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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..6733f9a --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #54988 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54988) diff --git a/old/54988-0.txt b/old/54988-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 720eed9..0000000 --- a/old/54988-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,12244 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gloria Mundi, by Harold Frederic - -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: Gloria Mundi - -Author: Harold Frederic - -Release Date: June 26, 2017 [EBook #54988] -Last Updated: February 5, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GLORIA MUNDI *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - -GLORIA MUNDI - -By Harold Frederic - -Author Of “The Damnation Of Theron Ware,” “March Hares,” Etc. - -New York: International Book And Publishing Company - -1899 - - -[Illustration: 0001] - - -[Illustration: 0007] - - - -TO MY FRIEND - -THE HON. ALTON B. PARKER - -CHIEF JUDGE OF THE COURT OF APPEALS, N. Y. - - - - -PART I - - - - -CHAPTER I - -The meeting of the man and the woman--it is to this that every story in -the world goes back for its beginning. - -At noon on a day late in September the express train from Paris rested, -panting and impatient, on its brief halt in the station at Rouen. The -platform was covered with groups of passengers, pushing their way into -or out of the throng about the victualer’s table. Through the press -passed waiters, bearing above their heads trays with cups of tea and -plates of food. People were climbing the high steps to the carriages, or -beckoning to others from the open windows of compartments. Four minutes -of the allotted five had passed. The warning cries of the guards had -begun, and there was even to be heard the ominous preliminary tooting of -a horn. - -At the front of the section of first-class carriages a young woman -leaned through the broad window-frame of a coupé, and held a difficult -conversation with one of the waiters. She had sandwiches in one hand, -some loose coin in the other. Her task was to get at the meaning of a -man who spoke of sous while she was thinking in centimes, and she smiled -a little in amused vexation with herself at the embarrassment. - -“Deux sandwich: combien si vous plait, monsieur?” she repeated, with -an appealing stress of courtesy. More slowly she constructed a second -sentence: “Est un franc assez?” She proffered the silver coin to help -out her inquiry, and the waiter, nodding, put up his hand for it. - -On the instant, as the noise of slamming doors and the chorus of “Au -coupé, s’il-v’-plait!” grew peremptory, one in authority pushed the -waiter aside and pulled open the coupé door upon which she had been -leaning. “Permettez moi, madame!” he said curtly. - -Close at his back was a young man, with wraps upon his arm and a -traveling bag in his hand, who was flushed and breathing hard with the -excitement of hurry, and who drew a long sigh of relief as he put his -foot on the bottom step of the coupé. - -The young woman had grasped the door and was striving stoutly to drag -it to her. “Mais non, monsieur!” she shouted, her voice quivering with -vehemence. “Cette compartement est tout reserveé-engageé! J’ai donné -sank franc soisante, en Paris, pour moi seulement! Je proteste!” - -Sharp blasts from a horn at the rear of the train broke in upon her -earnest if uncertain remarks. The official held up one warning hand, -while with the other he wrenched the door wide open. He said something -of which the girl comprehended only its arbitrary harshness of spirit. -Brusquely thrusting a ticket into the young man’s hand, he pushed him -up the steps into the compartment, and closed the door upon him with -a clang. Arms were waving outside; the tin horn screamed; a throb of -reawakened energy thrilled backward through the train. - -“I assure you--I am so sorry,” the young man began, still standing by -the door. His voice was gentle and deprecatory. His words were English, -but the tone was of some other language. - -“But I have taken the whole compartment-I paid for it all!” she burst -out at him, her voice shaking with indignation. “It is an outrage!” - -“I am afraid you are mistaken,” he started to speak again; “you obtained -only one seat--I have a ticket for another. If there had been time, -I beg you to believe--” The train was moving, and a swift plunge into -utter darkness abruptly broke off his speech. After a few moments it -became possible to discern vague outlines in the black compartment. The -girl had huddled herself on the end cushion at the right. The young -man took his seat in the corner to the left, and for three incredibly -protracted minutes the tunnel reared its uncanny barrier of bogus -night between them. The dim suggestion of light which remained to them -revealed constrained and motionless figures drawn rigidly away from each -other, and pale averted countenances staring fixedly into the gloom. - -All at once they were blinking in a flood of sunshine, and drawing -welcome breaths of the new, sweet air which swept through from window -to window. The young man’s gaze, decorously turned to his left, was of a -sudden struck with the panorama as by a blow. He uttered a little cry of -delight to himself, and bent forward with eagerness to grasp as much as -he might of what was offered. The broad, hill-rimmed basin of the Seine; -the gray towers and shining spires of the ancient town; the blue films -of smoke drifting through the autumn haze; the tall black chimneys, the -narrow, high poplars, the splashes of vivid color with which the mighty -moving picture painted itself--all held him, rapt and trembling, with -his face out of the window. - -Summarily the darkness descended upon them again. He drew back, settled -himself in his seat and recalled the circumstance that he was not alone. -It occurred to him to pull up the window, and then instinctively he -turned to see if she had taken the same precaution on her side. Thus -when the short second tunnel unexpectedly ended, he found himself -regarding his companion with wideeyed and surprised intentness. - -There were two vacant seats between them, and across this space she -returned his scrutiny for a moment; then with a fine show of calm she -looked away, out through the broad, rounded panes which constituted the -front of the compartment. - -To the eye of the young man, she was above all things English. Her -garments, her figure, the pose of her head, the consciously competent -repose of her profile, the very angle at which the correct gray hat, -with its fawn-colored ribbon, crossed the line of the brow above--these -spoke loudly to him of the islander. From this fact alone would be -inferred a towering personal pride, and an implacable resentment toward -those who, no matter how innocently and accidentally, offered injury to -that pride. He knew the English well, and it hardly needed this partial -view of her face to tell him that she was very angry. - -Another young man, under these conditions, might have more frankly asked -himself whether the face was a beautiful one. He was conscious that the -query had taken shape in his mind, but he gave it no attention. It was -the character of the face, instead, which had powerfully impressed him. -He recalled with curious minuteness the details of his first glimpse of -it--the commanding light in the gray eyes, the tightened curves of the -lip, the mantling red on the high, smooth cheek. Was it a pretty face? -No--the question would not propound itself. Prettiness had nothing to do -with the matter. The personality which looked through the face--that was -what affected him. - -The compartment seemed filled in some subtle way with the effect of this -personality. He looked out of his window again. A beautiful deep valley -lay below him now, with densely wooded hills beyond. The delicate tints -of the waning season enriched the tracery of foliage close at hand; -still the tall chimneys, mixed with poplars, marked the course of the -enslaved river, but the factories themselves were kindly hidden here by -dark growths of thicket in the shadowed depths. - -It was surpassingly beautiful, but its contemplation left him restless. -He moved about on his seat, partially lowered the window, put it up -again and at last turned his head. - -“I am afraid that all the charming landscape is on this side,” he made -bold to say. “I will change places with pleasure, if--if you would be so -kind.” - -“No, thank you,” was her spontaneous and decisive reply. Upon reflection -she added in a more deliberate tone: “I should be obliged if you would -take the view that conversation is not necessary.” - -Some latent strain of temerity amazed the young man by rising to the -surface of his mind, under the provocation of this rebuff, and shaping -his purpose for him. - -“It is only fair to myself, first, however,” he with surprise heard -himself declaring, “that I should finish my explanation. You can satisfy -yourself readily at Dieppe that your ticket is for only one seat. It -is very, easy to make errors of that kind when one does not--that is to -say, is not--well, _entirely_ familiar with the language of the country. -As to my own part, you will remember that I came only at the last -moment. I took my coupé seat a half hour before, because I also wished -to be alone, and then I went out to see Jeanne d’Arc’s tower again, and -I was nearly too late. If there had been time, I would have found a seat -elsewhere--but you yourself saw--” - -“Really, I think no more need be said,” broke in his companion. She -looked him frankly, coldly in the face as she spoke, and her words -seemed in his ears to have metallic edges. “It is plain enough that -there was a mistake. As you have suggested, my French is very faulty -indeed, and no doubt the misunderstanding is entirely my own. So, since -it is unavoidable, there surely need be no more words about it.” - -She opened a book at this, put her feet out to the stool in front and -ostentatiously disposed herself for deep abstraction in literature. - -The young man in turn got out some pamphlets and papers from the pockets -of his great-coat, and pretended to divide his attention between these -and the scenery outside. In truth, he did not for a moment get the face -of this girl out of his thoughts. More than ever now, since she had -looked him fully in the eye, it was not a face to be pictured in the -brain as other faces of women had been. The luminous substance of the -individuality behind the face shone out at him from the pages he -stared at, and from the passing vistas of lowland meadows, streams and -mill-towns that met his gaze through the window. - -He knew so little of women that his mind was quite devoid of materials -for any comparative analysis of the effect she produced upon him. He -evolved for himself, indeed, the conviction that really this was the -first woman, in the genuine and higher meaning of the word, that he had -ever met. The recognition of this brought with it an excitement as novel -to him as the fact itself. Before ever he had seen her, clinging to -the coupé door with her gloved hands and so bravely doing hopeless and -tongue-tied battle with the guard, there had been things which had made -this the greatest day of his life. He was in truth finishing the last -stage of a journey into the unknown, the strange possibilities of which -had for a week kept his nerves on the rack. The curtain of only one more -night hung now between him and the revealed lineaments of destiny. To -be alone with his perturbed thoughts, on this culminating day of anxious -hopes and dreads, had been his controlling idea at Rouen. It was for -this that he had bought the coupé seat, upon the rumor of the station -that solitude was thus to be commanded. And now how extraordinary was -the chance! - -There had stepped into this eventful day, as from the clouds, a stranger -whose mysterious appeal to his imagination seemed more remarkable than -all else combined. - -He worked this out, painstakingly, with little sidelong glances from -time to time toward where she sat buried in her book, to check the -progression of his reasoning. When he reached the conclusion that she -was really playing this predominant part in the drama of the day, its -suggestion of hysterical folly rather frightened him. He looked with -earnestness out of the window, and even be gan to count the chimneys of -the landscape as an overture to returning sanity. Then he looked less -furtively at her and said to himself with labored plausibility that she -was but an ordinary traveling Englishwoman, scarcely to be -differentiated from the Cook’s-tourist type that he knew so well; she -had not even a governess’ knowledge of French, and there had been -nothing in her words and tone with him to indicate either mental -distinction or kindliness of temper. Why should he bestow so much as -another thought upon her? He squared his slender shoulders, and turned -with resolution to his book. - -A minute later the impossibility of the situation had mastered every -fiber of his brain. He put down the volume, feeling himself to be a fool -for doing so, yet suffering himself with an unheard-of gladness. - -“If I anger you, I shall be much pained,” he said, with a set face -turned not quite toward her, and a voice that he kept from breaking -by constant effort, “but I am going to England for the first time, and -there are some things that I am very anxious to ask about.” - -She seemed to reflect a little before she lifted her head. Now again he -was priviledged to look squarely into her face, and he added swiftly -to his store a new impression of her. The ruling characteristic of the -countenance was a certain calm and serious reasonableness. The forehead -was broad and comely; the glance of the eyes was at once alert and -steady. The other features were content to support this controlling -upper part of the face; they made a graceful and fitting frame for the -mind which revealed itself in the eyes and brow--and sought to do no -more. Studying her afresh in this moment of her silence, he recalled the -face of a young Piedmontese bishop who had come once to his school. -It had the same episcopal serenity, the same wistful pride in youth’s -conquest of the things immortal, the same suggestion of intellectuality -in its clear pallor. - -“I should dislike to seem rude,” she said, slowly. “What is it that you -want to ask?” What was it indeed? He searched confusedly about in his -mind for some one question entitled to precedence among the thousand to -which answers would come in good time. He found nothing better than a -query as to the connection between New Haven and Brighton. - -“In this little book,” he explained, “there is a time for New Haven and -for London, but I cannot find a mention of Brighton, yet I am expected -there this evening, or perhaps, early to-morrow morning.” - -“I am sure I cannot tell you,’” she answered. “However, the places are -not far apart. I should say there would certainly be trains.” - -She lifted the book again as she spoke, and adjusted her shoulders to -the cushions. He made haste to prevent the interview from lapsing. - -“I have never seen England,” he urged dolefully, “and yet I am all -English in my blood--and in my feelings, too.” - -A flicker of ironical perception played for an instant in her eye and at -the corner of her lip. “I have heard that a certain class of Americans -adopt that pose,” she remarked. “I dare say it is all right.” - -He did not grasp her meaning all at once, though the willingness to give -umbrage conveyed in her tone was clear enough. He looked doubtfully at -her, before he spoke again. “Oh,” he began, with hesitation--“yes, -I see--you thought I was American. I am not in the least--I am all -English. And it affects me very much--this thought that in a few hours -now I am to see the real England. I am so excited about it, in fact,” he -added with a deprecatory little laugh, “that I couldn’t bear it not to -talk.” - -She nodded comprehendingly. “I thought that your accent must be -American--since it certainly isn’t English.” - -“Oh, I have too facile an ear,” he answered readily, as if the subject -were by no means new to him. “I pick up every accent that I hear. I -have been much with English people, but even more with Americans and -Australians. I always talk like the last family I have been in--until -I enter another. I am by profession a private tutor--principally in -languages--and so I know my failings in this matter very well.” She -smiled at some passing retrospect. “You must have had an especially -complete sense of my shortcomings as a linguist, too. I have often -wondered what effect my French would produce upon an actual professor, -but I should never have had the courage to experiment, if I had known.” - -He waved his hand--a pale hand with veined, thin, nervous fingers, which -she looked at in its foreign gesture. “Too much importance is attached -to languages,” he declared. “It is the cheapest and most trivial of -acquirements, if it stands alone, or if it is not put to high uses. -Parents have so often angered me over this: they do not care what is in -their children’s minds and hearts, but only for the polish and form of -what is on their tongues. I have a different feeling about education.” - -She nodded again, and laid the book aside. “You are coming to a country -where everything will shock you, then,” she said. “I would rather do -scullery work, or break stones by the roadside, than be a schoolteacher -in England.” - -“Oh, it’s the same everywhere,” he urged. “I would not think that the -English were worse than the others. They are different, that is all. -Besides, I do not think I shall be a teacher in England. Of course, I -speak in the dark; for a few hours yet everything is uncertain. But as -the old American senator at Monte Carlo used to say, ‘I feel it in my -bones’ that I will not have to teach any more.” - -The expression of her face seemed somehow not to invite autobiography -at the moment. “The prospect of not having to work any more for one’s -living,” she mused at him--“how curiously fascinating it always is! We -know perfectly well that it is good for us to work, and that we should -be woefully unhappy if we did not work, and yet we are forever charming -our imagination with a vision of complete idleness.” - -“I would not be idle!” the young man broke forth, enthusiastically. He -leaned forward in his seat, and spoke with eager hands as well as words -against the noise that filled the swaying carriage. “I have that same -feeling--the longing to escape from the dull and foolish tasks I have -to do--but I never say to myself that I would be idle. There are such a -host of things to do in the world that are worth doing! But the men -who have the time and the money, who are in the position to do these -things--how is it, I ask myself, that they never think of doing them? It -is the greatest of marvels to me. Then sometimes I wonder, if the chance -and the power came to me, whether I also would sit down, and fold my -hands, and do nothing. It is hard to say; who can be sure what is in -him till he has been tested? Yet I like to think that I would prove -the exception. It is only natural,” he concluded, smilingly, “that one -should try to think as well as possible of oneself.” - -The young lady surveyed his nervous, mobile face with thoughtful -impassivity. “You seem to think, one way or another, a good deal about -yourself,” she remarked. - -He bowed to her, with a certain exaggeration in his show of quite -sincere humility which, she said to herself, had not been learned from -his English-speaking connections. - -“What you say is very true,” he admitted with candor. “It is my -fault--my failing. I know it only too well.” - -“_My_ fault is bad manners,” she replied, disarmed by his -self-abasement. “I had no business to say it at all.” - -“Oh, no,” he urged. “It is delightful to me that you did say it. I could -not begin to tell you how good your words sounded in my ears. Honest and -wise criticism is what I have not heard before in years. You do not get -it in the South; there is flattery for you, and sneering, and praise as -much too high as blame is too cruel--but no candid, quiet judgments. Oh, -I loved to hear you say that! It was like my brother--my older brother -Salvator. He is in America now. He is the only one who always said the -truth to me. And I am glad, too, because--because it makes you seem like -a friend to me, and I have been so agitated this whole week, so anxious -and upset, and all without a soul to talk to, or advise with--and the -pressure on me has been so great----” - -He let the wandering sentence lose itself in the clamor of the train, -and put the rest of his meaning into the glance with which he clung to -hers. The appeal for sympathetic kindliness of treatment glowed in his -eyes and shone upon his eager face. - -She took time for her answer, and when she spoke it was hardly in direct -reply. “Your business in England,” she said, as unconcernedly as might -be--“it is that, I take it, which causes so much anxiety. Fortunately it -is soon to be settled--to-morrow, I think you said.” - -“I wish I might tell you about it,” he responded with frank fervency. “I -wish it--you cannot imagine how much!” - -The look with which she received his words recalled to him her earlier -manner. “I’m afraid--” she began, in a measured voice, and then stopped. -Intuition helped him to read in her face the coming of a softer mood. -Finally she smiled a little. “Really, this is all very quaint,” she -said, and the smile crept into her voice. “But the train is slowing -down--there is no time now.” - -They were indeed moving through the street of a town, at a pace which -had been insensibly lowered while they talked. The irregular outlines -of docks and boat-slips, overhanging greenish water, revealed themselves -between dingy houses covered with signs and posters. At the barriers -crossing the streets were clustered groups of philosophic observers, -headed by the inevitable young soldier with his hands in the pockets of -his red trousers, and flanked by those brown old women in white caps -who seem always to be unoccupied, yet mysteriously do everything that is -done. - -“This is Dieppe, then?” he asked, with a collecting hand put out for his -wraps. - -The train had halted, and doors were being opened for tickets. - -“We sit still, here, and go on to the wharf,” she explained. - -“And then to the boat!” he cried. “How long is it?--the voyage on the -boat, I mean. Three hours and over! Excellent!” - -She laughed outright as she rose, and got together her books and papers. - -“I thought you were a Frenchman when I first saw you,” she confided -to him over her shoulder. “But no Frenchman at Dieppe ever yet shouted -‘Excellent!’ with his face turned toward the New Haven steamers.” - -The mirth in her tone was so welcome to him that he laughed in turn, -without any clear idea of her words. He gathered her handbag up along -with his own, and when she demurred he offered her gay defiance. - -“It is the terrible boldness of a timid person,” he prattled, as he -helped her down the steps, “but you must perceive that in the face of it -you are quite helpless. Since I was born, I have never really had my own -way before. But now I begin to believe in my star. After all, one is not -an Englishman for nothing.” - -“Oh, it is comparatively easy to be an Englishman in Dieppe,” she made -answer. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -The sky was dappled azure overhead, the water calm and fresh-hued -below. When the ship’s company had disposed itself, and the vessel was -making way outside, there were numerous long gaps of unpeopled space on -the windy side, and to one of these the young couple tacitly bent their -steps. They leaned against the rail, standing close together, with their -faces lifted to the strong sweet breeze. - -Viewed thus side by side, it could be seen that of the two the young man -was just perceptibly the taller, but his extreme fragility excused his -companion’s conception of him as a small man. On his head he had pulled -tight for the voyage a little turban of a cap, which accentuated the -foreign note of his features and expression. He was dark of skin and -hair, with deep-brown eyes both larger and softer than is common with -his sex, even in the South. The face, high and regular in shape, had -in repose the careworn effect of maturer years than the boyish figure -indicated. In the animation of discussion this face took on, for the -most part, the rather somber brilliancy of a strenuous earnestness. -Now, as it confronted the stiff Channel wind, it was illumined by the -unaccustomed light of a frivolous mood. The ends of his slight mustache -were lifted in a continuous smile. - -“It is my gayest day for many, many years,” he told her, after a little -pause in the talk. They had become great friends in this last half-hour. -In the reaction from the questionable restraint of the coupé to the -broad, sunlit freedom of the steamer’s deck, the girl had revealed -in generous measure a side of her temperament for which he had been -unprepared. She had a humorous talent, and, once she had gained a clew -to his perceptive capacities in this direction, it had pleased her to -make him laugh by droll accounts of her experiences and observations in -Paris. She had been there for a fortnight’s holiday, quite by herself, -she told him, and there was something in her tone which rendered it -impossible for him to ask himself if this was at all unusual among -English young ladies. His knowledge of Paris was also that of a -stranger, and he followed her whimsical narrative of blunders and odd -mistakes with a zest heightened by a recollection of his own. - -“When have I laughed so much before?” he cried now. A long sigh, as of -surprised relief, followed his words. “Well--I had looked forward to -coming in a different spirit to England. With some hopes and a good -courage--yes. But with a merry heart--how could I have foretold that? It -was my good angel who put that coupé ticket into my head, and so brought -me to you. Ah, how angry you were! I see you now, pulling at that door.” - -“Ah, well,” she said in extenuation, “how could I know? I never dreamed -that the whole coupé was not mine--and when I saw that odious guard -opening the door, to force in some wretched little Continental -creature--I mean, that was my momentary thought--and naturally I--” - -An involuntary sidelong glance of his eyes upward toward the crown of -her hat, passed mute comment on her unfinished remark. She bit her lip -in self-reproof at sight of the dusky flush on his cheek. - -“It is the only un-English thing about me,” he said, with a pathetically -proud attempt at a smile. “My father was a tall, big man, and so is my -brother Salvator.” - -A new consciousness of the susceptibility of this young man to slights -and wounds spread in the girl’s mind. It was so cruelly easy to prick -his thin skin! But it was correspondingly easy to soothe and charm -him--and that was the better part. His character and temperament mapped -themselves out before her mind’s eye. She read him as at once innocent -and complicated. He could be full of confidence in a stranger, like -herself, but his doubts about his own values were distressing. -The uneased antennæ of his self-consciousness were extended in all -directions, as if to solicit injury. She had caught in his brown eyes -the suggestion of an analogy to a friendless spaniel--the capacity for -infinite gratitude united with conviction that only kicks were to be -expected. It was more helpful to liken him to a woman. In the gentle and -timid soul of a convent-bred maiden he nourished the stormy ambitions -of a leader of men. It was a nun who boldly dreamed of commanding on the -field of battle. - -“I had a feeling,” she said to him, so softly that the tone was almost -tender, “that you must be like your mother.” - -She rightly judged him to be her elder, but for the moment her mood was -absorbingly maternal. “Let us sit down here,” she added, moving toward -the bench facing the rail. “You were going to tell me--about her, was -it?” - -He spread his rugs over their knees as they sat together in the fresh -wind. - -“No, it was not so much of her,” he said. - -“I have much to think about her--not much to put into words. She died -five years ago--nearly six now--and I was so much at school that I saw -very little of her in the latter years. Salvator was with her -always, though, to the end, although he was not her own son. We are -half-brothers, but no one could have been fonder than he was of my -mother, or a better son to her. After she died, he still kept me in -school, and this was curious too, because he hated all my teachers -bitterly. Salvator is fierce against the church, yet he kept me where -I had been put years before, with the Christian Brothers at the Bon -Rencontre, in Toulon. When at last I left them, Salvator took me with -him for a period--he is an expert and a dealer in gems--and then I -became a private tutor. Four years or so of that--and now I am here.” - He added, as upon an afterthought: “You must not think that I failed -to love my mother. She was sweet and good, and very tender to me, and I -used to weep a great deal after I left her, but it was not my fortune -to be so much with her as Salvator was. I think of her, but there is not -much to say.” - -The repetition of this formula suggested no comment to his companion, -and he went on. - -“The real memory of my childhood is my father, although I saw him only -once. Salvator says I saw him oftener, but if so all the recollections -jumble themselves together in my mind, to make a single impression. I -was five years old; it was in the early summer, in 1875. My father had -been fighting against the Prussians when I was born. By the time I was -old enough to know people, he was away in Spain with Don Carlos. He -died there, of wounds and fever, at Seo de Urgel, in August of that same -year, 1875. But first he came to see us--it would have been in June, -I think--and we were living at Cannes. He had some secret Carlist -business, Salvator says. I knew nothing of that. I know only that I saw -him, and understood very well who he was, and fixed him in my mind so -that I should never, never forget him. How strange a thing it is about -children! I have only the dimmest general idea of how my mother looked -when I was that age; I cannot remember her at all in the odd clothes -which her pictures show she wore then, though I saw them constantly. Yet -my father comes once and I carry his image till Judgment Day.” - -“Poor mothers!” sighed the girl, under her breath. “No, it was nothing. -Go on.” - -“I knew that he was a soldier, and that wherever there were wars he went -to have his share of fighting. I suppose it was this which gripped my -imagination, even as a baby. I could read when I was five, and Salvator -had told me about our father’s battles. He had been in the Mutiny in -India, and he was in Sicily against Garibaldi, and he was with the -Austrians four years before I was born, and in the French Foreign Legion -afterward. I think I knew all this when I saw him--and if I did not, -then I feel that I could have learned it from just looking at him. He -was like a statue of War. Ah, how I remember him--the tall, strong, -straight, dark, hardfaced, silent man!” - -“And you loved _him!_” commented his companion, with significance. - -He shook his head smilingly. The analysis in retrospect of his own -childish emotions had a pleasant interest for him. “No; there was no -question of love, at all. For example, he liked Salvator--who was then a -big boy of fifteen--and he took him off to Spain with him when he left. -I cannot remember that he so much as put his hand on my head, or paid -the slightest attention to me. He looked at me in a grave way if I put -myself in front of his eyes, just as he looked at other things, but he -would not turn his eyes to follow me if I moved aside. Do you know that -to my fancy that was superb? I was not in the least jealous of Salvator. -I only said to myself that when I was his age, I also would march to -fight in my father’s battles. And I was proud that he did not bend to -me, or put himself out to please me, this huge, cold-eyed, lion-like -father of mine. If he had ever kissed me I should have been ashamed--for -us both. But nothing was farther from his thoughts. He went away, and at -the door he spoke for the first time in my hearing of me. He twisted -his thumb toward me, where I stood in the shelter of my mother’s skirts. -Mind, he’s an Englishman! he said--and turned on his heel. I have the -words in my ears still. ‘Mind, he’s an Englishman!’” - -“There _is_ England!” she cried. - -They stood up, and his eager eye, following the guidance of her finger, -found the faint, broken, thin line of white on the distant water’s edge. -Above it, as if they were a part of it, hung in a figured curtain soft -clouds which were taking on a rosy tint from the declining sun. He gazed -at the remote prospect in silence, but with a quickened breath. - -“It is the first time that _I_ have seen it like this--coming toward it, -I mean, from somewhere else,” she remarked at last. “I had never been -outside England before.” - -He did not seem to hear her. With another lingering, clinging gaze at -the white speck, he shook himself a little, and turned. “And now I want -to tell you about this new, wonderful thing--about why I am this minute -within sight of England. You will say it is very strange.” - -They moved to their bench again, and he spread the wraps once more, but -this time they did not sit quite so close together. It was as if the -mere sight of that pale, respectable slip of land on the horizon had in -some subtle way affected their relation to each other. - -“A week ago,” he began afresh, “at Nice, a messenger from the Crédit -Lyonnais brought me a note saying they wished to see me at the bank. -They had, it seems, searched for me in several towns along the Riviera, -because I had been moving about. It was demanded that I should prove -my identity by witnesses, and when that was done I was given a sum of -money, and a sealed letter addressed to me, bearing simply my name, Mr. -Christian Tower--nothing more. I hurried outside and read its contents. -I was requested to get together all my papers--” - -He stopped short, arrested by a sharp, half-stifled exclamation from her -lips. She had continued looking at him after his mention of his name--at -first absent-mindedly, as if something in his talk had sent her thoughts -unconsciously astray; then with lifted head, and brows bent together in -evident concentration upon some new phase of what he had been saying. -Now she interrupted him with visible excitement. - -“You say Christian Tower!” She pushed the words at him hurriedly. “What -was your father’s name?” - -“He was always known as Captain Tower, but I have read it in my -papers--his first name was Ambrose.” - -She had risen to her feet, in evident agitation, and now strode across -to the rail. As he essayed to follow her, she turned, and forced the -shadow of a smile into her lips; her eyes remained frightened. “It is -all right,” she said with a gasping attempt at reassurance. “I was queer -for just an instant; it’s all right. Go on, please. You were to get -together your papers--” - -“And bring them to Brighton,” he said, much disconcerted. “That is all. -But won’t you sit down?” - -“I think I would rather stand,” she answered. Her composure was -returning, and with it the power to view altogether, and in their proper -relation to one another, the several elements of the situation his words -had revealed to her. Upon examination, it was curiosity that she felt -rather than personal concern--an astonished and most exigent curiosity. -But even before this, it grew apparent to her as she thought, came her -honorable duty to this young man who had confided in her. - -“I think I ought to tell you,” she began, beckoning him nearer where she -stood; “yes, you should be told that in all human probability I know the -story. It is impossible that I should be mistaken--two such names never -got together by accident. And I can assure you that the whole thing is -even more extraordinary and astounding than you can possibly imagine. -There are people in England who will curl up like leaves thrown on -the fire when they see you. But for the moment”--she paused, with a -perplexed face and hesitating voice--“go on; tell me a little more. -It isn’t clear to me--how much you know. Don’t be afraid; I will be -entirely frank with you, when you have finished.” - -He patted the rail nervously with his hand, and stared at her in pained -bewilderment and impatience. “How much do I know?” he faltered vaguely. -“Very little; almost nothing. There was no explanation in the letter. -The bankers said nothing, save that they were to give me a thousand -francs. But one does not get a thousand francs merely because the wind -has changed. There must be a reason for it; and what reason is possible -except that there is some inheritance for me? So I argued it out--to -myself. I have thought of nothing else, awake or asleep, for the whole -week.” - -He halted, with anxious appeal in his eyes, and his hands outspread to -beseech enlightenment from her. She nodded to show that she understood. -“In a minute or two, when I have got it into shape in my mind,” she said -soothingly. “But meantime go on. I want you to talk. What have you done -during the week?” - -Christian threw his hands outward. - -“Done?” he asked plaintively. “Murdered time some way or the other. I -was free to move an hour after I had read the letter. The money was more -than I had ever had before. It was intolerable to me--the thought of not -being in motion. In the ‘Indicateur’ I got the times of trains, and I -formed my plan. Avignon I had never seen, and then Le Puy--there was a -wonderful description of it in a magazine I had read--and then to Paris, -and next to Rouen. It was at Rouen that I slept last night. It was my -first night’s good sleep--I had tired myself out so completely. Always -walking with the map in my mind, going from one church to another, -talking to the Suisse, bending back my head to examine capitals and -arches, forcing myself to take an interest in what I saw every little -minute--so I have come somehow through the week. But now here is rich -England within plain sight, and here are you, my new friend--and all my -life I have been so poor and without friends!” - -He tightened his hand upon the rail, and abruptly turned his face away. -She saw the shine of tears in his eyes. - -“Come and sit down again,” she said, with a sisterly hand on his arm. “I -know how to tell it to you now.” - -“But you truly know nothing about the Towers--or Torrs--your father’s -family?” she continued, when they were once again seated. “It sounds -incredible! I can hardly realize how you could have lived all these -years and not--but how old are you?” - -“Twenty-six.” - -“--And not got some inkling of who--of who your father was?” - -“My mother never told me. Perhaps she did not know altogether, herself. -I cannot say as to that. And if Salvator knew--that I cannot tell, -either. He is a curious man, my brother Salvator. He talks so you would -think you saw him inside out--but he keeps many things to himself none -the less.” - -“Yes--that brother of yours,” she said abstractedly. “I have been -thinking about him. But it can’t be that he has any importance in the -game, else the Jews would have sent for him instead of you. They waste -no time,--they make no errors.” - -“The Jews!” he murmured at her, with no comprehension in his eyes. - -She smiled. “I have been arranging it in my mind. The thing was like a -black fog to me when you first spoke. I had to search about for a light -before I could make a start. But when I stumbled across the thought, ‘It -is the Jews’ work,’ then it was not very hard to make out the rest. I -could almost tell you who it is that is to meet you at Brighton. It is -Mr. Soman. Is it not?” - -He assented with an impulsive movement of head and hands. The gaze that -he fixed upon her sparkled with excitement. - -“He is Lord Julius’ man of business,” she explained to his further -mystification. “No doubt he has had one of those green eyes of his on -you ever since you were a fortnight old. It frightens one to think -of it--the merciless and unerring precision of their system. Is there -anything they _don’t_ know?” - -“I am afraid of Jews myself,” he faltered, striving to connect himself -with what he dimly perceived of her mood. “But what have they -against me? What can they do to me? I owe nothing; they can’t make me -responsible for what other people, strangers to me, have done, can they? -And why should they give me a thousand francs? It is I,” he finished -hopelessly, “I who am in the black fog. Tell me, I beg you, what is it -that they want with me?” - -She put a reassuring hand upon his arm, and the steady, genial light -in her calm eyes brought him instantaneous solace. “You have not the -slightest cause for fear,” she told him, gently. “Quite the contrary. -They are not going to hurt you. So far from it, they have taken you -up; they will wrap you in cotton-wool and nurse you as if you were the -Koh-i-noor diamond. You may rest easy, my dear sir; you may close your -eyes, and fold your hands, and lean back against Israel as heavily -as you like. It is all right so far as you are concerned. But the -others”--she paused, and looked seaward with lifted brows and a -mouth twisted to express sardonic comment upon some amazing new -outlook--“eye-ee! the others!” - -“Still you do not tell me!” For the first time she caught in his -voice the hint of a virile, and even an imperious note. Behind the -half-petulant entreaty of the tired boy, there was a man’s spirit of -dictation. She deferred to it unconsciously. - -“The Lord Julius that I spoke of is--let me see--he is your -great-uncle--your grandfather’s younger brother.” - -“But if _he_ is a Jew--” began Christian, in an awed whisper. - -“No--no; he is nothing of the sort. That is to say, he is not Jewish -in blood. But he married a great heiress of the race--whole millions -sterling came to him from the huge fortune of the Aronsons in -Holland--and he likes Jewish people--of the right sort. He is an old man -now, and his son, Emanuel, has immense influence over him. You should -see them sitting together like two love-birds on a perch. They idolize -each other, and they both worship Emanuel’s wife. If they weren’t the -two best men in the world, and if she weren’t the most remarkable woman -anywhere, they would utterly spoil her.” - -“He--this lord--is my great-uncle,” - -Christian recalled her to his subject. “He and his son are good men.” - -“They are the ones I referred to as the Jews. That is how they are -spoken of in the family--to distinguish them from the senior branch--the -sons and grandsons of your grandfather. Fix that distinction in you -mind. There is the elder group, who have titles and miles of mortgaged -estates, no money to speak of and still less brains--” - -“That is the group that I belong to?” He offered the interruption with -a little twinkle in his eyes. It was patent that his self-possession had -returned. Even this limited and tentative measure of identification with -the most desirable and deep-rooted realities in that wonderful island -that he could see coming nearer to meet him, had sufficed to quell the -restless flutter of his nerves. - -She nodded with a responsive gleam of sportiveness on her face. “Yes, -your place in it is a very curious one. But first get this clear in your -mind--that the younger group, whom they speak of as the Jews, have money -beyond counting, and have morals and intelligence moreover. Between -these two groups no love is lost. In fact, they hate each other. The -difference is the Christians go about cursing the Jews, whereas the Jews -wisely shrug their shoulders and say nothing. No one suspected that -they would _do_ anything, either--but--oh, this is going to be an awful -business!” - -He held himself down to a fine semblance of dignified calm. “Tell me -more,” he bade her, with an effect of temperate curiosity. - -“Now comes tragedy,” she went on, and the hint of sprightliness -disappeared from her face and tone. “It is really one of the most -terrible stories that could be told. There is a very aged man--he must -be nearly ninety--lying at death’s door in his great seat in Shropshire. -He is at death’s door, I said, but he has the strength and will of a -giant, and though he is half paralyzed, half blind, half everything, -still he has his weight against the door, and no one knows how long he -can hold it closed. It is your grandfather that I am speaking of. His -name also is Christian.” - -The young man nodded gravely. “My father would have fought death that -way too, if they had not shot him to pieces, and heaped fever on top of -that,” he commented. - -The girl bit her lip and flushed awkwardly for an instant “Let me go -on,” she said then, and hurried forward. “This old man had three -sons--not counting the priest, Lord David, who doesn’t come into the -thing. The first of these sons, also Christian, had three sons, and he -and they were all alive six months ago. They are all dead now, two -drowned in their yacht, one lost in the ‘Castle Drummond,’ one killed in -Matabeleland. Lord David, the priest, the next brother, died last -year--childless of course. There remained in England two sons of another -brother who died some years ago, Lord Edward, and this horrible mowing -down of human lives left them apparently nearest to the very aged man, -your grandfather. Do you follow all that?” - -“I think I do,” said Christian. “If I don’t I will pick it up afterward. -In mercy’s name, do not stop!” - -“The Jews, saying nothing, had lost sight of nothing. There was still -another brother who had lived abroad for many years, who died abroad -twenty years ago. You are getting to the climax now. The Jews must have -kept an eye on this wandering cousin of theirs; it is evident they knew -he left a son capable of inheriting, and that they did not let this son -escape from view. Because Lord Ambrose Torr was older than Lord Edward, -his brother, it happens now that the son of that Ambrose--” - -The young man abruptly rose, and moved along to the rail. He had -signified by a rapid backward gesture of the hand his momentary craving -for solitude; he stretched this hand now slowly, as if unconsciously, -toward the sunset glow on sky and sea, in the heart of which lay -imbedded a thick line of cream-colored cliffs, escalloped under a close -covering of soft olive-hued verdure. The profile of his uplifted face, -as he gazed thus before him into the light, seemed to the eyes of the -girl transfigured. - -He stood thus, rapt and motionless, for minutes, until her mind had time -to formulate the suspicion that this was all intolerable play-acting, -and to dismiss it again as unworthy. Then he returned all at once to her -side, apparently with a shamefaced kind of perception of her thoughts. -He was flushed and uneasy, and shuffled his hands in and out of the -pockets of his great-coat. He did not seat himself, but stood looking -down at her. - -“What is my grandfather?” he asked, with a husky, difficult voice. - -“The Duke of Glastonbury.” - -“I do not understand,” he began, hesitatingly; “it is not clear to me -about my father. Why should he--” - -She rose in turn, with swift decision, as if she had been alertly -watching for the question. “That is what you must not ask me,” she said, -hurriedly. “I think I will move about a little. The wind is colder here. -I am getting chilled.” - -They strolled about together, conducting a fitful conversation, but -as often gazing in silence at the bulk of the headlands they were -approaching, gray and massive now in the evening light. She answered -freely enough the queries he put, but between these he lapsed into -an abstraction which she respected. More than once he spoke of the -extraordinary confusion into which her story had thrown his thoughts, -and she philosophically replied that she could well understand it. - -An hour later they had passed the fatuous inspection of the customs -people, and confronted the imminence of leave-taking. Constraint -enveloped them as in a mantle. - -It occurred suddenly to him to say: “How strange! You possess the most -extraordinary knowledge of me and my--my people, and yet the thought -just comes to me--I have not so much as asked your name.” - -She smiled at him with a new light in her eyes, half kind, half -ironically roguish. “If I may confess it, there have been times today -when I was annoyed with you for being so persistently and indefatigably -interested in yourself--for never dreaming of wondering, speculating, -inquiring something about me. But that was very weak of me--I see it -now--and very wise of you, because--what does it matter about a nobody -like me?--but next week the whole world will be bearing witness that you -are the most interesting young man in England.” - -He gave a swift glance down the train toward the guards noisily shutting -the doors. “No, it is too bad,” he said, nervously. “You will always be -my first friend in England--my very deeply prized friend everywhere. I -know you only to-day--but that day is more to me than all the rest of -my life--and it is full of you. They are closing the doors--but you will -tell me? The notion of not seeing you again is ridiculous. You are in -London--yes?--then how do you think I could come to London without first -of all, before everything else, wanting to call upon you?” - -“Oh, I daresay we shall meet again,” she answered, as perforce he -stepped into the compartment. Her smile had a puzzling quality in -it--something compounded, it seemed to him, of both fear and fun. “In a -remote kind of way I am mixed up with the story myself.” - -There was no time for any hope of further explanation. He put his head -out of the window, and shook hands again. “Remember!” he called out -fervently. “You are my first friend in England. Whenever--whatever I can -do--” - -“Even to the half of your kingdom!” she laughed at him, as the movement -of the carriage drew him past her. - -The tone of these last words, which he bore away with him, had been -gay--almost jovial. But the girl, when she had watched him pass out of -sight, turned and walked slowly off in the direction of her own train -with a white and troubled face. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -Many builders in their day have put a hand to the making of Caermere -Hall. Though there were wide differences of race and language among -them and though the long chain of time which binds them together has -generations and even centuries for its links, they seem to have had thus -much in common: they were all at feud with the sunlight. - -On the very pick of summer days, when the densest thickets of Clune -Forest are alive to the core with moving green reflections of the outer -radiance, and hints of the glory up above pierce their way to the bottom -of the narrowest ravine through which the black Devon churns and frets, -somehow Caermere remains wrapped in its ancient shadows. - -The first men, in some forgotten time, laid its foundations with no -thought save of the pass at the foot to be defended. Later artificers -reared thick walls upon these foundations, pushed out towered curtains, -sank wells, lifted the keep, cut slits of corner windows or crowned the -fabric with new turrets for watchmen, each after the need or fashion of -his age, but all with minds single to the idea of blocking the path -that Caermere overhung. In due time came the breath of the king’s peace, -blowing equably over the vexed marches, albeit loaded with the scent of -gunpowder, and my lords slowly put aside their iron harness for silken -jackets, and unslung the herses in their gateways. Men of skill set now -about the task of expanding the turfed spaces within the inclosure, of -spreading terraces and forming gardens, of turning stone chambers into -dames’ apartments, and sullen guard-rooms into banquet-halls. Their -grandsons, in turn, pulled down even more than they erected; where the -mightiest walls had shouldered their huge bulk, these men of Elizabeth -and James left thin façades of brickwork, and beams of oak set in a -trivial plaster casing. The old barbican was not broad enough to span -their new roadway, stretching to the valley below over the track of the -former military path, and they blew it up; the pleasure-ground, which -they extended by moving far backward the wall of the tilting yard, was -bare of aspect to their eye, and they planted it with yews and, later, -with cedars from the Lebanon. - -Through all these changes, Caermere remained upon its three sides -shadowed by great hills, and the thought of making wide windows in -the walls on the open fourth side came to no one. When at last, in the -earlier Georgian time, the venerable piles of bastioned masonry here -were replaced by a feebly polite front of lath and stucco, windows were -indeed cut to the very floor, in the French style, but meanwhile the -trees had grown into a high screen against the sky, and it was not in -the Torr blood to level timber. - -When a house and family have lived together for a thousand years, it is -but reasonable that they should have come to an understanding with each -other. Was Caermere dark because the mood of the Torrs, its makers and -masters, had from the dawn of things been saturnine? Or did the Torrs -owe their historic gloom and dourness of temperament to the influence -of this somber cradle of their race? There is record of the query having -been put, in a spirit of banter, by a gentleman who rode over Clune -bridge in the train of King John. Of convincing answer there is none -to this latest day. The Torrs are a dark folk, and Caermere is a dark -house. They belong to one another and that is all. - -Thus, on the first morning of October, a gray and overcast morning even -on the hilltops, and though it was past the half-hour towards nine, -there was barely light enough to see one’s way about by in the big -breakfast-room. - -A tall young man in rough, light-brown clothes stood at one of the -windows, drumming idly on the glass and staring at the black cedars -beyond the lawn. At intervals he whistled under his breath, in a sulky -fashion, some primitive snatches of an unknown tune. Once or twice he -yawned, and then struck a vicious ring from the panes with his hard -nails, in protesting comment upon his boredom. - -About the large fireplace behind him were dishes huddled for heat, and -their metallic gleam in the flicker of the flames was repeated farther -away in the points of red on the plate and glass of the long breakfast -table spread in the center of the room. From time to time a white-faced -youngster in livery entered the room, performed some mysterious service -at the hearth or the table in the dim twilight and went out again. - -The man at the window paid no heed to the goings and comings of the -servant, but when the door opened presently and another tweed-clad -figure entered, his ear told him the difference on the instant, and he -half turned his head. - -“In God’s name, what are you all doing?” he growled angrily. “I said -eight--you heard me!--sharp eight!” - -“What _does_ it matter?” protested the newcomer, stooping at the -fire-place to lift the covers from the dishes in a languid inspection of -their contents. He yawned as he spoke. “If you won’t let fellows go to -bed till four, how the devil do you expect them to be down at eight?” - -“Oh, is that you, Pirie?” said the man at the window. “I thought it was -my brother.” The other stood for a moment, with his back to the fire. -Then he lounged to the window, stretching his arms as he moved. He also -was tall, but with a scattering of gray in his hair. - -“Beastly black morning,” he commented in drowsy tones, after a prolonged -observation of the prospect. “Might as well stopped in bed.” - -“Well, go back then!” snapped the other. “I didn’t make the rotten -weather, did I?” This was wanton ill-temper. The elder man also -began drumming with his nails on the window. “Turn it up, Eddy,” he -remonstrated, smoothly enough, but with a latent snarl in his tone. “I -don’t like it.” - -The younger man moved his head, as if he would have looked his companion -in the face. Then he stared away again, out of the window. - -“Beaters been waitin’ half an hour already,” he grumbled, sulkily. -“What’s the good of makin’ a time if you don’t keep it?” - -“I didn’t make any time,” responded Major Pirie with curtness. Upon -reflection, he added: “What does it matter about the beaters?” - -There seemed no answer to this, and for several minutes nothing was -said. Finally the younger man thought of something. “I say,” he began, -and after an instant’s pause went on: “It’d suit me better not to be -called ‘Eddy’ among the men, d’ye see? That fellow Burlington began it -last night--he got it from you--and I don’t like it. When we’re alone, -of course, that’s different.” - -Major Pirie laughed--a dry, brief, harsh laugh--and swung around on his -heels. “Your man didn’t get those sausages I asked for, after all,” he -remarked, going back to the dishes at the fender. - -“Probably couldn’t,” said Mr. Edward, “or else,” he added, “wouldn’t. I -never saw such a houseful of brutes and duffers. I’m keen to shunt the -lot of ‘em, and they know it, the beggars. You’d think they’d try to -suck up to me, but they don’t, they haven’t got brains enough.” - -The major had brought a plate from the table, and was filling it from -under the covers on the hearth. “Shall I ring for the tea?” he asked. - -Mr. Edward moved across to the chimney corner and pulled the cord -himself. “Do you know what that old ass, Barlow--the butler, you -know--had the face to say to me yesterday? ‘I’--God, you couldn’t -believe it! ‘I ’ope, sir,’ he says, ‘you’ll think better of shootin’ -on the First, for His Grace’ll hear the guns in the covers, and it won’t -do His Grace no good.’ Fancy the beggar’s cheek!” - -“Well, do you know, Torr,” said Major Pirie, slowly, speaking with his -mouth full but contriving to give a significantly nice emphasis to the -name, “I was thinkin’ much the same myself. For that matter, several -of the fellows were mentionin’ it. It doesn’t look quite the thing, you -know.” - -The entrance of the servant created an interval of silence, during which -Mr. Edward in his turn rummaged among the dishes before the fire. - -“It’s Gus, is it?” he demanded, from where he knelt on one knee, plate -in hand. - -“He thought it would be funny to queer my game, eh?” - -“Your brother hasn’t said a word, so far’s I know,” replied the major, -pouring his tea. “It was merely some of the fellows, talkin’.” - -“God Almighty!” cried Mr. Edward, springing to his feet. “Here’s a -precious outfit of pals for you! You come down here, so help me--” - -“Don’t say ‘you’; say ‘they,’ if you’ve got to say anything,” interposed -the major, quietly. - -“Well, they, then,” the other went on, in loud heat. “They come down -here, and take my mounts, by God; they drink my wine, they win my money, -they drain me dry--and then they go behind my back and whisper to one -another that I’m an outsider. And you too, Pirie,” he continued, with -defiance and deprecation mingled in his tone, “you admit yourself that -you talked with them.” - -“My dear Torr,” replied the major, “it’s a mistake for you to turn out -so early. You’ve tried to quarrel before breakfast every day I’ve been -here. It’s the worst morning temper I ever heard of in my life. You -ought to have tea and eggs and things brought to you in your room, and -not show yourself for at least two hours afterward--you really ought. It -isn’t fair to your friends.” - -The door opened and still another tall man came in. He nodded to Pirie -as he passed him, with a tolerant “Well, major,” and went straight to -the dishes by the fire. - -“Pirie’s got it into his head we oughtn’t to shoot to-day, Gus,” said -Mr. Edward. - -The other rose with a dish in his hands. - -“It _is_ dark,” he assented, glancing toward the window. “Afraid of -pottin’ a beater, major?” - -“No--it’s about the duke,” explained Edward. “It seems some of the -fellows funk the thing--they think he’ll hear the guns--they want to go -to church instead, or something of that sort.” - -Augustine Torr, M.P., looked at his brother inquiringly. The tie of -blood between them was obvious enough. They were both slender as well -as tall; their small round heads merging indistinguishably behind into -flat, broad necks, seemed identical in contour; they had the same -light coarse hair, the same florid skins, even the same little yellow -mustaches. The differences were harder to seek. Edward, though he had -borne Her Majesty’s commission for some years, was not so well set up -about the shoulders as his younger and civilian brother. Augustine, on -the other hand, despite his confident carriage of himself, produced the -effect of being Edward’s inferior in simple force of character. It was -at once to his credit and his disparagement that he had the more amiable -nature of the two. - -“How do you mean--the duke?” he asked. “Is there a change?” - -Edward put out his closed lips a little, and shook his head. Major Pirie -sprinkled salt on his muffin while he explained. - -“All there is of it is this,” he said. “There was just an idea that with -the--with your grandfather--dyin’ in the house--it might look a little -better to give the first the go-by. Nobody’d have a word to say against -shootin’ to-morrow.” - -“Well, but what the hell”--Augustine groped his way with hesitancy--“I -don’t understand--we’ve been shootin’ partridges for a month, and how -are pheasants any different? And as for the duke--why, of course one’s -sorry and all that--but he’s been dyin’ since June, and the birds have -some rights--or rather, I should say--what I mean is--” - -“That’s what I said,” put in Edward, to cover the collapse of his -brother’s argument. - -Major Pirie frowned a little. “Partridges are another matter,” he said -testily. - -“Damned if I know what you’re driving at,” avowed Augustine. He -paused with fork in air at his own words. “Drivin’ at,” he repeated -painstakingly. “Drivin’ at pheasants, eh? Not bad, you know. Pass the -mustard, Pirie.” - -“God!” said the major, with gloom. “You know well enough what I mean. -To work through fields miles off--that’s one thing. To shoot the covers -here under the duke’s nose, with the beaters messin’ about--that’s quite -another. However that’s your affair, not mine.” - -“But don’t you see,” urged Augustine, “what difference does a day -make? There’ll be just as much racket to-morrow as to-day. It isn’t -reasonable, you know.” - -“It was merely what you might call a sentiment,” said the major, in -the half apologetic tone of a man admitting defeat. He looked the least -sentimental of warriors as he went on with his breakfast--a longfaced, -weather-beaten, dull-eyed man of the late forties. - -Four other men who came in now at brief intervals, with few or no words -of salutation to the company, and who lounged about helping themselves -to what caught their fancy in the breakfast, were equally removed from -the suspicion of adding a sentimental element to the atmosphere. They -made little talk of any kind, and no mention whatever of that absurd -qualm about the First which had been reported to have germinated among -them. - -Edward had reached the stage of filling his pipe. Walking to the mantel -for a light, it occurred to him to ring the bell first. “Her ladyship -breakfastin’ in her room?” he asked the youngster who answered the -summons. - -“Her ladyship’s woman has just gone up with it, sir,” he replied. - -“_That’s_ all right,” said Edward, and forthwith struck the match. “Send -in Davis and Morton to me, and ask Barlow for those Brazilian cigars -of mine--the small huntin’ ones. What wheels were those I heard on the -gravel? If it’s the traps we shan’t want them to-day. We’re walkin’ -across.” - -“I will make inquiries, sir,” said the domestic, and went out. - -The room had brightened perceptibly, and Captain Edward was in a better -temper. He moved over to the sideboard and filled a pocket-flask from -one of the decanters in the old-fashioned case. As an afterthought, he -also filled a small glass, and gulped its contents neat. “We’re off in -ten minutes now,” he called out to the men about the table, some of whom -had already lit their pipes. “What do you fellows want to take with you? -My tip is this rum.” - -“Hardly cold enough for rum, is it?” asked one, drifting languidly -toward the sideboard. Most of the others had risen to their feet. - -A slender, sad-faced, gentlemanly-looking old man in evening clothes had -entered the room, and stood now at Captain Edward’s elbow and touched it -with his hand. “I--beg--your--pardon--sir,” he said, in the conventional -phrase. - -Edward, listening to what a companion was saying, turned absent-mindedly -to the butler. Then he happened to remember something. “Damn you, -Barlow, you get duller every day!” he snapped. “You know perfectly well -what cigars I take out of doors!” - -“I--beg--your--pardon--sir,” repeated the elderly person. He spoke in a -confidential murmur. “I thought you would like to know, sir--Lord Julius -has come.” - -The young man looked at him, silently revolving the intelligence, -a puzzled frown between his pale brows. A furtive something in the -butler’s composed expression struck him. “What of it?” he demanded, -angrily. “What are you whispering for? He’s old enough to take care of -himself, isn’t he?” - -The butler thrust out his dry underlip a trifle. “I thought you would -like to know, sir,” he reiterated. - -“Well, you’re wrong. I don’t like to know!” The man’s tone--an -indefinable, lurking suggestiveness in his face and eyes and -voice--vexed Mr. Edward exceedingly. It annoyed him still more to note -that his companions had tacitly turned their backs, and were affecting -great preoccupation in something else. - -He kept a wrathful eye on Barlow, as the latter bowed, turned, moved -to the door and opened it. Of course, a man musn’t slang servants, his -irritated thought ran, but the covert impertinence in this old menial’s -manner was something no longer to be borne. The impulse to call the -elderly fool back and send him packing on the instant, tingled hotly in -the young man’s blood. He even opened his lips to speak, but reflection -checked his tongue. It would be bad form, for one thing; for another, -perhaps he was not quite in the position to dismiss his grandfather’s -servants. He would speak to Welldon, the estate steward, instead--a -sensible and civil man, by the way, who seemed to know which side his -bread was buttered on. At the merest hint from the heir, Welldon would -give Barlow the sack, and that would teach the rest a lesson. But -all this would keep until Lord Julius had gone. Being an aged duffer -himself, he would probably side with Barlow--and there was no point in -offending Lord Julius. Very much to the contrary, indeed. - -Mr. Edward’s meditations, unwontedly facile in their movements for him, -had reached this point, when his mind reverted to the fact that he was -still regarding the back of Barlow, who, instead of going out, stood -holding the door open, his lean figure poised in ceremonious expectancy. -Even as the surprised Edward continued looking, the butler made a staid -obeisance. - -A stalwart, erect, burly old gentleman came in, and halted just over -the threshold to look about him. He had the carriage, dress and general -aspect of a prosperous and opinionated farmer. The suggestion of acres -and crops was peculiarly marked in the broad, low soft hat on his -head, and in the great white beard which spread fan-wise over his -ample breast. He had the face of one who had spent a life in commanding -others, and had learned meanwhile to master himself--a frank, -high-featured, ruddy face, with a conspicuously prominent and -well-curved nose, and steady, confident eyes. He folded his hands over -his stick and, holding his head well back, glanced about the room at his -ease. It was a glance from which the various eyes that it encountered -somehow turned away. - -“How-do, Eddy? How-do, Gus?” the newcomer said impassively to the two -young men who, with palpable constraint, came up to greet him. He shook -hands with each, but seemed more interested in viewing the company at -large. His appearance had produced a visible effect of numbness upon the -group of guests, but he seemed not to mind this. - -“Quite a party!” he observed. His voice was full and robust, and not -unamiable. “All military?” - -Edward nodded. “All but Gus, here. Glad to introduce ’em, if you like,” - he murmured, with a kind of sullen deference. - -“Presently, presently,” said Lord Julius, with an effect of heartiness -at which Edward lifted his head. - -“Drive over from Clune this morning?” the young man asked. “Then you’ll -want breakfast. Ring the bell, Gus. We’re just starting for the Mere -copse. Glad to have you make an eighth gun, if you’ll come to us after -you’ve eaten. You still shoot, don’t you?” - -“Oh, yes, I still shoot,” said the other. - -Edward had a sense of embarrassment at his great-uncle’s immobility in -the doorway. “Well, we’ll get along to the gun-room now,” he said to -the others. Then to Lord Julius he remarked with an air of making -conversation, “I always say to the fellows that I ask nothing better in -this world than to be as fit as you are when I’m your age. Let’s see, -seventy-six, isn’t it?” - -The elder man nodded. “I’m sure that’s a modest enough ambition,” he -observed. His steady gray eyes dallied with the young man’s countenance -for a moment. “I’m relieved to learn that you want nothing more than -that.” - -Edward looked up swiftly, and braved an instant’s piercing scrutiny of -the other’s face. Then he laughed, uneasily. “Oh, I want a few other -things, too.” - -Lord Julius lowered his voice. “I would put among your wants a trifling -matter of good taste, Eddy,” he said, not unkindly. - -Captain Edward flushed. “If I could see that it really made any -difference between the First and the Second,” he answered with dogged -civility, “I wouldn’t shoot until tomorrow. If you’re keen about it now, -I’ll--” - -“Oh, damn your First and Second,” broke in the old man, keeping his -voice down below the hearing of the others, but letting impatience glow -in his eyes; “you had no business bringing these men here at all. No--I -see that you don’t understand me. You needn’t explain. It’s entirely a -question of feeling.” - -“I’m sorry you take that view of it, sir,” said Edward, gloomily. -“You know that I’m willing enough to meet your views--if only--if -only because I’m going to need your help.” Lord Julius gave a snort of -contemptuous laughter, and nodded to himself with lifted brows. “Really -something in the way of consideration is due to such frankness as that,” - he said, with a pretense of reverie. “Send your friends out of the room, -Eddy,” he went on, more gently--“make what excuse you like--or take them -out and come back to me--that’s better. I did intend to have no secrets -from them, but I’ve relented. And yes--by the way--instead of coming -here--you’ll find me in the small morning room I will breakfast there. -You’ve filled this room with smoke.” - -“Would you--would you mind my bringing Gus?” Edward asked, doubtfully. - -The other thought for an instant. “Oh, yes, Gus may come,” he said, and -with that left the room. - -“Rum old beggar, isn’t he?” said Augustine to the company, with the -sense that something had to be said. - -“Gad! he seemed to think he was in a synagogue!” laughed Captain -Burlington. “Kept his hat on, you know,” he explained in the next breath -to the surprised and attentive faces about him. - -“But he isn’t a Jew,” said one of the others with gravity. “He married -one, but that doesn’t make him one, you know.” - -“It was a joke! Can’t you see a joke?” protested Burlington. - -“Well, I don’t think much of it,” growled Edward, sourly. “Come along to -the gunroom.” - -***** - -“What’s up?” asked Mr. Augustine, in an anxious murmur, a few minutes -later, as the two brothers walked along the wide central hallway toward -the appointed place. - -“Can’t think for the life of me,” replied Edward. “Unless Craven babbled -about the baccarat when he got up to town. He’s rather that sort, you -know. He kicked about the stakes at the time.” - -“Yes--after he’d been hit,” said Augustine. “But if it’s only that, -you’ll be an ass to let the old man rot you about it. Just stand up to -him, and let him see you feel your position.” - -“That’s all right,” rejoined Edward, dubiously, “but what’s the -position without money? If anybody could have foreseen what was going to -happen--damn it all, I could have married as much as I needed. But as it -is, I’ve got Cora on my back, and the kid, and--my God! fancy doing the -duke on four thou, a year net! Welldon tells me it can’t be screwed a -bit above that. Well, then, how can I afford to cheek Julius? When you -come to that he isn’t half a bad sort, you know. He stood my marriage -awfully well. Gad, you know, we couldn’t have lived if he hadn’t drawn a -check.” - -“Let us hope he’ll draw another,” said Augustine. “It’s bad enough to be -a pauper duke, but it’s a bailey sight worse to be his brother.” - -“What rot!” said Edward. “My kid’s a girl, and you’re free to marry.” - -They had come to the door of the morning room. It stood ajar, and Edward -pushed it open. Before the fireplace was visible the expected bulk and -vast beard of Lord Julius, but the eyes of the brothers intuitively -wandered to the window beyond, against which was outlined the figure of -a much smaller man. - -“Secretary,” whispered the quicker-minded Augustine out of the corner of -his mouth as they advanced. The thought brought them a tempered kind -of comfort. The same instinct which had prompted Edward to crave his -brother’s support led them both to welcome the presence of a fourth -party. - -They looked again toward the stranger, and Lord Julius, as he caught -their returning glance, smiled and nodded significantly. “Come here, -Christian!” he said, and the brothers saw now that it was a slender -young man with a dark, fine face and foreign-looking eyes who moved -toward them. - -Lord Julius put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Christian,” he -said, and gave his full voice a new note of gravity, “these are your two -cousins, Mr. Edward Torr, a captain in the Hussars until recently, and -Mr. Augustine Torr, a member of Parliament. Your coming will make some -difference in their affairs, but I know that you will be good to them.” - -The brothers had shaken hands with the new-comer automatically, while -their minds were in the first stage of wonderment as to what the words -being spoken about him meant. Now that silence fell, they stared slowly -at him, at their great-uncle, at each other. - -“How--cousin?” Edward managed to ask. He spoke as if his tongue filled -his mouth. - -“The son of your uncle, Lord Ambrose Torr,” the old man made quiet, -carefully distinct answer. - -Another period of silence ensued, until Christian turned abruptly. “It -is very painful to me,” he said hurriedly to the old man, and walked to -the window. - -“It is painful to everybody,” said Lord Julius. - -“Not so damned particularly painful to you, sir, I should say,” put in -Edward, looking his great-uncle in the face. The young man had slowly -pulled himself together, and one could see the muscles of his neck being -stiffened to keep his chin well in the air. His blue eyes had the effect -of summoning all their resources of pride to gaze with dignity into the -muzzle of a machine-gun. - -Augustine was less secure in the control of his nerves. He stood a -little behind his brother, and the elbow which he braced against him for -support trembled. His eyes wandered about the room, and he moistened -his lips with his tongue several times before he contrived to whisper -something into Edward’s ear. The latter received the suggestion, -whatever it was, with an impatient shake of the head. - -“You scarcely do me justice,” said Lord Julius, quietly, “but that’s -not worth mentioning at the moment. I must say you are taking it very -well--much better than I expected.” - -Edward squared his shoulders still more. “I wouldn’t say that we’re -takin’ it at all,” he replied, with studied deliberation. “You offer it, -d’ye see--but it doesn’t follow that we take it. You come and bring this -young fellow--this young gentleman, and you tell me that he is Ambrose’s -son. What good is that to me? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Ambrose may -have had twenty sons, for all I know. I should be sorry to be one of -them--but they’re not to blame for that. I don’t mind being civil to -them--if they come to me in the right spirit--” He stopped abruptly, and -listened with a frown to more whispering from Augustine. - -“You don’t seem to understand, Eddy--” began Lord Julius. - -“Oh, perfectly!” broke in the young man. “I had an uncle who had to -leave England before I was born. His name couldn’t even be mentioned in -the family--but I know all about him. God knows I’ve had him flung in my -face often enough.” - -“Don’t let us go into that,” urged Lord Julius, softly, and with -a sidelong nod toward the window. “It’s needless cruelty to other -people--and surely we can discuss this like gentlemen. You are really -behaving splendidly, Eddy.” - -“God! he thought we were cads!” cried Edward, in husky indignation. - -“No--no--no--no,” murmured the older man, soothingly. “I only want you -to grasp the thing as it is. You know me. You do not regard me as a -foolish person who goes off half-cock. Well, I tell you that Christian -here is the son of my nephew Ambrose, born in lawful wedlock, and that -there is not a shadow of doubt about it. The proofs are all open to your -inspection; there is not a flaw in them. And so I say to you, in all -kindness--take it calmly and sensibly and like a gentleman. It is to -your own interest to do so, as well. If you think, you will see that.” - -“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” said Augustine, strenuously, from -behind his brother’s shoulder. - -A faint smile fluttered about the old man’s eyelids. “It was the advice -of a born statesman,” he said, dryly. “You are the political hope of the -family.” - -The stiffening had melted from Edward’s neck and shoulders. He turned -irresolutely now, and looked at the floor. “Of course I admit nothing; -I reserve all my rights, till my lawyers have satisfied themselves,” he -said in a worn, depressed mutter. - -“Why, naturally,” responded Lord Julius, with relieved cordiality. “And -now please me--do it all handsomely to the end--come and shake hands -again with Christian, both of you.” - -The brothers stood for a hesitating instant, then turned toward the -window and began a movement of reluctant assent. - -To the surprise of all three, Christian forestalled their approach by -wrenching open one half of the tall window, and putting a foot over the -sill to the lawn outside. - -“If you will excuse me,” he said, in his nervous, high voice, “I am -taking a little walk.” - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -Upon the garden side of Caermere is a very large conservatory, built -nearly fifty years ago, at the close of the life of the last duchess. -The poor lady left no other mark of her meek existence upon the -buildings, and it was thought at the time that she would never have -ventured upon even this, had it not been that every one was mad for -the moment about the wonderful palace of glass reared in London for the -First Exhibition. - -In area and height, and in the spacious pretensions of its dome, the -structure still suggests irresistibly the period of its inception. It is -as ambitious as it is self-conscious; its shining respectability remains -superior to all the wiles of climbers and creeping vines. The older -servants cherish traditions of “Her Grace’s glass,” as it used to be -called. She had the work begun on her fortieth birthday, and precisely -a year later it happened that she was wheeled in from the big morning -room, and left at her own desire to recline in solitude under the palms -beneath the dome, and that when they went to her at last she was dead. -The circumstance that Shakespeare is supposed also to have died on the -anniversary of his birth, has somehow come to be an integral part of -the story, as it is kept alive now in the humbler parts of the Caermere -household, but the duchess had nothing else in common with the poet. -The very face of her, in her maturer years, is but dimly remembered. The -portrait in the library is of a young Lady Clarissa, with pale ringlets -and a childishly sweet countenance, and clad in the formal quaintness of -the last year of King George the Fourth. She became the duchess, but in -turn the duchess, seemed to become somebody else. That was the way with -the brides brought home to Caermere. The pictures in the library -show them all girlish, and innocently pretty, and for the most part -fair-haired. Happily there is no painted record of what they were -like when, still in middle life, they bade a last goodbye to the -dark-skinned, big-shouldered sons they had borne, and perhaps made a -little moan that no daughters were ever given to mothers at Caermere, -and turned their sad faces to the wall. - -The crystal house had memories of another and more recent mistress, the -countess. She had come six years after the other went, she had lived -for twelve years--a silent, colorless, gently unhappy life--and then -had faded away out of sight. It was this Lady Porlock who had caused the -orchid houses to be built at the inner side of the conservatory, and it -was in her time, too, that the gifted Cheltnam was fetched from her own -father’s house in Berkshire to be head gardener at Caermere. Her fame -is indeed irrevocably linked with his, for the tea-rose of his breeding, -bearing her maiden-name of the Hon. Florence Denson, is scarcely less -well known than this hybrid sweet-briar the Countess of Porlock. - -And now, in the third generation, still another lady had for some years -enjoyed special property rights in this great glass apartment. - -Lady Cressage came into the conservatory from the large morning room, -with a large volume in her hand, and an irresolute look on her face. She -glanced about at the several couches piled with cushions and furs, at an -easy-chair beyond--and yawned slightly. Then she wandered over to a row -of early chrysanthemums, and, putting the book under her arm, occupied -herself with the destruction of a few tiny beginnings of buds in the -lower foliage. In this she employed as pincers the delicately tinted -nails of a very shapely finger and thumb, and at the sign of some slight -discoloration of these she stopped the work. From a glance at the nails, -she went to a musing scrutiny of this whole right hand of hers, holding -it up, and turning it from one composition of graceful curves to -another. It had been called the most beautiful hand in England, but this -morning its owner, upon a brief and rather listless inspection of its -charms, yawned again. Finally she seated herself in the chair and, after -a languid search for the place in her book, began to read. - -Half reclining thus, with the equable and shadowless light of the glass -house about her, the young widow made a picture curiously different from -any in the library within. All the dead and gone brides of the Torrs had -been painted in bright attire; Lady Cressage wore a belted gown of black -cloth, unrelieved save by a softened line of white at the throat and -wrists. The others, without exception, had signified by elaborate -hair-dressing not less than by dutifully vacuous facial expressions, -their comprehension of the requirements of the place they had been -called upon to fill; Lady Cressage’s bistre hair was gathered in -careless fashion to a loose knot at the back of the head, and in her -exquisitely modeled face there was no hint whatever of docility or awed -submission to any external claims. The profile of this countenance, -outlined for the moment against a cluster of vividly purple pleroma -blossoms, had the delicacy of a rare flower, but it conveyed also the -impression of resolute and enduring force. If the dome above could have -generated voices of its own, these would have murmured to one another -that here at last was a woman whom Caermere could not break or even -easily bend. - -In the season of 1892, London had heard a good deal of this lady. She -was unknown before, and of her belongings people to this day knew and -cared very little. There was a General Kervick enumerated in the retired -list, who had vegetated into promotion in some obscure corner of -India, and now led an equally inconspicuous existence somewhere in -the suburbs--or was it in West Kensington? He had never belonged to a -service club, but an occasional man encountered him once in a while -at the Oriental, where he was supposed by the waiters to have an -exceptional knowledge of peppers and chutneys. The name of his wife -had been vaguely associated with charitable committees, or subscription -committees, and here and there some one remembered having heard that she -was distantly related to somebody. The elder Kervicks never secured a -much more definite place in London’s regard--even after this remarkable -daughter had risen like a planet to dim the fixed stars of the season. - -The credit for having discovered and launched Miss Kervick came -generally to be ascribed to Lady Selton, but perhaps this turned upon -the fact that she lent her house in Park Lane for the culminating scene -in the spectacular triumph of that young person. No doubt there were -others who would have placed still bigger houses at the disposal of a -bride whose wedding was, in many respects, the most interesting of the -year, and some of these may have had as good a claim to the privilege as -Lady Selton. As matters turned out, however, they were given no cause to -repine. The marriage was not a success, and within one short year Lady -Selton herself had grown a little shy about assuming responsibility for -it. A year later she was quite prepared to repudiate all share in it, -and after that people ceased to remember about it all, until the shock -of the tragedy came to stir polite London into startled whisperings. - -Hardly within the memory of living folk had a family been dealt such -a swift succession of deadly blows as these which were rained upon the -Torrs in the first half of 1896. - -The Earl of Porlock had been the heir of dukedom since most people could -remember, and had got himself called to the House of Lords in his -own right, apparently as a kind of protest against his father’s -unconscionable longevity, at least a dozen years before his own end -came. It was not to be supposed that he desired a peerage for any -other reason, since he had never chosen to seek a seat in the House of -Commons, and indeed, save upon one occasion connected with ground game, -made no use whatever of his legislative powers after they had been -given to him. He cared nothing for politics, and read scarcely more in -newspapers than in books. Up to middle life, he had displayed a certain -tendency toward interest in fat stock and a limited number of allied -agricultural topics, but the decline in farming values had turned him -from this. In his earlier years, too, he had enjoyed being identified -with the sporting set of his class in London, and about the racing -circuit, but this association he also dropped out of as he grew older, -partly because late nights bored him, partly because he could no longer -afford to jeopardize any portion of his income. He came at last to think -of his mastership of hounds as his principal tie to existence on land. -He liked it all, from the sailing sweep over the highest barrier in an -exceptionally rough country, to the smell of the kennels of an early -morning across the frozen yards. This life with the horses and dogs, -and with the people who belonged to the horses and dogs, offered fewer -temptations to the evil temper in his blood than any other, and with -growing years his dislike for the wear and tear of getting angry had -become a controlling instinct. He continued to use bad language with an -appropriate show of fervency, when occasion required, but he had got out -of the way of scalding himself with rage inside. He even achieved a -grim sort of jocularity toward the close. In the last year of his life -a tenant-farmer, speaking to a toast, affirmed of him that “a truer -sportsman, nor yet a more humorous and affable nobleman, has never taken -the chair at a puppy-walk luncheon within my recollection,” and this -tribute to his geniality both pleased and impressed the earl. He was -then in his sixty-second year, and he might have lived into a mellowed, -and even jovial old age, under the influence of this praise, had there -been no unwritten law ending the hunting season in the early spring. - -The earl cared very little for otters and rats, and almost nothing at -all for salmon, so that when April came he usually went to his yacht, -and practically lived aboard it until November. Sometimes he made long -cruises in this substantial and comfortable vessel, which he delighted -in navigating himself. He was lying in at Bremerhaven, for example, in -May, when one of a sheaf of telegrams scattered along the line of North -Sea ports in search of him, brought the news that his youngest son -Joseph, who had drifted into Mashonaland after the collapse of the -Jameson adventure, had been killed in the native rebellion. Upon -consideration, the earl could not see that a post-haste return to -England would serve any useful end. He sailed westward, however, after -some telegraphic communication with England, and made his leisurely way -down the Channel and round Cornwall to Milford Haven, where his wont was -to winter his yacht, and where most of his crew were at home. The fact -that he and the vessel were well known in this port rendered it possible -to follow in detail subsequent events. - -It was on the 10th of June that Lord Porlock came to anchor in Milford, -and went ashore, taking the afternoon train for Shrewsbury. He returned -on the 14th, accompanied by his eldest son and heir, Lord Cressage. -This latter personage was known only from hearsay at Milford, and local -observation of him was therefore stimulated by a virgin curiosity. It -was noted that Viscount Cressage--a stalwart and rubicund young man of -more than his father’s height, but somewhat less swarthy of aspect--was -laboring under very marked depression. He hung about the hotel, during -the delay incident upon cleaning up the yacht, taking on new stores -and altering some of the sailing gear, in a plainly moping mood, saying -little to his father and never a word to any one else. A number of -witnesses were able to make it clear that at first he did not intend to -sail forth, but was merely bearing his father company while the latter -remained in harbor. - -The fact of their recent bereavement accounted in a general way for -their reticence with each other, but it was impossible not to see that -the younger man had something besides the death of a brother on his -mind. When, on the second day of their waiting, the tide began to -fill in which on its turn was to bear out the yacht, his nervous -preoccupation grew painfully manifest. He walked across many times to -the headland; he fidgeted in and out of the bar, taking drinks for -which he obviously had no relish, and looking over and over again in the -railway time-tables for information which he seemed incapable of fixing -in his memory. At last, when everything was ready, and the earl stood -with his hand out to say good-bye to his son, the latter had suddenly, -and upon the evident impulse of the moment, declared with some -excitement that he also would go. People remembered that he had said, -as if in defensive explanation of his hasty resolve: “Perhaps that will -teach her a lesson!” His father had only remarked “Rot!”--and with that -the yacht sailed off, a heaving white patch against the blackening west. - -But what followed was too grossly unreasoning to afford a lesson to -anybody. The morning newspapers of the 18th contained in one column -confirmation of the earlier report that the Hon. Anselm Torr, second son -of the earl of Porlock, had been a passenger on the ill-fated “Drummond -Castle,” and had gone down with the rest in the night off Ushant; and in -another column a telegram from Porthstinian, announcing the total loss -of a large yacht, on the rocks known as the Bishop and Clerks, with all -on board. The evening papers followed with the rumor that the lost yacht -was the “Minstrel,” with both Lord Porlock and his son, Lord Cressage, -on board; but it was not until the next afternoon that the public -possessed all the facts in this extraordinary affair. Then it happened -that the edge was rather taken off the horror of the tragic coincidence, -by the announcement that these sudden deaths brought forward as next -heir to the dukedom Captain Edward Torr, late of the --th Hussars, -who was better known, perhaps, as the husband of Miss Cora Bayard. The -thought of Cora as a prospective duchess made such a direct appeal -to the gayer side of the popular mind, that the gruesome terrors -surrounding her advancement were lost to sight. When, a few days later, -it was stated that the venerable Duke of Glastonbury had suffered a -stroke of paralysis, and lay at Caermere in a critical state, the news -only made more vivid the picture of the music-hall dancer turned into -Her Grace which the public had in its mind’s eye. Her radiant portrait -in the photographic weeklies and budgets was what remained uppermost in -the general memory. - -For a time, however, in that little fraction of the public which is -called Society, the figure of another woman concentrated interest upon -itself, in connection with the Torr tragedy. The fact that a music-hall -person was to wear a great title had no permanent hold upon the -imagination of this class. They would probably see rather less of her -then than now--and the thing had no longer the charm of the unusual. But -they had known Lady Cressage. They had admired her, followed after her, -done all sorts of nice things for her, in that season of her wonderful -triumph as the most beautiful girl, and the most envied bride, in -London. After her marriage she had been very little in evidence, it -was true; one hardly knew of any other reigning beauty who had let the -sceptre slip through her fingers so promptly and completely. What was -the secret of it all? It could not be said that she had lost her good -looks, or that she was lacking in cleverness. There was no tangible -scandal against her; to the contrary, she seemed rather surprisingly -indifferent to men’s company. Of course, it was understood that her -marriage was unhappy, but that was scarcely a reason for allowing -herself to be so wholly snuffed out of social importance. Everybody knew -what the Torrs were like as husbands, and everybody would have been -glad to be good to her. But in some unaccountable way, without quite -producing the effect of rebuffing kindness, she had contrived to lapse -from the place prepared for her. And now those last words from the lips -of poor young Cressage--“Perhaps that will teach her a lesson!”--sifted -their way from the coroner’s inquest in a Welsh village up to London, -and set people thinking once more. Who could tell? It might be that the -fault was not all on one side. According to the accounts of Milford, he -was in a state of visible excitement and mental distress. The very -fact of his going off alone in a yacht with his father, of whom he -notoriously saw as little as possible on dry land, showed that he must -have been greatly upset. And his words could mean nothing save that it -was a quarrel with his wife which had sent him off to what proved to be -his death. What was this quarrel about? And was it the woman, after all, -who was to blame? Echoes of these questions, and of their speculative -and varied answers, kept themselves alive here and there in London till -Parliament rose in August. They were lost then in the general flutter -toward the moors. - -Lady Cressage, meantime, had not quitted Caermere or disclosed any -design of doing so, and it is there we return to her, where she sat at -her ease under the palms in the glass-house, with a book open before -her. - -The spattering reports of a number of guns, not very far away, caused -her presently to lift her head, but after an instant, with a fleeting -frown, she went back to her book. The racket continued, and finally she -closed the volume, listened with a vexed face for a minute or two and -then sprang to her feet. - -“Positively this is too bad!” she declared aloud, to herself. - -Unexpectedly, as she turned, she found confronting her another young -woman, also clad in black, even to the point of long gloves, and a -broad hat heavy with funereal plumes. In her hand she held some unopened -letters, and on her round, smooth, pretty countenance there was a -doubtful look. - -“Good-mornin’, dear,” said this newcomer. Her voice, not unmusical in -tone, carried the suggestion of being produced with sedulous regard to a -system. “There were no letters for you.” - -There was a momentary pause, and then Lady Cressage, as if upon -deliberation, answered, “Good-morning--Cora.” She turned away listlessly -as she spoke. - -“Ah, so it _is_ one of my ‘Cora’ days, after all,” said the other, with -a long breath of ostentatious reassurance. “I never know in the least -where to have you, my dear, you know--and particularly this mornin’; I -made sure you’d blame me for the guns.” - -“Blame”--commented Lady Cressage, musingly--“I no longer blame anybody -for anything. I’ve long since done with my fancy for playing at being -God, and distributing judgments about among people.” - -“Oh, you’re quite right about this shootin’ the home covers,” protested -the other. “I gave Eddy a fair bit of my mind about it--but you know -what he is, when once he’s headed in a given direction. You might -as well talk soft to the east wind. And, for that matter, I was dead -against his bringin’ these men down here at all--though it may surprise -you to hear it.” - -Lady Cressage, still looking away, shook her head very slightly. “No--I -don’t find myself particularly surprised,” she said, with an effect of -languor. “Really, I can’t be said to have given the matter a thought, -one way or the other. It is neither my business nor my wish to form -opinions about your husband’s friends. We were speaking of something -else, were we not?” - -“Why, yes,” responded Mrs. Edward; “I mentioned that sometimes I’m -‘Cora,’ and sometimes it’s very much the other way about. I merely -mentioned it--don’t think I mean to complain--only I began calling _you_ -Edith from the start--from the first day I came here, after the--after -the----” - -“I know you did. It was very kind of you,” murmured Edith, but with no -affectation of gratitude in her voice. Then, slowly, she turned her eyes -toward her companion, and added in a more considerate tone: “But then -you are by nature a much kindlier person than I am.” - -“Oh, yes, you say that,” put in the other, “but it isn’t true, you know. -It’s only that I’ve seen more of the world, and am so much older than -you are. That’s what tells, my dear--it’s years that smooths the temper -down, and rubs off one’s sharp corners--of course, if one has some sense -to start with. I assure you, Edith, that when I was your age I was a -perfect tiger-cat.” - -Lady Cressage smiled in a wan fashion, as if in despite of her mood. -“You always make such a point of your seniority,” she said, not -unamiably, “but when I look at you, I can never believe you’re of any -age at all. I seem a thousand years old beside you.” Mrs. Edward showed -some dazzling teeth in her pleased appreciation of the compliment. Her -smile was as characteristic as her voice, in its studiously regular and -equable distribution. The even parting of her bright lips, with -their symmetrical inner lines of white, was supported to a nicety of -proportional value by eyelashes and eyes. - -“It’s what I’ve been saying,” she commented, with frank enjoyment. “It’s -good temper that does the trick.” - -To tell the truth, Mrs. Edward’s was a face which bore no visible -relation to years. It was of rounded oval in contour, with beautifully -chiseled small features, a faultless skin which was neither fair nor -dark and fine large eyes that seemed sometimes blue, and as often -something else. In these eyes there lay always, within touch of the -surface, a latent smile, ready to beam, to sparkle, to dance, to -languish in mellow softness or glitter in cool abstract recognition of -pleasantries afloat, all at the instant bidding of the lips below. These -lips, delicately arched and of vivid warmth of color, were as restricted -in their movements as is the mercury in a thermometer. They did not curl -sidewise upon occasion; they never pouted, or pulled themselves inward -together under the stress of sudden emotion. They did nothing but -separate, in perfectly balanced measure, sometimes by only a hair’s -breadth, again in the freest fashion, but always in painstaking harmony -with the spirit of the glance above. Students of this smile, or rather -of this range of graded smiles, ordinarily reached the conclusion that -it was the lips which gave the signal to the eyes. Certain it is that -they worked together in trained accord, and that the rest of the face -did nothing at all. The white forehead furrowed itself with no lines of -puzzled thought; there was not the shadow of a wrinkle at the corners -of the little mouth, or about the shapely brown lashes--and it seemed -incredible that time should ever bring one. - -Beside this serene and lovely mask--in the placidity of which one -found the pledge of an easy temper along with the promise of unfailing -youth--the face of Lady Cressage was still beautiful, but in a restless -and strenuous way. If she did produce the effect of being the older of -the two, it was because Mrs. Edward’s countenance had nothing to do with -any such standard of comparison. - -“When you come to think of it,” the latter went on now, “you _do_ -seem older than I do, dear--I mean you seem so to me. Of course I -know there’s a good six years’ difference between us--and as far as -appearance goes, I needn’t say that you’d be the belle of the ball in -London as easily as you were four years ago--but all the same you have -the knack of making me feel as if I were the youngster, and you the -grown-up. I’ve a sister--five years younger than me--and she does the -same thing. When she looks at me--just quietly turns her eyes full on -me, you know--it seems as if I ought to have a pinafore on, and she have -spectacles and a cap. Oh, she used to give me the jumps, that girl did. -We haven’t seen much of each other, these last few years; we didn’t hit -it off particularly well--but--why, hello! this _is_ odd, if you like!” - -“What is it?” asked the other, perfunctorily. - -Mrs. Edward had been, shuffling the envelopes in her hand the while she -spoke, and idly noting their superscriptions. She held up one of them -now, in explanation of her remark. - -“Well, talk of the devil, you know--I was speaking of my sister Frank, -and here’s a letter from her. She hasn’t written a line to me in--how -long is it?--why, it must be--well, certainly not since I was married. -Funny, isn’t it? I wonder if it’s anything about the pater.” - -She continued to regard the sealed missive absent-mindedly, as if the -resource of opening it had not yet suggested itself to her. In the -meantime, something else occurred to her, and she turned to face Lady -Cressage, who had seated herself again. - -“I meant what I said about these men Eddy’s brought down,” she declared. -“I didn’t want them to be asked, and I don’t like their being here, any -more than you do. Yes, I want to have you understand,” she persisted, as -the other offered a gesture of deprecation, “I hope I’m the last person -in the world to round on old pals, but really, as I told Eddy, a man in -his position must draw the line somewhere. I don’t mind giving a leg-up -to old Pirie--in a quiet way, of course--for he’s not half a bad sort -by himself; but as for the rest, what are they? I don’t care for their -families or their commissions--I’ve seen too much of the world to be -taken in by kid of that sort--I say they’re bounders. I never was what -you might call keen about them as the right friends for Eddy, even -before--I mean in the old days, when it didn’t matter so much what -company he kept. But now, with everything so altered, he ought to see -that they’re not in his class at all. And that’s just what I can’t get -him to do in the least.” - -“Men have their own views in these matters. They are often rather -difficult to understand,” commented Edith, sententiously. - -“I should think so!” began Mrs. Edward. “Why, if I were a man, and in -Eddy’s place--” - -Her words had ended aimlessly, as her eyes followed the lines of the -letter she had at last opened and begun to read. She finished the brief -task, and then, going back to the top of the single page, went over it -again more attentively. There was something indefinably impressive about -the silence in which she did this, and Lady Cressage presently raised -an inquiring glance. Mrs. Edward’s face exhibited no marked change of -expression, but it had turned deathly pale. The unabated redness of the -lips gave this pallor a ghastliness which frightened Edith, and brought -her to her feet. - -“What in the name--” she began, but the other held up a black-gloved -hand. - -“Is this something you know about?--something you’ve been putting up?” - Cora demanded, in a harsh, ungoverned voice, moving forward as she -spoke. “Look at this. Here’s what my sister writes.” She did not offer -to show the letter, but huskily read forth its contents: - -“‘London, September 30. - -“‘My dear Cora: I don’t know whether you will thank me or not, but I -feel that some one ought to warn you, if only that you may pull yourself -together to meet what is coming. Your house is built of cards, and it is -only a question of days, perhaps of hours, when it will be pushed over. -Your husband is not the heir, after all. I am truly in great grief at -the thought of what this will mean to you, and I can only hope that you -will believe me when I sign myself, - -“‘Your sincerely affectionate sister, - -“‘Frances.’” - -The two women exchanged a tense look in which sheer astonishment -encountered terror, and mingled with it. - -“No, I know nothing of this,” faltered Edith, more in response to the -other’s wild eyes than to the half-forgotten inquiries that had prefaced -the reading of the letter. - -“No trick of a child, eh? What do they call it, posthumous?” Cora -panted, still with the rough voice which had shaken off the yoke of -tuition. - -Edith lifted her head. “That is absurd,” she answered, curtly. - -As they confronted each other thus, a moving shadow outside caught their -notice. Instinctively turning their eyes, they beheld through the glass -a stranger, a slender young man with a soft hat of foreign fashion, -striding across the lawn away from the house. He held his head high in -the air, and they could see that the hands carried stiffly outstretched -at his sides were clenched. - -“He struts across the turf as if he owned it,” said Edith, clutching -vaguely at the meaningless relief which this interruption seemed to -offer. - -But Mrs. Edward had sunk info the chair, and buried her face in her -black-gloved hands. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -Christian began his walk with swift, energetic steps, and a guiding -eye fixed resolutely on a distinguishing mark in the distant line of -tree-tops beyond, as if both speed and directness of course were -of utmost urgency to his purpose. While his body moved forward thus -automatically, however, his mind remained engrossed with what had been -said and done in the room he was leaving behind. - -His brain reproduced over and over again the appearance of the two young -brothers, their glances at each other, their sneering scowls at him. The -picture of Augustine whispering in Edward’s ear, and of Edward shaking -his sulky head, stuck in his memory as a living thing. He had continued -to see it after he had turned his back on them and gone to the window. -The infamous words which had been spoken about his father were a part -of this picture, and their inflection still rang in his ears just as the -young men still stood before his eyes, compact of hostility to him and -his blood. - -The noise of guns in the wood he approached was for a time subordinated -in his mind to those bitter echoes of Edward’s speech. When at last -these reports of firing attracted his attention, he had passed out of -sight of Caermere, and found himself on a vaguely defined path at the -end of a broad heath, much overgrown with heather and broom and low, -straggling, inhospitable-looking shrubs novel to his eye. Curious -movements among this shaggy verdure caught his wandering notice, and -he stopped to observe them more closely. A great many rabbits--or would -they be hares?--were making their frightened escape from the wood in -front of him, and darting about for cover in this undergrowth. He became -conscious now of an extraordinary tumult in the wood itself--a confused -roar of men’s voices raised in apparently meaningless cries, accompanied -by an unintelligible pounding of sticks on timber and crackling brush. -This racket almost drowned the noise of the remote firing; its effect -of consternation upon the small inhabitants of the thicket was only less -than the bewilderment that it caused in Christian’s mind. Forgetting -altogether his own concerns, he pushed cautiously forward to spy out the -cause of the commotion. - -Somewhat later, he emerged from the wood again, having obtained a -tolerable notion of what was going on. He had caught a view of one -line of beaters making their way through a copse, diagonally away from -him--rough men clad for the most part in white jackets, who shouted and -thrashed about them with staves as they went--and it was easy enough to -connect their work, and the consequent rise and whirring rush of birds -before it, with the excited fusillade of guns farther on. Christian did -not get a sight of the sportsmen themselves. Albeit with some doubts -as to the dignity of the proceeding, he made a detour of the piece of -woodland, with the idea of coming out upon the shooting party, but when -he arrived at the barrier it was to find on the spot only a couple of -men in greenish corduroys, whom he took to be underkeepers. They were at -work before a large heap of pheasants, tying the birds in pairs by the -necks, and hanging them over a long stick, stretched between two -trees, which already bent under its burden. They glanced up from their -employment at Christian, and when he stooped to pick up one of the -cartridge cases with which the ground at his feet was strewn, they -exchanged some muttered comment at which both laughed aloud. He -instinctively threw the little tube down, and looked away from the men. -The thought occurred to him that if they only knew who he was their -confusion would be pathetic, but as it was, they had the monopoly of -self-possession, and it was he who shyly withdrew. - -The whole diversion, however, had cleared and sweetened his mood. -He retraced his steps through the wood and then struck off in a new -direction across the heath, at a more leisurely pace than he had come, -his mind dwelling pleasurably upon the various picturesque phases of -what he had witnessed. The stray glimpses of _la chasse_ which had -been afforded him in the South had had nothing in common with this. -The unkempt freedom of the growths about him appealed to his senses -as cultivated parks and ordered forests had never done. It was all so -strong and simple and natural--and the memory of the beaters smashing -along in the thicket, bawling and laying about them with their clubs, -gave it a primitive note which greatly pleased his fancy. - -The heath was even finer, in his eyes, than the wood. The air stirring -across it, for one thing, had a quality which he seemed never to have -known before--and the wild, almost savage, aspect of its squat gray -and russet herbage, the sense of a splendidly unashamed idleness and -unproductiveness suggested by its stretches of waste land, charmed his -imagination. He said to himself, as he sauntered here, that he would -gallop every day across this wonderful plain, with a company of big dogs -at his horse’s heels. The thought of the motion in the saddle inspired -him to walk faster. He straightened himself, put his hands to his coat -at the breast as he had seen young Englishmen do on their pedestrian -tours, and strode briskly forward, humming to himself as he moved. The -hateful episode of the morning had not so much faded from his thoughts, -as shaken itself into a new kaleidoscopic formation. Contact with -these noble realities out of doors had had the effect, as it were, of -immeasurably increasing his stature. When he thought of those paltry -cousins of his, it was as if he looked down upon their insignificance -from a height. - -He came at last face to face with a high stone wall, the pretensions and -obvious antiquity of which told him at once that he had returned to -the vicinity of the castle. Sure enough, there were discernible at a -considerable distance down to the right some of the turrets and roofs of -Caermere, and he turned his course in that direction. It seemed to him a -long way that he walked by the side of this great wall, marveling as he -did so at its size and at the ambitious views of the persons who built -it. The reflection that they were ancestors of his own came to his mind, -and expanded therein. He also would build like a great nobleman in his -time! What was there so grand as building?--he mused as he looked about -him--unless it might be the heath and the brownish-purple hills beyond, -and these also one intuitively thought of as having been built. - -Presently a small doorway appeared in the massive wall, and Christian, -finding it unlocked, passed through it into a vast garden. The inner and -sunny side of the wall, as far as he could see in either direction, was -veined with the regularly espaliered branches of dwarf trees flattened -against it, from which still depended here and there belated specimens -of choice fruit. On the other side of the path following close this -wall, down which he proceeded, were endless rows of small trees and -staked clumps of canes, all now bereft of their season’s produce. The -spectacle did not fit with what had been mentioned to him of the poverty -of Caermere. Farther on, a tall hedge stretching at right angles from -the wall separated this orchard from what he saw now, by glimpses -through an open arch, to a be a flower garden. He quickened his pace at -the sight, for flowers were very near his heart. - -At first there was not much to move his admiration. The sunlit profusion -of his boyhood’s home had given him standards of size and glowing color -which were barely approached, and nowhere equaled, here. Suddenly he -came upon something, however, before which he perforce stopped. It was -the beginning of a long row of dahlias, rounded flowers on the one side -of him, pointed and twisted cactus varieties on the other, and he had -imagined nothing like this before in his life. Apparently no two of the -tall plants, held upright to the height of his breast by thick stakes, -were alike, and he knew not upon which to expend the greater delight, -the beauty of their individual blossoms or the perfection of skill -exhibited in the color-arrangement of the line. - -He moved slowly along, examining the more notable flowers in detail with -such ardor that a young lady in a black gown, but with a broad hat of -light straw on her pale hair, advanced up the path, paused, and stood -quite near him for some moments before he perceived her presence. Then -with a little start, he took off his hat, and held it in his hands while -he made a stiff bow. - -“You are fond of flowers?” Lady Cressage said, more as a remark than an -inquiry. She observed him meanwhile with politely calm interest. - -“These dahlias are extraordinary!” he exclaimed, very earnestly. “I have -never seen such flowers, and such variety. It surprises me a great deal. -It is a spécialité in England, n’est ce pas?” - -“I think I have heard that we have carried the dahlia further than other -countries have done,” responded the lady, courteously giving the name -the broad-voweled sound he had used. She added with a pleasant softening -of eyes and lips: “But you ought not to begrudge us one little triumph -like this--you who come from the very paradise of flowers.” - -The implication in her words caused him to straighten himself, and to -regard her with a surprised new scrutiny. He saw now that she was very -beautiful, and he strove to recall the few casual remarks Lord Julius -had dropped, concerning the two ladies at the castle, as a clue to -her identity. One had been an actress, he remembered--and this lady’s -graceful equanimity had, perhaps, something histrionic in it. But if she -happened not to be the actress, then it would no doubt anger her very -much to be taken for one. He knew so little of women--and then his own -part in the small drama occurred to him. - -“It is evident that you understand who I am,” he said, with another bow. -The further thought that in either case she was related to him, was a -part of the family of which he would soon be the head, came to give him -fresh confidence. “It is not only dahlias that are carried to unrivaled -heights of beauty in England,” he added, and bowed once more. - -She smiled outright at this. “That is somewhat too--what shall I -say?--continental for these latitudes,” she remarked. “Men don’t -say such glowing things in England. We haven’t sun enough, you know, -properly to ripen rose-hips--or compliments. I should like to introduce -myself, if I may--I am Edith Cressage--and Lord Julius has told me the -wonderful story about you.” - -She held out her hand as she spoke, with a deliberate gesture, which -afforded Christian time to note its exquisite modeling, if he had had -the eyes for it. But he took the hand in his own rather cursorily, -and began speaking with abruptness before he had finished his bow and -relinquished it. - -“It is much too wonderful,” he said, hastily. “It frightens me. I cannot -get used to it. I have the feeling that I should go away somewhere, and -live by myself, till it became all familiar to me. But then I see it -would be just as painful, wherever I went.” - -“Oh, let us hope it would be least painful here, of all places,” urged -the lady, in gentle deprecation of his tone. “Caermere is not gay, but -it can be soothing and restful--to those who stand in need of solace. It -has come to be my second home--I never thought one could grow so deeply -attached to a place. It has been to me like a tender old nurse and -confidante--in times when--when its shelter and consolation were very -welcome”--she faltered for an instant, with averted face, then raised -her moist eyes to his, and let them sparkle--“and oh, you will grow to -love Caermere with all your heart.” - -Christian felt himself much moved. He had put on his hat, and stepped -now to her side. - -“I have seen nothing of it at all,” he said. “I am going to ask that you -shall show it to me--you who love it so much. But if I shall remain here -now, that I cannot in the least tell. Nothing is arranged, so far as I -know. I am quite in Lord Julius’ hands--thus far.” - -They had tacitly begun to move down the path together, loitering to look -at plants on either side which particularly invited notice. - -“Lord Julius is a remarkable man,” she said. “If one is fortunate enough -to enlist his friendship, there is no end to what he can do for him. You -can hardly imagine what a difference it makes for you in everything--the -fact that he is warmly disposed towards you.” - -“Yes, that I have been told,” said Christian, “and I see it for myself, -too. I do not feel that I know him very well, as yet. It was only -yesterday morning that I met him for the first time at an hotel in -Brighton. We breakfasted together, we looked through papers together and -then we began a long railway journey together, which only ended a few -hours ago. We have talked a great deal in this time, but, as I have -said, the man himself is not very clear to me yet. But no one could have -been kinder--and I think he likes me.” - -“Oh, of course he does,” affirmed Lady Cressage, as if anything -else would have been incredible. “And--talking with him so much, so -continuously, you no doubt understand the entire situation. I am glad -that he at least left it to me to show you over Caermere; there is -apparently nothing else in which I can be of use.” - -Christian, though he smiled in kindly recognition of her attitude, -offered no verbal comment, and after a wandering digression about -dahlias, she returned to the subject. - -“If there _is_ anything I can tell you--about the family, the position -of affairs in general, and so on--you should not stand on ceremony with -me. Has he, for example, explained about money affairs?” - -The young man looked keenly at her for an instant, as if the question -took him by surprise. Then he answered frankly enough: “Nothing -definite. I only gather that it will be made easier for me than it would -have been for--for other members of the family, if they--had been in my -place. But perhaps that is not what I should say to you.” - -Lady Cressage smiled on him reassuringly. - -“Oh, don’t think of me in that light,” she pleaded. “I stand quite -outside the--what shall I say?--the interested family circle. I have -no ax of any description to grind. You, of course, have been told my -position in the castle--that is, so far as it can be told by others. It -is a simple enough story--I was to have been everything, and then -the wind happens to change off the Welsh coast and lo! I am -nothing--nothing! It is not even certain that I am not a beggar--living -here on alms. Legally, everything is in such confusion that no one knows -how he stands. But so far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter. My cup -has been filled so full--so long:--that a little more or less trouble is -of no importance. Oh, I assure you, I do not desire to be considered in -the matter at all.” - -She made this last declaration with great earnestness, in immediate -response to the sympathetic look and gesture with which Christian had -interrupted her narrative. - -His gentle eyes regarded her troubled beauty with compassionate -softness. “I venture to think that you will be considered a good deal, -none the less,” he remarked, in a grave yet eager tone. The sense of -elation at being able to play the part of Providence to such a lady -spread through his mind and possessed his being. The lofty possibilities -of the powers devolving upon him had never been so apparent before. He -instinctively put out his arm toward her, in such overt fashion that she -could but take it. She did not lean upon it, but imparted to the contact -instead a kind of ceremonial reserve which directly ministered to the -patrician side of his mood. - -They walked, if possible, still more slowly now, pausing before almost -every stake; their talk was of the flowers, with occasional lapses into -the personal. - -“What you said about Lord Julius,” she remarked, in one of these -interludes, “is quite true. He has it in his power to say whether the -duke shall be a rich man or a pauper, and until yesterday he was all for -the pauper. If poor Porlock and his sons had lived, they knew very well -that Lord Julius was no friend of theirs, and would starve the -title whichever of them had it. And so with these others--Edward and -Augustine--only with them, it isn’t merely dislike but loathing that -Lord Julius has for them.” - -“I met those young gentlemen this morning,” said Christian stiffly. “It -seemed to me that Lord Julius went quite out of his way to be kind with -them. I should never have gathered that he hated them.” - -“Oh, not personally,” she explained. “I don’t think he dislikes anybody -personally. But in what you may call their representative capacity he -is furious with people if they don’t measure up to his idea of what they -should be. I never heard of any other family that had such a man in it. -I used to admire him very much--when I was newly married--I thought his -ideals for the family were so noble and fine--but I don’t know--” - -“Do you have suspicions of Julius, then?” asked Christian, hurriedly. - -“Oh, no, no!” she protested. “Nothing is farther from my thoughts. Only -I have seen it all, here. I have lived in the very heart of it--and -much as I sympathize with his feelings, I can’t help feeling that he is -unjust--not willfully, but still unjust. He and his son are men of great -intelligence and refined tastes; they would do honor to any position. -But is it quite fair of them to be so hard on cousins of theirs who -were not given great intelligence, and who had no capacity whatever for -refinement? That is what I mean. You saw those young men this morning. -They are not up to much, certainly; their uncle Porlock and his sons -averaged, perhaps, even a shade lower--you see I am speaking quite -frankly--but when it is all said and done, they were not so remarkably -worse than other men of their class. If any of the six had succeeded -to the title, he would not have been such a startling anomaly in the -peerage. I doubt if he would have attracted attention, one way or the -other. But it became a fixed idea with Lord Julius years ago to get -control of the estates, and to use this control to bully the elder -line into the paths of sweetness and light. It didn’t succeed in -the least--and I think he grew a little spiteful. That is all. And -besides--what does it matter? It is all ancient history now.” - -Christian was looking straight before him, with a meditative gaze. They -walked for some moments in silence before he spoke. “And how did he -know that he would like me?” he demanded, musingly. “How should he be -confident that I was better than the others? Perhaps--do you know?--was -he very fond of my father?” - -“I have no idea,” she responded. It was impossible not to note the -brevity of her tone. - -“No one speaks willingly of my father,” he broke forth with impulsive -bitterness. “Even Lord Julius would tell me nothing of him. And the -young lady on the boat--she too--” - -He paused, and his companion, who had been looking away, glanced -again at him. “The young lady on the boat,” she said, more by way of -suggesting to him a safe topic than as an inquiry. - -“Oh, I much want to know who she can be,” he cried, unconsciously -accepting the diversion. He described the meeting at Rouen, the -conversation and, after a fashion of his own, the girl herself. “She -said,” he went on, “that she had personally something to do with the -story--‘remotely’ was the word she used. I asked Lord Julius, but he -could not think who she might be. She earns her own living--she told -me that--and she had never been out of England before. She is not well -educated--in the school sense, I mean--her French was ridiculous. But -she spoke very beautifully her own language, and her mind filled me -with charm, but even more so her good heart. We swore friendship for all -time--or at least I did.” - -“Dear me!” said Lady Cressage. Her thoughts had not been idle, and they -brought to her now on the instant a satisfactory clue. She pondered -it for a little, before she decided to speak. “I think I know who this -remarkable young lady must be,” she observed then. “This Captain Edward -whom you met this morning--he has a wife.” - -“Yes, I know,” put in Christian abruptly--“the actress-lady; Julius told -me of her.” - -“I suppose ‘actress’ would cover the thing,” she answered, with an air -of amiable indifference. “She danced more than she acted, I believe, -but ‘actress’ is a very general term. Well, your eternal friend is, I -suspect, her younger sister. ‘I have never seen her, but by accident I -happen to know that she is aware of your coming to England.” - -Christian’s mobile face had lengthened somewhat. “Is she also an--an -‘actress’?” he asked, dolefully. - -Lady Cressage looked skyward, with halfclosed eyes, in an effort -of memory. “I really seem to have heard what she did,” she mused, -hesitatingly. “I know her sister has often spoken of her. Is it -‘barmaid’? No. ‘Telegraph’? No, it’s her father who’s in the General -Post Office. Why, now, how stupid of me! She can’t be a nurse, of -course, or there would have been her uniform. Oh, now I remember--she’s -a typewriter.” - -It was not clear to her whether Christian wholly comprehended the term, -now that she had found it. She perceived, however, that he disliked -something in what she had said, or in her manner of saying it. The -remarkable responsiveness of his countenance to passing emotions and -moods within him had already impressed her. She regarded his profile now -with a sidelong glance, and reconstructed some of her notions about him -by the help of what she saw. Nothing was said, until suddenly he paused, -gazing with kindled eye upon the prospect opened before him. - -They had come to the end of the garden, and stood at the summit of a -broad stone-kerbed path descending in terraces. Above them, the dense -foliage of the yews rising at either side of the gap in the hedge -had been trained and cut into an arched canopy. From under this green -gateway Christian looked down upon a Caermere he had not imagined to -himself before. - -The castle revealed itself for the first time, as he beheld it now, -in its character as a great medieval fortress. On his arrival in the -morning, emerging from the shadowed driveway into the immediate precinct -of the house, he had seen only its variously modernized parts; these, -as they were viewed from this altitude, shrank to their proper -proportions--an inconsiderable fraction of the mighty whole. All -about, the massive shoulders of big hills shelved downward to form the -basin-like hollow in which the castle seemed to stand, but their large -bulk, so far from dwarfing Caermere, produced the effect of emphasizing -its dimensions. Its dark-gray walls and towers, with their bulging -clumps of chimneys and turrets, and lusterless facets of many-angled -roofings, all of somber slate, were visibly the product, the very child, -of the mountains. A sensation of grim, adamantine, implacable power took -hold of the young man’s brain as he gazed. For a long time he did -not want to talk, and felt vaguely that he was signifying this by the -slight, sustained pressure of his arm against hers. At all events, she -grasped his wish, and preserved silence, holding herself a little behind -him, so that he might look down, without distraction, upon his kingdom. - -“These Torrs,” he burst forth all at once, with a nervous uncertainty in -his tones as of one out of breath, “these ancestors of mine--the family -I belong to--did they produce great men? You must know their history. -Julius says we are the most ancient family in England. I have not had -the time yet to learn anything of what we did. Were there heroes and -famous soldiers and learned scholars among us? To look at that wonderful -castle there at our feet, it seems as if none but born chiefs and rulers -of mankind could ever have come out of it.” - -“Captain Edward and his brother Augustine were both born there,” she -permitted her own over-quick tongue to comment. - -He let her arm drop from his with a swift gesture, and wheeled round to -look her in the face. The glance in his eyes said so much to her that -she hastened to anticipate his speech. - -“Forgive me!” she urged hastily. “It was silly thoughtlessness of mine. -I do not know you at all well as yet, you know, and I say the wrong -things to you. Do tell me you forgive me! And it is only fair to myself -to say, too, that I have been in a bad school these last few years. -Conversation as one practices it at Caermere is merely the art of making -everything pointed and sharp enough to pierce thick skins. I should have -remembered that you were different--it was unpardonable of me! But I -have really angered you!” - -Christian, still looking at her, found himself gently shaking his head -in reassurance. It was plain enough to him that this beautiful young -woman had suffered much, and that at the hands of his own people. What -wonder that acrid memories of them should find their way to her lips? He -also had been unhappy. He smiled gravely into her face at the softening -recollection. - -“We were speaking of different things, I think,” he commented, and -nodded approval at sight of the relieved change which his tone brought -to her countenance. “I know very well there are many disagreeable and -unpleasant matters close about us--when we are down below, there. But -now we are up above them, and we forget them all, or ignore them--and I -was asking you about the history of the family--its ancient history.” - -She put her hand lightly upon his arm again. “Lord Julius is right about -it being a very, very long history,” she said, putting into her voice a -tacit recognition of his magnanimity. “I know it, in a certain way, but -I can hardly make a good story of it, I’m afraid. The family is -Keltic, you know. That is what is always said about it, as its most -distinguishing characteristic. It is the only large English one which -managed to survive through the Saxon period, and then the Norman period, -and keep its name and its estates and its territorial power. This makes -it very interesting to historians and archaeologists. There are many -stone circles and Druidic monuments about here, some of which are said -to be connected with the introduction of Christianity into Britain. You -will see them another day, and read the legends about them. Well, it is -said that the chief who possessed this land here, and who had some kind -of a stronghold there where the castle is, at that time, was a Torr. Of -course, there were no surnames then, but it would have been his tribal -appellation, or something of the sort. The fact itself, I believe, is -generally accepted--that the family that was here in St. David’s time is -here now. It is a tradition that there should always be a David in the -family; it used to be the leading name, but now Christian is usually -the duke’s name, and the others are all saints, like Anselm, Edward, -Augustine and--and so forth.” - -The young man looked down in meditation upon the gloomy, historic pile. -“It is a very grand beginning,” he said, thoughtfully. - -“Perhaps it was too grand for mere mortals to live up to,” she ventured, -with a cautious sidelong eye on him. - -“I see your meaning,” he assented, nodding. “Yes, no doubt it is -natural. It is as if a boy were named Napoleon. He would be frightened -to think what he had done to make his name and himself fit together--and -very likely he would never do anything at all.” - -“Yes, that is it,” she answered, and drew a long, consolatory breath. - -They had begun to move down the wide winding path, and when they paused -presently at one of the steps to note a new view of the buildings, she -called his attention to something by a little exclamation and a pointing -finger. - -“Do you see the balcony there, up above and to the left of the -flat-topped tower--no, this side of the highest chimneys--there are -figures coming out on it from the window.” - -“There is some one in a reclining chair, n’est ce pas?” he asked, -following her finger. - -“It is your grandfather,” she said softly. “Those are his -apartments--the rows of windows with the white woodwork. When the -sun gets round to them, they bring him out--if he is strong enough. -Evidently this is one of his good days.” - -Christian, gazing eagerly, made out beyond the attendants and the couch -they bore, another figure, with a splash of white like a shield upon its -front. - -“Is it not Julius?” he asked swiftly, pressing her arm. “Oh, then by -this time my grandfather knows of me--knows that I am here! Should you -not think so? And no doubt, since it is his good day, they will take me -to see him. Is that not probable?” - -“I haven’t the least idea,” she responded, after a momentary pause, -“either as to what Lord Julius has told him, or as to how much he is -capable of understanding. Except from this distance, I have not seen him -since he was struck down with paralysis. I know nothing of his condition -beyond a stray, guarded word now and then from the doctors. If I were -a professional thief and he a crown jewel, I could not have been more -securely shut out from him!” - -The melancholy bitterness of her words, and tone appealed to the young -man. He drew her hand closer to his side by a delicate pressure of -the arm. “I can see that you have been very unhappy,” he said, -compassionately. - -“Oh-h-h!” she murmured, with a shuddering sigh. “Don’t--don’t speak of -it, I beg of you!” - -“I also have had a sad youth,” he went on, unconsciously tightening his -arm. “But now”--and he lifted his head and smiled--“who knows? Who shall -say that the bad days are not all gone--for both of us?” - -Only the flutter of the hand against his arm made answer. They walked oh -together down the broad sunlit path. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -At the foot of the terraced slope, the wide, graveled path down which -Lady Cressage had led Christian described a formal curve to the right, -across a lawn which he recognized as belonging to his morning’s -experiences. The angle of the high, domed conservatory recalled itself -to him. Beyond it, on the same side, would be the window from which he -had quitted the house. - -To the left, a smaller footpath turned into still another garden, and -he was glad that his companion moved this way. They were in a relatively -small inclosure, hedged upon three sides by closely knit high walls of -box; the straggling, untrimmed profusion of this tall growth, through -which a multitude of sweet-briers thrust still farther upward their -dipping and interlaced green rods, gave the place a homely if unkempt -aspect. On the fourth side rose the blue-gray masonry of the castle -itself--an ancient curtain stretched between two towers. The autumn -sunlight lay upon this stained old wall, and warmed it, and glowed -softly among the leaves and saffron blossoms of the great rose-tree -trained upon it. This garden preserved the outlines of some former -quaint arrangement of walks and beds, but these were comfortably -softened everywhere, and in part obscured, by the untrammeled freedom -of vegetation. Even over the moldering red tiles of the paths mosses had -been suffered to creep unmolested. A few late roses were in bloom here -and there, and at one corner there rose a colony of graceful white -lilies, the scent of which filled the air. It was all very restful -and charming, and Christian, pausing to gaze about him, gave little -exclamations of pleasure at what he saw. - -In the center of the garden, surrounded by a low seat of weather-worn -woodwork, was what seemed to be a fountain, culminating in a piece of -statuary, so blackened and battered by time and storm that little could -be made out of its creator’s intentions. Christian, with some murmured -inquiry, led the way toward this--and then perceived that Lord Julius, -who had been sitting at the other and sunny side of the statue, was -standing now in the path, confronting the new-comers with a friendly -smile. - -“This is _my_ particular haunt at Caer-mere,” he explained to the young -man. - -“In so huge a place, one is lost if he does not fasten upon a special -corner or nook of some sort, and send down roots in it and make it his -own. This was my mother’s garden, and for over fifty years now I have -bargained with one generation of head gardeners after another to leave -it alone--as she left it. When Cheltnam came, he was so famous a person -that I submitted to his budding some new varieties on the old wall-rose -there--but, bless me, even that is thirty years ago--before either -of you was born. I see you young people have lost no time in becoming -acquainted.” - -Edith Cressage looked into the old gentleman’s eyes for a moment before -she replied. They had exchanged this same glance--on her side at once -puzzled, suspicious, defiant; on his full of a geniality possibly -pointed with cynicism--very often during the last four years, without -affecting by it any prepossession or prejudice in either’s mind. “We met -by accident in the upper fruit-walk, and I introduced myself. It must -be quite luncheon time. Shall we go in?” She added, as upon an -afterthought, and with another steadfast look into his face, “I have -promised to show him over the house and the castle.” - -“Admirable!” said Lord Julius, cordially. - -He looked at his watch. “We will follow you in a very few moments, if we -may. I dare say he is as ready for luncheon as I am, but I want to show -him my old garden first.” - -“Oh, let me stop too!” she exclaimed, without an instant’s hesitation. -“May I confess it?--when you’re not here I call it _my_ garden, too. I -knew it was your mother’s--and I was always going to ask you to tell -me about her, but the opportunity never offered. It is the one -really perfect spot at Caermere, even to me. And I can understand how -infinitely these old associations add to its charms for you! I shall -truly not be in the way if I stop?” - -The elder man regarded her with a twinkling eye from under his broad -hat-brim as he shook his head. “To the contrary, we are both delighted,” - he answered, amiably enough. He began leading the way at this, and the -two young people, walking perforce very close together on the narrow -path, followed at his heels. - -He pointed out to them that the fountain, which he could not remember -being in working order even in his boyhood, was built over the ancient -well of the castle. The statue apparently dated from William and Mary’s -time; at least, it was very like the objects they set up at Hampton -Court. Part of its pedestal was made of three Ogham stones, which were -said to have stood by the well in former times. Flint knives and other -primitive weapons had been found in the garden. Antiquaries were not -agreed as to the possibility of the well having been in existence at -any very remote period, but it was not unlikely that this small -garden had been the center of interest--perhaps the scene of Druidical -sacrifices, or even of the famous conversion of the tribe resident -here by St. David--at the beginning of things. These speculations as to -precise localities were interesting, but scarcely convincing. The wall -at the end was a more definite affair. It had been built after the Third -Crusade by Stephen de la Tour, as the Normanized name went then. - -“Ah, the name has not always been spelled the same then?” interrupted -Christian here. He spoke with an eagerness which the abstract interest -of the query seemed hardly to warrant. - -“Heavens, no!” said Lord Julius. “It has been Tor with one ‘r’ and with -two; it has been de la Tour, as I said, and Tour without the ‘de la,’ -and Toure, and I know of at least one branch of the people of the name -of Tower who are undoubtedly of our stock. It is quite conceivable that -many others of them are, too.” - -“Then the forms of names can be altered at will?” pursued Christian. “If -a man says, ‘I will spell it so and so,’ then it is all right?” - -“Oh, yes,” explained the other. “Often two spellings exist side by side. -Witness the Seymours a few years ago. You had one brother writing -it Seymour and another St. Maur. The latter is now the official -spelling--for the present, at least.” - -“This is extremely interesting to me,” the young man cried. “So I may -keep my name as I have always borne it! I may write myself ‘Christian -Tower’! That lifts a load from my mind. I had been unhappy to think -of abandoning the name my father liked. He always both spelled and -pronounced it ‘Tower,’ and that is why I shall be so glad to do the -same.” - -An acute kind of silence rested upon the group for an awkward minute. - -“Oh, don’t let us have anymore archaeology before luncheon, Lord -Julius,” put in the lady then. “Caermere so reeks with history that one -must take it in small installments or be overwhelmed altogether. You -were going to tell us about your mother, Lord Julius, and how you -remember her, here in this dear old garden. And positively nothing has -been changed since!” - -“I mustn’t go quite so far as that,” said the old man, smilingly. -He seemed grateful to her for the digression. “A certain systematic -renovation has, of course, been necessary; I have arranged with the -gardeners to manage that. I dare say there are scarcely any plants or -roots here now which were individually in existence in my mother’s time; -but their children, their descendants, are here in their places. Except -for Cheltnam’s buds on the wall there, I don’t think any novelties -have been introduced. If so, it was against my wish. The lilies in that -corner, for example, are lineal progeny, heaven knows how many times -removed, of the lilies my mother planted there. These roses are slips -from other slips of the old cabbage and damask and moss roses she used -to sit and look at with her crewel-work in her lap. The old flowers are -gone, and yet they are not gone. In the same way, my mother has been -dead for sixty years, and yet this is still her garden, and she is -still here--here in the person of me, her son, and of Christian, her -great-grandson.” - -“And I,” commented Lady Cressage, upon a sudden smiling impulse, “I -alone am an intruding new species--like one of Cheltnam’s ‘niphetos’ -buds on the old rose. I hasten to extricate myself.” And with a bright -little nod and mock half-courtesy, she caught her gown in one hand, -wheeled round and moved quickly down the path and through the hedge. - -The two men watched her till she vanished. - -“She is a beautiful lady,” observed Christian, with enthusiasm; “and -very courteous, too.” - -Lord Julius offered no remark upon this, but stood for a little with -his gaze apparently fixed on the point whence she had disappeared. Then, -without turning his head, he said in a gently grave way: - -“If I were you, Christian, I would make as few allusions, in mixed -company, to my father as possible.” - -“Ah, yes! this is what I desired to discuss with you!” said the young -man, stoutly. He swung round to face the other, and his eyes sparkled -with impatience. “Everybody avoids mention of him; they turn to -something else when I speak his name--all but those abominable young -men who offered him insult. That is what I should very much like to talk -about!” - -“I had thought it might not be necessary,” replied Lord Julius. “At -least, I had hoped you would pick up the information for yourself--a -harmless little at a time, and guess the rest, and so spare everybody, -yourself included. But that is precisely what you seem not to do; and I -dare say I was wrong in not talking frankly with you at the start. But -let me understand first: what do you know about your father?” - -“Only that he was a soldier, a professional soldier. That I have told -you,” panted Christian. - -“Yes, and a very notable soldier,” responded the other. “He won the -Victoria Cross in the Mutiny--the youngest man in all India to do so. -That is for you to remember always--in your own mind--for your own pride -and consolation.” - -“Ah, yes, always!” murmured the son. - -“And in other services, too, after he left England,” the elder man went -on, “I have understood that he was a loyal and very valuable officer to -those he fought for. This also is something for you to be proud of---but -still inside your own mind! That it is necessary to remember--that you -must keep it to yourself. Forgive my repeating the injunction.” - -“Go on!” said Christian. - -“Well,” Lord Julius began, speaking with more hesitation, “Ambrose as -a soldier was magnificent, but you know enough from your books to know -that splendid soldiers may easily be--how shall I say?--not so splendid -in other walks of life. It is to be said for him that he was bare -twenty-three--poor boy. It was in 1859; and, as misery would have it, I -was in Syria, traveling with my wife. Perhaps if I had been in England, -I could have done something. As it was, there was no one to help him; -and of course it may be that he couldn’t have been helped. It was a case -of a young man returning to London, with honors and flattery enough to -turn even an old head, and walking blindfold into the worst company in -Europe. I have no intention of going into details. You must take my word -for it that suddenly four or five young men of great families fled to -the Continent; and that, without much publicity in the papers, there was -a very miserable sort of scandal after their flight. Other names were -mentioned--but I needn’t go into that. It was to the interest of -many influential people to hush the thing up, and to some extent they -succeeded. After a while it became even possible for the others to come -back to England--there are many ways of managing such matters--but there -was one of them who never returned.” - -Christian gazed into the old man’s face with mute, piteous fixity of -concentration. - -“This one, of course,” Lord Julius pursued, picking his words still more -cautiously, and liking his task less than ever, “was your father. The -way was smoothed for the rest to come back, but not for him--that is, at -first. Later, when he could have returned, he would not. Ambrose had -a stubborn and bitter temper. He was furious with his father, with his -family--with all England. He would touch none of us. Why, I myself went -to Sicily many years ago--it was as soon as I had got back from the -East--and learned the facts, and found out what could be done; and I -tried to see him, and bring him home with me, but he would not speak -with me, or even remain under the same roof with me--and so I could do -nothing. Or yes, there was one thing--that is to maintain some kind of -watch over you--after his death, and that we did. My own idea was to -have brought you over to England years ago--as soon as your mother -died--but Emanuel thought otherwise.” - -He paused here in his narrative, for the reason that his companion was -obviously no longer listening to him. - -Christian had moved a step or two away, and with a white, set face was -looking off over the hill-tops. His profile showed brows knitted and -lips being bitten, under the stress of an internal tempest. It seemed -to the old man a long time that he stood thus, in dry-eyed, passionate -battle with his own mind. Then, with a sudden, decisive gesture he -spread out his hands and turned impulsively to Lord Julius. - -“You are an old man, and a wise one, and you were my father’s friend and -you are my friend!” he said, with trembling earnestness. “I should be -a fool not to pay heed to what you tell me. You advise that I do not -mention my father more than is necessary. Eh bien, I take your advice. -Without doubt it is right--just as it is right that I should speak less -of my brother Salvator. I have remembered that since you warned me, -and now I will remember this. But I should like”--he came forward as he -spoke, still with extended hands, and looked with entreating earnestness -up into the other’s face--“I should like to have you understand that -Salvator is my brother not any the less, and that I love and honor and -have pride in my father more than before. This I keep in my own mind, -as you advise--but one thing I will do for every one to take note of. I -will write my name always ‘Tower.’” - -The great-uncle put a big, comforting hand on his shoulder. “I should -not dream of blaming you,” he said, gently. “But there is a man to tell -us luncheon is ready.” - -He nodded comprehension to the servant who had appeared at the opening -in the hedge, and, still with his hand on Christian’s shoulder, began to -move in that direction. - -“One other matter,” said the young man in lowered tones and -hurriedly--“from the hill above, awhile ago, I saw my grandfather--in -his chair, on the balcony. You said just now that my father hated -him--was furious with him. Did he behave cruelly to my father?” - -“Oh, no-o,” replied Julius, with an indefinite upward inflection on the -deliberate negative. “Not cruelly.” - -“But unjustly?” - -“Oh, no, not unjustly, either--if only because he never in his life -possessed the dimmest inkling of what justice meant. The duke is my -brother, and I know him much better than any one else living, and so -I am free to speak frankly about him. He has been a duke nearly eighty -years--which is, I believe, unprecedented--but he has been an ass still -longer than that.” After a pause he added: “I am going to take you to -him this afternoon.” - -Christian hung his head as they walked along, and framed in his -depressed mind more than one further inquiry about this grandsire -of his, who held so august a station, and yet had been dismissed so -contemptuously, but they did not translate themselves into speech. -Nor, later, during the luncheon, was this great personage more than -indirectly alluded to. - -The way to this luncheon had led through three or four large rooms, -opening one upon the other by small doors, the immediate approaches to -which were given the effect of passageways by means of screens. What -these apartments were used for, or how the residents of the castle -distinguished them apart in their own minds, Christian could not -imagine. To his rapid and curious inspection, they seemed all -alike--each with its bare, indifferently polished floor, its huge stone -fireplace, its wainscoting, walls and ceiling of dark, umber-hued -wood, and its scant store of furniture which only heightened the ruling -impression of big empty spaces. An occasional portrait was dimly to be -discerned up in the duskiness of the oak panels, but the light from the -narrow and small-paned windows was too faint to examine them by. More -cheerless or apparently useless rooms the young man had never seen. - -Lord Julius seemed to guess his thoughts. “This is all an old part--what -might be called mid-Plantagenet,” he explained, as they went along. “My -father had these rooms pulled about a good deal, and done up according -to Georgian standards, but it was time and money wasted. Even if big -windows were cut through they would be too dark for comfort, to our -notions. The men who made them, of course, cared nothing at all about -daylight, at least inside a house. They spent as little time as possible -under roofs, to begin with; they rose at daybreak and went to bed at -dark. When they were forced to be under cover, they valued security -above all things, and the fewer openings there were in the walls, the -better they liked it. They did no reading whatever, but after they had -gorged themselves with food, sat around the fire and drank as much as -they could hold, and listened to the silly rubbish of their professional -story-tellers and ballad-singers till they fell asleep. If it happened -that they wanted to gamble instead, a handful of rush-lights or a torch -on the wall was enough to see the dice by. - -“Really, what did they want more? And for that matter, what do most of -their lineal descendants want more either? Light enough to enable them -to tell a spade from a heart, and perhaps to decipher the label on -a bottle now and then. Nothing more. The fashion of the day builds -plate-glass windows round them, but it is truly a gross superfluity.” - The room in which Lady Cressage and the luncheon-table awaited them was -of a more hospitable aspect. A broad expanse of lawn, and of distant -trees and sky-line fading away in the sunny autumn haze, made a luminous -picture of the high embrasured window stretching almost from corner to -corner across one side. By contrast with the other apartments, the light -here was brilliant. Christian, with a little apologetic bow and gesture -to the others, dallied before the half-dozen portraits on the walls, -examined the modeling of the blackened oak panels about them, and -lingered in admiring scrutiny of the great carved chimney-piece above -the cavernous hearth, on which a fire of logs crackled pleasantly. This -chimney-piece was fairly architectural in its dimensions. It was as full -of detail, and seemed almost as big, as the west front of a church, and -he tipped his head back to look up at its intricate, yet flowing scheme -of scrollwork, its heraldic symbolism used now for decoration, now to -point the significance, as it were, of the central escutcheon--and all -in old wood of so ripe a nut-brown color that one seemed to catch a -fragrance exhaled from it. - -“That is the best thing here,” said Edith Cressage, moving over to -stand beside him. “It came from Ludlow Castle. Those are the arms of the -Mortimers. It _is_ the Mortimers, isn’t it?” She turned to Lord Julius -for support. “I always confuse them with the De Lacys.” - -“Yes, the Mortimers,” answered Julius, as servants entered, and they -took their seats. “But almost every other family of the Marches is -represented in the devices scattered about. You can see the arrows of -the Egertons, the eagles of the Grandisons, and up above, the corbies or -ravens of the Corbets, and so on. That was the period when the Marches -ruled England, and their great families, all married and intermarried -and bolstered up by the feudal structure, were like a nation by -themselves. The Mortimers, you know,” he added, turning to Christian, -“became practically kings of England. At least they had their grandsons -on the throne--but they couldn’t hold it after they had got it. The day -of these parts was really over before Bosworth Field. The printing press -and Protestantism finished the destruction of its nobility. Only a house -here and there has survived among us. Some few of the old names are -preserved, like flies in amber, over in Ireland, but I should not know -where to look to-day for a De Lacy, or a Tregoz, or a west country Le -Strange, let alone a Mortimer. I suppose, in fact, we have more of the -Mortimer blood among us than there is anywhere else.” - -Christian, seated so that he faced the great armorial pageant spread -as a background to the fair head of the lady, smiled wistfully at his -companions, but said nothing. The words about his sharing the blood of -kings were like some distant, soft music in his ears. He looked at -the escutcheons and badges, and sought in a dreamy way to familiarize -himself with the fact that they were a part of his own history--that the -grandeur they told of was in truth his personal heritage. - -There was some talk going on between the others--conversation which, -for a time, he scarcely strove to follow. Lord Julius had begun by -expressing his joy at the absence from luncheon of the physician whom -circumstances kept on the premises, and from this he drifted to an -attack upon doctors as a class. He denounced them root and branch, -as impostors and parasites, who darkened and embittered human life by -fostering all the mean cowardices of smallbrained people, in order that -they might secure a dishonest livelihood by pretending to dispel the -horrors their own low tricks had conjured up. The robust old gentleman -developed these violent theories without heat or any trace of -excitement, and even maintained a genial expression of countenance -while he spoke. Lady Cressage seemed entertained, and even helped on the -diatribe now and again with pertinent quips of her own. But Christian -could see very little sense in such an assault upon a respectable -profession, and his attention wandered willingly again to the splendid -chimney-piece. He resolved to learn all there was to learn of the -heraldry and local history embodied in this sumptuous decoration, -without delay. But then, on every conceivable side there was so much to -learn! - -Suddenly he became aware that his thoughts had concentrated themselves -on the extraordinary badness of the luncheon he was eating. Here at -least was something Caermere could not teach him about--nor, for that -matter, as it seemed, all England either. Since his arrival in the -country, he reflected, he had not encountered one even tolerable dish. -Vegetables and fish half raw, meats tasteless and without sauce or -seasoning, bread heavy and sour, coffee unrecognizable, the pastry a -thing too ridiculous for words--so his indictment shaped itself. He felt -it his duty to argue to himself that quite likely this graceless and -repellent diet was the very thing which made the English such physical -and temperamental masters of the world, but the effort left him sad. He -made a resolution that if ever Caermere were his a certain white-capped -Agostino, in Cannes, should be imported forthwith. Then he became -conscious again of what was being said at the table. - -“If you could only imagine,” Lady Cressage was saying to Lord Julius, -“what a boon your coming has been! I had positively almost forgotten -what intelligent conversation was like. It seems ages since I last heard -ten consecutive words strung together on a thought of any description. -Let me see--it was June when you were last down, with Sir Benjamin -Alstead; he has been here once since--but in your absence he put on such -a pompous ‘eminent-physician’ manner that really I oughtn’t to count him -at all--and with that exception, from June to October, civilization has -left poor me entirely out of its reckoning. But perhaps”--they had risen -now, and there was a certain new frankness, almost confidence of appeal -in her glance into his face--“perhaps, as matters have turned, you will -come oftener henceforth?” - -Lord Julius nodded. “It is quite likely,” he said, and stretched forth -his hand significantly to Christian’s shoulder. “But you were going to -show him the house--and I suppose I may come along too. There is half an -hour before we go to my brother--and our train does not leave Clune till -nearly six.” - -“You are not going to-day! and he too?” she exclaimed, hurriedly. - -The old man nodded again. “We are expected at Emanuel’s to-night,” he -answered. Then, as Christian had moved toward the window and seemed -beyond hearing, he added, in a smiling aside, “There is one reason for -dragging him away that is comical enough. It wouldn’t do for him to -dine at Caermere in morning clothes, and so far as I can see he has no -others.” - -“He could be too tired to dine,” she suggested, quickly, in a -confidential murmur. “Or, for that matter, there is a room full of -Porlock’s things--I suppose--I suppose poor Cressage’s--would be too big -for him. Oh, it’s too dreadful to have him whisked off like this! Can’t -you send a telegram instead?” - -Her tone was as frank as her speech--and on the instant her glance at -his face made keen inquiry whether it had not been too frank. - -He smiled in a tolerant, almost amused way. “Oh, he will return all in -good time,” he assured her, gently enough. “Caermere will see plenty of -him, later on.” - -“Yes, but who can tell where I shall be then?” The necessity for -speaking in an undertone gave her words an added intensity of feeling. -“And it isn’t only him--I had hoped you would be stopping some days at -least--for I wanted to speak with you about this very thing. My position -here--the uncertainty of everything--is intolerable to bear.” She lifted -her head, and turned her direct gaze into his eyes. - -“If only you liked me a little better, I could discuss the matter more -freely with you.” - -“Humbug!” replied Lord Julius, with a geniality which was at least -superficially reassuring. “You shouldn’t say such things, much less -think them. I can understand your impatience--but it will be possible to -straighten out affairs very soon now. I don’t think you will be found to -have suffered by the delay.” - -“Oh, that is all right,” she answered, almost pettishly. “Everybody -assures me of the most magnanimous intentions--but in the meantime”--she -checked herself, tossed her head in resentment, apparently, at the -tears which had started to her eyes, and forced herself to smile--“in -the meantime, you must forgive my tantrums. It is so depressing -here--all alone--or worse than alone! I’m really no longer fit to -receive anybody. But now”--she raised her voice in an eager simulation -of gaiety--“shall the personally conducted tour begin?” - -Caermere had been inaccessible to so many generations of sightseers that -no formula for its exhibition remained. The party seemed to Christian to -wander at haphazard through an interminable succession of rooms, many of -them small, some of them what he could only think of as over-large, -but all insufficiently lighted, and all suggesting in their meager -appointments and somber dejection of aspect a stage of existence well -along on the downward path to ruin. He had only to look about him -to perceive why Caermere had long ago been removed from the list of -England’s show-places. His companions between them kept his attention -busy with comments upon the history and purpose of the apartments they -passed through, but beyond a general sense of futile and rather shabby -immensity he gained very little from the inspection. The mood to -postpone comprehension of what he was seeing to another and a more -convenient time was upon him, and he almost willfully yielded to it. - -Once, when impulse prompted him to climb a little ladder-like staircase, -and push open a door from which the black dust fell in a shower, and he -discerned in the gloom of the attic chamber piles of armor and ancient -weapons, a thrill of fleeting excitement ran through his veins. - -“They say that Prince Llewelyn’s armor is there,” called up Lord Julius -from the landing below. “Some day we will have it all out, and cleaned -and furbished up. But don’t go in now! You’ll get covered with dirt. I -used to venture in there and rummage about once in a while when I was a -boy,” he added as Christian came down. “But even then one came out black -as a sweep.” - -There were fine broad stretches of rugged landscape to be seen here and -there from narrow casements in the older, higher parts they were now -traversing, and occasionally Christian was able to interest himself as -well in details of primitive, half-obliterated ornamentation over arches -and doorways of early periods, but he was none the less almost glad when -they came out at last into a spacious upper hallway, and halted in tacit -token that the journey was at an end. - -“Now I will leave you,” said the lady, with lifted skirt and a foot -poised tentatively over the first step of the broad descending stairs. -“I shall have tea in the conservatory when you come down.” - -Christian felt that something must be said. “It has all been very -wonderful to me,” he assured her. “I am afraid I did not seem very -appreciative--but that is because the place is too huge, too vast, to be -understood quite at once. And I am so new to it all--you will understand -what I mean. But I thank you very much.” - -She smiled brightly on him and nodded to them both, and passed down the -stairway. Christian was all at once conscious, as his eyes followed her, -that there was a novel quickening or fluttering of his heart’s action. -For a brief second, the sensation somehow linked itself in his thoughts -with the tall, graceful figure receding from him, and he bent forward -to grasp more fully the picture she made, moving sedately along, with a -hand like a lily on the wide black rail. Then he suddenly became aware -that this was an error, and that he was trembling instead because the -moment for confronting his grandfather had come. - -Lord Julius, indeed, had already opened a massive mahogany door at the -right of the stairs, and signaled to him now to follow. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -What Christian first perceived about the duke’s apartments was that -they had an odor quite peculiar to themselves. The series of small and -badly lighted anterooms through which he followed Lord Julius--rooms -with pallet-beds, clothes hung against the walls, and other somewhat -squalid signs of domestic occupation--were full of this curiously -distinctive smell. It was not so obvious in the larger and -better-lighted chamber beyond, which the doctor in residence had -converted to his own uses, and where he sat now reading a book, merely -rising momentarily to bow as they passed. But in the next room--the -big sleeping apartment, with its faded pretensions of stateliness of -appointment, and its huge, high-posted bed, canopied by old curtains -embroidered with heraldic devices in tarnished gilt threads--the odor -was more powerful than ever, despite the fact that a broad window-door -was open upon the balcony beyond. The young man’s keen sense was baffled -by this pervasive scent--compounded as it seemed to be of all the -ancient castle’s mustiness, of sharp medicinal vapors and of something -else at once familiar and unknown. He sniffed inquiringly at it, as they -neared the window, and apparently Lord Julius heard him, for he remarked -over his shoulder: - -“It is the dogs that you smell. They’ve practically removed the kennel -up here.” - -On the stone floor of the balcony outside there were to be seen, indeed, -some dozen old hounds, for the most part lying sleepily in the sunshine, -with their heads pointed toward a large, half-covered reclining chair -placed near the balustrade, and occasionally opening a drowsy eye to -regard its occupant. There were a few dogs of other kinds as well, -Christian noted upon a second glance, and one of these, a bulky black -creature with a broad snout and hair curled tight like astrakhan fur, -sat close to the chair and was thrusting its muzzle against a hand at -its side. - -This hand was what Christian saw first of his grandfather--an immense -limp hand, with thick fingers twisted and misshapen, and skin of an -almost greenish pallor. The dog’s nose, thrust under it, moved this -inert hand about, and the young man felt himself thrill unpleasantly, -for some reason, at the spectacle. - -At the further end of the balcony two men in livery lounged against -the wall, but upon a signal from Lord Julius they went in. The latter, -threading his way among the hounds, led Christian round to the side of -the chair. - -“This is Ambrose’s boy,” he said, bending a little and raising his -voice. “He is Christian, too.” - -Upon the chair was stretched, in a halfsitting posture, the gigantic -frame of a very old man. The grandson looked upon him in silence for a -long time, his mind confused with many impressions. The vast shoulders -and high, bullet-like head, propped up by pillows in the partial shadow -of the hood, seemed vaguely to recall the vision his baby memory had -preserved of his own father. But in detail there was no resemblance. -Or yes, there were resemblances, but they were blurred almost beyond -recognition by the rough touch of time. The face, with its big, harsh -features and bushing brows, and its frame of stiff white whiskers under -the jaws and chin, had something in it which for an instant the young -man seemed to identify; then the unnatural effect of its uniform -yellow-clay color drove all thoughts of its human relationships from -his mind, and he saw nothing but a meaningless mask. It was as devoid of -significance, indeed, as if it had been in a coffin. The eyes were open -and they seemed to be fixed upon the distant rolling prospect of hills -and forest, but whether they were seeing anything, Christian could not -imagine. They certainly had not been turned to include him in their -survey. The livid right hand, swaying as the black dog pushed it with -its nose, was the only thing about the duke that moved. - -“He does not know I am here,” said Christian, at last. He spoke -instinctively, with the ceremonious affectation of awe which one puts on -in the presence of death. His grandfather hardly impressed him as being -alive and still less made any appeal to his sense of kinship. He had -expected to be overwhelmed with emotion at the meeting, but he found -himself barely interested. His wandering glance chanced to take note of -some of the dogs’ faces about the chair. They were all alertly watching -him, and the profoundly wise look in their eyes caught his attention. -No doubt they were dreadful fools, if the truth could be known, but -the suggestion of cultured sagacity in their gaze was extraordinary. He -looked back again at his grandfather, and tried to say to himself that -he was a great noble, the head of an ancient and proud line, and the -actual father of _his_ father--but the effort failed to spur his fancy. -He turned to Lord Julius and lifted his brows in wearied interrogation. - -“Move round in front of him,” counseled the other. “Get yourself in the -range of his eyes.” - -Christian obeyed, and, flushing a little with self-consciousness, strove -to intercept the aged man’s gaze. There was no change upon the ashen -face under the hood to tell him whether he had succeeded or not. The -impulse to grimace, to wave his arms about, to compel attention by -any wild and violent device, forced him to smile in the midst of his -perplexed constraint. He stared for a few moments longer at the gaunt, -immovable figure--then shrugged his shoulders, and, stepping over a dog -or two, made bold to rejoin Lord Julius. - -“I do not see that it is of any use,” he said, with annoyance. “If you -wish to go, I am quite ready.” - -Lord Julius lifted his brows in turn, and looked at his grand-nephew -with curiosity. “I said nothing about going, that I recall,” he began, -with an effect of reproof in his tone. But then he seemed to think -better of it, and gave an abrupt little laugh. “It isn’t very -invigorating, I’m bound to admit,” he confessed, cheerfully enough. -“Wait a moment, and I’ll stir him up a bit.” - -He bent forward again, with his head at the edge of the hood, and -shouted into it: “If you want to see Ambrose’s boy, here he is! If you -don’t want to see him, say so, and waste no more of our time!” - -To Christian’s surprise, the duke took instant cognizance of this -remark. His large face brightened, or at least altered its aspect, into -something like animation; his eyes emerged from their cover of lethargy, -and looked alive. - -“My back is very bad to-day,” he remarked, in a voice which, though -it bore the querulous note of the invalid, was unexpectedly robust in -volume. “And I cannot make out whether the numbness is passing down -below my knee or not.” - -Lord Julius nodded, as if confirming to himself some previous suspicion. -“I thought as much,” he commented in an aside to the young man. “It’s -merely his endearing little way. Have patience, and we’ll draw the -badger yet.” - -He bawled once more into the hood, with an added peremptoriness of tone: -“I explained it all to you, hours ago, and I’m sure you understand it -perfectly. Christian naturally wished to pay his respects to you, but if -your back is too bad, why, there’s no more to be said--and we’ll be off. -Goodbye to you!” - -“Did I know his mother? Who was his mother? I have no recollection of -her.” The duke spoke peevishly, twitching his sunken lips in what was -plainly an effort to pout them. Christian noted with curiosity that as -he surrendered himself to such mental exertion as the talk demanded, -the aged man’s face grew disagreeably senile in effect. An infinity -of gossamer-like wrinkles showed themselves now, covering the entire -countenance in a minute network. - -“No, you didn’t know his mother!” replied Lord Julius, with significant -curtness. “It is more to the point that you should know _him_, since he -is to be your successor. Look at him--and say something to him!” - -The duke managed to testify on his stiffened lineaments the reluctance -with which he did what he was told, but he shifted his eyes in a -sidelong fashion to take a brief survey of the young man. “Cressage -could have given you five stone ten,” he said to him, brusquely, and -turned his eyes away. - -Christian cast a look of bewildered inquiry up at Lord Julius, but -encountered only a smile of contemptuous amusement. He summoned the -courage to declare, in a voice which he hoped was loud enough: “I am -glad to hear, sir, that this is one of your good days. I hope you will -have many more of them!” - -Of this assurance His Grace seemingly took no note. After a short pause -he began speaking again. “There’s a dog up here,” he said, with the -gravity befitting a subject to which he had given much thought, “that -I’m sure falls asleep, and yelps in her dreams, and disturbs me most -damnably, and I believe it’s that old bitch Peggy, and when I mention -it the fellows swear that she’s been taken away, but I suspect that she -hasn’t.” - -“We will look to it,” put in Lord Julius perfunctorily. He added, upon -an afterthought, “Did the guns annoy you, this forenoon?” - -The duke’s thoughts were upon something else. He turned his eyes again, -and apparently spoke to Christian. “A good hearty cut across the face -with a whip,” he said, with kindling energy, “is what’d teach-swine like -Griffiths their place--and then let ’em summons you and be damned. -A farmer who puts up barbed-wire--no gentleman would listen to his -evidence for a minute. Treat them like the vermin they are--and they’ll -understand that. Cressage had the proper trick with them--a kick in the -stomach first and reasons afterward. That’s the only way this country -can be hunted. When I got to riding over eighteen stone, and couldn’t -take anything, that ruffian Griffiths screwed up his gates and sent me -round the turnpike like a damned peddler, and Ambrose--it was -Ambrose, wasn’t it?--or am I thinking of Cressage? But they weren’t -together--here, Julius! It was you who were speaking of Ambrose! What -about him? By God, I wish he had my back!” - -Lord Julius, with the smile in his beard hardening toward scorn, took -Christian by the arm. “I think you’ve had enough grandfather to go on -with,” he said, quietly. “Never mind making your adieux. They would be -quite wasted on him.” - -Without further words, they turned and moved away through the dogs to -the window, and so into the house. The doctor, still at his book, rose -once more upon their approach, and this time Lord Julius halted to speak -with him. - -“His Grace seems to ramble in his mind a good deal more than he did -before luncheon. Do you see a change in this respect--say week by week?” - -“It is not observable in gradations, Lord Julius,” answered the -physician, a stout, sandy young man, who assumed his air of deference -with considerable awkwardness; “sometimes he recovers a very decided -lucidity after what had seemed to be a prolonged lapse in the other -direction. But on the whole I should say there was a perceptible--well, -loss of faculty. He knows the dogs, however, quite as well as -ever--distinguishes them apparently by touch, remembers all their names, -and recalls anecdotes about them, and, very often, about their mothers -too. Fletcher tells me His Grace hasn’t once miscalled a hound.” - -“They make an abominable atmosphere up here,” commented the other. - -The doctor smiled lugubriously. “I can’t deny that, Lord Julius,” he -replied, “but all the same they are the most important part of the -treatment. If we took them away, His Grace would die within the week.” - -“Unhappy dogs!” mused Lord Julius, partly to himself, and walked on. It -was not until they were half-way down the big staircase that Christian -felt impelled to speak. - -“I should much like to know,” he began, with diffident eagerness--“you -have already spoken so plainly about my grandfather--the question -will not seem rude to him, I hope--but when he was well, before the -paralysis, was he in any respect like what he is now?” - -“I should say,” answered Lord Julius, in a reflective way, “that he is -at present rather less objectionable than formerly. One can make the -excuse of illness for him now--and that covers a multitude of sins. But -when he was in health--and he had the superb--what shall I say?--riotous -health of a whale--he was very hard to bear. You have seen him and you -have observed his mental and moral elevation. He remembers his dogs more -distinctly than he does his children. In the Almanach de Gotha he is -classed among princes, but what he dwells upon most fondly among his -public duties is the kicking of tenant-farmers in the stomach when they -try to save their crops from being ruined by the hunt. I may tell you, -I was in two minds about taking you to him at all, and now I think I -regret having done so.” - -“No-o,” said Christian, thoughtfully. “It is better as it is. I am glad -to have seen him, and to have you tell me about him, frankly, as you -have done. It all helps me to understand the position--and it seems that -there is a great deal that needs to be understood. I can see already -that there is strange blood in the Torrs.” He paused on the bottom step -as he spoke, and turned to his companion with a wistful smile. “There -is an even bolder question I should like to ask--how does it happen that -_you_ are so different? How do you account for yourself?” - -Lord Julius laughed. “Oh, that is a long story,” he said, “but I can -put it into a word for you. I was made by my wife. I married a woman -so noble and clever and wise and strong that I couldn’t help becoming a -decent sort of fellow in spite of myself. But I am going to talk to you -about all that, later on. It is better worth talking about than anything -else under the sun. Oh--Barlow, please!” - -The old butler had passed from one door to another in the hall, and -turned now as he was called, with a hand behind him upon the knob. Lord -Julius, approaching, exchanged some words with him upon the subject of -his afternoon’s plans. - -Christian, watching this venerable servant with curiosity, as a type -novel to his experience, discovered suddenly that his scrutiny was being -returned. Barlow, while listening attentively and with decorously slow -nods of comprehension to what was being said to him, had his eyes fixed -aslant, beyond his interlocutor’s shoulder, upon the young stranger. -Christian encountered this gaze, and saw it waver and flutter aside, -as from force of polite habit, and then creep back again. This happened -more than once, and Christian began to feel that it had some meaning. -He observed that the butler inclined his head at last and whispered -something--his pale, wan old face showed it to be an inquiry--into the -other’s ear. The action explained itself so perfectly that Christian was -in no way surprised to see Lord Julius turn smilingly, and nod toward -himself. - -“Yes, he is Ambrose’s son,” he said. “He has come to take his place. I -know you for one won’t be sorry--eh, Barlow?” - -It was clear to the young man’s perceptions that Lord Julius spoke as -to one who was a friend as well as a servant. The note of patriarchal -kindness in the tone appealed gratefully to him, and the affectionate -mention of his father’s name was sweet in his ears. A strange thrill of -emotion, a kind of aimless yet profound yearning, possessed him as -he moved forward. On the instant he realized that this was how he had -expected to feel in the presence of his grandfather. The fact that the -tenderness within him was appealed to instead by this gentle, sad-eyed -old family dependant seemed to him to have something beautiful and very -touching in it. Tears came into his eyes. - -“You remember my father, then,” he said, and the breaking of his voice -carried him into the heart of this sudden new mood of self-abandonment. -“You would have known him as a little child--yes?--and you--you--” he -paused, to dash away the tears with his hand, and strive to regain some -control over his facial muscles--“you will have in your memory the good -things about him--the boyish, pleasant things--and you loved him for -them, did you not?” - -Old Barlow, trembling greatly, and with a faint flush upon his white -cheeks, stared confusedly at the young man as he advanced. “I held him -on his first pony, sir,” he stammered forth, and then shook his head in -token that he could utter no more. His glistening eyes said the rest. - -Christian flung his arms round the surprised old man’s neck, and kissed -him on both cheeks, and then, with head bowed upon his shoulder, sobbed -aloud. - - - - -PART II - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -The music of a spirited and tireless band of robins helped Christian to -wake next morning. The character of their cheerful racket defined itself -very slowly to his drowsy consciousness. He lay for a long time with -closed eyes, listening to it, and letting his mind drift quite at random -among the thoughts which it suggested. He knew they were robins because -his hostess had said he would hear them; he lazily pictured to himself -the tiny red-breasts gathered in the shrubbery outside, in obedience to -some mysterious signal of hers, and singing to order thus briskly and -unwearyingly to make good her promise. - -In what gay, high spirits the little fellow sang! The sun must be -shining, to account for so much happiness. He accepted the idea with -a sense of profound pleasure, and appropriated it to his own wonderful -case. - -For him, it was as if happiness had never existed before. - - “‘Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays, - - And twenty cagéd nightingales do sing.’” - -He murmured the lines in indolent reverie, then opened his eyes, and -smiled to think where he was, and what he had become a part of. Lifting -himself on his elbow, he looked about him. The beauties of the apartment -had not been lost upon him the previous evening. He had carried them -with him in vague processional magnificence on his devious march through -dreamland; he surveyed them again now in the morning light, rising after -a while to pull aside the curtains, and bring in the full sunshine. - -The room was, he said over and over to himself, ‘the most exquisite -thing he had ever seen. The ruling color was of some blue which -could almost be thought a green, and which, embraced as complementary -decoration many shades of ocher and soft yellowish browns in woodwork, -and in the thick, fleecy rugs underfoot. Around the four sides, at -the level of his eyes, ran a continuous band of portraits--the English -drawings of Holbein reproduced in the dominant tint of the room, set -solidly into the wall, and separated from one another only by thin -strips of the same tawny oak which framed them at top and bottom. -The hooded, high-bosomed ladies, the cavaliers in hats and plumes and -pointed beards, the smoothfaced, shrewd-eyed prelates and statesmen in -their caps and fur, all knew him this morning for one of their own, as -he went along, still in his nightshirt, and inspected them afresh. They -appeared to greet him, and he beamed at them in response. - -A dim impression of the earlier morning, which had seemed a shadowy -passing phase of his dreams, revealed itself now to him as a substantial -fact. Some one _had_ been in the room, moving noiselessly about, and had -spread forth for his use a great variety of articles of clothing and of -the toilet, most of which he beheld for the first time. Overnight, his -cousin Emanuel’s insistence upon his regarding everything in the house -as his own for the time being, had had no definite significance to -his mind. He looked now through the array of silks and fine cloths, of -trinkets in ivory and silver and polished metals, and began dressing -himself with a long sigh of delight. - -Recollections of the leave-taking at Caermere straggled into his -thoughts as he pursued the task. He had seen Lady Cressage again in the -conservatory, where she wore another dress, and had her beautiful hair -carefully arranged as if in his honor, and poured out tea for him and -Lord Julius in wonderful little cups which his great-grandfather, a -sailor, had brought from China. Of her conversation he recalled little, -and still less of the talk of the other lady, the actress-person, Mrs. -Edward, who had joined the party, but whose composed pretty face had -been too obviously a mask for anguish not to dampen everybody’s spirits. -He wondered now, as he plied his razor on the strap, what had become of -her husband, and of that poor-spirited brother of his. Had they joined -the pheasant-shooters, after their interview with him? The temptation to -fire upon themselves instead of the birds must have sorely beset them. - -But it was pleasanter to begin the retrospect some hours later, when the -rough country of the Marches, and even Bristol, had been left behind. -Lord Julius had explained to him then, as darkness settled upon the low, -pasture-land levels they were swinging along past, that Somerset was -also a county of the Torrs; two of their three titles were derived from -it, indeed, and Somerset marriages had brought into the family, in -the days following the downfall of the monasteries, some of the most -important of its estates. If the dukes had turned their backs on -Caermere two centuries ago, and made their principal seat here in this -gentler and more equable land, perhaps the family history might have -been different. Christian had absorbed the spirit rather than the letter -of his companion’s remarks. English counties were all one to him, but -intuitively he had felt that he was getting into a kindlier and more -congenial atmosphere. Although it was a black night, he had stared a -good deal at the window, trying to discern some tokens of this change -in the dimly lighted, empty stations they glided through, or paused -reluctantly in. - -When they had finally quitted the train at Bridgewater, and had got -under way inside the carriage waiting for them there, Christian had -asked whether it was not true that the railway servants here were more -courteously obliging than they had been in other parts. - -Lord Julius had lightly remarked that it might be so; very likely, -however, it was some indirect effect of the general psychical change the -family underwent in shifting its territorial base. Then he had gone on -more gravely, alluding for the first time to the episode of the butler. - -“You must be prepared to find everything very different, here,” he had -said. “There is such a thing as having too much past--especially when -it is of the wrong sort. Caermere is as tenacious of its memories as a -prison--and they are as unpleasant. It forces upon you its air of never -forgetting a single one of its miseries and injuries--and you feel that -it cannot remember any compensating joys. I could see how the effect -of it got into your blood, and broke your nerve. Under ordinary -circumstances men do not kiss their butlers, or even sob on their -bosoms. But I understood perfectly how old Barlow appealed to you. As -you beheld him he might have stood as model for a statue of the Family -Grief, choking down its yearning to wail over the generations gone to -the bad. It was all right, what you did. For that matter, I was precious -near raising a howl of lamentation myself. One is always alternating -between tears and curses in that criminal old coalmine of a castle. -But now you are over a hundred miles away from it all--and if it was -a thousand the difference couldn’t be greater. You will find nothing -whatever to cry about down here. Nobody has any bad dreams. There isn’t -a cupboard that ever sheltered a skeleton even overnight. In these -parts, remarkable as it may seem, the Torrs are actually regarded with -admiration--quite the salt of the earth--a trifle eccentric, perhaps, -but splendid landlords, capable organizers, uncommonly good masters--and -above all, happy people who insist that everybody about them shall be -happy too. It was important to show you the other side first--at least -that was what we decided upon, but you are done with that now--and we’ll -give you something to take the taste out of your mouth.” - -Christian recalled these assurances, now, with a delicious sense of -being already enfolded and upheld by the processes of their fulfillment. -The details of his reception at the broad, hospitably lighted door of -Emanuel’s house crowded in upon his memory, and merged themselves with -other recollections of the later evening hours--the supper, the long, -calm, sweetly intimate talk before the fire, the honest, wise, frankly -affectionate faces into which he had looked to say “good-night”--it -almost overwhelmed him with its weight of unimagined happiness. He had -hardly guessed before what other men might mean when they gave a loving -sound to the word “home.” Yet now the doors of such a home as he could -never have dreamed of had opened to him--to him, the homeless, lonely -one! and he was nestled securely in the warm heart of its welcome. He -could have groaned aloud under the burden of his rapture at the thought. - -At last he went downstairs, his misgivings about the hour not quite -allayed by recollection of the parting injunction to sleep his fill and -get up when he liked. There were beautiful things to note and linger -over on every side as he made his way--pictures and armor and -wonderful inlaid work and tapestries, all subordinating themselves with -distinguished good breeding to the fact that they were in a home and not -a museum--but he moved along in rather conscience-stricken haste toward -the part of the house which had seemed to him the previous night to -be the center of domestic life. He formed a sudden resolution, as -he explored the lower hallway, that when he got some money his first -purchase should be of a watch. - -After looking into a couple of rooms which were clearly not what -he sought, Christian opened the right door, and confronted a -breakfast-table, shining in its snowy attractiveness midway between a -window full of sunlight and a brightly tiled chimney-place, with a -fire on the hearth. There was no one in the room, and he stood for -some minutes looking about him, liking very much the fresh, light-hued -cheerfulness of everything, but still wishing that some one would -come to pour his coffee. By degrees, he assimilated the idea that the -ingredients of breakfast were all here to hand. There were dishes beside -the fire, and this was apparently the coffee-pot on the table--a covered -urn, with a thin spirit-flame trembling beneath it. He had reached -the point of deciding to help himself--or should he ring the bell -instead?--when the door opened and the lady of the house came bustling -in. - -Mrs. Emanuel, as he styled her in his thoughts, looked the very spirit -of breakfast--buoyant, gay-hearted and full of the zest of life. Last -night, to the young man’s diffident though strenuous inspection, she -had seemed the embodiment of tender hospitality in general. Though his -glances were more confident now, in the brilliant morning light, she -still gave the impression of personifying the influences which she made -felt about her, rather than exhibiting a specific personal image. She -was not tall, nor yet short; her face pleased the eye without suggesting -prettiness; she had the dark, clear skin and rounded substance of figure -which the mind associates with sedate movements and even languor, but -she herself moved, thought, spoke with alert vivacity. Above all things, -a mellow motherliness in her had struck the forlorn youth the previous -evening. Now it seemed much more like the sweet playfulness of a fond -elder sister. - -“You took me at my word; that’s right,” she said to him, as they shook -hands. “I was afraid the man might disturb you, or give you the idea you -were expected to get up. And do you feel perfectly rested now? A day or -two more will do it, at all events. If I’d known how they were dragging -you about, by night and by day! But your Uncle Julius has no knowledge -of even the meaning of the word fatigue. Sit here, won’t you--and now -here’s bacon for you, and here’s fish taken this very morning, and eggs -I’ll ring for to be done as you like them, and how much sugar to your -coffee? You mustn’t think this has been boiling ever since morning. It -was made when you were heard moving about in your room.” - -“I should be so sorry to have kept anybody waiting,” he began, in shy -comment upon the discovery that he was eating alone. - -She laughed at him with cordial frankness. “Waiting?” she echoed -merrily. “Why, it’s about three o’clock. Lord Julius is nearly in -London by this time, and the rest of us have not only breakfasted, but -lunched.” - -“Lord Julius gone?” he asked with wide-open eyes. - -She nodded, and raised a reassuring hand. “It’s nothing but business. -Telegrams came early this morning which took him away by the first -train. He would have gone later in the day in any case. He left the -most fatherly adieux for you--and of course you’ll be seeing him soon in -London.” - -Christian was puzzled. “But this is his home here, is it not?” he asked. - -“Not at all--more’s the pity,” she replied. “We wish for nothing so much -as that he might make it so--but he elects instead to be the slave of -the family, and to work like a bank-clerk in Brighton instead of cutting -himself free and living his own life like the rest of us, in God’s fresh -air. But he comes often to us--whenever the rural mood seizes him.” She -seemed to comprehend the doubtful expression on the youth’s face, for -she added smilingly: “And you mustn’t be frightened to be left alone -with us. You’re as much our blood as you are his--and--” - -“Oh, don’t think that!” he pleaded impulsively. “I was never so glad to -be anywhere in my life as I am to be here.” - -Her gray eyes regarded him with kindly softness. He saw that they were -only in part gray eyes--that they were both blues and browns in their -beautiful coloring, and that the outer edge of the iris deepened in tint -almost to the black of the splendid lashes. He returned her look, and -held it with a tentative smile, that he might the longer observe the -remarkable eyes. All at once it flashed upon him that there was a -resemblance. - -“Your eyes are like my mother’s,” he said, as if in defensive -explanation of his scrutiny. - -“Tell me about your mother,” she rejoined, putting her arms on the table -and resting her chin upon a finger. “I do not think I ever heard her -name.” - -“It was Coppinger--Mary Coppinger. I never saw the name anywhere -else.” He added hesitatingly: “My brother told me that her father was -a soldier--an officer--who became in his old age very poor, and was at -last a gardener for some rich man at Malta, and my mother gave lessons -as a governess to support herself, and it was there she met my father.” - -The lady seemed most interested in the name. “Coppinger, is it!” she -exclaimed, nodding her head at him. “No wonder my heart warmed at the -sight of you. Why, now, to look at you--of course you’re County Cork. -You’re our slender dark type to perfection.” - -“I am afraid I do not understand,” he murmured. - -“Why, she could not have that name and be anything but a County -Cork woman. Who ever heard of a Coppinger anywhere else? Only it is -pronounced with a soft ‘g,’ not hard, as you speak it. I wonder--but -that can wait; her father will be easily enough traced. And so you are -an Irishman, too!” - -Christian looked abashed at the confusing suggestion. “I think I am all -English,” he said vaguely. - -She laughed again. “Are you turning your back on us? Did you not know -it? I also am Irish. No doubt I am some sort of cousin of yours on my -own account, as well as on Emanuel’s. There are Coppingers in my own -family, and in most of those that we have intermarried with. Your mother -was a Protestant, of course.” - -He shook his head apprehensively, as if fearful that his answer must -give pain. “No, she went to mass like other people, and I was sent to -the Brothers of the Christian School. But she was not in any degree a -_dévotée_, and for that matter,” he added in a more confident tone, “I -myself am still less _dévot_.” - -“Ah!” was her only comment, and he quite failed to gather from it any -clue to her sentiments on the subject. “Well,” she began again, “I’ll -not put you through any more of your catechism now. Are you finished? -Then come with me and we will find Emanuel, and incidentally you will -see the place--or portions of it. It will take you a long time to see it -all. Do you want to smoke? Put some of these cigars in your pocket--or -here are cigarettes if you prefer them. Oh, we smoke everywhere. There -is nothing on earth that we want to do that we don’t do--and there’s -nothing we don’t want to do that any mortal power can make us do. There -you have the sum of our philosophy.” - -He had followed her into the hallway, where the doors were open wide to -the mellow autumn afternoon. He put on the soft shapeless hat she gave -him from a collection on the antlers, and was inspired to select a stick -for himself out of the big standful at the door. - -“Now I shall walk about,” he said, gaily, “quite as if I had never been -out of England in my life. Is your husband--perhaps-shooting?” - -She seemed always to laugh at him. Her visible merriment at his question -dashed his spirits for an instant. Then he saw how genial and honest was -her mirth, and smiled himself in spontaneous sympathy with it. - -“Don’t dream of suggesting it to him!” she adjured the young man, -with mock solemnity. “He has a horror of the idea of killing living -creatures. He does not even fish for sport--though I confess I hardly -follow him to that length. And don’t speak of him in that roundabout -way, but call him Emanuel, and call me Kathleen or Kit--whichever comes -easiest. Merely because Thom’s directory swears we’re forty years old, -we’re not to be made venerable people by you. All happy folk belong to -the same generation, no matter when they were born--and--but here is -Emanuel now. - -“I have been telling Christian,” she continued, addressing her husband -as he paused at the foot of the steps, “that he is to be happy here, -even in spite of himself.” - -Emanuel shook hands with his cousin, and nodded pleased approval of his -wife’s remark. His smile, however, was of a fleeting sort. “Nothing -has come of the Onothera experiments,” he announced to her in a serious -tone. “I’m afraid we must give up the idea of the yellow fuchsia.” - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -Emanuel Torr, at the age of forty, was felt by those who knew and loved -him almost to have justified the very highest of the high hopes which -his youth had encouraged. This intimate circle of appreciation was -rendered a small one by the circumstances of his temperament and choice -of career; but beyond this his name was familiar to many who had -never seen him, or who remembered him at best as a stripling, yet who -habitually thought and spoke of him as an example and model to his -generation. - -At Oxford, twenty years before, he had attracted attention of a sort -rather peculiar to himself. Those who took note of him saw foreshadowed -the promise, not so much of great achievements as of the development and -consolidation of a great influence. He was not specially distinguished -in his work at the University, and he made no mark at the Union, where -there happened at the time to be glittering a quite exceptional galaxy -of future front bench men, judges and bishops. In Emanuel’s case, the -interest he aroused was perhaps more sentimental than intellectual. His -mind was seen to be of a fine order, but his character was even more -attractive to the observant eye. The facts that he was half Jewish in -blood, and that in time he would be the possessor of enormous wealth, -no doubt lent an added suggestion of romance to the picture of delicate, -somewhat coldly modeled features, of ivory skin and serious, musing dark -eyes, and of a rare smile of wonderful sweetness, which Oxford men of -the mid-seventies still associate with his name. It was in the days -when Disraeli’s remarkable individuality was a part of England’s current -history, and when the English imagination, in part from the stimulus -of this fact, dwelt upon the possibilities of a new Semitic wave of -inspiration and ethical impetus. The dreams, the aspirations, the -mysterious “perhaps” of Daniel Deronda were in men’s minds, and -Johannesburg had not been so much as heard of. - -What the University recognized in the youth standing upon the threshold -of manhood, had been an article of faith within his home since his -childhood. It is as well to recount at this place the brief story of -that home. - -At the age of twenty-five Lord Julius Torr, engaged in the listless -pursuit of that least elusive of careers, called diplomacy, found -himself at The Hague, and yawned his way about its brightly scrubbed -solitudes for some months, until, upon the eve of his resolve to have -done with the whole business, and buy a commission in a line regiment, -he encountered a young woman who profoundly altered all his plans in -life. It was by the merest and unlikeliest of accidents that he came -to know the Ascarels, father and daughter, and at the outset his -condescension had seemed to him to be involved as well. They were of -an old family in the Netherlands, Jewish in race but now for -some generations estranged from, the synagogue, and reputed to be -extraordinarily wealthy. It was said of them too that they were sternly -exclusive, but to the brother of an English duke this had not appeared -to possess much meaning. He had previously been of some official service -to the father, in a matter wherein Dutch and English interests touched -each other at Sumatra; from this he came to meet the daughter. He had -been told by the proud father that she was of the blood of the immortal -Spinoza, and had been so little impressed that he had not gone to the -trouble of finding out who Spinoza was. - -The marriage of young Torr, of the Foreign Office, to some Dutch-Jewish -heiress a half-year later, received only a trifle more notice in England -than did the news of his retirement from his country’s diplomatic -service. The duke had already four sons, and the brother, when it seemed -that he intended to live abroad, was not at all missed. Nearly fifteen -years elapsed before a mature Lord Julius reappeared in England--a Lord -Julius whom scarcely any one found recognizable. He bore small visible -relation to the aimless and indolent young attaché whom people, by -an effort of memory, were able to recall; still less did he resemble -anything else that the Torr family, within recollection, had produced. -He took a big old house in Russell Square, and in time it became -understood that very learned and intellectual people paid pilgrimages -thither to sit at the feet of Lady Julius, and learn of her. Smart -London rarely saw this Lady Julius save at a distance--in her carriage -or at the opera. The impression it preserved of her was of a short, -swarthy woman, increasingly stout as years went on, who peered with -near-sighted earnestness through a large pince-nez of unusual form. -On her side, it seemed doubtful if she had formed even so succinct an -impression as this of smart London. She was content with Bloomsbury to -the end of her days; and made no effort whatever to establish relations -with the West End. Indeed, tales came to be told of the effectual -resistance she offered, in later years, to amiable interested advances -from that quarter. It grew to be believed that she had made an eccentric -will, and would leave untold millions to Atheist charities. The rumor -that she was among the most highly cultivated women of her time, and -that the most illustrious scientists and thinkers would quit the society -of kings to travel post-haste across Europe at her bidding, did not, it -must regretfully be added, seem incompatible with this theory about a -crazy will. Finally, when she died in 1885, something was printed by the -papers about her philanthropy, and much was said in private speculation -about her disposition of her vast fortune, but it did not come out that -any will whatever was proved, and London ceased to think of the matter. - -The outer world had in truth been wrong from the beginning. Lady Julius -was not a deeply learned woman, and the limited circle of friends she -gathered about her contained hardly one distinguished figure, in the -popular use of the phrase; her opinions were not notably advanced or -unconventional; she did not shun society upon philosophic principles, -but merely because it failed to attract a nature at once shy and -practical; so far from being rich in her own right, she had insisted -many years before her death upon transferring every penny of her fortune -to her husband. - -Inside her own household, this dark, stout little woman with the -eye-glasses was revered as a kind of angel. She was plainfaced almost to -ugliness in the eyes of strangers. Her husband and her son never doubted -that she was beautiful. Now, when she had been a memory for ten years -and more, these two talked of her lovingly and with no constraint of -gloom, as if she were still the pivot round which their daily life -turned. - -The elder man particularly delighted in dwelling upon the details of -that earlier change in him, under her influence, to which allusion -has been made. Emanuel had in his mind, from boyhood, no vision more -distinct or familiar than this selfpainted picture of his father--the -idle, indifferent, unschooled, paltry-ideaed young gentleman of -fashion--meeting all unawares this overpowering new force, and kneeling -in awed yet rapturous submission before it. To the boy’s imagination -it became a historical scene, as fixed and well known in its lines -of composition as that of Nelson’s death in the cockpit. He saw his -beardless father in dandified clothes of the Corn-Laws-caricature -period, proceeding along the primrose path of dalliance, like some -flippant new Laodicean type of Saul of Tarsus--when “suddenly there -shined around him a light from heaven.” Lord Julius, indeed, thought and -spoke of it in much that same spirit. The recollection that he had not -known who Spinoza was tenderly amused him: it was the symbol of his vast -oceanic ignorance of all things worth knowing. - -“Ah, yes,” the son used to say, “but if you had not had within yourself -all the right feelings--only lacking the flash to bring them out--you -would not have seen how wonderful she was. You would not have understood -at all, but just passed on, and nothing would have happened.” - -And the father, smiling in reverie, and stroking his great beard, would -answer: “I don’t see that that follows. I remember what I was like quite -vividly, and really there was nothing in me to explain the thing at all. -I was a young blood about town, positively nothing more. No, Emanuel, we -may say what we like, but there are things supernatural--that is, -beyond what we can see, and are prepared for, in nature. It was as -unaccountable as magic, the effect your mother produced upon me from the -beginning. At the end of a few hours, when it was time for me to take -my leave, and I turned--there was a gulf in front of me, cutting me off -from where I had been before I came to her, that very day. It was so -wide, it seemed that I could barely see across it.” - -To any listener but Emanuel such language must have been extravagant. To -him there were no words for overpraise of his mother. It was not alone -that he had never seen her in anger or even vexation; that he had -never known her to be in error in any judgment, or suspected in her an -uncharitable or unkindly thought. These were mere negations, and the -memory of her was full of positive influences, all wise and pure and -lofty. Very early in life, when he began to look about the world he -found himself in, he learned to marvel that there were no other such -women anywhere to be seen. She had been so perfect, with seemingly no -effort to herself! Why should other women not even try? - -Emanuel had been born some ten years after the marriage of his parents, -and they thus came into his baby consciousness as persons of middle age, -in appearance and its suggested authority at least, by comparison with -the parents of other children he saw about him. Nowhere else, however, -either then or in later years, did he see another home so filled from -center to circumference with love, and tender gentleness of eye and word -and deed. The perception that this environment was unique colored all -his boyhood. It became a habit with him to set in contrast his own -charmed existence against the unconsidered and uneven experiences of -other children, and to ponder the meaning of the difference. As he -grew up, the importance of this question expanded in his mind and -took possession of it. He was consumed with the longing to make -some effective protest against the peevish folly with which humanity -mismanaged its brief innings of life. From the cradle to the grave the -race swarmed stupidly along, elbowing and jostling in an aimless bustle, -hot and ill-tempered through exertions which had no purpose; trampling -down all weaker than themselves and cursing those who, in turn, had the -strength to push them under; coming wearily at the end to the gate and -the outer darkness of extinction, a futile and disappointed mob--having -seen nothing, comprehended nothing, profited nothing. - -The progress of a generation across the span of life might be made so -serene and well-ordered and fruitful an affair! What else had man to -concern himself about than this one thing--that “peace on earth, good -will to men,” should rule in his time? And how was it that this alone, -of all possible problems, received from him no attention at all? - -The impulse toward a mission was discernible in the lad; it altogether -dominated the young man. His parents, regarding him lovingly and yet -with wise inquiry, were fascinated by what they saw. A sense of lofty -responsibility in their trusteeship for this beneficent new force formed -a fresh bond between them, which grew to absorb within itself all their -other ties. They came to regard themselves in no other light than as -the parents of Emanuel. To preserve him from vitiating and stunting -suggestions; richly to nourish, yet with an anxious avoidance of -surfeit, both the soul and the mind within him; to give him strength -and means and single-hearted courage adequate to the task he yearned to -undertake--they asked nothing better of life than this. - -After Oxford, he went abroad for a couple of years, having as a -companion a young Fellow of Swithin’s, a trifle older than himself, who -shared his moral attitude if not his passionate aspirations. He saw many -parts of the world, and scrutinized closely in each the working of those -portions of the social mechanism which interested him. Returning with a -mass of notes and a mind packed with impressions and theories, he set -to work to write a big book. At the end of a year he produced instead a -small volume, dealing with one little phase of the huge, complex theme -he had at heart. It was a treatise on the relations between parents and -children, and it received very favorable reviews indeed. University men -felt that it was what they had had the foresight to expect from this -serious and high-minded young fellow, who was lucky enough to have the -means and leisure for ethical essay-writing. Evidently he was going in -for that sort of thing, and they noted with approbation that he had been -at great pains with his style. Much to Emanuel’s surprise, only some -three hundred copies of the work were sold; upon reflection, he saw that -it was no part of his plan to sell books, and he forthwith distributed -the remainder of the edition, and another edition as well, among the -libraries of the Three Kingdoms. Within the next three years two -other brochures went through much the same experiences. They treated -respectively of primary education and of public amusements. Again the -reviews were extremely cordial; again the men who had always predicted -that Torr would do something regarded their prophetic intuition with -refreshed complacency; again Emanuel drew considerable checks in favor -of his publisher. What had been hinted at rather vaguely heretofore was -now, however, announced with confidence in “literary” columns: these -small volumes were merely chapters of a vast and comprehensive work to -which the author had dedicated his life--the laborious exposition of -a whole new philosophy of existence, to be as complete in its way as -Herbert Spencer’s noble survey of mankind. - -Not long after came the death of Emanuel’s mother--an unlooked-for -event which altered everything in the world to the bereaved couple left -behind. They went away together in the following month, with a plan of -a prolonged tour in the Orient, but came back to England after a few -weeks’ absence, having found their proposed distraction intolerable. -Lord Julius promptly invented for his own relief the device of taking -over upon himself the drudgery of caring for his millions, which -heretofore had been divided among a banker, a broker, a solicitor and -two secretaries. Emanuel saw his way less directly, but at last he found -the will to begin a tentative experiment with some of his theories -of life on a Somersetshire farm which his father gave him. The work -speedily engrossed him, and expanded under his hands. He became -conscious of growth within himself as well. The conviction that life is -a thing not to be written about, but to be lived, formulated itself in -his mind, and he elaborated this new view in an argument which persuaded -his father. The Somersetshire estates of the family, which had been -bought by Lord Julius in 1859, when the duke and his son Porlock joined -to set aside the entail, were placed now unreservedly at Emanuel’s -disposal. What he did with them is to be seen later on. - -At the moment, it was of the first importance that he should decide for -himself the great question of celibacy v. marriage. The far-reaching -projects which possessed his brain would, beyond doubt, be multiplied -infinitely in value if precisely the right woman were brought in to -share his enthusiasm and devotion. It was no whit less clear that they -would dwindle into failure and collapse under the blight of the wrong -woman. The dimensions of the risk so impressed him, as he studied them, -that for more than two years he believed himself to be irrevocably -committed to the cold middle course of bachelorhood. - -Then, by a remarkable stroke of good fortune, he met, fell in love with -and married the sister of Lord Rosbrin, a young Irish peer whom he had -known at Oxford. No one has ever doubted, he least of all, that she was -the right woman. - -He wrote no more books, in the years following this event, but gradually -he became the cause of writing in others. A review article upon the -character and aims of his experiment in Somersetshire, written in an -appreciative spirit by an economist of position, attracted so much -attention that the intrusion of curious strangers and inquisitive -reporters threatened to be a nuisance. After this, his name was always -mentioned as that of an authority, when sociological problems were -discussed. There was even a certain flurry of inquiry for his books, -though this did not turn out to have warranted the printing of the new -popular edition. Sundry precepts in them became, however, the stock -phrases of leader-writers. People of culture grew convinced that they -were familiar with his works, and only a few months before the period -at which we meet him, his university had conferred upon him an honorary -D.C.L., which gratified him more deeply than any other recognition his -labors and attainments had ever received. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -Christian, observing his celebrated cousin by daylight for the first -time, perceived the necessity of revising some of the previous night’s -impressions. - -Under the illumination of the shaded lamp and the glowing bank of peat -on the study hearth, Emanuel in his velvet jacket and slippered ease had -seemed a delicately refined creature, of so ethereal a type that life -for it outside the atmosphere of books, and of a library’s thought -and talk, would be unnatural, or even impossible. With his back to the -afternoon sunshine, however, and with rough, light clothes suggesting -fresh-air exercise, Emanuel was a different person. - -In stature he was a trifle taller than Christian; perhaps he was also -something heavier, but what the newcomer noted most about the figure -was the wiry vigor of muscular energy indicated in all its lines and -movements. There was apparent no trace of any physical resemblance -to his father, the massive Lord Julius, and Christian, as this fact -occurred to him, remembered what he had heard about the race from which -the mother had come. He could not say that Emanuel’s face was like -anything which he had thought of as distinctively Jewish. The forehead -was both broad and prominent, and at the top, where early baldness -exposed the conformation of the skull, there were curious sutural -irregularities of surface which attracted attention. The rest of the -face was indefinably distinguished in effect, but not so remarkable. -Christian thought now that it was a more virile countenance than he had -imagined it to be. Vague suggestions of the scholarly dreamer flitted -through its expressions now and again, but it was still above all things -the face of a man of action. - -Christian had said to himself, in that crowded instant of analysis, that -he had never seen any Jewish face which at all resembled this of his -cousin’s. Yet somewhere he had seen a face so like it!--the memory -puzzled and absorbed his mind. The same crisping, silky black-brown -hair; the same full line of brow and nose; the same wide-open dark eyes, -intently comprehending in their steady gaze--how strangely familiar they -were to him! He saw them again in his mind’s eye, and they had the same -shadow-casting background of sunlight--only as he looked at the mental -picture, this sunlight was fiercer and hotter, and there was a golden, -hazy distance of purple-blue sea. Suddenly he laughed aloud, and his -brain was alive with recollections. - -“I never recognized you last night,” he declared. “Is it not strange -that I should have been so blind? But seeing you in the sunlight--ah, I -remember you well enough.” - -Emanuel smiled too, a little awkwardly. “Of course I was not making -any secret of it,” he said. “It would have come up naturally, sooner or -later, in the course of talk.” - -But Christian had turned to the lady, and was speaking with gay -animation. “He it is whom I have so often thought of, for years now, as -the ‘mysterious stranger’ of my poor little romance. How long is it ago? -Oh, ten years perhaps, since I saw him first. It was at Toulon, and I -was walking along the quai in the late afternoon, and he stopped me to -ask some question, and we fell to walking together and talking--at first -about the old town, then of myself, because he wished it so. A long -time passed, and lo! I saw him again. This time he came into Salvator’s -little shop at Cannes--it was in the Rue d’Oran--and I was alone, and -we talked again--it seems to me for more than an hour. And I wondered -always who he could be--because he made me feel that he had friendly -thoughts about me. And then, once more--it was a year ago last -summer--he met me again, and came and sat beside me on a seat in the -Jardin Public, at Nice. It must have been in June, for the season was -ended, and it surprised me that he should be there.” - -“Oh, yes, I know all about it,” put in Kathleen. “He told me of his -seeing you, and what he thought of you, almost as soon as your back was -turned. But at that time, of course--things hadn’t happened.” - -“Ah, but he wanted to be kind to me, even then,” the young man broke -forth, with a glow in his eyes. “I felt that in his tone, the very first -time, when I was the young boy at school. Oh, I puzzled my brain very -often about this young English gentleman who liked to talk to me. -And here is a curious thing, that when the Credit Lyonnais gave me my -summons to come to England, it was of him that I thought first of all, -and wondered if he had not some part in it. And then I was so dull--I -come to his own house, and sit at his own table with him as my cousin, -and do not know him at all! It is true that he had no beard then--but -none the less I am ashamed.” He spread his hands out and smiled a -deprecatory gesture at them both as he added: “But then everything has -been upside down in my mind since I came to England. It has been as if -I were going up the side of a straight cliff in a funicular railway--my -heart throbbing in terror, my brain whirling--afraid to look down, or -out, or to realize where I was. But to-day I am happily at the end of -the journey, and the good safe ground is well under my feet--and so I am -not confused any more, but only very, very glad.” - -The elder couple exchanged a frankly delighted smile over the -enthusiast’s head. “You take him for a stroll about the place,” said the -wife. “Perhaps I will come and find you, later on.” - -In obedience to the suggestion, the two men turned, and went off -together across the lawn. - -Emanuel began speaking at once. “My father,” he said, “has given me a -rough outline of what you have seen and heard. In the nature of things, -it could not all be pleasant.” - -“Oh, I have quite forgotten the unhappy parts,” the young man declared. -“I resolved to do that; it would be folly to remember them.” - -“They have their uses, though,” persisted the other. “I wanted you to -start out with just that impression of the family’s seamy side. We have -an immense deal to make up to the people about us, and to humanity in -general, have we Torrs. It seemed to me that you could not realize this -too early in your experience here. What impressions did Caermere itself -make upon you?” - -Christian hesitated a little, to give form to his thoughts. “I am -imagining it in my mind,” he said at last, slowly, and with extended -hands to shape his meaning to the eye, “as a huge canvas, one of the -very biggest. As it happens, there is an unpleasant picture on it now, -but that can be wiped out, covered over, and then on the vast blank -surface a new and splendid picture may be painted--if I have the skill -to do it.” He paused, as his companion nodded comprehension of the -figure, and then added abruptly: “I have not put the question -direct before--but it is really the case that I am to succeed my -grandfather--to be duke of Glastonbury, is it not?” - -“Yes,” answered Emanuel, gravely. “That is the case.” - -“Lord Julius told me to ask you everything,” Christian went on in -defense of his curiosity. “But, grand Dieu! there is so much to ask! -Shall I be a rich man, also? There are dukes in France who can scarcely -give a dinner to a friend--and in Italy who are often in doubt -about even their own dinners. I understand that English dukes are -different--but it has been said to me that my grandfather, for example, -is not a rich man. He would be rich, no doubt, in some other station, -but as a duke he is poor. Shall I also be poor?” - -Emanuel smiled, more, it seemed, to himself than for the benefit of the -young man. With amusing deliberation he took from his pocket a little -oblong book with flexible covers. “Have you ever owned a checkbook?” he -asked drily. - -Christian shook his head. - -“Well, this is yours. It came from London this morning. I have written -here on the back of the first check, on the part that remains in the -book, these figures. They show what the bank holds at your disposal at -the present moment.” - -Christian took the book, and stared with awe at the figures indicated. -“Three thousand pounds! That is to say, seventy-five thousand francs! -But--I do not understand. What portion is this of my entire fortune? -There is more besides--to come at some future period--n’est ce pas?” - -The sum itself had seemed at first glance to be of bewildering -dimensions. Soberer second thoughts, however, told him that he had been -lifted into a social stratum where such an amount might easily come and -go a number of times during one’s life. - -“Well,” Emanuel began, hesitating in turn over his phrases, “strictly -speaking, you have no fortune at all. This money has been placed to -your credit by my father--or if you like, by us both--to put you in a -position of independence for the time being. You are quite free to spend -it as you like. But--this is a somewhat delicate matter to explain--but -we look to you in turn to be more or less guided by us in, say, your -mode of life, your choice of associates and--and so on. Don’t think that -we wish in the least to hamper your individual freedom. I am sure you -will feel that that is not our way. But we have formed very high hopes -indeed for your career and--how shall I make you understand?--it rests a -good deal with us to say how far the realization of these hopes warrants -us in going on. That isn’t plain to you, I see. Well, to put it frankly, -you have nothing of your own, but we turn our money over to you because -we believe in you. If unhappily--let us suppose the very improbable -case--we should find ourselves no longer believing in you, why then we -should feel free to reconsider our financial responsibilities towards -you. That is stating it very baldly--not at all as I should like to have -put it--but it gives you the essence of the situation.” - -They had paused, and Christian regarded him with a troubled face. “Then -if you come not to like me, or if I make mistakes, you take everything -away from me again? I have never heard of a system like that. It seems -to place me in a very strange position.” - -The youth’s mobile countenance expressed such wistful dejection, as he -faltered out these words, that Emanuel hastened to reassure him. - -“No, no,” he urged, putting a brotherly hand on his shoulder, “it is the -fault entirely of the way I explained it. No one will ever take anything -away from you. In all human probability you will live and die a wealthy -and powerful nobleman--and perhaps something a good deal more than that. -But let me show you the situation in another way. You have seen your -grandfather--so I need say little about him. When he had reached the age -of fifty or thereabouts he had come to the end of his resources. Since -the estates were entailed, nothing could be sold or mortgaged, and debts -of all sorts were crowding in upon him and his eldest son, Lord Porlock. -They were at their wits’ end to keep going at all; Porlock could not -hold his head up in London, much less marry, as he was expected to -do. If it had not been for the invention of life insurance, they could -hardly have found money to live from week to week. That was in 1858 -or ’9, when I was two or three years old. It was then that my father -adopted his policy toward the older branch of the family. As you perhaps -know, he was a very rich man. He came forward at this juncture, and -saved the duke and his household from ruin.” - -“That was very noble of him. It is what I should have thought he would -do,” interposed Christian. They had begun walking again. - -“Oh, I don’t know that noble is quite the word,” said Emanuel. “The -element of generosity was not very conspicuous in the transaction. The -truth is that the duke and his son were not people that one could be -generous to. They had to be bound to a hard-and-fast bargain. They -agreed between them to break the entail, so that all the estates could -be dealt with as was deemed best, and bound themselves to sell or -mortgage nothing except to my father, unless with his consent. He on -his side settled seventy thousand pounds on Porlock and his heirs, -thus enabling him to marry, and he not only purchased from the duke the -Somerset properties, of which this is a part, but he bought up his debts -at the sacrifice of a good many thousands of pounds, so that in practice -he became his brother’s only creditor. No doubt there _was_ generosity -in that--since he cut down the rate of interest to something almost -nominal by comparison with the usury that had been going on--but his -motive was practical enough. It was to get complete financial mastery -of the family estates. Nearly forty years have passed since he began; -to-day he holds mortgages on practically every acre. If it were not -for the mine near Coalbrook, which latterly yields the duke a certain -surplus over the outlay at Caermere, my father would probably own it all -outright. Well, you have followed it so far, haven’t you?” - -Christian thoughtfully nodded his head. “These are not affairs that -I have been brought up to understand,” he commented, “but I think I -comprehend. Only this--you speak of your father’s adopted policy; -that means he has a purpose--an aim. The lady at the castle--Lady -Cressage--spoke to me about this, and I wish--” - -“Ah, yes, you met her,” interposed - -Emanuel. “I am not sure she was the best fitted to expound our policy to -you.” - -“Oh, she was very sympathetic,” the young man hastened to insist. “She -had the warmest praises for both you and your father. And I could not -but feel she wished me well, too.” - -Emanuel made no immediate reply, but walked slowly along, revolving -silent thoughts, with a far-away, deliberative look in his eyes. When -he spoke at last, it was to revert with abruptness to the earlier topic. -“The policy, as we are calling it,” he said, “can be put in a nutshell. -We take that kind of pride in the family which impels us to resolve -that, if we cannot induce it to do great things, we will at least -prevent it doing base things. The position which your grandfather -inherited was one of remarkable opportunities, and also of exceptional -responsibilities. He was unfit to do anything with the opportunities, -and as for the responsibilities, he regarded them with only ignorant -contempt. His immediate heirs were very little better. It became a -problem with us, therefore, how best to limit their power for harm. -Money was the one force they could understand and respect, and we have -used it accordingly. I say ‘we’ because as the situation has gradually -developed itself, it is hard to say which part of it is my father’s and -which mine--and still more impossible to imagine what either of us would -have done independently of my mother. I will tell you more about her -sometime. It was she, of course, who brought the money to us, but she -brought much else besides. However, we will not enter upon that at the -moment. Well, suddenly, last summer, the deaths changed everything. -Up to that time, what we had been doing had had, so to speak, only a -negative purpose. We had been keeping unfit people from parading their -unfitness in too scandalously public a fashion. But all at once the -possibility of doing something positive--something which might be very -fine indeed--was opened up before us. As you know now, we were aware of -your existence, but there were inquiries to be made as to--well, as to -the formal validity of your claim. After that, there was some slight -delay in tracing your whereabouts--but now you are here, at last.” - -“Now I am here, at last!” Christian repeated softly. He looked up into -the sky; somewhere from the blue an invisible lark filled the air with -its bubbling song. He drew a long breath of amazed content, then turned -to his companion. - -“That men like you and your father should be making plans and sacrifices -for one like myself,” he said--“it is hard for me to realize it. There -is nothing for me to say but this--that I will spare no thought or labor -to be what you want me to be. And you will make it all clear to me, will -you not? in every detail what it is I am to do?” - -“Oh, hardly to that length,” said Emanuel. He smiled once more--that -grave, sweet, introspective smile of his, which suggested humor as -little as it did flippancy--and spoke more freely, as if conscious that -the irksome part of his task lay behind him. “We dream a great dream of -you, but it would be folly to attempt to dictate to you at every stage -of its realization. That would do you more harm than good, and it would -be unfair to both parties, into the bargain. No, what I desire is to -show you the practical workings of a system, and to fill you with the -principles and spirit of that system. I think it will interest you -deeply, and I hope you will see your way to making it, in its essentials -at least, your own. It has taken me many years to build it up, and I -can’t pretend to suppose that you will grasp it in a week or a year. But -you will see at least the aim I have in view, and you will get a notion -of how I progress toward it. I shall be satisfied, for the time being, -merely to commend it to your judgment as the aim which you might do well -to set before you. It occurs to me to ask you: have you decided opinions -in politics?” - -Christian shrugged his shoulders diffidently. “In France my friends were -of many parties, but since I thought never of myself as a Frenchman, -I did not take sides with any of them. My brother Salvator is very -advanced indeed; he is a Free Mason, and his friends are Carbonari in -Italy and Socialists in France. But to me, these things had not much -meaning. I said always to myself that I was English, and I read journals -from London when I could, to learn about English parties. But it was -not easy to learn. I stood in the streets often at Cannes in the early -spring to see Mr. Gladstone when he passed, and to take off my hat to -him, because I read that he was the greatest Englishman. But then I -talked with English people on the Riviera about him, and they all cursed -and ridiculed him, and told me that in England no respectable -people would so much as speak to him. So it is very hard to know the -truth--when you are born and bred in another country.” - -“Even those who are born here do not invariably agree upon definitions -of the truth,” commented Emanuel. “But I was not speaking of parties -or politicians, so called. Politics, in its bigger sense, means -the housekeeping of humanity--the whole mass of interests that the -individuals of the human race have in common. But I don’t want to -generalize to you. Let us stop here for a few minutes; I have brought -you to this point that you may get the view.” - -Their leisurely stroll through pastures and meadows, and latterly -across a strip of grassy common dotted with sheep, had brought them by -a gradual ascent to the summit of a knoll, crowned by a group of -picturesquely gnarled and twisted old trees, the boughs of which -were all pointed backward in the direction whence the men had come. -Christian, coming to the ridge and halting, confronted the unexpected -breeze, steady and sustained as an ocean swell, which he could hear -murmuring through the land-ward bent branches overhead. In front of him, -at the distance of a stone’s throw, the sloping heath abruptly ended in -what for the instant he supposed was the sky-line--and then saw to be -a vast glittering expanse of water, stretching off to an illimitable -horizon. - -“Oh, the sea!” he cried out, in surprised delight. “I had never dreamed -that we were near it.” - -He could distinguish now the faint intermittent rustle of the waves on -the hidden beach far below. Perhaps a mile out the profile of a craft -under full sail shone magically white in the sunlight. He knew it to -be a yacht, and began watching it with an intuitive appreciation of its -beauty of line and carriage. Then in a sudden impulse he swung around -and faced his companion. “I do not like to look at it,” he broke out -nervously. “I am afraid to see the ghosts of those cousins who were -drowned--killed to make room for me. Where their yacht went down on the -rocks--was that close by here?” - -“At least sixty miles away--in that direction,” and Emanuel gave an -indifferent nod towards the west. “I wouldn’t encourage ghosts of any -sort, if I were you, but theirs would be least of all worth while. I -wanted you to look about you from here--not specially seaward, but in -all directions. There is a small village at the water’s edge, almost -directly under our feet, which can’t be seen from above--we will get -round to it, perhaps to-morrow--but look in other directions. As far -as you can see along the coast to right and left--and inland, too--the -system I spoke of is in operation. It is all my land. Get the scope of -it into your mind. Roughly speaking, you can see over some nine or ten -thousand acres. Imagine that multiplied by seven or eight, and you will -have, an idea of the territory that your grandfather still owns--at -least nominally.” - -Christian kept a rapt gaze upon the prospect, and strove in silence to -grasp the meaning of the words. - -“On the land that you see before you,” Emanuel went on, “in one capacity -or another, nearly two thousand human beings have homes. On your -grandfather’s estates there must be nearly if not quite ten times that -number. Think what this means. You will be in a position to affect the -prosperity, the happiness, the well-being, body and soul, of fifteen or -twenty thousand people. It is a little nation--a small kingdom--of which -you will be the head.” - -The young man turned slowly and forced himself to look out upon the -deep, but still said nothing. - -“This position you may make much of, or little, or worse than nothing at -all,” the other continued. “It is a simple enough matter to put the work -and the responsibility upon other shoulders, if you choose to do it. -Many very respectable men born to such positions do wash their hands -of the worry and labor in just that fashion. They lead idle lives, they -amuse themselves, they take all that is yielded to them and give nothing -in return--and because they avoid open grossness and scandal their -behavior attracts no particular attention. In fact, it is quite taken -for granted that they have done the natural thing. Being born to -leisure, why should they toil? Possessing the title to wealth and -dominion and the deference of those about them, why should they be -expected to go to work and earn these things which they already own? -That is the public view. Mine is very different. I hold that a man who -has been born to a position of power among his fellows, and neglects the -duties of that position while he accepts its rewards, is disgraced. It -is as dishonest as any action for which less fortunate persons go to -prison.” - -“Yes, that is my feeling, also,” said Christian in low, earnest tones. -“It’s all true--but--” - -“Ah, yes, the ‘But,’” commented Emanuel, with his perceptive smile. “Now -let me explain to you that I have met this ‘But,’ and done battle with -it, and put it under my feet. I began planning for this struggle when I -was very young. All the good people I knew admitted frankly the evils -I speak of; they saw them quite clearly, and talked with eloquence and -fine feeling about them, and at the finish they said ‘But!’--and changed -the subject, and everything went on as before. It became apparent to me -that this eternal ‘But’ is the enemy of the human race. There it -stood forever in the path, blocking every attempt of benevolent and -right-minded people to advance in real progress. So I said: at least one -life shall be given to the task of proving that there need be no ‘But.’ -I have been working here now for years, upon lines which were carefully -thought out during other years of preparation. The results are in most -respects better than I could have expected; they are certainly many-fold -better than any one who had not my faith could have believed possible. -Sundry limitations in the system I have, no doubt, discovered. Some -things which seemed axiomatic on paper do not work themselves out the -same way in practice--but as a whole the system is recognized now as -having justified itself. There was an article in the ‘Fortnightly’ on -it last November which I will give you to read. I have written some -chapters upon certain phases of it, myself, which you might also look -at. But the principal thing is that you should see the system itself in -full operation.” - -“I am eager to begin,” declared the young man, with fervor. - -They had turned by tacit consent, and were sauntering back again over -the short, soft grass of the heath. - -Emanuel paused and picked from a furze-bush a belated spray of bright -yellow blossoms. As he continued his walk, he pulled one of these -flowers to pieces, and attentively examined the fragments. - -“I gather that you are much interested in flowers,” said Christian, to -make conversation. - -The other laughed briefly, as he threw the stuff aside, then sighed a -little. “Too much so,” he answered. “I wish I had the courage to give it -up altogether. It murders my work. I spend sometimes whole hours in my -greenhouses when I ought to be doing other things. The worst of it is -that I realize perfectly the criminal waste of time--and still I persist -in it. There is something quite mysterious in plants--especially if you -have grown them yourself. You can go and stand among them by the hour, -and look from one to another, with your mind entirely closed to thoughts -of any description. I used to assume that this mental rest had a -recuperative value, but as I get older I suspect that it is a kind -of lethargy instead--a mere blankness that can grow upon one. I find -myself, for example, going incessantly to see certain pans of my own -hybridized seedlings--and staring aimlessly at them till I get quite -empty-headed. Now, I am too busy a man to be able to afford that.” - -“But if you get pleasure from it,” expostulated Christian, gently. - -“We have no right to think of our pleasure,” Emanuel asserted with -decision, “while any duty remains unperformed. And rightly considered, -duty _is_ pleasure, the very highest and noblest pleasure. The trouble -is that even while our minds quite recognize this, our senses play us -tricks. For example, when I saw how much time I was wasting on flowers, -I tried to turn the impulse into a useful channel. The blossoms of fruit -trees, for instance; the growth and flowering and seeding processes of -melons and broad-beans and potatoes and so on, are just as interesting -and worthy of study, and they mean value to humanity into the bargain. -So I said I would concentrate my attention upon them, instead--but there -was some perverse element in me somewhere; I couldn’t do it. The mere -knowledge that these excellent vegetables were of practical utility -threw me off altogether. They bored me--so I went shamefacedly back to -the roses and fuchsias and dahlias.” - -“They have wonderful dahlias at Caermere,” interposed Christian. “I -walked for a long time among them with Lady Cressage, and she told me -all their names. Poor lady, she is very sad, in spite of the flowers. -I--I think I should like to say it to you--I find myself very sorry for -her. And--such a bewildering number of things are to be done for me--is -there not something that can be done for her?” - -Emanuel walked slowly on in silence for some moments, regarding his -companion’s profile out of the corner of his eye, his own face showing -signs of preoccupation meantime. When at last he spoke, the question -seemed to have lost itself in convolution of his thoughts. - -“Considering their northern exposure,” he said meditatively, “they grow -an extraordinary amount of fruit at Caermere.” - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -At the end of a fortnight Christian found himself able to confront the -system, and even look it in the face, with a certain degree of mental -composure. He was far from imagining that he had comprehended it all, -but the thought of it no longer made his brain whirl by the magnitude of -its scope, or frightened him by its daring. The implication that he -was expected to do still more with it than Emanuel, its inventor and -evangel, had done, possessed its terrors, no doubt, but one is not -young for nothing. The buoyancy of youth, expanding genially amid these -delightful surroundings, thrust these shadows off into the indefinite -future, whenever they approached. - -This system need not detain us long, or unnerve us at all. Lord Julius -had spoken figuratively of it as the Pursuit of Happiness; perhaps that -remains its best definition. - -Like other systems, it was capable of explanation by means of formulas; -but the most lucid and painstaking presentation of these could not hope -to convey complete meaning to the mind. Stated in words, Emanuel’s plan -hardly appealed to the imagination. Save for a few innovations, not -of primary importance, it proceeded by arguments entirely familiar to -everybody, and which indeed none disputes. Most of its propositions were -the commonplaces of human speech and thought. The value of purity, of -cheerfulness, of loyalty, of mercy--this is not gainsaid by any one. The -conception of duty as the mainspring of human action is very old indeed. -For this reason, doubtless, Emanuel’s efforts to expound his System -by means of books had failed to rivet public attention. He could only -insist afresh upon what was universally conceded, and Mr. Tupper before -him had done enough of this to last several generations. - -Viewed in operation, however, the System was another matter. Our -immemorial platitudes, once clothed in flesh and blood, informed with -life, and set in motion under the sympathetic control of a master mind, -became unrecognizable. - -Emanuel as a lad had thought much of the fact that he was of the blood -of the Spinozas. When he learned Latin in his early boyhood, the task -was sweetened and ennobled to his mind by the knowledge that it would -bring him into communion with the actual words of the great man, his -kinsman. Later, when he approached with veneration the study of these -words, the discovery that they meant little or nothing to him was almost -crushing in its effects. Eventually it dawned upon his brain that the -philosopher’s abstractions and speculations were as froth on the top -of the water; the great fact was the man himself--the serene, lofty, -beautiful character which shines out at us from its squalid setting like -a flawless gem. To be like Spinoza, but to give his mind to the real -rather than the unreal, shaped itself as the goal of his ambitions. - -It was at this period that he became impressed by the thought that -he was also of the blood of the Torrs. On the one side the poor -lens-grinder with the soul of an archangel; on the other the line of -dull-browed, heavy-handed dukes, with a soul of any sort discoverable -among them nowhere. Slowly the significance of the conjunction revealed -itself to him. To take up the long-neglected burden of responsibilities -and possibilities of the Torrs, with the courage and pure spirit of a -Spinoza--there lay the duty of his life, plainly marked before him. - -Ensuing years of reading, travel and reflection gave him the frame, so -to speak, in which to put this picture. He had from his childhood been -greatly attracted by the glimpses which his father’s library gave him of -what is called the Mediaeval period. As he grew older, this taste became -a passion. Where predilection ended and persuasion began, it would be -hard to say, but when he had arrived at man’s estate, and stood upon -the threshold of his life-work, it was with the deeply rooted conviction -that the feudal stage had offered mankind its greatest opportunities -for happiness and the higher life. That the opportunities had been -misunderstood, wasted, thrown away, proved nothing against the soundness -of his theory. He had masses of statistics as to wages, rent-rolls, -endowments and the like at his fingers’ ends, to show that even on its -reverse side, the medieval shield was not so black as it was painted. -As for the other side--it was the age of the cathedrals, of the Book -of Kells, of the great mendicant orders, of the saintly and knightly -ideals. It was in its flowering time that craftsmanship attained its -highest point, and the great artisan guilds, proud of their talents and -afraid of nothing but the reproach of work ill-done, gave the world its -magnificent possessions among the applied arts. Sovereigns and princes -vied with one another to do honor to the noblest forms of art, and -to bow to the intellect of an Erasmus, who had not even the name of a -father to bear. Class caste was the rule of the earth, yet the son of a -peasant like Luther could force himself to the top, and compel emperors -to listen to him, more readily then than now. The bishop-princes of -feudal England were as often as not the sons of swineherds or starveling -clerks, whereas now no such thing could conceivably happen to the -hierarchy. Above all things, it was the age of human character. Men -like Thomas More, with their bewildering circle of attainments and their -extraordinary individual force, were familiar products. In a thousand -other directions, Emanuel saw convincing proofs that mankind then and -there had come closest to the possibilities of a golden age. True, it -had wandered off miserably again, into all manner of blind lanes -and morasses, until it floundered now in a veritable Dismal Swamp of -individualism, menaced on the one side by the millionaire slave-hunter, -on the other by the spectral anarchist, and still the fools in its ranks -cried out ceaselessly for further progress. Oh, blind leaders of the -blind! - -No. Emanuel saw clearly that humanity could right itself by retracing -its steps, and going back to the scene of its mistaken choice of roads. -It had taken the wrong turning when it forsook the path of coherent and -interdependent organization--that marvelously intricate yet perfectly -logical system called feudalism, in which everybody from king to serf -had service to render and service to receive, and mutual duty was the -law of the entire mechanism. - -Though Christian heard much more than this, enough has been said to -indicate the spirit in which Emanuel had embarked upon the realization -of his plan. The results, as Christian wonderingly observed them, were -remarkable. - -The estate over which the System reigned was compact in shape, and -enjoyed the advantage of natural boundaries, either of waste moorland or -estuaries, which shut it off from the outside world, and simplified the -problem of developing its individual character. In area it comprised -nearly fifteen square miles, and upon it, as has been said, lived some -two thousand people. About half of these were employed in, or dependent -upon, the industrial occupations Emanuel had introduced; the others -were more directly connected with the soil. Whether artisans or farmers, -however, they lived almost without exception in some one of the six -little villages on the property. - -In each of these hamlets there were conserved one or more old timbered -houses; the newer cottages had been built, not in servile imitation -of these, but after equally old models, no two quite alike. As the -“Fortnightly Review” article said, if the System had done nothing else -it had “gathered for the instruction and delight of the intelligent -observer almost a complete collection of examples of early English -domestic architecture of the humbler sort.” The numerous roads upon the -estate were kept in perfect order, and were for the most part lined with -trees; where they passed through the villages they were of great width, -with broad expanses of turf, shaded by big oaks or elms, some of which -had been moved from other spots only a few years before, to the admiring -surprise of the neighborhood. Each village had a small church edifice of -its own, quaintly towered and beautiful in form, and either possessing -or simulating skillfully the graces of antiquity as well. Beside -the church was a building presenting some one or another type of the -tolsey-house of old English towns, devoted to the communal uses of the -villagers. About the church and the tolsey was the public garden and -common, with a playground with swings and bars for the children at -the back--and there was no grave or tombstone in sight anywhere. A -hospitable, ivy-clad, low-gabled inn, with its long side to the street, -was a conspicuous feature on each village green. - -Christian retained a vivid recollection of entering one of these taverns -with Emanuel, very early in his tour of observation. Above the broad, -open door, as they went in, swung the cumbrous, brightly painted sign -of “The Torr Arms.” Two or three laborers in corduroys were seated on -benches at the table, with tankards before them; they dragged their -heavily shod feet together on the sanded floor, and stood up, when they -saw Emanuel, touching their hats with an air of affectionate humility -as he smiled and nodded to them. There was a seemingly intelligent and -capable landlady in the bar, who drew the two glasses of beer which -Emanuel asked for, and answered cheerfully the questions he put to her. -Two brightfaced young women, very neatly dressed, were seated sewing in -this commodious bar, and they joined in the conversation which Emanuel -raised. Christian gathered from what he heard and saw that his cousin -took an active interest in the fortunes of this tavern and of both its -inmates and its patrons, and that the interest and liking were warmly -reciprocated. The discovery gave him a more genial conception of -Emanuel’s character than he had hitherto entertained. - -“That is one of my most satisfactory enterprises,” Emanuel had said when -they came out. “We brew our own beer, as well as the few cordials which -take the place of spirits, and I really feel sure it’s the best beer -obtainable in England. I am very proud of it--but I am proud of -these taverns of ours too. That was one of the hardest problems to be -solved--but the solution satisfies me better, perhaps, than anything -else I have done. Nobody ever dreams of getting drunk in these ‘pubs’ -of ours. Nobody dreams of being ashamed to be seen going into them or -coming out. The women and children enter them just as freely, if they -have occasion to do so, as they would a dairy or grocer’s shop. They -are the village clubs, so to speak, and they are constantly open to the -whole village, as much as the church or the tolsey. But here is one of -my parsons. I want you to take note of him--and I will tell you about -his part in the System afterward. He is as interesting a figure in it as -my publican.” - -A tall, fresh-faced, fair young man approached them as Emanuel spoke, -and was presented to the stranger as Father William. Christian observed -him narrowly, as he had been bidden, but beyond the fact that he was -clad in a somewhat outlandish fashion, and seemed a merry-hearted -fellow, there was nothing noteworthy in the impression he produced. He -stood talking for a few minutes, and then, with affable adieux, passed -on. - -“That is wholly my invention,” commented Emanuel, as they resumed their -walk. “There is one of them in each of the six villages, and a -seventh who has a kind of general function--and really I have been -extraordinarily fortunate with them all. They come from my college at -Oxford--Swithin’s--and when you think that twenty years ago it was the -most bigoted hole in England, the change is most miraculous. These young -men fell in with my ideas like magic. I don’t suppose you know much -about the Church of England. Well, it drives with an extremely loose -rein. You can do almost anything you like inside it, if you go about the -thing decorously. I didn’t even have the trouble with the bishop which -might have been expected. These young men--my curates, we may call -them--have among themselves a kind of guild or confraternity. -They are called Father William, or Father Alfred; they wear the sort of -habit you have seen; they are quite agreed upon an irreducible minimum -of dogmatic theology, and an artistic elaboration of the ritual, and, -above all, upon an active life consecrated to good works. They have -their own central chapter-house, where they live when they choose and -feel like enjoying one another’s society, but each has his own village, -for the moral and intellectual health of which he feels responsible. -Without their constant and very capable oversight, the System would have -a good many ragged edges, I’m afraid. But what they do is wonderful. -They have made a study of all the different temperaments and natures -among the people. They know just how to smooth away possible friction -here, to encourage dormant energy there, to keep the whole thing -tight and clean and sound. They specially watch the development of the -children, and make careful notes of their qualities and capacities. They -decide which are to be fully educated, and which are to be taught only -to read and do sums.” - -“I am not sure that I understand,” put in Christian. “Is not universal -education a part of your plan?” - -Emanuel smiled indulgently. “There was never grosser nonsense talked -in this world,” he said, with the placid air of one long since familiar -with the highest truths, “or more mischievous rubbish into the bargain, -than this babble about universal education. The thing we call modern -civilization is wrong at so many points that it is hard to say where -it sins most, but often I think this is its worst offense. The race -has gone fairly mad over this craze for stuffing unfit brains with -encumbering and harmful twaddle. In the Middle Ages they knew better. -The monks of a locality picked out the children whose minds would repay -cultivation, and they taught these as much as it was useful for them to -know. If the system was in honest operation, it mattered nothing whether -these children belonged to the lord of the manor or the poorest peasant. -Assume, for example, that there was a nobleman and one of his lowest -dependents, and that each of them had a clever son and a dull one. The -monks would take the two clever ones, and educate them side by side--and -if in the end the base born boy had the finer mind of the two, and the -stronger character, he would become the bishop or the abbot or the judge -in preference to his noble school-fellow. On the other hand, the two -dull boys were not wearied by schooling from which they could get no -profit. The thick-headed young-noble, very often without even learning -his alphabet, was put on a horse, and given a suit of armor and a sword; -the heavy-witted young churl was given a leathern shirt and a pike or -a bow, and bidden to follow behind that horse’s tail--and off the two -happy dunces went, to fulfill in a healthful and intelligent fashion -their manifest destiny. Those were the rational days when human -institutions were made to fit human beings--instead of this modern -lunacy of either shaving down and mangling the human being, or -else blowing him up like a bladder, to make him appear to fit the -institutions. Of course, you must understand, I don’t say that this -medieval system worked uniformly, or perfectly, even at its best--and, -of course, for a variety of reasons, it eventually failed to work -altogether. But its principle, its spirit, was the right one--and it is -only by getting back to it, and making another start with the light of -experience to guide us this time, that we can achieve real progress. -Fortunately, my parsons entered fully, and quite joyfully, into my -feelings on this point. They couldn’t have labored harder, or better, to -make the System a success if it had been of their own invention.” - -“I have seen English parsons often,” said Christian, vaguely. “They are -always married, n’est ce pas?” - -“Oh, no--no!” answered Emanuel, with impatient emphasis. “That would -never do here. It is difficult enough to find men fit to carry on the -task we have undertaken. It would be asking too much of the miracle to -expect also unique women who would bring help rather than confusion to -such men. Oh, no--we take no risks of that sort. Celibacy is the very -basis of their guild. It is very lucky that their own tastes run in that -direction--because in any case it would have had to be insisted upon.” - -Christian wondered if he ought to put into words the comment which rose -in his mind. “But you, and your father,” he ventured--“you personally--” - -“Ah,” interposed Emanuel, with a rapt softening of expression in face -and tone, “when women like my mother and my wife appear--that lifts us -away from the earth and things earthly, altogether. But they are as rare -as a great poem--or a comet. If they were plentiful there would be no -need of any System. The human race would never have fallen into the mud. -We should all be angels.” - -After a little pause he added: “The woman question here has been a very -hard nut to crack. We have made some progress with it--but it is still -one of the embarrassments. Of course there are others. The restless -young men who leave the estate, for example, and having made a failure -of it elsewhere, come back to make mischief here: That is an awkward -subject to deal with. The whole problem of our relations to outsiders -is full of perplexities. To prevent intercourse with them is out of the -question. They come and go as they like--and of course my own people are -equally free. I can’t see my way to any restrictions which wouldn’t do -more harm than good--if indeed they could be enforced at all. I have to -rely entirely upon the good sense and good feeling of my people, to show -them how much better off they are in every way than any other community -they know of, and how important it is for them to keep themselves to -themselves, and continue to benefit by their good fortune. If they fail -to understand this, I am quite powerless to coerce them. And that is -where the women give us trouble. It is the rarest thing for us to have -any difficulty with the men. They comprehend their advantages, they take -a warm interest in their work, and we have developed among them a really -fine communal spirit. They are proud of the System, and fond of it, and -I can trust them to defend it and stand by it. But this isn’t true of -all the women. You have always the depressing consciousness that there -are treacherous malcontents among them, who smile to your face but are -planning disturbance behind your back. It is not so much a matter of -evil natures as of inferior brains. Let a soldier in a red coat come -along, for example--an utterly ignorant and vulgar clown from heaven -knows what gutter or pigsty--and we have girls here who would secretly -value his knowledge of the world, and his advice upon things in general, -above _mine!