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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Trespasser, by Gilbert Parker, v1
+#46 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: The Trespasser, Volume 1.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6219]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 27, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER, BY PARKER, V1 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TRESPASSER
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+Volume 1
+I.        ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM
+II.       IN WHICH HE CLAIMS HIS OWN
+III.      HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE
+IV.       AN HOUR WITH HIS FATHER'S PAST
+V.        WHEREIN HE FINDS HIS ENEMY
+
+Volume 2.
+VI.       WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
+VII.      WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET
+VIII.     HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION
+IX.       HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS
+X.        HE COMES TO "THE WAKING OF THE FIRE"
+XI.       HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST
+
+Volume 3.
+XII.      HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
+XIII.     HE JOURNEYS AFAR
+XIV.      IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED
+XV.       WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE GARDEN
+XVI.      WHEREIN LOVE SNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN'S
+XVII.     THE MAN AND THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE
+XVIII.    "RETURN, O SHULAMITE!"
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+While I was studying the life of French Canada in the winter of 1892,
+in the city of Quebec or in secluded parishes, there was forwarded to me
+from my London home a letter from Mr. Arrowsmith, the publisher, asking
+me to write a novel of fifty thousand or sixty thousand words for what
+was called his Annual.  In this Annual had appeared Hugh Conway's 'Called
+Back' and Anthony Hope's 'Prisoner of Zenda', among other celebrated
+works of fiction.  I cabled my acceptance of the excellent offer made me,
+and the summer of 1893 found me at Audierne, in Brittany, with some
+artist friends--more than one of whom has since come to eminence--living
+what was really an out-door literary life; for the greater part of 'The
+Trespasser' was written in a high-walled garden on a gentle hill, and the
+remainder in a little tower-like structure of the villa where I lodged,
+which was all windows.  The latter I only used when it rained, and the
+garden was my workshop.  There were peaches and figs on the walls,
+pleasant shrubs surrounded me, and the place was ideally quiet and
+serene.  Coffee or tea and toast was served me at 6.30 o'clock A.M., my
+pad was on my knee at 8, and then there was practically uninterrupted
+work till 12, when 'dejeuner a la fourchette', with its fresh sardines,
+its omelettes, and its roast chicken, was welcome.  The afternoon was
+spent on the sea-shore, which is very beautiful at Audierne, and there I
+watched my friends painting sea-scapes.  In the late afternoon came
+letter-writing and reading, and after a little and simple dinner at 6.30
+came bed at 9.45 or thereabouts.  In such conditions for many weeks I
+worked on The Trespasser; and I think the book has an outdoor spirit
+which such a life would inspire.
+
+It was perhaps natural that, having lived in Canada and Australia,
+and having travelled greatly in all the outer portions of the Empire,
+I should be interested in and impelled to write regarding the impingement
+of the outer life of our far dominions, through individual character,
+upon the complicated, traditional, orderly life of England.  That feeling
+found expression in The Translation of a Savage, and I think that in
+neither case the issue of the plot or the plot--if such it may be called
+--nor the main incident, was exaggerated.  Whether the treatment was free
+from exaggeration, it is not my province to say.  I only know what I
+attempted to do.  The sense produced by the contact of the outer life
+with a refined, and perhaps overrefined, and sensitive, not to say
+meticulous, civilisation, is always more sensational than the touch of
+the representative of "the thousand years" with the wide, loosely
+organised free life of what is still somewhat hesitatingly called the
+Colonies, though the same remark could be applied to all new lands, such
+as the United States.  The representative of the older life makes no
+signs, or makes little collision at any rate, when he touches the new
+social organisms of the outer circle.  He is not emphatic; he is typical,
+but not individual; he seeks seclusion in the mass.  It is not so with
+the more dynamic personality of the over-sea citizen.  For a time at
+least he remains in the old civilisation an entity, an isolated,
+unabsorbed fact which has capacities for explosion.  All this was in my
+mind when The Trespasser was written, and its converse was 'The Pomp of
+the Lavilettes', which showed the invasion of the life of the outer land
+by the representative of the old civilisation.
+
+I do not know whether I had the thought that the treatment of such themes
+was interesting or not.  The idea of The Trespasser was there in my mind,
+and I had to use it.  At the beginning of one's career, if one were to
+calculate too carefully, impulse, momentum, daring, original conception
+would be lost.  To be too audacious, even to exaggerate, is no crime in
+youth nor in the young artist.  As a farmer once said to me regarding a
+frisky mount, it is better to smash through the top bar than to have
+spring-halt.
+
+The Trespasser took its place, and, as I think, its natural place, in the
+development of my literary life.  I did not stop to think whether it was
+a happy theme or not, or whether it had popular elements.  These things
+did not concern me.  When it was written I should not have known what was
+a popular theme.  It was written under circumstances conducive to its
+artistic welfare; if it has not as many friends as 'The Right of Way' or
+'The Seats of the Mighty' or 'The Weavers' or 'The Judgment House', that
+is not the fault of the public or of the critics.
+
+
+
+
+TO DOUGLAS ROBINSON, Esq.,
+
+AND
+
+FRANK A.  HILTON, Esq.
+
+My dear Douglas and Frank:
+
+I feel sure that this dedication will give you as much pleasure as it
+does me.  It will at least be evidence that I do not forget good days in
+your company here and there in the world.  I take pleasure in linking
+your names; for you, who have never met, meet thus in the porch of a
+little house that I have built.
+
+You, my dear Douglas, will find herein scenes, times, and things familiar
+to you; and you, my dear Frank, reflections of hours when we camped by an
+idle shore, or drew about the fire of winter nights, and told tales worth
+more than this, for they were of the future, and it is of the past.
+
+                    Always sincerely yours,
+                              GILBERT PARKER.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRESPASSER
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM
+
+Why Gaston Belward left the wholesome North to journey afar, Jacques
+Brillon asked often in the brawling streets of New York, and oftener in
+the fog of London as they made ready to ride to Ridley Court.  There was
+a railway station two miles from the Court, but Belward had had enough of
+railways.  He had brought his own horse Saracen, and Jacques's broncho
+also, at foolish expense, across the sea, and at a hotel near Euston
+Station master and man mounted and set forth, having seen their worldly
+goods bestowed by staring porters, to go on by rail.
+
+In murky London they attracted little notice; but when their hired guide
+left them at the outskirts, and they got away upon the highway towards
+the Court, cottagers stood gaping.  For, outside the town there was no
+fog, and the fresh autumn air drew the people abroad.
+
+"What is it makes 'em stare, Jacques?" asked Belward, with a humorous
+sidelong glance.
+
+Jacques looked seriously at the bright pommel of his master's saddle and
+the shining stirrups and spurs, dug a heel into the tender skin of his
+broncho, and replied:
+
+"Too much silver all at once."
+
+He tossed his curling black hair, showing up the gold rings in his ears,
+and flicked the red-and-gold tassels of his boots.
+
+"You think that's it, eh?" rejoined Belward, as he tossed a shilling to
+a beggar.
+
+"Maybe, too, your great Saracen to this tot of a broncho, and the grand
+homme to little Jacques Brillon."  Jacques was tired and testy.
+
+The other laid his whip softly on the half-breed's shoulder.
+
+"See, my peacock: none of that.  You're a spanking good servant, but
+you're in a country where it's knuckle down man to master; and what they
+do here you've got to do, or quit--go back to your pea-soup and caribou.
+That's as true as God's in heaven, little Brillon.  We're not on the
+buffalo trail now.  You understand?"
+
+Jacques nodded.
+
+"Hadn't you better say it?"
+
+The warning voice drew up the half-breed's face swiftly, and he replied:
+
+"I am to do what you please."
+
+"Exactly.  You've been with me six years--ever since I turned Bear Eye's
+moccasins to the sun; and for that you swore you'd never leave me.  Did
+it on a string of holy beads, didn't you, Frenchman?"
+
+"I do it again."
+
+He drew out a rosary, and disregarding Belward's outstretched hand, said:
+
+"By the Mother of God, I will never leave you!"  There was a kind of
+wondering triumph in Belward's eyes, though he had at first shrunk from
+Jacques's action, and a puzzling smile came.
+
+"Wherever I go, or whatever I do?"
+
+"Whatever you do, or wherever you go."
+
+He put the rosary to his lips, and made the sign of the cross.
+
+His master looked at him curiously, intently.  Here was a vain, naturally
+indolent half-breed, whose life had made for selfishness and
+independence, giving his neck willingly to a man's heel, serving
+with blind reverence, under a voluntary vow.
+
+"Well, it's like this, Jacques," Belward said presently; "I want you, and
+I'm not going to say that you'll have a better time than you did in the
+North, or on the Slope; but if you'd rather be with me than not, you'll
+find that I'll interest you.  There's a bond between us, anyway.  You're
+half French, and I'm one-fourth French, and more.  You're half Indian,
+and I'm one-fourth Indian--no more.  That's enough.  So far, I haven't
+much advantage.  But I'm one-half English--King's English, for there's
+been an offshoot of royalty in our family somewhere, and there's the
+royal difference.  That's where I get my brains--and manners."
+
+"Where did you get the other?" asked Jacques, shyly, almost furtively.
+
+"Money?"
+
+"Not money--the other."
+
+Belward spurred, and his horse sprang away viciously.  A laugh came back
+on Jacques, who followed as hard as he could, and it gave him a feeling
+of awe.  They were apart for a long time, then came together again, and
+rode for miles without a word.  At last Belward, glancing at a sign-post
+before an inn door, exclaimed at the legend--"The Whisk o' Barley,"--and
+drew rein.  He regarded the place curiously for a minute.  The landlord
+came out.  Belward had some beer brought.
+
+A half-dozen rustics stood gaping, not far away.  He touched his horse
+with a heel.  Saracen sprang towards them, and they fell back alarmed.
+Belward now drank his beer quietly, and asked question after question of
+the landlord, sometimes waiting for an answer, sometimes not--a kind of
+cross-examination.  Presently he dismounted.
+
+As he stood questioning, chiefly about Ridley Court and its people,
+a coach showed on the hill, and came dashing down and past.  He lifted
+his eyes idly, though never before had he seen such a coach as swings
+away from Northumberland Avenue of a morning.  He was not idle, however;
+but he had not come to England to show surprise at anything.  As the
+coach passed his face lifted above the arm on the neck of the horse,
+keen, dark, strange.  A man on the box-seat, attracted at first by the
+uncommon horses and their trappings, caught Belward's eyes.  Not he
+alone, but Belward started then.  Some vague intelligence moved the minds
+of both, and their attention was fixed till the coach rounded a corner
+and was gone.
+
+The landlord was at Belward's elbow.
+
+"The gentleman on the box-seat be from Ridley Court.  That's Maister Ian
+Belward, sir."
+
+Gaston Belward's eyes half closed, and a sombre look came, giving his
+face a handsome malice.  He wound his fingers in his horse's mane, and
+put a foot in the stirrup.
+
+"Who is 'Maister Ian'?"
+
+"Maister Ian be Sir William's eldest, sir.  On'y one that's left, sir.
+On'y three to start wi': and one be killed i' battle, and one had trouble
+wi' his faither and Maister Ian; and he went away and never was heard on
+again, sir.  That's the end on him."
+
+"Oh, that's the end on him, eh, landlord?  And how long ago was that?"
+
+"Becky, lass," called the landlord within the door, "wheniver was it
+Maister Robert turned his back on the Court--iver so while ago?  Eh, a
+fine lad that Maister Robert as iver I see!"
+
+Fat laborious Becky hobbled out, holding an apple and a knife.  She
+blinked at her husband, and then at the strangers.
+
+"What be askin' o' the Court?" she said.  Her husband repeated the
+question.
+
+She gathered her apron to her eyes with an unctuous sob:
+
+"Doan't a' know when Maister Robert went!  He comes, i' the house 'ere
+and says, 'Becky, gie us a taste o' the red-top-and where's Jock?' He was
+always thinkin' a deal o' my son Jock.  'Jock be gone,' I says, 'and I
+knows nowt o' his comin' back'--meanin', I was, that day.  'Good for
+Jock!' says he, 'and I'm goin' too, Becky, and I knows nowt o' my comin'
+back.'  'Where be goin', Maister Robert?' I says.  'To hell, Becky,' says
+he, and he laughs.  'From hell to hell.  I'm sick to my teeth o' one,
+I'll try t'other'--a way like that speaks he."
+
+Belward was impatient, and to hurry the story he made as if to start on.
+Becky, seeing, hastened.  "Dear a' dear!  The red-top were afore him, and
+I tryin' to make what become to him.  He throws arm 'round me, smacks me
+on the cheek, and says he: 'Tell Jock to keep the mare, Becky.'  Then he
+flings away, and never more comes back to the Court.  And that day one
+year my Jock smacks me on the cheek, and gets on the mare; and when I
+ask: 'Where be goin'?' he says: 'For a hunt i' hell wi' Maister Robert,
+mother.'  And from that day come back he never did, nor any word.  There
+was trouble wi' the lad-wi' him and Maister Robert at the Court; but I
+never knowed nowt o' the truth.  And it's seven-and-twenty years since
+Maister Robert went."
+
+Gaston leaned over his horse's neck, and thrust a piece of silver into
+the woman's hands.
+
+"Take that, Becky Lawson, and mop your eyes no more."
+
+She gaped.
