven than for failing to raise his hat when he meets her on the -street. Stephen was very careful about his hat, indoors and out. He had -seen his father wear his in his mother’s sitting-room, and by her very -bedside. The lesson had sunk, and it stuck. - -But his love of his mother, and its jealous observance of her, had -trained him to feel for women rather than to respect them. He had seen -her sicken and shiver under the storm, and bow down and endure it -patiently, when he would have had her breast and quell it. He had not -heard Life’s emphatic telling—he was too young to catch it—that -strength is strongest when it seems weak and meek, that great loyalty is -the strongest of all strength as well as the highest of all virtues, and -that often Loyalty for ermine must wear a yoke,—and always must it bear -uncomplainingly a “friend’s infirmities.” - -The boy was a unique, and a blend of his father and his “Uncle Dick.” He -was wonderfully like each. From his mother he had inherited nothing but -a possibility, an aptitude, a predisposition even, towards great -loyalty, which in her had crystallized and perfected into everlasting -and invincible self-sacrifice. In her son it was young yet, plastic and -undeveloped. In maturity it might match, or even exceed, her own; or, on -the other hand, experiences sufficiently rasping and deforming might -wrench and transmute it, under the black alchemy of sufficient tragedy, -even into treachery itself. - -If few boys of fourteen are tormented by ambition, very many such -youngsters suffer from genuine heart-hunger. We never see or suspect or -care. They scarcely suspect themselves, and never understand. But the -canker is there, terribly often, and it eats and eats. The heart-ache of -a little child is a hideous tragedy, and when it is untold and unsoothed -it twists and poisons all after life and character. Angels _may_ rise -above such spiritual catastrophe—men don’t. - -Even more than Stephen longed to succeed, he longed to be loved. And in -a hurt, dumb boy-way he realized that he did not, as a rule, attract -love. - -“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; ’tis woman’s whole -existence.” Hum? There are men _and_ men. (There are even women and -women.) Stephen longed to be very rich, and planned to do it. He longed -to contrive strange, wonderful things that would cleave the air as birds -clove it, revolutionize both Commerce and her servant and master -Transport, make travel a dance and a melody, redraw the map of the -world, carry armies across the hemispheres with a breath, hurl kings -from their thrones, annihilate peoples in an hour—and he planned to do -it: planned as he lay on the grass and watched the birds, planned as he -sat in the firelight, planned as he lay in bed. But more than all this -he longed to be loved: longed but could not plan it. The child knew his -own limitations; and that he did was at once his ability and inability: -it was equipment and drag-chain. - -He ached for love. He longed to feel his uncle’s hand in caress on his -shoulder. Once in the twilight he cuddled Helen’s doll to him, in fierce -longing and loneliness of heart. And night after night he prayed that in -his dreams he might hear his mother’s voice. And sometimes he did. -Science asserts that we never _hear_ in our sleep. Science still has -some things to learn. - -Stephen loved Hugh, and this affection was returned. But Stephen wanted -more than that; Hugh loved every one. Their mutual fondness was placid -and moderate. And it lacked novelty. - -If Hugh loved every one, every one loved Hugh—unless Helen did not. And -Helen was merely a baby, and cared for no one but her father—unless it -was “Gertrude,” whom Stephen hated. - -Even Richard Bransby himself, hard and impassive, began to warm to the -younger boy, and Stephen sensed it. He was keen to such things, and read -his uncle the more readily because they resembled each other in so much. - -But, much as he desired to be loved, Stephen was not jealous of Hugh. -Jealousy had as yet no hand in his hopes, his fears or his plans: -Jealousy, sometimes Love’s horrid bastard-twin, sometimes Love’s -flaming-sworded angel. - -Possibly Stephen’s as-yet escape from jealousy and all its torments he -owed in no small part to Helen’s indifference to Hugh, and to the fact -that Hugh’s fondness of every one made Hugh’s fondness of Helen somewhat -inconspicuous. - -For odd Stephen loved wee Helen with a great love—greater than the love -he had given his mother. - -The day the boys had first come to Deep Dale Helen, running at play, had -lost a tiny blue shoe in the grounds. Stephen had found and had kept it. - -Helen liked her “pretty blue shoes,” and Mrs. Leavitt was sensibly -frugal. The grounds had been searched until they had been almost dug up, -and the entire servant-staff had been angrily wearied of blue kid shoes -and of ferns and geraniums. But Stephen had kept it. He had it still. -And he would have fought any man-force, or the foul fiend himself, -before he would have yielded that bit of sky-blue treasure. - -No one understood Stephen, not even the uncle he so resembled. He was -alone and unhappy, only fourteen years old—a quivering personality -concealed beneath a suave mask of ice, and young armor of steel. - -Stephen had a tutor. - -Helen and Hugh shared a governess. - -Both instructors were “daily,” one coming by train from Guildford, the -other by train from London. - -Stephen was going to public school in a year or two, Hugh then falling -heir to the tutor. - -How long the governess would retain her present position had never been -considered. Probably she would do so for some time. Helen liked her. - - * * * * * - - - - - BOOK II - - - THE DARK - - - CHAPTER VII - -The years sped. - -In the autumn of 1916 Helen was twenty. - -The governess had left three years ago. Helen had found her a curate, -and had given her her silver abundant. - -Already that curate had had preferment. Richard Bransby had contrived -that, but Helen had instigated. - -Stephen and Hugh had gone, in due course, from the tutor to Harrow, from -Harrow to Oxford. - -Stephen would have preferred education more technical, and Hugh would -have preferred none. - -Hugh was not lazy, but he had little thirst for learning and none for -tables, declensions or isms. - -Stephen, might he have followed his own bent, would have studied only -those things which promised to coach him toward aviation in all its -branches and corollaries. But Richard was not to be handled, and to the -school and the ’varsity he chose the boys went. - -Being there, Stephen worked splendidly—took honors and contrived to -gain no little of the very things he desired. He had carpentry at -Harrow—and excelled in it. And at Magdalen he bent physics and -chemistry to his particular needs. At both places his conduct and his -industry were exemplary. - -Hugh barely passed into Harrow, and barely stayed there. He ran and he -boxed, and at that glorified form of leap-frog which public schools -dignify as “hurdles” he excelled. But he was lax and mischievous, and -twice he only just escaped expulsion. His stay at Oxford was brief and -curtailed. The authorities more than hinted to Bransby that his younger -nephew was not calculated to receive or to give much benefit at Oxford. - -Hence the brothers began on the same day a severe novitiate at the great -shipbuilding and shipping offices. - -Strangely enough they both did well. Hugh had a happy knack of jumping -to the right conclusions, and he got his first big step up from dreaming -in his sleep the correct solution of a commercial tangle that was vexing -his uncle greatly. - -That Hugh’s mind had worked so in his sleep, accomplishing what it had -failed to finish when normally awake, as human minds do now and then, -proved that at core he was interested in the business his careless -manner had sometimes seemed to indicate that he took too lightly. And -this pleased and gratified Richard Bransby even more than the -elucidation of a business difficulty did. As an evidence of the peculiar -psychological workings of human intelligence it interested Bransby not -at all. - -Stephen worked hard and brilliantly. From the first he had dreams of -inducing his uncle to add the building of aircraft to their already -enormous building of ships. He nursed his dream and it nursed his -patience and fed his industry. Morton Grant watched over both young men -impartially and devotedly. All his experience was sorted and furbished -for them. All his care and solicitude were shared between them and the -business. - -At the first beat of Kitchener’s drum Hugh begged to follow the flag. -And when Bransby at last realized that the war would not “be over by -Christmas” he withdrew his opposition, and Hugh was allowed to join the -army. He had not done ill in the O. T. C. at Harrow. He applied for a -commission and got it. But it was understood that at the end of the war -he would return to the firm. Richard Bransby would tolerate nothing -else. - -There had been no talk—no thought even—of soldiering for Stephen. He -was nearly thirty, and seemed older. Never ill, he was not too robust. -He was essential now to his uncle’s great business concern. And -“Bransby’s” was vitally essential to the Government and to the -prosecution of the war: no firm in Britain more so. Stephen was no -coward, but soldiering did not attract him. He had no wish to join the -contemptible little army, destined saviors of England. Had he wished to -do so, the Government itself and the great soldier-dictator would have -forbidden it. Emphatically Hugh belonged in the army. As emphatically -Stephen did not; but did, even more emphatically, belong in the great -shiphouse. - -Time and its passing had changed and developed the persons with whom -this history is concerned—as time usually does—along the lines of -least resistance. - -Helen had “grown up” and, no longer interested, even intermittently, in -dolls—“Gertrude” and her band quite forgotten—introduced a dozen new -interests, a score of new friends into the home-circle. Guests came and -went. Helen flitted from function to function, and took her cousins with -her, and sometimes even Bransby himself. Aunt Caroline was a sociable -creature for all her Martha-like qualities. She was immensely proud of -the ultra-nice gowns Helen ordered and made her wear, and quite enjoyed -the dinners and small dances they occasionally gave in return for the -constant hospitalities pressed upon the girl and her cousins. - -Helen was as flower-like as ever. She loved her father more than all the -rest of the world put together, or had until recently—but after him her -keenest interest, until recently, was in her own wonderful frocks. She -had a genius for clothes, and journeyed far and wide in quest of new and -unusual talent in the needlework line. But above all, her personality -was sweet and womanly. In no one way particularly gifted, she had the -great general, sweeping gift of charm. And her tender, passionate -devotion to her father set her apart, lifted her above the average of -nice girlhood—perfumed her, added to her charm of prettiness and -gracefulness, a something of spiritual charm not to be worded, but -always felt and delightful to feel. - -Between the girl and the father was one of the rare, beautiful -intimacies, unstrained and perfect, that do link now and then just such -soft, gay girl-natures to fathers just so rigid and still. And, as it -usually is with such comrades, in this intimate and partisan comradeship -Helen the gentle was the dominant and stronger ruling, with a gay -tyranny, that sometimes swung to a sweet insolence and a caressing -defiance that were love-tribute and flattery, the man of granite and -quiet arrogance. - -Wax to Helen, Richard Bransby was granite and steel to others. Grant, -still his man Friday and, even more than indispensable Stephen, his good -right-hand, trusted but ruled, still stood, as he always had and always -would, in considerable awe of him. But the years had sweetened -Bransby—the Helen-ruled years. He had always striven to be a just -man—in justice to himself—but his just-dealing was easier now and -kindlier, and he strove to be just to others for their sakes rather than -for his own. It was less a duty and more an enjoyment than it had been: -almost even a species of stern self-indulgence. Once it had been a -penance. It was penance no longer. With good men penances -conscientiously practised tend to grow easy and even agreeable. The -devout penitent and the zealot need to find new substitutes periodically -for old scourges smooth-worn. - -Caroline’s fussinesses amused Richard more than they irritated him. And -Helen no longer was sole in his love. He loved the boys—both of them. -Stephen he loved with pride and some reservation. Their wills clashed -not infrequently, and on one matter always. Hugh, who often compelled -his disapproval, he loved almost as an own son. - -Latham found him a more tractable patient than of old. Horace Latham had -reached no slight professional importance now; owned his place on Harley -Street, made no daily rounds, studied more than he practised, had an -eloquent bank account, and “consulted” more often than he directly -practised. - -Helen’s little coterie of friends and acquaintances found him an -amiable, if not a demonstrative, host. Even Angela Hilary he suffered -suavely, if not eagerly. - -A Mrs. Hilary had bought a bijou place near theirs a few years ago, and -cordial, if not intimate, relations had been established quickly between -Helen Bransby and the rich, volatile American widow in accordance with -the time-honored rule that opposites attract. But some things they had -in common, if only things of no higher moment than chiffons and a pretty -taste in hospitality. Both danced through life—rather. But theirs was -dancing with all the difference. Helen never romped. Her dancing, both -actual and figurative, was seemly and slow as the dance on a Watteau -fan—thistle-down dignified—minuet. Angela’s, fine of its sort, was -less art and more impulse, and yet more studied, less natural. It almost -partook of the order of skirt-dancing. Both dancings were pretty to -watch, Helen’s the prettier to remember. For the matter of that both -dancers were pretty to watch. Helen Bransby at twenty was full as lovely -as her childhood had promised. She had been exquisitely loved, and love -feeds beauty and adds to it. Angela Hilary had the composite comeliness -so characteristic of the well-circumstanced American woman: Irish eyes, -a little shrewder, a little harder, than the real thing, hands and feet -Irish-small, skin Saxon-fair, soft, wayward hair Spanish-dark, French -_chic_, a thin form Slavic-svelt and Paris-clad, the wide red mouth of -an English great-grandmother, and a self-confidence and a social -assurance to which no man ever has attained, or ever will, and no woman -either not born and bred between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate—a -daring woman, never grotesque; daring in manner, more daring in speech, -most daring of all in dress; but never too daring—for her; fantastic, -never odious—least of all gross. Each of her vagaries suited her, and -the most surprising of all her unexpected gowns became and adorned her: -an artificial, hot-house creature, she was the perfectly natural product -of civilization at once extravagant, well-meaning and cosmopolitan, if -insular too, and she had a heart of gold. A great many people laughed at -Mrs. Hilary, especially English people, and never suspected how much -more she laughed at them, or how much more shrewdly and with how much -more cause—some few liked her greatly, and every one else liked her at -least a little; every one except Horace Latham. Latham was afraid of -her. - - - CHAPTER VIII - -One evening, early in the autumn of 1916, Morton Grant passed nervously -by the lodge of Deep Dale, and along the carriage drive that twisted and -curled to the house. - -He had cause enough to be nervous. For the second time in thirty years -he was disobeying his chief grossly; and the cause of his present -turpitude could scarcely have been more unpleasant or less reassuring. - -Under one arm he carried a large book carefully wrapped in brown paper. -He carried it as if he feared and disliked it, and yet it and its -fellows had been the vessels of his temple and his own dedication for -years. - -Grant barely came to Deep Dale. Richard Bransby dealt with his -subordinates not meanly. A turkey at Christmas, a suitable sum of money -on boxing-day, leniency at illness, and a coffin when requisite, were -always forthcoming—but an invitation to dinner was unheard and -unthought of, and even Grant, in spite of the responsibility and -implicit trustedness of his position, and of the intimacy of their -boyhood, scarcely once had tasted a brew of his master’s tea. - -A nervous little maid, palpably a war-substitute either for the spruce -man-servant or the sprucer parlor-maid, one of whom had always admitted -him heretofore, answered his ring, and showed him awkwardly into the -library. She collided with him as they went in, and collided with the -door itself as she went out to announce his presence. - -“Tell Mr. Bransby I should be most grateful if he would see me when he -is disengaged, and—er—you might add that the matter -is—er—urgent—er—that is, as soon as they have quite finished dinner. -Just don’t mention my being here until he has left the -dining-room—er—in fact, not until he is disengaged—er—alone.” - -Left by himself Grant placed his top hat on a table and laid his parcel -beside it. He unfastened the string, and partly unwrapped the ledger. -Walking to the fireplace, he rolled up the string very neatly and put it -carefully in his waistcoat pocket; ready to his hand should he carry the -ledger back to London with him; ready to some other service for “Bransby -and Co.”—if the ledger remained with his chief. - -The clerk glanced about the room—and possibly saw it—but he never -turned his back on the big buff book, or his eyes from it long. - -It was a fine old-fashioned room, paneled in dark oak. Not in the least -gloomy, yet even when, as now, brilliantly lit, fire on the hearth, the -electric lamps and wall-lights turned up, it seemed invested with -shadows, shadows lending it an impalpable suggestion of mystery. The -room was not greatly changed since the spring evening thirteen years ago -when Helen had sat on her father’s knee here and grown sleepy at his -reading of Dickens. The curtains were new, and two of the pictures. The -valuable carpet was the same and most of the furniture. The flowers -might have been the same—Helen’s favorite heliotrope and carnations. -The dolls were gone. But the banjo on the chesterfield and the box of -chocolates on the window-seat scarcely spoke of Bransby, unless they -told of a subjugation that had outlasted the dollies. - -In the old days the room had been rather exclusively its master’s “den,” -more than library, and into which others were not apt to come very -freely uninvited. Helen had changed all that, and so had the years’ slow -mellowing of Bransby himself. “Daddy’s room” had become the heart of the -house, and the gathering-place of the family. But it was _his_ room -still, and in his absence, as his presence, it seemed to breathe of his -personality. - -Grant had waited some minutes, but he still stood nervously, when the -employer came in. He eyed Grant rather sourly. Grant stood confused and -tongue-tied. - -The master let the man wait long enough to grow still more -uncomfortable, and then said crisply, “Good-evening, Grant.” - -The clerk moved then—one eye in awe on Bransby, one in dread on the -ledger. He took a few steps towards Bransby, and began apologetically, -“Good—er—ahem—good-evening, Mr. Bransby. I—er—I trust I am not -disturbing you, but——” - -Bransby interrupted sharply, just a glint of wicked humor in his eye, -“Just come from town, eh?” - -“Yes, sir—er—quite right——” - -“Come straight here from the office, I dare say?” Bransby spoke with a -harshness that was a little insolent to so old, and so tried, a servant. - -Morton Grant’s pitiful uneasiness was growing. “Well—er—yes, sir, as a -matter of fact, I did.” - -“I knew it,” Bransby said in cold triumph. It was one of the -ineradicable defects of his nature that he enjoyed small and cheap -triumphs, and irrespective of what they cost others. - -Grant winced. His uneasiness was making him ridiculous, and it -threatened to overmaster him. “Er—ahem—” he stammered, “the matter on -which I have come is so serious——” - -“Grant,” Bransby’s tone was smooth, and so cold that its controlled -sneer pricked, “when my health forced me to take a holiday, what -instructions did I give you?” - -“Why, sir—er—you said that you must not be bothered with business -affairs upon any account—not until you instructed me otherwise.” - -“And have I instructed you otherwise?” The tone was absolutely sweet, -but it made poor Morton Grant’s veins curdle. - -“Well, sir,” he said wretchedly—“er—no, sir, you haven’t.” - -Bransby looked at his watch. Almost the tyrant was smiling. “There’s a -train leaving for town in about forty-five minutes—you will just have -time to catch it.” He turned on his heel—he had not sat down—and went -towards the door. - -Grant began to feel more like jelly than like flesh and bone, but he -pulled himself together, remembering what was at stake, and spoke more -firmly than he had yet done—more firmly than his employer had often -heard him speak. “I beg your pardon,”—he took a step towards -Bransby—“sir”—there was entreaty in his voice, and command too—“but -you must not send me away like this.” - -His tone caught Bransby’s attention. It could not well have failed to do -so. The shipbuilder turned and looked at the other keenly. “Why not?” he -snapped. - -“The thing that brought me here is most important.” - -“So important that you feel justified in setting my instructions aside?” - -“Yes, sir!” holding his ground now. - -Bransby eyed him for a long moment. - -Grant did not flinch. - -“Sit down.” - -Grant did so, and with a sigh of relief—the tension a little eased. -What he had before him was hard enough, Heaven knew—but the first point -was gained: Bransby would hear him. - -“I always thought,” moving towards his own chair beside the -writing-table, “that obeying orders was the most sacred thing in your -life, Grant. I am anxious to know what could have deprived you of that -idea.” - -Anxious to know! And when he did know!—Morton Grant began to tremble -again, and was speechless. - -Bransby studied him thoughtfully. “Well?” he spoke a shade more kindly. - -“The matter I—I—I——” - -“Yes—yes?” impatience and some sympathy for the other’s distress were -struggling. - -Well—it had to be told. He had come here to tell it—and to tell it had -braved and breasted Bransby’s displeasure as he had never done before. -But he could not say it with his eyes on the other’s. He hung his head, -ashamed and broken. But he spoke—and without stammer or break: “We’ve -been robbed of a large sum of money, sir.” - - - CHAPTER IX - -Bransby watched Grant under beetling brows, his thin lips set, stiff and -angry. He valued his money. He had earned it hard, and to be robbed of a -farthing had always enraged him. But more than any money—much more, he -valued the prestige of his business and the triumphant working of his -own business methods. Its success was the justification of his -arbitrariness and his egoism. - -He was angry now, in hot earnest—very angry. “Robbed?” he said at last -quietly. It was an ominous quietude. When he was angriest, invariably he -was quietest. - -“Ten thousand pounds, sir,” Grant said wearily. - -“Ten thousand pounds. Have you reported it to the police?” - -“No, sir.” - -“Why do you come to me instead of them?” - -“Well, sir, you see it only came to light this afternoon. You know the -war has disturbed all our arrangements—made us very backward.” - -Richard Bransby knew nothing of the sort. His business prevision and his -business arrangements were far too masterly to be greatly disarranged by -a mere war, had Heaven granted him subordinates with half his own grit -and devise. But he let that pass. - -And Grant continued. “The accountants have been unable to make their -yearly audit of our books until this week. It was during their work -to-day that they discovered the theft. So I thought before taking any -action I had best come straight to you.” - -“Who stole it?” - -Morton Grant’s terrible moment had come—his ordeal excruciating and -testing. He looked piteously toward his hat. He felt that it might help -him to hold on to it. But the hat was too far to reach, and alone, -without prop, he braced himself for his supreme moment of loyalty. - -“Who stole it?” Bransby’s patience was wearing thin. The fumbling man -prayed for grit to take the plunge clean and straight. But the deep was -too cold for his nerve. He shivered and slacked. - -“Why—er—the fact of the matter is—we are not quite sure.” - -“Yes, you are—who stole it?” - -“Mr. Bransby, I—” the dry old lips refused their office. - -Even in his own impatience, tinged with anxiety now (it disturbed him to -have trusted and employed untrustworthy servants), Bransby was sorry for -the other’s painful embarrassment. And for that he said all the more -roughly, “Come, come, man. Out with it.” - -“Well, sir,” Grant’s voice was nervously timid, almost craven—and not -once had he looked at Richard Bransby—“all the evidence goes to prove -that only one man could have done it.” - -“And who is that man?” demanded the quick, hard voice. - -With a supreme effort of courage, which a brave man never knows—it is -reserved for the cowards—Grant lifted his eyes square to the other, and -answered in a voice so low that Bransby scarcely could have heard the -words had they not rung clear with desperation and resolve, “Your—your -nephew, Mr. Hugh Pryde.” - -For a moment Richard Bransby yielded himself up to amazement, -over-sweeping and numb. Then his face flushed and he half rose. For that -one instant Morton Grant was in danger of his employer’s fingers -fiercely strangling at his throat—and he knew it. His eyes filled with -tears—not for himself, pity for Bransby. - -Then Bransby laughed. It was a natural laugh—he was genuinely -amused—but full of contempt. “My nephew Hugh?” he said good-humoredly. - -“Yes, sir.” The low words were emphatic. Grant was past flinching now. - -“Grant, you must be out of your senses——” - -“It’s the truth, sir; I am sorry, but it’s the truth.” - -Bransby disputed him roughly. “It can’t be. He is my own flesh and -blood. I love the boy. Why, he’s just received his commission, Grant. -And you come sneaking to me accusing him like this—” He threw his head -up angrily and his eyes encountered Helen’s eyes in the portrait of her -that hung over the fireplace: a breathing, beautiful thing, well worth -the great price he had paid for it. As he looked at it his words died on -his lips, and then rushed on anew in fresh and uncontrolled fury—“How -dare you say he’s a thief—how dare you?” - -Grant rose too. He was standing his ground resolutely now. The worst was -over for him: the worst for Richard Bransby was just to come. Pity made -the clerk brave and direct. “I’ve only told you the truth, sir,” he said -very quietly. - -Grant’s calmness checked Bransby’s rage. For a moment or two he wavered -and then, reseating himself quietly, he said in a voice quiet and -restrained, “What evidence do you base this extraordinary charge on?” As -he spoke he picked up from the table a little jade paper-weight and -fingered it idly. He had had it for years and often handled it so. No -one else ever touched it—not even Helen. He dusted it himself, with a -silk handkerchief kept for that purpose in a drawer to his hand. It was -worth its weight in pure gold, a moon-faced, green Chinese god squatted -on a pink lotus flower. - -Grant answered him immediately. “The shortage occurred in the African -trading account.” - -“Well?” - -“That was entirely in charge of Mr. Hugh; except for him,” Grant -continued, with the kind relentlessness of a surgeon, “no one has access -to those accounts but his brother, Mr. Stephen, and myself. I do not -think that you will believe that either Mr. Stephen Pryde or myself -tampered——” - -Bransby brushed that aside with a light sharpness that was something of -an apology, and completely a vote of credit. “Of course not. Go on.” - -“Those accounts have been tampered with.” - -“But Hugh has not been at the office for months,” Bransby said eagerly, -the hopefulness of his voice betraying how sharp his fear had been in -spite of himself. Acute masters do not easily doubt the conviction of -the word of this world’s rare Morton Grants—“not for months. He’s been -training.” - -“The theft occurred before he left us.” - -“Oh!” trying to conceal his disappointment, but succeeding not too well. - -“Drafts made payable to us are not entered in the books. The accounts -were juggled with so that the shortage would escape our notice.” - -Bransby’s teeth closed on his lip. “Is that the entire case against -Hugh?” he demanded sharply, clutching at any hope. - -Grant stood up beside the ledger, and opened it remorselessly. What the -remorse at his old heart was only the spirit of a dead woman knew—_if_ -the dead know. “The alterations in the books are in his handwriting,” he -said. - -“I don’t believe it.” - -“I brought the ledger down so that you might see for yourself, sir.” He -placed the volume on the table before Bransby, took a memorandum from -his waistcoat pocket, and consulted it. “The irregularities occur on -pages forty-three——” - -Bransby put on his glasses and opened the book scornfully. He believed -in Hugh, and now his belief would be vindicated. Grant was faithful, no -question of that, but a doddering old blunderer. Well, he must not be -too hard on Grant, and he would not, for really he had been half -afraid—from the so-far evidence—himself for a breath or two. - -“Page forty-three—yes.” He looked at it. “Yes.” His face was -puzzled—his voice lacked triumph. - -“Fifty-nine,” Grant prompted. - -Bransby turned to it. “Fifty-nine—yes.” - -“Eighty-eight.” - -“Eighty-eight.” He looked at it steadily. Slowly belief in Hugh was -sickened into suspicion. Bransby put down the jade toy held till now -idly, and took up a magnifying glass. Suspicion was changing to -conviction. “Yes,” he said grimly. Just the one word—but the one word -was defeat. He was convinced, convinced with the terrible conviction of -love betrayed and outraged—loyalty befouled by disloyalty. Violet -seemed to stand before him—Violet as a child. A lump sobbed in his -throat. - -“One hundred and two.” - -Staring straight before him, “What number?” he said. - -“One hundred and two,” Grant repeated. - -“One hundred and two—yes.” But he did not look at the page, he was -still staring straight before him, looking through the long years at the -sister he had loved—Violet in her wedding dress. “Yes.” Still it was -Violet he saw—he had no sight for the page of damnation and treachery. -Violet as he had seen her last, cold in her shroud. Slowly he closed the -book—slowly and gently. He needed it no more. He had nothing more to -fear from it, nothing more to hope. He was convinced of his nephew’s -guilt. “My God.” It was a cry to his Maker for sympathy—and rebuke -rather than prayer. - -“The alterations are unmistakably in Mr. Hugh’s handwriting, sir,” Grant -said sorrowfully. - -“But why,” Richard Bransby cried with sudden passion, “why should he -steal from me, Grant? Answer me that. Why should he steal from me?” - -“Some time ago, sir—after Mr. Hugh had joined the army—it came to my -ears—quite by accident, as a matter of fact—through an anonymous -letter——” - -Bransby uttered a syllable of contempt. - -Grant acquiesced, “Yes, sir, of course—_but_—I—er—verified its -statements that while Mr. Hugh was still with us—he had been gambling -rather heavily and for a time was in the hands of the money-lenders.” - -“Certain of this?” - -“Quite.” - -“And I trusted that boy, Grant. I would have trusted him with -anything”—his eyes turned to the pictured face over the -fireplace—“anything”—and his hand playing with the jade paper-weight -trembled. - -“I know.” And Grant did know. Had not he trusted him too—and loved -him—and for the same woman’s sake? - -The hand on the little jade god grew steady and still. The man gripped -it calmly; he had regained his grip of self. “Except yourself, who has -any knowledge of this affair?” - -“Only the accountants, sir. Mr. Stephen Pryde has not been at the office -for the past few days.” - -“I know. He is staying here with me.” Then the mention of Stephen’s name -suggested to him a pretext and a vent to give relief to his choking -feelings, and he added in querulous irritation, “He’s down here to worry -me again about that cracked-brain scheme of his for controlling the -world’s output of aeroplane engines. He’s as mad as the Kaiser, and -about as ambitious and pig-headed. I’ve told him that Bransby and Co. -built ships and sailed ’em, and that was enough. But not for him. He’s -the first man I’ve ever met who thinks he knows how to conduct my -business better than I do—the business I built up myself. Of course I -know he has brains—but he should have ’em—he’s my nephew—that’s why I -left him the management of my business at my death—fortunate, -fortunate——” - -“Yes, sir. But about Mr. Hugh?” - -“Ah!” In his irritation over Stephen—an old irritation—the thought of -Hugh had for a moment escaped their uncle. It returned to him now, and -his face fell from anger to brooding sorrow, “Yes, yes, about Hugh.” He -stared in front of him in deep thought, his face working a little. - -“I think that, perhaps——” the clerk began timidly. - -But Bransby silenced him with an impatient gesture. “The accountants? -Can you trust them?” - -“Absolutely.” - -“They won’t talk?” - -“Not one word.” - -“I know there is no need to caution you.” - -“Thank you.” - -“I must think this over for a day or two—I must think what is best to -be done. Go back to town and have everything go on as if nothing had -happened. Go back on the next train. And, Grant, you’d best leave the -house at once. Hugh is staying here with me, too. I don’t want him to -know you’ve been here.” - -“Very good, Mr. Bransby,” Grant said, picking up his hat, and turning to -the ledger. - -But Bransby stayed him. “I’ll keep the ledger here with me. I shall want -to look over it again.” - -Grant took the memorandum slip from the pocket to which he had restored -it when Bransby shut the book, and held it towards his employer in -silence. In silence Bransby took it. - -“I am—er—I am very sorry, sir,” Grant faltered, half afraid to voice -the sympathy that would not be stifled. - -“Yes, yes, Grant, I know,” Richard Bransby returned gently. They looked -in each other’s eyes, two old men stricken by a common trouble, a common -disappointment, and for the moment, as they had not been before, in a -mutual sympathy. “You shall hear from me in a day or two.” - -“Very good, sir.” - -“And, Grant——” - -Grant turned back, nearly at the door, “Yes, sir?” - -With a glint of humor, a touch of affection, and a touch of pathos, -Bransby said, “You were quite justified in setting aside my orders.” - - - CHAPTER X - -The two stricken men parted then, one going down the road with slouched -shoulders and aimless gait, feeling more than such a type of such years -and so circumstanced often has to feel, but devising nothing, suffering -but not fighting. There was no fight in him—none left—his interview -with Bransby had used it all up—to the last atom. - -Richard Bransby sat alone with his trouble, cut, angry, at bay—already -devising, weighing, fighting, twisting and turning the bit of jade in -his nervous fingers. He rose and pulled open a drawer of his table and -laid the ledger in it with a quiet that was pathetic. For a moment he -stood looking at the book sadly. - -How much that book had meant to this man only just such men could gauge. -It was his _libra d’ora_, his high commission in the world’s great -financial army, and his certificate of success in its far-flung battle -front. It was his horoscope, predicted and cast in his own keen boy’s -heart and head, fulfilled in his graying old age. It was the record of -over forty years of fierce fight, always waged fairly, of a business -career as stiff and sometimes as desperate and as venturesome as -Napoleon’s or Philip’s, but never once smirched or touched with -dishonor—no, not with so much as one shadow of shame. He had -fought—ah! how he had fought, from instinct, for Alice, for Helen—and, -by God! yes, lately for Violet’s boys too—he had fought, and always he -had fought on and on to success: bulldog and British in tenacity, he had -been Celtic-skillful, and many a terrible corner had he turned with a -deft fling of wrist and a glow in his eye that might have been -envied—and certainly would have been applauded and loved—on Wall -Street, or that fleeter, less scrupulous street of high-finance—La -Salle. It was his escutcheon—all the blazon he had ever craved—and -now——He closed the drawer swiftly and softly. Many a coffin lid has -been closed with pain less profound. - -Then his quiet broke, and for a moment the frozen tears melted down his -trembling face, and the terrible sobs of manhood and age thwarted and -hurt to the quick shook his gaunt body. A cry broke from him—a cry of -torture and love. “Hugh—Hugh!” - -For a few moments he let the storm have its will of him; he had to. Then -his will took its turn, asserted itself and he commanded himself again. - -Bransby turned quietly away with a sigh. For a space he stood in deep -thought. Quite suddenly a pain and a faintness shot through him, -bullet-quick, nerve-racking. He forgot everything else—everything: -which is perhaps the one pleasant thing that can be said of such -physical pain; it banishes all other aches, and shows heart and head who -is their master. - -White to his lips, pure fright in his eyes, Bransby contrived to reach a -chair by a side-table on which a tantalus stood unobtrusively. It always -was there. There was one like it in his bedroom, and another in his -private room at the office. And Richard Bransby was an abstemious man, -caring little for his meat, nothing at all for his drink. Tobacco he had -liked once, but Latham had stinted him of tobacco. With the greatest -difficulty he managed to pour out some brandy—and to gulp it. For a -short space he sat motionless with closed eyes. But some one was coming. - -With a tremendous effort he pulled himself together. He got out of the -chair, tell-tale near that tantalus, and with the criminal-like -secretiveness of a very sick man, pushed his glass behind the decanter. -He had sauntered to another seat, moving with a lame show of -nonchalance, and taking up his old plaything, when the footsteps he had -heard came through the door. - -It was Horace Latham. “Alone?” - -“Oh! is that you, doctor? Come in—come in. Have a cigar?” - -The physician stood behind his host, smiling, debonair, groomed to a -fault, suspiciously easy of manner, lynx-eyes apparently unobservant, he -himself palpably unconcerned. “Thanks,” he said—“I find a subtle joy in -indulging myself in luxuries which my duties compel me to deny to -others.” He chose a cigar—very carefully—from the box Bransby had -indicated. But he diagnosed those Havanas with his touch-talented -finger-tips. His microscope eyes were on Bransby. - -Bransby knew this, or at least feared it, though Latham stood behind -him. - -Still fighting desperately against his weakness (he had much to do just -now; Latham must not get in his way), he said, doing it as well as he -could, “Oh, I—I don’t mind—next to smoking myself—I like to watch -some one else enjoying a good cigar.” - -Latham’s face did not change in the least, nor did his eyes shift. He -came carelessly around the table, facing his host now, never relaxing a -covert scrutiny, as bland as it was keen. “In order,” he said, “to give -you as much pleasure as possible I shall enjoy this one thoroughly. Can -you give me a match?” - -“Of course. Stupid of me.” Bransby caught up a match-stand with an -effort and offered it. Latham pretended not to see it. Bransby was -forced to light a match. He contrived to, and held it towards Latham, in -a hand that would shake. The physician threw his cigar aside with a -quick movement, and caught his friend’s wrist, seized the flaming match -and blew it out. - -“I knew it,” Latham said sternly. “Bransby, you are not playing fair -with me. You’ve just had another of those heart attacks.” - -“Nonsense,” the other replied with uneasy impatience. - -“Then why are you all of a tremble? Why is your hand shaking? Why is -your pulse jumping?” - -“I had a slight dizziness,” Bransby admitted wearily. - -“What caused it?” Latham asked sharply. - -“Grant brought me some bad news from the office.” - -“Well—what of it? The air is full of bad news now. You can afford to -lose an odd million now and then. But what business had Grant here? What -business had you to see him? You promised me that you would not even -think of business, much less discuss it with any one, until I gave you -leave.” - -“This was exceptional.” - -The physician sat down, his eyes still on his patient, and said, his -voice changed to a sudden deep kindness, “Bransby, I am going to be -frank with you—brutally frank. You’re an ill man—a very ill man -indeed. A severe attack of this—‘dizziness’ as you call it—will—well, -it might prove fatal. Your heart’s beat shown by the last photograph we -had taken by the electric cardigraph was bad—very bad.” - -“I’ve heard all this before.” - -“And have paid no heed to it. Bransby, unless you give me your word to -obey my instructions absolutely, I will wash my hands of your case.” - -“Don’t say that.” In spite of himself Bransby’s voice shook. - -“I mean it.” Latham’s voice came near shaking too, but professional -training and instinct saved it. “Well?” - -“This—this news I have just had—I must make a decision concerning it. -It can’t cause me any further shock. As soon as I have dismissed it, and -I will very soon, I give you my word, I’ll do precisely as you say.” - - - CHAPTER XI - -“Here you are! I thought you were coming back to the billiard room, -Daddy.” - -As Helen Bransby came gayly in, her father threw Latham an appealing -look, and shifted a little from the light. - -Latham stepped between them. “So he was, Miss Bransby. Forgive me, I -kept him.” - -“Our side won, Daddy,” said the glad young voice. - -“Did we, dear? Then old Hugh owes me a bob.” As the words left his lips, -a sudden spasm of memory caught him. Helen saw nothing, but Latham took -a quick half-step towards him. - -“Are you and Dr. Latham having a confidential chat, Daddy?” - -The father contrived to answer her lightly, more lightly than Latham -could have done at the moment. That physician was growing more and more -anxious. - -“What on earth do you think Latham and I could be having a confidential -chat about?” - -Helen laughed. She had the prettiest laugh in the world. And her -flower-like face brimmed over with mischief. “I thought perhaps he was -asking your advice about matrimony.” - -“Latham?” exclaimed Bransby, so surprised that he almost dropped his -precious jade god with which he was still toying. - -Latham was distinctly worried—Latham the cool, imperturbable man of the -world. “Now, really, Miss Bransby,” he began, and then halted lamely. - -“You don’t mean to say that he is contemplating marrying? Latham the -adamant bachelor of Harley Street?” - -Helen wagged her pretty head impishly. “I can’t say whether he is -contemplating it or not, but I know he is face to face with it.” - -“Well, upon my word!” Bransby was really interested now. - -Latham was intensely uncomfortable. “I am afraid,” he began again, “Miss -Bransby exaggerates the danger——” - -“Danger?” the girl mocked at him. “That’s not very gallant, is it?” - -“And who is the happy woman?” demanded Bransby. - -“Angela Hilary.” - -Bransby laughed unaffectedly. “Mrs. Hilary? Our American friend, eh? -Glad to see you are helping on Anglo-American friendship, my dear -fellow. That’s exactly what we need now. I congratulate you, Latham.” - -“Please don’t.” - -“Oh! he hasn’t proposed _yet_, Daddy,” said the pretty persistent. - -“He has not!” assented Latham briskly. - -“But it’s coming!” taunted Helen wickedly. - -“It is not!” Latham exclaimed hotly. “I haven’t the slightest intention -of proposing to Mrs. Hilary.” - -“But what if she should propose to you?” demanded his tormentor. - -“I should refuse,” insisted Latham, beside himself with embarrassment. - -“And if she won’t take ‘No’ for an answer?” - -“You don’t really think it will come to that?” He was really -considerably alarmed. - -Helen was delighted. “I think it may.” - -“Good heavens!” - -“I had no idea, Latham,” joined in Bransby, playing up to Helen (he -always did play up to Helen), “that you were so attractive to the -opposite sex.” - -Latham groaned. - -“Oh!” Helen said with almost judicial gravity, “I don’t know that it is -entirely due to Dr. Latham’s charm that the present crisis has come -about. I think Angela’s sense of duty is equally to blame.” - -“Mrs. Hilary’s sense of duty!” Latham muttered. - -“Really?” quizzed Bransby. - -“Yes, Daddy, she feels that bachelorhood is an unfit state for a -physician; and because she has a high regard for Dr. Latham she has -nobly resolved to cure him of it.” - -“But I don’t wish to be cured.” - -“Nonsense!” Bransby rebuked him, adding dryly, “what would you say to a -patient of yours who talked like that?” - -Latham turned to Helen desperately. “I say, Miss Bransby, does she know -I am staying with you?” - -“No—I think not. I think she’s still in town.” - -“That’s a relief.” - -“But she’ll find out,” Helen assured him, nodding sagely her naughty red -head. - -But respite was at hand. “Can we come in?” asked a voice at which -Richard Bransby winced again. - -“Yes, Hugh, come along,” Helen said cheerfully. “Dr. Latham will be glad -to see you; he has finished his delicate confidences.” - -“It’s all right, Stephen, we won’t be in the way,” Hugh called over his -shoulder as he strolled through the doorway, a boyish, soldierly young -figure, sunny-faced, frank-eyed. He wore the khaki of a second -lieutenant. He went up to his uncle. Bransby’s fingers tightened at the -throat of the green god, and imperiled the delicately cut pink lotus -leaves. - -“I suppose Helen told you that she beat us,” the young fellow said, -laying a coin near Bransby’s hand. “There’s the shilling I owe you, -sir—the last of an ill-spent fortune.” - -“Thanks,” Bransby spoke with difficulty. But the boy noticed nothing. He -already was moving to the back of the room where Helen was sitting. - -“Have you told him?” Hugh said in a low voice as he sat down beside her. - -“No, not yet.” - -Stephen Pryde threw one quick glance to where they sat as he came -quickly in, but only one, and he went at once to his uncle. “I hope -Grant didn’t bring you any bad news, sir?” he said. - -Bransby was sharply annoyed. He answered quickly, with a swift furtive -look at his nephew. “How did you know Grant was here?” - -“Barker told me. I hope there is nothing wrong, sir?” - -“Wrong? What could be wrong?” The impatience of Bransby’s tone brooked -no further questioning. - -Latham had joined Helen, and Hugh had left her then and had been -strolling about the room unconcernedly. He came up to his uncle -chuckling. - -“Old Grant is a funny old josser,” he said. “He is like a hen with one -chick around the office. Why, if one is ten minutes late in the morning, -he treats it as if it was a national calamity.” - -Bransby lifted his head a little and looked Hugh straight in the face. -It was the first time their eyes had met—since Grant’s visit. “Grant -has always had great faith in you, Hugh,” the uncle said gravely. - -Hugh responded cheerfully. “He’s been jolly kind to me, too. He is a -good old sport, when you get beneath all the fuss and feathers.” And he -strolled back to Helen, Richard’s eyes following him sadly. Latham gave -way to Hugh and wandered over to a bookcase and began examining its -treasures. - -Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle again. “The business that brought -him—Grant—can I attend to it for you, Uncle Dick?” - -“No, thank you, Stephen, it—it is purely a personal matter.” - -Pryde helped himself to a cigarette, saying, “Did he say whether he had -heard from Jepson?” and trying to speak carelessly. - -Bransby answered him impatiently. “No; I was glad to find out, however, -that Grant agrees with me that your scheme for controlling the output of -aeroplane engines is an impossible one for us.” - -Pryde’s face stiffened. “Then he is wrong,” he said curtly. - -Bransby angered. “He is not wrong. Haven’t I just said he agreed with -me?” - -“If you gave the matter serious attention, instead of opposing it -blindly, simply because it came from me——” - -But this was too much. Bransby stopped him hotly, “I don’t oppose it -because it comes from you. I am against it because it isn’t sound. If it -were, I would have thought of it.” - -“You don’t realize the possibilities.” Stephen spoke as hotly as the -elder had, but there was pleading in his voice. - -Latham was watching them now—closely. - -“There are no possibilities, I tell you,” Bransby continued roughly, -“and that should be sufficient—it always has been for every one in my -establishment but you”—he turned to Latham: “Stephen is trying to -induce me to give up shipbuilding for aeroplane engines—and not only -that, he wants to spend our surplus in buying every plant we are able -that can be turned to that use.” - -“Yes,” Stephen urged, “because after the war the future of the world -will be in the air.” - -“I don’t believe it.” - -“And no one believed in steel ships.” - -“That has nothing to do with this.” Bransby was growing testy, and -always his troubled eyes would turn to Hugh—to Hugh and Helen. - -“It has,” Stephen insisted, “for it shows how the problem of -transportation has evolved. The men of the future are the men who -realize the chance the conquest of the air has given them.” - -“Well, let who wishes go in for it. I am quite satisfied with our -business as it is, and at my time of life I am not going to embark on -ambitious schemes. We make money enough.” - -“Money!” Pryde said with bitter scorn. “It isn’t the money that makes me -keen. It’s the power to be gained—the power to build and to destroy.” -The tense face was fierce and transfigured. The typical face of a seer, -Latham thought, watching him curiously. “I tell you, sir, that from now -on the men who rule the air are the men who will rule the world.” The -voice changed, imperiousness cast away, it was tender, caressingly -pleading—“Uncle Dick——” - -But Bransby’s irritation was now beyond all control. The day, and its -revelation and pain, had tortured him enough; his nerves had no -resistance left with which to meet petty annoyance largely. “And I tell -you,” he said heatedly, getting on to his feet, “that I have heard all -about the matter I care to hear, now or ever. I’ve said ‘No,’ and that -ends it. Once I make a decision I never change it, and—I—I—I——” - -Latham laid a hand on his wrist. “Tut, tut, Bransby, you _must not_ -excite yourself.” - -Bransby sank back wearily into his chair—putting the paper-weight down -with an impatient gesture; it made a small clatter. - -Stephen Pryde shrugged his shoulders and turned away drearily with a -half-muttered apology, “I’m sorry, I forgot,” and an oath unspoken but -black. There was despair on his face, misery in his eyes. - - - CHAPTER XII - -The same group was gathered in the same room just twenty-three hours -later. But Mrs. Leavitt, detained last night on one of her many domestic -cares (she never had learned to wear her domestic cares lightly, and -probably would have enjoyed them less if she had) was here also -to-night: an upright, satin-clad figure very busy with an elaborate -piece of needlework. She made no contributions to the chat—the new -stitch was difficult—but constantly her eye glanced from her needle, -here, there and everywhere—searching for dust. - -Richard Bransby had not yet readied his decision, and the self-suspense -was punishing him badly. Latham was anxious. His keen eyes saw a dozen -signs he disliked. - -Stephen sat apart smoking moodily, but watchful—a dark, well-groomed -man, with but one beauty: his agile hands. They looked gifted, deft and -powerful. They were all three. - -Again Helen and Hugh were together at a far end of the big room, -chatting softly. Bransby watched them uneasily. (Stephen was glad to -notice that.) - -Bransby stood it a little longer, and then he called, “Helen!” - -She rose and came to him at once, “Yes, Daddy?” - -Bransby fumbled rather—at a loss what to say—what excuse to make for -having called her. He even stammered a little. “Why—why—” then -glancing by accident towards the book-shelves, a ruse occurred to him -that would answer, that would keep her from Hugh, as his voice had -called her from him. “I don’t think,” he said, “that Latham has seen -that new edition of Dickens of mine. Show it to him. Show him the -illustrations especially.” - -Latham raised a hand in mock horror. “_Another_ edition!” - -But even a better diversion was to hand. Barker stood palpitating in the -door with which she had just collided, her agitation in no way soothed -by the fact that Hugh winked at her encouragingly. “Mrs. Hilary,” she -announced, crimsoning. The girl could scarcely have blushed redder if -she had been obliged to read her own banns. - -Angela Hilary came in with almost a run; seeing Helen, she rushed on her -and embraced her dramatically with a little cry. She was almost -hysterical—but prettily so, quite altogether prettily so. She wore the -unkempt emotion as perfectly as she did her ravishing frock—you -couldn’t help thinking it suited her—not the frock—though indeed that -did, too, to a miracle. - -“Helen! Oh, my dear!” Seeing Bransby, she released the smiling Helen, -and dashed at him, seizing his hand. “Mr. Bransby, oh—I am so glad! -Dear Mrs. Leavitt, too: I am so relieved”—which was rather more than -Caroline could have said. She disliked being hugged, especially just -after dinner, and she had lost count, and dropped her fine crochet-hook. - -Mrs. Hilary turned to Stephen and wrung his hand warmly, half sobbing, -“It is Mr. Pryde?” - -“Yes,” he told her gravely, “I have not changed my name since last -week.” - -But Angela paid no attention to what he said. She rarely did pay much -attention to what other people said. “Dear Mr. Pryde,” she bubbled on at -him, “oh! and you are quite all right.” Hugh came strolling down the -room. Angela Hilary was a great favorite of his. She rushed to him and -caught him by the shoulder, “Lieutenant Hugh. Oh, how do you do?” Then -she caught sight of Latham. She pounced on him. He edged away, a little -embarrassed. She followed the closer—“Dr. Latham! Now my cup _is_ full. -Oh! this is wonderful.” - -“Yes, isn’t it!” he stammered, greatly embarrassed. Through the back of -his head he could see Helen watching him. What a nuisance the woman was, -and how fiendishly pretty! Really, American women ought to be locked up -when they invaded London, at least if they were half as lovely and a -quarter as incalculable as this teasing specimen. Interning Huns seemed -fatuous to him, when such disturbers of Britain’s placidity as this were -permitted abroad. Positively he was afraid of this bizarre creature. -What would she say next? What do? - -What she did was to seize him by his beautifully tailored arm. Latham -hated being hugged, and at any time, far more than Mrs. Leavitt did. -Indeed he could not recall that he ever had been hugged. He was -conscious of no desire to be initiated into that close procedure—and, -of all places to suffer it, this was about as undesirable as he could -imagine. And this woman respected neither places nor persons. She had -hugged poor Mrs. Leavitt unmistakably. What if——He flushed and tried -to extricate his coat sleeve. - -Angela held him the tighter and looked tenderly into his eyes with her -great Creole eyes, surely inherited from some southern foremother. He -thought he heard Helen giggle softly. “My _dear_ Dr. Latham! Oh!”—then, -with a sudden change of manner, that was one of her most bewildering -traits, an instant change this time from the hysterical to the -commonplace—“You will have lunch with me to-morrow—half-past one.” It -was not a question, but simply an announcement. - -“I’m afraid I can’t,” Latham began. “I am returning to town on an early -train.” Yes, he _did_ hear Helen smother a laugh?—hang the girl! and -that was Hugh’s chuckle. - -“Pouf!” Angela Hilary blew his words aside as if they had been a wisp of -thistledown. “Then you’ll have to change your plans and take a later -one.” - -“But really I——” - -“We’ll consider it settled. You men here all need reforming,” she added -severely to Hugh, catching his eye. “In America we women bring up our -men perfectly: they do us great credit.” - -“But this is not America,” Stephen Pryde interposed indolently. - -Angela Hilary drew herself up to all her lovely, graceful height. “But I -am American—an American woman.” She said it very quietly. No English -woman living could have said it more quietly or more coldly. It was all -she said. But it was quite enough. Horace Latham took out his -engagement-book, an entirely unnecessary bit of social by-play on his -part, and he knew it. He knew in his startled bachelor heart that he -would not forget that engagement, or arrive late at the tryst. But he -was not going to marry any one, much less be laughed into it by Helen -Bransby, or witched into it by bewildering personality and composite -loveliness. And as for marrying an American wife—he, Horace Latham, -M.D., F.R.C.P.—the shades of all his ancestors forbid! But what was the -tormenting thing doing now? - -Suddenly remembering the object of her visit, she pushed an easy-chair -into the center of the room (claiming and taking the stage as it were) -and sank into it hysterically. - -Mrs. Leavitt looked up uneasily; she hated the furniture moved about. - -“Oh! thank Heaven,” cried Angela, “you are all here.” - -“Why shouldn’t we be all here?” laughed Helen. - -“I’ve seen all my friends in the neighborhood now,” Angela answered, -relaxing and lying back in relief, “and every one is all right.” - -Even Bransby was amused. “Why shouldn’t they be all right?” he asked, -laughing, and motioning Latham towards the cigars. - -“Don’t jest, Mr. Bransby,” she implored him. “I have had a very solemn -communication this afternoon.” - -“Good gracious!” Hugh said. - -“Communication?” Helen queried. - -They all gathered about her now—with their eyes—in amused -bewilderment. Even Aunt Caroline looked up from her lace-making. - -Angela nodded gravely. “Yes.” - -“A—er—communication from whom?” Stephen asked lazily. - -“From Wah-No-Tee.” - -“Who in the world is Wah-No-Tee?” Pryde demanded. - -“Why, my medium’s Indian control.” - -Hugh chuckled—his laugh always was a nice boyish chuckle. Mrs. Leavitt -looked shocked—Stephen winked at his cigarette as he lit it. Latham -laid down the cigar he had selected but not yet lit. - -“Indian control?” Bransby said—quite at a loss. - -Helen explained. “Mrs. Hilary is interested in spiritualism, Daddy.” - -“Oh!” Bransby was frankly disgusted. Either Angela did not notice this, -or was perfectly indifferent. - -Stephen was greatly amused. A charming smile lit his sharp face. “Is it -permitted to ask what Wah-No-Tee’s communication was, Mrs. Hilary?” he -said—almost caressingly. - -“She told me——” - -“Oh—” interjected Stephen—“Wah-No-Tee is a lady?” - -“Oh! Quite. She told me this morning that one of my dearest friends was -just ‘passing over.’ I was so worried. I hurried back from town as -quickly as I could, and ever since dinner I have been rushing about -calling on every dear friend I have”—she gave Latham a soft look. “And, -as I said—they are all quite all right. Silly mistake!” - -Bransby gave a short grunt. “Surely, Mrs. Hilary,” he said irritably, -“you’re not serious.” - -“I am always serious,” she told him emphatically. “I love being -serious.” - -Bransby picked up the paper-weight and shook it irritably, god, lotus -and all. “But you can’t believe in such rubbish.” - -Helen caught his hand warningly. “Daddy! you’ll break poor old Joss!” -For a moment his hand and her young hand closed together over the costly -toy, and then she made him put it down, prying under his heavy fingers -with her soft ones. - -“Of course, I believe in it,” Angela said superiorly. “Why, there have -been quite a number of books written about it lately.” - -“Foolish books,” snapped Bransby. - -Mrs. Hilary answered him most impressively. “There are more -what-you-may-call-’ems in Heaven and Earth, Horatio——” she said -earnestly. - -Bransby interrupted her, absently in his irritation taking up “Joss” -again. “But, my dear lady——” - -“Even men of science believe.” Angela Hilary could interrupt as well as -the next. - -“Now-a-days men of science believe anything—even such stuff as this.” -Again Helen gently rescued the bit of jade. - -“‘Stuff!’ Mr. Bransby; it is not ‘stuff’!” - -“But your own words prove that it is,” Bransby continued the duel. - -“My own words?” - -“You’ve just admitted your—‘communication’ I think you called it—was a -silly mistake.” - -For one time in her life she was completely non-plused. There had not -been many such times. - -“Well—well——” she began, but she could find no useful words. Her -annoyance was so keen that Helen feared she was going to cry. She could -cry, too—Helen had seen her do it. Helen caught up a box of cigarettes -and carried them to Angela, hoping to divert her. - -“Do have a cigarette,” she urged. - -Mrs. Hilary shook her head violently, but sadly. Helen threw Hugh a look -of despair. - -That warrior was no diplomatist, but a beautifully obedient lover. He -hurried to Mrs. Hilary and bent over her almost tenderly, and said, -“Ripping weather—what?” - -Mrs. Hilary gave him a baleful look—almost a glare—and turned her -shoulder on him. Hugh shrugged his shoulders helplessly, throwing Helen -an apologetic look. - -Helen, in despair, nodded imploringly at Stephen. He smiled, lowered his -cigarette, and addressed their volatile guest. “What a charming frock -that is, Mrs. Hilary.” - -The delightful comedienne threw him a sharp look—and melted. “Do you -think so really?” - -“It’s most becoming,” he said enthusiastically. - -A smile creamed sunnily over the petulant, delicate face. “I think it -does suit me,” she said joyfully. - -They all gave a sigh of relief. - -“Who made it for you, Angela?” Helen asked hurriedly. - -“Clarice—you know, in Albemarle Street.” The cure was complete. - -But Helen repeated the dose. “She does make adorable things. I am going -to try her. You know Mrs. Montague goes to her, and she says——” - -But what Mrs. Montague said was never told, for at the Verona-like name -Angela Hilary sprang to her feet with a scream of “Good Heavens!” - -“Why, what’s up?” Hugh exclaimed. - -“I forgot to call on the Montagues—and poor dear Mr. Montague has such -dreadful gout. How could I be so heartless as to forget the Montagues? -Such perfectly dreadful gout. Oh, well, one never knows—one never -knows. Good-night, everybody. I am sure you won’t mind my rushing off -like this”—both Bransby and Caroline looked resigned—“but I am so -worried. Good-night—good-night.” She paused in the door, “Don’t forget, -Dr. Latham, to-morrow at half-past one sharp.” She threw him a sweet, -imperative look, and was gone—as she had come—in a silken whirl and a -jangle of jewels and chains. - - - CHAPTER XIII - -Richard Bransby looked after her sourly. - -“Humph,” he said. “What a foolish woman.” - -“Yes, silly,” Stephen agreed. - -“So foolish she dares to believe—in things,” Horace Latham said slowly. - -They all looked at him in amazement. “Latham!” Bransby exclaimed. - -The physician turned and met his gaze. “Yes?” - -“You don’t mean to tell me that you believe in all this hopeless drivel -of ‘mediums’ and ‘control’ and spirit communications.” - -“I don’t know,” Latham said musingly. - -“Well, upon my word!” - -“Of course,” Latham continued, “some of it—much of it—sounds -incredible—beyond belief—and yet—well, some years ago wireless -telegraphy, the telephone, a hundred other things that we have seen -proved, would have seemed quite as incredible. With those things in -mind, how can we absolutely deny this thing? How can we be sure that -these people—foolish as some of them certainly appear—are not upon the -threshold of a great truth?” - -The hand that held the paper-weight tightened angrily. “And you, a -sensible man, tell me that you believe that the spirits of those who -have gone before us come back to earth, and spend their time knocking on -walls, rocking tables, whirling banjos, and giving silly women silly -answers to silly questions!” - -“No—not that exactly.” Latham was smiling. “But my profession—it -brings me very close to death—I’ve seen so much suffering lately. -Well—if one believes in God—how can we believe that death is the end? -I know I don’t.” - -Helen’s hand lay on the table, she was standing near her father. He laid -his palm on hers—and sat musing. - -“No,” he said after a pause, “neither do I.” - -“I’m sure it isn’t!” the girl said. - -“This is getting a bit over my head,” Stephen Pryde said with a shrug, -rising. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take a stroll.” - -Latham looked at him with a smile of apprisement, “I take it you don’t -share our belief, Pryde?” - -Stephen smiled in return, and a little contemptuously. - -“I am afraid I am what you would call a rank materialist. To me death is -the end—complete annihilation. That’s why I mean to get everything I -can out of life.” - -“Oh, Stephen—no!” his cousin cried. “You mustn’t believe that! You -can’t! Think! What becomes of the mind, the heart, the soul, the thing -that makes us think, and love and hate and eat and move, quite aside -from muscles and bones and veins? The thing that is we, and drives us, -the very life of us?” - -“Just what becomes of an aeroplane when it flies foul, or is _killed_, -and comes crashing down to earth: done, killed, I tell you, just as much -as a dead man is killed—and no more. Last week, near Hendon, I saw a -biplane, a single seater, fighter, die. Something went wrong when she -was high, going beautifully, she side-slipped abruptly to port, and -trembled on her wing-tip just as I’ve seen a bird do a thousand times, -and she sickened and staggered down to her doom, faint, torn and -bleeding, twisted and moaned on the grass, gave a last convulsive groan, -a last shudder, and then lay still, a huddled mass of oil, broken -struts, smashed propeller, petrol dripping slowly from her shattered -engine, her sectional veins bleeding, her rudder gone, her ailerons -useless, forever, her landing-gear ruined: killed—dead—a corpse—for -the rubbish heap.” - -“Oh! Stephen,” whispered Helen, “and the pilot?” - -“The pilot?” Pryde said indifferently. “Oh! he was dead too, of course.” - -He picked up a fresh cigarette and sauntered from the room. - -Of the injured and destroyed machine he had spoken with more emotion -than any one of them had ever heard in his voice before. And there was a -long pause before Bransby, turning again to Latham, said: - -“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow your argument, Doctor. Surely one can -believe in immortality without believing in spiritualism?” - -“I don’t know that that is my argument. But lately one has thought a -great deal over such things. The war has brought them very close to all -of us.” - -“Yes,” Bransby concurred thoughtfully. And Caroline Leavitt laid down -her work a moment and echoed sadly, “Yes.” - -And Latham continued: “Those lives that were given out there—so -unselfishly—surely that cannot be the end—and, if we don’t really die, -how can we be certain that the spiritual power—the _driving_ force, -that continues to exist, cannot come back and make its existence felt? -Oh! I don’t mean in rocking tables, or ringing bells, or showing lights, -or in ghostly manifestations at séances.” - -“What do you mean, then?” Bransby was half fascinated, half annoyed. - -“They might make an impression upon the consciousness of the living.” - -But Bransby was unimpressed by that. - -“A sort of supernatural telepathy, eh?” - -Latham pondered a moment. “I dare say I can explain best by giving you -an example.” - -“Well?” - -“Suppose a man—a man whose every instinct was just and generous—had -done another man a great wrong and found it out too late. If his -consciousness remained, isn’t it possible—isn’t it probable, that he -would try to right that wrong and, since he had cast away all material -things, he couldn’t communicate in the old way—yet he’d try—surely he -would try——” - -“You believe that?” Bransby exclaimed. - -“I believe,” Latham said very slowly, “that he’d try—but whether he’d -succeed or not—I don’t know.” - -“Oh!” Helen cried with a rapt, glowing face, laying a pleading hand on -the hand holding the jade, “it must be so—it’s beautiful to believe it -is so.” - -“And if,” Latham continued, “one would try for the sake of justice, -can’t you think that others would try, because of the love they had for -the living they had left behind—who still needed them? I dare say that -every one of us has at one time or another been conscious of some -impalpable thing near us—some of us have believed it was a spirit -guarding us.” - -“Yes,” Helen whispered. - -“If we knew,” Latham went on, “the way, we might understand what they -wanted to tell us—if only we knew the way——” - -Again there was a pause. Bransby shifted impatiently, and put his toy -down with a slight clatter, but kept his hand on it still. - -Latham spoke, his manner completely changed. He got up, and he spoke, -almost abruptly. “Well, I am afraid I have bored you people sufficiently -for to-night, and I have some rather important letters to write—if you -will excuse me.” - -“Of course,” Helen said, as he moved to the door, “but oh! you haven’t -bored us, Dr. Latham.” - -Latham smiled at her. “Thanks. I’ll take my cigar,” he added, picking it -up. - -“I shan’t be able to enjoy seeing you enjoy it,” Bransby protested. - -“Try telepathy,” was the smiling rejoinder. “Good-night.” - - - CHAPTER XIV - -Mrs. Leavitt had not noticed the physician go. She had not been -listening for some time, the turn of her pattern had been at its most -difficult point. But she had managed it, and now sat counting -contentedly. Helen was gazing into the fire, her face all tender and -tense. Bransby had watched the door close, a queer purse on his lips. -Presently he said grimly—half in jest, half in earnest— - -“Well, he’s a queer kind of a doctor. I shall have to consult some one -else.” - -Mrs. Leavitt rose with a startled cry. Glancing up from the endless -pattern, at an easy stage now, the dust-searching eye had discovered -much small prey. She gathered up her work carefully and bustled about -the room. - -“If that dreadful Barker didn’t forget to straighten out this room while -we were at dinner. Dr. Latham and Mrs. Hilary will think I am the most -careless housekeeper. I do hope, Helen, that you explain to our friends -how the war has taken all our servants. You should tell everybody that -before it began Barker was only a tweeny, and now she is all we have in -the shape of a butler and parlor-maid and three-quarters of our staff. -And she is so careless and clumsy.” She went from cushion to vase, from -fireplace to table, straightening out the room somewhat to her -satisfaction: the father and the daughter watching her with resigned -amusement. - -A book lay open, face down on the writing-table. She pounced on the -volume. Bransby’s amusement vanished. “Careful there, Caroline, I am -reading that book.” - -“Not now, you’re not—and books belong in book-cases.” She closed it -with a snap. - -“Now you’ve lost my place!” - -“Well, the book’s in its proper place,” she said, thrusting it into its -shelf. “There, that’s better. Now I wonder how the drawing-room is. I -must see. Dear me, this war has been a great inconvenience,” she sighed -as she went from the room—taking Hugh, none too willing, with her. - -Caroline Leavitt was not an unpatriotic woman. Simply, to her home and -house were country and universe too—her horizon enclosed nothing beyond -them. She loved England, because her home and her housekeeping, this -house and her vocation, were in it; and not her home, as some do, -because it was in England. England was a frame, a background. Her -emotions began at Deep Dale’s front door, and ended in its kitchen -garden. There are many such women in the world. - -“Your aunt is a martinet, Helen,” Bransby grumbled smilingly. “She never -lets me have my books about as I like them—and she is always losing my -place.” - -Helen laughed. - -“Do you know,” her father continued, “I have found rare good sport in my -books? Some of those chaps there—and Dickens especially—now—he _was_ -a card. Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?” - -“Yes, Daddy.” - -“Well, when I’m a bit low in my mind, I like to read it—more than any -other book, I think—I find it sort of comforting. A man is never really -lonely when he has books about him. Ah! I remember my place now—where -Copperfield passes the blind beggar. It goes—let me see—yes: ‘He made -me start by muttering as if he were an echo of the -morning—“Blind—blind—blind.”’” - -“I’m glad you find your books good company, Daddy.” - -“Are you? Why?” - -“Well—well—if—if we were ever parted, it would make me happy to think -you had friends near you.” - -Bransby laid his paper-weight down quickly and looked at his girl -anxiously. “If we were ever parted? What do you mean, Helen?” - -She turned from him a little as she replied softly, “Haven’t -you—haven’t you ever looked forward to a time when we might be?” - -“No—of course not!” - -“Sure?” she whispered. - -“Oh!”—her father’s breath came quickly—“You mean that some day you -might marry?” - -“Well—you want me to marry—some day—don’t you, Daddy?” - -“Why—why, yes. Yes, of course I do. It would be a wrench, a bad wrench, -but—I should feel safer, if I knew there was some good man to take care -of you.” - -The girl came to him then, and he reached and took her hand and held it -to his cheek. - -“There is a good man who wants to—now.” She spoke very low—only just -said it. But Richard Bransby heard every word; and every word cut him. - -“Who is he?” There was fear in his voice and fear on his face. He -dropped her hand. - -“Can’t you guess?” - -“Not—not Hugh?” - -“Yes, Daddy.” - -He turned and walked as if groping his way towards the window. - -Helen watched him, surprised and disappointed. “Why—why—Daddy!” - -“Helen,” he said, still turned from her, “suppose—suppose I didn’t -approve of your marrying Hugh—what would you do?” - -The girl pouted a little. “Daddy dear,” she rebuked him, “do be -serious.” - -“I am serious.” He turned and faced her, sadly and gravely, far the more -troubled of the two. - -And she took a step towards him, and spoke clearly. “But why suppose -such a thing? You would never refuse your consent to my marrying Hugh. -You have loved him better than any one else in the world—except -me—always since they came. Why, it has been almost as if he were your -very own son.” - -Her words affected him keenly. It was with a stern effort that he kept -traces of his emotion from his voice. “But, if I didn’t approve?” he -insisted. - -Helen looked at him with startled eyes, realizing for the first time -that he was serious. “You mean—you mean—you don’t!” - -“Yes,” he told her. - -“Why?” she cried. - -The question was very, very difficult for him, so difficult that for a -moment he could find no answer. At last he said slowly, “I don’t believe -Hugh is the man to make you happy.” - -“Don’t you think I am the best judge of that?” Helen said -gently—quickly. - -His answer was quicker: “No.” - -The girl lost something of her self-control then, and there was a -pitiful note in the young voice saying: “Daddy, this isn’t all a silly -joke? You aren’t trying to tease me?” - -“I’m not joking, Helen.” There were tears in his voice. - -“Then,” she cried, “why have you suddenly changed towards Hugh? Our -house has always been his home—all these years. I can only just -remember when he came: I can’t remember when he was not here. You have -purposely thrown us together.” There was accusation in her tone, but no -anger. - -She had pricked him, and he answered sharply: “I never said that it was -my wish that you should marry him.” - -“Not in words—no—but in a hundred other ways. Why have you changed? -Why?” - -“I don’t want to answer that question.” - -“I have the right to know.” - -Richard Bransby was suffering terribly—and physically too. He yearned -over her, and he ached to get it over and done. But he could not bring -himself to denounce the boy he had loved so—so loved still. - -But Helen, at bay too, would give him no respite: how could she? “You -haven’t answered me—yet,” she said, more coldly. Her tone was still -gentle; but her fixed determination was quite evident—unmistakable. - -“Very well, then, I will,” and he gathered himself for the ordeal, -his—and hers. Then again he hesitated. “Helen,” he pleaded, “won’t you -accept my decision? You—you know a little—just a little—what you are -to me—how all the world—ah! my Helen—you wouldn’t break my old heart, -would you? Say that you could not—would not—say it——” - -“Daddy! My daddy,” she whispered. - -“Say it,” he cried. - -“Daddy,” her tears had come now—near; but she held them—“I mean to -marry Hugh,” she said very quietly—even in his distressed agitation he -recognized and honored her grit—the wonderful grit of such delicate -creatures—“with your approval, I hope—but, in any case, I mean to -marry him.” - -“Think how I’ve loved you, child,” the father cried, catching her wrists -in his hands, “you wouldn’t set my wishes aside?” - -“Yes, Daddy.” - -“Helen.” It was a sob in his throat. - -“Just think for a moment,” she said, “he has given up everything to join -the army. Any day, now, he may go—out there. He loves me, Daddy—and I -love him.” - -“He is not worthy of you—” Bransby was commanding himself—at what cost -only he knew—and Horace Latham might partly have guessed. - -After a pause—painful to him—she was too indignant to suffer much -now—at last she spoke—sternly. “Why do you say that?” - -“Don’t press the question,” he pleaded, “you know how much I care for -you—how dear you are to me. Surely you must know that I would not come -between you and your happiness if I hadn’t a good reason.” - -“But I must know that reason.” - -“You won’t give him up—for me?” - -Pity for his evident distress welled over her, and she answered him -tenderly: “I can’t, dear.” - -She waited. He waited too. He could count his heart thump, and almost -she might have counted it too. - -At last he nerved himself desperately, went to his desk and pulled the -ledger from the drawer. He put it down ready to his hand, if he had to -show it to her at last; then turned and laid his hands on her shoulders. - -When he could command himself—it was not at once—he said, speaking -more gently than in all his long, gentle loving of her he had ever -spoken to her before, “Helen, Hugh is a thief.” - -There was silence between them; a silence neither could ever forget. It -punctuated their mutual life. - -She broke it. For a while she stood rigid and dazed—and then she -laughed. - -No lash in his face—even from her hand—could have hurt him so. - -Again she waited: haughty and outraged now. - -“He has stolen ten thousand pounds from me.” - -She neither spoke nor stirred. - -“That is why Grant came here last night—to tell me.” - -The girl made a gesture of infinite scorn, of unspeakable rebuke. - -“My dear, I would have spared you this—if I could.” - -She answered him then, contempt in her voice, no faintest shadow of fear -in her brave young eyes. “I don’t believe it.” - -“I didn’t believe it—at first. But the proof,”—he went to the desk and -laid one hand sorrowfully on the big buff book—“well, it’s too strong -to be denied. You shall see it yourself.” - -“I will not look. I would not believe it if Hugh told me himself.” She -turned quietly and left him, and he dared not stay her. - -But he heard her sob as she passed along the hall. - -At the sound his white face quivered and he crouched down in a chair and -laid his tired face on the table. He sat so for a long time—perfectly -still. Presently a wet bead of something salt lay in the heart of the -rose lotus flower. - - - CHAPTER XV - -“What a fashion plate!” Angela Hilary exclaimed as she came across her -ornate little morning room to greet her guest. - -Latham smiled amiably. No one dressed more carefully than he, and he had -no mock shyness about having it noted. - -“You don’t look especially dowdy yourself,” he returned, as he took in -his hand one of her proffered hands and eleven of her rings. - -The visit was an unqualified success, and more than once Horace Latham -thought ruefully what an ass he had been to fight shy of so delightful a -morning. - -He was the only guest: it goes without saying, and Latham himself had -hoped for nothing else. That he foreknew that it would be a function -strictly for two had both assuaged and augmented his maiden nervousness. -If this dominant and seductively pretty young widow was determined to -press her suit (and quite aside from Helen Bransby’s tormenting -prompting he had an odd, fluttering feeling that it was a suit, and not -to be side-tracked easily), her opportunities to do so would be -tenfolded under her own roof—and they alone. On the other hand, he -thought that he could manage himself better, and far more smoothly, safe -from the disconcerting flicker of Helen’s mocking eyes, and the not -improbable comments, aside and otherwise, of her impish tongue. And, if -it came to such stress of issue between them (himself and the widow) -that he had no strategical escape left short of brutality, he felt that -he would find the exercise of such brutal harshness somewhat less -abominable and repugnant when no third one was present to witness -Angela’s discomfiture. - -But he had misjudged his lady—and soon he sensed it. - -Under all her flare for willfulness, and her disconcerting blend of -dainty atrocities and personal aplomb, Mrs. Hilary had sound instincts -and inherited good taste. She fluttered her skirts with some rumpus of -silken _frou-frou_ (to speak in metaphor), but she never lifted them -above her ankles. Her home was her temple, she, its goddess, was chaste -as erratic, and to her half-southern blood a guest was very sacred. - -She gave him an exquisite meal and a thoroughly good time, but she never -once made love to him or even gave him a provocative opening to make -love to her. And with admirable masculine consistency almost he felt -that had she done either or both he might have borne -it—yes—cheerfully. - -But she did not. She was grave. She was gay. She showed him her -_cloisonné_ and her ivories, her etchings and her Sargent, she played to -him, and she sang a little. She flattered him, and she gave him some -rare dole of subtle petting, but she did no wooing, and seemed inclined -to brook none. - -What a woman! She set him to thinking. And he thought. - -Next to his profession, in which he was deeply absorbed—but not -narrowly so, for this dapper, good-looking man was a great physician, -and not in-the-making—Horace Latham cared more for music, and needed it -more, than he did for anything else—even pictures. All that was most -personal to him, all that was strongest and finest in him, quivered and -glowed quickest, surest, longest, at the side of a dissecting table, and -to the sound of music, violin-sweetness, harp-magic, the song of a -piano, the invocation of an organ, the lyric lure of a voice. - -But it had to be good music. Helen played prettily, and bored him. Hugh -was everlastingly discoursing rag-time with his two first fingers, and -Latham itched to chloroform him. - -He had never heard Mrs. Hilary attempt music. And when, after lunch, -uninvited she sat down at her piano he winced. - -She played wonderfully. What a surprising woman! She played Greig to him -and Chopin, and then she sang just twice: “Oft in the Stilly Night”—his -mother had sung that to him in the dear long-ago, and then a quaint -pathetic darky melody that he had never heard before. - -“Oh! please,” he begged as she rose. - -“No more—to-day,” she told him, “enough is better than too much feast.” - -“And what a feast!” he said sincerely. - -“Do you like Stephen Pryde?” she demanded abruptly, closing the piano. - -“I’ve known him since he was a child.” - -She accepted the evasion, or rather, to be more exact, spared him -putting its admission into cruder wording. - -“Well—you’re wrong. You’re all wrong. I like him. No one else does, -except Hugh, and Hugh doesn’t count. But I do: and I like Stephen Pryde -immensely.” - -“You certainly do count, very much,” Latham told her emphatically. And -she did not contradict him by so much as a gesture of her ring-covered -hands or a lift of the straight black eyebrows. “Why doesn’t Hugh -count?” he asked. - -“Because he likes every one. The people who like every one never do -count. It is silly. It’s too silly. Now, Stephen Pryde does no such -thing.” - -“No,” agreed Latham, “he does not; and certainly ‘silly’ is the last -word I should employ to describe him.” - -“Silly!” Angela said with high scorn. “There isn’t a silly hair on his -head. He’s a genius—and he’s hungry—oh! so hungry.” - -“Geniuses usually are,” Latham interrupted. - -Angela ignored this as it deserved, and he himself thought it feeble and -regretted it as soon as he had perpetrated it. - -“He’s a genius—and his uncle throttles it. Now, I want you to make -Richard Bransby behave—you and Helen. You can, you two; together you -can do anything with him.” - -“Oh, Mrs. Hilary, please listen to me,” the physician was genuinely -alarmed, “on no account must Mr. Bransby be bothered or -irritated—positively _on none_.” - -She studied him for a moment. “So,” she said slowly—“as ill as -that—poor Helen.” - -She did not say, “Poor Mr. Bransby,” and Latham liked her for the nice -justice of her differentiation. - -“And that’s why you stay here so much.” - -Latham made no reply—and she seemed to expect none. She had affirmed; -she had asked no question. Really she had some very satisfactory -points—most satisfactory! - -Then she gave a surprising little cry. “Oh! I am so sorry—so sorry for -Helen.” - -“I hope,” the doctor began, but she paid no attention to him whatever. - -“Don’t you remember?—Wah-No-Tee told me. How wonderful! How stupid of -me not to have understood! Oh! I must ’phone for another appointment -to-morrow. I mustn’t forget,” and she made a dash for her engagement -book, and began to scribble something in it. As she wrote she said to -him over her shoulder, “Won’t Helen look just too lovely in mourning?” - -What a woman! He gazed at her speechless. What would the incalculable -creature say next—what do? - -What she did was to move a stool near to his chair, and seat herself. -What she said was, “Well—then—of course—that makes a difference. Let -me see—yes—I have it—I’ll lend Stephen the money—lots of money; I -can, you know, just as easy as not.” - -“Lend Stephen the money!” Latham said dumb-foundedly. - -“Oh—of course,” Angela added impatiently; “Stephen Pryde wouldn’t -borrow money of me—of course not. That’s where you come in.” - -“Oh! where I come in——” - -“Yes, of course, don’t you see——” - -“No, I certainly do not.” - -“How stupid! It’s perfectly simple. I think a blind man would see it—if -he was fair-to-middling smart. You are to lend him the money.” - -“I!” - -“Yes, stupid—_you_: my money.” - -“Oh!” - -“Listen—don’t sit there staring and just say, ‘I! Oh! Ah!’ as if you -were trying to sing: ‘Do—re—mi—fa—sol—la.’ You are to manage -Stephen.” - -“Instead of handling Bransby,” Latham said with light sarcasm. - -But Mrs. Hilary beamed on him approvingly. “Exactly.” - -“It occurs to me,” Latham remarked softly, “that you intend me to -renounce medicine for diplomacy.” - -“They’re much the same thing—but—oh! I’ll manage it all really.” - -“Yes—I inferred that. Now, please, the details. To begin at the -beginning, you wish to endow Pryde with your fortune.” - -“I wish to do nothing of the sort,” she said severely. “I am going to -lend him part of it; or rather invest it in him. I shall get it all back -a thousand times.” - -“Good interest!” - -“Oh—be quiet——” - -Latham sat in smiling silence. - -“You will do it? You must!” - -“I begin to see. I am to lend Pryde a slice—shall we say?—of your -fortune. Now, just that I may act intelligently, may I enquire how -much?” - -“That’s what you are to find out.” - -“Oh! that’s what I am to find out——” - -“Of course.” - -“May I—dare I ask, what he wishes it for—or needs it—or is to have -it?” - -“To build aircraft. You ought to know that. I think you are dense -to-day, Dr. Latham.” - -“I think you are very charming—to-day, Mrs. Hilary.” - -“_And_ you will help me? Say you will. Say it now!” - -“I am thinking——” - -“Don’t think. Just promise.” - -Latham was minded to tell her, “Some one must think,” but he refrained, -and said instead, “We’ll talk it over at least, several times, if we -may. Yes, I’ll come soon again and talk it over, if you’ll let me.” - -She seemed quite satisfied at that. Probably she foresaw several -_tête-à-tête_ luncheons. Perhaps Latham did also. - -He would have stayed to tea, but Angela did not ask him; and at last he -got up slowly. Even then she might ask him, he thought, but she did not. - -But she gave him a deep red rose—at his request. - -Just as he was going he turned back to say, “I do know, of course, that -Pryde is obsessed about aviation, and that Bransby will have none of -it—and, between you and me, I think that Bransby is wrong—but why do -you care? Are you interested in the air?” - -“Good gracious, no. I love the earth—and indoors for choice. Give me a -good rocking-chair. I’d rather have that than the best horse that ever -was driven or ridden, though I like horses too. I’m just sheer sorry for -Stephen Pryde. I like him. And I’d just love to help him. He’ll succeed -too, I think; but that’s not the point. I want him to have his own way. -He never has—in anything. Only think, how horrid, never to have your -own way.” - -“Much you know about it.” - -She ignored that. Angela was terribly in earnest. “He is very intense. -He is strong too. And with all his strength he has desired two things -intensely. Hugh, his own brother, has thwarted him in one; Richard -Bransby in the other. One we can’t give him. The other we can. And we -are going to—you and I.” She held out her hand in “good-by,” but Latham -knew she meant it even more in compact. - -He was thoughtful all his way back to Deep Dale, and silent at dinner. - -Undressing for sleep—if sleep came—he looked at his red rose with an -odd rueful smile, and put it carefully in water. - -At that moment Angela Hilary laughed softly as she let her dark hair -fall free to the white hem of her nightgown. Then she threw a kiss to -herself in the mirror. - -The first thing Latham saw the next morning when he woke was a deep -crimson rose. He lay very still for a long time watching it. - - - CHAPTER XVI - -Morton Grant had delivered his sorry news on Monday. Dr. Latham had -lunched with Mrs. Hilary on Wednesday. - -Thursday was bleak and cold, and a slow chilly rain fell all day. - -Helen and her father were alone in the library when the brothers joined -them. She felt that her father meant to “have it out” then, and she was -glad. For him and for her the tension was already too cruel. And it was -Hugh’s due to know, and to know without longer delay. Once or twice she -had felt that she herself must tell him. But the girlish lips he had -kissed refused the words and the office; and she had an added instinct -of reticence, part a reluctance to tale-bear, part a hurt, angry -determination to leave her father to do his own “dirty work.” - -“Stephen says you want to have a chat with me, Uncle Dick.” - -So—her father had sent for Hugh; had sent Stephen. - -“Yes, Hugh,” Bransby said gently. - -“Righto,” the boy replied. In several senses he was not “sensitive,” and -nothing of his uncle’s strain, or of Helen’s, had reached him. - -Bransby turned to his daughter. “Helen, will you leave us for a little -while?” - -“I’d rather stay, Daddy.” - -“I’d rather you didn’t.” - -Helen met his gaze quietly, and sat down. She had been standing near the -fire when her cousins came in. - -Bransby sighed. But he saw it was useless to command her. She would not -go. - -Stephen had been looking at the books in the case. He turned sharply now -and eyed them all intently. He was “sensitive,” and keenly so where -Helen was concerned. - -Hugh turned to Helen, smiling and happy: “I say, have you told him, -then, Helen?” - -“Yes—Tuesday night.” - -Hugh turned to Bransby with a boyish laugh, a very slight flush of -embarrassment on his young face, love, pride and victory in his eyes. “I -suppose I am in for a wigging, eh?” - -“Hugh,” Helen broke in, “Daddy has refused his consent.” - -Hugh took a sharp step forward and threw up his head. “Refused his -consent? Why?” - -She gestured towards her father. _She_ could not say it. - -“Why, sir?” - -Bransby answered him sadly: “Don’t you know, Hugh?” - -“No, sir. Of course I know I am not good enough for her—who could be? -But you know I love her very dearly.” - -“Hugh,” Bransby said more sorrowfully and sternly, “didn’t you realize -that some day you were certain to be found out?” - -Stephen Pryde started, but controlled himself instantly. - -Hugh gazed at his uncle blankly. “Found out? What in the world—I don’t -know what you mean, sir.” - -“Can’t you think why Grant came here on Monday?” - -“No. How could I?” - -“Why did he come, sir?” Stephen interposed. - -“A shortage has been discovered in the accounts at the office.” - -“A shortage in our accounts?” Stephen spoke incredulously. “Impossible.” - -“I’m most awfully sorry, sir,” Hugh said sympathetically, taking a step -nearer his uncle. - -“Some one has stolen ten thousand pounds.” - -“Who?” Stephen asked quickly. - -“The money was taken from the African trading account.” - -“From the African trading account?” Stephen echoed. “But that’s -impossible—Hugh has always had charge of that.” - -“I know,” Bransby said dully. - -“Uncle Dick,” Hugh cried, suddenly realizing that he was being -accused—“Uncle Dick, you don’t mean that you think that I——” The -passionate voice choked and almost broke. - -Stephen stopped him. “Quiet, Hugh; of course he can’t mean anything so -absurd as that. Besides, you’ve not been at the office for months.” - -Helen threw toward Stephen a look full of gratefulness. - -But her father said despairingly, “The money was taken while he was -still at the office.” - -“How do you know that, sir?” Stephen spoke almost sternly to his uncle. - -But the older man did not resent that. “Certain alterations were made in -the ledger during the time he had charge of it,” he explained drearily. - -Hugh broke in hotly, “I know nothing of them.” - -“Of course not,” his brother said cordially. “You see, sir——” turning -to Bransby. - -“The alterations are in Hugh’s handwriting.” - -“Impossible,” Hugh cried indignantly—contemptuously too. - -Stephen said very quietly, “I don’t believe it.” - -“I can convince you.” Their uncle opened the ledger, one hand on its -pages, the other on the jade weight. - -Helen sat proudly apart, but the brothers hurried to him. Hugh threw -himself in a chair at the table where the book lay, Stephen stood behind -his brother, his hand on his shoulder. - -There was a significant pause. - -Stephen shook his head. “It is very like,” he said slowly. - -Bransby turned to another page. “And this?” - -“Oh, yes, it is. It is very like too.” Stephen’s reluctance was apparent -and deep. And a hint of conviction escaped him. - -“There is no need to go further,” Bransby said wearily. “These were made -when the money was taken.” - -Hugh sat gazing at the open ledger in bewilderment. “It—it,” he -stammered—“it seems to be my handwriting—but”—he was not stammering -now—“I swear I never wrote it.” - -“I believe you, Hugh,” Stephen said simply. - -Bransby said sternly—but not altogether without a subcurrent of hope in -his tired voice, “Besides you, only Stephen and Grant had access to that -ledger. Will you accuse either of them of making these alterations?” - -Hugh laughed. “Of course not. Old Stephen and Grant—why, you know, sir, -that that’s absurd. But what have I ever done that you should think me -capable of being a thief?” - -The old man shook his head. But Stephen answered, his hand on Hugh’s -shoulder, “Nothing, Hugh, nothing! You’ve known my brother always, -sir”—turning to their uncle, speaking with passionate earnestness. “You -_know_ he’s not a thief. If he has been a bit wild—it was only the -wildness of youth.” There was anxious entreaty in face and in voice, and -the face was very white and drawn. Of the four Stephen Pryde -unmistakably was not suffering the least. - -But Bransby was despairingly relentless now. “While he was at the office -he was gambling—he borrowed from money-lenders.” - -“It isn’t true,” cried Stephen hotly. - -Bransby swung to his younger nephew. “Is it true?” - -“Yes.” - -“Hugh!” the elder brother said in quick horror. - -“But I won enough to clear myself, and that’s why I——” - -“Hugh,” Stephen’s voice broke, “I wouldn’t have believed it.” - -Hugh turned on his brother in dismay: “Stephen! you don’t mean that -_you_ think——” - -“Why didn’t you tell me you were in trouble?” Pryde said sorrowfully. “I -would have helped you, if I could.” - -“But I wasn’t in trouble,” the boy protested impatiently. “I tell you -I’m innocent.” - -With a gesture of infinite sadness and his face quivering Stephen Pryde -laid his hand on Hugh’s shoulder. “Hugh,” he said, and now his voice -broke as a mother’s might have broken, “Hugh, I am your brother—I love -you—can’t you trust me?” he pleaded. “Even now we may find a way out of -this, if you will only tell the truth.” - -“But I have told the truth,” Hugh asserted helplessly. His voice broke, -too, as he said it. - -Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle and they exchanged a slow look—a look -of mutual sorrow and despair. Hugh saw the look, shrugged his shoulders -and crossed to Helen’s chair. - -“Helen, you don’t believe this, do you?” - -Stephen turned and watched them intently. - -The girl smiled. “No, Hugh.” - -“Thank you, dear.” And he smiled back at her. - -“I would give a great deal not to believe it, Hugh”—there was entreaty -in Bransby’s voice, if not in his words, almost too a slight something -of apology—“but the evidence is all against you.” - -Hugh had grown angry a few moments ago, but at Helen’s smile all his -anger had died, and even the very possibility of anger. And he answered -Bransby as sadly and as gently as the older man himself had spoken, “I -realize that, sir; but there must be some way to prove my innocence—and -I’ll find it.” - -“And in the meantime?” Bransby demanded. - -“In the meantime,” his nephew echoed—“oh—yes—what do you want me to -do?” - -“The right thing.” - -Helen sprang to her feet—but quietly, and even yet she said nothing. Of -them all she was the least disturbed. But perhaps she was also the most -intent. Hers was a watching brief. She held it splendidly. - -“The right thing?” Hugh asked, puzzled but fearful. - -“You must tell Helen that no marriage can take place between -you—unless—until you have cleared yourself of this—this suspicion.” - -Stephen protested. “But, sir—” He was watching and listening almost as -sharply as the girl was; but for the life of him he could not tell -whether or not his uncle had indeed given up all hope. At the elder’s -last words he had winced—for some reason. - -Helen looked only at Hugh now. “No, Hugh, no,” she cried proudly—and -then at the look on his face, “No—no,” she pled. - -Hugh Pryde’s face was the grimmest there now. But he answered her -tenderly. “He’s right, dear. It can’t take place until I have cleared -myself. Oh, don’t look startled like that. Of course it can’t. But I’ll -do that. Helen, listen, somehow I’ll do that.” - -“Oh!” she almost sobbed, both hands groping for his—and finding -them—“but, my dear——” - -Bransby broke in, and, to hide his own rising and threatening emotion, -more harshly than he felt: “And until then you must not see each other.” - -For a moment Hugh held her hands to his face—and then he put them away -from him and said, smiling sadly but confidently, and speaking to her -and not to her father, answering the cry in her eyes, the rebellion in -the poise of her head, “No—until then we must not see each other.” - -She drew herself up, almost to his own height, and laid her arms about -his neck, folding and holding him. “I can’t let you go from me like -this, Hugh, I can’t let you.” - -Stephen Pryde watched them grimly—torture in his eyes; but Bransby -turned his eyes away, and saw nothing, unless he saw the green and rose -bauble he held and handled nervously. - -Very gently Hugh Pryde took her arms from his neck, and half led, half -pushed her to the door. “You must.” - -She turned back to him with outstretched arms. “Oh, Hugh, Hugh,” she -begged. - -Still he smiled at her, and shook his head. - -For a moment longer she pleaded with him—mutely; then, with a little -hurt cry, she ran from the room. - -Hugh stood looking after her sadly until Stephen spoke. “Hugh, my boy, -be frank with me. Let me help you.” - -At that the younger grew petulant, and answered shortly, “There’s -nothing to be frank about.” Then his irritation passed as quickly as it -had come. “Oh! why won’t you believe that I never did this thing?” - -Stephen hung his head sadly. But Bransby was wavering. “Hugh,” he said, -“if you can prove yourself innocent, no one will be happier than I—but -until you do——” - -“I understand, sir. But—oh—I say—what about—what about -my—commission?” His face twitched, and he could scarcely control -himself to utter the last word with some show of calmness. He was very -young—and very driven. - -“You will have to relinquish that,” Bransby replied pityingly. “You can -leave the matter in my hands—my boy. I will arrange it.” - -Hugh could hardly speak. But he managed. “Very good, sir. Then I—may -go?” - -Bransby could not look at him. “You will leave here to-night?” - -“At once.” - -“That would be best.” - -“Good-by,” Hugh said abruptly. - -Stephen held out his hand, and after an instant Hugh clasped it. He -turned to his uncle. - -Bransby rose stiffly from his chair. He was trembling. Neither seemed -able to speak. For a bad moment neither moved. Then Richard Bransby held -out—both hands. Hugh flushed, then paled, and took the proffered hands -in his. There was pride as well as regret in his gesture, affection even -more than protest. Then without a word—a thick sound in his throat was -not a syllable—with no other look—he went. - -Bransby caught at the back of his chair. He motioned Stephen to follow -Hugh. “See that he has money—enough,” he said hoarsely. - -Stephen nodded and left him. - -Richard Bransby looked about the silent room helplessly. “My poor -Helen,” he said presently—“Violet! Violet!”