_ How _can_ you deal with that sort of mind?” - -Christian smiled drolly, and disclaimed responsibility with a playful -outward gesture of his hands. “It is not my subject,” he declared. - -“But it has to be faced,” insisted Emanuel. “My wife has devoted -incredible labor and pains to it--and on the surface of things she has -succeeded wonderfully. I say the surface, because that is the sinister -peculiarity of the affair; you can never be sure what is underneath. -When you go up to London, you must do as I have done since I was a -youth: take a walk of a bright afternoon along Regent Street and Oxford -Street, where the great millinery and drapers’ and jewelers’ shops are, -and study the faces of the thousands of well-dressed and well-connected -women whom you will see passing from one show-window to another. -There will be many beautiful faces, and many more which are deeply -interesting. But one note you will catch in them all--or at least in the -vast majority--the note of furtiveness. Once you learn to recognize -it you will find it everywhere--the suggestion of something hidden, -something artfully wrapped up out of sight. God knows, I don’t suggest -they all have guilty secrets--or for that matter secrets of any sort. -But they have the trained facial capacity for concealment; it is their -commonest accomplishment; their mothers’ fingers have been busy kneading -their features into this mask of pretense from their earliest girlhood.” - -“Would you not find it also on the men’s faces?” demanded Christian, -with a dissolving mental vision of sly masculine visages before him as -he spoke. “That is to say, when once you had learned to detect the male -variation of the mask? And even if it is so, then is not the reason of -it this--that men have long been their own masters, making their own -laws, doing freely what they choose, and there is no one before whom -they must dissemble?” - -Emanuel had not the temperament which is attracted by contradiction. He -listened to his cousin’s eager words, seemed to ponder them for a space, -and then began talking of something else. - -Those whom Emanuel called “his people” were for the most part -descendants of families who had been on the soil for centuries--since -before the Torrs came into possession of it. In a few cases, their stock -had been transplanted from the Shropshire estates of the same house. -Emanuel had discerned it to be an essential part of the System that -its benefits should be reaped by those to whom his family had historic -responsibilities. The reflection that the Torrs in Somerset only went -back at the farthest to Henry VIII.’s time, and became large landlords -there so recently as Charles II.’s reign, saddened him when he dwelt -upon it. He would have given much to have been able to establish -the System at Caermere instead, where the relations between lord and -retainer had subsisted from the dawn of tribal history. He dwelt a good -deal upon this aspect of the matter in his talks with Christian. “If you -take up the idea,” he would say, “you will have the enormous advantage -of really ancient ties between you and your people. Here in Somerset -we are, relatively speaking, new-comers--merely lucky bridegrooms or -confiscating interlopers of a few generations’ standing. I have had -to create my feudal spirit here out of whole cloth. But you at -Caermere--you will find it ready-made to your hand.” - -Emanuel had created much more besides. - -The villages hummed with the exotic industries he had brought into -being. The estate produced most of its raw material--food, wool, hides, -peat for domestic fuel, stone in several varieties for building, and -numerous products of the sea. It drew coal, wood and iron across the -channel from the Caermere properties. The effort of the System had been -from the outset to expand its self-sufficiency. Christian saw now the -remarkable results of this effort on both sides. One village had its -leather workers, beginning with the tanners at one end and finishing -with the most skillful artificers--glovers, saddlers and shoemakers--at -the other. A second village possessed its colony of builders--masons -and carpenters alike--and with them guiding architects and designers of -furniture and carving. Here also were the coopers, who served not only -the brewery, but the butter-makers. These latter formed in turn a link -with the great dairy establishment, which had for its flank the farming -lands. The gardens, nurseries, orchards and long glasshouses were -nearest to Emanuel’s residence, and their workers made up the largest of -the hamlets. This was in other senses the metropolis of the state, for -here were the printing-press, the bindery, the chemical laboratory, -the electric-light plant, the photographic and drawing departments, the -clergy house and the estate office. The smallest of the villages was in -the center of the stock farm, where scientific breeding and experimental -acclimatization had attained results of which the staid “Field” spoke in -almost excited terms. - -But to Christian’s mind by far the most interesting village was that -nestled on the sea-shore, under the protection of the cliffs. When he -had once seen this place, his cousin found if difficult to get him away -from it, or to enlist his attention for other branches of the System. -There was a small but sufficient wharf here, to which colliers of a fair -burden could have access; shelter was secured for the home-built fishing -craft in the little harbor by means of a breakwater. The red-roofed, -gray-stone cottages clustered along the winding roadway which climbed -the cliff made a picture fascinating to the young man’s eye, but his -greater delight was in something not at first visible. Around a bend in -the cove, out of sight of the village, was a factory for the manufacture -of glass, and beyond this were pointed out to him other buildings, near -the water’s edge, which he was told were used for curing, pickling and -otherwise preserving fish. “We make our own glass for the gardens and -forcing houses, ‘and for all the dwellings on the estate,” Emanuel had -told him, “and for another use as well.” - -The statement had not aroused his curiosity at the moment, but a little -later, when he confronted the embodiment of its meaning, he murmured -aloud in his astonishment. He found himself walking in a spacious -corridor, beneath a roof of semi-opaque, greenish glass, and between -walls that seemed of solid crystal, stretching onward as far as the eye -could reach. A bar of sunlight, striking through aslant from somewhere -outside, painted a central glowing prismatic patch of color, which -reflected itself in countless wavering gleams of orange and purple all -about him. A curious moving glitter, as of fountains noiselessly at -play, traversed the upper surface of these glass walls, and flashed -confusion at his first scrutiny. Then he gave a schoolboy’s shout of joy -and rushed forward to the nearest side. He was in a giant aquarium--and -these were actual fishes of the sea swimming placidly before him! Even -as he stared in bewildered pleasure, with his nose flattened against the -glass, there lounged toward him, across the domed back of a king-crab, -the biggest conger he had ever imagined to himself. He put up a hand -instinctively to ward off the advance of the impassive eel--then laughed -aloud for glee. - -“Oh, this is worth all the rest!” he cried to Emanuel. - -“Yes, good idea, isn’t it?” said the other. “It was my wife who -suggested it. We had started making our own glass--and really this was -a most intelligent way of using it. In time I think it will be of great -value, too. We have some clever men down here, from time to time, to -study the specimens. I’m sorry no one is here for the moment. I thought -at first of building a residence for them, and putting it all at their -disposal in a regular way as a kind of marine observatory, like that at -Naples. But after all, it would hardly be fair to the system. My first -duty is to my own people, and we’ve got some young men of our own who -are making good use of it. There are a hundred or more of these tanks, -and we are fitting up electrical machinery to get automatic control -of the water supply, and to regulate the temperature more exactly. But -beyond the spectacle of the fishes themselves--our people make holiday -excursions here every fortnight or so--and certain things we learn about -food and fecundation and so on, I don’t know that there’s much to be -said for the practical utility of this department. Further on you will -see the oyster and mussel beds, and the lobsters and crabs. I attach -much more importance to the experiments we are making out there. There -seems almost no limit to what can be done in those fields, now that -we have learned how to go to work. It is as simple a matter to rear -lobsters as it is to rear chickens.” - -“But it is all wonderful!” cried Christian, once more. “But tell -me--this costs a great sum of money. I am afraid to think how much. Is -it your hope--shall you ever get a profit from it?” - -Emanuel smiled. “There is no question of profits,” he explained, gently. -“The System as a whole supports itself--or rather is entirely capable of -doing so. The capital that I have spent in putting the System upon its -feet, so to speak, I count as nothing. It belonged to the people who had -been with us all these centuries and I have merely restored it to them. -In the eyes of the law it is all mine, and from that point of view I am -a much richer man than I was before the System began. But in practice -it belongs to all my people. I take enough to live as befits my -station; each of the others has enough to maintain him in _his_ station, -comfortably and honorably. Whatever the surplus may be, that is devoted -to the objects which we all have in common. You see it is simplicity -itself.” - -“But that is like my brother Salvator’s doctrine,” said Christian. -“It is socialism, is it not?” Emanuel’s fine brows drew together in an -impatient frown. “Please do not use that word,” he said, with a shade of -annoyance in his tone. “The very sound of it affronts my ears. Nothing -vexes me more than to have my work unthinkingly coupled with that -monstrous imposture. If you will think of it, I am more opposed to what -is called socialism than anybody else on earth. I have elaborated the -one satisfactory system, on lines absolutely opposed to it. I furnish -the best weapon for fighting and slaying that pernicious delusion that -the whole world offers. So you see, I have a right to protest when -people confuse me with my bitterest antagonist.” - -“Pardon!” said Christian, with humility. “I am so badly informed upon -all these matters!” - -“Ah, well, you will understand them perfectly, all in good time,” his -cousin reassured him in a kindly way. - -Christian drew a furtive sigh as they moved along. To his fancy the -large fishes in the tanks regarded him with a sympathetic eye. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -It has done Emanuel a world of good to have you here,” said Kathleen, -on the morning of Christian’s leave-taking. “Of course it has been a -delight to us both--but he has had a personal benefit from it, too. -He works too hard. He carries such a burden of details about in his -mind--by day and by night, for he sleeps badly and is forever dreaming -of his work--that companionship with some new and attractive mind is of -the greatest rest and help to him. And he is very fond of you.” - -Christian nodded gratified acknowledgment of the words and their spirit, -with a glow in his dark eyes. In little more than an hour he would be -on his way to London--that mighty, almost fabulous goal of his lifelong -dreams. He was already dressed for the journey, in a traveling-suit of -rough, fawn-colored cloth, and as he sat at ease in the breakfast-room -with his cousin’s wife, his glance wandered very often from her face -to a pleased contemplation of these garments. They were what he -individually liked best in the wonderful collection of clothes for which -a fashionable tailor had come from London to measure him, and which were -this moment being packed by the man up-stairs in bags and portmanteaus -equally new. The tweeds enabled him to feel more like an Englishman than -he had succeeded in doing before. - -He smiled diffidently at her. “I am so excited about going,” he said, -his voice wavering between exuberance and appeal--“and yet I ought to be -thinking of nothing but my sorrow in leaving you dear people. But that -will come to me soon enough--in a storm of homesickness--when once I -find myself really alone.” - -“Oh, I’ll not deny we expect a _little_ homesickness,” she replied to -him, cheerfully--“but it must not be enough to at all take the edge off -your spirits. Oh, you’ll be vastly entertained and interested by all -you see and hear. Young Lord Lingfield--you’ll be seeing him to-night -at dinner--he will be greatly pleased to take you about, and properly -introduce you; He will do it better than any other we can think of. He -is not by any means an intellectual gladiator, but he is good-looking -and amiable and he goes everywhere.” - -“He is my relation, too, I think Emanuel said?” - -“Let’s work it out--his grandfather’s sister was your grandmother. Yes, -that is it. She was the Lady Clarissa Poynes, the sister of the old earl -of Chobham, who used to wear the blue coat and brass buttons to the -end of his days. So she would be the aunt of the present earl, and -the grand-aunt of young Lingfield. You stand in exactly the same -relationship to Lord Lingfield that you would to a son of Emanuel’s--if -he had one, poor man!” - -Christian had long since become sensible of the pathos which colored -these references to the childlessness of the house. A tender instinct -impelled him to hasten a diversion. - -“And how strange it is!” he cried. “They are as close to me, these -people, in blood as Emanuel is--and yet I care nothing for them -whatever. I shall meet them, and know them, and not feel that I am bound -to them at all--whereas Emanuel is like a brother to me, whom I have -been with and loved all my life. And you,” he added, with a smile in his -eyes--“you are more than any sister to me.” - -“Well, then, let me talk to you like a sister,” she rejoined. - -He thought he had not seen her before in precisely the mood which was -discernible in her face and tone this morning. Outwardly she was as -gay and light-hearted as ever, and certainly she had not seemed on any -previous day to come so near being beautiful as well. The sense of sheer -pleasure in being where she was, in listening to her and looking’ -at her, and holding her affectionately bright attention for his own -thoughts, was peculiarly strong in him to-day. But there was also the -consciousness of a new gravity in her attitude toward him--a kind of -yearning apprehension of dangers threatening him. He saw again in her -eyes when she looked at him that likeness to his mother’s glance--a -wistfully sad glance as he most often recalled it. And yet Kathleen -smiled merrily with it all, when occasion required. - -“You are entering upon the great experience now,” she said to him: “I -think it was very wise of Emanuel to show you first what we may call -his ideal state of society. By all the rules, it ought to help you -to understand in the right way what you will see of the society -which--well, which isn’t in an ideal state. But there are certain things -which get to be understood, not so much by brains, as by years. That -is to say, the very cleverest youth may not be able to see, in this one -respect, what is plain enough to most dull persons at forty. Emanuel -tells me that he has talked with you about women in general.” - -“He does not like them very much,” said Christian, laughingly. - -She twisted the corners of her mouth in a droll little grimace, which -seemed to express approval of his mirth, and something more besides. - -“He takes them with tremendous seriousness,” she answered. “That is his -way with everything. He makes all sorts of classifications--the bigger -they are and the more complicated the better he likes them--and then he -treats each one as a problem, and he worries at it with all his energy -until he works out a satisfactory solution. It is only in that sense -that he has a grievance against women. He has proceeded upon the theory -that the sex is a unit, for philosophical purposes at least, and that -he ought to be able to get at the rules which govern its actions. But we -continue to baffle him,” she added, again with the playful curl of the -lips. - -“Oh, you--you are not in the problem,” protested Christian. “For you -and his mother he has only the veneration one gives to one’s favorite -saints.” - -“His mother was a great woman,” said Kathleen, serious once more. “I -never saw her, but she is my patron saint, as you put it, quite as much -as his. I never permit myself to doubt that we should have loved each -other deeply--and it is the sweetest thing any one can think of me, -or say to me--to link us together. But even the saints have their -specialties--and that implies limitations. I have a notion that -Emanuel’s mother did not know many women, and so fell into a way of -generalizing about them. Emanuel has that same tendency. I, who work -among them daily, and make it my business to be teacher and mistress and -mother and sister to some five hundred of them, young and old, foolish -and wise--I come to believe that these generalizations are entirely -mistaken. If a woman is brought up like a man, and circumstanced -precisely like a man, and knows nothing of any conventions save those -which control a man--why, then you can’t tell the difference between -her opinions and actions and those of her brother. But you never get the -chance to view a woman under those conditions.” - -“But here we shall see them!” cried Christian, with premature -enthusiasm. “You will change all that!” - -“Oh, no, I shan’t,” she answered abruptly. “It is not being tried--it is -not desirable. What I am doing proceeds quite on orthodox lines. We -make a point of developing them in the way of usefulness--material -usefulness, I mean. We teach them the useful accomplishments--spinning, -weaving, sewing, dairy and poultry work, and above all things good -cooking.” - -“That I can well believe,” he declared. “I have never eaten so many good -dishes in my life as here.” - -“Yes, I _have_ a talent in that direction,” she assented. “And I -am prouder of it because it represents a triumph over my ancestral -prejudices. You will get nothing good to eat in Ireland. The Irish have -never respected food as a proper subject for serious human thought. -It is the rarest thing to hear them mention it. There may be some fine -spiritual quality in that--but at all events we cook well here, and I -have worked a complete revolution in that respect on the estate. There -are certainly no such cooks and housekeepers anywhere else in England as -my women. But you see what I mean. There is no effort to take women away -from the work they have always been doing, but only to make them do it -better.” - -“But that in itself is very much,” urged Christian. Somehow he had the -feeling that he was defending the System against a critic. - -“Undoubtedly,” she admitted. “And of course we do something more than -that. In a good many cases, when it was not inconvenient, I have put -young girls of aptitude forward to learn designing and other arts. Some -of them have made me some very tolerable tapestry, and a few of them are -as intelligent and valuable in the greenhouses as our best men. In the -matter of music they really beat them. Emanuel insists on a choir of -glee singers in each village--and at Christmas time we have a -competition of ‘waits’ which will be worth your while coming to hear. -For my part, I have a string orchestra of girls that I should not be -ashamed to have play in London.” - -The word seemed to bring them back, “You were going to speak to me,” - Christian ventured, “about London. One thing--I shall see you there -often, shall I not?” - -She slowly shook her head. “No, we have outgrown London, I’m afraid. It -can be proved, I believe, that it is the biggest town in the world--but -to us it is too small for comfort. It is now more than a year since we -have been up at all. Why should we go? We have the National Gallery by -heart, and the year’s pictures are rather distressing than otherwise. -The theaters are intellectually beneath notice. There is the opera of -course, and the concerts, but the people annoy us by talking loudly, -and besides, we have our own music, and occasionally we bring down a -Paderewski or a Sarasate for our people to hear. At the houses where -we would naturally go, the women talk about matters of which I know -absolutely nothing, and Emanuel either quarrels with the men about what -they call their politics, or chokes silently with rage and disgust. -And then the spectacle of the people in the streets--the poor of -London!--that fairly sickens our hearts. We have no joy of going at all. -Occasionally we have guests down here, but it is not a very happy -time they have of it. Everything is so strange to them that they are -confused, and walk about with constraint, as if they were being shown -around an asylum. So it happens that I see very few women of my own -class--and really know less about them than most people. And yet,” she -added, with a twinkle in her eye, “so naturally audacious a race are the -Irish--it is precisely about ladies in London society that I am going to -read you a lecture.” - -Christian drew up his feet, and assumed an air of delighted -anticipation. - -“First of all, you are six and twenty, and you will be thinking of -marrying. What is more, you are what is called a great match, and for -every thought that you give to the subject of a wife, others will give -ten thousand to the subject of you as a possible husband.” - -The young man looked into her kindly eyes with a sustained glance of -awakening thought. This dazzling and princely position which she had -thus outlined--sure enough, it was his! How extraordinary that this -had not suggested itself to him before! Or had the perception of it not -really lain dormant in his consciousness all the while? This question -propounded itself to a mind which was engrossed in something else--for -of a sudden there rose upon the blank background of his thoughts -the luminous face of a lady, beautiful, distinguished, exquisitely -sensitized, and as by the trick of a dream she first wore a large garden -hat, and then was bare-headed, her fair hair gathered loosely back into -a careless knot. The mental picture expanded, to show the full length of -her queenly figure as she descended a broad staircase, with one lovely -hand like a lily against the oak of the rail. Then it contracted, and -underwent a strange metamorphosis, for it was another face which he saw, -a pale, earnest, clever face, and instead of the great stairway, there -was the laced tawdriness of a French railway compartment. - -Then, with a start, and a backward movement of the head, he was free of -dreamland, and blushingly conscious of having stared his cousin out of -countenance. He laughed with awkward embarrassment. “I--I suppose it is -true--what you say,” he remarked, stumblingly. - -She had perhaps some clew to the character of his reverie. She smiled -in a gently quizzical way, but went on soberly enough. “The thing of all -things,” she said, “is to be clearly and profoundly convinced in your -own mind that your marriage will be the most important event of your -life--that it will indeed affect, for good or for bad, every conceivable -element of your life. You have the kind of temperament which would be -peculiarly susceptible to such intimate influences. There are great -numbers of men--the vast majority--to whom it does not matter so much. -They accommodate themselves to their burdens, and shuffle along somehow, -with the patience of a cart-horse. But you--the wrong wife would wreck -you and kill you. I am speaking frankly, laddie,”--she gave the novel -word an intonation which made it music in his ears--“because you have -no mother, and because you are going into a very trying and delicate -situation with what I feel to be a pathetic lack of preparation.” - -Christian drew his chair nearer to her, and crossed his knees, and -leaned back in an attitude of intimate ease. The conversation appealed -powerfully to him as having more of the atmosphere of domesticity and -sweet home influences in it than any he had ever heard. - -“I know almost nothing at all of women,” he said, quite simply. “The -mothers of my pupils I saw sometimes and occasionally a sister, but they -were not in any sense my friends. As to marriage--of course that has -never been in my head. Until only the other day, the idea of a wife -would have been absurd. But now--as you say--it is not any longer -absurd.” He paused and gazed absently past her, as if in pursuit of -the thoughts his own words had set in motion. “I wonder--I wonder”--he -murmured, and then turned his bright eyes to her, full of wistful -expectancy. “Have you, par exemple, some one in your mind for me?” he -asked. - -She laughed and shook her head. The implication in his tone, of entire -readiness to accept the bride of her selection, had its amusing and its -flattering sides; upon a second glance, however, it contained something -else not so much to her liking. She frowned a little at this something. - -“Oh, you must not approach the subject in that spirit,” she adjured him. -“It is the one affair of all others on earth in which you must be guided -absolutely by your own heart and your own mind. We speak of the heart -and mind as distinct from each other; I don’t know that they are not -one and the same. Perhaps I would put it this way--when your heart _and_ -your mind are completely agreed, when your personal liking and your -deliberate judgment pull together in exactly the same direction--so that -it seems to you that they _are_ one and the same thing--then--then-----” - -“Then what?” demanded Christian, bending forward. - -“Oh, I am not fortunate in expressing myself to-day,” Kathleen declared, -with a gesture of playful impatience. “But in general, this is what I -wanted to say: Do not be betrayed into haste in this matter of deciding -about a girl. You will see a large number of extremely attractive young -ladies. They will certainly not be looking or behaving their worst for -your benefit, and you on your side will be lacking the experience to -tell precisely what it is all worth. So walk quietly along, with your -wits about you, and see what there is to be seen for a time, and commit -yourself to nothing. A year hence, for example, you will look back -upon your present condition of mind with surprise. You will not seem -to yourself at all the same person. I can’t promise that you’ll be -happier,” she added, with a little smiling sigh, “but you will know a -great deal more about what you want--or rather about making sure that -you are getting what you want.” - -“I know what I shall do,” he declared, after a moment’s reflection. “I -shall come always to you, and beg your wise and good advice. You will -tell me if I am making a bad choice.” - -“You talk as if you were entering upon a lifelong series of -experiments,” she laughed at him. “No, I’ll undertake no such -responsibility as that, young man.” She explained, more gravely: “It -is never quite possible for a friend, no matter how wise and fond the -friend may be, to advise upon this matter. To give information upon the -subject, that is another affair. But specific advice, no. But let me -finish what I had in mind to say. You have seen here, during this past -fortnight, what great hopes are built upon your administration of your -affairs when you come into the title. No, don’t speak yet. You must not -pledge yourself at all to the System. It would be unfair to let you do -it. But at all events you have seen it, and you will think it all over, -and, whether you take it up altogether or not, I know it will have its -effect on you. You will set an ideal of usefulness and duty before -you, and you will have your heart fixed on realizing it. Well, then, -I counsel you above all things to keep that idea in mind whenever you -think of marriage. A man has a good many sides to his life, but the side -which is most vital to him is that of the work he wants to do in the -world. If the wife fits perfectly on that side, the discrepancies -elsewhere are of small account by comparison. They smooth away, -they adjust themselves. But the misfit on the side of the man’s -ambitions--that never effaces itself. And so, just in proportion as the -work you want to do becomes clear in your mind, you ought to define -to yourself the type of woman who will be most sympathetic toward that -work, and who will best help you in it--or rather, who will help you in -it in the way you like best. I don’t say you will find the perfect type -of that woman--but you should have the type before you, and be able to -measure people by its standards. But I have harangued you long enough! -There is something in the atmosphere here: we all deliver lectures to -each other at the most unscrupulous length. Poor boy! We’ve done nothing -but make speeches to you since you showed in sight.” - -Christian deprecated her suggestion with persuasive hands. “I have -learned here, I think, all that I know,” he protested. He did not, -however, insist upon further generalizations. “One thing you said,” he -remarked, thoughtfully, “puts a question into my head. You said it was -better to give information than advice. Now there is so much that I am -in ignorance about. Perhaps I do wrong to ask you--but I am curious to -know more about the people of the family--our own family. There are no -ladies of my own blood? I mean, all I have seen or heard of come to us -by marriage, like yourself.” - -“You hit upon the weakest and unhappiest point,” she replied. “There has -not been a daughter born in the Torr family for over a hundred years. I -have always insisted that this has operated like a curse on the family. -The beautiful humanizing charm of little girls about the house--this -they have never felt. The mothers have had no daughters to lean upon, -the men have never known what a sister was like. That one fact, it seems -to me, is enough to account for everything that is hard and rough and -cruel in their story.” - -Christian bowed his head in silent token of comprehension. - -“I am always more grieved than angry, when I’m thinking of the black -sheep in the family fold,” she went on. “They had never a chance. It was -like a tradition in the family that the father should be a brute and -the mother a fool. A daughter here and there might have softened the -combination--but with little boys alone face to face with it--what could -they do? They grew up in the stables and the kennels. Think of those two -young men whom you met at Caermere, for example. Lord Julius told me of -their scene with you, and I’m far from blaming you--but think of their -bringing up! Their father, Lord Edward, I remember very well. I saw him -when I was a girl, at the Punchestown races, and my brother told me his -name. Even without it, I should have remembered his face as the coarsest -and meanest I ever saw. He married a woman out of some vile gambling set -that he was in as a young man. She is still alive somewhere, and has an -allowance from Lord Julius for suppressing herself, and not using the -family name. Well, when I think of the blood in those two boys, and -of the horrors of their childhood till they were taken away from their -mother, and sent into the country to school--upon my soul I can only -wonder that they come so near decency as they do. Your encounter with -them happened to strike out sparks, but you must remember what a blow it -represented to them.” - -The young man gave a somewhat perfunctory nod. His sympathies were -somehow obdurate upon this particular point. - -“Oh, and that reminds me,” she went on. “I said that the family was -daughterless--but Eddy has a little girl. It is very quaint to think -what she will grow up like, under the maternal wing of Cora Bayard. -Yet I am told there are worse mothers than Cora. I’ve never seen her, -myself.” - -“I saw her at Caermere,” Christian remarked. “She seemed very frightened -and sad--and since it was because of me, I did not look much at her. I -remember only the effect of a likeness to Pierrot--the red lips on the -white face. But”--he drew his chair still nearer, and betrayed by -manner and tone alike his approach to a subject of more than casual -interest--“the other lady whom I saw there--Lady Cressage--I had much -conversation with her. I feel that she and I are friends. I liked her -very much indeed--but I have no information about her whatever. If I am -permitted to confess it--I tried to talk about her with Lord Julius -and with Emanuel, but they at once spoke of other things. You see how -frankly I am telling you everything; that is because you make me feel -so wonderfully at home. But perhaps you do not like to talk about her, -either.” - -She smiled pleasantly enough in comment upon his faltering conclusion. -“Oh, I think you exaggerate the conspiracy of silence,” she answered. -“Neither Lord Julius nor Emanuel has anything hostile to say about Edith -Cressage, but she doesn’t quite appeal to their imagination, and so they -find nothing of any sort to say. But it is only fair to remember that -they are both men with peculiar and exacting standards for women. They -would be equally silent about a hundred other ladies of unblemished -character, and of beauty and wit untold. It is nothing at all against -her that she hasn’t excited their enthusiasm. I do not know her at all -well, but I think she is very nice. Now--is that what you wanted me to -say?” - -The mild note of banter which informed her words put Christian if -possible even more at his ease. He stood up, with his hands in the sleek -pockets of his new coat, and bent down upon her a joyous smile. - -“No, ever so much more!” he insisted, gaily. “She is very beautiful; -she has the air and the distinction of a grande dame; she speaks like a -flute, and what she says is clever and apropos; she is unhappy, and yet -with no bitterness toward any one; she seemed to like me very much, and, -mind you, she was the first fine lady whom I had ever met. Enfin, she is -my cousin, and the fact impresses me. What is more natural than that I -should be eager to know all about her?” - -Kathleen did not respond readily to his mood. She knitted her brows -slightly once more, and looked away from him toward the window. “It is -rather hard for me to explain,” she began at last, doubtfully. “From -a good many points of view--her own included--I dare say we do her an -injustice. Don’t misunderstand me; we are all sorry for her--and I for -one have my moments of doubt whether we oughtn’t to be something more -than sorry.” - -“Yes, that is the phrase,” put in Christian, strenuously. “I think that -I myself am something more than sorry for her.” - -She looked up at him, at first with a shadow of apprehension in her -eyes. Then she estimated aright his enthusiasm with a gentle smile. “I -will explain as well as I can,” she said, softly. “As you say, you are -entitled to be told. The feeling, then, is--I am speaking of Lord Julius -and Emanuel, and more or less of myself too--the feeling is that she -ought not to have made the marriage she did. Everybody knew that the -young man she married was a worthless creature--a violent, ignorant, -low-minded fellow. You could not see him, much less talk with him, -without recognizing this. One knows perfectly well that she must have -hated the very thought of him as a lover or a companion. But he is -the heir to a dukedom, and so she marries him. You see what I mean; it -seemed an unpleasant thing to us.” - -Christian considered with a puzzled air the situation thus defined. -“But,” he commented, with hesitation, “it is the metier of a young woman -to get a husband, and to get the best one for herself that she can. If -she is so beautiful that a man wishes to make her a duchess, why, that -is her triumph. Would you have her forego it? And if she says ‘no’, -why, then the next one he asks says ‘yes’--and it is merely that the -first one has waived her place in the queue for another. The queue -remains the same. And if this were not so, why, then, young men who are -not very good, they would get no wives at all. But,” he added, in -extenuation of his dissent, “all these matters are so differently regarded, -you know, in France.” She did not look altogether pleased with him. -“I thought you would have caught my meaning more readily,” she said, -“despite your Continental point of view. For that matter, it is the -common English point of view also. There is a matrimonial market, of -course, and girls offer themselves in it to the highest bidder, and -nothing that we can do will change it. But at least we are free to think -what we like of the wretched business--and to hold our own opinions of -the people who traffic in it.” - -Kathleen had stated her position with a certain argumentative warmth, -which gave her tone a novel effect of reproof. The sight now of the -young man’s saddened and surprised expression sent her mood up with -a rebound. She put a hand on his arm, as he stood before her, and -reassured him by a kindly laugh. “Ah, now,” she said, with genial -pleading in her soft voice, “don’t be making a mountain of my molehill. -I only wanted you to understand how we felt. And as I have told you, we -have our reservations about even that feeling. The poor girl did only -what she was expected to do--what her mother and her family and all the -friends that surrounded her took it quite as a matter of course that -she should do. Probably she never once encountered the opinion that she -should do otherwise. No doubt that is to be said for her. In fact, I -should never have dreamed of blaming her to you, if you had not pressed -me. And after it’s all said and done, you may take it from me that -perhaps I don’t blame her so very much. She was poor, and not over -comfortable at home, I think, and she was very young, and people ran -after her to an extraordinary extent--and to be the beauty of the season -in London is enough to turn any one’s head. Poor creature--it’s bitterly -enough she’s paid for her whistle!” - -He smiled down into her eyes. “That is how I knew you would end by -speaking of her,” he said. “It is in that same way that she moves me--by -my compassion. And this is my fancy”--he began, in a more vivacious -tone--“I should like to tell it to you--it seems that I am to have the -power to do so many such wonderful things--well, then, nothing would -delight me more than to be very good to her. It is my _fantaisie_--and -there is no harm in it, _is_ there?--to atone to her for some of the -unhappiness she has suffered. I have thought about it much since I left -Caermere. It seems that it would be a good thing for me to do--like an -act of piety. You must remember--she was the first lady who spoke kindly -to me in England. And I think you will be pleased with me for being -grateful. But, of course, if Emanuel tells me ‘no’----” - -“Oh, no one will tell you ‘no,’” she assured him, rising as she spoke, -and looking into his face with beaming eyes. “It is the kind of spirit -we like in you. Never imagine that we will be obstacles in its way. Only -be on your guard against the soft heart running away with you. The -world is full of clever and adroit people who practice upon innocent -generosity. It is not so much the worth of what they wheedle from you, -as the shock of your discovery of their tricks. That hurts a young -nature, and very often callouses and hardens it. But here I am, -lecturing you again!” - -Christian had not, in truth, been following her remarks with complete -attention. Something had come up in his mind, which by the time she -stopped he seemed to have turned over and over, and examined from many -standpoints, and finally decided to speak about. - -“I was not wholly exact,” he began, with constraint, “when I said that -Lady Cressage was the first lady who spoke kindly to me in England. I -mentioned it to Lord Julius--there was a very charming and good young -lady who traveled with me from Rouen, and crossed on the boat--and it is -a very curious thing, but when we became acquainted, and I hinted to her -about my story, she knew who I was. Indeed, it was she who told me who I -was. I had the whole wonderful tale from her--and the kindness and sweet -sympathy with which she told it to me, a little at a time--ah, that is -what I will never forget! I am bound to remember her with gratitude -all my life. And that is another _fantaisie_ of mine--that I shall do -something good for her. Oh, she has no selfish thoughts! She would not -even tell me her name!” - -Kathleen’s comment was prefaced by a mirthful chuckle. “I can’t -deny that gratitude is a very active and resourceful element in your -composition,” she declared, and laughed again. “Oh, we’ll advertise for -her. How would this do: ‘The young lady who meets returning lost heirs -to the British nobility at Rouen, and lets them down easily’? Or we -might----” - -“Ah,” Christian interrupted, pleadingly, “I am really very sincere -about her. You cannot imagine anything finer or more delicate than her -character. And besides,”--he added this with visible reluctance--“I have -learned since who she is. Lady Cressage told me. She is the sister of -the lady you call Cora--the wife of that young man Edward--but she is -not an actress! It is not in the least her _type!_ She earns her -own living--she has some work to do--I think it is with a -writing-machine--that is, a type-writer, n’est-ce pas?” - -Mrs. Emanuel did not immediately reply, but moved to the window, looked -out and then walked slowly back to where he stood. “I am not going to -suggest an unkind thought about this girl,” she said, deliberately. -“I would not want you to think differently of her, or of the grateful -impulse you have toward her. Indeed, I have heard something of her--and -it is much to her credit. But--this sounds a mean thing to say, and yet -it has its important true side--people should stick to their class. Bear -that always in mind. There seem to be brilliant exceptions to the rule, -whenever we look about us--but just the same, the rule exists. But--now -I _will_ stop, once for all!” She mused at him, with a twinkling eye. -“You poor lad, there’s something about you that draws down lectures as a -lightning-rod draws electricity. And here’s the trap!” - -When Emanuel returned from London a few days later, to report that his -young cousin had been comfortably installed in chambers on Duke Street, -St. James’s, and seemed to get on capitally with Lord Lingfield, who -was showing him the ropes, Kathleen received the news with less than her -accustomed cheerfulness. - -“I haven’t been quite happy, thinking of him alone in London,” she -admitted, in the course of their conversation. “I feel, somehow, as if -we should have gone up, and taken a house for the winter.” - -“Ah, but, sweetheart,” he urged, almost reproachfully, “you see how I am -up to my eyes in all sorts of work. This is really about the most -trying and ticklish stage we have gone through yet. If the fibrous -silk processes are what is claimed for them, and your girls display the -aptitude that you count upon----” - -But Kathleen for once seemed not to listen. She had turned, and moved a -few steps listlessly away. She took a flower from a vase, picked it to -pieces and gazed in a brown study at the meaningless fragments. - -“Yes, I know,” she remarked at last, with a half sigh. Then she threw -the petals into the grate, and, with a decisive little shake of head and -shoulders, wheeled round, and came smilingly to her husband. - -“And whom did you see in town?” she asked. - - - - -PART III - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -Toward the end of April, there came an afternoon on which Christian -seemed to himself to wake up of a sudden as from a harassed sleep. - -He had been in England for over six months, when all at once he became -conscious of this queer sensation: the experiences of his half year put -themselves together before his mental eye in the aspect of a finished -volume--of something definitely over and done with. - -There was warm spring in the London air, and at first the vague feeling -of unrest impressed him as a part of the general vernal effect. The -device of taking a stroll through the parks, to note the early flowers -and the wonderful infancy of leafage among the trees, seemed at the -outset to fit this new mood that was upon him. Then abruptly he wearied -of nature and turned his back upon it, driving in a hansom to his club. -Here there was no one whom he knew, or at least cared to speak with. He -sat for a time in the billiard-room, watching with profound inattention -the progress of a game he knew nothing about. From this he wandered into -the library, where some fierce-faced old gentlemen slept peacefully in -armchairs about the alcoves. The sound of their breathing vexed him; -he pretended to himself that otherwise he would have found solace in a -book. The whim seized him to go home to his chambers, and have tea there -comfortably in gown and slippers, and finish a novel Lady Milly Poynes -had induced him to begin weeks before. - -Once in his own easy-chair, the romance lying opened beside him, he put -back his head, stretched his feet and yawned. He left untasted the tea -which Falkner brought in; with fingers interlaced behind his neck -he stared up at the blue of the sky through his window in formless -rumination. - -His earlier glimpses of London were dim enough memories now. The town -had been described by his cousin Lingfield as empty when he arrived, and -after a few days of desultory sight-seeing, he had been carried off to -the earl of Chobham’s place in Derbyshire. Here, among people who -behaved like kindly kinsmen to the young new-comer, yet failed to arouse -much interest in his mind, he learned to shoot well enough to escape -open protests by the autocratic head gamekeeper, and to keep his seat in -the saddle after a fashion of his own. These acquirements stood him in -good stead at the four or five other country houses to which the amiable -Lingfield in due course led him. Without them, meager as they were, he -would have been in a sorry plight indeed. They provided him with a -certain semblance of justification for his presence among people who -seemed incapable of amusing themselves or their guests in any other way. -There were always ladies, it was true, and it was generally manifest to -him that he might spend his time with them if he chose, but after a few -tentative experiments he fell back upon the conviction that he did not -know how to talk to English ladies. He drifted somehow through these -months of hospitable entertainment, feeling that he had never known -before what loneliness could mean. - -When, at Christmas, he went to spend another fortnight with Emanuel, he -had it in his heart to confess to disappointment, and even depression. -He had not thus far fitted at all into the place which had been prepared -for him, and he looked forward, with wistful eagerness, as he journeyed -westward, to the balm of sympathy and tender comprehension with which -Kathleen and Emanuel, dear people that they were, would soothe and heal -his wounded self-consciousness. Somehow, the opportunity of unburdening -his troubled mind, however, did not come to him. There were other -guests, including Lord Julius, and such exceptional attention was -devoted on the estates to elaborating the holiday festivities of the -various villages, that no individual could hope to secure consideration -for his own private emotions. It was sometimes suspected that Emanuel -made so much of Christmas in his System, unconsciously no doubt, because -the Jewish side of him felt the need of ostentation in its disavowal of -theological prejudices. For whatever reason, the festival was observed -here in a remarkable spirit. The little churches were embowered in holly -and mistletoe, and were the scenes of numerous ornate services. There -were processions, merry-makings, midnight visitations of the “waits,” - concerts and dances throughout the week, and only the strictly necessary -work of the community was performed meanwhile. On New Year’s Day the -rejoicings culminated in a children’s carnival from one end of the -property to the other, with big trees laden with lights and gifts in the -German fashion, and exhibitions of the magic lantern, and other juvenile -delights. The fortnight passed, and Christian returned to London, as -has been said, without having anything like the intimate talk he had -expected. Both Kathleen and Emanuel had seemed pleased with him; they -had noted with approving comment his progress in the use of idiomatic -English, and his rapid assimilation of the manners and bearing of those -about him; they had heard none but welcome reports of him from outside, -and made clear to him their gratification at the fact. Their smile for -him was as affectionate, their display of pleasure in his presence -as marked, as ever, but he had the sense, none the less, of something -altered. Lord Julius bore him company on his journey to London, and -after a brief halt, took him away again for another fortnight, this time -at Brighton. He was no more successful with the father, in the matter of -helpful confidences, than he had been with the son. It was impossible -to tell the strong, big, redoubtable old gentleman of what he felt to be -his weaknesses. A kind of desponding pride possessed him, and closed his -lips. He was not happy, as he had supposed he would be, and he could not -bring himself to feel that at any point the fault was his. It was the -position that was incongruous. Yet how could he complain, or avow his -discontent, without seeming an ingrate to the benefactors whose heart -had been in the work of shaping and gilding that position for him? - -Parliament met this year in January, and Christian saw now a London -which he had not imagined to himself--for which nothing, indeed, had -prepared him. There came all at once a great many invitations, and the -young man, surprised and not a little dismayed, called Lord Lingfield -to his assistance. The prospect unfolded to him by this accomplished -professor of the proprieties was terrifying enough. At the end of a week -Christian cried out that the reality was too much. But Lingfield could -see no alternative to going on. “You will get used to it soon enough, -now that you have once taken the plunge,” he assured him. “There are -certain things that a fellow has to do, you know, when he’s in London -in the season, or even now, in what you may call the half season, -unless he’s going to chuck the thing altogether.” Christian replied with -excitement that this was precisely what he wished to do. In his own mind -he had already reached the point of debating whether he could honorably -go on using the money placed to his credit at the bank, most of which -was still there, if he fled from London, and even England. - -Lord Lingfield was a fine young man, irreproachable in attire and -manners, who expected to do something in politics, and who regarded his -duty both to the future which he hoped to create for himself, and to -the immediate present which had been created for him, with conscientious -gravity. He had never thought of lightening or evading the tasks set -before him; he had no perception whatever of the possibility of -making such things easier for others. He assured Christian with -gentle solemnity that desertion was not to be mentioned, and that even -mitigation was undesirable. “It has all been arranged for you,” he -urged. “Upon my word, you are very lucky. You have been to two houses -already where I never get asked except to luncheon, and here is a card -here which I could hardly believe my eyes to see To trifle with such -chances would be simple madness. You will get to have all London at your -fingers’ ends, your very first season. Such a start as you’re likely to -have, I’ve never seen in my life. My dear fellow--you don’t understand -what it means.” - -“But I’m tired to death!” groaned Christian. “No doubt they are -excellent people, but they weary me to the bone. The dinners, the calls, -the receptions, the dances--I have no talent whatever for these things. -It is very kind of these people--but I know I am ridiculous in it all. I -give them no pleasure, and God knows I receive none. Then why must it go -on? For whose benefit is it? I swear to you, I would not mind the labor -and fatigue, if it was any good that I was doing. Emanuel, for example, -toils like a slave, but then his work has great results. But this of -mine----!” - -“Ah, yes,” interposed Lingfield, smilingly. “But Emanuel could never have -made much running in London. He disputes with people too much, don’t you -know. They don’t like that. And I think you make much too hard work of -it all. There’s no need for _you_ to talk, you know. It isn’t expected -of you. And I don’t see why you can’t move quietly along, going -everywhere, being seen at the right places, and being civil to -everybody, and not worry yourself at all. That’s what you need, my dear -boy--repose! Let the other people do the worry. Now, of course, in a -case like Dicky Westland’s it’s different. He has to be amusing and -useful, or he wouldn’t get asked. But you are not on all fours with him -at all. To tell the truth--no doubt it’ll sound strange to you, but it -is the truth all the same--it’s better form for you not to be amusing, -or brilliant, or that sort of thing. Fellows in your place don’t go in -for it, you know.” - -Christian sighed, and chafing at the necessity of submission, still -submitted. - -Now, as he lay back in his chair, the retrospect was augmented by six -other weeks, in which he had passively yielded to what Lingfield had -assured him was the inevitable. He had dined out almost every-night, -and had made countless calls. It seemed to him that he must have -met everybody in this huge metropolis who had a pair of shoulders or -possessed a dress coat. He yawned at the thought of them. - -Was he not himself to blame for this? At Christmas time he had been -quite confident in answering “no” to this question; now he did not feel -so sure about it. At one place or another he had come into contact -with most of the members of the government, and with many of those -distinguished statesmen on the opposite bench who, by the grace of the -genial British electorate, would be ministers next time. He had talked -with eminent artists, eminent scientists, eminent writers, eminent -soldiers and sailors, and watched them and listened to them as they sat -over their cigars, or moved about among the ladies in the drawing-rooms. -Hostesses whose cordial good will toward him seemed equaled only by -their capable control over others, had said to him time and time again: -“If there is any one you want to know, tell me.” The phrase lingered in -his mind as a symbol of his position. He had merely to mention his wish, -like some lucky person of the fables who possessed a talisman. It could -not be said that he had used his magic power foolishly or perversely. He -had followed in dutiful, painstaking solicitude the path marked out for -him by his advisers. He had done the best that was in him to do; he had -gone wherever Lingfield bade him go; he had loyally kept awake late -at night; he had smiled and bowed and spoken affable words; he had -fulfilled punctually all the engagements imposed upon him. What was -more, he could no longer pretend that he made a failure of the thing; it -was known to him that he had created a pleasant impression upon London, -and that people liked him. - -For all that, he could not feel that in turn he liked these people. -Among those of whom he had seen the most, was there any whom he -profoundly desired ever to see again? He passed some random figures in -mental review, and suffered them to vanish without thrusting forth any -tentacle of thought to detain them. They had not entered his real life; -they meant nothing to him. Positively he was as much alone in London -to-day as he had been when he first set foot in it. Indeed, was he not -the poorer to-day by all those lost illusions and joyous, ardent hopes -now faded to nothingness? In return for these departed treasures, he had -only empty hands to show--and a jaded, futilely mutinous, empty mind as -well. - -The soft, equable tinkle of the door-bell caught his ear, but scarcely -arrested his attention. Perhaps unconsciously the sound served to -polarize his thoughts, for suddenly it became apparent to him that -he was in revolt. All this intolerable social labor was ended for -him--definitely and irrevocably ended. He would not dine at another -house; he would burn forthwith his basket of cards, and the little book -with its foolish record of ladies’ days “at home.” - -He sat up and sipped at his lukewarm tea, with the glow of a new resolve -on his face. - -Falkner--a smooth-mannered, assiduous, likable man of middle age whom -Emanuel had given him from his own household--entered the room to -announce a caller. A brisk, alert tread on the polished hall floor -behind him cut into his words, so that Christian did not catch them. He -rose, and looked inquiringly. - -For an instant, he felt that he was not glad to see the person who came -in. It was a young man of about his age, tall and fair, and handsome -in a buoyant, bright-faced way of his own. His blue eyes sparkled -cheerfully into Christian’s doubtful glance, and he held out a hand as -he advanced. Everybody in the world called him Dicky Westland, and for -this opening moment Christian thought of him as preeminently typical of -all the vanities and artificialities he was on the point of forswearing. - -“Not seedy, I hope?” the new-comer said in comment upon the other’s -loose attire--and perhaps upon his dubious countenance as well. His -voice had a musical vivacity in it which seemed to lighten the room. -Christian, as he took the hand and shook his head, smiled a little. It -began to occur to him that really he did like this young man. - -“No,” he replied, with a gesture toward a chair. “I’m all right. Only -the whim seized me--to come home and read a book. I got homesick, I -think.” - -This statement, once in the air, seemed funny to the young men, and -Dicky Westland laughed aloud. Christian, sitting down opposite his -visitor, felt himself sharing his animation. ‘“It was good of you to -come,” he declared, with a refreshed tone. “The truth is, I’m tired out. -I am up too late. I run about too much.” - -“Yes, a fellow does get hipped,” assented Dicky. “But you are so -tremendously regular, it doesn’t do you any harm. A days’ rest now and -then, and you’re right as a trivet again.” - -“Regular,” Christian repeated, musingly. He formed his lips to utter -some reflection upon the theme, and then closed them again. “Will you -have a cup of tea?” he asked, with the air of thinking of something -else. - -The other shook his head, and preserved a posture of vivacious -anticipation, as if Christian had made a literal promise to unburden -his mind. The suggestion was so complete that Christian accepted it as a -mandate. - -“I am glad you came,” he said, “because--well, because I have come to -a conclusion in my mind, and I should like to put it into words for -you--so that I can also hear it myself. I am resolved to go away--to -leave London.” - -Dicky lifted his brows in puzzled interrogation. “How do you mean?” he -asked. - -“I do not like it,” Christian replied, speaking more readily now, -and enforcing his words with eager hands. Lingfield had cautioned him -against this gesticulatory tendency, but the very consciousness that he -was in rebellion brought his hands upward into the conversation. “It -is not what I care for. I come into it too late, no doubt, to -understand--appreciate it, properly. The people I meet--I have no -feeling for them. It seems a waste of my time to sit with them, to stand -and talk, to go about from one of their houses to another. At the end -of it all, there is nothing. They have all thick shells on, and they -are not going to let me get inside of them. And, moreover, if I did get -inside, who can be sure there would be anything of value there? It does -not often look so to me, from the outside. But it is a waste of time and -labor, and it does not amuse me in the least, and why should I pursue -it?” - -“Quite right!” said Dicky. - -“Then you agree with me?--you approve?” asked Christian, not concealing -his surprise. - -“Of course I do. It’s awful rot,” the other affirmed. He observed his -host silently for a space, and meanwhile, by a quite visible process, -the familiar external elasticity, not to say flippancy, of his manner -seemed to fall away from him. “With me, of course,” he went on, almost -gravely, “I have to do it. I must get my secretaryship, or I can’t live. -My relations could put me into the swim, but they can’t support me there -indefinitely. I have only two aunts, you know--dear old things, they -are--and they keep me going, but they have only life interests, and I -fancy they have to scrape a little as it is. - -“So you see,” pursued Dicky Westland, “I must help myself, and it’s only -by knowing the right people, and being seen at the right places, that -a fellow can bring anything off. For example, now: Lady Winsey is a -distant cousin of mine, and she’s promised the aunts, you know, and -there’s an old Sir Hogface Something-or-Other dodging about the place, -who’s going to get a West Indian governorship in May, and Lady Winsey -has not only had him at her house to dinner, where he could see me, but -has contrived to throw me at him at three other houses. Next week I’m -to go down to a closing meet in Berkshire, just because he’s to be -there--and that she arranged, too. And it’s all to get a place worth -perhaps three hundred a year, with yellow fever thrown in--if it comes -to anything at all.” - -“Three hundred a year,” commented Christian, knitting his brows. “I -still make pounds into francs to know what a sum means,” he explained, -smilingly, after a moment. “Once I would have thought that a great -fortune--and only a few months ago, too, at that.” - -“Well, you see how it is,” said Dicky. “I mustn’t let any chance slip -by. But if I stood in your shoes, dear God! how I would chuck it all!” - -“But what would you do instead?” Christian propounded this question -sitting back in his chair, with the tips of his fingers joined, and a -calm twinkle in his eye. He discovered himself feeling as if it were his -companion who had made confessions and craved sympathy. - -Dicky looked into his hat, and pouted his lips in whimsical indecision. -“What I mean is,” he explained at last--“my point was this--I hate the -whole thing, and if I didn’t have to do it, why then I wouldn’t do it, -d’ye see? I’d go about with nobody except the people I really cared -about--my right-down, intimate friends. That’s the idea.” - -“Ah--friends!” said Christian. “That is the word that sings in my ears!” - -He rose impulsively, and began walking about the room with a restless -step. Now and again he halted briefly to look down upon his companion, -to enforce with eyes as well as gesture some special thing in his -talk. “Yes, friends!” he cried. “Tell me, you Dicky Westland, where are -friends to be found? Have you some, perhaps? Then where did you come -upon them? It is what I should like very much to know. Listen to me! -I have been in England six months. I possess in England, say -two--three--no, five friends--and all these came to me in my first week -here. All but one belong to my family, so they were here, ready-made for -me. But since that time, now that I am for myself, I have not gained one -friend. Is there then something strange--what do I say--forbidding in -me? Or no--it is nonsense for me to say that. It is the other way about. -I have seen nobody who awakened voices within me. There has been no one -who appealed to me as a friend should appeal. I live among a thousand -rich and fine people who are as good to me as they know how to be--and -yet I am as if I lived in a desert. And it is very cold--and lonely--and -heartbreaking in this desert of mine!” - -Westland looked at him, as he stood now in the pathetic abandonment of -his peroration, with a contemplative squint in one eye. - -“I see what you mean,” he remarked finally. “You’ve been looking for -flesh and blood, and you find only gun-metal.” He thrust out his lips a -little, and gave further consideration to the problem. “There isn’t any -need for you to go away, you know,” he added after a pause. “You can -have any kind of life you like in London. It is all here, if you want -it. But what is it that you do want?” - -Christian threw himself sidewise into his chair, and bent his head with -a sigh. Then, with a new light in his eyes, he looked up. “You yourself -said it”--he exclaimed--“to see only my true friends. That is my idea -of life: To have a small circle of people whom I love very much, and to -make constant opportunities to be with some of them--talking as we like -to talk, going about together, making life happy for one another as we -go along. All my youth, I envied rich people, because I thought that -they used their wealth to command this greatest of delights. I imagined -that if one had much money, then one could afford to spend his time -only with his close, dear friends. But what I discover is that they do -something entirely different. They seem not to let friendship come into -their lives at all. They desire only acquaintances, and of these the -more they have the better, if they bear the proper cachet.” - -“It is the women,” said Dicky, sententiously. - -“They like the crowd, and the new faces. And what they like, of course -they have. They run the whole show.” - -Christian nodded comprehension--then put out a hand to signalize a -reservation. “I know women--here in England--who have a higher idea than -this,” he declared, softly. - -“Of course, so we all do,” assented Westland. “There are a million -splendid women, if one could only get at them. But it’s a sort of trades -union, don’t you know. You don’t take the workmen you want, on your own -terms; you take those the society gives you, and the terms are arranged -for you. It’s like that with women. You meet some awfully jolly girls -now and then, but they are not in the least degree their own masters. -If you try to get to know them well, either they’re frightened, and pull -back into their shells, or you’re headed off by their mothers. But,” he -added upon reflection--“of course it’s different with you.” - -“At least I am not interested,” said Christian, wearily. The advice of -Kathleen had produced upon his mind an even greater effect, perhaps, -than he imagined. He had encountered, by the dozen, extremely beautiful -and engaging girls, whose charm should have been enhanced in his eyes by -the dignity and even grandeur of their surroundings. But an impalpable -yet efficient barrier had stood always between them and him. If they -exhibited reserve, he was too shy for words. If they expanded toward -him with smiles or any freedom of demeanor, he recalled instantly the -warning of Emanuel’s wife, and that was fatal. “I have not cared for any -of them,” he reaffirmed. - -“Oh!” cried Westland of a sudden, his comely, boyish face beaming with -the thought that had come to him. “How stupid of me! I’d forgotten what -I came for--and I’m not sure it doesn’t precisely fill the bill. Are you -doing anything to-night? Will you come with me to the Hanover Theater at -midnight? It’s the five-hundredth performance of ‘Pansy Blossoms’--and -there’s to be supper on the stage and a dance. I don’t think you’ve seen -much of that sort of thing, have you?” - -Christian shook his head, and regarded his companion doubtfully. -“Nothing at all of it,” he said, slowly. “But it does not attract me -very much, I’m afraid. You would better take some one else. I should -be a fish out of water there. The people of the theaters--they are not -congenial to me--that is, I do not think they would be.” - -“But, hang it all, man, how do you know till you’ve tried?” Dicky put -a little worldly authority into his tone as he proceeded. “You mustn’t -mind my saying it to you--it is you who make your own desert, as you -call it, for yourself. If you say in advance that you know you won’t -like this sort of person, or that, how are you ever going to form any -friendships?” - -Christian received the remonstrance with meekness. “You do not quite -understand me,” he said, amiably enough. “I have some work to do in the -world, and I don’t think that actresses and actors would help me much to -do it. The young men who run after them do not seem, somehow, to do -much else. It is only a prejudice I have; it applies only to myself. If -others feel differently, why, I have not a word to say.” - -“No, you must come!” Westland declared, rising. “It’s nonsense for you -not to see that side of things. My dear fellow, it’s as respectable as -the Royal Academy--or Madame Tussaud’s. Are you dining anywhere? Then -I’ll run home and dress, and I’ll drive round here for you. We’ll dine -together, and then look in at some of the halls. Shall I say seven? It -gives us more time over our dinner.” - -Christian accepted, with a rueful little smile, his committal to the -enterprise. “You must not mind if I come away early,” he said, getting -to his feet in turn. - -The other laughed at him. “My dear man, you’ll never want to come away -at all. But no, seriously--it’s just the kind of thing you want. It’ll -amuse you, for one thing--and deuce take it, you’ll be young only once -in your life. But more than that--here you are swearing that you’ll do -no more social work at all, and you don’t know in the least what other -resources are open to you. It isn’t alone actresses that you meet at a -place like this, but all sorts of clever people who know how to get what -there is out of life. That is what you yourself want to do, isn’t it? -Well, it’ll do you no harm, to say the least, to see how they go about -it.” - -“Very likely,” Christian replied, as the other turned. “I will be ready -at seven.” He followed him to the door, and into the hallway. “Mind,” - he said, half jokingly, half gravely, as he leaned over the banister, “I -have not altogether promised. When midnight comes, I may lose my courage -altogether.” - -“Ah, it’s that kind of timidity that storms every fortress in its path,” - Dicky called up to him from the stairway. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -The two young men dined at the Café Royal. “It’s as good a kitchen as -there is in London, and in the matter of people it isn’t such a tiresome -repetition of those one meets everywhere else as Willis’s or the -Prince’s. To see the same shoulders and the same necks, night after -night--a fellow gets tired of it.” - -To this explanation by Dicky of his choice, as they rolled forward in -their hansom, Christian made no direct response. After a little he said: -“Very soon now, I am going to do something that seems to have been in my -mind for months. Perhaps I have only thought of it since this afternoon: -I cannot be sure. But I am going to do it--I am going to know for myself -what the real London and the real England are like. A thousand gentlemen -in black clothes and silk hats, a thousand ladies with low-cut dresses -and feathers in their hair--all thinking and talking about themselves -and their own little affairs--that does not mean London. And a few large -houses in the country, where these same people spend a few months riding -after the hounds and shooting tame birds and wearying each other with -idle, sleepy talk--that does not represent England.” - -“Doesn’t it!” cried Westland. “I should say that’s just what it did, -worse luck!” - -“No, no!” protested Christian. “I don’t want to be told that it -does--for then I should want to go away altogether. No--there is the -other thing, and I am going to find it out, and see it and know it. -When all those years of my boyhood and youth I was so proud of being an -Englishman, it was not this empty, valueless life of the West End, or -the chase of foxes and birds in the country, that I longed for, and -nourished pride in.” - -“Oh, but they do other things, you know,” laughed Dicky. “They are in -Parliament, some of them, or they are at the bar, or in the Services, -or they manage estates or are directors in companies, and that sort -of thing. And some of them go in a lot for charities, and work on -committees and organize things, you know. You’d hardly believe how much -of that most of the women let themselves in for.” - -“That is not what I mean,” said the other, rather abruptly. “To me all -that is not worth the snap of a finger,” and he emphasized his words by -a gestured with the hand which rested on the door of the hansom. - -At an advanced stage of the dinner, the young men came to the subject -again. In reply to a random inquiry Christian said that his grandfather, -the duke, as far as he knew, was neither worse nor better in health -than he had been all winter. “I have not been to Caermere since my first -visit,” he went on. “I am really living upon a programme arranged for -me, I should think, by a committee of my relations. Lord Lingfield is -my active bear-leader. He conducts me, or sends me, wherever it has been -decided that I shall go. It was not deemed important that I should go to -Caermere again--and so I have not gone. Voilà tout! If I had been free -to myself, I think I should have gone.” - -“It must be an awfully jolly place, from the pictures I’ve seen of it,” - said Westland. - -“Jolly!” cried Christian. “My dear creature, it is a grave, a mausoleum, -a place of skulls and dead men’s bones! You have never seen such a -family vault in all your days. When I even begin to think of undertaking -the task of brightening it into life again, I grow dizzy. The immensity -of the work unnerves me. And now I do not know if I shall ever put my -hand to it. The country-gentleman idea--which you make so much of in -England--it does not appeal to me. It is too idle--too purposeless. Of -course my cousin Emanuel, he makes a terrible toil of it--and does some -wonderful things, beyond doubt. But after all, what does it come to? -He helps people to be extremely fine who without him would only be -tolerably fine. But I have the feeling that one should help those who -are not fine at all--who have never had the chance to be fine, who do -not know what it means. Emanuel’s wife--oh, a very lovely character--she -said to me that they disliked coming up to town, the sight of the London -poor distressed them so much. Well, that is the point--if I am to -help anybody at all, it is the London poor that I should try to help. -Emanuel’s plan is to give extra bones, and teach new tricks, to dogs -already very comfortable. My heart warms to the dogs without collars, -the homeless and hungry devils who look for bones in the gutters.” - -“Oh, you’re going in for settlements and that sort of thing,” commented -Dicky. “I hear that is rather disappointing work. If you don’t take the -sporting papers at the reading-room they say the men won’t come at all. -Slingsby Chetwynd was awfully keen on the thing. He went down to stop -a whole week--at Shoreditch or Houndsditch or the Isle of Dogs, or -somewhere like that--and a woman smashed his hat in, and he fell into a -cellar--and he was jolly glad to get back again the same night.” - -Christian was pursuing thoughts of his own. The wine was admirable--as -indeed it should have been considering the pains Dicky had been at, with -pursed lips and lifted eyebrows, in the selection of it--and Christian -had found an unaccustomed pleasure in its aromatic, sub-acid taste. He -had drunk rather freely of it, and was satisfied with himself for -having done so. He leaned back in his chair now, and watching the golden -fountain of bubbles forever streaming upward in his glass, mused upon -welcome new impulses within him toward the life of a free man. - -“None the less,” he remarked, indifferent to the irrelevancy of his -theme, “I should have liked to go to Caermere during the winter. I am -annoyed with myself now that I did not go--whether it was arranged for -me or not. There is a lady there for whom I felt great sympathy. I had -expected to be of service to her long before this--but I am of service -to no one. She is a cousin--no doubt you know her--Lady Cressage.” - -“But she is in London,” put in Westland. “I only know her a little, but -Lady Selton used to be by way of seeing a good deal of her. She told me -last week that she was in town--taken a little flat somewhere--Victoria -Street way, I think. She doesn’t go in for being very smart, you know. -Why--yes--of course she’s your cousin by marriage. Awfully pretty woman -she was. Gad! how well I remember her season! All the fellows went quite -off their heads. How funny--that she should be your cousin!” - -Christian took no note of his companion’s closing words, or of the tone -in which they had been uttered. He scowled at the playful bubbles in his -glass, as he reflected that the news of her arrival in London ought not -to have come to him in this roundabout, accidental way. Why did none -of his own people tell him? Or still more to the point, why had not -she herself told him? He really had given her only an occasional and -sporadic thought, during these past four or five months. Now, as he -frowned at his wine, it seemed to him that his whole winter had been -burdened with solicitude for her. Or no, “burdened” was an ungracious -word, and false to boot. He would say “mellowed” or “enriched” instead. - -“You must find out for me”--he began, and then, upon a second -thought born of pique, checked himself. “Or do not mind--it is of no -consequence. I shall hear as a matter of course.” He called for the bill -with a decision in his voice which seemed full of warning that the topic -was exhausted. - -Westland could not help observing the fat roll of crackling white notes -which the other drew from his pocket. If they were all of the smallest -denomination, they must still represent something like his whole year’s -allowance. The general understanding that Christian’s unfamiliarity -with English ways excused, and even invited, wise admonition from his -friends, prompted him to speak. - -“That’s rather a lot to carry about with you, old man,” he said, in -gentle expostulation. - -“Oh, I like it!” Christian declared, with shining eyes. He snapped the -elastic band about the roll, with an air of boyish delight in the sound, -as he returned it to his pocket. “If you knew the years in which I -counted my sous!”. - -It was nearly ten o’clock when they left. Beginning with the Pavilion, -they went to four or five music halls, only to find that there were no -seats to be had. “Why, of course it’s the boat-race,” exclaimed Dicky at -last. “Stupid of me to have forgotten it. I say, I ought to have come -for you this morning, and taken you up the river to see it. It’s worth -seeing--for once. I wonder Lingfield did not arrange it for you.” - -“Oh, several people asked me to join their parties,” Christian replied. -“But it did not attract me. The athletics here--they rather annoy me. -It is as if people thought of nothing else. And to have students at the -universities consumed with the idea--that is specially unpleasant to my -mind. You must remember--I am a teacher by profession.” - -“We’ll go back to the Empire,” Westland decided. “Ever been there? Well, -it’s worth seeing, too--perhaps more than once. The Johnnies’ll be out -in extraordinary force, I’m afraid, but then you ought to see them too, -I suppose. It takes all sorts to make a world--and the world is what -you’ve come out to look at. Let me get the tickets--or, well, if you -insist--ask for the promenade.” It was indeed a novel spectacle, which -smote and confused his eyes, rather than revealed itself to them, when -Christian found himself inside. The broad, low, rounded promenade was -so crowded with people that at first sight walking about seemed wholly -impracticable, but Dicky stepped confidently into the jumbled throng and -began moving through it, apparently with ease, and the other followed -him. They made their way to the end, where a man in uniform guarded a -staircase; then, turning, they elbowed along back to the opposite end -of the half-circle. This gained, there was nothing in Dicky’s thoughts, -seemingly, but to repeat the performance indefinitely. Their progress -was of a necessity slow. On the inner side a dense wall of backs and -high hats rendered hopeless any notion of seeing the stage below. -Christian, struggling after his guide, wondered what else there was to -see. - -After a time it became obvious to him that the women who formed so large -an element of the lazily shifting crowd were also the occasion of its -being. They walked about, looking the men in the face with a cold, free, -impassive scrutiny upon which, even if he had never seen it before, -intuition would have fixed a label for him. Other women, from the plush -seats on the outer edge of the circle, bent upon the whole moving mass -of promenaders the same stoical, inscrutable gaze. The range of age -among them did not seem extended to his uninformed glance. In years they -were apparently all about alike. Some, indeed, had fresher faces and -smoother skins than others, but when the eyes were considered a certain -indefinable equality was insisted upon in them all. Their toilets were -often striking in effect, and especially their hats--exaggerating both -in breadth of brim, and in the height and bulk of the edifice of plumes -above, the prevalent fashion in such matters--were notable to the -spectator; but Christian found himself, upon consideration, more -interested in their eyes than in anything else. - -A certain stony quality in this stereotyped gaze of theirs suggested a -parallel to his memory; he had seen precisely that same cool, unruffled, -consciously unconscious stare in princesses who had looked at him -without beholding him in the far-away days of his life about the hotels -of the Riviera. It was very curious, he thought--this incongruous -resemblance. But a little closer analysis showed that the likeness was -but partial. These ladies of the promenade could look about them with -the imperturbability of princesses, it was true, but only so long as -they saw nothing which concerned them immediately. Nay, now he could -discern beneath the surface of this passionless perlustration a couched -vigilance of attention, which ever and again flashed uppermost with -electric swiftness. When this mercurial change came, one saw the -temperament mapped out like a landscape under the illumination of -lightning. There gleamed forth expectancy, dread, joy, irritability, -fun, dislike or wistful hope--whatever the mood of the instant -yielded--with a force of intensity almost startling. Then, as quickly -as it came, the look might vanish; even if it flickered on, the briefest -interval of repose brought back again the watchful, dispassionate, -hardened regard. - -“Have you had enough of this?” Dicky asked, with an implication of -weariness in his tone. - -Christian, halting, took slow and bewildered cognizance of the fact that -he had been going from one end of the promenade to the other for a very -long time. Insensibly, at some period of the experience, he had taken -the lead from his companion, and had been dragging him about in his -wake. - -“It is very interesting,” was the vague excuse he offered to Dicky, and -even more to himself. - -A sofa just beside them was for the moment unoccupied. Christian seated -himself with the air of one physically tired out. “Ought we not to -order drinks?” he asked his companion, who stood over him, looking down -somewhat doubtfully. - -“Oh, dear, no--not here!” Dicky replied, with conviction. “It’s nearly -closing time--and we’ll go over to the club for half an hour--where we -know our tipple. Shall we run along now?” - -“No--sit down here,” said Christian. He spoke with the authority of -a profound emotion, that glowed in his eyes and quivered on his lips. -Westland obeyed him, pretending to a nonchalance which his mistrustful -glance belied. - -“This is all very extraordinary to me,” Christian continued, in a low, -strenuous voice. He spoke with even more than his wonted fluency. -“It catches hold of me. It fills my mind with new thoughts. There is -something in the very air here--” - -“Musk and cigarette smoke,” interposed Dicky, lightly. Then he saw that -levity struck a false note. - -“Pah!” the other jerked forth, impatiently. “Don’t talk like that! It -is the most terrible, the most touching, the most inspiring thing I -have seen in my life. I breathe in a new ambition here, out of this -atmosphere. We were talking of the London poor. I thought they made the -loudest appeal--but they are nothing beside _this!_” He spread his thin, -nervous hand out as he spoke, and swept it in a comprehensive gesture -over the spectacle before them. “These are my sisters--my unhappy and -dishonored sisters, scorned and scornful--oh, yes, they are all my -sisters!” - -“But fortunately they don’t know it,” urged Dicky, surveying the ladies -with pouting lips and half-closed eyes. “For God’s sake, don’t mention -it to them.” - -Christian turned round, with one knee on the sofa, and claimed his -companion’s attention. “I wanted to be able to add you to my very little -list of friends,” he said, gravely. “All the evening I have had that in -my mind--and it may be something else, too. But if you cannot understand -me, now, when I tell you how all this moves me--and if you only care to -mock at what I say--why, then, it is not needful to say more.” - -Dicky faced about in turn, and regarded him with a puzzled glance, -from which he was at pains to exclude all signs of frivolity. “But you -haven’t told me _how_ it moves you at all,” he said, vaguely. - -“Oh, how,” repeated Christian with hesitation. “It is not easy to say -just how. But I am devoured by a great compassion. I could weep tears -at the heart-misery I see here. They shout in the papers and wring their -hands over the massacre of Armenians--but right here--this thing--is -it not more cruel and dreadful still? Here there is no question of race -hatreds and religious hatreds, but just the cold, implacable pressure of -poverty on human souls, crushing them and sinking them in shame.” - -“Oh, that’s only a part of the story--not such a deuce of a big part -either,” urged the other, gently. “Don’t get so excited about it, my -dear fellow. It is by no means a new thing. And wait till you know more -about it, and have thought it over--and then, if you feel that there is -anything you can do, why, take my word for it, it will still be here. It -won’t disappear in the meanwhile. You’ll still be in time.” - -Christian regarded him wistfully, and with a mild, faint smile. “You -would never enter into my feelings about this,” he said, softly. “We are -made differently. It strikes you as strange, does it not, that a young -man, coming into contact with this for the first time, should be filled -only with the yearning to help these poor girls, and do good to them? It -surprises you? It is something new to you, n’est ce pas?” - -Dicky grinned within decorous limits. “My dear boy,” he declared, -confidentially, “so far from being new, it’s the oldest thing in the -world. Every young fellow worth his salt that I have ever known, or that -anybody’s ever known, has swelled himself out with precisely these same -reform sentiments. In this very promenade here I have witnessed at least -a dozen attacks like yours. And don’t think I am jeering at the thing. -It is a very beautiful and generous spirit indeed, and I admire it -awfully, I assure you--only--only, as one gets to know his way about -a trifle better, he sees that there isn’t so much in it as he thought -there was. And that’s what I was trying to say to you. Don’t let your -first impulses run away with you. If the subject interests you, appeals -to you, very well; get to understand it. You will find that it is more -complicated, perhaps, than you think. But when you know it all, why, -then you can do what you like.” - -Some of the light seemed to have been turned out. A definitive blare -rolled up from the orchestra below; the throng of promenaders, though -still informed by the most leisurely of moods, was converging upon the -door of exit. The two young men arose. - -Christian suddenly yawned. “I am tired--and depressed,” he said, -wearily. “I think I will ask you to let me go home.” - -“Nonsense!” said Dicky, promptly. “We’ll go to the club, and get a -pick-up, and then you shall see something that won’t depress you. I -grant you this _is_ rather melancholy. God knows why we came.” - -An hour or more later, emerging from a confusing sequence of narrow -passages and winding ascents and descents, Christian followed Westland -out through a groove of painted canvas to the stage of the Hanover -Theater. - -He had never seen a theater from this point of view, and the first few -minutes of his scrutiny--here where he stood at the wings, while Dicky -looked after the coats and hats--were full of pleased interest. The huge -dusky space of the galleries overhead, strange and formidable in its -dark bulk like some giant balloon, was very impressive. By contrast, -the stage itself seemed to give out light. A long riband of a table -stretched across the back, and down the two sides, and about this -clustered many people; shining shirt-fronts and bald heads, pale -shimmering dresses and white shoulders, the glitter of napery and plates -and glasses--all was radiant under the powerful electric glow from -above. He could see now, in the halfshadows down beyond the footlights, -two or three rows of heads of people sitting in the front stalls. To -his fancy these detached heads appeared to belong to an order of beings -quite distinct from those on the stage. He wondered if actors felt their -audiences to be thus remote and aloof from themselves. - -“We can push our way in at the other end--there’s less of a crush -there,” he heard Dicky say to him. He followed his guide across the -stage, through groups of conversing guests who had brought out their -sandwiches and glasses from the throng, and came eventually to the table -itself. Some one held out a bottle toward him, and he lifted a glass to -be filled. From under some other stranger’s arm he extricated a plate, -containing something in gelatine, he knew not what. In straightening -himself he pushed against a person unexpectedly close behind him. - -Half turning, with the murmur of an apology upon his lips, his eyes -encountered those of a lady, who seemed to know him, and to be smiling -at him. - -“How d’ye do?” this lady said to him. There could be no doubt about -the cordiality of her tone. Her left hand was occupied with a champagne -glass and a fan, but her right was being lifted to him, almost against -his breast, in greeting. He gazed at her in smiling perplexity, the -while he signed that both his own hands were filled. - -“You don’t know me from Adam,” she said to him, cheerfully. “But I’m -your cousin--Cora Torr, you know.” - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -You’ve altered so much since I saw you! It was odds against my -recognizing you at all,” declared Cora, beaming forth into conversation -before Christian had fairly grasped the significance of her identity. - -“I should never have believed they would make such an Englishman out -of you, in just these few months. Let’s see--it was October, wasn’t it? -Yes, of course--the First.” She showed her beautiful teeth in a flash of -gaiety. “The pheasants weren’t the only ones that got hit that day. But -bygones are bygones.... And how do you like London? How do you find it -compares with Paris? I always maintain that there’s more real life here, -if you know where to look for it.... But I am afraid you’re not glad to -see me.” - -“There you are wrong. I am glad to see you,” Christian replied, with -deliberation. He made his words good by thrusting his plate back upon -the table and shaking her gloved hand. There was a frank smile in his -eyes. - -“Get my glass filled again,” she suggested--“and-your own too--and let’s -get out of the way. These people push as if they had had nothing to eat -since Christmas. Of all the hogs in evening clothes, the stage-supper -hog is the worst. Well, and how have you been, all this time?” - -They had moved across the stage to the entrance, and paused near it in -a little nook of momentary isolation. Christian made conventional answer -to her query, and to other remarks of hers calling for no earnest -attention, the while he concentrated his thoughts upon the fact that -they were actually standing here together, talking like old friends. - -It was sufficiently surprising, this fact, but even more remarkable was -the satisfaction he himself was getting from it. There was no room for -doubt; he really enjoyed being with her. There was no special need to -concern himself with what she was saying. She hardly paused for replies, -and seemed not to mind in the least the automatic character of the few -which came to her. He had only to smile a little, and nod, and let his -eyes glow pleasurably, and she went blithely on. The perception came -suddenly to him that he had been sorry also for her. Indeed, now that he -reflected upon it, had not hers been the most cruel misfortune of all? -The memory of the drawn, agonized mask of a face she had shown, over the -tea-table in the conservatory at Caermere, rose in his mind’s vision. -He looked up at the strips of canvas and lamps above, with half-closed -eyes, recalling in reverie the details of this suffering face; then he -turned abruptly to confront her, and observe afresh the happy contrast -she presented to-night. - -Cora was looking away for the instant, and apparently conveying by -lifted eyebrows and shakes of the head a message of some sort to some -person on the bustling stage unknown to him. He glanced instinctively -in the direction of her signal, but gained no information--and indeed -realized at once that he was not in search of any. Of course, she knew -everybody here, and would be exchanging nods and smiles of recognition -all the evening. It occurred to him to wonder if her husband, that -Captain Edward of unpleasant memory, was on the stage, but he had the -power to put the thought promptly out of his mind. It was only Cora that -he was interested in, and that he wanted to talk with. And here she was, -once more looking into his face, and restoring by her smile his almost -jocund pleasure in the situation. - -He still maintained the rôle of listener, but it grew increasingly clear -to him that when his turn came he would have a good deal to say, and -that he would say it well. He had never spoken on familiar terms with an -actress before--and the experience put him wonderfully at his ease. -He felt that he could say things to her; already he delighted in the -assurance of her receptivity, her immunity from starched nonsense, her -genial and comforting good fellowship. As he continued to look at her, -and to smile, he remembered what people always said, or rather took -for granted, about ladies on the stage. The consciousness shaped itself -within him that she offered a timely and felicitous compromise--a sort -of bridge between those formal, “gun-metal” women of society whom he -desired never to see again, and those hapless, unblest creatures of the -Empire. - -Presently she took his arm, and they moved round to the stalls in front, -and found seats a little apart from any one else. A large number of -young ladies, in white or light-hued evening dresses, were seated about -in the rows before them, and Cora pointed out this one and that among -them to Christian. “That is Dolly Montressor--the dancer, you know--her -photos are all the rage just now. The girl in pink, over there--just -turning round--she is the one who sued young Concannon for breach of -promise. You must remember. Her lawyers put the bailiffs in for what -she owed them, after they’d taken everything the jury gave her, and she -dressed the bailiffs in livery and had them wait at the table at a big -supper she gave. The little thicknosed dark man there--next but one to -her--he drew a check for the supper and the bailiffs too. You see the -small, thin girl with the tomato-colored hair--she didn’t bring _her_ -suit into court--one isn’t fox-headed for nothing. She settled outside -at the last minute--the Lord Carmody case, you know--and no one’s ever -heard a whisper of any supper she ever gave. It isn’t at all her line. -She puts it all into South Africans; they say she’s good for thirty -thousand pounds, if she’s got a penny. It isn’t bad, you know, on a -salary of six quid, and only the pantomime season at that. Oh, there’s -Peggy Wiltshire--just in the doorway. She’s the most remarkable woman in -England. How old would you think she was? Forty? Why, my dear man, she -was billed as a star in the old original Black Crook--just about the -time I was born. She can’t be a minute under sixty. But look at her--the -neck and shoulders of a girl! Isn’t it amazing! Why, she was knocking -about town when your father was a youngster--and here she is still going -strong.” - -The tables were being cleared from the stage, and the fringe of -gentlemen who remained hungry and thirsty was retiring slowly and with -palpable reluctance toward the wings. Some sad-faced musicians emerged -wearily from an unsuspected cave beneath the footlights, and exhibited -their violins and flutes to the general gaze with an air of profound -dejection. Their fiddle strings began to whine at one another, in a -perfunctory and bad-tempered groping about for something they were -expected to have in common. A stout man on the stage vigorously -superintended the removal of the last table, and warned off with a -comprehensive gesture the lingering remnant of unsated raveners; then, -turning, he lifted his hand. On the instant, some score and more of the -young ladies in white and pale pinks and blues and lavenders rose from -their front stalls, and moved toward the stage door at the left. They -pressed forward like a flock of sheep--and with faces as listlessly -vacant as any pasture could afford. Christian observed their mechanical -exit with a curling lip. - -“If these are the renowned beauties, whose fascinations turn the heads -of all the young men about town,” he confided to his companion, “then it -says extremely little for the quality of what is inside those heads.” - -“Yes, isn’t it extraordinary!” she mused at him, eyeing the bevy of -celebrities with a ruminating glance. “This must be somewhere near the -sixth or seventh lot of ’em that even I’ve seen passing through the -turnstile, as you might say. Where do they all come from?--and good -heavens! where do they all go to? It’s a procession that never stops, -you know. You’d think there was a policeman, keeping it moving. You have -these girls here--well, they’re the queens, just for the minute. They -own the earth. Nothing in the world is too good for them. Very well: -just behind them are some other girls, a few years younger. Goodness -knows where they were to-night--in the back ranks of the ballets, -perhaps, or doing their little turn at the Paragon or the Canterbury, -or doing nothing at all--nothing but keeping their toes pointed in this -direction. And they are treading close on the heels of these queens -you see here; and behind _them_ are girls of sixteen or so, and behind -_them_ the little chits of ten and twelve--and they’re all pushing -along--and in time each lot gets in front, out under the limelight, and -has its little year on the throne--and then gets shoved off to make room -for the next. You might have seen two-thirds of these men here ten years -ago. But not the women. Oh, no! Only here and there one--an old stager -like Polly Wiltshire--or a middle-aged stager like myself. But we’re -merely salt to the porridge.” - -“But do you not wish to dance?” he asked her. The orchestra had begun a -waltz, and the young ladies from the front stalls, each now attached to -a stiffly gyrating male figure, were circling about on the stage, with -a floating, wave-like swing of their full skirts which revealed to those -below in the stalls rhythmic glimpses of whisking feet and trim black -ankles. - -“I will dance with you with pleasure,” she replied, promptly. - -“Unfortunately”--he began with confusion--“it is ridiculous of me, but I -never learned.” - -“Oh, then, we will sit here and talk,” she insisted. “I truly don’t want -to dance. It’s ever so much cooler and more comfortable here. One has to -come to these things, you know--you have to show yourself or you’re like -the man who fell out of the balloon--simply not in it. But they’re all -alike--all deadly stupid unless you’re young and want to kick your legs -about--or unless you find some one you’re particularly glad to see.” - -Christian did not seek to evade the implication of the genial glance -with which she pointed this last remark. “Yes, it is good of you to stay -here with me,” he declared. “Except you and my friend who brought me -here--I thought I saw him dancing a moment ago--I don’t know a soul. I -have been saying to-day,” he continued, settling down in his seat toward -her, “that I make friends badly--I remain here in England almost a -stranger.” - -“Why, I thought you went everywhere. I know I’m forever seeing your name -in the ‘Morning Post.’ You spell it Tower, I notice.” - -“Oh, yes, I have been going everywhere--but going as one goes alone -through a gallery of pictures. I do not bring out any friends with me.” - -She stole a swift glance at him, as she fanned herself. “You surprise -me,” she commented. “I should have thought everybody would be running -after you.” - -“Do they? I am not conscious of it.” He spoke wearily. “If they do, it -does not interest me. They are not my kind of people. They take no hold -whatever upon my sympathy. They make no appeal to the imagination.” - -“You could hardly say that about those ladies’ skirts up there,” she -jocosely remarked. “I had no idea silk petticoats flapped so.” - -He was not to be diverted from his theme. “It is very funny about me,” - he went on. “I seem to make no friends among men, of my own age or any -other. Of course there are two or three exceptions--but no more. And as -for the majority of women, they attract me still less. Yet when, once in -a great while, I do meet some one who really interests me, it is always -a woman. These few women whom I have in mind--oh, I could count them -on the fingers of one hand--they make a much deeper and more lasting -impression on me than any man can make.” - -“I believe that frequently happens,” she put in lightly. She did not -seem to him to be following his thread of reasoning with conspicuous -closeness, but her pleasant smile reassured him. - -“I think I am most readily moved on the side of my compassion,” he -continued, intent upon the development of his self-analysis. “If I am -sorry for the people, it is easier for me to like them--that is, if they -are young and pretty women.” - -Cora laughed aloud at this, then lapsed abruptly into thoughtfulness. -“How do you mean?” she asked. - -“To-night I went to the place of the--the promenade--the Empire, is it -not? And the sight of the young women there--it terribly affected me. I -wanted to shout out that they were all my sisters--that I would protect -them all--that they should never be forced by poverty and want to face -that miserable humiliation again.” She looked at him, her lips parted -over the beautiful teeth, a certain blankness of non-comprehension in -the beautiful eyes. As she slowly grasped the drift of his words, the -eyes and lips joined in a reserved and baffling smile. “You’re a nice -boy,” she decided, “but you’re tremendously young. Those girls are lazy, -greedy, good-for-nothing hussies. They wouldn’t do honest work for a -living if it was brought to them on a silver salver. They haven’t an -idea in their empty painted heads except to wheedle or steal money from -drunken fools. They’re nothing but--what d’ye call ’em?--parasites. I’d -put ’em all on the treadmill, if I had my way.” - -Christian sat up a little, and she was alert in noting the signs of -disaffection on his mobile face. “Nevertheless, there is a great sorrow -and a great shame in it all,” he said, gravely. - -“Oh, that I admit,” she declared, making busy work with her fan. “Of -course! Perhaps I spoke more sharply than I meant. Every one is sorry -for the poor creatures--but--but I confess I’m sorrier still for the -girls who have to work like slaves for the barest necessities of life. -Why, my dressmaker’s girls, two of ’em--poor little half-starved -sisters who may come at nine or ten o’clock at night to deliver things, -or try something on--they get twenty-five shillings a week between them. -That’s what gets on _my_ nerve.” - -He preserved silence for a time, then suddenly sat upright and faced -her. A new light shone in his eyes. “I am the dullest person on earth,” - he protested. “All this time I have not thought of it. I want to ask you -a thousand things about your sister. Did you not know?--She is my oldest -friend in England.” - -Cora drew a long breath, and held up her fan for a protracted and -attentive inspection. “Oh, yes--you mean Frank,” she said, tentatively. - -“Frank? Is that her name? She works. She has a machine à écrire--a -typewriter it is called. You must tell me about her! Is she very well? -And where is she to be found? How shall I go about it to recall myself -to her?” As there came no immediate response, he put his further -meditations into dreamy words: “She spoke the first kind words to me, -here in England. I bade farewell to France and the old hard life, in her -company. It was she who pointed with her finger for me to have my first -look at England--the little, rose-colored island in the green water, -with the purple clouds above it. It seemed that we were very close -together--on that one day. And I was so full of the thought of seeing -her very soon again! And that was September--and now it is very nearly -May!. . . But you have not told me! Where is it that she is to be found? -Where does she live?” - -“She lives at home with my people,” Cora replied, still with reflective -deliberation. It was with a visible effort that she shook off the -preoccupied air into which she had lapsed. “But you don’t want to go -there--it’s out of the world--red-busses and green-busses and a tram and -that sort of thing. But she has an office now of her own; that’s where -you’d find her most easily. Bless me if I know where it is--it’s between -the Strand and the Embankment, but I never can remember which is Norfolk -Street and which Arundel Street--and really I’m not sure she’s on -either. But my brother is here. I’ll ask him, presently. And so you know -Frank?” - -“Ah, yes, but you know her better still,” said Christian, softly, -nestling again into the corner of his chair nearest her. “I wanted you -to tell me about her.” - -“Oh, well--but what is there to tell?” she made answer, vaguely. “She -is a good girl; she’s frightfully clever; she works very hard, and gives -most of her money to her mamma; she’s successful, too, because she’s got -a shop of her own, at last--and--and--that’s about all, isn’t it? You -know, we’re not by way of seeing much of each other. There’s no quarrel, -of course--not the least in the world--but I’m too frivolous to be in -her class at all. I dare say it’s my fault--I ought to go and look her -up. That’s what I will do, too, one of these days. But--you mustn’t -misunderstand me--she’s an awfully good girl, that is, of course, if you -like that sort of girl. And she’s pretty, too, don’t you think?” - -“Yes, I think so,” affirmed Christian, almost with solemnity. “What time -would she come to her office--in the morning, I mean?” - -“Oh, don’t ask me!” laughed Cora. “At some ghastly hour, when they have -breakfast, I believe, in cabmen’s shelters, and the streets haven’t been -swept. I know it only by hearsay. I’ve never stopped up quite as late as -that, you know. But you see something like it, driving round by Covent -Garden on your way home from a late dance, to see the flowers. Have you -ever done that?” - -Christian shook his head. The idea attracted him, apparently. “At what -hour is it?” he asked, with interest. - -“Oh, four or five or something like that. It’s really the prettiest -sight you ever saw. I used to go often, at this time of year, and -take home a cabload of flowers. But I am getting too old now--and too -serious-minded. The mother of a family--you know.” - -Christian looked at his watch. “It has occurred to me”--he suggested, -hesitatingly--“it is now after two--perhaps we could make a party to go -this morning. The dancing will not stop earlier, will it?” - -On the stage nothing seemed further from any mind than stopping. There -was some complicated kind of set dance in progress, which at the moment -involved the spectacle of some score of couples, hands all joined, -romping madly around in a gigantic ring. The dresses whirled more wildly -than ever; the men crooked their legs and hung outward from the circle -as they went, stamping their feet and laughing boisterously. Christian’s -eyes singled out one young man who seemed to be making most noise of -all--and then he perceived that it was Dicky Westland. - -“Perhaps it might be arranged,” Cora replied, after consideration, and -with a sidelong eye upon her companion. “I will go behind for a moment, -and find my brother, and see what he says. No, you stop here. I will -come back again.” - -So many people were moving about with entire individual freedom, that -he offered no objection to her departure. She pushed her way confidently -yet affably past the others in the row, and disappeared at the stage -door. He had no clues by which to follow her in fancy after that. Once -he thought he distinguished her at the back of the stage--but for the -rest it was her sister rather than the friendly Cora who engaged his -thoughts. The idea that he was to see her again, quite without delay, -seemed to illuminate his whole mind. - -In the labyrinth of shunted scenery behind the back-curtain, and -along the narrow corridors of dressing-rooms, now devoted to varying -hospitable uses, Cora prosecuted what was for a time a fruitless search. - -“Where are the gentlemen getting their drinks?” she asked at last of a -cloak-room attendant, and the answer simplified her task. Downstairs, at -the door of the manager’s room, she was lucky enough to hit upon Major -Pirie. “Tell Eddy that’ I want him, will you, old man,” she said, -nodding with assurance toward the crowded, smoky little interior, “and -if that brother of mine is in there, I want to see him for a minute, -too.” - -The brother came out first--a slender, overdressed youth, with a -face which suggested a cheap and inferior copy of Cora’s. It had the -self-complacency without the high spirits--the comeliness of line -without the delicacy of texture and charm of color. He was obviously -young in years, but he regarded her through the eyes of an elderly and -wearied person. - -“Hello,” he said, amiably enough. “Goin’ to take Eddy home? He won’t be -the worse for a friendly lead. Oh, he’s all right, though, up to now. -He’s got rippin’ odds against Perambulator from Hoskins, seventy to -three, you know, in fivers. Try and get him to let me in on the bet, -will you? I offered to take half of it, the minute the bet was made--but -he didn’t answer me. You can work it, if you try, old girl.” - -“What’s Frank’s address--her office, I mean?” she put in abruptly, “Got -a pencil? Go and get one from somebody. Thirty-two A, you say? Thanks! -Now tell Eddy to come out.” - -“But what’s up? What do you want with Frank? Anything I can tell her?” - -“Never you mind! And don’t lisp a word to her, or to Eddy or to any one -else. If it comes off, it’ll be a beano for the lot of us.” - -“Right you are,” he assented, with a glimmer of animation. “But say, -you won’t forget about the Hoskins bet, will you? If I could even have -a third of it! I could do with some odd sovereigns just now, and no -mistake.” - -“Sh-h! Here he comes. You run away-now, d’ye see; I want to talk with -Eddy.” - -Captain Edward emerged from the haze of cigarette smoke which veiled the -throng within the manager’s room. “Well?” he demanded, with a kind of -sulky eagerness. - -“I haven’t told him you were here,” Cora began, under her breath, -drawing her husband aside down the passage. “It didn’t seem to come into -the talk. He thinks I’m here with Tom.” - -Edward looked down upon his wife, with a slow, ponderous glance of -mingled hope and uneasiness. He pulled at his small yellow mustache, and -aimlessly jingled some keys in his pocket. - -“You’ve had nearly two hours with him, you know,” he protested, -doubtfully. - -“_Don’t_ I know it!” she ejaculated, holding up her hands in mock pain -at the retrospect. “Good God! If I had a thousand pounds to show for it, -I’d say it was the hardest earned money _I_ ever handled.” - -“Yes, but you haven’t got anything to show--so far’s I can make out,” he -commented with gloom. “You didn’t mention my name at all, eh? But that -was what you particularly set out to do, I thought.” - -“Well, you thought wrong,” she responded briskly. “I set out to do -what was wisest under the circumstances, and I’ve done it. I’ve got an -inkling of a game to be played”--she let her eyes twinkle at him as she -made this tantalizing little pause--“a game, you old goose, worth seven -hundred thousand times anything you ever thought of.” - -The ex-hussar regarded her fixedly, the while he pondered her words. -“I don’t think I’m very keen about games,” he remarked at last, with -obvious suspicion in his tone. “A married woman always gets the worst of -games, in the long run.” - -She grinned affectionate contempt up at him. “Don’t be such a duffer, -Eddy!” she remonstrated with him. “If I had a notion of that sort--do -you suppose I’d come and give it away to you? What rot you talk!” - -“Yes--but what _is_ your game?” he demanded, doggedly. - -“I won’t tell you!” She spoke with great apparent decision. “You’d blab -it all over the place. You can no more keep a secret than you can keep a -ten-pound note.” - -“Oh, I say, Cora,” he urged, in grieved protestation. “You know I’m a -regular bailey oyster, where a thing has to be kept dark. You’d better -tell me, you know. It’ll keep me from--imaginin’ things.” - -The wife smiled. “It’s only a plant I’ve got in my mind,” she explained, -after consideration. “What’s the matter with my naming a wife for him, -eh?” - -Edward, upon reflection, pouted his lips. “Probably you’d come a cropper -over it, in the first place,” he objected, slowly, “and then even if you -did name the winner, she’d probably welsh us out of our winnings--and -besides, what do we want of his marrying at all. The longer he puts off -getting married, the less the odds against us gets. I should think even -a woman could see that.” - -Cora permitted herself a frank yawn. “I’ll explain it to you to-morrow,” - she said. - -“And now I must go back to my Juggins for a few minutes. I’ll come and -fetch you when I’m ready to go.” - -“I don’t fancy it much, you know,” he urged upon her as she turned. He -took a step toward her, and put his hand on her arm. “If your brother -Tom was any good”--he began, with a hard growl in his voice--“by God, -I’d have half a mind to talk with him about _my_ plan. Old Pirie’d be no -use--but if Tom had the sense and the nerve--why, we’d--” - -She had held his eye with a steady, comprehending glance, under the -embarrassment of which his speech faltered and then lapsed altogether. -“No, the less either you or Tom have to do with your plan the better. Go -in now, and take a plain soda, and wait for me! You’ve got no plan, mind -you. You’ve simply been dreaming about it. Do you hear? You never had a -plan! You can’t have one!” - -She spoke with significant authority, and he deferred to it with a -sullen upward wag of the head. “All right,” he muttered curtly, and -turned on his heel. - -“Plain soda, mind!” she called after him, and without waiting for an -answer, ran briskly up the steps toward the stage. - -Captain Edward’s plain soda had become a remote and almost wholly -effaced memory by the time his wife again summoned him from the -manager’s room. - -“We’ll cut this now, if you don’t mind,” she remarked, in her most -casual tone. “I’m as tired as if I’d danced every minute.” She had put -on her wraps, and her small, pretty face, framed by the white down of -her hood, seemed to his scrutiny to wear an expression of increased -contentment. - -“Anything fresh?” he asked, as they went in search of his coat and hat. - -“Yes--fresh is the word,” she replied, with simulated nonchalance. -“Fresh, fresher, freshest--as we used to say at school.” - -“Wha’ is it?” he inquired, when they were within touch of the open air. -The music was still audible behind them, broken by faint, intermittent -echoes of stamping feet and laughing voices. - -“I’ll tell you about it in the morning,” she answered listlessly. “I -hope to heaven you’ve got a cab-fare.” - -“Yes, tha’s all right,” said Edward, waving his stick toward the rank -in the dark middle distance of the street. “Whyn’t you tell me all about -it?” - -“Oh, you wouldn’t get onto it now,” she replied, But later, in the -hansom, the desire to unburden her mind achieved the mastery. - -“Are you awake?” she demanded, and went on: “He’s not a bad sort, that -boy, you know.” - -“Damn him!” said Edward, breathing heavily. - -“I rather like him myself,” she continued. “He’s a bit slow to talk to, -and he’s fresher than Devonshire cream, but there isn’t a drop of the -Johnnie in him. He’s as clean as my little girl.” - -“Damn him,” repeated her husband, but in a milder and even argumentative -tone. - -“He’s a proper bundle of nerves, that youngster,” she mused, as if -talking to herself. “And whatever those nerves of his tell him to do, -he’ll do it. And I’d lay odds he’s goin’ to surprise us all. He’s -got something boilin’ in his mind--something that’s just struck him -to-night--I could see that. Oh, if I was a man!--I’d get out of this -hansom now, and I’d follow that lad, and I’d get hold of him somehow, -and I’d bend him any way I chose--_that_ would be something like!--but -then again, you take him some other way, and he’s as stubborn as a moke. -But I like him, all the same.” She turned toward her husband, and lifted -her voice a little. “I like him so much, I’m thinkin’ of havin’ him for -a brother-in-law.” - -“Strornary thing,” commented Edward, earnestly, “no man’er where I start -from, whenever I get t’ the Circus, I get the hiccups.” - -Cora put her head back against the cushions, and closed her eyes. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -Christian discovered that he was not sorry to be alone. Cora’s company -had been amusing and vivifying, no doubt, but it was even better now to -have his own thoughts. He observed with relief that others in the stalls -were smoking; tobacco as a rule had not very much meaning for him, -but now he lit a large cigar from the dinner-case in his pocket, and -stretching himself in his chair, proceeded to enjoy it. He kept his -glance, in an indolent fashion, upon the stage, but his mind roamed far -and wide. - -Cora, in returning to explain that it would not be possible for her to -stay till the time for Covent Garden, had ingenuously sat on for nearly -another hour, cheering him with her lively prattle. She asked him many -questions about himself, his diversions, his tastes, his relations with -Lord Julius and Emanuel. He wondered now if these queries had been quite -as artless as they seemed at the time. There rose up before him, in -retrospect, certain occasional phases of her manner which suggested -something furtive. She had watched the stage, and the doorway leading -from it, with a kind of detached uneasiness on which he now languidly -speculated. It occurred to him again to wonder if her husband was really -in the building. Christian found himself thinking of this cousin of his -almost with compassion. Poor devil! Was his fate not even more tragic -than that of the others who were merely dead? He regretted now that -he had not asked Cora point-blank as to his presence. His mood was so -tolerant to-night that even the unforgivable insult to his father lost -its sharp outlines, and became only a hasty phrase, the creature of -imperative provocation. - -In her final leave-taking, Cora had genially proffered her services if -he desired to know any or all of the young ladies--and he had begged -to be excused. Dicky Westland came down to the stalls later on, and -shamefacedly linked a similar offer to his apologies for his prolonged -neglect of his guest. But Christian protested that he was enjoying -himself thoroughly. He was never less sleepy in his life; he did not -want a drink; he would not dream of wishing to go until his friend was -entirely ready. “You cannot realize,” he concluded, with his persuasive -smile, “how strange and interesting this all is to me.” - -But when Dicky had returned again to the stage, Christian paid less -attention than ever to the diverting spectacle. His thoughts reverted -obstinately to Captain Edward--? and to that portion of the family of -which he was the congenital type. Was not that really the sort of man -who should have the title? There seemed a cloud of negative reasons, but -were these not sentimental abstractions? Should the duke not be a rough, -hard sportsman, a man with a passion for horses and dogs and gunpowder -saturating his veins? One who loved the country for its rude, toilsome -out-of-door sports, and who liked best in town the primitive amusements -of the natural man? He figured Edward in his mind’s eye most readily as -puffing and cursing over a rat-hole with his terriers--or as watching -with a shine of steel in his blue eyes the blood-stained progress of -a prize-fight. And truly, were these not the things that a duke of -Glastonbury of right belonged to? - -He could not think of Lord Julius and of Emanuel as being Torrs at all. -The older man had the physical inheritance of the family, it was -true, but he was almost as much estranged from its ideals as that -extraordinary son of his. They both were grotesquely out of the picture -of English aristocratie life, whether in country or town. And he -himself--how absolutely he also was out of the picture! - -The immensity of the position which his grandfather’s death would -devolve upon him had been present in his mind, it seemed sleeping as -well as waking, for half a year. At the outset he had thrilled at the -prospect; sometimes still he was able to reassure himself about it, and -to profess to himself confidence that when the emergency came, he -would be equal to it. But more often, in these latter days, the outlook -depressed him. Of course nothing grievous would happen to him, in any -event. He would be assured of an excellent living to the end of his -days, with an exceptional amount of social deference from those about -him, and relative freedom to do what he liked. He could marry and rear -a family of lords and ladies; he could have his speeches in the House -of Lords or elsewhere printed in the “Times”; if he looked about in -America, he could secure a bride with perhaps millions to her dower. -There was, in any case, the reasonable likelihood that he would be, to -some extent, the heir of Lord Julius and Emanuel, in the latter part -of his life. Thus he could go on, when he set himself to the task, -piling-up reasons why he ought to view the future with buoyant -serenity--to count himself among the happiest of men. - -But then--was his not all self-deception? Did he not know in his heart -that he was not happy?--that this gilded and ornate career awaiting -him really repelled all his finer senses? To-night as he followed his -thoughts behind the transparent screen of whisking dresses and jolting -figures upon which his outer vision rested, the impulse to escape the -whole thing rose strong within him. Already he had sworn that he would -no longer weary himself with the meaningless and distasteful routine of -social obligations in London. Why should he not plunge boldly forward -beyond that, and say that he would make no further sacrifices of any -sort to the conventions of mediocrity? - -He lit another cigar and, rising, walked about a little by himself at -the side of the stalls, his hands deep in his pockets, his brows knitted -in formative introspection. - -First of all, it was clear that Emanuel’s hopes about his taking up the -System were doomed. It was not in him to assume such a part. He had -not the capacity for such work; even if he had, he lacked both the -tremendous driving energy and the enthusiasm. - -But when Emanuel learned this, then he would be angry, and he would -cover over no more money to that account at the bank. Eh bien! It -couldn’t be helped. Christian recalled that he had still at that blessed -bank more than sixty thousand francs!--truly a prodigious sum, when one -thought of it soberly. The question whether this sum ought not to be -given back to Emanuel, under certain circumstances, seemed to have -settled itself. When it had first occurred to him that afternoon, it had -suggested a good many moral difficulties. But it was really simplicity -itself, as he considered it now. There were all those lean and -poverty-stricken years of his youth and childhood to be remembered--and, -stretching back beyond that, those other years of his father’s exile -before he was born--nearly forty in all. The intelligent thing was to -regard the three thousand pounds as a sort of restitution fund, to be -spread out over the whole of that long period. Viewed in this light, -the annual fraction of it was a paltry matter. Besides, Emanuel had -expressly declared that no conditions whatever were attached to the -money. Christian saw that he could make his mind quite easy on that -score. - -So then, there were sixty thousand francs! With that he might live -admirably, even luxuriously, on the Continent, until his grandfather’s -death. That event would of course alter everything. There would then -come automatically to him--no matter where he was or what he did--a -certain fixed income, which he understood to be probably over rather -than under seventy-five thousand francs a year. This--still on the -Continent--would be almost incredible wealth! There was really no limit -to the soul-satisfying possibilities it opened before him. He would -have a yacht on the Mediterranean; he would have a little chateau in -the marvelous green depths of the Styrian Mountains--of which a boyhood -friend had told him with such tender reverence of memory. He would see -Innsbruck and Moscow, and, if he liked, even Samarkand and China. Why, -he could go round the world in his yacht, if he chose--to remote spice -islands and tropical seas! He could be a duke when, and as much, as it -pleased him to be one. Instead of being the slave to his position -and title, he would make them minister to him. He would do original -things--realize his own inner fancies and predilections. If the whim -seized him to climb Mount Ararat, or to cross the Sahara with a caravan -of his own servants--that he would do. But above all things--now and -henceforth forever, he would be a free man! He laughed grimly as he -thought how slight was the actual difference between the life of pauper -bondage he had led up to last October, and the existence which polite -England and London had imposed upon him ever since. The second set of -chains were of precious metal--that was all. Well, hereafter there would -be no fetters of any description! - -“I’m quite ready to go now, old man, if you are,” Dicky Westland said at -some belated stage of this reverie. He had approached without being seen -by his friend, and he had to pull at Christian’s sleeve to attract his -attention. “I fancy you’ve been walking in your sleep,” he laughed, in -comment upon this. - -Christian shook himself, and, blinking at Dicky, protested that he had -never been more wide awake in his life. “I go only if you’re entirely -ready,” he said. “Don’t dream of leaving on my account I have been -extremely interested, I assure you.” - -“Every fellow has his own notions of enjoyment,” reflected Westland, -with drowsy philosophy, as they went up the stairs toward the stage. “I -tried to explain your point of view to some of the girls up here, but -I’m not sure they quite grasped it. They were dying to have me bring you -up and make you dance, you know. By George, I had a job to keep Dolly -Montressor from coming down and fetching you, off her own bat.” - -“How should they know or care about me?” asked Christian. “I didn’t -expect to be pointed out.” - -“My dear man,” retorted Dicky, sleepily, “no one pointed you out. They -all know you by sight as well as they do George Edwards. It isn’t too -late, still, you know--if you really would like to be introduced.” - -Christian shook his head with resolution, as they halted at the wings. -“Truly, no!” he repeated. “But I should like a glass of wine and a -sandwich, if we can get past the stage. I’m not an atom sleepy, but I’m -hungry and thirsty.” - -On their way through a narrow, shadowed defile of huge canvas-stretched -frames of deal, they passed two young men, one much taller than the -other, who had their heads bent together in some low-voiced, private -conversation. Christian glanced at them casually, and was struck with -the notion that they observed him in turn, and exchanged comment upon -his approach. He looked at them with a keener scrutiny as he went -by--and it seemed to him that there was something familiar in the face -of the larger man--who indeed looked away upon the instant their eyes -met. - -“Did you see those men?” he asked Westland, in an undertone, a moment -later. “Do you know them?” - -“Those we just passed?” Dicky looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know -the thin chap, but the other fellow is Gus Torr--why, of course--your -cousin. Somehow, I never think of you as belonging to that lot--I mean, -being related to them. Of course--that was his sister-in-law you were -sitting with. Why did you ask if I knew him?” - -“Nothing--I was not sure if it was he--I’ve seen him only once,” - Christian replied, with an assumption of indifference. “I remember -having noticed then how much he looked like his brother.” - -“Yes--poor devils!” commented Dicky, as they entered the manager’s room. -Apparently it was in his mind to say more, but the place was crowded, -and the problem of getting through the throng to the food and drink -monopolized his attention. - -Some minutes later, while Christian stood in another corridor, waiting -for his friend to bring their hats and coats from the mysteriously -elusive spot where he had left them, he overheard the mention of his -name. Two women’s voices, wholly unknown to him, came from behind an -improvised partition of screens near at hand, with great distinctness. - -One of them said: “He spells his name ‘Tower,’ you know. I understand -the idea is to make people forget who his father was.” - -“Good job, too!” replied the other voice. - -Christian turned abruptly, and strode off in the direction whither Dicky -had disappeared. “After forty years!” he murmured hotly to himself. -“After forty years!” and clenched his fists till the nails hurt his -palms. - -***** - -The two young men walked homeward, arm in arm, through silent streets -over which the dawn was spreading its tentative first lights. It was -colder than they had thought, and the morning air was at once misty and -fresh. In Leicester Square the scent of lilacs came to them; beside the -pale, undefined bulk of the squat statue they caught the lavender splash -of color which was sister to the perfume. - -“By Jove, it’s spring!” said Dicky. He pointed out the flowers, and -then, still drawing Christian’s arm to turn his attention to the -square, recalled to him as they moved that this was the oldtime haunt -of foreigners in London. “Dickens’s villain in ‘Little Dorrit,’ you -know--the fellow whose mustache went up and his nose went down--I never -can remember his name--he lived here. In those days, all that sort of -chappies lived here--the adventurers and jailbirds who had made their -own countries too hot to hold them.” - -Westland’s insistence upon this theme had no purpose other than to -divert Christian’s attention while they passed the Empire. He was tired, -and profoundly disinclined to any renewal of the discussion about the -promenade. He encountered with vague surprise, therefore, the frowning -glance which Christian, half halting, bent upon him. The young man’s -displeasure was marked, but Dicky for the life of him could not imagine -why. He tightened his hold on the other’s arm and quickened their pace. - -But Christian, after a few yards, suddenly withdrew his arm altogether. -“I do not like to walk so fast,” he said, with a sharp note in his -voice. - -Dicky regarded him with puzzled apprehension. “What’s up, old man?” he -asked, almost pleadingly. “Has anything gone wrong?” - -Christian, still with knitted brows, parted his lips to speak. Then -he seemed to reconsider his intention, and let his face soften as he -paused. “No--nothing at all,” he replied, after a moment. He smiled -a little to reassure the other. “It was nothing at all,” he repeated. -“Only I am nervous and excited to-night--this morning, I should say--and -my head is full of projects. It is twelve hours since you came to -me--and the whole world has changed meanwhile. I see everything -different. I am not altered to your eyes--but none the less, I am not -at all, in any respect, the man you took to dine with you. You have not -observed anything--but it is a revolution that has occurred under your -very nose, Mr. Dicky Westland.” - -“I’m too sleepy to observe anything,” the other declared. “I couldn’t -tell a revolution from a--from a hot-potato can.” - -The comparison had forced itself upon Westland’s jaded mind through the -medium of his weary eyes. There before them, by the curb at the corner, -stood the dingy wheeled-oven of the streets, the sullen red glow of -its lower door making a strange patch of fiery light upon the ragged -trousers of the man in charge. He was a dirty and undersized creature, -and he looked up at the two young gentlemen in evening dress with a -speculative, yet hardly hopeful, eye. - -Christian stopped short. “Ah, this is very good,” he said, with a -brightening face. “I have never eaten a potato from a can.” - -Dicky sighed, but resigned himself with only a languid protest: “You -have to eat so much else besides the potato,” he commented dolefully. - -The man opened an upper door, and then drew from under the machine a -twisted wad of old newspaper, which, being unwound, revealed a gray heap -of salt. “How many, cap’n?” he demanded, briefly. - -Christian had been glancing across the Circus meanwhile--to where, in -the misty vagueness of dawn, Piccadilly opened between its tall, shapely -corners, and beyond, the curved yellowish sweep of Regent Street began. -The dim light revealed some lurking figures to his eyes. - -“Can you call over those women?” he asked the potato-man. - -A tall, fresh-faced young policeman came upon the group round the -Criterion corner. Although the pounding of his thick boots on the -pavement had been audible long before his appearance, he regarded them -with the slightly dramatic air of one who has deftly surprised a group -of conspirators. The potato-man looked from Christian to the officer and -made no reply. - -Christian drew some silver from his pocket, shaking off the restraining -hand Westland tried to lay on his arm. “Is there any objection, -constable,” he inquired, “to my buying potatoes for those friends of -ours over there? It is a cold morning.” - -The policeman’s glance ranged from the white ties of the young gentlemen -to the coins in Christian’s palm. His official expression relaxed. “I -dare say it’ll do no ’arm, sir,” he replied with courtesy. He even -lent himself to the enterprise by stooping down and beating a certain -number of strokes with his baton on the pavement. - -“How many times did he strike?” Dicky made whispered inquiry. “That’s a -new dodge to me.” - -New or old, it was efficient. Forlorn shapes began to emerge from the -shadows of the big streets opposite, and move forward across the empty -open space. Others stole noiselessly in from the byways of Leicester -Square. There were perhaps a dozen in all when the potato-man made his -census--poorly dressed, fagged, bold-faced, furtive-eyed women. They -spoke in monotonous, subdued tones among themselves. There were to be -heard German, French, Belgian French, cockney English, and Lancashire -English. Two of them pulled at the sleeve of the potato-man to make him -hurry. - -Christian, regarding his motley guests, found himself neither touched -nor entertained. They seemed as stupid as they were squalid. With a -gesture of decision he gave the money to the policeman. - -“Pay for it all,” he directed, “and if more come, give them a look-in, -too--and keep what is left for yourself.” - -“Now then, Frenchy!” broke in the constable, sharply. “Mind what you’re -at! Pass Germany the salt!” With an abrupt change to civility, he turned -to Christian. “Right you are, sir!” he said. - -Dicky laughed drowsily. “It’s like the Concert of Europe,” he declared. -“Shall we go on?” - -They moved down the broad pavement, again arm in arm, breathing in -slowly the new, keen air, and observing in a silence which was full of -tacit comment the beautiful termination of the street before them: the -dark figures of the Crimean monument standing in grim relief against -the morning light, the stately palace beyond, with its formal portals -of club buildings, its embowered statues, its huge column towering -ponderously above the pale green of spring in the park--all gray and -cool and, as it were, thoughtfully solemn in the hush of daybreak. - -“Ah, yes--this wonderful London!” sighed Christian, as they halted at -the Continental corner. He spread his hand to embrace the prospect -before them. “How right you were! I have not learned to know it at all. -But I begin now! If you will walk through the square with me--there is -something I wish to say.” - -This something did not get itself said till they halted within this -somber, slate-colored square. Christian paused before a big, pretentious -house of gloomy, and even forbidding aspect--a front of sooty stucco, -with cornices of ashen-hued stone, and many windows masked with sullen -brown shades. - -“This was our town house a hundred years ago,” he said meditatively. “My -father was born here. My grandfather sold it when the entail was broken. -Until this afternoon, it was my fixed resolve to buy it back again. I -said always to myself: ‘If I am to have a house in London, it must be -this old one of ours in St. James’s.’ But that is all changed now. At -least, it is no longer a resolve.” - -Dicky gazed at him with sleepy eyes. “How do you mean?” he asked, -perfunctorily. - -“Wake up now, and I will tell you!” Christian, with a lingering glance, -as of renunciation, at the mansion, began to walk again. “This is it. -You said you were eager to be some colonial official’s secretary--to -have three hundred pounds--and the yellow fever. To obtain this, you -expend all your energies, you and your relations. Well, then--why will -you not be my secretary instead? You shall have more than three hundred -pounds--and no yellow fever.” - -Westland had roused himself, and looked inquiringly now into the other’s -face. “What do you need of a secretary?” he objected, half jestingly. -“If you want to talk about it after you’ve come into the thing--I don’t -say that I shouldn’t be glad-to consider it. But the deuce of it is----” - -“No--I wish it to begin now, this morning, this hour--this minute!” - Christian spoke peremptorily. - -Dicky, pondering, shook his head. “No, you mustn’t insist on -settling anything now,” he decided. “It isn’t regular, you know. If -you--really--want to propose something immediate--why, I’ll call and -talk with you to-morrow--or, that is to say, this afternoon. But I -couldn’t possibly let you commit yourself to anything of that sort now.” - -Christian frowned at his friend. “You speak of what you will let me do!” - he said. - -“In your opinion--I see it!--you think I have not sober command of -myself, am not responsible--is that it?” - -“Nonsense! I’ve said nothing of the sort,” protested the other. “Of -course, you’re perfectly all right--but we’re both tired and sleepy, and -you’re not so accustomed to go home by daylight as I am--and it wouldn’t -be at all the thing for me to close a bargain with you now. Can’t you -see what I mean? I wouldn’t play threepenny écarté with you at this -hour in the morning--and I’m damned if I’m going to let you in for three -hundred a year for the rest of my life. Shall I come round, say, at -luncheon time?” - -“I shall not be in,” said Christian, curtly. He looked at his companion, -and then past him at the trees in the square, in vexed rumination. “What -I have it in my mind to do”--he continued, vaguely, after a pause--“it -is not a thing for delay. It is in my blood to do it at once. It was my -impulse to make you my comrade in it--but of course, since you have your -reservations and doubts, there need be nothing more said about it.” - -The shrug of the shoulders which emphasized these last words nettled -Westland, and at the same time helped him to repress his annoyance. It -lent to the whole episode just that savor of foreign eccentricity which -appealed to the amiable tolerance of the islander. - -“My dear man,” he urged, gently, “I haven’t the slightest notion what it -is that you’re so keen about--but whatever it is, do go home and sleep -on it, and make up your mind calmly after breakfast. It’s no good -deciding important questions, and striking out new lines, and all that -sort of thing, at this hour in the morning. Nobody ever does it, you -know. It simply can’t be done.” - -“Good-night!” said Christian, proffering his hand. “You are right; it is -high time for those who are sleepy to go to bed I won’t drag you round -to Duke Street.” - -Dicky looked at him doubtfully. “You do wrong to be angry, you know,” he -said. - -“But that is your error--I am not in the least angry--I beg you to -believe it,” cried Christian. His eyes beamed genially in proof of his -assertion, and he put heartiness into his voice. “For a minute I was -disappointed--shall I say vexed?--but not any more. How should I quarrel -with you for not beholding things through my eyes? To me, something is -a giant; you perceive that it is a windmill. Eh bien! We do not convince -each other--but surely we do not quarrel.” - -“Oh, I am game enough to play Sancho to your Don,” expostulated Dicky, -with a readiness which Christian had not looked for, “but I draw the -line at starting out on an empty stomach, and when we’re too sleepy to -stand. Well, what shall it be?” He took the hand offered him, and strove -to signify by his cordial grasp that no trace of a misunderstanding -remained. “Shall I look you up, say, at two o’clock?” - -“I do not think I shall be there. Goodnight!” responded Christian, and -the two parted. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -Christian climbed the stairs at Duke Street, and let himself into his -apartments, with painstaking precautions against being overheard. There -was an excess of zeal about Falkner which might easily impel him to -present himself for service at even this most unseasonable hour. - -The young man had still only formless notions of what he was going to -do, but it was at least plain to him that Falkner was to have no part in -the proceedings. He drew off his varnished boots as a further measure -of security, and then, with more hesitation, removed his cloak and coat, -and raised the inside blinds at the two windows. This sitting-room of -his had rather pleased him formerly. He could recall having taken quite -an affectionate interest in buying and arranging the rugs and pictures -and bookcases with which he had supplemented the somewhat gaunt -furnishing of his predecessor. But now, in this misty and reluctant -light of the London morning, nothing seemed good to him as he looked -about. - -The pretty things of his own selection said no more to him than did the -chattels he had taken over from a stranger. There was no spirit of home -in them. - -He moved noiselessly to the adjoining bedroom, and drew the curtains -there as well, and glanced round. Here, too, he had the sense of -beholding the casual appointments of a hotel chamber. Nothing made an -appeal of intimacy to him. He reflected that in a day or two he -should not be able to remember how his room looked--even if his memory -attempted the fatuous task. Duke Street had been engraved on his cards -for six months, but it had not made the faintest mark on his heart. - -With an air of decision, he suddenly began to drag forth his clothes -from the wardrobe and drawers, and spread them on the bed. In the tiny -dressing-room beyond were piled his traveling bags, and these he brought -out into the light. Upon consideration, however, the original impulse -to take a good many things weakened and dwindled. To begin with, their -secret removal was in no way practicable. Moreover, now that he thought -of it, he did not want them. They would be simply encumbrances. He would -take with him only the smallest handbag, with a change of linen and a -few brushes. - -Finally, the conviction that even this must be a nuisance became clear -to him, and he desisted from the random packing he had begun. Still -moving about as silently as possible, he changed his ceremonial tie for -one of every-day wear, and put on a suit of sober-colored tweeds, and -his easiest brown boots. The transfer of his watch, some loose gold -and the roll of notes from one set of pockets to another, completed his -preparations in the bedchamber. He tiptoed out to the larger room, -and there, upon reflection, wrote a few lines for Falkner’s direction, -saying merely that he was called away, and that matters were to go on as -usual until he returned or sent further orders. He separated a banknote -from the roll to place inside this note, but on second thoughts wrote -a check instead, and sealing and directing the envelope, laid it in a -conspicuous place on the table. - -He noticed then, for the first time, that there were some letters from -the evening post for him, neatly arranged on this table. He opened the -nearest, and glanced at its contents: it was a note from his second -cousin, Lady Milly Poynes, the fair-haired, fair-faced, fair-brained, -fair-everything sister of Lord Lingfield, reminding him that she was -depending upon his escort for the Private View of the Academy, and that -the time for getting tickets was running very short. He laughed aloud -at the conceit of the Royal Academy rising in his path as an obstacle -at such a moment--and without more ado thrust this with the unopened -letters into his pocket. Then, when he had made sure once more that he -had his check-book, nothing remained to be done. He went softly forth, -without so much as a thought of taking a farewell glance behind him, -found a soft dark hat in the hallway and then closed the outer door with -great care upon the whole Duke Street episode of his life. - -“You are not to see me here again in a hurry,” he confided aloud to the -banisters and steps, when he had descended to the first floor. Then he -laughed to himself, and tripped gaily down the remaining flight. - -There was no hesitation now in his mood. He walked briskly back through -the square, and then down Waterloo Place, till he came to the Guards’ -Memorial. He moved round this to the front, and looked up at one of the -three bronze Guardsmen with the confident air of familiarity. He knew -this immutable, somber face under every shifting aspect of light and -shadow; he had stared at the mantling greatcoat and the huge bearskin of -this hero of his a hundred times. The very first day of his arrival in -London he had made the acquaintance of this statue, and had started, -dazed and fascinated, at the strange resemblance it suggested. Thus his -boy-father must have looked, with the beard and the heavy dress of -the Russian winter. The metal figure came to mean to him more than all -London beside. In the sad, strong, silent countenance which gazed down -upon him he read forever the tragedy that gripped his heartstrings. -Forever Honor, standing aloft, held the laurel wreath poised high above -the warrior’s head--immovable in the air, never to descend to touch its -mark. Christian had seen this wreath always through moist eyes. - -This morning, for a wonder, no tearful impulse came to him as he -looked upward. The impassive face was as gravely fine as ever, but -its customary effect of pathos was lacking. There even seemed in its -sightless eyes a latent perception of Christian’s altered mood. He -lifted his hat soberly and saluted the statue. - -Toward the Strand now he made his way, walking blithely, and humming to -himself. He could not forbear to smile at a policeman he passed in front -of St. Martin’s. Two elderly and much bewrapped cabmen stood stamping -their feet beside a shelter, and they pointed toward their ridiculous -old horses and battered growlers as he came along, with an air that -moved him to glee. He gave them a shilling to divide, and went on, -conscious of a novel delight in himself and in the world at large. - -The big clock showed it to be half-past five. There was no blue in the -sky, but the mist of daybreak was abating, and the air was milder. Not a -living creature was visible along the naked length of the Strand. At the -end, the beautiful spire of St. Mary’s rose from the dim grays about its -base, exquisite in tints and contour as an Alpine summit in the moment -before sunrise. - -A turning to the left opened to Christian, unexpectedly, a scene full of -motion and color. He had not thought himself so near Covent Garden, -but clearly this must be it. He walked up toward the busy scene of -high-laden vans, big cart-horses and swarming porters, wondering why -no sign of all this activity was manifest in the sleeping Strand below, -barely a stone’s throw distant. He saw the glowing banks of flowers -within, as he approached, and made toward them, sighing already with -pleasure at the promise they held out to him. - -He might have read in the papers that it was a backward and a grudging -April, this year, in the matter of flowers. But to Christian, no memory -of the exuberant South suggested any rivalry with this wonderful show -of northern blossoms. Tulips and daffodils, amaryllis and azaleas, -rhododendrons, carnations, roses--he seemed to have imagined to himself -nothing like this before. He spent over an hour among them, in the end -making numerous purchases. At each stall he gave an address--always the -same--and exacted the pledge of delivery at eight o’clock. - -At last he could in reason buy nothing more, and he went out to look -about him. He found the place where the market-men take drinks at -all hours, and food and coffee when nature’s sternest demands can be -positively no longer disregarded--but it did not invite his appetite. -Some further time he spent in gazing wondering at the vast walls of -vegetables and fruit being tirelessly built up and pulled down again, -pondering meanwhile the question whether he should breakfast before -eight o’clock, or at some indefinitely later hour. He partially solved -the problem at length by buying a small box of Algerian peaches, and -eating them where he stood. Then some exceptionally fine bananas tempted -him further, and he finished with a delicate little melon from Sicily. - -How it carried him back to the days of his youth--this early morning -fragrance of the fresh fruit! It was as if he were at Cannes again--only -buoyant now, and happy, and oh, so free! And in his pocket he could feel -whenever he liked the soft, munificent crackle of over four thousand -francs! The sapphire Mediterranean had surely never been so lovely to -his gaze as was now the dingy Strand below. - -The laggard hour came round at last. He descended to Arundel Street, and -discovered the house he wanted, and found just within the entrance two -or three of the flower-laden porters awaiting his arrival, For the rest, -the building seemed profoundly unoccupied. He led the way up to the -third floor, and had the plants set down beside the locked door which -bore the sign “Miss Bailey.” Other similarly burdened porters made their -appearance in turn, till the narrow hallway looked like a floral annex -to the Garden itself. - -He waited alone with his treasures for what seemed to him a very long -time, then descended and stood at the street door till he was tired, -then climbed the stairs again. The extraordinary quiet of the big -building, filled with business offices as it was, puzzled him. He had -no experience of early-morning London to warn him that English habits -differed from those of the continent. It occurred to him that perhaps it -was a holiday--conceivably one of those extraordinary interludes called -Bank Holidays--and he essayed a perplexing computation in the calendar -in the effort to settle this point. - -Finally there began the sounds of steps, and the opening and closing of -doors, below him. A tow-headed boy in buttons came up to his landing, -stared in vacuous amazement at him and the flowers and passed on to the -next floor. Noises of occupancy rose from the well of the staircase to -bear him countenance, and suddenly a lift glided up past him in this -well. He had not noticed the ropes or the iron caging before. He heard -the slamming of the lift doors above, and the dark carriage followed on -its smooth descent. Christian reproached himself for not having rung the -bell and questioned the lift-man. He considered the feasibility of doing -it now, but was deterred by the fear that the man would resent it. Then -the lift came up again--and was stopping at his floor. There was a sharp -note of girlish laughter on the instant of the halt, answered by a male -guffaw. - -A slight, erect, active young woman emerged from the lift, her -face alive with mirth of some unknown character. Behind her, in the -obscurity, Christian saw for an instant the vanishing countenance of -the liftman, grinning widely. This hilarity, somehow, struck in him an -unsympathetic chord. - -The young woman, still laughing, spread an uncomprehending glance over -Christian and his flowers. She moved past him, key in hand, toward the -door which he had been guarding, with a puzzled eye upon him meanwhile. -With the key in the lock she turned and decided to speak. - -“What might all this be--the Temple Flower Show or the Crystal Palace?” - she asked, with banter in her tone. - -“These are for Miss Bailey,” said Christian, quite humbly. - -“Must be some mistake,” said the girl decisively. “Did she order them -herself? Were you there at the time? Did you see her? Where do they come -from?” - -Christian advanced a little into the light. “She has not ordered them,” - he said, in his calmest voice. “I have not seen her for a long time. But -I have brought them for her, and I think you may take it from me that -they are hers.” - -“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she replied, lightly but with grace. “I didn’t -understand. Things are forever being brought here that belong somewhere -else. Men are so stupid in finding their way about! Well--I suppose we -must get them inside. That is your idea, isn’t it?” - -She spoke very rapidly, and with a kind of metallic snap in her tones. -Christian answered her questions by a suave assenting gesture. “Miss -Bailey is not likely to turn up much before half-past nine,” she went -on, as if he had made the inquiry. “She lives so far out, and just now -we’re not very busy. There’s nothing doing in new plays at this time of -the year, and the lady novelists are all getting their own typewriters. -If you’ll lend a hand, we’ll carry the things in.” Between them they -bore in the various pots, and the big bouquets loosely wrapped in blue -paper. The girl led the way through a large working-room to a smaller -apartment, fitted as an office but containing also a sofa and a tall gas -cooking-stove--and here on desk and center-table, chairs and windowsill, -they placed the flowers. Christian watched her as she deftly removed -their paper wrappings. She had a comely, small face of aspect at once -alert and masterful. The skin was peculiarly fair, with a tinge of rose -in the cheeks so delicately modulated that he found it in rivalry with -the “Mrs. Pauls” she was unpacking. Her light hair was drawn plainly -down over the temples in a fashion which he felt was distinguished, but -said to himself he did not like. Her shrewd eyes took calm cognizance of -him from time to time. - -“They are very beautiful indeed,” she remarked with judicial approval, -upon the completion of her task. Then, as upon an afterthought, she -moved rapidly about, peering under the branches of the growing plants, -and separating the cut flowers lightly with her hands. “There is no card -anywhere, is there? I suppose you will want to leave a message? Here are -pen and ink--if you wish to write anything.” - -“Thank you,” Christian began, smilingly but with obvious hesitation. He -looked at his watch. “If you don’t mind--if you’re quite sure I shan’t -be in the way--I think I should like to wait till Miss Bailey comes.” - -“Oh, you won’t be in the way,” the girl replied. She regarded him -meditatively, with narrowed eyes. “I shouldn’t dust this room in any -event--since the flowers are here; but you mustn’t come out into the -big room--unless you want to get choked with blacks. Would you like a -morning paper? I can send a boy out for one.” - -“Thank you--you are very good--no,” Christian answered. “There are some -books here--I shall amuse myself.” - -The girl turned to leave him, and then on second thought moved over -to the window and lifted the sash. “There’ll be no objection to your -smoking if you like,” she informed him. Then she went out, closing the -door behind her. - -Christian walked to the window in turn, and looked down over the flowers -to the narrow street below. It was full of young men in silk hats, -toiling up the granite ascent like black ants. He reflected that they -must be clerks and shopmen, going to their daily work from the Temple -station or the Embankment. The suggestion of monotonous bondage which -their swarming progress toward the wage-earning center gave forth, -interested him. He yawned pleasurably at the thought of his own superb -emancipation from duties and tasks of all descriptions. - -He strolled over to the bookcase above the desk, and glanced at the -volumes revealed through its glass doors. They seemed very serious -books, indeed. “Economics of Socialism,” “Capitalist Production,” “The -Ethics of Socialism,” “Towards Democracy”--so the titles ran that first -met his eye. There were other groups--mainly of history and the -essayists--but everything was substantial. His glance sought in vain any -lightsome gleam of poetry or fiction. The legend on a thin red book, -“Civilization: Its Cause and Cure,” whimsically caught his attention. He -put his hand to the key in the bookcase door to get out the volume; -then, hesitating, yawned, and looked over the shelves once more. There -was nothing else--and really he desired to read nothing. - -He would half recline in comfort upon the sofa instead, until his friend -came. As a pleasing adjunct to this plan, he drew the table up close, -and found room upon it, by crowding them together, for most of the -flowers that had been bestowed elsewhere. He seated himself at his ease, -with his head resting against the wall, and surveyed the plants and -blossoms in affectionate admiration. It was delicious to think how -naïve her surprise would be--how great her pleasure! Truly, since his -discovery of his birthright, remarkable and varied as had been his -experiences, he had done nothing else which afforded him a tithe of the -satisfaction he felt now glowing in all his veins. Here, at last, by -some curious and devious chance, he had stumbled upon the thing that was -genuinely worth doing. - -He could hear the cheerful girl in the next room, whistling gently to -herself as she moved the furniture about. There came presently the sound -of other female voices, and then a sustained, vibrant rattle, quaintly -accentuated like the ticking of a telegraph key, which he grew -accustomed to, and even found pleasant to the ear. - -He put his feet up on the edge of the sofa--and nestled downward till -his head was upon it as well. A delicate yet pervasive fragrance from -the table close beside him aroused his languid curiosity. Was it the -perfume of carnations or of roses? - -He closed his eyes the better to decide. - -In the outer room, Miss Connie Staples permitted herself numerous and -varied speculations as to the identity and purposes of the young man -with the flowers, the while she dusted the typewriters, distributed the -copy for the morning’s start and set the place in order. She had her -sleeves rolled up, and had wound a big handkerchief about her hair; -beneath this turban her forehead scored itself in lines of perplexed -wonderment as to this curious early caller--but when two other girls -arrived, she suffered them to put aside their things and begin work -without so much as hinting at what had happened. A third girl, coming a -little later, brought in a stray blossom which she had picked up in the -corridor outside. She mentioned the fact, and even laid stress upon it, -but got no syllable of explanation. - -This was all simple enough, but at half-past nine the arrival of still -another of the sex put Miss Connie’s resources to an unexpected test. - -A handsome, youngish woman, very well dressed indeed, appeared suddenly -upon the threshold of the workroom, knocking upon the door and pushing -it wide open at the same instant. She looked curiously about, and then -point-blank into the face of the girl who came toward her. It was a -glance of independent and impersonal criticism which the two exchanged, -covering with instantaneous swiftness an infinitude of details as to -dress, coiffure, complexion, figure, temperament and origin. Connie -wondered if the new-comer was really quite a lady, long before she -formulated an inquiring thought about her errand. Even as she finally -looked this question of business, she decided that it was an actress -with a play for the provinces, and asked herself if she did not seem to -recognize the face. The visitor, for her part, saw that Connie’s teeth -were too uneven to be false, and that her waist was overlong, and that -her hair was not thick enough to be worn flat over the temples, much -less to justify so confident a manner. In all, something less than a -second of time had elapsed. - -“I want to see Miss Bailey--Miss Frank Bailey,” explained the stranger, -graciously. - -Connie conveyed to her, with courteous brevity, the fact that Miss -Bailey had not yet arrived. “Is it something that I can do?” she added. - -The other shook her head, and showed an affable thread of white between -her freshened lips. “No, I will wait for her,” she answered, and threw -a keen glance about the place. “That’s her private room, isn’t it?” she -asked, nodding at the closed door to the right. “I will wait in there,” - she decided, in the same breath, and began moving toward it. - -Connie alertly headed her off. “If you will kindly take a seat here--” - she interposed, standing in front of her visitor. - -“It’s too noisy out here,” remarked the other; “those horrid machines -would give me a headache. That _is_ her private room, isn’t it?” - -“Unfortunately,” Connie began, lowering her voice, “the room belongs to -another office. Or rather, I should say, it is locked. Miss Bailey will -be here--with the key--very shortly now.” - -“Oh, it’s all right--I’m her sister,” explained the other, in no wise -resenting the ineffectual fabrications. She pushed forward past the -reluctant girl with a resolute step, and put her hand on the knob of the -tabooed door. “Make your mind quite easy, my dear,” she remarked over -her shoulder, sinking her voice in turn in deference to the situation; -“you’ve done all that could be expected of you--and I’ll tell her so.” - -Then, with a momentary gleam of good nature on her pretty face, which -the short transparent veil she wore to her chin seemed to accentuate -rather than mask, she opened the door, threw up her head with a swift, -puzzled glance at what she saw, and then tiptoed gracefully into the -room, closing the door with painstaking noiselessness behind her. - -Miss Frances Bailey entered her office not many minutes later, her -cheeks aglow with the morning air as the wheelwoman meets it. She nodded -cheerfully to Connie, and beyond her to the girls at the machines, as -her hand sought for a hat-pin at the back of her head. - -“Any word from the Lyceum?” she asked. “And what does that -Zambesi-travel manuscript make?” - -Connie ignored industrial topics. “There are people waiting in there to -see you,” she announced, in low, significant tones. - -The mistress was impressed by the suggestion of mystery. “People? What -people?” she asked, knitting her brows. - -“One of them says she’s your sister. And the other is a young -gentleman--he came first--and he brought--” - -“My sister?” interrupted Miss Bailey. “Cora! Something dreadful must -have happened--for she never got out so early as this before in her -life. Is she in mourning? Did she seem upset?” - -“_Not_ a bit of it!” said Connie, reassuringly. She added, following the -other toward the private office: “I tried my best to keep her out here.” - -“Why should you?” asked Frances, with wide-open eyes. - -“Oh, well--you’ll see,” replied the girl, evasively. “I told you there -was some one else in there.” - -Frances opened the door--and Connie noted that she too lifted her head -and stared a little, and then cautiously closed the door behind her. She -pondered this as she returned to her machine, and she curled her -thin lip when she took up the copies of the first act of an amateur’s -romantic play, to underscore the business directions with red ink, and -sew on brown paper covers. Intuition told her that a much better drama -was afoot, here under her very nose. - -Inside her office, Miss Bailey surrendered herself to frank astonishment -at what she beheld. - -Bestowed in obvious discomfort upon her sofa, behind an extraordinary -bank of potted plants and bright, costly greenhouse flowers, was a young -man fast asleep. Her eye took in as well her sister, who sat near the -head of the sofa, but she could wait. The interest centered in this -sleeping stranger, who made himself so much at home in the shelter -of his remarkable floral barricade. She moved round the better to -scrutinize his face, which was tilted up as if proudly held even in -slumber. Upon examination she recognized the countenance; and in a swift -moment of concentration tried to think what his presence might signify. -Then she turned to her sister, and lifted her calm brows in mute -inquiry. - -“Oh, my dear--what splendid business!” whispered Cora, her glance -beaming upward from the sofa to the standing figure. “And mind, Frank, -I’m in it! I’m in it up to my neck! I sent him to you, dear.” - -The girl looked down at them both, and deliberated before she spoke. -“If you brought him here,” she said, “I think you’d better take him -away again. I can let you out by this other door. Let us have no more -publicity than necessary.” - -“But you don’t in the least understand!” protested Cora, with her finger -raised in an appeal for quiet tones. - -“No, I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand,” replied Frances -coldly. “There’s one thing _you_ don’t understand either, Cora: This is -my typewriting office; it isn’t a greenroom at all.” - -“Then it well might be,” retorted the other, with a latent grin. -“Anything greener than its owner I never saw. Now listen--don’t be a -silly cuckoo! I met the youngster last night--and I worked him up till -he was mad to learn where you were to be found. I told him--and then -I went home, and I couldn’t sleep for thinkin’ of you, dear--and so I -turned out at some extraordinary hour this mornin’--it is mornin’ by -this time, isn’t it?--and I came here, just to tell you that he was -askin’ after you--and I come in here--and lo! here’s the bird on his -little nest!--and see the flowers he’s brought from Covent Garden for -you!--and so I sit here like Patience on a monument, afraid to wink an -eyelash, so’s not to wake him till you come. That’s what I’ve done for -_you_, dear--and presently, if you don’t mind, I’d like to hear what -you’ll do for me.” - -Frances put a knee upon the chair before her, and rested with her hands -upon its back. She sighed a little, and bit her lips. A troubled look -came into her gray eyes. - -“You might as well say all you have to say,” she said, slowly. “I don’t -in the least see what you’re up to--but then I never did.” - -“No, dear, you never did,” responded Cora, smiling as if in pleased -retrospect. “But that’s no reason why I shouldn’t be a good sister -to you. If it’s one’s nature to be a good sister, why, then one will -be--and there you are, don’t you see? I take no credit to myself for -it.” - -“Go on,” said the other. The two women spoke in hushed whispers, and -with each sentence stole glances of precaution toward the sleeper. - -“Well, Frank, I look to you not to forget what I’ve done. I spent two -or three very hard hours last night talkin’ him round, and singin’ your -praises to him--and I put Covent Garden into his head, too---and here -he is! And I kept Eddy and Gus off his back, too--they were frightfully -keen to get at him--but I said no, and I held ’em to heel. It was all -for you, dear. They might have queered the whole pitch, if I’d given -’em their heads. But now about myself. I’m tired, dead tired, of -bein’ poor. Of course we get a little something from Lord Julius. But -Eddy--you know what Eddy is! No sooner does he pick himself up from -Epsom than Ascot gives him a fair knockout, and if he lives through the -Sandown Eclipse there’s Goodwood waitin’ for him with a facer. I -can’t understand it; other men seem to win sometimes--you’d think the -unluckiest duffer would get a look-in once in a while--but no, he just -gets hammered one meeting after another. And I’m tired of it, Frank! If -I could only go back to work! But if I get an engagement, then Eddy will -go playin’ the goat--he’s jealous of everybody about the place from the -bandmaster down to the carpenter’s boy--and that makes me unpopular--and -there we are, don’t you see! I’m worn out with it. But if I could have -eight hundred a year, or even six hundred or five at a pinch--God knows, -my wants are simple enough!--and have it paid to me personally, do you -see--why, then, life would be worth livin’. Now, what do you say?” - -Frances looked moodily down at her distinguished sister, her lips -twisted in stormy amusement. “Why not say a thousand and be done with -it?” she demanded between set teeth, after an ominous pause. “One would -be as intelligent as the other. And oughtn’t I to set your Eddy up with -a racing stud while I’m about it? It’s true that I have about twenty -pounds a year for my own personal use, and Tom has a standing grievance -that I don’t give even _that_ to him--but don’t let that interfere with -your plans. Whatever you feel that you would like, just give it a name. -Couldn’t I lease one of the new Kaffir mansions in Park Lane for you? Or -would you prefer something in Grosvenor Square?” - -Cora gazed up with such intentness at her unnatural sister that a bright -little tear came to shine at the corner of each eye. She put up her veil -then, and breathed a cautious sigh. “I didn’t expect this of you, dear,” - she said, submissively. “Of course it’s the old story--La Cigale, and -‘go-to-the ant-thou-sluggard’ and all that. I don’t see myself why a -typewriting machine should make one so fearfully stony-hearted; you get -callouses on your fingers, I know, but you needn’t get ’em on your -sisterly affections, one would think. But however”--she wiped her -eyes, drew down her veil and allowed a truculent note to sound in her -voice--“however, if you won’t play, why then neither will I. I’ve been -at pains to put this youngster in your way, but it won’t be much -trouble to shunt him out again. You mustn’t think you can walk on me -indefinitely, Frank. I’m the best-natured woman in the world, but even I -draw the line somewhere.” - -“Draw it now then,” said the other, with stern promptitude. “Go away, -and take your friend with you and let me get to my work. I don’t know -what business either of you had coming here, at all.” As she spoke, she -moved to the outer private door, and turned the key in the lock. “You -can send for the flowers,” she added, “or I will have them taken over to -Charing Cross Hospital--whichever you like.” - -Cora rose, her veiled face luminous with a sudden inspiration. “You -can’t quarrel with me, dear, no matter how hard you try.” She spoke in -low, cooing tones--a triumph of sympathetic voice production. “You’re -hard as nails, but I know you’re straight. I will trust my interests -absolutely in your hands. I leave it to you to do the fair thing by me.” - -“The fair thing?” echoed Frances, in dubious perplexity. She puzzled -over the words and their elusive implication. “Your interests?” she -repeated--and saw Cora move round her to the unlocked door, and open -it--and still sought to comprehend what it was all about. Only when her -sister, smiling cordially once more, bent forward without warning and -pressed her veiled lips against her chin, and with a gentle “Goodbye, -dear!” stepped into the shadows without, did she recall the other -features of the situation. - -“Here!” she called, with nervous eagerness, yet keeping her voice down, -“you’re not to run off like this. Take your man with you.” - -“Softly, dear!” Cora enjoined her, from the dusk of the hallway. “Your -young women wouldn’t understand. No--I caught him for you, and I leave -him in your hands. I’m not in the least afraid to trust it all to you. -Bye-bye, dear.” - -Frances went out and glared down the staircase, with angry expostulation -on her tongue’s end. But there was nobody to talk to. She could hear -only the brisk rustle of Cora’s skirts on the stone steps, a floor -below--and even that died away beneath the clatter of the machines -inside. - -Returning over the threshold, she paused, and looked impatiently at -the flowers, and at the impassive, slumbering face beyond them. After a -little, the lines of vexation began to melt from her brow. In a musing -way, she put a hand behind her, and as if unconsciously closed and -locked the hall door again. Then she moved to the table, picked up some -of the loose blossoms and breathed in their fragrance, still keeping her -thoughtful gaze upon the young man. She found the face much older and -stronger than she remembered it--and in a spirit of fairness she said -to herself that it seemed no whit less innocent. But then perhaps all -sleeping faces looked innocent; she could recall that Cora’s certainly -did. Holding the carnations to her lips and nostrils, she examined in -meditative detail the countenance before her--delicately modeled, dark, -nervously high-spirited even in repose. Associations came back as she -gazed--the tender eagerness of the lad, the wistful charm with which his -fancy had invested England, the frank sweetness of the temperament he -had disclosed to her. He had been like a flower himself on that mellow -autumn day--as fresh and as goodly to the eye as these roses on -the table. But a winter had intervened since then--and what gross -disillusionments, what roughening and hardening and corroding -experiences had he not encountered! You could not tell anything by a -face in sleep; again she assured herself of that. - -Why, when one came to think of it, it was enough that Cora had brought -him--or sent him, it mattered not which. Whence had she dispatched -him?--from some theatrical dance or late supper. It was true that he was -not in evening dress--and the thought gave her pause for a moment. -But he had been at some place where those wretched cousins of his were -present--for Cora had spoken of keeping both Eddy and Gus “off his -back”--whatever that might mean. And it was Cora herself who had told -him to go to Covent Garden and buy these flowers! - -Frances, revolving these unpleasant reflections, discovered all at once -that the young man, without betraying by any other motion his awakening, -had opened his eyes and was looking placidly across the flowers into her -face. - -She caught a quick breath, and frowned slightly at him. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -I don’t think I like your being here,” Frances remarked to the young -man after a brief frowning inspection. She spoke slowly, and with a -deliberate gravity and evenness of tone. - -Christian’s wide-open eyes continued to gaze up at her with that -disconcerting look which had in it both remote abstraction and something -very intimately personal. His glance expressed a tender pleasure as it -maintained itself against hers. - -“Oh, but I like it so very much!” he murmured, with a pleading smile. - -Then, by a sudden movement, he sat up, flushing in a novel -embarrassment. “I beg you to pardon me,” he urged, faltering over his -words. “I was not wholly awake, I think; or I was trying to persuade -myself that it was still a dream. Do not think me so rude, I pray you!” - -She signified by a gesture and momentary facial relaxation that this -particular detail of the situation need not detain them. - -“But”--she began, in her stiffest and least amiable voice, and then -hesitated. She put her knee again upon the chair, and, resting her hand -on its back, looked dubiously at him. “I hardly know what to say,” she -started once more, and stopped altogether. - -“Oh, but it is I who must say everything,” he broke in, eagerly. “I am -quite awake now--I see, of course, it is all absurd, meaningless in your -eyes, till I explain it to you.” He rose to his feet and put forth his -hand as if to offer it in greeting. No responsive token being visible on -her set face, or in her rigid posture, as she confronted him, he waved -both hands in a deprecatory movement over the table laden with flowers -between them. “These are my peace-offering,” he said, with less -confidence. “I hoped they would say some things for me--some things -which I feel within me, and cannot easily put into speech. That is what -I expected they would surely do. But”--he finished with dejection, after -another glance into her face--“evidently they are as tongue-tied as I -am. I see it was not a happy thought in me to bring them--or to come -myself!” - -She had followed his words with rapt attentiveness--but at the end -seemed to remember only one of them. “The ‘thought,’” she said, coldly. -“Yes, that is what I do not understand. What was the thought?” - -He regarded her with some perplexity. “What was the thought--my -thought?” he repeated. “Oh--since it does not explain itself, what good -is there in talking about it? Let us say that there was no ‘thought’ at -all. I will make my compliments and apologies--and say good-morning--and -nothing at all will have happened.” - -“No,” she answered reflectively. “That would be stupid. You have been to -expense, and evidently to some inconvenience as well, to do this thing. -On second thoughts,” she went on, with an apparent effort to modify the -asperities of her tone and manner, “I dare say that I haven’t behaved -quite nicely to you. If you remember, I told you a long time ago that -bad manners was a failing of mine.” - -“I remember every little word that you spoke,” said Christian softly. - -Frances hardened her voice on the instant. “But that doesn’t help me to -understand why--what this is all about.” - -He responded slowly, searching for his words as he went along. The -rattle of machines in the next room for the first time came into the -conversation, and forced him to lift his voice. “You were my last friend -in France--my first friend in England,” he began. “I said I would not -forget you, and you have been always in my mind--always somewhere secure -and fresh and sweet in my mind. It was only last night that I learned -where I might find you. You will remember that when I begged you to tell -me, you laughed and would not. I must not make you believe that I did -not very soon find out your name or that I could not have learned your -whereabouts much earlier. All I say is that I did not forget--and that -last night, when the chance came naturally to me, I asked and learned -what I desired to know. And then--why, then--this knowledge spread -upward to be of more importance than all the other things I knew. I went -home--but never to think of sleeping, but only to change my clothes and -hasten out again, to get some new morning flowers for you, and to -come to you at the earliest moment. I did not know that London rose -so late--I arrived before the time, and, so it seems, waiting for your -coming, I fell asleep. That is the entire story. You see it is not very -complicated--it is by no means extraordinary.” - -Frances had listened with a dreamy gentleness in her gray eyes. She -started slightly when he stopped, and gave him a keen, cool glance. “The -entire story?” she queried. “I think you have forgotten to mention that -it was my sister who told you about me, and gave you my address.” - -Her prescience in no wise astonished Christian. Imagination had thrown -round the Minerva-like figure which personified her in his thoughts, -such a glamour of intellectual radiancy, that it seemed quite a natural -thing for her to divine the obscure, and comprehend the mysterious. He -smiled at her as he shrugged his shoulders. “It did not occur to me as -important,” he exclaimed. “It is true, however, that she told me. She -did not know the address when I asked her, but later she procured it -for me from her brother. It was at a supper at the Hanover Theater. -Afterward there was dancing on the stage. I fear it would have been -rather tiresome for me if I had not met your sister. She is a very -friendly lady, and she talked a great deal to me.” - -“About me?” demanded Frances, sharply. - -“Oh, no--about you only a few pleasant words; not more. It seems you do -not meet very often.” - -He spoke with such evident frankness that she hesitated over the further -inquiry her mind had framed. At last she put it in altered form. -“Then you would not say that she sent you here---that she told you to -come--and to come by way of Covent Garden, and buy these flowers?” The -question, as she uttered it, was full of significant suggestion about -the nature of the reply desired. Its tone, too, carried the welcome -hint of a softened mood, under the influence of which Christian’s face -brightened with joy. - -“Why, not at all!” he cried, lifting his voice gaily above the -typewriters’ clatter. “She did speak of Covent Garden, and the show of -flowers there in the early morning, but it was not in the least with -reference to you. It was my own idea long after she had gone. Oh, no one -would be more surprised than that good sister of yours to know that I am -here!” - -Frances, with a puzzling smile which ended in a long breath of relief, -took up some of the roses and held them to her face. - -“Sit down again,” she bade him, with a pleasant glow in the eyes -regarding him over the blossoms; “sit down, and let us talk. Or does -that noise bore you?” - -“Oh, I am too glad!” he assured her, beamingly. “If it were cannon -firing in the next room, it would be nothing to me.” Then, as he -continued to gaze with delight at her, an inspiration came to him. “Or -is it possible for you to come out? Would you walk a little while, -perhaps on the Embankment?” - -“I am not particularly busy this morning,” she made indirect answer. -Then a digression occurred to her. “But I am rather surprised,” she -observed, “to find that England hasn’t made more changes in your speech. -I would have expected a perfect Piccadilly accent, but you talk exactly -as you did on the train and the boat.” - -He laughed and clapped his hands for glee. “It is wholly because I am -with you again,” he declared. “Everybody has said for months that the -foreign traces had quite vanished from my tongue--but the first glimpse -of you--ah! they come instantly back! It is the association of ideas, -beyond doubt--that very sweet association,” he added, with trembling -softness, “of oh! such fond ideas.” - -She had taken up her hat. “We will go out for a little, if you like,” - she remarked rather abruptly. - -“And I am altogether forgiven?” he demanded in high spirits, as he rose. -“You consent to accept the flowers?” - -“Heaven only knows what I shall do with them,” she answered, with a -grimace of mock despair. “But it was ever so nice of you to get them, -and I thank you very much. Oh, I must tell Connie to sprinkle them -before I go.” - -She moved to the inner door, and as she opened it turned. “Wouldn’t you -like to come and see the factory at work?” she inquired, and he joined -her with alacrity. “It isn’t much to see at the moment,” she explained, -as they entered the large room. “We have nine machines, but only four -of them are needed just now. Until after the Jubilee, I’m afraid things -will be very dull with publishers and playwrights. However, one must -take the lean with the fat.” - -Christian looked somewhat nervously about him, while his friend stepped -aside to confer with the girl whom he remembered from the early morning. -Both this young lady and the three at their machines made a rapid, and -as it seemed to him, perfunctory survey of their mistress’s guest, -and bent their attention upon their duties again as if his presence -signified nothing whatever to them. He suspected that in reality they -were plunged in furious speculation concerning him; and this embarrassed -him so much that he turned and strolled back toward the open door and -even entered the office before Frances rejoined him. - -When she came back to him, she took from the table a couple of pale, -half-opened tea-rose buds, gave one to him to fix in his lapel and -pinned the other to the breast of her fawn-gray frock. “If you are -ready,” she said, smilingly, and led the way to the staircase. As she -descended before him, he noted the intelligent simplicity of this dress -she wore--how it fitted her as gracefully and as artistically as Poole -ever fitted Dicky Westland. About her hat, the carriage of her head and -shoulders, the free decision of her step, there was something individual -which appealed directly to him--a charm which would not be duplicated by -any other person in the world. He looked at his watch as he went down, -and found with surprise that it was nearly eleven. - -He stepped to her side at the street doorway, with a meaning gesture. -“Do you remember,” he said, gently--“on the boat you took my arm?” - -“I think London is a little different,” she answered, decisively enough, -yet with the effect to his ears of unreserved camaraderie. - -They walked slowly down to the end of the street. “Do you mind which way -we go?” she asked him, and turned eastward. “I haven’t seen the city in -an age,” she remarked, as if the choice needed explanation. Sauntering -along, they found little to say to each other at the outset. What words -they exchanged were about the mild, sunless sky of the London April, and -the wonderful pencilings and rubbings of soot upon the silver-gray of -London’s stone walls. Learning that he was a stranger to the Temple, she -led the way through the gate and lane, and then, by turnings which it -surprised him to find her knowing so well, to the curious little church. -The door in the sunken porch was ajar, and they went in. She pointed to -the circle of freestone Crusaders looking complacently up from the floor -at the Oriental dome which had caught their traveled fancy ages before, -and it occurred to her to say: “Is it not interesting to you to think -that there were Torrs who were friends and companions of these very -Magnavilles and Mareschalls, six hundred years ago?” - -He thrust out his lips a little. “I have not much interest in anything -concerning the Torrs,” he answered. - -She looked up at him with curiosity, but offered no comment. They left -the church, and she led him round to the spot where, amid the cracked -old flags from forgotten graves, Oliver Goldsmith’s tomb now finds -itself. A crumbling wreath of natural flowers showed that some kindly -soul had remembered the date of the poet’s death, three weeks before. - -Christian displayed scarcely more interest here. “I have not read his -‘Vicar of Wakefield,’” he confessed to her. “I had always the intention -to do so, but it--it never came off.” - -“That brings me to one thing I wanted to ask you,” she said, as they -retraced their steps. “What books have you been reading--since you came -to England? I am anxious to know?” - -“Not many,” he admitted with an attempted laugh which ended rather -shamefacedly. “Reading did not fit itself very readily into my time. At -Lord Chobham’s I read in some old books, and at Emanuel’s too, but -it was all about our own people--the Barons’ War, and the Wars of the -Roses, and the Civil War. I know something about these and about the -old families of the West, but not much else. I should have read more, I -know, but there was really not much opportunity. But you--I saw at your -office what serious books you read. It is what I should like to do, -too--sometimes. But there has been no one to talk with about any kind of -books.” - -They had come out again to the Embankment, and made their pace now even -more deliberate. “I have been thinking a great deal about you, and your -future, since we met,” she remarked, after a pause. “It has made me -wonder what you would do, when the opportunity came to you--and what it -would be open for you to do. That is why I began reading the books that -I take it you have in mind--but afterward I read them for their own -value. At the beginning”--she went on slowly, studying the sky-line in -an abstracted way as she walked--“at the beginning I thought I should -see you again sometime, and I had the idea that I wanted to be able to -advise--or no, not that, but to talk to you, and try to interest you in -the right sort of things. But it did not take me long to see how foolish -that was.” - -“No, no!” urged Christian; without, however, any convincing display of -enthusiasm. “There is no one in the world from whom I will so gladly -take advice as you.” - -She smiled fleetingly at him. “And there is no one in the world,” she -replied, “more firmly resolved not to offer you any.” - -“Ah, but if I beg it! You may not offer--but will you refuse to give?” - -“What is the good?” she broke forth in a louder tone, speaking as if in -annoyed reproof to herself. “No person can think or feel or decide for -another! It is nonsense to pretend otherwise. A man must think his own -thoughts, follow his own nature! We can ask nothing finer of a man than -to honestly be himself. I get so angry at all these ceaseless attempts -to run people all into one mold, to make everybody like everybody -else--and then, here I was, solemnly starting out to do the very trick -myself!” She laughed in ironical self-depreciation at the thought. - -Christian drew closer to her side. “I have very many things to say to -you,” he began gravely. “But I am in one way sorry that we went into the -churchyard, because it has made us melancholy, and I was going to tell -it all to you in the highest good spirits. We were both laughing like -merry children when we left your place--and now we are sad. I like -Emanuel’s idea--he will have no tombs to be seen upon his estate. Death -will come there as elsewhere, without doubt, but he will not be allowed -to remain hanging about, thrusting his ugly presence upon happy people -each time they walk in the street. At Emanuel’s there is cremation--and -that is the end of it. That is the portion of his System which pleases -me most. It is the best thing in it.” - -She looked into his face. “Then you are not wildly in love with his -whole System?” she asked. - -“Me? I grieve to say not. It is no doubt very admirable indeed--but--how -shall I say?--it does not appeal to me. You are displeased with me for -confessing it--but--” - -“Displeased?” she interrupted him, with a meaning laugh. “Nothing could -displease me less!” - -“Oh, you do not love the System?” he cried, with dancing eyes. - -“I hate it!” she answered, briefly. - -“Capital!” He halted, to shake her by the hand with gay effusion. “Let -us abuse it together! You shall say it all, however, because I only -dislike it, and cannot give any reasons why--but you will know them -every one. Oh, this is splendid! I had the right instinct when I came to -you! I have a great deal to tell you--but first you must tell me: what -do you say about my cousin’s System? I am burning to hear that.” - -It was impossible to evade the contagion of his sparkling face. She -laughed in turn. - -“Oh, it would be too long a story,” she half protested. “But to put -it briefly, this is my idea. Emanuel seems to me to be a magnificent -character, with one extraordinary limitation. I think it must be a -Jewish limitation--for I have seen it pointed out that they do not -invent things. That is Emanuel’s flaw; he has not an original thought -in his head. He merely carries to a mathematical point of expansion and -development the ready-made ideas which he finds accepted all about him. -What you see in him is a triumph of the Semitic passion for working a -problem out to its ultimate conclusion. When you consider it, what -has he done? Merely discovered, by tremendous labor and energy, the -smoothest possible working arrangement of the social system which his -class regards as best for itself, and hence for all mankind--the system -which exalts a chosen few, and keeps all the rest in subjection. My dear -sir, things do not rise higher than their source! How did the Torrs come -by their estates? By stealing the birthright of thousands of dumb human -beasts of burden, and riveting the family collar round their necks with -no more regard for their wishes or their rights than as if they had -been so many puppies or colts. And what was the origin of the Ascarel -fortune? The most frightful and bloodstained human slavery in the -poisonous jungles of the Dutch East Indies--that, and an ancient family -business of international usury, every dirty penny in which if you -followed it far enough, meant the flaying alive of a peasant, or the -starvation of his little children. These are the things which your -cousin inherits. He is fine enough to be ashamed of them, but he is not -broad enough to repudiate them. He makes himself believe that they -were wrong only in degree. He will admit that the Torrs were too brutal -toward their serfs, the Ascarels too selfish with their millions. That -is all. And he sets himself to proving that with the right kind of chief -at their head these systems of theirs can be made not only respectable, -but even profitable to the slaves as well as the master. He does not see -that the systems themselves are crimes! ” - -“Yes, I am glad that I came to you,” said Christian, in low, earnest -tones, in the pause which followed. The girl, breathing deeply under -the fervor of her mood, looked fixedly before her toward the copper-haze -above Paul’s dome. He watched the noble immobility of her profile and -thrilled at its suggestion of strength. - -“To do him justice,” she went on, musingly, “he does not pretend that it -is progress. He is honest, and he describes it as reaction--a long -step backward. It is just that kind of honesty and devotion, plus -wrong-headedness, which keeps us all at sixes and sevens. If we agree -that there is no better-intentioned man alive than Emanuel--still he -would do more harm than the most atrocious blackguard, if he had his way -with the world. But fortunately, he will not have it. A vastly greater -and loftier Jew has said that you cannot pour new wine into old -bottles.” - -They walked on for a little in silence. “Have you been to Emanuel’s -place then?” Christian asked at last. - -“No; I know it only from hearsay, and from his books. A woman novelist -for whom I do work has been there, and she has told me a good deal about -it. She is going to use it in a book, and would you believe it? she is -crazy with enthusiasm about the whole thing. I tried to point out to her -what she was doing, but you might as well talk to the east wind. The -way women run after the hand that smites them, and beslaver it with -kisses--that is the thing that enrages me most of all. Why, the very -corner-stone of Emanuel’s System is the perpetual enslavement of women. -I am always surprised, when I hear about his mediæval arrangements, that -he hasn’t set up a ducking-stool for his women-folk. I’m sure it’s a -pure oversight on his part. Well, what are you to expect when cultivated -women like Mrs. Sessyl-Trant turn up as frantic admirers of that sort of -thing? However, thank goodness, women are not forever to be sold out by -the fools of their own sex. It is impossible not to see that the tide -has turned at last. There _is_ a change--and I think something genuine -and lasting is going to come out of it. I really think it!” - -“Ah, that is what I feel,” put in Christian, with confused eagerness. -“I have no clear thoughts about it, but it is my deep feeling -that--that--what shall I say?--we are most at fault in the matter of the -women.” - -Frances pursued her thought, in frowning meditation. “It is the new -professional class, who earn their own living, who will help us out. -These women, who have come through the mill of self-responsibility, will -not accept the old nonsense invented for them, and imposed upon them by -the women parasites. The younger women who take care of themselves have -all begun to ask questions: ‘Why should I do this?’ ‘Why shouldn’t I -do that?’ ‘And whose business but my own is it if I do the other?’ -Unfortunately, they are too ready to accept the first answer that comes -to them. Oh, that is the woeful trouble! Men have slowly built up for -themselves a good deal of machinery by which they can find out what -is true. I don’t say they are not continually deceived, or that they -invariably recognize the truth when they see it, but still they have -certain facilities for protecting themselves against falsehoods. But -women have practically none at all. They are systematically lied to -from their cradle to their grave. They read so hard!--they are _the_ -consumers of novels, religious books, weekly newspapers, magazines, and -the rest of it--but never a word of actual truth is allowed to reach -them out of it all. Wherever they turn to inquire about themselves, -about their rights and their duties in this world that they have been -born into, they encounter this vast, unbroken conspiracy of liars. That -is the gravest of all the disadvantages they labor under. Why, take even -the ‘New Woman’ fiction of a few years ago. There was a great hullabaloo -raised over certain novels; at last, they cried, the truth was -being-revealed by women, for women, of women. But what nonsense! It -turned out not to be the truth at all, but only the old falsehood, -disguised in hysterics and some shocking bad manners. There seems no -escape for women anywhere. They are lied to by their parents, their -parsons, their doctors, their authors--and of course they lie to -one another. They have a whole debased currency of insincerities and -flattering falsehoods which they pass among themselves, keeping straight -faces all the while as if it were honest money.--But as I said, I think -a change is coming. However, don’t let’s talk any more about it. I get -too angry!” - -“I like you to be angry--only not with me,” commented Christian with -a sprightly smile. Then he added, more gravely, “Oh, I can see how the -women who work will make a change. It was very curious to me to see -those girls at the machines in your office. It was one of them who let -me in, before you came. She was quite different from any of the English -women I have been meeting. One saw that she had thoughts of her own--an -atmosphere of her own. I should not like to tell lies to her; I think -she would detect them more rapidly than I could get them out.” - -“Oh, Connie,” laughed Frances. “Yes, she has a head on her shoulders. -They are all fairly bright girls, and they get on together extremely -well. It’s quite their own idea to divide up the work equally among the -lot, and when there is not much doing to take turns in working alternate -days. I think it was rather fine of them.” - -“Ah, that is the class of women one would like to help,” he declared. -“That is what I will devote myself to.” - -“But it is the class which prefers to help itself,” she explained -quietly. “I see no way in which you could ‘help’ them, as you call it. -They don’t want any help. Men in their position might take tips, but -these girls won’t.” As he received the rebuff in silence, she changed -the subject. “I am meeting now some other young women who would interest -you. They are doing newspaper work--and doing it on its merits, too, -and not by the favoritism of editors and proprietors--and one or two -evenings a week we all get together at my office and talk things over. -Sometimes there are as many as twenty of us, including my girls. In a -year or two, perhaps it will run to a club-room of our own. I don’t know -that I told you--I am getting into newspaper work myself. If I saw how -to combine it with my office business, I could have a place on a regular -daily staff. I’m puzzling a good deal to find some way of making the two -things go together.” - -“Oh, I envy you!” broke in Christian, impulsively. “You have work to do! -You are interested in your work! You find in it not only occupation, but -the opportunities of being useful to others, and of making your life, -and other people’s lives, worth living. But think of me! I have nothing -in the wide world to do, except wait for a very strong old man to die. -And when he dies, then still I have nothing to do worth doing. Don’t -you see that it is the most miserable of existences? I am filled with -disgust for it. I cannot bear it another day. And that is what I was -going to tell you. I have decided to leave it all--and go away.” - -Frances paused for a moment to scrutinize, with slightly narrowed -eyes, the excited face he turned to her. “How will going away improve -matters?” she asked him, upon reflection. - -He put out his lips, and shrugged his shoulders. “At least I shall be a -free man,” he affirmed. - -Unconsciously she imitated his gesture in turn: “It does not follow that -a deserter is necessarily a free man.” - -He pushed and winced visibly under the words, and turned away biting his -lips. Then, the vexation clearing from his face, he wheeled again, and -regarded her with calm gravity. - -“There is no one else who could say that to me and not injure me,” he -answered, simply. “But that is the characteristic of you--when you say -such a thing to me, then it becomes a thing that should have been said. -Yet perhaps it is not the final word, after all. Ask yourself what it -is that I am deserting! Consider whether I should give up or gain -something. Here in England it is possible for me to be one of two -things--the conventional person of position like all the others, or the -exceptional kind of being which Emanuel desires to make of me. I have -been at school for half a year learning what it is that society in -general expects a man in my situation to do. Now that I have learned -it, frankly it makes me sick at heart. But then I have been at another -school for a month, observing and studying what it is that Emanuel -wishes me to undertake. We have agreed that that is not to be thought -of, either. Then what am I to do?” - -“But how does running away solve the difficulty?” She put the question -to him with gentle persistency. - -“Ah, but, you see,” he rejoined, argumentatively, “it is not alone a -moral difficulty. There are practical questions, too. When I announce to -Emanuel that I reject his plans for my future, then I am left to myself -to be that most ridiculous of objects--a man with a great station and -no money to keep it up. That is what I must be here in England. But in -other countries, that will not be the case. There will always be enough -money for me to live like a prince upon--so long as I travel about, in -my own yacht if I like, or reside simply and happily in the beautiful -places of the earth, here and there, as the fancy possesses me. Thus I -can put to use the prestige of my title, when it is of advantage to do -so--but only in so far as it is needful at the moment--and at the -same time it does not become a burden to me in any degree. Now think -carefully of this--is it not the wisest course for me?” She seemed -not to pause for thought at all. “Oh, that depends upon how you define -wisdom,” she replied, promptly. “There is the wisdom of the serpent, -but fortunately there are many other kinds. No, I must say, you haven’t -convinced me in the least. However, you mustn’t think that is of -importance. You are under no obligation to convince me, surely!” - -“Ah, but that is everything to me,” he insisted. “There are -reasons--which I wish to explain to you.” - -He could not keep a new meaning out of the glance with which he enforced -this assurance. They had strolled round to Ludgate Circus, and come to a -halt on the corner, with their backs turned upon a window full of droll -phrenological charts and symbols. He consulted his watch once more. “I -breakfasted so lightly, and so early,” he said--“it is not luncheon time -quite, but that will give us a table to ourselves. You will come across -with me, will you not? There are truly important things which have not -been said--which I much wish to say.” - -After a moment’s reflection she nodded her assent. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - -Christian and Frances ate their luncheon in an upper chamber, close to -a kind of balcony window, which gave upon one of the city’s most crowded -thoroughfares. An unceasing and uniform uproar--overridden from time to -time by the superior tumult of a passing railway train on a bridge -near by--rose from this indefatigable street. They had the room to -themselves; the portentous din magnified the effect of the solitude -in which they regarded each other, crumbling the bread on the table -absent-mindedly, and waiting for the inspiration of speech. - -“When I get back,” the girl said at last with a smile, “the racket of -my typewriters will seem like the murmur of a gentle breeze down a leafy -country lane.” - -They laughed--but they had discovered it was not so hard to make oneself -heard as they had supposed. Their voices intuitively found a level which -served their personal needs, yet did not incommode the waiters yawning -at the head of the stairway outside. - -“Have you taken to the bicycle?” she was moved in sheer irrelevance to -ask him. When he shook his head, she went on: “It is a wonderful thing -for women. It has done more for them in three years, than all the -progressive intellectual movements of civilization did in three hundred. -We all use them, coming to and from the office. We have to store them -down in the area, now--but I am going to find a better place.” - -Christian rolled his bread crumbs into balls and stared at them in a -brown study, from which this topic was powerless to arouse him. - -“I wish,” he said, finally--“I wish very much that I knew how to -convince you. But I seem never to produce any impression upon you. You -are unyielding to the touch. It is I who get molded and kneaded about -whenever I come close to you. And I don’t say that it is not for the -best. Only--only now, you will not accept my own ideas of what I should -do, and you will not tell me what your ideas are.” - -“I am not sure that I have any ideas,” she assured him. “It is merely -that, on general principles, I don’t care for the people who settle -difficulties by turning tail and running away from them.” - -“Very well,” he began, as if an important premise had been accepted. -“But as to my special case, I have stated what must be my -position if I remain in England. To me it seems that it must be -impossible--intolerable. But you have some different view, evidently. -That is what I beg you to explain to me. If I am to remain in England, -what is it your idea that I should do?” She knitted her brows a little, -and took time to her reply. “You seem to think so entirely of yourself,” - she said, slowly, “it is very hard to know what to say to you. I cannot -put myself, you see, so completely in your place, as you are always -able to do.” He opened his eyes wide, and informed their gaze with -a surprised reproach. “There you are surely unjust to me,” he urged, -pleadingly. “I do not know anyone who thinks more about other people -than I do. One hesitates to say these things about oneself--but truly -you are mistaken in this matter. In fact, I wonder sometimes if it is -not a fault, a weakness in my nature, that I am so readily moved by the -sufferings and wrongs of unhappy people. Whenever I see injustice, I am -beside myself with a passion to set it right. I grow almost sick with -indignation, and pity, when these things come before me. Last night, for -example, at the Empire----” - -Christian stopped abruptly, with the sudden consciousness that the -ground was not clear before him. He saw that he was entirely without a -clue as to what his companion’s views on the subject might be. That was -her peculiarity: he knew concerning her thoughts and inclinations only -what she chose to reveal to him. It was beyond his power to predict -what her attitude would be on any new topic. Looking at her thoughtful, -serene-eyed face, it decidedly seemed to him that the Empire, as an -ethical problem, might with advantage be passed by. He hesitated for -a moment, in the friendly shelter of the street noise, and then gave -another termination to his speech: “It puzzles me that you should have -that view of my temperament.” - -“Ah, that is just it--you have put the word into my mouth. It is -‘temperament’ that you are thinking of--and about that you are -perfectly right. Your temperament is as open to the impulses of the -moment--kindly, generous, compassionate and all that--as a flower is -to the bees. But character is another matter. What good do your fine -momentary sentiments, these rapid noble emotions of yours, do you or -anybody else? You experience them--and forget them. The only thing -that abides permanently with you is consideration for your own personal -affairs.” - -“This is all very unjust,” he said, disconsolately. “I come to you for -solace and friendship, and you turn upon me with beak and claws.” He -sighed, with the beginning of tears in his bright eyes, as he added: -“There is more reason than ever, it seems to me, why I should go away -from England! It is not kind to me!” - -His doleful tone and mien drove her to swift repentance. “Oh, I have -only been saying the disagreeable things first, to get them out of the -way,” she sought to reassure him. “There isn’t another unpleasant word -for you to hear, not one, I promise you.” - -“It is my opinion that there have been enough,” he ventured to comment, -with a rueful little smile. A measure of composure returned to him. “But -if they must be said, I would rather they come from you than from any -one else, for I think that you have also some pleasant thoughts about -me.” - -She nodded her head several times in assent, regarding him with an -amused twinkle in her eyes meanwhile. “Yes--the right kind of editor -could make very interesting stuff indeed out of you,” she said, and -smiled almost gaily at his visible failure to comprehend her figure. -“What I mean is--you are too much sail, and too little boat. You -drift before every new wind that blows. There is lacking that kind -of balance--proportion--which gives stability. But, dear me, it is a -thousand times better to be like that, than to have an excess of the -other thing. The man of the solid qualities, without the imagination, -simply sticks in the mud where he was born. But with you--if the right -person chances to get hold of you, and brings the right influences -steadily to bear upon you, then there is no telling what fine things you -may not rise to.” - -“You are that right person!” - -He lifted his voice to utter these words, with the air of feeling them -to be momentous. His eyes glowed as they reaffirmed the declaration to -her inquiring glance. But she seemed to miss the gravity of both words -and look. - -“Oh, there you’re wrong,” she said, half jestingly. “I’m too bad -tempered and quarrelsome to exert any proper influence over any one. -Why, I should nag all the joy and high spirits out of you in no time -at all. No--you need an equable and happy person, really very wise -and strong and sensible, but above all with an easy, smooth -disposition--such a person, for example, as Emanuel’s wife is described -to be.” - -“No--I need no one but you!” he repeated with accentuated deliberation. - -This time she appeared to feel something of his intention. She looked -into the gaze he was bending upon her and then withdrew her eyes -precipitately, and made a show of active interest in her food. - -“I am asking you to think of joining your life to mine,” he went on, in -low, yet very distinct tones. “You cannot know a hundredth part as well -as I do, how profoundly I need such help as you can give. You are the -one woman in the world who means strength as well as happiness to me. -If you could only dream with what yearning I long always to lean upon -you--to be supported by your fine, calm, sweet wisdom! To be upheld by -you--to be nourished and guided by you--oh, that is the vision which -I tremble with joy to think of! I am my own master for the first time -to-day--I have taken my life into my own hands--and I lay it at your -feet--dear lady--at your feet.” - -She rose abruptly while his last words were in the air, and turning, -moved to the window. She had contrived by a gesture to bid him not to -follow, and he could only gaze in mingled apprehension and hope at her -back, the while she stood professing to scrutinize the shifting throng -below. - -The waiter brought in another dish, methodically rearranged the plates -and went away again. To Christian’s bitter disgust, two men entered and -took seats at a table at the other end of the small room--and still she -did not turn. He meditated calling her, or joining her on the pretense -of announcing the cutlets--and only stared in nervous excitement -instead. - -Then, as suddenly as she had left him she returned, and resumed her -chair as if nothing unusual had happened. His strenuous gaze swept her -face for tokens of her mood--of her inclination or decision--but beyond -a spot of vivid red on each smooth cheek, there was no sign of any sort. -Her frank, calm gray eyes met his with unruffled directness; they had in -them that suggestion of benignant tolerance which he had discerned there -more than once before. - -“You do not answer me!” he pleaded, after a few mouthfuls. As his back -shielded the action from the strangers, he put forth a cautious hand to -touch the nearest of hers, but she drew it gently away beyond his reach. -They automatically adjusted their voices to the conditions created by -the newcomers. - -“There could be only one possible answer,” she told him, softly, almost -tenderly. “It is a very flattering dream--? to me--but it is a mere -empty dream, none the less. I hope you will not want to talk about it -any more.” - -“But I swear that it is not empty at all!” he urged, in earnest tones. -“Who has a right to say that it is a dream? I am my own master--so are -you. We are of age--we are intelligent people. I deliberately come to -you, and say to you that you are the one woman on earth whom I desire -with all my heart for my wife. I open my mind to you. There is only the -image of you inside it. You know my sincerity. You must feel how supreme -is the place you have in my thoughts. It is the logical end toward which -I have been walking ever since I first saw you! You are all that there -is of true friendship, of true womanhood, for me! I put out my hands to -you, I pray to you! And why will you not come to me, dear, dear Frank?” - There was a touch of pathos in the smile she gave him. “It isn’t the -least bit of good, I assure you,” she made answer, in the confidential -murmur that was necessary. “One can’t talk here--but please let us speak -of something else. Or can we not go now?” He went on as if she had not -spoken, his big, dark eyes challenging hers to an encounter which she -evaded. “Do not think we need go away from England, if you want to stay; -there will always be money enough--with your wisdom in controlling it. -Perhaps we may even be able to restore Caermere. But if we are not, -still it can be one of the noblest and most beautiful residences in -England, when we learn together to understand its charm, and make it our -home. Oh, when you see the magnificent hills and forests shutting it -in on all sides--and the grim, fine old walls and towers of the castle -itself! But there we need live only when we choose to do so--and -whenever the mood comes to us, off we can roam to the Alps or Algiers, -or the wonderful India which one always dreams of. And we shall sail in -our own yacht and you shall be the queen there, as everywhere else. And -all our lives we will spend in doing good to others: do you not see what -extraordinary opportunities for helping those who need help you will -have? Where now you are of service to one person, then you can assist a -hundred! An army of grateful people will give thanks because of you--and -I will always be the chief of them--your foremost slave, your most -reverent worshiper! And then--think of the joy of a life in which no one -has a share who is not pleasant and welcome to us! We will have no one -near us who is not our friend. Oh, I have not told you: that is why, -this very morning, I decided to leave it all, and to make a new life for -myself, and to spend it wholly with my real friends. It is loneliness, -heart and soul loneliness, that has driven me to revolt. And in my -despair I come to you--and I say to you that it is friendship that I -cannot live without, and you are my oldest friend, my dearest, truest, -most precious friend, and I beg you to come with me and we will go -through the world together, hand in hand----” - -She interrupted him by pushing back her chair and half rising. “If -you will excuse me now,” she said, nervously, “I think I must go. You -mustn’t trouble to come--I will say good-bye here.” - -He had risen as well, and now in trembling earnestness protested against -her proposal. At the risk of attracting the attention of the strangers, -he displayed such resentful opposition that she yielded. The waiter was -summoned--and remained bowing in dazed meditation upon the magnitude of -the change he had been bidden to keep for himself, after they had passed -out and down the staircase. - -She led the way at a hurried pace back across the Circus and to -Blackfriars. At the rounded beginning of the Embankment she paused, and -for the first time spoke. “Really I would rather go back by myself,” - she told him. “It is only unhappiness to both of us--what you insist on -talking about.” - -“But I do not think it is to be treated in this way,” he declared with -dignity. “If we speak of nothing else it is the highest and most solemn -honor that a man can pay to any woman, that I have paid to you. I have -the feeling that it should be more courteously dealt with.” - -“Yes, I know,” she admitted, nodding her ready compunction. She -tightened her lips and looked away from him toward the bridge, her brows -drawn together in troubled lines. “I don’t say the right thing to -you--I know that better even than you do. You must not think I fail to -appreciate it all--the honor, and the immense confidence, and all the -rest of it. But when I have said that much--then I don’t know in the -least how to say the rest. Why can’t we leave it unsaid altogether? I -assure you, in all seriousness, that it can’t be--and mayn’t we leave it -like that? Please!” - -He regarded her with a patient yet proud sadness, waiting to speak till -she had turned, and his glance caught hers. “I do not wish to become a -nuisance to you,” he said, his voice choking a little, “but I think it -would be better if you said everything to me. Then I shall not put my -mind on the rack, to try and imagine your reasons.” He let his lip curl -with a lingering ironical perception of the fantastic with which his -tragedy was veined. “It is very sweet,” he went on--“your consideration -for my feelings. But I have heard so many plain truths to-day, I think -my sensibilities are in good training now--they will not suffer for a -few more.” Suddenly, as if the sound of his voice had unnerved him, he -seized her arm, and confronted her surprised gaze with a reddened and -scowling face. “What are you afraid of?” he demanded hoarsely. “Why not -say it? I heard it only last night! It is forty years old, it is true, -but they have wonderful memories in England. You are the one whom I have -held to be my dearest friend--but go on! Say it to me! A little thing -like friendship does not prevent you from thinking it! Why, then, you -should have the courage to speak it out!” - -Dimly, while she stared in his distracted countenance, the meaning, of -the wild talk dawned upon her. With a startled exclamation, she -dragged her arm from his clutch, and drew back a step. Trembling in her -agitation, her gray eyes distended themselves out of all likeness to -their tranquil habit. - -“Oh-h-h!” she murmured in dismay at him, and wrung her hands. “Oh-h! -Stop! Stop! That is too horrible for you to think!” - -Gaining coherence of thought and purpose, she moved impulsively to him, -and in turn clasped her hand upon his arm. “Put that out of your mind!” - she adjured him. “I could not look anybody in the face if you thought -_that_ of me. Oh, it is too terrible of you! How could you suppose that -I could harbor such a thought? To blame you for something years before -you were born!--to throw it into your face. And _me_ of all people! Why, -I have cried to myself at remembering what you said about your father -when we first met--how your little-boy memory clung affectionately to -the soldier-figure of him in the door-way! Look at me--I cry now to -think of it! Why, it is the one thing about you that is sacred to -me!--the one thing that you are perfect in--and then you imagine that -I am capable of insulting you about it! Oh, heavens, why wouldn’t you -leave me when I told you to?” - -She threw his arm from her in a gust of physical impatience, but the -glance with which, on the instant, she corrected this demonstration, -was full of honest compassion. He groveled before this benign gaze, with -bowed head and outstretched, pleading hands. - -“Forgive me! Forgive me!” he groaned, brokenly. “I could not--at -all--know what it was I said. I am too unhappy!” - -“Well,” she began, with a vehement effort at calmness, “let us say -good-bye here. There are some Germans watching us from the hotel -windows. Or it is better perhaps--will you walk on past the school?” As -they moved forward, she recovered more of her self-possession. “I hope -you will be able to remember something pleasant out of our morning,” she -said, and with a joyless laugh added, “but for the life of me, I don’t -know what it can be. Or yes, you can remember when you woke up, and I -stood and scolded you, from above the flowers. I pretended to bully -you, but really all the while I was thinking how sweet of you the entire -thing was. And later, too--oh, there were several intervals in which I -behaved civilly to you for whole minutes at a time.” - -He looked wistfully at her. Beneath the forced playfulness of her tone -it seemed to him that something hopeful sounded. “Ah, dear friend,” he -murmured, drawing close to her--“think!--think tenderly in my behalf! -Ask yourself--your kindest self--if I must be really driven away. Why is -it that I may not stay? I plead with you as if it were for my life--and -is it not indeed for my life?--my very life?” - -“No--Christian,” she said, gravely, “it is not your life, nor anything -like your life. You give big labels to your emotions, but in good time -you will see that the things themselves are not so big, or so vital. And -you mustn’t yield so readily to all these impulses to mope and despair -and to think yourself ill used. You must try to make for yourself a -thicker skin--and to view things more calmly. And I don’t want you to go -away thinking hard things of me. Is it true that I always nag you--there -is something in you which calls out all the bully in me--but I wish you -would think of me as your friend. It gives me great pleasure when you -speak of me as your oldest friend in England--for I have always liked -you, and I am interested in you, and--” - -“And why will you not marry me?” He interposed the question bluntly, and -with a directness which gave it the effect of an obstacle in her path, -isolated but impassable. - -She halted, and studied the pavement in consideration of her reply. When -she looked up, it was with the veiled elation of a disputant who has his -counter-stroke well in hand. “You said to-day that you had become your -own master, and that you were a free man, with your life in your own -hands. Very well. I also am my own master, and I am a free woman. My -life is exclusively my own personal property, to live as I choose to -live it. I value my liberty quite as highly as if I were a man. It does -not suit me to merge any part of it in something else. There could be -many other reasons given, no doubt, but they would be merely individual -variations of this one chief reason--that I am a free woman, and intend -to remain a free woman. I know what I want to do in the world, and I am -going to try to do it, always my own way, always my own master.” - -He regarded her thoughtfully, bowing his head in token of comprehension. -“But if----” he began, and then checked himself, with a gesture of -pained submission. - -“There are no ‘ifs,’” she said, with resolute calmness, and held out -her hand to him. Her control of the situation was undisputed. “We say -good-bye, now--and we are friends--good friends. I--I thank you--for -everything!” - -He stood looking at her as she walked away--a sedately graceful figure, -erect and light of step, receding from him under the pallid green -shelter of the young trees. Musingly, he held up the hand which still -preserved the sense of that farewell contact with hers--and upon a -sudden impulse put it to his lips and kissed it. Something in the action -wrought an instantaneous change in his thoughts. All at once it was -apparent to him that many things which should have been said to her he -had left unsaid. In truth, it seemed upon reflection that he had said -and done everything wrong. The notion of running after her flamed up in -him for a moment. She was still in sight--he could distinguish her -in the distance, stopping to buy a paper from a boy near the Temple -station. But then the memory of her unanswerable, irrevocable “No” swept -back upon him--and with a long sigh he turned and strode in the other -direction. - -***** - -Frances, hastening mechanically toward her office, found relief from the -oppressive confusion of her thoughts in the fortuitous spectacle of -two small newsboys fighting in the gutter just at the end of the Temple -Gardens. For the first time in her life, the sight aroused nothing -within her save a pleased if unscientific interest. She paused, and -almost smilingly observed the contest. She found something amusingly -grotesque in the pseudo-Titanic rage on these baby faces. The dramatic -fury of the embattled infants was in such ridiculous disproportion to -the feather-weight blows they exchanged! She found herself chuckling -aloud at some incongruous comparison which rose in her mind. - -Then, as the combatants parted, apparently for no better reason than the -general volatility of youth, she remembered that she had it in mind to -look at the “Star.” One of her friends, Mary Leach, had sent to that -paper some days before an article on “Shopgirls’ Dormitories,” and she -was interested in watching for its appearance. It happened that one of -the boys had a “Star.” Acting upon some obscure whim, she gave them each -a penny, quite in the manner of a distributor of prizes for conspicuous -merit--and grinned to herself at the thought when she had turned her -back on them and moved on. - -There was no sign of what she sought on the front page. Opening the -sheet, her eye fell, as it were, upon a news paragraph in a middle -column: - -***** - -“Death of the Oldest Duke.--The Shrewsbury correspondent of the -‘Exchange Telegraph’ announces the death at Caermere Castle, at an early -hour this morning, of the Duke of Glastonbury. His Grace, who was in his -ninetieth year, had until last summer enjoyed the most vigorous health, -and only now succumbs to the prostration then occasioned by the group -of domestic bereavements which at the time created such a sensation. The -deceased nobleman, who for the great part of his prolonged life, was -one of the best known sportsmen in Shropshire, succeeded his father as -eighth duke in his minority, and had been in possession of the title for -no less than seventeen years when Her Majesty ascended the throne, thus -constituting a record which is believed to be without parallel in the -annals of the peerage. His successor is stated by Whitaker’s Almanac to -be his grandson, Mr. Christian Tower, but the current editions of Burke, -Debrett and others do not mention this gentleman, whose claims, it would -appear, have but recently been admitted by the family.” - -***** - -Frances read it all, as she stood at the corner, with a curious sense -of mental sluggishness. Her attention failing to follow one of the -sentences, she went back, and laboriously traced its entire tortuous -course, only to find that it meant no more than it had at first. - -It seemed a long time before she connected the intelligence on the -printed page with the realities of actual life. Then she turned swiftly, -and strained her eyes in the wild hope of discovering Christian still on -the Embankment. She even took a few hurried steps, as if to follow and -overtake him--but stopped short, confronted by the utter futility of -such an enterprise. - -Then, walking slowly, her mind a maze of wondering thoughts, she went -her way. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - -Christian strolled aimlessly about for a long time in the closely -packed congeries of streets, little and big, behind St. Paul’s. It -happened to be all new ground to him, and something novel was welcome to -his troubled and restless mind. He loitered from one window to another, -examining their contents gravely; at the old book stalls he took down -numbers of volumes and looked laboriously through them, as if conducting -an urgent search for something. - -His jumbled thoughts were a burden to him. He could get nothing coherent -from them, It was not even clear to his perception whether he was really -as dejected and disconsolate as he ought to be. - -He had only recently been plunged into despairing depths of sadness, and -it was fitting that he should still be racked with anguish. Yet there -was no actual pain--there was not even a dogged insensibility to the -frivolous distractions of the moment. He became exceedingly interested -in an old copy of Boutell, for example, and hunted eagerly through the -multitude of heraldic cuts to see if the white bull on a green ground -of the Torrs was among them. His disappointment at not finding it was so -keen that for the instant it superseded his abiding grief. His discovery -of this fact entertained him; he was almost capable of laughing in -amusement at it. Then, in self-condemnation, he sought to call up before -his mental vision the picture of Frances, as she had looked when they -had said good-bye. The image would not come distinctly. Her face eluded -him; he could only see her walking away, instead, under the feeble green -of the young trees. None the less, he said deliberately to himself that -he was unhappy beyond the doom of most men, and that the hope had gone -out of his life. - -The day had turned out unexpectedly warm. In the middle of his shapeless -musings, the ornate sign of a Munich brewery on a cool, shaded doorway -suddenly attracted him. The dusky, restful emptiness of the place inside -seemed ideally to fit his mood. He went in, and seated himself with a -long sigh of satisfaction at one of the tables. Here, in this mellow -quiet, over the refreshing contents of the big, covered stone mug, he -could think peacefully and to advantage. He lit a cigar, and leaning -back in comfort, gave the signal to his thoughts to arrange and -concentrate themselves. - -What should he do next? Yes--that was far more to the point than mooning -over the irrevocable past. He had left Duke Street with hardly any plan -beyond not returning thither. Luggage of some sort he would have to -have--changes of linen and the like, and the necessary articles of the -toilet. It was his intention to buy these as the need of them arose--and -the character of his purchases would also depend a good deal, of course, -upon the decision he should come to concerning his movements. He had -said that he would leave England--and now he asked himself whether there -was anything to prevent his departure that very evening. One of the -deepest charms of travel must be to start off on the instant, upon the -bidding of the immediate whim, and descend upon your destination before -there has been time to cheapen it by thinking about it. Why should he -not eat the morrow’s breakfast in the Hague--and dine at Amsterdam? -Similarly, he could within twenty-four hours be watching the marriage of -Mosel and Rhine at Coblenz--or gazing upon the wide, wet, white sands of -the Norman shore from the towering battlements of St. Michel. A hundred -storied towns, vaguely pictured in his imagination, beckoned to him -from across the Channel. Upon reflection, it seemed to him that Holland -offered the most wooing invitation. He asked the waiter for Bradshaw, -and noted the salient points of the itinerary from Queen borough. - -It was now three o’clock. There was plenty of time for all purchases, -and a leisurely dinner before going to Victoria. It occurred to him that -the dinner must be very good--a luxurious kind of farewell repast. - -He would make a memorandum now of the things he ought to buy here in -London. Holland was by all accounts a dear place--and moreover he had -heard that the Dutch customs examination was by no means troublesome. -It would be more intelligent to complete practically his outfit here. -He took out a pencil, and began feeling in his coat-pocket for a bit of -paper. The hand brought out, beside Lady Milly’s note about the Private -View, three or four unopened letters. He had entirely forgotten their -existence--and stared at them now in puzzled indecision. It was not a -sensible thing, or a fair thing either, to tear up and destroy unread -the message which some one else had been at pains to transcribe for -you. But on the other hand, these missives belonged to the stupid and -intolerable life in Duke Street, with which he had definitely parted -company. It might even be said, in one sense, that he was not the person -to whom they were addressed. - -By some whimsical freak of the brain, he suddenly asked himself whether -he should not go to Greece instead of Holland, and enlist as a volunteer -in the war against the Turks. He became on the instant immersed in -adventurous military speculations. He had not fallen into the English -habit of following the daily papers with regularity, and he was -conscious of no responsibility whatever toward the events of the world -at large, as Reuter and the correspondents chronicled them. Something -of this new war in Thessaly, however, he had perforce read and heard. Of -the circumstances and politics surrounding this latest eruption of -the Eastern Question he knew little more than would any of the young -Frenchmen of education among whom he had spent his youth. But in an -obscure way, he comprehended that good people in Western Europe always -sympathized with the Christian as against the Moslem. It seemed that -some generous-minded young Englishmen were already translating this -sympathy into action; somewhere he had seen an account of a party of -volunteers leaving London for Athens, and being cheered by their friends -at the station. Now that he thought of it, the paper in which he had -read the report had ridiculed the affair as an undesirable kind of a -joke--but the impulse of the volunteers seemed fine to him, none the -less. - -There ought to be some martial blood in his veins; the soldier-figure of -his father rose before him in affirmation of the idea. - -But no--what nonsense it was! If ever there had been a youth bred and -narrowed to the walks of peace, he was that young person. He who -had never struck another human being in his life, that he could -remember--what would such a tame sheep be doing in the open field, -against the unknown, ferocious Osmanli Turk? The gross absurdity of the -picture flared upon him, momentarily--and then the whole notion of armed -adventure had vanished from his mind. - -His attention reverted to the letters--and now it seemed quite a -matter of course that he should open them. The first three were of no -importance. The fourth he regarded with wide-open eyes, after he had -grasped the identity of the writer. He read it over slowly, more than -once: - -“27A Ashley Gardens, S. W., Monday. - -“My Dear Mr. Christian Tower: I have taken this little place in town for -the time being, and I shall be glad to see you when you are this way. -To-morrow, Tuesday, is a day when I shall not be at home to other -people--if you have nothing better to do. - -“Yours very sincerely, - -“Edith Cressage.” - -Nothing better to do? Christian’s thoughts lingered rather blankly upon -the phrase--until all at once he perceived that there could not possibly -be anything better to do. He rose with decision, hurriedly gulped what -remained of his second pot of beer, paid his bill and marched out with -the air of a man with a mission. - -In the hansom, he read the letter still again, and leaned backward to -see as much as possible of himself in the little mirror at the side. -His chin could not be described as closely shaven, and his garments were -certainly not those of the afternoon caller. The resource of stopping -at Duke Street occurred to him--but no! that would be too foolish. The -whole significance of the day would be abolished, wiped out, by such a -fatuous step. And he repeated to himself that it _was_ a day of supreme -significance. By comparison with the proceedings and experiences of this -long and crowded day, the rest of his life seemed colorless indeed. And -what was of most importance in it, he declared to himself, was not its -external happenings, but the fine and novel posture of his liberated -mind toward them. He was for the first time actually a free man. His -enfranchisement had not been thrown at him by outsiders; it proceeded -from within him--the product of his own individuality. - -That was what people would discern in him hereafter--a complete and -self-sufficient personality. He would no longer be pointed out and -classified as somebody’s grandson--somebody’s cousin or grand-nephew. -The world would recognize him as being himself. He felt assured, -for example, upon reflection that Lady Cressage would not dream of -questioning the fashion of the clothes in which he came to see her. She -would perceive at once that he had developed beyond the silly pupilary -stage of subordination to his coat and hat. She was so clever and -sympathetic a woman, he felt intuitively, that these symbols of his -emancipated condition would delight her. It was true, he saw again from -the mirror that his collar might be a little whiter; his cuffs, too, had -lost their earlier glow of starched freshness. But these were trifles to -serious minds. And besides, was it not all in the family? - -There was a momentary block at the corner of Parliament Street, and here -a newsboy thrust a fourth edition upon Christian with such an effect -of authority that he found a penny and took the paper. It was the -“Westminster Gazette,” and when he had looked upon the second page for -a possible drawing by Gould, and had skimmed the column of desultory -gossip on the last page, which always seemed to his alien conceptions of -journalism to be the kind of matter he liked in a newspaper, he laid the -sheet on his knee, and resumed his idle reverie. To his great surprise -the cabman’s shouts through the roof were necessary to awaken him at -Ashley Gardens. He shook himself, laughingly explained that he had been -up all night as he paid his fare, and ascended the steps of 27A, paper -in hand. - -The servant seemed prepared for his coming, for upon giving his name in -response to her somewhat meaning inquiry, she led him in at once. He -sat waiting for a few moments in a small and conveniently appointed -drawing-room, and then stood up, at the rustle of rapid skirts which -announced Lady Cressage in the half-open doorway. - -She entered with outstretched hand, and a radiant welcome upon her face. - -Christian noted that beyond the hand there was a forearm, shapely and -cream-hued, disclosed by the lace of her flowing sleeve. There were -billows of this lace, and of some fragile, light fabric which seemed -sister to it, enveloping the lady, yet her tall, graceful figure was in -some indefinable way molded to the eye beneath them all. The pale hair -was as he had first seen it, loosely drawn across her temples; there -were warm shadows in it which he had not thought to see. The face, too, -had some unexpected phase, here in the subdued light of the curtained -room. There was a sense of rosiness in the rounded flesh, a certain -reposeful elation in the regard of the blue eyes, which put quite at -fault the image of harrowed restlessness and nerves he had retained from -Caermere. It was in an illuminating second that he saw all this, -and perceived that she was very beautiful, and flushed with the deep -consciousness that she read his thoughts like big print. - -“It was the greatest cheek in the world--my summoning you like this,” - she said, as they shook hands. “Yes--sit here. Put your hat and paper -on the sofa. This is my only reception room--but we might have a little -more light.” - -She moved to the window, to pull back the curtains, and then about the -room, lightly rearranging some of the chairs and trinkets--all with a -buoyant daintiness of motion which inexpressibly charmed him. “These -are not my things, you know,” she explained over her shoulder. “I am -not trying in the least to live up to them, either. I take the place, -furnished, for three months, from the widow of an Indian officer. You -would think she would have some Indian things--but it might have all -come direct from Tottenham Court Road. It’s impossible to get the -slightest sensation of being at home, here. One could really extract -more domesticity out of four bare cottage walls. Or no, what am I -saying?”--she had returned, and sinking into the low chair opposite him, -pointed her words with a frank smile into his face---“it _is_ a bit like -home--to see you here!” - -“I am very glad to be here,” he assured her, nodding his unfeigned -pleasure. “But it seemed as if you would never tell me I might come.” - -“Oh, I was worried to death. There were all sorts of things to see about -when I first came up,” she explained with animation. “And I had the -feeling that I didn’t want you to come till I had smoothed some of my -wrinkles out, and had achieved a certain control over my nerves. It was -not fair to myself--the view you had of me at Caermere.” - -The view of her that was afforded him here brought a glow of admiration -to his eyes. - -“To think of your being my cousin!” he said, with some remote echo in -his own voice of the surprise which he recalled in Dicky Westland’s -tone. It seemed wonderful indeed as he looked at her, and smiled. He -shook his head presently, in response to her question whether he had -any recent news from Caermere, and continued to observe her with a rapt -sense of the miraculous being embodied before his eyes. - -“But the duke is very low indeed,” she told him in a hushed voice. “I -had it yesterday from--from one of the household.” - -The tidings barely affected him. That side of his mind was still fast in -the rut of last night’s mutiny. - -“I have quite decided to go away,” he announced, calmly. “I get no good -out of the life here. It does not suit me. Whatever comes to me, why, -that I shall accept, but to use it in my own way, living my own life. -Now that I am a free man, it astonishes me that I did not rebel long -ago.” - -“Rebel--against what?” she asked him, with a kind of confidential candor -which put him even more at his ease. - -“Oh, against everything,” he smiled back at her. “This existence -that they arranged for me--it is like being embalmed and wrapped in -mummy-cloths. Personally I do not survive a thousand years--but I am but -one link in a long chain of respectable people who have lived like that, -without living at all, for many thousands. It is being buried alive. -Why, you will see what I mean--a man is a creature different from other -human creatures. He has an individual nature of his own. His tastes, his -inclinations, his impulses and ideas, are not quite like those of the -people about him. He would be happy to follow these according to his own -wishes. But then everybody seizes upon him and says: ‘No, you must -be and do just like the rest. You will be noticed and disliked if you -indulge in even the slightest variation. These are the coats you are to -wear, and the hats and caps and neckties. This is Duke Street, which -you must live in. This is the hour to get up, this is the hour to make -calls, this is the corner of your card to turn down, this is the list of -people at whose houses you must dine, these are your friends ready-made -for you out of a book.’ And truly what is it all?--utter, utter -emptiness. You are really not alive at all! You have no more personal -sensation of your own existence than an insect. It is all this that I -rebel against.” - -She reclined a little in her chair, and covered him with a meditative -gaze. “I know the feeling,” she commented thoughtfully. “I used to -have sharp spasms of it--oh, ages ago--whenever a shopwoman showed me -something, and said, ‘This is very much worn just now,’ or, ‘We are -selling a great deal of this.’ Then I would not have that particular -thing if I died for it. But do you really feel so earnestly about it?” - She put the question in deference to a gesture by which he had signified -the inadequacy of her comparison. “Ah, the real life, as you call it, is -a more complicated thing than one fancies.” - -“But that is precisely the point,” with vivacity. “I have thought much -about that. Is it not the artificial life which is complicated instead? -Do we not confound the two? If you consider it, what can be more simple -that the natural life of a man? If an astronomer, for example, has a -difficult problem to work out, he first busies himself in discovering -and putting aside all the things which seem to be factors in it but -really are not. One by one he gets rid of them, until at last he has the -naked equation before him--and then a result is possible. But with us, -it seems that we go quite the other way about it. We take the problem of -life--which is extraordinarily simple to begin with--and we pile upon it -and around it thousands of outside rules and conventions and traditions, -and we confuse it with other thousands of prejudices, and insincerities, -and old mistakes that no one has had the industry to examine--and then -we look with embarrassment at what we have done, and shake our heads, -and say that the problem is too hard, that it passes the wisdom of man -to solve it.” - -“I wish you joy of solving it,” she remarked, after another reflective -survey of his face. “I am sure I wish some one would do it. But you -spoke of going away. How would that help matters?” - -The recurrence of the question startled him. He looked at her with -lifted head, recalling swiftly meanwhile the tone in which Frances -had uttered those same words. A blurred, imperfect retrospect of the -morning’s events and talks passed fleetingly across his mind--and its -progress disquieted him. Some tokens of perturbation on his face seemed -to warn her, for she went on without waiting for an answer. - -“I am not surprised to find you feeling like this,” she said. “It is -quite the effect that I imagined London would produce upon you. I have -no right to say so, perhaps, but it seemed to me from the start that it -was being badly managed--I mean the way you were sent here by yourself, -and given nothing to do except follow about where Lord Lingfield led. -It is not what I should have done--but the truth is that Emanuel knows -nothing at all about the characters and temperaments of human beings. -If men agree with him, he thinks they are good men, and if they disagree -with him, they are bad men--or at least not worth thinking about at -all.” - -“I had quite resolved not to commit myself to his System,” Christian -informed her, “even before I made up my mind to--to take other steps.” - -His closing euphemism seemed to attract her attention. “What is it you -intend to do?” she asked of him, softly. She sat upright again, with an -air of friendly curiosity. - -In the face of this query, he discovered that his intentions were by no -means so clear to himself as they had been. “It is still rather in the -air,” he said vaguely. “But we talk always of myself! Tell me, instead, -about yourself! It is an infinitely more pleasing subject. You are here -in London for only three months? And you are alone here?” - -She smiled in an indefinite fashion, and leaned back in her chair. -“Ought I to have a chaperon? I dare say. But there is no room for her -here. The flat accommodates just one solitary elderly lady and here you -behold her. Oh, I am a hundred years old, I assure you!” - -He could only wave his hand at her in genial deprecation. “Oh, who is -younger than you?” he murmured. - -She sighed. “By the almanac I am four-and-twenty,” she went on, with a -new note of gentle melancholy. “But by my own feelings, I seem to have -been left over from the reign of William the Fourth. And really, it is -not my own feelings alone--when I go out, I observe that very old -men take me down to dinner, and talk to me precisely as if I were a -contemporary of theirs.” - -“When we were together at Caermere,” interposed Christian, “you -confessed to me that you were not happy--and it was my great delight to -pledge myself that if ever there was anything I could do--” - -“Oh, there is nothing at all,” she interrupted him to declare. “My -case will not come up. It has all been settled. The accounts, or -settlements--or whatever you call them--have been made up, and my share -of my husband’s share of his father’s interest in _his_ father’s estate -has been ascertained. I have six hundred a year for life. It is a mild -and decorous competence. I do not complain. It will keep a genteel roof -over my head here in London, or a small house and a pony-trap in the -country. It will run to a month at a pension in the cheaper parts of -Switzerland, or perhaps even to a lodging and a bath-chair at Brighton, -when it is not quite the season. Oh, I shall get on very well indeed--at -all events,” she added with a touch of bitterness, “much better than I -deserve to do.” - -Christian lifted his brows in protesting inquiry. “You always speak in -that tone of yourself! It pains me to hear you. I cannot think of any -one who deserves the kindness and friendly good offices of fortune more -than you.” - -Lady Cressage gave an uncertain little laugh. “You are too -generous-minded--too innocent. You do not know. Me? My dear friend--I -have committed the unpardonable sin! I humiliated and degraded myself -to win a great prize in the world’s lottery--and I did not bring it off. -That is my offense. If I had won the trick--why, they would be burning -incense before me! But I lost instead--and they leave me quite by myself -to digest my own disgust. I don’t talk about it--I have never said as -much to any living soul as I am saying to you--I don’t know why I am -telling you--” - -“Is there any one else who would listen with such sympathy?” Christian -heard himself interjecting. - -“But it is too cruel,” continued Lady Cressage, “too shameful a story! I -was not happy at home. It was nobody’s fault in particular; I don’t know -that we were more evil-tempered and selfish among ourselves than most -other middle-class households with four hundred a year, and three -daughters to marry off. I was the youngest, and I had the sort of good -looks which were in fashion at the moment, and mamma worked very hard -for me--pretending to idolize me before people though we yapped at -each other like fox-terriers in private--and I was lucky in making -friends--and so I went swimming out on the top of the wave that season, -the most envied poor fool of a girl in London. And when Cressage wanted -to marry me--I was dizzy with the immensity of what seemed to be offered -me. My parents were mad with pride and ecstasy. Everybody around me -pretended a kind of holy joy at my triumph. I give you my word!