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+Project Gutenberg's From One Generation to Another, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: From One Generation to Another
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8805]
+This file was first posted on August 10, 2003
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
+
+
+By Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I. THE SEED
+
+    II. SUBURBAN
+
+   III. MERCURY
+
+    IV. FREIGHTED
+
+     V. AFTER NINETEEN YEARS
+
+    VI. FOR HIS COUNTRY
+
+   VII. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
+
+  VIII. RELIEVED
+
+    IX. RE-CAST
+
+     X. A LAST THROW
+
+    XI. A CARPET KNIGHT
+
+   XII. BAD NEWS
+
+  XIII. ON THIN ICE
+
+   XIV. THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION
+
+    XV. THE TOUCH OF NATURE
+
+   XVI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY
+
+  XVII. TWO MOTIVES
+
+ XVIII. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA
+
+   XIX. AT HURLINGHAM
+
+    XX. IN A SIDE PATH
+
+   XXI. ALONE
+
+  XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS
+
+ XXIII. AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW
+
+  XXIV. A STAB IN THE DARK
+
+   XXV. FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH
+
+  XXVI. BALANCING ACCOUNTS
+
+ XXVII. AT BAY
+
+XXVIII. THE LAST LINK
+
+  XXIX. SETTLED
+
+
+
+
+FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SEED
+
+Il faut se garder des premiers mouvements, parce qu'ils sont presque
+toujours honnétes.
+
+
+“Dearest Anna,--I see from the newspaper before me of March 13, that I am
+reported dead. Before attempting to investigate the origin of this
+mistake, I hasten to write to you, knowing, dearest, what a shock this
+must have been to you. It is true that I was in the Makar Akool affair,
+and was slightly wounded--a mere scratch in the arm--but nothing more. I
+have not written to you for some months past because I have been turning
+something over in my mind. Anna, dearest, there is no chance of my being
+in a position to marry for some years yet, and I feel it incumbent upon
+me ...”
+
+This letter, half written, lay on a camp table before a keen-faced young
+officer. He ceased writing suddenly, and, leaping to his feet, walked to
+the door of his bungalow, which was open to the four winds of heaven. In
+doing this he passed from the range of the lazy punkah flapping
+somnolently over table and bed. It may have been this sudden change to
+hotter air that caused him to raise his hand to his forehead, which was
+high and strangely rounded.
+
+“By George!” he said, “suppose I do it that way!”
+
+He walked rapidly backwards and forwards with the lithe actions of a man
+of steel, a light weight, of medium height, keen and quick as a monkey.
+His black eyes flitted from one object to another with such restlessness
+that it was impossible to say whether he comprehended what he saw or
+merely looked at things from force of habit.
+
+He was dark of hair with a sallow complexion and a long drooping
+nose--the nose of Semitic ancestors. A small mouth, and the chin
+running almost to a point. A face full of interest, devoid of distinct
+vice--heartless. Here was a man with a future before him--a man whose
+vices were all negative, whose virtues depended entirely upon expediency.
+Here was a man who could be almost anything he liked; as some men can. If
+expediency prompted he could be a very depôt of virtues; for his body,
+with all the warmer failings of that part of humanity, was in perfect
+control. On the other hand, there was no love of good for goodness'
+sake--no conscience behind the subtle eyes. All this, and more, was
+written in the face of Seymour Michael, whose handwriting had dried some
+moments before on the half-filled sheet of letter-paper.
+
+He returned and stood at the table with slightly bowed legs--not the
+result of much riding, although he wore top-boots and breeches as if of
+daily habit--but a racial defect handed down like the nasal brand from
+remote progenitors. He looked at letter and newspaper as they lay side by
+side--not with the doubtfulness of warfare between conscience and
+temptation, but with a calculating thoughtfulness. He was not wondering
+what was best to do, but what the most expedient.
+
+Those were troublesome times in India, for the Mutiny was not quelled,
+and each mail took home a list of killed, slowly compiled from news that
+dribbled in from outlying stations, forts, and towns. Those were days
+when men's lives were made or lost in the Eastern Empire, for it seems to
+be in Fortune's balance that great danger weighs against great gain. No
+large wealth has ever been acquired without proportionate risk of life or
+happiness. To the tame and timorous city clerk comes small remuneration
+and a nameless grave, while to more adventurous spirits larger stakes
+bring vaster rewards. The clerk, pure and simple, has, within these later
+years, found his way to India, sitting side by side with the Baboo, and
+consequently it is as easy to make a fortune in London as in Calcutta and
+Madras. The clerk has carried his sordid civilisation and his love of
+personal safety with him, sapping at the glorious uncertainty from which
+the earlier pioneers of a hardier commerce wrested quick-founded
+fortunes.
+
+Seymour Michael had come into all this with the red coat of a soldier and
+the keen, ambitious heart of a Jew, at the very nick of time. He saw at
+once the enormous possibilities hidden in the near future for a man who
+took this country at its proper value, handling what he secured with
+coolness and foresight. He know that he only possessed one thing to risk,
+namely, his life; and true to his racial instinct, he valued this very
+highly, looking for an extortionate usury on his stake.
+
+At this moment he was like Aladdin in the cave of jewels: he did not know
+which way to turn, which treasure to seize first.
+
+Anna--dearest Anna--to whom this half-completed letter was addressed, was
+a person for whom he had not the slightest affection. At the outset of
+his career he had paused, decided in haste, and had resolved to make use
+of the passing opportunity. Anna Hethbridge had therefore been annexed
+_en passant_. In person she was youthful and rather handsome--her fortune
+was extremely handsome. So Seymour Michael went out to India engaged to
+be married to this girl who was unfortunate enough to love him.
+
+In India two things happened. Firstly, Seymour Michael met a second young
+lady with a fortune twice as large as that of Miss Anna Hethbridge.
+Secondly, the Mutiny broke out, and India lay before the ambitious young
+officer a very land of Ophir. He promptly decided to cut the first string
+of his bow. Anna Hethbridge was now useless--nay, more, she was a
+burthen. Hence the letter which lay half-written on the table of his
+bungalow.
+
+He paused before this wrong to a blameless woman, and contemplated the
+perpetration of a greater. He weighed pro and con--carefully withholding
+from the balance the casting weight of Right against Wrong. Then he took
+up the letter and slowly tore it to small pieces. He had decided to leave
+the report of his death uncontradicted. It was morally certain that five
+weeks before that day Anna Hethbridge had read the news in the printed
+column lying before him. He resolved to leave her in ignorance of its
+falseness. Seymour Michael was not, however, a selfish man. All that he
+did at this time, and later in life--all the lives that he ruined--the
+hearts he broke--the men he sacrificed were not offered upon the altar of
+Self (though the distinction may appear subtle), but sold to his career.
+Career was this man's god. He wanted to be great, and rich, and powerful;
+and yet he was conscious of having no definite use for greatness, or
+riches, or power when acquired.
+
+Here again was the taint of the blood that ran in his veins. The curse
+had reached him--in addition to the long, sad nose and the bandy legs.
+The sense of enjoyment was never to be his. The greed of gain--gain of
+any sort--filled his heart, and _ennui_ secretly nestling in his soul
+said: “Thou shalt possess, but not enjoy.”
+
+He was conscious of this voice, but did not understand it then. He only
+burned to possess; looking to possession to provide enjoyment. In this he
+was not quite alone--with him in his error are all men and women. And so
+we talk of Love coming after marriage--and so women marry without Love,
+believing that it will follow. God help them! That which comes afterwards
+is not even the ghost of Love, it is only Custom. This was the spirit of
+Seymour Michael. He had already acquired one or two objects of a vague
+ambition; and, possessing them, had only learnt to be accustomed to
+them--not to value them.
+
+There was no elation in the thought that he was freed from the
+encumbrance of Anna Hethbridge by a chance misprint. Neither was there
+hesitation in turning accident ruthlessly to his own advantage. There was
+only a steady pressing forward--an unceasing, unwearying attention to his
+own gain.
+
+In those days news travelled slowly, and the personal had not yet taken
+precedence in journalism. In the anxiety for the State, the Individual
+was apt to be overlooked. Seymour Michael counted on six months of
+oblivion at the least--he hoped for more, but with characteristic caution
+acted always in anticipation of the worst.
+
+He had scarcely thrown the newspaper aside when a comrade entered the
+bungalow carrying another copy of the same journal.
+
+“I say, Michael,” exclaimed this man, “do you see that you're put in
+among the killed?”
+
+“Yes,” replied Seymour Michael, without haste, without hesitation. “I
+have already written to contradict it. Not that there is any one to care
+whether I am dead or alive. But it might do me harm in Leadenhall Street.
+I can't afford to be dead even for a week when so much promotion is going
+forward.”
+
+This was artistic. Most of us forget to preserve our own characteristics
+in diverging from the truth. The tangled web is only woven when _first_
+we practise to deceive. Later on the facility is greater, the handling
+superior, and the web runs smooth and straight. Seymour Michael was
+apparently no novice at this sort of thing. He was even at that moment
+making mental note of the fact that up-country mails were in a state of
+disorganisation, and a letter which was never written may easily be made
+to have miscarried later on.
+
+But even he could not foresee everything--no one can. Not even the
+righteous man, much less the liar.
+
+“Do you mean to say,” pursued the newcomer, “that you are not writing to
+your family about it--only to the Company?”
+
+“That is all.”
+
+“Rum chap you are, Michael,” said the other, lighting a cheroot.
+“Heartless beggar I take it.”
+
+“Not at all. The simple fact is that I have no one to write to. I only
+possess one or two distant relatives, and they would probably be rather
+sorry than otherwise to have the report contradicted.”
+
+The younger officer--a mere boy--with a beardless, happy face, walked to
+the door of the bungalow.
+
+“Of course there is always this in it,” he said carelessly. “By the time
+the contradiction reaches home the news may be true.”
+
+Seymour Michael laughed lamely. A joke of this description made him feel
+rather sick, for a Jew never makes a soldier or a sailor, and they are
+rarely found in those positions unless great gain is holden up.
+
+With this pleasantry the youth departed, leaving Michael to write the
+letter which he had advised as written. As he drew the writing materials
+towards him he cursed his brother officer quietly and politely for a
+meddling young fool. He wrote a formal letter to the Company--the
+old East India Company which administered an empire with ledger and
+daybook--calling their attention to the mistake in the newspaper, and
+begging them not to trouble to give the matter publicity, as he had
+already advised his friends.
+
+This done, he proceeded with the ordinary routine of his daily life. Such
+men as this are case-hardened. They carry with them a conscience like the
+floor of an Augean stable, but they know how to walk thereon. Moreover,
+he was one of those who assign to their dealings with men quite a
+different code of morals to that reserved for women. His was the code of
+“not being found out.” Men are more suspicious--they find out sooner:
+_ergo_ the morals to be observed _vis à vis_ to them are of a stricter
+order. Railway companies and women are by many looked upon as fair game
+for deception. Consciences tender in many other respects have a subtle
+contempt for these two exceptions. Many a so-called honest man travels
+gaily in a first-class carriage with a second-class ticket, and lies to a
+woman at each end of his journey without so much as casting a shadow upon
+his conscience.
+
+Seymour Michael carried this code to the farthest limit of safety. All
+through the months that followed he went about his business with a clear
+conscience and a heart slightly relieved by the removal of Anna
+Hethbridge from his path to prosperity. He served his country and the
+Company with a keenness of foresight and a soldierly exposure of the
+lives of others which did not fail, in the course of time, to bring him
+in a harvest of honours and rewards. Neither did he put his candle under
+a bushel, but set it in the very highest candlestick available.
+
+But, as has been previously stated, he could not foresee everything. He
+did not know, for instance, that his cheroot-smoking subaltern--a
+youth as guileless as he was indiscreet, for the two usually go
+together--possessed a memory like a dry-plate. He did not foresee that a
+passing conversation in an Indian bungalow might perchance photograph
+itself on the somewhat sparsely covered tablets of a man's mind, to be
+reproduced at the wrong moment with a result lying twenty-six years ahead
+in the womb of time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SUBURBAN
+
+_L'amour fait tout excuser, mais il faut être bien sûr qu'il y a de i
+amour._
+
+
+Miss Anna Hethbridge loved Seymour Michael with as great a love as her
+nature could compass.
+
+When the news of his death reached her, at the profusely laden
+breakfast-table at Jaggery House, Clapham Common, her first feeling was
+one of scornful anger towards a Providence which could be so careless.
+Life had always been prosperous for her, in a bourgeois, solidly wealthy
+way, entirely suited to her turn of mind. She had always had servants at
+her beck and call, whom she could abuse illogically and treat with an
+utter inconsequence inherent in her nature. She had been the spoilt child
+of a ponderous, thick-skinned father and a very suburban mother, who, out
+of her unexpected prosperity, could deny her daughter nothing.
+
+Three months after the receipt of the news Anna Hethbridge went down into
+Hertfordshire, where, in the course of a visit at Stagholme Rectory, she
+met and became engaged to the Squire of Stagholme, James Edward Agar.
+
+A month later she became the second wife of the simple-minded old country
+gentleman. It would be hard to say what motives prompted her to this
+apparently heartless action. Some women are heartless--we know that. But
+Anna Hethbridge was too impulsive, too excitable, and too much given to
+pleasure to be devoid of heart. Behind her action there must have been
+some strange, illogical, feminine motive, for there was a deliberation in
+every move--one of those motives which are quite beyond the masculine
+comprehension. One notices that when a woman takes action in this
+incomprehensible way her lady friends are never surprised; they seem to
+have some subtle sympathy with her. It is only the men who look puzzled,
+as if the ground beneath their feet were unstable. Therefore there must
+be some influence at work, probably the same influence, under different
+forms, which urges women to those strange, inconsequent actions by which
+their lives are rendered miserable. Men have not found it out yet.
+
+Anna Hethbridge was at this time twenty-four years of age, rather pretty,
+with a vivacity of manner which only seemed frivolous to the more
+thoughtful of her acquaintances. The idea of her marrying old Squire Agar
+within six months of the untimely death of her clever lover, Seymour
+Michael, seemed so preposterous that her hostess, good, sentimental Mrs.
+Glynde, never dreamt of such a possibility until, in the form of a fact,
+it was confided to her by Miss Hethbridge, one afternoon soon after her
+arrival at the rectory.
+
+“Confound it, Maria,” exclaimed the Rector testily, when the information
+was passed on to him later in the evening. “Why could you not have
+foreseen such an absurd event?”
+
+Poor Mrs. Glynde looked distressed. She was a thin little woman, with an
+unsteady head, physically and morally speaking; full of kindness of
+heart, sentimentality, high-flown principles, and other bygone ladylike
+commodities. Her small, eager face, of a ruddy and weather-worn
+complexion--as if she had, at some early period of her existence, been
+left out all night in an east wind--was puckered up with a sense of her
+own negligence.
+
+She tried hard, poor little woman, to take a deep and Christian interest
+in the welfare of her neighbours; but all the while she was conscious of
+failure. She knew that even at that moment, when she was sitting in her
+small arm-chair with clasped, guilty hands, her whole heart and soul were
+absorbed beyond retrieval in a small bundle of white flannel and pink
+humanity in a cradle upstairs.
+
+The Rector had dropped his weekly review upon his knees and was staring
+at her angrily.
+
+“I really can't tell,” he continued, “what you can have been thinking
+about to let such a ridiculous thing come to pass. What are you thinking
+about now?”
+
+“Well, dear,” confessed the little woman shamedly, “I was thinking of
+Baby--of Dora.”
+
+“Thought so,” he snapped, with a little laugh, returning to his paper
+with a keen interest. But he did not seem to be following the printed
+lines.
+
+“I suppose she was all right when you were up just now!” he said
+carelessly after a moment, and without lowering his paper.
+
+“Yes, dear,” the lady replied. “She was asleep.”
+
+And this young mother of forty smiled softly to herself as if at some
+recollection.
+
+This happiness had come late, as happiness must for us to value it fully,
+and Mrs. Glynde's somewhat old-fashioned Christianity was of that school
+which seeks to depreciate by hook or by crook the enjoyment of those
+sparse goods that the gods send us. The stone in her path at this time
+was an exaggerated sense of her own unworthiness--a matter which she
+might safely have left to another and wiser judgment.
+
+Presently the Rector laid aside the newspaper, and rose slowly from his
+chair.
+
+“Are you going upstairs, dear?” inquired his tactless spouse.
+
+“Um--er. Yes! I am just going up to get--a pocket-handkerchief.”
+
+Mrs. Glynde said nothing; but as she knew the creak of every board
+in the room overhead she became aware shortly afterwards that the
+Rector had either diverged slightly from the path of which he was the
+ordained finger-post, or that he had suddenly taken to keeping his
+pocket-handkerchiefs in the far corner of the room where the cradle
+stood.
+
+It will be readily understood that in a household ruled, as this rectory
+was, by a sleepy little morsel of humanity, Anna Hethbridge was in no way
+hindered in the furtherance of her own personal purposes--one might
+almost add periodical purposes, for she never held to one for long.
+
+The Squire was very lonely. His boy Jem, aged four, would certainly be
+the happier for a mother's care. Above all, Miss Hethbridge seemed to
+want the marriage, and so it came about.
+
+If Anna Hethbridge had been asked at that time why she wanted it, she
+would probably have told an untruth. She was rather given, by the way, to
+telling untruths. Had she, in fact, given a reason at all, she would
+perforce have left the straight path, because she had no reason in her
+mind.
+
+The real motive was probably a love of excitement; and Miss Anna
+Hethbridge is not the only woman, by many thousands, who has married for
+that same reason.
+
+The wedding was celebrated quietly at the Clapham parish church. A
+humiliating day for the stiff-necked old Squire of Stagholme; for he was
+introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought up
+Stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter “h.”
+ The bourgeois ostentation and would-be high-toned graciousness of the
+ladies, jarred on his nerves as harshly as did the personal appearance of
+their respective husbands.
+
+Altogether it was just possible that Squire Agar began to realise the
+extent of his own foolishness before the effervescence had left the
+champagne that flowed freely to the health of bride and bride-groom.
+
+The event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the course
+of a few days a copy of the _Times_ containing the insertion started
+eastward to meet Seymour Michael on his way home from India.
+
+Anna Agar came home to Stagholme to begin her new life; for which
+peaceful groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she
+had breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth. This atmosphere is
+terribly impregnated with the microbe of bourgeoisie.
+
+But the novelty of the great house had that all-absorbing fascination
+exercised over shallow minds by anything that is new. At first she
+maintained excitedly that there was no life like a country life--no
+centre more suited for such an ideal existence than Stagholme. For a time
+she forgot Seymour Michael; but love is eminently deceitful. It lies in a
+comatose silence for many years and then suddenly springs to life.
+Sometimes the long period of rest has strengthened it--sometimes the time
+has been passed in a chrysalis stage from which Love awakens to find
+itself changed into Hatred.
+
+Little Jem, her stepson--sturdy, fair, silent--was her first failure.
+
+“Come to your mother, dear,” she said, with unguarded enthusiasm one
+afternoon when there were callers in the room.
+
+“I cannot go to my mother,” replied the youthful James, with his mouth
+full of cake, “because she is dead.”
+
+There was an uncompromising matter-of-factness about this simple
+statement, made in all good faith and honesty, which warned the second
+Mrs. Agar to press the matter no farther just then. But she was so intent
+upon exhibiting to her neighbours the maternal affection which she
+persuaded herself that she felt for the plain-spoken heir to Stagholme,
+that she took him to task afterwards. With great care and an utter lack
+of logic she devoted some hours to the instruction of Jem in the somewhat
+crooked ways of her social creed.
+
+“And when,” she added, “I tell you to come to your mother, you must come
+and kiss me.”
+
+This last item she further impressed upon him by the gift of an orange,
+and then asked him if he understood.
+
+After scratching his head meditatively for some moments, he looked into
+her comely face with very steady blue eyes and said:
+
+“I don't think so--not quite.”
+
+“Then,” replied his stepmother angrily, “you are a very stupid little
+boy--and you must go up to the nursery at once.”
+
+This puzzled Jem still more, and he walked upstairs reflecting deeply.
+Years afterwards, when he was a man, the sunlight falling on the wall
+through the skylight over the staircase had the power of bringing back
+that moment to him--a moment when the world first began to open itself
+before him and to puzzle him.
+
+It happened that at that precise time when Mrs. Agar was endeavouring
+To teach her little stepson the usages of polite society, a small,
+keen-faced man was standing near the table in the smoking-room in the
+Hotel Wagstaff at Suez. He was idly turning over the newspapers lying
+there in the hopes of finding something comparatively recent in date.
+
+Presently he came upon a copy of the _Times_, with which he repaired to
+one of the long chairs on that verandah overlooking the desert which some
+of us know only too well.
+
+After idly conning the general news he glanced at the births, deaths, and
+marriages, and there he read of the recent ceremony in the parish church
+of Clapham.
+
+“D----n it!” he muttered, with that racial love of an expletive which
+makes a Jew a profane man.
+
+In addition to a strong feeling of wounded vanity that Anna Hethbridge
+should so soon have forgotten him, Seymour Michael was distinctly
+disappointed that this heiress should no longer be within his reach. The
+truth was, that the young lady in India had transferred her valuable
+affections, with all solid appurtenances attaching thereto, to a young
+officer in the Navy who had been invalided at Calcutta.
+
+To men who intend, despite all and at any cost, to get on in the world
+the first failures are usually very bitter. It is only those who press
+stolidly forward without expecting much, who profit from a check. Seymour
+Michael was just the man to fail by being too acute, too unscrupulous. He
+was usually in such a hurry to help himself that he never allowed another
+the very fruitful pleasure of giving.
+
+In India his zeal had led him into one or two small mistakes to which he
+himself attached no importance, but they were remembered against him. He
+had cruelly thrown aside Anna Hethbridge when a richer marriage offered
+itself. Now he had missed both bone and reflection, and he sat with a
+smile on his dark face, looking out over the dreary desert.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MERCURY
+
+_The evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come._
+
+
+James Edward Makerstone Agar was not at the age of five the material
+from which the heroes of children's stories are evolved. He was not a
+good boy, nor a clean, nor particularly interesting. He was, however,
+honest--and that is _déjà quelque chose_. He was as far removed from the
+“misunderstood” type as could be wished; and he was quite happy.
+
+Before his stepmother had laid aside the title and glory of a bride, he
+had, by his deadly honesty, made her understand that even a child of five
+requires what she could not give him--namely, logic. Had she been clever
+enough to reason logically she might have undermined the little fellow's
+innate honesty of character, despite the fact that he lacked a child's
+chief incentive to learn from its mother, namely, the sympathy of
+heredity.
+
+Gradually and steadily Mrs. Agar “gave him up,” to make use of her own
+expression. She was one of those women who either fear or despise that
+which they do not understand. She could scarcely fear Jem, so she
+persuaded herself that he was stupid and unattractive. At this time there
+came another influence to militate against any excess of love between Jem
+and his stepmother. It came to her, for he was ignorant of it. And this
+was the knowledge that before long the little heir's undisputed reign in
+the nursery would come to an end.
+
+With a suburban horror of being a long distance from the chemist, Mrs.
+Agar protested that she could not possibly remain at Stagholme during the
+ensuing winter, and that her child must be born at Clapham. It was vain
+to argue or reason, and at last the Squire was forced to swallow this
+second humiliation, which was quite beyond his wife's comprehension. He
+only dared to hint that all the Agars had seen the light at Stagholme
+since time immemorial; but feelings of this description found no
+answering note in her practical and essentially commonplace mind. So Mr.
+And Mrs. Agar emigrated to Clapham, leaving Jem behind them.
+
+It happened that a few days after their arrival at the stately house
+overlooking the Common, a young officer called to see Mr. Hethbridge,
+who was at that time one of the Directors of the East India Company.
+Now it furthermore happened that this young soldier was he whom we last
+saw smoking a cheroot in the doorway of Seymour Michael's bungalow in
+India. As chance would have it, he called in the evening, and the
+estimable Mr. Hethbridge, warmed into an unusual hospitality by the
+fumes of his own port wine, pressed him to pass into the drawing-room and
+take a dish of tea with the ladies. The subaltern accepted, chiefly
+because it was the Director's self that pressed, and presently followed
+that short-winded gentleman into the drawing-room--thereby shaping lives
+yet uncreated--thereby unconsciously helping to work out a chain of
+events leading ultimately to an end which no man could foresee.
+
+“Yes,” he said, in reply to Mrs. Agar's question, “I am just back from
+India.”
+
+It happened that these two were left almost beyond earshot at the far end
+of the room. The old people, among whom was Mrs. Agar's husband, were
+settling down to a game of whist. Mrs. Agar was leaning forward with
+considerable interest. This was not a mere passing curiosity to hear
+further of a country and of an event which have not lost their glamour
+yet.
+
+The very word “India” had stirred something up within her heart of the
+presence of which she had been unsuspicious. She was as one who, having a
+closed room in her life, and thinking the door thereof securely barred,
+suddenly finds herself within that room.
+
+“Whereabouts in India were you?” she asked, with a sudden dryness of the
+lips.
+
+“Oh--I was north of Delhi.”
+
+“North of Delhi--oh, yes.”
+
+She moistened her lips, with a strange, sidelong glance round the room,
+as if she were preparing to jump from a height.
+
+“And--and I suppose you saw a great deal of the Mutiny?”
+
+Even then--after many months, in a drawing-room in peaceful Clapham--the
+young man's eyes hardened.
+
+“Yes, I saw a good deal,” he answered.
+
+Mrs. Agar leant back in her chair, drawing her handkerchief through her
+fingers with jerky, unnatural movements.
+
+“And did you lose many friends?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” answered the young fellow, “in one way and another.”
+
+“How? What do you mean?” She had a way of leaning forward and listening
+when spoken to, which passed very well for sympathy.
+
+“Well, a time like the Mutiny brings out all that is in a man, you
+know. And some men had less in them than one might have thought, while
+others--quiet-going fellows--seemed to wake up.”
+
+“Yes,” she said; “I see.”
+
+“One or two,” he continued, “betrayed themselves. They showed that there
+was that in them which no one had suspected. I lost one friend that way.”
+
+“How?”
+
+It was marvellous how the merest details of India interested this woman,
+who, like most of us, did not know herself. Moreover, she never learnt to
+do so thoroughly, thereby being spared the horrid pain of knowing oneself
+too late.
+
+“I made a mistake,” he explained. “I thought he was a gentleman and a
+brave man. I found that he was a coward and a cad.”
+
+Something urged her to go on with her pointless questions--the same
+inevitable Fate which, according to the Italians, “stands at the end of
+everything,” and which had prompted Mr. Hethbridge to bring this stranger
+into the drawing-room.
+
+“But how did you find it out?”
+
+“Oh, I did not do it all at once. I first began by a mere trifle. It
+happened that this man was reported dead in the Gazette--I showed it to
+him myself.”
+
+The young officer, who was not accustomed to ladies' society, and felt
+rather nervous at his own loquaciousness, kept his eyes fixed on his
+boots, and did not notice the deathly pallor of Mrs. Agar's face, nor the
+convulsive clutch of her fingers on the velvet arm of the chair.
+
+She turned right round, with a peculiar movement of the throat as if
+swallowing something, and made sure that the whist-players were
+interested in their game. In that position she heard the next words.
+
+“He did not even take the trouble to write home to his friends. I thought
+it rather strange at the time, and told him so. Later on I heard the
+truth of it. I heard him tell some one else that he was engaged to a girl
+in England, and he thought it a very good way of getting out of the
+engagement.”
+
+“You heard him tell that, with your own ears?”
+
+“Yes; and he seemed to think it a good joke.”
+
+Mrs. Agar was shuffling about in the chair as if in pain.
+
+Then she asked again in a strangely metallic voice, “Did he say that
+he--did not love her?”
+
+“Yes, the cad!”
+
+“He cannot have been a nice man,” she said, with that evenness of
+enunciation which betrays that the tongue is speaking without the direct
+aid of the mind.
+
+The young officer rose with a glance towards the clock.
+
+“No,” he said, “he was not. He did other things afterwards which made it
+quite impossible for a man with any self-respect whatever to look upon
+him as a friend.”
+
+“Did he,” asked Mrs. Agar, “say anything about her personal appearance?
+Was it that?”
+
+The subaltern looked puzzled. It was as well for Mrs. Agar that he was
+not a man of deep experience. Instead of being puzzled he might suddenly
+have seen clear.
+
+“No--no,” he replied. “It was not that. It was merely a matter of
+expediency, I believe.”
+
+But, womanlike, Mrs. Agar did not believe him. She sat while he made his
+farewell speech over the whist-table, but as he went to the door she rose
+and followed him slowly.
+
+In the hall she watched the servant help him on with his coat--her
+features twisted into a stereotype smile of polite leave-taking.
+
+“By the way,” she said, with a sickening little laugh, “what was the
+man's name--your friend, whom you lost?”
+
+“Michael--Seymour Michael.”
+
+“Ah! Good-night--good-night.”
+
+Then she turned and walked slowly upstairs.
+
+We are apt to read indifferently of human ills, whether of the flesh or
+the soul. We are apt to overlook the fact that what we read may apply to
+us. Some of us even bear upon us the mark of hereditary disease and
+refuse to believe in it. Then suddenly comes a day when a pain makes
+itself felt--a dumb, little creeping pain, which may mean nothing. We sit
+down and, so to speak, feel ourselves. Before long all doubt goes. We
+have it. The world darkens, and behold we are in the ranks of those upon
+whom we looked a little while back with a semi-indifferent pity.
+
+It was thus with Mrs. Agar. As some play with nature, so had she played
+with her own heart. She had heard of a consuming love which is near akin
+to hatred. She had read of passion which is stronger than the strongest
+worldliness. She had smilingly doubted the existence of the broken heart
+pure and simple. And now she sat in her own room, numbly, blindly feeling
+herself, like one to whom the first warning of an internal deadly disease
+has been manifested. She was conscious of something within herself which
+she could not get at, over which she had no control.
+
+With quivering lips she sat and wondered what she could do to hurt this
+man. She did not only want to inflict bodily pain, but that other
+gnawing pain of the heart which she herself was now feeling for the first
+time. And through it all there ran the one thought that he must die. It
+was strange that hate should first teach her that love is a living,
+undeniable reality in the lives of all of us. She had never realised
+this before. Her bringing-up, her surroundings, all her teaching had
+been that money and a great house, and servants, and carriages were the
+good things of this life, the things to be sought after.
+
+She had been conscious of a vague admiration for Seymour Michael, and
+that was the full extent of her knowledge of herself. This admiration
+took the worldly form of a conviction that he was destined one day to be
+a great man, and she had a strongly developed, common-minded desire to be
+a great lady.
+
+There are some things in this life which to a moderate intelligence are
+quite unmistakable. Most of us, having left childhood behind, recognise
+at once an earthquake, and death. Love is as unmistakable when it really
+comes. And Anna Agar, having suddenly learnt to hate Seymour Michael,
+knew that she had loved him with that one all-absorbing love which comes
+but once to a woman.
+
+She was not a deep-thinking or a subtle woman. Her actions were usually
+based upon impulse, and her one all-absorbing desire now was to see him,
+to speak to him face to face. In this indefinite longing there was
+probably a vulgar love of vituperation--the taint of her low-born
+ancestors.
+
+She wanted to shout and shriek her hatred into the evil face of the man
+who had tricked her. She wanted to frighten him, to threaten, to lash him
+with her tongue. For she was conscious all the while of her own inability
+to harm him. Without defining the thought, her common-sense taught her
+one lamentable, unjust fact; namely, that unless a woman is loved by the
+object of her wrath she can hardly make him suffer.
+
+She rose at last, and, lighting the candles on the writing-table, she
+proceeded to write to Seymour Michael. Even in this epistle the natural
+cunning of her nature appeared.
+
+“DEAR SEYMOUR “--she wrote on a sheet of paper bearing the address of the
+house in which she was staying, the roof under which Seymour Michael had
+first paid his careless tribute to her wealth--“I learnt by accident this
+evening that your regiment has returned to England. If you are in London,
+I hope you will make time to come and see me. Come to-morrow evening at
+four, if that time is convenient to you. ANNA.”
+
+She purposely signed her Christian name only, purposely refrained from
+vouchsafing any personal news. She did not know how much or how little he
+might know.
+
+Ringing for her maid, she sent the letter to the post, addressed to
+Seymour Michael, at the Service Club, of which she knew him to be a
+member. Then she went to bed to toss and turn all night. The doctors,
+good, portly Clapham practitioners, had warned her in the usual way to
+spare herself all bodily fatigue and mental worry for the sake of the
+little one. It is so easy to urge each other to spare all mental worry,
+and so eminently useful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+FREIGHTED
+
+I shall remember while the light lives yet,
+And in the darkness I shall not forget.
+
+
+Seymour Michael was no coward where hard words and no hard knocks were to
+be exchanged. His faith in his own keenness of intellect and
+unscrupulousness of tongue was unbounded.
+
+He smiled when he read Anna Agar's letter over a dainty breakfast at his
+club the next morning. The cunning of it was obvious to his cunning
+comprehension, and the fact of her suppressing her newly-acquired surname
+only convinced him that she knew but little about himself.
+
+That same evening at four o'clock he presented himself at the lordly
+hall-door of Mr. Hethbridge. Since first he had raised his hand to this
+knocker, fingering his letter of introduction to the East India director,
+Seymour Michael had learnt many things, but the knowledge was not yet his
+that indiscriminate untruths are apt to fly home to roost.
+
+Anna Agar had easily managed to send her mother out of the house; her
+husband spent his days as far from Clapham as circumstances would allow.
+She was seated on a sofa at the far end of the room when Seymour Michael
+was shown in, and the first thing that struck her was his diminutiveness.
+After the hearty country gentlemen who habitually carried mud into the
+Stagholme drawing-room, this small-limbed dapper soldier of fortune
+looked almost puny. But there is a depth in every woman's heart which is
+only to be reached by one man. Whatever betide them both, that one is
+different from the rest all through life.
+
+Neither of these two persons spoke until the servant had closed the door.
+Then, as is usual in such cases, the more indifferent spoke first.
+
+“Why did you never write to me?” said Seymour Michael, fixing his
+mournful glance on her face.
+
+“Because I thought you were dead.”
+
+“You never got my letter contradicting the report?”
+
+“No,” she answered, with so cheap a cunning that it deceived him.
+
+“And,” he went on, with the heartlessness of a small man, for large men
+respect woman with a deeper chivalry than every puny knight yet
+compassed, “and you did not trouble to inquire. You did not even give me
+six months' grace to cool in my grave.”
+
+“How did you send your letter?” she asked, with a suppressed excitement
+which he misread entirely.
+
+“By the usual route. I wrote off at once.”
+
+“Liar! liar! liar!” she shrieked.
+
+She had risen, and stood pointing an accusatory finger at him. Then
+suddenly the dramatic force of the situation seemed to fail, and she
+burst out laughing. For some seconds it seemed as if her laughter was
+getting beyond her control, but at last she checked it with a gurgle.
+
+The complete success of the trap which she had laid for him almost
+disappointed her. Few things are more disappointing than complete
+success. She hated him, and yet for the sake of the one gleam of good
+love that had flickered once in her essentially sordid heart, she had
+nourished a vague hope that he would clear himself--that at all events he
+would have the cleverness to see through her stratagem.
+
+“Liar!” she repeated. “In this room last night--not twenty-four hours
+ago--Mr. Wynderton told me all about it. He said that you told several
+men in his presence that you did not love me, and that your death
+reported in the papers was the best way of breaking off the engagement.”
+
+Seymour Michael's eyes never wavered. For once they were still, with
+that solemn depth of gaze which tells of the curse laid on a smitten,
+miserable race. It was strange that before honest men and women his
+glance wavered ever--he could never meet honest eyes; but looking at Anna
+Agar they were as steady as those of a true man.
+
+“Wynderton,” ho said, “the man whose promotion I stopped, by a report
+against him for looting.”
+
+When Nature makes a fool in the guise of a woman she turns out a finished
+work. Mrs. Agar's eyes actually lighted up. Seymour Michael saw; but he
+knew that he had no case. Nevertheless, in view of the Squire's advanced
+age (a fact of which he had made sure), he attempted to carry through a
+forlorn hope.
+
+“And you believe this man before you believe me?” said Michael. It is
+strange how often one hears the word “believe” on the lips of those whose
+veracity is doubtful.
+
+Now it happened that Mr. Hethbridge had spoken of Wynderton at breakfast
+that morning in terms which left no doubt as to the untruth of the
+statement just made in regard to him. But even this would have been
+passed over by the woman who had a natural tendency towards falsehood
+herself, had not Seymour Michael made a hideous mistake. A wiser man than
+any of us has said that there is a time for all things. Most distinctly
+defined is the time for making love. More men come to grief by making too
+much love than too little. Seymour Michael, being heartless, deemed
+erroneously that this was a propitious moment to essay the power which
+had once been his over this woman.
+
+He accompanied his reproachful speech with a tender glance, which in
+olden times had never failed to call forth an answering look of love in
+her eyes. Now, it suddenly aroused her to realise the extent of her
+hatred. In some subtle way it humiliated her; for she looked back into
+the past, and saw herself therein a dupe to this man.
+
+“No!” she cried, and her raised voice had a sudden twang in
+it--suggestive of the streets; of the People. “No--you needn't trouble to
+make soft eyes at me. I know you now--I know that what that man said was
+true. He called you a coward and a cad. You are worse! You are a Jew--a
+mean, lying Jew.”
+
+There are few greater trials to a man's dignity than vituperation from
+the lips of a woman. She walked towards him, clumsily, menacingly and
+raised her hand as if to strike him.
+
+Seymour Michael's brown face turned yellow beneath her blazing anger.
+
+“Sit down!” he commanded, “and don't make a fool of yourself.”
+
+He was mean enough to pay her back in her own coin--the paltry,
+loud-ringing coin which is all that a woman has.
+
+“I do not mean to wrangle,” he said coolly; “but I may as well tell you
+now that I never cared a jot for you. I was laughing at you in my sleeve
+all the time. I did not want you but your money. I concluded that the
+money would be too dear at the price, so I determined to throw you over.
+The way I chose to do it was as good as any other, because it saved me
+the trouble of writing to you.”
+
+Anna Agar had obeyed him. She was sitting down in a stiff-backed
+arm-chair, looking stupidly at the pattern of the carpet as if it were
+something new to her. Between physical pain and mental excitement she
+was beginning to wander. She was the sort of woman to lose control over
+her mind with a temperature of one hundred and one.
+
+Michael looked keenly at her. He had a racial terror of physical ailment.
+He saw that something was wrong, but his knowledge went no further. He
+had never seen a woman faint, so limited had been his experience of the
+sex.
+
+“Come,” he said consolingly, “it is all for the best. We made a mistake.
+In a few years we shall look back to this, and thank Heaven for saving us
+many years of unhappiness. We are not suited to each other, Anna. We
+never should have been happy.”
+
+It was characteristic of the man to be more afraid of a fainting fit than
+of a broken heart.
+
+He went to her side and stood, not daring to touch her, for fear of
+arousing another of those fits of passion in her which neither of them
+seemed to understand. At length she spoke in a singular monotonous tone
+which an experienced doctor would have recognised at once as the speech
+of a tongue unguided for the time being. She did not look up, but kept
+her eyes fixed on the carpet as if reading there.
+
+“Some day,” she said, “I will pay you back. Some day--some day. I do not
+know how, but I feel that you will be sorry you ever did this.”
+
+Twenty-five years afterwards these words came back to him in a flash.
+They passed through his brain--conglomerate--in a flash, in a hundredth
+part of the time required to speak them.
+
+Even at the time of hearing them, spoken in that voice which did not seem
+to belong to Anna Hethbridge at all, he turned pale. For all the hatred
+that burnt within her like a fire smouldered in the deliberate tones of
+her voice. Hatred and love can teach us more in a moment than the
+experience of a lifetime; for through either of them we see ourselves
+face to face. This hatred made Anna Agar in twenty-four hours, and the
+woman thus created went through a lifetime unchanged.
+
+Michael went towards the bell.
+
+“I am going to ring,” he said, “for your maid.”
+
+“Twice,” she muttered in the same vague way.
+
+He obeyed her, ringing twice.
+
+Presently the woman came.
+
+“Your mistress,” said Michael in a low voice to her at the door, “has
+been suddenly seized with faintness. I leave her to you.”
+
+Without looking round he passed through the doorway and out into his own
+self-seeking life. But Anna Agar's revenge began from that moment. To a
+man of his nature, in whose veins ran the taint of a semi-superstitious
+Oriental blood, there was a nameless terror in the hatred of a human
+being, however helpless. Surely the hell of the coward will be a twilight
+land of vague shadowy dangers ever approaching and receding.
+
+In such a land Seymour Michael moved for some months, until he returned
+to India; and there, in the daily round of a new life, he gradually
+learnt to shake off the past. The world is very large despite chance
+meetings. It is easy enough to find room for two even in the same county,
+with the exercise of a little care.
+
+Twenty-five years elapsed before these two met again, and then they only
+had time to exchange a glance. By that time the result of their own
+actions had passed beyond their control.
+
+Seymour Michael walked across the Common, which was in those days still
+wild and almost beautiful; and on the whole he was pleased with the
+result of this interview. He knew that it was destined to come sooner or
+later--he had known that all along; and it might have been worse. It is
+characteristic of an untruthful nature to be impervious to the shame of
+mere detection. In Eastern countries the liar detected smiles in one's
+face. Detection is to an Oriental no punishment; something more tangible
+is required to pierce his mental epidermis.
+
+Being quite incapable of a strong love this man was innocent of consuming
+hatred. He therefore vaguely wondered whether the day might come wherein
+he would once more lay siege to the affections of Anna Agar, a rich
+widow.
+
+Had he seen the face of the woman whom he had just left as it lay
+at that moment, hardly less pale than the pillow between the fluted
+mahogany pillars of a huge four-post bed, he would not have understood
+its meaning. He would never have divined that the dull gleam shining
+between her half-closed eyelids was simple hatred of himself, that the
+restless, twitching lips were whispering curses upon his head, that the
+half-stunned brain was struggling back to circulation and thought for
+the sole purpose of devising hurt to him.
+
+Seymour Michael, ignorant of all this, went peaceably back to his club,
+where he dressed, dined, and proceeded to pass the evening at a theatre.
+
+That night, while he was displaying his diamond studs in the stalls of
+Drury Lane Theatre, was born into the world--long before his time--a
+child, Arthur Agar, destined to walk the smoothest paths of life,
+literally in silk attire; for he grew up to love such things.
+
+But the ways of Nature are strange. She is very quiet; patient as death
+itself. She holds her hand for years--sometimes for a generation--but she
+strikes at last.
+
+She is more cruel than man, or even than woman which is saying much, She
+is the best friend we have, and the worst foe, for she never forgives an
+outrage.
+
+Nature raised her hand over this puny, whimpering child, Arthur Agar. She
+never forgot a mother's selfish passion. She forgets nothing. When first
+he opened his little pink lids upon the world he looked round with a
+scared wonder in a pair of colourless blue-grey eyes; and that vague look
+of expectation never left his eyes in later life. It almost seemed as if
+the infant orbs could see ahead into the future--could discern the
+lowering hand of outraged Nature.
+
+This hand was suspended over the ill-fated, poorly-endowed head for
+years, then Nature struck--hard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+AFTER NINETEEN YEARS
+
+A sharp judgment shall be to them that be in high places.
+
+
+“Yes, dear. I have great news for you to take back to your mother. Jem
+has got his commission--in a Goorkha regiment!”
+
+The lady who spoke leant back in her chair, half turning her head, but
+not looking entirely round in the direction of the only other occupant of
+the room--a girl of nineteen.
+
+“In a Goorkha regiment, Aunt Anna?” repeated the girl; “what is that? It
+sounds as if he would have to black his face and wear a turban. It
+suggests curry and gymkhanas (whatever they may be) and pyjamas and
+bananas and other pickles. A Goorkha regiment.”
+
+There was a faint drop in her tone--on the last three words, which to
+very keen ears might have signified reproach, but the hearer was not
+keen--merely cunning, which is quite a different matter.
+
+“Yes, dear. They tell me that these Indian regiments are much the best
+for a young man who is likely to get on. There are so many more chances
+of promotions and--er--er--distinction.”
+
+The girl was standing by the open window, and she turned her head without
+otherwise moving, looking at the speaker with a pair of exceedingly
+discriminating eyes.
+
+“Bosh, my dear aunt!” she whispered confidingly to the blind-cord.
+
+“Yes,” pursued the lady, with the eager credulity of her first mother,
+ever ready to believe the last speaker when belief is convenient--“Yes.
+Sister Cecilia tells me that all the great men began in the Indian
+Service.”
+
+“Oh! I wonder where they finished. Royal Academy--finishing Academy.
+Regimentals and a gold frame--leaning heroically on a mild-looking cannon
+with battles in the background.”
+
+“Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Agar, who only half understood Dora Glynde at
+all times; “it is such a good thing for Jem. Such a splendid opportunity,
+you know!”
+
+“Yes,” echoed the girl, with a twist of her humorous lips. “Splendid!”
+
+She had turned again, and was looking out of the window across a soft old
+lawn where two Wellingtonians towered side by side like sentries. Without
+glancing in the direction of her companion she knew the expression of
+Mrs. Agar's face, the direction of her gaze; the very thought in her
+shallow mind. She knew that Mrs. Agar was sitting with her arms on the
+little davenport, gazing rapturously at the photograph of an insipid
+young man with a silk-faced smoking jacket; with clean linen, clean
+countenance, clean hands, immaculate hair, and a general air of being too
+weak to be mean.
+
+“Sister Cecilia,” went on the elder lady, “seems to know all about it.”
+
+It is useless to attempt concealment of the fact that at this juncture
+Dora Glynde made a face--an honest schoolgirl behind-your-back
+Face--indicative of supreme scorn for some person or persons unspecified.
+
+Hers was a countenance which lent itself admirably to the purpose, with
+lips full of humour, and capable, as such lips are, of expressing a great
+and wonderful tenderness. The face, _du reste_, was that of a healthy,
+fair-skinned English girl, liable to honest change from pale to pink,
+according to the dictates of an arbitrary climate. Her eyes were of a
+dark grey-blue, straightforward and steady, with a shadow of thought in
+them which made wise people respect her presence. She was not painfully
+beautiful, like the heroine of a novel--nor abnormally plain, like the
+antitype who has found her way into fiction, and there (alone) brings all
+hearts to her feet.
+
+“Is Jem glad?” she asked cheerfully. “Is he thirsting for gore and
+glory?”
+
+“Oh, delighted! Arthur will be so pleased too. Dear boy, _he_ is so
+interested in soldiers, but of course he could not go into the army! He
+is too delicate--besides, the life is rough, and the risks are very
+great.”
+
+Mrs. Agar was speaking with her head slightly inclined to one side, and
+she never raised her adoring eyes from the photograph of the insipid
+young man. Had she done so she would have seen a look of patient, if
+comic, resignation come over the face of her youthful companion at the
+mention of her son's name.
+
+“I will tell mother,” said Dora Glynde, purposely ignoring Arthur Agar,
+whose name was always dragged sooner or later into every conversation.
+“Fancy Jem in a helmet, or a turban, with his face blacked! All the same,
+if I were a man I should be a soldier. When does he go--to join his
+regiment?”
+
+“Oh, almost at once.”
+
+The girl winced, quietly, between herself and the blind-cord.
+
+“And in the meantime,” she said lightly, “I suppose he is fully engaged
+in buying swords and guns and bomb-shells, or whatever the Goorkhas use
+in warfare.”
+
+“He is coming home to-morrow for Sunday,” replied Jem Agar's stepmother
+absently. She was thinking of her own son, and therefore did not hear the
+quick sigh which was almost a gasp; did not note the sudden light in the
+girl's eyes.
+
+Dora Glynde was rather a solitary-minded young person. The only child of
+elderly parents, she had never learnt in the nursery to indulge in the
+indiscretions of confiding girlhood. She had the good fortune to be
+without a bosom-friend who related her most sacred secrets to other bosom
+friends and so on, as is the way of maidens. From her father she had
+inherited a discriminating mind and a most admirable habit of reserve.
+She was quite happy when alone, which, according to La Bruyère, is a
+great safeguard against all evil.
+
+She wanted to be alone now, and therefore passed out of the open window
+with a non-committing “Good-bye, Aunt Anna!”
+
+“Good-bye, dear,” replied the lady, awaking suddenly from a reverie. But
+by the time she had turned round in her chair, the girl was gone.
+
+Dora crossed the lawn, passing between the sentinel pines and crossing
+the moat by the narrow footbridge. She climbed the railing with all the
+ease of nineteen years and struck a bee-line across the park. She never
+raised her eyes from the ground, never paused in her swinging gait, until
+she reached the brown hush of the beechwood which divided the Rectory
+garden from the southern extremity of the park.
+
+Having climbed the railing again she sat on a mossy mound at the foot of
+a huge beech tree. Her manner of doing so subtly indicated that she did
+not only know the spot, but was in the habit of sitting there, possibly
+to think. A youthful privilege of doubtful value, for, as we get busier
+in life we have to do the thinking as we go along.
+
+“Oh!” she muttered, “oh, how awful!”
+
+A new expression had come over her face. She looked older, and all the
+vivacity had suddenly left her lips.
+
+While she was still sitting there the crisp sound of footsteps on the
+fallen leaves approached through the wood. Looking up she saw her father,
+following the winding path through the spinney towards his home.
+
+A grave man was the Rector of Stagholme in his declining years;
+hopelessly, wisely pessimistic, with sudden youthful returns of interest
+in matters literary and theological. As he came he read a book.
+
+Instantly the expression of Dora's face changed. She rose and went
+towards him, smiling contemptuously towards his lowering gravity. He
+looked up, gave a little grunt of recognition, and closed his book.
+
+“Father,” she said, “I've just heard a piece of news.”
+
+“Bad, I suppose.”
+
+She laughed.
+
+“Well,” she answered, “I suppose we shall survive it. Jem has got his
+commission, in a Goorkha regiment.”
+
+“Goorkha regiment? Nonsense!”
+
+“Aunt Anna has just told me so. She is very pleased, and seems prepared
+for the--best.”
+
+“That is the custom of fools, to be prepared for the best--only.”
+
+The Rector gave a despairing shrug of the shoulders. He was a man who
+allowed himself, after the manner of the ancients with whom he lived
+mentally, a few gestures. He smoked a very expressive cigarette. He was
+smoking one at this moment, and threw it away half consumed. This divine
+was possessed of a rooted conviction that the Almighty made a great
+mistake whenever He invested temporal power in a woman, whom he was
+ungallantly inclined to classify under a celebrated dictum of Mr.
+Carlyle's respecting the population of these happy Isles, who, truth to
+tell, care not one jot what Mr. Carlyle may think of them.
+
+The Reverend Thomas Glynde and his daughter walked all the way home
+without exchanging another word. In the Rectory drawing-room they found
+Mrs. Glynde, small, nervous, worried. She had evidently devoted
+considerable thought and attention to the preservation of the hot
+buttered toast. Poor humble little soul, she was quite content to
+minister to the bodily requirements of her spouse, having long been
+convinced of the inferiority of her own sex in every respect except a
+certain limited knowledge of housekeeping matters.
+
+She was vaguely conscious of inferiority to Dora from a literary point of
+view, and talked with abject humility to her own daughter of all things
+appertaining to books. But on all other points connected with the child
+of her old age this quiet little woman was absolute mistress. Years
+before the Rector had made a great mistake; he had, as the plain-spoken
+East Burgen doctor put it, made an ass of himself on the matter of a
+childish illness, thereby imperilling Dora's half-fledged little life.
+Mrs. Glynde had then, like a diminutive tigress, stood up boldly before
+her awesome lord and master, saying such things to him that the
+remembrance of them made her catch her breath even now. From that time
+forth the Rector was allowed to hold forth on symptoms to his heart's
+content, to take down from his library shelf a stout misguided book of
+medical short-cuts to the grave, but nothing more.
+
+He never referred to the asinine business, and in the course of
+years he forgave the doctor (having in view the fact that that
+practitioner had been carried away by a right and proper sense of the
+importance of the case), but he tacitly acknowledged that in the practice
+of home-administered medical assistance, his knowledge was second to a
+mother's instinct.
+
+“It appears,” he said sharply, while he was stirring his tea, “that Jem
+Agar has got his commission in a Goorkha regiment.”
+
+Now Mrs. Glynde knew more about the organisation of the heavenly bands
+than of the administration of the Indian army. She did not know whether
+to rejoice or lament, and having been sharply pulled up--any time during
+the last twenty years--for doing one or the other in the wrong place, she
+meekly took soundings.
+
+“What is that, dear?” she inquired.
+
+“The Goorkhas are native Indian soldiers,” explained the Rector. “Very
+good fellows, no doubt. They get all the hard knocks in small frontier
+wars and none of the half-pence. What the woman can have been thinking
+of, I don't know.”
+
+Mrs. Glynde was anxiously glancing towards Dora, who was nicking the nose
+of a sportive kitten with the tassel of the tea-cosy.
+
+“And will he go to India?” she asked, with laudable mental grovellings in
+the mire of her own ignorance.
+
+“Course he will.”
+
+“And,” added Dora cheerfully, “he will come home covered with glory and
+medals, with a weakness for strong pickles and hot language--I mean hot
+pickles and strong language.”
+
+“But,” said Mrs. Glynde rather breathlessly, “are they never stationed in
+England?”
+
+“No--never,” replied her husband snappishly.
+
+Mrs. Glynde had a pink patch on each cheek--precisely on the spot whore
+two such patches had appeared years ago when the doctor spoke so
+strongly. Those patches were maternal, and only appeared when Dora's
+affairs, spiritual or temporal, were concerned.
+
+“I don't know,” put in Dora again, “but I have a sort of lurking
+conviction that Jem will have to wear a turban and red morocco boots.”
+
+“But,” pursued Mrs. Glynde, with that courage which cometh with a red
+patch on either cheek, “I always thought these Indian regiments were
+meant for people who are badly off.”
+
+The Rector gave a short laugh.
+
+“You are not so very far wrong, my dear,” he admitted. “And no one can
+say that Jem is badly off. He will be very rich some day.”
+
+The Rector assumed an air of superior discretion, to which he usually
+treated his women-folk when he thought fit to consider that they were
+touching on matters beyond their jurisdiction.
+
+“Some more tea, please, mother,” put in Dora appropriately. “Excuse my
+appetite. I suppose it is the autumn air.”
+
+There was a short silence, during which Mrs. Glynde sought to propitiate
+her angered spouse with sodden toast and a second brew of tea.
+
+“I always said,” observed the Rector at last, “that your cousin was a
+fool.”
+
+And in some indefinite way Mrs. Glynde felt that she was once more
+responsible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FOR HIS COUNTRY
+
+Shall I forget on this side of the grave?
+I promise nothing; you must wait and see.
+
+
+From the train arriving at East Burgen station at eight o'clock that same
+evening there alighted a youth who seemed suddenly to have taken manhood
+upon his shoulders. He stood on the platform and pointed out to a porter,
+who called him Master James, a large Gladstone bag and a new sword-case.
+
+Although he could have carried the luggage under one arm and the porter
+under the other, he carefully refrained from offering to convey anything
+except his own walking-stick. Such is the force of education. This boy
+had been brought up to expect service. He was to be served all his life,
+and so the sword-case had to be left to the porter whom he envied.
+
+During the journey down--between the farthest-removed stations--the sword
+had flashed more than once in the dim light of the carriage lamp. Ah!
+those first swords! Not Toledo nor Damascus can produce their equal in
+after years.
+
+The porter, honest father of two private soldiers of the line himself,
+saw it all--at once. He carried the sword-case with an exaggerated
+reverence and forbore from remark just then. Afterwards, beneath the
+station-lamp, he looked at the shilling--the first of its kind from that
+quarter--with a pathetic, meaning smile.
+
+It was Saturday night. The streets of East Burgen were rather crowded,
+and Jem Agar--with elbows well in and the whip at the regulation angle
+across old Lasher's face, who could not help squinting at the pendant
+thong--shouted to the country-folk in a new voice of mighty deep
+register.
+
+He carried his boyish head stiffly, and had for ever discarded a
+turn-down collar. At first he kept old Lasher at a respectful distance,
+asking in a somewhat curt and business-like manner after the stables.
+Then gradually, as they bowled along the country road in the familiar
+hush of an April evening, he thawed, and proceeded to vouchsafe to that
+steady coachman a series of very interesting details of military matters
+in general and the Indian army in particular.
+
+“Well, I'm sure, Mas--sir,” opined Mr. Lasher at length; “if there's any
+one as has got into his right rut, so to speak, in this world, it's you.
+I always said you was a born soldier.”
+
+“Ah--then you've heard that I've got my commission?” inquired Jem airily,
+as if he had had many such in bygone years.
+
+“Oh yes, sir! Miss Dora it was that told me.”
+
+Somehow this caused a little silence.
+
+Truth to tell, Dora had lost her rank as the most beautiful and
+accomplished maiden in Christendom. This situation was at that moment
+occupied by a young person hight Evelina Louisa Barmond, sister to Billy
+Barmond of the Hundred and second, a veteran fellow-soldier and comrade
+who had jumped five feet six at the Sandhurst sports a year before. Miss
+Evelina Louisa was twenty-four, five years Dora's senior, and only three
+years and two months older than Jem Agar himself. He had spoken to her
+twice, and thought about her in the intervals allowed by such weighty
+matters as uniform and the new sword, which, however, required almost
+constant consideration at that time.
+
+“Well,” said Jem, with exaggerated nonchalance, “I am afraid I should
+never be fit for anything else.”
+
+Whereat Lasher laughed and touched his hat. He made it a rule to salute a
+joke in that manner, either from a general respect for humour, or looking
+at it in the light of a mental gratuity offered by his betters.
+
+“There's one thing you can do, Master Jem, sir--leastwise, which you can
+do as well as any man in the British army,” he said, with pardonable
+pride, “and that is sit a 'orse.”
+
+“Thanks to you, Lasher,” Jem was kind enough to say with a flourish of
+his whip.
+
+The dignity was now ebbing fast, and by the time that the clever little
+cob swung round the gate-post into the avenue of Stagholme, Jem and
+Lasher were fully re-established on the old familiar footing.
+
+There was a bright moon overhead, and at the end of the avenue beyond the
+dip where the lake gleamed mysteriously, the gables and solid towers of
+Stagholme stood peacefully confessed.
+
+Jem Agar was firmly convinced that England only contained one Stagholme,
+and perhaps he was right. Six miles from the nearest station, the great
+house stands self-sufficient, self-contained. The moat, now dry and
+cultivated, is still traceable, and requires bridging in two places.
+Surrounded by vast park-like meadowland, where huge trees guard against
+cutting wind or prying modern journalistic instinct, the house is only
+approached by a private road.
+
+Inside the gates of this road there is something ancient and feudal in
+the very scent of the air. The tones of the big bell striking the hour
+over the wide portico die away over the lands that still belong to
+Stagholme, despite the vicissitudes through which all ancient families
+run.
+
+Jem, however, whose childhood and youth had been passed amidst companions
+with names as good as his, had learnt long ago to keep his pride to
+himself. He was Jem Agar, and the family name seemed somehow to belong
+exclusively to his father still, although that thorough old sportsman had
+lain for three years and more beneath the quiet turf of the little
+churchyard within his own park gates.
+
+As he pulled up at the door this was thrown open, and within its frame of
+light he saw the gracious form of his stepmother waiting to welcome him.
+Behind her, in the shadow, and amidst the decoration of staghorns,
+ancient pike and hanger, loomed a tall dark figure startlingly in keeping
+with the semi-monastic architecture of the house. This was Sister
+Cecilia. She was always thus--behind Mrs. Agar, with clasped hands and a
+vaguely approving smile, as if Mrs. Agar conferred a benefit upon
+suffering humanity by the mere act of existing.
+
+A slightly bored expression came into Jem's patient eyes. It was not that
+he had very much in common with his stepmother, although he had an honest
+affection for her; but he instinctively disliked Sister Cecilia and all
+her works. These latter were of the class termed “good.” That is to say,
+this lady, the spinster daughter of a former rector in the neighbourhood,
+considered that the earthly livery of a marvellous black bonnet which was
+almost a cap, and quite hideous, justified a shameless interference in
+the most intimate affairs of her neighbours, rich and poor.
+
+Under the cover of charity she committed a thousand social sins. She
+constituted herself mother-confessor to all who were weak enough to
+confide in her or seek her advice, and in soul she was the most arrant
+time-server who ever flattered a rich woman.
+
+Jem distrusted her soft and “holy” ways, more especially her speech,
+which had the lofty condescension of the saved towards the damned in
+prospective. In his calmly commanding way he had, months before,
+forbidden Dora Glynde to kiss Sister Cecilia, because that ostentatiously
+virtuous person was in the habit of kissing the maids when she met them;
+and he maintained that this Christian practice, if very estimable
+theoretically, was socially an insult either to the mistress or the maid.
+
+In view of the important changes in his own life which were about to
+supervene, that is to say, firstly, his departure for India, and
+secondly, his coming of age before he could hope to return from that land
+of promise, he had counted on a quiet evening with his mother. Moreover,
+he was vaguely conscious of the fact that a right-minded person would
+have carefully abstained from accepting the most pressing invitation to
+form a third that evening.
+
+In view of this Jem Agar had recourse to the last refuge of the simple.
+He retired within himself, and, so to speak, shut the door. He had dined
+with these women before, and knew that the conversation would follow its
+usual mazy course through a forest of cross-questions upon all subjects,
+and notably upon those intimate matters which were essentially his own
+business.
+
+Sister Cecilia, good mistaken soul that she was, tried her best. She was
+lively in a Sunday-school-tea style. She was by turns tender and warlike
+as occasion seemed to demand; but no scrap or tittle of personal
+information did she extract from Jem, stiffly on guard behind his high
+collar. Mrs. Agar was excited and failed utterly to follow the wiser
+footsteps of her bosom friends. She talked such arrant nonsense about
+India, the Goorkhas, and matters military, that more than once Jem
+glanced at the imperturbable servants with misgiving.
+
+The next day was Sunday, and after morning service Jem eagerly accepted
+an invitation to have supper at the Rectory after evening church. Sister
+Cecilia was staying from Saturday till Monday, which alone was sufficient
+reason for this young soldier to pass his last evening in Stagholme under
+another than his own historic roof. With her in the house he knew that
+the chances of serious conversation were small; for she encouraged such
+topics as the possibility of sending fresh eggs packed in lime to the
+Goorkhas of his prospective half-company. So Jem retired within himself,
+and finally left England without having said many things which should
+have been said between stepmother and son.
+
+At the Rectory he found a very different atmosphere--that air of cheerful
+intellectuality which comes from the presence of cultivated men and
+women.
+
+The Rector held strong views on the rare virtue of minding one's own
+business, and in loyalty to such, deemed it right to refrain from
+mentioning his opinion as to the wisdom of selecting a native branch of
+the military service for the heir to Stagholme.
+
+The supper passed pleasantly enough in the discussion of general topics
+all bordering on the great question they had at heart. They were like
+people seeking for each other in the dark around the edge of a pit--the
+pit being India. Dora, and Dora alone, laughed and treated matters
+lightly. Mrs. Glynde blundered several times, and stepping backwards over
+an abyss of years, called the new soldier “darling” more than once. Twice
+she required helping out by Dora, and on the second occasion something
+was said which Jem remembered afterwards with a stolid British memory.
+
+“Jem,” said the girl, buttering a biscuit with a light hand, “you should
+write a diary. All great men write diaries which their friends publish
+afterwards.”
+
+“I do not think,” replied Jem, with that contempt for the pen which the
+possession of a new sword ever justifies, “that writing a diary is much
+in my line.”
+
+“Ah, you can never tell till you try. Of course it would not be published
+straight off. Some literary person would be hired to cross the t's and
+dot the i's.”
+
+There was a little pause. Dora glanced at Jem Agar, and something made
+him say:
+
+“All right. I'll try.”
+
+“Who knows?” said the Rector, with a smile of indulgent affection. “There
+may be great literary capacity lying dormant in Jem. The worst of a diary
+is that one may come to look at it in after years, when one finds a very
+different story has been written from what one intended to write.”
+
+“Oh,” said Dora, lightly skipping over the chasm of gravity, “that is
+Providence. We must blame Providence for these little _contretemps_. Some
+one must be blamed, and Providence obviously does not mind.”
+
+Jem laughed--somewhat lamely; but still it was a laugh. Supper was
+despatched somehow--as last meals are. Some of us never forget the
+flavour of those cups of tea gulped down in the gorgeous steamer-saloon
+while the stewards get the hand luggage on board. It was a late meal on
+Sunday evening at the Rectory, and the servants soon followed their
+betters into the drawing-room for prayers.
+
+Then the Rector lighted his last cigarette, and Mrs. Glynde began to show
+symptoms of a patch of pink in either cheek.
+
+At last Jem rose--awkwardly--in the midst of a sally from Dora, who
+seemed afraid to stop speaking.
+
+“Must be going,” he said; and he shook hands with the Rector.
+
+Mrs. Glynde, with nervous deliberation, kissed him and squeezed his hand
+jerkily.
+
+“Dora--will open the door for you,” she said, with an apprehensive glance
+towards her husband, who, however, showed no inclination to move from his
+chair.
+
+Dora not only opened the door, but left it open, and walked with him
+across the lawn towards the stile. When they reached it there was a
+little pause. He vaulted over and she quietly followed--without his
+proffered assistance.
+
+Then at last Jem spoke.
+
+“You don't seem to care!” he said gruffly--with his new voice.
+
+“Oh, _don't!”_ she whispered imploringly.
+
+And they walked on beneath the murmuring trees where the yellow moonlight
+stole in and out between the trunks. It was not cheerful. For when Nature
+joins her sadness to the sad libretto of life she usually breaks a heart
+or two. Fortunately for us we mostly act our tragedies in the wrong
+scenery--the scenery that was painted for a comedy.
+
+“I don't understand it,” said the girl at length.
+
+“I suppose it is in order to save money for Arthur.”
+
+“If I don't, go,” replied Jem, “it will be a question of letting
+Stagholme.”
+
+Dora knew of the ancient horror of such a necessity, handed down from one
+Agar to another, like a family tradition. Moreover, women seem to respect
+men who have some simple creed and hold to it simply. Are they not one of
+our creeds themselves, though by seeking for rights instead of contenting
+themselves with privileges, some of them try to make atheists of us?
+
+“So,” she said nevertheless, “you are being sacrificed to Arthur!”
+
+He answered nothing, but he had forgotten for ever Miss Evelina Louisa
+Barmond.
+
+“When do you go?” asked Dora suddenly, with something in her voice which
+no one had ever heard before. She was startled at it herself.
+
+He waited until the soft old church bell finished striking ten, then he
+answered:
+
+“To-morrow!”
+
+They had reached the farthest limit of the wood and stood at the park
+railing.
+
+“Then--,” she paused, and seemed to collect herself as if for a leap;
+“then good-bye, Jem!”
+
+He took the outstretched hand; his large grasp seemed to swallow it up.
+
+“Good-bye!” he said.
+
+He climbed the rail without agility, paused for a moment, and the
+moonlight happened to gleam on his face through the gently waving
+branches as he looked down at her in dumb distress.
+
+Then he turned and walked away across the shimmering grass.
+
+A few minutes later Dora re-entered the drawing room. Her father and
+mother were seated close together, closer than she had seen them for
+years. Mrs. Glynde was pale, with two scarlet patches.
+
+Dora collected her belongings, preparatory to going to bed.
+
+“Jem,” she said quietly, “is absurdly proud of his new honours. It
+affects his chin, which has gone up exactly one inch.”
+
+Then she went to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
+
+The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people.
+
+
+“Here--hi!”
+
+As no one replied to this summons either, by voice or approach, the young
+man subsided into occupied silence.
+
+He was a very large young man, with a fair moustache which looked almost
+flaxen against the deep tan of his face. This last, like the rest of him,
+was ludicrously typical of that race which has wandered farther than the
+Jews, and has hitherto managed, like them, to retain a few of its
+characteristics. The Anglo-Saxonism of this youth was almost aggressive.
+It lurked in the neat droop of moustache, which was devoid of that untidy
+suggestion of a beer-mug characterising the labial adornment of a
+northern flaxen nation of which we wot. It shone calmly in the glance of
+a pair of reflectively deep blue eyes--it threw itself at one from the
+pockets of an old tweed jacket worn in conjunction with regulation
+top-boots and khaki breeches.
+
+Moreover, it gave birth to a quiet sense of being as good as any one
+else, and possibly better, which sat without conceit on his brow.
+
+It would seem that he really did not want to be answered just then, for
+he did not raise a voice accustomed to dominate the clatter of horses'
+feet, nor did he pass any comment on the carelessness or criminal absence
+of some person or persons unknown.
+
+He merely took up his pen again, and proceeded to handle that mighty
+weapon with an awkwardness suggestive of a greater skill with another
+instrument only less powerful. He was seated on two reversed buckets,
+pyramidally balanced, at a small table which had the air of wide
+capabilities in some other sphere of usefulness. There was a weird
+cunning in the legs of this table indicative of subtle change into a
+camp-bed or possibly a canoe.
+
+The writing materials consisted of a vaseline bottle (fourpenny size)
+full of ink, and two weary pieces of blotting-paper. The paper upon which
+he was writing had a travelled and somewhat jaundiced air, the penholder
+was of gold. In the furniture of the tent, as in the canvas thereof,
+there was that mournful suggestion of better days which is held to be a
+virtue in furnished apartments. But over all there hovered that sense of
+well-scrubbed cleanliness which comes from the touch of a native military
+servant. An indulgence in this habit of rubbing and scrubbing was indeed
+accountable for much dilapidation; for that silent little Ghoorka man,
+Ben Abdi, had rubbed and scrubbed many things not intended by an
+ingenious camp-furnisher for such treatment. James Edward Makerstone Agar
+was engaged in the compilation of a diary, which volume there is reason
+to believe is still preserved in a woman's jewel drawer.
+
+It has not run through any editions--indeed, no compositor's finger has
+up to this time defiled its pages. This, in fact, was one of those
+literary works, ground slowly out from the millstones of the brain, of
+which the style fails to please the taste of the present day. To catch
+the fancy of a slang-loving and thoughtless generation the writer must
+throw off his works. This is an age of “throwing off,” and it is to be
+presumed that future ages will throw the result away. One must be
+brilliant, shallow, slightly unpleasant and very unwholesome, to acquire
+nowadays that best of all literary reputations which leaveth a balance at
+one's bank.
+
+J.E.M. Agar--or “Jem” as his friends call him to his face and his
+servants behind his back--Jem Sahib to wit--was no Pepys. His literary
+style was disjointed, heavy, and occasionally illiterate. This last
+peculiarity, by the way, is of no consequence nowadays, but it is
+mentioned here for ulterior motives. In the pages of this little
+black-bound volume there were no scintillating thoughts scribbled there
+with suspicious neatness of diction, such as one finds in the diaries of
+great men who, it would seem, are not above post-mortem vanity. The diary
+was a chronicle of solid facts--Jem being essentially solid and a man of
+the very plainest facts.
+
+Speaking as an impartial critic, one would incline to the opinion that
+Agar devoted too much thought to his work--in strong contrast, perhaps,
+to the literary tendency of his day. He nibbled the leisure end of his
+penholder too much, and allowed the business extremity thereof to dry in
+inky conglomeration. The result was a distinct sense of labour in the
+style of the work. After having called in vain, perhaps for assistance,
+the scribe returned to the contemplation of his latest effort. The book
+was one of Letts's diaries, three days in a page, which are in themselves
+fatal to a finished style of literature. There is always too much to say
+or too little. One's thoughts never fit the rhomboid apportioned by Mr.
+Letts for their accommodation. Great men who have thoughts when the diary
+is handy do not, of course, patronise Letts, because he could not be
+expected to know when there would be a sunset likely to stir up poetic
+reflections, or a moonrise comparable with the cold light cast by some
+unsympathetic young woman's eyes upon the poet's life.
+
+For such men, however, as Agar, Mr. Letts is a guardian angel. The space
+is there, and facts must be forthcoming to fill it. Agar was, and is
+still--thank Heaven--a conscientious man. He had promised to keep this
+diary and keep it he did. And surely he hath his reward--remembering the
+jewel drawer.
+
+At the moment under consideration he was filling in yesterday's rhomboid,
+and paused at the conclusion of the following remarks:
+
+“_Seven_ A.M. Turned out, and shot a Ghilzai. Saw him sneaking up the
+valley. Long shot--should put it down at a hundred and seventy-five
+yards. Hit him in the stom--abd--chest. Looked like rain until two
+o'clock. Then cleared up. Walter caught a mongoose and brought him in
+with much triumph. He got conceited afterwards and slept on my bed till
+kicked off by Ben Abdi. I see it's Sunday. Church four hundred odd miles
+away.”
+
+This, my masters, is not the stuff to quote _in extenso_, and yet in its
+day this diary was cried over--before it was put away in the jewel
+drawer. Truly women are strange--one can never tell how a thing will
+present itself to them. Honest Jem Agar, nibbling his penholder and
+jerking these lucid observations out of his military brain by mere force
+of discipline, never suspected the heart that was in it all--that minute
+particle of himself that lay in the blot in the corner carefully absorbed
+by the exhausted blotting-paper.
+
+“Sunday, egad!” he muttered, leaning his arms on the cunning table, and
+gazing out across the pine-clad valley that lay below him in a deep blue
+haze.
+
+He stared into the haze, and there he saw those whom he called “his
+people” walking across a neat English park toward a peaceful little
+English church. To them came presently a young person; a young person
+clad in pink cotton, who walked with a certain demure sureness of tread,
+as if she knew her own mind and other things besides. Her path came into
+the park from the left, and among the trees into which it disappeared
+behind her there stood the red chimneys of a long low house.
+
+Suddenly these visions vanished before something more tangible in the
+haze of the valley. This was the flutter of a dirty white rag which
+seemed to come and go among the fir trees.
+
+Jem Agar rose from his temporary seat and walked to the door of the
+tent--exactly two strides. A rifle lay against the canvas, and this he
+took up, slowly cocking it without taking his eyes from the belt of fir
+trees across the valley.
+
+Presently he threw the rifle up and fired instantaneously. He had been
+musketry instructor in his time and held views upon quick firing. The
+smoke rose lazily in the ambient air, and he saw a figure all fluttering
+rags and flying turban running down the slope away from him. At the same
+moment there was a crashing volley, followed by two straggling reports.
+The figure stopped, seemed to hesitate, and then slowly subsided into the
+grass.
+
+Agar put his head out of the tent and saw half a company of Goorkhas,
+keen little sportsmen all standing in line at the edge of the plateau,
+reloading.
+
+This was the force at the disposal of Major J. E. M. Agar, at that time
+occupying and holding for Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of
+India a very advanced position on the northern frontier of India. And in
+this manner he spent most of his days and some of his nights. In addition
+to the plain Major he had several other titles attached to his name at
+that time, indicative of duties real and imaginary. He was “deputy
+assistant” several things and “acting” one or two; for in military
+titles one begins in inverse ratio in a large way, and ends in something
+short.
+
+Jem Agar was thought very highly of by almost all concerned, except
+himself, and it had not occurred to him to devote much thought to this
+matter. He was one of the very few men to whom a senior officer or a
+pretty girl could say, “You are a nice man and a clever fellow,” without
+doing the least harm. Men who thought such things of themselves laughed
+at him behind his back, and wondered vaguely why he got promotion. It
+never occurred to them to reflect that “old Jem” invariably acquitted
+himself well in each new position thrust upon him by a persistently kind
+fortune; they contented themselves with an indefinite conviction that
+each severally could have done better, as is the way of clever young men.
+One of the many mysteries, by the way, which will have to be cleared up
+in a busy hereafter is that appertaining to brilliant boys, clever
+undergraduates, and gifted young men. What becomes of them? There are
+hundreds at school at this moment--we have it from their own parents;
+hundreds more at Oxford and Cambridge--we have it from themselves. In a
+few years they will be absorbed in a world of men very much inferior to
+themselves (by their own showing), and will be no more seen.
+
+Jem Agar had never been a clever boy. He was not a clever man. But--and
+mark ye this--he knew it. The result of this knowledge was that he did
+what he could in the present with the present, and did not indefinitely
+postpone astonishing the universe, as most of us do, until some future
+date.
+
+At this time he was banished, as some would take it. Banished to the top
+of a pass which was nought else than a footway between two empires. Forty
+miles from men of his own race, this man was one of those who either have
+no thoughts or no wish to impart them; for this racial solitude, which is
+an emotion fully explored by many in India, in no way affected his
+nerves. Some say that they get jumpy, others aver that they begin to lose
+their national characteristics and develop barbarous proclivities, while
+one Woods-and-Forests man known to some of us resigned because he had a
+buzzing in the head during the long solitary, silent evenings.
+
+Major Agar made no statements on this point, though he listened with
+sympathy to the assertions of others. If the sympathy were subtly mingled
+with non-comprehensive wonder, the seeker after a purer form of
+commiseration attributed the alloy to natural density, and turned
+elsewhere.
+
+Accompanied by a handful of Goorkhas, Major J. E. M. Agar had occupied
+the key to this narrow pass for more than a week, vaguely admiring the
+scenery, illustrating upon living “running deer” in turbans his views
+upon quick firing to his diminutive soldiers, who worshipped him as
+second only to the gods, and possessing his soul with that trustful
+patience which is rapidly becoming old-fashioned and effete.
+
+During that same week the newspapers at home had been very busy with his
+name. Some had gone so far as to lay before a greedy public a short and
+succinct account of his life, compiled from the Army List and a
+journalistic imagination, finishing the record on the Monday, six days
+previously, with the usual three-line regret that England should in
+future be compelled to limp along the path to glory without the
+assistance of so brilliant a young officer.
+
+Such a word as brilliant had never been coupled with the name of Jem even
+by his best friend in earnest or his worst enemy in irony. Such sarcasm
+were too shallow to be worth sounding even in disparagement. But we never
+know what an obituary notice may bring. Not only had he been endowed with
+many virtues, manly qualities, and the record of noble deeds, but more
+substantial honours had been heaped upon his fallen crest or pinned upon
+his breathless bosom. To some of his distant countrymen he was the proud
+possessor of the Victoria Cross, awarded him post-mortem in the heat of
+obituary enthusiasm by more than one local paper. To others he was held
+up by what is called a Representative Press as a second Crichton. And all
+this because he was dead. Such is glory.
+
+All unconscious of these honours, honest Jem Agar sat in his little
+tent, nibbling the end of his penholder--the gift, by the way, of his
+father--and wishing that he had bought a Letts's diary with six days in a
+page instead of three.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+RELIEVED
+
+Well waited is well done.
+
+
+“Here--hi!”
+
+This time some one heard him, and that small, silent man, Ben Abdi, stood
+in the doorway of the tent at attention.
+
+“Are you keeping a good look-out down the valley?” asked Major Agar.
+
+“Ee yess, sar.”
+
+“No signs of any one?”
+
+“No, sar.”
+
+Agar shut up the diary, which book Ben Abdi had been taught to regard as
+strictly official, laid it aside, and passed out of the tent, the little
+Goorkha following close upon his heels with a quick intelligent interest
+in his every movement which somehow suggested a dusky and faithful little
+dog.
+
+For some moments they stood thus on the edge of the small plateau, the
+big man in front, the little one behind--alert, with twinkling, beady
+eyes. Behind them towered a bleak grey slope of bare rock, like a cliff
+set back at a slight angle, so treeless, so smooth was the face of it. In
+front the great blue-shadowed valley lay beneath them, stretching away to
+the south, until in a distant haze the sharp hills seemed to close in and
+cut it short.
+
+Perched thus, as it were, upon the roof of the world, these two men
+looked down upon it all with a calm sense of possession, and to him of
+the dominant race standing there some thousands of miles from his native
+land--alone--master of this great stretch of an alien shore, there must
+have come some passing thought of the strangeness of it all.
+
+There was something wrong--he knew that. His orders had been to press
+forward and occupy this little ridge, which was vaguely marked on the
+service maps as Mistley's Plateau, named after an adventurous soul, its
+discoverer. He had been instructed to hold this against all comers, and
+if possible to prevent communication between the two valleys, connected
+only by this narrow pass. All this Agar had carried out to the letter;
+but some one else had failed somewhere.
+
+“It will be three days at the most,” his chief had said, “and the main
+body of the advance guard will join you!”
+
+Jem Agar had been in occupation a week, and it seemed that he and his
+little band of men were forgotten of the world. Still this soldier held
+on, saying nothing to his men, writing his intensely practical diary, and
+trusting as a soldier should to the _Deus ex machina_ who finally allows
+discipline to triumph. He looked down into the valley, piercing the
+shimmer of its hazes with his gentle blue eyes, looking to his chief, who
+had said, “In three days I will join you.”
+
+It was not the first time that Agar and the little non-commissioned
+native officer, Ben Abdi, had stood thus together. They had taken their
+stand in this same spot in the keen air of the early morning, with the
+white frost crystallising the stones around them; in the glow of midday;
+and when the moon, hanging over the sharp-pointed hills, cast the valley
+into an opaque shade dark and fathomless as the valley of death.
+
+Scanning the distant hills, Agar presently raised his eyes, noting the
+position of the sun in the heavens.
+
+“Have you tried the heliograph a second time this morning?” he asked
+without looking round, which informality of manner warmed the little
+soldier's heart.
+
+“Yes, sar. Three times since breakfast.”
+
+It was the first time that Ben Abdi had found himself in a position of
+some responsibility, in immediate touch with one of the white-skinned
+warriors from over seas whose methods of making war had for him all the
+mystery and the infinite possibilities of a religion. This silent looking
+out for relief partook in some small degree of the nature of a council of
+war. Jem Sahib and himself were undoubtedly the chiefs of this
+expeditionary force, and to whom else than himself, Ben Abdi, should the
+Major turn for counsel and assistance? The little Goorkha preferred,
+however, that it should be thus; that Agar Sahib should say nothing,
+merely allowing him to stand silent three paces behind. He was a modest
+little man, this Goorkha, and knew the limit of his own capabilities,
+which knowledge, by the way, is not always to be found in the hearts of
+some of us boasting a fairer skin. He knew that for hard fighting, snugly
+concealed behind a rock at two hundred yards, or in the open, with
+cunning bayonet or swinging kookery, he was as good as his fellows; but
+for strategy, for the larger responsibilities of warfare, he was well
+pleased that his superior officer should manage these affairs in his
+quiet way unaided.
+
+During a luncheon more remarkable for heartiness of despatch than
+delicacy of viand, James Edward Makerstone Agar devoted much thought to
+the affairs of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress of India. After luncheon
+he lighted a cheroot, threw himself on his bed, and there reflected
+further. Then he called to him Ben Abdi.
+
+“No more promiscuous shooting,” he said to him. “No more volley firing
+at a single Ghilzai or a stray Bhutari. It seems that they do not
+know we are here, as we are left undisturbed. I do not want them to
+know--understand? If you see any one going along the valley, send two men
+after him; no shooting, Ben Abdi.”
+
+And he pointed with his cheroot towards the evil-looking curved knife
+which hung at the Goorkha's side.
+
+Ben Abdi grinned. He understood that sort of business thoroughly.
+
+Then followed many technical instructions--not only technical in good
+honest English, but interlarded with words from a language which cannot
+be written with our alphabet for the benefit of such as love details of a
+realistic nature.
+
+The result of this council was that sundry little dusky warriors were
+busy clambering about the rocky slope all that day and well into the
+short hill-country evening, working in twos and threes with the
+_alacrity_ of ants.
+
+Jem Agar, in his own good time, was proceeding to further fortify, as
+well as circumstances allowed, the position he had been told to hold
+until relief should come. In addition to the magic of the master's eye he
+lent the assistance of his strong right arm, laying his lithe weight
+against many a rock which his men could not move unaided. By the evening
+the position was in a fairly fortified state, and, after a copious dinner
+in the chill breeze that rushed from the mountain down to the valley
+after sunset, he walked placidly up and down at the edge of the plateau,
+watching, ever watching, but with calmness and no sign of anxiety.
+
+Such it is to be an Englishman--the product of an English public
+school and country life. Thick-limbed, very quiet; thick-headed if you
+will!--that is as may be--but with a nerve of iron, ready to face the
+last foe of all--Death, without so much as a wink.
+
+To his ear came at times the low cautious cry of some night-bird sailing
+with heavy wing down to the haunt of mouse or mole; otherwise the night
+was still as only mountain night-seasons are. Far down below him, the
+jungle and forest were rustling with game and beasts of prey seeking
+their meat from God, but the larger beasts of India, unlike their African
+brethren, move in silence, stealthy yet courageous; and the distance was
+too great for the quickly stifled cry of the victim of panther or tiger
+to reach him.