—but he pulled himself -together and moved towards the bookcase. Perhaps he could find -distraction there. - -He sat down again, the volume he had selected on his knee, and opened it -at random, turning the pages idly—one hand on the jade joss, that as it -lay on the table; seemed to blink in the firelight. - -The printed words evaded him. To focus his troubled mind he began to -read aloud softly:— - -“‘There was a beggar in the street, when I went down; and as I turned my -head towards the window, thinking of her calm seraphic eyes, he made me -start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning: “Blind! Blind! -Blind!”’” - - - CHAPTER XVII - -Richard Bransby was breaking. He could not bear much more, and he knew -it. He had felt very faint at lunch. Latham would have driven him to his -bed, but Latham had been again lunching at Mrs. Hilary’s. - -Now he was alone in the library. The room seemed to his tired, tortured -mind haunted by Hugh and by trouble. - -He looked up at the clock. The boy had been gone just twenty-four hours. -Where had he gone? What was he doing? Violet’s boy! - -The sick man felt alone and deserted. Helen had scarcely spoken to him -all day. Indeed she had stayed in her room until nearly dinner-time, and -at dinner she and Latham had almost confined their chat to each other. - -He picked up “David Copperfield,” opened it at random—then shook his -head and laid it down, still open. He’d read presently; he could not -now. - -A step at the door was welcome. It was Stephen. - -Bransby began abruptly: “Last night, when you saw him off—he protested -his innocence to the last?” - -“Yes, sir. Oh! yes.” - -“Oh! why didn’t he tell me the truth. If he had confessed, I could have -found it in my heart to forgive him.” - -Stephen sighed, and sat down near his uncle. “I told him that. I begged -him to throw himself on your mercy. But he wouldn’t even listen.” - -Bransby’s face changed suddenly. “You told him that—that you were sure -I’d forgive it, let it pass even, and he still persisted that he was -innocent.” - -“Yes. Absolutely.” - -“Stephen,” Bransby said anxiously, rising in his agitation and looking -down on the other almost beseechingly, “have you thought—thought that -we may be mistaken?” - -“Mistaken? In what way?” - -“About Hugh, of course. When he was here, even though everything was -against him, his attitude was that of an innocent man. Then his refusal -to you to confess even when mercy—forgiveness—were promised—that, -too, is the action of an innocent man.” Bransby spoke more in entreaty -for confirmation than in his usual tone of conviction and personal -decision. - -Stephen responded musingly, “Yes—it is. And I believe he is innocent. I -can’t quite believe that he isn’t, at least—only——” - -“Only what?” - -Pryde hesitated—and then reluctantly, “It was such a shock to have -discovered that he deceived us about his gambling. I had never thought -Hugh deceitful. He always seemed so frank—so open—as he seemed last -night in this room.” - -“Yes,” Bransby groaned. “Yes—he did deceive us about his gambling—and -he knew it was contrary to my orders—how I hated it.” - -“But that doesn’t _prove_,” the nephew said promptly, “that he did this -other thing” (his uncle looked up quickly, gratefully). “Of course, it’s -true that gambling sometimes tempts men to steal.” - -“It always does.” Bransby lapsed back into despair, and shrank back into -his chair. - -“But Hugh seemed so innocent,” Stephen added reflectively. - -“He seemed innocent, too, when he was gambling,” the other retorted. - -“Yes—that’s true.” - -“And I loved him—I trusted him—I—he was always my favorite. Even now, -I’m not treating you fairly. You must be suffering horribly—my poor -Stephen.” - -“I am suffering, sir. On your account, on my own, on poor misguided -Hugh’s, I loved him too, I always shall love him; but I am suffering -more, a thousand times more, for—Helen.” - -Bransby gave him a startled look. He had spoken her name in a tone -unmistakable. “Yes, Uncle Dick, it’s just that. It has always been that. -It will never be anything else, any other way than that with me.” - -In his surprise Bransby picked up his joss and put it down again several -times, beating with it a nervous tattoo on the table. “Does she know?” - -“Helen? No. It would only have hurt her to know. It has always been Hugh -with her. But now——” - -Bransby checked him—not unkindly—he sensed something of what it must -have cost him, this unanswered affection; he knew Stephen’s nature ran -deep and keen—but he spoke decidedly, feeling, too, that there was -something callous, almost something of treachery, in a brother who could -hint at hope so quick on a brother’s ruin, and Helen’s heart newly hurt -and raw. “Put it out of your mind, Stephen. Helen will never change; -least of all now. The women of our family are constant forever. Now we -must act—you and I. We must arrange that there shall be no scandal -about Hugh’s disappearance. We must protect his name—on Helen’s -account—and the firm’s. About his commission—almost I regret saying he -must throw it up. It might—it might have been the way out. Have you any -idea where he is?” - -“None.” - -“Well—then—we must act at once. Already I’ve let a day slip—I—I’m -not well—I said I’d attend to it. We’ll attend to it now. I don’t think -there’ll be any trouble about that. Oh! he ought to have written his -resignation, though, before he went. My fault—my fault. However, I’ll -do it now. No! I can’t.” He held out the hand with the Chinese curio in -it. The hand was trembling so that the jade thing winked and rainbowed -in the light of the fire. “You must write it. That will do. Sit there -and do it now. Make it brief and formal as possible. I’ll go to town -to-morrow and see his Colonel myself, if necessary—Latham willing or -no.” - -Stephen crossed to the writing-table thoughtfully. He began to -write—Bransby walking about still carrying the paper-weight -absent-mindedly—and thinking aloud as he moved. “His leave isn’t up for -another three days. Yes—I think that gives us time. Yes—we’ll get into -touch with his Colonel to-morrow and find out just how to proceed. I -hope I shan’t have to tell the real reason.” - -“Will this do?” Pryde had finished, and passed his uncle the sheet. - -Bransby glanced at it carelessly at first. “Yes, yes.” He held it -towards Pryde—then something prompted—a strong impulse—he drew it -back, looked at it, then he fell to studying it. A terrible change -passed over his face. He gazed at the paper in amazement, then looked in -horror from it to the man who had written it—then back at the note, -crimson flooding his neck, a gray shadow darkening his rigid face. He -raised his haggard eyes and stared at Stephen thunderstruck. - -Stephen felt the fierce eyes, and looked up. “Why—why—what is it, -sir?” - -But even as he spoke Stephen Pryde knew—as Bransby himself had learned -in a flash—one of those terrible forked flashes of illumination that -come to most of us once in life. - -Bransby answered slowly, coldly, carefully. “You have signed Hugh’s name -to this, and it is Hugh’s handwriting. If I didn’t _know_ otherwise, I -would have sworn he wrote it himself.” - -Stephen lost his head. His hand shook, and his tongue. “That’s odd,” he -stammered with a sick laugh, “I—I didn’t realize.” He put his hand out -for the letter—Bransby drew it back, looking him relentlessly in the -eyes. The brain that had made and controlled one of the greatest -businesses ever launched, and complicated in its immense ramifications, -was working now at lightning speed, rapier-sharp, sledge hammer in -force, quick, clear and sure. - -“It was no accident. You can’t patch it up that way—or in any—I _see_. -You have practiced his handwriting. You have done this before.” - -Stephen gathered himself together feebly. “Of what do you accuse me?” he -fumbled. - -“Tell me the truth—I must know the truth.” - -Then Stephen added blunder to blunder. He pointed to the ledger. “I know -nothing of it—nothing.” - -“You’re lying.” - -“Uncle Dick!” - -“You are lying, Stephen Pryde—it’s as plain on your face as the truth -was on Hugh’s—and, God forgive me, I wouldn’t believe him.” - -“I didn’t do it, I tell you!” Stephen was blustering fiercely now. - -“You had access to that ledger as well as Hugh. You can’t deny the -damnable evidence of this you’ve just written before my eyes. Oh! how -blind I’ve been—blind—blind! Stephen,” he panted in his fury, “unless -you tell me the truth now, by the mother that bore you, I’ll show you no -mercy—none.” - -For a space Stephen stared at him, fascinated—caught. All at once his -courage quite went, and he sagged down in his chair, crumpled and -beaten. “I did it,” he said hoarsely. “I had to.” - -“You made the alteration in the ledger after Hugh left?” - -“Yes.” - -“My God! and you wrote the anonymous letter to Grant, too! Why?” - -“I wanted power—dominion—they are all that make life worth living. You -drove me to it. You never cared for me—not as you did for Hugh—you -thwarted me always. I wanted power, I tell you. I would have given it to -you—such power as you never dreamed of—such power as few men ever have -had. But you always stood in my way. You kept me a subordinate—and I -hated it. You threw Helen and Hugh together, and I could have killed -you. When the war broke out I saw my chance. I meant to take for myself -the place I could have won for you—and would have won—for you—and for -her—but I needed money—so—I speculated—and lost.” - -“And then you put the crime on your brother’s shoulder. You would have -ruined his life—destroyed his happiness.” - -“What does the life and happiness of any one matter, if they stand in -the way? Hugh! Hugh meant nothing to the world—Hugh’s a fool. I could -have done great things—I could have given England the Air—The Air.” - -“Yes,” Bransby said piteously. “Yes, I believed in you. I have left the -control of my business to you—after my death. Thank God for -to-morrow—to alter that, to——” - -Stephen shrugged an insolent shoulder, and said coldly—he was cool -enough now, “Well, what are you going to do—with me?” - -The answer was ready. “Take up that pen again—write—and see to it that -the handwriting’s your own.” - -Pryde glowered at Bransby with rebel eyes, and then—almost as if -hypnotized—did as he was told—writing mechanically, his face -twitching, but his hand moving slowly, to Richard Bransby’s slow -dictation. - -The dictation was relentless: “I confess that I stole”—the quivering -face of the younger man looked up for an instant, but Bransby did not -meet the look (perhaps he, too, was suffering), his eyes were on space, -his fingers lifting and falling on his carved toy. Stephen looked up, -but his pen moved mechanically on—“ten thousand pounds from my uncle, -Richard Bransby—and I forged my brother Hugh’s handwriting in the -ledger.” Pryde laid down the pen. - -“Sign it.”—He did. - -“Date it.”—He did. - -“Give it to me.” The hand that took the paper shook more than the hand -that had written it. - -“Do you know where your brother has gone? Have a care that you tell me -the truth from this on—it’s your only chance. Do you know where he has -gone?” - -“No!” - -“Go find him—if you hope for mercy. Bring him back here by to-morrow.” - -Stephen rose with a shrug. For an evil moment Richard Bransby’s life was -in peril. Stephen stood behind him, murder hot in his heart, insane in -his eyes, and clenched in his fist: all the hurt and the thwart of years -joined with the rage and dilemma of the moment, ready to spring, to -avenge and to kill. Bransby saw nothing—not even the jade he still -fingered. Then with a gesture of scorn he tore into bits the note of -resignation he had made Stephen write. “I’ll see the Colonel myself. -That will be best,” he said. - -At that instant, Bransby’s head bowed, Pryde’s hand still raised, Mrs. -Leavitt’s voice rose in the hall, fussed and querulous, “Who left this -here? Barker!” Bransby did not hear her, but Pryde did. His arm fell to -his side, he forced a mask of calm to his face, and then without a word -he went. He did not even look towards his uncle again; but at the door -he turned and looked bitterly, hungrily, at the picture over the -fireplace. Poor Stephen! - -In the hall Caroline Leavitt hailed him. “Not going out, Stephen?” - -“Yes; I’ve to run up to London for Uncle Dick,” he told her lightly. She -exclaimed at the hour, followed him with sundry advice about a rug and a -warmer coat, and he answered her cordially. Perhaps he was not -ungrateful for so much creature kindliness, such small dole of -mothering—just then. - -Presently the front door slammed. “Dear me, that’s not like Stephen,” -she said aloud. - -Richard Bransby heard nothing. For a little he sat lost in his own -bitter thoughts. Then he read Stephen’s confession over with scrupulous -care. “Blind—Blind—Blind,” he murmured as he folded it. Ah! that -terrible faintness was coming on again. He dropped the paper; it fell on -the still open pages of “David Copperfield.” For once the book astray -had escaped Caroline’s eye. This was torture. Could he get to the -brandy? Where was Latham? Helen—he wanted Helen. He thought he was very -ill. Helen must know the truth—about Hugh—and they must put the proof -in safe keeping before—before anything happened to him. Helen’s -happiness—yes, he must secure that—and Hugh—Hugh whom he had so -wronged—he must atone to Hugh. - -In his effort to conquer his spasm he caught hold of the volume of -Dickens, and it closed in his convulsive fingers. Helen—he must get to -Helen. He staggered to his feet, the book forgotten on the table, the -paper-weight forgotten too, but still gripped close in one unconscious -hand. For a space he stood swaying—then he contrived to turn, and -staggered to the door, calling, “Helen—Helen!” - -His voice rang through the house with the far-carrying of fright and -despair. - -Barker reached him first, and began to cry and moan hysterically. - -Caroline Leavitt pushed her aside. “He has fainted. Call Dr. Latham.” - -But Latham had heard Bransby’s cry, and so, too, had Helen. They came -together from the billiard room hurriedly. The girl threw herself down -by her father, all the bitterness gone, only the old love and gratitude -left. Latham knelt by him, too, and after a touch of Bransby’s hand, a -look at his face, said, “Mrs. Leavitt—you and Miss Bransby wait in the -library.” - -“No, I want to stay here,” Helen insisted. - -“You must do as I say.” - -“Come, dear,” and Caroline led her away, and put her into her father’s -chair. - -“Poor Daddy—poor Daddy.” - -“He will be all right in a few moments,” the older woman said feebly. -But Helen was not attending to her. Caroline stood looking pitifully at -the shaken girl, and then turned away sadly. The disorder of the table -caught her eye. Not thinking, not caring now, but obeying the habit of -her lifetime, she took up the volume of “David Copperfield,” and carried -it to the bookcase. As she replaced it on its shelf Latham came in. He -went to Helen and laid his hand on her shoulder. - -“Daddy?” - -The physician met her eyes pityingly. He had no healing—for her. - -With a shudder the girl rose and turned to the hall. - -“Helen,” Mrs. Leavitt pled. - -“He would want me near him,” the girl said quite calmly. And the -physician neither stayed nor followed her; and he motioned Mrs. Leavitt -to do neither. - - - CHAPTER XVIII - -Three days later they laid him down by his wife. - -Until then Helen scarcely left him. And not once did her pitiful young -calm break or waver. - -Stephen came from London. Latham’s telephone message had reached Pont -Street before Pryde had. - -No word came of Hugh, no word or sign from him. - -They laid him in his coffin almost as they found him. Helen insisted -that it be so. Much that when dead we usually owe to strange hands, to -professional kindliness, the girl, who had not seen death before, did -for this dead. - -The blackdraped trestle, the casket on it, was placed in the room where -the tragedy that had killed him had fallen. - -He lay as if he slept, all the pain and doubt gone from his still face. -Only one flower was with him—just one in his hand. And in the other -hand he still held the odd Chinese carving. Helen had intended the -costly trifle he had so affected—so often handled—it seemed almost a -part of him—to remain with him. But, at last, something, some new -vagary of Grief’s many piteous, puzzling vagaries, impelled her to take -it from him. - -She scarcely left him all the hours he lay in his favorite room and took -there his last homekeeping, there where he had lived so much of his -life, done so much of his thinking, welcomed such few friends as he -valued, read again and again the books he liked. - -He rested with Helen’s picture, radiant, gay-clad, smiling down on him -serene and immovable, and Helen black-clad, pallid, almost as -quiet,—moving only to do him some new little service, to give him still -one more caress. - -It was their last tryst—kept tenderly in the old room where they had -kept so many. Such trysts are not for chronicling. - -At the last—alone for the “good-by” that must be given—but never to be -quite ended or done, live she as long as she may—Helen unclenched the -cold—oh! so cold—fingers, and drew away the bit of jade. - -Sobbing—she had scarcely cried until now—she carried it to the -writing-table, and put it just where it had always stood. - -“I want it, Daddy,” she said, smiling down wet-eyed on the still face. -“You don’t know how much you handled it. I seem always to have seen it -in your hand. No one shall touch it again but me—just yours and mine, -Daddy—our little jade doll, in a pink cradle. Stay there!” she told the -joss, and then sobbing, but pressing back her tears, and wiping them -away when they _would_ come, that her sight might be clear for its last -loving of that dear, dead face, she bent over the coffin, spending their -last hour together, saying—good-by. - -“Oh, Daddy—my Daddy——” The sobs came then, long and louder. Latham, -watching in the hall, heard them, but he did not go to the girl; nor let -any one else do so. - - * * * * * - - - - - BOOK III - - - THE QUEST - - - CHAPTER XIX - -The spring waxed into radiant molten summer, mocking with its lush of -flower-life, its trill of bird-voice, its downpouring of sunshine, the -agony of the nations, and the pitiful grief in one English girl’s -inconsolable heart. - -Other girls lost their lovers. Never a home in England but held some -bereavement now, never a heart in Christendom but nursed some ache. But -most of the sorrow and suffering was ennobled and blazoned. Other girls -walked proud with their memories—_his_ D.S.O. pinned in their black, -the ribbon of _his_ Military Cross worn on their heart, tiny wings of -tinsel, of gold, or of diamonds rising and falling with their breath, a -regimental badge pinning their lace, a sailor’s button warm at a soft -white throat—telling of a “boy” sleeping cold, unafraid in the North -Sea, or (proudest of all these) a new wedding-ring under a little black -glove—and, perhaps—— - -Other girls packed weekly boxes for Ruhleben, or walked the London -streets and the Sussex lanes with the man on whose arm they had used to -lean leaning on theirs, blinded, a leg gone, or trembling still from -shell-shock, a face mutilated, broken and scarred in body, -nerve-wrecked, but _hers_, hers to have and to hold, to love and to -mother, to lean on her love, to respond to her shy wooing, to beget her -children; to show the world, and God, how English women love. - -But she—Helen—was alone. No field-card for her—no last kiss at -Victoria, no trophy, no hope. - -Hugh had been posted as a deserter. It was some hideous mistake, Helen -knew that, but the world did not know. Hugh! Hugh dishonored, despised. -She knew that he had not deserted. But what had happened? Had he been -killed? Had his mind broken? That he had not taken his own life—at -least not knowingly—that she knew. But what, what, then, had happened? -He had disappeared from her, as from every one else—no trace—not a -clue. Where was he? How was he? Did he live? Not a word came—not a -whisper—not a hint. And his name was branded. _Her_ name—the name she -had dreamed to wear in bridal white and in motherhood. “Mrs. Hugh -Pryde”—“Helen Pryde”—how often she had written those, alone in her -room—as girls will. “Mrs. Hugh Pryde,” she had liked it the better of -the two, and sometimes she had held it to her dimpling, flushed face -before she had burned it. - -For what the world thought, for what the world said, she held her young -head but the higher, and went among men but the more proudly. But under -her pride and her scorn her heart ached until she felt old and -palsied—and some days she looked it. - -She put pictures of Hugh about her rooms conspicuously. Caroline Leavitt -and Stephen both wished she had not, but neither commented on it; -neither dared. Angela Hilary loved her for it as she had not done -before. And for it Horace Latham formed a far higher estimate of her -than he had in her happier girl-days. - -Spring grew to summer, summer sickened to winter. Still Hugh did not -come, or send even a word. The wind whined and sneered in the leafless -trees, rattling their naked branches. The snow lay cold on the ground. - -A few days after her father’s funeral, Helen left Deep Dale—forever, -she thought. But such servants as the war had left them there, she -retained there, and there she established her “Aunt Caroline.” - -Mrs. Leavitt had been well enough pleased to stay as vicereine at Deep -Dale. She would have preferred to come and go with Helen; Curzon Street -had its points, but Helen preferred to be alone and said so simply, -brooking no dispute. If the girl had been willful before, she was -adamant now. Even Stephen found it not easy to suggest or to argue, and -never once when he did carried his point. - -She locked up the library herself, and forbade that any should enter it -in her absence. She pocketed her father’s keys, and scarcely troubled to -reply to the suggestion that they might be needed by her cousin. - -She had lived alone—except for her servants—in Curzon Street. At that -Caroline Leavitt had protested—“so young a girl without even a figure -head of a chaperon will be misunderstood”—and as much more along the -same lines of social rectitude and prudence as Helen would tolerate. - -Helen’s toleration was brief. “My mourning is chaperon enough,” she said -curtly, “and if it isn’t, it is all I shall ever have. I wish to be -alone. I intend to be.” - -“No one to be with you at all—to take care of you,” Stephen had -contributed once to Mrs. Leavitt’s urgency. - -“No one at all, until Hugh comes home to take care of me.” - -Pryde bit his lip angrily, and said no more. - -Helen was her own mistress absolutely. - -A will disposing of so large a fortune had not often been briefer than -Richard Bransby’s, and no will had ever been clearer. - -There were a few minor bequests. Caroline Leavitt was provided for -handsomely, and so also were Stephen and Hugh. (The will had been signed -in 1911.) To Stephen had been left the management of the vast business. -Everything else—and it was more than nine-tenths of the immense -estate—was Helen’s, absolutely, without condition or control. And even -Stephen’s management was subject to her veto, even the legacies to -others subject to her approval. She had approved, of course, at once, -and the legacies were now irrevocable. But Stephen’s dictatorship she -could terminate a year from the day she expressed and recorded her -desire to do so, and in the meantime she could greatly curtail it. -Bransby had left her heir to an autocracy. And already, in several small -ways, her rule had been autocratic. Always willful, her sorrow had -hardened her, and Stephen knew that when their wills clashed, hers would -be maintained, no matter at what cost to him. Where she was indifferent, -he could have his way absolutely. Where she was interested, he could -have no part of it, unless it luckily chanced to be identical with hers. -He understood, and he chafed. But also he was very careful. - -He lived still in Pont Street, in the bachelor rooms he and Hugh had had -since their ’Varsity days; for Bransby had liked to have Helen to -himself often. - -Stephen spent as much time with his cousin as she would let him, and he -had from the day of his uncle’s death. And he “looked after” her as much -as she would brook. - -Vast as the Bransby fortune had been, even in this short time of his -stewardship he had increased it by leaps and bounds. A great fortune a -year ago, now it was one of the largest, if not the largest, of the -war-fortunes. They still built ships and sailed them. He had suggested -nothing less to Helen—he had not dared. But they dealt in aircraft too. -Stephen had suggested that at a favorable moment, and she had conceded -it listlessly. - -Air was still his element, and its conquest his desire. His own room at -Pont Street was now, as it had been all along, and as every nook of his -very own when a boy had been, an ordered-litter of aeroplane models, -aerodrome plans, “parts,” schemes, dreams sketched out, estimates, -schedules, inventions tried and untried, lame and perfected. They knew -him at the Patent Office, and at least one of his own contrivances was -known and flown in both hemispheres. - -For Helen’s love he still waited, hungry and denied. But his dreams of -the air were fast coming true. - -Helen had no comrades in these drear days, and scarcely kept up an -acquaintance. Angela Hilary had refused to be “shunted,” as she termed -it, and she and Horace Latham gained Helen’s odd half-hours oftener than -any one else did. The girl had always “enjoyed” Angela, and when sorrow -came, gifting her with some of its own wonderful clairvoyance, she had -quickly sensed the worth and the tenderness of the persistent woman. And -Dr. Latham was secure in her interest and liking, because she associated -him closely with her father, and remembered warmly his tact and kindness -in the first hours of her bereavement. And, sorry as her own plight was, -and dreary as her daily life, she could not be altogether dull to the -pretty contrivances and the nice management of the older girl’s -love-affair. Grief itself could but find some amusement and take some -warmth from Angela’s brilliant, deft handling of that difficult matter. -It would have made a colder onlooker than Helen tingle—and sometimes -gasp. It certainly made Latham tingle, and not infrequently gasp. - - - CHAPTER XX - -Begun half in fun, the pretty widow’s advance towards the physician had -grown a little out of her own entire control, and she found herself in -some danger of being hoist by her own petard. Easy enough she found it -to handle the man—she had handled men from her cradle—but she found -her own wild heart not quite so manageable. - -Helen half expected Angela to make the proposal which Latham, the girl -felt sure, never would. She was sure that Angela was in deadly earnest -now, and she was confident that in love, as in frolic, Angela would -stick at nothing. - -And Angela was in deadly earnest now—the deadliest. But she had no -intention of proposing to Horace. She knew a trick worth ten of that. - -Wah-No-Tee still stood to Mrs. Hilary for friend, philosopher and guide, -but, believed in as staunchly as ever, she was sought rather less -frequently, and on the affair-Latham the disembodied spirit, who was -also “quite a lady,” was consulted not at all. For the subjugation of -the physician Angela Hilary besought no sibyl, bought no love-philter. - -She lived, when in London, in a tiny private hotel, just off Bond -Street, and as expensive as it was small. In her sitting-room there -Latham and she were lounging close to the log-heaped fire one dark -December day, exploiting an afternoon tea transatlantically -heterogeneous. - -“You know, I don’t approve of this at all,” the medico said, shaking his -head at hot muffins heavy with butter and whipped cream, his hand -hovering undecidedly over toasted marshmallows and a saline liaison of -popcorn and peanuts. “We deserve to be very ill, both of us—and my -country is at war, and the _Morning Post_ says——” - -“Food-shortage! Eat less bread!” Angela gurgled, burying her white teeth -in a very red peach. “Well, there’s no bread here, not a crust. And the -children in the East End and badly wounded Tommies might not thrive on -this fare of mine.” - -“They might not,” the physician said cordially. “Yes, please, I will -have two lumps and cream: my constitution requires it.” - -As she poured his tea, all her rings flashing in the fire-flicker, her -face, usually so white, just flushed with rose from the flecks of the -flames, he fell to watching her silently. - -“Talk!” she commanded. - -He smiled, and said nothing. - -“Oh, a penny, then, for your thoughts, Mr. Man, if you want to be -bribed.” - -“I wonder if I dare.” - -“Be bribed? What nonsense.” - -“It takes a great deal of courage sometimes. But that was not what I -meant.” - -“What did you mean?—if you meant anything.” - -“Oh! yes—I meant.” - -“What? Hurry up!” - -“I meant that I wondered if I dared tell you my thoughts—what I was -thinking just then.” - -“H’m,” was all the help she vouchsafed him. - -“Will you be angry?” - -“Very like—how can I tell?” - -“Shall I plunge, and find out?” - -“As you like. But I don’t mind making it six-pence.” - -“The fee nerves me. I was wishing I knew, and could ask without -impertinence, something about your first marriage.” - -“My first marriage indeed!” she cried indignantly. “How often are you -pleased to imagine I have been married? I’ve only been married once, I’d -have you know.” - -Latham flushed hotly, and she tilted back in her chair and laughed at -him openly. Then the dimpling face—her dimples were -delightful—sobered, and she leaned towards the fire—brooding—her -hands clasped on her knees, her foot on the fender. “I’ll tell you, -then, as well as I can—why not? John was quite unlike any man you’ve -known. You don’t grow such men in England. It isn’t the type. He was -big, and blond and reckless—‘all wool and a yard wide.’ I loved my -husband very dearly. We American women usually do. We can, you know, for -we don’t often marry for any other reason. Why should we? Mr. Hilary was -a lawyer—a great criminal pleader. He saved more murderers than any -other one man at the Illinois bar. He was a Westerner—every bit of him. -His crying was wonderful, and oh! how he bullied his juries. He made -them obey him. He made every one obey him.” - -“You?” Latham interjected. - -“Me! Good gracious, man, American women don’t obey. Me! I wouldn’t obey -Georgie Washington come to life and richer than Rothschild. Obey!” Only -an American voice could express such contempt, and no British pen convey -it. “But the juries obeyed him all right—as a rule! Those were good -days in Chicago. There’s no place like Chicago.” - -“So I’ve heard,” Latham admitted. - -“But they didn’t last long. An uncle of John’s died out in California, -and left us ever so many millions.” - -“I say—that was sporting!” - -“What was?” - -“Leaving his money to you as well as to his nephew.” - -“Land’s sake, but you English are funny! Of course Ira Hilary did -nothing of the sort. I don’t suppose he’d ever heard of me—though he -might if he read the Chicago papers; a dress or two of mine were usually -in on Sunday—or something I’d done. But I dare say he didn’t even know -if John had a wife. He’d gone to the Pacific coast when he was a boy, -before John was born—and he’d never been back East, or even written, -till he wrote he was dead. It’s like that in America. _Our_ men are -busy.” - -“I see,” Latham asserted. - -“No, you don’t. No one could who hadn’t lived there. Throw another log -on.” - -Latham did, and she continued, half chatting to him, half musing: “My! -how it all comes back, talking about it. Well, he left us all that -money, left it to me as much as if he’d said so, and very much more than -he left it to John. That’s another way we have in America that you -couldn’t understand if you tried; so I wouldn’t try, if I were you.” - -“I won’t,” her guest said meekly. “Go on, please. I am interested.” - -“Well, Uncle Ira died, and I made John retire.” - -“Retire?” - -“Give up the bar. And we traveled. I love to travel, I always have. And -now we could afford to go anywhere and do everything. Of course I’d -always had money, heaps and heaps. Papa was rich, and he left me -everything. Oh! Richard Bransby wasn’t the only pebble on that beach. -Gracious! we run to such fathers in America. But, of course, we’d had to -live on John’s money.” - -“Why?” - -“Why?” she blazed at him. “Why? Why, because my money wasn’t his. He -hadn’t earned it. John Hilary never had so much as a cigar out of my -money. He dressed shockingly. I had to burn half the ties he bought. And -his hats! But he supported me, I didn’t support him. American men don’t -sponge on their wives. They wouldn’t do it. And if they would, we -wouldn’t let them—not we American women. I say, Dr. Latham, you’ve a -lot to learn about America—all Englishmen have.” - -“Go on. Teach me some more. I like learning.” - -“There’s not much more to tell. We were not together long, John and I. -It was like a story my father used to tease me with, when he was tired -and I teased him to tell me stories. ‘I’ll tell you a story about Jack -A’Manory, and now my story’s begun. I’ll tell you another about Jack and -his brother, and now my story’s done.’ I was eighteen, nearly, when I -was married. It was four years after that that John said good-by to his -murderers and absconders. Just a year after he died in Hong -Kong—cholera. That teased me some.” The pretty lips were quivering and -Latham saw a tear pearl on the long lashes. - -After a pause he said gently, “Will you ever give any one else his -place, do you think?” - -“John’s place? Never. No one could.” She did not add that there were -other places that a man—the right man—might make in her heart, and -that she was lonely. But the thought was clear in her mind, and it -glanced through Latham’s. - -“How long is it—since you were in Hong Kong?” he ventured presently. - -Angela Hilary dimpled and laughed. “I’ll be twenty-eight next week.” - -“And I was forty-seven last week.” And then he added earnestly, “Thank -you for telling me.” - -“Oh, I was glad to.” Neither referred to her confidence about her age, -or thought that the other did. - -At that moment “Mr. Pryde” was announced. Angela welcomed him -effusively, brewed him fresh tea and plied him with molasses candy and -hot ginger-bread. - -Latham watched her; it was always pleasant to watch this woman, -especially when plying some womanly craft, as now, but he spoke to -Stephen. “I am glad to have this chance of offering you my -congratulations, Pryde.” - -Stephen raised a puzzled eyebrow. “Your congratulations?” - -“I hear that since you have become the head of the house of Bransby you -have done great things.” - -“Oh,” Stephen said non-committally. - -“They tell me that you are the big man in the Aeroplane World, and that -you are going to grow bigger. Perhaps success means nothing to you, -but——” - -“Success means everything to me, to every man worth his salt. The people -who say it doesn’t are liars.” - -“So, after all, you were right and Bransby was wrong.” - -“Yes, I was right, and Uncle Dick was wrong. But as for my rising to -great heights—well—after all, it is the house of Bransby that will -reap the benefit. It was very trusting of Uncle Dick to leave me the -management of the business, but Helen is the house of Bransby.” - -“But surely she won’t interfere with your management,” said Latham. - -And Angela cried, “Oh no, she must never do that.” - -“No—she must never do that,” Pryde said, more to himself than to them, -stirring his tea musingly and gazing wistfully, stubbornly into the -fire. He looked up and caught Mrs. Hilary’s eye, and spoke to them both, -and more lightly. “I dare say I shall find a way to persuade her to let -me go on as I have.” - -Their hostess sprang up with a cry. Latham just saved her cup, and an -almonded eclair tumbled into the fire—past all saving. “Oh! it is -lovely, perfectly lovely!” - -“What?” the men both asked. - -“To fly like a bird. I used to dream I was flying when I was a child. It -was perfectly sweet. I used to dream it, too, sometimes when I first -came out and went to Germans (cotillions, you call ’em) and things every -night—oh!” - -“Perhaps that came from your dancing,” Pryde said gallantly. Angela -danced well. - -“More probably it was the midnight supper she’d eaten,” laughed Latham, -pointing a rueful professional finger at the tea-table. - -“Perhaps it was both,” the hostess said cheerfully. “And my, it was -beautiful. But oh, we never had supper at midnight. No fear! Two or -three was nearer the hour. But such good suppers. You don’t know how to -eat over here,” she added sadly. “For one thing, you simply don’t know -how to cook a lobster—not one of you.” - -“How should a lobster be cooked?” Pryde said lazily. - -“Hot—hot—hot. Or it’s good in a mayonnaise. But who ever saw a -mayonnaise in London? No one.” - -“I am not greatly surprised that you dreamed at some height, if you -regularly supped off lobster, Mrs. Hilary, at three in the morning, -either frappé or sizzling hot,” Latham told her. - -“And champagne with it,” Stephen ventured. - -“Never! I detest champagne with shellfish.” - -“Stout?” Pryde quizzed. - -Angela made a face. - -“What, then, was the beverage? If one is permitted to ask,” Stephen -persisted meekly. - -“Cream—when I could get it. I do love cream.” - -The physician groaned. “I wonder,” he said severely, “that instead of -dreaming of flying you did not in reality fly.” - -She giggled, and helped herself to a macaroon, still standing on the -hearthrug, facing them. “Oh, I knew a lovely poem once—we all had to -learn it by heart at school—probably you did too?” - -“I think it highly improbable,” Latham protested. - -“I am positive I did not,” Pryde asserted. - -“Not learn to recite ‘Darius Green and His Flying Machine’! My, you do -neglect your children in this country. You poor things! I wonder if I -can remember it and say it to you.” - -She clasped her hands behind her back and faced them with dancing eyes. -“‘Darius Green and His Flying Machine,’” she declaimed solemnly. And -very solemnly, but with now and then a punctuation point of giggle, she -recited in its entirety the absurd classic which has played no -inconspicuous part in the transatlantic curriculum. Her beautiful Creole -voice, now pathetic and velvet, now lifted as the wing of a bird in -flight, her face dimpling till even Stephen was bewitched, and Latham -could have kissed it, and might have been tempted to essay the -enterprise had only they been alone. Richard Bransby, whose fond fancy -had compared the women of his love each to some distinct flower, might -have thought her like some rich magnolia of her own South as she swayed -and postured in the gleaming firelight. But perhaps all beautiful women -are rather flower-like. - -She ended the performance with a shiver and sigh of elation. “Oh, isn’t -it a love of a poem? Have some more tea.” - -Stephen came to see Mrs. Hilary not infrequently. She liked him -genuinely, and her liking soothed and helped him. He was terribly -restless often. Never once had he repented. He had loved Hugh, and loved -him still. He would have given a great deal to have known where he was, -and to have helped him. He would have given far more to know that the -brother would never come back—come back to thwart him of Helen—perhaps -to expose him of crime. He loved Hugh and he mourned him; but two things -to him were paramount: to make Helen his wife, and to be an “Air-King.” -One goal was in sight, the other he could not, and would not, -relinquish. And to gain these two great desires, soul-desires both, he -would hesitate at nothing, regret nothing, and least of all their cost -to any other, no matter how dear to him that other, no matter how -terrible that cost. - -Latham left a few moments after the tragic descent of Darius into the -barnyard mud. Angela Hilary went to the door to speed her parting guest, -and gave him her hand, her right hand, of course. Latham dropped it -rather abruptly and took her left hand in his. “How many rings do you -own?” he demanded. - -“Dozens. I’ve not counted them for years. There’s a list somewhere.” - -“You need two more,” he said softly—and went. - - - CHAPTER XXI - -The jade Joss had the room to himself. There was little enough light and -no fire. Gray shadows hung thick in the place, palpable and dreary. The -blinds were down and the curtains all drawn. It was late afternoon in -January—a cold, forbidding day; and the room itself, once the heart of -the house, was even colder, more ghoul-like. Only one or two thin shafts -of sickly light crept in, penetrating the gloom—but not lifting it, -intensifying it rather. - -Joss looked cold, neglected and alien. The rose-colored lotus looked -pinched, gray and frozen—poor exiled pair, and here and so they had -been since a few days after Richard Bransby’s death, when Helen had left -the room, locking it behind her, and pronounced it taboo to all others. - -But now a key turned in the door, creaking and stiffly, as if long -unused to its office. - -In the hall, Mrs. Leavitt drew back with a shiver and motioned -imperatively to Stephen to precede her. “How dark it is,” she said, and -not very bravely, following him in not ungingerly. - -“Yes,” he answered crisply. He had not come there to talk. And, like -her, he was intensely nervous; but from a very different cause. Dead -men, and the places of their last earthly resting, meant nothing to him. - -“And cold. Stephen, light the fire while I draw the curtains. Have you -matches?” - -“Of course.” He knelt at the fireplace and set a match to the gas logs. -Mrs. Leavitt drew the curtain aside and raised the blinds. The winter -sunlight came streaming through the windows, a chilled unfriendly -sunshine, but it flooded the room. Pryde looked about quickly, and the -woman did too. - -She was much affected. “Oh, Stephen, how this room does bring it all -back to me! It seems as if it were only yesterday that Richard was -here—poor Richard.” Then her eyes caught their old prey—dust—and -dust—dust everywhere. She pulled open a drawer under the bookshelves -and caught up a little feather duster that had always been kept there. - -But Stephen checked her abruptly. “Don’t touch that table—don’t touch -anything on any of the tables,” he said sharply. - -“Well, I’m sure——” - -“No—you must not. I—I promised Helen——” - -“Promised Helen?” - -“That no one should lay hand on even one thing, no one but myself, and -that I would touch as little as possible—just to find the papers.” - -“Well, I’m sure——” - -His eye fell upon the bit of jade and he pointed to it, laughing -nervously. “Especially, I had to promise her that I’d not lay a finger -on that. You remember how Uncle Dick used absent-mindedly to play with -it. And Helen declares that no one shall ever touch it again but -herself, and she only to dust it.” - -“Well, it needs dusting now, right enough,” Mrs. Leavitt remarked -resentfully. - -“Are you quite sure that everything here is exactly as Uncle Dick left -it?” In spite of himself he could not keep his hideous anxiety out of -his voice. - -But Mrs. Leavitt did not notice. She was looking furtively about the -unkempt room with disapproving eyes. She answered mechanically, -“Oh—yes—everything. The day Richard’s coffin was carried out of it, -Helen locked it up herself, just as it was. It has never been opened -since.” - -“She didn’t disturb any of the papers on this table?” - -“No.” - -“And no one has been here since, you are sure?” - -“Of course I’m sure,” she replied acidly. “If I refused you, my own -nephew, admission twenty times at least, I wouldn’t allow any one else -in, would I? Helen said, before she went up to town to live because she -couldn’t bear to stay here, poor child—it’s very lonely without -her—well, she said that she did not want any one to come in here until -she returned. Naturally I respected her wishes—orders, you might call -them, since this is her house now—not that I grudge that. Well, now you -come with this letter from her, saying that you are to do what you like -in the library, and are to have her father’s keys—so of course I opened -it for you—and glad enough to get it opened at last—and here are the -keys; it’s only recently I’ve had them. Helen kept them herself for a -long time.” - -Stephen took them from her quickly—almost too quickly, had she been a -woman observant of anything but dust and disorder. “I persuaded her to -write it,” he said. “It is time her father’s papers were looked over, -and it would be too heavy a task for her—too sad.” - -“Stephen, is she still grieving over Hugh’s disappearance?” - -Pryde shrugged his shoulders. “H’m, yes.” - -“Poor child—poor child! It seems as if everything were taken from her -at once. And to think that a nephew of mine—well, nearly a -nephew—should desert from the army, and in war time, too—that there -should be a warrant out for his arrest! Just do look at that dust!” - -Stephen’s patience was wearing thin. “If you’ll excuse me now, Aunt -Caroline——” - -“Of course—you have a great deal to do, and I have too; the servants -get worse and worse. Servants! They’re not servants; war impostures, I -call them. Well, I’ll leave you now.” But at the door she turned again. -“Stephen!” - -“Yes.” He tried not to say it too impatiently. - -“There isn’t anything of great value in this room, is there?” - -“Why, no,” he said nervously. - -“That’s odd.” - -“Why—odd?” His voice was tense, and he did not look at her. - -“Three times since Richard died, burglars have tried to force their way -through the windows in this room.” - -“Oh!” Pryde managed to say, and it was all he could manage to say. - -“Always the same windows, you understand. Each time, fortunately, we -frightened them away.” - -“You have reported the matter to the police?” The anxiety made his voice -husky. - -“Yes, but all they ever did was to make notes.” - -“You have no idea who the burglar was? Burglars, I mean,” correcting -himself awkwardly. “You never caught sight of him—them?” - -“No—not a glimpse.” - -“No—oh, just some tramp, I dare say.” - -He was easier now, but his voice was a little unsteady from strain and -with relief. “And now please——” - -“Yes, I’ll hurry away now. Barker is dusting the best dinner service—if -I’m not there to watch, she’s sure to break something. Call me, if you -want me.” - -“I shan’t want you, Aunt Caroline.” - - - CHAPTER XXII - -As the fussy, bustling footsteps died away Stephen sank into an -easy-chair—Richard’s own, as it chanced—and laid his head on a table. -He was worn out with tension and uncertainty. - -The tall clock in the corner had run down. The gas fire made no sound. -No room could have been stiller. - -The day was mending toward its close, and the late level sun flooded in -from the windows, as if to make up for lost time and eight months of -exclusion. The light of the fire lit up the room’s other side, and -between the two riots of light and of warmth the man sat dejected, -distraught and shivering—alone with his self-knowledge, his fear and -his gruesome task. - -Where was the damnatory sheet of paper? In this room in all human -probability. Its ink had scarcely dried when Bransby had died, and it -had not been found on the body; Stephen Pryde had made sure of that. - -For eight terrible months he had schemed and tortured to get here and -find it—even playing housebreaker in his desperation. Yet now here at -long last he shrank inexplicably from beginning the search. Why? That he -knew not in the least. But, for one thing, he was hideously cold, almost -cramped with chill. The arms of the chair felt like ice. Little billows -of cold seemed to buffet against his face. The room had been shut up and -fireless for so long. His feet ached with cold, almost they felt -paralyzed. His legs were quivering, and so cold! And his hands were -blueing. - -At last he forced his numb frame from the seat. - -He looked about with frightened, agonized eyes. - -No paper lay on any one of the tables apparently. The wastepaper basket! -He seized it with a hand that shook as if palsied. Oh—a crumpled -whiteness lay on the bottom of the basket. Pray Heaven—he thrust in a -fumbling hand—and gave a cry of disappointment. This was not paper, but -some bit of soft cloth. He jerked it out impatiently, and then, when he -saw what it was, dropped it on the table with a sharp sigh; a -handkerchief—Helen’s. - -From table to table he went, examining each article on them, searching -every crevice. Each drawer he searched again and again. He looked in -every possible place, and, as the anxious searchers for lost things have -from time immemorial, in many impossible places. He overlooked -nothing—he was sure of that. Again and again he searched the tables and -then researched them. - -With a puzzled frown he rose and stared about the room. Then he moved -about it slowly and carefully, looking for some possible hidden -cupboard. He sounded the wainscoting. He scrutinized the ceiling, he -pulled at the seats of the chairs. - -Finally he halted before the bookcase and stood staring at it a long -time. He drew out one or two volumes. Could the thin sheet be behind -one? But the dust came out thickly, and he put them back. Something -seemed to pull him away, and drive him back to the table. Why, of -course, it must be there. Where else would the dead man have hidden it? -Nowhere, of course. Why waste time looking anywhere else? Again he began -the weary business all over. Again and again his cold, trembling hands -felt and searched, and his eyes, wild now and baffled, peered and -studied. Almost he prayed. His breath came in gasps. Sweat stood on his -forehead and around his clenched lips. - -Nothing! Nowhere! He sank back in his seat, convinced and defeated. The -confession was not here; or, if it was, he could not find it. And it -_might_ be somewhere else. Probably it had been destroyed, intentionally -or accidentally, by some one else. But it _might_ be in existence. And -some day it might be found to damn and to ruin. - -How tired he was—and how cold! Why couldn’t he get warmer? And where -did those icy drifts of wind come from, goose-fleshing his face and his -hands and making his spine creep? - -He crouched over the fire, and held out his blue hands to its heat. No -use! He was growing colder and colder. - -Then he began in his groping misery to think of birds flying. That was -always his vision in moments of over-tension or of great -aspiration—birds in full flight. To watch such flight had been the -purest joy of his boyhood. To contrive and to achieve its emulation had -been the fight and the triumph of his manhood. - -He lifted the morsel of cambric to his face, saluting it, and wiping -away with it the cold moisture on his cheek and his lips. Who should say -his extraordinary ambition, extraordinarily pursued, extraordinarily -fulfilled, ignoble? No one quite justly. Certainly he had wanted -success, power, prestige and great wealth for himself. But, as much as -he had desired them for himself, no less had he desired them for -Helen—to lay at her feet, to keep in her hands. - -And, too, he had dreamed to make England mightier yet by his air fleets -and their victories. Patriotism is a virtue enhanced and embellished by -all other virtues, even as it enhances and embellishes all other -virtues. But it is a virtue sole and apart, and not impossible to hearts -and to lives in all else besotted and ignoble. Only yesterday Stephen -himself had seen an example of this. Waiting at Victoria, he had watched -some hundreds of German prisoners detrained and retrained. As they sat -waiting and guarded, a bunch of English convicts, manacled and pallid, -had slouched on to the platform—“old timers” of the worst type, from -their looks, with heads ill-shaped and shapeless, more appropriate to an -asylum for idiots than a prison for miscreants, and with countenances -that would have disgraced and branded the lowest form of quadruped brute -life—“men” compared with whom, unless their appearance grossly libeled -them, Bill Sykes must have been quite the gentleman and no little of an -Adonis. But not one of them all, bestial, hardened and deficient, but -slunk or weakly brazened as they shuffled along, ashamed and unnerved, -abashed of God’s daylight and of the glance of their unincarcerated -fellows. Among them was chained one boy (he was scarcely older than -that) with a fine head and a gifted face—a boy, not unlike what Stephen -remembered himself in his unscorched days. It was a spiritual face even -now, as Stephen’s own was. Probably the boy’s crime had been some sin of -passion. Murderers often are of the spiritual type, but very rarely -housebreakers or thugs. Perhaps he had murdered a brother, loved by the -girl he himself craved. Perhaps he had killed some enemy or friend who -well deserved such slaughter. Or had his guilt been more sordid, -begotten in some schoolboy escapade, growing and nourished fœtuslike in -the fructive womb of youth’s temptations and young manhood’s cowardice: -money misused, trust betrayed, sex tarnished? Whatever his crime it had -left no scar on his face, no record except of suffering. And of them -all, this young convict’s plight was the most pitiful, his chagrin the -most woeful, of all that sorry gang. At a word from a warder, they -turned their poor cropped heads and saw the Hun prisoners. The cravened -faces cleared, the handcuffed figures straightened, the haggard, clouded -eyes brightened, the broken gait mended; criminals, exhibited in their -hideous livery of shame, for the moment they were men once -more—Englishmen, belligerent, proud and rejoiced—of the race of the -victors, lifted out and above the slime of their personal defeat—all of -them, the oldest and most beast-like, and the boy with the finely -chiseled face and the heart-broken eyes. - -Stephen Pryde’s own eyes, as he sat brooding between the fire and the -sunshine, were as haggard as any of those cinnamon-clad miserables had -been. He was ill—with the inexplicable chill, the grave-smell of the -room, and the nausea of disappointment and of his dilemma. He was at bay -indeed now. - -But the face that hung over the fire was a spiritual face. He had -betrayed a trust. He had stolen. He had borne false witness. In this -very room he had knotted his fist to do murder—and against the man who -had given him home, affection, position and luxury; and against his own -brother, whose mother and his had placed their hands palm in palm when -death already had muted her lips—his kiddy brother!—he had sinned with -a sin and a dastardy, compared to which Cain’s was venial and kind. Why? -And having so sinned, why was his face still fine, the hallmark of the -spiritual type still stamped there, clear and unblurred? - -Ah, who shall say? The riddle is dense. - -Perhaps ’twas because his vice was indeed “but virtue misapplied,” -because circumstances had betrayed him. Mary Magdalene in her common -days probably had some foretelling of saintship on her lureful face, and -might more easily have nursed babes on her breast than lured men to her -lair, been mother more gladly than wanton. - -However it was, however it came, there was a high something, a fineness, -on Stephen Pryde’s face that no one else of his milieu had—not even -Helen, certainly not Hugh; but his, for all time, to descend with him -into the grave, to go with him wherever he went, Heavenward or -Hellward—his gift and his birth-right. Few indeed ever sensed this. -Spirituality was almost the last trait friends or relatives would have -attributed to him. But one acquaintance had espied it—the American -woman, whom he had held in some sneering tolerance in the days of their -first meeting. “He has the face of a saint—a sour saint—but a saint, a -soul apart,” Angela had said of him the day he had been introduced to -her. And he had said of her after the same occasion, “What a -preposterous rattle of a woman! She rushes from whim to absurdity, back -and forth and getting nowhere—‘cluck, cluck, cluck’—like a hen in -front of a motor-car.” And this of the woman who had understood him at a -glance, as his own people had not in a lifetime. Why? Another riddle. -Perhaps it was because, underneath her cap and bells, Angela Hilary, -too, wore the hallmark, smaller, lighter cut—but there, and the same. -There is no greater mistake—and none made more often—than to think -that those who laugh and dance through life are earthbound. Heaven is -full of little children, clustered at her knee, playing with Our Lady’s -beads. - -After Stephen, dreamer and sinner, Angela Hilary had the most spiritual -of all the personalities with which this tale is concerned; and, after -her, the self-contained, conventional, well-groomed doctor of Harley -Street. - -Mrs. Leavitt’s step came along the hall, and her voice, upbraiding some -domestic delinquency, ordering tea and toast. - -With a shivering effort, Pryde rose from his seat, put the handkerchief -away carefully—in his pocket, and strolled nonchalantly into the hall, -closing the door behind him. - -The jade Joss had the room to himself. - - - CHAPTER XXIII - -About noon the next day Helen motored from London and took them all by -surprise. - -Mrs. Leavitt was delighted. It was lonely at Deep Dale—very lonely -sometimes. For the first time in his life Stephen was sorry to see his -cousin. Her visit, he felt, foreboded no good to his momentary -enterprise, and her presence could but be something of an entanglement. -He was manager—dictator almost—at Cockspur Street, at the Poultry and -at Weybridge, and could carry it off with some show of authority, and -with some reality of it too. But here he was nothing, nobody. Helen was -everything here. No one else counted. Her rule was gentle, but not -Bransby’s own had been more autocratic or less to be swayed except by -her own fancy or whim. - -Only too well he knew how this home-coming would move her. What might -she not order and countermand? Her permission to him to search and to -docket had been scant and reluctant enough in London. Here, any instant -she might rescind it. Above all he dreaded her presence in the -library—both for its interference with his further searching (of course -he had determined to search the already much-searched room again) and -for the effect of the room and its associations upon her. - -She had little to say to him, and almost he seemed to avoid her. But he -ventured to follow her to the library the afternoon of her arrival—and -he did it for her sake almost as much as for his own. - -She was standing quietly looking about the well-loved room; and he could -see that she was holding back her tears with difficulty. Almost he -wished that she would not restrain them—though he liked to see a -woman’s weeping as little as most men do—so drawn and set was her face. - -“Who is it?” she asked presently. - -“It’s I, Helen.” - -She turned to him wearily—then turned to the table; he put out his hand -to restrain her, but she did not see, or she ignored it, and took up the -green and pink jade and wiped it carefully with her handkerchief. A -strange rapt look grew in her face, as she pressed the cambric into the -difficult crannies of the intricate, delicate carving. She sighed when -she had finished, and put the little fetish down—very carefully, just -where it had stood before. - -“Is—is anything wrong, Helen?” - -“No.” - -“Then why are you here? You said you couldn’t come.” - -“I know, but at the last minute I had to.” - -“You had to?” - -“Yes,” she answered wearily, seating herself on the broad window-seat. -“Have you looked over Daddy’s papers?” - -“Yes.” - -“Have you found anything—anything—about Hugh?” The listless voice was -keen and eager enough now. - -“No—nothing,” he told her. - -“Are you sure, Stephen?” - -“Quite,” he said sadly. “Why, dear, what makes you think——” - -“I don’t know—only—something told me——” She rose and came towards -the writing-table. Stephen moved too, getting between her and it—“I -felt—that we should find something here that would help us prove his -innocence—that would bring him back to me.” - -The man who loved her as neither Hugh nor Richard Bransby had, winced at -the love and longing in the girl’s voice. But he answered her gently, -“There is nothing here.” For a space he stood staring at the table, -puzzled, thinking hard. “Helen.” - -“Well?” she was back at the window now, looking idly out at the -leafless, snow-crusted trees. - -“Had Uncle Dick any secret cupboard or safe where he kept important -papers?” - -“No—you know he hadn’t. He always kept his important things at the -office—you know that.” - -“Then, if there was anything about Hugh here it would be on this table.” - -“Yes.” But even at Hugh’s name she did not turn from the window, but -still stood looking drearily out at the dreary day. - -Perplexed and still more perplexed, Stephen stood motionless, gazing -down on the writing-table. Suddenly a thought struck him. His face lit a -little. The thought had possessed him now: a welcome thought. Surely the -paper, the hideous paper, had fallen from the table on which his uncle -had left it, fallen into the fire, and been burnt. He measured the -distance with a kindling eye. Yes! Yes! It might have been that. Surely -it had been that. It must be; it should be. Fascinated, he stood -estimating the chances—again and again. Helen sighed and turned and -came towards him slowly. He neither saw nor heard her. “That’s it. Yes, -that’s it!” he exclaimed excitedly—triumphant, speaking to himself, not -to Helen. - -And, if Helen heard, she did not heed. After a little she came close to -him and said beseechingly, “You don’t think there is any hope, do you, -Stephen?” - -He pulled himself together with a sharp effort—so sharp that it paled a -little his face which had flushed slightly with his own relief of a -moment ago. He took her hand gently. “I am sure there is not,” he told -her sadly. - -She left her hand in his for a moment—glad of the sympathy in his -touch, then turned dejectedly away. “Poor Hugh!” she said as she moved. -“Poor Hugh,” she repeated, slipping down on to the big couch. - -Stephen Pryde followed her. “Helen,” he begged, “you mustn’t grieve like -this—you must not torture yourself so by hoping to see Hugh again. You -must put him out of your mind.” Her mother could not have said it more -gently. He moved a light chair nearer the couch and sat down. - -“I can’t,” she said simply. - -He left his chair and sat down quietly beside her “Why won’t you let me -help you? Why won’t you——” - -The girl shrank back into her corner. “Don’t, Stephen—please. We’ve -gone all through this before. It’s impossible.” - -“But Hugh is unworthy of you. Oh!”—at a quick gesture from her—“don’t -misunderstand me. I love Hugh—love him still—always shall——” There -was the ring of sincerity in his voice, and indeed, so far, he had said -but the truth. “Day in and day out I go over it all in my mind, and at -night, and try to find some possible loophole for hope, hope of his -innocence. But there is none. And then the deserting! But I’d do -anything for Hugh—anything. And I’d give all I have, or ever hope to -have, to clear him. I shall always stick to him, if ever he comes back, -and in my heart at least, if he doesn’t. But you—oh! Helen—to waste -all your young years, spill all your thought and all your caring—I -can’t endure that—for your own sake—if my love and my longing are -nothing to you—I implore you—he has proved himself -unworthy—acknowledged it even——” - -“Daddy loved him—even when the trouble came—and I know he would want -me to help him—if I could.” - -“Helen,” Stephen said after a short pause, speaking in a low even voice -(really he was managing himself splendidly—heroically), “you want to do -everything that your father wished, don’t you?” - -“Of course I do. You know that.” - -“After Hugh left that night, Uncle Dick told me that it would make him -happy to think that—some day—you and I would be married——” - -The last words were almost a whisper, so gently he said them. But, for -all his care, they stabbed her. - -“Stephen!——” It was a cry and a protest. - -The smooth voice went on, “He knew that I had always cared for you, and -that you would be safe with me. He would have told you had he lived. He -meant to——” - -Never was wooing quieter. But the room pulsed about him, perhaps she -felt it throb too, so intense and so true was his passion, so crying his -longing. - -“You have never told me this—before——” she began, not unmoved. - -“No, dear, I didn’t want to worry you. And I—I wanted it to come from -you—the gift—of yourself. I wanted to teach you to love me—unaided. -But I couldn’t—so I turned to him—to Uncle Dick to help me—as I -always turned to him for everything from the day mother died. Oh, Helen, -can’t you, won’t you, don’t you see how I love you? I have always loved -you.” - -“Please—not now——” Her face was very white. “I can’t talk to you now. -I must have time—to think—we—we can talk—another time.” She got up -unsteadily and moved to the door. - -He opened it simply, and made not even a gesture to delay her. - -Alone—he breathed a long sigh of mingled feelings. There was -satisfaction in it—and other things, satisfaction that she was no -longer here in this danger zone of his where the confession _might_ be -after all, and might be found at any moment to confront and undo him. -And there was satisfaction too that he had come a little nearer -prosperity in his hard wooing than he had ever come before. She had not -repulsed him—not at least as she had done before. Perhaps—perhaps—he -would win her yet—and—if he did—if he did! - -Standing by the table he rested his hand there, and it just brushed the -piece of jade. He drew his hand back quickly. Helen had desired that no -one but she herself should ever touch it again. Not for much would he -have disobeyed her in this small thing. Her every wish was law to -Stephen Pryde, except only when some wish of hers threatened his two -great passions. - -The paper—the cursed paper—must have gone to cinder. Surely it had -been so. He searched a drawer and found notepaper—and made a sheet to -the size—as he remembered it—of the missing piece. He laid it on the -table, brushed it off with a convulsive motion of his arm. Brief as his -instant of waiting was, it trembled his lip with suspense. Thank God! -Thank God! The paper had fallen on to the glowing asbestos. It caught. -It burned. It was gone—absolutely obliterated—destroyed as if it had -never been. - -He sank down into Richard Bransby’s chair, and began to laugh. Long and -softly the hysterical laughter of his relief—sadder than any -sobbing—crept and shivered through the room. - -The green Joss blinked and winked in the flickering of the high-turned -fire. The pink jade lotus grew redder in the crimson laving of the -setting sun. - - - CHAPTER XXIV - -Of course any feeling of security built upon so slight foundation, and -concerning a matter of such paramount and vital moment, could but be -transient. With the next daylight, dread and anxiety reasserted -themselves. And Pryde was again the victim of restlessness and -uncertainty. - -Helen’s presence, her nearness to the library all the time, and her -actual occupation of it whenever she chose, disconcerted him. He hoped -that she would go back to Curzon Street almost at once. Anxious as he -was to go over his feverish searching again and still again, he would -eagerly have turned the key in the library door, and taken her back to -London, deferring for a few days what he again believed and hoped would -be the result and the reward of yet one more hunt. It had been great -relief to feel that the deadly document was already destroyed. It would -be a thousandfold more comfort to see it burn—and ten thousand times -more satisfactory. He should _know_ then. He could _never_ know else. He -should be free and unafraid then. In no other way could he ever attain -unalloyed freedom, in no other way escape the rough clutch of fear. - -But Helen had come to Oxshott to stay—for the present. And on the -second day Pryde learned to his annoyance that she was expecting Dr. -Latham by an afternoon train. - -Well, what would be would be, more especially if Helen had decreed it, -and he accepted the physician’s appearance with a patient shrug—as -patient a shrug as he could muster. - -It naturally fell to him to act host to this man guest of Helen’s, and -he liked Latham more than he liked most men, and resented his intrusion -as little as he could any one’s, unless Angela Hilary might have come in -the doctor’s stead. Angela would have played the better into his hands, -by the shrill claim she would have made upon Helen with a chatter of -frocks and a running hither and thither. And, too, he had come to enjoy -Mrs. Hilary quite apart from any usefulness to be wrung from the vibrant -personality. He enjoyed the breeze of it, and often turned into her -hotel as other overworked and brain-fagged men run down to Brighton or -Folkestone for a day of relaxation, and the tonic sea-air. He had come -to find positive refreshment in occasional whiffs of her saline sparkle, -and no little diversion in speculating as to what she would say next, -and about what. And this of the woman of whom he had once said that she -and her inconsequent chatter of kaleidoscope nonsenses reminded him of -nothing but the wild fluttings and distraught flutterings of a hen in -front of a motor! Truly with him she was an acquired taste. But as truly -he had acquired it. He had come more nearly to know her—her as she was, -as well as her as she seemed. Many people acquired that taste—when they -came to more know the blithe alien—and not a few felt it instinctively -at the first of acquaintance. - -But Angela Hilary was not here, and Horace Latham was—and Pryde did his -best to make the latter’s visit pleasant, but without the slightest -effort or wish to prolong it. - -“Do you know, Pryde,” Latham said musingly, as they smoked together -after dinner—alone for the moment in the library—“it always puzzled -me——” - -“Puzzled you?” - -“I have so often wondered about it—it came so suddenly—Bransby’s -death. As a physician I could not just understand it then, and I have -never been quite able to understand it since. And as a physician—I’d -like to. It’s been rather like losing track of the end of a case you’ve -been at particular pains to diagnose. It’s unsatisfactory.” - -“I don’t quite see——” - -“It must have been a shock that killed him—a great shock.” Latham’s -voice and manner were the manner and voice of his consulting-room. He -was probing—kindly and easily—but probing skillfully. Pryde felt it -distinctly. “Did he, by any chance, know that your brother intended to -desert?” - -“No—I don’t think so.” Stephen was well on his guard. “But he knew that -Hugh was in some trouble at the office. That was why Grant came here -that night.” - -“Oh, yes,” Latham nodded. “I remember. No, it wasn’t that. His interview -with Grant disturbed him, I know—but it was something bigger that -killed him!” - -“Why, how—how do you mean?” Stephen spoke as naturally as he could. - -“You were the last person who saw him alive, were you not?” Latham -questioned for question. - -“Yes.” - -“How was he when you left him—when you said good-night?” - -“He was all right,” Pryde spoke reflectingly. - -“If my memory serves me,” the physician continued, “you had gone from -the house.” - -“When he died? Yes—some time before he died. I was on my way to London. -There was something Uncle Dick wanted me to do for him in town—er it -was nothing important.” - -“Then,” Latham added musingly, “it was after you left that this shock -occurred to him. It must have come from something in this room.” - -“Something in this room?” Strive as he might, and he strove his utmost, -Stephen could not keep the sharp agitation he felt out of his voice. - -But Latham did not notice it—or did not appear to. “Yes,” he said in -his same level voice, “a letter—some papers. Was anything of importance -found on his table?” - -“Nothing.” - -“Curious!” - -Pryde, fascinated by his own device and his hope, the device born of the -hope, was lost in thought, and sat looking from table to fire, measuring -again with his trained eyes distance and angles. And, seeing the other’s -absorption, Latham was watching him openly now, with eyes also well -trained, and, because less anxious, probably shrewder. The physician was -diagnosing. - -Stephen spoke first. Latham had intended that he should. “Latham?” - -“Yes?” - -“If you were right,” rising in his tense interest,—“if there had been -some papers that caused the shock that killed him—isn’t it -possible”—returning to his chair as suddenly as he had quit it—“isn’t -it probable that while he had it in his hand, sitting just here perhaps, -he tried to rise, he was faint and tried to reach the bell, and the -paper fell from his hand, fell into the fire and was destroyed?” As he -spoke he enacted, rising, turning ineffectually, convulsively toward the -bell, let an imaginary paper drift from his hand. Then he caught the -significance of his own excitement, ruled himself, and sauntered to the -fireplace. - -But the diagnosis was completed. “I dare say that might have happened,” -Latham said consideringly. - -“It’s the only way I can explain it,” Pryde’s voice vibrated with his -infinite relief. - -“Explain what, Pryde?” Latham asked in his Harley Street voice. To the -insinuation of that deft tone many a patient had yielded a secret -unconsciously. - -But Stephen recalled himself, and was on his guard again. -“Why—why—this sudden death.” A slight smile just flicked the -physician’s serene face. Pryde rose once more and stood again gazing, -half hypnotized by his own suggestion. “It was a great blow to me, -Latham, a great blow”—a sigh, so sharp that it seemed to shake him, -ended his sentence. “I torture myself trying to picture just what -happened after I left this room.” - -Latham made no reply. Presently Pryde spoke again, repeating his own -words rather wildly. “Torture myself trying to picture just what -happened after I left this room.” - -Still Latham said nothing. He was considering. - - - CHAPTER XXV - -In a little room high up in the house, her very own sitting-room, heaped -with roses and heliotrope and carnations, its windows looking out to the -Surrey hills and a gurgling brook—blue as steel in the winter cold, its -snow-white banks edged with irregular shrubberies icicle-hung, Helen and -Latham sat in close conference. - -A glorious fire flamed on the broad hearth in the corner. Helen had -inherited her father’s love of fires. When the war came, crippling their -servant staff both at Curzon Street and at Deep Dale, and making the -replenishing of coal cellars arduous, and posters on every hoarding -admonished patriotism to economize fuel, Richard Bransby had installed a -gas-fire in his library. Helen had opposed this, she had so loved the -great mixed fire of logs and of coal before which so many of her -childhood’s gloamings had been spent, so many of her acute young dreams -dreamed, but for once the father had not yielded to her. In one -particular the gas-fire had appealed to him—it minimized the intrusions -of servants when he best liked to have his “den” to himself. Humbly -born, but with none of the excrescent caddishness of smaller-souled -_nouveaux riches_, he had no liking for the visible presence of his -domestic retinue, and when servants were ill-trained and imperfectly -unobtrusive, little irritated him more than to have them about, and, -except by Helen, he was a man easily irritated. So gas had replaced wood -and anthracite in his room. But not so in Helen’s. She meant well by her -country, but the logs piled high on her hearth. The patriotisms of youth -are apt to be thoughtless, in every country. Often Youth makes the great -sacrifice—England needs no telling of that—but Age makes the ten -thousand daily burnt-offerings that in their infinite aggregate heap -high in the scale of a people’s devotion; and, perhaps, win as tender -approval from the Angel that records. - -The morning sun streamed in riotously. A room could not be prettier or -more cozy. It made a brilliant background to the slender, black-clad -girl-figure, and the handsome, middle-aged man, dressed as carefully as -she—in a gray morning suit—and almost as slender. Dr. Latham took -every care of his figure. - -“I hope you are not going to be angry with me,” Helen said, looking at -him a little ruefully. - -“My dear child!” - -“Because, you see, I have brought you here under false pretenses.” - -“False pretenses!” her old friend laughed contentedly, “that’s -actionable.” - -“I’m not ill. It isn’t about my health I want to see you.” - -“Then I’ve lost a very attractive patient,” he mocked at her in -affectionate retort. - -“Don’t joke—please. It is very serious.” - -“So you wrote.” - -“And I didn’t say I was ill. But, of course, that would be what you -thought, when I begged you to come for a few days, and knowing how busy -you always are, and asking you to say nothing to Aunt Caroline or any -one, but just seem to be on an ordinary visit.” - -“I was delighted to come,” he assured her gravely. “And, as it happens, -I did not think you were ill.” - -“No?” - -“No.” - -“How was that, Dr. Latham?” - -“Can’t say in the least; but I didn’t. And—now—well—tell me.” - -“It’s about something you once said.” - -He wondered if it were something he had said about Angela Hilary. He -hoped not. He had said some very foolish things—but that was long -ago—before he really knew that radiant woman. “Something I once said?” -he echoed a little anxiously. - -Helen nodded. - -“I am afraid I don’t remember. What was it?” - -“That night that——” But she choked at the words. For a moment she -could not speak. Latham gave her time. He was used to giving people -time—and especially women. Presently she went on, finding another way -to put it—“That last night—when you spoke of the dead coming back. You -said that if two people loved each other very dearly, and one was left -behind and needed the one who had gone, he would come back.” - -“I said he might try,” Latham corrected her gently. - -“You were right.” - -“What do you mean?” The man was half amused, half startled, but the -physician was anxious. - -“Daddy—Daddy is trying to come back to me,” she said very simply. - -“Miss Bransby!” For a moment he wondered if Angela had been taking this -overwrought child to materializing circles or trumpet mediums or some -other such bosh. But no, Angela wouldn’t. She did the wildest -things—small things—but in the important things she had the greatest -good sense: he had proved it. - -“Oh,” Helen assured him, “I am sure of it—I am sure of it. There’s -something he wants me to do, but I can’t understand what it is. That is -why I asked you to come here—I thought you might help me.” - -Latham was moved, and perturbed. “My dear child,” he began lamely. - -But Helen could brook no interruption now. Her words came fast enough, -now she had started. “For weeks,” she insisted breathlessly, “I’ve had -this feeling—for weeks I’ve known that he was doing his utmost to tell -me something. At first I tried to put it aside. I thought it was my -grief or my longing for him that deceived me into thinking this—but I -couldn’t. It always came back stronger than ever—until to-day when I -suddenly realized—I can’t tell you just how—there is something he -wants _me_ to do _in the library_.” - -“My dear, my dear, my idle remarks have put these ideas in your head.” -The doctor was thoroughly alarmed for her now, though still he could -detect no hint of illness or disorder. “You are overwrought.” - -“No, no!” the girl cried. “It isn’t that. It’s the strain of not being -able to understand—it’s almost more than I can bear. Oh, Dr. Latham, -can’t you help me to find out what it is that Daddy wants me to do?” - -He studied her gravely—puzzled, troubled, strange thoughts surging in -his mind. She seemed perfectly normal. And he knew that while love, -religious mania, money troubles, filled insane asylums almost to -bursting, that the percentage of patients so incarcerated as the result -of spiritualism was almost _nil_, and quite negligible—general rumor -notwithstanding. (Rumor’s a libelous jade.) He felt less sure of a right -course than he often did. And he said sadly, but with little conviction, -“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Miss Bransby.” - -“But surely——” She rose and stood before him, her eyes flushed with -entreaty, her clasped hands stretched toward him in pleading. - -He rose too and laid a grave arm about her slight shoulder, saying -tenderly, “What I said that night—it was no more than an idle -speculation—I had no ground for it. And, naturally, your great grief -coming so soon afterwards impressed my words upon your mind.” - -“Oh, no——” Helen said, her tears gathering. - -“Come! come!” Latham coaxed her. “You’re imagining things.” - -She pulled from his arm, and moved to the window, answering him almost -violently, “No, no! _It’s too vivid—it’s too real!_” - -“But surely,” he urged, “if your father could bring you to this house, -direct you to the library—you said the library?”—she nodded her head -emphatically—“he could tell you what he wanted you to do there. You -have had to bear a great sorrow—it has unsettled you and given you this -delusion—a delusion that comes to so many people who have lost what you -have lost; you must conquer it!” - -Perhaps he might have convinced and influenced her more, had he been -more convinced himself, had she convinced and influenced him less. She -persisted with him, wearily. “But—don’t you see? I thought you would -see. Oh, please try to see. If I lose this—I lose—everything. I was so -sure it was about Hugh—I was so sure Daddy was going to bring him back -to me.” She sat down by the fire crying piteously now. - -Latham’s own eyes felt odd. He knelt down on the hearthrug, and gathered -her hands into his. “Poor child!” It was all he could say. What else was -there to say? - -She looked at him desperately. “Then you don’t believe?” - -“I’m afraid I don’t,” he admitted—very softly. - -He saw her mouth quiver, and then the sobs came thick and fast, and she -hid her face on his shoulder. - - - CHAPTER XXVI - -She seemed quite herself at luncheon, and Latham was the life and the -jest of the table. Women are bred so; and such is the craft of his -trade. - -Even Stephen watching jealously—he had known of the _tête-à-tête_ of -the morning—learned nothing. And Caroline Leavitt rejoiced and was -grateful to see the girl so much more nearly herself. - -But still Stephen watched—and waited. - -At twilight he found Helen alone in the library. He joined her almost -timidly, fearing she might drive him away. He sensed well enough that -she wished to be alone. But she neither welcomed nor dismissed him. - -“I didn’t know you were ill, Helen,” he said, seating himself where he -could see her face well. - -“I am not ill,” she replied, a little impatiently, rising and crossing -the room, and standing at the window, facing it, not him. - -“But you sent for Latham.” - -Helen made no answer. - -Stephen persisted, “And you carried him off to your room after -breakfast, and said plainly enough, that you wished to be undisturbed -there.” - -“Yes, and I meant it. But it was to talk to him of something quite -different from my health.” - -“May I know what it was?” Pryde asked, going to the window, looking at -her searchingly with his keen, speculative eyes. - -“You, Stephen? No.” She could scarcely have spoken more coldly. And -again she crossed the room, and stood looking down into the fire this -time, her face once more out of the range of his eyes. - -Pryde bit his lip, but he made no further bid for her confidence. He -knew it would be useless—and worse. Neither spoke again for some time. -Only the tick-tick of the grandfather’s clock, rewound and set now, -touched the absolute silence. At last he said, “Helen.” - -“Yes.” She turned and faced him, but both her voice and her face were -cold and discouraging. He was risking too much, he was rasping his -cousin; and he knew it. But for the life of him he could not desist. -Such moments come to men sometimes, and against the impulse the firmest -will is helpless. - -“Do you remember losing a little blue shoe, years ago?” he began. - -“I? No.” - -“You did—the day we first came here. I found it. And I kept it. I have -it still. I’ve always had it. I had it at Oxford.” - -Helen sat down wearily, looking bored. - -“I loved that little blue shoe, even the day I found and kept -it—because it was yours. I have treasured it all these years—because -it was yours. I shall keep it always.” - -The girl shrugged her shoulders a little unkindly. “Well,” she said -indifferently, “I don’t suppose it would fit me now.” - -Her irresponsiveness stung him. He crossed to her quickly and laid a -masterful hand on her chair. “Have you thought over what I told -you?