+
+"How dost know my name is Becky Lawson?  I havena been ca'd so these
+three-and-twenty years--not since a' married good man here, and put
+Jock's faither in 's grave yander."
+
+"The devil told me," he answered, with a strange laugh, and, spurring,
+they were quickly out of sight.  They rode for a couple of miles without
+speaking.  Jacques knew his master, and did not break the silence.
+Presently they came over a hill, and down upon a little bridge.  Belward
+drew rein, and looked up the valley.  About two miles beyond the roofs
+and turrets of the Court showed above the trees.  A whimsical smile came
+to his lips.
+
+"Brillon," he said, "I'm in sight of home."
+
+The half-breed cocked his head.  It was the first time that Belward had
+called him "Brillon"--he had ever been "Jacques."  This was to be a part
+of the new life.  They were not now hunting elk, riding to "wipe out" a
+camp of Indians or navvies, dining the owner of a rancho or a deputation
+from a prairie constituency in search of a member, nor yet with a senator
+at Washington, who served tea with canvas-back duck and tooth-picks with
+dessert.  Once before had Jacques seen this new manner--when Belward
+visited Parliament House at Ottawa, and was presented to some notable
+English people, visitors to Canada.  It had come to these notable folk
+that Mr. Gaston Belward had relations at Ridley Court, and that of itself
+was enough to command courtesy.  But presently, they who would be
+gracious for the family's sake, were gracious for the man's.  He had that
+which compelled interest--a suggestive, personal, distinguished air.
+Jacques knew his master better than any one else knew him; and yet he
+knew little, for Belward was of those who seem to give much confidence,
+and yet give little--never more than he wished.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, in sight of home," Jacques replied, with a dry cadence.
+
+"Say 'sir,' not 'monsieur,' Brillon; and from the time we enter the Court
+yonder, look every day and every hour as you did when the judge asked you
+who killed Tom Daly."
+
+Jacques winced, but nodded his head.  Belward continued:
+
+"What you hear me tell is what you can speak of; otherwise you are blind
+and dumb.  You understand?" Jacques's face was sombre, but he said
+quickly: "Yes--sir."
+
+He straightened himself on his horse, as if to put himself into
+discipline at once--as lead to the back of a racer.
+
+Belward read the look.  He drew his horse close up.  Then he ran an arm
+over the other's shoulder.
+
+"See here, Jacques.  This is a game that's got to be played up to the
+hilt.  A cat has nine lives, and most men have two.  We have.  Now
+listen.  You never knew me mess things, did you?  Well, I play for keeps
+in this; no monkeying.  I've had the life of Ur of the Chaldees; now for
+Babylon.  I've lodged with the barbarian; here are the roofs of ivory.
+I've had my day with my mother's people; voila!  for my father's.  You
+heard what Becky Lawson said.  My father was sick of it at twenty-five,
+and got out.  We'll see what my father's son will do.  .  .  .  I'm going
+to say my say to you, and have done with it.  As like as not there isn't
+another man that I'd have brought with me.  You're all right.  But I'm
+not going to rub noses.  I stick when I do stick, but I know what's got
+to be done here; and I've told you.  You'll not have the fun out of it
+that I will, but you won't have the worry.  Now, we start fresh.  I'm to
+be obeyed; I'm Napoleon.  I've got a devil, yet it needn't hurt you, and
+it won't.  But if I make enemies here--and I'm sure to--let them look
+out.  Give me your hand, Jacques; and don't you forget that there are two
+Gaston Belwards, and the one you have hunted and lived with is the one
+you want to remember when you get raw with the new one.  For you'll hear
+no more slang like this from me, and you'll have to get used to lots of
+things."
+
+Without waiting reply, Belward urged on his horse, and at last paused on
+the top of a hill, and waited for Jacques.  It was now dusk, and the
+landscape showed soft, sleepy, and warm.
+
+"It's all of a piece," Belward said to himself, glancing from the trim
+hedges, the small, perfectly-tilled fields and the smooth roads, to
+Ridley Court itself, where many lights were burning and gates opening and
+shutting.  There was some affair on at the Court, and he smiled to think
+of his own appearance among the guests.
+
+"It's a pity I haven't clothes with me, Brillon; they have a show going
+there."
+
+He had dropped again into the new form of master and man.  His voice was
+cadenced, gentlemanly.  Jacques pointed to his own saddle-bag.
+
+"No, no, they are not the things needed.  I want the evening-dress which
+cost that cool hundred dollars in New York."
+
+Still Jacques was silent.  He did not know whether, in his new position,
+he was expected to suggest.  Belward understood, and it pleased him.
+
+"If we had lost the track of a buck moose, or were nosing a cache of
+furs, you'd find a way, Brillon."
+
+"Voila," said Jacques; "then, why not wear the buckskin vest, the red-
+silk sash, and the boots like these?"--tapping his own leathers.  "You
+look a grand seigneur so."
+
+"But I am here to look an English gentleman, not a grand seigneur, nor a
+company's trader on a break.  Never mind, the thing will wait till we
+stand in my ancestral halls," he added, with a dry laugh.
+
+They neared the Court.  The village church was close by the Court-wall.
+It drew Belward's attention.  One by one lights were springing up in it.
+It was a Friday evening, and the choir were come to practise.  They saw
+buxom village girls stroll in, followed by the organist, one or two young
+men and a handful of boys.  Presently the horsemen were seen, and a
+staring group gathered at the church door.  An idea came to Belward.
+
+"Kings used to make pilgrimages before they took their crowns, why
+shouldn't I?" he said half-jestingly.  Most men placed similarly would
+have been so engaged with the main event that they had never thought of
+this other.  But Belward was not excited.  He was moving deliberately,
+prepared for every situation.  He had a great game in hand, and he had no
+fear of his ability to play it.  He suddenly stopped his horse, and threw
+the bridle to Jacques, saying:
+
+"I'll be back directly, Brillon."
+
+He entered the churchyard, and passed to the door.  As he came the group
+under the crumbling arch fell back, and at the call of the organist went
+to the chancel.  Belward came slowly up the aisle, and paused about the
+middle.  Something in the scene gave him a new sensation.  The church was
+old, dilapidated; but the timbered roof, the Norman and Early English
+arches incongruously side by side, with patches of ancient distemper and
+paintings, and, more than all, the marble figures on the tombs, with
+hands folded so foolishly,--yet impressively too, brought him up with a
+quick throb of the heart.  It was his first real contact with England;
+for he had not seen London, save at Euston Station and in the north-west
+district.  But here he was in touch with his heritage.  He rested his
+hand upon a tomb beside him, and looked around slowly.
+
+The choir began the psalm for the following Sunday.  At first he did not
+listen; but presently the organist was heard alone, and then the choir
+afterwards sang:
+
+    "Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech:
+     And to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar."
+
+Simple, dusty, ancient church, thick with effigies and tombs; with
+inscriptions upon pillars to virgins departed this life; and tablets
+telling of gentlemen gone from great parochial virtues: it wakened in
+Belward's brain a fresh conception of the life he was about to live--he
+did not doubt that he would live it.  He would not think of himself as
+inacceptable to old Sir William Belward.  He glanced to the tomb under
+his hand.  There was enough daylight yet to see the inscription on the
+marble.  Besides, a single candle was burning just over his head.  He
+stooped and read:
+
+                         SACRED TO THE MEMORY
+                                   OF
+                   SIR GASTON ROBERT BELWARD, BART.,
+            OF RIDLEY COURT, IN THIS PARISH OF GASTONBURY,
+                                 WHO,
+                  AT THE AGE OF ONE AND FIFTY YEARS,
+          AFTER A LIFE OF DISTINGUISHED SERVICE FOR HIS KING
+                             AND COUNTRY,
+          AND GRAVE AND CONSTANT CARE OF THOSE EXALTED WORKS
+                 WHICH BECAME A GENTLEMAN OF ENGLAND;
+            MOST NOTABLE FOR HIS LOVE OF ARTS AND LETTERS;
+              SENSIBLE IN ALL GRACES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS;
+             GIFTED WITH SINGULAR VIRTUES AND INTELLECTS;
+                                  AND
+                DELIGHTING AS MUCH IN THE JOYS OF PEACE
+                    AS IN THE HEAVY DUTIES OF WAR:
+             WAS SLAIN BY THE SIDE OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS,
+              THE BELOVED AND ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE RUPERT,
+                       AT THE BATTLE OF NASEBY,
+                    IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD MDCXLV.
+
+                 "A Sojourner as all my Fathers were."
+
+"'Gaston Robert Belward'!"
+
+He read the name over and over, his fingers tracing the letters.
+
+His first glance at the recumbent figure had been hasty.  Now, however,
+he leaned over and examined it.  It lay, hands folded, in the dress of
+Prince Rupert's cavaliers, a sword at side, and great spurs laid beside
+the heels.
+
+"'Gaston Robert Belward'!"
+
+As this other Gaston Robert Belward looked at the image of his dead
+ancestor, a wild thought came: Had he himself not fought with Prince
+Rupert?  Was he not looking at himself in stone?  Was he not here to show
+England how a knight of Charles's time would look upon the life of the
+Victorian age?  Would not this still cold Gaston be as strange at Ridley
+Court as himself fresh from tightening a cinch on the belly of a broncho?
+Would he not ride from where he had been sojourning as much a stranger in
+his England as himself?
+
+For a moment the idea possessed him.  He was Sir Gaston Robert Belward,
+Baronet.  He remembered now how, at Prince Rupert's side, he had sped on
+after Ireton's horse, cutting down Roundheads as he passed, on and on,
+mad with conquest, yet wondering that Rupert kept so long in pursuit
+while Charles was in danger with Cromwell: how, as the word came to wheel
+back, a shot tore away the pommel of his saddle; then another, and
+another, and with a sharp twinge in his neck he fell from his horse.  He
+remembered how he raised himself on his arm and shouted "God save the
+King!"  How he loosed his scarf and stanched the blood at his neck, then
+fell back into a whirring silence, from which he was roused by feeling
+himself in strong arms, and hearing a voice say: "Courage, Gaston."  Then
+came the distant, very distant, thud of hoofs, and he fell asleep; and
+memory was done.
+
+He stood for a moment oblivious to everything: the evening bird
+fluttering among the rafters, the song of the nightingale without, the
+sighing wind in the tower entry, the rustics in the doorway, the group in
+the choir.  Presently he became conscious of the words sung:
+
+                   "A thousand ages in Thy sight
+                    Are like an evening gone;
+                    Short as the watch that ends the night
+                    Before the rising sun.
+
+                   "Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
+                    Bears all its sons away;
+                    They fly, forgotten, as a dream
+                    Dies at the opening day."
+
+He was himself again in an instant.  He had been in a kind of dream.  It
+seemed a long time since he had entered the church--in reality but a few
+moments.  He caught his moustache in his fingers, and turned on his heel
+with a musing smile.  His spurs clinked as he went down the aisle; and,
+involuntarily, he tapped a boot-leg with his riding-whip.  The singing
+ceased.  His spurs made the only sound.  The rustics at the door fell
+back before him.  He had to go up three steps to reach the threshold.  As
+he stood on the top one he paused and turned round.
+
+So, this was home: this church more so even than the Court hard by.
+Here his ancestors--for how long he did not know, probably since the time
+of Edward III--idled time away in the dust; here Gaston Belward had been
+sleeping in effigy since Naseby Field.  A romantic light came into his
+face.  Again, why not?  Even in the Hudson's Bay country and in the Rocky
+Mountains, he had been called, "Tivi, The Man of the Other."  He had been
+counted the greatest of Medicine Men--one of the Race: the people of the
+Pole, who lived in a pleasant land, gifted as none others of the race of
+men.  Not an hour before Jacques had asked him where he got "the other."
+No man can live in the North for any time without getting the strain
+of its mystery and romance in him.  Gaston waved his hand to the tomb,
+and said half-believingly:
+
+"Gaston Robert Belward, come again to your kingdom."
+
+He turned to go out, and faced the rector of the parish,--a bent, benign-
+looking man,--who gazed at him astonished.  He had heard the strange
+speech.  His grave eyes rested on the stalwart stranger with courteous
+inquiry.  Gaston knew who it was.  Over his left brow there was a scar.
+He had heard of that scar before.  When the venerable Archdeacon Varcoe
+was tutor to Ian and Robert Belward, Ian, in a fit of anger, had thrown a
+stick at his brother.  It had struck the clergyman, leaving a scar.
+
+Gaston now raised his hat.  As he passed, the rector looked after him,
+puzzled; the words he had heard addressed to the effigy returning.  His
+eyes followed the young man to the gate, and presently, with a quick
+lifting of the shoulders, he said:
+
+"Robert Belward!"  Then added: "Impossible!  But he is a Belward."
+
+He saw Gaston mount, then entered and went slowly up the aisle.  He
+paused beside the tomb of that other Belward.  His wrinkled hand rested
+on it.
+
+"That is it," he said at last.  "He is like the picture of this Sir
+Gaston.  Strange."
+
+He sighed, and unconsciously touched the scar on his brow.  His dealings
+with the Belwards had not been all joy.  Begun with youthful pride and
+affectionate interest, they had gone on into vexation, sorrow, failure,
+and shame.  While Gaston was riding into his kingdom, Lionel Henry Varcoe
+was thinking how poor his life had been where he had meant it to be
+useful.  As he stood musing and listening to the music of the choir,
+a girl came softly up the aisle, and touched him on the arm.