--never -so much as a whisper came to my ears of any shadow of a reason why I -should hesitate--why I should think a second time! Do you see? There -was not an honest person--a single woman or a man with decency enough to -warn an ignorant girl of her danger--within reach of me anywhere. They -all kept as silent as the grave--with that lying grin of congratulation -on their mean faces--and they led me to be married to the beast!” - -She had sat erect in her chair as she spoke, and now she rose to her -feet, motioning him not to get up as she did so. She took a restless -step or two, her shoulders trembling with excitement, and her hands -clenched. “Ah-h! I will never forgive them the longest day of my life!” - she called out. - -Then, with a determined shake of her head, she seemed to master herself. -Standing before a small mirror in the panel of a cabinet against the -wall, she busied her beautiful hands in correcting the slight disorder -of her hair. When she turned to him, it was with a faint, tremulous -smile surmounting the signs of stress and agitation upon her face. She -sank into the chair again, with a long-drawn breath of resignation. - -“But it isn’t nice to abuse the dead,” she remarked, striving after an -effect of judicial fairness in her voice. “I didn’t mean to speak like -that. And for that matter, why should I speak at all of him? One -doesn’t blame a wolf for man-eating. You execrate instead the people -who deliberately throw a helpless human being to the wolf. I even say to -myself that I have no quarrel with Cressage. He was as God made him--if -the thought isn’t blasphemous. He was a great, overgrown, bullying, -blubbering, ignorant boy, who never got beyond the morals of the stables -and kennels, and the standards of taste of the servants’ hall. One could -hardly call him vicious; that is to say, he did not deliberately set -out to cause suffering. He did not do anything on deliberation. He acted -just as his rudimentary set of barbaric impulses prompted him to act. -Some of these impulses would have been regarded as virtues in a more -intelligent man. For example, he was wildly, insanely jealous of me. It -took the most impossible and vulgar forms, it is true, but still----” - -“Oh, need we talk of him?” It was with almost a groan of supplication -that Christian stopped her. “He is too unpleasant to think about. -Nothing that I had heard of him before made me sorry that he was -dead--but this--it is too painful. But now you are a free woman--you see -your path well before you, to travel as you choose. And what will you -do?” - -She sighed and threw up her hands with a gesture of contemptuous -indifference. “What does any English lady with six hundred a year do? -Devote her energies to seeing that she gets--let me see, what is the -sum?--to seeing that she gets twelve thousand shillings’ worth of -respectable discomfort, and secures reasonable opportunities for making -those about her uncomfortable also. Oh, I don’t in the least know what -I shall do. The truth is,” she added, with a sad smile, “I have lived -alone with my dislikes so long, and I have nourished and watered them -so carefully, that now they fill my whole garden. They have quite choked -out the flowers of existence--these thick, rank, powerful weeds. And I -haven’t the energy--perhaps I haven’t even the desire--to pull them up. -They seem appropriate, somehow--they belong to the desolation that has -been made of my life.” - -Christian bent forward, and made a movement as if to take one of the -hands which lay dejectedly in her lap. He did not do this, but touched a -projecting bit of lace upon one of the flounces of her gown, and twisted -it absent-mindedly in his fingers instead. - -“You are still unhappy!” he said reproachfully, his eyes glowing with -the intensity of his tender compassion. “I do not forgive myself for -my inability to be of help to you. It is incredible that there is not -something I can do.” - -“But you are going away,” she reminded him, in a soft monotone. “You -have your own unpleasantnesses to think of--and you are occupied with -plans for rearranging your life on new lines. I only hope that you will -find the happiness you are setting out in search of. But then men can -always get what they want, if they are only sufficiently in earnest -about it.” - -“It is not entirely settled that I shall go away,” said Christian. -He twisted the lace in the reverse direction, and hesitated over his -further words. “That was only one of several alternatives. I am clear -only about my resolve to make a stand--to break away. But if I remained -here in England--in London?”--He looked with mingled trepidation and -inquiry into her face. “If I did not go abroad--is there anything I -could do?” - -She regarded with attentiveness the hand which was playing havoc with -her flounce--and it straightway desisted. She continued to study the -little screwed-up cone of lace, in meditative silence. At last she shook -her head. “You must not give it another thought,” she said, but with no -touch of dictation in her musing tone. Her eyes dwelt upon him with a -remote and ruminating gaze. “I belong to a past generation. My chances -in the lottery are all exhausted--things of the past. You must not -bother about me. And I think you ought to give up those ideas of yours -about breaking away, as you call it. London hasn’t been made pleasant -for you, simply because the wrong people have gone the wrong way about -it to arrange matters for you. But there are extremely nice people among -the set you know, if you once understood them. With your position, you -can command any kind of associations you wish to have. After it is all -said and done, I think England has its full share of cultivated and -refined people of intelligence. I have not seen much of the Continent, -but I do not believe that it possesses any superiority over us in that -respect.” - -“But in your own case,” urged Christian, somewhat hazily; “you said that -there were no honest people about you to warn you--though you were in -the best society. That is my feeling--that you do not get the truth from -them. They do not lie to you--but they are silent about the truth.” - -“Is it different elsewhere?” she asked, gravely. “Is not the young -girl sold everywhere? Do you think that marriage is a more sacred and -ethereal thing among the great families of France or Austria or Germany -than it is with us? I have heard differently.” - -“Oh, we are all equally uncivilized about women,” he admitted. “I feel -very strongly about that. But you, who have such knowledge and such -clear opinions--would you not love to do something to alter this -injustice to women? The thought has been much in my mind, of late.” He -paused to reflect in fleeting wonderment upon the fact that only this -morning he had been absorbed in it. “And my meaning is,” he stumbled -on, “there is nothing I would rather devote my life to than the task of -making existence easier and broader and more free for young women. Could -there be any finer work than that? I know that it appeals to you.” - -She looked at him with an element of doubt in her glance. “Nothing -appeals very much to me--and I’m afraid my sex least of all. I do not -like them, to tell the truth. I never get over the surprised disgust of -waking up in the morning and finding that I am one of them. But this is -rather wandering from the point, isn’t it? I was urging you to give -over the notion of making a demonstration. You have waited thus long; be -content to wait just a little longer. My private belief is that the Duke -will not live the week out.” - -Still, the assurance seemed to suggest nothing to him. “But if he dies,” - he protested, “how then will I be different? I am lonely--I am like a -forlorn man escaped on a raft from a shipwreck--I eat my heart out in -friendless solitude. And if I have a great title--why, then I shall be -more alone than ever. It is that way with such men--I have seen that -they hold themselves aloof--and others do not come freely near them. -It frightens me--the thought of living without friends. I say to you -solemnly that I would give it all--the position, the authority and -dignity, the estates, Caermere, everything--for the assurance of one -warm, human heart answering in every beat to mine! Has friendship -perished out of the world, then? Or has it never existed, except in the -books?” - -Her beauty had never been so manifest to him, as now while he gazed at -her, and she did not speak. There seemed the faint, delicate hint of -a tenderness in the classical lines of the face that he had not seen -before. It was as if his appeal had brought forth some latent aptitude -of romance, to mellow the direct glance of her eyes, and soften in some -subtle way the whole charm of her presence. A new magic was visible in -her loveliness--and the sense that his words had conjured it into -being thrilled him with a wistful pride. No woman had thus moved -him heretofore. The perception that she was plastic to his mental -touch--that this flower-like marvel of comeliness and grace, of -exquisite tastes and pure dignity of soul, could be swayed by his -suggestion, would vibrate at the tone of his voice--awed him as if he -were confronted by a miracle. His breath came and went under a dull -consciousness of pain--which was yet more like pleasure. A bell sounded -somewhere within the house, and its brief crystal resonance seemed -somehow to clarify the ferment of his thoughts. All at once, as by the -flooding of sunlight into a darkened labyrinth, his mind was clear to -him. He knew what he wanted--nay, what all the years had been leading -him up to desire. - -With his gaze maintained upon her face--timidly yet with rapturous -intentness, as if fearful of breaking the spell--he rose to his feet, -and stood over her. A confusion of unspoken words trembled on his lips, -as her slow glance lifted itself to his. - -“It was like the pleasantry of a beautiful, roguish little girl”--he -began, smiling nervously down at her--“your saying that you belonged -to a generation earlier than mine. Do you think I do not know my -generation? And am I blind, that I do not see what is most precious in -it? This is what----” - -An extraordinary outburst of disputing voices, in the little hallway -close at hand, broke in upon his words. He stopped, stared inquiringly -at Lady Cressage, and beheld her rise, frowning and hard-eyed, and step -toward the door. A vague sense of the familiar came to him from the -louder of the accents outside. - -The door was opened, and the domestic, red-faced, and spluttering with -wrath, began some stammered explanation to her mistress. What she sought -to say did not appear, for on the instant the door was pushed farther -back, and a veiled lady took up her energetic stand upon the threshold. - -“Don’t blame her,” this lady cried, in high, rapid tones. “I forced my -way in--something told me that you were at home. And when you hear my -news----” - -“Oh, since you are here”--Lady Cressage began, coldly. “But, really, -Mrs. Torr----” - -“Oh, no--call me Cora!” the other interrupted, vivaciously. - -She went further, and bustling her arms against Edith’s shoulders, -purported to kiss her on both cheeks. Then, drawing back her head, she -went on: “My dear, the duke died at two this morning! It’s in all the -papers. But what isn’t in any of the papers is that the heir is missing. -It’s a very curious story. Mr. Westland here”--by her gesture it seemed -that Dicky was behind her in the hallway--“went to Duke Street this -noon, and found Christian’s man in great alarm. The youngster had -bolted, leaving a note saying merely that he was called away. Mr. -Westland’ then hunted me up, and we started out, for I had a kind -of clue, don’t you see. I knew where he was at ten o’clock this -forenoon--and we drove to Arundel Street, and there we found----” - -Christian hurriedly stepped forward. “Oh, I think you may take it that -I am not lost,” he called out, revealing himself to the astonished Cora. -For the moment the chief thing in his mind was satisfaction at having -interrupted her disclosures about Arundel Street. - -Then, as other thoughts crowded in upon him, he straightened his -shoulders and lifted his chin. “It’s all right,” he said, with a -reassuring wave of the hand toward the womenfolk of his family. - - - - -PART IV - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - -On the morning of the funeral, six days later, Christian rose very -early, and took coffee in his library shortly after seven. Then, -lighting a cigarette, he resumed work upon several drawers full of -papers, open on the big table, where it had been left off the previous -evening. The details of the task seemed already familiar to him. He -scanned one document after another with an informed eye, and put it -in its proper pile without hesitation. He made notes suggested by the -contents of each, on the pad before him, with a quill pen and corrected -the vagaries of this unaccustomed implement, in the matter of blots and -inadequate lines, with painstaking patience. There were steel nibs in -abundance, and two gold stylographic pens, but he clung resolutely to -the embarrassing feather. - -After a time he rested from his labors, and rang the bell beside his -desk; almost upon the instant Falkner appeared in the doorway. - -“If Mr. Westland is up,” said Christian, “you may ask him to join me -here.” - -“Yes, Your Grace,” the smooth-voiced, soft-mannered man replied, and -vanished. - -The young duke rose, yawned slightly and moved to the window nearest -him. It opened, upon examination, and he stepped out on a narrow balcony -of stone which skirted the front of the square tower he had quitted. The -outlook seemed to be to the northeast, for a patch of sunshine lay upon -the outer edge of the balcony at the right. Breathing in delightedly the -fresh Maymorning air, he gazed upon the bold prospect of hills receding -in lifted terraces high against the remote sky-line. He had not seen -just this view from Caermere before--and he said to himself that it was -finer than all the others. Above each lateral stretch of purplish-gray -granite, to the farthest distance, there ran a band of cool green -foliage--the inexpressibly tender green of young birch trees; their -thin, chalk-white stems were revealed in delicate tracery against -indefinable sylvan shadows. - -Through the early stillness, he could hear the faint murmur of the -Devon, gurgling in the depths of the ravine between him and the nearest -hill. “To-morrow,” he thought, “will begin the true life! All this will -be my home--mine! mine! and before anybody is up in the morning I will -be down where that river of black water runs, and fish in the deep pools -for trout.” - -Some one touched his elbow. He turned with a quick nod and smile to -greet Dicky Westland. “I am up ages before you, you see,” he said -genially. “It was barely daylight when I woke--and I suffered tortures -trying to remain in bed even till six. Oh, this is wonderful out here!” - -“Awfully jolly place, all round,” commented Dicky. He blinked to -exorcise the spirit of sleep and gazed at the prospect with determined -enthusiasm. “I haven’t looked about much, but I’ve found out one thing -already. There’s a ghost in my room--and I think he must have been a -professional pedestrian in life.” - -“Splendid!” cried Christian, gaily. “Have you had coffee--or it is tea -you people drink, isn’t it? Then shall we get to work? I want the papers -out of the way before Emanuel comes. They will all be here between nine -and ten. I wanted to send carriages to Craven Arms, but it seemed there -were not horses enough, so hired traps are to be brought up from the -station.” - -“Do you know who are coming?” - -“Lord Julius, and Emanuel and his wife; the captain and his wife and -brother; Lord Chobham, and Lord Lingfield--I don’t know if any of their -women will come--and Lady Cressage. Then there are some solicitors, -and perhaps some old acquaintances of my grandfather’s. At all events, -Welldon has ordered four carriages and a break. There is to be breakfast -at ten, and I shall be glad when it is all over--when everything is -over. Do you know?--I have never been to a funeral in my life--and I -rather funk it.” - -“Oh, they’re not so bad as you always think they’re going to be,” said -the secretary, consolingly. “The main thing is the gloves. I never could -understand it--but black gloves are invariably about two sizes smaller -than ordinary colors. You want to look out for that. But I dare say your -man is up to the trick--he looks a knowing party, does Falkner.” - -“I fancy I shall give him back to Emanuel,” remarked Christian, -thoughtfully. - -“He is an excellent servant, but he reminds me too much of Duke Street. -Did you notice the old butler yesterday afternoon?--he stood at the head -of the steps to meet us--that is old Barlow. I have a great affection -for him. I shall have him valet me, I think.” - -“Isn’t he rather venerable for the job?” suggested the other. “And -wouldn’t it be rather a come-down for a head butler? They’re awfully -keen about their distinctions among themselves, you know.” - -Christian smiled with placidity. “I think that the man whom I pick out -to be nearest me will feel that he has the best place in the household. -I shall be very much surprised indeed if that isn’t Barlow’s view. And -of course he will have his subordinates. But now let us take Welldon’s -statement for the last half of ’95, and the two halves of ’96. -Then we can get to the mine. Unless I am greatly mistaken, that is most -important. I find that the mining company’s lease falls in early next -year. And won’t you ring the bell and have Welldon sent up when he -comes?” - -***** - -Upon mature reflection Christian decided not to descend to meet his -guests at breakfast. When he had dismissed the estate agent, Welldon, -after a prolonged and very comprehensive interview, he announced this -decision to Westland. “You must go down and receive them in my place,” - he said. - -“I will say that you have a cold,” suggested Dicky. - -“By no means,” returned Christian, promptly. - -“It is not necessary to enter into details. You receive them--that is -all. I have spoken with Barlow; he knows what to do with them in the -matter of rooms and so on. I am breakfasting here. And afterward--say at -eleven o’clock--I will see some of them here. There is an hour to spare -then, before we go to the church. I am not clear about this--which ones -to see first. There is that stupid reading of the will after we get -back----” - -“By George! do they do that still?” interrupted Dicky. “I know they did -in Trollope and George Eliot--but I thought it had gone out.” - -“It is kept up in old families,” replied Christian, simply. “In this -case it is a pure formality, of course. There is no mystery whatever. -The will was made in 1859, after the entail was broken, and merely -bequeaths everything in general terms to the heir-at-law. My grandfather -covenanted, at the same time, to Lord Julius to make no subsequent will -save by his advice and consent--so that there can be no complications -of any kind. I am thinking whether it would be better to see Lord Julius -and Emanuel before the reading of this will or after. Really it makes no -difference--perhaps it is better to get it over with. Yes--say to them -that I beg they will come to me here at eleven. You might bring them up -and then leave us together--or no, they know the way. Let them come up -by themselves.” - -Through the open window there came the grinding sound of wheels upon -the gravel of the drive, around at the east front. At a gesture from the -other, Dicky hurried away. - -Left to himself, Christian wandered again to the casement, and regarded -the spacious view with renewed interest. Falkner entered presently, -bearing a large tray, and spread some covered dishes upon a cloth on the -library table. - -“How many carriages have come?” the master asked from his place at the -window. - -“Four, Your Grace--and a break with some wreaths and Lord Chobham’s man -and a maid--I think it is Lady Cressage’s maid.” - -“Who has come--outside the family?” - -“Three gentlemen, Your Grace--one of them is Mr. Soman. Barlow thinks -they are all solicitors.” - -Christian mused briefly upon the presence of Lord Julius’s man of -business. Since that first evening of his on English soil, at Brighton, -he had not seen this Mr. Soman. He remembered nothing of him, indeed, -save his green eyes. And now that he thought of it, even this was not a -personal recollection. It was the remark of the girl on the boat, about -his having green eyes, which stuck in his memory. He smiled, as he -looked idly out on the hills. - -The girl on the boat! Was it not strange that his mind should have -applied to her this distant and chilling designation? Only a few days -ago--it would not be a week till to-morrow--she had seemed to him the -most important person in the world. A vision of his future had possessed -him, in which she alone had a definite share. How remote it seemed--and -how curious! - -He recalled, quite impersonally, what he had heard in one way or another -about her family. Her father was some sort of underling in the general -post office--a clerk or accountant, or something of the kind. There was -a son--of course, that would be the brother Cora had spoken of--and -the ambition of the family had expended itself in sending this boy to -a public school, and to the university. The family had made great -sacrifices to do this--and apparently these had been wasted. He had the -distinct impression of having been told that the son was a worthless -fellow. How often that occurred in England--that everything was done -for the son, and nothing at all for the daughters! Then in fairness he -reflected that it was even worse in France. Yes, but somehow Frenchwomen -had a talent for doing for themselves. They were cleverer than their -brothers--more helpful, resourceful--in spite of the fact that the -brothers had monopolized the advantages. Images of capable, managing -Frenchwomen he had known rose before his mind’s eye; he saw them again -accomplishing wonders of work, diligent, wise, sensible, understanding -everything that was said or done. Yet, oddly enough, these very paragons -of feminine capacity had a fatal unfeminine defect; they did not know -how to bring up their sons. Upon that side they were incredibly weak and -silly; it was impossible to prevent their making pampered fools of their -boys. - -Suddenly his vagrant fancies were concentrated upon the question of how -Frances Bailey would bring up a boy--a son of her own. It was an absurd -query to have raised itself in his mind--and he put it away from him -with promptitude. There remained, however, a kind of mental protest -lodged on her behalf among his thoughts. He perceived that in his -ruminations he had done her an injustice. She was not inferior in -capability or courage to any of the self-sufficient Frenchwomen he had -been thinking of, and in the matter of intellectual attainments was -she not immeasurably superior to them all? The translucent calm of her -mind--penetrating, far-reaching, equable as the starlight--how queer -that it should be coupled with such a bad temper! She always quarreled -with him, and bullied him, when they were together. Even when she was -exhibiting to him the sunniest aspects of her mood, there was always a -latent defiance of him underneath, ready to spring forth at a word. He -remembered how, at the close of their first meeting, she had refused to -tell him her name. He saw now that this obstinacy of hers had annoyed -him more than he had imagined. For an instant it assumed almost the -character of a grievance--but then his attention fastened itself at -random upon the remarkable fact that he had seen her only twice in his -life. Upon reflection, this did seem very strange indeed. But it was the -fact--and in the process of readjusting his impressions of the past six -months to fit with it, the figure of her receded in his mind, grew less -as she moved away under a canopy of dull yellowish-green, which vaguely -identified itself with the trees on the Embankment. She dwindled thus -till he thought of her again, with a dim impulse of insistence upon the -phrase, as the girl on the boat. The transition to thoughts of other -things gave his mind no sort of trouble. - -He pondered some of these other things--formlessly and -light-heartedly--while he stood at the library table, and picked morsels -here and there from the dishes laid for him. His absence of appetite he -referred tacitly to the warmth of the day, as it was sunnily developing -itself outside. Here on this shaded side of the castle, it was cool -enough, but there was the languor of spring in the air. He scrutinized -this new library of his afresh. Until Barlow had opened it for him, -shortly after his arrival yesterday, it could not have been used for -years. Most of its appointments had a very ancient look; no doubt they -must date back at least to the seventh Duke’s time. It was incredible -that his grandfather, the eighth Duke, should have been inspired to -furnish a library. There were many shelves of apparently very old books -as well, but there was also a vast deal of later rubbish--stock and -sporting annuals, veterinary treatises, county directories and the -like--which he would lose no time in putting out. He saw already how -delightful a room could be made of it. It had the crowning merit of -being connected with the suite of apartments he had chosen for his own. -From the door at the side, opposite the fine old fireplace, one entered -the antechamber to his dressing-room. This gave to the library an -intimate character, upon which he reflected with pleasure. Here he would -come, secure from interruption, and spend among his books the choicest -and most fruitful hours of his leisure. It was plain to him that -henceforth he would do a great deal of reading, and perhaps--why -not?--of writing too. - -There was a rap upon the door, and then Falkner, opening it, announced -Lord Julius and his son. They came in together, diffusing an impalpable -effect of constraint. The elder man seemed in Christian’s eyes bigger -than ever; his white beard spread over the broad chest like a vine run -wild. Emanuel, who lapsed in the wake of his father, was unexpectedly -small by comparison. The shadows, where the two stood, emphasized the -angular peculiarities of his bald head. His thin face took an effect of -sallow pallor from his black clothes. Already he had his black gloves in -his hands. - -Christian stepped forward to meet them--and was suddenly conscious of -the necessity for an apology. “I did not come down,” he murmured, as he -shook hands with a grave smile--“I am not quite master of myself yet. It -is still strange to me. But come to the window, and let us sit down.” - -They followed him, and took the chairs he pushed out for them. He -perched himself on the corner of the big table, and lightly stroked the -glazed boot of the foot which was not on the floor. “I am glad to hear -that Kathleen has come,” he said to his cousin. “I hope she is very -well.” - -“Extremely so,” replied Emanuel. Then, upon reflection, he added, “We -had hoped that you would come to us, on your way down from London.” - -“There was so much to do in town,” explained Christian, hazily. “My -grandfather’s lawyers came up at once from Shrewsbury, and it was -necessary to see a good deal of them--and then there were the tailors -and outfitters. It was all I could do to get away yesterday morning. And -of course--by that time I was needed here.” He turned to the other. “And -you are very well, Uncle Julius?” - -“I am well,” said the elder man, with what Christian suspected for the -instant to be significant brevity. The father and son had exchanged a -look, as well, which seemed to have a meaning beyond his comprehension. -But then he forgot these momentary doubts in the interest of the -discovery that there were tears in his great-uncle’s eyes. - -Lord Julius unaffectedly got out a handkerchief, and wiped them away. -He looked up at the young man as through a mist. “I never dreamed that -I should feel it so much,” he said, huskily. “I am amazed at myself--and -then ashamed at my amazement--but Kit’s death has somehow put me about -and upset me to a tremendous extent. There was thirteen years between -us--but when you get to be an old man, that seems no more than as many -weeks. And Emanuel”--he addressed his son with the solemnity befitting a -revelation--“I am an old man.” - -Emanuel frowned a little in his abstracted fashion. “You are less old -than any other man of your years in England,” he protested. - -Christian, listening, somehow found no conviction in these reassuring -words. It dawned upon him suddenly that Lord Julius had in truth aged a -great deal. The perception of this disarranged the speech he had in his -mind. - -“There are a thousand things to be talked over,” he began, with an eye -upon Emanuel, “but I do not know if this is quite the opportune time. I -wished to lose no time in seeing you both, of course--but you will not -be hurrying away. No doubt there will be a better opportunity.” - -“I don’t think it will be found that there is so very much to say,” - remarked Emanuel. A gentle but persistent melancholy seemed to pervade -his tone. - -“There is the complication”--Christian began again, and hesitated. “That -is to say--you know even better and more fully than I do, to what a -great extent I am in your hands. And there the complication, as I said, -arises. I have been working very hard on the figures--with the lawyers -in London, and here since I arrived--but before we touch those at all, -I ought to tell you frankly, Emanuel: I do not see my way to meeting the -conditions which you suggested to me last autumn, when we met first.” - Emanuel seemed in no wise perturbed by the announcement. His nervous -face maintained its unmoved gravity. “It was never anything more than a -pious hope that you would,” he commented. “I may add,” he went on, -“that even this hope cannot be said to have survived your first visit. -Otherwise, I should have tried to have you see London under different -auspices--through different eyes.” - -The calmness with which the decision he had regarded as so momentous -met acceptance disconcerted Christian. He had mentally prepared for -the defense of his hostile attitude toward the System--and, lo! not a -syllable of challenge was forthcoming. - -“But there remains, all the same, the principal difficulty,” he said, -thinking hard upon his words. “It does not lessen my obligations to -you as my chief creditors.” He looked from one to the other, as if in -uncertainty as to which was the master mind. “You have both been very -open with me. You have told me why it was that you devoted a large -fortune to buying up the mortgages on the estate which is now mine--and -to lending always more money upon it--until now the interest eats up -the income like a visitation of locusts. But my knowledge of the motives -does not help me. And you must not think, either,” his confidence was -returning now, and with it a better control over his phrases--“that I -am begging for help. I look the situation in the face, and I do not feel -that I am afraid of it. I see already many ways in which I can make a -better fight of it than my grandfather made.” - -Lord Julius held up a hand. “Is there not a misconception there?” - he asked, pleasantly enough. “A fight involves antagonists--and I -intervened in poor Kit’s affairs as a protector, not as an assailant.” - -Christian stood erect, and knitted his brows in puzzled thought upon -both the manner and the matter of these words. - -“But it is still the same,” he persisted. “You were his good friend--as -I know you are mine--or hope very sincerely that you are--but none the -less you were his overwhelmingly big creditor, as now you are mine. If -one is greatly in debt, then one struggles to get out. It is in that -sense that I meant the word ‘fight.’ And, to repeat, I see many ways of -making progress. I find that Welldon is not exclusively my man. He is -the agent of three other estates as well, because we could not pay him -enough here for all of his services. That I will alter at once. I find -that we have no mineral bailiff. The company at Coalbrook has paid such -royalties as it pleased, without check of any sort. We have the right -to examine their books, but it has never been exercised. Next week my -secretary and Welldon go to Coalbrook. I find that the company’s lease -of twenty-one years expires next February. Eh bien! It will be strange -if I do not get ten thousand pounds hereafter, where less than four has -come in hitherto. My lawyers already know of capitalists who desire to -bid for the new lease--and the estimate of increase is theirs, not mine. -But these are details. I mention them to you only to show you that I am -not afraid. But anxious, I do not deny that I am. I have not been bred -to these things--and I may easily make mistakes. It would take a great -load off my mind if--if, in some measure, you would be my advisers as -well as my creditors.” - -“Why should you ever have doubted that?” asked Emanuel, in a tone of -somber kindliness. - -“Ah, but I do not mean advice about the management of the estate,” put -in Christian, with an over-eager instinct of self-defense. “I do not -shrink from taking that completely on my own shoulders. I would not -trouble you with anything of that sort. But of larger matters----” - -“There is one large matter,” interrupted Lord Julius, speaking with -great deliberation, “which I find outweighing all others in my mind. It -is not new to my mind--but to-day it pushes everything else aside. It -is the thought of the family itself. I have told you this before--let -me say it to you again. Everything that I have done--every penny that I -have laid out--has been with this one end in view--the family. Yet this -morning I have been thinking of it--and I am frightened. While poor old -Kit lingered along, it was not so easy to grasp it, somehow--but his -going off makes it glaring. There are too few of us. I am alone in my -generation--and so is Emanuel in his--and so are you in yours, save for -those rowdy simpletons Eddy and Gus. And beyond you, there is only that -little girl baby of Cora Bayard’s! I want you to marry, Christian. I -want to see sons of yours growing up here at Caermere--hearty, fine boys -to carry the name of Torr along. That I am really in earnest about. By -comparison with it, nothing else on earth matters--for us.” - -“Oh, I shall marry,” Christian replied, in smiling seriousness. “Of -course, that is the obvious thing to be done. And now”--he looked at his -watch--“it is time for me to dress. It is arranged that you and Emanuel -and Kathleen drive to the church in the carriage with me. It is not -quite orthodox precedence, I know, but I could not bear to--to have it -otherwise. And we will think no more about those other matters until -tomorrow.” - -“Other matters,” repeated Lord Julius, and exchanged a look with his son -as they rose. “My dear Christian, there are no other matters.” - -“No--not till to-morrow,” answered Christian, with a doubtful smile. -“But then I am afraid there are a good many.” - -Emanuel filled in the pause. “Mr. Soman has brought all the papers,” he -said, with a flitting return to his lighter manner. “It is my father’s -meaning that the mortgages are extinguished.” - -Christian gazed from one to the other with a face full of stupefaction. -His knees shook and sought to bend under him. Tremblingly he essayed to -speak--and his lips would make no sound. - -Lord Julius laid his big hand on the young man’s shoulder--and -Christian, dimly recalling the effect of this touch in the days when -he had first known it, thrilled at the novel restfulness it somehow now -conferred. - -“Only show me a son of yours,” said the old man, with tender gravity. -“Let me see an heir before I die.” - -Without further words, the two left him. Christian, staring at the -shadowed door through which they had vanished, remained standing. His -confused brain quailed in the presence of thoughts more stupendous than -the ancient hills outside. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - -Several thousand people caught that day their first curious glimpse of -the new master of Caermere. At the most there were but a handful of aged -persons, in the throng clustered along the sides of the road winding -down from the Castle to the partially restored medieval collegiate -church in the valley, who could remember any other duke than the one -being borne now to lie among his fathers. The fact that these venerable -folk, without exception, were in the enjoyment of a day’s holiday from -the workhouse, might have interested a philosopher, had it been pressed -upon his attention. - -Quite two hundred horsemen, mounted in their own saddles on their own -beasts, rode in the long procession which descended from Caermere toward -the close of the noon hour. Clad in decent black for the greater part, -with old silk hats or other formal and somber headgear, they jogged -sedately in unison as the curbed horses stepped with caution down the -hill. Their browned and large-featured faces wore a uniform mask of -solemnity--distinguished chiefly by a resolute contraction of brows and -lips, and eyes triumphantly cleared of all traces of speculation. They -looked down, as they passed, upon the humbler dalesmen and laborers -of the hillsides, and their womenfolk and swarming children, with an -impassive, opacated gaze. - -On the green, before the little covered gateway to the churchyard, dull -murmurs spread through this cortege, propelled sidelong from mouths -which scorned to open; the main principles of a proposed evolution came -slowly, in some mysterious way, to be comprehended among them: after -almost less backing and pushing into one another than might have -been expected, they perceived themselves emerging into an orderly -arrangement, by which they lined the two sides of the carriage-way -crossing the green. They regarded each other across this significant -strip of gravel with a gloomy stolidity of pride: the West Salop -Yeomanry could scarcely have done it better. Then another rustle of -whispered sounds along their ranks toward the church--and the civic side -of their demonstration came uppermost. With a tightened left hand upon -the reins, they removed their hats, and held them so that they could -most readily read the names of the makers inside. - -The carriages bearing the family of Torr, preceded by the curtained -hearse, and followed by a considerable number of broughams and closed -landaus recognizable as the property of the neighboring gentry, moved -silently forward along this lane of uncovered horsemen. The distant -swelling moan of the organ floated on the May air, in effect a comment -upon the fact that the tolling of the bell in the tower had ceased. - -The intermittent noise of carriage-doors being sharply shut, and of -wheels getting out of the way, proceeded from the head of the procession -at the gate--and tenants and other undistinguished people on foot began -to press forward between the ranks. The horsemen, with furtive glances -to right and left, put on their hats again, and let the restive animals -stretch their muscles in the path. A few, dismounting, and giving their -bridles over to boys, joined those who were moving toward the church. -The majority, drawing their horses aside into groups formed at random, -and incessantly shifting, lent their intellects, and in some restrained -measure their tongues, to communion upon the one great problem of the -day:--would the new Duke set the Hunt on its legs again? - -The question was so intimately connected with their tenderest emotions -and convictions, that no one liked to speak of it thoughtlessly or upon -hasty impulse. Even those who doubted most, shrank from hearing the -prophecies of evil they felt prone to utter. Men who nourished almost -buoyant hopes still hesitated to create a confidence which must be so -precarious. While the faint sustained recitative of the priest in the -church could be heard, insistent and disturbing like the monotone of -a distant insect, and then the sounds of the organ once more, and of -singing, fell upon the sunlit green, the horsemen spoke cautiously about -the hounds. Even before Lord Porlock’s death, things had not been what -they should have been. The pack was even then, as one might say, falling -between two stools. The Torrs hadn’t the money to keep the thing up -properly themselves, but they showed their teeth savagely the minute -mention was made of getting in some outside help. But since Porlock’s -death--well, the condition of affairs had been too painful for words. -The horsemen shook their heads in dumb eloquence upon this tragic -interval. The Kennels had lapsed into a state hardly to be thought of, -much less discussed. There had been no puppy-walk. Were there any young -dogs at all? And, just heavens! if there were, what must they be like! - -And yet the country-side, outraged as it felt itself to be in its finest -feelings, beheld itself helpless. The old Duke--but really this was not -just the time and place for saying what they felt about the old Duke -They glanced uneasily toward the church when this theme suggested -itself, and nodded with meaning to one another. It could be taken for -granted that there were no illusions among them concerning _him_. But -what about the new man? Eyes brightened, lips quivered in beseeching -inquiry, at the mention of this omnipotent stranger. What was he like? -Had anybody heard anything that Welldon had said about him? It seemed -that he was French bred, and that, considered by itself, might easily -involve the worst. But then, was there not a story that he had ridden -to the hounds in Derbyshire? Perhaps the younger generation of Frenchmen -were better fellows than their fathers--but then, there was the reported -fact that the Duke of Orleans fell off his horse and broke his leg -whenever he tried to ride. Sir George had been informed in Paris that he -would have been King of France by this time if he had been able to -stick in a saddle. Yet, when one thought of it, did not this very -fact indicate a fine new public sentiment in France, on the subject of -horsemanship--and perhaps even of sport in general? - -Christian, at the door of the church, had thought most of clenching -his teeth, and straining his upper-arms against his sides, to keep from -trembling. He had not pictured himself, beforehand, as entering this -burial place of his ancestors alone. Yet, in the churchyard, that was -how the matter arranged itself. His first idea had been to lead, -with Kathleen on his arm--but she had said her place was with Emanuel -instead. Then the alternative of walking arm-in-arm with Lord Julius -had seemed to him even more appropriate--but this too, in the -confused constraint of the moment, had gone wrong. Stealing an anxious -half-glance over his shoulder, he discovered that Lord Julius had -placed himself at Kathleen’s other side. The slight gesture of appealing -invitation which he ventured upon did not catch the old man’s eye. There -was nothing for it but to stand alone. - -To be the strange, unsupported central figure in such a pageant unnerved -him. He stood tremulously behind the pall--a burden draped with a -great purple embroidered cloth, and borne upon the shoulders of eight -peasant-laborers from the estate--and noted fleetingly that, so stunted -and mean of stature were these poor hinds, he looked with ease above -them, over their load, into the faces of the two priests advancing down -the walk toward him. - -These persons, an elderly, dark man, with a red hood folded upon his -shoulders, and a thin-faced fair young man, seemed to return the gaze -with meaning. He caught himself feeling that their eyes deferred to -him; yes, if they had bowed to the ground, the effect of their abasement -before him could not have been more palpable. Looking perfunctorily -across the chasm of death, their glances sought to, make interest with -the living. He hated them both on the instant. As they wheeled, and by -their measured steps forward drew slowly in their wake the bearers -of the pall, the chant of the elder--“I am the Resurrection and the -Life”--came vaguely to his ears, and found them hostile. - -The interior of the old church--dim, cool, cloistral--was larger than -Christian had assumed from its outer aspect. Many people were present, -crowded close in the pews nearest the door--and strangely enough, it was -his perception that these were chiefly women, of some unlabeled -class which at least was not his own, that brought to him of a sudden -self-command. He followed the bier up the aisle to its resting-place -before the rail, took tacit cognizance of the place indicated to him by -some man in professional black, and stood aside to let Kathleen pass in -before him, all with a restored equanimity in which he was himself much -interested. Through the reading of the Psalm and the Epistle he gave but -the most vagrant attention to their words. The priests read badly, for -one thing; the whining artificiality of their elocution annoyed -and repelled him. But still more, his thoughts were diverted by the -suggestiveness of everything about him. - -Especially, the size of the funeral gathering, and of the mounted and -wheeled procession, had impressed him. There need be no pretense that -affection or esteem for the dead man had brought out, from the sparsely -populated country round about, this great multitude. Precisely for that -reason, it became a majestic fact. The burial of a Duke of Glastonbury -had nothing to do with, personal qualities or reputation. It was -like the passing away of a monarch. People who cared nothing for the -individual were stirred and appealed to by the vicissitudes of an -institution. Inset upon the walls around him were marble tablets, and -more archaic canopies of stone over little carved effigies of kneeling -figures; beyond, at the sides of the chancel, he could see the dark, -rectangular elevations of the tombs, capped by recumbent mail-clad -statues, with here and there a gleam of gilt or scarlet retained from -their ancient ornamentation; even as he had walked slowly up the aisle, -his downcast eyes had noticed the chiseled heraldry of stones beneath -his feet. Everywhere about him was the historic impact of the Torrs. -Their ashes were here--their banners and shields and tilting-helmets, -their symbolical quarterings of the best arms of the West, their -own proudest device of all. Their white bull on the green ground was -familiar in England long before the broom-corn of the Angevins had been -thought of. The clerkly pun on Tor and Taurus was as like as not older -than the English language itself. All this made something mightier, -more imposing and enduring, than any edifice to be reared by man alone. -It was only in part human, this structure of the family. The everlasting -hills were a part of it, the dark ranges of forests, the spirits and -legends of the ancient Marches. - -“_In the morning it is green, and groweth up; but in the evening it is -cut down, dried up and withered,_” droned the young clergyman. - -But if man seemed to count for but little in this tremendous, forceful -aggregation of tradition and custom, yet again he might be all in all. -The tall old man under the purple pall, there--it was easy to think -contemptuously of him. Christian recalled, in a kind of affrighted -musing, that one view of his grandfather that he had had. The disgust -with which he had heard the stupid, violent words from those aged lips -revived within him--then changed to wonder. Was it not, after all, the -principle of strength which most affected men’s minds? There had been -discernible in that grandfather of his a certain sort of strength--dull, -unintelligent, sinister, half-barbarous, but still strength. Was it not -that which had brought forth the two hundred horsemen? And if this -one element, of strength--yes, you might call it brute strength--were -lacking, then would all the other fine qualities in the world avail to -hold the impalpable, intangible combination together? - -“‘_He shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and power_.’” It -was the old parson who was reading now. - -“‘_For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet_.’” - -Yes, even in this Protestant religion to which he had passively become -committed, force was the real ideal! Christian’s wandering mind fastened -itself for a moment upon the ensuing words of the lesson, but got -nothing from their confusing reiterations. He lapsed into reverie again, -then started abruptly with the sudden perception that everybody in the -church behind him must be looking at him. In the pew immediately behind, -there would be Captain Edward and his wife, and Augustine; in the one -behind that Lady Cressage, Lord Chobham and his son; beyond them scores -and scores of others seated in rows, and then a throng in the aisle and -the doorway--all purporting to think of the dead, but fixing their eyes -none the less on the living. And it was not alone in the church, but -through the neighborhood, for miles round about: when men spoke of the -old Duke who was gone, their minds would in truth be dwelling upon -the new Duke who was come. A thrill ran through his veins as the words -spelled themselves out before his inner vision. The new Duke! He seemed -never to have comprehended what it meant before. - -No; and till this moment no genuine realization had come to him of this -added meaning--this towering superstructure which the message of Julius -and Emanuel had reared. It was only now that he hit upon the proper -mental focus with which to contemplate this amazing thing. Not only was -he a territorial ruler, one of the great nobles of Europe, but he was -the master of wealth almost beyond counting as well! - -Those nearest to him were rising now, and he, obeying imperative -impulses within him, lifted himself proudly to his feet. While the air -throbbed with deep-voiced organ notes, in the pause which here -ensued, his gaze rested upon the pall before him. There was a sense -of transfiguration in the spectacle. The purple mantle became imperial -Tyrian to his eyes--and something which was almost tenderness, almost -reverence, yearned within him toward that silent, incased figure hidden -beneath it. The mystic, omnipotent tie of blood gripped his heart. - -With a collected sidelong look he surveyed the profiles of Emanuel and -Lord Julius to his left. Theirs were the lineaments of princes. As if -he had eyes in the back of his head, he beheld Edward and Augustine, -as fancy revealed them standing in the pew behind him. Tall, slim, -athletic, fair--the figures his imagination made of them appealed to the -new patriarchal spirit in his heart. Perhaps they were not wholly nice, -these young men, but they also were princes, and they were of his race, -and no one should persecute them, or despitefully use them. - -The uncouth little bearers of the dead had come forward again, and taken -up their burden. In a small lady-chapel, extending from the transept -at the left, the interment was to take place, and thither Christian now -followed the pall, leading the menfolk of his family and the male guests -of position who attached themselves to the group. Thus some score of -black-clad figures clustered round the oblong opening in the old stone -floor, and Christian, standing at its head, glanced impassively over the -undefined throng of spectators gathered at the doorway. - -“‘_Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full -of misery_,’” proclaimed the younger priest, with a sudden outburst -of high-pitched, nasal tones which pierced the unexpectant ear. “‘_He -cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, -and never continueth in one stay._’” - -Christian, watching abstractedly the impersonal wedge of faces at the -door, all at once caught his breath in a sharp spasm of bewildered -amazement. The little book he had been holding fell from his hands, -balanced on its edge for an instant and toppled over into the dark vault -below. He seemed unconscious of the incident--but stared fixedly, with -parted lips and astonished eyes, at the image of something he had seen -outside of the chapel. The thing itself had apparently vanished. He -perceived vaguely that people were looking at him--and with a determined -effort regained control of his face and bearing. The puzzling thought -that it might have been an illusion--that perhaps he had seen nothing at -all--brought mingled confusion and solace to his mind. He put his hand -to the open book which Lord Julius at his side held toward him, and -pretended to look at it. - -The coffin, now bereft of its purple covering, had been lowered to its -final place. One of the bearers, standing over the cavity, crumbled -dry earth from his tanned and clumsy fingers, and it fell with a faint -rattle upon some resonant, unseen surface. - -The phrase, “‘_Our dear brother, here departed_,’” stuck out with -awkward obtrusiveness from among the words of the priest. “‘_Earth to -earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust_.’” the sing-song went on. Then they -were repeating the Lord’s Prayer together in a buzzing, fitful murmur. -There were other prayers--and then Christian read in the faces of those -about him that the ceremony was finished. Accepting the suggestion of -Lord Julius’s movement, he also bent over, and looked blankly down into -the obscurity of the vault. But when he lifted his head again, it was to -throw a more searching and strenuous glance than ever over the knot -of people outside the door. And yes!--he had not been deceived. He -distinctly saw the face again, and with lightning swiftness verified its -features. Beyond a shadow of doubt it was Frances Bailey whom he beheld, -mysteriously present in this most unlikely of places. - -He withdrew his eyes and did not look that way again. The question -whether she knew that he had recognized her, occupied his mind to the -exclusion of all else, as he returned at the head of his followers to -the body of the church. It still possessed his thoughts when he had -joined the family group of chief mourners, loosely collecting itself -in the aisle before the front pews, in waiting for the summons to the -carriages. To some one he ought to speak at once, and for the moment his -eye rested speculatively upon Cora. He identified her confidently, not -only by her husband’s proximity, but by the fact that her mourning -veil was much thicker and longer than any of the others. Some unshaped -consideration, however, restrained him, and on a swift second thought he -turned to Kathleen. - -“I want you to look,” he whispered to her, inclining his head--“on the -other side of the church, just in a line between the second pillar and -the white-bearded figure in the window--there is a tall young woman, -with the gray and black hat. Do you see her? In a kind of way she -belongs to us--she is Cora’s sister, but I’m afraid if Cora asked her, -she would not come to the Castle.” - -“Yes--once you talked to me about her,” Kathleen reminded him. - -“Well, will you do this for me?” he continued, in an eager murmur. “Go -to her, and make sure that she promises to come up with the rest. It -would be unforgivable--if we let her go away.” - -He had an uneasy feeling that Mrs. Emanuel’s veil did not prevent her -shrewd glance from reading him through and through--but he did not seek -to dissemble the breath of relief with which he heard her assent. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - -It was not a very easy task,” Kathleen found opportunity to say to -Christian, half an hour later, as the family were assembling in his -library. They stood together by the window nearest the table, and -watched the embarrassed deportment of Lord Lingfield under the -conversational attentions of Cora, as they talked in low tones. - -“But she is here in the Castle: that is the principal thing.” He did not -shrink now from the implication of his words. - -“Yes, she finally consented to come,” explained the other. “I told her -that you insisted upon it--and then--then I used some persuasion of my -own.” - -“I thank you, Kathleen,” he said, simply. “It seems that she is to write -an account of the funeral for some London newspaper. She said frankly, -however, that that of itself did not account for her coming. It will -pay her expenses--so she said--but the paper would not have sent her -specially. And there is no doubt about it--she was really annoyed at -being discovered.” - -The solicitors from Shrewsbury, entering the room now, gave at once -an official air to everything. The elder of them, with oppressive -formality, drew a formidable parchment from a bag held by his junior, -and bowed elaborately to Christian. Then, as if he had received some -mandate to do so from His Grace, he untied the tape, and cleared his -throat. Those who had been seated, rose to their feet. - -The will came to them unaltered from 1859--and contained, wrapped in a -surprising deal of pompous verbiage, a solitary kernel of essential -fact. No legatee was mentioned save an impersonal being called -the heir-at-law. The absolutism of dynastic rule contemplated no -distribution or division of power. This slender, dark-eyed young man, -standing with head inclined and a nervous hand upon the table, had not -come into being until long after that will was made, and for other long -years thereafter his very existence had been unknown to the family at -large. Yet, as the lawyer’s reading ended, there he stood before their -gaze, the unquestioned autocrat. - -“This may be the best time to say it.” Christian straightened himself, -and addressed his family for the first time, with a grave smile, and a -voice which was behaving itself better than he feared it would. “There -are no minor bequests, owing to the circumstances under which the will -was drawn, but I have taken it upon myself to supply such omissions, in -this matter, as shall commend themselves to my consideration. Upon this -subject we may speak among ourselves at our leisure, later on.” With -distinguished self-possession he looked at his watch. “I think luncheon -is at two.” - -There followed here an unrehearsed, and seemingly unpremeditated, -episode. Lord Julius advanced with impressive gravity across the little -open space, and taking the hand which Christian impulsively extended to -him, bent over it in a formal and courtly bow. When Emanuel, following -his father, did the same, it was within the consciousness of all that -they had become committed to a new ceremonial rite. Kathleen, coming -behind her husband, gave her cheek to be kissed by the young chief of -her adopted clan--and this action translated itself into a precedent as -well. - -Edward and Augustine, after the hesitation of an awkward instant, -came forward together, and in their turn, with a flushed stiffness of -deportment, made their salutation to the head of the house. To them, -conjointly, Christian said something in a whisper. He kissed Cora upon -each cheek, with a faint smile in his eyes at her preference for the -foreign method. His remoter cousins, the Earl of Chobham and Lord -Lingfield, passed before him, and he vaguely noted the reservation -expressed in their lifeless palms and frigid half-bow. They seemed to -wish to differentiate themselves from the others--to express to him the -Pickwickian character of their homage. They were not Torrs; they did not -salaam to him as their over-lord. They had a rival dynasty of their own, -and their appearance here involved nothing but the seemly courtesy of -distant relationship. He perceived in a dim way that this was what their -manner was saying to him--but it scarcely diverted his attention. His -glance and his thoughts passed over their heads, to fasten upon the -remaining figure. - -Lady Cressage, unlike the other two women, had retained the bonnet -and heavy veil of mourning. The latter she held drawn aside with -a black-gloved hand as she approached. It flashed suddenly across -Christian’s brain that the year of her mourning for her own dead was not -over--yet in her own house she wore gay laces and light colors. But it -was unkind to remember this--and senseless, too. He strove to revivify, -instead, the great compassionate impulse which formerly she had stirred -within him. A pallid shadow of it was all that he could conjure up--and -in the chill of this shadow he touched her white temple with his lips, -and she moved away. There lingered in his mind a curious, passive -conflict of memories as to whether their eyes had met or not. Then this -yielded place to the impression some detached organ of perception had -formed for him, that in that somber setting of crape her face had looked -too small for the rest of her figure. - -Then, as the whole subject melted from his mind, he turned toward the -two young men who, upon his whispered request, had remained in the -library after the departure of the others. He looked at his watch, and -beckoned them forward with a friendly wave of his hand. - -“Pray come and sit down,” he said, with affability upon the surface of -his tone. “We have a quarter of an hour, and I felt that it could not be -put to better use than in relieving your minds a little--or trying to do -so. Let me begin by saying that I do not think I have met either of -you before. In fact, now that I reflect, I am sure that we have not met -before. I am glad to see you both.” - -The two brothers had drawn near, and settled uneasily into the very -chairs which Lord Julius and Emanuel had occupied some hours before. -Again Christian half seated himself upon the corner of the table, -but this time he swung his leg lightly as he surveyed his guests. It -flattered his prophetic judgment to note that Augustine seemed the first -to apprehend the meaning of his words, but that Edward, upon pondering -them, appeared the more impressed by their magnanimity. Between them, -as they regarded him and each other doubtfully, the family likeness was -more striking than ever. Christian remembered having heard somewhere -that their father, Lord Edward, had been a dark man, as a Torr -should be. Their flaxen hair and dull blue eyes must come from -that unmentionable mother of theirs, who was living in indefinite -obscurity--if she was living at all--upon the blackmail Julius paid -her for not using the family name. The thought somehow put an added -gentleness into his voice. - -“How old are you--Eddy?” he asked, forcing himself into the use of the -diminutive as a necessary part of the patriarchal rôle he had assumed. - -“Nine-and-twenty in October,” answered the Captain, poutingly. It seemed -on the tip of his tongue to add something else, but he did not. - -“There’s two years and a month between us,” remarked Augustine, with -more buoyancy. - -“And you’ve been out of the army for five years,” pursued Christian. “It -seems that you became a Captain very early. Would there be any chance of -your taking it up again, where you left off?” - -Edward shook his head. “It couldn’t be done twice. I got it by a lucky -fluke--a friend of my father’s, you know. But they’re deuced stiff now,” - he answered. “You have to do exams and things. An old johnnie asks you -what bounds Peru on the northeast, and if you can’t remember just at the -minute, why, you get chucked. Out you go, d’ye see?” - -“What is your idea, then? What would you like to do?” - -Captain Edward knitted his scanty, pale brows over this question, and -regarded the prospect through the window in frowning perplexity. “Oh, -almost anything,” he remarked at last, vacuously. - -Christian permitted himself the comment of a smiling sniff. “Think it -over,” he said, and directed his glance at the younger brother. “You’re -in Parliament,” he observed, with a slight difference in tone. “I’m not -sure that I quite understand-What is it that attracts you in a--in a -Parliamentary career?” - -Augustine lifted his pale, scanty brows in surprise. The right kind -of answer did not come readily to him. “Well,” he began with -hesitation--“there was that seat in Cheshire where we still had a good -bit of land--and Julius didn’t object--and I had an idea it would help -me in the City.” He recovered confidence as he went on. “But it is -pretty well played out now, I came in too late. The Kaffir boom spoiled -the whole show. Five years ago an M P. could pick and choose; I knew -fellows who were on twenty boards at a time, and big blocks of stock -were flying about them like--like hailstones. But you can’t do that now. -M. P.s are as cheap as dirt; they won’t have ’em at any price. A -fellow hardly makes his cab-fares in the City nowadays. And even if you -get the very best inside tips, brokers have got so fearfully nasty about -your margins being covered----” - -“Oh, well,” interposed Christian, “it isn’t necessary that we should go -into all that. I do not like to hear about the City. If you get money -for yourself there, you have taken it away from somebody else. I would -rather that people of our name kept away from such things.” - -“If you come to that, everybody’s money is taken from somebody else,” - said Edward, unexpectedly entering the conversation. His brother -checked him with a monitory hand on his arm. “No, you don’t understand,” - Augustine warned him. “I quite see what the Duke means.” - -“If you see what I mean,” returned Christian, quietly, “perhaps you -will follow the rest that I have to say; Do you care very much about -remaining in Parliament?” Augustine’s face reflected an eager mental -effort to get at his august interlocutor’s meaning. “Well--that’s -so hard to say,” he began, anxiously. “There are points about it, of -course--but then--when you look at it in another way, why of course----” - -“My idea is this,” Christian interposed once more. “I hope you won’t -mind my saying it--but there seems to me something rather ridiculous -about your being in the House. Parliament ought not to be treated as a -joke, or a convenience. It is a place for men who will work hard in the -service of the country, and who have the tastes and the information and -the judgment and the patriotic devotion to make their work of value to -their country. I dare say that there are members who do not entirely -measure up to this standard, but after all there _is_ a standard, and -I do not like to be a party to lowering it. England has claims upon us -Torrs; it deserves something better at our hands than that. So I think I -would like you to consider the idea of resigning your seat--or at least, -dropping out at the end of this Parliament. Or no--that would be waiting -too long. You would better think of retiring now.” - -“Do you mean that _I_ am to stand for the seat, instead?” asked Edward, -looking up with awakened interest. - -Christian stared, then sighed smilingly and shook his head. - -“No, that doesn’t seem to have been in my mind,” he replied with -gentleness. He contemplated the elder brother afresh. - -“Have you thought yet what you would like to do?” he asked again, almost -with geniality. - -“How d’ye mean ‘do’?” inquired Edward, with a mutinous note in his -voice. “Is it something about a business? If you ask me straight, I’m -not so fearfully keen about doin’ anything. No fellow wants to do -things, if he can rub along without.” - -Christian found himself repressing a gay chuckle with effort. He had not -dreamed he should like this one of his kinsmen so much. - -“No--no; you shall not do things,” he promised him, with a sparkling -eye. “That would be too bad.” - -Captain Edward turned in his chair, and recrossed his legs. “It’s a -trifle awkward, all this, you know,” he declared, with an impatient -scowl. “It doesn’t suit me to be made game of. You’ve got the whip hand, -and you can give me things or not, as you like, and I’ve got to be civil -and take what you offer, because I can’t help myself--but damn me if I -like to be chaffed into the bargain! I wouldn’t do it to you, d’ye see, -if it was the other way about.” - -Christian’s face lapsed into instant gravity. A fleeting speculation as -to that problematical reversal of positions rose in his mind, but he -put it away. “Ah, you mustn’t think that,” he urged, with serious tones. -“No, Cousin Edward, this is what I want to say to you.” And then, all -unbidden, the things he really wished to say, yet which he had not -thought of before, ranged themselves in his mind. - -“Listen to me,” he went on. “You have been a soldier. You were a soldier -when you were a very young man. Now, you had an uncle who was also -a soldier when he was a mere youth--a very loyal and distinguished -soldier, too. He died a soldier when he was in his fortieth year--far -away from his family, from his wife and son, and much farther away still -from the place and country of his birth. Once, in his youth, he was -mixed up in an unpleasant and even disgraceful affair. How much to blame -he personally was--that I do not know. It was very long ago--and he was -so young a man--really I refuse to consider the question. I could insist -to myself that he was innocent--if I felt that it mattered at all, one -way or the other--and if I did not feel that by doing so, somehow he -would not be then so real a figure to me as he is now. And he is very -real to me; he has been so all my life.” - -He paused, with a momentary break in his voice, to blink the tears -from his eyes. It was not ducal, but he put the back of his hand to his -cheeks, and dried them. - -“I show you how it affects me,” he continued, simply. “No matter what he -did in some stupid hour in London, he was a brave soldier before that, -and after that. He fought for many losing causes; he died fighting for -one which was most hopeless of all. I am proud that I am his son. I am -proud for you, that you are his nephew. And something has occurred to -me that I think you will like to do--for me and for him. When I stood -to-day over our vault--where we are all buried--it cut me to the heart -to remember that one of us lies alone, a great way off--in a strange -land by himself. I propose to you that you go to Spain for me--it is at -Seo de Urgel, in the mountain country of the Catalans--and that you find -his grave, and that you bring him back here to sleep with his people. He -would not return in his lifetime--but I think he would be pleased with -us for bringing him back now.” - -Edward had looked fixedly up at his cousin, then glanced away, then -allowed his blank gaze to return, the while these words were being -spoken. It was impossible to gather from his reddened, immobile face, -now, any notion of their effect upon him. But after a moment’s pause, -he rose to his feet, squared his shoulders and put out his hand to -Christian. - -“Quite right; I’ll go,” he said, abruptly. - -The two men shook hands, with a sense of magnetic communion which -could have amazed no one more than themselves. Then, under a recurring -consciousness of embarrassed constraint, they turned away from each -other, and Edward wandered off awkwardly toward the door. - -“Oh--a moment more,” called Christian, with a step in his cousin’s -direction. Then on second thoughts he added: “Or shall we let that wait? -I will see you again--some time to-day or to-morrow. Yes--leave me now -for a minute with your brother.” - -When the door had closed upon Edward, Christian turned slowly to -Augustine, and, as he leaned once more against the table, regarded him -with a ruminating scrutiny. - -“I am puzzled about you,” he remarked, thoughtfully. - -Augustine returned the gaze with visible perturbation. - -“I think,” pursued Christian, “that it rather annoys me that you don’t -tell me to puzzle and be damned.” - -The other took the words with a grimace, and an unhappy little laugh. -He, too, rose to his feet. “I funked it,” he said with rueful candor. - -“Well, don’t funk things with me,” Christian advised him, with a -testiness of which, upon the instant, he was ashamed. “Look here,” he -continued, less brusquely, “I could take it from your brother that he -did not want to do things. That fits him: he is not the kind of man -to apply himself in that way. But I have the feeling that you are -different. There ought to be performance--capacity--of some sort in you, -if I could only get to know what it is. You are only my age. Isn’t there -something that particularly appeals to you?” - -Augustine balanced himself meditatively upon his heels. “You say you bar -the City”--he remarked with caution. “Would you have any objection to -Johannesburg? It’s not what it was, by any means, but it’s bound to pick -up again. I might do myself very well there--with a proper start.” - -“But you are thinking always of money!” broke in Christian, sharply once -again. “Suppose that there was no question of money--suppose, what shall -I say? that you had twelve hundred a year, secure to you without any -effort of your own--what would you do then?” - -This seemed very simple to Augustine. “I would do whatever you wanted me -to do,” he replied, with fervor. - -Christian shrugged his shoulders, and dismissed him with a gesture. “We -will speak again about it,” he said coldly, and turned away. - -Descending the great staircase a few minutes later, Christian entered -the door which Barlow had been waiting to open for him--and made his -first public appearance as the dispenser of Caermere’s hospitality. - -The guests, after the old mid-day fashion of the place, were already -for the most part gathered in the large dining-hall, and stood or sat in -groups upon the side pierced by the tall windows. These guests did -not dissemble the interest with which they from time to time directed -glances across to the other side, where a long table, laid for luncheon, -put in evidence a grateful profusion of cold joints and made-dishes. - -A pleased rustle of expectancy greeted Christian’s advent, but it seemed -that this did not, for the moment at least, involve food and drink. He -strolled over to the company, and, as he exchanged words here and there, -kept an attentive eye busy in taking stock of its composition. There -were some forty persons present, of whom three-fourths, apparently, were -county people. A few casual presentations forced themselves upon him, -but the names of the new acquaintances established no foothold in his -memory. He smiled and murmured words which he hoped were seasonable--but -all the while he was scanning the assemblage with a purpose of his own. - -At last he came to Kathleen, and was able to have a private word in her -ear. “I do not see her anywhere,” he whispered. - -“I could not prevail upon her to come in to lunch,” she answered; “I -imagine it is partly a question of clothes. But she is being looked -out for. And afterward I will take charge of her again, if you -like--though----” - -The sentence remained unfinished, as she took the arm Christian offered -her, at Barlow’s eloquent approach. - - - - -CHAPTER XXV - -During the progress of the luncheon, Christian found no opportunity for -intimate conversation with Emanuel’s wife. The elderly and ponderously -verbose Lord Chobham sat upon her right; there was the thin-faced, -exigeant wife of some clerical person in gaiters--a rural dean, was it -not?--full of dogmatic commonplaces, on his left. The other people did -not seem to talk so much. The scene down the table--with so much black -cloth offset garishly against the white linen in the daylight--presented -an effect of funereal sobriety, curiously combined with a spontaneous -reaction of the natural man against this effect. The guests ate -steadily, and with energy; Christian noted with interest how freely they -also drank. For himself, he could not achieve an appetite, but thirst -was in the air. He lifted his glass bravely to Lord Julius, whose -massive bulk and beard confronted him at the other end of the table--and -then to others whose glance from time to time caught his. - -Once he found the chance to murmur to Kathleen: “When this is over, I -hope you will manage it so that I may speak with you.” - -She nodded slow assent, without looking at him. He, observing her -profile, realized all at once that something was amiss with her. It came -back to him now that a certain intensity of sadness had dwelt in the -first glance they had exchanged that morning, upon meeting. At the time -he had referred it to the general aspect of woe which people put on at -funerals. He saw now that it was a grief personal to herself. And now -that he thought of it, too, there had been much the same stricken look -upon Emanuel’s face. It was incredible that they should be thus devoured -by grief at the fact of his grandfather’s death. No one had liked that -old man overmuch--but surely they least of all. The emotion of Lord -Julius was more intelligible--and yet even this had a quality of -broken dejection in it which seemed independent of Caermere’s cause for -mourning. - -The disquieting conviction that these dearly beloved cousins of -his--these ineffably tender and generous friends of his--were writhing -under some trouble unknown to him, took more definite shape in his mind -with each new glance that he stole at her. - -Once the thought sprang up that they might be unhappy because such a -huge sum of money had been given to him, but on the instant he hated -himself for being capable of formulating such a monstrous idea. The -wondering solicitude which all this raised within him possessed his -thoughts for the rest of the meal. He was consumed with impatience to -get away so that he might question Kathleen about it. - -Yet when at last he found himself beside her, standing before an old -portrait in one of the chain of big rooms through which the liberated -company had dispersed itself, this was just the question for which it -seemed that no occasion would offer. - -She began speaking to him at once. “The young lady--Miss Bailey, I -should say--has gone for a walk--so Falkner learns from some of the -women. They have the impression that she is coming back--but I don’t -know that I feel quite so sure about it.” Christian’s face visibly -lengthened. “It’s very awkward,” he said, with vague annoyance. “They do -not arrange things in a very talented fashion, these people of mine.” - -“But what could they arrange?” she argued. An indefinable listlessness -in her tone struck him. “It is a free country, you know, and this is the -nineteenth century. They cannot bodily capture a young woman and keep -her in the Castle against her will. As I told you, I had difficulty in -persuading her to come at all.” - -“Ah, what did you say to her?” he asked, eagerly. - -“I can hardly tell you. She is not an ordinary person--and I know only -that I tried not to say ordinary things to her. But what it was that I -did say----” She broke off with an uncertain gesture, and a sigh. - -“Ah, you saw that she was not ordinary!” said Christian, admiringly. “I -should love dearly to hear what you really think of her--the impression -that she makes upon you.” Kathleen roused herself and turned to him. “Do -you truly mean it, Christian?” she asked him, gravely. - -“Do you blame me?” he rejoined, with uneasy indirection. - -She pressed her lips together, and stared up at the picture with a -troubled face. “I know so little of her,” she protested. “You put too -big a responsibility upon me. It is more than I am equal to.” - -With a sudden gust of self-reproach, he perceived afresh the marks of -suffering in her countenance, and recalled his anxiety. “Take my arm,” - he said, softly, “and let us go on into the next room. There is a -terrace there, I think. Forgive me for troubling you,” he added, as they -moved forward. “I ought to have seen that you are not well--that you -have something on your mind.” - -She did not answer him immediately. “It is Emanuel who is not well.” she -said, after a pause. - -Christian uttered a formless little exclamation of grieved astonishment. -“Oh, it is nothing serious?” he whispered imploringly. - -She shook her head in a doubtful way. “No, I think not--that is, not -irrevocably. But he has worked too hard. He has broken down under the -strain. We are going away for a long journey--to rest, and forget about -the System.” - -He bent his head to look into her eyes--trusting his glance to say the -things which his lips shrank from uttering. A window stood open, and -they passed out upon a broad stone terrace, shaded and pleasant under a -fresh breeze full of forest odors. - -“Oh--the System”--he ventured to say, as they stood alone here, and she -lifted her head to breathe in the revivifying air--“I felt always that -it was too much for one man. The load was too great. It would crush the -most powerful man on earth.” - -She nodded reflective assent. “Oh, yes--I’m afraid I hated it,” she -confessed to him, in a murmur full of contrition. - -“But he is going away now,” urged Christian, hopefully. “You will -have him to yourself--free from care, seeing strange and beautiful new -places--as long as you like. Ah, then soon enough that gaiety of yours -will return to you. Why, it is such a shock to me to think of you as -sad, depressed--you who are by nature so full of joy and high spirits. -Ah, but be sure they will all return to you! I make no doubt whatever of -that. And Emanuel, too--he will get rested and strong, and be happy as -he never was before--the dear fellow!” - -She smiled at him in wan, affectionate fashion. “All the courage has -gone out of me,” she said. “Will it be coming back again? God knows!” - -“But surely----” Christian began, with hearty confidence. - -She interrupted him. “What I am fearful of--it is not so much his -health, strictly speaking--but the terrible unsettling blow that all -this means to him. It is like the death of a beautiful only child to the -fondest of fathers. It tears his heart to pieces. He loved his work so -devotedly--it was so wholly a part of his life--and to have to give it -up! He says he is reconciled. Poor man, he tried with all his strength to -make himself believe that he is. I catch him forcing a smile on his face -when he sees me looking at him--and that is the hardest of all for me -to bear. But I don’t know”--she drew a long breath, and gazed with a -wistful brightening in her eyes at the placid hills and sky--“it -may work itself out for the best. As you say--when we get away alone -together, ah, that is where love like ours will surely tell. I do wrong -to harbor any doubts at all. When two people love each other as we -do--ah, Christian, boy, there’s nothing else in all the world to equal -that!” - -He inclined his head gravely, to mark his reverential sympathy with her -mood. - -“Ah, but you know nothing of it at all,” she went on. “You’re just a -lad--and love is no more to be understood by instinct than any other -great wisdom. Millions of people pass through life talking about -love--and they would stare with surprise if you told them they never had -had so much as a glimmer of the meaning of it. They use the name of -love in all the matings of young couples--and there’s hardly once in a -thousand times that it isn’t blasphemy to mention it. Do you know what -most marriages are? Life-sentences! If you have means and intelligence, -you make your prison tolerable; you can get used to it, and even grow -dependent upon it--but it is a prison still. The best-behaved convict -eyes his warder with a cruel thought somewhere at the back of his mind. -Do you remember--when you left us the first time, I begged you to be in -no haste to marry?” - -He bowed again. “Oh, yes, I remember it all,” he said, soberly. - -“I have come to feel so strongly upon that subject,” she explained. -“It seems to me more important than all others combined. It is the last -thing in the world that should be decided upon an impulse, or a passing -fancy--yet that is just what happens all about us. The books are greatly -to blame for that. They talk as if only boys and girls knew what love -meant. They flatter the young people, and turn their empty heads, with -the notion that their idlest inclinations are very probably sacred -emotions--which they may trust to burn brightly in a pure flame all -their lives. The innocent simpletons rush to light this penny dip that -is warranted to blaze eternally, and in a week or a month they are in -utter darkness. We trembled lest you, coming so suddenly into a new -life, should meet with that misfortune.” - -He smiled faintly at her. “You see, I have not,” he commented. - -She regarded him thoughtfully. “It is impossible to make rules for -others in these matters,” she observed, “but there is this thing to be -said. True love must be built upon absolutely true friendship; there can -be no other foundation for it You will often see two men who are fond -of each other. They delight in being together. Very often you cannot -imagine what is the tie between them--and they would not be able to tell -you. They just like to be together--even though they may not speak for -hours, and may be as different in temperament as chalk and cheese. That -is the essence of friendship--and you cannot have love without it. -The man and the woman must have the all-powerful sense of ideal -companionship between them. They must be able to say with truth to -themselves that the world will always be richer to them together than -apart. There may be many other elements in love, but there can be no -love at all without this element. But you wonder why I am saying all -this to you.” - -He made a deprecatory gesture of the hands. “I am always charmed when -you talk to me. I have been remembering that dear home of yours, and how -inexpressibly good you were to me. I prize that memory so fondly!” - -She smiled with an approach to her old gaiety of manner. “You were -like a son of our own to us. And so we think of you now--as if you were -ours.” - -“And with what munificence you have treated me!” he exclaimed, -fervently. - -“And why not? For whom else would we be laying up our money? Oh, there -was no difference of opinion about that. Months ago it was decided that -when you came into Caermere you should come into everything.” - -“I feared that Emanuel would be angry--disappointed--at my not taking -up his work--but truly I could not. It wouldn’t be easy to explain to -you--but----” - -“No--let us not go into reasons. He had no feeling about it whatever. -How should he? It would have been as reasonable to be vexed because -the lenses of his spectacles did not fit your eyes. And Emanuel is -reasonableness itself. No--the experiment was quite personal to himself. -Without him, it could not have gone on at all. It will not go on now, -when he leaves it to others. We make some little pretense that it -will--but we know in our hearts that it won’t. And there was a fatal -fault in it. To begin with, that would have killed it sooner or later, -in any case.” - -“I know what you mean,” he interposed, with sensitive intuition. “There -was no proper place in it for women. ‘The very corner-stone of the -System was the perpetual enslavement of women’--or rather, I should -say”--he stumbled awkwardly as the sweeping form of the quotation -revealed itself to him--“I should say, it did not provide women with the -opportunities which--which----” - -Kathleen also had her intuitions. “May I ask?--it sounds as if you -were repeating a remark--was it Miss Bailey who said that about the -corner-stone?” - -Christian bit his lip and flushed confusedly. “Yes--I think those were -her words,” he confessed. “But you must remember,” he added, eager to -minimize-the offense--“it was in the course of a long discussion on the -whole subject, and she----” - -“The dear girl!” said Kathleen, with a sigh of relief. - -“Ah, but you would love her!” he cried, excitedly perceiving the -significance of her words. “She has the noblest mind--calm and broad and -serene--and so fine a nature--I know you would love her!” - -Kathleen put a hand on his arm, with motherly directness. “But do _you_ -love her?” she asked. - -To his own considerable surprise he hesitated. “I have that feeling -of deep friendship that you described,” he said, slowly. “The charm of -being where she is is like nothing else to me. I cannot think that it -would ever lose its force for me. I get the effect of drawing strength -and breadth of thought and temper from her, when I am with her. I would -rather spend my life with her for my companion than any other woman I -have ever seen. That is what you mean, is it not?” - -“Partly,” she made enigmatic response. “But--now you mustn’t answer -me if I ask what I’ve no business to ask--but the suspicion came to me -while you were speaking--I am right, am I not, in thinking that you have -said all this to her?” - -“Yes,” he admitted with palpable reluctance, “and she would not listen -to me. Only a few hours before I heard the news of my grandfather’s -death, I asked her to be my wife, and she refused. She seemed very -resolute. And yet she has some of that same feeling of friendship for -me. She said that she had always a deep interest in me. She had read -books--very serious books--in order to be able to advise me, if the -chance ever came. All that bespeaks friendship, surely! And her coming -here, to look on and still not be seen--you said yourself that she was -distressed at being discovered--is not that the act of warm friendship?” - -Kathleen pondered her reply. She looked away at the nearest hills across -the river for some moments, with her gaze riveted fixedly as if in an -absorption of interest. Without moving her head, she spoke at last: “You -have a good deal to say about friendship. It is my fault--I introduced -the word and insisted on it--but did you also lay such stress upon this -‘friendship’ to her?” - -“You do not know her nature,” he assured her. “There is nothing weak or -commonplace in it. One does not talk to her as to an ordinary woman--as -you yourself said. I begged her to join her life to mine, and I put the -plea on the highest possible grounds. All that I have repeated to you, -and much more, I said to her--how great was my need of her, how lofty -her character seemed to me, how all my life I should revere her, and -gain strength and inspiration from being with her.” - -“H--m,” said Kathleen. - -“Do you mean--?” he began, regarding his companion wonderingly--“was -that not enough? Remember the kind of woman she is--proud of her -independence, occupied with large thoughts, not to be appealed to by -any but the highest motives--a creature who disdains the sentimental -romances of inferior women--do you mean that there should have been -something more? I do love her--and should I have told her so in so many -words?” - -“I’m afraid that’s our foible,” she made answer. On the face that she -turned to him, something like the old merry light was shining. “You -goose!” she scolded at him, genially. - -His eyes sparkled up as with a light from her own. “Oh, I will make some -excuse, and get away from these people, and find her,” he cried. “She -will be returning, if not here, then to the inn, down below the church, -don’t you think? There would be nothing out of the way in my riding -down, would there? Or if I sent a man down with a letter, appealing to -her not to go away--telling her why? There is no earthly reason why she -should not stop here at the Castle. Her sister is here--why, of course, -she belongs quite to the family party. How dull of me not to have -thought of that! Of course, Cora can go and fetch her.” - -“I think I would leave Cora out of it,” Kathleen advised him. “There is -nothing that you cannot do better yourself. Come here! Do you see that -patch of reddish stain on the hill there, above the poplars where the -iron has colored the rock? Well, look to the right, on the ledge just a -bit higher up--there is Miss Bailey. I have been watching her for some -minutes. She has been round the hill; the path she is on will lead her -to the Mere Copse--and to the heath beyond the orchards.” - -His eyes had found the moving figure, microscopic yet unmistakable in -the sunshine against the verdant face of the hill--and they dwelt upon -it for a meditative moment. - -Then he turned to Kathleen, and took her hand, and almost wrung it in -his own. “Do let us go in!” he urged her, with exultant eagerness. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVI - -Christian, professing to himself momentarily that the chance to get -away from his guests was at hand, discovered that his escape, all the -same, was no easy matter. - -Kathleen had disappeared somewhere, and without her he seemed curiously -helpless. He did not as yet know the house well enough to be sure about -its exits. The result of one furtive attempt at flight was to find -himself in the midst of a group of county people, who fell back -courteously at his approach and, as if by design, let him become -involved in a quite meaningless conversation with a purple-faced, -bull-necked old gentleman whose name he could not remember. This person -talked at tremendous length, producing his words in gurgling spasms; his -voice was so husky and his manner so disconcerting--not to mention the -peculiarities of the local dialect in which he spoke--that Christian -could make literally nothing of his remarks. He maintained a vapid -listener’s-smile, the while his eyes roamed despondently about the room, -and what he could see of the next apartment, in search of some relief. -If he could hit upon Dicky Westland--or even Edward or Augustine! - -It became apparent to him, at last, that his interlocutor was -discoursing on the subject of dogs. Of course--it would be about the -Caermere hounds. On the grave faces of those about him, who stood near -enough to hear the sounds of this mysterious monologue, he read signs -that they considered themselves a party to it. It was on their behalf -as well as his own that the old gentleman was haranguing him--and he -swiftly perceived the necessity of paying better attention. - -“The hounds--yes,” he said, after a little. “I have been making -inquiries about them. I am advised that they cannot be kept up properly -for less than four thousand five hundred a year.” - -“Up to Lord Porlock’s death, we had something like twenty-four hundred -pounds from the Castle, and we made a whip-round among ourselves,” the -other replied, “for the rest. With corn what it is, and rents what -they are, we’re all so poor now that it’ll be harder than ever to get -subscriptions, but we’ll try to do our share if the Castle’ll meet us -half-way.” - -Christian felt that he liked being referred to as “the Castle.” - Moreover, an idea suddenly took shape in his mind. “My uncle, Lord -Porlock, was the Master,” he said. “And before him my grandfather, I -believe. But what has been done since Lord Porlock’s death--about a new -Master, I mean?” - -Out of the complicated response made to this question he gathered -vaguely that nothing had been done--that nothing could have been done. - -“My cousin, Captain Torr, is a hunting man, I think.” He threw out the -question with some diffidence, and was vastly relieved to see the faces -brighten about him. - -“None better, by God!” affirmed the old gentleman, with vehemence, -and there followed a glowing and spluttering eulogium of Edward’s -sportsmanlike qualities and achievements, in the middle of which -Christian recalled that the speaker was Sir George Dence. - -“I like the Mastership to continue in the family, Sir George,” he -replied, suavely proud of the decision he had leaped to. “I think I -shall suggest to you that Captain Edward take the hounds, and that, for -a time at least, you allow the Castle to be at the entire expense. At -all events, you have my annual subscription of five thousand pounds to -begin upon.” - -He made a dignified half-bow in the silence which ensued, and boldly -moved away. The murmur of amazed admiration which rose behind him was -music in his ears. - -Visions of possible escape rose for the moment before him. He walked -with an air of resolution through the next room, trying to remember -whither the corridor outside led--but at the doorway he stopped face to -face with Lord Lingfield. - -“Ah,” said his cousin, amiably, “I did not know if I should see you -again. I thought perhaps that you had gone to lie down. Funerals take -it out of one so, don’t they? My father is quite seedy since lunch, and -poor Lady Cressage has the most wretched headache! I think myself she’d -do better not to travel while it lasts, but she’s anxious to get away, -and so we’re all off by the evening train.” - -“Oh, I didn’t dream of your hurrying off like this,” exclaimed -Christian, sincerely enough. “But if you are set upon it--come, let’s -find your father. It will seem as if I had neglected him.” - -“He’s in his room,” explained Lord Lingfield, as they moved away -together, “getting into some heavier clothes. The evenings are chilly -here in the hills, and we’re to start almost immediately, and take the -long drive round through the forest. Lady Cressage has talked so much of -it, and we’ve never seen it, you know.” - -“But this is all too bad!” urged Christian. “You rush away before I have -had time to have a word with any of you. There is no urgent reason for -such haste, is there now, really?” - -“Lady Cressage seems anxious to go,” answered the other, with a kind of -significance in his solemn voice. “And of course--since she came with -us----” - -Christian stole a quick glance at his kinsman, and as swiftly looked -away. “If she prefers it--of course,” he commented with brevity. - -“Do you think she is very strong?” asked Lord Lingfield. “I have a kind -of fear, sometimes, that her health is not altogether robust. She seemed -very pale to-day.” There was a note of obvious solicitude in his voice. - -“She has a headache,” Christian reminded him. - -“Yes, that would account for it, wouldn’t it?” The young man was visibly -relieved by this reflection. “They may say what they like,” he went on, -“she is the most beautiful woman in London to-day, just as she was when -she was married. Let me see--I am not sure that I ever knew her precise -age. Do you happen to know?” - -“She is four-and-twenty.” - -“Not more! I should have said six, or at least five. Hm-m! -Four-and-twenty!” The reiteration, for some reason, seemed to afford him -pleasure. “I am nearly thirty myself,” he added meditatively, “and I’m -practically sure of being in the next Government. Shall you go in much -for politics, do you think? It wouldn’t be of any great use to you, -except the Garter, perhaps, and it’s so fearfully slow waiting for that. -My father had the promise of it as long ago as Lord John Russell’s time, -and it hasn’t come off yet. But then that Home Rule business was so -unfortunate--it sent us all over to the Tory side, where there were -already more people waiting for things than there were things to go -round. If I were you, I would keep very quiet for a year or two--not -committing myself openly to either side. I can’t help thinking there -will be a break-up. It’s a fearful bore to have only twenty or thirty -people on one side and five hundred on the other. They won’t stand it -much longer. It doesn’t make a fair distribution of things. Of course, -I’m a Unionist, but if I were in your shoes, I’d think it over very -carefully. The Liberals haven’t got a single Duke--and mind you, though -people don’t seem to notice it, it is a fact that a party practically -never succeeds itself. The Liberals are bound to come in, sooner or -later--and then, if you were their only Duke, why, you’d get your -Garter shot at you out of a gun--so to speak. Of course, -I mustn’t be mentioned as saying this--but you think it over! And it -needn’t matter in the least--our being in different parties.. We can -help each other quite as well--indeed, sometimes I’m tempted to think -even better. Of course, I dare say there won’t be much that I can do -for you--for the next two or three years, at least--except in the way of -advice, and tips, and that sort of thing--but there may be a number of -matters that you can help me in.” - -Christian nodded wearily--with a nervous thought upon the time being -wasted. “I am not likely to forget your kindness--or our family ties,” - he said, consciously evasive. - -“You never saw Cressage, of course; awful beast!” remarked the other, -with an irrelevancy which still struck the listener as having a certain -method in it. “It makes a man furious to think what she must have -suffered with him. And a mere child, too, when she was married. Only -four-and-twenty now! These early marriages are a great mistake. Of -course, when a man gets to be nearly thirty, and there is a family and -property and so on to be handed along, why, then marriage becomes a -duty. That has always been my view. And I try invariably to do my duty, -as I see it. I think a man ought to, you know.” - -Christian sighed, and restrained an impulse to look at his watch. They -had sauntered forward into the central hallway; through the open door -could be seen a carriage and pair drawn up before the steps. A rustle on -the stairs behind him caught his ear, and turning, Christian beheld Lady -Cressage descending toward him, with Lord Chobham looming, stately and -severe, in the shadows above her. - -Christian moved impulsively to her. “It was the greatest surprise to -me--and disappointment, too--to hear that you were going like this,” he -declared, with outstretched hand. - -She smiled feebly, and regarded him with a pensive consideration. Her -heavy mourning of an earlier hour had been exchanged for a black -garb less ostentatiously funereal, yet including the conventional -widow’s-fall, which he had not seen her wear before. The thought that -here at Caermere, last autumn, she had not even worn a widow’s-cap, rose -in his mind. It carried with it a sense of remissness, of contumacy as -against the great family which had endowed her with one of its names. -But at least now she exhibited a consciousness that her husband was less -than a year dead. And her pallid face was very beautiful in its frame of -black--a delicately strong face, meditative, reserved, holding sadness -in a proud restraint. “I am not very well,” she said to him, in tones -to reach his ear alone. “The crowd here depressed me. I could not bring -myself to appear at luncheon. It seems better that I should go away.” - -“But it is such a fatiguing journey--for one who does not feel wholly up -to it!” he urged upon her. “All these strangers will be going--I think -some of them have gone already. I don’t know what their rule is here -about stopping after luncheon--but surely they must clear out very soon. -Then we shall be quite by ourselves--so that if that is your only reason -for going--why, I can’t admit that it is a reason at all.” - -He paused, and strove to cover with a halting smile his sudden -perception that they were not talking with candor to each other. There -were things in her mind, things in his mind, which bore no relation to -the words they uttered. She was looking at him musingly--and he felt -that he could read in her glance, or perhaps gather from what there -was not in her glance, that she would not go if he begged her with -sufficient earnestness to remain. Nay, the conviction flashed vividly -uppermost in his thoughts that even a tolerable simulation of this -earnestness would be enough. It was as if a game were being played, in -which he was not quite the master of his moves. In this mere instant -of time, while they had stood facing each other, he had been able to -reproduce the whole panorama of his contact with this beautiful woman. -From that first memorable day when she had come into his wondering, -distraught vision of the new life before him, to that other day but a -week ago when he had stood trembling with passionate emotions in her -presence, his mental pictures of her rose connectedly about him. They -exerted a pressure upon his will. They left him no free agency in the -matter. By all the chivalric, tenderly compassionate memories they -evoked, he must bid her to remain. - -“I am very sorry that you feel you must go,” was what he heard himself -say instead. - -“Good-bye,” she answered simply, and gave him her gloved hand with an -impassive face. “Lord Chobham and Lord Lingfield are good enough to see -me back to London again. We are driving round through the forest. Our -people are to join us at the station with the luggage. Goodbye.” - -He accompanied the party out to the carriage door, despite some formal -doubts about its being the proper thing to do. Both father and son made -remarks to him, to which he seemed to himself to be making suitable -answers, but what they were about he never knew. The tragedy of Edith’s -final departure from Caermere--she who had been the hostess here when -he came; she who was to have worn the coronet on her lovely brow as the -mistress of it all--seized upon his mind and harrowed it. A vehement -self-reproach that his thoughts should have done her even momentary -injustice stung him, as he beheld her seated in the carriage. She smiled -at him--that wistful, subdued smile of the headache--and then, as the -horses moved, his eyes were resting upon another smile instead--the -beaming of fatuous content upon the countenance of Lord Lingfield, who -sat facing her. - -Christian, regarding this second cousin of his as the carriage receded -from view, suddenly breathed a long sigh of relief. - -All at once remembering many things, he wheeled with the impulse to run -up the steps. Upon reflection, he ascended them sedately instead, -and gave orders in the hall that Mr. Westland should be sent to him -forthwith. Two or more groups of departing guests came upon him, while -he stood irresolutely here, and he bade them farewell with formal -gravity. The two parsons whom he had seen at the church were among -them--attired now in black garments with curiously ugly little round, -flat hats--and he noted with interest that their smirking deference now -displeased him less than it had done in the morning. He perceived that -his lungs were becoming accustomed to the atmosphere of adulation, and -smiled tolerantly at himself. How long would it be, he wondered with -idle amusement, before it would stifle him to breathe any other air? - -Augustine had sauntered out from some unknown quarter into the hall, -and Christian beckoned to him. A shapeless kind of suspicion, born of a -resemblance now for the first time suggesting itself, had risen in his -brain. He took the young man by the arm, and strolled aside with him. - -“Am I wrong,” he asked carelessly, “or did I see you at the supper at -the Hanover Theater? Let us see--it would be a week ago to-night? I -thought so. Why I asked--I was curious to know whom you were with. It -was a young man; you were standing together between some scenery as I -passed you.” - -“Oh!” said Augustine, with visible reassurance. “That was Tom -Bailey--Cora’s brother, you know.” - -“What sort is he?” Christian pursued, secretly astonished at the -inspired accuracy of his intuition. - -“Well”--replied the other, hesitatingly--“it’s rather hard to say. He -got sent down from Cambridge for something or other, and his governor -got the needle over it, and put him on an allowance of a pound a week, -or something like that, and so what could he do? It’s jolly hard on a -young fellow round town to have less money than anybody else. He’s bound -to get talked about, if he only owes half-a-crown to some outsider or -other, and that makes other fellows turn shirty. But I think he always -pays when he can.” - -“You like him, then, do you?” - -“Oh, yes--I like Tom well enough,” answered Augustine, dubiously -pondering the significance of the interrogatory. “He’d be all right -if--if he had a proper chance.” With a sigh, he ventured to add: “He’s -like the rest of us--that way.” - -At sight of Dicky Westland’s approach. Christian dropped his inquiries -abruptly. “All right,” he said, with enigmatic brevity, and turned to -his secretary with a meaning gesture. “I want to get away from here--out -of the Castle,” he murmured to the newcomer, “without a minute’s delay. -I have a--kind of appointment, and I am already late. If you will get -our hats, we will walk out together, as if we were discussing some -private matter, and then no one will interrupt us.” - -This confidence was only partially justified by events. The two made -their way unmolested into the open air, and across some long stretches -of lawn to the beginning of the series of gardens. It was within -Christian’s memory that one reached the orchards and the opening upon -the heath by traversing these gardens. But in the second of them, where -remarkable masses of tulips in gorgeous effulgence of bloom occupied -the very beds in which he believed the dahlias must have been last year, -there was some one on the well-remembered path in front of him. - -A little child of two or three years, still walking insecurely at least, -was being led along the edge of the flower-border by a woman in black -whose back was turned. - -The infant had caught the notion of bending over the hyacinths, one by -one, laboriously to smell their perfume, and the woman indulgently lent -herself to the pastime, halting and supporting the little one by the -hand. - -Christian wondered vaguely what child this could be, before observation -told him that the person they were approaching was a lady. He took -Dicky’s arm then, and quickened their step. “We will be very much -engaged as we pass,” he admonished him. After a few paces, however, -the futility of this device made itself apparent. The lady, glancing -indifferently over her shoulder at the sound, of their tread, turned on -the instant with a little cry of pleasure. - -It was Cora who came toward them, now radiant of face and with an -extended hand. She dragged the surprised child heedlessly along at her -side with the other arm. - -“Oh, Duke!” she cried. “I did so long to burst in upon you, wherever you -were to be found, and thank you when I heard. It was Sir George Dence -who told us. And Eddy, he’s quite off his head with joy! He wanted to -look you up, too, but I told him to put off thanking you till to-morrow; -between ourselves, I don’t fancy he’ll be seen quite to the best -advantage later on to-day. But I know you’ll think none the worse of -him for that; and there’s a good bit to be done, he says, in the way of -pulling the Hunt together again to work like one man. He’s begun already -promoting the right sort of feeling. He’s got Sir George and old General -Fawcett and about a dozen more of ’em in the billiard-room, and I -told him everything would be all right so long as they didn’t sing. On -account of the funeral, you know. And--why, you’ve never seen my oldest -unmarried daughter! Look up and say, ‘How-de-do?’ Chrissy. Why, she’s -your namesake! Yes, her baptismal name is Christiana or Christina--which -is it? We always call her Chrissy. And you haven’t told me what an -effective family group I make. You never would have believed that I -could be so domestic, now, would you?” - -She had gathered the child up into her arms, and under the influence of -her jocund mood Christian smiled cheerfully. “You are very wonderful -as a mother,” he assured her, and extended a tentative finger toward -Chrissy, who, huddled in awkward and twisted discomfort under her -mother’s elbow, regarded him with unconcealed repulsion. - -“She seems an extremely healthy child,” he remarked, and the words were -not so perfunctory as they sounded. The robust, red cheeked heartiness -of Chrissy raised musing reflections in his mind. If this infant, with -its stout mottled arms and legs, had been a boy, it would be at this -moment his heir. No one could ask for a finer child--and she was very -closely akin to him. And Cora was her mother--and Cora’s sister! - -“Oh, but where _are_ we going to live?” she broke in upon his -meditations. “I said to Eddy that I’d lay odds you were thinking of -David’s Court for us. You know the kennels used to be there before -Porlock’s time.” - -“All that we can arrange,” said Christian, shaking off his reverie, and -lifting his hat. “Rest easy in your mind about everything.” - -She nodded with an expansive geniality which freely included Dicky as -well, and then walked away. It slowly occurred to Christian that she had -said nothing about her sister’s presence in the neighborhood, although -it was impossible to suppose her ignorant, of it. Upon consideration, he -decided that her reticence was delicate. He felt that he liked Cora, and -then uneasily speculated upon the seeming probability that his liking -for her was in excess of her sister’s. - -“Westland,” he said, with a new thought in his busy brain, “you know -about geography--about where the different British colonies are on -the map, and what they are distinguished for. I want to know of a good -place, a very long way off, where two young men with a moderate capital -might do well, or-at least have the chance to do well.” - -“Fellows like that generally go to South Africa, nowadays,” replied -Dicky, “though I believe it’s gone off a bit. It’s not as far away as -Australia, but it’s livelier, apparently. They don’t seem to come back -as much.” - -“No; I have a prejudice against that Johannesburg. It is not a good -atmosphere, and it is too easy to get into trouble there.” - -“There are great reports about British Columbia just now. They’ve found -wonderful new gold-fields, and they’re a fearful distance from anywhere. -It takes you months to get to them, so I’m told. But it depends so much -on what the fellows themselves are like. If I may ask, do I know them?” - -“It is Augustine Torr that I have in mind, and a young friend of -his--Bailey his name is. By the way, a brother of the lady we just -left.” - -“I know _of_ him,” commented Dicky sententiously. - -“Well, it has occurred to me that these young men, for whom there seems -no specially suitable foothold in England, might accomplish something in -the colonies. That is the way Greater Britain, as they call it, has been -made--by young men who might have done nothing at all worth doing at -home. Life is really very difficult and complicated in this crowded -island, unless one has exactly the temperament to succeed. But in the -colonies it is different. Men who are of no use here may become valuable -there. I have heard that there are many instances of this. And these -young men, it seems to me that very possibly, if they found themselves -on new ground, they might do as others have done and get on. We do not -quite know what to do with them here, but we send them out, and they -make the Empire.” - -“It’s rather rough on the Empire, though, isn’t it?” said Dicky. - -Christian frowned and drew himself up a little. “One is my cousin,” - he said coldly, “and the other is the brother of--is the brother of my -cousin’s wife.” - -There was a moment of silence, and then the secretary, as upon a sudden -resolution, stopped. “It’s no good my going on,” he said, nervously, but -with decision. “I daresay you don’t mean it, but all the same it’s too -much for me. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn it up and catch the -evening-train. I don’t mind going to the station in the brake with the -servants and the luggage. It certainly won’t take anybody by surprise.” - Christian regarded him with open-eyed astonishment. “I don’t know what -you’re talking about,” he said, in obvious candor. - -Dicky restlessly threw out his hands. “Oh, I can’t stand this Dukeness -of yours,” he declared. “You put it on too thick. I know Gus Torr, and -I know as much as I want to of Tom Bailey, and I know they’re no good, -and you know it, too--although I don’t say they mayn’t get on in the -colonies. God knows what won’t get on there! But when I make some -perfectly civil and natural remark on the subject, you flame up at -me, and blow yourself out like a pouter pigeon, and say -they’re--haw-haw!--relations of yours. Well, that be damned, you know! -It may do once in a way with outsiders, but it isn’t good enough to live -with.” - -“Dicky!” said Christian, in a voice of awed appeal. His brown face -distorted itself in lines of painful bewilderment as he gazed at his -companion. “Have I done that? Is it as bad as that?” He gasped the -questions out in a frightened way and tears sprang into his eyes. “Then -it is not you who should catch the evening train, but me. I am not fit -to be here!” He finished with a groan of bitter dejection and bowed his -head. - -Westland, as much scared as surprised at the violent result of his -protest, moved impetuously to his friend and put a hand on his shoulder. -“No-no! No-no,” he said, in a soothing voice. “It’s all right! I said -you didn’t mean it, you know. Truly, old man, I _knew_ you didn’t mean -it! Upon my word, it’s all right!” - -Christian lifted his head, and tried to choke down his agitation. “But -you go away from me!” he said in despairing tones. “It is the same as -ever! Nothing is changed for me! I do not make friends--much less keep -them!” - -“But I _am_ your friend! You _are_ keeping me!” Dicky insisted, raising -his voice. An odd impulse to laugh aloud struggled confusedly with the -concern the other’s visible suffering gave him. “I take it all back. I’m -stopping with you, right enough!” - -Christian accepted the assurance in a dazed way, and after he had -silently shaken the other’s hand, began walking on again, studying the -ground with a troubled frown. “I am a weak and dull fool!” he growled at -last, in rage at himself. “I have not sense enough to behave properly! -It is a mistake that I should he put over anybody else! I make myself -ridiculous, like any _parvenu_.” - -“No--that’s all rot,” the other felt it judicious to urge. “You’re -perfectly all right, only--only----” - -“Only I’m not!” Christian filled in the gap of hesitation with an angry -laugh. - -Gradually a calmer view of himself pervaded his mind. “It is more -difficult than you think, Dicky,” he affirmed, after a pause. “It is not -easy at all--at first--to--what shall I say?--to keep feeling your feet -under you on the solid ground. The temptation to soar, to think you are -lifted up, is upon you every minute. It catches you unawares. Ah! I see -one must watch that without ceasing. Oh, I am glad--more glad than I can -tell you--that you stopped me. Ah! that was a true friend’s service.” - -Dicky chuckled softly: “It’s much nicer, if you can take it that way,” - he admitted. - -“If I am ever anything but nice to _yoo_,” Christian began, gravely, -and then stopped as if he had bitten his tongue. “Oh, there is patronage -again!” he cried with vexation--and then let himself be persuaded to -join in the frank laughter that the other set up. - -“Oh, we shall hit it off all right,” Dicky assured him as a final word -on the subject. “It’s merely a question of time. You’ve got to get -accustomed to your new job, and I to mine: that’s all there is of it. -We shall learn the whole bag of tricks in a week or so, and be happy -ever afterward.” - -The joking refrain struck some welcome chord in Christian’s thoughts. He -looked up, and noted that they were very near the door leading out from -the fruit-garden to the heath beyond the wall. Halting, he smiled into -his companion’s face. - -“No one will follow me now,” he said with sparkling eyes. “I will let -you turn back here, if you don’t mind.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXVII - -Christian realized blankly, all at once, as’ he stood and gazed out -over the moor, that he did not know his way. - -The spring had laid upon this great rolling common a beauty of its own. -Everywhere, on thorns and furze and briars, the touch of the new life -had hung emeralds to bedeck and hide the dun waste of winter. The -ashen-gray carpets of old mosses were veined with the vivid green of -young growths; out from the dry brown litter of lifeless ferns and -bracken were rising the malachite croziers of fresh fronds. The -brilliant yellow of broom and gorse blooms caught the eye in all -directions, blazing above the vernal outburst of another year’s -vegetation, and the hum of the bees in the sunlight, and the delicately -mingled odors in the May air were a delight to the senses. But under -this exuberance of re-awakened nature, welcome though it might be, -somehow the landmarks of last autumn seemed to have disappeared. - -The path which had led along the wall, for example, was now nowhere -discernible. Or had there really been a path at any time? - -It was clear enough, at all events, that his course for some distance -lay beside this massive line of ancient masonry, even if no track was -marked for him. At some farther point it would be necessary to turn -off at a right angle toward the Mere Copse--and here he could recall -distinctly that there had been a path. But then he came upon several -paths, or vaguely defined grassy depressions which might be paths, and -the divergent ways of these were a trouble to him. At last, he decided -to strike out more boldly into the heath, independently of paths, and -try to get a general view of the landscape. He made his way through -creepers and prickly little bushes toward an elevation in the distance, -realizing more and more in his encumbered progress that his quest was -like that of one who should search the limitless sea for a small boat. -There seemed no boundaries whatever to this vast tract of waste land. - -As he began at length the ascent of the mound toward which his course -had been directed, he scanned the moor near and far, but no human figure -was visible. No signs could he discover of any beaten track across it; -of the several patches of woodland beyond, in the distance to the left, -he could not even be sure which was the Mere Copse. Below, on the edge -of the sky-line at the right, he could see the tops of the towers -and chimneys of Caermere. Wheeling round from this point, then, he -endeavored to identify that portion of the hill, on the opposite side of -the river-chasm, which Kathleen had pointed out to him from the terrace. -But, viewed from here, there were so many hills! The hopelessness of -his errand became more apparent with each glance round. Despondently, he -sauntered up the few remaining yards to the top. - -He stood upon the ridge of a grass-grown wall of stones and earth, which -in a somewhat irregular circle enclosed perhaps a quarter-acre of land. -This wall on its best preserved side, where he found himself, was some -dozen feet in height. Across the ring it seemed lower, and at three -or four points was broken down altogether. He realized that he was -surveying a very ancient structure--no doubt, prehistoric. Would it -have been a fortress or a temple, or the primitive mausoleum of some -chieftain-ruler in these wilds? One of the openings seemed to suggest by -its symmetry an entrance to the enclosure. It was all very curious, and -he promised himself that very soon he would examine it in detail. Some -vague promptings of a nascent archaeological spirit impelled him now, -upon second thoughts, to walk round on the crest of the wall to the -other side. - -Suddenly he stopped, stared sharply downward with arrested breath, and -then, while his face wreathed itself with amused smiles, tip-toed along -a few paces farther. Halting here, his eyes dancing with suppressed -gaiety, he regarded at his leisure the object of his expedition. - -Upon the sunny outer side of the sloping embankment, only a few feet -below, was seated Frances Bailey. Her face was turned from him, and she -was apparently engrossed in the study of a linen-backed sectional map -spread on her knees. A small red book lay in the grass at her side, -and he was so close that he could decipher the legend “Shropshire and -Cheshire” on its cover. - -After a minute’s rapturous reflection he turned and noiselessly retraced -his steps, till he could descend from the wall without being seen. There -was a kind of miniature dry moat surrounding it at this point, and this -he lightly vaulted. Then, straightening himself, he strolled forward -with as fine an assumption of unsuspecting innocence as he could -contrive. It occurred to him to whistle some negligent tune very softly -as he came, but, oddly enough, his lips seemed recalcitrant--they made -no sound. - -At the obtrusion of his shadow upon the map she was examining she looked -swiftly up. For a moment, with the afternoon sun in her eyes, she seemed -not to recognize him. There followed another pause, infinitesimal in -duration, yet crowded with significance, in which she appeared clearly -at a loss what to say or do, now that she realized the fact of his -presence. Then she smiled at him with a kind of superficial brightness -and tossed the map aside. - -“I am fortunate indeed to find you,” he said, as he came up, and they -shook hands formally. A few moments before, when he had looked down upon -her from the mound, he had been buoyantly conscious of his control of -the situation; but now that he stood before her it was she who looked -down upon him from her vantage-ground on the side of the bank, and -somehow this seemed to make a great deal of difference. The sound of his -voice in his own ears was unexpectedly solemn and constrained. He felt -his deportment to be unpleasantly awkward. - -She ignored the implication that he had been looking for her. “I suppose -this must be the place that is marked ‘tumulus’ on the map here,” she -observed, with what seemed to be a deliberately casual tone. “But -I should think it is more like a rath, such as one reads about in -Ireland--a fortified place to defend one’s herds and people in. As I -understand it, a tumulus was for purposes of burial, and this seems to -be a fort rather than a tomb. What is your idea about it?” She rose to -her feet as she put the question, and turned to regard the earthworks -above and about her with a concentrated interest. - -He tried to laugh. “I’m afraid I’m more ignorant about them than anybody -else,” he confessed. “I have never been here before. I suppose all one -can really say is that the people who did these things knew what they -were for, but that since they had no alphabet they could not leave a -record to explain them to us, and so we are free to make each his own -theory to suit himself.” - -“That is a very indolent view to take,” she told him over her shoulder. -“Scientists and archaeologists are not contented with that sort of -reply. They examine and compare and draw deductions, and get at the -meaning of these ancient remains. They do not sit down and fold their -hands and say, ‘Unfortunately those people had no alphabet.’ Why don’t -you dig this thing up and find out about it?” - -He smiled to himself doubtfully, “I have only been in possession of it -for about three hours,” he reminded her. Then an inspiration came -to, him. “Would _you_ like to dig it up?” he asked, with an effect -of eagerness shining through the banter of his tone. “I mean, to -superintend the excavations. You shall have forty men out here with -picks and shovels to-morrow if you say the word.” Instead of answering, -she stooped to get her book and map, and then moved with a preoccupied -air to the top of the bank. After an instant’s hesitation he scrambled -up to join her. - -“I suppose that would have been the entrance there,” she observed, -pointing across the circle. “And in the center, you see, where the grass -is so thin, there are evidently big stones there. That _does_ suggest -interment after all, doesn’t it? Yet the Silurians are said to have -buried only in dolmens. It is very curious.” - -“I do not find that I care much about Silurians this afternoon,” he -ventured to say. There was a gentle hint of reproach in his voice. - -“Why, you’re one yourself! That is the principal point about the Torrs; -that is what makes them interesting.” - -“But what good does it do me to be a Silurian and interesting,” he -protested with a whimsical gesture, “if I--if I do not get what I want -most of all in the world?” - -“It seems to me that you have got more things already than most people -on this planet.” She went on reflectively: “I had no idea at all what it -meant till I saw these hills and the valleys below them, and the forests -and the villages and the castle, and the people coming out from heaven -knows what holes in the rocks--all with your collar round their necks. -I should think it would either send you mad with the sense of power or -frighten you to death.” - -“I am really very humble about it, I think,” he assured her simply. “And -there is not so much power as you seem to imagine. It is all a great -organized machine, like some big business. The differences are that it -works very clumsily and badly as it is at present managed, and that it -hardly pays any dividend at all. The average large wholesale grocer’s -or wine merchant’s estate would pay a bigger succession duty than my -grandfather’s. He died actually a poor man.” The intelligence did not -visibly impress her. “But it was not because he helped others,” she -remarked. “Those about him grew poorer also. It is a hateful system!” - -“There is something you do not know,” he began with gravity. “I said -that my grandfather died a poor man. But since his death a tremendous -thing has happened. A great gift has been made to me. The enormous debts -which encumbered his estates have been wiped out of existence. It is -Lord Julius and Emanuel who have done this--done it for me! I do not -know the figures yet--to-morrow Mr. Soman is to explain them to me--but -the fact is I am a very rich man indeed. I do not owe anybody a penny. -Whatever seems to be mine, _is_ mine. There are between seventy-five and -eighty thousand acres. By comparison with other estates, it seems to me -that there will be a yearly income of more than fifty thousand pounds!” - -She drew a long breath and looked him in the face. “I am very sorry for -you,” she said soberly. - -“Ah, no; I resist you there,” he exclaimed. “I quote your own words -to you: ‘It is an indolent view to take.’ There is a prodigious -responsibility! Yes! But all the more reason why I should be brave. -Would you have me lose my nerve, and say the task is too great for me? I -thought you did not like people who solved difficulties by turning tail -and running away. Well, to confess oneself afraid--that is the same -thing.” - -She smiled thoughtfully, perhaps at the quaint recurrence to foreign -gestures and an uncertain, hurried use of book-English which her company -seemed always to provoke in him. “I meant only that it was a terrible -burden you had had fastened upon your shoulders,” she made answer -softly. “I did not suggest that you were afraid of it. And yet I should -think you would be!” - -“I think,” he responded, with a kind of diffident conviction, “I think -that if a man is honest and ambitious for good things, and has some -brains, he can grow to be equal to any task that will be laid upon him. -And if he labors at it with sincerity and does absolutely the best that -there is in him to do, then I do not think that his work will be wasted. -A man is only a man after all. He did not make this world, and he cannot -do with it what he likes. It is a bigger thing, when you come to think -of it, than he is. At the end there is only a little hole in it for him -to be buried in and forgotten, as these people who raised this wall -that we stand on are forgotten. They thought in their day that the whole -world depended upon them; when there was thunder and lightning, they -said it was on their account, because their gods in the sky were angry -with them. But to us it is evident that they were not so important as -they supposed they were. We look at the work of their hands here, and -we regard it with curiosity, as we might an ant’s nest. We do not know -whether they made it as a tomb for their chief or as a shelter for their -cows. And if they had left records to explain that, and it does not -matter how much else, it would be the same. We learn only one thing from -all the numberless millions who have gone before us--that man is less -important than he thinks he is. I have a high position thrust upon me. -_Eh bien!_ I am not going to command the sun to stand still. I am not -going to believe that I ought to revolutionize human society before I -die. There will be many men after me. If one or two of them says of me -that I worked hard to do well, and that I left things a trifle better -than I found them, then what more can I desire?” - -She nodded in musing abstraction, but answered nothing. Her gaze was -fastened resolutely upon the opposite bank. - -“I am truly so fortunate not to have missed you!” he repeated after a -small interval of silence. - -“Why should you say that?” she asked almost with petulance. “You make -too much of me! I do not belong in this gallery at all. I am very angry -with myself for being here. I ought not to have allowed Mrs. Emanuel to -persuade me against my own judgment. It did not enter into my head that -I should be seen by anybody. I was on my vacation--I take it early, -because some of the girls like to get away at Whitsuntide--and at Bath -I saw in a paper some reference to the state with which your grandfather -would be buried, and the whim seized me to see the funeral. I came on -my bicycle most of the way, till the hills got too bad. I thought no one -would be the wiser for my coming and going. And one thing--you must not -ask me to come into the castle again. I am going to the inn to get my -machine, and go down to Craven Arms or Clun for the night. I have looked -both roads out on my map. Is Clun interesting, do you know?” - -“I have not the remotest idea. In fact, there is only one idea of any -sort in my mind just now. It is that you are not to be allowed to go -away. Have you seen the dungeons in which we fasten up people whose -presence is particularly desired, and who will not listen to reason?” - -The jesting tone of his words was belied by the glance in his eyes. -She frowned a little. “No, there is no reason in it at all. -What have I to do with these people? They are not my kind. It is the -merest accident that you and I happen to be acquainted. If you did not -know me now, nothing is more certain than that we should never meet in -the world. And our seeming to each other like friends on those other -occasions--that had nothing to do with the present. The circumstances -are entirely different. There is nothing in common between us now, or -hardly anything at all. You ought to understand that. And I look to you -to realize how matters are altered, and not to insist upon placing me -in a very undignified and unpleasant position.” She had spoken with -increasing rapidity of utterance, and with rising agitation. “Not -that your insisting would make any difference!” she added now, almost -defiantly. - -He looked at her in silence. The face half turned from him, with its -broad brow, its shapely and competent profile, the commanding light -in its gray eyes, the firm lips drawn into tightened curves of proud -resistance to any weakness of quivering--it was the face that had made -so profound an impression upon him at the outset of that wonderful -journey from Rouen. The memory became on the instant inexpressibly -touching to him. She was almost as she had been then--it might well be -the same sober gray frock, the same hat, save that the ribbon now was -black instead of fawn. She would have no varied wardrobe, this girl who -earned her own bread, and gave her mind to the large realities of life. -But this very simplicity of setting, how notably it emphasized the -precious quality of what it framed! He recalled that in his first rapt -study of this face it had seemed to him like the face of the young -Piedmontese bishop who had once come to his school--pure, wise, sweet, -tender, strong. And now, beholding it afresh, it was beyond all these -things the face which woke music in his heart--the face of the woman he -loved. - -With gentle slowness he answered her: “The position I seek to place you -in does not seem to me undignified. I should like to hope that you would -not find it unpleasant. You know what I mean--I offered it to you in -advance, before it was yet mine to give. I beg you again to accept it, -now when it _is_ mine to give. If you will turn, you can see Caermere -from where you stand. It has had in all its days no mistress like you. -Will you take it from my hands?” - -She confronted him with a clear, steady gaze of disapproval. “All this -is very stupid!” she said, peremptorily. “Last week--it had its pretty -and graceful side then perhaps, but it is not nice at all now. It does -not flatter me; it does not please me in any way to-day. I told you -then, I had my own independence, my own personal pride and dignity, -which are dearer to me than anything else. If I had them then, I have -them very much more now. What kind of idea of me is this that you -have--that I am to change my mind because now you can talk of fifty -thousand a year? I like you less than I did when you had nothing at all! -For then we seemed to understand each other better. You would not have -rattled your money-box at me then! You had finer sensibilities--I liked -you more!” - -He returned her gaze with a perplexed smile. “But I am asking you to be -my wife,” he pointed out. - -She sniffed with a suggestion of contempt at the word. “Wife!” she told -him stormily. “You do not seem to know what the word ‘wife’ means! You -are not thinking of a ‘wife’ at all. It is a woman to play Duchess to -your Duke that you have in mind, and you feel merely that she ought to -be presentable and intelligent, and personally not distasteful to you; -we’ll even say that you prefer a woman towards whom you have felt a sort -of comrade’s impulse. But that has nothing to do with a ‘wife.’ And even -on your own ground how foolish you are! In heaven’s name, why hit on -_me_ of all women? There are ten thousand who would do it all vastly -better, and who, moreover, would leap at the chance. You have only to -look about you. England is full of beauties in training for just such a -place. They know the ways of your set--the small talk, the little jokes, -the amusements and social duties and distinctions, and all that. Go -and find what you want among them. What have I to do with such people? -They’re not in my class at all.” - -Christian sighed, and then sought her glance again with a timid, -whimsical smile. “Ah, how you badger me always!” he said. “But I have -still something more to say.” - -“Let me beg that it be left unsaid!” She folded up the map, and began -moving along the ridge as she spoke. “It is all as distressful to me as -can be. You cannot understand--or will not understand--and it puts me -in an utterly hateful position. I do not like to be saying unpleasant -things to you. I had only the nicest feelings towards you when we last -parted; and this noon, when I saw you in the church, you made a picture -in my mind that I had quite--quite a tenderness for. But now you force -me into disagreeable feelings and words, which I don’t like any more -than you do. I seem to be never myself when I am with you. I have -actually never seen you but three times, and you disturb me more--you -make me hate myself more--than everything else in the world.” - -The exigencies of the path along the summit of the mound forced -Christian to walk behind her. In the voice which carried these words -backward to him the quavering stress of profound emotion was more to him -than the words themselves. He put out his hand and laid it lightly upon -her arm. - -“It is because you feel in your heart of hearts that I love you,” he -said in a low, tremulous voice. “Can you not see? It is that that has -made all our meetings disturbed, full of misunderstandings as well as -pleasure. You wrong me, dear--or no, you could not do that, but it is -that you do not comprehend. I have loved you from that first day. Oh, -I have loved you always, since I can remember--long years before I saw -you. There is not any memory in my life, it seems, but of you--for -all the sweet things were a foretaste of you, and all the bitter are -forgotten because of you. And shall there not be an end now to our -hurting each other? For where you go I follow you, and I must always -be longing for you--and I do not believe that in your heart you hold -yourself away from me, but only in your mind.” - -She had drawn her sleeve from his touch, and irresolutely quickened her -steps. She perforce paused now at a broken gap in the bank, and with -books and gathered skirts in one hand, lifted the other in instinctively -balancing preparation for a descent. He took this hand, and she made no -demur to his leading her down the steep slope to the level outer ground. -He retained the hand reverently, gently in his own as they walked in -silence across the heath. It seemed ever as if she would take it from -him, and that he consciously exerted a magic through his touch which -just sufficed to hold it. - -With a bowed head, and cheek at once flushed and white, she began to -speak. “You are very young,” she said, lingering over the words with -almost dejection in her tone. “You know so little of what life is like! -You have such a place in the affairs of men to fill, and you come to it -with such innocent boyish good faith--and men are so little like -what you think they are. And as you learn the lesson--the hardening, -disillusionizing lesson of the world--and the soft, youthful places in -your nature toughen, and you are a man holding your own with other men, -and lording it over them where you can, then you will hate the things -which hamper you, and you will curse encumbrances that you took -on you in your ignorance. And you are all wrong about me! -It is because you do not know other women that you think well of me. I -am a very ordinary girl, indeed. There are thousands like me, and better -than me, with more courage and finer characters, and you do not know -them, that is all. And there are the young women of your own little -world, who are born and reared to be the wives of men in your place, and -you will see them----” - -“I have seen them,” he interposed softly. “But it is not fair!” she -hurried on breathlessly. “It is the duty of a friend to hold a man back -when he is bent on a folly. And we pledged ourselves to be true friends, -and I implore you--or no, I insist! I will not have it. It is too -cruelly unfair to you--and--I am going now--no, not that way; in the -other direction. We will say good-bye.” - -He would not relinquish the hand she strove to drag away. All the -calmness of confident mastery was in his hold upon this hand, and in the -gravely sweet cadence of his voice. “I love you,” he said. “I shall love -no one in my life, or in another life, but you. I will not live without -you. I will not willingly spend a day in all my years away from you. You -are truly my other half--the companion, the friend, the love, the wife, -without whom nothing exists for me. I am not young as you say I am, -and I shall never be old--for in this love there is no youth or age for -either of us. Try to look backward now! Can you see a time when we -did not love each other? And forward! Is it thinkable that we can be -parted?” Slowly she lifted her head. - -“Look at me!” she bade him in a voice he seemed never to have heard -before. - - -THE END - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gloria Mundi, by Harold Frederic - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GLORIA MUNDI *** - -***** This file should be named 54988-0.txt or 54988-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/9/8/54988/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -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: Gloria Mundi - -Author: Harold Frederic - -Release Date: June 26, 2017 [EBook #54988] -Last Updated: February 5, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GLORIA MUNDI *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - -</pre> - - <div style="height: 8em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - GLORIA MUNDI - </h1> - <h2> - By Harold Frederic - </h2> - <h3> - Author Of “The Damnation Of Theron Ware,” “March Hares,” Etc. - </h3> - <h4> - New York: International Book And Publishing Company - </h4> - <h3> - 1899 - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0007.jpg" alt="0007 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <p> - <br /> <br /> - </p> - <h3> - TO MY FRIEND - </h3> - <h3> - THE HON. ALTON B. PARKER - </h3> - <h3> - CHIEF JUDGE OF THE COURT OF APPEALS, N. Y. - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - <b>CONTENTS</b> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART"> <b>PART I</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <b>PART II</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART3"> <b>PART III</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XIX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XXI </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_PART4"> <b>PART IV</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXVI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVII </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> -<p> - <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART I - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER I - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he meeting of the - man and the woman—it is to this that every story in the world goes - back for its beginning. - </p> - <p> - At noon on a day late in September the express train from Paris rested, - panting and impatient, on its brief halt in the station at Rouen. The - platform was covered with groups of passengers, pushing their way into or - out of the throng about the victualer’s table. Through the press passed - waiters, bearing above their heads trays with cups of tea and plates of - food. People were climbing the high steps to the carriages, or beckoning - to others from the open windows of compartments. Four minutes of the - allotted five had passed. The warning cries of the guards had begun, and - there was even to be heard the ominous preliminary tooting of a horn. - </p> - <p> - At the front of the section of first-class carriages a young woman leaned - through the broad window-frame of a coupé, and held a difficult - conversation with one of the waiters. She had sandwiches in one hand, some - loose coin in the other. Her task was to get at the meaning of a man who - spoke of sous while she was thinking in centimes, and she smiled a little - in amused vexation with herself at the embarrassment. - </p> - <p> - “Deux sandwich: combien si vous plait, monsieur?” she repeated, with an - appealing stress of courtesy. More slowly she constructed a second - sentence: “Est un franc assez?” She proffered the silver coin to help out - her inquiry, and the waiter, nodding, put up his hand for it. - </p> - <p> - On the instant, as the noise of slamming doors and the chorus of “Au - coupé, s’il-v’-plait!” grew peremptory, one in authority pushed the waiter - aside and pulled open the coupé door upon which she had been leaning. - “Permettez moi, madame!” he said curtly. - </p> - <p> - Close at his back was a young man, with wraps upon his arm and a traveling - bag in his hand, who was flushed and breathing hard with the excitement of - hurry, and who drew a long sigh of relief as he put his foot on the bottom - step of the coupé. - </p> - <p> - The young woman had grasped the door and was striving stoutly to drag it - to her. “Mais non, monsieur!” she shouted, her voice quivering with - vehemence. “Cette compartement est tout reserveé-engageé! J’ai donné sank - franc soisante, en Paris, pour moi seulement! Je proteste!” - </p> - <p> - Sharp blasts from a horn at the rear of the train broke in upon her - earnest if uncertain remarks. The official held up one warning hand, while - with the other he wrenched the door wide open. He said something of which - the girl comprehended only its arbitrary harshness of spirit. Brusquely - thrusting a ticket into the young man’s hand, he pushed him up the steps - into the compartment, and closed the door upon him with a clang. Arms were - waving outside; the tin horn screamed; a throb of reawakened energy - thrilled backward through the train. - </p> - <p> - “I assure you—I am so sorry,” the young man began, still standing by - the door. His voice was gentle and deprecatory. His words were English, - but the tone was of some other language. - </p> - <p> - “But I have taken the whole compartment-I paid for it all!” she burst out - at him, her voice shaking with indignation. “It is an outrage!” - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid you are mistaken,” he started to speak again; “you obtained - only one seat—I have a ticket for another. If there had been time, I - beg you to believe—” The train was moving, and a swift plunge into - utter darkness abruptly broke off his speech. After a few moments it - became possible to discern vague outlines in the black compartment. The - girl had huddled herself on the end cushion at the right. The young man - took his seat in the corner to the left, and for three incredibly - protracted minutes the tunnel reared its uncanny barrier of bogus night - between them. The dim suggestion of light which remained to them revealed - constrained and motionless figures drawn rigidly away from each other, and - pale averted countenances staring fixedly into the gloom. - </p> - <p> - All at once they were blinking in a flood of sunshine, and drawing welcome - breaths of the new, sweet air which swept through from window to window. - The young man’s gaze, decorously turned to his left, was of a sudden - struck with the panorama as by a blow. He uttered a little cry of delight - to himself, and bent forward with eagerness to grasp as much as he might - of what was offered. The broad, hill-rimmed basin of the Seine; the gray - towers and shining spires of the ancient town; the blue films of smoke - drifting through the autumn haze; the tall black chimneys, the narrow, - high poplars, the splashes of vivid color with which the mighty moving - picture painted itself—all held him, rapt and trembling, with his - face out of the window. - </p> - <p> - Summarily the darkness descended upon them again. He drew back, settled - himself in his seat and recalled the circumstance that he was not alone. - It occurred to him to pull up the window, and then instinctively he turned - to see if she had taken the same precaution on her side. Thus when the - short second tunnel unexpectedly ended, he found himself regarding his - companion with wideeyed and surprised intentness. - </p> - <p> - There were two vacant seats between them, and across this space she - returned his scrutiny for a moment; then with a fine show of calm she - looked away, out through the broad, rounded panes which constituted the - front of the compartment. - </p> - <p> - To the eye of the young man, she was above all things English. Her - garments, her figure, the pose of her head, the consciously competent - repose of her profile, the very angle at which the correct gray hat, with - its fawn-colored ribbon, crossed the line of the brow above—these - spoke loudly to him of the islander. From this fact alone would be - inferred a towering personal pride, and an implacable resentment toward - those who, no matter how innocently and accidentally, offered injury to - that pride. He knew the English well, and it hardly needed this partial - view of her face to tell him that she was very angry. - </p> - <p> - Another young man, under these conditions, might have more frankly asked - himself whether the face was a beautiful one. He was conscious that the - query had taken shape in his mind, but he gave it no attention. It was the - character of the face, instead, which had powerfully impressed him. He - recalled with curious minuteness the details of his first glimpse of it—the - commanding light in the gray eyes, the tightened curves of the lip, the - mantling red on the high, smooth cheek. Was it a pretty face? No—the - question would not propound itself. Prettiness had nothing to do with the - matter. The personality which looked through the face—that was what - affected him. - </p> - <p> - The compartment seemed filled in some subtle way with the effect of this - personality. He looked out of his window again. A beautiful deep valley - lay below him now, with densely wooded hills beyond. The delicate tints of - the waning season enriched the tracery of foliage close at hand; still the - tall chimneys, mixed with poplars, marked the course of the enslaved - river, but the factories themselves were kindly hidden here by dark - growths of thicket in the shadowed depths. - </p> - <p> - It was surpassingly beautiful, but its contemplation left him restless. He - moved about on his seat, partially lowered the window, put it up again and - at last turned his head. - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid that all the charming landscape is on this side,” he made - bold to say. “I will change places with pleasure, if—if you would be - so kind.” - </p> - <p> - “No, thank you,” was her spontaneous and decisive reply. Upon reflection - she added in a more deliberate tone: “I should be obliged if you would - take the view that conversation is not necessary.” - </p> - <p> - Some latent strain of temerity amazed the young man by rising to the - surface of his mind, under the provocation of this rebuff, and shaping his - purpose for him. - </p> - <p> - “It is only fair to myself, first, however,” he with surprise heard - himself declaring, “that I should finish my explanation. You can satisfy - yourself readily at Dieppe that your ticket is for only one seat. It is - very, easy to make errors of that kind when one does not—that is to - say, is not—well, <i>entirely</i> familiar with the language of the - country. As to my own part, you will remember that I came only at the last - moment. I took my coupé seat a half hour before, because I also wished to - be alone, and then I went out to see Jeanne d’Arc’s tower again, and I was - nearly too late. If there had been time, I would have found a seat - elsewhere—but you yourself saw—” - </p> - <p> - “Really, I think no more need be said,” broke in his companion. She looked - him frankly, coldly in the face as she spoke, and her words seemed in his - ears to have metallic edges. “It is plain enough that there was a mistake. - As you have suggested, my French is very faulty indeed, and no doubt the - misunderstanding is entirely my own. So, since it is unavoidable, there - surely need be no more words about it.” - </p> - <p> - She opened a book at this, put her feet out to the stool in front and - ostentatiously disposed herself for deep abstraction in literature. - </p> - <p> - The young man in turn got out some pamphlets and papers from the pockets - of his great-coat, and pretended to divide his attention between these and - the scenery outside. In truth, he did not for a moment get the face of - this girl out of his thoughts. More than ever now, since she had looked - him fully in the eye, it was not a face to be pictured in the brain as - other faces of women had been. The luminous substance of the individuality - behind the face shone out at him from the pages he stared at, and from the - passing vistas of lowland meadows, streams and mill-towns that met his - gaze through the window. - </p> - <p> - He knew so little of women that his mind was quite devoid of materials for - any comparative analysis of the effect she produced upon him. He evolved - for himself, indeed, the conviction that really this was the first woman, - in the genuine and higher meaning of the word, that he had ever met. The - recognition of this brought with it an excitement as novel to him as the - fact itself. Before ever he had seen her, clinging to the coupé door with - her gloved hands and so bravely doing hopeless and tongue-tied battle with - the guard, there had been things which had made this the greatest day of - his life. He was in truth finishing the last stage of a journey into the - unknown, the strange possibilities of which had for a week kept his nerves - on the rack. The curtain of only one more night hung now between him and - the revealed lineaments of destiny. To be alone with his perturbed - thoughts, on this culminating day of anxious hopes and dreads, had been - his controlling idea at Rouen. It was for this that he had bought the - coupé seat, upon the rumor of the station that solitude was thus to be - commanded. And now how extraordinary was the chance! - </p> - <p> - There had stepped into this eventful day, as from the clouds, a stranger - whose mysterious appeal to his imagination seemed more remarkable than all - else combined. - </p> - <p> - He worked this out, painstakingly, with little sidelong glances from time - to time toward where she sat buried in her book, to check the progression - of his reasoning. When he reached the conclusion that she was really - playing this predominant part in the drama of the day, its suggestion of - hysterical folly rather frightened him. He looked with earnestness out of - the window, and even be gan to count the chimneys of the landscape as an - overture to returning sanity. Then he looked less furtively at her and - said to himself with labored plausibility that she was but an ordinary - traveling Englishwoman, scarcely to be differentiated from the - Cook’s-tourist type that he knew so well; she had not even a governess’ - knowledge of French, and there had been nothing in her words and tone with - him to indicate either mental distinction or kindliness of temper. Why - should he bestow so much as another thought upon her? He squared his - slender shoulders, and turned with resolution to his book. - </p> - <p> - A minute later the impossibility of the situation had mastered every fiber - of his brain. He put down the volume, feeling himself to be a fool for - doing so, yet suffering himself with an unheard-of gladness. - </p> - <p> - “If I anger you, I shall be much pained,” he said, with a set face turned - not quite toward her, and a voice that he kept from breaking by constant - effort, “but I am going to England for the first time, and there are some - things that I am very anxious to ask about.” - </p> - <p> - She seemed to reflect a little before she lifted her head. Now again he - was priviledged to look squarely into her face, and he added swiftly to - his store a new impression of her. The ruling characteristic of the - countenance was a certain calm and serious reasonableness. The forehead - was broad and comely; the glance of the eyes was at once alert and steady. - The other features were content to support this controlling upper part of - the face; they made a graceful and fitting frame for the mind which - revealed itself in the eyes and brow—and sought to do no more. - Studying her afresh in this moment of her silence, he recalled the face of - a young Piedmontese bishop who had come once to his school. It had the - same episcopal serenity, the same wistful pride in youth’s conquest of the - things immortal, the same suggestion of intellectuality in its clear - pallor. - </p> - <p> - “I should dislike to seem rude,” she said, slowly. “What is it that you - want to ask?” What was it indeed? He searched confusedly about in his mind - for some one question entitled to precedence among the thousand to which - answers would come in good time. He found nothing better than a query as - to the connection between New Haven and Brighton. - </p> - <p> - “In this little book,” he explained, “there is a time for New Haven and - for London, but I cannot find a mention of Brighton, yet I am expected - there this evening, or perhaps, early to-morrow morning.” - </p> - <p> - “I am sure I cannot tell you,’” she answered. “However, the places are not - far apart. I should say there would certainly be trains.” - </p> - <p> - She lifted the book again as she spoke, and adjusted her shoulders to the - cushions. He made haste to prevent the interview from lapsing. - </p> - <p> - “I have never seen England,” he urged dolefully, “and yet I am all English - in my blood—and in my feelings, too.” - </p> - <p> - A flicker of ironical perception played for an instant in her eye and at - the corner of her lip. “I have heard that a certain class of Americans - adopt that pose,” she remarked. “I dare say it is all right.” - </p> - <p> - He did not grasp her meaning all at once, though the willingness to give - umbrage conveyed in her tone was clear enough. He looked doubtfully at - her, before he spoke again. “Oh,” he began, with hesitation—“yes, I - see—you thought I was American. I am not in the least—I am all - English. And it affects me very much—this thought that in a few - hours now I am to see the real England. I am so excited about it, in - fact,” he added with a deprecatory little laugh, “that I couldn’t bear it - not to talk.” - </p> - <p> - She nodded comprehendingly. “I thought that your accent must be American—since - it certainly isn’t English.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I have too facile an ear,” he answered readily, as if the subject - were by no means new to him. “I pick up every accent that I hear. I have - been much with English people, but even more with Americans and - Australians. I always talk like the last family I have been in—until - I enter another. I am by profession a private tutor—principally in - languages—and so I know my failings in this matter very well.” She - smiled at some passing retrospect. “You must have had an especially - complete sense of my shortcomings as a linguist, too. I have often - wondered what effect my French would produce upon an actual professor, but - I should never have had the courage to experiment, if I had known.” - </p> - <p> - He waved his hand—a pale hand with veined, thin, nervous fingers, - which she looked at in its foreign gesture. “Too much importance is - attached to languages,” he declared. “It is the cheapest and most trivial - of acquirements, if it stands alone, or if it is not put to high uses. - Parents have so often angered me over this: they do not care what is in - their children’s minds and hearts, but only for the polish and form of - what is on their tongues. I have a different feeling about education.” - </p> - <p> - She nodded again, and laid the book aside. “You are coming to a country - where everything will shock you, then,” she said. “I would rather do - scullery work, or break stones by the roadside, than be a schoolteacher in - England.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it’s the same everywhere,” he urged. “I would not think that the - English were worse than the others. They are different, that is all. - Besides, I do not think I shall be a teacher in England. Of course, I - speak in the dark; for a few hours yet everything is uncertain. But as the - old American senator at Monte Carlo used to say, ‘I feel it in my bones’ - that I will not have to teach any more.” - </p> - <p> - The expression of her face seemed somehow not to invite autobiography at - the moment. “The prospect of not having to work any more for one’s - living,” she mused at him—“how curiously fascinating it always is! - We know perfectly well that it is good for us to work, and that we should - be woefully unhappy if we did not work, and yet we are forever charming - our imagination with a vision of complete idleness.” - </p> - <p> - “I would not be idle!” the young man broke forth, enthusiastically. He - leaned forward in his seat, and spoke with eager hands as well as words - against the noise that filled the swaying carriage. “I have that same - feeling—the longing to escape from the dull and foolish tasks I have - to do—but I never say to myself that I would be idle. There are such - a host of things to do in the world that are worth doing! But the men who - have the time and the money, who are in the position to do these things—how - is it, I ask myself, that they never think of doing them? It is the - greatest of marvels to me. Then sometimes I wonder, if the chance and the - power came to me, whether I also would sit down, and fold my hands, and do - nothing. It is hard to say; who can be sure what is in him till he has - been tested? Yet I like to think that I would prove the exception. It is - only natural,” he concluded, smilingly, “that one should try to think as - well as possible of oneself.” - </p> - <p> - The young lady surveyed his nervous, mobile face with thoughtful - impassivity. “You seem to think, one way or another, a good deal about - yourself,” she remarked. - </p> - <p> - He bowed to her, with a certain exaggeration in his show of quite sincere - humility which, she said to herself, had not been learned from his - English-speaking connections. - </p> - <p> - “What you say is very true,” he admitted with candor. “It is my fault—my - failing. I know it only too well.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>My</i> fault is bad manners,” she replied, disarmed by his - self-abasement. “I had no business to say it at all.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no,” he urged. “It is delightful to me that you did say it. I could - not begin to tell you how good your words sounded in my ears. Honest and - wise criticism is what I have not heard before in years. You do not get it - in the South; there is flattery for you, and sneering, and praise as much - too high as blame is too cruel—but no candid, quiet judgments. Oh, I - loved to hear you say that! It was like my brother—my older brother - Salvator. He is in America now. He is the only one who always said the - truth to me. And I am glad, too, because—because it makes you seem - like a friend to me, and I have been so agitated this whole week, so - anxious and upset, and all without a soul to talk to, or advise with—and - the pressure on me has been so great——” - </p> - <p> - He let the wandering sentence lose itself in the clamor of the train, and - put the rest of his meaning into the glance with which he clung to hers. - The appeal for sympathetic kindliness of treatment glowed in his eyes and - shone upon his eager face. - </p> - <p> - She took time for her answer, and when she spoke it was hardly in direct - reply. “Your business in England,” she said, as unconcernedly as might be—“it - is that, I take it, which causes so much anxiety. Fortunately it is soon - to be settled—to-morrow, I think you said.” - </p> - <p> - “I wish I might tell you about it,” he responded with frank fervency. “I - wish it—you cannot imagine how much!” - </p> - <p> - The look with which she received his words recalled to him her earlier - manner. “I’m afraid—” she began, in a measured voice, and then - stopped. Intuition helped him to read in her face the coming of a softer - mood. Finally she smiled a little. “Really, this is all very quaint,” she - said, and the smile crept into her voice. “But the train is slowing down—there - is no time now.” - </p> - <p> - They were indeed moving through the street of a town, at a pace which had - been insensibly lowered while they talked. The irregular outlines of docks - and boat-slips, overhanging greenish water, revealed themselves between - dingy houses covered with signs and posters. At the barriers crossing the - streets were clustered groups of philosophic observers, headed by the - inevitable young soldier with his hands in the pockets of his red - trousers, and flanked by those brown old women in white caps who seem - always to be unoccupied, yet mysteriously do everything that is done. - </p> - <p> - “This is Dieppe, then?” he asked, with a collecting hand put out for his - wraps. - </p> - <p> - The train had halted, and doors were being opened for tickets. - </p> - <p> - “We sit still, here, and go on to the wharf,” she explained. - </p> - <p> - “And then to the boat!” he cried. “How long is it?—the voyage on the - boat, I mean. Three hours and over! Excellent!” - </p> - <p> - She laughed outright as she rose, and got together her books and papers. - </p> - <p> - “I thought you were a Frenchman when I first saw you,” she confided to him - over her shoulder. “But no Frenchman at Dieppe ever yet shouted - ‘Excellent!’ with his face turned toward the New Haven steamers.” - </p> - <p> - The mirth in her tone was so welcome to him that he laughed in turn, - without any clear idea of her words. He gathered her handbag up along with - his own, and when she demurred he offered her gay defiance. - </p> - <p> - “It is the terrible boldness of a timid person,” he prattled, as he helped - her down the steps, “but you must perceive that in the face of it you are - quite helpless. Since I was born, I have never really had my own way - before. But now I begin to believe in my star. After all, one is not an - Englishman for nothing.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it is comparatively easy to be an Englishman in Dieppe,” she made - answer. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER II - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he sky was dappled - azure overhead, the water calm and fresh-hued below. When the ship’s - company had disposed itself, and the vessel was making way outside, there - were numerous long gaps of unpeopled space on the windy side, and to one - of these the young couple tacitly bent their steps. They leaned against - the rail, standing close together, with their faces lifted to the strong - sweet breeze. - </p> - <p> - Viewed thus side by side, it could be seen that of the two the young man - was just perceptibly the taller, but his extreme fragility excused his - companion’s conception of him as a small man. On his head he had pulled - tight for the voyage a little turban of a cap, which accentuated the - foreign note of his features and expression. He was dark of skin and hair, - with deep-brown eyes both larger and softer than is common with his sex, - even in the South. The face, high and regular in shape, had in repose the - careworn effect of maturer years than the boyish figure indicated. In the - animation of discussion this face took on, for the most part, the rather - somber brilliancy of a strenuous earnestness. Now, as it confronted the - stiff Channel wind, it was illumined by the unaccustomed light of a - frivolous mood. The ends of his slight mustache were lifted in a - continuous smile. - </p> - <p> - “It is my gayest day for many, many years,” he told her, after a little - pause in the talk. They had become great friends in this last half-hour. - In the reaction from the questionable restraint of the coupé to the broad, - sunlit freedom of the steamer’s deck, the girl had revealed in generous - measure a side of her temperament for which he had been unprepared. She - had a humorous talent, and, once she had gained a clew to his perceptive - capacities in this direction, it had pleased her to make him laugh by - droll accounts of her experiences and observations in Paris. She had been - there for a fortnight’s holiday, quite by herself, she told him, and there - was something in her tone which rendered it impossible for him to ask - himself if this was at all unusual among English young ladies. His - knowledge of Paris was also that of a stranger, and he followed her - whimsical narrative of blunders and odd mistakes with a zest heightened by - a recollection of his own. - </p> - <p> - “When have I laughed so much before?” he cried now. A long sigh, as of - surprised relief, followed his words. “Well—I had looked forward to - coming in a different spirit to England. With some hopes and a good - courage—yes. But with a merry heart—how could I have foretold - that? It was my good angel who put that coupé ticket into my head, and so - brought me to you. Ah, how angry you were! I see you now, pulling at that - door.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, well,” she said in extenuation, “how could I know? I never dreamed - that the whole coupé was not mine—and when I saw that odious guard - opening the door, to force in some wretched little Continental creature—I - mean, that was my momentary thought—and naturally I—” - </p> - <p> - An involuntary sidelong glance of his eyes upward toward the crown of her - hat, passed mute comment on her unfinished remark. She bit her lip in - self-reproof at sight of the dusky flush on his cheek. - </p> - <p> - “It is the only un-English thing about me,” he said, with a pathetically - proud attempt at a smile. “My father was a tall, big man, and so is my - brother Salvator.” - </p> - <p> - A new consciousness of the susceptibility of this young man to slights and - wounds spread in the girl’s mind. It was so cruelly easy to prick his thin - skin! But it was correspondingly easy to soothe and charm him—and - that was the better part. His character and temperament mapped themselves - out before her mind’s eye. She read him as at once innocent and - complicated. He could be full of confidence in a stranger, like herself, - but his doubts about his own values were distressing. The uneased antennæ - of his self-consciousness were extended in all directions, as if to - solicit injury. She had caught in his brown eyes the suggestion of an - analogy to a friendless spaniel—the capacity for infinite gratitude - united with conviction that only kicks were to be expected. It was more - helpful to liken him to a woman. In the gentle and timid soul of a - convent-bred maiden he nourished the stormy ambitions of a leader of men. - It was a nun who boldly dreamed of commanding on the field of battle. - </p> - <p> - “I had a feeling,” she said to him, so softly that the tone was almost - tender, “that you must be like your mother.” - </p> - <p> - She rightly judged him to be her elder, but for the moment her mood was - absorbingly maternal. “Let us sit down here,” she added, moving toward the - bench facing the rail. “You were going to tell me—about her, was - it?” - </p> - <p> - He spread his rugs over their knees as they sat together in the fresh - wind. - </p> - <p> - “No, it was not so much of her,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “I have much to think about her—not much to put into words. She died - five years ago—nearly six now—and I was so much at school that - I saw very little of her in the latter years. Salvator was with her - always, though, to the end, although he was not her own son. We are - half-brothers, but no one could have been fonder than he was of my mother, - or a better son to her. After she died, he still kept me in school, and - this was curious too, because he hated all my teachers bitterly. Salvator - is fierce against the church, yet he kept me where I had been put years - before, with the Christian Brothers at the Bon Rencontre, in Toulon. When - at last I left them, Salvator took me with him for a period—he is an - expert and a dealer in gems—and then I became a private tutor. Four - years or so of that—and now I am here.” He added, as upon an - afterthought: “You must not think that I failed to love my mother. She was - sweet and good, and very tender to me, and I used to weep a great deal - after I left her, but it was not my fortune to be so much with her as - Salvator was. I think of her, but there is not much to say.” - </p> - <p> - The repetition of this formula suggested no comment to his companion, and - he went on. - </p> - <p> - “The real memory of my childhood is my father, although I saw him only - once. Salvator says I saw him oftener, but if so all the recollections - jumble themselves together in my mind, to make a single impression. I was - five years old; it was in the early summer, in 1875. My father had been - fighting against the Prussians when I was born. By the time I was old - enough to know people, he was away in Spain with Don Carlos. He died - there, of wounds and fever, at Seo de Urgel, in August of that same year, - 1875. But first he came to see us—it would have been in June, I - think—and we were living at Cannes. He had some secret Carlist - business, Salvator says. I knew nothing of that. I know only that I saw - him, and understood very well who he was, and fixed him in my mind so that - I should never, never forget him. How strange a thing it is about - children! I have only the dimmest general idea of how my mother looked - when I was that age; I cannot remember her at all in the odd clothes which - her pictures show she wore then, though I saw them constantly. Yet my - father comes once and I carry his image till Judgment Day.” - </p> - <p> - “Poor mothers!” sighed the girl, under her breath. “No, it was nothing. Go - on.” - </p> - <p> - “I knew that he was a soldier, and that wherever there were wars he went - to have his share of fighting. I suppose it was this which gripped my - imagination, even as a baby. I could read when I was five, and Salvator - had told me about our father’s battles. He had been in the Mutiny in - India, and he was in Sicily against Garibaldi, and he was with the - Austrians four years before I was born, and in the French Foreign Legion - afterward. I think I knew all this when I saw him—and if I did not, - then I feel that I could have learned it from just looking at him. He was - like a statue of War. Ah, how I remember him—the tall, strong, - straight, dark, hardfaced, silent man!” - </p> - <p> - “And you loved <i>him!</i>” commented his companion, with significance. - </p> - <p> - He shook his head smilingly. The analysis in retrospect of his own - childish emotions had a pleasant interest for him. “No; there was no - question of love, at all. For example, he liked Salvator—who was - then a big boy of fifteen—and he took him off to Spain with him when - he left. I cannot remember that he so much as put his hand on my head, or - paid the slightest attention to me. He looked at me in a grave way if I - put myself in front of his eyes, just as he looked at other things, but he - would not turn his eyes to follow me if I moved aside. Do you know that to - my fancy that was superb? I was not in the least jealous of Salvator. I - only said to myself that when I was his age, I also would march to fight - in my father’s battles. And I was proud that he did not bend to me, or put - himself out to please me, this huge, cold-eyed, lion-like father of mine. - If he had ever kissed me I should have been ashamed—for us both. But - nothing was farther from his thoughts. He went away, and at the door he - spoke for the first time in my hearing of me. He twisted his thumb toward - me, where I stood in the shelter of my mother’s skirts. Mind, he’s an - Englishman! he said—and turned on his heel. I have the words in my - ears still. ‘Mind, he’s an Englishman!’” - </p> - <p> - “There <i>is</i> England!” she cried. - </p> - <p> - They stood up, and his eager eye, following the guidance of her finger, - found the faint, broken, thin line of white on the distant water’s edge. - Above it, as if they were a part of it, hung in a figured curtain soft - clouds which were taking on a rosy tint from the declining sun. He gazed - at the remote prospect in silence, but with a quickened breath. - </p> - <p> - “It is the first time that <i>I</i> have seen it like this—coming - toward it, I mean, from somewhere else,” she remarked at last. “I had - never been outside England before.” - </p> - <p> - He did not seem to hear her. With another lingering, clinging gaze at the - white speck, he shook himself a little, and turned. “And now I want to - tell you about this new, wonderful thing—about why I am this minute - within sight of England. You will say it is very strange.” - </p> - <p> - They moved to their bench again, and he spread the wraps once more, but - this time they did not sit quite so close together. It was as if the mere - sight of that pale, respectable slip of land on the horizon had in some - subtle way affected their relation to each other. - </p> - <p> - “A week ago,” he began afresh, “at Nice, a messenger from the Crédit - Lyonnais brought me a note saying they wished to see me at the bank. They - had, it seems, searched for me in several towns along the Riviera, because - I had been moving about. It was demanded that I should prove my identity - by witnesses, and when that was done I was given a sum of money, and a - sealed letter addressed to me, bearing simply my name, Mr. Christian Tower—nothing - more. I hurried outside and read its contents. I was requested to get - together all my papers—” - </p> - <p> - He stopped short, arrested by a sharp, half-stifled exclamation from her - lips. She had continued looking at him after his mention of his name—at - first absent-mindedly, as if something in his talk had sent her thoughts - unconsciously astray; then with lifted head, and brows bent together in - evident concentration upon some new phase of what he had been saying. Now - she interrupted him with visible excitement. - </p> - <p> - “You say Christian Tower!” She pushed the words at him hurriedly. “What - was your father’s name?” - </p> - <p> - “He was always known as Captain Tower, but I have read it in my papers—his - first name was Ambrose.” - </p> - <p> - She had risen to her feet, in evident agitation, and now strode across to - the rail. As he essayed to follow her, she turned, and forced the shadow - of a smile into her lips; her eyes remained frightened. “It is all right,” - she said with a gasping attempt at reassurance. “I was queer for just an - instant; it’s all right. Go on, please. You were to get together your - papers—” - </p> - <p> - “And bring them to Brighton,” he said, much disconcerted. “That is all. - But won’t you sit down?” - </p> - <p> - “I think I would rather stand,” she answered. Her composure was returning, - and with it the power to view altogether, and in their proper relation to - one another, the several elements of the situation his words had revealed - to her. Upon examination, it was curiosity that she felt rather than - personal concern—an astonished and most exigent curiosity. But even - before this, it grew apparent to her as she thought, came her honorable - duty to this young man who had confided in her. - </p> - <p> - “I think I ought to tell you,” she began, beckoning him nearer where she - stood; “yes, you should be told that in all human probability I know the - story. It is impossible that I should be mistaken—two such names - never got together by accident. And I can assure you that the whole thing - is even more extraordinary and astounding than you can possibly imagine. - There are people in England who will curl up like leaves thrown on the - fire when they see you. But for the moment”—she paused, with a - perplexed face and hesitating voice—“go on; tell me a little more. - It isn’t clear to me—how much you know. Don’t be afraid; I will be - entirely frank with you, when you have finished.” - </p> - <p> - He patted the rail nervously with his hand, and stared at her in pained - bewilderment and impatience. “How much do I know?” he faltered vaguely. - “Very little; almost nothing. There was no explanation in the letter. The - bankers said nothing, save that they were to give me a thousand francs. - But one does not get a thousand francs merely because the wind has - changed. There must be a reason for it; and what reason is possible except - that there is some inheritance for me? So I argued it out—to myself. - I have thought of nothing else, awake or asleep, for the whole week.” - </p> - <p> - He halted, with anxious appeal in his eyes, and his hands outspread to - beseech enlightenment from her. She nodded to show that she understood. - “In a minute or two, when I have got it into shape in my mind,” she said - soothingly. “But meantime go on. I want you to talk. What have you done - during the week?” - </p> - <p> - Christian threw his hands outward. - </p> - <p> - “Done?” he asked plaintively. “Murdered time some way or the other. I was - free to move an hour after I had read the letter. The money was more than - I had ever had before. It was intolerable to me—the thought of not - being in motion. In the ‘Indicateur’ I got the times of trains, and I - formed my plan. Avignon I had never seen, and then Le Puy—there was - a wonderful description of it in a magazine I had read—and then to - Paris, and next to Rouen. It was at Rouen that I slept last night. It was - my first night’s good sleep—I had tired myself out so completely. - Always walking with the map in my mind, going from one church to another, - talking to the Suisse, bending back my head to examine capitals and - arches, forcing myself to take an interest in what I saw every little - minute—so I have come somehow through the week. But now here is rich - England within plain sight, and here are you, my new friend—and all - my life I have been so poor and without friends!” - </p> - <p> - He tightened his hand upon the rail, and abruptly turned his face away. - She saw the shine of tears in his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Come and sit down again,” she said, with a sisterly hand on his arm. “I - know how to tell it to you now.” - </p> - <p> - “But you truly know nothing about the Towers—or Torrs—your - father’s family?” she continued, when they were once again seated. “It - sounds incredible! I can hardly realize how you could have lived all these - years and not—but how old are you?” - </p> - <p> - “Twenty-six.” - </p> - <p> - “—And not got some inkling of who—of who your father was?” - </p> - <p> - “My mother never told me. Perhaps she did not know altogether, herself. I - cannot say as to that. And if Salvator knew—that I cannot tell, - either. He is a curious man, my brother Salvator. He talks so you would - think you saw him inside out—but he keeps many things to himself - none the less.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes—that brother of yours,” she said abstractedly. “I have been - thinking about him. But it can’t be that he has any importance in the - game, else the Jews would have sent for him instead of you. They waste no - time,—they make no errors.” - </p> - <p> - “The Jews!” he murmured at her, with no comprehension in his eyes. - </p> - <p> - She smiled. “I have been arranging it in my mind. The thing was like a - black fog to me when you first spoke. I had to search about for a light - before I could make a start. But when I stumbled across the thought, ‘It - is the Jews’ work,’ then it was not very hard to make out the rest. I - could almost tell you who it is that is to meet you at Brighton. It is Mr. - Soman. Is it not?” - </p> - <p> - He assented with an impulsive movement of head and hands. The gaze that he - fixed upon her sparkled with excitement. - </p> - <p> - “He is Lord Julius’ man of business,” she explained to his further - mystification. “No doubt he has had one of those green eyes of his on you - ever since you were a fortnight old. It frightens one to think of it—the - merciless and unerring precision of their system. Is there anything they - <i>don’t</i> know?” - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid of Jews myself,” he faltered, striving to connect himself - with what he dimly perceived of her mood. “But what have they against me? - What can they do to me? I owe nothing; they can’t make me responsible for - what other people, strangers to me, have done, can they? And why should - they give me a thousand francs? It is I,” he finished hopelessly, “I who - am in the black fog. Tell me, I beg you, what is it that they want with - me?” - </p> - <p> - She put a reassuring hand upon his arm, and the steady, genial light in - her calm eyes brought him instantaneous solace. “You have not the - slightest cause for fear,” she told him, gently. “Quite the contrary. They - are not going to hurt you. So far from it, they have taken you up; they - will wrap you in cotton-wool and nurse you as if you were the Koh-i-noor - diamond. You may rest easy, my dear sir; you may close your eyes, and fold - your hands, and lean back against Israel as heavily as you like. It is all - right so far as you are concerned. But the others”—she paused, and - looked seaward with lifted brows and a mouth twisted to express sardonic - comment upon some amazing new outlook—“eye-ee! the others!” - </p> - <p> - “Still you do not tell me!” For the first time she caught in his voice the - hint of a virile, and even an imperious note. Behind the half-petulant - entreaty of the tired boy, there was a man’s spirit of dictation. She - deferred to it unconsciously. - </p> - <p> - “The Lord Julius that I spoke of is—let me see—he is your - great-uncle—your grandfather’s younger brother.” - </p> - <p> - “But if <i>he</i> is a Jew—” began Christian, in an awed whisper. - </p> - <p> - “No—no; he is nothing of the sort. That is to say, he is not Jewish - in blood. But he married a great heiress of the race—whole millions - sterling came to him from the huge fortune of the Aronsons in Holland—and - he likes Jewish people—of the right sort. He is an old man now, and - his son, Emanuel, has immense influence over him. You should see them - sitting together like two love-birds on a perch. They idolize each other, - and they both worship Emanuel’s wife. If they weren’t the two best men in - the world, and if she weren’t the most remarkable woman anywhere, they - would utterly spoil her.” - </p> - <p> - “He—this lord—is my great-uncle,” - </p> - <p> - Christian recalled her to his subject. “He and his son are good men.” - </p> - <p> - “They are the ones I referred to as the Jews. That is how they are spoken - of in the family—to distinguish them from the senior branch—the - sons and grandsons of your grandfather. Fix that distinction in you mind. - There is the elder group, who have titles and miles of mortgaged estates, - no money to speak of and still less brains—” - </p> - <p> - “That is the group that I belong to?” He offered the interruption with a - little twinkle in his eyes. It was patent that his self-possession had - returned. Even this limited and tentative measure of identification with - the most desirable and deep-rooted realities in that wonderful island that - he could see coming nearer to meet him, had sufficed to quell the restless - flutter of his nerves. - </p> - <p> - She nodded with a responsive gleam of sportiveness on her face. “Yes, your - place in it is a very curious one. But first get this clear in your mind—that - the younger group, whom they speak of as the Jews, have money beyond - counting, and have morals and intelligence moreover. Between these two - groups no love is lost. In fact, they hate each other. The difference is - the Christians go about cursing the Jews, whereas the Jews wisely shrug - their shoulders and say nothing. No one suspected that they would <i>do</i> - anything, either—but—oh, this is going to be an awful - business!” - </p> - <p> - He held himself down to a fine semblance of dignified calm. “Tell me - more,” he bade her, with an effect of temperate curiosity. - </p> - <p> - “Now comes tragedy,” she went on, and the hint of sprightliness - disappeared from her face and tone. “It is really one of the most terrible - stories that could be told. There is a very aged man—he must be - nearly ninety—lying at death’s door in his great seat in Shropshire. - He is at death’s door, I said, but he has the strength and will of a - giant, and though he is half paralyzed, half blind, half everything, still - he has his weight against the door, and no one knows how long he can hold - it closed. It is your grandfather that I am speaking of. His name also is - Christian.” - </p> - <p> - The young man nodded gravely. “My father would have fought death that way - too, if they had not shot him to pieces, and heaped fever on top of that,” - he commented. - </p> - <p> - The girl bit her lip and flushed awkwardly for an instant “Let me go on,” - she said then, and hurried forward. “This old man had three sons—not - counting the priest, Lord David, who doesn’t come into the thing. The - first of these sons, also Christian, had three sons, and he and they were - all alive six months ago. They are all dead now, two drowned in their - yacht, one lost in the ‘Castle Drummond,’ one killed in Matabeleland. Lord - David, the priest, the next brother, died last year—childless of - course. There remained in England two sons of another brother who died - some years ago, Lord Edward, and this horrible mowing down of human lives - left them apparently nearest to the very aged man, your grandfather. Do - you follow all that?” - </p> - <p> - “I think I do,” said Christian. “If I don’t I will pick it up afterward. - In mercy’s name, do not stop!” - </p> - <p> - “The Jews, saying nothing, had lost sight of nothing. There was still - another brother who had lived abroad for many years, who died abroad - twenty years ago. You are getting to the climax now. The Jews must have - kept an eye on this wandering cousin of theirs; it is evident they knew he - left a son capable of inheriting, and that they did not let this son - escape from view. Because Lord Ambrose Torr was older than Lord Edward, - his brother, it happens now that the son of that Ambrose—” - </p> - <p> - The young man abruptly rose, and moved along to the rail. He had signified - by a rapid backward gesture of the hand his momentary craving for - solitude; he stretched this hand now slowly, as if unconsciously, toward - the sunset glow on sky and sea, in the heart of which lay imbedded a thick - line of cream-colored cliffs, escalloped under a close covering of soft - olive-hued verdure. The profile of his uplifted face, as he gazed thus - before him into the light, seemed to the eyes of the girl transfigured. - </p> - <p> - He stood thus, rapt and motionless, for minutes, until her mind had time - to formulate the suspicion that this was all intolerable play-acting, and - to dismiss it again as unworthy. Then he returned all at once to her side, - apparently with a shamefaced kind of perception of her thoughts. He was - flushed and uneasy, and shuffled his hands in and out of the pockets of - his great-coat. He did not seat himself, but stood looking down at her. - </p> - <p> - “What is my grandfather?” he asked, with a husky, difficult voice. - </p> - <p> - “The Duke of Glastonbury.” - </p> - <p> - “I do not understand,” he began, hesitatingly; “it is not clear to me - about my father. Why should he—” - </p> - <p> - She rose in turn, with swift decision, as if she had been alertly watching - for the question. “That is what you must not ask me,” she said, hurriedly. - “I think I will move about a little. The wind is colder here. I am getting - chilled.” - </p> - <p> - They strolled about together, conducting a fitful conversation, but as - often gazing in silence at the bulk of the headlands they were - approaching, gray and massive now in the evening light. She answered - freely enough the queries he put, but between these he lapsed into an - abstraction which she respected. More than once he spoke of the - extraordinary confusion into which her story had thrown his thoughts, and - she philosophically replied that she could well understand it. - </p> - <p> - An hour later they had passed the fatuous inspection of the customs - people, and confronted the imminence of leave-taking. Constraint enveloped - them as in a mantle. - </p> - <p> - It occurred suddenly to him to say: “How strange! You possess the most - extraordinary knowledge of me and my—my people, and yet the thought - just comes to me—I have not so much as asked your name.” - </p> - <p> - She smiled at him with a new light in her eyes, half kind, half ironically - roguish. “If I may confess it, there have been times today when I was - annoyed with you for being so persistently and indefatigably interested in - yourself—for never dreaming of wondering, speculating, inquiring - something about me. But that was very weak of me—I see it now—and - very wise of you, because—what does it matter about a nobody like - me?—but next week the whole world will be bearing witness that you - are the most interesting young man in England.” - </p> - <p> - He gave a swift glance down the train toward the guards noisily shutting - the doors. “No, it is too bad,” he said, nervously. “You will always be my - first friend in England—my very deeply prized friend everywhere. I - know you only to-day—but that day is more to me than all the rest of - my life—and it is full of you. They are closing the doors—but - you will tell me? The notion of not seeing you again is ridiculous. You - are in London—yes?—then how do you think I could come to - London without first of all, before everything else, wanting to call upon - you?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I daresay we shall meet again,” she answered, as perforce he stepped - into the compartment. Her smile had a puzzling quality in it—something - compounded, it seemed to him, of both fear and fun. “In a remote kind of - way I am mixed up with the story myself.” - </p> - <p> - There was no time for any hope of further explanation. He put his head out - of the window, and shook hands again. “Remember!” he called out fervently. - “You are my first friend in England. Whenever—whatever I can do—” - </p> - <p> - “Even to the half of your kingdom!” she laughed at him, as the movement of - the carriage drew him past her. - </p> - <p> - The tone of these last words, which he bore away with him, had been gay—almost - jovial. But the girl, when she had watched him pass out of sight, turned - and walked slowly off in the direction of her own train with a white and - troubled face. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER III - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>any builders in - their day have put a hand to the making of Caermere Hall. Though there - were wide differences of race and language among them and though the long - chain of time which binds them together has generations and even centuries - for its links, they seem to have had thus much in common: they were all at - feud with the sunlight. - </p> - <p> - On the very pick of summer days, when the densest thickets of Clune Forest - are alive to the core with moving green reflections of the outer radiance, - and hints of the glory up above pierce their way to the bottom of the - narrowest ravine through which the black Devon churns and frets, somehow - Caermere remains wrapped in its ancient shadows. - </p> - <p> - The first men, in some forgotten time, laid its foundations with no - thought save of the pass at the foot to be defended. Later artificers - reared thick walls upon these foundations, pushed out towered curtains, - sank wells, lifted the keep, cut slits of corner windows or crowned the - fabric with new turrets for watchmen, each after the need or fashion of - his age, but all with minds single to the idea of blocking the path that - Caermere overhung. In due time came the breath of the king’s peace, - blowing equably over the vexed marches, albeit loaded with the scent of - gunpowder, and my lords slowly put aside their iron harness for silken - jackets, and unslung the herses in their gateways. Men of skill set now - about the task of expanding the turfed spaces within the inclosure, of - spreading terraces and forming gardens, of turning stone chambers into - dames’ apartments, and sullen guard-rooms into banquet-halls. Their - grandsons, in turn, pulled down even more than they erected; where the - mightiest walls had shouldered their huge bulk, these men of Elizabeth and - James left thin façades of brickwork, and beams of oak set in a trivial - plaster casing. The old barbican was not broad enough to span their new - roadway, stretching to the valley below over the track of the former - military path, and they blew it up; the pleasure-ground, which they - extended by moving far backward the wall of the tilting yard, was bare of - aspect to their eye, and they planted it with yews and, later, with cedars - from the Lebanon. - </p> - <p> - Through all these changes, Caermere remained upon its three sides shadowed - by great hills, and the thought of making wide windows in the walls on the - open fourth side came to no one. When at last, in the earlier Georgian - time, the venerable piles of bastioned masonry here were replaced by a - feebly polite front of lath and stucco, windows were indeed cut to the - very floor, in the French style, but meanwhile the trees had grown into a - high screen against the sky, and it was not in the Torr blood to level - timber. - </p> - <p> - When a house and family have lived together for a thousand years, it is - but reasonable that they should have come to an understanding with each - other. Was Caermere dark because the mood of the Torrs, its makers and - masters, had from the dawn of things been saturnine? Or did the Torrs owe - their historic gloom and dourness of temperament to the influence of this - somber cradle of their race? There is record of the query having been put, - in a spirit of banter, by a gentleman who rode over Clune bridge in the - train of King John. Of convincing answer there is none to this latest day. - The Torrs are a dark folk, and Caermere is a dark house. They belong to - one another and that is all. - </p> - <p> - Thus, on the first morning of October, a gray and overcast morning even on - the hilltops, and though it was past the half-hour towards nine, there was - barely light enough to see one’s way about by in the big breakfast-room. - </p> - <p> - A tall young man in rough, light-brown clothes stood at one of the - windows, drumming idly on the glass and staring at the black cedars beyond - the lawn. At intervals he whistled under his breath, in a sulky fashion, - some primitive snatches of an unknown tune. Once or twice he yawned, and - then struck a vicious ring from the panes with his hard nails, in - protesting comment upon his boredom. - </p> - <p> - About the large fireplace behind him were dishes huddled for heat, and - their metallic gleam in the flicker of the flames was repeated farther - away in the points of red on the plate and glass of the long breakfast - table spread in the center of the room. From time to time a white-faced - youngster in livery entered the room, performed some mysterious service at - the hearth or the table in the dim twilight and went out again. - </p> - <p> - The man at the window paid no heed to the goings and comings of the - servant, but when the door opened presently and another tweed-clad figure - entered, his ear told him the difference on the instant, and he half - turned his head. - </p> - <p> - “In God’s name, what are you all doing?” he growled angrily. “I said eight—you - heard me!—sharp eight!” - </p> - <p> - “What <i>does</i> it matter?” protested the newcomer, stooping at the - fire-place to lift the covers from the dishes in a languid inspection of - their contents. He yawned as he spoke. “If you won’t let fellows go to bed - till four, how the devil do you expect them to be down at eight?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, is that you, Pirie?” said the man at the window. “I thought it was my - brother.” The other stood for a moment, with his back to the fire. Then he - lounged to the window, stretching his arms as he moved. He also was tall, - but with a scattering of gray in his hair. - </p> - <p> - “Beastly black morning,” he commented in drowsy tones, after a prolonged - observation of the prospect. “Might as well stopped in bed.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, go back then!” snapped the other. “I didn’t make the rotten - weather, did I?” This was wanton ill-temper. The elder man also began - drumming with his nails on the window. “Turn it up, Eddy,” he - remonstrated, smoothly enough, but with a latent snarl in his tone. “I - don’t like it.” - </p> - <p> - The younger man moved his head, as if he would have looked his companion - in the face. Then he stared away again, out of the window. - </p> - <p> - “Beaters been waitin’ half an hour already,” he grumbled, sulkily. “What’s - the good of makin’ a time if you don’t keep it?” - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t make any time,” responded Major Pirie with curtness. Upon - reflection, he added: “What does it matter about the beaters?” - </p> - <p> - There seemed no answer to this, and for several minutes nothing was said. - Finally the younger man thought of something. “I say,” he began, and after - an instant’s pause went on: “It’d suit me better not to be called ‘Eddy’ - among the men, d’ye see? That fellow Burlington began it last night—he - got it from you—and I don’t like it. When we’re alone, of course, - that’s different.” - </p> - <p> - Major Pirie laughed—a dry, brief, harsh laugh—and swung around - on his heels. “Your man didn’t get those sausages I asked for, after all,” - he remarked, going back to the dishes at the fender. - </p> - <p> - “Probably couldn’t,” said Mr. Edward, “or else,” he added, “wouldn’t. I - never saw such a houseful of brutes and duffers. I’m keen to shunt the lot - of ‘em, and they know it, the beggars. You’d think they’d try to suck up - to me, but they don’t, they haven’t got brains enough.” - </p> - <p> - The major had brought a plate from the table, and was filling it from - under the covers on the hearth. “Shall I ring for the tea?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Edward moved across to the chimney corner and pulled the cord himself. - “Do you know what that old ass, Barlow—the butler, you know—had - the face to say to me yesterday? ‘I’—God, you couldn’t believe it! - ‘I ’ope, sir,’ he says, ‘you’ll think better of shootin’ on the - First, for His Grace’ll hear the guns in the covers, and it won’t do His - Grace no good.’ Fancy the beggar’s cheek!” - </p> - <p> - “Well, do you know, Torr,” said Major Pirie, slowly, speaking with his - mouth full but contriving to give a significantly nice emphasis to the - name, “I was thinkin’ much the same myself. For that matter, several of - the fellows were mentionin’ it. It doesn’t look quite the thing, you - know.” - </p> - <p> - The entrance of the servant created an interval of silence, during which - Mr. Edward in his turn rummaged among the dishes before the fire. - </p> - <p> - “It’s Gus, is it?” he demanded, from where he knelt on one knee, plate in - hand. - </p> - <p> - “He thought it would be funny to queer my game, eh?” - </p> - <p> - “Your brother hasn’t said a word, so far’s I know,” replied the major, - pouring his tea. “It was merely some of the fellows, talkin’.” - </p> - <p> - “God Almighty!” cried Mr. Edward, springing to his feet. “Here’s a - precious outfit of pals for you! You come down here, so help me—” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t say ‘you’; say ‘they,’ if you’ve got to say anything,” interposed - the major, quietly. - </p> - <p> - “Well, they, then,” the other went on, in loud heat. “They come down here, - and take my mounts, by God; they drink my wine, they win my money, they - drain me dry—and then they go behind my back and whisper to one - another that I’m an outsider. And you too, Pirie,” he continued, with - defiance and deprecation mingled in his tone, “you admit yourself that you - talked with them.” - </p> - <p> - “My dear Torr,” replied the major, “it’s a mistake for you to turn out so - early. You’ve tried to quarrel before breakfast every day I’ve been here. - It’s the worst morning temper I ever heard of in my life. You ought to - have tea and eggs and things brought to you in your room, and not show - yourself for at least two hours afterward—you really ought. It isn’t - fair to your friends.” - </p> - <p> - The door opened and still another tall man came in. He nodded to Pirie as - he passed him, with a tolerant “Well, major,” and went straight to the - dishes by the fire. - </p> - <p> - “Pirie’s got it into his head we oughtn’t to shoot to-day, Gus,” said Mr. - Edward. - </p> - <p> - The other rose with a dish in his hands. - </p> - <p> - “It <i>is</i> dark,” he assented, glancing toward the window. “Afraid of - pottin’ a beater, major?” - </p> - <p> - “No—it’s about the duke,” explained Edward. “It seems some of the - fellows funk the thing—they think he’ll hear the guns—they - want to go to church instead, or something of that sort.” - </p> - <p> - Augustine Torr, M.P., looked at his brother inquiringly. The tie of blood - between them was obvious enough. They were both slender as well as tall; - their small round heads merging indistinguishably behind into flat, broad - necks, seemed identical in contour; they had the same light coarse hair, - the same florid skins, even the same little yellow mustaches. The - differences were harder to seek. Edward, though he had borne Her Majesty’s - commission for some years, was not so well set up about the shoulders as - his younger and civilian brother. Augustine, on the other hand, despite - his confident carriage of himself, produced the effect of being Edward’s - inferior in simple force of character. It was at once to his credit and - his disparagement that he had the more amiable nature of the two. - </p> - <p> - “How do you mean—the duke?” he asked. “Is there a change?” - </p> - <p> - Edward put out his closed lips a little, and shook his head. Major Pirie - sprinkled salt on his muffin while he explained. - </p> - <p> - “All there is of it is this,” he said. “There was just an idea that with - the—with your grandfather—dyin’ in the house—it might - look a little better to give the first the go-by. Nobody’d have a word to - say against shootin’ to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, but what the hell”—Augustine groped his way with hesitancy—“I - don’t understand—we’ve been shootin’ partridges for a month, and how - are pheasants any different? And as for the duke—why, of course - one’s sorry and all that—but he’s been dyin’ since June, and the - birds have some rights—or rather, I should say—what I mean is—” - </p> - <p> - “That’s what I said,” put in Edward, to cover the collapse of his - brother’s argument. - </p> - <p> - Major Pirie frowned a little. “Partridges are another matter,” he said - testily. - </p> - <p> - “Damned if I know what you’re driving at,” avowed Augustine. He paused - with fork in air at his own words. “Drivin’ at,” he repeated - painstakingly. “Drivin’ at pheasants, eh? Not bad, you know. Pass the - mustard, Pirie.” - </p> - <p> - “God!” said the major, with gloom. “You know well enough what I mean. To - work through fields miles off—that’s one thing. To shoot the covers - here under the duke’s nose, with the beaters messin’ about—that’s - quite another. However that’s your affair, not mine.” - </p> - <p> - “But don’t you see,” urged Augustine, “what difference does a day make? - There’ll be just as much racket to-morrow as to-day. It isn’t reasonable, - you know.” - </p> - <p> - “It was merely what you might call a sentiment,” said the major, in the - half apologetic tone of a man admitting defeat. He looked the least - sentimental of warriors as he went on with his breakfast—a - longfaced, weather-beaten, dull-eyed man of the late forties. - </p> - <p> - Four other men who came in now at brief intervals, with few or no words of - salutation to the company, and who lounged about helping themselves to - what caught their fancy in the breakfast, were equally removed from the - suspicion of adding a sentimental element to the atmosphere. They made - little talk of any kind, and no mention whatever of that absurd qualm - about the First which had been reported to have germinated among them. - </p> - <p> - Edward had reached the stage of filling his pipe. Walking to the mantel - for a light, it occurred to him to ring the bell first. “Her ladyship - breakfastin’ in her room?” he asked the youngster who answered the - summons. - </p> - <p> - “Her ladyship’s woman has just gone up with it, sir,” he replied. - </p> - <p> - “<i>That’s</i> all right,” said Edward, and forthwith struck the match. - “Send in Davis and Morton to me, and ask Barlow for those Brazilian cigars - of mine—the small huntin’ ones. What wheels were those I heard on - the gravel? If it’s the traps we shan’t want them to-day. We’re walkin’ - across.” - </p> - <p> - “I will make inquiries, sir,” said the domestic, and went out. - </p> - <p> - The room had brightened perceptibly, and Captain Edward was in a better - temper. He moved over to the sideboard and filled a pocket-flask from one - of the decanters in the old-fashioned case. As an afterthought, he also - filled a small glass, and gulped its contents neat. “We’re off in ten - minutes now,” he called out to the men about the table, some of whom had - already lit their pipes. “What do you fellows want to take with you? My - tip is this rum.” - </p> - <p> - “Hardly cold enough for rum, is it?” asked one, drifting languidly toward - the sideboard. Most of the others had risen to their feet. - </p> - <p> - A slender, sad-faced, gentlemanly-looking old man in evening clothes had - entered the room, and stood now at Captain Edward’s elbow and touched it - with his hand. “I—beg—your—pardon—sir,” he said, - in the conventional phrase. - </p> - <p> - Edward, listening to what a companion was saying, turned absent-mindedly - to the butler. Then he happened to remember something. “Damn you, Barlow, - you get duller every day!” he snapped. “You know perfectly well what - cigars I take out of doors!” - </p> - <p> - “I—beg—your—pardon—sir,” repeated the elderly - person. He spoke in a confidential murmur. “I thought you would like to - know, sir—Lord Julius has come.” - </p> - <p> - The young man looked at him, silently revolving the intelligence, a - puzzled frown between his pale brows. A furtive something in the butler’s - composed expression struck him. “What of it?” he demanded, angrily. “What - are you whispering for? He’s old enough to take care of himself, isn’t - he?” - </p> - <p> - The butler thrust out his dry underlip a trifle. “I thought you would like - to know, sir,” he reiterated. - </p> - <p> - “Well, you’re wrong. I don’t like to know!” The man’s tone—an - indefinable, lurking suggestiveness in his face and eyes and voice—vexed - Mr. Edward exceedingly. It annoyed him still more to note that his - companions had tacitly turned their backs, and were affecting great - preoccupation in something else. - </p> - <p> - He kept a wrathful eye on Barlow, as the latter bowed, turned, moved to - the door and opened it. Of course, a man musn’t slang servants, his - irritated thought ran, but the covert impertinence in this old menial’s - manner was something no longer to be borne. The impulse to call the - elderly fool back and send him packing on the instant, tingled hotly in - the young man’s blood. He even opened his lips to speak, but reflection - checked his tongue. It would be bad form, for one thing; for another, - perhaps he was not quite in the position to dismiss his grandfather’s - servants. He would speak to Welldon, the estate steward, instead—a - sensible and civil man, by the way, who seemed to know which side his - bread was buttered on. At the merest hint from the heir, Welldon would - give Barlow the sack, and that would teach the rest a lesson. But all this - would keep until Lord Julius had gone. Being an aged duffer himself, he - would probably side with Barlow—and there was no point in offending - Lord Julius. Very much to the contrary, indeed. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Edward’s meditations, unwontedly facile in their movements for him, - had reached this point, when his mind reverted to the fact that he was - still regarding the back of Barlow, who, instead of going out, stood - holding the door open, his lean figure poised in ceremonious expectancy. - Even as the surprised Edward continued looking, the butler made a staid - obeisance. - </p> - <p> - A stalwart, erect, burly old gentleman came in, and halted just over the - threshold to look about him. He had the carriage, dress and general aspect - of a prosperous and opinionated farmer. The suggestion of acres and crops - was peculiarly marked in the broad, low soft hat on his head, and in the - great white beard which spread fan-wise over his ample breast. He had the - face of one who had spent a life in commanding others, and had learned - meanwhile to master himself—a frank, high-featured, ruddy face, with - a conspicuously prominent and well-curved nose, and steady, confident - eyes. He folded his hands over his stick and, holding his head well back, - glanced about the room at his ease. It was a glance from which the various - eyes that it encountered somehow turned away. - </p> - <p> - “How-do, Eddy? How-do, Gus?” the newcomer said impassively to the two - young men who, with palpable constraint, came up to greet him. He shook - hands with each, but seemed more interested in viewing the company at - large. His appearance had produced a visible effect of numbness upon the - group of guests, but he seemed not to mind this. - </p> - <p> - “Quite a party!” he observed. His voice was full and robust, and not - unamiable. “All military?” - </p> - <p> - Edward nodded. “All but Gus, here. Glad to introduce ’em, if you - like,” he murmured, with a kind of sullen deference. - </p> - <p> - “Presently, presently,” said Lord Julius, with an effect of heartiness at - which Edward lifted his head. - </p> - <p> - “Drive over from Clune this morning?” the young man asked. “Then you’ll - want breakfast. Ring the bell, Gus. We’re just starting for the Mere - copse. Glad to have you make an eighth gun, if you’ll come to us after - you’ve eaten. You still shoot, don’t you?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, I still shoot,” said the other. - </p> - <p> - Edward had a sense of embarrassment at his great-uncle’s immobility in the - doorway. “Well, we’ll get along to the gun-room now,” he said to the - others. Then to Lord Julius he remarked with an air of making - conversation, “I always say to the fellows that I ask nothing better in - this world than to be as fit as you are when I’m your age. Let’s see, - seventy-six, isn’t it?” - </p> - <p> - The elder man nodded. “I’m sure that’s a modest enough ambition,” he - observed. His steady gray eyes dallied with the young man’s countenance - for a moment. “I’m relieved to learn that you want nothing more than - that.” - </p> - <p> - Edward looked up swiftly, and braved an instant’s piercing scrutiny of the - other’s face. Then he laughed, uneasily. “Oh, I want a few other things, - too.” - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius lowered his voice. “I would put among your wants a trifling - matter of good taste, Eddy,” he said, not unkindly. - </p> - <p> - Captain Edward flushed. “If I could see that it really made any difference - between the First and the Second,” he answered with dogged civility, “I - wouldn’t shoot until tomorrow. If you’re keen about it now, I’ll—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, damn your First and Second,” broke in the old man, keeping his voice - down below the hearing of the others, but letting impatience glow in his - eyes; “you had no business bringing these men here at all. No—I see - that you don’t understand me. You needn’t explain. It’s entirely a - question of feeling.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m sorry you take that view of it, sir,” said Edward, gloomily. “You - know that I’m willing enough to meet your views—if only—if - only because I’m going to need your help.” Lord Julius gave a snort of - contemptuous laughter, and nodded to himself with lifted brows. “Really - something in the way of consideration is due to such frankness as that,” - he said, with a pretense of reverie. “Send your friends out of the room, - Eddy,” he went on, more gently—“make what excuse you like—or - take them out and come back to me—that’s better. I did intend to - have no secrets from them, but I’ve relented. And yes—by the way—instead - of coming here—you’ll find me in the small morning room I will - breakfast there. You’ve filled this room with smoke.” - </p> - <p> - “Would you—would you mind my bringing Gus?” Edward asked, - doubtfully. - </p> - <p> - The other thought for an instant. “Oh, yes, Gus may come,” he said, and - with that left the room. - </p> - <p> - “Rum old beggar, isn’t he?” said Augustine to the company, with the sense - that something had to be said. - </p> - <p> - “Gad! he seemed to think he was in a synagogue!” laughed Captain - Burlington. “Kept his hat on, you know,” he explained in the next breath - to the surprised and attentive faces about him. - </p> - <p> - “But he isn’t a Jew,” said one of the others with gravity. “He married - one, but that doesn’t make him one, you know.” - </p> - <p> - “It was a joke! Can’t you see a joke?” protested Burlington. - </p> - <p> - “Well, I don’t think much of it,” growled Edward, sourly. “Come along to - the gunroom.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - “What’s up?” asked Mr. Augustine, in an anxious murmur, a few minutes - later, as the two brothers walked along the wide central hallway toward - the appointed place. - </p> - <p> - “Can’t think for the life of me,” replied Edward. “Unless Craven babbled - about the baccarat when he got up to town. He’s rather that sort, you - know. He kicked about the stakes at the time.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes—after he’d been hit,” said Augustine. “But if it’s only that, - you’ll be an ass to let the old man rot you about it. Just stand up to - him, and let him see you feel your position.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s all right,” rejoined Edward, dubiously, “but what’s the position - without money? If anybody could have foreseen what was going to happen—damn - it all, I could have married as much as I needed. But as it is, I’ve got - Cora on my back, and the kid, and—my God! fancy doing the duke on - four thou, a year net! Welldon tells me it can’t be screwed a bit above - that. Well, then, how can I afford to cheek Julius? When you come to that - he isn’t half a bad sort, you know. He stood my marriage awfully well. - Gad, you know, we couldn’t have lived if he hadn’t drawn a check.” - </p> - <p> - “Let us hope he’ll draw another,” said Augustine. “It’s bad enough to be a - pauper duke, but it’s a bailey sight worse to be his brother.” - </p> - <p> - “What rot!” said Edward. “My kid’s a girl, and you’re free to marry.” - </p> - <p> - They had come to the door of the morning room. It stood ajar, and Edward - pushed it open. Before the fireplace was visible the expected bulk and - vast beard of Lord Julius, but the eyes of the brothers intuitively - wandered to the window beyond, against which was outlined the figure of a - much smaller man. - </p> - <p> - “Secretary,” whispered the quicker-minded Augustine out of the corner of - his mouth as they advanced. The thought brought them a tempered kind of - comfort. The same instinct which had prompted Edward to crave his - brother’s support led them both to welcome the presence of a fourth party. - </p> - <p> - They looked again toward the stranger, and Lord Julius, as he caught their - returning glance, smiled and nodded significantly. “Come here, Christian!” - he said, and the brothers saw now that it was a slender young man with a - dark, fine face and foreign-looking eyes who moved toward them. - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Christian,” he said, - and gave his full voice a new note of gravity, “these are your two - cousins, Mr. Edward Torr, a captain in the Hussars until recently, and Mr. - Augustine Torr, a member of Parliament. Your coming will make some - difference in their affairs, but I know that you will be good to them.” - </p> - <p> - The brothers had shaken hands with the new-comer automatically, while - their minds were in the first stage of wonderment as to what the words - being spoken about him meant. Now that silence fell, they stared slowly at - him, at their great-uncle, at each other. - </p> - <p> - “How—cousin?” Edward managed to ask. He spoke as if his tongue - filled his mouth. - </p> - <p> - “The son of your uncle, Lord Ambrose Torr,” the old man made quiet, - carefully distinct answer. - </p> - <p> - Another period of silence ensued, until Christian turned abruptly. “It is - very painful to me,” he said hurriedly to the old man, and walked to the - window. - </p> - <p> - “It is painful to everybody,” said Lord Julius. - </p> - <p> - “Not so damned particularly painful to you, sir, I should say,” put in - Edward, looking his great-uncle in the face. The young man had slowly - pulled himself together, and one could see the muscles of his neck being - stiffened to keep his chin well in the air. His blue eyes had the effect - of summoning all their resources of pride to gaze with dignity into the - muzzle of a machine-gun. - </p> - <p> - Augustine was less secure in the control of his nerves. He stood a little - behind his brother, and the elbow which he braced against him for support - trembled. His eyes wandered about the room, and he moistened his lips with - his tongue several times before he contrived to whisper something into - Edward’s ear. The latter received the suggestion, whatever it was, with an - impatient shake of the head. - </p> - <p> - “You scarcely do me justice,” said Lord Julius, quietly, “but that’s not - worth mentioning at the moment. I must say you are taking it very well—much - better than I expected.” - </p> - <p> - Edward squared his shoulders still more. “I wouldn’t say that we’re takin’ - it at all,” he replied, with studied deliberation. “You offer it, d’ye see—but - it doesn’t follow that we take it. You come and bring this young fellow—this - young gentleman, and you tell me that he is Ambrose’s son. What good is - that to me? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Ambrose may have had twenty sons, - for all I know. I should be sorry to be one of them—but they’re not - to blame for that. I don’t mind being civil to them—if they come to - me in the right spirit—” He stopped abruptly, and listened with a - frown to more whispering from Augustine. - </p> - <p> - “You don’t seem to understand, Eddy—” began Lord Julius. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, perfectly!” broke in the young man. “I had an uncle who had to leave - England before I was born. His name couldn’t even be mentioned in the - family—but I know all about him. God knows I’ve had him flung in my - face often enough.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t let us go into that,” urged Lord Julius, softly, and with a - sidelong nod toward the window. “It’s needless cruelty to other people—and - surely we can discuss this like gentlemen. You are really behaving - splendidly, Eddy.” - </p> - <p> - “God! he thought we were cads!” cried Edward, in husky indignation. - </p> - <p> - “No—no—no—no,” murmured the older man, soothingly. “I - only want you to grasp the thing as it is. You know me. You do not regard - me as a foolish person who goes off half-cock. Well, I tell you that - Christian here is the son of my nephew Ambrose, born in lawful wedlock, - and that there is not a shadow of doubt about it. The proofs are all open - to your inspection; there is not a flaw in them. And so I say to you, in - all kindness—take it calmly and sensibly and like a gentleman. It is - to your own interest to do so, as well. If you think, you will see that.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s what I’ve been telling him,” said Augustine, strenuously, from - behind his brother’s shoulder. - </p> - <p> - A faint smile fluttered about the old man’s eyelids. “It was the advice of - a born statesman,” he said, dryly. “You are the political hope of the - family.” - </p> - <p> - The stiffening had melted from Edward’s neck and shoulders. He turned - irresolutely now, and looked at the floor. “Of course I admit nothing; I - reserve all my rights, till my lawyers have satisfied themselves,” he said - in a worn, depressed mutter. - </p> - <p> - “Why, naturally,” responded Lord Julius, with relieved cordiality. “And - now please me—do it all handsomely to the end—come and shake - hands again with Christian, both of you.” - </p> - <p> - The brothers stood for a hesitating instant, then turned toward the window - and began a movement of reluctant assent. - </p> - <p> - To the surprise of all three, Christian forestalled their approach by - wrenching open one half of the tall window, and putting a foot over the - sill to the lawn outside. - </p> - <p> - “If you will excuse me,” he said, in his nervous, high voice, “I am taking - a little walk.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">U</span>pon the garden - side of Caermere is a very large conservatory, built nearly fifty years - ago, at the close of the life of the last duchess. The poor lady left no - other mark of her meek existence upon the buildings, and it was thought at - the time that she would never have ventured upon even this, had it not - been that every one was mad for the moment about the wonderful palace of - glass reared in London for the First Exhibition. - </p> - <p> - In area and height, and in the spacious pretensions of its dome, the - structure still suggests irresistibly the period of its inception. It is - as ambitious as it is self-conscious; its shining respectability remains - superior to all the wiles of climbers and creeping vines. The older - servants cherish traditions of “Her Grace’s glass,” as it used to be - called. She had the work begun on her fortieth birthday, and precisely a - year later it happened that she was wheeled in from the big morning room, - and left at her own desire to recline in solitude under the palms beneath - the dome, and that when they went to her at last she was dead. The - circumstance that Shakespeare is supposed also to have died on the - anniversary of his birth, has somehow come to be an integral part of the - story, as it is kept alive now in the humbler parts of the Caermere - household, but the duchess had nothing else in common with the poet. The - very face of her, in her maturer years, is but dimly remembered. The - portrait in the library is of a young Lady Clarissa, with pale ringlets - and a childishly sweet countenance, and clad in the formal quaintness of - the last year of King George the Fourth. She became the duchess, but in - turn the duchess, seemed to become somebody else. That was the way with - the brides brought home to Caermere. The pictures in the library show them - all girlish, and innocently pretty, and for the most part fair-haired. - Happily there is no painted record of what they were like when, still in - middle life, they bade a last goodbye to the dark-skinned, big-shouldered - sons they had borne, and perhaps made a little moan that no daughters were - ever given to mothers at Caermere, and turned their sad faces to the wall. - </p> - <p> - The crystal house had memories of another and more recent mistress, the - countess. She had come six years after the other went, she had lived for - twelve years—a silent, colorless, gently unhappy life—and then - had faded away out of sight. It was this Lady Porlock who had caused the - orchid houses to be built at the inner side of the conservatory, and it - was in her time, too, that the gifted Cheltnam was fetched from her own - father’s house in Berkshire to be head gardener at Caermere. Her fame is - indeed irrevocably linked with his, for the tea-rose of his breeding, - bearing her maiden-name of the Hon. Florence Denson, is scarcely less well - known than this hybrid sweet-briar the Countess of Porlock. - </p> - <p> - And now, in the third generation, still another lady had for some years - enjoyed special property rights in this great glass apartment. - </p> - <p> - Lady Cressage came into the conservatory from the large morning room, with - a large volume in her hand, and an irresolute look on her face. She - glanced about at the several couches piled with cushions and furs, at an - easy-chair beyond—and yawned slightly. Then she wandered over to a - row of early chrysanthemums, and, putting the book under her arm, occupied - herself with the destruction of a few tiny beginnings of buds in the lower - foliage. In this she employed as pincers the delicately tinted nails of a - very shapely finger and thumb, and at the sign of some slight - discoloration of these she stopped the work. From a glance at the nails, - she went to a musing scrutiny of this whole right hand of hers, holding it - up, and turning it from one composition of graceful curves to another. It - had been called the most beautiful hand in England, but this morning its - owner, upon a brief and rather listless inspection of its charms, yawned - again. Finally she seated herself in the chair and, after a languid search - for the place in her book, began to read. - </p> - <p> - Half reclining thus, with the equable and shadowless light of the glass - house about her, the young widow made a picture curiously different from - any in the library within. All the dead and gone brides of the Torrs had - been painted in bright attire; Lady Cressage wore a belted gown of black - cloth, unrelieved save by a softened line of white at the throat and - wrists. The others, without exception, had signified by elaborate - hair-dressing not less than by dutifully vacuous facial expressions, their - comprehension of the requirements of the place they had been called upon - to fill; Lady Cressage’s bistre hair was gathered in careless fashion to a - loose knot at the back of the head, and in her exquisitely modeled face - there was no hint whatever of docility or awed submission to any external - claims. The profile of this countenance, outlined for the moment against a - cluster of vividly purple pleroma blossoms, had the delicacy of a rare - flower, but it conveyed also the impression of resolute and enduring - force. If the dome above could have generated voices of its own, these - would have murmured to one another that here at last was a woman whom - Caermere could not break or even easily bend. - </p> - <p> - In the season of 1892, London had heard a good deal of this lady. She was - unknown before, and of her belongings people to this day knew and cared - very little. There was a General Kervick enumerated in the retired list, - who had vegetated into promotion in some obscure corner of India, and now - led an equally inconspicuous existence somewhere in the suburbs—or - was it in West Kensington? He had never belonged to a service club, but an - occasional man encountered him once in a while at the Oriental, where he - was supposed by the waiters to have an exceptional knowledge of peppers - and chutneys. The name of his wife had been vaguely associated with - charitable committees, or subscription committees, and here and there some - one remembered having heard that she was distantly related to somebody. - The elder Kervicks never secured a much more definite place in London’s - regard—even after this remarkable daughter had risen like a planet - to dim the fixed stars of the season. - </p> - <p> - The credit for having discovered and launched Miss Kervick came generally - to be ascribed to Lady Selton, but perhaps this turned upon the fact that - she lent her house in Park Lane for the culminating scene in the - spectacular triumph of that young person. No doubt there were others who - would have placed still bigger houses at the disposal of a bride whose - wedding was, in many respects, the most interesting of the year, and some - of these may have had as good a claim to the privilege as Lady Selton. As - matters turned out, however, they were given no cause to repine. The - marriage was not a success, and within one short year Lady Selton herself - had grown a little shy about assuming responsibility for it. A year later - she was quite prepared to repudiate all share in it, and after that people - ceased to remember about it all, until the shock of the tragedy came to - stir polite London into startled whisperings. - </p> - <p> - Hardly within the memory of living folk had a family been dealt such a - swift succession of deadly blows as these which were rained upon the Torrs - in the first half of 1896. - </p> - <p> - The Earl of Porlock had been the heir of dukedom since most people could - remember, and had got himself called to the House of Lords in his own - right, apparently as a kind of protest against his father’s unconscionable - longevity, at least a dozen years before his own end came. It was not to - be supposed that he desired a peerage for any other reason, since he had - never chosen to seek a seat in the House of Commons, and indeed, save upon - one occasion connected with ground game, made no use whatever of his - legislative powers after they had been given to him. He cared nothing for - politics, and read scarcely more in newspapers than in books. Up to middle - life, he had displayed a certain tendency toward interest in fat stock and - a limited number of allied agricultural topics, but the decline in farming - values had turned him from this. In his earlier years, too, he had enjoyed - being identified with the sporting set of his class in London, and about - the racing circuit, but this association he also dropped out of as he grew - older, partly because late nights bored him, partly because he could no - longer afford to jeopardize any portion of his income. He came at last to - think of his mastership of hounds as his principal tie to existence on - land. He liked it all, from the sailing sweep over the highest barrier in - an exceptionally rough country, to the smell of the kennels of an early - morning across the frozen yards. This life with the horses and dogs, and - with the people who belonged to the horses and dogs, offered fewer - temptations to the evil temper in his blood than any other, and with - growing years his dislike for the wear and tear of getting angry had - become a controlling instinct. He continued to use bad language with an - appropriate show of fervency, when occasion required, but he had got out - of the way of scalding himself with rage inside. He even achieved a grim - sort of jocularity toward the close. In the last year of his life a - tenant-farmer, speaking to a toast, affirmed of him that “a truer - sportsman, nor yet a more humorous and affable nobleman, has never taken - the chair at a puppy-walk luncheon within my recollection,” and this - tribute to his geniality both pleased and impressed the earl. He was then - in his sixty-second year, and he might have lived into a mellowed, and - even jovial old age, under the influence of this praise, had there been no - unwritten law ending the hunting season in the early spring. - </p> - <p> - The earl cared very little for otters and rats, and almost nothing at all - for salmon, so that when April came he usually went to his yacht, and - practically lived aboard it until November. Sometimes he made long cruises - in this substantial and comfortable vessel, which he delighted in - navigating himself. He was lying in at Bremerhaven, for example, in May, - when one of a sheaf of telegrams scattered along the line of North Sea - ports in search of him, brought the news that his youngest son Joseph, who - had drifted into Mashonaland after the collapse of the Jameson adventure, - had been killed in the native rebellion. Upon consideration, the earl - could not see that a post-haste return to England would serve any useful - end. He sailed westward, however, after some telegraphic communication - with England, and made his leisurely way down the Channel and round - Cornwall to Milford Haven, where his wont was to winter his yacht, and - where most of his crew were at home. The fact that he and the vessel were - well known in this port rendered it possible to follow in detail - subsequent events. - </p> - <p> - It was on the 10th of June that Lord Porlock came to anchor in Milford, - and went ashore, taking the afternoon train for Shrewsbury. He returned on - the 14th, accompanied by his eldest son and heir, Lord Cressage. This - latter personage was known only from hearsay at Milford, and local - observation of him was therefore stimulated by a virgin curiosity. It was - noted that Viscount Cressage—a stalwart and rubicund young man of - more than his father’s height, but somewhat less swarthy of aspect—was - laboring under very marked depression. He hung about the hotel, during the - delay incident upon cleaning up the yacht, taking on new stores and - altering some of the sailing gear, in a plainly moping mood, saying little - to his father and never a word to any one else. A number of witnesses were - able to make it clear that at first he did not intend to sail forth, but - was merely bearing his father company while the latter remained in harbor. - </p> - <p> - The fact of their recent bereavement accounted in a general way for their - reticence with each other, but it was impossible not to see that the - younger man had something besides the death of a brother on his mind. - When, on the second day of their waiting, the tide began to fill in which - on its turn was to bear out the yacht, his nervous preoccupation grew - painfully manifest. He walked across many times to the headland; he - fidgeted in and out of the bar, taking drinks for which he obviously had - no relish, and looking over and over again in the railway time-tables for - information which he seemed incapable of fixing in his memory. At last, - when everything was ready, and the earl stood with his hand out to say - good-bye to his son, the latter had suddenly, and upon the evident impulse - of the moment, declared with some excitement that he also would go. People - remembered that he had said, as if in defensive explanation of his hasty - resolve: “Perhaps that will teach her a lesson!” His father had only - remarked “Rot!”—and with that the yacht sailed off, a heaving white - patch against the blackening west. - </p> - <p> - But what followed was too grossly unreasoning to afford a lesson to - anybody. The morning newspapers of the 18th contained in one column - confirmation of the earlier report that the Hon. Anselm Torr, second son - of the earl of Porlock, had been a passenger on the ill-fated “Drummond - Castle,” and had gone down with the rest in the night off Ushant; and in - another column a telegram from Porthstinian, announcing the total loss of - a large yacht, on the rocks known as the Bishop and Clerks, with all on - board. The evening papers followed with the rumor that the lost yacht was - the “Minstrel,” with both Lord Porlock and his son, Lord Cressage, on - board; but it was not until the next afternoon that the public possessed - all the facts in this extraordinary affair. Then it happened that the edge - was rather taken off the horror of the tragic coincidence, by the - announcement that these sudden deaths brought forward as next heir to the - dukedom Captain Edward Torr, late of the —th Hussars, who was better - known, perhaps, as the husband of Miss Cora Bayard. The thought of Cora as - a prospective duchess made such a direct appeal to the gayer side of the - popular mind, that the gruesome terrors surrounding her advancement were - lost to sight. When, a few days later, it was stated that the venerable - Duke of Glastonbury had suffered a stroke of paralysis, and lay at - Caermere in a critical state, the news only made more vivid the picture of - the music-hall dancer turned into Her Grace which the public had in its - mind’s eye. Her radiant portrait in the photographic weeklies and budgets - was what remained uppermost in the general memory. - </p> - <p> - For a time, however, in that little fraction of the public which is called - Society, the figure of another woman concentrated interest upon itself, in - connection with the Torr tragedy. The fact that a music-hall person was to - wear a great title had no permanent hold upon the imagination of this - class. They would probably see rather less of her then than now—and - the thing had no longer the charm of the unusual. But they had known Lady - Cressage. They had admired her, followed after her, done all sorts of nice - things for her, in that season of her wonderful triumph as the most - beautiful girl, and the most envied bride, in London. After her marriage - she had been very little in evidence, it was true; one hardly knew of any - other reigning beauty who had let the sceptre slip through her fingers so - promptly and completely. What was the secret of it all? It could not be - said that she had lost her good looks, or that she was lacking in - cleverness. There was no tangible scandal against her; to the contrary, - she seemed rather surprisingly indifferent to men’s company. Of course, it - was understood that her marriage was unhappy, but that was scarcely a - reason for allowing herself to be so wholly snuffed out of social - importance. Everybody knew what the Torrs were like as husbands, and - everybody would have been glad to be good to her. But in some - unaccountable way, without quite producing the effect of rebuffing - kindness, she had contrived to lapse from the place prepared for her. And - now those last words from the lips of poor young Cressage—“Perhaps - that will teach her a lesson!”—sifted their way from the coroner’s - inquest in a Welsh village up to London, and set people thinking once - more. Who could tell? It might be that the fault was not all on one side. - According to the accounts of Milford, he was in a state of visible - excitement and mental distress. The very fact of his going off alone in a - yacht with his father, of whom he notoriously saw as little as possible on - dry land, showed that he must have been greatly upset. And his words could - mean nothing save that it was a quarrel with his wife which had sent him - off to what proved to be his death. What was this quarrel about? And was - it the woman, after all, who was to blame? Echoes of these questions, and - of their speculative and varied answers, kept themselves alive here and - there in London till Parliament rose in August. They were lost then in the - general flutter toward the moors. - </p> - <p> - Lady Cressage, meantime, had not quitted Caermere or disclosed any design - of doing so, and it is there we return to her, where she sat at her ease - under the palms in the glass-house, with a book open before her. - </p> - <p> - The spattering reports of a number of guns, not very far away, caused her - presently to lift her head, but after an instant, with a fleeting frown, - she went back to her book. The racket continued, and finally she closed - the volume, listened with a vexed face for a minute or two and then sprang - to her feet. - </p> - <p> - “Positively this is too bad!” she declared aloud, to herself. - </p> - <p> - Unexpectedly, as she turned, she found confronting her another young - woman, also clad in black, even to the point of long gloves, and a broad - hat heavy with funereal plumes. In her hand she held some unopened - letters, and on her round, smooth, pretty countenance there was a doubtful - look. - </p> - <p> - “Good-mornin’, dear,” said this newcomer. Her voice, not unmusical in - tone, carried the suggestion of being produced with sedulous regard to a - system. “There were no letters for you.” - </p> - <p> - There was a momentary pause, and then Lady Cressage, as if upon - deliberation, answered, “Good-morning—Cora.” She turned away - listlessly as she spoke. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, so it <i>is</i> one of my ‘Cora’ days, after all,” said the other, - with a long breath of ostentatious reassurance. “I never know in the least - where to have you, my dear, you know—and particularly this mornin’; - I made sure you’d blame me for the guns.” - </p> - <p> - “Blame”—commented Lady Cressage, musingly—“I no longer blame - anybody for anything. I’ve long since done with my fancy for playing at - being God, and distributing judgments about among people.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you’re quite right about this shootin’ the home covers,” protested - the other. “I gave Eddy a fair bit of my mind about it—but you know - what he is, when once he’s headed in a given direction. You might as well - talk soft to the east wind. And, for that matter, I was dead against his - bringin’ these men down here at all—though it may surprise you to - hear it.” - </p> - <p> - Lady Cressage, still looking away, shook her head very slightly. “No—I - don’t find myself particularly surprised,” she said, with an effect of - languor. “Really, I can’t be said to have given the matter a thought, one - way or the other. It is neither my business nor my wish to form opinions - about your husband’s friends. We were speaking of something else, were we - not?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, yes,” responded Mrs. Edward; “I mentioned that sometimes I’m ‘Cora,’ - and sometimes it’s very much the other way about. I merely mentioned it—don’t - think I mean to complain—only I began calling <i>you</i> Edith from - the start—from the first day I came here, after the—after the——” - </p> - <p> - “I know you did. It was very kind of you,” murmured Edith, but with no - affectation of gratitude in her voice. Then, slowly, she turned her eyes - toward her companion, and added in a more considerate tone: “But then you - are by nature a much kindlier person than I am.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, you say that,” put in the other, “but it isn’t true, you know. - It’s only that I’ve seen more of the world, and am so much older than you - are. That’s what tells, my dear—it’s years that smooths the temper - down, and rubs off one’s sharp corners—of course, if one has some - sense to start with. I assure you, Edith, that when I was your age I was a - perfect tiger-cat.” - </p> - <p> - Lady Cressage smiled in a wan fashion, as if in despite of her mood. “You - always make such a point of your seniority,” she said, not unamiably, “but - when I look at you, I can never believe you’re of any age at all. I seem a - thousand years old beside you.” Mrs. Edward showed some dazzling teeth in - her pleased appreciation of the compliment. Her smile was as - characteristic as her voice, in its studiously regular and equable - distribution. The even parting of her bright lips, with their symmetrical - inner lines of white, was supported to a nicety of proportional value by - eyelashes and eyes. - </p> - <p> - “It’s what I’ve been saying,” she commented, with frank enjoyment. “It’s - good temper that does the trick.” - </p> - <p> - To tell the truth, Mrs. Edward’s was a face which bore no visible relation - to years. It was of rounded oval in contour, with beautifully chiseled - small features, a faultless skin which was neither fair nor dark and fine - large eyes that seemed sometimes blue, and as often something else. In - these eyes there lay always, within touch of the surface, a latent smile, - ready to beam, to sparkle, to dance, to languish in mellow softness or - glitter in cool abstract recognition of pleasantries afloat, all at the - instant bidding of the lips below. These lips, delicately arched and of - vivid warmth of color, were as restricted in their movements as is the - mercury in a thermometer. They did not curl sidewise upon occasion; they - never pouted, or pulled themselves inward together under the stress of - sudden emotion. They did nothing but separate, in perfectly balanced - measure, sometimes by only a hair’s breadth, again in the freest fashion, - but always in painstaking harmony with the spirit of the glance above. - Students of this smile, or rather of this range of graded smiles, - ordinarily reached the conclusion that it was the lips which gave the - signal to the eyes. Certain it is that they worked together in trained - accord, and that the rest of the face did nothing at all. The white - forehead furrowed itself with no lines of puzzled thought; there was not - the shadow of a wrinkle at the corners of the little mouth, or about the - shapely brown lashes—and it seemed incredible that time should ever - bring one. - </p> - <p> - Beside this serene and lovely mask—in the placidity of which one - found the pledge of an easy temper along with the promise of unfailing - youth—the face of Lady Cressage was still beautiful, but in a - restless and strenuous way. If she did produce the effect of being the - older of the two, it was because Mrs. Edward’s countenance had nothing to - do with any such standard of comparison. - </p> - <p> - “When you come to think of it,” the latter went on now, “you <i>do</i> - seem older than I do, dear—I mean you seem so to me. Of course I - know there’s a good six years’ difference between us—and as far as - appearance goes, I needn’t say that you’d be the belle of the ball in - London as easily as you were four years ago—but all the same you - have the knack of making me feel as if I were the youngster, and you the - grown-up. I’ve a sister—five years younger than me—and she - does the same thing. When she looks at me—just quietly turns her - eyes full on me, you know—it seems as if I ought to have a pinafore - on, and she have spectacles and a cap. Oh, she used to give me the jumps, - that girl did. We haven’t seen much of each other, these last few years; - we didn’t hit it off particularly well—but—why, hello! this <i>is</i> - odd, if you like!” - </p> - <p> - “What is it?” asked the other, perfunctorily. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Edward had been, shuffling the envelopes in her hand the while she - spoke, and idly noting their superscriptions. She held up one of them now, - in explanation of her remark. - </p> - <p> - “Well, talk of the devil, you know—I was speaking of my sister - Frank, and here’s a letter from her. She hasn’t written a line to me in—how - long is it?—why, it must be—well, certainly not since I was - married. Funny, isn’t it? I wonder if it’s anything about the pater.” - </p> - <p> - She continued to regard the sealed missive absent-mindedly, as if the - resource of opening it had not yet suggested itself to her. In the - meantime, something else occurred to her, and she turned to face Lady - Cressage, who had seated herself again. - </p> - <p> - “I meant what I said about these men Eddy’s brought down,” she declared. - “I didn’t want them to be asked, and I don’t like their being here, any - more than you do. Yes, I want to have you understand,” she persisted, as - the other offered a gesture of deprecation, “I hope I’m the last person in - the world to round on old pals, but really, as I told Eddy, a man in his - position must draw the line somewhere. I don’t mind giving a leg-up to old - Pirie—in a quiet way, of course—for he’s not half a bad sort - by himself; but as for the rest, what are they? I don’t care for their - families or their commissions—I’ve seen too much of the world to be - taken in by kid of that sort—I say they’re bounders. I never was - what you might call keen about them as the right friends for Eddy, even - before—I mean in the old days, when it didn’t matter so much what - company he kept. But now, with everything so altered, he ought to see that - they’re not in his class at all. And that’s just what I can’t get him to - do in the least.” - </p> - <p> - “Men have their own views in these matters. They are often rather - difficult to understand,” commented Edith, sententiously. - </p> - <p> - “I should think so!” began Mrs. Edward. “Why, if I were a man, and in - Eddy’s place—” - </p> - <p> - Her words had ended aimlessly, as her eyes followed the lines of the - letter she had at last opened and begun to read. She finished the brief - task, and then, going back to the top of the single page, went over it - again more attentively. There was something indefinably impressive about - the silence in which she did this, and Lady Cressage presently raised an - inquiring glance. Mrs. Edward’s face exhibited no marked change of - expression, but it had turned deathly pale. The unabated redness of the - lips gave this pallor a ghastliness which frightened Edith, and brought - her to her feet. - </p> - <p> - “What in the name—” she began, but the other held up a black-gloved - hand. - </p> - <p> - “Is this something you know about?