—about what I feel—about what Uncle Dick wished?” - -She answered him then, and anything but indifferently. “Not now, -Stephen,” she said impatiently, “I can’t talk of that now.” - -“But you must.” - -“Must?” - -Her voice should have warned him. There was anger in it, contempt even, -indignation, no quarter. And it was final. Not so do coquettes parry and -fence and invite. Not so do women who love, or are learning to love, -postpone the hour they half fear, the joy they hesitate to reveal or -confess. Perfectly, too, Stephen caught the portents of her tone, but he -was past warning. Love and impatience goaded him. He had reached his -Rubicon, and he must cross it, or go down in it, engulfed and defeated. -A vainer man would have taken alarm and retreated definitely from sure -discomfiture and chagrin. A man who loved less would have spared the -girl and himself. A wiser man, more self-contained, would have waited. -Stephen Pryde plunged on, and plunged badly—every word an offense, -every tone provocation. - -“Can’t you see how vital this is to me?” he demanded roughly, his voice -as impatient as hers had been, and altogether lacking her calm. “I must -know what you are going to do, I must know.” He could not even deny -himself the dire word the most obnoxious a man can use to a woman. A -blow from his hand, if she loves him enough, a woman may forgive, in -time half forget—some women (the weakest type and the strongest)—but -“must” never. - -Helen Bransby smiled, and looked up at Pryde squarely, with a sigh of -resignation—and of something else too. “Oh! if you must know now, if I -‘must’ tell you, I must.” Then the longing in his face smote her, and -the thought of her father quickened her gentleness, as it always did, -and she stayed her sting. “Are you certain,” she concluded earnestly, -almost kindly, “that it was Daddy’s wish that we should be married—you -and I?” - -“Quite certain,” Pryde answered in a firm voice. But his hands were -trembling. - -“I want to do everything he wanted,” Helen said wistfully. - -The man turned away, even took a few steps from her, to grapple a moment -with his own mad emotion. He felt victory in his grasp—victory hot on -his craven fear, victory after despair, victory after hunger and thirst. -He swung round and came back reaching towards her—his face -transfigured, his voice clarion sweet, his eyes flashing, _and_ -brimming. “Helen——” - -She motioned him back. “Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I can’t do this. I -told Daddy, when he was here, that it was Hugh or no one for me. Even to -please him then I couldn’t change. I can’t change now.” - -“And Hugh—that’s the only reason?” Pryde persisted doggedly. But he -spoke breathlessly now, for a fear had chilled in on his ardor: did she -suspect him? had she found anything? What had she and Latham said to -each other? “Is that the only reason, Helen?” he besought her again. - -“Yes,” she replied, considering him gravely. - -“Then perhaps in time,” he begged. - -She rose impatiently and crossed to another seat, speaking as she went. -His nearness annoyed her. - -“No, Stephen, never.” - -He blanched, but again he would have spoken, but Helen gave him no time. -“Now, please,” she said very clearly, “leave me here for a little -while—I want to be alone _here_.” - -“No,” he exclaimed peremptorily, with sudden fear. “No, I can’t leave -you here—not in this room, anywhere else, but not here. This room is -bad for you. Come.” - -“You are to go,” she told him quietly, “and now, please.” - -“Why—why do you want to be alone—here?” he pleaded. - -She answered him gently. “Just to think of Daddy. You know I haven’t -been here since——” - -His love, his tenderness reasserted his manhood then. “Of -course—forgive me—I understand—I did not mean to speak sharply—but I -hate to see you grieve so.” For a moment he stood looking down on her -bowed head. Then he just touched her hand—it lay on the back of her -chair—lingeringly, reverently, and said again as he went from the room, -“I hate to see you grieve so.” - -The girl sat bowed and brooding. After a time she rose and moved about -the familiar place, touching old trifles, recalling old scenes. She -stood a long time by the bookcase gazing at the volumes he had loved and -handled, peering with brimming eyes at their well-known titles. She did -not touch the jade Joss, but she lingered at it longest, choking, -trembling. Then her face cleared—transfigured. A rapt look came over -it—a look of love, longing, great expectation. Men have turned such -looks to the bride of an hour. Mothers have bent such looks on the babe -first, and new come, at their breast. She reached out her young arms in -acceptance, obedience, greeting, entreaty—and said to the air—to the -room—“I’m here, Daddy. I’m here.” - - - CHAPTER XXVII - -But no father came to her call, no companion from the void to her tryst. -She waited, feeling, or thinking that she felt, the air touch her hair, -brush her face, cool but kindly, and once cross her lips. She waited, -but only the light air, or her fancy of it, came. - -She knelt down by the old chair in which she had seen him last until she -had seen him in his majesty, on the floor, in the hall. She laid her -head on the seat that had been his, and wept there softly, disappointed, -overwrought. - -Some one was coming; some one very much of this world. High heels -clattered on the inlaid hall floor, silk sounded crisply, and an -expensive Persian perfume—attar probably—came in as a hand turned the -knob on the other side and pushed the door open, and with the perfume -the silken frou-frou, a jumble of several furs, lace and pearls, and -Angela in a very big hat and a chinchilla coat. She closed the door -behind her—an odd thing for an unexpected, uninvited guest to do, and -she closed it quietly, for her very quietly. She tip-toed across the -room stealthily, caught sight of Helen and screamed. - -At the sound of some one coming Helen had risen to her feet and pulled -herself together with the quick pluck of her sex. But she was still too -overwrought to grasp entirely the strangeness of her friend’s behavior. -Mrs. Hilary was dumfounded. She had thought Helen in London. She had -crept into the house through a side door, come through the halls -secretly and as silently as such shoes and so much silk and many -draperies could, meeting no one and hoping neither to be seen nor heard. -Her errand was particularly private. She had not been surprised to find -the library door unlocked, for she had not been deeper in the house than -the drawing-room since Mr. Bransby’s death. She and Mrs. Leavitt were -far from intimate. And Mrs. Hilary had not heard of the taboo Helen had -placed on the father’s room. She was dumfounded to find Helen here, and -bitterly disappointed. But she noticed little amiss with the girl. Each -was too agitated to realize the agitation of the other. - -Helen pulled herself together and waited, Angela pulled herself together -and gushed; each with the woman’s shrewd instinct to appear natural and -much as usual. - -Angela supplemented her cry of dismay with an even shriller cry of -enthusiastic delight. - -“My dearest Helen! How perfectly lovely!” - -“This is a surprise,” Helen said more quietly. Of the two she was the -less surprised and far the more pleased. - -“Yes—isn’t it—a surprise?” - -“You didn’t expect to see me?” What had brought Angela rushing into this -room, then? - -Mrs. Hilary saw her blunder as soon as she made it, even while she was -making it almost. She was greatly confused—a thing that did not often -befall Angela Hilary. She and embarrassment rarely met. - -“No,” she stammered. “No—I—uh—yes, yes, I came over to——” She was -utterly at a loss now. “Well,” she went on desperately, “I happened to -be passing——” She broke off suddenly, looking anxiously at the window, -and then looked away from it pointedly, and hurried on with, “I came to -see if, by any chance, it was you Margaret McIntyre caught a glimpse of -in the grounds yesterday. But—I—I didn’t see you when I came in here. -It’s so dark here, after the hall. When did you come? Are you going to -stay long?” - -“I came suddenly—on an impulse—to find something. I may stay. I may go -back to-morrow. I don’t know. But I haven’t unpacked much.” - -Mrs. Hilary seized on the pretext this offered to get rid of Helen. She -had been searching her excited mind for one wildly for some moments. -“Then,” she said sharply, “you must see at once that your things are -properly unpacked. Nothing spoils things like being crushed in trunks. -And, as for chiffons! Go at once.” - -“But,” Helen began. - -“At once. I insist. You must not let me keep you. I shall be all right -here, and when you have finished——” She was pushing Helen towards the -door. - -“Don’t be absurd, Angela,” the girl laughed—freeing herself, “my things -can wait—I may not unpack them at all.” - -“Are you sure—sure they can wait?” Mrs. Hilary said lamely. - -“Of course I am sure, you absurdity. Besides, tea must be ready in the -drawing-room. Angela, Dr. Latham is here.” - -Angela dimpled and flushed. “Oh! is he—is he really?” - -Helen nodded. - -Angela sat down and opened her vanity bag. She propped the mirror up on -the table, shook out her powder puff, tried it on one cheek, refilled -and applied it liberally, thinking, thinking, as she beautified. How -could she get rid of Helen? She wanted to see Horace Latham, of course, -but she had something much more important to attend to first. Latham -could wait—for once in a way. As she piled on powder, and flicked it -off, another idea came to her. She seized it. “You go along now, dear, -and I’ll follow you.” - -Helen shook her head. “You will stop prinking and come with me, now.” - -“Very well,” Mrs. Hilary said reluctantly, letting Helen take her arm -and lead her to the door. At the door she cried, “Oh! Oh!” pressed her -hand to her side and staggered back to a chair. She did it beautifully. -It scarcely could have been done better. - -“What is it, Angela?” Helen was thoroughly alarmed. - -“Oh! the whole room is swimming.” - -“My dear——” - -“You must think I am awfully silly.” She could only just speak. - -“You poor thing—of course I don’t. Perhaps a glass of water——” - -Mrs. Hilary shook her head violently—far too violently for so ill a -woman. - -“I’ll get Dr. Latham.” - -“Please don’t,” the invalid said sharply, and then, “I’m not well enough -to see a doctor,” she wailed. - -“But I’m worried about you, Angela.” - -“There’s nothing to worry about. It’s only the pain, the pain and the -faintness, the horrid faintness. If only I had some smelling salts,” she -moaned. - -“There are some in my dressing-case,” Helen said quickly. “I’ll ring.” - -“Oh no, no, you mustn’t!” Mrs. Hilary cried. “I—I—can’t let Barker see -me like this. No, no! Don’t do that. Couldn’t you get them yourself, -dear? Couldn’t you? Do you mind?” - -“Why, no—of course not.” Helen was puzzled—and a little amused. How -absurd Angela was—even when ill. - -“How long will it take you?” Mrs. Hilary asked faintly. - -“About two minutes.” - -“That will do nicely,” the sick woman said with sudden cheerfulness. -“Helen,” she cried fretfully as the other turned to go, “don’t hurry. -You are not to hurry. Promise me you won’t hurry. It drives me crazy to -have people hurry.” - -Helen studied her friend for a moment, shook a puzzled and a now -somewhat suspicious head, and went slowly out. - -As the door closed the fainting one bounced up, searched the room -rapidly with her sharp American eyes, rushed to the window, threw it -open, and leaned out far over the sill. - -“It’s all right, thank goodness, at last! Come in!” she called in a -shrill whisper. - -A brown hand clasped the sill in a moment. In another a khaki-clad man -swung up into the room. Hugh had come home. - -Not the spick and span serviceless subaltern of eight months ago, but a -sergeant, battered and brown—his uniform worn and faded, his face thin -and alert. Hugh Pryde’s face had never been that before. - -“My, but I’ve had a time,” Angela Hilary told him. - -Once in the familiar room he looked about it quickly, heaved a great -sigh of relief, threw his cap on the table, and laid his hands on the -back of a chair affectionately, as if greeting an old friend. - -Mrs. Hilary shut the window carefully. “Did any one see you come through -the garden?” she asked. - -“No.” - -“Sure?” - -“Quite.” - -“Well, thank Heaven for that much.” - -“Helen?” he begged. “No danger of her seeing me?” he added. - -“No—no—of course not,” Angela replied promptly. “I told you she was in -town.” - -Hugh sighed. “I want to see her—but I mustn’t.” - -“Of course you mustn’t.” Mrs. Hilary was plainly shocked at the very -idea. “Of course not—but I’m sure she’d want to see you, if she -knew—and, if she hadn’t been in town, she might help you. Do you know? -I almost wish she’d come in by accident, and find you.” - -Hugh drew a sharp breath. “No, no!” he said quickly, “I promised not to -see her until I could show that I was innocent.” - -“Well, now that you _are_ in this room, I hope you can prove it quickly. -This atmosphere of conspirator is wearing me to a frazzle. I’m so jumpy -my powder won’t half stick on, and that’s awful. And every time I see a -policeman the cold chills run up and down my spine, and I speckle all -over with goose-flesh. This morning one of them came to see me about a -dog license and I was so terrified I went wobbly and almost fainted away -in his arms. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and have some tea.” She -turned to go, elated and dimpling—like the child that she was. - -“Mrs. Hilary!” Hugh delayed her. She turned back to him. “You’ve been a -dear.” - -“I always am.” - -He caught her hands. “I’ve a lot to thank you for. You know I can’t say -things—I never could. But I want you to know how I appreciate it.” - -“Oh! that’s nothing,” she said gayly. “You mustn’t thank me. It wasn’t -kindness. It’s just sheer creature weakness; it’s simply that I don’t -seem able to resist a uniform, I never could. There was a German band in -’Frisco——” But she heard a light step in the hall. “Good gracious! I’m -forgetting Dr. Latham. Good luck!” she cried hysterically and sped from -the room, as Helen stood in the door. - - - CHAPTER XXVIII - -Angela Hilary was half crying, half laughing, when she danced into the -drawing-room. The tea still stood on the low table, steam still hissed -from the kettle. But only Latham was there, alone, on the hearthrug. She -swept him a low curtsey, caught him by the shoulders and swung him into -the center of the room, whistling a ravishing melody in three-four time. -He put his arm about her gravely, and they waltzed on and on until -Barker cried, “Oh lor!” in the doorway. - -“It’s all right,” Angela told her. “It’s callisthenics. Dr. Latham R-Xed -for my health. I’ve a touch of gout, Barker.” But Barker had fled -giggling. - -“You’ve more than a touch of the devil,” the physician corrected her -severely. Angela giggled too at that, a sweeter, more seductive giggle -than Barker’s. - -“Mein kleiner Herr Doktor!” she began sweetly. They were still standing -where they had been when Barker arrested their waltzing. Latham caught -her and shook her. “Bitte erlauben Sie! ich bin nicht eine Ihrer armen -Kranken und verbitte mir Auftreten. Jetzt sind Sie erzürnt, über nichts, -wahrhaftig nichts. Ach! die Männer, wie sind Sie dumm!” She poured out -at him. It irritated the Englishman to be chattered to in intimate -German, and Angela Hilary delighted in doing it. She had done it to him -many times more than once, and the more he squirmed the more eloquent, -the swifter grew her German. She had spoken to him in the hated language -all through an otherwise dull dinner-party, a dour Bishop on her other -side, an indignant and very bony suffragette just across the table. She -had done it at Church Parade, and at Harrods (she had dragged him out -shopping twice), in the Abbey and in the packed stalls of the Garrick. - -“Hush, or I’ll make you,” he warned her now. He intended her to say, -“How?” And she knew it and smiled. But she said nothing of the -sort—but, almost gravely, “Oh! but I’m happy!” - -“You look it.” - -“So happy. So glad.” - -“It suits you,” he said. “Do you know, I rather intend to try it -myself.” - -“It?” - -“Happiness.” - -Angela flushed. “Shall we dance some more?” she said quickly. - -Latham picked her up and put her into a chair. “Barker’s face was -enough. I prefer to avoid Mrs. Leavitt’s.” - -Mrs. Hilary looked up at him wickedly. “Please, must I stay-put?” - -“Must you what?” - -“Insular Englishman, ‘stay-put’ is graphic American. By the way, why do -you dislike Americans so?” - -“I should like you even better as a British subject,” he admitted. - -Angela Hilary turned to the fire and spoke into it. “Oh, this war—this -wretched war! But, do you know, Dr. Latham,” swinging back to him—she -could not keep turned from him long—“do you know, I’ve been thinking.” -Latham smiled indulgently. “Oh! I think a great deal, a very great -deal.” - -“When?” - -“Well—for one thing—I think most all night—every night.” - -He let the enormity pass. “And this last cogitation, of which you were -about to speak——” - -“When you interrupted me rudely.” - -“When I interrupted you with flaming interest. It was about our present -war, I apprehend.” - -“I was thinking what a lot of good people were getting out of -it—different people such different good. I don’t suppose there’s any -one who hasn’t reaped some real benefit from it, if they’d stop and -think.” - -Horace Latham shook his head slowly. “I wonder.” - -“Oh, I don’t; I’m sure.” - -He studied the fire flames gravely for a time. Then he sighed, shook off -the mood her words had called forth, and turned to her lightly. - -“And what benefit has Mrs. Hilary reaped from the war?” - -She knitted her brows, and sat very still. Suddenly her face kindled and -her lips quivered mutinously. - -“I know. I’ve learned how to spell sugar.” - -Latham laughed. This woman who spoke three other tongues as fluently and -probably as erratically as she did English, and whose music was such as -few amateurs and not all professionals could approach, was an atrocious -speller, and every one knew it who had ever been favored with a letter -from her. Latham had been favored with many. He had waste-paper-basketed -them at first—but of late he did not. - -“I can!!” she insisted. “S-U-G-A-R. There! Sugar, color, collar, their, -reign, oh! what I’ve suffered over those words! I spent a whole day once -at school hunting for ‘sword’ in the dictionary (I do think of all the -silly books dictionaries are the silliest), and then I never found it. -Think of shoving a _w_ into sword. Who wants it? I don’t. Nobody needs -it. Silly language.” - -“Which language can your high wisdomship spell the least incorrectly?” -he asked pleasantly. - -“Mein werter Herr Doktor, das Buchstabiren ist mir Nebensache. Ich -sprache vier Sprachen flissend—Sie kaum im Stande sind nur eine zu -stammeln doch glauben Sie dass eine Frau ohne Fehler sei wenn sie -richtig Englisch schreibt und nur an die drei k’s denkt—wir man in -Deutschland zu sagen pflegt—Kirche, Kinder und Küche,” she said in a -torrent. - -“You are ill,” he said, “I am going to prescribe for you.” - -“What?” She made a wry face. “What?” - -“This,” he gathered her into his arms and kissed her swiftly—and then -again—more than once. - -At last she pushed him away. “It took some doing,” she told herself in -the glass that night. But to him she said gravely, “To be taken only -three times a day—after meals.” - -“No fear!” Her physician cried, “To be taken again and again!” And it -was. - -The chatterbox was silent and shy. But Horace Latham had a great deal to -tell her. He had only begun to say it, haltingly at first, then swifter -and swifter, man dominating and wooing his woman, when Angela cried -imploringly, “Hush!” - -He thought that she heard some one coming. But it was not that. Angela -Hilary was planning her wedding-dress. He hushed at her cry, and sat -studying her face. Presently she fell to knotting and unknotting his -long fingers. - -“Silk has most distinction,” she said to the fire, “and satin has its -points. Oh, yes, satin has points, but I think velvet, yes—velvet and -white fox.” - -“What are you talking about?” demanded her lover. - -Angela giggled. - - - CHAPTER XXIX - -For a long time neither spoke, or moved. Then Hugh held out his arms, -and Helen came into them. And still neither spoke. The old clock ticked -the moments, and the beat of their hearts throbbed tremblingly. - -At last they spoke, each at the same instant. - -“Helen”—“Hugh.” - -She lifted her hand from his shoulder, and fondled his face. - -Of course, she spoke first, when either could speak beyond that first -syllable. - -“Oh, my dear, my dear!” she said. “I thought you were never coming back -to me.” - -He caught her hands and held them against his heart. - -“I couldn’t come, Helen. You know that—not until I had made things -right.” - -The glad blood rushed to her face. “Oh! Hugh,” she cried, “then you have -made things right, you have found out? I am so glad, so glad!” - -“Why no, dear,” he faltered, “not yet. But that’s why I’ve come.” - -She paled a little, but her voice and her eyes were brave. “It doesn’t -matter—nothing matters, now that you have come back to me. Oh, I’m so -glad—I’ve missed you so, Hugh—I’ve missed you so”—the bravery had -died in a little girlish wail. - -“My dear”—it was all he could say. - -“Where have you been all these months?” she asked, pushing him to a -chair, and kneeling beside him, her arms on his knee. - -“When I left here that night”—he laid a hand on her hair—“and had to -give up my commission, I went straight to a recruiting office—and -joined up as a private, under another name.” - -“And now,” she said with a soft laugh, laying her cheek against the -stripes on his sleeve, “you’re a sergeant. You have been to the front?” -The young voice was very proud as she said it. Her man had given battle. - -“I went almost at once.” - -“And I never knew.” How much she had missed! - -“It wasn’t until a few weeks ago I learned of Uncle Dick’s death,” Hugh -said gently. - -“He died that night, Hugh,” Helen whispered—“just there—in the hall.” - -“Yes—I know,” he nodded, his arm on her shoulder. Neither said more for -a space. Presently he told her, “I’ve had luck out there. I have been -recommended for a commission.” - -“I think I like this best,” the girl said, stroking his sleeve. “But -it’s splendid that you’ve won through the ranks. That’s the kind of -commission worth having—the only kind.” - -“But I can’t accept it until I can tell them who I am. That’s why I got -leave—to come back and try and clear myself. I didn’t know until I -reached England that I had been published as a deserter—that there was -a warrant for my arrest.” - -“You didn’t know that?” Helen said, in her surprise rising to her feet. - -“No—Uncle Dick promised to arrange matters—he must have died before he -had the chance—of course he did—but I never thought of that. So now -I’ve got to clear my name—of two pretty black things—or give myself -up,” he said, rising and standing beside her, face to face. - -She shuddered a little, and she could not keep all her anxiety out of -her voice. - -“And you think you can clear yourself? You have some plan?” - -“Not a plan exactly,” he shook his head gropingly, “only a vague sort -of—I don’t know what to call it.” - -Helen was bitterly disappointed. “Why, what do you mean?” she asked -wistfully. - -“Helen,” he said awkwardly, diffidently. “You mustn’t think me quite -mad—but I don’t know that I can make you understand—only—well—all -these months out there—I have been haunted by an idea—oh! Helen, -strange things have come to many of us out there—at night—in the -trenches—lying by our guns waiting—in the thick of the fight -even—things that will never be believed by those who didn’t see -them—never forgotten, or doubted again, by those who did. I don’t know -how it came to me—or when exactly—but somehow I came to believe that, -yes, to _know_ it, that, if I could come back to this room, I would find -something to prove my innocence. I don’t know how, I didn’t know how, -but the thing was so strong I couldn’t resist it.” - -Helen Bransby’s heart stood still. Something fanned on her face. She -stood before Hugh almost transfixed. Slowly, reluctantly even, her eyes -left his face, and moved mechanically until they halted and rested on a -green-and-pink toy blinking in the sunset. Sunset was fast turning to -twilight. The room was flooded and curtained with shadows. - -“I always felt,” Hugh continued, “that when I got to this room something -would come to me.” Then his manner changed abruptly, the scorn of the -modern man mocking and scoffing the embryo seer, and he said bitterly, -“I dare say I’ve been a fool—but it all seemed so real—so vivid—so -real.” His last words were plaintive with human longing and uncertainty. - -“I know,” she smiled a little, but her voice was deeply earnest. - -Hugh regarded her in amazement. “You know?” he said breathlessly, -catching her hand. - -“Yes.” She seemed to find the rest difficult to say. He waited tensely, -and with a long intaking of breath she went on, “Hugh, did you ever -think where this feeling might come from?” - -“Well—no,” he replied lamely, “how could I? It was an impression, I -dare say, just because this room was so much in my thoughts.” - -“No, it wasn’t that,” Helen said staunchly. “Hugh, I have had this -feeling too.” - -“You, Helen!” - -“Yes. _I have it now_—strongly. For a long time I’ve felt that there -was something that I could do—something I must do—something that would -make things right for you.” - -“But, my dear”—Hugh was frightened, anxious for her. - -“That’s why I came down here a few days ago. Why I came to this room an -hour ago——” she hurried on—“all at once, in London, I knew that there -was something in this room that would clear you.” - -Hugh was baffled—and strangely impressed. “That is curious,” he said -very slowly. - -“Hugh,” she whispered clearly, “don’t you realize where this -feeling—that we both have—comes from?” - -He shook his head slowly—puzzled—quite in the dark. - -“Think!” - -Again a slow shake of the head. - -“Daddy—Daddy is trying to help us!” - - - CHAPTER XXX - -Too amazed to speak, too stunned to think, Hugh Pryde stood -rigid—dumfounded. Helen was breathing rapidly, her breast rising and -falling in great heaves, waves of alternate shadow and sunset veiling -and lighting her face, her eyes far off and set, her hands reaching out -to—— - -“Helen, my dear——” he said, brought to himself by her strangeness. - -“Oh!” she cried fiercely, great longing fluting her voice—she was more -intensely nervous than her companion had ever seen any one before, and -he had seen hundreds of untried boys on the eve of battle—“Oh! it must -be so. Why should the same thought come to us both—you at the front—I -in London—come—so—vividly? And without any reason!—I am sure it’s -Daddy.” - -At the sight of her exaltation all his cocksure masculinity reasserted -itself. He laid a patronizing, affectionate hand on her arm. “Don’t -distress yourself with this, dear,” he said soothingly, “I can’t let -you. Our both having the same feeling must have been only a -coincidence.” - -She shook off his hand with gentle impatience, the sex impatience of -quick woman with man’s dullness, a delicate rage as old as the Garden of -Eden. “No, no,” she said chidingly. “It wasn’t only that—it wasn’t only -that.” - -Her earnestness shook him a little—and perhaps his wish did too: any -port in a storm, even a supernatural one! - -“But if Uncle Dick could bring us to this room,” he asked slowly, “why -doesn’t he show us what to do?” - -“He will,” she said—almost sternly—“he will—now that he has brought -us here—why, that proves it! Don’t you see? I see!—now that he has -brought us here—_He will come to us._” She sank down into a low chair -near the writing-table, her eyes rapt, riveted on space. - -Again masculine superiority reasserted itself, and something -creature-love, and chivalry too—jostling aside the “almost I am -persuaded” that the moment before had cried in his soul, and Hugh put a -pitying hand on her shoulder, saying, - -“I don’t want to make you unhappy, Helen, but that’s impossible.” -Thought-transference, spiritual-wireless—um—well, perhaps—but -_ghosts_!—perish the folly! - -Helen looked up, and, at something in her face, he took his hand from -her shoulder. The girl shivered. And in another moment the khaki-clad -man shivered too—rather violently. “How cold it is here,” he said, and -repeated somewhat dreamily—“How cold!” - -“Yes,” Helen echoed in an unnatural voice, “cold.” - -“I must have left the window open,” Hugh said with an effort. He went to -the casement. “No,” he said with a puzzled frown. “I did close -it—tight.” He crossed to Helen again and stood looking down on -her—worried and at sea. She sighed and looked up—almost he could see -her mood of exaltation, or emotion, or whatever it was, pass. She spoke -to him in a clear, natural voice. “What are we going to do, Hugh? We -must do something.” - -“I don’t know,” he said hopelessly—and began moving restlessly about -the room. - -Suddenly Helen sat upright and gave a swift half-frightened look over -her shoulder. - -“Hugh!” - -He came to her at once. “Yes.” - -“Don’t think me hysterical—but we don’t _know_ that Daddy couldn’t come -back—we _can’t be sure_. What if he were here, in this room now, trying -to tell us something, and we couldn’t understand?” - -“Helen, my dearest,” Hugh deprecated. - -“Wait,” she whispered, rising slowly. “Wait!” For an instant she stood -erect, her slim height carved by the last of the sunshine out of the -shadows—trance-like, rigid. But at that sybil-moment Stephen Pryde -opened the door softly and came through it. The girl’s taut figure -quivered, relaxed, and with a moan—“No—no—I—no—no——” she sank -down again and buried her face in her hands. - -Richard Bransby come from the dead could scarcely have confounded -Stephen more than the sight of Hugh did. For a moment of distraught -dismay the elder brother stood supine and irresolute on the threshold. -Then forcing himself to face dilemma, and to deal with it, if possible, -as such natures do at terribly crucial moments—until they reach their -breaking point—he called his brother by name. - -Hugh swung round with a glad exclamation of surprise, and held out his -hand. Stephen gripped it; and, when he could trust his voice, he said, - -“I had no idea you were here.” - -Helen rose and went to them eagerly. “He has come back to us, Stephen, -he has been to France—he has been offered a commission—he has proved -himself,” she poured out in one exultant breath. - -“I am glad to see you, Hugh, very glad——” Stephen said gravely, “but -you shouldn’t have come.” - -“Why not?” the girl demanded. - -Stephen turned to her then; he had paid no attention to her before, -scarcely had known of her presence. - -“The warrant,” he said to her sadly. “Hugh,” at once turning again to -him, “didn’t you know that there was a warrant out for your arrest?” - -“I only heard of it a day or two ago.” - -“Then you must realize what a risk you run in coming here. Why did you -take such a chance?” - -“He came to clear himself,” Helen interposed. - -“What?” Stephen cried, his dismay undisguised, but the others were too -overwrought to catch it. “What?” Stephen repeated huskily. - -“He believes—and so do I——” Helen answered—“that there is something -in this room that will prove his innocence.” - -“In this room?” Stephen Pryde’s voice trembled with fear; fear so -obvious that only the intensest absorption could have missed it. - -“Yes,” Helen said firmly. - -Stephen controlled himself with a great effort—it was -masterly—“What—what is it?” he forced himself to ask, turning directly -to Hugh and looking searchingly into his eyes. - -“I don’t know—yet,” Hugh said regretfully. Stephen gave a breath of -relief, and sat down; his legs were aching from his mental anxiety and -tension. “But,” Hugh went on, “I am certain I can find something that -will clear me, if Helen will allow me to search this room.” - -Hugh search this room! At that suggestion, panic, such as even yet he -had not known, in all these hideous months of hidden panic, caught -Stephen Pryde and shook him, man as he was and man-built, as if -palsy-stricken. Neither Helen nor Hugh could possibly have overlooked a -state so pitiful and so abject, if either had looked at him at that -moment. But neither did. - -“Allow!” the girl said scornfully, both hands on Hugh’s shoulders. -“Allow! Me allow you! You are master here,” she added proudly. - -Once more Stephen Pryde commanded himself. It was bravely done. Hugh’s -head was bent over Helen—the woman Stephen loved—Hugh’s lips were -lingering on her hair. Stephen commanded himself, and spoke with quiet -emphasis— - -“No—no! You must not do that.” - -“Why not?” Helen said sharply, turning a little in Hugh’s arm. - -“Don’t you see?” Stephen answered smoothly, his eyes very kind, his -voice affectionate and solicitous. “Every moment you stay here, Hugh, -you run a great risk. You must get away, at once, to some safe place, -and then—I’ll make the search for you. Indeed I intended doing so.” - -“No—no—that wouldn’t be right,” Hugh said impulsively, not in the -least knowing why he said it. “I don’t know why,” he added slowly, “but -that wouldn’t be right.” As he spoke he turned his head and looked over -his shoulder almost as if listening to some one from whose prompting he -spoke. The movement of his head was unusual and somehow suggested -apprehension. And he spoke hesitatingly, automatically, as if some one -else threw him the word. - -“What are you looking at?” Stephen said uneasily. - -Hugh turned back with an awkward laugh. “Ah—um—nothing,” he said -lamely. - - - CHAPTER XXXI - -Often life seems one long series of interruptions; and, more often than -not, interruptions are petty and annoying. That it is our -inconsequential acquaintances who interrupt us most frequently is easily -enough understood—far more easily understood than accepted. But it is -much more difficult to understand how often some crisis is transmuted or -decided by some very minor personality, and a personality in no way -concerned in the crucial thing it decides or alters. - -Stephen was determined that Hugh should go—and go now. - -Hugh was determined to stay, at all cost, until he had searched, and -exhausted search of, this room to which both he and Helen had been so -stupendously impressed. - -Helen wished him to stay, but feared his staying. Her will in the matter -swung an unhappy pendulum to and fro between the two wills of the -brothers. - -Hugh, Helen, and Stephen, and of all the world they alone, were vitally -interested in the pending decision and in its consequences. How that -decision would have gone, left to them, can never be known. - -Barker the inept, and old Morton Grant fated an intruder at Deep Dale, -interrupted, and, so to speak, decided the issue. - -“Nothing,” Hugh had replied evasively to his brother’s “What are you -looking at?” and had gone to the window, as if to avoid further -question. Stephen, unsatisfied, was following him persistently when -Barker opened the door and announced, “Mr. Grant.” Helen started to -check her, but Stephen with a quick gesture, stayed her, and before she -could speak speech was too late. Barker blundered out, and Grant came -timidly in. - -The old clerk had aged and broken sadly in eight months. Very evidently -he was more in awe of Stephen Pryde than at the worst of times he had -been of Richard Bransby. He stood awkwardly just inside the room, and -fumbled with his hat, and fumbled for words. - -“Good—er—good-afternoon, Mr. Pryde. How do you do, Miss Bransby? I -trust——” - -Stephen interrupted him sharply. “Well, Grant?” - -“Er—I—I—am very sorry to intrude on you like this——” - -“Yes, yes; but what do you want?” Stephen snapped. - -“It’s—it’s about Mr. Hugh, sir.” - -Stephen and Helen exchanged a quick look, she all apprehension, he -trying to hide his elation, trying to look anxious too. Hugh turned at -his name and came toward the others. - -“About me? Well, here I am. What about me, Grant?” - -The old man was amazed and moved. “Mr. Hugh,” he stammered, letting his -inseparable hat fall into a chair. “God bless me—it _is_ Mr. Hugh.” - -“Accurate as ever, Grant, eh?” Hugh chaffed him, smiling with boyish -friendliness. - -Morton Grant went to him eagerly, almost as if about to verify his own -eyesight by touch. - -“You are all right, sir? You are well?” - -“Never better.” - -“I am glad, sir. I’m very glad indeed,” the old man said brokenly. - -Stephen Pryde had had enough of this. “Yes, yes, yes,” he interrupted -testily; “but why are you here, Grant? You said it was about Hugh.” - -“It is, sir,” the clerk answered quickly, recalled to his errand; -“the—the authorities came to the office to-day, searching for him.” - -“Well, that’s cheerful,” Hugh commented. - -Helen gave a little sob. - -“It appears,” Grant continued, “that he has been seen and recognized -lately. They thought we might have news of him.” - -Stephen turned to Hugh curtly, but still trying to hide his triumph. - -“You see the risks you are running.” - -“What did you tell them, Grant?” Hugh asked. - -“I said we knew nothing of your whereabouts, sir. Then I came directly -here.” - -“Were you followed?” Stephen asked sharply. - -The question and the idea took Grant aback. “I—I don’t think so, sir!” -he said feebly. “It never occurred to me that such a thing was possible. -I’ve never had any experience with the police,” he apologized sadly. - -“Your common sense should have told you not to come,” Stephen said -brutally. - -“I dare say, sir,” Grant admitted piteously; “but it seemed to me to be -the only thing I could do.” - -“You must go back at once,” Stephen ordered. - -“Very good, sir,” Grant agreed meekly. - -“And if you are questioned again——” - -For the first time in his life, Morton Grant interrupted an employer. -And he did it brusquely and with determined self-assertion. - -“I shall say that I have seen nothing of Mr. Hugh—absolutely nothing.” - -Hugh went to him with outstretched hand; but Helen was there first. - -“Oh yes, that’s fine—fine,” Stephen said briskly. - -Helen caught Grant’s arm in her hands, and thanked him without a -word—with swimming eyes. But Hugh spoke. - -“Thank you, Grant.” - -Grant paid no attention to Stephen Pryde, and Helen he gave but an -embarrassed scant look. Hugh’s hand he took in his. He was much -affected, and the old voice shook. - -“Mr. Hugh—I want you to know—I’ve always wanted you to know—that -telling Mr. Bransby about the—about the shortage—was the hardest thing -I ever did. But I had to do it.” - -Hugh pressed the hand he held. “I know, Grant,” he said cordially. “And -you were quite right to tell him.” - -“God bless you, Mr. Hugh.” Morton Grant felt for his handkerchief. He -thought he was filling up for a cold. - -“God bless you, Grant,” the young fellow said, still holding the old -clerk’s hand. - -Stephen Pryde intervened sharply. “Come, come, Grant, you mustn’t waste -time like this.” - -“Very good, sir, I’ll—I’ll go at once.” But at the door he turned and -lingered a moment to say to Hugh, - -“I hope—I trust that everything will be all right for you, sir.” - -“That ought to convince you that I am right,” Stephen said imperatively -to his brother, as the door closed behind Grant. “You _must_ get away -from here now—the quicker the better.” - -“But I can’t go now, Stephen,” the younger man pled; “I simply can’t go -until—not yet——” - -“They are certain to come here for you,” Stephen insisted; “they are -certain to do that.” - -“But before they can come I will have searched.” - -But Stephen interrupted again, more sharply. - -“Besides, Latham is in the house. He may come into this room at any -minute—we couldn’t ask him to be a party to this. By Jove! no; he -mustn’t see you; now I think of it, he suspects something already; he -was questioning me shrewdly yesterday. I didn’t like it then, I like it -very much less now. The coast’s quite clear,” he said, looking through -the door. “Go up to my room—you will be safe there. Go! Go now. I’ll -come to you presently, and we can talk things over—arrange everything.” - -Hugh Pryde hesitated. It seemed to him that some strong impulse forbade -him to leave the room. He looked at Helen, but she seemed as hesitating -as he, and at last he muttered something about, “Another word to old -Grant, the old brick,” and went reluctantly into the hall. - - - CHAPTER XXXII - -Neither followed him, and Stephen did not even call after him “not to -linger in the hall, running the risk of being seen,” but turned at once -to Helen, who sat brooding and puzzled. - -“Helen,” Pryde said earnestly, “you must help me persuade him to go at -once.” - -“I can’t do that, Stephen,” the girl replied slowly. - -“But it’s madness for him to stay here.” - -“I’m not so sure of that,” Helen said, shaking her head. “I have the -same feeling that he has—exactly the same feeling.” - -“Helen, be sensible!” he begged roughly. “Look things in the face! What -evidence could there be here that would help you?” - -“I can’t answer that,” she replied musingly, “at least not yet. All I -know is that this is our one chance.” - -“Our one chance?” - -“Yes—Hugh’s and mine.” - -Stephen Pryde winced. Hers and Hugh’s! They two linked by her, and -always. “Yours and Hugh’s,” he said acidly. “Yes, but, Helen, aren’t you -forgetting?” - -“Forgetting what?” - -“Your father’s wishes.” - -“Oh,” she returned impatiently, “that was when he believed Hugh guilty; -if he proves his innocence——” - -“He hasn’t proved it yet,” Stephen broke in viciously. - -“But he will,” she said firmly. “Stephen, I am sure he will. You—you -wouldn’t wish to stand between us then?” - -“Don’t you understand, Helen,” Pryde retorted, “that this is just what -your father wanted to save you from? He realized that, if you ever came -under Hugh’s influence again, he would make you believe in him.” - -“Then you don’t believe in him?” She spoke coldly, and she was fully -alert now. - -“God knows I wish I could.” - -“Stephen!” she cried, rising indignantly, recoiling from him in -amazement. - -“But I can’t,” Pryde added doggedly. He was furious now. - -“Well, I can and do,” the girl said icily. “And I am going to stand by -him, no matter what happens. I know he is innocent. But if he were -guilty, a thousand times guilty, it would make no difference to me, none -at all in my love. I’d only care for him the more, stand by him the -more, and for ever and ever.” - -The fierce color rushed to Pryde’s face, and his hands knotted together -in pain. - -“Helen,” he pled, “you are making things very difficult for me.” - -“I am sorry, Stephen,” she said a little perfunctorily; “but I love -Hugh,” she added proudly. “He is all I have in the world.” - -“You don’t understand,” he retorted sternly. “I promised your father to -take care of you. I mean to keep that promise.” - -“No, I do not understand,” Helen said haughtily. She, too, was -infuriated now. - -“You must send Hugh away at once,” Stephen told her abruptly. - -“Must? Do you think to force me to do as you wish?” - -“Yes.” - -She had spoken insolently, and he was white to his lips. He loved her, -all his life he had loved her; and she knew it. An older woman would -have spared him a little, because of that love, because of his pain. -Helen hit him again. She went a step nearer, and laughed in his face—a -taunting laugh of scorn and dislike. - -There was a bitter pause, and then Stephen spoke more carefully, groping -to retrieve somewhat the ground his passion had lost. - -“You don’t seem to realize that Hugh is in a very dangerous position. -If—if some one should inform the authorities of his whereabouts——” - -“Inform the authorities?” she repeated his words wonderingly. He had not -meant to say them, and already regretted them. He bit his lip. Suddenly -their meaning dawned on her. - -“Stephen,” her voice was stiff with horror, horror of him, not fear for -Hugh. “You wouldn’t do that?” - -“I!” he said thickly. “I—no—no—no.” - -“I’d hate you, if you did that,” Helen said quietly. Pryde realized how -much too far he had gone. He owed his place in the world to this girl’s -favor, his hope, still ardent, to fulfill the dreams he had dreamt as a -boy, watching the birds; he could not afford to incur her enmity. If -love was lost, ambition remained. Fool, fool that he was to imperil that -too. He changed his tone, and said shiftily— - -“No—no—you misunderstand me—of course I wouldn’t.” - -“It would disgrace Hugh,” she persisted hotly; “ruin his whole life, -just when he has fought his way up again.” - -“But don’t you see,” Stephen urged eagerly, taking quick advantage of -the opening her words gave, “that is just what I am trying to prevent? -If he is caught, he is certain to be disgraced. The whole truth about -the theft would have to come out. That is why I want him to go from here -quickly. It’s for his sake—to save him. I’m thinking of him, only of -him.” - -At the word “theft,” Helen threw her head up haughtily. But Stephen -Pryde was almost past picking his words now. On the whole, though, he -was playing his part well, his cards shrewdly. His last words rang true, -whatever they in fact were; and Helen was not unimpressed. Incredible as -it may seem, Pryde’s affection for his brother was not dead, and at -sight of Hugh, for all the dilemma with which Hugh’s reappearance -threatened him, that old-time affection had leapt in the older man’s -guilt-heavy heart. And it was that, probably, that had given some warmth -of truth to his last words, some semblance of conviction to Helen. - -But she stood her ground. “He can’t go—until he has made his search,” -she said with quiet finality. “His only chance of proving his innocence -is through that.” - -“But that’s absurd,” Pryde disputed impatiently. “What evidence could he -find here?” - -“I don’t know yet,” Helen admitted. “But I am sure there is something.” - -“Sure? Why are you so sure?” He spoke eagerly, all his uneasiness -rekindled at her confident words, the poor thief in him fearing each -syllable an officer. - -His cousin thought a little, and then she answered him, and more kindly. - -“Stephen, I haven’t been quite frank with you, because I know you don’t -believe what I believe, but I must tell you the truth now.” - -“Well?” he said breathlessly. - -“Hugh and I have both had a message from Daddy, telling us that the -proof that would clear him is in this room.” - -“A message—a message from your father?” His agitation was increasing, -but he did his utmost to conquer it. - -“Yes,” Helen replied gravely. - -“He left you—he left you letters?” Pryde’s voice was thick with terror. -Few as his words were, he spoke them with difficulty. - -“No!” Helen shook her head. - -“Then how”—his voice trembled and so did his hands—“how did the -message come?” - -“It only came lately—from the other side.” - -“From the other side?” Stephen asked blankly. - -Helen nodded. For a moment he looked at her in utter perplexity, and -then a light broke faintly. - -“Oh!” he said incredulously. “You—you mean the messages came from a -dead man?” - -“Yes,” Helen said assuredly. - -Pryde’s relief was so great that he could scarcely control it or -himself. He felt faint and sick with elation, and presently he broke -into hysterical laughter. It was the second time he had laughed so in -this room. - -Helen regarded him offendedly. Indeed, feeling as she felt, and at stake -what she had at stake, his mirth was offensive. But the boisterous -merriment was his safety-valve. - -When he was able to check himself, and he did as soon as he could, he -said, more affectionately than superiorly, - -“Helen, surely you can’t be serious?” - -“I am,” she answered curtly. She was indignant. - -“But,” Stephen persisted, “you can’t believe such preposterous nonsense. -A message from the dead! It’s too absurd!” - -“You will see that it is not,” the girl told him coldly. - -“I shall have to wait a long time for that, I am afraid,” he returned -patronizingly. He was quite himself now. He rose carelessly and strolled -to the writing-table. But as he went the menace that still threatened -him reasserted itself in his mind. He turned again to Helen. “And this -message from the dead, as you call it, is your only reason for believing -that there was some evidence in this room that would clear Hugh?” - -“Yes.” She vouchsafed the word inimically. - -Pryde drew a long breath of relief, and turned from her vexed face. As -he turned, his eye fell again on the writing-table and traveled, as -before, from it to the fireplace. He stood musing, and presently, -scarcely conscious of what he was saying, said— - -“And for a time you quite impressed me. I thought you had found out -about——” He broke off abruptly, realizing with a frightened start that -he had been on the verge of a damning admission. His great relief had -weakened his masterly defense—made him careless. - -Helen regarded him curiously. “About what?” she said. - -“Why, about—about this evidence,” he replied, laughing lightly. He was -well on his guard again. - -“Don’t make fun of me, Stephen,” she said, rising. “You hurt me.” - -“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I didn’t mean to do that. Where are you -going?” he added, as she reached the door. - -“I am going to Hugh,” she said quietly, without halting or looking -toward him. And he neither dared stay her nor follow her. - -Alone in the fateful room, Stephen Pryde moved about it restlessly. - -He lit a cigarette, but after a few whiffs he tossed it to the fire. -Suddenly he looked apprehensively over his shoulder. He was shivering -with cold. He walked about uncomfortably. “A message from the dead,” he -said aloud, contempt, amusement, and dread blended in his voice. “A -message from the dead.” He went hurriedly to the side table where the -decanters stood and mixed himself a drink. He carried his glass to the -fireplace, as if for warmth, and drank, looking down at the flames. -Suddenly he swung round with a cry of horror. “Uncle Dick!” The thin -glass fell and shivered into a dozen fragments on the hearth. “Who’s -there?” he cried, twitching convulsively. “Who’s there?” And with a -distraught moan, he sank cowering into the chair from which Richard -Bransby had risen to die. - - * * * * * - - - - - BOOK IV - - - THE LIGHT - - - CHAPTER XXXIII - -The wretched man sat helpless in the grip of his terror. Cold puffs of -air buffeted his trembling face. A hand of ice lay on his forehead. -Afraid of what he almost saw dimly, and clearly sensed now, he hid his -face in his hands and waited, unable to move, except as his own abject -fear shook him, unable to call for help. And he would have welcomed any -human help now—any human companionship. - -But such wills as Stephen Pryde’s are neither conquered nor broken by -one defeat. Presently he took down his hands, and the uncovered face was -again the face of a man. - -He was calmer now, and with his wonderful will and the habits of thought -of a lifetime he was overcoming his fear. He looked about the big room -quickly, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed slightly—a rather -mirthless laugh of self-contempt. He got up in another moment, and moved -about steadily, turning on the electric lights. Again he laughed as he -stood warming his hands before the glow of the gas fire. Clearly he was -ashamed of himself for having permitted his nerves to get the better of -him and of his commonsense. Yet the quick, stealthy glances he could not -refrain from throwing over his shoulder now and then, and an odd -apprehensiveness in his bearing, proved that there was still some doubt -in his mind—a doubt and a fear of which he could not rid -himself—absolutely. - -He was still wandering aimlessly about the room when his tired eyes fell -on the writing-table. It suggested the missing paper to him again, of -course: it always would, whenever he saw it. He went close to the table, -dragged there, as it were, and, as they had done before again and again, -his eyes traveled to the fire. A thought flashed to his troubled mind. -He went eagerly to the fireplace, and kneeling down searched feverishly -for some charred fragments of the paper that so threatened him. Nothing -could have shown more clearly how unhinged he was. A paper burnt eight -months ago would scarcely be traceable, by even one atom, near a fire -that had been burning constantly since Helen’s return some days ago, or -in a fireplace, or on a hearthrug, that Caroline Leavitt most certainly -had had thoroughly cleaned each day since the partial removal of Helen’s -taboo had made such cleanly housewifery possible. It had been a crazed -thought, bred in an overwrought mind. Often acute mania discloses itself -in just some such small irregularity of conduct. - -Of course, he found nothing where there could be nothing to find. But it -unsettled him again greatly. He rose from his knees and stood a long -time deeply troubled, staring vacantly into space. - -Presently he looked quickly behind him, but not this time with the -nervous tremor of the ghost-ridden, but rather with the trained, skilled -investigation of the steel-nerved housebreaker, the quick movement of -one who wishes to make sure he is unobserved. - -“Afraid of a dead man!” He laughed at the very thought. But the -living—ah, that was very much another matter. He was afraid of the -living, deadly afraid of his own brother—of poor hunted Hugh—of a slip -of a girl, and of every breathing creature that might find, through -search or by accident, and disclose, the incriminating document. For it, -murder had been in his heart, in the hour he had written it. And because -of it, something akin to murder throbbed and sickened in him now. - -He looked about the room again and again for some possible hiding-place. -Then all at once he looked at the door through which Hugh had gone, and -his face grew livid and terrible. Hugh _must_ go. He must not, he should -not, search this room and its hideous possibilities again. He must go: -he should. If only the boy’d go and go into safety! How gladly he, -Stephen, would aid him, and provide for him too. But, if Hugh would not -go in that way, why, then he should go in another. Pryde had taken his -resolve. He would not waver now. - -He rang the bell, and moved to the table, and stood looking down on the -notepaper there. - -“You rung, sir?” Barker asked. - -“Yes. There’s a camp near here, I believe?” - -“Just over the hill, sir.” - -“Simmons the gardener still lives in the cottage?” - -“Yes, sir.” The girl glowed, and was almost inarticulate with eagerness. -“But, sir, if you want some one to go over to the camp, sir——” - -“That will do,” Pryde told her curtly. - -“Very—very good, sir,” she almost sobbed it, and slunk out, -disappointed and abashed. - -Stephen watched her go impatiently, and then turned back to the table, -his face tense and set. He picked up a piece of paper, sat down, dipped -a pen in the ink—and then laid the pen down, remembering what had, in -all probability, been last written at that table, with ink from this -well—perhaps with this penholder! The nib was new, and careful “Aunt -Caroline” had had the inkstand cleaned and filled. Stephen sighed and -took up the pen. Then he frowned—at the embossed address at the head of -the sheet. He tore it off, looked at the waste-paper basket, then at the -fire, but neither seemed quite safe enough to share this latest secret -of his penmanship. He put the torn-off engraved bit of paper carefully -in his pocket, and began to write very slowly, with wonderful care. - -The writing was not his own. Versatility in hand-writings had always -been the greatest deftness of his versatile hands. “Hugh Pryde, wanted -for desertion, is in hiding at Deep Dale. A Friend.” He wrote it -relentlessly, his lip curving in scorn at the threadbare pseudonym. Then -he gave a long look up at Helen’s portrait still radiant over the -mantel. Then a thought of Hugh, and of the boyhood days they had shared, -came to him chokingly. He propped his head in his hands, and sat and -gazed ruefully at the treachery he had just written. So absorbed was he -in his sorry scrutiny that he did not hear a step in the hall, and he -jumped a little, woman-like, when his cousin closed the door behind her. -With a quick, stealthy movement he folded the sheet of paper and thrust -it into his coat “Oh, Helen, it’s you!” he said rather jerkily. - -“Hugh is growing very impatient, Stephen,” she said, coming nearer; -“will you go to him now?” - -“Yes—yes—of course. I was just going. There’s no time to lose; none. I -hope he has grown more reasonable.” - -“How do you mean?” Helen spoke sharply. - -“About leaving here, of course.” His voice was as sharp. - -“We both know that he can’t do that yet,” she returned decidedly—“not -until——” - -Stephen came to her imperiously. “Helen, it’s folly for him to stay.” - -“No,” she retorted hotly. “For I am sure, quite sure, we are going to -find the proofs we want—and it is only here we can look for them.” - -“But if you don’t find them?” he reminded her. - -“We will.” - -“You haven’t yet,” Stephen told her impatiently. - -“In just a little while the way will come to us,” the girl said. “I am -sure it will.” - -“Yes, I’m sure it will,” her cousin said mendaciously. “But in the -meantime the men are searching for Hugh. And, if he doesn’t leave at -once, I feel certain they will come here and arrest him. I’m going to -him now, to try to persuade him once more to be reasonable.” And he went -from the library, his anonymous note in his pocket. Helen made no -attempt to dissuade him. His words had troubled her deeply. Ought Hugh -indeed to go? She couldn’t say. She could scarcely think. - - - CHAPTER XXXIV - -She looked in the fire. She counted the clock’s ticking. She gazed at -the Joss. What should she do? She asked them all that. What ought Hugh -to do? They gave her no answer, no help. She rang the bell, and sank -dejectedly into her father’s chair. “Do you know where Dr. Latham is?” -she asked Barker when the girl came. - -“No, Miss.” - -“Find him. Tell him I want him—here, at once.” - -It seemed an unconscionable time to her that she waited. But it was not -long, as the clock told it. Barker had been quick for once. - -“Dr. Latham, you must help me, you must help me now,” Helen cried -excitedly as he came in. - -At the sight of her face Latham turned back and closed the door -carefully. Then he came to her. - -“Help you—something has happened?” - -“Yes. And that feeling I spoke of—that sense of nearness—has come back -to me.” - -The physician drew a chair close to hers. “You must put this out of your -mind,” he told her pityingly. - -She turned to him imploringly. “How can I? Daddy is speaking to me, he -is trying to help me; and isn’t it terrible I can’t hear?—I can’t -hear.” - -“My dear child——” - -“Oh, I know, you think I am nervous, overwrought—well, perhaps I am,” -she said, rising and going to him, laying her hand on his chair’s high -back, “but don’t you see the only way I can get any relief is to find -out what Daddy wants to tell me?—Think how he must be suffering when he -is trying so hard to speak to me, and I can’t hear—I can’t hear.” -Latham made a gesture of sympathy and disbelief mingled, and laid his -hand on hers, rising. “Oh, if you knew the circumstances you would help -me, I know you would.” - -Her voice was wild, but her eyes were clear and sane, and something in -their steady light gave him pause—almost touched him with conviction. -He was skilled at distinguishing truth from untruth, sanity from -hallucination: that was no small part of his fine professional -equipment. He studied her steadily, and then said gravely— - -“What are the circumstances?” - -“I know I can trust you.” - -Latham smiled. “Of course.” - -“Hugh has come back.” - -“No?” Great physicians are rarely surprised. Horace Latham was very much -surprised. - -“He came this afternoon. Dr. Latham, he didn’t desert. Daddy told him he -must give up his commission—he promised Hugh that he would arrange it; -he must have died before he had the chance, but Hugh never knew. He -enlisted under another name.” - -Angela had always said that Hugh Pryde had done nothing shabby. She knew -that. There was some explanation. Latham remembered it. Clever woman! - -“But,” he said, “why did your father——” - -“He thought Hugh had taken some money from the office,” Helen rushed on -breathlessly. “The evidence was all against him; but he was innocent, -Dr. Latham.” Latham’s face was non-committal, but he bowed his head -gravely. “I know he was innocent,” the girl insisted, “and Daddy knows -it now. Oh, Dr. Latham, can’t you help me?” She laid her little hands on -his arm, and her tearful eyes pled with him eloquently. - -Latham was moved. “My dear, how can I?” he said very gently. - -“You don’t realize how vital this is,” she urged, “The authorities -suspect Hugh’s whereabouts; they were at the office to-day, looking for -him. If they find him before he can clear himself——” - -“Yes——” Latham saw clearly the gravity of that. But _what_ could he -do? “Yes?” - -“Don’t you see now that I must find out what Daddy wants to tell me?” - -Latham was badly troubled. Hugh _might_ be innocent, but the chances -were the other way. Angela was the most charming creature in all the -universe. Helen was very charming. But their added convictions were no -evidence in a court of law, and not much before the tribunal of his own -masculine judgment. - -“Miss Bransby,” he told the trembling girl sadly, “if I could help you -to understand, I would; but I—I—don’t know the way.” - -“But you believe there is a way?” Helen said, eagerly. Even that much -from his lips would be something. Every one knew Dr. Latham was wise and -thoughtful and careful. “You do believe there is a way?” she repeated -wistfully. - -“Perhaps.” He spoke almost as wistfully as she had. “If one could only -find it; but so many unhappy people have tried to stretch a hand across -that gulf, and so few have succeeded—and even when they have—most of -the messages that have come to them have been either frivolous or beyond -our understanding.” - -“But we shall find the way—we shall find it,” Helen told him -positively. - -“Well,” Latham said, begging the psychic question—putting it aside for -the more material quandary, “somehow we will find a way to get Hugh out -of this difficulty. Where is he now?” - -“With Stephen,” Helen told him. - -“Stephen—Stephen’s the very man to help us,” Latham said cheerfully. - -Helen felt perfectly sure that Stephen might be bettered for the work in -hand, but she had no time to say so, even if she would, for at that -moment Mrs. Hilary ran through the door, opening it abruptly, and -closing it with a clatter. - -“Oh! Helen,” she cried—and then she saw Latham, and paused -disconcerted. - -“He knows all about Hugh, Angela,” Helen said. - -“Thank goodness! Now perhaps we shan’t be long! Something dreadful has -happened. My chauffeur has just brought me a note. The detectives have -found out that Hugh has been at my house. Two detectives are waiting -there now to question me. They may be here any moment. Thank goodness -Palmer had the sense to send me word. But, what shall we do? They may be -here any moment, I tell you.” - -“Yes,” Latham said, “unless they have been here already.” He went to the -bell and rang it. Why he rang he did not say. And neither of the women -asked him, only too content, as all but the silliest women, or the -bitterest, are, to throw the responsibility of immediate practical -action in such dilemmas on to a man they trusted. The three waited in -silence until Barker said— - -“You rang, miss?” - -“I rang, Barker,” Latham answered. “Has any one been here lately asking -for Mr. Hugh?” - -“Yes, sir. This afternoon, sir.” - -“This afternoon!” Helen cried in dismay. - -“Yes, miss, about an hour ago, two men come—came.” - -“What did you tell them?” Latham asked quickly. “I told them the truth, -sir, of course, as I ’adn’t never been told to tell them anything else, -that he has never been here, not once since the master died.” - -“Quite right,” Latham said cordially. “And, Barker, if they should -happen to come back, let me know at once, and I’ll speak to them.” - -“Very good, sir.” - -“And—Barker, did they see any one but you?” - -“No, sir.” - -“You are sure?” - -“Oh yes, sir. I stood at the hall window and watched them until the road -turned, and I couldn’t see them no more.” - -“They will come back,” Helen almost sobbed as the door closed behind -Barker. - -“When they come back Hugh will not be here,” Latham told her -confidently. - -“Then you are going to help us?” - -“Of course.” Latham smiled at her. In all his years of conventional -rectitude, he had never defied the law of his land; and he fully -realized the heinousness of aiding a deserter soldier to escape -arrest—and in war time too—and its possible consequences. But he was -staunch in friendship, he was greatly sorry for Helen, be the merits of -Hugh’s case what they might, and he knew that Angela’s eye was on him. -And this thing he could do. To raise the dead to the girl’s aid he had -no necromancy, but to smuggle Hugh away he might easily compass, if no -more time were lost. “Of course,” he repeated. “I must. Go and tell Hugh -to come here as quickly as he can.” - -“Yes,” Helen said eagerly. “Oh, thank you, Doctor.” - -“That’s all right,” he said cheerfully. - -Helen hurried away. Latham held out his hand, and Angela came to him and -put hers in it. She asked him no question, and for a space he stood -thinking. - -“Now, dear,” he said in a moment. - -“Yes,” she said eagerly. - -“You must go at once.” - -“I know—but where can I go?” - -“Home.” - -“Home!” She echoed his word in consternation. - -“Yes, go back as if nothing had happened.” He put his arm about her and -led her towards the door. - -“As if nothing had happened?” she said feebly. - -“Keep those men there until we have a chance to get Hugh safely away.” - -“Oh——” she cried in a panic. “Oh—I couldn’t.” - -“You must.” If “must” is the one word no woman forgives any man -ordinarily, it can on the other hand be the sweetest she ever hears—at -the right moment, from the right man. Angela accepted it meekly, and -proudly too. “But what can I say to them?” she begged. - -“Oh, say—anything, anything.” - -“But, Horace, what does one say to detectives?” - -“You can say whatever comes into your head,” he replied, smiling into -her eyes. “After all they are only men.” - -Angela dimpled. “Yes—so they are—just men. I dare say I can manage.” - -“I dare say you can,” Horace Latham retorted dryly. - - - CHAPTER XXXV - -“Hugh will be down directly,” Helen told Latham as she came in, a moment -after Mrs. Hilary had gone. - -“Good. I will take him away in my car, and find some place where he can -stay safely until we can get at the truth of this.” - -“Ah, that is good of you,” Helen thanked him. - -“Remember,” Latham reminded her gravely, “sooner or later Hugh must give -himself up.” - -“He knows that,” Helen said bravely. - -“I drive my own car now,” the doctor said briskly, “so we can start at -once. Be sure he’s ready.” - -“Oh, yes,” she said. - -“Then I’ll get the car and bring it round,” he said over his shoulder as -he went. - -She scarcely heard his last words, or realized that he had gone. She -stood very still, one hand on the table—one on her breast. There was -something trance-like in the tense, slender figure. Her wide eyes -glazed. Her breath came in slow, heavy beats. Presently she gave a great -sigh, lifted her hand from her breast to her head, then moved slowly -towards the bookcase, her hand stretched out in front of her now, as if -leading and pointing. She moved mechanically, as sleep walkers move, and -almost as if impelled from behind. Her face was still and mask-like. - -She had almost reached the bookshelves, almost touched with her outheld -hand “David Copperfield,” when Stephen came into the room. Instantly -something odd and uncanny in her manner arrested him. For one moment he -stood riveted, spell-bound, then he shook off furiously the influence -that held him, and exclaimed abruptly, peremptorily, “Helen! Helen!” - -His voice broke the spell, and she turned to him blankly, like one who -had but just awakened from heavy sleep. A moment she gazed at him -unseeingly; then she moaned and tottered. She would have fallen, but -Stephen caught her and held her. The spell, the faintness, whatever it -was, passed or changed, and she moved slowly from his hold, greatly -excited, but conscious, and more nearly normal; the rapt look on her -face still, but penetrated more and more by her own personality, awake -and normally sentient. - -All at once she realized. In one flash of time, one great beat of -emotion, _she saw_. - -“Stephen!” she panted. - -“What is it?” Pryde said, guiding her to a chair, and urging her into it -gently. - -“Stephen,” she repeated, both palms pressed on her forehead. “Oh!” - -“What is the matter?” he asked hoarsely, dazed and perturbed. - -“Just now—when you spoke”; her voice gathered tone as she continued, -grew bell-clear, ringing, flute-fine, “the message was coming—it almost -got through, it almost got through! Something was telling me what to do -to save Hugh.” - -Her eyes glowed like deep blue lamps, around her face a veil of -transparent lambent whiteness clung, and transfigured it. The girl was -in ecstasy. - -Stephen Pryde was terribly shaken. He looked at Helen in fear and -amazement. Then, unable to refrain, though he tried his strongest, he -looked over his shoulder uneasily. When he could speak his voice was -harsh and unnatural. - -“Impossible,” he said roughly; “impossible.” - -“No, no,” the girl whispered exultantly, clearly. “_I know_—I can’t -tell you anything, but that I know, I know, I know.” - -There was a power in the girl-voice that reached and subdued Stephen. He -was impressed, almost convinced. - -“You know,” he said slowly, wonderingly. “Did this message—did it -indicate some paper—tell you where to look for it?” For his soul, for -his life, for his whole future at stake, he could not keep the words -back. They were forced from him, as the hand of the player plucks the -melody from a harp—the melody, or the discord. Something stronger than -he ever had been, or ever could be, commanded and he obeyed, bowed to -the infinite; his own conscience turned traitor and linked against him, -linked with some nameless mightiness he had scoffed at and denied and -defied. - -“Paper?” Helen said. “What paper do you mean?” - -He rushed on, goaded and driven. “I don’t know—only if there were some -evidence here that would clear Hugh, it would be in the shape of a paper -that—that——” His tongue clove thick in his mouth, clotted and mumbled -with nervousness. He could scarcely enunciate; he could not enunciate -clearly—“that seems reasonable, doesn’t it?” - -“Yes, of course,” Helen agreed. “No—nothing of that sort came to -me—the whole thing was so vague—so indistinct. But I am sure now; it -will come back to me—and help me—I am sure it will.” The glow on her -face, the great light in her eyes, grew brighter and brighter. - -Stephen Pryde was almost in the state he had been in when he had dropped -his glass on the fender and cried, “Who’s there? Uncle Dick!” While -Helen spoke he kept looking over his shoulder. He was tremblingly -conscious of a _something_ in the room, a something that he felt was a -some one—a presence. It almost overpowered him, the conviction, the -chill, and the unprecedented sensation, but, summoning his iron will, he -resolved to fight on; and with a flash of chicanery that was nothing -short of genius, and nothing less than satanic, he determined even to -take advantage of the dead man’s message. For it had come to that with -him now. That Richard Bransby was in the room, and trying “to -communicate,” he now no more doubted than Helen herself did. Well! let -it be so. Let the dead man get the message through, if he could! He—he, -Stephen—would take it, twist it, turn it, use it, seize it—_destroy_ -it, if need were. He had defied God and His angels, his own conscience, -fate, the law of the land, and now he defied the soul and the -consciousness and all the craft of one old man dead—dead and returned. - -He turned to Helen impressively. “If—if it would only come to you now.” - -“What?” the girl said uncomprehendingly. - -“If I could find whatever it is—if you would help me to find it,” he -insinuated earnestly. - -“How can I?” she faltered. - -“Try,” he urged masterfully—“try and get that message again.” His hands -were so cold they ached. Sweat ran on his brow. But his voice was firm, -his eyes imperative, compelling. - -“I can’t,” Helen said piteously. - -“You must, I tell you, you must.” He stamped his foot in his insistence. - -“Stephen, you frighten me,” she said, shrinking. - -“Try, Helen, try.” He whispered it gently, soothingly. - -Like some beautiful, breathing marionette, she rose slowly, very slowly, -pressed one hand over her eyes—stood rigid, but swaying, poised for -motion, tuned for revelation—for receiving and transmitting a message. - -Stephen Pryde watched her with straining eyes. His gasping breath froze -on his stiffening lips. He put out one daring hand, and just touched her -sleeve. At that touch some negative current seemed to sweep and surge -through her. She recoiled, she shuddered, and then she relaxed from all -her intensity, and sank wearily down into the nearest chair, saying -dully— - -“I can’t Stephen, I can’t!” - -The banished blood leapt back to his face, and laughed in his heart, -danced through his veins. His whole attitude was changed in one flash of -time; the attitude of his flesh, the attitude of his mind. Helen had -failed. The thing she had hoped, he had feared and defied, could not be -done. It was farce. It was fraud—fraud worked on them by their caitiff -nerves, as “fortunes” forsooth were told for a “bob” by old crones, from -tea leaves—on the Brixton Road. And almost he had been persuaded, he, -Stephen Pryde! Pshaw! Well, his fears were done for and past now once -for all. The dead man could not reach her! The dead man; a handful of -dust or of rot in a grave! - -He turned to Helen in cold triumph. “I knew it—I knew it,” he exulted. -“Don’t you see now, Helen, how you are deceiving yourself? If there was -a message for you, why shouldn’t it come? I tried to help you—to put -myself in sympathy—you saw how useless it was.” - -But Helen had been too near the unseen, too far across the dread -borderland. Doubt could not touch her again. She had stood in the edge -of the light. She had felt. Almost she had heard and had seen. She knew. -She shook her head, without troubling to answer him or look toward him. -She shook her head and she smiled. - -“Where’s Latham?” Pryde said in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone. - -She answered him as crisply, and as commonplace in manner and word. - -“He is going to take poor Hugh away in his car; he has gone to get it -ready.” - -“Oh!” - -“He is going to take him to some place where he will be safe until we -can find the evidence that will clear him.” - -“But there isn’t any,” Pryde said with truculent brutality; and his eyes -measured yet again, gloatingly, the distance and the angle from the -writing-table to the fireplace. - -“I know there is,” Helen said quietly. - -“There can’t be,” Stephen stormed, almost losing grip of himself—very -nearly had he reached his breaking-point. “I tell you, there can’t be.” - -Helen sat and studied her cousin curiously. She was not a thoughtful -girl, and the abnormal strains through which she had been passing for -some time now had conspired to make thought peculiarly difficult; but -there was much in Stephen’s manner, in what he said and in how he said -it, in his face, his eyes, his gestures, his inconsistencies, to compel -thought and arouse suspicion, even in a mind as tired and as little -given to analysis as hers was. - -She was on his track now, not in the least knowing or surmising what was -hidden in his soul, but sensing that there was something, something that -it behooved her, for Hugh’s sake, to fathom. Whether she might have -fathomed it, as she sat watching him with troubled, doubting eyes, would -be difficult to guess. And in a few moments her detective train of -thought was broken by Hugh’s voice. He came in gravely but cheerfully, -and said, as he stood smiling down on her tenderly— - -“Here I am, Helen.” - -She smiled back at him, little minded to show less courage than her man -did in this climax moment of their ordeal. - -“Doctor Latham will be here in a minute; he’s going to take you away in -his car,” she said as cheerfully as Hugh himself had spoken, and rising -and linking her arm in his. - -“But I can’t go, Helen,” Hugh told her,—“not yet—it wouldn’t be right -for me to go until I have searched this room—I—why, if I turn towards -the door even, something _pushes_ me back. I mustn’t go, dear; I must -search first. It won’t take long—I can do it before they get here.” - -Stephen came to his brother, and laid his hands on Hugh’s shoulders. As -Stephen came towards them, Helen drew a little away. - -“No,” Stephen said earnestly, “no; why not go with Latham now, and then, -come back—when it is safe?” - -Hugh wavered. This elder brother had always influenced him much. They -had been orphans together, and in their early orphaned days, the elder -had been something of father and mother too to Hugh Pryde. Stephen’s -earliest recollection was of their mother; Hugh’s earliest was of -Stephen, mending a broken toy for him, and comforting him with a silver -threepence. A thousand times Stephen had befriended him. Stephen was -proved wise, again and again, and kind and disinterested. - -“That would give me more time,” the boy said, looking gratefully into -the affectionate, brotherly eyes that were bent steadily on his—“that’s -not a bad idea. If Latham took me as far as the Heath they’d never find -me there—never—then late to-night I could come back.” - -“No,” Stephen interrupted, “not the Heath—it must be some place where I -can get to you; it may not be safe to come back to-night—they may leave -some one here to watch.” - -“Yes,” Hugh agreed, “they’re almost sure to do that. Where shall I wait, -Stevie?” - -Stephen Pryde winced at the old name of their playfellow days—Hugh had -not used it for years. But he had put his foot upon the fratricidal -plowshare of deceit and treachery, and it was beyond him to withdraw it -now. At that bitter moment he would have spared his brother if he -could—but it was too late. Suffering acutely (probably Cain suffered so -once), he said emphatically, “Oakhill! The wood on the other side.” - -“But if they find me there,” Hugh objected, “I wouldn’t have a chance to -get away.” - -Stephen’s hands were still on his brother’s shoulders and he leaned his -weight upon them. - -“They won’t find you, my boy, trust me.” - -It was enough, and Hugh’s answer came instant and content. - -“All right, Stephen!” - -“Good-by,” the elder said hastily. “I’ll go hurry up Latham; the sooner -you are away from here now the better.” He released Hugh, and turned to -go. But Hugh held out both his hands, and for a long moment the brothers -stood looking earnestly into each other’s eyes, hands gripped—Helen, -apart, watching them, dissatisfied. Then Stephen turned on his heel and -walked resolutely away, out of the room. - - - CHAPTER XXXVI - -As Stephen’s step died in the distance, all Hugh’s uncertainty came -back, and he turned to Helen disconcertedly. - -“I hope this is the right thing I am doing.” - -“I am sure it is,” the girl said. “Dr. Latham thinks so too.” - -“Are you? Still something keeps telling me I shouldn’t go—I dare say -it’s my imagination.” - -“Why, yes,” she reassured him, “what difference could it make, Hugh, -whether you search this afternoon or this evening?” - -“None, of course,” he admitted; “the strain has lasted so long it’s on -my nerves. Oh,” he broke out anew, “if I could only think where to look -now. But I can’t—I can’t.” He looked about the room distractedly. - -Helen came to him, and put her hand on him. “It is going to be all -right, Hugh—I’m certain it’s going to be all right.” - -“Yes, I hope so,” he said; “but, Helen, if it shouldn’t?” - -“If it shouldn’t?” she said, startled, and touched too now by his -discomfort, his vacillation. - -“This would have to be good-by, Helen.” - -“No—no—no!” she said, choking. - -“It would,” Hugh insisted sadly. “Oh, I dare say my record at the -front—would help me; no doubt the penalty wouldn’t be very severe—but -the whole story of the robbery would have to come out—the scandal would -always cling to me—I couldn’t let you share that.” - -“Do you think I’d mind?” - -He took her face in his hands. “You don’t realize what unhappiness it -would bring you.” - -“It doesn’t matter,” she said proudly. “I _want_ to share it with you.” - -“No, Helen—unless I clear myself I can never see you again.” She caught -his hands, and held, them to her heart. He whitened under and over his -war-tan, but he added almost sternly, “I mean it.” - -“And what about me?” she cried passionately. “Have you thought about -that?” - -“It’s you I am thinking of, believe that.” - -“Oh!” she cried, hurt, angry, rebellious, freeing herself from his -touch; but he caught her back and held her fast. He kissed her again and -again, and then—again. - -“Hugh, my boy, my boy,” Mrs. Leavitt sobbed, bustling in upon them. - -Helen moved away, and sat down wearily. Hugh bent to his aunt’s embrace. -“There, there, Aunt Caroline, don’t cry,” he entreated, as soon as he -could disentangle himself enough to be articulate. - -“I can’t help it—I can’t help it,” Mrs. Leavitt wailed. - -“Yes, but such big tears,” he coaxed, dabbing at them affectionately -with his khaki-colored handkerchief; “there, there, dear.” - -But the poor childless Niobe would not be comforted. - -“Oh! Hugh,” she sobbed, “you won’t let them take you away—you are not -going to let them take you away—promise me.” - -“Why, of course not,” he said soothingly. - -“I’m so frightened,” the woman moaned. - -“There is no need to be frightened,” he told her briskly, “if you will -only do your part, dear Aunt Caroline.” - -“What is my part?” Caroline Leavitt asked falteringly. - -“None of the servants know I have been here—not even Barker has seen -me—get them away so they won’t see me leave.” - -“Yes, dear,” his aunt said promptly, alert, business-like, Martha ready -and practical again under the stimulant of something definite to do, -some tangible service to render, some woman’s help to contribute. - -“Go quickly, won’t you?” But he need not have said it, for already she -was hurrying from the room, and only half pausing to say, “Yes, at once. -You will come back, Hugh—you are sure to come back?” - -“Yes,” he said confidently, “don’t worry, I’ll come back.” - -“I’ll get them all in the kitchen and lock the door,” she said grimly, -and went. - -Hugh nodded and he smiled until the door closed. Then he turned sadly to -Helen. - -“Well, dear, I’d better go now.” She could not speak, but she nodded—as -bravely as she could. “Yes—keep up your courage, dear,” he told her; -“everything will turn out all right.” - -But at that she broke down and threw her arms about him convulsively. - -“I can’t let you go, Hugh, I can’t let you go.” - -“I must go, dear, you know I must.” He kissed her—just once, and put -her from him, and went resolutely to the door. But in the doorway Dr. -Latham met him, and pushed him back into the room. - -“I have bad news, Hugh,” the physician said. - -“Bad news?” Helen cried. - -Hugh said nothing. He knew. - -“They have come for you—they know you are here,” Latham said quietly. - -Hugh turned pityingly to Helen—his one thought of her, to comfort her. -But Helen, womanlike, was all courage now. She held out both hands; a -moment he pressed them, then turned and went, with a soldier’s gait, -toward the door. - -“Scotland Yard men or a sergeant?” he asked Latham as he passed him. - -“Soldiers,” Latham said. - -“It’s tecs,” Barker cried in a wrathful panic, bursting through the -doorway. “Me not know tecs! That’s likely. I knew it was tecs the ’stant -I laid eyes on ’em—dressed up in a uneeform—but they’s tecs.” True to -her type, she had sensed “police” even through tunics and khaki. The -dullest servant, and the most inexperienced, have an unfailing flare for -the “tec.” - -Latham pushed her gently from the room, but she ran down the hall -crying, “It’s tecs, I tell you; it’s tecs!” - - - CHAPTER XXXVII - -“Military police, I suppose, or a non-com. and two privates,” Hugh said -as he and Latham went toward the morning room. - -“Two outside the door,” Latham said, “a non-commissioned officer in the -morning room—a decent chap—very.” - -Hugh nodded. “Oh, yes—and he’ll behave very decently to me—they -usually do in such cases—and a good deal is left to their discretion. -Undoubtedly it’s a non-com. and a trusted one. Good-by, Latham, and, I -say, thanks awfully.” - -“I’m coming in with you.” - -“No, go back to Helen, I’d rather.” - -Latham wrung Hugh’s hand; and Hugh passed into the morning room and -closed the door. - -“Here I am,” he said briskly. - -The soldier standing waiting stepped back with an oath. - -“Tare an’ ’ounds,” he exclaimed violently, “don’t you bey after tellin’ -me it’s you, Carter.” - -“Yes, Kinsella, I’m Pryde, wanted for desertion, all right. But, I say, -it’s hellish luck that they’ve sent you after me!” - -“Sent and bey damned to thim. Oi’ll not bey after doin’ ut. The loikes -uv you! Oi’ll toike the stroips from me coat and ate ’em forst. Oi’ve -fought the Hoons for ’em, and Oi’ll bey after foighten uv ’em again, but -sorra a fist or a harm’ll Oi putt on you, Tom Carter—or Mister Proid, -sor, whichiver, whoiver, ye are.” - -“I’m both,” Hugh told him. “Where’s your warrant?” - -“Me warrent is it? It’s no warrent uv moin, my boy, ‘_sor_’ I’m after -mainin’. It’s a dirthy scrap uv paiper, an’ that’s what it is, fut to -spat at the Imperur uv the Hoons—cursed bey the doiy they giv’ it -myself.” - -“Where are we going?” Hugh asked. - -“To Hell wid going! you’re stayin’.” - -“That’ll mean shooting, if not hanging, for both of us, Kinsella.” - -“Mother of God! is it axin’ me to bey toiking ye that ye are? Me, that -ye carried on yer back and fed from yer cup fer all this woirld’s uf -Oi’d been yer baby an’ you the own mither uv me! We’ve starved and we’ve -shivered togither. We’ve stuck in the mud to our necks, glued there -loike flies in th’ amber, we’ve shared our rum tot and our billy, we’ve -gone over the top shoulder to shoulder—we’ve stood so close Oi’ve heard -your heart bate, and you’ve heard moine, whin we’ve been waitin’ for the -wurd to come to dash into the curtain uv fire uv the barrage, and -togither we’ve watched the flammin’ ruins uv Europe—and our pals -dropping and writhing under the very feet uv us as if they’d been lice -and Wilheim their Moses—Me arrest you! Oi’d sooner bey stealin’ the -shillin’s off the eyelids uv a dead baby!” His own Irish eyes were -brimful, and there was almost a sob in the lilt of the brogue on the tip -of his tongue. - -Hugh Pryde marched up to him with a laugh and pushed him down into a -chair, then he swung himself onto a table and leaned over Kinsella, one -hand gripped on his arm. - -“Listen to reason,” he said. “We are soldiers——” - -“Begorra thin Oi’m a man though, an’ whin Oi can’t bey the both, it’s -man Oi’m choosin’ to bey, an’ not spalpeen.” - -“We are soldiers,” Hugh said sternly; “you are here to arrest me, and -you are going to do it.” - -“And Oi’m not thin,” the other retorted. “Our Lady’d blush to own me, if -ever Oi did such an Orangeman dirthy trick—an’ me a mimber of the -Sodality meself win Oi was a boy. Oi’d sooner bey shootin’ me own brains -into puddin’, an’ savin’ the Hoons the throuble uv it. Me shame the -loikes uv yerself—Oi’d as soon say a wrongin’ wourd to the Saints in -their shrines.” - -“Listen,” Hugh told him again. “You want to help me?” - -“Oi do that very same thing, thin.” - -“Then do precisely as I tell you. I am going with you. I’d have had to -give myself up in a day or two. I was going to—as soon as I’d done -something I had to do here—something important. Now, I want you to stay -here quietly, and let me go back for half an hour. Then I’ll come here, -and we’ll go together and do what has to be done.” - -“We will not thin.” - -“You want to help me?” - -“Sure it’s yourself as knows that.” - -“Then you will do—as I say. It’s the only way, partner. I’ll be back.” -At the door he turned to say, “By the way, Kin, I did not desert.” - -“Glory bey to God, as if Oi didn’t know that.” - -“But I seemed to have done so. It can be cleared up, and it shall; but -the authorities are quite in the right—they thought I had.” - -“An’ be damned to ’um—as blithering a set of auld wimin as iver wore -petticoats. Authorities is ut? Meddlin’ and blunderin’ an’ playin’ the -goat uv ut. That’s how they’ve been runnin’ this war from the furst day, -and from the furst day Oi’ve said it. Oh!” he broke forth, “don’t ye bey -after givin’ yerself up—and don’t ye bey after axin’ me to help ye do -it. Oi’d—Oi’d—Oi’d rather turn Hoon and lick-spitter their cur uv a -Kaiser than hurt wan hair uv yer head. I luv ye, Tom Carter. Oi sensed -ye were a gintleman the furst toime Oi saw ye—and Oi loiked ye in spoit -uv ut.” - -“Will you wait for me for half an hour?” - -“Toike yer toime,” Kinsella said grimly. - -In the hall Hugh found Barker, and gave her a startling order for a tray -of refreshments to be taken to his “friend” in the morning room. - -True to her word Mrs. Leavitt had packed the servants into the -kitchen—and then locked it. But she had been unable to find Barker, and -was still beating the house for her. - -The larder was accessible, and Barker foraged nobly. - -She carried a tray so heavy with good things that she only just could -carry it, into the morning room, a delighted smile on her face and her -best apron, hurriedly donned, very much askew. - -But the morning room was empty. - -The window was open, and down the path marched two surprised privates, -hurried and cursed by Sergeant Patrick Kinsella. - -“Uv all th’ auld fools uv wimin,” he muttered, “ut isn’t the man wat’s -wanted at all at all, but anither entoirly. The bloak we’re after -wantin’s been gonn two hours and more—halfway to London, and out ur th’ -counthry by this. Doouble-quick, now.” And they double-quicked. - - - CHAPTER XXXVIII - -When Latham returned to the library he found Helen sitting by the -writing-table, one hand lying idly and resting on the jade paper weight. -He spoke to her, and she looked up and smiled at him rather vacantly, -but she said nothing. He gave her a sharp look, and then picked up a -magazine and sat down, pretending to read. - -She sat very still. She seemed resting—and though he watched her, he -decided not to disturb her, to make no effort to arouse her. - -And so they sat without a word until Hugh came back. Latham looked round -in surprise, but Helen scarcely seemed to notice. - -“An hour’s reprieve,” Hugh said lightly. “Awfully decent chap in there. -Knew him at the front. He’ll make it as comfortable for me as he can. -I’ve told Barker to do him uncommonly well. And now, to search this room -in earnest!” - -Stephen followed his brother into the library. “Some one has given you -away, Hugh,” he said sorrowfully. “The soldiers knew you were here, when -they came—the sergeant was so positive that all my denials were -useless. Who could it have been?” - -“Don’t you know, Stephen?” Helen said softly, rising—the Joss in her -hand, but not even glancing at Pryde. - -“How on earth would Stephen know?” Hugh said, going to his brother. - -Stephen put out his hand. “I—I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Hugh.” - -Hugh smiled at the elder. “I know, old boy, I know. And I’m not -worrying. It’ll come all right.” - -Helen moved suddenly, sharply, as if some shock of electricity had -currented through her. Then she spoke, and her voice was strange. -“Blind—blind—blind!” It seemed as if she said it unconsciously. The -three men watched her intensely, each moved and apprehensive in a -different way, and from a different cause. She spoke again in the same -queer, mechanical manner, but this time her voice was louder, clearer, -more vibrant. “Blind—blind—blind!” To Hugh and to Latham the one word -repeated again and again conveyed nothing, but suddenly Stephen Pryde -remembered where he had heard it last, and he shuddered. She spoke -on—“As if he were an echo of the morning—‘Blind—blind—blind’!” - -“Helen!” Hugh cried, alarmed for her. - -“What is it?” Latham said to her insistently. - -Stephen went to her quickly. “It’s nothing,” he said sharply. -“Nothing—only the parting with Hugh. It’s been a great strain on her.” -He turned to Hugh. “You had better go now, quickly.” - -“No, no!” she said sharply, but looking at neither of them. - -“Helen!” Hugh pled—distracted. - -She heard him, and ran to him, brushing by Stephen. - -“My dear,” she began, and faltered. - -He put his arms about her. “There—there—you’re all right.” - -The voice she loved best recalled her. “Of course I am,” she said -brightly. - -“But why did you say those words just now?” he said, impelled to ask it, -though he understood a gesture of Latham’s that forbade all simulation -of her strange excitement. - -“I don’t know. And I didn’t exactly seem to say them—they said -themselves. I don’t know what they mean, or where they come from; but -they keep running through my head—I can’t stop them somehow.” - -“That’s odd,” Latham remarked, his interest in what seemed to him a -unique psychological case out-weighing his fear for the patient, “very -odd. I seem to have heard them before too. But I can’t think where. -What’s that you have in your hand?” - -“Why—why, it’s his paper-weight—Daddy’s.” She held it up and gazed at -it intently, as an Indian seer gazes at his crystal. In a moment she -spoke again, her voice once more quite changed. “Did you ever read -‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?” - -“What?” Latham said, unprofessionally tremulous with surprise and with -interest. - -“Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?” the mechanical voice -repeated automatically. The girl’s face was white and expressionless as -a death mask. - -“‘David Copperfield’!” Stephen Pryde exclaimed hoarsely. And as he said -it he knew. And Helen knew too. She had readied the light. At that -moment Richard Bransby had got his message through. Stephen’s eyes went -to the table where the volume lay when he left the room the night his -uncle died—then slowly they traveled to the bookcase. In that moment -the whole thing was clear to him—as clear as if he had seen his -confession shut in the volume, the volume by some one at sometime -replaced on its shelf. - -And Helen had grasped the meaning of the words she had uttered so oddly, -and repeatedly. She shrined the jade god in her hands, and looked raptly -at its green and rose surfaces and curves. Then she put it gently down -on the table, reverently too, as some devout Catholic might handle and -lay down a relic most holy—a relic miraculous and well proven. A dozen -lights played and quivered in and out of its multiple indentations and -intricate clefts; and the rose-hue petals seemed to quiver and color in -response, but the green face of the god was immovable, expressionless, -mute. But Latham’s eyes, scalpel-sharp, following Helen’s hands, thought -they saw a tiny eidolon star-shaped, yellow and ambient, slip from the -deep of the odd little figure, and hover a moment above it -significantly, before it broke with a bubble of fiercer light and -dissolved in a scintillation of minute flame. And Stephen Pryde, -watching only Helen, was sure that a rim of faint haze, impalpable, -delicately tinted and living, bordered and framed her. - -Richard Bransby had gotten his message through—recorded at the moment -of his passing, and held safe ever since in the folds of the toy he had -treasured and handled with years-long habit and almost with -obsession—or flashed from his heart still living and potent to the soul -of his child. Richard Bransby had gotten his message through. And each -in their different way knew, received, and accepted it. The old room was -strangely cold. But not one of the four waiting and asking felt the -smallest sensation of fear—not even Stephen, defeated, convicted. - -Helen spoke, and her voice rang clear and assured, the beautiful color -creeping back to her face, a great light in her eyes. -“Doctor—Hugh—Daddy asked me that very question just before he died.” - -“That’s strange,” Latham said musingly, pondering as in all his -thoughtful years of reflection he had never pondered before. - -Hugh was speechless. Stephen picked up a cigarette, and laid it down -again, with a bitter smile—the hopeless smile of final defeat. - -“Just before he died,” Helen said. - -“‘David Copperfield,’” Latham exclaimed; “of course—I remember now. -Those words you just said were a quotation from ‘David -Copperfield’—where he passes the blind beggar.” - -“I think you are wrong, Latham.” Stephen Pryde made his last throw more -in cynical indifference than in desperation. His long game was up: that -was the special message that had come through to him. But he’d fight on, -cool and callous now, and meet his defeat in the last ditch of all—not -an inch sooner. - -“No,” Latham said sternly; “I am not wrong.” - -“Yes,” Stephen smiled with slight contemptuousness as he said it; “I am -sure you are.” - -“I’ll show you,” Latham retorted. He went to the bookcase and took down -the ‘David Copperfield’ volume. - -“Yes,” Helen said quietly; “‘David Copperfield’ has a message for -me—from Daddy.” - -“This is nonsense,” Stephen said impatiently. “Latham, I appeal to you.” - -“I tell you the message is there,” Helen said imperiously. - -“It’s impossible,” Pryde began with a shrug. - -“Then prove it to me,” the girl said hotly; “prove it to me—that’s the -only way you can convince me.” - -“She’s right,” Hugh exclaimed; “of course, that’s the only way to help -her.” - -There was a brief, tense pause, and then Latham, assuming the judiciary -and the dictatorship to which his being the one disinterested person -there entitled him, said— - -“Yes. Well. If there was a message, it would be in the words you just -spoke—and their context.” - -Helen nodded. - -“I could find the place blindfold,” Latham continued. He sat down, the -book still in his hand. He opened it, turned but a page or two, and -said, “Yes, here it is.” The three listened with breathless eagerness, -as he read, “‘There was a beggar in the street when I went down, and as -I turned my head towards the window, thinking of her calm, seraphic -eyes, he made me start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the -morning, “Blind—Blind—Blind.”’” He closed the book and turned to -Helen. - -“You see,” Stephen remarked quietly, “there’s nothing in it.” - -“No,” Latham concurred reluctantly, disappointed, in spite of himself, -scientist as he was, skeptic as he once had thought himself; “no, your -suddenly remembering those words—it could have been no more than a -coincidence.” - -“Yes, a coincidence,” Stephen echoed. - -“That paper-weight,” the physician analyzed on, “was associated in your -mind with your father. When you took it in your hand, unconsciously you -went back to the last time you saw him alive.” - -“That’s it,” Stephen said cordially. Really Latham could not have given -better service if he had briefed him. - -Helen looked from one to another, she was on the verge of a breakdown -now—and just when she had been so sure. She held out her hands, and -Hugh came and led her gently back to the chair by the writing-table. -“Rest awhile,” he begged. “I’ll hunt in a moment.” He glanced anxiously -up at the clock. - -“Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” Helen sobbed; “why didn’t you help me? Why didn’t -you help me?” - -“Helen,” Stephen said gravely, bending over her chair, “that question is -answered. Your father’s dead—the dead never return. All this belief of -yours in immortality is a delusion. If you had listened to me, you would -have understood. But you wouldn’t. I tried to spare you suffering, but -you were so obstinate. You made me fight this dead man—” His voice, -which at first had been bitter but even, grew angry and discordant. His -iron nerve was cracking and bleating under the hideous strain—“you -tried to haunt me with some presence in this room—it’s been -ghastly—ghastly”—he was so cold he could scarcely articulate, his -tongue clicked icily against his stiffening cheek, and grew thicker and -thicker—“but this invisible foe, I’ve conquered it—this obsession of -yours, I’ve shown you how false, how hopeless it is—all this rubbish -about this book of Copperfield—and now you must put it all away for the -sake of others as well as yourself.” Helen rose very slowly, paying her -cousin not the slightest attention. Suddenly she grew rigid again; Hugh -and Latham, who had been regarding Stephen in amazement, looked only at -her now. Stephen continued speaking to her peremptorily, haranguing her -almost, “You understood that now, don’t you?” - -Very slowly, again almost somnambulant, Helen turned, her hand -outstretched as it was before, towards the bookcase. - -“Well,” Stephen Pryde cried roughly, “why don’t you answer me? Why don’t -you answer me? You heard what I said!” She moved slowly across the room. -“For the future you must rely on me, on me,” Pryde pounded on. “Your -father can’t help you now,” he added brutally. Still she paid no heed. -Still she moved—so slowly that she scarcely seemed to move, across the -room. All at once Pryde understood where she was going, what she was -going to do. He was horror-struck, and made as if to pull her back -roughly, but Latham moved in between them. - -“Helen, what are you doing?” Stephen shrieked—“what are you doing?” - -Still she paid no attention, but moved slowly, serenely on, until she -reached the mahogany table on which Latham had placed “David -Copperfield.” Not looking at it, her head held high, her eyes wide but -sightless and glazed, she put out her hand and lifted up the volume, -holding it by one cover only. An instant she stood with the book at -arm’s length. - -Stephen’s breath came in great noisy pants, audible both to Hugh and -Latham. - -Helen moved her arm gently, shaking the volume she held. Slowly, -quietly, as if conscious of its own significance, a paper slipped from -between the inverted pages, and fell to the floor. - -“Oh, my God!” Stephen sobbed with a nasty choke. Then he swooped towards -the paper. But Latham, who had been watching him again, and this time -with a physician’s taut scrutiny, reached it first and secured it. Pryde -fell back with a piteous laugh, maudlin, pathetic. - -“Read it, I can’t,” Helen said, pointing to the paper. Latham and Hugh -bent over it together. - -Hugh read only the first few lines, and then hid his shamed face in his -hands, and sobbed like a child. But Latham read on till he had read it -all. - -Helen hurried to Hugh, but Latham held out the document to her with a -gesture not to be disregarded, even for a moment. She went to him, and -took the paper. For an instant she shook so that the writing danced and -mocked her. Then she drew herself up, and read it through, slowly and -carefully—from its first word to its last. Read, she refolded it, and -with an earnest look handed it back to Latham. - -Slowly, quietly she turned—not to Hugh, but to Stephen. He stood near -the door, trembling and cringing, his eyes fixed and staring—at -something—cringing as if some terrible hand clutched or menaced him. -With a cry of pain and of terror, such as the sufferers in Purgatory may -shriek, he rushed from the room, sobbing and gibbering, - -“Don’t touch me, Uncle Dick! Don’t touch me!” - -Helen, scorn, hatred on her face, and no atom of pity, was following -him; but Latham stayed her. - -“I’ll go,” he said; “there is mania in his eyes. Stay with Hugh, he -needs you. I’ll see to Pryde.” He thrust the confession in his -pocket-book, the pocket-book in his coat. “That paper,” he told her, -“will straighten out Hugh’s trouble. He’ll be free and clear to-morrow, -believe me. But stay with him now; he needs you.” - -Helen yielded. She went and knelt down by Hugh and laid her hands on his -knee. As Latham was leaving the room, she said to him, with a grave -smile— - -“You see, you were wrong, Doctor. Daddy did come to me.” - -“I wonder,” was his reply. “I wonder. Finding the paper in that book may -all have been coincidence—who knows?” - -“Daddy and I know,” Helen said; “Daddy and I know.” - - - CHAPTER XXXIX - -Stephen turned restlessly on his pillows, and Angela Latham bent down -and cozied them deftly. - -“You’re a wonderful nurse,” he told her gratefully. - -“Not bad, am I?” - -“I’ve made you a great deal of trouble.” - -“You have,” Mrs. Latham returned cordially. “But you know what Mrs. -Hemans says, or perhaps it’s Mark Twain, I always get them mixed, ‘the -labor we delight in physics pain’—I’ve quite enjoyed the trouble—and -Georgie Washington, but you begin to do me credit. You’re going to be a -good boy now and do just as I say.” - -“Am I?” Pryde said skeptically. - -Angela held out her ring-heavy hand. “Put it there, pard,” she -commanded. And after a moment the sick man lifted his thin, bloodless -hand and laid it in hers. “Perhaps I’m going to be good—though it -hadn’t occurred to me till you mentioned it—but I can scarcely be -required to be a boy. I was quite a year or two old at your birth.” - -“Never mind, I’ve been a mother to you.” - -“Heavens, yes; you have,” Stephen replied. - -He lay in his own bed in Pont Street, and nothing was much changed in -his room from what it had been for years; a temple and workshop of -flight. Pictures of birds, of bats and of butterflies and of man-made -aircraft covered the walls. The skeleton of a flying fox shared the -glass case of a flying fish. A long workmanlike table stretched the -length of the room—a table stacked with orderly piles of plans and -designs, groups of models, trays of “parts” and of tools. Every book in -the room (and they were many) treated of the air and air navigation. -“Not a novel in the whole show,” Angela had told her husband -disgustedly. And on Stephen’s desk lay a half-finished manuscript -positively bristling with small detail drawings of rotary and fixed -engines, sketches of exhaust manifolds and working diagrams of -many-bladed propellers, his pen beside it, as he had left it on the last -day he had journeyed to Oxshott. - -The woman bustled about the room and the man lay and watched her, a -gentler look in his eyes than those poor anxious organs had shown for -years. - -“That’s a wonderful frock,” he said lazily. - -“Great Scott, and I with no apron on! Why didn’t you tell me before?” -she said excitedly, and dashed to the chest of drawers, opened one -drawer, and shook out a voluminous apron, all-covering as a hospital -apron, but more decorative. - -“It’s a shame to cover it,” Stephen objected. - -“It’s my going-away dress, the very first dress Angela M. Latham ever -was hooked and laced into, and you needn’t think I’m going to spill ox -tail soup, Top Bronnen water, peaches and wine over it. The chinchilla -it’s trimmed with cost eighty guineas, and every inch of the lace cost -half a crown—hand crocheted.” She relentlessly tied the frilled and -ribboned strings of the apron about her slim waist. “If you like this, I -wonder what you’d have said to my wedding dress. I’m going to be painted -in it—by one of the very biggest big-bugs. I want Poynter, because he’s -the president of the brush and paint boys, and the president seemed -about the right thing to draw an American’s picture, but Horace says -Poynter doesn’t do portraits. My wedding dress was—well, really it -was—and I designed it two minutes after we were engaged. Quick work. It -was velvet, just _not_ white, the faintest, loveliest tinge of green you -ever saw; there was white fox at the hem, not too much, that’s half the -art of dressing—narrow really in front, but it widened out as it went -around till it measured over two feet at the very back. And my bonnet, -not much bigger than a big butterfly, nothing but pearls and one ear of -point lace, lined with green—emerald green to show it up—You’re not -listening.” - -“Look here,” Stephen told her. “You are simply marking time. You have -something to tell me, and you are nervous and afraid to say it. The -sooner such things are said and done with the better. But first there -are one or two things I want to know, that I must know and am going to -know. So we’ll have them now, please.” - -“I quite agree,” Angela said, relieved at the prospect of the immediate -passing of a tension. “Fire ahead. Question number one?” - -“I want to know just what happened—when I was taken ill—what happened -afterwards and all along. My mind’s a bit blank. But first tell me -about—Helen.” - -Angela busied herself desperately at the toilet-table, dusting already -speckless silver with her absurd apron, sniffing interrogatively at -toilet bottles with the contents of which she was perfectly familiar, -moving brushes recklessly, but she answered briskly, and with merciful -promptitude. - -“They were married six weeks ago. No fuss, not even a cake, a gray dress -plainer’n plain. A week knocking about in a motor-car, Heaven knows -where. Hugh is doing some fool thing or other at the War Office. -Temporary something or other. He goes back to the front next week. Now -I’ll go back to the beginning and tell you everything.” - -“Please don’t,” Stephen said grimly. “Just the important items briefly.” - -“Right-o,” Mrs. Latham said amicably, perching herself on the foot of -the bed—“perfectly plain, no trimming, no colored lights, no slow -music. Well! Helen found a paper that cleared Hugh. There were Tommies -in the morning room, or somewhere, sent to arrest Hugh, but when he and -Horace went in, nary a Tommy was there—and the silver was all right -too—and not even the beer touched. Barker had got rid of them—charmed -them away: awfully clever girl, Barker, only your aunt never could see -it. Well, Hugh couldn’t be arrested because there was nobody there to -arrest him, but he went up to Whitehall the next day with Horace and Sir -Somebody Something who’s no end of a lawyer and a very big-wig, and -after a few miles of your charming British red tape, well, that was -O.K.! See? Forgiven. Forgotten. Commission restored.” She slid from the -bed and strutted daintily about the room tooting the Anthem from an -imaginary bugle, its mouthpiece her own sparkling hand. It was a pretty -piece of burlesque—delicately done—and briefly. - -Pryde waited quietly; it was simplest, easiest so, he thought, and far -quickest. “Rule, Britannia,” followed the Anthem, “John Brown’s Body” -followed “Rule, Britannia,” and then she discoursed “Deutschland, -Deutschland über alles.” But Pryde was invulnerable, not to be teased as -Horace Latham was; and she ceased as suddenly as she had begun and -perched back on the bed. “By the way,” she said, “Hugh burned -that—that—document thing Helen’d found in the Thackeray book—or -perhaps it was Charlotte Brontë, or ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ We Southerners -don’t think any too much of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’” - -“Burned it?” Stephen said sharply. “Are you sure?” - -“Quite.” Mrs. Latham nodded. - -“Why?” - -“You can search me. But far’s I remember, it was to get rid of it—and -that seems a likely reason. I think Hugh said it wouldn’t be needed -again. Helen is ‘Bransby’s’—no one else could make any trouble—and -something had been fixed up—all hunky-dorey and everything.” - -“Was—was she willing—willing it should be burned?” - -“She was not. But Hugh had his way. Men do in this upside-down, -inside-out old country. But I bet you a gooseberry to a guinea Horace -Latham won’t—not so you’d notice it.” - -“I decline the wager,” Pryde told her. “Go on.” - -“Well, you—you were feverish, and fancied all sorts of things that -time—when the paper was found. Thought you saw things.” - -“I saw Uncle Dick, if that’s what you mean,” Stephen said quietly. “I -know I’ve been very ill—had brain fever, and all that—but I did see -Uncle Dick. It was no delusion.” - -Angela nodded gravely. “Of course you did. _I’ve_ never doubted it for a -moment. Isn’t it perfectly wonderful—oh!