+
+"Grandfather, dear," she said, "aren't you going to the Court?  You have
+a standing invitation for this night in the week.  You have not been
+there for so long."
+
+He fondled the hand on his arm.
+
+"My dearest, they have not asked me for a long time."
+
+"But why not to-night?  I have laid out everything nicely for you--your
+new gaiters, and your D. C. L.  coat with the pretty buttons and cord."
+
+"How can I leave you, my dear?  And they do not ask you!"
+
+The voice tried for playfulness, but the eyes had a disturbed look.
+
+"Me?  Oh! they never ask me to dinner-you know that.  Tea and formal
+visits are enough for Lady Belward, and almost too much for me.  There is
+yet time to dress.  Do say you will go.  I want you to be friendly with
+them."
+
+The old man shook his head.
+
+"I do not care to leave you, my dearest."
+
+"Foolish old fatherkins!  Who would carry me off?--'Nobody, no, not I,
+nobody cares for me.'"  Suddenly a new look shot up in her face.
+
+"Did you see that singular handsome man who came from the church--like
+some one out of an old painting?  Not that his dress was so strange; but
+there was something in his face--something that you would expect to find
+in--in a Garibaldi.  Silly, am I not?  Did you see him?"
+
+He looked at her gravely.
+
+"My dear," he said at last, "I think I will go after all, though I shall
+be a little late."
+
+"A sensible grandfather.  Come quickly, dear."  He paused again.
+
+"But I fear I sent a note to say I could not dine."
+
+"No, you did not.  It has been lying on your table for two days."
+
+"Dear me--dear me!  I am getting very old."
+
+They passed out of the church.  Presently, as they hurried to the rectory
+near by, the girl said:
+
+"But you haven't answered.  Did you see the stranger?  Do you know who he
+is?"
+
+The rector turned, and pointed to the gate of Ridley Court.  Gaston and
+Brillon were just entering.  "Alice," he said, in a vague, half-troubled
+way, "the man is a Belward, I think."
+
+"Why, of course!" the girl replied with a flash of excitement.  "But
+he's so dark, and foreign-looking!  What Belward is he?"
+
+"I do not know yet, my dear."
+
+"I shall be up when you come back.  But mind, don't leave just after
+dinner.  Stay and talk; you must tell me everything that's said and done
+--and about the stranger."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN WHICH HE CLAIMS HIS OWN
+
+Meanwhile, without a word, Gaston had mounted, ridden to the castle,
+and passed through the open gates into the court-yard.  Inside he paused.
+In the main building many lights were burning.  There came a rattle of
+wheels behind him, and he shifted to let a carriage pass.  Through the
+window of the brougham he could see the shimmer of satin, lace, and soft
+white fur, and he had an instant's glance of a pretty face.
+
+The carriage drew up to the steps, and presently three ladies and a
+brusque gentleman passed into the hall-way, admitted by powdered footmen.
+The incident had a manner, an air, which struck Gaston, he knew not why.
+Perhaps it was the easy finesse of ceremonial.  He looked at Brillon.  He
+had seen him sit arms folded like that, looking from the top of a bluff
+down on an Indian village or a herd of buffaloes.  There was wonder, but
+no shyness or agitation, on his face; rather the naive, naked look of a
+child.  Belward laughed.
+
+"Come, Brillon; we are at home."
+
+He rode up to the steps, Jacques following.  A foot man appeared and
+stared.  Gaston looked down on him neutrally, and dismounted.  Jacques
+did the same.  The footman still stared.  Another appeared behind.
+Gaston eyed the puzzled servant calmly.
+
+"Why don't you call a groom?" he presently said.  There was a cold gleam
+in his eye.
+
+The footman shrank.
+
+"Yessir, yessir," he said confusedly, and signalled.  The other footman
+came down, and made as if to take the bridle.  Gaston waved him back.
+None too soon, for the horse lunged at him.
+
+"A rub down, a pint of beer, and water and feed in an hour, and I'll come
+to see him myself late to-night."  Jacques had loosened the saddle-bags
+and taken them off.  Gaston spoke to the horse, patted his neck, and gave
+him to the groom.  Then he went up the steps, followed by Jacques.  He
+turned at the door to see the groom leading both horses off, and eyeing
+Saracen suspiciously.  He laughed noiselessly.
+
+"Saracen 'll teach him things," he said.  "I might warn him, but it's
+best for the horses to make their own impressions."
+
+"What name, sir?" asked a footman.
+
+"You are--?"
+
+"Falby, Sir."
+
+"Falby, look after my man Brillon here, and take me to Sir William."
+
+"What name, sir?"
+
+Gaston, as if with sudden thought, stepped into the light of the candles,
+and said in a low voice: "Falby, don't you know me?"
+
+The footman turned a little pale, as his eyes, in spite of themselves,
+clung to Gaston's.  A kind of fright came, and then they steadied.
+
+"Oh yes, sir," he said mechanically.
+
+"Where have you seen me?"
+
+"In the picture on the wall, sir."
+
+"Whose picture, Falby?"
+
+"Sir Gaston Belward, Sir."
+
+A smile lurked at the corners of Gaston's mouth.
+
+"Gaston Belward.  Very well, then you know what to say to Sir William.
+Show me into the library."
+
+"Or the justices' room, sir?"
+
+"The justices' room will do."
+
+Gaston wondered what the justices' room was.  A moment after he stood in
+it, and the dazed Falby had gone, trying vainly to reconcile the picture
+on the wall, which, now that he could think, he knew was very old, with
+this strange man who had sent a curious cold shiver through him.  But,
+anyhow, he was a Belward, that was certain: voice, face, manner showed
+it.  But with something like no Belward he had ever seen.  Left to
+himself, Gaston looked round on a large, severe room.  Its use dawned on
+him.  This was part of the life: Sir William was a Justice of the Peace.
+But why had he been brought here?  Why not to the library as himself had
+suggested?  There would be some awkward hours for Falby in the future.
+Gaston had as winning a smile, as sweet a manner, as any one in the
+world, so long as a straight game was on; but to cross his will with the
+other--he had been too long a power in that wild country where his father
+had also been a power!  He did not quite know how long he waited, for he
+was busy with plans as to his career at Ridley Court.  He was roused at
+last by Falby's entrance.  A keen, cold look shot from under his straight
+brows.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+"Will you step into the library, sir?  Sir William will see you there."
+
+Falby tried to avoid his look, but his eyes were compelled, and Gaston
+said:
+
+"Falby, you will always hate to enter this room."  Falby was agitated.
+
+"I hope not, sir."
+
+"But you will, Falby, unless--"
+
+"Yessir?"
+
+"Unless you are both the serpent and the dove, Falby."
+
+"Yessir."
+
+As they entered the hall, Brillon with the saddle-bags was being taken in
+charge, and Gaston saw what a strange figure he looked beside the other
+servants and in these fine surroundings.  He could not think that himself
+was so bizarre.  Nor was he.  But he looked unusual; as one of high
+civilisation might, through long absence in primitive countries, return
+in uncommon clothing, and with a manner of distinguished strangeness: the
+barbaric to protect the refined, as one has seen a bush of firs set to
+shelter a wheat-field from a seawind, or a wind-mill water cunningly-
+begotten flowers.
+
+As he went through the hall other visitors were entering.  They passed
+him, making for the staircase.  Ladies with the grand air looked at him
+curiously, and two girls glanced shyly from the jingling spurs and
+tasselled boots to his rare face.
+
+One of the ladies suddenly gave a little gasping cry, and catching the
+arm of her companion, said:
+
+"Reine, how like Robert Belward!  Who--who is he?"
+
+The other coolly put up her pince-nez.  She caught Gaston's profile and
+the turn of his shoulder.
+
+"Yes, like, Sophie; but Robert never had such a back, nor anything like
+the face."
+
+She spoke with no attempt to modulate her voice, and it carried
+distinctly to Gaston.  He turned and glanced at them.
+
+"He's a Belward, certainly, but like what one I don't know; and he's
+terribly eccentric, my dear!  Did you see the boots and the sash?  Why,
+bless me, if you are not shaking!  Don't be silly--shivering at the
+thought of Robert Belward after all these years."
+
+So saying, Mrs. Warren Gasgoyne tapped Lady Dargan on the arm, and then
+turned sharply to see if her daughters had been listening.  She saw that
+they had; and though herself and not her sister was to blame, she said:
+
+"Sophie, you are very indiscreet!  If you had daughters of your own, you
+would probably be more careful--though Heaven only knows, for you were
+always difficult!"
+
+With this they vanished up the staircase, Mrs. Gasgoyne's daughters,
+Delia and Agatha, smiling at each other and whispering about Gaston.
+
+Meanwhile the seeker after a kingdom was shown into Sir William Belward's
+study.  No one was there.  He walked to the mantelpiece, and, leaning his
+arm on it, looked round.  Directly in front of him on the wall was the
+picture of a lady in middle-life, sitting in an arbour.  A crutch lay
+against one arm of her chair, and her left hand leaned on an ebony
+silver-topped cane.  There was something painful, haunting, in the face
+--a weirdness in the whole picture.  The face was looking into the
+sunlight, but the effect was rather of moonlight--distant, mournful.  He
+was fascinated; why, he could not tell.  Art to him was an unknown book,
+but he had the instinct, and he was quick to feel.  This picture struck
+him as being out of harmony with everything else in the room.  Yet it
+had, a strange compelling charm.
+
+Presently he started forward with an exclamation.  Now he understood the
+vague, eerie influence.  Looking out from behind the foliage was a face,
+so dim that one moment it seemed not to be there, and then suddenly to
+flash in--as a picture from beyond sails, lightning-like, across the
+filmy eyes of the dying.  It was the face of a youth, elf-like, unreal,
+yet he saw his father's features in it.
+
+He rubbed his eyes and looked again.  It seemed very dim.  Indeed, so
+delicately, vaguely, had the work been done that only eyes like Gaston's,
+trained to observe, with the sight of a hawk and a sense of the
+mysterious, could have seen so quickly or so distinctly.  He drew slowly
+back to the mantel again, and mused.  What did it mean?  He was sure that
+the woman was his grandmother.
+
+At that moment the door opened, and an alert, white-haired man stepped in
+quickly, and stopped in the centre of the room, looking at his visitor.
+His deep, keen eyes gazed out with an intensity that might almost be
+fierceness, and the fingers of his fine hands opened and shut nervously.
+Though of no great stature, he had singular dignity.  He was in evening-
+dress, and as he raised a hand to his chin quickly, as if in surprise or
+perplexity, Gaston noticed that he wore a large seal-ring.  It is
+singular that while he was engaged with his great event, he was also
+thinking what an air of authority the ring gave.
+
+For a moment the two men stood at gaze without speaking, though Gaston
+stepped forward respectfully.  A bewildered, almost shrinking look came
+into Sir William's eyes, as the other stood full in the light of the
+candles.
+
+Presently the old man spoke.  In spite of conventional smoothness, his
+voice had the ring of distance, which comes from having lived through and
+above painful things.
+
+"My servant announced you as Sir Gaston Belward.  There is some mistake?"
+
+"There is a mistake," was the slow reply.  "I did not give my name as Sir
+Gaston Belward.  That was Falby's conclusion, sir.  But I am Gaston
+Robert Belward, just the same."
+
+Sir William was dazed, puzzled.  He presently made a quick gesture, as if
+driving away some foolish thought, and, motioning to a chair, said:
+
+"Will you be seated?"
+
+They both sat, Sir William by his writing-table.  His look was now steady
+and penetrating, but he met one just as firm.
+
+"You are--Gaston Robert Belward?  May I ask for further information?"
+
+There was furtive humour playing at Gaston's mouth.  The old man's manner
+had been so unlike anything he had ever met, save, to an extent, in his
+father, that it interested him.  He replied, with keen distinctness:
+"You mean, why I have come--home?"
+
+Sir William's fingers trembled on a paper-knife.  "Are you-at home?"
+
+"I have come home to ask for my heritage--with interest compounded, sir."
+
+Sir William was now very pale.  He got to his feet, came to the young
+man, peered into his face, then drew back to the table and steadied
+himself against it.  Gaston rose also: his instinct of courtesy was
+acute--absurdly civilised--that is, primitive.  He waited.  "You are
+Robert's son?"
+
+"Robert Belward was my father."
+
+"Your father is dead?"
+
+"Twelve years ago."
+
+Sir William sank back in his chair.  His thin fingers ran back and forth
+along his lips.  Presently he took out his handkerchief and coughed into
+it nervously.  His lips trembled.  With a preoccupied air he arranged a
+handful of papers on the table.
+
+"Why did you not come before?" he asked at last, in a low, mechanical
+voice.
+
+"It was better for a man than a boy to come."
+
+"May I ask why?"
+
+"A boy doesn't always see a situation--gives up too soon--throws away his
+rights.  My father was a boy."
+
+"He was twenty-five when he went away."
+
+"I am fifty!"
+
+Sir William looked up sharply, perplexed.  "Fifty?"
+
+"He only knew this life: I know the world."
+
+"What world?"
+
+"The great North, the South, the seas at four corners of the earth."
+
+Sir William glanced at the top-boots, the peeping sash, the strong,
+bronzed face.
+
+"Who was your mother?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"A woman of France."
+
+The baronet made a gesture of impatience, and looked searchingly at the
+young man.
+
+All at once Gaston shot his bolt, to have it over.  "She had Indian blood
+also."