+
+When the moon rose he made the round of his pickets--a matter of ten
+minutes--and then to bed.
+
+On the morning of the ninth day he thought he detected signs of
+uneasiness in the faces of the men. He found their keen little visages
+ever turned towards him, watching his every movement, noting the play of
+every feature. So in his simplicity he practised a simple diplomacy. He
+hummed to himself as he went his rounds and while he sat over his diary.
+He only knew one song--“A Warrior Bold”--which every mess in India
+associated with old Jem Agar, for no evening was considered complete
+without the Major's one ditty if he were present. He had stood up and
+roared it in many strange places, quite without sentiment, without
+self-consciousness, without afterthought. He never thought it a matter of
+apology that he should have failed to learn another song. The smile with
+which many ladies of his acquaintance sat down to play the accompaniment
+_by heart_ conveyed nothing to him. He did not pretend to be a singer--he
+knew that one song, and if they liked it he would sing it. Moreover, they
+did like it, and that was why they asked for it. It did some of them good
+to see honest Jem get on his legs and shout out, in a very musical voice,
+with perfect truth to air, what seemed to be a plain statement of his
+creed of life.
+
+So, far up on Mistley Plateau, nine thousand feet above the level of the
+sea, Jem Agar advised his little dark-visaged fighters, _sotto voce_,
+while he puzzled over his diary, that his love had golden hair, with eyes
+so blue and heart so true, that none with her compared; moreover, that he
+didn't care if death were nigh, because he had fought for love, and for
+love would die.
+
+It was not very deep or very subtle, but it served the purpose. It kept
+up the hearts of his handful of warriors, who, in common with their
+chief, had something child-like and simple in their honest, sporting
+souls.
+
+Shortly after tiffin Ben Abdi came to the Major's tent, speaking
+hurriedly in his own tongue.
+
+One of the men had seen the sunlight gleam on white steel far down in the
+valley. He had seen it several times--a long spiral flash, such as the
+sun would make on a fixed bayonet carried over the shoulder. Such a flash
+as this will carry twenty miles through a clear atmosphere; the spot
+pointed out by the sharp-eyed Goorkha was not more than ten miles
+distant. They stood in a group, this isolated little band, and gazed down
+into the depth below them. They gazed in vain for some time, then a
+little murmur of excitement told that the sun had glinted again on
+burnished steel. This time there were several flashes close together.
+These were men marching with fixed bayonets through an enemy's country.
+
+“Heliograph,” said Agar quietly, without taking his eyes from the spot
+far down in the valley; and soon the little mirror was flashing out its
+question over the vale. After a few anxious moments the answering gleam
+sprang to life among the trees far below. Agar gave a quick little sigh
+of relief--that was all.
+
+Then followed a short conversation flickered over ten miles of space.
+
+“Are you beset?” asked the Valley,
+
+“No,” replied the Hill.
+
+“Is the enemy in sight?”
+
+“No,” replied the Mountain, again, with a sharp click.
+
+“Are you all well?” flashed from below.
+
+“Yes,” from above.
+
+Then the “Good-bye,” and the glimmer of the bayonets began again.
+
+Two hours later Major Agar drew his absurd little force in line, and thus
+they received the relieving column, grimly conscious of dangers past but
+not forgotten.
+
+At the head of the new-comers rode a little man with a prominent chin and
+a long drooping nose; such a remarkable-looking little man that the
+veriest tyro at physiognomy would have turned to look at him again. His
+black eyes, beaming with intelligence, moved so quickly beneath the
+steady lashes that it was next to an impossibility to state what he saw
+and what he failed to see.
+
+He returned Agar's salute hurriedly, with a preoccupied air. He wore a
+quiet uniform tunic almost hidden by black braiding, a pith helmet which
+had seen brighter days and likewise fouler, and the leg that he threw
+over his horse's head was cased in riding trousers and a neat little
+top-boot of brown leather.
+
+He slipped from the saddle with a litheness which contrasted strangely
+with his closely cropped grey hair and white moustache and Imperial. He
+walked towards Agar's tent after the manner of one who had sat in the
+saddle for many hours. His spurs clanked with a sharp, business-like
+ring, and his every movement had that neat finish which indicates the
+soldier born and bred.
+
+Wheeling round he faced Agar, who had followed him with a more leisurely
+gait based on longer legs, looking up keenly into the quiet fair face.
+Turning he shot his sword home into its scabbard with a click.
+
+“Thank God,” he said, “you're safe!”
+
+Agar awaited for further observations. This was not the man whom he
+had expected, but another, far greater, far higher up in the military
+scale--a man whom he had only met once before, and that at an official
+reception.
+
+Seeing that his guest was unbuckling his sword, he presumed that the task
+of continuing this conversation lay with himself.
+
+“M' yes!” he replied, rubbing his pannikin out clean with the corner of a
+towel, and proceeding to mix some brandy and water; “why?”
+
+“Why!” answered the little man scornfully, “WHY! damn it, sir, Stevenor's
+command has been cut off by the enemy in force--massacred to a man. That
+is why I say 'Thank God, you're safe!' It is more than I expected.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+RE-CAST
+
+Our deeds still travel with us from afar,
+And what, we have been makes us what we are.
+
+
+There was a momentary pause; then Major Agar spoke.
+
+“In that case,” he observed, “the British force occupying this country
+for the last week has consisted of myself and thirty Goorkhas.”
+
+“Precisely so! And it was by the merest chance that I found out that you
+were here. It was only guesswork at the best. A bazaar report reached me
+that poor old Stevenor had been cut to pieces. I hate blaming a dead man,
+but I really don't know what he can have been about. He made some hideous
+mistake somewhere. We buried him yesterday. On hearing the report, I
+thought it better to come up myself, having a little knowledge of the
+country. Brought two companies, and half a squadron to act as scouts. We
+reached Barkoola yesterday, and found the poor chaps as they had fallen.
+And some of those carpet-warriors at home say that a black man can't
+fight! Can't he! Not so much brandy this time, please. Yes, fill it up.”
+
+Agar set the regulation water-bottle down on his gifted table.
+
+“I have the Devil's own luck!” he murmured. “While they were burying I
+missed you from among the officers; and then it struck me that you
+might have got away before the disaster. We counted the men, and found
+thirty-four short, so we came on here. By God! what a chap Mistley was!
+We came here without a check. His maps are perfect!”
+
+“Yes,” admitted Agar, “that man knew his business!”
+
+There was something in his tone that might have been envy or perhaps mere
+admiration; for this man knew himself to be inferior in many ways to him
+who had first crossed the mountain pass on which he stood.
+
+“The worst of it is,” went on the great officer, “that you are
+telegraphed home as killed.”
+
+He paused on the last word, watching its effect. It would seem that,
+behind the busy black eyes, there was the beginning of a thought hatched
+within the grey close-cut head which, _en fait de têtes,_ was without its
+rival in the Empire.
+
+“That is soon remedied,” opined the Major with a cheerful laugh.
+
+“Ye--es!”
+
+The great man was thoughtfully rubbing his chin with the tips of the
+first and second fingers, drawing in his under lip at the same time, and
+apparently taking pleasure in the rasping sound caused by the friction
+over the shaven chin.
+
+There is usually something written in the human countenance--some single
+virtue, vice, or quality which dominates all petty characteristics. Most
+faces express weakness--the faces that pass one in the streets. Some are
+the incarnation of meanness, some pleasanter types verge on sensuality.
+The face of the man who sat watching Agar expressed indomitable,
+invincible determination, and _nothing else_. It was the face of one who
+was ready to sacrifice any one, even himself, to a single all-pervading
+purpose. In this respect he was a splendid commander, for he was as
+nearly heartless as men are made.
+
+The big fair Englishman who had occupied Mistley's Plateau for a week,
+exactly one hundred and seventy miles from assistance of any description,
+and in the heart of the enemy's country, smiled down at his companion
+with a simple wonder.
+
+“Got something up your sleeve, sir?” he inquired softly, for he knew
+somewhat of his superior officer's ways.
+
+“Yes!” replied the other curtly. “A trump card!”
+
+He continued to look at Jem Agar with a cold and calculating scrutiny, as
+a jockey may look at his horse or a butcher at living meat.
+
+“It's like this,” he said. “You're dead. I want you to stay dead for a
+little while--say six months to a year!”
+
+Agar seated himself on the corner of the table, which creaked under the
+weight of his spare muscular person, and then, true to his cloth, he
+awaited further orders; true to his nature, he waited in silence.
+
+After a short pause the other proceeded to explain.
+
+“You frontier men,” he said, “are closely watched; we know that. There
+will be great rejoicing over there, in Northern Europe, over this mishap
+to Stevenor, although, God knows, he was not a very dangerous man. Not so
+dangerous as you, Agar. They will be delighted to hear that you are out
+of the way. Stay out of the way for a year, and during that twelve months
+you will be able to do more than you could get done in twelve years when
+you were being watched by them.”
+
+“I see,” answered Agar quietly. “Not dead, but gone--up country.”
+
+“Precisely so; where they certainly will not be on the look-out for you.”
+
+The bright black eyes were shining with suppressed excitement. The great
+man was afraid that his tool would refuse to work under this exacting
+touch.
+
+“But what about my people?” asked Agar.
+
+“Oh, I will put that right. You see, they have got over the worst of it
+by this time. It is wonderful how soon people do get over it. They have
+known it for a week now, and have bought their mourning and all that.”
+
+There came a look into Agar's face which the little officer did not
+understand. We never do understand what we could not feel ourselves, and
+it is not a matter of wonder that the lesser intelligence should foil the
+greater in this instance. There was a depth in Jem Agar which was beyond
+the fathom of his keen-witted companion.
+
+“I am going home,” continued General Michael, “almost at once. The first
+thing I do on landing is to go straight to your people and tell them. We
+cannot afford to telegraph it. Telegraph clerks are only human, and it is
+worth the while of the newspapers in these days of large circulation to
+pay a heavy price for their news. We all know that some items, published
+_can_ only have been bought from the telegraph clerks.”
+
+Agar was making a mental calculation.
+
+“That means,” he said, “two months before they hear.”
+
+The expression on the face of the little man was scarcely human in its
+heartless cunning.
+
+“Hardly,” he answered carelessly. “And when they hear the reason they
+will admit that the result is worth the sacrifice. It will be the making
+of you!--and of me!” added the black eyes with a secretive gleam.
+
+“It is,” went on the General, “such a chance as only comes once to a man
+in his lifetime. I wish I had had it at your age.”
+
+The voice was a pleasant one, with that ring of friendliness and
+familiarity which is usually heard in the tones of an educated Jew; for
+General Michael was that rare combination, a Jew and a soldier.
+
+“I don't like leaving them so long under the mistake,” answered Agar,
+half yielding to authoritative persuasion, half tempted by ambition and a
+love of adventure. “I don't like it, General. The straight thing would be
+to telegraph home at once.”
+
+In the wavering smile that crossed the dark face there was suggested a
+fine contempt for the straight thing unaccompanied by some tangible
+advantage.
+
+“Who are they?” inquired the General almost affectionately. “Who are your
+people?”
+
+Agar walked to the tent door and looked out. There was some clatter of
+swords going on outside, and as commander of this post it was his duty to
+know all that was passing. He turned, and standing in the doorway, quite
+filling it with his bulk, he answered:
+
+“My father died three years ago. I have a step-mother and a step-brother,
+that is all--besides friends.”
+
+The General stooped to loosen the strap of his spur.
+
+“Of course,” he said in that attitude, “I know you are not a married
+man.”
+
+“No.”
+
+Beneath the brim of the helmet, which he had not laid aside, the Jew's
+keen black eyes were watching, watching. But they saw nothing; for there
+is no one so impenetrable as a man with a clear conscience and a large
+faith.
+
+“My idea was,” continued General Michael, “that two, or at the most
+three, people besides you and I be let into the secret.”
+
+“Three,” said Agar, with quiet decision.
+
+“Three?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The General tacitly allowed this point and passed on with characteristic
+promptitude to another.
+
+“Are you a man of property?”
+
+“Yes, I inherit my father's place down in Hertfordshire.”
+
+“I'll tell you why I ask. There are those beastly lawyers to think of. At
+your death it is to be presumed that the estate comes to your brother.
+The legal operations must be delayed somehow. I will see to it,” he added
+in a concise, almost snappish way.
+
+Agar smiled, although he was conscious of a vague feeling of discomfort.
+He was not a highly sensitive or a nervous man, and this feeling was more
+than might have been expected to arise from an attendance, as it were, at
+one's own obituary arrangements. The General seemed to be remarkably well
+informed on these smaller points, and something prompted Jem Agar to ask
+him if the idea he had just propounded was a suddenly conceived one.
+
+“No,” replied the General with a singular pause.
+
+“No, I once knew a man who did the same thing for a different purpose,
+but the idea was identical. I do not claim to be the originator.”
+
+“And there was no hitch? It was successful?” inquired Agar.
+
+“Yes,” replied the older soldier in a far-away voice, as if he had
+mentally gone back to the results of that man's deception. “Yes, it was
+successful. By the way, you say your people live down in Hertfordshire?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I once knew a girl--long ago, in my younger days--who married a man
+called Agar, and went to live in Hertfordshire. The name did not strike
+me until you mentioned the county. I wonder if the lady is now your
+step-mother.”
+
+“My step-mother's name was Hethbridge,” replied Jem Agar.
+
+“The same. How strange!” said the General indifferently. “Well, she has
+probably forgotten my existence these thirty years. She has one son, you
+say?”
+
+“Yes, Arthur. He is twenty-three--five years younger than myself.”
+
+The shifty black eyes excelled themselves at this moment in rapidity of
+observation. They seemed to be full of question, of many questions, but
+none were forthcoming.
+
+“Ah!” said General Michael indifferently. “He is,” pursued Jem Agar, “a
+delicate fellow; does nothing; though I believe he is going to be called
+to the Bar.”
+
+The General, having passed most of his life in India, where men work or
+else go home, did not take in the full meaning of this; but he was keen
+as a ferret, and he saw easily that Jem Agar despised his step-brother
+with that cruel contempt which strong men feel for weak.
+
+“Mother's darling?” he suggested.
+
+“Yes, that is about it,” replied Agar. He was too simple, too innately
+upright and honest to perceive the infinite possibilities opened up by
+the fact upon which General Michael had pounced.
+
+“In case you decide to accept my offer,” the older man went on, “you
+would wish your stepmother and step-brother to be told?”
+
+“Yes, and one other person.”
+
+“Ah, and another person. You could not limit it to two?” urged the
+General.
+
+“No!” replied Agar with a decision which the other was wise enough to
+consider final. Moreover, the General omitted to ask the name of this
+third person, urged thereto by one of those strokes of instinct which
+indicate the genius of the commander of men.
+
+General Michael, moreover, deemed it prudent to carry the matter no
+further at that moment. He rose from his seat on the bed, stretched his
+lithe limbs, and said:
+
+“Well, this won't do! We must get to work. I propose retreating
+to-morrow morning at daylight.”
+
+They passed out of the tent together and proceeded to give their orders,
+moving in and out among the busy men. There was a subtle difference in
+their reception which was perhaps patent to both, though neither deemed
+it necessary to make any comment. Wherever Agar went the eager little
+black faces of his Goorkhas met him with a smile or a grin of delight;
+when General Michael passed by, the dusky features hardened suddenly to a
+marble stillness, and the beady eyes were all soldier-like attention.
+
+They feared and loved the one because they felt that there was something
+in him which they could not understand; they feared and hated the other
+because his nature was nearer to their own, and they defined the evil in
+it.
+
+Moreover, each had his reputation--that of General Michael dating from
+the Mutiny; the other, a younger and a cleaner record.
+
+It is considered the proper thing to talk in England of the unvoiced
+millions of India. No greater mistake could be made. These millions have
+a voice, but it does not reach to us because they do not raise it. They
+talk with it among themselves.
+
+They had talked of General Michael for thirty years, and all that there
+was in him had been discussed to its very dregs. Thus their impenetrable
+faces hardened when he passed, their shadowy secretive eyes looked beyond
+him with a vacancy which was not the vacancy of dulness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A LAST THROW
+
+Get place and wealth; if possible, with grace;
+If not, by any means get wealth and place.
+
+
+Daylight broke next morning in a snow-storm, and a thin sprinkling lay
+over all the hills, clothing them in spotless white.
+
+General Michael was among the first astir, seeing in person to all the
+details of the retreat. The men looked in vain towards the tent where
+their late youthful leader had been wont to sit, nibbling the end of his
+golden pocket-penholder, wrestling manfully in the throes of literary
+composition.
+
+When at last the order was given to strike tents the faces of the rank
+and file fell like the face of one man.
+
+Major James Edward Makerstone Agar had simply disappeared. His limited
+baggage was attached to the smaller belongings of General Michael, and no
+explanation was offered by that dreaded officer. To him the cold seemed
+to be a matter of indifference; for he stood about watching every
+movement of the men with a supreme disregard for the driving snow or the
+knife-like wind that whistled over the northern scarp.
+
+Under his calculating eye they worked to such effect that by nine o'clock
+the little column was on the downward march. Again General Michael rode
+through that lone, lorn country lying between India and Russia. Again his
+melancholy face with keen but hopeless eyes passed through the darksome
+valleys where, if legend be true, a race as old as his has lived since
+the children of Abraham set forth to wander over the earth.
+
+For twenty years this man had haunted these vales and hills, seeking,
+ever seeking, his own aggrandisement and nothing else. Accounted a
+patriot, he was no patriot; for the homeless blood was mingled in his
+veins. Held to be a hero by some, he was none; for he hated danger for
+its own sake, just as some men love it.
+
+But his lines had been cast in this unpleasant place, from whence flight
+or retreat was rendered almost impossible, by the laws of discipline and
+the freak of circumstance. Despite his titles, in face of his great
+reputation, he knew himself to be a failure, and as he rode southward
+through the mountain barrier that frowns down over India he was conscious
+of the knowledge that in all human probability he would never look upon
+this drear land again. His time was up, he was about to be set on the
+shelf, life was over. And he had all his powers yet--all his marvellous
+quickness at the mastery of tongues, all the restless energy which had
+urged him on to overrun the race, to dodge and bore and break his stride
+instead of holding steadily on the straight course.
+
+He it was who had discovered Jem Agar's talent for this rough, peculiar
+soldiering of the frontier. He it was to whom the simple-minded young
+officer had owed promotion after promotion. General Michael had fixed
+upon Agar as his last hope--his last chance of doing something brilliant
+in this deathly country, which moved with a slowness that nearly drove
+him mad.
+
+This last attempt was thrown down like a defiance in the face of Fortune;
+but still the risk was not his own. It never had been. Men had been sent
+to their certain death by this sallow-faced commander, for no other
+object than his own aggrandisement. It would almost seem that a just
+Providence had ever turned away in loathing from the schemes of this man
+who would have all and risk nothing.
+
+Should Jem Agar succeed in the dangerous secret mission on which he had
+been sent by a subtle underhand pressure of discipline, the glory would
+never be his. This, under the grasping fingers of General Michael, would
+never appear to the world as the wonderful individual feat of an intrepid
+man, but as a masterly stroke of strategy dealt by a great general.
+
+Seymour Michael had long ago found out that Jem Agar was the step-son of
+the woman whom he had wronged in bygone years. But the name failed to
+touch his conscience, partly because that conscience was not of much
+account, and partly because time heals all things, even a sore sense of
+wrong. Truth to tell, he had not thought much of Anna Agar during the
+last twenty years, and the mere coincidence that this simple tool should
+be her step-son was insufficient to deter him from making use of Agar.
+But with that careful attention to detail which in such a man betrayed
+innate weakness, he took care to make sure that Jem Agar had learnt
+nothing of the past from the lips of his father's second wife.
+
+General Michael did not disguise from himself the fact that the mission
+on which he had despatched Jem Agar was what the life insurance companies
+call hazardous. But he had lived by the sword, and that mode of gaining a
+livelihood makes men wondrously indifferent to the lives of others.
+Moreover, this was in a sense a speciality of his. He was getting
+hardened to the game, and played it with coolness and precision.
+
+All through that day the little band retreated through an enemy's
+country, watchful, alert, almost nervous. There were absurdly few of
+them--a characteristic of that frontier warfare which the sallow, silent
+leader had waged nearly all his life. And in the evening there was not
+peace.
+
+Fortune is a playful soul. She keeps men waiting a lifetime, and then,
+when it is too late, she suddenly opens both her hands. Seymour Michael
+had waited twenty years for one of those chances of easy distinction
+which seemed to fall to the lot of all his comrades in arms. This chance
+was vouchsafed to him on the last evening he ever passed in an enemy's
+country--when it was too late--when that which he did was no more than
+was to be expected from a man of his experience and fame.
+
+The little band was attacked at sunset by the victorious savages who had
+annihilated the advance column three days earlier, and with half the
+number of men, fatigued and hungry, Seymour Michael beat them back and
+cut his way to the south. He knew that it was good, and the men knew it.
+They looked upon this keen-faced little man as something approaching a
+demi-god; but they had no love for him as they had for Major Agar. The
+knowledge was theirs that to him their lives were of no account--they
+were not men, but numbers. He brought them out of a dire strait by sheer
+skill, by that heartless grip of discipline which a true general
+exercises over his troops even at that critical moment when a common
+death seems to reduce all lives to an equal value.
+
+But in the thick of it the Goorkhas--keen little Highlanders of the
+Indian army--looked in vain for the fighting light in their leader's
+eyes. They listened in vain for the encouraging voice--now low and steady
+in warning, now trumpet-like and maddening with the infection of
+excitement.
+
+In the midst of that wild, apparently disorderly _mêlée_ in the narrow
+valley, while the hush of mountain sunset settled over the battle, the
+leader sat imperturbable, cold, and infinitely wise. He was pale, and his
+lips were quite colourless, but his eyes were vigilant, ready,
+resourceful. An ideal general but no soldier. He played this game with a
+skill that never faced the possibility of failure--and won.
+
+Far overhead, many miles to the northward, a solitary wanderer heard the
+sound of firing and paused to listen. He was a big man, worthy to be
+accounted such even among the strapping mountaineers of that district,
+and as he leant on the long barrel of his quaintly ornamental rifle his
+sheepskin cloak fell back from a long sinewy arm of deep-brown hue.
+
+As he listened to the far-off rumble of independent firing he muttered to
+himself indications of anxiety. Strange to say, the eyes that looked out
+over the hollow of the gorge-like valley were blue. They were, however,
+hardly visible through the tangle of unkempt hair and raw wool that fell
+over his forehead. The high sheepskin cap was dragged forward, and the
+lower part of his face was almost hidden by the indiscriminate folds of
+hood, cloak, and scarf affected by the shepherds hereabout.
+
+James Agar was perfectly happy. There must have been somewhere in his
+sporting soul that love of Nature which drives men into solitude--making
+gamekeepers and fishermen and explorers of them. It was in this man's
+character to wait passive until responsibility came to him, when he
+accepted it readily enough; but he never went out to meet it. He was not
+as the sons of Levi, who took too much upon themselves; but rather was he
+happiest when he had only his own life and his own self to take care of.
+
+Here he was now an outcast, an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand raised
+against him. It was not the first time. For this quiet-going man had
+unobtrusively learnt many tongues, and, while no one heeded him, he had
+studied the ways of this Eastern land with no mean success.
+
+He waited there during an hour while the firing still continued, and
+then, when at last silence reigned again and the wind whispered
+undisturbed through the dark pines, he turned his wandering footsteps
+northward to a land where few white men have passed.
+
+So night fell upon these two men thus hazardously brought together, and
+every moment stretched longer the distance between them--James Agar going
+north, Seymour Michael passing southward.
+
+Agar wondered vaguely whether his toilsome diary would ever reach home,
+but he was not anxious as to the result of the fight which had evidently
+taken place in the valley. He too seemed to share the belief of all who
+came in contact with him that General Michael could not do wrong in
+warfare.
+
+That night the Master of Stagholme laid him down to rest in the shadow of
+a big rock, strong in himself, strong in his faith. And as he slumbered,
+those who slumber not nor cease their toil by day or night sat with
+crooked backs over a little ticking, spitting, restless machine that
+spelt out his name across half the world. While the moon rose over the
+mountains, and looked placidly down upon this strange man lying there
+peacefully sleeping in a world of his own, two men who had never seen
+each other talked together with nimble fingers over a thousand miles of
+wire. And one told the other that James Edward Makerstone was dead.
+
+The sleeper slept on. He smiled quietly beneath the moon. Perhaps he
+dreamt of the home-coming, of that time when he could say at last, “I
+have fought my fight, and now I come with a clear conscience to enjoy the
+good things given to me.” He never dreamt of treason. He never knew that
+for their own gain men will sacrifice the happiness of their neighbours
+without so much as a pang of self-reproach. There are some people, thank
+Heaven, who never learn these things, who go on believing that men are
+good and women better all their lives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A CARPET KNIGHT
+
+As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
+
+
+First door on the right after passing into New Court, Trinity College,
+Cambridge, by the river door. It is a small door, leading directly on to
+a narrow, winding stone staircase. For some reason, known possibly to the
+architect responsible for New Court (may his bones know no rest!), the
+ground-floor rooms have a door of their own within the archway.
+
+On the first floor Arthur Agar, to use the affected phraseology of an
+affected generation, “kept” in the days with which we have to deal. What
+he kept transpireth not. There were many things which he did not keep,
+the first among these being his money. In these rooms he dispensed an
+open-handed, carefully considered hospitality which earned for him a
+certain bubble popularity.
+
+There are, one finds, always plenty of men (and women too) ready to lick
+the blacking off one's boots provided always that that doubtful fare be
+varied by champagne or truffles at appropriate intervals. Men came to
+Arthur Agar's rooms, and brought their friends. Mark well the last item.
+They brought their friends. There is more in that than meets the eye.
+There is a subtle difference between the invitation for “Mr. Jones” and
+the invitation for “Mr. Jones and friends”--a difference which he who
+runs the social race may read. If Jones is worth his salt he will discern
+the difference in a week.
+
+“Oh, come to Agar's,” one man (save the mark) would say to another.
+“Ripping coffee, topping cigarettes.”
+
+So they went; they drank the ripping coffee, smoked the topping
+cigarette, and if they happened to be men of stomach ventured on a
+clinking cigar. Moreover, they were made welcome. Agar was like a vain
+woman who loved to see a full saloon. And he paid for his pleasure in
+more honourable coin than many a vain woman has laid down since daughters
+of Eve commenced drawing fops around them--namely, the adjectived items
+of hospitality above mentioned.
+
+It did not matter much who the guests were, provided that they filled the
+diminutive room in those spaces left vacant by _bric-a-brac_ and
+furniture of the spindle-legged description. So the men came. There were
+freshmen who fell over the footstools and bumped their heads against the
+painted sabots on the wall containing ever-fresh flowers, as per
+florist's bill; who were rather over-powered by the profusion of painted
+photograph frames, fans, and fal-lals. There was the man who sang a comic
+song and dined out on it at least twice a week. There was the calculating
+son of a poor North-country parson, who liked coffee after dinner and
+knew the value of sixpence. There was the man who came to play his own
+valse, and he who came to hear his own voice, _und so weiter_. Do we not
+know them all? Have we not run against them in after-life, despite many
+attempts to pass by on the other side? The habitual acceptors of
+hospitality have no objection to crossing the road through the thickest
+mud.
+
+“By their rooms ye shall know them,” might well, if profanely, be written
+large over any college gate. Arthur Agar's rooms were worthy of the man.
+There was, even on the little stone staircase, a faint odour of pastille
+or scent spray, or something of feminine suggestion. The unwary visitor
+would as likely as not catch some part of his person against a silk
+hanging or a lurking _portière_ on crossing the threshold; and the
+impression which struck (as all rooms do strike) from the threshold was
+one of oppressive drapery. A man, by the way, should never know anything
+about drapery or draping. Such knowledge undermines his virility. This is
+an age of undermining knowledge. We all, from the lowest to the highest,
+learn many things of which we were better ignorant. The school-board
+infant acquires French; Arthur Agar and his like bring away from
+Cambridge a pretty knack of draping chair-backs.
+
+There were little screens in the room, with shelves specially constructed
+to hold little gimcracks, which in their turn were specially shaped to
+stand upon the little shelves. There was a portentous standing-lamp, six
+feet high in its bare feet, with a shade like a crinoline. There were
+settees and _poufs_ and _des prie-Dieu_, and strange things hanging on
+the wall without rhyme, reason, or beauty. And nowhere a pipe, or a
+tennis racket, or even a pair of boots--not so much as a single manly
+indiscretion in the way of a cricket-bat in the corner, or a sporting
+novel on the table.
+
+In the midst of this the temporary proprietor of the rooms sat
+disconsolately at an inlaid writing-table with his face buried in his
+arms--weeping.
+
+The outer door was shut. Arthur Agar had sported his rare oak, not to
+work but to weep. It sometimes does happen to men, this shedding of the
+idle tear, even to Englishmen, even to Cambridge men. Moreover, it was
+infinitely to the credit of Arthur Agar that he should bury his face in
+the sleeve of his perfectly-fitting coat thus and sob, for he was weeping
+(quietly and to himself) the advent of three thousand pounds per annum.
+
+At his elbow lay a telegram--that flimsy pink paper which, with all our
+progress, all our knowledge, the bravest of us fear still.
+
+“Jem killed in India; come home at once.--AGAR.”
+
+Honour to whom honour. Arthur Agar's only thought had been one of sudden
+horror. He had read the telegram over twice before going out to close his
+outer door. Then he came back and sat weakly down at the table where he
+had written more scented notes than noted themes, deliberately,
+womanlike, to cry.
+
+To his credit be it noted that he never thought of Stagholme, which was
+now his. He only thought of Jem--his no longer--Jem the open-handed,
+elder brother who tolerated much and said little. Having had everything
+that he wanted since childhood, Arthur Agar had never been in the habit
+of thinking about money matters. His florist's bills (and Cambridge
+horticulturists seem to water their flowers with Château Lafitte), his
+confectioner's account, and his tailor's little note had always been paid
+without a murmur. Thus, want of money--the chief incentive to crime and
+criminal thought--had never come within measurable distance of this
+gentle undergraduate.
+
+Truth to tell, he had never devoted much thought to the future. He had
+always vaguely concluded that his mother and Jem would “do something”;
+and in the meantime there were important matters requiring his attention.
+There was the _menu_ to prepare for an approaching little dinner. There
+was always an approaching dinner, and always a _menu_ in execrable French
+on a satin-faced card with the college arms in a coat of many colours.
+There was the florist to be interviewed and the arrangement of the table
+to be superintended; the finishing touch to be given to the floral
+decoration thereof by the master-hand.
+
+Jem's death seemed to knock away one of the supports of the future, and
+Arthur Agar even in his grief was conscious of the impending necessity of
+having to act for himself some day.
+
+At length he lifted his head, and through the intricate pattern of the
+very newest design in art muslins the daylight fell on his face. It was a
+face which in France is called _chiffonné_; but the term is never applied
+to the visage masculine. A diminutive and slightly _retrousse_ nose,
+gentle grey eyes of the drowning-fly description, and a sensitive mouth
+scarcely hidden by a fair moustache of downward tendency.
+
+Here was a man made to be ruled all his life--probably by a woman. With a
+little more strength it might have been a melancholy face; as it stood,
+it was suggestive of nothing stronger than fretfulness. There was a vague
+distress in the eyes and in the whole countenance which mistaken and
+practical souls would probably put down to a defective digestion or a
+feeble vitality. More than one enthusiastic disciple of Aesculapius
+studying at Caius professed to have discovered the evidence of some
+internal disease in Arthur Agar's distressed eyes; but his complaint was
+not of the body at all.
+
+Presently the necessity for action forced itself upon his understanding,
+and he rose with a jerk. It is worth noting that his first thought was
+connected with dress. He passed into the inner room and there exchanged
+his elegant morning suit for a black one, replacing a delicate heliotrope
+necktie by another of sombre hue. He mentally reviewed his mourning
+wardrobe while doing so, and gathered much spiritual repose from the
+diversion.
+
+In the meantime the Rector of Stagholme, having breakfasted, proceeded to
+light a cigarette and open the _Times_ with the leisurely sense of
+enjoyment of one who takes an interest in all things without being keenly
+concerned in any.
+
+“God help us!” he exclaimed suddenly; and Mrs. Glynde, who alone happened
+to be present, dropped a handful of housekeeping money on the floor.
+
+“What is it, dear?” she gasped.
+
+“There,” was the answer; “read that. 'Disaster in Northern India.' Not
+there--higher up!”
+
+In her eagerness Mrs. Glynde had plunged headlong into the consumption of
+Wesleyan missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. Then she had to find her
+glasses, and considerable delay was incurred by putting them on upside
+down. All this while the Rector sat glaring at her as if in some occult
+way she were responsible for the disaster in Northern India.
+
+At last she read the short article, and was about to give a sigh of
+relief when her eyes travelled to a diminutive list of names appended.
+
+“What!” she exclaimed. “What! Jem! Oh, Tom, dear, this can't be true!”
+
+“I have no reason,” answered the Rector grimly, “to suppose that it is
+untrue.”
+
+Mrs. Glynde was one of those unfortunate persons who seem only to have
+the power of aggravating at a crisis. In their way they are useful as
+serving to divert the mind; but they usually come in for more than their
+need of abuse.
+
+The poor little woman laid the newspaper gently down by her husband's
+elbow, and looked at him with a certain air of grandeur and strength. The
+instinct that arouses the mother wren to peck at the schoolboy's hand at
+her nest was strong in this subdued little old lady.
+
+“Something,” she said, “must be done. How are we going to tell Dora?”
+
+The Rector was a man who never went straight at the fence, before him. He
+invariably pulled up and rode alongside the obstacle before leaping, and
+when going for it he braced himself mentally with the reflection that he
+was an English gentleman, and as such had obligations. But these
+obligations, like those of many English gentlemen, ceased at his own
+fireside. He, like many of us, was apt to forget that wife, sister, and
+daughter are nevertheless ladies to whom deference is due.
+
+“Oh--Dora,” he answered; “she will have to bear it like the rest of us.
+But here am I with fresh legal complications laid upon me. I foresee
+endless trouble with the lawyers and that woman. Why the Squire made me
+his executor I can't tell. Parsons know nothing of these matters.”
+
+With a patient sigh Mrs. Glynde turned away and went to the window, where
+she stood with her back to him. Even to the duller masculine mind the
+wonder sometimes presents itself that our women-folk take us so patiently
+as we are. If Mrs. Glynde had turned upon her husband (who was not so
+selfish as he would appear), presenting him forthwith in the plainest
+language at her command with a piece of her mind, the treatment would
+have been surprising at first, and infinitely beneficial afterwards.
+
+The Reverend Thomas sat staring into the fire--a luxury which he allowed
+himself all through the year--with troubled eyes. There was a fence in
+front of him, but he could not bring himself up to it. In his mistaken
+contempt for women he had never taken his wife fully into his confidence
+in those things--great or small, according to the capacity of the
+producing machine--which are essentially a personal property--namely his
+thoughts.
+
+All else he told her openly and at once, as behoved an English gentleman.
+
+Should he tell all that he had hoped and thought and rethought respecting
+Jem Agar and Dora? Should he; should he not? And the loving little woman
+stood there almost daring to break the great silence herself; but not
+quite. Strong as was her mother's heart, the habit of submission was
+stronger. She longed, she yearned to hear the deeper, graver tone of
+voice which had been used once or twice towards her--once or twice in
+moments of unusual confidence. The Reverend Thomas Glynde was silent, and
+the voice that they both heard was Dora's, singing as she came downstairs
+towards them. It was only a matter of moments, and when we have no more
+than that wherein to act we usually take the wrong turning.
+
+Mrs. Glynde turned and gave one imploring look towards her husband.
+
+At the same instant the door opened and Dora entered, singing as she
+came.
+
+“What is the matter?” she exclaimed. “You both look depressed. Stocks
+down, or something else has gone up? I know! Papa has been made a
+bishop!”
+
+With a cheery laugh she went to the table and took up the newspaper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+BAD NEWS
+
+Sa manière de souffrir est le témoignage qu'une âme porte sur elle-même.
+
+
+There was a horrid throbbing silence while Dora read, and her parents
+calculated the seconds which would necessarily elapse before she reached
+the bottom line. Such moments as these are scored up as years in the span
+of life.
+
+Mrs. Glynde did not know what she was doing. It happened that she
+was trying to rub away a flaw in the window-glass with her pocket
+hand-kerchief--a flaw which must have been an old friend, as such things
+are in quiet lives. At this occupation she found herself when her heart
+began to beat again.
+
+“I suppose,” said Dora in a terribly calm voice, “that the _Times_ never
+makes a mistake--I mean they never publish anything unless they are quite
+sure?”
+
+Then the English gentleman of parts who ever and anon peeped out through
+the veneer of the parson asserted himself--the English gentleman whose
+sense of fair play and honour told him that it is better to strike at
+once a blow that must be struck than to keep the victim waiting.
+
+“Such is their reputation,” answered Dora's father.
+
+Mrs. Glynde turned with that pathetic yearning movement of a punished dog
+which waits to be called. But Dora had some of her father's sternness,
+her father's good British reserve, and she never called.
+
+Turning, she walked quietly out of the room. And all the light had gone
+out of her life. So we write, and so ye read; but do we realise it? It is
+not many of us who have suddenly to look at life without so much as a
+glimmer in its dark recesses to make it worth the living. It is not many
+of us who come to be told by the doctor: “For the rest of your existence
+you must give up eyesight,” or, “For the remainder of life you must go
+halt.” But these are trifles. Everything is a trifle, if we would only
+believe it. Riches and poverty, peace and war, fame and obscurity, town
+and country, England and the backwoods--all these are trifles compared
+with that other life which makes our own a living completeness.
+
+Silently she went, and left silence behind her. The Rector was abashed.
+For once a woman had acted in a manner unexpected by him; for he was
+ignorant enough of the world to keep up the old fallacy of treating women
+as a class. True, it was Dora, whom he held apart from the rest of her
+sex; but still he was left wondering. He felt as if he had been found
+walking in a holy place with shoes upon his feet--those gross shoes of
+Self with which most of us tramp through the world, not heeding where we
+tread or what we crush.
+
+One of the hardest things we have to bear is the helpless standing by
+while one dear to us must suffer. When Mrs. Glynde turned round and came
+towards her husband she had become an old woman. Her face had suddenly
+aged while her frame was yet in its full strength, and such a change is
+not pleasant to look on.
+
+“Tom,” she said, in a dry, commanding voice, “you must go up to the Holme
+at once and hear what news they have. There may be some chance--it may
+please God to spare us yet.”
+
+“Yes,” answered the Rector meekly; “I will go.”
+
+While he was lacing his boots with all speed Mrs. Glynde took up the
+newspaper again, and reread the brief account of the disaster. They were
+spared comment; that blow came later, when the warriors of Fleet Street
+set about explaining why the defeat was sustained and why it should never
+have happened. In due course these carpet tacticians proved to their own
+satisfaction that Colonel Stevenor was incompetent for the service on
+which he had been dispatched. But the reek of printing-ink never was good
+for the better feelings.
+
+In due course the Rector set off across the park; very grave, and
+distinctly aware of the importance of his mission. He had somewhere in
+his composition a strong sense of the dramatic, to which the situation
+appealed. He felt that had he been a younger man he would have stored up
+many details during the morning's work worthy of reproduction in the
+narrative form during years to come.
+
+Before he reached the great house he was aware that the grim pleasure of
+imparting bad news was not to be his, for the blinds were all lowered--a
+detail likely to receive early attention in a feminine household, for it
+is only men who can hear of a death without thinking of mourning and the
+blinds.
+
+The butler opened the door and took the Rector's hat and stick with a
+silent _savoir-faire_ indicative of experience in well-bred grief. His
+chaste demeanour said as plainly as words that this was right and proper,
+the Rector being no more than he expected.
+
+“Where's your mistress?” asked Mr. Glynde, who had strong views upon
+butlers in general and Tims in particular--said Tims being so sure of his
+place that he did not always trouble to know it.
+
+“Library, sir,” replied Tims in an appropriately sepulchral voice.
+
+The Rector went to the library without waiting to be announced. He was a
+man well versed in human nature, as most parsons are, and it is possible
+that he had caught a glimpse of Mrs. Agar watching his advent from the
+dining-room window.
+
+The lady of the house was standing by the writing-table when he entered,
+and beneath her ill-concealed excitement there was something subtly
+observant, like the glance of an untruthful child, which he never forgot
+nor forgave, despite his cloth and the impossibilities popularly expected
+therefrom.
+
+“Oh,” she exclaimed, “it is you. I have telegraphed for Arthur. I
+have--telegraphed for Arthur.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+She gave a nervous, almost a guilty little laugh, and looked at him with
+puzzled discomfort.
+
+“Why?” he repeated, looking at her with a cold scrutiny much dreaded of
+the parish ne'er-do-wells.
+
+“Oh, well,” she replied, “it is only natural that I should want him at
+home in such a time as this--such a terrible affliction. Besides--”
+
+“Besides,” suggested the Rector imperturbably, “he is now master of
+Stagholme.”
+
+“Yes!” she said, with a simulated surprise which would scarcely have
+deceived the most guileless Sunday-school teacher. “I had not thought of
+that. I suppose something must be done at once--those horrid lawyers
+again.”
+
+Her eyes were dancing with breathless excitement. To this woman
+excitement even in the form of a death was better than nothing. The
+bourgeois mind, with its love of a Crystal Palace, a subscription dance,
+or even a parochial bazaar, was unquenchable even after years of practice
+as the county lady of position.
+
+The Rector did not answer. He stood squarely in front of her with a
+persistence that forced her to turn shiftily away with a pretence of
+looking at the clock.
+
+“This is a bad business,” he said. “That boy ought never to have gone out
+there.”
+
+Mrs. Agar had her handkerchief ready and made use of it, with as much
+effect upon Mr. Glynde as might have been produced upon a granite sphinx.
+There is no man harder to deceive than the innately good and
+conscientious man of the world who has tried to find good in human
+nature.
+
+“Poor boy!” sobbed the lady. “Dear Jem! I could not keep him at home.”
+ Thus proving herself a fool, and worse, before those wise eyes.
+
+When occasion demanded Mr. Glynde could wield a very strong
+silence--stronger than he thought. He wielded it now, and Mrs. Agar
+shuffled before it, her eyes glittering with suppressed
+communicativeness. She was obviously bubbling over with talk relevant and
+irrelevant, but the Rector had the chivalry to check it by his cold
+silence.
+
+After a pause it was he who spoke, in a quiet, unemotional voice which
+aggravated while it cowed her.
+
+“When did you hear this news?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, last night. It was so late that I did not send down. I--it was so
+sudden. I was terribly upset.”
+
+“M--yes.”
+
+“I telegraphed to Arthur first thing this morning,” the mistress of
+Stagholme went on eagerly, “and I was just going to write to you when you
+came in.”
+
+With that nervous desire for corroborative evidence which arouses the
+suspicion of the observant whenever it appears, Mrs. Agar indicated the
+writing-table with open blotter and inkstand. Instantly, but too late,
+she regretted having done so, for a volume playfully called “Every Man
+his own Lawyer” lay confessed beside the writing-case, and its home on
+the bookshelf stared vacantly at them.
+
+“And from whom did you hear it?” pursued the Rector, heartlessly looking
+at the book with an air of recognition.
+
+“Oh, from a Mr. Johnson--at the War Office, or the India Office, or
+somewhere. I suppose I ought to write and thank him. Let me see--where is
+the telegram?”
+
+She shuffled among the papers on the writing-table, and made the hideous
+mistake of pushing “Every Man his own Lawyer” behind the stationery case.
+
+“Here it is!” she exclaimed at length.
+
+It was a long document. Mr. Johnson, not having to pay for telegraphic
+expenses out of his own pocket, had done his task thoroughly. He stated
+clearly that the advance column under Colonel Stevenor, Major Agar, and
+another British officer had been surprised and annihilated. There were no
+particulars yet, nor could reliable details be expected, as it was quite
+certain that not one man of the ill-fated corps had survived. General
+Seymour, added the official, missing out in his haste the commanding
+officer's surname, had promptly repaired to the scene of the disaster, to
+punish the victors, and, if possible, recover the effects of the slain.
+
+Mrs. Agar was one of those persons who are incapable of reading a letter
+or a telegram thoroughly. She was one of those for whose comprehension
+the wrong end of the story must have been specially created. Had the
+official put Seymour Michael's name in full, it is probable that in her
+infantile excitement she would have failed to take it in or to connect it
+with the man who had wronged her twenty years before.
+
+She had not thought much about that little affair during late years, her
+feeling for Seymour Michael having settled down into a passive hatred.
+The longing to do him some personal injury had died away fifteen years
+before. She was, as a matter of fact, quite incapable of a lasting
+feeling of any description. Hers was a life lived for the present only. A
+tea-party next week was of more importance to her than a change in
+fortune next year. Some people are thus, and Heaven help those whose
+lives come under their fickle influence!
+
+The one permanent motive of her existence was her son Arthur--the puny
+little infant who had been prematurely ushered into a world that seemed
+full of hatred twenty years before--and even his image faded from mind
+and thought before the short Cambridge terms were half expired.
+
+At this moment she was thinking less of the death of Jem than of the
+approaching arrival of Arthur. There must have been something wrong with
+her mental focus, to which trifles presented themselves as of the first
+importance, to the obliteration of larger matters.
+
+“And this is all the news you have had?” inquired the Rector, rather
+hurriedly. He saw Sister Cecilia coming up the avenue, and that lady was
+for him the embodiment of the combination of those feminine failings
+which aggravated him so intensely.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He moved towards the door, and standing there he turned, holding up a
+warning finger.
+
+“You must be very careful,” he said. “You must not consult any lawyer or
+take any steps in this matter. So far as you are concerned the state of
+affairs is unchanged. I, as the Squire's executor, am the only person
+called upon to act in any way if that poor boy has died without making a
+will. You must remember that your son is under age.”
+
+With that he left her, rather precipitately, for Sister Cecilia, like all
+busybodies, was a quick walker.
+
+In a few moments Miss Cecilia Harbottle entered the library. She glided
+forward as if afloat on a depth of the milk of human kindness, and folded
+Mrs. Agar in an emotional embrace.
+
+“Dear!” she exclaimed. “Dear Anna, how I feel for you!”
+
+In illustration of this sympathy she patted Mrs. Agar's somewhat flabby
+hands, and looked softly at her. She could hardly have failed to see a
+glitter in the bereaved one's eyes, which was certainly not that of
+grief. It was the gleam of pure, heartless excitement and love of change.
+But Sister Cecilia probably misread it; for, like all excesses, that of
+charity seems to dull the comprehension.
+
+“Tell me, dear,” she urged gently, “all about it.”
+
+How many of us imagine the satisfaction of our own curiosity to be
+sympathy!
+
+So Mrs. Agar told her all about it, and presently they sat down, with a
+view to fuller discussion. There was, however, a point beyond which even
+Mrs. Agar would not go. This point Sister Cecilia scented with the
+instinct of the terrier, so keen was her nose in the sniffing of other
+people's business. When that point was reached a third time she gently
+led the way over it.
+
+“Of course,” she said, with a resigned glance at the curtain poles, “one
+cannot help sometimes feeling that a wise Providence does all for the
+best.”
+
+Gratifying as this must have been to the power in question, no miraculous
+manifestation of joy was forthcoming, and Mrs. Agar cunningly confined
+herself to a non-committing “Yes.”
+
+After a sigh, Sister Cecilia further expatiated.
+
+“I cannot but think,” she said, “that Stagholme will be in better hands
+now. Of course dear Jem was very nice, and all that--a dear, good boy.
+But do you not think that Arthur is more suited to the position in some
+ways?”
+
+“Perhaps he is,” allowed Mrs. Agar, with ill-concealed pleasure.
+
+“He is,” continued Sister Cecilia, with a broader brush, “so refined, so
+gentlemanly, so ideal a country squire.”
+
+And after that she had no difficulty in supplying herself with
+information.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ON THIN ICE
+
+Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason?
+For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
+
+
+Two days later a gentleman, whose clean-shaven face had a habit of
+beaming suddenly into a professional smile, was seated at a huge
+writing-table in his office in Gray's Inn, when a clerk announced to him
+the arrival of Mrs. Agar, who desired to see him at once.
+
+Mr. Rigg beamed instantaneously, and the clerk, who knew his master,
+waited until the paroxysm had passed. In the meantime Mrs. Agar was
+fuming in the waiting-room, wherein lay a copy of the _Times_ and nothing
+else. The window looked out upon the neatly kept but depressing garden,
+where five antiquated rooks looked in vain for sustenance. Mrs. Agar
+watched these intelligent birds, but all her soul was in her ears. She
+had already set Mr. Rigg down in her own mind as a stupid because,
+forsooth, he had dared to keep her waiting.
+
+But the truth is that they are accustomed to ladies in Gray's Inn,
+especially ladies in deep mourning, with a chastely important air which
+seems to demand that advice and sympathy be carefully mingled. _Connues_,
+these ladies whose deep crape and quite exceptional bereavement plead
+(not always dumbly) for a special equity, home-made and superior to any
+law, and infer that the ordinary foes are in their case more than any
+gentleman would think of accepting.
+
+The clerk presently passed into an inner room and fetched therefrom a tin
+box, upon which were painted in dingy white the letters “J. E. M. A.,”
+ and underneath “Stagholme Estate.” This the embryo lawyer carefully wiped
+with a duster, and set it up on some of its fellows immediately behind
+Mr. Rigg.
+
+There was no hurry displayed in this scenic arrangement. Mr. Rigg made a
+practice of keeping ladies, especially those wearing crape, for a few
+minutes in the waiting-room. It calmed them down wonderfully, and
+introduced into their mental chambers a little legal atmosphere.
+
+“Marks,” he said, when that youth was taking his last look round at the
+_mise en scène_ before, as it were, raising the curtain, “eh--er--just go
+round to Corbyn's and get them to make up these pills.”
+
+At the mention of the medicinal term he beamed, as if to intimate that
+between themselves no secret need be observed that he, Mr. Rigg, was
+subject to the usual anatomical laws of mankind.
+
+“And--er--just call at the fishmonger's as you come back and get a parcel
+for me, ordered this morning.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” answered the faithful Marks, taking the prescription as if it
+were a will or a transfer.
+
+He knew his part so well that he moved towards the door and opened it as
+if Mrs. Agar's existence and attendance in the waiting-room were matters
+of the utmost indifference.
+
+“Marks!”
+
+The door was open, so that the lawyer's voice carried well down the
+passage.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“I will see Mrs. Agar now.”
+
+And Mrs. Agar was shown in, all bustling with excitement.
+
+“Mr. Rigg,” she said, with some dignity, “has Mr. Glynde been here?”
+
+The lawyer beamed again--literally all over his parchment-coloured face,
+except the eyes, which remained grave.
+
+“When, my dear madam?” he asked, as he brought forward a chair.
+
+“Well, lately--since my son's death.”
+
+The lawyer opened a large diary, and proceeded to trace back each day
+with his finger. It promised to be a question of time, this ascertaining
+whether Mr. Glynde had called within the last week. It was marvellous how
+well this man of deeds knew his clients. Mrs. Agar had never persevered
+in any inquiry or project that required time all through her life. Mr.
+Rigg, behind his disarming smile, could see as far into a crape veil as
+any man.
+
+“It must have been quite lately,” said Mrs. Agar, leaning forward and
+trying visibly to read the diary.
+
+Mr. Rigg turned back a few pages, as if to go over the ground a second
+time.
+
+“Let me see!” he said leisurely. “What was the precise date of
+the--er--sad event?”
+
+“Last Tuesday, the fourteenth.”
+
+“To be sure,” reflected Mr. Rigg, fixing his eyes sadly on an engraving
+of London Bridge in the seventeenth century--a spot specially reserved
+for the sadder moments of probate and other testamentary work. “Very sad,
+very sad.”
+
+Then he rose with the mental brushing-away of unshed tears of a man who
+has never yet had time in life for idle lamentation. He turned towards
+the tin box, jingling his keys in a most practical and business-like way.
+
+“And I presume,” he said, “that you have come to consult me about the
+late Captain Agar's will?”
+
+“Was there a will?” asked Mrs. Agar, with audible alarm. She had not
+studied “Every Man his own Lawyer” quite in vain, although most of the
+legal technicalities had conveyed nothing whatever to her mind. She did
+not notice that her question regarding Mr. Glynde had never been
+answered.
+
+Mr. Rigg turned upon her beaming.
+
+“I have no will,” he answered. “I thought that perhaps you were aware of
+the existence of one.”
+
+Mrs. Agar's face lighted up.
+
+“No,” she said, with ill-concealed delight; “I am certain there is no
+will.”
+
+“Indeed! And why, my dear madam?”
+
+“Well--oh, well, because Jem was just the sort of person to forget such
+matters. Besides, when he left England he was under age.”
+
+The lawyer was looking at her with his usual sympathetic smile spread
+over his face like an actor's make-up, but his eyes were very keen and
+clever.
+
+“Of course,” he observed, “he may have made one out there.”
+
+“I do not think that it is likely,” replied the lady, whose small
+thoughts always came into the world in charge of a very obvious father in
+the shape of a wish. “There are no facilities out there--no lawyers.”
+
+“There are quite a number of lawyers in India,” said Mr. Rigg, with
+sudden gravity. His face was only grave when he wished to fend off
+laughter.
+
+“Well,” persisted Mrs. Agar, “I am _sure_ Jem did not make a will.”
+
+Mr. Rigg bowed and resumed his seat. He took up a penholder and smiled,
+presumably at his own sunny thoughts.
+
+Mrs. Agar was one of those fatuous ladies who think themselves capable of
+tricking a professional man out of his fee. She had a vague notion that
+if one asks a lawyer a question the price of his answer is at least six
+shillings and eightpence. Up to this point in the interview she was
+serenely conscious of having eluded the fee.
+
+“I presume,” she remarked carelessly, in pursuance of this economical
+policy, “that in such a case the property would go unconditionally to the
+second son.”
+
+“There are contingent possibilities,” replied the man of subterfuge
+blandly. He did not mean anything at all, but shrewdly guessed that Mrs.
+Agar would not credit him with so simple a design.
+
+The lady smiled in a subtly commiserating manner, indicative of the fact
+that on some family matters the ignorance of all except herself was
+somewhat pitiful.
+
+“Of course,” she said, “as regards the present case, I know perfectly
+well that both Jem and his father would wish everything to go to Arthur.”
+
+She was picking a thread from the corner of her jacket with an air of
+nonchalance.
+
+Mr. Rigg was silent. He had some thirty years before this period given up
+attaching importance to the wishes of the deceased as interpreted by
+disinterested survivors.
+
+“And _I_ should imagine that the necessary transfers--and--and things
+would be much better put in hand at once. Delay seems to me quite
+unnecessary.”
+
+She paused for Mr. Rigg's opinion--quite a friendly opinion, of course,
+without price.
+
+“Pardon me,” said that lawyer, driven into a corner at last, “but are you
+consulting me on behalf of the late Squire's executor, Mr. Glynde, or on
+your own account?”
+
+“Oh!” replied Mrs. Agar, drawing herself up with a deprecating little
+laugh, “I did not intend it to be a consultation at all. I happened to be
+passing, that was all. You see, Mr. Rigg, Mr. Glynde does not know
+anything about these matters. Clergymen are so stupid.”
+
+“Seems to be afraid,” Mr. Rigg was reflecting behind his pleasant mask,
+“of the young man coming alive again.”
+
+Mrs. Agar was like a child in many ways, more especially in her unbounded
+belief in her own cunning. She actually imagined herself to be a match
+for this man, who had been trained in the ways of duplicity all his life.
+She saw nothing of his mind, and fatuously ignored the fact that from the
+moment she had entered the room he had begun the interview with a mental
+hypothesis.
+
+“This woman,” he had reflected, “has always hated her step-son. She got
+him a commission in an Indian regiment for the primary purpose of getting
+him out of the way while she saved money on her life-interest in the
+estate for her second son. The secondary purpose was little more than a
+hope. She hoped for the best. The best has come off, and she is not
+clever enough to let things take their course.”
+
+Every word Mrs. Agar had uttered, every silence, every glance had gone to
+confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He
+did not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor
+in the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to
+probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the
+elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one
+domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law.
+And in one as in the other the finer susceptibilities grow dull. The
+doctor almost forgets the pain he inflicts. The lawyer gradually loses
+his sense of right and wrong.
+
+Mr. Rigg was an honest man--as honesty is understood in the law. He was
+keenly alive to all the motives of this woman, who, in the law of
+humanity, was a criminal. He had started from a lawyer's standpoint--_id
+est_, personal advantage. “To whose advantage?” they ask, and there they
+assign the action. But Mr. Rigg was also a good lawyer, and therefore he
+kept his own counsel.
+
+“Things must be allowed,” he said, “to take their course. You know, Mrs.
+Agar, we are proverbially slow in moving, but we are sure.”
+
+Now it happened that this was precisely the position assumed by Mr.
+Glynde, whose respect for legal routine was enormous. He rarely moved in
+any matters wherein the law could by hook or crook be introduced without
+consulting Mr. Rigg, whom he vaguely called his “man.” And it was
+precisely this delay that Mrs. Agar disliked. She had no definite reason
+for so doing; but this stroke of good fortune presented itself to her
+mind more in the light of an opportunity to be seized than as a just
+inheritance to be thankfully received in its due time.
+
+She was awake to the fact that Arthur was not the man to seize any
+opportunity, however obviously it might be thrust into his grasp, and her
+knowledge of the world tended to exaggerate its dishonesty in her mind.
+
+Sister Cecilia and she had talked this matter over with that small
+modicum of learning which is a dangerous thing, and they had arrived at
+the conclusion that Mr. Glynde was not competent to carry out the duties
+thus suddenly thrust upon him. Wrapped up as was her heart in the welfare
+of her weakling son, the one lasting motive of her life had been to
+secure for him the largest possible portion of earthly goods. Now that
+success seemed to be within measurable distance, she gave way to the
+baneful panic of the weak conspirator, and fancied that the whole world
+was allied against her.
+
+She could not keep her fingers off “Every Man his own Lawyer,” and
+consulted that boon to the legal profession to such good effect that she
+placed a handsome fee in the pocket of one of its brightest ornaments at
+the earliest opportunity. Mr. Rigg continued to beam and to keep his own
+counsel, merely notifying that things must be allowed to take their own
+course, and presently he bowed Mrs. Agar out of his office, dissatisfied,
+and with an uncomfortable feeling of having been somewhat indiscreet.
+
+Arthur was waiting for her in a hansom cab in Holborn, and with a sigh of
+relief they drove westward to a shop in Regent Street to order a supply
+of the newest procurable mode of signifying grief on paper and envelopes.
+Arthur Agar was an expert in such matters, and indeed both mother and son
+were more at home in the graceful pastime of spending money than in the
+technicalities of making or keeping the same.
+
+Arthur was already beginning to taste the sweetness of his adversity, and
+being intensely sensitive to the influence of those with whom he happened
+to be at the moment, he was already beginning to look back with mild
+surprise to the first burst of grief to which he had given way on hearing
+that Jem was killed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION
+
+_There is one that keepeth silence and is found wise._
+
+
+Sister Cecilia received--nay, she almost welcomed--the news of Jem
+Agar's death in an intensely Christian spirit. She looked upon it in
+the light of a chastening-a sort of moral cold bath, unpleasant at the
+time, but cleanly and refreshing in its effect. Intense goodness and
+virtue of the jubby-jubby order seem frequently to produce this result.
+Trouble--provided that it be not personal--is elevated to a position
+which it was never intended to occupy by an all-seeing Providence. There
+are some people who step into the troubles of others as into the
+chastening bath above referred to, and splash about. They pretend to feel
+deeply bereavements which cannot reasonably be expected to affect them,
+and go about the world with a well-scrubbed air of conscious virtue,
+saying in manner if not in words, “Look at me; my troubles compass me
+about, but my innate goodness enables me to take them in the proper
+spirit and to be cheerful despite all.”
+
+This was precisely Sister Cecilia's attitude towards her small world of
+Stagholme, after the news of the young Squire's death had cast a gloom
+over the whole neighbourhood.
+
+“Ah!” she would say to some honest cottage mother who had more true
+feeling in her rough little finger than Sister Cecilia possessed in her
+whole heart. “These trials are sent to us for our good. The ways of
+Providence are strange, Mrs. Martin--strange to us now.”
+
+“Yes, miss; that they be,” Mrs. Martin replied, looking at her with the
+hard and far-seeing gaze of a poor mother who has known trouble in its
+least romantic form. And Sister Cecilia, with that blindness which comes
+from systematically closing the eyes to the earthly side of earthly
+things, never realised that the small change of sympathy is often
+slightly aggravating.
+
+At this period she took to calling Jem Agar her “poor boy.” The grave
+seems to have the power of completely altering the past, and with persons
+of the stamp of Sister Cecilia death appears not only to wipe out all
+sin, but to impair the memory of the living to such an extent that the
+individuality of the deceased is no longer recognisable.
+
+Jem never had in any sense of the word been her boy. His feelings for her
+had passed from the distrust of childhood to the lofty contempt of a
+schoolboy for all things preternaturally virtuous, finally settling down
+into the more tolerant contempt of manhood. The dead, however, have
+perforce to accept much affection which they scornfully refused in life.
+
+“Poor Jem!” said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar the day after that lady's
+visit to Gray's Inn. “I always thought that perhaps he and dear Dora
+would come to--to some understanding.”
+
+She stirred her tea with patient, suffering head inclined at a resigned
+angle.
+
+“Do you think there _was_ any understanding between them?” inquired Mrs.
+Agar.
+
+“Well--I should not like to say.”
+
+Which, being translated, meant that she would like to say, but did not
+know.
+
+It had always been a pet scheme of Mrs. Agar's that Dora should marry
+Arthur; firstly, because she would have nearly two thousand pounds a year
+on the death of her parents; and, secondly, because she was a capable
+person with plenty of common-sense. These two adjuncts--namely, money and
+common-sense--Mrs. Agar wisely looked for in candidates for the flaccid
+hand of her son.
+
+“I will try and find out,” said Sister Cecilia after a pause.
+
+Mrs. Agar said nothing. She was meditating over this last stroke of fate
+in favour of her scheme, and her thoughts were disturbed by that distrust
+in the continuance of good fortune which usually spoils the enjoyment of
+the unscrupulous in those good things which they have obtained for
+themselves.
+
+So Sister Cecilia took it for granted that she was doing the will of the
+mistress of Stagholme when she wrote a note that same evening inviting
+Dora to have tea with her the following afternoon.
+
+At the hour appointed Dora arrived, and was duly shown into the little
+cottage drawing-room, of which the decoration hovered between the
+avowedly devout and the economo-aesthetic.
+
+Sister Cecilia swept down upon her with a speechless emotion which, in
+the nature of things (and Sister Cecilia), could not well be of long
+duration.
+
+“My dear,” she whispered, “God will give you strength to bear this awful
+trial.”
+
+Dora recovered her breath and re-arranged her crushed habiliments before
+inquiring, with just sufficient feeling to save her from downright
+rudeness, “What is the matter; has something else happened?”
+
+Sister Cecilia drew back. She was vaguely conscious of having run
+mentally against a brick wall. There was something new and unusual about
+Dora which she could not understand--something, if she could only have
+seen it, suggestive of the quiet, strong man in whose honour the whole
+parish wore mourning. But Sister Cecilia was not a subtle woman. She had
+had so little experience of the world, of men and of women, that she fell
+easily into the error of thinking that they were all to be treated alike
+and with equal success by little maxims culled from fourpenny-halfpenny
+devotional books.
+
+“No, dear,” she exclaimed; “I was referring to our terrible loss. My
+heart has been bleeding for you--”
+
+“It is very kind, I'm sure,” said Dora quietly; “I forgot that I had not
+seen you since the news reached us.”
+
+It is probable that her self-control cost her more than she suspected.
+Her lips were drawn and dry. She wore a thick veil, which she carefully
+abstained from lifting above the level of her eyes. “I am sure,” moaned
+Sister Cecilia, “it has been a most trying time for us all. I wonder that
+Mrs. Agar has borne up so bravely. Her health is wonderful, considering.”
+
+Dora sat looking straight in front of her. She was withdrawing her gloves
+slowly. Her face was that of a person whose mind was made up for the
+endurance of an operation.
+
+The twaddling voice, the characteristic reference to health, were
+intensely aggravating. There are some women who talk of their own health
+before the dead are buried. They do not seem to be able to separate grief
+from bodily ill. Clad in crape, they rush to the seaside, and there,
+presumably because grief affects their legs, they hire a man to wheel
+themselves and Sorrow in a bath-chair. Why--oh, why! does bereavement
+drive women into bath-chairs on the King's Road, or the Lees, or the Hoe?
+
+“Wonderful!” said Dora.
+
+Sister Cecilia, busying herself with the teapot, proceeded to blow her
+own trumpet with the bare-facedness of true virtue.
+
+“I have been with her constantly,” she said. “I think it is better for us
+all to tell of our grief; I think that we are given speech for that
+purpose. For although one may only be able to offer sympathy and perhaps
+a little advice, it is always a relief to speak of one's sorrow.”
+
+“I suppose it is,” admitted Dora from her strong-hold of reserve, “for
+some people.”
+
+“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Sister Cecilia, all heedless of the sarcasm. For
+extreme charity is proof against such. It covers other things besides a
+multitude of sins. Wielded foolishly it runs amuck like a too luxuriant
+creeper, and often kills commonsense. “And that is why I asked you to
+come, dear. I thought that you might want to confide in some one--that
+you might want to unburden your heart to one who feels for you as if this
+sorrow were her own--”
+
+“Only one piece of sugar, thank you,” interrupted Dora. “Thank you. No.
+Bread and butter, please. It is very kind of you, Sister Cecilia. But,
+you see, when I have any unburdening to do there is always mother, and if
+I want any advice there is always father.”
+
+“Yes, dear. But sometimes even one's parents are not quite the persons to
+whom one would turn in times of grief.”
+
+“Oh!” observed Dora, without much enthusiasm.
+
+Unconsciously Sister Cecilia was doing the very best thing possible for
+Dora, She was arousing in her the spirit of antagonism--hardening a
+stricken heart, as it were, by a fresh challenge. She was teaching Dora
+to fight for what we learn to deem most sacred--namely, the right to
+monopolise our own thoughts and feelings. Sister Cecilia is not, one may
+assume, the only good woman in the world who cannot draw a definite line
+between sympathy and mere curiosity. With many the display of sympathy is
+nothing but a half-conscious bait to attract a shoal of further details.
+
+Self-reliance was lurking somewhere in this girl's character, but it had
+never been developed by the pressure of circumstances. Reserve she had
+seen practised by her father, but the actual advantages thereof were only
+now beginning to be apparent to her. The body, we are told, adapts itself
+to abnormal circumstances; so is it with the mind. Already Dora was
+beginning, as they say at sea, to find her feet; to take that stand
+amidst her environments which she was forced to hold, practically alone,
+thereafter.
+
+And Sister Cecilia, with that blind faith in a good motive which gives
+almost as much trouble as actual vice, floundered on in the path she had
+mapped out for herself.
+
+“You know, dear,” she said, looking out of the window with a sentimental
+droop of her thin, inquisitive lips, “I cannot help feeling that
+this--this terrible blow means more to you than it does to us.”
+
+“Why?” inquired Dora practically.
+
+Sister Cecilia was silent, with one of those aggravating silences which
+do not allow even the satisfaction of a flat contradiction. A meaning
+silence is a coward's argument. She was beginning to feel slightly
+nervous before this child, ignorant that childhood is not always a matter
+of years and calendar months.
+
+“Why?” asked Dora again.
+
+Sister Cecilia looked rather bewildered.
+
+“Well, dear, I thought perhaps--I always thought that my poor boy
+entertained some feeling--you understand?”
+
+“No,” replied Dora, borrowing for the moment her father's most crushing
+deliberation of manner, “I cannot say I do. When you say your 'poor boy,'
+are you referring to Jem?”
+
+Sister Cecilia assented with a resigned nod worthy of the very earliest
+martyr.
+
+“Then, as every one has discovered so many virtues in him--quite
+suddenly--we had better emulate one of them, and have at the least the
+good feeling to hold our tongues about any feelings he may have
+entertained. Do you not think so, Sister Cecilia?”
+
+“Well, dear, I only thought to act as might be best for you,” said the
+well-intentioned meddler, with the drawl of the professionally
+misunderstood.
+
+“I have no doubt of that,” returned Dora, with an equanimity which was
+again strangely suggestive of Jem Agar. “But in future you will be
+consulting my welfare much more effectively by refraining from action on
+my behalf at all.”
+
+“As you will, dear; as you will,” in the hopeless tone of age,
+experience, and wisdom forced to stand idle while youth and folly rush
+headlong down the hill.
+
+“Yes,” returned Dora calmly; “I know that, thank you. And now, I think,
+we had better change the subject.”
+
+The subject was therefore changed; but Sister Cecilia, having, as it
+were, whetted her appetite for details, was not at her ease with other
+food for the mind, and presently Dora left.
+
+The girl went back into her small world with a new knowledge gained--the
+knowledge that in all and through all we are really quite alone. There
+can be only one companion, and if that one be absent, there are only so
+many talking-machines left to us. And many of us pass the whole of our
+lives in conversation with them. So it is; and we know not why.
+
+In a subtle way she felt stronger for this little tussle--a fight is
+always exhilarating. She felt that from henceforth the memory of Jem was
+hers, and hers alone, to defend and to cherish. It was not much of a
+consolation. No. But then this is a world of small mercies, where some of
+us get an hour or some mean portion of a day when we want a lifetime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE TOUCH OF NATURE
+
+A sense, when first I fronted him,
+Said, “Trust him not!”
+
+
+After successfully carrying through the purchase of mourning stationery
+and attending to other important items connected with sorrow in its
+worldly shape, Arthur Agar went back to Cambridge. There was enough of
+the woman in his nature to enable him to cherish grief and nurse it
+lovingly, as some women (not the best of them) do. In this attitude
+towards the world there was none of that dogged going about his business
+which characterises the ordinary man from whose life something has
+slipped out.
+
+He wandered by the banks of the Cam with mourning in his mien, and his
+cherished friends took sympathetic coffee with him after Hall. They spoke
+of Jem with that fervid admiration which University men honestly feel for
+one a few years their senior who has already “done something.”
+
+“A ripping soldier” they called him and some of them entertained serious
+doubts as to whether they had done wisely in choosing the less glorious
+paths of peace. And Arthur Agar settled down into the old profitless
+life, with this difference--that he could not dine out, that he used
+blackedged notepaper, and that his delicate heliotrope neckties were
+folded away in a drawer until such time as his grief should be assuaged
+into that state of resignation technically called half-mourning.
+
+One afternoon well towards the end of the term Arthur Agar's “gyp” crept
+in with that valet-like confidential air which seems to be bred of too
+intimate a knowledge of the extent of one's wardrobe.
+
+“There is a gentleman, sir,” he said, “as wants to see you. But in no
+wise will he give his name, which, he says, you don't know it.”
+
+“Is he selling engravings?” asked Arthur.
+
+The “gyp” looked mildly offended. As if he didn't know that sort!
+
+“No, sir. Military man, I should take it.”
+
+Arthur Agar had met the Scotch Balaclava veteran in his time too. He
+hesitated, and the “gyp,” who felt that his reputation was at stake,
+spoke:
+
+“He is eminently a gentleman, sir,” he said.
+
+“Well, then, show him up.”
+
+A moment later a man who might have been the wandering Jew _fin de
+siècle_ stood in the doorway. His smart military moustache was small and
+evidently trimmed, his face was sunburnt, and in his eyes there gleamed
+the restlessness of India.
+
+He bowed, and awaited the exit of the man. Then, coming forward, he was
+able for the first time to see Arthur Agar's face distinctly, and his
+glance wavered.
+
+At that moment Arthur Agar was staring at him with something in his face
+that was almost strong. When this man had entered the room, Arthur felt
+his heart give one great bound which almost choked him. There was a
+strange physical feeling of vacuity in his breast which seemed to
+paralyse his breathing powers, and his temples throbbed painfully.
+
+Arthur Agar's life had been passed in eminently pleasant places. The
+seamy side of existence had always been carefully hidden from his eyes.
+He therefore did not recognise this strange sense which had leapt into
+his being--the sense of superhuman, physical, mortal revulsion.
+
+He was divided between two instincts. One side of his nature urged him to
+shriek like a woman. Had he followed the other, he would have rushed at
+this man, whom he had never seen before, seeking to do him bodily harm.
+He would not have paused to reason that in anything like a struggle he
+would stand no chance against the sinewy, dark-eyed soldier who stood
+watching him. For there are moments even in this age of self-suppression
+when we do not pause to think, when he who cannot swim will leap into
+deep water to save another.
+
+This sudden unreasoning hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed
+to stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease
+lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the
+spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. The stranger it was
+who spoke.
+
+“I presume,” he said, with a pleasant smile, in a voice so musical that
+his hearer breathed suddenly as if his head had been lifted from water,
+“I presume that you are Mr. Arthur Agar?”
+
+While he spoke he looked past Arthur, out of the silken-draped window. He
+did not seem to like the glance of this young man, for even the most
+practical of us have a conscience at times.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The new-comer laid his walking-stick on the table, and turned to make
+sure that the door was closed.
+
+“I knew your step-brother,” he explained, “Jem Agar, in India.”
+
+Then the instinct of the gentleman and the host asserted itself over and
+above the throbbing hatred.
+
+“Ah! Will you sit down?”
+
+The stranger took the proffered chair and laid aside his hat. But neither
+of them was at ease. There was a subtle suggestion that they had met
+before and quarrelled--vague, unreasoning, quite impossible if you will;
+but it was there. They were as men meeting again with a past between them
+(too full of strong passions ever to be forgotten) which each was trying
+in vain to ignore.
+
+“I have brought home a few belongings of his,” the stranger went on to
+explain. “Just a port-manteau with some clothes and things.”
+
+He paused, and drew a small packet from the pocket of a covert-coat which
+he carried over his arm.
+
+“Here,” he went on, “are some papers of his--a diary and one or two
+letters. The rest of the things are at my hotel in town.”
+
+Arthur took the packet, and, still in the same dreamy, unreal way, opened
+it. He turned to the last entry--dated six weeks back.
+
+“Got out of bed at five, but nothing to be seen in the valley. I feel a
+bit chippy this morning. If nothing turns up to-day shall begin to feel
+uneasy. The men seem all right. They are plucky little fellows.”
+
+There was a self-consciousness about Jem Agar's diary, a selection of the
+right word, which conveyed nothing to Arthur. But it fell into other
+hands later on, where it was understood better.
+
+General Michael was watching the undergraduate with the same critical
+attention which he had brought to bear on the writer of the diary not two
+months before.
+
+“Did you see much of your step-brother?” he asked abruptly, feeling his
+way towards his purpose.
+
+Arthur looked up. He was getting accustomed to the loathing that he felt
+for this man, as one gets accustomed to an evil odour or a physical pain.
+
+“I saw enough of him to be very fond of him,” he replied.
+
+“And your mother--was she attached to him? Excuse my asking; I have a
+reason.”
+
+The little pause was enough. Seymour Michael had expected as much.
+
+He had never forgiven Mrs. Agar the insults she heaped upon his head in
+the drawing-room of Jaggery House. It is very difficult to bring shame
+home to a Jew, and on that occasion this son of the modern Ishmaelites
+had been thoroughly ashamed of himself. The sting of that past ignominy
+was with him still, and would remain within his heart until such time as
+he could revenge himself.
+
+With that mean, underhand watchfulness for an opportunity which is almost
+excusable in one of the unfortunates against whom every man's hand is
+raised to-day, he had never parted with his thirst for revenge. The
+moment seemed propitious. It was within his power to lay for Anna Agar
+one of those spiteful feminine traps of which a woman can only fully
+appreciate the sting.
+
+He determined to leave Mrs. Agar in ignorance of the real facts
+respecting her step-son. His vengeance was to allow her to
+rejoice--almost openly, as she did--in the stroke of fortune by which her
+own son, Arthur, had become possessed of Stagholme. He knew the woman
+well enough to foresee that in a hundred ways she would heap up ignominy,
+meanness, deception, which would crumble in one vast wreck about her head
+when Jem Agar returned.
+
+It was a vengeance worthy of the man, and spiteful enough to be fully
+comprehended by its victim. But, like others handling petards, Seymour
+Michael grew somewhat careless, and forgot that the wrong man is
+sometimes hoist.
+
+He knew his position well enough to make all safe as regarded Jem Agar on
+his return. It was absolutely necessary to tell Arthur Agar--necessary
+for his own safety in the future. The other two persons to whom the
+secret was to be imparted were Mrs. Agar and Dora Glynde. From Mrs. Agar
+Seymour Michael determined to withhold the news for his own reasons. Dora
+was to be kept in the dark because she was a woman, and therefore unsafe.
+
+This was the plan in its original shape with which Michael sought out
+Arthur Agar at his rooms in college at Cambridge. It was further assisted
+and elaborated by a circumstance which the originator could scarcely have
+been expected to foresee--the fact of Arthur Agar's love for Dora, which
+was at this time beginning to take to itself a definite existence. It
+began, as all love does, with a want more or less elevated according to
+the nature of the wanter. Arthur Agar required some one for whom to buy
+those small and feminine luxuries which he could not for manly shame
+purchase to himself. He delighted in spending money in those
+establishments tersely called _magasins de luxe_ in the country from
+whence their contents do emanate. He therefore got into the habit of
+“picking up little things” for Dora, with the result that she in her turn
+picked up that very small object, his heart.
+
+Michael had seen enough of Arthur Agar during this short interview to
+endow him with the same need of contempt which he had entertained towards
+Anna Agar, the mother. The strong personal resemblance, the obvious
+weakness of the boy's face, and, above all, that sense of having the
+upper hand, which makes brave men out of cowards, gave him confidence. It
+seemed that he had only to play the cards thrust into his hand.
+
+“I knew,” he pursued, “Jem Agar very well. He was a peculiar man: very
+quiet, very reserved, and just the man to make a difficult position
+rather more difficult.”
+
+Arthur's intelligence was not keen enough to follow the drift of this
+remark.
+
+“Yes,” he said gently.
+
+“He hinted to me once or twice,” went on Seymour Michael, “that things
+were not very harmonious at home.”
+
+“I was not aware of it,” answered Arthur, whose innate gentlemanliness
+told him that this should be held sacred ground.
+
+The General shifted his position.
+
+“He was a first-rate soldier,” he said warmly.
+
+It was obvious to both that they were not getting on. Something
+seemed to hold them both back, paralysing the _savoir-faire_ which
+both had acquired in their intercourse with the world. Seymour Michael
+was puzzled. He was not afraid of this boy. He knew himself to be
+stronger--capable of over-mastering him entirely. But for the first time
+in his life he felt awkward and ill at ease.
+
+Arthur Agar only wanted this man to go. He felt that he could forego the
+news which he must undoubtedly be in a position to give if only he could
+be rid of this hated presence. At moments the loathing came to him again,
+like a cold hand laid upon his heart.
+
+“Were you with him,” inquired the undergraduate, “at the time of
+his--death?”
+
+“No. I was at head-quarters, forty miles to the rear.”
+
+There was a little pause, then suddenly Seymour Michael leant forward
+with his two hands on the table that stood between them.
+
+“Mr. Agar,” he said, “are you able to keep a secret?”
+
+“I suppose so,” answered Agar apprehensively.
+
+“Then I am going to tell you something which you must swear by all that
+you hold most sacred to keep a strict secret until such time as I give
+you leave to reveal it.”
+
+Arthur looked at him with a vague fear in his face. It seemed suddenly as
+if this man had always been in his life--as if he would never go out of
+it again.
+
+“I am not sure that I care to hear it,” he wavered.
+
+“You must hear it. Almost the last words that Jem Agar spoke to me were
+requesting me to tell you this.”
+
+“You promise that that is true?”
+
+Arthur was surprised at his own suspicions. It was so unlike him, whose
+nature, too weak to compass vice, had never allowed the suspicion of vice
+or deceit in others to trouble him.
+
+“I promise,” replied Seymour Michael.
+
+Arthur gathered himself together for an effort. His distrust of this man
+was almost a panic.
+
+“Then tell me,” he said.
+
+Michael leant back in his chair, fixing his pleasant eyes on Arthur's
+pale face.
+
+“The estate is not yours,” he said. “Your step-brother, Jem Agar, is not
+dead.”
+
+“Not dead!” repeated Arthur, without any joy in his voice. “Not dead!
+Then who are you? Tell me who you are!”
+
+“Ah! That I cannot tell you.”
+
+And Seymour Michael sat smiling quietly on Anna Agar's son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE SPIDER AND THE FLY
+
+How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
+Makes ill deeds done!
+
+
+He is a wise liar who makes use of the truth at times. Seymour Michael
+was clever enough to stay his fantastic tongue in his further explanation
+to Arthur Agar.
+
+“It is a long story,” he said, “and in order to fully state the case to
+you I must go into some matters of which perhaps you have heard little.
+Do you happen to be anything of a politician? Are you, I mean, interested
+in foreign affairs?”
+
+Arthur confessed that he knew nothing of foreign affairs, a fact of which
+Michael had become fully aware on entering the narrow-minded,
+characteristic room.
+
+“You perhaps know,” Seymour Michael went on, in a tone of which the
+sarcasm was lost upon its victim, “that Russia is living in hopes of some
+day possessing India?”
+
+“Oh--ah--yes!”
+
+Arthur Agar was obviously not at all interested. There were so many
+things of a similar nature to be remembered--things which did not really
+interest him--and those nearer home had precedence in his mind. He knew,
+for instance, that Trinity Hall lived in hopes of heading the river that
+year, and that the Narcissus Club were going to give a narcissus-coloured
+dance in May week, at which entertainment even the jellies were to be
+yellow.
+
+The General now launched into an explanation, couched carefully in
+language suitable to his hearer's limited knowledge of the facts.
+
+“Russia,” he said, “is now so large that, unless they make it larger
+still and get tropical resources to draw upon, it will fall to pieces.
+They want India. Some day there will be a fight, a very large fight. But
+not yet. In the meantime it is a question of learning every inch of that
+country where the battle-fields will be, and every thought in the minds
+of those men who will look on at the fight. I--”
+
+He paused, recollecting that the fame of his own name might have
+penetrated even to this out-of-the-way spot. “Some of us have been at
+this all our lives. Over there, on the Frontier, there are certain
+numbers of us, on both sides, playing a very deep game. Your brother is
+one of the players, a prominent man on the field; a half-back, one might
+call him.”
+
+There was a strong temptation to continue the allegory--to say that he
+himself was goal-keeper; but Seymour Michael was one of the few men who
+can in need make even their own vanity subservient to convenience.
+
+“We watch each other,” he went on, “like cats. We always know where the
+others are, and what they are doing. Your brother was one of the most
+closely watched by the other side. For some time we have been aware of an
+influence at work with a tribe of Hillmen who have hitherto been friendly
+to us, and we have not been able to find what this influence is, or how
+it is brought to bear upon them. We were so closely watched that we could
+not penetrate to the affected country. But at last the chance came. Your
+brother was gazetted as killed. We allowed the report to remain
+uncontradicted. We let the other side think that Jem Agar was dead, and
+therefore incapable of doing any more harm, and now he has gone up into
+that country to find out what they are after.”
+
+Arthur nodded.
+
+“I see,” he said. He was rather vague about it all, and had not quite
+realised yet that this was all true, that this man whom he still hated
+and distrusted without any apparent reason was real and living, speaking
+to him in real waking life and not in a dream. Moreover, he had not
+nearly realised that Jem was alive. The evidence of his own black
+clothes, of the sombre-edged stationery, of his mourning habit of life
+this term, was too strong upon a mind like his to be suddenly thrown
+aside. Perhaps he had discovered that the consolation of inheritance was
+greater than was at first apparent. In six weeks he had slipped very
+comfortably into Jem's shoes, and it seemed only right and proper that
+his life should have a background of the noble proportions of Stagholme.
+Also, now Stagholme meant Dora; for he was worldly-wise enough to know
+that his own personal value in the world's estimation had undergone a
+great change in six short weeks. He knew that the man with the money
+usually wins.
+
+It would almost seem that Seymour Michael divined his thoughts, at least
+in part.
+
+“There are two reasons,” he went on to say, “why absolute secrecy is
+necessary; first, for Agar's own sake. He is, of course, in disguise. No
+one suspects that he is there, and that is his only safeguard in the
+country where he is. Secondly--but I want your whole attention, please.”
+
+“Yes, I am listening.”
+
+Seymour Michael leant forward and emphasised his remark by tapping on the
+table with his gloved finger.
+
+“The mission is so extremely dangerous that it comes almost to the same
+thing.”