—if they’d only let the -Spiritualists run this war, we’d have the poor old Kaiser dished in a -jiff. But they won’t.” - -“No, probably not,” Pryde concurred. “Go on.” - -“I am going on—as fast as I can. Well, you sailed out of the library, -the night you fell ill, and went up to your room, and rammed some things -in a bag—Horace followed you up and found you doing it. He saw you were -queer, and he ordered you to bed, but you just ordered him out of your -room and left the house. No one could stop you. I don’t think Hugh or -Horace really wanted to: anyway they couldn’t and they didn’t. You piled -up here to London. Where you went here or what you did here, I can’t -tell you, for nobody knows. But two days after you left Oxshott, I was -having tea in my sitting-room at my hotel—I’d come up to hustle my -dressmakers—when in you walked. You were as mad as six March hares—and -in about five minutes you fell down with a fit.” - -“Fit?” Stephen said it rather indignantly. - -“Well—if it wasn’t, it was a pretty good imitation one. I called it a -fit. Horace called it something in Latin. And you began saying things -you’d no business to say, so I wasn’t going to call any one in. So I -just got you into the next room, and on to the bed.” - -“You?” - -“Me!” - -“But you couldn’t.” - -“No, of course I couldn’t. But I did. You can’t faze an American woman. -We’re not made that way. You’re not so awfully heavy, and I just hauled -and twisted until I’d done it. You never know till you try. I don’t go -in much for horses—I never did. But once I held a runaway team of Blue -Grass Kentuckies for three miles on the Shell Road, outside ’Frisco. -They pulled. But I held on. And I slowed them down all right in the end. -I got you on to the bed and telephoned for Horace. No strangers wanted! -You fussed about a bit—but I managed.” - -“Why did you bother?” he asked in a curious tone. Her answer was prompt. -“Because I like you. I always have liked you—very much indeed.” - -The sick man’s thin hand crept over the eiderdown and rested on hers. - -“Horace came,” she continued, “and we bundled you up in blankets and -things and brought you around here. At first I said you shouldn’t be -moved. But Horace said you’d be better here than so near Bond Street, -and, after all, he’s a doctor. So—well, we just moved you.” - -“And you’ve nursed me ever since.” - -“I’ve done most of it,” Angela said proudly. “I’m some nurse. I always -was. And you did talk so. Talk about women! I simply couldn’t let a -stranger come pothering. You were very ill, but you soon got better, and -Mr. Grant helped me.” - -“Yes—I’ve known he was here.” Stephen had thought Grant on guard for -Helen and Hugh. He knew better now. He lay for a while very quiet, -thinking it over. - -“He stayed with you all the time the week we were married. It didn’t -take long—getting married doesn’t take long, if you go about it the -right way.” - -“It takes more than a lifetime sometimes,” Stephen said bitterly. - -Angela rubbed his thin hand against her face. “I know, dear,” she said. - -“You had a very short honeymoon. Was that on my account?” - -“Four days. Yes, you poor child, I wasn’t going to leave you too long.” - -Stephen said nothing. He couldn’t—say anything. - -“Are you happy?” he asked after a time. - -“Me and Horace? Oh! so-so.” But she dimpled and flushed eloquently. -“So-so—but our troubles have begun already: servants. Horace’s have all -given us notice—the silly old frumps. They don’t like me chattering -German all over the house. You English haven’t much sense of humor, and -English servants have none. Noah—the butler, his name is Ryder, but I -call him ‘Noah,’ he’s been with Horace since the flood—Noah sulked -whenever I spoke to him in German, and the housekeeper was rude. Well, I -bundled her off lickety-click. Then I began to teach Horace German. He -read it well enough, but his accent was awful. So I took him in hand. -And last night—after dinner—he’d been singing to me—the sweetest love -song ever made—in Germany—don’t you think so? ‘Du bist wie eine Blume, -So hold, und schön und rein!’—The head parlor-maid and the cook—and -the buttons and all the rest, flounced in and gave notice in a bunch. -When this war’s over, I shall send to a woman I know in Hong Kong to -send me a boat-load of decent servants. I never had real-servant comfort -but once in all my life—and that was in ’Frisco, where every maid we -had was a Chinaman.” - -“I doubt if they’d fit in in Harley Street,” Stephen said lazily. “I’d -try ’em at Oxshott first, if I were you.” - -“They’ll fit in anywhere; that’s the beauty of them. I’ll have them in -both places—no fear! I’m not very sure that I like Harley Street—and -there isn’t a nook, or a twist or a turn in our entire house. But I’m -going to have Horace stick a roof-garden on.” - -“Why don’t you make him move?” - -“He won’t. I’ve told him to over and over. Oh! I can manage Horace easy -enough—_except_ where his profession comes in; he will have his own way -there—and, after all, he is a doctor, you know.” - -Pryde smiled. - -“Have you thought of what you’d do the next few years?” Angela asked -rather timidly when some silent moments had passed. - -“A deuce of a lot!” - -“Well—that’s one of the two things _I_ want to talk about, only it’s -hard to begin. But I’ve got it all planned—every bit—” - -Stephen Pryde laughed. - -“You’ve nothing at all to do, but agree—not a thing. First of all, -guess who’s coming?” - -“Hugh?” - -The woman nodded. - -“I’d rather he didn’t.” - -“I know,” she said—“but please—” - -Pryde shrugged his shoulder against the pillow. “Oh! all right. What -does it matter? He coming here? When?” - -Mrs. Latham glanced at the clock. “In about half an hour.” - - - CHAPTER XL - -Hugh was embarrassed and awkward when he came in; Stephen was neither. -He lay comfortably on his plumped-up pillows and regarded his brother -with a slight, cynical smile. - -“Hello, Steve,” the younger said. - -Stephen said nothing. - -“Jolly fine to see you getting on—Ripping—what—” - -“Take it easy,” Stephen said amusedly. “I don’t worry: you needn’t.” - -Mrs. Latham pushed a chair to the bed, and Hugh sat down awkwardly, and -put down on the small table near Stephen’s pillow a parcel. Stephen eyed -it quizzically. “Grapes,” Hugh remarked lamely. - -“Why have you come?” the elder demanded. - -“To see you, old fellow,” his brother told him. - -“What do you want?” - -“Haven’t you told him?” Hugh asked Angela, in a palpable panic. She -shook her head. “Funked it?” - -“Certainly not,” she replied severely. “Merely I hadn’t got to it yet.” - -“See here.” Stephen spoke crisply. “We’ll cut all the circumlocutions -out. You needn’t be so damned crumpled up, Hugh. If you’ve come here -with any idea of letting me down easy, you’ve wasted your time.” - -He raised himself up on his pillows and faced his brother defiantly. -Hugh blushed like a girl, and fumbled his cap—but sat speechless. - -“When we were children you had all the best of it,” Stephen continued. -“You’ve had all the best of it all along. You’ve got the best of it -now.” Hugh dropped his eyes to his boots, a picture of guilt and -discomfort. “We both cared—a good deal—for—Mother. You were her -favorite. I was willing. You were the kid—and, believe it or not, I was -willing. And I was good to you—for years.” - -“God—yes—very,” Hugh said heartily, lifting his troubled eyes to -Stephen’s. - -“We came to Deep Dale. My heart was sorer than yours. I’d known Mother -longer; I missed her more than you did; I needed her more. Well—you had -all the fat of it—at Oxshott: there was none of it I grudged you, -none—but I was a boy too, and I wanted my share; and I didn’t get it. I -had clothes, and food, and servants, and saw a future open up before me, -a future of wealth and power. But I wanted love too. I had more brains -in my toe than you had in your carcass—and Uncle Dick saw it. He began -to take interest in me, to talk to me, to draw me out, he took no end of -pains over my education, and before long to plan my future as his -ultimate successor at ‘Bransby’s’—but he loved you. And I would have -given my poor little hide to have had just half of that love. All my -life—ever since I can remember—every day of it, I’ve wanted some one -to love me—and no one ever has really—Mother—did half; since she -died, no one.” - -The fire hissed and flamed in the hearth, and Stephen lay watching it -moodily. No one spoke for a long time. It seemed as if none of them -could. Hugh was choking. Angela Latham was crying. - -At last Stephen spoke, taking up again the sorry parable of his tragedy. -“I waited on Aunt Caroline; she waited on you—and I—I wanted a little -mothering so. I worked like a navvy, and won prizes at Harrow and -Oxford. Uncle Dick said, ‘Creditable, Stephen, quite creditable,’ and -gave me a fiver—and I—I wanted the feel of his hand on my shoulder. -You played the silly goat at Harrow and at Magdalen, and Uncle Dick -said, ‘Tut-tut,’ and bought you a hunter, and coddled you generally. I -was driven in on myself, I tell you, at every point. I wanted human -affection, and I was left alone to browse on my own canker. Well—I -did—I lived alone. There wasn’t a beast on the place, or a servant -either, that didn’t come at your whistle and fawn on you, and run from -me, if it dared. I lived alone—and was lonely. I lay in the woods as a -boy. I worked at that bench when I was older. I dreamed and I planned -and I schemed to do a big thing, a damned fine thing too—a bigger thing -than you ever could have understood. But Richard Bransby could have -understood; he had brains. If you’d wanted to fly on a contrivance of -dragon-flies to the moon, he’d have considered whether he couldn’t -gratify you, and have turned you down in the end, kindly and -generously—but me—it wasn’t the flying and the aircraft I cared about -really in the first place; it was the dreaming, and something to take -the place of people—the people I wanted and couldn’t have—” Mrs. -Latham was sobbing. “Then, presently, I got caught in the charm of the -wonderful thing—and went mad—dæmonized, as the old Greeks were—the -men who did the great things, the greatest the world has ever had done. -Birds were my prophets—my playfellows, the only ones I had, poor little -devil. You played with Helen, I sat apart—and watched you—and then I -got to watching the birds and the bats and the insects that flew -instead—sometimes. I worked tremendously at drawing and maths and fifty -other things that I might be able to invent aircraft and perfect it. But -no—Uncle Dick would have none of it. But, by God, I’ll do it yet, I -tell you—” - -Angela slipped in between the bed and the table, and sat down on the -coverlet. - -“You must not talk too long,” she said gently. - -“Won’t you try some grapes?” Hugh said huskily. - -Stephen laughed mirthlessly. “No.” To Mrs. Latham he said, “I’m almost -done. There was something I wanted more than I wanted an aerial career,” -he went on, looking Hugh full in the face—“more than you ever wanted -anything in your life—or could want anything—or many men could. It was -not for me. And I might have won it, if it hadn’t been for Uncle Dick. -Oh! it wasn’t you who thwarted me—you needn’t think it was—it was he. -Always he thwarted me. I did my best to thwart him in return. I wasn’t -glad to hurt you, Hugh, truly I wasn’t—” For just an instant his voice -softened and suspended. Then he went bitterly on, “You were in the way, -and you had to go—that was all—but I’d very much rather it had been -any one else. I owed Uncle Dick a good deal, and I tried to pay it. And -I’d do it again.” - -Hugh held out his hand timidly; it was in apology too. Stephen ignored -it, and bent his eyes to the fire. - -“Now,” he said, after a long, brooding pause, “you know the depth of my -penitence. We’ll talk about something else.” - -“We will,” Angela said briskly, but her voice shook. “You say you are -going to succeed at the aircraft thing yet. Do you know how you are -going to do it?” - -“No,” Stephen said gruffly. - -“Well, then, I do. We’ve planned it all—Hugh and I.” - -Stephen sat up in the bed, he shot her a glance, and then fixed his eyes -on his brother. Hugh nodded and went horribly red. - -“You are going to do it in South America. That’s the place, where you -won’t be overlooked, and half your inventions and things stolen before -you’ve perfected them. It’s going to be an enormous thing, our -firm—just we three partners. Your brains, your control, my money—and a -little from Hugh, and your own too, of course—and all ‘Bransby’s,’ -influence and co-operation back of us. It will need a rare lot of -capital. Well, it’s ready.” - -Stephen paid no attention to her, but he said to his brother— - -“Do you mean it?” - -“Yes, Stevie—and jolly glad, and pleased—” - -Stephen silenced him with a gesture. “Well, I don’t. I’d die first.” - -“You’ll die after,” Mrs. Latham remarked. - -She put her hand on his face. “You are going to do this for me. I’ve -millions, and you are going to double them.” - -“I could.” - -“You are going to.” - -He looked at her then. “Why do you wish to do this—this big thing?” - -“Because I like you. And when I like, I like. Never again dare say no -one cares for you, Stephen. I care. I liked you cordially from the very -first—and believed in you. I like you a thousand times more now. Next -to Horace, there is no one in all the world I care for half so much. -Won’t you do this for me—consent for my sake?” - -A slow color crept into the sick, white face. “I’d like to,” Pryde said -gently—“but I can’t. Don’t—don’t say any more about it—please.” - -Then Hugh Pryde did the one dramatic thing of his life. A calendar hung -on the wall. Hugh pointed to it. - -“Do you know what day this is, Stephen?” - -Stephen nodded. “I never forget—” There was mist in his stubborn eyes. -And in a flash of intuition, Angela understood: this was Violet Pryde’s -birthday. - -“Won’t you consent, for her sake?” Hugh said. “She would ask you to if -she could.” - -“Perhaps she is asking you to?” Angela whispered. - -Half a moment beat out in silence. Then Stephen said— - -“Yes, Hugh, I’ll do it—and thank you both—I’ll do it for Mrs. Latham’s -sake—and for Mother’s.” He held out his thin hand—Hugh gripped it. But -Angela bent swiftly over Stephen—and kissed him. - - THE END - - * * * * * - -Transcriber’s Notes: - -Minor printer errors have been corrected without note. Inconsistency in -hyphenation has been retained. Other errors have been corrected as noted -below: - -On page 193 of the book, Paul Latham was used as a name for Dr. Latham. -In all other locations in the book, he was named Horace. -Paul has been replaced with Horace. - -Paul Latham shook his head ==> Horace Latham shook his head - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Invisible Foe, by Louise Jordan Miln - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVISIBLE FOE *** - -***** This file should be named 50188-0.txt or 50188-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/1/8/50188/ - -Produced by Mardi Desjardins & Alex White and the online -Distributed Proofreaders Canada team -(http://www.pgdpcanada.net) from page images generously -made available by HathiTrust Digital Library -(https://www.hathitrust.org/digital_library) and Google -Books - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Invisible Foe - A Story Adapted from the Play by Walter Hackett - -Author: Louise Jordan Miln - -Release Date: October 12, 2015 [EBook #50188] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVISIBLE FOE *** - - - - -Produced by Mardi Desjardins & Alex White and the online -Distributed Proofreaders Canada team -(http://www.pgdpcanada.net) from page images generously -made available by HathiTrust Digital Library -(https://www.hathitrust.org/digital_library) and Google -Books - - - - - - -</pre> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:375px;height:auto;'/> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:2.5em;font-weight:bold;'>THE</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:2.5em;font-weight:bold;'>INVISIBLE FOE</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:1.5em;font-size:1.5em;'>A STORY ADAPTED FROM THE PLAY</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.5em;'>BY WALTER HACKETT</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:1.5em;font-size:0.9em;'>BY</p> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:1.5em;font-size:1.5em;'>LOUISE JORDAN MILN</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>(MRS. GEORGE CRICHTON MILN)</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/logo.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0001' style='width:120px;height:auto;'/> -</div> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>NEW YORK</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.1em;'>FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>PUBLISHERS</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'><span class='it'>Copyright, 1918, 1920, by</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.1em;'><span class='sc'>Frederick A. Stokes Company</span></p> -<hr class='tbk100'/> -<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'><span class='it'>All rights reserved</span></p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<hr class='tbk101'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>“<span class='it'>Blind, blind, blind</span>”</p> - -<hr class='tbk102'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1.5em;font-size:1.3em;font-weight:bold;'>CONTENTS</p> - -<table id='tab1' summary='' class='center'> -<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'><a href='#BOOKI'>BOOK I The Children</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'><a href='#BOOKII'>BOOK II The Dark</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'><a href='#BOOKIII'>BOOK III The Quest</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'> </td></tr> -<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'><a href='#BOOKIV'>BOOK IV The Light</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'> </td></tr> -</table> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'><a href='#notes'>Transcriber’s Notes</a> can be found at the end of this eBook.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div><h1 class='nobreak'><a id='BOOKI'></a>BOOK I</h1></div> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.2em;'>THE CHILDREN</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER I</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen lay on his stomach, one sharp elbow comfortable in a velvet bed -of moss, his chin cupped in his palm, his beautifully shaped head thrown -back, his alert face lifted to the sky, his eager eyes following -hungrily the flight of a bird.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh, crunched up against the big oak tree, was making a chain of -blossoms, and making it awkwardly enough, with many a restless boy-sigh, -many a destruction of delicate spring wild flower.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen was playing by herself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nothing could have been more characteristic of the three children than -their occupations of the moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen usually was watching birds fly, when he was out of doors, and -birds were to be seen. And the only time his uncle Richard had ever laid -a hand (except in rare caress or in approbation) on the orphan boy, had -been when Stephen, three months after his arrival at Deep Dale, had -opened its cage, and lost Helen her pet canary—all because he “wanted -to see just how he flies.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I did see, too,” he had told Hugh an hour after his stoically -endured caning. “It was worth more than a few smacks. Bet I can fly too, -some day. You wait.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh had said nothing. He was used to Stephen and Stephen’s vivid -ambitions. And he was stolid.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen had suffered his slight chastisement proudly—if not quite -gladly—but with each faltering fall of his uncle’s cane a seed of -bitterness had entered the child’s soul. He never had felt the same to -“Uncle Dick” since—which was no small pity, for the orphan boy was -love-hungry, and Richard Bransby his best friend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The small punishment bred deceit but worked no cure. The men in the -fowl-yard could have told sad tales of staid hens aggravated to -indignant, fluttering flight, and the old gardener of peacocks goaded to -rise from their self-glorified strutting and preening to fly stiff and -screaming the few spaces which were their farthest. But neither the farm -hands nor the gardener told. Why—it is not easy to say. They did not -particularly like Stephen—few people did. But they feared him. He -mastered their wills. A solitary child, not half so happy as childhood -has every right to be, the boy met few he did not influence sharply. His -was a masterful nature. Little altogether escaped his subtle dominance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen was not essentially cruel. His cruelty was corollary and -accessory to his passion—a passion for power and for the secrets of -aerial skill. He bore the birds no ill-will. He simply was obsessed to -see their flight, and to study it, garnering up in his odd, isolated, -accretive child’s mind—and heart—every vibrant curve and beat of their -wings, every angle and bend of their bodies.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen usually was watching the flight of a bird, or scheming some -mechanical imitation of it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh usually was doing something for wee Helen, doing it with perspiring -and sighful awkwardness and for scant thanks—or for none.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen usually was playing by herself, and pretending, as now, to be -sharing the sport of some playfellow, perfectly tangible to her, but -invisible, non-existent to the boys—a form of persistent “make believe” -which greatly amused Hugh and as greatly irritated Stephen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t pretend like that; it’s a simpleton way of going on,” the older -boy called to her now, without moving his head or his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s nothing of the kind,” the girl replied scornfully. “You’re blind, -that’s what’s the matter—blinder’n a bat, both of you.” And she -continued to laugh and chat with her “make-believe” playmates.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An elfin child herself, the children of her own delicate myth did seem -the more suitable fellows for her dainty frolic than either queer -Stephen or stolid, clumsy Hugh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The little girl was very pretty, a queenly little head heavy with vivid -waves of gold-red hair, curved red lips eloquent of the history of -centuries of womanhood, wide blue eyes, and the prettiest hands and arms -that even feminine babyhood (and English babyhood, Celtic-dashed at -that) had ever yet achieved; every pink-tipped finger a miracle, and -each soft, beautifully molded elbow, dimpled and dented with witching -chinks that simply clamored for kisses—and often got them; a sunny, -docile child, yielding but unafraid, quiet and reserved, but hiding -under its rose and snow robe of provocatively pretty flesh, a will that -never swerved: the strongest will at Deep Dale—and that says everything -of it—for both Stephen Pryde, fourteen years old, and his uncle, -nearing fifty, had stronger wills than often fall to us weak mortals of -drift and vacillation. These two masculine strengths of will lay rough -and prominent on the surface and also sank soul-deep. The uncle’s never -abated. Circumstances and youth curbed the boy’s, at times—but neither -chilled nor softened it. Helen’s will lay deep and still. Her pretty, -smiling surface never showed it by so much as a gentle ripple. She kept -it as a sort of spiritual “Sunday best” laid away in the lavender and -tissue of her secret self. As yet only her old Scotch nurse even -suspected its existence and of all her little, subservient world, only -that old Scotch nurse neither laughed at Helen’s dream friends—nor -scoffed. In her sweet six years of life her father’s will and hers had -never clashed. That, when the almost inevitable clash of child and -parent, old and young, cautious experience and adventurous inexperience, -came, Helen’s should prove the stronger will, and hers the victory, -would have seemed absurd and incredible to all who knew them—to every -one except the nurse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen and Hugh, in their different boyish ways, loved the girl-child, -and wooed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She tolerated them both, patronized, tyrannized, and cared little for -either.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh was thick-set and had sweaty hands. Often he bored her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen’s odd face, already at fourteen corrugated by thought, ambition -and strident personality painfully concealed, repelled her—even -frightened her a little, a very little; for her cherished life and -serene soul gave her little gift of fear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Their wills clashed daily—but almost always over things about which she -cared little or less than little, and did not trouble to be insistent. -She yielded over such trifles—out of indifference and almost -contemptuous good-nature sheerly. And the boy, “blind” here at least, -misread it. But on one point Stephen never could prevail against her. -She would neither renounce her invisible playmates nor even concede him -that they were indeed “make-believe.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her will and Hugh’s never clashed. How could they? He had no will but -hers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh was her slave.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen, loving her as strongly and as hotly, sought to be her master. -No conscious presumption this: it was his nature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Deep Dale was all simmering blue and green to-day—with softening -shadows and tones of gray; blue sky, green grass, trees green-leafed, -gray-trunked—green paths, gray and green-walled, blue roofed, the early -spring flowers (growing among the grasses but sparsely as yet, and being -woven, too often broken-necked, into Hugh’s devoted jewelering) too tiny -of modest bud and timid bloom to speck but most minutely the picture -with lemon, violet or rose. The little girl’s wealth of red hair made -the glory and the only emphatic color of the picture. Hugh’s hair was -ash brown and dull—Stephen’s darker, growing to black—but as dull. -Even the clothes of these three children painted in perfectly with the -blue and green of this early May-day, Nature’s spring-song. The lads, -not long out of mourning, were dressed in sober gray. Helen’s frocks -came from Hanover Square, when they did not come from the <span class='it'>Rue de -Rivoli</span>, and to-day her little frock of turquoise cashmere was -embroidered and sashed with green as soft and tender as the pussy -willows and their new baby leafage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the sun—a pale gray sun at best all day—was slipping down the -sky’s blue skirt. Helen, tiring of her elvish play, or wholesomely -hungry for “cambric” tea and buns, slid off the tree trunk, smiled back -and waved her hand—to nothing, and turned towards the house. Hugh -trotted after her, not sorry to suspend his trying toil, not sorry to -approach cake and jam, but carrying his stickily woven tribute with him. -But Stephen, enthralled, almost entranced, lay still, his fine chin -cupped in his strong hand, his eyes—and his soul—watching a flock of -birds flying nestward towards the night.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER II</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby had few friends because he tolerated few. Unloving -towards most, rather than unlovable, his life and his personality cut -deep, but in narrow channels. To him pictures were—canvas and paint, -and a considerable item of expense; for he was too shrewd a business man -to buy anything cheap or inferior. Knowing his own limitations as few -men have the self-searching gift to do, he took no risks with his -strenuously earned sovereigns, lavishly as he spent them. He spent -magnificently, but he never misspent. He had too much respect to do -that—respect for his money and for himself and for the honest, -relentless industry with which that self had amassed that same money. He -never selected the pictures for which he paid, nor even their frames. -Latham did all that for him. Horace knew almost as much about pictures -and music as he did about nerves, and could chat with as much suave -authority about Tintoretto and Liszt, <span class='it'>motif</span> and <span class='it'>chiaro-oscuro</span> as he -could about diphtheria or Bell’s palsy, and was as much at his old -friend’s service in matters of art as in matters of cerebellum and -aorta. Bransby cared nothing for horses, and liked dogs just “well -enough”—out of doors. He was a book-worm—with one author, scarcely -more. He was indifferent to his dinner, and he cared nothing at all for -flowers. This last seems strange and contradictory, for the women he had -loved had each been peculiarly flowerlike. But who shall attempt to -gauge or plumb the contradictorinesses of human nature, or be newly -surprised at them?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby had loved three women passionately, and had lost them -all. He was no skeptic, but he was rebel. He could not, or he would not, -forgive God their death, and he grudged the Heaven, to which he doubted -not they had gone, their presence. Nothing could reconcile or console -him—although two strong affections (and beside which he had no other) -remained to him; and with them—and his books—he patched his life and -kept his heart just alive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He loved the great ship-building business he had created, and steered -through many a financial tempest, around rocks of strikes and quicksands -of competition, into an impregnably fortified harbor of millionairedom, -with skill as devoted and as magnificent as the skill of a Drake or the -devotion of a Scott, steering and nursing some great ship or tiny bark -through the desperate straits of battle or the torture perils of polar -ice floes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he loved Helen whom he had begotten—loved her tenderly for her own -sweet, lovable sake, loved her more many times, and more quickly, for -the sake of her mother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He cared nothing for flowers, but he had recognized clearly how markedly -the three women he had adored (for it had amounted to that) had -resembled each a blossom. His mother had been like a “red, red rose that -blooms in June”—a Jacqueminot or a Xavier Olibo. And it was from her he -had inherited the vivid personality of his youth. She had died -suddenly—when he had been in the City, chained even then to the great -business he was creating—boy of twenty-three though he was—and his hot -young heart was almost broken; but not quite, for Alice, his wife, had -crept into it then, a graceful tea-rose-like creature, white, -pink-flushed, head-heavy with perfume. Violet, his only sister, had been -a pale, pretty thing, modest and sweet as the flower of her name. Helen -he thought was like some rare orchid, with her elusive piquant features, -her copper-red hair, her snow face, her curved crimson lips, her -intangible, indescribable charm—irregular, baffling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alice had died at Helen’s birth, but he blamed God and turned from Him, -blamed not or turned from the small plaintive destroyer who laughed and -wailed in its unmothered cradle. The young wife’s death had unnerved, -and had hardened him too. It injured him soul-side and body: and the -hurt to his physical self threatened to be as lasting and the more -baneful. A slight cardiac miscarriage caught young Dr. Latham’s trained -eye on the very day of Alice Bransby’s death—and the disturbance it -caused, controlled for six silent years by the one man’s will and the -other man’s skill, had not disappeared or abated. Very slowly it grimly -gained slight ground, and presaged to them both the possibility of worse -to come.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Only yesterday Richard Bransby had taken little Helen on his knee, and -holding her sunny head close to his heart had talked to her of her -mother. He often held the child so—but he rarely spoke to her of the -mother—and of that mother to no one else did he ever speak. Only his -own angry heart and the long hungry nights knew what she had been to -him—only they and his God. God! who must be divine in pity and -forgiveness towards the rebel rage of husbands so sore and so faithful.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yesterday, too, he had told the child of how like a flower his Alice, -her mother, had been, and seeing how she caught at the fancy (odd in so -prosaic a man) and liked it, he had gone on to speak of his own mother, -her “granny,” for all the world like a deep, very red rose, and of -Violet, her aunt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen wriggled her glowing head from the tender prison of his hands, -looked up into his sharp, tired face, clapped her own petal-like little -palms, and said with a gurgling laugh and a dancing wink of her fearless -blue eyes, “And you—Daddy—are just like a flower, too!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shook her and called her “Miss Impudence.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! but yes, you are. I’ll tell you, you are that tall ugly cactus that -Simmons says came from Mexicur—all big prickles and one poor little -lonely flower ’way up at the top by itself, grown out of the ugly leaves -and the ugly thorns, and not pretty either.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby sighed, and caught her quickly closer to him again—one poor -insignificant attempt of a blossom lonely, alone; solitary but for -thorns, and only desirable in comparison with them, and because it was -the flowering—such as it was—of a plant exotic and costly: a magenta -rag of a flower that stood for much money, and for nothing else!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The baby went on with the parable—pretty as he had made it, grotesqued -now by her. “An’ Aunt Carline’s anover flower, too. She’s a daleeah.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby laughed. Caroline Leavitt was rather like a dahlia; neat, -geometrically regular, handsome, cut and built by rule, fashionable, -prim but gorgeous, as far from poetry and sentiment as anything a flower -could be.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Leavitt was his widowed cousin and housekeeper—called “Aunt” by -the children. Richard and Violet had been the only children of John and -Cora Bransby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Violet, several years younger than Richard, had married six years -earlier—married a human oddity, half-genius, half-adventurer, -impecunious, improvident, vain. He had misused and broken her. His death -was literally the only kindness he had ever done her—and it had killed -her—for weak-womanlike she had loved him to the end. Perhaps such -weakness is a finer, truer strength—weighed in God’s scales—than -man-called strength.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Violet Pryde, dying five years after Alice’s death, left two children; -the boys playing with six-year-old Helen under the oak trees. Bransby -had been blind to his sister’s needs while Pryde had lived; but indeed -she had hidden them with the silence, the dignity and the deft, quiet -subterfuge of such natures—but at her husband’s death Bransby had -hastened to ask, as gently as he could (and to the women he loved he -could be gentleness itself), “How are you off? What do you need? What -would you like best? What may I do?” pressing himself to her as suitor -rather than almoner. But she had refused all but friendship, indeed -almost had refused it, since it had never been given her dead. Her -loyalty survived Pryde’s disloyal life, and even dwarfed and stunted her -mother-instinct to do her utmost for her boys: her boys and Pryde’s. But -her own death had followed close upon her husband’s, and then Richard -Branbsy had asserted himself. He had gathered up into his own capable -hands the shabby threads of her affairs—mismanaged for years, but—even -so—too scant to be tangled, and the charge of her two orphaned boys.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had brought Stephen and Hugh at once to Deep Dale and had established -them there on an almost perfect parity with Helen—a parity impinged by -little else than her advantage of sex and charm and presumable heirship.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Such was—in brief—the home and the home folk of Deep Dale, the -millionaire shipbuilder’s toy estate a mile or two from Oxshott.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Helen ruled it—and them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Caroline Leavitt housekept, but small Helen reigned. Her reign was no -ephemeral sovereignty—not even a constitutional queenship; it was -autocracy gracious and sunshiny, but all of autocracy for all that. -Helen ruled.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER III</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby had amassed a fortune and perfected a fad, but he had -amassed no friends. In the thirty-five years in which he had gathered -and nursed his fortune (for he began at fifteen) he had made but the one -friend—Latham. And even this sole friendship was largely professional -and in small degree quick or vibrant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen might have had twenty playmates, but she greatly cared for none -but her dear “make believes,” and tolerated no others but her cavalierly -treated cousins.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Leavitt gave tea to the well-to-do of the neighborhood, and took it -of them. Very occasionally she and Richard dined with them alternately -as hosts and guests. But none of it ran to friendship, or shaped towards -intimacy. She was too fussy a woman for friendship, he too embittered -and too arrogant a man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The vicinity of Claygate and Oxshott teemed with the stucco and ornate -wood “residences” of rich stockbrokers and successful business -men—living elaborately in the lovely countryside—but not of it: of -London still, train-catching, market-watching, silk-hatted, -bridge-playing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby rarely hatted in silk, and he preferred Dickens to bridge. He -nodded to his rich fellow-villagers, but he clasped them no hand-clasp.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He, too, was in the country but not of it, he too was Londoner to the -core; but both in a sense quite different from them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Deep Dale was a beautiful excrescence—but an excrescence—an elaborate -florescence of his wealth, but he had never felt it “home,” except -because Alice had rather liked it, and never would feel it “home” again -except as Helen and his books might grow to make it so.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a flat, too, in Curzon Street Alice had liked it rather more -than she had Deep Dale, and while she lived he had too; except that they -had been more alone, and in that much more together, at Oxshott, and for -that he had always been grateful to Deep Dale, and held it, for that, in -some tenderness still. And Helen had been born there.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But to him “Home” meant a dingy house in Marylebone, in which he had -been born and his mother died. He avoided seeing it now (an undertaker -tenanted the basement and the first floor, a dressmaker, whose -<span class='it'>clientèle</span> was chiefly of the slenderly-pursed <span class='it'>demimonde</span>, the other -two floors), but he still held it in his stubborn heart for “home.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In business Bransby was hard, cold and implastic. He had great talent in -the conduct of his affairs, indefatigable industry, undeviating -devotion. Small wonder—or rather none—that he grew rich and steadily -richer. But had he had the genius to rule kindlier, to be friend as well -as master, to win, accept and use the friendship of the men he employed -(and now sometimes a little crushed of their best possibility of service -by the ruthlessness of his rule and by the unsympathy of his touch), his -might well have grown one of the gigantic, wizard fortunes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even as things were, Morton Grant, head and trusted clerk, probably -attained nearer to friendship with Richard Bransby than did any one else -but Latham.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For Grant nothing was relaxed. He was dealt with as crisply and treated -as drastically as any office boy of the unconsidered and driven all. -Bransby’s to order; Grant’s to obey. But, for all that, the employer -felt some hidden, embryonic kindliness for the employee. And the clerk -was devoted to the master: accepted the latter’s tyranny almost -cordially, and resented it not even at heart or unconsciously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The two men had been born within a few doors of each other on the same -long, dull street. That was a link.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant cherished and doted on the business of which he was but a servant -as much as Bransby did—not more, because more was an impossibility. He -rose for it in the morning. He lay down for it at night. He rested—so -far as he did rest—on the Sabbath and on perforced holidays for it. He -ate for it. He dressed for it. He went to Margate once a year, second -class, for it. That was a link.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Unless it involves some form of rivalry—as cricket, competitive -business, acting, popular letters, desire for the same woman, two men -cannot live for the selfsame thing without it in some measure breeding -in them some tinge of mutual liking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And these two reserved, uncommunicative men <span class='it'>had</span> loved the same woman, -and contrary to rule, that too was a link—perhaps the strongest of the -three—though Bransby had never even remotely suspected it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Morton Grant could not remember when he had not loved Violet Bransby. He -had yearned for her when they both wore curls and very short dresses. He -had loved her when, short-sighted and round-shouldered then as now, he -had been in her class at dancing school and in the adjacent class at the -Sunday School, in which the pupils, aged from four to fourteen, had been -decently and discreetly segregated of sex. He had loved her on her -wedding-day, and wept the hard scant tears of manhood defeated, denied -and at bay, until his dull, weak eyes had been bleared and red-rimmed, -and his ugly little button of a nose (he had almost none) had flamed -gin-scarlet. And for that one day the beloved business had been to him -nothing. He had loved her when she lay shrouded in her coffin—and now, -a year after, he loved her dust in its grave—and all so silently that -even she had never sensed it. For the old saying is untrue: a woman does -not <span class='it'>always</span> know.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This poor love of his was indeed a link between the man and his -master—and all the stronger because Richard had been as suspicionless -as Violet herself. For Bransby would have resented it haughtily, but -less and less hotly than he had resented her marriage with that -“mountebank” (the term is Bransby’s and not altogether just)—but of the -two he would greatly have preferred Grant as a brother-in-law.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Under Helen’s sway, Grant had never come. She was not Violet’s child. He -would rather even that Bransby were childless and his fortune in entire -keeping for Violet’s boys. For herself he neither liked nor disliked the -little girl. But he was grateful to her for being a girl. That left the -business undividedly open for Stephen and Hugh—for their future -participation and ultimate management at least. And he hoped that of so -large a fortune an uncle so generous to them, and so fond of Violet, -would allot the brothers some considerable share.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Unlike Mr. Dombey and many other self-made millionaires, Richard Bransby -had never wished for a son. Not for treble his millions would he have -changed her of sex: Helen satisfied him—quite.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And perhaps unconsciously he was some trifle relieved that no son, -growing up to man’s assertion, could rival or question his sole headship -of “Bransby’s.”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER IV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>As Helen and Hugh came singing up the path, Bransby was driving Grant -from the door. It was no friendliness that had led him to speed his -visitor so far, but a desire to see if Helen were not coming. The sun -was setting, and the father thought it high time she came indoors.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant was in disgrace. He had come unbidden, forbidden, in fact—and so -unwelcome.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Advised by Latham (still a youthful, but daily growing famous physician) -and enforced by his own judgment, Bransby was taking a short holiday. -Thorough in all things, the merchant had abandoned his business affairs -and their conduct entirely—for the moment. Grant had been ordered to -manage and decide everything unaided until the master’s return, and by -no means to intrude by so much as a letter or a telegram.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had disobeyed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That it was the first turpitude of thirty years of implicit, almost -craven, fealty in no way tempered its enormity. “Preposterous!” had been -Bransby’s greeting. “Preposterous,” was his good-by.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Something had gone wrong at the office, or threatened to go wrong, so -important that the faithful old dog had felt obliged to come for his -master’s personal and immediate decision. But he had come trembling. For -his pains he had had abuse and reprimand. But he had gained his point. -He had got his message through, and learned Bransby’s will. And he was -going away—back to his loved drudgery, not trembling, but alert and -reassured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And though Bransby abused, secretly he approved. The link was -strengthened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby was angry—but also he was flattered. He was not, concerning his -business at least, and a few other things, altogether above flattery. -Who is? Are you?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his quaint way he had some interior warm liking for his commonplace -factotum. He trusted him unreservedly; and trust begets liking more -surely and more quickly than pity begets love. After Horace Latham, -Morton Grant stood to Bransby for all of human friendship and of living -comradeship.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby had adopted Violet’s boys, out of love for her and out of a -nepotism that was conscience rather than instinct—and, too, it was -pride.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had been with him nearly a year now, and because he counted them as -one of his assets, possible appanages of his great business—and because -of their daily companionship with Helen—he watched them keenly. He did -not suspect it, as yet, but both little fellows were creeping slowly -into a corner of the heart that still beat true enough and human under -his surface of granite and steel. And Stephen began to interest him -much. Indisputably Stephen Pryde was interesting. He had personality -beyond Nature’s average dole to each individual of that priceless though -dangerous quality. And the personality of the boy, in its young way, had -no slight resemblance to that of the uncle. Stephen was an eccentric -in-the-making, Richard an eccentric made and polished. Each hid his -eccentricity under intense reserve and a steely suavity of bearing. That -this should be so in the experienced man of fifty, disciplined by time, -by experience and by personal intention, was natural, and not unusual in -such types. That it was so in the small boy untried and untutored was -extraordinary—it spoke much of force and presaged of his future large -things good or bad, whichever might eventuate, and one probably as apt -to eventuate as the other, and, whichever came, to come in no small -degree. And truly the lad had force even now: perhaps it was his most -salient quality, and stood to him for that useful gift—magnetism—which -he somewhat lacked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As Grant went out the two children came in. Helen took her father’s -hand, and led him back to the room he had just left—and Hugh followed -her doglike. The word is used in no abject sense, but in its noblest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ring the bell,” Richard said to the boy, sitting down in the big chair -to which his tiny mistress had propelled him. She climbed into her -father’s lap and snuggled her radiant head against his arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Light the fire,” Bransby ordered the maid who answered the bell almost -as it rang. Bells always were answered promptly in Richard Bransby’s -house. In some ways Deep Dale was more of the office or counting-house -type than of the home-type, and had been so, at least, since Alice -Bransby’s death.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But it was a pleasant place for all that, if somewhat a stiff, formal -casket for so dainty a jewel as the red-headed child who reigned there, -and life ran smoothly rather than harshly in its walls and its gates.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Certainly this was a pleasant room; and it was the master’s own room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The fire took but an instant to catch. It was well and truly laid, and -scientifically nice in its proportions and arrangement of paper, -anthracite and ship’s-logs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If the novels of Charles Dickens had pride of place as Bransby’s one -fad, as they certainly had pride of place on his room’s book-full -shelves, open fires came near to being a minor fad. He was inclined to -be cold.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the late afternoon was growing chilly, and little Helen watched the -red and orange flames approvingly as they licked and leapt through the -chinks of the fuel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh, a stocky, tweed-clad boy, as apt to be too warm as was his uncle -to be too cold, lay down on the floor at a discreet distance from the -hearth, but not unsociably far from the armchair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He did not move when Mrs. Leavitt came in, but he smiled at her -confidently, and she smiled back at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen, had he been there, would have risen and moved her chair, or -brought her a footstool, and she would have thanked him with a smile a -little less affectionate than the one she had just given negligent Hugh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As she sat down she glanced about the large room anxiously. Then she -sighed happily and fell to crocheting contentedly. Really the room was -quite tidy. One book lay open—face down—on a table, but nothing else -was awry, and that she would put in its place presently, when Richard -carried Helen up to the nursery, as at bedtime he always did. Two dolls, -one very smart, one very shabby, lay in shockingly latitudinarian -attitudes on the chesterfield. But those she could not touch: it was -forbidden.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Caroline Leavitt was a notable housewife, but sadly fussy. But she -curbed her own fussiness considerably in Richard’s presence, and what of -it she could not curb he endured with a good humor not commonly -characteristic of him, for he appreciated its results of order and -comfort. He was an orderly man himself, and it was only by his books -that they often annoyed each other. He rarely left anything else about -or out of place.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She very much wished that he strewed those on chair and window-seat less -often, and he very much wished that she would leave them alone. But they -managed this one small discord really quite admirably and amicably. To -do him justice he never was reading more than one volume at a time. To -do her justice she never moved that one except to put it primly where it -belonged on the shelves. And he knew the exact dwelling-spot of every -book he owned—and so did she. They were many, but not too many—and he -read them all—his favorites again and again. She never opened one of -them, but she kept their covers burnished and pleasant to touch and to -hold. There were five editions of Dickens, and Bransby was reading for -the tenth time his favorite author from the great-hearted -wizard-of-pathos-and-humor’s Alpha of “Boz” to his unfinished Omega of -“Edwin Drood”—Bransby’s book of the moment was “David Copperfield.” He -had been reading a passage that appealed to him particularly when he had -been interrupted by Grant’s intrusion. That had not served to soften the -acerbity of the employer’s “Preposterous!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what have you been doing?” Richard asked the dainty bundle on his -knee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Playing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With your cousins?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She shook an emphatic head, and her curls glowed redder, more golden in -the red and gold of the fire’s reflection. “Wiv Gertrude.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Leavitt stirred uncomfortably. But the father laughed tolerantly. -He regarded all his daughter’s vagaries (she had several) as part of the -fun of the fair, and quite charming. She rarely could be led to speak of -her “make-believe” playmates, but he knew that they all had names and -individualities, and that “Gertrude” was first favorite. And he knew -that many children played so with mates of their own spirit’s finding. -Gertrude seemed a virtuous, well-behaved young person, quite a suitable -acquaintance for his fastidious daughter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Servants carried high-tea in just then, and Stephen slipped into the -room with it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Caroline Leavitt rolled up her crocheting disapprovingly. She detested -having food carried all over the house and devoured in inappropriate -places, and she disliked high-tea. Crumbs got on the Persian carpet and -cream on the carved chairs, and once, when the hybrid refection had been -served in the drawing-room, jam had encrusted the piano. Caroline had -gained a prize for “piano proficiency” in her girlhood’s long-ago. Every -day at four-fifteen it was her habit to commemorate that old victory by -playing at least a few bars of the Moonlight Sonata. For some time after -the episode of the jam, whenever she touched the instrument’s ivory, -small bubbles of thickly boiled blackberry and apple billowed up on to -her manicured nails and her rings. No—she did not approve of -“high-tea”—and <span class='it'>such</span> high-tea “all over the house.” But this was the -children’s hour at Deep Dale, and the children’s feast—and wherever -Helen chanced to be at that hour, there that meal was served. Helen -willed it so. Richard Bransby willed it so. Against such an adamant -combine of power and of will-force determined and arrogant, Caroline -knew herself a mere nothing, and she wisely withheld a protest she -realized hopeless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So now, she laid her lace-work carefully away, and addressed herself to -the silver tea-pot. And she did it in a cheerful manner. She was not a -profound woman, but she was a wise one. The unprofound are often very -wise. And this is especially true of women.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER V</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not a boisterous meal. There was not a naturally noisy person -there. Bransby was too cold, Stephen too sensitive, Hugh too heavy, to -be given to the creation of noise. Mrs. Leavitt thought it bad form, and -she was just lowly enough of birth to be tormentedly anxious about good -form. And she was inclined to be fat. Helen was ebullient at times, but -never noisily so; her voice and her motions, her mirth and her -reprovings, were all silvery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a homely hour, and they were all in homely and friendly mood. But -it was Stephen who made himself useful. It was Stephen who remembered -that Aunt Caroline preferred buttered toast to cream sandwiches, and he -carried her the plate on which the toast looked hottest and crispest. -And it was Stephen who checked her hand unobtrusively when she came near -to putting sugar in Bransby’s tea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen had slipped from her father’s knee—she was a hearty little -thing—and motioned Hugh to put one of a nest of tables before the chair -she had selected, and dragged close to Richard’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what have you been doing all afternoon?” he asked Stephen, as the -boy brought him the cake.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thinking.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Story,” Helen said promptly, through a mouthful of cream and cocoanut -“You wus just watching the birds.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, so I was,” the boy said gently, “and thinking about them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?” demanded Bransby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thinking how stupid it was to be beaten by birds.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Beaten?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They fly. We can’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see. So you’d like to fly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not sure. I think I might. But I’d jolly well like to be <span class='it'>able</span> -to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man followed the theme up with the boy. In his stern heart Hugh had -already found a warmer place than Stephen had, and Bransby’s kindliness -to the brothers was as nothing compared to his love of Helen. But it -was—of the three—to Stephen that he talked most often and longest, and -with a seriousness he rarely felt or showed in talk with the others. -Stephen Pryde interested his uncle keenly. Bransby did not think Hugh -interesting, and Helen not especially so—charming (he felt her charm, -and knew that others did who lacked a father’s prejudiced -predisposition), but not notably interesting as a mentality or even as a -character.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was not an over-talkative child. Bransby suspected that also she was -not over-thoughtful. And he was quite right. She felt a great deal: she -thought very little. And her small thinkings were neither accurate, -searching nor synthetic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Stephen thought much and keenly, and the boy talked well, but not -too well. Stephen Pryde made few mistakes. When he did he would probably -make bad ones. He was not given to small blunders. And such few mistakes -as he did make he was gifted with agility to cover up and retrieve -finely. Richard enjoyed talking with Stephen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen was not interested in the flight of birds, and still less in its -possible application to affairs of mercantile profit, or of national -power. She interrupted them at a tense and interesting turn, and neither -the man nor the boy resented it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What have you been doing?” she demanded of her father.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Reading ‘David Copperfield’ until Grant came.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it a nice book?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—very.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it a story book?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then I’ll let you read me some, and see if I like it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby pointed to the volume, and Stephen brought it to him, still open -at the passage he had been reading when his clerk had interrupted him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shall I begin at the beginning?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—I mayn’t like it. Do a bit just where you wus. Wait, till I get -back,” and she climbed daintily on to his knee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Bransby read, smiling:—“‘“We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I -know,” I replied, “and I dare say we say and think a good deal that is -rather foolish. But we love one another truly, I am sure. If I thought -Dora could ever love anybody else, or cease to love me; or that I could -ever love anybody else, or cease to love her; I don’t know what I should -do—go out of my mind, I think?” “Ah, Trot!” said my aunt, shaking her -head, and smiling gravely, “blind, blind, blind!” “Some one that I know, -Trot,” my aunt pursued, after a pause, “though of a very pliant -disposition, has an earnestness of affection in him that reminds me of -poor Baby. Earnestness is what that Somebody must look for, to sustain -him and improve him, Trot. Deep, downright, faithful earnestness.” “If -you only knew the earnestness of Dora, aunt!” I cried. “Oh, Trot!” she -said again; “blind, blind!” and without knowing why, I felt a vague -unhappy loss or want of something overshadow me like a cloud.’”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Silly man!” exclaimed Helen. She was bored. “No one shouldn’t be blind. -I’m not blind—not a bit. I see.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You! you’ve eyes in the back of your head,” Hugh said, speaking for the -first time in half an hour. In those early days he had a talent for -silence. It was by way of being a family gift.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It seems a pity to feel obliged to record it of the one remark of a -person who so infrequently made even that much conversational -contribution, but Hugh was wrong. Helen was not a particularly observing -child. She felt, she dreamed; but she was as lax of observation as she -was indolent of thought. Perhaps she realized or sensed this, for she -said promptly, “I have not. I see with my front.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you see now?” her father asked idly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She pointed to the glowing fire, and sighed dreamily: “I see things, in -there. I see Gertrude. Her face is in there all smiley. And she looks -sleepy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby smiled indulgently and cuddled the pretty head nestling in the -crook of his arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“David Copperfield” slid to the floor. The opportunity was too good to -be neglected—too inviting. The volume was bound in calf, full limp -calf, and had all the Cruikshank’s illustrations finely reproduced. -Caroline got up very carefully and took up the book. Bransby saw her, -but he only smiled indulgently, and she seized the license of his humor, -and carried volume xi. to its own space on the shelves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Encouraged craftily by her amused father, Helen chatted on to her friend -Gertrude, and of her. Mrs. Leavitt was shocked, but did not dare show -it, and what would have been the use? Nothing! she knew. But she did so -disapprove of Richard’s encouraging the child in the habit of telling -“stories”—to name very mildly such baseless and brazen fabrications.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh was puzzled, but not unsympathetically so, and less puzzled than -might have been expected of so stolid a boy, and at so self-absorbed an -age.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen was uneasy and angry. <span class='it'>He</span> thrilled somewhat to Helen’s fancy, -but he disliked both her claim and his own emotion to it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All three of these children (for why beat longer about our bush?) in -ways totally, almost antagonistically different, were somewhat -“psychic.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No one suspected it, much less knew it—and they themselves least of -all. Hugh could not. Stephen would not. Helen was too young.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Psychic science or revelation had not, in those days, had much of a look -in socially. And in Oxshott it had barely been heard of—merely heard of -enough to give Ignorance a meaningless laugh. Spiritual planes and -delicate soul-processes would seem to have little vibration with that -environment of mundane interests and financial aggrandizement. But the -souls of the other plane peep in through odd nooks, and work in -seemingly strange ways. And, too, this one group of people, for all -their wealth and their luxuries, lived rather “apart”—they were in the -social swim—to an extent, and in the commercial ether up to their -necks, but even so, in it, they were in another, and perhaps a more real -and significant, way “cloistered” in it: apart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gertrude is sleepy. I am sleepy too. Gertrude says: ‘Good-night, -Helen.’ Good-night, Gertrude.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby swung her up to his shoulder and carried her off to bed. And -Hugh, at a gesture of an imperious little hand, gathered up the two -dolls, and followed after with them carefully. Helen was a motherly -little thing—intermittently, and had her children to sleep with -her—sometimes. The chain of flowers lay dying and forgotten.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen was not happy. He was loving but not lovable—on the surface at -least. He was sensitive to a fault, brooding, secretive. He had loved -his mother dearly, and Hugh had been her favorite. But that had soured -and twisted him less than had the marriage-misery of her last years. He -had seen and understood most of it; and it had aged and lined his young -face almost from his perambulator days. His two earliest memories were -of her face blistered with tears, and a tea-table on which there had -been no jam, and not too much bread. Secure at Deep Dale, he had jam, -and all such plenties, to spare. And he intended to command jam of his -very own—and cut-glass dishes to serve it in—before he was much older, -and as long as he lived. His days of jam-shortage were past. And they -had left but little scar—if only he could forget that she had shared -and hated it. But the tear-scars on her face, and on her heart, could -never be erased—or from his—or forgotten.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Small boy as he was, all the future lines of his character were clearly -drawn, and Time had but to give them light and shade—and color: there -was nothing more to be done—the outline and the proportions were -complete and unalterable. And at fourteen and a few months he was the -victim of two gnawing wants: heart-hunger and ambition. Few boys of -fourteen are definitely and greatly ambitious, or, if they are, greatly -disturbed as to the feasibility and the details of its fulfillment. -Fourteen is not an age of masculine self-distrust. Masculine -self-depreciation and under-apprisement come slowly, and fairly late in -life. There are rare, notable men to whom they never come. Such men -carry on them a visible and easily-to-be-recognized hall-mark. Their -vocabulary may be scant or Milton-much, but invariably its every seventh -word is “I” or “me” or “my” or “mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde had no doubt of his own ability to earn success. But his -mind was wide-eyed and clear-eyed, and he doubted if circumstances would -not thwart, much less abet him. Already he saw that he could gain a -great deal through his uncle and in his uncle’s way. The man had said as -much. But Stephen was no disciple, and he was ill-content to win even -success itself in subordination to any other, or in imitation of others -or of their methods. He longed to carve and to climb unaided and alone. -He wished to cleave uncharted skies—as the birds did. Ah! yes, there he -was meek to imitate—to follow and imitate the birds, but not any other -man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Partly was this ingrained; firm-rooted independence, egoism, partly it -came from the poor opinion he had already formed of his own sex. He -thought none too well of men: his own father had done that to him. -Towards all women he had a sort of pitying, tender chivalry. That his -mother had done to him. He did not over-rate female intellect or -character (like the uncle, whom he resembled so much, intellect in -womenkind did not attract him, and he prized them most when their -virtues were passive and not too diverse), but he bore them one and all -good-will, and the constant small attentions he paid Mrs. Leavitt, and -even the maid-servants, were almost as much a native tenderness as a -calculated diplomacy. Mrs. Leavitt and the maids were not ungrateful. -Women of all sorts and of all conditions are easiest purchased, and -held, with small coins. A husband may break all the commandments, and -break them over his wife’s very back roughly, and be more probably -forgiven than for failing to raise his hat when he meets her on the -street. Stephen was very careful about his hat, indoors and out. He had -seen his father wear his in his mother’s sitting-room, and by her very -bedside. The lesson had sunk, and it stuck.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But his love of his mother, and its jealous observance of her, had -trained him to feel for women rather than to respect them. He had seen -her sicken and shiver under the storm, and bow down and endure it -patiently, when he would have had her breast and quell it. He had not -heard Life’s emphatic telling—he was too young to catch it—that -strength is strongest when it seems weak and meek, that great loyalty is -the strongest of all strength as well as the highest of all virtues, and -that often Loyalty for ermine must wear a yoke,—and always must it bear -uncomplainingly a “friend’s infirmities.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The boy was a unique, and a blend of his father and his “Uncle Dick.” He -was wonderfully like each. From his mother he had inherited nothing but -a possibility, an aptitude, a predisposition even, towards great -loyalty, which in her had crystallized and perfected into everlasting -and invincible self-sacrifice. In her son it was young yet, plastic and -undeveloped. In maturity it might match, or even exceed, her own; or, on -the other hand, experiences sufficiently rasping and deforming might -wrench and transmute it, under the black alchemy of sufficient tragedy, -even into treachery itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If few boys of fourteen are tormented by ambition, very many such -youngsters suffer from genuine heart-hunger. We never see or suspect or -care. They scarcely suspect themselves, and never understand. But the -canker is there, terribly often, and it eats and eats. The heart-ache of -a little child is a hideous tragedy, and when it is untold and unsoothed -it twists and poisons all after life and character. Angels <span class='it'>may</span> rise -above such spiritual catastrophe—men don’t.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even more than Stephen longed to succeed, he longed to be loved. And in -a hurt, dumb boy-way he realized that he did not, as a rule, attract -love.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; ’tis woman’s whole -existence.” Hum? There are men <span class='it'>and</span> men. (There are even women and -women.) Stephen longed to be very rich, and planned to do it. He longed -to contrive strange, wonderful things that would cleave the air as birds -clove it, revolutionize both Commerce and her servant and master -Transport, make travel a dance and a melody, redraw the map of the -world, carry armies across the hemispheres with a breath, hurl kings -from their thrones, annihilate peoples in an hour—and he planned to do -it: planned as he lay on the grass and watched the birds, planned as he -sat in the firelight, planned as he lay in bed. But more than all this -he longed to be loved: longed but could not plan it. The child knew his -own limitations; and that he did was at once his ability and inability: -it was equipment and drag-chain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He ached for love. He longed to feel his uncle’s hand in caress on his -shoulder. Once in the twilight he cuddled Helen’s doll to him, in fierce -longing and loneliness of heart. And night after night he prayed that in -his dreams he might hear his mother’s voice. And sometimes he did. -Science asserts that we never <span class='it'>hear</span> in our sleep. Science still has -some things to learn.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen loved Hugh, and this affection was returned. But Stephen wanted -more than that; Hugh loved every one. Their mutual fondness was placid -and moderate. And it lacked novelty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If Hugh loved every one, every one loved Hugh—unless Helen did not. And -Helen was merely a baby, and cared for no one but her father—unless it -was “Gertrude,” whom Stephen hated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even Richard Bransby himself, hard and impassive, began to warm to the -younger boy, and Stephen sensed it. He was keen to such things, and read -his uncle the more readily because they resembled each other in so much.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But, much as he desired to be loved, Stephen was not jealous of Hugh. -Jealousy had as yet no hand in his hopes, his fears or his plans: -Jealousy, sometimes Love’s horrid bastard-twin, sometimes Love’s -flaming-sworded angel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Possibly Stephen’s as-yet escape from jealousy and all its torments he -owed in no small part to Helen’s indifference to Hugh, and to the fact -that Hugh’s fondness of every one made Hugh’s fondness of Helen somewhat -inconspicuous.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For odd Stephen loved wee Helen with a great love—greater than the love -he had given his mother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The day the boys had first come to Deep Dale Helen, running at play, had -lost a tiny blue shoe in the grounds. Stephen had found and had kept it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen liked her “pretty blue shoes,” and Mrs. Leavitt was sensibly -frugal. The grounds had been searched until they had been almost dug up, -and the entire servant-staff had been angrily wearied of blue kid shoes -and of ferns and geraniums. But Stephen had kept it. He had it still. -And he would have fought any man-force, or the foul fiend himself, -before he would have yielded that bit of sky-blue treasure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No one understood Stephen, not even the uncle he so resembled. He was -alone and unhappy, only fourteen years old—a quivering personality -concealed beneath a suave mask of ice, and young armor of steel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen had a tutor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen and Hugh shared a governess.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Both instructors were “daily,” one coming by train from Guildford, the -other by train from London.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen was going to public school in a year or two, Hugh then falling -heir to the tutor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How long the governess would retain her present position had never been -considered. Probably she would do so for some time. Helen liked her.</p> - -<hr class='tbk103'/> - -<div><h1 class='nobreak'><a id='BOOKII'></a>BOOK II</h1></div> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>THE DARK</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER VII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>The years sped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the autumn of 1916 Helen was twenty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The governess had left three years ago. Helen had found her a curate, -and had given her her silver abundant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Already that curate had had preferment. Richard Bransby had contrived -that, but Helen had instigated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen and Hugh had gone, in due course, from the tutor to Harrow, from -Harrow to Oxford.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen would have preferred education more technical, and Hugh would -have preferred none.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh was not lazy, but he had little thirst for learning and none for -tables, declensions or isms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen, might he have followed his own bent, would have studied only -those things which promised to coach him toward aviation in all its -branches and corollaries. But Richard was not to be handled, and to the -school and the ’varsity he chose the boys went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Being there, Stephen worked splendidly—took honors and contrived to -gain no little of the very things he desired. He had carpentry at -Harrow—and excelled in it. And at Magdalen he bent physics and -chemistry to his particular needs. At both places his conduct and his -industry were exemplary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh barely passed into Harrow, and barely stayed there. He ran and he -boxed, and at that glorified form of leap-frog which public schools -dignify as “hurdles” he excelled. But he was lax and mischievous, and -twice he only just escaped expulsion. His stay at Oxford was brief and -curtailed. The authorities more than hinted to Bransby that his younger -nephew was not calculated to receive or to give much benefit at Oxford.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hence the brothers began on the same day a severe novitiate at the great -shipbuilding and shipping offices.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Strangely enough they both did well. Hugh had a happy knack of jumping -to the right conclusions, and he got his first big step up from dreaming -in his sleep the correct solution of a commercial tangle that was vexing -his uncle greatly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That Hugh’s mind had worked so in his sleep, accomplishing what it had -failed to finish when normally awake, as human minds do now and then, -proved that at core he was interested in the business his careless -manner had sometimes seemed to indicate that he took too lightly. And -this pleased and gratified Richard Bransby even more than the -elucidation of a business difficulty did. As an evidence of the peculiar -psychological workings of human intelligence it interested Bransby not -at all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen worked hard and brilliantly. From the first he had dreams of -inducing his uncle to add the building of aircraft to their already -enormous building of ships. He nursed his dream and it nursed his -patience and fed his industry. Morton Grant watched over both young men -impartially and devotedly. All his experience was sorted and furbished -for them. All his care and solicitude were shared between them and the -business.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the first beat of Kitchener’s drum Hugh begged to follow the flag. -And when Bransby at last realized that the war would not “be over by -Christmas” he withdrew his opposition, and Hugh was allowed to join the -army. He had not done ill in the O. T. C. at Harrow. He applied for a -commission and got it. But it was understood that at the end of the war -he would return to the firm. Richard Bransby would tolerate nothing -else.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There had been no talk—no thought even—of soldiering for Stephen. He -was nearly thirty, and seemed older. Never ill, he was not too robust. -He was essential now to his uncle’s great business concern. And -“Bransby’s” was vitally essential to the Government and to the -prosecution of the war: no firm in Britain more so. Stephen was no -coward, but soldiering did not attract him. He had no wish to join the -contemptible little army, destined saviors of England. Had he wished to -do so, the Government itself and the great soldier-dictator would have -forbidden it. Emphatically Hugh belonged in the army. As emphatically -Stephen did not; but did, even more emphatically, belong in the great -shiphouse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Time and its passing had changed and developed the persons with whom -this history is concerned—as time usually does—along the lines of -least resistance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen had “grown up” and, no longer interested, even intermittently, in -dolls—“Gertrude” and her band quite forgotten—introduced a dozen new -interests, a score of new friends into the home-circle. Guests came and -went. Helen flitted from function to function, and took her cousins with -her, and sometimes even Bransby himself. Aunt Caroline was a sociable -creature for all her Martha-like qualities. She was immensely proud of -the ultra-nice gowns Helen ordered and made her wear, and quite enjoyed -the dinners and small dances they occasionally gave in return for the -constant hospitalities pressed upon the girl and her cousins.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen was as flower-like as ever. She loved her father more than all the -rest of the world put together, or had until recently—but after him her -keenest interest, until recently, was in her own wonderful frocks. She -had a genius for clothes, and journeyed far and wide in quest of new and -unusual talent in the needlework line. But above all, her personality -was sweet and womanly. In no one way particularly gifted, she had the -great general, sweeping gift of charm. And her tender, passionate -devotion to her father set her apart, lifted her above the average of -nice girlhood—perfumed her, added to her charm of prettiness and -gracefulness, a something of spiritual charm not to be worded, but -always felt and delightful to feel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Between the girl and the father was one of the rare, beautiful -intimacies, unstrained and perfect, that do link now and then just such -soft, gay girl-natures to fathers just so rigid and still. And, as it -usually is with such comrades, in this intimate and partisan comradeship -Helen the gentle was the dominant and stronger ruling, with a gay -tyranny, that sometimes swung to a sweet insolence and a caressing -defiance that were love-tribute and flattery, the man of granite and -quiet arrogance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Wax to Helen, Richard Bransby was granite and steel to others. Grant, -still his man Friday and, even more than indispensable Stephen, his good -right-hand, trusted but ruled, still stood, as he always had and always -would, in considerable awe of him. But the years had sweetened -Bransby—the Helen-ruled years. He had always striven to be a just -man—in justice to himself—but his just-dealing was easier now and -kindlier, and he strove to be just to others for their sakes rather than -for his own. It was less a duty and more an enjoyment than it had been: -almost even a species of stern self-indulgence. Once it had been a -penance. It was penance no longer. With good men penances -conscientiously practised tend to grow easy and even agreeable. The -devout penitent and the zealot need to find new substitutes periodically -for old scourges smooth-worn.