—something you’ve been putting - up?” Cora demanded, in a harsh, ungoverned voice, moving forward as she - spoke. “Look at this. Here’s what my sister writes.” She did not offer to - show the letter, but huskily read forth its contents: - </p> - <p> - “‘London, September 30. - </p> - <p> - “‘My dear Cora: I don’t know whether you will thank me or not, but I feel - that some one ought to warn you, if only that you may pull yourself - together to meet what is coming. Your house is built of cards, and it is - only a question of days, perhaps of hours, when it will be pushed over. - Your husband is not the heir, after all. I am truly in great grief at the - thought of what this will mean to you, and I can only hope that you will - believe me when I sign myself, - </p> - <p> - “‘Your sincerely affectionate sister, - </p> - <p> - “‘Frances.’” - </p> - <p> - The two women exchanged a tense look in which sheer astonishment - encountered terror, and mingled with it. - </p> - <p> - “No, I know nothing of this,” faltered Edith, more in response to the - other’s wild eyes than to the half-forgotten inquiries that had prefaced - the reading of the letter. - </p> - <p> - “No trick of a child, eh? What do they call it, posthumous?” Cora panted, - still with the rough voice which had shaken off the yoke of tuition. - </p> - <p> - Edith lifted her head. “That is absurd,” she answered, curtly. - </p> - <p> - As they confronted each other thus, a moving shadow outside caught their - notice. Instinctively turning their eyes, they beheld through the glass a - stranger, a slender young man with a soft hat of foreign fashion, striding - across the lawn away from the house. He held his head high in the air, and - they could see that the hands carried stiffly outstretched at his sides - were clenched. - </p> - <p> - “He struts across the turf as if he owned it,” said Edith, clutching - vaguely at the meaningless relief which this interruption seemed to offer. - </p> - <p> - But Mrs. Edward had sunk info the chair, and buried her face in her - black-gloved hands. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER V - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian began his - walk with swift, energetic steps, and a guiding eye fixed resolutely on a - distinguishing mark in the distant line of tree-tops beyond, as if both - speed and directness of course were of utmost urgency to his purpose. - While his body moved forward thus automatically, however, his mind - remained engrossed with what had been said and done in the room he was - leaving behind. - </p> - <p> - His brain reproduced over and over again the appearance of the two young - brothers, their glances at each other, their sneering scowls at him. The - picture of Augustine whispering in Edward’s ear, and of Edward shaking his - sulky head, stuck in his memory as a living thing. He had continued to see - it after he had turned his back on them and gone to the window. The - infamous words which had been spoken about his father were a part of this - picture, and their inflection still rang in his ears just as the young men - still stood before his eyes, compact of hostility to him and his blood. - </p> - <p> - The noise of guns in the wood he approached was for a time subordinated in - his mind to those bitter echoes of Edward’s speech. When at last these - reports of firing attracted his attention, he had passed out of sight of - Caermere, and found himself on a vaguely defined path at the end of a - broad heath, much overgrown with heather and broom and low, straggling, - inhospitable-looking shrubs novel to his eye. Curious movements among this - shaggy verdure caught his wandering notice, and he stopped to observe them - more closely. A great many rabbits—or would they be hares?—were - making their frightened escape from the wood in front of him, and darting - about for cover in this undergrowth. He became conscious now of an - extraordinary tumult in the wood itself—a confused roar of men’s - voices raised in apparently meaningless cries, accompanied by an - unintelligible pounding of sticks on timber and crackling brush. This - racket almost drowned the noise of the remote firing; its effect of - consternation upon the small inhabitants of the thicket was only less than - the bewilderment that it caused in Christian’s mind. Forgetting altogether - his own concerns, he pushed cautiously forward to spy out the cause of the - commotion. - </p> - <p> - Somewhat later, he emerged from the wood again, having obtained a - tolerable notion of what was going on. He had caught a view of one line of - beaters making their way through a copse, diagonally away from him—rough - men clad for the most part in white jackets, who shouted and thrashed - about them with staves as they went—and it was easy enough to - connect their work, and the consequent rise and whirring rush of birds - before it, with the excited fusillade of guns farther on. Christian did - not get a sight of the sportsmen themselves. Albeit with some doubts as to - the dignity of the proceeding, he made a detour of the piece of woodland, - with the idea of coming out upon the shooting party, but when he arrived - at the barrier it was to find on the spot only a couple of men in greenish - corduroys, whom he took to be underkeepers. They were at work before a - large heap of pheasants, tying the birds in pairs by the necks, and - hanging them over a long stick, stretched between two trees, which already - bent under its burden. They glanced up from their employment at Christian, - and when he stooped to pick up one of the cartridge cases with which the - ground at his feet was strewn, they exchanged some muttered comment at - which both laughed aloud. He instinctively threw the little tube down, and - looked away from the men. The thought occurred to him that if they only - knew who he was their confusion would be pathetic, but as it was, they had - the monopoly of self-possession, and it was he who shyly withdrew. - </p> - <p> - The whole diversion, however, had cleared and sweetened his mood. He - retraced his steps through the wood and then struck off in a new direction - across the heath, at a more leisurely pace than he had come, his mind - dwelling pleasurably upon the various picturesque phases of what he had - witnessed. The stray glimpses of <i>la chasse</i> which had been afforded - him in the South had had nothing in common with this. The unkempt freedom - of the growths about him appealed to his senses as cultivated parks and - ordered forests had never done. It was all so strong and simple and - natural—and the memory of the beaters smashing along in the thicket, - bawling and laying about them with their clubs, gave it a primitive note - which greatly pleased his fancy. - </p> - <p> - The heath was even finer, in his eyes, than the wood. The air stirring - across it, for one thing, had a quality which he seemed never to have - known before—and the wild, almost savage, aspect of its squat gray - and russet herbage, the sense of a splendidly unashamed idleness and - unproductiveness suggested by its stretches of waste land, charmed his - imagination. He said to himself, as he sauntered here, that he would - gallop every day across this wonderful plain, with a company of big dogs - at his horse’s heels. The thought of the motion in the saddle inspired him - to walk faster. He straightened himself, put his hands to his coat at the - breast as he had seen young Englishmen do on their pedestrian tours, and - strode briskly forward, humming to himself as he moved. The hateful - episode of the morning had not so much faded from his thoughts, as shaken - itself into a new kaleidoscopic formation. Contact with these noble - realities out of doors had had the effect, as it were, of immeasurably - increasing his stature. When he thought of those paltry cousins of his, it - was as if he looked down upon their insignificance from a height. - </p> - <p> - He came at last face to face with a high stone wall, the pretensions and - obvious antiquity of which told him at once that he had returned to the - vicinity of the castle. Sure enough, there were discernible at a - considerable distance down to the right some of the turrets and roofs of - Caermere, and he turned his course in that direction. It seemed to him a - long way that he walked by the side of this great wall, marveling as he - did so at its size and at the ambitious views of the persons who built it. - The reflection that they were ancestors of his own came to his mind, and - expanded therein. He also would build like a great nobleman in his time! - What was there so grand as building?—he mused as he looked about him—unless - it might be the heath and the brownish-purple hills beyond, and these also - one intuitively thought of as having been built. - </p> - <p> - Presently a small doorway appeared in the massive wall, and Christian, - finding it unlocked, passed through it into a vast garden. The inner and - sunny side of the wall, as far as he could see in either direction, was - veined with the regularly espaliered branches of dwarf trees flattened - against it, from which still depended here and there belated specimens of - choice fruit. On the other side of the path following close this wall, - down which he proceeded, were endless rows of small trees and staked - clumps of canes, all now bereft of their season’s produce. The spectacle - did not fit with what had been mentioned to him of the poverty of - Caermere. Farther on, a tall hedge stretching at right angles from the - wall separated this orchard from what he saw now, by glimpses through an - open arch, to a be a flower garden. He quickened his pace at the sight, - for flowers were very near his heart. - </p> - <p> - At first there was not much to move his admiration. The sunlit profusion - of his boyhood’s home had given him standards of size and glowing color - which were barely approached, and nowhere equaled, here. Suddenly he came - upon something, however, before which he perforce stopped. It was the - beginning of a long row of dahlias, rounded flowers on the one side of - him, pointed and twisted cactus varieties on the other, and he had - imagined nothing like this before in his life. Apparently no two of the - tall plants, held upright to the height of his breast by thick stakes, - were alike, and he knew not upon which to expend the greater delight, the - beauty of their individual blossoms or the perfection of skill exhibited - in the color-arrangement of the line. - </p> - <p> - He moved slowly along, examining the more notable flowers in detail with - such ardor that a young lady in a black gown, but with a broad hat of - light straw on her pale hair, advanced up the path, paused, and stood - quite near him for some moments before he perceived her presence. Then - with a little start, he took off his hat, and held it in his hands while - he made a stiff bow. - </p> - <p> - “You are fond of flowers?” Lady Cressage said, more as a remark than an - inquiry. She observed him meanwhile with politely calm interest. - </p> - <p> - “These dahlias are extraordinary!” he exclaimed, very earnestly. “I have - never seen such flowers, and such variety. It surprises me a great deal. - It is a spécialité in England, n’est ce pas?” - </p> - <p> - “I think I have heard that we have carried the dahlia further than other - countries have done,” responded the lady, courteously giving the name the - broad-voweled sound he had used. She added with a pleasant softening of - eyes and lips: “But you ought not to begrudge us one little triumph like - this—you who come from the very paradise of flowers.” - </p> - <p> - The implication in her words caused him to straighten himself, and to - regard her with a surprised new scrutiny. He saw now that she was very - beautiful, and he strove to recall the few casual remarks Lord Julius had - dropped, concerning the two ladies at the castle, as a clue to her - identity. One had been an actress, he remembered—and this lady’s - graceful equanimity had, perhaps, something histrionic in it. But if she - happened not to be the actress, then it would no doubt anger her very much - to be taken for one. He knew so little of women—and then his own - part in the small drama occurred to him. - </p> - <p> - “It is evident that you understand who I am,” he said, with another bow. - The further thought that in either case she was related to him, was a part - of the family of which he would soon be the head, came to give him fresh - confidence. “It is not only dahlias that are carried to unrivaled heights - of beauty in England,” he added, and bowed once more. - </p> - <p> - She smiled outright at this. “That is somewhat too—what shall I say?—continental - for these latitudes,” she remarked. “Men don’t say such glowing things in - England. We haven’t sun enough, you know, properly to ripen rose-hips—or - compliments. I should like to introduce myself, if I may—I am Edith - Cressage—and Lord Julius has told me the wonderful story about you.” - </p> - <p> - She held out her hand as she spoke, with a deliberate gesture, which - afforded Christian time to note its exquisite modeling, if he had had the - eyes for it. But he took the hand in his own rather cursorily, and began - speaking with abruptness before he had finished his bow and relinquished - it. - </p> - <p> - “It is much too wonderful,” he said, hastily. “It frightens me. I cannot - get used to it. I have the feeling that I should go away somewhere, and - live by myself, till it became all familiar to me. But then I see it would - be just as painful, wherever I went.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, let us hope it would be least painful here, of all places,” urged the - lady, in gentle deprecation of his tone. “Caermere is not gay, but it can - be soothing and restful—to those who stand in need of solace. It has - come to be my second home—I never thought one could grow so deeply - attached to a place. It has been to me like a tender old nurse and - confidante—in times when—when its shelter and consolation were - very welcome”—she faltered for an instant, with averted face, then - raised her moist eyes to his, and let them sparkle—“and oh, you will - grow to love Caermere with all your heart.” - </p> - <p> - Christian felt himself much moved. He had put on his hat, and stepped now - to her side. - </p> - <p> - “I have seen nothing of it at all,” he said. “I am going to ask that you - shall show it to me—you who love it so much. But if I shall remain - here now, that I cannot in the least tell. Nothing is arranged, so far as - I know. I am quite in Lord Julius’ hands—thus far.” - </p> - <p> - They had tacitly begun to move down the path together, loitering to look - at plants on either side which particularly invited notice. - </p> - <p> - “Lord Julius is a remarkable man,” she said. “If one is fortunate enough - to enlist his friendship, there is no end to what he can do for him. You - can hardly imagine what a difference it makes for you in everything—the - fact that he is warmly disposed towards you.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, that I have been told,” said Christian, “and I see it for myself, - too. I do not feel that I know him very well, as yet. It was only - yesterday morning that I met him for the first time at an hotel in - Brighton. We breakfasted together, we looked through papers together and - then we began a long railway journey together, which only ended a few - hours ago. We have talked a great deal in this time, but, as I have said, - the man himself is not very clear to me yet. But no one could have been - kinder—and I think he likes me.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, of course he does,” affirmed Lady Cressage, as if anything else would - have been incredible. “And—talking with him so much, so - continuously, you no doubt understand the entire situation. I am glad that - he at least left it to me to show you over Caermere; there is apparently - nothing else in which I can be of use.” - </p> - <p> - Christian, though he smiled in kindly recognition of her attitude, offered - no verbal comment, and after a wandering digression about dahlias, she - returned to the subject. - </p> - <p> - “If there <i>is</i> anything I can tell you—about the family, the - position of affairs in general, and so on—you should not stand on - ceremony with me. Has he, for example, explained about money affairs?” - </p> - <p> - The young man looked keenly at her for an instant, as if the question took - him by surprise. Then he answered frankly enough: “Nothing definite. I - only gather that it will be made easier for me than it would have been for—for - other members of the family, if they—had been in my place. But - perhaps that is not what I should say to you.” - </p> - <p> - Lady Cressage smiled on him reassuringly. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, don’t think of me in that light,” she pleaded. “I stand quite outside - the—what shall I say?—the interested family circle. I have no - ax of any description to grind. You, of course, have been told my position - in the castle—that is, so far as it can be told by others. It is a - simple enough story—I was to have been everything, and then the wind - happens to change off the Welsh coast and lo! I am nothing—nothing! - It is not even certain that I am not a beggar—living here on alms. - Legally, everything is in such confusion that no one knows how he stands. - But so far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter. My cup has been filled so - full—so long:—that a little more or less trouble is of no - importance. Oh, I assure you, I do not desire to be considered in the - matter at all.” - </p> - <p> - She made this last declaration with great earnestness, in immediate - response to the sympathetic look and gesture with which Christian had - interrupted her narrative. - </p> - <p> - His gentle eyes regarded her troubled beauty with compassionate softness. - “I venture to think that you will be considered a good deal, none the - less,” he remarked, in a grave yet eager tone. The sense of elation at - being able to play the part of Providence to such a lady spread through - his mind and possessed his being. The lofty possibilities of the powers - devolving upon him had never been so apparent before. He instinctively put - out his arm toward her, in such overt fashion that she could but take it. - She did not lean upon it, but imparted to the contact instead a kind of - ceremonial reserve which directly ministered to the patrician side of his - mood. - </p> - <p> - They walked, if possible, still more slowly now, pausing before almost - every stake; their talk was of the flowers, with occasional lapses into - the personal. - </p> - <p> - “What you said about Lord Julius,” she remarked, in one of these - interludes, “is quite true. He has it in his power to say whether the duke - shall be a rich man or a pauper, and until yesterday he was all for the - pauper. If poor Porlock and his sons had lived, they knew very well that - Lord Julius was no friend of theirs, and would starve the title whichever - of them had it. And so with these others—Edward and Augustine—only - with them, it isn’t merely dislike but loathing that Lord Julius has for - them.” - </p> - <p> - “I met those young gentlemen this morning,” said Christian stiffly. “It - seemed to me that Lord Julius went quite out of his way to be kind with - them. I should never have gathered that he hated them.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, not personally,” she explained. “I don’t think he dislikes anybody - personally. But in what you may call their representative capacity he is - furious with people if they don’t measure up to his idea of what they - should be. I never heard of any other family that had such a man in it. I - used to admire him very much—when I was newly married—I - thought his ideals for the family were so noble and fine—but I don’t - know—” - </p> - <p> - “Do you have suspicions of Julius, then?” asked Christian, hurriedly. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no, no!” she protested. “Nothing is farther from my thoughts. Only I - have seen it all, here. I have lived in the very heart of it—and - much as I sympathize with his feelings, I can’t help feeling that he is - unjust—not willfully, but still unjust. He and his son are men of - great intelligence and refined tastes; they would do honor to any - position. But is it quite fair of them to be so hard on cousins of theirs - who were not given great intelligence, and who had no capacity whatever - for refinement? That is what I mean. You saw those young men this morning. - They are not up to much, certainly; their uncle Porlock and his sons - averaged, perhaps, even a shade lower—you see I am speaking quite - frankly—but when it is all said and done, they were not so - remarkably worse than other men of their class. If any of the six had - succeeded to the title, he would not have been such a startling anomaly in - the peerage. I doubt if he would have attracted attention, one way or the - other. But it became a fixed idea with Lord Julius years ago to get - control of the estates, and to use this control to bully the elder line - into the paths of sweetness and light. It didn’t succeed in the least—and - I think he grew a little spiteful. That is all. And besides—what - does it matter? It is all ancient history now.” - </p> - <p> - Christian was looking straight before him, with a meditative gaze. They - walked for some moments in silence before he spoke. “And how did he know - that he would like me?” he demanded, musingly. “How should he be confident - that I was better than the others? Perhaps—do you know?—was he - very fond of my father?” - </p> - <p> - “I have no idea,” she responded. It was impossible not to note the brevity - of her tone. - </p> - <p> - “No one speaks willingly of my father,” he broke forth with impulsive - bitterness. “Even Lord Julius would tell me nothing of him. And the young - lady on the boat—she too—” - </p> - <p> - He paused, and his companion, who had been looking away, glanced again at - him. “The young lady on the boat,” she said, more by way of suggesting to - him a safe topic than as an inquiry. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I much want to know who she can be,” he cried, unconsciously - accepting the diversion. He described the meeting at Rouen, the - conversation and, after a fashion of his own, the girl herself. “She - said,” he went on, “that she had personally something to do with the story—‘remotely’ - was the word she used. I asked Lord Julius, but he could not think who she - might be. She earns her own living—she told me that—and she - had never been out of England before. She is not well educated—in - the school sense, I mean—her French was ridiculous. But she spoke - very beautifully her own language, and her mind filled me with charm, but - even more so her good heart. We swore friendship for all time—or at - least I did.” - </p> - <p> - “Dear me!” said Lady Cressage. Her thoughts had not been idle, and they - brought to her now on the instant a satisfactory clue. She pondered it for - a little, before she decided to speak. “I think I know who this remarkable - young lady must be,” she observed then. “This Captain Edward whom you met - this morning—he has a wife.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I know,” put in Christian abruptly—“the actress-lady; Julius - told me of her.” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose ‘actress’ would cover the thing,” she answered, with an air of - amiable indifference. “She danced more than she acted, I believe, but - ‘actress’ is a very general term. Well, your eternal friend is, I suspect, - her younger sister. ‘I have never seen her, but by accident I happen to - know that she is aware of your coming to England.” - </p> - <p> - Christian’s mobile face had lengthened somewhat. “Is she also an—an - ‘actress’?” he asked, dolefully. - </p> - <p> - Lady Cressage looked skyward, with halfclosed eyes, in an effort of - memory. “I really seem to have heard what she did,” she mused, - hesitatingly. “I know her sister has often spoken of her. Is it ‘barmaid’? - No. ‘Telegraph’? No, it’s her father who’s in the General Post Office. - Why, now, how stupid of me! She can’t be a nurse, of course, or there - would have been her uniform. Oh, now I remember—she’s a typewriter.” - </p> - <p> - It was not clear to her whether Christian wholly comprehended the term, - now that she had found it. She perceived, however, that he disliked - something in what she had said, or in her manner of saying it. The - remarkable responsiveness of his countenance to passing emotions and moods - within him had already impressed her. She regarded his profile now with a - sidelong glance, and reconstructed some of her notions about him by the - help of what she saw. Nothing was said, until suddenly he paused, gazing - with kindled eye upon the prospect opened before him. - </p> - <p> - They had come to the end of the garden, and stood at the summit of a broad - stone-kerbed path descending in terraces. Above them, the dense foliage of - the yews rising at either side of the gap in the hedge had been trained - and cut into an arched canopy. From under this green gateway Christian - looked down upon a Caermere he had not imagined to himself before. - </p> - <p> - The castle revealed itself for the first time, as he beheld it now, in its - character as a great medieval fortress. On his arrival in the morning, - emerging from the shadowed driveway into the immediate precinct of the - house, he had seen only its variously modernized parts; these, as they - were viewed from this altitude, shrank to their proper proportions—an - inconsiderable fraction of the mighty whole. All about, the massive - shoulders of big hills shelved downward to form the basin-like hollow in - which the castle seemed to stand, but their large bulk, so far from - dwarfing Caermere, produced the effect of emphasizing its dimensions. Its - dark-gray walls and towers, with their bulging clumps of chimneys and - turrets, and lusterless facets of many-angled roofings, all of somber - slate, were visibly the product, the very child, of the mountains. A - sensation of grim, adamantine, implacable power took hold of the young - man’s brain as he gazed. For a long time he did not want to talk, and felt - vaguely that he was signifying this by the slight, sustained pressure of - his arm against hers. At all events, she grasped his wish, and preserved - silence, holding herself a little behind him, so that he might look down, - without distraction, upon his kingdom. - </p> - <p> - “These Torrs,” he burst forth all at once, with a nervous uncertainty in - his tones as of one out of breath, “these ancestors of mine—the - family I belong to—did they produce great men? You must know their - history. Julius says we are the most ancient family in England. I have not - had the time yet to learn anything of what we did. Were there heroes and - famous soldiers and learned scholars among us? To look at that wonderful - castle there at our feet, it seems as if none but born chiefs and rulers - of mankind could ever have come out of it.” - </p> - <p> - “Captain Edward and his brother Augustine were both born there,” she - permitted her own over-quick tongue to comment. - </p> - <p> - He let her arm drop from his with a swift gesture, and wheeled round to - look her in the face. The glance in his eyes said so much to her that she - hastened to anticipate his speech. - </p> - <p> - “Forgive me!” she urged hastily. “It was silly thoughtlessness of mine. I - do not know you at all well as yet, you know, and I say the wrong things - to you. Do tell me you forgive me! And it is only fair to myself to say, - too, that I have been in a bad school these last few years. Conversation - as one practices it at Caermere is merely the art of making everything - pointed and sharp enough to pierce thick skins. I should have remembered - that you were different—it was unpardonable of me! But I have really - angered you!” - </p> - <p> - Christian, still looking at her, found himself gently shaking his head in - reassurance. It was plain enough to him that this beautiful young woman - had suffered much, and that at the hands of his own people. What wonder - that acrid memories of them should find their way to her lips? He also had - been unhappy. He smiled gravely into her face at the softening - recollection. - </p> - <p> - “We were speaking of different things, I think,” he commented, and nodded - approval at sight of the relieved change which his tone brought to her - countenance. “I know very well there are many disagreeable and unpleasant - matters close about us—when we are down below, there. But now we are - up above them, and we forget them all, or ignore them—and I was - asking you about the history of the family—its ancient history.” - </p> - <p> - She put her hand lightly upon his arm again. “Lord Julius is right about - it being a very, very long history,” she said, putting into her voice a - tacit recognition of his magnanimity. “I know it, in a certain way, but I - can hardly make a good story of it, I’m afraid. The family is Keltic, you - know. That is what is always said about it, as its most distinguishing - characteristic. It is the only large English one which managed to survive - through the Saxon period, and then the Norman period, and keep its name - and its estates and its territorial power. This makes it very interesting - to historians and archaeologists. There are many stone circles and Druidic - monuments about here, some of which are said to be connected with the - introduction of Christianity into Britain. You will see them another day, - and read the legends about them. Well, it is said that the chief who - possessed this land here, and who had some kind of a stronghold there - where the castle is, at that time, was a Torr. Of course, there were no - surnames then, but it would have been his tribal appellation, or something - of the sort. The fact itself, I believe, is generally accepted—that - the family that was here in St. David’s time is here now. It is a - tradition that there should always be a David in the family; it used to be - the leading name, but now Christian is usually the duke’s name, and the - others are all saints, like Anselm, Edward, Augustine and—and so - forth.” - </p> - <p> - The young man looked down in meditation upon the gloomy, historic pile. - “It is a very grand beginning,” he said, thoughtfully. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps it was too grand for mere mortals to live up to,” she ventured, - with a cautious sidelong eye on him. - </p> - <p> - “I see your meaning,” he assented, nodding. “Yes, no doubt it is natural. - It is as if a boy were named Napoleon. He would be frightened to think - what he had done to make his name and himself fit together—and very - likely he would never do anything at all.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, that is it,” she answered, and drew a long, consolatory breath. - </p> - <p> - They had begun to move down the wide winding path, and when they paused - presently at one of the steps to note a new view of the buildings, she - called his attention to something by a little exclamation and a pointing - finger. - </p> - <p> - “Do you see the balcony there, up above and to the left of the flat-topped - tower—no, this side of the highest chimneys—there are figures - coming out on it from the window.” - </p> - <p> - “There is some one in a reclining chair, n’est ce pas?” he asked, - following her finger. - </p> - <p> - “It is your grandfather,” she said softly. “Those are his apartments—the - rows of windows with the white woodwork. When the sun gets round to them, - they bring him out—if he is strong enough. Evidently this is one of - his good days.” - </p> - <p> - Christian, gazing eagerly, made out beyond the attendants and the couch - they bore, another figure, with a splash of white like a shield upon its - front. - </p> - <p> - “Is it not Julius?” he asked swiftly, pressing her arm. “Oh, then by this - time my grandfather knows of me—knows that I am here! Should you not - think so? And no doubt, since it is his good day, they will take me to see - him. Is that not probable?” - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t the least idea,” she responded, after a momentary pause, - “either as to what Lord Julius has told him, or as to how much he is - capable of understanding. Except from this distance, I have not seen him - since he was struck down with paralysis. I know nothing of his condition - beyond a stray, guarded word now and then from the doctors. If I were a - professional thief and he a crown jewel, I could not have been more - securely shut out from him!” - </p> - <p> - The melancholy bitterness of her words, and tone appealed to the young - man. He drew her hand closer to his side by a delicate pressure of the - arm. “I can see that you have been very unhappy,” he said, - compassionately. - </p> - <p> - “Oh-h-h!” she murmured, with a shuddering sigh. “Don’t—don’t speak - of it, I beg of you!” - </p> - <p> - “I also have had a sad youth,” he went on, unconsciously tightening his - arm. “But now”—and he lifted his head and smiled—“who knows? - Who shall say that the bad days are not all gone—for both of us?” - </p> - <p> - Only the flutter of the hand against his arm made answer. They walked oh - together down the broad sunlit path. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t the foot of the - terraced slope, the wide, graveled path down which Lady Cressage had led - Christian described a formal curve to the right, across a lawn which he - recognized as belonging to his morning’s experiences. The angle of the - high, domed conservatory recalled itself to him. Beyond it, on the same - side, would be the window from which he had quitted the house. - </p> - <p> - To the left, a smaller footpath turned into still another garden, and he - was glad that his companion moved this way. They were in a relatively - small inclosure, hedged upon three sides by closely knit high walls of - box; the straggling, untrimmed profusion of this tall growth, through - which a multitude of sweet-briers thrust still farther upward their - dipping and interlaced green rods, gave the place a homely if unkempt - aspect. On the fourth side rose the blue-gray masonry of the castle itself—an - ancient curtain stretched between two towers. The autumn sunlight lay upon - this stained old wall, and warmed it, and glowed softly among the leaves - and saffron blossoms of the great rose-tree trained upon it. This garden - preserved the outlines of some former quaint arrangement of walks and - beds, but these were comfortably softened everywhere, and in part - obscured, by the untrammeled freedom of vegetation. Even over the - moldering red tiles of the paths mosses had been suffered to creep - unmolested. A few late roses were in bloom here and there, and at one - corner there rose a colony of graceful white lilies, the scent of which - filled the air. It was all very restful and charming, and Christian, - pausing to gaze about him, gave little exclamations of pleasure at what he - saw. - </p> - <p> - In the center of the garden, surrounded by a low seat of weather-worn - woodwork, was what seemed to be a fountain, culminating in a piece of - statuary, so blackened and battered by time and storm that little could be - made out of its creator’s intentions. Christian, with some murmured - inquiry, led the way toward this—and then perceived that Lord - Julius, who had been sitting at the other and sunny side of the statue, - was standing now in the path, confronting the new-comers with a friendly - smile. - </p> - <p> - “This is <i>my</i> particular haunt at Caer-mere,” he explained to the - young man. - </p> - <p> - “In so huge a place, one is lost if he does not fasten upon a special - corner or nook of some sort, and send down roots in it and make it his - own. This was my mother’s garden, and for over fifty years now I have - bargained with one generation of head gardeners after another to leave it - alone—as she left it. When Cheltnam came, he was so famous a person - that I submitted to his budding some new varieties on the old wall-rose - there—but, bless me, even that is thirty years ago—before - either of you was born. I see you young people have lost no time in - becoming acquainted.” - </p> - <p> - Edith Cressage looked into the old gentleman’s eyes for a moment before - she replied. They had exchanged this same glance—on her side at once - puzzled, suspicious, defiant; on his full of a geniality possibly pointed - with cynicism—very often during the last four years, without - affecting by it any prepossession or prejudice in either’s mind. “We met - by accident in the upper fruit-walk, and I introduced myself. It must be - quite luncheon time. Shall we go in?” She added, as upon an afterthought, - and with another steadfast look into his face, “I have promised to show - him over the house and the castle.” - </p> - <p> - “Admirable!” said Lord Julius, cordially. - </p> - <p> - He looked at his watch. “We will follow you in a very few moments, if we - may. I dare say he is as ready for luncheon as I am, but I want to show - him my old garden first.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, let me stop too!” she exclaimed, without an instant’s hesitation. - “May I confess it?—when you’re not here I call it <i>my</i> garden, - too. I knew it was your mother’s—and I was always going to ask you - to tell me about her, but the opportunity never offered. It is the one - really perfect spot at Caermere, even to me. And I can understand how - infinitely these old associations add to its charms for you! I shall truly - not be in the way if I stop?” - </p> - <p> - The elder man regarded her with a twinkling eye from under his broad - hat-brim as he shook his head. “To the contrary, we are both delighted,” - he answered, amiably enough. He began leading the way at this, and the two - young people, walking perforce very close together on the narrow path, - followed at his heels. - </p> - <p> - He pointed out to them that the fountain, which he could not remember - being in working order even in his boyhood, was built over the ancient - well of the castle. The statue apparently dated from William and Mary’s - time; at least, it was very like the objects they set up at Hampton Court. - Part of its pedestal was made of three Ogham stones, which were said to - have stood by the well in former times. Flint knives and other primitive - weapons had been found in the garden. Antiquaries were not agreed as to - the possibility of the well having been in existence at any very remote - period, but it was not unlikely that this small garden had been the center - of interest—perhaps the scene of Druidical sacrifices, or even of - the famous conversion of the tribe resident here by St. David—at the - beginning of things. These speculations as to precise localities were - interesting, but scarcely convincing. The wall at the end was a more - definite affair. It had been built after the Third Crusade by Stephen de - la Tour, as the Normanized name went then. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, the name has not always been spelled the same then?” interrupted - Christian here. He spoke with an eagerness which the abstract interest of - the query seemed hardly to warrant. - </p> - <p> - “Heavens, no!” said Lord Julius. “It has been Tor with one ‘r’ and with - two; it has been de la Tour, as I said, and Tour without the ‘de la,’ and - Toure, and I know of at least one branch of the people of the name of - Tower who are undoubtedly of our stock. It is quite conceivable that many - others of them are, too.” - </p> - <p> - “Then the forms of names can be altered at will?” pursued Christian. “If a - man says, ‘I will spell it so and so,’ then it is all right?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes,” explained the other. “Often two spellings exist side by side. - Witness the Seymours a few years ago. You had one brother writing it - Seymour and another St. Maur. The latter is now the official spelling—for - the present, at least.” - </p> - <p> - “This is extremely interesting to me,” the young man cried. “So I may keep - my name as I have always borne it! I may write myself ‘Christian Tower’! - That lifts a load from my mind. I had been unhappy to think of abandoning - the name my father liked. He always both spelled and pronounced it - ‘Tower,’ and that is why I shall be so glad to do the same.” - </p> - <p> - An acute kind of silence rested upon the group for an awkward minute. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, don’t let us have anymore archaeology before luncheon, Lord Julius,” - put in the lady then. “Caermere so reeks with history that one must take - it in small installments or be overwhelmed altogether. You were going to - tell us about your mother, Lord Julius, and how you remember her, here in - this dear old garden. And positively nothing has been changed since!” - </p> - <p> - “I mustn’t go quite so far as that,” said the old man, smilingly. He - seemed grateful to her for the digression. “A certain systematic - renovation has, of course, been necessary; I have arranged with the - gardeners to manage that. I dare say there are scarcely any plants or - roots here now which were individually in existence in my mother’s time; - but their children, their descendants, are here in their places. Except - for Cheltnam’s buds on the wall there, I don’t think any novelties have - been introduced. If so, it was against my wish. The lilies in that corner, - for example, are lineal progeny, heaven knows how many times removed, of - the lilies my mother planted there. These roses are slips from other slips - of the old cabbage and damask and moss roses she used to sit and look at - with her crewel-work in her lap. The old flowers are gone, and yet they - are not gone. In the same way, my mother has been dead for sixty years, - and yet this is still her garden, and she is still here—here in the - person of me, her son, and of Christian, her great-grandson.” - </p> - <p> - “And I,” commented Lady Cressage, upon a sudden smiling impulse, “I alone - am an intruding new species—like one of Cheltnam’s ‘niphetos’ buds - on the old rose. I hasten to extricate myself.” And with a bright little - nod and mock half-courtesy, she caught her gown in one hand, wheeled round - and moved quickly down the path and through the hedge. - </p> - <p> - The two men watched her till she vanished. - </p> - <p> - “She is a beautiful lady,” observed Christian, with enthusiasm; “and very - courteous, too.” - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius offered no remark upon this, but stood for a little with his - gaze apparently fixed on the point whence she had disappeared. Then, - without turning his head, he said in a gently grave way: - </p> - <p> - “If I were you, Christian, I would make as few allusions, in mixed - company, to my father as possible.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, yes! this is what I desired to discuss with you!” said the young man, - stoutly. He swung round to face the other, and his eyes sparkled with - impatience. “Everybody avoids mention of him; they turn to something else - when I speak his name—all but those abominable young men who offered - him insult. That is what I should very much like to talk about!” - </p> - <p> - “I had thought it might not be necessary,” replied Lord Julius. “At least, - I had hoped you would pick up the information for yourself—a - harmless little at a time, and guess the rest, and so spare everybody, - yourself included. But that is precisely what you seem not to do; and I - dare say I was wrong in not talking frankly with you at the start. But let - me understand first: what do you know about your father?” - </p> - <p> - “Only that he was a soldier, a professional soldier. That I have told - you,” panted Christian. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, and a very notable soldier,” responded the other. “He won the - Victoria Cross in the Mutiny—the youngest man in all India to do so. - That is for you to remember always—in your own mind—for your - own pride and consolation.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, yes, always!” murmured the son. - </p> - <p> - “And in other services, too, after he left England,” the elder man went - on, “I have understood that he was a loyal and very valuable officer to - those he fought for. This also is something for you to be proud of—-but - still inside your own mind! That it is necessary to remember—that - you must keep it to yourself. Forgive my repeating the injunction.” - </p> - <p> - “Go on!” said Christian. - </p> - <p> - “Well,” Lord Julius began, speaking with more hesitation, “Ambrose as a - soldier was magnificent, but you know enough from your books to know that - splendid soldiers may easily be—how shall I say?—not so - splendid in other walks of life. It is to be said for him that he was bare - twenty-three—poor boy. It was in 1859; and, as misery would have it, - I was in Syria, traveling with my wife. Perhaps if I had been in England, - I could have done something. As it was, there was no one to help him; and - of course it may be that he couldn’t have been helped. It was a case of a - young man returning to London, with honors and flattery enough to turn - even an old head, and walking blindfold into the worst company in Europe. - I have no intention of going into details. You must take my word for it - that suddenly four or five young men of great families fled to the - Continent; and that, without much publicity in the papers, there was a - very miserable sort of scandal after their flight. Other names were - mentioned—but I needn’t go into that. It was to the interest of many - influential people to hush the thing up, and to some extent they - succeeded. After a while it became even possible for the others to come - back to England—there are many ways of managing such matters—but - there was one of them who never returned.” - </p> - <p> - Christian gazed into the old man’s face with mute, piteous fixity of - concentration. - </p> - <p> - “This one, of course,” Lord Julius pursued, picking his words still more - cautiously, and liking his task less than ever, “was your father. The way - was smoothed for the rest to come back, but not for him—that is, at - first. Later, when he could have returned, he would not. Ambrose had a - stubborn and bitter temper. He was furious with his father, with his - family—with all England. He would touch none of us. Why, I myself - went to Sicily many years ago—it was as soon as I had got back from - the East—and learned the facts, and found out what could be done; - and I tried to see him, and bring him home with me, but he would not speak - with me, or even remain under the same roof with me—and so I could - do nothing. Or yes, there was one thing—that is to maintain some - kind of watch over you—after his death, and that we did. My own idea - was to have brought you over to England years ago—as soon as your - mother died—but Emanuel thought otherwise.” - </p> - <p> - He paused here in his narrative, for the reason that his companion was - obviously no longer listening to him. - </p> - <p> - Christian had moved a step or two away, and with a white, set face was - looking off over the hill-tops. His profile showed brows knitted and lips - being bitten, under the stress of an internal tempest. It seemed to the - old man a long time that he stood thus, in dry-eyed, passionate battle - with his own mind. Then, with a sudden, decisive gesture he spread out his - hands and turned impulsively to Lord Julius. - </p> - <p> - “You are an old man, and a wise one, and you were my father’s friend and - you are my friend!” he said, with trembling earnestness. “I should be a - fool not to pay heed to what you tell me. You advise that I do not mention - my father more than is necessary. Eh bien, I take your advice. Without - doubt it is right—just as it is right that I should speak less of my - brother Salvator. I have remembered that since you warned me, and now I - will remember this. But I should like”—he came forward as he spoke, - still with extended hands, and looked with entreating earnestness up into - the other’s face—“I should like to have you understand that Salvator - is my brother not any the less, and that I love and honor and have pride - in my father more than before. This I keep in my own mind, as you advise—but - one thing I will do for every one to take note of. I will write my name - always ‘Tower.’” - </p> - <p> - The great-uncle put a big, comforting hand on his shoulder. “I should not - dream of blaming you,” he said, gently. “But there is a man to tell us - luncheon is ready.” - </p> - <p> - He nodded comprehension to the servant who had appeared at the opening in - the hedge, and, still with his hand on Christian’s shoulder, began to move - in that direction. - </p> - <p> - “One other matter,” said the young man in lowered tones and hurriedly—“from - the hill above, awhile ago, I saw my grandfather—in his chair, on - the balcony. You said just now that my father hated him—was furious - with him. Did he behave cruelly to my father?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no-o,” replied Julius, with an indefinite upward inflection on the - deliberate negative. “Not cruelly.” - </p> - <p> - “But unjustly?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no, not unjustly, either—if only because he never in his life - possessed the dimmest inkling of what justice meant. The duke is my - brother, and I know him much better than any one else living, and so I am - free to speak frankly about him. He has been a duke nearly eighty years—which - is, I believe, unprecedented—but he has been an ass still longer - than that.” After a pause he added: “I am going to take you to him this - afternoon.” - </p> - <p> - Christian hung his head as they walked along, and framed in his depressed - mind more than one further inquiry about this grandsire of his, who held - so august a station, and yet had been dismissed so contemptuously, but - they did not translate themselves into speech. Nor, later, during the - luncheon, was this great personage more than indirectly alluded to. - </p> - <p> - The way to this luncheon had led through three or four large rooms, - opening one upon the other by small doors, the immediate approaches to - which were given the effect of passageways by means of screens. What these - apartments were used for, or how the residents of the castle distinguished - them apart in their own minds, Christian could not imagine. To his rapid - and curious inspection, they seemed all alike—each with its bare, - indifferently polished floor, its huge stone fireplace, its wainscoting, - walls and ceiling of dark, umber-hued wood, and its scant store of - furniture which only heightened the ruling impression of big empty spaces. - An occasional portrait was dimly to be discerned up in the duskiness of - the oak panels, but the light from the narrow and small-paned windows was - too faint to examine them by. More cheerless or apparently useless rooms - the young man had never seen. - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius seemed to guess his thoughts. “This is all an old part—what - might be called mid-Plantagenet,” he explained, as they went along. “My - father had these rooms pulled about a good deal, and done up according to - Georgian standards, but it was time and money wasted. Even if big windows - were cut through they would be too dark for comfort, to our notions. The - men who made them, of course, cared nothing at all about daylight, at - least inside a house. They spent as little time as possible under roofs, - to begin with; they rose at daybreak and went to bed at dark. When they - were forced to be under cover, they valued security above all things, and - the fewer openings there were in the walls, the better they liked it. They - did no reading whatever, but after they had gorged themselves with food, - sat around the fire and drank as much as they could hold, and listened to - the silly rubbish of their professional story-tellers and ballad-singers - till they fell asleep. If it happened that they wanted to gamble instead, - a handful of rush-lights or a torch on the wall was enough to see the dice - by. - </p> - <p> - “Really, what did they want more? And for that matter, what do most of - their lineal descendants want more either? Light enough to enable them to - tell a spade from a heart, and perhaps to decipher the label on a bottle - now and then. Nothing more. The fashion of the day builds plate-glass - windows round them, but it is truly a gross superfluity.” The room in - which Lady Cressage and the luncheon-table awaited them was of a more - hospitable aspect. A broad expanse of lawn, and of distant trees and - sky-line fading away in the sunny autumn haze, made a luminous picture of - the high embrasured window stretching almost from corner to corner across - one side. By contrast with the other apartments, the light here was - brilliant. Christian, with a little apologetic bow and gesture to the - others, dallied before the half-dozen portraits on the walls, examined the - modeling of the blackened oak panels about them, and lingered in admiring - scrutiny of the great carved chimney-piece above the cavernous hearth, on - which a fire of logs crackled pleasantly. This chimney-piece was fairly - architectural in its dimensions. It was as full of detail, and seemed - almost as big, as the west front of a church, and he tipped his head back - to look up at its intricate, yet flowing scheme of scrollwork, its - heraldic symbolism used now for decoration, now to point the significance, - as it were, of the central escutcheon—and all in old wood of so ripe - a nut-brown color that one seemed to catch a fragrance exhaled from it. - </p> - <p> - “That is the best thing here,” said Edith Cressage, moving over to stand - beside him. “It came from Ludlow Castle. Those are the arms of the - Mortimers. It <i>is</i> the Mortimers, isn’t it?” She turned to Lord - Julius for support. “I always confuse them with the De Lacys.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, the Mortimers,” answered Julius, as servants entered, and they took - their seats. “But almost every other family of the Marches is represented - in the devices scattered about. You can see the arrows of the Egertons, - the eagles of the Grandisons, and up above, the corbies or ravens of the - Corbets, and so on. That was the period when the Marches ruled England, - and their great families, all married and intermarried and bolstered up by - the feudal structure, were like a nation by themselves. The Mortimers, you - know,” he added, turning to Christian, “became practically kings of - England. At least they had their grandsons on the throne—but they - couldn’t hold it after they had got it. The day of these parts was really - over before Bosworth Field. The printing press and Protestantism finished - the destruction of its nobility. Only a house here and there has survived - among us. Some few of the old names are preserved, like flies in amber, - over in Ireland, but I should not know where to look to-day for a De Lacy, - or a Tregoz, or a west country Le Strange, let alone a Mortimer. I - suppose, in fact, we have more of the Mortimer blood among us than there - is anywhere else.” - </p> - <p> - Christian, seated so that he faced the great armorial pageant spread as a - background to the fair head of the lady, smiled wistfully at his - companions, but said nothing. The words about his sharing the blood of - kings were like some distant, soft music in his ears. He looked at the - escutcheons and badges, and sought in a dreamy way to familiarize himself - with the fact that they were a part of his own history—that the - grandeur they told of was in truth his personal heritage. - </p> - <p> - There was some talk going on between the others—conversation which, - for a time, he scarcely strove to follow. Lord Julius had begun by - expressing his joy at the absence from luncheon of the physician whom - circumstances kept on the premises, and from this he drifted to an attack - upon doctors as a class. He denounced them root and branch, as impostors - and parasites, who darkened and embittered human life by fostering all the - mean cowardices of smallbrained people, in order that they might secure a - dishonest livelihood by pretending to dispel the horrors their own low - tricks had conjured up. The robust old gentleman developed these violent - theories without heat or any trace of excitement, and even maintained a - genial expression of countenance while he spoke. Lady Cressage seemed - entertained, and even helped on the diatribe now and again with pertinent - quips of her own. But Christian could see very little sense in such an - assault upon a respectable profession, and his attention wandered - willingly again to the splendid chimney-piece. He resolved to learn all - there was to learn of the heraldry and local history embodied in this - sumptuous decoration, without delay. But then, on every conceivable side - there was so much to learn! - </p> - <p> - Suddenly he became aware that his thoughts had concentrated themselves on - the extraordinary badness of the luncheon he was eating. Here at least was - something Caermere could not teach him about—nor, for that matter, - as it seemed, all England either. Since his arrival in the country, he - reflected, he had not encountered one even tolerable dish. Vegetables and - fish half raw, meats tasteless and without sauce or seasoning, bread heavy - and sour, coffee unrecognizable, the pastry a thing too ridiculous for - words—so his indictment shaped itself. He felt it his duty to argue - to himself that quite likely this graceless and repellent diet was the - very thing which made the English such physical and temperamental masters - of the world, but the effort left him sad. He made a resolution that if - ever Caermere were his a certain white-capped Agostino, in Cannes, should - be imported forthwith. Then he became conscious again of what was being - said at the table. - </p> - <p> - “If you could only imagine,” Lady Cressage was saying to Lord Julius, - “what a boon your coming has been! I had positively almost forgotten what - intelligent conversation was like. It seems ages since I last heard ten - consecutive words strung together on a thought of any description. Let me - see—it was June when you were last down, with Sir Benjamin Alstead; - he has been here once since—but in your absence he put on such a - pompous ‘eminent-physician’ manner that really I oughtn’t to count him at - all—and with that exception, from June to October, civilization has - left poor me entirely out of its reckoning. But perhaps”—they had - risen now, and there was a certain new frankness, almost confidence of - appeal in her glance into his face—“perhaps, as matters have turned, - you will come oftener henceforth?” - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius nodded. “It is quite likely,” he said, and stretched forth his - hand significantly to Christian’s shoulder. “But you were going to show - him the house—and I suppose I may come along too. There is half an - hour before we go to my brother—and our train does not leave Clune - till nearly six.” - </p> - <p> - “You are not going to-day! and he too?” she exclaimed, hurriedly. - </p> - <p> - The old man nodded again. “We are expected at Emanuel’s to-night,” he - answered. Then, as Christian had moved toward the window and seemed beyond - hearing, he added, in a smiling aside, “There is one reason for dragging - him away that is comical enough. It wouldn’t do for him to dine at - Caermere in morning clothes, and so far as I can see he has no others.” - </p> - <p> - “He could be too tired to dine,” she suggested, quickly, in a confidential - murmur. “Or, for that matter, there is a room full of Porlock’s things—I - suppose—I suppose poor Cressage’s—would be too big for him. - Oh, it’s too dreadful to have him whisked off like this! Can’t you send a - telegram instead?” - </p> - <p> - Her tone was as frank as her speech—and on the instant her glance at - his face made keen inquiry whether it had not been too frank. - </p> - <p> - He smiled in a tolerant, almost amused way. “Oh, he will return all in - good time,” he assured her, gently enough. “Caermere will see plenty of - him, later on.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, but who can tell where I shall be then?” The necessity for speaking - in an undertone gave her words an added intensity of feeling. “And it - isn’t only him—I had hoped you would be stopping some days at least—for - I wanted to speak with you about this very thing. My position here—the - uncertainty of everything—is intolerable to bear.” She lifted her - head, and turned her direct gaze into his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “If only you liked me a little better, I could discuss the matter more - freely with you.” - </p> - <p> - “Humbug!” replied Lord Julius, with a geniality which was at least - superficially reassuring. “You shouldn’t say such things, much less think - them. I can understand your impatience—but it will be possible to - straighten out affairs very soon now. I don’t think you will be found to - have suffered by the delay.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, that is all right,” she answered, almost pettishly. “Everybody - assures me of the most magnanimous intentions—but in the meantime”—she - checked herself, tossed her head in resentment, apparently, at the tears - which had started to her eyes, and forced herself to smile—“in the - meantime, you must forgive my tantrums. It is so depressing here—all - alone—or worse than alone! I’m really no longer fit to receive - anybody. But now”—she raised her voice in an eager simulation of - gaiety—“shall the personally conducted tour begin?” - </p> - <p> - Caermere had been inaccessible to so many generations of sightseers that - no formula for its exhibition remained. The party seemed to Christian to - wander at haphazard through an interminable succession of rooms, many of - them small, some of them what he could only think of as over-large, but - all insufficiently lighted, and all suggesting in their meager - appointments and somber dejection of aspect a stage of existence well - along on the downward path to ruin. He had only to look about him to - perceive why Caermere had long ago been removed from the list of England’s - show-places. His companions between them kept his attention busy with - comments upon the history and purpose of the apartments they passed - through, but beyond a general sense of futile and rather shabby immensity - he gained very little from the inspection. The mood to postpone - comprehension of what he was seeing to another and a more convenient time - was upon him, and he almost willfully yielded to it. - </p> - <p> - Once, when impulse prompted him to climb a little ladder-like staircase, - and push open a door from which the black dust fell in a shower, and he - discerned in the gloom of the attic chamber piles of armor and ancient - weapons, a thrill of fleeting excitement ran through his veins. - </p> - <p> - “They say that Prince Llewelyn’s armor is there,” called up Lord Julius - from the landing below. “Some day we will have it all out, and cleaned and - furbished up. But don’t go in now! You’ll get covered with dirt. I used to - venture in there and rummage about once in a while when I was a boy,” he - added as Christian came down. “But even then one came out black as a - sweep.” - </p> - <p> - There were fine broad stretches of rugged landscape to be seen here and - there from narrow casements in the older, higher parts they were now - traversing, and occasionally Christian was able to interest himself as - well in details of primitive, half-obliterated ornamentation over arches - and doorways of early periods, but he was none the less almost glad when - they came out at last into a spacious upper hallway, and halted in tacit - token that the journey was at an end. - </p> - <p> - “Now I will leave you,” said the lady, with lifted skirt and a foot poised - tentatively over the first step of the broad descending stairs. “I shall - have tea in the conservatory when you come down.” - </p> - <p> - Christian felt that something must be said. “It has all been very - wonderful to me,” he assured her. “I am afraid I did not seem very - appreciative—but that is because the place is too huge, too vast, to - be understood quite at once. And I am so new to it all—you will - understand what I mean. But I thank you very much.” - </p> - <p> - She smiled brightly on him and nodded to them both, and passed down the - stairway. Christian was all at once conscious, as his eyes followed her, - that there was a novel quickening or fluttering of his heart’s action. For - a brief second, the sensation somehow linked itself in his thoughts with - the tall, graceful figure receding from him, and he bent forward to grasp - more fully the picture she made, moving sedately along, with a hand like a - lily on the wide black rail. Then he suddenly became aware that this was - an error, and that he was trembling instead because the moment for - confronting his grandfather had come. - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius, indeed, had already opened a massive mahogany door at the - right of the stairs, and signaled to him now to follow. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hat Christian - first perceived about the duke’s apartments was that they had an odor - quite peculiar to themselves. The series of small and badly lighted - anterooms through which he followed Lord Julius—rooms with - pallet-beds, clothes hung against the walls, and other somewhat squalid - signs of domestic occupation—were full of this curiously distinctive - smell. It was not so obvious in the larger and better-lighted chamber - beyond, which the doctor in residence had converted to his own uses, and - where he sat now reading a book, merely rising momentarily to bow as they - passed. But in the next room—the big sleeping apartment, with its - faded pretensions of stateliness of appointment, and its huge, high-posted - bed, canopied by old curtains embroidered with heraldic devices in - tarnished gilt threads—the odor was more powerful than ever, despite - the fact that a broad window-door was open upon the balcony beyond. The - young man’s keen sense was baffled by this pervasive scent—compounded - as it seemed to be of all the ancient castle’s mustiness, of sharp - medicinal vapors and of something else at once familiar and unknown. He - sniffed inquiringly at it, as they neared the window, and apparently Lord - Julius heard him, for he remarked over his shoulder: - </p> - <p> - “It is the dogs that you smell. They’ve practically removed the kennel up - here.” - </p> - <p> - On the stone floor of the balcony outside there were to be seen, indeed, - some dozen old hounds, for the most part lying sleepily in the sunshine, - with their heads pointed toward a large, half-covered reclining chair - placed near the balustrade, and occasionally opening a drowsy eye to - regard its occupant. There were a few dogs of other kinds as well, - Christian noted upon a second glance, and one of these, a bulky black - creature with a broad snout and hair curled tight like astrakhan fur, sat - close to the chair and was thrusting its muzzle against a hand at its - side. - </p> - <p> - This hand was what Christian saw first of his grandfather—an immense - limp hand, with thick fingers twisted and misshapen, and skin of an almost - greenish pallor. The dog’s nose, thrust under it, moved this inert hand - about, and the young man felt himself thrill unpleasantly, for some - reason, at the spectacle. - </p> - <p> - At the further end of the balcony two men in livery lounged against the - wall, but upon a signal from Lord Julius they went in. The latter, - threading his way among the hounds, led Christian round to the side of the - chair. - </p> - <p> - “This is Ambrose’s boy,” he said, bending a little and raising his voice. - “He is Christian, too.” - </p> - <p> - Upon the chair was stretched, in a halfsitting posture, the gigantic frame - of a very old man. The grandson looked upon him in silence for a long - time, his mind confused with many impressions. The vast shoulders and - high, bullet-like head, propped up by pillows in the partial shadow of the - hood, seemed vaguely to recall the vision his baby memory had preserved of - his own father. But in detail there was no resemblance. Or yes, there were - resemblances, but they were blurred almost beyond recognition by the rough - touch of time. The face, with its big, harsh features and bushing brows, - and its frame of stiff white whiskers under the jaws and chin, had - something in it which for an instant the young man seemed to identify; - then the unnatural effect of its uniform yellow-clay color drove all - thoughts of its human relationships from his mind, and he saw nothing but - a meaningless mask. It was as devoid of significance, indeed, as if it had - been in a coffin. The eyes were open and they seemed to be fixed upon the - distant rolling prospect of hills and forest, but whether they were seeing - anything, Christian could not imagine. They certainly had not been turned - to include him in their survey. The livid right hand, swaying as the black - dog pushed it with its nose, was the only thing about the duke that moved. - </p> - <p> - “He does not know I am here,” said Christian, at last. He spoke - instinctively, with the ceremonious affectation of awe which one puts on - in the presence of death. His grandfather hardly impressed him as being - alive and still less made any appeal to his sense of kinship. He had - expected to be overwhelmed with emotion at the meeting, but he found - himself barely interested. His wandering glance chanced to take note of - some of the dogs’ faces about the chair. They were all alertly watching - him, and the profoundly wise look in their eyes caught his attention. No - doubt they were dreadful fools, if the truth could be known, but the - suggestion of cultured sagacity in their gaze was extraordinary. He looked - back again at his grandfather, and tried to say to himself that he was a - great noble, the head of an ancient and proud line, and the actual father - of <i>his</i> father—but the effort failed to spur his fancy. He - turned to Lord Julius and lifted his brows in wearied interrogation. - </p> - <p> - “Move round in front of him,” counseled the other. “Get yourself in the - range of his eyes.” - </p> - <p> - Christian obeyed, and, flushing a little with self-consciousness, strove - to intercept the aged man’s gaze. There was no change upon the ashen face - under the hood to tell him whether he had succeeded or not. The impulse to - grimace, to wave his arms about, to compel attention by any wild and - violent device, forced him to smile in the midst of his perplexed - constraint. He stared for a few moments longer at the gaunt, immovable - figure—then shrugged his shoulders, and, stepping over a dog or two, - made bold to rejoin Lord Julius. - </p> - <p> - “I do not see that it is of any use,” he said, with annoyance. “If you - wish to go, I am quite ready.” - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius lifted his brows in turn, and looked at his grand-nephew with - curiosity. “I said nothing about going, that I recall,” he began, with an - effect of reproof in his tone. But then he seemed to think better of it, - and gave an abrupt little laugh. “It isn’t very invigorating, I’m bound to - admit,” he confessed, cheerfully enough. “Wait a moment, and I’ll stir him - up a bit.” - </p> - <p> - He bent forward again, with his head at the edge of the hood, and shouted - into it: “If you want to see Ambrose’s boy, here he is! If you don’t want - to see him, say so, and waste no more of our time!” - </p> - <p> - To Christian’s surprise, the duke took instant cognizance of this remark. - His large face brightened, or at least altered its aspect, into something - like animation; his eyes emerged from their cover of lethargy, and looked - alive. - </p> - <p> - “My back is very bad to-day,” he remarked, in a voice which, though it - bore the querulous note of the invalid, was unexpectedly robust in volume. - “And I cannot make out whether the numbness is passing down below my knee - or not.” - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius nodded, as if confirming to himself some previous suspicion. - “I thought as much,” he commented in an aside to the young man. “It’s - merely his endearing little way. Have patience, and we’ll draw the badger - yet.” - </p> - <p> - He bawled once more into the hood, with an added peremptoriness of tone: - “I explained it all to you, hours ago, and I’m sure you understand it - perfectly. Christian naturally wished to pay his respects to you, but if - your back is too bad, why, there’s no more to be said—and we’ll be - off. Goodbye to you!” - </p> - <p> - “Did I know his mother? Who was his mother? I have no recollection of - her.” The duke spoke peevishly, twitching his sunken lips in what was - plainly an effort to pout them. Christian noted with curiosity that as he - surrendered himself to such mental exertion as the talk demanded, the aged - man’s face grew disagreeably senile in effect. An infinity of - gossamer-like wrinkles showed themselves now, covering the entire - countenance in a minute network. - </p> - <p> - “No, you didn’t know his mother!” replied Lord Julius, with significant - curtness. “It is more to the point that you should know <i>him</i>, since - he is to be your successor. Look at him—and say something to him!” - </p> - <p> - The duke managed to testify on his stiffened lineaments the reluctance - with which he did what he was told, but he shifted his eyes in a sidelong - fashion to take a brief survey of the young man. “Cressage could have - given you five stone ten,” he said to him, brusquely, and turned his eyes - away. - </p> - <p> - Christian cast a look of bewildered inquiry up at Lord Julius, but - encountered only a smile of contemptuous amusement. He summoned the - courage to declare, in a voice which he hoped was loud enough: “I am glad - to hear, sir, that this is one of your good days. I hope you will have - many more of them!” - </p> - <p> - Of this assurance His Grace seemingly took no note. After a short pause he - began speaking again. “There’s a dog up here,” he said, with the gravity - befitting a subject to which he had given much thought, “that I’m sure - falls asleep, and yelps in her dreams, and disturbs me most damnably, and - I believe it’s that old bitch Peggy, and when I mention it the fellows - swear that she’s been taken away, but I suspect that she hasn’t.” - </p> - <p> - “We will look to it,” put in Lord Julius perfunctorily. He added, upon an - afterthought, “Did the guns annoy you, this forenoon?” - </p> - <p> - The duke’s thoughts were upon something else. He turned his eyes again, - and apparently spoke to Christian. “A good hearty cut across the face with - a whip,” he said, with kindling energy, “is what’d teach-swine like - Griffiths their place—and then let ’em summons you and be - damned. A farmer who puts up barbed-wire—no gentleman would listen - to his evidence for a minute. Treat them like the vermin they are—and - they’ll understand that. Cressage had the proper trick with them—a - kick in the stomach first and reasons afterward. That’s the only way this - country can be hunted. When I got to riding over eighteen stone, and - couldn’t take anything, that ruffian Griffiths screwed up his gates and - sent me round the turnpike like a damned peddler, and Ambrose—it was - Ambrose, wasn’t it?—or am I thinking of Cressage? But they weren’t - together—here, Julius! It was you who were speaking of Ambrose! What - about him? By God, I wish he had my back!” - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius, with the smile in his beard hardening toward scorn, took - Christian by the arm. “I think you’ve had enough grandfather to go on - with,” he said, quietly. “Never mind making your adieux. They would be - quite wasted on him.” - </p> - <p> - Without further words, they turned and moved away through the dogs to the - window, and so into the house. The doctor, still at his book, rose once - more upon their approach, and this time Lord Julius halted to speak with - him. - </p> - <p> - “His Grace seems to ramble in his mind a good deal more than he did before - luncheon. Do you see a change in this respect—say week by week?” - </p> - <p> - “It is not observable in gradations, Lord Julius,” answered the physician, - a stout, sandy young man, who assumed his air of deference with - considerable awkwardness; “sometimes he recovers a very decided lucidity - after what had seemed to be a prolonged lapse in the other direction. But - on the whole I should say there was a perceptible—well, loss of - faculty. He knows the dogs, however, quite as well as ever—distinguishes - them apparently by touch, remembers all their names, and recalls anecdotes - about them, and, very often, about their mothers too. Fletcher tells me - His Grace hasn’t once miscalled a hound.” - </p> - <p> - “They make an abominable atmosphere up here,” commented the other. - </p> - <p> - The doctor smiled lugubriously. “I can’t deny that, Lord Julius,” he - replied, “but all the same they are the most important part of the - treatment. If we took them away, His Grace would die within the week.” - </p> - <p> - “Unhappy dogs!” mused Lord Julius, partly to himself, and walked on. It - was not until they were half-way down the big staircase that Christian - felt impelled to speak. - </p> - <p> - “I should much like to know,” he began, with diffident eagerness—“you - have already spoken so plainly about my grandfather—the question - will not seem rude to him, I hope—but when he was well, before the - paralysis, was he in any respect like what he is now?” - </p> - <p> - “I should say,” answered Lord Julius, in a reflective way, “that he is at - present rather less objectionable than formerly. One can make the excuse - of illness for him now—and that covers a multitude of sins. But when - he was in health—and he had the superb—what shall I say?—riotous - health of a whale—he was very hard to bear. You have seen him and - you have observed his mental and moral elevation. He remembers his dogs - more distinctly than he does his children. In the Almanach de Gotha he is - classed among princes, but what he dwells upon most fondly among his - public duties is the kicking of tenant-farmers in the stomach when they - try to save their crops from being ruined by the hunt. I may tell you, I - was in two minds about taking you to him at all, and now I think I regret - having done so.” - </p> - <p> - “No-o,” said Christian, thoughtfully. “It is better as it is. I am glad to - have seen him, and to have you tell me about him, frankly, as you have - done. It all helps me to understand the position—and it seems that - there is a great deal that needs to be understood. I can see already that - there is strange blood in the Torrs.” He paused on the bottom step as he - spoke, and turned to his companion with a wistful smile. “There is an even - bolder question I should like to ask—how does it happen that <i>you</i> - are so different? How do you account for yourself?” - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius laughed. “Oh, that is a long story,” he said, “but I can put - it into a word for you. I was made by my wife. I married a woman so noble - and clever and wise and strong that I couldn’t help becoming a decent sort - of fellow in spite of myself. But I am going to talk to you about all - that, later on. It is better worth talking about than anything else under - the sun. Oh—Barlow, please!” - </p> - <p> - The old butler had passed from one door to another in the hall, and turned - now as he was called, with a hand behind him upon the knob. Lord Julius, - approaching, exchanged some words with him upon the subject of his - afternoon’s plans. - </p> - <p> - Christian, watching this venerable servant with curiosity, as a type novel - to his experience, discovered suddenly that his scrutiny was being - returned. Barlow, while listening attentively and with decorously slow - nods of comprehension to what was being said to him, had his eyes fixed - aslant, beyond his interlocutor’s shoulder, upon the young stranger. - Christian encountered this gaze, and saw it waver and flutter aside, as - from force of polite habit, and then creep back again. This happened more - than once, and Christian began to feel that it had some meaning. He - observed that the butler inclined his head at last and whispered something—his - pale, wan old face showed it to be an inquiry—into the other’s ear. - The action explained itself so perfectly that Christian was in no way - surprised to see Lord Julius turn smilingly, and nod toward himself. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, he is Ambrose’s son,” he said. “He has come to take his place. I - know you for one won’t be sorry—eh, Barlow?” - </p> - <p> - It was clear to the young man’s perceptions that Lord Julius spoke as to - one who was a friend as well as a servant. The note of patriarchal - kindness in the tone appealed gratefully to him, and the affectionate - mention of his father’s name was sweet in his ears. A strange thrill of - emotion, a kind of aimless yet profound yearning, possessed him as he - moved forward. On the instant he realized that this was how he had - expected to feel in the presence of his grandfather. The fact that the - tenderness within him was appealed to instead by this gentle, sad-eyed old - family dependant seemed to him to have something beautiful and very - touching in it. Tears came into his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “You remember my father, then,” he said, and the breaking of his voice - carried him into the heart of this sudden new mood of self-abandonment. - “You would have known him as a little child—yes?—and you—you—” - he paused, to dash away the tears with his hand, and strive to regain some - control over his facial muscles—“you will have in your memory the - good things about him—the boyish, pleasant things—and you - loved him for them, did you not?” - </p> - <p> - Old Barlow, trembling greatly, and with a faint flush upon his white - cheeks, stared confusedly at the young man as he advanced. “I held him on - his first pony, sir,” he stammered forth, and then shook his head in token - that he could utter no more. His glistening eyes said the rest. - </p> - <p> - Christian flung his arms round the surprised old man’s neck, and kissed - him on both cheeks, and then, with head bowed upon his shoulder, sobbed - aloud. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART II - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER VIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he music of a - spirited and tireless band of robins helped Christian to wake next - morning. The character of their cheerful racket defined itself very slowly - to his drowsy consciousness. He lay for a long time with closed eyes, - listening to it, and letting his mind drift quite at random among the - thoughts which it suggested. He knew they were robins because his hostess - had said he would hear them; he lazily pictured to himself the tiny - red-breasts gathered in the shrubbery outside, in obedience to some - mysterious signal of hers, and singing to order thus briskly and - unwearyingly to make good her promise. - </p> - <p> - In what gay, high spirits the little fellow sang! The sun must be shining, - to account for so much happiness. He accepted the idea with a sense of - profound pleasure, and appropriated it to his own wonderful case. - </p> - <p> - For him, it was as if happiness had never existed before. - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - “‘Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays, - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - And twenty cagéd nightingales do sing.’” - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p> - He murmured the lines in indolent reverie, then opened his eyes, and - smiled to think where he was, and what he had become a part of. Lifting - himself on his elbow, he looked about him. The beauties of the apartment - had not been lost upon him the previous evening. He had carried them with - him in vague processional magnificence on his devious march through - dreamland; he surveyed them again now in the morning light, rising after a - while to pull aside the curtains, and bring in the full sunshine. - </p> - <p> - The room was, he said over and over to himself, ‘the most exquisite thing - he had ever seen. The ruling color was of some blue which could almost be - thought a green, and which, embraced as complementary decoration many - shades of ocher and soft yellowish browns in woodwork, and in the thick, - fleecy rugs underfoot. Around the four sides, at the level of his eyes, - ran a continuous band of portraits—the English drawings of Holbein - reproduced in the dominant tint of the room, set solidly into the wall, - and separated from one another only by thin strips of the same tawny oak - which framed them at top and bottom. The hooded, high-bosomed ladies, the - cavaliers in hats and plumes and pointed beards, the smoothfaced, - shrewd-eyed prelates and statesmen in their caps and fur, all knew him - this morning for one of their own, as he went along, still in his - nightshirt, and inspected them afresh. They appeared to greet him, and he - beamed at them in response. - </p> - <p> - A dim impression of the earlier morning, which had seemed a shadowy - passing phase of his dreams, revealed itself now to him as a substantial - fact. Some one <i>had</i> been in the room, moving noiselessly about, and - had spread forth for his use a great variety of articles of clothing and - of the toilet, most of which he beheld for the first time. Overnight, his - cousin Emanuel’s insistence upon his regarding everything in the house as - his own for the time being, had had no definite significance to his mind. - He looked now through the array of silks and fine cloths, of trinkets in - ivory and silver and polished metals, and began dressing himself with a - long sigh of delight. - </p> - <p> - Recollections of the leave-taking at Caermere straggled into his thoughts - as he pursued the task. He had seen Lady Cressage again in the - conservatory, where she wore another dress, and had her beautiful hair - carefully arranged as if in his honor, and poured out tea for him and Lord - Julius in wonderful little cups which his great-grandfather, a sailor, had - brought from China. Of her conversation he recalled little, and still less - of the talk of the other lady, the actress-person, Mrs. Edward, who had - joined the party, but whose composed pretty face had been too obviously a - mask for anguish not to dampen everybody’s spirits. He wondered now, as he - plied his razor on the strap, what had become of her husband, and of that - poor-spirited brother of his. Had they joined the pheasant-shooters, after - their interview with him? The temptation to fire upon themselves instead - of the birds must have sorely beset them. - </p> - <p> - But it was pleasanter to begin the retrospect some hours later, when the - rough country of the Marches, and even Bristol, had been left behind. Lord - Julius had explained to him then, as darkness settled upon the low, - pasture-land levels they were swinging along past, that Somerset was also - a county of the Torrs; two of their three titles were derived from it, - indeed, and Somerset marriages had brought into the family, in the days - following the downfall of the monasteries, some of the most important of - its estates. If the dukes had turned their backs on Caermere two centuries - ago, and made their principal seat here in this gentler and more equable - land, perhaps the family history might have been different. Christian had - absorbed the spirit rather than the letter of his companion’s remarks. - English counties were all one to him, but intuitively he had felt that he - was getting into a kindlier and more congenial atmosphere. Although it was - a black night, he had stared a good deal at the window, trying to discern - some tokens of this change in the dimly lighted, empty stations they - glided through, or paused reluctantly in. - </p> - <p> - When they had finally quitted the train at Bridgewater, and had got under - way inside the carriage waiting for them there, Christian had asked - whether it was not true that the railway servants here were more - courteously obliging than they had been in other parts. - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius had lightly remarked that it might be so; very likely, - however, it was some indirect effect of the general psychical change the - family underwent in shifting its territorial base. Then he had gone on - more gravely, alluding for the first time to the episode of the butler. - </p> - <p> - “You must be prepared to find everything very different, here,” he had - said. “There is such a thing as having too much past—especially when - it is of the wrong sort. Caermere is as tenacious of its memories as a - prison—and they are as unpleasant. It forces upon you its air of - never forgetting a single one of its miseries and injuries—and you - feel that it cannot remember any compensating joys. I could see how the - effect of it got into your blood, and broke your nerve. Under ordinary - circumstances men do not kiss their butlers, or even sob on their bosoms. - But I understood perfectly how old Barlow appealed to you. As you beheld - him he might have stood as model for a statue of the Family Grief, choking - down its yearning to wail over the generations gone to the bad. It was all - right, what you did. For that matter, I was precious near raising a howl - of lamentation myself. One is always alternating between tears and curses - in that criminal old coalmine of a castle. But now you are over a hundred - miles away from it all—and if it was a thousand the difference - couldn’t be greater. You will find nothing whatever to cry about down - here. Nobody has any bad dreams. There isn’t a cupboard that ever - sheltered a skeleton even overnight. In these parts, remarkable as it may - seem, the Torrs are actually regarded with admiration—quite the salt - of the earth—a trifle eccentric, perhaps, but splendid landlords, - capable organizers, uncommonly good masters—and above all, happy - people who insist that everybody about them shall be happy too. It was - important to show you the other side first—at least that was what we - decided upon, but you are done with that now—and we’ll give you - something to take the taste out of your mouth.” - </p> - <p> - Christian recalled these assurances, now, with a delicious sense of being - already enfolded and upheld by the processes of their fulfillment. The - details of his reception at the broad, hospitably lighted door of - Emanuel’s house crowded in upon his memory, and merged themselves with - other recollections of the later evening hours—the supper, the long, - calm, sweetly intimate talk before the fire, the honest, wise, frankly - affectionate faces into which he had looked to say “good-night”—it - almost overwhelmed him with its weight of unimagined happiness. He had - hardly guessed before what other men might mean when they gave a loving - sound to the word “home.” Yet now the doors of such a home as he could - never have dreamed of had opened to him—to him, the homeless, lonely - one! and he was nestled securely in the warm heart of its welcome. He - could have groaned aloud under the burden of his rapture at the thought. - </p> - <p> - At last he went downstairs, his misgivings about the hour not quite - allayed by recollection of the parting injunction to sleep his fill and - get up when he liked. There were beautiful things to note and linger over - on every side as he made his way—pictures and armor and wonderful - inlaid work and tapestries, all subordinating themselves with - distinguished good breeding to the fact that they were in a home and not a - museum—but he moved along in rather conscience-stricken haste toward - the part of the house which had seemed to him the previous night to be the - center of domestic life. He formed a sudden resolution, as he explored the - lower hallway, that when he got some money his first purchase should be of - a watch. - </p> - <p> - After looking into a couple of rooms which were clearly not what he - sought, Christian opened the right door, and confronted a breakfast-table, - shining in its snowy attractiveness midway between a window full of - sunlight and a brightly tiled chimney-place, with a fire on the hearth. - There was no one in the room, and he stood for some minutes looking about - him, liking very much the fresh, light-hued cheerfulness of everything, - but still wishing that some one would come to pour his coffee. By degrees, - he assimilated the idea that the ingredients of breakfast were all here to - hand. There were dishes beside the fire, and this was apparently the - coffee-pot on the table—a covered urn, with a thin spirit-flame - trembling beneath it. He had reached the point of deciding to help himself—or - should he ring the bell instead?—when the door opened and the lady - of the house came bustling in. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Emanuel, as he styled her in his thoughts, looked the very spirit of - breakfast—buoyant, gay-hearted and full of the zest of life. Last - night, to the young man’s diffident though strenuous inspection, she had - seemed the embodiment of tender hospitality in general. Though his glances - were more confident now, in the brilliant morning light, she still gave - the impression of personifying the influences which she made felt about - her, rather than exhibiting a specific personal image. She was not tall, - nor yet short; her face pleased the eye without suggesting prettiness; she - had the dark, clear skin and rounded substance of figure which the mind - associates with sedate movements and even languor, but she herself moved, - thought, spoke with alert vivacity. Above all things, a mellow - motherliness in her had struck the forlorn youth the previous evening. Now - it seemed much more like the sweet playfulness of a fond elder sister. - </p> - <p> - “You took me at my word; that’s right,” she said to him, as they shook - hands. “I was afraid the man might disturb you, or give you the idea you - were expected to get up. And do you feel perfectly rested now? A day or - two more will do it, at all events. If I’d known how they were dragging - you about, by night and by day! But your Uncle Julius has no knowledge of - even the meaning of the word fatigue. Sit here, won’t you—and now - here’s bacon for you, and here’s fish taken this very morning, and eggs - I’ll ring for to be done as you like them, and how much sugar to your - coffee? You mustn’t think this has been boiling ever since morning. It was - made when you were heard moving about in your room.” - </p> - <p> - “I should be so sorry to have kept anybody waiting,” he began, in shy - comment upon the discovery that he was eating alone. - </p> - <p> - She laughed at him with cordial frankness. “Waiting?” she echoed merrily. - “Why, it’s about three o’clock. Lord Julius is nearly in London by this - time, and the rest of us have not only breakfasted, but lunched.” - </p> - <p> - “Lord Julius gone?” he asked with wide-open eyes. - </p> - <p> - She nodded, and raised a reassuring hand. “It’s nothing but business. - Telegrams came early this morning which took him away by the first train. - He would have gone later in the day in any case. He left the most fatherly - adieux for you—and of course you’ll be seeing him soon in London.” - </p> - <p> - Christian was puzzled. “But this is his home here, is it not?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “Not at all—more’s the pity,” she replied. “We wish for nothing so - much as that he might make it so—but he elects instead to be the - slave of the family, and to work like a bank-clerk in Brighton instead of - cutting himself free and living his own life like the rest of us, in God’s - fresh air. But he comes often to us—whenever the rural mood seizes - him.” She seemed to comprehend the doubtful expression on the youth’s - face, for she added smilingly: “And you mustn’t be frightened to be left - alone with us. You’re as much our blood as you are his—and—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, don’t think that!” he pleaded impulsively. “I was never so glad to be - anywhere in my life as I am to be here.” - </p> - <p> - Her gray eyes regarded him with kindly softness. He saw that they were - only in part gray eyes—that they were both blues and browns in their - beautiful coloring, and that the outer edge of the iris deepened in tint - almost to the black of the splendid lashes. He returned her look, and held - it with a tentative smile, that he might the longer observe the remarkable - eyes. All at once it flashed upon him that there was a resemblance. - </p> - <p> - “Your eyes are like my mother’s,” he said, as if in defensive explanation - of his scrutiny. - </p> - <p> - “Tell me about your mother,” she rejoined, putting her arms on the table - and resting her chin upon a finger. “I do not think I ever heard her - name.” - </p> - <p> - “It was Coppinger—Mary Coppinger. I never saw the name anywhere - else.” He added hesitatingly: “My brother told me that her father was a - soldier—an officer—who became in his old age very poor, and - was at last a gardener for some rich man at Malta, and my mother gave - lessons as a governess to support herself, and it was there she met my - father.” - </p> - <p> - The lady seemed most interested in the name. “Coppinger, is it!” she - exclaimed, nodding her head at him. “No wonder my heart warmed at the - sight of you. Why, now, to look at you—of course you’re County Cork. - You’re our slender dark type to perfection.” - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid I do not understand,” he murmured. - </p> - <p> - “Why, she could not have that name and be anything but a County Cork - woman. Who ever heard of a Coppinger anywhere else? Only it is pronounced - with a soft ‘g,’ not hard, as you speak it. I wonder—but that can - wait; her father will be easily enough traced. And so you are an Irishman, - too!” - </p> - <p> - Christian looked abashed at the confusing suggestion. “I think I am all - English,” he said vaguely. - </p> - <p> - She laughed again. “Are you turning your back on us? Did you not know it? - I also am Irish. No doubt I am some sort of cousin of yours on my own - account, as well as on Emanuel’s. There are Coppingers in my own family, - and in most of those that we have intermarried with. Your mother was a - Protestant, of course.” - </p> - <p> - He shook his head apprehensively, as if fearful that his answer must give - pain. “No, she went to mass like other people, and I was sent to the - Brothers of the Christian School. But she was not in any degree a <i>dévotée</i>, - and for that matter,” he added in a more confident tone, “I myself am - still less <i>dévot</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah!” was her only comment, and he quite failed to gather from it any clue - to her sentiments on the subject. “Well,” she began again, “I’ll not put - you through any more of your catechism now. Are you finished? Then come - with me and we will find Emanuel, and incidentally you will see the place—or - portions of it. It will take you a long time to see it all. Do you want to - smoke? Put some of these cigars in your pocket—or here are - cigarettes if you prefer them. Oh, we smoke everywhere. There is nothing - on earth that we want to do that we don’t do—and there’s nothing we - don’t want to do that any mortal power can make us do. There you have the - sum of our philosophy.” - </p> - <p> - He had followed her into the hallway, where the doors were open wide to - the mellow autumn afternoon. He put on the soft shapeless hat she gave him - from a collection on the antlers, and was inspired to select a stick for - himself out of the big standful at the door. - </p> - <p> - “Now I shall walk about,” he said, gaily, “quite as if I had never been - out of England in my life. Is your husband—perhaps-shooting?” - </p> - <p> - She seemed always to laugh at him. Her visible merriment at his question - dashed his spirits for an instant. Then he saw how genial and honest was - her mirth, and smiled himself in spontaneous sympathy with it. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t dream of suggesting it to him!” she adjured the young man, with - mock solemnity. “He has a horror of the idea of killing living creatures. - He does not even fish for sport—though I confess I hardly follow him - to that length. And don’t speak of him in that roundabout way, but call - him Emanuel, and call me Kathleen or Kit—whichever comes easiest. - Merely because Thom’s directory swears we’re forty years old, we’re not to - be made venerable people by you. All happy folk belong to the same - generation, no matter when they were born—and—but here is - Emanuel now. - </p> - <p> - “I have been telling Christian,” she continued, addressing her husband as - he paused at the foot of the steps, “that he is to be happy here, even in - spite of himself.” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel shook hands with his cousin, and nodded pleased approval of his - wife’s remark. His smile, however, was of a fleeting sort. “Nothing has - come of the Onothera experiments,” he announced to her in a serious tone. - “I’m afraid we must give up the idea of the yellow fuchsia.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER IX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>manuel Torr, at - the age of forty, was felt by those who knew and loved him almost to have - justified the very highest of the high hopes which his youth had - encouraged. This intimate circle of appreciation was rendered a small one - by the circumstances of his temperament and choice of career; but beyond - this his name was familiar to many who had never seen him, or who - remembered him at best as a stripling, yet who habitually thought and - spoke of him as an example and model to his generation. - </p> - <p> - At Oxford, twenty years before, he had attracted attention of a sort - rather peculiar to himself. Those who took note of him saw foreshadowed - the promise, not so much of great achievements as of the development and - consolidation of a great influence. He was not specially distinguished in - his work at the University, and he made no mark at the Union, where there - happened at the time to be glittering a quite exceptional galaxy of future - front bench men, judges and bishops. In Emanuel’s case, the interest he - aroused was perhaps more sentimental than intellectual. His mind was seen - to be of a fine order, but his character was even more attractive to the - observant eye. The facts that he was half Jewish in blood, and that in - time he would be the possessor of enormous wealth, no doubt lent an added - suggestion of romance to the picture of delicate, somewhat coldly modeled - features, of ivory skin and serious, musing dark eyes, and of a rare smile - of wonderful sweetness, which Oxford men of the mid-seventies still - associate with his name. It was in the days when Disraeli’s remarkable - individuality was a part of England’s current history, and when the - English imagination, in part from the stimulus of this fact, dwelt upon - the possibilities of a new Semitic wave of inspiration and ethical - impetus. The dreams, the aspirations, the mysterious “perhaps” of Daniel - Deronda were in men’s minds, and Johannesburg had not been so much as - heard of. - </p> - <p> - What the University recognized in the youth standing upon the threshold of - manhood, had been an article of faith within his home since his childhood. - It is as well to recount at this place the brief story of that home. - </p> - <p> - At the age of twenty-five Lord Julius Torr, engaged in the listless - pursuit of that least elusive of careers, called diplomacy, found himself - at The Hague, and yawned his way about its brightly scrubbed solitudes for - some months, until, upon the eve of his resolve to have done with the - whole business, and buy a commission in a line regiment, he encountered a - young woman who profoundly altered all his plans in life. It was by the - merest and unlikeliest of accidents that he came to know the Ascarels, - father and daughter, and at the outset his condescension had seemed to him - to be involved as well. They were of an old family in the Netherlands, - Jewish in race but now for some generations estranged from, the synagogue, - and reputed to be extraordinarily wealthy. It was said of them too that - they were sternly exclusive, but to the brother of an English duke this - had not appeared to possess much meaning. He had previously been of some - official service to the father, in a matter wherein Dutch and English - interests touched each other at Sumatra; from this he came to meet the - daughter. He had been told by the proud father that she was of the blood - of the immortal Spinoza, and had been so little impressed that he had not - gone to the trouble of finding out who Spinoza was. - </p> - <p> - The marriage of young Torr, of the Foreign Office, to some Dutch-Jewish - heiress a half-year later, received only a trifle more notice in England - than did the news of his retirement from his country’s diplomatic service. - The duke had already four sons, and the brother, when it seemed that he - intended to live abroad, was not at all missed. Nearly fifteen years - elapsed before a mature Lord Julius reappeared in England—a Lord - Julius whom scarcely any one found recognizable. He bore small visible - relation to the aimless and indolent young attaché whom people, by an - effort of memory, were able to recall; still less did he resemble anything - else that the Torr family, within recollection, had produced. He took a - big old house in Russell Square, and in time it became understood that - very learned and intellectual people paid pilgrimages thither to sit at - the feet of Lady Julius, and learn of her. Smart London rarely saw this - Lady Julius save at a distance—in her carriage or at the opera. The - impression it preserved of her was of a short, swarthy woman, increasingly - stout as years went on, who peered with near-sighted earnestness through a - large pince-nez of unusual form. On her side, it seemed doubtful if she - had formed even so succinct an impression as this of smart London. She was - content with Bloomsbury to the end of her days; and made no effort - whatever to establish relations with the West End. Indeed, tales came to - be told of the effectual resistance she offered, in later years, to - amiable interested advances from that quarter. It grew to be believed that - she had made an eccentric will, and would leave untold millions to Atheist - charities. The rumor that she was among the most highly cultivated women - of her time, and that the most illustrious scientists and thinkers would - quit the society of kings to travel post-haste across Europe at her - bidding, did not, it must regretfully be added, seem incompatible with - this theory about a crazy will. Finally, when she died in 1885, something - was printed by the papers about her philanthropy, and much was said in - private speculation about her disposition of her vast fortune, but it did - not come out that any will whatever was proved, and London ceased to think - of the matter. - </p> - <p> - The outer world had in truth been wrong from the beginning. Lady Julius - was not a deeply learned woman, and the limited circle of friends she - gathered about her contained hardly one distinguished figure, in the - popular use of the phrase; her opinions were not notably advanced or - unconventional; she did not shun society upon philosophic principles, but - merely because it failed to attract a nature at once shy and practical; so - far from being rich in her own right, she had insisted many years before - her death upon transferring every penny of her fortune to her husband. - </p> - <p> - Inside her own household, this dark, stout little woman with the - eye-glasses was revered as a kind of angel. She was plainfaced almost to - ugliness in the eyes of strangers. Her husband and her son never doubted - that she was beautiful. Now, when she had been a memory for ten years and - more, these two talked of her lovingly and with no constraint of gloom, as - if she were still the pivot round which their daily life turned. - </p> - <p> - The elder man particularly delighted in dwelling upon the details of that - earlier change in him, under her influence, to which allusion has been - made. Emanuel had in his mind, from boyhood, no vision more distinct or - familiar than this selfpainted picture of his father—the idle, - indifferent, unschooled, paltry-ideaed young gentleman of fashion—meeting - all unawares this overpowering new force, and kneeling in awed yet - rapturous submission before it. To the boy’s imagination it became a - historical scene, as fixed and well known in its lines of composition as - that of Nelson’s death in the cockpit. He saw his beardless father in - dandified clothes of the Corn-Laws-caricature period, proceeding along the - primrose path of dalliance, like some flippant new Laodicean type of Saul - of Tarsus—when “suddenly there shined around him a light from - heaven.” Lord Julius, indeed, thought and spoke of it in much that same - spirit. The recollection that he had not known who Spinoza was tenderly - amused him: it was the symbol of his vast oceanic ignorance of all things - worth knowing. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, yes,” the son used to say, “but if you had not had within yourself - all the right feelings—only lacking the flash to bring them out—you - would not have seen how wonderful she was. You would not have understood - at all, but just passed on, and nothing would have happened.” - </p> - <p> - And the father, smiling in reverie, and stroking his great beard, would - answer: “I don’t see that that follows. I remember what I was like quite - vividly, and really there was nothing in me to explain the thing at all. I - was a young blood about town, positively nothing more. No, Emanuel, we may - say what we like, but there are things supernatural—that is, beyond - what we can see, and are prepared for, in nature. It was as unaccountable - as magic, the effect your mother produced upon me from the beginning. At - the end of a few hours, when it was time for me to take my leave, and I - turned—there was a gulf in front of me, cutting me off from where I - had been before I came to her, that very day. It was so wide, it seemed - that I could barely see across it.” - </p> - <p> - To any listener but Emanuel such language must have been extravagant. To - him there were no words for overpraise of his mother. It was not alone - that he had never seen her in anger or even vexation; that he had never - known her to be in error in any judgment, or suspected in her an - uncharitable or unkindly thought. These were mere negations, and the - memory of her was full of positive influences, all wise and pure and - lofty. Very early in life, when he began to look about the world he found - himself in, he learned to marvel that there were no other such women - anywhere to be seen. She had been so perfect, with seemingly no effort to - herself! Why should other women not even try? - </p> - <p> - Emanuel had been born some ten years after the marriage of his parents, - and they thus came into his baby consciousness as persons of middle age, - in appearance and its suggested authority at least, by comparison with the - parents of other children he saw about him. Nowhere else, however, either - then or in later years, did he see another home so filled from center to - circumference with love, and tender gentleness of eye and word and deed. - The perception that this environment was unique colored all his boyhood. - It became a habit with him to set in contrast his own charmed existence - against the unconsidered and uneven experiences of other children, and to - ponder the meaning of the difference. As he grew up, the importance of - this question expanded in his mind and took possession of it. He was - consumed with the longing to make some effective protest against the - peevish folly with which humanity mismanaged its brief innings of life. - From the cradle to the grave the race swarmed stupidly along, elbowing and - jostling in an aimless bustle, hot and ill-tempered through exertions - which had no purpose; trampling down all weaker than themselves and - cursing those who, in turn, had the strength to push them under; coming - wearily at the end to the gate and the outer darkness of extinction, a - futile and disappointed mob—having seen nothing, comprehended - nothing, profited nothing. - </p> - <p> - The progress of a generation across the span of life might be made so - serene and well-ordered and fruitful an affair! What else had man to - concern himself about than this one thing—that “peace on earth, good - will to men,” should rule in his time? And how was it that this alone, of - all possible problems, received from him no attention at all? - </p> - <p> - The impulse toward a mission was discernible in the lad; it altogether - dominated the young man. His parents, regarding him lovingly and yet with - wise inquiry, were fascinated by what they saw. A sense of lofty - responsibility in their trusteeship for this beneficent new force formed a - fresh bond between them, which grew to absorb within itself all their - other ties. They came to regard themselves in no other light than as the - parents of Emanuel. To preserve him from vitiating and stunting - suggestions; richly to nourish, yet with an anxious avoidance of surfeit, - both the soul and the mind within him; to give him strength and means and - single-hearted courage adequate to the task he yearned to undertake—they - asked nothing better of life than this. - </p> - <p> - After Oxford, he went abroad for a couple of years, having as a companion - a young Fellow of Swithin’s, a trifle older than himself, who shared his - moral attitude if not his passionate aspirations. He saw many parts of the - world, and scrutinized closely in each the working of those portions of - the social mechanism which interested him. Returning with a mass of notes - and a mind packed with impressions and theories, he set to work to write a - big book. At the end of a year he produced instead a small volume, dealing - with one little phase of the huge, complex theme he had at heart. It was a - treatise on the relations between parents and children, and it received - very favorable reviews indeed. University men felt that it was what they - had had the foresight to expect from this serious and high-minded young - fellow, who was lucky enough to have the means and leisure for ethical - essay-writing. Evidently he was going in for that sort of thing, and they - noted with approbation that he had been at great pains with his style. - Much to Emanuel’s surprise, only some three hundred copies of the work - were sold; upon reflection, he saw that it was no part of his plan to sell - books, and he forthwith distributed the remainder of the edition, and - another edition as well, among the libraries of the Three Kingdoms. Within - the next three years two other brochures went through much the same - experiences. They treated respectively of primary education and of public - amusements. Again the reviews were extremely cordial; again the men who - had always predicted that Torr would do something regarded their prophetic - intuition with refreshed complacency; again Emanuel drew considerable - checks in favor of his publisher. What had been hinted at rather vaguely - heretofore was now, however, announced with confidence in “literary” - columns: these small volumes were merely chapters of a vast and - comprehensive work to which the author had dedicated his life—the - laborious exposition of a whole new philosophy of existence, to be as - complete in its way as Herbert Spencer’s noble survey of mankind. - </p> - <p> - Not long after came the death of Emanuel’s mother—an unlooked-for - event which altered everything in the world to the bereaved couple left - behind. They went away together in the following month, with a plan of a - prolonged tour in the Orient, but came back to England after a few weeks’ - absence, having found their proposed distraction intolerable. Lord Julius - promptly invented for his own relief the device of taking over upon - himself the drudgery of caring for his millions, which heretofore had been - divided among a banker, a broker, a solicitor and two secretaries. Emanuel - saw his way less directly, but at last he found the will to begin a - tentative experiment with some of his theories of life on a Somersetshire - farm which his father gave him. The work speedily engrossed him, and - expanded under his hands. He became conscious of growth within himself as - well. The conviction that life is a thing not to be written about, but to - be lived, formulated itself in his mind, and he elaborated this new view - in an argument which persuaded his father. The Somersetshire estates of - the family, which had been bought by Lord Julius in 1859, when the duke - and his son Porlock joined to set aside the entail, were placed now - unreservedly at Emanuel’s disposal. What he did with them is to be seen - later on. - </p> - <p> - At the moment, it was of the first importance that he should decide for - himself the great question of celibacy v. marriage. The far-reaching - projects which possessed his brain would, beyond doubt, be multiplied - infinitely in value if precisely the right woman were brought in to share - his enthusiasm and devotion. It was no whit less clear that they would - dwindle into failure and collapse under the blight of the wrong woman. The - dimensions of the risk so impressed him, as he studied them, that for more - than two years he believed himself to be irrevocably committed to the cold - middle course of bachelorhood. - </p> - <p> - Then, by a remarkable stroke of good fortune, he met, fell in love with - and married the sister of Lord Rosbrin, a young Irish peer whom he had - known at Oxford. No one has ever doubted, he least of all, that she was - the right woman. - </p> - <p> - He wrote no more books, in the years following this event, but gradually - he became the cause of writing in others. A review article upon the - character and aims of his experiment in Somersetshire, written in an - appreciative spirit by an economist of position, attracted so much - attention that the intrusion of curious strangers and inquisitive - reporters threatened to be a nuisance. After this, his name was always - mentioned as that of an authority, when sociological problems were - discussed. There was even a certain flurry of inquiry for his books, - though this did not turn out to have warranted the printing of the new - popular edition. Sundry precepts in them became, however, the stock - phrases of leader-writers. People of culture grew convinced that they were - familiar with his works, and only a few months before the period at which - we meet him, his university had conferred upon him an honorary D.C.L., - which gratified him more deeply than any other recognition his labors and - attainments had ever received. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER X - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian, - observing his celebrated cousin by daylight for the first time, perceived - the necessity of revising some of the previous night’s impressions. - </p> - <p> - Under the illumination of the shaded lamp and the glowing bank of peat on - the study hearth, Emanuel in his velvet jacket and slippered ease had - seemed a delicately refined creature, of so ethereal a type that life for - it outside the atmosphere of books, and of a library’s thought and talk, - would be unnatural, or even impossible. With his back to the afternoon - sunshine, however, and with rough, light clothes suggesting fresh-air - exercise, Emanuel was a different person. - </p> - <p> - In stature he was a trifle taller than Christian; perhaps he was also - something heavier, but what the newcomer noted most about the figure was - the wiry vigor of muscular energy indicated in all its lines and - movements. There was apparent no trace of any physical resemblance to his - father, the massive Lord Julius, and Christian, as this fact occurred to - him, remembered what he had heard about the race from which the mother had - come. He could not say that Emanuel’s face was like anything which he had - thought of as distinctively Jewish. The forehead was both broad and - prominent, and at the top, where early baldness exposed the conformation - of the skull, there were curious sutural irregularities of surface which - attracted attention. The rest of the face was indefinably distinguished in - effect, but not so remarkable. Christian thought now that it was a more - virile countenance than he had imagined it to be. Vague suggestions of the - scholarly dreamer flitted through its expressions now and again, but it - was still above all things the face of a man of action. - </p> - <p> - Christian had said to himself, in that crowded instant of analysis, that - he had never seen any Jewish face which at all resembled this of his - cousin’s. Yet somewhere he had seen a face so like it!—the memory - puzzled and absorbed his mind. The same crisping, silky black-brown hair; - the same full line of brow and nose; the same wide-open dark eyes, - intently comprehending in their steady gaze—how strangely familiar - they were to him! He saw them again in his mind’s eye, and they had the - same shadow-casting background of sunlight—only as he looked at the - mental picture, this sunlight was fiercer and hotter, and there was a - golden, hazy distance of purple-blue sea. Suddenly he laughed aloud, and - his brain was alive with recollections. - </p> - <p> - “I never recognized you last night,” he declared. “Is it not strange that - I should have been so blind? But seeing you in the sunlight—ah, I - remember you well enough.” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel smiled too, a little awkwardly. “Of course I was not making any - secret of it,” he said. “It would have come up naturally, sooner or later, - in the course of talk.” - </p> - <p> - But Christian had turned to the lady, and was speaking with gay animation. - “He it is whom I have so often thought of, for years now, as the - ‘mysterious stranger’ of my poor little romance. How long is it ago? Oh, - ten years perhaps, since I saw him first. It was at Toulon, and I was - walking along the quai in the late afternoon, and he stopped me to ask - some question, and we fell to walking together and talking—at first - about the old town, then of myself, because he wished it so. A long time - passed, and lo! I saw him again. This time he came into Salvator’s little - shop at Cannes—it was in the Rue d’Oran—and I was alone, and - we talked again—it seems to me for more than an hour. And I wondered - always who he could be—because he made me feel that he had friendly - thoughts about me. And then, once more—it was a year ago last summer—he - met me again, and came and sat beside me on a seat in the Jardin Public, - at Nice. It must have been in June, for the season was ended, and it - surprised me that he should be there.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, I know all about it,” put in Kathleen. “He told me of his seeing - you, and what he thought of you, almost as soon as your back was turned. - But at that time, of course—things hadn’t happened.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, but he wanted to be kind to me, even then,” the young man broke - forth, with a glow in his eyes. “I felt that in his tone, the very first - time, when I was the young boy at school. Oh, I puzzled my brain very - often about this young English gentleman who liked to talk to me. And here - is a curious thing, that when the Credit Lyonnais gave me my summons to - come to England, it was of him that I thought first of all, and wondered - if he had not some part in it. And then I was so dull—I come to his - own house, and sit at his own table with him as my cousin, and do not know - him at all! It is true that he had no beard then—but none the less I - am ashamed.” He spread his hands out and smiled a deprecatory gesture at - them both as he added: “But then everything has been upside down in my - mind since I came to England. It has been as if I were going up the side - of a straight cliff in a funicular railway—my heart throbbing in - terror, my brain whirling—afraid to look down, or out, or to realize - where I was. But to-day I am happily at the end of the journey, and the - good safe ground is well under my feet—and so I am not confused any - more, but only very, very glad.” - </p> - <p> - The elder couple exchanged a frankly delighted smile over the enthusiast’s - head. “You take him for a stroll about the place,” said the wife. “Perhaps - I will come and find you, later on.” - </p> - <p> - In obedience to the suggestion, the two men turned, and went off together - across the lawn. - </p> - <p> - Emanuel began speaking at once. “My father,” he said, “has given me a - rough outline of what you have seen and heard. In the nature of things, it - could not all be pleasant.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I have quite forgotten the unhappy parts,” the young man declared. “I - resolved to do that; it would be folly to remember them.” - </p> - <p> - “They have their uses, though,” persisted the other. “I wanted you to - start out with just that impression of the family’s seamy side. We have an - immense deal to make up to the people about us, and to humanity in - general, have we Torrs. It seemed to me that you could not realize this - too early in your experience here. What impressions did Caermere itself - make upon you?” - </p> - <p> - Christian hesitated a little, to give form to his thoughts. “I am - imagining it in my mind,” he said at last, slowly, and with extended hands - to shape his meaning to the eye, “as a huge canvas, one of the very - biggest. As it happens, there is an unpleasant picture on it now, but that - can be wiped out, covered over, and then on the vast blank surface a new - and splendid picture may be painted—if I have the skill to do it.” - He paused, as his companion nodded comprehension of the figure, and then - added abruptly: “I have not put the question direct before—but it is - really the case that I am to succeed my grandfather—to be duke of - Glastonbury, is it not?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” answered Emanuel, gravely. “That is the case.” - </p> - <p> - “Lord Julius told me to ask you everything,” Christian went on in defense - of his curiosity. “But, grand Dieu! there is so much to ask! Shall I be a - rich man, also? There are dukes in France who can scarcely give a dinner - to a friend—and in Italy who are often in doubt about even their own - dinners. I understand that English dukes are different—but it has - been said to me that my grandfather, for example, is not a rich man. He - would be rich, no doubt, in some other station, but as a duke he is poor. - Shall I also be poor?” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel smiled, more, it seemed, to himself than for the benefit of the - young man. With amusing deliberation he took from his pocket a little - oblong book with flexible covers. “Have you ever owned a checkbook?” he - asked drily. - </p> - <p> - Christian shook his head. - </p> - <p> - “Well, this is yours. It came from London this morning. I have written - here on the back of the first check, on the part that remains in the book, - these figures. They show what the bank holds at your disposal at the - present moment.” - </p> - <p> - Christian took the book, and stared with awe at the figures indicated. - “Three thousand pounds! That is to say, seventy-five thousand francs! But—I - do not understand. What portion is this of my entire fortune? There is - more besides—to come at some future period—n’est ce pas?” - </p> - <p> - The sum itself had seemed at first glance to be of bewildering dimensions. - Soberer second thoughts, however, told him that he had been lifted into a - social stratum where such an amount might easily come and go a number of - times during one’s life. - </p> - <p> - “Well,” Emanuel began, hesitating in turn over his phrases, “strictly - speaking, you have no fortune at all. This money has been placed to your - credit by my father—or if you like, by us both—to put you in a - position of independence for the time being. You are quite free to spend - it as you like. But—this is a somewhat delicate matter to explain—but - we look to you in turn to be more or less guided by us in, say, your mode - of life, your choice of associates and—and so on. Don’t think that - we wish in the least to hamper your individual freedom. I am sure you will - feel that that is not our way. But we have formed very high hopes indeed - for your career and—how shall I make you understand?—it rests - a good deal with us to say how far the realization of these hopes warrants - us in going on. That isn’t plain to you, I see. Well, to put it frankly, - you have nothing of your own, but we turn our money over to you because we - believe in you. If unhappily—let us suppose the very improbable case—we - should find ourselves no longer believing in you, why then we should feel - free to reconsider our financial responsibilities towards you. That is - stating it very baldly—not at all as I should like to have put it—but - it gives you the essence of the situation.” - </p> - <p> - They had paused, and Christian regarded him with a troubled face. “Then if - you come not to like me, or if I make mistakes, you take everything away - from me again? I have never heard of a system like that. It seems to place - me in a very strange position.” - </p> - <p> - The youth’s mobile countenance expressed such wistful dejection, as he - faltered out these words, that Emanuel hastened to reassure him. - </p> - <p> - “No, no,” he urged, putting a brotherly hand on his shoulder, “it is the - fault entirely of the way I explained it. No one will ever take anything - away from you. In all human probability you will live and die a wealthy - and powerful nobleman—and perhaps something a good deal more than - that. But let me show you the situation in another way. You have seen your - grandfather—so I need say little about him. When he had reached the - age of fifty or thereabouts he had come to the end of his resources. Since - the estates were entailed, nothing could be sold or mortgaged, and debts - of all sorts were crowding in upon him and his eldest son, Lord Porlock. - They were at their wits’ end to keep going at all; Porlock could not hold - his head up in London, much less marry, as he was expected to do. If it - had not been for the invention of life insurance, they could hardly have - found money to live from week to week. That was in 1858 or ’9, when - I was two or three years old. It was then that my father adopted his - policy toward the older branch of the family. As you perhaps know, he was - a very rich man. He came forward at this juncture, and saved the duke and - his household from ruin.” - </p> - <p> - “That was very noble of him. It is what I should have thought he would - do,” interposed Christian. They had begun walking again. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I don’t know that noble is quite the word,” said Emanuel. “The - element of generosity was not very conspicuous in the transaction. The - truth is that the duke and his son were not people that one could be - generous to. They had to be bound to a hard-and-fast bargain. They agreed - between them to break the entail, so that all the estates could be dealt - with as was deemed best, and bound themselves to sell or mortgage nothing - except to my father, unless with his consent. He on his side settled - seventy thousand pounds on Porlock and his heirs, thus enabling him to - marry, and he not only purchased from the duke the Somerset properties, of - which this is a part, but he bought up his debts at the sacrifice of a - good many thousands of pounds, so that in practice he became his brother’s - only creditor. No doubt there <i>was</i> generosity in that—since he - cut down the rate of interest to something almost nominal by comparison - with the usury that had been going on—but his motive was practical - enough. It was to get complete financial mastery of the family estates. - Nearly forty years have passed since he began; to-day he holds mortgages - on practically every acre. If it were not for the mine near Coalbrook, - which latterly yields the duke a certain surplus over the outlay at - Caermere, my father would probably own it all outright. Well, you have - followed it so far, haven’t you?” - </p> - <p> - Christian thoughtfully nodded his head. “These are not affairs that I have - been brought up to understand,” he commented, “but I think I comprehend. - Only this—you speak of your father’s adopted policy; that means he - has a purpose—an aim. The lady at the castle—Lady Cressage—spoke - to me about this, and I wish—” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, yes, you met her,” interposed - </p> - <p> - Emanuel. “I am not sure she was the best fitted to expound our policy to - you.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, she was very sympathetic,” the young man hastened to insist. “She had - the warmest praises for both you and your father. And I could not but feel - she wished me well, too.” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel made no immediate reply, but walked slowly along, revolving silent - thoughts, with a far-away, deliberative look in his eyes. When he spoke at - last, it was to revert with abruptness to the earlier topic. “The policy, - as we are calling it,” he said, “can be put in a nutshell. We take that - kind of pride in the family which impels us to resolve that, if we cannot - induce it to do great things, we will at least prevent it doing base - things. The position which your grandfather inherited was one of - remarkable opportunities, and also of exceptional responsibilities. He was - unfit to do anything with the opportunities, and as for the - responsibilities, he regarded them with only ignorant contempt. His - immediate heirs were very little better. It became a problem with us, - therefore, how best to limit their power for harm. Money was the one force - they could understand and respect, and we have used it accordingly. I say - ‘we’ because as the situation has gradually developed itself, it is hard - to say which part of it is my father’s and which mine—and still more - impossible to imagine what either of us would have done independently of - my mother. I will tell you more about her sometime. It was she, of course, - who brought the money to us, but she brought much else besides. However, - we will not enter upon that at the moment. Well, suddenly, last summer, - the deaths changed everything. Up to that time, what we had been doing had - had, so to speak, only a negative purpose. We had been keeping unfit - people from parading their unfitness in too scandalously public a fashion. - But all at once the possibility of doing something positive—something - which might be very fine indeed—was opened up before us. As you know - now, we were aware of your existence, but there were inquiries to be made - as to—well, as to the formal validity of your claim. After that, - there was some slight delay in tracing your whereabouts—but now you - are here, at last.” - </p> - <p> - “Now I am here, at last!” Christian repeated softly. He looked up into the - sky; somewhere from the blue an invisible lark filled the air with its - bubbling song. He drew a long breath of amazed content, then turned to his - companion. - </p> - <p> - “That men like you and your father should be making plans and sacrifices - for one like myself,” he said—“it is hard for me to realize it. - There is nothing for me to say but this—that I will spare no thought - or labor to be what you want me to be. And you will make it all clear to - me, will you not? in every detail what it is I am to do?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, hardly to that length,” said Emanuel. He smiled once more—that - grave, sweet, introspective smile of his, which suggested humor as little - as it did flippancy—and spoke more freely, as if conscious that the - irksome part of his task lay behind him. “We dream a great dream of you, - but it would be folly to attempt to dictate to you at every stage of its - realization. That would do you more harm than good, and it would be unfair - to both parties, into the bargain. No, what I desire is to show you the - practical workings of a system, and to fill you with the principles and - spirit of that system. I think it will interest you deeply, and I hope you - will see your way to making it, in its essentials at least, your own. It - has taken me many years to build it up, and I can’t pretend to suppose - that you will grasp it in a week or a year. But you will see at least the - aim I have in view, and you will get a notion of how I progress toward it. - I shall be satisfied, for the time being, merely to commend it to your - judgment as the aim which you might do well to set before you. It occurs - to me to ask you: have you decided opinions in politics?” - </p> - <p> - Christian shrugged his shoulders diffidently. “In France my friends were - of many parties, but since I thought never of myself as a Frenchman, I did - not take sides with any of them. My brother Salvator is very advanced - indeed; he is a Free Mason, and his friends are Carbonari in Italy and - Socialists in France. But to me, these things had not much meaning. I said - always to myself that I was English, and I read journals from London when - I could, to learn about English parties. But it was not easy to learn. I - stood in the streets often at Cannes in the early spring to see Mr. - Gladstone when he passed, and to take off my hat to him, because I read - that he was the greatest Englishman. But then I talked with English people - on the Riviera about him, and they all cursed and ridiculed him, and told - me that in England no respectable people would so much as speak to him. So - it is very hard to know the truth—when you are born and bred in - another country.” - </p> - <p> - “Even those who are born here do not invariably agree upon definitions of - the truth,” commented Emanuel. “But I was not speaking of parties or - politicians, so called. Politics, in its bigger sense, means the - housekeeping of humanity—the whole mass of interests that the - individuals of the human race have in common. But I don’t want to - generalize to you. Let us stop here for a few minutes; I have brought you - to this point that you may get the view.” - </p> - <p> - Their leisurely stroll through pastures and meadows, and latterly across a - strip of grassy common dotted with sheep, had brought them by a gradual - ascent to the summit of a knoll, crowned by a group of picturesquely - gnarled and twisted old trees, the boughs of which were all pointed - backward in the direction whence the men had come. Christian, coming to - the ridge and halting, confronted the unexpected breeze, steady and - sustained as an ocean swell, which he could hear murmuring through the - land-ward bent branches overhead. In front of him, at the distance of a - stone’s throw, the sloping heath abruptly ended in what for the instant he - supposed was the sky-line—and then saw to be a vast glittering - expanse of water, stretching off to an illimitable horizon. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, the sea!” he cried out, in surprised delight. “I had never dreamed - that we were near it.” - </p> - <p> - He could distinguish now the faint intermittent rustle of the waves on the - hidden beach far below. Perhaps a mile out the profile of a craft under - full sail shone magically white in the sunlight. He knew it to be a yacht, - and began watching it with an intuitive appreciation of its beauty of line - and carriage. Then in a sudden impulse he swung around and faced his - companion. “I do not like to look at it,” he broke out nervously. “I am - afraid to see the ghosts of those cousins who were drowned—killed to - make room for me. Where their yacht went down on the rocks—was that - close by here?” - </p> - <p> - “At least sixty miles away—in that direction,” and Emanuel gave an - indifferent nod towards the west. “I wouldn’t encourage ghosts of any - sort, if I were you, but theirs would be least of all worth while. I - wanted you to look about you from here—not specially seaward, but in - all directions. There is a small village at the water’s edge, almost - directly under our feet, which can’t be seen from above—we will get - round to it, perhaps to-morrow—but look in other directions. As far - as you can see along the coast to right and left—and inland, too—the - system I spoke of is in operation. It is all my land. Get the scope of it - into your mind. Roughly speaking, you can see over some nine or ten - thousand acres. Imagine that multiplied by seven or eight, and you will - have, an idea of the territory that your grandfather still owns—at - least nominally.” - </p> - <p> - Christian kept a rapt gaze upon the prospect, and strove in silence to - grasp the meaning of the words. - </p> - <p> - “On the land that you see before you,” Emanuel went on, “in one capacity - or another, nearly two thousand human beings have homes. On your - grandfather’s estates there must be nearly if not quite ten times that - number. Think what this means. You will be in a position to affect the - prosperity, the happiness, the well-being, body and soul, of fifteen or - twenty thousand people. It is a little nation—a small kingdom—of - which you will be the head.” - </p> - <p> - The young man turned slowly and forced himself to look out upon the deep, - but still said nothing. - </p> - <p> - “This position you may make much of, or little, or worse than nothing at - all,” the other continued. “It is a simple enough matter to put the work - and the responsibility upon other shoulders, if you choose to do it. Many - very respectable men born to such positions do wash their hands of the - worry and labor in just that fashion. They lead idle lives, they amuse - themselves, they take all that is yielded to them and give nothing in - return—and because they avoid open grossness and scandal their - behavior attracts no particular attention. In fact, it is quite taken for - granted that they have done the natural thing. Being born to leisure, why - should they toil? Possessing the title to wealth and dominion and the - deference of those about them, why should they be expected to go to work - and earn these things which they already own? That is the public view. - Mine is very different. I hold that a man who has been born to a position - of power among his fellows, and neglects the duties of that position while - he accepts its rewards, is disgraced. It is as dishonest as any action for - which less fortunate persons go to prison.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, that is my feeling, also,” said Christian in low, earnest tones. - “It’s all true—but—” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, yes, the ‘But,’” commented Emanuel, with his perceptive smile. “Now - let me explain to you that I have met this ‘But,’ and done battle with it, - and put it under my feet. I began planning for this struggle when I was - very young. All the good people I knew admitted frankly the evils I speak - of; they saw them quite clearly, and talked with eloquence and fine - feeling about them, and at the finish they said ‘But!’—and changed - the subject, and everything went on as before. It became apparent to me - that this eternal ‘But’ is the enemy of the human race. There it stood - forever in the path, blocking every attempt of benevolent and right-minded - people to advance in real progress. So I said: at least one life shall be - given to the task of proving that there need be no ‘But.’ I have been - working here now for years, upon lines which were carefully thought out - during other years of preparation. The results are in most respects better - than I could have expected; they are certainly many-fold better than any - one who had not my faith could have believed possible. Sundry limitations - in the system I have, no doubt, discovered. Some things which seemed - axiomatic on paper do not work themselves out the same way in practice—but - as a whole the system is recognized now as having justified itself. There - was an article in the ‘Fortnightly’ on it last November which I will give - you to read. I have written some chapters upon certain phases of it, - myself, which you might also look at. But the principal thing is that you - should see the system itself in full operation.” - </p> - <p> - “I am eager to begin,” declared the young man, with fervor. - </p> - <p> - They had turned by tacit consent, and were sauntering back again over the - short, soft grass of the heath. - </p> - <p> - Emanuel paused and picked from a furze-bush a belated spray of bright - yellow blossoms. As he continued his walk, he pulled one of these flowers - to pieces, and attentively examined the fragments. - </p> - <p> - “I gather that you are much interested in flowers,” said Christian, to - make conversation. - </p> - <p> - The other laughed briefly, as he threw the stuff aside, then sighed a - little. “Too much so,” he answered. “I wish I had the courage to give it - up altogether. It murders my work. I spend sometimes whole hours in my - greenhouses when I ought to be doing other things. The worst of it is that - I realize perfectly the criminal waste of time—and still I persist - in it. There is something quite mysterious in plants—especially if - you have grown them yourself. You can go and stand among them by the hour, - and look from one to another, with your mind entirely closed to thoughts - of any description. I used to assume that this mental rest had a - recuperative value, but as I get older I suspect that it is a kind of - lethargy instead—a mere blankness that can grow upon one. I find - myself, for example, going incessantly to see certain pans of my own - hybridized seedlings—and staring aimlessly at them till I get quite - empty-headed. Now, I am too busy a man to be able to afford that.” - </p> - <p> - “But if you get pleasure from it,” expostulated Christian, gently. - </p> - <p> - “We have no right to think of our pleasure,” Emanuel asserted with - decision, “while any duty remains unperformed. And rightly considered, - duty <i>is</i> pleasure, the very highest and noblest pleasure. The - trouble is that even while our minds quite recognize this, our senses play - us tricks. For example, when I saw how much time I was wasting on flowers, - I tried to turn the impulse into a useful channel. The blossoms of fruit - trees, for instance; the growth and flowering and seeding processes of - melons and broad-beans and potatoes and so on, are just as interesting and - worthy of study, and they mean value to humanity into the bargain. So I - said I would concentrate my attention upon them, instead—but there - was some perverse element in me somewhere; I couldn’t do it. The mere - knowledge that these excellent vegetables were of practical utility threw - me off altogether. They bored me—so I went shamefacedly back to the - roses and fuchsias and dahlias.” - </p> - <p> - “They have wonderful dahlias at Caermere,” interposed Christian. “I - walked for a long time among them with Lady Cressage, and she told me all - their names. Poor lady, she is very sad, in spite of the flowers. I—I - think I should like to say it to you—I find myself very sorry for - her. And—such a bewildering number of things are to be done for me—is - there not something that can be done for her?” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel walked slowly on in silence for some moments, regarding his - companion’s profile out of the corner of his eye, his own face showing - signs of preoccupation meantime. When at last he spoke, the question - seemed to have lost itself in convolution of his thoughts. - </p> - <p> - “Considering their northern exposure,” he said meditatively, “they grow an - extraordinary amount of fruit at Caermere.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t the end of a - fortnight Christian found himself able to confront the system, and even - look it in the face, with a certain degree of mental composure. He was far - from imagining that he had comprehended it all, but the thought of it no - longer made his brain whirl by the magnitude of its scope, or frightened - him by its daring. The implication that he was expected to do still more - with it than Emanuel, its inventor and evangel, had done, possessed its - terrors, no doubt, but one is not young for nothing. The buoyancy of - youth, expanding genially amid these delightful surroundings, thrust these - shadows off into the indefinite future, whenever they approached. - </p> - <p> - This system need not detain us long, or unnerve us at all. Lord Julius had - spoken figuratively of it as the Pursuit of Happiness; perhaps that - remains its best definition. - </p> - <p> - Like other systems, it was capable of explanation by means of formulas; - but the most lucid and painstaking presentation of these could not hope to - convey complete meaning to the mind. Stated in words, Emanuel’s plan - hardly appealed to the imagination. Save for a few innovations, not of - primary importance, it proceeded by arguments entirely familiar to - everybody, and which indeed none disputes. Most of its propositions were - the commonplaces of human speech and thought. The value of purity, of - cheerfulness, of loyalty, of mercy—this is not gainsaid by any one. - The conception of duty as the mainspring of human action is very old - indeed. For this reason, doubtless, Emanuel’s efforts to expound his - System by means of books had failed to rivet public attention. He could - only insist afresh upon what was universally conceded, and Mr. Tupper - before him had done enough of this to last several generations. - </p> - <p> - Viewed in operation, however, the System was another matter. Our - immemorial platitudes, once clothed in flesh and blood, informed with - life, and set in motion under the sympathetic control of a master mind, - became unrecognizable. - </p> - <p> - Emanuel as a lad had thought much of the fact that he was of the blood of - the Spinozas. When he learned Latin in his early boyhood, the task was - sweetened and ennobled to his mind by the knowledge that it would bring - him into communion with the actual words of the great man, his kinsman. - Later, when he approached with veneration the study of these words, the - discovery that they meant little or nothing to him was almost crushing in - its effects. Eventually it dawned upon his brain that the philosopher’s - abstractions and speculations were as froth on the top of the water; the - great fact was the man himself—the serene, lofty, beautiful - character which shines out at us from its squalid setting like a flawless - gem. To be like Spinoza, but to give his mind to the real rather than the - unreal, shaped itself as the goal of his ambitions. - </p> - <p> - It was at this period that he became impressed by the thought that he was - also of the blood of the Torrs. On the one side the poor lens-grinder with - the soul of an archangel; on the other the line of dull-browed, - heavy-handed dukes, with a soul of any sort discoverable among them - nowhere. Slowly the significance of the conjunction revealed itself to - him. To take up the long-neglected burden of responsibilities and - possibilities of the Torrs, with the courage and pure spirit of a Spinoza—there - lay the duty of his life, plainly marked before him. - </p> - <p> - Ensuing years of reading, travel and reflection gave him the frame, so to - speak, in which to put this picture. He had from his childhood been - greatly attracted by the glimpses which his father’s library gave him of - what is called the Mediaeval period. As he grew older, this taste became a - passion. Where predilection ended and persuasion began, it would be hard - to say, but when he had arrived at man’s estate, and stood upon the - threshold of his life-work, it was with the deeply rooted conviction that - the feudal stage had offered mankind its greatest opportunities for - happiness and the higher life. That the opportunities had been - misunderstood, wasted, thrown away, proved nothing against the soundness - of his theory. He had masses of statistics as to wages, rent-rolls, - endowments and the like at his fingers’ ends, to show that even on its - reverse side, the medieval shield was not so black as it was painted. As - for the other side—it was the age of the cathedrals, of the Book of - Kells, of the great mendicant orders, of the saintly and knightly ideals. - It was in its flowering time that craftsmanship attained its highest - point, and the great artisan guilds, proud of their talents and afraid of - nothing but the reproach of work ill-done, gave the world its magnificent - possessions among the applied arts. Sovereigns and princes vied with one - another to do honor to the noblest forms of art, and to bow to the - intellect of an Erasmus, who had not even the name of a father to bear. - Class caste was the rule of the earth, yet the son of a peasant like - Luther could force himself to the top, and compel emperors to listen to - him, more readily then than now. The bishop-princes of feudal England were - as often as not the sons of swineherds or starveling clerks, whereas now - no such thing could conceivably happen to the hierarchy. Above all things, - it was the age of human character. Men like Thomas More, with their - bewildering circle of attainments and their extraordinary individual - force, were familiar products. In a thousand other directions, Emanuel saw - convincing proofs that mankind then and there had come closest to the - possibilities of a golden age. True, it had wandered off miserably again, - into all manner of blind lanes and morasses, until it floundered now in a - veritable Dismal Swamp of individualism, menaced on the one side by the - millionaire slave-hunter, on the other by the spectral anarchist, and - still the fools in its ranks cried out ceaselessly for further progress. - Oh, blind leaders of the blind! - </p> - <p> - No. Emanuel saw clearly that humanity could right itself by retracing its - steps, and going back to the scene of its mistaken choice of roads. It had - taken the wrong turning when it forsook the path of coherent and - interdependent organization—that marvelously intricate yet perfectly - logical system called feudalism, in which everybody from king to serf had - service to render and service to receive, and mutual duty was the law of - the entire mechanism. - </p> - <p> - Though Christian heard much more than this, enough has been said to - indicate the spirit in which Emanuel had embarked upon the realization of - his plan. The results, as Christian wonderingly observed them, were - remarkable. - </p> - <p> - The estate over which the System reigned was compact in shape, and enjoyed - the advantage of natural boundaries, either of waste moorland or - estuaries, which shut it off from the outside world, and simplified the - problem of developing its individual character. In area it comprised - nearly fifteen square miles, and upon it, as has been said, lived some two - thousand people. About half of these were employed in, or dependent upon, - the industrial occupations Emanuel had introduced; the others were more - directly connected with the soil. Whether artisans or farmers, however, - they lived almost without exception in some one of the six little villages - on the property. - </p> - <p> - In each of these hamlets there were conserved one or more old timbered - houses; the newer cottages had been built, not in servile imitation of - these, but after equally old models, no two quite alike. As the - “Fortnightly Review” article said, if the System had done nothing else it - had “gathered for the instruction and delight of the intelligent observer - almost a complete collection of examples of early English domestic - architecture of the humbler sort.” The numerous roads upon the estate were - kept in perfect order, and were for the most part lined with trees; where - they passed through the villages they were of great width, with broad - expanses of turf, shaded by big oaks or elms, some of which had been moved - from other spots only a few years before, to the admiring surprise of the - neighborhood. Each village had a small church edifice of its own, quaintly - towered and beautiful in form, and either possessing or simulating - skillfully the graces of antiquity as well. Beside the church was a - building presenting some one or another type of the tolsey-house of old - English towns, devoted to the communal uses of the villagers. About the - church and the tolsey was the public garden and common, with a playground - with swings and bars for the children at the back—and there was no - grave or tombstone in sight anywhere. A hospitable, ivy-clad, low-gabled - inn, with its long side to the street, was a conspicuous feature on each - village green. - </p> - <p> - Christian retained a vivid recollection of entering one of these taverns - with Emanuel, very early in his tour of observation. Above the broad, open - door, as they went in, swung the cumbrous, brightly painted sign of “The - Torr Arms.” Two or three laborers in corduroys were seated on benches at - the table, with tankards before them; they dragged their heavily shod feet - together on the sanded floor, and stood up, when they saw Emanuel, - touching their hats with an air of affectionate humility as he smiled and - nodded to them. There was a seemingly intelligent and capable landlady in - the bar, who drew the two glasses of beer which Emanuel asked for, and - answered cheerfully the questions he put to her. Two brightfaced young - women, very neatly dressed, were seated sewing in this commodious bar, and - they joined in the conversation which Emanuel raised. Christian gathered - from what he heard and saw that his cousin took an active interest in the - fortunes of this tavern and of both its inmates and its patrons, and that - the interest and liking were warmly reciprocated. The discovery gave him a - more genial conception of Emanuel’s character than he had hitherto - entertained. - </p> - <p> - “That is one of my most satisfactory enterprises,” Emanuel had said when - they came out. “We brew our own beer, as well as the few cordials which - take the place of spirits, and I really feel sure it’s the best beer - obtainable in England. I am very proud of it—but I am proud of these - taverns of ours too. That was one of the hardest problems to be solved—but - the solution satisfies me better, perhaps, than anything else I have done. - Nobody ever dreams of getting drunk in these ‘pubs’ of ours. Nobody dreams - of being ashamed to be seen going into them or coming out. The women and - children enter them just as freely, if they have occasion to do so, as - they would a dairy or grocer’s shop. They are the village clubs, so to - speak, and they are constantly open to the whole village, as much as the - church or the tolsey. But here is one of my parsons. I want you to take - note of him—and I will tell you about his part in the System - afterward. He is as interesting a figure in it as my publican.” - </p> - <p> - A tall, fresh-faced, fair young man approached them as Emanuel spoke, and - was presented to the stranger as Father William. Christian observed him - narrowly, as he had been bidden, but beyond the fact that he was clad in a - somewhat outlandish fashion, and seemed a merry-hearted fellow, there was - nothing noteworthy in the impression he produced. He stood talking for a - few minutes, and then, with affable adieux, passed on. - </p> - <p> - “That is wholly my invention,” commented Emanuel, as they resumed their - walk. “There is one of them in each of the six villages, and a seventh who - has a kind of general function—and really I have been - extraordinarily fortunate with them all. They come from my college at - Oxford—Swithin’s—and when you think that twenty years ago it - was the most bigoted hole in England, the change is most miraculous. These - young men fell in with my ideas like magic. I don’t suppose you know much - about the Church of England. Well, it drives with an extremely loose rein. - You can do almost anything you like inside it, if you go about the thing - decorously. I didn’t even have the trouble with the bishop which might - have been expected. These young men—my curates, we may call them—have - among themselves a kind of guild or confraternity. They are called Father - William, or Father Alfred; they wear the sort of habit you have seen; they - are quite agreed upon an irreducible minimum of dogmatic theology, and an - artistic elaboration of the ritual, and, above all, upon an active life - consecrated to good works. They have their own central chapter-house, - where they live when they choose and feel like enjoying one another’s - society, but each has his own village, for the moral and intellectual - health of which he feels responsible. Without their constant and very - capable oversight, the System would have a good many ragged edges, I’m - afraid. But what they do is wonderful. They have made a study of all the - different temperaments and natures among the people. They know just how to - smooth away possible friction here, to encourage dormant energy there, to - keep the whole thing tight and clean and sound. They specially watch the - development of the children, and make careful notes of their qualities and - capacities. They decide which are to be fully educated, and which are to - be taught only to read and do sums.” - </p> - <p> - “I am not sure that I understand,” put in Christian. “Is not universal - education a part of your plan?” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel smiled indulgently. “There was never grosser nonsense talked in - this world,” he said, with the placid air of one long since familiar with - the highest truths, “or more mischievous rubbish into the bargain, than - this babble about universal education. The thing we call modern - civilization is wrong at so many points that it is hard to say where it - sins most, but often I think this is its worst offense. The race has gone - fairly mad over this craze for stuffing unfit brains with encumbering and - harmful twaddle. In the Middle Ages they knew better. The monks of a - locality picked out the children whose minds would repay cultivation, and - they taught these as much as it was useful for them to know. If the system - was in honest operation, it mattered nothing whether these children - belonged to the lord of the manor or the poorest peasant. Assume, for - example, that there was a nobleman and one of his lowest dependents, and - that each of them had a clever son and a dull one. The monks would take - the two clever ones, and educate them side by side—and if in the end - the base born boy had the finer mind of the two, and the stronger - character, he would become the bishop or the abbot or the judge in - preference to his noble school-fellow. On the other hand, the two dull - boys were not wearied by schooling from which they could get no profit. - The thick-headed young-noble, very often without even learning his - alphabet, was put on a horse, and given a suit of armor and a sword; the - heavy-witted young churl was given a leathern shirt and a pike or a bow, - and bidden to follow behind that horse’s tail—and off the two happy - dunces went, to fulfill in a healthful and intelligent fashion their - manifest destiny. Those were the rational days when human institutions - were made to fit human beings—instead of this modern lunacy of - either shaving down and mangling the human being, or else blowing him up - like a bladder, to make him appear to fit the institutions. Of course, you - must understand, I don’t say that this medieval system worked uniformly, - or perfectly, even at its best—and, of course, for a variety of - reasons, it eventually failed to work altogether. But its principle, its - spirit, was the right one—and it is only by getting back to it, and - making another start with the light of experience to guide us this time, - that we can achieve real progress. Fortunately, my parsons entered fully, - and quite joyfully, into my feelings on this point. They couldn’t have - labored harder, or better, to make the System a success if it had been of - their own invention.” - </p> - <p> - “I have seen English parsons often,” said Christian, vaguely. “They are - always married, n’est ce pas?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no—no!” answered Emanuel, with impatient emphasis. “That would - never do here. It is difficult enough to find men fit to carry on the task - we have undertaken. It would be asking too much of the miracle to expect - also unique women who would bring help rather than confusion to such men. - Oh, no—we take no risks of that sort. Celibacy is the very basis of - their guild. It is very lucky that their own tastes run in that direction—because - in any case it would have had to be insisted upon.” - </p> - <p> - Christian wondered if he ought to put into words the comment which rose in - his mind. “But you, and your father,” he ventured—“you personally—” - </p> - <p> - “Ah,” interposed Emanuel, with a rapt softening of expression in face and - tone, “when women like my mother and my wife appear—that lifts us - away from the earth and things earthly, altogether. But they are as rare - as a great poem—or a comet. If they were plentiful there would be no - need of any System. The human race would never have fallen into the mud. - We should all be angels.” - </p> - <p> - After a little pause he added: “The woman question here has been a very - hard nut to crack. We have made some progress with it—but it is - still one of the embarrassments. Of course there are others. The restless - young men who leave the estate, for example, and having made a failure of - it elsewhere, come back to make mischief here: That is an awkward subject - to deal with. The whole problem of our relations to outsiders is full of - perplexities. To prevent intercourse with them is out of the question. - They come and go as they like—and of course my own people are - equally free. I can’t see my way to any restrictions which wouldn’t do - more harm than good—if indeed they could be enforced at all. I have - to rely entirely upon the good sense and good feeling of my people, to - show them how much better off they are in every way than any other - community they know of, and how important it is for them to keep - themselves to themselves, and continue to benefit by their good fortune. - If they fail to understand this, I am quite powerless to coerce them. And - that is where the women give us trouble. It is the rarest thing for us to - have any difficulty with the men. They comprehend their advantages, they - take a warm interest in their work, and we have developed among them a - really fine communal spirit. They are proud of the System, and fond of it, - and I can trust them to defend it and stand by it. But this isn’t true of - all the women. You have always the depressing consciousness that there are - treacherous malcontents among them, who smile to your face but are - planning disturbance behind your back. It is not so much a matter of evil - natures as of inferior brains. Let a soldier in a red coat come along, for - example—an utterly ignorant and vulgar clown from heaven knows what - gutter or pigsty—and we have girls here who would secretly value his - knowledge of the world, and his advice upon things in general, above <i>mine!</i> - How <i>can</i> you deal with that sort of mind?” - </p> - <p> - Christian smiled drolly, and disclaimed responsibility with a playful - outward gesture of his hands. “It is not my subject,” he declared. - </p> - <p> - “But it has to be faced,” insisted Emanuel. “My wife has devoted - incredible labor and pains to it—and on the surface of things she - has succeeded wonderfully. I say the surface, because that is the sinister - peculiarity of the affair; you can never be sure what is underneath. When - you go up to London, you must do as I have done since I was a youth: take - a walk of a bright afternoon along Regent Street and Oxford Street, where - the great millinery and drapers’ and jewelers’ shops are, and study the - faces of the thousands of well-dressed and well-connected women whom you - will see passing from one show-window to another. There will be many - beautiful faces, and many more which are deeply interesting. But one note - you will catch in them all—or at least in the vast majority—the - note of furtiveness. Once you learn to recognize it you will find it - everywhere—the suggestion of something hidden, something artfully - wrapped up out of sight. God knows, I don’t suggest they all have guilty - secrets—or for that matter secrets of any sort. But they have the - trained facial capacity for concealment; it is their commonest - accomplishment; their mothers’ fingers have been busy kneading their - features into this mask of pretense from their earliest girlhood.” - </p> - <p> - “Would you not find it also on the men’s faces?” demanded Christian, with - a dissolving mental vision of sly masculine visages before him as he - spoke. “That is to say, when once you had learned to detect the male - variation of the mask? And even if it is so, then is not the reason of it - this—that men have long been their own masters, making their own - laws, doing freely what they choose, and there is no one before whom they - must dissemble?” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel had not the temperament which is attracted by contradiction. He - listened to his cousin’s eager words, seemed to ponder them for a space, - and then began talking of something else. - </p> - <p> - Those whom Emanuel called “his people” were for the most part descendants - of families who had been on the soil for centuries—since before the - Torrs came into possession of it. In a few cases, their stock had been - transplanted from the Shropshire estates of the same house. Emanuel had - discerned it to be an essential part of the System that its benefits - should be reaped by those to whom his family had historic - responsibilities. The reflection that the Torrs in Somerset only went back - at the farthest to Henry VIII.‘s time, and became large landlords there so - recently as Charles II.‘s reign, saddened him when he dwelt upon it. He - would have given much to have been able to establish the System at - Caermere instead, where the relations between lord and retainer had - subsisted from the dawn of tribal history. He dwelt a good deal upon this - aspect of the matter in his talks with Christian. “If you take up the - idea,” he would say, “you will have the enormous advantage of really - ancient ties between you and your people. Here in Somerset we are, - relatively speaking, new-comers—merely lucky bridegrooms or - confiscating interlopers of a few generations’ standing. I have had to - create my feudal spirit here out of whole cloth. But you at Caermere—you - will find it ready-made to your hand.” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel had created much more besides. - </p> - <p> - The villages hummed with the exotic industries he had brought into being. - The estate produced most of its raw material—food, wool, hides, peat - for domestic fuel, stone in several varieties for building, and numerous - products of the sea. It drew coal, wood and iron across the channel from - the Caermere properties. The effort of the System had been from the outset - to expand its self-sufficiency. Christian saw now the remarkable results - of this effort on both sides. One village had its leather workers, - beginning with the tanners at one end and finishing with the most skillful - artificers—glovers, saddlers and shoemakers—at the other. A - second village possessed its colony of builders—masons and - carpenters alike—and with them guiding architects and designers of - furniture and carving. Here also were the coopers, who served not only the - brewery, but the butter-makers. These latter formed in turn a link with - the great dairy establishment, which had for its flank the farming lands. - The gardens, nurseries, orchards and long glasshouses were nearest to - Emanuel’s residence, and their workers made up the largest of the hamlets. - This was in other senses the metropolis of the state, for here were the - printing-press, the bindery, the chemical laboratory, the electric-light - plant, the photographic and drawing departments, the clergy house and the - estate office. The smallest of the villages was in the center of the stock - farm, where scientific breeding and experimental acclimatization had - attained results of which the staid “Field” spoke in almost excited terms. - </p> - <p> - But to Christian’s mind by far the most interesting village was that - nestled on the sea-shore, under the protection of the cliffs. When he had - once seen this place, his cousin found if difficult to get him away from - it, or to enlist his attention for other branches of the System. There was - a small but sufficient wharf here, to which colliers of a fair burden - could have access; shelter was secured for the home-built fishing craft in - the little harbor by means of a breakwater. The red-roofed, gray-stone - cottages clustered along the winding roadway which climbed the cliff made - a picture fascinating to the young man’s eye, but his greater delight was - in something not at first visible. Around a bend in the cove, out of sight - of the village, was a factory for the manufacture of glass, and beyond - this were pointed out to him other buildings, near the water’s edge, which - he was told were used for curing, pickling and otherwise preserving fish. - “We make our own glass for the gardens and forcing houses, ‘and for all - the dwellings on the estate,” Emanuel had told him, “and for another use - as well.” - </p> - <p> - The statement had not aroused his curiosity at the moment, but a little - later, when he confronted the embodiment of its meaning, he murmured aloud - in his astonishment. He found himself walking in a spacious corridor, - beneath a roof of semi-opaque, greenish glass, and between walls that - seemed of solid crystal, stretching onward as far as the eye could reach. - A bar of sunlight, striking through aslant from somewhere outside, painted - a central glowing prismatic patch of color, which reflected itself in - countless wavering gleams of orange and purple all about him. A curious - moving glitter, as of fountains noiselessly at play, traversed the upper - surface of these glass walls, and flashed confusion at his first scrutiny. - Then he gave a schoolboy’s shout of joy and rushed forward to the nearest - side. He was in a giant aquarium—and these were actual fishes of the - sea swimming placidly before him! Even as he stared in bewildered - pleasure, with his nose flattened against the glass, there lounged toward - him, across the domed back of a king-crab, the biggest conger he had ever - imagined to himself. He put up a hand instinctively to ward off the - advance of the impassive eel—then laughed aloud for glee. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, this is worth all the rest!” he cried to Emanuel. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, good idea, isn’t it?” said the other. “It was my wife who suggested - it. We had started making our own glass—and really this was a most - intelligent way of using it. In time I think it will be of great value, - too. We have some clever men down here, from time to time, to study the - specimens. I’m sorry no one is here for the moment. I thought at first of - building a residence for them, and putting it all at their disposal in a - regular way as a kind of marine observatory, like that at Naples. But - after all, it would hardly be fair to the system. My first duty is to my - own people, and we’ve got some young men of our own who are making good - use of it. There are a hundred or more of these tanks, and we are fitting - up electrical machinery to get automatic control of the water supply, and - to regulate the temperature more exactly. But beyond the spectacle of the - fishes themselves—our people make holiday excursions here every - fortnight or so—and certain things we learn about food and - fecundation and so on, I don’t know that there’s much to be said for the - practical utility of this department. Further on you will see the oyster - and mussel beds, and the lobsters and crabs. I attach much more importance - to the experiments we are making out there. There seems almost no limit to - what can be done in those fields, now that we have learned how to go to - work. It is as simple a matter to rear lobsters as it is to rear - chickens.” - </p> - <p> - “But it is all wonderful!” cried Christian, once more. “But tell me—this - costs a great sum of money. I am afraid to think how much. Is it your hope—shall - you ever get a profit from it?” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel smiled. “There is no question of profits,” he explained, gently. - “The System as a whole supports itself—or rather is entirely capable - of doing so. The capital that I have spent in putting the System upon its - feet, so to speak, I count as nothing. It belonged to the people who had - been with us all these centuries and I have merely restored it to them. In - the eyes of the law it is all mine, and from that point of view I am a - much richer man than I was before the System began. But in practice it - belongs to all my people. I take enough to live as befits my station; each - of the others has enough to maintain him in <i>his</i> station, - comfortably and honorably. Whatever the surplus may be, that is devoted to - the objects which we all have in common. You see it is simplicity itself.” - </p> - <p> - “But that is like my brother Salvator’s doctrine,” said Christian. “It is - socialism, is it not?” Emanuel’s fine brows drew together in an impatient - frown. “Please do not use that word,” he said, with a shade of annoyance - in his tone. “The very sound of it affronts my ears. Nothing vexes me more - than to have my work unthinkingly coupled with that monstrous imposture. - If you will think of it, I am more opposed to what is called socialism - than anybody else on earth. I have elaborated the one satisfactory system, - on lines absolutely opposed to it. I furnish the best weapon for fighting - and slaying that pernicious delusion that the whole world offers. So you - see, I have a right to protest when people confuse me with my bitterest - antagonist.” - </p> - <p> - “Pardon!” said Christian, with humility. “I am so badly informed upon all - these matters!” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, well, you will understand them perfectly, all in good time,” his - cousin reassured him in a kindly way. - </p> - <p> - Christian drew a furtive sigh as they moved along. To his fancy the large - fishes in the tanks regarded him with a sympathetic eye. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t has done Emanuel - a world of good to have you here,” said Kathleen, on the morning of - Christian’s leave-taking. “Of course it has been a delight to us both—but - he has had a personal benefit from it, too. He works too hard. He carries - such a burden of details about in his mind—by day and by night, for - he sleeps badly and is forever dreaming of his work—that - companionship with some new and attractive mind is of the greatest rest - and help to him. And he is very fond of you.” - </p> - <p> - Christian nodded gratified acknowledgment of the words and their spirit, - with a glow in his dark eyes. In little more than an hour he would be on - his way to London—that mighty, almost fabulous goal of his lifelong - dreams. He was already dressed for the journey, in a traveling-suit of - rough, fawn-colored cloth, and as he sat at ease in the breakfast-room - with his cousin’s wife, his glance wandered very often from her face to a - pleased contemplation of these garments. They were what he individually - liked best in the wonderful collection of clothes for which a fashionable - tailor had come from London to measure him, and which were this moment - being packed by the man up-stairs in bags and portmanteaus equally new. - The tweeds enabled him to feel more like an Englishman than he had - succeeded in doing before. - </p> - <p> - He smiled diffidently at her. “I am so excited about going,” he said, his - voice wavering between exuberance and appeal—“and yet I ought to be - thinking of nothing but my sorrow in leaving you dear people. But that - will come to me soon enough—in a storm of homesickness—when - once I find myself really alone.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I’ll not deny we expect a <i>little</i> homesickness,” she replied to - him, cheerfully—“but it must not be enough to at all take the edge - off your spirits. Oh, you’ll be vastly entertained and interested by all - you see and hear. Young Lord Lingfield—you’ll be seeing him to-night - at dinner—he will be greatly pleased to take you about, and properly - introduce you; He will do it better than any other we can think of. He is - not by any means an intellectual gladiator, but he is good-looking and - amiable and he goes everywhere.” - </p> - <p> - “He is my relation, too, I think Emanuel said?” - </p> - <p> - “Let’s work it out—his grandfather’s sister was your grandmother. - Yes, that is it. She was the Lady Clarissa Poynes, the sister of the old - earl of Chobham, who used to wear the blue coat and brass buttons to the - end of his days. So she would be the aunt of the present earl, and the - grand-aunt of young Lingfield. You stand in exactly the same relationship - to Lord Lingfield that you would to a son of Emanuel’s—if he had - one, poor man!” - </p> - <p> - Christian had long since become sensible of the pathos which colored these - references to the childlessness of the house. A tender instinct impelled - him to hasten a diversion. - </p> - <p> - “And how strange it is!” he cried. “They are as close to me, these people, - in blood as Emanuel is—and yet I care nothing for them whatever. I - shall meet them, and know them, and not feel that I am bound to them at - all—whereas Emanuel is like a brother to me, whom I have been with - and loved all my life. And you,” he added, with a smile in his eyes—“you - are more than any sister to me.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, then, let me talk to you like a sister,” she rejoined. - </p> - <p> - He thought he had not seen her before in precisely the mood which was - discernible in her face and tone this morning. Outwardly she was as gay - and light-hearted as ever, and certainly she had not seemed on any - previous day to come so near being beautiful as well. The sense of sheer - pleasure in being where she was, in listening to her and looking’ at her, - and holding her affectionately bright attention for his own thoughts, was - peculiarly strong in him to-day. But there was also the consciousness of a - new gravity in her attitude toward him—a kind of yearning - apprehension of dangers threatening him. He saw again in her eyes when she - looked at him that likeness to his mother’s glance—a wistfully sad - glance as he most often recalled it. And yet Kathleen smiled merrily with - it all, when occasion required. - </p> - <p> - “You are entering upon the great experience now,” she said to him: “I - think it was very wise of Emanuel to show you first what we may call his - ideal state of society. By all the rules, it ought to help you to - understand in the right way what you will see of the society which—well, - which isn’t in an ideal state. But there are certain things which get to - be understood, not so much by brains, as by years. That is to say, the - very cleverest youth may not be able to see, in this one respect, what is - plain enough to most dull persons at forty. Emanuel tells me that he has - talked with you about women in general.” - </p> - <p> - “He does not like them very much,” said Christian, laughingly. - </p> - <p> - She twisted the corners of her mouth in a droll little grimace, which - seemed to express approval of his mirth, and something more besides. - </p> - <p> - “He takes them with tremendous seriousness,” she answered. “That is his - way with everything. He makes all sorts of classifications—the - bigger they are and the more complicated the better he likes them—and - then he treats each one as a problem, and he worries at it with all his - energy until he works out a satisfactory solution. It is only in that - sense that he has a grievance against women. He has proceeded upon the - theory that the sex is a unit, for philosophical purposes at least, and - that he ought to be able to get at the rules which govern its actions. But - we continue to baffle him,” she added, again with the playful curl of the - lips. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you—you are not in the problem,” protested Christian. “For you - and his mother he has only the veneration one gives to one’s favorite - saints.” - </p> - <p> - “His mother was a great woman,” said Kathleen, serious once more. “I never - saw her, but she is my patron saint, as you put it, quite as much as his. - I never permit myself to doubt that we should have loved each other deeply—and - it is the sweetest thing any one can think of me, or say to me—to - link us together. But even the saints have their specialties—and - that implies limitations. I have a notion that Emanuel’s mother did not - know many women, and so fell into a way of generalizing about them. - Emanuel has that same tendency. I, who work among them daily, and make it - my business to be teacher and mistress and mother and sister to some five - hundred of them, young and old, foolish and wise—I come to believe - that these generalizations are entirely mistaken. If a woman is brought up - like a man, and circumstanced precisely like a man, and knows nothing of - any conventions save those which control a man—why, then you can’t - tell the difference between her opinions and actions and those of her - brother. But you never get the chance to view a woman under those - conditions.” - </p> - <p> - “But here we shall see them!” cried Christian, with premature enthusiasm. - “You will change all that!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no, I shan’t,” she answered abruptly. “It is not being tried—it - is not desirable. What I am doing proceeds quite on orthodox lines. We - make a point of developing them in the way of usefulness—material - usefulness, I mean. We teach them the useful accomplishments—spinning, - weaving, sewing, dairy and poultry work, and above all things good - cooking.” - </p> - <p> - “That I can well believe,” he declared. “I have never eaten so many good - dishes in my life as here.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I <i>have</i> a talent in that direction,” she assented. “And I am - prouder of it because it represents a triumph over my ancestral - prejudices. You will get nothing good to eat in Ireland. The Irish have - never respected food as a proper subject for serious human thought. It is - the rarest thing to hear them mention it. There may be some fine spiritual - quality in that—but at all events we cook well here, and I have - worked a complete revolution in that respect on the estate. There are - certainly no such cooks and housekeepers anywhere else in England as my - women. But you see what I mean. There is no effort to take women away from - the work they have always been doing, but only to make them do it better.” - </p> - <p> - “But that in itself is very much,” urged Christian. Somehow he had the - feeling that he was defending the System against a critic. - </p> - <p> - “Undoubtedly,” she admitted. “And of course we do something more than - that. In a good many cases, when it was not inconvenient, I have put young - girls of aptitude forward to learn designing and other arts. Some of them - have made me some very tolerable tapestry, and a few of them are as - intelligent and valuable in the greenhouses as our best men. In the matter - of music they really beat them. Emanuel insists on a choir of glee singers - in each village—and at Christmas time we have a competition of - ‘waits’ which will be worth your while coming to hear. For my part, I have - a string orchestra of girls that I should not be ashamed to have play in - London.” - </p> - <p> - The word seemed to bring them back, “You were going to speak to me,” - Christian ventured, “about London. One thing—I shall see you there - often, shall I not?” - </p> - <p> - She slowly shook her head. “No, we have outgrown London, I’m afraid. It - can be proved, I believe, that it is the biggest town in the world—but - to us it is too small for comfort. It is now more than a year since we - have been up at all. Why should we go? We have the National Gallery by - heart, and the year’s pictures are rather distressing than otherwise. The - theaters are intellectually beneath notice. There is the opera of course, - and the concerts, but the people annoy us by talking loudly, and besides, - we have our own music, and occasionally we bring down a Paderewski or a - Sarasate for our people to hear. At the houses where we would naturally - go, the women talk about matters of which I know absolutely nothing, and - Emanuel either quarrels with the men about what they call their politics, - or chokes silently with rage and disgust. And then the spectacle of the - people in the streets—the poor of London!—that fairly sickens - our hearts. We have no joy of going at all. Occasionally we have guests - down here, but it is not a very happy time they have of it. Everything is - so strange to them that they are confused, and walk about with constraint, - as if they were being shown around an asylum. So it happens that I see - very few women of my own class—and really know less about them than - most people. And yet,” she added, with a twinkle in her eye, “so naturally - audacious a race are the Irish—it is precisely about ladies in - London society that I am going to read you a lecture.” - </p> - <p> - Christian drew up his feet, and assumed an air of delighted anticipation. - </p> - <p> - “First of all, you are six and twenty, and you will be thinking of - marrying. What is more, you are what is called a great match, and for - every thought that you give to the subject of a wife, others will give ten - thousand to the subject of you as a possible husband.” - </p> - <p> - The young man looked into her kindly eyes with a sustained glance of - awakening thought. This dazzling and princely position which she had thus - outlined—sure enough, it was his! How extraordinary that this had - not suggested itself to him before! Or had the perception of it not really - lain dormant in his consciousness all the while? This question propounded - itself to a mind which was engrossed in something else—for of a - sudden there rose upon the blank background of his thoughts the luminous - face of a lady, beautiful, distinguished, exquisitely sensitized, and as - by the trick of a dream she first wore a large garden hat, and then was - bare-headed, her fair hair gathered loosely back into a careless knot. The - mental picture expanded, to show the full length of her queenly figure as - she descended a broad staircase, with one lovely hand like a lily against - the oak of the rail. Then it contracted, and underwent a strange - metamorphosis, for it was another face which he saw, a pale, earnest, - clever face, and instead of the great stairway, there was the laced - tawdriness of a French railway compartment. - </p> - <p> - Then, with a start, and a backward movement of the head, he was free of - dreamland, and blushingly conscious of having stared his cousin out of - countenance. He laughed with awkward embarrassment. “I—I suppose it - is true—what you say,” he remarked, stumblingly. - </p> - <p> - She had perhaps some clew to the character of his reverie. She smiled in a - gently quizzical way, but went on soberly enough. “The thing of all - things,” she said, “is to be clearly and profoundly convinced in your own - mind that your marriage will be the most important event of your life—that - it will indeed affect, for good or for bad, every conceivable element of - your life. You have the kind of temperament which would be peculiarly - susceptible to such intimate influences. There are great numbers of men—the - vast majority—to whom it does not matter so much. They accommodate - themselves to their burdens, and shuffle along somehow, with the patience - of a cart-horse. But you—the wrong wife would wreck you and kill - you. I am speaking frankly, laddie,”—she gave the novel word an - intonation which made it music in his ears—“because you have no - mother, and because you are going into a very trying and delicate - situation with what I feel to be a pathetic lack of preparation.” - </p> - <p> - Christian drew his chair nearer to her, and crossed his knees, and leaned - back in an attitude of intimate ease. The conversation appealed powerfully - to him as having more of the atmosphere of domesticity and sweet home - influences in it than any he had ever heard. - </p> - <p> - “I know almost nothing at all of women,” he said, quite simply. “The - mothers of my pupils I saw sometimes and occasionally a sister, but they - were not in any sense my friends. As to marriage—of course that has - never been in my head. Until only the other day, the idea of a wife would - have been absurd. But now—as you say—it is not any longer - absurd.” He paused and gazed absently past her, as if in pursuit of the - thoughts his own words had set in motion. “I wonder—I wonder”—he - murmured, and then turned his bright eyes to her, full of wistful - expectancy. “Have you, par exemple, some one in your mind for me?” he - asked. - </p> - <p> - She laughed and shook her head. The implication in his tone, of entire - readiness to accept the bride of her selection, had its amusing and its - flattering sides; upon a second glance, however, it contained something - else not so much to her liking. She frowned a little at this something. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you must not approach the subject in that spirit,” she adjured him. - “It is the one affair of all others on earth in which you must be guided - absolutely by your own heart and your own mind. We speak of the heart and - mind as distinct from each other; I don’t know that they are not one and - the same. Perhaps I would put it this way—when your heart <i>and</i> - your mind are completely agreed, when your personal liking and your - deliberate judgment pull together in exactly the same direction—so - that it seems to you that they <i>are</i> one and the same thing—then—then——-” - </p> - <p> - “Then what?” demanded Christian, bending forward. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I am not fortunate in expressing myself to-day,” Kathleen declared, - with a gesture of playful impatience. “But in general, this is what I - wanted to say: Do not be betrayed into haste in this matter of deciding - about a girl. You will see a large number of extremely attractive young - ladies. They will certainly not be looking or behaving their worst for - your benefit, and you on your side will be lacking the experience to tell - precisely what it is all worth. So walk quietly along, with your wits - about you, and see what there is to be seen for a time, and commit - yourself to nothing. A year hence, for example, you will look back upon - your present condition of mind with surprise. You will not seem to - yourself at all the same person. I can’t promise that you’ll be happier,” - she added, with a little smiling sigh, “but you will know a great deal - more about what you want—or rather about making sure that you are - getting what you want.” - </p> - <p> - “I know what I shall do,” he declared, after a moment’s reflection. “I - shall come always to you, and beg your wise and good advice. You will tell - me if I am making a bad choice.” - </p> - <p> - “You talk as if you were entering upon a lifelong series of experiments,” - she laughed at him. “No, I’ll undertake no such responsibility as that, - young man.” She explained, more gravely: “It is never quite possible for a - friend, no matter how wise and fond the friend may be, to advise upon this - matter. To give information upon the subject, that is another affair. But - specific advice, no. But let me finish what I had in mind to say. You have - seen here, during this past fortnight, what great hopes are built upon - your administration of your affairs when you come into the title. No, - don’t speak yet. You must not pledge yourself at all to the System. It - would be unfair to let you do it. But at all events you have seen it, and - you will think it all over, and, whether you take it up altogether or not, - I know it will have its effect on you. You will set an ideal of usefulness - and duty before you, and you will have your heart fixed on realizing it. - Well, then, I counsel you above all things to keep that idea in mind - whenever you think of marriage. A man has a good many sides to his life, - but the side which is most vital to him is that of the work he wants to do - in the world. If the wife fits perfectly on that side, the discrepancies - elsewhere are of small account by comparison. They smooth away, they - adjust themselves. But the misfit on the side of the man’s ambitions—that - never effaces itself. And so, just in proportion as the work you want to - do becomes clear in your mind, you ought to define to yourself the type of - woman who will be most sympathetic toward that work, and who will best - help you in it—or rather, who will help you in it in the way you - like best. I don’t say you will find the perfect type of that woman—but - you should have the type before you, and be able to measure people by its - standards. But I have harangued you long enough! There is something in the - atmosphere here: we all deliver lectures to each other at the most - unscrupulous length. Poor boy! We’ve done nothing but make speeches to you - since you showed in sight.” - </p> - <p> - Christian deprecated her suggestion with persuasive hands. “I have learned - here, I think, all that I know,” he protested. He did not, however, insist - upon further generalizations. “One thing you said,” he remarked, - thoughtfully, “puts a question into my head. You said it was better to - give information than advice. Now there is so much that I am in ignorance - about. Perhaps I do wrong to ask you—but I am curious to know more - about the people of the family—our own family. There are no ladies - of my own blood? I mean, all I have seen or heard of come to us by - marriage, like yourself.” - </p> - <p> - “You hit upon the weakest and unhappiest point,” she replied. “There has - not been a daughter born in the Torr family for over a hundred years. I - have always insisted that this has operated like a curse on the family. - The beautiful humanizing charm of little girls about the house—this - they have never felt. The mothers have had no daughters to lean upon, the - men have never known what a sister was like. That one fact, it seems to - me, is enough to account for everything that is hard and rough and cruel - in their story.” - </p> - <p> - Christian bowed his head in silent token of comprehension. - </p> - <p> - “I am always more grieved than angry, when I’m thinking of the black sheep - in the family fold,” she went on. “They had never a chance. It was like a - tradition in the family that the father should be a brute and the mother a - fool. A daughter here and there might have softened the combination—but - with little boys alone face to face with it—what could they do? They - grew up in the stables and the kennels. Think of those two young men whom - you met at Caermere, for example. Lord Julius told me of their scene with - you, and I’m far from blaming you—but think of their bringing up! - Their father, Lord Edward, I remember very well. I saw him when I was a - girl, at the Punchestown races, and my brother told me his name. Even - without it, I should have remembered his face as the coarsest and meanest - I ever saw. He married a woman out of some vile gambling set that he was - in as a young man. She is still alive somewhere, and has an allowance from - Lord Julius for suppressing herself, and not using the family name. Well, - when I think of the blood in those two boys, and of the horrors of their - childhood till they were taken away from their mother, and sent into the - country to school—upon my soul I can only wonder that they come so - near decency as they do. Your encounter with them happened to strike out - sparks, but you must remember what a blow it represented to them.” - </p> - <p> - The young man gave a somewhat perfunctory nod. His sympathies were somehow - obdurate upon this particular point. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, and that reminds me,” she went on. “I said that the family was - daughterless—but Eddy has a little girl. It is very quaint to think - what she will grow up like, under the maternal wing of Cora Bayard. Yet I - am told there are worse mothers than Cora. I’ve never seen her, myself.” - </p> - <p> - “I saw her at Caermere,” Christian remarked. “She seemed very frightened - and sad—and since it was because of me, I did not look much at her. - I remember only the effect of a likeness to Pierrot—the red lips on - the white face. But”—he drew his chair still nearer, and betrayed by - manner and tone alike his approach to a subject of more than casual - interest—“the other lady whom I saw there—Lady Cressage—I - had much conversation with her. I feel that she and I are friends. I liked - her very much indeed—but I have no information about her whatever. - If I am permitted to confess it—I tried to talk about her with Lord - Julius and with Emanuel, but they at once spoke of other things. You see - how frankly I am telling you everything; that is because you make me feel - so wonderfully at home. But perhaps you do not like to talk about her, - either.” - </p> - <p> - She smiled pleasantly enough in comment upon his faltering conclusion. - “Oh, I think you exaggerate the conspiracy of silence,” she answered. - “Neither Lord Julius nor Emanuel has anything hostile to say about Edith - Cressage, but she doesn’t quite appeal to their imagination, and so they - find nothing of any sort to say. But it is only fair to remember that they - are both men with peculiar and exacting standards for women. They would be - equally silent about a hundred other ladies of unblemished character, and - of beauty and wit untold. It is nothing at all against her that she hasn’t - excited their enthusiasm. I do not know her at all well, but I think she - is very nice. Now—is that what you wanted me to say?” - </p> - <p> - The mild note of banter which informed her words put Christian if possible - even more at his ease. He stood up, with his hands in the sleek pockets of - his new coat, and bent down upon her a joyous smile. - </p> - <p> - “No, ever so much more!” he insisted, gaily. “She is very beautiful; she - has the air and the distinction of a grande dame; she speaks like a flute, - and what she says is clever and apropos; she is unhappy, and yet with no - bitterness toward any one; she seemed to like me very much, and, mind you, - she was the first fine lady whom I had ever met. Enfin, she is my cousin, - and the fact impresses me. What is more natural than that I should be - eager to know all about her?” - </p> - <p> - Kathleen did not respond readily to his mood. She knitted her brows - slightly once more, and looked away from him toward the window. “It is - rather hard for me to explain,” she began at last, doubtfully. “From a - good many points of view—her own included—I dare say we do her - an injustice. Don’t misunderstand me; we are all sorry for her—and I - for one have my moments of doubt whether we oughtn’t to be something more - than sorry.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, that is the phrase,” put in Christian, strenuously. “I think that I - myself am something more than sorry for her.” - </p> - <p> - She looked up at him, at first with a shadow of apprehension in her eyes. - Then she estimated aright his enthusiasm with a gentle smile. “I will - explain as well as I can,” she said, softly. “As you say, you are entitled - to be told. The feeling, then, is—I am speaking of Lord Julius and - Emanuel, and more or less of myself too—the feeling is that she - ought not to have made the marriage she did. Everybody knew that the young - man she married was a worthless creature—a violent, ignorant, - low-minded fellow. You could not see him, much less talk with him, without - recognizing this. One knows perfectly well that she must have hated the - very thought of him as a lover or a companion. But he is the heir to a - dukedom, and so she marries him. You see what I mean; it seemed an - unpleasant thing to us.” - </p> - <p> - Christian considered with a puzzled air the situation thus defined. “But,” - he commented, with hesitation, “it is the metier of a young woman to get a - husband, and to get the best one for herself that she can. If she is so - beautiful that a man wishes to make her a duchess, why, that is her - triumph. Would you have her forego it? And if she says ‘no’, why, then the - next one he asks says ‘yes’—and it is merely that the first one has - waived her place in the queue for another. The queue remains the same. And - if this were not so, why, then, young men who are not very good, they - would get no wives at all. But,” he added, in extenuation of his dissent, - “all these matters are so differently regarded, you know, in France.” She - did not look altogether pleased with him. “I thought you would have caught - my meaning more readily,” she said, “despite your Continental point of - view. For that matter, it is the common English point of view also. There - is a matrimonial market, of course, and girls offer themselves in it to - the highest bidder, and nothing that we can do will change it. But at - least we are free to think what we like of the wretched business—and - to hold our own opinions of the people who traffic in it.” - </p> - <p> - Kathleen had stated her position with a certain argumentative warmth, - which gave her tone a novel effect of reproof. The sight now of the young - man’s saddened and surprised expression sent her mood up with a rebound. - She put a hand on his arm, as he stood before her, and reassured him by a - kindly laugh. “Ah, now,” she said, with genial pleading in her soft voice, - “don’t be making a mountain of my molehill. I only wanted you to - understand how we felt. And as I have told you, we have our reservations - about even that feeling. The poor girl did only what she was expected to - do—what her mother and her family and all the friends that - surrounded her took it quite as a matter of course that she should do. - Probably she never once encountered the opinion that she should do - otherwise. No doubt that is to be said for her. In fact, I should never - have dreamed of blaming her to you, if you had not pressed me. And after - it’s all said and done, you may take it from me that perhaps I don’t blame - her so very much. She was poor, and not over comfortable at home, I think, - and she was very young, and people ran after her to an extraordinary - extent—and to be the beauty of the season in London is enough to - turn any one’s head. Poor creature—it’s bitterly enough she’s paid - for her whistle!” - </p> - <p> - He smiled down into her eyes. “That is how I knew you would end by - speaking of her,” he said. “It is in that same way that she moves me—by - my compassion. And this is my fancy”—he began, in a more vivacious - tone—“I should like to tell it to you—it seems that I am to - have the power to do so many such wonderful things—well, then, - nothing would delight me more than to be very good to her. It is my <i>fantaisie</i>—and - there is no harm in it, <i>is</i> there?—to atone to her for some of - the unhappiness she has suffered. I have thought about it much since I - left Caermere. It seems that it would be a good thing for me to do—like - an act of piety. You must remember—she was the first lady who spoke - kindly to me in England. And I think you will be pleased with me for being - grateful. But, of course, if Emanuel tells me ‘no’——” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no one will tell you ‘no,’” she assured him, rising as she spoke, and - looking into his face with beaming eyes. “It is the kind of spirit we like - in you. Never imagine that we will be obstacles in its way. Only be on - your guard against the soft heart running away with you. The world is full - of clever and adroit people who practice upon innocent generosity. It is - not so much the worth of what they wheedle from you, as the shock of your - discovery of their tricks. That hurts a young nature, and very often - callouses and hardens it. But here I am, lecturing you again!” - </p> - <p> - Christian had not, in truth, been following her remarks with complete - attention. Something had come up in his mind, which by the time she - stopped he seemed to have turned over and over, and examined from many - standpoints, and finally decided to speak about. - </p> - <p> - “I was not wholly exact,” he began, with constraint, “when I said that - Lady Cressage was the first lady who spoke kindly to me in England. I - mentioned it to Lord Julius—there was a very charming and good young - lady who traveled with me from Rouen, and crossed on the boat—and it - is a very curious thing, but when we became acquainted, and I hinted to - her about my story, she knew who I was. Indeed, it was she who told me who - I was. I had the whole wonderful tale from her—and the kindness and - sweet sympathy with which she told it to me, a little at a time—ah, - that is what I will never forget! I am bound to remember her with - gratitude all my life. And that is another <i>fantaisie</i> of mine—that - I shall do something good for her. Oh, she has no selfish thoughts! She - would not even tell me her name!” - </p> - <p> - Kathleen’s comment was prefaced by a mirthful chuckle. “I can’t deny that - gratitude is a very active and resourceful element in your composition,” - she declared, and laughed again. “Oh, we’ll advertise for her. How would - this do: ‘The young lady who meets returning lost heirs to the British - nobility at Rouen, and lets them down easily’? Or we might——” - </p> - <p> - “Ah,” Christian interrupted, pleadingly, “I am really very sincere about - her. You cannot imagine anything finer or more delicate than her - character. And besides,”—he added this with visible reluctance—“I - have learned since who she is. Lady Cressage told me. She is the sister of - the lady you call Cora—the wife of that young man Edward—but - she is not an actress! It is not in the least her <i>type!</i> She earns - her own living—she has some work to do—I think it is with a - writing-machine—that is, a type-writer, n’est-ce pas?” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Emanuel did not immediately reply, but moved to the window, looked - out and then walked slowly back to where he stood. “I am not going to - suggest an unkind thought about this girl,” she said, deliberately. “I - would not want you to think differently of her, or of the grateful impulse - you have toward her. Indeed, I have heard something of her—and it is - much to her credit. But—this sounds a mean thing to say, and yet it - has its important true side—people should stick to their class. Bear - that always in mind. There seem to be brilliant exceptions to the rule, - whenever we look about us—but just the same, the rule exists. But—now - I <i>will</i> stop, once for all!” She mused at him, with a twinkling eye. - “You poor lad, there’s something about you that draws down lectures as a - lightning-rod draws electricity. And here’s the trap!” - </p> - <p> - When Emanuel returned from London a few days later, to report that his - young cousin had been comfortably installed in chambers on Duke Street, - St. James’s, and seemed to get on capitally with Lord Lingfield, who was - showing him the ropes, Kathleen received the news with less than her - accustomed cheerfulness. - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t been quite happy, thinking of him alone in London,” she - admitted, in the course of their conversation. “I feel, somehow, as if we - should have gone up, and taken a house for the winter.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, but, sweetheart,” he urged, almost reproachfully, “you see how I am - up to my eyes in all sorts of work. This is really about the most trying - and ticklish stage we have gone through yet. If the fibrous silk processes - are what is claimed for them, and your girls display the aptitude that you - count upon——” - </p> - <p> - But Kathleen for once seemed not to listen. She had turned, and moved a - few steps listlessly away. She took a flower from a vase, picked it to - pieces and gazed in a brown study at the meaningless fragments. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I know,” she remarked at last, with a half sigh. Then she threw the - petals into the grate, and, with a decisive little shake of head and - shoulders, wheeled round, and came smilingly to her husband. - </p> - <p> - “And whom did you see in town?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART III - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>oward the end of - April, there came an afternoon on which Christian seemed to himself to - wake up of a sudden as from a harassed sleep. - </p> - <p> - He had been in England for over six months, when all at once he became - conscious of this queer sensation: the experiences of his half year put - themselves together before his mental eye in the aspect of a finished - volume—of something definitely over and done with. - </p> - <p> - There was warm spring in the London air, and at first the vague feeling of - unrest impressed him as a part of the general vernal effect. The device of - taking a stroll through the parks, to note the early flowers and the - wonderful infancy of leafage among the trees, seemed at the outset to fit - this new mood that was upon him. Then abruptly he wearied of nature and - turned his back upon it, driving in a hansom to his club. Here there was - no one whom he knew, or at least cared to speak with. He sat for a time in - the billiard-room, watching with profound inattention the progress of a - game he knew nothing about. From this he wandered into the library, where - some fierce-faced old gentlemen slept peacefully in armchairs about the - alcoves. The sound of their breathing vexed him; he pretended to himself - that otherwise he would have found solace in a book. The whim seized him - to go home to his chambers, and have tea there comfortably in gown and - slippers, and finish a novel Lady Milly Poynes had induced him to begin - weeks before. - </p> - <p> - Once in his own easy-chair, the romance lying opened beside him, he put - back his head, stretched his feet and yawned. He left untasted the tea - which Falkner brought in; with fingers interlaced behind his neck he - stared up at the blue of the sky through his window in formless - rumination. - </p> - <p> - His earlier glimpses of London were dim enough memories now. The town had - been described by his cousin Lingfield as empty when he arrived, and after - a few days of desultory sight-seeing, he had been carried off to the earl - of Chobham’s place in Derbyshire. Here, among people who behaved like - kindly kinsmen to the young new-comer, yet failed to arouse much interest - in his mind, he learned to shoot well enough to escape open protests by - the autocratic head gamekeeper, and to keep his seat in the saddle after a - fashion of his own. These acquirements stood him in good stead at the four - or five other country houses to which the amiable Lingfield in due course - led him. Without them, meager as they were, he would have been in a sorry - plight indeed. They provided him with a certain semblance of justification - for his presence among people who seemed incapable of amusing themselves - or their guests in any other way. There were always ladies, it was true, - and it was generally manifest to him that he might spend his time with - them if he chose, but after a few tentative experiments he fell back upon - the conviction that he did not know how to talk to English ladies. He - drifted somehow through these months of hospitable entertainment, feeling - that he had never known before what loneliness could mean. - </p> - <p> - When, at Christmas, he went to spend another fortnight with Emanuel, he - had it in his heart to confess to disappointment, and even depression. He - had not thus far fitted at all into the place which had been prepared for - him, and he looked forward, with wistful eagerness, as he journeyed - westward, to the balm of sympathy and tender comprehension with which - Kathleen and Emanuel, dear people that they were, would soothe and heal - his wounded self-consciousness. Somehow, the opportunity of unburdening - his troubled mind, however, did not come to him. There were other guests, - including Lord Julius, and such exceptional attention was devoted on the - estates to elaborating the holiday festivities of the various villages, - that no individual could hope to secure consideration for his own private - emotions. It was sometimes suspected that Emanuel made so much of - Christmas in his System, unconsciously no doubt, because the Jewish side - of him felt the need of ostentation in its disavowal of theological - prejudices. For whatever reason, the festival was observed here in a - remarkable spirit. The little churches were embowered in holly and - mistletoe, and were the scenes of numerous ornate services. There were - processions, merry-makings, midnight visitations of the “waits,” concerts - and dances throughout the week, and only the strictly necessary work of - the community was performed meanwhile. On New Year’s Day the rejoicings - culminated in a children’s carnival from one end of the property to the - other, with big trees laden with lights and gifts in the German fashion, - and exhibitions of the magic lantern, and other juvenile delights. The - fortnight passed, and Christian returned to London, as has been said, - without having anything like the intimate talk he had expected. Both - Kathleen and Emanuel had seemed pleased with him; they had noted with - approving comment his progress in the use of idiomatic English, and his - rapid assimilation of the manners and bearing of those about him; they had - heard none but welcome reports of him from outside, and made clear to him - their gratification at the fact. Their smile for him was as affectionate, - their display of pleasure in his presence as marked, as ever, but he had - the sense, none the less, of something altered. Lord Julius bore him - company on his journey to London, and after a brief halt, took him away - again for another fortnight, this time at Brighton. He was no more - successful with the father, in the matter of helpful confidences, than he - had been with the son. It was impossible to tell the strong, big, - redoubtable old gentleman of what he felt to be his weaknesses. A kind of - desponding pride possessed him, and closed his lips. He was not happy, as - he had supposed he would be, and he could not bring himself to feel that - at any point the fault was his. It was the position that was incongruous. - Yet how could he complain, or avow his discontent, without seeming an - ingrate to the benefactors whose heart had been in the work of shaping and - gilding that position for him? - </p> - <p> - Parliament met this year in January, and Christian saw now a London which - he had not imagined to himself—for which nothing, indeed, had - prepared him. There came all at once a great many invitations, and the - young man, surprised and not a little dismayed, called Lord Lingfield to - his assistance. The prospect unfolded to him by this accomplished - professor of the proprieties was terrifying enough. At the end of a week - Christian cried out that the reality was too much. But Lingfield could see - no alternative to going on. “You will get used to it soon enough, now that - you have once taken the plunge,” he assured him. “There are certain things - that a fellow has to do, you know, when he’s in London in the season, or - even now, in what you may call the half season, unless he’s going to chuck - the thing altogether.” Christian replied with excitement that this was - precisely what he wished to do. In his own mind he had already reached the - point of debating whether he could honorably go on using the money placed - to his credit at the bank, most of which was still there, if he fled from - London, and even England. - </p> - <p> - Lord Lingfield was a fine young man, irreproachable in attire and manners, - who expected to do something in politics, and who regarded his duty both - to the future which he hoped to create for himself, and to the immediate - present which had been created for him, with conscientious gravity. He had - never thought of lightening or evading the tasks set before him; he had no - perception whatever of the possibility of making such things easier for - others. He assured Christian with gentle solemnity that desertion was not - to be mentioned, and that even mitigation was undesirable. “It has all - been arranged for you,” he urged. “Upon my word, you are very lucky. You - have been to two houses already where I never get asked except to - luncheon, and here is a card here which I could hardly believe my eyes to - see To trifle with such chances would be simple madness. You will get to - have all London at your fingers’ ends, your very first season. Such a - start as you’re likely to have, I’ve never seen in my life. My dear fellow—you - don’t understand what it means.” - </p> - <p> - “But I’m tired to death!” groaned Christian. “No doubt they are excellent - people, but they weary me to the bone. The dinners, the calls, the - receptions, the dances—I have no talent whatever for these things. - It is very kind of these people—but I know I am ridiculous in it - all. I give them no pleasure, and God knows I receive none. Then why must - it go on? For whose benefit is it? I swear to you, I would not mind the - labor and fatigue, if it was any good that I was doing. Emanuel, for - example, toils like a slave, but then his work has great results. But this - of mine——!” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, yes,” interposed Lingfield, smilingly. “But Emanuel could never have - made much running in London. He disputes with people too much, don’t you - know. They don’t like that. And I think you make much too hard work of it - all. There’s no need for <i>you</i> to talk, you know. It isn’t expected - of you. And I don’t see why you can’t move quietly along, going - everywhere, being seen at the right places, and being civil to everybody, - and not worry yourself at all. That’s what you need, my dear boy—repose! - Let the other people do the worry. Now, of course, in a case like Dicky - Westland’s it’s different. He has to be amusing and useful, or he wouldn’t - get asked. But you are not on all fours with him at all. To tell the truth—no - doubt it’ll sound strange to you, but it is the truth all the same—it’s - better form for you not to be amusing, or brilliant, or that sort of - thing. Fellows in your place don’t go in for it, you know.” - </p> - <p> - Christian sighed, and chafing at the necessity of submission, still - submitted. - </p> - <p> - Now, as he lay back in his chair, the retrospect was augmented by six - other weeks, in which he had passively yielded to what Lingfield had - assured him was the inevitable. He had dined out almost every-night, and - had made countless calls. It seemed to him that he must have met everybody - in this huge metropolis who had a pair of shoulders or possessed a dress - coat. He yawned at the thought of them. - </p> - <p> - Was he not himself to blame for this? At Christmas time he had been quite - confident in answering “no” to this question; now he did not feel so sure - about it. At one place or another he had come into contact with most of - the members of the government, and with many of those distinguished - statesmen on the opposite bench who, by the grace of the genial British - electorate, would be ministers next time. He had talked with eminent - artists, eminent scientists, eminent writers, eminent soldiers and - sailors, and watched them and listened to them as they sat over their - cigars, or moved about among the ladies in the drawing-rooms. Hostesses - whose cordial good will toward him seemed equaled only by their capable - control over others, had said to him time and time again: “If there is any - one you want to know, tell me.” The phrase lingered in his mind as a - symbol of his position. He had merely to mention his wish, like some lucky - person of the fables who possessed a talisman. It could not be said that - he had used his magic power foolishly or perversely. He had followed in - dutiful, painstaking solicitude the path marked out for him by his - advisers. He had done the best that was in him to do; he had gone wherever - Lingfield bade him go; he had loyally kept awake late at night; he had - smiled and bowed and spoken affable words; he had fulfilled punctually all - the engagements imposed upon him. What was more, he could no longer - pretend that he made a failure of the thing; it was known to him that he - had created a pleasant impression upon London, and that people liked him. - </p> - <p> - For all that, he could not feel that in turn he liked these people. Among - those of whom he had seen the most, was there any whom he profoundly - desired ever to see again? He passed some random figures in mental review, - and suffered them to vanish without thrusting forth any tentacle of - thought to detain them. They had not entered his real life; they meant - nothing to him. Positively he was as much alone in London to-day as he had - been when he first set foot in it. Indeed, was he not the poorer to-day by - all those lost illusions and joyous, ardent hopes now faded to - nothingness? In return for these departed treasures, he had only empty - hands to show—and a jaded, futilely mutinous, empty mind as well. - </p> - <p> - The soft, equable tinkle of the door-bell caught his ear, but scarcely - arrested his attention. Perhaps unconsciously the sound served to polarize - his thoughts, for suddenly it became apparent to him that he was in - revolt. All this intolerable social labor was ended for him—definitely - and irrevocably ended. He would not dine at another house; he would burn - forthwith his basket of cards, and the little book with its foolish record - of ladies’ days “at home.” - </p> - <p> - He sat up and sipped at his lukewarm tea, with the glow of a new resolve - on his face. - </p> - <p> - Falkner—a smooth-mannered, assiduous, likable man of middle age whom - Emanuel had given him from his own household—entered the room to - announce a caller. A brisk, alert tread on the polished hall floor behind - him cut into his words, so that Christian did not catch them. He rose, and - looked inquiringly. - </p> - <p> - For an instant, he felt that he was not glad to see the person who came - in. It was a young man of about his age, tall and fair, and handsome in a - buoyant, bright-faced way of his own. His blue eyes sparkled cheerfully - into Christian’s doubtful glance, and he held out a hand as he advanced. - Everybody in the world called him Dicky Westland, and for this opening - moment Christian thought of him as preeminently typical of all the - vanities and artificialities he was on the point of forswearing. - </p> - <p> - “Not seedy, I hope?” the new-comer said in comment upon the other’s loose - attire—and perhaps upon his dubious countenance as well. His voice - had a musical vivacity in it which seemed to lighten the room. Christian, - as he took the hand and shook his head, smiled a little. It began to occur - to him that really he did like this young man. - </p> - <p> - “No,” he replied, with a gesture toward a chair. “I’m all right. Only the - whim seized me—to come home and read a book. I got homesick, I - think.” - </p> - <p> - This statement, once in the air, seemed funny to the young men, and Dicky - Westland laughed aloud. Christian, sitting down opposite his visitor, felt - himself sharing his animation. ‘“It was good of you to come,” he declared, - with a refreshed tone. “The truth is, I’m tired out. I am up too late. I - run about too much.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, a fellow does get hipped,” assented Dicky. “But you are so - tremendously regular, it doesn’t do you any harm. A days’ rest now and - then, and you’re right as a trivet again.” - </p> - <p> - “Regular,” Christian repeated, musingly. He formed his lips to utter some - reflection upon the theme, and then closed them again. “Will you have a - cup of tea?” he asked, with the air of thinking of something else. - </p> - <p> - The other shook his head, and preserved a posture of vivacious - anticipation, as if Christian had made a literal promise to unburden his - mind. The suggestion was so complete that Christian accepted it as a - mandate. - </p> - <p> - “I am glad you came,” he said, “because—well, because I have come to - a conclusion in my mind, and I should like to put it into words for you—so - that I can also hear it myself. I am resolved to go away—to leave - London.” - </p> - <p> - Dicky lifted his brows in puzzled interrogation. “How do you mean?” he - asked. - </p> - <p> - “I do not like it,” Christian replied, speaking more readily now, and - enforcing his words with eager hands. Lingfield had cautioned him against - this gesticulatory tendency, but the very consciousness that he was in - rebellion brought his hands upward into the conversation. “It is not what - I care for. I come into it too late, no doubt, to understand—appreciate - it, properly. The people I meet—I have no feeling for them. It seems - a waste of my time to sit with them, to stand and talk, to go about from - one of their houses to another. At the end of it all, there is nothing. - They have all thick shells on, and they are not going to let me get inside - of them. And, moreover, if I did get inside, who can be sure there would - be anything of value there? It does not often look so to me, from the - outside. But it is a waste of time and labor, and it does not amuse me in - the least, and why should I pursue it?” - </p> - <p> - “Quite right!” said Dicky. - </p> - <p> - “Then you agree with me?—you approve?” asked Christian, not - concealing his surprise. - </p> - <p> - “Of course I do. It’s awful rot,” the other affirmed. He observed his host - silently for a space, and meanwhile, by a quite visible process, the - familiar external elasticity, not to say flippancy, of his manner seemed - to fall away from him. “With me, of course,” he went on, almost gravely, - “I have to do it. I must get my secretaryship, or I can’t live. My - relations could put me into the swim, but they can’t support me there - indefinitely. I have only two aunts, you know—dear old things, they - are—and they keep me going, but they have only life interests, and I - fancy they have to scrape a little as it is. - </p> - <p> - “So you see,” pursued Dicky Westland, “I must help myself, and it’s only - by knowing the right people, and being seen at the right places, that a - fellow can bring anything off. For example, now: Lady Winsey is a distant - cousin of mine, and she’s promised the aunts, you know, and there’s an old - Sir Hogface Something-or-Other dodging about the place, who’s going to get - a West Indian governorship in May, and Lady Winsey has not only had him at - her house to dinner, where he could see me, but has contrived to throw me - at him at three other houses. Next week I’m to go down to a closing meet - in Berkshire, just because he’s to be there—and that she arranged, - too. And it’s all to get a place worth perhaps three hundred a year, with - yellow fever thrown in—if it comes to anything at all.” - </p> - <p> - “Three hundred a year,” commented Christian, knitting his brows. “I still - make pounds into francs to know what a sum means,” he explained, - smilingly, after a moment. “Once I would have thought that a great fortune—and - only a few months ago, too, at that.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, you see how it is,” said Dicky. “I mustn’t let any chance slip by. - But if I stood in your shoes, dear God! how I would chuck it all!” - </p> - <p> - “But what would you do instead?” Christian propounded this question - sitting back in his chair, with the tips of his fingers joined, and a calm - twinkle in his eye. He discovered himself feeling as if it were his - companion who had made confessions and craved sympathy. - </p> - <p> - Dicky looked into his hat, and pouted his lips in whimsical indecision. - “What I mean is,” he explained at last—“my point was this—I - hate the whole thing, and if I didn’t have to do it, why then I wouldn’t - do it, d’ye see? I’d go about with nobody except the people I really cared - about—my right-down, intimate friends. That’s the idea.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah—friends!” said Christian. “That is the word that sings in my - ears!” - </p> - <p> - He rose impulsively, and began walking about the room with a restless - step. Now and again he halted briefly to look down upon his companion, to - enforce with eyes as well as gesture some special thing in his talk. “Yes, - friends!” he cried. “Tell me, you Dicky Westland, where are friends to be - found? Have you some, perhaps? Then where did you come upon them? It is - what I should like very much to know. Listen to me! I have been in England - six months. I possess in England, say two—three—no, five - friends—and all these came to me in my first week here. All but one - belong to my family, so they were here, ready-made for me. But since that - time, now that I am for myself, I have not gained one friend. Is there - then something strange—what do I say—forbidding in me? Or no—it - is nonsense for me to say that. It is the other way about. I have seen - nobody who awakened voices within me. There has been no one who appealed - to me as a friend should appeal. I live among a thousand rich and fine - people who are as good to me as they know how to be—and yet I am as - if I lived in a desert. And it is very cold—and lonely—and - heartbreaking in this desert of mine!” - </p> - <p> - Westland looked at him, as he stood now in the pathetic abandonment of his - peroration, with a contemplative squint in one eye. - </p> - <p> - “I see what you mean,” he remarked finally. “You’ve been looking for flesh - and blood, and you find only gun-metal.” He thrust out his lips a little, - and gave further consideration to the problem. “There isn’t any need for - you to go away, you know,” he added after a pause. “You can have any kind - of life you like in London. It is all here, if you want it. But what is it - that you do want?” - </p> - <p> - Christian threw himself sidewise into his chair, and bent his head with a - sigh. Then, with a new light in his eyes, he looked up. “You yourself said - it”—he exclaimed—“to see only my true friends. That is my idea - of life: To have a small circle of people whom I love very much, and to - make constant opportunities to be with some of them—talking as we - like to talk, going about together, making life happy for one another as - we go along. All my youth, I envied rich people, because I thought that - they used their wealth to command this greatest of delights. I imagined - that if one had much money, then one could afford to spend his time only - with his close, dear friends. But what I discover is that they do - something entirely different. They seem not to let friendship come into - their lives at all. They desire only acquaintances, and of these the more - they have the better, if they bear the proper cachet.” - </p> - <p> - “It is the women,” said Dicky, sententiously. - </p> - <p> - “They like the crowd, and the new faces. And what they like, of course - they have. They run the whole show.” - </p> - <p> - Christian nodded comprehension—then put out a hand to signalize a - reservation. “I know women—here in England—who have a higher - idea than this,” he declared, softly. - </p> - <p> - “Of course, so we all do,” assented Westland. “There are a million - splendid women, if one could only get at them. But it’s a sort of trades - union, don’t you know. You don’t take the workmen you want, on your own - terms; you take those the society gives you, and the terms are arranged - for you. It’s like that with women. You meet some awfully jolly girls now - and then, but they are not in the least degree their own masters. If you - try to get to know them well, either they’re frightened, and pull back - into their shells, or you’re headed off by their mothers. But,” he added - upon reflection—“of course it’s different with you.” - </p> - <p> - “At least I am not interested,” said Christian, wearily. The advice of - Kathleen had produced upon his mind an even greater effect, perhaps, than - he imagined. He had encountered, by the dozen, extremely beautiful and - engaging girls, whose charm should have been enhanced in his eyes by the - dignity and even grandeur of their surroundings. But an impalpable yet - efficient barrier had stood always between them and him. If they exhibited - reserve, he was too shy for words. If they expanded toward him with smiles - or any freedom of demeanor, he recalled instantly the warning of Emanuel’s - wife, and that was fatal. “I have not cared for any of them,” he - reaffirmed. - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” cried Westland of a sudden, his comely, boyish face beaming with the - thought that had come to him. “How stupid of me! I’d forgotten what I came - for—and I’m not sure it doesn’t precisely fill the bill. Are you - doing anything to-night? Will you come with me to the Hanover Theater at - midnight? It’s the five-hundredth performance of ‘Pansy Blossoms’—and - there’s to be supper on the stage and a dance. I don’t think you’ve seen - much of that sort of thing, have you?” - </p> - <p> - Christian shook his head, and regarded his companion doubtfully. “Nothing - at all of it,” he said, slowly. “But it does not attract me very much, I’m - afraid. You would better take some one else. I should be a fish out of - water there. The people of the theaters—they are not congenial to me—that - is, I do not think they would be.” - </p> - <p> - “But, hang it all, man, how do you know till you’ve tried?” Dicky put a - little worldly authority into his tone as he proceeded. “You mustn’t mind - my saying it to you—it is you who make your own desert, as you call - it, for yourself. If you say in advance that you know you won’t like this - sort of person, or that, how are you ever going to form any friendships?” - </p> - <p> - Christian received the remonstrance with meekness. “You do not quite - understand me,” he said, amiably enough. “I have some work to do in the - world, and I don’t think that actresses and actors would help me much to - do it. The young men who run after them do not seem, somehow, to do much - else. It is only a prejudice I have; it applies only to myself. If others - feel differently, why, I have not a word to say.” - </p> - <p> - “No, you must come!” Westland declared, rising. “It’s nonsense for you not - to see that side of things. My dear fellow, it’s as respectable as the - Royal Academy—or Madame Tussaud’s. Are you dining anywhere? Then - I’ll run home and dress, and I’ll drive round here for you. We’ll dine - together, and then look in at some of the halls. Shall I say seven? It - gives us more time over our dinner.” - </p> - <p> - Christian accepted, with a rueful little smile, his committal to the - enterprise. “You must not mind if I come away early,” he said, getting to - his feet in turn. - </p> - <p> - The other laughed at him. “My dear man, you’ll never want to come away at - all. But no, seriously—it’s just the kind of thing you want. It’ll - amuse you, for one thing—and deuce take it, you’ll be young only - once in your life. But more than that—here you are swearing that - you’ll do no more social work at all, and you don’t know in the least what - other resources are open to you. It isn’t alone actresses that you meet at - a place like this, but all sorts of clever people who know how to get what - there is out of life. That is what you yourself want to do, isn’t it? - Well, it’ll do you no harm, to say the least, to see how they go about - it.” - </p> - <p> - “Very likely,” Christian replied, as the other turned. “I will be ready at - seven.” He followed him to the door, and into the hallway. “Mind,” he - said, half jokingly, half gravely, as he leaned over the banister, “I have - not altogether promised. When midnight comes, I may lose my courage - altogether.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, it’s that kind of timidity that storms every fortress in its path,” - Dicky called up to him from the stairway. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he two young men - dined at the Café Royal. “It’s as good a kitchen as there is in London, - and in the matter of people it isn’t such a tiresome repetition of those - one meets everywhere else as Willis’s or the Prince’s. To see the same - shoulders and the same necks, night after night—a fellow gets tired - of it.” - </p> - <p> - To this explanation by Dicky of his choice, as they rolled forward in - their hansom, Christian made no direct response. After a little he said: - “Very soon now, I am going to do something that seems to have been in my - mind for months. Perhaps I have only thought of it since this afternoon: I - cannot be sure. But I am going to do it—I am going to know for - myself what the real London and the real England are like. A thousand - gentlemen in black clothes and silk hats, a thousand ladies with low-cut - dresses and feathers in their hair—all thinking and talking about - themselves and their own little affairs—that does not mean London. - And a few large houses in the country, where these same people spend a few - months riding after the hounds and shooting tame birds and wearying each - other with idle, sleepy talk—that does not represent England.” - </p> - <p> - “Doesn’t it!” cried Westland. “I should say that’s just what it did, worse - luck!” - </p> - <p> - “No, no!” protested Christian. “I don’t want to be told that it does—for - then I should want to go away altogether. No—there is the other - thing, and I am going to find it out, and see it and know it. When all - those years of my boyhood and youth I was so proud of being an Englishman, - it was not this empty, valueless life of the West End, or the chase of - foxes and birds in the country, that I longed for, and nourished pride - in.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, but they do other things, you know,” laughed Dicky. “They are in - Parliament, some of them, or they are at the bar, or in the Services, or - they manage estates or are directors in companies, and that sort of thing. - And some of them go in a lot for charities, and work on committees and - organize things, you know. You’d hardly believe how much of that most of - the women let themselves in for.” - </p> - <p> - “That is not what I mean,” said the other, rather abruptly. “To me all - that is not worth the snap of a finger,” and he emphasized his words by a - gestured with the hand which rested on the door of the hansom. - </p> - <p> - At an advanced stage of the dinner, the young men came to the subject - again. In reply to a random inquiry Christian said that his grandfather, - the duke, as far as he knew, was neither worse nor better in health than - he had been all winter. “I have not been to Caermere since my first - visit,” he went on. “I am really living upon a programme arranged for me, - I should think, by a committee of my relations. Lord Lingfield is my - active bear-leader. He conducts me, or sends me, wherever it has been - decided that I shall go. It was not deemed important that I should go to - Caermere again—and so I have not gone. Voilà tout! If I had been - free to myself, I think I should have gone.” - </p> - <p> - “It must be an awfully jolly place, from the pictures I’ve seen of it,” - said Westland. - </p> - <p> - “Jolly!” cried Christian. “My dear creature, it is a grave, a mausoleum, a - place of skulls and dead men’s bones! You have never seen such a family - vault in all your days. When I even begin to think of undertaking the task - of brightening it into life again, I grow dizzy. The immensity of the work - unnerves me. And now I do not know if I shall ever put my hand to it. The - country-gentleman idea—which you make so much of in England—it - does not appeal to me. It is too idle—too purposeless. Of course my - cousin Emanuel, he makes a terrible toil of it—and does some - wonderful things, beyond doubt. But after all, what does it come to? He - helps people to be extremely fine who without him would only be tolerably - fine. But I have the feeling that one should help those who are not fine - at all—who have never had the chance to be fine, who do not know - what it means. Emanuel’s wife—oh, a very lovely character—she - said to me that they disliked coming up to town, the sight of the London - poor distressed them so much. Well, that is the point—if I am to - help anybody at all, it is the London poor that I should try to help. - Emanuel’s plan is to give extra bones, and teach new tricks, to dogs - already very comfortable. My heart warms to the dogs without collars, the - homeless and hungry devils who look for bones in the gutters.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you’re going in for settlements and that sort of thing,” commented - Dicky. “I hear that is rather disappointing work. If you don’t take the - sporting papers at the reading-room they say the men won’t come at all. - Slingsby Chetwynd was awfully keen on the thing. He went down to stop a - whole week—at Shoreditch or Houndsditch or the Isle of Dogs, or - somewhere like that—and a woman smashed his hat in, and he fell into - a cellar—and he was jolly glad to get back again the same night.” - </p> - <p> - Christian was pursuing thoughts of his own. The wine was admirable—as - indeed it should have been considering the pains Dicky had been at, with - pursed lips and lifted eyebrows, in the selection of it—and - Christian had found an unaccustomed pleasure in its aromatic, sub-acid - taste. He had drunk rather freely of it, and was satisfied with himself - for having done so. He leaned back in his chair now, and watching the - golden fountain of bubbles forever streaming upward in his glass, mused - upon welcome new impulses within him toward the life of a free man. - </p> - <p> - “None the less,” he remarked, indifferent to the irrelevancy of his theme, - “I should have liked to go to Caermere during the winter. I am annoyed - with myself now that I did not go—whether it was arranged for me or - not. There is a lady there for whom I felt great sympathy. I had expected - to be of service to her long before this—but I am of service to no - one. She is a cousin—no doubt you know her—Lady Cressage.” - </p> - <p> - “But she is in London,” put in Westland. “I only know her a little, but - Lady Selton used to be by way of seeing a good deal of her. She told me - last week that she was in town—taken a little flat somewhere—Victoria - Street way, I think. She doesn’t go in for being very smart, you know. Why—yes—of - course she’s your cousin by marriage. Awfully pretty woman she was. Gad! - how well I remember her season! All the fellows went quite off their - heads. How funny—that she should be your cousin!” - </p> - <p> - Christian took no note of his companion’s closing words, or of the tone in - which they had been uttered. He scowled at the playful bubbles in his - glass, as he reflected that the news of her arrival in London ought not to - have come to him in this roundabout, accidental way. Why did none of his - own people tell him? Or still more to the point, why had not she herself - told him? He really had given her only an occasional and sporadic thought, - during these past four or five months. Now, as he frowned at his wine, it - seemed to him that his whole winter had been burdened with solicitude for - her. Or no, “burdened” was an ungracious word, and false to boot. He would - say “mellowed” or “enriched” instead. - </p> - <p> - “You must find out for me”—he began, and then, upon a second thought - born of pique, checked himself. “Or do not mind—it is of no - consequence. I shall hear as a matter of course.” He called for the bill - with a decision in his voice which seemed full of warning that the topic - was exhausted. - </p> - <p> - Westland could not help observing the fat roll of crackling white notes - which the other drew from his pocket. If they were all of the smallest - denomination, they must still represent something like his whole year’s - allowance. The general understanding that Christian’s unfamiliarity with - English ways excused, and even invited, wise admonition from his friends, - prompted him to speak. - </p> - <p> - “That’s rather a lot to carry about with you, old man,” he said, in gentle - expostulation. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I like it!” Christian declared, with shining eyes. He snapped the - elastic band about the roll, with an air of boyish delight in the sound, - as he returned it to his pocket. “If you knew the years in which I counted - my sous!”. - </p> - <p> - It was nearly ten o’clock when they left. Beginning with the Pavilion, - they went to four or five music halls, only to find that there were no - seats to be had. “Why, of course it’s the boat-race,” exclaimed Dicky at - last. “Stupid of me to have forgotten it. I say, I ought to have come for - you this morning, and taken you up the river to see it. It’s worth seeing—for - once. I wonder Lingfield did not arrange it for you.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, several people asked me to join their parties,” Christian replied. - “But it did not attract me. The athletics here—they rather annoy me. - It is as if people thought of nothing else. And to have students at the - universities consumed with the idea—that is specially unpleasant to - my mind. You must remember—I am a teacher by profession.” - </p> - <p> - “We’ll go back to the Empire,” Westland decided. “Ever been there? Well, - it’s worth seeing, too—perhaps more than once. The Johnnies’ll be - out in extraordinary force, I’m afraid, but then you ought to see them - too, I suppose. It takes all sorts to make a world—and the world is - what you’ve come out to look at. Let me get the tickets—or, well, if - you insist—ask for the promenade.” It was indeed a novel spectacle, - which smote and confused his eyes, rather than revealed itself to them, - when Christian found himself inside. The broad, low, rounded promenade was - so crowded with people that at first sight walking about seemed wholly - impracticable, but Dicky stepped confidently into the jumbled throng and - began moving through it, apparently with ease, and the other followed him. - They made their way to the end, where a man in uniform guarded a - staircase; then, turning, they elbowed along back to the opposite end of - the half-circle. This gained, there was nothing in Dicky’s thoughts, - seemingly, but to repeat the performance indefinitely. Their progress was - of a necessity slow. On the inner side a dense wall of backs and high hats - rendered hopeless any notion of seeing the stage below. Christian, - struggling after his guide, wondered what else there was to see. - </p> - <p> - After a time it became obvious to him that the women who formed so large - an element of the lazily shifting crowd were also the occasion of its - being. They walked about, looking the men in the face with a cold, free, - impassive scrutiny upon which, even if he had never seen it before, - intuition would have fixed a label for him. Other women, from the plush - seats on the outer edge of the circle, bent upon the whole moving mass of - promenaders the same stoical, inscrutable gaze. The range of age among - them did not seem extended to his uninformed glance. In years they were - apparently all about alike. Some, indeed, had fresher faces and smoother - skins than others, but when the eyes were considered a certain indefinable - equality was insisted upon in them all. Their toilets were often striking - in effect, and especially their hats—exaggerating both in breadth of - brim, and in the height and bulk of the edifice of plumes above, the - prevalent fashion in such matters—were notable to the spectator; but - Christian found himself, upon consideration, more interested in their eyes - than in anything else. - </p> - <p> - A certain stony quality in this stereotyped gaze of theirs suggested a - parallel to his memory; he had seen precisely that same cool, unruffled, - consciously unconscious stare in princesses who had looked at him without - beholding him in the far-away days of his life about the hotels of the - Riviera. It was very curious, he thought—this incongruous - resemblance. But a little closer analysis showed that the likeness was but - partial. These ladies of the promenade could look about them with the - imperturbability of princesses, it was true, but only so long as they saw - nothing which concerned them immediately. Nay, now he could discern - beneath the surface of this passionless perlustration a couched vigilance - of attention, which ever and again flashed uppermost with electric - swiftness. When this mercurial change came, one saw the temperament mapped - out like a landscape under the illumination of lightning. There gleamed - forth expectancy, dread, joy, irritability, fun, dislike or wistful hope—whatever - the mood of the instant yielded—with a force of intensity almost - startling. Then, as quickly as it came, the look might vanish; even if it - flickered on, the briefest interval of repose brought back again the - watchful, dispassionate, hardened regard. - </p> - <p> - “Have you had enough of this?” Dicky asked, with an implication of - weariness in his tone. - </p> - <p> - Christian, halting, took slow and bewildered cognizance of the fact that - he had been going from one end of the promenade to the other for a very - long time. Insensibly, at some period of the experience, he had taken the - lead from his companion, and had been dragging him about in his wake. - </p> - <p> - “It is very interesting,” was the vague excuse he offered to Dicky, and - even more to himself. - </p> - <p> - A sofa just beside them was for the moment unoccupied. Christian seated - himself with the air of one physically tired out. “Ought we not to order - drinks?” he asked his companion, who stood over him, looking down somewhat - doubtfully. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, dear, no—not here!” Dicky replied, with conviction. “It’s - nearly closing time—and we’ll go over to the club for half an hour—where - we know our tipple. Shall we run along now?” - </p> - <p> - “No—sit down here,” said Christian. He spoke with the authority of a - profound emotion, that glowed in his eyes and quivered on his lips. - Westland obeyed him, pretending to a nonchalance which his mistrustful - glance belied. - </p> - <p> - “This is all very extraordinary to me,” Christian continued, in a low, - strenuous voice. He spoke with even more than his wonted fluency. “It - catches hold of me. It fills my mind with new thoughts. There is something - in the very air here—” - </p> - <p> - “Musk and cigarette smoke,” interposed Dicky, lightly. Then he saw that - levity struck a false note. - </p> - <p> - “Pah!” the other jerked forth, impatiently. “Don’t talk like that! It is - the most terrible, the most touching, the most inspiring thing I have seen - in my life. I breathe in a new ambition here, out of this atmosphere. We - were talking of the London poor. I thought they made the loudest appeal—but - they are nothing beside <i>this!</i>” He spread his thin, nervous hand out - as he spoke, and swept it in a comprehensive gesture over the spectacle - before them. “These are my sisters—my unhappy and dishonored - sisters, scorned and scornful—oh, yes, they are all my sisters!” - </p> - <p> - “But fortunately they don’t know it,” urged Dicky, surveying the ladies - with pouting lips and half-closed eyes. “For God’s sake, don’t mention it - to them.” - </p> - <p> - Christian turned round, with one knee on the sofa, and claimed his - companion’s attention. “I wanted to be able to add you to my very little - list of friends,” he said, gravely. “All the evening I have had that in my - mind—and it may be something else, too. But if you cannot understand - me, now, when I tell you how all this moves me—and if you only care - to mock at what I say—why, then, it is not needful to say more.” - </p> - <p> - Dicky faced about in turn, and regarded him with a puzzled glance, from - which he was at pains to exclude all signs of frivolity. “But you haven’t - told me <i>how</i> it moves you at all,” he said, vaguely. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, how,” repeated Christian with hesitation. “It is not easy to say just - how. But I am devoured by a great compassion. I could weep tears at the - heart-misery I see here. They shout in the papers and wring their hands - over the massacre of Armenians—but right here—this thing—is - it not more cruel and dreadful still? Here there is no question of race - hatreds and religious hatreds, but just the cold, implacable pressure of - poverty on human souls, crushing them and sinking them in shame.