+
+“What do you mean?” inquired Arthur Agar, whose gentle intellect only
+compassed subtleties of the drawing-room type.
+
+“I mean that Jem Agar is almost as good as a dead man, although he was
+not killed at Pregalla.”
+
+The man who had wept in this same room six weeks before looked up with a
+gleam of something very like hope in his troubled eyes. Such is the power
+of love. For Arthur Agar had not been ignorant of the probability that in
+his step-brother, once dead but now living, he had had a rival. Sister
+Cecilia had seen to that.
+
+“But when shall we know? When will he come back?” inquired he. And
+Seymour Michael, the subtle, began to see his way more clearly.
+
+“Certainly not for six months, probably not for nine.”
+
+One may take it that no man is sent into the world a ready-made
+scoundrel. It all depends upon the circumstances of life. No one is safe
+right up to the end, and events may combine to make the very best of us
+into that thing which the world calls a villain.
+
+Arthur Agar, all inexperienced, weak, hereditarily handicapped, suddenly
+found himself on the balance. And the scales were held, not by the hand
+of Justice, blind and clement, but by Seymour Michael, very open-eyed,
+with a keen watchfulness for his own purpose; biassed; unscrupulous. It
+must be admitted that circumstances were against Arthur Agar.
+
+“There is nothing to be done,” added Seymour Michael, with a smile which
+his companion could not be expected to fathom, “but to keep very quiet,
+and to make the best of your opportunities while you occupy the position
+of heir.”
+
+Arthur smiled in a sickly way. He felt suddenly as if this man could see
+right through him, and all the while he hated him. Seymour Michael meant
+“debts”--it was only natural that one of his race should think of money
+before all things--Arthur's thoughts were fixed on Dora. And guiltily he
+imagined himself to be detected.
+
+“You will be doing no harm to Jem,” said the tempter, with his pleasant
+laugh. “You are called upon to act the part well for his sake.”
+
+“Ye-es, I suppose I am,” answered Arthur. “And I must tell no one?”
+
+“Absolutely no one.”
+
+Despite his credulous nature, Arthur Agar was singularly suspicious on
+this occasion.
+
+“Are these Jem's own instructions?” he asked.
+
+“His own instructions,” replied Seymour Michael callously.
+
+Arthur paused in deep reflection. It was evident, he argued to himself,
+that Jem could not have cared for Dora, or he would never have left her
+in ignorance of the truth. If, therefore, during Jem's absence, he could
+win Dora for himself, he could not in any way be accused of wronging his
+step-brother. And we all know that a conscience which argues with itself
+is lost.
+
+“To make things easier for us both,” pursued Seymour Michael, “I propose
+that this interview remain a strict secret between ourselves, and for
+that purpose I have suppressed my own name. It is a fairly well-known
+name. I may mention that in guarantee of good faith. As, however, you do
+not know me, it will be easier for you to suppress the fact that we have
+ever met.”
+
+Arthur almost laughed at these last words. It seemed as if he had known
+this man all his life--as if his whole existence had merely been a period
+of waiting until he should come.
+
+“And my mother must not know?” he said. He kept harking back to this
+question with a singular persistence. There are a few men and many
+women for whom a secret is a responsibility to be transferred to the
+first-comer without hesitation. One half of the world takes pleasure in
+divulging a secret--for the other half it is positive pain to keep one.
+
+Seymour Michael never dreamt that the secret might be in unsafe hands. To
+a secretive man like himself the incapacity to keep a counsel never
+suggested itself. There is no doubt that where we all err is in
+persistently judging others by ourselves. Arthur Agar was keenly aware of
+his own incompetence in many things--he was one of those promising
+undergraduates who hire a man to water six small plants in a window-box.
+Incompetence was by him reduced to a science. There were so many things
+which he could not do, that he was forced to find occupations for a very
+extensive leisure, and these were usually of the petty accomplishment
+order, which are graceful in young girls and very disgraceful in young
+men.
+
+Now the doctrine of incompetence is a very dangerous one. Already in the
+criminal courts we are beginning to hear of men and women who do not feel
+competent to keep the law. There were many laws of social procedure and a
+few of schoolboy honour which Arthur Agar felt to be beyond him, and he
+considered that in making confession he was acquiring a right to
+absolution.
+
+He did not tell General Michael that he was not good at keeping secrets,
+chiefly because that gentleman was not of the trivial confession type;
+but he made a mental reservation.
+
+Seymour Michael had risen and was walking backwards and forwards slowly
+between the window and the door. He seemed quite at home in the small
+room, and his manner of taking three strides and then wheeling round
+suggested the habit of living in tents.
+
+“What you must say is that you have received your brother's effects,” he
+said. “If they ask from whence--from the War Office. I am the War Office
+to all intents and purposes. The affair is almost forgotten. All the
+details have been published--the usual newspaper details, with Fleet
+Street local colouring. You should have no difficulty.”
+
+“No,” answered Arthur meekly, but with another mental reservation.
+
+“There are, of course, certain legal formalities in progress,” went on
+the General, “relative to the estate. Those must be allowed to go on. We
+may trust the lawyers to go slowly. And afterwards they can amuse
+themselves by undoing what they have done. That is their trade. Half of
+them make a living by undoing what the others have done. You are ...”
+
+Seymour Michael so far forgot himself as to pause and make a mental
+calculation. Arthur saw him do it and never thought of being surprised.
+It seemed quite natural that this man should possess data upon which to
+base mental calculations.
+
+“... not twenty-one yet?” Michael finished the sentence.
+
+“No.”
+
+“So that, you see, they cannot make over the estate to you before the
+time your brother comes or--should--come--back.”
+
+Arthur understood the emphasis perfectly this time. He was getting on.
+
+“There are,” continued Michael, who was eminently methodical, “a few
+military formalities, which have had my attention. In fact, I think that
+everything has been attended to. In case you should require any
+information, or perhaps advice, write to C 74, Smith's Library, Vigo
+Street. That is the address on that envelope.”
+
+Arthur rose too. The thought that his visitor might be about to depart
+thrilled through him with the warmth of relieved suspense.
+
+“For your own information,” said Michael, looking straight into the
+wavering, colourless eyes, “I may tell you that in my opinion--the
+opinion of an expert--this expedition is exceedingly hazardous. We--we
+must be prepared for the worst.”
+
+Arthur Agar turned away. He had felt the deep eyes probing his very
+soul--looking right through him. A sickening sense of weakness was at his
+heart. He felt that in the presence of this man he did not belong to
+himself.
+
+“You mean,” he muttered awkwardly, “that Jem will never come back?”
+
+“I think it most probable. And then--when we have to abandon all hope, I
+mean--we shall be glad that we kept this thing to ourselves.”
+
+Seymour Michael held out his hand, and pressed the boy's weak fingers in
+a careless grip. Then he turned, and with a short “Good-bye” left him.
+
+Arthur stood looking at the closed door with the frightened eyes of a
+woman. He looked round at the familiar objects of his room--the futile
+little gimcracks with which he had surrounded an existence worthy of such
+environments--the invitation cards on the draped mantelpiece, the little
+glass vases of fantastic shape with a single bloom of stephanotis, the
+hundred and one fantasies of a finicking generation wherein Art sappeth
+Manhood. And his eyes were suddenly opened to a new world of things
+which he could not do. He gazed--not without a vague shame--into a
+perspective of incompetencies.
+
+In the _laissez-aller_ of the unreflective he had assumed that life would
+be a continuance of small pleasures and refined enjoyments, little
+dinners and pleasant converse, Dora and a comfortable home, mutual mild
+delight in flowers and table decoration. Into this assumption Seymour
+Michael had suddenly stepped--strong, restless, and mysterious--and
+Arthur became uneasily conscious of possibilities. There might be
+something in his own life, there might even be something within himself,
+over which he could have no control. There was something within
+himself--something connected with the man who had gone, leaving unrest
+behind him, as he left it wherever he passed. What was this? whither
+would it lead?
+
+Arthur Agar rang the bell, and kept the “gyp” in the room on some trivial
+pretext. He was afraid of solitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+TWO MOTIVES
+
+Making vain pretence
+Of gladness, with an awful sense
+Of one mute shadow watching all.
+
+
+“Pooh! the girl is happy enough!”
+
+Mr. Glynde jerked his newspaper up and read an advertisement of
+steamships about to depart to the West Coast of Africa. His wife--engaged
+in cutting out a scarlet flannel garment of diminutive proportions (an
+operation which she made a point of performing on the study table)--gave
+two gentle snips and ceased her occupation.
+
+She looked at the back of her husband's head, where the hair was getting
+a little thin, and said nothing. No one argued with the Reverend Thomas
+Glynde.
+
+“The girl is happy enough,” he repeated, seeking contradiction. There are
+times when an autocrat would very much like to be argued with.
+
+“She is always lively and gay,” he continued defiantly.
+
+“Too gay,” Mrs. Glynde whispered to the scissors, with a flash of the
+only wisdom which Heaven gives away, and it is not given to all mothers.
+
+The winter had closed over Stagholme, the isolating, distance-making
+winter of English country life, wherein each house is thrown upon its own
+resource, and the peaceful are at rest because their neighbours cannot
+get at them.
+
+Dora was out. She was out a good deal now; exceedingly busy in good works
+of a different type from those affected by Sister Cecilia. The winter air
+seemed to invigorate her, and she tramped miles with a can of soup or an
+infant's flannel wrapper. And always when she came in she was gay, as her
+father described it. She gave amusing descriptions of her visits among
+the cottagers, retailed little quaint conceits such as drop from rustic
+lips declared unto them by their fathers from the old time before them,
+and in it all she displayed a keen insight into human nature. At times
+she was brilliant; which her father noticed with grave approval, ignorant
+or heedless of the fact that brilliancy means friction. Happy people are
+not brilliant.
+
+She suddenly developed a taste for politics, and read the newspaper with
+a keen interest. Several half-forgotten duties were revived, and their
+performance became a matter of principle.
+
+Mr. Glynde did not notice these subtle changes. Old men are generally
+selfish, more so, if possible, than young ones, and Mr. Glynde was
+eminently so. He only saw other people in relationship to himself. He
+looked at them through himself.
+
+Mrs. Glynde had taken the opportunity of a “cutting out” to mention that
+she thought a change would do Dora good. During the three months that had
+elapsed since the announcement of Jem's death, Stagholme had necessarily
+been a somewhat dull abode. The winter had not come on well, but in fits
+and starts, with trying winds and much rain. She said these things while
+she cut into her roll of red flannel--the scissors seemed to give her
+courage.
+
+The Rector of Stagholme had awful visions of a furnished house at
+Brighton or a crammed hotel on the Riviera.
+
+“Where do you want to go to?” he inquired, with a gruffness which meant
+less than it conveyed.
+
+“To town, dear.”
+
+Now Mr. Glynde loved London.
+
+In the meantime Dora was standing at the gate of the gamekeeper's little
+cottage-garden which adjoined the orchard at Stagholme. There were
+certain women with whom Sister Cecilia did not “get on,” and these were
+by tacit understanding relegated to Dora. This same inability to “get on”
+ was one of the crosses which Sister Cecilia carried in a magnified
+condition through life. The gamekeeper's wife was one of the failures--a
+hardy mother of several hardy little embryo gamekeepers, who held that
+she knew her own business of motherhood best, and intimated as much to
+Sister Cecilia.
+
+Dora went there very frequently, and the pathos of her way with little
+children is one of the things which cannot be touched upon here. It is
+possible that she went there because the cottage was near the Holme, and
+the way took her past the great house. She had never laid aside her old
+girlish habit of passing through the rooms, unannounced, to exchange a
+few words with Mrs. Agar. It was not that she held that lady in great
+veneration or respect; but in the country people learn to take their
+neighbours as they are, remembering that they are neighbours.
+
+She went through the orchard and in at the side-door, which stood always
+open to the turn of the handle. She had fallen into a singular habit
+of always using this entrance, and of glancing as she passed at the
+stick-rack, where a rough mountain-ash was wont to stand--a stick which
+Jem had cut, while she stood by, years before. There was, perhaps,
+something characteristically suggestive of Jem in this stick--something
+strong and simple. She was not the person to indulge in sentimental
+thoughts; she could not afford to do that, Indeed, she often looked into
+the stick-rack without thinking, but she never passed it without looking.
+
+In the library she found Mrs. Agar, talking to her maid, who withdrew
+with a pinched salutation. Mrs. Agar was one of those unfortunate women
+who level all ranks in their sore need of a listener. The expression of
+her face was decidedly lachrymose.
+
+“Poor Arthur!” she exclaimed. “Dora, dear, something so dreadful has
+happened!”
+
+“Yes,” returned Dora, with the indifference of one who has tasted of the
+worst.
+
+“Poor Arthur has received Jem's papers and diaries and things, and I can
+see from his letter that it has quite upset him. He is so sympathetic,
+you know.”
+
+Dora had turned quite away. She usually carried a stick in her country
+rambles, and it seemed suddenly to have suggested itself to her to lay
+this on a table near the door. The stick fell off again, and some moments
+elapsed while she picked it up from the floor. When she turned, her veil
+had slipped from the brim of her hat down over her face.
+
+“But it could not have been a surprise to him,” she said quietly. “He
+must have known that there would probably be something of the sort sent
+home.”
+
+“Yes, yes. But you know, dear, how keenly he feels everything. These
+highly-strung, artistic temperaments--but I need not tell you; you know
+Arthur almost as well as I do.”
+
+Dora answered nothing. It was not the first time that Mrs. Agar had
+charged some remark with that weight of significance which, in her
+vulgar-minded subtlety, she considered delicate and exceptionally clever.
+And each time that Dora heard it she was conscious of a vague discomfort,
+as at the approach of some danger, of some interference in her life which
+would be too strong for her to resist. It was one of those mean feminine
+thrusts to parry which is to acknowledge, to ignore is to admit fear.
+
+“Has he sent them on to you?” she asked after a little pause, resisting
+only by a great effort the temptation to look towards the writing-table.
+
+“Yes,” was the reply. “It appears that they have been in his possession
+for some time. He kept them back for some reason--I cannot think why.”
+
+Providence is sometimes unexpectedly kind. Had Mrs. Agar been a different
+woman, had she, perhaps, been a better woman, less aggravating, more
+discreet, more honourable, she would not have done at this moment
+precisely that which Dora was silently praying that she would do.
+
+“Here,” continued the mistress of Stagholme, going to the writing-table,
+“is his diary; perhaps you would care to look through it? Poor Jem! I am
+afraid it will not be very interesting.”
+
+Dora took the little dark-coloured book almost indifferently.
+
+“Thanks,” she said. “It was always an effort to him to write the very
+shortest letter, was it not? Papa would like to see it, I know, if I may
+show it to him.”
+
+Being rather taller than Mrs. Agar, she could see over that lady's
+shoulder as she stood turning over with some curiosity a score or so of
+bundles evidently containing letters.
+
+“These,” said Mrs. Agar, “seem to be letters; probably our letters to
+him. Shall we burn them?”
+
+Dora reflected for a moment. She knew that many of the bundles must
+contain letters from herself to Jem--letters which could have been read
+from the housetops without conveying anything to the populace. But some
+of them--almost between the lines--had been intended to convey, and had
+conveyed, something to Jem. She reflected--without anger, as women do on
+such matters--that if curiosity moved her, Mrs. Agar would not scruple to
+open all these letters and read them. The packets had evidently not been
+opened, and a momentary feeling of grateful recognition of Arthur's
+gentlemanly honour passed through her mind. There was about the faded
+papers that dim, mysterious odour which ever clings to packages that have
+been packed in India.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “let us burn them.”
+
+Mrs. Agar seemed to hesitate for a moment, but it was only for effect.
+She dreaded the packages, for one of them might contain the will which
+haunted her.
+
+And so these two women, so very different, from such very different
+motives, carried the letters to the fire, and there they burnt them. In
+the curling flames Dora saw her own handwriting. She could not understand
+the suppressed excitement of Mrs. Agar's manner; she only knew that the
+mistress of Stagholme seemed to be afraid of looking at the burning
+papers.
+
+When all was consumed both women heaved a sigh of relief.
+
+“There,” said Mrs. Agar, “I am glad we have been able to save poor Arthur
+that. These things are so very painful.”
+
+Dora looked rather as if she could not understand why the painful things
+of life should be harder for Arthur to bear than for other people. But
+she said nothing.
+
+“He will be glad,” continued Mrs. Agar, “to hear that it was you who
+helped me. I know he would rather that it had been you than any one.”
+
+All this with the horrid meaning, the sly significance, of her kind; for
+there are women for whom there is absolutely nothing sacred in the whole
+gamut of human feelings. There are women who will talk of things upon
+which the lips of even the most depraved men are silent.
+
+And with it there was nothing that Dora could take exception to--nothing
+that she could answer without running the risk of bringing upon herself
+questions to which she had no reply.
+
+“Well,” she said cheerfully, “it is done now, so we can dismiss it from
+our minds. Of course you know that mother is getting out of hand
+altogether. I cannot hold her in. Her plans are simply kittenish. She
+wants to take a flat in town for two months, to take Boulton and one
+maid, to hire a cook, and to go generally to the bad.”
+
+Mrs. Agar's eyes glistened. She liked to hear of other people seeking
+excitement because she felt more justified in doing so herself.
+
+“Well, I think she is very sensible. I am sure you all want a change. I
+feel I do. It is so depressing here all alone with one's thoughts. Sister
+Cecilia was just saying the other day that I ought to go away to Brighton
+or somewhere--that I owed it to Arthur.”
+
+“I don't see why you should not pay it to yourself, whoever you owe it
+to,” said Dora. “This is an age of going away for changes. Life is like
+old Martin's trousers--so patched up with changes that the original
+pattern has disappeared.”
+
+“Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Agar, with a vague laugh. In conversation with
+Dora she invariably felt clumsy and unable to protect herself, like a
+stout fencer conscious of many vulnerable outlying points. She did not
+understand this girl, and never knew which was carte and which tierce.
+“So you are going away?”
+
+“I expect so. Mother usually carries through her little schemes, and in
+his inward soul papa is rather a fast old gentleman. He loves the
+pavement, and--I don't object to the shops myself.”
+
+“Then you will like it?”
+
+“Oh yes!” replied Dora, rising to go. “Like Mr. Martin, I am not sure
+that the old pattern is worth preserving.”
+
+“I wish I could go with you,” said Mrs. Agar, holding up her cheek in an
+absent way for the farewell kiss; “I have not been to town for ages.”
+
+“Last week,” amended Dora mentally.
+
+“Why not come too?” she said aloud, gathering together stick, basket, and
+gloves.
+
+“There is Arthur,” replied the lady. “I am afraid he will not care to
+leave home just now, after so great a blow.”
+
+“All the more reason why he should go to town for a little and
+forget--himself.”
+
+Mrs. Agar smiled sadly and waited for further persuasion. She had fully
+made up her mind to go to Brighton, but was anxious first that the whole
+parish should press her to do so against her will.
+
+“It will be very nice,” continued Dora, “to have you to help me to keep
+my flighty progenitors in order. Now I _must_ go.”
+
+With a nod and a light laugh she closed the library door behind her,
+having apparently forgotten the sadder events of the visit. But in her
+basket she had the diary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA
+
+Be as one that knoweth, and yet holdeth his tongue.
+
+
+“And, of course, you know every one in the room?” Dora was saying to her
+cousin as the orchestra struck suddenly into “God bless the Prince of
+Wales.”
+
+“Good gracious, no!” Miss Mazerod replied; and both young ladies stood up
+to curtsey to the Royal party.
+
+It was the great artistic _soirée_ of the year, and crowds of nobodies
+jostled each other in their mad desire to deceive whosoever might be
+credulous into the belief that they were somebodies.
+
+“Of course,” said Dora, when they were seated again, and the strains of
+the Welsh air had been suppressed “by desire,” “they may be very great
+swells; I have no doubt they are in their particular way; but they do not
+look it.”
+
+Miss Mazerod looked round critically.
+
+“Some of them,” she said, “are frame-makers, a good many of them, with
+big bills in high places. Others are actresses--very great actresses off
+the stage. Do you see that tall girl there, with a supercilious
+expression which she does not know is apt to remind one of a housemaid
+scorning a milkman's love on the area steps? She is a great actress, who
+will not take small engagements, and is not offered large ones. She is an
+actress 'pour se faire photographier.'”
+
+“And this is the cream of London society?” said Dora, looking round her
+with considerable amusement.
+
+“Society,” returned her cousin, “is not allowed to stand for cream now.
+It is stirred up with a spoon, silver-gilt, and the skim milk gets
+hopelessly mixed up with the cream. That young man who is now talking to
+the actress person is not what he looks. He is, as a matter of fact, the
+scion of a noble house, who models in clay atrociously.”
+
+“And the gorgeous person he is turning his back upon?”
+
+“One of his models.”
+
+“Of clay?”
+
+“Essentially so.”
+
+And Miss Mazerod broke off into a happy laugh. Hers was not the
+bitterness of plainness or insignificance, but something infinitely more
+suggestive. It was, indeed, not bitterness at all, but light-hearted
+contempt, which is, perhaps, the deepest contempt there is.
+
+“Who is the wretched woman with no backbone draped in rusty black?” asked
+Dora.
+
+“My dear! That is one of the great lady artists of the age. She lectures
+to factory girls or something, and she paints limp females snuffling over
+tiger-lilies. Her ideal woman has that sort of droop of the throat--I
+imagine she-tries to teach it to the factory. She objects to backbone.”
+
+Miss Mazerod, who possessed a very firm little specimen of the adjunct
+mentioned, drew herself up and smiled commiseratingly.
+
+“Then,” said Dora, “I feel quite consoled about my sketches.”
+
+For the first time Miss Mazerod looked serious.
+
+“Dora,” she said, “I often wonder whether it would be profane to mention
+in one's prayers a little gratitude for not having an artistic soul.
+There are lots of women like that in the world, especially in London.
+They pretend that they think themselves superior to men, but they know in
+their hearts that they are inferior to women. For they have not something
+that women ought to have--No, Dolly, no brown studies here; you must not
+dream here!”
+
+Dora, with a light laugh, came back from her mental wanderings to find
+herself looking at a face which caught her attention at once. It was the
+face of a man--brown, self-contained, with unhappy eyes and a long
+drooping nose.
+
+“Who is _that_ man?” she inquired at once. “Now, he is quite different
+from the rest. He is about the only person who is not furtively finding
+out how much attention he has succeeded in attracting.”
+
+“Yes, that is a man with a purpose.”
+
+“What purpose?” inquired Dora.
+
+“I don't know; I shouldn't think any one knows.”
+
+“_He_ knows,” suggested Dora.
+
+“Yes, _he_ knows.”
+
+Miss Mazerod was looking at the mechanism of her fan with a demure
+expression on lips shaped for happiness. A dark young man was elbowing
+his way through the mixed crowd towards them.
+
+“What is his name?” asked Dora, who was still looking at the man with a
+purpose.
+
+“General Seymour Michael.”
+
+“The Indian man?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+There was a little pause, during which Miss Mazerod glanced in the
+direction of the younger man, who had been detained by a stout lady with
+a purple dress and a depressed daughter.
+
+“I should like to know him,” said Dora.
+
+“Nothing easier,” replied her cousin, still absorbed in the fan. “I know
+him quite well.”
+
+“He is looking at you now.”
+
+Miss Mazerod looked up and bowed with a little jerk, as if she felt too
+young to be stately; one of those bows that say “Come here.”
+
+At this moment the younger man came up and shook hands effusively with
+Dora, slowly with Miss Mazerod.
+
+“Jack,” said that young lady, “I have just beamed on General Michael, who
+is behind you. I want to introduce him to Dora.”
+
+Jack seemed to think this an excellent idea, and stepped aside with
+alacrity.
+
+Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile. He certainly was
+one of the most distinguished-looking men in the room, with a brilliant
+ribbon across his breast, and that smart, well-brushed general effect
+which stamps the successful soldier.
+
+“When did you come back to England?” inquired Edith Mazerod, whose father
+had worked with this man in India.
+
+“I--oh! I have been home six months,” he replied, shaking hands with a
+subtle _empressemant_ which was more effective than words.
+
+“On leave?”
+
+“No. Laid on the shelf.”
+
+He stood upright, drawing himself up with ironical emphasis, as if to
+show as plainly as possible that there were many years of life and work
+in him yet.
+
+Edith Mazerod laughed, the careless passing laugh of inattention.
+
+“Dora,” she said, “may I introduce General Michael? My cousin.”
+
+She rose, and Seymour Michael prepared to take the vacant seat. The youth
+called Jack was making signs with his eyebrows, and in attempting to
+decipher his meaning she forgot to mention Dora's name.
+
+“You will be sorry for this,” said Seymour Michael, sitting down. “You
+will not thank your cousin.”
+
+“Why?” inquired Dora, prepared to like him, possibly because he had a
+brown face and wore his hair cut short.
+
+“Because,” he replied, “I am hopelessly new to this work.”
+
+“So am I,” replied Dora; “I don't even know what pictures to look at and
+what to ignore. So I dare not look at the walls at all.”
+
+“That is precisely my position, only I am worse. You know how to behave
+in polite circles; I don't. You have a slightly tired look, as if this
+sort of thing wearied you by reason of its monotony.”
+
+“Have I? I am sorry for that.”
+
+“No, there is no reason to be sorry. They all have it.”
+
+“But,” protested Dora, “I am not one of them. I am only aping the
+Romans.”
+
+“You do it well; I shall study your method. You do it better than Edith
+Mazerod.”
+
+“Edith is young--hopelessly, enviably young. Do you know them well?”
+
+“Yes, I knew them in India.”
+
+“Of course; I forgot.”
+
+He turned and looked at her sharply. Sometimes his own reputation, far
+from being a happiness, gave him cause for misgiving. A man with an
+unclean record cannot well be sure that all the details he would wish
+suppressed have been suppressed. There was a little pause, during which
+they both watched the self-satisfied throng moving in and out, here and
+there, full of a restless desire to be observed.
+
+It was Seymour Michael who spoke first. True to his mixed blood, he
+sought to make himself safe.
+
+“Excuse me,” he said, “but Edith Mazerod did not mention your name; may I
+ask it?”
+
+“Dora Glynde!”
+
+She saw him start. She saw a sudden wavering gleam in his eyes which in
+another man she would have set down to fear.
+
+“Miss Dora Glynde,” he repeated; and the expression of his face was so
+serene again that the look which had passed away from it began already to
+present itself to her memory as a conception of her own brain.
+
+“When I was younger and shyer,” he said, with a singular haste, “I was
+afraid to ask a lady her name when I did not catch it, and--and I
+frequently regretted not having had the courage to do so.”
+
+She recollected it all afterwards--every word, every pause. But then, as
+so frequently happens, knowledge aided her memory, and added significance
+to every detail.
+
+“Are you staying with the Mazerods?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, I am being shown life. I am doing a season. To-night is part of my
+education. To-morrow, I believe, we go to Hurlingham; the next day to a
+charity bazaar, and so on. I believe I am getting on very well. Aunt Mary
+is pleased with me. But I still stare about me, and show visible
+disappointment when I am presented to a literary celebrity or some other
+person of newspaper renown.”
+
+“Celebrities in the flesh _are_ disappointing.”
+
+“Not only that, but I find that many of them are just a little common.
+Not quite what we in the country call gentlemen.”
+
+“Ah! Miss Glynde, you forget that Art rises superior to class
+distinctions.”
+
+“Yes, but artists don't; and artists' wives don't rise at all. I think
+you are to be congratulated. In your profession there are fewer persons
+'superior to class distinction.'”
+
+This was a subject which Seymour Michael dreaded. He was ignorant of how
+much Dora might know. He had suspected from the first that Jem Agar's
+desire that she should know the truth had been a mere matter of
+sentiment; but the fact of meeting her at this public festivity, gay and
+in colours, shook this theory from its foundation. He disliked Edith
+Mazerod, because he suspected that his own early career had probably been
+discussed in her hearing, and her easy lightness of heart was to him as
+incomprehensible as it was suspicious. Dora he rather feared without
+knowing why.
+
+“I suppose you know India well?” she said, looking straight in front of
+her.
+
+“Too well,” was the reply, with a sharp sidelong glance.
+
+He was right. At that moment Dora might have been one of these
+_habituées_ of rout and ballroom. She was very pale and looked tired out.
+
+“I went out there thirty years ago,” he continued, “into the Mutiny. From
+that time to this India has been killing my friends.”
+
+There was a little pause. She knew that in the natural course of events
+it was almost certain that this man knew Jem personally. It would have
+been easy to mention his name; but the wound was too fresh, her heart was
+too sore to bear the sting of hearing him discussed.
+
+For a second Seymour Michael hovered on the brink. His lips almost framed
+the name. Good almost triumphed over evil.
+
+And the girl sitting there--broken-hearted, quiet and strong, as only
+women can be--never knew how near she was. Sometimes it seems as if the
+cruelty of fate were unnecessary, as if the word too little or the word
+too much, which has the power to alter a whole life, were withheld or
+spoken merely to further a Providential experiment.
+
+“Yes,” said Michael, “I hate India.”
+
+And the spell was broken, the moment lost for ever. Seymour Michael had
+kept silence, and elsewhere, perhaps, at that very moment his doom was
+spoken. Who can tell? We are offered chances--we are, if you will, the
+puppets of an experiment--and surely there must be a moment which
+decides.
+
+Dora was conscious of having miscalculated her own strength. She had led
+him on to the dangerous ground, but it was with relief that she saw him
+step back. She did not dare to lead him to it again.
+
+It was not long before he left her, on the timely arrival of another
+friend.
+
+The introduction brought about by Miss Mazerod did not seem to have been
+an entire success, for they parted gravely and without a word expressing
+the hope of meeting again. And yet Dora liked him, for he was strong and
+purposeful, such as she would have had all men. She wanted to know more
+of him. She wanted to be admitted further into the knowledge which she
+knew to be his.
+
+Seymour Michael was conscious of a feeling of discomfort, no less
+disquieting by reason of its vagueness. He had a nervous sensation of
+being surrounded by something--something in the nature of a chain,
+piecing itself together, link by link--something that was slowly closing
+in upon him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AT HURLINGHGAM
+
+I must be cruel only to be kind.
+
+
+It is not your deep person who succeeds in carrying out a set purpose,
+but one who is just profound enough to be fathomed of the multitude. For,
+after all, the multitude is ready enough to help, in a casual,
+parenthetic way, in the furtherance of a design; and a little depth,
+serving to flatter that vanity which taketh delight in a sense of
+superior perspicacity, only adds to the zest. There are plenty of people
+ready to pull on a rope or shove at a wheel, but there are more eager to
+do so if they are offered the direction of affairs.
+
+Mrs. Glynde was one of those easily-fathomed persons who often succeed in
+their designs by the very transparency of their method. She had come to
+London with the purpose of leaving Dora there under the care of her
+sister Lady Mazerod, and before she had talked to that amiable widow for
+half an hour the design was as apparent as if it had been spoken.
+
+In due course Dora and Miss Mazerod renewed a childish love, and at the
+end of April Mr. And Mrs. Glynde went back to Stagholme alone. It is
+probable that neither Mrs. Glynde nor Providence could have chosen a
+better companion for Dora at this time than Edith Mazerod. There was a
+breezy simplicity about this young lady's view of life which seemed to
+have the power of simplifying life itself. There are some people like
+this to whom is vouchsafed a limited comprehension of evil and an
+unlimited belief in good. A very shrewd author, who is, perhaps, not so
+much read to-day as he ought to be, said that “to the pure all things are
+pure.” He often said less than he meant. For he knew as well as we do
+that the pure-minded are just so many moral filters who clear the
+atmosphere and take no harm themselves.
+
+Dora Glynde required some one like this; for she had, as the French say,
+“found herself.” The little world of Stagholme--the world of this
+Record--was intensely human. There was nobody very good in it and nobody
+very bad. Jem, with that quicker perception of evil which is wisely
+included in the mental outfit of men, had warned her against Sister
+Cecilia. And she had begun to understand his meaning now. Mrs. Agar she
+had found out for herself. Her father she respected and loved, but she
+had reached that age wherein we discover that father and mother are but
+as other men and women. Her mother she loved with that half-patronising
+affection which is found where a daughter is mentally superior.
+
+The only person whom she had ever really respected and looked up to
+without reserve was Jem.
+
+Altogether life was too complicated, subtle, difficult, hopeless, when
+Edith Mazerod came into it, and by her presence seemed to clear the
+atmosphere of daily existence.
+
+At first the constant round of visiting and gaiety was a supreme effort;
+then came tolerance, and finally that business-like acceptance which is
+mistaken by many for enjoyment. The human machine is not constructed to
+go always at high pressure, either in happiness or in misery. We cannot
+exist all day and all night with a living care on our shoulders--the
+greatest misery slips off-sometimes. With men it can be lubricated by
+hard work, and likewise by alcohol, but the latter method is not always
+to be advised. With women there is much consolation to be extracted from
+a new dress or several new dresses and a hat. Even a new pair of gloves
+may help a breaking heart, and a glass of bitter beer taken at the right
+moment (with or without faith) has power to change a man's view of life.
+
+So Dora, who had at no time been tragic, began to find that Academy
+_soirées_ and similar entertainments assisted her in preserving towards
+the world that attitude which she had elected to assume. And if there be
+any who blame her, they are at liberty to do so. It is not worth while to
+pause for the purpose of writing--on the ground or elsewhere--for their
+edification.
+
+Only one such alleviation did she repent of in after life. The day after
+the Academy _soirée_ the Mazerods took her to Hurlingham. And Hurlingham
+became one of the pages of her life which she would have wished to tear
+completely out.
+
+When they drove in through the simple gateway and round by the winding
+drive, it was evident that a great afternoon was to be expected. The
+blue-and-white club flag fluttered over a pavilion crammed from roof to
+terrace. The teams were already out in their bright colours, curveting
+about, each with a practice ball, on their stiff little ponies, moving
+with that singular cramped action only seen on the polo ground.
+
+It was one of those brilliant days in early May when only gardeners,
+grumbling, talk or think of rain. A few fleecy white clouds seemed
+painted. So motionless were they, on the sky, reproducing the Hurlingham
+colours far above the ground. A gentle breeze coming up from the river
+brought with it the odour of lilac and budding things.
+
+The chairs were crowded with a well-dressed throng, the larger majority
+of which seemed to be unaware that polo was the object of the afternoon.
+
+The Mazerods and Dora had scarcely taken chairs when Arthur Agar
+presented himself. His tailor had apparently told him that after a lapse
+of six months it was permissible to assume habiliments of a slightly
+resigned tenour. His grey suit was one of the most elegant on the ground,
+his Suède gloves fitted perfectly, his tie was unique. And Arthur Agar
+was as happy as the best-dressed girl there.
+
+The reception accorded him was not exactly enthusiastic. Having in view
+the fact that the young man called Jack was entirely satisfactory, Lady
+Mazerod treated all other young men with indifference. Edith despised
+Arthur Agar because Jack was athletic in his tendencies; and Dora was
+sorry to see him, because she had not answered his three last letters.
+There were also numerous small but expensive presents for which she had
+failed to tender thanks.
+
+Unfortunately the young man called Jack turned up at tea-time, carrying
+one of the heavy chairs, which never fail to spoil the gloves of some of
+us, with unconscious ease. Owing to the activity and enterprise of this
+young gentleman, tea was soon procured, and consequently despatched
+before the interval was over and before the band had wet its whistle with
+something of a different nature from that in vogue on the lawn. A stroll
+through the gardens was proposed, and Lady Mazerod sent the young people
+off alone. There was no choice; but Dora had probably no thought of
+making a choice, had such been offered to her. She, like many another
+young lady, erred in placing too great a confidence in her own powers of
+staving things off.
+
+There was no doubt whatever about Edith and the energetic John. They led
+the way round by the river path and the tennis-courts with a sublime
+disregard for the eye of the multitude, leaving Dora and Arthur to follow
+at such speed as their discretion might dictate.
+
+Before they had left the tennis-lawn Arthur plunged. It may have been the
+desperation of diffidence, or perhaps that the new grey suit and the
+unique tie lent him confidence. One sees a young lady completely carried
+off her mental status by the success of a dress or the absence of a
+dreaded competitor, and Arthur Agar had enough of the woman in him to
+give way to this dangerous vertigo.
+
+“Dora,” he said, “you have not answered my last three letters.”
+
+“No,” she replied, “because they struck me as a little ridiculous.”
+
+“Ridiculous!” he repeated, with such sincere dismay that she was moved to
+compassion. “Ridiculous, Dora, why?”
+
+His horror-struck, almost tearful voice gave her a pang of self-reproach,
+as if she had struck some defenceless dumb animal.
+
+“Well, there were things in them that I did not understand.”
+
+“But I could make you understand them,” he said, with a sudden
+self-assertion which startled her. The weakest man is, after all, a
+man--so far as women are concerned.
+
+“I think you had better not,” she said, hurrying her steps.
+
+But he refused to alter his pace, and he disregarded her warning.
+
+“They meant,” he said, “that I wanted you to know that I love you.”
+
+There was a little pause. Dora was struck dumb by a chill sense of
+foreboding. It was like a momentary glance into a future full of trouble.
+
+“I am sorry,” she said, “for that. I hope--that you may find that it is a
+mistake.”
+
+“But it is not a mistake. I don't see why it should be one.”
+
+Dora paused. She was afraid to strike. She did not know yet that it is
+less cruel to be cruel at once.
+
+“It is best to look at these things practically,” she said. “And if we
+look at it practically we shall find that you and I are not at all likely
+to be happy together.”
+
+“However I look at it, I only see that I should never be happy without
+you.”
+
+“Then, Arthur, you are not looking at it practically.”
+
+“No, and I don't want to,” he replied doggedly.
+
+“That is a mistake. A little bit of life may not be practical, but all
+the rest of it is; and for the gratification of that little bit, there is
+all the rest to be lived through.”
+
+Arthur looked puzzled. He rearranged the orchid in his coat before
+replying. He had found time to think of the orchid.
+
+“I don't understand all that,” he said. “I only know that I love you, and
+that I should be miserable without you. Besides, if that little bit is
+love--I suppose you admit there is such a thing as love?”
+
+Dora winced. She was looking through the trees across the peaceful
+evening river.
+
+“Yes,” she answered gently. “I suppose so.”
+
+Arthur Agar had been brought up in an atmosphere of futile discussion,
+but he had never wanted anything in vain. There are women--fools--who
+dare to bring up children thus in a world where wanting in vain is the
+chief characteristic of daily life. Arthur was ready enough to go on
+discussing his future thus, but never doubted that it would all come to
+his desire in the end. He was like a woman in so much as he failed to
+understand an argument which he could not meet.
+
+They walked on amidst the flowering shrubs, and Dora was filled with a
+disquieting sense of having failed to convince him.
+
+“I do not want to hurry you,” said Arthur presently, with a maddening
+equanimity. “You can give me your answer some other time.”
+
+“But I have given it now.”
+
+Arthur was engaged in taking off his hat to a passing lady, and made no
+acknowledgment of this.
+
+“Everybody at home would be pleased,” he observed, after a pause occupied
+by the adjustment of his hat. “They all want it.”
+
+It was not that he refused to take No when it was given to him, but
+rather that he did not recognise it, never having encountered it before.
+
+They were now coming round by the pigeon-shooting enclosure, and the
+strains of the band announced that the interval for tea had elapsed.
+
+In the distance Lady Mazerod and Edith, attended by the indefatigable
+Jack, were keeping a chair for Dora. She slackened her pace. To her the
+knowledge had come that the difficulties of life have usually to be met
+single-handed. She was not afraid of Arthur, but this was a distinct
+difficulty because of the influence he had at his back.
+
+“Arthur,” she said, “I think we had better understand each other _now_.
+It may save us both something in the future. I cannot help feeling rather
+sorry that I must say No. Every girl must feel that. I do not know from
+whence the feeling comes. It is a sort of regret, as if something good
+and valuable were being wasted. But, Arthur, it _is_ No, and it must
+always be No. I am not the sort of person to change.”
+
+“I suppose,” he replied, _en vrai fils de sa mère_, “that there is some
+one else?”
+
+He turned as he spoke, but Dora's parasol was too quick for him.
+
+“Please do not let us be like people in books,” she said. “There is no
+necessity to go into side issues at all. You have asked me to marry you.
+I can never marry you. There is the whole question and the whole answer.
+I say nothing to you about finding somebody worthier, or any nonsense of
+that sort. Please spare me the usual--impertinences--about there being
+somebody else.”
+
+The word found its mark. Arthur Agar caught his breath, but made no
+answer.
+
+They were among the well-dressed throng now crowding back to the chairs.
+
+When Arthur had handed Dora over to the care of Lady Mazerod he lifted
+his hat and took his departure with that perfect _savoir faire_ which was
+his _forte_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IN A SIDE PATH
+
+“To sum up all, he has the worst fault-a husband can have, he's not my
+choice.”
+
+
+There is something doubtful in a love-making that is in more than two
+pairs of hands. This is a day of syndicates. The strength that lies in
+union is cultivated nowadays with much assiduity. But in matters of love
+the case is not yet altered, and never will be. It is a matter for two
+people to decide between themselves, and all interference is mistaken and
+deplorable. It is usually, one notices, those persons who are incapable
+of the feeling themselves who seek to interfere in the affairs of others.
+
+That one of the principals should seek aid in such interference proves
+without appeal that he does not know his business. Such aid as this Arthur
+Agar had sought. He had, as Dora suspected, written to his mother, with
+full particulars of the conversation beneath the Hurlingham trees. He had
+laid before her many arguments, which, by reason of their effeminacy,
+appealed to her illogical mind, proving that Dora could not do better than
+marry him. The arrangement, he argued, was satisfactory from whatever
+point of view it might be taken; and, finally, he begged his mother to try
+and succeed where he had failed. He did not propose that Mrs. Agar should
+appeal to Dora; not because such a course was repellent, but merely
+because he knew a better. He suggested that Mrs. Agar should sound Mr.
+Glynde upon the matter.
+
+This suggestion was in itself a stroke of diplomacy. The astute have no
+doubt found out by this time that the Reverend Thomas Glynde loved money;
+and a man who loves money has not the makings of a good father within
+him, whatever else he may have. Whether Arthur was aware of this it would
+be hard to say. Whether he had the penetration to know that, in the
+nature of things, Mr. Glynde would urge Dora to marry Arthur Agar and
+Stagholme, without due regard to her own feelings in the matter, is a
+question upon which no man can give a reliable opinion. Certain it is
+that such a course was precisely what the Reverend Thomas had marked out
+for himself.
+
+He had an exaggerated respect for money and position--a title was a thing
+to be revered. Clergymen, like artists, are dependent on patronage, and
+must swallow their pride. It is therefore, perhaps, only natural that Mr.
+Glynde should be quite prepared to make some sacrifice of feeling or
+sentiment (especially the feeling and sentiment of another) in order to
+secure a position.
+
+Arthur Agar simply followed the spirit of the age. He could not succeed
+alone, and therefore he proceeded to form a syndicate to compel Dora to
+love him, or in the meantime to marry him.
+
+“Of course,” said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar, when the matter was first
+under discussion, “she would soon learn to care for him. Women _always_
+do.”
+
+Which shows how much Sister Cecilia knew about it.
+
+“And besides, I believe she cares for him already,” added Mrs. Agar, who
+never did things by halves.
+
+Sister Cecilia dropped her head on one side and looked convinced--to
+order.
+
+“Of course,” pursued Mrs. Agar vaguely, “I am very fond of Dora; no one
+could be more so. But I must confess that I do not always understand
+her.”
+
+Even to Sister Cecilia it would not do to confess that she was afraid of
+her.
+
+The interview was easily brought about. Mrs. Agar wrote a note to the
+Rector and asked him to luncheon. The Rector, who had not had many legal
+affairs to settle during his uneventful life, was always pleased to be
+consulted upon a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing. Besides,
+they gave one a good luncheon at Stagholme in those days.
+
+“I have had a letter from dear Arthur,” said Mrs. Agar, at a moment which
+she deemed propitious, namely, after a third glass of the Stagholme brown
+sherry.
+
+“Ah! I hope he is well. The boy is not strong.”
+
+“Yes, he is quite well, thank you. But of course he has had a great
+shock, and one cannot expect him to get over it all at once.”
+
+The Rector did not hold much by sentiment, so he contented himself with a
+grave sip of sherry.
+
+“And now I am afraid there is fresh trouble,” added Mrs. Agar.
+
+“Been running into debt?” suggested Mr. Glynde.
+
+“No, it is not that. No, it is Dora.”
+
+“Dora! What has Dora been doing?”
+
+Mrs. Agar was polishing the rim of a silver salt-cellar with her
+forefinger.
+
+“Of course,” she said, “I have seen it going on for a long time. My poor
+boy has always--well, he has always admired Dora.”'
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“Yes, and of course I should like nothing better. I am sure they would be
+most happy.”
+
+The Rector looked doubtful.
+
+“We must not forget,” he said, “that Arthur is constitutionally
+delicate. That extreme repugnance to active exercise, the love of ease
+and--er--indoor pursuits, show a tendency to enfeeble the organisation
+which might--I don't say it will, but it might--turn to decline.”
+
+“But the doctors say that he is quite strong. Everybody cannot be robust
+and--and massive.”
+
+She was thinking of Jem, against whom she had always borne a grudge,
+because his inoffensive presence alone had the power of making Arthur
+look puny.
+
+“No; and of course with care one may hope that Arthur will live to a ripe
+old age,” said the Rector, who was only coquetting with the question.
+
+Mrs. Agar played with a biscuit. She had a rooted aversion to the query
+direct.
+
+“I should have thought,” she said, “that you or her mother would have
+seen that such an attachment was likely to form itself.”
+
+The truth was that the Reverend Thomas did not devote very much thought
+to any subject which did not directly influence his own well-being. He
+had at one time thought that an attachment between Jem and Dora might
+conveniently result from a childhood's friendship, but Arthur had not
+entered into his prognostications at all. He rather despised the youth,
+as much on his own account as that he was Anna Agar's son.
+
+“Can't say,” he replied, “that the thing ever entered my head. Of course,
+if the young people have settled it all between themselves, I suppose we
+must give them our blessing, and be thankful that we have been saved
+further trouble.”
+
+He thought it rather strange that Dora should have fixed her affections
+on such an unlikely object as Arthur Agar; but it was part of his earthly
+creed that the feelings of women are as incomprehensible as they are
+unimportant. Which, by the way, serves to show how very little the Rector
+of Stagholme knew of the world.
+
+“But,” protested Mrs. Agar, “they have _not_ settled it between
+themselves. That is just it.”
+
+“Just what?”
+
+“Just the difficulty.”
+
+Immediately Mr. Glynde's face fell to its usual degree of set depression.
+
+“What do they want me to do?” he inquired, with that air of resignation
+which is in reality no resignation at all.
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Agar volubly, “it appears that Arthur spoke to Dora at
+Hurlingham, and for some reason she said No. I can't understand it at
+all. I am sure she has always appeared to like him very much. It may have
+been some passing fancy or something, you know. When she is told that it
+would please us all, perhaps she will change her mind. Poor Arthur is
+terribly cut up about it. Of course a man in his position does not quite
+expect to be treated cavalierly like that.”
+
+Mr. Glynde smiled. Behind the parson there was somewhat even better;
+there was a just and honest English gentleman, which, in the way of human
+species, is very hard to beat.
+
+“I am afraid Arthur will have to manage such affairs for himself. When a
+girl is settling a question involving her whole life she does not usually
+pause to consider the position of the man who asks her to be his wife. He
+would have no business to ask her had he no position, and the rest is
+merely a matter of degrees.”
+
+“Then you don't care about the match?” said Mrs. Agar, to whose mind the
+earliest rudiments of logic were incomprehensible.
+
+“I do not say that,” replied the Rector, with the patience of a man who
+has had dealings with women all his life; “but I should like it to be
+understood that Dora is quite free to choose for herself. I am willing to
+tell her that the match would be satisfactory to me. Arthur is a
+gentleman, which is saying a good deal in these days. He is affectionate,
+and, so far as I know, a dutiful son. I have little doubt he would make a
+good husband.”
+
+Mrs. Agar wiped away an obvious tear, which ran off Mr. Glynde's mental
+epidermis like water off the back of the proverbial fowl. This also he
+had learnt in the course of his dealings with the world.
+
+“He has been a good son to me,” sniffed the fond and foolish mother.
+
+Neither of these persons was capable of understanding that “goodness” is
+not all we want in husband or wife. These good husbands--heaven help
+their wives!--break as many hearts as those who are labelled by the world
+with the black ticket.
+
+“Then I may tell Arthur that you will help him?” said Mrs. Agar, with a
+sudden access of practical energy.
+
+“You may tell him that he has my good wishes, and that I will point out
+to Dora the advantages of--acceding to his desire. There are, of course,
+advantages on both sides, we know that.”
+
+As usual, Mrs. Agar overdid things. The airiness of her indifference
+might have deceived a child of eight, provided that its intellect was not
+_de première force._
+
+“Ye-es,” she murmured, “I suppose Dora would bring her
+little--eh--subscription towards the household expenses. Sister Cecilia
+gave me to understand that there was a little something coming to her
+under her mother's marriage settlement.”
+
+Mrs. Agar was not clever enough to see that she had made a mistake. The
+mention of Sister Cecilia's name acted on the Rector like a mental
+douche. He was just beginning to give way to expansiveness--probably
+under the suave influence of the brown sherry--and the name of Sister
+Cecilia pulled him together with a jerk. The jerk extended to his
+features; but Mrs. Agar was one of those cunning women whom no man need
+fear. She was so cunning that she deceived herself into seeing that which
+she wished to see, and nothing else.
+
+“All that,” said the Rector gravely, “can be discussed when Arthur has
+persuaded Dora to say Yes.”
+
+He was in the position of an unfortunate person who, having come into
+controversy with the police, is warned that every word he says may be
+used in evidence against him. He had been reminded that every detail of
+the present conversation would be repeated to Sister Cecilia, with
+embellishments or subtractions as might please the narrator's fancy or
+suit her purpose.
+
+“A dangerous woman” he called Sister Cecilia in his most gloomy voice,
+and a parson must perforce fear dangerous women. That is one of the
+trials of the ministry.
+
+Mrs. Agar laughed in a forced manner.
+
+“Of course,” she said--she had a habit of beginning her remarks with
+these two words--“of course, we need not think of such questions yet. I
+am sure all _I_ want is the happiness of the dear children.”
+
+“Umph!” ejaculated Mr. Glynde, who was not always a model of politeness.
+
+“That, I am sure,” continued Mrs. Agar, with a dabbing
+pocket-handkerchief, “is the dearest wish of us all.”
+
+“When does the boy come home?” inquired the Rector.
+
+“Oh, in a week. I am so longing for him to come. He has to go to town to
+get some clothes, which will delay his return by one night.”
+
+“Is he doing any good this term?”
+
+Mrs. Agar looked slightly hurt.
+
+“Well, he always works very hard, I am only afraid that he should overdo
+it. You know, I suppose, that he did not get through his examination this
+term. Of course it is no good _my_ saying anything, but I am quite
+convinced that they are not dealing fairly by him. I have seen some of
+those examination papers, and some of the questions are simply spiteful.
+They do it on purpose, I know. And Sister Cecilia tells me that that
+_does_ happen sometimes. For some reason or other--because they have been
+snubbed, or something like that--the masters, the examiners, or whatever
+they are called, make a dead set at some men, and simply keep them back.
+They don't give them the marks that they ought to have. Why should Arthur
+always fail? Of course the thing is unfair.”
+
+This theory was not quite new to the Rector. He had given up arguing
+about it, and usually took refuge in flight. He did so on this occasion.
+But as he walked home across the park, smoking a cigarette, he reflected
+that to the owner of Stagholme such a small matter as a college career
+was, after all, of no importance. These broad acres, the stately forests,
+the grand old house, raised Arthur Agar above such considerations, indeed
+above most considerations. And Mr. Glynde made up his mind to put it very
+strongly to Dora.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ALONE
+
+The name of the slough was Despond.
+
+
+When Dora returned to Stagholme a fortnight later she was relieved to
+find that Arthur had not yet come down from Cambridge.
+
+It is a strange thing that in the spring-time those who are happy--_pro
+tempore_, of course, we know all that--are happier, while those who carry
+something with them find the burden heavier. Stagholme in the spring came
+as a sort of shock to Dora. There were certain adjuncts to the growth of
+things which gave her actual pain. After dinner, the first night, she
+walked across the garden to the beechwood, but before long she came back
+again. There is a scent in beech forests in the spring which is like no
+other scent on earth, and Dora found that she could not stand it.
+
+Her father and mother were sitting in the drawing-room with open windows,
+for it was a warm May that year. She came in through the falling
+curtains, and something warned her to keep her face averted from the
+furtive glance of her mother's eyes. She had learnt something of the
+world during her brief season in town, and one of the lessons had been
+that the world sees more than is often credited to it.
+
+“The worst,” she said cheerfully, “of a season in town is that it makes
+one feel aged and experienced. Middle age came upon me suddenly, just
+now, in the garden.”
+
+Mr. Glynde was looking at her almost critically over his newspaper.
+
+“How old are you?” he asked curtly.
+
+“Twenty-five.”
+
+In some indefinite way the question jarred horribly. Dora was conscious
+of a faint doubt in the infallibility of her father's judgment. She knew
+that in a worldly sense he was more experienced, more thoughtful,
+cleverer than her mother, but in some ways she inclined towards the
+maternal opinion on questions connected with herself.
+
+At this moment Mrs. Glynde was called from the room, and went
+reluctantly, feeling that the time was unpropitious.
+
+Mr. Glynde's life had been eminently uneventful. Prosperous, happy in a
+half-hearted, almost negative, way, somewhat selfish, he had never known
+hardship, had never faced adversity. It is such men as this who love what
+they call a serious talk, summoning the subject thereof with exaggerated
+gravity to a study, making a point of the _mise en scène_, and finally
+saying nothing that could not have been spoken in course of ordinary
+conversation.
+
+Dora detected the odour of a serious talk in the atmosphere, and she
+found that something had taken away the awe which such conversations had
+hitherto inspired. It may have been the season in town, but it was more
+probably that confidence which comes from the knowledge of the world.
+There were things in life of which she consciously knew more than her
+father, and one of these was sorrow. There is nothing that gives so much
+confidence as the knowledge that the worst possible has happened. It
+raises one above the petty worries of daily existence.
+
+Dora knew that her acquaintance with sorrow was more intimate, more
+thorough, than that of her father, who sat looking as if the hangman were
+at the door. She awaited the serious talk with some apprehension, but
+none of that almost paralysing awe which she had known in childhood.
+
+“I am getting an old man,” he said, with supreme egotism, “and you cannot
+expect to have me with you much longer.”
+
+“But I do expect it,” replied Dora cheerfully. “I am sorry to disappoint
+you, papa, but I do expect it most decidedly.”
+
+This rather spoilt the lugubrious gravity of the situation.
+
+“Well, thank Heaven! I am a hearty man yet,” admitted the Rector rather
+more hopefully; “but still you cannot expect to have your parents with
+you all your life, you know.”
+
+“I think it is wiser not to look too far into the future,” replied Dora,
+warding off.
+
+“I should look much more happily into the future,” replied the Rector,
+with the deliberation of the domestic autocrat, “if I knew that you had a
+good husband to take care of you.”
+
+In a flash of thought Dora traced it all back to Arthur, through Mrs.
+Agar; and her would-be lover fell still further in her estimation. He
+seemed to be fated to show himself at every turn the very antitype to her
+ideal.
+
+“Ah,” she laughed, “but suppose I got a bad one? You are always saying
+that marriage is a lottery, and I don't believe the remark is original.
+Suppose I drew a blank; fancy being married to a blank! Or I might do
+worse. I might draw minus something--minus brains, for instance. They
+are in the lottery, for I have seen them, nicely done up in faultless
+linen--both blanks and worse.”
+
+She turned away towards the window, and the moment her face was averted
+it changed suddenly. The face that looked out towards the beech-wood,
+where the shadows were creeping from the darkening east, was piteous,
+terror-stricken, driven.
+
+It is an ever-living question why people--honest, well-meaning parents
+and others--should be set to ride rough-shod over all that is best and
+purest in the human mind.
+
+The Rector went on, in his calmly self-satisfied voice, with a fatuous
+ignorance of what he was doing which must have made the very angels
+wince.
+
+“A great many girls,” he said, “have thrown away a chance of happiness
+merely to serve a passing fancy. Mind you don't do that.”
+
+She gave a little laugh, quite natural and easy, but her face was grave,
+and more.
+
+“I do not think there is any fear of that,” she replied lightly. “You
+must confess, papa, that I have always displayed a remarkable capacity
+for the management of my own affairs--with the assistance of Sister
+Cecilia, _bien entendu_.”
+
+This was rather a forlorn hope, but Dora was driven into a corner. The
+Rector was in the habit of preaching a good methodical sermon, and
+usually finished up somewhere in the neighbourhood of the text from
+whence he started. He allowed himself to deviate, but he never turned his
+back upon his text and went for a vague ramble through scriptural
+meadows, as some have been heard to do. He deviated on this occasion for
+a moment, but never lost sight of the main question.
+
+“Sister Cecilia,” he said, “is a busybody, and, like all busybodies, a
+fool. It is always people who cannot manage their own affairs who are so
+anxious to help their neighbours. I have no doubt that you are as capable
+of looking after yourself as any girl; but, child, you must remember that
+experience goes a long way in the world, and in the nature of things I
+must know better than you.”
+
+“Of course you do, papa dear. I know that.”
+
+But she did not know it, and he knew that she did not. This knowledge is
+certain to come, sooner or later, to men and women who have lived for
+themselves and in themselves alone. They are mental hermits, whose
+opinion of things connected with the lives of others cannot well be of
+value because they have only studied their own existences.
+
+The Rector of Stagholme suddenly became aware of this. He suddenly found
+that his advice was no longer law. There are plenty of us ready to
+confess that we cannot play billiards or whist or polo, but no man likes
+it to be known that he cannot play the game of life. Mr. Glynde did not
+like this subtle feeling of incompetency. He prided himself on being a
+man of the world, and frequently applied the vague term to himself. We
+are all men of a world, but it depends upon the size of that world as to
+what value our citizenship may be. Mr. Glynde's world had always been the
+Reverend Thomas Glynde. He knew nothing of Dora's world, and lost his way
+as soon as he set his foot therein. But rather than make inquiries he
+thought to support paternal dignity by going further.
+
+“It is,” he said, with inevitable egotism, “unnecessary for me to tell
+you that I have only your interests at heart.”
+
+“Quite, papa dear. But do not let us talk about these horrid things. I am
+quite happy at home, and I do not want to go away from it. There is
+nowhere in the world where I should sooner be than here, even taking into
+consideration the fact that you are sometimes the most dismal old
+gentleman on the face of the earth.”
+
+“Well,” he answered, with a grim smile, “I am sure I have enough to make
+me dismal. I am thankful to say that there will be no difficulty about
+money. You will be well enough off to have all that you might desire. But
+wealth is not all that a woman wants. She cannot turn it to the same
+account as a man. She wants position, a household, a husband. Otherwise
+the world only makes use of her; she is a prey to charity humbugs and bad
+people who do good works badly. I am not speaking as a parson, but as a
+man of the world.”
+
+“Then,” she said, “as a parson, tell me if it would not be wrong to marry
+a man for whom one did not care, just for the sake of these things--a
+household and a husband.”
+
+“Of course it would,” answered Mr. Glynde. “And that is a wrong which is
+usually punished in this life. But there are cases where it is difficult
+to say whether there be love or not. Unless you actually despise or hate
+a man, you may come to care for him.”
+
+“And in the meantime the position and the advantages mentioned are worth
+seizing?”
+
+“So says the world,” admitted Mr. Glynde.
+
+“And what says the parson?”
+
+She went to him and laid her two arms upon his broad chest, standing
+behind him as he sat in his arm-chair and looking down affectionately
+upon his averted face.
+
+“And what says the parson?” she repeated, with a loving tap of her
+fingers on his breast.
+
+“Nothing,” was the reply. “A better parson than I says that what is
+natural is right.”
+
+“Yes, and that means follow the dictates of your own heart?”
+
+“I suppose so,” admitted the Hector, taking her two hands in his.
+
+“And the dictates of my heart are all for staying at home and looking
+after my ancient parents and worrying them. Am I to be sent away? Not
+yet, old gentleman, not yet.”
+
+The Reverend Thomas Glynde laughed, somewhat as if a weight had been
+lifted from his heart. In his way he was a conscientious man. It was his
+honest conviction that Dora would do well to marry Arthur, who was a
+gentleman and essentially harmless. In persuading her to do so covertly,
+as he had thought well to do, he was honestly performing that which he
+thought to be his duty towards her. Presently Mrs. Glynde came back, and
+shortly afterwards Dora left the room. The Rector was not reading the
+book he held open on his knee, but gazed instead absently at the pattern
+of the hearthrug.
+
+A change had come in this quiet household. Dora had gone away a child.
+She had come back a woman, with that consciousness of life which comes
+somewhere between twenty and thirty years of age--a consciousness which
+is partly made up of the knowledge that life is, after all, given to each
+one of us individually to make the best of as well as we may; and no one
+knows what that best is except ourselves. What is happiness for one is
+misery for another, and while human beings vary as the clouds of heaven,
+no life can be lived by set rule.
+
+Over these things the Rector pondered. He felt the difference in Dora.
+She was still his daughter, but no longer a child. Her existence was
+still his chief care, but he could only stand by and help a little here
+and there; for the dependency of childhood was left behind, and her
+evident intention was to work out her own life in her own way. So do
+those who are dependent by nature upon the advice and sympathy of others
+learn to lean only upon their own strength.
+
+In the room overhead, standing by the window with weary eyes, Dora was
+murmuring: “I wonder--I wonder if I shall be able to hold out against
+them all.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+ACROSS THE YEARS
+
+Across the years you seem to come.
+
+
+“That is just what I can't do. I cannot afford to wait.”
+
+Arthur Agar drew in his neatly-shod little feet, and leant back in the
+deep chair which was always set aside as his in the Stagholme
+drawing-room.
+
+Mother and son were alone in the vast, somewhat gloomy apartment. Arthur
+had been home six hours, and the subject of their conversation was, of
+course, Dora.
+
+Sister Cecilia was absent, only in obedience to a very unmistakable hint
+in one of Arthur's recent letters to his mother.
+
+“Only a little while,” pleaded Mrs. Agar. “Of course, dear, it will all
+come right. I feel convinced of that. Only you see, dear, girls do not
+like to be hurried in such an important step. I am quite sure she cares
+for you; only you _must_ give her a little time.”
+
+“But I can't, I can't,” he repeated anxiously. And his face wore that
+strangely accentuated look of trouble which almost amounted to
+dread--dread of something in life which had not come yet.
+
+“Why not?” inquired Mrs. Agar. “You are both young enough, I am sure.”
+
+“Oh, yes, we are young enough.”
+
+He stirred his tea with an effeminate appreciation of fine Coalport and a
+dainty Norwegian spoon.
+
+“Then why should you not wait?”
+
+Arthur was silent; he looked very small and frail, almost childlike, in
+his silk-faced evening coat. Spoilt boy was writ large all over his
+person. “Arthur,” said Mrs. Agar, “you are keeping something from me.”
+
+He shook his feeble head feebly.
+
+“You are, I know you are. What is it?”
+
+This was the only person in all the world who had stirred the heart of
+Anna Agar to something like a lasting affection. Once--years before--she
+had loved Seymour Michael with a sudden volcanic passion which had as
+suddenly turned to hatred. But under no circumstances could such a love
+have endured. Consistency, constancy, singleness of purpose were quite
+lacking in this woman's composition. It is rare, but when a woman does
+fail in this respect, her failure is more complete, more miserable than
+the failure of men, inconstant as they are.
+
+Her affection for Arthur, coupled with that suspicion which always goes
+with a cheap cunning, had put her on the right scent.
+
+“Tell me,” she said, “I insist on knowing.”
+
+Still he held his peace, with the obstinate silence of the weak.
+
+“Well, then,” she cried, “don't ask me to help you to win Dora, that is
+all!”
+
+There was a pause; in the silence of the great house the wind moaned
+softly. It always moaned in the drawing-room, whether in calm or storm,
+from some undiscovered draught in the high ventilated ceiling.
+
+“I sometimes think,” said Arthur at length, in an awestruck voice, “that
+Jem may not be dead.”
+
+“Not dead! Arthur, how can you be so stupid?”
+
+She was not at all awestruck. Her denser, more sordid nature was proof
+against the silence or the humming wind. The greed of gain has power to
+kill superstition.
+
+His face puzzled her. Suddenly he cast himself back and hid his face in
+his hands.
+
+“Oh!” he muttered, “I can't do it, I can't do it!”
+
+In an instant his mother was standing over him.
+
+“Arthur,” she hissed, “you _know_ something?”
+
+“Yes,” he confessed in a whisper at length.
+
+“Jem is not dead?” she hissed again. Her voice was hoarse.
+
+“He was not killed in the disaster,” admitted Arthur. In his heart he was
+still clinging to the other hope subtly held out by Seymour Michael--the
+hope that in his simple intrepidity Jem had gone to his death.
+
+“Then where is he--where is he, Arthur? Tell me quickly!”
+
+Mrs. Agar was white and breathless. It was as if she had bartered her
+soul, and after payment, had been tricked out of her share of the
+bargain. She trembled with a fear which seemed to fill her world and
+extend to the other world to come.
+
+“He escaped from that action,” said Arthur, who, now that the truth was
+out, grew voluble like a child making a confession, “by being sent on in
+front with a few men. They escaped notice, while the larger body was
+attacked and massacred.”
+
+“Who told you this?”
+
+“I do not know. I cannot tell you his name.”
+
+“Arthur!” exclaimed Mrs. Agar nervously, “are you going mad? Do you know
+what you are saying?”
+
+In reply he gave a little laugh like a sob.
+
+“Oh yes,” he replied, “it is all right. I know what I am saying, though
+sometimes I scarcely believe it myself. If it was a hundred years ago one
+might believe it easily enough, but now it seems unreal.”
+
+“Then where is Jem? Was he taken prisoner? Those men are savages, aren't
+they? They kill--people when they take them prisoners.”
+
+“No, he was not taken prisoner,” said Arthur. Sometimes he lost patience
+in a snappy, feminine way with his mother.
+
+“Oh! tell me, tell me, Arthur dear! You are killing me!”
+
+“I will, if you will let me. It appears that Jem had made himself a name
+out there for knowing the country and the people, which is useful to the
+Government, because Russia and England both want the country, or
+something like that; I don't quite understand it.”
+
+“Oh, never mind! Go on!” interrupted Mrs. Agar, with characteristic
+impatience.
+
+“And at any rate the men on the other side--the Russians or some one, I
+don't know who--were in the habit of watching Jem so as to prevent his
+going up into this unexplored country. Well, when the report of his death
+was put in the newspapers it was left uncontradicted, so that these men
+should think he was dead, and not be on the look-out for him. Do you
+understand?”
+
+Mrs. Agar had raised her head, with listening, attentive eyes. It seemed
+as if a voice had come to her across the years from the distant past. A
+voice telling an old story, which had never been forgotten, but merely
+laid aside in the memory among those things that never are forgotten.
+
+Finding Arthur's troubled gaze upon her, she seemed to recollect herself
+with a little gesture of her hand to her breast as if breathing were
+difficult.
+
+“That does not sound like a thing Jem would do,” she said, with one of
+those flashes of shrewd observation which sometimes come to inconsequent
+people, and make it difficult for those around them to be sure how much
+they see and how much passes unobserved.
+
+“It was not Jem, it was this other man.”
+
+“Which other man?” Mrs. Agar gave a little gasp, as if she had found
+something she feared to find.
+
+“The man who told me--he was Jem's superior officer.”
+
+“When did he tell you--where?”
+
+“He came to see me at Cambridge, and brought those things of Jem's,”
+ replied Arthur. So far from feeling guilty at thus revealing all that he
+had promised to keep secret, he was now beginning to experience some
+pangs of conscience at the recollection of a concealment which, by a
+supreme effort, had been made to extend to four months.
+
+There was a sly gleam in Mrs. Agar's eyes. A close observer knowing her
+well could have seen the cunning written on her face, for it was cheap
+and obvious.
+
+“Oh!” she said indifferently, “and what sort of man was he?”
+
+Arthur pondered with a deliberation that almost maddened her.
+
+“Oh!” he replied at length, “a small man, dark, with a sunburnt face; a
+Jew, I should think. He was rather well dressed--in the military style,
+of course.”
+
+“Yes,” muttered Mrs. Agar. “Yes.”
+
+There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Agar reflected, as deeply,
+perhaps, as she had ever reflected in her life.
+
+Then she discovered something for herself which had of necessity been
+pointed out to her son--a subtle divergence of character.
+
+“But,” she said, “of course Jem may never come back from this expedition.
+It _must_ be very dangerous.”
+
+“It is very dangerous.”
+
+Mrs. Agar's sigh of relief was quite audible. It is thus that nature
+sometimes betrays human nature.
+
+“Did _he_ say that? Did _he_ think that of it?”
+
+Seymour Michael's opinion still had value in her eyes.
+
+“Yes,” the reply came slowly; “he said that we might almost look upon Jem
+as a dead man.”
+
+Mother and son looked at each other and said nothing. Heredity is a
+strange thing, and one alternately aggrandised and slighted. Blood is a
+very powerful force, but the little lessons taught in childhood's years
+bear a wondrous crop of good or evil fruit in later days.
+
+Left alone, Arthur Agar's natural tendency was towards good. Probably
+because he was timid, and goodness seems the safer course. There are many
+who have not the courage to forsake goodness, even for a moment. But
+under the influence of a stronger will--that is to say, under the
+influence of four out of every five persons crossing his path--Arthur was
+liable to be led in any direction. He would rather have sinned in company
+than have cultivated virtue in the solitude usually accorded to that
+state.
+
+Somehow, in his mother's presence it did not seem so very wrong to keep
+back the truth respecting Jem and to turn it to his own ends. It did not
+seem either mean or cowardly to take advantage of a rival's absence and
+gain his object, by deception. So, perhaps, it was in the beginning, when
+the world was young. In those days also a mother and son helped each
+other in deception, and so since then have many thousands of mothers
+(incompetent or vicious) led their children to ruin.
+
+“Of course,” said Mrs. Agar, “if Jem goes and does things of that
+description he must take the consequences.”
+
+Arthur said nothing in reply to this. The thought had been his for some
+months, but he had never put it into shape.
+
+“We are perfectly justified,” she went on, “in acting as if Jem were dead
+until he deigns to advise us to the contrary.”
+
+This also was putting a long-cherished thought into form.
+
+Arthur knew that he ought to have told his mother then and there that Jem
+had taken every step in his power to advise him as soon as possible of
+the falseness of the news transmitted to the newspapers. But something
+held him silent, some taint of hereditary untruthfulness.
+
+“I do not see,” she said, “that this news can, therefore, make much
+difference. There is no reason to alter any of our plans. To begin with,
+I am certain that he is dead. We must have heard by this time if he had
+been living.”
+
+Arthur gave a little nod of acquiescence.
+
+“And also,” pursued Mrs. Agar, with characteristic inconsistency, “he
+evidently does not care about us or our feelings.”
+
+Arthur knew what she meant, and he descended as low in the moral scale as
+ever he went during his life.
+
+“But,” he said, “there is, all the same, no time to lose.”
+
+He passed his hand over his sleek, lifeless hair with a weary look.
+
+“Well, dear,” said his mother soothingly, “I will see Ellen Glynde
+to-morrow, and try to make her say something to Dora. A girl's mother has
+always more influence than her father.”
+
+This idiotic axiom seemed to satisfy Arthur, probably because he knew no
+better, and he rose to take his bedroom candlestick.
+
+Mrs. Agar was a person utterly incapable of harbouring two thoughts at
+the same moment. She never even got so far as to place two sides of a
+question upon an equal footing in her mind. All her questions had but one
+side. She was not thinking of Arthur when she went to her room. She was
+not thinking of him when she lay staring at the daylight, which had crept
+up into the sky before she closed her eyes.
+
+She tossed and turned and moaned aloud with a childish impatience. Her
+mind could find no rest; it could not throw off the deadly knowledge that
+Seymour Michael had come back into her life. And somehow she was no
+longer Anna Agar, but Anna Hethbridge. She was no longer the fond mother
+whose whole world was filled by thoughts of her son--a miserable,
+thoughtless, haphazard world it was--but again she was the wronged woman,
+moved by the one great passion that had stirred her sordid soul, a
+fearsome hatred for Seymour Michael.
+
+She was not an analytical woman; she had never thought about her own
+thoughts; she was as superficial as human nature can well be. That is to
+say, she was little more than an animal with the gift of speech, added to
+one or two small items of knowledge which divide men from beasts. But she
+_knew_ that this was not the end. She never doubted for a moment that it
+was merely a beginning, that Seymour Michael was coming back into her
+life.
+
+Like a child she tossed and tumbled in her bed, muttering
+half-consciously, “Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW
+
+His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.
+
+
+For two days Mrs. Glynde had been going about the world with a bright red
+patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely,
+the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning
+service her fervour was something astonishing--the quaver in her voice
+was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to
+silent prayer after the blessing was so abnormally long that Stark, the
+sexton, had to rattle the keys twice, with all due respect and for the
+sake of his Sunday dinner, before she rose from her knees; whereas once
+usually sufficed.
+
+It was the devout practice that all the Rectory servants should go to
+evening service, while Mrs. Glynde, or Dora, or both, remained at home to
+take care of the house. On this particular evening Mrs. Glynde proposed
+that Dora should stay with her, and what her mother proposed Dora usually
+acceded to.
+
+“Dear,” said the elder lady, with a nervous little jerk of the head which
+was habitual or physical, “I have heard about Arthur.”
+
+They were sitting in the drawing-room, with windows open to the ground,
+and the fading light was insufficient to read by, although both had
+books.
+
+“Yes, mother,” answered the girl in rather a tired voice, quite
+forgetting to be cheerful. “I should like to know exactly what you
+heard.”
+
+“Well, Anna told me,” and there was a whole world of distrust in the
+little phrase, “that Arthur had asked you to be his wife, and that you
+had refused without giving a reason.”
+
+“I gave him a reason,” replied Dora; “the best one. I said that I did not
+love him.”
+
+There was a little pause. The two women looked out on to the quiet lawn.
+They seemed singularly anxious to avoid looking at each other.
+
+“But that might come, dear; I think it would come.”
+
+“I know it would not,” replied Dora quietly. There was a dreaminess in
+her voice, as if she were repeating something she had heard or said
+before.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Glynde rose from her chair, and going towards her daughter,
+she knelt on the soft carpet, still afraid to look at her face. There was
+something suggestive and strange in the attitude, for the elder woman was
+crouching at the feet of the younger.
+
+“My darling,” she whispered, “I know, I _know!_ I have known all along.
+But mind, no one else knows, no one suspects! _It_ can never come to you
+again in this life. Women are like that, it never comes to them twice. To
+some it never comes at all; think of that, dear, it never comes to them
+at all! Surely that is worse?”
+
+Dora took the nervous, eager hands in her own quiet grasp and held them
+still. But she said nothing.
+
+“I have prayed night and morning,” the elder woman went on in the same
+pleading whisper, “that strength might be given you, and I think my
+prayers were heard. For you have been strong, and no one has known except
+me, and I do not matter. The strength must have come from somewhere. I
+like to think that I had something to do with it, however little.”
+
+Again there was a silence. Across the quiet garden, from the church that
+was hidden among the trees, the sound of the evening hymn came rising and
+falling, the harshness of the rustic voices toned down by the whispering
+of the leaves.
+
+“I know,” Mrs. Glynde went on, speaking perhaps out of her own
+experience, “that now it must seem that there is nothing left. I know
+that It can never come to you, but something else may--a sort of
+alleviation; something that is a little stronger than resignation, and
+many people think that it is love. It is not love; never believe that!
+But it is surely sent because so many women have--to go through
+life--without that--which makes life worth living.”
+
+“Hush, dear!” said Dora; and Mrs. Glynde paused as if to collect herself.
+Perhaps her daughter stopped her just in time.
+
+“There is,” she went on in a calmer voice, “a sort of satisfaction in the
+duties that come and have to be performed. The duties towards one's
+husband and the others--the others, darling--are the best. They are not
+the same, not the same as if--as they might have been, but sometimes it
+is a great alleviation. And the time passes somehow.”
+
+It is not the clever people who make all the epigrams; but sometimes
+those who merely live and feel, and are perhaps objects of ridicule. Mrs.
+Glynde was one of these. She had unwittingly made an epigram. She had
+summed up life in five words--the time passes somehow.”
+
+“And, dear,” she went on, “it is not wise, perhaps it is not quite right,
+to turn one's back upon an alleviation which is offered. Arthur would be
+very kind to you. He is really fond of you, and perhaps the very fact of
+his not being clever or brilliant or anything like that might be a
+blessing in the future, for he would not expect so much.”
+
+“He would have to expect nothing,” said Dora, speaking for the first
+time, “because I could give him nothing.”
+
+She spoke in rather an indifferent voice, and in the gloom her mother
+could not see her face. It was a singular thing that neither of them
+seemed to take Arthur Agar's feelings into account in the very smallest
+degree; and this must be accounted to them for wisdom.
+
+Dora was, as her mother had said, very strong. She never gave way. Her
+delicate lips never quivered, but she took care to keep them close
+pressed. Only in her eyes was the pain to be seen, and perhaps that was
+why her mother did not dare to look.
+
+“There is no hurry,” she pleaded. “You need not decide now.”
+
+“But,” answered Dora, “I have decided now, and he knows my decision.”
+
+“Perhaps after some time--some years?” suggested Mrs. Glynde.
+
+“A great many years,” put in Dora.
+
+“If he asks you again--oh! I know it would be better, dear; better for
+you in every way. I do not say that you would be quite happy. But it
+would be a sort of happiness; there would be less unhappiness, because
+you would have less time to think. I do not say anything about the
+position and the wealth and such considerations, for they are not of much
+importance to a good woman.”
+
+“After a great many years,” said Dora, in that calm and judicial voice
+which fell like ice on her mother's heart, “I will see--if he chooses to
+wait.”
+
+“Yes, but--” began Mrs. Glynde, but she did not go on. That which she was
+about to say would scarcely have been appropriate. But so far as the
+facts were concerned she might just as well have said it. For Dora knew
+as well as she did that Arthur Agar would not wait. Women are not blind
+to manifest facts. They know us, my brothers, better than we think. And
+they are not quite so romantic as we take them to be. Their love is a
+better thing than ours, because it is more practical and more defined.
+They do not seek an ideal of their own imagination; but when something
+approaching to it crosses their path in the flesh they know what they
+want, and they do not change.
+
+Before the silence was again broken the murmur of voices told them that
+the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female
+form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia,
+walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the
+outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the
+remainder of womanhood. Good women--those mistaken females who move in an
+atmosphere of ostentatious good works--usually walk like this. Like this
+they enter the humble cot with a little soup and a lot of advice. Like
+this they smilingly step, where angels would fear to tread, upon feelings
+which they are incapable of understanding.
+
+Mrs. Glynde got quietly up and left the room. As the door closed behind
+her Sister Cecilia's gently persuasive voice was heard.
+
+“Dora! Dora dear!”
+
+“Yes,” replied the girl without any enthusiasm, rising and going to the
+window.
+
+“Will you walk with me a little way across the fields? It is such a
+lovely evening.”
+
+“Yes, if you like.”
+
+And Dora passed out of the open window.
+
+“I am sorry,” said Sister Cecilia after a few paces, “that you were not
+in church. We had such a bright service.”
+
+Dora, like some more of us, wondered vaguely where the adjective applied,
+especially on a gloomy evening without candles, but she said nothing.
+
+“I stayed at home with mother,” she explained practically. “The servants
+were all out.” Sister Cecilia was not listening. She was gazing up at the
+sky, where a few stars were beginning to show themselves.
+
+“One feels,” she murmured with a sigh, “on such an evening as this, that,
+after all, nothing matters much.”
+
+“About the servants do you mean? They are going on better now.”
+
+“No, dear, about life. I mean that at times one feels that this cannot be
+the end of it all.”
+
+“Well, we ought to feel that, I suppose, being Christians.”
+
+“And some day we shall see the meaning of all our troubles,” pursued
+Sister Cecilia. “It is so hard for us older ones, who have passed through
+it, to stand by helpless, only guessing at the pain and anguish of it
+all, whereas, perhaps, we could help if we only knew. A little more
+candour, a little more confidence might so easily lead to mutual help and
+consolation.”
+
+“Possibly,” admitted Dora, without any encouragement.
+
+“I am so sorry for poor Arthur!” whispered Sister Cecilia, apparently to
+the evening shades.
+
+Dora was silent. She knew how to treat Sister Cecilia. Jem had taught her
+that.
+
+“It has been such a terrible blow. His letters to his mother are quite
+heartbroken.”
+
+Dora reserved her opinion of grown-up men who write heartbroken letters
+to their mothers.
+
+“I know all about it,” Sister Cecilia went on, quite regardless of the
+truth, as some good people are. “Dora, dear, I know all about it.”
+
+Silence, a silence which reminded Sister Cecilia of a sense of
+discomfiture which had more than once been hers in conversation with Jem.
+
+“Have you nothing to tell me, dear?” she inquired. “Nothing to say to
+me?”
+
+“Nothing,” replied Dora pleasantly. “Especially as you know all about
+it.”
+
+“Will you never change your mind?” persuasively.
+
+“No, I am not the sort of person to change my mind.”
+
+There was a little pause, and again Sister Cecilia whispered to the
+evening shades.
+
+“I cannot help hoping that some day it may be different. It is not as if
+there were any one else--?”
+
+Silence again.
+
+“I dare say,” added Sister Cecilia, after waiting in vain for an answer
+to her implied question, “that I am wrong, but I cannot help being in
+favour of a little more candour, a little mutual confidence.”
+
+“I cannot help feeling,” replied Dora quietly, “that we are all best
+employed when we mind our own business.”
+
+“Yes, dear, I know. But it is very hard to stand idly by and see young
+people make mistakes which can only bring them sorrow. I want to tell you
+to think very deeply before you elect to lead the life of a single woman.
+It is a life full of temptation to idleness and self-indulgence. There
+are many single women who, I am really afraid, are quite useless in the
+world. They only gossip and pry into their neighbours' affairs and make
+mischief. It is because they have nothing to do. I have known several
+women like that, and I cannot help thinking that they would have been
+happier if they had married. Perhaps they did not have the chance. One
+does not understand these things.”
+
+Sister Cecilia cast her eyes upwards toward the tree-tops to see if
+perchance the explanation was written there.
+
+“Of course,” she went on complacently, drawing down her bonnet-strings,
+“there are many useful lives of single women. Lives which the world would
+sadly miss should it please God to take them. Women who live, not for
+themselves, but for others; who go about the world helping their
+neighbours with advice and the fruits of their own experience; ever the
+first to go to the afflicted and to those who are in trouble. They do not
+receive their reward here, they are not always thanked. The ignorant are
+sometimes even rude. They have only the knowledge that they are doing
+good.”
+
+“That _must_ be a satisfaction,” murmured Dora fervently.
+
+“It is, dear; it is. But--you will excuse me, Dora dear, if I say
+this?--I do not think you are that sort of woman.”
+
+“No,” answered Dora, “I don't think I am.”
+
+“And that is why I have said this to you. Now, don't answer me, dear.
+Just think about it quietly. I think I have done my duty in telling you
+what, was on my mind. It is always best, although it is sometimes
+difficult, or even painful; but then, it is one's duty. Kiss me, dear!
+Good-night!--_good_-night!”
+
+And so Sister Cecilia left Dora--mincing away into the gloom of the
+overhanging trees. And so she leaves these pages. Verily the good have
+their reward here below in a coat of self-complacency which is as
+impervious to the buffets of life as to the sarcasm of the worldly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A STAB IN THE DARK
+
+Slander, meanest spawn of Hell;
+And women's slander is the worst.
+
+
+Mrs. Agar was a person incapable of awaiting that vague result called the
+development of things.
+
+Arthur had never been forced to wait for anything in his life. No longer
+at least than tradespeople required, and in many cases not so long, for
+Mrs. Agar had an annoying way of refusing to listen to reason. She never
+allowed that laws applying to ordinary people, served more or less
+faithfully by tailor or dressmaker, applied to herself or to Arthur. And
+tradespeople, one finds are not always of the same mind as the Medes and
+Persians--they square matters quietly in the bill. They had to do it very
+quietly indeed with Mrs. Agar, who endeavoured strenuously to get the
+best value for her money all through life; a remnant of Jaggery House,
+Clapham Common, which the placid wealth of Stagholme never obliterated.
+
+After the luncheon, specially prepared and laid before the Rector, this
+second Rebecca awaited the result impatiently. But nothing came of it.