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Caroline’s fussinesses amused Richard more than they irritated him. And -Helen no longer was sole in his love. He loved the boys—both of them. -Stephen he loved with pride and some reservation. Their wills clashed -not infrequently, and on one matter always. Hugh, who often compelled -his disapproval, he loved almost as an own son.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham found him a more tractable patient than of old. Horace Latham had -reached no slight professional importance now; owned his place on Harley -Street, made no daily rounds, studied more than he practised, had an -eloquent bank account, and “consulted” more often than he directly -practised.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen’s little coterie of friends and acquaintances found him an -amiable, if not a demonstrative, host. Even Angela Hilary he suffered -suavely, if not eagerly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A Mrs. Hilary had bought a bijou place near theirs a few years ago, and -cordial, if not intimate, relations had been established quickly between -Helen Bransby and the rich, volatile American widow in accordance with -the time-honored rule that opposites attract. But some things they had -in common, if only things of no higher moment than chiffons and a pretty -taste in hospitality. Both danced through life—rather. But theirs was -dancing with all the difference. Helen never romped. Her dancing, both -actual and figurative, was seemly and slow as the dance on a Watteau -fan—thistle-down dignified—minuet. Angela’s, fine of its sort, was -less art and more impulse, and yet more studied, less natural. It almost -partook of the order of skirt-dancing. Both dancings were pretty to -watch, Helen’s the prettier to remember. For the matter of that both -dancers were pretty to watch. Helen Bransby at twenty was full as lovely -as her childhood had promised. She had been exquisitely loved, and love -feeds beauty and adds to it. Angela Hilary had the composite comeliness -so characteristic of the well-circumstanced American woman: Irish eyes, -a little shrewder, a little harder, than the real thing, hands and feet -Irish-small, skin Saxon-fair, soft, wayward hair Spanish-dark, French -<span class='it'>chic</span>, a thin form Slavic-svelt and Paris-clad, the wide red mouth of -an English great-grandmother, and a self-confidence and a social -assurance to which no man ever has attained, or ever will, and no woman -either not born and bred between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate—a -daring woman, never grotesque; daring in manner, more daring in speech, -most daring of all in dress; but never too daring—for her; fantastic, -never odious—least of all gross. Each of her vagaries suited her, and -the most surprising of all her unexpected gowns became and adorned her: -an artificial, hot-house creature, she was the perfectly natural product -of civilization at once extravagant, well-meaning and cosmopolitan, if -insular too, and she had a heart of gold. A great many people laughed at -Mrs. Hilary, especially English people, and never suspected how much -more she laughed at them, or how much more shrewdly and with how much -more cause—some few liked her greatly, and every one else liked her at -least a little; every one except Horace Latham. Latham was afraid of -her.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>One evening, early in the autumn of 1916, Morton Grant passed nervously -by the lodge of Deep Dale, and along the carriage drive that twisted and -curled to the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had cause enough to be nervous. For the second time in thirty years -he was disobeying his chief grossly; and the cause of his present -turpitude could scarcely have been more unpleasant or less reassuring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Under one arm he carried a large book carefully wrapped in brown paper. -He carried it as if he feared and disliked it, and yet it and its -fellows had been the vessels of his temple and his own dedication for -years.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant barely came to Deep Dale. Richard Bransby dealt with his -subordinates not meanly. A turkey at Christmas, a suitable sum of money -on boxing-day, leniency at illness, and a coffin when requisite, were -always forthcoming—but an invitation to dinner was unheard and -unthought of, and even Grant, in spite of the responsibility and -implicit trustedness of his position, and of the intimacy of their -boyhood, scarcely once had tasted a brew of his master’s tea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A nervous little maid, palpably a war-substitute either for the spruce -man-servant or the sprucer parlor-maid, one of whom had always admitted -him heretofore, answered his ring, and showed him awkwardly into the -library. She collided with him as they went in, and collided with the -door itself as she went out to announce his presence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell Mr. Bransby I should be most grateful if he would see me when he -is disengaged, and—er—you might add that the matter -is—er—urgent—er—that is, as soon as they have quite finished dinner. -Just don’t mention my being here until he has left the -dining-room—er—in fact, not until he is disengaged—er—alone.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Left by himself Grant placed his top hat on a table and laid his parcel -beside it. He unfastened the string, and partly unwrapped the ledger. -Walking to the fireplace, he rolled up the string very neatly and put it -carefully in his waistcoat pocket; ready to his hand should he carry the -ledger back to London with him; ready to some other service for “Bransby -and Co.”—if the ledger remained with his chief.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The clerk glanced about the room—and possibly saw it—but he never -turned his back on the big buff book, or his eyes from it long.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a fine old-fashioned room, paneled in dark oak. Not in the least -gloomy, yet even when, as now, brilliantly lit, fire on the hearth, the -electric lamps and wall-lights turned up, it seemed invested with -shadows, shadows lending it an impalpable suggestion of mystery. The -room was not greatly changed since the spring evening thirteen years ago -when Helen had sat on her father’s knee here and grown sleepy at his -reading of Dickens. The curtains were new, and two of the pictures. The -valuable carpet was the same and most of the furniture. The flowers -might have been the same—Helen’s favorite heliotrope and carnations. -The dolls were gone. But the banjo on the chesterfield and the box of -chocolates on the window-seat scarcely spoke of Bransby, unless they -told of a subjugation that had outlasted the dollies.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the old days the room had been rather exclusively its master’s “den,” -more than library, and into which others were not apt to come very -freely uninvited. Helen had changed all that, and so had the years’ slow -mellowing of Bransby himself. “Daddy’s room” had become the heart of the -house, and the gathering-place of the family. But it was <span class='it'>his</span> room -still, and in his absence, as his presence, it seemed to breathe of his -personality.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant had waited some minutes, but he still stood nervously, when the -employer came in. He eyed Grant rather sourly. Grant stood confused and -tongue-tied.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The master let the man wait long enough to grow still more -uncomfortable, and then said crisply, “Good-evening, Grant.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The clerk moved then—one eye in awe on Bransby, one in dread on the -ledger. He took a few steps towards Bransby, and began apologetically, -“Good—er—ahem—good-evening, Mr. Bransby. I—er—I trust I am not -disturbing you, but——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby interrupted sharply, just a glint of wicked humor in his eye, -“Just come from town, eh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, sir—er—quite right——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come straight here from the office, I dare say?” Bransby spoke with a -harshness that was a little insolent to so old, and so tried, a servant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Morton Grant’s pitiful uneasiness was growing. “Well—er—yes, sir, as a -matter of fact, I did.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I knew it,” Bransby said in cold triumph. It was one of the -ineradicable defects of his nature that he enjoyed small and cheap -triumphs, and irrespective of what they cost others.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant winced. His uneasiness was making him ridiculous, and it -threatened to overmaster him. “Er—ahem—” he stammered, “the matter on -which I have come is so serious——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Grant,” Bransby’s tone was smooth, and so cold that its controlled -sneer pricked, “when my health forced me to take a holiday, what -instructions did I give you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, sir—er—you said that you must not be bothered with business -affairs upon any account—not until you instructed me otherwise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And have I instructed you otherwise?” The tone was absolutely sweet, -but it made poor Morton Grant’s veins curdle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, sir,” he said wretchedly—“er—no, sir, you haven’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby looked at his watch. Almost the tyrant was smiling. “There’s a -train leaving for town in about forty-five minutes—you will just have -time to catch it.” He turned on his heel—he had not sat down—and went -towards the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant began to feel more like jelly than like flesh and bone, but he -pulled himself together, remembering what was at stake, and spoke more -firmly than he had yet done—more firmly than his employer had often -heard him speak. “I beg your pardon,”—he took a step towards -Bransby—“sir”—there was entreaty in his voice, and command too—“but -you must not send me away like this.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His tone caught Bransby’s attention. It could not well have failed to do -so. The shipbuilder turned and looked at the other keenly. “Why not?” he -snapped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The thing that brought me here is most important.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So important that you feel justified in setting my instructions aside?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, sir!” holding his ground now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby eyed him for a long moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant did not flinch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sit down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant did so, and with a sigh of relief—the tension a little eased. -What he had before him was hard enough, Heaven knew—but the first point -was gained: Bransby would hear him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I always thought,” moving towards his own chair beside the -writing-table, “that obeying orders was the most sacred thing in your -life, Grant. I am anxious to know what could have deprived you of that -idea.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anxious to know! And when he did know!—Morton Grant began to tremble -again, and was speechless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby studied him thoughtfully. “Well?” he spoke a shade more kindly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The matter I—I—I——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—yes?” impatience and some sympathy for the other’s distress were -struggling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Well—it had to be told. He had come here to tell it—and to tell it had -braved and breasted Bransby’s displeasure as he had never done before. -But he could not say it with his eyes on the other’s. He hung his head, -ashamed and broken. But he spoke—and without stammer or break: “We’ve -been robbed of a large sum of money, sir.”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER IX</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby watched Grant under beetling brows, his thin lips set, stiff and -angry. He valued his money. He had earned it hard, and to be robbed of a -farthing had always enraged him. But more than any money—much more, he -valued the prestige of his business and the triumphant working of his -own business methods. Its success was the justification of his -arbitrariness and his egoism.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was angry now, in hot earnest—very angry. “Robbed?” he said at last -quietly. It was an ominous quietude. When he was angriest, invariably he -was quietest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ten thousand pounds, sir,” Grant said wearily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ten thousand pounds. Have you reported it to the police?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why do you come to me instead of them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, sir, you see it only came to light this afternoon. You know the -war has disturbed all our arrangements—made us very backward.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby knew nothing of the sort. His business prevision and his -business arrangements were far too masterly to be greatly disarranged by -a mere war, had Heaven granted him subordinates with half his own grit -and devise. But he let that pass.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Grant continued. “The accountants have been unable to make their -yearly audit of our books until this week. It was during their work -to-day that they discovered the theft. So I thought before taking any -action I had best come straight to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who stole it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Morton Grant’s terrible moment had come—his ordeal excruciating and -testing. He looked piteously toward his hat. He felt that it might help -him to hold on to it. But the hat was too far to reach, and alone, -without prop, he braced himself for his supreme moment of loyalty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who stole it?” Bransby’s patience was wearing thin. The fumbling man -prayed for grit to take the plunge clean and straight. But the deep was -too cold for his nerve. He shivered and slacked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why—er—the fact of the matter is—we are not quite sure.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, you are—who stole it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Bransby, I—” the dry old lips refused their office.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even in his own impatience, tinged with anxiety now (it disturbed him to -have trusted and employed untrustworthy servants), Bransby was sorry for -the other’s painful embarrassment. And for that he said all the more -roughly, “Come, come, man. Out with it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, sir,” Grant’s voice was nervously timid, almost craven—and not -once had he looked at Richard Bransby—“all the evidence goes to prove -that only one man could have done it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And who is that man?” demanded the quick, hard voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a supreme effort of courage, which a brave man never knows—it is -reserved for the cowards—Grant lifted his eyes square to the other, and -answered in a voice so low that Bransby scarcely could have heard the -words had they not rung clear with desperation and resolve, “Your—your -nephew, Mr. Hugh Pryde.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a moment Richard Bransby yielded himself up to amazement, -over-sweeping and numb. Then his face flushed and he half rose. For that -one instant Morton Grant was in danger of his employer’s fingers -fiercely strangling at his throat—and he knew it. His eyes filled with -tears—not for himself, pity for Bransby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Bransby laughed. It was a natural laugh—he was genuinely -amused—but full of contempt. “My nephew Hugh?” he said good-humoredly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, sir.” The low words were emphatic. Grant was past flinching now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Grant, you must be out of your senses——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the truth, sir; I am sorry, but it’s the truth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby disputed him roughly. “It can’t be. He is my own flesh and -blood. I love the boy. Why, he’s just received his commission, Grant. -And you come sneaking to me accusing him like this—” He threw his head -up angrily and his eyes encountered Helen’s eyes in the portrait of her -that hung over the fireplace: a breathing, beautiful thing, well worth -the great price he had paid for it. As he looked at it his words died on -his lips, and then rushed on anew in fresh and uncontrolled fury—“How -dare you say he’s a thief—how dare you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant rose too. He was standing his ground resolutely now. The worst was -over for him: the worst for Richard Bransby was just to come. Pity made -the clerk brave and direct. “I’ve only told you the truth, sir,” he said -very quietly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant’s calmness checked Bransby’s rage. For a moment or two he wavered -and then, reseating himself quietly, he said in a voice quiet and -restrained, “What evidence do you base this extraordinary charge on?” As -he spoke he picked up from the table a little jade paper-weight and -fingered it idly. He had had it for years and often handled it so. No -one else ever touched it—not even Helen. He dusted it himself, with a -silk handkerchief kept for that purpose in a drawer to his hand. It was -worth its weight in pure gold, a moon-faced, green Chinese god squatted -on a pink lotus flower.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant answered him immediately. “The shortage occurred in the African -trading account.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was entirely in charge of Mr. Hugh; except for him,” Grant -continued, with the kind relentlessness of a surgeon, “no one has access -to those accounts but his brother, Mr. Stephen, and myself. I do not -think that you will believe that either Mr. Stephen Pryde or myself -tampered——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby brushed that aside with a light sharpness that was something of -an apology, and completely a vote of credit. “Of course not. Go on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Those accounts have been tampered with.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But Hugh has not been at the office for months,” Bransby said eagerly, -the hopefulness of his voice betraying how sharp his fear had been in -spite of himself. Acute masters do not easily doubt the conviction of -the word of this world’s rare Morton Grants—“not for months. He’s been -training.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The theft occurred before he left us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” trying to conceal his disappointment, but succeeding not too well.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Drafts made payable to us are not entered in the books. The accounts -were juggled with so that the shortage would escape our notice.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby’s teeth closed on his lip. “Is that the entire case against -Hugh?” he demanded sharply, clutching at any hope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant stood up beside the ledger, and opened it remorselessly. What the -remorse at his old heart was only the spirit of a dead woman knew—<span class='it'>if</span> -the dead know. “The alterations in the books are in his handwriting,” he -said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t believe it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I brought the ledger down so that you might see for yourself, sir.” He -placed the volume on the table before Bransby, took a memorandum from -his waistcoat pocket, and consulted it. “The irregularities occur on -pages forty-three——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby put on his glasses and opened the book scornfully. He believed -in Hugh, and now his belief would be vindicated. Grant was faithful, no -question of that, but a doddering old blunderer. Well, he must not be -too hard on Grant, and he would not, for really he had been half -afraid—from the so-far evidence—himself for a breath or two.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Page forty-three—yes.” He looked at it. “Yes.” His face was -puzzled—his voice lacked triumph.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fifty-nine,” Grant prompted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby turned to it. “Fifty-nine—yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Eighty-eight.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Eighty-eight.” He looked at it steadily. Slowly belief in Hugh was -sickened into suspicion. Bransby put down the jade toy held till now -idly, and took up a magnifying glass. Suspicion was changing to -conviction. “Yes,” he said grimly. Just the one word—but the one word -was defeat. He was convinced, convinced with the terrible conviction of -love betrayed and outraged—loyalty befouled by disloyalty. Violet -seemed to stand before him—Violet as a child. A lump sobbed in his -throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One hundred and two.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Staring straight before him, “What number?” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One hundred and two,” Grant repeated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One hundred and two—yes.” But he did not look at the page, he was -still staring straight before him, looking through the long years at the -sister he had loved—Violet in her wedding dress. “Yes.” Still it was -Violet he saw—he had no sight for the page of damnation and treachery. -Violet as he had seen her last, cold in her shroud. Slowly he closed the -book—slowly and gently. He needed it no more. He had nothing more to -fear from it, nothing more to hope. He was convinced of his nephew’s -guilt. “My God.” It was a cry to his Maker for sympathy—and rebuke -rather than prayer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The alterations are unmistakably in Mr. Hugh’s handwriting, sir,” Grant -said sorrowfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why,” Richard Bransby cried with sudden passion, “why should he -steal from me, Grant? Answer me that. Why should he steal from me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Some time ago, sir—after Mr. Hugh had joined the army—it came to my -ears—quite by accident, as a matter of fact—through an anonymous -letter——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby uttered a syllable of contempt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant acquiesced, “Yes, sir, of course—<span class='it'>but</span>—I—er—verified its -statements that while Mr. Hugh was still with us—he had been gambling -rather heavily and for a time was in the hands of the money-lenders.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Certain of this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I trusted that boy, Grant. I would have trusted him with -anything”—his eyes turned to the pictured face over the -fireplace—“anything”—and his hand playing with the jade paper-weight -trembled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know.” And Grant did know. Had not he trusted him too—and loved -him—and for the same woman’s sake?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The hand on the little jade god grew steady and still. The man gripped -it calmly; he had regained his grip of self. “Except yourself, who has -any knowledge of this affair?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only the accountants, sir. Mr. Stephen Pryde has not been at the office -for the past few days.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know. He is staying here with me.” Then the mention of Stephen’s name -suggested to him a pretext and a vent to give relief to his choking -feelings, and he added in querulous irritation, “He’s down here to worry -me again about that cracked-brain scheme of his for controlling the -world’s output of aeroplane engines. He’s as mad as the Kaiser, and -about as ambitious and pig-headed. I’ve told him that Bransby and Co. -built ships and sailed ’em, and that was enough. But not for him. He’s -the first man I’ve ever met who thinks he knows how to conduct my -business better than I do—the business I built up myself. Of course I -know he has brains—but he should have ’em—he’s my nephew—that’s why I -left him the management of my business at my death—fortunate, -fortunate——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, sir. But about Mr. Hugh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah!” In his irritation over Stephen—an old irritation—the thought of -Hugh had for a moment escaped their uncle. It returned to him now, and -his face fell from anger to brooding sorrow, “Yes, yes, about Hugh.” He -stared in front of him in deep thought, his face working a little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think that, perhaps——” the clerk began timidly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Bransby silenced him with an impatient gesture. “The accountants? -Can you trust them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Absolutely.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They won’t talk?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not one word.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know there is no need to caution you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must think this over for a day or two—I must think what is best to -be done. Go back to town and have everything go on as if nothing had -happened. Go back on the next train. And, Grant, you’d best leave the -house at once. Hugh is staying here with me, too. I don’t want him to -know you’ve been here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very good, Mr. Bransby,” Grant said, picking up his hat, and turning to -the ledger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Bransby stayed him. “I’ll keep the ledger here with me. I shall want -to look over it again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant took the memorandum slip from the pocket to which he had restored -it when Bransby shut the book, and held it towards his employer in -silence. In silence Bransby took it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am—er—I am very sorry, sir,” Grant faltered, half afraid to voice -the sympathy that would not be stifled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, yes, Grant, I know,” Richard Bransby returned gently. They looked -in each other’s eyes, two old men stricken by a common trouble, a common -disappointment, and for the moment, as they had not been before, in a -mutual sympathy. “You shall hear from me in a day or two.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very good, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And, Grant——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant turned back, nearly at the door, “Yes, sir?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a glint of humor, a touch of affection, and a touch of pathos, -Bransby said, “You were quite justified in setting aside my orders.”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER X</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>The two stricken men parted then, one going down the road with slouched -shoulders and aimless gait, feeling more than such a type of such years -and so circumstanced often has to feel, but devising nothing, suffering -but not fighting. There was no fight in him—none left—his interview -with Bransby had used it all up—to the last atom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby sat alone with his trouble, cut, angry, at bay—already -devising, weighing, fighting, twisting and turning the bit of jade in -his nervous fingers. He rose and pulled open a drawer of his table and -laid the ledger in it with a quiet that was pathetic. For a moment he -stood looking at the book sadly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How much that book had meant to this man only just such men could gauge. -It was his <span class='it'>libra d’ora</span>, his high commission in the world’s great -financial army, and his certificate of success in its far-flung battle -front. It was his horoscope, predicted and cast in his own keen boy’s -heart and head, fulfilled in his graying old age. It was the record of -over forty years of fierce fight, always waged fairly, of a business -career as stiff and sometimes as desperate and as venturesome as -Napoleon’s or Philip’s, but never once smirched or touched with -dishonor—no, not with so much as one shadow of shame. He had -fought—ah! how he had fought, from instinct, for Alice, for Helen—and, -by God! yes, lately for Violet’s boys too—he had fought, and always he -had fought on and on to success: bulldog and British in tenacity, he had -been Celtic-skillful, and many a terrible corner had he turned with a -deft fling of wrist and a glow in his eye that might have been -envied—and certainly would have been applauded and loved—on Wall -Street, or that fleeter, less scrupulous street of high-finance—La -Salle. It was his escutcheon—all the blazon he had ever craved—and -now——He closed the drawer swiftly and softly. Many a coffin lid has -been closed with pain less profound.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then his quiet broke, and for a moment the frozen tears melted down his -trembling face, and the terrible sobs of manhood and age thwarted and -hurt to the quick shook his gaunt body. A cry broke from him—a cry of -torture and love. “Hugh—Hugh!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a few moments he let the storm have its will of him; he had to. Then -his will took its turn, asserted itself and he commanded himself again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby turned quietly away with a sigh. For a space he stood in deep -thought. Quite suddenly a pain and a faintness shot through him, -bullet-quick, nerve-racking. He forgot everything else—everything: -which is perhaps the one pleasant thing that can be said of such -physical pain; it banishes all other aches, and shows heart and head who -is their master.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>White to his lips, pure fright in his eyes, Bransby contrived to reach a -chair by a side-table on which a tantalus stood unobtrusively. It always -was there. There was one like it in his bedroom, and another in his -private room at the office. And Richard Bransby was an abstemious man, -caring little for his meat, nothing at all for his drink. Tobacco he had -liked once, but Latham had stinted him of tobacco. With the greatest -difficulty he managed to pour out some brandy—and to gulp it. For a -short space he sat motionless with closed eyes. But some one was coming.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a tremendous effort he pulled himself together. He got out of the -chair, tell-tale near that tantalus, and with the criminal-like -secretiveness of a very sick man, pushed his glass behind the decanter. -He had sauntered to another seat, moving with a lame show of -nonchalance, and taking up his old plaything, when the footsteps he had -heard came through the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Horace Latham. “Alone?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! is that you, doctor? Come in—come in. Have a cigar?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The physician stood behind his host, smiling, debonair, groomed to a -fault, suspiciously easy of manner, lynx-eyes apparently unobservant, he -himself palpably unconcerned. “Thanks,” he said—“I find a subtle joy in -indulging myself in luxuries which my duties compel me to deny to -others.” He chose a cigar—very carefully—from the box Bransby had -indicated. But he diagnosed those Havanas with his touch-talented -finger-tips. His microscope eyes were on Bransby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby knew this, or at least feared it, though Latham stood behind -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still fighting desperately against his weakness (he had much to do just -now; Latham must not get in his way), he said, doing it as well as he -could, “Oh, I—I don’t mind—next to smoking myself—I like to watch -some one else enjoying a good cigar.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham’s face did not change in the least, nor did his eyes shift. He -came carelessly around the table, facing his host now, never relaxing a -covert scrutiny, as bland as it was keen. “In order,” he said, “to give -you as much pleasure as possible I shall enjoy this one thoroughly. Can -you give me a match?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course. Stupid of me.” Bransby caught up a match-stand with an -effort and offered it. Latham pretended not to see it. Bransby was -forced to light a match. He contrived to, and held it towards Latham, in -a hand that would shake. The physician threw his cigar aside with a -quick movement, and caught his friend’s wrist, seized the flaming match -and blew it out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I knew it,” Latham said sternly. “Bransby, you are not playing fair -with me. You’ve just had another of those heart attacks.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nonsense,” the other replied with uneasy impatience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then why are you all of a tremble? Why is your hand shaking? Why is -your pulse jumping?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had a slight dizziness,” Bransby admitted wearily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What caused it?” Latham asked sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Grant brought me some bad news from the office.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—what of it? The air is full of bad news now. You can afford to -lose an odd million now and then. But what business had Grant here? What -business had you to see him? You promised me that you would not even -think of business, much less discuss it with any one, until I gave you -leave.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This was exceptional.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The physician sat down, his eyes still on his patient, and said, his -voice changed to a sudden deep kindness, “Bransby, I am going to be -frank with you—brutally frank. You’re an ill man—a very ill man -indeed. A severe attack of this—‘dizziness’ as you call it—will—well, -it might prove fatal. Your heart’s beat shown by the last photograph we -had taken by the electric cardigraph was bad—very bad.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve heard all this before.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And have paid no heed to it. Bransby, unless you give me your word to -obey my instructions absolutely, I will wash my hands of your case.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t say that.” In spite of himself Bransby’s voice shook.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I mean it.” Latham’s voice came near shaking too, but professional -training and instinct saved it. “Well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This—this news I have just had—I must make a decision concerning it. -It can’t cause me any further shock. As soon as I have dismissed it, and -I will very soon, I give you my word, I’ll do precisely as you say.”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here you are! I thought you were coming back to the billiard room, -Daddy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As Helen Bransby came gayly in, her father threw Latham an appealing -look, and shifted a little from the light.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham stepped between them. “So he was, Miss Bransby. Forgive me, I -kept him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Our side won, Daddy,” said the glad young voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did we, dear? Then old Hugh owes me a bob.” As the words left his lips, -a sudden spasm of memory caught him. Helen saw nothing, but Latham took -a quick half-step towards him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you and Dr. Latham having a confidential chat, Daddy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The father contrived to answer her lightly, more lightly than Latham -could have done at the moment. That physician was growing more and more -anxious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What on earth do you think Latham and I could be having a confidential -chat about?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen laughed. She had the prettiest laugh in the world. And her -flower-like face brimmed over with mischief. “I thought perhaps he was -asking your advice about matrimony.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Latham?” exclaimed Bransby, so surprised that he almost dropped his -precious jade god with which he was still toying.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham was distinctly worried—Latham the cool, imperturbable man of the -world. “Now, really, Miss Bransby,” he began, and then halted lamely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t mean to say that he is contemplating marrying? Latham the -adamant bachelor of Harley Street?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen wagged her pretty head impishly. “I can’t say whether he is -contemplating it or not, but I know he is face to face with it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, upon my word!” Bransby was really interested now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham was intensely uncomfortable. “I am afraid,” he began again, “Miss -Bransby exaggerates the danger——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Danger?” the girl mocked at him. “That’s not very gallant, is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And who is the happy woman?” demanded Bransby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Angela Hilary.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby laughed unaffectedly. “Mrs. Hilary? Our American friend, eh? -Glad to see you are helping on Anglo-American friendship, my dear -fellow. That’s exactly what we need now. I congratulate you, Latham.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please don’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! he hasn’t proposed <span class='it'>yet</span>, Daddy,” said the pretty persistent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has not!” assented Latham briskly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it’s coming!” taunted Helen wickedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is not!” Latham exclaimed hotly. “I haven’t the slightest intention -of proposing to Mrs. Hilary.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what if she should propose to you?” demanded his tormentor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should refuse,” insisted Latham, beside himself with embarrassment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if she won’t take ‘No’ for an answer?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t really think it will come to that?” He was really -considerably alarmed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen was delighted. “I think it may.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good heavens!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had no idea, Latham,” joined in Bransby, playing up to Helen (he -always did play up to Helen), “that you were so attractive to the -opposite sex.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham groaned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” Helen said with almost judicial gravity, “I don’t know that it is -entirely due to Dr. Latham’s charm that the present crisis has come -about. I think Angela’s sense of duty is equally to blame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mrs. Hilary’s sense of duty!” Latham muttered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Really?” quizzed Bransby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Daddy, she feels that bachelorhood is an unfit state for a -physician; and because she has a high regard for Dr. Latham she has -nobly resolved to cure him of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I don’t wish to be cured.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nonsense!” Bransby rebuked him, adding dryly, “what would you say to a -patient of yours who talked like that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham turned to Helen desperately. “I say, Miss Bransby, does she know -I am staying with you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—I think not. I think she’s still in town.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a relief.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she’ll find out,” Helen assured him, nodding sagely her naughty red -head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But respite was at hand. “Can we come in?” asked a voice at which -Richard Bransby winced again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Hugh, come along,” Helen said cheerfully. “Dr. Latham will be glad -to see you; he has finished his delicate confidences.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all right, Stephen, we won’t be in the way,” Hugh called over his -shoulder as he strolled through the doorway, a boyish, soldierly young -figure, sunny-faced, frank-eyed. He wore the khaki of a second -lieutenant. He went up to his uncle. Bransby’s fingers tightened at the -throat of the green god, and imperiled the delicately cut pink lotus -leaves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose Helen told you that she beat us,” the young fellow said, -laying a coin near Bransby’s hand. “There’s the shilling I owe you, -sir—the last of an ill-spent fortune.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thanks,” Bransby spoke with difficulty. But the boy noticed nothing. He -already was moving to the back of the room where Helen was sitting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you told him?” Hugh said in a low voice as he sat down beside her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, not yet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde threw one quick glance to where they sat as he came -quickly in, but only one, and he went at once to his uncle. “I hope -Grant didn’t bring you any bad news, sir?” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby was sharply annoyed. He answered quickly, with a swift furtive -look at his nephew. “How did you know Grant was here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Barker told me. I hope there is nothing wrong, sir?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wrong? What could be wrong?” The impatience of Bransby’s tone brooked -no further questioning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham had joined Helen, and Hugh had left her then and had been -strolling about the room unconcernedly. He came up to his uncle -chuckling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Old Grant is a funny old josser,” he said. “He is like a hen with one -chick around the office. Why, if one is ten minutes late in the morning, -he treats it as if it was a national calamity.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby lifted his head a little and looked Hugh straight in the face. -It was the first time their eyes had met—since Grant’s visit. “Grant -has always had great faith in you, Hugh,” the uncle said gravely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh responded cheerfully. “He’s been jolly kind to me, too. He is a -good old sport, when you get beneath all the fuss and feathers.” And he -strolled back to Helen, Richard’s eyes following him sadly. Latham gave -way to Hugh and wandered over to a bookcase and began examining its -treasures.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle again. “The business that brought -him—Grant—can I attend to it for you, Uncle Dick?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, thank you, Stephen, it—it is purely a personal matter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde helped himself to a cigarette, saying, “Did he say whether he had -heard from Jepson?” and trying to speak carelessly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby answered him impatiently. “No; I was glad to find out, however, -that Grant agrees with me that your scheme for controlling the output of -aeroplane engines is an impossible one for us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde’s face stiffened. “Then he is wrong,” he said curtly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby angered. “He is not wrong. Haven’t I just said he agreed with -me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you gave the matter serious attention, instead of opposing it -blindly, simply because it came from me——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But this was too much. Bransby stopped him hotly, “I don’t oppose it -because it comes from you. I am against it because it isn’t sound. If it -were, I would have thought of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t realize the possibilities.” Stephen spoke as hotly as the -elder had, but there was pleading in his voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham was watching them now—closely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are no possibilities, I tell you,” Bransby continued roughly, -“and that should be sufficient—it always has been for every one in my -establishment but you”—he turned to Latham: “Stephen is trying to -induce me to give up shipbuilding for aeroplane engines—and not only -that, he wants to spend our surplus in buying every plant we are able -that can be turned to that use.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Stephen urged, “because after the war the future of the world -will be in the air.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t believe it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And no one believed in steel ships.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That has nothing to do with this.” Bransby was growing testy, and -always his troubled eyes would turn to Hugh—to Hugh and Helen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It has,” Stephen insisted, “for it shows how the problem of -transportation has evolved. The men of the future are the men who -realize the chance the conquest of the air has given them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, let who wishes go in for it. I am quite satisfied with our -business as it is, and at my time of life I am not going to embark on -ambitious schemes. We make money enough.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Money!” Pryde said with bitter scorn. “It isn’t the money that makes me -keen. It’s the power to be gained—the power to build and to destroy.” -The tense face was fierce and transfigured. The typical face of a seer, -Latham thought, watching him curiously. “I tell you, sir, that from now -on the men who rule the air are the men who will rule the world.” The -voice changed, imperiousness cast away, it was tender, caressingly -pleading—“Uncle Dick——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Bransby’s irritation was now beyond all control. The day, and its -revelation and pain, had tortured him enough; his nerves had no -resistance left with which to meet petty annoyance largely. “And I tell -you,” he said heatedly, getting on to his feet, “that I have heard all -about the matter I care to hear, now or ever. I’ve said ‘No,’ and that -ends it. Once I make a decision I never change it, and—I—I—I——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham laid a hand on his wrist. “Tut, tut, Bransby, you <span class='it'>must not</span> -excite yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby sank back wearily into his chair—putting the paper-weight down -with an impatient gesture; it made a small clatter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde shrugged his shoulders and turned away drearily with a -half-muttered apology, “I’m sorry, I forgot,” and an oath unspoken but -black. There was despair on his face, misery in his eyes.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>The same group was gathered in the same room just twenty-three hours -later. But Mrs. Leavitt, detained last night on one of her many domestic -cares (she never had learned to wear her domestic cares lightly, and -probably would have enjoyed them less if she had) was here also -to-night: an upright, satin-clad figure very busy with an elaborate -piece of needlework. She made no contributions to the chat—the new -stitch was difficult—but constantly her eye glanced from her needle, -here, there and everywhere—searching for dust.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby had not yet readied his decision, and the self-suspense -was punishing him badly. Latham was anxious. His keen eyes saw a dozen -signs he disliked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen sat apart smoking moodily, but watchful—a dark, well-groomed -man, with but one beauty: his agile hands. They looked gifted, deft and -powerful. They were all three.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again Helen and Hugh were together at a far end of the big room, -chatting softly. Bransby watched them uneasily. (Stephen was glad to -notice that.)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby stood it a little longer, and then he called, “Helen!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She rose and came to him at once, “Yes, Daddy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby fumbled rather—at a loss what to say—what excuse to make for -having called her. He even stammered a little. “Why—why—” then -glancing by accident towards the book-shelves, a ruse occurred to him -that would answer, that would keep her from Hugh, as his voice had -called her from him. “I don’t think,” he said, “that Latham has seen -that new edition of Dickens of mine. Show it to him. Show him the -illustrations especially.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham raised a hand in mock horror. “<span class='it'>Another</span> edition!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But even a better diversion was to hand. Barker stood palpitating in the -door with which she had just collided, her agitation in no way soothed -by the fact that Hugh winked at her encouragingly. “Mrs. Hilary,” she -announced, crimsoning. The girl could scarcely have blushed redder if -she had been obliged to read her own banns.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela Hilary came in with almost a run; seeing Helen, she rushed on her -and embraced her dramatically with a little cry. She was almost -hysterical—but prettily so, quite altogether prettily so. She wore the -unkempt emotion as perfectly as she did her ravishing frock—you -couldn’t help thinking it suited her—not the frock—though indeed that -did, too, to a miracle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen! Oh, my dear!” Seeing Bransby, she released the smiling Helen, -and dashed at him, seizing his hand. “Mr. Bransby, oh—I am so glad! -Dear Mrs. Leavitt, too: I am so relieved”—which was rather more than -Caroline could have said. She disliked being hugged, especially just -after dinner, and she had lost count, and dropped her fine crochet-hook.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hilary turned to Stephen and wrung his hand warmly, half sobbing, -“It is Mr. Pryde?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” he told her gravely, “I have not changed my name since last -week.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Angela paid no attention to what he said. She rarely did pay much -attention to what other people said. “Dear Mr. Pryde,” she bubbled on at -him, “oh! and you are quite all right.” Hugh came strolling down the -room. Angela Hilary was a great favorite of his. She rushed to him and -caught him by the shoulder, “Lieutenant Hugh. Oh, how do you do?” Then -she caught sight of Latham. She pounced on him. He edged away, a little -embarrassed. She followed the closer—“Dr. Latham! Now my cup <span class='it'>is</span> full. -Oh! this is wonderful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, isn’t it!” he stammered, greatly embarrassed. Through the back of -his head he could see Helen watching him. What a nuisance the woman was, -and how fiendishly pretty! Really, American women ought to be locked up -when they invaded London, at least if they were half as lovely and a -quarter as incalculable as this teasing specimen. Interning Huns seemed -fatuous to him, when such disturbers of Britain’s placidity as this were -permitted abroad. Positively he was afraid of this bizarre creature. -What would she say next? What do?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What she did was to seize him by his beautifully tailored arm. Latham -hated being hugged, and at any time, far more than Mrs. Leavitt did. -Indeed he could not recall that he ever had been hugged. He was -conscious of no desire to be initiated into that close procedure—and, -of all places to suffer it, this was about as undesirable as he could -imagine. And this woman respected neither places nor persons. She had -hugged poor Mrs. Leavitt unmistakably. What if——He flushed and tried -to extricate his coat sleeve.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela held him the tighter and looked tenderly into his eyes with her -great Creole eyes, surely inherited from some southern foremother. He -thought he heard Helen giggle softly. “My <span class='it'>dear</span> Dr. Latham! Oh!”—then, -with a sudden change of manner, that was one of her most bewildering -traits, an instant change this time from the hysterical to the -commonplace—“You will have lunch with me to-morrow—half-past one.” It -was not a question, but simply an announcement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid I can’t,” Latham began. “I am returning to town on an early -train.” Yes, he <span class='it'>did</span> hear Helen smother a laugh?—hang the girl! and -that was Hugh’s chuckle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pouf!” Angela Hilary blew his words aside as if they had been a wisp of -thistledown. “Then you’ll have to change your plans and take a later -one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But really I——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll consider it settled. You men here all need reforming,” she added -severely to Hugh, catching his eye. “In America we women bring up our -men perfectly: they do us great credit.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But this is not America,” Stephen Pryde interposed indolently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela Hilary drew herself up to all her lovely, graceful height. “But I -am American—an American woman.” She said it very quietly. No English -woman living could have said it more quietly or more coldly. It was all -she said. But it was quite enough. Horace Latham took out his -engagement-book, an entirely unnecessary bit of social by-play on his -part, and he knew it. He knew in his startled bachelor heart that he -would not forget that engagement, or arrive late at the tryst. But he -was not going to marry any one, much less be laughed into it by Helen -Bransby, or witched into it by bewildering personality and composite -loveliness. And as for marrying an American wife—he, Horace Latham, -M.D., F.R.C.P.—the shades of all his ancestors forbid! But what was the -tormenting thing doing now?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly remembering the object of her visit, she pushed an easy-chair -into the center of the room (claiming and taking the stage as it were) -and sank into it hysterically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Leavitt looked up uneasily; she hated the furniture moved about.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! thank Heaven,” cried Angela, “you are all here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why shouldn’t we be all here?” laughed Helen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve seen all my friends in the neighborhood now,” Angela answered, -relaxing and lying back in relief, “and every one is all right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even Bransby was amused. “Why shouldn’t they be all right?” he asked, -laughing, and motioning Latham towards the cigars.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t jest, Mr. Bransby,” she implored him. “I have had a very solemn -communication this afternoon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good gracious!” Hugh said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Communication?” Helen queried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They all gathered about her now—with their eyes—in amused -bewilderment. Even Aunt Caroline looked up from her lace-making.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela nodded gravely. “Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A—er—communication from whom?” Stephen asked lazily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From Wah-No-Tee.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who in the world is Wah-No-Tee?” Pryde demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, my medium’s Indian control.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh chuckled—his laugh always was a nice boyish chuckle. Mrs. Leavitt -looked shocked—Stephen winked at his cigarette as he lit it. Latham -laid down the cigar he had selected but not yet lit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Indian control?” Bransby said—quite at a loss.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen explained. “Mrs. Hilary is interested in spiritualism, Daddy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” Bransby was frankly disgusted. Either Angela did not notice this, -or was perfectly indifferent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen was greatly amused. A charming smile lit his sharp face. “Is it -permitted to ask what Wah-No-Tee’s communication was, Mrs. Hilary?” he -said—almost caressingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She told me——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—” interjected Stephen—“Wah-No-Tee is a lady?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! Quite. She told me this morning that one of my dearest friends was -just ‘passing over.’ I was so worried. I hurried back from town as -quickly as I could, and ever since dinner I have been rushing about -calling on every dear friend I have”—she gave Latham a soft look. “And, -as I said—they are all quite all right. Silly mistake!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby gave a short grunt. “Surely, Mrs. Hilary,” he said irritably, -“you’re not serious.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am always serious,” she told him emphatically. “I love being -serious.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby picked up the paper-weight and shook it irritably, god, lotus -and all. “But you can’t believe in such rubbish.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen caught his hand warningly. “Daddy! you’ll break poor old Joss!” -For a moment his hand and her young hand closed together over the costly -toy, and then she made him put it down, prying under his heavy fingers -with her soft ones.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course, I believe in it,” Angela said superiorly. “Why, there have -been quite a number of books written about it lately.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Foolish books,” snapped Bransby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hilary answered him most impressively. “There are more -what-you-may-call-’ems in Heaven and Earth, Horatio——” she said -earnestly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby interrupted her, absently in his irritation taking up “Joss” -again. “But, my dear lady——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Even men of science believe.” Angela Hilary could interrupt as well as -the next.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now-a-days men of science believe anything—even such stuff as this.” -Again Helen gently rescued the bit of jade.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘Stuff!’ Mr. Bransby; it is not ‘stuff’!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But your own words prove that it is,” Bransby continued the duel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My own words?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve just admitted your—‘communication’ I think you called it—was a -silly mistake.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For one time in her life she was completely non-plused. There had not -been many such times.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—well——” she began, but she could find no useful words. Her -annoyance was so keen that Helen feared she was going to cry. She could -cry, too—Helen had seen her do it. Helen caught up a box of cigarettes -and carried them to Angela, hoping to divert her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do have a cigarette,” she urged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hilary shook her head violently, but sadly. Helen threw Hugh a look -of despair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That warrior was no diplomatist, but a beautifully obedient lover. He -hurried to Mrs. Hilary and bent over her almost tenderly, and said, -“Ripping weather—what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hilary gave him a baleful look—almost a glare—and turned her -shoulder on him. Hugh shrugged his shoulders helplessly, throwing Helen -an apologetic look.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen, in despair, nodded imploringly at Stephen. He smiled, lowered his -cigarette, and addressed their volatile guest. “What a charming frock -that is, Mrs. Hilary.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The delightful comedienne threw him a sharp look—and melted. “Do you -think so really?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s most becoming,” he said enthusiastically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A smile creamed sunnily over the petulant, delicate face. “I think it -does suit me,” she said joyfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They all gave a sigh of relief.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who made it for you, Angela?” Helen asked hurriedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Clarice—you know, in Albemarle Street.” The cure was complete.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Helen repeated the dose. “She does make adorable things. I am going -to try her. You know Mrs. Montague goes to her, and she says——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But what Mrs. Montague said was never told, for at the Verona-like name -Angela Hilary sprang to her feet with a scream of “Good Heavens!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, what’s up?” Hugh exclaimed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I forgot to call on the Montagues—and poor dear Mr. Montague has such -dreadful gout. How could I be so heartless as to forget the Montagues? -Such perfectly dreadful gout. Oh, well, one never knows—one never -knows. Good-night, everybody. I am sure you won’t mind my rushing off -like this”—both Bransby and Caroline looked resigned—“but I am so -worried. Good-night—good-night.” She paused in the door, “Don’t forget, -Dr. Latham, to-morrow at half-past one sharp.” She threw him a sweet, -imperative look, and was gone—as she had come—in a silken whirl and a -jangle of jewels and chains.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby looked after her sourly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Humph,” he said. “What a foolish woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, silly,” Stephen agreed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So foolish she dares to believe—in things,” Horace Latham said slowly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They all looked at him in amazement. “Latham!” Bransby exclaimed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The physician turned and met his gaze. “Yes?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t mean to tell me that you believe in all this hopeless drivel -of ‘mediums’ and ‘control’ and spirit communications.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know,” Latham said musingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, upon my word!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course,” Latham continued, “some of it—much of it—sounds -incredible—beyond belief—and yet—well, some years ago wireless -telegraphy, the telephone, a hundred other things that we have seen -proved, would have seemed quite as incredible. With those things in -mind, how can we absolutely deny this thing? How can we be sure that -these people—foolish as some of them certainly appear—are not upon the -threshold of a great truth?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The hand that held the paper-weight tightened angrily. “And you, a -sensible man, tell me that you believe that the spirits of those who -have gone before us come back to earth, and spend their time knocking on -walls, rocking tables, whirling banjos, and giving silly women silly -answers to silly questions!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—not that exactly.” Latham was smiling. “But my profession—it -brings me very close to death—I’ve seen so much suffering lately. -Well—if one believes in God—how can we believe that death is the end? -I know I don’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen’s hand lay on the table, she was standing near her father. He laid -his palm on hers—and sat musing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” he said after a pause, “neither do I.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sure it isn’t!” the girl said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is getting a bit over my head,” Stephen Pryde said with a shrug, -rising. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take a stroll.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham looked at him with a smile of apprisement, “I take it you don’t -share our belief, Pryde?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen smiled in return, and a little contemptuously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am afraid I am what you would call a rank materialist. To me death is -the end—complete annihilation. That’s why I mean to get everything I -can out of life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Stephen—no!” his cousin cried. “You mustn’t believe that! You -can’t! Think! What becomes of the mind, the heart, the soul, the thing -that makes us think, and love and hate and eat and move, quite aside -from muscles and bones and veins? The thing that is we, and drives us, -the very life of us?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just what becomes of an aeroplane when it flies foul, or is <span class='it'>killed</span>, -and comes crashing down to earth: done, killed, I tell you, just as much -as a dead man is killed—and no more. Last week, near Hendon, I saw a -biplane, a single seater, fighter, die. Something went wrong when she -was high, going beautifully, she side-slipped abruptly to port, and -trembled on her wing-tip just as I’ve seen a bird do a thousand times, -and she sickened and staggered down to her doom, faint, torn and -bleeding, twisted and moaned on the grass, gave a last convulsive groan, -a last shudder, and then lay still, a huddled mass of oil, broken -struts, smashed propeller, petrol dripping slowly from her shattered -engine, her sectional veins bleeding, her rudder gone, her ailerons -useless, forever, her landing-gear ruined: killed—dead—a corpse—for -the rubbish heap.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! Stephen,” whispered Helen, “and the pilot?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The pilot?” Pryde said indifferently. “Oh! he was dead too, of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He picked up a fresh cigarette and sauntered from the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Of the injured and destroyed machine he had spoken with more emotion -than any one of them had ever heard in his voice before. And there was a -long pause before Bransby, turning again to Latham, said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow your argument, Doctor. Surely one can -believe in immortality without believing in spiritualism?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know that that is my argument. But lately one has thought a -great deal over such things. The war has brought them very close to all -of us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Bransby concurred thoughtfully. And Caroline Leavitt laid down -her work a moment and echoed sadly, “Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Latham continued: “Those lives that were given out there—so -unselfishly—surely that cannot be the end—and, if we don’t really die, -how can we be certain that the spiritual power—the <span class='it'>driving</span> force, -that continues to exist, cannot come back and make its existence felt? -Oh! I don’t mean in rocking tables, or ringing bells, or showing lights, -or in ghostly manifestations at séances.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you mean, then?” Bransby was half fascinated, half annoyed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They might make an impression upon the consciousness of the living.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Bransby was unimpressed by that.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A sort of supernatural telepathy, eh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham pondered a moment. “I dare say I can explain best by giving you -an example.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Suppose a man—a man whose every instinct was just and generous—had -done another man a great wrong and found it out too late. If his -consciousness remained, isn’t it possible—isn’t it probable, that he -would try to right that wrong and, since he had cast away all material -things, he couldn’t communicate in the old way—yet he’d try—surely he -would try——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You believe that?” Bransby exclaimed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I believe,” Latham said very slowly, “that he’d try—but whether he’d -succeed or not—I don’t know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” Helen cried with a rapt, glowing face, laying a pleading hand on -the hand holding the jade, “it must be so—it’s beautiful to believe it -is so.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if,” Latham continued, “one would try for the sake of justice, -can’t you think that others would try, because of the love they had for -the living they had left behind—who still needed them? I dare say that -every one of us has at one time or another been conscious of some -impalpable thing near us—some of us have believed it was a spirit -guarding us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Helen whispered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If we knew,” Latham went on, “the way, we might understand what they -wanted to tell us—if only we knew the way——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again there was a pause. Bransby shifted impatiently, and put his toy -down with a slight clatter, but kept his hand on it still.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham spoke, his manner completely changed. He got up, and he spoke, -almost abruptly. “Well, I am afraid I have bored you people sufficiently -for to-night, and I have some rather important letters to write—if you -will excuse me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course,” Helen said, as he moved to the door, “but oh! you haven’t -bored us, Dr. Latham.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham smiled at her. “Thanks. I’ll take my cigar,” he added, picking it -up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shan’t be able to enjoy seeing you enjoy it,” Bransby protested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Try telepathy,” was the smiling rejoinder. “Good-night.”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XIV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Leavitt had not noticed the physician go. She had not been -listening for some time, the turn of her pattern had been at its most -difficult point. But she had managed it, and now sat counting -contentedly. Helen was gazing into the fire, her face all tender and -tense. Bransby had watched the door close, a queer purse on his lips. -Presently he said grimly—half in jest, half in earnest—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, he’s a queer kind of a doctor. I shall have to consult some one -else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Leavitt rose with a startled cry. Glancing up from the endless -pattern, at an easy stage now, the dust-searching eye had discovered -much small prey. She gathered up her work carefully and bustled about -the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If that dreadful Barker didn’t forget to straighten out this room while -we were at dinner. Dr. Latham and Mrs. Hilary will think I am the most -careless housekeeper. I do hope, Helen, that you explain to our friends -how the war has taken all our servants. You should tell everybody that -before it began Barker was only a tweeny, and now she is all we have in -the shape of a butler and parlor-maid and three-quarters of our staff. -And she is so careless and clumsy.” She went from cushion to vase, from -fireplace to table, straightening out the room somewhat to her -satisfaction: the father and the daughter watching her with resigned -amusement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A book lay open, face down on the writing-table. She pounced on the -volume. Bransby’s amusement vanished. “Careful there, Caroline, I am -reading that book.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not now, you’re not—and books belong in book-cases.” She closed it -with a snap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now you’ve lost my place!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, the book’s in its proper place,” she said, thrusting it into its -shelf. “There, that’s better. Now I wonder how the drawing-room is. I -must see. Dear me, this war has been a great inconvenience,” she sighed -as she went from the room—taking Hugh, none too willing, with her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Caroline Leavitt was not an unpatriotic woman. Simply, to her home and -house were country and universe too—her horizon enclosed nothing beyond -them. She loved England, because her home and her housekeeping, this -house and her vocation, were in it; and not her home, as some do, -because it was in England. England was a frame, a background. Her -emotions began at Deep Dale’s front door, and ended in its kitchen -garden. There are many such women in the world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your aunt is a martinet, Helen,” Bransby grumbled smilingly. “She never -lets me have my books about as I like them—and she is always losing my -place.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know,” her father continued, “I have found rare good sport in my -books? Some of those chaps there—and Dickens especially—now—he <span class='it'>was</span> -a card. Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Daddy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, when I’m a bit low in my mind, I like to read it—more than any -other book, I think—I find it sort of comforting. A man is never really -lonely when he has books about him. Ah! I remember my place now—where -Copperfield passes the blind beggar. It goes—let me see—yes: ‘He made -me start by muttering as if he were an echo of the -morning—“Blind—blind—blind.”’”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m glad you find your books good company, Daddy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you? Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—well—if—if we were ever parted, it would make me happy to think -you had friends near you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby laid his paper-weight down quickly and looked at his girl -anxiously. “If we were ever parted? What do you mean, Helen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned from him a little as she replied softly, “Haven’t -you—haven’t you ever looked forward to a time when we might be?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—of course not!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sure?” she whispered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!”—her father’s breath came quickly—“You mean that some day you -might marry?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—you want me to marry—some day—don’t you, Daddy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why—why, yes. Yes, of course I do. It would be a wrench, a bad wrench, -but—I should feel safer, if I knew there was some good man to take care -of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl came to him then, and he reached and took her hand and held it -to his cheek.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is a good man who wants to—now.” She spoke very low—only just -said it. But Richard Bransby heard every word; and every word cut him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who is he?” There was fear in his voice and fear on his face. He -dropped her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can’t you guess?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not—not Hugh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Daddy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned and walked as if groping his way towards the window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen watched him, surprised and disappointed. “Why—why—Daddy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen,” he said, still turned from her, “suppose—suppose I didn’t -approve of your marrying Hugh—what would you do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl pouted a little. “Daddy dear,” she rebuked him, “do be -serious.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am serious.” He turned and faced her, sadly and gravely, far the more -troubled of the two.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And she took a step towards him, and spoke clearly. “But why suppose -such a thing? You would never refuse your consent to my marrying Hugh. -You have loved him better than any one else in the world—except -me—always since they came. Why, it has been almost as if he were your -very own son.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her words affected him keenly. It was with a stern effort that he kept -traces of his emotion from his voice. “But, if I didn’t approve?” he -insisted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen looked at him with startled eyes, realizing for the first time -that he was serious. “You mean—you mean—you don’t!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” he told her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?” she cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The question was very, very difficult for him, so difficult that for a -moment he could find no answer. At last he said slowly, “I don’t believe -Hugh is the man to make you happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you think I am the best judge of that?” Helen said -gently—quickly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His answer was quicker: “No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl lost something of her self-control then, and there was a -pitiful note in the young voice saying: “Daddy, this isn’t all a silly -joke? You aren’t trying to tease me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not joking, Helen.” There were tears in his voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then,” she cried, “why have you suddenly changed towards Hugh? Our -house has always been his home—all these years. I can only just -remember when he came: I can’t remember when he was not here. You have -purposely thrown us together.” There was accusation in her tone, but no -anger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had pricked him, and he answered sharply: “I never said that it was -my wish that you should marry him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not in words—no—but in a hundred other ways. Why have you changed? -Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t want to answer that question.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have the right to know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby was suffering terribly—and physically too. He yearned -over her, and he ached to get it over and done. But he could not bring -himself to denounce the boy he had loved so—so loved still.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Helen, at bay too, would give him no respite: how could she? “You -haven’t answered me—yet,” she said, more coldly. Her tone was still -gentle; but her fixed determination was quite evident—unmistakable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very well, then, I will,” and he gathered himself for the ordeal, -his—and hers. Then again he hesitated. “Helen,” he pleaded, “won’t you -accept my decision? You—you know a little—just a little—what you are -to me—how all the world—ah! my Helen—you wouldn’t break my old heart, -would you? Say that you could not—would not—say it——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Daddy! My daddy,” she whispered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Say it,” he cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Daddy,” her tears had come now—near; but she held them—“I mean to -marry Hugh,” she said very quietly—even in his distressed agitation he -recognized and honored her grit—the wonderful grit of such delicate -creatures—“with your approval, I hope—but, in any case, I mean to -marry him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Think how I’ve loved you, child,” the father cried, catching her wrists -in his hands, “you wouldn’t set my wishes aside?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Daddy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen.” It was a sob in his throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just think for a moment,” she said, “he has given up everything to join -the army. Any day, now, he may go—out there. He loves me, Daddy—and I -love him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is not worthy of you—” Bransby was commanding himself—at what cost -only he knew—and Horace Latham might partly have guessed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After a pause—painful to him—she was too indignant to suffer much -now—at last she spoke—sternly. “Why do you say that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t press the question,” he pleaded, “you know how much I care for -you—how dear you are to me. Surely you must know that I would not come -between you and your happiness if I hadn’t a good reason.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I must know that reason.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You won’t give him up—for me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pity for his evident distress welled over her, and she answered him -tenderly: “I can’t, dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She waited. He waited too. He could count his heart thump, and almost -she might have counted it too.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At last he nerved himself desperately, went to his desk and pulled the -ledger from the drawer. He put it down ready to his hand, if he had to -show it to her at last; then turned and laid his hands on her shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When he could command himself—it was not at once—he said, speaking -more gently than in all his long, gentle loving of her he had ever -spoken to her before, “Helen, Hugh is a thief.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was silence between them; a silence neither could ever forget. It -punctuated their mutual life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She broke it. For a while she stood rigid and dazed—and then she -laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No lash in his face—even from her hand—could have hurt him so.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again she waited: haughty and outraged now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has stolen ten thousand pounds from me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She neither spoke nor stirred.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is why Grant came here last night—to tell me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl made a gesture of infinite scorn, of unspeakable rebuke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear, I would have spared you this—if I could.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She answered him then, contempt in her voice, no faintest shadow of fear -in her brave young eyes. “I don’t believe it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t believe it—at first. But the proof,”—he went to the desk and -laid one hand sorrowfully on the big buff book—“well, it’s too strong -to be denied. You shall see it yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will not look. I would not believe it if Hugh told me himself.” She -turned quietly and left him, and he dared not stay her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he heard her sob as she passed along the hall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the sound his white face quivered and he crouched down in a chair and -laid his tired face on the table. He sat so for a long time—perfectly -still. Presently a wet bead of something salt lay in the heart of the -rose lotus flower.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a fashion plate!” Angela Hilary exclaimed as she came across her -ornate little morning room to greet her guest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham smiled amiably. No one dressed more carefully than he, and he had -no mock shyness about having it noted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t look especially dowdy yourself,” he returned, as he took in -his hand one of her proffered hands and eleven of her rings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The visit was an unqualified success, and more than once Horace Latham -thought ruefully what an ass he had been to fight shy of so delightful a -morning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was the only guest: it goes without saying, and Latham himself had -hoped for nothing else. That he foreknew that it would be a function -strictly for two had both assuaged and augmented his maiden nervousness. -If this dominant and seductively pretty young widow was determined to -press her suit (and quite aside from Helen Bransby’s tormenting -prompting he had an odd, fluttering feeling that it was a suit, and not -to be side-tracked easily), her opportunities to do so would be -tenfolded under her own roof—and they alone. On the other hand, he -thought that he could manage himself better, and far more smoothly, safe -from the disconcerting flicker of Helen’s mocking eyes, and the not -improbable comments, aside and otherwise, of her impish tongue. And, if -it came to such stress of issue between them (himself and the widow) -that he had no strategical escape left short of brutality, he felt that -he would find the exercise of such brutal harshness somewhat less -abominable and repugnant when no third one was present to witness -Angela’s discomfiture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he had misjudged his lady—and soon he sensed it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Under all her flare for willfulness, and her disconcerting blend of -dainty atrocities and personal aplomb, Mrs. Hilary had sound instincts -and inherited good taste. She fluttered her skirts with some rumpus of -silken <span class='it'>frou-frou</span> (to speak in metaphor), but she never lifted them -above her ankles. Her home was her temple, she, its goddess, was chaste -as erratic, and to her half-southern blood a guest was very sacred.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave him an exquisite meal and a thoroughly good time, but she never -once made love to him or even gave him a provocative opening to make -love to her. And with admirable masculine consistency almost he felt -that had she done either or both he might have borne -it—yes—cheerfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she did not. She was grave. She was gay. She showed him her -<span class='it'>cloisonné</span> and her ivories, her etchings and her Sargent, she played to -him, and she sang a little. She flattered him, and she gave him some -rare dole of subtle petting, but she did no wooing, and seemed inclined -to brook none.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What a woman! She set him to thinking. And he thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Next to his profession, in which he was deeply absorbed—but not -narrowly so, for this dapper, good-looking man was a great physician, -and not in-the-making—Horace Latham cared more for music, and needed it -more, than he did for anything else—even pictures. All that was most -personal to him, all that was strongest and finest in him, quivered and -glowed quickest, surest, longest, at the side of a dissecting table, and -to the sound of music, violin-sweetness, harp-magic, the song of a -piano, the invocation of an organ, the lyric lure of a voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But it had to be good music. Helen played prettily, and bored him. Hugh -was everlastingly discoursing rag-time with his two first fingers, and -Latham itched to chloroform him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had never heard Mrs. Hilary attempt music. And when, after lunch, -uninvited she sat down at her piano he winced.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She played wonderfully. What a surprising woman! She played Greig to him -and Chopin, and then she sang just twice: “Oft in the Stilly Night”—his -mother had sung that to him in the dear long-ago, and then a quaint -pathetic darky melody that he had never heard before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! please,” he begged as she rose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No more—to-day,” she told him, “enough is better than too much feast.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what a feast!” he said sincerely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you like Stephen Pryde?” she demanded abruptly, closing the piano.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve known him since he was a child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She accepted the evasion, or rather, to be more exact, spared him -putting its admission into cruder wording.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—you’re wrong. You’re all wrong. I like him. No one else does, -except Hugh, and Hugh doesn’t count. But I do: and I like Stephen Pryde -immensely.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You certainly do count, very much,” Latham told her emphatically. And -she did not contradict him by so much as a gesture of her ring-covered -hands or a lift of the straight black eyebrows. “Why doesn’t Hugh -count?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because he likes every one. The people who like every one never do -count. It is silly. It’s too silly. Now, Stephen Pryde does no such -thing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” agreed Latham, “he does not; and certainly ‘silly’ is the last -word I should employ to describe him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Silly!” Angela said with high scorn. “There isn’t a silly hair on his -head. He’s a genius—and he’s hungry—oh! so hungry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Geniuses usually are,” Latham interrupted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela ignored this as it deserved, and he himself thought it feeble and -regretted it as soon as he had perpetrated it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s a genius—and his uncle throttles it. Now, I want you to make -Richard Bransby behave—you and Helen. You can, you two; together you -can do anything with him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Mrs. Hilary, please listen to me,” the physician was genuinely -alarmed, “on no account must Mr. Bransby be bothered or -irritated—positively <span class='it'>on none</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She studied him for a moment. “So,” she said slowly—“as ill as -that—poor Helen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not say, “Poor Mr. Bransby,” and Latham liked her for the nice -justice of her differentiation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And that’s why you stay here so much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham made no reply—and she seemed to expect none. She had affirmed; -she had asked no question. Really she had some very satisfactory -points—most satisfactory!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she gave a surprising little cry. “Oh! I am so sorry—so sorry for -Helen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope,” the doctor began, but she paid no attention to him whatever.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you remember?—Wah-No-Tee told me. How wonderful! How stupid of -me not to have understood! Oh! I must ’phone for another appointment -to-morrow. I mustn’t forget,” and she made a dash for her engagement -book, and began to scribble something in it. As she wrote she said to -him over her shoulder, “Won’t Helen look just too lovely in mourning?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What a woman! He gazed at her speechless. What would the incalculable -creature say next—what do?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What she did was to move a stool near to his chair, and seat herself. -What she said was, “Well—then—of course—that makes a difference. Let -me see—yes—I have it—I’ll lend Stephen the money—lots of money; I -can, you know, just as easy as not.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lend Stephen the money!” Latham said dumb-foundedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—of course,” Angela added impatiently; “Stephen Pryde wouldn’t -borrow money of me—of course not. That’s where you come in.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! where I come in——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, of course, don’t you see——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I certainly do not.