+
+He stretched himself to his full height, easily, broadly, with a touch of
+defiance, and leaned an arm against the mantel, awaiting Sir William's
+reply.
+
+The old man shrank, then said coldly: "Have you the marriage-
+certificate?"
+
+Gaston drew some papers from his pockets.
+
+"Here, sir, with a letter from my father, and one from the Hudson's Bay
+Company."
+
+His grandfather took them.  With an effort he steadied himself, then
+opened and read them one by one, his son's brief letter last--it was
+merely a calm farewell, with a request that justice should be done his
+son.
+
+At that moment Falby entered and said:
+
+"Her ladyship's compliments, and all the guests have arrived, sir."
+
+"My compliments to her ladyship, and ask her to give me five minutes yet,
+Falby."
+
+Turning to his grandson, there seemed to be a moment's hesitation, then
+he reached out his hand.
+
+"You have brought your luggage?  Will you care to dine with us?"
+
+Gaston took the cold outstretched fingers.
+
+"Only my saddle-bag, and I have no evening-dress with me, else I should
+be glad."
+
+There was another glance up and down the athletic figure, a half-
+apprehensive smile as the baronet thought of his wife, and then he said:
+
+"We must see if anything can be done."
+
+He pulled a bell-cord.  A servant appeared.
+
+"Ask the housekeeper to come for a moment, please."  Neither spoke till
+the housekeeper appeared.  "Hovey," he said to the grim woman, "give Mr.
+Gaston the room in the north tower.  Then, from the press in the same
+room lay out the evening-dress which you will find there....  They were
+your father's," he added, turning to the young man.  "It was my wife's
+wish to keep them.  Have they been aired lately, Hovey?"
+
+"Some days ago, sir."
+
+"That will do."  The housekeeper left, agitated.  You will probably be in
+time for the fish," he added, as he bowed to Robert.
+
+"If the clothes do not fit, sir?"
+
+"Your father was about your height and nearly as large, and fashions have
+not changed much."
+
+A few moments afterwards Gaston was in the room which his father had
+occupied twenty-seven years before.  The taciturn housekeeper, eyeing him
+excitedly the while, put out the clothes.  He did not say anything till
+she was about to go.  Then:
+
+"Hovey, were you here in my father's time?"
+
+"I was under-parlourmaid, sir," she said.
+
+"And you are housekeeper now--good!"
+
+The face of the woman crimsoned, hiding her dour wrinkles.  She turned
+away her head.
+
+"I'd have given my right hand if he hadn't gone, sir."
+
+Gaston whistled softly, then:
+
+"So would he, I fancy, before he died.  But I shall not go, so you will
+not need to risk a finger for me.  I am going to stay, Hovey.  Good-
+night.  Look after Brillon, please."
+
+He held out his hand.  Her fingers twitched in his, then grasped them
+nervously.
+
+"Yes, sir.  Good-night, Sir.  It's--it's like him comin' back, sir."
+
+Then she suddenly turned and hurried from the room, a blunt figure to
+whom emotion was not graceful.  "H'm!" said Gaston, as he shut the door.
+"Parlourmaid then, eh?  History at every turn!  'Voici le sabre de mon
+pere!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE
+
+Gaston Belward was not sentimental: that belongs to the middle-class
+Englishman's ideal of civilisation.  But he had a civilisation akin to
+the highest; incongruous, therefore, to the general as the sympathy
+between the United States and Russia.  The highest civilisation can be
+independent.  The English aristocrat is at home in the lodge of a Sioux
+chief or the bamboo-hut of a Fijian, and makes brothers of "savages,"
+when those other formal folk, who spend their lives in keeping their
+dignity, would be lofty and superior.
+
+When Gaston looked at his father's clothes and turned them over,
+he had a twinge of honest emotion; but his mind was on the dinner and
+his heritage, and he only said, as he frowned at the tightness of the
+waistband:
+
+"Never mind, we'll make 'em pay, shot and wadding, for what you lost,
+Robert Belward; and wherever you are, I hope you'll see it."
+
+In twelve minutes from the time he entered the bedroom he was ready.
+He pulled the bell-cord, and then passed out.  A servant met him on the
+stairs, and in another minute he was inside the dining-room.  Sir
+William's eyes flashed up.  There was smouldering excitement in his face,
+but one could not have guessed at anything unusual.  A seat had been
+placed for Gaston beside him.  The situation was singular and trying.
+It would have been easier if he had merely come into the drawing-room
+after dinner.  This was in Sir William's mind when he asked him to dine;
+but it was as it was.  Gaston's alert glance found the empty seat.  He
+was about to make towards it, but he caught Sir William's eye and saw it
+signal him to the end of the table near him.  His brain was working with
+celerity and clearness.  He now saw the woman whose portrait had so
+fascinated him in the library.  As his eyes fastened on her here, he
+almost fancied he could see the boy's--his father's-face looking over
+her shoulder.
+
+He instantly went to her, and said: "I am sorry to be late."
+
+His first impulse had been to offer his hand, as, naturally, he would
+have done in "barbaric" lands, but the instinct of this other
+civilisation was at work in him.  He might have been a polite casual
+guest, and not a grandson, bringing the remembrance, the culmination of
+twenty-seven years' tragedy into a home; she might have been a hostess
+with whom he wished to be on terms: that was all.
+
+If the situation was trying for him, it was painful for her.  She had had
+only a whispered announcement before Sir William led the way to dinner.
+Yet she was now all her husband had been, and more.  Repression had been
+her practice for unnumbered years, and the only heralds of her feelings
+were the restless wells of her dark eyes: the physical and mental misery
+she had endured lay hid under the pale composure of her face.  She was
+now brought suddenly before the composite image of her past.  Yet she
+merely lifted a slender hand with long, fine fingers, which, as they
+clasped his, all at once trembled, and then pressed them hotly,
+nervously.  To his surprise, it sent a twinge of colour to his cheek.
+"It was good of you to come down after such a journey," she said.
+Nothing more.
+
+Then he passed on, and sat down to Sir William's courteous gesture.  The
+situation had its difficulties for the guests--perfect guests as they
+were.  Every one was aware of a dramatic incident, for which there had
+been no preparation save Sir William's remark that a grandson had arrived
+from the North Pole or thereabouts; and to continue conversation and
+appear casual put their resources to some test.  But they stood it well,
+though.  their eyes were busy, and the talk was cheerfully mechanical.
+So occupied were they with Gaston's entrance, that they did not know
+how near Lady Dargan came to fainting.
+
+At the button-hole of the coat worn by Gaston hung a tiny piece of red
+ribbon which she had drawn from her sleeve on the terrace twenty-seven
+years ago, and tied there with the words:
+
+"Do you think you will wear it till we meet again?"  And the man had
+replied:
+
+"You'll not see me without it, pretty girl--pretty girl."
+
+A woman is not so unaccountable after all.  She has more imagination than
+a man; she has not many resources to console her for disappointments, and
+she prizes to her last hour the swift moments when wonderful things
+seemed possible.  That man is foolish who shows himself jealous of a
+woman's memories or tokens--those guarantees of her womanliness.
+
+When Lady Dargan saw the ribbon, which Gaston in his hurry had not
+disturbed, tied exactly as she had tied it, a weird feeling came to her,
+and she felt choking.  But her sister's eyes were on her, and Mrs.
+Gasgoyne's voice came across the table clearly:
+
+"Sophie, what were Fred Bideford's colours at Sandown?  You always
+remember that kind of thing."  The warning was sufficient.  Lady Dargan
+could make no effort of memory, but she replied without hesitation--or
+conscience:
+
+"Yellow and brown."
+
+"There," said Mrs. Gasgoyne, "we are both wrong, Captain Maudsley.
+Sophie never makes a mistake."  Maudsley assented politely, but, stealing
+a look at Lady Dargan, wondered what the little by-play meant.  Gaston
+was between Sir William and Mrs. Gasgoyne.  He declined soup and fish,
+which had just been served, because he wished for time to get his
+bearings.  He glanced at the menu as if idly interested, conscious that
+he was under observation.  He felt that he had, some how, the situation
+in his hands.  Everything had gone well, and he knew that his part had
+been played with some aplomb--natural, instinctive.  Unlike most large
+men, he had a mind always alert, not requiring the inspiration of unusual
+moments.  What struck him most forcibly now was the tasteful courtesy
+which had made his entrance easy.  He instinctively compared it to the
+courtesy in the lodge of an Indian chief, or of a Hudson's Bay factor who
+has not seen the outer world for half a century.  It was so different,
+and yet it was much the same.  He had seen a missionary, a layreader,
+come intoxicated into a council of chiefs.  The chiefs did not show that
+they knew his condition till he forced them to do so.  Then two of the
+young men rose, suddenly pinned him in their arms, carried him out, and
+tied him in a lodge.  The next morning they sent him out of their
+country.  Gaston was no philosopher, but he could place a thing when he
+saw it: which is a kind of genius.
+
+Presently Sir William said quietly:
+
+"Mrs. Gasgoyne, you knew Robert well; his son ought to know you."
+
+Gaston turned to Mrs. Gasgoyne, and said in his father's manner as much
+as possible, for now his mind ran back to how his father talked and
+acted, forming a standard for him:
+
+"My father once told me a tale of the Keithley Hunt--something 'away up,'
+as they say in the West--and a Mrs. Warren Gasgoyne was in it."
+
+He made an instant friend of Mrs. Gasgoyne--made her so purposely.
+This was one of the few things from his father's talks upon his past
+life.  He remembered the story because it was interesting, the name
+because it had a sound.
+
+She flushed with pleasure.  That story of the Hunt was one of her
+sweetest recollections.  For her bravery then she had been voted by the
+field "a good fellow," and an admiral present declared that she had a
+head "as long as the maintop bow-line."  She loved admiration, though she
+had no foolish sentiment; she called men silly creatures, and yet would
+go on her knees across country to do a deserving man-friend a service.
+She was fifty and over, yet she had the springing heart of a girl--mostly
+hid behind a brusque manner and a blunt, kindly tongue.
+
+"Your father could always tell a good story," she said.
+
+"He told me one of you: what about telling me one of him?"
+
+Adaptable, he had at once fallen in with her direct speech; the more so
+because it was his natural way; any other ways were "games," as he
+himself said.
+
+She flashed a glance at her sister, and smiled half-ironically.
+
+"I could tell you plenty," she said softly.  "He was a startling fellow,
+and went far sometimes; but you look as if you could go farther."
+
+Gaston helped himself to an entree, wondering whether a knife was used
+with sweetbreads.
+
+"How far could he go?" he asked.
+
+"In the hunting-field with anybody, with women endlessly, with meanness
+like a snail, and when his blood was up, to the most nonsensical place
+you can think of."
+
+Forks only for sweetbreads!  Gaston picked one up.  "He went there."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"I came from there."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"A few hundred miles from the Arctic circle."
+
+"Oh, I didn't think it was that climate!"
+
+"It never is till you arrive.  You are always out in the cold there."
+
+"That sounds American."
+
+"Every man is a sinner one way or another."
+
+"You are very clever--cleverer than your father ever was.
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He went--there.  I've come--from there."
+
+"And you think you will stay--never go back?"
+
+"He was out of it for twenty years, and died.  If I am in it for that
+long, I shall have had enough."
+
+Their eyes met.  The woman looked at him steadily.  "You won't be," she
+replied, this time seriously, and in a very low voice.
+
+"No?  Why?"
+
+"Because you will tire of it all--though you've started very well."
+
+She then answered a question of Captain Maudsley's and turned again to
+Gaston.
+
+"What will make me tire of it?" he inquired.  She sipped her champagne
+musingly.
+
+"Why, what is in you deeper than all this; with the help of some woman
+probably."
+
+She looked at him searchingly, then added:
+
+"You seem strangely like and yet unlike your father to-night."
+
+"I am wearing his clothes," he said.
+
+She had plenty of nerve, but this startled her.  She shrank a little: it
+seemed uncanny.  Now she remembered that ribbon in the button-hole.
+
+"Poor Sophie!" she thought.  "And this one will make greater mischief
+here."  Then, aloud to him: "Your father was a good fellow, but he did
+wild things."
+
+"I do not see the connection," he answered.  "I am not a good man, and I
+shall do wilder things--is that it?"
+
+"You will do mad things," she replied hardly above a whisper, and talked
+once more with Captain Maudsley.  Gaston now turned to his grandfather,
+who had heard a sentence here and there, and felt that the young man
+carried off the situation well enough.  He then began to talk in a
+general way about Gaston's voyage, of the Hudson's Bay Company, and
+expeditions to the Arctic, drawing Lady Dargan into the conversation.
+
+Whatever might be said of Sir William Belward he was an excellent host.
+He had a cool, unmalicious wit, but that man was unwise who offered
+himself to its severity.  To-night he surpassed himself in suggestive
+talk, until, all at once, seeing Lady Dargan's eyes fixed on Gaston,
+he went silent, sitting back in his chair abstracted.  Soon, however,
+a warning glance from his wife brought him back and saved Lady Dargan
+from collapse; for it seemed impossible to talk alone to this ghost of
+her past.
+
+At this moment Gaston heard a voice near:
+
+"As like as if he'd stepped out of the picture, if it weren't for the
+clothes.  A Gaston too!"
+
+The speaker was Lord Dargan.  He was talking to Archdeacon Varcoe.