+Although Mrs. Agar now looked upon Dora as the latest whim of the
+not-to-be-denied Arthur, she could hardly consider Mr. Glynde in the
+light of a tradesman retailing the said commodity, and, therefore, to be
+bullied and harassed into making haste. She reflected with misgiving that
+Mr. Glynde was an exponent of the tiresome art of talking over and
+thinking out matters which required neither words nor thought, and saw no
+prospect of an immediate furtherance of her design.
+
+With a mistaken and much practised desire of striking when the iron was
+hot, Mrs. Agar, like many a wiser person, began, therefore, to bang about
+in all directions, hitting not only the iron but the anvil, her own
+knuckles and the susceptibilities of any one standing in the
+neighbourhood. She could not leave things to Mr. Glynde, but must needs
+see Dora herself. She had in her mind the nucleus of a simple if
+scurrilous scheme which will show itself hereafter. Her opportunity
+presented itself a few days later.
+
+A neighbouring family counting itself county, presumably on the strength
+of never being able to absent themselves from the favoured neighbourhood
+on account of monetary incapacity, gave its annual garden-party at this
+time. To this entertainment the whole countryside was in the habit of
+repairing--not with an idea of enjoying itself, but because everybody did
+it. To be bidden to this garden-party was in itself a _cachet_ of
+respectability. This indeed was the only satisfaction to be gathered from
+the festivity. If the honour was great, the hospitality was small. If the
+condescension was vast, the fare provided was verging on the stingy. Here
+were served by half-starved domestic servants, in the smallest of
+tumblers, “cups” wherein were mixed liquors, such as cider, usually
+consumed by self-respecting persons in the undiluted condition and in
+mugs. Upon cucumber-cup, taken in county society, as on a dinner of
+herbs, one hardly expects the guest to grow convivial. Therefore at this
+garden-party those bidden to the feast were in the habit of wandering
+sadly through the shrubbery seeking whom they might avoid, and in the
+course of such a perambulation, with a young man conversant of himself,
+Dora met Mrs. Agar. Even the mistress of Stagholme was preferable to the
+young man from London, and besides--there were associations. So Dora drew
+Mrs. Agar into her promenade, and presently the young man got his
+_congé_.
+
+At first they talked of local topics, and Mrs. Agar, who had a fine sense
+of hospitality, said her say about the cider-cup. Then she gave an
+awkward little laugh, and with an assumption of lightness which did not
+succeed she said:
+
+“I hope, dear, you do not intend to keep my poor boy in suspense much
+longer?”
+
+“Do you mean Arthur?” asked Dora.
+
+“Yes, dear. I really don't see why there should be this absurd reserve
+between us.”
+
+“I am quite willing,” replied the girl, “to hear what you have to say
+about it.”
+
+“Yes, but not to talk of it.”
+
+“Well, I suppose Arthur has told you all there is to tell. If there is
+anything more that you want to know I shall be very glad to tell you.”
+
+“Well, of course, I don't understand it at all,” burst out Mrs. Agar
+eagerly. This was quite true; neither she nor Arthur could understand how
+any one could refuse such a glorious offer as he had made.
+
+“Perhaps I can explain. Arthur asked me to marry him. I quite appreciated
+the honour, but I declined it.”
+
+“Yes, but why? Surely you didn't mean it?”
+
+“I did mean it.”
+
+“Well,” explained Mrs. Agar, with a little toss of the head, “I am sure I
+cannot see what more you want. There are many girls who would be glad to
+be mistress of Stagholme.”
+
+And it must be remembered that she said this knowing quite well that Jem
+was probably alive. There are some crimes which women commit daily in the
+family circle which deserve a greater punishment than that meted out to a
+legal criminal.
+
+“That is precisely what I ventured to point out to Arthur,” said Dora,
+unconsciously borrowing her father's ironical neatness of enunciation.
+
+“But why shouldn't you take the opportunity? There are not many estates
+like it in England. Your position would be as good as that of a titled
+lady, and I am sure you could not want a better husband.”
+
+“I like Arthur as a friend, but I could never marry him, so it is useless
+to discuss the question.”
+
+“But why?” persisted Mrs. Agar.
+
+“Because I do not care for him in the right way.”
+
+“But that would come,” said Mrs. Agar. It was only natural that she
+should use an argument which is accountable for more misery on earth than
+mothers dream of.
+
+“No, it would never come.”
+
+Mrs. Agar gave a cunning little laugh, and paused so as to lend
+additional weight to her next remark.
+
+“That is a dangerous thing for a girl to say.”
+
+“Is it?” inquired Dora indifferently.
+
+“Yes, because they can never be sure, unless--”
+
+“Unless what? I am quite sure.”
+
+“Unless there is some one else,” said Mrs. Agar, with an exaggerated
+significance suggestive of the servants' hall.
+
+Dora did not answer at once. They walked on for a few moments in silence,
+passing other guests walking in couples. Then Dora replied with a
+succinctness acquired from her father:
+
+“Generalities about women,” she said, “are always a mistake. Indeed, all
+generalities are dangerous. But if you and Arthur care to apply this to
+me, you are at liberty to do so. Whatever generalities you apply and
+whatever you say will make no difference to the main question. Moreover,
+you will, perhaps, be acting a kinder part if you give Arthur to
+understand once for all that my decision is final.”
+
+“As you like, dear, as you like,” muttered Mrs. Agar, apparently
+abandoning the argument, whereas in reality she had not yet begun it.
+
+“How do you do, dear Mrs. Martin?” she went on in the same breath, bowing
+and smiling to a lady who passed them at that moment.
+
+“Of course,” she said, returning in a final way to the question after a
+few moments' silence, “of course I do not believe all I hear; in fact, I
+contradict a good deal. But I have been told that gossips talked about
+you a good deal last year, at the time of Jem's death. I think it only
+fair that you should know.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Dora curtly.
+
+“Of course, dear, _I_ didn't believe anything about it.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Dora again.
+
+“I should have been sorry to do so.”
+
+Then Dora turned upon her suddenly.
+
+“What do you mean, Aunt Anna?” she asked with determination.
+
+“Oh, nothing, dear, nothing. Don't get flurried about it.”
+
+“I am not at all flurried,” replied Dora quietly. “You said that you
+would be sorry to have to believe what gossips said of me last year at
+the time of Jem's death--”
+
+“Dora,” interrupted Mrs. Agar, “I never said anything against you in any
+way; how can you say such a thing?”
+
+“And,” continued Dora, with an unpleasant calmness of manner, “I must ask
+you to explain. What did the gossips say, and why should you be sorry to
+have to believe it?”
+
+Mrs. Agar's reluctance was not quite genuine nor was it well enough
+simulated to deceive Dora.
+
+“Well, dear,” she said, “if you insist, they said that there had been
+something between you and Jem--long, long ago, of course, before he went
+out to India.”
+
+Dora shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“They are welcome to say what they like.”
+
+Mrs. Agar was silent, awaiting a second question.
+
+“And why should you be sorry to believe that?” inquired the girl.
+
+“I--I hardly like to tell you,” said Mrs. Agar, in a low voice.
+
+Dora waited in silence, without appearing to heed Mrs. Agar's reluctance.
+
+“I am afraid, dear,” went on the elder lady, when she saw that there was
+no chance of assistance, “that we have been all sadly mistaken in Jem. He
+was not--all that we thought him.”
+
+“In what way?” asked Dora. She had turned quite white, and her lips were
+suddenly dry and parched. She held her parasol a little lower, so that
+Mrs. Agar could not see her face. She was sure enough of her voice. She
+had had practice in that.
+
+“In what way was Jem not all that we thought him?” she repeated evenly,
+like a lesson learnt by heart.
+
+Mrs. Agar stammered. She tried to blush, but she could not manage that.
+
+“I cannot very well give you details. Perhaps, when you are older. You
+know, dear, in India people are not very particular. They have peculiar
+ideas, I mean, of morals--different from ours. And perhaps he saw no harm
+in it.”
+
+“In what?” inquired Dora gravely.
+
+“Well, in the life they lead out there. It appears that there was some
+unfortunate attachment. I think she was married or something like that.”
+
+“Who told you this?” asked Dora, in a voice like a threat.
+
+“A man told Arthur at Cambridge--one of poor Jem's fellow-officers. The
+man who brought home the diary and things.”
+
+Having once begun Mrs. Agar found herself obliged to go on. She had not
+time to pause and reflect that she was now staking everything upon the
+possibility of Jem's death subsequent to the disaster in which he was
+supposed to have perished.
+
+Dora did not believe one word of this story, although she was quite
+without proof to the contrary. Jem's letters had not been frequent, nor
+had they been remarkable for minuteness of detail respecting his own
+life. Mrs. Agar had done her best to put a stop to this correspondence
+altogether, and had succeeded in bringing about a subtle reserve on both
+sides. She had persistently told Jem that Dora was evidently attached to
+Arthur, and that their marriage was only the question of a few years. Of
+this Jem had never found any confirmatory hint in Dora's letters, and
+from some mistaken sense of chivalry refrained from writing to ask her
+point-blank if it were true.
+
+“And why,” said Dora, “do you tell me this? In case what the gossips said
+might be true?”
+
+“Ye-es, dear, perhaps it was that.”
+
+“So as to save me from cherishing any mistaken memory?”
+
+“Yes, it may have been that.”
+
+And Mrs. Agar was surprised to see Dora turn her back upon her as if she
+had been something loathsome to look upon, and walk away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH
+
+When the heart speaks, Glory itself is an illusion.
+
+
+The _Mahanaddy_ had just turned her blunt prow out westward from the
+harbour of Port Said, sniffing her native north wind, with a gentle
+rising movement to that old Mediterranean eastward-tending swell. The
+lights of the most iniquitous town on earth were fading away in the mist
+of the desert on the left hand, and on the right the gloom of the sea
+merged into a grey sky.
+
+The dinner-hour had passed, and the passengers were lolling about on the
+long quarter-deck, talking lazily after the manner of men and women who
+have little to say and much time wherein to say it.
+
+It was quite easy to perceive that they had left a voyage of many days
+behind them, for the funny man had exhausted himself and the politicians
+were asleep. The lifeless, homeward-bound flirtations had waned long ago,
+and no one looked twice at any one else. They all knew each other's
+dresses and vices and little aggravating habits, and only three or four
+of them were aware that human nature runs deeper than such superficial
+details.
+
+Away forward, behind the sheep-pens, an Italian gentleman in the ice
+industry was scraping on a yellow fiddle which looked sticky. But like
+many things of plain exterior this unprepossessing instrument had
+something in it, something that the Italian gentleman knew how to
+extract, and all the ship was hushed into listening. Such as had
+conversation left spoke in low tones, and even the stewards in the pantry
+ceased for a time to test the strength of the dinner-plates.
+
+On a small clear space of deck between the door of the doctor's cabin and
+the saloon gangway two men were walking slowly backwards and forwards.
+They were both tall men, both large, and consequently both inclined to
+taciturnity. They had said, perhaps, as little as any two persons on
+board, which may have accounted for the fact that they were talking now,
+and still seemed to have plenty to say.
+
+One was dark and clean-shaven, with something of the sea in his mien and
+gait. His nose and chin were singularly clean cut, and suggestive of an
+ancestral type. This was the ship's doctor, a man who probed men's hearts
+as well as their bodies, and wrote of what he found there. His companion
+was an antitype--a representative of the fair race found in England by
+the ancestors of the other when they came and conquered. He wore a beard,
+and his face was burnt to the colour of mahogany, which had a strange
+effect in contrast to the bluest of Saxon eyes.
+
+The Doctor was talking.
+
+“Then,” he was saying, “who the devil are you?”
+
+The other smiled, a gentle, triumphant smile. The smile of a man who,
+humbly recognising himself at a just estimation, is conscious of having
+outwitted another, cleverer than himself.
+
+“You finish your pipe,” he said, and he walked away with long firm
+strides towards the saloon stairs. The Doctor went to the rail, where,
+resting his arms on the solid teak, he leant, gazing thoughtfully out
+over the sea, which was part of his life. For he knew the great waters,
+and loved them with all the quiet strength of a slow-tongued man.
+
+Before very long some one came behind and touched him on the shoulder. He
+turned, and in the fading light looked into the smiling face of his late
+companion--the same and yet quite different, for the beard was gone, and
+there only remained the long fair moustache.
+
+“Yes,” said Dr. Mark Ruthine, “Jem Agar. I was a fool not to know you at
+first.”
+
+A sort of shyness flickered for a moment in the blue eyes.
+
+“I have been practising so hard during the last ten months to look like
+some one else that I hardly feel like myself,” he said.
+
+“Um-m! There was something uncanny about you when you first came on
+board. I used to watch you at meals, and wonder what it was. By God,
+Agar, I _am_ glad!”
+
+“Thanks,” replied Jem Agar. He was looking round him rather nervously.
+“You don't think there is anybody on board who will know me, do you?”
+
+“No one, barring the Captain.”
+
+“Oh,” said Agar calmly, “he is all right. He can keep his mouth shut.”
+
+“There is no doubt about that,” replied the Doctor.
+
+A little pause followed, during which they both listened involuntarily to
+the ice-cream merchant's musical voice, which was now floating over the
+silent decks, raised in song.
+
+“I should like to hear all about it some day,” said the ship's surgeon at
+last. He knew his man, and no detail of the strange lives that passed the
+horizon of his daily existence was ever forgotten. Only he usually found
+that those who had the most to tell required a little assistance in their
+narration.
+
+“It is rather a rum business,” answered Jem Agar, not displeased.
+
+At this moment the ship's bell rang four clear notes into the night.
+
+“Ten o'clock,” said the Doctor. “Come into my cabin and have a smoke; the
+Captain will be in soon. He would like to hear the story too.”
+
+So they passed into the cabin, and before they had been there many
+minutes the Captain joined them. For a moment he stood in the doorway,
+then he came forward with outstretched hand.
+
+“Well,” he said, “all that I can say is that you ought to be dead. But
+it's not my business.”
+
+He had seen too many freaks of fortune to be surprised at this.
+
+“I thought,” he continued, “that there was something familiar about the
+back of your head. Back of a man's head never changes. It's a funny
+thing.”
+
+He sat down in his usual chair, and looked with a cheery smile upon him
+who had risen from the death column of the _Times_. Then he turned to his
+pipe.
+
+“You know, Agar,” he said, “I was beastly sorry about that--death of
+yours. Cut me up wonderfully for a few minutes. That is saying a lot in
+these days.”
+
+Agar laughed.
+
+“It is very kind of you to say so,” he said rather awkwardly.
+
+“And I,” added Dr. Ruthine from behind the whisky and soda tray, in the
+deliberate voice of a man who is saying something with an effort, “felt
+that it was a pity. That is how it struck me--a pity.”
+
+Then, very disjointedly, and in a manner which could scarcely be set down
+here, Major James Agar told his singular story. There are--thank
+heaven!--many such stories still untold; there are, one would be inclined
+to hope, many such still uncommenced. As a nation we may be on the
+decline, but there is something to go on with in us yet.
+
+Once when the narrator paused, Dr. Ruthine went to the side table and
+opened some bottles.
+
+“Whisky?” he inquired, with curt hospitality, “or anything else your
+fancy may paint, down to tea.”
+
+Agar rose to pour out his own allowance, and for a moment the two men
+stood together. With the critical eye of a soldier, which seems to weigh
+flesh and blood, he looked his host for the time being up and down.
+
+“They don't make men like you and me on tea,” he said, reaching out his
+hand towards a tumbler.
+
+Then the story went on. At first the ship's doctor listened to it with
+interest but without absorption, then suddenly something seemed to catch
+his attention and hold it riveted. When a pause came he leant forward,
+pointing an emphasising finger.
+
+“When you spoke just now of the chief,” he said, “did you mean Michael?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What! Seymour Michael?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The Captain tapped his pipe against his boot and leant back with the
+shrug of the shoulders awaiting further developments.
+
+“And you mean to tell me that you put yourself entirely in the hands of
+Seymour Michael?” pursued the Doctor.
+
+“Yes, why not?”
+
+Mark Ruthine shook his head with a little laugh. “I always thought, Agar,
+that you were a bit of a fool!”
+
+“I have sometimes suspected it myself,” admitted the soldier meekly.
+
+“Why, man,” said Ruthine, “Seymour Michael is one of the biggest rascals
+on God's earth. I would not trust him with fourpence round the corner.”
+
+“Nor would I,” put in the Captain, “and the sum is not excessive.”
+
+Jem Agar was sipping his whisky and soda with the placidity of a giant
+who fears no open fight and never thinks of foul play.
+
+“I don't see,” he muttered, “what harm he can do me.”
+
+“No more do I, at the moment,” replied the Doctor; “but the man is a liar
+and an unscrupulous cad. I have kept an eye on him for years because he
+interests me. He has never run a straight course since he came into the
+field; he has consistently sacrificed truth, honour, and his best friend
+to his own ambition ever since the beginning.”
+
+Jem Agar smiled at the Doctor's vehemence, although he was aware that
+such a display was far from being characteristic of the man.
+
+“Of course,” he admitted, “in the matter of honour and glory I expect to
+be swindled. But I don't care. I know the chap's reputation, and all
+that, but he can hardly get rid of the fact that I have done the thing
+and he has not.”
+
+“I was not thinking so much of that,” replied the other. “Men sell their
+souls for honour and glory and never get paid.”
+
+He paused; then with the sure touch of one who has dabbled with pen and
+ink in the humanities, he laid his finger on the vulnerable spot.
+
+“I was thinking more,” he said, “of what you had trusted him to
+do--telling certain persons, I mean, that you were not dead. He is just
+as likely as not to have suppressed the information.”
+
+Jem Agar was looking very grave, with a sudden pinched appearance about
+the lips which was only half concealed by his moustache.
+
+“Why should he do that?” he asked sharply.
+
+“He would do it if it suited his purpose. He is not the man to take into
+consideration such things as feelings--especially the feelings of
+others.”
+
+“You're a bit hard on him, Ruthine,” said Jem doubtfully. “Why should it
+suit his convenience?”
+
+“Secrecy was essential for your purpose and his; in telling a secret one
+doubles the risk of its disclosure each time a new confidant is admitted.
+Besides, the man's nature is quite extraordinarily secretive. He has
+Jewish and Scotch blood in his veins, and the result is that he would
+rather disseminate false news than true on the off chance of benefiting
+thereby later on. For men of that breed each piece of accurate
+information, however trivial, has a marketable value, and they don't part
+with it unless they get their price.”
+
+There followed a silence, during which Jem Agar went back in mental
+retrospection to the only interview he had ever had with Seymour Michael,
+and the old lurking sense of distrust awoke within his heart.
+
+“But,” said the Captain, who was an optimist--he even applied that theory
+to human nature--“I suppose it is all right now. Everybody knows now that
+you are among the quick--eh?”
+
+“No,” replied Jem, “only Michael; it was arranged that I should telegraph
+to him.”
+
+“Of course,” the Doctor hastened to say, for he had perceived a change in
+Agar's demeanour, “all this is the purest supposition. It is only a
+theory built upon a man's character. It is wonderful how consistent
+people are. Judge how a man would act and you will find that he has acted
+like it afterwards.”
+
+As if in illustration of the theory Jem Agar looked gravely determined,
+but uttered no threat directed towards Seymour Michael. His quiet face
+was a threat in itself.
+
+“Well,” he said, rising, “I am keeping you fellows from your slumbers. I
+am still sleeping on deck; can't get accustomed to the atmosphere below
+decks after six months' sleeping in the open.”
+
+He nodded and left them.
+
+“Rum chap!” muttered the Captain, looking at his watch when the footsteps
+had died away over the silent decks.
+
+“One of the queerest specimens I know,” retorted Dr. Mark Ruthine, who
+was fingering a pen and looking longingly towards the inkstand. The
+Captain--a man of renowned discretion--quietly departed.
+
+There is no more distrustful man than the simple gentleman of honour who
+finds himself deceived and tricked. It is as if the bottom suddenly fell
+out of his trust in all mankind, and there is nothing left but a mocking
+void. Jem Agar lay on his mattress beneath the awning, and stared hard at
+a bright star near the horizon. He was realising that life is, after all,
+a sorry thing of chance, and that all his world might be hanging at that
+moment on the word of an untrustworthy man.
+
+Before morning he had determined to telegraph from Malta to Seymour
+Michael to meet him at Plymouth on the arrival of the _Mahanaddy_ at that
+port.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+BALANCING ACCOUNTS
+
+And yet God has not said a word.
+
+
+One fine morning in June the _Mahanaddy_ steamed with stately
+deliberation into the calm water inside Plymouth breakwater. Many writers
+love to dwell with pathetic insistence on incidents of a departure; but
+there is also pathos--perhaps deeper and truer because more subtle--in
+the arrival of the homeward-board ship.
+
+Who can tell? There may have been others as anxious to look on the green
+slopes of Mount Edgecumbe as the man with the mahogany-coloured face who
+stood ever smoking--smoking--always at the forward starboard corner of
+the hurricane deck. His story had not leaked out, because only two men on
+board knew it--men with no conversational leaks whatever. He had made no
+other friends. But many watched him half interestedly, and perhaps a few
+divined the great calm impatience beneath the suppressed quiet of his
+manner.
+
+“That man--Jem Agar--is dangerous,” the Doctor had said to the Captain
+more than once, and Mark Ruthine was not often egregiously mistaken in
+such matters.
+
+“Um!” replied the Captain of the _Mahanaddy_. “There is an uncanny calm.”
+
+They were talking about him now as the Captain--his own pilot for
+Plymouth and the Channel--walked slowly backwards and forwards on the
+bridge. It seemed quite natural for the Doctor to be sitting on the rail
+by the engine-room telegraph. The passengers and the men were quite
+accustomed to it. This friendship was a matter of history to the homeless
+world of men and women who travelled east and west through the Suez
+Canal.
+
+“He has asked me,” the Doctor was saying, “to go ashore with him at
+Plymouth; I don't know why. I imagine he is a little bit afraid of
+wringing Seymour Michael's neck.”
+
+“Just as likely as not,” observed the Captain. “It would be a good thing
+done, but don't let Agar do it.”
+
+“May I leave the ship at Plymouth?” asked Mark Ruthine, with a quiet air
+of obedience which seemed to be accepted with the gravity with which it
+was offered.
+
+“I don't see why you should not,” was the reply. “Everybody goes ashore
+there except about half a dozen men, who certainly will not want your
+services.”
+
+“I should rather like to do it. We come from the same part of the
+country, and Agar seems anxious to have me. He is not a chap to say much,
+but I imagine there will be some sort of a _denouement_.”
+
+The Captain was looking through a pair of glasses ahead, towards the
+anchorage.
+
+“All right,” he said. “Go.”
+
+And he continued to attend to his business with that watchful care which
+made the _Mahanaddy_ one of the safest boats afloat.
+
+Presently Mark Ruthine left the bridge and went to his cabin to pack. As
+he descended he paused, and retracing his steps forward he went and
+touched Jem Agar on the arm.
+
+“It's all right,” he said. “I'll go with you.”
+
+Agar nodded. He was gazing at the green English hills and far faint
+valley of the Tamar with a curious gleam of excitement in his eyes.
+
+Half an hour later they landed.
+
+“You stick by me,” said Jem Agar, when they discerned the small wiry form
+of Seymour Michael awaiting them on the quay. “I want you to hear
+everything.”
+
+This man was, as Ruthine had said, dangerous. He was too calm. There was
+something grand and terrifying in that white heat which burned in his
+eyes and drove the blood from his lips.
+
+Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile, waving his hand in
+greeting to Jem and to Ruthine, whom he knew.
+
+Jem shook hands with him.
+
+“I'm all right, thanks,” he said curtly, in answer to Seymour Michael's
+inquiry.
+
+“Good business--good business,” exclaimed the General, who seemed
+somewhat unnecessarily excited.
+
+“Old Mark Ruthine too!” he went on. “You look as fit as ever. Still
+turning your thousands out of the British public--eh!”
+
+“Yes,” said Ruthine, “thank you.”
+
+“Just run ashore for half an hour, I suppose?” continued Seymour Michael,
+looking hurriedly out towards the _Mahanaddy_.
+
+“No,” replied Ruthine, “I leave the ship here.”
+
+The small man glanced from the face of one to the other with something
+sly and uneasy in his eyes.
+
+Jem Agar had altered since he saw him last in the little tent far up on
+the slopes of the Pamir. He was older and graver. There was also a wisdom
+in his eyes--that steadfast wise look that comes to eyes which have
+looked too often on death. Mark Ruthine he knew, and him he distrusted,
+with that quiet keenness of observation which was his.
+
+“Now,” he said eagerly to Jem, “what I thought we might do was to have a
+little breakfast and catch the eleven o'clock train up to town. If
+Ruthine will join us, I for one shall be very pleased. He won't mind our
+talking shop.”
+
+Mark Ruthine was attending to the luggage, which was being piled upon a
+cab.
+
+“Have you not had breakfast?” asked Agar.
+
+“Well, I have had a little, but I don't mind a second edition. That
+waiter chap at the hotel got me out of bed much too soon. However, it is
+worth getting up the night before to see you back, old chap.”
+
+“Is there not an earlier train than the eleven o'clock?” asked Agar,
+looking at his watch. There was a singular constraint in his manner which
+Seymour Michael could not understand.
+
+“Yes, there is one at nine forty-five.”
+
+“Then let us go by that. We can get something at the station, if we want
+it.”
+
+“Make it a bottle of champagne to celebrate the return of the explorer,
+and I am your man,” said Michael heartily.
+
+“Make it anything you like,” answered Agar, in a gentler voice. He was
+beginning to come under the influence of Seymour Michael's sweet voice,
+and of that fascination which nearly all educated Jews unconsciously
+exercise.
+
+He turned and beckoned to Mark Ruthine, who presently joined them, after
+paying the boatmen.
+
+“The nine forty-five is the train,” he said to him. “We may as well walk
+up. The streets of Plymouth are not pleasant to drive through.”
+
+So the cab was sent on with the luggage, and the three men turned to the
+slope that leads up to the Hoe.
+
+There was some sort of constraint over them, and they reached the summit
+of the ascent without having exchanged a word.
+
+When they stood on the Hoe, where the old Eddystone lighthouse is now
+erected, Seymour Michael turned and looked out over the bay where the
+ships lay at anchor.
+
+“The good old _Mahanaddy_,” he said, “the finest ship I have ever sailed
+in.”
+
+Neither man answered him, but they turned also and looked, standing one
+on each side of him.
+
+Then at last Jem Agar spoke, breaking a silence which had been brooding
+since the _Mahanaddy_ came out of the Canal.
+
+“I want to know,” he said, “exactly how things stand with my people at
+home.”
+
+He continued to look out over the bay towards the _Mahanaddy_, but Mark
+Ruthine was looking at Seymour Michael.
+
+“Yes,” replied the General, “I wanted to talk to you about that. That was
+really my reason for proposing that we should wait till the second
+train.”
+
+“There cannot be much to say,” said Jem Agar rather coldly.
+
+“Well, I wanted to tell you all about it.”
+
+“About what?”
+
+There was what the Captain had called an uncanny calm in the voice.
+General Michael did not answer, and Jem turned slowly towards him.
+
+“I presume,” he said, “that I am right in taking it for granted that you
+have carried out your share of the contract?”
+
+“My dear fellow, it has been perfectly wonderful. The secret has been
+kept perfectly.”
+
+“By all concerned?”
+
+“Eh!--yes.”
+
+Michael was glancing furtively at Mark Ruthine, as the fox glances back
+over his shoulder, not at the huntsman, but at the hounds.
+
+“Did you tell them personally, or did you write?” pursued Jem Agar
+relentlessly.
+
+“My dear fellow,” replied Michael, pulling out his watch, “it is a long
+story, and we must get to the train.”
+
+“No,” replied Agar, in the calm voice which raised a sort of “fearful
+joy” in Ruthine's soul, “we need not be getting to the train yet, and
+there is no reason for it to be a long story.”
+
+Seymour Michael gave an uneasy little laugh, which met with no response
+whatever. The two taller men exchanged a glance over his head. Up to that
+moment Jem Agar had hoped for the best. He had a greater faith in human
+nature than Mark Ruthine had managed to retain.
+
+“Have you or have you not told those people whom you swore to me that you
+would tell, out there, that night?” asked Jem.
+
+“I told your brother,” answered the General with dogged indifference.
+
+“Only?”
+
+There was an ugly gleam in the blue eyes.
+
+“I didn't tell him not to tell the others.”
+
+“But you suggested it to him,” put in Mark Ruthine, with the knowledge of
+mankind that was his.
+
+“What has it got to do with you, at any rate?” snapped Seymour Michael.
+
+“Nothing,” replied Ruthine, looking across at Agar.
+
+“You did not tell Dora Glynde?”
+
+General Michael shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Why?” asked Jem hoarsely. It was singular, that sudden hoarseness, and
+the Doctor, whose business such things were, made a note of it.
+
+“I didn't dare to do it. Why, man, it was too dangerous to tell a single
+soul. If it had leaked out you would have been murdered up there as
+sure as hell. There would have been plenty of men ready to do it for
+half-a-crown.”
+
+“That was _my_ business,” answered Jem coolly. “You promised, you
+_swore_, that you would tell Dora Glynde, my step-mother, and my brother
+Arthur. And you didn't do it. Why?”
+
+“I have given you my reasons--it was too dangerous. Besides, what does it
+matter? It is all over now.”
+
+“No,” said Jem, “not yet.”
+
+The clock struck nine at that moment; and from the harbour came the sound
+of the ship's bells, high and clear, sounding the hour. The Hoe was quite
+deserted; these three men were alone. A silence followed the ringing of
+the bells, like the silence that precedes a verdict.
+
+Then Jem Agar spoke.
+
+“I asked Mark Buthine,” he said, “to come ashore with me, because I had
+reason to suspect your good faith. I can't see now why you should have
+done this, but I suppose that people who are born liars, as Ruthine says
+you are, prefer lying to telling the truth. You are coming down now with
+Ruthine and myself to Stagholme. I shall tell the whole story as it
+happened, and then you will have to explain matters to the two ladies as
+best you can.”
+
+A sudden unreasoning terror took possession of Seymour Michael. He knew
+that one of the ladies was Anna Agar, the woman who hated him almost as
+much as he deserved. He was afraid of her; for it is one consolation to
+the wronged to know that the wronger goes all through his life with a
+dull, unquenchable fear upon his heart. But this was not sufficient,
+this could not account for the mighty terror which clutched his soul at
+that moment, and he knew it. He felt that this was something beyond
+that--something which could not be reasoned away. It was a physical
+terror, one of those emotions which seem to attack the body independently
+of the soul, a terror striking the Man before it reaches the Mind. His
+limbs trembled; it was only by an effort that he kept his teeth clenched
+to prevent them from chattering.
+
+“And,” said Jem Agar, “if I find that any harm has been done--if any one
+has suffered for this, I will give you the soundest thrashing you have
+ever had in your life.”
+
+Both his hearers knew now who Dora Glynde was, what she was to him. He
+neither added to their knowledge nor sought to mislead. He was not, as we
+have said, _de ceux qui s'expliquent_.
+
+“Come,” he added, and turning he led the way across the Hoe.
+
+Seymour Michael followed quietly. He was cowed by the inward fear which
+would not be allayed, and the judicial calmness of these two men
+paralysed him. Once, in the train, he began explaining matters over
+again.
+
+“We will hear all that at Stagholme,” said Jem sternly, and Mark Ruthine
+merely looked at him over the top of a newspaper which he was not
+reading.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+AT BAY
+
+To thine own self be true;
+And it must follow as the night the day
+Thou canst not then be false to any man.
+
+
+Human nature is, after all, a hopeless failure. Not even the very best
+instinct is safe. It will probably be turned sooner or later to evil
+account.
+
+The best instinct in Anna Agar was her maternal love, and upon this
+strong rock she finally wrecked her barque. She was one of those women
+who hold that, so long as the object is unselfish, the means used to
+obtain it cannot well be evil. She did not say this in so many words,
+because she was quite without principle, good or bad, and she invariably
+acted on impulse.
+
+Her impulse at this time was to turn as much of heaven and earth as came
+under her influence to compel Dora to marry Arthur. That Arthur should be
+unhappy, and should be allowed to continue in that common condition, was
+a thought that she could not tolerate or allow. Something must be done,
+and it was characteristic of the woman that that something should present
+itself to her in the form of the handy and useful lie. In a strait we all
+naturally turn to that accomplishment in which we consider ourselves most
+proficient. The blusterer blusters; the profane man swears; the tearful
+woman weeps--and weeping, by the way, is no mean accomplishment if it be
+used at the right moment. Mrs. Agar naturally meditated on that form of
+diplomacy which is sometimes called lying. The truth would not serve her
+purpose (not that she had given it a fair trial), and therefore she would
+forsake the straight path for that other one which hath many turnings.
+
+Dora absolutely refused to come to Stagholme while Arthur was there--a
+delicacy of feeling, which, by the way, was quite incomprehensible to
+Mrs. Agar. It was necessary for Arthur's happiness that he should see
+Dora again and try the effect of another necktie and further eloquence.
+Therefore, Dora must be made by subterfuge to see Arthur.
+
+“Dear Dora,” she wrote, “it will be a great grief to me if this
+unfortunate attachment of my poor boy's is allowed to interfere with the
+affection which has existed between us since your infancy. Come, dear,
+and see me to-morrow afternoon. I shall be quite alone, and the subject
+which, of course, occupies the first place in my thoughts will, if you
+wish it, be tabooed.
+
+“Your affectionate old Friend,
+
+“ANNA AGAR.”
+
+“It will be quite easy,” reflected this diplomatic lady as she folded the
+letter--almost illegible on account of its impetuosity--“for Arthur to
+come back from East Burgen earlier than I expected him.”
+
+The rest she left to chance, which was very kind but not quite necessary,
+for chance had already taken possession of the rest, and was even at that
+moment making her arrangements.
+
+Dora read the letter in the garden beneath the laburnum-tree, where she
+spent a large part of her life. Before reaching the end of the epistle
+she had determined to go. She was a young person of spirit as well as of
+discrimination, and in obedience to the urging of the former was quite
+ready to show Mrs. Agar, and Arthur too, if need be, that she was not
+afraid of them.
+
+She was distinctly conscious of the increasing power of her own strength
+of purpose as she made this resolution, and as she walked across the park
+the next afternoon her feeling was one very near akin to elation. It is
+only the strong who mistrust their own power. Dora Glynde had always
+looked upon herself as a somewhat weak and easily led person; she was
+beginning to feel her own strength now and to rejoice in it. From the
+first she half-suspected a trap of some sort. Such a subterfuge was
+eminently characteristic of Mrs. Agar, and that lady's manner of
+welcoming her only increased the suspicion.
+
+The mistress of Stagholme was positively crackling with an excitement
+which even her best friend could not have called suppressed. There was no
+suppression whatever about it.
+
+“So good of you,” she panted, “to come, Dora dear!”
+
+And she searched madly for her pocket handkerchief.
+
+“Not at all,” replied Dora, very calmly.
+
+“And now, dear,” went on the lady of the house, “are we going to talk
+about it?”
+
+The question was somewhat futile, for it was easy to see that she was not
+in a condition to talk of anything else.
+
+“I think not,” replied Dora. She had a way of using the word “think” when
+she was positive. “The question was raised the last time I saw you, and I
+do not think that any good resulted from it.”
+
+Mrs. Agar's face dropped. In some ways she was a child still, and a
+childish woman of fifty is as aggravating a creature as walks upon this
+earth. Dora remembered every word of the interview referred to, while
+Mrs. Agar had almost forgotten it. It is to the common-minded that common
+proverbs and sayings of the people apply. Hard words had not the power of
+breaking anything in Mrs. Agar's being.
+
+“Of course,” she said, “_I_ don't wish to talk about it, if you don't. It
+is most painful to me.”
+
+She had dragged forward a second chair, only separated from that occupied
+by Dora by the tea-table.
+
+“Arthur,” she said, with a lamentable assumption of cheerfulness, “has
+driven over to East Burgen to get some things I wanted. He will not be
+back for ever so long.”
+
+She reflected that he was overdue at that moment, and that the butler had
+orders to send him to the library as soon as he returned.
+
+“I was sorry to hear,” said Dora, quite naturally, “that he had not
+passed his examination.”
+
+Mrs. Agar glanced at her cunningly; she was always looking for second
+meanings in the most innocent remarks, hardly guilty of an original
+meaning.
+
+At this moment the door leading through a smaller library into the
+dining-room opened and Arthur came quietly in. He changed colour and
+hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he remembered that before all
+things a gentleman must be a gentleman. He came forward and held out his
+hand.
+
+“How do you do?” he said, and for a moment he was quite dignified. “I am
+glad to see you here with mother. I did not know that I was going to
+interrupt a _téte-à-téte_, tea. No tea, thanks, mother; no.”
+
+“Have you brought the things I wanted? You are earlier than I expected,”
+ blurted out the lady of the house unskillfully.
+
+“Yes, I have brought them.”
+
+“I must go and see if they are right,” said Mrs. Agar, rising, and before
+he could stop her she passed out of the door by which he had entered.
+
+For a moment there was an awkward silence, then Dora spoke--after the
+door had been reluctantly closed from without.
+
+“I suppose,” she said, “that this was done on purpose?”
+
+“Not by me, Dora.”
+
+She merely bowed her head.
+
+“Do you believe me?” he asked.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She continued to sip her tea, and he actually handed her a plate of
+biscuits.
+
+“Is it still No?” he asked abruptly.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Perhaps her fresh youthful beauty moved him, perhaps it was merely
+opposition that raised his love suddenly to the dignity of a passion that
+made him for once forget himself, his clothes, his personal appearance,
+and the gentlemanly modulation of his voice.
+
+For a moment he was almost a man. He almost touched the height of a man's
+ascendency over woman.
+
+“You may say No now,” he cried, “but I shall have you yet. Some day you
+will say Yes.”
+
+It was then for the first time that Dora realised that this man did
+actually love her according to his lights. But never for an instant did
+she admit in her own mind the possibility of succumbing to Arthur's will.
+It is not by words that men command women. They must first command their
+respect, and that is never gained by words.
+
+Dora was conscious of a feeling of sudden, unspeakable pain. Arthur had
+only succeeded in convincing her that she could have submitted to a man's
+will, wholly and without reserve; but not to the will of Arthur Agar. He
+had only showed her that such a submission would in itself have been a
+greater happiness than she had ever tasted. But she knew at once that
+only one man ever had, ever could have had, the power of exacting such
+submission; and he commanded it, not by word of mouth (for he never
+seemed to ask it), but by something strong and just and good within
+himself, before which her whole being bowed down.
+
+We never know how we appear in the eyes of our neighbours, friends or
+lovers. Arthur was at that moment in Dora's eyes a mere sham, aping
+something he could never attain.
+
+He had seized her two hands in his nervous and delicate fingers, from
+which she easily withdrew them. The action was natural enough, strong
+enough. But he completely spoiled the effect by the words he spoke in his
+thin tenor voice.
+
+“No, Arthur,” she said. “No, Arthur; since you mention the future, I may
+as well tell you _now_ that my answer will never be anything but No. At
+one time I thought that it might be different. I told my mother that
+possibly, after a great many years, I might think otherwise; but I
+retract that. I shall never think otherwise. And if you imagine that you
+can force me to do so, please lay aside that hope at once.”
+
+“Then there is some one else!” cried Arthur, with an apparent
+irrelevance. “I know there is some one else.”
+
+Dora seemed to be reflecting. She looked over his head, out of the
+window, where the fleecy summer clouds floated idly over the sky.
+
+She turned and looked deliberately at the door by which Mrs. Agar had
+disappeared. It was standing ajar. Then again she reflected, weighing
+something in her mind.
+
+“Yes,” she replied half-dreamily at length. “I think you have a right to
+know--there is some one else.”
+
+“Was,” corrected Arthur, with the womanly intuition which was given to
+him with other womanly traits.
+
+“Was and is,” replied Dora quietly. “His being dead makes no difference
+so far as you are concerned.”
+
+“Then it _was_ Jem! I was sure it was Jem,” said a third voice.
+
+In the excitement of the moment Mrs. Agar forgot that when ladies and
+gentlemen stoop to eavesdropping they generally retire discreetly and
+return after a few moments, humming a tune, hymns preferred.
+
+“I knew that you were there,” said Dora, with a calmness which was not
+pleasant to the ear. “I saw your black dress through the crack of the
+door. You did not stand quite still, which was a pity, because the
+sunlight was on the floor behind you. I was not surprised; it was worthy
+of you.”
+
+“I take God to witness,” cried Mrs. Agar, “that I only heard the last
+words as I came back into the room.”
+
+“Don't,” said Dora, “that is blasphemy.”
+
+“Arthur,” cried Mrs. Agar, “will you hear your mother called names?”
+
+“We will not wrangle,” said Dora, rising with something very like a smile
+on her face. “Yes, if you want to know, it _was_ Jem. I have only his
+memory, but still I can be faithful to that. I don't care if all the
+world knows; that is why I told _you_ behind the door. I am not ashamed
+of it. I always did care for Jem.”
+
+There was a little pause, for mother and son had nothing to answer. Dora
+turned to take her gloves, which she had laid on a side table, and as she
+did so the other door opened, the principal door leading to the hall.
+Moreover, it was opened without the menial pause, and they all turned in
+surprise, knowing that there were only servants in the house.
+
+In the doorway stood Jem, brown-faced, lean, and anxious-looking. There
+was something wolf-like in his face, with the fierce blue eyes shining
+from beneath dark lashes, the fair moustache pushed forward by set lips.
+
+Behind him the keen face of Seymour Michael peered nervously, restlessly
+from side to side. He was distinctly suggestive of a rat in a trap. And
+beyond him, in the gloom of the old arras-hung hall, a third man,
+seemingly standing guard over Seymour Michael, for he was not looking
+into the room but watching every movement made by the General--tall man,
+dark, upright, with a silent, clean-shaven face, a total stranger to them
+all. But his manner was not that of a stranger, he seemed to have
+something to do there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE LAST LINK
+
+A thing hereditary in the race comes unawares.
+
+
+Jem came straight into the room, and there seemed to be no one in it for
+him but Dora. She went to meet him with outstretched hand, and her eyes
+were answering the questions that she read in his.
+
+He took her hand and he said no word, but suddenly all the misery of the
+last year slipped back, as it were, into a dream. She could not define
+her thoughts then, and they left no memory to recall afterwards. She
+seemed to forget that this man had been dead and was living, she only
+knew that her hand was within his. Jem looked round to the others
+present, his attitude a judgment in itself, his face, in its fierce
+repose, a verdict.
+
+Mark Ruthine had gently pushed Seymour Michael into the room and was
+closing the door behind them. Mrs. Agar did not see the General, who was
+half-concealed by his junior officer. She could not take her eyes from
+Jem's face.
+
+“This is fortunate,” he said; and the sound of his voice was music in
+Dora's ears. “This is fortunate, every one seems to be here.”
+
+He paused for a moment, as if at a loss, and drew his brown hand down
+over his moustache. Perhaps he felt remotely that his position was strong
+and almost dramatic; but that, being a simple, honest Englishman, he was
+unable to turn it to account.
+
+He turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood behind, uncomfortably
+conscious of Mark Ruthine at his heels. It was not in Jem to make an
+effective scene. Englishmen are so. We do not make our lives
+superficially picturesque by apostrophising the shade of a dead mother.
+Jem gave way to the natural instinct of a soldier by nature and training.
+A clear statement of the facts, and a short, sharp judgment.
+
+“This man,” he said, laying his hand on the General's shoulder, and
+bringing him forward, “has been brought here by us to explain something.”
+
+White-lipped, breathless, in a ghastly silence Anna Agar and Seymour
+Michael stared at each other over the dainty tea-table, across a gulf of
+misused years, through the tangle of two unfaithful lives.
+
+Then Jem Agar began his story, addressing himself to Dora, then, and
+until the end.
+
+“I was not with Stevenor,” he said, “when his force was surprised and
+annihilated. I had been sent on through an enemy's country into a
+position which no man had the right to ask another to hold with the force
+allowed me. This man sent me. All his life has he been seeking glory at
+the risk of other men's lives. After the disaster he came to me and
+relieved my little force; but he proposed to me a scheme of exploration,
+which I have carried through. But even now I shall not get the credit;
+_he_ will have that. It was a low, scurrilous thing to do; for he was my
+commanding officer, and I could not say No.”
+
+“I gave you the option,” blurted out Michael sullenly.
+
+Jem took no notice of the interruption, which only had the effect of
+making Mark Ruthine move up a few paces nearer.
+
+“He made a great point of secrecy,” continued Agar, “which at the time I
+thought to be for my safety. But now I see otherwise; Ruthine has pointed
+it out to me. If I had never come back he would have said nothing, and
+would thus have escaped the odium of having sent a man to certain death.
+I only made one condition--namely, that three persons should be informed
+at once of my survival, after the disaster to Stevenor's force. Those
+three persons were my brother Arthur, my step-mother, and Miss Glynde.”
+
+He paused for a moment, and Dora's clear, low voice took up the
+narrative.
+
+“I met General Michael,” she said, “in London, some months ago. I met him
+more than once. He knew quite well who I was, and he never told me.”
+
+Thus was the first link of the chain riveted. Seymour Michael winced. He
+never raised his eyes.
+
+Mark Ruthine moved forward again. He did so with a singular rapidity, for
+he had seen murder flash from beneath Jem Agar's eyebrows. He was
+standing between them, his left hand gripping Jem's right arm with an
+undeniable strength. Dora, looking at them, suddenly felt the tears well
+to her eyes. There was something that melted her heart strangely in the
+sight of those two men--friends--standing side by side; and at that
+moment her affection went out towards Mark Ruthine, the friend of Jem,
+who understood Jem, who knew Jem and loved him, perhaps, a thousandth
+part as well as she did; an affection which was never withdrawn all
+through their lives.
+
+It was Ruthine's voice that broke the silence, giving Jem time to master
+himself.
+
+“It is to his credit,” he said, also addressing Dora, “that for very
+shame he did not dare to tell you that he had sent Agar on a mission
+which was as unnecessary as it was dangerous. When he sent him he must
+have known that it was almost a sentence of death.”
+
+Then Jem spoke again.
+
+“As soon as I got back to civilisation,” he said, “I wrote to him as
+arranged, and I enclosed letters to--the three persons who were admitted
+into the secret. Those letters have, of course, never reached their
+destination. General Michael will be required to explain that also.”
+
+At this moment Arthur Agar gave a strange little cackling laugh,
+which drew the general attention towards him. He was looking at his
+half-brother, with a glitter in his usually soft and peaceful eyes.
+
+“There are a good many things which he will have to explain.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Jem. “That is why we have brought him here.”
+
+It fell to Arthur Agar's lot to forge the second link.
+
+“When,” he asked Jem, “did he know that you had got back to safety and
+civilisation?”
+
+“Two months ago, by telegram.”
+
+The half-brothers turned with one accord towards Seymour Michael, who
+stood trying to conceal the quiver of his lips.
+
+“He promised,” said Arthur Agar, “to tell me at once when he received
+news of your safety.”
+
+It was singular that Seymour Michael should give way at that moment to a
+little shrinking movement of fear--back and away, not from Jem, who
+towered huge and powerful above him, but from the frail and delicate
+younger brother. Mark Ruthine, who was standing behind, saw the movement
+and wondered at it. For it would appear that, of all his judges, Seymour
+Michael feared the weakest most.
+
+And so the second link was welded on to the first, while only Anna Agar
+knew the motive that had prompted Michael to suppress the news. She
+divined that it was spite towards herself, and for once in her life, with
+that intuition which only comes at supreme moments, she had the wisdom to
+bide her time.
+
+Then at last Seymour Michael spoke. He did not raise his eyes, but his
+words were evidently addressed to Arthur.
+
+“I acted,” he said, “as I thought best. Secrecy was necessary for Agar's
+safety. I knew that if I told you too much you would tell your mother,
+and--I know your mother better than either you or Jem Agar know her. She
+is not fit to be trusted with the most trifling secret.”
+
+“Well, you see, you were quite wrong,” burst out Mrs. Agar, with a
+derisive laugh. “For I knew it all along. Arthur told me at the first.”
+
+Her voice came as a shock to them all. It was harsh and common, the voice
+of the street-wrangler.
+
+“Then,” cried Seymour Michael, as sharp as fate, “why did you not tell
+Miss Glynde?”
+
+He raised his arm, pointing one lean dark finger into her face.
+
+“I knew,” he hissed, “that the boy would tell you. I counted on it. Why
+did you not tell Miss Glynde? Come! Tell us why.”
+
+Mark Ruthine's face was a study. It was the face of a very keen sportsman
+at the corner of a “drive.” In every word he saw twice as much as simple
+Jem Agar ever suspected.
+
+“Well,” answered Mrs. Agar, wavering, “because I thought it better not.”
+
+“No,” Dora said, “you kept it from me because you wanted me to marry
+Arthur. And you thought that I should do so because he was master of
+Stagholme. You wanted to trick me into marrying Arthur before”--she
+hesitated--“before--”
+
+“Before I came back,” added Jem imperturbably. “That was it, that was
+it!” cried Seymour Michael, grasping at the straw which might serve to
+turn the current aside from himself.
+
+But the attempt failed. No one took any notice of it. Jem was looking at
+Dora, and she was looking anywhere except at him.
+
+It was Jem who spoke, with the decisiveness of the president of a
+court-martial.
+
+“That will come afterwards,” he said. “And now, perhaps,” he went on,
+turning towards Seymour, “you will kindly explain why you broke your word
+to me. Explain it to these l---- [sic.] to Miss Glynde.”
+
+Seymour Michael shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Why, what is the good of making all this fuss about it now?” he
+explained. “It has all come right. I acted as I thought best. That is all
+the explanation I have to offer.”
+
+“Can you not do better than that?” inquired Jem, with a dangerous
+suavity. “You had better try.”
+
+Dora was looking at Jem now, appealingly. She knew that tone of voice,
+and feared it. She alone suspected the anger that was hidden behind so
+calm an exterior.
+
+Seymour Michael preserved a dogged silence, glancing from side to side
+beneath his lowered lashes. He had not forgotten Jem's threat, but he
+felt the safeguard of a lady's presence.
+
+“I can offer an explanation,” put in Mark Ruthine. “This man is mentally
+incapable of telling the truth and of doing the straight thing. There are
+some people who are born liars. This man is one. It is not quite fair to
+judge him as one would judge others. I have known him for years, have
+watched him, have studied him.”
+
+All eyes turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood half-cringing,
+trembling with fear and hatred towards his relentless judges.
+
+“Years ago,” pursued Ruthine, “at the outset of life, he committed a
+wanton crime. He did a wrong to a poor innocent woman, whose only fault
+was to love him beyond his deserts. He was engaged to be married to her,
+and meeting a richer woman he had not the courage to ask to be released
+from his engagement. It happened that by a mistake he was gazetted 'dead'
+at the time of the Mutiny. He never contradicted the mistake--that was
+how he got out of his engagement. He played the same trick with Jem
+Agar's name. I recognised it.”
+
+Then the last link of the chain was forged.
+
+“So did I,” said Anna Agar. “I was the woman.”
+
+Before the words were well out of her mouth Mark Ruthine's voice was
+raised in an alarmed shout.
+
+“Look out!” he cried. “Hold that man; he is mad!”
+
+No one had been noticing Arthur Agar--no one except Seymour Michael, who
+had never taken his eyes from his face during Ruthine's narration.
+
+With a groan, unlike a human sound at all, Arthur Agar had rushed forward
+when his mother spoke, and for a few seconds there was a wild confusion
+in the room, while Seymour Michael, white with dread, fled before his
+doom. In and out among the people and the furniture, shouting for help,
+he leapt and struggled. Then there came a crash. Seymour Michael had
+broken through the window, smashing the glass, with his arms doubled over
+his face.
+
+A second later Arthur wrenched open the sash and gave chase across the
+lawn. In the confusion some moments elapsed before the two heavier men
+followed him over the smooth turf, and the ladies from the window saw
+Arthur Agar kneeling over Seymour Michael on the stone terrace at the end
+of the lawn. They heard with cruel distinctness the sharp crackling crash
+of the Jew's head upon the stone flags, as Arthur shook him as a terrier
+shakes a rat.
+
+Instinctively they followed, and as they came up to the group where
+Ruthine was kneeling over Seymour Michael, while Jem dragged Arthur away,
+they heard the Doctor say--
+
+“Agar, get the ladies away. This man is dead. Look sharp, man! They
+mustn't see this.”
+
+And Jem barred their way with one hand, while he held his half-brother
+with the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+SETTLED
+
+For love in sequel works with fate.
+
+
+The four walked back to the library together. Mrs. Agar looked back over
+her shoulder at every other footstep. She took no notice of her son. Her
+affection for him seemed suddenly to have been absorbed and lost in some
+other emotion.
+
+Jem was half supporting, half carrying Arthur, whose eyes were like those
+of a dead man, while his lips were parted in a vacant, senseless way.
+
+Already Ruthine could be heard giving his orders to the gardeners and
+other servants who had gathered round him in a wonderfully short space of
+time.
+
+Dora passed into the library first, treading carefully over the broken
+glass, and Mrs. Agar followed her without appearing to notice the sound
+of breakage beneath her feet. No one had spoken a word since Mark Ruthine
+had told them that Seymour Michael was dead. There are some situations in
+life wherein we suddenly realise what an inadequate thing human speech
+is. There are some things that others know which we have never told them,
+and would ever be unable to tell them. There are some feelings within us
+for which no language can find expression.
+
+Mrs. Agar was simply stupefied. When God does mete out punishment here on
+earth, He does so with an overflowing measure. This devoted mother did
+not even evince anxiety as to the welfare of her son, for whose sake she
+had made so many blunders, so many futile plots.
+
+Jem brought Arthur into the room, and led him to an arm-chair. There was
+that steady masterfulness in his manner which comes to those who have
+looked on death in many forms and whom nothing can dismay.
+
+He offered no unnecessary assistance or advice, did not fussily loosen
+Arthur's necktie, or perform any of those small inappropriate offices
+which some would have deemed necessary under the circumstances. He knew
+quite well that this was no matter of a necktie or a collar.
+
+Mrs. Agar seated herself on a sofa opposite, and slowly swayed her body
+backwards and forwards. She was one of those persons who can never
+separate mental anguish from physical pain. They have but one way of
+expressing both, and possibly of feeling both. Her hands were clasped on
+her lap, her head on one side, her lips drawn back as if in agony. She
+even went so far as to breathe laboriously.
+
+Thus they remained; Jem watching Arthur, Dora watching Jem, who seemed to
+ignore her presence.
+
+It was Mrs. Agar who spoke first, angrily and bitterly.
+
+“What is the good of standing there?” she said to Jem. “Can't you find
+something more useful to do than that?”
+
+Jem looked at her, first with surprise and then with something very
+nearly approaching contempt.
+
+“I am waiting,” he replied, “for Ruthine. He is a doctor.”
+
+“Who wants a doctor now? What is the good of a doctor now--now that
+Seymour is dead? I don't know what he is doing here, at any rate,
+meddling.”
+
+“Arthur wants a doctor,” replied Jem. “Can you not see that he is in a
+sort of trance? He hears and sees nothing. He is quite unconscious.”
+
+Mrs. Agar seemed only half to understand. She stared at her son, swaying
+backwards and forwards in imbecile misery.
+
+“Oh dear! oh dear!” she whispered, “what have we done to deserve this?”
+
+After a few seconds she repeated the words.
+
+“What have we done to deserve this? What have we done ...”
+
+Her voice died away into a whisper, and when that became inaudible her
+lips went on moving, still framing the same words over and over again.
+
+In this manner they waited, with that dull senselessness to the flight of
+time which follows on a great shock.
+
+They all heard the clatter of horses' feet on the gravel of the avenue,
+and probably they all divined that Mark Ruthine had sent for medical
+help.
+
+To Dora the sound brought a sudden boundless sense of relief. Amidst this
+mental confusion it came as a practical common-sense proof that the
+tension of the last year was over. The burden of her own life was by it
+lifted from her shoulders; for Jem was here, and nothing could matter
+very much now.
+
+Presently Ruthine came into the room. As he went towards Arthur he
+glanced at Dora and then at Mrs. Agar, but the young fellow was evidently
+his first care.
+
+While he was kneeling by the low chair examining Arthur's eyes and face,
+Mrs. Agar suddenly rose and crossed the room.
+
+“Is he dead?” she said abruptly.
+
+“Who?” inquired Mark Ruthine, without looking round.
+
+“Seymour Michael.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Quite?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then Arthur killed him?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+All this while Arthur was lying back in the chair, white and lifeless.
+His eyes were open, he breathed regularly, but he heard nothing that was
+said, nor saw anything before his eyes.
+
+“Then,” said Mrs. Agar, “that was a murder?”
+
+She was looking out of the window, towards the stone terrace, already
+conscious that the scene that she had witnessed there would never be
+effaced from her memory while she had life.
+
+After a little pause Mark Ruthine spoke.
+
+“No,” he answered, “it was not that. Your son was not responsible for his
+actions when he did it. I think I can prove that. I do not yet know what
+it was. It was very singular. I think it was some sort of mental
+aberration--temporary, I hope, and think. We will see when he recovers
+himself--when the circulation is restored.”
+
+While he spoke he continued to examine his patient. He spoke in his
+natural tone, without attempting to lower his voice, for he knew that
+Arthur Agar had no comprehension of things terrestrial at that time.
+
+“It was not,” he went on, “the action of a sane man. Besides, he could
+not have done it. In his right mind he could not have killed Seymour
+Michael, who was a strong man. As it is, I think that there was some sort
+of paralysis in Seymour Michael--a paralysis of fear. He seemed too
+frightened to attempt to defend himself. Besides, why should your son do
+it?”
+
+“He was born hating him.”
+
+Mark Ruthine slowly turned, still upon his knees. He rose, and in his
+dark face there was that strange eagerness again, like the eagerness of a
+sportsman approaching some unknown quarry in the jungle.
+
+“What do you mean, Mrs. Agar?” he asked.
+
+“I mean that he was born with a hatred for that man stronger than
+anything that was in him. His soul was given to him full of hate for
+Seymour Michael. Such things are when a woman bears a child in the midst
+of great passion.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mark Ruthine, “I know.”
+
+“The night he was born,” Mrs. Agar went on, “I first saw and spoke to
+that man after he had come back from India--after I had learnt what he
+had done.”
+
+Ruthine turned round towards Jem and Dora.
+
+“You hear that,” he said to them. “This is not the story of a mother
+trumped up in court to save her son. It is the truth. There are some
+things which we do not understand even yet. Don't forget what you have
+heard. It will come in usefully.”
+
+He turned to Mrs. Agar again.
+
+“Did he know the story?” he asked.
+
+“He never heard it until you told it just now.”
+
+“Can you swear to that, Mrs. Agar?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then,” said Ruthine, “he does not know now that you are the woman whom
+Seymour Michael wronged. He need never know it. The paroxysm had come on
+before you spoke--that was why I shouted. He was mad with hate, before
+you opened your lips.”
+
+Mrs. Agar was now beginning to realise what was at stake. The mother's
+love was re-awakening. The old cunning look came into her eyes, and her
+quick, truthless mind was evidently on the alert. There was something
+animal-like in Mrs. Agar; but she was of the lower order of animal, that
+seeks to defend its young by cunning and not by sheer bravery.
+
+Ruthine must have guessed at something, for he said at once:
+
+“Remember what you have told me. You will have to repeat that exactly.
+Add nothing to it, take nothing from it, or you will spoil it. Tell me,
+has your son seen this man more than once?”
+
+“No, only once; at Cambridge.”
+
+“All right; I think I shall be able to prove it.”
+
+As he spoke he went towards the writing-table and, sitting down, he wrote
+out a prescription. Dora followed him and held out her hand for the
+paper.
+
+“Send for that at once, please,” he said.
+
+Then he beckoned to Jem.
+
+“I have sent for the local doctor,” he said to him. “But I should advise
+having some one else--Llandoller from Harley Street. This is far above
+our heads.”
+
+“Telegraph for him,” answered Jem Agar.
+
+While Ruthine wrote he went on speaking.
+
+“We must get him upstairs at once,” he said. “I should like to have him
+in bed before the doctor comes.”
+
+In answer to the bell, rung a second time, the servant came, looking
+white and scared.
+
+“Show Dr. Ruthine Mr. Arthur's room,” said Jem; and Ruthine took Arthur
+up in his arms like a child.
+
+When they had gone there was a silence. Mrs. Agar made no attempt to
+follow. She sat down again on the sofa, swaying backwards and forwards.
+Perhaps she was dimly aware that there remained something still to be
+said.
+
+Jem Agar crossed the room and stood in front of her. Dora, from the
+background, was pleading with her eyes for this woman. There were the
+makings of a very hard man in James Edward Makerstone Agar, and seven
+years of the grimmest soldiering of modern days had done nothing to
+soften him. He was strictly just; but it is not justice that women want.
+To all men there comes a time when they recognise the fact that all their
+time and all their energies are required for the taking care of _one_
+woman, and that all the rest must take care of themselves.
+
+“You may stay,” he said to his step-mother, “until Arthur is removed from
+this house--but no longer. I shall never pretend to forgive you, and I
+never want to see you again.”
+
+Mrs. Agar made no answer, nor did she look up.
+
+“Go,” said Jem, with a little jerk of his head towards the door.
+
+Slowly she rose, and without looking at either of them she passed out of
+the room.
+
+When, at last, they were left alone in the quiet library where they had
+played together as children, where the happiest moments of his life and
+the most miserable of hers had been lived through.
+
+Dora did not seem to know quite what to do. She was standing by the
+writing-table, with one hand resting on it, facing him, but not looking
+at him. She suddenly felt unable to do that--felt at a loss, abashed,
+unequal to the moment.
+
+But Jem seemed to have no hesitation. He was quite natural and very
+deliberate. He seemed to know quite well what to do. He closed the door
+behind Mrs. Agar, and then he came across the room and took Dora in his
+arms, as if there were no question about it. He said nothing. After all,
+there was nothing to be said.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of From One Generation to Another, by
+Henry Seton Merriman
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+Project Gutenberg's From One Generation to Another, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: From One Generation to Another
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8805]
+This file was first posted on August 10, 2003
+Last Updated: May 4, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
+
+
+By Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I. THE SEED
+
+    II. SUBURBAN
+
+   III. MERCURY
+
+    IV. FREIGHTED
+
+     V. AFTER NINETEEN YEARS
+
+    VI. FOR HIS COUNTRY
+
+   VII. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
+
+  VIII. RELIEVED
+
+    IX. RE-CAST
+
+     X. A LAST THROW
+
+    XI. A CARPET KNIGHT
+
+   XII. BAD NEWS
+
+  XIII. ON THIN ICE
+
+   XIV. THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION
+
+    XV. THE TOUCH OF NATURE
+
+   XVI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY
+
+  XVII. TWO MOTIVES
+
+ XVIII. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA
+
+   XIX. AT HURLINGHAM
+
+    XX. IN A SIDE PATH
+
+   XXI. ALONE
+
+  XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS
+
+ XXIII. AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW
+
+  XXIV. A STAB IN THE DARK
+
+   XXV. FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH
+
+  XXVI. BALANCING ACCOUNTS
+
+ XXVII. AT BAY
+
+XXVIII. THE LAST LINK
+
+  XXIX. SETTLED
+
+
+
+
+FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SEED
+
+Il faut se garder des premiers mouvements, parce qu'ils sont presque
+toujours honn�tes.
+
+
+"Dearest Anna,--I see from the newspaper before me of March 13, that I am
+reported dead. Before attempting to investigate the origin of this
+mistake, I hasten to write to you, knowing, dearest, what a shock this
+must have been to you. It is true that I was in the Makar Akool affair,
+and was slightly wounded--a mere scratch in the arm--but nothing more. I
+have not written to you for some months past because I have been turning
+something over in my mind. Anna, dearest, there is no chance of my being
+in a position to marry for some years yet, and I feel it incumbent upon
+me ..."
+
+This letter, half written, lay on a camp table before a keen-faced young
+officer. He ceased writing suddenly, and, leaping to his feet, walked to
+the door of his bungalow, which was open to the four winds of heaven. In
+doing this he passed from the range of the lazy punkah flapping
+somnolently over table and bed. It may have been this sudden change to
+hotter air that caused him to raise his hand to his forehead, which was
+high and strangely rounded.
+
+"By George!" he said, "suppose I do it that way!"
+
+He walked rapidly backwards and forwards with the lithe actions of a man
+of steel, a light weight, of medium height, keen and quick as a monkey.
+His black eyes flitted from one object to another with such restlessness
+that it was impossible to say whether he comprehended what he saw or
+merely looked at things from force of habit.
+
+He was dark of hair with a sallow complexion and a long drooping
+nose--the nose of Semitic ancestors. A small mouth, and the chin
+running almost to a point. A face full of interest, devoid of distinct
+vice--heartless. Here was a man with a future before him--a man whose
+vices were all negative, whose virtues depended entirely upon expediency.
+Here was a man who could be almost anything he liked; as some men can. If
+expediency prompted he could be a very dep�t of virtues; for his body,
+with all the warmer failings of that part of humanity, was in perfect
+control. On the other hand, there was no love of good for goodness'
+sake--no conscience behind the subtle eyes. All this, and more, was
+written in the face of Seymour Michael, whose handwriting had dried some
+moments before on the half-filled sheet of letter-paper.
+
+He returned and stood at the table with slightly bowed legs--not the
+result of much riding, although he wore top-boots and breeches as if of
+daily habit--but a racial defect handed down like the nasal brand from
+remote progenitors. He looked at letter and newspaper as they lay side by
+side--not with the doubtfulness of warfare between conscience and
+temptation, but with a calculating thoughtfulness. He was not wondering
+what was best to do, but what the most expedient.
+
+Those were troublesome times in India, for the Mutiny was not quelled,
+and each mail took home a list of killed, slowly compiled from news that
+dribbled in from outlying stations, forts, and towns. Those were days
+when men's lives were made or lost in the Eastern Empire, for it seems to
+be in Fortune's balance that great danger weighs against great gain. No
+large wealth has ever been acquired without proportionate risk of life or
+happiness. To the tame and timorous city clerk comes small remuneration
+and a nameless grave, while to more adventurous spirits larger stakes
+bring vaster rewards. The clerk, pure and simple, has, within these later
+years, found his way to India, sitting side by side with the Baboo, and
+consequently it is as easy to make a fortune in London as in Calcutta and
+Madras. The clerk has carried his sordid civilisation and his love of
+personal safety with him, sapping at the glorious uncertainty from which
+the earlier pioneers of a hardier commerce wrested quick-founded
+fortunes.
+
+Seymour Michael had come into all this with the red coat of a soldier and
+the keen, ambitious heart of a Jew, at the very nick of time. He saw at
+once the enormous possibilities hidden in the near future for a man who
+took this country at its proper value, handling what he secured with
+coolness and foresight. He know that he only possessed one thing to risk,
+namely, his life; and true to his racial instinct, he valued this very
+highly, looking for an extortionate usury on his stake.
+
+At this moment he was like Aladdin in the cave of jewels: he did not know
+which way to turn, which treasure to seize first.
+
+Anna--dearest Anna--to whom this half-completed letter was addressed, was
+a person for whom he had not the slightest affection. At the outset of
+his career he had paused, decided in haste, and had resolved to make use
+of the passing opportunity. Anna Hethbridge had therefore been annexed
+_en passant_. In person she was youthful and rather handsome--her fortune
+was extremely handsome. So Seymour Michael went out to India engaged to
+be married to this girl who was unfortunate enough to love him.
+
+In India two things happened. Firstly, Seymour Michael met a second young
+lady with a fortune twice as large as that of Miss Anna Hethbridge.
+Secondly, the Mutiny broke out, and India lay before the ambitious young
+officer a very land of Ophir. He promptly decided to cut the first string
+of his bow. Anna Hethbridge was now useless--nay, more, she was a
+burthen. Hence the letter which lay half-written on the table of his
+bungalow.
+
+He paused before this wrong to a blameless woman, and contemplated the
+perpetration of a greater. He weighed pro and con--carefully withholding
+from the balance the casting weight of Right against Wrong. Then he took
+up the letter and slowly tore it to small pieces. He had decided to leave
+the report of his death uncontradicted. It was morally certain that five
+weeks before that day Anna Hethbridge had read the news in the printed
+column lying before him. He resolved to leave her in ignorance of its
+falseness. Seymour Michael was not, however, a selfish man. All that he
+did at this time, and later in life--all the lives that he ruined--the
+hearts he broke--the men he sacrificed were not offered upon the altar of
+Self (though the distinction may appear subtle), but sold to his career.
+Career was this man's god. He wanted to be great, and rich, and powerful;
+and yet he was conscious of having no definite use for greatness, or
+riches, or power when acquired.
+
+Here again was the taint of the blood that ran in his veins. The curse
+had reached him--in addition to the long, sad nose and the bandy legs.
+The sense of enjoyment was never to be his. The greed of gain--gain of
+any sort--filled his heart, and _ennui_ secretly nestling in his soul
+said: "Thou shalt possess, but not enjoy."
+
+He was conscious of this voice, but did not understand it then. He only
+burned to possess; looking to possession to provide enjoyment. In this he
+was not quite alone--with him in his error are all men and women. And so
+we talk of Love coming after marriage--and so women marry without Love,
+believing that it will follow. God help them! That which comes afterwards
+is not even the ghost of Love, it is only Custom. This was the spirit of
+Seymour Michael. He had already acquired one or two objects of a vague
+ambition; and, possessing them, had only learnt to be accustomed to
+them--not to value them.
+
+There was no elation in the thought that he was freed from the
+encumbrance of Anna Hethbridge by a chance misprint. Neither was there
+hesitation in turning accident ruthlessly to his own advantage. There was
+only a steady pressing forward--an unceasing, unwearying attention to his
+own gain.
+
+In those days news travelled slowly, and the personal had not yet taken
+precedence in journalism. In the anxiety for the State, the Individual
+was apt to be overlooked. Seymour Michael counted on six months of
+oblivion at the least--he hoped for more, but with characteristic caution
+acted always in anticipation of the worst.
+
+He had scarcely thrown the newspaper aside when a comrade entered the
+bungalow carrying another copy of the same journal.
+
+"I say, Michael," exclaimed this man, "do you see that you're put in
+among the killed?"
+
+"Yes," replied Seymour Michael, without haste, without hesitation. "I
+have already written to contradict it. Not that there is any one to care
+whether I am dead or alive. But it might do me harm in Leadenhall Street.
+I can't afford to be dead even for a week when so much promotion is going
+forward."
+
+This was artistic. Most of us forget to preserve our own characteristics
+in diverging from the truth. The tangled web is only woven when _first_
+we practise to deceive. Later on the facility is greater, the handling
+superior, and the web runs smooth and straight. Seymour Michael was
+apparently no novice at this sort of thing. He was even at that moment
+making mental note of the fact that up-country mails were in a state of
+disorganisation, and a letter which was never written may easily be made
+to have miscarried later on.
+
+But even he could not foresee everything--no one can. Not even the
+righteous man, much less the liar.
+
+"Do you mean to say," pursued the newcomer, "that you are not writing to
+your family about it--only to the Company?"
+
+"That is all."
+
+"Rum chap you are, Michael," said the other, lighting a cheroot.
+"Heartless beggar I take it."
+
+"Not at all. The simple fact is that I have no one to write to. I only
+possess one or two distant relatives, and they would probably be rather
+sorry than otherwise to have the report contradicted."
+
+The younger officer--a mere boy--with a beardless, happy face, walked to
+the door of the bungalow.
+
+"Of course there is always this in it," he said carelessly. "By the time
+the contradiction reaches home the news may be true."
+
+Seymour Michael laughed lamely. A joke of this description made him feel
+rather sick, for a Jew never makes a soldier or a sailor, and they are
+rarely found in those positions unless great gain is holden up.
+
+With this pleasantry the youth departed, leaving Michael to write the
+letter which he had advised as written. As he drew the writing materials
+towards him he cursed his brother officer quietly and politely for a
+meddling young fool. He wrote a formal letter to the Company--the
+old East India Company which administered an empire with ledger and
+daybook--calling their attention to the mistake in the newspaper, and
+begging them not to trouble to give the matter publicity, as he had
+already advised his friends.
+
+This done, he proceeded with the ordinary routine of his daily life. Such
+men as this are case-hardened. They carry with them a conscience like the
+floor of an Augean stable, but they know how to walk thereon. Moreover,
+he was one of those who assign to their dealings with men quite a
+different code of morals to that reserved for women. His was the code of
+"not being found out." Men are more suspicious--they find out sooner:
+_ergo_ the morals to be observed _vis � vis_ to them are of a stricter
+order. Railway companies and women are by many looked upon as fair game
+for deception. Consciences tender in many other respects have a subtle
+contempt for these two exceptions. Many a so-called honest man travels
+gaily in a first-class carriage with a second-class ticket, and lies to a
+woman at each end of his journey without so much as casting a shadow upon
+his conscience.
+
+Seymour Michael carried this code to the farthest limit of safety. All
+through the months that followed he went about his business with a clear
+conscience and a heart slightly relieved by the removal of Anna
+Hethbridge from his path to prosperity. He served his country and the
+Company with a keenness of foresight and a soldierly exposure of the
+lives of others which did not fail, in the course of time, to bring him
+in a harvest of honours and rewards. Neither did he put his candle under
+a bushel, but set it in the very highest candlestick available.
+
+But, as has been previously stated, he could not foresee everything. He
+did not know, for instance, that his cheroot-smoking subaltern--a
+youth as guileless as he was indiscreet, for the two usually go
+together--possessed a memory like a dry-plate. He did not foresee that a
+passing conversation in an Indian bungalow might perchance photograph
+itself on the somewhat sparsely covered tablets of a man's mind, to be
+reproduced at the wrong moment with a result lying twenty-six years ahead
+in the womb of time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SUBURBAN
+
+_L'amour fait tout excuser, mais il faut �tre bien s�r qu'il y a de i
+amour._
+
+
+Miss Anna Hethbridge loved Seymour Michael with as great a love as her
+nature could compass.
+
+When the news of his death reached her, at the profusely laden
+breakfast-table at Jaggery House, Clapham Common, her first feeling was
+one of scornful anger towards a Providence which could be so careless.
+Life had always been prosperous for her, in a bourgeois, solidly wealthy
+way, entirely suited to her turn of mind. She had always had servants at
+her beck and call, whom she could abuse illogically and treat with an
+utter inconsequence inherent in her nature. She had been the spoilt child
+of a ponderous, thick-skinned father and a very suburban mother, who, out
+of her unexpected prosperity, could deny her daughter nothing.
+
+Three months after the receipt of the news Anna Hethbridge went down into
+Hertfordshire, where, in the course of a visit at Stagholme Rectory, she
+met and became engaged to the Squire of Stagholme, James Edward Agar.
+
+A month later she became the second wife of the simple-minded old country
+gentleman. It would be hard to say what motives prompted her to this
+apparently heartless action. Some women are heartless--we know that. But
+Anna Hethbridge was too impulsive, too excitable, and too much given to
+pleasure to be devoid of heart. Behind her action there must have been
+some strange, illogical, feminine motive, for there was a deliberation in
+every move--one of those motives which are quite beyond the masculine
+comprehension. One notices that when a woman takes action in this
+incomprehensible way her lady friends are never surprised; they seem to
+have some subtle sympathy with her. It is only the men who look puzzled,
+as if the ground beneath their feet were unstable. Therefore there must
+be some influence at work, probably the same influence, under different
+forms, which urges women to those strange, inconsequent actions by which
+their lives are rendered miserable. Men have not found it out yet.
+
+Anna Hethbridge was at this time twenty-four years of age, rather pretty,
+with a vivacity of manner which only seemed frivolous to the more
+thoughtful of her acquaintances. The idea of her marrying old Squire Agar
+within six months of the untimely death of her clever lover, Seymour
+Michael, seemed so preposterous that her hostess, good, sentimental Mrs.
+Glynde, never dreamt of such a possibility until, in the form of a fact,
+it was confided to her by Miss Hethbridge, one afternoon soon after her
+arrival at the rectory.
+
+"Confound it, Maria," exclaimed the Rector testily, when the information
+was passed on to him later in the evening. "Why could you not have
+foreseen such an absurd event?"
+
+Poor Mrs. Glynde looked distressed. She was a thin little woman, with an
+unsteady head, physically and morally speaking; full of kindness of
+heart, sentimentality, high-flown principles, and other bygone ladylike
+commodities. Her small, eager face, of a ruddy and weather-worn
+complexion--as if she had, at some early period of her existence, been
+left out all night in an east wind--was puckered up with a sense of her
+own negligence.
+
+She tried hard, poor little woman, to take a deep and Christian interest
+in the welfare of her neighbours; but all the while she was conscious of
+failure. She knew that even at that moment, when she was sitting in her
+small arm-chair with clasped, guilty hands, her whole heart and soul were
+absorbed beyond retrieval in a small bundle of white flannel and pink
+humanity in a cradle upstairs.
+
+The Rector had dropped his weekly review upon his knees and was staring
+at her angrily.
+
+"I really can't tell," he continued, "what you can have been thinking
+about to let such a ridiculous thing come to pass. What are you thinking
+about now?"
+
+"Well, dear," confessed the little woman shamedly, "I was thinking of
+Baby--of Dora."
+
+"Thought so," he snapped, with a little laugh, returning to his paper
+with a keen interest. But he did not seem to be following the printed
+lines.
+
+"I suppose she was all right when you were up just now!" he said
+carelessly after a moment, and without lowering his paper.
+
+"Yes, dear," the lady replied. "She was asleep."
+
+And this young mother of forty smiled softly to herself as if at some
+recollection.
+
+This happiness had come late, as happiness must for us to value it fully,
+and Mrs. Glynde's somewhat old-fashioned Christianity was of that school
+which seeks to depreciate by hook or by crook the enjoyment of those
+sparse goods that the gods send us. The stone in her path at this time
+was an exaggerated sense of her own unworthiness--a matter which she
+might safely have left to another and wiser judgment.
+
+Presently the Rector laid aside the newspaper, and rose slowly from his
+chair.
+
+"Are you going upstairs, dear?" inquired his tactless spouse.
+
+"Um--er. Yes! I am just going up to get--a pocket-handkerchief."
+
+Mrs. Glynde said nothing; but as she knew the creak of every board
+in the room overhead she became aware shortly afterwards that the
+Rector had either diverged slightly from the path of which he was the
+ordained finger-post, or that he had suddenly taken to keeping his
+pocket-handkerchiefs in the far corner of the room where the cradle
+stood.
+
+It will be readily understood that in a household ruled, as this rectory
+was, by a sleepy little morsel of humanity, Anna Hethbridge was in no way
+hindered in the furtherance of her own personal purposes--one might
+almost add periodical purposes, for she never held to one for long.
+
+The Squire was very lonely. His boy Jem, aged four, would certainly be
+the happier for a mother's care. Above all, Miss Hethbridge seemed to
+want the marriage, and so it came about.
+
+If Anna Hethbridge had been asked at that time why she wanted it, she
+would probably have told an untruth. She was rather given, by the way, to
+telling untruths. Had she, in fact, given a reason at all, she would
+perforce have left the straight path, because she had no reason in her
+mind.
+
+The real motive was probably a love of excitement; and Miss Anna
+Hethbridge is not the only woman, by many thousands, who has married for
+that same reason.
+
+The wedding was celebrated quietly at the Clapham parish church. A
+humiliating day for the stiff-necked old Squire of Stagholme; for he was
+introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought up
+Stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter "h."
+The bourgeois ostentation and would-be high-toned graciousness of the
+ladies, jarred on his nerves as harshly as did the personal appearance of
+their respective husbands.
+
+Altogether it was just possible that Squire Agar began to realise the
+extent of his own foolishness before the effervescence had left the
+champagne that flowed freely to the health of bride and bride-groom.
+
+The event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the course
+of a few days a copy of the _Times_ containing the insertion started
+eastward to meet Seymour Michael on his way home from India.
+
+Anna Agar came home to Stagholme to begin her new life; for which
+peaceful groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she
+had breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth. This atmosphere is
+terribly impregnated with the microbe of bourgeoisie.
+
+But the novelty of the great house had that all-absorbing fascination
+exercised over shallow minds by anything that is new. At first she
+maintained excitedly that there was no life like a country life--no
+centre more suited for such an ideal existence than Stagholme. For a time
+she forgot Seymour Michael; but love is eminently deceitful. It lies in a
+comatose silence for many years and then suddenly springs to life.
+Sometimes the long period of rest has strengthened it--sometimes the time
+has been passed in a chrysalis stage from which Love awakens to find
+itself changed into Hatred.
+
+Little Jem, her stepson--sturdy, fair, silent--was her first failure.
+
+"Come to your mother, dear," she said, with unguarded enthusiasm one
+afternoon when there were callers in the room.
+
+"I cannot go to my mother," replied the youthful James, with his mouth
+full of cake, "because she is dead."
+
+There was an uncompromising matter-of-factness about this simple
+statement, made in all good faith and honesty, which warned the second
+Mrs. Agar to press the matter no farther just then. But she was so intent
+upon exhibiting to her neighbours the maternal affection which she
+persuaded herself that she felt for the plain-spoken heir to Stagholme,
+that she took him to task afterwards. With great care and an utter lack
+of logic she devoted some hours to the instruction of Jem in the somewhat
+crooked ways of her social creed.
+
+"And when," she added, "I tell you to come to your mother, you must come
+and kiss me."
+
+This last item she further impressed upon him by the gift of an orange,
+and then asked him if he understood.
+
+After scratching his head meditatively for some moments, he looked into
+her comely face with very steady blue eyes and said:
+
+"I don't think so--not quite."
+
+"Then," replied his stepmother angrily, "you are a very stupid little
+boy--and you must go up to the nursery at once."
+
+This puzzled Jem still more, and he walked upstairs reflecting deeply.
+Years afterwards, when he was a man, the sunlight falling on the wall
+through the skylight over the staircase had the power of bringing back
+that moment to him--a moment when the world first began to open itself
+before him and to puzzle him.
+
+It happened that at that precise time when Mrs. Agar was endeavouring
+To teach her little stepson the usages of polite society, a small,
+keen-faced man was standing near the table in the smoking-room in the
+Hotel Wagstaff at Suez. He was idly turning over the newspapers lying
+there in the hopes of finding something comparatively recent in date.
+
+Presently he came upon a copy of the _Times_, with which he repaired to
+one of the long chairs on that verandah overlooking the desert which some
+of us know only too well.
+
+After idly conning the general news he glanced at the births, deaths, and
+marriages, and there he read of the recent ceremony in the parish church
+of Clapham.
+
+"D----n it!" he muttered, with that racial love of an expletive which
+makes a Jew a profane man.
+
+In addition to a strong feeling of wounded vanity that Anna Hethbridge
+should so soon have forgotten him, Seymour Michael was distinctly
+disappointed that this heiress should no longer be within his reach. The
+truth was, that the young lady in India had transferred her valuable
+affections, with all solid appurtenances attaching thereto, to a young
+officer in the Navy who had been invalided at Calcutta.
+
+To men who intend, despite all and at any cost, to get on in the world
+the first failures are usually very bitter. It is only those who press
+stolidly forward without expecting much, who profit from a check. Seymour
+Michael was just the man to fail by being too acute, too unscrupulous. He
+was usually in such a hurry to help himself that he never allowed another
+the very fruitful pleasure of giving.
+
+In India his zeal had led him into one or two small mistakes to which he
+himself attached no importance, but they were remembered against him. He
+had cruelly thrown aside Anna Hethbridge when a richer marriage offered
+itself. Now he had missed both bone and reflection, and he sat with a
+smile on his dark face, looking out over the dreary desert.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MERCURY
+
+_The evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come._
+
+
+James Edward Makerstone Agar was not at the age of five the material
+from which the heroes of children's stories are evolved. He was not a
+good boy, nor a clean, nor particularly interesting. He was, however,
+honest--and that is _d�j� quelque chose_. He was as far removed from the
+"misunderstood" type as could be wished; and he was quite happy.
+
+Before his stepmother had laid aside the title and glory of a bride, he
+had, by his deadly honesty, made her understand that even a child of five
+requires what she could not give him--namely, logic. Had she been clever
+enough to reason logically she might have undermined the little fellow's
+innate honesty of character, despite the fact that he lacked a child's
+chief incentive to learn from its mother, namely, the sympathy of
+heredity.
+
+Gradually and steadily Mrs. Agar "gave him up," to make use of her own
+expression. She was one of those women who either fear or despise that
+which they do not understand. She could scarcely fear Jem, so she
+persuaded herself that he was stupid and unattractive. At this time there
+came another influence to militate against any excess of love between Jem
+and his stepmother. It came to her, for he was ignorant of it. And this
+was the knowledge that before long the little heir's undisputed reign in
+the nursery would come to an end.