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How stupid! It’s perfectly simple. I think a blind man would see it—if -he was fair-to-middling smart. You are to lend him the money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, stupid—<span class='it'>you</span>: my money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen—don’t sit there staring and just say, ‘I! Oh! Ah!’ as if you -were trying to sing: ‘Do—re—mi—fa—sol—la.’ You are to manage -Stephen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Instead of handling Bransby,” Latham said with light sarcasm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Mrs. Hilary beamed on him approvingly. “Exactly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It occurs to me,” Latham remarked softly, “that you intend me to -renounce medicine for diplomacy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’re much the same thing—but—oh! I’ll manage it all really.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—I inferred that. Now, please, the details. To begin at the -beginning, you wish to endow Pryde with your fortune.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish to do nothing of the sort,” she said severely. “I am going to -lend him part of it; or rather invest it in him. I shall get it all back -a thousand times.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good interest!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—be quiet——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham sat in smiling silence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will do it? You must!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I begin to see. I am to lend Pryde a slice—shall we say?—of your -fortune. Now, just that I may act intelligently, may I enquire how -much?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s what you are to find out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! that’s what I am to find out——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“May I—dare I ask, what he wishes it for—or needs it—or is to have -it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To build aircraft. You ought to know that. I think you are dense -to-day, Dr. Latham.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you are very charming—to-day, Mrs. Hilary.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>And</span> you will help me? Say you will. Say it now!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am thinking——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t think. Just promise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham was minded to tell her, “Some one must think,” but he refrained, -and said instead, “We’ll talk it over at least, several times, if we -may. Yes, I’ll come soon again and talk it over, if you’ll let me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She seemed quite satisfied at that. Probably she foresaw several -<span class='it'>tête-à-tête</span> luncheons. Perhaps Latham did also.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He would have stayed to tea, but Angela did not ask him; and at last he -got up slowly. Even then she might ask him, he thought, but she did not.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she gave him a deep red rose—at his request.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Just as he was going he turned back to say, “I do know, of course, that -Pryde is obsessed about aviation, and that Bransby will have none of -it—and, between you and me, I think that Bransby is wrong—but why do -you care? Are you interested in the air?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good gracious, no. I love the earth—and indoors for choice. Give me a -good rocking-chair. I’d rather have that than the best horse that ever -was driven or ridden, though I like horses too. I’m just sheer sorry for -Stephen Pryde. I like him. And I’d just love to help him. He’ll succeed -too, I think; but that’s not the point. I want him to have his own way. -He never has—in anything. Only think, how horrid, never to have your -own way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Much you know about it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ignored that. Angela was terribly in earnest. “He is very intense. -He is strong too. And with all his strength he has desired two things -intensely. Hugh, his own brother, has thwarted him in one; Richard -Bransby in the other. One we can’t give him. The other we can. And we -are going to—you and I.” She held out her hand in “good-by,” but Latham -knew she meant it even more in compact.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was thoughtful all his way back to Deep Dale, and silent at dinner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Undressing for sleep—if sleep came—he looked at his red rose with an -odd rueful smile, and put it carefully in water.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At that moment Angela Hilary laughed softly as she let her dark hair -fall free to the white hem of her nightgown. Then she threw a kiss to -herself in the mirror.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The first thing Latham saw the next morning when he woke was a deep -crimson rose. He lay very still for a long time watching it.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XVI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Morton Grant had delivered his sorry news on Monday. Dr. Latham had -lunched with Mrs. Hilary on Wednesday.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thursday was bleak and cold, and a slow chilly rain fell all day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen and her father were alone in the library when the brothers joined -them. She felt that her father meant to “have it out” then, and she was -glad. For him and for her the tension was already too cruel. And it was -Hugh’s due to know, and to know without longer delay. Once or twice she -had felt that she herself must tell him. But the girlish lips he had -kissed refused the words and the office; and she had an added instinct -of reticence, part a reluctance to tale-bear, part a hurt, angry -determination to leave her father to do his own “dirty work.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen says you want to have a chat with me, Uncle Dick.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So—her father had sent for Hugh; had sent Stephen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Hugh,” Bransby said gently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Righto,” the boy replied. In several senses he was not “sensitive,” and -nothing of his uncle’s strain, or of Helen’s, had reached him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby turned to his daughter. “Helen, will you leave us for a little -while?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d rather stay, Daddy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d rather you didn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen met his gaze quietly, and sat down. She had been standing near the -fire when her cousins came in.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby sighed. But he saw it was useless to command her. She would not -go.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen had been looking at the books in the case. He turned sharply now -and eyed them all intently. He was “sensitive,” and keenly so where -Helen was concerned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh turned to Helen, smiling and happy: “I say, have you told him, -then, Helen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—Tuesday night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh turned to Bransby with a boyish laugh, a very slight flush of -embarrassment on his young face, love, pride and victory in his eyes. “I -suppose I am in for a wigging, eh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh,” Helen broke in, “Daddy has refused his consent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh took a sharp step forward and threw up his head. “Refused his -consent? Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gestured towards her father. <span class='it'>She</span> could not say it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, sir?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby answered him sadly: “Don’t you know, Hugh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, sir. Of course I know I am not good enough for her—who could be? -But you know I love her very dearly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh,” Bransby said more sorrowfully and sternly, “didn’t you realize -that some day you were certain to be found out?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde started, but controlled himself instantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh gazed at his uncle blankly. “Found out? What in the world—I don’t -know what you mean, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can’t you think why Grant came here on Monday?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. How could I?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why did he come, sir?” Stephen interposed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A shortage has been discovered in the accounts at the office.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A shortage in our accounts?” Stephen spoke incredulously. “Impossible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m most awfully sorry, sir,” Hugh said sympathetically, taking a step -nearer his uncle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Some one has stolen ten thousand pounds.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who?” Stephen asked quickly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The money was taken from the African trading account.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From the African trading account?” Stephen echoed. “But that’s -impossible—Hugh has always had charge of that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know,” Bransby said dully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Uncle Dick,” Hugh cried, suddenly realizing that he was being -accused—“Uncle Dick, you don’t mean that you think that I——” The -passionate voice choked and almost broke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen stopped him. “Quiet, Hugh; of course he can’t mean anything so -absurd as that. Besides, you’ve not been at the office for months.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen threw toward Stephen a look full of gratefulness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But her father said despairingly, “The money was taken while he was -still at the office.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do you know that, sir?” Stephen spoke almost sternly to his uncle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the older man did not resent that. “Certain alterations were made in -the ledger during the time he had charge of it,” he explained drearily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh broke in hotly, “I know nothing of them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course not,” his brother said cordially. “You see, sir——” turning -to Bransby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The alterations are in Hugh’s handwriting.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Impossible,” Hugh cried indignantly—contemptuously too.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen said very quietly, “I don’t believe it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can convince you.” Their uncle opened the ledger, one hand on its -pages, the other on the jade weight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen sat proudly apart, but the brothers hurried to him. Hugh threw -himself in a chair at the table where the book lay, Stephen stood behind -his brother, his hand on his shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a significant pause.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen shook his head. “It is very like,” he said slowly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby turned to another page. “And this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes, it is. It is very like too.” Stephen’s reluctance was apparent -and deep. And a hint of conviction escaped him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is no need to go further,” Bransby said wearily. “These were made -when the money was taken.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh sat gazing at the open ledger in bewilderment. “It—it,” he -stammered—“it seems to be my handwriting—but”—he was not stammering -now—“I swear I never wrote it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I believe you, Hugh,” Stephen said simply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby said sternly—but not altogether without a subcurrent of hope in -his tired voice, “Besides you, only Stephen and Grant had access to that -ledger. Will you accuse either of them of making these alterations?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh laughed. “Of course not. Old Stephen and Grant—why, you know, sir, -that that’s absurd. But what have I ever done that you should think me -capable of being a thief?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The old man shook his head. But Stephen answered, his hand on Hugh’s -shoulder, “Nothing, Hugh, nothing! You’ve known my brother always, -sir”—turning to their uncle, speaking with passionate earnestness. “You -<span class='it'>know</span> he’s not a thief. If he has been a bit wild—it was only the -wildness of youth.” There was anxious entreaty in face and in voice, and -the face was very white and drawn. Of the four Stephen Pryde -unmistakably was not suffering the least.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Bransby was despairingly relentless now. “While he was at the office -he was gambling—he borrowed from money-lenders.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It isn’t true,” cried Stephen hotly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby swung to his younger nephew. “Is it true?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh!” the elder brother said in quick horror.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I won enough to clear myself, and that’s why I——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh,” Stephen’s voice broke, “I wouldn’t have believed it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh turned on his brother in dismay: “Stephen! you don’t mean that -<span class='it'>you</span> think——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why didn’t you tell me you were in trouble?” Pryde said sorrowfully. “I -would have helped you, if I could.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I wasn’t in trouble,” the boy protested impatiently. “I tell you -I’m innocent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a gesture of infinite sadness and his face quivering Stephen Pryde -laid his hand on Hugh’s shoulder. “Hugh,” he said, and now his voice -broke as a mother’s might have broken, “Hugh, I am your brother—I love -you—can’t you trust me?” he pleaded. “Even now we may find a way out of -this, if you will only tell the truth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I have told the truth,” Hugh asserted helplessly. His voice broke, -too, as he said it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle and they exchanged a slow look—a look -of mutual sorrow and despair. Hugh saw the look, shrugged his shoulders -and crossed to Helen’s chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen, you don’t believe this, do you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen turned and watched them intently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl smiled. “No, Hugh.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank you, dear.” And he smiled back at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I would give a great deal not to believe it, Hugh”—there was entreaty -in Bransby’s voice, if not in his words, almost too a slight something -of apology—“but the evidence is all against you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh had grown angry a few moments ago, but at Helen’s smile all his -anger had died, and even the very possibility of anger. And he answered -Bransby as sadly and as gently as the older man himself had spoken, “I -realize that, sir; but there must be some way to prove my innocence—and -I’ll find it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And in the meantime?” Bransby demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In the meantime,” his nephew echoed—“oh—yes—what do you want me to -do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The right thing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen sprang to her feet—but quietly, and even yet she said nothing. Of -them all she was the least disturbed. But perhaps she was also the most -intent. Hers was a watching brief. She held it splendidly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The right thing?” Hugh asked, puzzled but fearful.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must tell Helen that no marriage can take place between -you—unless—until you have cleared yourself of this—this suspicion.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen protested. “But, sir—” He was watching and listening almost as -sharply as the girl was; but for the life of him he could not tell -whether or not his uncle had indeed given up all hope. At the elder’s -last words he had winced—for some reason.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen looked only at Hugh now. “No, Hugh, no,” she cried proudly—and -then at the look on his face, “No—no,” she pled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh Pryde’s face was the grimmest there now. But he answered her -tenderly. “He’s right, dear. It can’t take place until I have cleared -myself. Oh, don’t look startled like that. Of course it can’t. But I’ll -do that. Helen, listen, somehow I’ll do that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” she almost sobbed, both hands groping for his—and finding -them—“but, my dear——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby broke in, and, to hide his own rising and threatening emotion, -more harshly than he felt: “And until then you must not see each other.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a moment Hugh held her hands to his face—and then he put them away -from him and said, smiling sadly but confidently, and speaking to her -and not to her father, answering the cry in her eyes, the rebellion in -the poise of her head, “No—until then we must not see each other.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She drew herself up, almost to his own height, and laid her arms about -his neck, folding and holding him. “I can’t let you go from me like -this, Hugh, I can’t let you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde watched them grimly—torture in his eyes; but Bransby -turned his eyes away, and saw nothing, unless he saw the green and rose -bauble he held and handled nervously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Very gently Hugh Pryde took her arms from his neck, and half led, half -pushed her to the door. “You must.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned back to him with outstretched arms. “Oh, Hugh, Hugh,” she -begged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still he smiled at her, and shook his head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a moment longer she pleaded with him—mutely; then, with a little -hurt cry, she ran from the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh stood looking after her sadly until Stephen spoke. “Hugh, my boy, -be frank with me. Let me help you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At that the younger grew petulant, and answered shortly, “There’s -nothing to be frank about.” Then his irritation passed as quickly as it -had come. “Oh! why won’t you believe that I never did this thing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen hung his head sadly. But Bransby was wavering. “Hugh,” he said, -“if you can prove yourself innocent, no one will be happier than I—but -until you do——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I understand, sir. But—oh—I say—what about—what about -my—commission?” His face twitched, and he could scarcely control -himself to utter the last word with some show of calmness. He was very -young—and very driven.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will have to relinquish that,” Bransby replied pityingly. “You can -leave the matter in my hands—my boy. I will arrange it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh could hardly speak. But he managed. “Very good, sir. Then I—may -go?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby could not look at him. “You will leave here to-night?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“At once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That would be best.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-by,” Hugh said abruptly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen held out his hand, and after an instant Hugh clasped it. He -turned to his uncle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby rose stiffly from his chair. He was trembling. Neither seemed -able to speak. For a bad moment neither moved. Then Richard Bransby held -out—both hands. Hugh flushed, then paled, and took the proffered hands -in his. There was pride as well as regret in his gesture, affection even -more than protest. Then without a word—a thick sound in his throat was -not a syllable—with no other look—he went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby caught at the back of his chair. He motioned Stephen to follow -Hugh. “See that he has money—enough,” he said hoarsely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen nodded and left him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby looked about the silent room helplessly. “My poor -Helen,” he said presently—“Violet! Violet!”—but he pulled himself -together and moved towards the bookcase. Perhaps he could find -distraction there.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sat down again, the volume he had selected on his knee, and opened it -at random, turning the pages idly—one hand on the jade joss, that as it -lay on the table; seemed to blink in the firelight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The printed words evaded him. To focus his troubled mind he began to -read aloud softly:—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘There was a beggar in the street, when I went down; and as I turned -my head towards the window, thinking of her calm seraphic eyes, he made -me start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning: “Blind! -Blind! Blind!”’”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XVII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby was breaking. He could not bear much more, and he knew -it. He had felt very faint at lunch. Latham would have driven him to his -bed, but Latham had been again lunching at Mrs. Hilary’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now he was alone in the library. The room seemed to his tired, tortured -mind haunted by Hugh and by trouble.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked up at the clock. The boy had been gone just twenty-four hours. -Where had he gone? What was he doing? Violet’s boy!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sick man felt alone and deserted. Helen had scarcely spoken to him -all day. Indeed she had stayed in her room until nearly dinner-time, and -at dinner she and Latham had almost confined their chat to each other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He picked up “David Copperfield,” opened it at random—then shook his -head and laid it down, still open. He’d read presently; he could not -now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A step at the door was welcome. It was Stephen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby began abruptly: “Last night, when you saw him off—he protested -his innocence to the last?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, sir. Oh! yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! why didn’t he tell me the truth. If he had confessed, I could have -found it in my heart to forgive him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen sighed, and sat down near his uncle. “I told him that. I begged -him to throw himself on your mercy. But he wouldn’t even listen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby’s face changed suddenly. “You told him that—that you were sure -I’d forgive it, let it pass even, and he still persisted that he was -innocent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Absolutely.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen,” Bransby said anxiously, rising in his agitation and looking -down on the other almost beseechingly, “have you thought—thought that -we may be mistaken?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mistaken? In what way?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About Hugh, of course. When he was here, even though everything was -against him, his attitude was that of an innocent man. Then his refusal -to you to confess even when mercy—forgiveness—were promised—that, -too, is the action of an innocent man.” Bransby spoke more in entreaty -for confirmation than in his usual tone of conviction and personal -decision.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen responded musingly, “Yes—it is. And I believe he is innocent. I -can’t quite believe that he isn’t, at least—only——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde hesitated—and then reluctantly, “It was such a shock to have -discovered that he deceived us about his gambling. I had never thought -Hugh deceitful. He always seemed so frank—so open—as he seemed last -night in this room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Bransby groaned. “Yes—he did deceive us about his gambling—and -he knew it was contrary to my orders—how I hated it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that doesn’t <span class='it'>prove</span>,” the nephew said promptly, “that he did this -other thing” (his uncle looked up quickly, gratefully). “Of course, it’s -true that gambling sometimes tempts men to steal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It always does.” Bransby lapsed back into despair, and shrank back into -his chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But Hugh seemed so innocent,” Stephen added reflectively.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He seemed innocent, too, when he was gambling,” the other retorted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—that’s true.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I loved him—I trusted him—I—he was always my favorite. Even now, -I’m not treating you fairly. You must be suffering horribly—my poor -Stephen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am suffering, sir. On your account, on my own, on poor misguided -Hugh’s, I loved him too, I always shall love him; but I am suffering -more, a thousand times more, for—Helen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby gave him a startled look. He had spoken her name in a tone -unmistakable. “Yes, Uncle Dick, it’s just that. It has always been that. -It will never be anything else, any other way than that with me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his surprise Bransby picked up his joss and put it down again several -times, beating with it a nervous tattoo on the table. “Does she know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen? No. It would only have hurt her to know. It has always been Hugh -with her. But now——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby checked him—not unkindly—he sensed something of what it must -have cost him, this unanswered affection; he knew Stephen’s nature ran -deep and keen—but he spoke decidedly, feeling, too, that there was -something callous, almost something of treachery, in a brother who could -hint at hope so quick on a brother’s ruin, and Helen’s heart newly hurt -and raw. “Put it out of your mind, Stephen. Helen will never change; -least of all now. The women of our family are constant forever. Now we -must act—you and I. We must arrange that there shall be no scandal -about Hugh’s disappearance. We must protect his name—on Helen’s -account—and the firm’s. About his commission—almost I regret saying he -must throw it up. It might—it might have been the way out. Have you any -idea where he is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“None.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—then—we must act at once. Already I’ve let a day slip—I—I’m -not well—I said I’d attend to it. We’ll attend to it now. I don’t think -there’ll be any trouble about that. Oh! he ought to have written his -resignation, though, before he went. My fault—my fault. However, I’ll -do it now. No! I can’t.” He held out the hand with the Chinese curio in -it. The hand was trembling so that the jade thing winked and rainbowed -in the light of the fire. “You must write it. That will do. Sit there -and do it now. Make it brief and formal as possible. I’ll go to town -to-morrow and see his Colonel myself, if necessary—Latham willing or -no.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen crossed to the writing-table thoughtfully. He began to -write—Bransby walking about still carrying the paper-weight -absent-mindedly—and thinking aloud as he moved. “His leave isn’t up for -another three days. Yes—I think that gives us time. Yes—we’ll get into -touch with his Colonel to-morrow and find out just how to proceed. I -hope I shan’t have to tell the real reason.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will this do?” Pryde had finished, and passed his uncle the sheet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby glanced at it carelessly at first. “Yes, yes.” He held it -towards Pryde—then something prompted—a strong impulse—he drew it -back, looked at it, then he fell to studying it. A terrible change -passed over his face. He gazed at the paper in amazement, then looked in -horror from it to the man who had written it—then back at the note, -crimson flooding his neck, a gray shadow darkening his rigid face. He -raised his haggard eyes and stared at Stephen thunderstruck.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen felt the fierce eyes, and looked up. “Why—why—what is it, -sir?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But even as he spoke Stephen Pryde knew—as Bransby himself had learned -in a flash—one of those terrible forked flashes of illumination that -come to most of us once in life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bransby answered slowly, coldly, carefully. “You have signed Hugh’s name -to this, and it is Hugh’s handwriting. If I didn’t <span class='it'>know</span> otherwise, I -would have sworn he wrote it himself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen lost his head. His hand shook, and his tongue. “That’s odd,” he -stammered with a sick laugh, “I—I didn’t realize.” He put his hand out -for the letter—Bransby drew it back, looking him relentlessly in the -eyes. The brain that had made and controlled one of the greatest -businesses ever launched, and complicated in its immense ramifications, -was working now at lightning speed, rapier-sharp, sledge hammer in -force, quick, clear and sure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was no accident. You can’t patch it up that way—or in any—I <span class='it'>see</span>. -You have practiced his handwriting. You have done this before.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen gathered himself together feebly. “Of what do you accuse me?” he -fumbled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell me the truth—I must know the truth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Stephen added blunder to blunder. He pointed to the ledger. “I know -nothing of it—nothing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re lying.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Uncle Dick!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are lying, Stephen Pryde—it’s as plain on your face as the truth -was on Hugh’s—and, God forgive me, I wouldn’t believe him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t do it, I tell you!” Stephen was blustering fiercely now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You had access to that ledger as well as Hugh. You can’t deny the -damnable evidence of this you’ve just written before my eyes. Oh! how -blind I’ve been—blind—blind! Stephen,” he panted in his fury, “unless -you tell me the truth now, by the mother that bore you, I’ll show you no -mercy—none.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a space Stephen stared at him, fascinated—caught. All at once his -courage quite went, and he sagged down in his chair, crumpled and -beaten. “I did it,” he said hoarsely. “I had to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You made the alteration in the ledger after Hugh left?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My God! and you wrote the anonymous letter to Grant, too! Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wanted power—dominion—they are all that make life worth living. You -drove me to it. You never cared for me—not as you did for Hugh—you -thwarted me always. I wanted power, I tell you. I would have given it to -you—such power as you never dreamed of—such power as few men ever have -had. But you always stood in my way. You kept me a subordinate—and I -hated it. You threw Helen and Hugh together, and I could have killed -you. When the war broke out I saw my chance. I meant to take for myself -the place I could have won for you—and would have won—for you—and for -her—but I needed money—so—I speculated—and lost.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then you put the crime on your brother’s shoulder. You would have -ruined his life—destroyed his happiness.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What does the life and happiness of any one matter, if they stand in -the way? Hugh! Hugh meant nothing to the world—Hugh’s a fool. I could -have done great things—I could have given England the Air—The Air.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Bransby said piteously. “Yes, I believed in you. I have left the -control of my business to you—after my death. Thank God for -to-morrow—to alter that, to——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen shrugged an insolent shoulder, and said coldly—he was cool -enough now, “Well, what are you going to do—with me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The answer was ready. “Take up that pen again—write—and see to it that -the handwriting’s your own.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde glowered at Bransby with rebel eyes, and then—almost as if -hypnotized—did as he was told—writing mechanically, his face -twitching, but his hand moving slowly, to Richard Bransby’s slow -dictation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The dictation was relentless: “I confess that I stole”—the quivering -face of the younger man looked up for an instant, but Bransby did not -meet the look (perhaps he, too, was suffering), his eyes were on space, -his fingers lifting and falling on his carved toy. Stephen looked up, -but his pen moved mechanically on—“ten thousand pounds from my uncle, -Richard Bransby—and I forged my brother Hugh’s handwriting in the -ledger.” Pryde laid down the pen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sign it.”—He did.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Date it.”—He did.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Give it to me.” The hand that took the paper shook more than the hand -that had written it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know where your brother has gone? Have a care that you tell me -the truth from this on—it’s your only chance. Do you know where he has -gone?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go find him—if you hope for mercy. Bring him back here by to-morrow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen rose with a shrug. For an evil moment Richard Bransby’s life was -in peril. Stephen stood behind him, murder hot in his heart, insane in -his eyes, and clenched in his fist: all the hurt and the thwart of years -joined with the rage and dilemma of the moment, ready to spring, to -avenge and to kill. Bransby saw nothing—not even the jade he still -fingered. Then with a gesture of scorn he tore into bits the note of -resignation he had made Stephen write. “I’ll see the Colonel myself. -That will be best,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At that instant, Bransby’s head bowed, Pryde’s hand still raised, Mrs. -Leavitt’s voice rose in the hall, fussed and querulous, “Who left this -here? Barker!” Bransby did not hear her, but Pryde did. His arm fell to -his side, he forced a mask of calm to his face, and then without a word -he went. He did not even look towards his uncle again; but at the door -he turned and looked bitterly, hungrily, at the picture over the -fireplace. Poor Stephen!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the hall Caroline Leavitt hailed him. “Not going out, Stephen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; I’ve to run up to London for Uncle Dick,” he told her lightly. She -exclaimed at the hour, followed him with sundry advice about a rug and a -warmer coat, and he answered her cordially. Perhaps he was not -ungrateful for so much creature kindliness, such small dole of -mothering—just then.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Presently the front door slammed. “Dear me, that’s not like Stephen,” -she said aloud.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby heard nothing. For a little he sat lost in his own -bitter thoughts. Then he read Stephen’s confession over with scrupulous -care. “Blind—Blind—Blind,” he murmured as he folded it. Ah! that -terrible faintness was coming on again. He dropped the paper; it fell on -the still open pages of “David Copperfield.” For once the book astray -had escaped Caroline’s eye. This was torture. Could he get to the -brandy? Where was Latham? Helen—he wanted Helen. He thought he was very -ill. Helen must know the truth—about Hugh—and they must put the proof -in safe keeping before—before anything happened to him. Helen’s -happiness—yes, he must secure that—and Hugh—Hugh whom he had so -wronged—he must atone to Hugh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his effort to conquer his spasm he caught hold of the volume of -Dickens, and it closed in his convulsive fingers. Helen—he must get to -Helen. He staggered to his feet, the book forgotten on the table, the -paper-weight forgotten too, but still gripped close in one unconscious -hand. For a space he stood swaying—then he contrived to turn, and -staggered to the door, calling, “Helen—Helen!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His voice rang through the house with the far-carrying of fright and -despair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Barker reached him first, and began to cry and moan hysterically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Caroline Leavitt pushed her aside. “He has fainted. Call Dr. Latham.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Latham had heard Bransby’s cry, and so, too, had Helen. They came -together from the billiard room hurriedly. The girl threw herself down -by her father, all the bitterness gone, only the old love and gratitude -left. Latham knelt by him, too, and after a touch of Bransby’s hand, a -look at his face, said, “Mrs. Leavitt—you and Miss Bransby wait in the -library.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I want to stay here,” Helen insisted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must do as I say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come, dear,” and Caroline led her away, and put her into her father’s -chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor Daddy—poor Daddy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He will be all right in a few moments,” the older woman said feebly. -But Helen was not attending to her. Caroline stood looking pitifully at -the shaken girl, and then turned away sadly. The disorder of the table -caught her eye. Not thinking, not caring now, but obeying the habit of -her lifetime, she took up the volume of “David Copperfield,” and carried -it to the bookcase. As she replaced it on its shelf Latham came in. He -went to Helen and laid his hand on her shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Daddy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The physician met her eyes pityingly. He had no healing—for her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a shudder the girl rose and turned to the hall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen,” Mrs. Leavitt pled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He would want me near him,” the girl said quite calmly. And the -physician neither stayed nor followed her; and he motioned Mrs. Leavitt -to do neither.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Three days later they laid him down by his wife.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Until then Helen scarcely left him. And not once did her pitiful young -calm break or waver.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen came from London. Latham’s telephone message had reached Pont -Street before Pryde had.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No word came of Hugh, no word or sign from him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They laid him in his coffin almost as they found him. Helen insisted -that it be so. Much that when dead we usually owe to strange hands, to -professional kindliness, the girl, who had not seen death before, did -for this dead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The blackdraped trestle, the casket on it, was placed in the room where -the tragedy that had killed him had fallen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lay as if he slept, all the pain and doubt gone from his still face. -Only one flower was with him—just one in his hand. And in the other -hand he still held the odd Chinese carving. Helen had intended the -costly trifle he had so affected—so often handled—it seemed almost a -part of him—to remain with him. But, at last, something, some new -vagary of Grief’s many piteous, puzzling vagaries, impelled her to take -it from him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She scarcely left him all the hours he lay in his favorite room and took -there his last homekeeping, there where he had lived so much of his -life, done so much of his thinking, welcomed such few friends as he -valued, read again and again the books he liked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rested with Helen’s picture, radiant, gay-clad, smiling down on him -serene and immovable, and Helen black-clad, pallid, almost as -quiet,—moving only to do him some new little service, to give him still -one more caress.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was their last tryst—kept tenderly in the old room where they had -kept so many. Such trysts are not for chronicling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the last—alone for the “good-by” that must be given—but never to be -quite ended or done, live she as long as she may—Helen unclenched the -cold—oh! so cold—fingers, and drew away the bit of jade.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sobbing—she had scarcely cried until now—she carried it to the -writing-table, and put it just where it had always stood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want it, Daddy,” she said, smiling down wet-eyed on the still face. -“You don’t know how much you handled it. I seem always to have seen it -in your hand. No one shall touch it again but me—just yours and mine, -Daddy—our little jade doll, in a pink cradle. Stay there!” she told the -joss, and then sobbing, but pressing back her tears, and wiping them -away when they <span class='it'>would</span> come, that her sight might be clear for its last -loving of that dear, dead face, she bent over the coffin, spending their -last hour together, saying—good-by.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Daddy—my Daddy——” The sobs came then, long and louder. Latham, -watching in the hall, heard them, but he did not go to the girl; nor let -any one else do so.</p> - -<hr class='tbk104'/> - -<div><h1 class='nobreak'><a id='BOOKIII'></a>BOOK III</h1></div> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>THE QUEST</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XIX</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>The spring waxed into radiant molten summer, mocking with its lush of -flower-life, its trill of bird-voice, its downpouring of sunshine, the -agony of the nations, and the pitiful grief in one English girl’s -inconsolable heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Other girls lost their lovers. Never a home in England but held some -bereavement now, never a heart in Christendom but nursed some ache. But -most of the sorrow and suffering was ennobled and blazoned. Other girls -walked proud with their memories—<span class='it'>his</span> D.S.O. pinned in their black, -the ribbon of <span class='it'>his</span> Military Cross worn on their heart, tiny wings of -tinsel, of gold, or of diamonds rising and falling with their breath, a -regimental badge pinning their lace, a sailor’s button warm at a soft -white throat—telling of a “boy” sleeping cold, unafraid in the North -Sea, or (proudest of all these) a new wedding-ring under a little black -glove—and, perhaps——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Other girls packed weekly boxes for Ruhleben, or walked the London -streets and the Sussex lanes with the man on whose arm they had used to -lean leaning on theirs, blinded, a leg gone, or trembling still from -shell-shock, a face mutilated, broken and scarred in body, -nerve-wrecked, but <span class='it'>hers</span>, hers to have and to hold, to love and to -mother, to lean on her love, to respond to her shy wooing, to beget her -children; to show the world, and God, how English women love.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she—Helen—was alone. No field-card for her—no last kiss at -Victoria, no trophy, no hope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh had been posted as a deserter. It was some hideous mistake, Helen -knew that, but the world did not know. Hugh! Hugh dishonored, despised. -She knew that he had not deserted. But what had happened? Had he been -killed? Had his mind broken? That he had not taken his own life—at -least not knowingly—that she knew. But what, what, then, had happened? -He had disappeared from her, as from every one else—no trace—not a -clue. Where was he? How was he? Did he live? Not a word came—not a -whisper—not a hint. And his name was branded. <span class='it'>Her</span> name—the name she -had dreamed to wear in bridal white and in motherhood. “Mrs. Hugh -Pryde”—“Helen Pryde”—how often she had written those, alone in her -room—as girls will. “Mrs. Hugh Pryde,” she had liked it the better of -the two, and sometimes she had held it to her dimpling, flushed face -before she had burned it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For what the world thought, for what the world said, she held her young -head but the higher, and went among men but the more proudly. But under -her pride and her scorn her heart ached until she felt old and -palsied—and some days she looked it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She put pictures of Hugh about her rooms conspicuously. Caroline Leavitt -and Stephen both wished she had not, but neither commented on it; -neither dared. Angela Hilary loved her for it as she had not done -before. And for it Horace Latham formed a far higher estimate of her -than he had in her happier girl-days.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Spring grew to summer, summer sickened to winter. Still Hugh did not -come, or send even a word. The wind whined and sneered in the leafless -trees, rattling their naked branches. The snow lay cold on the ground.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A few days after her father’s funeral, Helen left Deep Dale—forever, -she thought. But such servants as the war had left them there, she -retained there, and there she established her “Aunt Caroline.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Leavitt had been well enough pleased to stay as vicereine at Deep -Dale. She would have preferred to come and go with Helen; Curzon Street -had its points, but Helen preferred to be alone and said so simply, -brooking no dispute. If the girl had been willful before, she was -adamant now. Even Stephen found it not easy to suggest or to argue, and -never once when he did carried his point.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She locked up the library herself, and forbade that any should enter it -in her absence. She pocketed her father’s keys, and scarcely troubled to -reply to the suggestion that they might be needed by her cousin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had lived alone—except for her servants—in Curzon Street. At that -Caroline Leavitt had protested—“so young a girl without even a figure -head of a chaperon will be misunderstood”—and as much more along the -same lines of social rectitude and prudence as Helen would tolerate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen’s toleration was brief. “My mourning is chaperon enough,” she said -curtly, “and if it isn’t, it is all I shall ever have. I wish to be -alone. I intend to be.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No one to be with you at all—to take care of you,” Stephen had -contributed once to Mrs. Leavitt’s urgency.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No one at all, until Hugh comes home to take care of me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde bit his lip angrily, and said no more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen was her own mistress absolutely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A will disposing of so large a fortune had not often been briefer than -Richard Bransby’s, and no will had ever been clearer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were a few minor bequests. Caroline Leavitt was provided for -handsomely, and so also were Stephen and Hugh. (The will had been signed -in 1911.) To Stephen had been left the management of the vast business. -Everything else—and it was more than nine-tenths of the immense -estate—was Helen’s, absolutely, without condition or control. And even -Stephen’s management was subject to her veto, even the legacies to -others subject to her approval. She had approved, of course, at once, -and the legacies were now irrevocable. But Stephen’s dictatorship she -could terminate a year from the day she expressed and recorded her -desire to do so, and in the meantime she could greatly curtail it. -Bransby had left her heir to an autocracy. And already, in several small -ways, her rule had been autocratic. Always willful, her sorrow had -hardened her, and Stephen knew that when their wills clashed, hers would -be maintained, no matter at what cost to him. Where she was indifferent, -he could have his way absolutely. Where she was interested, he could -have no part of it, unless it luckily chanced to be identical with hers. -He understood, and he chafed. But also he was very careful.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lived still in Pont Street, in the bachelor rooms he and Hugh had had -since their ’Varsity days; for Bransby had liked to have Helen to -himself often.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen spent as much time with his cousin as she would let him, and he -had from the day of his uncle’s death. And he “looked after” her as much -as she would brook.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Vast as the Bransby fortune had been, even in this short time of his -stewardship he had increased it by leaps and bounds. A great fortune a -year ago, now it was one of the largest, if not the largest, of the -war-fortunes. They still built ships and sailed them. He had suggested -nothing less to Helen—he had not dared. But they dealt in aircraft too. -Stephen had suggested that at a favorable moment, and she had conceded -it listlessly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Air was still his element, and its conquest his desire. His own room at -Pont Street was now, as it had been all along, and as every nook of his -very own when a boy had been, an ordered-litter of aeroplane models, -aerodrome plans, “parts,” schemes, dreams sketched out, estimates, -schedules, inventions tried and untried, lame and perfected. They knew -him at the Patent Office, and at least one of his own contrivances was -known and flown in both hemispheres.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For Helen’s love he still waited, hungry and denied. But his dreams of -the air were fast coming true.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen had no comrades in these drear days, and scarcely kept up an -acquaintance. Angela Hilary had refused to be “shunted,” as she termed -it, and she and Horace Latham gained Helen’s odd half-hours oftener than -any one else did. The girl had always “enjoyed” Angela, and when sorrow -came, gifting her with some of its own wonderful clairvoyance, she had -quickly sensed the worth and the tenderness of the persistent woman. And -Dr. Latham was secure in her interest and liking, because she associated -him closely with her father, and remembered warmly his tact and kindness -in the first hours of her bereavement. And, sorry as her own plight was, -and dreary as her daily life, she could not be altogether dull to the -pretty contrivances and the nice management of the older girl’s -love-affair. Grief itself could but find some amusement and take some -warmth from Angela’s brilliant, deft handling of that difficult matter. -It would have made a colder onlooker than Helen tingle—and sometimes -gasp. It certainly made Latham tingle, and not infrequently gasp.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XX</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Begun half in fun, the pretty widow’s advance towards the physician had -grown a little out of her own entire control, and she found herself in -some danger of being hoist by her own petard. Easy enough she found it -to handle the man—she had handled men from her cradle—but she found -her own wild heart not quite so manageable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen half expected Angela to make the proposal which Latham, the girl -felt sure, never would. She was sure that Angela was in deadly earnest -now, and she was confident that in love, as in frolic, Angela would -stick at nothing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Angela was in deadly earnest now—the deadliest. But she had no -intention of proposing to Horace. She knew a trick worth ten of that.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Wah-No-Tee still stood to Mrs. Hilary for friend, philosopher and guide, -but, believed in as staunchly as ever, she was sought rather less -frequently, and on the affair-Latham the disembodied spirit, who was -also “quite a lady,” was consulted not at all. For the subjugation of -the physician Angela Hilary besought no sibyl, bought no love-philter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She lived, when in London, in a tiny private hotel, just off Bond -Street, and as expensive as it was small. In her sitting-room there -Latham and she were lounging close to the log-heaped fire one dark -December day, exploiting an afternoon tea transatlantically -heterogeneous.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know, I don’t approve of this at all,” the medico said, shaking his -head at hot muffins heavy with butter and whipped cream, his hand -hovering undecidedly over toasted marshmallows and a saline liaison of -popcorn and peanuts. “We deserve to be very ill, both of us—and my -country is at war, and the <span class='it'>Morning Post</span> says——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Food-shortage! Eat less bread!” Angela gurgled, burying her white teeth -in a very red peach. “Well, there’s no bread here, not a crust. And the -children in the East End and badly wounded Tommies might not thrive on -this fare of mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They might not,” the physician said cordially. “Yes, please, I will -have two lumps and cream: my constitution requires it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As she poured his tea, all her rings flashing in the fire-flicker, her -face, usually so white, just flushed with rose from the flecks of the -flames, he fell to watching her silently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Talk!” she commanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled, and said nothing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, a penny, then, for your thoughts, Mr. Man, if you want to be -bribed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wonder if I dare.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be bribed? What nonsense.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It takes a great deal of courage sometimes. But that was not what I -meant.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did you mean?—if you meant anything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! yes—I meant.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What? Hurry up!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I meant that I wondered if I dared tell you my thoughts—what I was -thinking just then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“H’m,” was all the help she vouchsafed him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you be angry?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very like—how can I tell?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shall I plunge, and find out?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As you like. But I don’t mind making it six-pence.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The fee nerves me. I was wishing I knew, and could ask without -impertinence, something about your first marriage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My first marriage indeed!” she cried indignantly. “How often are you -pleased to imagine I have been married? I’ve only been married once, I’d -have you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham flushed hotly, and she tilted back in her chair and laughed at -him openly. Then the dimpling face—her dimples were -delightful—sobered, and she leaned towards the fire—brooding—her -hands clasped on her knees, her foot on the fender. “I’ll tell you, -then, as well as I can—why not? John was quite unlike any man you’ve -known. You don’t grow such men in England. It isn’t the type. He was -big, and blond and reckless—‘all wool and a yard wide.’ I loved my -husband very dearly. We American women usually do. We can, you know, for -we don’t often marry for any other reason. Why should we? Mr. Hilary was -a lawyer—a great criminal pleader. He saved more murderers than any -other one man at the Illinois bar. He was a Westerner—every bit of him. -His crying was wonderful, and oh! how he bullied his juries. He made -them obey him. He made every one obey him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You?” Latham interjected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Me! Good gracious, man, American women don’t obey. Me! I wouldn’t obey -Georgie Washington come to life and richer than Rothschild. Obey!” Only -an American voice could express such contempt, and no British pen convey -it. “But the juries obeyed him all right—as a rule! Those were good -days in Chicago. There’s no place like Chicago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So I’ve heard,” Latham admitted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But they didn’t last long. An uncle of John’s died out in California, -and left us ever so many millions.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say—that was sporting!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What was?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Leaving his money to you as well as to his nephew.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Land’s sake, but you English are funny! Of course Ira Hilary did -nothing of the sort. I don’t suppose he’d ever heard of me—though he -might if he read the Chicago papers; a dress or two of mine were usually -in on Sunday—or something I’d done. But I dare say he didn’t even know -if John had a wife. He’d gone to the Pacific coast when he was a boy, -before John was born—and he’d never been back East, or even written, -till he wrote he was dead. It’s like that in America. <span class='it'>Our</span> men are -busy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see,” Latham asserted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, you don’t. No one could who hadn’t lived there. Throw another log -on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham did, and she continued, half chatting to him, half musing: “My! -how it all comes back, talking about it. Well, he left us all that -money, left it to me as much as if he’d said so, and very much more than -he left it to John. That’s another way we have in America that you -couldn’t understand if you tried; so I wouldn’t try, if I were you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I won’t,” her guest said meekly. “Go on, please. I am interested.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, Uncle Ira died, and I made John retire.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Retire?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Give up the bar. And we traveled. I love to travel, I always have. And -now we could afford to go anywhere and do everything. Of course I’d -always had money, heaps and heaps. Papa was rich, and he left me -everything. Oh! Richard Bransby wasn’t the only pebble on that beach. -Gracious! we run to such fathers in America. But, of course, we’d had to -live on John’s money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?” she blazed at him. “Why? Why, because my money wasn’t his. He -hadn’t earned it. John Hilary never had so much as a cigar out of my -money. He dressed shockingly. I had to burn half the ties he bought. And -his hats! But he supported me, I didn’t support him. American men don’t -sponge on their wives. They wouldn’t do it. And if they would, we -wouldn’t let them—not we American women. I say, Dr. Latham, you’ve a -lot to learn about America—all Englishmen have.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go on. Teach me some more. I like learning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s not much more to tell. We were not together long, John and I. -It was like a story my father used to tease me with, when he was tired -and I teased him to tell me stories. ‘I’ll tell you a story about Jack -A’Manory, and now my story’s begun. I’ll tell you another about Jack and -his brother, and now my story’s done.’ I was eighteen, nearly, when I -was married. It was four years after that that John said good-by to his -murderers and absconders. Just a year after he died in Hong -Kong—cholera. That teased me some.” The pretty lips were quivering and -Latham saw a tear pearl on the long lashes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After a pause he said gently, “Will you ever give any one else his -place, do you think?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“John’s place? Never. No one could.” She did not add that there were -other places that a man—the right man—might make in her heart, and -that she was lonely. But the thought was clear in her mind, and it -glanced through Latham’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How long is it—since you were in Hong Kong?” he ventured presently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela Hilary dimpled and laughed. “I’ll be twenty-eight next week.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I was forty-seven last week.” And then he added earnestly, “Thank -you for telling me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I was glad to.” Neither referred to her confidence about her age, -or thought that the other did.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At that moment “Mr. Pryde” was announced. Angela welcomed him -effusively, brewed him fresh tea and plied him with molasses candy and -hot ginger-bread.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham watched her; it was always pleasant to watch this woman, -especially when plying some womanly craft, as now, but he spoke to -Stephen. “I am glad to have this chance of offering you my -congratulations, Pryde.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen raised a puzzled eyebrow. “Your congratulations?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hear that since you have become the head of the house of Bransby you -have done great things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh,” Stephen said non-committally.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They tell me that you are the big man in the Aeroplane World, and that -you are going to grow bigger. Perhaps success means nothing to you, -but——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Success means everything to me, to every man worth his salt. The people -who say it doesn’t are liars.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So, after all, you were right and Bransby was wrong.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I was right, and Uncle Dick was wrong. But as for my rising to -great heights—well—after all, it is the house of Bransby that will -reap the benefit. It was very trusting of Uncle Dick to leave me the -management of the business, but Helen is the house of Bransby.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But surely she won’t interfere with your management,” said Latham.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Angela cried, “Oh no, she must never do that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—she must never do that,” Pryde said, more to himself than to them, -stirring his tea musingly and gazing wistfully, stubbornly into the -fire. He looked up and caught Mrs. Hilary’s eye, and spoke to them both, -and more lightly. “I dare say I shall find a way to persuade her to let -me go on as I have.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Their hostess sprang up with a cry. Latham just saved her cup, and an -almonded eclair tumbled into the fire—past all saving. “Oh! it is -lovely, perfectly lovely!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?” the men both asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To fly like a bird. I used to dream I was flying when I was a child. It -was perfectly sweet. I used to dream it, too, sometimes when I first -came out and went to Germans (cotillions, you call ’em) and things every -night—oh!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps that came from your dancing,” Pryde said gallantly. Angela -danced well.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“More probably it was the midnight supper she’d eaten,” laughed Latham, -pointing a rueful professional finger at the tea-table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps it was both,” the hostess said cheerfully. “And my, it was -beautiful. But oh, we never had supper at midnight. No fear! Two or -three was nearer the hour. But such good suppers. You don’t know how to -eat over here,” she added sadly. “For one thing, you simply don’t know -how to cook a lobster—not one of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How should a lobster be cooked?” Pryde said lazily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hot—hot—hot. Or it’s good in a mayonnaise. But who ever saw a -mayonnaise in London? No one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am not greatly surprised that you dreamed at some height, if you -regularly supped off lobster, Mrs. Hilary, at three in the morning, -either frappé or sizzling hot,” Latham told her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And champagne with it,” Stephen ventured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never! I detest champagne with shellfish.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stout?” Pryde quizzed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela made a face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What, then, was the beverage? If one is permitted to ask,” Stephen -persisted meekly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cream—when I could get it. I do love cream.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The physician groaned. “I wonder,” he said severely, “that instead of -dreaming of flying you did not in reality fly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She giggled, and helped herself to a macaroon, still standing on the -hearthrug, facing them. “Oh, I knew a lovely poem once—we all had to -learn it by heart at school—probably you did too?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think it highly improbable,” Latham protested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am positive I did not,” Pryde asserted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not learn to recite ‘Darius Green and His Flying Machine’! My, you do -neglect your children in this country. You poor things! I wonder if I -can remember it and say it to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She clasped her hands behind her back and faced them with dancing eyes. -“‘Darius Green and His Flying Machine,’” she declaimed solemnly. And -very solemnly, but with now and then a punctuation point of giggle, she -recited in its entirety the absurd classic which has played no -inconspicuous part in the transatlantic curriculum. Her beautiful Creole -voice, now pathetic and velvet, now lifted as the wing of a bird in -flight, her face dimpling till even Stephen was bewitched, and Latham -could have kissed it, and might have been tempted to essay the -enterprise had only they been alone. Richard Bransby, whose fond fancy -had compared the women of his love each to some distinct flower, might -have thought her like some rich magnolia of her own South as she swayed -and postured in the gleaming firelight. But perhaps all beautiful women -are rather flower-like.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ended the performance with a shiver and sigh of elation. “Oh, isn’t -it a love of a poem? Have some more tea.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen came to see Mrs. Hilary not infrequently. She liked him -genuinely, and her liking soothed and helped him. He was terribly -restless often. Never once had he repented. He had loved Hugh, and loved -him still. He would have given a great deal to have known where he was, -and to have helped him. He would have given far more to know that the -brother would never come back—come back to thwart him of Helen—perhaps -to expose him of crime. He loved Hugh and he mourned him; but two things -to him were paramount: to make Helen his wife, and to be an “Air-King.” -One goal was in sight, the other he could not, and would not, -relinquish. And to gain these two great desires, soul-desires both, he -would hesitate at nothing, regret nothing, and least of all their cost -to any other, no matter how dear to him that other, no matter how -terrible that cost.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham left a few moments after the tragic descent of Darius into the -barnyard mud. Angela Hilary went to the door to speed her parting guest, -and gave him her hand, her right hand, of course. Latham dropped it -rather abruptly and took her left hand in his. “How many rings do you -own?” he demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dozens. I’ve not counted them for years. There’s a list somewhere.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You need two more,” he said softly—and went.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>The jade Joss had the room to himself. There was little enough light and -no fire. Gray shadows hung thick in the place, palpable and dreary. The -blinds were down and the curtains all drawn. It was late afternoon in -January—a cold, forbidding day; and the room itself, once the heart of -the house, was even colder, more ghoul-like. Only one or two thin shafts -of sickly light crept in, penetrating the gloom—but not lifting it, -intensifying it rather.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Joss looked cold, neglected and alien. The rose-colored lotus looked -pinched, gray and frozen—poor exiled pair, and here and so they had -been since a few days after Richard Bransby’s death, when Helen had left -the room, locking it behind her, and pronounced it taboo to all others.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But now a key turned in the door, creaking and stiffly, as if long -unused to its office.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the hall, Mrs. Leavitt drew back with a shiver and motioned -imperatively to Stephen to precede her. “How dark it is,” she said, and -not very bravely, following him in not ungingerly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” he answered crisply. He had not come there to talk. And, like -her, he was intensely nervous; but from a very different cause. Dead -men, and the places of their last earthly resting, meant nothing to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And cold. Stephen, light the fire while I draw the curtains. Have you -matches?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course.” He knelt at the fireplace and set a match to the gas logs. -Mrs. Leavitt drew the curtain aside and raised the blinds. The winter -sunlight came streaming through the windows, a chilled unfriendly -sunshine, but it flooded the room. Pryde looked about quickly, and the -woman did too.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was much affected. “Oh, Stephen, how this room does bring it all -back to me! It seems as if it were only yesterday that Richard was -here—poor Richard.” Then her eyes caught their old prey—dust—and -dust—dust everywhere. She pulled open a drawer under the bookshelves -and caught up a little feather duster that had always been kept there.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Stephen checked her abruptly. “Don’t touch that table—don’t touch -anything on any of the tables,” he said sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I’m sure——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—you must not. I—I promised Helen——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Promised Helen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That no one should lay hand on even one thing, no one but myself, and -that I would touch as little as possible—just to find the papers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I’m sure——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His eye fell upon the bit of jade and he pointed to it, laughing -nervously. “Especially, I had to promise her that I’d not lay a finger -on that. You remember how Uncle Dick used absent-mindedly to play with -it. And Helen declares that no one shall ever touch it again but -herself, and she only to dust it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, it needs dusting now, right enough,” Mrs. Leavitt remarked -resentfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you quite sure that everything here is exactly as Uncle Dick left -it?” In spite of himself he could not keep his hideous anxiety out of -his voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Mrs. Leavitt did not notice. She was looking furtively about the -unkempt room with disapproving eyes. She answered mechanically, -“Oh—yes—everything. The day Richard’s coffin was carried out of it, -Helen locked it up herself, just as it was. It has never been opened -since.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She didn’t disturb any of the papers on this table?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And no one has been here since, you are sure?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I’m sure,” she replied acidly. “If I refused you, my own -nephew, admission twenty times at least, I wouldn’t allow any one else -in, would I? Helen said, before she went up to town to live because she -couldn’t bear to stay here, poor child—it’s very lonely without -her—well, she said that she did not want any one to come in here until -she returned. Naturally I respected her wishes—orders, you might call -them, since this is her house now—not that I grudge that. Well, now you -come with this letter from her, saying that you are to do what you like -in the library, and are to have her father’s keys—so of course I opened -it for you—and glad enough to get it opened at last—and here are the -keys; it’s only recently I’ve had them. Helen kept them herself for a -long time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen took them from her quickly—almost too quickly, had she been a -woman observant of anything but dust and disorder. “I persuaded her to -write it,” he said. “It is time her father’s papers were looked over, -and it would be too heavy a task for her—too sad.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen, is she still grieving over Hugh’s disappearance?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde shrugged his shoulders. “H’m, yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor child—poor child! It seems as if everything were taken from her -at once. And to think that a nephew of mine—well, nearly a -nephew—should desert from the army, and in war time, too—that there -should be a warrant out for his arrest! Just do look at that dust!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen’s patience was wearing thin. “If you’ll excuse me now, Aunt -Caroline——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course—you have a great deal to do, and I have too; the servants -get worse and worse. Servants! They’re not servants; war impostures, I -call them. Well, I’ll leave you now.” But at the door she turned again. -“Stephen!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.” He tried not to say it too impatiently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There isn’t anything of great value in this room, is there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, no,” he said nervously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s odd.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why—odd?” His voice was tense, and he did not look at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Three times since Richard died, burglars have tried to force their way -through the windows in this room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” Pryde managed to say, and it was all he could manage to say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Always the same windows, you understand. Each time, fortunately, we -frightened them away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have reported the matter to the police?” The anxiety made his voice -husky.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, but all they ever did was to make notes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have no idea who the burglar was? Burglars, I mean,” correcting -himself awkwardly. “You never caught sight of him—them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—not a glimpse.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—oh, just some tramp, I dare say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was easier now, but his voice was a little unsteady from strain and -with relief. “And now please——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I’ll hurry away now. Barker is dusting the best dinner service—if -I’m not there to watch, she’s sure to break something. Call me, if you -want me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shan’t want you, Aunt Caroline.”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>As the fussy, bustling footsteps died away Stephen sank into an -easy-chair—Richard’s own, as it chanced—and laid his head on a table. -He was worn out with tension and uncertainty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The tall clock in the corner had run down. The gas fire made no sound. -No room could have been stiller.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The day was mending toward its close, and the late level sun flooded in -from the windows, as if to make up for lost time and eight months of -exclusion. The light of the fire lit up the room’s other side, and -between the two riots of light and of warmth the man sat dejected, -distraught and shivering—alone with his self-knowledge, his fear and -his gruesome task.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Where was the damnatory sheet of paper? In this room in all human -probability. Its ink had scarcely dried when Bransby had died, and it -had not been found on the body; Stephen Pryde had made sure of that.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For eight terrible months he had schemed and tortured to get here and -find it—even playing housebreaker in his desperation. Yet now here at -long last he shrank inexplicably from beginning the search. Why? That he -knew not in the least. But, for one thing, he was hideously cold, almost -cramped with chill. The arms of the chair felt like ice. Little billows -of cold seemed to buffet against his face. The room had been shut up and -fireless for so long. His feet ached with cold, almost they felt -paralyzed. His legs were quivering, and so cold! And his hands were -blueing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At last he forced his numb frame from the seat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked about with frightened, agonized eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No paper lay on any one of the tables apparently. The wastepaper basket! -He seized it with a hand that shook as if palsied. Oh—a crumpled -whiteness lay on the bottom of the basket. Pray Heaven—he thrust in a -fumbling hand—and gave a cry of disappointment. This was not paper, but -some bit of soft cloth. He jerked it out impatiently, and then, when he -saw what it was, dropped it on the table with a sharp sigh; a -handkerchief—Helen’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From table to table he went, examining each article on them, searching -every crevice. Each drawer he searched again and again. He looked in -every possible place, and, as the anxious searchers for lost things have -from time immemorial, in many impossible places. He overlooked -nothing—he was sure of that. Again and again he searched the tables and -then researched them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a puzzled frown he rose and stared about the room. Then he moved -about it slowly and carefully, looking for some possible hidden -cupboard. He sounded the wainscoting. He scrutinized the ceiling, he -pulled at the seats of the chairs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Finally he halted before the bookcase and stood staring at it a long -time. He drew out one or two volumes. Could the thin sheet be behind -one? But the dust came out thickly, and he put them back. Something -seemed to pull him away, and drive him back to the table. Why, of -course, it must be there. Where else would the dead man have hidden it? -Nowhere, of course. Why waste time looking anywhere else? Again he began -the weary business all over. Again and again his cold, trembling hands -felt and searched, and his eyes, wild now and baffled, peered and -studied. Almost he prayed. His breath came in gasps. Sweat stood on his -forehead and around his clenched lips.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nothing! Nowhere! He sank back in his seat, convinced and defeated. The -confession was not here; or, if it was, he could not find it. And it -<span class='it'>might</span> be somewhere else. Probably it had been destroyed, intentionally -or accidentally, by some one else. But it <span class='it'>might</span> be in existence. And -some day it might be found to damn and to ruin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How tired he was—and how cold! Why couldn’t he get warmer? And where -did those icy drifts of wind come from, goose-fleshing his face and his -hands and making his spine creep?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He crouched over the fire, and held out his blue hands to its heat. No -use! He was growing colder and colder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he began in his groping misery to think of birds flying. That was -always his vision in moments of over-tension or of great -aspiration—birds in full flight. To watch such flight had been the -purest joy of his boyhood. To contrive and to achieve its emulation had -been the fight and the triumph of his manhood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lifted the morsel of cambric to his face, saluting it, and wiping -away with it the cold moisture on his cheek and his lips. Who should say -his extraordinary ambition, extraordinarily pursued, extraordinarily -fulfilled, ignoble? No one quite justly. Certainly he had wanted -success, power, prestige and great wealth for himself. But, as much as -he had desired them for himself, no less had he desired them for -Helen—to lay at her feet, to keep in her hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And, too, he had dreamed to make England mightier yet by his air fleets -and their victories. Patriotism is a virtue enhanced and embellished by -all other virtues, even as it enhances and embellishes all other -virtues. But it is a virtue sole and apart, and not impossible to hearts -and to lives in all else besotted and ignoble. Only yesterday Stephen -himself had seen an example of this. Waiting at Victoria, he had watched -some hundreds of German prisoners detrained and retrained. As they sat -waiting and guarded, a bunch of English convicts, manacled and pallid, -had slouched on to the platform—“old timers” of the worst type, from -their looks, with heads ill-shaped and shapeless, more appropriate to an -asylum for idiots than a prison for miscreants, and with countenances -that would have disgraced and branded the lowest form of quadruped brute -life—“men” compared with whom, unless their appearance grossly libeled -them, Bill Sykes must have been quite the gentleman and no little of an -Adonis. But not one of them all, bestial, hardened and deficient, but -slunk or weakly brazened as they shuffled along, ashamed and unnerved, -abashed of God’s daylight and of the glance of their unincarcerated -fellows. Among them was chained one boy (he was scarcely older than -that) with a fine head and a gifted face—a boy, not unlike what Stephen -remembered himself in his unscorched days. It was a spiritual face even -now, as Stephen’s own was. Probably the boy’s crime had been some sin of -passion. Murderers often are of the spiritual type, but very rarely -housebreakers or thugs. Perhaps he had murdered a brother, loved by the -girl he himself craved. Perhaps he had killed some enemy or friend who -well deserved such slaughter. Or had his guilt been more sordid, -begotten in some schoolboy escapade, growing and nourished fœtuslike in -the fructive womb of youth’s temptations and young manhood’s cowardice: -money misused, trust betrayed, sex tarnished? Whatever his crime it had -left no scar on his face, no record except of suffering. And of them -all, this young convict’s plight was the most pitiful, his chagrin the -most woeful, of all that sorry gang. At a word from a warder, they -turned their poor cropped heads and saw the Hun prisoners. The cravened -faces cleared, the handcuffed figures straightened, the haggard, clouded -eyes brightened, the broken gait mended; criminals, exhibited in their -hideous livery of shame, for the moment they were men once -more—Englishmen, belligerent, proud and rejoiced—of the race of the -victors, lifted out and above the slime of their personal defeat—all of -them, the oldest and most beast-like, and the boy with the finely -chiseled face and the heart-broken eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde’s own eyes, as he sat brooding between the fire and the -sunshine, were as haggard as any of those cinnamon-clad miserables had -been. He was ill—with the inexplicable chill, the grave-smell of the -room, and the nausea of disappointment and of his dilemma. He was at bay -indeed now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the face that hung over the fire was a spiritual face. He had -betrayed a trust. He had stolen. He had borne false witness. In this -very room he had knotted his fist to do murder—and against the man who -had given him home, affection, position and luxury; and against his own -brother, whose mother and his had placed their hands palm in palm when -death already had muted her lips—his kiddy brother!—he had sinned with -a sin and a dastardy, compared to which Cain’s was venial and kind. Why? -And having so sinned, why was his face still fine, the hallmark of the -spiritual type still stamped there, clear and unblurred?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ah, who shall say? The riddle is dense.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps ’twas because his vice was indeed “but virtue misapplied,” -because circumstances had betrayed him. Mary Magdalene in her common -days probably had some foretelling of saintship on her lureful face, and -might more easily have nursed babes on her breast than lured men to her -lair, been mother more gladly than wanton.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>However it was, however it came, there was a high something, a fineness, -on Stephen Pryde’s face that no one else of his milieu had—not even -Helen, certainly not Hugh; but his, for all time, to descend with him -into the grave, to go with him wherever he went, Heavenward or -Hellward—his gift and his birth-right. Few indeed ever sensed this. -Spirituality was almost the last trait friends or relatives would have -attributed to him. But one acquaintance had espied it—the American -woman, whom he had held in some sneering tolerance in the days of their -first meeting. “He has the face of a saint—a sour saint—but a saint, a -soul apart,” Angela had said of him the day he had been introduced to -her. And he had said of her after the same occasion, “What a -preposterous rattle of a woman! She rushes from whim to absurdity, back -and forth and getting nowhere—‘cluck, cluck, cluck’—like a hen in -front of a motor-car.” And this of the woman who had understood him at a -glance, as his own people had not in a lifetime. Why? Another riddle. -Perhaps it was because, underneath her cap and bells, Angela Hilary, -too, wore the hallmark, smaller, lighter cut—but there, and the same. -There is no greater mistake—and none made more often—than to think -that those who laugh and dance through life are earthbound. Heaven is -full of little children, clustered at her knee, playing with Our Lady’s -beads.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After Stephen, dreamer and sinner, Angela Hilary had the most spiritual -of all the personalities with which this tale is concerned; and, after -her, the self-contained, conventional, well-groomed doctor of Harley -Street.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Leavitt’s step came along the hall, and her voice, upbraiding some -domestic delinquency, ordering tea and toast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a shivering effort, Pryde rose from his seat, put the handkerchief -away carefully—in his pocket, and strolled nonchalantly into the hall, -closing the door behind him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The jade Joss had the room to himself.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>About noon the next day Helen motored from London and took them all by -surprise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Leavitt was delighted. It was lonely at Deep Dale—very lonely -sometimes. For the first time in his life Stephen was sorry to see his -cousin. Her visit, he felt, foreboded no good to his momentary -enterprise, and her presence could but be something of an entanglement. -He was manager—dictator almost—at Cockspur Street, at the Poultry and -at Weybridge, and could carry it off with some show of authority, and -with some reality of it too. But here he was nothing, nobody. Helen was -everything here. No one else counted. Her rule was gentle, but not -Bransby’s own had been more autocratic or less to be swayed except by -her own fancy or whim.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Only too well he knew how this home-coming would move her. What might -she not order and countermand? Her permission to him to search and to -docket had been scant and reluctant enough in London. Here, any instant -she might rescind it. Above all he dreaded her presence in the -library—both for its interference with his further searching (of course -he had determined to search the already much-searched room again) and -for the effect of the room and its associations upon her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had little to say to him, and almost he seemed to avoid her. But he -ventured to follow her to the library the afternoon of her arrival—and -he did it for her sake almost as much as for his own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was standing quietly looking about the well-loved room; and he could -see that she was holding back her tears with difficulty. Almost he -wished that she would not restrain them—though he liked to see a -woman’s weeping as little as most men do—so drawn and set was her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who is it?” she asked presently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s I, Helen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned to him wearily—then turned to the table; he put out his hand -to restrain her, but she did not see, or she ignored it, and took up the -green and pink jade and wiped it carefully with her handkerchief. A -strange rapt look grew in her face, as she pressed the cambric into the -difficult crannies of the intricate, delicate carving. She sighed when -she had finished, and put the little fetish down—very carefully, just -where it had stood before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is—is anything wrong, Helen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then why are you here? You said you couldn’t come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know, but at the last minute I had to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You had to?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she answered wearily, seating herself on the broad window-seat. -“Have you looked over Daddy’s papers?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you found anything—anything—about Hugh?” The listless voice was -keen and eager enough now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—nothing,” he told her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you sure, Stephen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite,” he said sadly. “Why, dear, what makes you think——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know—only—something told me——” She rose and came towards -the writing-table. Stephen moved too, getting between her and it—“I -felt—that we should find something here that would help us prove his -innocence—that would bring him back to me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man who loved her as neither Hugh nor Richard Bransby had, winced at -the love and longing in the girl’s voice. But he answered her gently, -“There is nothing here.” For a space he stood staring at the table, -puzzled, thinking hard. “Helen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?” she was back at the window now, looking idly out at the -leafless, snow-crusted trees.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Had Uncle Dick any secret cupboard or safe where he kept important -papers?