+
+Gaston followed Lord Dargan's glance to the portrait of that Sir Gaston
+Belward whose effigy he had seen.  He found himself in form, feature,
+expression; the bold vigilance of eye, the primitive activity of
+shoulder, the small firm foot, the nervous power of the hand.  The eyes
+seemed looking at him.  He answered to the look.  There was in him the
+romantic strain, and something more!  In the remote parts of his being
+there was the capacity for the phenomenal, the strange.  Once again, as
+in the church, he saw the field of Naseby, King Charles, Ireton's men,
+Cromwell and his Ironsides, Prince Rupert and the swarming rush of
+cavalry, and the end of it all!  Had it been a tale of his father's at
+camp-fire?  Had he read it somewhere?  He felt his blood thump in his
+veins.  Another half-hour, wherein he was learning every minute, nothing
+escaping him, everything interesting him; his grandfather and Mrs.
+Gasgoyne especially, then the ladies retired slowly with their crippled
+hostess, who gave Gaston, as she rose, a look almost painfully intense.
+It haunted him.
+
+Now Gaston had his chance.  He had no fear of what he could do with men:
+he had measured himself a few times with English gentlemen as he
+travelled, and he knew where his power lay--not in making himself
+agreeable, but in imposing his personality.
+
+The guests were not soon to forget the talk of that hour.  It played into
+Gaston's hands.  He pretended to nothing; he confessed ignorance here and
+there with great simplicity; but he had the gift of reducing things, as
+it were, to their original elements.  He cut away to the core of a
+matter, and having simple, fixed ideas, he was able to focus the talk,
+which had begun with hunting stories, and ended with the morality of
+duelling.  Gaston's hunting stories had made them breathless, his views
+upon duelling did not free their lungs.
+
+There were sentimentalists present; others who, because it had become
+etiquette not to cross swords, thought it indecent.  Archdeacon Varcoe
+would not be drawn into discussion, but sipped his wine, listened, and
+watched Gaston.
+
+The young man measured his grandfather's mind, and he drove home his
+points mercilessly.
+
+Captain Maudsley said something about "romantic murder."
+
+"That's the trouble," Gaston said.  "I don't know who killed duelling
+in England, but behind it must have been a woman or a shopkeeper:
+sentimentalism, timidity, dead romance.  What is patriotism but romance?
+Ideals is what they call it somewhere.  I've lived in a land full of hard
+work and dangers, but also full of romance.  What is the result?  Why, a
+people off there whom you pity, and who don't need pity.  Romance?  See:
+you only get square justice out of a wise autocrat, not out of your
+'twelve true men'; and duelling is the last decent relic of autocracy.
+Suppose the wronged man does get killed; that is all right: it wasn't
+merely blood he was after, but the right to hit a man in the eye for a
+wrong done.  What is all this hullaballoo--about saving human life?
+There's as much interest--and duty--in dying as living, if you go the
+way your conscience tells you."
+
+A couple of hours later, Gaston, after having seen to his horse, stood
+alone in the drawing-room with his grandfather and grandmother.  As yet
+Lady Belward had spoken not half a dozen words to him.  Sir William
+presently said to him:
+
+"Are you too tired to join us in the library?"
+
+"I'm as fresh as paint, sir," was the reply.
+
+Lady Belward turned without a word, and slowly passed from the room.
+Gaston's eyes followed the crippled figure, which yet had a rare dignity.
+He had a sudden impulse.  He stepped to her and said with an almost
+boyish simplicity:
+
+"You are very tired; let me carry you--grandmother."
+
+He could hear Sir William gasp a little as he laid a quick warm hand on
+hers that held the cane.  She looked at him gravely, sadly, and then
+said:
+
+"I will take your arm, if you please."
+
+He took the cane, and she put a hand towards him.  He ran his strong arm
+around her waist with a little humouring laugh, her hand rested on his
+shoulder, and he timed his step to hers.  Sir William was in an eddy of
+wonder--a strong head was "mazed."  He had looked for a different
+reception of this uncommon kinsman.  How quickly had the new-comer
+conquered himself!  And yet he had a slight strangeness of accent--not
+American, but something which seemed unusual.  He did not reckon with a
+voice which, under cover of easy deliberation, had a convincing quality;
+with a manner of old-fashioned courtesy and stateliness.  As Mrs.
+Gasgoyne had said to the rector, whose eyes had followed Gaston
+everywhere in the drawing-room:
+
+"My dear archdeacon, where did he get it?  Why, he has lived most of his
+life with savages!"
+
+"Vandyke might have painted the man," Lord Dargan had added.
+
+"Vandyke did paint him," had put in Delia Gasgoyne from behind her
+mother.
+
+"How do you mean, Delia?" Mrs. Gasgoyne had added, looking curiously at
+her.
+
+"His picture hangs in the dining-room."
+
+Then the picture had been discussed, and the girl's eyes had followed
+Gaston--followed him until he had caught their glance.  Without an
+introduction, he had come and dropped into conversation with her, till
+her mother cleverly interrupted.
+
+Inside the library Lady Belward was comfortably placed, and looking up at
+Gaston, said:
+
+"You have your father's ways: I hope that you will be wiser."
+
+"If you will teach me!" he answered gently.
+
+There came two little bright spots on her cheeks, and her hands clasped
+in her lap.  They all sat down.  Sir William spoke:
+
+"It is much to ask that you should tell us of your life now, but it is
+better that we should start with some knowledge of each other."
+
+At that moment Gaston's eyes caught the strange picture on the wall.
+
+"I understand," he answered.  "But I would be starting in the middle of a
+story."
+
+"You mean that you wish to hear your father's history?  Did he not tell
+you?"
+
+"Trifles--that is all."
+
+"Did he ever speak of me?" asked Lady Belward with low anxiety.
+
+"Yes, when he was dying."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said: 'Tell my mother that Truth waits long, but whips hard.  Tell
+her that I always loved her.'"  She shrank in her chair as if from a
+blow, and then was white and motionless.
+
+"Let us hear your story," Sir William said with a sort of hauteur.
+"You know your own, much of your father's lies buried with him."
+
+"Very well, sir."
+
+Sir William drew a chair up beside his wife.  Gaston sat back, and for a
+moment did not speak.  He was looking into distance.  Presently the blue
+of his eyes went all black, and with strange unwavering concentration he
+gazed straight before him.  A light spread over his face, his hands felt
+for the chair-arms and held them firmly.  He began:
+
+"I first remember swinging in a blanket from a pine-tree at a buffalo-
+hunt while my mother cooked the dinner.  There were scores of tents,
+horses, and many Indians and half-breeds, and a few white men.  My father
+was in command.  I can see my mother's face as she stood over the fire.
+It was not darker than mine; she always seemed more French than Indian,
+and she was thought comely."
+
+Lady Belward shuddered a little, but Gaston did not notice.
+
+"I can remember the great buffalo-hunt.  You heard a heavy rumbling
+sound; you saw a cloud on the prairie.  It heaved, a steam came from it,
+and sometimes you caught the flash of ten thousand eyes as the beasts
+tossed their heads and then bent them again to the ground and rolled on,
+five hundred men after them, our women shouting and laughing, and arrows
+and bullets flying.  .  .  .  I can remember a time also when a great
+Indian battle happened just outside the fort, and, with my mother crying
+after him, my father went out with a priest to stop it.  My father was
+wounded, and then the priest frightened them, and they gathered their
+dead together and buried them.  We lived in a fort for a long time, and
+my mother died there.  She was a good woman, and she loved my father.
+I have seen her on her knees for hours praying when he was away.--I have
+her rosary now.  They called her Ste. Heloise.  Afterwards I was always
+with my father.  He was a good man, but he was never happy; and only at
+the last would he listen to the priest, though they were always great
+friends.  He was not a Catholic of course, but he said that didn't
+matter."
+
+Sir William interrupted huskily.  "Why did he never come back?"
+
+"I do not know quite, but he said to me once, 'Gaston, you'll tell them
+of me some day, and it will be a soft pillow for their heads!  You can
+mend a broken life, but the ring of it is gone.'  I think he meant to
+come back when I was about fourteen; but things happened, and he stayed."
+
+There was a pause.  Gaston seemed brooding, and Lady Belward said:
+
+"Go on, please."
+
+"There isn't so very much to tell.  The life was the only one I had
+known, and it was all right.  But my father had told me of this life.
+He taught me himself--he and Father Decluse and a Moravian missionary for
+awhile.  I knew some Latin and history, a bit of mathematics, a good deal
+of astronomy, some French poets, and Shakespere.  Shakespere is
+wonderful.  .  .  .  My father wanted me to come here at once after he
+died, but I knew better--I wanted to get sense first.  So I took a place
+in the Company.  It wasn't all fun.
+
+"I had to keep my wits sharp.  I was only a youngster, and I had to do
+with men as crafty and as silly as old Polonius.  I was sent to Labrador.
+That was not a life for a Christian.  Once a year a ship comes to the
+port, bringing the year's mail and news from the world.  When you watch
+that ship go out again, and you turn round and see the filthy Esquimaux
+and Indians, and know that you've got to live for another year with them,
+sit in their dirty tepees, eat their raw frozen meat, with an occasional
+glut of pemmican, and the thermometer 70 degrees below zero, you get a
+lump in your throat.
+
+"Then came one winter.  I had one white man, two half-breeds, and an
+Indian with me.  There was darkness day after day, and because the
+Esquimaux and Indians hadn't come up to the fort that winter, it was
+lonely as a tomb.  One by one the men got melancholy and then went mad,
+and I had to tie them up, and care for them and feed them.  The Indian
+was all right, but he got afraid, and wanted to start to a mission
+station three hundred miles on.  It was a bad look-out for me, but I told
+him to go.  I was left alone.  I was only twenty-one, but I was steel to
+my toes--good for wear and tear.  Well, I had one solid month all alone
+with my madmen.  Their jabbering made me sea-sick some times.  At last
+one day I felt I'd go staring mad myself if I didn't do something
+exciting to lift me, as it were.  I got a revolver, sat at the opposite
+end of the room from the three lunatics, and practised shooting at them.
+I had got it into my head that they ought to die, but it was only fair,
+I thought, to give them a chance.  I would try hard to shoot all round
+them--make a halo of bullets for the head of every one, draw them in
+silhouettes of solid lead on the wall.
+
+"I talked to them first, and told them what I was going to do.  They
+seemed to understand, and didn't object.  I began with the silhouettes,
+of course.  I had a box of bullets beside me.  They never squealed.  I
+sent the bullets round them as pretty as the pattern of a milliner.  Then
+I began with their heads.  I did two all right.  They sat and never
+stirred.  But when I came to the last something happened.  It was Jock
+Lawson."
+
+Sir William interposed:
+
+"Jock Lawson--Jock Lawson from here?"
+
+"Yes.  His mother keeps 'The Whisk o' Barley.'"
+
+"So, that is where Jock Lawson went?  He followed your father?"
+
+"Yes.  Jock was mad enough when I began--clean gone.  But, somehow, the
+game I was playing cured him.  'Steady, Jock!' I said.  'Steady!' for I
+saw him move.  I levelled for the second bead of the halo.  My finger was
+on the trigger.  'My God, don't shoot!' he called.  It startled me, my
+hand shook, the thing went off, and Jock had a bullet through his brain.
+
+".  .  .  Then I waked up.  Perhaps I had been mad myself--I don't know.
+But my brain never seemed clearer than when I was playing that game.  It
+was like a magnifying glass: and my eyes were so clear and strong that I
+could see the pores on their skin, and the drops of sweat breaking out on
+Jock's forehead when he yelled."
+
+A low moan came from Lady Belward.  Her face was drawn and pale, but her
+eyes were on Gaston with a deep fascination.  Sir William whispered to
+her.
+
+"No," she said, "I will stay."
+
+Gaston saw the impression he had made.
+
+"Well, I had to bury poor Jock all alone.  I don't think I should have
+minded it so much, if it hadn't been for the faces of those other two
+crazy men.  One of them sat still as death, his eyes following me with
+one long stare, and the other kept praying all the time--he'd been a
+lay preacher once before he backslided, and it came back on him now
+naturally.  Now it would be from Revelation, now out of the Psalms, and
+again a swingeing exhortation for the Spirit to come down and convict me
+of sin.  There was a lot of sanity in it too, for he kept saying at last:
+'O shut not up my soul with the sinners: nor my life with the
+bloodthirsty.'  I couldn't stand it, with Jock dead there before me,
+so I gave him a heavy dose of paregoric out of the Company's stores.
+Before he took it he raised his finger and said to me, with a beastly
+stare: 'Thou art the man!'  But the paregoric put him to sleep.  .  .  .
+
+"Then I gave the other something to eat, and dragged Jock out to bury
+him.  I remembered then that he couldn't be buried, for the ground was
+too hard and the ice too thick; so I got ropes, and, when he stiffened,
+slung him up into a big cedar tree, and then went up myself and arranged
+the branches about him comfortably.  It seemed to me that Jock was a baby
+and I was his father.  You couldn't see any blood, and I fixed his hair
+so that it covered the hole in the forehead.  I remember I kissed him on
+the cheek, and then said a prayer--one that I'd got out of my father's
+prayer-book: 'That it may please Thee to preserve all that travel by land
+or by water, all women labouring of child, all sick persons and young
+children; and to show Thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.' Somehow
+I had got it into my head that Jock was going on a long journey, and that
+I was a prisoner and a captive."