+
+With a suburban horror of being a long distance from the chemist, Mrs.
+Agar protested that she could not possibly remain at Stagholme during the
+ensuing winter, and that her child must be born at Clapham. It was vain
+to argue or reason, and at last the Squire was forced to swallow this
+second humiliation, which was quite beyond his wife's comprehension. He
+only dared to hint that all the Agars had seen the light at Stagholme
+since time immemorial; but feelings of this description found no
+answering note in her practical and essentially commonplace mind. So Mr.
+And Mrs. Agar emigrated to Clapham, leaving Jem behind them.
+
+It happened that a few days after their arrival at the stately house
+overlooking the Common, a young officer called to see Mr. Hethbridge,
+who was at that time one of the Directors of the East India Company.
+Now it furthermore happened that this young soldier was he whom we last
+saw smoking a cheroot in the doorway of Seymour Michael's bungalow in
+India. As chance would have it, he called in the evening, and the
+estimable Mr. Hethbridge, warmed into an unusual hospitality by the
+fumes of his own port wine, pressed him to pass into the drawing-room and
+take a dish of tea with the ladies. The subaltern accepted, chiefly
+because it was the Director's self that pressed, and presently followed
+that short-winded gentleman into the drawing-room--thereby shaping lives
+yet uncreated--thereby unconsciously helping to work out a chain of
+events leading ultimately to an end which no man could foresee.
+
+"Yes," he said, in reply to Mrs. Agar's question, "I am just back from
+India."
+
+It happened that these two were left almost beyond earshot at the far end
+of the room. The old people, among whom was Mrs. Agar's husband, were
+settling down to a game of whist. Mrs. Agar was leaning forward with
+considerable interest. This was not a mere passing curiosity to hear
+further of a country and of an event which have not lost their glamour
+yet.
+
+The very word "India" had stirred something up within her heart of the
+presence of which she had been unsuspicious. She was as one who, having a
+closed room in her life, and thinking the door thereof securely barred,
+suddenly finds herself within that room.
+
+"Whereabouts in India were you?" she asked, with a sudden dryness of the
+lips.
+
+"Oh--I was north of Delhi."
+
+"North of Delhi--oh, yes."
+
+She moistened her lips, with a strange, sidelong glance round the room,
+as if she were preparing to jump from a height.
+
+"And--and I suppose you saw a great deal of the Mutiny?"
+
+Even then--after many months, in a drawing-room in peaceful Clapham--the
+young man's eyes hardened.
+
+"Yes, I saw a good deal," he answered.
+
+Mrs. Agar leant back in her chair, drawing her handkerchief through her
+fingers with jerky, unnatural movements.
+
+"And did you lose many friends?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," answered the young fellow, "in one way and another."
+
+"How? What do you mean?" She had a way of leaning forward and listening
+when spoken to, which passed very well for sympathy.
+
+"Well, a time like the Mutiny brings out all that is in a man, you
+know. And some men had less in them than one might have thought, while
+others--quiet-going fellows--seemed to wake up."
+
+"Yes," she said; "I see."
+
+"One or two," he continued, "betrayed themselves. They showed that there
+was that in them which no one had suspected. I lost one friend that way."
+
+"How?"
+
+It was marvellous how the merest details of India interested this woman,
+who, like most of us, did not know herself. Moreover, she never learnt to
+do so thoroughly, thereby being spared the horrid pain of knowing oneself
+too late.
+
+"I made a mistake," he explained. "I thought he was a gentleman and a
+brave man. I found that he was a coward and a cad."
+
+Something urged her to go on with her pointless questions--the same
+inevitable Fate which, according to the Italians, "stands at the end of
+everything," and which had prompted Mr. Hethbridge to bring this stranger
+into the drawing-room.
+
+"But how did you find it out?"
+
+"Oh, I did not do it all at once. I first began by a mere trifle. It
+happened that this man was reported dead in the Gazette--I showed it to
+him myself."
+
+The young officer, who was not accustomed to ladies' society, and felt
+rather nervous at his own loquaciousness, kept his eyes fixed on his
+boots, and did not notice the deathly pallor of Mrs. Agar's face, nor the
+convulsive clutch of her fingers on the velvet arm of the chair.
+
+She turned right round, with a peculiar movement of the throat as if
+swallowing something, and made sure that the whist-players were
+interested in their game. In that position she heard the next words.
+
+"He did not even take the trouble to write home to his friends. I thought
+it rather strange at the time, and told him so. Later on I heard the
+truth of it. I heard him tell some one else that he was engaged to a girl
+in England, and he thought it a very good way of getting out of the
+engagement."
+
+"You heard him tell that, with your own ears?"
+
+"Yes; and he seemed to think it a good joke."
+
+Mrs. Agar was shuffling about in the chair as if in pain.
+
+Then she asked again in a strangely metallic voice, "Did he say that
+he--did not love her?"
+
+"Yes, the cad!"
+
+"He cannot have been a nice man," she said, with that evenness of
+enunciation which betrays that the tongue is speaking without the direct
+aid of the mind.
+
+The young officer rose with a glance towards the clock.
+
+"No," he said, "he was not. He did other things afterwards which made it
+quite impossible for a man with any self-respect whatever to look upon
+him as a friend."
+
+"Did he," asked Mrs. Agar, "say anything about her personal appearance?
+Was it that?"
+
+The subaltern looked puzzled. It was as well for Mrs. Agar that he was
+not a man of deep experience. Instead of being puzzled he might suddenly
+have seen clear.
+
+"No--no," he replied. "It was not that. It was merely a matter of
+expediency, I believe."
+
+But, womanlike, Mrs. Agar did not believe him. She sat while he made his
+farewell speech over the whist-table, but as he went to the door she rose
+and followed him slowly.
+
+In the hall she watched the servant help him on with his coat--her
+features twisted into a stereotype smile of polite leave-taking.
+
+"By the way," she said, with a sickening little laugh, "what was the
+man's name--your friend, whom you lost?"
+
+"Michael--Seymour Michael."
+
+"Ah! Good-night--good-night."
+
+Then she turned and walked slowly upstairs.
+
+We are apt to read indifferently of human ills, whether of the flesh or
+the soul. We are apt to overlook the fact that what we read may apply to
+us. Some of us even bear upon us the mark of hereditary disease and
+refuse to believe in it. Then suddenly comes a day when a pain makes
+itself felt--a dumb, little creeping pain, which may mean nothing. We sit
+down and, so to speak, feel ourselves. Before long all doubt goes. We
+have it. The world darkens, and behold we are in the ranks of those upon
+whom we looked a little while back with a semi-indifferent pity.
+
+It was thus with Mrs. Agar. As some play with nature, so had she played
+with her own heart. She had heard of a consuming love which is near akin
+to hatred. She had read of passion which is stronger than the strongest
+worldliness. She had smilingly doubted the existence of the broken heart
+pure and simple. And now she sat in her own room, numbly, blindly feeling
+herself, like one to whom the first warning of an internal deadly disease
+has been manifested. She was conscious of something within herself which
+she could not get at, over which she had no control.
+
+With quivering lips she sat and wondered what she could do to hurt this
+man. She did not only want to inflict bodily pain, but that other
+gnawing pain of the heart which she herself was now feeling for the first
+time. And through it all there ran the one thought that he must die. It
+was strange that hate should first teach her that love is a living,
+undeniable reality in the lives of all of us. She had never realised
+this before. Her bringing-up, her surroundings, all her teaching had
+been that money and a great house, and servants, and carriages were the
+good things of this life, the things to be sought after.
+
+She had been conscious of a vague admiration for Seymour Michael, and
+that was the full extent of her knowledge of herself. This admiration
+took the worldly form of a conviction that he was destined one day to be
+a great man, and she had a strongly developed, common-minded desire to be
+a great lady.
+
+There are some things in this life which to a moderate intelligence are
+quite unmistakable. Most of us, having left childhood behind, recognise
+at once an earthquake, and death. Love is as unmistakable when it really
+comes. And Anna Agar, having suddenly learnt to hate Seymour Michael,
+knew that she had loved him with that one all-absorbing love which comes
+but once to a woman.
+
+She was not a deep-thinking or a subtle woman. Her actions were usually
+based upon impulse, and her one all-absorbing desire now was to see him,
+to speak to him face to face. In this indefinite longing there was
+probably a vulgar love of vituperation--the taint of her low-born
+ancestors.
+
+She wanted to shout and shriek her hatred into the evil face of the man
+who had tricked her. She wanted to frighten him, to threaten, to lash him
+with her tongue. For she was conscious all the while of her own inability
+to harm him. Without defining the thought, her common-sense taught her
+one lamentable, unjust fact; namely, that unless a woman is loved by the
+object of her wrath she can hardly make him suffer.
+
+She rose at last, and, lighting the candles on the writing-table, she
+proceeded to write to Seymour Michael. Even in this epistle the natural
+cunning of her nature appeared.
+
+"DEAR SEYMOUR "--she wrote on a sheet of paper bearing the address of the
+house in which she was staying, the roof under which Seymour Michael had
+first paid his careless tribute to her wealth--"I learnt by accident this
+evening that your regiment has returned to England. If you are in London,
+I hope you will make time to come and see me. Come to-morrow evening at
+four, if that time is convenient to you. ANNA."
+
+She purposely signed her Christian name only, purposely refrained from
+vouchsafing any personal news. She did not know how much or how little he
+might know.
+
+Ringing for her maid, she sent the letter to the post, addressed to
+Seymour Michael, at the Service Club, of which she knew him to be a
+member. Then she went to bed to toss and turn all night. The doctors,
+good, portly Clapham practitioners, had warned her in the usual way to
+spare herself all bodily fatigue and mental worry for the sake of the
+little one. It is so easy to urge each other to spare all mental worry,
+and so eminently useful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+FREIGHTED
+
+I shall remember while the light lives yet,
+And in the darkness I shall not forget.
+
+
+Seymour Michael was no coward where hard words and no hard knocks were to
+be exchanged. His faith in his own keenness of intellect and
+unscrupulousness of tongue was unbounded.
+
+He smiled when he read Anna Agar's letter over a dainty breakfast at his
+club the next morning. The cunning of it was obvious to his cunning
+comprehension, and the fact of her suppressing her newly-acquired surname
+only convinced him that she knew but little about himself.
+
+That same evening at four o'clock he presented himself at the lordly
+hall-door of Mr. Hethbridge. Since first he had raised his hand to this
+knocker, fingering his letter of introduction to the East India director,
+Seymour Michael had learnt many things, but the knowledge was not yet his
+that indiscriminate untruths are apt to fly home to roost.
+
+Anna Agar had easily managed to send her mother out of the house; her
+husband spent his days as far from Clapham as circumstances would allow.
+She was seated on a sofa at the far end of the room when Seymour Michael
+was shown in, and the first thing that struck her was his diminutiveness.
+After the hearty country gentlemen who habitually carried mud into the
+Stagholme drawing-room, this small-limbed dapper soldier of fortune
+looked almost puny. But there is a depth in every woman's heart which is
+only to be reached by one man. Whatever betide them both, that one is
+different from the rest all through life.
+
+Neither of these two persons spoke until the servant had closed the door.
+Then, as is usual in such cases, the more indifferent spoke first.
+
+"Why did you never write to me?" said Seymour Michael, fixing his
+mournful glance on her face.
+
+"Because I thought you were dead."
+
+"You never got my letter contradicting the report?"
+
+"No," she answered, with so cheap a cunning that it deceived him.
+
+"And," he went on, with the heartlessness of a small man, for large men
+respect woman with a deeper chivalry than every puny knight yet
+compassed, "and you did not trouble to inquire. You did not even give me
+six months' grace to cool in my grave."
+
+"How did you send your letter?" she asked, with a suppressed excitement
+which he misread entirely.
+
+"By the usual route. I wrote off at once."
+
+"Liar! liar! liar!" she shrieked.
+
+She had risen, and stood pointing an accusatory finger at him. Then
+suddenly the dramatic force of the situation seemed to fail, and she
+burst out laughing. For some seconds it seemed as if her laughter was
+getting beyond her control, but at last she checked it with a gurgle.
+
+The complete success of the trap which she had laid for him almost
+disappointed her. Few things are more disappointing than complete
+success. She hated him, and yet for the sake of the one gleam of good
+love that had flickered once in her essentially sordid heart, she had
+nourished a vague hope that he would clear himself--that at all events he
+would have the cleverness to see through her stratagem.
+
+"Liar!" she repeated. "In this room last night--not twenty-four hours
+ago--Mr. Wynderton told me all about it. He said that you told several
+men in his presence that you did not love me, and that your death
+reported in the papers was the best way of breaking off the engagement."
+
+Seymour Michael's eyes never wavered. For once they were still, with
+that solemn depth of gaze which tells of the curse laid on a smitten,
+miserable race. It was strange that before honest men and women his
+glance wavered ever--he could never meet honest eyes; but looking at Anna
+Agar they were as steady as those of a true man.
+
+"Wynderton," ho said, "the man whose promotion I stopped, by a report
+against him for looting."
+
+When Nature makes a fool in the guise of a woman she turns out a finished
+work. Mrs. Agar's eyes actually lighted up. Seymour Michael saw; but he
+knew that he had no case. Nevertheless, in view of the Squire's advanced
+age (a fact of which he had made sure), he attempted to carry through a
+forlorn hope.
+
+"And you believe this man before you believe me?" said Michael. It is
+strange how often one hears the word "believe" on the lips of those whose
+veracity is doubtful.
+
+Now it happened that Mr. Hethbridge had spoken of Wynderton at breakfast
+that morning in terms which left no doubt as to the untruth of the
+statement just made in regard to him. But even this would have been
+passed over by the woman who had a natural tendency towards falsehood
+herself, had not Seymour Michael made a hideous mistake. A wiser man than
+any of us has said that there is a time for all things. Most distinctly
+defined is the time for making love. More men come to grief by making too
+much love than too little. Seymour Michael, being heartless, deemed
+erroneously that this was a propitious moment to essay the power which
+had once been his over this woman.
+
+He accompanied his reproachful speech with a tender glance, which in
+olden times had never failed to call forth an answering look of love in
+her eyes. Now, it suddenly aroused her to realise the extent of her
+hatred. In some subtle way it humiliated her; for she looked back into
+the past, and saw herself therein a dupe to this man.
+
+"No!" she cried, and her raised voice had a sudden twang in
+it--suggestive of the streets; of the People. "No--you needn't trouble to
+make soft eyes at me. I know you now--I know that what that man said was
+true. He called you a coward and a cad. You are worse! You are a Jew--a
+mean, lying Jew."
+
+There are few greater trials to a man's dignity than vituperation from
+the lips of a woman. She walked towards him, clumsily, menacingly and
+raised her hand as if to strike him.
+
+Seymour Michael's brown face turned yellow beneath her blazing anger.
+
+"Sit down!" he commanded, "and don't make a fool of yourself."
+
+He was mean enough to pay her back in her own coin--the paltry,
+loud-ringing coin which is all that a woman has.
+
+"I do not mean to wrangle," he said coolly; "but I may as well tell you
+now that I never cared a jot for you. I was laughing at you in my sleeve
+all the time. I did not want you but your money. I concluded that the
+money would be too dear at the price, so I determined to throw you over.
+The way I chose to do it was as good as any other, because it saved me
+the trouble of writing to you."
+
+Anna Agar had obeyed him. She was sitting down in a stiff-backed
+arm-chair, looking stupidly at the pattern of the carpet as if it were
+something new to her. Between physical pain and mental excitement she
+was beginning to wander. She was the sort of woman to lose control over
+her mind with a temperature of one hundred and one.
+
+Michael looked keenly at her. He had a racial terror of physical ailment.
+He saw that something was wrong, but his knowledge went no further. He
+had never seen a woman faint, so limited had been his experience of the
+sex.
+
+"Come," he said consolingly, "it is all for the best. We made a mistake.
+In a few years we shall look back to this, and thank Heaven for saving us
+many years of unhappiness. We are not suited to each other, Anna. We
+never should have been happy."
+
+It was characteristic of the man to be more afraid of a fainting fit than
+of a broken heart.
+
+He went to her side and stood, not daring to touch her, for fear of
+arousing another of those fits of passion in her which neither of them
+seemed to understand. At length she spoke in a singular monotonous tone
+which an experienced doctor would have recognised at once as the speech
+of a tongue unguided for the time being. She did not look up, but kept
+her eyes fixed on the carpet as if reading there.
+
+"Some day," she said, "I will pay you back. Some day--some day. I do not
+know how, but I feel that you will be sorry you ever did this."
+
+Twenty-five years afterwards these words came back to him in a flash.
+They passed through his brain--conglomerate--in a flash, in a hundredth
+part of the time required to speak them.
+
+Even at the time of hearing them, spoken in that voice which did not seem
+to belong to Anna Hethbridge at all, he turned pale. For all the hatred
+that burnt within her like a fire smouldered in the deliberate tones of
+her voice. Hatred and love can teach us more in a moment than the
+experience of a lifetime; for through either of them we see ourselves
+face to face. This hatred made Anna Agar in twenty-four hours, and the
+woman thus created went through a lifetime unchanged.
+
+Michael went towards the bell.
+
+"I am going to ring," he said, "for your maid."
+
+"Twice," she muttered in the same vague way.
+
+He obeyed her, ringing twice.
+
+Presently the woman came.
+
+"Your mistress," said Michael in a low voice to her at the door, "has
+been suddenly seized with faintness. I leave her to you."
+
+Without looking round he passed through the doorway and out into his own
+self-seeking life. But Anna Agar's revenge began from that moment. To a
+man of his nature, in whose veins ran the taint of a semi-superstitious
+Oriental blood, there was a nameless terror in the hatred of a human
+being, however helpless. Surely the hell of the coward will be a twilight
+land of vague shadowy dangers ever approaching and receding.
+
+In such a land Seymour Michael moved for some months, until he returned
+to India; and there, in the daily round of a new life, he gradually
+learnt to shake off the past. The world is very large despite chance
+meetings. It is easy enough to find room for two even in the same county,
+with the exercise of a little care.
+
+Twenty-five years elapsed before these two met again, and then they only
+had time to exchange a glance. By that time the result of their own
+actions had passed beyond their control.
+
+Seymour Michael walked across the Common, which was in those days still
+wild and almost beautiful; and on the whole he was pleased with the
+result of this interview. He knew that it was destined to come sooner or
+later--he had known that all along; and it might have been worse. It is
+characteristic of an untruthful nature to be impervious to the shame of
+mere detection. In Eastern countries the liar detected smiles in one's
+face. Detection is to an Oriental no punishment; something more tangible
+is required to pierce his mental epidermis.
+
+Being quite incapable of a strong love this man was innocent of consuming
+hatred. He therefore vaguely wondered whether the day might come wherein
+he would once more lay siege to the affections of Anna Agar, a rich
+widow.
+
+Had he seen the face of the woman whom he had just left as it lay
+at that moment, hardly less pale than the pillow between the fluted
+mahogany pillars of a huge four-post bed, he would not have understood
+its meaning. He would never have divined that the dull gleam shining
+between her half-closed eyelids was simple hatred of himself, that the
+restless, twitching lips were whispering curses upon his head, that the
+half-stunned brain was struggling back to circulation and thought for
+the sole purpose of devising hurt to him.
+
+Seymour Michael, ignorant of all this, went peaceably back to his club,
+where he dressed, dined, and proceeded to pass the evening at a theatre.
+
+That night, while he was displaying his diamond studs in the stalls of
+Drury Lane Theatre, was born into the world--long before his time--a
+child, Arthur Agar, destined to walk the smoothest paths of life,
+literally in silk attire; for he grew up to love such things.
+
+But the ways of Nature are strange. She is very quiet; patient as death
+itself. She holds her hand for years--sometimes for a generation--but she
+strikes at last.
+
+She is more cruel than man, or even than woman which is saying much, She
+is the best friend we have, and the worst foe, for she never forgives an
+outrage.
+
+Nature raised her hand over this puny, whimpering child, Arthur Agar. She
+never forgot a mother's selfish passion. She forgets nothing. When first
+he opened his little pink lids upon the world he looked round with a
+scared wonder in a pair of colourless blue-grey eyes; and that vague look
+of expectation never left his eyes in later life. It almost seemed as if
+the infant orbs could see ahead into the future--could discern the
+lowering hand of outraged Nature.
+
+This hand was suspended over the ill-fated, poorly-endowed head for
+years, then Nature struck--hard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+AFTER NINETEEN YEARS
+
+A sharp judgment shall be to them that be in high places.
+
+
+"Yes, dear. I have great news for you to take back to your mother. Jem
+has got his commission--in a Goorkha regiment!"
+
+The lady who spoke leant back in her chair, half turning her head, but
+not looking entirely round in the direction of the only other occupant of
+the room--a girl of nineteen.
+
+"In a Goorkha regiment, Aunt Anna?" repeated the girl; "what is that? It
+sounds as if he would have to black his face and wear a turban. It
+suggests curry and gymkhanas (whatever they may be) and pyjamas and
+bananas and other pickles. A Goorkha regiment."
+
+There was a faint drop in her tone--on the last three words, which to
+very keen ears might have signified reproach, but the hearer was not
+keen--merely cunning, which is quite a different matter.
+
+"Yes, dear. They tell me that these Indian regiments are much the best
+for a young man who is likely to get on. There are so many more chances
+of promotions and--er--er--distinction."
+
+The girl was standing by the open window, and she turned her head without
+otherwise moving, looking at the speaker with a pair of exceedingly
+discriminating eyes.
+
+"Bosh, my dear aunt!" she whispered confidingly to the blind-cord.
+
+"Yes," pursued the lady, with the eager credulity of her first mother,
+ever ready to believe the last speaker when belief is convenient--"Yes.
+Sister Cecilia tells me that all the great men began in the Indian
+Service."
+
+"Oh! I wonder where they finished. Royal Academy--finishing Academy.
+Regimentals and a gold frame--leaning heroically on a mild-looking cannon
+with battles in the background."
+
+"Yes, dear," replied Mrs. Agar, who only half understood Dora Glynde at
+all times; "it is such a good thing for Jem. Such a splendid opportunity,
+you know!"
+
+"Yes," echoed the girl, with a twist of her humorous lips. "Splendid!"
+
+She had turned again, and was looking out of the window across a soft old
+lawn where two Wellingtonians towered side by side like sentries. Without
+glancing in the direction of her companion she knew the expression of
+Mrs. Agar's face, the direction of her gaze; the very thought in her
+shallow mind. She knew that Mrs. Agar was sitting with her arms on the
+little davenport, gazing rapturously at the photograph of an insipid
+young man with a silk-faced smoking jacket; with clean linen, clean
+countenance, clean hands, immaculate hair, and a general air of being too
+weak to be mean.
+
+"Sister Cecilia," went on the elder lady, "seems to know all about it."
+
+It is useless to attempt concealment of the fact that at this juncture
+Dora Glynde made a face--an honest schoolgirl behind-your-back
+Face--indicative of supreme scorn for some person or persons unspecified.
+
+Hers was a countenance which lent itself admirably to the purpose, with
+lips full of humour, and capable, as such lips are, of expressing a great
+and wonderful tenderness. The face, _du reste_, was that of a healthy,
+fair-skinned English girl, liable to honest change from pale to pink,
+according to the dictates of an arbitrary climate. Her eyes were of a
+dark grey-blue, straightforward and steady, with a shadow of thought in
+them which made wise people respect her presence. She was not painfully
+beautiful, like the heroine of a novel--nor abnormally plain, like the
+antitype who has found her way into fiction, and there (alone) brings all
+hearts to her feet.
+
+"Is Jem glad?" she asked cheerfully. "Is he thirsting for gore and
+glory?"
+
+"Oh, delighted! Arthur will be so pleased too. Dear boy, _he_ is so
+interested in soldiers, but of course he could not go into the army! He
+is too delicate--besides, the life is rough, and the risks are very
+great."
+
+Mrs. Agar was speaking with her head slightly inclined to one side, and
+she never raised her adoring eyes from the photograph of the insipid
+young man. Had she done so she would have seen a look of patient, if
+comic, resignation come over the face of her youthful companion at the
+mention of her son's name.
+
+"I will tell mother," said Dora Glynde, purposely ignoring Arthur Agar,
+whose name was always dragged sooner or later into every conversation.
+"Fancy Jem in a helmet, or a turban, with his face blacked! All the same,
+if I were a man I should be a soldier. When does he go--to join his
+regiment?"
+
+"Oh, almost at once."
+
+The girl winced, quietly, between herself and the blind-cord.
+
+"And in the meantime," she said lightly, "I suppose he is fully engaged
+in buying swords and guns and bomb-shells, or whatever the Goorkhas use
+in warfare."
+
+"He is coming home to-morrow for Sunday," replied Jem Agar's stepmother
+absently. She was thinking of her own son, and therefore did not hear the
+quick sigh which was almost a gasp; did not note the sudden light in the
+girl's eyes.
+
+Dora Glynde was rather a solitary-minded young person. The only child of
+elderly parents, she had never learnt in the nursery to indulge in the
+indiscretions of confiding girlhood. She had the good fortune to be
+without a bosom-friend who related her most sacred secrets to other bosom
+friends and so on, as is the way of maidens. From her father she had
+inherited a discriminating mind and a most admirable habit of reserve.
+She was quite happy when alone, which, according to La Bruy�re, is a
+great safeguard against all evil.
+
+She wanted to be alone now, and therefore passed out of the open window
+with a non-committing "Good-bye, Aunt Anna!"
+
+"Good-bye, dear," replied the lady, awaking suddenly from a reverie. But
+by the time she had turned round in her chair, the girl was gone.
+
+Dora crossed the lawn, passing between the sentinel pines and crossing
+the moat by the narrow footbridge. She climbed the railing with all the
+ease of nineteen years and struck a bee-line across the park. She never
+raised her eyes from the ground, never paused in her swinging gait, until
+she reached the brown hush of the beechwood which divided the Rectory
+garden from the southern extremity of the park.
+
+Having climbed the railing again she sat on a mossy mound at the foot of
+a huge beech tree. Her manner of doing so subtly indicated that she did
+not only know the spot, but was in the habit of sitting there, possibly
+to think. A youthful privilege of doubtful value, for, as we get busier
+in life we have to do the thinking as we go along.
+
+"Oh!" she muttered, "oh, how awful!"
+
+A new expression had come over her face. She looked older, and all the
+vivacity had suddenly left her lips.
+
+While she was still sitting there the crisp sound of footsteps on the
+fallen leaves approached through the wood. Looking up she saw her father,
+following the winding path through the spinney towards his home.
+
+A grave man was the Rector of Stagholme in his declining years;
+hopelessly, wisely pessimistic, with sudden youthful returns of interest
+in matters literary and theological. As he came he read a book.
+
+Instantly the expression of Dora's face changed. She rose and went
+towards him, smiling contemptuously towards his lowering gravity. He
+looked up, gave a little grunt of recognition, and closed his book.
+
+"Father," she said, "I've just heard a piece of news."
+
+"Bad, I suppose."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Well," she answered, "I suppose we shall survive it. Jem has got his
+commission, in a Goorkha regiment."
+
+"Goorkha regiment? Nonsense!"
+
+"Aunt Anna has just told me so. She is very pleased, and seems prepared
+for the--best."
+
+"That is the custom of fools, to be prepared for the best--only."
+
+The Rector gave a despairing shrug of the shoulders. He was a man who
+allowed himself, after the manner of the ancients with whom he lived
+mentally, a few gestures. He smoked a very expressive cigarette. He was
+smoking one at this moment, and threw it away half consumed. This divine
+was possessed of a rooted conviction that the Almighty made a great
+mistake whenever He invested temporal power in a woman, whom he was
+ungallantly inclined to classify under a celebrated dictum of Mr.
+Carlyle's respecting the population of these happy Isles, who, truth to
+tell, care not one jot what Mr. Carlyle may think of them.
+
+The Reverend Thomas Glynde and his daughter walked all the way home
+without exchanging another word. In the Rectory drawing-room they found
+Mrs. Glynde, small, nervous, worried. She had evidently devoted
+considerable thought and attention to the preservation of the hot
+buttered toast. Poor humble little soul, she was quite content to
+minister to the bodily requirements of her spouse, having long been
+convinced of the inferiority of her own sex in every respect except a
+certain limited knowledge of housekeeping matters.
+
+She was vaguely conscious of inferiority to Dora from a literary point of
+view, and talked with abject humility to her own daughter of all things
+appertaining to books. But on all other points connected with the child
+of her old age this quiet little woman was absolute mistress. Years
+before the Rector had made a great mistake; he had, as the plain-spoken
+East Burgen doctor put it, made an ass of himself on the matter of a
+childish illness, thereby imperilling Dora's half-fledged little life.
+Mrs. Glynde had then, like a diminutive tigress, stood up boldly before
+her awesome lord and master, saying such things to him that the
+remembrance of them made her catch her breath even now. From that time
+forth the Rector was allowed to hold forth on symptoms to his heart's
+content, to take down from his library shelf a stout misguided book of
+medical short-cuts to the grave, but nothing more.
+
+He never referred to the asinine business, and in the course of
+years he forgave the doctor (having in view the fact that that
+practitioner had been carried away by a right and proper sense of the
+importance of the case), but he tacitly acknowledged that in the practice
+of home-administered medical assistance, his knowledge was second to a
+mother's instinct.
+
+"It appears," he said sharply, while he was stirring his tea, "that Jem
+Agar has got his commission in a Goorkha regiment."
+
+Now Mrs. Glynde knew more about the organisation of the heavenly bands
+than of the administration of the Indian army. She did not know whether
+to rejoice or lament, and having been sharply pulled up--any time during
+the last twenty years--for doing one or the other in the wrong place, she
+meekly took soundings.
+
+"What is that, dear?" she inquired.
+
+"The Goorkhas are native Indian soldiers," explained the Rector. "Very
+good fellows, no doubt. They get all the hard knocks in small frontier
+wars and none of the half-pence. What the woman can have been thinking
+of, I don't know."
+
+Mrs. Glynde was anxiously glancing towards Dora, who was nicking the nose
+of a sportive kitten with the tassel of the tea-cosy.
+
+"And will he go to India?" she asked, with laudable mental grovellings in
+the mire of her own ignorance.
+
+"Course he will."
+
+"And," added Dora cheerfully, "he will come home covered with glory and
+medals, with a weakness for strong pickles and hot language--I mean hot
+pickles and strong language."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Glynde rather breathlessly, "are they never stationed in
+England?"
+
+"No--never," replied her husband snappishly.
+
+Mrs. Glynde had a pink patch on each cheek--precisely on the spot whore
+two such patches had appeared years ago when the doctor spoke so
+strongly. Those patches were maternal, and only appeared when Dora's
+affairs, spiritual or temporal, were concerned.
+
+"I don't know," put in Dora again, "but I have a sort of lurking
+conviction that Jem will have to wear a turban and red morocco boots."
+
+"But," pursued Mrs. Glynde, with that courage which cometh with a red
+patch on either cheek, "I always thought these Indian regiments were
+meant for people who are badly off."
+
+The Rector gave a short laugh.
+
+"You are not so very far wrong, my dear," he admitted. "And no one can
+say that Jem is badly off. He will be very rich some day."
+
+The Rector assumed an air of superior discretion, to which he usually
+treated his women-folk when he thought fit to consider that they were
+touching on matters beyond their jurisdiction.
+
+"Some more tea, please, mother," put in Dora appropriately. "Excuse my
+appetite. I suppose it is the autumn air."
+
+There was a short silence, during which Mrs. Glynde sought to propitiate
+her angered spouse with sodden toast and a second brew of tea.
+
+"I always said," observed the Rector at last, "that your cousin was a
+fool."
+
+And in some indefinite way Mrs. Glynde felt that she was once more
+responsible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FOR HIS COUNTRY
+
+Shall I forget on this side of the grave?
+I promise nothing; you must wait and see.
+
+
+From the train arriving at East Burgen station at eight o'clock that same
+evening there alighted a youth who seemed suddenly to have taken manhood
+upon his shoulders. He stood on the platform and pointed out to a porter,
+who called him Master James, a large Gladstone bag and a new sword-case.
+
+Although he could have carried the luggage under one arm and the porter
+under the other, he carefully refrained from offering to convey anything
+except his own walking-stick. Such is the force of education. This boy
+had been brought up to expect service. He was to be served all his life,
+and so the sword-case had to be left to the porter whom he envied.
+
+During the journey down--between the farthest-removed stations--the sword
+had flashed more than once in the dim light of the carriage lamp. Ah!
+those first swords! Not Toledo nor Damascus can produce their equal in
+after years.
+
+The porter, honest father of two private soldiers of the line himself,
+saw it all--at once. He carried the sword-case with an exaggerated
+reverence and forbore from remark just then. Afterwards, beneath the
+station-lamp, he looked at the shilling--the first of its kind from that
+quarter--with a pathetic, meaning smile.
+
+It was Saturday night. The streets of East Burgen were rather crowded,
+and Jem Agar--with elbows well in and the whip at the regulation angle
+across old Lasher's face, who could not help squinting at the pendant
+thong--shouted to the country-folk in a new voice of mighty deep
+register.
+
+He carried his boyish head stiffly, and had for ever discarded a
+turn-down collar. At first he kept old Lasher at a respectful distance,
+asking in a somewhat curt and business-like manner after the stables.
+Then gradually, as they bowled along the country road in the familiar
+hush of an April evening, he thawed, and proceeded to vouchsafe to that
+steady coachman a series of very interesting details of military matters
+in general and the Indian army in particular.
+
+"Well, I'm sure, Mas--sir," opined Mr. Lasher at length; "if there's any
+one as has got into his right rut, so to speak, in this world, it's you.
+I always said you was a born soldier."
+
+"Ah--then you've heard that I've got my commission?" inquired Jem airily,
+as if he had had many such in bygone years.
+
+"Oh yes, sir! Miss Dora it was that told me."
+
+Somehow this caused a little silence.
+
+Truth to tell, Dora had lost her rank as the most beautiful and
+accomplished maiden in Christendom. This situation was at that moment
+occupied by a young person hight Evelina Louisa Barmond, sister to Billy
+Barmond of the Hundred and second, a veteran fellow-soldier and comrade
+who had jumped five feet six at the Sandhurst sports a year before. Miss
+Evelina Louisa was twenty-four, five years Dora's senior, and only three
+years and two months older than Jem Agar himself. He had spoken to her
+twice, and thought about her in the intervals allowed by such weighty
+matters as uniform and the new sword, which, however, required almost
+constant consideration at that time.
+
+"Well," said Jem, with exaggerated nonchalance, "I am afraid I should
+never be fit for anything else."
+
+Whereat Lasher laughed and touched his hat. He made it a rule to salute a
+joke in that manner, either from a general respect for humour, or looking
+at it in the light of a mental gratuity offered by his betters.
+
+"There's one thing you can do, Master Jem, sir--leastwise, which you can
+do as well as any man in the British army," he said, with pardonable
+pride, "and that is sit a 'orse."
+
+"Thanks to you, Lasher," Jem was kind enough to say with a flourish of
+his whip.
+
+The dignity was now ebbing fast, and by the time that the clever little
+cob swung round the gate-post into the avenue of Stagholme, Jem and
+Lasher were fully re-established on the old familiar footing.
+
+There was a bright moon overhead, and at the end of the avenue beyond the
+dip where the lake gleamed mysteriously, the gables and solid towers of
+Stagholme stood peacefully confessed.
+
+Jem Agar was firmly convinced that England only contained one Stagholme,
+and perhaps he was right. Six miles from the nearest station, the great
+house stands self-sufficient, self-contained. The moat, now dry and
+cultivated, is still traceable, and requires bridging in two places.
+Surrounded by vast park-like meadowland, where huge trees guard against
+cutting wind or prying modern journalistic instinct, the house is only
+approached by a private road.
+
+Inside the gates of this road there is something ancient and feudal in
+the very scent of the air. The tones of the big bell striking the hour
+over the wide portico die away over the lands that still belong to
+Stagholme, despite the vicissitudes through which all ancient families
+run.
+
+Jem, however, whose childhood and youth had been passed amidst companions
+with names as good as his, had learnt long ago to keep his pride to
+himself. He was Jem Agar, and the family name seemed somehow to belong
+exclusively to his father still, although that thorough old sportsman had
+lain for three years and more beneath the quiet turf of the little
+churchyard within his own park gates.
+
+As he pulled up at the door this was thrown open, and within its frame of
+light he saw the gracious form of his stepmother waiting to welcome him.
+Behind her, in the shadow, and amidst the decoration of staghorns,
+ancient pike and hanger, loomed a tall dark figure startlingly in keeping
+with the semi-monastic architecture of the house. This was Sister
+Cecilia. She was always thus--behind Mrs. Agar, with clasped hands and a
+vaguely approving smile, as if Mrs. Agar conferred a benefit upon
+suffering humanity by the mere act of existing.
+
+A slightly bored expression came into Jem's patient eyes. It was not that
+he had very much in common with his stepmother, although he had an honest
+affection for her; but he instinctively disliked Sister Cecilia and all
+her works. These latter were of the class termed "good." That is to say,
+this lady, the spinster daughter of a former rector in the neighbourhood,
+considered that the earthly livery of a marvellous black bonnet which was
+almost a cap, and quite hideous, justified a shameless interference in
+the most intimate affairs of her neighbours, rich and poor.
+
+Under the cover of charity she committed a thousand social sins. She
+constituted herself mother-confessor to all who were weak enough to
+confide in her or seek her advice, and in soul she was the most arrant
+time-server who ever flattered a rich woman.
+
+Jem distrusted her soft and "holy" ways, more especially her speech,
+which had the lofty condescension of the saved towards the damned in
+prospective. In his calmly commanding way he had, months before,
+forbidden Dora Glynde to kiss Sister Cecilia, because that ostentatiously
+virtuous person was in the habit of kissing the maids when she met them;
+and he maintained that this Christian practice, if very estimable
+theoretically, was socially an insult either to the mistress or the maid.
+
+In view of the important changes in his own life which were about to
+supervene, that is to say, firstly, his departure for India, and
+secondly, his coming of age before he could hope to return from that land
+of promise, he had counted on a quiet evening with his mother. Moreover,
+he was vaguely conscious of the fact that a right-minded person would
+have carefully abstained from accepting the most pressing invitation to
+form a third that evening.
+
+In view of this Jem Agar had recourse to the last refuge of the simple.
+He retired within himself, and, so to speak, shut the door. He had dined
+with these women before, and knew that the conversation would follow its
+usual mazy course through a forest of cross-questions upon all subjects,
+and notably upon those intimate matters which were essentially his own
+business.
+
+Sister Cecilia, good mistaken soul that she was, tried her best. She was
+lively in a Sunday-school-tea style. She was by turns tender and warlike
+as occasion seemed to demand; but no scrap or tittle of personal
+information did she extract from Jem, stiffly on guard behind his high
+collar. Mrs. Agar was excited and failed utterly to follow the wiser
+footsteps of her bosom friends. She talked such arrant nonsense about
+India, the Goorkhas, and matters military, that more than once Jem
+glanced at the imperturbable servants with misgiving.
+
+The next day was Sunday, and after morning service Jem eagerly accepted
+an invitation to have supper at the Rectory after evening church. Sister
+Cecilia was staying from Saturday till Monday, which alone was sufficient
+reason for this young soldier to pass his last evening in Stagholme under
+another than his own historic roof. With her in the house he knew that
+the chances of serious conversation were small; for she encouraged such
+topics as the possibility of sending fresh eggs packed in lime to the
+Goorkhas of his prospective half-company. So Jem retired within himself,
+and finally left England without having said many things which should
+have been said between stepmother and son.
+
+At the Rectory he found a very different atmosphere--that air of cheerful
+intellectuality which comes from the presence of cultivated men and
+women.
+
+The Rector held strong views on the rare virtue of minding one's own
+business, and in loyalty to such, deemed it right to refrain from
+mentioning his opinion as to the wisdom of selecting a native branch of
+the military service for the heir to Stagholme.
+
+The supper passed pleasantly enough in the discussion of general topics
+all bordering on the great question they had at heart. They were like
+people seeking for each other in the dark around the edge of a pit--the
+pit being India. Dora, and Dora alone, laughed and treated matters
+lightly. Mrs. Glynde blundered several times, and stepping backwards over
+an abyss of years, called the new soldier "darling" more than once. Twice
+she required helping out by Dora, and on the second occasion something
+was said which Jem remembered afterwards with a stolid British memory.
+
+"Jem," said the girl, buttering a biscuit with a light hand, "you should
+write a diary. All great men write diaries which their friends publish
+afterwards."
+
+"I do not think," replied Jem, with that contempt for the pen which the
+possession of a new sword ever justifies, "that writing a diary is much
+in my line."
+
+"Ah, you can never tell till you try. Of course it would not be published
+straight off. Some literary person would be hired to cross the t's and
+dot the i's."
+
+There was a little pause. Dora glanced at Jem Agar, and something made
+him say:
+
+"All right. I'll try."
+
+"Who knows?" said the Rector, with a smile of indulgent affection. "There
+may be great literary capacity lying dormant in Jem. The worst of a diary
+is that one may come to look at it in after years, when one finds a very
+different story has been written from what one intended to write."
+
+"Oh," said Dora, lightly skipping over the chasm of gravity, "that is
+Providence. We must blame Providence for these little _contretemps_. Some
+one must be blamed, and Providence obviously does not mind."
+
+Jem laughed--somewhat lamely; but still it was a laugh. Supper was
+despatched somehow--as last meals are. Some of us never forget the
+flavour of those cups of tea gulped down in the gorgeous steamer-saloon
+while the stewards get the hand luggage on board. It was a late meal on
+Sunday evening at the Rectory, and the servants soon followed their
+betters into the drawing-room for prayers.
+
+Then the Rector lighted his last cigarette, and Mrs. Glynde began to show
+symptoms of a patch of pink in either cheek.
+
+At last Jem rose--awkwardly--in the midst of a sally from Dora, who
+seemed afraid to stop speaking.
+
+"Must be going," he said; and he shook hands with the Rector.
+
+Mrs. Glynde, with nervous deliberation, kissed him and squeezed his hand
+jerkily.
+
+"Dora--will open the door for you," she said, with an apprehensive glance
+towards her husband, who, however, showed no inclination to move from his
+chair.
+
+Dora not only opened the door, but left it open, and walked with him
+across the lawn towards the stile. When they reached it there was a
+little pause. He vaulted over and she quietly followed--without his
+proffered assistance.
+
+Then at last Jem spoke.
+
+"You don't seem to care!" he said gruffly--with his new voice.
+
+"Oh, _don't!"_ she whispered imploringly.
+
+And they walked on beneath the murmuring trees where the yellow moonlight
+stole in and out between the trunks. It was not cheerful. For when Nature
+joins her sadness to the sad libretto of life she usually breaks a heart
+or two. Fortunately for us we mostly act our tragedies in the wrong
+scenery--the scenery that was painted for a comedy.
+
+"I don't understand it," said the girl at length.
+
+"I suppose it is in order to save money for Arthur."
+
+"If I don't, go," replied Jem, "it will be a question of letting
+Stagholme."
+
+Dora knew of the ancient horror of such a necessity, handed down from one
+Agar to another, like a family tradition. Moreover, women seem to respect
+men who have some simple creed and hold to it simply. Are they not one of
+our creeds themselves, though by seeking for rights instead of contenting
+themselves with privileges, some of them try to make atheists of us?
+
+"So," she said nevertheless, "you are being sacrificed to Arthur!"
+
+He answered nothing, but he had forgotten for ever Miss Evelina Louisa
+Barmond.
+
+"When do you go?" asked Dora suddenly, with something in her voice which
+no one had ever heard before. She was startled at it herself.
+
+He waited until the soft old church bell finished striking ten, then he
+answered:
+
+"To-morrow!"
+
+They had reached the farthest limit of the wood and stood at the park
+railing.
+
+"Then--," she paused, and seemed to collect herself as if for a leap;
+"then good-bye, Jem!"
+
+He took the outstretched hand; his large grasp seemed to swallow it up.
+
+"Good-bye!" he said.
+
+He climbed the rail without agility, paused for a moment, and the
+moonlight happened to gleam on his face through the gently waving
+branches as he looked down at her in dumb distress.
+
+Then he turned and walked away across the shimmering grass.
+
+A few minutes later Dora re-entered the drawing room. Her father and
+mother were seated close together, closer than she had seen them for
+years. Mrs. Glynde was pale, with two scarlet patches.
+
+Dora collected her belongings, preparatory to going to bed.
+
+"Jem," she said quietly, "is absurdly proud of his new honours. It
+affects his chin, which has gone up exactly one inch."
+
+Then she went to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
+
+The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people.
+
+
+"Here--hi!"
+
+As no one replied to this summons either, by voice or approach, the young
+man subsided into occupied silence.
+
+He was a very large young man, with a fair moustache which looked almost
+flaxen against the deep tan of his face. This last, like the rest of him,
+was ludicrously typical of that race which has wandered farther than the
+Jews, and has hitherto managed, like them, to retain a few of its
+characteristics. The Anglo-Saxonism of this youth was almost aggressive.
+It lurked in the neat droop of moustache, which was devoid of that untidy
+suggestion of a beer-mug characterising the labial adornment of a
+northern flaxen nation of which we wot. It shone calmly in the glance of
+a pair of reflectively deep blue eyes--it threw itself at one from the
+pockets of an old tweed jacket worn in conjunction with regulation
+top-boots and khaki breeches.
+
+Moreover, it gave birth to a quiet sense of being as good as any one
+else, and possibly better, which sat without conceit on his brow.
+
+It would seem that he really did not want to be answered just then, for
+he did not raise a voice accustomed to dominate the clatter of horses'
+feet, nor did he pass any comment on the carelessness or criminal absence
+of some person or persons unknown.
+
+He merely took up his pen again, and proceeded to handle that mighty
+weapon with an awkwardness suggestive of a greater skill with another
+instrument only less powerful. He was seated on two reversed buckets,
+pyramidally balanced, at a small table which had the air of wide
+capabilities in some other sphere of usefulness. There was a weird
+cunning in the legs of this table indicative of subtle change into a
+camp-bed or possibly a canoe.
+
+The writing materials consisted of a vaseline bottle (fourpenny size)
+full of ink, and two weary pieces of blotting-paper. The paper upon which
+he was writing had a travelled and somewhat jaundiced air, the penholder
+was of gold. In the furniture of the tent, as in the canvas thereof,
+there was that mournful suggestion of better days which is held to be a
+virtue in furnished apartments. But over all there hovered that sense of
+well-scrubbed cleanliness which comes from the touch of a native military
+servant. An indulgence in this habit of rubbing and scrubbing was indeed
+accountable for much dilapidation; for that silent little Ghoorka man,
+Ben Abdi, had rubbed and scrubbed many things not intended by an
+ingenious camp-furnisher for such treatment. James Edward Makerstone Agar
+was engaged in the compilation of a diary, which volume there is reason
+to believe is still preserved in a woman's jewel drawer.
+
+It has not run through any editions--indeed, no compositor's finger has
+up to this time defiled its pages. This, in fact, was one of those
+literary works, ground slowly out from the millstones of the brain, of
+which the style fails to please the taste of the present day. To catch
+the fancy of a slang-loving and thoughtless generation the writer must
+throw off his works. This is an age of "throwing off," and it is to be
+presumed that future ages will throw the result away. One must be
+brilliant, shallow, slightly unpleasant and very unwholesome, to acquire
+nowadays that best of all literary reputations which leaveth a balance at
+one's bank.
+
+J.E.M. Agar--or "Jem" as his friends call him to his face and his
+servants behind his back--Jem Sahib to wit--was no Pepys. His literary
+style was disjointed, heavy, and occasionally illiterate. This last
+peculiarity, by the way, is of no consequence nowadays, but it is
+mentioned here for ulterior motives. In the pages of this little
+black-bound volume there were no scintillating thoughts scribbled there
+with suspicious neatness of diction, such as one finds in the diaries of
+great men who, it would seem, are not above post-mortem vanity. The diary
+was a chronicle of solid facts--Jem being essentially solid and a man of
+the very plainest facts.
+
+Speaking as an impartial critic, one would incline to the opinion that
+Agar devoted too much thought to his work--in strong contrast, perhaps,
+to the literary tendency of his day. He nibbled the leisure end of his
+penholder too much, and allowed the business extremity thereof to dry in
+inky conglomeration. The result was a distinct sense of labour in the
+style of the work. After having called in vain, perhaps for assistance,
+the scribe returned to the contemplation of his latest effort. The book
+was one of Letts's diaries, three days in a page, which are in themselves
+fatal to a finished style of literature. There is always too much to say
+or too little. One's thoughts never fit the rhomboid apportioned by Mr.
+Letts for their accommodation. Great men who have thoughts when the diary
+is handy do not, of course, patronise Letts, because he could not be
+expected to know when there would be a sunset likely to stir up poetic
+reflections, or a moonrise comparable with the cold light cast by some
+unsympathetic young woman's eyes upon the poet's life.
+
+For such men, however, as Agar, Mr. Letts is a guardian angel. The space
+is there, and facts must be forthcoming to fill it. Agar was, and is
+still--thank Heaven--a conscientious man. He had promised to keep this
+diary and keep it he did. And surely he hath his reward--remembering the
+jewel drawer.
+
+At the moment under consideration he was filling in yesterday's rhomboid,
+and paused at the conclusion of the following remarks:
+
+"_Seven_ A.M. Turned out, and shot a Ghilzai. Saw him sneaking up the
+valley. Long shot--should put it down at a hundred and seventy-five
+yards. Hit him in the stom--abd--chest. Looked like rain until two
+o'clock. Then cleared up. Walter caught a mongoose and brought him in
+with much triumph. He got conceited afterwards and slept on my bed till
+kicked off by Ben Abdi. I see it's Sunday. Church four hundred odd miles
+away."
+
+This, my masters, is not the stuff to quote _in extenso_, and yet in its
+day this diary was cried over--before it was put away in the jewel
+drawer. Truly women are strange--one can never tell how a thing will
+present itself to them. Honest Jem Agar, nibbling his penholder and
+jerking these lucid observations out of his military brain by mere force
+of discipline, never suspected the heart that was in it all--that minute
+particle of himself that lay in the blot in the corner carefully absorbed
+by the exhausted blotting-paper.
+
+"Sunday, egad!" he muttered, leaning his arms on the cunning table, and
+gazing out across the pine-clad valley that lay below him in a deep blue
+haze.
+
+He stared into the haze, and there he saw those whom he called "his
+people" walking across a neat English park toward a peaceful little
+English church. To them came presently a young person; a young person
+clad in pink cotton, who walked with a certain demure sureness of tread,
+as if she knew her own mind and other things besides. Her path came into
+the park from the left, and among the trees into which it disappeared
+behind her there stood the red chimneys of a long low house.
+
+Suddenly these visions vanished before something more tangible in the
+haze of the valley. This was the flutter of a dirty white rag which
+seemed to come and go among the fir trees.
+
+Jem Agar rose from his temporary seat and walked to the door of the
+tent--exactly two strides. A rifle lay against the canvas, and this he
+took up, slowly cocking it without taking his eyes from the belt of fir
+trees across the valley.
+
+Presently he threw the rifle up and fired instantaneously. He had been
+musketry instructor in his time and held views upon quick firing. The
+smoke rose lazily in the ambient air, and he saw a figure all fluttering
+rags and flying turban running down the slope away from him. At the same
+moment there was a crashing volley, followed by two straggling reports.
+The figure stopped, seemed to hesitate, and then slowly subsided into the
+grass.
+
+Agar put his head out of the tent and saw half a company of Goorkhas,
+keen little sportsmen all standing in line at the edge of the plateau,
+reloading.
+
+This was the force at the disposal of Major J. E. M. Agar, at that time
+occupying and holding for Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of
+India a very advanced position on the northern frontier of India. And in
+this manner he spent most of his days and some of his nights. In addition
+to the plain Major he had several other titles attached to his name at
+that time, indicative of duties real and imaginary. He was "deputy
+assistant" several things and "acting" one or two; for in military
+titles one begins in inverse ratio in a large way, and ends in something
+short.
+
+Jem Agar was thought very highly of by almost all concerned, except
+himself, and it had not occurred to him to devote much thought to this
+matter. He was one of the very few men to whom a senior officer or a
+pretty girl could say, "You are a nice man and a clever fellow," without
+doing the least harm. Men who thought such things of themselves laughed
+at him behind his back, and wondered vaguely why he got promotion. It
+never occurred to them to reflect that "old Jem" invariably acquitted
+himself well in each new position thrust upon him by a persistently kind
+fortune; they contented themselves with an indefinite conviction that
+each severally could have done better, as is the way of clever young men.
+One of the many mysteries, by the way, which will have to be cleared up
+in a busy hereafter is that appertaining to brilliant boys, clever
+undergraduates, and gifted young men. What becomes of them? There are
+hundreds at school at this moment--we have it from their own parents;
+hundreds more at Oxford and Cambridge--we have it from themselves. In a
+few years they will be absorbed in a world of men very much inferior to
+themselves (by their own showing), and will be no more seen.
+
+Jem Agar had never been a clever boy. He was not a clever man. But--and
+mark ye this--he knew it. The result of this knowledge was that he did
+what he could in the present with the present, and did not indefinitely
+postpone astonishing the universe, as most of us do, until some future
+date.
+
+At this time he was banished, as some would take it. Banished to the top
+of a pass which was nought else than a footway between two empires. Forty
+miles from men of his own race, this man was one of those who either have
+no thoughts or no wish to impart them; for this racial solitude, which is
+an emotion fully explored by many in India, in no way affected his
+nerves. Some say that they get jumpy, others aver that they begin to lose
+their national characteristics and develop barbarous proclivities, while
+one Woods-and-Forests man known to some of us resigned because he had a
+buzzing in the head during the long solitary, silent evenings.
+
+Major Agar made no statements on this point, though he listened with
+sympathy to the assertions of others. If the sympathy were subtly mingled
+with non-comprehensive wonder, the seeker after a purer form of
+commiseration attributed the alloy to natural density, and turned
+elsewhere.
+
+Accompanied by a handful of Goorkhas, Major J. E. M. Agar had occupied
+the key to this narrow pass for more than a week, vaguely admiring the
+scenery, illustrating upon living "running deer" in turbans his views
+upon quick firing to his diminutive soldiers, who worshipped him as
+second only to the gods, and possessing his soul with that trustful
+patience which is rapidly becoming old-fashioned and effete.
+
+During that same week the newspapers at home had been very busy with his
+name. Some had gone so far as to lay before a greedy public a short and
+succinct account of his life, compiled from the Army List and a
+journalistic imagination, finishing the record on the Monday, six days
+previously, with the usual three-line regret that England should in
+future be compelled to limp along the path to glory without the
+assistance of so brilliant a young officer.
+
+Such a word as brilliant had never been coupled with the name of Jem even
+by his best friend in earnest or his worst enemy in irony. Such sarcasm
+were too shallow to be worth sounding even in disparagement. But we never
+know what an obituary notice may bring. Not only had he been endowed with
+many virtues, manly qualities, and the record of noble deeds, but more
+substantial honours had been heaped upon his fallen crest or pinned upon
+his breathless bosom. To some of his distant countrymen he was the proud
+possessor of the Victoria Cross, awarded him post-mortem in the heat of
+obituary enthusiasm by more than one local paper. To others he was held
+up by what is called a Representative Press as a second Crichton. And all
+this because he was dead. Such is glory.
+
+All unconscious of these honours, honest Jem Agar sat in his little
+tent, nibbling the end of his penholder--the gift, by the way, of his
+father--and wishing that he had bought a Letts's diary with six days in a
+page instead of three.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+RELIEVED
+
+Well waited is well done.
+
+
+"Here--hi!"
+
+This time some one heard him, and that small, silent man, Ben Abdi, stood
+in the doorway of the tent at attention.
+
+"Are you keeping a good look-out down the valley?" asked Major Agar.
+
+"Ee yess, sar."
+
+"No signs of any one?"
+
+"No, sar."
+
+Agar shut up the diary, which book Ben Abdi had been taught to regard as
+strictly official, laid it aside, and passed out of the tent, the little
+Goorkha following close upon his heels with a quick intelligent interest
+in his every movement which somehow suggested a dusky and faithful little
+dog.
+
+For some moments they stood thus on the edge of the small plateau, the
+big man in front, the little one behind--alert, with twinkling, beady
+eyes. Behind them towered a bleak grey slope of bare rock, like a cliff
+set back at a slight angle, so treeless, so smooth was the face of it. In
+front the great blue-shadowed valley lay beneath them, stretching away to
+the south, until in a distant haze the sharp hills seemed to close in and
+cut it short.
+
+Perched thus, as it were, upon the roof of the world, these two men
+looked down upon it all with a calm sense of possession, and to him of
+the dominant race standing there some thousands of miles from his native
+land--alone--master of this great stretch of an alien shore, there must
+have come some passing thought of the strangeness of it all.
+
+There was something wrong--he knew that. His orders had been to press
+forward and occupy this little ridge, which was vaguely marked on the
+service maps as Mistley's Plateau, named after an adventurous soul, its
+discoverer. He had been instructed to hold this against all comers, and
+if possible to prevent communication between the two valleys, connected
+only by this narrow pass. All this Agar had carried out to the letter;
+but some one else had failed somewhere.
+
+"It will be three days at the most," his chief had said, "and the main
+body of the advance guard will join you!"
+
+Jem Agar had been in occupation a week, and it seemed that he and his
+little band of men were forgotten of the world. Still this soldier held
+on, saying nothing to his men, writing his intensely practical diary, and
+trusting as a soldier should to the _Deus ex machina_ who finally allows
+discipline to triumph. He looked down into the valley, piercing the
+shimmer of its hazes with his gentle blue eyes, looking to his chief, who
+had said, "In three days I will join you."
+
+It was not the first time that Agar and the little non-commissioned
+native officer, Ben Abdi, had stood thus together. They had taken their
+stand in this same spot in the keen air of the early morning, with the
+white frost crystallising the stones around them; in the glow of midday;
+and when the moon, hanging over the sharp-pointed hills, cast the valley
+into an opaque shade dark and fathomless as the valley of death.
+
+Scanning the distant hills, Agar presently raised his eyes, noting the
+position of the sun in the heavens.
+
+"Have you tried the heliograph a second time this morning?" he asked
+without looking round, which informality of manner warmed the little
+soldier's heart.
+
+"Yes, sar. Three times since breakfast."
+
+It was the first time that Ben Abdi had found himself in a position of
+some responsibility, in immediate touch with one of the white-skinned
+warriors from over seas whose methods of making war had for him all the
+mystery and the infinite possibilities of a religion. This silent looking
+out for relief partook in some small degree of the nature of a council of
+war. Jem Sahib and himself were undoubtedly the chiefs of this
+expeditionary force, and to whom else than himself, Ben Abdi, should the
+Major turn for counsel and assistance? The little Goorkha preferred,
+however, that it should be thus; that Agar Sahib should say nothing,
+merely allowing him to stand silent three paces behind. He was a modest
+little man, this Goorkha, and knew the limit of his own capabilities,
+which knowledge, by the way, is not always to be found in the hearts of
+some of us boasting a fairer skin. He knew that for hard fighting, snugly
+concealed behind a rock at two hundred yards, or in the open, with
+cunning bayonet or swinging kookery, he was as good as his fellows; but
+for strategy, for the larger responsibilities of warfare, he was well
+pleased that his superior officer should manage these affairs in his
+quiet way unaided.
+
+During a luncheon more remarkable for heartiness of despatch than
+delicacy of viand, James Edward Makerstone Agar devoted much thought to
+the affairs of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress of India. After luncheon
+he lighted a cheroot, threw himself on his bed, and there reflected
+further. Then he called to him Ben Abdi.
+
+"No more promiscuous shooting," he said to him. "No more volley firing
+at a single Ghilzai or a stray Bhutari. It seems that they do not
+know we are here, as we are left undisturbed. I do not want them to
+know--understand? If you see any one going along the valley, send two men
+after him; no shooting, Ben Abdi."
+
+And he pointed with his cheroot towards the evil-looking curved knife
+which hung at the Goorkha's side.
+
+Ben Abdi grinned. He understood that sort of business thoroughly.
+
+Then followed many technical instructions--not only technical in good
+honest English, but interlarded with words from a language which cannot
+be written with our alphabet for the benefit of such as love details of a
+realistic nature.
+
+The result of this council was that sundry little dusky warriors were
+busy clambering about the rocky slope all that day and well into the
+short hill-country evening, working in twos and threes with the
+_alacrity_ of ants.
+
+Jem Agar, in his own good time, was proceeding to further fortify, as
+well as circumstances allowed, the position he had been told to hold
+until relief should come. In addition to the magic of the master's eye he
+lent the assistance of his strong right arm, laying his lithe weight
+against many a rock which his men could not move unaided. By the evening
+the position was in a fairly fortified state, and, after a copious dinner
+in the chill breeze that rushed from the mountain down to the valley
+after sunset, he walked placidly up and down at the edge of the plateau,
+watching, ever watching, but with calmness and no sign of anxiety.
+
+Such it is to be an Englishman--the product of an English public
+school and country life. Thick-limbed, very quiet; thick-headed if you
+will!--that is as may be--but with a nerve of iron, ready to face the
+last foe of all--Death, without so much as a wink.
+
+To his ear came at times the low cautious cry of some night-bird sailing
+with heavy wing down to the haunt of mouse or mole; otherwise the night
+was still as only mountain night-seasons are. Far down below him, the
+jungle and forest were rustling with game and beasts of prey seeking
+their meat from God, but the larger beasts of India, unlike their African
+brethren, move in silence, stealthy yet courageous; and the distance was
+too great for the quickly stifled cry of the victim of panther or tiger
+to reach him.
+
+When the moon rose he made the round of his pickets--a matter of ten
+minutes--and then to bed.
+
+On the morning of the ninth day he thought he detected signs of
+uneasiness in the faces of the men. He found their keen little visages
+ever turned towards him, watching his every movement, noting the play of
+every feature. So in his simplicity he practised a simple diplomacy. He
+hummed to himself as he went his rounds and while he sat over his diary.
+He only knew one song--"A Warrior Bold"--which every mess in India
+associated with old Jem Agar, for no evening was considered complete
+without the Major's one ditty if he were present. He had stood up and
+roared it in many strange places, quite without sentiment, without
+self-consciousness, without afterthought. He never thought it a matter of
+apology that he should have failed to learn another song. The smile with
+which many ladies of his acquaintance sat down to play the accompaniment
+_by heart_ conveyed nothing to him. He did not pretend to be a singer--he
+knew that one song, and if they liked it he would sing it. Moreover, they
+did like it, and that was why they asked for it. It did some of them good
+to see honest Jem get on his legs and shout out, in a very musical voice,
+with perfect truth to air, what seemed to be a plain statement of his
+creed of life.
+
+So, far up on Mistley Plateau, nine thousand feet above the level of the
+sea, Jem Agar advised his little dark-visaged fighters, _sotto voce_,
+while he puzzled over his diary, that his love had golden hair, with eyes
+so blue and heart so true, that none with her compared; moreover, that he
+didn't care if death were nigh, because he had fought for love, and for
+love would die.
+
+It was not very deep or very subtle, but it served the purpose. It kept
+up the hearts of his handful of warriors, who, in common with their
+chief, had something child-like and simple in their honest, sporting
+souls.
+
+Shortly after tiffin Ben Abdi came to the Major's tent, speaking
+hurriedly in his own tongue.
+
+One of the men had seen the sunlight gleam on white steel far down in the
+valley. He had seen it several times--a long spiral flash, such as the
+sun would make on a fixed bayonet carried over the shoulder. Such a flash
+as this will carry twenty miles through a clear atmosphere; the spot
+pointed out by the sharp-eyed Goorkha was not more than ten miles
+distant. They stood in a group, this isolated little band, and gazed down
+into the depth below them. They gazed in vain for some time, then a
+little murmur of excitement told that the sun had glinted again on
+burnished steel. This time there were several flashes close together.
+These were men marching with fixed bayonets through an enemy's country.
+
+"Heliograph," said Agar quietly, without taking his eyes from the spot
+far down in the valley; and soon the little mirror was flashing out its
+question over the vale. After a few anxious moments the answering gleam
+sprang to life among the trees far below. Agar gave a quick little sigh
+of relief--that was all.
+
+Then followed a short conversation flickered over ten miles of space.
+
+"Are you beset?" asked the Valley,
+
+"No," replied the Hill.
+
+"Is the enemy in sight?"
+
+"No," replied the Mountain, again, with a sharp click.
+
+"Are you all well?" flashed from below.
+
+"Yes," from above.
+
+Then the "Good-bye," and the glimmer of the bayonets began again.
+
+Two hours later Major Agar drew his absurd little force in line, and thus
+they received the relieving column, grimly conscious of dangers past but
+not forgotten.
+
+At the head of the new-comers rode a little man with a prominent chin and
+a long drooping nose; such a remarkable-looking little man that the
+veriest tyro at physiognomy would have turned to look at him again. His
+black eyes, beaming with intelligence, moved so quickly beneath the
+steady lashes that it was next to an impossibility to state what he saw
+and what he failed to see.
+
+He returned Agar's salute hurriedly, with a preoccupied air. He wore a
+quiet uniform tunic almost hidden by black braiding, a pith helmet which
+had seen brighter days and likewise fouler, and the leg that he threw
+over his horse's head was cased in riding trousers and a neat little
+top-boot of brown leather.
+
+He slipped from the saddle with a litheness which contrasted strangely
+with his closely cropped grey hair and white moustache and Imperial. He
+walked towards Agar's tent after the manner of one who had sat in the
+saddle for many hours. His spurs clanked with a sharp, business-like
+ring, and his every movement had that neat finish which indicates the
+soldier born and bred.
+
+Wheeling round he faced Agar, who had followed him with a more leisurely
+gait based on longer legs, looking up keenly into the quiet fair face.
+Turning he shot his sword home into its scabbard with a click.
+
+"Thank God," he said, "you're safe!"
+
+Agar awaited for further observations. This was not the man whom he
+had expected, but another, far greater, far higher up in the military
+scale--a man whom he had only met once before, and that at an official
+reception.
+
+Seeing that his guest was unbuckling his sword, he presumed that the task
+of continuing this conversation lay with himself.
+
+"M' yes!" he replied, rubbing his pannikin out clean with the corner of a
+towel, and proceeding to mix some brandy and water; "why?"
+
+"Why!" answered the little man scornfully, "WHY! damn it, sir, Stevenor's
+command has been cut off by the enemy in force--massacred to a man. That
+is why I say 'Thank God, you're safe!' It is more than I expected."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+RE-CAST
+
+Our deeds still travel with us from afar,
+And what, we have been makes us what we are.
+
+
+There was a momentary pause; then Major Agar spoke.
+
+"In that case," he observed, "the British force occupying this country
+for the last week has consisted of myself and thirty Goorkhas."
+
+"Precisely so! And it was by the merest chance that I found out that you
+were here. It was only guesswork at the best. A bazaar report reached me
+that poor old Stevenor had been cut to pieces. I hate blaming a dead man,
+but I really don't know what he can have been about. He made some hideous
+mistake somewhere. We buried him yesterday. On hearing the report, I
+thought it better to come up myself, having a little knowledge of the
+country. Brought two companies, and half a squadron to act as scouts. We
+reached Barkoola yesterday, and found the poor chaps as they had fallen.
+And some of those carpet-warriors at home say that a black man can't
+fight! Can't he! Not so much brandy this time, please. Yes, fill it up."
+
+Agar set the regulation water-bottle down on his gifted table.
+
+"I have the Devil's own luck!" he murmured. "While they were burying I
+missed you from among the officers; and then it struck me that you
+might have got away before the disaster. We counted the men, and found
+thirty-four short, so we came on here. By God! what a chap Mistley was!
+We came here without a check. His maps are perfect!"
+
+"Yes," admitted Agar, "that man knew his business!"
+
+There was something in his tone that might have been envy or perhaps mere
+admiration; for this man knew himself to be inferior in many ways to him
+who had first crossed the mountain pass on which he stood.
+
+"The worst of it is," went on the great officer, "that you are
+telegraphed home as killed."
+
+He paused on the last word, watching its effect. It would seem that,
+behind the busy black eyes, there was the beginning of a thought hatched
+within the grey close-cut head which, _en fait de t�tes,_ was without its
+rival in the Empire.
+
+"That is soon remedied," opined the Major with a cheerful laugh.
+
+"Ye--es!"
+
+The great man was thoughtfully rubbing his chin with the tips of the
+first and second fingers, drawing in his under lip at the same time, and
+apparently taking pleasure in the rasping sound caused by the friction
+over the shaven chin.
+
+There is usually something written in the human countenance--some single
+virtue, vice, or quality which dominates all petty characteristics. Most
+faces express weakness--the faces that pass one in the streets. Some are
+the incarnation of meanness, some pleasanter types verge on sensuality.
+The face of the man who sat watching Agar expressed indomitable,
+invincible determination, and _nothing else_. It was the face of one who
+was ready to sacrifice any one, even himself, to a single all-pervading
+purpose. In this respect he was a splendid commander, for he was as
+nearly heartless as men are made.
+
+The big fair Englishman who had occupied Mistley's Plateau for a week,
+exactly one hundred and seventy miles from assistance of any description,
+and in the heart of the enemy's country, smiled down at his companion
+with a simple wonder.
+
+"Got something up your sleeve, sir?" he inquired softly, for he knew
+somewhat of his superior officer's ways.
+
+"Yes!" replied the other curtly. "A trump card!"
+
+He continued to look at Jem Agar with a cold and calculating scrutiny, as
+a jockey may look at his horse or a butcher at living meat.
+
+"It's like this," he said. "You're dead. I want you to stay dead for a
+little while--say six months to a year!"
+
+Agar seated himself on the corner of the table, which creaked under the
+weight of his spare muscular person, and then, true to his cloth, he
+awaited further orders; true to his nature, he waited in silence.
+
+After a short pause the other proceeded to explain.
+
+"You frontier men," he said, "are closely watched; we know that. There
+will be great rejoicing over there, in Northern Europe, over this mishap
+to Stevenor, although, God knows, he was not a very dangerous man. Not so
+dangerous as you, Agar. They will be delighted to hear that you are out
+of the way. Stay out of the way for a year, and during that twelve months
+you will be able to do more than you could get done in twelve years when
+you were being watched by them."
+
+"I see," answered Agar quietly. "Not dead, but gone--up country."
+
+"Precisely so; where they certainly will not be on the look-out for you."
+
+The bright black eyes were shining with suppressed excitement. The great
+man was afraid that his tool would refuse to work under this exacting
+touch.
+
+"But what about my people?" asked Agar.
+
+"Oh, I will put that right. You see, they have got over the worst of it
+by this time. It is wonderful how soon people do get over it. They have
+known it for a week now, and have bought their mourning and all that."
+
+There came a look into Agar's face which the little officer did not
+understand. We never do understand what we could not feel ourselves, and
+it is not a matter of wonder that the lesser intelligence should foil the
+greater in this instance. There was a depth in Jem Agar which was beyond
+the fathom of his keen-witted companion.
+
+"I am going home," continued General Michael, "almost at once. The first
+thing I do on landing is to go straight to your people and tell them. We
+cannot afford to telegraph it. Telegraph clerks are only human, and it is
+worth the while of the newspapers in these days of large circulation to
+pay a heavy price for their news. We all know that some items, published
+_can_ only have been bought from the telegraph clerks."
+
+Agar was making a mental calculation.
+
+"That means," he said, "two months before they hear."
+
+The expression on the face of the little man was scarcely human in its
+heartless cunning.
+
+"Hardly," he answered carelessly. "And when they hear the reason they
+will admit that the result is worth the sacrifice. It will be the making
+of you!--and of me!" added the black eyes with a secretive gleam.
+
+"It is," went on the General, "such a chance as only comes once to a man
+in his lifetime. I wish I had had it at your age."
+
+The voice was a pleasant one, with that ring of friendliness and
+familiarity which is usually heard in the tones of an educated Jew; for
+General Michael was that rare combination, a Jew and a soldier.
+
+"I don't like leaving them so long under the mistake," answered Agar,
+half yielding to authoritative persuasion, half tempted by ambition and a
+love of adventure. "I don't like it, General. The straight thing would be
+to telegraph home at once."
+
+In the wavering smile that crossed the dark face there was suggested a
+fine contempt for the straight thing unaccompanied by some tangible
+advantage.
+
+"Who are they?" inquired the General almost affectionately. "Who are your
+people?"
+
+Agar walked to the tent door and looked out. There was some clatter of
+swords going on outside, and as commander of this post it was his duty to
+know all that was passing. He turned, and standing in the doorway, quite
+filling it with his bulk, he answered:
+
+"My father died three years ago. I have a step-mother and a step-brother,
+that is all--besides friends."
+
+The General stooped to loosen the strap of his spur.
+
+"Of course," he said in that attitude, "I know you are not a married
+man."
+
+"No."
+
+Beneath the brim of the helmet, which he had not laid aside, the Jew's
+keen black eyes were watching, watching. But they saw nothing; for there
+is no one so impenetrable as a man with a clear conscience and a large
+faith.
+
+"My idea was," continued General Michael, "that two, or at the most
+three, people besides you and I be let into the secret."
+
+"Three," said Agar, with quiet decision.
+
+"Three?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The General tacitly allowed this point and passed on with characteristic
+promptitude to another.
+
+"Are you a man of property?"
+
+"Yes, I inherit my father's place down in Hertfordshire."
+
+"I'll tell you why I ask. There are those beastly lawyers to think of. At
+your death it is to be presumed that the estate comes to your brother.
+The legal operations must be delayed somehow. I will see to it," he added
+in a concise, almost snappish way.
+
+Agar smiled, although he was conscious of a vague feeling of discomfort.
+He was not a highly sensitive or a nervous man, and this feeling was more
+than might have been expected to arise from an attendance, as it were, at
+one's own obituary arrangements. The General seemed to be remarkably well
+informed on these smaller points, and something prompted Jem Agar to ask
+him if the idea he had just propounded was a suddenly conceived one.
+
+"No," replied the General with a singular pause.
+
+"No, I once knew a man who did the same thing for a different purpose,
+but the idea was identical. I do not claim to be the originator."
+
+"And there was no hitch? It was successful?" inquired Agar.
+
+"Yes," replied the older soldier in a far-away voice, as if he had
+mentally gone back to the results of that man's deception. "Yes, it was
+successful. By the way, you say your people live down in Hertfordshire?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I once knew a girl--long ago, in my younger days--who married a man
+called Agar, and went to live in Hertfordshire. The name did not strike
+me until you mentioned the county. I wonder if the lady is now your
+step-mother."
+
+"My step-mother's name was Hethbridge," replied Jem Agar.
+
+"The same. How strange!" said the General indifferently. "Well, she has
+probably forgotten my existence these thirty years. She has one son, you
+say?"
+
+"Yes, Arthur. He is twenty-three--five years younger than myself."
+
+The shifty black eyes excelled themselves at this moment in rapidity of
+observation. They seemed to be full of question, of many questions, but
+none were forthcoming.
+
+"Ah!" said General Michael indifferently. "He is," pursued Jem Agar, "a
+delicate fellow; does nothing; though I believe he is going to be called
+to the Bar."
+
+The General, having passed most of his life in India, where men work or
+else go home, did not take in the full meaning of this; but he was keen
+as a ferret, and he saw easily that Jem Agar despised his step-brother
+with that cruel contempt which strong men feel for weak.
+
+"Mother's darling?" he suggested.
+
+"Yes, that is about it," replied Agar. He was too simple, too innately
+upright and honest to perceive the infinite possibilities opened up by
+the fact upon which General Michael had pounced.
+
+"In case you decide to accept my offer," the older man went on, "you
+would wish your stepmother and step-brother to be told?"
+
+"Yes, and one other person."
+
+"Ah, and another person. You could not limit it to two?" urged the
+General.
+
+"No!" replied Agar with a decision which the other was wise enough to
+consider final. Moreover, the General omitted to ask the name of this
+third person, urged thereto by one of those strokes of instinct which
+indicate the genius of the commander of men.
+
+General Michael, moreover, deemed it prudent to carry the matter no
+further at that moment. He rose from his seat on the bed, stretched his
+lithe limbs, and said:
+
+"Well, this won't do! We must get to work. I propose retreating
+to-morrow morning at daylight."
+
+They passed out of the tent together and proceeded to give their orders,
+moving in and out among the busy men. There was a subtle difference in
+their reception which was perhaps patent to both, though neither deemed
+it necessary to make any comment. Wherever Agar went the eager little
+black faces of his Goorkhas met him with a smile or a grin of delight;
+when General Michael passed by, the dusky features hardened suddenly to a
+marble stillness, and the beady eyes were all soldier-like attention.
+
+They feared and loved the one because they felt that there was something
+in him which they could not understand; they feared and hated the other
+because his nature was nearer to their own, and they defined the evil in
+it.
+
+Moreover, each had his reputation--that of General Michael dating from
+the Mutiny; the other, a younger and a cleaner record.
+
+It is considered the proper thing to talk in England of the unvoiced
+millions of India. No greater mistake could be made. These millions have
+a voice, but it does not reach to us because they do not raise it. They
+talk with it among themselves.
+
+They had talked of General Michael for thirty years, and all that there
+was in him had been discussed to its very dregs. Thus their impenetrable
+faces hardened when he passed, their shadowy secretive eyes looked beyond
+him with a vacancy which was not the vacancy of dulness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A LAST THROW
+
+Get place and wealth; if possible, with grace;
+If not, by any means get wealth and place.
+
+
+Daylight broke next morning in a snow-storm, and a thin sprinkling lay
+over all the hills, clothing them in spotless white.
+
+General Michael was among the first astir, seeing in person to all the
+details of the retreat. The men looked in vain towards the tent where
+their late youthful leader had been wont to sit, nibbling the end of his
+golden pocket-penholder, wrestling manfully in the throes of literary
+composition.
+
+When at last the order was given to strike tents the faces of the rank
+and file fell like the face of one man.
+
+Major James Edward Makerstone Agar had simply disappeared. His limited
+baggage was attached to the smaller belongings of General Michael, and no
+explanation was offered by that dreaded officer. To him the cold seemed
+to be a matter of indifference; for he stood about watching every
+movement of the men with a supreme disregard for the driving snow or the
+knife-like wind that whistled over the northern scarp.
+
+Under his calculating eye they worked to such effect that by nine o'clock
+the little column was on the downward march. Again General Michael rode
+through that lone, lorn country lying between India and Russia. Again his
+melancholy face with keen but hopeless eyes passed through the darksome
+valleys where, if legend be true, a race as old as his has lived since
+the children of Abraham set forth to wander over the earth.
+
+For twenty years this man had haunted these vales and hills, seeking,
+ever seeking, his own aggrandisement and nothing else. Accounted a
+patriot, he was no patriot; for the homeless blood was mingled in his
+veins. Held to be a hero by some, he was none; for he hated danger for
+its own sake, just as some men love it.
+
+But his lines had been cast in this unpleasant place, from whence flight
+or retreat was rendered almost impossible, by the laws of discipline and
+the freak of circumstance. Despite his titles, in face of his great
+reputation, he knew himself to be a failure, and as he rode southward
+through the mountain barrier that frowns down over India he was conscious
+of the knowledge that in all human probability he would never look upon
+this drear land again. His time was up, he was about to be set on the
+shelf, life was over. And he had all his powers yet--all his marvellous
+quickness at the mastery of tongues, all the restless energy which had
+urged him on to overrun the race, to dodge and bore and break his stride
+instead of holding steadily on the straight course.
+
+He it was who had discovered Jem Agar's talent for this rough, peculiar
+soldiering of the frontier. He it was to whom the simple-minded young
+officer had owed promotion after promotion. General Michael had fixed
+upon Agar as his last hope--his last chance of doing something brilliant
+in this deathly country, which moved with a slowness that nearly drove
+him mad.
+
+This last attempt was thrown down like a defiance in the face of Fortune;
+but still the risk was not his own. It never had been. Men had been sent
+to their certain death by this sallow-faced commander, for no other
+object than his own aggrandisement. It would almost seem that a just
+Providence had ever turned away in loathing from the schemes of this man
+who would have all and risk nothing.
+
+Should Jem Agar succeed in the dangerous secret mission on which he had
+been sent by a subtle underhand pressure of discipline, the glory would
+never be his. This, under the grasping fingers of General Michael, would
+never appear to the world as the wonderful individual feat of an intrepid
+man, but as a masterly stroke of strategy dealt by a great general.
+
+Seymour Michael had long ago found out that Jem Agar was the step-son of
+the woman whom he had wronged in bygone years. But the name failed to
+touch his conscience, partly because that conscience was not of much
+account, and partly because time heals all things, even a sore sense of
+wrong. Truth to tell, he had not thought much of Anna Agar during the
+last twenty years, and the mere coincidence that this simple tool should
+be her step-son was insufficient to deter him from making use of Agar.
+But with that careful attention to detail which in such a man betrayed
+innate weakness, he took care to make sure that Jem Agar had learnt
+nothing of the past from the lips of his father's second wife.
+
+General Michael did not disguise from himself the fact that the mission
+on which he had despatched Jem Agar was what the life insurance companies
+call hazardous. But he had lived by the sword, and that mode of gaining a
+livelihood makes men wondrously indifferent to the lives of others.
+Moreover, this was in a sense a speciality of his. He was getting
+hardened to the game, and played it with coolness and precision.
+
+All through that day the little band retreated through an enemy's
+country, watchful, alert, almost nervous. There were absurdly few of
+them--a characteristic of that frontier warfare which the sallow, silent
+leader had waged nearly all his life. And in the evening there was not
+peace.
+
+Fortune is a playful soul. She keeps men waiting a lifetime, and then,
+when it is too late, she suddenly opens both her hands. Seymour Michael
+had waited twenty years for one of those chances of easy distinction
+which seemed to fall to the lot of all his comrades in arms. This chance
+was vouchsafed to him on the last evening he ever passed in an enemy's
+country--when it was too late--when that which he did was no more than
+was to be expected from a man of his experience and fame.
+
+The little band was attacked at sunset by the victorious savages who had
+annihilated the advance column three days earlier, and with half the
+number of men, fatigued and hungry, Seymour Michael beat them back and
+cut his way to the south. He knew that it was good, and the men knew it.
+They looked upon this keen-faced little man as something approaching a
+demi-god; but they had no love for him as they had for Major Agar. The
+knowledge was theirs that to him their lives were of no account--they
+were not men, but numbers. He brought them out of a dire strait by sheer
+skill, by that heartless grip of discipline which a true general
+exercises over his troops even at that critical moment when a common
+death seems to reduce all lives to an equal value.
+
+But in the thick of it the Goorkhas--keen little Highlanders of the
+Indian army--looked in vain for the fighting light in their leader's
+eyes. They listened in vain for the encouraging voice--now low and steady
+in warning, now trumpet-like and maddening with the infection of
+excitement.
+
+In the midst of that wild, apparently disorderly _m�l�e_ in the narrow
+valley, while the hush of mountain sunset settled over the battle, the
+leader sat imperturbable, cold, and infinitely wise. He was pale, and his
+lips were quite colourless, but his eyes were vigilant, ready,
+resourceful. An ideal general but no soldier. He played this game with a
+skill that never faced the possibility of failure--and won.
+
+Far overhead, many miles to the northward, a solitary wanderer heard the
+sound of firing and paused to listen. He was a big man, worthy to be
+accounted such even among the strapping mountaineers of that district,
+and as he leant on the long barrel of his quaintly ornamental rifle his
+sheepskin cloak fell back from a long sinewy arm of deep-brown hue.
+
+As he listened to the far-off rumble of independent firing he muttered to
+himself indications of anxiety. Strange to say, the eyes that looked out
+over the hollow of the gorge-like valley were blue. They were, however,
+hardly visible through the tangle of unkempt hair and raw wool that fell
+over his forehead. The high sheepskin cap was dragged forward, and the
+lower part of his face was almost hidden by the indiscriminate folds of
+hood, cloak, and scarf affected by the shepherds hereabout.
+
+James Agar was perfectly happy. There must have been somewhere in his
+sporting soul that love of Nature which drives men into solitude--making
+gamekeepers and fishermen and explorers of them. It was in this man's
+character to wait passive until responsibility came to him, when he
+accepted it readily enough; but he never went out to meet it. He was not
+as the sons of Levi, who took too much upon themselves; but rather was he
+happiest when he had only his own life and his own self to take care of.
+
+Here he was now an outcast, an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand raised
+against him. It was not the first time. For this quiet-going man had
+unobtrusively learnt many tongues, and, while no one heeded him, he had
+studied the ways of this Eastern land with no mean success.
+
+He waited there during an hour while the firing still continued, and
+then, when at last silence reigned again and the wind whispered
+undisturbed through the dark pines, he turned his wandering footsteps
+northward to a land where few white men have passed.