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, that’s only a part of the story—not such a deuce of a big part - either,” urged the other, gently. “Don’t get so excited about it, my dear - fellow. It is by no means a new thing. And wait till you know more about - it, and have thought it over—and then, if you feel that there is - anything you can do, why, take my word for it, it will still be here. It - won’t disappear in the meanwhile. You’ll still be in time.” - </p> - <p> - Christian regarded him wistfully, and with a mild, faint smile. “You would - never enter into my feelings about this,” he said, softly. “We are made - differently. It strikes you as strange, does it not, that a young man, - coming into contact with this for the first time, should be filled only - with the yearning to help these poor girls, and do good to them? It - surprises you? It is something new to you, n’est ce pas?” - </p> - <p> - Dicky grinned within decorous limits. “My dear boy,” he declared, - confidentially, “so far from being new, it’s the oldest thing in the - world. Every young fellow worth his salt that I have ever known, or that - anybody’s ever known, has swelled himself out with precisely these same - reform sentiments. In this very promenade here I have witnessed at least a - dozen attacks like yours. And don’t think I am jeering at the thing. It is - a very beautiful and generous spirit indeed, and I admire it awfully, I - assure you—only—only, as one gets to know his way about a - trifle better, he sees that there isn’t so much in it as he thought there - was. And that’s what I was trying to say to you. Don’t let your first - impulses run away with you. If the subject interests you, appeals to you, - very well; get to understand it. You will find that it is more - complicated, perhaps, than you think. But when you know it all, why, then - you can do what you like.” - </p> - <p> - Some of the light seemed to have been turned out. A definitive blare - rolled up from the orchestra below; the throng of promenaders, though - still informed by the most leisurely of moods, was converging upon the - door of exit. The two young men arose. - </p> - <p> - Christian suddenly yawned. “I am tired—and depressed,” he said, - wearily. “I think I will ask you to let me go home.” - </p> - <p> - “Nonsense!” said Dicky, promptly. “We’ll go to the club, and get a - pick-up, and then you shall see something that won’t depress you. I grant - you this <i>is</i> rather melancholy. God knows why we came.” - </p> - <p> - An hour or more later, emerging from a confusing sequence of narrow - passages and winding ascents and descents, Christian followed Westland out - through a groove of painted canvas to the stage of the Hanover Theater. - </p> - <p> - He had never seen a theater from this point of view, and the first few - minutes of his scrutiny—here where he stood at the wings, while - Dicky looked after the coats and hats—were full of pleased interest. - The huge dusky space of the galleries overhead, strange and formidable in - its dark bulk like some giant balloon, was very impressive. By contrast, - the stage itself seemed to give out light. A long riband of a table - stretched across the back, and down the two sides, and about this - clustered many people; shining shirt-fronts and bald heads, pale - shimmering dresses and white shoulders, the glitter of napery and plates - and glasses—all was radiant under the powerful electric glow from - above. He could see now, in the halfshadows down beyond the footlights, - two or three rows of heads of people sitting in the front stalls. To his - fancy these detached heads appeared to belong to an order of beings quite - distinct from those on the stage. He wondered if actors felt their - audiences to be thus remote and aloof from themselves. - </p> - <p> - “We can push our way in at the other end—there’s less of a crush - there,” he heard Dicky say to him. He followed his guide across the stage, - through groups of conversing guests who had brought out their sandwiches - and glasses from the throng, and came eventually to the table itself. Some - one held out a bottle toward him, and he lifted a glass to be filled. From - under some other stranger’s arm he extricated a plate, containing - something in gelatine, he knew not what. In straightening himself he - pushed against a person unexpectedly close behind him. - </p> - <p> - Half turning, with the murmur of an apology upon his lips, his eyes - encountered those of a lady, who seemed to know him, and to be smiling at - him. - </p> - <p> - “How d’ye do?” this lady said to him. There could be no doubt about the - cordiality of her tone. Her left hand was occupied with a champagne glass - and a fan, but her right was being lifted to him, almost against his - breast, in greeting. He gazed at her in smiling perplexity, the while he - signed that both his own hands were filled. - </p> - <p> - “You don’t know me from Adam,” she said to him, cheerfully. “But I’m your - cousin—Cora Torr, you know.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>ou’ve altered so - much since I saw you! It was odds against my recognizing you at all,” - declared Cora, beaming forth into conversation before Christian had fairly - grasped the significance of her identity. - </p> - <p> - “I should never have believed they would make such an Englishman out of - you, in just these few months. Let’s see—it was October, wasn’t it? - Yes, of course—the First.” She showed her beautiful teeth in a flash - of gaiety. “The pheasants weren’t the only ones that got hit that day. But - bygones are bygones.... And how do you like London? How do you find it - compares with Paris? I always maintain that there’s more real life here, - if you know where to look for it.... But I am afraid you’re not glad to - see me.” - </p> - <p> - “There you are wrong. I am glad to see you,” Christian replied, with - deliberation. He made his words good by thrusting his plate back upon the - table and shaking her gloved hand. There was a frank smile in his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Get my glass filled again,” she suggested—“and-your own too—and - let’s get out of the way. These people push as if they had had nothing to - eat since Christmas. Of all the hogs in evening clothes, the stage-supper - hog is the worst. Well, and how have you been, all this time?” - </p> - <p> - They had moved across the stage to the entrance, and paused near it in a - little nook of momentary isolation. Christian made conventional answer to - her query, and to other remarks of hers calling for no earnest attention, - the while he concentrated his thoughts upon the fact that they were - actually standing here together, talking like old friends. - </p> - <p> - It was sufficiently surprising, this fact, but even more remarkable was - the satisfaction he himself was getting from it. There was no room for - doubt; he really enjoyed being with her. There was no special need to - concern himself with what she was saying. She hardly paused for replies, - and seemed not to mind in the least the automatic character of the few - which came to her. He had only to smile a little, and nod, and let his - eyes glow pleasurably, and she went blithely on. The perception came - suddenly to him that he had been sorry also for her. Indeed, now that he - reflected upon it, had not hers been the most cruel misfortune of all? The - memory of the drawn, agonized mask of a face she had shown, over the - tea-table in the conservatory at Caermere, rose in his mind’s vision. He - looked up at the strips of canvas and lamps above, with half-closed eyes, - recalling in reverie the details of this suffering face; then he turned - abruptly to confront her, and observe afresh the happy contrast she - presented to-night. - </p> - <p> - Cora was looking away for the instant, and apparently conveying by lifted - eyebrows and shakes of the head a message of some sort to some person on - the bustling stage unknown to him. He glanced instinctively in the - direction of her signal, but gained no information—and indeed - realized at once that he was not in search of any. Of course, she knew - everybody here, and would be exchanging nods and smiles of recognition all - the evening. It occurred to him to wonder if her husband, that Captain - Edward of unpleasant memory, was on the stage, but he had the power to put - the thought promptly out of his mind. It was only Cora that he was - interested in, and that he wanted to talk with. And here she was, once - more looking into his face, and restoring by her smile his almost jocund - pleasure in the situation. - </p> - <p> - He still maintained the rôle of listener, but it grew increasingly clear - to him that when his turn came he would have a good deal to say, and that - he would say it well. He had never spoken on familiar terms with an - actress before—and the experience put him wonderfully at his ease. - He felt that he could say things to her; already he delighted in the - assurance of her receptivity, her immunity from starched nonsense, her - genial and comforting good fellowship. As he continued to look at her, and - to smile, he remembered what people always said, or rather took for - granted, about ladies on the stage. The consciousness shaped itself within - him that she offered a timely and felicitous compromise—a sort of - bridge between those formal, “gun-metal” women of society whom he desired - never to see again, and those hapless, unblest creatures of the Empire. - </p> - <p> - Presently she took his arm, and they moved round to the stalls in front, - and found seats a little apart from any one else. A large number of young - ladies, in white or light-hued evening dresses, were seated about in the - rows before them, and Cora pointed out this one and that among them to - Christian. “That is Dolly Montressor—the dancer, you know—her - photos are all the rage just now. The girl in pink, over there—just - turning round—she is the one who sued young Concannon for breach of - promise. You must remember. Her lawyers put the bailiffs in for what she - owed them, after they’d taken everything the jury gave her, and she - dressed the bailiffs in livery and had them wait at the table at a big - supper she gave. The little thicknosed dark man there—next but one - to her—he drew a check for the supper and the bailiffs too. You see - the small, thin girl with the tomato-colored hair—she didn’t bring - <i>her</i> suit into court—one isn’t fox-headed for nothing. She - settled outside at the last minute—the Lord Carmody case, you know—and - no one’s ever heard a whisper of any supper she ever gave. It isn’t at all - her line. She puts it all into South Africans; they say she’s good for - thirty thousand pounds, if she’s got a penny. It isn’t bad, you know, on a - salary of six quid, and only the pantomime season at that. Oh, there’s - Peggy Wiltshire—just in the doorway. She’s the most remarkable woman - in England. How old would you think she was? Forty? Why, my dear man, she - was billed as a star in the old original Black Crook—just about the - time I was born. She can’t be a minute under sixty. But look at her—the - neck and shoulders of a girl! Isn’t it amazing! Why, she was knocking - about town when your father was a youngster—and here she is still - going strong.” - </p> - <p> - The tables were being cleared from the stage, and the fringe of gentlemen - who remained hungry and thirsty was retiring slowly and with palpable - reluctance toward the wings. Some sad-faced musicians emerged wearily from - an unsuspected cave beneath the footlights, and exhibited their violins - and flutes to the general gaze with an air of profound dejection. Their - fiddle strings began to whine at one another, in a perfunctory and - bad-tempered groping about for something they were expected to have in - common. A stout man on the stage vigorously superintended the removal of - the last table, and warned off with a comprehensive gesture the lingering - remnant of unsated raveners; then, turning, he lifted his hand. On the - instant, some score and more of the young ladies in white and pale pinks - and blues and lavenders rose from their front stalls, and moved toward the - stage door at the left. They pressed forward like a flock of sheep—and - with faces as listlessly vacant as any pasture could afford. Christian - observed their mechanical exit with a curling lip. - </p> - <p> - “If these are the renowned beauties, whose fascinations turn the heads of - all the young men about town,” he confided to his companion, “then it says - extremely little for the quality of what is inside those heads.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, isn’t it extraordinary!” she mused at him, eyeing the bevy of - celebrities with a ruminating glance. “This must be somewhere near the - sixth or seventh lot of ’em that even I’ve seen passing through the - turnstile, as you might say. Where do they all come from?—and good - heavens! where do they all go to? It’s a procession that never stops, you - know. You’d think there was a policeman, keeping it moving. You have these - girls here—well, they’re the queens, just for the minute. They own - the earth. Nothing in the world is too good for them. Very well: just - behind them are some other girls, a few years younger. Goodness knows - where they were to-night—in the back ranks of the ballets, perhaps, - or doing their little turn at the Paragon or the Canterbury, or doing - nothing at all—nothing but keeping their toes pointed in this - direction. And they are treading close on the heels of these queens you - see here; and behind <i>them</i> are girls of sixteen or so, and behind <i>them</i> - the little chits of ten and twelve—and they’re all pushing along—and - in time each lot gets in front, out under the limelight, and has its - little year on the throne—and then gets shoved off to make room for - the next. You might have seen two-thirds of these men here ten years ago. - But not the women. Oh, no! Only here and there one—an old stager - like Polly Wiltshire—or a middle-aged stager like myself. But we’re - merely salt to the porridge.” - </p> - <p> - “But do you not wish to dance?” he asked her. The orchestra had begun a - waltz, and the young ladies from the front stalls, each now attached to a - stiffly gyrating male figure, were circling about on the stage, with a - floating, wave-like swing of their full skirts which revealed to those - below in the stalls rhythmic glimpses of whisking feet and trim black - ankles. - </p> - <p> - “I will dance with you with pleasure,” she replied, promptly. - </p> - <p> - “Unfortunately”—he began with confusion—“it is ridiculous of - me, but I never learned.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, then, we will sit here and talk,” she insisted. “I truly don’t want - to dance. It’s ever so much cooler and more comfortable here. One has to - come to these things, you know—you have to show yourself or you’re - like the man who fell out of the balloon—simply not in it. But - they’re all alike—all deadly stupid unless you’re young and want to - kick your legs about—or unless you find some one you’re particularly - glad to see.” - </p> - <p> - Christian did not seek to evade the implication of the genial glance with - which she pointed this last remark. “Yes, it is good of you to stay here - with me,” he declared. “Except you and my friend who brought me here—I - thought I saw him dancing a moment ago—I don’t know a soul. I have - been saying to-day,” he continued, settling down in his seat toward her, - “that I make friends badly—I remain here in England almost a - stranger.” - </p> - <p> - “Why, I thought you went everywhere. I know I’m forever seeing your name - in the ‘Morning Post.’ You spell it Tower, I notice.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, I have been going everywhere—but going as one goes alone - through a gallery of pictures. I do not bring out any friends with me.” - </p> - <p> - She stole a swift glance at him, as she fanned herself. “You surprise me,” - she commented. “I should have thought everybody would be running after - you.” - </p> - <p> - “Do they? I am not conscious of it.” He spoke wearily. “If they do, it - does not interest me. They are not my kind of people. They take no hold - whatever upon my sympathy. They make no appeal to the imagination.” - </p> - <p> - “You could hardly say that about those ladies’ skirts up there,” she - jocosely remarked. “I had no idea silk petticoats flapped so.” - </p> - <p> - He was not to be diverted from his theme. “It is very funny about me,” he - went on. “I seem to make no friends among men, of my own age or any other. - Of course there are two or three exceptions—but no more. And as for - the majority of women, they attract me still less. Yet when, once in a - great while, I do meet some one who really interests me, it is always a - woman. These few women whom I have in mind—oh, I could count them on - the fingers of one hand—they make a much deeper and more lasting - impression on me than any man can make.” - </p> - <p> - “I believe that frequently happens,” she put in lightly. She did not seem - to him to be following his thread of reasoning with conspicuous closeness, - but her pleasant smile reassured him. - </p> - <p> - “I think I am most readily moved on the side of my compassion,” he - continued, intent upon the development of his self-analysis. “If I am - sorry for the people, it is easier for me to like them—that is, if - they are young and pretty women.” - </p> - <p> - Cora laughed aloud at this, then lapsed abruptly into thoughtfulness. “How - do you mean?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “To-night I went to the place of the—the promenade—the Empire, - is it not? And the sight of the young women there—it terribly - affected me. I wanted to shout out that they were all my sisters—that - I would protect them all—that they should never be forced by poverty - and want to face that miserable humiliation again.” She looked at him, her - lips parted over the beautiful teeth, a certain blankness of - non-comprehension in the beautiful eyes. As she slowly grasped the drift - of his words, the eyes and lips joined in a reserved and baffling smile. - “You’re a nice boy,” she decided, “but you’re tremendously young. Those - girls are lazy, greedy, good-for-nothing hussies. They wouldn’t do honest - work for a living if it was brought to them on a silver salver. They - haven’t an idea in their empty painted heads except to wheedle or steal - money from drunken fools. They’re nothing but—what d’ye call ’em?—parasites. - I’d put ’em all on the treadmill, if I had my way.” - </p> - <p> - Christian sat up a little, and she was alert in noting the signs of - disaffection on his mobile face. “Nevertheless, there is a great sorrow - and a great shame in it all,” he said, gravely. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, that I admit,” she declared, making busy work with her fan. “Of - course! Perhaps I spoke more sharply than I meant. Every one is sorry for - the poor creatures—but—but I confess I’m sorrier still for the - girls who have to work like slaves for the barest necessities of life. - Why, my dressmaker’s girls, two of ’em—poor little - half-starved sisters who may come at nine or ten o’clock at night to - deliver things, or try something on—they get twenty-five shillings a - week between them. That’s what gets on <i>my</i> nerve.” - </p> - <p> - He preserved silence for a time, then suddenly sat upright and faced her. - A new light shone in his eyes. “I am the dullest person on earth,” he - protested. “All this time I have not thought of it. I want to ask you a - thousand things about your sister. Did you not know?—She is my - oldest friend in England.” - </p> - <p> - Cora drew a long breath, and held up her fan for a protracted and - attentive inspection. “Oh, yes—you mean Frank,” she said, - tentatively. - </p> - <p> - “Frank? Is that her name? She works. She has a machine à écrire—a - typewriter it is called. You must tell me about her! Is she very well? And - where is she to be found? How shall I go about it to recall myself to - her?” As there came no immediate response, he put his further meditations - into dreamy words: “She spoke the first kind words to me, here in England. - I bade farewell to France and the old hard life, in her company. It was - she who pointed with her finger for me to have my first look at England—the - little, rose-colored island in the green water, with the purple clouds - above it. It seemed that we were very close together—on that one - day. And I was so full of the thought of seeing her very soon again! And - that was September—and now it is very nearly May!. . . But you have - not told me! Where is it that she is to be found? Where does she live?” - </p> - <p> - “She lives at home with my people,” Cora replied, still with reflective - deliberation. It was with a visible effort that she shook off the - preoccupied air into which she had lapsed. “But you don’t want to go there—it’s - out of the world—red-busses and green-busses and a tram and that - sort of thing. But she has an office now of her own; that’s where you’d - find her most easily. Bless me if I know where it is—it’s between - the Strand and the Embankment, but I never can remember which is Norfolk - Street and which Arundel Street—and really I’m not sure she’s on - either. But my brother is here. I’ll ask him, presently. And so you know - Frank?” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, yes, but you know her better still,” said Christian, softly, nestling - again into the corner of his chair nearest her. “I wanted you to tell me - about her.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, well—but what is there to tell?” she made answer, vaguely. “She - is a good girl; she’s frightfully clever; she works very hard, and gives - most of her money to her mamma; she’s successful, too, because she’s got a - shop of her own, at last—and—and—that’s about all, isn’t - it? You know, we’re not by way of seeing much of each other. There’s no - quarrel, of course—not the least in the world—but I’m too - frivolous to be in her class at all. I dare say it’s my fault—I - ought to go and look her up. That’s what I will do, too, one of these - days. But—you mustn’t misunderstand me—she’s an awfully good - girl, that is, of course, if you like that sort of girl. And she’s pretty, - too, don’t you think?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I think so,” affirmed Christian, almost with solemnity. “What time - would she come to her office—in the morning, I mean?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, don’t ask me!” laughed Cora. “At some ghastly hour, when they have - breakfast, I believe, in cabmen’s shelters, and the streets haven’t been - swept. I know it only by hearsay. I’ve never stopped up quite as late as - that, you know. But you see something like it, driving round by Covent - Garden on your way home from a late dance, to see the flowers. Have you - ever done that?” - </p> - <p> - Christian shook his head. The idea attracted him, apparently. “At what - hour is it?” he asked, with interest. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, four or five or something like that. It’s really the prettiest sight - you ever saw. I used to go often, at this time of year, and take home a - cabload of flowers. But I am getting too old now—and too - serious-minded. The mother of a family—you know.” - </p> - <p> - Christian looked at his watch. “It has occurred to me”—he suggested, - hesitatingly—“it is now after two—perhaps we could make a - party to go this morning. The dancing will not stop earlier, will it?” - </p> - <p> - On the stage nothing seemed further from any mind than stopping. There was - some complicated kind of set dance in progress, which at the moment - involved the spectacle of some score of couples, hands all joined, romping - madly around in a gigantic ring. The dresses whirled more wildly than - ever; the men crooked their legs and hung outward from the circle as they - went, stamping their feet and laughing boisterously. Christian’s eyes - singled out one young man who seemed to be making most noise of all—and - then he perceived that it was Dicky Westland. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps it might be arranged,” Cora replied, after consideration, and - with a sidelong eye upon her companion. “I will go behind for a moment, - and find my brother, and see what he says. No, you stop here. I will come - back again.” - </p> - <p> - So many people were moving about with entire individual freedom, that he - offered no objection to her departure. She pushed her way confidently yet - affably past the others in the row, and disappeared at the stage door. He - had no clues by which to follow her in fancy after that. Once he thought - he distinguished her at the back of the stage—but for the rest it - was her sister rather than the friendly Cora who engaged his thoughts. The - idea that he was to see her again, quite without delay, seemed to - illuminate his whole mind. - </p> - <p> - In the labyrinth of shunted scenery behind the back-curtain, and along the - narrow corridors of dressing-rooms, now devoted to varying hospitable - uses, Cora prosecuted what was for a time a fruitless search. - </p> - <p> - “Where are the gentlemen getting their drinks?” she asked at last of a - cloak-room attendant, and the answer simplified her task. Downstairs, at - the door of the manager’s room, she was lucky enough to hit upon Major - Pirie. “Tell Eddy that’ I want him, will you, old man,” she said, nodding - with assurance toward the crowded, smoky little interior, “and if that - brother of mine is in there, I want to see him for a minute, too.” - </p> - <p> - The brother came out first—a slender, overdressed youth, with a face - which suggested a cheap and inferior copy of Cora’s. It had the - self-complacency without the high spirits—the comeliness of line - without the delicacy of texture and charm of color. He was obviously young - in years, but he regarded her through the eyes of an elderly and wearied - person. - </p> - <p> - “Hello,” he said, amiably enough. “Goin’ to take Eddy home? He won’t be - the worse for a friendly lead. Oh, he’s all right, though, up to now. He’s - got rippin’ odds against Perambulator from Hoskins, seventy to three, you - know, in fivers. Try and get him to let me in on the bet, will you? I - offered to take half of it, the minute the bet was made—but he - didn’t answer me. You can work it, if you try, old girl.” - </p> - <p> - “What’s Frank’s address—her office, I mean?” she put in abruptly, - “Got a pencil? Go and get one from somebody. Thirty-two A, you say? - Thanks! Now tell Eddy to come out.” - </p> - <p> - “But what’s up? What do you want with Frank? Anything I can tell her?” - </p> - <p> - “Never you mind! And don’t lisp a word to her, or to Eddy or to any one - else. If it comes off, it’ll be a beano for the lot of us.” - </p> - <p> - “Right you are,” he assented, with a glimmer of animation. “But say, you - won’t forget about the Hoskins bet, will you? If I could even have a third - of it! I could do with some odd sovereigns just now, and no mistake.” - </p> - <p> - “Sh-h! Here he comes. You run away-now, d’ye see; I want to talk with - Eddy.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Edward emerged from the haze of cigarette smoke which veiled the - throng within the manager’s room. “Well?” he demanded, with a kind of - sulky eagerness. - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t told him you were here,” Cora began, under her breath, drawing - her husband aside down the passage. “It didn’t seem to come into the talk. - He thinks I’m here with Tom.” - </p> - <p> - Edward looked down upon his wife, with a slow, ponderous glance of mingled - hope and uneasiness. He pulled at his small yellow mustache, and aimlessly - jingled some keys in his pocket. - </p> - <p> - “You’ve had nearly two hours with him, you know,” he protested, - doubtfully. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Don’t</i> I know it!” she ejaculated, holding up her hands in mock - pain at the retrospect. “Good God! If I had a thousand pounds to show for - it, I’d say it was the hardest earned money <i>I</i> ever handled.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, but you haven’t got anything to show—so far’s I can make out,” - he commented with gloom. “You didn’t mention my name at all, eh? But that - was what you particularly set out to do, I thought.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, you thought wrong,” she responded briskly. “I set out to do what - was wisest under the circumstances, and I’ve done it. I’ve got an inkling - of a game to be played”—she let her eyes twinkle at him as she made - this tantalizing little pause—“a game, you old goose, worth seven - hundred thousand times anything you ever thought of.” - </p> - <p> - The ex-hussar regarded her fixedly, the while he pondered her words. “I - don’t think I’m very keen about games,” he remarked at last, with obvious - suspicion in his tone. “A married woman always gets the worst of games, in - the long run.” - </p> - <p> - She grinned affectionate contempt up at him. “Don’t be such a duffer, - Eddy!” she remonstrated with him. “If I had a notion of that sort—do - you suppose I’d come and give it away to you? What rot you talk!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes—but what <i>is</i> your game?” he demanded, doggedly. - </p> - <p> - “I won’t tell you!” She spoke with great apparent decision. “You’d blab it - all over the place. You can no more keep a secret than you can keep a - ten-pound note.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I say, Cora,” he urged, in grieved protestation. “You know I’m a - regular bailey oyster, where a thing has to be kept dark. You’d better - tell me, you know. It’ll keep me from—imaginin’ things.” - </p> - <p> - The wife smiled. “It’s only a plant I’ve got in my mind,” she explained, - after consideration. “What’s the matter with my naming a wife for him, - eh?” - </p> - <p> - Edward, upon reflection, pouted his lips. “Probably you’d come a cropper - over it, in the first place,” he objected, slowly, “and then even if you - did name the winner, she’d probably welsh us out of our winnings—and - besides, what do we want of his marrying at all. The longer he puts off - getting married, the less the odds against us gets. I should think even a - woman could see that.” - </p> - <p> - Cora permitted herself a frank yawn. “I’ll explain it to you to-morrow,” - she said. - </p> - <p> - “And now I must go back to my Juggins for a few minutes. I’ll come and - fetch you when I’m ready to go.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t fancy it much, you know,” he urged upon her as she turned. He - took a step toward her, and put his hand on her arm. “If your brother Tom - was any good”—he began, with a hard growl in his voice—“by - God, I’d have half a mind to talk with him about <i>my</i> plan. Old - Pirie’d be no use—but if Tom had the sense and the nerve—why, - we’d—” - </p> - <p> - She had held his eye with a steady, comprehending glance, under the - embarrassment of which his speech faltered and then lapsed altogether. - “No, the less either you or Tom have to do with your plan the better. Go - in now, and take a plain soda, and wait for me! You’ve got no plan, mind - you. You’ve simply been dreaming about it. Do you hear? You never had a - plan! You can’t have one!” - </p> - <p> - She spoke with significant authority, and he deferred to it with a sullen - upward wag of the head. “All right,” he muttered curtly, and turned on his - heel. - </p> - <p> - “Plain soda, mind!” she called after him, and without waiting for an - answer, ran briskly up the steps toward the stage. - </p> - <p> - Captain Edward’s plain soda had become a remote and almost wholly effaced - memory by the time his wife again summoned him from the manager’s room. - </p> - <p> - “We’ll cut this now, if you don’t mind,” she remarked, in her most casual - tone. “I’m as tired as if I’d danced every minute.” She had put on her - wraps, and her small, pretty face, framed by the white down of her hood, - seemed to his scrutiny to wear an expression of increased contentment. - </p> - <p> - “Anything fresh?” he asked, as they went in search of his coat and hat. - </p> - <p> - “Yes—fresh is the word,” she replied, with simulated nonchalance. - “Fresh, fresher, freshest—as we used to say at school.” - </p> - <p> - “Wha’ is it?” he inquired, when they were within touch of the open air. - The music was still audible behind them, broken by faint, intermittent - echoes of stamping feet and laughing voices. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll tell you about it in the morning,” she answered listlessly. “I hope - to heaven you’ve got a cab-fare.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, tha’s all right,” said Edward, waving his stick toward the rank in - the dark middle distance of the street. “Whyn’t you tell me all about it?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you wouldn’t get onto it now,” she replied, But later, in the hansom, - the desire to unburden her mind achieved the mastery. - </p> - <p> - “Are you awake?” she demanded, and went on: “He’s not a bad sort, that - boy, you know.” - </p> - <p> - “Damn him!” said Edward, breathing heavily. - </p> - <p> - “I rather like him myself,” she continued. “He’s a bit slow to talk to, - and he’s fresher than Devonshire cream, but there isn’t a drop of the - Johnnie in him. He’s as clean as my little girl.” - </p> - <p> - “Damn him,” repeated her husband, but in a milder and even argumentative - tone. - </p> - <p> - “He’s a proper bundle of nerves, that youngster,” she mused, as if talking - to herself. “And whatever those nerves of his tell him to do, he’ll do it. - And I’d lay odds he’s goin’ to surprise us all. He’s got something boilin’ - in his mind—something that’s just struck him to-night—I could - see that. Oh, if I was a man!—I’d get out of this hansom now, and - I’d follow that lad, and I’d get hold of him somehow, and I’d bend him any - way I chose—<i>that</i> would be something like!—but then - again, you take him some other way, and he’s as stubborn as a moke. But I - like him, all the same.” She turned toward her husband, and lifted her - voice a little. “I like him so much, I’m thinkin’ of havin’ him for a - brother-in-law.” - </p> - <p> - “Strornary thing,” commented Edward, earnestly, “no man’er where I start - from, whenever I get t’ the Circus, I get the hiccups.” - </p> - <p> - Cora put her head back against the cushions, and closed her eyes. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian - discovered that he was not sorry to be alone. Cora’s company had been - amusing and vivifying, no doubt, but it was even better now to have his - own thoughts. He observed with relief that others in the stalls were - smoking; tobacco as a rule had not very much meaning for him, but now he - lit a large cigar from the dinner-case in his pocket, and stretching - himself in his chair, proceeded to enjoy it. He kept his glance, in an - indolent fashion, upon the stage, but his mind roamed far and wide. - </p> - <p> - Cora, in returning to explain that it would not be possible for her to - stay till the time for Covent Garden, had ingenuously sat on for nearly - another hour, cheering him with her lively prattle. She asked him many - questions about himself, his diversions, his tastes, his relations with - Lord Julius and Emanuel. He wondered now if these queries had been quite - as artless as they seemed at the time. There rose up before him, in - retrospect, certain occasional phases of her manner which suggested - something furtive. She had watched the stage, and the doorway leading from - it, with a kind of detached uneasiness on which he now languidly - speculated. It occurred to him again to wonder if her husband was really - in the building. Christian found himself thinking of this cousin of his - almost with compassion. Poor devil! Was his fate not even more tragic than - that of the others who were merely dead? He regretted now that he had not - asked Cora point-blank as to his presence. His mood was so tolerant - to-night that even the unforgivable insult to his father lost its sharp - outlines, and became only a hasty phrase, the creature of imperative - provocation. - </p> - <p> - In her final leave-taking, Cora had genially proffered her services if he - desired to know any or all of the young ladies—and he had begged to - be excused. Dicky Westland came down to the stalls later on, and - shamefacedly linked a similar offer to his apologies for his prolonged - neglect of his guest. But Christian protested that he was enjoying himself - thoroughly. He was never less sleepy in his life; he did not want a drink; - he would not dream of wishing to go until his friend was entirely ready. - “You cannot realize,” he concluded, with his persuasive smile, “how - strange and interesting this all is to me.” - </p> - <p> - But when Dicky had returned again to the stage, Christian paid less - attention than ever to the diverting spectacle. His thoughts reverted - obstinately to Captain Edward—? and to that portion of the family of - which he was the congenital type. Was not that really the sort of man who - should have the title? There seemed a cloud of negative reasons, but were - these not sentimental abstractions? Should the duke not be a rough, hard - sportsman, a man with a passion for horses and dogs and gunpowder - saturating his veins? One who loved the country for its rude, toilsome - out-of-door sports, and who liked best in town the primitive amusements of - the natural man? He figured Edward in his mind’s eye most readily as - puffing and cursing over a rat-hole with his terriers—or as watching - with a shine of steel in his blue eyes the blood-stained progress of a - prize-fight. And truly, were these not the things that a duke of - Glastonbury of right belonged to? - </p> - <p> - He could not think of Lord Julius and of Emanuel as being Torrs at all. - The older man had the physical inheritance of the family, it was true, but - he was almost as much estranged from its ideals as that extraordinary son - of his. They both were grotesquely out of the picture of English - aristocratie life, whether in country or town. And he himself—how - absolutely he also was out of the picture! - </p> - <p> - The immensity of the position which his grandfather’s death would devolve - upon him had been present in his mind, it seemed sleeping as well as - waking, for half a year. At the outset he had thrilled at the prospect; - sometimes still he was able to reassure himself about it, and to profess - to himself confidence that when the emergency came, he would be equal to - it. But more often, in these latter days, the outlook depressed him. Of - course nothing grievous would happen to him, in any event. He would be - assured of an excellent living to the end of his days, with an exceptional - amount of social deference from those about him, and relative freedom to - do what he liked. He could marry and rear a family of lords and ladies; he - could have his speeches in the House of Lords or elsewhere printed in the - “Times”; if he looked about in America, he could secure a bride with - perhaps millions to her dower. There was, in any case, the reasonable - likelihood that he would be, to some extent, the heir of Lord Julius and - Emanuel, in the latter part of his life. Thus he could go on, when he set - himself to the task, piling-up reasons why he ought to view the future - with buoyant serenity—to count himself among the happiest of men. - </p> - <p> - But then—was his not all self-deception? Did he not know in his - heart that he was not happy?—that this gilded and ornate career - awaiting him really repelled all his finer senses? To-night as he followed - his thoughts behind the transparent screen of whisking dresses and jolting - figures upon which his outer vision rested, the impulse to escape the - whole thing rose strong within him. Already he had sworn that he would no - longer weary himself with the meaningless and distasteful routine of - social obligations in London. Why should he not plunge boldly forward - beyond that, and say that he would make no further sacrifices of any sort - to the conventions of mediocrity? - </p> - <p> - He lit another cigar and, rising, walked about a little by himself at the - side of the stalls, his hands deep in his pockets, his brows knitted in - formative introspection. - </p> - <p> - First of all, it was clear that Emanuel’s hopes about his taking up the - System were doomed. It was not in him to assume such a part. He had not - the capacity for such work; even if he had, he lacked both the tremendous - driving energy and the enthusiasm. - </p> - <p> - But when Emanuel learned this, then he would be angry, and he would cover - over no more money to that account at the bank. Eh bien! It couldn’t be - helped. Christian recalled that he had still at that blessed bank more - than sixty thousand francs!—truly a prodigious sum, when one thought - of it soberly. The question whether this sum ought not to be given back to - Emanuel, under certain circumstances, seemed to have settled itself. When - it had first occurred to him that afternoon, it had suggested a good many - moral difficulties. But it was really simplicity itself, as he considered - it now. There were all those lean and poverty-stricken years of his youth - and childhood to be remembered—and, stretching back beyond that, - those other years of his father’s exile before he was born—nearly - forty in all. The intelligent thing was to regard the three thousand - pounds as a sort of restitution fund, to be spread out over the whole of - that long period. Viewed in this light, the annual fraction of it was a - paltry matter. Besides, Emanuel had expressly declared that no conditions - whatever were attached to the money. Christian saw that he could make his - mind quite easy on that score. - </p> - <p> - So then, there were sixty thousand francs! With that he might live - admirably, even luxuriously, on the Continent, until his grandfather’s - death. That event would of course alter everything. There would then come - automatically to him—no matter where he was or what he did—a - certain fixed income, which he understood to be probably over rather than - under seventy-five thousand francs a year. This—still on the - Continent—would be almost incredible wealth! There was really no - limit to the soul-satisfying possibilities it opened before him. He would - have a yacht on the Mediterranean; he would have a little chateau in the - marvelous green depths of the Styrian Mountains—of which a boyhood - friend had told him with such tender reverence of memory. He would see - Innsbruck and Moscow, and, if he liked, even Samarkand and China. Why, he - could go round the world in his yacht, if he chose—to remote spice - islands and tropical seas! He could be a duke when, and as much, as it - pleased him to be one. Instead of being the slave to his position and - title, he would make them minister to him. He would do original things—realize - his own inner fancies and predilections. If the whim seized him to climb - Mount Ararat, or to cross the Sahara with a caravan of his own servants—that - he would do. But above all things—now and henceforth forever, he - would be a free man! He laughed grimly as he thought how slight was the - actual difference between the life of pauper bondage he had led up to last - October, and the existence which polite England and London had imposed - upon him ever since. The second set of chains were of precious metal—that - was all. Well, hereafter there would be no fetters of any description! - </p> - <p> - “I’m quite ready to go now, old man, if you are,” Dicky Westland said at - some belated stage of this reverie. He had approached without being seen - by his friend, and he had to pull at Christian’s sleeve to attract his - attention. “I fancy you’ve been walking in your sleep,” he laughed, in - comment upon this. - </p> - <p> - Christian shook himself, and, blinking at Dicky, protested that he had - never been more wide awake in his life. “I go only if you’re entirely - ready,” he said. “Don’t dream of leaving on my account I have been - extremely interested, I assure you.” - </p> - <p> - “Every fellow has his own notions of enjoyment,” reflected Westland, with - drowsy philosophy, as they went up the stairs toward the stage. “I tried - to explain your point of view to some of the girls up here, but I’m not - sure they quite grasped it. They were dying to have me bring you up and - make you dance, you know. By George, I had a job to keep Dolly Montressor - from coming down and fetching you, off her own bat.” - </p> - <p> - “How should they know or care about me?” asked Christian. “I didn’t expect - to be pointed out.” - </p> - <p> - “My dear man,” retorted Dicky, sleepily, “no one pointed you out. They all - know you by sight as well as they do George Edwards. It isn’t too late, - still, you know—if you really would like to be introduced.” - </p> - <p> - Christian shook his head with resolution, as they halted at the wings. - “Truly, no!” he repeated. “But I should like a glass of wine and a - sandwich, if we can get past the stage. I’m not an atom sleepy, but I’m - hungry and thirsty.” - </p> - <p> - On their way through a narrow, shadowed defile of huge canvas-stretched - frames of deal, they passed two young men, one much taller than the other, - who had their heads bent together in some low-voiced, private - conversation. Christian glanced at them casually, and was struck with the - notion that they observed him in turn, and exchanged comment upon his - approach. He looked at them with a keener scrutiny as he went by—and - it seemed to him that there was something familiar in the face of the - larger man—who indeed looked away upon the instant their eyes met. - </p> - <p> - “Did you see those men?” he asked Westland, in an undertone, a moment - later. “Do you know them?” - </p> - <p> - “Those we just passed?” Dicky looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know the - thin chap, but the other fellow is Gus Torr—why, of course—your - cousin. Somehow, I never think of you as belonging to that lot—I - mean, being related to them. Of course—that was his sister-in-law - you were sitting with. Why did you ask if I knew him?” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing—I was not sure if it was he—I’ve seen him only once,” - Christian replied, with an assumption of indifference. “I remember having - noticed then how much he looked like his brother.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes—poor devils!” commented Dicky, as they entered the manager’s - room. Apparently it was in his mind to say more, but the place was - crowded, and the problem of getting through the throng to the food and - drink monopolized his attention. - </p> - <p> - Some minutes later, while Christian stood in another corridor, waiting for - his friend to bring their hats and coats from the mysteriously elusive - spot where he had left them, he overheard the mention of his name. Two - women’s voices, wholly unknown to him, came from behind an improvised - partition of screens near at hand, with great distinctness. - </p> - <p> - One of them said: “He spells his name ‘Tower,’ you know. I understand the - idea is to make people forget who his father was.” - </p> - <p> - “Good job, too!” replied the other voice. - </p> - <p> - Christian turned abruptly, and strode off in the direction whither Dicky - had disappeared. “After forty years!” he murmured hotly to himself. “After - forty years!” and clenched his fists till the nails hurt his palms. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - The two young men walked homeward, arm in arm, through silent streets over - which the dawn was spreading its tentative first lights. It was colder - than they had thought, and the morning air was at once misty and fresh. In - Leicester Square the scent of lilacs came to them; beside the pale, - undefined bulk of the squat statue they caught the lavender splash of - color which was sister to the perfume. - </p> - <p> - “By Jove, it’s spring!” said Dicky. He pointed out the flowers, and then, - still drawing Christian’s arm to turn his attention to the square, - recalled to him as they moved that this was the oldtime haunt of - foreigners in London. “Dickens’s villain in ‘Little Dorrit,’ you know—the - fellow whose mustache went up and his nose went down—I never can - remember his name—he lived here. In those days, all that sort of - chappies lived here—the adventurers and jailbirds who had made their - own countries too hot to hold them.” - </p> - <p> - Westland’s insistence upon this theme had no purpose other than to divert - Christian’s attention while they passed the Empire. He was tired, and - profoundly disinclined to any renewal of the discussion about the - promenade. He encountered with vague surprise, therefore, the frowning - glance which Christian, half halting, bent upon him. The young man’s - displeasure was marked, but Dicky for the life of him could not imagine - why. He tightened his hold on the other’s arm and quickened their pace. - </p> - <p> - But Christian, after a few yards, suddenly withdrew his arm altogether. “I - do not like to walk so fast,” he said, with a sharp note in his voice. - </p> - <p> - Dicky regarded him with puzzled apprehension. “What’s up, old man?” he - asked, almost pleadingly. “Has anything gone wrong?” - </p> - <p> - Christian, still with knitted brows, parted his lips to speak. Then he - seemed to reconsider his intention, and let his face soften as he paused. - “No—nothing at all,” he replied, after a moment. He smiled a little - to reassure the other. “It was nothing at all,” he repeated. “Only I am - nervous and excited to-night—this morning, I should say—and my - head is full of projects. It is twelve hours since you came to me—and - the whole world has changed meanwhile. I see everything different. I am - not altered to your eyes—but none the less, I am not at all, in any - respect, the man you took to dine with you. You have not observed anything—but - it is a revolution that has occurred under your very nose, Mr. Dicky - Westland.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m too sleepy to observe anything,” the other declared. “I couldn’t tell - a revolution from a—from a hot-potato can.” - </p> - <p> - The comparison had forced itself upon Westland’s jaded mind through the - medium of his weary eyes. There before them, by the curb at the corner, - stood the dingy wheeled-oven of the streets, the sullen red glow of its - lower door making a strange patch of fiery light upon the ragged trousers - of the man in charge. He was a dirty and undersized creature, and he - looked up at the two young gentlemen in evening dress with a speculative, - yet hardly hopeful, eye. - </p> - <p> - Christian stopped short. “Ah, this is very good,” he said, with a - brightening face. “I have never eaten a potato from a can.” - </p> - <p> - Dicky sighed, but resigned himself with only a languid protest: “You have - to eat so much else besides the potato,” he commented dolefully. - </p> - <p> - The man opened an upper door, and then drew from under the machine a - twisted wad of old newspaper, which, being unwound, revealed a gray heap - of salt. “How many, cap’n?” he demanded, briefly. - </p> - <p> - Christian had been glancing across the Circus meanwhile—to where, in - the misty vagueness of dawn, Piccadilly opened between its tall, shapely - corners, and beyond, the curved yellowish sweep of Regent Street began. - The dim light revealed some lurking figures to his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Can you call over those women?” he asked the potato-man. - </p> - <p> - A tall, fresh-faced young policeman came upon the group round the - Criterion corner. Although the pounding of his thick boots on the pavement - had been audible long before his appearance, he regarded them with the - slightly dramatic air of one who has deftly surprised a group of - conspirators. The potato-man looked from Christian to the officer and made - no reply. - </p> - <p> - Christian drew some silver from his pocket, shaking off the restraining - hand Westland tried to lay on his arm. “Is there any objection, - constable,” he inquired, “to my buying potatoes for those friends of ours - over there? It is a cold morning.” - </p> - <p> - The policeman’s glance ranged from the white ties of the young gentlemen - to the coins in Christian’s palm. His official expression relaxed. “I dare - say it’ll do no ’arm, sir,” he replied with courtesy. He even lent - himself to the enterprise by stooping down and beating a certain number of - strokes with his baton on the pavement. - </p> - <p> - “How many times did he strike?” Dicky made whispered inquiry. “That’s a - new dodge to me.” - </p> - <p> - New or old, it was efficient. Forlorn shapes began to emerge from the - shadows of the big streets opposite, and move forward across the empty - open space. Others stole noiselessly in from the byways of Leicester - Square. There were perhaps a dozen in all when the potato-man made his - census—poorly dressed, fagged, bold-faced, furtive-eyed women. They - spoke in monotonous, subdued tones among themselves. There were to be - heard German, French, Belgian French, cockney English, and Lancashire - English. Two of them pulled at the sleeve of the potato-man to make him - hurry. - </p> - <p> - Christian, regarding his motley guests, found himself neither touched nor - entertained. They seemed as stupid as they were squalid. With a gesture of - decision he gave the money to the policeman. - </p> - <p> - “Pay for it all,” he directed, “and if more come, give them a look-in, too—and - keep what is left for yourself.” - </p> - <p> - “Now then, Frenchy!” broke in the constable, sharply. “Mind what you’re - at! Pass Germany the salt!” With an abrupt change to civility, he turned - to Christian. “Right you are, sir!” he said. - </p> - <p> - Dicky laughed drowsily. “It’s like the Concert of Europe,” he declared. - “Shall we go on?” - </p> - <p> - They moved down the broad pavement, again arm in arm, breathing in slowly - the new, keen air, and observing in a silence which was full of tacit - comment the beautiful termination of the street before them: the dark - figures of the Crimean monument standing in grim relief against the - morning light, the stately palace beyond, with its formal portals of club - buildings, its embowered statues, its huge column towering ponderously - above the pale green of spring in the park—all gray and cool and, as - it were, thoughtfully solemn in the hush of daybreak. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, yes—this wonderful London!” sighed Christian, as they halted at - the Continental corner. He spread his hand to embrace the prospect before - them. “How right you were! I have not learned to know it at all. But I - begin now! If you will walk through the square with me—there is - something I wish to say.” - </p> - <p> - This something did not get itself said till they halted within this - somber, slate-colored square. Christian paused before a big, pretentious - house of gloomy, and even forbidding aspect—a front of sooty stucco, - with cornices of ashen-hued stone, and many windows masked with sullen - brown shades. - </p> - <p> - “This was our town house a hundred years ago,” he said meditatively. “My - father was born here. My grandfather sold it when the entail was broken. - Until this afternoon, it was my fixed resolve to buy it back again. I said - always to myself: ‘If I am to have a house in London, it must be this old - one of ours in St. James’s.’ But that is all changed now. At least, it is - no longer a resolve.” - </p> - <p> - Dicky gazed at him with sleepy eyes. “How do you mean?” he asked, - perfunctorily. - </p> - <p> - “Wake up now, and I will tell you!” Christian, with a lingering glance, as - of renunciation, at the mansion, began to walk again. “This is it. You - said you were eager to be some colonial official’s secretary—to have - three hundred pounds—and the yellow fever. To obtain this, you - expend all your energies, you and your relations. Well, then—why - will you not be my secretary instead? You shall have more than three - hundred pounds—and no yellow fever.” - </p> - <p> - Westland had roused himself, and looked inquiringly now into the other’s - face. “What do you need of a secretary?” he objected, half jestingly. “If - you want to talk about it after you’ve come into the thing—I don’t - say that I shouldn’t be glad-to consider it. But the deuce of it is——” - </p> - <p> - “No—I wish it to begin now, this morning, this hour—this - minute!” Christian spoke peremptorily. - </p> - <p> - Dicky, pondering, shook his head. “No, you mustn’t insist on settling - anything now,” he decided. “It isn’t regular, you know. If you—really—want - to propose something immediate—why, I’ll call and talk with you - to-morrow—or, that is to say, this afternoon. But I couldn’t - possibly let you commit yourself to anything of that sort now.” - </p> - <p> - Christian frowned at his friend. “You speak of what you will let me do!” - he said. - </p> - <p> - “In your opinion—I see it!—you think I have not sober command - of myself, am not responsible—is that it?” - </p> - <p> - “Nonsense! I’ve said nothing of the sort,” protested the other. “Of - course, you’re perfectly all right—but we’re both tired and sleepy, - and you’re not so accustomed to go home by daylight as I am—and it - wouldn’t be at all the thing for me to close a bargain with you now. Can’t - you see what I mean? I wouldn’t play threepenny écarté with you at this - hour in the morning—and I’m damned if I’m going to let you in for - three hundred a year for the rest of my life. Shall I come round, say, at - luncheon time?” - </p> - <p> - “I shall not be in,” said Christian, curtly. He looked at his companion, - and then past him at the trees in the square, in vexed rumination. “What I - have it in my mind to do”—he continued, vaguely, after a pause—“it - is not a thing for delay. It is in my blood to do it at once. It was my - impulse to make you my comrade in it—but of course, since you have - your reservations and doubts, there need be nothing more said about it.” - </p> - <p> - The shrug of the shoulders which emphasized these last words nettled - Westland, and at the same time helped him to repress his annoyance. It - lent to the whole episode just that savor of foreign eccentricity which - appealed to the amiable tolerance of the islander. - </p> - <p> - “My dear man,” he urged, gently, “I haven’t the slightest notion what it - is that you’re so keen about—but whatever it is, do go home and - sleep on it, and make up your mind calmly after breakfast. It’s no good - deciding important questions, and striking out new lines, and all that - sort of thing, at this hour in the morning. Nobody ever does it, you know. - It simply can’t be done.” - </p> - <p> - “Good-night!” said Christian, proffering his hand. “You are right; it is - high time for those who are sleepy to go to bed I won’t drag you round to - Duke Street.” - </p> - <p> - Dicky looked at him doubtfully. “You do wrong to be angry, you know,” he - said. - </p> - <p> - “But that is your error—I am not in the least angry—I beg you - to believe it,” cried Christian. His eyes beamed genially in proof of his - assertion, and he put heartiness into his voice. “For a minute I was - disappointed—shall I say vexed?—but not any more. How should I - quarrel with you for not beholding things through my eyes? To me, - something is a giant; you perceive that it is a windmill. Eh bien! We do - not convince each other—but surely we do not quarrel.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I am game enough to play Sancho to your Don,” expostulated Dicky, - with a readiness which Christian had not looked for, “but I draw the line - at starting out on an empty stomach, and when we’re too sleepy to stand. - Well, what shall it be?” He took the hand offered him, and strove to - signify by his cordial grasp that no trace of a misunderstanding remained. - “Shall I look you up, say, at two o’clock?” - </p> - <p> - “I do not think I shall be there. Goodnight!” responded Christian, and the - two parted. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XVII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian climbed - the stairs at Duke Street, and let himself into his apartments, with - painstaking precautions against being overheard. There was an excess of - zeal about Falkner which might easily impel him to present himself for - service at even this most unseasonable hour. - </p> - <p> - The young man had still only formless notions of what he was going to do, - but it was at least plain to him that Falkner was to have no part in the - proceedings. He drew off his varnished boots as a further measure of - security, and then, with more hesitation, removed his cloak and coat, and - raised the inside blinds at the two windows. This sitting-room of his had - rather pleased him formerly. He could recall having taken quite an - affectionate interest in buying and arranging the rugs and pictures and - bookcases with which he had supplemented the somewhat gaunt furnishing of - his predecessor. But now, in this misty and reluctant light of the London - morning, nothing seemed good to him as he looked about. - </p> - <p> - The pretty things of his own selection said no more to him than did the - chattels he had taken over from a stranger. There was no spirit of home in - them. - </p> - <p> - He moved noiselessly to the adjoining bedroom, and drew the curtains there - as well, and glanced round. Here, too, he had the sense of beholding the - casual appointments of a hotel chamber. Nothing made an appeal of intimacy - to him. He reflected that in a day or two he should not be able to - remember how his room looked—even if his memory attempted the - fatuous task. Duke Street had been engraved on his cards for six months, - but it had not made the faintest mark on his heart. - </p> - <p> - With an air of decision, he suddenly began to drag forth his clothes from - the wardrobe and drawers, and spread them on the bed. In the tiny - dressing-room beyond were piled his traveling bags, and these he brought - out into the light. Upon consideration, however, the original impulse to - take a good many things weakened and dwindled. To begin with, their secret - removal was in no way practicable. Moreover, now that he thought of it, he - did not want them. They would be simply encumbrances. He would take with - him only the smallest handbag, with a change of linen and a few brushes. - </p> - <p> - Finally, the conviction that even this must be a nuisance became clear to - him, and he desisted from the random packing he had begun. Still moving - about as silently as possible, he changed his ceremonial tie for one of - every-day wear, and put on a suit of sober-colored tweeds, and his easiest - brown boots. The transfer of his watch, some loose gold and the roll of - notes from one set of pockets to another, completed his preparations in - the bedchamber. He tiptoed out to the larger room, and there, upon - reflection, wrote a few lines for Falkner’s direction, saying merely that - he was called away, and that matters were to go on as usual until he - returned or sent further orders. He separated a banknote from the roll to - place inside this note, but on second thoughts wrote a check instead, and - sealing and directing the envelope, laid it in a conspicuous place on the - table. - </p> - <p> - He noticed then, for the first time, that there were some letters from the - evening post for him, neatly arranged on this table. He opened the - nearest, and glanced at its contents: it was a note from his second - cousin, Lady Milly Poynes, the fair-haired, fair-faced, fair-brained, - fair-everything sister of Lord Lingfield, reminding him that she was - depending upon his escort for the Private View of the Academy, and that - the time for getting tickets was running very short. He laughed aloud at - the conceit of the Royal Academy rising in his path as an obstacle at such - a moment—and without more ado thrust this with the unopened letters - into his pocket. Then, when he had made sure once more that he had his - check-book, nothing remained to be done. He went softly forth, without so - much as a thought of taking a farewell glance behind him, found a soft - dark hat in the hallway and then closed the outer door with great care - upon the whole Duke Street episode of his life. - </p> - <p> - “You are not to see me here again in a hurry,” he confided aloud to the - banisters and steps, when he had descended to the first floor. Then he - laughed to himself, and tripped gaily down the remaining flight. - </p> - <p> - There was no hesitation now in his mood. He walked briskly back through - the square, and then down Waterloo Place, till he came to the Guards’ - Memorial. He moved round this to the front, and looked up at one of the - three bronze Guardsmen with the confident air of familiarity. He knew this - immutable, somber face under every shifting aspect of light and shadow; he - had stared at the mantling greatcoat and the huge bearskin of this hero of - his a hundred times. The very first day of his arrival in London he had - made the acquaintance of this statue, and had started, dazed and - fascinated, at the strange resemblance it suggested. Thus his boy-father - must have looked, with the beard and the heavy dress of the Russian - winter. The metal figure came to mean to him more than all London beside. - In the sad, strong, silent countenance which gazed down upon him he read - forever the tragedy that gripped his heartstrings. Forever Honor, standing - aloft, held the laurel wreath poised high above the warrior’s head—immovable - in the air, never to descend to touch its mark. Christian had seen this - wreath always through moist eyes. - </p> - <p> - This morning, for a wonder, no tearful impulse came to him as he looked - upward. The impassive face was as gravely fine as ever, but its customary - effect of pathos was lacking. There even seemed in its sightless eyes a - latent perception of Christian’s altered mood. He lifted his hat soberly - and saluted the statue. - </p> - <p> - Toward the Strand now he made his way, walking blithely, and humming to - himself. He could not forbear to smile at a policeman he passed in front - of St. Martin’s. Two elderly and much bewrapped cabmen stood stamping - their feet beside a shelter, and they pointed toward their ridiculous old - horses and battered growlers as he came along, with an air that moved him - to glee. He gave them a shilling to divide, and went on, conscious of a - novel delight in himself and in the world at large. - </p> - <p> - The big clock showed it to be half-past five. There was no blue in the - sky, but the mist of daybreak was abating, and the air was milder. Not a - living creature was visible along the naked length of the Strand. At the - end, the beautiful spire of St. Mary’s rose from the dim grays about its - base, exquisite in tints and contour as an Alpine summit in the moment - before sunrise. - </p> - <p> - A turning to the left opened to Christian, unexpectedly, a scene full of - motion and color. He had not thought himself so near Covent Garden, but - clearly this must be it. He walked up toward the busy scene of high-laden - vans, big cart-horses and swarming porters, wondering why no sign of all - this activity was manifest in the sleeping Strand below, barely a stone’s - throw distant. He saw the glowing banks of flowers within, as he - approached, and made toward them, sighing already with pleasure at the - promise they held out to him. - </p> - <p> - He might have read in the papers that it was a backward and a grudging - April, this year, in the matter of flowers. But to Christian, no memory of - the exuberant South suggested any rivalry with this wonderful show of - northern blossoms. Tulips and daffodils, amaryllis and azaleas, - rhododendrons, carnations, roses—he seemed to have imagined to - himself nothing like this before. He spent over an hour among them, in the - end making numerous purchases. At each stall he gave an address—always - the same—and exacted the pledge of delivery at eight o’clock. - </p> - <p> - At last he could in reason buy nothing more, and he went out to look about - him. He found the place where the market-men take drinks at all hours, and - food and coffee when nature’s sternest demands can be positively no longer - disregarded—but it did not invite his appetite. Some further time he - spent in gazing wondering at the vast walls of vegetables and fruit being - tirelessly built up and pulled down again, pondering meanwhile the - question whether he should breakfast before eight o’clock, or at some - indefinitely later hour. He partially solved the problem at length by - buying a small box of Algerian peaches, and eating them where he stood. - Then some exceptionally fine bananas tempted him further, and he finished - with a delicate little melon from Sicily. - </p> - <p> - How it carried him back to the days of his youth—this early morning - fragrance of the fresh fruit! It was as if he were at Cannes again—only - buoyant now, and happy, and oh, so free! And in his pocket he could feel - whenever he liked the soft, munificent crackle of over four thousand - francs! The sapphire Mediterranean had surely never been so lovely to his - gaze as was now the dingy Strand below. - </p> - <p> - The laggard hour came round at last. He descended to Arundel Street, and - discovered the house he wanted, and found just within the entrance two or - three of the flower-laden porters awaiting his arrival, For the rest, the - building seemed profoundly unoccupied. He led the way up to the third - floor, and had the plants set down beside the locked door which bore the - sign “Miss Bailey.” Other similarly burdened porters made their appearance - in turn, till the narrow hallway looked like a floral annex to the Garden - itself. - </p> - <p> - He waited alone with his treasures for what seemed to him a very long - time, then descended and stood at the street door till he was tired, then - climbed the stairs again. The extraordinary quiet of the big building, - filled with business offices as it was, puzzled him. He had no experience - of early-morning London to warn him that English habits differed from - those of the continent. It occurred to him that perhaps it was a holiday—conceivably - one of those extraordinary interludes called Bank Holidays—and he - essayed a perplexing computation in the calendar in the effort to settle - this point. - </p> - <p> - Finally there began the sounds of steps, and the opening and closing of - doors, below him. A tow-headed boy in buttons came up to his landing, - stared in vacuous amazement at him and the flowers and passed on to the - next floor. Noises of occupancy rose from the well of the staircase to - bear him countenance, and suddenly a lift glided up past him in this well. - He had not noticed the ropes or the iron caging before. He heard the - slamming of the lift doors above, and the dark carriage followed on its - smooth descent. Christian reproached himself for not having rung the bell - and questioned the lift-man. He considered the feasibility of doing it - now, but was deterred by the fear that the man would resent it. Then the - lift came up again—and was stopping at his floor. There was a sharp - note of girlish laughter on the instant of the halt, answered by a male - guffaw. - </p> - <p> - A slight, erect, active young woman emerged from the lift, her face alive - with mirth of some unknown character. Behind her, in the obscurity, - Christian saw for an instant the vanishing countenance of the liftman, - grinning widely. This hilarity, somehow, struck in him an unsympathetic - chord. - </p> - <p> - The young woman, still laughing, spread an uncomprehending glance over - Christian and his flowers. She moved past him, key in hand, toward the - door which he had been guarding, with a puzzled eye upon him meanwhile. - With the key in the lock she turned and decided to speak. - </p> - <p> - “What might all this be—the Temple Flower Show or the Crystal - Palace?” she asked, with banter in her tone. - </p> - <p> - “These are for Miss Bailey,” said Christian, quite humbly. - </p> - <p> - “Must be some mistake,” said the girl decisively. “Did she order them - herself? Were you there at the time? Did you see her? Where do they come - from?” - </p> - <p> - Christian advanced a little into the light. “She has not ordered them,” he - said, in his calmest voice. “I have not seen her for a long time. But I - have brought them for her, and I think you may take it from me that they - are hers.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I beg your pardon,” she replied, lightly but with grace. “I didn’t - understand. Things are forever being brought here that belong somewhere - else. Men are so stupid in finding their way about! Well—I suppose - we must get them inside. That is your idea, isn’t it?” - </p> - <p> - She spoke very rapidly, and with a kind of metallic snap in her tones. - Christian answered her questions by a suave assenting gesture. “Miss - Bailey is not likely to turn up much before half-past nine,” she went on, - as if he had made the inquiry. “She lives so far out, and just now we’re - not very busy. There’s nothing doing in new plays at this time of the - year, and the lady novelists are all getting their own typewriters. If - you’ll lend a hand, we’ll carry the things in.” Between them they bore in - the various pots, and the big bouquets loosely wrapped in blue paper. The - girl led the way through a large working-room to a smaller apartment, - fitted as an office but containing also a sofa and a tall gas - cooking-stove—and here on desk and center-table, chairs and - windowsill, they placed the flowers. Christian watched her as she deftly - removed their paper wrappings. She had a comely, small face of aspect at - once alert and masterful. The skin was peculiarly fair, with a tinge of - rose in the cheeks so delicately modulated that he found it in rivalry - with the “Mrs. Pauls” she was unpacking. Her light hair was drawn plainly - down over the temples in a fashion which he felt was distinguished, but - said to himself he did not like. Her shrewd eyes took calm cognizance of - him from time to time. - </p> - <p> - “They are very beautiful indeed,” she remarked with judicial approval, - upon the completion of her task. Then, as upon an afterthought, she moved - rapidly about, peering under the branches of the growing plants, and - separating the cut flowers lightly with her hands. “There is no card - anywhere, is there? I suppose you will want to leave a message? Here are - pen and ink—if you wish to write anything.” - </p> - <p> - “Thank you,” Christian began, smilingly but with obvious hesitation. He - looked at his watch. “If you don’t mind—if you’re quite sure I - shan’t be in the way—I think I should like to wait till Miss Bailey - comes.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you won’t be in the way,” the girl replied. She regarded him - meditatively, with narrowed eyes. “I shouldn’t dust this room in any event—since - the flowers are here; but you mustn’t come out into the big room—unless - you want to get choked with blacks. Would you like a morning paper? I can - send a boy out for one.” - </p> - <p> - “Thank you—you are very good—no,” Christian answered. “There - are some books here—I shall amuse myself.” - </p> - <p> - The girl turned to leave him, and then on second thought moved over to the - window and lifted the sash. “There’ll be no objection to your smoking if - you like,” she informed him. Then she went out, closing the door behind - her. - </p> - <p> - Christian walked to the window in turn, and looked down over the flowers - to the narrow street below. It was full of young men in silk hats, toiling - up the granite ascent like black ants. He reflected that they must be - clerks and shopmen, going to their daily work from the Temple station or - the Embankment. The suggestion of monotonous bondage which their swarming - progress toward the wage-earning center gave forth, interested him. He - yawned pleasurably at the thought of his own superb emancipation from - duties and tasks of all descriptions. - </p> - <p> - He strolled over to the bookcase above the desk, and glanced at the - volumes revealed through its glass doors. They seemed very serious books, - indeed. “Economics of Socialism,” “Capitalist Production,” “The Ethics of - Socialism,” “Towards Democracy”—so the titles ran that first met his - eye. There were other groups—mainly of history and the essayists—but - everything was substantial. His glance sought in vain any lightsome gleam - of poetry or fiction. The legend on a thin red book, “Civilization: Its - Cause and Cure,” whimsically caught his attention. He put his hand to the - key in the bookcase door to get out the volume; then, hesitating, yawned, - and looked over the shelves once more. There was nothing else—and - really he desired to read nothing. - </p> - <p> - He would half recline in comfort upon the sofa instead, until his friend - came. As a pleasing adjunct to this plan, he drew the table up close, and - found room upon it, by crowding them together, for most of the flowers - that had been bestowed elsewhere. He seated himself at his ease, with his - head resting against the wall, and surveyed the plants and blossoms in - affectionate admiration. It was delicious to think how naïve her surprise - would be—how great her pleasure! Truly, since his discovery of his - birthright, remarkable and varied as had been his experiences, he had done - nothing else which afforded him a tithe of the satisfaction he felt now - glowing in all his veins. Here, at last, by some curious and devious - chance, he had stumbled upon the thing that was genuinely worth doing. - </p> - <p> - He could hear the cheerful girl in the next room, whistling gently to - herself as she moved the furniture about. There came presently the sound - of other female voices, and then a sustained, vibrant rattle, quaintly - accentuated like the ticking of a telegraph key, which he grew accustomed - to, and even found pleasant to the ear. - </p> - <p> - He put his feet up on the edge of the sofa—and nestled downward till - his head was upon it as well. A delicate yet pervasive fragrance from the - table close beside him aroused his languid curiosity. Was it the perfume - of carnations or of roses? - </p> - <p> - He closed his eyes the better to decide. - </p> - <p> - In the outer room, Miss Connie Staples permitted herself numerous and - varied speculations as to the identity and purposes of the young man with - the flowers, the while she dusted the typewriters, distributed the copy - for the morning’s start and set the place in order. She had her sleeves - rolled up, and had wound a big handkerchief about her hair; beneath this - turban her forehead scored itself in lines of perplexed wonderment as to - this curious early caller—but when two other girls arrived, she - suffered them to put aside their things and begin work without so much as - hinting at what had happened. A third girl, coming a little later, brought - in a stray blossom which she had picked up in the corridor outside. She - mentioned the fact, and even laid stress upon it, but got no syllable of - explanation. - </p> - <p> - This was all simple enough, but at half-past nine the arrival of still - another of the sex put Miss Connie’s resources to an unexpected test. - </p> - <p> - A handsome, youngish woman, very well dressed indeed, appeared suddenly - upon the threshold of the workroom, knocking upon the door and pushing it - wide open at the same instant. She looked curiously about, and then - point-blank into the face of the girl who came toward her. It was a glance - of independent and impersonal criticism which the two exchanged, covering - with instantaneous swiftness an infinitude of details as to dress, - coiffure, complexion, figure, temperament and origin. Connie wondered if - the new-comer was really quite a lady, long before she formulated an - inquiring thought about her errand. Even as she finally looked this - question of business, she decided that it was an actress with a play for - the provinces, and asked herself if she did not seem to recognize the - face. The visitor, for her part, saw that Connie’s teeth were too uneven - to be false, and that her waist was overlong, and that her hair was not - thick enough to be worn flat over the temples, much less to justify so - confident a manner. In all, something less than a second of time had - elapsed. - </p> - <p> - “I want to see Miss Bailey—Miss Frank Bailey,” explained the - stranger, graciously. - </p> - <p> - Connie conveyed to her, with courteous brevity, the fact that Miss Bailey - had not yet arrived. “Is it something that I can do?” she added. - </p> - <p> - The other shook her head, and showed an affable thread of white between - her freshened lips. “No, I will wait for her,” she answered, and threw a - keen glance about the place. “That’s her private room, isn’t it?” she - asked, nodding at the closed door to the right. “I will wait in there,” - she decided, in the same breath, and began moving toward it. - </p> - <p> - Connie alertly headed her off. “If you will kindly take a seat here—” - she interposed, standing in front of her visitor. - </p> - <p> - “It’s too noisy out here,” remarked the other; “those horrid machines - would give me a headache. That <i>is</i> her private room, isn’t it?” - </p> - <p> - “Unfortunately,” Connie began, lowering her voice, “the room belongs to - another office. Or rather, I should say, it is locked. Miss Bailey will be - here—with the key—very shortly now.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it’s all right—I’m her sister,” explained the other, in no wise - resenting the ineffectual fabrications. She pushed forward past the - reluctant girl with a resolute step, and put her hand on the knob of the - tabooed door. “Make your mind quite easy, my dear,” she remarked over her - shoulder, sinking her voice in turn in deference to the situation; “you’ve - done all that could be expected of you—and I’ll tell her so.” - </p> - <p> - Then, with a momentary gleam of good nature on her pretty face, which the - short transparent veil she wore to her chin seemed to accentuate rather - than mask, she opened the door, threw up her head with a swift, puzzled - glance at what she saw, and then tiptoed gracefully into the room, closing - the door with painstaking noiselessness behind her. - </p> - <p> - Miss Frances Bailey entered her office not many minutes later, her cheeks - aglow with the morning air as the wheelwoman meets it. She nodded - cheerfully to Connie, and beyond her to the girls at the machines, as her - hand sought for a hat-pin at the back of her head. - </p> - <p> - “Any word from the Lyceum?” she asked. “And what does that Zambesi-travel - manuscript make?” - </p> - <p> - Connie ignored industrial topics. “There are people waiting in there to - see you,” she announced, in low, significant tones. - </p> - <p> - The mistress was impressed by the suggestion of mystery. “People? What - people?” she asked, knitting her brows. - </p> - <p> - “One of them says she’s your sister. And the other is a young gentleman—he - came first—and he brought—” - </p> - <p> - “My sister?” interrupted Miss Bailey. “Cora! Something dreadful must have - happened—for she never got out so early as this before in her life. - Is she in mourning? Did she seem upset?” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Not</i> a bit of it!” said Connie, reassuringly. She added, following - the other toward the private office: “I tried my best to keep her out - here.” - </p> - <p> - “Why should you?” asked Frances, with wide-open eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, well—you’ll see,” replied the girl, evasively. “I told you - there was some one else in there.” - </p> - <p> - Frances opened the door—and Connie noted that she too lifted her - head and stared a little, and then cautiously closed the door behind her. - She pondered this as she returned to her machine, and she curled her thin - lip when she took up the copies of the first act of an amateur’s romantic - play, to underscore the business directions with red ink, and sew on brown - paper covers. Intuition told her that a much better drama was afoot, here - under her very nose. - </p> - <p> - Inside her office, Miss Bailey surrendered herself to frank astonishment - at what she beheld. - </p> - <p> - Bestowed in obvious discomfort upon her sofa, behind an extraordinary bank - of potted plants and bright, costly greenhouse flowers, was a young man - fast asleep. Her eye took in as well her sister, who sat near the head of - the sofa, but she could wait. The interest centered in this sleeping - stranger, who made himself so much at home in the shelter of his - remarkable floral barricade. She moved round the better to scrutinize his - face, which was tilted up as if proudly held even in slumber. Upon - examination she recognized the countenance; and in a swift moment of - concentration tried to think what his presence might signify. Then she - turned to her sister, and lifted her calm brows in mute inquiry. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, my dear—what splendid business!” whispered Cora, her glance - beaming upward from the sofa to the standing figure. “And mind, Frank, I’m - in it! I’m in it up to my neck! I sent him to you, dear.” - </p> - <p> - The girl looked down at them both, and deliberated before she spoke. “If - you brought him here,” she said, “I think you’d better take him away - again. I can let you out by this other door. Let us have no more publicity - than necessary.” - </p> - <p> - “But you don’t in the least understand!” protested Cora, with her finger - raised in an appeal for quiet tones. - </p> - <p> - “No, I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand,” replied Frances - coldly. “There’s one thing <i>you</i> don’t understand either, Cora: This - is my typewriting office; it isn’t a greenroom at all.” - </p> - <p> - “Then it well might be,” retorted the other, with a latent grin. “Anything - greener than its owner I never saw. Now listen—don’t be a silly - cuckoo! I met the youngster last night—and I worked him up till he - was mad to learn where you were to be found. I told him—and then I - went home, and I couldn’t sleep for thinkin’ of you, dear—and so I - turned out at some extraordinary hour this mornin’—it is mornin’ by - this time, isn’t it?—and I came here, just to tell you that he was - askin’ after you—and I come in here—and lo! here’s the bird on - his little nest!—and see the flowers he’s brought from Covent Garden - for you!—and so I sit here like Patience on a monument, afraid to - wink an eyelash, so’s not to wake him till you come. That’s what I’ve done - for <i>you</i>, dear—and presently, if you don’t mind, I’d like to - hear what you’ll do for me.” - </p> - <p> - Frances put a knee upon the chair before her, and rested with her hands - upon its back. She sighed a little, and bit her lips. A troubled look came - into her gray eyes. - </p> - <p> - “You might as well say all you have to say,” she said, slowly. “I don’t in - the least see what you’re up to—but then I never did.” - </p> - <p> - “No, dear, you never did,” responded Cora, smiling as if in pleased - retrospect. “But that’s no reason why I shouldn’t be a good sister to you. - If it’s one’s nature to be a good sister, why, then one will be—and - there you are, don’t you see? I take no credit to myself for it.” - </p> - <p> - “Go on,” said the other. The two women spoke in hushed whispers, and with - each sentence stole glances of precaution toward the sleeper. - </p> - <p> - “Well, Frank, I look to you not to forget what I’ve done. I spent two or - three very hard hours last night talkin’ him round, and singin’ your - praises to him—and I put Covent Garden into his head, too—-and - here he is! And I kept Eddy and Gus off his back, too—they were - frightfully keen to get at him—but I said no, and I held ’em - to heel. It was all for you, dear. They might have queered the whole - pitch, if I’d given ’em their heads. But now about myself. I’m - tired, dead tired, of bein’ poor. Of course we get a little something from - Lord Julius. But Eddy—you know what Eddy is! No sooner does he pick - himself up from Epsom than Ascot gives him a fair knockout, and if he - lives through the Sandown Eclipse there’s Goodwood waitin’ for him with a - facer. I can’t understand it; other men seem to win sometimes—you’d - think the unluckiest duffer would get a look-in once in a while—but - no, he just gets hammered one meeting after another. And I’m tired of it, - Frank! If I could only go back to work! But if I get an engagement, then - Eddy will go playin’ the goat—he’s jealous of everybody about the - place from the bandmaster down to the carpenter’s boy—and that makes - me unpopular—and there we are, don’t you see! I’m worn out with it. - But if I could have eight hundred a year, or even six hundred or five at a - pinch—God knows, my wants are simple enough!—and have it paid - to me personally, do you see—why, then, life would be worth livin’. - Now, what do you say?” - </p> - <p> - Frances looked moodily down at her distinguished sister, her lips twisted - in stormy amusement. “Why not say a thousand and be done with it?” she - demanded between set teeth, after an ominous pause. “One would be as - intelligent as the other. And oughtn’t I to set your Eddy up with a racing - stud while I’m about it? It’s true that I have about twenty pounds a year - for my own personal use, and Tom has a standing grievance that I don’t - give even <i>that</i> to him—but don’t let that interfere with your - plans. Whatever you feel that you would like, just give it a name. - Couldn’t I lease one of the new Kaffir mansions in Park Lane for you? Or - would you prefer something in Grosvenor Square?” - </p> - <p> - Cora gazed up with such intentness at her unnatural sister that a bright - little tear came to shine at the corner of each eye. She put up her veil - then, and breathed a cautious sigh. “I didn’t expect this of you, dear,” - she said, submissively. “Of course it’s the old story—La Cigale, and - ‘go-to-the ant-thou-sluggard’ and all that. I don’t see myself why a - typewriting machine should make one so fearfully stony-hearted; you get - callouses on your fingers, I know, but you needn’t get ’em on your - sisterly affections, one would think. But however”—she wiped her - eyes, drew down her veil and allowed a truculent note to sound in her - voice—“however, if you won’t play, why then neither will I. I’ve - been at pains to put this youngster in your way, but it won’t be much - trouble to shunt him out again. You mustn’t think you can walk on me - indefinitely, Frank. I’m the best-natured woman in the world, but even I - draw the line somewhere.” - </p> - <p> - “Draw it now then,” said the other, with stern promptitude. “Go away, and - take your friend with you and let me get to my work. I don’t know what - business either of you had coming here, at all.” As she spoke, she moved - to the outer private door, and turned the key in the lock. “You can send - for the flowers,” she added, “or I will have them taken over to Charing - Cross Hospital—whichever you like.” - </p> - <p> - Cora rose, her veiled face luminous with a sudden inspiration. “You can’t - quarrel with me, dear, no matter how hard you try.” She spoke in low, - cooing tones—a triumph of sympathetic voice production. “You’re hard - as nails, but I know you’re straight. I will trust my interests absolutely - in your hands. I leave it to you to do the fair thing by me.” - </p> - <p> - “The fair thing?” echoed Frances, in dubious perplexity. She puzzled over - the words and their elusive implication. “Your interests?” she repeated—and - saw Cora move round her to the unlocked door, and open it—and still - sought to comprehend what it was all about. Only when her sister, smiling - cordially once more, bent forward without warning and pressed her veiled - lips against her chin, and with a gentle “Goodbye, dear!” stepped into the - shadows without, did she recall the other features of the situation. - </p> - <p> - “Here!” she called, with nervous eagerness, yet keeping her voice down, - “you’re not to run off like this. Take your man with you.” - </p> - <p> - “Softly, dear!” Cora enjoined her, from the dusk of the hallway. “Your - young women wouldn’t understand. No—I caught him for you, and I - leave him in your hands. I’m not in the least afraid to trust it all to - you. Bye-bye, dear.” - </p> - <p> - Frances went out and glared down the staircase, with angry expostulation - on her tongue’s end. But there was nobody to talk to. She could hear only - the brisk rustle of Cora’s skirts on the stone steps, a floor below—and - even that died away beneath the clatter of the machines inside. - </p> - <p> - Returning over the threshold, she paused, and looked impatiently at the - flowers, and at the impassive, slumbering face beyond them. After a - little, the lines of vexation began to melt from her brow. In a musing - way, she put a hand behind her, and as if unconsciously closed and locked - the hall door again. Then she moved to the table, picked up some of the - loose blossoms and breathed in their fragrance, still keeping her - thoughtful gaze upon the young man. She found the face much older and - stronger than she remembered it—and in a spirit of fairness she said - to herself that it seemed no whit less innocent. But then perhaps all - sleeping faces looked innocent; she could recall that Cora’s certainly - did. Holding the carnations to her lips and nostrils, she examined in - meditative detail the countenance before her—delicately modeled, - dark, nervously high-spirited even in repose. Associations came back as - she gazed—the tender eagerness of the lad, the wistful charm with - which his fancy had invested England, the frank sweetness of the - temperament he had disclosed to her. He had been like a flower himself on - that mellow autumn day—as fresh and as goodly to the eye as these - roses on the table. But a winter had intervened since then—and what - gross disillusionments, what roughening and hardening and corroding - experiences had he not encountered! You could not tell anything by a face - in sleep; again she assured herself of that. - </p> - <p> - Why, when one came to think of it, it was enough that Cora had brought him—or - sent him, it mattered not which. Whence had she dispatched him?—from - some theatrical dance or late supper. It was true that he was not in - evening dress—and the thought gave her pause for a moment. But he - had been at some place where those wretched cousins of his were present—for - Cora had spoken of keeping both Eddy and Gus “off his back”—whatever - that might mean. And it was Cora herself who had told him to go to Covent - Garden and buy these flowers! - </p> - <p> - Frances, revolving these unpleasant reflections, discovered all at once - that the young man, without betraying by any other motion his awakening, - had opened his eyes and was looking placidly across the flowers into her - face. - </p> - <p> - She caught a quick breath, and frowned slightly at him. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XIX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> don’t think I - like your being here,” Frances remarked to the young man after a brief - frowning inspection. She spoke slowly, and with a deliberate gravity and - evenness of tone. - </p> - <p> - Christian’s wide-open eyes continued to gaze up at her with that - disconcerting look which had in it both remote abstraction and something - very intimately personal. His glance expressed a tender pleasure as it - maintained itself against hers. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, but I like it so very much!” he murmured, with a pleading smile. - </p> - <p> - Then, by a sudden movement, he sat up, flushing in a novel embarrassment. - “I beg you to pardon me,” he urged, faltering over his words. “I was not - wholly awake, I think; or I was trying to persuade myself that it was - still a dream. Do not think me so rude, I pray you!” - </p> - <p> - She signified by a gesture and momentary facial relaxation that this - particular detail of the situation need not detain them. - </p> - <p> - “But”—she began, in her stiffest and least amiable voice, and then - hesitated. She put her knee again upon the chair, and, resting her hand on - its back, looked dubiously at him. “I hardly know what to say,” she - started once more, and stopped altogether. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, but it is I who must say everything,” he broke in, eagerly. “I am - quite awake now—I see, of course, it is all absurd, meaningless in - your eyes, till I explain it to you.” He rose to his feet and put forth - his hand as if to offer it in greeting. No responsive token being visible - on her set face, or in her rigid posture, as she confronted him, he waved - both hands in a deprecatory movement over the table laden with flowers - between them. “These are my peace-offering,” he said, with less - confidence. “I hoped they would say some things for me—some things - which I feel within me, and cannot easily put into speech. That is what I - expected they would surely do. But”—he finished with dejection, - after another glance into her face—“evidently they are as - tongue-tied as I am. I see it was not a happy thought in me to bring them—or - to come myself!” - </p> - <p> - She had followed his words with rapt attentiveness—but at the end - seemed to remember only one of them. “The ‘thought,’” she said, coldly. - “Yes, that is what I do not understand. What was the thought?” - </p> - <p> - He regarded her with some perplexity. “What was the thought—my - thought?” he repeated. “Oh—since it does not explain itself, what - good is there in talking about it? Let us say that there was no ‘thought’ - at all. I will make my compliments and apologies—and say - good-morning—and nothing at all will have happened.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” she answered reflectively. “That would be stupid. You have been to - expense, and evidently to some inconvenience as well, to do this thing. On - second thoughts,” she went on, with an apparent effort to modify the - asperities of her tone and manner, “I dare say that I haven’t behaved - quite nicely to you. If you remember, I told you a long time ago that bad - manners was a failing of mine.” - </p> - <p> - “I remember every little word that you spoke,” said Christian softly. - </p> - <p> - Frances hardened her voice on the instant. “But that doesn’t help me to - understand why—what this is all about.” - </p> - <p> - He responded slowly, searching for his words as he went along. The rattle - of machines in the next room for the first time came into the - conversation, and forced him to lift his voice. “You were my last friend - in France—my first friend in England,” he began. “I said I would not - forget you, and you have been always in my mind—always somewhere - secure and fresh and sweet in my mind. It was only last night that I - learned where I might find you. You will remember that when I begged you - to tell me, you laughed and would not. I must not make you believe that I - did not very soon find out your name or that I could not have learned your - whereabouts much earlier. All I say is that I did not forget—and - that last night, when the chance came naturally to me, I asked and learned - what I desired to know. And then—why, then—this knowledge - spread upward to be of more importance than all the other things I knew. I - went home—but never to think of sleeping, but only to change my - clothes and hasten out again, to get some new morning flowers for you, - and to come to you at the earliest moment. I did not know that London rose - so late—I arrived before the time, and, so it seems, waiting for - your coming, I fell asleep. That is the entire story. You see it is not - very complicated—it is by no means extraordinary.” - </p> - <p> - Frances had listened with a dreamy gentleness in her gray eyes. She - started slightly when he stopped, and gave him a keen, cool glance. “The - entire story?” she queried. “I think you have forgotten to mention that it - was my sister who told you about me, and gave you my address.” - </p> - <p> - Her prescience in no wise astonished Christian. Imagination had thrown - round the Minerva-like figure which personified her in his thoughts, such - a glamour of intellectual radiancy, that it seemed quite a natural thing - for her to divine the obscure, and comprehend the mysterious. He smiled at - her as he shrugged his shoulders. “It did not occur to me as important,” - he exclaimed. “It is true, however, that she told me. She did not know the - address when I asked her, but later she procured it for me from her - brother. It was at a supper at the Hanover Theater. Afterward there was - dancing on the stage. I fear it would have been rather tiresome for me if - I had not met your sister. She is a very friendly lady, and she talked a - great deal to me.” - </p> - <p> - “About me?” demanded Frances, sharply. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no—about you only a few pleasant words; not more. It seems you - do not meet very often.” - </p> - <p> - He spoke with such evident frankness that she hesitated over the further - inquiry her mind had framed. At last she put it in altered form. “Then you - would not say that she sent you here—-that she told you to come—and - to come by way of Covent Garden, and buy these flowers?” The question, as - she uttered it, was full of significant suggestion about the nature of the - reply desired. Its tone, too, carried the welcome hint of a softened mood, - under the influence of which Christian’s face brightened with joy. - </p> - <p> - “Why, not at all!” he cried, lifting his voice gaily above the - typewriters’ clatter. “She did speak of Covent Garden, and the show of - flowers there in the early morning, but it was not in the least with - reference to you. It was my own idea long after she had gone. Oh, no one - would be more surprised than that good sister of yours to know that I am - here!” - </p> - <p> - Frances, with a puzzling smile which ended in a long breath of relief, - took up some of the roses and held them to her face. - </p> - <p> - “Sit down again,” she bade him, with a pleasant glow in the eyes regarding - him over the blossoms; “sit down, and let us talk. Or does that noise bore - you?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I am too glad!” he assured her, beamingly. “If it were cannon firing - in the next room, it would be nothing to me.” Then, as he continued to - gaze with delight at her, an inspiration came to him. “Or is it possible - for you to come out? Would you walk a little while, perhaps on the - Embankment?” - </p> - <p> - “I am not particularly busy this morning,” she made indirect answer. Then - a digression occurred to her. “But I am rather surprised,” she observed, - “to find that England hasn’t made more changes in your speech. I would - have expected a perfect Piccadilly accent, but you talk exactly as you did - on the train and the boat.” - </p> - <p> - He laughed and clapped his hands for glee. “It is wholly because I am with - you again,” he declared. “Everybody has said for months that the foreign - traces had quite vanished from my tongue—but the first glimpse of - you—ah! they come instantly back! It is the association of ideas, - beyond doubt—that very sweet association,” he added, with trembling - softness, “of oh! such fond ideas.” - </p> - <p> - She had taken up her hat. “We will go out for a little, if you like,” she - remarked rather abruptly. - </p> - <p> - “And I am altogether forgiven?” he demanded in high spirits, as he rose. - “You consent to accept the flowers?” - </p> - <p> - “Heaven only knows what I shall do with them,” she answered, with a - grimace of mock despair. “But it was ever so nice of you to get them, and - I thank you very much. Oh, I must tell Connie to sprinkle them before I - go.” - </p> - <p> - She moved to the inner door, and as she opened it turned. “Wouldn’t you - like to come and see the factory at work?” she inquired, and he joined her - with alacrity. “It isn’t much to see at the moment,” she explained, as - they entered the large room. “We have nine machines, but only four of them - are needed just now. Until after the Jubilee, I’m afraid things will be - very dull with publishers and playwrights. However, one must take the lean - with the fat.” - </p> - <p> - Christian looked somewhat nervously about him, while his friend stepped - aside to confer with the girl whom he remembered from the early morning. - Both this young lady and the three at their machines made a rapid, and as - it seemed to him, perfunctory survey of their mistress’s guest, and bent - their attention upon their duties again as if his presence signified - nothing whatever to them. He suspected that in reality they were plunged - in furious speculation concerning him; and this embarrassed him so much - that he turned and strolled back toward the open door and even entered the - office before Frances rejoined him. - </p> - <p> - When she came back to him, she took from the table a couple of pale, - half-opened tea-rose buds, gave one to him to fix in his lapel and pinned - the other to the breast of her fawn-gray frock. “If you are ready,” she - said, smilingly, and led the way to the staircase. As she descended before - him, he noted the intelligent simplicity of this dress she wore—how - it fitted her as gracefully and as artistically as Poole ever fitted Dicky - Westland. About her hat, the carriage of her head and shoulders, the free - decision of her step, there was something individual which appealed - directly to him—a charm which would not be duplicated by any other - person in the world. He looked at his watch as he went down, and found - with surprise that it was nearly eleven. - </p> - <p> - He stepped to her side at the street doorway, with a meaning gesture. “Do - you remember,” he said, gently—“on the boat you took my arm?” - </p> - <p> - “I think London is a little different,” she answered, decisively enough, - yet with the effect to his ears of unreserved camaraderie. - </p> - <p> - They walked slowly down to the end of the street. “Do you mind which way - we go?” she asked him, and turned eastward. “I haven’t seen the city in an - age,” she remarked, as if the choice needed explanation. Sauntering along, - they found little to say to each other at the outset. What words they - exchanged were about the mild, sunless sky of the London April, and the - wonderful pencilings and rubbings of soot upon the silver-gray of London’s - stone walls. Learning that he was a stranger to the Temple, she led the - way through the gate and lane, and then, by turnings which it surprised - him to find her knowing so well, to the curious little church. The door in - the sunken porch was ajar, and they went in. She pointed to the circle of - freestone Crusaders looking complacently up from the floor at the Oriental - dome which had caught their traveled fancy ages before, and it occurred to - her to say: “Is it not interesting to you to think that there were Torrs - who were friends and companions of these very Magnavilles and Mareschalls, - six hundred years ago?” - </p> - <p> - He thrust out his lips a little. “I have not much interest in anything - concerning the Torrs,” he answered. - </p> - <p> - She looked up at him with curiosity, but offered no comment. They left the - church, and she led him round to the spot where, amid the cracked old - flags from forgotten graves, Oliver Goldsmith’s tomb now finds itself. A - crumbling wreath of natural flowers showed that some kindly soul had - remembered the date of the poet’s death, three weeks before. - </p> - <p> - Christian displayed scarcely more interest here. “I have not read his - ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’” he confessed to her. “I had always the intention to - do so, but it—it never came off.” - </p> - <p> - “That brings me to one thing I wanted to ask you,” she said, as they - retraced their steps. “What books have you been reading—since you - came to England? I am anxious to know?” - </p> - <p> - “Not many,” he admitted with an attempted laugh which ended rather - shamefacedly. “Reading did not fit itself very readily into my time. At - Lord Chobham’s I read in some old books, and at Emanuel’s too, but it was - all about our own people—the Barons’ War, and the Wars of the Roses, - and the Civil War. I know something about these and about the old families - of the West, but not much else. I should have read more, I know, but there - was really not much opportunity. But you—I saw at your office what - serious books you read. It is what I should like to do, too—sometimes. - But there has been no one to talk with about any kind of books.” - </p> - <p> - They had come out again to the Embankment, and made their pace now even - more deliberate. “I have been thinking a great deal about you, and your - future, since we met,” she remarked, after a pause. “It has made me wonder - what you would do, when the opportunity came to you—and what it - would be open for you to do. That is why I began reading the books that I - take it you have in mind—but afterward I read them for their own - value. At the beginning”—she went on slowly, studying the sky-line - in an abstracted way as she walked—“at the beginning I thought I - should see you again sometime, and I had the idea that I wanted to be able - to advise—or no, not that, but to talk to you, and try to interest - you in the right sort of things. But it did not take me long to see how - foolish that was.” - </p> - <p> - “No, no!” urged Christian; without, however, any convincing display of - enthusiasm. “There is no one in the world from whom I will so gladly take - advice as you.” - </p> - <p> - She smiled fleetingly at him. “And there is no one in the world,” she - replied, “more firmly resolved not to offer you any.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, but if I beg it! You may not offer—but will you refuse to - give?” - </p> - <p> - “What is the good?” she broke forth in a louder tone, speaking as if in - annoyed reproof to herself. “No person can think or feel or decide for - another! It is nonsense to pretend otherwise. A man must think his own - thoughts, follow his own nature! We can ask nothing finer of a man than to - honestly be himself. I get so angry at all these ceaseless attempts to run - people all into one mold, to make everybody like everybody else—and - then, here I was, solemnly starting out to do the very trick myself!” She - laughed in ironical self-depreciation at the thought. - </p> - <p> - Christian drew closer to her side. “I have very many things to say to - you,” he began gravely. “But I am in one way sorry that we went into the - churchyard, because it has made us melancholy, and I was going to tell it - all to you in the highest good spirits. We were both laughing like merry - children when we left your place—and now we are sad. I like - Emanuel’s idea—he will have no tombs to be seen upon his estate. - Death will come there as elsewhere, without doubt, but he will not be - allowed to remain hanging about, thrusting his ugly presence upon happy - people each time they walk in the street. At Emanuel’s there is cremation—and - that is the end of it. That is the portion of his System which pleases me - most. It is the best thing in it.” - </p> - <p> - She looked into his face. “Then you are not wildly in love with his whole - System?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “Me? I grieve to say not. It is no doubt very admirable indeed—but—how - shall I say?—it does not appeal to me. You are displeased with me - for confessing it—but—” - </p> - <p> - “Displeased?” she interrupted him, with a meaning laugh. “Nothing could - displease me less!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you do not love the System?” he cried, with dancing eyes. - </p> - <p> - “I hate it!” she answered, briefly. - </p> - <p> - “Capital!” He halted, to shake her by the hand with gay effusion. “Let us - abuse it together! You shall say it all, however, because I only dislike - it, and cannot give any reasons why—but you will know them every - one. Oh, this is splendid! I had the right instinct when I came to you! I - have a great deal to tell you—but first you must tell me: what do - you say about my cousin’s System? I am burning to hear that.” - </p> - <p> - It was impossible to evade the contagion of his sparkling face. She - laughed in turn. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it would be too long a story,” she half protested. “But to put it - briefly, this is my idea. Emanuel seems to me to be a magnificent - character, with one extraordinary limitation. I think it must be a Jewish - limitation—for I have seen it pointed out that they do not invent - things. That is Emanuel’s flaw; he has not an original thought in his - head. He merely carries to a mathematical point of expansion and - development the ready-made ideas which he finds accepted all about him. - What you see in him is a triumph of the Semitic passion for working a - problem out to its ultimate conclusion. When you consider it, what has he - done? Merely discovered, by tremendous labor and energy, the smoothest - possible working arrangement of the social system which his class regards - as best for itself, and hence for all mankind—the system which - exalts a chosen few, and keeps all the rest in subjection. My dear sir, - things do not rise higher than their source! How did the Torrs come by - their estates? By stealing the birthright of thousands of dumb human - beasts of burden, and riveting the family collar round their necks with no - more regard for their wishes or their rights than as if they had been so - many puppies or colts. And what was the origin of the Ascarel fortune? The - most frightful and bloodstained human slavery in the poisonous jungles of - the Dutch East Indies—that, and an ancient family business of - international usury, every dirty penny in which if you followed it far - enough, meant the flaying alive of a peasant, or the starvation of his - little children. These are the things which your cousin inherits. He is - fine enough to be ashamed of them, but he is not broad enough to repudiate - them. He makes himself believe that they were wrong only in degree. He - will admit that the Torrs were too brutal toward their serfs, the Ascarels - too selfish with their millions. That is all. And he sets himself to - proving that with the right kind of chief at their head these systems of - theirs can be made not only respectable, but even profitable to the slaves - as well as the master. He does not see that the systems themselves are - crimes! ” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I am glad that I came to you,” said Christian, in low, earnest - tones, in the pause which followed. The girl, breathing deeply under the - fervor of her mood, looked fixedly before her toward the copper-haze above - Paul’s dome. He watched the noble immobility of her profile and thrilled - at its suggestion of strength. - </p> - <p> - “To do him justice,” she went on, musingly, “he does not pretend that it - is progress. He is honest, and he describes it as reaction—a long - step backward. It is just that kind of honesty and devotion, plus - wrong-headedness, which keeps us all at sixes and sevens. If we agree that - there is no better-intentioned man alive than Emanuel—still he would - do more harm than the most atrocious blackguard, if he had his way with - the world. But fortunately, he will not have it. A vastly greater and - loftier Jew has said that you cannot pour new wine into old bottles.” - </p> - <p> - They walked on for a little in silence. “Have you been to Emanuel’s place - then?” Christian asked at last. - </p> - <p> - “No; I know it only from hearsay, and from his books. A woman novelist for - whom I do work has been there, and she has told me a good deal about it. - She is going to use it in a book, and would you believe it? she is crazy - with enthusiasm about the whole thing. I tried to point out to her what - she was doing, but you might as well talk to the east wind. The way women - run after the hand that smites them, and beslaver it with kisses—that - is the thing that enrages me most of all. Why, the very corner-stone of - Emanuel’s System is the perpetual enslavement of women. I am always - surprised, when I hear about his mediæval arrangements, that he hasn’t set - up a ducking-stool for his women-folk. I’m sure it’s a pure oversight on - his part. Well, what are you to expect when cultivated women like Mrs. - Sessyl-Trant turn up as frantic admirers of that sort of thing? However, - thank goodness, women are not forever to be sold out by the fools of their - own sex. It is impossible not to see that the tide has turned at last. - There <i>is</i> a change—and I think something genuine and lasting - is going to come out of it. I really think it!” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, that is what I feel,” put in Christian, with confused eagerness. “I - have no clear thoughts about it, but it is my deep feeling that—that—what - shall I say?—we are most at fault in the matter of the women.” - </p> - <p> - Frances pursued her thought, in frowning meditation. “It is the new - professional class, who earn their own living, who will help us out. These - women, who have come through the mill of self-responsibility, will not - accept the old nonsense invented for them, and imposed upon them by the - women parasites. The younger women who take care of themselves have all - begun to ask questions: ‘Why should I do this?’ ‘Why shouldn’t I do that?’ - ‘And whose business but my own is it if I do the other?’ Unfortunately, - they are too ready to accept the first answer that comes to them. Oh, that - is the woeful trouble! Men have slowly built up for themselves a good deal - of machinery by which they can find out what is true. I don’t say they are - not continually deceived, or that they invariably recognize the truth when - they see it, but still they have certain facilities for protecting - themselves against falsehoods. But women have practically none at all. - They are systematically lied to from their cradle to their grave. They - read so hard!—they are <i>the</i> consumers of novels, religious - books, weekly newspapers, magazines, and the rest of it—but never a - word of actual truth is allowed to reach them out of it all. Wherever they - turn to inquire about themselves, about their rights and their duties in - this world that they have been born into, they encounter this vast, - unbroken conspiracy of liars. That is the gravest of all the disadvantages - they labor under. Why, take even the ‘New Woman’ fiction of a few years - ago. There was a great hullabaloo raised over certain novels; at last, - they cried, the truth was being-revealed by women, for women, of women. - But what nonsense! It turned out not to be the truth at all, but only the - old falsehood, disguised in hysterics and some shocking bad manners. There - seems no escape for women anywhere. They are lied to by their parents, - their parsons, their doctors, their authors—and of course they lie - to one another. They have a whole debased currency of insincerities and - flattering falsehoods which they pass among themselves, keeping straight - faces all the while as if it were honest money.—But as I said, I - think a change is coming. However, don’t let’s talk any more about it. I - get too angry!” - </p> - <p> - “I like you to be angry—only not with me,” commented Christian with - a sprightly smile. Then he added, more gravely, “Oh, I can see how the - women who work will make a change. It was very curious to me to see those - girls at the machines in your office. It was one of them who let me in, - before you came. She was quite different from any of the English women I - have been meeting. One saw that she had thoughts of her own—an - atmosphere of her own. I should not like to tell lies to her; I think she - would detect them more rapidly than I could get them out.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Connie,” laughed Frances. “Yes, she has a head on her shoulders. They - are all fairly bright girls, and they get on together extremely well. It’s - quite their own idea to divide up the work equally among the lot, and when - there is not much doing to take turns in working alternate days. I think - it was rather fine of them.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, that is the class of women one would like to help,” he declared. - “That is what I will devote myself to.” - </p> - <p> - “But it is the class which prefers to help itself,” she explained quietly. - “I see no way in which you could ‘help’ them, as you call it. They don’t - want any help. Men in their position might take tips, but these girls - won’t.” As he received the rebuff in silence, she changed the subject. “I - am meeting now some other young women who would interest you. They are - doing newspaper work—and doing it on its merits, too, and not by the - favoritism of editors and proprietors—and one or two evenings a week - we all get together at my office and talk things over. Sometimes there are - as many as twenty of us, including my girls. In a year or two, perhaps it - will run to a club-room of our own. I don’t know that I told you—I - am getting into newspaper work myself. If I saw how to combine it with my - office business, I could have a place on a regular daily staff. I’m - puzzling a good deal to find some way of making the two things go - together.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I envy you!” broke in Christian, impulsively. “You have work to do! - You are interested in your work! You find in it not only occupation, but - the opportunities of being useful to others, and of making your life, and - other people’s lives, worth living. But think of me! I have nothing in the - wide world to do, except wait for a very strong old man to die. And when - he dies, then still I have nothing to do worth doing. Don’t you see that - it is the most miserable of existences? I am filled with disgust for it. I - cannot bear it another day. And that is what I was going to tell you. I - have decided to leave it all—and go away.” - </p> - <p> - Frances paused for a moment to scrutinize, with slightly narrowed eyes, - the excited face he turned to her. “How will going away improve matters?” - she asked him, upon reflection. - </p> - <p> - He put out his lips, and shrugged his shoulders. “At least I shall be a - free man,” he affirmed. - </p> - <p> - Unconsciously she imitated his gesture in turn: “It does not follow that a - deserter is necessarily a free man.” - </p> - <p> - He pushed and winced visibly under the words, and turned away biting his - lips. Then, the vexation clearing from his face, he wheeled again, and - regarded her with calm gravity. - </p> - <p> - “There is no one else who could say that to me and not injure me,” he - answered, simply. “But that is the characteristic of you—when you - say such a thing to me, then it becomes a thing that should have been - said. Yet perhaps it is not the final word, after all. Ask yourself what - it is that I am deserting! Consider whether I should give up or gain - something. Here in England it is possible for me to be one of two things—the - conventional person of position like all the others, or the exceptional - kind of being which Emanuel desires to make of me. I have been at school - for half a year learning what it is that society in general expects a man - in my situation to do. Now that I have learned it, frankly it makes me - sick at heart. But then I have been at another school for a month, - observing and studying what it is that Emanuel wishes me to undertake. We - have agreed that that is not to be thought of, either. Then what am I to - do?” - </p> - <p> - “But how does running away solve the difficulty?” She put the question to - him with gentle persistency. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, but, you see,” he rejoined, argumentatively, “it is not alone a moral - difficulty. There are practical questions, too. When I announce to Emanuel - that I reject his plans for my future, then I am left to myself to be that - most ridiculous of objects—a man with a great station and no money - to keep it up. That is what I must be here in England. But in other - countries, that will not be the case. There will always be enough money - for me to live like a prince upon—so long as I travel about, in my - own yacht if I like, or reside simply and happily in the beautiful places - of the earth, here and there, as the fancy possesses me. Thus I can put to - use the prestige of my title, when it is of advantage to do so—but - only in so far as it is needful at the moment—and at the same time - it does not become a burden to me in any degree. Now think carefully of - this—is it not the wisest course for me?” She seemed not to pause - for thought at all. “Oh, that depends upon how you define wisdom,” she - replied, promptly. “There is the wisdom of the serpent, but fortunately - there are many other kinds. No, I must say, you haven’t convinced me in - the least. However, you mustn’t think that is of importance. You are under - no obligation to convince me, surely!” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, but that is everything to me,” he insisted. “There are reasons—which - I wish to explain to you.” - </p> - <p> - He could not keep a new meaning out of the glance with which he enforced - this assurance. They had strolled round to Ludgate Circus, and come to a - halt on the corner, with their backs turned upon a window full of droll - phrenological charts and symbols. He consulted his watch once more. “I - breakfasted so lightly, and so early,” he said—“it is not luncheon - time quite, but that will give us a table to ourselves. You will come - across with me, will you not? There are truly important things which have - not been said—which I much wish to say.” - </p> - <p> - After a moment’s reflection she nodded her assent. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian and - Frances ate their luncheon in an upper chamber, close to a kind of balcony - window, which gave upon one of the city’s most crowded thoroughfares. An - unceasing and uniform uproar—overridden from time to time by the - superior tumult of a passing railway train on a bridge near by—rose - from this indefatigable street. They had the room to themselves; the - portentous din magnified the effect of the solitude in which they regarded - each other, crumbling the bread on the table absent-mindedly, and waiting - for the inspiration of speech. - </p> - <p> - “When I get back,” the girl said at last with a smile, “the racket of my - typewriters will seem like the murmur of a gentle breeze down a leafy - country lane.” - </p> - <p> - They laughed—but they had discovered it was not so hard to make - oneself heard as they had supposed. Their voices intuitively found a level - which served their personal needs, yet did not incommode the waiters - yawning at the head of the stairway outside. - </p> - <p> - “Have you taken to the bicycle?” she was moved in sheer irrelevance to ask - him. When he shook his head, she went on: “It is a wonderful thing for - women. It has done more for them in three years, than all the progressive - intellectual movements of civilization did in three hundred. We all use - them, coming to and from the office. We have to store them down in the - area, now—but I am going to find a better place.” - </p> - <p> - Christian rolled his bread crumbs into balls and stared at them in a brown - study, from which this topic was powerless to arouse him. - </p> - <p> - “I wish,” he said, finally—“I wish very much that I knew how to - convince you. But I seem never to produce any impression upon you. You are - unyielding to the touch. It is I who get molded and kneaded about whenever - I come close to you. And I don’t say that it is not for the best. Only—only - now, you will not accept my own ideas of what I should do, and you will - not tell me what your ideas are.” - </p> - <p> - “I am not sure that I have any ideas,” she assured him. “It is merely - that, on general principles, I don’t care for the people who settle - difficulties by turning tail and running away from them.” - </p> - <p> - “Very well,” he began, as if an important premise had been accepted. “But - as to my special case, I have stated what must be my position if I remain - in England. To me it seems that it must be impossible—intolerable. - But you have some different view, evidently. That is what I beg you to - explain to me. If I am to remain in England, what is it your idea that I - should do?” She knitted her brows a little, and took time to her reply. - “You seem to think so entirely of yourself,” she said, slowly, “it is very - hard to know what to say to you. I cannot put myself, you see, so - completely in your place, as you are always able to do.” He opened his - eyes wide, and informed their gaze with a surprised reproach. “There you - are surely unjust to me,” he urged, pleadingly. “I do not know anyone who - thinks more about other people than I do. One hesitates to say these - things about oneself—but truly you are mistaken in this matter. In - fact, I wonder sometimes if it is not a fault, a weakness in my nature, - that I am so readily moved by the sufferings and wrongs of unhappy people. - Whenever I see injustice, I am beside myself with a passion to set it - right. I grow almost sick with indignation, and pity, when these things - come before me. Last night, for example, at the Empire——” - </p> - <p> - Christian stopped abruptly, with the sudden consciousness that the ground - was not clear before him. He saw that he was entirely without a clue as to - what his companion’s views on the subject might be. That was her - peculiarity: he knew concerning her thoughts and inclinations only what - she chose to reveal to him. It was beyond his power to predict what her - attitude would be on any new topic. Looking at her thoughtful, serene-eyed - face, it decidedly seemed to him that the Empire, as an ethical problem, - might with advantage be passed by. He hesitated for a moment, in the - friendly shelter of the street noise, and then gave another termination to - his speech: “It puzzles me that you should have that view of my - temperament.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, that is just it—you have put the word into my mouth. It is - ‘temperament’ that you are thinking of—and about that you are - perfectly right. Your temperament is as open to the impulses of the moment—kindly, - generous, compassionate and all that—as a flower is to the bees. But - character is another matter. What good do your fine momentary sentiments, - these rapid noble emotions of yours, do you or anybody else? You - experience them—and forget them. The only thing that abides - permanently with you is consideration for your own personal affairs.” - </p> - <p> - “This is all very unjust,” he said, disconsolately. “I come to you for - solace and friendship, and you turn upon me with beak and claws.” He - sighed, with the beginning of tears in his bright eyes, as he added: - “There is more reason than ever, it seems to me, why I should go away from - England! It is not kind to me!” - </p> - <p> - His doleful tone and mien drove her to swift repentance. “Oh, I have only - been saying the disagreeable things first, to get them out of the way,” - she sought to reassure him. “There isn’t another unpleasant word for you - to hear, not one, I promise you.” - </p> - <p> - “It is my opinion that there have been enough,” he ventured to comment, - with a rueful little smile. A measure of composure returned to him. “But - if they must be said, I would rather they come from you than from any one - else, for I think that you have also some pleasant thoughts about me.” - </p> - <p> - She nodded her head several times in assent, regarding him with an amused - twinkle in her eyes meanwhile. “Yes—the right kind of editor could - make very interesting stuff indeed out of you,” she said, and smiled - almost gaily at his visible failure to comprehend her figure. “What I mean - is—you are too much sail, and too little boat. You drift before - every new wind that blows. There is lacking that kind of balance—proportion—which - gives stability. But, dear me, it is a thousand times better to be like - that, than to have an excess of the other thing. The man of the solid - qualities, without the imagination, simply sticks in the mud where he was - born. But with you—if the right person chances to get hold of you, - and brings the right influences steadily to bear upon you, then there is - no telling what fine things you may not rise to.” - </p> - <p> - “You are that right person!” - </p> - <p> - He lifted his voice to utter these words, with the air of feeling them to - be momentous. His eyes glowed as they reaffirmed the declaration to her - inquiring glance. But she seemed to miss the gravity of both words and - look. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, there you’re wrong,” she said, half jestingly. “I’m too bad tempered - and quarrelsome to exert any proper influence over any one. Why, I should - nag all the joy and high spirits out of you in no time at all. No—you - need an equable and happy person, really very wise and strong and - sensible, but above all with an easy, smooth disposition—such a - person, for example, as Emanuel’s wife is described to be.” - </p> - <p> - “No—I need no one but you!” he repeated with accentuated - deliberation. - </p> - <p> - This time she appeared to feel something of his intention. She looked into - the gaze he was bending upon her and then withdrew her eyes precipitately, - and made a show of active interest in her food. - </p> - <p> - “I am asking you to think of joining your life to mine,” he went on, in - low, yet very distinct tones. “You cannot know a hundredth part as well as - I do, how profoundly I need such help as you can give. You are the one - woman in the world who means strength as well as happiness to me. If you - could only dream with what yearning I long always to lean upon you—to - be supported by your fine, calm, sweet wisdom! To be upheld by you—to - be nourished and guided by you—oh, that is the vision which I - tremble with joy to think of! I am my own master for the first time to-day—I - have taken my life into my own hands—and I lay it at your feet—dear - lady—at your feet.” - </p> - <p> - She rose abruptly while his last words were in the air, and turning, moved - to the window. She had contrived by a gesture to bid him not to follow, - and he could only gaze in mingled apprehension and hope at her back, the - while she stood professing to scrutinize the shifting throng below. - </p> - <p> - The waiter brought in another dish, methodically rearranged the plates and - went away again. To Christian’s bitter disgust, two men entered and took - seats at a table at the other end of the small room—and still she - did not turn. He meditated calling her, or joining her on the pretense of - announcing the cutlets—and only stared in nervous excitement - instead. - </p> - <p> - Then, as suddenly as she had left him she returned, and resumed her chair - as if nothing unusual had happened. His strenuous gaze swept her face for - tokens of her mood—of her inclination or decision—but beyond a - spot of vivid red on each smooth cheek, there was no sign of any sort. Her - frank, calm gray eyes met his with unruffled directness; they had in them - that suggestion of benignant tolerance which he had discerned there more - than once before. - </p> - <p> - “You do not answer me!” he pleaded, after a few mouthfuls. As his back - shielded the action from the strangers, he put forth a cautious hand to - touch the nearest of hers, but she drew it gently away beyond his reach. - They automatically adjusted their voices to the conditions created by the - newcomers. - </p> - <p> - “There could be only one possible answer,” she told him, softly, almost - tenderly. “It is a very flattering dream—? to me—but it is a - mere empty dream, none the less. I hope you will not want to talk about it - any more.” - </p> - <p> - “But I swear that it is not empty at all!” he urged, in earnest tones. - “Who has a right to say that it is a dream? I am my own master—so - are you. We are of age—we are intelligent people. I deliberately - come to you, and say to you that you are the one woman on earth whom I - desire with all my heart for my wife. I open my mind to you. There is only - the image of you inside it. You know my sincerity. You must feel how - supreme is the place you have in my thoughts. It is the logical end toward - which I have been walking ever since I first saw you! You are all that - there is of true friendship, of true womanhood, for me! I put out my hands - to you, I pray to you! And why will you not come to me, dear, dear Frank?” - There was a touch of pathos in the smile she gave him. “It isn’t the least - bit of good, I assure you,” she made answer, in the confidential murmur - that was necessary. “One can’t talk here—but please let us speak of - something else. Or can we not go now?” He went on as if she had not - spoken, his big, dark eyes challenging hers to an encounter which she - evaded. “Do not think we need go away from England, if you want to stay; - there will always be money enough—with your wisdom in controlling - it. Perhaps we may even be able to restore Caermere. But if we are not, - still it can be one of the noblest and most beautiful residences in - England, when we learn together to understand its charm, and make it our - home. Oh, when you see the magnificent hills and forests shutting it in on - all sides—and the grim, fine old walls and towers of the castle - itself! But there we need live only when we choose to do so—and - whenever the mood comes to us, off we can roam to the Alps or Algiers, or - the wonderful India which one always dreams of. And we shall sail in our - own yacht and you shall be the queen there, as everywhere else. And all - our lives we will spend in doing good to others: do you not see what - extraordinary opportunities for helping those who need help you will have? - Where now you are of service to one person, then you can assist a hundred! - An army of grateful people will give thanks because of you—and I - will always be the chief of them—your foremost slave, your most - reverent worshiper! And then—think of the joy of a life in which no - one has a share who is not pleasant and welcome to us! We will have no one - near us who is not our friend. Oh, I have not told you: that is why, this - very morning, I decided to leave it all, and to make a new life for - myself, and to spend it wholly with my real friends. It is loneliness, - heart and soul loneliness, that has driven me to revolt. And in my despair - I come to you—and I say to you that it is friendship that I cannot - live without, and you are my oldest friend, my dearest, truest, most - precious friend, and I beg you to come with me and we will go through the - world together, hand in hand——” - </p> - <p> - She interrupted him by pushing back her chair and half rising. “If you - will excuse me now,” she said, nervously, “I think I must go. You mustn’t - trouble to come—I will say good-bye here.” - </p> - <p> - He had risen as well, and now in trembling earnestness protested against - her proposal. At the risk of attracting the attention of the strangers, he - displayed such resentful opposition that she yielded. The waiter was - summoned—and remained bowing in dazed meditation upon the magnitude - of the change he had been bidden to keep for himself, after they had - passed out and down the staircase. - </p> - <p> - She led the way at a hurried pace back across the Circus and to - Blackfriars. At the rounded beginning of the Embankment she paused, and - for the first time spoke. “Really I would rather go back by myself,” she - told him. “It is only unhappiness to both of us—what you insist on - talking about.” - </p> - <p> - “But I do not think it is to be treated in this way,” he declared with - dignity. “If we speak of nothing else it is the highest and most solemn - honor that a man can pay to any woman, that I have paid to you. I have the - feeling that it should be more courteously dealt with.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I know,” she admitted, nodding her ready compunction. She tightened - her lips and looked away from him toward the bridge, her brows drawn - together in troubled lines. “I don’t say the right thing to you—I - know that better even than you do. You must not think I fail to appreciate - it all—the honor, and the immense confidence, and all the rest of - it. But when I have said that much—then I don’t know in the least - how to say the rest. Why can’t we leave it unsaid altogether? I assure - you, in all seriousness, that it can’t be—and mayn’t we leave it - like that? Please!” - </p> - <p> - He regarded her with a patient yet proud sadness, waiting to speak till - she had turned, and his glance caught hers. “I do not wish to become a - nuisance to you,” he said, his voice choking a little, “but I think it - would be better if you said everything to me. Then I shall not put my mind - on the rack, to try and imagine your reasons.” He let his lip curl with a - lingering ironical perception of the fantastic with which his tragedy was - veined. “It is very sweet,” he went on—“your consideration for my - feelings. But I have heard so many plain truths to-day, I think my - sensibilities are in good training now—they will not suffer for a - few more.” Suddenly, as if the sound of his voice had unnerved him, he - seized her arm, and confronted her surprised gaze with a reddened and - scowling face. “What are you afraid of?” he demanded hoarsely. “Why not - say it? I heard it only last night! It is forty years old, it is true, but - they have wonderful memories in England. You are the one whom I have held - to be my dearest friend—but go on! Say it to me! A little thing like - friendship does not prevent you from thinking it! Why, then, you should - have the courage to speak it out!” - </p> - <p> - Dimly, while she stared in his distracted countenance, the meaning, of the - wild talk dawned upon her. With a startled exclamation, she dragged her - arm from his clutch, and drew back a step. Trembling in her agitation, her - gray eyes distended themselves out of all likeness to their tranquil - habit. - </p> - <p> - “Oh-h-h!” she murmured in dismay at him, and wrung her hands. “Oh-h! Stop! - Stop! That is too horrible for you to think!” - </p> - <p> - Gaining coherence of thought and purpose, she moved impulsively to him, - and in turn clasped her hand upon his arm. “Put that out of your mind!” - she adjured him. “I could not look anybody in the face if you thought <i>that</i> - of me. Oh, it is too terrible of you! How could you suppose that I could - harbor such a thought? To blame you for something years before you were - born!—to throw it into your face. And <i>me</i> of all people! Why, - I have cried to myself at remembering what you said about your father when - we first met—how your little-boy memory clung affectionately to the - soldier-figure of him in the door-way! Look at me—I cry now to think - of it! Why, it is the one thing about you that is sacred to me!—the - one thing that you are perfect in—and then you imagine that I am - capable of insulting you about it! Oh, heavens, why wouldn’t you leave me - when I told you to?” - </p> - <p> - She threw his arm from her in a gust of physical impatience, but the - glance with which, on the instant, she corrected this demonstration, was - full of honest compassion. He groveled before this benign gaze, with bowed - head and outstretched, pleading hands. - </p> - <p> - “Forgive me! Forgive me!” he groaned, brokenly. “I could not—at all—know - what it was I said. I am too unhappy!” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” she began, with a vehement effort at calmness, “let us say - good-bye here. There are some Germans watching us from the hotel windows. - Or it is better perhaps—will you walk on past the school?” As they - moved forward, she recovered more of her self-possession. “I hope you will - be able to remember something pleasant out of our morning,” she said, and - with a joyless laugh added, “but for the life of me, I don’t know what it - can be. Or yes, you can remember when you woke up, and I stood and scolded - you, from above the flowers. I pretended to bully you, but really all the - while I was thinking how sweet of you the entire thing was. And later, too—oh, - there were several intervals in which I behaved civilly to you for whole - minutes at a time.” - </p> - <p> - He looked wistfully at her. Beneath the forced playfulness of her tone it - seemed to him that something hopeful sounded. “Ah, dear friend,” he - murmured, drawing close to her—“think!—think tenderly in my - behalf! Ask yourself—your kindest self—if I must be really - driven away. Why is it that I may not stay? I plead with you as if it were - for my life—and is it not indeed for my life?—my very life?” - </p> - <p> - “No—Christian,” she said, gravely, “it is not your life, nor - anything like your life. You give big labels to your emotions, but in good - time you will see that the things themselves are not so big, or so vital. - And you mustn’t yield so readily to all these impulses to mope and despair - and to think yourself ill used. You must try to make for yourself a - thicker skin—and to view things more calmly. And I don’t want you to - go away thinking hard things of me. Is it true that I always nag you—there - is something in you which calls out all the bully in me—but I wish - you would think of me as your friend. It gives me great pleasure when you - speak of me as your oldest friend in England—for I have always liked - you, and I am interested in you, and—” - </p> - <p> - “And why will you not marry me?” He interposed the question bluntly, and - with a directness which gave it the effect of an obstacle in her path, - isolated but impassable. - </p> - <p> - She halted, and studied the pavement in consideration of her reply. When - she looked up, it was with the veiled elation of a disputant who has his - counter-stroke well in hand. “You said to-day that you had become your own - master, and that you were a free man, with your life in your own hands. - Very well. I also am my own master, and I am a free woman. My life is - exclusively my own personal property, to live as I choose to live it. I - value my liberty quite as highly as if I were a man. It does not suit me - to merge any part of it in something else. There could be many other - reasons given, no doubt, but they would be merely individual variations of - this one chief reason—that I am a free woman, and intend to remain a - free woman. I know what I want to do in the world, and I am going to try - to do it, always my own way, always my own master.” - </p> - <p> - He regarded her thoughtfully, bowing his head in token of comprehension. - “But if——” he began, and then checked himself, with a gesture - of pained submission. - </p> - <p> - “There are no ‘ifs,’” she said, with resolute calmness, and held out her - hand to him. Her control of the situation was undisputed. “We say - good-bye, now—and we are friends—good friends. I—I thank - you—for everything!” - </p> - <p> - He stood looking at her as she walked away—a sedately graceful - figure, erect and light of step, receding from him under the pallid green - shelter of the young trees. Musingly, he held up the hand which still - preserved the sense of that farewell contact with hers—and upon a - sudden impulse put it to his lips and kissed it. Something in the action - wrought an instantaneous change in his thoughts. All at once it was - apparent to him that many things which should have been said to her he had - left unsaid. In truth, it seemed upon reflection that he had said and done - everything wrong. The notion of running after her flamed up in him for a - moment. She was still in sight—he could distinguish her in the - distance, stopping to buy a paper from a boy near the Temple station. But - then the memory of her unanswerable, irrevocable “No” swept back upon him—and - with a long sigh he turned and strode in the other direction. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - Frances, hastening mechanically toward her office, found relief from the - oppressive confusion of her thoughts in the fortuitous spectacle of two - small newsboys fighting in the gutter just at the end of the Temple - Gardens. For the first time in her life, the sight aroused nothing within - her save a pleased if unscientific interest. She paused, and almost - smilingly observed the contest. She found something amusingly grotesque in - the pseudo-Titanic rage on these baby faces. The dramatic fury of the - embattled infants was in such ridiculous disproportion to the - feather-weight blows they exchanged! She found herself chuckling aloud at - some incongruous comparison which rose in her mind. - </p> - <p> - Then, as the combatants parted, apparently for no better reason than the - general volatility of youth, she remembered that she had it in mind to - look at the “Star.” One of her friends, Mary Leach, had sent to that paper - some days before an article on “Shopgirls’ Dormitories,” and she was - interested in watching for its appearance. It happened that one of the - boys had a “Star.” Acting upon some obscure whim, she gave them each a - penny, quite in the manner of a distributor of prizes for conspicuous - merit—and grinned to herself at the thought when she had turned her - back on them and moved on. - </p> - <p> - There was no sign of what she sought on the front page. Opening the sheet, - her eye fell, as it were, upon a news paragraph in a middle column: - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - “Death of the Oldest Duke.—The Shrewsbury correspondent of the - ‘Exchange Telegraph’ announces the death at Caermere Castle, at an early - hour this morning, of the Duke of Glastonbury. His Grace, who was in his - ninetieth year, had until last summer enjoyed the most vigorous health, - and only now succumbs to the prostration then occasioned by the group of - domestic bereavements which at the time created such a sensation. The - deceased nobleman, who for the great part of his prolonged life, was one - of the best known sportsmen in Shropshire, succeeded his father as eighth - duke in his minority, and had been in possession of the title for no less - than seventeen years when Her Majesty ascended the throne, thus - constituting a record which is believed to be without parallel in the - annals of the peerage. His successor is stated by Whitaker’s Almanac to be - his grandson, Mr. Christian Tower, but the current editions of Burke, - Debrett and others do not mention this gentleman, whose claims, it would - appear, have but recently been admitted by the family.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - Frances read it all, as she stood at the corner, with a curious sense of - mental sluggishness. Her attention failing to follow one of the sentences, - she went back, and laboriously traced its entire tortuous course, only to - find that it meant no more than it had at first. - </p> - <p> - It seemed a long time before she connected the intelligence on the printed - page with the realities of actual life. Then she turned swiftly, and - strained her eyes in the wild hope of discovering Christian still on the - Embankment. She even took a few hurried steps, as if to follow and - overtake him—but stopped short, confronted by the utter futility of - such an enterprise. - </p> - <p> - Then, walking slowly, her mind a maze of wondering thoughts, she went her - way. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian strolled - aimlessly about for a long time in the closely packed congeries of - streets, little and big, behind St. Paul’s. It happened to be all new - ground to him, and something novel was welcome to his troubled and - restless mind. He loitered from one window to another, examining their - contents gravely; at the old book stalls he took down numbers of volumes - and looked laboriously through them, as if conducting an urgent search for - something. - </p> - <p> - His jumbled thoughts were a burden to him. He could get nothing coherent - from them, It was not even clear to his perception whether he was really - as dejected and disconsolate as he ought to be. - </p> - <p> - He had only recently been plunged into despairing depths of sadness, and - it was fitting that he should still be racked with anguish. Yet there was - no actual pain—there was not even a dogged insensibility to the - frivolous distractions of the moment. He became exceedingly interested in - an old copy of Boutell, for example, and hunted eagerly through the - multitude of heraldic cuts to see if the white bull on a green ground of - the Torrs was among them. His disappointment at not finding it was so keen - that for the instant it superseded his abiding grief. His discovery of - this fact entertained him; he was almost capable of laughing in amusement - at it. Then, in self-condemnation, he sought to call up before his mental - vision the picture of Frances, as she had looked when they had said - good-bye. The image would not come distinctly. Her face eluded him; he - could only see her walking away, instead, under the feeble green of the - young trees. None the less, he said deliberately to himself that he was - unhappy beyond the doom of most men, and that the hope had gone out of his - life. - </p> - <p> - The day had turned out unexpectedly warm. In the middle of his shapeless - musings, the ornate sign of a Munich brewery on a cool, shaded doorway - suddenly attracted him. The dusky, restful emptiness of the place inside - seemed ideally to fit his mood. He went in, and seated himself with a long - sigh of satisfaction at one of the tables. Here, in this mellow quiet, - over the refreshing contents of the big, covered stone mug, he could think - peacefully and to advantage. He lit a cigar, and leaning back in comfort, - gave the signal to his thoughts to arrange and concentrate themselves. - </p> - <p> - What should he do next? Yes—that was far more to the point than - mooning over the irrevocable past. He had left Duke Street with hardly any - plan beyond not returning thither. Luggage of some sort he would have to - have—changes of linen and the like, and the necessary articles of - the toilet. It was his intention to buy these as the need of them arose—and - the character of his purchases would also depend a good deal, of course, - upon the decision he should come to concerning his movements. He had said - that he would leave England—and now he asked himself whether there - was anything to prevent his departure that very evening. One of the - deepest charms of travel must be to start off on the instant, upon the - bidding of the immediate whim, and descend upon your destination before - there has been time to cheapen it by thinking about it. Why should he not - eat the morrow’s breakfast in the Hague—and dine at Amsterdam? - Similarly, he could within twenty-four hours be watching the marriage of - Mosel and Rhine at Coblenz—or gazing upon the wide, wet, white sands - of the Norman shore from the towering battlements of St. Michel. A hundred - storied towns, vaguely pictured in his imagination, beckoned to him from - across the Channel. Upon reflection, it seemed to him that Holland offered - the most wooing invitation. He asked the waiter for Bradshaw, and noted - the salient points of the itinerary from Queen borough. - </p> - <p> - It was now three o’clock. There was plenty of time for all purchases, and - a leisurely dinner before going to Victoria. It occurred to him that the - dinner must be very good—a luxurious kind of farewell repast. - </p> - <p> - He would make a memorandum now of the things he ought to buy here in - London. Holland was by all accounts a dear place—and moreover he had - heard that the Dutch customs examination was by no means troublesome. It - would be more intelligent to complete practically his outfit here. He took - out a pencil, and began feeling in his coat-pocket for a bit of paper. The - hand brought out, beside Lady Milly’s note about the Private View, three - or four unopened letters. He had entirely forgotten their existence—and - stared at them now in puzzled indecision. It was not a sensible thing, or - a fair thing either, to tear up and destroy unread the message which some - one else had been at pains to transcribe for you. But on the other hand, - these missives belonged to the stupid and intolerable life in Duke Street, - with which he had definitely parted company. It might even be said, in one - sense, that he was not the person to whom they were addressed. - </p> - <p> - By some whimsical freak of the brain, he suddenly asked himself whether he - should not go to Greece instead of Holland, and enlist as a volunteer in - the war against the Turks. He became on the instant immersed in - adventurous military speculations. He had not fallen into the English - habit of following the daily papers with regularity, and he was conscious - of no responsibility whatever toward the events of the world at large, as - Reuter and the correspondents chronicled them. Something of this new war - in Thessaly, however, he had perforce read and heard. Of the circumstances - and politics surrounding this latest eruption of the Eastern Question he - knew little more than would any of the young Frenchmen of education among - whom he had spent his youth. But in an obscure way, he comprehended that - good people in Western Europe always sympathized with the Christian as - against the Moslem. It seemed that some generous-minded young Englishmen - were already translating this sympathy into action; somewhere he had seen - an account of a party of volunteers leaving London for Athens, and being - cheered by their friends at the station. Now that he thought of it, the - paper in which he had read the report had ridiculed the affair as an - undesirable kind of a joke—but the impulse of the volunteers seemed - fine to him, none the less. - </p> - <p> - There ought to be some martial blood in his veins; the soldier-figure of - his father rose before him in affirmation of the idea. - </p> - <p> - But no—what nonsense it was! If ever there had been a youth bred and - narrowed to the walks of peace, he was that young person. He who had never - struck another human being in his life, that he could remember—what - would such a tame sheep be doing in the open field, against the unknown, - ferocious Osmanli Turk? The gross absurdity of the picture flared upon - him, momentarily—and then the whole notion of armed adventure had - vanished from his mind. - </p> - <p> - His attention reverted to the letters—and now it seemed quite a - matter of course that he should open them. The first three were of no - importance. The fourth he regarded with wide-open eyes, after he had - grasped the identity of the writer. He read it over slowly, more than - once: - </p> - <p> - “27A Ashley Gardens, S. W., Monday. - </p> - <p> - “My Dear Mr. Christian Tower: I have taken this little place in town for - the time being, and I shall be glad to see you when you are this way. - To-morrow, Tuesday, is a day when I shall not be at home to other people—if - you have nothing better to do. - </p> - <p> - “Yours very sincerely, - </p> - <p> - “Edith Cressage.” - </p> - <p> - Nothing better to do? Christian’s thoughts lingered rather blankly upon - the phrase—until all at once he perceived that there could not - possibly be anything better to do. He rose with decision, hurriedly gulped - what remained of his second pot of beer, paid his bill and marched out - with the air of a man with a mission. - </p> - <p> - In the hansom, he read the letter still again, and leaned backward to see - as much as possible of himself in the little mirror at the side. His chin - could not be described as closely shaven, and his garments were certainly - not those of the afternoon caller. The resource of stopping at Duke Street - occurred to him—but no! that would be too foolish. The whole - significance of the day would be abolished, wiped out, by such a fatuous - step. And he repeated to himself that it <i>was</i> a day of supreme - significance. By comparison with the proceedings and experiences of this - long and crowded day, the rest of his life seemed colorless indeed. And - what was of most importance in it, he declared to himself, was not its - external happenings, but the fine and novel posture of his liberated mind - toward them. He was for the first time actually a free man. His - enfranchisement had not been thrown at him by outsiders; it proceeded from - within him—the product of his own individuality. - </p> - <p> - That was what people would discern in him hereafter—a complete and - self-sufficient personality. He would no longer be pointed out and - classified as somebody’s grandson—somebody’s cousin or grand-nephew. - The world would recognize him as being himself. He felt assured, for - example, upon reflection that Lady Cressage would not dream of questioning - the fashion of the clothes in which he came to see her. She would perceive - at once that he had developed beyond the silly pupilary stage of - subordination to his coat and hat. She was so clever and sympathetic a - woman, he felt intuitively, that these symbols of his emancipated - condition would delight her. It was true, he saw again from the mirror - that his collar might be a little whiter; his cuffs, too, had lost their - earlier glow of starched freshness. But these were trifles to serious - minds. And besides, was it not all in the family? - </p> - <p> - There was a momentary block at the corner of Parliament Street, and here a - newsboy thrust a fourth edition upon Christian with such an effect of - authority that he found a penny and took the paper. It was the - “Westminster Gazette,” and when he had looked upon the second page for a - possible drawing by Gould, and had skimmed the column of desultory gossip - on the last page, which always seemed to his alien conceptions of - journalism to be the kind of matter he liked in a newspaper, he laid the - sheet on his knee, and resumed his idle reverie. To his great surprise the - cabman’s shouts through the roof were necessary to awaken him at Ashley - Gardens. He shook himself, laughingly explained that he had been up all - night as he paid his fare, and ascended the steps of 27A, paper in hand. - </p> - <p> - The servant seemed prepared for his coming, for upon giving his name in - response to her somewhat meaning inquiry, she led him in at once. He sat - waiting for a few moments in a small and conveniently appointed - drawing-room, and then stood up, at the rustle of rapid skirts which - announced Lady Cressage in the half-open doorway. - </p> - <p> - She entered with outstretched hand, and a radiant welcome upon her face. - </p> - <p> - Christian noted that beyond the hand there was a forearm, shapely and - cream-hued, disclosed by the lace of her flowing sleeve. There were - billows of this lace, and of some fragile, light fabric which seemed - sister to it, enveloping the lady, yet her tall, graceful figure was in - some indefinable way molded to the eye beneath them all. The pale hair was - as he had first seen it, loosely drawn across her temples; there were warm - shadows in it which he had not thought to see. The face, too, had some - unexpected phase, here in the subdued light of the curtained room. There - was a sense of rosiness in the rounded flesh, a certain reposeful elation - in the regard of the blue eyes, which put quite at fault the image of - harrowed restlessness and nerves he had retained from Caermere. It was in - an illuminating second that he saw all this, and perceived that she was - very beautiful, and flushed with the deep consciousness that she read his - thoughts like big print. - </p> - <p> - “It was the greatest cheek in the world—my summoning you like this,” - she said, as they shook hands. “Yes—sit here. Put your hat and paper - on the sofa. This is my only reception room—but we might have a - little more light.” - </p> - <p> - She moved to the window, to pull back the curtains, and then about the - room, lightly rearranging some of the chairs and trinkets—all with a - buoyant daintiness of motion which inexpressibly charmed him. “These are - not my things, you know,” she explained over her shoulder. “I am not - trying in the least to live up to them, either. I take the place, - furnished, for three months, from the widow of an Indian officer. You - would think she would have some Indian things—but it might have all - come direct from Tottenham Court Road. It’s impossible to get the - slightest sensation of being at home, here. One could really extract more - domesticity out of four bare cottage walls. Or no, what am I saying?”—she - had returned, and sinking into the low chair opposite him, pointed her - words with a frank smile into his face—-“it <i>is</i> a bit like - home—to see you here!” - </p> - <p> - “I am very glad to be here,” he assured her, nodding his unfeigned - pleasure. “But it seemed as if you would never tell me I might come.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I was worried to death. There were all sorts of things to see about - when I first came up,” she explained with animation. “And I had the - feeling that I didn’t want you to come till I had smoothed some of my - wrinkles out, and had achieved a certain control over my nerves. It was - not fair to myself—the view you had of me at Caermere.” - </p> - <p> - The view of her that was afforded him here brought a glow of admiration to - his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “To think of your being my cousin!” he said, with some remote echo in his - own voice of the surprise which he recalled in Dicky Westland’s tone. It - seemed wonderful indeed as he looked at her, and smiled. He shook his head - presently, in response to her question whether he had any recent news from - Caermere, and continued to observe her with a rapt sense of the miraculous - being embodied before his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “But the duke is very low indeed,” she told him in a hushed voice. “I had - it yesterday from—from one of the household.” - </p> - <p> - The tidings barely affected him. That side of his mind was still fast in - the rut of last night’s mutiny. - </p> - <p> - “I have quite decided to go away,” he announced, calmly. “I get no good - out of the life here. It does not suit me. Whatever comes to me, why, that - I shall accept, but to use it in my own way, living my own life. Now that - I am a free man, it astonishes me that I did not rebel long ago.” - </p> - <p> - “Rebel—against what?” she asked him, with a kind of confidential - candor which put him even more at his ease. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, against everything,” he smiled back at her. “This existence that they - arranged for me—it is like being embalmed and wrapped in - mummy-cloths. Personally I do not survive a thousand years—but I am - but one link in a long chain of respectable people who have lived like - that, without living at all, for many thousands. It is being buried alive. - Why, you will see what I mean—a man is a creature different from - other human creatures. He has an individual nature of his own. His tastes, - his inclinations, his impulses and ideas, are not quite like those of the - people about him. He would be happy to follow these according to his own - wishes. But then everybody seizes upon him and says: ‘No, you must be and - do just like the rest. You will be noticed and disliked if you indulge in - even the slightest variation. These are the coats you are to wear, and the - hats and caps and neckties. This is Duke Street, which you must live in. - This is the hour to get up, this is the hour to make calls, this is the - corner of your card to turn down, this is the list of people at whose - houses you must dine, these are your friends ready-made for you out of a - book.’ And truly what is it all?—utter, utter emptiness. You are - really not alive at all! You have no more personal sensation of your own - existence than an insect. It is all this that I rebel against.” - </p> - <p> - She reclined a little in her chair, and covered him with a meditative - gaze. “I know the feeling,” she commented thoughtfully. “I used to have - sharp spasms of it—oh, ages ago—whenever a shopwoman showed me - something, and said, ‘This is very much worn just now,’ or, ‘We are - selling a great deal of this.’ Then I would not have that particular thing - if I died for it. But do you really feel so earnestly about it?” She put - the question in deference to a gesture by which he had signified the - inadequacy of her comparison. “Ah, the real life, as you call it, is a - more complicated thing than one fancies.” - </p> - <p> - “But that is precisely the point,” with vivacity. “I have thought much - about that. Is it not the artificial life which is complicated instead? Do - we not confound the two? If you consider it, what can be more simple that - the natural life of a man? If an astronomer, for example, has a difficult - problem to work out, he first busies himself in discovering and putting - aside all the things which seem to be factors in it but really are not. - One by one he gets rid of them, until at last he has the naked equation - before him—and then a result is possible. But with us, it seems that - we go quite the other way about it. We take the problem of life—which - is extraordinarily simple to begin with—and we pile upon it and - around it thousands of outside rules and conventions and traditions, and - we confuse it with other thousands of prejudices, and insincerities, and - old mistakes that no one has had the industry to examine—and then we - look with embarrassment at what we have done, and shake our heads, and say - that the problem is too hard, that it passes the wisdom of man to solve - it.” - </p> - <p> - “I wish you joy of solving it,” she remarked, after another reflective - survey of his face. “I am sure I wish some one would do it. But you spoke - of going away. How would that help matters?” - </p> - <p> - The recurrence of the question startled him. He looked at her with lifted - head, recalling swiftly meanwhile the tone in which Frances had uttered - those same words. A blurred, imperfect retrospect of the morning’s events - and talks passed fleetingly across his mind—and its progress - disquieted him. Some tokens of perturbation on his face seemed to warn - her, for she went on without waiting for an answer. - </p> - <p> - “I am not surprised to find you feeling like this,” she said. “It is quite - the effect that I imagined London would produce upon you. I have no right - to say so, perhaps, but it seemed to me from the start that it was being - badly managed—I mean the way you were sent here by yourself, and - given nothing to do except follow about where Lord Lingfield led. It is - not what I should have done—but the truth is that Emanuel knows - nothing at all about the characters and temperaments of human beings. If - men agree with him, he thinks they are good men, and if they disagree with - him, they are bad men—or at least not worth thinking about at all.” - </p> - <p> - “I had quite resolved not to commit myself to his System,” Christian - informed her, “even before I made up my mind to—to take other - steps.” - </p> - <p> - His closing euphemism seemed to attract her attention. “What is it you - intend to do?” she asked of him, softly. She sat upright again, with an - air of friendly curiosity. - </p> - <p> - In the face of this query, he discovered that his intentions were by no - means so clear to himself as they had been. “It is still rather in the - air,” he said vaguely. “But we talk always of myself! Tell me, instead, - about yourself! It is an infinitely more pleasing subject. You are here in - London for only three months? And you are alone here?” - </p> - <p> - She smiled in an indefinite fashion, and leaned back in her chair. “Ought - I to have a chaperon? I dare say. But there is no room for her here. The - flat accommodates just one solitary elderly lady and here you behold her. - Oh, I am a hundred years old, I assure you!” - </p> - <p> - He could only wave his hand at her in genial deprecation. “Oh, who is - younger than you?” he murmured. - </p> - <p> - She sighed. “By the almanac I am four-and-twenty,” she went on, with a new - note of gentle melancholy. “But by my own feelings, I seem to have been - left over from the reign of William the Fourth. And really, it is not my - own feelings alone—when I go out, I observe that very old men take - me down to dinner, and talk to me precisely as if I were a contemporary of - theirs.” - </p> - <p> - “When we were together at Caermere,” interposed Christian, “you confessed - to me that you were not happy—and it was my great delight to pledge - myself that if ever there was anything I could do—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, there is nothing at all,” she interrupted him to declare. “My case - will not come up. It has all been settled. The accounts, or settlements—or - whatever you call them—have been made up, and my share of my - husband’s share of his father’s interest in <i>his</i> father’s estate has - been ascertained. I have six hundred a year for life. It is a mild and - decorous competence. I do not complain. It will keep a genteel roof over - my head here in London, or a small house and a pony-trap in the country. - It will run to a month at a pension in the cheaper parts of Switzerland, - or perhaps even to a lodging and a bath-chair at Brighton, when it is not - quite the season. Oh, I shall get on very well indeed—at all - events,” she added with a touch of bitterness, “much better than I deserve - to do.” - </p> - <p> - Christian lifted his brows in protesting inquiry. “You always speak in - that tone of yourself! It pains me to hear you. I cannot think of any one - who deserves the kindness and friendly good offices of fortune more than - you.” - </p> - <p> - Lady Cressage gave an uncertain little laugh. “You are too generous-minded—too - innocent. You do not know. Me? My dear friend—I have committed the - unpardonable sin! I humiliated and degraded myself to win a great prize in - the world’s lottery—and I did not bring it off. That is my offense. - If I had won the trick—why, they would be burning incense before me! - But I lost instead—and they leave me quite by myself to digest my - own disgust. I don’t talk about it—I have never said as much to any - living soul as I am saying to you—I don’t know why I am telling you—” - </p> - <p> - “Is there any one else who would listen with such sympathy?” Christian - heard himself interjecting. - </p> - <p> - “But it is too cruel,” continued Lady Cressage, “too shameful a story! I - was not happy at home. It was nobody’s fault in particular; I don’t know - that we were more evil-tempered and selfish among ourselves than most - other middle-class households with four hundred a year, and three - daughters to marry off. I was the youngest, and I had the sort of good - looks which were in fashion at the moment, and mamma worked very hard for - me—pretending to idolize me before people though we yapped at each - other like fox-terriers in private—and I was lucky in making friends—and - so I went swimming out on the top of the wave that season, the most envied - poor fool of a girl in London. And when Cressage wanted to marry me—I - was dizzy with the immensity of what seemed to be offered me. My parents - were mad with pride and ecstasy. Everybody around me pretended a kind of - holy joy at my triumph. I give you my word!—never so much as a - whisper came to my ears of any shadow of a reason why I should hesitate—why - I should think a second time! Do you see? There was not an honest person—a - single woman or a man with decency enough to warn an ignorant girl of her - danger—within reach of me anywhere. They all kept as silent as the - grave—with that lying grin of congratulation on their mean faces—and - they led me to be married to the beast!” - </p> - <p> - She had sat erect in her chair as she spoke, and now she rose to her feet, - motioning him not to get up as she did so. She took a restless step or - two, her shoulders trembling with excitement, and her hands clenched. - “Ah-h! I will never forgive them the longest day of my life!” she called - out. - </p> - <p> - Then, with a determined shake of her head, she seemed to master herself. - Standing before a small mirror in the panel of a cabinet against the wall, - she busied her beautiful hands in correcting the slight disorder of her - hair. When she turned to him, it was with a faint, tremulous smile - surmounting the signs of stress and agitation upon her face. She sank into - the chair again, with a long-drawn breath of resignation. - </p> - <p> - “But it isn’t nice to abuse the dead,” she remarked, striving after an - effect of judicial fairness in her voice. “I didn’t mean to speak like - that. And for that matter, why should I speak at all of him? One doesn’t - blame a wolf for man-eating. You execrate instead the people who - deliberately throw a helpless human being to the wolf. I even say to - myself that I have no quarrel with Cressage. He was as God made him—if - the thought isn’t blasphemous. He was a great, overgrown, bullying, - blubbering, ignorant boy, who never got beyond the morals of the stables - and kennels, and the standards of taste of the servants’ hall. One could - hardly call him vicious; that is to say, he did not deliberately set out - to cause suffering. He did not do anything on deliberation. He acted just - as his rudimentary set of barbaric impulses prompted him to act. Some of - these impulses would have been regarded as virtues in a more intelligent - man. For example, he was wildly, insanely jealous of me. It took the most - impossible and vulgar forms, it is true, but still——” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, need we talk of him?” It was with almost a groan of supplication that - Christian stopped her. “He is too unpleasant to think about. Nothing that - I had heard of him before made me sorry that he was dead—but this—it - is too painful. But now you are a free woman—you see your path well - before you, to travel as you choose. And what will you do?” - </p> - <p> - She sighed and threw up her hands with a gesture of contemptuous - indifference. “What does any English lady with six hundred a year do? - Devote her energies to seeing that she gets—let me see, what is the - sum?—to seeing that she gets twelve thousand shillings’ worth of - respectable discomfort, and secures reasonable opportunities for making - those about her uncomfortable also. Oh, I don’t in the least know what I - shall do. The truth is,” she added, with a sad smile, “I have lived alone - with my dislikes so long, and I have nourished and watered them so - carefully, that now they fill my whole garden. They have quite choked out - the flowers of existence—these thick, rank, powerful weeds. And I - haven’t the energy—perhaps I haven’t even the desire—to pull - them up. They seem appropriate, somehow—they belong to the - desolation that has been made of my life.” - </p> - <p> - Christian bent forward, and made a movement as if to take one of the hands - which lay dejectedly in her lap. He did not do this, but touched a - projecting bit of lace upon one of the flounces of her gown, and twisted - it absent-mindedly in his fingers instead. - </p> - <p> - “You are still unhappy!” he said reproachfully, his eyes glowing with the - intensity of his tender compassion. “I do not forgive myself for my - inability to be of help to you. It is incredible that there is not - something I can do.” - </p> - <p> - “But you are going away,” she reminded him, in a soft monotone. “You have - your own unpleasantnesses to think of—and you are occupied with - plans for rearranging your life on new lines. I only hope that you will - find the happiness you are setting out in search of. But then men can - always get what they want, if they are only sufficiently in earnest about - it.” - </p> - <p> - “It is not entirely settled that I shall go away,” said Christian. He - twisted the lace in the reverse direction, and hesitated over his further - words. “That was only one of several alternatives. I am clear only about - my resolve to make a stand—to break away. But if I remained here in - England—in London?”—He looked with mingled trepidation and - inquiry into her face. “If I did not go abroad—is there anything I - could do?” - </p> - <p> - She regarded with attentiveness the hand which was playing havoc with her - flounce—and it straightway desisted. She continued to study the - little screwed-up cone of lace, in meditative silence. At last she shook - her head. “You must not give it another thought,” she said, but with no - touch of dictation in her musing tone. Her eyes dwelt upon him with a - remote and ruminating gaze. “I belong to a past generation. My chances in - the lottery are all exhausted—things of the past. You must not - bother about me. And I think you ought to give up those ideas of yours - about breaking away, as you call it. London hasn’t been made pleasant for - you, simply because the wrong people have gone the wrong way about it to - arrange matters for you. But there are extremely nice people among the set - you know, if you once understood them. With your position, you can command - any kind of associations you wish to have. After it is all said and done, - I think England has its full share of cultivated and refined people of - intelligence. I have not seen much of the Continent, but I do not believe - that it possesses any superiority over us in that respect.” - </p> - <p> - “But in your own case,” urged Christian, somewhat hazily; “you said that - there were no honest people about you to warn you—though you were in - the best society. That is my feeling—that you do not get the truth - from them. They do not lie to you—but they are silent about the - truth.” - </p> - <p> - “Is it different elsewhere?” she asked, gravely. “Is not the young girl - sold everywhere? Do you think that marriage is a more sacred and ethereal - thing among the great families of France or Austria or Germany than it is - with us? I have heard differently.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, we are all equally uncivilized about women,” he admitted. “I feel - very strongly about that. But you, who have such knowledge and such clear - opinions—would you not love to do something to alter this injustice - to women? The thought has been much in my mind, of late.” He paused to - reflect in fleeting wonderment upon the fact that only this morning he had - been absorbed in it. “And my meaning is,” he stumbled on, “there is - nothing I would rather devote my life to than the task of making existence - easier and broader and more free for young women. Could there be any finer - work than that? I know that it appeals to you.” - </p> - <p> - She looked at him with an element of doubt in her glance. “Nothing appeals - very much to me—and I’m afraid my sex least of all. I do not like - them, to tell the truth. I never get over the surprised disgust of waking - up in the morning and finding that I am one of them. But this is rather - wandering from the point, isn’t it? I was urging you to give over the - notion of making a demonstration. You have waited thus long; be content to - wait just a little longer. My private belief is that the Duke will not - live the week out.” - </p> - <p> - Still, the assurance seemed to suggest nothing to him. “But if he dies,” - he protested, “how then will I be different? I am lonely—I am like a - forlorn man escaped on a raft from a shipwreck—I eat my heart out in - friendless solitude. And if I have a great title—why, then I shall - be more alone than ever. It is that way with such men—I have seen - that they hold themselves aloof—and others do not come freely near - them. It frightens me—the thought of living without friends. I say - to you solemnly that I would give it all—the position, the authority - and dignity, the estates, Caermere, everything—for the assurance of - one warm, human heart answering in every beat to mine! Has friendship - perished out of the world, then? Or has it never existed, except in the - books?” - </p> - <p> - Her beauty had never been so manifest to him, as now while he gazed at - her, and she did not speak. There seemed the faint, delicate hint of a - tenderness in the classical lines of the face that he had not seen before. - It was as if his appeal had brought forth some latent aptitude of romance, - to mellow the direct glance of her eyes, and soften in some subtle way the - whole charm of her presence. A new magic was visible in her loveliness—and - the sense that his words had conjured it into being thrilled him with a - wistful pride. No woman had thus moved him heretofore. The perception that - she was plastic to his mental touch—that this flower-like marvel of - comeliness and grace, of exquisite tastes and pure dignity of soul, could - be swayed by his suggestion, would vibrate at the tone of his voice—awed - him as if he were confronted by a miracle. His breath came and went under - a dull consciousness of pain—which was yet more like pleasure. A - bell sounded somewhere within the house, and its brief crystal resonance - seemed somehow to clarify the ferment of his thoughts. All at once, as by - the flooding of sunlight into a darkened labyrinth, his mind was clear to - him. He knew what he wanted—nay, what all the years had been leading - him up to desire. - </p> - <p> - With his gaze maintained upon her face—timidly yet with rapturous - intentness, as if fearful of breaking the spell—he rose to his feet, - and stood over her. A confusion of unspoken words trembled on his lips, as - her slow glance lifted itself to his. - </p> - <p> - “It was like the pleasantry of a beautiful, roguish little girl”—he - began, smiling nervously down at her—“your saying that you belonged - to a generation earlier than mine. Do you think I do not know my - generation? And am I blind, that I do not see what is most precious in it? - This is what——” - </p> - <p> - An extraordinary outburst of disputing voices, in the little hallway close - at hand, broke in upon his words. He stopped, stared inquiringly at Lady - Cressage, and beheld her rise, frowning and hard-eyed, and step toward the - door. A vague sense of the familiar came to him from the louder of the - accents outside. - </p> - <p> - The door was opened, and the domestic, red-faced, and spluttering with - wrath, began some stammered explanation to her mistress. What she sought - to say did not appear, for on the instant the door was pushed farther - back, and a veiled lady took up her energetic stand upon the threshold. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t blame her,” this lady cried, in high, rapid tones. “I forced my way - in—something told me that you were at home. And when you hear my - news——” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, since you are here”—Lady Cressage began, coldly. “But, really, - Mrs. Torr——” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no—call me Cora!” the other interrupted, vivaciously. - </p> - <p> - She went further, and bustling her arms against Edith’s shoulders, - purported to kiss her on both cheeks. Then, drawing back her head, she - went on: “My dear, the duke died at two this morning! It’s in all the - papers. But what isn’t in any of the papers is that the heir is missing. - It’s a very curious story. Mr. Westland here”—by her gesture it - seemed that Dicky was behind her in the hallway—“went to Duke Street - this noon, and found Christian’s man in great alarm. The youngster had - bolted, leaving a note saying merely that he was called away. Mr. - Westland’ then hunted me up, and we started out, for I had a kind of clue, - don’t you see. I knew where he was at ten o’clock this forenoon—and - we drove to Arundel Street, and there we found——” - </p> - <p> - Christian hurriedly stepped forward. “Oh, I think you may take it that I - am not lost,” he called out, revealing himself to the astonished Cora. For - the moment the chief thing in his mind was satisfaction at having - interrupted her disclosures about Arundel Street. - </p> - <p> - Then, as other thoughts crowded in upon him, he straightened his shoulders - and lifted his chin. “It’s all right,” he said, with a reassuring wave of - the hand toward the womenfolk of his family. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_PART4" id="link2H_PART4"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - PART IV - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>n the morning of - the funeral, six days later, Christian rose very early, and took coffee in - his library shortly after seven. Then, lighting a cigarette, he resumed - work upon several drawers full of papers, open on the big table, where it - had been left off the previous evening. The details of the task seemed - already familiar to him. He scanned one document after another with an - informed eye, and put it in its proper pile without hesitation. He made - notes suggested by the contents of each, on the pad before him, with a - quill pen and corrected the vagaries of this unaccustomed implement, in - the matter of blots and inadequate lines, with painstaking patience. There - were steel nibs in abundance, and two gold stylographic pens, but he clung - resolutely to the embarrassing feather. - </p> - <p> - After a time he rested from his labors, and rang the bell beside his desk; - almost upon the instant Falkner appeared in the doorway. - </p> - <p> - “If Mr. Westland is up,” said Christian, “you may ask him to join me - here.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, Your Grace,” the smooth-voiced, soft-mannered man replied, and - vanished. - </p> - <p> - The young duke rose, yawned slightly and moved to the window nearest him. - It opened, upon examination, and he stepped out on a narrow balcony of - stone which skirted the front of the square tower he had quitted. The - outlook seemed to be to the northeast, for a patch of sunshine lay upon - the outer edge of the balcony at the right. Breathing in delightedly the - fresh Maymorning air, he gazed upon the bold prospect of hills receding in - lifted terraces high against the remote sky-line. He had not seen just - this view from Caermere before—and he said to himself that it was - finer than all the others. Above each lateral stretch of purplish-gray - granite, to the farthest distance, there ran a band of cool green foliage—the - inexpressibly tender green of young birch trees; their thin, chalk-white - stems were revealed in delicate tracery against indefinable sylvan - shadows. - </p> - <p> - Through the early stillness, he could hear the faint murmur of the Devon, - gurgling in the depths of the ravine between him and the nearest hill. - “To-morrow,” he thought, “will begin the true life! All this will be my - home—mine! mine! and before anybody is up in the morning I will be - down where that river of black water runs, and fish in the deep pools for - trout.” - </p> - <p> - Some one touched his elbow. He turned with a quick nod and smile to greet - Dicky Westland. “I am up ages before you, you see,” he said genially. “It - was barely daylight when I woke—and I suffered tortures trying to - remain in bed even till six. Oh, this is wonderful out here!” - </p> - <p> - “Awfully jolly place, all round,” commented Dicky. He blinked to exorcise - the spirit of sleep and gazed at the prospect with determined enthusiasm. - “I haven’t looked about much, but I’ve found out one thing already. - There’s a ghost in my room—and I think he must have been a - professional pedestrian in life.” - </p> - <p> - “Splendid!” cried Christian, gaily. “Have you had coffee—or it is - tea you people drink, isn’t it? Then shall we get to work? I want the - papers out of the way before Emanuel comes. They will all be here between - nine and ten. I wanted to send carriages to Craven Arms, but it seemed - there were not horses enough, so hired traps are to be brought up from the - station.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you know who are coming?” - </p> - <p> - “Lord Julius, and Emanuel and his wife; the captain and his wife and - brother; Lord Chobham, and Lord Lingfield—I don’t know if any of - their women will come—and Lady Cressage. Then there are some - solicitors, and perhaps some old acquaintances of my grandfather’s. At all - events, Welldon has ordered four carriages and a break. There is to be - breakfast at ten, and I shall be glad when it is all over—when - everything is over. Do you know?—I have never been to a funeral in - my life—and I rather funk it.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, they’re not so bad as you always think they’re going to be,” said the - secretary, consolingly. “The main thing is the gloves. I never could - understand it—but black gloves are invariably about two sizes - smaller than ordinary colors. You want to look out for that. But I dare - say your man is up to the trick—he looks a knowing party, does - Falkner.” - </p> - <p> - “I fancy I shall give him back to Emanuel,” remarked Christian, - thoughtfully. - </p> - <p> - “He is an excellent servant, but he reminds me too much of Duke Street. - Did you notice the old butler yesterday afternoon?—he stood at the - head of the steps to meet us—that is old Barlow. I have a great - affection for him. I shall have him valet me, I think.” - </p> - <p> - “Isn’t he rather venerable for the job?” suggested the other. “And - wouldn’t it be rather a come-down for a head butler? They’re awfully keen - about their distinctions among themselves, you know.” - </p> - <p> - Christian smiled with placidity. “I think that the man whom I pick out to - be nearest me will feel that he has the best place in the household. I - shall be very much surprised indeed if that isn’t Barlow’s view. And of - course he will have his subordinates. But now let us take Welldon’s - statement for the last half of ’95, and the two halves of ’96. - Then we can get to the mine. Unless I am greatly mistaken, that is most - important. I find that the mining company’s lease falls in early next - year. And won’t you ring the bell and have Welldon sent up when he comes?” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - Upon mature reflection Christian decided not to descend to meet his guests - at breakfast. When he had dismissed the estate agent, Welldon, after a - prolonged and very comprehensive interview, he announced this decision to - Westland. “You must go down and receive them in my place,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “I will say that you have a cold,” suggested Dicky. - </p> - <p> - “By no means,” returned Christian, promptly. - </p> - <p> - “It is not necessary to enter into details. You receive them—that is - all. I have spoken with Barlow; he knows what to do with them in the - matter of rooms and so on. I am breakfasting here. And afterward—say - at eleven o’clock—I will see some of them here. There is an hour to - spare then, before we go to the church. I am not clear about this—which - ones to see first. There is that stupid reading of the will after we get - back——” - </p> - <p> - “By George! do they do that still?” interrupted Dicky. “I know they did in - Trollope and George Eliot—but I thought it had gone out.” - </p> - <p> - “It is kept up in old families,” replied Christian, simply. “In this case - it is a pure formality, of course. There is no mystery whatever. The will - was made in 1859, after the entail was broken, and merely bequeaths - everything in general terms to the heir-at-law. My grandfather covenanted, - at the same time, to Lord Julius to make no subsequent will save by his - advice and consent—so that there can be no complications of any - kind. I am thinking whether it would be better to see Lord Julius and - Emanuel before the reading of this will or after. Really it makes no - difference—perhaps it is better to get it over with. Yes—say - to them that I beg they will come to me here at eleven. You might bring - them up and then leave us together—or no, they know the way. Let - them come up by themselves.” - </p> - <p> - Through the open window there came the grinding sound of wheels upon the - gravel of the drive, around at the east front. At a gesture from the - other, Dicky hurried away. - </p> - <p> - Left to himself, Christian wandered again to the casement, and regarded - the spacious view with renewed interest. Falkner entered presently, - bearing a large tray, and spread some covered dishes upon a cloth on the - library table. - </p> - <p> - “How many carriages have come?” the master asked from his place at the - window. - </p> - <p> - “Four, Your Grace—and a break with some wreaths and Lord Chobham’s - man and a maid—I think it is Lady Cressage’s maid.” - </p> - <p> - “Who has come—outside the family?” - </p> - <p> - “Three gentlemen, Your Grace—one of them is Mr. Soman. Barlow thinks - they are all solicitors.” - </p> - <p> - Christian mused briefly upon the presence of Lord Julius’s man of - business. Since that first evening of his on English soil, at Brighton, he - had not seen this Mr. Soman. He remembered nothing of him, indeed, save - his green eyes. And now that he thought of it, even this was not a - personal recollection. It was the remark of the girl on the boat, about - his having green eyes, which stuck in his memory. He smiled, as he looked - idly out on the hills. - </p> - <p> - The girl on the boat! Was it not strange that his mind should have applied - to her this distant and chilling designation? Only a few days ago—it - would not be a week till to-morrow—she had seemed to him the most - important person in the world. A vision of his future had possessed him, - in which she alone had a definite share. How remote it seemed—and - how curious! - </p> - <p> - He recalled, quite impersonally, what he had heard in one way or another - about her family. Her father was some sort of underling in the general - post office—a clerk or accountant, or something of the kind. There - was a son—of course, that would be the brother Cora had spoken of—and - the ambition of the family had expended itself in sending this boy to a - public school, and to the university. The family had made great sacrifices - to do this—and apparently these had been wasted. He had the distinct - impression of having been told that the son was a worthless fellow. How - often that occurred in England—that everything was done for the son, - and nothing at all for the daughters! Then in fairness he reflected that - it was even worse in France. Yes, but somehow Frenchwomen had a talent for - doing for themselves. They were cleverer than their brothers—more - helpful, resourceful—in spite of the fact that the brothers had - monopolized the advantages. Images of capable, managing Frenchwomen he had - known rose before his mind’s eye; he saw them again accomplishing wonders - of work, diligent, wise, sensible, understanding everything that was said - or done. Yet, oddly enough, these very paragons of feminine capacity had a - fatal unfeminine defect; they did not know how to bring up their sons. - Upon that side they were incredibly weak and silly; it was impossible to - prevent their making pampered fools of their boys. - </p> - <p> - Suddenly his vagrant fancies were concentrated upon the question of how - Frances Bailey would bring up a boy—a son of her own. It was an - absurd query to have raised itself in his mind—and he put it away - from him with promptitude. There remained, however, a kind of mental - protest lodged on her behalf among his thoughts. He perceived that in his - ruminations he had done her an injustice. She was not inferior in - capability or courage to any of the self-sufficient Frenchwomen he had - been thinking of, and in the matter of intellectual attainments was she - not immeasurably superior to them all? The translucent calm of her mind—penetrating, - far-reaching, equable as the starlight—how queer that it should be - coupled with such a bad temper! She always quarreled with him, and bullied - him, when they were together. Even when she was exhibiting to him the - sunniest aspects of her mood, there was always a latent defiance of him - underneath, ready to spring forth at a word. He remembered how, at the - close of their first meeting, she had refused to tell him her name. He saw - now that this obstinacy of hers had annoyed him more than he had imagined. - For an instant it assumed almost the character of a grievance—but - then his attention fastened itself at random upon the remarkable fact that - he had seen her only twice in his life. Upon reflection, this did seem - very strange indeed. But it was the fact—and in the process of - readjusting his impressions of the past six months to fit with it, the - figure of her receded in his mind, grew less as she moved away under a - canopy of dull yellowish-green, which vaguely identified itself with the - trees on the Embankment. She dwindled thus till he thought of her again, - with a dim impulse of insistence upon the phrase, as the girl on the boat. - The transition to thoughts of other things gave his mind no sort of - trouble. - </p> - <p> - He pondered some of these other things—formlessly and - light-heartedly—while he stood at the library table, and picked - morsels here and there from the dishes laid for him. His absence of - appetite he referred tacitly to the warmth of the day, as it was sunnily - developing itself outside. Here on this shaded side of the castle, it was - cool enough, but there was the languor of spring in the air. He - scrutinized this new library of his afresh. Until Barlow had opened it for - him, shortly after his arrival yesterday, it could not have been used for - years. Most of its appointments had a very ancient look; no doubt they - must date back at least to the seventh Duke’s time. It was incredible that - his grandfather, the eighth Duke, should have been inspired to furnish a - library. There were many shelves of apparently very old books as well, but - there was also a vast deal of later rubbish—stock and sporting - annuals, veterinary treatises, county directories and the like—which - he would lose no time in putting out. He saw already how delightful a room - could be made of it. It had the crowning merit of being connected with the - suite of apartments he had chosen for his own. From the door at the side, - opposite the fine old fireplace, one entered the antechamber to his - dressing-room. This gave to the library an intimate character, upon which - he reflected with pleasure. Here he would come, secure from interruption, - and spend among his books the choicest and most fruitful hours of his - leisure. It was plain to him that henceforth he would do a great deal of - reading, and perhaps—why not?—of writing too. - </p> - <p> - There was a rap upon the door, and then Falkner, opening it, announced - Lord Julius and his son. They came in together, diffusing an impalpable - effect of constraint. The elder man seemed in Christian’s eyes bigger than - ever; his white beard spread over the broad chest like a vine run wild. - Emanuel, who lapsed in the wake of his father, was unexpectedly small by - comparison. The shadows, where the two stood, emphasized the angular - peculiarities of his bald head. His thin face took an effect of sallow - pallor from his black clothes. Already he had his black gloves in his - hands. - </p> - <p> - Christian stepped forward to meet them—and was suddenly conscious of - the necessity for an apology. “I did not come down,” he murmured, as he - shook hands with a grave smile—“I am not quite master of myself yet. - It is still strange to me. But come to the window, and let us sit down.” - </p> - <p> - They followed him, and took the chairs he pushed out for them. He perched - himself on the corner of the big table, and lightly stroked the glazed - boot of the foot which was not on the floor. “I am glad to hear that - Kathleen has come,” he said to his cousin. “I hope she is very well.” - </p> - <p> - “Extremely so,” replied Emanuel. Then, upon reflection, he added, “We had - hoped that you would come to us, on your way down from London.” - </p> - <p> - “There was so much to do in town,” explained Christian, hazily. “My - grandfather’s lawyers came up at once from Shrewsbury, and it was - necessary to see a good deal of them—and then there were the tailors - and outfitters. It was all I could do to get away yesterday morning. And - of course—by that time I was needed here.” He turned to the other. - “And you are very well, Uncle Julius?” - </p> - <p> - “I am well,” said the elder man, with what Christian suspected for the - instant to be significant brevity. The father and son had exchanged a - look, as well, which seemed to have a meaning beyond his comprehension. - But then he forgot these momentary doubts in the interest of the discovery - that there were tears in his great-uncle’s eyes. - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius unaffectedly got out a handkerchief, and wiped them away. He - looked up at the young man as through a mist. “I never dreamed that I - should feel it so much,” he said, huskily. “I am amazed at myself—and - then ashamed at my amazement—but Kit’s death has somehow put me - about and upset me to a tremendous extent. There was thirteen years - between us—but when you get to be an old man, that seems no more - than as many weeks. And Emanuel”—he addressed his son with the - solemnity befitting a revelation—“I am an old man.” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel frowned a little in his abstracted fashion. “You are less old than - any other man of your years in England,” he protested. - </p> - <p> - Christian, listening, somehow found no conviction in these reassuring - words. It dawned upon him suddenly that Lord Julius had in truth aged a - great deal. The perception of this disarranged the speech he had in his - mind. - </p> - <p> - “There are a thousand things to be talked over,” he began, with an eye - upon Emanuel, “but I do not know if this is quite the opportune time. I - wished to lose no time in seeing you both, of course—but you will - not be hurrying away. No doubt there will be a better opportunity.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t think it will be found that there is so very much to say,” - remarked Emanuel. A gentle but persistent melancholy seemed to pervade his - tone. - </p> - <p> - “There is the complication”—Christian began again, and hesitated. - “That is to say—you know even better and more fully than I do, to - what a great extent I am in your hands. And there the complication, as I - said, arises. I have been working very hard on the figures—with the - lawyers in London, and here since I arrived—but before we touch - those at all, I ought to tell you frankly, Emanuel: I do not see my way to - meeting the conditions which you suggested to me last autumn, when we met - first.” Emanuel seemed in no wise perturbed by the announcement. His - nervous face maintained its unmoved gravity. “It was never anything more - than a pious hope that you would,” he commented. “I may add,” he went on, - “that even this hope cannot be said to have survived your first visit. - Otherwise, I should have tried to have you see London under different - auspices—through different eyes.” - </p> - <p> - The calmness with which the decision he had regarded as so momentous met - acceptance disconcerted Christian. He had mentally prepared for the - defense of his hostile attitude toward the System—and, lo! not a - syllable of challenge was forthcoming. - </p> - <p> - “But there remains, all the same, the principal difficulty,” he said, - thinking hard upon his words. “It does not lessen my obligations to you as - my chief creditors.” He looked from one to the other, as if in uncertainty - as to which was the master mind. “You have both been very open with me. - You have told me why it was that you devoted a large fortune to buying up - the mortgages on the estate which is now mine—and to lending always - more money upon it—until now the interest eats up the income like a - visitation of locusts. But my knowledge of the motives does not help me. - And you must not think, either,” his confidence was returning now, and - with it a better control over his phrases—“that I am begging for - help. I look the situation in the face, and I do not feel that I am afraid - of it. I see already many ways in which I can make a better fight of it - than my grandfather made.” - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius held up a hand. “Is there not a misconception there?” he - asked, pleasantly enough. “A fight involves antagonists—and I - intervened in poor Kit’s affairs as a protector, not as an assailant.” - </p> - <p> - Christian stood erect, and knitted his brows in puzzled thought upon both - the manner and the matter of these words. - </p> - <p> - “But it is still the same,” he persisted. “You were his good friend—as - I know you are mine—or hope very sincerely that you are—but - none the less you were his overwhelmingly big creditor, as now you are - mine. If one is greatly in debt, then one struggles to get out. It is in - that sense that I meant the word ‘fight.’ And, to repeat, I see many ways - of making progress. I find that Welldon is not exclusively my man. He is - the agent of three other estates as well, because we could not pay him - enough here for all of his services. That I will alter at once. I find - that we have no mineral bailiff. The company at Coalbrook has paid such - royalties as it pleased, without check of any sort. We have the right to - examine their books, but it has never been exercised. Next week my - secretary and Welldon go to Coalbrook. I find that the company’s lease of - twenty-one years expires next February. Eh bien! It will be strange if I - do not get ten thousand pounds hereafter, where less than four has come in - hitherto. My lawyers already know of capitalists who desire to bid for the - new lease—and the estimate of increase is theirs, not mine. But - these are details. I mention them to you only to show you that I am not - afraid. But anxious, I do not deny that I am. I have not been bred to - these things—and I may easily make mistakes. It would take a great - load off my mind if—if, in some measure, you would be my advisers as - well as my creditors.” - </p> - <p> - “Why should you ever have doubted that?” asked Emanuel, in a tone of - somber kindliness. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, but I do not mean advice about the management of the estate,” put in - Christian, with an over-eager instinct of self-defense. “I do not shrink - from taking that completely on my own shoulders. I would not trouble you - with anything of that sort. But of larger matters——” - </p> - <p> - “There is one large matter,” interrupted Lord Julius, speaking with great - deliberation, “which I find outweighing all others in my mind. It is not - new to my mind—but to-day it pushes everything else aside. It is the - thought of the family itself. I have told you this before—let me say - it to you again. Everything that I have done—every penny that I have - laid out—has been with this one end in view—the family. Yet - this morning I have been thinking of it—and I am frightened. While - poor old Kit lingered along, it was not so easy to grasp it, somehow—but - his going off makes it glaring. There are too few of us. I am alone in my - generation—and so is Emanuel in his—and so are you in yours, - save for those rowdy simpletons Eddy and Gus. And beyond you, there is - only that little girl baby of Cora Bayard’s! I want you to marry, - Christian. I want to see sons of yours growing up here at Caermere—hearty, - fine boys to carry the name of Torr along. That I am really in earnest - about. By comparison with it, nothing else on earth matters—for us.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I shall marry,” Christian replied, in smiling seriousness. “Of - course, that is the obvious thing to be done. And now”—he looked at - his watch—“it is time for me to dress. It is arranged that you and - Emanuel and Kathleen drive to the church in the carriage with me. It is - not quite orthodox precedence, I know, but I could not bear to—to - have it otherwise. And we will think no more about those other matters - until tomorrow.” - </p> - <p> - “Other matters,” repeated Lord Julius, and exchanged a look with his son - as they rose. “My dear Christian, there are no other matters.” - </p> - <p> - “No—not till to-morrow,” answered Christian, with a doubtful smile. - “But then I am afraid there are a good many.” - </p> - <p> - Emanuel filled in the pause. “Mr. Soman has brought all the papers,” he - said, with a flitting return to his lighter manner. “It is my father’s - meaning that the mortgages are extinguished.” - </p> - <p> - Christian gazed from one to the other with a face full of stupefaction. - His knees shook and sought to bend under him. Tremblingly he essayed to - speak—and his lips would make no sound. - </p> - <p> - Lord Julius laid his big hand on the young man’s shoulder—and - Christian, dimly recalling the effect of this touch in the days when he - had first known it, thrilled at the novel restfulness it somehow now - conferred. - </p> - <p> - “Only show me a son of yours,” said the old man, with tender gravity. “Let - me see an heir before I die.” - </p> - <p> - Without further words, the two left him. Christian, staring at the - shadowed door through which they had vanished, remained standing. His - confused brain quailed in the presence of thoughts more stupendous than - the ancient hills outside. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>everal thousand - people caught that day their first curious glimpse of the new master of - Caermere. At the most there were but a handful of aged persons, in the - throng clustered along the sides of the road winding down from the Castle - to the partially restored medieval collegiate church in the valley, who - could remember any other duke than the one being borne now to lie among - his fathers. The fact that these venerable folk, without exception, were - in the enjoyment of a day’s holiday from the workhouse, might have - interested a philosopher, had it been pressed upon his attention. - </p> - <p> - Quite two hundred horsemen, mounted in their own saddles on their own - beasts, rode in the long procession which descended from Caermere toward - the close of the noon hour. Clad in decent black for the greater part, - with old silk hats or other formal and somber headgear, they jogged - sedately in unison as the curbed horses stepped with caution down the - hill. Their browned and large-featured faces wore a uniform mask of - solemnity—distinguished chiefly by a resolute contraction of brows - and lips, and eyes triumphantly cleared of all traces of speculation. They - looked down, as they passed, upon the humbler dalesmen and laborers of the - hillsides, and their womenfolk and swarming children, with an impassive, - opacated gaze. - </p> - <p> - On the green, before the little covered gateway to the churchyard, dull - murmurs spread through this cortege, propelled sidelong from mouths which - scorned to open; the main principles of a proposed evolution came slowly, - in some mysterious way, to be comprehended among them: after almost less - backing and pushing into one another than might have been expected, they - perceived themselves emerging into an orderly arrangement, by which they - lined the two sides of the carriage-way crossing the green. They regarded - each other across this significant strip of gravel with a gloomy stolidity - of pride: the West Salop Yeomanry could scarcely have done it better. Then - another rustle of whispered sounds along their ranks toward the church—and - the civic side of their demonstration came uppermost. With a tightened - left hand upon the reins, they removed their hats, and held them so that - they could most readily read the names of the makers inside. - </p> - <p> - The carriages bearing the family of Torr, preceded by the curtained - hearse, and followed by a considerable number of broughams and closed - landaus recognizable as the property of the neighboring gentry, moved - silently forward along this lane of uncovered horsemen. The distant - swelling moan of the organ floated on the May air, in effect a comment - upon the fact that the tolling of the bell in the tower had ceased. - </p> - <p> - The intermittent noise of carriage-doors being sharply shut, and of wheels - getting out of the way, proceeded from the head of the procession at the - gate—and tenants and other undistinguished people on foot began to - press forward between the ranks. The horsemen, with furtive glances to - right and left, put on their hats again, and let the restive animals - stretch their muscles in the path. A few, dismounting, and giving their - bridles over to boys, joined those who were moving toward the church. The - majority, drawing their horses aside into groups formed at random, and - incessantly shifting, lent their intellects, and in some restrained - measure their tongues, to communion upon the one great problem of the day:—would - the new Duke set the Hunt on its legs again? - </p> - <p> - The question was so intimately connected with their tenderest emotions and - convictions, that no one liked to speak of it thoughtlessly or upon hasty - impulse. Even those who doubted most, shrank from hearing the prophecies - of evil they felt prone to utter. Men who nourished almost buoyant hopes - still hesitated to create a confidence which must be so precarious. While - the faint sustained recitative of the priest in the church could be heard, - insistent and disturbing like the monotone of a distant insect, and then - the sounds of the organ once more, and of singing, fell upon the sunlit - green, the horsemen spoke cautiously about the hounds. Even before Lord - Porlock’s death, things had not been what they should have been. The pack - was even then, as one might say, falling between two stools. The Torrs - hadn’t the money to keep the thing up properly themselves, but they showed - their teeth savagely the minute mention was made of getting in some - outside help. But since Porlock’s death—well, the condition of - affairs had been too painful for words. The horsemen shook their heads in - dumb eloquence upon this tragic interval. The Kennels had lapsed into a - state hardly to be thought of, much less discussed. There had been no - puppy-walk. Were there any young dogs at all? And, just heavens! if there - were, what must they be like! - </p> - <p> - And yet the country-side, outraged as it felt itself to be in its finest - feelings, beheld itself helpless. The old Duke—but really this was - not just the time and place for saying what they felt about the old Duke - They glanced uneasily toward the church when this theme suggested itself, - and nodded with meaning to one another. It could be taken for granted that - there were no illusions among them concerning <i>him</i>. But what about - the new man? Eyes brightened, lips quivered in beseeching inquiry, at the - mention of this omnipotent stranger. What was he like? Had anybody heard - anything that Welldon had said about him? It seemed that he was French - bred, and that, considered by itself, might easily involve the worst. But - then, was there not a story that he had ridden to the hounds in - Derbyshire? Perhaps the younger generation of Frenchmen were better - fellows than their fathers—but then, there was the reported fact - that the Duke of Orleans fell off his horse and broke his leg whenever he - tried to ride. Sir George had been informed in Paris that he would have - been King of France by this time if he had been able to stick in a saddle. - Yet, when one thought of it, did not this very fact indicate a fine new - public sentiment in France, on the subject of horsemanship—and - perhaps even of sport in general? - </p> - <p> - Christian, at the door of the church, had thought most of clenching his - teeth, and straining his upper-arms against his sides, to keep from - trembling. He had not pictured himself, beforehand, as entering this - burial place of his ancestors alone. Yet, in the churchyard, that was how - the matter arranged itself. His first idea had been to lead, with Kathleen - on his arm—but she had said her place was with Emanuel instead. Then - the alternative of walking arm-in-arm with Lord Julius had seemed to him - even more appropriate—but this too, in the confused constraint of - the moment, had gone wrong. Stealing an anxious half-glance over his - shoulder, he discovered that Lord Julius had placed himself at Kathleen’s - other side. The slight gesture of appealing invitation which he ventured - upon did not catch the old man’s eye. There was nothing for it but to - stand alone. - </p> - <p> - To be the strange, unsupported central figure in such a pageant unnerved - him. He stood tremulously behind the pall—a burden draped with a - great purple embroidered cloth, and borne upon the shoulders of eight - peasant-laborers from the estate—and noted fleetingly that, so - stunted and mean of stature were these poor hinds, he looked with ease - above them, over their load, into the faces of the two priests advancing - down the walk toward him. - </p> - <p> - These persons, an elderly, dark man, with a red hood folded upon his - shoulders, and a thin-faced fair young man, seemed to return the gaze with - meaning. He caught himself feeling that their eyes deferred to him; yes, - if they had bowed to the ground, the effect of their abasement before him - could not have been more palpable. Looking perfunctorily across the chasm - of death, their glances sought to, make interest with the living. He hated - them both on the instant. As they wheeled, and by their measured steps - forward drew slowly in their wake the bearers of the pall, the chant of - the elder—“I am the Resurrection and the Life”—came vaguely to - his ears, and found them hostile. - </p> - <p> - The interior of the old church—dim, cool, cloistral—was larger - than Christian had assumed from its outer aspect. Many people were - present, crowded close in the pews nearest the door—and strangely - enough, it was his perception that these were chiefly women, of some - unlabeled class which at least was not his own, that brought to him of a - sudden self-command. He followed the bier up the aisle to its - resting-place before the rail, took tacit cognizance of the place - indicated to him by some man in professional black, and stood aside to let - Kathleen pass in before him, all with a restored equanimity in which he - was himself much interested. Through the reading of the Psalm and the - Epistle he gave but the most vagrant attention to their words. The priests - read badly, for one thing; the whining artificiality of their elocution - annoyed and repelled him. But still more, his thoughts were diverted by - the suggestiveness of everything about him. - </p> - <p> - Especially, the size of the funeral gathering, and of the mounted and - wheeled procession, had impressed him. There need be no pretense that - affection or esteem for the dead man had brought out, from the sparsely - populated country round about, this great multitude. Precisely for that - reason, it became a majestic fact. The burial of a Duke of Glastonbury had - nothing to do with, personal qualities or reputation. It was like the - passing away of a monarch. People who cared nothing for the individual - were stirred and appealed to by the vicissitudes of an institution. Inset - upon the walls around him were marble tablets, and more archaic canopies - of stone over little carved effigies of kneeling figures; beyond, at the - sides of the chancel, he could see the dark, rectangular elevations of the - tombs, capped by recumbent mail-clad statues, with here and there a gleam - of gilt or scarlet retained from their ancient ornamentation; even as he - had walked slowly up the aisle, his downcast eyes had noticed the chiseled - heraldry of stones beneath his feet. Everywhere about him was the historic - impact of the Torrs. Their ashes were here—their banners and shields - and tilting-helmets, their symbolical quarterings of the best arms of the - West, their own proudest device of all. Their white bull on the green - ground was familiar in England long before the broom-corn of the Angevins - had been thought of. The clerkly pun on Tor and Taurus was as like as not - older than the English language itself. All this made something mightier, - more imposing and enduring, than any edifice to be reared by man alone. It - was only in part human, this structure of the family. The everlasting - hills were a part of it, the dark ranges of forests, the spirits and - legends of the ancient Marches. - </p> - <p> - “<i>In the morning it is green, and groweth up; but in the evening it is - cut down, dried up and withered,</i>” droned the young clergyman. - </p> - <p> - But if man seemed to count for but little in this tremendous, forceful - aggregation of tradition and custom, yet again he might be all in all. The - tall old man under the purple pall, there—it was easy to think - contemptuously of him. Christian recalled, in a kind of affrighted musing, - that one view of his grandfather that he had had. The disgust with which - he had heard the stupid, violent words from those aged lips revived within - him—then changed to wonder. Was it not, after all, the principle of - strength which most affected men’s minds? There had been discernible in - that grandfather of his a certain sort of strength—dull, - unintelligent, sinister, half-barbarous, but still strength. Was it not - that which had brought forth the two hundred horsemen? And if this one - element, of strength—yes, you might call it brute strength—were - lacking, then would all the other fine qualities in the world avail to - hold the impalpable, intangible combination together? - </p> - <p> - “‘<i>He shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and power</i>.’” - It was the old parson who was reading now. - </p> - <p> - “‘<i>For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet</i>.’” - </p> - <p> - Yes, even in this Protestant religion to which he had passively become - committed, force was the real ideal! Christian’s wandering mind fastened - itself for a moment upon the ensuing words of the lesson, but got nothing - from their confusing reiterations. He lapsed into reverie again, then - started abruptly with the sudden perception that everybody in the church - behind him must be looking at him. In the pew immediately behind, there - would be Captain Edward and his wife, and Augustine; in the one behind - that Lady Cressage, Lord Chobham and his son; beyond them scores and - scores of others seated in rows, and then a throng in the aisle and the - doorway—all purporting to think of the dead, but fixing their eyes - none the less on the living. And it was not alone in the church, but - through the neighborhood, for miles round about: when men spoke of the old - Duke who was gone, their minds would in truth be dwelling upon the new - Duke who was come. A thrill ran through his veins as the words spelled - themselves out before his inner vision. The new Duke! He seemed never to - have comprehended what it meant before. - </p> - <p> - No; and till this moment no genuine realization had come to him of this - added meaning—this towering superstructure which the message of - Julius and Emanuel had reared. It was only now that he hit upon the proper - mental focus with which to contemplate this amazing thing. Not only was he - a territorial ruler, one of the great nobles of Europe, but he was the - master of wealth almost beyond counting as well! - </p> - <p> - Those nearest to him were rising now, and he, obeying imperative impulses - within him, lifted himself proudly to his feet. While the air throbbed - with deep-voiced organ notes, in the pause which here ensued, his gaze - rested upon the pall before him. There was a sense of transfiguration in - the spectacle. The purple mantle became imperial Tyrian to his eyes—and - something which was almost tenderness, almost reverence, yearned within - him toward that silent, incased figure hidden beneath it. The mystic, - omnipotent tie of blood gripped his heart. - </p> - <p> - With a collected sidelong look he surveyed the profiles of Emanuel and - Lord Julius to his left. Theirs were the lineaments of princes. As if he - had eyes in the back of his head, he beheld Edward and Augustine, as fancy - revealed them standing in the pew behind him. Tall, slim, athletic, fair—the - figures his imagination made of them appealed to the new patriarchal - spirit in his heart. Perhaps they were not wholly nice, these young men, - but they also were princes, and they were of his race, and no one should - persecute them, or despitefully use them. - </p> - <p> - The uncouth little bearers of the dead had come forward again, and taken - up their burden. In a small lady-chapel, extending from the transept at - the left, the interment was to take place, and thither Christian now - followed the pall, leading the menfolk of his family and the male guests - of position who attached themselves to the group. Thus some score of - black-clad figures clustered round the oblong opening in the old stone - floor, and Christian, standing at its head, glanced impassively over the - undefined throng of spectators gathered at the doorway. - </p> - <p> - “‘<i>Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full - of misery</i>,’” proclaimed the younger priest, with a sudden outburst of - high-pitched, nasal tones which pierced the unexpectant ear. “‘<i>He - cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, - and never continueth in one stay.</i>’” - </p> - <p> - Christian, watching abstractedly the impersonal wedge of faces at the - door, all at once caught his breath in a sharp spasm of bewildered - amazement. The little book he had been holding fell from his hands, - balanced on its edge for an instant and toppled over into the dark vault - below. He seemed unconscious of the incident—but stared fixedly, - with parted lips and astonished eyes, at the image of something he had - seen outside of the chapel. The thing itself had apparently vanished. He - perceived vaguely that people were looking at him—and with a - determined effort regained control of his face and bearing. The puzzling - thought that it might have been an illusion—that perhaps he had seen - nothing at all—brought mingled confusion and solace to his mind. He - put his hand to the open book which Lord Julius at his side held toward - him, and pretended to look at it. - </p> - <p> - The coffin, now bereft of its purple covering, had been lowered to its - final place. One of the bearers, standing over the cavity, crumbled dry - earth from his tanned and clumsy fingers, and it fell with a faint rattle - upon some resonant, unseen surface. - </p> - <p> - The phrase, “‘<i>Our dear brother, here departed</i>,’” stuck out with - awkward obtrusiveness from among the words of the priest. “‘<i>Earth to - earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust</i>.’” the sing-song went on. Then - they were repeating the Lord’s Prayer together in a buzzing, fitful - murmur. There were other prayers—and then Christian read in the - faces of those about him that the ceremony was finished. Accepting the - suggestion of Lord Julius’s movement, he also bent over, and looked - blankly down into the obscurity of the vault. But when he lifted his head - again, it was to throw a more searching and strenuous glance than ever - over the knot of people outside the door. And yes!—he had not been - deceived. He distinctly saw the face again, and with lightning swiftness - verified its features. Beyond a shadow of doubt it was Frances Bailey whom - he beheld, mysteriously present in this most unlikely of places. - </p> - <p> - He withdrew his eyes and did not look that way again. The question whether - she knew that he had recognized her, occupied his mind to the exclusion of - all else, as he returned at the head of his followers to the body of the - church. It still possessed his thoughts when he had joined the family - group of chief mourners, loosely collecting itself in the aisle before the - front pews, in waiting for the summons to the carriages. To some one he - ought to speak at once, and for the moment his eye rested speculatively - upon Cora. He identified her confidently, not only by her husband’s - proximity, but by the fact that her mourning veil was much thicker and - longer than any of the others. Some unshaped consideration, however, - restrained him, and on a swift second thought he turned to Kathleen. - </p> - <p> - “I want you to look,” he whispered to her, inclining his head—“on - the other side of the church, just in a line between the second pillar and - the white-bearded figure in the window—there is a tall young woman, - with the gray and black hat. Do you see her? In a kind of way she belongs - to us—she is Cora’s sister, but I’m afraid if Cora asked her, she - would not come to the Castle.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes—once you talked to me about her,” Kathleen reminded him. - </p> - <p> - “Well, will you do this for me?” he continued, in an eager murmur. “Go to - her, and make sure that she promises to come up with the rest. It would be - unforgivable—if we let her go away.” - </p> - <p> - He had an uneasy feeling that Mrs. Emanuel’s veil did not prevent her - shrewd glance from reading him through and through—but he did not - seek to dissemble the breath of relief with which he heard her assent. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXIV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was not a very - easy task,” Kathleen found opportunity to say to Christian, half an hour - later, as the family were assembling in his library. They stood together - by the window nearest the table, and watched the embarrassed deportment of - Lord Lingfield under the conversational attentions of Cora, as they talked - in low tones. - </p> - <p> - “But she is here in the Castle: that is the principal thing.” He did not - shrink now from the implication of his words. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, she finally consented to come,” explained the other. “I told her - that you insisted upon it—and then—then I used some persuasion - of my own.” - </p> - <p> - “I thank you, Kathleen,” he said, simply. “It seems that she is to write - an account of the funeral for some London newspaper. She said frankly, - however, that that of itself did not account for her coming. It will pay - her expenses—so she said—but the paper would not have sent her - specially. And there is no doubt about it—she was really annoyed at - being discovered.” - </p> - <p> - The solicitors from Shrewsbury, entering the room now, gave at once an - official air to everything. The elder of them, with oppressive formality, - drew a formidable parchment from a bag held by his junior, and bowed - elaborately to Christian. Then, as if he had received some mandate to do - so from His Grace, he untied the tape, and cleared his throat. Those who - had been seated, rose to their feet. - </p> - <p> - The will came to them unaltered from 1859—and contained, wrapped in - a surprising deal of pompous verbiage, a solitary kernel of essential - fact. No legatee was mentioned save an impersonal being called the - heir-at-law. The absolutism of dynastic rule contemplated no distribution - or division of power. This slender, dark-eyed young man, standing with - head inclined and a nervous hand upon the table, had not come into being - until long after that will was made, and for other long years thereafter - his very existence had been unknown to the family at large. Yet, as the - lawyer’s reading ended, there he stood before their gaze, the unquestioned - autocrat. - </p> - <p> - “This may be the best time to say it.” Christian straightened himself, and - addressed his family for the first time, with a grave smile, and a voice - which was behaving itself better than he feared it would. “There are no - minor bequests, owing to the circumstances under which the will was drawn, - but I have taken it upon myself to supply such omissions, in this matter, - as shall commend themselves to my consideration. Upon this subject we may - speak among ourselves at our leisure, later on.” With distinguished - self-possession he looked at his watch. “I think luncheon is at two.” - </p> - <p> - There followed here an unrehearsed, and seemingly unpremeditated, episode. - Lord Julius advanced with impressive gravity across the little open space, - and taking the hand which Christian impulsively extended to him, bent over - it in a formal and courtly bow. When Emanuel, following his father, did - the same, it was within the consciousness of all that they had become - committed to a new ceremonial rite. Kathleen, coming behind her husband, - gave her cheek to be kissed by the young chief of her adopted clan—and - this action translated itself into a precedent as well. - </p> - <p> - Edward and Augustine, after the hesitation of an awkward instant, came - forward together, and in their turn, with a flushed stiffness of - deportment, made their salutation to the head of the house. To them, - conjointly, Christian said something in a whisper. He kissed Cora upon - each cheek, with a faint smile in his eyes at her preference for the - foreign method. His remoter cousins, the Earl of Chobham and Lord - Lingfield, passed before him, and he vaguely noted the reservation - expressed in their lifeless palms and frigid half-bow. They seemed to wish - to differentiate themselves from the others—to express to him the - Pickwickian character of their homage. They were not Torrs; they did not - salaam to him as their over-lord. They had a rival dynasty of their own, - and their appearance here involved nothing but the seemly courtesy of - distant relationship. He perceived in a dim way that this was what their - manner was saying to him—but it scarcely diverted his attention. His - glance and his thoughts passed over their heads, to fasten upon the - remaining figure. - </p> - <p> - Lady Cressage, unlike the other two women, had retained the bonnet and - heavy veil of mourning. The latter she held drawn aside with a - black-gloved hand as she approached. It flashed suddenly across - Christian’s brain that the year of her mourning for her own dead was not - over—yet in her own house she wore gay laces and light colors. But - it was unkind to remember this—and senseless, too. He strove to - revivify, instead, the great compassionate impulse which formerly she had - stirred within him. A pallid shadow of it was all that he could conjure up—and - in the chill of this shadow he touched her white temple with his lips, and - she moved away. There lingered in his mind a curious, passive conflict of - memories as to whether their eyes had met or not. Then this yielded place - to the impression some detached organ of perception had formed for him, - that in that somber setting of crape her face had looked too small for the - rest of her figure. - </p> - <p> - Then, as the whole subject melted from his mind, he turned toward the two - young men who, upon his whispered request, had remained in the library - after the departure of the others. He looked at his watch, and beckoned - them forward with a friendly wave of his hand. - </p> - <p> - “Pray come and sit down,” he said, with affability upon the surface of his - tone. “We have a quarter of an hour, and I felt that it could not be put - to better use than in relieving your minds a little—or trying to do - so. Let me begin by saying that I do not think I have met either of you - before. In fact, now that I reflect, I am sure that we have not met - before. I am glad to see you both.” - </p> - <p> - The two brothers had drawn near, and settled uneasily into the very chairs - which Lord Julius and Emanuel had occupied some hours before. Again - Christian half seated himself upon the corner of the table, but this time - he swung his leg lightly as he surveyed his guests. It flattered his - prophetic judgment to note that Augustine seemed the first to apprehend - the meaning of his words, but that Edward, upon pondering them, appeared - the more impressed by their magnanimity. Between them, as they regarded - him and each other doubtfully, the family likeness was more striking than - ever. Christian remembered having heard somewhere that their father, Lord - Edward, had been a dark man, as a Torr should be. Their flaxen hair and - dull blue eyes must come from that unmentionable mother of theirs, who was - living in indefinite obscurity—if she was living at all—upon - the blackmail Julius paid her for not using the family name. The thought - somehow put an added gentleness into his voice. - </p> - <p> - “How old are you—Eddy?” he asked, forcing himself into the use of - the diminutive as a necessary part of the patriarchal rôle he had assumed. - </p> - <p> - “Nine-and-twenty in October,” answered the Captain, poutingly. It seemed - on the tip of his tongue to add something else, but he did not. - </p> - <p> - “There’s two years and a month between us,” remarked Augustine, with more - buoyancy. - </p> - <p> - “And you’ve been out of the army for five years,” pursued Christian. “It - seems that you became a Captain very early. Would there be any chance of - your taking it up again, where you left off?” - </p> - <p> - Edward shook his head. “It couldn’t be done twice. I got it by a lucky - fluke—a friend of my father’s, you know. But they’re deuced stiff - now,” he answered. “You have to do exams and things. An old johnnie asks - you what bounds Peru on the northeast, and if you can’t remember just at - the minute, why, you get chucked. Out you go, d’ye see?” - </p> - <p> - “What is your idea, then? What would you like to do?” - </p> - <p> - Captain Edward knitted his scanty, pale brows over this question, and - regarded the prospect through the window in frowning perplexity. “Oh, - almost anything,” he remarked at last, vacuously. - </p> - <p> - Christian permitted himself the comment of a smiling sniff. “Think it - over,” he said, and directed his glance at the younger brother. “You’re in - Parliament,” he observed, with a slight difference in tone. “I’m not sure - that I quite understand-What is it that attracts you in a—in a - Parliamentary career?” - </p> - <p> - Augustine lifted his pale, scanty brows in surprise. The right kind of - answer did not come readily to him. “Well,” he began with hesitation—“there - was that seat in Cheshire where we still had a good bit of land—and - Julius didn’t object—and I had an idea it would help me in the - City.” He recovered confidence as he went on. “But it is pretty well - played out now, I came in too late. The Kaffir boom spoiled the whole - show. Five years ago an M P. could pick and choose; I knew fellows who - were on twenty boards at a time, and big blocks of stock were flying about - them like—like hailstones. But you can’t do that now. M. P.s are as - cheap as dirt; they won’t have ’em at any price. A fellow hardly - makes his cab-fares in the City nowadays. And even if you get the very - best inside tips, brokers have got so fearfully nasty about your margins - being covered——” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, well,” interposed Christian, “it isn’t necessary that we should go - into all that. I do not like to hear about the City. If you get money for - yourself there, you have taken it away from somebody else. I would rather - that people of our name kept away from such things.” - </p> - <p> - “If you come to that, everybody’s money is taken from somebody else,” said - Edward, unexpectedly entering the conversation. His brother checked him - with a monitory hand on his arm. “No, you don’t understand,” Augustine - warned him. “I quite see what the Duke means.” - </p> - <p> - “If you see what I mean,” returned Christian, quietly, “perhaps you will - follow the rest that I have to say; Do you care very much about remaining - in Parliament?” Augustine’s face reflected an eager mental effort to get - at his august interlocutor’s meaning. “Well—that’s so hard to say,” - he began, anxiously. “There are points about it, of course—but then—when - you look at it in another way, why of course——” - </p> - <p> - “My idea is this,” Christian interposed once more. “I hope you won’t mind - my saying it—but there seems to me something rather ridiculous about - your being in the House. Parliament ought not to be treated as a joke, or - a convenience. It is a place for men who will work hard in the service of - the country, and who have the tastes and the information and the judgment - and the patriotic devotion to make their work of value to their country. I - dare say that there are members who do not entirely measure up to this - standard, but after all there <i>is</i> a standard, and I do not like to - be a party to lowering it. England has claims upon us Torrs; it deserves - something better at our hands than that. So I think I would like you to - consider the idea of resigning your seat—or at least, dropping out - at the end of this Parliament. Or no—that would be waiting too long. - You would better think of retiring now.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean that <i>I</i> am to stand for the seat, instead?” asked - Edward, looking up with awakened interest. - </p> - <p> - Christian stared, then sighed smilingly and shook his head. - </p> - <p> - “No, that doesn’t seem to have been in my mind,” he replied with - gentleness. He contemplated the elder brother afresh. - </p> - <p> - “Have you thought yet what you would like to do?” he asked again, almost - with geniality. - </p> - <p> - “How d’ye mean ‘do’?” inquired Edward, with a mutinous note in his voice. - “Is it something about a business? If you ask me straight, I’m not so - fearfully keen about doin’ anything. No fellow wants to do things, if he - can rub along without.” - </p> - <p> - Christian found himself repressing a gay chuckle with effort. He had not - dreamed he should like this one of his kinsmen so much. - </p> - <p> - “No—no; you shall not do things,” he promised him, with a sparkling - eye. “That would be too bad.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Edward turned in his chair, and recrossed his legs. “It’s a trifle - awkward, all this, you know,” he declared, with an impatient scowl. “It - doesn’t suit me to be made game of. You’ve got the whip hand, and you can - give me things or not, as you like, and I’ve got to be civil and take what - you offer, because I can’t help myself—but damn me if I like to be - chaffed into the bargain! I wouldn’t do it to you, d’ye see, if it was the - other way about.” - </p> - <p> - Christian’s face lapsed into instant gravity. A fleeting speculation as to - that problematical reversal of positions rose in his mind, but he put it - away. “Ah, you mustn’t think that,” he urged, with serious tones. “No, - Cousin Edward, this is what I want to say to you.” And then, all unbidden, - the things he really wished to say, yet which he had not thought of - before, ranged themselves in his mind. - </p> - <p> - “Listen to me,” he went on. “You have been a soldier. You were a soldier - when you were a very young man. Now, you had an uncle who was also a - soldier when he was a mere youth—a very loyal and distinguished - soldier, too. He died a soldier when he was in his fortieth year—far - away from his family, from his wife and son, and much farther away still - from the place and country of his birth. Once, in his youth, he was mixed - up in an unpleasant and even disgraceful affair. How much to blame he - personally was—that I do not know. It was very long ago—and he - was so young a man—really I refuse to consider the question. I could - insist to myself that he was innocent—if I felt that it mattered at - all, one way or the other—and if I did not feel that by doing so, - somehow he would not be then so real a figure to me as he is now. And he - is very real to me; he has been so all my life.” - </p> - <p> - He paused, with a momentary break in his voice, to blink the tears from - his eyes. It was not ducal, but he put the back of his hand to his cheeks, - and dried them. - </p> - <p> - “I show you how it affects me,” he continued, simply. “No matter what he - did in some stupid hour in London, he was a brave soldier before that, and - after that. He fought for many losing causes; he died fighting for one - which was most hopeless of all. I am proud that I am his son. I am proud - for you, that you are his nephew. And something has occurred to me that I - think you will like to do—for me and for him. When I stood to-day - over our vault—where we are all buried—it cut me to the heart - to remember that one of us lies alone, a great way off—in a strange - land by himself. I propose to you that you go to Spain for me—it is - at Seo de Urgel, in the mountain country of the Catalans—and that - you find his grave, and that you bring him back here to sleep with his - people. He would not return in his lifetime—but I think he would be - pleased with us for bringing him back now.” - </p> - <p> - Edward had looked fixedly up at his cousin, then glanced away, then - allowed his blank gaze to return, the while these words were being spoken. - It was impossible to gather from his reddened, immobile face, now, any - notion of their effect upon him. But after a moment’s pause, he rose to - his feet, squared his shoulders and put out his hand to Christian. - </p> - <p> - “Quite right; I’ll go,” he said, abruptly. - </p> - <p> - The two men shook hands, with a sense of magnetic communion which could - have amazed no one more than themselves. Then, under a recurring - consciousness of embarrassed constraint, they turned away from each other, - and Edward wandered off awkwardly toward the door. - </p> - <p> - “Oh—a moment more,” called Christian, with a step in his cousin’s - direction. Then on second thoughts he added: “Or shall we let that wait? I - will see you again—some time to-day or to-morrow. Yes—leave me - now for a minute with your brother.” - </p> - <p> - When the door had closed upon Edward, Christian turned slowly to - Augustine, and, as he leaned once more against the table, regarded him - with a ruminating scrutiny. - </p> - <p> - “I am puzzled about you,” he remarked, thoughtfully. - </p> - <p> - Augustine returned the gaze with visible perturbation. - </p> - <p> - “I think,” pursued Christian, “that it rather annoys me that you don’t - tell me to puzzle and be damned.” - </p> - <p> - The other took the words with a grimace, and an unhappy little laugh. He, - too, rose to his feet. “I funked it,” he said with rueful candor. - </p> - <p> - “Well, don’t funk things with me,” Christian advised him, with a testiness - of which, upon the instant, he was ashamed. “Look here,” he continued, - less brusquely, “I could take it from your brother that he did not want to - do things. That fits him: he is not the kind of man to apply himself in - that way. But I have the feeling that you are different. There ought to be - performance—capacity—of some sort in you, if I could only get - to know what it is. You are only my age. Isn’t there something that - particularly appeals to you?” - </p> - <p> - Augustine balanced himself meditatively upon his heels. “You say you bar - the City”—he remarked with caution. “Would you have any objection to - Johannesburg? It’s not what it was, by any means, but it’s bound to pick - up again. I might do myself very well there—with a proper start.” - </p> - <p> - “But you are thinking always of money!” broke in Christian, sharply once - again. “Suppose that there was no question of money—suppose, what - shall I say? that you had twelve hundred a year, secure to you without any - effort of your own—what would you do then?” - </p> - <p> - This seemed very simple to Augustine. “I would do whatever you wanted me - to do,” he replied, with fervor. - </p> - <p> - Christian shrugged his shoulders, and dismissed him with a gesture. “We - will speak again about it,” he said coldly, and turned away. - </p> - <p> - Descending the great staircase a few minutes later, Christian entered the - door which Barlow had been waiting to open for him—and made his - first public appearance as the dispenser of Caermere’s hospitality. - </p> - <p> - The guests, after the old mid-day fashion of the place, were already for - the most part gathered in the large dining-hall, and stood or sat in - groups upon the side pierced by the tall windows. These guests did not - dissemble the interest with which they from time to time directed glances - across to the other side, where a long table, laid for luncheon, put in - evidence a grateful profusion of cold joints and made-dishes. - </p> - <p> - A pleased rustle of expectancy greeted Christian’s advent, but it seemed - that this did not, for the moment at least, involve food and drink. He - strolled over to the company, and, as he exchanged words here and there, - kept an attentive eye busy in taking stock of its composition. There were - some forty persons present, of whom three-fourths, apparently, were county - people. A few casual presentations forced themselves upon him, but the - names of the new acquaintances established no foothold in his memory. He - smiled and murmured words which he hoped were seasonable—but all the - while he was scanning the assemblage with a purpose of his own. - </p> - <p> - At last he came to Kathleen, and was able to have a private word in her - ear. “I do not see her anywhere,” he whispered. - </p> - <p> - “I could not prevail upon her to come in to lunch,” she answered; “I - imagine it is partly a question of clothes. But she is being looked out - for. And afterward I will take charge of her again, if you like—though——” - </p> - <p> - The sentence remained unfinished, as she took the arm Christian offered - her, at Barlow’s eloquent approach. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>uring the progress - of the luncheon, Christian found no opportunity for intimate conversation - with Emanuel’s wife. The elderly and ponderously verbose Lord Chobham sat - upon her right; there was the thin-faced, exigeant wife of some clerical - person in gaiters—a rural dean, was it not?—full of dogmatic - commonplaces, on his left. The other people did not seem to talk so much. - The scene down the table—with so much black cloth offset garishly - against the white linen in the daylight—presented an effect of - funereal sobriety, curiously combined with a spontaneous reaction of the - natural man against this effect. The guests ate steadily, and with energy; - Christian noted with interest how freely they also drank. For himself, he - could not achieve an appetite, but thirst was in the air. He lifted his - glass bravely to Lord Julius, whose massive bulk and beard confronted him - at the other end of the table—and then to others whose glance from - time to time caught his. - </p> - <p> - Once he found the chance to murmur to Kathleen: “When this is over, I hope - you will manage it so that I may speak with you.” - </p> - <p> - She nodded slow assent, without looking at him. He, observing her profile, - realized all at once that something was amiss with her. It came back to - him now that a certain intensity of sadness had dwelt in the first glance - they had exchanged that morning, upon meeting. At the time he had referred - it to the general aspect of woe which people put on at funerals. He saw - now that it was a grief personal to herself. And now that he thought of - it, too, there had been much the same stricken look upon Emanuel’s face. - It was incredible that they should be thus devoured by grief at the fact - of his grandfather’s death. No one had liked that old man overmuch—but - surely they least of all. The emotion of Lord Julius was more intelligible—and - yet even this had a quality of broken dejection in it which seemed - independent of Caermere’s cause for mourning. - </p> - <p> - The disquieting conviction that these dearly beloved cousins of his—these - ineffably tender and generous friends of his—were writhing under - some trouble unknown to him, took more definite shape in his mind with - each new glance that he stole at her. - </p> - <p> - Once the thought sprang up that they might be unhappy because such a huge - sum of money had been given to him, but on the instant he hated himself - for being capable of formulating such a monstrous idea. The wondering - solicitude which all this raised within him possessed his thoughts for the - rest of the meal. He was consumed with impatience to get away so that he - might question Kathleen about it. - </p> - <p> - Yet when at last he found himself beside her, standing before an old - portrait in one of the chain of big rooms through which the liberated - company had dispersed itself, this was just the question for which it - seemed that no occasion would offer. - </p> - <p> - She began speaking to him at once. “The young lady—Miss Bailey, I - should say—has gone for a walk—so Falkner learns from some of - the women. They have the impression that she is coming back—but I - don’t know that I feel quite so sure about it.” Christian’s face visibly - lengthened. “It’s very awkward,” he said, with vague annoyance. “They do - not arrange things in a very talented fashion, these people of mine.” - </p> - <p> - “But what could they arrange?” she argued. An indefinable listlessness in - her tone struck him. “It is a free country, you know, and this is the - nineteenth century. They cannot bodily capture a young woman and keep her - in the Castle against her will. As I told you, I had difficulty in - persuading her to come at all.