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—you know he hadn’t. He always kept his important things at the -office—you know that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then, if there was anything about Hugh here it would be on this table.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.” But even at Hugh’s name she did not turn from the window, but -still stood looking drearily out at the dreary day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perplexed and still more perplexed, Stephen stood motionless, gazing -down on the writing-table. Suddenly a thought struck him. His face lit a -little. The thought had possessed him now: a welcome thought. Surely the -paper, the hideous paper, had fallen from the table on which his uncle -had left it, fallen into the fire, and been burnt. He measured the -distance with a kindling eye. Yes! Yes! It might have been that. Surely -it had been that. It must be; it should be. Fascinated, he stood -estimating the chances—again and again. Helen sighed and turned and -came towards him slowly. He neither saw nor heard her. “That’s it. Yes, -that’s it!” he exclaimed excitedly—triumphant, speaking to himself, not -to Helen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And, if Helen heard, she did not heed. After a little she came close to -him and said beseechingly, “You don’t think there is any hope, do you, -Stephen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He pulled himself together with a sharp effort—so sharp that it paled a -little his face which had flushed slightly with his own relief of a -moment ago. He took her hand gently. “I am sure there is not,” he told -her sadly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She left her hand in his for a moment—glad of the sympathy in his -touch, then turned dejectedly away. “Poor Hugh!” she said as she moved. -“Poor Hugh,” she repeated, slipping down on to the big couch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde followed her. “Helen,” he begged, “you mustn’t grieve like -this—you must not torture yourself so by hoping to see Hugh again. You -must put him out of your mind.” Her mother could not have said it more -gently. He moved a light chair nearer the couch and sat down.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t,” she said simply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He left his chair and sat down quietly beside her “Why won’t you let me -help you? Why won’t you——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl shrank back into her corner. “Don’t, Stephen—please. We’ve -gone all through this before. It’s impossible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But Hugh is unworthy of you. Oh!”—at a quick gesture from her—“don’t -misunderstand me. I love Hugh—love him still—always shall——” There -was the ring of sincerity in his voice, and indeed, so far, he had said -but the truth. “Day in and day out I go over it all in my mind, and at -night, and try to find some possible loophole for hope, hope of his -innocence. But there is none. And then the deserting! But I’d do -anything for Hugh—anything. And I’d give all I have, or ever hope to -have, to clear him. I shall always stick to him, if ever he comes back, -and in my heart at least, if he doesn’t. But you—oh! Helen—to waste -all your young years, spill all your thought and all your caring—I -can’t endure that—for your own sake—if my love and my longing are -nothing to you—I implore you—he has proved himself -unworthy—acknowledged it even——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Daddy loved him—even when the trouble came—and I know he would want -me to help him—if I could.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen,” Stephen said after a short pause, speaking in a low even voice -(really he was managing himself splendidly—heroically), “you want to do -everything that your father wished, don’t you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I do. You know that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“After Hugh left that night, Uncle Dick told me that it would make him -happy to think that—some day—you and I would be married——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The last words were almost a whisper, so gently he said them. But, for -all his care, they stabbed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen!——” It was a cry and a protest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The smooth voice went on, “He knew that I had always cared for you, and -that you would be safe with me. He would have told you had he lived. He -meant to——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Never was wooing quieter. But the room pulsed about him, perhaps she -felt it throb too, so intense and so true was his passion, so crying his -longing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have never told me this—before——” she began, not unmoved.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, dear, I didn’t want to worry you. And I—I wanted it to come from -you—the gift—of yourself. I wanted to teach you to love me—unaided. -But I couldn’t—so I turned to him—to Uncle Dick to help me—as I -always turned to him for everything from the day mother died. Oh, Helen, -can’t you, won’t you, don’t you see how I love you? I have always loved -you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please—not now——” Her face was very white. “I can’t talk to you now. -I must have time—to think—we—we can talk—another time.” She got up -unsteadily and moved to the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He opened it simply, and made not even a gesture to delay her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alone—he breathed a long sigh of mingled feelings. There was -satisfaction in it—and other things, satisfaction that she was no -longer here in this danger zone of his where the confession <span class='it'>might</span> be -after all, and might be found at any moment to confront and undo him. -And there was satisfaction too that he had come a little nearer -prosperity in his hard wooing than he had ever come before. She had not -repulsed him—not at least as she had done before. Perhaps—perhaps—he -would win her yet—and—if he did—if he did!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Standing by the table he rested his hand there, and it just brushed the -piece of jade. He drew his hand back quickly. Helen had desired that no -one but she herself should ever touch it again. Not for much would he -have disobeyed her in this small thing. Her every wish was law to -Stephen Pryde, except only when some wish of hers threatened his two -great passions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The paper—the cursed paper—must have gone to cinder. Surely it had -been so. He searched a drawer and found notepaper—and made a sheet to -the size—as he remembered it—of the missing piece. He laid it on the -table, brushed it off with a convulsive motion of his arm. Brief as his -instant of waiting was, it trembled his lip with suspense. Thank God! -Thank God! The paper had fallen on to the glowing asbestos. It caught. -It burned. It was gone—absolutely obliterated—destroyed as if it had -never been.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sank down into Richard Bransby’s chair, and began to laugh. Long and -softly the hysterical laughter of his relief—sadder than any -sobbing—crept and shivered through the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The green Joss blinked and winked in the flickering of the high-turned -fire. The pink jade lotus grew redder in the crimson laving of the -setting sun.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Of course any feeling of security built upon so slight foundation, and -concerning a matter of such paramount and vital moment, could but be -transient. With the next daylight, dread and anxiety reasserted -themselves. And Pryde was again the victim of restlessness and -uncertainty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen’s presence, her nearness to the library all the time, and her -actual occupation of it whenever she chose, disconcerted him. He hoped -that she would go back to Curzon Street almost at once. Anxious as he -was to go over his feverish searching again and still again, he would -eagerly have turned the key in the library door, and taken her back to -London, deferring for a few days what he again believed and hoped would -be the result and the reward of yet one more hunt. It had been great -relief to feel that the deadly document was already destroyed. It would -be a thousandfold more comfort to see it burn—and ten thousand times -more satisfactory. He should <span class='it'>know</span> then. He could <span class='it'>never</span> know else. He -should be free and unafraid then. In no other way could he ever attain -unalloyed freedom, in no other way escape the rough clutch of fear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Helen had come to Oxshott to stay—for the present. And on the -second day Pryde learned to his annoyance that she was expecting Dr. -Latham by an afternoon train.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Well, what would be would be, more especially if Helen had decreed it, -and he accepted the physician’s appearance with a patient shrug—as -patient a shrug as he could muster.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It naturally fell to him to act host to this man guest of Helen’s, and -he liked Latham more than he liked most men, and resented his intrusion -as little as he could any one’s, unless Angela Hilary might have come in -the doctor’s stead. Angela would have played the better into his hands, -by the shrill claim she would have made upon Helen with a chatter of -frocks and a running hither and thither. And, too, he had come to enjoy -Mrs. Hilary quite apart from any usefulness to be wrung from the vibrant -personality. He enjoyed the breeze of it, and often turned into her -hotel as other overworked and brain-fagged men run down to Brighton or -Folkestone for a day of relaxation, and the tonic sea-air. He had come -to find positive refreshment in occasional whiffs of her saline sparkle, -and no little diversion in speculating as to what she would say next, -and about what. And this of the woman of whom he had once said that she -and her inconsequent chatter of kaleidoscope nonsenses reminded him of -nothing but the wild fluttings and distraught flutterings of a hen in -front of a motor! Truly with him she was an acquired taste. But as truly -he had acquired it. He had come more nearly to know her—her as she was, -as well as her as she seemed. Many people acquired that taste—when they -came to more know the blithe alien—and not a few felt it instinctively -at the first of acquaintance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Angela Hilary was not here, and Horace Latham was—and Pryde did his -best to make the latter’s visit pleasant, but without the slightest -effort or wish to prolong it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know, Pryde,” Latham said musingly, as they smoked together -after dinner—alone for the moment in the library—“it always puzzled -me——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Puzzled you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have so often wondered about it—it came so suddenly—Bransby’s -death. As a physician I could not just understand it then, and I have -never been quite able to understand it since. And as a physician—I’d -like to. It’s been rather like losing track of the end of a case you’ve -been at particular pains to diagnose. It’s unsatisfactory.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t quite see——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It must have been a shock that killed him—a great shock.” Latham’s -voice and manner were the manner and voice of his consulting-room. He -was probing—kindly and easily—but probing skillfully. Pryde felt it -distinctly. “Did he, by any chance, know that your brother intended to -desert?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—I don’t think so.” Stephen was well on his guard. “But he knew that -Hugh was in some trouble at the office. That was why Grant came here -that night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes,” Latham nodded. “I remember. No, it wasn’t that. His interview -with Grant disturbed him, I know—but it was something bigger that -killed him!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, how—how do you mean?” Stephen spoke as naturally as he could.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You were the last person who saw him alive, were you not?” Latham -questioned for question.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How was he when you left him—when you said good-night?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was all right,” Pryde spoke reflectingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If my memory serves me,” the physician continued, “you had gone from -the house.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When he died? Yes—some time before he died. I was on my way to London. -There was something Uncle Dick wanted me to do for him in town—er it -was nothing important.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then,” Latham added musingly, “it was after you left that this shock -occurred to him. It must have come from something in this room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Something in this room?” Strive as he might, and he strove his utmost, -Stephen could not keep the sharp agitation he felt out of his voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Latham did not notice it—or did not appear to. “Yes,” he said in -his same level voice, “a letter—some papers. Was anything of importance -found on his table?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Curious!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde, fascinated by his own device and his hope, the device born of the -hope, was lost in thought, and sat looking from table to fire, measuring -again with his trained eyes distance and angles. And, seeing the other’s -absorption, Latham was watching him openly now, with eyes also well -trained, and, because less anxious, probably shrewder. The physician was -diagnosing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen spoke first. Latham had intended that he should. “Latham?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you were right,” rising in his tense interest,—“if there had been -some papers that caused the shock that killed him—isn’t it -possible”—returning to his chair as suddenly as he had quit it—“isn’t -it probable that while he had it in his hand, sitting just here perhaps, -he tried to rise, he was faint and tried to reach the bell, and the -paper fell from his hand, fell into the fire and was destroyed?” As he -spoke he enacted, rising, turning ineffectually, convulsively toward the -bell, let an imaginary paper drift from his hand. Then he caught the -significance of his own excitement, ruled himself, and sauntered to the -fireplace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the diagnosis was completed. “I dare say that might have happened,” -Latham said consideringly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the only way I can explain it,” Pryde’s voice vibrated with his -infinite relief.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Explain what, Pryde?” Latham asked in his Harley Street voice. To the -insinuation of that deft tone many a patient had yielded a secret -unconsciously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Stephen recalled himself, and was on his guard again. -“Why—why—this sudden death.” A slight smile just flicked the -physician’s serene face. Pryde rose once more and stood again gazing, -half hypnotized by his own suggestion. “It was a great blow to me, -Latham, a great blow”—a sigh, so sharp that it seemed to shake him, -ended his sentence. “I torture myself trying to picture just what -happened after I left this room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham made no reply. Presently Pryde spoke again, repeating his own -words rather wildly. “Torture myself trying to picture just what -happened after I left this room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still Latham said nothing. He was considering.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>In a little room high up in the house, her very own sitting-room, heaped -with roses and heliotrope and carnations, its windows looking out to the -Surrey hills and a gurgling brook—blue as steel in the winter cold, its -snow-white banks edged with irregular shrubberies icicle-hung, Helen and -Latham sat in close conference.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A glorious fire flamed on the broad hearth in the corner. Helen had -inherited her father’s love of fires. When the war came, crippling their -servant staff both at Curzon Street and at Deep Dale, and making the -replenishing of coal cellars arduous, and posters on every hoarding -admonished patriotism to economize fuel, Richard Bransby had installed a -gas-fire in his library. Helen had opposed this, she had so loved the -great mixed fire of logs and of coal before which so many of her -childhood’s gloamings had been spent, so many of her acute young dreams -dreamed, but for once the father had not yielded to her. In one -particular the gas-fire had appealed to him—it minimized the intrusions -of servants when he best liked to have his “den” to himself. Humbly -born, but with none of the excrescent caddishness of smaller-souled -<span class='it'>nouveaux riches</span>, he had no liking for the visible presence of his -domestic retinue, and when servants were ill-trained and imperfectly -unobtrusive, little irritated him more than to have them about, and, -except by Helen, he was a man easily irritated. So gas had replaced wood -and anthracite in his room. But not so in Helen’s. She meant well by her -country, but the logs piled high on her hearth. The patriotisms of youth -are apt to be thoughtless, in every country. Often Youth makes the great -sacrifice—England needs no telling of that—but Age makes the ten -thousand daily burnt-offerings that in their infinite aggregate heap -high in the scale of a people’s devotion; and, perhaps, win as tender -approval from the Angel that records.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The morning sun streamed in riotously. A room could not be prettier or -more cozy. It made a brilliant background to the slender, black-clad -girl-figure, and the handsome, middle-aged man, dressed as carefully as -she—in a gray morning suit—and almost as slender. Dr. Latham took -every care of his figure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope you are not going to be angry with me,” Helen said, looking at -him a little ruefully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear child!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because, you see, I have brought you here under false pretenses.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“False pretenses!” her old friend laughed contentedly, “that’s -actionable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not ill. It isn’t about my health I want to see you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then I’ve lost a very attractive patient,” he mocked at her in -affectionate retort.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t joke—please. It is very serious.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you wrote.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I didn’t say I was ill. But, of course, that would be what you -thought, when I begged you to come for a few days, and knowing how busy -you always are, and asking you to say nothing to Aunt Caroline or any -one, but just seem to be on an ordinary visit.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was delighted to come,” he assured her gravely. “And, as it happens, -I did not think you were ill.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How was that, Dr. Latham?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can’t say in the least; but I didn’t. And—now—well—tell me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s about something you once said.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He wondered if it were something he had said about Angela Hilary. He -hoped not. He had said some very foolish things—but that was long -ago—before he really knew that radiant woman. “Something I once said?” -he echoed a little anxiously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am afraid I don’t remember. What was it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That night that——” But she choked at the words. For a moment she -could not speak. Latham gave her time. He was used to giving people -time—and especially women. Presently she went on, finding another way -to put it—“That last night—when you spoke of the dead coming back. You -said that if two people loved each other very dearly, and one was left -behind and needed the one who had gone, he would come back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I said he might try,” Latham corrected her gently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You were right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you mean?” The man was half amused, half startled, but the -physician was anxious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Daddy—Daddy is trying to come back to me,” she said very simply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Miss Bransby!” For a moment he wondered if Angela had been taking this -overwrought child to materializing circles or trumpet mediums or some -other such bosh. But no, Angela wouldn’t. She did the wildest -things—small things—but in the important things she had the greatest -good sense: he had proved it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh,” Helen assured him, “I am sure of it—I am sure of it. There’s -something he wants me to do, but I can’t understand what it is. That is -why I asked you to come here—I thought you might help me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham was moved, and perturbed. “My dear child,” he began lamely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Helen could brook no interruption now. Her words came fast enough, -now she had started. “For weeks,” she insisted breathlessly, “I’ve had -this feeling—for weeks I’ve known that he was doing his utmost to tell -me something. At first I tried to put it aside. I thought it was my -grief or my longing for him that deceived me into thinking this—but I -couldn’t. It always came back stronger than ever—until to-day when I -suddenly realized—I can’t tell you just how—there is something he -wants <span class='it'>me</span> to do <span class='it'>in the library</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear, my dear, my idle remarks have put these ideas in your head.” -The doctor was thoroughly alarmed for her now, though still he could -detect no hint of illness or disorder. “You are overwrought.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no!” the girl cried. “It isn’t that. It’s the strain of not being -able to understand—it’s almost more than I can bear. Oh, Dr. Latham, -can’t you help me to find out what it is that Daddy wants me to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He studied her gravely—puzzled, troubled, strange thoughts surging in -his mind. She seemed perfectly normal. And he knew that while love, -religious mania, money troubles, filled insane asylums almost to -bursting, that the percentage of patients so incarcerated as the result -of spiritualism was almost <span class='it'>nil</span>, and quite negligible—general rumor -notwithstanding. (Rumor’s a libelous jade.) He felt less sure of a right -course than he often did. And he said sadly, but with little conviction, -“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Miss Bransby.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But surely——” She rose and stood before him, her eyes flushed with -entreaty, her clasped hands stretched toward him in pleading.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rose too and laid a grave arm about her slight shoulder, saying -tenderly, “What I said that night—it was no more than an idle -speculation—I had no ground for it. And, naturally, your great grief -coming so soon afterwards impressed my words upon your mind.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, no——” Helen said, her tears gathering.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come! come!” Latham coaxed her. “You’re imagining things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She pulled from his arm, and moved to the window, answering him almost -violently, “No, no! <span class='it'>It’s too vivid—it’s too real!</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But surely,” he urged, “if your father could bring you to this house, -direct you to the library—you said the library?”—she nodded her head -emphatically—“he could tell you what he wanted you to do there. You -have had to bear a great sorrow—it has unsettled you and given you this -delusion—a delusion that comes to so many people who have lost what you -have lost; you must conquer it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps he might have convinced and influenced her more, had he been -more convinced himself, had she convinced and influenced him less. She -persisted with him, wearily. “But—don’t you see? I thought you would -see. Oh, please try to see. If I lose this—I lose—everything. I was so -sure it was about Hugh—I was so sure Daddy was going to bring him back -to me.” She sat down by the fire crying piteously now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham’s own eyes felt odd. He knelt down on the hearthrug, and gathered -her hands into his. “Poor child!” It was all he could say. What else was -there to say?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at him desperately. “Then you don’t believe?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid I don’t,” he admitted—very softly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw her mouth quiver, and then the sobs came thick and fast, and she -hid her face on his shoulder.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>She seemed quite herself at luncheon, and Latham was the life and the -jest of the table. Women are bred so; and such is the craft of his -trade.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even Stephen watching jealously—he had known of the <span class='it'>tête-à-tête</span> of -the morning—learned nothing. And Caroline Leavitt rejoiced and was -grateful to see the girl so much more nearly herself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But still Stephen watched—and waited.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At twilight he found Helen alone in the library. He joined her almost -timidly, fearing she might drive him away. He sensed well enough that -she wished to be alone. But she neither welcomed nor dismissed him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t know you were ill, Helen,” he said, seating himself where he -could see her face well.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am not ill,” she replied, a little impatiently, rising and crossing -the room, and standing at the window, facing it, not him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you sent for Latham.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen made no answer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen persisted, “And you carried him off to your room after -breakfast, and said plainly enough, that you wished to be undisturbed -there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, and I meant it. But it was to talk to him of something quite -different from my health.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“May I know what it was?” Pryde asked, going to the window, looking at -her searchingly with his keen, speculative eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You, Stephen? No.” She could scarcely have spoken more coldly. And -again she crossed the room, and stood looking down into the fire this -time, her face once more out of the range of his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde bit his lip, but he made no further bid for her confidence. He -knew it would be useless—and worse. Neither spoke again for some time. -Only the tick-tick of the grandfather’s clock, rewound and set now, -touched the absolute silence. At last he said, “Helen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.” She turned and faced him, but both her voice and her face were -cold and discouraging. He was risking too much, he was rasping his -cousin; and he knew it. But for the life of him he could not desist. -Such moments come to men sometimes, and against the impulse the firmest -will is helpless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you remember losing a little blue shoe, years ago?” he began.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I? No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You did—the day we first came here. I found it. And I kept it. I have -it still. I’ve always had it. I had it at Oxford.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen sat down wearily, looking bored.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I loved that little blue shoe, even the day I found and kept -it—because it was yours. I have treasured it all these years—because -it was yours. I shall keep it always.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl shrugged her shoulders a little unkindly. “Well,” she said -indifferently, “I don’t suppose it would fit me now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her irresponsiveness stung him. He crossed to her quickly and laid a -masterful hand on her chair. “Have you thought over what I told -you?—about what I feel—about what Uncle Dick wished?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She answered him then, and anything but indifferently. “Not now, -Stephen,” she said impatiently, “I can’t talk of that now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you must.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Must?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her voice should have warned him. There was anger in it, contempt even, -indignation, no quarter. And it was final. Not so do coquettes parry and -fence and invite. Not so do women who love, or are learning to love, -postpone the hour they half fear, the joy they hesitate to reveal or -confess. Perfectly, too, Stephen caught the portents of her tone, but he -was past warning. Love and impatience goaded him. He had reached his -Rubicon, and he must cross it, or go down in it, engulfed and defeated. -A vainer man would have taken alarm and retreated definitely from sure -discomfiture and chagrin. A man who loved less would have spared the -girl and himself. A wiser man, more self-contained, would have waited. -Stephen Pryde plunged on, and plunged badly—every word an offense, -every tone provocation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can’t you see how vital this is to me?” he demanded roughly, his voice -as impatient as hers had been, and altogether lacking her calm. “I must -know what you are going to do, I must know.” He could not even deny -himself the dire word the most obnoxious a man can use to a woman. A -blow from his hand, if she loves him enough, a woman may forgive, in -time half forget—some women (the weakest type and the strongest)—but -“must” never.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen Bransby smiled, and looked up at Pryde squarely, with a sigh of -resignation—and of something else too. “Oh! if you must know now, if I -‘must’ tell you, I must.” Then the longing in his face smote her, and -the thought of her father quickened her gentleness, as it always did, -and she stayed her sting. “Are you certain,” she concluded earnestly, -almost kindly, “that it was Daddy’s wish that we should be married—you -and I?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite certain,” Pryde answered in a firm voice. But his hands were -trembling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to do everything he wanted,” Helen said wistfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man turned away, even took a few steps from her, to grapple a moment -with his own mad emotion. He felt victory in his grasp—victory hot on -his craven fear, victory after despair, victory after hunger and thirst. -He swung round and came back reaching towards her—his face -transfigured, his voice clarion sweet, his eyes flashing, <span class='it'>and</span> -brimming. “Helen——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She motioned him back. “Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I can’t do this. I -told Daddy, when he was here, that it was Hugh or no one for me. Even to -please him then I couldn’t change. I can’t change now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Hugh—that’s the only reason?” Pryde persisted doggedly. But he -spoke breathlessly now, for a fear had chilled in on his ardor: did she -suspect him? had she found anything? What had she and Latham said to -each other? “Is that the only reason, Helen?” he besought her again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she replied, considering him gravely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then perhaps in time,” he begged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She rose impatiently and crossed to another seat, speaking as she went. -His nearness annoyed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, Stephen, never.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He blanched, but again he would have spoken, but Helen gave him no time. -“Now, please,” she said very clearly, “leave me here for a little -while—I want to be alone <span class='it'>here</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” he exclaimed peremptorily, with sudden fear. “No, I can’t leave -you here—not in this room, anywhere else, but not here. This room is -bad for you. Come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are to go,” she told him quietly, “and now, please.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why—why do you want to be alone—here?” he pleaded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She answered him gently. “Just to think of Daddy. You know I haven’t -been here since——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His love, his tenderness reasserted his manhood then. “Of -course—forgive me—I understand—I did not mean to speak sharply—but I -hate to see you grieve so.” For a moment he stood looking down on her -bowed head. Then he just touched her hand—it lay on the back of her -chair—lingeringly, reverently, and said again as he went from the room, -“I hate to see you grieve so.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl sat bowed and brooding. After a time she rose and moved about -the familiar place, touching old trifles, recalling old scenes. She -stood a long time by the bookcase gazing at the volumes he had loved and -handled, peering with brimming eyes at their well-known titles. She did -not touch the jade Joss, but she lingered at it longest, choking, -trembling. Then her face cleared—transfigured. A rapt look came over -it—a look of love, longing, great expectation. Men have turned such -looks to the bride of an hour. Mothers have bent such looks on the babe -first, and new come, at their breast. She reached out her young arms in -acceptance, obedience, greeting, entreaty—and said to the air—to the -room—“I’m here, Daddy. I’m here.”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>But no father came to her call, no companion from the void to her tryst. -She waited, feeling, or thinking that she felt, the air touch her hair, -brush her face, cool but kindly, and once cross her lips. She waited, -but only the light air, or her fancy of it, came.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knelt down by the old chair in which she had seen him last until she -had seen him in his majesty, on the floor, in the hall. She laid her -head on the seat that had been his, and wept there softly, disappointed, -overwrought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some one was coming; some one very much of this world. High heels -clattered on the inlaid hall floor, silk sounded crisply, and an -expensive Persian perfume—attar probably—came in as a hand turned the -knob on the other side and pushed the door open, and with the perfume -the silken frou-frou, a jumble of several furs, lace and pearls, and -Angela in a very big hat and a chinchilla coat. She closed the door -behind her—an odd thing for an unexpected, uninvited guest to do, and -she closed it quietly, for her very quietly. She tip-toed across the -room stealthily, caught sight of Helen and screamed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the sound of some one coming Helen had risen to her feet and pulled -herself together with the quick pluck of her sex. But she was still too -overwrought to grasp entirely the strangeness of her friend’s behavior. -Mrs. Hilary was dumfounded. She had thought Helen in London. She had -crept into the house through a side door, come through the halls -secretly and as silently as such shoes and so much silk and many -draperies could, meeting no one and hoping neither to be seen nor heard. -Her errand was particularly private. She had not been surprised to find -the library door unlocked, for she had not been deeper in the house than -the drawing-room since Mr. Bransby’s death. She and Mrs. Leavitt were -far from intimate. And Mrs. Hilary had not heard of the taboo Helen had -placed on the father’s room. She was dumfounded to find Helen here, and -bitterly disappointed. But she noticed little amiss with the girl. Each -was too agitated to realize the agitation of the other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen pulled herself together and waited, Angela pulled herself together -and gushed; each with the woman’s shrewd instinct to appear natural and -much as usual.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela supplemented her cry of dismay with an even shriller cry of -enthusiastic delight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dearest Helen! How perfectly lovely!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is a surprise,” Helen said more quietly. Of the two she was the -less surprised and far the more pleased.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—isn’t it—a surprise?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You didn’t expect to see me?” What had brought Angela rushing into this -room, then?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hilary saw her blunder as soon as she made it, even while she was -making it almost. She was greatly confused—a thing that did not often -befall Angela Hilary. She and embarrassment rarely met.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” she stammered. “No—I—uh—yes, yes, I came over to——” She was -utterly at a loss now. “Well,” she went on desperately, “I happened to -be passing——” She broke off suddenly, looking anxiously at the window, -and then looked away from it pointedly, and hurried on with, “I came to -see if, by any chance, it was you Margaret McIntyre caught a glimpse of -in the grounds yesterday. But—I—I didn’t see you when I came in here. -It’s so dark here, after the hall. When did you come? Are you going to -stay long?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I came suddenly—on an impulse—to find something. I may stay. I may go -back to-morrow. I don’t know. But I haven’t unpacked much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hilary seized on the pretext this offered to get rid of Helen. She -had been searching her excited mind for one wildly for some moments. -“Then,” she said sharply, “you must see at once that your things are -properly unpacked. Nothing spoils things like being crushed in trunks. -And, as for chiffons! Go at once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But,” Helen began.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“At once. I insist. You must not let me keep you. I shall be all right -here, and when you have finished——” She was pushing Helen towards the -door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t be absurd, Angela,” the girl laughed—freeing herself, “my things -can wait—I may not unpack them at all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you sure—sure they can wait?” Mrs. Hilary said lamely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I am sure, you absurdity. Besides, tea must be ready in the -drawing-room. Angela, Dr. Latham is here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela dimpled and flushed. “Oh! is he—is he really?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela sat down and opened her vanity bag. She propped the mirror up on -the table, shook out her powder puff, tried it on one cheek, refilled -and applied it liberally, thinking, thinking, as she beautified. How -could she get rid of Helen? She wanted to see Horace Latham, of course, -but she had something much more important to attend to first. Latham -could wait—for once in a way. As she piled on powder, and flicked it -off, another idea came to her. She seized it. “You go along now, dear, -and I’ll follow you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen shook her head. “You will stop prinking and come with me, now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very well,” Mrs. Hilary said reluctantly, letting Helen take her arm -and lead her to the door. At the door she cried, “Oh! Oh!” pressed her -hand to her side and staggered back to a chair. She did it beautifully. -It scarcely could have been done better.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it, Angela?” Helen was thoroughly alarmed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! the whole room is swimming.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must think I am awfully silly.” She could only just speak.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You poor thing—of course I don’t. Perhaps a glass of water——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hilary shook her head violently—far too violently for so ill a -woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll get Dr. Latham.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please don’t,” the invalid said sharply, and then, “I’m not well enough -to see a doctor,” she wailed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I’m worried about you, Angela.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s nothing to worry about. It’s only the pain, the pain and the -faintness, the horrid faintness. If only I had some smelling salts,” she -moaned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are some in my dressing-case,” Helen said quickly. “I’ll ring.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh no, no, you mustn’t!” Mrs. Hilary cried. “I—I—can’t let Barker see -me like this. No, no! Don’t do that. Couldn’t you get them yourself, -dear? Couldn’t you? Do you mind?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, no—of course not.” Helen was puzzled—and a little amused. How -absurd Angela was—even when ill.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How long will it take you?” Mrs. Hilary asked faintly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About two minutes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That will do nicely,” the sick woman said with sudden cheerfulness. -“Helen,” she cried fretfully as the other turned to go, “don’t hurry. -You are not to hurry. Promise me you won’t hurry. It drives me crazy to -have people hurry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen studied her friend for a moment, shook a puzzled and a now -somewhat suspicious head, and went slowly out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As the door closed the fainting one bounced up, searched the room -rapidly with her sharp American eyes, rushed to the window, threw it -open, and leaned out far over the sill.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all right, thank goodness, at last! Come in!” she called in a -shrill whisper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A brown hand clasped the sill in a moment. In another a khaki-clad man -swung up into the room. Hugh had come home.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Not the spick and span serviceless subaltern of eight months ago, but a -sergeant, battered and brown—his uniform worn and faded, his face thin -and alert. Hugh Pryde’s face had never been that before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My, but I’ve had a time,” Angela Hilary told him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once in the familiar room he looked about it quickly, heaved a great -sigh of relief, threw his cap on the table, and laid his hands on the -back of a chair affectionately, as if greeting an old friend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hilary shut the window carefully. “Did any one see you come through -the garden?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sure?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, thank Heaven for that much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen?” he begged. “No danger of her seeing me?” he added.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—no—of course not,” Angela replied promptly. “I told you she was in -town.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh sighed. “I want to see her—but I mustn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course you mustn’t.” Mrs. Hilary was plainly shocked at the very -idea. “Of course not—but I’m sure she’d want to see you, if she -knew—and, if she hadn’t been in town, she might help you. Do you know? -I almost wish she’d come in by accident, and find you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh drew a sharp breath. “No, no!” he said quickly, “I promised not to -see her until I could show that I was innocent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, now that you <span class='it'>are</span> in this room, I hope you can prove it quickly. -This atmosphere of conspirator is wearing me to a frazzle. I’m so jumpy -my powder won’t half stick on, and that’s awful. And every time I see a -policeman the cold chills run up and down my spine, and I speckle all -over with goose-flesh. This morning one of them came to see me about a -dog license and I was so terrified I went wobbly and almost fainted away -in his arms. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and have some tea.” She -turned to go, elated and dimpling—like the child that she was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mrs. Hilary!” Hugh delayed her. She turned back to him. “You’ve been a -dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I always am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He caught her hands. “I’ve a lot to thank you for. You know I can’t say -things—I never could. But I want you to know how I appreciate it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! that’s nothing,” she said gayly. “You mustn’t thank me. It wasn’t -kindness. It’s just sheer creature weakness; it’s simply that I don’t -seem able to resist a uniform, I never could. There was a German band in -’Frisco——” But she heard a light step in the hall. “Good gracious! I’m -forgetting Dr. Latham. Good luck!” she cried hysterically and sped from -the room, as Helen stood in the door.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela Hilary was half crying, half laughing, when she danced into the -drawing-room. The tea still stood on the low table, steam still hissed -from the kettle. But only Latham was there, alone, on the hearthrug. She -swept him a low curtsey, caught him by the shoulders and swung him into -the center of the room, whistling a ravishing melody in three-four time. -He put his arm about her gravely, and they waltzed on and on until -Barker cried, “Oh lor!” in the doorway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all right,” Angela told her. “It’s callisthenics. Dr. Latham R-Xed -for my health. I’ve a touch of gout, Barker.” But Barker had fled -giggling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve more than a touch of the devil,” the physician corrected her -severely. Angela giggled too at that, a sweeter, more seductive giggle -than Barker’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mein kleiner Herr Doktor!” she began sweetly. They were still standing -where they had been when Barker arrested their waltzing. Latham caught -her and shook her. “Bitte erlauben Sie! ich bin nicht eine Ihrer armen -Kranken und verbitte mir Auftreten. Jetzt sind Sie erzürnt, über nichts, -wahrhaftig nichts. Ach! die Männer, wie sind Sie dumm!” She poured out -at him. It irritated the Englishman to be chattered to in intimate -German, and Angela Hilary delighted in doing it. She had done it to him -many times more than once, and the more he squirmed the more eloquent, -the swifter grew her German. She had spoken to him in the hated language -all through an otherwise dull dinner-party, a dour Bishop on her other -side, an indignant and very bony suffragette just across the table. She -had done it at Church Parade, and at Harrods (she had dragged him out -shopping twice), in the Abbey and in the packed stalls of the Garrick.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hush, or I’ll make you,” he warned her now. He intended her to say, -“How?” And she knew it and smiled. But she said nothing of the -sort—but, almost gravely, “Oh! but I’m happy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You look it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So happy. So glad.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It suits you,” he said. “Do you know, I rather intend to try it -myself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Happiness.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela flushed. “Shall we dance some more?” she said quickly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham picked her up and put her into a chair. “Barker’s face was -enough. I prefer to avoid Mrs. Leavitt’s.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hilary looked up at him wickedly. “Please, must I stay-put?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Must you what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Insular Englishman, ‘stay-put’ is graphic American. By the way, why do -you dislike Americans so?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should like you even better as a British subject,” he admitted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela Hilary turned to the fire and spoke into it. “Oh, this war—this -wretched war! But, do you know, Dr. Latham,” swinging back to him—she -could not keep turned from him long—“do you know, I’ve been thinking.” -Latham smiled indulgently. “Oh! I think a great deal, a very great -deal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—for one thing—I think most all night—every night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He let the enormity pass. “And this last cogitation, of which you were -about to speak——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When you interrupted me rudely.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When I interrupted you with flaming interest. It was about our present -war, I apprehend.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was thinking what a lot of good people were getting out of -it—different people such different good. I don’t suppose there’s any -one who hasn’t reaped some real benefit from it, if they’d stop and -think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'><a id='Horace'></a>Horace Latham shook his head slowly. “I wonder.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I don’t; I’m sure.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He studied the fire flames gravely for a time. Then he sighed, shook off -the mood her words had called forth, and turned to her lightly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what benefit has Mrs. Hilary reaped from the war?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knitted her brows, and sat very still. Suddenly her face kindled and -her lips quivered mutinously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know. I’ve learned how to spell sugar.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham laughed. This woman who spoke three other tongues as fluently and -probably as erratically as she did English, and whose music was such as -few amateurs and not all professionals could approach, was an atrocious -speller, and every one knew it who had ever been favored with a letter -from her. Latham had been favored with many. He had waste-paper-basketed -them at first—but of late he did not.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can!!” she insisted. “S-U-G-A-R. There! Sugar, color, collar, their, -reign, oh! what I’ve suffered over those words! I spent a whole day once -at school hunting for ‘sword’ in the dictionary (I do think of all the -silly books dictionaries are the silliest), and then I never found it. -Think of shoving a <span class='it'>w</span> into sword. Who wants it? I don’t. Nobody needs -it. Silly language.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Which language can your high wisdomship spell the least incorrectly?” -he asked pleasantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mein werter Herr Doktor, das Buchstabiren ist mir Nebensache. Ich -sprache vier Sprachen flissend—Sie kaum im Stande sind nur eine zu -stammeln doch glauben Sie dass eine Frau ohne Fehler sei wenn sie -richtig Englisch schreibt und nur an die drei k’s denkt—wir man in -Deutschland zu sagen pflegt—Kirche, Kinder und Küche,” she said in a -torrent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are ill,” he said, “I am going to prescribe for you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?” She made a wry face. “What?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This,” he gathered her into his arms and kissed her swiftly—and then -again—more than once.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At last she pushed him away. “It took some doing,” she told herself in -the glass that night. But to him she said gravely, “To be taken only -three times a day—after meals.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No fear!” Her physician cried, “To be taken again and again!” And it -was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The chatterbox was silent and shy. But Horace Latham had a great deal to -tell her. He had only begun to say it, haltingly at first, then swifter -and swifter, man dominating and wooing his woman, when Angela cried -imploringly, “Hush!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He thought that she heard some one coming. But it was not that. Angela -Hilary was planning her wedding-dress. He hushed at her cry, and sat -studying her face. Presently she fell to knotting and unknotting his -long fingers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Silk has most distinction,” she said to the fire, “and satin has its -points. Oh, yes, satin has points, but I think velvet, yes—velvet and -white fox.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are you talking about?” demanded her lover.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela giggled.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>For a long time neither spoke, or moved. Then Hugh held out his arms, -and Helen came into them. And still neither spoke. The old clock ticked -the moments, and the beat of their hearts throbbed tremblingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At last they spoke, each at the same instant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen”—“Hugh.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She lifted her hand from his shoulder, and fondled his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Of course, she spoke first, when either could speak beyond that first -syllable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my dear, my dear!” she said. “I thought you were never coming back -to me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He caught her hands and held them against his heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I couldn’t come, Helen. You know that—not until I had made things -right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The glad blood rushed to her face. “Oh! Hugh,” she cried, “then you have -made things right, you have found out? I am so glad, so glad!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why no, dear,” he faltered, “not yet. But that’s why I’ve come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She paled a little, but her voice and her eyes were brave. “It doesn’t -matter—nothing matters, now that you have come back to me. Oh, I’m so -glad—I’ve missed you so, Hugh—I’ve missed you so”—the bravery had -died in a little girlish wail.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear”—it was all he could say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where have you been all these months?” she asked, pushing him to a -chair, and kneeling beside him, her arms on his knee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When I left here that night”—he laid a hand on her hair—“and had to -give up my commission, I went straight to a recruiting office—and -joined up as a private, under another name.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now,” she said with a soft laugh, laying her cheek against the -stripes on his sleeve, “you’re a sergeant. You have been to the front?” -The young voice was very proud as she said it. Her man had given battle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I went almost at once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I never knew.” How much she had missed!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It wasn’t until a few weeks ago I learned of Uncle Dick’s death,” Hugh -said gently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He died that night, Hugh,” Helen whispered—“just there—in the hall.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—I know,” he nodded, his arm on her shoulder. Neither said more for -a space. Presently he told her, “I’ve had luck out there. I have been -recommended for a commission.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think I like this best,” the girl said, stroking his sleeve. “But -it’s splendid that you’ve won through the ranks. That’s the kind of -commission worth having—the only kind.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I can’t accept it until I can tell them who I am. That’s why I got -leave—to come back and try and clear myself. I didn’t know until I -reached England that I had been published as a deserter—that there was -a warrant for my arrest.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You didn’t know that?” Helen said, in her surprise rising to her feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—Uncle Dick promised to arrange matters—he must have died before he -had the chance—of course he did—but I never thought of that. So now -I’ve got to clear my name—of two pretty black things—or give myself -up,” he said, rising and standing beside her, face to face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She shuddered a little, and she could not keep all her anxiety out of -her voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you think you can clear yourself? You have some plan?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a plan exactly,” he shook his head gropingly, “only a vague sort -of—I don’t know what to call it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen was bitterly disappointed. “Why, what do you mean?” she asked -wistfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen,” he said awkwardly, diffidently. “You mustn’t think me quite -mad—but I don’t know that I can make you understand—only—well—all -these months out there—I have been haunted by an idea—oh! Helen, -strange things have come to many of us out there—at night—in the -trenches—lying by our guns waiting—in the thick of the fight -even—things that will never be believed by those who didn’t see -them—never forgotten, or doubted again, by those who did. I don’t know -how it came to me—or when exactly—but somehow I came to believe that, -yes, to <span class='it'>know</span> it, that, if I could come back to this room, I would find -something to prove my innocence. I don’t know how, I didn’t know how, -but the thing was so strong I couldn’t resist it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen Bransby’s heart stood still. Something fanned on her face. She -stood before Hugh almost transfixed. Slowly, reluctantly even, her eyes -left his face, and moved mechanically until they halted and rested on a -green-and-pink toy blinking in the sunset. Sunset was fast turning to -twilight. The room was flooded and curtained with shadows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I always felt,” Hugh continued, “that when I got to this room something -would come to me.” Then his manner changed abruptly, the scorn of the -modern man mocking and scoffing the embryo seer, and he said bitterly, -“I dare say I’ve been a fool—but it all seemed so real—so vivid—so -real.” His last words were plaintive with human longing and uncertainty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know,” she smiled a little, but her voice was deeply earnest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh regarded her in amazement. “You know?” he said breathlessly, -catching her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.” She seemed to find the rest difficult to say. He waited tensely, -and with a long intaking of breath she went on, “Hugh, did you ever -think where this feeling might come from?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—no,” he replied lamely, “how could I? It was an impression, I -dare say, just because this room was so much in my thoughts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, it wasn’t that,” Helen said staunchly. “Hugh, I have had this -feeling too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You, Helen!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. <span class='it'>I have it now</span>—strongly. For a long time I’ve felt that there -was something that I could do—something I must do—something that would -make things right for you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, my dear”—Hugh was frightened, anxious for her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s why I came down here a few days ago. Why I came to this room an -hour ago——” she hurried on—“all at once, in London, I knew that there -was something in this room that would clear you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh was baffled—and strangely impressed. “That is curious,” he said -very slowly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh,” she whispered clearly, “don’t you realize where this -feeling—that we both have—comes from?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shook his head slowly—puzzled—quite in the dark.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Think!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again a slow shake of the head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Daddy—Daddy is trying to help us!”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXX</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Too amazed to speak, too stunned to think, Hugh Pryde stood -rigid—dumfounded. Helen was breathing rapidly, her breast rising and -falling in great heaves, waves of alternate shadow and sunset veiling -and lighting her face, her eyes far off and set, her hands reaching out -to——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen, my dear——” he said, brought to himself by her strangeness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” she cried fiercely, great longing fluting her voice—she was more -intensely nervous than her companion had ever seen any one before, and -he had seen hundreds of untried boys on the eve of battle—“Oh! it must -be so. Why should the same thought come to us both—you at the front—I -in London—come—so—vividly? And without any reason!—I am sure it’s -Daddy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the sight of her exaltation all his cocksure masculinity reasserted -itself. He laid a patronizing, affectionate hand on her arm. “Don’t -distress yourself with this, dear,” he said soothingly, “I can’t let -you. Our both having the same feeling must have been only a -coincidence.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She shook off his hand with gentle impatience, the sex impatience of -quick woman with man’s dullness, a delicate rage as old as the Garden of -Eden. “No, no,” she said chidingly. “It wasn’t only that—it wasn’t only -that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her earnestness shook him a little—and perhaps his wish did too: any -port in a storm, even a supernatural one!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But if Uncle Dick could bring us to this room,” he asked slowly, “why -doesn’t he show us what to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He will,” she said—almost sternly—“he will—now that he has brought -us here—why, that proves it! Don’t you see? I see!—now that he has -brought us here—<span class='it'>He will come to us.</span>” She sank down into a low chair -near the writing-table, her eyes rapt, riveted on space.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again masculine superiority reasserted itself, and something -creature-love, and chivalry too—jostling aside the “almost I am -persuaded” that the moment before had cried in his soul, and Hugh put a -pitying hand on her shoulder, saying,</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t want to make you unhappy, Helen, but that’s impossible.” -Thought-transference, spiritual-wireless—um—well, perhaps—but -<span class='it'>ghosts</span>!—perish the folly!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen looked up, and, at something in her face, he took his hand from -her shoulder. The girl shivered. And in another moment the khaki-clad -man shivered too—rather violently. “How cold it is here,” he said, and -repeated somewhat dreamily—“How cold!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Helen echoed in an unnatural voice, “cold.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must have left the window open,” Hugh said with an effort. He went to -the casement. “No,” he said with a puzzled frown. “I did close -it—tight.” He crossed to Helen again and stood looking down on -her—worried and at sea. She sighed and looked up—almost he could see -her mood of exaltation, or emotion, or whatever it was, pass. She spoke -to him in a clear, natural voice. “What are we going to do, Hugh? We -must do something.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know,” he said hopelessly—and began moving restlessly about -the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly Helen sat upright and gave a swift half-frightened look over -her shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He came to her at once. “Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t think me hysterical—but we don’t <span class='it'>know</span> that Daddy couldn’t come -back—we <span class='it'>can’t be sure</span>. What if he were here, in this room now, trying -to tell us something, and we couldn’t understand?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen, my dearest,” Hugh deprecated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wait,” she whispered, rising slowly. “Wait!” For an instant she stood -erect, her slim height carved by the last of the sunshine out of the -shadows—trance-like, rigid. But at that sybil-moment Stephen Pryde -opened the door softly and came through it. The girl’s taut figure -quivered, relaxed, and with a moan—“No—no—I—no—no——” she sank -down again and buried her face in her hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby come from the dead could scarcely have confounded -Stephen more than the sight of Hugh did. For a moment of distraught -dismay the elder brother stood supine and irresolute on the threshold. -Then forcing himself to face dilemma, and to deal with it, if possible, -as such natures do at terribly crucial moments—until they reach their -breaking point—he called his brother by name.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh swung round with a glad exclamation of surprise, and held out his -hand. Stephen gripped it; and, when he could trust his voice, he said,</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had no idea you were here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen rose and went to them eagerly. “He has come back to us, Stephen, -he has been to France—he has been offered a commission—he has proved -himself,” she poured out in one exultant breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am glad to see you, Hugh, very glad——” Stephen said gravely, “but -you shouldn’t have come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why not?” the girl demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen turned to her then; he had paid no attention to her before, -scarcely had known of her presence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The warrant,” he said to her sadly. “Hugh,” at once turning again to -him, “didn’t you know that there was a warrant out for your arrest?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I only heard of it a day or two ago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you must realize what a risk you run in coming here. Why did you -take such a chance?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He came to clear himself,” Helen interposed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?” Stephen cried, his dismay undisguised, but the others were too -overwrought to catch it. “What?” Stephen repeated huskily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He believes—and so do I——” Helen answered—“that there is something -in this room that will prove his innocence.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In this room?” Stephen Pryde’s voice trembled with fear; fear so -obvious that only the intensest absorption could have missed it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Helen said firmly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen controlled himself with a great effort—it was -masterly—“What—what is it?” he forced himself to ask, turning directly -to Hugh and looking searchingly into his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know—yet,” Hugh said regretfully. Stephen gave a breath of -relief, and sat down; his legs were aching from his mental anxiety and -tension. “But,” Hugh went on, “I am certain I can find something that -will clear me, if Helen will allow me to search this room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh search this room! At that suggestion, panic, such as even yet he -had not known, in all these hideous months of hidden panic, caught -Stephen Pryde and shook him, man as he was and man-built, as if -palsy-stricken. Neither Helen nor Hugh could possibly have overlooked a -state so pitiful and so abject, if either had looked at him at that -moment. But neither did.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Allow!” the girl said scornfully, both hands on Hugh’s shoulders. -“Allow! Me allow you! You are master here,” she added proudly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once more Stephen Pryde commanded himself. It was bravely done. Hugh’s -head was bent over Helen—the woman Stephen loved—Hugh’s lips were -lingering on her hair. Stephen commanded himself, and spoke with quiet -emphasis—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—no! You must not do that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why not?” Helen said sharply, turning a little in Hugh’s arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you see?” Stephen answered smoothly, his eyes very kind, his -voice affectionate and solicitous. “Every moment you stay here, Hugh, -you run a great risk. You must get away, at once, to some safe place, -and then—I’ll make the search for you. Indeed I intended doing so.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—no—that wouldn’t be right,” Hugh said impulsively, not in the -least knowing why he said it. “I don’t know why,” he added slowly, “but -that wouldn’t be right.” As he spoke he turned his head and looked over -his shoulder almost as if listening to some one from whose prompting he -spoke. The movement of his head was unusual and somehow suggested -apprehension. And he spoke hesitatingly, automatically, as if some one -else threw him the word.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are you looking at?” Stephen said uneasily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh turned back with an awkward laugh. “Ah—um—nothing,” he said -lamely.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXXI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Often life seems one long series of interruptions; and, more often than -not, interruptions are petty and annoying. That it is our -inconsequential acquaintances who interrupt us most frequently is easily -enough understood—far more easily understood than accepted. But it is -much more difficult to understand how often some crisis is transmuted or -decided by some very minor personality, and a personality in no way -concerned in the crucial thing it decides or alters.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen was determined that Hugh should go—and go now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh was determined to stay, at all cost, until he had searched, and -exhausted search of, this room to which both he and Helen had been so -stupendously impressed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen wished him to stay, but feared his staying. Her will in the matter -swung an unhappy pendulum to and fro between the two wills of the -brothers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh, Helen, and Stephen, and of all the world they alone, were vitally -interested in the pending decision and in its consequences. How that -decision would have gone, left to them, can never be known.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Barker the inept, and old Morton Grant fated an intruder at Deep Dale, -interrupted, and, so to speak, decided the issue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing,” Hugh had replied evasively to his brother’s “What are you -looking at?” and had gone to the window, as if to avoid further -question. Stephen, unsatisfied, was following him persistently when -Barker opened the door and announced, “Mr. Grant.” Helen started to -check her, but Stephen with a quick gesture, stayed her, and before she -could speak speech was too late. Barker blundered out, and Grant came -timidly in.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The old clerk had aged and broken sadly in eight months. Very evidently -he was more in awe of Stephen Pryde than at the worst of times he had -been of Richard Bransby. He stood awkwardly just inside the room, and -fumbled with his hat, and fumbled for words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good—er—good-afternoon, Mr. Pryde. How do you do, Miss Bransby? I -trust——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen interrupted him sharply. “Well, Grant?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Er—I—I—am very sorry to intrude on you like this——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, yes; but what do you want?” Stephen snapped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s—it’s about Mr. Hugh, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen and Helen exchanged a quick look, she all apprehension, he -trying to hide his elation, trying to look anxious too. Hugh turned at -his name and came toward the others.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About me? Well, here I am. What about me, Grant?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The old man was amazed and moved. “Mr. Hugh,” he stammered, letting his -inseparable hat fall into a chair. “God bless me—it <span class='it'>is</span> Mr. Hugh.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Accurate as ever, Grant, eh?” Hugh chaffed him, smiling with boyish -friendliness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Morton Grant went to him eagerly, almost as if about to verify his own -eyesight by touch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are all right, sir? You are well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never better.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am glad, sir. I’m very glad indeed,” the old man said brokenly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde had had enough of this. “Yes, yes, yes,” he interrupted -testily; “but why are you here, Grant? You said it was about Hugh.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is, sir,” the clerk answered quickly, recalled to his errand; -“the—the authorities came to the office to-day, searching for him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, that’s cheerful,” Hugh commented.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen gave a little sob.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It appears,” Grant continued, “that he has been seen and recognized -lately. They thought we might have news of him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen turned to Hugh curtly, but still trying to hide his triumph.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see the risks you are running.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did you tell them, Grant?” Hugh asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I said we knew nothing of your whereabouts, sir. Then I came directly -here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Were you followed?” Stephen asked sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The question and the idea took Grant aback. “I—I don’t think so, sir!” -he said feebly. “It never occurred to me that such a thing was possible. -I’ve never had any experience with the police,” he apologized sadly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your common sense should have told you not to come,” Stephen said -brutally.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I dare say, sir,” Grant admitted piteously; “but it seemed to me to be -the only thing I could do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must go back at once,” Stephen ordered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very good, sir,” Grant agreed meekly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if you are questioned again——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For the first time in his life, Morton Grant interrupted an employer. -And he did it brusquely and with determined self-assertion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall say that I have seen nothing of Mr. Hugh—absolutely nothing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh went to him with outstretched hand; but Helen was there first.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh yes, that’s fine—fine,” Stephen said briskly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen caught Grant’s arm in her hands, and thanked him without a -word—with swimming eyes. But Hugh spoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank you, Grant.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grant paid no attention to Stephen Pryde, and Helen he gave but an -embarrassed scant look. Hugh’s hand he took in his. He was much -affected, and the old voice shook.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Hugh—I want you to know—I’ve always wanted you to know—that -telling Mr. Bransby about the—about the shortage—was the hardest thing -I ever did. But I had to do it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh pressed the hand he held. “I know, Grant,” he said cordially. “And -you were quite right to tell him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God bless you, Mr. Hugh.” Morton Grant felt for his handkerchief. He -thought he was filling up for a cold.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God bless you, Grant,” the young fellow said, still holding the old -clerk’s hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde intervened sharply. “Come, come, Grant, you mustn’t waste -time like this.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very good, sir, I’ll—I’ll go at once.” But at the door he turned and -lingered a moment to say to Hugh,</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope—I trust that everything will be all right for you, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That ought to convince you that I am right,” Stephen said imperatively -to his brother, as the door closed behind Grant. “You <span class='it'>must</span> get away -from here now—the quicker the better.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I can’t go now, Stephen,” the younger man pled; “I simply can’t go -until—not yet——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They are certain to come here for you,” Stephen insisted; “they are -certain to do that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But before they can come I will have searched.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Stephen interrupted again, more sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Besides, Latham is in the house. He may come into this room at any -minute—we couldn’t ask him to be a party to this. By Jove! no; he -mustn’t see you; now I think of it, he suspects something already; he -was questioning me shrewdly yesterday. I didn’t like it then, I like it -very much less now. The coast’s quite clear,” he said, looking through -the door. “Go up to my room—you will be safe there. Go! Go now. I’ll -come to you presently, and we can talk things over—arrange everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh Pryde hesitated. It seemed to him that some strong impulse forbade -him to leave the room. He looked at Helen, but she seemed as hesitating -as he, and at last he muttered something about, “Another word to old -Grant, the old brick,” and went reluctantly into the hall.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXXII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Neither followed him, and Stephen did not even call after him “not to -linger in the hall, running the risk of being seen,” but turned at once -to Helen, who sat brooding and puzzled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen,” Pryde said earnestly, “you must help me persuade him to go at -once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t do that, Stephen,” the girl replied slowly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it’s madness for him to stay here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not so sure of that,” Helen said, shaking her head. “I have the -same feeling that he has—exactly the same feeling.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen, be sensible!” he begged roughly. “Look things in the face! What -evidence could there be here that would help you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t answer that,” she replied musingly, “at least not yet. All I -know is that this is our one chance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Our one chance?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—Hugh’s and mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde winced. Hers and Hugh’s! They two linked by her, and -always. “Yours and Hugh’s,” he said acidly. “Yes, but, Helen, aren’t you -forgetting?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Forgetting what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your father’s wishes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh,” she returned impatiently, “that was when he believed Hugh guilty; -if he proves his innocence——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He hasn’t proved it yet,” Stephen broke in viciously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But he will,” she said firmly. “Stephen, I am sure he will. You—you -wouldn’t wish to stand between us then?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you understand, Helen,” Pryde retorted, “that this is just what -your father wanted to save you from? He realized that, if you ever came -under Hugh’s influence again, he would make you believe in him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you don’t believe in him?” She spoke coldly, and she was fully -alert now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God knows I wish I could.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen!” she cried, rising indignantly, recoiling from him in -amazement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I can’t,” Pryde added doggedly. He was furious now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I can and do,” the girl said icily. “And I am going to stand by -him, no matter what happens. I know he is innocent. But if he were -guilty, a thousand times guilty, it would make no difference to me, none -at all in my love. I’d only care for him the more, stand by him the -more, and for ever and ever.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The fierce color rushed to Pryde’s face, and his hands knotted together -in pain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen,” he pled, “you are making things very difficult for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am sorry, Stephen,” she said a little perfunctorily; “but I love -Hugh,” she added proudly. “He is all I have in the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t understand,” he retorted sternly. “I promised your father to -take care of you. I mean to keep that promise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I do not understand,” Helen said haughtily. She, too, was -infuriated now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must send Hugh away at once,” Stephen told her abruptly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Must? Do you think to force me to do as you wish?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had spoken insolently, and he was white to his lips. He loved her, -all his life he had loved her; and she knew it. An older woman would -have spared him a little, because of that love, because of his pain. -Helen hit him again. She went a step nearer, and laughed in his face—a -taunting laugh of scorn and dislike.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a bitter pause, and then Stephen spoke more carefully, groping -to retrieve somewhat the ground his passion had lost.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t seem to realize that Hugh is in a very dangerous position. -If—if some one should inform the authorities of his whereabouts——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Inform the authorities?” she repeated his words wonderingly. He had not -meant to say them, and already regretted them. He bit his lip. Suddenly -their meaning dawned on her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen,” her voice was stiff with horror, horror of him, not fear for -Hugh. “You wouldn’t do that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I!” he said thickly. “I—no—no—no.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d hate you, if you did that,” Helen said quietly. Pryde realized how -much too far he had gone. He owed his place in the world to this girl’s -favor, his hope, still ardent, to fulfill the dreams he had dreamt as a -boy, watching the birds; he could not afford to incur her enmity. If -love was lost, ambition remained. Fool, fool that he was to imperil that -too. He changed his tone, and said shiftily—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—no—you misunderstand me—of course I wouldn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would disgrace Hugh,” she persisted hotly; “ruin his whole life, -just when he has fought his way up again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But don’t you see,” Stephen urged eagerly, taking quick advantage of -the opening her words gave, “that is just what I am trying to prevent? -If he is caught, he is certain to be disgraced. The whole truth about -the theft would have to come out. That is why I want him to go from here -quickly. It’s for his sake—to save him. I’m thinking of him, only of -him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the word “theft,” Helen threw her head up haughtily. But Stephen -Pryde was almost past picking his words now. On the whole, though, he -was playing his part well, his cards shrewdly. His last words rang true, -whatever they in fact were; and Helen was not unimpressed. Incredible as -it may seem, Pryde’s affection for his brother was not dead, and at -sight of Hugh, for all the dilemma with which Hugh’s reappearance -threatened him, that old-time affection had leapt in the older man’s -guilt-heavy heart. And it was that, probably, that had given some warmth -of truth to his last words, some semblance of conviction to Helen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she stood her ground. “He can’t go—until he has made his search,” -she said with quiet finality. “His only chance of proving his innocence -is through that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that’s absurd,” Pryde disputed impatiently. “What evidence could he -find here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know yet,” Helen admitted. “But I am sure there is something.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sure? Why are you so sure?” He spoke eagerly, all his uneasiness -rekindled at her confident words, the poor thief in him fearing each -syllable an officer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His cousin thought a little, and then she answered him, and more kindly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen, I haven’t been quite frank with you, because I know you don’t -believe what I believe, but I must tell you the truth now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?” he said breathlessly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh and I have both had a message from Daddy, telling us that the -proof that would clear him is in this room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A message—a message from your father?” His agitation was increasing, -but he did his utmost to conquer it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Helen replied gravely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He left you—he left you letters?” Pryde’s voice was thick with terror. -Few as his words were, he spoke them with difficulty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No!” Helen shook her head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then how”—his voice trembled and so did his hands—“how did the -message come?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It only came lately—from the other side.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From the other side?” Stephen asked blankly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen nodded. For a moment he looked at her in utter perplexity, and -then a light broke faintly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” he said incredulously. “You—you mean the messages came from a -dead man?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Helen said assuredly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde’s relief was so great that he could scarcely control it or -himself. He felt faint and sick with elation, and presently he broke -into hysterical laughter. It was the second time he had laughed so in -this room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen regarded him offendedly. Indeed, feeling as she felt, and at stake -what she had at stake, his mirth was offensive. But the boisterous -merriment was his safety-valve.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When he was able to check himself, and he did as soon as he could, he -said, more affectionately than superiorly,</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen, surely you can’t be serious?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am,” she answered curtly. She was indignant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But,” Stephen persisted, “you can’t believe such preposterous nonsense. -A message from the dead! It’s too absurd!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will see that it is not,” the girl told him coldly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall have to wait a long time for that, I am afraid,” he returned -patronizingly. He was quite himself now. He rose carelessly and strolled -to the writing-table. But as he went the menace that still threatened -him reasserted itself in his mind. He turned again to Helen. “And this -message from the dead, as you call it, is your only reason for believing -that there was some evidence in this room that would clear Hugh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.” She vouchsafed the word inimically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde drew a long breath of relief, and turned from her vexed face. As -he turned, his eye fell again on the writing-table and traveled, as -before, from it to the fireplace. He stood musing, and presently, -scarcely conscious of what he was saying, said—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And for a time you quite impressed me. I thought you had found out -about——” He broke off abruptly, realizing with a frightened start that -he had been on the verge of a damning admission. His great relief had -weakened his masterly defense—made him careless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen regarded him curiously. “About what?” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, about—about this evidence,” he replied, laughing lightly. He was -well on his guard again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t make fun of me, Stephen,” she said, rising. “You hurt me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I didn’t mean to do that. Where are you -going?” he added, as she reached the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going to Hugh,” she said quietly, without halting or looking -toward him. And he neither dared stay her nor follow her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alone in the fateful room, Stephen Pryde moved about it restlessly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lit a cigarette, but after a few whiffs he tossed it to the fire. -Suddenly he looked apprehensively over his shoulder. He was shivering -with cold. He walked about uncomfortably. “A message from the dead,” he -said aloud, contempt, amusement, and dread blended in his voice. “A -message from the dead.” He went hurriedly to the side table where the -decanters stood and mixed himself a drink. He carried his glass to the -fireplace, as if for warmth, and drank, looking down at the flames. -Suddenly he swung round with a cry of horror. “Uncle Dick!” The thin -glass fell and shivered into a dozen fragments on the hearth. “Who’s -there?” he cried, twitching convulsively. “Who’s there?” And with a -distraught moan, he sank cowering into the chair from which Richard -Bransby had risen to die.</p> - -<hr class='tbk105'/> - -<div><h1 class='nobreak'><a id='BOOKIV'></a>BOOK IV</h1></div> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>THE LIGHT</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>The wretched man sat helpless in the grip of his terror. Cold puffs of -air buffeted his trembling face. A hand of ice lay on his forehead. -Afraid of what he almost saw dimly, and clearly sensed now, he hid his -face in his hands and waited, unable to move, except as his own abject -fear shook him, unable to call for help. And he would have welcomed any -human help now—any human companionship.