+
+So night fell upon these two men thus hazardously brought together, and
+every moment stretched longer the distance between them--James Agar going
+north, Seymour Michael passing southward.
+
+Agar wondered vaguely whether his toilsome diary would ever reach home,
+but he was not anxious as to the result of the fight which had evidently
+taken place in the valley. He too seemed to share the belief of all who
+came in contact with him that General Michael could not do wrong in
+warfare.
+
+That night the Master of Stagholme laid him down to rest in the shadow of
+a big rock, strong in himself, strong in his faith. And as he slumbered,
+those who slumber not nor cease their toil by day or night sat with
+crooked backs over a little ticking, spitting, restless machine that
+spelt out his name across half the world. While the moon rose over the
+mountains, and looked placidly down upon this strange man lying there
+peacefully sleeping in a world of his own, two men who had never seen
+each other talked together with nimble fingers over a thousand miles of
+wire. And one told the other that James Edward Makerstone was dead.
+
+The sleeper slept on. He smiled quietly beneath the moon. Perhaps he
+dreamt of the home-coming, of that time when he could say at last, "I
+have fought my fight, and now I come with a clear conscience to enjoy the
+good things given to me." He never dreamt of treason. He never knew that
+for their own gain men will sacrifice the happiness of their neighbours
+without so much as a pang of self-reproach. There are some people, thank
+Heaven, who never learn these things, who go on believing that men are
+good and women better all their lives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A CARPET KNIGHT
+
+As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
+
+
+First door on the right after passing into New Court, Trinity College,
+Cambridge, by the river door. It is a small door, leading directly on to
+a narrow, winding stone staircase. For some reason, known possibly to the
+architect responsible for New Court (may his bones know no rest!), the
+ground-floor rooms have a door of their own within the archway.
+
+On the first floor Arthur Agar, to use the affected phraseology of an
+affected generation, "kept" in the days with which we have to deal. What
+he kept transpireth not. There were many things which he did not keep,
+the first among these being his money. In these rooms he dispensed an
+open-handed, carefully considered hospitality which earned for him a
+certain bubble popularity.
+
+There are, one finds, always plenty of men (and women too) ready to lick
+the blacking off one's boots provided always that that doubtful fare be
+varied by champagne or truffles at appropriate intervals. Men came to
+Arthur Agar's rooms, and brought their friends. Mark well the last item.
+They brought their friends. There is more in that than meets the eye.
+There is a subtle difference between the invitation for "Mr. Jones" and
+the invitation for "Mr. Jones and friends"--a difference which he who
+runs the social race may read. If Jones is worth his salt he will discern
+the difference in a week.
+
+"Oh, come to Agar's," one man (save the mark) would say to another.
+"Ripping coffee, topping cigarettes."
+
+So they went; they drank the ripping coffee, smoked the topping
+cigarette, and if they happened to be men of stomach ventured on a
+clinking cigar. Moreover, they were made welcome. Agar was like a vain
+woman who loved to see a full saloon. And he paid for his pleasure in
+more honourable coin than many a vain woman has laid down since daughters
+of Eve commenced drawing fops around them--namely, the adjectived items
+of hospitality above mentioned.
+
+It did not matter much who the guests were, provided that they filled the
+diminutive room in those spaces left vacant by _bric-a-brac_ and
+furniture of the spindle-legged description. So the men came. There were
+freshmen who fell over the footstools and bumped their heads against the
+painted sabots on the wall containing ever-fresh flowers, as per
+florist's bill; who were rather over-powered by the profusion of painted
+photograph frames, fans, and fal-lals. There was the man who sang a comic
+song and dined out on it at least twice a week. There was the calculating
+son of a poor North-country parson, who liked coffee after dinner and
+knew the value of sixpence. There was the man who came to play his own
+valse, and he who came to hear his own voice, _und so weiter_. Do we not
+know them all? Have we not run against them in after-life, despite many
+attempts to pass by on the other side? The habitual acceptors of
+hospitality have no objection to crossing the road through the thickest
+mud.
+
+"By their rooms ye shall know them," might well, if profanely, be written
+large over any college gate. Arthur Agar's rooms were worthy of the man.
+There was, even on the little stone staircase, a faint odour of pastille
+or scent spray, or something of feminine suggestion. The unwary visitor
+would as likely as not catch some part of his person against a silk
+hanging or a lurking _porti�re_ on crossing the threshold; and the
+impression which struck (as all rooms do strike) from the threshold was
+one of oppressive drapery. A man, by the way, should never know anything
+about drapery or draping. Such knowledge undermines his virility. This is
+an age of undermining knowledge. We all, from the lowest to the highest,
+learn many things of which we were better ignorant. The school-board
+infant acquires French; Arthur Agar and his like bring away from
+Cambridge a pretty knack of draping chair-backs.
+
+There were little screens in the room, with shelves specially constructed
+to hold little gimcracks, which in their turn were specially shaped to
+stand upon the little shelves. There was a portentous standing-lamp, six
+feet high in its bare feet, with a shade like a crinoline. There were
+settees and _poufs_ and _des prie-Dieu_, and strange things hanging on
+the wall without rhyme, reason, or beauty. And nowhere a pipe, or a
+tennis racket, or even a pair of boots--not so much as a single manly
+indiscretion in the way of a cricket-bat in the corner, or a sporting
+novel on the table.
+
+In the midst of this the temporary proprietor of the rooms sat
+disconsolately at an inlaid writing-table with his face buried in his
+arms--weeping.
+
+The outer door was shut. Arthur Agar had sported his rare oak, not to
+work but to weep. It sometimes does happen to men, this shedding of the
+idle tear, even to Englishmen, even to Cambridge men. Moreover, it was
+infinitely to the credit of Arthur Agar that he should bury his face in
+the sleeve of his perfectly-fitting coat thus and sob, for he was weeping
+(quietly and to himself) the advent of three thousand pounds per annum.
+
+At his elbow lay a telegram--that flimsy pink paper which, with all our
+progress, all our knowledge, the bravest of us fear still.
+
+"Jem killed in India; come home at once.--AGAR."
+
+Honour to whom honour. Arthur Agar's only thought had been one of sudden
+horror. He had read the telegram over twice before going out to close his
+outer door. Then he came back and sat weakly down at the table where he
+had written more scented notes than noted themes, deliberately,
+womanlike, to cry.
+
+To his credit be it noted that he never thought of Stagholme, which was
+now his. He only thought of Jem--his no longer--Jem the open-handed,
+elder brother who tolerated much and said little. Having had everything
+that he wanted since childhood, Arthur Agar had never been in the habit
+of thinking about money matters. His florist's bills (and Cambridge
+horticulturists seem to water their flowers with Ch�teau Lafitte), his
+confectioner's account, and his tailor's little note had always been paid
+without a murmur. Thus, want of money--the chief incentive to crime and
+criminal thought--had never come within measurable distance of this
+gentle undergraduate.
+
+Truth to tell, he had never devoted much thought to the future. He had
+always vaguely concluded that his mother and Jem would "do something";
+and in the meantime there were important matters requiring his attention.
+There was the _menu_ to prepare for an approaching little dinner. There
+was always an approaching dinner, and always a _menu_ in execrable French
+on a satin-faced card with the college arms in a coat of many colours.
+There was the florist to be interviewed and the arrangement of the table
+to be superintended; the finishing touch to be given to the floral
+decoration thereof by the master-hand.
+
+Jem's death seemed to knock away one of the supports of the future, and
+Arthur Agar even in his grief was conscious of the impending necessity of
+having to act for himself some day.
+
+At length he lifted his head, and through the intricate pattern of the
+very newest design in art muslins the daylight fell on his face. It was a
+face which in France is called _chiffonn�_; but the term is never applied
+to the visage masculine. A diminutive and slightly _retrousse_ nose,
+gentle grey eyes of the drowning-fly description, and a sensitive mouth
+scarcely hidden by a fair moustache of downward tendency.
+
+Here was a man made to be ruled all his life--probably by a woman. With a
+little more strength it might have been a melancholy face; as it stood,
+it was suggestive of nothing stronger than fretfulness. There was a vague
+distress in the eyes and in the whole countenance which mistaken and
+practical souls would probably put down to a defective digestion or a
+feeble vitality. More than one enthusiastic disciple of Aesculapius
+studying at Caius professed to have discovered the evidence of some
+internal disease in Arthur Agar's distressed eyes; but his complaint was
+not of the body at all.
+
+Presently the necessity for action forced itself upon his understanding,
+and he rose with a jerk. It is worth noting that his first thought was
+connected with dress. He passed into the inner room and there exchanged
+his elegant morning suit for a black one, replacing a delicate heliotrope
+necktie by another of sombre hue. He mentally reviewed his mourning
+wardrobe while doing so, and gathered much spiritual repose from the
+diversion.
+
+In the meantime the Rector of Stagholme, having breakfasted, proceeded to
+light a cigarette and open the _Times_ with the leisurely sense of
+enjoyment of one who takes an interest in all things without being keenly
+concerned in any.
+
+"God help us!" he exclaimed suddenly; and Mrs. Glynde, who alone happened
+to be present, dropped a handful of housekeeping money on the floor.
+
+"What is it, dear?" she gasped.
+
+"There," was the answer; "read that. 'Disaster in Northern India.' Not
+there--higher up!"
+
+In her eagerness Mrs. Glynde had plunged headlong into the consumption of
+Wesleyan missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. Then she had to find her
+glasses, and considerable delay was incurred by putting them on upside
+down. All this while the Rector sat glaring at her as if in some occult
+way she were responsible for the disaster in Northern India.
+
+At last she read the short article, and was about to give a sigh of
+relief when her eyes travelled to a diminutive list of names appended.
+
+"What!" she exclaimed. "What! Jem! Oh, Tom, dear, this can't be true!"
+
+"I have no reason," answered the Rector grimly, "to suppose that it is
+untrue."
+
+Mrs. Glynde was one of those unfortunate persons who seem only to have
+the power of aggravating at a crisis. In their way they are useful as
+serving to divert the mind; but they usually come in for more than their
+need of abuse.
+
+The poor little woman laid the newspaper gently down by her husband's
+elbow, and looked at him with a certain air of grandeur and strength. The
+instinct that arouses the mother wren to peck at the schoolboy's hand at
+her nest was strong in this subdued little old lady.
+
+"Something," she said, "must be done. How are we going to tell Dora?"
+
+The Rector was a man who never went straight at the fence, before him. He
+invariably pulled up and rode alongside the obstacle before leaping, and
+when going for it he braced himself mentally with the reflection that he
+was an English gentleman, and as such had obligations. But these
+obligations, like those of many English gentlemen, ceased at his own
+fireside. He, like many of us, was apt to forget that wife, sister, and
+daughter are nevertheless ladies to whom deference is due.
+
+"Oh--Dora," he answered; "she will have to bear it like the rest of us.
+But here am I with fresh legal complications laid upon me. I foresee
+endless trouble with the lawyers and that woman. Why the Squire made me
+his executor I can't tell. Parsons know nothing of these matters."
+
+With a patient sigh Mrs. Glynde turned away and went to the window, where
+she stood with her back to him. Even to the duller masculine mind the
+wonder sometimes presents itself that our women-folk take us so patiently
+as we are. If Mrs. Glynde had turned upon her husband (who was not so
+selfish as he would appear), presenting him forthwith in the plainest
+language at her command with a piece of her mind, the treatment would
+have been surprising at first, and infinitely beneficial afterwards.
+
+The Reverend Thomas sat staring into the fire--a luxury which he allowed
+himself all through the year--with troubled eyes. There was a fence in
+front of him, but he could not bring himself up to it. In his mistaken
+contempt for women he had never taken his wife fully into his confidence
+in those things--great or small, according to the capacity of the
+producing machine--which are essentially a personal property--namely his
+thoughts.
+
+All else he told her openly and at once, as behoved an English gentleman.
+
+Should he tell all that he had hoped and thought and rethought respecting
+Jem Agar and Dora? Should he; should he not? And the loving little woman
+stood there almost daring to break the great silence herself; but not
+quite. Strong as was her mother's heart, the habit of submission was
+stronger. She longed, she yearned to hear the deeper, graver tone of
+voice which had been used once or twice towards her--once or twice in
+moments of unusual confidence. The Reverend Thomas Glynde was silent, and
+the voice that they both heard was Dora's, singing as she came downstairs
+towards them. It was only a matter of moments, and when we have no more
+than that wherein to act we usually take the wrong turning.
+
+Mrs. Glynde turned and gave one imploring look towards her husband.
+
+At the same instant the door opened and Dora entered, singing as she
+came.
+
+"What is the matter?" she exclaimed. "You both look depressed. Stocks
+down, or something else has gone up? I know! Papa has been made a
+bishop!"
+
+With a cheery laugh she went to the table and took up the newspaper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+BAD NEWS
+
+Sa mani�re de souffrir est le t�moignage qu'une �me porte sur elle-m�me.
+
+
+There was a horrid throbbing silence while Dora read, and her parents
+calculated the seconds which would necessarily elapse before she reached
+the bottom line. Such moments as these are scored up as years in the span
+of life.
+
+Mrs. Glynde did not know what she was doing. It happened that she
+was trying to rub away a flaw in the window-glass with her pocket
+hand-kerchief--a flaw which must have been an old friend, as such things
+are in quiet lives. At this occupation she found herself when her heart
+began to beat again.
+
+"I suppose," said Dora in a terribly calm voice, "that the _Times_ never
+makes a mistake--I mean they never publish anything unless they are quite
+sure?"
+
+Then the English gentleman of parts who ever and anon peeped out through
+the veneer of the parson asserted himself--the English gentleman whose
+sense of fair play and honour told him that it is better to strike at
+once a blow that must be struck than to keep the victim waiting.
+
+"Such is their reputation," answered Dora's father.
+
+Mrs. Glynde turned with that pathetic yearning movement of a punished dog
+which waits to be called. But Dora had some of her father's sternness,
+her father's good British reserve, and she never called.
+
+Turning, she walked quietly out of the room. And all the light had gone
+out of her life. So we write, and so ye read; but do we realise it? It is
+not many of us who have suddenly to look at life without so much as a
+glimmer in its dark recesses to make it worth the living. It is not many
+of us who come to be told by the doctor: "For the rest of your existence
+you must give up eyesight," or, "For the remainder of life you must go
+halt." But these are trifles. Everything is a trifle, if we would only
+believe it. Riches and poverty, peace and war, fame and obscurity, town
+and country, England and the backwoods--all these are trifles compared
+with that other life which makes our own a living completeness.
+
+Silently she went, and left silence behind her. The Rector was abashed.
+For once a woman had acted in a manner unexpected by him; for he was
+ignorant enough of the world to keep up the old fallacy of treating women
+as a class. True, it was Dora, whom he held apart from the rest of her
+sex; but still he was left wondering. He felt as if he had been found
+walking in a holy place with shoes upon his feet--those gross shoes of
+Self with which most of us tramp through the world, not heeding where we
+tread or what we crush.
+
+One of the hardest things we have to bear is the helpless standing by
+while one dear to us must suffer. When Mrs. Glynde turned round and came
+towards her husband she had become an old woman. Her face had suddenly
+aged while her frame was yet in its full strength, and such a change is
+not pleasant to look on.
+
+"Tom," she said, in a dry, commanding voice, "you must go up to the Holme
+at once and hear what news they have. There may be some chance--it may
+please God to spare us yet."
+
+"Yes," answered the Rector meekly; "I will go."
+
+While he was lacing his boots with all speed Mrs. Glynde took up the
+newspaper again, and reread the brief account of the disaster. They were
+spared comment; that blow came later, when the warriors of Fleet Street
+set about explaining why the defeat was sustained and why it should never
+have happened. In due course these carpet tacticians proved to their own
+satisfaction that Colonel Stevenor was incompetent for the service on
+which he had been dispatched. But the reek of printing-ink never was good
+for the better feelings.
+
+In due course the Rector set off across the park; very grave, and
+distinctly aware of the importance of his mission. He had somewhere in
+his composition a strong sense of the dramatic, to which the situation
+appealed. He felt that had he been a younger man he would have stored up
+many details during the morning's work worthy of reproduction in the
+narrative form during years to come.
+
+Before he reached the great house he was aware that the grim pleasure of
+imparting bad news was not to be his, for the blinds were all lowered--a
+detail likely to receive early attention in a feminine household, for it
+is only men who can hear of a death without thinking of mourning and the
+blinds.
+
+The butler opened the door and took the Rector's hat and stick with a
+silent _savoir-faire_ indicative of experience in well-bred grief. His
+chaste demeanour said as plainly as words that this was right and proper,
+the Rector being no more than he expected.
+
+"Where's your mistress?" asked Mr. Glynde, who had strong views upon
+butlers in general and Tims in particular--said Tims being so sure of his
+place that he did not always trouble to know it.
+
+"Library, sir," replied Tims in an appropriately sepulchral voice.
+
+The Rector went to the library without waiting to be announced. He was a
+man well versed in human nature, as most parsons are, and it is possible
+that he had caught a glimpse of Mrs. Agar watching his advent from the
+dining-room window.
+
+The lady of the house was standing by the writing-table when he entered,
+and beneath her ill-concealed excitement there was something subtly
+observant, like the glance of an untruthful child, which he never forgot
+nor forgave, despite his cloth and the impossibilities popularly expected
+therefrom.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, "it is you. I have telegraphed for Arthur. I
+have--telegraphed for Arthur."
+
+"Why?"
+
+She gave a nervous, almost a guilty little laugh, and looked at him with
+puzzled discomfort.
+
+"Why?" he repeated, looking at her with a cold scrutiny much dreaded of
+the parish ne'er-do-wells.
+
+"Oh, well," she replied, "it is only natural that I should want him at
+home in such a time as this--such a terrible affliction. Besides--"
+
+"Besides," suggested the Rector imperturbably, "he is now master of
+Stagholme."
+
+"Yes!" she said, with a simulated surprise which would scarcely have
+deceived the most guileless Sunday-school teacher. "I had not thought of
+that. I suppose something must be done at once--those horrid lawyers
+again."
+
+Her eyes were dancing with breathless excitement. To this woman
+excitement even in the form of a death was better than nothing. The
+bourgeois mind, with its love of a Crystal Palace, a subscription dance,
+or even a parochial bazaar, was unquenchable even after years of practice
+as the county lady of position.
+
+The Rector did not answer. He stood squarely in front of her with a
+persistence that forced her to turn shiftily away with a pretence of
+looking at the clock.
+
+"This is a bad business," he said. "That boy ought never to have gone out
+there."
+
+Mrs. Agar had her handkerchief ready and made use of it, with as much
+effect upon Mr. Glynde as might have been produced upon a granite sphinx.
+There is no man harder to deceive than the innately good and
+conscientious man of the world who has tried to find good in human
+nature.
+
+"Poor boy!" sobbed the lady. "Dear Jem! I could not keep him at home."
+Thus proving herself a fool, and worse, before those wise eyes.
+
+When occasion demanded Mr. Glynde could wield a very strong
+silence--stronger than he thought. He wielded it now, and Mrs. Agar
+shuffled before it, her eyes glittering with suppressed
+communicativeness. She was obviously bubbling over with talk relevant and
+irrelevant, but the Rector had the chivalry to check it by his cold
+silence.
+
+After a pause it was he who spoke, in a quiet, unemotional voice which
+aggravated while it cowed her.
+
+"When did you hear this news?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, last night. It was so late that I did not send down. I--it was so
+sudden. I was terribly upset."
+
+"M--yes."
+
+"I telegraphed to Arthur first thing this morning," the mistress of
+Stagholme went on eagerly, "and I was just going to write to you when you
+came in."
+
+With that nervous desire for corroborative evidence which arouses the
+suspicion of the observant whenever it appears, Mrs. Agar indicated the
+writing-table with open blotter and inkstand. Instantly, but too late,
+she regretted having done so, for a volume playfully called "Every Man
+his own Lawyer" lay confessed beside the writing-case, and its home on
+the bookshelf stared vacantly at them.
+
+"And from whom did you hear it?" pursued the Rector, heartlessly looking
+at the book with an air of recognition.
+
+"Oh, from a Mr. Johnson--at the War Office, or the India Office, or
+somewhere. I suppose I ought to write and thank him. Let me see--where is
+the telegram?"
+
+She shuffled among the papers on the writing-table, and made the hideous
+mistake of pushing "Every Man his own Lawyer" behind the stationery case.
+
+"Here it is!" she exclaimed at length.
+
+It was a long document. Mr. Johnson, not having to pay for telegraphic
+expenses out of his own pocket, had done his task thoroughly. He stated
+clearly that the advance column under Colonel Stevenor, Major Agar, and
+another British officer had been surprised and annihilated. There were no
+particulars yet, nor could reliable details be expected, as it was quite
+certain that not one man of the ill-fated corps had survived. General
+Seymour, added the official, missing out in his haste the commanding
+officer's surname, had promptly repaired to the scene of the disaster, to
+punish the victors, and, if possible, recover the effects of the slain.
+
+Mrs. Agar was one of those persons who are incapable of reading a letter
+or a telegram thoroughly. She was one of those for whose comprehension
+the wrong end of the story must have been specially created. Had the
+official put Seymour Michael's name in full, it is probable that in her
+infantile excitement she would have failed to take it in or to connect it
+with the man who had wronged her twenty years before.
+
+She had not thought much about that little affair during late years, her
+feeling for Seymour Michael having settled down into a passive hatred.
+The longing to do him some personal injury had died away fifteen years
+before. She was, as a matter of fact, quite incapable of a lasting
+feeling of any description. Hers was a life lived for the present only. A
+tea-party next week was of more importance to her than a change in
+fortune next year. Some people are thus, and Heaven help those whose
+lives come under their fickle influence!
+
+The one permanent motive of her existence was her son Arthur--the puny
+little infant who had been prematurely ushered into a world that seemed
+full of hatred twenty years before--and even his image faded from mind
+and thought before the short Cambridge terms were half expired.
+
+At this moment she was thinking less of the death of Jem than of the
+approaching arrival of Arthur. There must have been something wrong with
+her mental focus, to which trifles presented themselves as of the first
+importance, to the obliteration of larger matters.
+
+"And this is all the news you have had?" inquired the Rector, rather
+hurriedly. He saw Sister Cecilia coming up the avenue, and that lady was
+for him the embodiment of the combination of those feminine failings
+which aggravated him so intensely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He moved towards the door, and standing there he turned, holding up a
+warning finger.
+
+"You must be very careful," he said. "You must not consult any lawyer or
+take any steps in this matter. So far as you are concerned the state of
+affairs is unchanged. I, as the Squire's executor, am the only person
+called upon to act in any way if that poor boy has died without making a
+will. You must remember that your son is under age."
+
+With that he left her, rather precipitately, for Sister Cecilia, like all
+busybodies, was a quick walker.
+
+In a few moments Miss Cecilia Harbottle entered the library. She glided
+forward as if afloat on a depth of the milk of human kindness, and folded
+Mrs. Agar in an emotional embrace.
+
+"Dear!" she exclaimed. "Dear Anna, how I feel for you!"
+
+In illustration of this sympathy she patted Mrs. Agar's somewhat flabby
+hands, and looked softly at her. She could hardly have failed to see a
+glitter in the bereaved one's eyes, which was certainly not that of
+grief. It was the gleam of pure, heartless excitement and love of change.
+But Sister Cecilia probably misread it; for, like all excesses, that of
+charity seems to dull the comprehension.
+
+"Tell me, dear," she urged gently, "all about it."
+
+How many of us imagine the satisfaction of our own curiosity to be
+sympathy!
+
+So Mrs. Agar told her all about it, and presently they sat down, with a
+view to fuller discussion. There was, however, a point beyond which even
+Mrs. Agar would not go. This point Sister Cecilia scented with the
+instinct of the terrier, so keen was her nose in the sniffing of other
+people's business. When that point was reached a third time she gently
+led the way over it.
+
+"Of course," she said, with a resigned glance at the curtain poles, "one
+cannot help sometimes feeling that a wise Providence does all for the
+best."
+
+Gratifying as this must have been to the power in question, no miraculous
+manifestation of joy was forthcoming, and Mrs. Agar cunningly confined
+herself to a non-committing "Yes."
+
+After a sigh, Sister Cecilia further expatiated.
+
+"I cannot but think," she said, "that Stagholme will be in better hands
+now. Of course dear Jem was very nice, and all that--a dear, good boy.
+But do you not think that Arthur is more suited to the position in some
+ways?"
+
+"Perhaps he is," allowed Mrs. Agar, with ill-concealed pleasure.
+
+"He is," continued Sister Cecilia, with a broader brush, "so refined, so
+gentlemanly, so ideal a country squire."
+
+And after that she had no difficulty in supplying herself with
+information.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ON THIN ICE
+
+Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason?
+For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
+
+
+Two days later a gentleman, whose clean-shaven face had a habit of
+beaming suddenly into a professional smile, was seated at a huge
+writing-table in his office in Gray's Inn, when a clerk announced to him
+the arrival of Mrs. Agar, who desired to see him at once.
+
+Mr. Rigg beamed instantaneously, and the clerk, who knew his master,
+waited until the paroxysm had passed. In the meantime Mrs. Agar was
+fuming in the waiting-room, wherein lay a copy of the _Times_ and nothing
+else. The window looked out upon the neatly kept but depressing garden,
+where five antiquated rooks looked in vain for sustenance. Mrs. Agar
+watched these intelligent birds, but all her soul was in her ears. She
+had already set Mr. Rigg down in her own mind as a stupid because,
+forsooth, he had dared to keep her waiting.
+
+But the truth is that they are accustomed to ladies in Gray's Inn,
+especially ladies in deep mourning, with a chastely important air which
+seems to demand that advice and sympathy be carefully mingled. _Connues_,
+these ladies whose deep crape and quite exceptional bereavement plead
+(not always dumbly) for a special equity, home-made and superior to any
+law, and infer that the ordinary foes are in their case more than any
+gentleman would think of accepting.
+
+The clerk presently passed into an inner room and fetched therefrom a tin
+box, upon which were painted in dingy white the letters "J. E. M. A.,"
+and underneath "Stagholme Estate." This the embryo lawyer carefully wiped
+with a duster, and set it up on some of its fellows immediately behind
+Mr. Rigg.
+
+There was no hurry displayed in this scenic arrangement. Mr. Rigg made a
+practice of keeping ladies, especially those wearing crape, for a few
+minutes in the waiting-room. It calmed them down wonderfully, and
+introduced into their mental chambers a little legal atmosphere.
+
+"Marks," he said, when that youth was taking his last look round at the
+_mise en sc�ne_ before, as it were, raising the curtain, "eh--er--just go
+round to Corbyn's and get them to make up these pills."
+
+At the mention of the medicinal term he beamed, as if to intimate that
+between themselves no secret need be observed that he, Mr. Rigg, was
+subject to the usual anatomical laws of mankind.
+
+"And--er--just call at the fishmonger's as you come back and get a parcel
+for me, ordered this morning."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the faithful Marks, taking the prescription as if it
+were a will or a transfer.
+
+He knew his part so well that he moved towards the door and opened it as
+if Mrs. Agar's existence and attendance in the waiting-room were matters
+of the utmost indifference.
+
+"Marks!"
+
+The door was open, so that the lawyer's voice carried well down the
+passage.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I will see Mrs. Agar now."
+
+And Mrs. Agar was shown in, all bustling with excitement.
+
+"Mr. Rigg," she said, with some dignity, "has Mr. Glynde been here?"
+
+The lawyer beamed again--literally all over his parchment-coloured face,
+except the eyes, which remained grave.
+
+"When, my dear madam?" he asked, as he brought forward a chair.
+
+"Well, lately--since my son's death."
+
+The lawyer opened a large diary, and proceeded to trace back each day
+with his finger. It promised to be a question of time, this ascertaining
+whether Mr. Glynde had called within the last week. It was marvellous how
+well this man of deeds knew his clients. Mrs. Agar had never persevered
+in any inquiry or project that required time all through her life. Mr.
+Rigg, behind his disarming smile, could see as far into a crape veil as
+any man.
+
+"It must have been quite lately," said Mrs. Agar, leaning forward and
+trying visibly to read the diary.
+
+Mr. Rigg turned back a few pages, as if to go over the ground a second
+time.
+
+"Let me see!" he said leisurely. "What was the precise date of
+the--er--sad event?"
+
+"Last Tuesday, the fourteenth."
+
+"To be sure," reflected Mr. Rigg, fixing his eyes sadly on an engraving
+of London Bridge in the seventeenth century--a spot specially reserved
+for the sadder moments of probate and other testamentary work. "Very sad,
+very sad."
+
+Then he rose with the mental brushing-away of unshed tears of a man who
+has never yet had time in life for idle lamentation. He turned towards
+the tin box, jingling his keys in a most practical and business-like way.
+
+"And I presume," he said, "that you have come to consult me about the
+late Captain Agar's will?"
+
+"Was there a will?" asked Mrs. Agar, with audible alarm. She had not
+studied "Every Man his own Lawyer" quite in vain, although most of the
+legal technicalities had conveyed nothing whatever to her mind. She did
+not notice that her question regarding Mr. Glynde had never been
+answered.
+
+Mr. Rigg turned upon her beaming.
+
+"I have no will," he answered. "I thought that perhaps you were aware of
+the existence of one."
+
+Mrs. Agar's face lighted up.
+
+"No," she said, with ill-concealed delight; "I am certain there is no
+will."
+
+"Indeed! And why, my dear madam?"
+
+"Well--oh, well, because Jem was just the sort of person to forget such
+matters. Besides, when he left England he was under age."
+
+The lawyer was looking at her with his usual sympathetic smile spread
+over his face like an actor's make-up, but his eyes were very keen and
+clever.
+
+"Of course," he observed, "he may have made one out there."
+
+"I do not think that it is likely," replied the lady, whose small
+thoughts always came into the world in charge of a very obvious father in
+the shape of a wish. "There are no facilities out there--no lawyers."
+
+"There are quite a number of lawyers in India," said Mr. Rigg, with
+sudden gravity. His face was only grave when he wished to fend off
+laughter.
+
+"Well," persisted Mrs. Agar, "I am _sure_ Jem did not make a will."
+
+Mr. Rigg bowed and resumed his seat. He took up a penholder and smiled,
+presumably at his own sunny thoughts.
+
+Mrs. Agar was one of those fatuous ladies who think themselves capable of
+tricking a professional man out of his fee. She had a vague notion that
+if one asks a lawyer a question the price of his answer is at least six
+shillings and eightpence. Up to this point in the interview she was
+serenely conscious of having eluded the fee.
+
+"I presume," she remarked carelessly, in pursuance of this economical
+policy, "that in such a case the property would go unconditionally to the
+second son."
+
+"There are contingent possibilities," replied the man of subterfuge
+blandly. He did not mean anything at all, but shrewdly guessed that Mrs.
+Agar would not credit him with so simple a design.
+
+The lady smiled in a subtly commiserating manner, indicative of the fact
+that on some family matters the ignorance of all except herself was
+somewhat pitiful.
+
+"Of course," she said, "as regards the present case, I know perfectly
+well that both Jem and his father would wish everything to go to Arthur."
+
+She was picking a thread from the corner of her jacket with an air of
+nonchalance.
+
+Mr. Rigg was silent. He had some thirty years before this period given up
+attaching importance to the wishes of the deceased as interpreted by
+disinterested survivors.
+
+"And _I_ should imagine that the necessary transfers--and--and things
+would be much better put in hand at once. Delay seems to me quite
+unnecessary."
+
+She paused for Mr. Rigg's opinion--quite a friendly opinion, of course,
+without price.
+
+"Pardon me," said that lawyer, driven into a corner at last, "but are you
+consulting me on behalf of the late Squire's executor, Mr. Glynde, or on
+your own account?"
+
+"Oh!" replied Mrs. Agar, drawing herself up with a deprecating little
+laugh, "I did not intend it to be a consultation at all. I happened to be
+passing, that was all. You see, Mr. Rigg, Mr. Glynde does not know
+anything about these matters. Clergymen are so stupid."
+
+"Seems to be afraid," Mr. Rigg was reflecting behind his pleasant mask,
+"of the young man coming alive again."
+
+Mrs. Agar was like a child in many ways, more especially in her unbounded
+belief in her own cunning. She actually imagined herself to be a match
+for this man, who had been trained in the ways of duplicity all his life.
+She saw nothing of his mind, and fatuously ignored the fact that from the
+moment she had entered the room he had begun the interview with a mental
+hypothesis.
+
+"This woman," he had reflected, "has always hated her step-son. She got
+him a commission in an Indian regiment for the primary purpose of getting
+him out of the way while she saved money on her life-interest in the
+estate for her second son. The secondary purpose was little more than a
+hope. She hoped for the best. The best has come off, and she is not
+clever enough to let things take their course."
+
+Every word Mrs. Agar had uttered, every silence, every glance had gone to
+confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He
+did not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor
+in the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to
+probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the
+elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one
+domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law.
+And in one as in the other the finer susceptibilities grow dull. The
+doctor almost forgets the pain he inflicts. The lawyer gradually loses
+his sense of right and wrong.
+
+Mr. Rigg was an honest man--as honesty is understood in the law. He was
+keenly alive to all the motives of this woman, who, in the law of
+humanity, was a criminal. He had started from a lawyer's standpoint--_id
+est_, personal advantage. "To whose advantage?" they ask, and there they
+assign the action. But Mr. Rigg was also a good lawyer, and therefore he
+kept his own counsel.
+
+"Things must be allowed," he said, "to take their course. You know, Mrs.
+Agar, we are proverbially slow in moving, but we are sure."
+
+Now it happened that this was precisely the position assumed by Mr.
+Glynde, whose respect for legal routine was enormous. He rarely moved in
+any matters wherein the law could by hook or crook be introduced without
+consulting Mr. Rigg, whom he vaguely called his "man." And it was
+precisely this delay that Mrs. Agar disliked. She had no definite reason
+for so doing; but this stroke of good fortune presented itself to her
+mind more in the light of an opportunity to be seized than as a just
+inheritance to be thankfully received in its due time.
+
+She was awake to the fact that Arthur was not the man to seize any
+opportunity, however obviously it might be thrust into his grasp, and her
+knowledge of the world tended to exaggerate its dishonesty in her mind.
+
+Sister Cecilia and she had talked this matter over with that small
+modicum of learning which is a dangerous thing, and they had arrived at
+the conclusion that Mr. Glynde was not competent to carry out the duties
+thus suddenly thrust upon him. Wrapped up as was her heart in the welfare
+of her weakling son, the one lasting motive of her life had been to
+secure for him the largest possible portion of earthly goods. Now that
+success seemed to be within measurable distance, she gave way to the
+baneful panic of the weak conspirator, and fancied that the whole world
+was allied against her.
+
+She could not keep her fingers off "Every Man his own Lawyer," and
+consulted that boon to the legal profession to such good effect that she
+placed a handsome fee in the pocket of one of its brightest ornaments at
+the earliest opportunity. Mr. Rigg continued to beam and to keep his own
+counsel, merely notifying that things must be allowed to take their own
+course, and presently he bowed Mrs. Agar out of his office, dissatisfied,
+and with an uncomfortable feeling of having been somewhat indiscreet.
+
+Arthur was waiting for her in a hansom cab in Holborn, and with a sigh of
+relief they drove westward to a shop in Regent Street to order a supply
+of the newest procurable mode of signifying grief on paper and envelopes.
+Arthur Agar was an expert in such matters, and indeed both mother and son
+were more at home in the graceful pastime of spending money than in the
+technicalities of making or keeping the same.
+
+Arthur was already beginning to taste the sweetness of his adversity, and
+being intensely sensitive to the influence of those with whom he happened
+to be at the moment, he was already beginning to look back with mild
+surprise to the first burst of grief to which he had given way on hearing
+that Jem was killed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION
+
+_There is one that keepeth silence and is found wise._
+
+
+Sister Cecilia received--nay, she almost welcomed--the news of Jem
+Agar's death in an intensely Christian spirit. She looked upon it in
+the light of a chastening-a sort of moral cold bath, unpleasant at the
+time, but cleanly and refreshing in its effect. Intense goodness and
+virtue of the jubby-jubby order seem frequently to produce this result.
+Trouble--provided that it be not personal--is elevated to a position
+which it was never intended to occupy by an all-seeing Providence. There
+are some people who step into the troubles of others as into the
+chastening bath above referred to, and splash about. They pretend to feel
+deeply bereavements which cannot reasonably be expected to affect them,
+and go about the world with a well-scrubbed air of conscious virtue,
+saying in manner if not in words, "Look at me; my troubles compass me
+about, but my innate goodness enables me to take them in the proper
+spirit and to be cheerful despite all."
+
+This was precisely Sister Cecilia's attitude towards her small world of
+Stagholme, after the news of the young Squire's death had cast a gloom
+over the whole neighbourhood.
+
+"Ah!" she would say to some honest cottage mother who had more true
+feeling in her rough little finger than Sister Cecilia possessed in her
+whole heart. "These trials are sent to us for our good. The ways of
+Providence are strange, Mrs. Martin--strange to us now."
+
+"Yes, miss; that they be," Mrs. Martin replied, looking at her with the
+hard and far-seeing gaze of a poor mother who has known trouble in its
+least romantic form. And Sister Cecilia, with that blindness which comes
+from systematically closing the eyes to the earthly side of earthly
+things, never realised that the small change of sympathy is often
+slightly aggravating.
+
+At this period she took to calling Jem Agar her "poor boy." The grave
+seems to have the power of completely altering the past, and with persons
+of the stamp of Sister Cecilia death appears not only to wipe out all
+sin, but to impair the memory of the living to such an extent that the
+individuality of the deceased is no longer recognisable.
+
+Jem never had in any sense of the word been her boy. His feelings for her
+had passed from the distrust of childhood to the lofty contempt of a
+schoolboy for all things preternaturally virtuous, finally settling down
+into the more tolerant contempt of manhood. The dead, however, have
+perforce to accept much affection which they scornfully refused in life.
+
+"Poor Jem!" said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar the day after that lady's
+visit to Gray's Inn. "I always thought that perhaps he and dear Dora
+would come to--to some understanding."
+
+She stirred her tea with patient, suffering head inclined at a resigned
+angle.
+
+"Do you think there _was_ any understanding between them?" inquired Mrs.
+Agar.
+
+"Well--I should not like to say."
+
+Which, being translated, meant that she would like to say, but did not
+know.
+
+It had always been a pet scheme of Mrs. Agar's that Dora should marry
+Arthur; firstly, because she would have nearly two thousand pounds a year
+on the death of her parents; and, secondly, because she was a capable
+person with plenty of common-sense. These two adjuncts--namely, money and
+common-sense--Mrs. Agar wisely looked for in candidates for the flaccid
+hand of her son.
+
+"I will try and find out," said Sister Cecilia after a pause.
+
+Mrs. Agar said nothing. She was meditating over this last stroke of fate
+in favour of her scheme, and her thoughts were disturbed by that distrust
+in the continuance of good fortune which usually spoils the enjoyment of
+the unscrupulous in those good things which they have obtained for
+themselves.
+
+So Sister Cecilia took it for granted that she was doing the will of the
+mistress of Stagholme when she wrote a note that same evening inviting
+Dora to have tea with her the following afternoon.
+
+At the hour appointed Dora arrived, and was duly shown into the little
+cottage drawing-room, of which the decoration hovered between the
+avowedly devout and the economo-aesthetic.
+
+Sister Cecilia swept down upon her with a speechless emotion which, in
+the nature of things (and Sister Cecilia), could not well be of long
+duration.
+
+"My dear," she whispered, "God will give you strength to bear this awful
+trial."
+
+Dora recovered her breath and re-arranged her crushed habiliments before
+inquiring, with just sufficient feeling to save her from downright
+rudeness, "What is the matter; has something else happened?"
+
+Sister Cecilia drew back. She was vaguely conscious of having run
+mentally against a brick wall. There was something new and unusual about
+Dora which she could not understand--something, if she could only have
+seen it, suggestive of the quiet, strong man in whose honour the whole
+parish wore mourning. But Sister Cecilia was not a subtle woman. She had
+had so little experience of the world, of men and of women, that she fell
+easily into the error of thinking that they were all to be treated alike
+and with equal success by little maxims culled from fourpenny-halfpenny
+devotional books.
+
+"No, dear," she exclaimed; "I was referring to our terrible loss. My
+heart has been bleeding for you--"
+
+"It is very kind, I'm sure," said Dora quietly; "I forgot that I had not
+seen you since the news reached us."
+
+It is probable that her self-control cost her more than she suspected.
+Her lips were drawn and dry. She wore a thick veil, which she carefully
+abstained from lifting above the level of her eyes. "I am sure," moaned
+Sister Cecilia, "it has been a most trying time for us all. I wonder that
+Mrs. Agar has borne up so bravely. Her health is wonderful, considering."
+
+Dora sat looking straight in front of her. She was withdrawing her gloves
+slowly. Her face was that of a person whose mind was made up for the
+endurance of an operation.
+
+The twaddling voice, the characteristic reference to health, were
+intensely aggravating. There are some women who talk of their own health
+before the dead are buried. They do not seem to be able to separate grief
+from bodily ill. Clad in crape, they rush to the seaside, and there,
+presumably because grief affects their legs, they hire a man to wheel
+themselves and Sorrow in a bath-chair. Why--oh, why! does bereavement
+drive women into bath-chairs on the King's Road, or the Lees, or the Hoe?
+
+"Wonderful!" said Dora.
+
+Sister Cecilia, busying herself with the teapot, proceeded to blow her
+own trumpet with the bare-facedness of true virtue.
+
+"I have been with her constantly," she said. "I think it is better for us
+all to tell of our grief; I think that we are given speech for that
+purpose. For although one may only be able to offer sympathy and perhaps
+a little advice, it is always a relief to speak of one's sorrow."
+
+"I suppose it is," admitted Dora from her strong-hold of reserve, "for
+some people."
+
+"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Sister Cecilia, all heedless of the sarcasm. For
+extreme charity is proof against such. It covers other things besides a
+multitude of sins. Wielded foolishly it runs amuck like a too luxuriant
+creeper, and often kills commonsense. "And that is why I asked you to
+come, dear. I thought that you might want to confide in some one--that
+you might want to unburden your heart to one who feels for you as if this
+sorrow were her own--"
+
+"Only one piece of sugar, thank you," interrupted Dora. "Thank you. No.
+Bread and butter, please. It is very kind of you, Sister Cecilia. But,
+you see, when I have any unburdening to do there is always mother, and if
+I want any advice there is always father."
+
+"Yes, dear. But sometimes even one's parents are not quite the persons to
+whom one would turn in times of grief."
+
+"Oh!" observed Dora, without much enthusiasm.
+
+Unconsciously Sister Cecilia was doing the very best thing possible for
+Dora, She was arousing in her the spirit of antagonism--hardening a
+stricken heart, as it were, by a fresh challenge. She was teaching Dora
+to fight for what we learn to deem most sacred--namely, the right to
+monopolise our own thoughts and feelings. Sister Cecilia is not, one may
+assume, the only good woman in the world who cannot draw a definite line
+between sympathy and mere curiosity. With many the display of sympathy is
+nothing but a half-conscious bait to attract a shoal of further details.
+
+Self-reliance was lurking somewhere in this girl's character, but it had
+never been developed by the pressure of circumstances. Reserve she had
+seen practised by her father, but the actual advantages thereof were only
+now beginning to be apparent to her. The body, we are told, adapts itself
+to abnormal circumstances; so is it with the mind. Already Dora was
+beginning, as they say at sea, to find her feet; to take that stand
+amidst her environments which she was forced to hold, practically alone,
+thereafter.
+
+And Sister Cecilia, with that blind faith in a good motive which gives
+almost as much trouble as actual vice, floundered on in the path she had
+mapped out for herself.
+
+"You know, dear," she said, looking out of the window with a sentimental
+droop of her thin, inquisitive lips, "I cannot help feeling that
+this--this terrible blow means more to you than it does to us."
+
+"Why?" inquired Dora practically.
+
+Sister Cecilia was silent, with one of those aggravating silences which
+do not allow even the satisfaction of a flat contradiction. A meaning
+silence is a coward's argument. She was beginning to feel slightly
+nervous before this child, ignorant that childhood is not always a matter
+of years and calendar months.
+
+"Why?" asked Dora again.
+
+Sister Cecilia looked rather bewildered.
+
+"Well, dear, I thought perhaps--I always thought that my poor boy
+entertained some feeling--you understand?"
+
+"No," replied Dora, borrowing for the moment her father's most crushing
+deliberation of manner, "I cannot say I do. When you say your 'poor boy,'
+are you referring to Jem?"
+
+Sister Cecilia assented with a resigned nod worthy of the very earliest
+martyr.
+
+"Then, as every one has discovered so many virtues in him--quite
+suddenly--we had better emulate one of them, and have at the least the
+good feeling to hold our tongues about any feelings he may have
+entertained. Do you not think so, Sister Cecilia?"
+
+"Well, dear, I only thought to act as might be best for you," said the
+well-intentioned meddler, with the drawl of the professionally
+misunderstood.
+
+"I have no doubt of that," returned Dora, with an equanimity which was
+again strangely suggestive of Jem Agar. "But in future you will be
+consulting my welfare much more effectively by refraining from action on
+my behalf at all."
+
+"As you will, dear; as you will," in the hopeless tone of age,
+experience, and wisdom forced to stand idle while youth and folly rush
+headlong down the hill.
+
+"Yes," returned Dora calmly; "I know that, thank you. And now, I think,
+we had better change the subject."
+
+The subject was therefore changed; but Sister Cecilia, having, as it
+were, whetted her appetite for details, was not at her ease with other
+food for the mind, and presently Dora left.
+
+The girl went back into her small world with a new knowledge gained--the
+knowledge that in all and through all we are really quite alone. There
+can be only one companion, and if that one be absent, there are only so
+many talking-machines left to us. And many of us pass the whole of our
+lives in conversation with them. So it is; and we know not why.
+
+In a subtle way she felt stronger for this little tussle--a fight is
+always exhilarating. She felt that from henceforth the memory of Jem was
+hers, and hers alone, to defend and to cherish. It was not much of a
+consolation. No. But then this is a world of small mercies, where some of
+us get an hour or some mean portion of a day when we want a lifetime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE TOUCH OF NATURE
+
+A sense, when first I fronted him,
+Said, "Trust him not!"
+
+
+After successfully carrying through the purchase of mourning stationery
+and attending to other important items connected with sorrow in its
+worldly shape, Arthur Agar went back to Cambridge. There was enough of
+the woman in his nature to enable him to cherish grief and nurse it
+lovingly, as some women (not the best of them) do. In this attitude
+towards the world there was none of that dogged going about his business
+which characterises the ordinary man from whose life something has
+slipped out.
+
+He wandered by the banks of the Cam with mourning in his mien, and his
+cherished friends took sympathetic coffee with him after Hall. They spoke
+of Jem with that fervid admiration which University men honestly feel for
+one a few years their senior who has already "done something."
+
+"A ripping soldier" they called him and some of them entertained serious
+doubts as to whether they had done wisely in choosing the less glorious
+paths of peace. And Arthur Agar settled down into the old profitless
+life, with this difference--that he could not dine out, that he used
+blackedged notepaper, and that his delicate heliotrope neckties were
+folded away in a drawer until such time as his grief should be assuaged
+into that state of resignation technically called half-mourning.
+
+One afternoon well towards the end of the term Arthur Agar's "gyp" crept
+in with that valet-like confidential air which seems to be bred of too
+intimate a knowledge of the extent of one's wardrobe.
+
+"There is a gentleman, sir," he said, "as wants to see you. But in no
+wise will he give his name, which, he says, you don't know it."
+
+"Is he selling engravings?" asked Arthur.
+
+The "gyp" looked mildly offended. As if he didn't know that sort!
+
+"No, sir. Military man, I should take it."
+
+Arthur Agar had met the Scotch Balaclava veteran in his time too. He
+hesitated, and the "gyp," who felt that his reputation was at stake,
+spoke:
+
+"He is eminently a gentleman, sir," he said.
+
+"Well, then, show him up."
+
+A moment later a man who might have been the wandering Jew _fin de
+si�cle_ stood in the doorway. His smart military moustache was small and
+evidently trimmed, his face was sunburnt, and in his eyes there gleamed
+the restlessness of India.
+
+He bowed, and awaited the exit of the man. Then, coming forward, he was
+able for the first time to see Arthur Agar's face distinctly, and his
+glance wavered.
+
+At that moment Arthur Agar was staring at him with something in his face
+that was almost strong. When this man had entered the room, Arthur felt
+his heart give one great bound which almost choked him. There was a
+strange physical feeling of vacuity in his breast which seemed to
+paralyse his breathing powers, and his temples throbbed painfully.
+
+Arthur Agar's life had been passed in eminently pleasant places. The
+seamy side of existence had always been carefully hidden from his eyes.
+He therefore did not recognise this strange sense which had leapt into
+his being--the sense of superhuman, physical, mortal revulsion.
+
+He was divided between two instincts. One side of his nature urged him to
+shriek like a woman. Had he followed the other, he would have rushed at
+this man, whom he had never seen before, seeking to do him bodily harm.
+He would not have paused to reason that in anything like a struggle he
+would stand no chance against the sinewy, dark-eyed soldier who stood
+watching him. For there are moments even in this age of self-suppression
+when we do not pause to think, when he who cannot swim will leap into
+deep water to save another.
+
+This sudden unreasoning hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed
+to stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease
+lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the
+spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. The stranger it was
+who spoke.
+
+"I presume," he said, with a pleasant smile, in a voice so musical that
+his hearer breathed suddenly as if his head had been lifted from water,
+"I presume that you are Mr. Arthur Agar?"
+
+While he spoke he looked past Arthur, out of the silken-draped window. He
+did not seem to like the glance of this young man, for even the most
+practical of us have a conscience at times.
+
+"Yes."
+
+The new-comer laid his walking-stick on the table, and turned to make
+sure that the door was closed.
+
+"I knew your step-brother," he explained, "Jem Agar, in India."
+
+Then the instinct of the gentleman and the host asserted itself over and
+above the throbbing hatred.
+
+"Ah! Will you sit down?"
+
+The stranger took the proffered chair and laid aside his hat. But neither
+of them was at ease. There was a subtle suggestion that they had met
+before and quarrelled--vague, unreasoning, quite impossible if you will;
+but it was there. They were as men meeting again with a past between them
+(too full of strong passions ever to be forgotten) which each was trying
+in vain to ignore.
+
+"I have brought home a few belongings of his," the stranger went on to
+explain. "Just a port-manteau with some clothes and things."
+
+He paused, and drew a small packet from the pocket of a covert-coat which
+he carried over his arm.
+
+"Here," he went on, "are some papers of his--a diary and one or two
+letters. The rest of the things are at my hotel in town."
+
+Arthur took the packet, and, still in the same dreamy, unreal way, opened
+it. He turned to the last entry--dated six weeks back.
+
+"Got out of bed at five, but nothing to be seen in the valley. I feel a
+bit chippy this morning. If nothing turns up to-day shall begin to feel
+uneasy. The men seem all right. They are plucky little fellows."
+
+There was a self-consciousness about Jem Agar's diary, a selection of the
+right word, which conveyed nothing to Arthur. But it fell into other
+hands later on, where it was understood better.
+
+General Michael was watching the undergraduate with the same critical
+attention which he had brought to bear on the writer of the diary not two
+months before.
+
+"Did you see much of your step-brother?" he asked abruptly, feeling his
+way towards his purpose.
+
+Arthur looked up. He was getting accustomed to the loathing that he felt
+for this man, as one gets accustomed to an evil odour or a physical pain.
+
+"I saw enough of him to be very fond of him," he replied.
+
+"And your mother--was she attached to him? Excuse my asking; I have a
+reason."
+
+The little pause was enough. Seymour Michael had expected as much.
+
+He had never forgiven Mrs. Agar the insults she heaped upon his head in
+the drawing-room of Jaggery House. It is very difficult to bring shame
+home to a Jew, and on that occasion this son of the modern Ishmaelites
+had been thoroughly ashamed of himself. The sting of that past ignominy
+was with him still, and would remain within his heart until such time as
+he could revenge himself.
+
+With that mean, underhand watchfulness for an opportunity which is almost
+excusable in one of the unfortunates against whom every man's hand is
+raised to-day, he had never parted with his thirst for revenge. The
+moment seemed propitious. It was within his power to lay for Anna Agar
+one of those spiteful feminine traps of which a woman can only fully
+appreciate the sting.
+
+He determined to leave Mrs. Agar in ignorance of the real facts
+respecting her step-son. His vengeance was to allow her to
+rejoice--almost openly, as she did--in the stroke of fortune by which her
+own son, Arthur, had become possessed of Stagholme. He knew the woman
+well enough to foresee that in a hundred ways she would heap up ignominy,
+meanness, deception, which would crumble in one vast wreck about her head
+when Jem Agar returned.
+
+It was a vengeance worthy of the man, and spiteful enough to be fully
+comprehended by its victim. But, like others handling petards, Seymour
+Michael grew somewhat careless, and forgot that the wrong man is
+sometimes hoist.
+
+He knew his position well enough to make all safe as regarded Jem Agar on
+his return. It was absolutely necessary to tell Arthur Agar--necessary
+for his own safety in the future. The other two persons to whom the
+secret was to be imparted were Mrs. Agar and Dora Glynde. From Mrs. Agar
+Seymour Michael determined to withhold the news for his own reasons. Dora
+was to be kept in the dark because she was a woman, and therefore unsafe.
+
+This was the plan in its original shape with which Michael sought out
+Arthur Agar at his rooms in college at Cambridge. It was further assisted
+and elaborated by a circumstance which the originator could scarcely have
+been expected to foresee--the fact of Arthur Agar's love for Dora, which
+was at this time beginning to take to itself a definite existence. It
+began, as all love does, with a want more or less elevated according to
+the nature of the wanter. Arthur Agar required some one for whom to buy
+those small and feminine luxuries which he could not for manly shame
+purchase to himself. He delighted in spending money in those
+establishments tersely called _magasins de luxe_ in the country from
+whence their contents do emanate. He therefore got into the habit of
+"picking up little things" for Dora, with the result that she in her turn
+picked up that very small object, his heart.
+
+Michael had seen enough of Arthur Agar during this short interview to
+endow him with the same need of contempt which he had entertained towards
+Anna Agar, the mother. The strong personal resemblance, the obvious
+weakness of the boy's face, and, above all, that sense of having the
+upper hand, which makes brave men out of cowards, gave him confidence. It
+seemed that he had only to play the cards thrust into his hand.
+
+"I knew," he pursued, "Jem Agar very well. He was a peculiar man: very
+quiet, very reserved, and just the man to make a difficult position
+rather more difficult."
+
+Arthur's intelligence was not keen enough to follow the drift of this
+remark.
+
+"Yes," he said gently.
+
+"He hinted to me once or twice," went on Seymour Michael, "that things
+were not very harmonious at home."
+
+"I was not aware of it," answered Arthur, whose innate gentlemanliness
+told him that this should be held sacred ground.
+
+The General shifted his position.
+
+"He was a first-rate soldier," he said warmly.
+
+It was obvious to both that they were not getting on. Something
+seemed to hold them both back, paralysing the _savoir-faire_ which
+both had acquired in their intercourse with the world. Seymour Michael
+was puzzled. He was not afraid of this boy. He knew himself to be
+stronger--capable of over-mastering him entirely. But for the first time
+in his life he felt awkward and ill at ease.
+
+Arthur Agar only wanted this man to go. He felt that he could forego the
+news which he must undoubtedly be in a position to give if only he could
+be rid of this hated presence. At moments the loathing came to him again,
+like a cold hand laid upon his heart.
+
+"Were you with him," inquired the undergraduate, "at the time of
+his--death?"
+
+"No. I was at head-quarters, forty miles to the rear."
+
+There was a little pause, then suddenly Seymour Michael leant forward
+with his two hands on the table that stood between them.
+
+"Mr. Agar," he said, "are you able to keep a secret?"
+
+"I suppose so," answered Agar apprehensively.
+
+"Then I am going to tell you something which you must swear by all that
+you hold most sacred to keep a strict secret until such time as I give
+you leave to reveal it."
+
+Arthur looked at him with a vague fear in his face. It seemed suddenly as
+if this man had always been in his life--as if he would never go out of
+it again.
+
+"I am not sure that I care to hear it," he wavered.
+
+"You must hear it. Almost the last words that Jem Agar spoke to me were
+requesting me to tell you this."
+
+"You promise that that is true?"
+
+Arthur was surprised at his own suspicions. It was so unlike him, whose
+nature, too weak to compass vice, had never allowed the suspicion of vice
+or deceit in others to trouble him.
+
+"I promise," replied Seymour Michael.
+
+Arthur gathered himself together for an effort. His distrust of this man
+was almost a panic.
+
+"Then tell me," he said.
+
+Michael leant back in his chair, fixing his pleasant eyes on Arthur's
+pale face.
+
+"The estate is not yours," he said. "Your step-brother, Jem Agar, is not
+dead."
+
+"Not dead!" repeated Arthur, without any joy in his voice. "Not dead!
+Then who are you? Tell me who you are!"
+
+"Ah! That I cannot tell you."
+
+And Seymour Michael sat smiling quietly on Anna Agar's son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE SPIDER AND THE FLY
+
+How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
+Makes ill deeds done!
+
+
+He is a wise liar who makes use of the truth at times. Seymour Michael
+was clever enough to stay his fantastic tongue in his further explanation
+to Arthur Agar.
+
+"It is a long story," he said, "and in order to fully state the case to
+you I must go into some matters of which perhaps you have heard little.
+Do you happen to be anything of a politician? Are you, I mean, interested
+in foreign affairs?"
+
+Arthur confessed that he knew nothing of foreign affairs, a fact of which
+Michael had become fully aware on entering the narrow-minded,
+characteristic room.
+
+"You perhaps know," Seymour Michael went on, in a tone of which the
+sarcasm was lost upon its victim, "that Russia is living in hopes of some
+day possessing India?"
+
+"Oh--ah--yes!"
+
+Arthur Agar was obviously not at all interested. There were so many
+things of a similar nature to be remembered--things which did not really
+interest him--and those nearer home had precedence in his mind. He knew,
+for instance, that Trinity Hall lived in hopes of heading the river that
+year, and that the Narcissus Club were going to give a narcissus-coloured
+dance in May week, at which entertainment even the jellies were to be
+yellow.
+
+The General now launched into an explanation, couched carefully in
+language suitable to his hearer's limited knowledge of the facts.
+
+"Russia," he said, "is now so large that, unless they make it larger
+still and get tropical resources to draw upon, it will fall to pieces.
+They want India. Some day there will be a fight, a very large fight. But
+not yet. In the meantime it is a question of learning every inch of that
+country where the battle-fields will be, and every thought in the minds
+of those men who will look on at the fight. I--"
+
+He paused, recollecting that the fame of his own name might have
+penetrated even to this out-of-the-way spot. "Some of us have been at
+this all our lives. Over there, on the Frontier, there are certain
+numbers of us, on both sides, playing a very deep game. Your brother is
+one of the players, a prominent man on the field; a half-back, one might
+call him."
+
+There was a strong temptation to continue the allegory--to say that he
+himself was goal-keeper; but Seymour Michael was one of the few men who
+can in need make even their own vanity subservient to convenience.
+
+"We watch each other," he went on, "like cats. We always know where the
+others are, and what they are doing. Your brother was one of the most
+closely watched by the other side. For some time we have been aware of an
+influence at work with a tribe of Hillmen who have hitherto been friendly
+to us, and we have not been able to find what this influence is, or how
+it is brought to bear upon them. We were so closely watched that we could
+not penetrate to the affected country. But at last the chance came. Your
+brother was gazetted as killed. We allowed the report to remain
+uncontradicted. We let the other side think that Jem Agar was dead, and
+therefore incapable of doing any more harm, and now he has gone up into
+that country to find out what they are after."
+
+Arthur nodded.
+
+"I see," he said. He was rather vague about it all, and had not quite
+realised yet that this was all true, that this man whom he still hated
+and distrusted without any apparent reason was real and living, speaking
+to him in real waking life and not in a dream. Moreover, he had not
+nearly realised that Jem was alive. The evidence of his own black
+clothes, of the sombre-edged stationery, of his mourning habit of life
+this term, was too strong upon a mind like his to be suddenly thrown
+aside. Perhaps he had discovered that the consolation of inheritance was
+greater than was at first apparent. In six weeks he had slipped very
+comfortably into Jem's shoes, and it seemed only right and proper that
+his life should have a background of the noble proportions of Stagholme.
+Also, now Stagholme meant Dora; for he was worldly-wise enough to know
+that his own personal value in the world's estimation had undergone a
+great change in six short weeks. He knew that the man with the money
+usually wins.
+
+It would almost seem that Seymour Michael divined his thoughts, at least
+in part.
+
+"There are two reasons," he went on to say, "why absolute secrecy is
+necessary; first, for Agar's own sake. He is, of course, in disguise. No
+one suspects that he is there, and that is his only safeguard in the
+country where he is. Secondly--but I want your whole attention, please."
+
+"Yes, I am listening."
+
+Seymour Michael leant forward and emphasised his remark by tapping on the
+table with his gloved finger.
+
+"The mission is so extremely dangerous that it comes almost to the same
+thing."
+
+"What do you mean?" inquired Arthur Agar, whose gentle intellect only
+compassed subtleties of the drawing-room type.
+
+"I mean that Jem Agar is almost as good as a dead man, although he was
+not killed at Pregalla."
+
+The man who had wept in this same room six weeks before looked up with a
+gleam of something very like hope in his troubled eyes. Such is the power
+of love. For Arthur Agar had not been ignorant of the probability that in
+his step-brother, once dead but now living, he had had a rival. Sister
+Cecilia had seen to that.
+
+"But when shall we know? When will he come back?" inquired he. And
+Seymour Michael, the subtle, began to see his way more clearly.
+
+"Certainly not for six months, probably not for nine."
+
+One may take it that no man is sent into the world a ready-made
+scoundrel. It all depends upon the circumstances of life. No one is safe
+right up to the end, and events may combine to make the very best of us
+into that thing which the world calls a villain.
+
+Arthur Agar, all inexperienced, weak, hereditarily handicapped, suddenly
+found himself on the balance. And the scales were held, not by the hand
+of Justice, blind and clement, but by Seymour Michael, very open-eyed,
+with a keen watchfulness for his own purpose; biassed; unscrupulous. It
+must be admitted that circumstances were against Arthur Agar.
+
+"There is nothing to be done," added Seymour Michael, with a smile which
+his companion could not be expected to fathom, "but to keep very quiet,
+and to make the best of your opportunities while you occupy the position
+of heir."
+
+Arthur smiled in a sickly way. He felt suddenly as if this man could see
+right through him, and all the while he hated him. Seymour Michael meant
+"debts"--it was only natural that one of his race should think of money
+before all things--Arthur's thoughts were fixed on Dora. And guiltily he
+imagined himself to be detected.
+
+"You will be doing no harm to Jem," said the tempter, with his pleasant
+laugh. "You are called upon to act the part well for his sake."
+
+"Ye-es, I suppose I am," answered Arthur. "And I must tell no one?"
+
+"Absolutely no one."
+
+Despite his credulous nature, Arthur Agar was singularly suspicious on
+this occasion.
+
+"Are these Jem's own instructions?" he asked.
+
+"His own instructions," replied Seymour Michael callously.
+
+Arthur paused in deep reflection. It was evident, he argued to himself,
+that Jem could not have cared for Dora, or he would never have left her
+in ignorance of the truth. If, therefore, during Jem's absence, he could
+win Dora for himself, he could not in any way be accused of wronging his
+step-brother. And we all know that a conscience which argues with itself
+is lost.
+
+"To make things easier for us both," pursued Seymour Michael, "I propose
+that this interview remain a strict secret between ourselves, and for
+that purpose I have suppressed my own name. It is a fairly well-known
+name. I may mention that in guarantee of good faith. As, however, you do
+not know me, it will be easier for you to suppress the fact that we have
+ever met."
+
+Arthur almost laughed at these last words. It seemed as if he had known
+this man all his life--as if his whole existence had merely been a period
+of waiting until he should come.
+
+"And my mother must not know?" he said. He kept harking back to this
+question with a singular persistence. There are a few men and many
+women for whom a secret is a responsibility to be transferred to the
+first-comer without hesitation. One half of the world takes pleasure in
+divulging a secret--for the other half it is positive pain to keep one.
+
+Seymour Michael never dreamt that the secret might be in unsafe hands. To
+a secretive man like himself the incapacity to keep a counsel never
+suggested itself. There is no doubt that where we all err is in
+persistently judging others by ourselves. Arthur Agar was keenly aware of
+his own incompetence in many things--he was one of those promising
+undergraduates who hire a man to water six small plants in a window-box.
+Incompetence was by him reduced to a science. There were so many things
+which he could not do, that he was forced to find occupations for a very
+extensive leisure, and these were usually of the petty accomplishment
+order, which are graceful in young girls and very disgraceful in young
+men.
+
+Now the doctrine of incompetence is a very dangerous one. Already in the
+criminal courts we are beginning to hear of men and women who do not feel
+competent to keep the law. There were many laws of social procedure and a
+few of schoolboy honour which Arthur Agar felt to be beyond him, and he
+considered that in making confession he was acquiring a right to
+absolution.
+
+He did not tell General Michael that he was not good at keeping secrets,
+chiefly because that gentleman was not of the trivial confession type;
+but he made a mental reservation.
+
+Seymour Michael had risen and was walking backwards and forwards slowly
+between the window and the door. He seemed quite at home in the small
+room, and his manner of taking three strides and then wheeling round
+suggested the habit of living in tents.
+
+"What you must say is that you have received your brother's effects," he
+said. "If they ask from whence--from the War Office. I am the War Office
+to all intents and purposes. The affair is almost forgotten. All the
+details have been published--the usual newspaper details, with Fleet
+Street local colouring. You should have no difficulty."
+
+"No," answered Arthur meekly, but with another mental reservation.
+
+"There are, of course, certain legal formalities in progress," went on
+the General, "relative to the estate. Those must be allowed to go on. We
+may trust the lawyers to go slowly. And afterwards they can amuse
+themselves by undoing what they have done. That is their trade. Half of
+them make a living by undoing what the others have done. You are ..."
+
+Seymour Michael so far forgot himself as to pause and make a mental
+calculation. Arthur saw him do it and never thought of being surprised.
+It seemed quite natural that this man should possess data upon which to
+base mental calculations.
+
+"... not twenty-one yet?" Michael finished the sentence.
+
+"No."
+
+"So that, you see, they cannot make over the estate to you before the
+time your brother comes or--should--come--back."
+
+Arthur understood the emphasis perfectly this time. He was getting on.
+
+"There are," continued Michael, who was eminently methodical, "a few
+military formalities, which have had my attention. In fact, I think that
+everything has been attended to. In case you should require any
+information, or perhaps advice, write to C 74, Smith's Library, Vigo
+Street. That is the address on that envelope."
+
+Arthur rose too. The thought that his visitor might be about to depart
+thrilled through him with the warmth of relieved suspense.
+
+"For your own information," said Michael, looking straight into the
+wavering, colourless eyes, "I may tell you that in my opinion--the
+opinion of an expert--this expedition is exceedingly hazardous. We--we
+must be prepared for the worst."
+
+Arthur Agar turned away. He had felt the deep eyes probing his very
+soul--looking right through him. A sickening sense of weakness was at his
+heart. He felt that in the presence of this man he did not belong to
+himself.
+
+"You mean," he muttered awkwardly, "that Jem will never come back?"
+
+"I think it most probable. And then--when we have to abandon all hope, I
+mean--we shall be glad that we kept this thing to ourselves."
+
+Seymour Michael held out his hand, and pressed the boy's weak fingers in
+a careless grip. Then he turned, and with a short "Good-bye" left him.
+
+Arthur stood looking at the closed door with the frightened eyes of a
+woman. He looked round at the familiar objects of his room--the futile
+little gimcracks with which he had surrounded an existence worthy of such
+environments--the invitation cards on the draped mantelpiece, the little
+glass vases of fantastic shape with a single bloom of stephanotis, the
+hundred and one fantasies of a finicking generation wherein Art sappeth
+Manhood. And his eyes were suddenly opened to a new world of things
+which he could not do. He gazed--not without a vague shame--into a
+perspective of incompetencies.
+
+In the _laissez-aller_ of the unreflective he had assumed that life would
+be a continuance of small pleasures and refined enjoyments, little
+dinners and pleasant converse, Dora and a comfortable home, mutual mild
+delight in flowers and table decoration. Into this assumption Seymour
+Michael had suddenly stepped--strong, restless, and mysterious--and
+Arthur became uneasily conscious of possibilities. There might be
+something in his own life, there might even be something within himself,
+over which he could have no control. There was something within
+himself--something connected with the man who had gone, leaving unrest
+behind him, as he left it wherever he passed. What was this? whither
+would it lead?
+
+Arthur Agar rang the bell, and kept the "gyp" in the room on some trivial
+pretext. He was afraid of solitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+TWO MOTIVES
+
+Making vain pretence
+Of gladness, with an awful sense
+Of one mute shadow watching all.
+
+
+"Pooh! the girl is happy enough!"
+
+Mr. Glynde jerked his newspaper up and read an advertisement of
+steamships about to depart to the West Coast of Africa. His wife--engaged
+in cutting out a scarlet flannel garment of diminutive proportions (an
+operation which she made a point of performing on the study table)--gave
+two gentle snips and ceased her occupation.
+
+She looked at the back of her husband's head, where the hair was getting
+a little thin, and said nothing. No one argued with the Reverend Thomas
+Glynde.
+
+"The girl is happy enough," he repeated, seeking contradiction. There are
+times when an autocrat would very much like to be argued with.
+
+"She is always lively and gay," he continued defiantly.
+
+"Too gay," Mrs. Glynde whispered to the scissors, with a flash of the
+only wisdom which Heaven gives away, and it is not given to all mothers.
+
+The winter had closed over Stagholme, the isolating, distance-making
+winter of English country life, wherein each house is thrown upon its own
+resource, and the peaceful are at rest because their neighbours cannot
+get at them.
+
+Dora was out. She was out a good deal now; exceedingly busy in good works
+of a different type from those affected by Sister Cecilia. The winter air
+seemed to invigorate her, and she tramped miles with a can of soup or an
+infant's flannel wrapper. And always when she came in she was gay, as her
+father described it. She gave amusing descriptions of her visits among
+the cottagers, retailed little quaint conceits such as drop from rustic
+lips declared unto them by their fathers from the old time before them,
+and in it all she displayed a keen insight into human nature. At times
+she was brilliant; which her father noticed with grave approval, ignorant
+or heedless of the fact that brilliancy means friction. Happy people are
+not brilliant.
+
+She suddenly developed a taste for politics, and read the newspaper with
+a keen interest. Several half-forgotten duties were revived, and their
+performance became a matter of principle.
+
+Mr. Glynde did not notice these subtle changes. Old men are generally
+selfish, more so, if possible, than young ones, and Mr. Glynde was
+eminently so. He only saw other people in relationship to himself. He
+looked at them through himself.
+
+Mrs. Glynde had taken the opportunity of a "cutting out" to mention that
+she thought a change would do Dora good. During the three months that had
+elapsed since the announcement of Jem's death, Stagholme had necessarily
+been a somewhat dull abode. The winter had not come on well, but in fits
+and starts, with trying winds and much rain. She said these things while
+she cut into her roll of red flannel--the scissors seemed to give her
+courage.
+
+The Rector of Stagholme had awful visions of a furnished house at
+Brighton or a crammed hotel on the Riviera.
+
+"Where do you want to go to?" he inquired, with a gruffness which meant
+less than it conveyed.
+
+"To town, dear."
+
+Now Mr. Glynde loved London.
+
+In the meantime Dora was standing at the gate of the gamekeeper's little
+cottage-garden which adjoined the orchard at Stagholme. There were
+certain women with whom Sister Cecilia did not "get on," and these were
+by tacit understanding relegated to Dora. This same inability to "get on"
+was one of the crosses which Sister Cecilia carried in a magnified
+condition through life. The gamekeeper's wife was one of the failures--a
+hardy mother of several hardy little embryo gamekeepers, who held that
+she knew her own business of motherhood best, and intimated as much to
+Sister Cecilia.
+
+Dora went there very frequently, and the pathos of her way with little
+children is one of the things which cannot be touched upon here. It is
+possible that she went there because the cottage was near the Holme, and
+the way took her past the great house. She had never laid aside her old
+girlish habit of passing through the rooms, unannounced, to exchange a
+few words with Mrs. Agar. It was not that she held that lady in great
+veneration or respect; but in the country people learn to take their
+neighbours as they are, remembering that they are neighbours.
+
+She went through the orchard and in at the side-door, which stood always
+open to the turn of the handle. She had fallen into a singular habit
+of always using this entrance, and of glancing as she passed at the
+stick-rack, where a rough mountain-ash was wont to stand--a stick which
+Jem had cut, while she stood by, years before. There was, perhaps,
+something characteristically suggestive of Jem in this stick--something
+strong and simple. She was not the person to indulge in sentimental
+thoughts; she could not afford to do that, Indeed, she often looked into
+the stick-rack without thinking, but she never passed it without looking.
+
+In the library she found Mrs. Agar, talking to her maid, who withdrew
+with a pinched salutation. Mrs. Agar was one of those unfortunate women
+who level all ranks in their sore need of a listener. The expression of
+her face was decidedly lachrymose.
+
+"Poor Arthur!" she exclaimed. "Dora, dear, something so dreadful has
+happened!"
+
+"Yes," returned Dora, with the indifference of one who has tasted of the
+worst.
+
+"Poor Arthur has received Jem's papers and diaries and things, and I can
+see from his letter that it has quite upset him. He is so sympathetic,
+you know."
+
+Dora had turned quite away. She usually carried a stick in her country
+rambles, and it seemed suddenly to have suggested itself to her to lay
+this on a table near the door. The stick fell off again, and some moments
+elapsed while she picked it up from the floor. When she turned, her veil
+had slipped from the brim of her hat down over her face.
+
+"But it could not have been a surprise to him," she said quietly. "He
+must have known that there would probably be something of the sort sent
+home."
+
+"Yes, yes. But you know, dear, how keenly he feels everything. These
+highly-strung, artistic temperaments--but I need not tell you; you know
+Arthur almost as well as I do."
+
+Dora answered nothing. It was not the first time that Mrs. Agar had
+charged some remark with that weight of significance which, in her
+vulgar-minded subtlety, she considered delicate and exceptionally clever.
+And each time that Dora heard it she was conscious of a vague discomfort,
+as at the approach of some danger, of some interference in her life which
+would be too strong for her to resist. It was one of those mean feminine
+thrusts to parry which is to acknowledge, to ignore is to admit fear.
+
+"Has he sent them on to you?" she asked after a little pause, resisting
+only by a great effort the temptation to look towards the writing-table.
+
+"Yes," was the reply. "It appears that they have been in his possession
+for some time. He kept them back for some reason--I cannot think why."
+
+Providence is sometimes unexpectedly kind. Had Mrs. Agar been a different
+woman, had she, perhaps, been a better woman, less aggravating, more
+discreet, more honourable, she would not have done at this moment
+precisely that which Dora was silently praying that she would do.
+
+"Here," continued the mistress of Stagholme, going to the writing-table,
+"is his diary; perhaps you would care to look through it? Poor Jem! I am
+afraid it will not be very interesting."
+
+Dora took the little dark-coloured book almost indifferently.
+
+"Thanks," she said. "It was always an effort to him to write the very
+shortest letter, was it not? Papa would like to see it, I know, if I may
+show it to him."
+
+Being rather taller than Mrs. Agar, she could see over that lady's
+shoulder as she stood turning over with some curiosity a score or so of
+bundles evidently containing letters.
+
+"These," said Mrs. Agar, "seem to be letters; probably our letters to
+him. Shall we burn them?"
+
+Dora reflected for a moment. She knew that many of the bundles must
+contain letters from herself to Jem--letters which could have been read
+from the housetops without conveying anything to the populace. But some
+of them--almost between the lines--had been intended to convey, and had
+conveyed, something to Jem. She reflected--without anger, as women do on
+such matters--that if curiosity moved her, Mrs. Agar would not scruple to
+open all these letters and read them. The packets had evidently not been
+opened, and a momentary feeling of grateful recognition of Arthur's
+gentlemanly honour passed through her mind. There was about the faded
+papers that dim, mysterious odour which ever clings to packages that have
+been packed in India.
+
+"Yes," she said, "let us burn them."
+
+Mrs. Agar seemed to hesitate for a moment, but it was only for effect.
+She dreaded the packages, for one of them might contain the will which
+haunted her.
+
+And so these two women, so very different, from such very different
+motives, carried the letters to the fire, and there they burnt them. In
+the curling flames Dora saw her own handwriting. She could not understand
+the suppressed excitement of Mrs. Agar's manner; she only knew that the
+mistress of Stagholme seemed to be afraid of looking at the burning
+papers.
+
+When all was consumed both women heaved a sigh of relief.
+
+"There," said Mrs. Agar, "I am glad we have been able to save poor Arthur
+that. These things are so very painful."
+
+Dora looked rather as if she could not understand why the painful things
+of life should be harder for Arthur to bear than for other people. But
+she said nothing.
+
+"He will be glad," continued Mrs. Agar, "to hear that it was you who
+helped me. I know he would rather that it had been you than any one."
+
+All this with the horrid meaning, the sly significance, of her kind; for
+there are women for whom there is absolutely nothing sacred in the whole
+gamut of human feelings. There are women who will talk of things upon
+which the lips of even the most depraved men are silent.
+
+And with it there was nothing that Dora could take exception to--nothing
+that she could answer without running the risk of bringing upon herself
+questions to which she had no reply.
+
+"Well," she said cheerfully, "it is done now, so we can dismiss it from
+our minds. Of course you know that mother is getting out of hand
+altogether. I cannot hold her in. Her plans are simply kittenish. She
+wants to take a flat in town for two months, to take Boulton and one
+maid, to hire a cook, and to go generally to the bad."
+
+Mrs. Agar's eyes glistened. She liked to hear of other people seeking
+excitement because she felt more justified in doing so herself.
+
+"Well, I think she is very sensible. I am sure you all want a change. I
+feel I do. It is so depressing here all alone with one's thoughts. Sister
+Cecilia was just saying the other day that I ought to go away to Brighton
+or somewhere--that I owed it to Arthur."
+
+"I don't see why you should not pay it to yourself, whoever you owe it
+to," said Dora. "This is an age of going away for changes. Life is like
+old Martin's trousers--so patched up with changes that the original
+pattern has disappeared."
+
+"Yes, dear," replied Mrs. Agar, with a vague laugh. In conversation with
+Dora she invariably felt clumsy and unable to protect herself, like a
+stout fencer conscious of many vulnerable outlying points. She did not
+understand this girl, and never knew which was carte and which tierce.
+"So you are going away?"
+
+"I expect so. Mother usually carries through her little schemes, and in
+his inward soul papa is rather a fast old gentleman. He loves the
+pavement, and--I don't object to the shops myself."
+
+"Then you will like it?"
+
+"Oh yes!" replied Dora, rising to go. "Like Mr. Martin, I am not sure
+that the old pattern is worth preserving."
+
+"I wish I could go with you," said Mrs. Agar, holding up her cheek in an
+absent way for the farewell kiss; "I have not been to town for ages."
+
+"Last week," amended Dora mentally.
+
+"Why not come too?" she said aloud, gathering together stick, basket, and
+gloves.
+
+"There is Arthur," replied the lady. "I am afraid he will not care to
+leave home just now, after so great a blow."
+
+"All the more reason why he should go to town for a little and
+forget--himself."
+
+Mrs. Agar smiled sadly and waited for further persuasion. She had fully
+made up her mind to go to Brighton, but was anxious first that the whole
+parish should press her to do so against her will.
+
+"It will be very nice," continued Dora, "to have you to help me to keep
+my flighty progenitors in order. Now I _must_ go."
+
+With a nod and a light laugh she closed the library door behind her,
+having apparently forgotten the sadder events of the visit. But in her
+basket she had the diary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA
+
+Be as one that knoweth, and yet holdeth his tongue.
+
+
+"And, of course, you know every one in the room?" Dora was saying to her
+cousin as the orchestra struck suddenly into "God bless the Prince of
+Wales."
+
+"Good gracious, no!" Miss Mazerod replied; and both young ladies stood up
+to curtsey to the Royal party.
+
+It was the great artistic _soir�e_ of the year, and crowds of nobodies
+jostled each other in their mad desire to deceive whosoever might be
+credulous into the belief that they were somebodies.
+
+"Of course," said Dora, when they were seated again, and the strains of
+the Welsh air had been suppressed "by desire," "they may be very great
+swells; I have no doubt they are in their particular way; but they do not
+look it."
+
+Miss Mazerod looked round critically.
+
+"Some of them," she said, "are frame-makers, a good many of them, with
+big bills in high places. Others are actresses--very great actresses off
+the stage. Do you see that tall girl there, with a supercilious
+expression which she does not know is apt to remind one of a housemaid
+scorning a milkman's love on the area steps? She is a great actress, who
+will not take small engagements, and is not offered large ones. She is an
+actress 'pour se faire photographier.'"
+
+"And this is the cream of London society?" said Dora, looking round her
+with considerable amusement.
+
+"Society," returned her cousin, "is not allowed to stand for cream now.
+It is stirred up with a spoon, silver-gilt, and the skim milk gets
+hopelessly mixed up with the cream. That young man who is now talking to
+the actress person is not what he looks. He is, as a matter of fact, the
+scion of a noble house, who models in clay atrociously."
+
+"And the gorgeous person he is turning his back upon?"
+
+"One of his models."
+
+"Of clay?"
+
+"Essentially so."
+
+And Miss Mazerod broke off into a happy laugh. Hers was not the
+bitterness of plainness or insignificance, but something infinitely more
+suggestive. It was, indeed, not bitterness at all, but light-hearted
+contempt, which is, perhaps, the deepest contempt there is.
+
+"Who is the wretched woman with no backbone draped in rusty black?" asked
+Dora.
+
+"My dear! That is one of the great lady artists of the age. She lectures
+to factory girls or something, and she paints limp females snuffling over
+tiger-lilies. Her ideal woman has that sort of droop of the throat--I
+imagine she-tries to teach it to the factory. She objects to backbone."
+
+Miss Mazerod, who possessed a very firm little specimen of the adjunct
+mentioned, drew herself up and smiled commiseratingly.
+
+"Then," said Dora, "I feel quite consoled about my sketches."
+
+For the first time Miss Mazerod looked serious.
+
+"Dora," she said, "I often wonder whether it would be profane to mention
+in one's prayers a little gratitude for not having an artistic soul.
+There are lots of women like that in the world, especially in London.
+They pretend that they think themselves superior to men, but they know in
+their hearts that they are inferior to women. For they have not something
+that women ought to have--No, Dolly, no brown studies here; you must not
+dream here!"
+
+Dora, with a light laugh, came back from her mental wanderings to find
+herself looking at a face which caught her attention at once. It was the
+face of a man--brown, self-contained, with unhappy eyes and a long
+drooping nose.
+
+"Who is _that_ man?" she inquired at once. "Now, he is quite different
+from the rest. He is about the only person who is not furtively finding
+out how much attention he has succeeded in attracting."
+
+"Yes, that is a man with a purpose."
+
+"What purpose?" inquired Dora.
+
+"I don't know; I shouldn't think any one knows."
+
+"_He_ knows," suggested Dora.
+
+"Yes, _he_ knows."
+
+Miss Mazerod was looking at the mechanism of her fan with a demure
+expression on lips shaped for happiness. A dark young man was elbowing
+his way through the mixed crowd towards them.
+
+"What is his name?" asked Dora, who was still looking at the man with a
+purpose.
+
+"General Seymour Michael."
+
+"The Indian man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a little pause, during which Miss Mazerod glanced in the
+direction of the younger man, who had been detained by a stout lady with
+a purple dress and a depressed daughter.
+
+"I should like to know him," said Dora.
+
+"Nothing easier," replied her cousin, still absorbed in the fan. "I know
+him quite well."
+
+"He is looking at you now."
+
+Miss Mazerod looked up and bowed with a little jerk, as if she felt too
+young to be stately; one of those bows that say "Come here."
+
+At this moment the younger man came up and shook hands effusively with
+Dora, slowly with Miss Mazerod.
+
+"Jack," said that young lady, "I have just beamed on General Michael, who
+is behind you. I want to introduce him to Dora."
+
+Jack seemed to think this an excellent idea, and stepped aside with
+alacrity.
+
+Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile. He certainly was
+one of the most distinguished-looking men in the room, with a brilliant
+ribbon across his breast, and that smart, well-brushed general effect
+which stamps the successful soldier.
+
+"When did you come back to England?" inquired Edith Mazerod, whose father
+had worked with this man in India.