+
+Gaston broke off, and added presently:
+
+"Perhaps this is all too awful to hear, but it gives you an idea of what
+kind of things went to make me."  Lady Belward answered for both:
+
+"Tell us all--everything."
+
+"It is late," said Sir William, nervously.
+
+"What does it matter?  It is once in a lifetime," she answered sadly.
+
+Gaston took up the thread:
+
+"Now I come to what will shock you even more, perhaps.  So, be prepared.
+I don't know how many days went, but at last I had three visitors--in
+time I should think: a Moravian missionary, and an Esquimaux and his
+daughter.  I didn't tell the missionary about Jock--there was no use,
+it could do no good.  They stayed four weeks, and during that time one
+of the crazy men died.  The other got better, but had to be watched.  I
+could do anything with him, if I got my eye on him.  Somehow, I must tell
+you, I've got a lot of power that way.  I don't know where it comes from.
+Well, the missionary had to go.  The old Esquimaux thought that he and
+his daughter would stay on if I'd let them.  I was only too glad.  But it
+wasn't wise for the missionary to take the journey alone--it was a bad
+business in any case.  I urged the man that had been crazy to go, for I
+thought activity would do him good.  He agreed, and the two left and got
+to the Mission Station all right, after wicked trouble.  I was alone with
+the Esquimaux and his daughter.  You never know why certain things
+happen, and I can't tell why that winter was so weird; why the old
+Esquimaux should take sick one morning, and in the evening should call
+me and his daughter Lucy--she'd been given a Christian name, of course--
+and say that he was going to die, and he wanted me to marry her" (Lady
+Belward exclaimed, Sir William's hands fingered the chair-arm nervously)
+"there and then, so that he'd know she would be cared for.  He was a
+heathen, but he had been primed by the missionaries about his daughter.
+She was a fine, clever girl, and well educated--the best product of their
+mission.  So he called for a Bible.  There wasn't one in the place, but I
+had my mother's Book of the Mass.  I went to get it, but when I set my
+eyes on it, I couldn't--no, I couldn't do it, for I hadn't the least idea
+but what I should bid my lady good-bye when it suited, and I didn't want
+any swearing at all--not a bit.  I didn't do any.  But what happened had
+to be with or without any ring or book and 'Forasmuch as.'  There had
+been so much funeral and sudden death that a marriage would be a godsend
+anyhow.  So the old Esquimaux got our two hands in his, babbled away in
+half-English, half-Esquimaux, with the girl's eyes shining like a she-
+moose over a dying buck, and about the time we kissed each other, his
+head dropped back--and that is all there was about that."
+
+Gaston now kept his eyes on his listeners.  He was aware that his story
+must sound to them as brutal as might be, but it was a phase of his life,
+and, so far as he could, he wanted to start with a clean sheet; not out
+of love of confidence, for he was self-contained, but he would have
+enough to do to shepherd his future without shepherding his past.  He saw
+that Lady Belward had a sickly fear in her face, while Sir William had
+gone stern and hard.
+
+He went on:
+
+"It saved the situation, did that marriage; though it was no marriage you
+will say.  Neither was it one way, and I didn't intend at the start to
+stand by it an hour longer than I wished.  But she was more than I looked
+for, and it seems to me that she saved my life that winter, or my reason
+anyhow.  There had been so much tragedy that I used to wonder every day
+what would happen before night; and that's not a good thing for the brain
+of a chap of twenty-one or two.  The funny part of it is that she wasn't
+a pagan--not a bit.  She could read and speak English in a sweet old-
+fashioned way, and she used to sing to me--such a funny, sorry little
+voice she had--hymns the Moravians had taught her, and one or two English
+songs.  I taught her one or two besides, 'Where the Hawthorn Tree is
+Blooming,' and 'Allan Water'--the first my father had taught me, the
+other an old Scotch trader.  It's different with a woman and a man in a
+place like that.  Two men will go mad together, but there's a saving
+something in the contact of a man's brain with a woman's.  I got fond of
+her, any man would have, for she had something that I never saw in any
+heathen, certainly in no Indian; you'll see it in women from Iceland.
+I determined to marry her in regular style when spring and a missionary
+came.  You can't understand, maybe, how one can settle to a life where
+you've got companionship, and let the world go by.  About that time, I
+thought that I'd let Ridley Court and the rest of it go as a boy's dreams
+go.  I didn't seem to know that I was only satisfied in one set of my
+instincts.  Spring came, so did a missionary, and for better or worse it
+was."
+
+Sir William came to his feet.  "Great Heaven!" he broke out.
+
+His wife tried to rise, but could not.
+
+"This makes everything impossible," added the baronet shortly.
+
+"No, no, it makes nothing impossible--if you will listen."
+
+Gaston was cool.  He had begun playing for the stakes from one stand-
+point, and he would not turn back.
+
+He continued:
+
+"I lived with her happily: I never expect to have happiness like that
+again,--never,--and after two years at another post in Labrador, came
+word from the Company that I might go to Quebec, there to be given my
+choice of posts.  I went.  By this time I had again vague ideas that
+sometime I should come here, but how or why I couldn't tell; I was
+drifting, and for her sake willing to drift.  I was glad to take her to
+Quebec, for I guessed she would get ideas, and it didn't strike me that
+she would be out of place.  So we went.  But she was out of place in
+many ways.  It did not suit at all.  We were asked to good houses, for I
+believe I have always had enough of the Belward in me to keep my end up
+anywhere.  The thing went on pretty well, but at last she used to beg me
+to go without her to excursions and parties.  There were always one or
+two quiet women whom she liked to sit with, and because she seemed
+happier for me to go, I did.  I was popular, and got along with women
+well; but I tell you honestly I loved my wife all the time; so that when
+a Christian busy-body poured into her ears some self-made scandal, it was
+a brutal, awful lie--brutal and awful, for she had never known jealousy;
+it did not belong to her old social creed.  But it was in the core of her
+somewhere, and an aboriginal passion at work naked is a thing to be
+remembered.  I had to face it one night.  .  .  .
+
+"I was quiet, and did what I could.  After that I insisted on her going
+with me wherever I went, but she had changed, and I saw that, in spite of
+herself, the thing grew.  One day we went on an excursion down the St.
+Lawrence.  We were merry, and I was telling yarns.  We were just nearing
+a landing-stage, when a pretty girl, with more gush than sense, caught me
+by the arm and begged some ridiculous thing of me--an autograph, or what
+not.  A minute afterwards I saw my wife spring from the bulwarks down on
+the landing-stage, and rush up the shore into the woods.  .  .  .  We
+were two days finding her.  That settled it.  I was sick enough at heart,
+and I determined to go back to Labrador.  We did so.  Every thing had
+gone on the rocks.  My wife was not, never would be, the same again.  She
+taunted me and worried me, and because I would not quarrel, seemed to
+have a greater grievance--jealousy is a kind of madness.  One night she
+was most galling, and I sat still and said nothing.  My life seemed gone
+of a heap: I was sick--sick to the teeth; hopeless, looking forward to
+nothing.  I imagine my hard quietness roused her.  She said something
+hateful--something about having married her, and not a woman from Quebec.
+I smiled--I couldn't help it; then I laughed, a bit wild, I suppose.
+I saw the flash of steel.  .  .  .  I believe I laughed in her face as I
+fell.  When I came to she was lying with her head on my breast--dead--
+stone dead."
+
+Lady Belward sat with closed eyes, her fingers clasping and unclasping on
+the top of her cane; but Sir William wore a look half-satisfied, half-
+excited.
+
+He now hurried his story.
+
+"I got well, and after that stayed in the North for a year.  Then I
+passed down the continent to Mexico and South America.  There I got a
+commission to go to New Zealand and Australia to sell a lot of horses.
+I did so, and spent some time in the South Sea Islands.  Again I drifted
+back to the Rockies and over into the plains; found Jacques Brillon, my
+servant, had a couple of years' work and play, gathered together some
+money, as good a horse and outfit as the North could give, and started
+with Brillon and his broncho--having got both sense and experience, I
+hope--for Ridley Court.  And here I am.  There's a lot of my life that I
+haven't told you of, but it doesn't matter, because it's adventure
+mostly, and it can be told at any time; but these are essential facts,
+and it is better that you should hear them.  And that is all, grandfather
+and grandmother."
+
+After a minute Lady Belward rose, leaned on her crutch, and looked at him
+wistfully.  Sir William said: "Are you sure that you will suit this life,
+or it you?"
+
+"It is the only idea I have at present; and, anyhow, it is my rightful
+home, sir."
+
+"I was not thinking of your rights, but of the happiness of us all."
+
+Lady Belward limped to him, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"You have had one great tragedy, so have we: neither could bear another.
+Try to be worthy--of your home."
+
+Then she solemnly kissed him on the cheek.  Soon afterwards they went to
+their rooms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+AN HOUR WITH HIS FATHER'S PAST
+
+In his bedroom Gaston made a discovery.  He chanced to place his hand in
+the tail-pocket of the coat he had worn.  He drew forth a letter.  The
+ink was faded, and the lines were scrawled.  It ran:
+
+     It's no good.  Mr. Ian's been!  It's face the musik now.  If you
+     want me, say so.  I'm for kicks or ha'pence--no diffrense.
+                                                       Yours, J.
+
+He knew the writing very well--Jock Lawson's.  There had been some
+trouble, and Mr. Ian had "been," bringing peril.  What was it?  His
+father and Jock had kept the secret from him.
+
+He put his hand in the pocket again.  There was another note--this time
+in a woman's handwriting:
+
+     Oh, come to me, if you would save us both!  Do not fail.  God help
+     us!  Oh, Robert!
+
+It was signed "Agnes."
+
+Well, here was something of mystery; but he did not trouble himself about
+that.  He was not at Ridley Court to solve mysteries, to probe into the
+past, to set his father's wrongs right; but to serve himself, to reap for
+all those years wherein his father had not reaped.  He enjoyed life, and
+he would search this one to the full of his desires.  Before he retired
+he studied the room, handling things that lay where his father placed
+them so many years before.  He was not without emotions in this, but he
+held himself firm.
+
+As he stood ready to get into bed, his eyes chanced upon a portrait of
+his uncle Ian.
+
+"There's where the tug comes!" he said, nodding at it.  "Shake hands,
+and ten paces, Uncle Ian?"
+
+Then he blew out the candle, and in five minutes was sound asleep.
+
+He was out at six o'clock.  He made for the stables, and found Jacques
+pacing the yard.  He smiled at Jacques's dazed look.
+
+"What about the horse, Brillon?" he said, nodding as he came up.
+
+"Saracen's had a slice of the stable-boy's shoulder--sir."
+
+Amusement loitered in Gaston's eyes.  The "sir" had stuck in Jacques's
+throat.
+
+"Saracen has established himself, then?  Good!  And the broncho?"
+
+"Bien, a trifle only.  They laugh much in the kitchen--"
+
+"The hall, Brillon."
+
+"--in the hall last night.  That hired man over there--"
+
+"That groom, Brillon."
+
+"--that groom, he was a fool, and fat.  He was the worst.  This morning
+he laugh at my broncho.  He say a horse like that is nothing: no pace, no
+travel.  I say the broncho was not so ver' bad, and I tell him try the
+paces.  I whisper soft, and the broncho stand like a lamb.  He mount,
+and sneer, and grin at the high pommel, and start.  For a minute it was
+pretty; and then I give a little soft call, and in a minute there was the
+broncho bucking--doubling like a hoop, and dropping same as lead.  Once
+that--groom--come down on the pommel, then over on the ground like a
+ball, all muck and blood."
+
+The half-breed paused, looking innocently before him.  Gaston's mouth
+quirked.
+
+"A solid success, Brillon.  Teach them all the tricks you can.  At ten
+o'clock come to my room.  The campaign begins then."
+
+Jacques ran a hand through his long black hair, and fingered his sash.
+Gaston understood.
+
+"The hair and ear-rings may remain, Brillon; but the beard and clothes
+must go--except for occasions.  Come along."
+
+For the next two hours Gaston explored the stables and the grounds.
+Nothing escaped him.  He gathered every incident of the surroundings,
+and talked to the servants freely, softly, and easily, yet with a
+superiority, which suddenly was imposed in the case of the huntsman at
+the kennels--for the Whipshire hounds were here.  Gaston had never ridden
+to hounds.  It was not, however, his cue to pretend knowledge.  He was
+strong enough to admit ignorance.  He stood leaning against the door of
+the kennels, arms folded, eyes half-closed, with the sense of a painter,
+before the turning bunch of brown and white, getting the charm of
+distance and soft tones.  His blood beat hard, for suddenly he felt as
+if he had been behind just such a pack one day, one clear desirable day
+of spring.  He saw people gathering at the kennels; saw men drink beer
+and eat sandwiches at the door of the huntsman's house,--a long, low
+dwelling, with crumbling arched doorways like those of a monastery,
+watched them get away from the top of the moor, he among them; heard
+the horn, the whips; and saw the fox break cover.
+
+Then came a rare run for five sweet miles--down a long valley--over
+quick-set hedges, with stiffish streams--another hill--a great combe--
+a lovely valley stretching out--a swerve to the right--over a gate--
+and the brush got at a farmhouse door.
+
+Surely, he had seen it all; but what kink of the brain was it that the
+men wore flowing wigs and immense boot-legs, and sported lace in the
+hunting-field?  And why did he see within that picture another of two
+ladies and a gentleman hawking?