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, what did you say to her?” he asked, eagerly. - </p> - <p> - “I can hardly tell you. She is not an ordinary person—and I know - only that I tried not to say ordinary things to her. But what it was that - I did say——” She broke off with an uncertain gesture, and a - sigh. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, you saw that she was not ordinary!” said Christian, admiringly. “I - should love dearly to hear what you really think of her—the - impression that she makes upon you.” Kathleen roused herself and turned to - him. “Do you truly mean it, Christian?” she asked him, gravely. - </p> - <p> - “Do you blame me?” he rejoined, with uneasy indirection. - </p> - <p> - She pressed her lips together, and stared up at the picture with a - troubled face. “I know so little of her,” she protested. “You put too big - a responsibility upon me. It is more than I am equal to.” - </p> - <p> - With a sudden gust of self-reproach, he perceived afresh the marks of - suffering in her countenance, and recalled his anxiety. “Take my arm,” he - said, softly, “and let us go on into the next room. There is a terrace - there, I think. Forgive me for troubling you,” he added, as they moved - forward. “I ought to have seen that you are not well—that you have - something on your mind.” - </p> - <p> - She did not answer him immediately. “It is Emanuel who is not well.” she - said, after a pause. - </p> - <p> - Christian uttered a formless little exclamation of grieved astonishment. - “Oh, it is nothing serious?” he whispered imploringly. - </p> - <p> - She shook her head in a doubtful way. “No, I think not—that is, not - irrevocably. But he has worked too hard. He has broken down under the - strain. We are going away for a long journey—to rest, and forget - about the System.” - </p> - <p> - He bent his head to look into her eyes—trusting his glance to say - the things which his lips shrank from uttering. A window stood open, and - they passed out upon a broad stone terrace, shaded and pleasant under a - fresh breeze full of forest odors. - </p> - <p> - “Oh—the System”—he ventured to say, as they stood alone here, - and she lifted her head to breathe in the revivifying air—“I felt - always that it was too much for one man. The load was too great. It would - crush the most powerful man on earth.” - </p> - <p> - She nodded reflective assent. “Oh, yes—I’m afraid I hated it,” she - confessed to him, in a murmur full of contrition. - </p> - <p> - “But he is going away now,” urged Christian, hopefully. “You will have him - to yourself—free from care, seeing strange and beautiful new places—as - long as you like. Ah, then soon enough that gaiety of yours will return to - you. Why, it is such a shock to me to think of you as sad, depressed—you - who are by nature so full of joy and high spirits. Ah, but be sure they - will all return to you! I make no doubt whatever of that. And Emanuel, too—he - will get rested and strong, and be happy as he never was before—the - dear fellow!” - </p> - <p> - She smiled at him in wan, affectionate fashion. “All the courage has gone - out of me,” she said. “Will it be coming back again? God knows!” - </p> - <p> - “But surely——” Christian began, with hearty confidence. - </p> - <p> - She interrupted him. “What I am fearful of—it is not so much his - health, strictly speaking—but the terrible unsettling blow that all - this means to him. It is like the death of a beautiful only child to the - fondest of fathers. It tears his heart to pieces. He loved his work so - devotedly—it was so wholly a part of his life—and to have to - give it up! He says he is reconciled. Poor man, he tried with all his - strength to make himself believe that he is. I catch him forcing a smile - on his face when he sees me looking at him—and that is the hardest - of all for me to bear. But I don’t know”—she drew a long breath, and - gazed with a wistful brightening in her eyes at the placid hills and sky—“it - may work itself out for the best. As you say—when we get away alone - together, ah, that is where love like ours will surely tell. I do wrong to - harbor any doubts at all. When two people love each other as we do—ah, - Christian, boy, there’s nothing else in all the world to equal that!” - </p> - <p> - He inclined his head gravely, to mark his reverential sympathy with her - mood. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, but you know nothing of it at all,” she went on. “You’re just a lad—and - love is no more to be understood by instinct than any other great wisdom. - Millions of people pass through life talking about love—and they - would stare with surprise if you told them they never had had so much as a - glimmer of the meaning of it. They use the name of love in all the matings - of young couples—and there’s hardly once in a thousand times that it - isn’t blasphemy to mention it. Do you know what most marriages are? - Life-sentences! If you have means and intelligence, you make your prison - tolerable; you can get used to it, and even grow dependent upon it—but - it is a prison still. The best-behaved convict eyes his warder with a - cruel thought somewhere at the back of his mind. Do you remember—when - you left us the first time, I begged you to be in no haste to marry?” - </p> - <p> - He bowed again. “Oh, yes, I remember it all,” he said, soberly. - </p> - <p> - “I have come to feel so strongly upon that subject,” she explained. “It - seems to me more important than all others combined. It is the last thing - in the world that should be decided upon an impulse, or a passing fancy—yet - that is just what happens all about us. The books are greatly to blame for - that. They talk as if only boys and girls knew what love meant. They - flatter the young people, and turn their empty heads, with the notion that - their idlest inclinations are very probably sacred emotions—which - they may trust to burn brightly in a pure flame all their lives. The - innocent simpletons rush to light this penny dip that is warranted to - blaze eternally, and in a week or a month they are in utter darkness. We - trembled lest you, coming so suddenly into a new life, should meet with - that misfortune.” - </p> - <p> - He smiled faintly at her. “You see, I have not,” he commented. - </p> - <p> - She regarded him thoughtfully. “It is impossible to make rules for others - in these matters,” she observed, “but there is this thing to be said. True - love must be built upon absolutely true friendship; there can be no other - foundation for it You will often see two men who are fond of each other. - They delight in being together. Very often you cannot imagine what is the - tie between them—and they would not be able to tell you. They just - like to be together—even though they may not speak for hours, and - may be as different in temperament as chalk and cheese. That is the - essence of friendship—and you cannot have love without it. The man - and the woman must have the all-powerful sense of ideal companionship - between them. They must be able to say with truth to themselves that the - world will always be richer to them together than apart. There may be many - other elements in love, but there can be no love at all without this - element. But you wonder why I am saying all this to you.” - </p> - <p> - He made a deprecatory gesture of the hands. “I am always charmed when you - talk to me. I have been remembering that dear home of yours, and how - inexpressibly good you were to me. I prize that memory so fondly!” - </p> - <p> - She smiled with an approach to her old gaiety of manner. “You were like a - son of our own to us. And so we think of you now—as if you were - ours.” - </p> - <p> - “And with what munificence you have treated me!” he exclaimed, fervently. - </p> - <p> - “And why not? For whom else would we be laying up our money? Oh, there was - no difference of opinion about that. Months ago it was decided that when - you came into Caermere you should come into everything.” - </p> - <p> - “I feared that Emanuel would be angry—disappointed—at my not - taking up his work—but truly I could not. It wouldn’t be easy to - explain to you—but——” - </p> - <p> - “No—let us not go into reasons. He had no feeling about it whatever. - How should he? It would have been as reasonable to be vexed because the - lenses of his spectacles did not fit your eyes. And Emanuel is - reasonableness itself. No—the experiment was quite personal to - himself. Without him, it could not have gone on at all. It will not go on - now, when he leaves it to others. We make some little pretense that it - will—but we know in our hearts that it won’t. And there was a fatal - fault in it. To begin with, that would have killed it sooner or later, in - any case.” - </p> - <p> - “I know what you mean,” he interposed, with sensitive intuition. “There - was no proper place in it for women. ‘The very corner-stone of the System - was the perpetual enslavement of women’—or rather, I should say”—he - stumbled awkwardly as the sweeping form of the quotation revealed itself - to him—“I should say, it did not provide women with the - opportunities which—which——” - </p> - <p> - Kathleen also had her intuitions. “May I ask?—it sounds as if you - were repeating a remark—was it Miss Bailey who said that about the - corner-stone?” - </p> - <p> - Christian bit his lip and flushed confusedly. “Yes—I think those - were her words,” he confessed. “But you must remember,” he added, eager to - minimize-the offense—“it was in the course of a long discussion on - the whole subject, and she——” - </p> - <p> - “The dear girl!” said Kathleen, with a sigh of relief. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, but you would love her!” he cried, excitedly perceiving the - significance of her words. “She has the noblest mind—calm and broad - and serene—and so fine a nature—I know you would love her!” - </p> - <p> - Kathleen put a hand on his arm, with motherly directness. “But do <i>you</i> - love her?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - To his own considerable surprise he hesitated. “I have that feeling of - deep friendship that you described,” he said, slowly. “The charm of being - where she is is like nothing else to me. I cannot think that it would ever - lose its force for me. I get the effect of drawing strength and breadth of - thought and temper from her, when I am with her. I would rather spend my - life with her for my companion than any other woman I have ever seen. That - is what you mean, is it not?” - </p> - <p> - “Partly,” she made enigmatic response. “But—now you mustn’t answer - me if I ask what I’ve no business to ask—but the suspicion came to - me while you were speaking—I am right, am I not, in thinking that - you have said all this to her?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” he admitted with palpable reluctance, “and she would not listen to - me. Only a few hours before I heard the news of my grandfather’s death, I - asked her to be my wife, and she refused. She seemed very resolute. And - yet she has some of that same feeling of friendship for me. She said that - she had always a deep interest in me. She had read books—very - serious books—in order to be able to advise me, if the chance ever - came. All that bespeaks friendship, surely! And her coming here, to look - on and still not be seen—you said yourself that she was distressed - at being discovered—is not that the act of warm friendship?” - </p> - <p> - Kathleen pondered her reply. She looked away at the nearest hills across - the river for some moments, with her gaze riveted fixedly as if in an - absorption of interest. Without moving her head, she spoke at last: “You - have a good deal to say about friendship. It is my fault—I - introduced the word and insisted on it—but did you also lay such - stress upon this ‘friendship’ to her?” - </p> - <p> - “You do not know her nature,” he assured her. “There is nothing weak or - commonplace in it. One does not talk to her as to an ordinary woman—as - you yourself said. I begged her to join her life to mine, and I put the - plea on the highest possible grounds. All that I have repeated to you, and - much more, I said to her—how great was my need of her, how lofty her - character seemed to me, how all my life I should revere her, and gain - strength and inspiration from being with her.” - </p> - <p> - “H—m,” said Kathleen. - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean—?” he began, regarding his companion wonderingly—“was - that not enough? Remember the kind of woman she is—proud of her - independence, occupied with large thoughts, not to be appealed to by any - but the highest motives—a creature who disdains the sentimental - romances of inferior women—do you mean that there should have been - something more? I do love her—and should I have told her so in so - many words?” - </p> - <p> - “I’m afraid that’s our foible,” she made answer. On the face that she - turned to him, something like the old merry light was shining. “You - goose!” she scolded at him, genially. - </p> - <p> - His eyes sparkled up as with a light from her own. “Oh, I will make some - excuse, and get away from these people, and find her,” he cried. “She will - be returning, if not here, then to the inn, down below the church, don’t - you think? There would be nothing out of the way in my riding down, would - there? Or if I sent a man down with a letter, appealing to her not to go - away—telling her why? There is no earthly reason why she should not - stop here at the Castle. Her sister is here—why, of course, she - belongs quite to the family party. How dull of me not to have thought of - that! Of course, Cora can go and fetch her.” - </p> - <p> - “I think I would leave Cora out of it,” Kathleen advised him. “There is - nothing that you cannot do better yourself. Come here! Do you see that - patch of reddish stain on the hill there, above the poplars where the iron - has colored the rock? Well, look to the right, on the ledge just a bit - higher up—there is Miss Bailey. I have been watching her for some - minutes. She has been round the hill; the path she is on will lead her to - the Mere Copse—and to the heath beyond the orchards.” - </p> - <p> - His eyes had found the moving figure, microscopic yet unmistakable in the - sunshine against the verdant face of the hill—and they dwelt upon it - for a meditative moment. - </p> - <p> - Then he turned to Kathleen, and took her hand, and almost wrung it in his - own. “Do let us go in!” he urged her, with exultant eagerness. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXVI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian, - professing to himself momentarily that the chance to get away from his - guests was at hand, discovered that his escape, all the same, was no easy - matter. - </p> - <p> - Kathleen had disappeared somewhere, and without her he seemed curiously - helpless. He did not as yet know the house well enough to be sure about - its exits. The result of one furtive attempt at flight was to find himself - in the midst of a group of county people, who fell back courteously at his - approach and, as if by design, let him become involved in a quite - meaningless conversation with a purple-faced, bull-necked old gentleman - whose name he could not remember. This person talked at tremendous length, - producing his words in gurgling spasms; his voice was so husky and his - manner so disconcerting—not to mention the peculiarities of the - local dialect in which he spoke—that Christian could make literally - nothing of his remarks. He maintained a vapid listener’s-smile, the while - his eyes roamed despondently about the room, and what he could see of the - next apartment, in search of some relief. If he could hit upon Dicky - Westland—or even Edward or Augustine! - </p> - <p> - It became apparent to him, at last, that his interlocutor was discoursing - on the subject of dogs. Of course—it would be about the Caermere - hounds. On the grave faces of those about him, who stood near enough to - hear the sounds of this mysterious monologue, he read signs that they - considered themselves a party to it. It was on their behalf as well as his - own that the old gentleman was haranguing him—and he swiftly - perceived the necessity of paying better attention. - </p> - <p> - “The hounds—yes,” he said, after a little. “I have been making - inquiries about them. I am advised that they cannot be kept up properly - for less than four thousand five hundred a year.” - </p> - <p> - “Up to Lord Porlock’s death, we had something like twenty-four hundred - pounds from the Castle, and we made a whip-round among ourselves,” the - other replied, “for the rest. With corn what it is, and rents what they - are, we’re all so poor now that it’ll be harder than ever to get - subscriptions, but we’ll try to do our share if the Castle’ll meet us - half-way.” - </p> - <p> - Christian felt that he liked being referred to as “the Castle.” Moreover, - an idea suddenly took shape in his mind. “My uncle, Lord Porlock, was the - Master,” he said. “And before him my grandfather, I believe. But what has - been done since Lord Porlock’s death—about a new Master, I mean?” - </p> - <p> - Out of the complicated response made to this question he gathered vaguely - that nothing had been done—that nothing could have been done. - </p> - <p> - “My cousin, Captain Torr, is a hunting man, I think.” He threw out the - question with some diffidence, and was vastly relieved to see the faces - brighten about him. - </p> - <p> - “None better, by God!” affirmed the old gentleman, with vehemence, and - there followed a glowing and spluttering eulogium of Edward’s - sportsmanlike qualities and achievements, in the middle of which Christian - recalled that the speaker was Sir George Dence. - </p> - <p> - “I like the Mastership to continue in the family, Sir George,” he replied, - suavely proud of the decision he had leaped to. “I think I shall suggest - to you that Captain Edward take the hounds, and that, for a time at least, - you allow the Castle to be at the entire expense. At all events, you have - my annual subscription of five thousand pounds to begin upon.” - </p> - <p> - He made a dignified half-bow in the silence which ensued, and boldly moved - away. The murmur of amazed admiration which rose behind him was music in - his ears. - </p> - <p> - Visions of possible escape rose for the moment before him. He walked with - an air of resolution through the next room, trying to remember whither the - corridor outside led—but at the doorway he stopped face to face with - Lord Lingfield. - </p> - <p> - “Ah,” said his cousin, amiably, “I did not know if I should see you again. - I thought perhaps that you had gone to lie down. Funerals take it out of - one so, don’t they? My father is quite seedy since lunch, and poor Lady - Cressage has the most wretched headache! I think myself she’d do better - not to travel while it lasts, but she’s anxious to get away, and so we’re - all off by the evening train.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I didn’t dream of your hurrying off like this,” exclaimed Christian, - sincerely enough. “But if you are set upon it—come, let’s find your - father. It will seem as if I had neglected him.” - </p> - <p> - “He’s in his room,” explained Lord Lingfield, as they moved away - together, “getting into some heavier clothes. The evenings are chilly here - in the hills, and we’re to start almost immediately, and take the long - drive round through the forest. Lady Cressage has talked so much of it, - and we’ve never seen it, you know.” - </p> - <p> - “But this is all too bad!” urged Christian. “You rush away before I have - had time to have a word with any of you. There is no urgent reason for - such haste, is there now, really?” - </p> - <p> - “Lady Cressage seems anxious to go,” answered the other, with a kind of - significance in his solemn voice. “And of course—since she came with - us——” - </p> - <p> - Christian stole a quick glance at his kinsman, and as swiftly looked away. - “If she prefers it—of course,” he commented with brevity. - </p> - <p> - “Do you think she is very strong?” asked Lord Lingfield. “I have a kind of - fear, sometimes, that her health is not altogether robust. She seemed very - pale to-day.” There was a note of obvious solicitude in his voice. - </p> - <p> - “She has a headache,” Christian reminded him. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, that would account for it, wouldn’t it?” The young man was visibly - relieved by this reflection. “They may say what they like,” he went on, - “she is the most beautiful woman in London to-day, just as she was when - she was married. Let me see—I am not sure that I ever knew her - precise age. Do you happen to know?” - </p> - <p> - “She is four-and-twenty.” - </p> - <p> - “Not more! I should have said six, or at least five. Hm-m! - Four-and-twenty!” The reiteration, for some reason, seemed to afford him - pleasure. “I am nearly thirty myself,” he added meditatively, “and I’m - practically sure of being in the next Government. Shall you go in much for - politics, do you think? It wouldn’t be of any great use to you, except the - Garter, perhaps, and it’s so fearfully slow waiting for that. My father - had the promise of it as long ago as Lord John Russell’s time, and it - hasn’t come off yet. But then that Home Rule business was so unfortunate—it - sent us all over to the Tory side, where there were already more people - waiting for things than there were things to go round. If I were you, I - would keep very quiet for a year or two—not committing myself openly - to either side. I can’t help thinking there will be a break-up. It’s a - fearful bore to have only twenty or thirty people on one side and five - hundred on the other. They won’t stand it much longer. It doesn’t make a - fair distribution of things. Of course, I’m a Unionist, but if I were in - your shoes, I’d think it over very carefully. The Liberals haven’t got a - single Duke—and mind you, though people don’t seem to notice it, it - is a fact that a party practically never succeeds itself. The Liberals are - bound to come in, sooner or later—and then, if you were their only - Duke, why, you’d get your Garter shot at you out of a gun—so to - speak. Of course, I mustn’t be mentioned as saying this—but you - think it over! And it needn’t matter in the least—our being in - different parties.. We can help each other quite as well—indeed, - sometimes I’m tempted to think even better. Of course, I dare say there - won’t be much that I can do for you—for the next two or three years, - at least—except in the way of advice, and tips, and that sort of - thing—but there may be a number of matters that you can help me in.” - </p> - <p> - Christian nodded wearily—with a nervous thought upon the time being - wasted. “I am not likely to forget your kindness—or our family - ties,” he said, consciously evasive. - </p> - <p> - “You never saw Cressage, of course; awful beast!” remarked the other, with - an irrelevancy which still struck the listener as having a certain method - in it. “It makes a man furious to think what she must have suffered with - him. And a mere child, too, when she was married. Only four-and-twenty - now! These early marriages are a great mistake. Of course, when a man gets - to be nearly thirty, and there is a family and property and so on to be - handed along, why, then marriage becomes a duty. That has always been my - view. And I try invariably to do my duty, as I see it. I think a man ought - to, you know.” - </p> - <p> - Christian sighed, and restrained an impulse to look at his watch. They had - sauntered forward into the central hallway; through the open door could be - seen a carriage and pair drawn up before the steps. A rustle on the stairs - behind him caught his ear, and turning, Christian beheld Lady Cressage - descending toward him, with Lord Chobham looming, stately and severe, in - the shadows above her. - </p> - <p> - Christian moved impulsively to her. “It was the greatest surprise to me—and - disappointment, too—to hear that you were going like this,” he - declared, with outstretched hand. - </p> - <p> - She smiled feebly, and regarded him with a pensive consideration. Her - heavy mourning of an earlier hour had been exchanged for a black garb less - ostentatiously funereal, yet including the conventional widow’s-fall, - which he had not seen her wear before. The thought that here at Caermere, - last autumn, she had not even worn a widow’s-cap, rose in his mind. It - carried with it a sense of remissness, of contumacy as against the great - family which had endowed her with one of its names. But at least now she - exhibited a consciousness that her husband was less than a year dead. And - her pallid face was very beautiful in its frame of black—a - delicately strong face, meditative, reserved, holding sadness in a proud - restraint. “I am not very well,” she said to him, in tones to reach his - ear alone. “The crowd here depressed me. I could not bring myself to - appear at luncheon. It seems better that I should go away.” - </p> - <p> - “But it is such a fatiguing journey—for one who does not feel wholly - up to it!” he urged upon her. “All these strangers will be going—I - think some of them have gone already. I don’t know what their rule is here - about stopping after luncheon—but surely they must clear out very - soon. Then we shall be quite by ourselves—so that if that is your - only reason for going—why, I can’t admit that it is a reason at - all.” - </p> - <p> - He paused, and strove to cover with a halting smile his sudden perception - that they were not talking with candor to each other. There were things in - her mind, things in his mind, which bore no relation to the words they - uttered. She was looking at him musingly—and he felt that he could - read in her glance, or perhaps gather from what there was not in her - glance, that she would not go if he begged her with sufficient earnestness - to remain. Nay, the conviction flashed vividly uppermost in his thoughts - that even a tolerable simulation of this earnestness would be enough. It - was as if a game were being played, in which he was not quite the master - of his moves. In this mere instant of time, while they had stood facing - each other, he had been able to reproduce the whole panorama of his - contact with this beautiful woman. From that first memorable day when she - had come into his wondering, distraught vision of the new life before him, - to that other day but a week ago when he had stood trembling with - passionate emotions in her presence, his mental pictures of her rose - connectedly about him. They exerted a pressure upon his will. They left - him no free agency in the matter. By all the chivalric, tenderly - compassionate memories they evoked, he must bid her to remain. - </p> - <p> - “I am very sorry that you feel you must go,” was what he heard himself say - instead. - </p> - <p> - “Good-bye,” she answered simply, and gave him her gloved hand with an - impassive face. “Lord Chobham and Lord Lingfield are good enough to see me - back to London again. We are driving round through the forest. Our people - are to join us at the station with the luggage. Goodbye.” - </p> - <p> - He accompanied the party out to the carriage door, despite some formal - doubts about its being the proper thing to do. Both father and son made - remarks to him, to which he seemed to himself to be making suitable - answers, but what they were about he never knew. The tragedy of Edith’s - final departure from Caermere—she who had been the hostess here when - he came; she who was to have worn the coronet on her lovely brow as the - mistress of it all—seized upon his mind and harrowed it. A vehement - self-reproach that his thoughts should have done her even momentary - injustice stung him, as he beheld her seated in the carriage. She smiled - at him—that wistful, subdued smile of the headache—and then, - as the horses moved, his eyes were resting upon another smile instead—the - beaming of fatuous content upon the countenance of Lord Lingfield, who sat - facing her. - </p> - <p> - Christian, regarding this second cousin of his as the carriage receded - from view, suddenly breathed a long sigh of relief. - </p> - <p> - All at once remembering many things, he wheeled with the impulse to run up - the steps. Upon reflection, he ascended them sedately instead, and gave - orders in the hall that Mr. Westland should be sent to him forthwith. Two - or more groups of departing guests came upon him, while he stood - irresolutely here, and he bade them farewell with formal gravity. The two - parsons whom he had seen at the church were among them—attired now - in black garments with curiously ugly little round, flat hats—and he - noted with interest that their smirking deference now displeased him less - than it had done in the morning. He perceived that his lungs were becoming - accustomed to the atmosphere of adulation, and smiled tolerantly at - himself. How long would it be, he wondered with idle amusement, before it - would stifle him to breathe any other air? - </p> - <p> - Augustine had sauntered out from some unknown quarter into the hall, and - Christian beckoned to him. A shapeless kind of suspicion, born of a - resemblance now for the first time suggesting itself, had risen in his - brain. He took the young man by the arm, and strolled aside with him. - </p> - <p> - “Am I wrong,” he asked carelessly, “or did I see you at the supper at the - Hanover Theater? Let us see—it would be a week ago to-night? I - thought so. Why I asked—I was curious to know whom you were with. It - was a young man; you were standing together between some scenery as I - passed you.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” said Augustine, with visible reassurance. “That was Tom Bailey—Cora’s - brother, you know.” - </p> - <p> - “What sort is he?” Christian pursued, secretly astonished at the inspired - accuracy of his intuition. - </p> - <p> - “Well”—replied the other, hesitatingly—“it’s rather hard to - say. He got sent down from Cambridge for something or other, and his - governor got the needle over it, and put him on an allowance of a pound a - week, or something like that, and so what could he do? It’s jolly hard on - a young fellow round town to have less money than anybody else. He’s bound - to get talked about, if he only owes half-a-crown to some outsider or - other, and that makes other fellows turn shirty. But I think he always - pays when he can.” - </p> - <p> - “You like him, then, do you?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes—I like Tom well enough,” answered Augustine, dubiously - pondering the significance of the interrogatory. “He’d be all right if—if - he had a proper chance.” With a sigh, he ventured to add: “He’s like the - rest of us—that way.” - </p> - <p> - At sight of Dicky Westland’s approach. Christian dropped his inquiries - abruptly. “All right,” he said, with enigmatic brevity, and turned to his - secretary with a meaning gesture. “I want to get away from here—out - of the Castle,” he murmured to the newcomer, “without a minute’s delay. I - have a—kind of appointment, and I am already late. If you will get - our hats, we will walk out together, as if we were discussing some private - matter, and then no one will interrupt us.” - </p> - <p> - This confidence was only partially justified by events. The two made their - way unmolested into the open air, and across some long stretches of lawn - to the beginning of the series of gardens. It was within Christian’s - memory that one reached the orchards and the opening upon the heath by - traversing these gardens. But in the second of them, where remarkable - masses of tulips in gorgeous effulgence of bloom occupied the very beds in - which he believed the dahlias must have been last year, there was some one - on the well-remembered path in front of him. - </p> - <p> - A little child of two or three years, still walking insecurely at least, - was being led along the edge of the flower-border by a woman in black - whose back was turned. - </p> - <p> - The infant had caught the notion of bending over the hyacinths, one by - one, laboriously to smell their perfume, and the woman indulgently lent - herself to the pastime, halting and supporting the little one by the hand. - </p> - <p> - Christian wondered vaguely what child this could be, before observation - told him that the person they were approaching was a lady. He took Dicky’s - arm then, and quickened their step. “We will be very much engaged as we - pass,” he admonished him. After a few paces, however, the futility of this - device made itself apparent. The lady, glancing indifferently over her - shoulder at the sound, of their tread, turned on the instant with a little - cry of pleasure. - </p> - <p> - It was Cora who came toward them, now radiant of face and with an extended - hand. She dragged the surprised child heedlessly along at her side with - the other arm. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Duke!” she cried. “I did so long to burst in upon you, wherever you - were to be found, and thank you when I heard. It was Sir George Dence who - told us. And Eddy, he’s quite off his head with joy! He wanted to look you - up, too, but I told him to put off thanking you till to-morrow; between - ourselves, I don’t fancy he’ll be seen quite to the best advantage later - on to-day. But I know you’ll think none the worse of him for that; and - there’s a good bit to be done, he says, in the way of pulling the Hunt - together again to work like one man. He’s begun already promoting the - right sort of feeling. He’s got Sir George and old General Fawcett and - about a dozen more of ’em in the billiard-room, and I told him - everything would be all right so long as they didn’t sing. On account of - the funeral, you know. And—why, you’ve never seen my oldest - unmarried daughter! Look up and say, ‘How-de-do?’ Chrissy. Why, she’s your - namesake! Yes, her baptismal name is Christiana or Christina—which - is it? We always call her Chrissy. And you haven’t told me what an - effective family group I make. You never would have believed that I could - be so domestic, now, would you?” - </p> - <p> - She had gathered the child up into her arms, and under the influence of - her jocund mood Christian smiled cheerfully. “You are very wonderful as a - mother,” he assured her, and extended a tentative finger toward Chrissy, - who, huddled in awkward and twisted discomfort under her mother’s elbow, - regarded him with unconcealed repulsion. - </p> - <p> - “She seems an extremely healthy child,” he remarked, and the words were - not so perfunctory as they sounded. The robust, red cheeked heartiness of - Chrissy raised musing reflections in his mind. If this infant, with its - stout mottled arms and legs, had been a boy, it would be at this moment - his heir. No one could ask for a finer child—and she was very - closely akin to him. And Cora was her mother—and Cora’s sister! - </p> - <p> - “Oh, but where <i>are</i> we going to live?” she broke in upon his - meditations. “I said to Eddy that I’d lay odds you were thinking of - David’s Court for us. You know the kennels used to be there before - Porlock’s time.” - </p> - <p> - “All that we can arrange,” said Christian, shaking off his reverie, and - lifting his hat. “Rest easy in your mind about everything.” - </p> - <p> - She nodded with an expansive geniality which freely included Dicky as - well, and then walked away. It slowly occurred to Christian that she had - said nothing about her sister’s presence in the neighborhood, although it - was impossible to suppose her ignorant, of it. Upon consideration, he - decided that her reticence was delicate. He felt that he liked Cora, and - then uneasily speculated upon the seeming probability that his liking for - her was in excess of her sister’s. - </p> - <p> - “Westland,” he said, with a new thought in his busy brain, “you know about - geography—about where the different British colonies are on the map, - and what they are distinguished for. I want to know of a good place, a - very long way off, where two young men with a moderate capital might do - well, or-at least have the chance to do well.” - </p> - <p> - “Fellows like that generally go to South Africa, nowadays,” replied Dicky, - “though I believe it’s gone off a bit. It’s not as far away as Australia, - but it’s livelier, apparently. They don’t seem to come back as much.” - </p> - <p> - “No; I have a prejudice against that Johannesburg. It is not a good - atmosphere, and it is too easy to get into trouble there.” - </p> - <p> - “There are great reports about British Columbia just now. They’ve found - wonderful new gold-fields, and they’re a fearful distance from anywhere. - It takes you months to get to them, so I’m told. But it depends so much on - what the fellows themselves are like. If I may ask, do I know them?” - </p> - <p> - “It is Augustine Torr that I have in mind, and a young friend of his—Bailey - his name is. By the way, a brother of the lady we just left.” - </p> - <p> - “I know <i>of</i> him,” commented Dicky sententiously. - </p> - <p> - “Well, it has occurred to me that these young men, for whom there seems no - specially suitable foothold in England, might accomplish something in the - colonies. That is the way Greater Britain, as they call it, has been made—by - young men who might have done nothing at all worth doing at home. Life is - really very difficult and complicated in this crowded island, unless one - has exactly the temperament to succeed. But in the colonies it is - different. Men who are of no use here may become valuable there. I have - heard that there are many instances of this. And these young men, it seems - to me that very possibly, if they found themselves on new ground, they - might do as others have done and get on. We do not quite know what to do - with them here, but we send them out, and they make the Empire.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s rather rough on the Empire, though, isn’t it?” said Dicky. - </p> - <p> - Christian frowned and drew himself up a little. “One is my cousin,” he - said coldly, “and the other is the brother of—is the brother of my - cousin’s wife.” - </p> - <p> - There was a moment of silence, and then the secretary, as upon a sudden - resolution, stopped. “It’s no good my going on,” he said, nervously, but - with decision. “I daresay you don’t mean it, but all the same it’s too - much for me. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn it up and catch the - evening-train. I don’t mind going to the station in the brake with the - servants and the luggage. It certainly won’t take anybody by surprise.” - Christian regarded him with open-eyed astonishment. “I don’t know what - you’re talking about,” he said, in obvious candor. - </p> - <p> - Dicky restlessly threw out his hands. “Oh, I can’t stand this Dukeness of - yours,” he declared. “You put it on too thick. I know Gus Torr, and I know - as much as I want to of Tom Bailey, and I know they’re no good, and you - know it, too—although I don’t say they mayn’t get on in the - colonies. God knows what won’t get on there! But when I make some - perfectly civil and natural remark on the subject, you flame up at me, and - blow yourself out like a pouter pigeon, and say they’re—haw-haw!—relations - of yours. Well, that be damned, you know! It may do once in a way with - outsiders, but it isn’t good enough to live with.” - </p> - <p> - “Dicky!” said Christian, in a voice of awed appeal. His brown face - distorted itself in lines of painful bewilderment as he gazed at his - companion. “Have I done that? Is it as bad as that?” He gasped the - questions out in a frightened way and tears sprang into his eyes. “Then it - is not you who should catch the evening train, but me. I am not fit to be - here!” He finished with a groan of bitter dejection and bowed his head. - </p> - <p> - Westland, as much scared as surprised at the violent result of his - protest, moved impetuously to his friend and put a hand on his shoulder. - “No-no! No-no,” he said, in a soothing voice. “It’s all right! I said you - didn’t mean it, you know. Truly, old man, I <i>knew</i> you didn’t mean - it! Upon my word, it’s all right!” - </p> - <p> - Christian lifted his head, and tried to choke down his agitation. “But you - go away from me!” he said in despairing tones. “It is the same as ever! - Nothing is changed for me! I do not make friends—much less keep - them!” - </p> - <p> - “But I <i>am</i> your friend! You <i>are</i> keeping me!” Dicky insisted, - raising his voice. An odd impulse to laugh aloud struggled confusedly with - the concern the other’s visible suffering gave him. “I take it all back. - I’m stopping with you, right enough!” - </p> - <p> - Christian accepted the assurance in a dazed way, and after he had silently - shaken the other’s hand, began walking on again, studying the ground with - a troubled frown. “I am a weak and dull fool!” he growled at last, in rage - at himself. “I have not sense enough to behave properly! It is a mistake - that I should he put over anybody else! I make myself ridiculous, like any - <i>parvenu</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “No—that’s all rot,” the other felt it judicious to urge. “You’re - perfectly all right, only—only——” - </p> - <p> - “Only I’m not!” Christian filled in the gap of hesitation with an angry - laugh. - </p> - <p> - Gradually a calmer view of himself pervaded his mind. “It is more - difficult than you think, Dicky,” he affirmed, after a pause. “It is not - easy at all—at first—to—what shall I say?—to keep - feeling your feet under you on the solid ground. The temptation to soar, - to think you are lifted up, is upon you every minute. It catches you - unawares. Ah! I see one must watch that without ceasing. Oh, I am glad—more - glad than I can tell you—that you stopped me. Ah! that was a true - friend’s service.” - </p> - <p> - Dicky chuckled softly: “It’s much nicer, if you can take it that way,” he - admitted. - </p> - <p> - “If I am ever anything but nice to <i>yoo</i>,” Christian began, gravely, - and then stopped as if he had bitten his tongue. “Oh, there is patronage - again!” he cried with vexation—and then let himself be persuaded to - join in the frank laughter that the other set up. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, we shall hit it off all right,” Dicky assured him as a final word on - the subject. “It’s merely a question of time. You’ve got to get accustomed - to your new job, and I to mine: that’s all there is of it. We shall learn - the whole bag of tricks in a week or so, and be happy ever afterward.” - </p> - <p> - The joking refrain struck some welcome chord in Christian’s thoughts. He - looked up, and noted that they were very near the door leading out from - the fruit-garden to the heath beyond the wall. Halting, he smiled into his - companion’s face. - </p> - <p> - “No one will follow me now,” he said with sparkling eyes. “I will let you - turn back here, if you don’t mind.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - CHAPTER XXVII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian realized - blankly, all at once, as’ he stood and gazed out over the moor, that he - did not know his way. - </p> - <p> - The spring had laid upon this great rolling common a beauty of its own. - Everywhere, on thorns and furze and briars, the touch of the new life had - hung emeralds to bedeck and hide the dun waste of winter. The ashen-gray - carpets of old mosses were veined with the vivid green of young growths; - out from the dry brown litter of lifeless ferns and bracken were rising - the malachite croziers of fresh fronds. The brilliant yellow of broom and - gorse blooms caught the eye in all directions, blazing above the vernal - outburst of another year’s vegetation, and the hum of the bees in the - sunlight, and the delicately mingled odors in the May air were a delight - to the senses. But under this exuberance of re-awakened nature, welcome - though it might be, somehow the landmarks of last autumn seemed to have - disappeared. - </p> - <p> - The path which had led along the wall, for example, was now nowhere - discernible. Or had there really been a path at any time? - </p> - <p> - It was clear enough, at all events, that his course for some distance lay - beside this massive line of ancient masonry, even if no track was marked - for him. At some farther point it would be necessary to turn off at a - right angle toward the Mere Copse—and here he could recall - distinctly that there had been a path. But then he came upon several - paths, or vaguely defined grassy depressions which might be paths, and the - divergent ways of these were a trouble to him. At last, he decided to - strike out more boldly into the heath, independently of paths, and try to - get a general view of the landscape. He made his way through creepers and - prickly little bushes toward an elevation in the distance, realizing more - and more in his encumbered progress that his quest was like that of one - who should search the limitless sea for a small boat. There seemed no - boundaries whatever to this vast tract of waste land. - </p> - <p> - As he began at length the ascent of the mound toward which his course had - been directed, he scanned the moor near and far, but no human figure was - visible. No signs could he discover of any beaten track across it; of the - several patches of woodland beyond, in the distance to the left, he could - not even be sure which was the Mere Copse. Below, on the edge of the - sky-line at the right, he could see the tops of the towers and chimneys of - Caermere. Wheeling round from this point, then, he endeavored to identify - that portion of the hill, on the opposite side of the river-chasm, which - Kathleen had pointed out to him from the terrace. But, viewed from here, - there were so many hills! The hopelessness of his errand became more - apparent with each glance round. Despondently, he sauntered up the few - remaining yards to the top. - </p> - <p> - He stood upon the ridge of a grass-grown wall of stones and earth, which - in a somewhat irregular circle enclosed perhaps a quarter-acre of land. - This wall on its best preserved side, where he found himself, was some - dozen feet in height. Across the ring it seemed lower, and at three or - four points was broken down altogether. He realized that he was surveying - a very ancient structure—no doubt, prehistoric. Would it have been a - fortress or a temple, or the primitive mausoleum of some chieftain-ruler - in these wilds? One of the openings seemed to suggest by its symmetry an - entrance to the enclosure. It was all very curious, and he promised - himself that very soon he would examine it in detail. Some vague - promptings of a nascent archaeological spirit impelled him now, upon - second thoughts, to walk round on the crest of the wall to the other side. - </p> - <p> - Suddenly he stopped, stared sharply downward with arrested breath, and - then, while his face wreathed itself with amused smiles, tip-toed along a - few paces farther. Halting here, his eyes dancing with suppressed gaiety, - he regarded at his leisure the object of his expedition. - </p> - <p> - Upon the sunny outer side of the sloping embankment, only a few feet - below, was seated Frances Bailey. Her face was turned from him, and she - was apparently engrossed in the study of a linen-backed sectional map - spread on her knees. A small red book lay in the grass at her side, and he - was so close that he could decipher the legend “Shropshire and Cheshire” - on its cover. - </p> - <p> - After a minute’s rapturous reflection he turned and noiselessly retraced - his steps, till he could descend from the wall without being seen. There - was a kind of miniature dry moat surrounding it at this point, and this he - lightly vaulted. Then, straightening himself, he strolled forward with as - fine an assumption of unsuspecting innocence as he could contrive. It - occurred to him to whistle some negligent tune very softly as he came, - but, oddly enough, his lips seemed recalcitrant—they made no sound. - </p> - <p> - At the obtrusion of his shadow upon the map she was examining she looked - swiftly up. For a moment, with the afternoon sun in her eyes, she seemed - not to recognize him. There followed another pause, infinitesimal in - duration, yet crowded with significance, in which she appeared clearly at - a loss what to say or do, now that she realized the fact of his presence. - Then she smiled at him with a kind of superficial brightness and tossed - the map aside. - </p> - <p> - “I am fortunate indeed to find you,” he said, as he came up, and they - shook hands formally. A few moments before, when he had looked down upon - her from the mound, he had been buoyantly conscious of his control of the - situation; but now that he stood before her it was she who looked down - upon him from her vantage-ground on the side of the bank, and somehow this - seemed to make a great deal of difference. The sound of his voice in his - own ears was unexpectedly solemn and constrained. He felt his deportment - to be unpleasantly awkward. - </p> - <p> - She ignored the implication that he had been looking for her. “I suppose - this must be the place that is marked ‘tumulus’ on the map here,” she - observed, with what seemed to be a deliberately casual tone. “But I should - think it is more like a rath, such as one reads about in Ireland—a - fortified place to defend one’s herds and people in. As I understand it, a - tumulus was for purposes of burial, and this seems to be a fort rather - than a tomb. What is your idea about it?” She rose to her feet as she put - the question, and turned to regard the earthworks above and about her with - a concentrated interest. - </p> - <p> - He tried to laugh. “I’m afraid I’m more ignorant about them than anybody - else,” he confessed. “I have never been here before. I suppose all one can - really say is that the people who did these things knew what they were - for, but that since they had no alphabet they could not leave a record to - explain them to us, and so we are free to make each his own theory to suit - himself.” - </p> - <p> - “That is a very indolent view to take,” she told him over her shoulder. - “Scientists and archaeologists are not contented with that sort of reply. - They examine and compare and draw deductions, and get at the meaning of - these ancient remains. They do not sit down and fold their hands and say, - ‘Unfortunately those people had no alphabet.’ Why don’t you dig this thing - up and find out about it?” - </p> - <p> - He smiled to himself doubtfully, “I have only been in possession of it for - about three hours,” he reminded her. Then an inspiration came to, him. - “Would <i>you</i> like to dig it up?” he asked, with an effect of - eagerness shining through the banter of his tone. “I mean, to superintend - the excavations. You shall have forty men out here with picks and shovels - to-morrow if you say the word.” Instead of answering, she stooped to get - her book and map, and then moved with a preoccupied air to the top of the - bank. After an instant’s hesitation he scrambled up to join her. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose that would have been the entrance there,” she observed, - pointing across the circle. “And in the center, you see, where the grass - is so thin, there are evidently big stones there. That <i>does</i> suggest - interment after all, doesn’t it? Yet the Silurians are said to have buried - only in dolmens. It is very curious.” - </p> - <p> - “I do not find that I care much about Silurians this afternoon,” he - ventured to say. There was a gentle hint of reproach in his voice. - </p> - <p> - “Why, you’re one yourself! That is the principal point about the Torrs; - that is what makes them interesting.” - </p> - <p> - “But what good does it do me to be a Silurian and interesting,” he - protested with a whimsical gesture, “if I—if I do not get what I - want most of all in the world?” - </p> - <p> - “It seems to me that you have got more things already than most people on - this planet.” She went on reflectively: “I had no idea at all what it - meant till I saw these hills and the valleys below them, and the forests - and the villages and the castle, and the people coming out from heaven - knows what holes in the rocks—all with your collar round their - necks. I should think it would either send you mad with the sense of power - or frighten you to death.” - </p> - <p> - “I am really very humble about it, I think,” he assured her simply. “And - there is not so much power as you seem to imagine. It is all a great - organized machine, like some big business. The differences are that it - works very clumsily and badly as it is at present managed, and that it - hardly pays any dividend at all. The average large wholesale grocer’s or - wine merchant’s estate would pay a bigger succession duty than my - grandfather’s. He died actually a poor man.” The intelligence did not - visibly impress her. “But it was not because he helped others,” she - remarked. “Those about him grew poorer also. It is a hateful system!” - </p> - <p> - “There is something you do not know,” he began with gravity. “I said that - my grandfather died a poor man. But since his death a tremendous thing has - happened. A great gift has been made to me. The enormous debts which - encumbered his estates have been wiped out of existence. It is Lord Julius - and Emanuel who have done this—done it for me! I do not know the - figures yet—to-morrow Mr. Soman is to explain them to me—but - the fact is I am a very rich man indeed. I do not owe anybody a penny. - Whatever seems to be mine, <i>is</i> mine. There are between seventy-five - and eighty thousand acres. By comparison with other estates, it seems to - me that there will be a yearly income of more than fifty thousand pounds!” - </p> - <p> - She drew a long breath and looked him in the face. “I am very sorry for - you,” she said soberly. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, no; I resist you there,” he exclaimed. “I quote your own words to - you: ‘It is an indolent view to take.’ There is a prodigious - responsibility! Yes! But all the more reason why I should be brave. Would - you have me lose my nerve, and say the task is too great for me? I thought - you did not like people who solved difficulties by turning tail and - running away. Well, to confess oneself afraid—that is the same - thing.” - </p> - <p> - She smiled thoughtfully, perhaps at the quaint recurrence to foreign - gestures and an uncertain, hurried use of book-English which her company - seemed always to provoke in him. “I meant only that it was a terrible - burden you had had fastened upon your shoulders,” she made answer softly. - “I did not suggest that you were afraid of it. And yet I should think you - would be!” - </p> - <p> - “I think,” he responded, with a kind of diffident conviction, “I think - that if a man is honest and ambitious for good things, and has some - brains, he can grow to be equal to any task that will be laid upon him. - And if he labors at it with sincerity and does absolutely the best that - there is in him to do, then I do not think that his work will be wasted. A - man is only a man after all. He did not make this world, and he cannot do - with it what he likes. It is a bigger thing, when you come to think of it, - than he is. At the end there is only a little hole in it for him to be - buried in and forgotten, as these people who raised this wall that we - stand on are forgotten. They thought in their day that the whole world - depended upon them; when there was thunder and lightning, they said it was - on their account, because their gods in the sky were angry with them. But - to us it is evident that they were not so important as they supposed they - were. We look at the work of their hands here, and we regard it with - curiosity, as we might an ant’s nest. We do not know whether they made it - as a tomb for their chief or as a shelter for their cows. And if they had - left records to explain that, and it does not matter how much else, it - would be the same. We learn only one thing from all the numberless - millions who have gone before us—that man is less important than he - thinks he is. I have a high position thrust upon me. <i>Eh bien!</i> I am - not going to command the sun to stand still. I am not going to believe - that I ought to revolutionize human society before I die. There will be - many men after me. If one or two of them says of me that I worked hard to - do well, and that I left things a trifle better than I found them, then - what more can I desire?” - </p> - <p> - She nodded in musing abstraction, but answered nothing. Her gaze was - fastened resolutely upon the opposite bank. - </p> - <p> - “I am truly so fortunate not to have missed you!” he repeated after a - small interval of silence. - </p> - <p> - “Why should you say that?” she asked almost with petulance. “You make too - much of me! I do not belong in this gallery at all. I am very angry with - myself for being here. I ought not to have allowed Mrs. Emanuel to - persuade me against my own judgment. It did not enter into my head that I - should be seen by anybody. I was on my vacation—I take it early, - because some of the girls like to get away at Whitsuntide—and at - Bath I saw in a paper some reference to the state with which your - grandfather would be buried, and the whim seized me to see the funeral. I - came on my bicycle most of the way, till the hills got too bad. I thought - no one would be the wiser for my coming and going. And one thing—you - must not ask me to come into the castle again. I am going to the inn to - get my machine, and go down to Craven Arms or Clun for the night. I have - looked both roads out on my map. Is Clun interesting, do you know?” - </p> - <p> - “I have not the remotest idea. In fact, there is only one idea of any sort - in my mind just now. It is that you are not to be allowed to go away. Have - you seen the dungeons in which we fasten up people whose presence is - particularly desired, and who will not listen to reason?” - </p> - <p> - The jesting tone of his words was belied by the glance in his eyes. She - frowned a little. “No, there is no reason in it at all. What have I to do - with these people? They are not my kind. It is the merest accident that - you and I happen to be acquainted. If you did not know me now, nothing is - more certain than that we should never meet in the world. And our seeming - to each other like friends on those other occasions—that had nothing - to do with the present. The circumstances are entirely different. There is - nothing in common between us now, or hardly anything at all. You ought to - understand that. And I look to you to realize how matters are altered, and - not to insist upon placing me in a very undignified and unpleasant - position.” She had spoken with increasing rapidity of utterance, and with - rising agitation. “Not that your insisting would make any difference!” she - added now, almost defiantly. - </p> - <p> - He looked at her in silence. The face half turned from him, with its broad - brow, its shapely and competent profile, the commanding light in its gray - eyes, the firm lips drawn into tightened curves of proud resistance to any - weakness of quivering—it was the face that had made so profound an - impression upon him at the outset of that wonderful journey from Rouen. - The memory became on the instant inexpressibly touching to him. She was - almost as she had been then—it might well be the same sober gray - frock, the same hat, save that the ribbon now was black instead of fawn. - She would have no varied wardrobe, this girl who earned her own bread, and - gave her mind to the large realities of life. But this very simplicity of - setting, how notably it emphasized the precious quality of what it framed! - He recalled that in his first rapt study of this face it had seemed to him - like the face of the young Piedmontese bishop who had once come to his - school—pure, wise, sweet, tender, strong. And now, beholding it - afresh, it was beyond all these things the face which woke music in his - heart—the face of the woman he loved. - </p> - <p> - With gentle slowness he answered her: “The position I seek to place you in - does not seem to me undignified. I should like to hope that you would not - find it unpleasant. You know what I mean—I offered it to you in - advance, before it was yet mine to give. I beg you again to accept it, now - when it <i>is</i> mine to give. If you will turn, you can see Caermere - from where you stand. It has had in all its days no mistress like you. - Will you take it from my hands?” - </p> - <p> - She confronted him with a clear, steady gaze of disapproval. “All this is - very stupid!” she said, peremptorily. “Last week—it had its pretty - and graceful side then perhaps, but it is not nice at all now. It does not - flatter me; it does not please me in any way to-day. I told you then, I - had my own independence, my own personal pride and dignity, which are - dearer to me than anything else. If I had them then, I have them very much - more now. What kind of idea of me is this that you have—that I am to - change my mind because now you can talk of fifty thousand a year? I like - you less than I did when you had nothing at all! For then we seemed to - understand each other better. You would not have rattled your money-box at - me then! You had finer sensibilities—I liked you more!” - </p> - <p> - He returned her gaze with a perplexed smile. “But I am asking you to be my - wife,” he pointed out. - </p> - <p> - She sniffed with a suggestion of contempt at the word. “Wife!” she told - him stormily. “You do not seem to know what the word ‘wife’ means! You are - not thinking of a ‘wife’ at all. It is a woman to play Duchess to your - Duke that you have in mind, and you feel merely that she ought to be - presentable and intelligent, and personally not distasteful to you; we’ll - even say that you prefer a woman towards whom you have felt a sort of - comrade’s impulse. But that has nothing to do with a ‘wife.’ And even on - your own ground how foolish you are! In heaven’s name, why hit on <i>me</i> - of all women? There are ten thousand who would do it all vastly better, - and who, moreover, would leap at the chance. You have only to look about - you. England is full of beauties in training for just such a place. They - know the ways of your set—the small talk, the little jokes, the - amusements and social duties and distinctions, and all that. Go and find - what you want among them. What have I to do with such people? They’re not - in my class at all.” - </p> - <p> - Christian sighed, and then sought her glance again with a timid, whimsical - smile. “Ah, how you badger me always!” he said. “But I have still - something more to say.” - </p> - <p> - “Let me beg that it be left unsaid!” She folded up the map, and began - moving along the ridge as she spoke. “It is all as distressful to me as - can be. You cannot understand—or will not understand—and it - puts me in an utterly hateful position. I do not like to be saying - unpleasant things to you. I had only the nicest feelings towards you when - we last parted; and this noon, when I saw you in the church, you made a - picture in my mind that I had quite—quite a tenderness for. But now - you force me into disagreeable feelings and words, which I don’t like any - more than you do. I seem to be never myself when I am with you. I have - actually never seen you but three times, and you disturb me more—you - make me hate myself more—than everything else in the world.” - </p> - <p> - The exigencies of the path along the summit of the mound forced Christian - to walk behind her. In the voice which carried these words backward to him - the quavering stress of profound emotion was more to him than the words - themselves. He put out his hand and laid it lightly upon her arm. - </p> - <p> - “It is because you feel in your heart of hearts that I love you,” he said - in a low, tremulous voice. “Can you not see? It is that that has made all - our meetings disturbed, full of misunderstandings as well as pleasure. You - wrong me, dear—or no, you could not do that, but it is that you do - not comprehend. I have loved you from that first day. Oh, I have loved you - always, since I can remember—long years before I saw you. There is - not any memory in my life, it seems, but of you—for all the sweet - things were a foretaste of you, and all the bitter are forgotten because - of you. And shall there not be an end now to our hurting each other? For - where you go I follow you, and I must always be longing for you—and - I do not believe that in your heart you hold yourself away from me, but - only in your mind.” - </p> - <p> - She had drawn her sleeve from his touch, and irresolutely quickened her - steps. She perforce paused now at a broken gap in the bank, and with books - and gathered skirts in one hand, lifted the other in instinctively - balancing preparation for a descent. He took this hand, and she made no - demur to his leading her down the steep slope to the level outer ground. - He retained the hand reverently, gently in his own as they walked in - silence across the heath. It seemed ever as if she would take it from him, - and that he consciously exerted a magic through his touch which just - sufficed to hold it. - </p> - <p> - With a bowed head, and cheek at once flushed and white, she began to - speak. “You are very young,” she said, lingering over the words with - almost dejection in her tone. “You know so little of what life is like! - You have such a place in the affairs of men to fill, and you come to it - with such innocent boyish good faith—and men are so little like what - you think they are. And as you learn the lesson—the hardening, - disillusionizing lesson of the world—and the soft, youthful places - in your nature toughen, and you are a man holding your own with other men, - and lording it over them where you can, then you will hate the things - which hamper you, and you will curse encumbrances that you took on you in - your ignorance. And you are all wrong about me! It is because you do not - know other women that you think well of me. I am a very ordinary girl, - indeed. There are thousands like me, and better than me, with more courage - and finer characters, and you do not know them, that is all. And there are - the young women of your own little world, who are born and reared to be - the wives of men in your place, and you will see them——” - </p> - <p> - “I have seen them,” he interposed softly. “But it is not fair!” she - hurried on breathlessly. “It is the duty of a friend to hold a man back - when he is bent on a folly. And we pledged ourselves to be true friends, - and I implore you—or no, I insist! I will not have it. It is too - cruelly unfair to you—and—I am going now—no, not that - way; in the other direction. We will say good-bye.” - </p> - <p> - He would not relinquish the hand she strove to drag away. All the calmness - of confident mastery was in his hold upon this hand, and in the gravely - sweet cadence of his voice. “I love you,” he said. “I shall love no one in - my life, or in another life, but you. I will not live without you. I will - not willingly spend a day in all my years away from you. You are truly my - other half—the companion, the friend, the love, the wife, without - whom nothing exists for me. I am not young as you say I am, and I shall - never be old—for in this love there is no youth or age for either of - us. Try to look backward now! Can you see a time when we did not love each - other? And forward! Is it thinkable that we can be parted?” Slowly she - lifted her head. - </p> - <p> - “Look at me!” she bade him in a voice he seemed never to have heard - before. - </p> - <h3> - THE END - </h3> - <div style="height: 6em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gloria Mundi, by Harold Frederic - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GLORIA MUNDI *** - -***** This file should be named 54988-h.htm or 54988-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/9/8/54988/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -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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- <title>Gloria Mundi, by Harold Frederic</title>
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gloria Mundi, by Harold Frederic
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-Title: Gloria Mundi
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-Author: Harold Frederic
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-Last Updated: February 5, 2018
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-Language: English
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GLORIA MUNDI ***
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-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
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-</pre>
-
- <div style="height: 8em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- GLORIA MUNDI
- </h1>
- <h2>
- By Harold Frederic
- </h2>
- <h3>
- Author Of “The Damnation Of Theron Ware,” “March Hares,” Etc.
- </h3>
- <h4>
- New York: International Book And Publishing Company
- </h4>
- <h3>
- 1899
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
- <img src="images/0007.jpg" alt="0007 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
- <p>
- <br /> <br />
- </p>
- <h3>
- TO MY FRIEND
- </h3>
- <h3>
- THE HON. ALTON B. PARKER
- </h3>
- <h3>
- CHIEF JUDGE OF THE COURT OF APPEALS, N. Y.
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <b>CONTENTS</b>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_PART"> <b>PART I</b> </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <b>PART II</b> </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_PART3"> <b>PART III</b> </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XIX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XXI </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_PART4"> <b>PART IV</b> </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXVI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVII </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
-<p>
- <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- PART I
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER I
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he meeting of the
- man and the woman—it is to this that every story in the world goes
- back for its beginning.
- </p>
- <p>
- At noon on a day late in September the express train from Paris rested,
- panting and impatient, on its brief halt in the station at Rouen. The
- platform was covered with groups of passengers, pushing their way into or
- out of the throng about the victualer’s table. Through the press passed
- waiters, bearing above their heads trays with cups of tea and plates of
- food. People were climbing the high steps to the carriages, or beckoning
- to others from the open windows of compartments. Four minutes of the
- allotted five had passed. The warning cries of the guards had begun, and
- there was even to be heard the ominous preliminary tooting of a horn.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the front of the section of first-class carriages a young woman leaned
- through the broad window-frame of a coupé, and held a difficult
- conversation with one of the waiters. She had sandwiches in one hand, some
- loose coin in the other. Her task was to get at the meaning of a man who
- spoke of sous while she was thinking in centimes, and she smiled a little
- in amused vexation with herself at the embarrassment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Deux sandwich: combien si vous plait, monsieur?” she repeated, with an
- appealing stress of courtesy. More slowly she constructed a second
- sentence: “Est un franc assez?” She proffered the silver coin to help out
- her inquiry, and the waiter, nodding, put up his hand for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the instant, as the noise of slamming doors and the chorus of “Au
- coupé, s’il-v’-plait!” grew peremptory, one in authority pushed the waiter
- aside and pulled open the coupé door upon which she had been leaning.
- “Permettez moi, madame!” he said curtly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Close at his back was a young man, with wraps upon his arm and a traveling
- bag in his hand, who was flushed and breathing hard with the excitement of
- hurry, and who drew a long sigh of relief as he put his foot on the bottom
- step of the coupé.
- </p>
- <p>
- The young woman had grasped the door and was striving stoutly to drag it
- to her. “Mais non, monsieur!” she shouted, her voice quivering with
- vehemence. “Cette compartement est tout reserveé-engageé! J’ai donné sank
- franc soisante, en Paris, pour moi seulement! Je proteste!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Sharp blasts from a horn at the rear of the train broke in upon her
- earnest if uncertain remarks. The official held up one warning hand, while
- with the other he wrenched the door wide open. He said something of which
- the girl comprehended only its arbitrary harshness of spirit. Brusquely
- thrusting a ticket into the young man’s hand, he pushed him up the steps
- into the compartment, and closed the door upon him with a clang. Arms were
- waving outside; the tin horn screamed; a throb of reawakened energy
- thrilled backward through the train.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I assure you—I am so sorry,” the young man began, still standing by
- the door. His voice was gentle and deprecatory. His words were English,
- but the tone was of some other language.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I have taken the whole compartment-I paid for it all!” she burst out
- at him, her voice shaking with indignation. “It is an outrage!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid you are mistaken,” he started to speak again; “you obtained
- only one seat—I have a ticket for another. If there had been time, I
- beg you to believe—” The train was moving, and a swift plunge into
- utter darkness abruptly broke off his speech. After a few moments it
- became possible to discern vague outlines in the black compartment. The
- girl had huddled herself on the end cushion at the right. The young man
- took his seat in the corner to the left, and for three incredibly
- protracted minutes the tunnel reared its uncanny barrier of bogus night
- between them. The dim suggestion of light which remained to them revealed
- constrained and motionless figures drawn rigidly away from each other, and
- pale averted countenances staring fixedly into the gloom.
- </p>
- <p>
- All at once they were blinking in a flood of sunshine, and drawing welcome
- breaths of the new, sweet air which swept through from window to window.
- The young man’s gaze, decorously turned to his left, was of a sudden
- struck with the panorama as by a blow. He uttered a little cry of delight
- to himself, and bent forward with eagerness to grasp as much as he might
- of what was offered. The broad, hill-rimmed basin of the Seine; the gray
- towers and shining spires of the ancient town; the blue films of smoke
- drifting through the autumn haze; the tall black chimneys, the narrow,
- high poplars, the splashes of vivid color with which the mighty moving
- picture painted itself—all held him, rapt and trembling, with his
- face out of the window.
- </p>
- <p>
- Summarily the darkness descended upon them again. He drew back, settled
- himself in his seat and recalled the circumstance that he was not alone.
- It occurred to him to pull up the window, and then instinctively he turned
- to see if she had taken the same precaution on her side. Thus when the
- short second tunnel unexpectedly ended, he found himself regarding his
- companion with wideeyed and surprised intentness.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were two vacant seats between them, and across this space she
- returned his scrutiny for a moment; then with a fine show of calm she
- looked away, out through the broad, rounded panes which constituted the
- front of the compartment.
- </p>
- <p>
- To the eye of the young man, she was above all things English. Her
- garments, her figure, the pose of her head, the consciously competent
- repose of her profile, the very angle at which the correct gray hat, with
- its fawn-colored ribbon, crossed the line of the brow above—these
- spoke loudly to him of the islander. From this fact alone would be
- inferred a towering personal pride, and an implacable resentment toward
- those who, no matter how innocently and accidentally, offered injury to
- that pride. He knew the English well, and it hardly needed this partial
- view of her face to tell him that she was very angry.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another young man, under these conditions, might have more frankly asked
- himself whether the face was a beautiful one. He was conscious that the
- query had taken shape in his mind, but he gave it no attention. It was the
- character of the face, instead, which had powerfully impressed him. He
- recalled with curious minuteness the details of his first glimpse of it—the
- commanding light in the gray eyes, the tightened curves of the lip, the
- mantling red on the high, smooth cheek. Was it a pretty face? No—the
- question would not propound itself. Prettiness had nothing to do with the
- matter. The personality which looked through the face—that was what
- affected him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The compartment seemed filled in some subtle way with the effect of this
- personality. He looked out of his window again. A beautiful deep valley
- lay below him now, with densely wooded hills beyond. The delicate tints of
- the waning season enriched the tracery of foliage close at hand; still the
- tall chimneys, mixed with poplars, marked the course of the enslaved
- river, but the factories themselves were kindly hidden here by dark
- growths of thicket in the shadowed depths.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was surpassingly beautiful, but its contemplation left him restless. He
- moved about on his seat, partially lowered the window, put it up again and
- at last turned his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid that all the charming landscape is on this side,” he made
- bold to say. “I will change places with pleasure, if—if you would be
- so kind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, thank you,” was her spontaneous and decisive reply. Upon reflection
- she added in a more deliberate tone: “I should be obliged if you would
- take the view that conversation is not necessary.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Some latent strain of temerity amazed the young man by rising to the
- surface of his mind, under the provocation of this rebuff, and shaping his
- purpose for him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is only fair to myself, first, however,” he with surprise heard
- himself declaring, “that I should finish my explanation. You can satisfy
- yourself readily at Dieppe that your ticket is for only one seat. It is
- very, easy to make errors of that kind when one does not—that is to
- say, is not—well, <i>entirely</i> familiar with the language of the
- country. As to my own part, you will remember that I came only at the last
- moment. I took my coupé seat a half hour before, because I also wished to
- be alone, and then I went out to see Jeanne d’Arc’s tower again, and I was
- nearly too late. If there had been time, I would have found a seat
- elsewhere—but you yourself saw—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Really, I think no more need be said,” broke in his companion. She looked
- him frankly, coldly in the face as she spoke, and her words seemed in his
- ears to have metallic edges. “It is plain enough that there was a mistake.
- As you have suggested, my French is very faulty indeed, and no doubt the
- misunderstanding is entirely my own. So, since it is unavoidable, there
- surely need be no more words about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She opened a book at this, put her feet out to the stool in front and
- ostentatiously disposed herself for deep abstraction in literature.
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man in turn got out some pamphlets and papers from the pockets
- of his great-coat, and pretended to divide his attention between these and
- the scenery outside. In truth, he did not for a moment get the face of
- this girl out of his thoughts. More than ever now, since she had looked
- him fully in the eye, it was not a face to be pictured in the brain as
- other faces of women had been. The luminous substance of the individuality
- behind the face shone out at him from the pages he stared at, and from the
- passing vistas of lowland meadows, streams and mill-towns that met his
- gaze through the window.
- </p>
- <p>
- He knew so little of women that his mind was quite devoid of materials for
- any comparative analysis of the effect she produced upon him. He evolved
- for himself, indeed, the conviction that really this was the first woman,
- in the genuine and higher meaning of the word, that he had ever met. The
- recognition of this brought with it an excitement as novel to him as the
- fact itself. Before ever he had seen her, clinging to the coupé door with
- her gloved hands and so bravely doing hopeless and tongue-tied battle with
- the guard, there had been things which had made this the greatest day of
- his life. He was in truth finishing the last stage of a journey into the
- unknown, the strange possibilities of which had for a week kept his nerves
- on the rack. The curtain of only one more night hung now between him and
- the revealed lineaments of destiny. To be alone with his perturbed
- thoughts, on this culminating day of anxious hopes and dreads, had been
- his controlling idea at Rouen. It was for this that he had bought the
- coupé seat, upon the rumor of the station that solitude was thus to be
- commanded. And now how extraordinary was the chance!
- </p>
- <p>
- There had stepped into this eventful day, as from the clouds, a stranger
- whose mysterious appeal to his imagination seemed more remarkable than all
- else combined.
- </p>
- <p>
- He worked this out, painstakingly, with little sidelong glances from time
- to time toward where she sat buried in her book, to check the progression
- of his reasoning. When he reached the conclusion that she was really
- playing this predominant part in the drama of the day, its suggestion of
- hysterical folly rather frightened him. He looked with earnestness out of
- the window, and even be gan to count the chimneys of the landscape as an
- overture to returning sanity. Then he looked less furtively at her and
- said to himself with labored plausibility that she was but an ordinary
- traveling Englishwoman, scarcely to be differentiated from the
- Cook’s-tourist type that he knew so well; she had not even a governess’
- knowledge of French, and there had been nothing in her words and tone with
- him to indicate either mental distinction or kindliness of temper. Why
- should he bestow so much as another thought upon her? He squared his
- slender shoulders, and turned with resolution to his book.
- </p>
- <p>
- A minute later the impossibility of the situation had mastered every fiber
- of his brain. He put down the volume, feeling himself to be a fool for
- doing so, yet suffering himself with an unheard-of gladness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I anger you, I shall be much pained,” he said, with a set face turned
- not quite toward her, and a voice that he kept from breaking by constant
- effort, “but I am going to England for the first time, and there are some
- things that I am very anxious to ask about.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She seemed to reflect a little before she lifted her head. Now again he
- was priviledged to look squarely into her face, and he added swiftly to
- his store a new impression of her. The ruling characteristic of the
- countenance was a certain calm and serious reasonableness. The forehead
- was broad and comely; the glance of the eyes was at once alert and steady.
- The other features were content to support this controlling upper part of
- the face; they made a graceful and fitting frame for the mind which
- revealed itself in the eyes and brow—and sought to do no more.
- Studying her afresh in this moment of her silence, he recalled the face of
- a young Piedmontese bishop who had come once to his school. It had the
- same episcopal serenity, the same wistful pride in youth’s conquest of the
- things immortal, the same suggestion of intellectuality in its clear
- pallor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should dislike to seem rude,” she said, slowly. “What is it that you
- want to ask?” What was it indeed? He searched confusedly about in his mind
- for some one question entitled to precedence among the thousand to which
- answers would come in good time. He found nothing better than a query as
- to the connection between New Haven and Brighton.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In this little book,” he explained, “there is a time for New Haven and
- for London, but I cannot find a mention of Brighton, yet I am expected
- there this evening, or perhaps, early to-morrow morning.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am sure I cannot tell you,’” she answered. “However, the places are not
- far apart. I should say there would certainly be trains.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She lifted the book again as she spoke, and adjusted her shoulders to the
- cushions. He made haste to prevent the interview from lapsing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have never seen England,” he urged dolefully, “and yet I am all English
- in my blood—and in my feelings, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A flicker of ironical perception played for an instant in her eye and at
- the corner of her lip. “I have heard that a certain class of Americans
- adopt that pose,” she remarked. “I dare say it is all right.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not grasp her meaning all at once, though the willingness to give
- umbrage conveyed in her tone was clear enough. He looked doubtfully at
- her, before he spoke again. “Oh,” he began, with hesitation—“yes, I
- see—you thought I was American. I am not in the least—I am all
- English. And it affects me very much—this thought that in a few
- hours now I am to see the real England. I am so excited about it, in
- fact,” he added with a deprecatory little laugh, “that I couldn’t bear it
- not to talk.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded comprehendingly. “I thought that your accent must be American—since
- it certainly isn’t English.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I have too facile an ear,” he answered readily, as if the subject
- were by no means new to him. “I pick up every accent that I hear. I have
- been much with English people, but even more with Americans and
- Australians. I always talk like the last family I have been in—until
- I enter another. I am by profession a private tutor—principally in
- languages—and so I know my failings in this matter very well.” She
- smiled at some passing retrospect. “You must have had an especially
- complete sense of my shortcomings as a linguist, too. I have often
- wondered what effect my French would produce upon an actual professor, but
- I should never have had the courage to experiment, if I had known.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He waved his hand—a pale hand with veined, thin, nervous fingers,
- which she looked at in its foreign gesture. “Too much importance is
- attached to languages,” he declared. “It is the cheapest and most trivial
- of acquirements, if it stands alone, or if it is not put to high uses.
- Parents have so often angered me over this: they do not care what is in
- their children’s minds and hearts, but only for the polish and form of
- what is on their tongues. I have a different feeling about education.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded again, and laid the book aside. “You are coming to a country
- where everything will shock you, then,” she said. “I would rather do
- scullery work, or break stones by the roadside, than be a schoolteacher in
- England.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, it’s the same everywhere,” he urged. “I would not think that the
- English were worse than the others. They are different, that is all.
- Besides, I do not think I shall be a teacher in England. Of course, I
- speak in the dark; for a few hours yet everything is uncertain. But as the
- old American senator at Monte Carlo used to say, ‘I feel it in my bones’
- that I will not have to teach any more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The expression of her face seemed somehow not to invite autobiography at
- the moment. “The prospect of not having to work any more for one’s
- living,” she mused at him—“how curiously fascinating it always is!
- We know perfectly well that it is good for us to work, and that we should
- be woefully unhappy if we did not work, and yet we are forever charming
- our imagination with a vision of complete idleness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I would not be idle!” the young man broke forth, enthusiastically. He
- leaned forward in his seat, and spoke with eager hands as well as words
- against the noise that filled the swaying carriage. “I have that same
- feeling—the longing to escape from the dull and foolish tasks I have
- to do—but I never say to myself that I would be idle. There are such
- a host of things to do in the world that are worth doing! But the men who
- have the time and the money, who are in the position to do these things—how
- is it, I ask myself, that they never think of doing them? It is the
- greatest of marvels to me. Then sometimes I wonder, if the chance and the
- power came to me, whether I also would sit down, and fold my hands, and do
- nothing. It is hard to say; who can be sure what is in him till he has
- been tested? Yet I like to think that I would prove the exception. It is
- only natural,” he concluded, smilingly, “that one should try to think as
- well as possible of oneself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young lady surveyed his nervous, mobile face with thoughtful
- impassivity. “You seem to think, one way or another, a good deal about
- yourself,” she remarked.
- </p>
- <p>
- He bowed to her, with a certain exaggeration in his show of quite sincere
- humility which, she said to herself, had not been learned from his
- English-speaking connections.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What you say is very true,” he admitted with candor. “It is my fault—my
- failing. I know it only too well.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>My</i> fault is bad manners,” she replied, disarmed by his
- self-abasement. “I had no business to say it at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no,” he urged. “It is delightful to me that you did say it. I could
- not begin to tell you how good your words sounded in my ears. Honest and
- wise criticism is what I have not heard before in years. You do not get it
- in the South; there is flattery for you, and sneering, and praise as much
- too high as blame is too cruel—but no candid, quiet judgments. Oh, I
- loved to hear you say that! It was like my brother—my older brother
- Salvator. He is in America now. He is the only one who always said the
- truth to me. And I am glad, too, because—because it makes you seem
- like a friend to me, and I have been so agitated this whole week, so
- anxious and upset, and all without a soul to talk to, or advise with—and
- the pressure on me has been so great——”
- </p>
- <p>
- He let the wandering sentence lose itself in the clamor of the train, and
- put the rest of his meaning into the glance with which he clung to hers.
- The appeal for sympathetic kindliness of treatment glowed in his eyes and
- shone upon his eager face.
- </p>
- <p>
- She took time for her answer, and when she spoke it was hardly in direct
- reply. “Your business in England,” she said, as unconcernedly as might be—“it
- is that, I take it, which causes so much anxiety. Fortunately it is soon
- to be settled—to-morrow, I think you said.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish I might tell you about it,” he responded with frank fervency. “I
- wish it—you cannot imagine how much!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The look with which she received his words recalled to him her earlier
- manner. “I’m afraid—” she began, in a measured voice, and then
- stopped. Intuition helped him to read in her face the coming of a softer
- mood. Finally she smiled a little. “Really, this is all very quaint,” she
- said, and the smile crept into her voice. “But the train is slowing down—there
- is no time now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They were indeed moving through the street of a town, at a pace which had
- been insensibly lowered while they talked. The irregular outlines of docks
- and boat-slips, overhanging greenish water, revealed themselves between
- dingy houses covered with signs and posters. At the barriers crossing the
- streets were clustered groups of philosophic observers, headed by the
- inevitable young soldier with his hands in the pockets of his red
- trousers, and flanked by those brown old women in white caps who seem
- always to be unoccupied, yet mysteriously do everything that is done.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is Dieppe, then?” he asked, with a collecting hand put out for his
- wraps.
- </p>
- <p>
- The train had halted, and doors were being opened for tickets.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We sit still, here, and go on to the wharf,” she explained.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And then to the boat!” he cried. “How long is it?—the voyage on the
- boat, I mean. Three hours and over! Excellent!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She laughed outright as she rose, and got together her books and papers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought you were a Frenchman when I first saw you,” she confided to him
- over her shoulder. “But no Frenchman at Dieppe ever yet shouted
- ‘Excellent!’ with his face turned toward the New Haven steamers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The mirth in her tone was so welcome to him that he laughed in turn,
- without any clear idea of her words. He gathered her handbag up along with
- his own, and when she demurred he offered her gay defiance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the terrible boldness of a timid person,” he prattled, as he helped
- her down the steps, “but you must perceive that in the face of it you are
- quite helpless. Since I was born, I have never really had my own way
- before. But now I begin to believe in my star. After all, one is not an
- Englishman for nothing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, it is comparatively easy to be an Englishman in Dieppe,” she made
- answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER II
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he sky was dappled
- azure overhead, the water calm and fresh-hued below. When the ship’s
- company had disposed itself, and the vessel was making way outside, there
- were numerous long gaps of unpeopled space on the windy side, and to one
- of these the young couple tacitly bent their steps. They leaned against
- the rail, standing close together, with their faces lifted to the strong
- sweet breeze.
- </p>
- <p>
- Viewed thus side by side, it could be seen that of the two the young man
- was just perceptibly the taller, but his extreme fragility excused his
- companion’s conception of him as a small man. On his head he had pulled
- tight for the voyage a little turban of a cap, which accentuated the
- foreign note of his features and expression. He was dark of skin and hair,
- with deep-brown eyes both larger and softer than is common with his sex,
- even in the South. The face, high and regular in shape, had in repose the
- careworn effect of maturer years than the boyish figure indicated. In the
- animation of discussion this face took on, for the most part, the rather
- somber brilliancy of a strenuous earnestness. Now, as it confronted the
- stiff Channel wind, it was illumined by the unaccustomed light of a
- frivolous mood. The ends of his slight mustache were lifted in a
- continuous smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is my gayest day for many, many years,” he told her, after a little
- pause in the talk. They had become great friends in this last half-hour.
- In the reaction from the questionable restraint of the coupé to the broad,
- sunlit freedom of the steamer’s deck, the girl had revealed in generous
- measure a side of her temperament for which he had been unprepared. She
- had a humorous talent, and, once she had gained a clew to his perceptive
- capacities in this direction, it had pleased her to make him laugh by
- droll accounts of her experiences and observations in Paris. She had been
- there for a fortnight’s holiday, quite by herself, she told him, and there
- was something in her tone which rendered it impossible for him to ask
- himself if this was at all unusual among English young ladies. His
- knowledge of Paris was also that of a stranger, and he followed her
- whimsical narrative of blunders and odd mistakes with a zest heightened by
- a recollection of his own.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When have I laughed so much before?” he cried now. A long sigh, as of
- surprised relief, followed his words. “Well—I had looked forward to
- coming in a different spirit to England. With some hopes and a good
- courage—yes. But with a merry heart—how could I have foretold
- that? It was my good angel who put that coupé ticket into my head, and so
- brought me to you. Ah, how angry you were! I see you now, pulling at that
- door.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, well,” she said in extenuation, “how could I know? I never dreamed
- that the whole coupé was not mine—and when I saw that odious guard
- opening the door, to force in some wretched little Continental creature—I
- mean, that was my momentary thought—and naturally I—”
- </p>
- <p>
- An involuntary sidelong glance of his eyes upward toward the crown of her
- hat, passed mute comment on her unfinished remark. She bit her lip in
- self-reproof at sight of the dusky flush on his cheek.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the only un-English thing about me,” he said, with a pathetically
- proud attempt at a smile. “My father was a tall, big man, and so is my
- brother Salvator.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A new consciousness of the susceptibility of this young man to slights and
- wounds spread in the girl’s mind. It was so cruelly easy to prick his thin
- skin! But it was correspondingly easy to soothe and charm him—and
- that was the better part. His character and temperament mapped themselves
- out before her mind’s eye. She read him as at once innocent and
- complicated. He could be full of confidence in a stranger, like herself,
- but his doubts about his own values were distressing. The uneased antennæ
- of his self-consciousness were extended in all directions, as if to
- solicit injury. She had caught in his brown eyes the suggestion of an
- analogy to a friendless spaniel—the capacity for infinite gratitude
- united with conviction that only kicks were to be expected. It was more
- helpful to liken him to a woman. In the gentle and timid soul of a
- convent-bred maiden he nourished the stormy ambitions of a leader of men.
- It was a nun who boldly dreamed of commanding on the field of battle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had a feeling,” she said to him, so softly that the tone was almost
- tender, “that you must be like your mother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She rightly judged him to be her elder, but for the moment her mood was
- absorbingly maternal. “Let us sit down here,” she added, moving toward the
- bench facing the rail. “You were going to tell me—about her, was
- it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He spread his rugs over their knees as they sat together in the fresh
- wind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, it was not so much of her,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have much to think about her—not much to put into words. She died
- five years ago—nearly six now—and I was so much at school that
- I saw very little of her in the latter years. Salvator was with her
- always, though, to the end, although he was not her own son. We are
- half-brothers, but no one could have been fonder than he was of my mother,
- or a better son to her. After she died, he still kept me in school, and
- this was curious too, because he hated all my teachers bitterly. Salvator
- is fierce against the church, yet he kept me where I had been put years
- before, with the Christian Brothers at the Bon Rencontre, in Toulon. When
- at last I left them, Salvator took me with him for a period—he is an
- expert and a dealer in gems—and then I became a private tutor. Four
- years or so of that—and now I am here.” He added, as upon an
- afterthought: “You must not think that I failed to love my mother. She was
- sweet and good, and very tender to me, and I used to weep a great deal
- after I left her, but it was not my fortune to be so much with her as
- Salvator was. I think of her, but there is not much to say.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The repetition of this formula suggested no comment to his companion, and
- he went on.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The real memory of my childhood is my father, although I saw him only
- once. Salvator says I saw him oftener, but if so all the recollections
- jumble themselves together in my mind, to make a single impression. I was
- five years old; it was in the early summer, in 1875. My father had been
- fighting against the Prussians when I was born. By the time I was old
- enough to know people, he was away in Spain with Don Carlos. He died
- there, of wounds and fever, at Seo de Urgel, in August of that same year,
- 1875. But first he came to see us—it would have been in June, I
- think—and we were living at Cannes. He had some secret Carlist
- business, Salvator says. I knew nothing of that. I know only that I saw
- him, and understood very well who he was, and fixed him in my mind so that
- I should never, never forget him. How strange a thing it is about
- children! I have only the dimmest general idea of how my mother looked
- when I was that age; I cannot remember her at all in the odd clothes which
- her pictures show she wore then, though I saw them constantly. Yet my
- father comes once and I carry his image till Judgment Day.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Poor mothers!” sighed the girl, under her breath. “No, it was nothing. Go
- on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I knew that he was a soldier, and that wherever there were wars he went
- to have his share of fighting. I suppose it was this which gripped my
- imagination, even as a baby. I could read when I was five, and Salvator
- had told me about our father’s battles. He had been in the Mutiny in
- India, and he was in Sicily against Garibaldi, and he was with the
- Austrians four years before I was born, and in the French Foreign Legion
- afterward. I think I knew all this when I saw him—and if I did not,
- then I feel that I could have learned it from just looking at him. He was
- like a statue of War. Ah, how I remember him—the tall, strong,
- straight, dark, hardfaced, silent man!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you loved <i>him!</i>” commented his companion, with significance.
- </p>
- <p>
- He shook his head smilingly. The analysis in retrospect of his own
- childish emotions had a pleasant interest for him. “No; there was no
- question of love, at all. For example, he liked Salvator—who was
- then a big boy of fifteen—and he took him off to Spain with him when
- he left. I cannot remember that he so much as put his hand on my head, or
- paid the slightest attention to me. He looked at me in a grave way if I
- put myself in front of his eyes, just as he looked at other things, but he
- would not turn his eyes to follow me if I moved aside. Do you know that to
- my fancy that was superb? I was not in the least jealous of Salvator. I
- only said to myself that when I was his age, I also would march to fight
- in my father’s battles. And I was proud that he did not bend to me, or put
- himself out to please me, this huge, cold-eyed, lion-like father of mine.
- If he had ever kissed me I should have been ashamed—for us both. But
- nothing was farther from his thoughts. He went away, and at the door he
- spoke for the first time in my hearing of me. He twisted his thumb toward
- me, where I stood in the shelter of my mother’s skirts. Mind, he’s an
- Englishman! he said—and turned on his heel. I have the words in my
- ears still. ‘Mind, he’s an Englishman!’”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There <i>is</i> England!” she cried.
- </p>
- <p>
- They stood up, and his eager eye, following the guidance of her finger,
- found the faint, broken, thin line of white on the distant water’s edge.
- Above it, as if they were a part of it, hung in a figured curtain soft
- clouds which were taking on a rosy tint from the declining sun. He gazed
- at the remote prospect in silence, but with a quickened breath.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the first time that <i>I</i> have seen it like this—coming
- toward it, I mean, from somewhere else,” she remarked at last. “I had
- never been outside England before.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not seem to hear her. With another lingering, clinging gaze at the
- white speck, he shook himself a little, and turned. “And now I want to
- tell you about this new, wonderful thing—about why I am this minute
- within sight of England. You will say it is very strange.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They moved to their bench again, and he spread the wraps once more, but
- this time they did not sit quite so close together. It was as if the mere
- sight of that pale, respectable slip of land on the horizon had in some
- subtle way affected their relation to each other.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A week ago,” he began afresh, “at Nice, a messenger from the Crédit
- Lyonnais brought me a note saying they wished to see me at the bank. They
- had, it seems, searched for me in several towns along the Riviera, because
- I had been moving about. It was demanded that I should prove my identity
- by witnesses, and when that was done I was given a sum of money, and a
- sealed letter addressed to me, bearing simply my name, Mr. Christian Tower—nothing
- more. I hurried outside and read its contents. I was requested to get
- together all my papers—”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stopped short, arrested by a sharp, half-stifled exclamation from her
- lips. She had continued looking at him after his mention of his name—at
- first absent-mindedly, as if something in his talk had sent her thoughts
- unconsciously astray; then with lifted head, and brows bent together in
- evident concentration upon some new phase of what he had been saying. Now
- she interrupted him with visible excitement.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You say Christian Tower!” She pushed the words at him hurriedly. “What
- was your father’s name?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He was always known as Captain Tower, but I have read it in my papers—his
- first name was Ambrose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had risen to her feet, in evident agitation, and now strode across to
- the rail. As he essayed to follow her, she turned, and forced the shadow
- of a smile into her lips; her eyes remained frightened. “It is all right,”
- she said with a gasping attempt at reassurance. “I was queer for just an
- instant; it’s all right. Go on, please. You were to get together your
- papers—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And bring them to Brighton,” he said, much disconcerted. “That is all.
- But won’t you sit down?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I would rather stand,” she answered. Her composure was returning,
- and with it the power to view altogether, and in their proper relation to
- one another, the several elements of the situation his words had revealed
- to her. Upon examination, it was curiosity that she felt rather than
- personal concern—an astonished and most exigent curiosity. But even
- before this, it grew apparent to her as she thought, came her honorable
- duty to this young man who had confided in her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I ought to tell you,” she began, beckoning him nearer where she
- stood; “yes, you should be told that in all human probability I know the
- story. It is impossible that I should be mistaken—two such names
- never got together by accident. And I can assure you that the whole thing
- is even more extraordinary and astounding than you can possibly imagine.
- There are people in England who will curl up like leaves thrown on the
- fire when they see you. But for the moment”—she paused, with a
- perplexed face and hesitating voice—“go on; tell me a little more.
- It isn’t clear to me—how much you know. Don’t be afraid; I will be
- entirely frank with you, when you have finished.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He patted the rail nervously with his hand, and stared at her in pained
- bewilderment and impatience. “How much do I know?” he faltered vaguely.
- “Very little; almost nothing. There was no explanation in the letter. The
- bankers said nothing, save that they were to give me a thousand francs.
- But one does not get a thousand francs merely because the wind has
- changed. There must be a reason for it; and what reason is possible except
- that there is some inheritance for me? So I argued it out—to myself.
- I have thought of nothing else, awake or asleep, for the whole week.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He halted, with anxious appeal in his eyes, and his hands outspread to
- beseech enlightenment from her. She nodded to show that she understood.
- “In a minute or two, when I have got it into shape in my mind,” she said
- soothingly. “But meantime go on. I want you to talk. What have you done
- during the week?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian threw his hands outward.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Done?” he asked plaintively. “Murdered time some way or the other. I was
- free to move an hour after I had read the letter. The money was more than
- I had ever had before. It was intolerable to me—the thought of not
- being in motion. In the ‘Indicateur’ I got the times of trains, and I
- formed my plan. Avignon I had never seen, and then Le Puy—there was
- a wonderful description of it in a magazine I had read—and then to
- Paris, and next to Rouen. It was at Rouen that I slept last night. It was
- my first night’s good sleep—I had tired myself out so completely.
- Always walking with the map in my mind, going from one church to another,
- talking to the Suisse, bending back my head to examine capitals and
- arches, forcing myself to take an interest in what I saw every little
- minute—so I have come somehow through the week. But now here is rich
- England within plain sight, and here are you, my new friend—and all
- my life I have been so poor and without friends!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He tightened his hand upon the rail, and abruptly turned his face away.
- She saw the shine of tears in his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come and sit down again,” she said, with a sisterly hand on his arm. “I
- know how to tell it to you now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you truly know nothing about the Towers—or Torrs—your
- father’s family?” she continued, when they were once again seated. “It
- sounds incredible! I can hardly realize how you could have lived all these
- years and not—but how old are you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Twenty-six.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “—And not got some inkling of who—of who your father was?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My mother never told me. Perhaps she did not know altogether, herself. I
- cannot say as to that. And if Salvator knew—that I cannot tell,
- either. He is a curious man, my brother Salvator. He talks so you would
- think you saw him inside out—but he keeps many things to himself
- none the less.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes—that brother of yours,” she said abstractedly. “I have been
- thinking about him. But it can’t be that he has any importance in the
- game, else the Jews would have sent for him instead of you. They waste no
- time,—they make no errors.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Jews!” he murmured at her, with no comprehension in his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled. “I have been arranging it in my mind. The thing was like a
- black fog to me when you first spoke. I had to search about for a light
- before I could make a start. But when I stumbled across the thought, ‘It
- is the Jews’ work,’ then it was not very hard to make out the rest. I
- could almost tell you who it is that is to meet you at Brighton. It is Mr.
- Soman. Is it not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He assented with an impulsive movement of head and hands. The gaze that he
- fixed upon her sparkled with excitement.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is Lord Julius’ man of business,” she explained to his further
- mystification. “No doubt he has had one of those green eyes of his on you
- ever since you were a fortnight old. It frightens one to think of it—the
- merciless and unerring precision of their system. Is there anything they
- <i>don’t</i> know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid of Jews myself,” he faltered, striving to connect himself
- with what he dimly perceived of her mood. “But what have they against me?
- What can they do to me? I owe nothing; they can’t make me responsible for
- what other people, strangers to me, have done, can they? And why should
- they give me a thousand francs? It is I,” he finished hopelessly, “I who
- am in the black fog. Tell me, I beg you, what is it that they want with
- me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She put a reassuring hand upon his arm, and the steady, genial light in
- her calm eyes brought him instantaneous solace. “You have not the
- slightest cause for fear,” she told him, gently. “Quite the contrary. They
- are not going to hurt you. So far from it, they have taken you up; they
- will wrap you in cotton-wool and nurse you as if you were the Koh-i-noor
- diamond. You may rest easy, my dear sir; you may close your eyes, and fold
- your hands, and lean back against Israel as heavily as you like. It is all
- right so far as you are concerned. But the others”—she paused, and
- looked seaward with lifted brows and a mouth twisted to express sardonic
- comment upon some amazing new outlook—“eye-ee! the others!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Still you do not tell me!” For the first time she caught in his voice the
- hint of a virile, and even an imperious note. Behind the half-petulant
- entreaty of the tired boy, there was a man’s spirit of dictation. She
- deferred to it unconsciously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Lord Julius that I spoke of is—let me see—he is your
- great-uncle—your grandfather’s younger brother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But if <i>he</i> is a Jew—” began Christian, in an awed whisper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—no; he is nothing of the sort. That is to say, he is not Jewish
- in blood. But he married a great heiress of the race—whole millions
- sterling came to him from the huge fortune of the Aronsons in Holland—and
- he likes Jewish people—of the right sort. He is an old man now, and
- his son, Emanuel, has immense influence over him. You should see them
- sitting together like two love-birds on a perch. They idolize each other,
- and they both worship Emanuel’s wife. If they weren’t the two best men in
- the world, and if she weren’t the most remarkable woman anywhere, they
- would utterly spoil her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He—this lord—is my great-uncle,”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian recalled her to his subject. “He and his son are good men.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They are the ones I referred to as the Jews. That is how they are spoken
- of in the family—to distinguish them from the senior branch—the
- sons and grandsons of your grandfather. Fix that distinction in you mind.
- There is the elder group, who have titles and miles of mortgaged estates,
- no money to speak of and still less brains—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is the group that I belong to?” He offered the interruption with a
- little twinkle in his eyes. It was patent that his self-possession had
- returned. Even this limited and tentative measure of identification with
- the most desirable and deep-rooted realities in that wonderful island that
- he could see coming nearer to meet him, had sufficed to quell the restless
- flutter of his nerves.
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded with a responsive gleam of sportiveness on her face. “Yes, your
- place in it is a very curious one. But first get this clear in your mind—that
- the younger group, whom they speak of as the Jews, have money beyond
- counting, and have morals and intelligence moreover. Between these two
- groups no love is lost. In fact, they hate each other. The difference is
- the Christians go about cursing the Jews, whereas the Jews wisely shrug
- their shoulders and say nothing. No one suspected that they would <i>do</i>
- anything, either—but—oh, this is going to be an awful
- business!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He held himself down to a fine semblance of dignified calm. “Tell me
- more,” he bade her, with an effect of temperate curiosity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now comes tragedy,” she went on, and the hint of sprightliness
- disappeared from her face and tone. “It is really one of the most terrible
- stories that could be told. There is a very aged man—he must be
- nearly ninety—lying at death’s door in his great seat in Shropshire.
- He is at death’s door, I said, but he has the strength and will of a
- giant, and though he is half paralyzed, half blind, half everything, still
- he has his weight against the door, and no one knows how long he can hold
- it closed. It is your grandfather that I am speaking of. His name also is
- Christian.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man nodded gravely. “My father would have fought death that way
- too, if they had not shot him to pieces, and heaped fever on top of that,”
- he commented.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl bit her lip and flushed awkwardly for an instant “Let me go on,”
- she said then, and hurried forward. “This old man had three sons—not
- counting the priest, Lord David, who doesn’t come into the thing. The
- first of these sons, also Christian, had three sons, and he and they were
- all alive six months ago. They are all dead now, two drowned in their
- yacht, one lost in the ‘Castle Drummond,’ one killed in Matabeleland. Lord
- David, the priest, the next brother, died last year—childless of
- course. There remained in England two sons of another brother who died
- some years ago, Lord Edward, and this horrible mowing down of human lives
- left them apparently nearest to the very aged man, your grandfather. Do
- you follow all that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I do,” said Christian. “If I don’t I will pick it up afterward.
- In mercy’s name, do not stop!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Jews, saying nothing, had lost sight of nothing. There was still
- another brother who had lived abroad for many years, who died abroad
- twenty years ago. You are getting to the climax now. The Jews must have
- kept an eye on this wandering cousin of theirs; it is evident they knew he
- left a son capable of inheriting, and that they did not let this son
- escape from view. Because Lord Ambrose Torr was older than Lord Edward,
- his brother, it happens now that the son of that Ambrose—”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man abruptly rose, and moved along to the rail. He had signified
- by a rapid backward gesture of the hand his momentary craving for
- solitude; he stretched this hand now slowly, as if unconsciously, toward
- the sunset glow on sky and sea, in the heart of which lay imbedded a thick
- line of cream-colored cliffs, escalloped under a close covering of soft
- olive-hued verdure. The profile of his uplifted face, as he gazed thus
- before him into the light, seemed to the eyes of the girl transfigured.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood thus, rapt and motionless, for minutes, until her mind had time
- to formulate the suspicion that this was all intolerable play-acting, and
- to dismiss it again as unworthy. Then he returned all at once to her side,
- apparently with a shamefaced kind of perception of her thoughts. He was
- flushed and uneasy, and shuffled his hands in and out of the pockets of
- his great-coat. He did not seat himself, but stood looking down at her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is my grandfather?” he asked, with a husky, difficult voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Duke of Glastonbury.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do not understand,” he began, hesitatingly; “it is not clear to me
- about my father. Why should he—”
- </p>
- <p>
- She rose in turn, with swift decision, as if she had been alertly watching
- for the question. “That is what you must not ask me,” she said, hurriedly.
- “I think I will move about a little. The wind is colder here. I am getting
- chilled.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They strolled about together, conducting a fitful conversation, but as
- often gazing in silence at the bulk of the headlands they were
- approaching, gray and massive now in the evening light. She answered
- freely enough the queries he put, but between these he lapsed into an
- abstraction which she respected. More than once he spoke of the
- extraordinary confusion into which her story had thrown his thoughts, and
- she philosophically replied that she could well understand it.
- </p>
- <p>
- An hour later they had passed the fatuous inspection of the customs
- people, and confronted the imminence of leave-taking. Constraint enveloped
- them as in a mantle.
- </p>
- <p>
- It occurred suddenly to him to say: “How strange! You possess the most
- extraordinary knowledge of me and my—my people, and yet the thought
- just comes to me—I have not so much as asked your name.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled at him with a new light in her eyes, half kind, half ironically
- roguish. “If I may confess it, there have been times today when I was
- annoyed with you for being so persistently and indefatigably interested in
- yourself—for never dreaming of wondering, speculating, inquiring
- something about me. But that was very weak of me—I see it now—and
- very wise of you, because—what does it matter about a nobody like
- me?—but next week the whole world will be bearing witness that you
- are the most interesting young man in England.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave a swift glance down the train toward the guards noisily shutting
- the doors. “No, it is too bad,” he said, nervously. “You will always be my
- first friend in England—my very deeply prized friend everywhere. I
- know you only to-day—but that day is more to me than all the rest of
- my life—and it is full of you. They are closing the doors—but
- you will tell me? The notion of not seeing you again is ridiculous. You
- are in London—yes?—then how do you think I could come to
- London without first of all, before everything else, wanting to call upon
- you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I daresay we shall meet again,” she answered, as perforce he stepped
- into the compartment. Her smile had a puzzling quality in it—something
- compounded, it seemed to him, of both fear and fun. “In a remote kind of
- way I am mixed up with the story myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no time for any hope of further explanation. He put his head out
- of the window, and shook hands again. “Remember!” he called out fervently.
- “You are my first friend in England. Whenever—whatever I can do—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Even to the half of your kingdom!” she laughed at him, as the movement of
- the carriage drew him past her.
- </p>
- <p>
- The tone of these last words, which he bore away with him, had been gay—almost
- jovial. But the girl, when she had watched him pass out of sight, turned
- and walked slowly off in the direction of her own train with a white and
- troubled face.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER III
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>any builders in
- their day have put a hand to the making of Caermere Hall. Though there
- were wide differences of race and language among them and though the long
- chain of time which binds them together has generations and even centuries
- for its links, they seem to have had thus much in common: they were all at
- feud with the sunlight.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the very pick of summer days, when the densest thickets of Clune Forest
- are alive to the core with moving green reflections of the outer radiance,
- and hints of the glory up above pierce their way to the bottom of the
- narrowest ravine through which the black Devon churns and frets, somehow
- Caermere remains wrapped in its ancient shadows.
- </p>
- <p>
- The first men, in some forgotten time, laid its foundations with no
- thought save of the pass at the foot to be defended. Later artificers
- reared thick walls upon these foundations, pushed out towered curtains,
- sank wells, lifted the keep, cut slits of corner windows or crowned the
- fabric with new turrets for watchmen, each after the need or fashion of
- his age, but all with minds single to the idea of blocking the path that
- Caermere overhung. In due time came the breath of the king’s peace,
- blowing equably over the vexed marches, albeit loaded with the scent of
- gunpowder, and my lords slowly put aside their iron harness for silken
- jackets, and unslung the herses in their gateways. Men of skill set now
- about the task of expanding the turfed spaces within the inclosure, of
- spreading terraces and forming gardens, of turning stone chambers into
- dames’ apartments, and sullen guard-rooms into banquet-halls. Their
- grandsons, in turn, pulled down even more than they erected; where the
- mightiest walls had shouldered their huge bulk, these men of Elizabeth and
- James left thin façades of brickwork, and beams of oak set in a trivial
- plaster casing. The old barbican was not broad enough to span their new
- roadway, stretching to the valley below over the track of the former
- military path, and they blew it up; the pleasure-ground, which they
- extended by moving far backward the wall of the tilting yard, was bare of
- aspect to their eye, and they planted it with yews and, later, with cedars
- from the Lebanon.
- </p>
- <p>
- Through all these changes, Caermere remained upon its three sides shadowed
- by great hills, and the thought of making wide windows in the walls on the
- open fourth side came to no one. When at last, in the earlier Georgian
- time, the venerable piles of bastioned masonry here were replaced by a
- feebly polite front of lath and stucco, windows were indeed cut to the
- very floor, in the French style, but meanwhile the trees had grown into a
- high screen against the sky, and it was not in the Torr blood to level
- timber.
- </p>
- <p>
- When a house and family have lived together for a thousand years, it is
- but reasonable that they should have come to an understanding with each
- other. Was Caermere dark because the mood of the Torrs, its makers and
- masters, had from the dawn of things been saturnine? Or did the Torrs owe
- their historic gloom and dourness of temperament to the influence of this
- somber cradle of their race? There is record of the query having been put,
- in a spirit of banter, by a gentleman who rode over Clune bridge in the
- train of King John. Of convincing answer there is none to this latest day.
- The Torrs are a dark folk, and Caermere is a dark house. They belong to
- one another and that is all.
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus, on the first morning of October, a gray and overcast morning even on
- the hilltops, and though it was past the half-hour towards nine, there was
- barely light enough to see one’s way about by in the big breakfast-room.
- </p>
- <p>
- A tall young man in rough, light-brown clothes stood at one of the
- windows, drumming idly on the glass and staring at the black cedars beyond
- the lawn. At intervals he whistled under his breath, in a sulky fashion,
- some primitive snatches of an unknown tune. Once or twice he yawned, and
- then struck a vicious ring from the panes with his hard nails, in
- protesting comment upon his boredom.
- </p>
- <p>
- About the large fireplace behind him were dishes huddled for heat, and
- their metallic gleam in the flicker of the flames was repeated farther
- away in the points of red on the plate and glass of the long breakfast
- table spread in the center of the room. From time to time a white-faced
- youngster in livery entered the room, performed some mysterious service at
- the hearth or the table in the dim twilight and went out again.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man at the window paid no heed to the goings and comings of the
- servant, but when the door opened presently and another tweed-clad figure
- entered, his ear told him the difference on the instant, and he half
- turned his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In God’s name, what are you all doing?” he growled angrily. “I said eight—you
- heard me!—sharp eight!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What <i>does</i> it matter?” protested the newcomer, stooping at the
- fire-place to lift the covers from the dishes in a languid inspection of
- their contents. He yawned as he spoke. “If you won’t let fellows go to bed
- till four, how the devil do you expect them to be down at eight?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, is that you, Pirie?” said the man at the window. “I thought it was my
- brother.” The other stood for a moment, with his back to the fire. Then he
- lounged to the window, stretching his arms as he moved. He also was tall,
- but with a scattering of gray in his hair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Beastly black morning,” he commented in drowsy tones, after a prolonged
- observation of the prospect. “Might as well stopped in bed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, go back then!” snapped the other. “I didn’t make the rotten
- weather, did I?” This was wanton ill-temper. The elder man also began
- drumming with his nails on the window. “Turn it up, Eddy,” he
- remonstrated, smoothly enough, but with a latent snarl in his tone. “I
- don’t like it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The younger man moved his head, as if he would have looked his companion
- in the face. Then he stared away again, out of the window.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Beaters been waitin’ half an hour already,” he grumbled, sulkily. “What’s
- the good of makin’ a time if you don’t keep it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t make any time,” responded Major Pirie with curtness. Upon
- reflection, he added: “What does it matter about the beaters?”
- </p>
- <p>
- There seemed no answer to this, and for several minutes nothing was said.
- Finally the younger man thought of something. “I say,” he began, and after
- an instant’s pause went on: “It’d suit me better not to be called ‘Eddy’
- among the men, d’ye see? That fellow Burlington began it last night—he
- got it from you—and I don’t like it. When we’re alone, of course,
- that’s different.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Major Pirie laughed—a dry, brief, harsh laugh—and swung around
- on his heels. “Your man didn’t get those sausages I asked for, after all,”
- he remarked, going back to the dishes at the fender.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Probably couldn’t,” said Mr. Edward, “or else,” he added, “wouldn’t. I
- never saw such a houseful of brutes and duffers. I’m keen to shunt the lot
- of ‘em, and they know it, the beggars. You’d think they’d try to suck up
- to me, but they don’t, they haven’t got brains enough.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The major had brought a plate from the table, and was filling it from
- under the covers on the hearth. “Shall I ring for the tea?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Edward moved across to the chimney corner and pulled the cord himself.
- “Do you know what that old ass, Barlow—the butler, you know—had
- the face to say to me yesterday? ‘I’—God, you couldn’t believe it!
- ‘I ’ope, sir,’ he says, ‘you’ll think better of shootin’ on the
- First, for His Grace’ll hear the guns in the covers, and it won’t do His
- Grace no good.’ Fancy the beggar’s cheek!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, do you know, Torr,” said Major Pirie, slowly, speaking with his
- mouth full but contriving to give a significantly nice emphasis to the
- name, “I was thinkin’ much the same myself. For that matter, several of
- the fellows were mentionin’ it. It doesn’t look quite the thing, you
- know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The entrance of the servant created an interval of silence, during which
- Mr. Edward in his turn rummaged among the dishes before the fire.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s Gus, is it?” he demanded, from where he knelt on one knee, plate in
- hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He thought it would be funny to queer my game, eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your brother hasn’t said a word, so far’s I know,” replied the major,
- pouring his tea. “It was merely some of the fellows, talkin’.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “God Almighty!” cried Mr. Edward, springing to his feet. “Here’s a
- precious outfit of pals for you! You come down here, so help me—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t say ‘you’; say ‘they,’ if you’ve got to say anything,” interposed
- the major, quietly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, they, then,” the other went on, in loud heat. “They come down here,
- and take my mounts, by God; they drink my wine, they win my money, they
- drain me dry—and then they go behind my back and whisper to one
- another that I’m an outsider. And you too, Pirie,” he continued, with
- defiance and deprecation mingled in his tone, “you admit yourself that you
- talked with them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Torr,” replied the major, “it’s a mistake for you to turn out so
- early. You’ve tried to quarrel before breakfast every day I’ve been here.
- It’s the worst morning temper I ever heard of in my life. You ought to
- have tea and eggs and things brought to you in your room, and not show
- yourself for at least two hours afterward—you really ought. It isn’t
- fair to your friends.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The door opened and still another tall man came in. He nodded to Pirie as
- he passed him, with a tolerant “Well, major,” and went straight to the
- dishes by the fire.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pirie’s got it into his head we oughtn’t to shoot to-day, Gus,” said Mr.
- Edward.
- </p>
- <p>
- The other rose with a dish in his hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It <i>is</i> dark,” he assented, glancing toward the window. “Afraid of
- pottin’ a beater, major?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—it’s about the duke,” explained Edward. “It seems some of the
- fellows funk the thing—they think he’ll hear the guns—they
- want to go to church instead, or something of that sort.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Augustine Torr, M.P., looked at his brother inquiringly. The tie of blood
- between them was obvious enough. They were both slender as well as tall;
- their small round heads merging indistinguishably behind into flat, broad
- necks, seemed identical in contour; they had the same light coarse hair,
- the same florid skins, even the same little yellow mustaches. The
- differences were harder to seek. Edward, though he had borne Her Majesty’s
- commission for some years, was not so well set up about the shoulders as
- his younger and civilian brother. Augustine, on the other hand, despite
- his confident carriage of himself, produced the effect of being Edward’s
- inferior in simple force of character. It was at once to his credit and
- his disparagement that he had the more amiable nature of the two.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do you mean—the duke?” he asked. “Is there a change?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward put out his closed lips a little, and shook his head. Major Pirie
- sprinkled salt on his muffin while he explained.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All there is of it is this,” he said. “There was just an idea that with
- the—with your grandfather—dyin’ in the house—it might
- look a little better to give the first the go-by. Nobody’d have a word to
- say against shootin’ to-morrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, but what the hell”—Augustine groped his way with hesitancy—“I
- don’t understand—we’ve been shootin’ partridges for a month, and how
- are pheasants any different? And as for the duke—why, of course
- one’s sorry and all that—but he’s been dyin’ since June, and the
- birds have some rights—or rather, I should say—what I mean is—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s what I said,” put in Edward, to cover the collapse of his
- brother’s argument.
- </p>
- <p>
- Major Pirie frowned a little. “Partridges are another matter,” he said
- testily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damned if I know what you’re driving at,” avowed Augustine. He paused
- with fork in air at his own words. “Drivin’ at,” he repeated
- painstakingly. “Drivin’ at pheasants, eh? Not bad, you know. Pass the
- mustard, Pirie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “God!” said the major, with gloom. “You know well enough what I mean. To
- work through fields miles off—that’s one thing. To shoot the covers
- here under the duke’s nose, with the beaters messin’ about—that’s
- quite another. However that’s your affair, not mine.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But don’t you see,” urged Augustine, “what difference does a day make?
- There’ll be just as much racket to-morrow as to-day. It isn’t reasonable,
- you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was merely what you might call a sentiment,” said the major, in the
- half apologetic tone of a man admitting defeat. He looked the least
- sentimental of warriors as he went on with his breakfast—a
- longfaced, weather-beaten, dull-eyed man of the late forties.
- </p>
- <p>
- Four other men who came in now at brief intervals, with few or no words of
- salutation to the company, and who lounged about helping themselves to
- what caught their fancy in the breakfast, were equally removed from the
- suspicion of adding a sentimental element to the atmosphere. They made
- little talk of any kind, and no mention whatever of that absurd qualm
- about the First which had been reported to have germinated among them.
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward had reached the stage of filling his pipe. Walking to the mantel
- for a light, it occurred to him to ring the bell first. “Her ladyship
- breakfastin’ in her room?” he asked the youngster who answered the
- summons.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Her ladyship’s woman has just gone up with it, sir,” he replied.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>That’s</i> all right,” said Edward, and forthwith struck the match.
- “Send in Davis and Morton to me, and ask Barlow for those Brazilian cigars
- of mine—the small huntin’ ones. What wheels were those I heard on
- the gravel? If it’s the traps we shan’t want them to-day. We’re walkin’
- across.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will make inquiries, sir,” said the domestic, and went out.
- </p>
- <p>
- The room had brightened perceptibly, and Captain Edward was in a better
- temper. He moved over to the sideboard and filled a pocket-flask from one
- of the decanters in the old-fashioned case. As an afterthought, he also
- filled a small glass, and gulped its contents neat. “We’re off in ten
- minutes now,” he called out to the men about the table, some of whom had
- already lit their pipes. “What do you fellows want to take with you? My
- tip is this rum.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hardly cold enough for rum, is it?” asked one, drifting languidly toward
- the sideboard. Most of the others had risen to their feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- A slender, sad-faced, gentlemanly-looking old man in evening clothes had
- entered the room, and stood now at Captain Edward’s elbow and touched it
- with his hand. “I—beg—your—pardon—sir,” he said,
- in the conventional phrase.
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward, listening to what a companion was saying, turned absent-mindedly
- to the butler. Then he happened to remember something. “Damn you, Barlow,
- you get duller every day!” he snapped. “You know perfectly well what
- cigars I take out of doors!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I—beg—your—pardon—sir,” repeated the elderly
- person. He spoke in a confidential murmur. “I thought you would like to
- know, sir—Lord Julius has come.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man looked at him, silently revolving the intelligence, a
- puzzled frown between his pale brows. A furtive something in the butler’s
- composed expression struck him. “What of it?” he demanded, angrily. “What
- are you whispering for? He’s old enough to take care of himself, isn’t
- he?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The butler thrust out his dry underlip a trifle. “I thought you would like
- to know, sir,” he reiterated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you’re wrong. I don’t like to know!” The man’s tone—an
- indefinable, lurking suggestiveness in his face and eyes and voice—vexed
- Mr. Edward exceedingly. It annoyed him still more to note that his
- companions had tacitly turned their backs, and were affecting great
- preoccupation in something else.
- </p>
- <p>
- He kept a wrathful eye on Barlow, as the latter bowed, turned, moved to
- the door and opened it. Of course, a man musn’t slang servants, his
- irritated thought ran, but the covert impertinence in this old menial’s
- manner was something no longer to be borne. The impulse to call the
- elderly fool back and send him packing on the instant, tingled hotly in
- the young man’s blood. He even opened his lips to speak, but reflection
- checked his tongue. It would be bad form, for one thing; for another,
- perhaps he was not quite in the position to dismiss his grandfather’s
- servants. He would speak to Welldon, the estate steward, instead—a
- sensible and civil man, by the way, who seemed to know which side his
- bread was buttered on. At the merest hint from the heir, Welldon would
- give Barlow the sack, and that would teach the rest a lesson. But all this
- would keep until Lord Julius had gone. Being an aged duffer himself, he
- would probably side with Barlow—and there was no point in offending
- Lord Julius. Very much to the contrary, indeed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Edward’s meditations, unwontedly facile in their movements for him,
- had reached this point, when his mind reverted to the fact that he was
- still regarding the back of Barlow, who, instead of going out, stood
- holding the door open, his lean figure poised in ceremonious expectancy.
- Even as the surprised Edward continued looking, the butler made a staid
- obeisance.
- </p>
- <p>
- A stalwart, erect, burly old gentleman came in, and halted just over the
- threshold to look about him. He had the carriage, dress and general aspect
- of a prosperous and opinionated farmer. The suggestion of acres and crops
- was peculiarly marked in the broad, low soft hat on his head, and in the
- great white beard which spread fan-wise over his ample breast. He had the
- face of one who had spent a life in commanding others, and had learned
- meanwhile to master himself—a frank, high-featured, ruddy face, with
- a conspicuously prominent and well-curved nose, and steady, confident
- eyes. He folded his hands over his stick and, holding his head well back,
- glanced about the room at his ease. It was a glance from which the various
- eyes that it encountered somehow turned away.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How-do, Eddy? How-do, Gus?” the newcomer said impassively to the two
- young men who, with palpable constraint, came up to greet him. He shook
- hands with each, but seemed more interested in viewing the company at
- large. His appearance had produced a visible effect of numbness upon the
- group of guests, but he seemed not to mind this.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Quite a party!” he observed. His voice was full and robust, and not
- unamiable. “All military?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward nodded. “All but Gus, here. Glad to introduce ’em, if you
- like,” he murmured, with a kind of sullen deference.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Presently, presently,” said Lord Julius, with an effect of heartiness at
- which Edward lifted his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Drive over from Clune this morning?” the young man asked. “Then you’ll
- want breakfast. Ring the bell, Gus. We’re just starting for the Mere
- copse. Glad to have you make an eighth gun, if you’ll come to us after
- you’ve eaten. You still shoot, don’t you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes, I still shoot,” said the other.
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward had a sense of embarrassment at his great-uncle’s immobility in the
- doorway. “Well, we’ll get along to the gun-room now,” he said to the
- others. Then to Lord Julius he remarked with an air of making
- conversation, “I always say to the fellows that I ask nothing better in
- this world than to be as fit as you are when I’m your age. Let’s see,
- seventy-six, isn’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The elder man nodded. “I’m sure that’s a modest enough ambition,” he
- observed. His steady gray eyes dallied with the young man’s countenance
- for a moment. “I’m relieved to learn that you want nothing more than
- that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward looked up swiftly, and braved an instant’s piercing scrutiny of the
- other’s face. Then he laughed, uneasily. “Oh, I want a few other things,
- too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius lowered his voice. “I would put among your wants a trifling
- matter of good taste, Eddy,” he said, not unkindly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Edward flushed. “If I could see that it really made any difference
- between the First and the Second,” he answered with dogged civility, “I
- wouldn’t shoot until tomorrow. If you’re keen about it now, I’ll—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, damn your First and Second,” broke in the old man, keeping his voice
- down below the hearing of the others, but letting impatience glow in his
- eyes; “you had no business bringing these men here at all. No—I see
- that you don’t understand me. You needn’t explain. It’s entirely a
- question of feeling.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sorry you take that view of it, sir,” said Edward, gloomily. “You
- know that I’m willing enough to meet your views—if only—if
- only because I’m going to need your help.” Lord Julius gave a snort of
- contemptuous laughter, and nodded to himself with lifted brows. “Really
- something in the way of consideration is due to such frankness as that,”
- he said, with a pretense of reverie. “Send your friends out of the room,
- Eddy,” he went on, more gently—“make what excuse you like—or
- take them out and come back to me—that’s better. I did intend to
- have no secrets from them, but I’ve relented. And yes—by the way—instead
- of coming here—you’ll find me in the small morning room I will
- breakfast there. You’ve filled this room with smoke.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Would you—would you mind my bringing Gus?” Edward asked,
- doubtfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- The other thought for an instant. “Oh, yes, Gus may come,” he said, and
- with that left the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rum old beggar, isn’t he?” said Augustine to the company, with the sense
- that something had to be said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gad! he seemed to think he was in a synagogue!” laughed Captain
- Burlington. “Kept his hat on, you know,” he explained in the next breath
- to the surprised and attentive faces about him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But he isn’t a Jew,” said one of the others with gravity. “He married
- one, but that doesn’t make him one, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was a joke! Can’t you see a joke?” protested Burlington.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I don’t think much of it,” growled Edward, sourly. “Come along to
- the gunroom.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s up?” asked Mr. Augustine, in an anxious murmur, a few minutes
- later, as the two brothers walked along the wide central hallway toward
- the appointed place.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can’t think for the life of me,” replied Edward. “Unless Craven babbled
- about the baccarat when he got up to town. He’s rather that sort, you
- know. He kicked about the stakes at the time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes—after he’d been hit,” said Augustine. “But if it’s only that,
- you’ll be an ass to let the old man rot you about it. Just stand up to
- him, and let him see you feel your position.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s all right,” rejoined Edward, dubiously, “but what’s the position
- without money? If anybody could have foreseen what was going to happen—damn
- it all, I could have married as much as I needed. But as it is, I’ve got
- Cora on my back, and the kid, and—my God! fancy doing the duke on
- four thou, a year net! Welldon tells me it can’t be screwed a bit above
- that. Well, then, how can I afford to cheek Julius? When you come to that
- he isn’t half a bad sort, you know. He stood my marriage awfully well.
- Gad, you know, we couldn’t have lived if he hadn’t drawn a check.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let us hope he’ll draw another,” said Augustine. “It’s bad enough to be a
- pauper duke, but it’s a bailey sight worse to be his brother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What rot!” said Edward. “My kid’s a girl, and you’re free to marry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They had come to the door of the morning room. It stood ajar, and Edward
- pushed it open. Before the fireplace was visible the expected bulk and
- vast beard of Lord Julius, but the eyes of the brothers intuitively
- wandered to the window beyond, against which was outlined the figure of a
- much smaller man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Secretary,” whispered the quicker-minded Augustine out of the corner of
- his mouth as they advanced. The thought brought them a tempered kind of
- comfort. The same instinct which had prompted Edward to crave his
- brother’s support led them both to welcome the presence of a fourth party.
- </p>
- <p>
- They looked again toward the stranger, and Lord Julius, as he caught their
- returning glance, smiled and nodded significantly. “Come here, Christian!”
- he said, and the brothers saw now that it was a slender young man with a
- dark, fine face and foreign-looking eyes who moved toward them.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Christian,” he said,
- and gave his full voice a new note of gravity, “these are your two
- cousins, Mr. Edward Torr, a captain in the Hussars until recently, and Mr.
- Augustine Torr, a member of Parliament. Your coming will make some
- difference in their affairs, but I know that you will be good to them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The brothers had shaken hands with the new-comer automatically, while
- their minds were in the first stage of wonderment as to what the words
- being spoken about him meant. Now that silence fell, they stared slowly at
- him, at their great-uncle, at each other.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How—cousin?” Edward managed to ask. He spoke as if his tongue
- filled his mouth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The son of your uncle, Lord Ambrose Torr,” the old man made quiet,
- carefully distinct answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another period of silence ensued, until Christian turned abruptly. “It is
- very painful to me,” he said hurriedly to the old man, and walked to the
- window.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is painful to everybody,” said Lord Julius.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not so damned particularly painful to you, sir, I should say,” put in
- Edward, looking his great-uncle in the face. The young man had slowly
- pulled himself together, and one could see the muscles of his neck being
- stiffened to keep his chin well in the air. His blue eyes had the effect
- of summoning all their resources of pride to gaze with dignity into the
- muzzle of a machine-gun.
- </p>
- <p>
- Augustine was less secure in the control of his nerves. He stood a little
- behind his brother, and the elbow which he braced against him for support
- trembled. His eyes wandered about the room, and he moistened his lips with
- his tongue several times before he contrived to whisper something into
- Edward’s ear. The latter received the suggestion, whatever it was, with an
- impatient shake of the head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You scarcely do me justice,” said Lord Julius, quietly, “but that’s not
- worth mentioning at the moment. I must say you are taking it very well—much
- better than I expected.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward squared his shoulders still more. “I wouldn’t say that we’re takin’
- it at all,” he replied, with studied deliberation. “You offer it, d’ye see—but
- it doesn’t follow that we take it. You come and bring this young fellow—this
- young gentleman, and you tell me that he is Ambrose’s son. What good is
- that to me? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Ambrose may have had twenty sons,
- for all I know. I should be sorry to be one of them—but they’re not
- to blame for that. I don’t mind being civil to them—if they come to
- me in the right spirit—” He stopped abruptly, and listened with a
- frown to more whispering from Augustine.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t seem to understand, Eddy—” began Lord Julius.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, perfectly!” broke in the young man. “I had an uncle who had to leave
- England before I was born. His name couldn’t even be mentioned in the
- family—but I know all about him. God knows I’ve had him flung in my
- face often enough.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t let us go into that,” urged Lord Julius, softly, and with a
- sidelong nod toward the window. “It’s needless cruelty to other people—and
- surely we can discuss this like gentlemen. You are really behaving
- splendidly, Eddy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “God! he thought we were cads!” cried Edward, in husky indignation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—no—no—no,” murmured the older man, soothingly. “I
- only want you to grasp the thing as it is. You know me. You do not regard
- me as a foolish person who goes off half-cock. Well, I tell you that
- Christian here is the son of my nephew Ambrose, born in lawful wedlock,
- and that there is not a shadow of doubt about it. The proofs are all open
- to your inspection; there is not a flaw in them. And so I say to you, in
- all kindness—take it calmly and sensibly and like a gentleman. It is
- to your own interest to do so, as well. If you think, you will see that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s what I’ve been telling him,” said Augustine, strenuously, from
- behind his brother’s shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- A faint smile fluttered about the old man’s eyelids. “It was the advice of
- a born statesman,” he said, dryly. “You are the political hope of the
- family.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The stiffening had melted from Edward’s neck and shoulders. He turned
- irresolutely now, and looked at the floor. “Of course I admit nothing; I
- reserve all my rights, till my lawyers have satisfied themselves,” he said
- in a worn, depressed mutter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, naturally,” responded Lord Julius, with relieved cordiality. “And
- now please me—do it all handsomely to the end—come and shake
- hands again with Christian, both of you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The brothers stood for a hesitating instant, then turned toward the window
- and began a movement of reluctant assent.
- </p>
- <p>
- To the surprise of all three, Christian forestalled their approach by
- wrenching open one half of the tall window, and putting a foot over the
- sill to the lawn outside.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you will excuse me,” he said, in his nervous, high voice, “I am taking
- a little walk.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER IV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">U</span>pon the garden
- side of Caermere is a very large conservatory, built nearly fifty years
- ago, at the close of the life of the last duchess. The poor lady left no
- other mark of her meek existence upon the buildings, and it was thought at
- the time that she would never have ventured upon even this, had it not
- been that every one was mad for the moment about the wonderful palace of
- glass reared in London for the First Exhibition.
- </p>
- <p>
- In area and height, and in the spacious pretensions of its dome, the
- structure still suggests irresistibly the period of its inception. It is
- as ambitious as it is self-conscious; its shining respectability remains
- superior to all the wiles of climbers and creeping vines. The older
- servants cherish traditions of “Her Grace’s glass,” as it used to be
- called. She had the work begun on her fortieth birthday, and precisely a
- year later it happened that she was wheeled in from the big morning room,
- and left at her own desire to recline in solitude under the palms beneath
- the dome, and that when they went to her at last she was dead. The
- circumstance that Shakespeare is supposed also to have died on the
- anniversary of his birth, has somehow come to be an integral part of the
- story, as it is kept alive now in the humbler parts of the Caermere
- household, but the duchess had nothing else in common with the poet. The
- very face of her, in her maturer years, is but dimly remembered. The
- portrait in the library is of a young Lady Clarissa, with pale ringlets
- and a childishly sweet countenance, and clad in the formal quaintness of
- the last year of King George the Fourth. She became the duchess, but in
- turn the duchess, seemed to become somebody else. That was the way with
- the brides brought home to Caermere. The pictures in the library show them
- all girlish, and innocently pretty, and for the most part fair-haired.
- Happily there is no painted record of what they were like when, still in
- middle life, they bade a last goodbye to the dark-skinned, big-shouldered
- sons they had borne, and perhaps made a little moan that no daughters were
- ever given to mothers at Caermere, and turned their sad faces to the wall.
- </p>
- <p>
- The crystal house had memories of another and more recent mistress, the
- countess. She had come six years after the other went, she had lived for
- twelve years—a silent, colorless, gently unhappy life—and then
- had faded away out of sight. It was this Lady Porlock who had caused the
- orchid houses to be built at the inner side of the conservatory, and it
- was in her time, too, that the gifted Cheltnam was fetched from her own
- father’s house in Berkshire to be head gardener at Caermere. Her fame is
- indeed irrevocably linked with his, for the tea-rose of his breeding,
- bearing her maiden-name of the Hon. Florence Denson, is scarcely less well
- known than this hybrid sweet-briar the Countess of Porlock.
- </p>
- <p>
- And now, in the third generation, still another lady had for some years
- enjoyed special property rights in this great glass apartment.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lady Cressage came into the conservatory from the large morning room, with
- a large volume in her hand, and an irresolute look on her face. She
- glanced about at the several couches piled with cushions and furs, at an
- easy-chair beyond—and yawned slightly. Then she wandered over to a
- row of early chrysanthemums, and, putting the book under her arm, occupied
- herself with the destruction of a few tiny beginnings of buds in the lower
- foliage. In this she employed as pincers the delicately tinted nails of a
- very shapely finger and thumb, and at the sign of some slight
- discoloration of these she stopped the work. From a glance at the nails,
- she went to a musing scrutiny of this whole right hand of hers, holding it
- up, and turning it from one composition of graceful curves to another. It
- had been called the most beautiful hand in England, but this morning its
- owner, upon a brief and rather listless inspection of its charms, yawned
- again. Finally she seated herself in the chair and, after a languid search
- for the place in her book, began to read.
- </p>
- <p>
- Half reclining thus, with the equable and shadowless light of the glass
- house about her, the young widow made a picture curiously different from
- any in the library within. All the dead and gone brides of the Torrs had
- been painted in bright attire; Lady Cressage wore a belted gown of black
- cloth, unrelieved save by a softened line of white at the throat and
- wrists. The others, without exception, had signified by elaborate
- hair-dressing not less than by dutifully vacuous facial expressions, their
- comprehension of the requirements of the place they had been called upon
- to fill; Lady Cressage’s bistre hair was gathered in careless fashion to a
- loose knot at the back of the head, and in her exquisitely modeled face
- there was no hint whatever of docility or awed submission to any external
- claims. The profile of this countenance, outlined for the moment against a
- cluster of vividly purple pleroma blossoms, had the delicacy of a rare
- flower, but it conveyed also the impression of resolute and enduring
- force. If the dome above could have generated voices of its own, these
- would have murmured to one another that here at last was a woman whom
- Caermere could not break or even easily bend.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the season of 1892, London had heard a good deal of this lady. She was
- unknown before, and of her belongings people to this day knew and cared
- very little. There was a General Kervick enumerated in the retired list,
- who had vegetated into promotion in some obscure corner of India, and now
- led an equally inconspicuous existence somewhere in the suburbs—or
- was it in West Kensington? He had never belonged to a service club, but an
- occasional man encountered him once in a while at the Oriental, where he
- was supposed by the waiters to have an exceptional knowledge of peppers
- and chutneys. The name of his wife had been vaguely associated with
- charitable committees, or subscription committees, and here and there some
- one remembered having heard that she was distantly related to somebody.
- The elder Kervicks never secured a much more definite place in London’s
- regard—even after this remarkable daughter had risen like a planet
- to dim the fixed stars of the season.
- </p>
- <p>
- The credit for having discovered and launched Miss Kervick came generally
- to be ascribed to Lady Selton, but perhaps this turned upon the fact that
- she lent her house in Park Lane for the culminating scene in the
- spectacular triumph of that young person. No doubt there were others who
- would have placed still bigger houses at the disposal of a bride whose
- wedding was, in many respects, the most interesting of the year, and some
- of these may have had as good a claim to the privilege as Lady Selton. As
- matters turned out, however, they were given no cause to repine. The
- marriage was not a success, and within one short year Lady Selton herself
- had grown a little shy about assuming responsibility for it. A year later
- she was quite prepared to repudiate all share in it, and after that people
- ceased to remember about it all, until the shock of the tragedy came to
- stir polite London into startled whisperings.
- </p>
- <p>
- Hardly within the memory of living folk had a family been dealt such a
- swift succession of deadly blows as these which were rained upon the Torrs
- in the first half of 1896.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Earl of Porlock had been the heir of dukedom since most people could
- remember, and had got himself called to the House of Lords in his own
- right, apparently as a kind of protest against his father’s unconscionable
- longevity, at least a dozen years before his own end came. It was not to
- be supposed that he desired a peerage for any other reason, since he had
- never chosen to seek a seat in the House of Commons, and indeed, save upon
- one occasion connected with ground game, made no use whatever of his
- legislative powers after they had been given to him. He cared nothing for
- politics, and read scarcely more in newspapers than in books. Up to middle
- life, he had displayed a certain tendency toward interest in fat stock and
- a limited number of allied agricultural topics, but the decline in farming
- values had turned him from this. In his earlier years, too, he had enjoyed
- being identified with the sporting set of his class in London, and about
- the racing circuit, but this association he also dropped out of as he grew
- older, partly because late nights bored him, partly because he could no
- longer afford to jeopardize any portion of his income. He came at last to
- think of his mastership of hounds as his principal tie to existence on
- land. He liked it all, from the sailing sweep over the highest barrier in
- an exceptionally rough country, to the smell of the kennels of an early
- morning across the frozen yards. This life with the horses and dogs, and
- with the people who belonged to the horses and dogs, offered fewer
- temptations to the evil temper in his blood than any other, and with
- growing years his dislike for the wear and tear of getting angry had
- become a controlling instinct. He continued to use bad language with an
- appropriate show of fervency, when occasion required, but he had got out
- of the way of scalding himself with rage inside. He even achieved a grim
- sort of jocularity toward the close. In the last year of his life a
- tenant-farmer, speaking to a toast, affirmed of him that “a truer
- sportsman, nor yet a more humorous and affable nobleman, has never taken
- the chair at a puppy-walk luncheon within my recollection,” and this
- tribute to his geniality both pleased and impressed the earl. He was then
- in his sixty-second year, and he might have lived into a mellowed, and
- even jovial old age, under the influence of this praise, had there been no
- unwritten law ending the hunting season in the early spring.
- </p>
- <p>
- The earl cared very little for otters and rats, and almost nothing at all
- for salmon, so that when April came he usually went to his yacht, and
- practically lived aboard it until November. Sometimes he made long cruises
- in this substantial and comfortable vessel, which he delighted in
- navigating himself. He was lying in at Bremerhaven, for example, in May,
- when one of a sheaf of telegrams scattered along the line of North Sea
- ports in search of him, brought the news that his youngest son Joseph, who
- had drifted into Mashonaland after the collapse of the Jameson adventure,
- had been killed in the native rebellion. Upon consideration, the earl
- could not see that a post-haste return to England would serve any useful
- end. He sailed westward, however, after some telegraphic communication
- with England, and made his leisurely way down the Channel and round
- Cornwall to Milford Haven, where his wont was to winter his yacht, and
- where most of his crew were at home. The fact that he and the vessel were
- well known in this port rendered it possible to follow in detail
- subsequent events.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was on the 10th of June that Lord Porlock came to anchor in Milford,
- and went ashore, taking the afternoon train for Shrewsbury. He returned on
- the 14th, accompanied by his eldest son and heir, Lord Cressage. This
- latter personage was known only from hearsay at Milford, and local
- observation of him was therefore stimulated by a virgin curiosity. It was
- noted that Viscount Cressage—a stalwart and rubicund young man of
- more than his father’s height, but somewhat less swarthy of aspect—was
- laboring under very marked depression. He hung about the hotel, during the
- delay incident upon cleaning up the yacht, taking on new stores and
- altering some of the sailing gear, in a plainly moping mood, saying little
- to his father and never a word to any one else. A number of witnesses were
- able to make it clear that at first he did not intend to sail forth, but
- was merely bearing his father company while the latter remained in harbor.
- </p>
- <p>
- The fact of their recent bereavement accounted in a general way for their
- reticence with each other, but it was impossible not to see that the
- younger man had something besides the death of a brother on his mind.
- When, on the second day of their waiting, the tide began to fill in which
- on its turn was to bear out the yacht, his nervous preoccupation grew
- painfully manifest. He walked across many times to the headland; he
- fidgeted in and out of the bar, taking drinks for which he obviously had
- no relish, and looking over and over again in the railway time-tables for
- information which he seemed incapable of fixing in his memory. At last,
- when everything was ready, and the earl stood with his hand out to say
- good-bye to his son, the latter had suddenly, and upon the evident impulse
- of the moment, declared with some excitement that he also would go. People
- remembered that he had said, as if in defensive explanation of his hasty
- resolve: “Perhaps that will teach her a lesson!” His father had only
- remarked “Rot!”—and with that the yacht sailed off, a heaving white
- patch against the blackening west.
- </p>
- <p>
- But what followed was too grossly unreasoning to afford a lesson to
- anybody. The morning newspapers of the 18th contained in one column
- confirmation of the earlier report that the Hon. Anselm Torr, second son
- of the earl of Porlock, had been a passenger on the ill-fated “Drummond
- Castle,” and had gone down with the rest in the night off Ushant; and in
- another column a telegram from Porthstinian, announcing the total loss of
- a large yacht, on the rocks known as the Bishop and Clerks, with all on
- board. The evening papers followed with the rumor that the lost yacht was
- the “Minstrel,” with both Lord Porlock and his son, Lord Cressage, on
- board; but it was not until the next afternoon that the public possessed
- all the facts in this extraordinary affair. Then it happened that the edge
- was rather taken off the horror of the tragic coincidence, by the
- announcement that these sudden deaths brought forward as next heir to the
- dukedom Captain Edward Torr, late of the —th Hussars, who was better
- known, perhaps, as the husband of Miss Cora Bayard. The thought of Cora as
- a prospective duchess made such a direct appeal to the gayer side of the
- popular mind, that the gruesome terrors surrounding her advancement were
- lost to sight. When, a few days later, it was stated that the venerable
- Duke of Glastonbury had suffered a stroke of paralysis, and lay at
- Caermere in a critical state, the news only made more vivid the picture of
- the music-hall dancer turned into Her Grace which the public had in its
- mind’s eye. Her radiant portrait in the photographic weeklies and budgets
- was what remained uppermost in the general memory.
- </p>
- <p>
- For a time, however, in that little fraction of the public which is called
- Society, the figure of another woman concentrated interest upon itself, in
- connection with the Torr tragedy. The fact that a music-hall person was to
- wear a great title had no permanent hold upon the imagination of this
- class. They would probably see rather less of her then than now—and
- the thing had no longer the charm of the unusual. But they had known Lady
- Cressage. They had admired her, followed after her, done all sorts of nice
- things for her, in that season of her wonderful triumph as the most
- beautiful girl, and the most envied bride, in London. After her marriage
- she had been very little in evidence, it was true; one hardly knew of any
- other reigning beauty who had let the sceptre slip through her fingers so
- promptly and completely. What was the secret of it all? It could not be
- said that she had lost her good looks, or that she was lacking in
- cleverness. There was no tangible scandal against her; to the contrary,
- she seemed rather surprisingly indifferent to men’s company. Of course, it
- was understood that her marriage was unhappy, but that was scarcely a
- reason for allowing herself to be so wholly snuffed out of social
- importance. Everybody knew what the Torrs were like as husbands, and
- everybody would have been glad to be good to her. But in some
- unaccountable way, without quite producing the effect of rebuffing
- kindness, she had contrived to lapse from the place prepared for her. And
- now those last words from the lips of poor young Cressage—“Perhaps
- that will teach her a lesson!”—sifted their way from the coroner’s
- inquest in a Welsh village up to London, and set people thinking once
- more. Who could tell? It might be that the fault was not all on one side.
- According to the accounts of Milford, he was in a state of visible
- excitement and mental distress. The very fact of his going off alone in a
- yacht with his father, of whom he notoriously saw as little as possible on
- dry land, showed that he must have been greatly upset. And his words could
- mean nothing save that it was a quarrel with his wife which had sent him
- off to what proved to be his death. What was this quarrel about? And was
- it the woman, after all, who was to blame? Echoes of these questions, and
- of their speculative and varied answers, kept themselves alive here and
- there in London till Parliament rose in August. They were lost then in the
- general flutter toward the moors.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lady Cressage, meantime, had not quitted Caermere or disclosed any design
- of doing so, and it is there we return to her, where she sat at her ease
- under the palms in the glass-house, with a book open before her.
- </p>
- <p>
- The spattering reports of a number of guns, not very far away, caused her
- presently to lift her head, but after an instant, with a fleeting frown,
- she went back to her book. The racket continued, and finally she closed
- the volume, listened with a vexed face for a minute or two and then sprang
- to her feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Positively this is too bad!” she declared aloud, to herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- Unexpectedly, as she turned, she found confronting her another young
- woman, also clad in black, even to the point of long gloves, and a broad
- hat heavy with funereal plumes. In her hand she held some unopened
- letters, and on her round, smooth, pretty countenance there was a doubtful
- look.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good-mornin’, dear,” said this newcomer. Her voice, not unmusical in
- tone, carried the suggestion of being produced with sedulous regard to a
- system. “There were no letters for you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a momentary pause, and then Lady Cressage, as if upon
- deliberation, answered, “Good-morning—Cora.” She turned away
- listlessly as she spoke.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, so it <i>is</i> one of my ‘Cora’ days, after all,” said the other,
- with a long breath of ostentatious reassurance. “I never know in the least
- where to have you, my dear, you know—and particularly this mornin’;
- I made sure you’d blame me for the guns.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Blame”—commented Lady Cressage, musingly—“I no longer blame
- anybody for anything. I’ve long since done with my fancy for playing at
- being God, and distributing judgments about among people.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you’re quite right about this shootin’ the home covers,” protested
- the other. “I gave Eddy a fair bit of my mind about it—but you know
- what he is, when once he’s headed in a given direction. You might as well
- talk soft to the east wind. And, for that matter, I was dead against his
- bringin’ these men down here at all—though it may surprise you to
- hear it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lady Cressage, still looking away, shook her head very slightly. “No—I
- don’t find myself particularly surprised,” she said, with an effect of
- languor. “Really, I can’t be said to have given the matter a thought, one
- way or the other. It is neither my business nor my wish to form opinions
- about your husband’s friends. We were speaking of something else, were we
- not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, yes,” responded Mrs. Edward; “I mentioned that sometimes I’m ‘Cora,’
- and sometimes it’s very much the other way about. I merely mentioned it—don’t
- think I mean to complain—only I began calling <i>you</i> Edith from
- the start—from the first day I came here, after the—after the——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know you did. It was very kind of you,” murmured Edith, but with no
- affectation of gratitude in her voice. Then, slowly, she turned her eyes
- toward her companion, and added in a more considerate tone: “But then you
- are by nature a much kindlier person than I am.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes, you say that,” put in the other, “but it isn’t true, you know.
- It’s only that I’ve seen more of the world, and am so much older than you
- are. That’s what tells, my dear—it’s years that smooths the temper
- down, and rubs off one’s sharp corners—of course, if one has some
- sense to start with. I assure you, Edith, that when I was your age I was a
- perfect tiger-cat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lady Cressage smiled in a wan fashion, as if in despite of her mood. “You
- always make such a point of your seniority,” she said, not unamiably, “but
- when I look at you, I can never believe you’re of any age at all. I seem a
- thousand years old beside you.” Mrs. Edward showed some dazzling teeth in
- her pleased appreciation of the compliment. Her smile was as
- characteristic as her voice, in its studiously regular and equable
- distribution. The even parting of her bright lips, with their symmetrical
- inner lines of white, was supported to a nicety of proportional value by
- eyelashes and eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s what I’ve been saying,” she commented, with frank enjoyment. “It’s
- good temper that does the trick.”
- </p>
- <p>
- To tell the truth, Mrs. Edward’s was a face which bore no visible relation
- to years. It was of rounded oval in contour, with beautifully chiseled
- small features, a faultless skin which was neither fair nor dark and fine
- large eyes that seemed sometimes blue, and as often something else. In
- these eyes there lay always, within touch of the surface, a latent smile,
- ready to beam, to sparkle, to dance, to languish in mellow softness or
- glitter in cool abstract recognition of pleasantries afloat, all at the
- instant bidding of the lips below. These lips, delicately arched and of
- vivid warmth of color, were as restricted in their movements as is the
- mercury in a thermometer. They did not curl sidewise upon occasion; they
- never pouted, or pulled themselves inward together under the stress of
- sudden emotion. They did nothing but separate, in perfectly balanced
- measure, sometimes by only a hair’s breadth, again in the freest fashion,
- but always in painstaking harmony with the spirit of the glance above.
- Students of this smile, or rather of this range of graded smiles,
- ordinarily reached the conclusion that it was the lips which gave the
- signal to the eyes. Certain it is that they worked together in trained
- accord, and that the rest of the face did nothing at all. The white
- forehead furrowed itself with no lines of puzzled thought; there was not
- the shadow of a wrinkle at the corners of the little mouth, or about the
- shapely brown lashes—and it seemed incredible that time should ever
- bring one.
- </p>
- <p>
- Beside this serene and lovely mask—in the placidity of which one
- found the pledge of an easy temper along with the promise of unfailing
- youth—the face of Lady Cressage was still beautiful, but in a
- restless and strenuous way. If she did produce the effect of being the
- older of the two, it was because Mrs. Edward’s countenance had nothing to
- do with any such standard of comparison.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When you come to think of it,” the latter went on now, “you <i>do</i>
- seem older than I do, dear—I mean you seem so to me. Of course I
- know there’s a good six years’ difference between us—and as far as
- appearance goes, I needn’t say that you’d be the belle of the ball in
- London as easily as you were four years ago—but all the same you
- have the knack of making me feel as if I were the youngster, and you the
- grown-up. I’ve a sister—five years younger than me—and she
- does the same thing. When she looks at me—just quietly turns her
- eyes full on me, you know—it seems as if I ought to have a pinafore
- on, and she have spectacles and a cap. Oh, she used to give me the jumps,
- that girl did. We haven’t seen much of each other, these last few years;
- we didn’t hit it off particularly well—but—why, hello! this <i>is</i>
- odd, if you like!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is it?” asked the other, perfunctorily.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Edward had been, shuffling the envelopes in her hand the while she
- spoke, and idly noting their superscriptions. She held up one of them now,
- in explanation of her remark.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, talk of the devil, you know—I was speaking of my sister
- Frank, and here’s a letter from her. She hasn’t written a line to me in—how
- long is it?—why, it must be—well, certainly not since I was
- married. Funny, isn’t it? I wonder if it’s anything about the pater.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She continued to regard the sealed missive absent-mindedly, as if the
- resource of opening it had not yet suggested itself to her. In the
- meantime, something else occurred to her, and she turned to face Lady
- Cressage, who had seated herself again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I meant what I said about these men Eddy’s brought down,” she declared.
- “I didn’t want them to be asked, and I don’t like their being here, any
- more than you do. Yes, I want to have you understand,” she persisted, as
- the other offered a gesture of deprecation, “I hope I’m the last person in
- the world to round on old pals, but really, as I told Eddy, a man in his
- position must draw the line somewhere. I don’t mind giving a leg-up to old
- Pirie—in a quiet way, of course—for he’s not half a bad sort
- by himself; but as for the rest, what are they? I don’t care for their
- families or their commissions—I’ve seen too much of the world to be
- taken in by kid of that sort—I say they’re bounders. I never was
- what you might call keen about them as the right friends for Eddy, even
- before—I mean in the old days, when it didn’t matter so much what
- company he kept. But now, with everything so altered, he ought to see that
- they’re not in his class at all. And that’s just what I can’t get him to
- do in the least.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Men have their own views in these matters. They are often rather
- difficult to understand,” commented Edith, sententiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should think so!” began Mrs. Edward. “Why, if I were a man, and in
- Eddy’s place—”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her words had ended aimlessly, as her eyes followed the lines of the
- letter she had at last opened and begun to read. She finished the brief
- task, and then, going back to the top of the single page, went over it
- again more attentively. There was something indefinably impressive about
- the silence in which she did this, and Lady Cressage presently raised an
- inquiring glance. Mrs. Edward’s face exhibited no marked change of
- expression, but it had turned deathly pale. The unabated redness of the
- lips gave this pallor a ghastliness which frightened Edith, and brought
- her to her feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What in the name—” she began, but the other held up a black-gloved
- hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is this something you know about?—something you’ve been putting
- up?” Cora demanded, in a harsh, ungoverned voice, moving forward as she
- spoke. “Look at this. Here’s what my sister writes.” She did not offer to
- show the letter, but huskily read forth its contents:
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘London, September 30.
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘My dear Cora: I don’t know whether you will thank me or not, but I feel
- that some one ought to warn you, if only that you may pull yourself
- together to meet what is coming. Your house is built of cards, and it is
- only a question of days, perhaps of hours, when it will be pushed over.
- Your husband is not the heir, after all. I am truly in great grief at the
- thought of what this will mean to you, and I can only hope that you will
- believe me when I sign myself,
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘Your sincerely affectionate sister,
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘Frances.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- The two women exchanged a tense look in which sheer astonishment
- encountered terror, and mingled with it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I know nothing of this,” faltered Edith, more in response to the
- other’s wild eyes than to the half-forgotten inquiries that had prefaced
- the reading of the letter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No trick of a child, eh? What do they call it, posthumous?” Cora panted,
- still with the rough voice which had shaken off the yoke of tuition.
- </p>
- <p>
- Edith lifted her head. “That is absurd,” she answered, curtly.
- </p>
- <p>
- As they confronted each other thus, a moving shadow outside caught their
- notice. Instinctively turning their eyes, they beheld through the glass a
- stranger, a slender young man with a soft hat of foreign fashion, striding
- across the lawn away from the house. He held his head high in the air, and
- they could see that the hands carried stiffly outstretched at his sides
- were clenched.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He struts across the turf as if he owned it,” said Edith, clutching
- vaguely at the meaningless relief which this interruption seemed to offer.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Mrs. Edward had sunk info the chair, and buried her face in her
- black-gloved hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER V
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian began his
- walk with swift, energetic steps, and a guiding eye fixed resolutely on a
- distinguishing mark in the distant line of tree-tops beyond, as if both
- speed and directness of course were of utmost urgency to his purpose.
- While his body moved forward thus automatically, however, his mind
- remained engrossed with what had been said and done in the room he was
- leaving behind.
- </p>
- <p>
- His brain reproduced over and over again the appearance of the two young
- brothers, their glances at each other, their sneering scowls at him. The
- picture of Augustine whispering in Edward’s ear, and of Edward shaking his
- sulky head, stuck in his memory as a living thing. He had continued to see
- it after he had turned his back on them and gone to the window. The
- infamous words which had been spoken about his father were a part of this
- picture, and their inflection still rang in his ears just as the young men
- still stood before his eyes, compact of hostility to him and his blood.
- </p>
- <p>
- The noise of guns in the wood he approached was for a time subordinated in
- his mind to those bitter echoes of Edward’s speech. When at last these
- reports of firing attracted his attention, he had passed out of sight of
- Caermere, and found himself on a vaguely defined path at the end of a
- broad heath, much overgrown with heather and broom and low, straggling,
- inhospitable-looking shrubs novel to his eye. Curious movements among this
- shaggy verdure caught his wandering notice, and he stopped to observe them
- more closely. A great many rabbits—or would they be hares?—were
- making their frightened escape from the wood in front of him, and darting
- about for cover in this undergrowth. He became conscious now of an
- extraordinary tumult in the wood itself—a confused roar of men’s
- voices raised in apparently meaningless cries, accompanied by an
- unintelligible pounding of sticks on timber and crackling brush. This
- racket almost drowned the noise of the remote firing; its effect of
- consternation upon the small inhabitants of the thicket was only less than
- the bewilderment that it caused in Christian’s mind. Forgetting altogether
- his own concerns, he pushed cautiously forward to spy out the cause of the
- commotion.
- </p>
- <p>
- Somewhat later, he emerged from the wood again, having obtained a
- tolerable notion of what was going on. He had caught a view of one line of
- beaters making their way through a copse, diagonally away from him—rough
- men clad for the most part in white jackets, who shouted and thrashed
- about them with staves as they went—and it was easy enough to
- connect their work, and the consequent rise and whirring rush of birds
- before it, with the excited fusillade of guns farther on. Christian did
- not get a sight of the sportsmen themselves. Albeit with some doubts as to
- the dignity of the proceeding, he made a detour of the piece of woodland,
- with the idea of coming out upon the shooting party, but when he arrived
- at the barrier it was to find on the spot only a couple of men in greenish
- corduroys, whom he took to be underkeepers. They were at work before a
- large heap of pheasants, tying the birds in pairs by the necks, and
- hanging them over a long stick, stretched between two trees, which already
- bent under its burden. They glanced up from their employment at Christian,
- and when he stooped to pick up one of the cartridge cases with which the
- ground at his feet was strewn, they exchanged some muttered comment at
- which both laughed aloud. He instinctively threw the little tube down, and
- looked away from the men. The thought occurred to him that if they only
- knew who he was their confusion would be pathetic, but as it was, they had
- the monopoly of self-possession, and it was he who shyly withdrew.
- </p>
- <p>
- The whole diversion, however, had cleared and sweetened his mood. He
- retraced his steps through the wood and then struck off in a new direction
- across the heath, at a more leisurely pace than he had come, his mind
- dwelling pleasurably upon the various picturesque phases of what he had
- witnessed. The stray glimpses of <i>la chasse</i> which had been afforded
- him in the South had had nothing in common with this. The unkempt freedom
- of the growths about him appealed to his senses as cultivated parks and
- ordered forests had never done. It was all so strong and simple and
- natural—and the memory of the beaters smashing along in the thicket,
- bawling and laying about them with their clubs, gave it a primitive note
- which greatly pleased his fancy.
- </p>
- <p>
- The heath was even finer, in his eyes, than the wood. The air stirring
- across it, for one thing, had a quality which he seemed never to have
- known before—and the wild, almost savage, aspect of its squat gray
- and russet herbage, the sense of a splendidly unashamed idleness and
- unproductiveness suggested by its stretches of waste land, charmed his
- imagination. He said to himself, as he sauntered here, that he would
- gallop every day across this wonderful plain, with a company of big dogs
- at his horse’s heels. The thought of the motion in the saddle inspired him
- to walk faster. He straightened himself, put his hands to his coat at the
- breast as he had seen young Englishmen do on their pedestrian tours, and
- strode briskly forward, humming to himself as he moved. The hateful
- episode of the morning had not so much faded from his thoughts, as shaken
- itself into a new kaleidoscopic formation. Contact with these noble
- realities out of doors had had the effect, as it were, of immeasurably
- increasing his stature. When he thought of those paltry cousins of his, it
- was as if he looked down upon their insignificance from a height.
- </p>
- <p>
- He came at last face to face with a high stone wall, the pretensions and
- obvious antiquity of which told him at once that he had returned to the
- vicinity of the castle. Sure enough, there were discernible at a
- considerable distance down to the right some of the turrets and roofs of
- Caermere, and he turned his course in that direction. It seemed to him a
- long way that he walked by the side of this great wall, marveling as he
- did so at its size and at the ambitious views of the persons who built it.
- The reflection that they were ancestors of his own came to his mind, and
- expanded therein. He also would build like a great nobleman in his time!
- What was there so grand as building?—he mused as he looked about him—unless
- it might be the heath and the brownish-purple hills beyond, and these also
- one intuitively thought of as having been built.
- </p>
- <p>
- Presently a small doorway appeared in the massive wall, and Christian,
- finding it unlocked, passed through it into a vast garden. The inner and
- sunny side of the wall, as far as he could see in either direction, was
- veined with the regularly espaliered branches of dwarf trees flattened
- against it, from which still depended here and there belated specimens of
- choice fruit. On the other side of the path following close this wall,
- down which he proceeded, were endless rows of small trees and staked
- clumps of canes, all now bereft of their season’s produce. The spectacle
- did not fit with what had been mentioned to him of the poverty of
- Caermere. Farther on, a tall hedge stretching at right angles from the
- wall separated this orchard from what he saw now, by glimpses through an
- open arch, to a be a flower garden. He quickened his pace at the sight,
- for flowers were very near his heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- At first there was not much to move his admiration. The sunlit profusion
- of his boyhood’s home had given him standards of size and glowing color
- which were barely approached, and nowhere equaled, here. Suddenly he came
- upon something, however, before which he perforce stopped. It was the
- beginning of a long row of dahlias, rounded flowers on the one side of
- him, pointed and twisted cactus varieties on the other, and he had
- imagined nothing like this before in his life. Apparently no two of the
- tall plants, held upright to the height of his breast by thick stakes,
- were alike, and he knew not upon which to expend the greater delight, the
- beauty of their individual blossoms or the perfection of skill exhibited
- in the color-arrangement of the line.
- </p>
- <p>
- He moved slowly along, examining the more notable flowers in detail with
- such ardor that a young lady in a black gown, but with a broad hat of
- light straw on her pale hair, advanced up the path, paused, and stood
- quite near him for some moments before he perceived her presence. Then
- with a little start, he took off his hat, and held it in his hands while
- he made a stiff bow.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are fond of flowers?” Lady Cressage said, more as a remark than an
- inquiry. She observed him meanwhile with politely calm interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “These dahlias are extraordinary!” he exclaimed, very earnestly. “I have
- never seen such flowers, and such variety. It surprises me a great deal.
- It is a spécialité in England, n’est ce pas?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I have heard that we have carried the dahlia further than other
- countries have done,” responded the lady, courteously giving the name the
- broad-voweled sound he had used. She added with a pleasant softening of
- eyes and lips: “But you ought not to begrudge us one little triumph like
- this—you who come from the very paradise of flowers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The implication in her words caused him to straighten himself, and to
- regard her with a surprised new scrutiny. He saw now that she was very
- beautiful, and he strove to recall the few casual remarks Lord Julius had
- dropped, concerning the two ladies at the castle, as a clue to her
- identity. One had been an actress, he remembered—and this lady’s
- graceful equanimity had, perhaps, something histrionic in it. But if she
- happened not to be the actress, then it would no doubt anger her very much
- to be taken for one. He knew so little of women—and then his own
- part in the small drama occurred to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is evident that you understand who I am,” he said, with another bow.
- The further thought that in either case she was related to him, was a part
- of the family of which he would soon be the head, came to give him fresh
- confidence. “It is not only dahlias that are carried to unrivaled heights
- of beauty in England,” he added, and bowed once more.
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled outright at this. “That is somewhat too—what shall I say?—continental
- for these latitudes,” she remarked. “Men don’t say such glowing things in
- England. We haven’t sun enough, you know, properly to ripen rose-hips—or
- compliments. I should like to introduce myself, if I may—I am Edith
- Cressage—and Lord Julius has told me the wonderful story about you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She held out her hand as she spoke, with a deliberate gesture, which
- afforded Christian time to note its exquisite modeling, if he had had the
- eyes for it. But he took the hand in his own rather cursorily, and began
- speaking with abruptness before he had finished his bow and relinquished
- it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is much too wonderful,” he said, hastily. “It frightens me. I cannot
- get used to it. I have the feeling that I should go away somewhere, and
- live by myself, till it became all familiar to me. But then I see it would
- be just as painful, wherever I went.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, let us hope it would be least painful here, of all places,” urged the
- lady, in gentle deprecation of his tone. “Caermere is not gay, but it can
- be soothing and restful—to those who stand in need of solace. It has
- come to be my second home—I never thought one could grow so deeply
- attached to a place. It has been to me like a tender old nurse and
- confidante—in times when—when its shelter and consolation were
- very welcome”—she faltered for an instant, with averted face, then
- raised her moist eyes to his, and let them sparkle—“and oh, you will
- grow to love Caermere with all your heart.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian felt himself much moved. He had put on his hat, and stepped now
- to her side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have seen nothing of it at all,” he said. “I am going to ask that you
- shall show it to me—you who love it so much. But if I shall remain
- here now, that I cannot in the least tell. Nothing is arranged, so far as
- I know. I am quite in Lord Julius’ hands—thus far.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They had tacitly begun to move down the path together, loitering to look
- at plants on either side which particularly invited notice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lord Julius is a remarkable man,” she said. “If one is fortunate enough
- to enlist his friendship, there is no end to what he can do for him. You
- can hardly imagine what a difference it makes for you in everything—the
- fact that he is warmly disposed towards you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, that I have been told,” said Christian, “and I see it for myself,
- too. I do not feel that I know him very well, as yet. It was only
- yesterday morning that I met him for the first time at an hotel in
- Brighton. We breakfasted together, we looked through papers together and
- then we began a long railway journey together, which only ended a few
- hours ago. We have talked a great deal in this time, but, as I have said,
- the man himself is not very clear to me yet. But no one could have been
- kinder—and I think he likes me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, of course he does,” affirmed Lady Cressage, as if anything else would
- have been incredible. “And—talking with him so much, so
- continuously, you no doubt understand the entire situation. I am glad that
- he at least left it to me to show you over Caermere; there is apparently
- nothing else in which I can be of use.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, though he smiled in kindly recognition of her attitude, offered
- no verbal comment, and after a wandering digression about dahlias, she
- returned to the subject.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If there <i>is</i> anything I can tell you—about the family, the
- position of affairs in general, and so on—you should not stand on
- ceremony with me. Has he, for example, explained about money affairs?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man looked keenly at her for an instant, as if the question took
- him by surprise. Then he answered frankly enough: “Nothing definite. I
- only gather that it will be made easier for me than it would have been for—for
- other members of the family, if they—had been in my place. But
- perhaps that is not what I should say to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lady Cressage smiled on him reassuringly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, don’t think of me in that light,” she pleaded. “I stand quite outside
- the—what shall I say?—the interested family circle. I have no
- ax of any description to grind. You, of course, have been told my position
- in the castle—that is, so far as it can be told by others. It is a
- simple enough story—I was to have been everything, and then the wind
- happens to change off the Welsh coast and lo! I am nothing—nothing!
- It is not even certain that I am not a beggar—living here on alms.
- Legally, everything is in such confusion that no one knows how he stands.
- But so far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter. My cup has been filled so
- full—so long:—that a little more or less trouble is of no
- importance. Oh, I assure you, I do not desire to be considered in the
- matter at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She made this last declaration with great earnestness, in immediate
- response to the sympathetic look and gesture with which Christian had
- interrupted her narrative.
- </p>
- <p>
- His gentle eyes regarded her troubled beauty with compassionate softness.
- “I venture to think that you will be considered a good deal, none the
- less,” he remarked, in a grave yet eager tone. The sense of elation at
- being able to play the part of Providence to such a lady spread through
- his mind and possessed his being. The lofty possibilities of the powers
- devolving upon him had never been so apparent before. He instinctively put
- out his arm toward her, in such overt fashion that she could but take it.
- She did not lean upon it, but imparted to the contact instead a kind of
- ceremonial reserve which directly ministered to the patrician side of his
- mood.
- </p>
- <p>
- They walked, if possible, still more slowly now, pausing before almost
- every stake; their talk was of the flowers, with occasional lapses into
- the personal.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What you said about Lord Julius,” she remarked, in one of these
- interludes, “is quite true. He has it in his power to say whether the duke
- shall be a rich man or a pauper, and until yesterday he was all for the
- pauper. If poor Porlock and his sons had lived, they knew very well that
- Lord Julius was no friend of theirs, and would starve the title whichever
- of them had it. And so with these others—Edward and Augustine—only
- with them, it isn’t merely dislike but loathing that Lord Julius has for
- them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I met those young gentlemen this morning,” said Christian stiffly. “It
- seemed to me that Lord Julius went quite out of his way to be kind with
- them. I should never have gathered that he hated them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, not personally,” she explained. “I don’t think he dislikes anybody
- personally. But in what you may call their representative capacity he is
- furious with people if they don’t measure up to his idea of what they
- should be. I never heard of any other family that had such a man in it. I
- used to admire him very much—when I was newly married—I
- thought his ideals for the family were so noble and fine—but I don’t
- know—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you have suspicions of Julius, then?” asked Christian, hurriedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no, no!” she protested. “Nothing is farther from my thoughts. Only I
- have seen it all, here. I have lived in the very heart of it—and
- much as I sympathize with his feelings, I can’t help feeling that he is
- unjust—not willfully, but still unjust. He and his son are men of
- great intelligence and refined tastes; they would do honor to any
- position. But is it quite fair of them to be so hard on cousins of theirs
- who were not given great intelligence, and who had no capacity whatever
- for refinement? That is what I mean. You saw those young men this morning.
- They are not up to much, certainly; their uncle Porlock and his sons
- averaged, perhaps, even a shade lower—you see I am speaking quite
- frankly—but when it is all said and done, they were not so
- remarkably worse than other men of their class. If any of the six had
- succeeded to the title, he would not have been such a startling anomaly in
- the peerage. I doubt if he would have attracted attention, one way or the
- other. But it became a fixed idea with Lord Julius years ago to get
- control of the estates, and to use this control to bully the elder line
- into the paths of sweetness and light. It didn’t succeed in the least—and
- I think he grew a little spiteful. That is all. And besides—what
- does it matter? It is all ancient history now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian was looking straight before him, with a meditative gaze. They
- walked for some moments in silence before he spoke. “And how did he know
- that he would like me?” he demanded, musingly. “How should he be confident
- that I was better than the others? Perhaps—do you know?—was he
- very fond of my father?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no idea,” she responded. It was impossible not to note the brevity
- of her tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No one speaks willingly of my father,” he broke forth with impulsive
- bitterness. “Even Lord Julius would tell me nothing of him. And the young
- lady on the boat—she too—”
- </p>
- <p>
- He paused, and his companion, who had been looking away, glanced again at
- him. “The young lady on the boat,” she said, more by way of suggesting to
- him a safe topic than as an inquiry.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I much want to know who she can be,” he cried, unconsciously
- accepting the diversion. He described the meeting at Rouen, the
- conversation and, after a fashion of his own, the girl herself. “She
- said,” he went on, “that she had personally something to do with the story—‘remotely’
- was the word she used. I asked Lord Julius, but he could not think who she
- might be. She earns her own living—she told me that—and she
- had never been out of England before. She is not well educated—in
- the school sense, I mean—her French was ridiculous. But she spoke
- very beautifully her own language, and her mind filled me with charm, but
- even more so her good heart. We swore friendship for all time—or at
- least I did.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear me!” said Lady Cressage. Her thoughts had not been idle, and they
- brought to her now on the instant a satisfactory clue. She pondered it for
- a little, before she decided to speak. “I think I know who this remarkable
- young lady must be,” she observed then. “This Captain Edward whom you met
- this morning—he has a wife.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I know,” put in Christian abruptly—“the actress-lady; Julius
- told me of her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose ‘actress’ would cover the thing,” she answered, with an air of
- amiable indifference. “She danced more than she acted, I believe, but
- ‘actress’ is a very general term. Well, your eternal friend is, I suspect,
- her younger sister. ‘I have never seen her, but by accident I happen to
- know that she is aware of your coming to England.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian’s mobile face had lengthened somewhat. “Is she also an—an
- ‘actress’?” he asked, dolefully.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lady Cressage looked skyward, with halfclosed eyes, in an effort of
- memory. “I really seem to have heard what she did,” she mused,
- hesitatingly. “I know her sister has often spoken of her. Is it ‘barmaid’?
- No. ‘Telegraph’? No, it’s her father who’s in the General Post Office.
- Why, now, how stupid of me! She can’t be a nurse, of course, or there
- would have been her uniform. Oh, now I remember—she’s a typewriter.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was not clear to her whether Christian wholly comprehended the term,
- now that she had found it. She perceived, however, that he disliked
- something in what she had said, or in her manner of saying it. The
- remarkable responsiveness of his countenance to passing emotions and moods
- within him had already impressed her. She regarded his profile now with a
- sidelong glance, and reconstructed some of her notions about him by the
- help of what she saw. Nothing was said, until suddenly he paused, gazing
- with kindled eye upon the prospect opened before him.
- </p>
- <p>
- They had come to the end of the garden, and stood at the summit of a broad
- stone-kerbed path descending in terraces. Above them, the dense foliage of
- the yews rising at either side of the gap in the hedge had been trained
- and cut into an arched canopy. From under this green gateway Christian
- looked down upon a Caermere he had not imagined to himself before.
- </p>
- <p>
- The castle revealed itself for the first time, as he beheld it now, in its
- character as a great medieval fortress. On his arrival in the morning,
- emerging from the shadowed driveway into the immediate precinct of the
- house, he had seen only its variously modernized parts; these, as they
- were viewed from this altitude, shrank to their proper proportions—an
- inconsiderable fraction of the mighty whole. All about, the massive
- shoulders of big hills shelved downward to form the basin-like hollow in
- which the castle seemed to stand, but their large bulk, so far from
- dwarfing Caermere, produced the effect of emphasizing its dimensions. Its
- dark-gray walls and towers, with their bulging clumps of chimneys and
- turrets, and lusterless facets of many-angled roofings, all of somber
- slate, were visibly the product, the very child, of the mountains. A
- sensation of grim, adamantine, implacable power took hold of the young
- man’s brain as he gazed. For a long time he did not want to talk, and felt
- vaguely that he was signifying this by the slight, sustained pressure of
- his arm against hers. At all events, she grasped his wish, and preserved
- silence, holding herself a little behind him, so that he might look down,
- without distraction, upon his kingdom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “These Torrs,” he burst forth all at once, with a nervous uncertainty in
- his tones as of one out of breath, “these ancestors of mine—the
- family I belong to—did they produce great men? You must know their
- history. Julius says we are the most ancient family in England. I have not
- had the time yet to learn anything of what we did. Were there heroes and
- famous soldiers and learned scholars among us? To look at that wonderful
- castle there at our feet, it seems as if none but born chiefs and rulers
- of mankind could ever have come out of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Captain Edward and his brother Augustine were both born there,” she
- permitted her own over-quick tongue to comment.
- </p>
- <p>
- He let her arm drop from his with a swift gesture, and wheeled round to
- look her in the face. The glance in his eyes said so much to her that she
- hastened to anticipate his speech.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Forgive me!” she urged hastily. “It was silly thoughtlessness of mine. I
- do not know you at all well as yet, you know, and I say the wrong things
- to you. Do tell me you forgive me! And it is only fair to myself to say,
- too, that I have been in a bad school these last few years. Conversation
- as one practices it at Caermere is merely the art of making everything
- pointed and sharp enough to pierce thick skins. I should have remembered
- that you were different—it was unpardonable of me! But I have really
- angered you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, still looking at her, found himself gently shaking his head in
- reassurance. It was plain enough to him that this beautiful young woman
- had suffered much, and that at the hands of his own people. What wonder
- that acrid memories of them should find their way to her lips? He also had
- been unhappy. He smiled gravely into her face at the softening
- recollection.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We were speaking of different things, I think,” he commented, and nodded
- approval at sight of the relieved change which his tone brought to her
- countenance. “I know very well there are many disagreeable and unpleasant
- matters close about us—when we are down below, there. But now we are
- up above them, and we forget them all, or ignore them—and I was
- asking you about the history of the family—its ancient history.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She put her hand lightly upon his arm again. “Lord Julius is right about
- it being a very, very long history,” she said, putting into her voice a
- tacit recognition of his magnanimity. “I know it, in a certain way, but I
- can hardly make a good story of it, I’m afraid. The family is Keltic, you
- know. That is what is always said about it, as its most distinguishing
- characteristic. It is the only large English one which managed to survive
- through the Saxon period, and then the Norman period, and keep its name
- and its estates and its territorial power. This makes it very interesting
- to historians and archaeologists. There are many stone circles and Druidic
- monuments about here, some of which are said to be connected with the
- introduction of Christianity into Britain. You will see them another day,
- and read the legends about them. Well, it is said that the chief who
- possessed this land here, and who had some kind of a stronghold there
- where the castle is, at that time, was a Torr. Of course, there were no
- surnames then, but it would have been his tribal appellation, or something
- of the sort. The fact itself, I believe, is generally accepted—that
- the family that was here in St. David’s time is here now. It is a
- tradition that there should always be a David in the family; it used to be
- the leading name, but now Christian is usually the duke’s name, and the
- others are all saints, like Anselm, Edward, Augustine and—and so
- forth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man looked down in meditation upon the gloomy, historic pile.
- “It is a very grand beginning,” he said, thoughtfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps it was too grand for mere mortals to live up to,” she ventured,
- with a cautious sidelong eye on him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I see your meaning,” he assented, nodding. “Yes, no doubt it is natural.
- It is as if a boy were named Napoleon. He would be frightened to think
- what he had done to make his name and himself fit together—and very
- likely he would never do anything at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, that is it,” she answered, and drew a long, consolatory breath.
- </p>
- <p>
- They had begun to move down the wide winding path, and when they paused
- presently at one of the steps to note a new view of the buildings, she
- called his attention to something by a little exclamation and a pointing
- finger.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you see the balcony there, up above and to the left of the flat-topped
- tower—no, this side of the highest chimneys—there are figures
- coming out on it from the window.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is some one in a reclining chair, n’est ce pas?” he asked,
- following her finger.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is your grandfather,” she said softly. “Those are his apartments—the
- rows of windows with the white woodwork. When the sun gets round to them,
- they bring him out—if he is strong enough. Evidently this is one of
- his good days.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, gazing eagerly, made out beyond the attendants and the couch
- they bore, another figure, with a splash of white like a shield upon its
- front.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is it not Julius?” he asked swiftly, pressing her arm. “Oh, then by this
- time my grandfather knows of me—knows that I am here! Should you not
- think so? And no doubt, since it is his good day, they will take me to see
- him. Is that not probable?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t the least idea,” she responded, after a momentary pause,
- “either as to what Lord Julius has told him, or as to how much he is
- capable of understanding. Except from this distance, I have not seen him
- since he was struck down with paralysis. I know nothing of his condition
- beyond a stray, guarded word now and then from the doctors. If I were a
- professional thief and he a crown jewel, I could not have been more
- securely shut out from him!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The melancholy bitterness of her words, and tone appealed to the young
- man. He drew her hand closer to his side by a delicate pressure of the
- arm. “I can see that you have been very unhappy,” he said,
- compassionately.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh-h-h!” she murmured, with a shuddering sigh. “Don’t—don’t speak
- of it, I beg of you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I also have had a sad youth,” he went on, unconsciously tightening his
- arm. “But now”—and he lifted his head and smiled—“who knows?
- Who shall say that the bad days are not all gone—for both of us?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Only the flutter of the hand against his arm made answer. They walked oh
- together down the broad sunlit path.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER VI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t the foot of the
- terraced slope, the wide, graveled path down which Lady Cressage had led
- Christian described a formal curve to the right, across a lawn which he
- recognized as belonging to his morning’s experiences. The angle of the
- high, domed conservatory recalled itself to him. Beyond it, on the same
- side, would be the window from which he had quitted the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- To the left, a smaller footpath turned into still another garden, and he
- was glad that his companion moved this way. They were in a relatively
- small inclosure, hedged upon three sides by closely knit high walls of
- box; the straggling, untrimmed profusion of this tall growth, through
- which a multitude of sweet-briers thrust still farther upward their
- dipping and interlaced green rods, gave the place a homely if unkempt
- aspect. On the fourth side rose the blue-gray masonry of the castle itself—an
- ancient curtain stretched between two towers. The autumn sunlight lay upon
- this stained old wall, and warmed it, and glowed softly among the leaves
- and saffron blossoms of the great rose-tree trained upon it. This garden
- preserved the outlines of some former quaint arrangement of walks and
- beds, but these were comfortably softened everywhere, and in part
- obscured, by the untrammeled freedom of vegetation. Even over the
- moldering red tiles of the paths mosses had been suffered to creep
- unmolested. A few late roses were in bloom here and there, and at one
- corner there rose a colony of graceful white lilies, the scent of which
- filled the air. It was all very restful and charming, and Christian,
- pausing to gaze about him, gave little exclamations of pleasure at what he
- saw.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the center of the garden, surrounded by a low seat of weather-worn
- woodwork, was what seemed to be a fountain, culminating in a piece of
- statuary, so blackened and battered by time and storm that little could be
- made out of its creator’s intentions. Christian, with some murmured
- inquiry, led the way toward this—and then perceived that Lord
- Julius, who had been sitting at the other and sunny side of the statue,
- was standing now in the path, confronting the new-comers with a friendly
- smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is <i>my</i> particular haunt at Caer-mere,” he explained to the
- young man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In so huge a place, one is lost if he does not fasten upon a special
- corner or nook of some sort, and send down roots in it and make it his
- own. This was my mother’s garden, and for over fifty years now I have
- bargained with one generation of head gardeners after another to leave it
- alone—as she left it. When Cheltnam came, he was so famous a person
- that I submitted to his budding some new varieties on the old wall-rose
- there—but, bless me, even that is thirty years ago—before
- either of you was born. I see you young people have lost no time in
- becoming acquainted.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Edith Cressage looked into the old gentleman’s eyes for a moment before
- she replied. They had exchanged this same glance—on her side at once
- puzzled, suspicious, defiant; on his full of a geniality possibly pointed
- with cynicism—very often during the last four years, without
- affecting by it any prepossession or prejudice in either’s mind. “We met
- by accident in the upper fruit-walk, and I introduced myself. It must be
- quite luncheon time. Shall we go in?” She added, as upon an afterthought,
- and with another steadfast look into his face, “I have promised to show
- him over the house and the castle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Admirable!” said Lord Julius, cordially.
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at his watch. “We will follow you in a very few moments, if we
- may. I dare say he is as ready for luncheon as I am, but I want to show
- him my old garden first.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, let me stop too!” she exclaimed, without an instant’s hesitation.
- “May I confess it?—when you’re not here I call it <i>my</i> garden,
- too. I knew it was your mother’s—and I was always going to ask you
- to tell me about her, but the opportunity never offered. It is the one
- really perfect spot at Caermere, even to me. And I can understand how
- infinitely these old associations add to its charms for you! I shall truly
- not be in the way if I stop?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The elder man regarded her with a twinkling eye from under his broad
- hat-brim as he shook his head. “To the contrary, we are both delighted,”
- he answered, amiably enough. He began leading the way at this, and the two
- young people, walking perforce very close together on the narrow path,
- followed at his heels.
- </p>
- <p>
- He pointed out to them that the fountain, which he could not remember
- being in working order even in his boyhood, was built over the ancient
- well of the castle. The statue apparently dated from William and Mary’s
- time; at least, it was very like the objects they set up at Hampton Court.
- Part of its pedestal was made of three Ogham stones, which were said to
- have stood by the well in former times. Flint knives and other primitive
- weapons had been found in the garden. Antiquaries were not agreed as to
- the possibility of the well having been in existence at any very remote
- period, but it was not unlikely that this small garden had been the center
- of interest—perhaps the scene of Druidical sacrifices, or even of
- the famous conversion of the tribe resident here by St. David—at the
- beginning of things. These speculations as to precise localities were
- interesting, but scarcely convincing. The wall at the end was a more
- definite affair. It had been built after the Third Crusade by Stephen de
- la Tour, as the Normanized name went then.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, the name has not always been spelled the same then?” interrupted
- Christian here. He spoke with an eagerness which the abstract interest of
- the query seemed hardly to warrant.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Heavens, no!” said Lord Julius. “It has been Tor with one ‘r’ and with
- two; it has been de la Tour, as I said, and Tour without the ‘de la,’ and
- Toure, and I know of at least one branch of the people of the name of
- Tower who are undoubtedly of our stock. It is quite conceivable that many
- others of them are, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then the forms of names can be altered at will?” pursued Christian. “If a
- man says, ‘I will spell it so and so,’ then it is all right?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes,” explained the other. “Often two spellings exist side by side.
- Witness the Seymours a few years ago. You had one brother writing it
- Seymour and another St. Maur. The latter is now the official spelling—for
- the present, at least.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is extremely interesting to me,” the young man cried. “So I may keep
- my name as I have always borne it! I may write myself ‘Christian Tower’!
- That lifts a load from my mind. I had been unhappy to think of abandoning
- the name my father liked. He always both spelled and pronounced it
- ‘Tower,’ and that is why I shall be so glad to do the same.”
- </p>
- <p>
- An acute kind of silence rested upon the group for an awkward minute.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, don’t let us have anymore archaeology before luncheon, Lord Julius,”
- put in the lady then. “Caermere so reeks with history that one must take
- it in small installments or be overwhelmed altogether. You were going to
- tell us about your mother, Lord Julius, and how you remember her, here in
- this dear old garden. And positively nothing has been changed since!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I mustn’t go quite so far as that,” said the old man, smilingly. He
- seemed grateful to her for the digression. “A certain systematic
- renovation has, of course, been necessary; I have arranged with the
- gardeners to manage that. I dare say there are scarcely any plants or
- roots here now which were individually in existence in my mother’s time;
- but their children, their descendants, are here in their places. Except
- for Cheltnam’s buds on the wall there, I don’t think any novelties have
- been introduced. If so, it was against my wish. The lilies in that corner,
- for example, are lineal progeny, heaven knows how many times removed, of
- the lilies my mother planted there. These roses are slips from other slips
- of the old cabbage and damask and moss roses she used to sit and look at
- with her crewel-work in her lap. The old flowers are gone, and yet they
- are not gone. In the same way, my mother has been dead for sixty years,
- and yet this is still her garden, and she is still here—here in the
- person of me, her son, and of Christian, her great-grandson.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I,” commented Lady Cressage, upon a sudden smiling impulse, “I alone
- am an intruding new species—like one of Cheltnam’s ‘niphetos’ buds
- on the old rose. I hasten to extricate myself.” And with a bright little
- nod and mock half-courtesy, she caught her gown in one hand, wheeled round
- and moved quickly down the path and through the hedge.
- </p>
- <p>
- The two men watched her till she vanished.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She is a beautiful lady,” observed Christian, with enthusiasm; “and very
- courteous, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius offered no remark upon this, but stood for a little with his
- gaze apparently fixed on the point whence she had disappeared. Then,
- without turning his head, he said in a gently grave way:
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I were you, Christian, I would make as few allusions, in mixed
- company, to my father as possible.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, yes! this is what I desired to discuss with you!” said the young man,
- stoutly. He swung round to face the other, and his eyes sparkled with
- impatience. “Everybody avoids mention of him; they turn to something else
- when I speak his name—all but those abominable young men who offered
- him insult. That is what I should very much like to talk about!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had thought it might not be necessary,” replied Lord Julius. “At least,
- I had hoped you would pick up the information for yourself—a
- harmless little at a time, and guess the rest, and so spare everybody,
- yourself included. But that is precisely what you seem not to do; and I
- dare say I was wrong in not talking frankly with you at the start. But let
- me understand first: what do you know about your father?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Only that he was a soldier, a professional soldier. That I have told
- you,” panted Christian.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, and a very notable soldier,” responded the other. “He won the
- Victoria Cross in the Mutiny—the youngest man in all India to do so.
- That is for you to remember always—in your own mind—for your
- own pride and consolation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, yes, always!” murmured the son.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And in other services, too, after he left England,” the elder man went
- on, “I have understood that he was a loyal and very valuable officer to
- those he fought for. This also is something for you to be proud of—-but
- still inside your own mind! That it is necessary to remember—that
- you must keep it to yourself. Forgive my repeating the injunction.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go on!” said Christian.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” Lord Julius began, speaking with more hesitation, “Ambrose as a
- soldier was magnificent, but you know enough from your books to know that
- splendid soldiers may easily be—how shall I say?—not so
- splendid in other walks of life. It is to be said for him that he was bare
- twenty-three—poor boy. It was in 1859; and, as misery would have it,
- I was in Syria, traveling with my wife. Perhaps if I had been in England,
- I could have done something. As it was, there was no one to help him; and
- of course it may be that he couldn’t have been helped. It was a case of a
- young man returning to London, with honors and flattery enough to turn
- even an old head, and walking blindfold into the worst company in Europe.
- I have no intention of going into details. You must take my word for it
- that suddenly four or five young men of great families fled to the
- Continent; and that, without much publicity in the papers, there was a
- very miserable sort of scandal after their flight. Other names were
- mentioned—but I needn’t go into that. It was to the interest of many
- influential people to hush the thing up, and to some extent they
- succeeded. After a while it became even possible for the others to come
- back to England—there are many ways of managing such matters—but
- there was one of them who never returned.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian gazed into the old man’s face with mute, piteous fixity of
- concentration.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This one, of course,” Lord Julius pursued, picking his words still more
- cautiously, and liking his task less than ever, “was your father. The way
- was smoothed for the rest to come back, but not for him—that is, at
- first. Later, when he could have returned, he would not. Ambrose had a
- stubborn and bitter temper. He was furious with his father, with his
- family—with all England. He would touch none of us. Why, I myself
- went to Sicily many years ago—it was as soon as I had got back from
- the East—and learned the facts, and found out what could be done;
- and I tried to see him, and bring him home with me, but he would not speak
- with me, or even remain under the same roof with me—and so I could
- do nothing. Or yes, there was one thing—that is to maintain some
- kind of watch over you—after his death, and that we did. My own idea
- was to have brought you over to England years ago—as soon as your
- mother died—but Emanuel thought otherwise.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He paused here in his narrative, for the reason that his companion was
- obviously no longer listening to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian had moved a step or two away, and with a white, set face was
- looking off over the hill-tops. His profile showed brows knitted and lips
- being bitten, under the stress of an internal tempest. It seemed to the
- old man a long time that he stood thus, in dry-eyed, passionate battle
- with his own mind. Then, with a sudden, decisive gesture he spread out his
- hands and turned impulsively to Lord Julius.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are an old man, and a wise one, and you were my father’s friend and
- you are my friend!” he said, with trembling earnestness. “I should be a
- fool not to pay heed to what you tell me. You advise that I do not mention
- my father more than is necessary. Eh bien, I take your advice. Without
- doubt it is right—just as it is right that I should speak less of my
- brother Salvator. I have remembered that since you warned me, and now I
- will remember this. But I should like”—he came forward as he spoke,
- still with extended hands, and looked with entreating earnestness up into
- the other’s face—“I should like to have you understand that Salvator
- is my brother not any the less, and that I love and honor and have pride
- in my father more than before. This I keep in my own mind, as you advise—but
- one thing I will do for every one to take note of. I will write my name
- always ‘Tower.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- The great-uncle put a big, comforting hand on his shoulder. “I should not
- dream of blaming you,” he said, gently. “But there is a man to tell us
- luncheon is ready.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He nodded comprehension to the servant who had appeared at the opening in
- the hedge, and, still with his hand on Christian’s shoulder, began to move
- in that direction.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One other matter,” said the young man in lowered tones and hurriedly—“from
- the hill above, awhile ago, I saw my grandfather—in his chair, on
- the balcony. You said just now that my father hated him—was furious
- with him. Did he behave cruelly to my father?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no-o,” replied Julius, with an indefinite upward inflection on the
- deliberate negative. “Not cruelly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But unjustly?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no, not unjustly, either—if only because he never in his life
- possessed the dimmest inkling of what justice meant. The duke is my
- brother, and I know him much better than any one else living, and so I am
- free to speak frankly about him. He has been a duke nearly eighty years—which
- is, I believe, unprecedented—but he has been an ass still longer
- than that.” After a pause he added: “I am going to take you to him this
- afternoon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian hung his head as they walked along, and framed in his depressed
- mind more than one further inquiry about this grandsire of his, who held
- so august a station, and yet had been dismissed so contemptuously, but
- they did not translate themselves into speech. Nor, later, during the
- luncheon, was this great personage more than indirectly alluded to.
- </p>
- <p>
- The way to this luncheon had led through three or four large rooms,
- opening one upon the other by small doors, the immediate approaches to
- which were given the effect of passageways by means of screens. What these
- apartments were used for, or how the residents of the castle distinguished
- them apart in their own minds, Christian could not imagine. To his rapid
- and curious inspection, they seemed all alike—each with its bare,
- indifferently polished floor, its huge stone fireplace, its wainscoting,
- walls and ceiling of dark, umber-hued wood, and its scant store of
- furniture which only heightened the ruling impression of big empty spaces.
- An occasional portrait was dimly to be discerned up in the duskiness of
- the oak panels, but the light from the narrow and small-paned windows was
- too faint to examine them by. More cheerless or apparently useless rooms
- the young man had never seen.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius seemed to guess his thoughts. “This is all an old part—what
- might be called mid-Plantagenet,” he explained, as they went along. “My
- father had these rooms pulled about a good deal, and done up according to
- Georgian standards, but it was time and money wasted. Even if big windows
- were cut through they would be too dark for comfort, to our notions. The
- men who made them, of course, cared nothing at all about daylight, at
- least inside a house. They spent as little time as possible under roofs,
- to begin with; they rose at daybreak and went to bed at dark. When they
- were forced to be under cover, they valued security above all things, and
- the fewer openings there were in the walls, the better they liked it. They
- did no reading whatever, but after they had gorged themselves with food,
- sat around the fire and drank as much as they could hold, and listened to
- the silly rubbish of their professional story-tellers and ballad-singers
- till they fell asleep. If it happened that they wanted to gamble instead,
- a handful of rush-lights or a torch on the wall was enough to see the dice
- by.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Really, what did they want more? And for that matter, what do most of
- their lineal descendants want more either? Light enough to enable them to
- tell a spade from a heart, and perhaps to decipher the label on a bottle
- now and then. Nothing more. The fashion of the day builds plate-glass
- windows round them, but it is truly a gross superfluity.” The room in
- which Lady Cressage and the luncheon-table awaited them was of a more
- hospitable aspect. A broad expanse of lawn, and of distant trees and
- sky-line fading away in the sunny autumn haze, made a luminous picture of
- the high embrasured window stretching almost from corner to corner across
- one side. By contrast with the other apartments, the light here was
- brilliant. Christian, with a little apologetic bow and gesture to the
- others, dallied before the half-dozen portraits on the walls, examined the
- modeling of the blackened oak panels about them, and lingered in admiring
- scrutiny of the great carved chimney-piece above the cavernous hearth, on
- which a fire of logs crackled pleasantly. This chimney-piece was fairly
- architectural in its dimensions. It was as full of detail, and seemed
- almost as big, as the west front of a church, and he tipped his head back
- to look up at its intricate, yet flowing scheme of scrollwork, its
- heraldic symbolism used now for decoration, now to point the significance,
- as it were, of the central escutcheon—and all in old wood of so ripe
- a nut-brown color that one seemed to catch a fragrance exhaled from it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is the best thing here,” said Edith Cressage, moving over to stand
- beside him. “It came from Ludlow Castle. Those are the arms of the
- Mortimers. It <i>is</i> the Mortimers, isn’t it?” She turned to Lord
- Julius for support. “I always confuse them with the De Lacys.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, the Mortimers,” answered Julius, as servants entered, and they took
- their seats. “But almost every other family of the Marches is represented
- in the devices scattered about. You can see the arrows of the Egertons,
- the eagles of the Grandisons, and up above, the corbies or ravens of the
- Corbets, and so on. That was the period when the Marches ruled England,
- and their great families, all married and intermarried and bolstered up by
- the feudal structure, were like a nation by themselves. The Mortimers, you
- know,” he added, turning to Christian, “became practically kings of
- England. At least they had their grandsons on the throne—but they
- couldn’t hold it after they had got it. The day of these parts was really
- over before Bosworth Field. The printing press and Protestantism finished
- the destruction of its nobility. Only a house here and there has survived
- among us. Some few of the old names are preserved, like flies in amber,
- over in Ireland, but I should not know where to look to-day for a De Lacy,
- or a Tregoz, or a west country Le Strange, let alone a Mortimer. I
- suppose, in fact, we have more of the Mortimer blood among us than there
- is anywhere else.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, seated so that he faced the great armorial pageant spread as a
- background to the fair head of the lady, smiled wistfully at his
- companions, but said nothing. The words about his sharing the blood of
- kings were like some distant, soft music in his ears. He looked at the
- escutcheons and badges, and sought in a dreamy way to familiarize himself
- with the fact that they were a part of his own history—that the
- grandeur they told of was in truth his personal heritage.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was some talk going on between the others—conversation which,
- for a time, he scarcely strove to follow. Lord Julius had begun by
- expressing his joy at the absence from luncheon of the physician whom
- circumstances kept on the premises, and from this he drifted to an attack
- upon doctors as a class. He denounced them root and branch, as impostors
- and parasites, who darkened and embittered human life by fostering all the
- mean cowardices of smallbrained people, in order that they might secure a
- dishonest livelihood by pretending to dispel the horrors their own low
- tricks had conjured up. The robust old gentleman developed these violent
- theories without heat or any trace of excitement, and even maintained a
- genial expression of countenance while he spoke. Lady Cressage seemed
- entertained, and even helped on the diatribe now and again with pertinent
- quips of her own. But Christian could see very little sense in such an
- assault upon a respectable profession, and his attention wandered
- willingly again to the splendid chimney-piece. He resolved to learn all
- there was to learn of the heraldry and local history embodied in this
- sumptuous decoration, without delay. But then, on every conceivable side
- there was so much to learn!
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly he became aware that his thoughts had concentrated themselves on
- the extraordinary badness of the luncheon he was eating. Here at least was
- something Caermere could not teach him about—nor, for that matter,
- as it seemed, all England either. Since his arrival in the country, he
- reflected, he had not encountered one even tolerable dish. Vegetables and
- fish half raw, meats tasteless and without sauce or seasoning, bread heavy
- and sour, coffee unrecognizable, the pastry a thing too ridiculous for
- words—so his indictment shaped itself. He felt it his duty to argue
- to himself that quite likely this graceless and repellent diet was the
- very thing which made the English such physical and temperamental masters
- of the world, but the effort left him sad. He made a resolution that if
- ever Caermere were his a certain white-capped Agostino, in Cannes, should
- be imported forthwith. Then he became conscious again of what was being
- said at the table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you could only imagine,” Lady Cressage was saying to Lord Julius,
- “what a boon your coming has been! I had positively almost forgotten what
- intelligent conversation was like. It seems ages since I last heard ten
- consecutive words strung together on a thought of any description. Let me
- see—it was June when you were last down, with Sir Benjamin Alstead;
- he has been here once since—but in your absence he put on such a
- pompous ‘eminent-physician’ manner that really I oughtn’t to count him at
- all—and with that exception, from June to October, civilization has
- left poor me entirely out of its reckoning. But perhaps”—they had
- risen now, and there was a certain new frankness, almost confidence of
- appeal in her glance into his face—“perhaps, as matters have turned,
- you will come oftener henceforth?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius nodded. “It is quite likely,” he said, and stretched forth his
- hand significantly to Christian’s shoulder. “But you were going to show
- him the house—and I suppose I may come along too. There is half an
- hour before we go to my brother—and our train does not leave Clune
- till nearly six.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are not going to-day! and he too?” she exclaimed, hurriedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- The old man nodded again. “We are expected at Emanuel’s to-night,” he
- answered. Then, as Christian had moved toward the window and seemed beyond
- hearing, he added, in a smiling aside, “There is one reason for dragging
- him away that is comical enough. It wouldn’t do for him to dine at
- Caermere in morning clothes, and so far as I can see he has no others.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He could be too tired to dine,” she suggested, quickly, in a confidential
- murmur. “Or, for that matter, there is a room full of Porlock’s things—I
- suppose—I suppose poor Cressage’s—would be too big for him.
- Oh, it’s too dreadful to have him whisked off like this! Can’t you send a
- telegram instead?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her tone was as frank as her speech—and on the instant her glance at
- his face made keen inquiry whether it had not been too frank.
- </p>
- <p>
- He smiled in a tolerant, almost amused way. “Oh, he will return all in
- good time,” he assured her, gently enough. “Caermere will see plenty of
- him, later on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, but who can tell where I shall be then?” The necessity for speaking
- in an undertone gave her words an added intensity of feeling. “And it
- isn’t only him—I had hoped you would be stopping some days at least—for
- I wanted to speak with you about this very thing. My position here—the
- uncertainty of everything—is intolerable to bear.” She lifted her
- head, and turned her direct gaze into his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If only you liked me a little better, I could discuss the matter more
- freely with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Humbug!” replied Lord Julius, with a geniality which was at least
- superficially reassuring. “You shouldn’t say such things, much less think
- them. I can understand your impatience—but it will be possible to
- straighten out affairs very soon now. I don’t think you will be found to
- have suffered by the delay.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, that is all right,” she answered, almost pettishly. “Everybody
- assures me of the most magnanimous intentions—but in the meantime”—she
- checked herself, tossed her head in resentment, apparently, at the tears
- which had started to her eyes, and forced herself to smile—“in the
- meantime, you must forgive my tantrums. It is so depressing here—all
- alone—or worse than alone! I’m really no longer fit to receive
- anybody. But now”—she raised her voice in an eager simulation of
- gaiety—“shall the personally conducted tour begin?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Caermere had been inaccessible to so many generations of sightseers that
- no formula for its exhibition remained. The party seemed to Christian to
- wander at haphazard through an interminable succession of rooms, many of
- them small, some of them what he could only think of as over-large, but
- all insufficiently lighted, and all suggesting in their meager
- appointments and somber dejection of aspect a stage of existence well
- along on the downward path to ruin. He had only to look about him to
- perceive why Caermere had long ago been removed from the list of England’s
- show-places. His companions between them kept his attention busy with
- comments upon the history and purpose of the apartments they passed
- through, but beyond a general sense of futile and rather shabby immensity
- he gained very little from the inspection. The mood to postpone
- comprehension of what he was seeing to another and a more convenient time
- was upon him, and he almost willfully yielded to it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once, when impulse prompted him to climb a little ladder-like staircase,
- and push open a door from which the black dust fell in a shower, and he
- discerned in the gloom of the attic chamber piles of armor and ancient
- weapons, a thrill of fleeting excitement ran through his veins.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They say that Prince Llewelyn’s armor is there,” called up Lord Julius
- from the landing below. “Some day we will have it all out, and cleaned and
- furbished up. But don’t go in now! You’ll get covered with dirt. I used to
- venture in there and rummage about once in a while when I was a boy,” he
- added as Christian came down. “But even then one came out black as a
- sweep.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There were fine broad stretches of rugged landscape to be seen here and
- there from narrow casements in the older, higher parts they were now
- traversing, and occasionally Christian was able to interest himself as
- well in details of primitive, half-obliterated ornamentation over arches
- and doorways of early periods, but he was none the less almost glad when
- they came out at last into a spacious upper hallway, and halted in tacit
- token that the journey was at an end.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now I will leave you,” said the lady, with lifted skirt and a foot poised
- tentatively over the first step of the broad descending stairs. “I shall
- have tea in the conservatory when you come down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian felt that something must be said. “It has all been very
- wonderful to me,” he assured her. “I am afraid I did not seem very
- appreciative—but that is because the place is too huge, too vast, to
- be understood quite at once. And I am so new to it all—you will
- understand what I mean. But I thank you very much.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled brightly on him and nodded to them both, and passed down the
- stairway. Christian was all at once conscious, as his eyes followed her,
- that there was a novel quickening or fluttering of his heart’s action. For
- a brief second, the sensation somehow linked itself in his thoughts with
- the tall, graceful figure receding from him, and he bent forward to grasp
- more fully the picture she made, moving sedately along, with a hand like a
- lily on the wide black rail. Then he suddenly became aware that this was
- an error, and that he was trembling instead because the moment for
- confronting his grandfather had come.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius, indeed, had already opened a massive mahogany door at the
- right of the stairs, and signaled to him now to follow.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER VII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hat Christian
- first perceived about the duke’s apartments was that they had an odor
- quite peculiar to themselves. The series of small and badly lighted
- anterooms through which he followed Lord Julius—rooms with
- pallet-beds, clothes hung against the walls, and other somewhat squalid
- signs of domestic occupation—were full of this curiously distinctive
- smell. It was not so obvious in the larger and better-lighted chamber
- beyond, which the doctor in residence had converted to his own uses, and
- where he sat now reading a book, merely rising momentarily to bow as they
- passed. But in the next room—the big sleeping apartment, with its
- faded pretensions of stateliness of appointment, and its huge, high-posted
- bed, canopied by old curtains embroidered with heraldic devices in
- tarnished gilt threads—the odor was more powerful than ever, despite
- the fact that a broad window-door was open upon the balcony beyond. The
- young man’s keen sense was baffled by this pervasive scent—compounded
- as it seemed to be of all the ancient castle’s mustiness, of sharp
- medicinal vapors and of something else at once familiar and unknown. He
- sniffed inquiringly at it, as they neared the window, and apparently Lord
- Julius heard him, for he remarked over his shoulder:
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the dogs that you smell. They’ve practically removed the kennel up
- here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- On the stone floor of the balcony outside there were to be seen, indeed,
- some dozen old hounds, for the most part lying sleepily in the sunshine,
- with their heads pointed toward a large, half-covered reclining chair
- placed near the balustrade, and occasionally opening a drowsy eye to
- regard its occupant. There were a few dogs of other kinds as well,
- Christian noted upon a second glance, and one of these, a bulky black
- creature with a broad snout and hair curled tight like astrakhan fur, sat
- close to the chair and was thrusting its muzzle against a hand at its
- side.