+
+"I--oh! I have been home six months," he replied, shaking hands with a
+subtle _empressemant_ which was more effective than words.
+
+"On leave?"
+
+"No. Laid on the shelf."
+
+He stood upright, drawing himself up with ironical emphasis, as if to
+show as plainly as possible that there were many years of life and work
+in him yet.
+
+Edith Mazerod laughed, the careless passing laugh of inattention.
+
+"Dora," she said, "may I introduce General Michael? My cousin."
+
+She rose, and Seymour Michael prepared to take the vacant seat. The youth
+called Jack was making signs with his eyebrows, and in attempting to
+decipher his meaning she forgot to mention Dora's name.
+
+"You will be sorry for this," said Seymour Michael, sitting down. "You
+will not thank your cousin."
+
+"Why?" inquired Dora, prepared to like him, possibly because he had a
+brown face and wore his hair cut short.
+
+"Because," he replied, "I am hopelessly new to this work."
+
+"So am I," replied Dora; "I don't even know what pictures to look at and
+what to ignore. So I dare not look at the walls at all."
+
+"That is precisely my position, only I am worse. You know how to behave
+in polite circles; I don't. You have a slightly tired look, as if this
+sort of thing wearied you by reason of its monotony."
+
+"Have I? I am sorry for that."
+
+"No, there is no reason to be sorry. They all have it."
+
+"But," protested Dora, "I am not one of them. I am only aping the
+Romans."
+
+"You do it well; I shall study your method. You do it better than Edith
+Mazerod."
+
+"Edith is young--hopelessly, enviably young. Do you know them well?"
+
+"Yes, I knew them in India."
+
+"Of course; I forgot."
+
+He turned and looked at her sharply. Sometimes his own reputation, far
+from being a happiness, gave him cause for misgiving. A man with an
+unclean record cannot well be sure that all the details he would wish
+suppressed have been suppressed. There was a little pause, during which
+they both watched the self-satisfied throng moving in and out, here and
+there, full of a restless desire to be observed.
+
+It was Seymour Michael who spoke first. True to his mixed blood, he
+sought to make himself safe.
+
+"Excuse me," he said, "but Edith Mazerod did not mention your name; may I
+ask it?"
+
+"Dora Glynde!"
+
+She saw him start. She saw a sudden wavering gleam in his eyes which in
+another man she would have set down to fear.
+
+"Miss Dora Glynde," he repeated; and the expression of his face was so
+serene again that the look which had passed away from it began already to
+present itself to her memory as a conception of her own brain.
+
+"When I was younger and shyer," he said, with a singular haste, "I was
+afraid to ask a lady her name when I did not catch it, and--and I
+frequently regretted not having had the courage to do so."
+
+She recollected it all afterwards--every word, every pause. But then, as
+so frequently happens, knowledge aided her memory, and added significance
+to every detail.
+
+"Are you staying with the Mazerods?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I am being shown life. I am doing a season. To-night is part of my
+education. To-morrow, I believe, we go to Hurlingham; the next day to a
+charity bazaar, and so on. I believe I am getting on very well. Aunt Mary
+is pleased with me. But I still stare about me, and show visible
+disappointment when I am presented to a literary celebrity or some other
+person of newspaper renown."
+
+"Celebrities in the flesh _are_ disappointing."
+
+"Not only that, but I find that many of them are just a little common.
+Not quite what we in the country call gentlemen."
+
+"Ah! Miss Glynde, you forget that Art rises superior to class
+distinctions."
+
+"Yes, but artists don't; and artists' wives don't rise at all. I think
+you are to be congratulated. In your profession there are fewer persons
+'superior to class distinction.'"
+
+This was a subject which Seymour Michael dreaded. He was ignorant of how
+much Dora might know. He had suspected from the first that Jem Agar's
+desire that she should know the truth had been a mere matter of
+sentiment; but the fact of meeting her at this public festivity, gay and
+in colours, shook this theory from its foundation. He disliked Edith
+Mazerod, because he suspected that his own early career had probably been
+discussed in her hearing, and her easy lightness of heart was to him as
+incomprehensible as it was suspicious. Dora he rather feared without
+knowing why.
+
+"I suppose you know India well?" she said, looking straight in front of
+her.
+
+"Too well," was the reply, with a sharp sidelong glance.
+
+He was right. At that moment Dora might have been one of these
+_habitu�es_ of rout and ballroom. She was very pale and looked tired out.
+
+"I went out there thirty years ago," he continued, "into the Mutiny. From
+that time to this India has been killing my friends."
+
+There was a little pause. She knew that in the natural course of events
+it was almost certain that this man knew Jem personally. It would have
+been easy to mention his name; but the wound was too fresh, her heart was
+too sore to bear the sting of hearing him discussed.
+
+For a second Seymour Michael hovered on the brink. His lips almost framed
+the name. Good almost triumphed over evil.
+
+And the girl sitting there--broken-hearted, quiet and strong, as only
+women can be--never knew how near she was. Sometimes it seems as if the
+cruelty of fate were unnecessary, as if the word too little or the word
+too much, which has the power to alter a whole life, were withheld or
+spoken merely to further a Providential experiment.
+
+"Yes," said Michael, "I hate India."
+
+And the spell was broken, the moment lost for ever. Seymour Michael had
+kept silence, and elsewhere, perhaps, at that very moment his doom was
+spoken. Who can tell? We are offered chances--we are, if you will, the
+puppets of an experiment--and surely there must be a moment which
+decides.
+
+Dora was conscious of having miscalculated her own strength. She had led
+him on to the dangerous ground, but it was with relief that she saw him
+step back. She did not dare to lead him to it again.
+
+It was not long before he left her, on the timely arrival of another
+friend.
+
+The introduction brought about by Miss Mazerod did not seem to have been
+an entire success, for they parted gravely and without a word expressing
+the hope of meeting again. And yet Dora liked him, for he was strong and
+purposeful, such as she would have had all men. She wanted to know more
+of him. She wanted to be admitted further into the knowledge which she
+knew to be his.
+
+Seymour Michael was conscious of a feeling of discomfort, no less
+disquieting by reason of its vagueness. He had a nervous sensation of
+being surrounded by something--something in the nature of a chain,
+piecing itself together, link by link--something that was slowly closing
+in upon him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AT HURLINGHGAM
+
+I must be cruel only to be kind.
+
+
+It is not your deep person who succeeds in carrying out a set purpose,
+but one who is just profound enough to be fathomed of the multitude. For,
+after all, the multitude is ready enough to help, in a casual,
+parenthetic way, in the furtherance of a design; and a little depth,
+serving to flatter that vanity which taketh delight in a sense of
+superior perspicacity, only adds to the zest. There are plenty of people
+ready to pull on a rope or shove at a wheel, but there are more eager to
+do so if they are offered the direction of affairs.
+
+Mrs. Glynde was one of those easily-fathomed persons who often succeed in
+their designs by the very transparency of their method. She had come to
+London with the purpose of leaving Dora there under the care of her
+sister Lady Mazerod, and before she had talked to that amiable widow for
+half an hour the design was as apparent as if it had been spoken.
+
+In due course Dora and Miss Mazerod renewed a childish love, and at the
+end of April Mr. And Mrs. Glynde went back to Stagholme alone. It is
+probable that neither Mrs. Glynde nor Providence could have chosen a
+better companion for Dora at this time than Edith Mazerod. There was a
+breezy simplicity about this young lady's view of life which seemed to
+have the power of simplifying life itself. There are some people like
+this to whom is vouchsafed a limited comprehension of evil and an
+unlimited belief in good. A very shrewd author, who is, perhaps, not so
+much read to-day as he ought to be, said that "to the pure all things are
+pure." He often said less than he meant. For he knew as well as we do
+that the pure-minded are just so many moral filters who clear the
+atmosphere and take no harm themselves.
+
+Dora Glynde required some one like this; for she had, as the French say,
+"found herself." The little world of Stagholme--the world of this
+Record--was intensely human. There was nobody very good in it and nobody
+very bad. Jem, with that quicker perception of evil which is wisely
+included in the mental outfit of men, had warned her against Sister
+Cecilia. And she had begun to understand his meaning now. Mrs. Agar she
+had found out for herself. Her father she respected and loved, but she
+had reached that age wherein we discover that father and mother are but
+as other men and women. Her mother she loved with that half-patronising
+affection which is found where a daughter is mentally superior.
+
+The only person whom she had ever really respected and looked up to
+without reserve was Jem.
+
+Altogether life was too complicated, subtle, difficult, hopeless, when
+Edith Mazerod came into it, and by her presence seemed to clear the
+atmosphere of daily existence.
+
+At first the constant round of visiting and gaiety was a supreme effort;
+then came tolerance, and finally that business-like acceptance which is
+mistaken by many for enjoyment. The human machine is not constructed to
+go always at high pressure, either in happiness or in misery. We cannot
+exist all day and all night with a living care on our shoulders--the
+greatest misery slips off-sometimes. With men it can be lubricated by
+hard work, and likewise by alcohol, but the latter method is not always
+to be advised. With women there is much consolation to be extracted from
+a new dress or several new dresses and a hat. Even a new pair of gloves
+may help a breaking heart, and a glass of bitter beer taken at the right
+moment (with or without faith) has power to change a man's view of life.
+
+So Dora, who had at no time been tragic, began to find that Academy
+_soir�es_ and similar entertainments assisted her in preserving towards
+the world that attitude which she had elected to assume. And if there be
+any who blame her, they are at liberty to do so. It is not worth while to
+pause for the purpose of writing--on the ground or elsewhere--for their
+edification.
+
+Only one such alleviation did she repent of in after life. The day after
+the Academy _soir�e_ the Mazerods took her to Hurlingham. And Hurlingham
+became one of the pages of her life which she would have wished to tear
+completely out.
+
+When they drove in through the simple gateway and round by the winding
+drive, it was evident that a great afternoon was to be expected. The
+blue-and-white club flag fluttered over a pavilion crammed from roof to
+terrace. The teams were already out in their bright colours, curveting
+about, each with a practice ball, on their stiff little ponies, moving
+with that singular cramped action only seen on the polo ground.
+
+It was one of those brilliant days in early May when only gardeners,
+grumbling, talk or think of rain. A few fleecy white clouds seemed
+painted. So motionless were they, on the sky, reproducing the Hurlingham
+colours far above the ground. A gentle breeze coming up from the river
+brought with it the odour of lilac and budding things.
+
+The chairs were crowded with a well-dressed throng, the larger majority
+of which seemed to be unaware that polo was the object of the afternoon.
+
+The Mazerods and Dora had scarcely taken chairs when Arthur Agar
+presented himself. His tailor had apparently told him that after a lapse
+of six months it was permissible to assume habiliments of a slightly
+resigned tenour. His grey suit was one of the most elegant on the ground,
+his Su�de gloves fitted perfectly, his tie was unique. And Arthur Agar
+was as happy as the best-dressed girl there.
+
+The reception accorded him was not exactly enthusiastic. Having in view
+the fact that the young man called Jack was entirely satisfactory, Lady
+Mazerod treated all other young men with indifference. Edith despised
+Arthur Agar because Jack was athletic in his tendencies; and Dora was
+sorry to see him, because she had not answered his three last letters.
+There were also numerous small but expensive presents for which she had
+failed to tender thanks.
+
+Unfortunately the young man called Jack turned up at tea-time, carrying
+one of the heavy chairs, which never fail to spoil the gloves of some of
+us, with unconscious ease. Owing to the activity and enterprise of this
+young gentleman, tea was soon procured, and consequently despatched
+before the interval was over and before the band had wet its whistle with
+something of a different nature from that in vogue on the lawn. A stroll
+through the gardens was proposed, and Lady Mazerod sent the young people
+off alone. There was no choice; but Dora had probably no thought of
+making a choice, had such been offered to her. She, like many another
+young lady, erred in placing too great a confidence in her own powers of
+staving things off.
+
+There was no doubt whatever about Edith and the energetic John. They led
+the way round by the river path and the tennis-courts with a sublime
+disregard for the eye of the multitude, leaving Dora and Arthur to follow
+at such speed as their discretion might dictate.
+
+Before they had left the tennis-lawn Arthur plunged. It may have been the
+desperation of diffidence, or perhaps that the new grey suit and the
+unique tie lent him confidence. One sees a young lady completely carried
+off her mental status by the success of a dress or the absence of a
+dreaded competitor, and Arthur Agar had enough of the woman in him to
+give way to this dangerous vertigo.
+
+"Dora," he said, "you have not answered my last three letters."
+
+"No," she replied, "because they struck me as a little ridiculous."
+
+"Ridiculous!" he repeated, with such sincere dismay that she was moved to
+compassion. "Ridiculous, Dora, why?"
+
+His horror-struck, almost tearful voice gave her a pang of self-reproach,
+as if she had struck some defenceless dumb animal.
+
+"Well, there were things in them that I did not understand."
+
+"But I could make you understand them," he said, with a sudden
+self-assertion which startled her. The weakest man is, after all, a
+man--so far as women are concerned.
+
+"I think you had better not," she said, hurrying her steps.
+
+But he refused to alter his pace, and he disregarded her warning.
+
+"They meant," he said, "that I wanted you to know that I love you."
+
+There was a little pause. Dora was struck dumb by a chill sense of
+foreboding. It was like a momentary glance into a future full of trouble.
+
+"I am sorry," she said, "for that. I hope--that you may find that it is a
+mistake."
+
+"But it is not a mistake. I don't see why it should be one."
+
+Dora paused. She was afraid to strike. She did not know yet that it is
+less cruel to be cruel at once.
+
+"It is best to look at these things practically," she said. "And if we
+look at it practically we shall find that you and I are not at all likely
+to be happy together."
+
+"However I look at it, I only see that I should never be happy without
+you."
+
+"Then, Arthur, you are not looking at it practically."
+
+"No, and I don't want to," he replied doggedly.
+
+"That is a mistake. A little bit of life may not be practical, but all
+the rest of it is; and for the gratification of that little bit, there is
+all the rest to be lived through."
+
+Arthur looked puzzled. He rearranged the orchid in his coat before
+replying. He had found time to think of the orchid.
+
+"I don't understand all that," he said. "I only know that I love you, and
+that I should be miserable without you. Besides, if that little bit is
+love--I suppose you admit there is such a thing as love?"
+
+Dora winced. She was looking through the trees across the peaceful
+evening river.
+
+"Yes," she answered gently. "I suppose so."
+
+Arthur Agar had been brought up in an atmosphere of futile discussion,
+but he had never wanted anything in vain. There are women--fools--who
+dare to bring up children thus in a world where wanting in vain is the
+chief characteristic of daily life. Arthur was ready enough to go on
+discussing his future thus, but never doubted that it would all come to
+his desire in the end. He was like a woman in so much as he failed to
+understand an argument which he could not meet.
+
+They walked on amidst the flowering shrubs, and Dora was filled with a
+disquieting sense of having failed to convince him.
+
+"I do not want to hurry you," said Arthur presently, with a maddening
+equanimity. "You can give me your answer some other time."
+
+"But I have given it now."
+
+Arthur was engaged in taking off his hat to a passing lady, and made no
+acknowledgment of this.
+
+"Everybody at home would be pleased," he observed, after a pause occupied
+by the adjustment of his hat. "They all want it."
+
+It was not that he refused to take No when it was given to him, but
+rather that he did not recognise it, never having encountered it before.
+
+They were now coming round by the pigeon-shooting enclosure, and the
+strains of the band announced that the interval for tea had elapsed.
+
+In the distance Lady Mazerod and Edith, attended by the indefatigable
+Jack, were keeping a chair for Dora. She slackened her pace. To her the
+knowledge had come that the difficulties of life have usually to be met
+single-handed. She was not afraid of Arthur, but this was a distinct
+difficulty because of the influence he had at his back.
+
+"Arthur," she said, "I think we had better understand each other _now_.
+It may save us both something in the future. I cannot help feeling rather
+sorry that I must say No. Every girl must feel that. I do not know from
+whence the feeling comes. It is a sort of regret, as if something good
+and valuable were being wasted. But, Arthur, it _is_ No, and it must
+always be No. I am not the sort of person to change."
+
+"I suppose," he replied, _en vrai fils de sa m�re_, "that there is some
+one else?"
+
+He turned as he spoke, but Dora's parasol was too quick for him.
+
+"Please do not let us be like people in books," she said. "There is no
+necessity to go into side issues at all. You have asked me to marry you.
+I can never marry you. There is the whole question and the whole answer.
+I say nothing to you about finding somebody worthier, or any nonsense of
+that sort. Please spare me the usual--impertinences--about there being
+somebody else."
+
+The word found its mark. Arthur Agar caught his breath, but made no
+answer.
+
+They were among the well-dressed throng now crowding back to the chairs.
+
+When Arthur had handed Dora over to the care of Lady Mazerod he lifted
+his hat and took his departure with that perfect _savoir faire_ which was
+his _forte_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IN A SIDE PATH
+
+"To sum up all, he has the worst fault-a husband can have, he's not my
+choice."
+
+
+There is something doubtful in a love-making that is in more than two
+pairs of hands. This is a day of syndicates. The strength that lies in
+union is cultivated nowadays with much assiduity. But in matters of love
+the case is not yet altered, and never will be. It is a matter for two
+people to decide between themselves, and all interference is mistaken and
+deplorable. It is usually, one notices, those persons who are incapable
+of the feeling themselves who seek to interfere in the affairs of others.
+
+That one of the principals should seek aid in such interference proves
+without appeal that he does not know his business. Such aid as this Arthur
+Agar had sought. He had, as Dora suspected, written to his mother, with
+full particulars of the conversation beneath the Hurlingham trees. He had
+laid before her many arguments, which, by reason of their effeminacy,
+appealed to her illogical mind, proving that Dora could not do better than
+marry him. The arrangement, he argued, was satisfactory from whatever
+point of view it might be taken; and, finally, he begged his mother to try
+and succeed where he had failed. He did not propose that Mrs. Agar should
+appeal to Dora; not because such a course was repellent, but merely
+because he knew a better. He suggested that Mrs. Agar should sound Mr.
+Glynde upon the matter.
+
+This suggestion was in itself a stroke of diplomacy. The astute have no
+doubt found out by this time that the Reverend Thomas Glynde loved money;
+and a man who loves money has not the makings of a good father within
+him, whatever else he may have. Whether Arthur was aware of this it would
+be hard to say. Whether he had the penetration to know that, in the
+nature of things, Mr. Glynde would urge Dora to marry Arthur Agar and
+Stagholme, without due regard to her own feelings in the matter, is a
+question upon which no man can give a reliable opinion. Certain it is
+that such a course was precisely what the Reverend Thomas had marked out
+for himself.
+
+He had an exaggerated respect for money and position--a title was a thing
+to be revered. Clergymen, like artists, are dependent on patronage, and
+must swallow their pride. It is therefore, perhaps, only natural that Mr.
+Glynde should be quite prepared to make some sacrifice of feeling or
+sentiment (especially the feeling and sentiment of another) in order to
+secure a position.
+
+Arthur Agar simply followed the spirit of the age. He could not succeed
+alone, and therefore he proceeded to form a syndicate to compel Dora to
+love him, or in the meantime to marry him.
+
+"Of course," said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar, when the matter was first
+under discussion, "she would soon learn to care for him. Women _always_
+do."
+
+Which shows how much Sister Cecilia knew about it.
+
+"And besides, I believe she cares for him already," added Mrs. Agar, who
+never did things by halves.
+
+Sister Cecilia dropped her head on one side and looked convinced--to
+order.
+
+"Of course," pursued Mrs. Agar vaguely, "I am very fond of Dora; no one
+could be more so. But I must confess that I do not always understand
+her."
+
+Even to Sister Cecilia it would not do to confess that she was afraid of
+her.
+
+The interview was easily brought about. Mrs. Agar wrote a note to the
+Rector and asked him to luncheon. The Rector, who had not had many legal
+affairs to settle during his uneventful life, was always pleased to be
+consulted upon a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing. Besides,
+they gave one a good luncheon at Stagholme in those days.
+
+"I have had a letter from dear Arthur," said Mrs. Agar, at a moment which
+she deemed propitious, namely, after a third glass of the Stagholme brown
+sherry.
+
+"Ah! I hope he is well. The boy is not strong."
+
+"Yes, he is quite well, thank you. But of course he has had a great
+shock, and one cannot expect him to get over it all at once."
+
+The Rector did not hold much by sentiment, so he contented himself with a
+grave sip of sherry.
+
+"And now I am afraid there is fresh trouble," added Mrs. Agar.
+
+"Been running into debt?" suggested Mr. Glynde.
+
+"No, it is not that. No, it is Dora."
+
+"Dora! What has Dora been doing?"
+
+Mrs. Agar was polishing the rim of a silver salt-cellar with her
+forefinger.
+
+"Of course," she said, "I have seen it going on for a long time. My poor
+boy has always--well, he has always admired Dora."'
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Yes, and of course I should like nothing better. I am sure they would be
+most happy."
+
+The Rector looked doubtful.
+
+"We must not forget," he said, "that Arthur is constitutionally
+delicate. That extreme repugnance to active exercise, the love of ease
+and--er--indoor pursuits, show a tendency to enfeeble the organisation
+which might--I don't say it will, but it might--turn to decline."
+
+"But the doctors say that he is quite strong. Everybody cannot be robust
+and--and massive."
+
+She was thinking of Jem, against whom she had always borne a grudge,
+because his inoffensive presence alone had the power of making Arthur
+look puny.
+
+"No; and of course with care one may hope that Arthur will live to a ripe
+old age," said the Rector, who was only coquetting with the question.
+
+Mrs. Agar played with a biscuit. She had a rooted aversion to the query
+direct.
+
+"I should have thought," she said, "that you or her mother would have
+seen that such an attachment was likely to form itself."
+
+The truth was that the Reverend Thomas did not devote very much thought
+to any subject which did not directly influence his own well-being. He
+had at one time thought that an attachment between Jem and Dora might
+conveniently result from a childhood's friendship, but Arthur had not
+entered into his prognostications at all. He rather despised the youth,
+as much on his own account as that he was Anna Agar's son.
+
+"Can't say," he replied, "that the thing ever entered my head. Of course,
+if the young people have settled it all between themselves, I suppose we
+must give them our blessing, and be thankful that we have been saved
+further trouble."
+
+He thought it rather strange that Dora should have fixed her affections
+on such an unlikely object as Arthur Agar; but it was part of his earthly
+creed that the feelings of women are as incomprehensible as they are
+unimportant. Which, by the way, serves to show how very little the Rector
+of Stagholme knew of the world.
+
+"But," protested Mrs. Agar, "they have _not_ settled it between
+themselves. That is just it."
+
+"Just what?"
+
+"Just the difficulty."
+
+Immediately Mr. Glynde's face fell to its usual degree of set depression.
+
+"What do they want me to do?" he inquired, with that air of resignation
+which is in reality no resignation at all.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Agar volubly, "it appears that Arthur spoke to Dora at
+Hurlingham, and for some reason she said No. I can't understand it at
+all. I am sure she has always appeared to like him very much. It may have
+been some passing fancy or something, you know. When she is told that it
+would please us all, perhaps she will change her mind. Poor Arthur is
+terribly cut up about it. Of course a man in his position does not quite
+expect to be treated cavalierly like that."
+
+Mr. Glynde smiled. Behind the parson there was somewhat even better;
+there was a just and honest English gentleman, which, in the way of human
+species, is very hard to beat.
+
+"I am afraid Arthur will have to manage such affairs for himself. When a
+girl is settling a question involving her whole life she does not usually
+pause to consider the position of the man who asks her to be his wife. He
+would have no business to ask her had he no position, and the rest is
+merely a matter of degrees."
+
+"Then you don't care about the match?" said Mrs. Agar, to whose mind the
+earliest rudiments of logic were incomprehensible.
+
+"I do not say that," replied the Rector, with the patience of a man who
+has had dealings with women all his life; "but I should like it to be
+understood that Dora is quite free to choose for herself. I am willing to
+tell her that the match would be satisfactory to me. Arthur is a
+gentleman, which is saying a good deal in these days. He is affectionate,
+and, so far as I know, a dutiful son. I have little doubt he would make a
+good husband."
+
+Mrs. Agar wiped away an obvious tear, which ran off Mr. Glynde's mental
+epidermis like water off the back of the proverbial fowl. This also he
+had learnt in the course of his dealings with the world.
+
+"He has been a good son to me," sniffed the fond and foolish mother.
+
+Neither of these persons was capable of understanding that "goodness" is
+not all we want in husband or wife. These good husbands--heaven help
+their wives!--break as many hearts as those who are labelled by the world
+with the black ticket.
+
+"Then I may tell Arthur that you will help him?" said Mrs. Agar, with a
+sudden access of practical energy.
+
+"You may tell him that he has my good wishes, and that I will point out
+to Dora the advantages of--acceding to his desire. There are, of course,
+advantages on both sides, we know that."
+
+As usual, Mrs. Agar overdid things. The airiness of her indifference
+might have deceived a child of eight, provided that its intellect was not
+_de premi�re force._
+
+"Ye-es," she murmured, "I suppose Dora would bring her
+little--eh--subscription towards the household expenses. Sister Cecilia
+gave me to understand that there was a little something coming to her
+under her mother's marriage settlement."
+
+Mrs. Agar was not clever enough to see that she had made a mistake. The
+mention of Sister Cecilia's name acted on the Rector like a mental
+douche. He was just beginning to give way to expansiveness--probably
+under the suave influence of the brown sherry--and the name of Sister
+Cecilia pulled him together with a jerk. The jerk extended to his
+features; but Mrs. Agar was one of those cunning women whom no man need
+fear. She was so cunning that she deceived herself into seeing that which
+she wished to see, and nothing else.
+
+"All that," said the Rector gravely, "can be discussed when Arthur has
+persuaded Dora to say Yes."
+
+He was in the position of an unfortunate person who, having come into
+controversy with the police, is warned that every word he says may be
+used in evidence against him. He had been reminded that every detail of
+the present conversation would be repeated to Sister Cecilia, with
+embellishments or subtractions as might please the narrator's fancy or
+suit her purpose.
+
+"A dangerous woman" he called Sister Cecilia in his most gloomy voice,
+and a parson must perforce fear dangerous women. That is one of the
+trials of the ministry.
+
+Mrs. Agar laughed in a forced manner.
+
+"Of course," she said--she had a habit of beginning her remarks with
+these two words--"of course, we need not think of such questions yet. I
+am sure all _I_ want is the happiness of the dear children."
+
+"Umph!" ejaculated Mr. Glynde, who was not always a model of politeness.
+
+"That, I am sure," continued Mrs. Agar, with a dabbing
+pocket-handkerchief, "is the dearest wish of us all."
+
+"When does the boy come home?" inquired the Rector.
+
+"Oh, in a week. I am so longing for him to come. He has to go to town to
+get some clothes, which will delay his return by one night."
+
+"Is he doing any good this term?"
+
+Mrs. Agar looked slightly hurt.
+
+"Well, he always works very hard, I am only afraid that he should overdo
+it. You know, I suppose, that he did not get through his examination this
+term. Of course it is no good _my_ saying anything, but I am quite
+convinced that they are not dealing fairly by him. I have seen some of
+those examination papers, and some of the questions are simply spiteful.
+They do it on purpose, I know. And Sister Cecilia tells me that that
+_does_ happen sometimes. For some reason or other--because they have been
+snubbed, or something like that--the masters, the examiners, or whatever
+they are called, make a dead set at some men, and simply keep them back.
+They don't give them the marks that they ought to have. Why should Arthur
+always fail? Of course the thing is unfair."
+
+This theory was not quite new to the Rector. He had given up arguing
+about it, and usually took refuge in flight. He did so on this occasion.
+But as he walked home across the park, smoking a cigarette, he reflected
+that to the owner of Stagholme such a small matter as a college career
+was, after all, of no importance. These broad acres, the stately forests,
+the grand old house, raised Arthur Agar above such considerations, indeed
+above most considerations. And Mr. Glynde made up his mind to put it very
+strongly to Dora.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ALONE
+
+The name of the slough was Despond.
+
+
+When Dora returned to Stagholme a fortnight later she was relieved to
+find that Arthur had not yet come down from Cambridge.
+
+It is a strange thing that in the spring-time those who are happy--_pro
+tempore_, of course, we know all that--are happier, while those who carry
+something with them find the burden heavier. Stagholme in the spring came
+as a sort of shock to Dora. There were certain adjuncts to the growth of
+things which gave her actual pain. After dinner, the first night, she
+walked across the garden to the beechwood, but before long she came back
+again. There is a scent in beech forests in the spring which is like no
+other scent on earth, and Dora found that she could not stand it.
+
+Her father and mother were sitting in the drawing-room with open windows,
+for it was a warm May that year. She came in through the falling
+curtains, and something warned her to keep her face averted from the
+furtive glance of her mother's eyes. She had learnt something of the
+world during her brief season in town, and one of the lessons had been
+that the world sees more than is often credited to it.
+
+"The worst," she said cheerfully, "of a season in town is that it makes
+one feel aged and experienced. Middle age came upon me suddenly, just
+now, in the garden."
+
+Mr. Glynde was looking at her almost critically over his newspaper.
+
+"How old are you?" he asked curtly.
+
+"Twenty-five."
+
+In some indefinite way the question jarred horribly. Dora was conscious
+of a faint doubt in the infallibility of her father's judgment. She knew
+that in a worldly sense he was more experienced, more thoughtful,
+cleverer than her mother, but in some ways she inclined towards the
+maternal opinion on questions connected with herself.
+
+At this moment Mrs. Glynde was called from the room, and went
+reluctantly, feeling that the time was unpropitious.
+
+Mr. Glynde's life had been eminently uneventful. Prosperous, happy in a
+half-hearted, almost negative, way, somewhat selfish, he had never known
+hardship, had never faced adversity. It is such men as this who love what
+they call a serious talk, summoning the subject thereof with exaggerated
+gravity to a study, making a point of the _mise en sc�ne_, and finally
+saying nothing that could not have been spoken in course of ordinary
+conversation.
+
+Dora detected the odour of a serious talk in the atmosphere, and she
+found that something had taken away the awe which such conversations had
+hitherto inspired. It may have been the season in town, but it was more
+probably that confidence which comes from the knowledge of the world.
+There were things in life of which she consciously knew more than her
+father, and one of these was sorrow. There is nothing that gives so much
+confidence as the knowledge that the worst possible has happened. It
+raises one above the petty worries of daily existence.
+
+Dora knew that her acquaintance with sorrow was more intimate, more
+thorough, than that of her father, who sat looking as if the hangman were
+at the door. She awaited the serious talk with some apprehension, but
+none of that almost paralysing awe which she had known in childhood.
+
+"I am getting an old man," he said, with supreme egotism, "and you cannot
+expect to have me with you much longer."
+
+"But I do expect it," replied Dora cheerfully. "I am sorry to disappoint
+you, papa, but I do expect it most decidedly."
+
+This rather spoilt the lugubrious gravity of the situation.
+
+"Well, thank Heaven! I am a hearty man yet," admitted the Rector rather
+more hopefully; "but still you cannot expect to have your parents with
+you all your life, you know."
+
+"I think it is wiser not to look too far into the future," replied Dora,
+warding off.
+
+"I should look much more happily into the future," replied the Rector,
+with the deliberation of the domestic autocrat, "if I knew that you had a
+good husband to take care of you."
+
+In a flash of thought Dora traced it all back to Arthur, through Mrs.
+Agar; and her would-be lover fell still further in her estimation. He
+seemed to be fated to show himself at every turn the very antitype to her
+ideal.
+
+"Ah," she laughed, "but suppose I got a bad one? You are always saying
+that marriage is a lottery, and I don't believe the remark is original.
+Suppose I drew a blank; fancy being married to a blank! Or I might do
+worse. I might draw minus something--minus brains, for instance. They
+are in the lottery, for I have seen them, nicely done up in faultless
+linen--both blanks and worse."
+
+She turned away towards the window, and the moment her face was averted
+it changed suddenly. The face that looked out towards the beech-wood,
+where the shadows were creeping from the darkening east, was piteous,
+terror-stricken, driven.
+
+It is an ever-living question why people--honest, well-meaning parents
+and others--should be set to ride rough-shod over all that is best and
+purest in the human mind.
+
+The Rector went on, in his calmly self-satisfied voice, with a fatuous
+ignorance of what he was doing which must have made the very angels
+wince.
+
+"A great many girls," he said, "have thrown away a chance of happiness
+merely to serve a passing fancy. Mind you don't do that."
+
+She gave a little laugh, quite natural and easy, but her face was grave,
+and more.
+
+"I do not think there is any fear of that," she replied lightly. "You
+must confess, papa, that I have always displayed a remarkable capacity
+for the management of my own affairs--with the assistance of Sister
+Cecilia, _bien entendu_."
+
+This was rather a forlorn hope, but Dora was driven into a corner. The
+Rector was in the habit of preaching a good methodical sermon, and
+usually finished up somewhere in the neighbourhood of the text from
+whence he started. He allowed himself to deviate, but he never turned his
+back upon his text and went for a vague ramble through scriptural
+meadows, as some have been heard to do. He deviated on this occasion for
+a moment, but never lost sight of the main question.
+
+"Sister Cecilia," he said, "is a busybody, and, like all busybodies, a
+fool. It is always people who cannot manage their own affairs who are so
+anxious to help their neighbours. I have no doubt that you are as capable
+of looking after yourself as any girl; but, child, you must remember that
+experience goes a long way in the world, and in the nature of things I
+must know better than you."
+
+"Of course you do, papa dear. I know that."
+
+But she did not know it, and he knew that she did not. This knowledge is
+certain to come, sooner or later, to men and women who have lived for
+themselves and in themselves alone. They are mental hermits, whose
+opinion of things connected with the lives of others cannot well be of
+value because they have only studied their own existences.
+
+The Rector of Stagholme suddenly became aware of this. He suddenly found
+that his advice was no longer law. There are plenty of us ready to
+confess that we cannot play billiards or whist or polo, but no man likes
+it to be known that he cannot play the game of life. Mr. Glynde did not
+like this subtle feeling of incompetency. He prided himself on being a
+man of the world, and frequently applied the vague term to himself. We
+are all men of a world, but it depends upon the size of that world as to
+what value our citizenship may be. Mr. Glynde's world had always been the
+Reverend Thomas Glynde. He knew nothing of Dora's world, and lost his way
+as soon as he set his foot therein. But rather than make inquiries he
+thought to support paternal dignity by going further.
+
+"It is," he said, with inevitable egotism, "unnecessary for me to tell
+you that I have only your interests at heart."
+
+"Quite, papa dear. But do not let us talk about these horrid things. I am
+quite happy at home, and I do not want to go away from it. There is
+nowhere in the world where I should sooner be than here, even taking into
+consideration the fact that you are sometimes the most dismal old
+gentleman on the face of the earth."
+
+"Well," he answered, with a grim smile, "I am sure I have enough to make
+me dismal. I am thankful to say that there will be no difficulty about
+money. You will be well enough off to have all that you might desire. But
+wealth is not all that a woman wants. She cannot turn it to the same
+account as a man. She wants position, a household, a husband. Otherwise
+the world only makes use of her; she is a prey to charity humbugs and bad
+people who do good works badly. I am not speaking as a parson, but as a
+man of the world."
+
+"Then," she said, "as a parson, tell me if it would not be wrong to marry
+a man for whom one did not care, just for the sake of these things--a
+household and a husband."
+
+"Of course it would," answered Mr. Glynde. "And that is a wrong which is
+usually punished in this life. But there are cases where it is difficult
+to say whether there be love or not. Unless you actually despise or hate
+a man, you may come to care for him."
+
+"And in the meantime the position and the advantages mentioned are worth
+seizing?"
+
+"So says the world," admitted Mr. Glynde.
+
+"And what says the parson?"
+
+She went to him and laid her two arms upon his broad chest, standing
+behind him as he sat in his arm-chair and looking down affectionately
+upon his averted face.
+
+"And what says the parson?" she repeated, with a loving tap of her
+fingers on his breast.
+
+"Nothing," was the reply. "A better parson than I says that what is
+natural is right."
+
+"Yes, and that means follow the dictates of your own heart?"
+
+"I suppose so," admitted the Hector, taking her two hands in his.
+
+"And the dictates of my heart are all for staying at home and looking
+after my ancient parents and worrying them. Am I to be sent away? Not
+yet, old gentleman, not yet."
+
+The Reverend Thomas Glynde laughed, somewhat as if a weight had been
+lifted from his heart. In his way he was a conscientious man. It was his
+honest conviction that Dora would do well to marry Arthur, who was a
+gentleman and essentially harmless. In persuading her to do so covertly,
+as he had thought well to do, he was honestly performing that which he
+thought to be his duty towards her. Presently Mrs. Glynde came back, and
+shortly afterwards Dora left the room. The Rector was not reading the
+book he held open on his knee, but gazed instead absently at the pattern
+of the hearthrug.
+
+A change had come in this quiet household. Dora had gone away a child.
+She had come back a woman, with that consciousness of life which comes
+somewhere between twenty and thirty years of age--a consciousness which
+is partly made up of the knowledge that life is, after all, given to each
+one of us individually to make the best of as well as we may; and no one
+knows what that best is except ourselves. What is happiness for one is
+misery for another, and while human beings vary as the clouds of heaven,
+no life can be lived by set rule.
+
+Over these things the Rector pondered. He felt the difference in Dora.
+She was still his daughter, but no longer a child. Her existence was
+still his chief care, but he could only stand by and help a little here
+and there; for the dependency of childhood was left behind, and her
+evident intention was to work out her own life in her own way. So do
+those who are dependent by nature upon the advice and sympathy of others
+learn to lean only upon their own strength.
+
+In the room overhead, standing by the window with weary eyes, Dora was
+murmuring: "I wonder--I wonder if I shall be able to hold out against
+them all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+ACROSS THE YEARS
+
+Across the years you seem to come.
+
+
+"That is just what I can't do. I cannot afford to wait."
+
+Arthur Agar drew in his neatly-shod little feet, and leant back in the
+deep chair which was always set aside as his in the Stagholme
+drawing-room.
+
+Mother and son were alone in the vast, somewhat gloomy apartment. Arthur
+had been home six hours, and the subject of their conversation was, of
+course, Dora.
+
+Sister Cecilia was absent, only in obedience to a very unmistakable hint
+in one of Arthur's recent letters to his mother.
+
+"Only a little while," pleaded Mrs. Agar. "Of course, dear, it will all
+come right. I feel convinced of that. Only you see, dear, girls do not
+like to be hurried in such an important step. I am quite sure she cares
+for you; only you _must_ give her a little time."
+
+"But I can't, I can't," he repeated anxiously. And his face wore that
+strangely accentuated look of trouble which almost amounted to
+dread--dread of something in life which had not come yet.
+
+"Why not?" inquired Mrs. Agar. "You are both young enough, I am sure."
+
+"Oh, yes, we are young enough."
+
+He stirred his tea with an effeminate appreciation of fine Coalport and a
+dainty Norwegian spoon.
+
+"Then why should you not wait?"
+
+Arthur was silent; he looked very small and frail, almost childlike, in
+his silk-faced evening coat. Spoilt boy was writ large all over his
+person. "Arthur," said Mrs. Agar, "you are keeping something from me."
+
+He shook his feeble head feebly.
+
+"You are, I know you are. What is it?"
+
+This was the only person in all the world who had stirred the heart of
+Anna Agar to something like a lasting affection. Once--years before--she
+had loved Seymour Michael with a sudden volcanic passion which had as
+suddenly turned to hatred. But under no circumstances could such a love
+have endured. Consistency, constancy, singleness of purpose were quite
+lacking in this woman's composition. It is rare, but when a woman does
+fail in this respect, her failure is more complete, more miserable than
+the failure of men, inconstant as they are.
+
+Her affection for Arthur, coupled with that suspicion which always goes
+with a cheap cunning, had put her on the right scent.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "I insist on knowing."
+
+Still he held his peace, with the obstinate silence of the weak.
+
+"Well, then," she cried, "don't ask me to help you to win Dora, that is
+all!"
+
+There was a pause; in the silence of the great house the wind moaned
+softly. It always moaned in the drawing-room, whether in calm or storm,
+from some undiscovered draught in the high ventilated ceiling.
+
+"I sometimes think," said Arthur at length, in an awestruck voice, "that
+Jem may not be dead."
+
+"Not dead! Arthur, how can you be so stupid?"
+
+She was not at all awestruck. Her denser, more sordid nature was proof
+against the silence or the humming wind. The greed of gain has power to
+kill superstition.
+
+His face puzzled her. Suddenly he cast himself back and hid his face in
+his hands.
+
+"Oh!" he muttered, "I can't do it, I can't do it!"
+
+In an instant his mother was standing over him.
+
+"Arthur," she hissed, "you _know_ something?"
+
+"Yes," he confessed in a whisper at length.
+
+"Jem is not dead?" she hissed again. Her voice was hoarse.
+
+"He was not killed in the disaster," admitted Arthur. In his heart he was
+still clinging to the other hope subtly held out by Seymour Michael--the
+hope that in his simple intrepidity Jem had gone to his death.
+
+"Then where is he--where is he, Arthur? Tell me quickly!"
+
+Mrs. Agar was white and breathless. It was as if she had bartered her
+soul, and after payment, had been tricked out of her share of the
+bargain. She trembled with a fear which seemed to fill her world and
+extend to the other world to come.
+
+"He escaped from that action," said Arthur, who, now that the truth was
+out, grew voluble like a child making a confession, "by being sent on in
+front with a few men. They escaped notice, while the larger body was
+attacked and massacred."
+
+"Who told you this?"
+
+"I do not know. I cannot tell you his name."
+
+"Arthur!" exclaimed Mrs. Agar nervously, "are you going mad? Do you know
+what you are saying?"
+
+In reply he gave a little laugh like a sob.
+
+"Oh yes," he replied, "it is all right. I know what I am saying, though
+sometimes I scarcely believe it myself. If it was a hundred years ago one
+might believe it easily enough, but now it seems unreal."
+
+"Then where is Jem? Was he taken prisoner? Those men are savages, aren't
+they? They kill--people when they take them prisoners."
+
+"No, he was not taken prisoner," said Arthur. Sometimes he lost patience
+in a snappy, feminine way with his mother.
+
+"Oh! tell me, tell me, Arthur dear! You are killing me!"
+
+"I will, if you will let me. It appears that Jem had made himself a name
+out there for knowing the country and the people, which is useful to the
+Government, because Russia and England both want the country, or
+something like that; I don't quite understand it."
+
+"Oh, never mind! Go on!" interrupted Mrs. Agar, with characteristic
+impatience.
+
+"And at any rate the men on the other side--the Russians or some one, I
+don't know who--were in the habit of watching Jem so as to prevent his
+going up into this unexplored country. Well, when the report of his death
+was put in the newspapers it was left uncontradicted, so that these men
+should think he was dead, and not be on the look-out for him. Do you
+understand?"
+
+Mrs. Agar had raised her head, with listening, attentive eyes. It seemed
+as if a voice had come to her across the years from the distant past. A
+voice telling an old story, which had never been forgotten, but merely
+laid aside in the memory among those things that never are forgotten.
+
+Finding Arthur's troubled gaze upon her, she seemed to recollect herself
+with a little gesture of her hand to her breast as if breathing were
+difficult.
+
+"That does not sound like a thing Jem would do," she said, with one of
+those flashes of shrewd observation which sometimes come to inconsequent
+people, and make it difficult for those around them to be sure how much
+they see and how much passes unobserved.
+
+"It was not Jem, it was this other man."
+
+"Which other man?" Mrs. Agar gave a little gasp, as if she had found
+something she feared to find.
+
+"The man who told me--he was Jem's superior officer."
+
+"When did he tell you--where?"
+
+"He came to see me at Cambridge, and brought those things of Jem's,"
+replied Arthur. So far from feeling guilty at thus revealing all that he
+had promised to keep secret, he was now beginning to experience some
+pangs of conscience at the recollection of a concealment which, by a
+supreme effort, had been made to extend to four months.
+
+There was a sly gleam in Mrs. Agar's eyes. A close observer knowing her
+well could have seen the cunning written on her face, for it was cheap
+and obvious.
+
+"Oh!" she said indifferently, "and what sort of man was he?"
+
+Arthur pondered with a deliberation that almost maddened her.
+
+"Oh!" he replied at length, "a small man, dark, with a sunburnt face; a
+Jew, I should think. He was rather well dressed--in the military style,
+of course."
+
+"Yes," muttered Mrs. Agar. "Yes."
+
+There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Agar reflected, as deeply,
+perhaps, as she had ever reflected in her life.
+
+Then she discovered something for herself which had of necessity been
+pointed out to her son--a subtle divergence of character.
+
+"But," she said, "of course Jem may never come back from this expedition.
+It _must_ be very dangerous."
+
+"It is very dangerous."
+
+Mrs. Agar's sigh of relief was quite audible. It is thus that nature
+sometimes betrays human nature.
+
+"Did _he_ say that? Did _he_ think that of it?"
+
+Seymour Michael's opinion still had value in her eyes.
+
+"Yes," the reply came slowly; "he said that we might almost look upon Jem
+as a dead man."
+
+Mother and son looked at each other and said nothing. Heredity is a
+strange thing, and one alternately aggrandised and slighted. Blood is a
+very powerful force, but the little lessons taught in childhood's years
+bear a wondrous crop of good or evil fruit in later days.
+
+Left alone, Arthur Agar's natural tendency was towards good. Probably
+because he was timid, and goodness seems the safer course. There are many
+who have not the courage to forsake goodness, even for a moment. But
+under the influence of a stronger will--that is to say, under the
+influence of four out of every five persons crossing his path--Arthur was
+liable to be led in any direction. He would rather have sinned in company
+than have cultivated virtue in the solitude usually accorded to that
+state.
+
+Somehow, in his mother's presence it did not seem so very wrong to keep
+back the truth respecting Jem and to turn it to his own ends. It did not
+seem either mean or cowardly to take advantage of a rival's absence and
+gain his object, by deception. So, perhaps, it was in the beginning, when
+the world was young. In those days also a mother and son helped each
+other in deception, and so since then have many thousands of mothers
+(incompetent or vicious) led their children to ruin.
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Agar, "if Jem goes and does things of that
+description he must take the consequences."
+
+Arthur said nothing in reply to this. The thought had been his for some
+months, but he had never put it into shape.
+
+"We are perfectly justified," she went on, "in acting as if Jem were dead
+until he deigns to advise us to the contrary."
+
+This also was putting a long-cherished thought into form.
+
+Arthur knew that he ought to have told his mother then and there that Jem
+had taken every step in his power to advise him as soon as possible of
+the falseness of the news transmitted to the newspapers. But something
+held him silent, some taint of hereditary untruthfulness.
+
+"I do not see," she said, "that this news can, therefore, make much
+difference. There is no reason to alter any of our plans. To begin with,
+I am certain that he is dead. We must have heard by this time if he had
+been living."
+
+Arthur gave a little nod of acquiescence.
+
+"And also," pursued Mrs. Agar, with characteristic inconsistency, "he
+evidently does not care about us or our feelings."
+
+Arthur knew what she meant, and he descended as low in the moral scale as
+ever he went during his life.
+
+"But," he said, "there is, all the same, no time to lose."
+
+He passed his hand over his sleek, lifeless hair with a weary look.
+
+"Well, dear," said his mother soothingly, "I will see Ellen Glynde
+to-morrow, and try to make her say something to Dora. A girl's mother has
+always more influence than her father."
+
+This idiotic axiom seemed to satisfy Arthur, probably because he knew no
+better, and he rose to take his bedroom candlestick.
+
+Mrs. Agar was a person utterly incapable of harbouring two thoughts at
+the same moment. She never even got so far as to place two sides of a
+question upon an equal footing in her mind. All her questions had but one
+side. She was not thinking of Arthur when she went to her room. She was
+not thinking of him when she lay staring at the daylight, which had crept
+up into the sky before she closed her eyes.
+
+She tossed and turned and moaned aloud with a childish impatience. Her
+mind could find no rest; it could not throw off the deadly knowledge that
+Seymour Michael had come back into her life. And somehow she was no
+longer Anna Agar, but Anna Hethbridge. She was no longer the fond mother
+whose whole world was filled by thoughts of her son--a miserable,
+thoughtless, haphazard world it was--but again she was the wronged woman,
+moved by the one great passion that had stirred her sordid soul, a
+fearsome hatred for Seymour Michael.
+
+She was not an analytical woman; she had never thought about her own
+thoughts; she was as superficial as human nature can well be. That is to
+say, she was little more than an animal with the gift of speech, added to
+one or two small items of knowledge which divide men from beasts. But she
+_knew_ that this was not the end. She never doubted for a moment that it
+was merely a beginning, that Seymour Michael was coming back into her
+life.
+
+Like a child she tossed and tumbled in her bed, muttering
+half-consciously, "Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW
+
+His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.
+
+
+For two days Mrs. Glynde had been going about the world with a bright red
+patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely,
+the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning
+service her fervour was something astonishing--the quaver in her voice
+was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to
+silent prayer after the blessing was so abnormally long that Stark, the
+sexton, had to rattle the keys twice, with all due respect and for the
+sake of his Sunday dinner, before she rose from her knees; whereas once
+usually sufficed.
+
+It was the devout practice that all the Rectory servants should go to
+evening service, while Mrs. Glynde, or Dora, or both, remained at home to
+take care of the house. On this particular evening Mrs. Glynde proposed
+that Dora should stay with her, and what her mother proposed Dora usually
+acceded to.
+
+"Dear," said the elder lady, with a nervous little jerk of the head which
+was habitual or physical, "I have heard about Arthur."
+
+They were sitting in the drawing-room, with windows open to the ground,
+and the fading light was insufficient to read by, although both had
+books.
+
+"Yes, mother," answered the girl in rather a tired voice, quite
+forgetting to be cheerful. "I should like to know exactly what you
+heard."
+
+"Well, Anna told me," and there was a whole world of distrust in the
+little phrase, "that Arthur had asked you to be his wife, and that you
+had refused without giving a reason."
+
+"I gave him a reason," replied Dora; "the best one. I said that I did not
+love him."
+
+There was a little pause. The two women looked out on to the quiet lawn.
+They seemed singularly anxious to avoid looking at each other.
+
+"But that might come, dear; I think it would come."
+
+"I know it would not," replied Dora quietly. There was a dreaminess in
+her voice, as if she were repeating something she had heard or said
+before.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Glynde rose from her chair, and going towards her daughter,
+she knelt on the soft carpet, still afraid to look at her face. There was
+something suggestive and strange in the attitude, for the elder woman was
+crouching at the feet of the younger.
+
+"My darling," she whispered, "I know, I _know!_ I have known all along.
+But mind, no one else knows, no one suspects! _It_ can never come to you
+again in this life. Women are like that, it never comes to them twice. To
+some it never comes at all; think of that, dear, it never comes to them
+at all! Surely that is worse?"
+
+Dora took the nervous, eager hands in her own quiet grasp and held them
+still. But she said nothing.
+
+"I have prayed night and morning," the elder woman went on in the same
+pleading whisper, "that strength might be given you, and I think my
+prayers were heard. For you have been strong, and no one has known except
+me, and I do not matter. The strength must have come from somewhere. I
+like to think that I had something to do with it, however little."
+
+Again there was a silence. Across the quiet garden, from the church that
+was hidden among the trees, the sound of the evening hymn came rising and
+falling, the harshness of the rustic voices toned down by the whispering
+of the leaves.
+
+"I know," Mrs. Glynde went on, speaking perhaps out of her own
+experience, "that now it must seem that there is nothing left. I know
+that It can never come to you, but something else may--a sort of
+alleviation; something that is a little stronger than resignation, and
+many people think that it is love. It is not love; never believe that!
+But it is surely sent because so many women have--to go through
+life--without that--which makes life worth living."
+
+"Hush, dear!" said Dora; and Mrs. Glynde paused as if to collect herself.
+Perhaps her daughter stopped her just in time.
+
+"There is," she went on in a calmer voice, "a sort of satisfaction in the
+duties that come and have to be performed. The duties towards one's
+husband and the others--the others, darling--are the best. They are not
+the same, not the same as if--as they might have been, but sometimes it
+is a great alleviation. And the time passes somehow."
+
+It is not the clever people who make all the epigrams; but sometimes
+those who merely live and feel, and are perhaps objects of ridicule. Mrs.
+Glynde was one of these. She had unwittingly made an epigram. She had
+summed up life in five words--the time passes somehow."
+
+"And, dear," she went on, "it is not wise, perhaps it is not quite right,
+to turn one's back upon an alleviation which is offered. Arthur would be
+very kind to you. He is really fond of you, and perhaps the very fact of
+his not being clever or brilliant or anything like that might be a
+blessing in the future, for he would not expect so much."
+
+"He would have to expect nothing," said Dora, speaking for the first
+time, "because I could give him nothing."
+
+She spoke in rather an indifferent voice, and in the gloom her mother
+could not see her face. It was a singular thing that neither of them
+seemed to take Arthur Agar's feelings into account in the very smallest
+degree; and this must be accounted to them for wisdom.
+
+Dora was, as her mother had said, very strong. She never gave way. Her
+delicate lips never quivered, but she took care to keep them close
+pressed. Only in her eyes was the pain to be seen, and perhaps that was
+why her mother did not dare to look.
+
+"There is no hurry," she pleaded. "You need not decide now."
+
+"But," answered Dora, "I have decided now, and he knows my decision."
+
+"Perhaps after some time--some years?" suggested Mrs. Glynde.
+
+"A great many years," put in Dora.
+
+"If he asks you again--oh! I know it would be better, dear; better for
+you in every way. I do not say that you would be quite happy. But it
+would be a sort of happiness; there would be less unhappiness, because
+you would have less time to think. I do not say anything about the
+position and the wealth and such considerations, for they are not of much
+importance to a good woman."
+
+"After a great many years," said Dora, in that calm and judicial voice
+which fell like ice on her mother's heart, "I will see--if he chooses to
+wait."
+
+"Yes, but--" began Mrs. Glynde, but she did not go on. That which she was
+about to say would scarcely have been appropriate. But so far as the
+facts were concerned she might just as well have said it. For Dora knew
+as well as she did that Arthur Agar would not wait. Women are not blind
+to manifest facts. They know us, my brothers, better than we think. And
+they are not quite so romantic as we take them to be. Their love is a
+better thing than ours, because it is more practical and more defined.
+They do not seek an ideal of their own imagination; but when something
+approaching to it crosses their path in the flesh they know what they
+want, and they do not change.
+
+Before the silence was again broken the murmur of voices told them that
+the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female
+form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia,
+walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the
+outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the
+remainder of womanhood. Good women--those mistaken females who move in an
+atmosphere of ostentatious good works--usually walk like this. Like this
+they enter the humble cot with a little soup and a lot of advice. Like
+this they smilingly step, where angels would fear to tread, upon feelings
+which they are incapable of understanding.
+
+Mrs. Glynde got quietly up and left the room. As the door closed behind
+her Sister Cecilia's gently persuasive voice was heard.
+
+"Dora! Dora dear!"
+
+"Yes," replied the girl without any enthusiasm, rising and going to the
+window.
+
+"Will you walk with me a little way across the fields? It is such a
+lovely evening."
+
+"Yes, if you like."
+
+And Dora passed out of the open window.
+
+"I am sorry," said Sister Cecilia after a few paces, "that you were not
+in church. We had such a bright service."
+
+Dora, like some more of us, wondered vaguely where the adjective applied,
+especially on a gloomy evening without candles, but she said nothing.
+
+"I stayed at home with mother," she explained practically. "The servants
+were all out." Sister Cecilia was not listening. She was gazing up at the
+sky, where a few stars were beginning to show themselves.
+
+"One feels," she murmured with a sigh, "on such an evening as this, that,
+after all, nothing matters much."
+
+"About the servants do you mean? They are going on better now."
+
+"No, dear, about life. I mean that at times one feels that this cannot be
+the end of it all."
+
+"Well, we ought to feel that, I suppose, being Christians."
+
+"And some day we shall see the meaning of all our troubles," pursued
+Sister Cecilia. "It is so hard for us older ones, who have passed through
+it, to stand by helpless, only guessing at the pain and anguish of it
+all, whereas, perhaps, we could help if we only knew. A little more
+candour, a little more confidence might so easily lead to mutual help and
+consolation."
+
+"Possibly," admitted Dora, without any encouragement.
+
+"I am so sorry for poor Arthur!" whispered Sister Cecilia, apparently to
+the evening shades.
+
+Dora was silent. She knew how to treat Sister Cecilia. Jem had taught her
+that.
+
+"It has been such a terrible blow. His letters to his mother are quite
+heartbroken."
+
+Dora reserved her opinion of grown-up men who write heartbroken letters
+to their mothers.
+
+"I know all about it," Sister Cecilia went on, quite regardless of the
+truth, as some good people are. "Dora, dear, I know all about it."
+
+Silence, a silence which reminded Sister Cecilia of a sense of
+discomfiture which had more than once been hers in conversation with Jem.
+
+"Have you nothing to tell me, dear?" she inquired. "Nothing to say to
+me?"
+
+"Nothing," replied Dora pleasantly. "Especially as you know all about
+it."
+
+"Will you never change your mind?" persuasively.
+
+"No, I am not the sort of person to change my mind."
+
+There was a little pause, and again Sister Cecilia whispered to the
+evening shades.
+
+"I cannot help hoping that some day it may be different. It is not as if
+there were any one else--?"
+
+Silence again.
+
+"I dare say," added Sister Cecilia, after waiting in vain for an answer
+to her implied question, "that I am wrong, but I cannot help being in
+favour of a little more candour, a little mutual confidence."
+
+"I cannot help feeling," replied Dora quietly, "that we are all best
+employed when we mind our own business."
+
+"Yes, dear, I know. But it is very hard to stand idly by and see young
+people make mistakes which can only bring them sorrow. I want to tell you
+to think very deeply before you elect to lead the life of a single woman.
+It is a life full of temptation to idleness and self-indulgence. There
+are many single women who, I am really afraid, are quite useless in the
+world. They only gossip and pry into their neighbours' affairs and make
+mischief. It is because they have nothing to do. I have known several
+women like that, and I cannot help thinking that they would have been
+happier if they had married. Perhaps they did not have the chance. One
+does not understand these things."
+
+Sister Cecilia cast her eyes upwards toward the tree-tops to see if
+perchance the explanation was written there.
+
+"Of course," she went on complacently, drawing down her bonnet-strings,
+"there are many useful lives of single women. Lives which the world would
+sadly miss should it please God to take them. Women who live, not for
+themselves, but for others; who go about the world helping their
+neighbours with advice and the fruits of their own experience; ever the
+first to go to the afflicted and to those who are in trouble. They do not
+receive their reward here, they are not always thanked. The ignorant are
+sometimes even rude. They have only the knowledge that they are doing
+good."
+
+"That _must_ be a satisfaction," murmured Dora fervently.
+
+"It is, dear; it is. But--you will excuse me, Dora dear, if I say
+this?--I do not think you are that sort of woman."
+
+"No," answered Dora, "I don't think I am."
+
+"And that is why I have said this to you. Now, don't answer me, dear.
+Just think about it quietly. I think I have done my duty in telling you
+what, was on my mind. It is always best, although it is sometimes
+difficult, or even painful; but then, it is one's duty. Kiss me, dear!
+Good-night!--_good_-night!"
+
+And so Sister Cecilia left Dora--mincing away into the gloom of the
+overhanging trees. And so she leaves these pages. Verily the good have
+their reward here below in a coat of self-complacency which is as
+impervious to the buffets of life as to the sarcasm of the worldly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A STAB IN THE DARK
+
+Slander, meanest spawn of Hell;
+And women's slander is the worst.
+
+
+Mrs. Agar was a person incapable of awaiting that vague result called the
+development of things.
+
+Arthur had never been forced to wait for anything in his life. No longer
+at least than tradespeople required, and in many cases not so long, for
+Mrs. Agar had an annoying way of refusing to listen to reason. She never
+allowed that laws applying to ordinary people, served more or less
+faithfully by tailor or dressmaker, applied to herself or to Arthur. And
+tradespeople, one finds are not always of the same mind as the Medes and
+Persians--they square matters quietly in the bill. They had to do it very
+quietly indeed with Mrs. Agar, who endeavoured strenuously to get the
+best value for her money all through life; a remnant of Jaggery House,
+Clapham Common, which the placid wealth of Stagholme never obliterated.
+
+After the luncheon, specially prepared and laid before the Rector, this
+second Rebecca awaited the result impatiently. But nothing came of it.
+Although Mrs. Agar now looked upon Dora as the latest whim of the
+not-to-be-denied Arthur, she could hardly consider Mr. Glynde in the
+light of a tradesman retailing the said commodity, and, therefore, to be
+bullied and harassed into making haste. She reflected with misgiving that
+Mr. Glynde was an exponent of the tiresome art of talking over and
+thinking out matters which required neither words nor thought, and saw no
+prospect of an immediate furtherance of her design.
+
+With a mistaken and much practised desire of striking when the iron was
+hot, Mrs. Agar, like many a wiser person, began, therefore, to bang about
+in all directions, hitting not only the iron but the anvil, her own
+knuckles and the susceptibilities of any one standing in the
+neighbourhood. She could not leave things to Mr. Glynde, but must needs
+see Dora herself. She had in her mind the nucleus of a simple if
+scurrilous scheme which will show itself hereafter. Her opportunity
+presented itself a few days later.
+
+A neighbouring family counting itself county, presumably on the strength
+of never being able to absent themselves from the favoured neighbourhood
+on account of monetary incapacity, gave its annual garden-party at this
+time. To this entertainment the whole countryside was in the habit of
+repairing--not with an idea of enjoying itself, but because everybody did
+it. To be bidden to this garden-party was in itself a _cachet_ of
+respectability. This indeed was the only satisfaction to be gathered from
+the festivity. If the honour was great, the hospitality was small. If the
+condescension was vast, the fare provided was verging on the stingy. Here
+were served by half-starved domestic servants, in the smallest of
+tumblers, "cups" wherein were mixed liquors, such as cider, usually
+consumed by self-respecting persons in the undiluted condition and in
+mugs. Upon cucumber-cup, taken in county society, as on a dinner of
+herbs, one hardly expects the guest to grow convivial. Therefore at this
+garden-party those bidden to the feast were in the habit of wandering
+sadly through the shrubbery seeking whom they might avoid, and in the
+course of such a perambulation, with a young man conversant of himself,
+Dora met Mrs. Agar. Even the mistress of Stagholme was preferable to the
+young man from London, and besides--there were associations. So Dora drew
+Mrs. Agar into her promenade, and presently the young man got his
+_cong�_.
+
+At first they talked of local topics, and Mrs. Agar, who had a fine sense
+of hospitality, said her say about the cider-cup. Then she gave an
+awkward little laugh, and with an assumption of lightness which did not
+succeed she said:
+
+"I hope, dear, you do not intend to keep my poor boy in suspense much
+longer?"
+
+"Do you mean Arthur?" asked Dora.
+
+"Yes, dear. I really don't see why there should be this absurd reserve
+between us."
+
+"I am quite willing," replied the girl, "to hear what you have to say
+about it."
+
+"Yes, but not to talk of it."
+
+"Well, I suppose Arthur has told you all there is to tell. If there is
+anything more that you want to know I shall be very glad to tell you."
+
+"Well, of course, I don't understand it at all," burst out Mrs. Agar
+eagerly. This was quite true; neither she nor Arthur could understand how
+any one could refuse such a glorious offer as he had made.
+
+"Perhaps I can explain. Arthur asked me to marry him. I quite appreciated
+the honour, but I declined it."
+
+"Yes, but why? Surely you didn't mean it?"
+
+"I did mean it."
+
+"Well," explained Mrs. Agar, with a little toss of the head, "I am sure I
+cannot see what more you want. There are many girls who would be glad to
+be mistress of Stagholme."
+
+And it must be remembered that she said this knowing quite well that Jem
+was probably alive. There are some crimes which women commit daily in the
+family circle which deserve a greater punishment than that meted out to a
+legal criminal.
+
+"That is precisely what I ventured to point out to Arthur," said Dora,
+unconsciously borrowing her father's ironical neatness of enunciation.
+
+"But why shouldn't you take the opportunity? There are not many estates
+like it in England. Your position would be as good as that of a titled
+lady, and I am sure you could not want a better husband."
+
+"I like Arthur as a friend, but I could never marry him, so it is useless
+to discuss the question."
+
+"But why?" persisted Mrs. Agar.
+
+"Because I do not care for him in the right way."
+
+"But that would come," said Mrs. Agar. It was only natural that she
+should use an argument which is accountable for more misery on earth than
+mothers dream of.
+
+"No, it would never come."
+
+Mrs. Agar gave a cunning little laugh, and paused so as to lend
+additional weight to her next remark.
+
+"That is a dangerous thing for a girl to say."
+
+"Is it?" inquired Dora indifferently.
+
+"Yes, because they can never be sure, unless--"
+
+"Unless what? I am quite sure."
+
+"Unless there is some one else," said Mrs. Agar, with an exaggerated
+significance suggestive of the servants' hall.
+
+Dora did not answer at once. They walked on for a few moments in silence,
+passing other guests walking in couples. Then Dora replied with a
+succinctness acquired from her father:
+
+"Generalities about women," she said, "are always a mistake. Indeed, all
+generalities are dangerous. But if you and Arthur care to apply this to
+me, you are at liberty to do so. Whatever generalities you apply and
+whatever you say will make no difference to the main question. Moreover,
+you will, perhaps, be acting a kinder part if you give Arthur to
+understand once for all that my decision is final."
+
+"As you like, dear, as you like," muttered Mrs. Agar, apparently
+abandoning the argument, whereas in reality she had not yet begun it.
+
+"How do you do, dear Mrs. Martin?" she went on in the same breath, bowing
+and smiling to a lady who passed them at that moment.
+
+"Of course," she said, returning in a final way to the question after a
+few moments' silence, "of course I do not believe all I hear; in fact, I
+contradict a good deal. But I have been told that gossips talked about
+you a good deal last year, at the time of Jem's death. I think it only
+fair that you should know."
+
+"Thank you," said Dora curtly.
+
+"Of course, dear, _I_ didn't believe anything about it."
+
+"Thank you," said Dora again.
+
+"I should have been sorry to do so."
+
+Then Dora turned upon her suddenly.
+
+"What do you mean, Aunt Anna?" she asked with determination.
+
+"Oh, nothing, dear, nothing. Don't get flurried about it."
+
+"I am not at all flurried," replied Dora quietly. "You said that you
+would be sorry to have to believe what gossips said of me last year at
+the time of Jem's death--"
+
+"Dora," interrupted Mrs. Agar, "I never said anything against you in any
+way; how can you say such a thing?"
+
+"And," continued Dora, with an unpleasant calmness of manner, "I must ask
+you to explain. What did the gossips say, and why should you be sorry to
+have to believe it?"
+
+Mrs. Agar's reluctance was not quite genuine nor was it well enough
+simulated to deceive Dora.
+
+"Well, dear," she said, "if you insist, they said that there had been
+something between you and Jem--long, long ago, of course, before he went
+out to India."
+
+Dora shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"They are welcome to say what they like."
+
+Mrs. Agar was silent, awaiting a second question.
+
+"And why should you be sorry to believe that?" inquired the girl.
+
+"I--I hardly like to tell you," said Mrs. Agar, in a low voice.
+
+Dora waited in silence, without appearing to heed Mrs. Agar's reluctance.
+
+"I am afraid, dear," went on the elder lady, when she saw that there was
+no chance of assistance, "that we have been all sadly mistaken in Jem. He
+was not--all that we thought him."
+
+"In what way?" asked Dora. She had turned quite white, and her lips were
+suddenly dry and parched. She held her parasol a little lower, so that
+Mrs. Agar could not see her face. She was sure enough of her voice. She
+had had practice in that.
+
+"In what way was Jem not all that we thought him?" she repeated evenly,
+like a lesson learnt by heart.
+
+Mrs. Agar stammered. She tried to blush, but she could not manage that.
+
+"I cannot very well give you details. Perhaps, when you are older. You
+know, dear, in India people are not very particular. They have peculiar
+ideas, I mean, of morals--different from ours. And perhaps he saw no harm
+in it."
+
+"In what?" inquired Dora gravely.
+
+"Well, in the life they lead out there. It appears that there was some
+unfortunate attachment. I think she was married or something like that."
+
+"Who told you this?" asked Dora, in a voice like a threat.
+
+"A man told Arthur at Cambridge--one of poor Jem's fellow-officers. The
+man who brought home the diary and things."
+
+Having once begun Mrs. Agar found herself obliged to go on. She had not
+time to pause and reflect that she was now staking everything upon the
+possibility of Jem's death subsequent to the disaster in which he was
+supposed to have perished.
+
+Dora did not believe one word of this story, although she was quite
+without proof to the contrary. Jem's letters had not been frequent, nor
+had they been remarkable for minuteness of detail respecting his own
+life. Mrs. Agar had done her best to put a stop to this correspondence
+altogether, and had succeeded in bringing about a subtle reserve on both
+sides. She had persistently told Jem that Dora was evidently attached to
+Arthur, and that their marriage was only the question of a few years. Of
+this Jem had never found any confirmatory hint in Dora's letters, and
+from some mistaken sense of chivalry refrained from writing to ask her
+point-blank if it were true.
+
+"And why," said Dora, "do you tell me this? In case what the gossips said
+might be true?"
+
+"Ye-es, dear, perhaps it was that."
+
+"So as to save me from cherishing any mistaken memory?"
+
+"Yes, it may have been that."
+
+And Mrs. Agar was surprised to see Dora turn her back upon her as if she
+had been something loathsome to look upon, and walk away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH
+
+When the heart speaks, Glory itself is an illusion.
+
+
+The _Mahanaddy_ had just turned her blunt prow out westward from the
+harbour of Port Said, sniffing her native north wind, with a gentle
+rising movement to that old Mediterranean eastward-tending swell. The
+lights of the most iniquitous town on earth were fading away in the mist
+of the desert on the left hand, and on the right the gloom of the sea
+merged into a grey sky.
+
+The dinner-hour had passed, and the passengers were lolling about on the
+long quarter-deck, talking lazily after the manner of men and women who
+have little to say and much time wherein to say it.
+
+It was quite easy to perceive that they had left a voyage of many days
+behind them, for the funny man had exhausted himself and the politicians
+were asleep. The lifeless, homeward-bound flirtations had waned long ago,
+and no one looked twice at any one else. They all knew each other's
+dresses and vices and little aggravating habits, and only three or four
+of them were aware that human nature runs deeper than such superficial
+details.
+
+Away forward, behind the sheep-pens, an Italian gentleman in the ice
+industry was scraping on a yellow fiddle which looked sticky. But like
+many things of plain exterior this unprepossessing instrument had
+something in it, something that the Italian gentleman knew how to
+extract, and all the ship was hushed into listening. Such as had
+conversation left spoke in low tones, and even the stewards in the pantry
+ceased for a time to test the strength of the dinner-plates.
+
+On a small clear space of deck between the door of the doctor's cabin and
+the saloon gangway two men were walking slowly backwards and forwards.
+They were both tall men, both large, and consequently both inclined to
+taciturnity. They had said, perhaps, as little as any two persons on
+board, which may have accounted for the fact that they were talking now,
+and still seemed to have plenty to say.
+
+One was dark and clean-shaven, with something of the sea in his mien and
+gait. His nose and chin were singularly clean cut, and suggestive of an
+ancestral type. This was the ship's doctor, a man who probed men's hearts
+as well as their bodies, and wrote of what he found there. His companion
+was an antitype--a representative of the fair race found in England by
+the ancestors of the other when they came and conquered. He wore a beard,
+and his face was burnt to the colour of mahogany, which had a strange
+effect in contrast to the bluest of Saxon eyes.
+
+The Doctor was talking.
+
+"Then," he was saying, "who the devil are you?"
+
+The other smiled, a gentle, triumphant smile. The smile of a man who,
+humbly recognising himself at a just estimation, is conscious of having
+outwitted another, cleverer than himself.
+
+"You finish your pipe," he said, and he walked away with long firm
+strides towards the saloon stairs. The Doctor went to the rail, where,
+resting his arms on the solid teak, he leant, gazing thoughtfully out
+over the sea, which was part of his life. For he knew the great waters,
+and loved them with all the quiet strength of a slow-tongued man.
+
+Before very long some one came behind and touched him on the shoulder. He
+turned, and in the fading light looked into the smiling face of his late
+companion--the same and yet quite different, for the beard was gone, and
+there only remained the long fair moustache.
+
+"Yes," said Dr. Mark Ruthine, "Jem Agar. I was a fool not to know you at
+first."
+
+A sort of shyness flickered for a moment in the blue eyes.
+
+"I have been practising so hard during the last ten months to look like
+some one else that I hardly feel like myself," he said.
+
+"Um-m! There was something uncanny about you when you first came on
+board. I used to watch you at meals, and wonder what it was. By God,
+Agar, I _am_ glad!"
+
+"Thanks," replied Jem Agar. He was looking round him rather nervously.
+"You don't think there is anybody on board who will know me, do you?"
+
+"No one, barring the Captain."
+
+"Oh," said Agar calmly, "he is all right. He can keep his mouth shut."
+
+"There is no doubt about that," replied the Doctor.
+
+A little pause followed, during which they both listened involuntarily to
+the ice-cream merchant's musical voice, which was now floating over the
+silent decks, raised in song.
+
+"I should like to hear all about it some day," said the ship's surgeon at
+last. He knew his man, and no detail of the strange lives that passed the
+horizon of his daily existence was ever forgotten. Only he usually found
+that those who had the most to tell required a little assistance in their
+narration.
+
+"It is rather a rum business," answered Jem Agar, not displeased.
+
+At this moment the ship's bell rang four clear notes into the night.
+
+"Ten o'clock," said the Doctor. "Come into my cabin and have a smoke; the
+Captain will be in soon. He would like to hear the story too."
+
+So they passed into the cabin, and before they had been there many
+minutes the Captain joined them. For a moment he stood in the doorway,
+then he came forward with outstretched hand.
+
+"Well," he said, "all that I can say is that you ought to be dead. But
+it's not my business."
+
+He had seen too many freaks of fortune to be surprised at this.
+
+"I thought," he continued, "that there was something familiar about the
+back of your head. Back of a man's head never changes. It's a funny
+thing."
+
+He sat down in his usual chair, and looked with a cheery smile upon him
+who had risen from the death column of the _Times_. Then he turned to his
+pipe.
+
+"You know, Agar," he said, "I was beastly sorry about that--death of
+yours. Cut me up wonderfully for a few minutes. That is saying a lot in
+these days."
+
+Agar laughed.
+
+"It is very kind of you to say so," he said rather awkwardly.
+
+"And I," added Dr. Ruthine from behind the whisky and soda tray, in the
+deliberate voice of a man who is saying something with an effort, "felt
+that it was a pity. That is how it struck me--a pity."
+
+Then, very disjointedly, and in a manner which could scarcely be set down
+here, Major James Agar told his singular story. There are--thank
+heaven!--many such stories still untold; there are, one would be inclined
+to hope, many such still uncommenced. As a nation we may be on the
+decline, but there is something to go on with in us yet.
+
+Once when the narrator paused, Dr. Ruthine went to the side table and
+opened some bottles.
+
+"Whisky?" he inquired, with curt hospitality, "or anything else your
+fancy may paint, down to tea."
+
+Agar rose to pour out his own allowance, and for a moment the two men
+stood together. With the critical eye of a soldier, which seems to weigh
+flesh and blood, he looked his host for the time being up and down.
+
+"They don't make men like you and me on tea," he said, reaching out his
+hand towards a tumbler.
+
+Then the story went on. At first the ship's doctor listened to it with
+interest but without absorption, then suddenly something seemed to catch
+his attention and hold it riveted. When a pause came he leant forward,
+pointing an emphasising finger.
+
+"When you spoke just now of the chief," he said, "did you mean Michael?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What! Seymour Michael?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Captain tapped his pipe against his boot and leant back with the
+shrug of the shoulders awaiting further developments.
+
+"And you mean to tell me that you put yourself entirely in the hands of
+Seymour Michael?" pursued the Doctor.
+
+"Yes, why not?"
+
+Mark Ruthine shook his head with a little laugh. "I always thought, Agar,
+that you were a bit of a fool!"
+
+"I have sometimes suspected it myself," admitted the soldier meekly.
+
+"Why, man," said Ruthine, "Seymour Michael is one of the biggest rascals
+on God's earth. I would not trust him with fourpence round the corner."
+
+"Nor would I," put in the Captain, "and the sum is not excessive."
+
+Jem Agar was sipping his whisky and soda with the placidity of a giant
+who fears no open fight and never thinks of foul play.
+
+"I don't see," he muttered, "what harm he can do me."
+
+"No more do I, at the moment," replied the Doctor; "but the man is a liar
+and an unscrupulous cad. I have kept an eye on him for years because he
+interests me. He has never run a straight course since he came into the
+field; he has consistently sacrificed truth, honour, and his best friend
+to his own ambition ever since the beginning."
+
+Jem Agar smiled at the Doctor's vehemence, although he was aware that
+such a display was far from being characteristic of the man.
+
+"Of course," he admitted, "in the matter of honour and glory I expect to
+be swindled. But I don't care. I know the chap's reputation, and all
+that, but he can hardly get rid of the fact that I have done the thing
+and he has not."
+
+"I was not thinking so much of that," replied the other. "Men sell their
+souls for honour and glory and never get paid."
+
+He paused; then with the sure touch of one who has dabbled with pen and
+ink in the humanities, he laid his finger on the vulnerable spot.
+
+"I was thinking more," he said, "of what you had trusted him to
+do--telling certain persons, I mean, that you were not dead. He is just
+as likely as not to have suppressed the information."
+
+Jem Agar was looking very grave, with a sudden pinched appearance about
+the lips which was only half concealed by his moustache.
+
+"Why should he do that?" he asked sharply.
+
+"He would do it if it suited his purpose. He is not the man to take into
+consideration such things as feelings--especially the feelings of
+others."
+
+"You're a bit hard on him, Ruthine," said Jem doubtfully. "Why should it
+suit his convenience?"
+
+"Secrecy was essential for your purpose and his; in telling a secret one
+doubles the risk of its disclosure each time a new confidant is admitted.
+Besides, the man's nature is quite extraordinarily secretive. He has
+Jewish and Scotch blood in his veins, and the result is that he would
+rather disseminate false news than true on the off chance of benefiting
+thereby later on. For men of that breed each piece of accurate
+information, however trivial, has a marketable value, and they don't part
+with it unless they get their price."
+
+There followed a silence, during which Jem Agar went back in mental
+retrospection to the only interview he had ever had with Seymour Michael,
+and the old lurking sense of distrust awoke within his heart.
+
+"But," said the Captain, who was an optimist--he even applied that theory
+to human nature--"I suppose it is all right now. Everybody knows now that
+you are among the quick--eh?"
+
+"No," replied Jem, "only Michael; it was arranged that I should telegraph
+to him."
+
+"Of course," the Doctor hastened to say, for he had perceived a change in
+Agar's demeanour, "all this is the purest supposition. It is only a
+theory built upon a man's character. It is wonderful how consistent
+people are. Judge how a man would act and you will find that he has acted
+like it afterwards."
+
+As if in illustration of the theory Jem Agar looked gravely determined,
+but uttered no threat directed towards Seymour Michael. His quiet face
+was a threat in itself.
+
+"Well," he said, rising, "I am keeping you fellows from your slumbers. I
+am still sleeping on deck; can't get accustomed to the atmosphere below
+decks after six months' sleeping in the open."
+
+He nodded and left them.
+
+"Rum chap!" muttered the Captain, looking at his watch when the footsteps
+had died away over the silent decks.
+
+"One of the queerest specimens I know," retorted Dr. Mark Ruthine, who
+was fingering a pen and looking longingly towards the inkstand. The
+Captain--a man of renowned discretion--quietly departed.
+
+There is no more distrustful man than the simple gentleman of honour who
+finds himself deceived and tricked. It is as if the bottom suddenly fell
+out of his trust in all mankind, and there is nothing left but a mocking
+void. Jem Agar lay on his mattress beneath the awning, and stared hard at
+a bright star near the horizon. He was realising that life is, after all,
+a sorry thing of chance, and that all his world might be hanging at that
+moment on the word of an untrustworthy man.
+
+Before morning he had determined to telegraph from Malta to Seymour
+Michael to meet him at Plymouth on the arrival of the _Mahanaddy_ at that
+port.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+BALANCING ACCOUNTS
+
+And yet God has not said a word.
+
+
+One fine morning in June the _Mahanaddy_ steamed with stately
+deliberation into the calm water inside Plymouth breakwater. Many writers
+love to dwell with pathetic insistence on incidents of a departure; but
+there is also pathos--perhaps deeper and truer because more subtle--in
+the arrival of the homeward-board ship.
+
+Who can tell? There may have been others as anxious to look on the green
+slopes of Mount Edgecumbe as the man with the mahogany-coloured face who
+stood ever smoking--smoking--always at the forward starboard corner of
+the hurricane deck. His story had not leaked out, because only two men on
+board knew it--men with no conversational leaks whatever. He had made no
+other friends. But many watched him half interestedly, and perhaps a few
+divined the great calm impatience beneath the suppressed quiet of his
+manner.
+
+"That man--Jem Agar--is dangerous," the Doctor had said to the Captain
+more than once, and Mark Ruthine was not often egregiously mistaken in
+such matters.
+
+"Um!" replied the Captain of the _Mahanaddy_. "There is an uncanny calm."
+
+They were talking about him now as the Captain--his own pilot for
+Plymouth and the Channel--walked slowly backwards and forwards on the
+bridge. It seemed quite natural for the Doctor to be sitting on the rail
+by the engine-room telegraph. The passengers and the men were quite
+accustomed to it. This friendship was a matter of history to the homeless
+world of men and women who travelled east and west through the Suez
+Canal.
+
+"He has asked me," the Doctor was saying, "to go ashore with him at
+Plymouth; I don't know why. I imagine he is a little bit afraid of
+wringing Seymour Michael's neck."
+
+"Just as likely as not," observed the Captain. "It would be a good thing
+done, but don't let Agar do it."
+
+"May I leave the ship at Plymouth?" asked Mark Ruthine, with a quiet air
+of obedience which seemed to be accepted with the gravity with which it
+was offered.
+
+"I don't see why you should not," was the reply. "Everybody goes ashore
+there except about half a dozen men, who certainly will not want your
+services."
+
+"I should rather like to do it. We come from the same part of the
+country, and Agar seems anxious to have me. He is not a chap to say much,
+but I imagine there will be some sort of a _denouement_."
+
+The Captain was looking through a pair of glasses ahead, towards the
+anchorage.
+
+"All right," he said. "Go."
+
+And he continued to attend to his business with that watchful care which
+made the _Mahanaddy_ one of the safest boats afloat.
+
+Presently Mark Ruthine left the bridge and went to his cabin to pack. As
+he descended he paused, and retracing his steps forward he went and
+touched Jem Agar on the arm.
+
+"It's all right," he said. "I'll go with you."
+
+Agar nodded. He was gazing at the green English hills and far faint
+valley of the Tamar with a curious gleam of excitement in his eyes.
+
+Half an hour later they landed.
+
+"You stick by me," said Jem Agar, when they discerned the small wiry form
+of Seymour Michael awaiting them on the quay. "I want you to hear
+everything."
+
+This man was, as Ruthine had said, dangerous. He was too calm. There was
+something grand and terrifying in that white heat which burned in his
+eyes and drove the blood from his lips.
+
+Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile, waving his hand in
+greeting to Jem and to Ruthine, whom he knew.
+
+Jem shook hands with him.
+
+"I'm all right, thanks," he said curtly, in answer to Seymour Michael's
+inquiry.
+
+"Good business--good business," exclaimed the General, who seemed
+somewhat unnecessarily excited.
+
+"Old Mark Ruthine too!" he went on. "You look as fit as ever. Still
+turning your thousands out of the British public--eh!"
+
+"Yes," said Ruthine, "thank you."
+
+"Just run ashore for half an hour, I suppose?" continued Seymour Michael,
+looking hurriedly out towards the _Mahanaddy_.
+
+"No," replied Ruthine, "I leave the ship here."
+
+The small man glanced from the face of one to the other with something
+sly and uneasy in his eyes.
+
+Jem Agar had altered since he saw him last in the little tent far up on
+the slopes of the Pamir. He was older and graver. There was also a wisdom
+in his eyes--that steadfast wise look that comes to eyes which have
+looked too often on death. Mark Ruthine he knew, and him he distrusted,
+with that quiet keenness of observation which was his.
+
+"Now," he said eagerly to Jem, "what I thought we might do was to have a
+little breakfast and catch the eleven o'clock train up to town. If
+Ruthine will join us, I for one shall be very pleased. He won't mind our
+talking shop."