+
+He was roused from his dream by hearing the huntsman say in a quizzical
+voice:
+
+"How do you like the dogs, sir?"
+
+To his last day Lugley, the huntsman, remembered the slow look of cold
+surprise, of masterful malice, scathing him from head to foot.  The words
+that followed the look, simple as they were, drove home the naked
+reproof:
+
+"What is your name, my man?"
+
+"Lugley, sir."
+
+"Lugley!  Lugley!  H'm!  Well, Lugley, I like the hounds better than
+I like you.  Who is Master of the Hounds, Lugley?"
+
+"Captain Maudsley, sir."
+
+"Just so.  You are satisfied with your place, Lugley?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the man in a humble voice, now cowed.
+
+The news of the arrival of the strangers had come to him late at night,
+and, with Whipshire stupidity, he had thought that any one coming from
+the wilds of British America must be but a savage after all.
+
+"Very well; I wouldn't throw myself out of a place, if I were you."
+
+"Oh, no, sir!  Beg pardon, sir, I--"
+
+"Attend to your hounds there, Lugley."
+
+So saying, Gaston nodded Jacques away with him, leaving the huntsman sick
+with apprehension.
+
+"You see how it is to be done, Brillon?" said Gaston.  Jacques's brown
+eyes twinkled.
+
+"You have the grand trick, sir."
+
+"I enjoy the game; and so shall you, if you will.  You've begun well.
+I don't know much of this life yet; but it seems to me that they are all
+part of a machine, not the idea behind the machine.  They have no
+invention.  Their machine is easy to learn.  Do not pretend; but for
+every bit you learn show something better, something to make them dizzy
+now and then."
+
+He paused on a knoll and looked down.  The castle, the stables, the
+cottages of labourers and villagers lay before them.  In a certain
+highly-cultivated field, men were working.  It was cut off in squares and
+patches.  It had an air which struck Gaston as unusual; why, he could not
+tell.  But he had a strange divining instinct, or whatever it may be
+called.  He made for the field and questioned the workmen.
+
+The field was cut up into allotment gardens.  Here, at a nominal rent,
+the cottager could grow his vegetables; a little spot of the great acre
+of England, which gave the labourer a tiny sense of ownership, of
+manhood.  Gaston was interested.  More, he was determined to carry that
+experiment further, if he ever got the chance.  There was no socialism
+in him.  The true barbarian is like the true aristocrat: more a giver of
+gifts than a lover of co-operation; conserving ownership by right of
+power and superior independence, hereditary or otherwise.  Gaston was
+both barbarian and aristocrat.
+
+"Brillon," he said, as they walked on, "do you think they would be
+happier on the prairies with a hundred acres of land, horses, cows,
+and a pen of pigs?"
+
+"Can I be happy here all at once, sir?"
+
+"That's just it.  It's too late for them.  They couldn't grasp it unless
+they went when they were youngsters.  They'd long for 'Home and Old
+England' and this grub-and-grind life.  Gracious heaven, look at them--
+crumpled-up creatures!  And I'll stake my life, they were as pretty
+children as you'd care to see.  They are out of place in the landscape,
+Brillon; for it is all luxury and lush, and they are crumples--crumples!
+But yet there isn't any use being sorry for them, for they don't grasp
+anything outside the life they are living.  Can't you guess how they
+live?  Look at the doors of the houses shut, and the windows sealed;
+yet they've been up these three hours!  And they'll suck in bad air,
+and bad food; and they'll get cancer, and all that; and they'll die and
+be trotted away to the graveyard for 'passun' to hurry them into their
+little dark cots, in the blessed hope of everlasting life!  I'm going to
+know this thing, Brillon, from tooth to ham-string; and, however it goes,
+we'll have lived up and down the whole scale; and that's something."
+
+He suddenly stopped, and then added:
+
+"I'm likely to go pretty far in this.  I can't tell how or why, but it's
+so.  Now, once more, as yesterday afternoon, for good or for bad, for
+long or for short, for the gods or for the devil, are you with me?
+There's time to turn back even yet, and I'll say no word to your going."
+
+"But no, no! a vow is a vow.  When I cannot run I will walk, when I
+cannot walk I will crawl after you--comme ca!"
+
+Lady Belward did not appear at breakfast.  Sir William and Gaston
+breakfasted alone at half past nine o'clock.  The talk was of the
+stables and the estate generally.
+
+The breakfast-room looked out on a soft lawn, stretching away into a
+broad park, through which a stream ran; and beyond was a green hillside.
+The quiet, the perfect order and discipline, gave a pleasant tingle to
+Gaston's veins.  It was all so easy, and yet so admirable--elegance
+without weight.  He felt at home.  He was not certain of some trifles
+of etiquette; but he and Sir William were alone, and he followed his
+instincts.  Once he frankly asked his grandfather of a matter of form,
+of which he was uncertain the evening before.  The thing was done so
+naturally that the conventional mind of the baronet was not disturbed.
+The Belwards were notable for their brains, and Sir William saw that
+the young man had an unusual share.  He also felt that this startling
+individuality might make a hazardous future; but he liked the fellow, and
+he had a debt to pay to the son of his own dead son.  Of course, if their
+wills came into conflict, there could be but one thing--the young man
+must yield; or, if he played the fool, there must be an end.  Still, he
+hoped the best.  When breakfast was finished, he proposed going to the
+library.
+
+There Sir William talked of the future, asked what Gaston's ideas were,
+and questioned him as to his present affairs.  Gaston frankly said that
+he wanted to live as his father would have done, and that he had no
+property, and no money beyond a hundred pounds, which would last him
+a couple of years on the prairies, but would be fleeting here.
+
+Sir William at once said that he would give him a liberal allowance,
+with, of course, the run of his own stables and their house in town:
+and when he married acceptably, his allowance would be doubled.
+
+"And I wish to say, Gaston," he added, "that your uncle Ian, though heir
+to the title, does not necessarily get the property, which is not
+entailed.  Upon that point I need hardly say more.  He has disappointed
+us.
+
+"Through him Robert left us.  Of his character I need not speak.  Of his
+ability the world speaks variably: he is an artist.  Of his morals I need
+only say that they are scarcely those of an English gentleman, though
+whether that is because he is an artist, I cannot say--I really cannot
+say.  I remember meeting a painter at Lord Dunfolly's,--Dunfolly is a
+singular fellow--and he struck me chiefly as harmless, distinctly
+harmless.  I could not understand why he was at Dunfolly's, he seemed
+of so little use, though Lady Malfire, who writes or something, mooned
+with him a good deal.  I believe there was some scandal or something
+afterwards.  I really do not know.  But you are not a painter, and I
+believe you have character--I fancy so."
+
+"If you mean that I don't play fast and loose, sir, you are right.
+What I do, I do as straight as a needle."  The old man sighed carefully.
+
+"You are very like Robert, and yet there is something else.  I don't
+know, I really don't know what!"
+
+"I ought to have more in me than the rest of the family, sir."
+
+This was somewhat startling.  Sir William's fingers stroked his beardless
+cheek uncertainly.  "Possibly--possibly."
+
+"I've lived a broader life, I've got wider standards, and there are three
+races at work in me."
+
+"Quite so, quite so;" and Sir William fumbled among his papers nervously.
+
+"Sir," said Gaston suddenly, "I told you last night the honest story of
+my life.  I want to start fair and square.  I want the honest story of my
+father's life here; how and why he left, and what these letters mean."
+
+He took from his pocket the notes he had found the night before, and
+handed them.  Sir William read them with a disturbed look, and turned
+them over and over.  Gaston told where he had found them.
+
+Sir William spoke at last.
+
+"The main story is simple enough.  Robert was extravagant, and Ian was
+vicious and extravagant also.  Both got into trouble.  I was younger
+then, and severe.  Robert hid nothing, Ian all he could.  One day things
+came to a climax.  In his wild way, Robert--with Jock Lawson--determined
+to rescue a young man from the officers of justice, and to get him out of
+the country.  There were reasons.  He was the son of a gentleman; and, as
+we discovered afterwards, Robert had been too intimate with the wife--his
+one sin of the kind, I believe.  Ian came to know, and prevented the
+rescue.  Meanwhile, Robert was liable to the law for the attempt.  There
+was a bitter scene here, and I fear that my wife and I said hard things
+to Robert."
+
+Gaston's eyes were on Lady Belward's portrait.  "What did my grandmother
+say?"
+
+There was a pause, then:
+
+"That she would never call him son again, I believe; that the shadow of
+his life would be hateful to her always.  I tell you this because I see
+you look at that portrait.  What I said, I think, was no less.  So,
+Robert, after a wild burst of anger, flung away from us out of the house.
+His mother, suddenly repenting, ran to follow him, but fell on the stone
+steps at the door, and became a cripple for life.  At first she remained
+bitter against Robert, and at that time Ian painted that portrait.  It is
+clever, as you may see, and weird.  But there came a time when she kept
+it as a reproach to herself, not Robert.  She is a good woman--a very
+good woman.  I know none better, really no one."
+
+"What became of the arrested man?" Gaston asked quietly, with the
+oblique suggestiveness of a counsel.
+
+"He died of a broken blood-vessel on the night of the intended rescue,
+and the matter was hushed up."
+
+"What became of the wife?"
+
+"She died also within a year."
+
+"Were there any children?"
+
+"One--a girl."
+
+"Whose was the child?"
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"The husband's or the lover's?"  There was a pause.
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+"Where is the girl?"
+
+"My son, do not ask that.  It can do no good--really no good."
+
+"Is it not my due?"
+
+"Do not impose your due.  Believe me, I know best.  If ever there is need
+to tell you, you shall be told.  Trust me.  Has not the girl her due
+also?"
+
+Gaston's eyes held Sir William's a moment.  "You are right, sir," he
+said, "quite right.  I shall not try to know.  But if--"  He paused.
+
+Sir William spoke:
+
+"There is but one person in the world who knows the child's father; and I
+could not ask him, though I have known him long and well--indeed, no."
+
+"I do not ask to understand more," Gaston replied.  "I almost wish I had
+known nothing.  And yet I will ask one thing: is the girl in comfort and
+good surroundings?"
+
+"The best--ah, yes, the very best."
+
+There was a pause, in which both sat thinking; then Sir William wrote out
+a cheque and offered it, with a hint of emotion.  He was recalling how he
+had done the same with this boy's father.
+
+Gaston understood.  He got up, and said: "Honestly, sir, I don't know how
+I shall turn out here; for, if I didn't like it, it couldn't hold me, or,
+if it did, I should probably make things uncomfortable.  But I think I
+shall like it, and I will do my best to make things go well.  Good-
+morning, sir."
+
+With courteous attention Sir William let his grandson out of the room.
+
+And thus did a young man begin his career as Gaston Belward, gentleman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+WHEREIN HE FINDS HIS ENEMY
+
+How that career was continued there are many histories: Jock Lawson's
+mother tells of it in her way, Mrs. Gasgoyne in hers, Hovey in hers,
+Captain Maudsley in his; and so on.  Each looks at it from an individual
+stand-point.  But all agree on two matters: that he did things hitherto
+unknown in the countryside; and that he was free and affable, but could
+pull one up smartly if necessary.
+
+He would sit by the hour and talk with Bimley, the cottager; with Rosher,
+the hotel-keeper, who when young had travelled far; with a sailorman,
+home for a holiday, who said he could spin a tidy yarn; and with Pogan,
+the groom, who had at last won Saracen's heart.  But one day when the
+meagre village chemist saw him cracking jokes with Beard, the carpenter,
+and sidled in with a silly air of equality, which was merely insolence,
+Gaston softly dismissed him, with his ears tingling.  The carpenter
+proved his right to be a friend of Gaston's by not changing countenance
+and by never speaking of the thing afterwards.
+
+His career was interesting during the eighteen months wherein society
+papers chatted of him amiably and romantically.  He had entered into the
+joys of hunting with enthusiasm and success, and had made a fast and
+admiring friend of Captain Maudsley; while Saracen held his own grandly.
+He had dined with country people, and had dined them; had entered upon
+the fag-end of the London season with keen, amused enjoyment; and had
+engrafted every little use of the convention.  The art was learned, but
+the man was always apart from it; using it as a toy, yet not despising
+it; for, as he said, it had its points, it was necessary.  There was
+yachting in the summer; but he was keener to know the life of England
+and his heritage than to roam afar, and most of the year was spent on the
+estate and thereabouts: with the steward, with the justices of the peace,
+in the fields, in the kennels, among the accounts.
+
+To-day he was in London, haunting Tattersall's, the East End, the docks,
+his club, the London Library--he had a taste for English history,
+especially for that of the seventeenth century; he saturated himself with
+it: to-morrow he would present to his grandfather a scheme for improving
+the estate and benefiting the cottagers.  Or he would suddenly enter the
+village school, and daze and charm the children by asking them strange
+yet simple questions, which sent a shiver of interest to their faces.
+
+One day at the close of his second hunting-season there was to be a ball
+at the Court, the first public declaration of acceptance by his people;
+for, at his wish, they did not entertain for him in town the previous
+season--Lady Belward had not lived in town for years.  But all had gone
+so well, if not with absolute smoothness, and with some strangeness,--
+that Gaston had become an integral part of their life, and they had
+ceased to look for anything sensational.
+
+This ball was to be the seal of their approval.  It had been mentioned in
+'Truth' with that freshness and point all its own.  What character than
+Gaston's could more appeal to his naive imagination?  It said in a
+piquant note that he did not wear a dagger and sombrero.