- </p>
- <p>
- This hand was what Christian saw first of his grandfather—an immense
- limp hand, with thick fingers twisted and misshapen, and skin of an almost
- greenish pallor. The dog’s nose, thrust under it, moved this inert hand
- about, and the young man felt himself thrill unpleasantly, for some
- reason, at the spectacle.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the further end of the balcony two men in livery lounged against the
- wall, but upon a signal from Lord Julius they went in. The latter,
- threading his way among the hounds, led Christian round to the side of the
- chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is Ambrose’s boy,” he said, bending a little and raising his voice.
- “He is Christian, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Upon the chair was stretched, in a halfsitting posture, the gigantic frame
- of a very old man. The grandson looked upon him in silence for a long
- time, his mind confused with many impressions. The vast shoulders and
- high, bullet-like head, propped up by pillows in the partial shadow of the
- hood, seemed vaguely to recall the vision his baby memory had preserved of
- his own father. But in detail there was no resemblance. Or yes, there were
- resemblances, but they were blurred almost beyond recognition by the rough
- touch of time. The face, with its big, harsh features and bushing brows,
- and its frame of stiff white whiskers under the jaws and chin, had
- something in it which for an instant the young man seemed to identify;
- then the unnatural effect of its uniform yellow-clay color drove all
- thoughts of its human relationships from his mind, and he saw nothing but
- a meaningless mask. It was as devoid of significance, indeed, as if it had
- been in a coffin. The eyes were open and they seemed to be fixed upon the
- distant rolling prospect of hills and forest, but whether they were seeing
- anything, Christian could not imagine. They certainly had not been turned
- to include him in their survey. The livid right hand, swaying as the black
- dog pushed it with its nose, was the only thing about the duke that moved.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He does not know I am here,” said Christian, at last. He spoke
- instinctively, with the ceremonious affectation of awe which one puts on
- in the presence of death. His grandfather hardly impressed him as being
- alive and still less made any appeal to his sense of kinship. He had
- expected to be overwhelmed with emotion at the meeting, but he found
- himself barely interested. His wandering glance chanced to take note of
- some of the dogs’ faces about the chair. They were all alertly watching
- him, and the profoundly wise look in their eyes caught his attention. No
- doubt they were dreadful fools, if the truth could be known, but the
- suggestion of cultured sagacity in their gaze was extraordinary. He looked
- back again at his grandfather, and tried to say to himself that he was a
- great noble, the head of an ancient and proud line, and the actual father
- of <i>his</i> father—but the effort failed to spur his fancy. He
- turned to Lord Julius and lifted his brows in wearied interrogation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Move round in front of him,” counseled the other. “Get yourself in the
- range of his eyes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian obeyed, and, flushing a little with self-consciousness, strove
- to intercept the aged man’s gaze. There was no change upon the ashen face
- under the hood to tell him whether he had succeeded or not. The impulse to
- grimace, to wave his arms about, to compel attention by any wild and
- violent device, forced him to smile in the midst of his perplexed
- constraint. He stared for a few moments longer at the gaunt, immovable
- figure—then shrugged his shoulders, and, stepping over a dog or two,
- made bold to rejoin Lord Julius.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do not see that it is of any use,” he said, with annoyance. “If you
- wish to go, I am quite ready.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius lifted his brows in turn, and looked at his grand-nephew with
- curiosity. “I said nothing about going, that I recall,” he began, with an
- effect of reproof in his tone. But then he seemed to think better of it,
- and gave an abrupt little laugh. “It isn’t very invigorating, I’m bound to
- admit,” he confessed, cheerfully enough. “Wait a moment, and I’ll stir him
- up a bit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He bent forward again, with his head at the edge of the hood, and shouted
- into it: “If you want to see Ambrose’s boy, here he is! If you don’t want
- to see him, say so, and waste no more of our time!”
- </p>
- <p>
- To Christian’s surprise, the duke took instant cognizance of this remark.
- His large face brightened, or at least altered its aspect, into something
- like animation; his eyes emerged from their cover of lethargy, and looked
- alive.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My back is very bad to-day,” he remarked, in a voice which, though it
- bore the querulous note of the invalid, was unexpectedly robust in volume.
- “And I cannot make out whether the numbness is passing down below my knee
- or not.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius nodded, as if confirming to himself some previous suspicion.
- “I thought as much,” he commented in an aside to the young man. “It’s
- merely his endearing little way. Have patience, and we’ll draw the badger
- yet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He bawled once more into the hood, with an added peremptoriness of tone:
- “I explained it all to you, hours ago, and I’m sure you understand it
- perfectly. Christian naturally wished to pay his respects to you, but if
- your back is too bad, why, there’s no more to be said—and we’ll be
- off. Goodbye to you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did I know his mother? Who was his mother? I have no recollection of
- her.” The duke spoke peevishly, twitching his sunken lips in what was
- plainly an effort to pout them. Christian noted with curiosity that as he
- surrendered himself to such mental exertion as the talk demanded, the aged
- man’s face grew disagreeably senile in effect. An infinity of
- gossamer-like wrinkles showed themselves now, covering the entire
- countenance in a minute network.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, you didn’t know his mother!” replied Lord Julius, with significant
- curtness. “It is more to the point that you should know <i>him</i>, since
- he is to be your successor. Look at him—and say something to him!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The duke managed to testify on his stiffened lineaments the reluctance
- with which he did what he was told, but he shifted his eyes in a sidelong
- fashion to take a brief survey of the young man. “Cressage could have
- given you five stone ten,” he said to him, brusquely, and turned his eyes
- away.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian cast a look of bewildered inquiry up at Lord Julius, but
- encountered only a smile of contemptuous amusement. He summoned the
- courage to declare, in a voice which he hoped was loud enough: “I am glad
- to hear, sir, that this is one of your good days. I hope you will have
- many more of them!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Of this assurance His Grace seemingly took no note. After a short pause he
- began speaking again. “There’s a dog up here,” he said, with the gravity
- befitting a subject to which he had given much thought, “that I’m sure
- falls asleep, and yelps in her dreams, and disturbs me most damnably, and
- I believe it’s that old bitch Peggy, and when I mention it the fellows
- swear that she’s been taken away, but I suspect that she hasn’t.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We will look to it,” put in Lord Julius perfunctorily. He added, upon an
- afterthought, “Did the guns annoy you, this forenoon?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The duke’s thoughts were upon something else. He turned his eyes again,
- and apparently spoke to Christian. “A good hearty cut across the face with
- a whip,” he said, with kindling energy, “is what’d teach-swine like
- Griffiths their place—and then let ’em summons you and be
- damned. A farmer who puts up barbed-wire—no gentleman would listen
- to his evidence for a minute. Treat them like the vermin they are—and
- they’ll understand that. Cressage had the proper trick with them—a
- kick in the stomach first and reasons afterward. That’s the only way this
- country can be hunted. When I got to riding over eighteen stone, and
- couldn’t take anything, that ruffian Griffiths screwed up his gates and
- sent me round the turnpike like a damned peddler, and Ambrose—it was
- Ambrose, wasn’t it?—or am I thinking of Cressage? But they weren’t
- together—here, Julius! It was you who were speaking of Ambrose! What
- about him? By God, I wish he had my back!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius, with the smile in his beard hardening toward scorn, took
- Christian by the arm. “I think you’ve had enough grandfather to go on
- with,” he said, quietly. “Never mind making your adieux. They would be
- quite wasted on him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Without further words, they turned and moved away through the dogs to the
- window, and so into the house. The doctor, still at his book, rose once
- more upon their approach, and this time Lord Julius halted to speak with
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “His Grace seems to ramble in his mind a good deal more than he did before
- luncheon. Do you see a change in this respect—say week by week?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is not observable in gradations, Lord Julius,” answered the physician,
- a stout, sandy young man, who assumed his air of deference with
- considerable awkwardness; “sometimes he recovers a very decided lucidity
- after what had seemed to be a prolonged lapse in the other direction. But
- on the whole I should say there was a perceptible—well, loss of
- faculty. He knows the dogs, however, quite as well as ever—distinguishes
- them apparently by touch, remembers all their names, and recalls anecdotes
- about them, and, very often, about their mothers too. Fletcher tells me
- His Grace hasn’t once miscalled a hound.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They make an abominable atmosphere up here,” commented the other.
- </p>
- <p>
- The doctor smiled lugubriously. “I can’t deny that, Lord Julius,” he
- replied, “but all the same they are the most important part of the
- treatment. If we took them away, His Grace would die within the week.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Unhappy dogs!” mused Lord Julius, partly to himself, and walked on. It
- was not until they were half-way down the big staircase that Christian
- felt impelled to speak.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should much like to know,” he began, with diffident eagerness—“you
- have already spoken so plainly about my grandfather—the question
- will not seem rude to him, I hope—but when he was well, before the
- paralysis, was he in any respect like what he is now?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should say,” answered Lord Julius, in a reflective way, “that he is at
- present rather less objectionable than formerly. One can make the excuse
- of illness for him now—and that covers a multitude of sins. But when
- he was in health—and he had the superb—what shall I say?—riotous
- health of a whale—he was very hard to bear. You have seen him and
- you have observed his mental and moral elevation. He remembers his dogs
- more distinctly than he does his children. In the Almanach de Gotha he is
- classed among princes, but what he dwells upon most fondly among his
- public duties is the kicking of tenant-farmers in the stomach when they
- try to save their crops from being ruined by the hunt. I may tell you, I
- was in two minds about taking you to him at all, and now I think I regret
- having done so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No-o,” said Christian, thoughtfully. “It is better as it is. I am glad to
- have seen him, and to have you tell me about him, frankly, as you have
- done. It all helps me to understand the position—and it seems that
- there is a great deal that needs to be understood. I can see already that
- there is strange blood in the Torrs.” He paused on the bottom step as he
- spoke, and turned to his companion with a wistful smile. “There is an even
- bolder question I should like to ask—how does it happen that <i>you</i>
- are so different? How do you account for yourself?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius laughed. “Oh, that is a long story,” he said, “but I can put
- it into a word for you. I was made by my wife. I married a woman so noble
- and clever and wise and strong that I couldn’t help becoming a decent sort
- of fellow in spite of myself. But I am going to talk to you about all
- that, later on. It is better worth talking about than anything else under
- the sun. Oh—Barlow, please!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The old butler had passed from one door to another in the hall, and turned
- now as he was called, with a hand behind him upon the knob. Lord Julius,
- approaching, exchanged some words with him upon the subject of his
- afternoon’s plans.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, watching this venerable servant with curiosity, as a type novel
- to his experience, discovered suddenly that his scrutiny was being
- returned. Barlow, while listening attentively and with decorously slow
- nods of comprehension to what was being said to him, had his eyes fixed
- aslant, beyond his interlocutor’s shoulder, upon the young stranger.
- Christian encountered this gaze, and saw it waver and flutter aside, as
- from force of polite habit, and then creep back again. This happened more
- than once, and Christian began to feel that it had some meaning. He
- observed that the butler inclined his head at last and whispered something—his
- pale, wan old face showed it to be an inquiry—into the other’s ear.
- The action explained itself so perfectly that Christian was in no way
- surprised to see Lord Julius turn smilingly, and nod toward himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, he is Ambrose’s son,” he said. “He has come to take his place. I
- know you for one won’t be sorry—eh, Barlow?”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was clear to the young man’s perceptions that Lord Julius spoke as to
- one who was a friend as well as a servant. The note of patriarchal
- kindness in the tone appealed gratefully to him, and the affectionate
- mention of his father’s name was sweet in his ears. A strange thrill of
- emotion, a kind of aimless yet profound yearning, possessed him as he
- moved forward. On the instant he realized that this was how he had
- expected to feel in the presence of his grandfather. The fact that the
- tenderness within him was appealed to instead by this gentle, sad-eyed old
- family dependant seemed to him to have something beautiful and very
- touching in it. Tears came into his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You remember my father, then,” he said, and the breaking of his voice
- carried him into the heart of this sudden new mood of self-abandonment.
- “You would have known him as a little child—yes?—and you—you—”
- he paused, to dash away the tears with his hand, and strive to regain some
- control over his facial muscles—“you will have in your memory the
- good things about him—the boyish, pleasant things—and you
- loved him for them, did you not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Barlow, trembling greatly, and with a faint flush upon his white
- cheeks, stared confusedly at the young man as he advanced. “I held him on
- his first pony, sir,” he stammered forth, and then shook his head in token
- that he could utter no more. His glistening eyes said the rest.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian flung his arms round the surprised old man’s neck, and kissed
- him on both cheeks, and then, with head bowed upon his shoulder, sobbed
- aloud.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- PART II
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER VIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he music of a
- spirited and tireless band of robins helped Christian to wake next
- morning. The character of their cheerful racket defined itself very slowly
- to his drowsy consciousness. He lay for a long time with closed eyes,
- listening to it, and letting his mind drift quite at random among the
- thoughts which it suggested. He knew they were robins because his hostess
- had said he would hear them; he lazily pictured to himself the tiny
- red-breasts gathered in the shrubbery outside, in obedience to some
- mysterious signal of hers, and singing to order thus briskly and
- unwearyingly to make good her promise.
- </p>
- <p>
- In what gay, high spirits the little fellow sang! The sun must be shining,
- to account for so much happiness. He accepted the idea with a sense of
- profound pleasure, and appropriated it to his own wonderful case.
- </p>
- <p>
- For him, it was as if happiness had never existed before.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- “‘Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays,
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- And twenty cagéd nightingales do sing.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- He murmured the lines in indolent reverie, then opened his eyes, and
- smiled to think where he was, and what he had become a part of. Lifting
- himself on his elbow, he looked about him. The beauties of the apartment
- had not been lost upon him the previous evening. He had carried them with
- him in vague processional magnificence on his devious march through
- dreamland; he surveyed them again now in the morning light, rising after a
- while to pull aside the curtains, and bring in the full sunshine.
- </p>
- <p>
- The room was, he said over and over to himself, ‘the most exquisite thing
- he had ever seen. The ruling color was of some blue which could almost be
- thought a green, and which, embraced as complementary decoration many
- shades of ocher and soft yellowish browns in woodwork, and in the thick,
- fleecy rugs underfoot. Around the four sides, at the level of his eyes,
- ran a continuous band of portraits—the English drawings of Holbein
- reproduced in the dominant tint of the room, set solidly into the wall,
- and separated from one another only by thin strips of the same tawny oak
- which framed them at top and bottom. The hooded, high-bosomed ladies, the
- cavaliers in hats and plumes and pointed beards, the smoothfaced,
- shrewd-eyed prelates and statesmen in their caps and fur, all knew him
- this morning for one of their own, as he went along, still in his
- nightshirt, and inspected them afresh. They appeared to greet him, and he
- beamed at them in response.
- </p>
- <p>
- A dim impression of the earlier morning, which had seemed a shadowy
- passing phase of his dreams, revealed itself now to him as a substantial
- fact. Some one <i>had</i> been in the room, moving noiselessly about, and
- had spread forth for his use a great variety of articles of clothing and
- of the toilet, most of which he beheld for the first time. Overnight, his
- cousin Emanuel’s insistence upon his regarding everything in the house as
- his own for the time being, had had no definite significance to his mind.
- He looked now through the array of silks and fine cloths, of trinkets in
- ivory and silver and polished metals, and began dressing himself with a
- long sigh of delight.
- </p>
- <p>
- Recollections of the leave-taking at Caermere straggled into his thoughts
- as he pursued the task. He had seen Lady Cressage again in the
- conservatory, where she wore another dress, and had her beautiful hair
- carefully arranged as if in his honor, and poured out tea for him and Lord
- Julius in wonderful little cups which his great-grandfather, a sailor, had
- brought from China. Of her conversation he recalled little, and still less
- of the talk of the other lady, the actress-person, Mrs. Edward, who had
- joined the party, but whose composed pretty face had been too obviously a
- mask for anguish not to dampen everybody’s spirits. He wondered now, as he
- plied his razor on the strap, what had become of her husband, and of that
- poor-spirited brother of his. Had they joined the pheasant-shooters, after
- their interview with him? The temptation to fire upon themselves instead
- of the birds must have sorely beset them.
- </p>
- <p>
- But it was pleasanter to begin the retrospect some hours later, when the
- rough country of the Marches, and even Bristol, had been left behind. Lord
- Julius had explained to him then, as darkness settled upon the low,
- pasture-land levels they were swinging along past, that Somerset was also
- a county of the Torrs; two of their three titles were derived from it,
- indeed, and Somerset marriages had brought into the family, in the days
- following the downfall of the monasteries, some of the most important of
- its estates. If the dukes had turned their backs on Caermere two centuries
- ago, and made their principal seat here in this gentler and more equable
- land, perhaps the family history might have been different. Christian had
- absorbed the spirit rather than the letter of his companion’s remarks.
- English counties were all one to him, but intuitively he had felt that he
- was getting into a kindlier and more congenial atmosphere. Although it was
- a black night, he had stared a good deal at the window, trying to discern
- some tokens of this change in the dimly lighted, empty stations they
- glided through, or paused reluctantly in.
- </p>
- <p>
- When they had finally quitted the train at Bridgewater, and had got under
- way inside the carriage waiting for them there, Christian had asked
- whether it was not true that the railway servants here were more
- courteously obliging than they had been in other parts.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius had lightly remarked that it might be so; very likely,
- however, it was some indirect effect of the general psychical change the
- family underwent in shifting its territorial base. Then he had gone on
- more gravely, alluding for the first time to the episode of the butler.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must be prepared to find everything very different, here,” he had
- said. “There is such a thing as having too much past—especially when
- it is of the wrong sort. Caermere is as tenacious of its memories as a
- prison—and they are as unpleasant. It forces upon you its air of
- never forgetting a single one of its miseries and injuries—and you
- feel that it cannot remember any compensating joys. I could see how the
- effect of it got into your blood, and broke your nerve. Under ordinary
- circumstances men do not kiss their butlers, or even sob on their bosoms.
- But I understood perfectly how old Barlow appealed to you. As you beheld
- him he might have stood as model for a statue of the Family Grief, choking
- down its yearning to wail over the generations gone to the bad. It was all
- right, what you did. For that matter, I was precious near raising a howl
- of lamentation myself. One is always alternating between tears and curses
- in that criminal old coalmine of a castle. But now you are over a hundred
- miles away from it all—and if it was a thousand the difference
- couldn’t be greater. You will find nothing whatever to cry about down
- here. Nobody has any bad dreams. There isn’t a cupboard that ever
- sheltered a skeleton even overnight. In these parts, remarkable as it may
- seem, the Torrs are actually regarded with admiration—quite the salt
- of the earth—a trifle eccentric, perhaps, but splendid landlords,
- capable organizers, uncommonly good masters—and above all, happy
- people who insist that everybody about them shall be happy too. It was
- important to show you the other side first—at least that was what we
- decided upon, but you are done with that now—and we’ll give you
- something to take the taste out of your mouth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian recalled these assurances, now, with a delicious sense of being
- already enfolded and upheld by the processes of their fulfillment. The
- details of his reception at the broad, hospitably lighted door of
- Emanuel’s house crowded in upon his memory, and merged themselves with
- other recollections of the later evening hours—the supper, the long,
- calm, sweetly intimate talk before the fire, the honest, wise, frankly
- affectionate faces into which he had looked to say “good-night”—it
- almost overwhelmed him with its weight of unimagined happiness. He had
- hardly guessed before what other men might mean when they gave a loving
- sound to the word “home.” Yet now the doors of such a home as he could
- never have dreamed of had opened to him—to him, the homeless, lonely
- one! and he was nestled securely in the warm heart of its welcome. He
- could have groaned aloud under the burden of his rapture at the thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last he went downstairs, his misgivings about the hour not quite
- allayed by recollection of the parting injunction to sleep his fill and
- get up when he liked. There were beautiful things to note and linger over
- on every side as he made his way—pictures and armor and wonderful
- inlaid work and tapestries, all subordinating themselves with
- distinguished good breeding to the fact that they were in a home and not a
- museum—but he moved along in rather conscience-stricken haste toward
- the part of the house which had seemed to him the previous night to be the
- center of domestic life. He formed a sudden resolution, as he explored the
- lower hallway, that when he got some money his first purchase should be of
- a watch.
- </p>
- <p>
- After looking into a couple of rooms which were clearly not what he
- sought, Christian opened the right door, and confronted a breakfast-table,
- shining in its snowy attractiveness midway between a window full of
- sunlight and a brightly tiled chimney-place, with a fire on the hearth.
- There was no one in the room, and he stood for some minutes looking about
- him, liking very much the fresh, light-hued cheerfulness of everything,
- but still wishing that some one would come to pour his coffee. By degrees,
- he assimilated the idea that the ingredients of breakfast were all here to
- hand. There were dishes beside the fire, and this was apparently the
- coffee-pot on the table—a covered urn, with a thin spirit-flame
- trembling beneath it. He had reached the point of deciding to help himself—or
- should he ring the bell instead?—when the door opened and the lady
- of the house came bustling in.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Emanuel, as he styled her in his thoughts, looked the very spirit of
- breakfast—buoyant, gay-hearted and full of the zest of life. Last
- night, to the young man’s diffident though strenuous inspection, she had
- seemed the embodiment of tender hospitality in general. Though his glances
- were more confident now, in the brilliant morning light, she still gave
- the impression of personifying the influences which she made felt about
- her, rather than exhibiting a specific personal image. She was not tall,
- nor yet short; her face pleased the eye without suggesting prettiness; she
- had the dark, clear skin and rounded substance of figure which the mind
- associates with sedate movements and even languor, but she herself moved,
- thought, spoke with alert vivacity. Above all things, a mellow
- motherliness in her had struck the forlorn youth the previous evening. Now
- it seemed much more like the sweet playfulness of a fond elder sister.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You took me at my word; that’s right,” she said to him, as they shook
- hands. “I was afraid the man might disturb you, or give you the idea you
- were expected to get up. And do you feel perfectly rested now? A day or
- two more will do it, at all events. If I’d known how they were dragging
- you about, by night and by day! But your Uncle Julius has no knowledge of
- even the meaning of the word fatigue. Sit here, won’t you—and now
- here’s bacon for you, and here’s fish taken this very morning, and eggs
- I’ll ring for to be done as you like them, and how much sugar to your
- coffee? You mustn’t think this has been boiling ever since morning. It was
- made when you were heard moving about in your room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should be so sorry to have kept anybody waiting,” he began, in shy
- comment upon the discovery that he was eating alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- She laughed at him with cordial frankness. “Waiting?” she echoed merrily.
- “Why, it’s about three o’clock. Lord Julius is nearly in London by this
- time, and the rest of us have not only breakfasted, but lunched.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lord Julius gone?” he asked with wide-open eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded, and raised a reassuring hand. “It’s nothing but business.
- Telegrams came early this morning which took him away by the first train.
- He would have gone later in the day in any case. He left the most fatherly
- adieux for you—and of course you’ll be seeing him soon in London.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian was puzzled. “But this is his home here, is it not?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not at all—more’s the pity,” she replied. “We wish for nothing so
- much as that he might make it so—but he elects instead to be the
- slave of the family, and to work like a bank-clerk in Brighton instead of
- cutting himself free and living his own life like the rest of us, in God’s
- fresh air. But he comes often to us—whenever the rural mood seizes
- him.” She seemed to comprehend the doubtful expression on the youth’s
- face, for she added smilingly: “And you mustn’t be frightened to be left
- alone with us. You’re as much our blood as you are his—and—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, don’t think that!” he pleaded impulsively. “I was never so glad to be
- anywhere in my life as I am to be here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her gray eyes regarded him with kindly softness. He saw that they were
- only in part gray eyes—that they were both blues and browns in their
- beautiful coloring, and that the outer edge of the iris deepened in tint
- almost to the black of the splendid lashes. He returned her look, and held
- it with a tentative smile, that he might the longer observe the remarkable
- eyes. All at once it flashed upon him that there was a resemblance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your eyes are like my mother’s,” he said, as if in defensive explanation
- of his scrutiny.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me about your mother,” she rejoined, putting her arms on the table
- and resting her chin upon a finger. “I do not think I ever heard her
- name.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was Coppinger—Mary Coppinger. I never saw the name anywhere
- else.” He added hesitatingly: “My brother told me that her father was a
- soldier—an officer—who became in his old age very poor, and
- was at last a gardener for some rich man at Malta, and my mother gave
- lessons as a governess to support herself, and it was there she met my
- father.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The lady seemed most interested in the name. “Coppinger, is it!” she
- exclaimed, nodding her head at him. “No wonder my heart warmed at the
- sight of you. Why, now, to look at you—of course you’re County Cork.
- You’re our slender dark type to perfection.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid I do not understand,” he murmured.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, she could not have that name and be anything but a County Cork
- woman. Who ever heard of a Coppinger anywhere else? Only it is pronounced
- with a soft ‘g,’ not hard, as you speak it. I wonder—but that can
- wait; her father will be easily enough traced. And so you are an Irishman,
- too!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian looked abashed at the confusing suggestion. “I think I am all
- English,” he said vaguely.
- </p>
- <p>
- She laughed again. “Are you turning your back on us? Did you not know it?
- I also am Irish. No doubt I am some sort of cousin of yours on my own
- account, as well as on Emanuel’s. There are Coppingers in my own family,
- and in most of those that we have intermarried with. Your mother was a
- Protestant, of course.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He shook his head apprehensively, as if fearful that his answer must give
- pain. “No, she went to mass like other people, and I was sent to the
- Brothers of the Christian School. But she was not in any degree a <i>dévotée</i>,
- and for that matter,” he added in a more confident tone, “I myself am
- still less <i>dévot</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah!” was her only comment, and he quite failed to gather from it any clue
- to her sentiments on the subject. “Well,” she began again, “I’ll not put
- you through any more of your catechism now. Are you finished? Then come
- with me and we will find Emanuel, and incidentally you will see the place—or
- portions of it. It will take you a long time to see it all. Do you want to
- smoke? Put some of these cigars in your pocket—or here are
- cigarettes if you prefer them. Oh, we smoke everywhere. There is nothing
- on earth that we want to do that we don’t do—and there’s nothing we
- don’t want to do that any mortal power can make us do. There you have the
- sum of our philosophy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had followed her into the hallway, where the doors were open wide to
- the mellow autumn afternoon. He put on the soft shapeless hat she gave him
- from a collection on the antlers, and was inspired to select a stick for
- himself out of the big standful at the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now I shall walk about,” he said, gaily, “quite as if I had never been
- out of England in my life. Is your husband—perhaps-shooting?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She seemed always to laugh at him. Her visible merriment at his question
- dashed his spirits for an instant. Then he saw how genial and honest was
- her mirth, and smiled himself in spontaneous sympathy with it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t dream of suggesting it to him!” she adjured the young man, with
- mock solemnity. “He has a horror of the idea of killing living creatures.
- He does not even fish for sport—though I confess I hardly follow him
- to that length. And don’t speak of him in that roundabout way, but call
- him Emanuel, and call me Kathleen or Kit—whichever comes easiest.
- Merely because Thom’s directory swears we’re forty years old, we’re not to
- be made venerable people by you. All happy folk belong to the same
- generation, no matter when they were born—and—but here is
- Emanuel now.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been telling Christian,” she continued, addressing her husband as
- he paused at the foot of the steps, “that he is to be happy here, even in
- spite of himself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel shook hands with his cousin, and nodded pleased approval of his
- wife’s remark. His smile, however, was of a fleeting sort. “Nothing has
- come of the Onothera experiments,” he announced to her in a serious tone.
- “I’m afraid we must give up the idea of the yellow fuchsia.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER IX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>manuel Torr, at
- the age of forty, was felt by those who knew and loved him almost to have
- justified the very highest of the high hopes which his youth had
- encouraged. This intimate circle of appreciation was rendered a small one
- by the circumstances of his temperament and choice of career; but beyond
- this his name was familiar to many who had never seen him, or who
- remembered him at best as a stripling, yet who habitually thought and
- spoke of him as an example and model to his generation.
- </p>
- <p>
- At Oxford, twenty years before, he had attracted attention of a sort
- rather peculiar to himself. Those who took note of him saw foreshadowed
- the promise, not so much of great achievements as of the development and
- consolidation of a great influence. He was not specially distinguished in
- his work at the University, and he made no mark at the Union, where there
- happened at the time to be glittering a quite exceptional galaxy of future
- front bench men, judges and bishops. In Emanuel’s case, the interest he
- aroused was perhaps more sentimental than intellectual. His mind was seen
- to be of a fine order, but his character was even more attractive to the
- observant eye. The facts that he was half Jewish in blood, and that in
- time he would be the possessor of enormous wealth, no doubt lent an added
- suggestion of romance to the picture of delicate, somewhat coldly modeled
- features, of ivory skin and serious, musing dark eyes, and of a rare smile
- of wonderful sweetness, which Oxford men of the mid-seventies still
- associate with his name. It was in the days when Disraeli’s remarkable
- individuality was a part of England’s current history, and when the
- English imagination, in part from the stimulus of this fact, dwelt upon
- the possibilities of a new Semitic wave of inspiration and ethical
- impetus. The dreams, the aspirations, the mysterious “perhaps” of Daniel
- Deronda were in men’s minds, and Johannesburg had not been so much as
- heard of.
- </p>
- <p>
- What the University recognized in the youth standing upon the threshold of
- manhood, had been an article of faith within his home since his childhood.
- It is as well to recount at this place the brief story of that home.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the age of twenty-five Lord Julius Torr, engaged in the listless
- pursuit of that least elusive of careers, called diplomacy, found himself
- at The Hague, and yawned his way about its brightly scrubbed solitudes for
- some months, until, upon the eve of his resolve to have done with the
- whole business, and buy a commission in a line regiment, he encountered a
- young woman who profoundly altered all his plans in life. It was by the
- merest and unlikeliest of accidents that he came to know the Ascarels,
- father and daughter, and at the outset his condescension had seemed to him
- to be involved as well. They were of an old family in the Netherlands,
- Jewish in race but now for some generations estranged from, the synagogue,
- and reputed to be extraordinarily wealthy. It was said of them too that
- they were sternly exclusive, but to the brother of an English duke this
- had not appeared to possess much meaning. He had previously been of some
- official service to the father, in a matter wherein Dutch and English
- interests touched each other at Sumatra; from this he came to meet the
- daughter. He had been told by the proud father that she was of the blood
- of the immortal Spinoza, and had been so little impressed that he had not
- gone to the trouble of finding out who Spinoza was.
- </p>
- <p>
- The marriage of young Torr, of the Foreign Office, to some Dutch-Jewish
- heiress a half-year later, received only a trifle more notice in England
- than did the news of his retirement from his country’s diplomatic service.
- The duke had already four sons, and the brother, when it seemed that he
- intended to live abroad, was not at all missed. Nearly fifteen years
- elapsed before a mature Lord Julius reappeared in England—a Lord
- Julius whom scarcely any one found recognizable. He bore small visible
- relation to the aimless and indolent young attaché whom people, by an
- effort of memory, were able to recall; still less did he resemble anything
- else that the Torr family, within recollection, had produced. He took a
- big old house in Russell Square, and in time it became understood that
- very learned and intellectual people paid pilgrimages thither to sit at
- the feet of Lady Julius, and learn of her. Smart London rarely saw this
- Lady Julius save at a distance—in her carriage or at the opera. The
- impression it preserved of her was of a short, swarthy woman, increasingly
- stout as years went on, who peered with near-sighted earnestness through a
- large pince-nez of unusual form. On her side, it seemed doubtful if she
- had formed even so succinct an impression as this of smart London. She was
- content with Bloomsbury to the end of her days; and made no effort
- whatever to establish relations with the West End. Indeed, tales came to
- be told of the effectual resistance she offered, in later years, to
- amiable interested advances from that quarter. It grew to be believed that
- she had made an eccentric will, and would leave untold millions to Atheist
- charities. The rumor that she was among the most highly cultivated women
- of her time, and that the most illustrious scientists and thinkers would
- quit the society of kings to travel post-haste across Europe at her
- bidding, did not, it must regretfully be added, seem incompatible with
- this theory about a crazy will. Finally, when she died in 1885, something
- was printed by the papers about her philanthropy, and much was said in
- private speculation about her disposition of her vast fortune, but it did
- not come out that any will whatever was proved, and London ceased to think
- of the matter.
- </p>
- <p>
- The outer world had in truth been wrong from the beginning. Lady Julius
- was not a deeply learned woman, and the limited circle of friends she
- gathered about her contained hardly one distinguished figure, in the
- popular use of the phrase; her opinions were not notably advanced or
- unconventional; she did not shun society upon philosophic principles, but
- merely because it failed to attract a nature at once shy and practical; so
- far from being rich in her own right, she had insisted many years before
- her death upon transferring every penny of her fortune to her husband.
- </p>
- <p>
- Inside her own household, this dark, stout little woman with the
- eye-glasses was revered as a kind of angel. She was plainfaced almost to
- ugliness in the eyes of strangers. Her husband and her son never doubted
- that she was beautiful. Now, when she had been a memory for ten years and
- more, these two talked of her lovingly and with no constraint of gloom, as
- if she were still the pivot round which their daily life turned.
- </p>
- <p>
- The elder man particularly delighted in dwelling upon the details of that
- earlier change in him, under her influence, to which allusion has been
- made. Emanuel had in his mind, from boyhood, no vision more distinct or
- familiar than this selfpainted picture of his father—the idle,
- indifferent, unschooled, paltry-ideaed young gentleman of fashion—meeting
- all unawares this overpowering new force, and kneeling in awed yet
- rapturous submission before it. To the boy’s imagination it became a
- historical scene, as fixed and well known in its lines of composition as
- that of Nelson’s death in the cockpit. He saw his beardless father in
- dandified clothes of the Corn-Laws-caricature period, proceeding along the
- primrose path of dalliance, like some flippant new Laodicean type of Saul
- of Tarsus—when “suddenly there shined around him a light from
- heaven.” Lord Julius, indeed, thought and spoke of it in much that same
- spirit. The recollection that he had not known who Spinoza was tenderly
- amused him: it was the symbol of his vast oceanic ignorance of all things
- worth knowing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, yes,” the son used to say, “but if you had not had within yourself
- all the right feelings—only lacking the flash to bring them out—you
- would not have seen how wonderful she was. You would not have understood
- at all, but just passed on, and nothing would have happened.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And the father, smiling in reverie, and stroking his great beard, would
- answer: “I don’t see that that follows. I remember what I was like quite
- vividly, and really there was nothing in me to explain the thing at all. I
- was a young blood about town, positively nothing more. No, Emanuel, we may
- say what we like, but there are things supernatural—that is, beyond
- what we can see, and are prepared for, in nature. It was as unaccountable
- as magic, the effect your mother produced upon me from the beginning. At
- the end of a few hours, when it was time for me to take my leave, and I
- turned—there was a gulf in front of me, cutting me off from where I
- had been before I came to her, that very day. It was so wide, it seemed
- that I could barely see across it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- To any listener but Emanuel such language must have been extravagant. To
- him there were no words for overpraise of his mother. It was not alone
- that he had never seen her in anger or even vexation; that he had never
- known her to be in error in any judgment, or suspected in her an
- uncharitable or unkindly thought. These were mere negations, and the
- memory of her was full of positive influences, all wise and pure and
- lofty. Very early in life, when he began to look about the world he found
- himself in, he learned to marvel that there were no other such women
- anywhere to be seen. She had been so perfect, with seemingly no effort to
- herself! Why should other women not even try?
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel had been born some ten years after the marriage of his parents,
- and they thus came into his baby consciousness as persons of middle age,
- in appearance and its suggested authority at least, by comparison with the
- parents of other children he saw about him. Nowhere else, however, either
- then or in later years, did he see another home so filled from center to
- circumference with love, and tender gentleness of eye and word and deed.
- The perception that this environment was unique colored all his boyhood.
- It became a habit with him to set in contrast his own charmed existence
- against the unconsidered and uneven experiences of other children, and to
- ponder the meaning of the difference. As he grew up, the importance of
- this question expanded in his mind and took possession of it. He was
- consumed with the longing to make some effective protest against the
- peevish folly with which humanity mismanaged its brief innings of life.
- From the cradle to the grave the race swarmed stupidly along, elbowing and
- jostling in an aimless bustle, hot and ill-tempered through exertions
- which had no purpose; trampling down all weaker than themselves and
- cursing those who, in turn, had the strength to push them under; coming
- wearily at the end to the gate and the outer darkness of extinction, a
- futile and disappointed mob—having seen nothing, comprehended
- nothing, profited nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- The progress of a generation across the span of life might be made so
- serene and well-ordered and fruitful an affair! What else had man to
- concern himself about than this one thing—that “peace on earth, good
- will to men,” should rule in his time? And how was it that this alone, of
- all possible problems, received from him no attention at all?
- </p>
- <p>
- The impulse toward a mission was discernible in the lad; it altogether
- dominated the young man. His parents, regarding him lovingly and yet with
- wise inquiry, were fascinated by what they saw. A sense of lofty
- responsibility in their trusteeship for this beneficent new force formed a
- fresh bond between them, which grew to absorb within itself all their
- other ties. They came to regard themselves in no other light than as the
- parents of Emanuel. To preserve him from vitiating and stunting
- suggestions; richly to nourish, yet with an anxious avoidance of surfeit,
- both the soul and the mind within him; to give him strength and means and
- single-hearted courage adequate to the task he yearned to undertake—they
- asked nothing better of life than this.
- </p>
- <p>
- After Oxford, he went abroad for a couple of years, having as a companion
- a young Fellow of Swithin’s, a trifle older than himself, who shared his
- moral attitude if not his passionate aspirations. He saw many parts of the
- world, and scrutinized closely in each the working of those portions of
- the social mechanism which interested him. Returning with a mass of notes
- and a mind packed with impressions and theories, he set to work to write a
- big book. At the end of a year he produced instead a small volume, dealing
- with one little phase of the huge, complex theme he had at heart. It was a
- treatise on the relations between parents and children, and it received
- very favorable reviews indeed. University men felt that it was what they
- had had the foresight to expect from this serious and high-minded young
- fellow, who was lucky enough to have the means and leisure for ethical
- essay-writing. Evidently he was going in for that sort of thing, and they
- noted with approbation that he had been at great pains with his style.
- Much to Emanuel’s surprise, only some three hundred copies of the work
- were sold; upon reflection, he saw that it was no part of his plan to sell
- books, and he forthwith distributed the remainder of the edition, and
- another edition as well, among the libraries of the Three Kingdoms. Within
- the next three years two other brochures went through much the same
- experiences. They treated respectively of primary education and of public
- amusements. Again the reviews were extremely cordial; again the men who
- had always predicted that Torr would do something regarded their prophetic
- intuition with refreshed complacency; again Emanuel drew considerable
- checks in favor of his publisher. What had been hinted at rather vaguely
- heretofore was now, however, announced with confidence in “literary”
- columns: these small volumes were merely chapters of a vast and
- comprehensive work to which the author had dedicated his life—the
- laborious exposition of a whole new philosophy of existence, to be as
- complete in its way as Herbert Spencer’s noble survey of mankind.
- </p>
- <p>
- Not long after came the death of Emanuel’s mother—an unlooked-for
- event which altered everything in the world to the bereaved couple left
- behind. They went away together in the following month, with a plan of a
- prolonged tour in the Orient, but came back to England after a few weeks’
- absence, having found their proposed distraction intolerable. Lord Julius
- promptly invented for his own relief the device of taking over upon
- himself the drudgery of caring for his millions, which heretofore had been
- divided among a banker, a broker, a solicitor and two secretaries. Emanuel
- saw his way less directly, but at last he found the will to begin a
- tentative experiment with some of his theories of life on a Somersetshire
- farm which his father gave him. The work speedily engrossed him, and
- expanded under his hands. He became conscious of growth within himself as
- well. The conviction that life is a thing not to be written about, but to
- be lived, formulated itself in his mind, and he elaborated this new view
- in an argument which persuaded his father. The Somersetshire estates of
- the family, which had been bought by Lord Julius in 1859, when the duke
- and his son Porlock joined to set aside the entail, were placed now
- unreservedly at Emanuel’s disposal. What he did with them is to be seen
- later on.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the moment, it was of the first importance that he should decide for
- himself the great question of celibacy v. marriage. The far-reaching
- projects which possessed his brain would, beyond doubt, be multiplied
- infinitely in value if precisely the right woman were brought in to share
- his enthusiasm and devotion. It was no whit less clear that they would
- dwindle into failure and collapse under the blight of the wrong woman. The
- dimensions of the risk so impressed him, as he studied them, that for more
- than two years he believed himself to be irrevocably committed to the cold
- middle course of bachelorhood.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, by a remarkable stroke of good fortune, he met, fell in love with
- and married the sister of Lord Rosbrin, a young Irish peer whom he had
- known at Oxford. No one has ever doubted, he least of all, that she was
- the right woman.
- </p>
- <p>
- He wrote no more books, in the years following this event, but gradually
- he became the cause of writing in others. A review article upon the
- character and aims of his experiment in Somersetshire, written in an
- appreciative spirit by an economist of position, attracted so much
- attention that the intrusion of curious strangers and inquisitive
- reporters threatened to be a nuisance. After this, his name was always
- mentioned as that of an authority, when sociological problems were
- discussed. There was even a certain flurry of inquiry for his books,
- though this did not turn out to have warranted the printing of the new
- popular edition. Sundry precepts in them became, however, the stock
- phrases of leader-writers. People of culture grew convinced that they were
- familiar with his works, and only a few months before the period at which
- we meet him, his university had conferred upon him an honorary D.C.L.,
- which gratified him more deeply than any other recognition his labors and
- attainments had ever received.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER X
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian,
- observing his celebrated cousin by daylight for the first time, perceived
- the necessity of revising some of the previous night’s impressions.
- </p>
- <p>
- Under the illumination of the shaded lamp and the glowing bank of peat on
- the study hearth, Emanuel in his velvet jacket and slippered ease had
- seemed a delicately refined creature, of so ethereal a type that life for
- it outside the atmosphere of books, and of a library’s thought and talk,
- would be unnatural, or even impossible. With his back to the afternoon
- sunshine, however, and with rough, light clothes suggesting fresh-air
- exercise, Emanuel was a different person.
- </p>
- <p>
- In stature he was a trifle taller than Christian; perhaps he was also
- something heavier, but what the newcomer noted most about the figure was
- the wiry vigor of muscular energy indicated in all its lines and
- movements. There was apparent no trace of any physical resemblance to his
- father, the massive Lord Julius, and Christian, as this fact occurred to
- him, remembered what he had heard about the race from which the mother had
- come. He could not say that Emanuel’s face was like anything which he had
- thought of as distinctively Jewish. The forehead was both broad and
- prominent, and at the top, where early baldness exposed the conformation
- of the skull, there were curious sutural irregularities of surface which
- attracted attention. The rest of the face was indefinably distinguished in
- effect, but not so remarkable. Christian thought now that it was a more
- virile countenance than he had imagined it to be. Vague suggestions of the
- scholarly dreamer flitted through its expressions now and again, but it
- was still above all things the face of a man of action.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian had said to himself, in that crowded instant of analysis, that
- he had never seen any Jewish face which at all resembled this of his
- cousin’s. Yet somewhere he had seen a face so like it!—the memory
- puzzled and absorbed his mind. The same crisping, silky black-brown hair;
- the same full line of brow and nose; the same wide-open dark eyes,
- intently comprehending in their steady gaze—how strangely familiar
- they were to him! He saw them again in his mind’s eye, and they had the
- same shadow-casting background of sunlight—only as he looked at the
- mental picture, this sunlight was fiercer and hotter, and there was a
- golden, hazy distance of purple-blue sea. Suddenly he laughed aloud, and
- his brain was alive with recollections.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never recognized you last night,” he declared. “Is it not strange that
- I should have been so blind? But seeing you in the sunlight—ah, I
- remember you well enough.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel smiled too, a little awkwardly. “Of course I was not making any
- secret of it,” he said. “It would have come up naturally, sooner or later,
- in the course of talk.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But Christian had turned to the lady, and was speaking with gay animation.
- “He it is whom I have so often thought of, for years now, as the
- ‘mysterious stranger’ of my poor little romance. How long is it ago? Oh,
- ten years perhaps, since I saw him first. It was at Toulon, and I was
- walking along the quai in the late afternoon, and he stopped me to ask
- some question, and we fell to walking together and talking—at first
- about the old town, then of myself, because he wished it so. A long time
- passed, and lo! I saw him again. This time he came into Salvator’s little
- shop at Cannes—it was in the Rue d’Oran—and I was alone, and
- we talked again—it seems to me for more than an hour. And I wondered
- always who he could be—because he made me feel that he had friendly
- thoughts about me. And then, once more—it was a year ago last summer—he
- met me again, and came and sat beside me on a seat in the Jardin Public,
- at Nice. It must have been in June, for the season was ended, and it
- surprised me that he should be there.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes, I know all about it,” put in Kathleen. “He told me of his seeing
- you, and what he thought of you, almost as soon as your back was turned.
- But at that time, of course—things hadn’t happened.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, but he wanted to be kind to me, even then,” the young man broke
- forth, with a glow in his eyes. “I felt that in his tone, the very first
- time, when I was the young boy at school. Oh, I puzzled my brain very
- often about this young English gentleman who liked to talk to me. And here
- is a curious thing, that when the Credit Lyonnais gave me my summons to
- come to England, it was of him that I thought first of all, and wondered
- if he had not some part in it. And then I was so dull—I come to his
- own house, and sit at his own table with him as my cousin, and do not know
- him at all! It is true that he had no beard then—but none the less I
- am ashamed.” He spread his hands out and smiled a deprecatory gesture at
- them both as he added: “But then everything has been upside down in my
- mind since I came to England. It has been as if I were going up the side
- of a straight cliff in a funicular railway—my heart throbbing in
- terror, my brain whirling—afraid to look down, or out, or to realize
- where I was. But to-day I am happily at the end of the journey, and the
- good safe ground is well under my feet—and so I am not confused any
- more, but only very, very glad.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The elder couple exchanged a frankly delighted smile over the enthusiast’s
- head. “You take him for a stroll about the place,” said the wife. “Perhaps
- I will come and find you, later on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In obedience to the suggestion, the two men turned, and went off together
- across the lawn.
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel began speaking at once. “My father,” he said, “has given me a
- rough outline of what you have seen and heard. In the nature of things, it
- could not all be pleasant.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I have quite forgotten the unhappy parts,” the young man declared. “I
- resolved to do that; it would be folly to remember them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They have their uses, though,” persisted the other. “I wanted you to
- start out with just that impression of the family’s seamy side. We have an
- immense deal to make up to the people about us, and to humanity in
- general, have we Torrs. It seemed to me that you could not realize this
- too early in your experience here. What impressions did Caermere itself
- make upon you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian hesitated a little, to give form to his thoughts. “I am
- imagining it in my mind,” he said at last, slowly, and with extended hands
- to shape his meaning to the eye, “as a huge canvas, one of the very
- biggest. As it happens, there is an unpleasant picture on it now, but that
- can be wiped out, covered over, and then on the vast blank surface a new
- and splendid picture may be painted—if I have the skill to do it.”
- He paused, as his companion nodded comprehension of the figure, and then
- added abruptly: “I have not put the question direct before—but it is
- really the case that I am to succeed my grandfather—to be duke of
- Glastonbury, is it not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” answered Emanuel, gravely. “That is the case.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lord Julius told me to ask you everything,” Christian went on in defense
- of his curiosity. “But, grand Dieu! there is so much to ask! Shall I be a
- rich man, also? There are dukes in France who can scarcely give a dinner
- to a friend—and in Italy who are often in doubt about even their own
- dinners. I understand that English dukes are different—but it has
- been said to me that my grandfather, for example, is not a rich man. He
- would be rich, no doubt, in some other station, but as a duke he is poor.
- Shall I also be poor?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel smiled, more, it seemed, to himself than for the benefit of the
- young man. With amusing deliberation he took from his pocket a little
- oblong book with flexible covers. “Have you ever owned a checkbook?” he
- asked drily.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian shook his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, this is yours. It came from London this morning. I have written
- here on the back of the first check, on the part that remains in the book,
- these figures. They show what the bank holds at your disposal at the
- present moment.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian took the book, and stared with awe at the figures indicated.
- “Three thousand pounds! That is to say, seventy-five thousand francs! But—I
- do not understand. What portion is this of my entire fortune? There is
- more besides—to come at some future period—n’est ce pas?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The sum itself had seemed at first glance to be of bewildering dimensions.
- Soberer second thoughts, however, told him that he had been lifted into a
- social stratum where such an amount might easily come and go a number of
- times during one’s life.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” Emanuel began, hesitating in turn over his phrases, “strictly
- speaking, you have no fortune at all. This money has been placed to your
- credit by my father—or if you like, by us both—to put you in a
- position of independence for the time being. You are quite free to spend
- it as you like. But—this is a somewhat delicate matter to explain—but
- we look to you in turn to be more or less guided by us in, say, your mode
- of life, your choice of associates and—and so on. Don’t think that
- we wish in the least to hamper your individual freedom. I am sure you will
- feel that that is not our way. But we have formed very high hopes indeed
- for your career and—how shall I make you understand?—it rests
- a good deal with us to say how far the realization of these hopes warrants
- us in going on. That isn’t plain to you, I see. Well, to put it frankly,
- you have nothing of your own, but we turn our money over to you because we
- believe in you. If unhappily—let us suppose the very improbable case—we
- should find ourselves no longer believing in you, why then we should feel
- free to reconsider our financial responsibilities towards you. That is
- stating it very baldly—not at all as I should like to have put it—but
- it gives you the essence of the situation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They had paused, and Christian regarded him with a troubled face. “Then if
- you come not to like me, or if I make mistakes, you take everything away
- from me again? I have never heard of a system like that. It seems to place
- me in a very strange position.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The youth’s mobile countenance expressed such wistful dejection, as he
- faltered out these words, that Emanuel hastened to reassure him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, no,” he urged, putting a brotherly hand on his shoulder, “it is the
- fault entirely of the way I explained it. No one will ever take anything
- away from you. In all human probability you will live and die a wealthy
- and powerful nobleman—and perhaps something a good deal more than
- that. But let me show you the situation in another way. You have seen your
- grandfather—so I need say little about him. When he had reached the
- age of fifty or thereabouts he had come to the end of his resources. Since
- the estates were entailed, nothing could be sold or mortgaged, and debts
- of all sorts were crowding in upon him and his eldest son, Lord Porlock.
- They were at their wits’ end to keep going at all; Porlock could not hold
- his head up in London, much less marry, as he was expected to do. If it
- had not been for the invention of life insurance, they could hardly have
- found money to live from week to week. That was in 1858 or ’9, when
- I was two or three years old. It was then that my father adopted his
- policy toward the older branch of the family. As you perhaps know, he was
- a very rich man. He came forward at this juncture, and saved the duke and
- his household from ruin.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That was very noble of him. It is what I should have thought he would
- do,” interposed Christian. They had begun walking again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I don’t know that noble is quite the word,” said Emanuel. “The
- element of generosity was not very conspicuous in the transaction. The
- truth is that the duke and his son were not people that one could be
- generous to. They had to be bound to a hard-and-fast bargain. They agreed
- between them to break the entail, so that all the estates could be dealt
- with as was deemed best, and bound themselves to sell or mortgage nothing
- except to my father, unless with his consent. He on his side settled
- seventy thousand pounds on Porlock and his heirs, thus enabling him to
- marry, and he not only purchased from the duke the Somerset properties, of
- which this is a part, but he bought up his debts at the sacrifice of a
- good many thousands of pounds, so that in practice he became his brother’s
- only creditor. No doubt there <i>was</i> generosity in that—since he
- cut down the rate of interest to something almost nominal by comparison
- with the usury that had been going on—but his motive was practical
- enough. It was to get complete financial mastery of the family estates.
- Nearly forty years have passed since he began; to-day he holds mortgages
- on practically every acre. If it were not for the mine near Coalbrook,
- which latterly yields the duke a certain surplus over the outlay at
- Caermere, my father would probably own it all outright. Well, you have
- followed it so far, haven’t you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian thoughtfully nodded his head. “These are not affairs that I have
- been brought up to understand,” he commented, “but I think I comprehend.
- Only this—you speak of your father’s adopted policy; that means he
- has a purpose—an aim. The lady at the castle—Lady Cressage—spoke
- to me about this, and I wish—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, yes, you met her,” interposed
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel. “I am not sure she was the best fitted to expound our policy to
- you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, she was very sympathetic,” the young man hastened to insist. “She had
- the warmest praises for both you and your father. And I could not but feel
- she wished me well, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel made no immediate reply, but walked slowly along, revolving silent
- thoughts, with a far-away, deliberative look in his eyes. When he spoke at
- last, it was to revert with abruptness to the earlier topic. “The policy,
- as we are calling it,” he said, “can be put in a nutshell. We take that
- kind of pride in the family which impels us to resolve that, if we cannot
- induce it to do great things, we will at least prevent it doing base
- things. The position which your grandfather inherited was one of
- remarkable opportunities, and also of exceptional responsibilities. He was
- unfit to do anything with the opportunities, and as for the
- responsibilities, he regarded them with only ignorant contempt. His
- immediate heirs were very little better. It became a problem with us,
- therefore, how best to limit their power for harm. Money was the one force
- they could understand and respect, and we have used it accordingly. I say
- ‘we’ because as the situation has gradually developed itself, it is hard
- to say which part of it is my father’s and which mine—and still more
- impossible to imagine what either of us would have done independently of
- my mother. I will tell you more about her sometime. It was she, of course,
- who brought the money to us, but she brought much else besides. However,
- we will not enter upon that at the moment. Well, suddenly, last summer,
- the deaths changed everything. Up to that time, what we had been doing had
- had, so to speak, only a negative purpose. We had been keeping unfit
- people from parading their unfitness in too scandalously public a fashion.
- But all at once the possibility of doing something positive—something
- which might be very fine indeed—was opened up before us. As you know
- now, we were aware of your existence, but there were inquiries to be made
- as to—well, as to the formal validity of your claim. After that,
- there was some slight delay in tracing your whereabouts—but now you
- are here, at last.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now I am here, at last!” Christian repeated softly. He looked up into the
- sky; somewhere from the blue an invisible lark filled the air with its
- bubbling song. He drew a long breath of amazed content, then turned to his
- companion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That men like you and your father should be making plans and sacrifices
- for one like myself,” he said—“it is hard for me to realize it.
- There is nothing for me to say but this—that I will spare no thought
- or labor to be what you want me to be. And you will make it all clear to
- me, will you not? in every detail what it is I am to do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, hardly to that length,” said Emanuel. He smiled once more—that
- grave, sweet, introspective smile of his, which suggested humor as little
- as it did flippancy—and spoke more freely, as if conscious that the
- irksome part of his task lay behind him. “We dream a great dream of you,
- but it would be folly to attempt to dictate to you at every stage of its
- realization. That would do you more harm than good, and it would be unfair
- to both parties, into the bargain. No, what I desire is to show you the
- practical workings of a system, and to fill you with the principles and
- spirit of that system. I think it will interest you deeply, and I hope you
- will see your way to making it, in its essentials at least, your own. It
- has taken me many years to build it up, and I can’t pretend to suppose
- that you will grasp it in a week or a year. But you will see at least the
- aim I have in view, and you will get a notion of how I progress toward it.
- I shall be satisfied, for the time being, merely to commend it to your
- judgment as the aim which you might do well to set before you. It occurs
- to me to ask you: have you decided opinions in politics?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian shrugged his shoulders diffidently. “In France my friends were
- of many parties, but since I thought never of myself as a Frenchman, I did
- not take sides with any of them. My brother Salvator is very advanced
- indeed; he is a Free Mason, and his friends are Carbonari in Italy and
- Socialists in France. But to me, these things had not much meaning. I said
- always to myself that I was English, and I read journals from London when
- I could, to learn about English parties. But it was not easy to learn. I
- stood in the streets often at Cannes in the early spring to see Mr.
- Gladstone when he passed, and to take off my hat to him, because I read
- that he was the greatest Englishman. But then I talked with English people
- on the Riviera about him, and they all cursed and ridiculed him, and told
- me that in England no respectable people would so much as speak to him. So
- it is very hard to know the truth—when you are born and bred in
- another country.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Even those who are born here do not invariably agree upon definitions of
- the truth,” commented Emanuel. “But I was not speaking of parties or
- politicians, so called. Politics, in its bigger sense, means the
- housekeeping of humanity—the whole mass of interests that the
- individuals of the human race have in common. But I don’t want to
- generalize to you. Let us stop here for a few minutes; I have brought you
- to this point that you may get the view.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Their leisurely stroll through pastures and meadows, and latterly across a
- strip of grassy common dotted with sheep, had brought them by a gradual
- ascent to the summit of a knoll, crowned by a group of picturesquely
- gnarled and twisted old trees, the boughs of which were all pointed
- backward in the direction whence the men had come. Christian, coming to
- the ridge and halting, confronted the unexpected breeze, steady and
- sustained as an ocean swell, which he could hear murmuring through the
- land-ward bent branches overhead. In front of him, at the distance of a
- stone’s throw, the sloping heath abruptly ended in what for the instant he
- supposed was the sky-line—and then saw to be a vast glittering
- expanse of water, stretching off to an illimitable horizon.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, the sea!” he cried out, in surprised delight. “I had never dreamed
- that we were near it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He could distinguish now the faint intermittent rustle of the waves on the
- hidden beach far below. Perhaps a mile out the profile of a craft under
- full sail shone magically white in the sunlight. He knew it to be a yacht,
- and began watching it with an intuitive appreciation of its beauty of line
- and carriage. Then in a sudden impulse he swung around and faced his
- companion. “I do not like to look at it,” he broke out nervously. “I am
- afraid to see the ghosts of those cousins who were drowned—killed to
- make room for me. Where their yacht went down on the rocks—was that
- close by here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “At least sixty miles away—in that direction,” and Emanuel gave an
- indifferent nod towards the west. “I wouldn’t encourage ghosts of any
- sort, if I were you, but theirs would be least of all worth while. I
- wanted you to look about you from here—not specially seaward, but in
- all directions. There is a small village at the water’s edge, almost
- directly under our feet, which can’t be seen from above—we will get
- round to it, perhaps to-morrow—but look in other directions. As far
- as you can see along the coast to right and left—and inland, too—the
- system I spoke of is in operation. It is all my land. Get the scope of it
- into your mind. Roughly speaking, you can see over some nine or ten
- thousand acres. Imagine that multiplied by seven or eight, and you will
- have, an idea of the territory that your grandfather still owns—at
- least nominally.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian kept a rapt gaze upon the prospect, and strove in silence to
- grasp the meaning of the words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “On the land that you see before you,” Emanuel went on, “in one capacity
- or another, nearly two thousand human beings have homes. On your
- grandfather’s estates there must be nearly if not quite ten times that
- number. Think what this means. You will be in a position to affect the
- prosperity, the happiness, the well-being, body and soul, of fifteen or
- twenty thousand people. It is a little nation—a small kingdom—of
- which you will be the head.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man turned slowly and forced himself to look out upon the deep,
- but still said nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This position you may make much of, or little, or worse than nothing at
- all,” the other continued. “It is a simple enough matter to put the work
- and the responsibility upon other shoulders, if you choose to do it. Many
- very respectable men born to such positions do wash their hands of the
- worry and labor in just that fashion. They lead idle lives, they amuse
- themselves, they take all that is yielded to them and give nothing in
- return—and because they avoid open grossness and scandal their
- behavior attracts no particular attention. In fact, it is quite taken for
- granted that they have done the natural thing. Being born to leisure, why
- should they toil? Possessing the title to wealth and dominion and the
- deference of those about them, why should they be expected to go to work
- and earn these things which they already own? That is the public view.
- Mine is very different. I hold that a man who has been born to a position
- of power among his fellows, and neglects the duties of that position while
- he accepts its rewards, is disgraced. It is as dishonest as any action for
- which less fortunate persons go to prison.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, that is my feeling, also,” said Christian in low, earnest tones.
- “It’s all true—but—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, yes, the ‘But,’” commented Emanuel, with his perceptive smile. “Now
- let me explain to you that I have met this ‘But,’ and done battle with it,
- and put it under my feet. I began planning for this struggle when I was
- very young. All the good people I knew admitted frankly the evils I speak
- of; they saw them quite clearly, and talked with eloquence and fine
- feeling about them, and at the finish they said ‘But!’—and changed
- the subject, and everything went on as before. It became apparent to me
- that this eternal ‘But’ is the enemy of the human race. There it stood
- forever in the path, blocking every attempt of benevolent and right-minded
- people to advance in real progress. So I said: at least one life shall be
- given to the task of proving that there need be no ‘But.’ I have been
- working here now for years, upon lines which were carefully thought out
- during other years of preparation. The results are in most respects better
- than I could have expected; they are certainly many-fold better than any
- one who had not my faith could have believed possible. Sundry limitations
- in the system I have, no doubt, discovered. Some things which seemed
- axiomatic on paper do not work themselves out the same way in practice—but
- as a whole the system is recognized now as having justified itself. There
- was an article in the ‘Fortnightly’ on it last November which I will give
- you to read. I have written some chapters upon certain phases of it,
- myself, which you might also look at. But the principal thing is that you
- should see the system itself in full operation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am eager to begin,” declared the young man, with fervor.
- </p>
- <p>
- They had turned by tacit consent, and were sauntering back again over the
- short, soft grass of the heath.
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel paused and picked from a furze-bush a belated spray of bright
- yellow blossoms. As he continued his walk, he pulled one of these flowers
- to pieces, and attentively examined the fragments.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I gather that you are much interested in flowers,” said Christian, to
- make conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- The other laughed briefly, as he threw the stuff aside, then sighed a
- little. “Too much so,” he answered. “I wish I had the courage to give it
- up altogether. It murders my work. I spend sometimes whole hours in my
- greenhouses when I ought to be doing other things. The worst of it is that
- I realize perfectly the criminal waste of time—and still I persist
- in it. There is something quite mysterious in plants—especially if
- you have grown them yourself. You can go and stand among them by the hour,
- and look from one to another, with your mind entirely closed to thoughts
- of any description. I used to assume that this mental rest had a
- recuperative value, but as I get older I suspect that it is a kind of
- lethargy instead—a mere blankness that can grow upon one. I find
- myself, for example, going incessantly to see certain pans of my own
- hybridized seedlings—and staring aimlessly at them till I get quite
- empty-headed. Now, I am too busy a man to be able to afford that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But if you get pleasure from it,” expostulated Christian, gently.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have no right to think of our pleasure,” Emanuel asserted with
- decision, “while any duty remains unperformed. And rightly considered,
- duty <i>is</i> pleasure, the very highest and noblest pleasure. The
- trouble is that even while our minds quite recognize this, our senses play
- us tricks. For example, when I saw how much time I was wasting on flowers,
- I tried to turn the impulse into a useful channel. The blossoms of fruit
- trees, for instance; the growth and flowering and seeding processes of
- melons and broad-beans and potatoes and so on, are just as interesting and
- worthy of study, and they mean value to humanity into the bargain. So I
- said I would concentrate my attention upon them, instead—but there
- was some perverse element in me somewhere; I couldn’t do it. The mere
- knowledge that these excellent vegetables were of practical utility threw
- me off altogether. They bored me—so I went shamefacedly back to the
- roses and fuchsias and dahlias.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They have wonderful dahlias at Caermere,” interposed Christian. “I
- walked for a long time among them with Lady Cressage, and she told me all
- their names. Poor lady, she is very sad, in spite of the flowers. I—I
- think I should like to say it to you—I find myself very sorry for
- her. And—such a bewildering number of things are to be done for me—is
- there not something that can be done for her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel walked slowly on in silence for some moments, regarding his
- companion’s profile out of the corner of his eye, his own face showing
- signs of preoccupation meantime. When at last he spoke, the question
- seemed to have lost itself in convolution of his thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Considering their northern exposure,” he said meditatively, “they grow an
- extraordinary amount of fruit at Caermere.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t the end of a
- fortnight Christian found himself able to confront the system, and even
- look it in the face, with a certain degree of mental composure. He was far
- from imagining that he had comprehended it all, but the thought of it no
- longer made his brain whirl by the magnitude of its scope, or frightened
- him by its daring. The implication that he was expected to do still more
- with it than Emanuel, its inventor and evangel, had done, possessed its
- terrors, no doubt, but one is not young for nothing. The buoyancy of
- youth, expanding genially amid these delightful surroundings, thrust these
- shadows off into the indefinite future, whenever they approached.
- </p>
- <p>
- This system need not detain us long, or unnerve us at all. Lord Julius had
- spoken figuratively of it as the Pursuit of Happiness; perhaps that
- remains its best definition.
- </p>
- <p>
- Like other systems, it was capable of explanation by means of formulas;
- but the most lucid and painstaking presentation of these could not hope to
- convey complete meaning to the mind. Stated in words, Emanuel’s plan
- hardly appealed to the imagination. Save for a few innovations, not of
- primary importance, it proceeded by arguments entirely familiar to
- everybody, and which indeed none disputes. Most of its propositions were
- the commonplaces of human speech and thought. The value of purity, of
- cheerfulness, of loyalty, of mercy—this is not gainsaid by any one.
- The conception of duty as the mainspring of human action is very old
- indeed. For this reason, doubtless, Emanuel’s efforts to expound his
- System by means of books had failed to rivet public attention. He could
- only insist afresh upon what was universally conceded, and Mr. Tupper
- before him had done enough of this to last several generations.
- </p>
- <p>
- Viewed in operation, however, the System was another matter. Our
- immemorial platitudes, once clothed in flesh and blood, informed with
- life, and set in motion under the sympathetic control of a master mind,
- became unrecognizable.
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel as a lad had thought much of the fact that he was of the blood of
- the Spinozas. When he learned Latin in his early boyhood, the task was
- sweetened and ennobled to his mind by the knowledge that it would bring
- him into communion with the actual words of the great man, his kinsman.
- Later, when he approached with veneration the study of these words, the
- discovery that they meant little or nothing to him was almost crushing in
- its effects. Eventually it dawned upon his brain that the philosopher’s
- abstractions and speculations were as froth on the top of the water; the
- great fact was the man himself—the serene, lofty, beautiful
- character which shines out at us from its squalid setting like a flawless
- gem. To be like Spinoza, but to give his mind to the real rather than the
- unreal, shaped itself as the goal of his ambitions.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was at this period that he became impressed by the thought that he was
- also of the blood of the Torrs. On the one side the poor lens-grinder with
- the soul of an archangel; on the other the line of dull-browed,
- heavy-handed dukes, with a soul of any sort discoverable among them
- nowhere. Slowly the significance of the conjunction revealed itself to
- him. To take up the long-neglected burden of responsibilities and
- possibilities of the Torrs, with the courage and pure spirit of a Spinoza—there
- lay the duty of his life, plainly marked before him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ensuing years of reading, travel and reflection gave him the frame, so to
- speak, in which to put this picture. He had from his childhood been
- greatly attracted by the glimpses which his father’s library gave him of
- what is called the Mediaeval period. As he grew older, this taste became a
- passion. Where predilection ended and persuasion began, it would be hard
- to say, but when he had arrived at man’s estate, and stood upon the
- threshold of his life-work, it was with the deeply rooted conviction that
- the feudal stage had offered mankind its greatest opportunities for
- happiness and the higher life. That the opportunities had been
- misunderstood, wasted, thrown away, proved nothing against the soundness
- of his theory. He had masses of statistics as to wages, rent-rolls,
- endowments and the like at his fingers’ ends, to show that even on its
- reverse side, the medieval shield was not so black as it was painted. As
- for the other side—it was the age of the cathedrals, of the Book of
- Kells, of the great mendicant orders, of the saintly and knightly ideals.
- It was in its flowering time that craftsmanship attained its highest
- point, and the great artisan guilds, proud of their talents and afraid of
- nothing but the reproach of work ill-done, gave the world its magnificent
- possessions among the applied arts. Sovereigns and princes vied with one
- another to do honor to the noblest forms of art, and to bow to the
- intellect of an Erasmus, who had not even the name of a father to bear.
- Class caste was the rule of the earth, yet the son of a peasant like
- Luther could force himself to the top, and compel emperors to listen to
- him, more readily then than now. The bishop-princes of feudal England were
- as often as not the sons of swineherds or starveling clerks, whereas now
- no such thing could conceivably happen to the hierarchy. Above all things,
- it was the age of human character. Men like Thomas More, with their
- bewildering circle of attainments and their extraordinary individual
- force, were familiar products. In a thousand other directions, Emanuel saw
- convincing proofs that mankind then and there had come closest to the
- possibilities of a golden age. True, it had wandered off miserably again,
- into all manner of blind lanes and morasses, until it floundered now in a
- veritable Dismal Swamp of individualism, menaced on the one side by the
- millionaire slave-hunter, on the other by the spectral anarchist, and
- still the fools in its ranks cried out ceaselessly for further progress.
- Oh, blind leaders of the blind!
- </p>
- <p>
- No. Emanuel saw clearly that humanity could right itself by retracing its
- steps, and going back to the scene of its mistaken choice of roads. It had
- taken the wrong turning when it forsook the path of coherent and
- interdependent organization—that marvelously intricate yet perfectly
- logical system called feudalism, in which everybody from king to serf had
- service to render and service to receive, and mutual duty was the law of
- the entire mechanism.
- </p>
- <p>
- Though Christian heard much more than this, enough has been said to
- indicate the spirit in which Emanuel had embarked upon the realization of
- his plan. The results, as Christian wonderingly observed them, were
- remarkable.
- </p>
- <p>
- The estate over which the System reigned was compact in shape, and enjoyed
- the advantage of natural boundaries, either of waste moorland or
- estuaries, which shut it off from the outside world, and simplified the
- problem of developing its individual character. In area it comprised
- nearly fifteen square miles, and upon it, as has been said, lived some two
- thousand people. About half of these were employed in, or dependent upon,
- the industrial occupations Emanuel had introduced; the others were more
- directly connected with the soil. Whether artisans or farmers, however,
- they lived almost without exception in some one of the six little villages
- on the property.
- </p>
- <p>
- In each of these hamlets there were conserved one or more old timbered
- houses; the newer cottages had been built, not in servile imitation of
- these, but after equally old models, no two quite alike. As the
- “Fortnightly Review” article said, if the System had done nothing else it
- had “gathered for the instruction and delight of the intelligent observer
- almost a complete collection of examples of early English domestic
- architecture of the humbler sort.” The numerous roads upon the estate were
- kept in perfect order, and were for the most part lined with trees; where
- they passed through the villages they were of great width, with broad
- expanses of turf, shaded by big oaks or elms, some of which had been moved
- from other spots only a few years before, to the admiring surprise of the
- neighborhood. Each village had a small church edifice of its own, quaintly
- towered and beautiful in form, and either possessing or simulating
- skillfully the graces of antiquity as well. Beside the church was a
- building presenting some one or another type of the tolsey-house of old
- English towns, devoted to the communal uses of the villagers. About the
- church and the tolsey was the public garden and common, with a playground
- with swings and bars for the children at the back—and there was no
- grave or tombstone in sight anywhere. A hospitable, ivy-clad, low-gabled
- inn, with its long side to the street, was a conspicuous feature on each
- village green.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian retained a vivid recollection of entering one of these taverns
- with Emanuel, very early in his tour of observation. Above the broad, open
- door, as they went in, swung the cumbrous, brightly painted sign of “The
- Torr Arms.” Two or three laborers in corduroys were seated on benches at
- the table, with tankards before them; they dragged their heavily shod feet
- together on the sanded floor, and stood up, when they saw Emanuel,
- touching their hats with an air of affectionate humility as he smiled and
- nodded to them. There was a seemingly intelligent and capable landlady in
- the bar, who drew the two glasses of beer which Emanuel asked for, and
- answered cheerfully the questions he put to her. Two brightfaced young
- women, very neatly dressed, were seated sewing in this commodious bar, and
- they joined in the conversation which Emanuel raised. Christian gathered
- from what he heard and saw that his cousin took an active interest in the
- fortunes of this tavern and of both its inmates and its patrons, and that
- the interest and liking were warmly reciprocated. The discovery gave him a
- more genial conception of Emanuel’s character than he had hitherto
- entertained.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is one of my most satisfactory enterprises,” Emanuel had said when
- they came out. “We brew our own beer, as well as the few cordials which
- take the place of spirits, and I really feel sure it’s the best beer
- obtainable in England. I am very proud of it—but I am proud of these
- taverns of ours too. That was one of the hardest problems to be solved—but
- the solution satisfies me better, perhaps, than anything else I have done.
- Nobody ever dreams of getting drunk in these ‘pubs’ of ours. Nobody dreams
- of being ashamed to be seen going into them or coming out. The women and
- children enter them just as freely, if they have occasion to do so, as
- they would a dairy or grocer’s shop. They are the village clubs, so to
- speak, and they are constantly open to the whole village, as much as the
- church or the tolsey. But here is one of my parsons. I want you to take
- note of him—and I will tell you about his part in the System
- afterward. He is as interesting a figure in it as my publican.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A tall, fresh-faced, fair young man approached them as Emanuel spoke, and
- was presented to the stranger as Father William. Christian observed him
- narrowly, as he had been bidden, but beyond the fact that he was clad in a
- somewhat outlandish fashion, and seemed a merry-hearted fellow, there was
- nothing noteworthy in the impression he produced. He stood talking for a
- few minutes, and then, with affable adieux, passed on.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is wholly my invention,” commented Emanuel, as they resumed their
- walk. “There is one of them in each of the six villages, and a seventh who
- has a kind of general function—and really I have been
- extraordinarily fortunate with them all. They come from my college at
- Oxford—Swithin’s—and when you think that twenty years ago it
- was the most bigoted hole in England, the change is most miraculous. These
- young men fell in with my ideas like magic. I don’t suppose you know much
- about the Church of England. Well, it drives with an extremely loose rein.
- You can do almost anything you like inside it, if you go about the thing
- decorously. I didn’t even have the trouble with the bishop which might
- have been expected. These young men—my curates, we may call them—have
- among themselves a kind of guild or confraternity. They are called Father
- William, or Father Alfred; they wear the sort of habit you have seen; they
- are quite agreed upon an irreducible minimum of dogmatic theology, and an
- artistic elaboration of the ritual, and, above all, upon an active life
- consecrated to good works. They have their own central chapter-house,
- where they live when they choose and feel like enjoying one another’s
- society, but each has his own village, for the moral and intellectual
- health of which he feels responsible. Without their constant and very
- capable oversight, the System would have a good many ragged edges, I’m
- afraid. But what they do is wonderful. They have made a study of all the
- different temperaments and natures among the people. They know just how to
- smooth away possible friction here, to encourage dormant energy there, to
- keep the whole thing tight and clean and sound. They specially watch the
- development of the children, and make careful notes of their qualities and
- capacities. They decide which are to be fully educated, and which are to
- be taught only to read and do sums.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not sure that I understand,” put in Christian. “Is not universal
- education a part of your plan?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel smiled indulgently. “There was never grosser nonsense talked in
- this world,” he said, with the placid air of one long since familiar with
- the highest truths, “or more mischievous rubbish into the bargain, than
- this babble about universal education. The thing we call modern
- civilization is wrong at so many points that it is hard to say where it
- sins most, but often I think this is its worst offense. The race has gone
- fairly mad over this craze for stuffing unfit brains with encumbering and
- harmful twaddle. In the Middle Ages they knew better. The monks of a
- locality picked out the children whose minds would repay cultivation, and
- they taught these as much as it was useful for them to know. If the system
- was in honest operation, it mattered nothing whether these children
- belonged to the lord of the manor or the poorest peasant. Assume, for
- example, that there was a nobleman and one of his lowest dependents, and
- that each of them had a clever son and a dull one. The monks would take
- the two clever ones, and educate them side by side—and if in the end
- the base born boy had the finer mind of the two, and the stronger
- character, he would become the bishop or the abbot or the judge in
- preference to his noble school-fellow. On the other hand, the two dull
- boys were not wearied by schooling from which they could get no profit.
- The thick-headed young-noble, very often without even learning his
- alphabet, was put on a horse, and given a suit of armor and a sword; the
- heavy-witted young churl was given a leathern shirt and a pike or a bow,
- and bidden to follow behind that horse’s tail—and off the two happy
- dunces went, to fulfill in a healthful and intelligent fashion their
- manifest destiny. Those were the rational days when human institutions
- were made to fit human beings—instead of this modern lunacy of
- either shaving down and mangling the human being, or else blowing him up
- like a bladder, to make him appear to fit the institutions. Of course, you
- must understand, I don’t say that this medieval system worked uniformly,
- or perfectly, even at its best—and, of course, for a variety of
- reasons, it eventually failed to work altogether. But its principle, its
- spirit, was the right one—and it is only by getting back to it, and
- making another start with the light of experience to guide us this time,
- that we can achieve real progress. Fortunately, my parsons entered fully,
- and quite joyfully, into my feelings on this point. They couldn’t have
- labored harder, or better, to make the System a success if it had been of
- their own invention.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have seen English parsons often,” said Christian, vaguely. “They are
- always married, n’est ce pas?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no—no!” answered Emanuel, with impatient emphasis. “That would
- never do here. It is difficult enough to find men fit to carry on the task
- we have undertaken. It would be asking too much of the miracle to expect
- also unique women who would bring help rather than confusion to such men.
- Oh, no—we take no risks of that sort. Celibacy is the very basis of
- their guild. It is very lucky that their own tastes run in that direction—because
- in any case it would have had to be insisted upon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian wondered if he ought to put into words the comment which rose in
- his mind. “But you, and your father,” he ventured—“you personally—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah,” interposed Emanuel, with a rapt softening of expression in face and
- tone, “when women like my mother and my wife appear—that lifts us
- away from the earth and things earthly, altogether. But they are as rare
- as a great poem—or a comet. If they were plentiful there would be no
- need of any System. The human race would never have fallen into the mud.
- We should all be angels.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After a little pause he added: “The woman question here has been a very
- hard nut to crack. We have made some progress with it—but it is
- still one of the embarrassments. Of course there are others. The restless
- young men who leave the estate, for example, and having made a failure of
- it elsewhere, come back to make mischief here: That is an awkward subject
- to deal with. The whole problem of our relations to outsiders is full of
- perplexities. To prevent intercourse with them is out of the question.
- They come and go as they like—and of course my own people are
- equally free. I can’t see my way to any restrictions which wouldn’t do
- more harm than good—if indeed they could be enforced at all. I have
- to rely entirely upon the good sense and good feeling of my people, to
- show them how much better off they are in every way than any other
- community they know of, and how important it is for them to keep
- themselves to themselves, and continue to benefit by their good fortune.
- If they fail to understand this, I am quite powerless to coerce them. And
- that is where the women give us trouble. It is the rarest thing for us to
- have any difficulty with the men. They comprehend their advantages, they
- take a warm interest in their work, and we have developed among them a
- really fine communal spirit. They are proud of the System, and fond of it,
- and I can trust them to defend it and stand by it. But this isn’t true of
- all the women. You have always the depressing consciousness that there are
- treacherous malcontents among them, who smile to your face but are
- planning disturbance behind your back. It is not so much a matter of evil
- natures as of inferior brains. Let a soldier in a red coat come along, for
- example—an utterly ignorant and vulgar clown from heaven knows what
- gutter or pigsty—and we have girls here who would secretly value his
- knowledge of the world, and his advice upon things in general, above <i>mine!</i>
- How <i>can</i> you deal with that sort of mind?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian smiled drolly, and disclaimed responsibility with a playful
- outward gesture of his hands. “It is not my subject,” he declared.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it has to be faced,” insisted Emanuel. “My wife has devoted
- incredible labor and pains to it—and on the surface of things she
- has succeeded wonderfully. I say the surface, because that is the sinister
- peculiarity of the affair; you can never be sure what is underneath. When
- you go up to London, you must do as I have done since I was a youth: take
- a walk of a bright afternoon along Regent Street and Oxford Street, where
- the great millinery and drapers’ and jewelers’ shops are, and study the
- faces of the thousands of well-dressed and well-connected women whom you
- will see passing from one show-window to another. There will be many
- beautiful faces, and many more which are deeply interesting. But one note
- you will catch in them all—or at least in the vast majority—the
- note of furtiveness. Once you learn to recognize it you will find it
- everywhere—the suggestion of something hidden, something artfully
- wrapped up out of sight. God knows, I don’t suggest they all have guilty
- secrets—or for that matter secrets of any sort. But they have the
- trained facial capacity for concealment; it is their commonest
- accomplishment; their mothers’ fingers have been busy kneading their
- features into this mask of pretense from their earliest girlhood.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Would you not find it also on the men’s faces?” demanded Christian, with
- a dissolving mental vision of sly masculine visages before him as he
- spoke. “That is to say, when once you had learned to detect the male
- variation of the mask? And even if it is so, then is not the reason of it
- this—that men have long been their own masters, making their own
- laws, doing freely what they choose, and there is no one before whom they
- must dissemble?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel had not the temperament which is attracted by contradiction. He
- listened to his cousin’s eager words, seemed to ponder them for a space,
- and then began talking of something else.
- </p>
- <p>
- Those whom Emanuel called “his people” were for the most part descendants
- of families who had been on the soil for centuries—since before the
- Torrs came into possession of it. In a few cases, their stock had been
- transplanted from the Shropshire estates of the same house. Emanuel had
- discerned it to be an essential part of the System that its benefits
- should be reaped by those to whom his family had historic
- responsibilities. The reflection that the Torrs in Somerset only went back
- at the farthest to Henry VIII.‘s time, and became large landlords there so
- recently as Charles II.‘s reign, saddened him when he dwelt upon it. He
- would have given much to have been able to establish the System at
- Caermere instead, where the relations between lord and retainer had
- subsisted from the dawn of tribal history. He dwelt a good deal upon this
- aspect of the matter in his talks with Christian. “If you take up the
- idea,” he would say, “you will have the enormous advantage of really
- ancient ties between you and your people. Here in Somerset we are,
- relatively speaking, new-comers—merely lucky bridegrooms or
- confiscating interlopers of a few generations’ standing. I have had to
- create my feudal spirit here out of whole cloth. But you at Caermere—you
- will find it ready-made to your hand.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel had created much more besides.
- </p>
- <p>
- The villages hummed with the exotic industries he had brought into being.
- The estate produced most of its raw material—food, wool, hides, peat
- for domestic fuel, stone in several varieties for building, and numerous
- products of the sea. It drew coal, wood and iron across the channel from
- the Caermere properties. The effort of the System had been from the outset
- to expand its self-sufficiency. Christian saw now the remarkable results
- of this effort on both sides. One village had its leather workers,
- beginning with the tanners at one end and finishing with the most skillful
- artificers—glovers, saddlers and shoemakers—at the other. A
- second village possessed its colony of builders—masons and
- carpenters alike—and with them guiding architects and designers of
- furniture and carving. Here also were the coopers, who served not only the
- brewery, but the butter-makers. These latter formed in turn a link with
- the great dairy establishment, which had for its flank the farming lands.
- The gardens, nurseries, orchards and long glasshouses were nearest to
- Emanuel’s residence, and their workers made up the largest of the hamlets.
- This was in other senses the metropolis of the state, for here were the
- printing-press, the bindery, the chemical laboratory, the electric-light
- plant, the photographic and drawing departments, the clergy house and the
- estate office. The smallest of the villages was in the center of the stock
- farm, where scientific breeding and experimental acclimatization had
- attained results of which the staid “Field” spoke in almost excited terms.
- </p>
- <p>
- But to Christian’s mind by far the most interesting village was that
- nestled on the sea-shore, under the protection of the cliffs. When he had
- once seen this place, his cousin found if difficult to get him away from
- it, or to enlist his attention for other branches of the System. There was
- a small but sufficient wharf here, to which colliers of a fair burden
- could have access; shelter was secured for the home-built fishing craft in
- the little harbor by means of a breakwater. The red-roofed, gray-stone
- cottages clustered along the winding roadway which climbed the cliff made
- a picture fascinating to the young man’s eye, but his greater delight was
- in something not at first visible. Around a bend in the cove, out of sight
- of the village, was a factory for the manufacture of glass, and beyond
- this were pointed out to him other buildings, near the water’s edge, which
- he was told were used for curing, pickling and otherwise preserving fish.
- “We make our own glass for the gardens and forcing houses, ‘and for all
- the dwellings on the estate,” Emanuel had told him, “and for another use
- as well.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The statement had not aroused his curiosity at the moment, but a little
- later, when he confronted the embodiment of its meaning, he murmured aloud
- in his astonishment. He found himself walking in a spacious corridor,
- beneath a roof of semi-opaque, greenish glass, and between walls that
- seemed of solid crystal, stretching onward as far as the eye could reach.
- A bar of sunlight, striking through aslant from somewhere outside, painted
- a central glowing prismatic patch of color, which reflected itself in
- countless wavering gleams of orange and purple all about him. A curious
- moving glitter, as of fountains noiselessly at play, traversed the upper
- surface of these glass walls, and flashed confusion at his first scrutiny.
- Then he gave a schoolboy’s shout of joy and rushed forward to the nearest
- side. He was in a giant aquarium—and these were actual fishes of the
- sea swimming placidly before him! Even as he stared in bewildered
- pleasure, with his nose flattened against the glass, there lounged toward
- him, across the domed back of a king-crab, the biggest conger he had ever
- imagined to himself. He put up a hand instinctively to ward off the
- advance of the impassive eel—then laughed aloud for glee.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, this is worth all the rest!” he cried to Emanuel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, good idea, isn’t it?” said the other. “It was my wife who suggested
- it. We had started making our own glass—and really this was a most
- intelligent way of using it. In time I think it will be of great value,
- too. We have some clever men down here, from time to time, to study the
- specimens. I’m sorry no one is here for the moment. I thought at first of
- building a residence for them, and putting it all at their disposal in a
- regular way as a kind of marine observatory, like that at Naples. But
- after all, it would hardly be fair to the system. My first duty is to my
- own people, and we’ve got some young men of our own who are making good
- use of it. There are a hundred or more of these tanks, and we are fitting
- up electrical machinery to get automatic control of the water supply, and
- to regulate the temperature more exactly. But beyond the spectacle of the
- fishes themselves—our people make holiday excursions here every
- fortnight or so—and certain things we learn about food and
- fecundation and so on, I don’t know that there’s much to be said for the
- practical utility of this department. Further on you will see the oyster
- and mussel beds, and the lobsters and crabs. I attach much more importance
- to the experiments we are making out there. There seems almost no limit to
- what can be done in those fields, now that we have learned how to go to
- work. It is as simple a matter to rear lobsters as it is to rear
- chickens.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it is all wonderful!” cried Christian, once more. “But tell me—this
- costs a great sum of money. I am afraid to think how much. Is it your hope—shall
- you ever get a profit from it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel smiled. “There is no question of profits,” he explained, gently.
- “The System as a whole supports itself—or rather is entirely capable
- of doing so. The capital that I have spent in putting the System upon its
- feet, so to speak, I count as nothing. It belonged to the people who had
- been with us all these centuries and I have merely restored it to them. In
- the eyes of the law it is all mine, and from that point of view I am a
- much richer man than I was before the System began. But in practice it
- belongs to all my people. I take enough to live as befits my station; each
- of the others has enough to maintain him in <i>his</i> station,
- comfortably and honorably. Whatever the surplus may be, that is devoted to
- the objects which we all have in common. You see it is simplicity itself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that is like my brother Salvator’s doctrine,” said Christian. “It is
- socialism, is it not?” Emanuel’s fine brows drew together in an impatient
- frown. “Please do not use that word,” he said, with a shade of annoyance
- in his tone. “The very sound of it affronts my ears. Nothing vexes me more
- than to have my work unthinkingly coupled with that monstrous imposture.
- If you will think of it, I am more opposed to what is called socialism
- than anybody else on earth. I have elaborated the one satisfactory system,
- on lines absolutely opposed to it. I furnish the best weapon for fighting
- and slaying that pernicious delusion that the whole world offers. So you
- see, I have a right to protest when people confuse me with my bitterest
- antagonist.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pardon!” said Christian, with humility. “I am so badly informed upon all
- these matters!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, well, you will understand them perfectly, all in good time,” his
- cousin reassured him in a kindly way.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian drew a furtive sigh as they moved along. To his fancy the large
- fishes in the tanks regarded him with a sympathetic eye.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t has done Emanuel
- a world of good to have you here,” said Kathleen, on the morning of
- Christian’s leave-taking. “Of course it has been a delight to us both—but
- he has had a personal benefit from it, too. He works too hard. He carries
- such a burden of details about in his mind—by day and by night, for
- he sleeps badly and is forever dreaming of his work—that
- companionship with some new and attractive mind is of the greatest rest
- and help to him. And he is very fond of you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian nodded gratified acknowledgment of the words and their spirit,
- with a glow in his dark eyes. In little more than an hour he would be on
- his way to London—that mighty, almost fabulous goal of his lifelong
- dreams. He was already dressed for the journey, in a traveling-suit of
- rough, fawn-colored cloth, and as he sat at ease in the breakfast-room
- with his cousin’s wife, his glance wandered very often from her face to a
- pleased contemplation of these garments. They were what he individually
- liked best in the wonderful collection of clothes for which a fashionable
- tailor had come from London to measure him, and which were this moment
- being packed by the man up-stairs in bags and portmanteaus equally new.
- The tweeds enabled him to feel more like an Englishman than he had
- succeeded in doing before.
- </p>
- <p>
- He smiled diffidently at her. “I am so excited about going,” he said, his
- voice wavering between exuberance and appeal—“and yet I ought to be
- thinking of nothing but my sorrow in leaving you dear people. But that
- will come to me soon enough—in a storm of homesickness—when
- once I find myself really alone.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I’ll not deny we expect a <i>little</i> homesickness,” she replied to
- him, cheerfully—“but it must not be enough to at all take the edge
- off your spirits. Oh, you’ll be vastly entertained and interested by all
- you see and hear. Young Lord Lingfield—you’ll be seeing him to-night
- at dinner—he will be greatly pleased to take you about, and properly
- introduce you; He will do it better than any other we can think of. He is
- not by any means an intellectual gladiator, but he is good-looking and
- amiable and he goes everywhere.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is my relation, too, I think Emanuel said?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let’s work it out—his grandfather’s sister was your grandmother.
- Yes, that is it. She was the Lady Clarissa Poynes, the sister of the old
- earl of Chobham, who used to wear the blue coat and brass buttons to the
- end of his days. So she would be the aunt of the present earl, and the
- grand-aunt of young Lingfield. You stand in exactly the same relationship
- to Lord Lingfield that you would to a son of Emanuel’s—if he had
- one, poor man!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian had long since become sensible of the pathos which colored these
- references to the childlessness of the house. A tender instinct impelled
- him to hasten a diversion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And how strange it is!” he cried. “They are as close to me, these people,
- in blood as Emanuel is—and yet I care nothing for them whatever. I
- shall meet them, and know them, and not feel that I am bound to them at
- all—whereas Emanuel is like a brother to me, whom I have been with
- and loved all my life. And you,” he added, with a smile in his eyes—“you
- are more than any sister to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, then, let me talk to you like a sister,” she rejoined.
- </p>
- <p>
- He thought he had not seen her before in precisely the mood which was
- discernible in her face and tone this morning. Outwardly she was as gay
- and light-hearted as ever, and certainly she had not seemed on any
- previous day to come so near being beautiful as well. The sense of sheer
- pleasure in being where she was, in listening to her and looking’ at her,
- and holding her affectionately bright attention for his own thoughts, was
- peculiarly strong in him to-day. But there was also the consciousness of a
- new gravity in her attitude toward him—a kind of yearning
- apprehension of dangers threatening him. He saw again in her eyes when she
- looked at him that likeness to his mother’s glance—a wistfully sad
- glance as he most often recalled it. And yet Kathleen smiled merrily with
- it all, when occasion required.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are entering upon the great experience now,” she said to him: “I
- think it was very wise of Emanuel to show you first what we may call his
- ideal state of society. By all the rules, it ought to help you to
- understand in the right way what you will see of the society which—well,
- which isn’t in an ideal state. But there are certain things which get to
- be understood, not so much by brains, as by years. That is to say, the
- very cleverest youth may not be able to see, in this one respect, what is
- plain enough to most dull persons at forty. Emanuel tells me that he has
- talked with you about women in general.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He does not like them very much,” said Christian, laughingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- She twisted the corners of her mouth in a droll little grimace, which
- seemed to express approval of his mirth, and something more besides.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He takes them with tremendous seriousness,” she answered. “That is his
- way with everything. He makes all sorts of classifications—the
- bigger they are and the more complicated the better he likes them—and
- then he treats each one as a problem, and he worries at it with all his
- energy until he works out a satisfactory solution. It is only in that
- sense that he has a grievance against women. He has proceeded upon the
- theory that the sex is a unit, for philosophical purposes at least, and
- that he ought to be able to get at the rules which govern its actions. But
- we continue to baffle him,” she added, again with the playful curl of the
- lips.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you—you are not in the problem,” protested Christian. “For you
- and his mother he has only the veneration one gives to one’s favorite
- saints.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “His mother was a great woman,” said Kathleen, serious once more. “I never
- saw her, but she is my patron saint, as you put it, quite as much as his.
- I never permit myself to doubt that we should have loved each other deeply—and
- it is the sweetest thing any one can think of me, or say to me—to
- link us together. But even the saints have their specialties—and
- that implies limitations. I have a notion that Emanuel’s mother did not
- know many women, and so fell into a way of generalizing about them.
- Emanuel has that same tendency. I, who work among them daily, and make it
- my business to be teacher and mistress and mother and sister to some five
- hundred of them, young and old, foolish and wise—I come to believe
- that these generalizations are entirely mistaken. If a woman is brought up
- like a man, and circumstanced precisely like a man, and knows nothing of
- any conventions save those which control a man—why, then you can’t
- tell the difference between her opinions and actions and those of her
- brother. But you never get the chance to view a woman under those
- conditions.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But here we shall see them!” cried Christian, with premature enthusiasm.
- “You will change all that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no, I shan’t,” she answered abruptly. “It is not being tried—it
- is not desirable. What I am doing proceeds quite on orthodox lines. We
- make a point of developing them in the way of usefulness—material
- usefulness, I mean. We teach them the useful accomplishments—spinning,
- weaving, sewing, dairy and poultry work, and above all things good
- cooking.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That I can well believe,” he declared. “I have never eaten so many good
- dishes in my life as here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I <i>have</i> a talent in that direction,” she assented. “And I am
- prouder of it because it represents a triumph over my ancestral
- prejudices. You will get nothing good to eat in Ireland. The Irish have
- never respected food as a proper subject for serious human thought. It is
- the rarest thing to hear them mention it. There may be some fine spiritual
- quality in that—but at all events we cook well here, and I have
- worked a complete revolution in that respect on the estate. There are
- certainly no such cooks and housekeepers anywhere else in England as my
- women. But you see what I mean. There is no effort to take women away from
- the work they have always been doing, but only to make them do it better.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that in itself is very much,” urged Christian. Somehow he had the
- feeling that he was defending the System against a critic.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Undoubtedly,” she admitted. “And of course we do something more than
- that. In a good many cases, when it was not inconvenient, I have put young
- girls of aptitude forward to learn designing and other arts. Some of them
- have made me some very tolerable tapestry, and a few of them are as
- intelligent and valuable in the greenhouses as our best men. In the matter
- of music they really beat them. Emanuel insists on a choir of glee singers
- in each village—and at Christmas time we have a competition of
- ‘waits’ which will be worth your while coming to hear. For my part, I have
- a string orchestra of girls that I should not be ashamed to have play in
- London.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The word seemed to bring them back, “You were going to speak to me,”
- Christian ventured, “about London. One thing—I shall see you there
- often, shall I not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She slowly shook her head. “No, we have outgrown London, I’m afraid. It
- can be proved, I believe, that it is the biggest town in the world—but
- to us it is too small for comfort. It is now more than a year since we
- have been up at all. Why should we go? We have the National Gallery by
- heart, and the year’s pictures are rather distressing than otherwise. The
- theaters are intellectually beneath notice. There is the opera of course,
- and the concerts, but the people annoy us by talking loudly, and besides,
- we have our own music, and occasionally we bring down a Paderewski or a
- Sarasate for our people to hear. At the houses where we would naturally
- go, the women talk about matters of which I know absolutely nothing, and
- Emanuel either quarrels with the men about what they call their politics,
- or chokes silently with rage and disgust. And then the spectacle of the
- people in the streets—the poor of London!—that fairly sickens
- our hearts. We have no joy of going at all. Occasionally we have guests
- down here, but it is not a very happy time they have of it. Everything is
- so strange to them that they are confused, and walk about with constraint,
- as if they were being shown around an asylum. So it happens that I see
- very few women of my own class—and really know less about them than
- most people. And yet,” she added, with a twinkle in her eye, “so naturally
- audacious a race are the Irish—it is precisely about ladies in
- London society that I am going to read you a lecture.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian drew up his feet, and assumed an air of delighted anticipation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “First of all, you are six and twenty, and you will be thinking of
- marrying. What is more, you are what is called a great match, and for
- every thought that you give to the subject of a wife, others will give ten
- thousand to the subject of you as a possible husband.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man looked into her kindly eyes with a sustained glance of
- awakening thought. This dazzling and princely position which she had thus
- outlined—sure enough, it was his! How extraordinary that this had
- not suggested itself to him before! Or had the perception of it not really
- lain dormant in his consciousness all the while? This question propounded
- itself to a mind which was engrossed in something else—for of a
- sudden there rose upon the blank background of his thoughts the luminous
- face of a lady, beautiful, distinguished, exquisitely sensitized, and as
- by the trick of a dream she first wore a large garden hat, and then was
- bare-headed, her fair hair gathered loosely back into a careless knot. The
- mental picture expanded, to show the full length of her queenly figure as
- she descended a broad staircase, with one lovely hand like a lily against
- the oak of the rail. Then it contracted, and underwent a strange
- metamorphosis, for it was another face which he saw, a pale, earnest,
- clever face, and instead of the great stairway, there was the laced
- tawdriness of a French railway compartment.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, with a start, and a backward movement of the head, he was free of
- dreamland, and blushingly conscious of having stared his cousin out of
- countenance. He laughed with awkward embarrassment. “I—I suppose it
- is true—what you say,” he remarked, stumblingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- She had perhaps some clew to the character of his reverie. She smiled in a
- gently quizzical way, but went on soberly enough. “The thing of all
- things,” she said, “is to be clearly and profoundly convinced in your own
- mind that your marriage will be the most important event of your life—that
- it will indeed affect, for good or for bad, every conceivable element of
- your life. You have the kind of temperament which would be peculiarly
- susceptible to such intimate influences. There are great numbers of men—the
- vast majority—to whom it does not matter so much. They accommodate
- themselves to their burdens, and shuffle along somehow, with the patience
- of a cart-horse. But you—the wrong wife would wreck you and kill
- you. I am speaking frankly, laddie,”—she gave the novel word an
- intonation which made it music in his ears—“because you have no
- mother, and because you are going into a very trying and delicate
- situation with what I feel to be a pathetic lack of preparation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian drew his chair nearer to her, and crossed his knees, and leaned
- back in an attitude of intimate ease. The conversation appealed powerfully
- to him as having more of the atmosphere of domesticity and sweet home
- influences in it than any he had ever heard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know almost nothing at all of women,” he said, quite simply. “The
- mothers of my pupils I saw sometimes and occasionally a sister, but they
- were not in any sense my friends. As to marriage—of course that has
- never been in my head. Until only the other day, the idea of a wife would
- have been absurd. But now—as you say—it is not any longer
- absurd.” He paused and gazed absently past her, as if in pursuit of the
- thoughts his own words had set in motion. “I wonder—I wonder”—he
- murmured, and then turned his bright eyes to her, full of wistful
- expectancy. “Have you, par exemple, some one in your mind for me?” he
- asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- She laughed and shook her head. The implication in his tone, of entire
- readiness to accept the bride of her selection, had its amusing and its
- flattering sides; upon a second glance, however, it contained something
- else not so much to her liking. She frowned a little at this something.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you must not approach the subject in that spirit,” she adjured him.
- “It is the one affair of all others on earth in which you must be guided
- absolutely by your own heart and your own mind. We speak of the heart and
- mind as distinct from each other; I don’t know that they are not one and
- the same. Perhaps I would put it this way—when your heart <i>and</i>
- your mind are completely agreed, when your personal liking and your
- deliberate judgment pull together in exactly the same direction—so
- that it seems to you that they <i>are</i> one and the same thing—then—then——-”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then what?” demanded Christian, bending forward.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I am not fortunate in expressing myself to-day,” Kathleen declared,
- with a gesture of playful impatience. “But in general, this is what I
- wanted to say: Do not be betrayed into haste in this matter of deciding
- about a girl. You will see a large number of extremely attractive young
- ladies. They will certainly not be looking or behaving their worst for
- your benefit, and you on your side will be lacking the experience to tell
- precisely what it is all worth. So walk quietly along, with your wits
- about you, and see what there is to be seen for a time, and commit
- yourself to nothing. A year hence, for example, you will look back upon
- your present condition of mind with surprise. You will not seem to
- yourself at all the same person. I can’t promise that you’ll be happier,”
- she added, with a little smiling sigh, “but you will know a great deal
- more about what you want—or rather about making sure that you are
- getting what you want.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know what I shall do,” he declared, after a moment’s reflection. “I
- shall come always to you, and beg your wise and good advice. You will tell
- me if I am making a bad choice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You talk as if you were entering upon a lifelong series of experiments,”
- she laughed at him. “No, I’ll undertake no such responsibility as that,
- young man.” She explained, more gravely: “It is never quite possible for a
- friend, no matter how wise and fond the friend may be, to advise upon this
- matter. To give information upon the subject, that is another affair. But
- specific advice, no. But let me finish what I had in mind to say. You have
- seen here, during this past fortnight, what great hopes are built upon
- your administration of your affairs when you come into the title. No,
- don’t speak yet. You must not pledge yourself at all to the System. It
- would be unfair to let you do it. But at all events you have seen it, and
- you will think it all over, and, whether you take it up altogether or not,
- I know it will have its effect on you. You will set an ideal of usefulness
- and duty before you, and you will have your heart fixed on realizing it.
- Well, then, I counsel you above all things to keep that idea in mind
- whenever you think of marriage. A man has a good many sides to his life,
- but the side which is most vital to him is that of the work he wants to do
- in the world. If the wife fits perfectly on that side, the discrepancies
- elsewhere are of small account by comparison. They smooth away, they
- adjust themselves. But the misfit on the side of the man’s ambitions—that
- never effaces itself. And so, just in proportion as the work you want to
- do becomes clear in your mind, you ought to define to yourself the type of
- woman who will be most sympathetic toward that work, and who will best
- help you in it—or rather, who will help you in it in the way you
- like best. I don’t say you will find the perfect type of that woman—but
- you should have the type before you, and be able to measure people by its
- standards. But I have harangued you long enough! There is something in the
- atmosphere here: we all deliver lectures to each other at the most
- unscrupulous length. Poor boy! We’ve done nothing but make speeches to you
- since you showed in sight.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian deprecated her suggestion with persuasive hands. “I have learned
- here, I think, all that I know,” he protested. He did not, however, insist
- upon further generalizations. “One thing you said,” he remarked,
- thoughtfully, “puts a question into my head. You said it was better to
- give information than advice. Now there is so much that I am in ignorance
- about. Perhaps I do wrong to ask you—but I am curious to know more
- about the people of the family—our own family. There are no ladies
- of my own blood? I mean, all I have seen or heard of come to us by
- marriage, like yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You hit upon the weakest and unhappiest point,” she replied. “There has
- not been a daughter born in the Torr family for over a hundred years. I
- have always insisted that this has operated like a curse on the family.
- The beautiful humanizing charm of little girls about the house—this
- they have never felt. The mothers have had no daughters to lean upon, the
- men have never known what a sister was like. That one fact, it seems to
- me, is enough to account for everything that is hard and rough and cruel
- in their story.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian bowed his head in silent token of comprehension.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am always more grieved than angry, when I’m thinking of the black sheep
- in the family fold,” she went on. “They had never a chance. It was like a
- tradition in the family that the father should be a brute and the mother a
- fool. A daughter here and there might have softened the combination—but
- with little boys alone face to face with it—what could they do? They
- grew up in the stables and the kennels. Think of those two young men whom
- you met at Caermere, for example. Lord Julius told me of their scene with
- you, and I’m far from blaming you—but think of their bringing up!
- Their father, Lord Edward, I remember very well. I saw him when I was a
- girl, at the Punchestown races, and my brother told me his name. Even
- without it, I should have remembered his face as the coarsest and meanest
- I ever saw. He married a woman out of some vile gambling set that he was
- in as a young man. She is still alive somewhere, and has an allowance from
- Lord Julius for suppressing herself, and not using the family name. Well,
- when I think of the blood in those two boys, and of the horrors of their
- childhood till they were taken away from their mother, and sent into the
- country to school—upon my soul I can only wonder that they come so
- near decency as they do. Your encounter with them happened to strike out
- sparks, but you must remember what a blow it represented to them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man gave a somewhat perfunctory nod. His sympathies were somehow
- obdurate upon this particular point.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, and that reminds me,” she went on. “I said that the family was
- daughterless—but Eddy has a little girl. It is very quaint to think
- what she will grow up like, under the maternal wing of Cora Bayard. Yet I
- am told there are worse mothers than Cora. I’ve never seen her, myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I saw her at Caermere,” Christian remarked. “She seemed very frightened
- and sad—and since it was because of me, I did not look much at her.
- I remember only the effect of a likeness to Pierrot—the red lips on
- the white face. But”—he drew his chair still nearer, and betrayed by
- manner and tone alike his approach to a subject of more than casual
- interest—“the other lady whom I saw there—Lady Cressage—I
- had much conversation with her. I feel that she and I are friends. I liked
- her very much indeed—but I have no information about her whatever.
- If I am permitted to confess it—I tried to talk about her with Lord
- Julius and with Emanuel, but they at once spoke of other things. You see
- how frankly I am telling you everything; that is because you make me feel
- so wonderfully at home. But perhaps you do not like to talk about her,
- either.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled pleasantly enough in comment upon his faltering conclusion.
- “Oh, I think you exaggerate the conspiracy of silence,” she answered.
- “Neither Lord Julius nor Emanuel has anything hostile to say about Edith
- Cressage, but she doesn’t quite appeal to their imagination, and so they
- find nothing of any sort to say. But it is only fair to remember that they
- are both men with peculiar and exacting standards for women. They would be
- equally silent about a hundred other ladies of unblemished character, and
- of beauty and wit untold. It is nothing at all against her that she hasn’t
- excited their enthusiasm. I do not know her at all well, but I think she
- is very nice. Now—is that what you wanted me to say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The mild note of banter which informed her words put Christian if possible
- even more at his ease. He stood up, with his hands in the sleek pockets of
- his new coat, and bent down upon her a joyous smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, ever so much more!” he insisted, gaily. “She is very beautiful; she
- has the air and the distinction of a grande dame; she speaks like a flute,
- and what she says is clever and apropos; she is unhappy, and yet with no
- bitterness toward any one; she seemed to like me very much, and, mind you,
- she was the first fine lady whom I had ever met. Enfin, she is my cousin,
- and the fact impresses me. What is more natural than that I should be
- eager to know all about her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Kathleen did not respond readily to his mood. She knitted her brows
- slightly once more, and looked away from him toward the window. “It is
- rather hard for me to explain,” she began at last, doubtfully. “From a
- good many points of view—her own included—I dare say we do her
- an injustice. Don’t misunderstand me; we are all sorry for her—and I
- for one have my moments of doubt whether we oughtn’t to be something more
- than sorry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, that is the phrase,” put in Christian, strenuously. “I think that I
- myself am something more than sorry for her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked up at him, at first with a shadow of apprehension in her eyes.
- Then she estimated aright his enthusiasm with a gentle smile. “I will
- explain as well as I can,” she said, softly. “As you say, you are entitled
- to be told. The feeling, then, is—I am speaking of Lord Julius and
- Emanuel, and more or less of myself too—the feeling is that she
- ought not to have made the marriage she did. Everybody knew that the young
- man she married was a worthless creature—a violent, ignorant,
- low-minded fellow. You could not see him, much less talk with him, without
- recognizing this. One knows perfectly well that she must have hated the
- very thought of him as a lover or a companion. But he is the heir to a
- dukedom, and so she marries him. You see what I mean; it seemed an
- unpleasant thing to us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian considered with a puzzled air the situation thus defined. “But,”
- he commented, with hesitation, “it is the metier of a young woman to get a
- husband, and to get the best one for herself that she can. If she is so
- beautiful that a man wishes to make her a duchess, why, that is her
- triumph. Would you have her forego it? And if she says ‘no’, why, then the
- next one he asks says ‘yes’—and it is merely that the first one has
- waived her place in the queue for another. The queue remains the same. And
- if this were not so, why, then, young men who are not very good, they
- would get no wives at all. But,” he added, in extenuation of his dissent,
- “all these matters are so differently regarded, you know, in France.” She
- did not look altogether pleased with him. “I thought you would have caught
- my meaning more readily,” she said, “despite your Continental point of
- view. For that matter, it is the common English point of view also. There
- is a matrimonial market, of course, and girls offer themselves in it to
- the highest bidder, and nothing that we can do will change it. But at
- least we are free to think what we like of the wretched business—and
- to hold our own opinions of the people who traffic in it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Kathleen had stated her position with a certain argumentative warmth,
- which gave her tone a novel effect of reproof. The sight now of the young
- man’s saddened and surprised expression sent her mood up with a rebound.
- She put a hand on his arm, as he stood before her, and reassured him by a
- kindly laugh. “Ah, now,” she said, with genial pleading in her soft voice,
- “don’t be making a mountain of my molehill. I only wanted you to
- understand how we felt. And as I have told you, we have our reservations
- about even that feeling. The poor girl did only what she was expected to
- do—what her mother and her family and all the friends that
- surrounded her took it quite as a matter of course that she should do.
- Probably she never once encountered the opinion that she should do
- otherwise. No doubt that is to be said for her. In fact, I should never
- have dreamed of blaming her to you, if you had not pressed me. And after
- it’s all said and done, you may take it from me that perhaps I don’t blame
- her so very much. She was poor, and not over comfortable at home, I think,
- and she was very young, and people ran after her to an extraordinary
- extent—and to be the beauty of the season in London is enough to
- turn any one’s head. Poor creature—it’s bitterly enough she’s paid
- for her whistle!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He smiled down into her eyes. “That is how I knew you would end by
- speaking of her,” he said. “It is in that same way that she moves me—by
- my compassion. And this is my fancy”—he began, in a more vivacious
- tone—“I should like to tell it to you—it seems that I am to
- have the power to do so many such wonderful things—well, then,
- nothing would delight me more than to be very good to her. It is my <i>fantaisie</i>—and
- there is no harm in it, <i>is</i> there?—to atone to her for some of
- the unhappiness she has suffered. I have thought about it much since I
- left Caermere. It seems that it would be a good thing for me to do—like
- an act of piety. You must remember—she was the first lady who spoke
- kindly to me in England. And I think you will be pleased with me for being
- grateful. But, of course, if Emanuel tells me ‘no’——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no one will tell you ‘no,’” she assured him, rising as she spoke, and
- looking into his face with beaming eyes. “It is the kind of spirit we like
- in you. Never imagine that we will be obstacles in its way. Only be on
- your guard against the soft heart running away with you. The world is full
- of clever and adroit people who practice upon innocent generosity. It is
- not so much the worth of what they wheedle from you, as the shock of your
- discovery of their tricks. That hurts a young nature, and very often
- callouses and hardens it. But here I am, lecturing you again!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian had not, in truth, been following her remarks with complete
- attention. Something had come up in his mind, which by the time she
- stopped he seemed to have turned over and over, and examined from many
- standpoints, and finally decided to speak about.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was not wholly exact,” he began, with constraint, “when I said that
- Lady Cressage was the first lady who spoke kindly to me in England. I
- mentioned it to Lord Julius—there was a very charming and good young
- lady who traveled with me from Rouen, and crossed on the boat—and it
- is a very curious thing, but when we became acquainted, and I hinted to
- her about my story, she knew who I was. Indeed, it was she who told me who
- I was. I had the whole wonderful tale from her—and the kindness and
- sweet sympathy with which she told it to me, a little at a time—ah,
- that is what I will never forget! I am bound to remember her with
- gratitude all my life. And that is another <i>fantaisie</i> of mine—that
- I shall do something good for her. Oh, she has no selfish thoughts! She
- would not even tell me her name!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Kathleen’s comment was prefaced by a mirthful chuckle. “I can’t deny that
- gratitude is a very active and resourceful element in your composition,”
- she declared, and laughed again. “Oh, we’ll advertise for her. How would
- this do: ‘The young lady who meets returning lost heirs to the British
- nobility at Rouen, and lets them down easily’? Or we might——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah,” Christian interrupted, pleadingly, “I am really very sincere about
- her. You cannot imagine anything finer or more delicate than her
- character. And besides,”—he added this with visible reluctance—“I
- have learned since who she is. Lady Cressage told me. She is the sister of
- the lady you call Cora—the wife of that young man Edward—but
- she is not an actress! It is not in the least her <i>type!</i> She earns
- her own living—she has some work to do—I think it is with a
- writing-machine—that is, a type-writer, n’est-ce pas?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Emanuel did not immediately reply, but moved to the window, looked
- out and then walked slowly back to where he stood. “I am not going to
- suggest an unkind thought about this girl,” she said, deliberately. “I
- would not want you to think differently of her, or of the grateful impulse
- you have toward her. Indeed, I have heard something of her—and it is
- much to her credit. But—this sounds a mean thing to say, and yet it
- has its important true side—people should stick to their class. Bear
- that always in mind. There seem to be brilliant exceptions to the rule,
- whenever we look about us—but just the same, the rule exists. But—now
- I <i>will</i> stop, once for all!” She mused at him, with a twinkling eye.
- “You poor lad, there’s something about you that draws down lectures as a
- lightning-rod draws electricity. And here’s the trap!”
- </p>
- <p>
- When Emanuel returned from London a few days later, to report that his
- young cousin had been comfortably installed in chambers on Duke Street,
- St. James’s, and seemed to get on capitally with Lord Lingfield, who was
- showing him the ropes, Kathleen received the news with less than her
- accustomed cheerfulness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t been quite happy, thinking of him alone in London,” she
- admitted, in the course of their conversation. “I feel, somehow, as if we
- should have gone up, and taken a house for the winter.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, but, sweetheart,” he urged, almost reproachfully, “you see how I am
- up to my eyes in all sorts of work. This is really about the most trying
- and ticklish stage we have gone through yet. If the fibrous silk processes
- are what is claimed for them, and your girls display the aptitude that you
- count upon——”
- </p>
- <p>
- But Kathleen for once seemed not to listen. She had turned, and moved a
- few steps listlessly away. She took a flower from a vase, picked it to
- pieces and gazed in a brown study at the meaningless fragments.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I know,” she remarked at last, with a half sigh. Then she threw the
- petals into the grate, and, with a decisive little shake of head and
- shoulders, wheeled round, and came smilingly to her husband.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And whom did you see in town?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- PART III
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>oward the end of
- April, there came an afternoon on which Christian seemed to himself to
- wake up of a sudden as from a harassed sleep.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had been in England for over six months, when all at once he became
- conscious of this queer sensation: the experiences of his half year put
- themselves together before his mental eye in the aspect of a finished
- volume—of something definitely over and done with.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was warm spring in the London air, and at first the vague feeling of
- unrest impressed him as a part of the general vernal effect. The device of
- taking a stroll through the parks, to note the early flowers and the
- wonderful infancy of leafage among the trees, seemed at the outset to fit
- this new mood that was upon him. Then abruptly he wearied of nature and
- turned his back upon it, driving in a hansom to his club. Here there was
- no one whom he knew, or at least cared to speak with. He sat for a time in
- the billiard-room, watching with profound inattention the progress of a
- game he knew nothing about. From this he wandered into the library, where
- some fierce-faced old gentlemen slept peacefully in armchairs about the
- alcoves. The sound of their breathing vexed him; he pretended to himself
- that otherwise he would have found solace in a book. The whim seized him
- to go home to his chambers, and have tea there comfortably in gown and
- slippers, and finish a novel Lady Milly Poynes had induced him to begin
- weeks before.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once in his own easy-chair, the romance lying opened beside him, he put
- back his head, stretched his feet and yawned. He left untasted the tea
- which Falkner brought in; with fingers interlaced behind his neck he
- stared up at the blue of the sky through his window in formless
- rumination.
- </p>
- <p>
- His earlier glimpses of London were dim enough memories now. The town had
- been described by his cousin Lingfield as empty when he arrived, and after
- a few days of desultory sight-seeing, he had been carried off to the earl
- of Chobham’s place in Derbyshire. Here, among people who behaved like
- kindly kinsmen to the young new-comer, yet failed to arouse much interest
- in his mind, he learned to shoot well enough to escape open protests by
- the autocratic head gamekeeper, and to keep his seat in the saddle after a
- fashion of his own. These acquirements stood him in good stead at the four
- or five other country houses to which the amiable Lingfield in due course
- led him. Without them, meager as they were, he would have been in a sorry
- plight indeed. They provided him with a certain semblance of justification
- for his presence among people who seemed incapable of amusing themselves
- or their guests in any other way. There were always ladies, it was true,
- and it was generally manifest to him that he might spend his time with
- them if he chose, but after a few tentative experiments he fell back upon
- the conviction that he did not know how to talk to English ladies. He
- drifted somehow through these months of hospitable entertainment, feeling
- that he had never known before what loneliness could mean.
- </p>
- <p>
- When, at Christmas, he went to spend another fortnight with Emanuel, he
- had it in his heart to confess to disappointment, and even depression. He
- had not thus far fitted at all into the place which had been prepared for
- him, and he looked forward, with wistful eagerness, as he journeyed
- westward, to the balm of sympathy and tender comprehension with which
- Kathleen and Emanuel, dear people that they were, would soothe and heal
- his wounded self-consciousness. Somehow, the opportunity of unburdening
- his troubled mind, however, did not come to him. There were other guests,
- including Lord Julius, and such exceptional attention was devoted on the
- estates to elaborating the holiday festivities of the various villages,
- that no individual could hope to secure consideration for his own private
- emotions. It was sometimes suspected that Emanuel made so much of
- Christmas in his System, unconsciously no doubt, because the Jewish side
- of him felt the need of ostentation in its disavowal of theological
- prejudices. For whatever reason, the festival was observed here in a
- remarkable spirit. The little churches were embowered in holly and
- mistletoe, and were the scenes of numerous ornate services. There were
- processions, merry-makings, midnight visitations of the “waits,” concerts
- and dances throughout the week, and only the strictly necessary work of
- the community was performed meanwhile. On New Year’s Day the rejoicings
- culminated in a children’s carnival from one end of the property to the
- other, with big trees laden with lights and gifts in the German fashion,
- and exhibitions of the magic lantern, and other juvenile delights. The
- fortnight passed, and Christian returned to London, as has been said,
- without having anything like the intimate talk he had expected. Both
- Kathleen and Emanuel had seemed pleased with him; they had noted with
- approving comment his progress in the use of idiomatic English, and his
- rapid assimilation of the manners and bearing of those about him; they had
- heard none but welcome reports of him from outside, and made clear to him
- their gratification at the fact. Their smile for him was as affectionate,
- their display of pleasure in his presence as marked, as ever, but he had
- the sense, none the less, of something altered. Lord Julius bore him
- company on his journey to London, and after a brief halt, took him away
- again for another fortnight, this time at Brighton. He was no more
- successful with the father, in the matter of helpful confidences, than he
- had been with the son. It was impossible to tell the strong, big,
- redoubtable old gentleman of what he felt to be his weaknesses. A kind of
- desponding pride possessed him, and closed his lips. He was not happy, as
- he had supposed he would be, and he could not bring himself to feel that
- at any point the fault was his. It was the position that was incongruous.
- Yet how could he complain, or avow his discontent, without seeming an
- ingrate to the benefactors whose heart had been in the work of shaping and
- gilding that position for him?
- </p>
- <p>
- Parliament met this year in January, and Christian saw now a London which
- he had not imagined to himself—for which nothing, indeed, had
- prepared him. There came all at once a great many invitations, and the
- young man, surprised and not a little dismayed, called Lord Lingfield to
- his assistance. The prospect unfolded to him by this accomplished
- professor of the proprieties was terrifying enough. At the end of a week
- Christian cried out that the reality was too much. But Lingfield could see
- no alternative to going on. “You will get used to it soon enough, now that
- you have once taken the plunge,” he assured him. “There are certain things
- that a fellow has to do, you know, when he’s in London in the season, or
- even now, in what you may call the half season, unless he’s going to chuck
- the thing altogether.” Christian replied with excitement that this was
- precisely what he wished to do. In his own mind he had already reached the
- point of debating whether he could honorably go on using the money placed
- to his credit at the bank, most of which was still there, if he fled from
- London, and even England.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Lingfield was a fine young man, irreproachable in attire and manners,
- who expected to do something in politics, and who regarded his duty both
- to the future which he hoped to create for himself, and to the immediate
- present which had been created for him, with conscientious gravity. He had
- never thought of lightening or evading the tasks set before him; he had no
- perception whatever of the possibility of making such things easier for
- others. He assured Christian with gentle solemnity that desertion was not
- to be mentioned, and that even mitigation was undesirable. “It has all
- been arranged for you,” he urged. “Upon my word, you are very lucky. You
- have been to two houses already where I never get asked except to
- luncheon, and here is a card here which I could hardly believe my eyes to
- see To trifle with such chances would be simple madness. You will get to
- have all London at your fingers’ ends, your very first season. Such a
- start as you’re likely to have, I’ve never seen in my life. My dear fellow—you
- don’t understand what it means.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I’m tired to death!” groaned Christian. “No doubt they are excellent
- people, but they weary me to the bone. The dinners, the calls, the
- receptions, the dances—I have no talent whatever for these things.
- It is very kind of these people—but I know I am ridiculous in it
- all. I give them no pleasure, and God knows I receive none. Then why must
- it go on? For whose benefit is it? I swear to you, I would not mind the
- labor and fatigue, if it was any good that I was doing. Emanuel, for
- example, toils like a slave, but then his work has great results. But this
- of mine——!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, yes,” interposed Lingfield, smilingly. “But Emanuel could never have
- made much running in London. He disputes with people too much, don’t you
- know. They don’t like that. And I think you make much too hard work of it
- all. There’s no need for <i>you</i> to talk, you know. It isn’t expected
- of you. And I don’t see why you can’t move quietly along, going
- everywhere, being seen at the right places, and being civil to everybody,
- and not worry yourself at all. That’s what you need, my dear boy—repose!
- Let the other people do the worry. Now, of course, in a case like Dicky
- Westland’s it’s different. He has to be amusing and useful, or he wouldn’t
- get asked. But you are not on all fours with him at all. To tell the truth—no
- doubt it’ll sound strange to you, but it is the truth all the same—it’s
- better form for you not to be amusing, or brilliant, or that sort of
- thing. Fellows in your place don’t go in for it, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian sighed, and chafing at the necessity of submission, still
- submitted.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now, as he lay back in his chair, the retrospect was augmented by six
- other weeks, in which he had passively yielded to what Lingfield had
- assured him was the inevitable. He had dined out almost every-night, and
- had made countless calls. It seemed to him that he must have met everybody
- in this huge metropolis who had a pair of shoulders or possessed a dress
- coat. He yawned at the thought of them.
- </p>
- <p>
- Was he not himself to blame for this? At Christmas time he had been quite
- confident in answering “no” to this question; now he did not feel so sure
- about it. At one place or another he had come into contact with most of
- the members of the government, and with many of those distinguished
- statesmen on the opposite bench who, by the grace of the genial British
- electorate, would be ministers next time. He had talked with eminent
- artists, eminent scientists, eminent writers, eminent soldiers and
- sailors, and watched them and listened to them as they sat over their
- cigars, or moved about among the ladies in the drawing-rooms. Hostesses
- whose cordial good will toward him seemed equaled only by their capable
- control over others, had said to him time and time again: “If there is any
- one you want to know, tell me.” The phrase lingered in his mind as a
- symbol of his position. He had merely to mention his wish, like some lucky
- person of the fables who possessed a talisman. It could not be said that
- he had used his magic power foolishly or perversely. He had followed in
- dutiful, painstaking solicitude the path marked out for him by his
- advisers. He had done the best that was in him to do; he had gone wherever
- Lingfield bade him go; he had loyally kept awake late at night; he had
- smiled and bowed and spoken affable words; he had fulfilled punctually all
- the engagements imposed upon him. What was more, he could no longer
- pretend that he made a failure of the thing; it was known to him that he
- had created a pleasant impression upon London, and that people liked him.
- </p>
- <p>
- For all that, he could not feel that in turn he liked these people. Among
- those of whom he had seen the most, was there any whom he profoundly
- desired ever to see again? He passed some random figures in mental review,
- and suffered them to vanish without thrusting forth any tentacle of
- thought to detain them. They had not entered his real life; they meant
- nothing to him. Positively he was as much alone in London to-day as he had
- been when he first set foot in it. Indeed, was he not the poorer to-day by
- all those lost illusions and joyous, ardent hopes now faded to
- nothingness? In return for these departed treasures, he had only empty
- hands to show—and a jaded, futilely mutinous, empty mind as well.
- </p>
- <p>
- The soft, equable tinkle of the door-bell caught his ear, but scarcely
- arrested his attention. Perhaps unconsciously the sound served to polarize
- his thoughts, for suddenly it became apparent to him that he was in
- revolt. All this intolerable social labor was ended for him—definitely
- and irrevocably ended. He would not dine at another house; he would burn
- forthwith his basket of cards, and the little book with its foolish record
- of ladies’ days “at home.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He sat up and sipped at his lukewarm tea, with the glow of a new resolve
- on his face.
- </p>
- <p>
- Falkner—a smooth-mannered, assiduous, likable man of middle age whom
- Emanuel had given him from his own household—entered the room to
- announce a caller. A brisk, alert tread on the polished hall floor behind
- him cut into his words, so that Christian did not catch them. He rose, and
- looked inquiringly.
- </p>
- <p>
- For an instant, he felt that he was not glad to see the person who came
- in. It was a young man of about his age, tall and fair, and handsome in a
- buoyant, bright-faced way of his own. His blue eyes sparkled cheerfully
- into Christian’s doubtful glance, and he held out a hand as he advanced.
- Everybody in the world called him Dicky Westland, and for this opening
- moment Christian thought of him as preeminently typical of all the
- vanities and artificialities he was on the point of forswearing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not seedy, I hope?” the new-comer said in comment upon the other’s loose
- attire—and perhaps upon his dubious countenance as well. His voice
- had a musical vivacity in it which seemed to lighten the room. Christian,
- as he took the hand and shook his head, smiled a little. It began to occur
- to him that really he did like this young man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” he replied, with a gesture toward a chair. “I’m all right. Only the
- whim seized me—to come home and read a book. I got homesick, I
- think.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This statement, once in the air, seemed funny to the young men, and Dicky
- Westland laughed aloud. Christian, sitting down opposite his visitor, felt
- himself sharing his animation. ‘“It was good of you to come,” he declared,
- with a refreshed tone. “The truth is, I’m tired out. I am up too late. I
- run about too much.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, a fellow does get hipped,” assented Dicky. “But you are so
- tremendously regular, it doesn’t do you any harm. A days’ rest now and
- then, and you’re right as a trivet again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Regular,” Christian repeated, musingly. He formed his lips to utter some
- reflection upon the theme, and then closed them again. “Will you have a
- cup of tea?” he asked, with the air of thinking of something else.
- </p>
- <p>
- The other shook his head, and preserved a posture of vivacious
- anticipation, as if Christian had made a literal promise to unburden his
- mind. The suggestion was so complete that Christian accepted it as a
- mandate.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am glad you came,” he said, “because—well, because I have come to
- a conclusion in my mind, and I should like to put it into words for you—so
- that I can also hear it myself. I am resolved to go away—to leave
- London.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky lifted his brows in puzzled interrogation. “How do you mean?” he
- asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do not like it,” Christian replied, speaking more readily now, and
- enforcing his words with eager hands. Lingfield had cautioned him against
- this gesticulatory tendency, but the very consciousness that he was in
- rebellion brought his hands upward into the conversation. “It is not what
- I care for. I come into it too late, no doubt, to understand—appreciate
- it, properly. The people I meet—I have no feeling for them. It seems
- a waste of my time to sit with them, to stand and talk, to go about from
- one of their houses to another. At the end of it all, there is nothing.
- They have all thick shells on, and they are not going to let me get inside
- of them. And, moreover, if I did get inside, who can be sure there would
- be anything of value there? It does not often look so to me, from the
- outside. But it is a waste of time and labor, and it does not amuse me in
- the least, and why should I pursue it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Quite right!” said Dicky.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you agree with me?—you approve?” asked Christian, not
- concealing his surprise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course I do. It’s awful rot,” the other affirmed. He observed his host
- silently for a space, and meanwhile, by a quite visible process, the
- familiar external elasticity, not to say flippancy, of his manner seemed
- to fall away from him. “With me, of course,” he went on, almost gravely,
- “I have to do it. I must get my secretaryship, or I can’t live. My
- relations could put me into the swim, but they can’t support me there
- indefinitely. I have only two aunts, you know—dear old things, they
- are—and they keep me going, but they have only life interests, and I
- fancy they have to scrape a little as it is.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you see,” pursued Dicky Westland, “I must help myself, and it’s only
- by knowing the right people, and being seen at the right places, that a
- fellow can bring anything off. For example, now: Lady Winsey is a distant
- cousin of mine, and she’s promised the aunts, you know, and there’s an old
- Sir Hogface Something-or-Other dodging about the place, who’s going to get
- a West Indian governorship in May, and Lady Winsey has not only had him at
- her house to dinner, where he could see me, but has contrived to throw me
- at him at three other houses. Next week I’m to go down to a closing meet
- in Berkshire, just because he’s to be there—and that she arranged,
- too. And it’s all to get a place worth perhaps three hundred a year, with
- yellow fever thrown in—if it comes to anything at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Three hundred a year,” commented Christian, knitting his brows. “I still
- make pounds into francs to know what a sum means,” he explained,
- smilingly, after a moment. “Once I would have thought that a great fortune—and
- only a few months ago, too, at that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you see how it is,” said Dicky. “I mustn’t let any chance slip by.
- But if I stood in your shoes, dear God! how I would chuck it all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what would you do instead?” Christian propounded this question
- sitting back in his chair, with the tips of his fingers joined, and a calm
- twinkle in his eye. He discovered himself feeling as if it were his
- companion who had made confessions and craved sympathy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky looked into his hat, and pouted his lips in whimsical indecision.
- “What I mean is,” he explained at last—“my point was this—I
- hate the whole thing, and if I didn’t have to do it, why then I wouldn’t
- do it, d’ye see? I’d go about with nobody except the people I really cared
- about—my right-down, intimate friends. That’s the idea.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah—friends!” said Christian. “That is the word that sings in my
- ears!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He rose impulsively, and began walking about the room with a restless
- step. Now and again he halted briefly to look down upon his companion, to
- enforce with eyes as well as gesture some special thing in his talk. “Yes,
- friends!” he cried. “Tell me, you Dicky Westland, where are friends to be
- found? Have you some, perhaps? Then where did you come upon them? It is
- what I should like very much to know. Listen to me! I have been in England
- six months. I possess in England, say two—three—no, five
- friends—and all these came to me in my first week here. All but one
- belong to my family, so they were here, ready-made for me. But since that
- time, now that I am for myself, I have not gained one friend. Is there
- then something strange—what do I say—forbidding in me? Or no—it
- is nonsense for me to say that. It is the other way about. I have seen
- nobody who awakened voices within me. There has been no one who appealed
- to me as a friend should appeal. I live among a thousand rich and fine
- people who are as good to me as they know how to be—and yet I am as
- if I lived in a desert. And it is very cold—and lonely—and
- heartbreaking in this desert of mine!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Westland looked at him, as he stood now in the pathetic abandonment of his
- peroration, with a contemplative squint in one eye.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I see what you mean,” he remarked finally. “You’ve been looking for flesh
- and blood, and you find only gun-metal.” He thrust out his lips a little,
- and gave further consideration to the problem. “There isn’t any need for
- you to go away, you know,” he added after a pause. “You can have any kind
- of life you like in London. It is all here, if you want it. But what is it
- that you do want?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian threw himself sidewise into his chair, and bent his head with a
- sigh. Then, with a new light in his eyes, he looked up. “You yourself said
- it”—he exclaimed—“to see only my true friends. That is my idea
- of life: To have a small circle of people whom I love very much, and to
- make constant opportunities to be with some of them—talking as we
- like to talk, going about together, making life happy for one another as
- we go along. All my youth, I envied rich people, because I thought that
- they used their wealth to command this greatest of delights. I imagined
- that if one had much money, then one could afford to spend his time only
- with his close, dear friends. But what I discover is that they do
- something entirely different. They seem not to let friendship come into
- their lives at all. They desire only acquaintances, and of these the more
- they have the better, if they bear the proper cachet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the women,” said Dicky, sententiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They like the crowd, and the new faces. And what they like, of course
- they have. They run the whole show.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian nodded comprehension—then put out a hand to signalize a
- reservation. “I know women—here in England—who have a higher
- idea than this,” he declared, softly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course, so we all do,” assented Westland. “There are a million
- splendid women, if one could only get at them. But it’s a sort of trades
- union, don’t you know. You don’t take the workmen you want, on your own
- terms; you take those the society gives you, and the terms are arranged
- for you. It’s like that with women. You meet some awfully jolly girls now
- and then, but they are not in the least degree their own masters. If you
- try to get to know them well, either they’re frightened, and pull back
- into their shells, or you’re headed off by their mothers. But,” he added
- upon reflection—“of course it’s different with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “At least I am not interested,” said Christian, wearily. The advice of
- Kathleen had produced upon his mind an even greater effect, perhaps, than
- he imagined. He had encountered, by the dozen, extremely beautiful and
- engaging girls, whose charm should have been enhanced in his eyes by the
- dignity and even grandeur of their surroundings. But an impalpable yet
- efficient barrier had stood always between them and him. If they exhibited
- reserve, he was too shy for words. If they expanded toward him with smiles
- or any freedom of demeanor, he recalled instantly the warning of Emanuel’s
- wife, and that was fatal. “I have not cared for any of them,” he
- reaffirmed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh!” cried Westland of a sudden, his comely, boyish face beaming with the
- thought that had come to him. “How stupid of me! I’d forgotten what I came
- for—and I’m not sure it doesn’t precisely fill the bill. Are you
- doing anything to-night? Will you come with me to the Hanover Theater at
- midnight? It’s the five-hundredth performance of ‘Pansy Blossoms’—and
- there’s to be supper on the stage and a dance. I don’t think you’ve seen
- much of that sort of thing, have you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian shook his head, and regarded his companion doubtfully. “Nothing
- at all of it,” he said, slowly. “But it does not attract me very much, I’m
- afraid. You would better take some one else. I should be a fish out of
- water there. The people of the theaters—they are not congenial to me—that
- is, I do not think they would be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But, hang it all, man, how do you know till you’ve tried?” Dicky put a
- little worldly authority into his tone as he proceeded. “You mustn’t mind
- my saying it to you—it is you who make your own desert, as you call
- it, for yourself. If you say in advance that you know you won’t like this
- sort of person, or that, how are you ever going to form any friendships?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian received the remonstrance with meekness. “You do not quite
- understand me,” he said, amiably enough. “I have some work to do in the
- world, and I don’t think that actresses and actors would help me much to
- do it. The young men who run after them do not seem, somehow, to do much
- else. It is only a prejudice I have; it applies only to myself. If others
- feel differently, why, I have not a word to say.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, you must come!” Westland declared, rising. “It’s nonsense for you not
- to see that side of things. My dear fellow, it’s as respectable as the
- Royal Academy—or Madame Tussaud’s. Are you dining anywhere? Then
- I’ll run home and dress, and I’ll drive round here for you. We’ll dine
- together, and then look in at some of the halls. Shall I say seven? It
- gives us more time over our dinner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian accepted, with a rueful little smile, his committal to the
- enterprise. “You must not mind if I come away early,” he said, getting to
- his feet in turn.
- </p>
- <p>
- The other laughed at him. “My dear man, you’ll never want to come away at
- all. But no, seriously—it’s just the kind of thing you want. It’ll
- amuse you, for one thing—and deuce take it, you’ll be young only
- once in your life. But more than that—here you are swearing that
- you’ll do no more social work at all, and you don’t know in the least what
- other resources are open to you. It isn’t alone actresses that you meet at
- a place like this, but all sorts of clever people who know how to get what
- there is out of life. That is what you yourself want to do, isn’t it?
- Well, it’ll do you no harm, to say the least, to see how they go about
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very likely,” Christian replied, as the other turned. “I will be ready at
- seven.” He followed him to the door, and into the hallway. “Mind,” he
- said, half jokingly, half gravely, as he leaned over the banister, “I have
- not altogether promised. When midnight comes, I may lose my courage
- altogether.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, it’s that kind of timidity that storms every fortress in its path,”
- Dicky called up to him from the stairway.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XIV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he two young men
- dined at the Café Royal. “It’s as good a kitchen as there is in London,
- and in the matter of people it isn’t such a tiresome repetition of those
- one meets everywhere else as Willis’s or the Prince’s. To see the same
- shoulders and the same necks, night after night—a fellow gets tired
- of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- To this explanation by Dicky of his choice, as they rolled forward in
- their hansom, Christian made no direct response. After a little he said:
- “Very soon now, I am going to do something that seems to have been in my
- mind for months. Perhaps I have only thought of it since this afternoon: I
- cannot be sure. But I am going to do it—I am going to know for
- myself what the real London and the real England are like. A thousand
- gentlemen in black clothes and silk hats, a thousand ladies with low-cut
- dresses and feathers in their hair—all thinking and talking about
- themselves and their own little affairs—that does not mean London.
- And a few large houses in the country, where these same people spend a few
- months riding after the hounds and shooting tame birds and wearying each
- other with idle, sleepy talk—that does not represent England.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Doesn’t it!” cried Westland. “I should say that’s just what it did, worse
- luck!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, no!” protested Christian. “I don’t want to be told that it does—for
- then I should want to go away altogether. No—there is the other
- thing, and I am going to find it out, and see it and know it. When all
- those years of my boyhood and youth I was so proud of being an Englishman,
- it was not this empty, valueless life of the West End, or the chase of
- foxes and birds in the country, that I longed for, and nourished pride
- in.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, but they do other things, you know,” laughed Dicky. “They are in
- Parliament, some of them, or they are at the bar, or in the Services, or
- they manage estates or are directors in companies, and that sort of thing.
- And some of them go in a lot for charities, and work on committees and
- organize things, you know. You’d hardly believe how much of that most of
- the women let themselves in for.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is not what I mean,” said the other, rather abruptly. “To me all
- that is not worth the snap of a finger,” and he emphasized his words by a
- gestured with the hand which rested on the door of the hansom.
- </p>
- <p>
- At an advanced stage of the dinner, the young men came to the subject
- again. In reply to a random inquiry Christian said that his grandfather,
- the duke, as far as he knew, was neither worse nor better in health than
- he had been all winter. “I have not been to Caermere since my first
- visit,” he went on. “I am really living upon a programme arranged for me,
- I should think, by a committee of my relations. Lord Lingfield is my
- active bear-leader. He conducts me, or sends me, wherever it has been
- decided that I shall go. It was not deemed important that I should go to
- Caermere again—and so I have not gone. Voilà tout! If I had been
- free to myself, I think I should have gone.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It must be an awfully jolly place, from the pictures I’ve seen of it,”
- said Westland.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jolly!” cried Christian. “My dear creature, it is a grave, a mausoleum, a
- place of skulls and dead men’s bones! You have never seen such a family
- vault in all your days. When I even begin to think of undertaking the task
- of brightening it into life again, I grow dizzy. The immensity of the work
- unnerves me. And now I do not know if I shall ever put my hand to it. The
- country-gentleman idea—which you make so much of in England—it
- does not appeal to me. It is too idle—too purposeless. Of course my
- cousin Emanuel, he makes a terrible toil of it—and does some
- wonderful things, beyond doubt. But after all, what does it come to? He
- helps people to be extremely fine who without him would only be tolerably
- fine. But I have the feeling that one should help those who are not fine
- at all—who have never had the chance to be fine, who do not know
- what it means. Emanuel’s wife—oh, a very lovely character—she
- said to me that they disliked coming up to town, the sight of the London
- poor distressed them so much. Well, that is the point—if I am to
- help anybody at all, it is the London poor that I should try to help.
- Emanuel’s plan is to give extra bones, and teach new tricks, to dogs
- already very comfortable. My heart warms to the dogs without collars, the
- homeless and hungry devils who look for bones in the gutters.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you’re going in for settlements and that sort of thing,” commented
- Dicky. “I hear that is rather disappointing work. If you don’t take the
- sporting papers at the reading-room they say the men won’t come at all.
- Slingsby Chetwynd was awfully keen on the thing. He went down to stop a
- whole week—at Shoreditch or Houndsditch or the Isle of Dogs, or
- somewhere like that—and a woman smashed his hat in, and he fell into
- a cellar—and he was jolly glad to get back again the same night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian was pursuing thoughts of his own. The wine was admirable—as
- indeed it should have been considering the pains Dicky had been at, with
- pursed lips and lifted eyebrows, in the selection of it—and
- Christian had found an unaccustomed pleasure in its aromatic, sub-acid
- taste. He had drunk rather freely of it, and was satisfied with himself
- for having done so. He leaned back in his chair now, and watching the
- golden fountain of bubbles forever streaming upward in his glass, mused
- upon welcome new impulses within him toward the life of a free man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “None the less,” he remarked, indifferent to the irrelevancy of his theme,
- “I should have liked to go to Caermere during the winter. I am annoyed
- with myself now that I did not go—whether it was arranged for me or
- not. There is a lady there for whom I felt great sympathy. I had expected
- to be of service to her long before this—but I am of service to no
- one. She is a cousin—no doubt you know her—Lady Cressage.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But she is in London,” put in Westland. “I only know her a little, but
- Lady Selton used to be by way of seeing a good deal of her. She told me
- last week that she was in town—taken a little flat somewhere—Victoria
- Street way, I think. She doesn’t go in for being very smart, you know. Why—yes—of
- course she’s your cousin by marriage. Awfully pretty woman she was. Gad!
- how well I remember her season! All the fellows went quite off their
- heads. How funny—that she should be your cousin!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian took no note of his companion’s closing words, or of the tone in
- which they had been uttered. He scowled at the playful bubbles in his
- glass, as he reflected that the news of her arrival in London ought not to
- have come to him in this roundabout, accidental way. Why did none of his
- own people tell him? Or still more to the point, why had not she herself
- told him? He really had given her only an occasional and sporadic thought,
- during these past four or five months. Now, as he frowned at his wine, it
- seemed to him that his whole winter had been burdened with solicitude for
- her. Or no, “burdened” was an ungracious word, and false to boot. He would
- say “mellowed” or “enriched” instead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must find out for me”—he began, and then, upon a second thought
- born of pique, checked himself. “Or do not mind—it is of no
- consequence. I shall hear as a matter of course.” He called for the bill
- with a decision in his voice which seemed full of warning that the topic
- was exhausted.
- </p>
- <p>
- Westland could not help observing the fat roll of crackling white notes
- which the other drew from his pocket. If they were all of the smallest
- denomination, they must still represent something like his whole year’s
- allowance. The general understanding that Christian’s unfamiliarity with
- English ways excused, and even invited, wise admonition from his friends,
- prompted him to speak.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s rather a lot to carry about with you, old man,” he said, in gentle
- expostulation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I like it!” Christian declared, with shining eyes. He snapped the
- elastic band about the roll, with an air of boyish delight in the sound,
- as he returned it to his pocket. “If you knew the years in which I counted
- my sous!”.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was nearly ten o’clock when they left. Beginning with the Pavilion,
- they went to four or five music halls, only to find that there were no
- seats to be had. “Why, of course it’s the boat-race,” exclaimed Dicky at
- last. “Stupid of me to have forgotten it. I say, I ought to have come for
- you this morning, and taken you up the river to see it. It’s worth seeing—for
- once. I wonder Lingfield did not arrange it for you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, several people asked me to join their parties,” Christian replied.
- “But it did not attract me. The athletics here—they rather annoy me.
- It is as if people thought of nothing else. And to have students at the
- universities consumed with the idea—that is specially unpleasant to
- my mind. You must remember—I am a teacher by profession.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ll go back to the Empire,” Westland decided. “Ever been there? Well,
- it’s worth seeing, too—perhaps more than once. The Johnnies’ll be
- out in extraordinary force, I’m afraid, but then you ought to see them
- too, I suppose. It takes all sorts to make a world—and the world is
- what you’ve come out to look at. Let me get the tickets—or, well, if
- you insist—ask for the promenade.” It was indeed a novel spectacle,
- which smote and confused his eyes, rather than revealed itself to them,
- when Christian found himself inside. The broad, low, rounded promenade was
- so crowded with people that at first sight walking about seemed wholly
- impracticable, but Dicky stepped confidently into the jumbled throng and
- began moving through it, apparently with ease, and the other followed him.
- They made their way to the end, where a man in uniform guarded a
- staircase; then, turning, they elbowed along back to the opposite end of
- the half-circle. This gained, there was nothing in Dicky’s thoughts,
- seemingly, but to repeat the performance indefinitely. Their progress was
- of a necessity slow. On the inner side a dense wall of backs and high hats
- rendered hopeless any notion of seeing the stage below. Christian,
- struggling after his guide, wondered what else there was to see.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time it became obvious to him that the women who formed so large
- an element of the lazily shifting crowd were also the occasion of its
- being. They walked about, looking the men in the face with a cold, free,
- impassive scrutiny upon which, even if he had never seen it before,
- intuition would have fixed a label for him. Other women, from the plush
- seats on the outer edge of the circle, bent upon the whole moving mass of
- promenaders the same stoical, inscrutable gaze. The range of age among
- them did not seem extended to his uninformed glance. In years they were
- apparently all about alike. Some, indeed, had fresher faces and smoother
- skins than others, but when the eyes were considered a certain indefinable
- equality was insisted upon in them all. Their toilets were often striking
- in effect, and especially their hats—exaggerating both in breadth of
- brim, and in the height and bulk of the edifice of plumes above, the
- prevalent fashion in such matters—were notable to the spectator; but
- Christian found himself, upon consideration, more interested in their eyes
- than in anything else.
- </p>
- <p>
- A certain stony quality in this stereotyped gaze of theirs suggested a
- parallel to his memory; he had seen precisely that same cool, unruffled,
- consciously unconscious stare in princesses who had looked at him without
- beholding him in the far-away days of his life about the hotels of the
- Riviera. It was very curious, he thought—this incongruous
- resemblance. But a little closer analysis showed that the likeness was but
- partial. These ladies of the promenade could look about them with the
- imperturbability of princesses, it was true, but only so long as they saw
- nothing which concerned them immediately. Nay, now he could discern
- beneath the surface of this passionless perlustration a couched vigilance
- of attention, which ever and again flashed uppermost with electric
- swiftness. When this mercurial change came, one saw the temperament mapped
- out like a landscape under the illumination of lightning. There gleamed
- forth expectancy, dread, joy, irritability, fun, dislike or wistful hope—whatever
- the mood of the instant yielded—with a force of intensity almost
- startling. Then, as quickly as it came, the look might vanish; even if it
- flickered on, the briefest interval of repose brought back again the
- watchful, dispassionate, hardened regard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you had enough of this?” Dicky asked, with an implication of
- weariness in his tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, halting, took slow and bewildered cognizance of the fact that
- he had been going from one end of the promenade to the other for a very
- long time. Insensibly, at some period of the experience, he had taken the
- lead from his companion, and had been dragging him about in his wake.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is very interesting,” was the vague excuse he offered to Dicky, and
- even more to himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- A sofa just beside them was for the moment unoccupied. Christian seated
- himself with the air of one physically tired out. “Ought we not to order
- drinks?” he asked his companion, who stood over him, looking down somewhat
- doubtfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, dear, no—not here!” Dicky replied, with conviction. “It’s
- nearly closing time—and we’ll go over to the club for half an hour—where
- we know our tipple. Shall we run along now?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—sit down here,” said Christian. He spoke with the authority of a
- profound emotion, that glowed in his eyes and quivered on his lips.
- Westland obeyed him, pretending to a nonchalance which his mistrustful
- glance belied.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is all very extraordinary to me,” Christian continued, in a low,
- strenuous voice. He spoke with even more than his wonted fluency. “It
- catches hold of me. It fills my mind with new thoughts. There is something
- in the very air here—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Musk and cigarette smoke,” interposed Dicky, lightly. Then he saw that
- levity struck a false note.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pah!” the other jerked forth, impatiently. “Don’t talk like that! It is
- the most terrible, the most touching, the most inspiring thing I have seen
- in my life. I breathe in a new ambition here, out of this atmosphere. We
- were talking of the London poor. I thought they made the loudest appeal—but
- they are nothing beside <i>this!</i>” He spread his thin, nervous hand out
- as he spoke, and swept it in a comprehensive gesture over the spectacle
- before them. “These are my sisters—my unhappy and dishonored
- sisters, scorned and scornful—oh, yes, they are all my sisters!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But fortunately they don’t know it,” urged Dicky, surveying the ladies
- with pouting lips and half-closed eyes. “For God’s sake, don’t mention it
- to them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian turned round, with one knee on the sofa, and claimed his
- companion’s attention. “I wanted to be able to add you to my very little
- list of friends,” he said, gravely. “All the evening I have had that in my
- mind—and it may be something else, too. But if you cannot understand
- me, now, when I tell you how all this moves me—and if you only care
- to mock at what I say—why, then, it is not needful to say more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky faced about in turn, and regarded him with a puzzled glance, from
- which he was at pains to exclude all signs of frivolity. “But you haven’t
- told me <i>how</i> it moves you at all,” he said, vaguely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, how,” repeated Christian with hesitation. “It is not easy to say just
- how. But I am devoured by a great compassion. I could weep tears at the
- heart-misery I see here. They shout in the papers and wring their hands
- over the massacre of Armenians—but right here—this thing—is
- it not more cruel and dreadful still? Here there is no question of race
- hatreds and religious hatreds, but just the cold, implacable pressure of
- poverty on human souls, crushing them and sinking them in shame.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, that’s only a part of the story—not such a deuce of a big part
- either,” urged the other, gently. “Don’t get so excited about it, my dear
- fellow. It is by no means a new thing. And wait till you know more about
- it, and have thought it over—and then, if you feel that there is
- anything you can do, why, take my word for it, it will still be here. It
- won’t disappear in the meanwhile. You’ll still be in time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian regarded him wistfully, and with a mild, faint smile. “You would
- never enter into my feelings about this,” he said, softly. “We are made
- differently. It strikes you as strange, does it not, that a young man,
- coming into contact with this for the first time, should be filled only
- with the yearning to help these poor girls, and do good to them? It
- surprises you? It is something new to you, n’est ce pas?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky grinned within decorous limits. “My dear boy,” he declared,
- confidentially, “so far from being new, it’s the oldest thing in the
- world. Every young fellow worth his salt that I have ever known, or that
- anybody’s ever known, has swelled himself out with precisely these same
- reform sentiments. In this very promenade here I have witnessed at least a
- dozen attacks like yours. And don’t think I am jeering at the thing. It is
- a very beautiful and generous spirit indeed, and I admire it awfully, I
- assure you—only—only, as one gets to know his way about a
- trifle better, he sees that there isn’t so much in it as he thought there
- was. And that’s what I was trying to say to you. Don’t let your first
- impulses run away with you. If the subject interests you, appeals to you,
- very well; get to understand it. You will find that it is more
- complicated, perhaps, than you think. But when you know it all, why, then
- you can do what you like.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Some of the light seemed to have been turned out. A definitive blare
- rolled up from the orchestra below; the throng of promenaders, though
- still informed by the most leisurely of moods, was converging upon the
- door of exit. The two young men arose.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian suddenly yawned. “I am tired—and depressed,” he said,
- wearily. “I think I will ask you to let me go home.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nonsense!” said Dicky, promptly. “We’ll go to the club, and get a
- pick-up, and then you shall see something that won’t depress you. I grant
- you this <i>is</i> rather melancholy. God knows why we came.”
- </p>
- <p>
- An hour or more later, emerging from a confusing sequence of narrow
- passages and winding ascents and descents, Christian followed Westland out
- through a groove of painted canvas to the stage of the Hanover Theater.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had never seen a theater from this point of view, and the first few
- minutes of his scrutiny—here where he stood at the wings, while
- Dicky looked after the coats and hats—were full of pleased interest.
- The huge dusky space of the galleries overhead, strange and formidable in
- its dark bulk like some giant balloon, was very impressive. By contrast,
- the stage itself seemed to give out light. A long riband of a table
- stretched across the back, and down the two sides, and about this
- clustered many people; shining shirt-fronts and bald heads, pale
- shimmering dresses and white shoulders, the glitter of napery and plates
- and glasses—all was radiant under the powerful electric glow from
- above. He could see now, in the halfshadows down beyond the footlights,
- two or three rows of heads of people sitting in the front stalls. To his
- fancy these detached heads appeared to belong to an order of beings quite
- distinct from those on the stage. He wondered if actors felt their
- audiences to be thus remote and aloof from themselves.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We can push our way in at the other end—there’s less of a crush
- there,” he heard Dicky say to him. He followed his guide across the stage,
- through groups of conversing guests who had brought out their sandwiches
- and glasses from the throng, and came eventually to the table itself. Some
- one held out a bottle toward him, and he lifted a glass to be filled. From
- under some other stranger’s arm he extricated a plate, containing
- something in gelatine, he knew not what. In straightening himself he
- pushed against a person unexpectedly close behind him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Half turning, with the murmur of an apology upon his lips, his eyes
- encountered those of a lady, who seemed to know him, and to be smiling at
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How d’ye do?” this lady said to him. There could be no doubt about the
- cordiality of her tone. Her left hand was occupied with a champagne glass
- and a fan, but her right was being lifted to him, almost against his
- breast, in greeting. He gazed at her in smiling perplexity, the while he
- signed that both his own hands were filled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t know me from Adam,” she said to him, cheerfully. “But I’m your
- cousin—Cora Torr, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>ou’ve altered so
- much since I saw you! It was odds against my recognizing you at all,”
- declared Cora, beaming forth into conversation before Christian had fairly
- grasped the significance of her identity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should never have believed they would make such an Englishman out of
- you, in just these few months. Let’s see—it was October, wasn’t it?
- Yes, of course—the First.” She showed her beautiful teeth in a flash
- of gaiety. “The pheasants weren’t the only ones that got hit that day. But
- bygones are bygones.... And how do you like London? How do you find it
- compares with Paris? I always maintain that there’s more real life here,
- if you know where to look for it.... But I am afraid you’re not glad to
- see me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There you are wrong. I am glad to see you,” Christian replied, with
- deliberation. He made his words good by thrusting his plate back upon the
- table and shaking her gloved hand. There was a frank smile in his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Get my glass filled again,” she suggested—“and-your own too—and
- let’s get out of the way. These people push as if they had had nothing to
- eat since Christmas. Of all the hogs in evening clothes, the stage-supper
- hog is the worst. Well, and how have you been, all this time?”
- </p>
- <p>
- They had moved across the stage to the entrance, and paused near it in a
- little nook of momentary isolation. Christian made conventional answer to
- her query, and to other remarks of hers calling for no earnest attention,
- the while he concentrated his thoughts upon the fact that they were
- actually standing here together, talking like old friends.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was sufficiently surprising, this fact, but even more remarkable was
- the satisfaction he himself was getting from it. There was no room for
- doubt; he really enjoyed being with her. There was no special need to
- concern himself with what she was saying. She hardly paused for replies,
- and seemed not to mind in the least the automatic character of the few
- which came to her. He had only to smile a little, and nod, and let his
- eyes glow pleasurably, and she went blithely on. The perception came
- suddenly to him that he had been sorry also for her. Indeed, now that he
- reflected upon it, had not hers been the most cruel misfortune of all? The
- memory of the drawn, agonized mask of a face she had shown, over the
- tea-table in the conservatory at Caermere, rose in his mind’s vision. He
- looked up at the strips of canvas and lamps above, with half-closed eyes,
- recalling in reverie the details of this suffering face; then he turned
- abruptly to confront her, and observe afresh the happy contrast she
- presented to-night.
- </p>
- <p>
- Cora was looking away for the instant, and apparently conveying by lifted
- eyebrows and shakes of the head a message of some sort to some person on
- the bustling stage unknown to him. He glanced instinctively in the
- direction of her signal, but gained no information—and indeed
- realized at once that he was not in search of any. Of course, she knew
- everybody here, and would be exchanging nods and smiles of recognition all
- the evening. It occurred to him to wonder if her husband, that Captain
- Edward of unpleasant memory, was on the stage, but he had the power to put
- the thought promptly out of his mind. It was only Cora that he was
- interested in, and that he wanted to talk with. And here she was, once
- more looking into his face, and restoring by her smile his almost jocund
- pleasure in the situation.
- </p>
- <p>
- He still maintained the rôle of listener, but it grew increasingly clear
- to him that when his turn came he would have a good deal to say, and that
- he would say it well. He had never spoken on familiar terms with an
- actress before—and the experience put him wonderfully at his ease.
- He felt that he could say things to her; already he delighted in the
- assurance of her receptivity, her immunity from starched nonsense, her
- genial and comforting good fellowship. As he continued to look at her, and
- to smile, he remembered what people always said, or rather took for
- granted, about ladies on the stage. The consciousness shaped itself within
- him that she offered a timely and felicitous compromise—a sort of
- bridge between those formal, “gun-metal” women of society whom he desired
- never to see again, and those hapless, unblest creatures of the Empire.
- </p>
- <p>
- Presently she took his arm, and they moved round to the stalls in front,
- and found seats a little apart from any one else. A large number of young
- ladies, in white or light-hued evening dresses, were seated about in the
- rows before them, and Cora pointed out this one and that among them to
- Christian. “That is Dolly Montressor—the dancer, you know—her
- photos are all the rage just now. The girl in pink, over there—just
- turning round—she is the one who sued young Concannon for breach of
- promise. You must remember. Her lawyers put the bailiffs in for what she
- owed them, after they’d taken everything the jury gave her, and she
- dressed the bailiffs in livery and had them wait at the table at a big
- supper she gave. The little thicknosed dark man there—next but one
- to her—he drew a check for the supper and the bailiffs too. You see
- the small, thin girl with the tomato-colored hair—she didn’t bring
- <i>her</i> suit into court—one isn’t fox-headed for nothing. She
- settled outside at the last minute—the Lord Carmody case, you know—and
- no one’s ever heard a whisper of any supper she ever gave. It isn’t at all
- her line. She puts it all into South Africans; they say she’s good for
- thirty thousand pounds, if she’s got a penny. It isn’t bad, you know, on a
- salary of six quid, and only the pantomime season at that. Oh, there’s
- Peggy Wiltshire—just in the doorway. She’s the most remarkable woman
- in England. How old would you think she was? Forty? Why, my dear man, she
- was billed as a star in the old original Black Crook—just about the
- time I was born. She can’t be a minute under sixty. But look at her—the
- neck and shoulders of a girl! Isn’t it amazing! Why, she was knocking
- about town when your father was a youngster—and here she is still
- going strong.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The tables were being cleared from the stage, and the fringe of gentlemen
- who remained hungry and thirsty was retiring slowly and with palpable
- reluctance toward the wings. Some sad-faced musicians emerged wearily from
- an unsuspected cave beneath the footlights, and exhibited their violins
- and flutes to the general gaze with an air of profound dejection. Their
- fiddle strings began to whine at one another, in a perfunctory and
- bad-tempered groping about for something they were expected to have in
- common. A stout man on the stage vigorously superintended the removal of
- the last table, and warned off with a comprehensive gesture the lingering
- remnant of unsated raveners; then, turning, he lifted his hand. On the
- instant, some score and more of the young ladies in white and pale pinks
- and blues and lavenders rose from their front stalls, and moved toward the
- stage door at the left. They pressed forward like a flock of sheep—and
- with faces as listlessly vacant as any pasture could afford. Christian
- observed their mechanical exit with a curling lip.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If these are the renowned beauties, whose fascinations turn the heads of
- all the young men about town,” he confided to his companion, “then it says
- extremely little for the quality of what is inside those heads.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, isn’t it extraordinary!” she mused at him, eyeing the bevy of
- celebrities with a ruminating glance. “This must be somewhere near the
- sixth or seventh lot of ’em that even I’ve seen passing through the
- turnstile, as you might say. Where do they all come from?—and good
- heavens! where do they all go to? It’s a procession that never stops, you
- know. You’d think there was a policeman, keeping it moving. You have these
- girls here—well, they’re the queens, just for the minute. They own
- the earth. Nothing in the world is too good for them. Very well: just
- behind them are some other girls, a few years younger. Goodness knows
- where they were to-night—in the back ranks of the ballets, perhaps,
- or doing their little turn at the Paragon or the Canterbury, or doing
- nothing at all—nothing but keeping their toes pointed in this
- direction. And they are treading close on the heels of these queens you
- see here; and behind <i>them</i> are girls of sixteen or so, and behind <i>them</i>
- the little chits of ten and twelve—and they’re all pushing along—and
- in time each lot gets in front, out under the limelight, and has its
- little year on the throne—and then gets shoved off to make room for
- the next. You might have seen two-thirds of these men here ten years ago.
- But not the women. Oh, no! Only here and there one—an old stager
- like Polly Wiltshire—or a middle-aged stager like myself. But we’re
- merely salt to the porridge.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But do you not wish to dance?” he asked her. The orchestra had begun a
- waltz, and the young ladies from the front stalls, each now attached to a
- stiffly gyrating male figure, were circling about on the stage, with a
- floating, wave-like swing of their full skirts which revealed to those
- below in the stalls rhythmic glimpses of whisking feet and trim black
- ankles.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will dance with you with pleasure,” she replied, promptly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Unfortunately”—he began with confusion—“it is ridiculous of
- me, but I never learned.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, then, we will sit here and talk,” she insisted. “I truly don’t want
- to dance. It’s ever so much cooler and more comfortable here. One has to
- come to these things, you know—you have to show yourself or you’re
- like the man who fell out of the balloon—simply not in it. But
- they’re all alike—all deadly stupid unless you’re young and want to
- kick your legs about—or unless you find some one you’re particularly
- glad to see.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian did not seek to evade the implication of the genial glance with
- which she pointed this last remark. “Yes, it is good of you to stay here
- with me,” he declared. “Except you and my friend who brought me here—I
- thought I saw him dancing a moment ago—I don’t know a soul. I have
- been saying to-day,” he continued, settling down in his seat toward her,
- “that I make friends badly—I remain here in England almost a
- stranger.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, I thought you went everywhere. I know I’m forever seeing your name
- in the ‘Morning Post.’ You spell it Tower, I notice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes, I have been going everywhere—but going as one goes alone
- through a gallery of pictures. I do not bring out any friends with me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stole a swift glance at him, as she fanned herself. “You surprise me,”
- she commented. “I should have thought everybody would be running after
- you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do they? I am not conscious of it.” He spoke wearily. “If they do, it
- does not interest me. They are not my kind of people. They take no hold
- whatever upon my sympathy. They make no appeal to the imagination.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You could hardly say that about those ladies’ skirts up there,” she
- jocosely remarked. “I had no idea silk petticoats flapped so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was not to be diverted from his theme. “It is very funny about me,” he
- went on. “I seem to make no friends among men, of my own age or any other.
- Of course there are two or three exceptions—but no more. And as for
- the majority of women, they attract me still less. Yet when, once in a
- great while, I do meet some one who really interests me, it is always a
- woman. These few women whom I have in mind—oh, I could count them on
- the fingers of one hand—they make a much deeper and more lasting
- impression on me than any man can make.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I believe that frequently happens,” she put in lightly. She did not seem
- to him to be following his thread of reasoning with conspicuous closeness,
- but her pleasant smile reassured him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I am most readily moved on the side of my compassion,” he
- continued, intent upon the development of his self-analysis. “If I am
- sorry for the people, it is easier for me to like them—that is, if
- they are young and pretty women.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Cora laughed aloud at this, then lapsed abruptly into thoughtfulness. “How
- do you mean?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “To-night I went to the place of the—the promenade—the Empire,
- is it not? And the sight of the young women there—it terribly
- affected me. I wanted to shout out that they were all my sisters—that
- I would protect them all—that they should never be forced by poverty
- and want to face that miserable humiliation again.” She looked at him, her
- lips parted over the beautiful teeth, a certain blankness of
- non-comprehension in the beautiful eyes. As she slowly grasped the drift
- of his words, the eyes and lips joined in a reserved and baffling smile.
- “You’re a nice boy,” she decided, “but you’re tremendously young. Those
- girls are lazy, greedy, good-for-nothing hussies. They wouldn’t do honest
- work for a living if it was brought to them on a silver salver. They
- haven’t an idea in their empty painted heads except to wheedle or steal
- money from drunken fools. They’re nothing but—what d’ye call ’em?—parasites.
- I’d put ’em all on the treadmill, if I had my way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian sat up a little, and she was alert in noting the signs of
- disaffection on his mobile face. “Nevertheless, there is a great sorrow
- and a great shame in it all,” he said, gravely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, that I admit,” she declared, making busy work with her fan. “Of
- course! Perhaps I spoke more sharply than I meant. Every one is sorry for
- the poor creatures—but—but I confess I’m sorrier still for the
- girls who have to work like slaves for the barest necessities of life.
- Why, my dressmaker’s girls, two of ’em—poor little
- half-starved sisters who may come at nine or ten o’clock at night to
- deliver things, or try something on—they get twenty-five shillings a
- week between them. That’s what gets on <i>my</i> nerve.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He preserved silence for a time, then suddenly sat upright and faced her.
- A new light shone in his eyes. “I am the dullest person on earth,” he
- protested. “All this time I have not thought of it. I want to ask you a
- thousand things about your sister. Did you not know?—She is my
- oldest friend in England.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Cora drew a long breath, and held up her fan for a protracted and
- attentive inspection. “Oh, yes—you mean Frank,” she said,
- tentatively.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Frank? Is that her name? She works. She has a machine à écrire—a
- typewriter it is called. You must tell me about her! Is she very well? And
- where is she to be found? How shall I go about it to recall myself to
- her?” As there came no immediate response, he put his further meditations
- into dreamy words: “She spoke the first kind words to me, here in England.
- I bade farewell to France and the old hard life, in her company. It was
- she who pointed with her finger for me to have my first look at England—the
- little, rose-colored island in the green water, with the purple clouds
- above it. It seemed that we were very close together—on that one
- day. And I was so full of the thought of seeing her very soon again! And
- that was September—and now it is very nearly May!. . . But you have
- not told me! Where is it that she is to be found? Where does she live?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She lives at home with my people,” Cora replied, still with reflective
- deliberation. It was with a visible effort that she shook off the
- preoccupied air into which she had lapsed. “But you don’t want to go there—it’s
- out of the world—red-busses and green-busses and a tram and that
- sort of thing. But she has an office now of her own; that’s where you’d
- find her most easily. Bless me if I know where it is—it’s between
- the Strand and the Embankment, but I never can remember which is Norfolk
- Street and which Arundel Street—and really I’m not sure she’s on
- either. But my brother is here. I’ll ask him, presently. And so you know
- Frank?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, yes, but you know her better still,” said Christian, softly, nestling
- again into the corner of his chair nearest her. “I wanted you to tell me
- about her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, well—but what is there to tell?” she made answer, vaguely. “She
- is a good girl; she’s frightfully clever; she works very hard, and gives
- most of her money to her mamma; she’s successful, too, because she’s got a
- shop of her own, at last—and—and—that’s about all, isn’t
- it? You know, we’re not by way of seeing much of each other. There’s no
- quarrel, of course—not the least in the world—but I’m too
- frivolous to be in her class at all. I dare say it’s my fault—I
- ought to go and look her up. That’s what I will do, too, one of these
- days. But—you mustn’t misunderstand me—she’s an awfully good
- girl, that is, of course, if you like that sort of girl. And she’s pretty,
- too, don’t you think?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I think so,” affirmed Christian, almost with solemnity. “What time
- would she come to her office—in the morning, I mean?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, don’t ask me!” laughed Cora. “At some ghastly hour, when they have
- breakfast, I believe, in cabmen’s shelters, and the streets haven’t been
- swept. I know it only by hearsay. I’ve never stopped up quite as late as
- that, you know. But you see something like it, driving round by Covent
- Garden on your way home from a late dance, to see the flowers. Have you
- ever done that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian shook his head. The idea attracted him, apparently. “At what
- hour is it?” he asked, with interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, four or five or something like that. It’s really the prettiest sight
- you ever saw. I used to go often, at this time of year, and take home a
- cabload of flowers. But I am getting too old now—and too
- serious-minded. The mother of a family—you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian looked at his watch. “It has occurred to me”—he suggested,
- hesitatingly—“it is now after two—perhaps we could make a
- party to go this morning. The dancing will not stop earlier, will it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- On the stage nothing seemed further from any mind than stopping. There was
- some complicated kind of set dance in progress, which at the moment
- involved the spectacle of some score of couples, hands all joined, romping
- madly around in a gigantic ring. The dresses whirled more wildly than
- ever; the men crooked their legs and hung outward from the circle as they
- went, stamping their feet and laughing boisterously. Christian’s eyes
- singled out one young man who seemed to be making most noise of all—and
- then he perceived that it was Dicky Westland.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps it might be arranged,” Cora replied, after consideration, and
- with a sidelong eye upon her companion. “I will go behind for a moment,
- and find my brother, and see what he says. No, you stop here. I will come
- back again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So many people were moving about with entire individual freedom, that he
- offered no objection to her departure. She pushed her way confidently yet
- affably past the others in the row, and disappeared at the stage door. He
- had no clues by which to follow her in fancy after that. Once he thought
- he distinguished her at the back of the stage—but for the rest it
- was her sister rather than the friendly Cora who engaged his thoughts. The
- idea that he was to see her again, quite without delay, seemed to
- illuminate his whole mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the labyrinth of shunted scenery behind the back-curtain, and along the
- narrow corridors of dressing-rooms, now devoted to varying hospitable
- uses, Cora prosecuted what was for a time a fruitless search.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where are the gentlemen getting their drinks?” she asked at last of a
- cloak-room attendant, and the answer simplified her task. Downstairs, at
- the door of the manager’s room, she was lucky enough to hit upon Major
- Pirie. “Tell Eddy that’ I want him, will you, old man,” she said, nodding
- with assurance toward the crowded, smoky little interior, “and if that
- brother of mine is in there, I want to see him for a minute, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The brother came out first—a slender, overdressed youth, with a face
- which suggested a cheap and inferior copy of Cora’s. It had the
- self-complacency without the high spirits—the comeliness of line
- without the delicacy of texture and charm of color. He was obviously young
- in years, but he regarded her through the eyes of an elderly and wearied
- person.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hello,” he said, amiably enough. “Goin’ to take Eddy home? He won’t be
- the worse for a friendly lead. Oh, he’s all right, though, up to now. He’s
- got rippin’ odds against Perambulator from Hoskins, seventy to three, you
- know, in fivers. Try and get him to let me in on the bet, will you? I
- offered to take half of it, the minute the bet was made—but he
- didn’t answer me. You can work it, if you try, old girl.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s Frank’s address—her office, I mean?” she put in abruptly,
- “Got a pencil? Go and get one from somebody. Thirty-two A, you say?
- Thanks! Now tell Eddy to come out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what’s up? What do you want with Frank? Anything I can tell her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never you mind! And don’t lisp a word to her, or to Eddy or to any one
- else. If it comes off, it’ll be a beano for the lot of us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Right you are,” he assented, with a glimmer of animation. “But say, you
- won’t forget about the Hoskins bet, will you? If I could even have a third
- of it! I could do with some odd sovereigns just now, and no mistake.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sh-h! Here he comes. You run away-now, d’ye see; I want to talk with
- Eddy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Edward emerged from the haze of cigarette smoke which veiled the
- throng within the manager’s room. “Well?” he demanded, with a kind of
- sulky eagerness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t told him you were here,” Cora began, under her breath, drawing
- her husband aside down the passage. “It didn’t seem to come into the talk.
- He thinks I’m here with Tom.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward looked down upon his wife, with a slow, ponderous glance of mingled
- hope and uneasiness. He pulled at his small yellow mustache, and aimlessly
- jingled some keys in his pocket.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’ve had nearly two hours with him, you know,” he protested,
- doubtfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Don’t</i> I know it!” she ejaculated, holding up her hands in mock
- pain at the retrospect. “Good God! If I had a thousand pounds to show for
- it, I’d say it was the hardest earned money <i>I</i> ever handled.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, but you haven’t got anything to show—so far’s I can make out,”
- he commented with gloom. “You didn’t mention my name at all, eh? But that
- was what you particularly set out to do, I thought.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you thought wrong,” she responded briskly. “I set out to do what
- was wisest under the circumstances, and I’ve done it. I’ve got an inkling
- of a game to be played”—she let her eyes twinkle at him as she made
- this tantalizing little pause—“a game, you old goose, worth seven
- hundred thousand times anything you ever thought of.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The ex-hussar regarded her fixedly, the while he pondered her words. “I
- don’t think I’m very keen about games,” he remarked at last, with obvious
- suspicion in his tone. “A married woman always gets the worst of games, in
- the long run.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She grinned affectionate contempt up at him. “Don’t be such a duffer,
- Eddy!” she remonstrated with him. “If I had a notion of that sort—do
- you suppose I’d come and give it away to you? What rot you talk!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes—but what <i>is</i> your game?” he demanded, doggedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won’t tell you!” She spoke with great apparent decision. “You’d blab it
- all over the place. You can no more keep a secret than you can keep a
- ten-pound note.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I say, Cora,” he urged, in grieved protestation. “You know I’m a
- regular bailey oyster, where a thing has to be kept dark. You’d better
- tell me, you know. It’ll keep me from—imaginin’ things.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The wife smiled. “It’s only a plant I’ve got in my mind,” she explained,
- after consideration. “What’s the matter with my naming a wife for him,
- eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward, upon reflection, pouted his lips. “Probably you’d come a cropper
- over it, in the first place,” he objected, slowly, “and then even if you
- did name the winner, she’d probably welsh us out of our winnings—and
- besides, what do we want of his marrying at all. The longer he puts off
- getting married, the less the odds against us gets. I should think even a
- woman could see that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Cora permitted herself a frank yawn. “I’ll explain it to you to-morrow,”
- she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And now I must go back to my Juggins for a few minutes. I’ll come and
- fetch you when I’m ready to go.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t fancy it much, you know,” he urged upon her as she turned. He
- took a step toward her, and put his hand on her arm. “If your brother Tom
- was any good”—he began, with a hard growl in his voice—“by
- God, I’d have half a mind to talk with him about <i>my</i> plan. Old
- Pirie’d be no use—but if Tom had the sense and the nerve—why,
- we’d—”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had held his eye with a steady, comprehending glance, under the
- embarrassment of which his speech faltered and then lapsed altogether.
- “No, the less either you or Tom have to do with your plan the better. Go
- in now, and take a plain soda, and wait for me! You’ve got no plan, mind
- you. You’ve simply been dreaming about it. Do you hear? You never had a
- plan! You can’t have one!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She spoke with significant authority, and he deferred to it with a sullen
- upward wag of the head. “All right,” he muttered curtly, and turned on his
- heel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Plain soda, mind!” she called after him, and without waiting for an
- answer, ran briskly up the steps toward the stage.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Edward’s plain soda had become a remote and almost wholly effaced
- memory by the time his wife again summoned him from the manager’s room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ll cut this now, if you don’t mind,” she remarked, in her most casual
- tone. “I’m as tired as if I’d danced every minute.” She had put on her
- wraps, and her small, pretty face, framed by the white down of her hood,
- seemed to his scrutiny to wear an expression of increased contentment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Anything fresh?” he asked, as they went in search of his coat and hat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes—fresh is the word,” she replied, with simulated nonchalance.
- “Fresh, fresher, freshest—as we used to say at school.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wha’ is it?” he inquired, when they were within touch of the open air.
- The music was still audible behind them, broken by faint, intermittent
- echoes of stamping feet and laughing voices.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll tell you about it in the morning,” she answered listlessly. “I hope
- to heaven you’ve got a cab-fare.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, tha’s all right,” said Edward, waving his stick toward the rank in
- the dark middle distance of the street. “Whyn’t you tell me all about it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you wouldn’t get onto it now,” she replied, But later, in the hansom,
- the desire to unburden her mind achieved the mastery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you awake?” she demanded, and went on: “He’s not a bad sort, that
- boy, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damn him!” said Edward, breathing heavily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I rather like him myself,” she continued. “He’s a bit slow to talk to,
- and he’s fresher than Devonshire cream, but there isn’t a drop of the
- Johnnie in him. He’s as clean as my little girl.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damn him,” repeated her husband, but in a milder and even argumentative
- tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He’s a proper bundle of nerves, that youngster,” she mused, as if talking
- to herself. “And whatever those nerves of his tell him to do, he’ll do it.
- And I’d lay odds he’s goin’ to surprise us all. He’s got something boilin’
- in his mind—something that’s just struck him to-night—I could
- see that. Oh, if I was a man!—I’d get out of this hansom now, and
- I’d follow that lad, and I’d get hold of him somehow, and I’d bend him any
- way I chose—<i>that</i> would be something like!—but then
- again, you take him some other way, and he’s as stubborn as a moke. But I
- like him, all the same.” She turned toward her husband, and lifted her
- voice a little. “I like him so much, I’m thinkin’ of havin’ him for a
- brother-in-law.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Strornary thing,” commented Edward, earnestly, “no man’er where I start
- from, whenever I get t’ the Circus, I get the hiccups.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Cora put her head back against the cushions, and closed her eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XVI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian
- discovered that he was not sorry to be alone. Cora’s company had been
- amusing and vivifying, no doubt, but it was even better now to have his
- own thoughts. He observed with relief that others in the stalls were
- smoking; tobacco as a rule had not very much meaning for him, but now he
- lit a large cigar from the dinner-case in his pocket, and stretching
- himself in his chair, proceeded to enjoy it. He kept his glance, in an
- indolent fashion, upon the stage, but his mind roamed far and wide.
- </p>
- <p>
- Cora, in returning to explain that it would not be possible for her to
- stay till the time for Covent Garden, had ingenuously sat on for nearly
- another hour, cheering him with her lively prattle. She asked him many
- questions about himself, his diversions, his tastes, his relations with
- Lord Julius and Emanuel. He wondered now if these queries had been quite
- as artless as they seemed at the time. There rose up before him, in
- retrospect, certain occasional phases of her manner which suggested
- something furtive. She had watched the stage, and the doorway leading from
- it, with a kind of detached uneasiness on which he now languidly
- speculated. It occurred to him again to wonder if her husband was really
- in the building. Christian found himself thinking of this cousin of his
- almost with compassion. Poor devil! Was his fate not even more tragic than
- that of the others who were merely dead? He regretted now that he had not
- asked Cora point-blank as to his presence. His mood was so tolerant
- to-night that even the unforgivable insult to his father lost its sharp
- outlines, and became only a hasty phrase, the creature of imperative
- provocation.
- </p>
- <p>
- In her final leave-taking, Cora had genially proffered her services if he
- desired to know any or all of the young ladies—and he had begged to
- be excused. Dicky Westland came down to the stalls later on, and
- shamefacedly linked a similar offer to his apologies for his prolonged
- neglect of his guest. But Christian protested that he was enjoying himself
- thoroughly. He was never less sleepy in his life; he did not want a drink;
- he would not dream of wishing to go until his friend was entirely ready.
- “You cannot realize,” he concluded, with his persuasive smile, “how
- strange and interesting this all is to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But when Dicky had returned again to the stage, Christian paid less
- attention than ever to the diverting spectacle. His thoughts reverted
- obstinately to Captain Edward—? and to that portion of the family of
- which he was the congenital type. Was not that really the sort of man who
- should have the title? There seemed a cloud of negative reasons, but were
- these not sentimental abstractions? Should the duke not be a rough, hard
- sportsman, a man with a passion for horses and dogs and gunpowder
- saturating his veins? One who loved the country for its rude, toilsome
- out-of-door sports, and who liked best in town the primitive amusements of
- the natural man? He figured Edward in his mind’s eye most readily as
- puffing and cursing over a rat-hole with his terriers—or as watching
- with a shine of steel in his blue eyes the blood-stained progress of a
- prize-fight. And truly, were these not the things that a duke of
- Glastonbury of right belonged to?
- </p>
- <p>
- He could not think of Lord Julius and of Emanuel as being Torrs at all.
- The older man had the physical inheritance of the family, it was true, but
- he was almost as much estranged from its ideals as that extraordinary son
- of his. They both were grotesquely out of the picture of English
- aristocratie life, whether in country or town. And he himself—how
- absolutely he also was out of the picture!
- </p>
- <p>
- The immensity of the position which his grandfather’s death would devolve
- upon him had been present in his mind, it seemed sleeping as well as
- waking, for half a year. At the outset he had thrilled at the prospect;
- sometimes still he was able to reassure himself about it, and to profess
- to himself confidence that when the emergency came, he would be equal to
- it. But more often, in these latter days, the outlook depressed him. Of
- course nothing grievous would happen to him, in any event. He would be
- assured of an excellent living to the end of his days, with an exceptional
- amount of social deference from those about him, and relative freedom to
- do what he liked. He could marry and rear a family of lords and ladies; he
- could have his speeches in the House of Lords or elsewhere printed in the
- “Times”; if he looked about in America, he could secure a bride with
- perhaps millions to her dower. There was, in any case, the reasonable
- likelihood that he would be, to some extent, the heir of Lord Julius and
- Emanuel, in the latter part of his life. Thus he could go on, when he set
- himself to the task, piling-up reasons why he ought to view the future
- with buoyant serenity—to count himself among the happiest of men.
- </p>
- <p>
- But then—was his not all self-deception? Did he not know in his
- heart that he was not happy?—that this gilded and ornate career
- awaiting him really repelled all his finer senses? To-night as he followed
- his thoughts behind the transparent screen of whisking dresses and jolting
- figures upon which his outer vision rested, the impulse to escape the
- whole thing rose strong within him. Already he had sworn that he would no
- longer weary himself with the meaningless and distasteful routine of
- social obligations in London. Why should he not plunge boldly forward
- beyond that, and say that he would make no further sacrifices of any sort
- to the conventions of mediocrity?
- </p>
- <p>
- He lit another cigar and, rising, walked about a little by himself at the
- side of the stalls, his hands deep in his pockets, his brows knitted in
- formative introspection.
- </p>
- <p>
- First of all, it was clear that Emanuel’s hopes about his taking up the
- System were doomed. It was not in him to assume such a part. He had not
- the capacity for such work; even if he had, he lacked both the tremendous
- driving energy and the enthusiasm.
- </p>
- <p>
- But when Emanuel learned this, then he would be angry, and he would cover
- over no more money to that account at the bank. Eh bien! It couldn’t be
- helped. Christian recalled that he had still at that blessed bank more
- than sixty thousand francs!—truly a prodigious sum, when one thought
- of it soberly. The question whether this sum ought not to be given back to
- Emanuel, under certain circumstances, seemed to have settled itself. When
- it had first occurred to him that afternoon, it had suggested a good many
- moral difficulties. But it was really simplicity itself, as he considered
- it now. There were all those lean and poverty-stricken years of his youth
- and childhood to be remembered—and, stretching back beyond that,
- those other years of his father’s exile before he was born—nearly
- forty in all. The intelligent thing was to regard the three thousand
- pounds as a sort of restitution fund, to be spread out over the whole of
- that long period. Viewed in this light, the annual fraction of it was a
- paltry matter. Besides, Emanuel had expressly declared that no conditions
- whatever were attached to the money. Christian saw that he could make his
- mind quite easy on that score.
- </p>
- <p>
- So then, there were sixty thousand francs! With that he might live
- admirably, even luxuriously, on the Continent, until his grandfather’s
- death. That event would of course alter everything. There would then come
- automatically to him—no matter where he was or what he did—a
- certain fixed income, which he understood to be probably over rather than
- under seventy-five thousand francs a year. This—still on the
- Continent—would be almost incredible wealth! There was really no
- limit to the soul-satisfying possibilities it opened before him. He would
- have a yacht on the Mediterranean; he would have a little chateau in the
- marvelous green depths of the Styrian Mountains—of which a boyhood
- friend had told him with such tender reverence of memory. He would see
- Innsbruck and Moscow, and, if he liked, even Samarkand and China. Why, he
- could go round the world in his yacht, if he chose—to remote spice
- islands and tropical seas! He could be a duke when, and as much, as it
- pleased him to be one. Instead of being the slave to his position and
- title, he would make them minister to him. He would do original things—realize
- his own inner fancies and predilections. If the whim seized him to climb
- Mount Ararat, or to cross the Sahara with a caravan of his own servants—that
- he would do. But above all things—now and henceforth forever, he
- would be a free man! He laughed grimly as he thought how slight was the
- actual difference between the life of pauper bondage he had led up to last
- October, and the existence which polite England and London had imposed
- upon him ever since. The second set of chains were of precious metal—that
- was all. Well, hereafter there would be no fetters of any description!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m quite ready to go now, old man, if you are,” Dicky Westland said at
- some belated stage of this reverie. He had approached without being seen
- by his friend, and he had to pull at Christian’s sleeve to attract his
- attention. “I fancy you’ve been walking in your sleep,” he laughed, in
- comment upon this.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian shook himself, and, blinking at Dicky, protested that he had
- never been more wide awake in his life. “I go only if you’re entirely
- ready,” he said. “Don’t dream of leaving on my account I have been
- extremely interested, I assure you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Every fellow has his own notions of enjoyment,” reflected Westland, with
- drowsy philosophy, as they went up the stairs toward the stage. “I tried
- to explain your point of view to some of the girls up here, but I’m not
- sure they quite grasped it. They were dying to have me bring you up and
- make you dance, you know. By George, I had a job to keep Dolly Montressor
- from coming down and fetching you, off her own bat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How should they know or care about me?” asked Christian. “I didn’t expect
- to be pointed out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear man,” retorted Dicky, sleepily, “no one pointed you out. They all
- know you by sight as well as they do George Edwards. It isn’t too late,
- still, you know—if you really would like to be introduced.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian shook his head with resolution, as they halted at the wings.
- “Truly, no!” he repeated. “But I should like a glass of wine and a
- sandwich, if we can get past the stage. I’m not an atom sleepy, but I’m
- hungry and thirsty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- On their way through a narrow, shadowed defile of huge canvas-stretched
- frames of deal, they passed two young men, one much taller than the other,
- who had their heads bent together in some low-voiced, private
- conversation. Christian glanced at them casually, and was struck with the
- notion that they observed him in turn, and exchanged comment upon his
- approach. He looked at them with a keener scrutiny as he went by—and
- it seemed to him that there was something familiar in the face of the
- larger man—who indeed looked away upon the instant their eyes met.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you see those men?” he asked Westland, in an undertone, a moment
- later. “Do you know them?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Those we just passed?” Dicky looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know the
- thin chap, but the other fellow is Gus Torr—why, of course—your
- cousin. Somehow, I never think of you as belonging to that lot—I
- mean, being related to them. Of course—that was his sister-in-law
- you were sitting with. Why did you ask if I knew him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing—I was not sure if it was he—I’ve seen him only once,”
- Christian replied, with an assumption of indifference. “I remember having
- noticed then how much he looked like his brother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes—poor devils!” commented Dicky, as they entered the manager’s
- room. Apparently it was in his mind to say more, but the place was
- crowded, and the problem of getting through the throng to the food and
- drink monopolized his attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some minutes later, while Christian stood in another corridor, waiting for
- his friend to bring their hats and coats from the mysteriously elusive
- spot where he had left them, he overheard the mention of his name. Two
- women’s voices, wholly unknown to him, came from behind an improvised
- partition of screens near at hand, with great distinctness.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of them said: “He spells his name ‘Tower,’ you know. I understand the
- idea is to make people forget who his father was.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good job, too!” replied the other voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian turned abruptly, and strode off in the direction whither Dicky
- had disappeared. “After forty years!” he murmured hotly to himself. “After
- forty years!” and clenched his fists till the nails hurt his palms.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The two young men walked homeward, arm in arm, through silent streets over
- which the dawn was spreading its tentative first lights. It was colder
- than they had thought, and the morning air was at once misty and fresh. In
- Leicester Square the scent of lilacs came to them; beside the pale,
- undefined bulk of the squat statue they caught the lavender splash of
- color which was sister to the perfume.
- </p>
- <p>
- “By Jove, it’s spring!” said Dicky. He pointed out the flowers, and then,
- still drawing Christian’s arm to turn his attention to the square,
- recalled to him as they moved that this was the oldtime haunt of
- foreigners in London. “Dickens’s villain in ‘Little Dorrit,’ you know—the
- fellow whose mustache went up and his nose went down—I never can
- remember his name—he lived here. In those days, all that sort of
- chappies lived here—the adventurers and jailbirds who had made their
- own countries too hot to hold them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Westland’s insistence upon this theme had no purpose other than to divert
- Christian’s attention while they passed the Empire. He was tired, and
- profoundly disinclined to any renewal of the discussion about the
- promenade. He encountered with vague surprise, therefore, the frowning
- glance which Christian, half halting, bent upon him. The young man’s
- displeasure was marked, but Dicky for the life of him could not imagine
- why. He tightened his hold on the other’s arm and quickened their pace.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Christian, after a few yards, suddenly withdrew his arm altogether. “I
- do not like to walk so fast,” he said, with a sharp note in his voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky regarded him with puzzled apprehension. “What’s up, old man?” he
- asked, almost pleadingly. “Has anything gone wrong?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, still with knitted brows, parted his lips to speak. Then he
- seemed to reconsider his intention, and let his face soften as he paused.
- “No—nothing at all,” he replied, after a moment. He smiled a little
- to reassure the other. “It was nothing at all,” he repeated. “Only I am
- nervous and excited to-night—this morning, I should say—and my
- head is full of projects. It is twelve hours since you came to me—and
- the whole world has changed meanwhile. I see everything different. I am
- not altered to your eyes—but none the less, I am not at all, in any
- respect, the man you took to dine with you. You have not observed anything—but
- it is a revolution that has occurred under your very nose, Mr. Dicky
- Westland.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m too sleepy to observe anything,” the other declared. “I couldn’t tell
- a revolution from a—from a hot-potato can.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The comparison had forced itself upon Westland’s jaded mind through the
- medium of his weary eyes. There before them, by the curb at the corner,
- stood the dingy wheeled-oven of the streets, the sullen red glow of its
- lower door making a strange patch of fiery light upon the ragged trousers
- of the man in charge. He was a dirty and undersized creature, and he
- looked up at the two young gentlemen in evening dress with a speculative,
- yet hardly hopeful, eye.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian stopped short. “Ah, this is very good,” he said, with a
- brightening face. “I have never eaten a potato from a can.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky sighed, but resigned himself with only a languid protest: “You have
- to eat so much else besides the potato,” he commented dolefully.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man opened an upper door, and then drew from under the machine a
- twisted wad of old newspaper, which, being unwound, revealed a gray heap
- of salt. “How many, cap’n?” he demanded, briefly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian had been glancing across the Circus meanwhile—to where, in
- the misty vagueness of dawn, Piccadilly opened between its tall, shapely
- corners, and beyond, the curved yellowish sweep of Regent Street began.
- The dim light revealed some lurking figures to his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can you call over those women?” he asked the potato-man.
- </p>
- <p>
- A tall, fresh-faced young policeman came upon the group round the
- Criterion corner. Although the pounding of his thick boots on the pavement
- had been audible long before his appearance, he regarded them with the
- slightly dramatic air of one who has deftly surprised a group of
- conspirators. The potato-man looked from Christian to the officer and made
- no reply.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian drew some silver from his pocket, shaking off the restraining
- hand Westland tried to lay on his arm. “Is there any objection,
- constable,” he inquired, “to my buying potatoes for those friends of ours
- over there? It is a cold morning.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The policeman’s glance ranged from the white ties of the young gentlemen
- to the coins in Christian’s palm. His official expression relaxed. “I dare
- say it’ll do no ’arm, sir,” he replied with courtesy. He even lent
- himself to the enterprise by stooping down and beating a certain number of
- strokes with his baton on the pavement.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How many times did he strike?” Dicky made whispered inquiry. “That’s a
- new dodge to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- New or old, it was efficient. Forlorn shapes began to emerge from the
- shadows of the big streets opposite, and move forward across the empty
- open space. Others stole noiselessly in from the byways of Leicester
- Square. There were perhaps a dozen in all when the potato-man made his
- census—poorly dressed, fagged, bold-faced, furtive-eyed women. They
- spoke in monotonous, subdued tones among themselves. There were to be
- heard German, French, Belgian French, cockney English, and Lancashire
- English. Two of them pulled at the sleeve of the potato-man to make him
- hurry.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, regarding his motley guests, found himself neither touched nor
- entertained. They seemed as stupid as they were squalid. With a gesture of
- decision he gave the money to the policeman.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pay for it all,” he directed, “and if more come, give them a look-in, too—and
- keep what is left for yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now then, Frenchy!” broke in the constable, sharply. “Mind what you’re
- at! Pass Germany the salt!” With an abrupt change to civility, he turned
- to Christian. “Right you are, sir!” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky laughed drowsily. “It’s like the Concert of Europe,” he declared.
- “Shall we go on?”
- </p>
- <p>
- They moved down the broad pavement, again arm in arm, breathing in slowly
- the new, keen air, and observing in a silence which was full of tacit
- comment the beautiful termination of the street before them: the dark
- figures of the Crimean monument standing in grim relief against the
- morning light, the stately palace beyond, with its formal portals of club
- buildings, its embowered statues, its huge column towering ponderously
- above the pale green of spring in the park—all gray and cool and, as
- it were, thoughtfully solemn in the hush of daybreak.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, yes—this wonderful London!” sighed Christian, as they halted at
- the Continental corner. He spread his hand to embrace the prospect before
- them. “How right you were! I have not learned to know it at all. But I
- begin now! If you will walk through the square with me—there is
- something I wish to say.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This something did not get itself said till they halted within this
- somber, slate-colored square. Christian paused before a big, pretentious
- house of gloomy, and even forbidding aspect—a front of sooty stucco,
- with cornices of ashen-hued stone, and many windows masked with sullen
- brown shades.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This was our town house a hundred years ago,” he said meditatively. “My
- father was born here. My grandfather sold it when the entail was broken.
- Until this afternoon, it was my fixed resolve to buy it back again. I said
- always to myself: ‘If I am to have a house in London, it must be this old
- one of ours in St. James’s.’ But that is all changed now. At least, it is
- no longer a resolve.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky gazed at him with sleepy eyes. “How do you mean?” he asked,
- perfunctorily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wake up now, and I will tell you!” Christian, with a lingering glance, as
- of renunciation, at the mansion, began to walk again. “This is it. You
- said you were eager to be some colonial official’s secretary—to have
- three hundred pounds—and the yellow fever. To obtain this, you
- expend all your energies, you and your relations. Well, then—why
- will you not be my secretary instead? You shall have more than three
- hundred pounds—and no yellow fever.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Westland had roused himself, and looked inquiringly now into the other’s
- face. “What do you need of a secretary?” he objected, half jestingly. “If
- you want to talk about it after you’ve come into the thing—I don’t
- say that I shouldn’t be glad-to consider it. But the deuce of it is——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—I wish it to begin now, this morning, this hour—this
- minute!” Christian spoke peremptorily.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky, pondering, shook his head. “No, you mustn’t insist on settling
- anything now,” he decided. “It isn’t regular, you know. If you—really—want
- to propose something immediate—why, I’ll call and talk with you
- to-morrow—or, that is to say, this afternoon. But I couldn’t
- possibly let you commit yourself to anything of that sort now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian frowned at his friend. “You speak of what you will let me do!”
- he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In your opinion—I see it!—you think I have not sober command
- of myself, am not responsible—is that it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nonsense! I’ve said nothing of the sort,” protested the other. “Of
- course, you’re perfectly all right—but we’re both tired and sleepy,
- and you’re not so accustomed to go home by daylight as I am—and it
- wouldn’t be at all the thing for me to close a bargain with you now. Can’t
- you see what I mean? I wouldn’t play threepenny écarté with you at this
- hour in the morning—and I’m damned if I’m going to let you in for
- three hundred a year for the rest of my life. Shall I come round, say, at
- luncheon time?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shall not be in,” said Christian, curtly. He looked at his companion,
- and then past him at the trees in the square, in vexed rumination. “What I
- have it in my mind to do”—he continued, vaguely, after a pause—“it
- is not a thing for delay. It is in my blood to do it at once. It was my
- impulse to make you my comrade in it—but of course, since you have
- your reservations and doubts, there need be nothing more said about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The shrug of the shoulders which emphasized these last words nettled
- Westland, and at the same time helped him to repress his annoyance. It
- lent to the whole episode just that savor of foreign eccentricity which
- appealed to the amiable tolerance of the islander.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear man,” he urged, gently, “I haven’t the slightest notion what it
- is that you’re so keen about—but whatever it is, do go home and
- sleep on it, and make up your mind calmly after breakfast. It’s no good
- deciding important questions, and striking out new lines, and all that
- sort of thing, at this hour in the morning. Nobody ever does it, you know.
- It simply can’t be done.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good-night!” said Christian, proffering his hand. “You are right; it is
- high time for those who are sleepy to go to bed I won’t drag you round to
- Duke Street.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky looked at him doubtfully. “You do wrong to be angry, you know,” he
- said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that is your error—I am not in the least angry—I beg you
- to believe it,” cried Christian. His eyes beamed genially in proof of his
- assertion, and he put heartiness into his voice. “For a minute I was
- disappointed—shall I say vexed?—but not any more. How should I
- quarrel with you for not beholding things through my eyes? To me,
- something is a giant; you perceive that it is a windmill. Eh bien! We do
- not convince each other—but surely we do not quarrel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I am game enough to play Sancho to your Don,” expostulated Dicky,
- with a readiness which Christian had not looked for, “but I draw the line
- at starting out on an empty stomach, and when we’re too sleepy to stand.
- Well, what shall it be?” He took the hand offered him, and strove to
- signify by his cordial grasp that no trace of a misunderstanding remained.
- “Shall I look you up, say, at two o’clock?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do not think I shall be there. Goodnight!” responded Christian, and the
- two parted.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XVII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian climbed
- the stairs at Duke Street, and let himself into his apartments, with
- painstaking precautions against being overheard. There was an excess of
- zeal about Falkner which might easily impel him to present himself for
- service at even this most unseasonable hour.
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man had still only formless notions of what he was going to do,
- but it was at least plain to him that Falkner was to have no part in the
- proceedings. He drew off his varnished boots as a further measure of
- security, and then, with more hesitation, removed his cloak and coat, and
- raised the inside blinds at the two windows. This sitting-room of his had
- rather pleased him formerly. He could recall having taken quite an
- affectionate interest in buying and arranging the rugs and pictures and
- bookcases with which he had supplemented the somewhat gaunt furnishing of
- his predecessor. But now, in this misty and reluctant light of the London
- morning, nothing seemed good to him as he looked about.
- </p>
- <p>
- The pretty things of his own selection said no more to him than did the
- chattels he had taken over from a stranger. There was no spirit of home in
- them.
- </p>
- <p>
- He moved noiselessly to the adjoining bedroom, and drew the curtains there
- as well, and glanced round. Here, too, he had the sense of beholding the
- casual appointments of a hotel chamber. Nothing made an appeal of intimacy
- to him. He reflected that in a day or two he should not be able to
- remember how his room looked—even if his memory attempted the
- fatuous task. Duke Street had been engraved on his cards for six months,
- but it had not made the faintest mark on his heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- With an air of decision, he suddenly began to drag forth his clothes from
- the wardrobe and drawers, and spread them on the bed. In the tiny
- dressing-room beyond were piled his traveling bags, and these he brought
- out into the light. Upon consideration, however, the original impulse to
- take a good many things weakened and dwindled. To begin with, their secret
- removal was in no way practicable. Moreover, now that he thought of it, he
- did not want them. They would be simply encumbrances. He would take with
- him only the smallest handbag, with a change of linen and a few brushes.
- </p>
- <p>
- Finally, the conviction that even this must be a nuisance became clear to
- him, and he desisted from the random packing he had begun. Still moving
- about as silently as possible, he changed his ceremonial tie for one of
- every-day wear, and put on a suit of sober-colored tweeds, and his easiest
- brown boots. The transfer of his watch, some loose gold and the roll of
- notes from one set of pockets to another, completed his preparations in
- the bedchamber. He tiptoed out to the larger room, and there, upon
- reflection, wrote a few lines for Falkner’s direction, saying merely that
- he was called away, and that matters were to go on as usual until he
- returned or sent further orders. He separated a banknote from the roll to
- place inside this note, but on second thoughts wrote a check instead, and
- sealing and directing the envelope, laid it in a conspicuous place on the
- table.
- </p>
- <p>
- He noticed then, for the first time, that there were some letters from the
- evening post for him, neatly arranged on this table. He opened the
- nearest, and glanced at its contents: it was a note from his second
- cousin, Lady Milly Poynes, the fair-haired, fair-faced, fair-brained,
- fair-everything sister of Lord Lingfield, reminding him that she was
- depending upon his escort for the Private View of the Academy, and that
- the time for getting tickets was running very short. He laughed aloud at
- the conceit of the Royal Academy rising in his path as an obstacle at such
- a moment—and without more ado thrust this with the unopened letters
- into his pocket. Then, when he had made sure once more that he had his
- check-book, nothing remained to be done. He went softly forth, without so
- much as a thought of taking a farewell glance behind him, found a soft
- dark hat in the hallway and then closed the outer door with great care
- upon the whole Duke Street episode of his life.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are not to see me here again in a hurry,” he confided aloud to the
- banisters and steps, when he had descended to the first floor. Then he
- laughed to himself, and tripped gaily down the remaining flight.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no hesitation now in his mood. He walked briskly back through
- the square, and then down Waterloo Place, till he came to the Guards’
- Memorial. He moved round this to the front, and looked up at one of the
- three bronze Guardsmen with the confident air of familiarity. He knew this
- immutable, somber face under every shifting aspect of light and shadow; he
- had stared at the mantling greatcoat and the huge bearskin of this hero of
- his a hundred times. The very first day of his arrival in London he had
- made the acquaintance of this statue, and had started, dazed and
- fascinated, at the strange resemblance it suggested. Thus his boy-father
- must have looked, with the beard and the heavy dress of the Russian
- winter. The metal figure came to mean to him more than all London beside.
- In the sad, strong, silent countenance which gazed down upon him he read
- forever the tragedy that gripped his heartstrings. Forever Honor, standing
- aloft, held the laurel wreath poised high above the warrior’s head—immovable
- in the air, never to descend to touch its mark. Christian had seen this
- wreath always through moist eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- This morning, for a wonder, no tearful impulse came to him as he looked
- upward. The impassive face was as gravely fine as ever, but its customary
- effect of pathos was lacking. There even seemed in its sightless eyes a
- latent perception of Christian’s altered mood. He lifted his hat soberly
- and saluted the statue.
- </p>
- <p>
- Toward the Strand now he made his way, walking blithely, and humming to
- himself. He could not forbear to smile at a policeman he passed in front
- of St. Martin’s. Two elderly and much bewrapped cabmen stood stamping
- their feet beside a shelter, and they pointed toward their ridiculous old
- horses and battered growlers as he came along, with an air that moved him
- to glee. He gave them a shilling to divide, and went on, conscious of a
- novel delight in himself and in the world at large.