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But such wills as Stephen Pryde’s are neither conquered nor broken by -one defeat. Presently he took down his hands, and the uncovered face was -again the face of a man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was calmer now, and with his wonderful will and the habits of thought -of a lifetime he was overcoming his fear. He looked about the big room -quickly, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed slightly—a rather -mirthless laugh of self-contempt. He got up in another moment, and moved -about steadily, turning on the electric lights. Again he laughed as he -stood warming his hands before the glow of the gas fire. Clearly he was -ashamed of himself for having permitted his nerves to get the better of -him and of his commonsense. Yet the quick, stealthy glances he could not -refrain from throwing over his shoulder now and then, and an odd -apprehensiveness in his bearing, proved that there was still some doubt -in his mind—a doubt and a fear of which he could not rid -himself—absolutely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was still wandering aimlessly about the room when his tired eyes fell -on the writing-table. It suggested the missing paper to him again, of -course: it always would, whenever he saw it. He went close to the table, -dragged there, as it were, and, as they had done before again and again, -his eyes traveled to the fire. A thought flashed to his troubled mind. -He went eagerly to the fireplace, and kneeling down searched feverishly -for some charred fragments of the paper that so threatened him. Nothing -could have shown more clearly how unhinged he was. A paper burnt eight -months ago would scarcely be traceable, by even one atom, near a fire -that had been burning constantly since Helen’s return some days ago, or -in a fireplace, or on a hearthrug, that Caroline Leavitt most certainly -had had thoroughly cleaned each day since the partial removal of Helen’s -taboo had made such cleanly housewifery possible. It had been a crazed -thought, bred in an overwrought mind. Often acute mania discloses itself -in just some such small irregularity of conduct.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Of course, he found nothing where there could be nothing to find. But it -unsettled him again greatly. He rose from his knees and stood a long -time deeply troubled, staring vacantly into space.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Presently he looked quickly behind him, but not this time with the -nervous tremor of the ghost-ridden, but rather with the trained, skilled -investigation of the steel-nerved housebreaker, the quick movement of -one who wishes to make sure he is unobserved.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Afraid of a dead man!” He laughed at the very thought. But the -living—ah, that was very much another matter. He was afraid of the -living, deadly afraid of his own brother—of poor hunted Hugh—of a slip -of a girl, and of every breathing creature that might find, through -search or by accident, and disclose, the incriminating document. For it, -murder had been in his heart, in the hour he had written it. And because -of it, something akin to murder throbbed and sickened in him now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked about the room again and again for some possible hiding-place. -Then all at once he looked at the door through which Hugh had gone, and -his face grew livid and terrible. Hugh <span class='it'>must</span> go. He must not, he should -not, search this room and its hideous possibilities again. He must go: -he should. If only the boy’d go and go into safety! How gladly he, -Stephen, would aid him, and provide for him too. But, if Hugh would not -go in that way, why, then he should go in another. Pryde had taken his -resolve. He would not waver now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rang the bell, and moved to the table, and stood looking down on the -notepaper there.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You rung, sir?” Barker asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. There’s a camp near here, I believe?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just over the hill, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Simmons the gardener still lives in the cottage?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, sir.” The girl glowed, and was almost inarticulate with eagerness. -“But, sir, if you want some one to go over to the camp, sir——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That will do,” Pryde told her curtly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very—very good, sir,” she almost sobbed it, and slunk out, -disappointed and abashed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen watched her go impatiently, and then turned back to the table, -his face tense and set. He picked up a piece of paper, sat down, dipped -a pen in the ink—and then laid the pen down, remembering what had, in -all probability, been last written at that table, with ink from this -well—perhaps with this penholder! The nib was new, and careful “Aunt -Caroline” had had the inkstand cleaned and filled. Stephen sighed and -took up the pen. Then he frowned—at the embossed address at the head of -the sheet. He tore it off, looked at the waste-paper basket, then at the -fire, but neither seemed quite safe enough to share this latest secret -of his penmanship. He put the torn-off engraved bit of paper carefully -in his pocket, and began to write very slowly, with wonderful care.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The writing was not his own. Versatility in hand-writings had always -been the greatest deftness of his versatile hands. “Hugh Pryde, wanted -for desertion, is in hiding at Deep Dale. A Friend.” He wrote it -relentlessly, his lip curving in scorn at the threadbare pseudonym. Then -he gave a long look up at Helen’s portrait still radiant over the -mantel. Then a thought of Hugh, and of the boyhood days they had shared, -came to him chokingly. He propped his head in his hands, and sat and -gazed ruefully at the treachery he had just written. So absorbed was he -in his sorry scrutiny that he did not hear a step in the hall, and he -jumped a little, woman-like, when his cousin closed the door behind her. -With a quick, stealthy movement he folded the sheet of paper and thrust -it into his coat “Oh, Helen, it’s you!” he said rather jerkily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh is growing very impatient, Stephen,” she said, coming nearer; -“will you go to him now?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—yes—of course. I was just going. There’s no time to lose; none. I -hope he has grown more reasonable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do you mean?” Helen spoke sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About leaving here, of course.” His voice was as sharp.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We both know that he can’t do that yet,” she returned decidedly—“not -until——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen came to her imperiously. “Helen, it’s folly for him to stay.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” she retorted hotly. “For I am sure, quite sure, we are going to -find the proofs we want—and it is only here we can look for them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But if you don’t find them?” he reminded her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You haven’t yet,” Stephen told her impatiently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In just a little while the way will come to us,” the girl said. “I am -sure it will.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I’m sure it will,” her cousin said mendaciously. “But in the -meantime the men are searching for Hugh. And, if he doesn’t leave at -once, I feel certain they will come here and arrest him. I’m going to -him now, to try to persuade him once more to be reasonable.” And he went -from the library, his anonymous note in his pocket. Helen made no -attempt to dissuade him. His words had troubled her deeply. Ought Hugh -indeed to go? She couldn’t say. She could scarcely think.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked in the fire. She counted the clock’s ticking. She gazed at -the Joss. What should she do? She asked them all that. What ought Hugh -to do? They gave her no answer, no help. She rang the bell, and sank -dejectedly into her father’s chair. “Do you know where Dr. Latham is?” -she asked Barker when the girl came.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, Miss.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Find him. Tell him I want him—here, at once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It seemed an unconscionable time to her that she waited. But it was not -long, as the clock told it. Barker had been quick for once.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dr. Latham, you must help me, you must help me now,” Helen cried -excitedly as he came in.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the sight of her face Latham turned back and closed the door -carefully. Then he came to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Help you—something has happened?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. And that feeling I spoke of—that sense of nearness—has come back -to me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The physician drew a chair close to hers. “You must put this out of your -mind,” he told her pityingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned to him imploringly. “How can I? Daddy is speaking to me, he -is trying to help me; and isn’t it terrible I can’t hear?—I can’t -hear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear child——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I know, you think I am nervous, overwrought—well, perhaps I am,” -she said, rising and going to him, laying her hand on his chair’s high -back, “but don’t you see the only way I can get any relief is to find -out what Daddy wants to tell me?—Think how he must be suffering when he -is trying so hard to speak to me, and I can’t hear—I can’t hear.” -Latham made a gesture of sympathy and disbelief mingled, and laid his -hand on hers, rising. “Oh, if you knew the circumstances you would help -me, I know you would.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her voice was wild, but her eyes were clear and sane, and something in -their steady light gave him pause—almost touched him with conviction. -He was skilled at distinguishing truth from untruth, sanity from -hallucination: that was no small part of his fine professional -equipment. He studied her steadily, and then said gravely—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are the circumstances?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know I can trust you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham smiled. “Of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh has come back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No?” Great physicians are rarely surprised. Horace Latham was very much -surprised.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He came this afternoon. Dr. Latham, he didn’t desert. Daddy told him he -must give up his commission—he promised Hugh that he would arrange it; -he must have died before he had the chance, but Hugh never knew. He -enlisted under another name.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela had always said that Hugh Pryde had done nothing shabby. She knew -that. There was some explanation. Latham remembered it. Clever woman!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But,” he said, “why did your father——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He thought Hugh had taken some money from the office,” Helen rushed on -breathlessly. “The evidence was all against him; but he was innocent, -Dr. Latham.” Latham’s face was non-committal, but he bowed his head -gravely. “I know he was innocent,” the girl insisted, “and Daddy knows -it now. Oh, Dr. Latham, can’t you help me?” She laid her little hands on -his arm, and her tearful eyes pled with him eloquently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham was moved. “My dear, how can I?” he said very gently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t realize how vital this is,” she urged, “The authorities -suspect Hugh’s whereabouts; they were at the office to-day, looking for -him. If they find him before he can clear himself——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes——” Latham saw clearly the gravity of that. But <span class='it'>what</span> could he -do? “Yes?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you see now that I must find out what Daddy wants to tell me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham was badly troubled. Hugh <span class='it'>might</span> be innocent, but the chances -were the other way. Angela was the most charming creature in all the -universe. Helen was very charming. But their added convictions were no -evidence in a court of law, and not much before the tribunal of his own -masculine judgment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Miss Bransby,” he told the trembling girl sadly, “if I could help you -to understand, I would; but I—I—don’t know the way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you believe there is a way?” Helen said, eagerly. Even that much -from his lips would be something. Every one knew Dr. Latham was wise and -thoughtful and careful. “You do believe there is a way?” she repeated -wistfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps.” He spoke almost as wistfully as she had. “If one could only -find it; but so many unhappy people have tried to stretch a hand across -that gulf, and so few have succeeded—and even when they have—most of -the messages that have come to them have been either frivolous or beyond -our understanding.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we shall find the way—we shall find it,” Helen told him -positively.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well,” Latham said, begging the psychic question—putting it aside for -the more material quandary, “somehow we will find a way to get Hugh out -of this difficulty. Where is he now?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With Stephen,” Helen told him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen—Stephen’s the very man to help us,” Latham said cheerfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen felt perfectly sure that Stephen might be bettered for the work in -hand, but she had no time to say so, even if she would, for at that -moment Mrs. Hilary ran through the door, opening it abruptly, and -closing it with a clatter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! Helen,” she cried—and then she saw Latham, and paused -disconcerted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He knows all about Hugh, Angela,” Helen said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank goodness! Now perhaps we shan’t be long! Something dreadful has -happened. My chauffeur has just brought me a note. The detectives have -found out that Hugh has been at my house. Two detectives are waiting -there now to question me. They may be here any moment. Thank goodness -Palmer had the sense to send me word. But, what shall we do? They may be -here any moment, I tell you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Latham said, “unless they have been here already.” He went to the -bell and rang it. Why he rang he did not say. And neither of the women -asked him, only too content, as all but the silliest women, or the -bitterest, are, to throw the responsibility of immediate practical -action in such dilemmas on to a man they trusted. The three waited in -silence until Barker said—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You rang, miss?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I rang, Barker,” Latham answered. “Has any one been here lately asking -for Mr. Hugh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, sir. This afternoon, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This afternoon!” Helen cried in dismay.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, miss, about an hour ago, two men come—came.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did you tell them?” Latham asked quickly. “I told them the truth, -sir, of course, as I ’adn’t never been told to tell them anything else, -that he has never been here, not once since the master died.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite right,” Latham said cordially. “And, Barker, if they should -happen to come back, let me know at once, and I’ll speak to them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very good, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And—Barker, did they see any one but you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are sure?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh yes, sir. I stood at the hall window and watched them until the road -turned, and I couldn’t see them no more.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They will come back,” Helen almost sobbed as the door closed behind -Barker.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When they come back Hugh will not be here,” Latham told her -confidently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you are going to help us?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course.” Latham smiled at her. In all his years of conventional -rectitude, he had never defied the law of his land; and he fully -realized the heinousness of aiding a deserter soldier to escape -arrest—and in war time too—and its possible consequences. But he was -staunch in friendship, he was greatly sorry for Helen, be the merits of -Hugh’s case what they might, and he knew that Angela’s eye was on him. -And this thing he could do. To raise the dead to the girl’s aid he had -no necromancy, but to smuggle Hugh away he might easily compass, if no -more time were lost. “Of course,” he repeated. “I must. Go and tell Hugh -to come here as quickly as he can.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Helen said eagerly. “Oh, thank you, Doctor.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s all right,” he said cheerfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen hurried away. Latham held out his hand, and Angela came to him and -put hers in it. She asked him no question, and for a space he stood -thinking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, dear,” he said in a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she said eagerly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must go at once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know—but where can I go?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Home.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Home!” She echoed his word in consternation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, go back as if nothing had happened.” He put his arm about her and -led her towards the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As if nothing had happened?” she said feebly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Keep those men there until we have a chance to get Hugh safely away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh——” she cried in a panic. “Oh—I couldn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must.” If “must” is the one word no woman forgives any man -ordinarily, it can on the other hand be the sweetest she ever hears—at -the right moment, from the right man. Angela accepted it meekly, and -proudly too. “But what can I say to them?” she begged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, say—anything, anything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Horace, what does one say to detectives?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can say whatever comes into your head,” he replied, smiling into -her eyes. “After all they are only men.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela dimpled. “Yes—so they are—just men. I dare say I can manage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I dare say you can,” Horace Latham retorted dryly.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXXV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh will be down directly,” Helen told Latham as she came in, a moment -after Mrs. Hilary had gone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good. I will take him away in my car, and find some place where he can -stay safely until we can get at the truth of this.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, that is good of you,” Helen thanked him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Remember,” Latham reminded her gravely, “sooner or later Hugh must give -himself up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He knows that,” Helen said bravely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I drive my own car now,” the doctor said briskly, “so we can start at -once. Be sure he’s ready.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then I’ll get the car and bring it round,” he said over his shoulder as -he went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She scarcely heard his last words, or realized that he had gone. She -stood very still, one hand on the table—one on her breast. There was -something trance-like in the tense, slender figure. Her wide eyes -glazed. Her breath came in slow, heavy beats. Presently she gave a great -sigh, lifted her hand from her breast to her head, then moved slowly -towards the bookcase, her hand stretched out in front of her now, as if -leading and pointing. She moved mechanically, as sleep walkers move, and -almost as if impelled from behind. Her face was still and mask-like.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had almost reached the bookshelves, almost touched with her outheld -hand “David Copperfield,” when Stephen came into the room. Instantly -something odd and uncanny in her manner arrested him. For one moment he -stood riveted, spell-bound, then he shook off furiously the influence -that held him, and exclaimed abruptly, peremptorily, “Helen! Helen!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His voice broke the spell, and she turned to him blankly, like one who -had but just awakened from heavy sleep. A moment she gazed at him -unseeingly; then she moaned and tottered. She would have fallen, but -Stephen caught her and held her. The spell, the faintness, whatever it -was, passed or changed, and she moved slowly from his hold, greatly -excited, but conscious, and more nearly normal; the rapt look on her -face still, but penetrated more and more by her own personality, awake -and normally sentient.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All at once she realized. In one flash of time, one great beat of -emotion, <span class='it'>she saw</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen!” she panted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it?” Pryde said, guiding her to a chair, and urging her into it -gently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen,” she repeated, both palms pressed on her forehead. “Oh!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is the matter?” he asked hoarsely, dazed and perturbed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just now—when you spoke”; her voice gathered tone as she continued, -grew bell-clear, ringing, flute-fine, “the message was coming—it almost -got through, it almost got through! Something was telling me what to do -to save Hugh.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes glowed like deep blue lamps, around her face a veil of -transparent lambent whiteness clung, and transfigured it. The girl was -in ecstasy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde was terribly shaken. He looked at Helen in fear and -amazement. Then, unable to refrain, though he tried his strongest, he -looked over his shoulder uneasily. When he could speak his voice was -harsh and unnatural.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Impossible,” he said roughly; “impossible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no,” the girl whispered exultantly, clearly. “<span class='it'>I know</span>—I can’t -tell you anything, but that I know, I know, I know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a power in the girl-voice that reached and subdued Stephen. He -was impressed, almost convinced.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know,” he said slowly, wonderingly. “Did this message—did it -indicate some paper—tell you where to look for it?” For his soul, for -his life, for his whole future at stake, he could not keep the words -back. They were forced from him, as the hand of the player plucks the -melody from a harp—the melody, or the discord. Something stronger than -he ever had been, or ever could be, commanded and he obeyed, bowed to -the infinite; his own conscience turned traitor and linked against him, -linked with some nameless mightiness he had scoffed at and denied and -defied.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paper?” Helen said. “What paper do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rushed on, goaded and driven. “I don’t know—only if there were some -evidence here that would clear Hugh, it would be in the shape of a paper -that—that——” His tongue clove thick in his mouth, clotted and mumbled -with nervousness. He could scarcely enunciate; he could not enunciate -clearly—“that seems reasonable, doesn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, of course,” Helen agreed. “No—nothing of that sort came to -me—the whole thing was so vague—so indistinct. But I am sure now; it -will come back to me—and help me—I am sure it will.” The glow on her -face, the great light in her eyes, grew brighter and brighter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde was almost in the state he had been in when he had dropped -his glass on the fender and cried, “Who’s there? Uncle Dick!” While -Helen spoke he kept looking over his shoulder. He was tremblingly -conscious of a <span class='it'>something</span> in the room, a something that he felt was a -some one—a presence. It almost overpowered him, the conviction, the -chill, and the unprecedented sensation, but, summoning his iron will, he -resolved to fight on; and with a flash of chicanery that was nothing -short of genius, and nothing less than satanic, he determined even to -take advantage of the dead man’s message. For it had come to that with -him now. That Richard Bransby was in the room, and trying “to -communicate,” he now no more doubted than Helen herself did. Well! let -it be so. Let the dead man get the message through, if he could! He—he, -Stephen—would take it, twist it, turn it, use it, seize it—<span class='it'>destroy</span> -it, if need were. He had defied God and His angels, his own conscience, -fate, the law of the land, and now he defied the soul and the -consciousness and all the craft of one old man dead—dead and returned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned to Helen impressively. “If—if it would only come to you now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?” the girl said uncomprehendingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I could find whatever it is—if you would help me to find it,” he -insinuated earnestly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How can I?” she faltered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Try,” he urged masterfully—“try and get that message again.” His hands -were so cold they ached. Sweat ran on his brow. But his voice was firm, -his eyes imperative, compelling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t,” Helen said piteously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must, I tell you, you must.” He stamped his foot in his insistence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stephen, you frighten me,” she said, shrinking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Try, Helen, try.” He whispered it gently, soothingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Like some beautiful, breathing marionette, she rose slowly, very slowly, -pressed one hand over her eyes—stood rigid, but swaying, poised for -motion, tuned for revelation—for receiving and transmitting a message.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde watched her with straining eyes. His gasping breath froze -on his stiffening lips. He put out one daring hand, and just touched her -sleeve. At that touch some negative current seemed to sweep and surge -through her. She recoiled, she shuddered, and then she relaxed from all -her intensity, and sank wearily down into the nearest chair, saying -dully—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t Stephen, I can’t!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The banished blood leapt back to his face, and laughed in his heart, -danced through his veins. His whole attitude was changed in one flash of -time; the attitude of his flesh, the attitude of his mind. Helen had -failed. The thing she had hoped, he had feared and defied, could not be -done. It was farce. It was fraud—fraud worked on them by their caitiff -nerves, as “fortunes” forsooth were told for a “bob” by old crones, from -tea leaves—on the Brixton Road. And almost he had been persuaded, he, -Stephen Pryde! Pshaw! Well, his fears were done for and past now once -for all. The dead man could not reach her! The dead man; a handful of -dust or of rot in a grave!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned to Helen in cold triumph. “I knew it—I knew it,” he exulted. -“Don’t you see now, Helen, how you are deceiving yourself? If there was -a message for you, why shouldn’t it come? I tried to help you—to put -myself in sympathy—you saw how useless it was.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Helen had been too near the unseen, too far across the dread -borderland. Doubt could not touch her again. She had stood in the edge -of the light. She had felt. Almost she had heard and had seen. She knew. -She shook her head, without troubling to answer him or look toward him. -She shook her head and she smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where’s Latham?” Pryde said in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She answered him as crisply, and as commonplace in manner and word.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is going to take poor Hugh away in his car; he has gone to get it -ready.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is going to take him to some place where he will be safe until we -can find the evidence that will clear him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But there isn’t any,” Pryde said with truculent brutality; and his eyes -measured yet again, gloatingly, the distance and the angle from the -writing-table to the fireplace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know there is,” Helen said quietly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There can’t be,” Stephen stormed, almost losing grip of himself—very -nearly had he reached his breaking-point. “I tell you, there can’t be.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen sat and studied her cousin curiously. She was not a thoughtful -girl, and the abnormal strains through which she had been passing for -some time now had conspired to make thought peculiarly difficult; but -there was much in Stephen’s manner, in what he said and in how he said -it, in his face, his eyes, his gestures, his inconsistencies, to compel -thought and arouse suspicion, even in a mind as tired and as little -given to analysis as hers was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was on his track now, not in the least knowing or surmising what was -hidden in his soul, but sensing that there was something, something that -it behooved her, for Hugh’s sake, to fathom. Whether she might have -fathomed it, as she sat watching him with troubled, doubting eyes, would -be difficult to guess. And in a few moments her detective train of -thought was broken by Hugh’s voice. He came in gravely but cheerfully, -and said, as he stood smiling down on her tenderly—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here I am, Helen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She smiled back at him, little minded to show less courage than her man -did in this climax moment of their ordeal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Doctor Latham will be here in a minute; he’s going to take you away in -his car,” she said as cheerfully as Hugh himself had spoken, and rising -and linking her arm in his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I can’t go, Helen,” Hugh told her,—“not yet—it wouldn’t be right -for me to go until I have searched this room—I—why, if I turn towards -the door even, something <span class='it'>pushes</span> me back. I mustn’t go, dear; I must -search first. It won’t take long—I can do it before they get here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen came to his brother, and laid his hands on Hugh’s shoulders. As -Stephen came towards them, Helen drew a little away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” Stephen said earnestly, “no; why not go with Latham now, and then, -come back—when it is safe?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh wavered. This elder brother had always influenced him much. They -had been orphans together, and in their early orphaned days, the elder -had been something of father and mother too to Hugh Pryde. Stephen’s -earliest recollection was of their mother; Hugh’s earliest was of -Stephen, mending a broken toy for him, and comforting him with a silver -threepence. A thousand times Stephen had befriended him. Stephen was -proved wise, again and again, and kind and disinterested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That would give me more time,” the boy said, looking gratefully into -the affectionate, brotherly eyes that were bent steadily on his—“that’s -not a bad idea. If Latham took me as far as the Heath they’d never find -me there—never—then late to-night I could come back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” Stephen interrupted, “not the Heath—it must be some place where I -can get to you; it may not be safe to come back to-night—they may leave -some one here to watch.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Hugh agreed, “they’re almost sure to do that. Where shall I wait, -Stevie?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde winced at the old name of their playfellow days—Hugh had -not used it for years. But he had put his foot upon the fratricidal -plowshare of deceit and treachery, and it was beyond him to withdraw it -now. At that bitter moment he would have spared his brother if he -could—but it was too late. Suffering acutely (probably Cain suffered so -once), he said emphatically, “Oakhill! The wood on the other side.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But if they find me there,” Hugh objected, “I wouldn’t have a chance to -get away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen’s hands were still on his brother’s shoulders and he leaned his -weight upon them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They won’t find you, my boy, trust me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was enough, and Hugh’s answer came instant and content.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right, Stephen!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-by,” the elder said hastily. “I’ll go hurry up Latham; the sooner -you are away from here now the better.” He released Hugh, and turned to -go. But Hugh held out both his hands, and for a long moment the brothers -stood looking earnestly into each other’s eyes, hands gripped—Helen, -apart, watching them, dissatisfied. Then Stephen turned on his heel and -walked resolutely away, out of the room.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>As Stephen’s step died in the distance, all Hugh’s uncertainty came -back, and he turned to Helen disconcertedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope this is the right thing I am doing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am sure it is,” the girl said. “Dr. Latham thinks so too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you? Still something keeps telling me I shouldn’t go—I dare say -it’s my imagination.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, yes,” she reassured him, “what difference could it make, Hugh, -whether you search this afternoon or this evening?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“None, of course,” he admitted; “the strain has lasted so long it’s on -my nerves. Oh,” he broke out anew, “if I could only think where to look -now. But I can’t—I can’t.” He looked about the room distractedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen came to him, and put her hand on him. “It is going to be all -right, Hugh—I’m certain it’s going to be all right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I hope so,” he said; “but, Helen, if it shouldn’t?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If it shouldn’t?” she said, startled, and touched too now by his -discomfort, his vacillation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This would have to be good-by, Helen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—no—no!” she said, choking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would,” Hugh insisted sadly. “Oh, I dare say my record at the -front—would help me; no doubt the penalty wouldn’t be very severe—but -the whole story of the robbery would have to come out—the scandal would -always cling to me—I couldn’t let you share that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you think I’d mind?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took her face in his hands. “You don’t realize what unhappiness it -would bring you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It doesn’t matter,” she said proudly. “I <span class='it'>want</span> to share it with you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, Helen—unless I clear myself I can never see you again.” She caught -his hands, and held, them to her heart. He whitened under and over his -war-tan, but he added almost sternly, “I mean it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what about me?” she cried passionately. “Have you thought about -that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s you I am thinking of, believe that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” she cried, hurt, angry, rebellious, freeing herself from his -touch; but he caught her back and held her fast. He kissed her again and -again, and then—again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh, my boy, my boy,” Mrs. Leavitt sobbed, bustling in upon them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen moved away, and sat down wearily. Hugh bent to his aunt’s embrace. -“There, there, Aunt Caroline, don’t cry,” he entreated, as soon as he -could disentangle himself enough to be articulate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t help it—I can’t help it,” Mrs. Leavitt wailed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, but such big tears,” he coaxed, dabbing at them affectionately -with his khaki-colored handkerchief; “there, there, dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the poor childless Niobe would not be comforted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! Hugh,” she sobbed, “you won’t let them take you away—you are not -going to let them take you away—promise me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, of course not,” he said soothingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m so frightened,” the woman moaned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is no need to be frightened,” he told her briskly, “if you will -only do your part, dear Aunt Caroline.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is my part?” Caroline Leavitt asked falteringly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“None of the servants know I have been here—not even Barker has seen -me—get them away so they won’t see me leave.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, dear,” his aunt said promptly, alert, business-like, Martha ready -and practical again under the stimulant of something definite to do, -some tangible service to render, some woman’s help to contribute.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go quickly, won’t you?” But he need not have said it, for already she -was hurrying from the room, and only half pausing to say, “Yes, at once. -You will come back, Hugh—you are sure to come back?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” he said confidently, “don’t worry, I’ll come back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll get them all in the kitchen and lock the door,” she said grimly, -and went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh nodded and he smiled until the door closed. Then he turned sadly to -Helen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, dear, I’d better go now.” She could not speak, but she nodded—as -bravely as she could. “Yes—keep up your courage, dear,” he told her; -“everything will turn out all right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But at that she broke down and threw her arms about him convulsively.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t let you go, Hugh, I can’t let you go.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must go, dear, you know I must.” He kissed her—just once, and put -her from him, and went resolutely to the door. But in the doorway Dr. -Latham met him, and pushed him back into the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have bad news, Hugh,” the physician said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bad news?” Helen cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh said nothing. He knew.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They have come for you—they know you are here,” Latham said quietly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh turned pityingly to Helen—his one thought of her, to comfort her. -But Helen, womanlike, was all courage now. She held out both hands; a -moment he pressed them, then turned and went, with a soldier’s gait, -toward the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Scotland Yard men or a sergeant?” he asked Latham as he passed him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Soldiers,” Latham said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s tecs,” Barker cried in a wrathful panic, bursting through the -doorway. “Me not know tecs! That’s likely. I knew it was tecs the ’stant -I laid eyes on ’em—dressed up in a uneeform—but they’s tecs.” True to -her type, she had sensed “police” even through tunics and khaki. The -dullest servant, and the most inexperienced, have an unfailing flare for -the “tec.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham pushed her gently from the room, but she ran down the hall -crying, “It’s tecs, I tell you; it’s tecs!”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“Military police, I suppose, or a non-com. and two privates,” Hugh said -as he and Latham went toward the morning room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Two outside the door,” Latham said, “a non-commissioned officer in the -morning room—a decent chap—very.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh nodded. “Oh, yes—and he’ll behave very decently to me—they -usually do in such cases—and a good deal is left to their discretion. -Undoubtedly it’s a non-com. and a trusted one. Good-by, Latham, and, I -say, thanks awfully.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m coming in with you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, go back to Helen, I’d rather.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Latham wrung Hugh’s hand; and Hugh passed into the morning room and -closed the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here I am,” he said briskly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The soldier standing waiting stepped back with an oath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tare an’ ’ounds,” he exclaimed violently, “don’t you bey after tellin’ -me it’s you, Carter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Kinsella, I’m Pryde, wanted for desertion, all right. But, I say, -it’s hellish luck that they’ve sent you after me!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sent and bey damned to thim. Oi’ll not bey after doin’ ut. The loikes -uv you! Oi’ll toike the stroips from me coat and ate ’em forst. Oi’ve -fought the Hoons for ’em, and Oi’ll bey after foighten uv ’em again, but -sorra a fist or a harm’ll Oi putt on you, Tom Carter—or Mister Proid, -sor, whichiver, whoiver, ye are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m both,” Hugh told him. “Where’s your warrant?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Me warrent is it? It’s no warrent uv moin, my boy, ‘<span class='it'>sor</span>’ I’m after -mainin’. It’s a dirthy scrap uv paiper, an’ that’s what it is, fut to -spat at the Imperur uv the Hoons—cursed bey the doiy they giv’ it -myself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where are we going?” Hugh asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To Hell wid going! you’re stayin’.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’ll mean shooting, if not hanging, for both of us, Kinsella.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mother of God! is it axin’ me to bey toiking ye that ye are? Me, that -ye carried on yer back and fed from yer cup fer all this woirld’s uf -Oi’d been yer baby an’ you the own mither uv me! We’ve starved and we’ve -shivered togither. We’ve stuck in the mud to our necks, glued there -loike flies in th’ amber, we’ve shared our rum tot and our billy, we’ve -gone over the top shoulder to shoulder—we’ve stood so close Oi’ve heard -your heart bate, and you’ve heard moine, whin we’ve been waitin’ for the -wurd to come to dash into the curtain uv fire uv the barrage, and -togither we’ve watched the flammin’ ruins uv Europe—and our pals -dropping and writhing under the very feet uv us as if they’d been lice -and Wilheim their Moses—Me arrest you! Oi’d sooner bey stealin’ the -shillin’s off the eyelids uv a dead baby!” His own Irish eyes were -brimful, and there was almost a sob in the lilt of the brogue on the tip -of his tongue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh Pryde marched up to him with a laugh and pushed him down into a -chair, then he swung himself onto a table and leaned over Kinsella, one -hand gripped on his arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen to reason,” he said. “We are soldiers——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Begorra thin Oi’m a man though, an’ whin Oi can’t bey the both, it’s -man Oi’m choosin’ to bey, an’ not spalpeen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We are soldiers,” Hugh said sternly; “you are here to arrest me, and -you are going to do it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Oi’m not thin,” the other retorted. “Our Lady’d blush to own me, if -ever Oi did such an Orangeman dirthy trick—an’ me a mimber of the -Sodality meself win Oi was a boy. Oi’d sooner bey shootin’ me own brains -into puddin’, an’ savin’ the Hoons the throuble uv it. Me shame the -loikes uv yerself—Oi’d as soon say a wrongin’ wourd to the Saints in -their shrines.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen,” Hugh told him again. “You want to help me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oi do that very same thing, thin.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then do precisely as I tell you. I am going with you. I’d have had to -give myself up in a day or two. I was going to—as soon as I’d done -something I had to do here—something important. Now, I want you to stay -here quietly, and let me go back for half an hour. Then I’ll come here, -and we’ll go together and do what has to be done.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will not thin.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You want to help me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sure it’s yourself as knows that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you will do—as I say. It’s the only way, partner. I’ll be back.” -At the door he turned to say, “By the way, Kin, I did not desert.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Glory bey to God, as if Oi didn’t know that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I seemed to have done so. It can be cleared up, and it shall; but -the authorities are quite in the right—they thought I had.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“An’ be damned to ’um—as blithering a set of auld wimin as iver wore -petticoats. Authorities is ut? Meddlin’ and blunderin’ an’ playin’ the -goat uv ut. That’s how they’ve been runnin’ this war from the furst day, -and from the furst day Oi’ve said it. Oh!” he broke forth, “don’t ye bey -after givin’ yerself up—and don’t ye bey after axin’ me to help ye do -it. Oi’d—Oi’d—Oi’d rather turn Hoon and lick-spitter their cur uv a -Kaiser than hurt wan hair uv yer head. I luv ye, Tom Carter. Oi sensed -ye were a gintleman the furst toime Oi saw ye—and Oi loiked ye in spoit -uv ut.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you wait for me for half an hour?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Toike yer toime,” Kinsella said grimly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the hall Hugh found Barker, and gave her a startling order for a tray -of refreshments to be taken to his “friend” in the morning room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>True to her word Mrs. Leavitt had packed the servants into the -kitchen—and then locked it. But she had been unable to find Barker, and -was still beating the house for her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The larder was accessible, and Barker foraged nobly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She carried a tray so heavy with good things that she only just could -carry it, into the morning room, a delighted smile on her face and her -best apron, hurriedly donned, very much askew.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the morning room was empty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The window was open, and down the path marched two surprised privates, -hurried and cursed by Sergeant Patrick Kinsella.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Uv all th’ auld fools uv wimin,” he muttered, “ut isn’t the man wat’s -wanted at all at all, but anither entoirly. The bloak we’re after -wantin’s been gonn two hours and more—halfway to London, and out ur th’ -counthry by this. Doouble-quick, now.” And they double-quicked.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>When Latham returned to the library he found Helen sitting by the -writing-table, one hand lying idly and resting on the jade paper weight. -He spoke to her, and she looked up and smiled at him rather vacantly, -but she said nothing. He gave her a sharp look, and then picked up a -magazine and sat down, pretending to read.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat very still. She seemed resting—and though he watched her, he -decided not to disturb her, to make no effort to arouse her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And so they sat without a word until Hugh came back. Latham looked round -in surprise, but Helen scarcely seemed to notice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“An hour’s reprieve,” Hugh said lightly. “Awfully decent chap in there. -Knew him at the front. He’ll make it as comfortable for me as he can. -I’ve told Barker to do him uncommonly well. And now, to search this room -in earnest!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen followed his brother into the library. “Some one has given you -away, Hugh,” he said sorrowfully. “The soldiers knew you were here, when -they came—the sergeant was so positive that all my denials were -useless. Who could it have been?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you know, Stephen?” Helen said softly, rising—the Joss in her -hand, but not even glancing at Pryde.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How on earth would Stephen know?” Hugh said, going to his brother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen put out his hand. “I—I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Hugh.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh smiled at the elder. “I know, old boy, I know. And I’m not -worrying. It’ll come all right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen moved suddenly, sharply, as if some shock of electricity had -currented through her. Then she spoke, and her voice was strange. -“Blind—blind—blind!” It seemed as if she said it unconsciously. The -three men watched her intensely, each moved and apprehensive in a -different way, and from a different cause. She spoke again in the same -queer, mechanical manner, but this time her voice was louder, clearer, -more vibrant. “Blind—blind—blind!” To Hugh and to Latham the one word -repeated again and again conveyed nothing, but suddenly Stephen Pryde -remembered where he had heard it last, and he shuddered. She spoke -on—“As if he were an echo of the morning—‘Blind—blind—blind’!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen!” Hugh cried, alarmed for her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it?” Latham said to her insistently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen went to her quickly. “It’s nothing,” he said sharply. -“Nothing—only the parting with Hugh. It’s been a great strain on her.” -He turned to Hugh. “You had better go now, quickly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no!” she said sharply, but looking at neither of them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen!” Hugh pled—distracted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She heard him, and ran to him, brushing by Stephen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear,” she began, and faltered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He put his arms about her. “There—there—you’re all right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The voice she loved best recalled her. “Of course I am,” she said -brightly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why did you say those words just now?” he said, impelled to ask it, -though he understood a gesture of Latham’s that forbade all simulation -of her strange excitement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know. And I didn’t exactly seem to say them—they said -themselves. I don’t know what they mean, or where they come from; but -they keep running through my head—I can’t stop them somehow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s odd,” Latham remarked, his interest in what seemed to him a -unique psychological case out-weighing his fear for the patient, “very -odd. I seem to have heard them before too. But I can’t think where. -What’s that you have in your hand?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why—why, it’s his paper-weight—Daddy’s.” She held it up and gazed at -it intently, as an Indian seer gazes at his crystal. In a moment she -spoke again, her voice once more quite changed. “Did you ever read -‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?” Latham said, unprofessionally tremulous with surprise and with -interest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?” the mechanical voice -repeated automatically. The girl’s face was white and expressionless as -a death mask.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘David Copperfield’!” Stephen Pryde exclaimed hoarsely. And as he said -it he knew. And Helen knew too. She had readied the light. At that -moment Richard Bransby had got his message through. Stephen’s eyes went -to the table where the volume lay when he left the room the night his -uncle died—then slowly they traveled to the bookcase. In that moment -the whole thing was clear to him—as clear as if he had seen his -confession shut in the volume, the volume by some one at sometime -replaced on its shelf.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Helen had grasped the meaning of the words she had uttered so oddly, -and repeatedly. She shrined the jade god in her hands, and looked raptly -at its green and rose surfaces and curves. Then she put it gently down -on the table, reverently too, as some devout Catholic might handle and -lay down a relic most holy—a relic miraculous and well proven. A dozen -lights played and quivered in and out of its multiple indentations and -intricate clefts; and the rose-hue petals seemed to quiver and color in -response, but the green face of the god was immovable, expressionless, -mute. But Latham’s eyes, scalpel-sharp, following Helen’s hands, thought -they saw a tiny eidolon star-shaped, yellow and ambient, slip from the -deep of the odd little figure, and hover a moment above it -significantly, before it broke with a bubble of fiercer light and -dissolved in a scintillation of minute flame. And Stephen Pryde, -watching only Helen, was sure that a rim of faint haze, impalpable, -delicately tinted and living, bordered and framed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Richard Bransby had gotten his message through—recorded at the moment -of his passing, and held safe ever since in the folds of the toy he had -treasured and handled with years-long habit and almost with -obsession—or flashed from his heart still living and potent to the soul -of his child. Richard Bransby had gotten his message through. And each -in their different way knew, received, and accepted it. The old room was -strangely cold. But not one of the four waiting and asking felt the -smallest sensation of fear—not even Stephen, defeated, convicted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen spoke, and her voice rang clear and assured, the beautiful color -creeping back to her face, a great light in her eyes. -“Doctor—Hugh—Daddy asked me that very question just before he died.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s strange,” Latham said musingly, pondering as in all his -thoughtful years of reflection he had never pondered before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh was speechless. Stephen picked up a cigarette, and laid it down -again, with a bitter smile—the hopeless smile of final defeat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just before he died,” Helen said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘David Copperfield,’” Latham exclaimed; “of course—I remember now. -Those words you just said were a quotation from ‘David -Copperfield’—where he passes the blind beggar.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you are wrong, Latham.” Stephen Pryde made his last throw more -in cynical indifference than in desperation. His long game was up: that -was the special message that had come through to him. But he’d fight on, -cool and callous now, and meet his defeat in the last ditch of all—not -an inch sooner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” Latham said sternly; “I am not wrong.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Stephen smiled with slight contemptuousness as he said it; “I am -sure you are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll show you,” Latham retorted. He went to the bookcase and took down -the ‘David Copperfield’ volume.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Helen said quietly; “‘David Copperfield’ has a message for -me—from Daddy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is nonsense,” Stephen said impatiently. “Latham, I appeal to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I tell you the message is there,” Helen said imperiously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s impossible,” Pryde began with a shrug.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then prove it to me,” the girl said hotly; “prove it to me—that’s the -only way you can convince me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s right,” Hugh exclaimed; “of course, that’s the only way to help -her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a brief, tense pause, and then Latham, assuming the judiciary -and the dictatorship to which his being the one disinterested person -there entitled him, said—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Well. If there was a message, it would be in the words you just -spoke—and their context.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I could find the place blindfold,” Latham continued. He sat down, the -book still in his hand. He opened it, turned but a page or two, and -said, “Yes, here it is.” The three listened with breathless eagerness, -as he read, “‘There was a beggar in the street when I went down, and as -I turned my head towards the window, thinking of her calm, seraphic -eyes, he made me start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the -morning, “Blind—Blind—Blind.”’” He closed the book and turned to -Helen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see,” Stephen remarked quietly, “there’s nothing in it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” Latham concurred reluctantly, disappointed, in spite of himself, -scientist as he was, skeptic as he once had thought himself; “no, your -suddenly remembering those words—it could have been no more than a -coincidence.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, a coincidence,” Stephen echoed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That paper-weight,” the physician analyzed on, “was associated in your -mind with your father. When you took it in your hand, unconsciously you -went back to the last time you saw him alive.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s it,” Stephen said cordially. Really Latham could not have given -better service if he had briefed him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen looked from one to another, she was on the verge of a breakdown -now—and just when she had been so sure. She held out her hands, and -Hugh came and led her gently back to the chair by the writing-table. -“Rest awhile,” he begged. “I’ll hunt in a moment.” He glanced anxiously -up at the clock.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” Helen sobbed; “why didn’t you help me? Why didn’t -you help me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen,” Stephen said gravely, bending over her chair, “that question is -answered. Your father’s dead—the dead never return. All this belief of -yours in immortality is a delusion. If you had listened to me, you would -have understood. But you wouldn’t. I tried to spare you suffering, but -you were so obstinate. You made me fight this dead man—” His voice, -which at first had been bitter but even, grew angry and discordant. His -iron nerve was cracking and bleating under the hideous strain—“you -tried to haunt me with some presence in this room—it’s been -ghastly—ghastly”—he was so cold he could scarcely articulate, his -tongue clicked icily against his stiffening cheek, and grew thicker and -thicker—“but this invisible foe, I’ve conquered it—this obsession of -yours, I’ve shown you how false, how hopeless it is—all this rubbish -about this book of Copperfield—and now you must put it all away for the -sake of others as well as yourself.” Helen rose very slowly, paying her -cousin not the slightest attention. Suddenly she grew rigid again; Hugh -and Latham, who had been regarding Stephen in amazement, looked only at -her now. Stephen continued speaking to her peremptorily, haranguing her -almost, “You understood that now, don’t you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Very slowly, again almost somnambulant, Helen turned, her hand -outstretched as it was before, towards the bookcase.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well,” Stephen Pryde cried roughly, “why don’t you answer me? Why don’t -you answer me? You heard what I said!” She moved slowly across the room. -“For the future you must rely on me, on me,” Pryde pounded on. “Your -father can’t help you now,” he added brutally. Still she paid no heed. -Still she moved—so slowly that she scarcely seemed to move, across the -room. All at once Pryde understood where she was going, what she was -going to do. He was horror-struck, and made as if to pull her back -roughly, but Latham moved in between them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen, what are you doing?” Stephen shrieked—“what are you doing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still she paid no attention, but moved slowly, serenely on, until she -reached the mahogany table on which Latham had placed “David -Copperfield.” Not looking at it, her head held high, her eyes wide but -sightless and glazed, she put out her hand and lifted up the volume, -holding it by one cover only. An instant she stood with the book at -arm’s length.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen’s breath came in great noisy pants, audible both to Hugh and -Latham.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen moved her arm gently, shaking the volume she held. Slowly, -quietly, as if conscious of its own significance, a paper slipped from -between the inverted pages, and fell to the floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my God!” Stephen sobbed with a nasty choke. Then he swooped towards -the paper. But Latham, who had been watching him again, and this time -with a physician’s taut scrutiny, reached it first and secured it. Pryde -fell back with a piteous laugh, maudlin, pathetic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Read it, I can’t,” Helen said, pointing to the paper. Latham and Hugh -bent over it together.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh read only the first few lines, and then hid his shamed face in his -hands, and sobbed like a child. But Latham read on till he had read it -all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen hurried to Hugh, but Latham held out the document to her with a -gesture not to be disregarded, even for a moment. She went to him, and -took the paper. For an instant she shook so that the writing danced and -mocked her. Then she drew herself up, and read it through, slowly and -carefully—from its first word to its last. Read, she refolded it, and -with an earnest look handed it back to Latham.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Slowly, quietly she turned—not to Hugh, but to Stephen. He stood near -the door, trembling and cringing, his eyes fixed and staring—at -something—cringing as if some terrible hand clutched or menaced him. -With a cry of pain and of terror, such as the sufferers in Purgatory may -shriek, he rushed from the room, sobbing and gibbering,</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t touch me, Uncle Dick! Don’t touch me!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen, scorn, hatred on her face, and no atom of pity, was following -him; but Latham stayed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll go,” he said; “there is mania in his eyes. Stay with Hugh, he -needs you. I’ll see to Pryde.” He thrust the confession in his -pocket-book, the pocket-book in his coat. “That paper,” he told her, -“will straighten out Hugh’s trouble. He’ll be free and clear to-morrow, -believe me. But stay with him now; he needs you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Helen yielded. She went and knelt down by Hugh and laid her hands on his -knee. As Latham was leaving the room, she said to him, with a grave -smile—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see, you were wrong, Doctor. Daddy did come to me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wonder,” was his reply. “I wonder. Finding the paper in that book may -all have been coincidence—who knows?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Daddy and I know,” Helen said; “Daddy and I know.”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XXXIX</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen turned restlessly on his pillows, and Angela Latham bent down -and cozied them deftly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re a wonderful nurse,” he told her gratefully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not bad, am I?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve made you a great deal of trouble.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have,” Mrs. Latham returned cordially. “But you know what Mrs. -Hemans says, or perhaps it’s Mark Twain, I always get them mixed, ‘the -labor we delight in physics pain’—I’ve quite enjoyed the trouble—and -Georgie Washington, but you begin to do me credit. You’re going to be a -good boy now and do just as I say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Am I?” Pryde said skeptically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela held out her ring-heavy hand. “Put it there, pard,” she -commanded. And after a moment the sick man lifted his thin, bloodless -hand and laid it in hers. “Perhaps I’m going to be good—though it -hadn’t occurred to me till you mentioned it—but I can scarcely be -required to be a boy. I was quite a year or two old at your birth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never mind, I’ve been a mother to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Heavens, yes; you have,” Stephen replied.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lay in his own bed in Pont Street, and nothing was much changed in -his room from what it had been for years; a temple and workshop of -flight. Pictures of birds, of bats and of butterflies and of man-made -aircraft covered the walls. The skeleton of a flying fox shared the -glass case of a flying fish. A long workmanlike table stretched the -length of the room—a table stacked with orderly piles of plans and -designs, groups of models, trays of “parts” and of tools. Every book in -the room (and they were many) treated of the air and air navigation. -“Not a novel in the whole show,” Angela had told her husband -disgustedly. And on Stephen’s desk lay a half-finished manuscript -positively bristling with small detail drawings of rotary and fixed -engines, sketches of exhaust manifolds and working diagrams of -many-bladed propellers, his pen beside it, as he had left it on the last -day he had journeyed to Oxshott.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The woman bustled about the room and the man lay and watched her, a -gentler look in his eyes than those poor anxious organs had shown for -years.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a wonderful frock,” he said lazily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Great Scott, and I with no apron on! Why didn’t you tell me before?” -she said excitedly, and dashed to the chest of drawers, opened one -drawer, and shook out a voluminous apron, all-covering as a hospital -apron, but more decorative.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a shame to cover it,” Stephen objected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s my going-away dress, the very first dress Angela M. Latham ever -was hooked and laced into, and you needn’t think I’m going to spill ox -tail soup, Top Bronnen water, peaches and wine over it. The chinchilla -it’s trimmed with cost eighty guineas, and every inch of the lace cost -half a crown—hand crocheted.” She relentlessly tied the frilled and -ribboned strings of the apron about her slim waist. “If you like this, I -wonder what you’d have said to my wedding dress. I’m going to be painted -in it—by one of the very biggest big-bugs. I want Poynter, because he’s -the president of the brush and paint boys, and the president seemed -about the right thing to draw an American’s picture, but Horace says -Poynter doesn’t do portraits. My wedding dress was—well, really it -was—and I designed it two minutes after we were engaged. Quick work. It -was velvet, just <span class='it'>not</span> white, the faintest, loveliest tinge of green you -ever saw; there was white fox at the hem, not too much, that’s half the -art of dressing—narrow really in front, but it widened out as it went -around till it measured over two feet at the very back. And my bonnet, -not much bigger than a big butterfly, nothing but pearls and one ear of -point lace, lined with green—emerald green to show it up—You’re not -listening.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here,” Stephen told her. “You are simply marking time. You have -something to tell me, and you are nervous and afraid to say it. The -sooner such things are said and done with the better. But first there -are one or two things I want to know, that I must know and am going to -know. So we’ll have them now, please.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I quite agree,” Angela said, relieved at the prospect of the immediate -passing of a tension. “Fire ahead. Question number one?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to know just what happened—when I was taken ill—what happened -afterwards and all along. My mind’s a bit blank. But first tell me -about—Helen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela busied herself desperately at the toilet-table, dusting already -speckless silver with her absurd apron, sniffing interrogatively at -toilet bottles with the contents of which she was perfectly familiar, -moving brushes recklessly, but she answered briskly, and with merciful -promptitude.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They were married six weeks ago. No fuss, not even a cake, a gray dress -plainer’n plain. A week knocking about in a motor-car, Heaven knows -where. Hugh is doing some fool thing or other at the War Office. -Temporary something or other. He goes back to the front next week. Now -I’ll go back to the beginning and tell you everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please don’t,” Stephen said grimly. “Just the important items briefly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Right-o,” Mrs. Latham said amicably, perching herself on the foot of -the bed—“perfectly plain, no trimming, no colored lights, no slow -music. Well! Helen found a paper that cleared Hugh. There were Tommies -in the morning room, or somewhere, sent to arrest Hugh, but when he and -Horace went in, nary a Tommy was there—and the silver was all right -too—and not even the beer touched. Barker had got rid of them—charmed -them away: awfully clever girl, Barker, only your aunt never could see -it. Well, Hugh couldn’t be arrested because there was nobody there to -arrest him, but he went up to Whitehall the next day with Horace and Sir -Somebody Something who’s no end of a lawyer and a very big-wig, and -after a few miles of your charming British red tape, well, that was -O.K.! See? Forgiven. Forgotten. Commission restored.” She slid from the -bed and strutted daintily about the room tooting the Anthem from an -imaginary bugle, its mouthpiece her own sparkling hand. It was a pretty -piece of burlesque—delicately done—and briefly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde waited quietly; it was simplest, easiest so, he thought, and far -quickest. “Rule, Britannia,” followed the Anthem, “John Brown’s Body” -followed “Rule, Britannia,” and then she discoursed “Deutschland, -Deutschland über alles.” But Pryde was invulnerable, not to be teased as -Horace Latham was; and she ceased as suddenly as she had begun and -perched back on the bed. “By the way,” she said, “Hugh burned -that—that—document thing Helen’d found in the Thackeray book—or -perhaps it was Charlotte Brontë, or ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ We Southerners -don’t think any too much of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Burned it?” Stephen said sharply. “Are you sure?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite.” Mrs. Latham nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can search me. But far’s I remember, it was to get rid of it—and -that seems a likely reason. I think Hugh said it wouldn’t be needed -again. Helen is ‘Bransby’s’—no one else could make any trouble—and -something had been fixed up—all hunky-dorey and everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Was—was she willing—willing it should be burned?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She was not. But Hugh had his way. Men do in this upside-down, -inside-out old country. But I bet you a gooseberry to a guinea Horace -Latham won’t—not so you’d notice it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I decline the wager,” Pryde told her. “Go on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you—you were feverish, and fancied all sorts of things that -time—when the paper was found. Thought you saw things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I saw Uncle Dick, if that’s what you mean,” Stephen said quietly. “I -know I’ve been very ill—had brain fever, and all that—but I did see -Uncle Dick. It was no delusion.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela nodded gravely. “Of course you did. <span class='it'>I’ve</span> never doubted it for a -moment. Isn’t it perfectly wonderful—oh!—if they’d only let the -Spiritualists run this war, we’d have the poor old Kaiser dished in a -jiff. But they won’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, probably not,” Pryde concurred. “Go on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going on—as fast as I can. Well, you sailed out of the library, -the night you fell ill, and went up to your room, and rammed some things -in a bag—Horace followed you up and found you doing it. He saw you were -queer, and he ordered you to bed, but you just ordered him out of your -room and left the house. No one could stop you. I don’t think Hugh or -Horace really wanted to: anyway they couldn’t and they didn’t. You piled -up here to London. Where you went here or what you did here, I can’t -tell you, for nobody knows. But two days after you left Oxshott, I was -having tea in my sitting-room at my hotel—I’d come up to hustle my -dressmakers—when in you walked. You were as mad as six March hares—and -in about five minutes you fell down with a fit.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fit?” Stephen said it rather indignantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—if it wasn’t, it was a pretty good imitation one. I called it a -fit. Horace called it something in Latin. And you began saying things -you’d no business to say, so I wasn’t going to call any one in. So I -just got you into the next room, and on to the bed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Me!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you couldn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, of course I couldn’t. But I did. You can’t faze an American woman. -We’re not made that way. You’re not so awfully heavy, and I just hauled -and twisted until I’d done it. You never know till you try. I don’t go -in much for horses—I never did. But once I held a runaway team of Blue -Grass Kentuckies for three miles on the Shell Road, outside ’Frisco. -They pulled. But I held on. And I slowed them down all right in the end. -I got you on to the bed and telephoned for Horace. No strangers wanted! -You fussed about a bit—but I managed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why did you bother?” he asked in a curious tone. Her answer was prompt. -“Because I like you. I always have liked you—very much indeed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sick man’s thin hand crept over the eiderdown and rested on hers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Horace came,” she continued, “and we bundled you up in blankets and -things and brought you around here. At first I said you shouldn’t be -moved. But Horace said you’d be better here than so near Bond Street, -and, after all, he’s a doctor. So—well, we just moved you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you’ve nursed me ever since.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve done most of it,” Angela said proudly. “I’m some nurse. I always -was. And you did talk so. Talk about women! I simply couldn’t let a -stranger come pothering. You were very ill, but you soon got better, and -Mr. Grant helped me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—I’ve known he was here.” Stephen had thought Grant on guard for -Helen and Hugh. He knew better now. He lay for a while very quiet, -thinking it over.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He stayed with you all the time the week we were married. It didn’t -take long—getting married doesn’t take long, if you go about it the -right way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It takes more than a lifetime sometimes,” Stephen said bitterly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela rubbed his thin hand against her face. “I know, dear,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You had a very short honeymoon. Was that on my account?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Four days. Yes, you poor child, I wasn’t going to leave you too long.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen said nothing. He couldn’t—say anything.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you happy?” he asked after a time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Me and Horace? Oh! so-so.” But she dimpled and flushed eloquently. -“So-so—but our troubles have begun already: servants. Horace’s have all -given us notice—the silly old frumps. They don’t like me chattering -German all over the house. You English haven’t much sense of humor, and -English servants have none. Noah—the butler, his name is Ryder, but I -call him ‘Noah,’ he’s been with Horace since the flood—Noah sulked -whenever I spoke to him in German, and the housekeeper was rude. Well, I -bundled her off lickety-click. Then I began to teach Horace German. He -read it well enough, but his accent was awful. So I took him in hand. -And last night—after dinner—he’d been singing to me—the sweetest love -song ever made—in Germany—don’t you think so? ‘Du bist wie eine Blume, -So hold, und schön und rein!’—The head parlor-maid and the cook—and -the buttons and all the rest, flounced in and gave notice in a bunch. -When this war’s over, I shall send to a woman I know in Hong Kong to -send me a boat-load of decent servants. I never had real-servant comfort -but once in all my life—and that was in ’Frisco, where every maid we -had was a Chinaman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I doubt if they’d fit in in Harley Street,” Stephen said lazily. “I’d -try ’em at Oxshott first, if I were you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’ll fit in anywhere; that’s the beauty of them. I’ll have them in -both places—no fear! I’m not very sure that I like Harley Street—and -there isn’t a nook, or a twist or a turn in our entire house. But I’m -going to have Horace stick a roof-garden on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why don’t you make him move?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He won’t. I’ve told him to over and over. Oh! I can manage Horace easy -enough—<span class='it'>except</span> where his profession comes in; he will have his own way -there—and, after all, he is a doctor, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you thought of what you’d do the next few years?” Angela asked -rather timidly when some silent moments had passed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A deuce of a lot!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—that’s one of the two things <span class='it'>I</span> want to talk about, only it’s -hard to begin. But I’ve got it all planned—every bit—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen Pryde laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve nothing at all to do, but agree—not a thing. First of all, -guess who’s coming?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hugh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The woman nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d rather he didn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know,” she said—“but please—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pryde shrugged his shoulder against the pillow. “Oh! all right. What -does it matter? He coming here? When?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Latham glanced at the clock. “In about half an hour.”</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak'>CHAPTER XL</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh was embarrassed and awkward when he came in; Stephen was neither. -He lay comfortably on his plumped-up pillows and regarded his brother -with a slight, cynical smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hello, Steve,” the younger said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen said nothing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Jolly fine to see you getting on—Ripping—what—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Take it easy,” Stephen said amusedly. “I don’t worry: you needn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Latham pushed a chair to the bed, and Hugh sat down awkwardly, and -put down on the small table near Stephen’s pillow a parcel. Stephen eyed -it quizzically. “Grapes,” Hugh remarked lamely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why have you come?” the elder demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To see you, old fellow,” his brother told him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you want?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Haven’t you told him?” Hugh asked Angela, in a palpable panic. She -shook her head. “Funked it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Certainly not,” she replied severely. “Merely I hadn’t got to it yet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“See here.” Stephen spoke crisply. “We’ll cut all the circumlocutions -out. You needn’t be so damned crumpled up, Hugh. If you’ve come here -with any idea of letting me down easy, you’ve wasted your time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He raised himself up on his pillows and faced his brother defiantly. -Hugh blushed like a girl, and fumbled his cap—but sat speechless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When we were children you had all the best of it,” Stephen continued. -“You’ve had all the best of it all along. You’ve got the best of it -now.” Hugh dropped his eyes to his boots, a picture of guilt and -discomfort. “We both cared—a good deal—for—Mother. You were her -favorite. I was willing. You were the kid—and, believe it or not, I was -willing. And I was good to you—for years.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God—yes—very,” Hugh said heartily, lifting his troubled eyes to -Stephen’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We came to Deep Dale. My heart was sorer than yours. I’d known Mother -longer; I missed her more than you did; I needed her more. Well—you had -all the fat of it—at Oxshott: there was none of it I grudged you, -none—but I was a boy too, and I wanted my share; and I didn’t get it. I -had clothes, and food, and servants, and saw a future open up before me, -a future of wealth and power. But I wanted love too. I had more brains -in my toe than you had in your carcass—and Uncle Dick saw it. He began -to take interest in me, to talk to me, to draw me out, he took no end of -pains over my education, and before long to plan my future as his -ultimate successor at ‘Bransby’s’—but he loved you. And I would have -given my poor little hide to have had just half of that love. All my -life—ever since I can remember—every day of it, I’ve wanted some one -to love me—and no one ever has really—Mother—did half; since she -died, no one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The fire hissed and flamed in the hearth, and Stephen lay watching it -moodily. No one spoke for a long time. It seemed as if none of them -could. Hugh was choking. Angela Latham was crying.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At last Stephen spoke, taking up again the sorry parable of his tragedy. -“I waited on Aunt Caroline; she waited on you—and I—I wanted a little -mothering so. I worked like a navvy, and won prizes at Harrow and -Oxford. Uncle Dick said, ‘Creditable, Stephen, quite creditable,’ and -gave me a fiver—and I—I wanted the feel of his hand on my shoulder. -You played the silly goat at Harrow and at Magdalen, and Uncle Dick -said, ‘Tut-tut,’ and bought you a hunter, and coddled you generally. I -was driven in on myself, I tell you, at every point. I wanted human -affection, and I was left alone to browse on my own canker. Well—I -did—I lived alone. There wasn’t a beast on the place, or a servant -either, that didn’t come at your whistle and fawn on you, and run from -me, if it dared. I lived alone—and was lonely. I lay in the woods as a -boy. I worked at that bench when I was older. I dreamed and I planned -and I schemed to do a big thing, a damned fine thing too—a bigger thing -than you ever could have understood. But Richard Bransby could have -understood; he had brains. If you’d wanted to fly on a contrivance of -dragon-flies to the moon, he’d have considered whether he couldn’t -gratify you, and have turned you down in the end, kindly and -generously—but me—it wasn’t the flying and the aircraft I cared about -really in the first place; it was the dreaming, and something to take -the place of people—the people I wanted and couldn’t have—” Mrs. -Latham was sobbing. “Then, presently, I got caught in the charm of the -wonderful thing—and went mad—dæmonized, as the old Greeks were—the -men who did the great things, the greatest the world has ever had done. -Birds were my prophets—my playfellows, the only ones I had, poor little -devil. You played with Helen, I sat apart—and watched you—and then I -got to watching the birds and the bats and the insects that flew -instead—sometimes. I worked tremendously at drawing and maths and fifty -other things that I might be able to invent aircraft and perfect it. But -no—Uncle Dick would have none of it. But, by God, I’ll do it yet, I -tell you—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Angela slipped in between the bed and the table, and sat down on the -coverlet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must not talk too long,” she said gently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Won’t you try some grapes?” Hugh said huskily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen laughed mirthlessly. “No.” To Mrs. Latham he said, “I’m almost -done. There was something I wanted more than I wanted an aerial career,” -he went on, looking Hugh full in the face—“more than you ever wanted -anything in your life—or could want anything—or many men could. It was -not for me. And I might have won it, if it hadn’t been for Uncle Dick. -Oh! it wasn’t you who thwarted me—you needn’t think it was—it was he. -Always he thwarted me. I did my best to thwart him in return. I wasn’t -glad to hurt you, Hugh, truly I wasn’t—” For just an instant his voice -softened and suspended. Then he went bitterly on, “You were in the way, -and you had to go—that was all—but I’d very much rather it had been -any one else. I owed Uncle Dick a good deal, and I tried to pay it. And -I’d do it again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hugh held out his hand timidly; it was in apology too. Stephen ignored -it, and bent his eyes to the fire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now,” he said, after a long, brooding pause, “you know the depth of my -penitence. We’ll talk about something else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will,” Angela said briskly, but her voice shook. “You say you are -going to succeed at the aircraft thing yet. Do you know how you are -going to do it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” Stephen said gruffly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, then, I do. We’ve planned it all—Hugh and I.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen sat up in the bed, he shot her a glance, and then fixed his eyes -on his brother. Hugh nodded and went horribly red.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are going to do it in South America. That’s the place, where you -won’t be overlooked, and half your inventions and things stolen before -you’ve perfected them. It’s going to be an enormous thing, our -firm—just we three partners. Your brains, your control, my money—and a -little from Hugh, and your own too, of course—and all ‘Bransby’s,’ -influence and co-operation back of us. It will need a rare lot of -capital. Well, it’s ready.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen paid no attention to her, but he said to his brother—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mean it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Stevie—and jolly glad, and pleased—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen silenced him with a gesture. “Well, I don’t. I’d die first.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll die after,” Mrs. Latham remarked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She put her hand on his face. “You are going to do this for me. I’ve -millions, and you are going to double them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I could.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are going to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her then. “Why do you wish to do this—this big thing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because I like you. And when I like, I like. Never again dare say no -one cares for you, Stephen. I care. I liked you cordially from the very -first—and believed in you. I like you a thousand times more now. Next -to Horace, there is no one in all the world I care for half so much. -Won’t you do this for me—consent for my sake?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A slow color crept into the sick, white face. “I’d like to,” Pryde said -gently—“but I can’t. Don’t—don’t say any more about it—please.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Hugh Pryde did the one dramatic thing of his life. A calendar hung -on the wall. Hugh pointed to it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know what day this is, Stephen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stephen nodded. “I never forget—” There was mist in his stubborn eyes. -And in a flash of intuition, Angela understood: this was Violet Pryde’s -birthday.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Won’t you consent, for her sake?” Hugh said. “She would ask you to if -she could.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps she is asking you to?” Angela whispered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Half a moment beat out in silence. Then Stephen said—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Hugh, I’ll do it—and thank you both—I’ll do it for Mrs. Latham’s -sake—and for Mother’s.” He held out his thin hand—Hugh gripped it. But -Angela bent swiftly over Stephen—and kissed him.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;'>THE END</p> - -<hr class='tbk106'/> - -<p class='line' style='margin-top:2em;font-size:1.1em;'><span class='bold'><a id='notes'></a>Transcriber’s Notes:</span></p> - -<p class='noindent'>Minor printer errors have been corrected without note. Inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained. -Other errors have been corrected as noted below:</p> - -<div class='lgl' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>On page 193 of the book, Paul Latham was used as a name for Dr. Latham.</p> -<p class='line'>In all other locations in the book, he was named Horace.</p> -<p class='line'>Paul has been replaced with Horace.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Paul Latham shook his head ==> <a href='#Horace'>Horace</a> Latham shook his head</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Invisible Foe, by Louise Jordan Miln - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVISIBLE FOE *** - -***** This file should be named 50188-h.htm or 50188-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/1/8/50188/ - -Produced by Mardi Desjardins & Alex White and the online -Distributed Proofreaders Canada team -(http://www.pgdpcanada.net) from page images generously -made available by HathiTrust Digital Library -(https://www.hathitrust.org/digital_library) and Google -Books - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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