+
+Everything was ready.  Decorations were up, the cook and the butler had
+done their parts.  At eleven in the morning Gaston had time on his hands.
+Walking out, he saw two or three children peeping in at the gateway.
+
+He would visit the village school.  He found the junior curate troubling
+the youthful mind with what their godfathers and godmothers did for them,
+and begging them to do their duty "in that state of life," etc.  He
+listened, wondering at the pious opacity, and presently asked the
+children to sing.  With inimitable melancholy they sang: "Oh, the Roast
+Beef of Old England!"
+
+Gaston sat back and laughed softly till the curate felt uneasy, till the
+children, waking to his humour, gurgled a little in the song.  With his
+thumbs caught lightly in his waistcoat pockets, he presently began to
+talk with the children in an easy, quiet voice.  He asked them little
+out-of-the-way questions, he lifted the school-room from their minds, and
+then he told them a story, showing them on the map where the place was,
+giving them distances, the kind of climate, and a dozen other matters of
+information, without the nature of a lesson.  Then he taught them the
+chorus--the Board forbade it afterwards--of a negro song, which told how
+those who behaved themselves well in this world should ultimately:
+
+"Blow on, blow on, blow on dat silver horn!"
+
+It was on this day that, as he left the school, he saw Ian Belward
+driving past.  He had not met his uncle since his arrival,--the artist
+had been in Morocco,--nor had he heard of him save through a note in a
+newspaper which said that he was giving no powerful work to the world,
+nor, indeed, had done so for several years; and that he preferred the
+purlieus of Montparnasse to Holland Park.
+
+They recognised each other.  Ian looked his nephew up and down with a
+cool kind of insolence as he passed, but did not make any salutation.
+Gaston went straight to the castle.  He asked for his uncle, and was told
+that he had gone to Lady Belward.  He wandered to the library: it was
+empty.  He lit a cigar, took down a copy of Matthew Arnold's poems,
+opening at "Sohrab and Rustum," read it with a quick-beating heart, and
+then came to "Tristram and Iseult."  He knew little of "that Arthur" and
+his knights of the Round Table, and Iseult of Brittany was a new figure
+of romance to him.  In Tennyson, he had got no further than "Locksley
+Hall," which, he said, had a right tune and wrong words; and "Maud,"
+which "was big in pathos."  The story and the metre of "Tristram and
+Iseult" beat in his veins.  He got to his feet, and, standing before the
+window, repeated a verse aloud:
+
+              "Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake,
+               O hunter!  and without a fear
+               Thy golden-tassell'd bugle blow,
+               And through the glades thy pasture take
+               For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here!
+               For these thou seest are unmoved;
+               Cold, cold as those who lived and loved
+               A thousand years ago."
+
+He was so engrossed that he did not hear the door open.  He again
+repeated the lines with the affectionate modulation of a musician.  He
+knew that they were right.  They were hot with life--a life that was no
+more a part of this peaceful landscape than a palm-tree would be.  He
+felt that he ought to read the poem in a desert, out by the Polar Sea,
+down on the Amazon, yonder at Nukualofa; that it would fit in with
+bearding the Spaniards two hundred years ago.  Bearding the Spaniards--
+what did he mean by that?  He shut his eyes and saw a picture: A Moorish
+castle, men firing from the battlements under a blazing sun, a multitude
+of troops before a tall splendid-looking man, in armour chased with gold
+and silver, and fine ribbons flying.  A woman was lifted upon the
+battlements.  He saw the gold of her necklace shake on her flesh like
+sunlight on little waves.  He heard a cry:
+
+At that moment some one said behind him: "You have your father's romantic
+manner."
+
+He quietly put down the book, and met the other's eyes with a steady
+directness.
+
+"Your memory is good, sir."
+
+"Less than thirty years--h'm, not so very long!"
+
+"Looking back--no.  You are my father's brother, Ian Belward?"
+
+"Your uncle Ian."
+
+There was a kind of quizzical loftiness in Ian Belward's manner.
+
+"Well, Uncle Ian, my father asked me to say that he hoped you would get
+as much out of life as he had, and that you would leave it as honest."
+
+"Thank you.  That is very like Robert.  He loved making little speeches.
+It is a pity we did not pull together; but I was hasty, and he was rash.
+He had a foolish career, and you are the result.  My mother has told me
+the story--his and yours."
+
+He sat down, ran his fingers through his grey-brown hair, and looking
+into a mirror, adjusted the bow of his tie, and flipped the flying ends.
+The kind of man was new to Gaston: self-indulgent, intelligent, heavily
+nourished, nonchalant, with a coarse kind of handsomeness.  He felt that
+here was a man of the world, equipped mentally cap-a-pie, as keen as
+cruel.  Reading that in the light of the past, he was ready.
+
+"And yet his rashness will hurt you longer than your haste hurt him."
+
+The artist took the hint bravely.
+
+"That you will have the estate, and I the title, eh?  Well, that looks
+likely just now; but I doubt it all the same.  You'll mess the thing one
+way or another."
+
+He turned from the contemplation of himself, and eyed Gaston lazily.
+Suddenly he started.
+
+"Begad," he said, "where did you get it?"  He rose.
+
+Gaston understood that he saw the resemblance to Sir Gaston Belward.
+
+"Before you were, I am.  I am nearer the real stuff."
+
+The other measured his words insolently:
+
+"But the Pocahontas soils the stream--that's plain."
+
+A moment after Gaston was beside the prostrate body of his uncle,
+feeling his heart.
+
+"Good God," he said, "I didn't think I hit so hard!"  He felt the pulse,
+looked at the livid face, then caught open the waistcoat and put his ear
+to the chest.  He did it all coolly, though swiftly--he was' born for
+action and incident.  And during that moment of suspense he thought of a
+hundred things, chiefly that, for the sake of the family--the family!
+--he must not go to trial.  There were easier ways.
+
+But presently he found that the heart beat.
+
+"Good!  good!" he said, undid the collar, got some water, and rang a
+bell.  Falby came.  Gaston ordered some brandy, and asked for Sir
+William.  After the brandy had been given, consciousness returned.
+Gaston lifted him up.
+
+He presently swallowed more brandy, and while yet his head was at
+Gaston's shoulder, said:
+
+"You are a hard hitter.  But you've certainly lost the game now."
+
+Here he made an effort, and with Gaston's assistance got to his feet.
+At that moment Falby entered to say that Sir William was not in the
+house.  With a wave of the hand Gaston dismissed him.  Deathly pale,
+his uncle lifted his eyebrows at the graceful gesture.
+
+"You do it fairly, nephew," he said ironically yet faintly,--"fairly in
+such little things; but a gentleman, your uncle, your elder, with fists
+--that smacks of low company!"
+
+Gaston made a frank reply as he smothered his pride
+
+"I am sorry for the blow, sir; but was the fault all mine?"
+
+"The fault?  Is that the question?  Faults and manners are not the same.
+At bottom you lack in manners; and that will ruin you at last."
+
+"You slighted my mother!"
+
+"Oh, no!  and if I had, you should not have seen it."
+
+"I am not used to swallow insults.  It is your way, sir.  I know your
+dealings with my father."
+
+"A little more brandy, please.  But your father had manners, after all.
+You are as rash as he; and in essential matters clownish--which he was
+not."
+
+Gaston was well in hand now, cooler even than his uncle.
+
+"Perhaps you will sum up your criticism now, sir, to save future
+explanation; and then accept my apology."
+
+"To apologise for what no gentleman pardons or does, or acknowledges
+openly when done--H'm!  Were it not well to pause in time, and go back
+to your wild North?  Why so difficult a saddle--Tartarin after Napoleon?
+Think--Tartarin's end!"
+
+Gaston deprecated with a gesture: "Can I do anything for you, sir?"
+
+His uncle now stood up, but swayed a little, and winced from sudden pain.
+A wave of malice crossed his face.
+
+"It's a pity we are relatives, with France so near," he said, "for I see
+you love fighting."  After an instant he added, with a carelessness as
+much assumed as natural: "You may ring the bell, and tell Falby to come
+to my room.  And because I am to appear at the flare-up to-night--all in
+honour of the prodigal's son--this matter is between us, and we meet as
+loving relatives.  You understand my motives, Gaston Robert Belward?"
+
+"Thoroughly."
+
+Gaston rang the bell, and went to open the door for his uncle to pass
+out.  Ian Belward buttoned his close-fitting coat, cast a glance in the
+mirror, and then eyed Gaston's fine figure and well-cut clothes.  In the
+presence of his nephew, there grew the envy of a man who knew that youth
+was passing while every hot instinct and passion remained.  For his age
+he was impossibly young.  Well past fifty he looked thirty-five, no more.
+His luxurious soul loathed the approach of age.  Unlike many men of
+indulgent natures, he loved youth for the sake of his art, and he had
+sacrificed upon that altar more than most men-sacrificed others.  His
+cruelty was not as that of the roughs of Seven Dials or Belleville, but
+it was pitiless.  He admitted to those who asked him why and wherefore
+when his selfishness became brutality, that everything had to give way
+for his work.  His painting of Ariadne represented the misery of two
+women's lives.  And of such was his kingdom of Art.
+
+As he now looked at Gaston he was again struck with the resemblance to
+the portrait in the dining-room, with his foreign out-of-the-way air:
+something that should be seen beneath the flowing wigs of the Stuart
+period.  He had long wanted to do a statue of the ill-fated Monmouth,
+and another greater than that.  Here was the very man: with a proud,
+daring, homeless look, a splendid body, and a kind of cavalier conceit.
+It was significant of him, of his attitude towards himself where his work
+was concerned, that he suddenly turned and shut the door again, telling
+Falby, who appeared, to go to his room; and then said:
+
+"You are my debtor, Cadet--I shall call you that: you shall have a chance
+of paying."
+
+"How?"
+
+In a few concise words he explained, scanning the other's face eagerly.
+
+Gaston showed nothing.  He had passed the apogee of irritation.
+
+"A model?" he questioned drily.
+
+"Well, if you put it that way.  'Portrait' sounds better.  It shall be
+Gaston Belward, gentleman; but we will call it in public, 'Monmouth the
+Trespasser.'"
+
+Gaston did not wince.  He had taken all the revenge he needed.  The idea
+rather pleased him than other wise.  He had instincts about art, and he
+liked pictures; statuary, poetry, romance; but he had no standards.  He
+was keen also to see the life of the artist, to touch that aristocracy
+more distinguished by mind than manners.
+
+"If that gives 'clearance,' yes.  And your debt to me?"
+
+"I owe you nothing.  You find your own meaning in my words.  I was
+railing, you were serious.  Do not be serious.  Assume it sometimes,
+if you will; be amusing mostly.  So, you will let me paint you--on your
+own horse, eh?"
+
+"That is asking much.  Where?"
+
+"Well, a sketch here this afternoon, while the thing is hot--if this
+damned headache stops!  Then at my studio in London in the spring, or"
+--here he laughed--"in Paris.  I am modest, you see."
+
+"As you will."
+
+Gaston had had a desire for Paris, and this seemed to give a cue for
+going.  He had tested London nearly all round.  He had yet to be
+presented at St. James's, and elected a member of the Trafalgar Club.
+Certainly he had not visited the Tower, Windsor Castle, and the Zoo;
+but that would only disqualify him in the eyes of a colonial.
+
+His uncle's face flushed slightly.  He had not expected such good
+fortune.  He felt that he could do anything with this romantic figure.
+He would do two pictures: Monmouth, and an ancient subject--that legend
+of the ancient city of Ys, on the coast of Brittany.  He had had it in
+his mind for years.  He came back and sat down, keen, eager.
+
+"I've a big subject brewing," he said; "better than the Monmouth, though
+it is good enough as I shall handle it.  It shall be royal, melancholy,
+devilish: a splendid bastard with creation against him; the best, most
+fascinating subject in English history.  The son dead on against the
+father--and the uncle!"
+
+He ceased for a minute, fashioning the picture in his mind; his face
+pale, but alive with interest, which his enthusiasm made into dignity.
+Then he went on:
+
+"But the other: when the king takes up the woman--his mistress--and rides
+into the sea with her on his horse, to save the town!  By Heaven, with
+you to sit, it's my chance!  You've got it all there in you--the immense
+manner.  You, a nineteenth century gentleman, to do this game of Ridley
+Court, and paddle round the Row?  Not you!  You're clever, and you're
+crafty, and you've a way with you.  But you'll come a cropper at this as
+sure as I shall paint two big pictures--if you'll stand to your word."
+
+"We need not discuss my position here.  I am in my proper place--in my
+father's home.  But for the paintings and Paris, as you please."
+
+"That is sensible--Paris is sensible; for you ought to see it right, and
+I'll show you what half the world never see, and wouldn't appreciate if
+they did.  You've got that old, barbaric taste, romance, and you'll find
+your metier in Paris."
+
+Gaston now knew the most interesting side of his uncle's character--which
+few people ever saw, and they mostly women who came to wish they had
+never felt the force of that occasional enthusiasm.  He had been in the
+National Gallery several times, and over and over again he had visited
+the picture places in Bond Street as he passed; but he wanted to get
+behind art life, to dig out the heart of it.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+He was strong enough to admit ignorance
+Not to show surprise at anything
+Truth waits long, but whips hard
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER, BY PARKER, V1 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #6219 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6219)