- </p>
- <p>
- The big clock showed it to be half-past five. There was no blue in the
- sky, but the mist of daybreak was abating, and the air was milder. Not a
- living creature was visible along the naked length of the Strand. At the
- end, the beautiful spire of St. Mary’s rose from the dim grays about its
- base, exquisite in tints and contour as an Alpine summit in the moment
- before sunrise.
- </p>
- <p>
- A turning to the left opened to Christian, unexpectedly, a scene full of
- motion and color. He had not thought himself so near Covent Garden, but
- clearly this must be it. He walked up toward the busy scene of high-laden
- vans, big cart-horses and swarming porters, wondering why no sign of all
- this activity was manifest in the sleeping Strand below, barely a stone’s
- throw distant. He saw the glowing banks of flowers within, as he
- approached, and made toward them, sighing already with pleasure at the
- promise they held out to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- He might have read in the papers that it was a backward and a grudging
- April, this year, in the matter of flowers. But to Christian, no memory of
- the exuberant South suggested any rivalry with this wonderful show of
- northern blossoms. Tulips and daffodils, amaryllis and azaleas,
- rhododendrons, carnations, roses—he seemed to have imagined to
- himself nothing like this before. He spent over an hour among them, in the
- end making numerous purchases. At each stall he gave an address—always
- the same—and exacted the pledge of delivery at eight o’clock.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last he could in reason buy nothing more, and he went out to look about
- him. He found the place where the market-men take drinks at all hours, and
- food and coffee when nature’s sternest demands can be positively no longer
- disregarded—but it did not invite his appetite. Some further time he
- spent in gazing wondering at the vast walls of vegetables and fruit being
- tirelessly built up and pulled down again, pondering meanwhile the
- question whether he should breakfast before eight o’clock, or at some
- indefinitely later hour. He partially solved the problem at length by
- buying a small box of Algerian peaches, and eating them where he stood.
- Then some exceptionally fine bananas tempted him further, and he finished
- with a delicate little melon from Sicily.
- </p>
- <p>
- How it carried him back to the days of his youth—this early morning
- fragrance of the fresh fruit! It was as if he were at Cannes again—only
- buoyant now, and happy, and oh, so free! And in his pocket he could feel
- whenever he liked the soft, munificent crackle of over four thousand
- francs! The sapphire Mediterranean had surely never been so lovely to his
- gaze as was now the dingy Strand below.
- </p>
- <p>
- The laggard hour came round at last. He descended to Arundel Street, and
- discovered the house he wanted, and found just within the entrance two or
- three of the flower-laden porters awaiting his arrival, For the rest, the
- building seemed profoundly unoccupied. He led the way up to the third
- floor, and had the plants set down beside the locked door which bore the
- sign “Miss Bailey.” Other similarly burdened porters made their appearance
- in turn, till the narrow hallway looked like a floral annex to the Garden
- itself.
- </p>
- <p>
- He waited alone with his treasures for what seemed to him a very long
- time, then descended and stood at the street door till he was tired, then
- climbed the stairs again. The extraordinary quiet of the big building,
- filled with business offices as it was, puzzled him. He had no experience
- of early-morning London to warn him that English habits differed from
- those of the continent. It occurred to him that perhaps it was a holiday—conceivably
- one of those extraordinary interludes called Bank Holidays—and he
- essayed a perplexing computation in the calendar in the effort to settle
- this point.
- </p>
- <p>
- Finally there began the sounds of steps, and the opening and closing of
- doors, below him. A tow-headed boy in buttons came up to his landing,
- stared in vacuous amazement at him and the flowers and passed on to the
- next floor. Noises of occupancy rose from the well of the staircase to
- bear him countenance, and suddenly a lift glided up past him in this well.
- He had not noticed the ropes or the iron caging before. He heard the
- slamming of the lift doors above, and the dark carriage followed on its
- smooth descent. Christian reproached himself for not having rung the bell
- and questioned the lift-man. He considered the feasibility of doing it
- now, but was deterred by the fear that the man would resent it. Then the
- lift came up again—and was stopping at his floor. There was a sharp
- note of girlish laughter on the instant of the halt, answered by a male
- guffaw.
- </p>
- <p>
- A slight, erect, active young woman emerged from the lift, her face alive
- with mirth of some unknown character. Behind her, in the obscurity,
- Christian saw for an instant the vanishing countenance of the liftman,
- grinning widely. This hilarity, somehow, struck in him an unsympathetic
- chord.
- </p>
- <p>
- The young woman, still laughing, spread an uncomprehending glance over
- Christian and his flowers. She moved past him, key in hand, toward the
- door which he had been guarding, with a puzzled eye upon him meanwhile.
- With the key in the lock she turned and decided to speak.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What might all this be—the Temple Flower Show or the Crystal
- Palace?” she asked, with banter in her tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “These are for Miss Bailey,” said Christian, quite humbly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Must be some mistake,” said the girl decisively. “Did she order them
- herself? Were you there at the time? Did you see her? Where do they come
- from?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian advanced a little into the light. “She has not ordered them,” he
- said, in his calmest voice. “I have not seen her for a long time. But I
- have brought them for her, and I think you may take it from me that they
- are hers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I beg your pardon,” she replied, lightly but with grace. “I didn’t
- understand. Things are forever being brought here that belong somewhere
- else. Men are so stupid in finding their way about! Well—I suppose
- we must get them inside. That is your idea, isn’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She spoke very rapidly, and with a kind of metallic snap in her tones.
- Christian answered her questions by a suave assenting gesture. “Miss
- Bailey is not likely to turn up much before half-past nine,” she went on,
- as if he had made the inquiry. “She lives so far out, and just now we’re
- not very busy. There’s nothing doing in new plays at this time of the
- year, and the lady novelists are all getting their own typewriters. If
- you’ll lend a hand, we’ll carry the things in.” Between them they bore in
- the various pots, and the big bouquets loosely wrapped in blue paper. The
- girl led the way through a large working-room to a smaller apartment,
- fitted as an office but containing also a sofa and a tall gas
- cooking-stove—and here on desk and center-table, chairs and
- windowsill, they placed the flowers. Christian watched her as she deftly
- removed their paper wrappings. She had a comely, small face of aspect at
- once alert and masterful. The skin was peculiarly fair, with a tinge of
- rose in the cheeks so delicately modulated that he found it in rivalry
- with the “Mrs. Pauls” she was unpacking. Her light hair was drawn plainly
- down over the temples in a fashion which he felt was distinguished, but
- said to himself he did not like. Her shrewd eyes took calm cognizance of
- him from time to time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They are very beautiful indeed,” she remarked with judicial approval,
- upon the completion of her task. Then, as upon an afterthought, she moved
- rapidly about, peering under the branches of the growing plants, and
- separating the cut flowers lightly with her hands. “There is no card
- anywhere, is there? I suppose you will want to leave a message? Here are
- pen and ink—if you wish to write anything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thank you,” Christian began, smilingly but with obvious hesitation. He
- looked at his watch. “If you don’t mind—if you’re quite sure I
- shan’t be in the way—I think I should like to wait till Miss Bailey
- comes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you won’t be in the way,” the girl replied. She regarded him
- meditatively, with narrowed eyes. “I shouldn’t dust this room in any event—since
- the flowers are here; but you mustn’t come out into the big room—unless
- you want to get choked with blacks. Would you like a morning paper? I can
- send a boy out for one.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thank you—you are very good—no,” Christian answered. “There
- are some books here—I shall amuse myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl turned to leave him, and then on second thought moved over to the
- window and lifted the sash. “There’ll be no objection to your smoking if
- you like,” she informed him. Then she went out, closing the door behind
- her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian walked to the window in turn, and looked down over the flowers
- to the narrow street below. It was full of young men in silk hats, toiling
- up the granite ascent like black ants. He reflected that they must be
- clerks and shopmen, going to their daily work from the Temple station or
- the Embankment. The suggestion of monotonous bondage which their swarming
- progress toward the wage-earning center gave forth, interested him. He
- yawned pleasurably at the thought of his own superb emancipation from
- duties and tasks of all descriptions.
- </p>
- <p>
- He strolled over to the bookcase above the desk, and glanced at the
- volumes revealed through its glass doors. They seemed very serious books,
- indeed. “Economics of Socialism,” “Capitalist Production,” “The Ethics of
- Socialism,” “Towards Democracy”—so the titles ran that first met his
- eye. There were other groups—mainly of history and the essayists—but
- everything was substantial. His glance sought in vain any lightsome gleam
- of poetry or fiction. The legend on a thin red book, “Civilization: Its
- Cause and Cure,” whimsically caught his attention. He put his hand to the
- key in the bookcase door to get out the volume; then, hesitating, yawned,
- and looked over the shelves once more. There was nothing else—and
- really he desired to read nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- He would half recline in comfort upon the sofa instead, until his friend
- came. As a pleasing adjunct to this plan, he drew the table up close, and
- found room upon it, by crowding them together, for most of the flowers
- that had been bestowed elsewhere. He seated himself at his ease, with his
- head resting against the wall, and surveyed the plants and blossoms in
- affectionate admiration. It was delicious to think how naïve her surprise
- would be—how great her pleasure! Truly, since his discovery of his
- birthright, remarkable and varied as had been his experiences, he had done
- nothing else which afforded him a tithe of the satisfaction he felt now
- glowing in all his veins. Here, at last, by some curious and devious
- chance, he had stumbled upon the thing that was genuinely worth doing.
- </p>
- <p>
- He could hear the cheerful girl in the next room, whistling gently to
- herself as she moved the furniture about. There came presently the sound
- of other female voices, and then a sustained, vibrant rattle, quaintly
- accentuated like the ticking of a telegraph key, which he grew accustomed
- to, and even found pleasant to the ear.
- </p>
- <p>
- He put his feet up on the edge of the sofa—and nestled downward till
- his head was upon it as well. A delicate yet pervasive fragrance from the
- table close beside him aroused his languid curiosity. Was it the perfume
- of carnations or of roses?
- </p>
- <p>
- He closed his eyes the better to decide.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the outer room, Miss Connie Staples permitted herself numerous and
- varied speculations as to the identity and purposes of the young man with
- the flowers, the while she dusted the typewriters, distributed the copy
- for the morning’s start and set the place in order. She had her sleeves
- rolled up, and had wound a big handkerchief about her hair; beneath this
- turban her forehead scored itself in lines of perplexed wonderment as to
- this curious early caller—but when two other girls arrived, she
- suffered them to put aside their things and begin work without so much as
- hinting at what had happened. A third girl, coming a little later, brought
- in a stray blossom which she had picked up in the corridor outside. She
- mentioned the fact, and even laid stress upon it, but got no syllable of
- explanation.
- </p>
- <p>
- This was all simple enough, but at half-past nine the arrival of still
- another of the sex put Miss Connie’s resources to an unexpected test.
- </p>
- <p>
- A handsome, youngish woman, very well dressed indeed, appeared suddenly
- upon the threshold of the workroom, knocking upon the door and pushing it
- wide open at the same instant. She looked curiously about, and then
- point-blank into the face of the girl who came toward her. It was a glance
- of independent and impersonal criticism which the two exchanged, covering
- with instantaneous swiftness an infinitude of details as to dress,
- coiffure, complexion, figure, temperament and origin. Connie wondered if
- the new-comer was really quite a lady, long before she formulated an
- inquiring thought about her errand. Even as she finally looked this
- question of business, she decided that it was an actress with a play for
- the provinces, and asked herself if she did not seem to recognize the
- face. The visitor, for her part, saw that Connie’s teeth were too uneven
- to be false, and that her waist was overlong, and that her hair was not
- thick enough to be worn flat over the temples, much less to justify so
- confident a manner. In all, something less than a second of time had
- elapsed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to see Miss Bailey—Miss Frank Bailey,” explained the
- stranger, graciously.
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie conveyed to her, with courteous brevity, the fact that Miss Bailey
- had not yet arrived. “Is it something that I can do?” she added.
- </p>
- <p>
- The other shook her head, and showed an affable thread of white between
- her freshened lips. “No, I will wait for her,” she answered, and threw a
- keen glance about the place. “That’s her private room, isn’t it?” she
- asked, nodding at the closed door to the right. “I will wait in there,”
- she decided, in the same breath, and began moving toward it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie alertly headed her off. “If you will kindly take a seat here—”
- she interposed, standing in front of her visitor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s too noisy out here,” remarked the other; “those horrid machines
- would give me a headache. That <i>is</i> her private room, isn’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Unfortunately,” Connie began, lowering her voice, “the room belongs to
- another office. Or rather, I should say, it is locked. Miss Bailey will be
- here—with the key—very shortly now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, it’s all right—I’m her sister,” explained the other, in no wise
- resenting the ineffectual fabrications. She pushed forward past the
- reluctant girl with a resolute step, and put her hand on the knob of the
- tabooed door. “Make your mind quite easy, my dear,” she remarked over her
- shoulder, sinking her voice in turn in deference to the situation; “you’ve
- done all that could be expected of you—and I’ll tell her so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, with a momentary gleam of good nature on her pretty face, which the
- short transparent veil she wore to her chin seemed to accentuate rather
- than mask, she opened the door, threw up her head with a swift, puzzled
- glance at what she saw, and then tiptoed gracefully into the room, closing
- the door with painstaking noiselessness behind her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Frances Bailey entered her office not many minutes later, her cheeks
- aglow with the morning air as the wheelwoman meets it. She nodded
- cheerfully to Connie, and beyond her to the girls at the machines, as her
- hand sought for a hat-pin at the back of her head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Any word from the Lyceum?” she asked. “And what does that Zambesi-travel
- manuscript make?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie ignored industrial topics. “There are people waiting in there to
- see you,” she announced, in low, significant tones.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mistress was impressed by the suggestion of mystery. “People? What
- people?” she asked, knitting her brows.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One of them says she’s your sister. And the other is a young gentleman—he
- came first—and he brought—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My sister?” interrupted Miss Bailey. “Cora! Something dreadful must have
- happened—for she never got out so early as this before in her life.
- Is she in mourning? Did she seem upset?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Not</i> a bit of it!” said Connie, reassuringly. She added, following
- the other toward the private office: “I tried my best to keep her out
- here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should you?” asked Frances, with wide-open eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, well—you’ll see,” replied the girl, evasively. “I told you
- there was some one else in there.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances opened the door—and Connie noted that she too lifted her
- head and stared a little, and then cautiously closed the door behind her.
- She pondered this as she returned to her machine, and she curled her thin
- lip when she took up the copies of the first act of an amateur’s romantic
- play, to underscore the business directions with red ink, and sew on brown
- paper covers. Intuition told her that a much better drama was afoot, here
- under her very nose.
- </p>
- <p>
- Inside her office, Miss Bailey surrendered herself to frank astonishment
- at what she beheld.
- </p>
- <p>
- Bestowed in obvious discomfort upon her sofa, behind an extraordinary bank
- of potted plants and bright, costly greenhouse flowers, was a young man
- fast asleep. Her eye took in as well her sister, who sat near the head of
- the sofa, but she could wait. The interest centered in this sleeping
- stranger, who made himself so much at home in the shelter of his
- remarkable floral barricade. She moved round the better to scrutinize his
- face, which was tilted up as if proudly held even in slumber. Upon
- examination she recognized the countenance; and in a swift moment of
- concentration tried to think what his presence might signify. Then she
- turned to her sister, and lifted her calm brows in mute inquiry.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, my dear—what splendid business!” whispered Cora, her glance
- beaming upward from the sofa to the standing figure. “And mind, Frank, I’m
- in it! I’m in it up to my neck! I sent him to you, dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl looked down at them both, and deliberated before she spoke. “If
- you brought him here,” she said, “I think you’d better take him away
- again. I can let you out by this other door. Let us have no more publicity
- than necessary.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you don’t in the least understand!” protested Cora, with her finger
- raised in an appeal for quiet tones.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand,” replied Frances
- coldly. “There’s one thing <i>you</i> don’t understand either, Cora: This
- is my typewriting office; it isn’t a greenroom at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then it well might be,” retorted the other, with a latent grin. “Anything
- greener than its owner I never saw. Now listen—don’t be a silly
- cuckoo! I met the youngster last night—and I worked him up till he
- was mad to learn where you were to be found. I told him—and then I
- went home, and I couldn’t sleep for thinkin’ of you, dear—and so I
- turned out at some extraordinary hour this mornin’—it is mornin’ by
- this time, isn’t it?—and I came here, just to tell you that he was
- askin’ after you—and I come in here—and lo! here’s the bird on
- his little nest!—and see the flowers he’s brought from Covent Garden
- for you!—and so I sit here like Patience on a monument, afraid to
- wink an eyelash, so’s not to wake him till you come. That’s what I’ve done
- for <i>you</i>, dear—and presently, if you don’t mind, I’d like to
- hear what you’ll do for me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances put a knee upon the chair before her, and rested with her hands
- upon its back. She sighed a little, and bit her lips. A troubled look came
- into her gray eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You might as well say all you have to say,” she said, slowly. “I don’t in
- the least see what you’re up to—but then I never did.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, dear, you never did,” responded Cora, smiling as if in pleased
- retrospect. “But that’s no reason why I shouldn’t be a good sister to you.
- If it’s one’s nature to be a good sister, why, then one will be—and
- there you are, don’t you see? I take no credit to myself for it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go on,” said the other. The two women spoke in hushed whispers, and with
- each sentence stole glances of precaution toward the sleeper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, Frank, I look to you not to forget what I’ve done. I spent two or
- three very hard hours last night talkin’ him round, and singin’ your
- praises to him—and I put Covent Garden into his head, too—-and
- here he is! And I kept Eddy and Gus off his back, too—they were
- frightfully keen to get at him—but I said no, and I held ’em
- to heel. It was all for you, dear. They might have queered the whole
- pitch, if I’d given ’em their heads. But now about myself. I’m
- tired, dead tired, of bein’ poor. Of course we get a little something from
- Lord Julius. But Eddy—you know what Eddy is! No sooner does he pick
- himself up from Epsom than Ascot gives him a fair knockout, and if he
- lives through the Sandown Eclipse there’s Goodwood waitin’ for him with a
- facer. I can’t understand it; other men seem to win sometimes—you’d
- think the unluckiest duffer would get a look-in once in a while—but
- no, he just gets hammered one meeting after another. And I’m tired of it,
- Frank! If I could only go back to work! But if I get an engagement, then
- Eddy will go playin’ the goat—he’s jealous of everybody about the
- place from the bandmaster down to the carpenter’s boy—and that makes
- me unpopular—and there we are, don’t you see! I’m worn out with it.
- But if I could have eight hundred a year, or even six hundred or five at a
- pinch—God knows, my wants are simple enough!—and have it paid
- to me personally, do you see—why, then, life would be worth livin’.
- Now, what do you say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances looked moodily down at her distinguished sister, her lips twisted
- in stormy amusement. “Why not say a thousand and be done with it?” she
- demanded between set teeth, after an ominous pause. “One would be as
- intelligent as the other. And oughtn’t I to set your Eddy up with a racing
- stud while I’m about it? It’s true that I have about twenty pounds a year
- for my own personal use, and Tom has a standing grievance that I don’t
- give even <i>that</i> to him—but don’t let that interfere with your
- plans. Whatever you feel that you would like, just give it a name.
- Couldn’t I lease one of the new Kaffir mansions in Park Lane for you? Or
- would you prefer something in Grosvenor Square?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Cora gazed up with such intentness at her unnatural sister that a bright
- little tear came to shine at the corner of each eye. She put up her veil
- then, and breathed a cautious sigh. “I didn’t expect this of you, dear,”
- she said, submissively. “Of course it’s the old story—La Cigale, and
- ‘go-to-the ant-thou-sluggard’ and all that. I don’t see myself why a
- typewriting machine should make one so fearfully stony-hearted; you get
- callouses on your fingers, I know, but you needn’t get ’em on your
- sisterly affections, one would think. But however”—she wiped her
- eyes, drew down her veil and allowed a truculent note to sound in her
- voice—“however, if you won’t play, why then neither will I. I’ve
- been at pains to put this youngster in your way, but it won’t be much
- trouble to shunt him out again. You mustn’t think you can walk on me
- indefinitely, Frank. I’m the best-natured woman in the world, but even I
- draw the line somewhere.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Draw it now then,” said the other, with stern promptitude. “Go away, and
- take your friend with you and let me get to my work. I don’t know what
- business either of you had coming here, at all.” As she spoke, she moved
- to the outer private door, and turned the key in the lock. “You can send
- for the flowers,” she added, “or I will have them taken over to Charing
- Cross Hospital—whichever you like.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Cora rose, her veiled face luminous with a sudden inspiration. “You can’t
- quarrel with me, dear, no matter how hard you try.” She spoke in low,
- cooing tones—a triumph of sympathetic voice production. “You’re hard
- as nails, but I know you’re straight. I will trust my interests absolutely
- in your hands. I leave it to you to do the fair thing by me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The fair thing?” echoed Frances, in dubious perplexity. She puzzled over
- the words and their elusive implication. “Your interests?” she repeated—and
- saw Cora move round her to the unlocked door, and open it—and still
- sought to comprehend what it was all about. Only when her sister, smiling
- cordially once more, bent forward without warning and pressed her veiled
- lips against her chin, and with a gentle “Goodbye, dear!” stepped into the
- shadows without, did she recall the other features of the situation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here!” she called, with nervous eagerness, yet keeping her voice down,
- “you’re not to run off like this. Take your man with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Softly, dear!” Cora enjoined her, from the dusk of the hallway. “Your
- young women wouldn’t understand. No—I caught him for you, and I
- leave him in your hands. I’m not in the least afraid to trust it all to
- you. Bye-bye, dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances went out and glared down the staircase, with angry expostulation
- on her tongue’s end. But there was nobody to talk to. She could hear only
- the brisk rustle of Cora’s skirts on the stone steps, a floor below—and
- even that died away beneath the clatter of the machines inside.
- </p>
- <p>
- Returning over the threshold, she paused, and looked impatiently at the
- flowers, and at the impassive, slumbering face beyond them. After a
- little, the lines of vexation began to melt from her brow. In a musing
- way, she put a hand behind her, and as if unconsciously closed and locked
- the hall door again. Then she moved to the table, picked up some of the
- loose blossoms and breathed in their fragrance, still keeping her
- thoughtful gaze upon the young man. She found the face much older and
- stronger than she remembered it—and in a spirit of fairness she said
- to herself that it seemed no whit less innocent. But then perhaps all
- sleeping faces looked innocent; she could recall that Cora’s certainly
- did. Holding the carnations to her lips and nostrils, she examined in
- meditative detail the countenance before her—delicately modeled,
- dark, nervously high-spirited even in repose. Associations came back as
- she gazed—the tender eagerness of the lad, the wistful charm with
- which his fancy had invested England, the frank sweetness of the
- temperament he had disclosed to her. He had been like a flower himself on
- that mellow autumn day—as fresh and as goodly to the eye as these
- roses on the table. But a winter had intervened since then—and what
- gross disillusionments, what roughening and hardening and corroding
- experiences had he not encountered! You could not tell anything by a face
- in sleep; again she assured herself of that.
- </p>
- <p>
- Why, when one came to think of it, it was enough that Cora had brought him—or
- sent him, it mattered not which. Whence had she dispatched him?—from
- some theatrical dance or late supper. It was true that he was not in
- evening dress—and the thought gave her pause for a moment. But he
- had been at some place where those wretched cousins of his were present—for
- Cora had spoken of keeping both Eddy and Gus “off his back”—whatever
- that might mean. And it was Cora herself who had told him to go to Covent
- Garden and buy these flowers!
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances, revolving these unpleasant reflections, discovered all at once
- that the young man, without betraying by any other motion his awakening,
- had opened his eyes and was looking placidly across the flowers into her
- face.
- </p>
- <p>
- She caught a quick breath, and frowned slightly at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XIX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> don’t think I
- like your being here,” Frances remarked to the young man after a brief
- frowning inspection. She spoke slowly, and with a deliberate gravity and
- evenness of tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian’s wide-open eyes continued to gaze up at her with that
- disconcerting look which had in it both remote abstraction and something
- very intimately personal. His glance expressed a tender pleasure as it
- maintained itself against hers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, but I like it so very much!” he murmured, with a pleading smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, by a sudden movement, he sat up, flushing in a novel embarrassment.
- “I beg you to pardon me,” he urged, faltering over his words. “I was not
- wholly awake, I think; or I was trying to persuade myself that it was
- still a dream. Do not think me so rude, I pray you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She signified by a gesture and momentary facial relaxation that this
- particular detail of the situation need not detain them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But”—she began, in her stiffest and least amiable voice, and then
- hesitated. She put her knee again upon the chair, and, resting her hand on
- its back, looked dubiously at him. “I hardly know what to say,” she
- started once more, and stopped altogether.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, but it is I who must say everything,” he broke in, eagerly. “I am
- quite awake now—I see, of course, it is all absurd, meaningless in
- your eyes, till I explain it to you.” He rose to his feet and put forth
- his hand as if to offer it in greeting. No responsive token being visible
- on her set face, or in her rigid posture, as she confronted him, he waved
- both hands in a deprecatory movement over the table laden with flowers
- between them. “These are my peace-offering,” he said, with less
- confidence. “I hoped they would say some things for me—some things
- which I feel within me, and cannot easily put into speech. That is what I
- expected they would surely do. But”—he finished with dejection,
- after another glance into her face—“evidently they are as
- tongue-tied as I am. I see it was not a happy thought in me to bring them—or
- to come myself!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had followed his words with rapt attentiveness—but at the end
- seemed to remember only one of them. “The ‘thought,’” she said, coldly.
- “Yes, that is what I do not understand. What was the thought?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He regarded her with some perplexity. “What was the thought—my
- thought?” he repeated. “Oh—since it does not explain itself, what
- good is there in talking about it? Let us say that there was no ‘thought’
- at all. I will make my compliments and apologies—and say
- good-morning—and nothing at all will have happened.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” she answered reflectively. “That would be stupid. You have been to
- expense, and evidently to some inconvenience as well, to do this thing. On
- second thoughts,” she went on, with an apparent effort to modify the
- asperities of her tone and manner, “I dare say that I haven’t behaved
- quite nicely to you. If you remember, I told you a long time ago that bad
- manners was a failing of mine.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I remember every little word that you spoke,” said Christian softly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances hardened her voice on the instant. “But that doesn’t help me to
- understand why—what this is all about.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He responded slowly, searching for his words as he went along. The rattle
- of machines in the next room for the first time came into the
- conversation, and forced him to lift his voice. “You were my last friend
- in France—my first friend in England,” he began. “I said I would not
- forget you, and you have been always in my mind—always somewhere
- secure and fresh and sweet in my mind. It was only last night that I
- learned where I might find you. You will remember that when I begged you
- to tell me, you laughed and would not. I must not make you believe that I
- did not very soon find out your name or that I could not have learned your
- whereabouts much earlier. All I say is that I did not forget—and
- that last night, when the chance came naturally to me, I asked and learned
- what I desired to know. And then—why, then—this knowledge
- spread upward to be of more importance than all the other things I knew. I
- went home—but never to think of sleeping, but only to change my
- clothes and hasten out again, to get some new morning flowers for you,
- and to come to you at the earliest moment. I did not know that London rose
- so late—I arrived before the time, and, so it seems, waiting for
- your coming, I fell asleep. That is the entire story. You see it is not
- very complicated—it is by no means extraordinary.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances had listened with a dreamy gentleness in her gray eyes. She
- started slightly when he stopped, and gave him a keen, cool glance. “The
- entire story?” she queried. “I think you have forgotten to mention that it
- was my sister who told you about me, and gave you my address.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her prescience in no wise astonished Christian. Imagination had thrown
- round the Minerva-like figure which personified her in his thoughts, such
- a glamour of intellectual radiancy, that it seemed quite a natural thing
- for her to divine the obscure, and comprehend the mysterious. He smiled at
- her as he shrugged his shoulders. “It did not occur to me as important,”
- he exclaimed. “It is true, however, that she told me. She did not know the
- address when I asked her, but later she procured it for me from her
- brother. It was at a supper at the Hanover Theater. Afterward there was
- dancing on the stage. I fear it would have been rather tiresome for me if
- I had not met your sister. She is a very friendly lady, and she talked a
- great deal to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “About me?” demanded Frances, sharply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no—about you only a few pleasant words; not more. It seems you
- do not meet very often.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke with such evident frankness that she hesitated over the further
- inquiry her mind had framed. At last she put it in altered form. “Then you
- would not say that she sent you here—-that she told you to come—and
- to come by way of Covent Garden, and buy these flowers?” The question, as
- she uttered it, was full of significant suggestion about the nature of the
- reply desired. Its tone, too, carried the welcome hint of a softened mood,
- under the influence of which Christian’s face brightened with joy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, not at all!” he cried, lifting his voice gaily above the
- typewriters’ clatter. “She did speak of Covent Garden, and the show of
- flowers there in the early morning, but it was not in the least with
- reference to you. It was my own idea long after she had gone. Oh, no one
- would be more surprised than that good sister of yours to know that I am
- here!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances, with a puzzling smile which ended in a long breath of relief,
- took up some of the roses and held them to her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sit down again,” she bade him, with a pleasant glow in the eyes regarding
- him over the blossoms; “sit down, and let us talk. Or does that noise bore
- you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I am too glad!” he assured her, beamingly. “If it were cannon firing
- in the next room, it would be nothing to me.” Then, as he continued to
- gaze with delight at her, an inspiration came to him. “Or is it possible
- for you to come out? Would you walk a little while, perhaps on the
- Embankment?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not particularly busy this morning,” she made indirect answer. Then
- a digression occurred to her. “But I am rather surprised,” she observed,
- “to find that England hasn’t made more changes in your speech. I would
- have expected a perfect Piccadilly accent, but you talk exactly as you did
- on the train and the boat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed and clapped his hands for glee. “It is wholly because I am with
- you again,” he declared. “Everybody has said for months that the foreign
- traces had quite vanished from my tongue—but the first glimpse of
- you—ah! they come instantly back! It is the association of ideas,
- beyond doubt—that very sweet association,” he added, with trembling
- softness, “of oh! such fond ideas.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had taken up her hat. “We will go out for a little, if you like,” she
- remarked rather abruptly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I am altogether forgiven?” he demanded in high spirits, as he rose.
- “You consent to accept the flowers?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Heaven only knows what I shall do with them,” she answered, with a
- grimace of mock despair. “But it was ever so nice of you to get them, and
- I thank you very much. Oh, I must tell Connie to sprinkle them before I
- go.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She moved to the inner door, and as she opened it turned. “Wouldn’t you
- like to come and see the factory at work?” she inquired, and he joined her
- with alacrity. “It isn’t much to see at the moment,” she explained, as
- they entered the large room. “We have nine machines, but only four of them
- are needed just now. Until after the Jubilee, I’m afraid things will be
- very dull with publishers and playwrights. However, one must take the lean
- with the fat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian looked somewhat nervously about him, while his friend stepped
- aside to confer with the girl whom he remembered from the early morning.
- Both this young lady and the three at their machines made a rapid, and as
- it seemed to him, perfunctory survey of their mistress’s guest, and bent
- their attention upon their duties again as if his presence signified
- nothing whatever to them. He suspected that in reality they were plunged
- in furious speculation concerning him; and this embarrassed him so much
- that he turned and strolled back toward the open door and even entered the
- office before Frances rejoined him.
- </p>
- <p>
- When she came back to him, she took from the table a couple of pale,
- half-opened tea-rose buds, gave one to him to fix in his lapel and pinned
- the other to the breast of her fawn-gray frock. “If you are ready,” she
- said, smilingly, and led the way to the staircase. As she descended before
- him, he noted the intelligent simplicity of this dress she wore—how
- it fitted her as gracefully and as artistically as Poole ever fitted Dicky
- Westland. About her hat, the carriage of her head and shoulders, the free
- decision of her step, there was something individual which appealed
- directly to him—a charm which would not be duplicated by any other
- person in the world. He looked at his watch as he went down, and found
- with surprise that it was nearly eleven.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stepped to her side at the street doorway, with a meaning gesture. “Do
- you remember,” he said, gently—“on the boat you took my arm?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think London is a little different,” she answered, decisively enough,
- yet with the effect to his ears of unreserved camaraderie.
- </p>
- <p>
- They walked slowly down to the end of the street. “Do you mind which way
- we go?” she asked him, and turned eastward. “I haven’t seen the city in an
- age,” she remarked, as if the choice needed explanation. Sauntering along,
- they found little to say to each other at the outset. What words they
- exchanged were about the mild, sunless sky of the London April, and the
- wonderful pencilings and rubbings of soot upon the silver-gray of London’s
- stone walls. Learning that he was a stranger to the Temple, she led the
- way through the gate and lane, and then, by turnings which it surprised
- him to find her knowing so well, to the curious little church. The door in
- the sunken porch was ajar, and they went in. She pointed to the circle of
- freestone Crusaders looking complacently up from the floor at the Oriental
- dome which had caught their traveled fancy ages before, and it occurred to
- her to say: “Is it not interesting to you to think that there were Torrs
- who were friends and companions of these very Magnavilles and Mareschalls,
- six hundred years ago?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He thrust out his lips a little. “I have not much interest in anything
- concerning the Torrs,” he answered.
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked up at him with curiosity, but offered no comment. They left the
- church, and she led him round to the spot where, amid the cracked old
- flags from forgotten graves, Oliver Goldsmith’s tomb now finds itself. A
- crumbling wreath of natural flowers showed that some kindly soul had
- remembered the date of the poet’s death, three weeks before.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian displayed scarcely more interest here. “I have not read his
- ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’” he confessed to her. “I had always the intention to
- do so, but it—it never came off.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That brings me to one thing I wanted to ask you,” she said, as they
- retraced their steps. “What books have you been reading—since you
- came to England? I am anxious to know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not many,” he admitted with an attempted laugh which ended rather
- shamefacedly. “Reading did not fit itself very readily into my time. At
- Lord Chobham’s I read in some old books, and at Emanuel’s too, but it was
- all about our own people—the Barons’ War, and the Wars of the Roses,
- and the Civil War. I know something about these and about the old families
- of the West, but not much else. I should have read more, I know, but there
- was really not much opportunity. But you—I saw at your office what
- serious books you read. It is what I should like to do, too—sometimes.
- But there has been no one to talk with about any kind of books.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They had come out again to the Embankment, and made their pace now even
- more deliberate. “I have been thinking a great deal about you, and your
- future, since we met,” she remarked, after a pause. “It has made me wonder
- what you would do, when the opportunity came to you—and what it
- would be open for you to do. That is why I began reading the books that I
- take it you have in mind—but afterward I read them for their own
- value. At the beginning”—she went on slowly, studying the sky-line
- in an abstracted way as she walked—“at the beginning I thought I
- should see you again sometime, and I had the idea that I wanted to be able
- to advise—or no, not that, but to talk to you, and try to interest
- you in the right sort of things. But it did not take me long to see how
- foolish that was.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, no!” urged Christian; without, however, any convincing display of
- enthusiasm. “There is no one in the world from whom I will so gladly take
- advice as you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled fleetingly at him. “And there is no one in the world,” she
- replied, “more firmly resolved not to offer you any.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, but if I beg it! You may not offer—but will you refuse to
- give?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is the good?” she broke forth in a louder tone, speaking as if in
- annoyed reproof to herself. “No person can think or feel or decide for
- another! It is nonsense to pretend otherwise. A man must think his own
- thoughts, follow his own nature! We can ask nothing finer of a man than to
- honestly be himself. I get so angry at all these ceaseless attempts to run
- people all into one mold, to make everybody like everybody else—and
- then, here I was, solemnly starting out to do the very trick myself!” She
- laughed in ironical self-depreciation at the thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian drew closer to her side. “I have very many things to say to
- you,” he began gravely. “But I am in one way sorry that we went into the
- churchyard, because it has made us melancholy, and I was going to tell it
- all to you in the highest good spirits. We were both laughing like merry
- children when we left your place—and now we are sad. I like
- Emanuel’s idea—he will have no tombs to be seen upon his estate.
- Death will come there as elsewhere, without doubt, but he will not be
- allowed to remain hanging about, thrusting his ugly presence upon happy
- people each time they walk in the street. At Emanuel’s there is cremation—and
- that is the end of it. That is the portion of his System which pleases me
- most. It is the best thing in it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked into his face. “Then you are not wildly in love with his whole
- System?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Me? I grieve to say not. It is no doubt very admirable indeed—but—how
- shall I say?—it does not appeal to me. You are displeased with me
- for confessing it—but—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Displeased?” she interrupted him, with a meaning laugh. “Nothing could
- displease me less!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you do not love the System?” he cried, with dancing eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hate it!” she answered, briefly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Capital!” He halted, to shake her by the hand with gay effusion. “Let us
- abuse it together! You shall say it all, however, because I only dislike
- it, and cannot give any reasons why—but you will know them every
- one. Oh, this is splendid! I had the right instinct when I came to you! I
- have a great deal to tell you—but first you must tell me: what do
- you say about my cousin’s System? I am burning to hear that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was impossible to evade the contagion of his sparkling face. She
- laughed in turn.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, it would be too long a story,” she half protested. “But to put it
- briefly, this is my idea. Emanuel seems to me to be a magnificent
- character, with one extraordinary limitation. I think it must be a Jewish
- limitation—for I have seen it pointed out that they do not invent
- things. That is Emanuel’s flaw; he has not an original thought in his
- head. He merely carries to a mathematical point of expansion and
- development the ready-made ideas which he finds accepted all about him.
- What you see in him is a triumph of the Semitic passion for working a
- problem out to its ultimate conclusion. When you consider it, what has he
- done? Merely discovered, by tremendous labor and energy, the smoothest
- possible working arrangement of the social system which his class regards
- as best for itself, and hence for all mankind—the system which
- exalts a chosen few, and keeps all the rest in subjection. My dear sir,
- things do not rise higher than their source! How did the Torrs come by
- their estates? By stealing the birthright of thousands of dumb human
- beasts of burden, and riveting the family collar round their necks with no
- more regard for their wishes or their rights than as if they had been so
- many puppies or colts. And what was the origin of the Ascarel fortune? The
- most frightful and bloodstained human slavery in the poisonous jungles of
- the Dutch East Indies—that, and an ancient family business of
- international usury, every dirty penny in which if you followed it far
- enough, meant the flaying alive of a peasant, or the starvation of his
- little children. These are the things which your cousin inherits. He is
- fine enough to be ashamed of them, but he is not broad enough to repudiate
- them. He makes himself believe that they were wrong only in degree. He
- will admit that the Torrs were too brutal toward their serfs, the Ascarels
- too selfish with their millions. That is all. And he sets himself to
- proving that with the right kind of chief at their head these systems of
- theirs can be made not only respectable, but even profitable to the slaves
- as well as the master. He does not see that the systems themselves are
- crimes! ”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I am glad that I came to you,” said Christian, in low, earnest
- tones, in the pause which followed. The girl, breathing deeply under the
- fervor of her mood, looked fixedly before her toward the copper-haze above
- Paul’s dome. He watched the noble immobility of her profile and thrilled
- at its suggestion of strength.
- </p>
- <p>
- “To do him justice,” she went on, musingly, “he does not pretend that it
- is progress. He is honest, and he describes it as reaction—a long
- step backward. It is just that kind of honesty and devotion, plus
- wrong-headedness, which keeps us all at sixes and sevens. If we agree that
- there is no better-intentioned man alive than Emanuel—still he would
- do more harm than the most atrocious blackguard, if he had his way with
- the world. But fortunately, he will not have it. A vastly greater and
- loftier Jew has said that you cannot pour new wine into old bottles.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They walked on for a little in silence. “Have you been to Emanuel’s place
- then?” Christian asked at last.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No; I know it only from hearsay, and from his books. A woman novelist for
- whom I do work has been there, and she has told me a good deal about it.
- She is going to use it in a book, and would you believe it? she is crazy
- with enthusiasm about the whole thing. I tried to point out to her what
- she was doing, but you might as well talk to the east wind. The way women
- run after the hand that smites them, and beslaver it with kisses—that
- is the thing that enrages me most of all. Why, the very corner-stone of
- Emanuel’s System is the perpetual enslavement of women. I am always
- surprised, when I hear about his mediæval arrangements, that he hasn’t set
- up a ducking-stool for his women-folk. I’m sure it’s a pure oversight on
- his part. Well, what are you to expect when cultivated women like Mrs.
- Sessyl-Trant turn up as frantic admirers of that sort of thing? However,
- thank goodness, women are not forever to be sold out by the fools of their
- own sex. It is impossible not to see that the tide has turned at last.
- There <i>is</i> a change—and I think something genuine and lasting
- is going to come out of it. I really think it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, that is what I feel,” put in Christian, with confused eagerness. “I
- have no clear thoughts about it, but it is my deep feeling that—that—what
- shall I say?—we are most at fault in the matter of the women.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances pursued her thought, in frowning meditation. “It is the new
- professional class, who earn their own living, who will help us out. These
- women, who have come through the mill of self-responsibility, will not
- accept the old nonsense invented for them, and imposed upon them by the
- women parasites. The younger women who take care of themselves have all
- begun to ask questions: ‘Why should I do this?’ ‘Why shouldn’t I do that?’
- ‘And whose business but my own is it if I do the other?’ Unfortunately,
- they are too ready to accept the first answer that comes to them. Oh, that
- is the woeful trouble! Men have slowly built up for themselves a good deal
- of machinery by which they can find out what is true. I don’t say they are
- not continually deceived, or that they invariably recognize the truth when
- they see it, but still they have certain facilities for protecting
- themselves against falsehoods. But women have practically none at all.
- They are systematically lied to from their cradle to their grave. They
- read so hard!—they are <i>the</i> consumers of novels, religious
- books, weekly newspapers, magazines, and the rest of it—but never a
- word of actual truth is allowed to reach them out of it all. Wherever they
- turn to inquire about themselves, about their rights and their duties in
- this world that they have been born into, they encounter this vast,
- unbroken conspiracy of liars. That is the gravest of all the disadvantages
- they labor under. Why, take even the ‘New Woman’ fiction of a few years
- ago. There was a great hullabaloo raised over certain novels; at last,
- they cried, the truth was being-revealed by women, for women, of women.
- But what nonsense! It turned out not to be the truth at all, but only the
- old falsehood, disguised in hysterics and some shocking bad manners. There
- seems no escape for women anywhere. They are lied to by their parents,
- their parsons, their doctors, their authors—and of course they lie
- to one another. They have a whole debased currency of insincerities and
- flattering falsehoods which they pass among themselves, keeping straight
- faces all the while as if it were honest money.—But as I said, I
- think a change is coming. However, don’t let’s talk any more about it. I
- get too angry!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I like you to be angry—only not with me,” commented Christian with
- a sprightly smile. Then he added, more gravely, “Oh, I can see how the
- women who work will make a change. It was very curious to me to see those
- girls at the machines in your office. It was one of them who let me in,
- before you came. She was quite different from any of the English women I
- have been meeting. One saw that she had thoughts of her own—an
- atmosphere of her own. I should not like to tell lies to her; I think she
- would detect them more rapidly than I could get them out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Connie,” laughed Frances. “Yes, she has a head on her shoulders. They
- are all fairly bright girls, and they get on together extremely well. It’s
- quite their own idea to divide up the work equally among the lot, and when
- there is not much doing to take turns in working alternate days. I think
- it was rather fine of them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, that is the class of women one would like to help,” he declared.
- “That is what I will devote myself to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it is the class which prefers to help itself,” she explained quietly.
- “I see no way in which you could ‘help’ them, as you call it. They don’t
- want any help. Men in their position might take tips, but these girls
- won’t.” As he received the rebuff in silence, she changed the subject. “I
- am meeting now some other young women who would interest you. They are
- doing newspaper work—and doing it on its merits, too, and not by the
- favoritism of editors and proprietors—and one or two evenings a week
- we all get together at my office and talk things over. Sometimes there are
- as many as twenty of us, including my girls. In a year or two, perhaps it
- will run to a club-room of our own. I don’t know that I told you—I
- am getting into newspaper work myself. If I saw how to combine it with my
- office business, I could have a place on a regular daily staff. I’m
- puzzling a good deal to find some way of making the two things go
- together.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I envy you!” broke in Christian, impulsively. “You have work to do!
- You are interested in your work! You find in it not only occupation, but
- the opportunities of being useful to others, and of making your life, and
- other people’s lives, worth living. But think of me! I have nothing in the
- wide world to do, except wait for a very strong old man to die. And when
- he dies, then still I have nothing to do worth doing. Don’t you see that
- it is the most miserable of existences? I am filled with disgust for it. I
- cannot bear it another day. And that is what I was going to tell you. I
- have decided to leave it all—and go away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances paused for a moment to scrutinize, with slightly narrowed eyes,
- the excited face he turned to her. “How will going away improve matters?”
- she asked him, upon reflection.
- </p>
- <p>
- He put out his lips, and shrugged his shoulders. “At least I shall be a
- free man,” he affirmed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Unconsciously she imitated his gesture in turn: “It does not follow that a
- deserter is necessarily a free man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He pushed and winced visibly under the words, and turned away biting his
- lips. Then, the vexation clearing from his face, he wheeled again, and
- regarded her with calm gravity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is no one else who could say that to me and not injure me,” he
- answered, simply. “But that is the characteristic of you—when you
- say such a thing to me, then it becomes a thing that should have been
- said. Yet perhaps it is not the final word, after all. Ask yourself what
- it is that I am deserting! Consider whether I should give up or gain
- something. Here in England it is possible for me to be one of two things—the
- conventional person of position like all the others, or the exceptional
- kind of being which Emanuel desires to make of me. I have been at school
- for half a year learning what it is that society in general expects a man
- in my situation to do. Now that I have learned it, frankly it makes me
- sick at heart. But then I have been at another school for a month,
- observing and studying what it is that Emanuel wishes me to undertake. We
- have agreed that that is not to be thought of, either. Then what am I to
- do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But how does running away solve the difficulty?” She put the question to
- him with gentle persistency.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, but, you see,” he rejoined, argumentatively, “it is not alone a moral
- difficulty. There are practical questions, too. When I announce to Emanuel
- that I reject his plans for my future, then I am left to myself to be that
- most ridiculous of objects—a man with a great station and no money
- to keep it up. That is what I must be here in England. But in other
- countries, that will not be the case. There will always be enough money
- for me to live like a prince upon—so long as I travel about, in my
- own yacht if I like, or reside simply and happily in the beautiful places
- of the earth, here and there, as the fancy possesses me. Thus I can put to
- use the prestige of my title, when it is of advantage to do so—but
- only in so far as it is needful at the moment—and at the same time
- it does not become a burden to me in any degree. Now think carefully of
- this—is it not the wisest course for me?” She seemed not to pause
- for thought at all. “Oh, that depends upon how you define wisdom,” she
- replied, promptly. “There is the wisdom of the serpent, but fortunately
- there are many other kinds. No, I must say, you haven’t convinced me in
- the least. However, you mustn’t think that is of importance. You are under
- no obligation to convince me, surely!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, but that is everything to me,” he insisted. “There are reasons—which
- I wish to explain to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He could not keep a new meaning out of the glance with which he enforced
- this assurance. They had strolled round to Ludgate Circus, and come to a
- halt on the corner, with their backs turned upon a window full of droll
- phrenological charts and symbols. He consulted his watch once more. “I
- breakfasted so lightly, and so early,” he said—“it is not luncheon
- time quite, but that will give us a table to ourselves. You will come
- across with me, will you not? There are truly important things which have
- not been said—which I much wish to say.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After a moment’s reflection she nodded her assent.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian and
- Frances ate their luncheon in an upper chamber, close to a kind of balcony
- window, which gave upon one of the city’s most crowded thoroughfares. An
- unceasing and uniform uproar—overridden from time to time by the
- superior tumult of a passing railway train on a bridge near by—rose
- from this indefatigable street. They had the room to themselves; the
- portentous din magnified the effect of the solitude in which they regarded
- each other, crumbling the bread on the table absent-mindedly, and waiting
- for the inspiration of speech.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When I get back,” the girl said at last with a smile, “the racket of my
- typewriters will seem like the murmur of a gentle breeze down a leafy
- country lane.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They laughed—but they had discovered it was not so hard to make
- oneself heard as they had supposed. Their voices intuitively found a level
- which served their personal needs, yet did not incommode the waiters
- yawning at the head of the stairway outside.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you taken to the bicycle?” she was moved in sheer irrelevance to ask
- him. When he shook his head, she went on: “It is a wonderful thing for
- women. It has done more for them in three years, than all the progressive
- intellectual movements of civilization did in three hundred. We all use
- them, coming to and from the office. We have to store them down in the
- area, now—but I am going to find a better place.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian rolled his bread crumbs into balls and stared at them in a brown
- study, from which this topic was powerless to arouse him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish,” he said, finally—“I wish very much that I knew how to
- convince you. But I seem never to produce any impression upon you. You are
- unyielding to the touch. It is I who get molded and kneaded about whenever
- I come close to you. And I don’t say that it is not for the best. Only—only
- now, you will not accept my own ideas of what I should do, and you will
- not tell me what your ideas are.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not sure that I have any ideas,” she assured him. “It is merely
- that, on general principles, I don’t care for the people who settle
- difficulties by turning tail and running away from them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very well,” he began, as if an important premise had been accepted. “But
- as to my special case, I have stated what must be my position if I remain
- in England. To me it seems that it must be impossible—intolerable.
- But you have some different view, evidently. That is what I beg you to
- explain to me. If I am to remain in England, what is it your idea that I
- should do?” She knitted her brows a little, and took time to her reply.
- “You seem to think so entirely of yourself,” she said, slowly, “it is very
- hard to know what to say to you. I cannot put myself, you see, so
- completely in your place, as you are always able to do.” He opened his
- eyes wide, and informed their gaze with a surprised reproach. “There you
- are surely unjust to me,” he urged, pleadingly. “I do not know anyone who
- thinks more about other people than I do. One hesitates to say these
- things about oneself—but truly you are mistaken in this matter. In
- fact, I wonder sometimes if it is not a fault, a weakness in my nature,
- that I am so readily moved by the sufferings and wrongs of unhappy people.
- Whenever I see injustice, I am beside myself with a passion to set it
- right. I grow almost sick with indignation, and pity, when these things
- come before me. Last night, for example, at the Empire——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian stopped abruptly, with the sudden consciousness that the ground
- was not clear before him. He saw that he was entirely without a clue as to
- what his companion’s views on the subject might be. That was her
- peculiarity: he knew concerning her thoughts and inclinations only what
- she chose to reveal to him. It was beyond his power to predict what her
- attitude would be on any new topic. Looking at her thoughtful, serene-eyed
- face, it decidedly seemed to him that the Empire, as an ethical problem,
- might with advantage be passed by. He hesitated for a moment, in the
- friendly shelter of the street noise, and then gave another termination to
- his speech: “It puzzles me that you should have that view of my
- temperament.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, that is just it—you have put the word into my mouth. It is
- ‘temperament’ that you are thinking of—and about that you are
- perfectly right. Your temperament is as open to the impulses of the moment—kindly,
- generous, compassionate and all that—as a flower is to the bees. But
- character is another matter. What good do your fine momentary sentiments,
- these rapid noble emotions of yours, do you or anybody else? You
- experience them—and forget them. The only thing that abides
- permanently with you is consideration for your own personal affairs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is all very unjust,” he said, disconsolately. “I come to you for
- solace and friendship, and you turn upon me with beak and claws.” He
- sighed, with the beginning of tears in his bright eyes, as he added:
- “There is more reason than ever, it seems to me, why I should go away from
- England! It is not kind to me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- His doleful tone and mien drove her to swift repentance. “Oh, I have only
- been saying the disagreeable things first, to get them out of the way,”
- she sought to reassure him. “There isn’t another unpleasant word for you
- to hear, not one, I promise you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is my opinion that there have been enough,” he ventured to comment,
- with a rueful little smile. A measure of composure returned to him. “But
- if they must be said, I would rather they come from you than from any one
- else, for I think that you have also some pleasant thoughts about me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded her head several times in assent, regarding him with an amused
- twinkle in her eyes meanwhile. “Yes—the right kind of editor could
- make very interesting stuff indeed out of you,” she said, and smiled
- almost gaily at his visible failure to comprehend her figure. “What I mean
- is—you are too much sail, and too little boat. You drift before
- every new wind that blows. There is lacking that kind of balance—proportion—which
- gives stability. But, dear me, it is a thousand times better to be like
- that, than to have an excess of the other thing. The man of the solid
- qualities, without the imagination, simply sticks in the mud where he was
- born. But with you—if the right person chances to get hold of you,
- and brings the right influences steadily to bear upon you, then there is
- no telling what fine things you may not rise to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are that right person!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He lifted his voice to utter these words, with the air of feeling them to
- be momentous. His eyes glowed as they reaffirmed the declaration to her
- inquiring glance. But she seemed to miss the gravity of both words and
- look.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, there you’re wrong,” she said, half jestingly. “I’m too bad tempered
- and quarrelsome to exert any proper influence over any one. Why, I should
- nag all the joy and high spirits out of you in no time at all. No—you
- need an equable and happy person, really very wise and strong and
- sensible, but above all with an easy, smooth disposition—such a
- person, for example, as Emanuel’s wife is described to be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—I need no one but you!” he repeated with accentuated
- deliberation.
- </p>
- <p>
- This time she appeared to feel something of his intention. She looked into
- the gaze he was bending upon her and then withdrew her eyes precipitately,
- and made a show of active interest in her food.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am asking you to think of joining your life to mine,” he went on, in
- low, yet very distinct tones. “You cannot know a hundredth part as well as
- I do, how profoundly I need such help as you can give. You are the one
- woman in the world who means strength as well as happiness to me. If you
- could only dream with what yearning I long always to lean upon you—to
- be supported by your fine, calm, sweet wisdom! To be upheld by you—to
- be nourished and guided by you—oh, that is the vision which I
- tremble with joy to think of! I am my own master for the first time to-day—I
- have taken my life into my own hands—and I lay it at your feet—dear
- lady—at your feet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She rose abruptly while his last words were in the air, and turning, moved
- to the window. She had contrived by a gesture to bid him not to follow,
- and he could only gaze in mingled apprehension and hope at her back, the
- while she stood professing to scrutinize the shifting throng below.
- </p>
- <p>
- The waiter brought in another dish, methodically rearranged the plates and
- went away again. To Christian’s bitter disgust, two men entered and took
- seats at a table at the other end of the small room—and still she
- did not turn. He meditated calling her, or joining her on the pretense of
- announcing the cutlets—and only stared in nervous excitement
- instead.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, as suddenly as she had left him she returned, and resumed her chair
- as if nothing unusual had happened. His strenuous gaze swept her face for
- tokens of her mood—of her inclination or decision—but beyond a
- spot of vivid red on each smooth cheek, there was no sign of any sort. Her
- frank, calm gray eyes met his with unruffled directness; they had in them
- that suggestion of benignant tolerance which he had discerned there more
- than once before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You do not answer me!” he pleaded, after a few mouthfuls. As his back
- shielded the action from the strangers, he put forth a cautious hand to
- touch the nearest of hers, but she drew it gently away beyond his reach.
- They automatically adjusted their voices to the conditions created by the
- newcomers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There could be only one possible answer,” she told him, softly, almost
- tenderly. “It is a very flattering dream—? to me—but it is a
- mere empty dream, none the less. I hope you will not want to talk about it
- any more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I swear that it is not empty at all!” he urged, in earnest tones.
- “Who has a right to say that it is a dream? I am my own master—so
- are you. We are of age—we are intelligent people. I deliberately
- come to you, and say to you that you are the one woman on earth whom I
- desire with all my heart for my wife. I open my mind to you. There is only
- the image of you inside it. You know my sincerity. You must feel how
- supreme is the place you have in my thoughts. It is the logical end toward
- which I have been walking ever since I first saw you! You are all that
- there is of true friendship, of true womanhood, for me! I put out my hands
- to you, I pray to you! And why will you not come to me, dear, dear Frank?”
- There was a touch of pathos in the smile she gave him. “It isn’t the least
- bit of good, I assure you,” she made answer, in the confidential murmur
- that was necessary. “One can’t talk here—but please let us speak of
- something else. Or can we not go now?” He went on as if she had not
- spoken, his big, dark eyes challenging hers to an encounter which she
- evaded. “Do not think we need go away from England, if you want to stay;
- there will always be money enough—with your wisdom in controlling
- it. Perhaps we may even be able to restore Caermere. But if we are not,
- still it can be one of the noblest and most beautiful residences in
- England, when we learn together to understand its charm, and make it our
- home. Oh, when you see the magnificent hills and forests shutting it in on
- all sides—and the grim, fine old walls and towers of the castle
- itself! But there we need live only when we choose to do so—and
- whenever the mood comes to us, off we can roam to the Alps or Algiers, or
- the wonderful India which one always dreams of. And we shall sail in our
- own yacht and you shall be the queen there, as everywhere else. And all
- our lives we will spend in doing good to others: do you not see what
- extraordinary opportunities for helping those who need help you will have?
- Where now you are of service to one person, then you can assist a hundred!
- An army of grateful people will give thanks because of you—and I
- will always be the chief of them—your foremost slave, your most
- reverent worshiper! And then—think of the joy of a life in which no
- one has a share who is not pleasant and welcome to us! We will have no one
- near us who is not our friend. Oh, I have not told you: that is why, this
- very morning, I decided to leave it all, and to make a new life for
- myself, and to spend it wholly with my real friends. It is loneliness,
- heart and soul loneliness, that has driven me to revolt. And in my despair
- I come to you—and I say to you that it is friendship that I cannot
- live without, and you are my oldest friend, my dearest, truest, most
- precious friend, and I beg you to come with me and we will go through the
- world together, hand in hand——”
- </p>
- <p>
- She interrupted him by pushing back her chair and half rising. “If you
- will excuse me now,” she said, nervously, “I think I must go. You mustn’t
- trouble to come—I will say good-bye here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had risen as well, and now in trembling earnestness protested against
- her proposal. At the risk of attracting the attention of the strangers, he
- displayed such resentful opposition that she yielded. The waiter was
- summoned—and remained bowing in dazed meditation upon the magnitude
- of the change he had been bidden to keep for himself, after they had
- passed out and down the staircase.
- </p>
- <p>
- She led the way at a hurried pace back across the Circus and to
- Blackfriars. At the rounded beginning of the Embankment she paused, and
- for the first time spoke. “Really I would rather go back by myself,” she
- told him. “It is only unhappiness to both of us—what you insist on
- talking about.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I do not think it is to be treated in this way,” he declared with
- dignity. “If we speak of nothing else it is the highest and most solemn
- honor that a man can pay to any woman, that I have paid to you. I have the
- feeling that it should be more courteously dealt with.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I know,” she admitted, nodding her ready compunction. She tightened
- her lips and looked away from him toward the bridge, her brows drawn
- together in troubled lines. “I don’t say the right thing to you—I
- know that better even than you do. You must not think I fail to appreciate
- it all—the honor, and the immense confidence, and all the rest of
- it. But when I have said that much—then I don’t know in the least
- how to say the rest. Why can’t we leave it unsaid altogether? I assure
- you, in all seriousness, that it can’t be—and mayn’t we leave it
- like that? Please!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He regarded her with a patient yet proud sadness, waiting to speak till
- she had turned, and his glance caught hers. “I do not wish to become a
- nuisance to you,” he said, his voice choking a little, “but I think it
- would be better if you said everything to me. Then I shall not put my mind
- on the rack, to try and imagine your reasons.” He let his lip curl with a
- lingering ironical perception of the fantastic with which his tragedy was
- veined. “It is very sweet,” he went on—“your consideration for my
- feelings. But I have heard so many plain truths to-day, I think my
- sensibilities are in good training now—they will not suffer for a
- few more.” Suddenly, as if the sound of his voice had unnerved him, he
- seized her arm, and confronted her surprised gaze with a reddened and
- scowling face. “What are you afraid of?” he demanded hoarsely. “Why not
- say it? I heard it only last night! It is forty years old, it is true, but
- they have wonderful memories in England. You are the one whom I have held
- to be my dearest friend—but go on! Say it to me! A little thing like
- friendship does not prevent you from thinking it! Why, then, you should
- have the courage to speak it out!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dimly, while she stared in his distracted countenance, the meaning, of the
- wild talk dawned upon her. With a startled exclamation, she dragged her
- arm from his clutch, and drew back a step. Trembling in her agitation, her
- gray eyes distended themselves out of all likeness to their tranquil
- habit.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh-h-h!” she murmured in dismay at him, and wrung her hands. “Oh-h! Stop!
- Stop! That is too horrible for you to think!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Gaining coherence of thought and purpose, she moved impulsively to him,
- and in turn clasped her hand upon his arm. “Put that out of your mind!”
- she adjured him. “I could not look anybody in the face if you thought <i>that</i>
- of me. Oh, it is too terrible of you! How could you suppose that I could
- harbor such a thought? To blame you for something years before you were
- born!—to throw it into your face. And <i>me</i> of all people! Why,
- I have cried to myself at remembering what you said about your father when
- we first met—how your little-boy memory clung affectionately to the
- soldier-figure of him in the door-way! Look at me—I cry now to think
- of it! Why, it is the one thing about you that is sacred to me!—the
- one thing that you are perfect in—and then you imagine that I am
- capable of insulting you about it! Oh, heavens, why wouldn’t you leave me
- when I told you to?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She threw his arm from her in a gust of physical impatience, but the
- glance with which, on the instant, she corrected this demonstration, was
- full of honest compassion. He groveled before this benign gaze, with bowed
- head and outstretched, pleading hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Forgive me! Forgive me!” he groaned, brokenly. “I could not—at all—know
- what it was I said. I am too unhappy!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” she began, with a vehement effort at calmness, “let us say
- good-bye here. There are some Germans watching us from the hotel windows.
- Or it is better perhaps—will you walk on past the school?” As they
- moved forward, she recovered more of her self-possession. “I hope you will
- be able to remember something pleasant out of our morning,” she said, and
- with a joyless laugh added, “but for the life of me, I don’t know what it
- can be. Or yes, you can remember when you woke up, and I stood and scolded
- you, from above the flowers. I pretended to bully you, but really all the
- while I was thinking how sweet of you the entire thing was. And later, too—oh,
- there were several intervals in which I behaved civilly to you for whole
- minutes at a time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked wistfully at her. Beneath the forced playfulness of her tone it
- seemed to him that something hopeful sounded. “Ah, dear friend,” he
- murmured, drawing close to her—“think!—think tenderly in my
- behalf! Ask yourself—your kindest self—if I must be really
- driven away. Why is it that I may not stay? I plead with you as if it were
- for my life—and is it not indeed for my life?—my very life?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—Christian,” she said, gravely, “it is not your life, nor
- anything like your life. You give big labels to your emotions, but in good
- time you will see that the things themselves are not so big, or so vital.
- And you mustn’t yield so readily to all these impulses to mope and despair
- and to think yourself ill used. You must try to make for yourself a
- thicker skin—and to view things more calmly. And I don’t want you to
- go away thinking hard things of me. Is it true that I always nag you—there
- is something in you which calls out all the bully in me—but I wish
- you would think of me as your friend. It gives me great pleasure when you
- speak of me as your oldest friend in England—for I have always liked
- you, and I am interested in you, and—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And why will you not marry me?” He interposed the question bluntly, and
- with a directness which gave it the effect of an obstacle in her path,
- isolated but impassable.
- </p>
- <p>
- She halted, and studied the pavement in consideration of her reply. When
- she looked up, it was with the veiled elation of a disputant who has his
- counter-stroke well in hand. “You said to-day that you had become your own
- master, and that you were a free man, with your life in your own hands.
- Very well. I also am my own master, and I am a free woman. My life is
- exclusively my own personal property, to live as I choose to live it. I
- value my liberty quite as highly as if I were a man. It does not suit me
- to merge any part of it in something else. There could be many other
- reasons given, no doubt, but they would be merely individual variations of
- this one chief reason—that I am a free woman, and intend to remain a
- free woman. I know what I want to do in the world, and I am going to try
- to do it, always my own way, always my own master.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He regarded her thoughtfully, bowing his head in token of comprehension.
- “But if——” he began, and then checked himself, with a gesture
- of pained submission.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are no ‘ifs,’” she said, with resolute calmness, and held out her
- hand to him. Her control of the situation was undisputed. “We say
- good-bye, now—and we are friends—good friends. I—I thank
- you—for everything!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood looking at her as she walked away—a sedately graceful
- figure, erect and light of step, receding from him under the pallid green
- shelter of the young trees. Musingly, he held up the hand which still
- preserved the sense of that farewell contact with hers—and upon a
- sudden impulse put it to his lips and kissed it. Something in the action
- wrought an instantaneous change in his thoughts. All at once it was
- apparent to him that many things which should have been said to her he had
- left unsaid. In truth, it seemed upon reflection that he had said and done
- everything wrong. The notion of running after her flamed up in him for a
- moment. She was still in sight—he could distinguish her in the
- distance, stopping to buy a paper from a boy near the Temple station. But
- then the memory of her unanswerable, irrevocable “No” swept back upon him—and
- with a long sigh he turned and strode in the other direction.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances, hastening mechanically toward her office, found relief from the
- oppressive confusion of her thoughts in the fortuitous spectacle of two
- small newsboys fighting in the gutter just at the end of the Temple
- Gardens. For the first time in her life, the sight aroused nothing within
- her save a pleased if unscientific interest. She paused, and almost
- smilingly observed the contest. She found something amusingly grotesque in
- the pseudo-Titanic rage on these baby faces. The dramatic fury of the
- embattled infants was in such ridiculous disproportion to the
- feather-weight blows they exchanged! She found herself chuckling aloud at
- some incongruous comparison which rose in her mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, as the combatants parted, apparently for no better reason than the
- general volatility of youth, she remembered that she had it in mind to
- look at the “Star.” One of her friends, Mary Leach, had sent to that paper
- some days before an article on “Shopgirls’ Dormitories,” and she was
- interested in watching for its appearance. It happened that one of the
- boys had a “Star.” Acting upon some obscure whim, she gave them each a
- penny, quite in the manner of a distributor of prizes for conspicuous
- merit—and grinned to herself at the thought when she had turned her
- back on them and moved on.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no sign of what she sought on the front page. Opening the sheet,
- her eye fell, as it were, upon a news paragraph in a middle column:
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- “Death of the Oldest Duke.—The Shrewsbury correspondent of the
- ‘Exchange Telegraph’ announces the death at Caermere Castle, at an early
- hour this morning, of the Duke of Glastonbury. His Grace, who was in his
- ninetieth year, had until last summer enjoyed the most vigorous health,
- and only now succumbs to the prostration then occasioned by the group of
- domestic bereavements which at the time created such a sensation. The
- deceased nobleman, who for the great part of his prolonged life, was one
- of the best known sportsmen in Shropshire, succeeded his father as eighth
- duke in his minority, and had been in possession of the title for no less
- than seventeen years when Her Majesty ascended the throne, thus
- constituting a record which is believed to be without parallel in the
- annals of the peerage. His successor is stated by Whitaker’s Almanac to be
- his grandson, Mr. Christian Tower, but the current editions of Burke,
- Debrett and others do not mention this gentleman, whose claims, it would
- appear, have but recently been admitted by the family.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Frances read it all, as she stood at the corner, with a curious sense of
- mental sluggishness. Her attention failing to follow one of the sentences,
- she went back, and laboriously traced its entire tortuous course, only to
- find that it meant no more than it had at first.
- </p>
- <p>
- It seemed a long time before she connected the intelligence on the printed
- page with the realities of actual life. Then she turned swiftly, and
- strained her eyes in the wild hope of discovering Christian still on the
- Embankment. She even took a few hurried steps, as if to follow and
- overtake him—but stopped short, confronted by the utter futility of
- such an enterprise.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, walking slowly, her mind a maze of wondering thoughts, she went her
- way.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian strolled
- aimlessly about for a long time in the closely packed congeries of
- streets, little and big, behind St. Paul’s. It happened to be all new
- ground to him, and something novel was welcome to his troubled and
- restless mind. He loitered from one window to another, examining their
- contents gravely; at the old book stalls he took down numbers of volumes
- and looked laboriously through them, as if conducting an urgent search for
- something.
- </p>
- <p>
- His jumbled thoughts were a burden to him. He could get nothing coherent
- from them, It was not even clear to his perception whether he was really
- as dejected and disconsolate as he ought to be.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had only recently been plunged into despairing depths of sadness, and
- it was fitting that he should still be racked with anguish. Yet there was
- no actual pain—there was not even a dogged insensibility to the
- frivolous distractions of the moment. He became exceedingly interested in
- an old copy of Boutell, for example, and hunted eagerly through the
- multitude of heraldic cuts to see if the white bull on a green ground of
- the Torrs was among them. His disappointment at not finding it was so keen
- that for the instant it superseded his abiding grief. His discovery of
- this fact entertained him; he was almost capable of laughing in amusement
- at it. Then, in self-condemnation, he sought to call up before his mental
- vision the picture of Frances, as she had looked when they had said
- good-bye. The image would not come distinctly. Her face eluded him; he
- could only see her walking away, instead, under the feeble green of the
- young trees. None the less, he said deliberately to himself that he was
- unhappy beyond the doom of most men, and that the hope had gone out of his
- life.
- </p>
- <p>
- The day had turned out unexpectedly warm. In the middle of his shapeless
- musings, the ornate sign of a Munich brewery on a cool, shaded doorway
- suddenly attracted him. The dusky, restful emptiness of the place inside
- seemed ideally to fit his mood. He went in, and seated himself with a long
- sigh of satisfaction at one of the tables. Here, in this mellow quiet,
- over the refreshing contents of the big, covered stone mug, he could think
- peacefully and to advantage. He lit a cigar, and leaning back in comfort,
- gave the signal to his thoughts to arrange and concentrate themselves.
- </p>
- <p>
- What should he do next? Yes—that was far more to the point than
- mooning over the irrevocable past. He had left Duke Street with hardly any
- plan beyond not returning thither. Luggage of some sort he would have to
- have—changes of linen and the like, and the necessary articles of
- the toilet. It was his intention to buy these as the need of them arose—and
- the character of his purchases would also depend a good deal, of course,
- upon the decision he should come to concerning his movements. He had said
- that he would leave England—and now he asked himself whether there
- was anything to prevent his departure that very evening. One of the
- deepest charms of travel must be to start off on the instant, upon the
- bidding of the immediate whim, and descend upon your destination before
- there has been time to cheapen it by thinking about it. Why should he not
- eat the morrow’s breakfast in the Hague—and dine at Amsterdam?
- Similarly, he could within twenty-four hours be watching the marriage of
- Mosel and Rhine at Coblenz—or gazing upon the wide, wet, white sands
- of the Norman shore from the towering battlements of St. Michel. A hundred
- storied towns, vaguely pictured in his imagination, beckoned to him from
- across the Channel. Upon reflection, it seemed to him that Holland offered
- the most wooing invitation. He asked the waiter for Bradshaw, and noted
- the salient points of the itinerary from Queen borough.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was now three o’clock. There was plenty of time for all purchases, and
- a leisurely dinner before going to Victoria. It occurred to him that the
- dinner must be very good—a luxurious kind of farewell repast.
- </p>
- <p>
- He would make a memorandum now of the things he ought to buy here in
- London. Holland was by all accounts a dear place—and moreover he had
- heard that the Dutch customs examination was by no means troublesome. It
- would be more intelligent to complete practically his outfit here. He took
- out a pencil, and began feeling in his coat-pocket for a bit of paper. The
- hand brought out, beside Lady Milly’s note about the Private View, three
- or four unopened letters. He had entirely forgotten their existence—and
- stared at them now in puzzled indecision. It was not a sensible thing, or
- a fair thing either, to tear up and destroy unread the message which some
- one else had been at pains to transcribe for you. But on the other hand,
- these missives belonged to the stupid and intolerable life in Duke Street,
- with which he had definitely parted company. It might even be said, in one
- sense, that he was not the person to whom they were addressed.
- </p>
- <p>
- By some whimsical freak of the brain, he suddenly asked himself whether he
- should not go to Greece instead of Holland, and enlist as a volunteer in
- the war against the Turks. He became on the instant immersed in
- adventurous military speculations. He had not fallen into the English
- habit of following the daily papers with regularity, and he was conscious
- of no responsibility whatever toward the events of the world at large, as
- Reuter and the correspondents chronicled them. Something of this new war
- in Thessaly, however, he had perforce read and heard. Of the circumstances
- and politics surrounding this latest eruption of the Eastern Question he
- knew little more than would any of the young Frenchmen of education among
- whom he had spent his youth. But in an obscure way, he comprehended that
- good people in Western Europe always sympathized with the Christian as
- against the Moslem. It seemed that some generous-minded young Englishmen
- were already translating this sympathy into action; somewhere he had seen
- an account of a party of volunteers leaving London for Athens, and being
- cheered by their friends at the station. Now that he thought of it, the
- paper in which he had read the report had ridiculed the affair as an
- undesirable kind of a joke—but the impulse of the volunteers seemed
- fine to him, none the less.
- </p>
- <p>
- There ought to be some martial blood in his veins; the soldier-figure of
- his father rose before him in affirmation of the idea.
- </p>
- <p>
- But no—what nonsense it was! If ever there had been a youth bred and
- narrowed to the walks of peace, he was that young person. He who had never
- struck another human being in his life, that he could remember—what
- would such a tame sheep be doing in the open field, against the unknown,
- ferocious Osmanli Turk? The gross absurdity of the picture flared upon
- him, momentarily—and then the whole notion of armed adventure had
- vanished from his mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- His attention reverted to the letters—and now it seemed quite a
- matter of course that he should open them. The first three were of no
- importance. The fourth he regarded with wide-open eyes, after he had
- grasped the identity of the writer. He read it over slowly, more than
- once:
- </p>
- <p>
- “27A Ashley Gardens, S. W., Monday.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My Dear Mr. Christian Tower: I have taken this little place in town for
- the time being, and I shall be glad to see you when you are this way.
- To-morrow, Tuesday, is a day when I shall not be at home to other people—if
- you have nothing better to do.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yours very sincerely,
- </p>
- <p>
- “Edith Cressage.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Nothing better to do? Christian’s thoughts lingered rather blankly upon
- the phrase—until all at once he perceived that there could not
- possibly be anything better to do. He rose with decision, hurriedly gulped
- what remained of his second pot of beer, paid his bill and marched out
- with the air of a man with a mission.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the hansom, he read the letter still again, and leaned backward to see
- as much as possible of himself in the little mirror at the side. His chin
- could not be described as closely shaven, and his garments were certainly
- not those of the afternoon caller. The resource of stopping at Duke Street
- occurred to him—but no! that would be too foolish. The whole
- significance of the day would be abolished, wiped out, by such a fatuous
- step. And he repeated to himself that it <i>was</i> a day of supreme
- significance. By comparison with the proceedings and experiences of this
- long and crowded day, the rest of his life seemed colorless indeed. And
- what was of most importance in it, he declared to himself, was not its
- external happenings, but the fine and novel posture of his liberated mind
- toward them. He was for the first time actually a free man. His
- enfranchisement had not been thrown at him by outsiders; it proceeded from
- within him—the product of his own individuality.
- </p>
- <p>
- That was what people would discern in him hereafter—a complete and
- self-sufficient personality. He would no longer be pointed out and
- classified as somebody’s grandson—somebody’s cousin or grand-nephew.
- The world would recognize him as being himself. He felt assured, for
- example, upon reflection that Lady Cressage would not dream of questioning
- the fashion of the clothes in which he came to see her. She would perceive
- at once that he had developed beyond the silly pupilary stage of
- subordination to his coat and hat. She was so clever and sympathetic a
- woman, he felt intuitively, that these symbols of his emancipated
- condition would delight her. It was true, he saw again from the mirror
- that his collar might be a little whiter; his cuffs, too, had lost their
- earlier glow of starched freshness. But these were trifles to serious
- minds. And besides, was it not all in the family?
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a momentary block at the corner of Parliament Street, and here a
- newsboy thrust a fourth edition upon Christian with such an effect of
- authority that he found a penny and took the paper. It was the
- “Westminster Gazette,” and when he had looked upon the second page for a
- possible drawing by Gould, and had skimmed the column of desultory gossip
- on the last page, which always seemed to his alien conceptions of
- journalism to be the kind of matter he liked in a newspaper, he laid the
- sheet on his knee, and resumed his idle reverie. To his great surprise the
- cabman’s shouts through the roof were necessary to awaken him at Ashley
- Gardens. He shook himself, laughingly explained that he had been up all
- night as he paid his fare, and ascended the steps of 27A, paper in hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- The servant seemed prepared for his coming, for upon giving his name in
- response to her somewhat meaning inquiry, she led him in at once. He sat
- waiting for a few moments in a small and conveniently appointed
- drawing-room, and then stood up, at the rustle of rapid skirts which
- announced Lady Cressage in the half-open doorway.
- </p>
- <p>
- She entered with outstretched hand, and a radiant welcome upon her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian noted that beyond the hand there was a forearm, shapely and
- cream-hued, disclosed by the lace of her flowing sleeve. There were
- billows of this lace, and of some fragile, light fabric which seemed
- sister to it, enveloping the lady, yet her tall, graceful figure was in
- some indefinable way molded to the eye beneath them all. The pale hair was
- as he had first seen it, loosely drawn across her temples; there were warm
- shadows in it which he had not thought to see. The face, too, had some
- unexpected phase, here in the subdued light of the curtained room. There
- was a sense of rosiness in the rounded flesh, a certain reposeful elation
- in the regard of the blue eyes, which put quite at fault the image of
- harrowed restlessness and nerves he had retained from Caermere. It was in
- an illuminating second that he saw all this, and perceived that she was
- very beautiful, and flushed with the deep consciousness that she read his
- thoughts like big print.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was the greatest cheek in the world—my summoning you like this,”
- she said, as they shook hands. “Yes—sit here. Put your hat and paper
- on the sofa. This is my only reception room—but we might have a
- little more light.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She moved to the window, to pull back the curtains, and then about the
- room, lightly rearranging some of the chairs and trinkets—all with a
- buoyant daintiness of motion which inexpressibly charmed him. “These are
- not my things, you know,” she explained over her shoulder. “I am not
- trying in the least to live up to them, either. I take the place,
- furnished, for three months, from the widow of an Indian officer. You
- would think she would have some Indian things—but it might have all
- come direct from Tottenham Court Road. It’s impossible to get the
- slightest sensation of being at home, here. One could really extract more
- domesticity out of four bare cottage walls. Or no, what am I saying?”—she
- had returned, and sinking into the low chair opposite him, pointed her
- words with a frank smile into his face—-“it <i>is</i> a bit like
- home—to see you here!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am very glad to be here,” he assured her, nodding his unfeigned
- pleasure. “But it seemed as if you would never tell me I might come.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I was worried to death. There were all sorts of things to see about
- when I first came up,” she explained with animation. “And I had the
- feeling that I didn’t want you to come till I had smoothed some of my
- wrinkles out, and had achieved a certain control over my nerves. It was
- not fair to myself—the view you had of me at Caermere.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The view of her that was afforded him here brought a glow of admiration to
- his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “To think of your being my cousin!” he said, with some remote echo in his
- own voice of the surprise which he recalled in Dicky Westland’s tone. It
- seemed wonderful indeed as he looked at her, and smiled. He shook his head
- presently, in response to her question whether he had any recent news from
- Caermere, and continued to observe her with a rapt sense of the miraculous
- being embodied before his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the duke is very low indeed,” she told him in a hushed voice. “I had
- it yesterday from—from one of the household.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The tidings barely affected him. That side of his mind was still fast in
- the rut of last night’s mutiny.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have quite decided to go away,” he announced, calmly. “I get no good
- out of the life here. It does not suit me. Whatever comes to me, why, that
- I shall accept, but to use it in my own way, living my own life. Now that
- I am a free man, it astonishes me that I did not rebel long ago.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rebel—against what?” she asked him, with a kind of confidential
- candor which put him even more at his ease.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, against everything,” he smiled back at her. “This existence that they
- arranged for me—it is like being embalmed and wrapped in
- mummy-cloths. Personally I do not survive a thousand years—but I am
- but one link in a long chain of respectable people who have lived like
- that, without living at all, for many thousands. It is being buried alive.
- Why, you will see what I mean—a man is a creature different from
- other human creatures. He has an individual nature of his own. His tastes,
- his inclinations, his impulses and ideas, are not quite like those of the
- people about him. He would be happy to follow these according to his own
- wishes. But then everybody seizes upon him and says: ‘No, you must be and
- do just like the rest. You will be noticed and disliked if you indulge in
- even the slightest variation. These are the coats you are to wear, and the
- hats and caps and neckties. This is Duke Street, which you must live in.
- This is the hour to get up, this is the hour to make calls, this is the
- corner of your card to turn down, this is the list of people at whose
- houses you must dine, these are your friends ready-made for you out of a
- book.’ And truly what is it all?—utter, utter emptiness. You are
- really not alive at all! You have no more personal sensation of your own
- existence than an insect. It is all this that I rebel against.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She reclined a little in her chair, and covered him with a meditative
- gaze. “I know the feeling,” she commented thoughtfully. “I used to have
- sharp spasms of it—oh, ages ago—whenever a shopwoman showed me
- something, and said, ‘This is very much worn just now,’ or, ‘We are
- selling a great deal of this.’ Then I would not have that particular thing
- if I died for it. But do you really feel so earnestly about it?” She put
- the question in deference to a gesture by which he had signified the
- inadequacy of her comparison. “Ah, the real life, as you call it, is a
- more complicated thing than one fancies.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that is precisely the point,” with vivacity. “I have thought much
- about that. Is it not the artificial life which is complicated instead? Do
- we not confound the two? If you consider it, what can be more simple that
- the natural life of a man? If an astronomer, for example, has a difficult
- problem to work out, he first busies himself in discovering and putting
- aside all the things which seem to be factors in it but really are not.
- One by one he gets rid of them, until at last he has the naked equation
- before him—and then a result is possible. But with us, it seems that
- we go quite the other way about it. We take the problem of life—which
- is extraordinarily simple to begin with—and we pile upon it and
- around it thousands of outside rules and conventions and traditions, and
- we confuse it with other thousands of prejudices, and insincerities, and
- old mistakes that no one has had the industry to examine—and then we
- look with embarrassment at what we have done, and shake our heads, and say
- that the problem is too hard, that it passes the wisdom of man to solve
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish you joy of solving it,” she remarked, after another reflective
- survey of his face. “I am sure I wish some one would do it. But you spoke
- of going away. How would that help matters?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The recurrence of the question startled him. He looked at her with lifted
- head, recalling swiftly meanwhile the tone in which Frances had uttered
- those same words. A blurred, imperfect retrospect of the morning’s events
- and talks passed fleetingly across his mind—and its progress
- disquieted him. Some tokens of perturbation on his face seemed to warn
- her, for she went on without waiting for an answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not surprised to find you feeling like this,” she said. “It is quite
- the effect that I imagined London would produce upon you. I have no right
- to say so, perhaps, but it seemed to me from the start that it was being
- badly managed—I mean the way you were sent here by yourself, and
- given nothing to do except follow about where Lord Lingfield led. It is
- not what I should have done—but the truth is that Emanuel knows
- nothing at all about the characters and temperaments of human beings. If
- men agree with him, he thinks they are good men, and if they disagree with
- him, they are bad men—or at least not worth thinking about at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had quite resolved not to commit myself to his System,” Christian
- informed her, “even before I made up my mind to—to take other
- steps.”
- </p>
- <p>
- His closing euphemism seemed to attract her attention. “What is it you
- intend to do?” she asked of him, softly. She sat upright again, with an
- air of friendly curiosity.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the face of this query, he discovered that his intentions were by no
- means so clear to himself as they had been. “It is still rather in the
- air,” he said vaguely. “But we talk always of myself! Tell me, instead,
- about yourself! It is an infinitely more pleasing subject. You are here in
- London for only three months? And you are alone here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled in an indefinite fashion, and leaned back in her chair. “Ought
- I to have a chaperon? I dare say. But there is no room for her here. The
- flat accommodates just one solitary elderly lady and here you behold her.
- Oh, I am a hundred years old, I assure you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He could only wave his hand at her in genial deprecation. “Oh, who is
- younger than you?” he murmured.
- </p>
- <p>
- She sighed. “By the almanac I am four-and-twenty,” she went on, with a new
- note of gentle melancholy. “But by my own feelings, I seem to have been
- left over from the reign of William the Fourth. And really, it is not my
- own feelings alone—when I go out, I observe that very old men take
- me down to dinner, and talk to me precisely as if I were a contemporary of
- theirs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When we were together at Caermere,” interposed Christian, “you confessed
- to me that you were not happy—and it was my great delight to pledge
- myself that if ever there was anything I could do—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, there is nothing at all,” she interrupted him to declare. “My case
- will not come up. It has all been settled. The accounts, or settlements—or
- whatever you call them—have been made up, and my share of my
- husband’s share of his father’s interest in <i>his</i> father’s estate has
- been ascertained. I have six hundred a year for life. It is a mild and
- decorous competence. I do not complain. It will keep a genteel roof over
- my head here in London, or a small house and a pony-trap in the country.
- It will run to a month at a pension in the cheaper parts of Switzerland,
- or perhaps even to a lodging and a bath-chair at Brighton, when it is not
- quite the season. Oh, I shall get on very well indeed—at all
- events,” she added with a touch of bitterness, “much better than I deserve
- to do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian lifted his brows in protesting inquiry. “You always speak in
- that tone of yourself! It pains me to hear you. I cannot think of any one
- who deserves the kindness and friendly good offices of fortune more than
- you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lady Cressage gave an uncertain little laugh. “You are too generous-minded—too
- innocent. You do not know. Me? My dear friend—I have committed the
- unpardonable sin! I humiliated and degraded myself to win a great prize in
- the world’s lottery—and I did not bring it off. That is my offense.
- If I had won the trick—why, they would be burning incense before me!
- But I lost instead—and they leave me quite by myself to digest my
- own disgust. I don’t talk about it—I have never said as much to any
- living soul as I am saying to you—I don’t know why I am telling you—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is there any one else who would listen with such sympathy?” Christian
- heard himself interjecting.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it is too cruel,” continued Lady Cressage, “too shameful a story! I
- was not happy at home. It was nobody’s fault in particular; I don’t know
- that we were more evil-tempered and selfish among ourselves than most
- other middle-class households with four hundred a year, and three
- daughters to marry off. I was the youngest, and I had the sort of good
- looks which were in fashion at the moment, and mamma worked very hard for
- me—pretending to idolize me before people though we yapped at each
- other like fox-terriers in private—and I was lucky in making friends—and
- so I went swimming out on the top of the wave that season, the most envied
- poor fool of a girl in London. And when Cressage wanted to marry me—I
- was dizzy with the immensity of what seemed to be offered me. My parents
- were mad with pride and ecstasy. Everybody around me pretended a kind of
- holy joy at my triumph. I give you my word!—never so much as a
- whisper came to my ears of any shadow of a reason why I should hesitate—why
- I should think a second time! Do you see? There was not an honest person—a
- single woman or a man with decency enough to warn an ignorant girl of her
- danger—within reach of me anywhere. They all kept as silent as the
- grave—with that lying grin of congratulation on their mean faces—and
- they led me to be married to the beast!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had sat erect in her chair as she spoke, and now she rose to her feet,
- motioning him not to get up as she did so. She took a restless step or
- two, her shoulders trembling with excitement, and her hands clenched.
- “Ah-h! I will never forgive them the longest day of my life!” she called
- out.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, with a determined shake of her head, she seemed to master herself.
- Standing before a small mirror in the panel of a cabinet against the wall,
- she busied her beautiful hands in correcting the slight disorder of her
- hair. When she turned to him, it was with a faint, tremulous smile
- surmounting the signs of stress and agitation upon her face. She sank into
- the chair again, with a long-drawn breath of resignation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it isn’t nice to abuse the dead,” she remarked, striving after an
- effect of judicial fairness in her voice. “I didn’t mean to speak like
- that. And for that matter, why should I speak at all of him? One doesn’t
- blame a wolf for man-eating. You execrate instead the people who
- deliberately throw a helpless human being to the wolf. I even say to
- myself that I have no quarrel with Cressage. He was as God made him—if
- the thought isn’t blasphemous. He was a great, overgrown, bullying,
- blubbering, ignorant boy, who never got beyond the morals of the stables
- and kennels, and the standards of taste of the servants’ hall. One could
- hardly call him vicious; that is to say, he did not deliberately set out
- to cause suffering. He did not do anything on deliberation. He acted just
- as his rudimentary set of barbaric impulses prompted him to act. Some of
- these impulses would have been regarded as virtues in a more intelligent
- man. For example, he was wildly, insanely jealous of me. It took the most
- impossible and vulgar forms, it is true, but still——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, need we talk of him?” It was with almost a groan of supplication that
- Christian stopped her. “He is too unpleasant to think about. Nothing that
- I had heard of him before made me sorry that he was dead—but this—it
- is too painful. But now you are a free woman—you see your path well
- before you, to travel as you choose. And what will you do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She sighed and threw up her hands with a gesture of contemptuous
- indifference. “What does any English lady with six hundred a year do?
- Devote her energies to seeing that she gets—let me see, what is the
- sum?—to seeing that she gets twelve thousand shillings’ worth of
- respectable discomfort, and secures reasonable opportunities for making
- those about her uncomfortable also. Oh, I don’t in the least know what I
- shall do. The truth is,” she added, with a sad smile, “I have lived alone
- with my dislikes so long, and I have nourished and watered them so
- carefully, that now they fill my whole garden. They have quite choked out
- the flowers of existence—these thick, rank, powerful weeds. And I
- haven’t the energy—perhaps I haven’t even the desire—to pull
- them up. They seem appropriate, somehow—they belong to the
- desolation that has been made of my life.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian bent forward, and made a movement as if to take one of the hands
- which lay dejectedly in her lap. He did not do this, but touched a
- projecting bit of lace upon one of the flounces of her gown, and twisted
- it absent-mindedly in his fingers instead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are still unhappy!” he said reproachfully, his eyes glowing with the
- intensity of his tender compassion. “I do not forgive myself for my
- inability to be of help to you. It is incredible that there is not
- something I can do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you are going away,” she reminded him, in a soft monotone. “You have
- your own unpleasantnesses to think of—and you are occupied with
- plans for rearranging your life on new lines. I only hope that you will
- find the happiness you are setting out in search of. But then men can
- always get what they want, if they are only sufficiently in earnest about
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is not entirely settled that I shall go away,” said Christian. He
- twisted the lace in the reverse direction, and hesitated over his further
- words. “That was only one of several alternatives. I am clear only about
- my resolve to make a stand—to break away. But if I remained here in
- England—in London?”—He looked with mingled trepidation and
- inquiry into her face. “If I did not go abroad—is there anything I
- could do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She regarded with attentiveness the hand which was playing havoc with her
- flounce—and it straightway desisted. She continued to study the
- little screwed-up cone of lace, in meditative silence. At last she shook
- her head. “You must not give it another thought,” she said, but with no
- touch of dictation in her musing tone. Her eyes dwelt upon him with a
- remote and ruminating gaze. “I belong to a past generation. My chances in
- the lottery are all exhausted—things of the past. You must not
- bother about me. And I think you ought to give up those ideas of yours
- about breaking away, as you call it. London hasn’t been made pleasant for
- you, simply because the wrong people have gone the wrong way about it to
- arrange matters for you. But there are extremely nice people among the set
- you know, if you once understood them. With your position, you can command
- any kind of associations you wish to have. After it is all said and done,
- I think England has its full share of cultivated and refined people of
- intelligence. I have not seen much of the Continent, but I do not believe
- that it possesses any superiority over us in that respect.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But in your own case,” urged Christian, somewhat hazily; “you said that
- there were no honest people about you to warn you—though you were in
- the best society. That is my feeling—that you do not get the truth
- from them. They do not lie to you—but they are silent about the
- truth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is it different elsewhere?” she asked, gravely. “Is not the young girl
- sold everywhere? Do you think that marriage is a more sacred and ethereal
- thing among the great families of France or Austria or Germany than it is
- with us? I have heard differently.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, we are all equally uncivilized about women,” he admitted. “I feel
- very strongly about that. But you, who have such knowledge and such clear
- opinions—would you not love to do something to alter this injustice
- to women? The thought has been much in my mind, of late.” He paused to
- reflect in fleeting wonderment upon the fact that only this morning he had
- been absorbed in it. “And my meaning is,” he stumbled on, “there is
- nothing I would rather devote my life to than the task of making existence
- easier and broader and more free for young women. Could there be any finer
- work than that? I know that it appeals to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked at him with an element of doubt in her glance. “Nothing appeals
- very much to me—and I’m afraid my sex least of all. I do not like
- them, to tell the truth. I never get over the surprised disgust of waking
- up in the morning and finding that I am one of them. But this is rather
- wandering from the point, isn’t it? I was urging you to give over the
- notion of making a demonstration. You have waited thus long; be content to
- wait just a little longer. My private belief is that the Duke will not
- live the week out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Still, the assurance seemed to suggest nothing to him. “But if he dies,”
- he protested, “how then will I be different? I am lonely—I am like a
- forlorn man escaped on a raft from a shipwreck—I eat my heart out in
- friendless solitude. And if I have a great title—why, then I shall
- be more alone than ever. It is that way with such men—I have seen
- that they hold themselves aloof—and others do not come freely near
- them. It frightens me—the thought of living without friends. I say
- to you solemnly that I would give it all—the position, the authority
- and dignity, the estates, Caermere, everything—for the assurance of
- one warm, human heart answering in every beat to mine! Has friendship
- perished out of the world, then? Or has it never existed, except in the
- books?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her beauty had never been so manifest to him, as now while he gazed at
- her, and she did not speak. There seemed the faint, delicate hint of a
- tenderness in the classical lines of the face that he had not seen before.
- It was as if his appeal had brought forth some latent aptitude of romance,
- to mellow the direct glance of her eyes, and soften in some subtle way the
- whole charm of her presence. A new magic was visible in her loveliness—and
- the sense that his words had conjured it into being thrilled him with a
- wistful pride. No woman had thus moved him heretofore. The perception that
- she was plastic to his mental touch—that this flower-like marvel of
- comeliness and grace, of exquisite tastes and pure dignity of soul, could
- be swayed by his suggestion, would vibrate at the tone of his voice—awed
- him as if he were confronted by a miracle. His breath came and went under
- a dull consciousness of pain—which was yet more like pleasure. A
- bell sounded somewhere within the house, and its brief crystal resonance
- seemed somehow to clarify the ferment of his thoughts. All at once, as by
- the flooding of sunlight into a darkened labyrinth, his mind was clear to
- him. He knew what he wanted—nay, what all the years had been leading
- him up to desire.
- </p>
- <p>
- With his gaze maintained upon her face—timidly yet with rapturous
- intentness, as if fearful of breaking the spell—he rose to his feet,
- and stood over her. A confusion of unspoken words trembled on his lips, as
- her slow glance lifted itself to his.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was like the pleasantry of a beautiful, roguish little girl”—he
- began, smiling nervously down at her—“your saying that you belonged
- to a generation earlier than mine. Do you think I do not know my
- generation? And am I blind, that I do not see what is most precious in it?
- This is what——”
- </p>
- <p>
- An extraordinary outburst of disputing voices, in the little hallway close
- at hand, broke in upon his words. He stopped, stared inquiringly at Lady
- Cressage, and beheld her rise, frowning and hard-eyed, and step toward the
- door. A vague sense of the familiar came to him from the louder of the
- accents outside.
- </p>
- <p>
- The door was opened, and the domestic, red-faced, and spluttering with
- wrath, began some stammered explanation to her mistress. What she sought
- to say did not appear, for on the instant the door was pushed farther
- back, and a veiled lady took up her energetic stand upon the threshold.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t blame her,” this lady cried, in high, rapid tones. “I forced my way
- in—something told me that you were at home. And when you hear my
- news——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, since you are here”—Lady Cressage began, coldly. “But, really,
- Mrs. Torr——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no—call me Cora!” the other interrupted, vivaciously.
- </p>
- <p>
- She went further, and bustling her arms against Edith’s shoulders,
- purported to kiss her on both cheeks. Then, drawing back her head, she
- went on: “My dear, the duke died at two this morning! It’s in all the
- papers. But what isn’t in any of the papers is that the heir is missing.
- It’s a very curious story. Mr. Westland here”—by her gesture it
- seemed that Dicky was behind her in the hallway—“went to Duke Street
- this noon, and found Christian’s man in great alarm. The youngster had
- bolted, leaving a note saying merely that he was called away. Mr.
- Westland’ then hunted me up, and we started out, for I had a kind of clue,
- don’t you see. I knew where he was at ten o’clock this forenoon—and
- we drove to Arundel Street, and there we found——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian hurriedly stepped forward. “Oh, I think you may take it that I
- am not lost,” he called out, revealing himself to the astonished Cora. For
- the moment the chief thing in his mind was satisfaction at having
- interrupted her disclosures about Arundel Street.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, as other thoughts crowded in upon him, he straightened his shoulders
- and lifted his chin. “It’s all right,” he said, with a reassuring wave of
- the hand toward the womenfolk of his family.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_PART4" id="link2H_PART4"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- PART IV
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>n the morning of
- the funeral, six days later, Christian rose very early, and took coffee in
- his library shortly after seven. Then, lighting a cigarette, he resumed
- work upon several drawers full of papers, open on the big table, where it
- had been left off the previous evening. The details of the task seemed
- already familiar to him. He scanned one document after another with an
- informed eye, and put it in its proper pile without hesitation. He made
- notes suggested by the contents of each, on the pad before him, with a
- quill pen and corrected the vagaries of this unaccustomed implement, in
- the matter of blots and inadequate lines, with painstaking patience. There
- were steel nibs in abundance, and two gold stylographic pens, but he clung
- resolutely to the embarrassing feather.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time he rested from his labors, and rang the bell beside his desk;
- almost upon the instant Falkner appeared in the doorway.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If Mr. Westland is up,” said Christian, “you may ask him to join me
- here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, Your Grace,” the smooth-voiced, soft-mannered man replied, and
- vanished.
- </p>
- <p>
- The young duke rose, yawned slightly and moved to the window nearest him.
- It opened, upon examination, and he stepped out on a narrow balcony of
- stone which skirted the front of the square tower he had quitted. The
- outlook seemed to be to the northeast, for a patch of sunshine lay upon
- the outer edge of the balcony at the right. Breathing in delightedly the
- fresh Maymorning air, he gazed upon the bold prospect of hills receding in
- lifted terraces high against the remote sky-line. He had not seen just
- this view from Caermere before—and he said to himself that it was
- finer than all the others. Above each lateral stretch of purplish-gray
- granite, to the farthest distance, there ran a band of cool green foliage—the
- inexpressibly tender green of young birch trees; their thin, chalk-white
- stems were revealed in delicate tracery against indefinable sylvan
- shadows.
- </p>
- <p>
- Through the early stillness, he could hear the faint murmur of the Devon,
- gurgling in the depths of the ravine between him and the nearest hill.
- “To-morrow,” he thought, “will begin the true life! All this will be my
- home—mine! mine! and before anybody is up in the morning I will be
- down where that river of black water runs, and fish in the deep pools for
- trout.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Some one touched his elbow. He turned with a quick nod and smile to greet
- Dicky Westland. “I am up ages before you, you see,” he said genially. “It
- was barely daylight when I woke—and I suffered tortures trying to
- remain in bed even till six. Oh, this is wonderful out here!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Awfully jolly place, all round,” commented Dicky. He blinked to exorcise
- the spirit of sleep and gazed at the prospect with determined enthusiasm.
- “I haven’t looked about much, but I’ve found out one thing already.
- There’s a ghost in my room—and I think he must have been a
- professional pedestrian in life.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Splendid!” cried Christian, gaily. “Have you had coffee—or it is
- tea you people drink, isn’t it? Then shall we get to work? I want the
- papers out of the way before Emanuel comes. They will all be here between
- nine and ten. I wanted to send carriages to Craven Arms, but it seemed
- there were not horses enough, so hired traps are to be brought up from the
- station.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know who are coming?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lord Julius, and Emanuel and his wife; the captain and his wife and
- brother; Lord Chobham, and Lord Lingfield—I don’t know if any of
- their women will come—and Lady Cressage. Then there are some
- solicitors, and perhaps some old acquaintances of my grandfather’s. At all
- events, Welldon has ordered four carriages and a break. There is to be
- breakfast at ten, and I shall be glad when it is all over—when
- everything is over. Do you know?—I have never been to a funeral in
- my life—and I rather funk it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, they’re not so bad as you always think they’re going to be,” said the
- secretary, consolingly. “The main thing is the gloves. I never could
- understand it—but black gloves are invariably about two sizes
- smaller than ordinary colors. You want to look out for that. But I dare
- say your man is up to the trick—he looks a knowing party, does
- Falkner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I fancy I shall give him back to Emanuel,” remarked Christian,
- thoughtfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is an excellent servant, but he reminds me too much of Duke Street.
- Did you notice the old butler yesterday afternoon?—he stood at the
- head of the steps to meet us—that is old Barlow. I have a great
- affection for him. I shall have him valet me, I think.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Isn’t he rather venerable for the job?” suggested the other. “And
- wouldn’t it be rather a come-down for a head butler? They’re awfully keen
- about their distinctions among themselves, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian smiled with placidity. “I think that the man whom I pick out to
- be nearest me will feel that he has the best place in the household. I
- shall be very much surprised indeed if that isn’t Barlow’s view. And of
- course he will have his subordinates. But now let us take Welldon’s
- statement for the last half of ’95, and the two halves of ’96.
- Then we can get to the mine. Unless I am greatly mistaken, that is most
- important. I find that the mining company’s lease falls in early next
- year. And won’t you ring the bell and have Welldon sent up when he comes?”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Upon mature reflection Christian decided not to descend to meet his guests
- at breakfast. When he had dismissed the estate agent, Welldon, after a
- prolonged and very comprehensive interview, he announced this decision to
- Westland. “You must go down and receive them in my place,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will say that you have a cold,” suggested Dicky.
- </p>
- <p>
- “By no means,” returned Christian, promptly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is not necessary to enter into details. You receive them—that is
- all. I have spoken with Barlow; he knows what to do with them in the
- matter of rooms and so on. I am breakfasting here. And afterward—say
- at eleven o’clock—I will see some of them here. There is an hour to
- spare then, before we go to the church. I am not clear about this—which
- ones to see first. There is that stupid reading of the will after we get
- back——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “By George! do they do that still?” interrupted Dicky. “I know they did in
- Trollope and George Eliot—but I thought it had gone out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is kept up in old families,” replied Christian, simply. “In this case
- it is a pure formality, of course. There is no mystery whatever. The will
- was made in 1859, after the entail was broken, and merely bequeaths
- everything in general terms to the heir-at-law. My grandfather covenanted,
- at the same time, to Lord Julius to make no subsequent will save by his
- advice and consent—so that there can be no complications of any
- kind. I am thinking whether it would be better to see Lord Julius and
- Emanuel before the reading of this will or after. Really it makes no
- difference—perhaps it is better to get it over with. Yes—say
- to them that I beg they will come to me here at eleven. You might bring
- them up and then leave us together—or no, they know the way. Let
- them come up by themselves.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Through the open window there came the grinding sound of wheels upon the
- gravel of the drive, around at the east front. At a gesture from the
- other, Dicky hurried away.
- </p>
- <p>
- Left to himself, Christian wandered again to the casement, and regarded
- the spacious view with renewed interest. Falkner entered presently,
- bearing a large tray, and spread some covered dishes upon a cloth on the
- library table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How many carriages have come?” the master asked from his place at the
- window.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Four, Your Grace—and a break with some wreaths and Lord Chobham’s
- man and a maid—I think it is Lady Cressage’s maid.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who has come—outside the family?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Three gentlemen, Your Grace—one of them is Mr. Soman. Barlow thinks
- they are all solicitors.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian mused briefly upon the presence of Lord Julius’s man of
- business. Since that first evening of his on English soil, at Brighton, he
- had not seen this Mr. Soman. He remembered nothing of him, indeed, save
- his green eyes. And now that he thought of it, even this was not a
- personal recollection. It was the remark of the girl on the boat, about
- his having green eyes, which stuck in his memory. He smiled, as he looked
- idly out on the hills.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl on the boat! Was it not strange that his mind should have applied
- to her this distant and chilling designation? Only a few days ago—it
- would not be a week till to-morrow—she had seemed to him the most
- important person in the world. A vision of his future had possessed him,
- in which she alone had a definite share. How remote it seemed—and
- how curious!
- </p>
- <p>
- He recalled, quite impersonally, what he had heard in one way or another
- about her family. Her father was some sort of underling in the general
- post office—a clerk or accountant, or something of the kind. There
- was a son—of course, that would be the brother Cora had spoken of—and
- the ambition of the family had expended itself in sending this boy to a
- public school, and to the university. The family had made great sacrifices
- to do this—and apparently these had been wasted. He had the distinct
- impression of having been told that the son was a worthless fellow. How
- often that occurred in England—that everything was done for the son,
- and nothing at all for the daughters! Then in fairness he reflected that
- it was even worse in France. Yes, but somehow Frenchwomen had a talent for
- doing for themselves. They were cleverer than their brothers—more
- helpful, resourceful—in spite of the fact that the brothers had
- monopolized the advantages. Images of capable, managing Frenchwomen he had
- known rose before his mind’s eye; he saw them again accomplishing wonders
- of work, diligent, wise, sensible, understanding everything that was said
- or done. Yet, oddly enough, these very paragons of feminine capacity had a
- fatal unfeminine defect; they did not know how to bring up their sons.
- Upon that side they were incredibly weak and silly; it was impossible to
- prevent their making pampered fools of their boys.
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly his vagrant fancies were concentrated upon the question of how
- Frances Bailey would bring up a boy—a son of her own. It was an
- absurd query to have raised itself in his mind—and he put it away
- from him with promptitude. There remained, however, a kind of mental
- protest lodged on her behalf among his thoughts. He perceived that in his
- ruminations he had done her an injustice. She was not inferior in
- capability or courage to any of the self-sufficient Frenchwomen he had
- been thinking of, and in the matter of intellectual attainments was she
- not immeasurably superior to them all? The translucent calm of her mind—penetrating,
- far-reaching, equable as the starlight—how queer that it should be
- coupled with such a bad temper! She always quarreled with him, and bullied
- him, when they were together. Even when she was exhibiting to him the
- sunniest aspects of her mood, there was always a latent defiance of him
- underneath, ready to spring forth at a word. He remembered how, at the
- close of their first meeting, she had refused to tell him her name. He saw
- now that this obstinacy of hers had annoyed him more than he had imagined.
- For an instant it assumed almost the character of a grievance—but
- then his attention fastened itself at random upon the remarkable fact that
- he had seen her only twice in his life. Upon reflection, this did seem
- very strange indeed. But it was the fact—and in the process of
- readjusting his impressions of the past six months to fit with it, the
- figure of her receded in his mind, grew less as she moved away under a
- canopy of dull yellowish-green, which vaguely identified itself with the
- trees on the Embankment. She dwindled thus till he thought of her again,
- with a dim impulse of insistence upon the phrase, as the girl on the boat.
- The transition to thoughts of other things gave his mind no sort of
- trouble.
- </p>
- <p>
- He pondered some of these other things—formlessly and
- light-heartedly—while he stood at the library table, and picked
- morsels here and there from the dishes laid for him. His absence of
- appetite he referred tacitly to the warmth of the day, as it was sunnily
- developing itself outside. Here on this shaded side of the castle, it was
- cool enough, but there was the languor of spring in the air. He
- scrutinized this new library of his afresh. Until Barlow had opened it for
- him, shortly after his arrival yesterday, it could not have been used for
- years. Most of its appointments had a very ancient look; no doubt they
- must date back at least to the seventh Duke’s time. It was incredible that
- his grandfather, the eighth Duke, should have been inspired to furnish a
- library. There were many shelves of apparently very old books as well, but
- there was also a vast deal of later rubbish—stock and sporting
- annuals, veterinary treatises, county directories and the like—which
- he would lose no time in putting out. He saw already how delightful a room
- could be made of it. It had the crowning merit of being connected with the
- suite of apartments he had chosen for his own. From the door at the side,
- opposite the fine old fireplace, one entered the antechamber to his
- dressing-room. This gave to the library an intimate character, upon which
- he reflected with pleasure. Here he would come, secure from interruption,
- and spend among his books the choicest and most fruitful hours of his
- leisure. It was plain to him that henceforth he would do a great deal of
- reading, and perhaps—why not?—of writing too.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a rap upon the door, and then Falkner, opening it, announced
- Lord Julius and his son. They came in together, diffusing an impalpable
- effect of constraint. The elder man seemed in Christian’s eyes bigger than
- ever; his white beard spread over the broad chest like a vine run wild.
- Emanuel, who lapsed in the wake of his father, was unexpectedly small by
- comparison. The shadows, where the two stood, emphasized the angular
- peculiarities of his bald head. His thin face took an effect of sallow
- pallor from his black clothes. Already he had his black gloves in his
- hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian stepped forward to meet them—and was suddenly conscious of
- the necessity for an apology. “I did not come down,” he murmured, as he
- shook hands with a grave smile—“I am not quite master of myself yet.
- It is still strange to me. But come to the window, and let us sit down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They followed him, and took the chairs he pushed out for them. He perched
- himself on the corner of the big table, and lightly stroked the glazed
- boot of the foot which was not on the floor. “I am glad to hear that
- Kathleen has come,” he said to his cousin. “I hope she is very well.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Extremely so,” replied Emanuel. Then, upon reflection, he added, “We had
- hoped that you would come to us, on your way down from London.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There was so much to do in town,” explained Christian, hazily. “My
- grandfather’s lawyers came up at once from Shrewsbury, and it was
- necessary to see a good deal of them—and then there were the tailors
- and outfitters. It was all I could do to get away yesterday morning. And
- of course—by that time I was needed here.” He turned to the other.
- “And you are very well, Uncle Julius?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am well,” said the elder man, with what Christian suspected for the
- instant to be significant brevity. The father and son had exchanged a
- look, as well, which seemed to have a meaning beyond his comprehension.
- But then he forgot these momentary doubts in the interest of the discovery
- that there were tears in his great-uncle’s eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius unaffectedly got out a handkerchief, and wiped them away. He
- looked up at the young man as through a mist. “I never dreamed that I
- should feel it so much,” he said, huskily. “I am amazed at myself—and
- then ashamed at my amazement—but Kit’s death has somehow put me
- about and upset me to a tremendous extent. There was thirteen years
- between us—but when you get to be an old man, that seems no more
- than as many weeks. And Emanuel”—he addressed his son with the
- solemnity befitting a revelation—“I am an old man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel frowned a little in his abstracted fashion. “You are less old than
- any other man of your years in England,” he protested.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, listening, somehow found no conviction in these reassuring
- words. It dawned upon him suddenly that Lord Julius had in truth aged a
- great deal. The perception of this disarranged the speech he had in his
- mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are a thousand things to be talked over,” he began, with an eye
- upon Emanuel, “but I do not know if this is quite the opportune time. I
- wished to lose no time in seeing you both, of course—but you will
- not be hurrying away. No doubt there will be a better opportunity.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t think it will be found that there is so very much to say,”
- remarked Emanuel. A gentle but persistent melancholy seemed to pervade his
- tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is the complication”—Christian began again, and hesitated.
- “That is to say—you know even better and more fully than I do, to
- what a great extent I am in your hands. And there the complication, as I
- said, arises. I have been working very hard on the figures—with the
- lawyers in London, and here since I arrived—but before we touch
- those at all, I ought to tell you frankly, Emanuel: I do not see my way to
- meeting the conditions which you suggested to me last autumn, when we met
- first.” Emanuel seemed in no wise perturbed by the announcement. His
- nervous face maintained its unmoved gravity. “It was never anything more
- than a pious hope that you would,” he commented. “I may add,” he went on,
- “that even this hope cannot be said to have survived your first visit.
- Otherwise, I should have tried to have you see London under different
- auspices—through different eyes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The calmness with which the decision he had regarded as so momentous met
- acceptance disconcerted Christian. He had mentally prepared for the
- defense of his hostile attitude toward the System—and, lo! not a
- syllable of challenge was forthcoming.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But there remains, all the same, the principal difficulty,” he said,
- thinking hard upon his words. “It does not lessen my obligations to you as
- my chief creditors.” He looked from one to the other, as if in uncertainty
- as to which was the master mind. “You have both been very open with me.
- You have told me why it was that you devoted a large fortune to buying up
- the mortgages on the estate which is now mine—and to lending always
- more money upon it—until now the interest eats up the income like a
- visitation of locusts. But my knowledge of the motives does not help me.
- And you must not think, either,” his confidence was returning now, and
- with it a better control over his phrases—“that I am begging for
- help. I look the situation in the face, and I do not feel that I am afraid
- of it. I see already many ways in which I can make a better fight of it
- than my grandfather made.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius held up a hand. “Is there not a misconception there?” he
- asked, pleasantly enough. “A fight involves antagonists—and I
- intervened in poor Kit’s affairs as a protector, not as an assailant.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian stood erect, and knitted his brows in puzzled thought upon both
- the manner and the matter of these words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it is still the same,” he persisted. “You were his good friend—as
- I know you are mine—or hope very sincerely that you are—but
- none the less you were his overwhelmingly big creditor, as now you are
- mine. If one is greatly in debt, then one struggles to get out. It is in
- that sense that I meant the word ‘fight.’ And, to repeat, I see many ways
- of making progress. I find that Welldon is not exclusively my man. He is
- the agent of three other estates as well, because we could not pay him
- enough here for all of his services. That I will alter at once. I find
- that we have no mineral bailiff. The company at Coalbrook has paid such
- royalties as it pleased, without check of any sort. We have the right to
- examine their books, but it has never been exercised. Next week my
- secretary and Welldon go to Coalbrook. I find that the company’s lease of
- twenty-one years expires next February. Eh bien! It will be strange if I
- do not get ten thousand pounds hereafter, where less than four has come in
- hitherto. My lawyers already know of capitalists who desire to bid for the
- new lease—and the estimate of increase is theirs, not mine. But
- these are details. I mention them to you only to show you that I am not
- afraid. But anxious, I do not deny that I am. I have not been bred to
- these things—and I may easily make mistakes. It would take a great
- load off my mind if—if, in some measure, you would be my advisers as
- well as my creditors.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should you ever have doubted that?” asked Emanuel, in a tone of
- somber kindliness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, but I do not mean advice about the management of the estate,” put in
- Christian, with an over-eager instinct of self-defense. “I do not shrink
- from taking that completely on my own shoulders. I would not trouble you
- with anything of that sort. But of larger matters——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is one large matter,” interrupted Lord Julius, speaking with great
- deliberation, “which I find outweighing all others in my mind. It is not
- new to my mind—but to-day it pushes everything else aside. It is the
- thought of the family itself. I have told you this before—let me say
- it to you again. Everything that I have done—every penny that I have
- laid out—has been with this one end in view—the family. Yet
- this morning I have been thinking of it—and I am frightened. While
- poor old Kit lingered along, it was not so easy to grasp it, somehow—but
- his going off makes it glaring. There are too few of us. I am alone in my
- generation—and so is Emanuel in his—and so are you in yours,
- save for those rowdy simpletons Eddy and Gus. And beyond you, there is
- only that little girl baby of Cora Bayard’s! I want you to marry,
- Christian. I want to see sons of yours growing up here at Caermere—hearty,
- fine boys to carry the name of Torr along. That I am really in earnest
- about. By comparison with it, nothing else on earth matters—for us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I shall marry,” Christian replied, in smiling seriousness. “Of
- course, that is the obvious thing to be done. And now”—he looked at
- his watch—“it is time for me to dress. It is arranged that you and
- Emanuel and Kathleen drive to the church in the carriage with me. It is
- not quite orthodox precedence, I know, but I could not bear to—to
- have it otherwise. And we will think no more about those other matters
- until tomorrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Other matters,” repeated Lord Julius, and exchanged a look with his son
- as they rose. “My dear Christian, there are no other matters.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—not till to-morrow,” answered Christian, with a doubtful smile.
- “But then I am afraid there are a good many.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Emanuel filled in the pause. “Mr. Soman has brought all the papers,” he
- said, with a flitting return to his lighter manner. “It is my father’s
- meaning that the mortgages are extinguished.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian gazed from one to the other with a face full of stupefaction.
- His knees shook and sought to bend under him. Tremblingly he essayed to
- speak—and his lips would make no sound.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lord Julius laid his big hand on the young man’s shoulder—and
- Christian, dimly recalling the effect of this touch in the days when he
- had first known it, thrilled at the novel restfulness it somehow now
- conferred.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Only show me a son of yours,” said the old man, with tender gravity. “Let
- me see an heir before I die.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Without further words, the two left him. Christian, staring at the
- shadowed door through which they had vanished, remained standing. His
- confused brain quailed in the presence of thoughts more stupendous than
- the ancient hills outside.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>everal thousand
- people caught that day their first curious glimpse of the new master of
- Caermere. At the most there were but a handful of aged persons, in the
- throng clustered along the sides of the road winding down from the Castle
- to the partially restored medieval collegiate church in the valley, who
- could remember any other duke than the one being borne now to lie among
- his fathers. The fact that these venerable folk, without exception, were
- in the enjoyment of a day’s holiday from the workhouse, might have
- interested a philosopher, had it been pressed upon his attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- Quite two hundred horsemen, mounted in their own saddles on their own
- beasts, rode in the long procession which descended from Caermere toward
- the close of the noon hour. Clad in decent black for the greater part,
- with old silk hats or other formal and somber headgear, they jogged
- sedately in unison as the curbed horses stepped with caution down the
- hill. Their browned and large-featured faces wore a uniform mask of
- solemnity—distinguished chiefly by a resolute contraction of brows
- and lips, and eyes triumphantly cleared of all traces of speculation. They
- looked down, as they passed, upon the humbler dalesmen and laborers of the
- hillsides, and their womenfolk and swarming children, with an impassive,
- opacated gaze.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the green, before the little covered gateway to the churchyard, dull
- murmurs spread through this cortege, propelled sidelong from mouths which
- scorned to open; the main principles of a proposed evolution came slowly,
- in some mysterious way, to be comprehended among them: after almost less
- backing and pushing into one another than might have been expected, they
- perceived themselves emerging into an orderly arrangement, by which they
- lined the two sides of the carriage-way crossing the green. They regarded
- each other across this significant strip of gravel with a gloomy stolidity
- of pride: the West Salop Yeomanry could scarcely have done it better. Then
- another rustle of whispered sounds along their ranks toward the church—and
- the civic side of their demonstration came uppermost. With a tightened
- left hand upon the reins, they removed their hats, and held them so that
- they could most readily read the names of the makers inside.
- </p>
- <p>
- The carriages bearing the family of Torr, preceded by the curtained
- hearse, and followed by a considerable number of broughams and closed
- landaus recognizable as the property of the neighboring gentry, moved
- silently forward along this lane of uncovered horsemen. The distant
- swelling moan of the organ floated on the May air, in effect a comment
- upon the fact that the tolling of the bell in the tower had ceased.
- </p>
- <p>
- The intermittent noise of carriage-doors being sharply shut, and of wheels
- getting out of the way, proceeded from the head of the procession at the
- gate—and tenants and other undistinguished people on foot began to
- press forward between the ranks. The horsemen, with furtive glances to
- right and left, put on their hats again, and let the restive animals
- stretch their muscles in the path. A few, dismounting, and giving their
- bridles over to boys, joined those who were moving toward the church. The
- majority, drawing their horses aside into groups formed at random, and
- incessantly shifting, lent their intellects, and in some restrained
- measure their tongues, to communion upon the one great problem of the day:—would
- the new Duke set the Hunt on its legs again?
- </p>
- <p>
- The question was so intimately connected with their tenderest emotions and
- convictions, that no one liked to speak of it thoughtlessly or upon hasty
- impulse. Even those who doubted most, shrank from hearing the prophecies
- of evil they felt prone to utter. Men who nourished almost buoyant hopes
- still hesitated to create a confidence which must be so precarious. While
- the faint sustained recitative of the priest in the church could be heard,
- insistent and disturbing like the monotone of a distant insect, and then
- the sounds of the organ once more, and of singing, fell upon the sunlit
- green, the horsemen spoke cautiously about the hounds. Even before Lord
- Porlock’s death, things had not been what they should have been. The pack
- was even then, as one might say, falling between two stools. The Torrs
- hadn’t the money to keep the thing up properly themselves, but they showed
- their teeth savagely the minute mention was made of getting in some
- outside help. But since Porlock’s death—well, the condition of
- affairs had been too painful for words. The horsemen shook their heads in
- dumb eloquence upon this tragic interval. The Kennels had lapsed into a
- state hardly to be thought of, much less discussed. There had been no
- puppy-walk. Were there any young dogs at all? And, just heavens! if there
- were, what must they be like!
- </p>
- <p>
- And yet the country-side, outraged as it felt itself to be in its finest
- feelings, beheld itself helpless. The old Duke—but really this was
- not just the time and place for saying what they felt about the old Duke
- They glanced uneasily toward the church when this theme suggested itself,
- and nodded with meaning to one another. It could be taken for granted that
- there were no illusions among them concerning <i>him</i>. But what about
- the new man? Eyes brightened, lips quivered in beseeching inquiry, at the
- mention of this omnipotent stranger. What was he like? Had anybody heard
- anything that Welldon had said about him? It seemed that he was French
- bred, and that, considered by itself, might easily involve the worst. But
- then, was there not a story that he had ridden to the hounds in
- Derbyshire? Perhaps the younger generation of Frenchmen were better
- fellows than their fathers—but then, there was the reported fact
- that the Duke of Orleans fell off his horse and broke his leg whenever he
- tried to ride. Sir George had been informed in Paris that he would have
- been King of France by this time if he had been able to stick in a saddle.
- Yet, when one thought of it, did not this very fact indicate a fine new
- public sentiment in France, on the subject of horsemanship—and
- perhaps even of sport in general?
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, at the door of the church, had thought most of clenching his
- teeth, and straining his upper-arms against his sides, to keep from
- trembling. He had not pictured himself, beforehand, as entering this
- burial place of his ancestors alone. Yet, in the churchyard, that was how
- the matter arranged itself. His first idea had been to lead, with Kathleen
- on his arm—but she had said her place was with Emanuel instead. Then
- the alternative of walking arm-in-arm with Lord Julius had seemed to him
- even more appropriate—but this too, in the confused constraint of
- the moment, had gone wrong. Stealing an anxious half-glance over his
- shoulder, he discovered that Lord Julius had placed himself at Kathleen’s
- other side. The slight gesture of appealing invitation which he ventured
- upon did not catch the old man’s eye. There was nothing for it but to
- stand alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- To be the strange, unsupported central figure in such a pageant unnerved
- him. He stood tremulously behind the pall—a burden draped with a
- great purple embroidered cloth, and borne upon the shoulders of eight
- peasant-laborers from the estate—and noted fleetingly that, so
- stunted and mean of stature were these poor hinds, he looked with ease
- above them, over their load, into the faces of the two priests advancing
- down the walk toward him.
- </p>
- <p>
- These persons, an elderly, dark man, with a red hood folded upon his
- shoulders, and a thin-faced fair young man, seemed to return the gaze with
- meaning. He caught himself feeling that their eyes deferred to him; yes,
- if they had bowed to the ground, the effect of their abasement before him
- could not have been more palpable. Looking perfunctorily across the chasm
- of death, their glances sought to, make interest with the living. He hated
- them both on the instant. As they wheeled, and by their measured steps
- forward drew slowly in their wake the bearers of the pall, the chant of
- the elder—“I am the Resurrection and the Life”—came vaguely to
- his ears, and found them hostile.
- </p>
- <p>
- The interior of the old church—dim, cool, cloistral—was larger
- than Christian had assumed from its outer aspect. Many people were
- present, crowded close in the pews nearest the door—and strangely
- enough, it was his perception that these were chiefly women, of some
- unlabeled class which at least was not his own, that brought to him of a
- sudden self-command. He followed the bier up the aisle to its
- resting-place before the rail, took tacit cognizance of the place
- indicated to him by some man in professional black, and stood aside to let
- Kathleen pass in before him, all with a restored equanimity in which he
- was himself much interested. Through the reading of the Psalm and the
- Epistle he gave but the most vagrant attention to their words. The priests
- read badly, for one thing; the whining artificiality of their elocution
- annoyed and repelled him. But still more, his thoughts were diverted by
- the suggestiveness of everything about him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Especially, the size of the funeral gathering, and of the mounted and
- wheeled procession, had impressed him. There need be no pretense that
- affection or esteem for the dead man had brought out, from the sparsely
- populated country round about, this great multitude. Precisely for that
- reason, it became a majestic fact. The burial of a Duke of Glastonbury had
- nothing to do with, personal qualities or reputation. It was like the
- passing away of a monarch. People who cared nothing for the individual
- were stirred and appealed to by the vicissitudes of an institution. Inset
- upon the walls around him were marble tablets, and more archaic canopies
- of stone over little carved effigies of kneeling figures; beyond, at the
- sides of the chancel, he could see the dark, rectangular elevations of the
- tombs, capped by recumbent mail-clad statues, with here and there a gleam
- of gilt or scarlet retained from their ancient ornamentation; even as he
- had walked slowly up the aisle, his downcast eyes had noticed the chiseled
- heraldry of stones beneath his feet. Everywhere about him was the historic
- impact of the Torrs. Their ashes were here—their banners and shields
- and tilting-helmets, their symbolical quarterings of the best arms of the
- West, their own proudest device of all. Their white bull on the green
- ground was familiar in England long before the broom-corn of the Angevins
- had been thought of. The clerkly pun on Tor and Taurus was as like as not
- older than the English language itself. All this made something mightier,
- more imposing and enduring, than any edifice to be reared by man alone. It
- was only in part human, this structure of the family. The everlasting
- hills were a part of it, the dark ranges of forests, the spirits and
- legends of the ancient Marches.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>In the morning it is green, and groweth up; but in the evening it is
- cut down, dried up and withered,</i>” droned the young clergyman.
- </p>
- <p>
- But if man seemed to count for but little in this tremendous, forceful
- aggregation of tradition and custom, yet again he might be all in all. The
- tall old man under the purple pall, there—it was easy to think
- contemptuously of him. Christian recalled, in a kind of affrighted musing,
- that one view of his grandfather that he had had. The disgust with which
- he had heard the stupid, violent words from those aged lips revived within
- him—then changed to wonder. Was it not, after all, the principle of
- strength which most affected men’s minds? There had been discernible in
- that grandfather of his a certain sort of strength—dull,
- unintelligent, sinister, half-barbarous, but still strength. Was it not
- that which had brought forth the two hundred horsemen? And if this one
- element, of strength—yes, you might call it brute strength—were
- lacking, then would all the other fine qualities in the world avail to
- hold the impalpable, intangible combination together?
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘<i>He shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and power</i>.’”
- It was the old parson who was reading now.
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘<i>For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet</i>.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, even in this Protestant religion to which he had passively become
- committed, force was the real ideal! Christian’s wandering mind fastened
- itself for a moment upon the ensuing words of the lesson, but got nothing
- from their confusing reiterations. He lapsed into reverie again, then
- started abruptly with the sudden perception that everybody in the church
- behind him must be looking at him. In the pew immediately behind, there
- would be Captain Edward and his wife, and Augustine; in the one behind
- that Lady Cressage, Lord Chobham and his son; beyond them scores and
- scores of others seated in rows, and then a throng in the aisle and the
- doorway—all purporting to think of the dead, but fixing their eyes
- none the less on the living. And it was not alone in the church, but
- through the neighborhood, for miles round about: when men spoke of the old
- Duke who was gone, their minds would in truth be dwelling upon the new
- Duke who was come. A thrill ran through his veins as the words spelled
- themselves out before his inner vision. The new Duke! He seemed never to
- have comprehended what it meant before.
- </p>
- <p>
- No; and till this moment no genuine realization had come to him of this
- added meaning—this towering superstructure which the message of
- Julius and Emanuel had reared. It was only now that he hit upon the proper
- mental focus with which to contemplate this amazing thing. Not only was he
- a territorial ruler, one of the great nobles of Europe, but he was the
- master of wealth almost beyond counting as well!
- </p>
- <p>
- Those nearest to him were rising now, and he, obeying imperative impulses
- within him, lifted himself proudly to his feet. While the air throbbed
- with deep-voiced organ notes, in the pause which here ensued, his gaze
- rested upon the pall before him. There was a sense of transfiguration in
- the spectacle. The purple mantle became imperial Tyrian to his eyes—and
- something which was almost tenderness, almost reverence, yearned within
- him toward that silent, incased figure hidden beneath it. The mystic,
- omnipotent tie of blood gripped his heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- With a collected sidelong look he surveyed the profiles of Emanuel and
- Lord Julius to his left. Theirs were the lineaments of princes. As if he
- had eyes in the back of his head, he beheld Edward and Augustine, as fancy
- revealed them standing in the pew behind him. Tall, slim, athletic, fair—the
- figures his imagination made of them appealed to the new patriarchal
- spirit in his heart. Perhaps they were not wholly nice, these young men,
- but they also were princes, and they were of his race, and no one should
- persecute them, or despitefully use them.
- </p>
- <p>
- The uncouth little bearers of the dead had come forward again, and taken
- up their burden. In a small lady-chapel, extending from the transept at
- the left, the interment was to take place, and thither Christian now
- followed the pall, leading the menfolk of his family and the male guests
- of position who attached themselves to the group. Thus some score of
- black-clad figures clustered round the oblong opening in the old stone
- floor, and Christian, standing at its head, glanced impassively over the
- undefined throng of spectators gathered at the doorway.
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘<i>Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full
- of misery</i>,’” proclaimed the younger priest, with a sudden outburst of
- high-pitched, nasal tones which pierced the unexpectant ear. “‘<i>He
- cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow,
- and never continueth in one stay.</i>’”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, watching abstractedly the impersonal wedge of faces at the
- door, all at once caught his breath in a sharp spasm of bewildered
- amazement. The little book he had been holding fell from his hands,
- balanced on its edge for an instant and toppled over into the dark vault
- below. He seemed unconscious of the incident—but stared fixedly,
- with parted lips and astonished eyes, at the image of something he had
- seen outside of the chapel. The thing itself had apparently vanished. He
- perceived vaguely that people were looking at him—and with a
- determined effort regained control of his face and bearing. The puzzling
- thought that it might have been an illusion—that perhaps he had seen
- nothing at all—brought mingled confusion and solace to his mind. He
- put his hand to the open book which Lord Julius at his side held toward
- him, and pretended to look at it.
- </p>
- <p>
- The coffin, now bereft of its purple covering, had been lowered to its
- final place. One of the bearers, standing over the cavity, crumbled dry
- earth from his tanned and clumsy fingers, and it fell with a faint rattle
- upon some resonant, unseen surface.
- </p>
- <p>
- The phrase, “‘<i>Our dear brother, here departed</i>,’” stuck out with
- awkward obtrusiveness from among the words of the priest. “‘<i>Earth to
- earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust</i>.’” the sing-song went on. Then
- they were repeating the Lord’s Prayer together in a buzzing, fitful
- murmur. There were other prayers—and then Christian read in the
- faces of those about him that the ceremony was finished. Accepting the
- suggestion of Lord Julius’s movement, he also bent over, and looked
- blankly down into the obscurity of the vault. But when he lifted his head
- again, it was to throw a more searching and strenuous glance than ever
- over the knot of people outside the door. And yes!—he had not been
- deceived. He distinctly saw the face again, and with lightning swiftness
- verified its features. Beyond a shadow of doubt it was Frances Bailey whom
- he beheld, mysteriously present in this most unlikely of places.
- </p>
- <p>
- He withdrew his eyes and did not look that way again. The question whether
- she knew that he had recognized her, occupied his mind to the exclusion of
- all else, as he returned at the head of his followers to the body of the
- church. It still possessed his thoughts when he had joined the family
- group of chief mourners, loosely collecting itself in the aisle before the
- front pews, in waiting for the summons to the carriages. To some one he
- ought to speak at once, and for the moment his eye rested speculatively
- upon Cora. He identified her confidently, not only by her husband’s
- proximity, but by the fact that her mourning veil was much thicker and
- longer than any of the others. Some unshaped consideration, however,
- restrained him, and on a swift second thought he turned to Kathleen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want you to look,” he whispered to her, inclining his head—“on
- the other side of the church, just in a line between the second pillar and
- the white-bearded figure in the window—there is a tall young woman,
- with the gray and black hat. Do you see her? In a kind of way she belongs
- to us—she is Cora’s sister, but I’m afraid if Cora asked her, she
- would not come to the Castle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes—once you talked to me about her,” Kathleen reminded him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, will you do this for me?” he continued, in an eager murmur. “Go to
- her, and make sure that she promises to come up with the rest. It would be
- unforgivable—if we let her go away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had an uneasy feeling that Mrs. Emanuel’s veil did not prevent her
- shrewd glance from reading him through and through—but he did not
- seek to dissemble the breath of relief with which he heard her assent.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXIV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was not a very
- easy task,” Kathleen found opportunity to say to Christian, half an hour
- later, as the family were assembling in his library. They stood together
- by the window nearest the table, and watched the embarrassed deportment of
- Lord Lingfield under the conversational attentions of Cora, as they talked
- in low tones.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But she is here in the Castle: that is the principal thing.” He did not
- shrink now from the implication of his words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, she finally consented to come,” explained the other. “I told her
- that you insisted upon it—and then—then I used some persuasion
- of my own.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thank you, Kathleen,” he said, simply. “It seems that she is to write
- an account of the funeral for some London newspaper. She said frankly,
- however, that that of itself did not account for her coming. It will pay
- her expenses—so she said—but the paper would not have sent her
- specially. And there is no doubt about it—she was really annoyed at
- being discovered.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The solicitors from Shrewsbury, entering the room now, gave at once an
- official air to everything. The elder of them, with oppressive formality,
- drew a formidable parchment from a bag held by his junior, and bowed
- elaborately to Christian. Then, as if he had received some mandate to do
- so from His Grace, he untied the tape, and cleared his throat. Those who
- had been seated, rose to their feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- The will came to them unaltered from 1859—and contained, wrapped in
- a surprising deal of pompous verbiage, a solitary kernel of essential
- fact. No legatee was mentioned save an impersonal being called the
- heir-at-law. The absolutism of dynastic rule contemplated no distribution
- or division of power. This slender, dark-eyed young man, standing with
- head inclined and a nervous hand upon the table, had not come into being
- until long after that will was made, and for other long years thereafter
- his very existence had been unknown to the family at large. Yet, as the
- lawyer’s reading ended, there he stood before their gaze, the unquestioned
- autocrat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This may be the best time to say it.” Christian straightened himself, and
- addressed his family for the first time, with a grave smile, and a voice
- which was behaving itself better than he feared it would. “There are no
- minor bequests, owing to the circumstances under which the will was drawn,
- but I have taken it upon myself to supply such omissions, in this matter,
- as shall commend themselves to my consideration. Upon this subject we may
- speak among ourselves at our leisure, later on.” With distinguished
- self-possession he looked at his watch. “I think luncheon is at two.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There followed here an unrehearsed, and seemingly unpremeditated, episode.
- Lord Julius advanced with impressive gravity across the little open space,
- and taking the hand which Christian impulsively extended to him, bent over
- it in a formal and courtly bow. When Emanuel, following his father, did
- the same, it was within the consciousness of all that they had become
- committed to a new ceremonial rite. Kathleen, coming behind her husband,
- gave her cheek to be kissed by the young chief of her adopted clan—and
- this action translated itself into a precedent as well.
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward and Augustine, after the hesitation of an awkward instant, came
- forward together, and in their turn, with a flushed stiffness of
- deportment, made their salutation to the head of the house. To them,
- conjointly, Christian said something in a whisper. He kissed Cora upon
- each cheek, with a faint smile in his eyes at her preference for the
- foreign method. His remoter cousins, the Earl of Chobham and Lord
- Lingfield, passed before him, and he vaguely noted the reservation
- expressed in their lifeless palms and frigid half-bow. They seemed to wish
- to differentiate themselves from the others—to express to him the
- Pickwickian character of their homage. They were not Torrs; they did not
- salaam to him as their over-lord. They had a rival dynasty of their own,
- and their appearance here involved nothing but the seemly courtesy of
- distant relationship. He perceived in a dim way that this was what their
- manner was saying to him—but it scarcely diverted his attention. His
- glance and his thoughts passed over their heads, to fasten upon the
- remaining figure.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lady Cressage, unlike the other two women, had retained the bonnet and
- heavy veil of mourning. The latter she held drawn aside with a
- black-gloved hand as she approached. It flashed suddenly across
- Christian’s brain that the year of her mourning for her own dead was not
- over—yet in her own house she wore gay laces and light colors. But
- it was unkind to remember this—and senseless, too. He strove to
- revivify, instead, the great compassionate impulse which formerly she had
- stirred within him. A pallid shadow of it was all that he could conjure up—and
- in the chill of this shadow he touched her white temple with his lips, and
- she moved away. There lingered in his mind a curious, passive conflict of
- memories as to whether their eyes had met or not. Then this yielded place
- to the impression some detached organ of perception had formed for him,
- that in that somber setting of crape her face had looked too small for the
- rest of her figure.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, as the whole subject melted from his mind, he turned toward the two
- young men who, upon his whispered request, had remained in the library
- after the departure of the others. He looked at his watch, and beckoned
- them forward with a friendly wave of his hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pray come and sit down,” he said, with affability upon the surface of his
- tone. “We have a quarter of an hour, and I felt that it could not be put
- to better use than in relieving your minds a little—or trying to do
- so. Let me begin by saying that I do not think I have met either of you
- before. In fact, now that I reflect, I am sure that we have not met
- before. I am glad to see you both.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The two brothers had drawn near, and settled uneasily into the very chairs
- which Lord Julius and Emanuel had occupied some hours before. Again
- Christian half seated himself upon the corner of the table, but this time
- he swung his leg lightly as he surveyed his guests. It flattered his
- prophetic judgment to note that Augustine seemed the first to apprehend
- the meaning of his words, but that Edward, upon pondering them, appeared
- the more impressed by their magnanimity. Between them, as they regarded
- him and each other doubtfully, the family likeness was more striking than
- ever. Christian remembered having heard somewhere that their father, Lord
- Edward, had been a dark man, as a Torr should be. Their flaxen hair and
- dull blue eyes must come from that unmentionable mother of theirs, who was
- living in indefinite obscurity—if she was living at all—upon
- the blackmail Julius paid her for not using the family name. The thought
- somehow put an added gentleness into his voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How old are you—Eddy?” he asked, forcing himself into the use of
- the diminutive as a necessary part of the patriarchal rôle he had assumed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nine-and-twenty in October,” answered the Captain, poutingly. It seemed
- on the tip of his tongue to add something else, but he did not.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s two years and a month between us,” remarked Augustine, with more
- buoyancy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you’ve been out of the army for five years,” pursued Christian. “It
- seems that you became a Captain very early. Would there be any chance of
- your taking it up again, where you left off?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward shook his head. “It couldn’t be done twice. I got it by a lucky
- fluke—a friend of my father’s, you know. But they’re deuced stiff
- now,” he answered. “You have to do exams and things. An old johnnie asks
- you what bounds Peru on the northeast, and if you can’t remember just at
- the minute, why, you get chucked. Out you go, d’ye see?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is your idea, then? What would you like to do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Edward knitted his scanty, pale brows over this question, and
- regarded the prospect through the window in frowning perplexity. “Oh,
- almost anything,” he remarked at last, vacuously.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian permitted himself the comment of a smiling sniff. “Think it
- over,” he said, and directed his glance at the younger brother. “You’re in
- Parliament,” he observed, with a slight difference in tone. “I’m not sure
- that I quite understand-What is it that attracts you in a—in a
- Parliamentary career?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Augustine lifted his pale, scanty brows in surprise. The right kind of
- answer did not come readily to him. “Well,” he began with hesitation—“there
- was that seat in Cheshire where we still had a good bit of land—and
- Julius didn’t object—and I had an idea it would help me in the
- City.” He recovered confidence as he went on. “But it is pretty well
- played out now, I came in too late. The Kaffir boom spoiled the whole
- show. Five years ago an M P. could pick and choose; I knew fellows who
- were on twenty boards at a time, and big blocks of stock were flying about
- them like—like hailstones. But you can’t do that now. M. P.s are as
- cheap as dirt; they won’t have ’em at any price. A fellow hardly
- makes his cab-fares in the City nowadays. And even if you get the very
- best inside tips, brokers have got so fearfully nasty about your margins
- being covered——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, well,” interposed Christian, “it isn’t necessary that we should go
- into all that. I do not like to hear about the City. If you get money for
- yourself there, you have taken it away from somebody else. I would rather
- that people of our name kept away from such things.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you come to that, everybody’s money is taken from somebody else,” said
- Edward, unexpectedly entering the conversation. His brother checked him
- with a monitory hand on his arm. “No, you don’t understand,” Augustine
- warned him. “I quite see what the Duke means.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you see what I mean,” returned Christian, quietly, “perhaps you will
- follow the rest that I have to say; Do you care very much about remaining
- in Parliament?” Augustine’s face reflected an eager mental effort to get
- at his august interlocutor’s meaning. “Well—that’s so hard to say,”
- he began, anxiously. “There are points about it, of course—but then—when
- you look at it in another way, why of course——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My idea is this,” Christian interposed once more. “I hope you won’t mind
- my saying it—but there seems to me something rather ridiculous about
- your being in the House. Parliament ought not to be treated as a joke, or
- a convenience. It is a place for men who will work hard in the service of
- the country, and who have the tastes and the information and the judgment
- and the patriotic devotion to make their work of value to their country. I
- dare say that there are members who do not entirely measure up to this
- standard, but after all there <i>is</i> a standard, and I do not like to
- be a party to lowering it. England has claims upon us Torrs; it deserves
- something better at our hands than that. So I think I would like you to
- consider the idea of resigning your seat—or at least, dropping out
- at the end of this Parliament. Or no—that would be waiting too long.
- You would better think of retiring now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you mean that <i>I</i> am to stand for the seat, instead?” asked
- Edward, looking up with awakened interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian stared, then sighed smilingly and shook his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, that doesn’t seem to have been in my mind,” he replied with
- gentleness. He contemplated the elder brother afresh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you thought yet what you would like to do?” he asked again, almost
- with geniality.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How d’ye mean ‘do’?” inquired Edward, with a mutinous note in his voice.
- “Is it something about a business? If you ask me straight, I’m not so
- fearfully keen about doin’ anything. No fellow wants to do things, if he
- can rub along without.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian found himself repressing a gay chuckle with effort. He had not
- dreamed he should like this one of his kinsmen so much.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—no; you shall not do things,” he promised him, with a sparkling
- eye. “That would be too bad.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Edward turned in his chair, and recrossed his legs. “It’s a trifle
- awkward, all this, you know,” he declared, with an impatient scowl. “It
- doesn’t suit me to be made game of. You’ve got the whip hand, and you can
- give me things or not, as you like, and I’ve got to be civil and take what
- you offer, because I can’t help myself—but damn me if I like to be
- chaffed into the bargain! I wouldn’t do it to you, d’ye see, if it was the
- other way about.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian’s face lapsed into instant gravity. A fleeting speculation as to
- that problematical reversal of positions rose in his mind, but he put it
- away. “Ah, you mustn’t think that,” he urged, with serious tones. “No,
- Cousin Edward, this is what I want to say to you.” And then, all unbidden,
- the things he really wished to say, yet which he had not thought of
- before, ranged themselves in his mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Listen to me,” he went on. “You have been a soldier. You were a soldier
- when you were a very young man. Now, you had an uncle who was also a
- soldier when he was a mere youth—a very loyal and distinguished
- soldier, too. He died a soldier when he was in his fortieth year—far
- away from his family, from his wife and son, and much farther away still
- from the place and country of his birth. Once, in his youth, he was mixed
- up in an unpleasant and even disgraceful affair. How much to blame he
- personally was—that I do not know. It was very long ago—and he
- was so young a man—really I refuse to consider the question. I could
- insist to myself that he was innocent—if I felt that it mattered at
- all, one way or the other—and if I did not feel that by doing so,
- somehow he would not be then so real a figure to me as he is now. And he
- is very real to me; he has been so all my life.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He paused, with a momentary break in his voice, to blink the tears from
- his eyes. It was not ducal, but he put the back of his hand to his cheeks,
- and dried them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I show you how it affects me,” he continued, simply. “No matter what he
- did in some stupid hour in London, he was a brave soldier before that, and
- after that. He fought for many losing causes; he died fighting for one
- which was most hopeless of all. I am proud that I am his son. I am proud
- for you, that you are his nephew. And something has occurred to me that I
- think you will like to do—for me and for him. When I stood to-day
- over our vault—where we are all buried—it cut me to the heart
- to remember that one of us lies alone, a great way off—in a strange
- land by himself. I propose to you that you go to Spain for me—it is
- at Seo de Urgel, in the mountain country of the Catalans—and that
- you find his grave, and that you bring him back here to sleep with his
- people. He would not return in his lifetime—but I think he would be
- pleased with us for bringing him back now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Edward had looked fixedly up at his cousin, then glanced away, then
- allowed his blank gaze to return, the while these words were being spoken.
- It was impossible to gather from his reddened, immobile face, now, any
- notion of their effect upon him. But after a moment’s pause, he rose to
- his feet, squared his shoulders and put out his hand to Christian.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Quite right; I’ll go,” he said, abruptly.
- </p>
- <p>
- The two men shook hands, with a sense of magnetic communion which could
- have amazed no one more than themselves. Then, under a recurring
- consciousness of embarrassed constraint, they turned away from each other,
- and Edward wandered off awkwardly toward the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh—a moment more,” called Christian, with a step in his cousin’s
- direction. Then on second thoughts he added: “Or shall we let that wait? I
- will see you again—some time to-day or to-morrow. Yes—leave me
- now for a minute with your brother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When the door had closed upon Edward, Christian turned slowly to
- Augustine, and, as he leaned once more against the table, regarded him
- with a ruminating scrutiny.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am puzzled about you,” he remarked, thoughtfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- Augustine returned the gaze with visible perturbation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think,” pursued Christian, “that it rather annoys me that you don’t
- tell me to puzzle and be damned.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The other took the words with a grimace, and an unhappy little laugh. He,
- too, rose to his feet. “I funked it,” he said with rueful candor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, don’t funk things with me,” Christian advised him, with a testiness
- of which, upon the instant, he was ashamed. “Look here,” he continued,
- less brusquely, “I could take it from your brother that he did not want to
- do things. That fits him: he is not the kind of man to apply himself in
- that way. But I have the feeling that you are different. There ought to be
- performance—capacity—of some sort in you, if I could only get
- to know what it is. You are only my age. Isn’t there something that
- particularly appeals to you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Augustine balanced himself meditatively upon his heels. “You say you bar
- the City”—he remarked with caution. “Would you have any objection to
- Johannesburg? It’s not what it was, by any means, but it’s bound to pick
- up again. I might do myself very well there—with a proper start.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you are thinking always of money!” broke in Christian, sharply once
- again. “Suppose that there was no question of money—suppose, what
- shall I say? that you had twelve hundred a year, secure to you without any
- effort of your own—what would you do then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- This seemed very simple to Augustine. “I would do whatever you wanted me
- to do,” he replied, with fervor.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian shrugged his shoulders, and dismissed him with a gesture. “We
- will speak again about it,” he said coldly, and turned away.
- </p>
- <p>
- Descending the great staircase a few minutes later, Christian entered the
- door which Barlow had been waiting to open for him—and made his
- first public appearance as the dispenser of Caermere’s hospitality.
- </p>
- <p>
- The guests, after the old mid-day fashion of the place, were already for
- the most part gathered in the large dining-hall, and stood or sat in
- groups upon the side pierced by the tall windows. These guests did not
- dissemble the interest with which they from time to time directed glances
- across to the other side, where a long table, laid for luncheon, put in
- evidence a grateful profusion of cold joints and made-dishes.
- </p>
- <p>
- A pleased rustle of expectancy greeted Christian’s advent, but it seemed
- that this did not, for the moment at least, involve food and drink. He
- strolled over to the company, and, as he exchanged words here and there,
- kept an attentive eye busy in taking stock of its composition. There were
- some forty persons present, of whom three-fourths, apparently, were county
- people. A few casual presentations forced themselves upon him, but the
- names of the new acquaintances established no foothold in his memory. He
- smiled and murmured words which he hoped were seasonable—but all the
- while he was scanning the assemblage with a purpose of his own.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last he came to Kathleen, and was able to have a private word in her
- ear. “I do not see her anywhere,” he whispered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I could not prevail upon her to come in to lunch,” she answered; “I
- imagine it is partly a question of clothes. But she is being looked out
- for. And afterward I will take charge of her again, if you like—though——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The sentence remained unfinished, as she took the arm Christian offered
- her, at Barlow’s eloquent approach.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>uring the progress
- of the luncheon, Christian found no opportunity for intimate conversation
- with Emanuel’s wife. The elderly and ponderously verbose Lord Chobham sat
- upon her right; there was the thin-faced, exigeant wife of some clerical
- person in gaiters—a rural dean, was it not?—full of dogmatic
- commonplaces, on his left. The other people did not seem to talk so much.
- The scene down the table—with so much black cloth offset garishly
- against the white linen in the daylight—presented an effect of
- funereal sobriety, curiously combined with a spontaneous reaction of the
- natural man against this effect. The guests ate steadily, and with energy;
- Christian noted with interest how freely they also drank. For himself, he
- could not achieve an appetite, but thirst was in the air. He lifted his
- glass bravely to Lord Julius, whose massive bulk and beard confronted him
- at the other end of the table—and then to others whose glance from
- time to time caught his.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once he found the chance to murmur to Kathleen: “When this is over, I hope
- you will manage it so that I may speak with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded slow assent, without looking at him. He, observing her profile,
- realized all at once that something was amiss with her. It came back to
- him now that a certain intensity of sadness had dwelt in the first glance
- they had exchanged that morning, upon meeting. At the time he had referred
- it to the general aspect of woe which people put on at funerals. He saw
- now that it was a grief personal to herself. And now that he thought of
- it, too, there had been much the same stricken look upon Emanuel’s face.
- It was incredible that they should be thus devoured by grief at the fact
- of his grandfather’s death. No one had liked that old man overmuch—but
- surely they least of all. The emotion of Lord Julius was more intelligible—and
- yet even this had a quality of broken dejection in it which seemed
- independent of Caermere’s cause for mourning.
- </p>
- <p>
- The disquieting conviction that these dearly beloved cousins of his—these
- ineffably tender and generous friends of his—were writhing under
- some trouble unknown to him, took more definite shape in his mind with
- each new glance that he stole at her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once the thought sprang up that they might be unhappy because such a huge
- sum of money had been given to him, but on the instant he hated himself
- for being capable of formulating such a monstrous idea. The wondering
- solicitude which all this raised within him possessed his thoughts for the
- rest of the meal. He was consumed with impatience to get away so that he
- might question Kathleen about it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet when at last he found himself beside her, standing before an old
- portrait in one of the chain of big rooms through which the liberated
- company had dispersed itself, this was just the question for which it
- seemed that no occasion would offer.
- </p>
- <p>
- She began speaking to him at once. “The young lady—Miss Bailey, I
- should say—has gone for a walk—so Falkner learns from some of
- the women. They have the impression that she is coming back—but I
- don’t know that I feel quite so sure about it.” Christian’s face visibly
- lengthened. “It’s very awkward,” he said, with vague annoyance. “They do
- not arrange things in a very talented fashion, these people of mine.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what could they arrange?” she argued. An indefinable listlessness in
- her tone struck him. “It is a free country, you know, and this is the
- nineteenth century. They cannot bodily capture a young woman and keep her
- in the Castle against her will. As I told you, I had difficulty in
- persuading her to come at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, what did you say to her?” he asked, eagerly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can hardly tell you. She is not an ordinary person—and I know
- only that I tried not to say ordinary things to her. But what it was that
- I did say——” She broke off with an uncertain gesture, and a
- sigh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, you saw that she was not ordinary!” said Christian, admiringly. “I
- should love dearly to hear what you really think of her—the
- impression that she makes upon you.” Kathleen roused herself and turned to
- him. “Do you truly mean it, Christian?” she asked him, gravely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you blame me?” he rejoined, with uneasy indirection.
- </p>
- <p>
- She pressed her lips together, and stared up at the picture with a
- troubled face. “I know so little of her,” she protested. “You put too big
- a responsibility upon me. It is more than I am equal to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- With a sudden gust of self-reproach, he perceived afresh the marks of
- suffering in her countenance, and recalled his anxiety. “Take my arm,” he
- said, softly, “and let us go on into the next room. There is a terrace
- there, I think. Forgive me for troubling you,” he added, as they moved
- forward. “I ought to have seen that you are not well—that you have
- something on your mind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She did not answer him immediately. “It is Emanuel who is not well.” she
- said, after a pause.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian uttered a formless little exclamation of grieved astonishment.
- “Oh, it is nothing serious?” he whispered imploringly.
- </p>
- <p>
- She shook her head in a doubtful way. “No, I think not—that is, not
- irrevocably. But he has worked too hard. He has broken down under the
- strain. We are going away for a long journey—to rest, and forget
- about the System.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He bent his head to look into her eyes—trusting his glance to say
- the things which his lips shrank from uttering. A window stood open, and
- they passed out upon a broad stone terrace, shaded and pleasant under a
- fresh breeze full of forest odors.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh—the System”—he ventured to say, as they stood alone here,
- and she lifted her head to breathe in the revivifying air—“I felt
- always that it was too much for one man. The load was too great. It would
- crush the most powerful man on earth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded reflective assent. “Oh, yes—I’m afraid I hated it,” she
- confessed to him, in a murmur full of contrition.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But he is going away now,” urged Christian, hopefully. “You will have him
- to yourself—free from care, seeing strange and beautiful new places—as
- long as you like. Ah, then soon enough that gaiety of yours will return to
- you. Why, it is such a shock to me to think of you as sad, depressed—you
- who are by nature so full of joy and high spirits. Ah, but be sure they
- will all return to you! I make no doubt whatever of that. And Emanuel, too—he
- will get rested and strong, and be happy as he never was before—the
- dear fellow!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled at him in wan, affectionate fashion. “All the courage has gone
- out of me,” she said. “Will it be coming back again? God knows!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But surely——” Christian began, with hearty confidence.
- </p>
- <p>
- She interrupted him. “What I am fearful of—it is not so much his
- health, strictly speaking—but the terrible unsettling blow that all
- this means to him. It is like the death of a beautiful only child to the
- fondest of fathers. It tears his heart to pieces. He loved his work so
- devotedly—it was so wholly a part of his life—and to have to
- give it up! He says he is reconciled. Poor man, he tried with all his
- strength to make himself believe that he is. I catch him forcing a smile
- on his face when he sees me looking at him—and that is the hardest
- of all for me to bear. But I don’t know”—she drew a long breath, and
- gazed with a wistful brightening in her eyes at the placid hills and sky—“it
- may work itself out for the best. As you say—when we get away alone
- together, ah, that is where love like ours will surely tell. I do wrong to
- harbor any doubts at all. When two people love each other as we do—ah,
- Christian, boy, there’s nothing else in all the world to equal that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He inclined his head gravely, to mark his reverential sympathy with her
- mood.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, but you know nothing of it at all,” she went on. “You’re just a lad—and
- love is no more to be understood by instinct than any other great wisdom.
- Millions of people pass through life talking about love—and they
- would stare with surprise if you told them they never had had so much as a
- glimmer of the meaning of it. They use the name of love in all the matings
- of young couples—and there’s hardly once in a thousand times that it
- isn’t blasphemy to mention it. Do you know what most marriages are?
- Life-sentences! If you have means and intelligence, you make your prison
- tolerable; you can get used to it, and even grow dependent upon it—but
- it is a prison still. The best-behaved convict eyes his warder with a
- cruel thought somewhere at the back of his mind. Do you remember—when
- you left us the first time, I begged you to be in no haste to marry?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He bowed again. “Oh, yes, I remember it all,” he said, soberly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have come to feel so strongly upon that subject,” she explained. “It
- seems to me more important than all others combined. It is the last thing
- in the world that should be decided upon an impulse, or a passing fancy—yet
- that is just what happens all about us. The books are greatly to blame for
- that. They talk as if only boys and girls knew what love meant. They
- flatter the young people, and turn their empty heads, with the notion that
- their idlest inclinations are very probably sacred emotions—which
- they may trust to burn brightly in a pure flame all their lives. The
- innocent simpletons rush to light this penny dip that is warranted to
- blaze eternally, and in a week or a month they are in utter darkness. We
- trembled lest you, coming so suddenly into a new life, should meet with
- that misfortune.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He smiled faintly at her. “You see, I have not,” he commented.
- </p>
- <p>
- She regarded him thoughtfully. “It is impossible to make rules for others
- in these matters,” she observed, “but there is this thing to be said. True
- love must be built upon absolutely true friendship; there can be no other
- foundation for it You will often see two men who are fond of each other.
- They delight in being together. Very often you cannot imagine what is the
- tie between them—and they would not be able to tell you. They just
- like to be together—even though they may not speak for hours, and
- may be as different in temperament as chalk and cheese. That is the
- essence of friendship—and you cannot have love without it. The man
- and the woman must have the all-powerful sense of ideal companionship
- between them. They must be able to say with truth to themselves that the
- world will always be richer to them together than apart. There may be many
- other elements in love, but there can be no love at all without this
- element. But you wonder why I am saying all this to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He made a deprecatory gesture of the hands. “I am always charmed when you
- talk to me. I have been remembering that dear home of yours, and how
- inexpressibly good you were to me. I prize that memory so fondly!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled with an approach to her old gaiety of manner. “You were like a
- son of our own to us. And so we think of you now—as if you were
- ours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And with what munificence you have treated me!” he exclaimed, fervently.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And why not? For whom else would we be laying up our money? Oh, there was
- no difference of opinion about that. Months ago it was decided that when
- you came into Caermere you should come into everything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I feared that Emanuel would be angry—disappointed—at my not
- taking up his work—but truly I could not. It wouldn’t be easy to
- explain to you—but——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—let us not go into reasons. He had no feeling about it whatever.
- How should he? It would have been as reasonable to be vexed because the
- lenses of his spectacles did not fit your eyes. And Emanuel is
- reasonableness itself. No—the experiment was quite personal to
- himself. Without him, it could not have gone on at all. It will not go on
- now, when he leaves it to others. We make some little pretense that it
- will—but we know in our hearts that it won’t. And there was a fatal
- fault in it. To begin with, that would have killed it sooner or later, in
- any case.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know what you mean,” he interposed, with sensitive intuition. “There
- was no proper place in it for women. ‘The very corner-stone of the System
- was the perpetual enslavement of women’—or rather, I should say”—he
- stumbled awkwardly as the sweeping form of the quotation revealed itself
- to him—“I should say, it did not provide women with the
- opportunities which—which——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Kathleen also had her intuitions. “May I ask?—it sounds as if you
- were repeating a remark—was it Miss Bailey who said that about the
- corner-stone?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian bit his lip and flushed confusedly. “Yes—I think those
- were her words,” he confessed. “But you must remember,” he added, eager to
- minimize-the offense—“it was in the course of a long discussion on
- the whole subject, and she——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The dear girl!” said Kathleen, with a sigh of relief.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, but you would love her!” he cried, excitedly perceiving the
- significance of her words. “She has the noblest mind—calm and broad
- and serene—and so fine a nature—I know you would love her!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Kathleen put a hand on his arm, with motherly directness. “But do <i>you</i>
- love her?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- To his own considerable surprise he hesitated. “I have that feeling of
- deep friendship that you described,” he said, slowly. “The charm of being
- where she is is like nothing else to me. I cannot think that it would ever
- lose its force for me. I get the effect of drawing strength and breadth of
- thought and temper from her, when I am with her. I would rather spend my
- life with her for my companion than any other woman I have ever seen. That
- is what you mean, is it not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Partly,” she made enigmatic response. “But—now you mustn’t answer
- me if I ask what I’ve no business to ask—but the suspicion came to
- me while you were speaking—I am right, am I not, in thinking that
- you have said all this to her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” he admitted with palpable reluctance, “and she would not listen to
- me. Only a few hours before I heard the news of my grandfather’s death, I
- asked her to be my wife, and she refused. She seemed very resolute. And
- yet she has some of that same feeling of friendship for me. She said that
- she had always a deep interest in me. She had read books—very
- serious books—in order to be able to advise me, if the chance ever
- came. All that bespeaks friendship, surely! And her coming here, to look
- on and still not be seen—you said yourself that she was distressed
- at being discovered—is not that the act of warm friendship?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Kathleen pondered her reply. She looked away at the nearest hills across
- the river for some moments, with her gaze riveted fixedly as if in an
- absorption of interest. Without moving her head, she spoke at last: “You
- have a good deal to say about friendship. It is my fault—I
- introduced the word and insisted on it—but did you also lay such
- stress upon this ‘friendship’ to her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You do not know her nature,” he assured her. “There is nothing weak or
- commonplace in it. One does not talk to her as to an ordinary woman—as
- you yourself said. I begged her to join her life to mine, and I put the
- plea on the highest possible grounds. All that I have repeated to you, and
- much more, I said to her—how great was my need of her, how lofty her
- character seemed to me, how all my life I should revere her, and gain
- strength and inspiration from being with her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “H—m,” said Kathleen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you mean—?” he began, regarding his companion wonderingly—“was
- that not enough? Remember the kind of woman she is—proud of her
- independence, occupied with large thoughts, not to be appealed to by any
- but the highest motives—a creature who disdains the sentimental
- romances of inferior women—do you mean that there should have been
- something more? I do love her—and should I have told her so in so
- many words?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m afraid that’s our foible,” she made answer. On the face that she
- turned to him, something like the old merry light was shining. “You
- goose!” she scolded at him, genially.
- </p>
- <p>
- His eyes sparkled up as with a light from her own. “Oh, I will make some
- excuse, and get away from these people, and find her,” he cried. “She will
- be returning, if not here, then to the inn, down below the church, don’t
- you think? There would be nothing out of the way in my riding down, would
- there? Or if I sent a man down with a letter, appealing to her not to go
- away—telling her why? There is no earthly reason why she should not
- stop here at the Castle. Her sister is here—why, of course, she
- belongs quite to the family party. How dull of me not to have thought of
- that! Of course, Cora can go and fetch her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I would leave Cora out of it,” Kathleen advised him. “There is
- nothing that you cannot do better yourself. Come here! Do you see that
- patch of reddish stain on the hill there, above the poplars where the iron
- has colored the rock? Well, look to the right, on the ledge just a bit
- higher up—there is Miss Bailey. I have been watching her for some
- minutes. She has been round the hill; the path she is on will lead her to
- the Mere Copse—and to the heath beyond the orchards.”
- </p>
- <p>
- His eyes had found the moving figure, microscopic yet unmistakable in the
- sunshine against the verdant face of the hill—and they dwelt upon it
- for a meditative moment.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he turned to Kathleen, and took her hand, and almost wrung it in his
- own. “Do let us go in!” he urged her, with exultant eagerness.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXVI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian,
- professing to himself momentarily that the chance to get away from his
- guests was at hand, discovered that his escape, all the same, was no easy
- matter.
- </p>
- <p>
- Kathleen had disappeared somewhere, and without her he seemed curiously
- helpless. He did not as yet know the house well enough to be sure about
- its exits. The result of one furtive attempt at flight was to find himself
- in the midst of a group of county people, who fell back courteously at his
- approach and, as if by design, let him become involved in a quite
- meaningless conversation with a purple-faced, bull-necked old gentleman
- whose name he could not remember. This person talked at tremendous length,
- producing his words in gurgling spasms; his voice was so husky and his
- manner so disconcerting—not to mention the peculiarities of the
- local dialect in which he spoke—that Christian could make literally
- nothing of his remarks. He maintained a vapid listener’s-smile, the while
- his eyes roamed despondently about the room, and what he could see of the
- next apartment, in search of some relief. If he could hit upon Dicky
- Westland—or even Edward or Augustine!
- </p>
- <p>
- It became apparent to him, at last, that his interlocutor was discoursing
- on the subject of dogs. Of course—it would be about the Caermere
- hounds. On the grave faces of those about him, who stood near enough to
- hear the sounds of this mysterious monologue, he read signs that they
- considered themselves a party to it. It was on their behalf as well as his
- own that the old gentleman was haranguing him—and he swiftly
- perceived the necessity of paying better attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The hounds—yes,” he said, after a little. “I have been making
- inquiries about them. I am advised that they cannot be kept up properly
- for less than four thousand five hundred a year.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Up to Lord Porlock’s death, we had something like twenty-four hundred
- pounds from the Castle, and we made a whip-round among ourselves,” the
- other replied, “for the rest. With corn what it is, and rents what they
- are, we’re all so poor now that it’ll be harder than ever to get
- subscriptions, but we’ll try to do our share if the Castle’ll meet us
- half-way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian felt that he liked being referred to as “the Castle.” Moreover,
- an idea suddenly took shape in his mind. “My uncle, Lord Porlock, was the
- Master,” he said. “And before him my grandfather, I believe. But what has
- been done since Lord Porlock’s death—about a new Master, I mean?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Out of the complicated response made to this question he gathered vaguely
- that nothing had been done—that nothing could have been done.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My cousin, Captain Torr, is a hunting man, I think.” He threw out the
- question with some diffidence, and was vastly relieved to see the faces
- brighten about him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “None better, by God!” affirmed the old gentleman, with vehemence, and
- there followed a glowing and spluttering eulogium of Edward’s
- sportsmanlike qualities and achievements, in the middle of which Christian
- recalled that the speaker was Sir George Dence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I like the Mastership to continue in the family, Sir George,” he replied,
- suavely proud of the decision he had leaped to. “I think I shall suggest
- to you that Captain Edward take the hounds, and that, for a time at least,
- you allow the Castle to be at the entire expense. At all events, you have
- my annual subscription of five thousand pounds to begin upon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He made a dignified half-bow in the silence which ensued, and boldly moved
- away. The murmur of amazed admiration which rose behind him was music in
- his ears.
- </p>
- <p>
- Visions of possible escape rose for the moment before him. He walked with
- an air of resolution through the next room, trying to remember whither the
- corridor outside led—but at the doorway he stopped face to face with
- Lord Lingfield.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah,” said his cousin, amiably, “I did not know if I should see you again.
- I thought perhaps that you had gone to lie down. Funerals take it out of
- one so, don’t they? My father is quite seedy since lunch, and poor Lady
- Cressage has the most wretched headache! I think myself she’d do better
- not to travel while it lasts, but she’s anxious to get away, and so we’re
- all off by the evening train.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I didn’t dream of your hurrying off like this,” exclaimed Christian,
- sincerely enough. “But if you are set upon it—come, let’s find your
- father. It will seem as if I had neglected him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He’s in his room,” explained Lord Lingfield, as they moved away
- together, “getting into some heavier clothes. The evenings are chilly here
- in the hills, and we’re to start almost immediately, and take the long
- drive round through the forest. Lady Cressage has talked so much of it,
- and we’ve never seen it, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But this is all too bad!” urged Christian. “You rush away before I have
- had time to have a word with any of you. There is no urgent reason for
- such haste, is there now, really?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lady Cressage seems anxious to go,” answered the other, with a kind of
- significance in his solemn voice. “And of course—since she came with
- us——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian stole a quick glance at his kinsman, and as swiftly looked away.
- “If she prefers it—of course,” he commented with brevity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think she is very strong?” asked Lord Lingfield. “I have a kind of
- fear, sometimes, that her health is not altogether robust. She seemed very
- pale to-day.” There was a note of obvious solicitude in his voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She has a headache,” Christian reminded him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, that would account for it, wouldn’t it?” The young man was visibly
- relieved by this reflection. “They may say what they like,” he went on,
- “she is the most beautiful woman in London to-day, just as she was when
- she was married. Let me see—I am not sure that I ever knew her
- precise age. Do you happen to know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She is four-and-twenty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not more! I should have said six, or at least five. Hm-m!
- Four-and-twenty!” The reiteration, for some reason, seemed to afford him
- pleasure. “I am nearly thirty myself,” he added meditatively, “and I’m
- practically sure of being in the next Government. Shall you go in much for
- politics, do you think? It wouldn’t be of any great use to you, except the
- Garter, perhaps, and it’s so fearfully slow waiting for that. My father
- had the promise of it as long ago as Lord John Russell’s time, and it
- hasn’t come off yet. But then that Home Rule business was so unfortunate—it
- sent us all over to the Tory side, where there were already more people
- waiting for things than there were things to go round. If I were you, I
- would keep very quiet for a year or two—not committing myself openly
- to either side. I can’t help thinking there will be a break-up. It’s a
- fearful bore to have only twenty or thirty people on one side and five
- hundred on the other. They won’t stand it much longer. It doesn’t make a
- fair distribution of things. Of course, I’m a Unionist, but if I were in
- your shoes, I’d think it over very carefully. The Liberals haven’t got a
- single Duke—and mind you, though people don’t seem to notice it, it
- is a fact that a party practically never succeeds itself. The Liberals are
- bound to come in, sooner or later—and then, if you were their only
- Duke, why, you’d get your Garter shot at you out of a gun—so to
- speak. Of course, I mustn’t be mentioned as saying this—but you
- think it over! And it needn’t matter in the least—our being in
- different parties.. We can help each other quite as well—indeed,
- sometimes I’m tempted to think even better. Of course, I dare say there
- won’t be much that I can do for you—for the next two or three years,
- at least—except in the way of advice, and tips, and that sort of
- thing—but there may be a number of matters that you can help me in.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian nodded wearily—with a nervous thought upon the time being
- wasted. “I am not likely to forget your kindness—or our family
- ties,” he said, consciously evasive.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You never saw Cressage, of course; awful beast!” remarked the other, with
- an irrelevancy which still struck the listener as having a certain method
- in it. “It makes a man furious to think what she must have suffered with
- him. And a mere child, too, when she was married. Only four-and-twenty
- now! These early marriages are a great mistake. Of course, when a man gets
- to be nearly thirty, and there is a family and property and so on to be
- handed along, why, then marriage becomes a duty. That has always been my
- view. And I try invariably to do my duty, as I see it. I think a man ought
- to, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian sighed, and restrained an impulse to look at his watch. They had
- sauntered forward into the central hallway; through the open door could be
- seen a carriage and pair drawn up before the steps. A rustle on the stairs
- behind him caught his ear, and turning, Christian beheld Lady Cressage
- descending toward him, with Lord Chobham looming, stately and severe, in
- the shadows above her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian moved impulsively to her. “It was the greatest surprise to me—and
- disappointment, too—to hear that you were going like this,” he
- declared, with outstretched hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled feebly, and regarded him with a pensive consideration. Her
- heavy mourning of an earlier hour had been exchanged for a black garb less
- ostentatiously funereal, yet including the conventional widow’s-fall,
- which he had not seen her wear before. The thought that here at Caermere,
- last autumn, she had not even worn a widow’s-cap, rose in his mind. It
- carried with it a sense of remissness, of contumacy as against the great
- family which had endowed her with one of its names. But at least now she
- exhibited a consciousness that her husband was less than a year dead. And
- her pallid face was very beautiful in its frame of black—a
- delicately strong face, meditative, reserved, holding sadness in a proud
- restraint. “I am not very well,” she said to him, in tones to reach his
- ear alone. “The crowd here depressed me. I could not bring myself to
- appear at luncheon. It seems better that I should go away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it is such a fatiguing journey—for one who does not feel wholly
- up to it!” he urged upon her. “All these strangers will be going—I
- think some of them have gone already. I don’t know what their rule is here
- about stopping after luncheon—but surely they must clear out very
- soon. Then we shall be quite by ourselves—so that if that is your
- only reason for going—why, I can’t admit that it is a reason at
- all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He paused, and strove to cover with a halting smile his sudden perception
- that they were not talking with candor to each other. There were things in
- her mind, things in his mind, which bore no relation to the words they
- uttered. She was looking at him musingly—and he felt that he could
- read in her glance, or perhaps gather from what there was not in her
- glance, that she would not go if he begged her with sufficient earnestness
- to remain. Nay, the conviction flashed vividly uppermost in his thoughts
- that even a tolerable simulation of this earnestness would be enough. It
- was as if a game were being played, in which he was not quite the master
- of his moves. In this mere instant of time, while they had stood facing
- each other, he had been able to reproduce the whole panorama of his
- contact with this beautiful woman. From that first memorable day when she
- had come into his wondering, distraught vision of the new life before him,
- to that other day but a week ago when he had stood trembling with
- passionate emotions in her presence, his mental pictures of her rose
- connectedly about him. They exerted a pressure upon his will. They left
- him no free agency in the matter. By all the chivalric, tenderly
- compassionate memories they evoked, he must bid her to remain.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am very sorry that you feel you must go,” was what he heard himself say
- instead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good-bye,” she answered simply, and gave him her gloved hand with an
- impassive face. “Lord Chobham and Lord Lingfield are good enough to see me
- back to London again. We are driving round through the forest. Our people
- are to join us at the station with the luggage. Goodbye.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He accompanied the party out to the carriage door, despite some formal
- doubts about its being the proper thing to do. Both father and son made
- remarks to him, to which he seemed to himself to be making suitable
- answers, but what they were about he never knew. The tragedy of Edith’s
- final departure from Caermere—she who had been the hostess here when
- he came; she who was to have worn the coronet on her lovely brow as the
- mistress of it all—seized upon his mind and harrowed it. A vehement
- self-reproach that his thoughts should have done her even momentary
- injustice stung him, as he beheld her seated in the carriage. She smiled
- at him—that wistful, subdued smile of the headache—and then,
- as the horses moved, his eyes were resting upon another smile instead—the
- beaming of fatuous content upon the countenance of Lord Lingfield, who sat
- facing her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian, regarding this second cousin of his as the carriage receded
- from view, suddenly breathed a long sigh of relief.
- </p>
- <p>
- All at once remembering many things, he wheeled with the impulse to run up
- the steps. Upon reflection, he ascended them sedately instead, and gave
- orders in the hall that Mr. Westland should be sent to him forthwith. Two
- or more groups of departing guests came upon him, while he stood
- irresolutely here, and he bade them farewell with formal gravity. The two
- parsons whom he had seen at the church were among them—attired now
- in black garments with curiously ugly little round, flat hats—and he
- noted with interest that their smirking deference now displeased him less
- than it had done in the morning. He perceived that his lungs were becoming
- accustomed to the atmosphere of adulation, and smiled tolerantly at
- himself. How long would it be, he wondered with idle amusement, before it
- would stifle him to breathe any other air?
- </p>
- <p>
- Augustine had sauntered out from some unknown quarter into the hall, and
- Christian beckoned to him. A shapeless kind of suspicion, born of a
- resemblance now for the first time suggesting itself, had risen in his
- brain. He took the young man by the arm, and strolled aside with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Am I wrong,” he asked carelessly, “or did I see you at the supper at the
- Hanover Theater? Let us see—it would be a week ago to-night? I
- thought so. Why I asked—I was curious to know whom you were with. It
- was a young man; you were standing together between some scenery as I
- passed you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh!” said Augustine, with visible reassurance. “That was Tom Bailey—Cora’s
- brother, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What sort is he?” Christian pursued, secretly astonished at the inspired
- accuracy of his intuition.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well”—replied the other, hesitatingly—“it’s rather hard to
- say. He got sent down from Cambridge for something or other, and his
- governor got the needle over it, and put him on an allowance of a pound a
- week, or something like that, and so what could he do? It’s jolly hard on
- a young fellow round town to have less money than anybody else. He’s bound
- to get talked about, if he only owes half-a-crown to some outsider or
- other, and that makes other fellows turn shirty. But I think he always
- pays when he can.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You like him, then, do you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes—I like Tom well enough,” answered Augustine, dubiously
- pondering the significance of the interrogatory. “He’d be all right if—if
- he had a proper chance.” With a sigh, he ventured to add: “He’s like the
- rest of us—that way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- At sight of Dicky Westland’s approach. Christian dropped his inquiries
- abruptly. “All right,” he said, with enigmatic brevity, and turned to his
- secretary with a meaning gesture. “I want to get away from here—out
- of the Castle,” he murmured to the newcomer, “without a minute’s delay. I
- have a—kind of appointment, and I am already late. If you will get
- our hats, we will walk out together, as if we were discussing some private
- matter, and then no one will interrupt us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This confidence was only partially justified by events. The two made their
- way unmolested into the open air, and across some long stretches of lawn
- to the beginning of the series of gardens. It was within Christian’s
- memory that one reached the orchards and the opening upon the heath by
- traversing these gardens. But in the second of them, where remarkable
- masses of tulips in gorgeous effulgence of bloom occupied the very beds in
- which he believed the dahlias must have been last year, there was some one
- on the well-remembered path in front of him.
- </p>
- <p>
- A little child of two or three years, still walking insecurely at least,
- was being led along the edge of the flower-border by a woman in black
- whose back was turned.
- </p>
- <p>
- The infant had caught the notion of bending over the hyacinths, one by
- one, laboriously to smell their perfume, and the woman indulgently lent
- herself to the pastime, halting and supporting the little one by the hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian wondered vaguely what child this could be, before observation
- told him that the person they were approaching was a lady. He took Dicky’s
- arm then, and quickened their step. “We will be very much engaged as we
- pass,” he admonished him. After a few paces, however, the futility of this
- device made itself apparent. The lady, glancing indifferently over her
- shoulder at the sound, of their tread, turned on the instant with a little
- cry of pleasure.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Cora who came toward them, now radiant of face and with an extended
- hand. She dragged the surprised child heedlessly along at her side with
- the other arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Duke!” she cried. “I did so long to burst in upon you, wherever you
- were to be found, and thank you when I heard. It was Sir George Dence who
- told us. And Eddy, he’s quite off his head with joy! He wanted to look you
- up, too, but I told him to put off thanking you till to-morrow; between
- ourselves, I don’t fancy he’ll be seen quite to the best advantage later
- on to-day. But I know you’ll think none the worse of him for that; and
- there’s a good bit to be done, he says, in the way of pulling the Hunt
- together again to work like one man. He’s begun already promoting the
- right sort of feeling. He’s got Sir George and old General Fawcett and
- about a dozen more of ’em in the billiard-room, and I told him
- everything would be all right so long as they didn’t sing. On account of
- the funeral, you know. And—why, you’ve never seen my oldest
- unmarried daughter! Look up and say, ‘How-de-do?’ Chrissy. Why, she’s your
- namesake! Yes, her baptismal name is Christiana or Christina—which
- is it? We always call her Chrissy. And you haven’t told me what an
- effective family group I make. You never would have believed that I could
- be so domestic, now, would you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had gathered the child up into her arms, and under the influence of
- her jocund mood Christian smiled cheerfully. “You are very wonderful as a
- mother,” he assured her, and extended a tentative finger toward Chrissy,
- who, huddled in awkward and twisted discomfort under her mother’s elbow,
- regarded him with unconcealed repulsion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She seems an extremely healthy child,” he remarked, and the words were
- not so perfunctory as they sounded. The robust, red cheeked heartiness of
- Chrissy raised musing reflections in his mind. If this infant, with its
- stout mottled arms and legs, had been a boy, it would be at this moment
- his heir. No one could ask for a finer child—and she was very
- closely akin to him. And Cora was her mother—and Cora’s sister!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, but where <i>are</i> we going to live?” she broke in upon his
- meditations. “I said to Eddy that I’d lay odds you were thinking of
- David’s Court for us. You know the kennels used to be there before
- Porlock’s time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “All that we can arrange,” said Christian, shaking off his reverie, and
- lifting his hat. “Rest easy in your mind about everything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded with an expansive geniality which freely included Dicky as
- well, and then walked away. It slowly occurred to Christian that she had
- said nothing about her sister’s presence in the neighborhood, although it
- was impossible to suppose her ignorant, of it. Upon consideration, he
- decided that her reticence was delicate. He felt that he liked Cora, and
- then uneasily speculated upon the seeming probability that his liking for
- her was in excess of her sister’s.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Westland,” he said, with a new thought in his busy brain, “you know about
- geography—about where the different British colonies are on the map,
- and what they are distinguished for. I want to know of a good place, a
- very long way off, where two young men with a moderate capital might do
- well, or-at least have the chance to do well.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fellows like that generally go to South Africa, nowadays,” replied Dicky,
- “though I believe it’s gone off a bit. It’s not as far away as Australia,
- but it’s livelier, apparently. They don’t seem to come back as much.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No; I have a prejudice against that Johannesburg. It is not a good
- atmosphere, and it is too easy to get into trouble there.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are great reports about British Columbia just now. They’ve found
- wonderful new gold-fields, and they’re a fearful distance from anywhere.
- It takes you months to get to them, so I’m told. But it depends so much on
- what the fellows themselves are like. If I may ask, do I know them?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is Augustine Torr that I have in mind, and a young friend of his—Bailey
- his name is. By the way, a brother of the lady we just left.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know <i>of</i> him,” commented Dicky sententiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, it has occurred to me that these young men, for whom there seems no
- specially suitable foothold in England, might accomplish something in the
- colonies. That is the way Greater Britain, as they call it, has been made—by
- young men who might have done nothing at all worth doing at home. Life is
- really very difficult and complicated in this crowded island, unless one
- has exactly the temperament to succeed. But in the colonies it is
- different. Men who are of no use here may become valuable there. I have
- heard that there are many instances of this. And these young men, it seems
- to me that very possibly, if they found themselves on new ground, they
- might do as others have done and get on. We do not quite know what to do
- with them here, but we send them out, and they make the Empire.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s rather rough on the Empire, though, isn’t it?” said Dicky.
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian frowned and drew himself up a little. “One is my cousin,” he
- said coldly, “and the other is the brother of—is the brother of my
- cousin’s wife.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a moment of silence, and then the secretary, as upon a sudden
- resolution, stopped. “It’s no good my going on,” he said, nervously, but
- with decision. “I daresay you don’t mean it, but all the same it’s too
- much for me. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn it up and catch the
- evening-train. I don’t mind going to the station in the brake with the
- servants and the luggage. It certainly won’t take anybody by surprise.”
- Christian regarded him with open-eyed astonishment. “I don’t know what
- you’re talking about,” he said, in obvious candor.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky restlessly threw out his hands. “Oh, I can’t stand this Dukeness of
- yours,” he declared. “You put it on too thick. I know Gus Torr, and I know
- as much as I want to of Tom Bailey, and I know they’re no good, and you
- know it, too—although I don’t say they mayn’t get on in the
- colonies. God knows what won’t get on there! But when I make some
- perfectly civil and natural remark on the subject, you flame up at me, and
- blow yourself out like a pouter pigeon, and say they’re—haw-haw!—relations
- of yours. Well, that be damned, you know! It may do once in a way with
- outsiders, but it isn’t good enough to live with.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dicky!” said Christian, in a voice of awed appeal. His brown face
- distorted itself in lines of painful bewilderment as he gazed at his
- companion. “Have I done that? Is it as bad as that?” He gasped the
- questions out in a frightened way and tears sprang into his eyes. “Then it
- is not you who should catch the evening train, but me. I am not fit to be
- here!” He finished with a groan of bitter dejection and bowed his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- Westland, as much scared as surprised at the violent result of his
- protest, moved impetuously to his friend and put a hand on his shoulder.
- “No-no! No-no,” he said, in a soothing voice. “It’s all right! I said you
- didn’t mean it, you know. Truly, old man, I <i>knew</i> you didn’t mean
- it! Upon my word, it’s all right!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian lifted his head, and tried to choke down his agitation. “But you
- go away from me!” he said in despairing tones. “It is the same as ever!
- Nothing is changed for me! I do not make friends—much less keep
- them!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I <i>am</i> your friend! You <i>are</i> keeping me!” Dicky insisted,
- raising his voice. An odd impulse to laugh aloud struggled confusedly with
- the concern the other’s visible suffering gave him. “I take it all back.
- I’m stopping with you, right enough!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian accepted the assurance in a dazed way, and after he had silently
- shaken the other’s hand, began walking on again, studying the ground with
- a troubled frown. “I am a weak and dull fool!” he growled at last, in rage
- at himself. “I have not sense enough to behave properly! It is a mistake
- that I should he put over anybody else! I make myself ridiculous, like any
- <i>parvenu</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—that’s all rot,” the other felt it judicious to urge. “You’re
- perfectly all right, only—only——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Only I’m not!” Christian filled in the gap of hesitation with an angry
- laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- Gradually a calmer view of himself pervaded his mind. “It is more
- difficult than you think, Dicky,” he affirmed, after a pause. “It is not
- easy at all—at first—to—what shall I say?—to keep
- feeling your feet under you on the solid ground. The temptation to soar,
- to think you are lifted up, is upon you every minute. It catches you
- unawares. Ah! I see one must watch that without ceasing. Oh, I am glad—more
- glad than I can tell you—that you stopped me. Ah! that was a true
- friend’s service.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dicky chuckled softly: “It’s much nicer, if you can take it that way,” he
- admitted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I am ever anything but nice to <i>yoo</i>,” Christian began, gravely,
- and then stopped as if he had bitten his tongue. “Oh, there is patronage
- again!” he cried with vexation—and then let himself be persuaded to
- join in the frank laughter that the other set up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, we shall hit it off all right,” Dicky assured him as a final word on
- the subject. “It’s merely a question of time. You’ve got to get accustomed
- to your new job, and I to mine: that’s all there is of it. We shall learn
- the whole bag of tricks in a week or so, and be happy ever afterward.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The joking refrain struck some welcome chord in Christian’s thoughts. He
- looked up, and noted that they were very near the door leading out from
- the fruit-garden to the heath beyond the wall. Halting, he smiled into his
- companion’s face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No one will follow me now,” he said with sparkling eyes. “I will let you
- turn back here, if you don’t mind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- CHAPTER XXVII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hristian realized
- blankly, all at once, as’ he stood and gazed out over the moor, that he
- did not know his way.
- </p>
- <p>
- The spring had laid upon this great rolling common a beauty of its own.
- Everywhere, on thorns and furze and briars, the touch of the new life had
- hung emeralds to bedeck and hide the dun waste of winter. The ashen-gray
- carpets of old mosses were veined with the vivid green of young growths;
- out from the dry brown litter of lifeless ferns and bracken were rising
- the malachite croziers of fresh fronds. The brilliant yellow of broom and
- gorse blooms caught the eye in all directions, blazing above the vernal
- outburst of another year’s vegetation, and the hum of the bees in the
- sunlight, and the delicately mingled odors in the May air were a delight
- to the senses. But under this exuberance of re-awakened nature, welcome
- though it might be, somehow the landmarks of last autumn seemed to have
- disappeared.
- </p>
- <p>
- The path which had led along the wall, for example, was now nowhere
- discernible. Or had there really been a path at any time?
- </p>
- <p>
- It was clear enough, at all events, that his course for some distance lay
- beside this massive line of ancient masonry, even if no track was marked
- for him. At some farther point it would be necessary to turn off at a
- right angle toward the Mere Copse—and here he could recall
- distinctly that there had been a path. But then he came upon several
- paths, or vaguely defined grassy depressions which might be paths, and the
- divergent ways of these were a trouble to him. At last, he decided to
- strike out more boldly into the heath, independently of paths, and try to
- get a general view of the landscape. He made his way through creepers and
- prickly little bushes toward an elevation in the distance, realizing more
- and more in his encumbered progress that his quest was like that of one
- who should search the limitless sea for a small boat. There seemed no
- boundaries whatever to this vast tract of waste land.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he began at length the ascent of the mound toward which his course had
- been directed, he scanned the moor near and far, but no human figure was
- visible. No signs could he discover of any beaten track across it; of the
- several patches of woodland beyond, in the distance to the left, he could
- not even be sure which was the Mere Copse. Below, on the edge of the
- sky-line at the right, he could see the tops of the towers and chimneys of
- Caermere. Wheeling round from this point, then, he endeavored to identify
- that portion of the hill, on the opposite side of the river-chasm, which
- Kathleen had pointed out to him from the terrace. But, viewed from here,
- there were so many hills! The hopelessness of his errand became more
- apparent with each glance round. Despondently, he sauntered up the few
- remaining yards to the top.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood upon the ridge of a grass-grown wall of stones and earth, which
- in a somewhat irregular circle enclosed perhaps a quarter-acre of land.
- This wall on its best preserved side, where he found himself, was some
- dozen feet in height. Across the ring it seemed lower, and at three or
- four points was broken down altogether. He realized that he was surveying
- a very ancient structure—no doubt, prehistoric. Would it have been a
- fortress or a temple, or the primitive mausoleum of some chieftain-ruler
- in these wilds? One of the openings seemed to suggest by its symmetry an
- entrance to the enclosure. It was all very curious, and he promised
- himself that very soon he would examine it in detail. Some vague
- promptings of a nascent archaeological spirit impelled him now, upon
- second thoughts, to walk round on the crest of the wall to the other side.
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly he stopped, stared sharply downward with arrested breath, and
- then, while his face wreathed itself with amused smiles, tip-toed along a
- few paces farther. Halting here, his eyes dancing with suppressed gaiety,
- he regarded at his leisure the object of his expedition.
- </p>
- <p>
- Upon the sunny outer side of the sloping embankment, only a few feet
- below, was seated Frances Bailey. Her face was turned from him, and she
- was apparently engrossed in the study of a linen-backed sectional map
- spread on her knees. A small red book lay in the grass at her side, and he
- was so close that he could decipher the legend “Shropshire and Cheshire”
- on its cover.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a minute’s rapturous reflection he turned and noiselessly retraced
- his steps, till he could descend from the wall without being seen. There
- was a kind of miniature dry moat surrounding it at this point, and this he
- lightly vaulted. Then, straightening himself, he strolled forward with as
- fine an assumption of unsuspecting innocence as he could contrive. It
- occurred to him to whistle some negligent tune very softly as he came,
- but, oddly enough, his lips seemed recalcitrant—they made no sound.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the obtrusion of his shadow upon the map she was examining she looked
- swiftly up. For a moment, with the afternoon sun in her eyes, she seemed
- not to recognize him. There followed another pause, infinitesimal in
- duration, yet crowded with significance, in which she appeared clearly at
- a loss what to say or do, now that she realized the fact of his presence.
- Then she smiled at him with a kind of superficial brightness and tossed
- the map aside.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am fortunate indeed to find you,” he said, as he came up, and they
- shook hands formally. A few moments before, when he had looked down upon
- her from the mound, he had been buoyantly conscious of his control of the
- situation; but now that he stood before her it was she who looked down
- upon him from her vantage-ground on the side of the bank, and somehow this
- seemed to make a great deal of difference. The sound of his voice in his
- own ears was unexpectedly solemn and constrained. He felt his deportment
- to be unpleasantly awkward.
- </p>
- <p>
- She ignored the implication that he had been looking for her. “I suppose
- this must be the place that is marked ‘tumulus’ on the map here,” she
- observed, with what seemed to be a deliberately casual tone. “But I should
- think it is more like a rath, such as one reads about in Ireland—a
- fortified place to defend one’s herds and people in. As I understand it, a
- tumulus was for purposes of burial, and this seems to be a fort rather
- than a tomb. What is your idea about it?” She rose to her feet as she put
- the question, and turned to regard the earthworks above and about her with
- a concentrated interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- He tried to laugh. “I’m afraid I’m more ignorant about them than anybody
- else,” he confessed. “I have never been here before. I suppose all one can
- really say is that the people who did these things knew what they were
- for, but that since they had no alphabet they could not leave a record to
- explain them to us, and so we are free to make each his own theory to suit
- himself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is a very indolent view to take,” she told him over her shoulder.
- “Scientists and archaeologists are not contented with that sort of reply.
- They examine and compare and draw deductions, and get at the meaning of
- these ancient remains. They do not sit down and fold their hands and say,
- ‘Unfortunately those people had no alphabet.’ Why don’t you dig this thing
- up and find out about it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He smiled to himself doubtfully, “I have only been in possession of it for
- about three hours,” he reminded her. Then an inspiration came to, him.
- “Would <i>you</i> like to dig it up?” he asked, with an effect of
- eagerness shining through the banter of his tone. “I mean, to superintend
- the excavations. You shall have forty men out here with picks and shovels
- to-morrow if you say the word.” Instead of answering, she stooped to get
- her book and map, and then moved with a preoccupied air to the top of the
- bank. After an instant’s hesitation he scrambled up to join her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose that would have been the entrance there,” she observed,
- pointing across the circle. “And in the center, you see, where the grass
- is so thin, there are evidently big stones there. That <i>does</i> suggest
- interment after all, doesn’t it? Yet the Silurians are said to have buried
- only in dolmens. It is very curious.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do not find that I care much about Silurians this afternoon,” he
- ventured to say. There was a gentle hint of reproach in his voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, you’re one yourself! That is the principal point about the Torrs;
- that is what makes them interesting.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what good does it do me to be a Silurian and interesting,” he
- protested with a whimsical gesture, “if I—if I do not get what I
- want most of all in the world?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It seems to me that you have got more things already than most people on
- this planet.” She went on reflectively: “I had no idea at all what it
- meant till I saw these hills and the valleys below them, and the forests
- and the villages and the castle, and the people coming out from heaven
- knows what holes in the rocks—all with your collar round their
- necks. I should think it would either send you mad with the sense of power
- or frighten you to death.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am really very humble about it, I think,” he assured her simply. “And
- there is not so much power as you seem to imagine. It is all a great
- organized machine, like some big business. The differences are that it
- works very clumsily and badly as it is at present managed, and that it
- hardly pays any dividend at all. The average large wholesale grocer’s or
- wine merchant’s estate would pay a bigger succession duty than my
- grandfather’s. He died actually a poor man.” The intelligence did not
- visibly impress her. “But it was not because he helped others,” she
- remarked. “Those about him grew poorer also. It is a hateful system!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is something you do not know,” he began with gravity. “I said that
- my grandfather died a poor man. But since his death a tremendous thing has
- happened. A great gift has been made to me. The enormous debts which
- encumbered his estates have been wiped out of existence. It is Lord Julius
- and Emanuel who have done this—done it for me! I do not know the
- figures yet—to-morrow Mr. Soman is to explain them to me—but
- the fact is I am a very rich man indeed. I do not owe anybody a penny.
- Whatever seems to be mine, <i>is</i> mine. There are between seventy-five
- and eighty thousand acres. By comparison with other estates, it seems to
- me that there will be a yearly income of more than fifty thousand pounds!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She drew a long breath and looked him in the face. “I am very sorry for
- you,” she said soberly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, no; I resist you there,” he exclaimed. “I quote your own words to
- you: ‘It is an indolent view to take.’ There is a prodigious
- responsibility! Yes! But all the more reason why I should be brave. Would
- you have me lose my nerve, and say the task is too great for me? I thought
- you did not like people who solved difficulties by turning tail and
- running away. Well, to confess oneself afraid—that is the same
- thing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled thoughtfully, perhaps at the quaint recurrence to foreign
- gestures and an uncertain, hurried use of book-English which her company
- seemed always to provoke in him. “I meant only that it was a terrible
- burden you had had fastened upon your shoulders,” she made answer softly.
- “I did not suggest that you were afraid of it. And yet I should think you
- would be!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think,” he responded, with a kind of diffident conviction, “I think
- that if a man is honest and ambitious for good things, and has some
- brains, he can grow to be equal to any task that will be laid upon him.
- And if he labors at it with sincerity and does absolutely the best that
- there is in him to do, then I do not think that his work will be wasted. A
- man is only a man after all. He did not make this world, and he cannot do
- with it what he likes. It is a bigger thing, when you come to think of it,
- than he is. At the end there is only a little hole in it for him to be
- buried in and forgotten, as these people who raised this wall that we
- stand on are forgotten. They thought in their day that the whole world
- depended upon them; when there was thunder and lightning, they said it was
- on their account, because their gods in the sky were angry with them. But
- to us it is evident that they were not so important as they supposed they
- were. We look at the work of their hands here, and we regard it with
- curiosity, as we might an ant’s nest. We do not know whether they made it
- as a tomb for their chief or as a shelter for their cows. And if they had
- left records to explain that, and it does not matter how much else, it
- would be the same. We learn only one thing from all the numberless
- millions who have gone before us—that man is less important than he
- thinks he is. I have a high position thrust upon me. <i>Eh bien!</i> I am
- not going to command the sun to stand still. I am not going to believe
- that I ought to revolutionize human society before I die. There will be
- many men after me. If one or two of them says of me that I worked hard to
- do well, and that I left things a trifle better than I found them, then
- what more can I desire?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded in musing abstraction, but answered nothing. Her gaze was
- fastened resolutely upon the opposite bank.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am truly so fortunate not to have missed you!” he repeated after a
- small interval of silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should you say that?” she asked almost with petulance. “You make too
- much of me! I do not belong in this gallery at all. I am very angry with
- myself for being here. I ought not to have allowed Mrs. Emanuel to
- persuade me against my own judgment. It did not enter into my head that I
- should be seen by anybody. I was on my vacation—I take it early,
- because some of the girls like to get away at Whitsuntide—and at
- Bath I saw in a paper some reference to the state with which your
- grandfather would be buried, and the whim seized me to see the funeral. I
- came on my bicycle most of the way, till the hills got too bad. I thought
- no one would be the wiser for my coming and going. And one thing—you
- must not ask me to come into the castle again. I am going to the inn to
- get my machine, and go down to Craven Arms or Clun for the night. I have
- looked both roads out on my map. Is Clun interesting, do you know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have not the remotest idea. In fact, there is only one idea of any sort
- in my mind just now. It is that you are not to be allowed to go away. Have
- you seen the dungeons in which we fasten up people whose presence is
- particularly desired, and who will not listen to reason?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The jesting tone of his words was belied by the glance in his eyes. She
- frowned a little. “No, there is no reason in it at all. What have I to do
- with these people? They are not my kind. It is the merest accident that
- you and I happen to be acquainted. If you did not know me now, nothing is
- more certain than that we should never meet in the world. And our seeming
- to each other like friends on those other occasions—that had nothing
- to do with the present. The circumstances are entirely different. There is
- nothing in common between us now, or hardly anything at all. You ought to
- understand that. And I look to you to realize how matters are altered, and
- not to insist upon placing me in a very undignified and unpleasant
- position.” She had spoken with increasing rapidity of utterance, and with
- rising agitation. “Not that your insisting would make any difference!” she
- added now, almost defiantly.
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at her in silence. The face half turned from him, with its broad
- brow, its shapely and competent profile, the commanding light in its gray
- eyes, the firm lips drawn into tightened curves of proud resistance to any
- weakness of quivering—it was the face that had made so profound an
- impression upon him at the outset of that wonderful journey from Rouen.
- The memory became on the instant inexpressibly touching to him. She was
- almost as she had been then—it might well be the same sober gray
- frock, the same hat, save that the ribbon now was black instead of fawn.
- She would have no varied wardrobe, this girl who earned her own bread, and
- gave her mind to the large realities of life. But this very simplicity of
- setting, how notably it emphasized the precious quality of what it framed!
- He recalled that in his first rapt study of this face it had seemed to him
- like the face of the young Piedmontese bishop who had once come to his
- school—pure, wise, sweet, tender, strong. And now, beholding it
- afresh, it was beyond all these things the face which woke music in his
- heart—the face of the woman he loved.
- </p>
- <p>
- With gentle slowness he answered her: “The position I seek to place you in
- does not seem to me undignified. I should like to hope that you would not
- find it unpleasant. You know what I mean—I offered it to you in
- advance, before it was yet mine to give. I beg you again to accept it, now
- when it <i>is</i> mine to give. If you will turn, you can see Caermere
- from where you stand. It has had in all its days no mistress like you.
- Will you take it from my hands?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She confronted him with a clear, steady gaze of disapproval. “All this is
- very stupid!” she said, peremptorily. “Last week—it had its pretty
- and graceful side then perhaps, but it is not nice at all now. It does not
- flatter me; it does not please me in any way to-day. I told you then, I
- had my own independence, my own personal pride and dignity, which are
- dearer to me than anything else. If I had them then, I have them very much
- more now. What kind of idea of me is this that you have—that I am to
- change my mind because now you can talk of fifty thousand a year? I like
- you less than I did when you had nothing at all! For then we seemed to
- understand each other better. You would not have rattled your money-box at
- me then! You had finer sensibilities—I liked you more!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He returned her gaze with a perplexed smile. “But I am asking you to be my
- wife,” he pointed out.
- </p>
- <p>
- She sniffed with a suggestion of contempt at the word. “Wife!” she told
- him stormily. “You do not seem to know what the word ‘wife’ means! You are
- not thinking of a ‘wife’ at all. It is a woman to play Duchess to your
- Duke that you have in mind, and you feel merely that she ought to be
- presentable and intelligent, and personally not distasteful to you; we’ll
- even say that you prefer a woman towards whom you have felt a sort of
- comrade’s impulse. But that has nothing to do with a ‘wife.’ And even on
- your own ground how foolish you are! In heaven’s name, why hit on <i>me</i>
- of all women? There are ten thousand who would do it all vastly better,
- and who, moreover, would leap at the chance. You have only to look about
- you. England is full of beauties in training for just such a place. They
- know the ways of your set—the small talk, the little jokes, the
- amusements and social duties and distinctions, and all that. Go and find
- what you want among them. What have I to do with such people? They’re not
- in my class at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Christian sighed, and then sought her glance again with a timid, whimsical
- smile. “Ah, how you badger me always!” he said. “But I have still
- something more to say.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let me beg that it be left unsaid!” She folded up the map, and began
- moving along the ridge as she spoke. “It is all as distressful to me as
- can be. You cannot understand—or will not understand—and it
- puts me in an utterly hateful position. I do not like to be saying
- unpleasant things to you. I had only the nicest feelings towards you when
- we last parted; and this noon, when I saw you in the church, you made a
- picture in my mind that I had quite—quite a tenderness for. But now
- you force me into disagreeable feelings and words, which I don’t like any
- more than you do. I seem to be never myself when I am with you. I have
- actually never seen you but three times, and you disturb me more—you
- make me hate myself more—than everything else in the world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The exigencies of the path along the summit of the mound forced Christian
- to walk behind her. In the voice which carried these words backward to him
- the quavering stress of profound emotion was more to him than the words
- themselves. He put out his hand and laid it lightly upon her arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is because you feel in your heart of hearts that I love you,” he said
- in a low, tremulous voice. “Can you not see? It is that that has made all
- our meetings disturbed, full of misunderstandings as well as pleasure. You
- wrong me, dear—or no, you could not do that, but it is that you do
- not comprehend. I have loved you from that first day. Oh, I have loved you
- always, since I can remember—long years before I saw you. There is
- not any memory in my life, it seems, but of you—for all the sweet
- things were a foretaste of you, and all the bitter are forgotten because
- of you. And shall there not be an end now to our hurting each other? For
- where you go I follow you, and I must always be longing for you—and
- I do not believe that in your heart you hold yourself away from me, but
- only in your mind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had drawn her sleeve from his touch, and irresolutely quickened her
- steps. She perforce paused now at a broken gap in the bank, and with books
- and gathered skirts in one hand, lifted the other in instinctively
- balancing preparation for a descent. He took this hand, and she made no
- demur to his leading her down the steep slope to the level outer ground.
- He retained the hand reverently, gently in his own as they walked in
- silence across the heath. It seemed ever as if she would take it from him,
- and that he consciously exerted a magic through his touch which just
- sufficed to hold it.
- </p>
- <p>
- With a bowed head, and cheek at once flushed and white, she began to
- speak. “You are very young,” she said, lingering over the words with
- almost dejection in her tone. “You know so little of what life is like!
- You have such a place in the affairs of men to fill, and you come to it
- with such innocent boyish good faith—and men are so little like what
- you think they are. And as you learn the lesson—the hardening,
- disillusionizing lesson of the world—and the soft, youthful places
- in your nature toughen, and you are a man holding your own with other men,
- and lording it over them where you can, then you will hate the things
- which hamper you, and you will curse encumbrances that you took on you in
- your ignorance. And you are all wrong about me! It is because you do not
- know other women that you think well of me. I am a very ordinary girl,
- indeed. There are thousands like me, and better than me, with more courage
- and finer characters, and you do not know them, that is all. And there are
- the young women of your own little world, who are born and reared to be
- the wives of men in your place, and you will see them——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have seen them,” he interposed softly. “But it is not fair!” she
- hurried on breathlessly. “It is the duty of a friend to hold a man back
- when he is bent on a folly. And we pledged ourselves to be true friends,
- and I implore you—or no, I insist! I will not have it. It is too
- cruelly unfair to you—and—I am going now—no, not that
- way; in the other direction. We will say good-bye.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He would not relinquish the hand she strove to drag away. All the calmness
- of confident mastery was in his hold upon this hand, and in the gravely
- sweet cadence of his voice. “I love you,” he said. “I shall love no one in
- my life, or in another life, but you. I will not live without you. I will
- not willingly spend a day in all my years away from you. You are truly my
- other half—the companion, the friend, the love, the wife, without
- whom nothing exists for me. I am not young as you say I am, and I shall
- never be old—for in this love there is no youth or age for either of
- us. Try to look backward now! Can you see a time when we did not love each
- other? And forward! Is it thinkable that we can be parted?” Slowly she
- lifted her head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look at me!” she bade him in a voice he seemed never to have heard
- before.
- </p>
- <h3>
- THE END
- </h3>
- <div style="height: 6em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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