+
+Mark Ruthine was attending to the luggage, which was being piled upon a
+cab.
+
+"Have you not had breakfast?" asked Agar.
+
+"Well, I have had a little, but I don't mind a second edition. That
+waiter chap at the hotel got me out of bed much too soon. However, it is
+worth getting up the night before to see you back, old chap."
+
+"Is there not an earlier train than the eleven o'clock?" asked Agar,
+looking at his watch. There was a singular constraint in his manner which
+Seymour Michael could not understand.
+
+"Yes, there is one at nine forty-five."
+
+"Then let us go by that. We can get something at the station, if we want
+it."
+
+"Make it a bottle of champagne to celebrate the return of the explorer,
+and I am your man," said Michael heartily.
+
+"Make it anything you like," answered Agar, in a gentler voice. He was
+beginning to come under the influence of Seymour Michael's sweet voice,
+and of that fascination which nearly all educated Jews unconsciously
+exercise.
+
+He turned and beckoned to Mark Ruthine, who presently joined them, after
+paying the boatmen.
+
+"The nine forty-five is the train," he said to him. "We may as well walk
+up. The streets of Plymouth are not pleasant to drive through."
+
+So the cab was sent on with the luggage, and the three men turned to the
+slope that leads up to the Hoe.
+
+There was some sort of constraint over them, and they reached the summit
+of the ascent without having exchanged a word.
+
+When they stood on the Hoe, where the old Eddystone lighthouse is now
+erected, Seymour Michael turned and looked out over the bay where the
+ships lay at anchor.
+
+"The good old _Mahanaddy_," he said, "the finest ship I have ever sailed
+in."
+
+Neither man answered him, but they turned also and looked, standing one
+on each side of him.
+
+Then at last Jem Agar spoke, breaking a silence which had been brooding
+since the _Mahanaddy_ came out of the Canal.
+
+"I want to know," he said, "exactly how things stand with my people at
+home."
+
+He continued to look out over the bay towards the _Mahanaddy_, but Mark
+Ruthine was looking at Seymour Michael.
+
+"Yes," replied the General, "I wanted to talk to you about that. That was
+really my reason for proposing that we should wait till the second
+train."
+
+"There cannot be much to say," said Jem Agar rather coldly.
+
+"Well, I wanted to tell you all about it."
+
+"About what?"
+
+There was what the Captain had called an uncanny calm in the voice.
+General Michael did not answer, and Jem turned slowly towards him.
+
+"I presume," he said, "that I am right in taking it for granted that you
+have carried out your share of the contract?"
+
+"My dear fellow, it has been perfectly wonderful. The secret has been
+kept perfectly."
+
+"By all concerned?"
+
+"Eh!--yes."
+
+Michael was glancing furtively at Mark Ruthine, as the fox glances back
+over his shoulder, not at the huntsman, but at the hounds.
+
+"Did you tell them personally, or did you write?" pursued Jem Agar
+relentlessly.
+
+"My dear fellow," replied Michael, pulling out his watch, "it is a long
+story, and we must get to the train."
+
+"No," replied Agar, in the calm voice which raised a sort of "fearful
+joy" in Ruthine's soul, "we need not be getting to the train yet, and
+there is no reason for it to be a long story."
+
+Seymour Michael gave an uneasy little laugh, which met with no response
+whatever. The two taller men exchanged a glance over his head. Up to that
+moment Jem Agar had hoped for the best. He had a greater faith in human
+nature than Mark Ruthine had managed to retain.
+
+"Have you or have you not told those people whom you swore to me that you
+would tell, out there, that night?" asked Jem.
+
+"I told your brother," answered the General with dogged indifference.
+
+"Only?"
+
+There was an ugly gleam in the blue eyes.
+
+"I didn't tell him not to tell the others."
+
+"But you suggested it to him," put in Mark Ruthine, with the knowledge of
+mankind that was his.
+
+"What has it got to do with you, at any rate?" snapped Seymour Michael.
+
+"Nothing," replied Ruthine, looking across at Agar.
+
+"You did not tell Dora Glynde?"
+
+General Michael shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Why?" asked Jem hoarsely. It was singular, that sudden hoarseness, and
+the Doctor, whose business such things were, made a note of it.
+
+"I didn't dare to do it. Why, man, it was too dangerous to tell a single
+soul. If it had leaked out you would have been murdered up there as
+sure as hell. There would have been plenty of men ready to do it for
+half-a-crown."
+
+"That was _my_ business," answered Jem coolly. "You promised, you
+_swore_, that you would tell Dora Glynde, my step-mother, and my brother
+Arthur. And you didn't do it. Why?"
+
+"I have given you my reasons--it was too dangerous. Besides, what does it
+matter? It is all over now."
+
+"No," said Jem, "not yet."
+
+The clock struck nine at that moment; and from the harbour came the sound
+of the ship's bells, high and clear, sounding the hour. The Hoe was quite
+deserted; these three men were alone. A silence followed the ringing of
+the bells, like the silence that precedes a verdict.
+
+Then Jem Agar spoke.
+
+"I asked Mark Buthine," he said, "to come ashore with me, because I had
+reason to suspect your good faith. I can't see now why you should have
+done this, but I suppose that people who are born liars, as Ruthine says
+you are, prefer lying to telling the truth. You are coming down now with
+Ruthine and myself to Stagholme. I shall tell the whole story as it
+happened, and then you will have to explain matters to the two ladies as
+best you can."
+
+A sudden unreasoning terror took possession of Seymour Michael. He knew
+that one of the ladies was Anna Agar, the woman who hated him almost as
+much as he deserved. He was afraid of her; for it is one consolation to
+the wronged to know that the wronger goes all through his life with a
+dull, unquenchable fear upon his heart. But this was not sufficient,
+this could not account for the mighty terror which clutched his soul at
+that moment, and he knew it. He felt that this was something beyond
+that--something which could not be reasoned away. It was a physical
+terror, one of those emotions which seem to attack the body independently
+of the soul, a terror striking the Man before it reaches the Mind. His
+limbs trembled; it was only by an effort that he kept his teeth clenched
+to prevent them from chattering.
+
+"And," said Jem Agar, "if I find that any harm has been done--if any one
+has suffered for this, I will give you the soundest thrashing you have
+ever had in your life."
+
+Both his hearers knew now who Dora Glynde was, what she was to him. He
+neither added to their knowledge nor sought to mislead. He was not, as we
+have said, _de ceux qui s'expliquent_.
+
+"Come," he added, and turning he led the way across the Hoe.
+
+Seymour Michael followed quietly. He was cowed by the inward fear which
+would not be allayed, and the judicial calmness of these two men
+paralysed him. Once, in the train, he began explaining matters over
+again.
+
+"We will hear all that at Stagholme," said Jem sternly, and Mark Ruthine
+merely looked at him over the top of a newspaper which he was not
+reading.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+AT BAY
+
+To thine own self be true;
+And it must follow as the night the day
+Thou canst not then be false to any man.
+
+
+Human nature is, after all, a hopeless failure. Not even the very best
+instinct is safe. It will probably be turned sooner or later to evil
+account.
+
+The best instinct in Anna Agar was her maternal love, and upon this
+strong rock she finally wrecked her barque. She was one of those women
+who hold that, so long as the object is unselfish, the means used to
+obtain it cannot well be evil. She did not say this in so many words,
+because she was quite without principle, good or bad, and she invariably
+acted on impulse.
+
+Her impulse at this time was to turn as much of heaven and earth as came
+under her influence to compel Dora to marry Arthur. That Arthur should be
+unhappy, and should be allowed to continue in that common condition, was
+a thought that she could not tolerate or allow. Something must be done,
+and it was characteristic of the woman that that something should present
+itself to her in the form of the handy and useful lie. In a strait we all
+naturally turn to that accomplishment in which we consider ourselves most
+proficient. The blusterer blusters; the profane man swears; the tearful
+woman weeps--and weeping, by the way, is no mean accomplishment if it be
+used at the right moment. Mrs. Agar naturally meditated on that form of
+diplomacy which is sometimes called lying. The truth would not serve her
+purpose (not that she had given it a fair trial), and therefore she would
+forsake the straight path for that other one which hath many turnings.
+
+Dora absolutely refused to come to Stagholme while Arthur was there--a
+delicacy of feeling, which, by the way, was quite incomprehensible to
+Mrs. Agar. It was necessary for Arthur's happiness that he should see
+Dora again and try the effect of another necktie and further eloquence.
+Therefore, Dora must be made by subterfuge to see Arthur.
+
+"Dear Dora," she wrote, "it will be a great grief to me if this
+unfortunate attachment of my poor boy's is allowed to interfere with the
+affection which has existed between us since your infancy. Come, dear,
+and see me to-morrow afternoon. I shall be quite alone, and the subject
+which, of course, occupies the first place in my thoughts will, if you
+wish it, be tabooed.
+
+"Your affectionate old Friend,
+
+"ANNA AGAR."
+
+"It will be quite easy," reflected this diplomatic lady as she folded the
+letter--almost illegible on account of its impetuosity--"for Arthur to
+come back from East Burgen earlier than I expected him."
+
+The rest she left to chance, which was very kind but not quite necessary,
+for chance had already taken possession of the rest, and was even at that
+moment making her arrangements.
+
+Dora read the letter in the garden beneath the laburnum-tree, where she
+spent a large part of her life. Before reaching the end of the epistle
+she had determined to go. She was a young person of spirit as well as of
+discrimination, and in obedience to the urging of the former was quite
+ready to show Mrs. Agar, and Arthur too, if need be, that she was not
+afraid of them.
+
+She was distinctly conscious of the increasing power of her own strength
+of purpose as she made this resolution, and as she walked across the park
+the next afternoon her feeling was one very near akin to elation. It is
+only the strong who mistrust their own power. Dora Glynde had always
+looked upon herself as a somewhat weak and easily led person; she was
+beginning to feel her own strength now and to rejoice in it. From the
+first she half-suspected a trap of some sort. Such a subterfuge was
+eminently characteristic of Mrs. Agar, and that lady's manner of
+welcoming her only increased the suspicion.
+
+The mistress of Stagholme was positively crackling with an excitement
+which even her best friend could not have called suppressed. There was no
+suppression whatever about it.
+
+"So good of you," she panted, "to come, Dora dear!"
+
+And she searched madly for her pocket handkerchief.
+
+"Not at all," replied Dora, very calmly.
+
+"And now, dear," went on the lady of the house, "are we going to talk
+about it?"
+
+The question was somewhat futile, for it was easy to see that she was not
+in a condition to talk of anything else.
+
+"I think not," replied Dora. She had a way of using the word "think" when
+she was positive. "The question was raised the last time I saw you, and I
+do not think that any good resulted from it."
+
+Mrs. Agar's face dropped. In some ways she was a child still, and a
+childish woman of fifty is as aggravating a creature as walks upon this
+earth. Dora remembered every word of the interview referred to, while
+Mrs. Agar had almost forgotten it. It is to the common-minded that common
+proverbs and sayings of the people apply. Hard words had not the power of
+breaking anything in Mrs. Agar's being.
+
+"Of course," she said, "_I_ don't wish to talk about it, if you don't. It
+is most painful to me."
+
+She had dragged forward a second chair, only separated from that occupied
+by Dora by the tea-table.
+
+"Arthur," she said, with a lamentable assumption of cheerfulness, "has
+driven over to East Burgen to get some things I wanted. He will not be
+back for ever so long."
+
+She reflected that he was overdue at that moment, and that the butler had
+orders to send him to the library as soon as he returned.
+
+"I was sorry to hear," said Dora, quite naturally, "that he had not
+passed his examination."
+
+Mrs. Agar glanced at her cunningly; she was always looking for second
+meanings in the most innocent remarks, hardly guilty of an original
+meaning.
+
+At this moment the door leading through a smaller library into the
+dining-room opened and Arthur came quietly in. He changed colour and
+hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he remembered that before all
+things a gentleman must be a gentleman. He came forward and held out his
+hand.
+
+"How do you do?" he said, and for a moment he was quite dignified. "I am
+glad to see you here with mother. I did not know that I was going to
+interrupt a _t�te-�-t�te_, tea. No tea, thanks, mother; no."
+
+"Have you brought the things I wanted? You are earlier than I expected,"
+blurted out the lady of the house unskillfully.
+
+"Yes, I have brought them."
+
+"I must go and see if they are right," said Mrs. Agar, rising, and before
+he could stop her she passed out of the door by which he had entered.
+
+For a moment there was an awkward silence, then Dora spoke--after the
+door had been reluctantly closed from without.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "that this was done on purpose?"
+
+"Not by me, Dora."
+
+She merely bowed her head.
+
+"Do you believe me?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+She continued to sip her tea, and he actually handed her a plate of
+biscuits.
+
+"Is it still No?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Perhaps her fresh youthful beauty moved him, perhaps it was merely
+opposition that raised his love suddenly to the dignity of a passion that
+made him for once forget himself, his clothes, his personal appearance,
+and the gentlemanly modulation of his voice.
+
+For a moment he was almost a man. He almost touched the height of a man's
+ascendency over woman.
+
+"You may say No now," he cried, "but I shall have you yet. Some day you
+will say Yes."
+
+It was then for the first time that Dora realised that this man did
+actually love her according to his lights. But never for an instant did
+she admit in her own mind the possibility of succumbing to Arthur's will.
+It is not by words that men command women. They must first command their
+respect, and that is never gained by words.
+
+Dora was conscious of a feeling of sudden, unspeakable pain. Arthur had
+only succeeded in convincing her that she could have submitted to a man's
+will, wholly and without reserve; but not to the will of Arthur Agar. He
+had only showed her that such a submission would in itself have been a
+greater happiness than she had ever tasted. But she knew at once that
+only one man ever had, ever could have had, the power of exacting such
+submission; and he commanded it, not by word of mouth (for he never
+seemed to ask it), but by something strong and just and good within
+himself, before which her whole being bowed down.
+
+We never know how we appear in the eyes of our neighbours, friends or
+lovers. Arthur was at that moment in Dora's eyes a mere sham, aping
+something he could never attain.
+
+He had seized her two hands in his nervous and delicate fingers, from
+which she easily withdrew them. The action was natural enough, strong
+enough. But he completely spoiled the effect by the words he spoke in his
+thin tenor voice.
+
+"No, Arthur," she said. "No, Arthur; since you mention the future, I may
+as well tell you _now_ that my answer will never be anything but No. At
+one time I thought that it might be different. I told my mother that
+possibly, after a great many years, I might think otherwise; but I
+retract that. I shall never think otherwise. And if you imagine that you
+can force me to do so, please lay aside that hope at once."
+
+"Then there is some one else!" cried Arthur, with an apparent
+irrelevance. "I know there is some one else."
+
+Dora seemed to be reflecting. She looked over his head, out of the
+window, where the fleecy summer clouds floated idly over the sky.
+
+She turned and looked deliberately at the door by which Mrs. Agar had
+disappeared. It was standing ajar. Then again she reflected, weighing
+something in her mind.
+
+"Yes," she replied half-dreamily at length. "I think you have a right to
+know--there is some one else."
+
+"Was," corrected Arthur, with the womanly intuition which was given to
+him with other womanly traits.
+
+"Was and is," replied Dora quietly. "His being dead makes no difference
+so far as you are concerned."
+
+"Then it _was_ Jem! I was sure it was Jem," said a third voice.
+
+In the excitement of the moment Mrs. Agar forgot that when ladies and
+gentlemen stoop to eavesdropping they generally retire discreetly and
+return after a few moments, humming a tune, hymns preferred.
+
+"I knew that you were there," said Dora, with a calmness which was not
+pleasant to the ear. "I saw your black dress through the crack of the
+door. You did not stand quite still, which was a pity, because the
+sunlight was on the floor behind you. I was not surprised; it was worthy
+of you."
+
+"I take God to witness," cried Mrs. Agar, "that I only heard the last
+words as I came back into the room."
+
+"Don't," said Dora, "that is blasphemy."
+
+"Arthur," cried Mrs. Agar, "will you hear your mother called names?"
+
+"We will not wrangle," said Dora, rising with something very like a smile
+on her face. "Yes, if you want to know, it _was_ Jem. I have only his
+memory, but still I can be faithful to that. I don't care if all the
+world knows; that is why I told _you_ behind the door. I am not ashamed
+of it. I always did care for Jem."
+
+There was a little pause, for mother and son had nothing to answer. Dora
+turned to take her gloves, which she had laid on a side table, and as she
+did so the other door opened, the principal door leading to the hall.
+Moreover, it was opened without the menial pause, and they all turned in
+surprise, knowing that there were only servants in the house.
+
+In the doorway stood Jem, brown-faced, lean, and anxious-looking. There
+was something wolf-like in his face, with the fierce blue eyes shining
+from beneath dark lashes, the fair moustache pushed forward by set lips.
+
+Behind him the keen face of Seymour Michael peered nervously, restlessly
+from side to side. He was distinctly suggestive of a rat in a trap. And
+beyond him, in the gloom of the old arras-hung hall, a third man,
+seemingly standing guard over Seymour Michael, for he was not looking
+into the room but watching every movement made by the General--tall man,
+dark, upright, with a silent, clean-shaven face, a total stranger to them
+all. But his manner was not that of a stranger, he seemed to have
+something to do there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE LAST LINK
+
+A thing hereditary in the race comes unawares.
+
+
+Jem came straight into the room, and there seemed to be no one in it for
+him but Dora. She went to meet him with outstretched hand, and her eyes
+were answering the questions that she read in his.
+
+He took her hand and he said no word, but suddenly all the misery of the
+last year slipped back, as it were, into a dream. She could not define
+her thoughts then, and they left no memory to recall afterwards. She
+seemed to forget that this man had been dead and was living, she only
+knew that her hand was within his. Jem looked round to the others
+present, his attitude a judgment in itself, his face, in its fierce
+repose, a verdict.
+
+Mark Ruthine had gently pushed Seymour Michael into the room and was
+closing the door behind them. Mrs. Agar did not see the General, who was
+half-concealed by his junior officer. She could not take her eyes from
+Jem's face.
+
+"This is fortunate," he said; and the sound of his voice was music in
+Dora's ears. "This is fortunate, every one seems to be here."
+
+He paused for a moment, as if at a loss, and drew his brown hand down
+over his moustache. Perhaps he felt remotely that his position was strong
+and almost dramatic; but that, being a simple, honest Englishman, he was
+unable to turn it to account.
+
+He turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood behind, uncomfortably
+conscious of Mark Ruthine at his heels. It was not in Jem to make an
+effective scene. Englishmen are so. We do not make our lives
+superficially picturesque by apostrophising the shade of a dead mother.
+Jem gave way to the natural instinct of a soldier by nature and training.
+A clear statement of the facts, and a short, sharp judgment.
+
+"This man," he said, laying his hand on the General's shoulder, and
+bringing him forward, "has been brought here by us to explain something."
+
+White-lipped, breathless, in a ghastly silence Anna Agar and Seymour
+Michael stared at each other over the dainty tea-table, across a gulf of
+misused years, through the tangle of two unfaithful lives.
+
+Then Jem Agar began his story, addressing himself to Dora, then, and
+until the end.
+
+"I was not with Stevenor," he said, "when his force was surprised and
+annihilated. I had been sent on through an enemy's country into a
+position which no man had the right to ask another to hold with the force
+allowed me. This man sent me. All his life has he been seeking glory at
+the risk of other men's lives. After the disaster he came to me and
+relieved my little force; but he proposed to me a scheme of exploration,
+which I have carried through. But even now I shall not get the credit;
+_he_ will have that. It was a low, scurrilous thing to do; for he was my
+commanding officer, and I could not say No."
+
+"I gave you the option," blurted out Michael sullenly.
+
+Jem took no notice of the interruption, which only had the effect of
+making Mark Ruthine move up a few paces nearer.
+
+"He made a great point of secrecy," continued Agar, "which at the time I
+thought to be for my safety. But now I see otherwise; Ruthine has pointed
+it out to me. If I had never come back he would have said nothing, and
+would thus have escaped the odium of having sent a man to certain death.
+I only made one condition--namely, that three persons should be informed
+at once of my survival, after the disaster to Stevenor's force. Those
+three persons were my brother Arthur, my step-mother, and Miss Glynde."
+
+He paused for a moment, and Dora's clear, low voice took up the
+narrative.
+
+"I met General Michael," she said, "in London, some months ago. I met him
+more than once. He knew quite well who I was, and he never told me."
+
+Thus was the first link of the chain riveted. Seymour Michael winced. He
+never raised his eyes.
+
+Mark Ruthine moved forward again. He did so with a singular rapidity, for
+he had seen murder flash from beneath Jem Agar's eyebrows. He was
+standing between them, his left hand gripping Jem's right arm with an
+undeniable strength. Dora, looking at them, suddenly felt the tears well
+to her eyes. There was something that melted her heart strangely in the
+sight of those two men--friends--standing side by side; and at that
+moment her affection went out towards Mark Ruthine, the friend of Jem,
+who understood Jem, who knew Jem and loved him, perhaps, a thousandth
+part as well as she did; an affection which was never withdrawn all
+through their lives.
+
+It was Ruthine's voice that broke the silence, giving Jem time to master
+himself.
+
+"It is to his credit," he said, also addressing Dora, "that for very
+shame he did not dare to tell you that he had sent Agar on a mission
+which was as unnecessary as it was dangerous. When he sent him he must
+have known that it was almost a sentence of death."
+
+Then Jem spoke again.
+
+"As soon as I got back to civilisation," he said, "I wrote to him as
+arranged, and I enclosed letters to--the three persons who were admitted
+into the secret. Those letters have, of course, never reached their
+destination. General Michael will be required to explain that also."
+
+At this moment Arthur Agar gave a strange little cackling laugh,
+which drew the general attention towards him. He was looking at his
+half-brother, with a glitter in his usually soft and peaceful eyes.
+
+"There are a good many things which he will have to explain."
+
+"Yes," answered Jem. "That is why we have brought him here."
+
+It fell to Arthur Agar's lot to forge the second link.
+
+"When," he asked Jem, "did he know that you had got back to safety and
+civilisation?"
+
+"Two months ago, by telegram."
+
+The half-brothers turned with one accord towards Seymour Michael, who
+stood trying to conceal the quiver of his lips.
+
+"He promised," said Arthur Agar, "to tell me at once when he received
+news of your safety."
+
+It was singular that Seymour Michael should give way at that moment to a
+little shrinking movement of fear--back and away, not from Jem, who
+towered huge and powerful above him, but from the frail and delicate
+younger brother. Mark Ruthine, who was standing behind, saw the movement
+and wondered at it. For it would appear that, of all his judges, Seymour
+Michael feared the weakest most.
+
+And so the second link was welded on to the first, while only Anna Agar
+knew the motive that had prompted Michael to suppress the news. She
+divined that it was spite towards herself, and for once in her life, with
+that intuition which only comes at supreme moments, she had the wisdom to
+bide her time.
+
+Then at last Seymour Michael spoke. He did not raise his eyes, but his
+words were evidently addressed to Arthur.
+
+"I acted," he said, "as I thought best. Secrecy was necessary for Agar's
+safety. I knew that if I told you too much you would tell your mother,
+and--I know your mother better than either you or Jem Agar know her. She
+is not fit to be trusted with the most trifling secret."
+
+"Well, you see, you were quite wrong," burst out Mrs. Agar, with a
+derisive laugh. "For I knew it all along. Arthur told me at the first."
+
+Her voice came as a shock to them all. It was harsh and common, the voice
+of the street-wrangler.
+
+"Then," cried Seymour Michael, as sharp as fate, "why did you not tell
+Miss Glynde?"
+
+He raised his arm, pointing one lean dark finger into her face.
+
+"I knew," he hissed, "that the boy would tell you. I counted on it. Why
+did you not tell Miss Glynde? Come! Tell us why."
+
+Mark Ruthine's face was a study. It was the face of a very keen sportsman
+at the corner of a "drive." In every word he saw twice as much as simple
+Jem Agar ever suspected.
+
+"Well," answered Mrs. Agar, wavering, "because I thought it better not."
+
+"No," Dora said, "you kept it from me because you wanted me to marry
+Arthur. And you thought that I should do so because he was master of
+Stagholme. You wanted to trick me into marrying Arthur before"--she
+hesitated--"before--"
+
+"Before I came back," added Jem imperturbably. "That was it, that was
+it!" cried Seymour Michael, grasping at the straw which might serve to
+turn the current aside from himself.
+
+But the attempt failed. No one took any notice of it. Jem was looking at
+Dora, and she was looking anywhere except at him.
+
+It was Jem who spoke, with the decisiveness of the president of a
+court-martial.
+
+"That will come afterwards," he said. "And now, perhaps," he went on,
+turning towards Seymour, "you will kindly explain why you broke your word
+to me. Explain it to these l---- [sic.] to Miss Glynde."
+
+Seymour Michael shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Why, what is the good of making all this fuss about it now?" he
+explained. "It has all come right. I acted as I thought best. That is all
+the explanation I have to offer."
+
+"Can you not do better than that?" inquired Jem, with a dangerous
+suavity. "You had better try."
+
+Dora was looking at Jem now, appealingly. She knew that tone of voice,
+and feared it. She alone suspected the anger that was hidden behind so
+calm an exterior.
+
+Seymour Michael preserved a dogged silence, glancing from side to side
+beneath his lowered lashes. He had not forgotten Jem's threat, but he
+felt the safeguard of a lady's presence.
+
+"I can offer an explanation," put in Mark Ruthine. "This man is mentally
+incapable of telling the truth and of doing the straight thing. There are
+some people who are born liars. This man is one. It is not quite fair to
+judge him as one would judge others. I have known him for years, have
+watched him, have studied him."
+
+All eyes turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood half-cringing,
+trembling with fear and hatred towards his relentless judges.
+
+"Years ago," pursued Ruthine, "at the outset of life, he committed a
+wanton crime. He did a wrong to a poor innocent woman, whose only fault
+was to love him beyond his deserts. He was engaged to be married to her,
+and meeting a richer woman he had not the courage to ask to be released
+from his engagement. It happened that by a mistake he was gazetted 'dead'
+at the time of the Mutiny. He never contradicted the mistake--that was
+how he got out of his engagement. He played the same trick with Jem
+Agar's name. I recognised it."
+
+Then the last link of the chain was forged.
+
+"So did I," said Anna Agar. "I was the woman."
+
+Before the words were well out of her mouth Mark Ruthine's voice was
+raised in an alarmed shout.
+
+"Look out!" he cried. "Hold that man; he is mad!"
+
+No one had been noticing Arthur Agar--no one except Seymour Michael, who
+had never taken his eyes from his face during Ruthine's narration.
+
+With a groan, unlike a human sound at all, Arthur Agar had rushed forward
+when his mother spoke, and for a few seconds there was a wild confusion
+in the room, while Seymour Michael, white with dread, fled before his
+doom. In and out among the people and the furniture, shouting for help,
+he leapt and struggled. Then there came a crash. Seymour Michael had
+broken through the window, smashing the glass, with his arms doubled over
+his face.
+
+A second later Arthur wrenched open the sash and gave chase across the
+lawn. In the confusion some moments elapsed before the two heavier men
+followed him over the smooth turf, and the ladies from the window saw
+Arthur Agar kneeling over Seymour Michael on the stone terrace at the end
+of the lawn. They heard with cruel distinctness the sharp crackling crash
+of the Jew's head upon the stone flags, as Arthur shook him as a terrier
+shakes a rat.
+
+Instinctively they followed, and as they came up to the group where
+Ruthine was kneeling over Seymour Michael, while Jem dragged Arthur away,
+they heard the Doctor say--
+
+"Agar, get the ladies away. This man is dead. Look sharp, man! They
+mustn't see this."
+
+And Jem barred their way with one hand, while he held his half-brother
+with the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+SETTLED
+
+For love in sequel works with fate.
+
+
+The four walked back to the library together. Mrs. Agar looked back over
+her shoulder at every other footstep. She took no notice of her son. Her
+affection for him seemed suddenly to have been absorbed and lost in some
+other emotion.
+
+Jem was half supporting, half carrying Arthur, whose eyes were like those
+of a dead man, while his lips were parted in a vacant, senseless way.
+
+Already Ruthine could be heard giving his orders to the gardeners and
+other servants who had gathered round him in a wonderfully short space of
+time.
+
+Dora passed into the library first, treading carefully over the broken
+glass, and Mrs. Agar followed her without appearing to notice the sound
+of breakage beneath her feet. No one had spoken a word since Mark Ruthine
+had told them that Seymour Michael was dead. There are some situations in
+life wherein we suddenly realise what an inadequate thing human speech
+is. There are some things that others know which we have never told them,
+and would ever be unable to tell them. There are some feelings within us
+for which no language can find expression.
+
+Mrs. Agar was simply stupefied. When God does mete out punishment here on
+earth, He does so with an overflowing measure. This devoted mother did
+not even evince anxiety as to the welfare of her son, for whose sake she
+had made so many blunders, so many futile plots.
+
+Jem brought Arthur into the room, and led him to an arm-chair. There was
+that steady masterfulness in his manner which comes to those who have
+looked on death in many forms and whom nothing can dismay.
+
+He offered no unnecessary assistance or advice, did not fussily loosen
+Arthur's necktie, or perform any of those small inappropriate offices
+which some would have deemed necessary under the circumstances. He knew
+quite well that this was no matter of a necktie or a collar.
+
+Mrs. Agar seated herself on a sofa opposite, and slowly swayed her body
+backwards and forwards. She was one of those persons who can never
+separate mental anguish from physical pain. They have but one way of
+expressing both, and possibly of feeling both. Her hands were clasped on
+her lap, her head on one side, her lips drawn back as if in agony. She
+even went so far as to breathe laboriously.
+
+Thus they remained; Jem watching Arthur, Dora watching Jem, who seemed to
+ignore her presence.
+
+It was Mrs. Agar who spoke first, angrily and bitterly.
+
+"What is the good of standing there?" she said to Jem. "Can't you find
+something more useful to do than that?"
+
+Jem looked at her, first with surprise and then with something very
+nearly approaching contempt.
+
+"I am waiting," he replied, "for Ruthine. He is a doctor."
+
+"Who wants a doctor now? What is the good of a doctor now--now that
+Seymour is dead? I don't know what he is doing here, at any rate,
+meddling."
+
+"Arthur wants a doctor," replied Jem. "Can you not see that he is in a
+sort of trance? He hears and sees nothing. He is quite unconscious."
+
+Mrs. Agar seemed only half to understand. She stared at her son, swaying
+backwards and forwards in imbecile misery.
+
+"Oh dear! oh dear!" she whispered, "what have we done to deserve this?"
+
+After a few seconds she repeated the words.
+
+"What have we done to deserve this? What have we done ..."
+
+Her voice died away into a whisper, and when that became inaudible her
+lips went on moving, still framing the same words over and over again.
+
+In this manner they waited, with that dull senselessness to the flight of
+time which follows on a great shock.
+
+They all heard the clatter of horses' feet on the gravel of the avenue,
+and probably they all divined that Mark Ruthine had sent for medical
+help.
+
+To Dora the sound brought a sudden boundless sense of relief. Amidst this
+mental confusion it came as a practical common-sense proof that the
+tension of the last year was over. The burden of her own life was by it
+lifted from her shoulders; for Jem was here, and nothing could matter
+very much now.
+
+Presently Ruthine came into the room. As he went towards Arthur he
+glanced at Dora and then at Mrs. Agar, but the young fellow was evidently
+his first care.
+
+While he was kneeling by the low chair examining Arthur's eyes and face,
+Mrs. Agar suddenly rose and crossed the room.
+
+"Is he dead?" she said abruptly.
+
+"Who?" inquired Mark Ruthine, without looking round.
+
+"Seymour Michael."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Quite?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then Arthur killed him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+All this while Arthur was lying back in the chair, white and lifeless.
+His eyes were open, he breathed regularly, but he heard nothing that was
+said, nor saw anything before his eyes.
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Agar, "that was a murder?"
+
+She was looking out of the window, towards the stone terrace, already
+conscious that the scene that she had witnessed there would never be
+effaced from her memory while she had life.
+
+After a little pause Mark Ruthine spoke.
+
+"No," he answered, "it was not that. Your son was not responsible for his
+actions when he did it. I think I can prove that. I do not yet know what
+it was. It was very singular. I think it was some sort of mental
+aberration--temporary, I hope, and think. We will see when he recovers
+himself--when the circulation is restored."
+
+While he spoke he continued to examine his patient. He spoke in his
+natural tone, without attempting to lower his voice, for he knew that
+Arthur Agar had no comprehension of things terrestrial at that time.
+
+"It was not," he went on, "the action of a sane man. Besides, he could
+not have done it. In his right mind he could not have killed Seymour
+Michael, who was a strong man. As it is, I think that there was some sort
+of paralysis in Seymour Michael--a paralysis of fear. He seemed too
+frightened to attempt to defend himself. Besides, why should your son do
+it?"
+
+"He was born hating him."
+
+Mark Ruthine slowly turned, still upon his knees. He rose, and in his
+dark face there was that strange eagerness again, like the eagerness of a
+sportsman approaching some unknown quarry in the jungle.
+
+"What do you mean, Mrs. Agar?" he asked.
+
+"I mean that he was born with a hatred for that man stronger than
+anything that was in him. His soul was given to him full of hate for
+Seymour Michael. Such things are when a woman bears a child in the midst
+of great passion."
+
+"Yes," said Mark Ruthine, "I know."
+
+"The night he was born," Mrs. Agar went on, "I first saw and spoke to
+that man after he had come back from India--after I had learnt what he
+had done."
+
+Ruthine turned round towards Jem and Dora.
+
+"You hear that," he said to them. "This is not the story of a mother
+trumped up in court to save her son. It is the truth. There are some
+things which we do not understand even yet. Don't forget what you have
+heard. It will come in usefully."
+
+He turned to Mrs. Agar again.
+
+"Did he know the story?" he asked.
+
+"He never heard it until you told it just now."
+
+"Can you swear to that, Mrs. Agar?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then," said Ruthine, "he does not know now that you are the woman whom
+Seymour Michael wronged. He need never know it. The paroxysm had come on
+before you spoke--that was why I shouted. He was mad with hate, before
+you opened your lips."
+
+Mrs. Agar was now beginning to realise what was at stake. The mother's
+love was re-awakening. The old cunning look came into her eyes, and her
+quick, truthless mind was evidently on the alert. There was something
+animal-like in Mrs. Agar; but she was of the lower order of animal, that
+seeks to defend its young by cunning and not by sheer bravery.
+
+Ruthine must have guessed at something, for he said at once:
+
+"Remember what you have told me. You will have to repeat that exactly.
+Add nothing to it, take nothing from it, or you will spoil it. Tell me,
+has your son seen this man more than once?"
+
+"No, only once; at Cambridge."
+
+"All right; I think I shall be able to prove it."
+
+As he spoke he went towards the writing-table and, sitting down, he wrote
+out a prescription. Dora followed him and held out her hand for the
+paper.
+
+"Send for that at once, please," he said.
+
+Then he beckoned to Jem.
+
+"I have sent for the local doctor," he said to him. "But I should advise
+having some one else--Llandoller from Harley Street. This is far above
+our heads."
+
+"Telegraph for him," answered Jem Agar.
+
+While Ruthine wrote he went on speaking.
+
+"We must get him upstairs at once," he said. "I should like to have him
+in bed before the doctor comes."
+
+In answer to the bell, rung a second time, the servant came, looking
+white and scared.
+
+"Show Dr. Ruthine Mr. Arthur's room," said Jem; and Ruthine took Arthur
+up in his arms like a child.
+
+When they had gone there was a silence. Mrs. Agar made no attempt to
+follow. She sat down again on the sofa, swaying backwards and forwards.
+Perhaps she was dimly aware that there remained something still to be
+said.
+
+Jem Agar crossed the room and stood in front of her. Dora, from the
+background, was pleading with her eyes for this woman. There were the
+makings of a very hard man in James Edward Makerstone Agar, and seven
+years of the grimmest soldiering of modern days had done nothing to
+soften him. He was strictly just; but it is not justice that women want.
+To all men there comes a time when they recognise the fact that all their
+time and all their energies are required for the taking care of _one_
+woman, and that all the rest must take care of themselves.
+
+"You may stay," he said to his step-mother, "until Arthur is removed from
+this house--but no longer. I shall never pretend to forgive you, and I
+never want to see you again."
+
+Mrs. Agar made no answer, nor did she look up.
+
+"Go," said Jem, with a little jerk of his head towards the door.
+
+Slowly she rose, and without looking at either of them she passed out of
+the room.
+
+When, at last, they were left alone in the quiet library where they had
+played together as children, where the happiest moments of his life and
+the most miserable of hers had been lived through.
+
+Dora did not seem to know quite what to do. She was standing by the
+writing-table, with one hand resting on it, facing him, but not looking
+at him. She suddenly felt unable to do that--felt at a loss, abashed,
+unequal to the moment.
+
+But Jem seemed to have no hesitation. He was quite natural and very
+deliberate. He seemed to know quite well what to do. He closed the door
+behind Mrs. Agar, and then he came across the room and took Dora in his
+arms, as if there were no question about it. He said nothing. After all,
+there was nothing to be said.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of From One Generation to Another, by
+Henry Seton Merriman
+
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diff --git a/8805-8.zip b/8805-8.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      From One Generation to Another, by Henry Seton Merriman
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's From One Generation to Another, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: From One Generation to Another
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8805]
+This file was first posted on August 10, 2003
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER ***
+
+
+
+
+Text file produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Henry Seton Merriman
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER I. THE SEED </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER II. SUBURBAN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER III. MERCURY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER IV. FREIGHTED </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER V. AFTER NINETEEN YEARS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VI. FOR HIS COUNTRY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VII. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER VIII. RELIEVED </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER IX. RE-CAST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER X. A LAST THROW </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XI. A CARPET KNIGHT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XII. BAD NEWS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIII. ON THIN ICE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XIV. THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XV. THE TOUCH OF NATURE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVII. TWO MOTIVES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XVIII. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XIX. AT HURLINGHGAM </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XX. IN A SIDE PATH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXI. ALONE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIII. AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXIV. A STAB IN THE DARK </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXV. FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVI. BALANCING ACCOUNTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVII. AT BAY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LAST LINK </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXIX. SETTLED </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. THE SEED
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Il faut se garder des premiers mouvements, parce qu'ils sont presque
+      toujours honnétes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dearest Anna,&mdash;I see from the newspaper before me of March 13, that
+      I am reported dead. Before attempting to investigate the origin of this
+      mistake, I hasten to write to you, knowing, dearest, what a shock this
+      must have been to you. It is true that I was in the Makar Akool affair,
+      and was slightly wounded&mdash;a mere scratch in the arm&mdash;but nothing
+      more. I have not written to you for some months past because I have been
+      turning something over in my mind. Anna, dearest, there is no chance of my
+      being in a position to marry for some years yet, and I feel it incumbent
+      upon me ...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter, half written, lay on a camp table before a keen-faced young
+      officer. He ceased writing suddenly, and, leaping to his feet, walked to
+      the door of his bungalow, which was open to the four winds of heaven. In
+      doing this he passed from the range of the lazy punkah flapping
+      somnolently over table and bed. It may have been this sudden change to
+      hotter air that caused him to raise his hand to his forehead, which was
+      high and strangely rounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;suppose I do it that way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked rapidly backwards and forwards with the lithe actions of a man
+      of steel, a light weight, of medium height, keen and quick as a monkey.
+      His black eyes flitted from one object to another with such restlessness
+      that it was impossible to say whether he comprehended what he saw or
+      merely looked at things from force of habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was dark of hair with a sallow complexion and a long drooping nose&mdash;the
+      nose of Semitic ancestors. A small mouth, and the chin running almost to a
+      point. A face full of interest, devoid of distinct vice&mdash;heartless.
+      Here was a man with a future before him&mdash;a man whose vices were all
+      negative, whose virtues depended entirely upon expediency. Here was a man
+      who could be almost anything he liked; as some men can. If expediency
+      prompted he could be a very depôt of virtues; for his body, with all the
+      warmer failings of that part of humanity, was in perfect control. On the
+      other hand, there was no love of good for goodness' sake&mdash;no
+      conscience behind the subtle eyes. All this, and more, was written in the
+      face of Seymour Michael, whose handwriting had dried some moments before
+      on the half-filled sheet of letter-paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned and stood at the table with slightly bowed legs&mdash;not the
+      result of much riding, although he wore top-boots and breeches as if of
+      daily habit&mdash;but a racial defect handed down like the nasal brand
+      from remote progenitors. He looked at letter and newspaper as they lay
+      side by side&mdash;not with the doubtfulness of warfare between conscience
+      and temptation, but with a calculating thoughtfulness. He was not
+      wondering what was best to do, but what the most expedient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those were troublesome times in India, for the Mutiny was not quelled, and
+      each mail took home a list of killed, slowly compiled from news that
+      dribbled in from outlying stations, forts, and towns. Those were days when
+      men's lives were made or lost in the Eastern Empire, for it seems to be in
+      Fortune's balance that great danger weighs against great gain. No large
+      wealth has ever been acquired without proportionate risk of life or
+      happiness. To the tame and timorous city clerk comes small remuneration
+      and a nameless grave, while to more adventurous spirits larger stakes
+      bring vaster rewards. The clerk, pure and simple, has, within these later
+      years, found his way to India, sitting side by side with the Baboo, and
+      consequently it is as easy to make a fortune in London as in Calcutta and
+      Madras. The clerk has carried his sordid civilisation and his love of
+      personal safety with him, sapping at the glorious uncertainty from which
+      the earlier pioneers of a hardier commerce wrested quick-founded fortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael had come into all this with the red coat of a soldier and
+      the keen, ambitious heart of a Jew, at the very nick of time. He saw at
+      once the enormous possibilities hidden in the near future for a man who
+      took this country at its proper value, handling what he secured with
+      coolness and foresight. He know that he only possessed one thing to risk,
+      namely, his life; and true to his racial instinct, he valued this very
+      highly, looking for an extortionate usury on his stake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment he was like Aladdin in the cave of jewels: he did not know
+      which way to turn, which treasure to seize first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna&mdash;dearest Anna&mdash;to whom this half-completed letter was
+      addressed, was a person for whom he had not the slightest affection. At
+      the outset of his career he had paused, decided in haste, and had resolved
+      to make use of the passing opportunity. Anna Hethbridge had therefore been
+      annexed <i>en passant</i>. In person she was youthful and rather handsome&mdash;her
+      fortune was extremely handsome. So Seymour Michael went out to India
+      engaged to be married to this girl who was unfortunate enough to love him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In India two things happened. Firstly, Seymour Michael met a second young
+      lady with a fortune twice as large as that of Miss Anna Hethbridge.
+      Secondly, the Mutiny broke out, and India lay before the ambitious young
+      officer a very land of Ophir. He promptly decided to cut the first string
+      of his bow. Anna Hethbridge was now useless&mdash;nay, more, she was a
+      burthen. Hence the letter which lay half-written on the table of his
+      bungalow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused before this wrong to a blameless woman, and contemplated the
+      perpetration of a greater. He weighed pro and con&mdash;carefully
+      withholding from the balance the casting weight of Right against Wrong.
+      Then he took up the letter and slowly tore it to small pieces. He had
+      decided to leave the report of his death uncontradicted. It was morally
+      certain that five weeks before that day Anna Hethbridge had read the news
+      in the printed column lying before him. He resolved to leave her in
+      ignorance of its falseness. Seymour Michael was not, however, a selfish
+      man. All that he did at this time, and later in life&mdash;all the lives
+      that he ruined&mdash;the hearts he broke&mdash;the men he sacrificed were
+      not offered upon the altar of Self (though the distinction may appear
+      subtle), but sold to his career. Career was this man's god. He wanted to
+      be great, and rich, and powerful; and yet he was conscious of having no
+      definite use for greatness, or riches, or power when acquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here again was the taint of the blood that ran in his veins. The curse had
+      reached him&mdash;in addition to the long, sad nose and the bandy legs.
+      The sense of enjoyment was never to be his. The greed of gain&mdash;gain
+      of any sort&mdash;filled his heart, and <i>ennui</i> secretly nestling in
+      his soul said: &ldquo;Thou shalt possess, but not enjoy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was conscious of this voice, but did not understand it then. He only
+      burned to possess; looking to possession to provide enjoyment. In this he
+      was not quite alone&mdash;with him in his error are all men and women. And
+      so we talk of Love coming after marriage&mdash;and so women marry without
+      Love, believing that it will follow. God help them! That which comes
+      afterwards is not even the ghost of Love, it is only Custom. This was the
+      spirit of Seymour Michael. He had already acquired one or two objects of a
+      vague ambition; and, possessing them, had only learnt to be accustomed to
+      them&mdash;not to value them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no elation in the thought that he was freed from the encumbrance
+      of Anna Hethbridge by a chance misprint. Neither was there hesitation in
+      turning accident ruthlessly to his own advantage. There was only a steady
+      pressing forward&mdash;an unceasing, unwearying attention to his own gain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days news travelled slowly, and the personal had not yet taken
+      precedence in journalism. In the anxiety for the State, the Individual was
+      apt to be overlooked. Seymour Michael counted on six months of oblivion at
+      the least&mdash;he hoped for more, but with characteristic caution acted
+      always in anticipation of the worst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had scarcely thrown the newspaper aside when a comrade entered the
+      bungalow carrying another copy of the same journal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Michael,&rdquo; exclaimed this man, &ldquo;do you see that you're put in among
+      the killed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Seymour Michael, without haste, without hesitation. &ldquo;I have
+      already written to contradict it. Not that there is any one to care
+      whether I am dead or alive. But it might do me harm in Leadenhall Street.
+      I can't afford to be dead even for a week when so much promotion is going
+      forward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was artistic. Most of us forget to preserve our own characteristics
+      in diverging from the truth. The tangled web is only woven when <i>first</i>
+      we practise to deceive. Later on the facility is greater, the handling
+      superior, and the web runs smooth and straight. Seymour Michael was
+      apparently no novice at this sort of thing. He was even at that moment
+      making mental note of the fact that up-country mails were in a state of
+      disorganisation, and a letter which was never written may easily be made
+      to have miscarried later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even he could not foresee everything&mdash;no one can. Not even the
+      righteous man, much less the liar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say,&rdquo; pursued the newcomer, &ldquo;that you are not writing to
+      your family about it&mdash;only to the Company?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rum chap you are, Michael,&rdquo; said the other, lighting a cheroot.
+      &ldquo;Heartless beggar I take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. The simple fact is that I have no one to write to. I only
+      possess one or two distant relatives, and they would probably be rather
+      sorry than otherwise to have the report contradicted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The younger officer&mdash;a mere boy&mdash;with a beardless, happy face,
+      walked to the door of the bungalow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there is always this in it,&rdquo; he said carelessly. &ldquo;By the time
+      the contradiction reaches home the news may be true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael laughed lamely. A joke of this description made him feel
+      rather sick, for a Jew never makes a soldier or a sailor, and they are
+      rarely found in those positions unless great gain is holden up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this pleasantry the youth departed, leaving Michael to write the
+      letter which he had advised as written. As he drew the writing materials
+      towards him he cursed his brother officer quietly and politely for a
+      meddling young fool. He wrote a formal letter to the Company&mdash;the old
+      East India Company which administered an empire with ledger and daybook&mdash;calling
+      their attention to the mistake in the newspaper, and begging them not to
+      trouble to give the matter publicity, as he had already advised his
+      friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This done, he proceeded with the ordinary routine of his daily life. Such
+      men as this are case-hardened. They carry with them a conscience like the
+      floor of an Augean stable, but they know how to walk thereon. Moreover, he
+      was one of those who assign to their dealings with men quite a different
+      code of morals to that reserved for women. His was the code of &ldquo;not being
+      found out.&rdquo; Men are more suspicious&mdash;they find out sooner: <i>ergo</i>
+      the morals to be observed <i>vis à vis</i> to them are of a stricter
+      order. Railway companies and women are by many looked upon as fair game
+      for deception. Consciences tender in many other respects have a subtle
+      contempt for these two exceptions. Many a so-called honest man travels
+      gaily in a first-class carriage with a second-class ticket, and lies to a
+      woman at each end of his journey without so much as casting a shadow upon
+      his conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael carried this code to the farthest limit of safety. All
+      through the months that followed he went about his business with a clear
+      conscience and a heart slightly relieved by the removal of Anna Hethbridge
+      from his path to prosperity. He served his country and the Company with a
+      keenness of foresight and a soldierly exposure of the lives of others
+      which did not fail, in the course of time, to bring him in a harvest of
+      honours and rewards. Neither did he put his candle under a bushel, but set
+      it in the very highest candlestick available.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as has been previously stated, he could not foresee everything. He
+      did not know, for instance, that his cheroot-smoking subaltern&mdash;a
+      youth as guileless as he was indiscreet, for the two usually go together&mdash;possessed
+      a memory like a dry-plate. He did not foresee that a passing conversation
+      in an Indian bungalow might perchance photograph itself on the somewhat
+      sparsely covered tablets of a man's mind, to be reproduced at the wrong
+      moment with a result lying twenty-six years ahead in the womb of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. SUBURBAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>L'amour fait tout excuser, mais il faut être bien sûr qu'il y a de i
+      amour.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Anna Hethbridge loved Seymour Michael with as great a love as her
+      nature could compass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the news of his death reached her, at the profusely laden
+      breakfast-table at Jaggery House, Clapham Common, her first feeling was
+      one of scornful anger towards a Providence which could be so careless.
+      Life had always been prosperous for her, in a bourgeois, solidly wealthy
+      way, entirely suited to her turn of mind. She had always had servants at
+      her beck and call, whom she could abuse illogically and treat with an
+      utter inconsequence inherent in her nature. She had been the spoilt child
+      of a ponderous, thick-skinned father and a very suburban mother, who, out
+      of her unexpected prosperity, could deny her daughter nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three months after the receipt of the news Anna Hethbridge went down into
+      Hertfordshire, where, in the course of a visit at Stagholme Rectory, she
+      met and became engaged to the Squire of Stagholme, James Edward Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month later she became the second wife of the simple-minded old country
+      gentleman. It would be hard to say what motives prompted her to this
+      apparently heartless action. Some women are heartless&mdash;we know that.
+      But Anna Hethbridge was too impulsive, too excitable, and too much given
+      to pleasure to be devoid of heart. Behind her action there must have been
+      some strange, illogical, feminine motive, for there was a deliberation in
+      every move&mdash;one of those motives which are quite beyond the masculine
+      comprehension. One notices that when a woman takes action in this
+      incomprehensible way her lady friends are never surprised; they seem to
+      have some subtle sympathy with her. It is only the men who look puzzled,
+      as if the ground beneath their feet were unstable. Therefore there must be
+      some influence at work, probably the same influence, under different
+      forms, which urges women to those strange, inconsequent actions by which
+      their lives are rendered miserable. Men have not found it out yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna Hethbridge was at this time twenty-four years of age, rather pretty,
+      with a vivacity of manner which only seemed frivolous to the more
+      thoughtful of her acquaintances. The idea of her marrying old Squire Agar
+      within six months of the untimely death of her clever lover, Seymour
+      Michael, seemed so preposterous that her hostess, good, sentimental Mrs.
+      Glynde, never dreamt of such a possibility until, in the form of a fact,
+      it was confided to her by Miss Hethbridge, one afternoon soon after her
+      arrival at the rectory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Confound it, Maria,&rdquo; exclaimed the Rector testily, when the information
+      was passed on to him later in the evening. &ldquo;Why could you not have
+      foreseen such an absurd event?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Mrs. Glynde looked distressed. She was a thin little woman, with an
+      unsteady head, physically and morally speaking; full of kindness of heart,
+      sentimentality, high-flown principles, and other bygone ladylike
+      commodities. Her small, eager face, of a ruddy and weather-worn complexion&mdash;as
+      if she had, at some early period of her existence, been left out all night
+      in an east wind&mdash;was puckered up with a sense of her own negligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried hard, poor little woman, to take a deep and Christian interest
+      in the welfare of her neighbours; but all the while she was conscious of
+      failure. She knew that even at that moment, when she was sitting in her
+      small arm-chair with clasped, guilty hands, her whole heart and soul were
+      absorbed beyond retrieval in a small bundle of white flannel and pink
+      humanity in a cradle upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector had dropped his weekly review upon his knees and was staring at
+      her angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really can't tell,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;what you can have been thinking
+      about to let such a ridiculous thing come to pass. What are you thinking
+      about now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear,&rdquo; confessed the little woman shamedly, &ldquo;I was thinking of Baby&mdash;of
+      Dora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought so,&rdquo; he snapped, with a little laugh, returning to his paper with
+      a keen interest. But he did not seem to be following the printed lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose she was all right when you were up just now!&rdquo; he said
+      carelessly after a moment, and without lowering his paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear,&rdquo; the lady replied. &ldquo;She was asleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this young mother of forty smiled softly to herself as if at some
+      recollection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This happiness had come late, as happiness must for us to value it fully,
+      and Mrs. Glynde's somewhat old-fashioned Christianity was of that school
+      which seeks to depreciate by hook or by crook the enjoyment of those
+      sparse goods that the gods send us. The stone in her path at this time was
+      an exaggerated sense of her own unworthiness&mdash;a matter which she
+      might safely have left to another and wiser judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the Rector laid aside the newspaper, and rose slowly from his
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going upstairs, dear?&rdquo; inquired his tactless spouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Um&mdash;er. Yes! I am just going up to get&mdash;a pocket-handkerchief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde said nothing; but as she knew the creak of every board in the
+      room overhead she became aware shortly afterwards that the Rector had
+      either diverged slightly from the path of which he was the ordained
+      finger-post, or that he had suddenly taken to keeping his
+      pocket-handkerchiefs in the far corner of the room where the cradle stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be readily understood that in a household ruled, as this rectory
+      was, by a sleepy little morsel of humanity, Anna Hethbridge was in no way
+      hindered in the furtherance of her own personal purposes&mdash;one might
+      almost add periodical purposes, for she never held to one for long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Squire was very lonely. His boy Jem, aged four, would certainly be the
+      happier for a mother's care. Above all, Miss Hethbridge seemed to want the
+      marriage, and so it came about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Anna Hethbridge had been asked at that time why she wanted it, she
+      would probably have told an untruth. She was rather given, by the way, to
+      telling untruths. Had she, in fact, given a reason at all, she would
+      perforce have left the straight path, because she had no reason in her
+      mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The real motive was probably a love of excitement; and Miss Anna
+      Hethbridge is not the only woman, by many thousands, who has married for
+      that same reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wedding was celebrated quietly at the Clapham parish church. A
+      humiliating day for the stiff-necked old Squire of Stagholme; for he was
+      introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought up
+      Stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter &ldquo;h.&rdquo;
+       The bourgeois ostentation and would-be high-toned graciousness of the
+      ladies, jarred on his nerves as harshly as did the personal appearance of
+      their respective husbands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Altogether it was just possible that Squire Agar began to realise the
+      extent of his own foolishness before the effervescence had left the
+      champagne that flowed freely to the health of bride and bride-groom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the course
+      of a few days a copy of the <i>Times</i> containing the insertion started
+      eastward to meet Seymour Michael on his way home from India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna Agar came home to Stagholme to begin her new life; for which peaceful
+      groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she had
+      breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth. This atmosphere is
+      terribly impregnated with the microbe of bourgeoisie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the novelty of the great house had that all-absorbing fascination
+      exercised over shallow minds by anything that is new. At first she
+      maintained excitedly that there was no life like a country life&mdash;no
+      centre more suited for such an ideal existence than Stagholme. For a time
+      she forgot Seymour Michael; but love is eminently deceitful. It lies in a
+      comatose silence for many years and then suddenly springs to life.
+      Sometimes the long period of rest has strengthened it&mdash;sometimes the
+      time has been passed in a chrysalis stage from which Love awakens to find
+      itself changed into Hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Jem, her stepson&mdash;sturdy, fair, silent&mdash;was her first
+      failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to your mother, dear,&rdquo; she said, with unguarded enthusiasm one
+      afternoon when there were callers in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot go to my mother,&rdquo; replied the youthful James, with his mouth
+      full of cake, &ldquo;because she is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an uncompromising matter-of-factness about this simple
+      statement, made in all good faith and honesty, which warned the second
+      Mrs. Agar to press the matter no farther just then. But she was so intent
+      upon exhibiting to her neighbours the maternal affection which she
+      persuaded herself that she felt for the plain-spoken heir to Stagholme,
+      that she took him to task afterwards. With great care and an utter lack of
+      logic she devoted some hours to the instruction of Jem in the somewhat
+      crooked ways of her social creed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;I tell you to come to your mother, you must come
+      and kiss me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This last item she further impressed upon him by the gift of an orange,
+      and then asked him if he understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After scratching his head meditatively for some moments, he looked into
+      her comely face with very steady blue eyes and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think so&mdash;not quite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; replied his stepmother angrily, &ldquo;you are a very stupid little boy&mdash;and
+      you must go up to the nursery at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This puzzled Jem still more, and he walked upstairs reflecting deeply.
+      Years afterwards, when he was a man, the sunlight falling on the wall
+      through the skylight over the staircase had the power of bringing back
+      that moment to him&mdash;a moment when the world first began to open
+      itself before him and to puzzle him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened that at that precise time when Mrs. Agar was endeavouring To
+      teach her little stepson the usages of polite society, a small, keen-faced
+      man was standing near the table in the smoking-room in the Hotel Wagstaff
+      at Suez. He was idly turning over the newspapers lying there in the hopes
+      of finding something comparatively recent in date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he came upon a copy of the <i>Times</i>, with which he repaired
+      to one of the long chairs on that verandah overlooking the desert which
+      some of us know only too well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After idly conning the general news he glanced at the births, deaths, and
+      marriages, and there he read of the recent ceremony in the parish church
+      of Clapham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D&mdash;&mdash;n it!&rdquo; he muttered, with that racial love of an expletive
+      which makes a Jew a profane man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition to a strong feeling of wounded vanity that Anna Hethbridge
+      should so soon have forgotten him, Seymour Michael was distinctly
+      disappointed that this heiress should no longer be within his reach. The
+      truth was, that the young lady in India had transferred her valuable
+      affections, with all solid appurtenances attaching thereto, to a young
+      officer in the Navy who had been invalided at Calcutta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To men who intend, despite all and at any cost, to get on in the world the
+      first failures are usually very bitter. It is only those who press
+      stolidly forward without expecting much, who profit from a check. Seymour
+      Michael was just the man to fail by being too acute, too unscrupulous. He
+      was usually in such a hurry to help himself that he never allowed another
+      the very fruitful pleasure of giving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In India his zeal had led him into one or two small mistakes to which he
+      himself attached no importance, but they were remembered against him. He
+      had cruelly thrown aside Anna Hethbridge when a richer marriage offered
+      itself. Now he had missed both bone and reflection, and he sat with a
+      smile on his dark face, looking out over the dreary desert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. MERCURY
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <i>The evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come.</i>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      James Edward Makerstone Agar was not at the age of five the material from
+      which the heroes of children's stories are evolved. He was not a good boy,
+      nor a clean, nor particularly interesting. He was, however, honest&mdash;and
+      that is <i>déjà quelque chose</i>. He was as far removed from the
+      &ldquo;misunderstood&rdquo; type as could be wished; and he was quite happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before his stepmother had laid aside the title and glory of a bride, he
+      had, by his deadly honesty, made her understand that even a child of five
+      requires what she could not give him&mdash;namely, logic. Had she been
+      clever enough to reason logically she might have undermined the little
+      fellow's innate honesty of character, despite the fact that he lacked a
+      child's chief incentive to learn from its mother, namely, the sympathy of
+      heredity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually and steadily Mrs. Agar &ldquo;gave him up,&rdquo; to make use of her own
+      expression. She was one of those women who either fear or despise that
+      which they do not understand. She could scarcely fear Jem, so she
+      persuaded herself that he was stupid and unattractive. At this time there
+      came another influence to militate against any excess of love between Jem
+      and his stepmother. It came to her, for he was ignorant of it. And this
+      was the knowledge that before long the little heir's undisputed reign in
+      the nursery would come to an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a suburban horror of being a long distance from the chemist, Mrs.
+      Agar protested that she could not possibly remain at Stagholme during the
+      ensuing winter, and that her child must be born at Clapham. It was vain to
+      argue or reason, and at last the Squire was forced to swallow this second
+      humiliation, which was quite beyond his wife's comprehension. He only
+      dared to hint that all the Agars had seen the light at Stagholme since
+      time immemorial; but feelings of this description found no answering note
+      in her practical and essentially commonplace mind. So Mr. And Mrs. Agar
+      emigrated to Clapham, leaving Jem behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened that a few days after their arrival at the stately house
+      overlooking the Common, a young officer called to see Mr. Hethbridge, who
+      was at that time one of the Directors of the East India Company. Now it
+      furthermore happened that this young soldier was he whom we last saw
+      smoking a cheroot in the doorway of Seymour Michael's bungalow in India.
+      As chance would have it, he called in the evening, and the estimable Mr.
+      Hethbridge, warmed into an unusual hospitality by the fumes of his own
+      port wine, pressed him to pass into the drawing-room and take a dish of
+      tea with the ladies. The subaltern accepted, chiefly because it was the
+      Director's self that pressed, and presently followed that short-winded
+      gentleman into the drawing-room&mdash;thereby shaping lives yet uncreated&mdash;thereby
+      unconsciously helping to work out a chain of events leading ultimately to
+      an end which no man could foresee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, in reply to Mrs. Agar's question, &ldquo;I am just back from
+      India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened that these two were left almost beyond earshot at the far end
+      of the room. The old people, among whom was Mrs. Agar's husband, were
+      settling down to a game of whist. Mrs. Agar was leaning forward with
+      considerable interest. This was not a mere passing curiosity to hear
+      further of a country and of an event which have not lost their glamour
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very word &ldquo;India&rdquo; had stirred something up within her heart of the
+      presence of which she had been unsuspicious. She was as one who, having a
+      closed room in her life, and thinking the door thereof securely barred,
+      suddenly finds herself within that room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whereabouts in India were you?&rdquo; she asked, with a sudden dryness of the
+      lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;I was north of Delhi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;North of Delhi&mdash;oh, yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She moistened her lips, with a strange, sidelong glance round the room, as
+      if she were preparing to jump from a height.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;and I suppose you saw a great deal of the Mutiny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even then&mdash;after many months, in a drawing-room in peaceful Clapham&mdash;the
+      young man's eyes hardened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw a good deal,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar leant back in her chair, drawing her handkerchief through her
+      fingers with jerky, unnatural movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did you lose many friends?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the young fellow, &ldquo;in one way and another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How? What do you mean?&rdquo; She had a way of leaning forward and listening
+      when spoken to, which passed very well for sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, a time like the Mutiny brings out all that is in a man, you know.
+      And some men had less in them than one might have thought, while others&mdash;quiet-going
+      fellows&mdash;seemed to wake up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One or two,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;betrayed themselves. They showed that there
+      was that in them which no one had suspected. I lost one friend that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was marvellous how the merest details of India interested this woman,
+      who, like most of us, did not know herself. Moreover, she never learnt to
+      do so thoroughly, thereby being spared the horrid pain of knowing oneself
+      too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I made a mistake,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;I thought he was a gentleman and a
+      brave man. I found that he was a coward and a cad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something urged her to go on with her pointless questions&mdash;the same
+      inevitable Fate which, according to the Italians, &ldquo;stands at the end of
+      everything,&rdquo; and which had prompted Mr. Hethbridge to bring this stranger
+      into the drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how did you find it out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I did not do it all at once. I first began by a mere trifle. It
+      happened that this man was reported dead in the Gazette&mdash;I showed it
+      to him myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young officer, who was not accustomed to ladies' society, and felt
+      rather nervous at his own loquaciousness, kept his eyes fixed on his
+      boots, and did not notice the deathly pallor of Mrs. Agar's face, nor the
+      convulsive clutch of her fingers on the velvet arm of the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned right round, with a peculiar movement of the throat as if
+      swallowing something, and made sure that the whist-players were interested
+      in their game. In that position she heard the next words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not even take the trouble to write home to his friends. I thought
+      it rather strange at the time, and told him so. Later on I heard the truth
+      of it. I heard him tell some one else that he was engaged to a girl in
+      England, and he thought it a very good way of getting out of the
+      engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You heard him tell that, with your own ears?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and he seemed to think it a good joke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was shuffling about in the chair as if in pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she asked again in a strangely metallic voice, &ldquo;Did he say that he&mdash;did
+      not love her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the cad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He cannot have been a nice man,&rdquo; she said, with that evenness of
+      enunciation which betrays that the tongue is speaking without the direct
+      aid of the mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young officer rose with a glance towards the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;he was not. He did other things afterwards which made it
+      quite impossible for a man with any self-respect whatever to look upon him
+      as a friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he,&rdquo; asked Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;say anything about her personal appearance?
+      Was it that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The subaltern looked puzzled. It was as well for Mrs. Agar that he was not
+      a man of deep experience. Instead of being puzzled he might suddenly have
+      seen clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;It was not that. It was merely a matter of
+      expediency, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, womanlike, Mrs. Agar did not believe him. She sat while he made his
+      farewell speech over the whist-table, but as he went to the door she rose
+      and followed him slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the hall she watched the servant help him on with his coat&mdash;her
+      features twisted into a stereotype smile of polite leave-taking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way,&rdquo; she said, with a sickening little laugh, &ldquo;what was the man's
+      name&mdash;your friend, whom you lost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael&mdash;Seymour Michael.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Good-night&mdash;good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she turned and walked slowly upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are apt to read indifferently of human ills, whether of the flesh or
+      the soul. We are apt to overlook the fact that what we read may apply to
+      us. Some of us even bear upon us the mark of hereditary disease and refuse
+      to believe in it. Then suddenly comes a day when a pain makes itself felt&mdash;a
+      dumb, little creeping pain, which may mean nothing. We sit down and, so to
+      speak, feel ourselves. Before long all doubt goes. We have it. The world
+      darkens, and behold we are in the ranks of those upon whom we looked a
+      little while back with a semi-indifferent pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was thus with Mrs. Agar. As some play with nature, so had she played
+      with her own heart. She had heard of a consuming love which is near akin
+      to hatred. She had read of passion which is stronger than the strongest
+      worldliness. She had smilingly doubted the existence of the broken heart
+      pure and simple. And now she sat in her own room, numbly, blindly feeling
+      herself, like one to whom the first warning of an internal deadly disease
+      has been manifested. She was conscious of something within herself which
+      she could not get at, over which she had no control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With quivering lips she sat and wondered what she could do to hurt this
+      man. She did not only want to inflict bodily pain, but that other gnawing
+      pain of the heart which she herself was now feeling for the first time.
+      And through it all there ran the one thought that he must die. It was
+      strange that hate should first teach her that love is a living, undeniable
+      reality in the lives of all of us. She had never realised this before. Her
+      bringing-up, her surroundings, all her teaching had been that money and a
+      great house, and servants, and carriages were the good things of this
+      life, the things to be sought after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been conscious of a vague admiration for Seymour Michael, and that
+      was the full extent of her knowledge of herself. This admiration took the
+      worldly form of a conviction that he was destined one day to be a great
+      man, and she had a strongly developed, common-minded desire to be a great
+      lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some things in this life which to a moderate intelligence are
+      quite unmistakable. Most of us, having left childhood behind, recognise at
+      once an earthquake, and death. Love is as unmistakable when it really
+      comes. And Anna Agar, having suddenly learnt to hate Seymour Michael, knew
+      that she had loved him with that one all-absorbing love which comes but
+      once to a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not a deep-thinking or a subtle woman. Her actions were usually
+      based upon impulse, and her one all-absorbing desire now was to see him,
+      to speak to him face to face. In this indefinite longing there was
+      probably a vulgar love of vituperation&mdash;the taint of her low-born
+      ancestors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wanted to shout and shriek her hatred into the evil face of the man
+      who had tricked her. She wanted to frighten him, to threaten, to lash him
+      with her tongue. For she was conscious all the while of her own inability
+      to harm him. Without defining the thought, her common-sense taught her one
+      lamentable, unjust fact; namely, that unless a woman is loved by the
+      object of her wrath she can hardly make him suffer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose at last, and, lighting the candles on the writing-table, she
+      proceeded to write to Seymour Michael. Even in this epistle the natural
+      cunning of her nature appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR SEYMOUR &ldquo;&mdash;she wrote on a sheet of paper bearing the address of
+      the house in which she was staying, the roof under which Seymour Michael
+      had first paid his careless tribute to her wealth&mdash;&ldquo;I learnt by
+      accident this evening that your regiment has returned to England. If you
+      are in London, I hope you will make time to come and see me. Come
+      to-morrow evening at four, if that time is convenient to you. ANNA.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She purposely signed her Christian name only, purposely refrained from
+      vouchsafing any personal news. She did not know how much or how little he
+      might know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ringing for her maid, she sent the letter to the post, addressed to
+      Seymour Michael, at the Service Club, of which she knew him to be a
+      member. Then she went to bed to toss and turn all night. The doctors,
+      good, portly Clapham practitioners, had warned her in the usual way to
+      spare herself all bodily fatigue and mental worry for the sake of the
+      little one. It is so easy to urge each other to spare all mental worry,
+      and so eminently useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. FREIGHTED
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I shall remember while the light lives yet, And in the darkness I shall
+      not forget.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael was no coward where hard words and no hard knocks were to
+      be exchanged. His faith in his own keenness of intellect and
+      unscrupulousness of tongue was unbounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled when he read Anna Agar's letter over a dainty breakfast at his
+      club the next morning. The cunning of it was obvious to his cunning
+      comprehension, and the fact of her suppressing her newly-acquired surname
+      only convinced him that she knew but little about himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That same evening at four o'clock he presented himself at the lordly
+      hall-door of Mr. Hethbridge. Since first he had raised his hand to this
+      knocker, fingering his letter of introduction to the East India director,
+      Seymour Michael had learnt many things, but the knowledge was not yet his
+      that indiscriminate untruths are apt to fly home to roost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna Agar had easily managed to send her mother out of the house; her
+      husband spent his days as far from Clapham as circumstances would allow.
+      She was seated on a sofa at the far end of the room when Seymour Michael
+      was shown in, and the first thing that struck her was his diminutiveness.
+      After the hearty country gentlemen who habitually carried mud into the
+      Stagholme drawing-room, this small-limbed dapper soldier of fortune looked
+      almost puny. But there is a depth in every woman's heart which is only to
+      be reached by one man. Whatever betide them both, that one is different
+      from the rest all through life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of these two persons spoke until the servant had closed the door.
+      Then, as is usual in such cases, the more indifferent spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you never write to me?&rdquo; said Seymour Michael, fixing his mournful
+      glance on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I thought you were dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never got my letter contradicting the report?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, with so cheap a cunning that it deceived him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; he went on, with the heartlessness of a small man, for large men
+      respect woman with a deeper chivalry than every puny knight yet compassed,
+      &ldquo;and you did not trouble to inquire. You did not even give me six months'
+      grace to cool in my grave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you send your letter?&rdquo; she asked, with a suppressed excitement
+      which he misread entirely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the usual route. I wrote off at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Liar! liar! liar!&rdquo; she shrieked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had risen, and stood pointing an accusatory finger at him. Then
+      suddenly the dramatic force of the situation seemed to fail, and she burst
+      out laughing. For some seconds it seemed as if her laughter was getting
+      beyond her control, but at last she checked it with a gurgle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The complete success of the trap which she had laid for him almost
+      disappointed her. Few things are more disappointing than complete success.
+      She hated him, and yet for the sake of the one gleam of good love that had
+      flickered once in her essentially sordid heart, she had nourished a vague
+      hope that he would clear himself&mdash;that at all events he would have
+      the cleverness to see through her stratagem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Liar!&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;In this room last night&mdash;not twenty-four hours
+      ago&mdash;Mr. Wynderton told me all about it. He said that you told
+      several men in his presence that you did not love me, and that your death
+      reported in the papers was the best way of breaking off the engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael's eyes never wavered. For once they were still, with that
+      solemn depth of gaze which tells of the curse laid on a smitten, miserable
+      race. It was strange that before honest men and women his glance wavered
+      ever&mdash;he could never meet honest eyes; but looking at Anna Agar they
+      were as steady as those of a true man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wynderton,&rdquo; ho said, &ldquo;the man whose promotion I stopped, by a report
+      against him for looting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nature makes a fool in the guise of a woman she turns out a finished
+      work. Mrs. Agar's eyes actually lighted up. Seymour Michael saw; but he
+      knew that he had no case. Nevertheless, in view of the Squire's advanced
+      age (a fact of which he had made sure), he attempted to carry through a
+      forlorn hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you believe this man before you believe me?&rdquo; said Michael. It is
+      strange how often one hears the word &ldquo;believe&rdquo; on the lips of those whose
+      veracity is doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now it happened that Mr. Hethbridge had spoken of Wynderton at breakfast
+      that morning in terms which left no doubt as to the untruth of the
+      statement just made in regard to him. But even this would have been passed
+      over by the woman who had a natural tendency towards falsehood herself,
+      had not Seymour Michael made a hideous mistake. A wiser man than any of us
+      has said that there is a time for all things. Most distinctly defined is
+      the time for making love. More men come to grief by making too much love
+      than too little. Seymour Michael, being heartless, deemed erroneously that
+      this was a propitious moment to essay the power which had once been his
+      over this woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He accompanied his reproachful speech with a tender glance, which in olden
+      times had never failed to call forth an answering look of love in her
+      eyes. Now, it suddenly aroused her to realise the extent of her hatred. In
+      some subtle way it humiliated her; for she looked back into the past, and
+      saw herself therein a dupe to this man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she cried, and her raised voice had a sudden twang in it&mdash;suggestive
+      of the streets; of the People. &ldquo;No&mdash;you needn't trouble to make soft
+      eyes at me. I know you now&mdash;I know that what that man said was true.
+      He called you a coward and a cad. You are worse! You are a Jew&mdash;a
+      mean, lying Jew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There are few greater trials to a man's dignity than vituperation from the
+      lips of a woman. She walked towards him, clumsily, menacingly and raised
+      her hand as if to strike him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael's brown face turned yellow beneath her blazing anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down!&rdquo; he commanded, &ldquo;and don't make a fool of yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was mean enough to pay her back in her own coin&mdash;the paltry,
+      loud-ringing coin which is all that a woman has.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not mean to wrangle,&rdquo; he said coolly; &ldquo;but I may as well tell you
+      now that I never cared a jot for you. I was laughing at you in my sleeve
+      all the time. I did not want you but your money. I concluded that the
+      money would be too dear at the price, so I determined to throw you over.
+      The way I chose to do it was as good as any other, because it saved me the
+      trouble of writing to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna Agar had obeyed him. She was sitting down in a stiff-backed
+      arm-chair, looking stupidly at the pattern of the carpet as if it were
+      something new to her. Between physical pain and mental excitement she was
+      beginning to wander. She was the sort of woman to lose control over her
+      mind with a temperature of one hundred and one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael looked keenly at her. He had a racial terror of physical ailment.
+      He saw that something was wrong, but his knowledge went no further. He had
+      never seen a woman faint, so limited had been his experience of the sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said consolingly, &ldquo;it is all for the best. We made a mistake.
+      In a few years we shall look back to this, and thank Heaven for saving us
+      many years of unhappiness. We are not suited to each other, Anna. We never
+      should have been happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was characteristic of the man to be more afraid of a fainting fit than
+      of a broken heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to her side and stood, not daring to touch her, for fear of
+      arousing another of those fits of passion in her which neither of them
+      seemed to understand. At length she spoke in a singular monotonous tone
+      which an experienced doctor would have recognised at once as the speech of
+      a tongue unguided for the time being. She did not look up, but kept her
+      eyes fixed on the carpet as if reading there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I will pay you back. Some day&mdash;some day. I do
+      not know how, but I feel that you will be sorry you ever did this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty-five years afterwards these words came back to him in a flash. They
+      passed through his brain&mdash;conglomerate&mdash;in a flash, in a
+      hundredth part of the time required to speak them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even at the time of hearing them, spoken in that voice which did not seem
+      to belong to Anna Hethbridge at all, he turned pale. For all the hatred
+      that burnt within her like a fire smouldered in the deliberate tones of
+      her voice. Hatred and love can teach us more in a moment than the
+      experience of a lifetime; for through either of them we see ourselves face
+      to face. This hatred made Anna Agar in twenty-four hours, and the woman
+      thus created went through a lifetime unchanged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael went towards the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to ring,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for your maid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twice,&rdquo; she muttered in the same vague way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He obeyed her, ringing twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the woman came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mistress,&rdquo; said Michael in a low voice to her at the door, &ldquo;has been
+      suddenly seized with faintness. I leave her to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without looking round he passed through the doorway and out into his own
+      self-seeking life. But Anna Agar's revenge began from that moment. To a
+      man of his nature, in whose veins ran the taint of a semi-superstitious
+      Oriental blood, there was a nameless terror in the hatred of a human
+      being, however helpless. Surely the hell of the coward will be a twilight
+      land of vague shadowy dangers ever approaching and receding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In such a land Seymour Michael moved for some months, until he returned to
+      India; and there, in the daily round of a new life, he gradually learnt to
+      shake off the past. The world is very large despite chance meetings. It is
+      easy enough to find room for two even in the same county, with the
+      exercise of a little care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty-five years elapsed before these two met again, and then they only
+      had time to exchange a glance. By that time the result of their own
+      actions had passed beyond their control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael walked across the Common, which was in those days still
+      wild and almost beautiful; and on the whole he was pleased with the result
+      of this interview. He knew that it was destined to come sooner or later&mdash;he
+      had known that all along; and it might have been worse. It is
+      characteristic of an untruthful nature to be impervious to the shame of
+      mere detection. In Eastern countries the liar detected smiles in one's
+      face. Detection is to an Oriental no punishment; something more tangible
+      is required to pierce his mental epidermis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being quite incapable of a strong love this man was innocent of consuming
+      hatred. He therefore vaguely wondered whether the day might come wherein
+      he would once more lay siege to the affections of Anna Agar, a rich widow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had he seen the face of the woman whom he had just left as it lay at that
+      moment, hardly less pale than the pillow between the fluted mahogany
+      pillars of a huge four-post bed, he would not have understood its meaning.
+      He would never have divined that the dull gleam shining between her
+      half-closed eyelids was simple hatred of himself, that the restless,
+      twitching lips were whispering curses upon his head, that the half-stunned
+      brain was struggling back to circulation and thought for the sole purpose
+      of devising hurt to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael, ignorant of all this, went peaceably back to his club,
+      where he dressed, dined, and proceeded to pass the evening at a theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, while he was displaying his diamond studs in the stalls of
+      Drury Lane Theatre, was born into the world&mdash;long before his time&mdash;a
+      child, Arthur Agar, destined to walk the smoothest paths of life,
+      literally in silk attire; for he grew up to love such things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the ways of Nature are strange. She is very quiet; patient as death
+      itself. She holds her hand for years&mdash;sometimes for a generation&mdash;but
+      she strikes at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She is more cruel than man, or even than woman which is saying much, She
+      is the best friend we have, and the worst foe, for she never forgives an
+      outrage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nature raised her hand over this puny, whimpering child, Arthur Agar. She
+      never forgot a mother's selfish passion. She forgets nothing. When first
+      he opened his little pink lids upon the world he looked round with a
+      scared wonder in a pair of colourless blue-grey eyes; and that vague look
+      of expectation never left his eyes in later life. It almost seemed as if
+      the infant orbs could see ahead into the future&mdash;could discern the
+      lowering hand of outraged Nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This hand was suspended over the ill-fated, poorly-endowed head for years,
+      then Nature struck&mdash;hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. AFTER NINETEEN YEARS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A sharp judgment shall be to them that be in high places.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear. I have great news for you to take back to your mother. Jem has
+      got his commission&mdash;in a Goorkha regiment!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady who spoke leant back in her chair, half turning her head, but not
+      looking entirely round in the direction of the only other occupant of the
+      room&mdash;a girl of nineteen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a Goorkha regiment, Aunt Anna?&rdquo; repeated the girl; &ldquo;what is that? It
+      sounds as if he would have to black his face and wear a turban. It
+      suggests curry and gymkhanas (whatever they may be) and pyjamas and
+      bananas and other pickles. A Goorkha regiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a faint drop in her tone&mdash;on the last three words, which to
+      very keen ears might have signified reproach, but the hearer was not keen&mdash;merely
+      cunning, which is quite a different matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear. They tell me that these Indian regiments are much the best for
+      a young man who is likely to get on. There are so many more chances of
+      promotions and&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;distinction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl was standing by the open window, and she turned her head without
+      otherwise moving, looking at the speaker with a pair of exceedingly
+      discriminating eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bosh, my dear aunt!&rdquo; she whispered confidingly to the blind-cord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; pursued the lady, with the eager credulity of her first mother,
+      ever ready to believe the last speaker when belief is convenient&mdash;&ldquo;Yes.
+      Sister Cecilia tells me that all the great men began in the Indian
+      Service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I wonder where they finished. Royal Academy&mdash;finishing Academy.
+      Regimentals and a gold frame&mdash;leaning heroically on a mild-looking
+      cannon with battles in the background.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear,&rdquo; replied Mrs. Agar, who only half understood Dora Glynde at
+      all times; &ldquo;it is such a good thing for Jem. Such a splendid opportunity,
+      you know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; echoed the girl, with a twist of her humorous lips. &ldquo;Splendid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had turned again, and was looking out of the window across a soft old
+      lawn where two Wellingtonians towered side by side like sentries. Without
+      glancing in the direction of her companion she knew the expression of Mrs.
+      Agar's face, the direction of her gaze; the very thought in her shallow
+      mind. She knew that Mrs. Agar was sitting with her arms on the little
+      davenport, gazing rapturously at the photograph of an insipid young man
+      with a silk-faced smoking jacket; with clean linen, clean countenance,
+      clean hands, immaculate hair, and a general air of being too weak to be
+      mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister Cecilia,&rdquo; went on the elder lady, &ldquo;seems to know all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is useless to attempt concealment of the fact that at this juncture
+      Dora Glynde made a face&mdash;an honest schoolgirl behind-your-back Face&mdash;indicative
+      of supreme scorn for some person or persons unspecified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hers was a countenance which lent itself admirably to the purpose, with
+      lips full of humour, and capable, as such lips are, of expressing a great
+      and wonderful tenderness. The face, <i>du reste</i>, was that of a
+      healthy, fair-skinned English girl, liable to honest change from pale to
+      pink, according to the dictates of an arbitrary climate. Her eyes were of
+      a dark grey-blue, straightforward and steady, with a shadow of thought in
+      them which made wise people respect her presence. She was not painfully
+      beautiful, like the heroine of a novel&mdash;nor abnormally plain, like
+      the antitype who has found her way into fiction, and there (alone) brings
+      all hearts to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Jem glad?&rdquo; she asked cheerfully. &ldquo;Is he thirsting for gore and glory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, delighted! Arthur will be so pleased too. Dear boy, <i>he</i> is so
+      interested in soldiers, but of course he could not go into the army! He is
+      too delicate&mdash;besides, the life is rough, and the risks are very
+      great.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was speaking with her head slightly inclined to one side, and
+      she never raised her adoring eyes from the photograph of the insipid young
+      man. Had she done so she would have seen a look of patient, if comic,
+      resignation come over the face of her youthful companion at the mention of
+      her son's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell mother,&rdquo; said Dora Glynde, purposely ignoring Arthur Agar,
+      whose name was always dragged sooner or later into every conversation.
+      &ldquo;Fancy Jem in a helmet, or a turban, with his face blacked! All the same,
+      if I were a man I should be a soldier. When does he go&mdash;to join his
+      regiment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, almost at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl winced, quietly, between herself and the blind-cord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And in the meantime,&rdquo; she said lightly, &ldquo;I suppose he is fully engaged in
+      buying swords and guns and bomb-shells, or whatever the Goorkhas use in
+      warfare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is coming home to-morrow for Sunday,&rdquo; replied Jem Agar's stepmother
+      absently. She was thinking of her own son, and therefore did not hear the
+      quick sigh which was almost a gasp; did not note the sudden light in the
+      girl's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora Glynde was rather a solitary-minded young person. The only child of
+      elderly parents, she had never learnt in the nursery to indulge in the
+      indiscretions of confiding girlhood. She had the good fortune to be
+      without a bosom-friend who related her most sacred secrets to other bosom
+      friends and so on, as is the way of maidens. From her father she had
+      inherited a discriminating mind and a most admirable habit of reserve. She
+      was quite happy when alone, which, according to La Bruyère, is a great
+      safeguard against all evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wanted to be alone now, and therefore passed out of the open window
+      with a non-committing &ldquo;Good-bye, Aunt Anna!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, dear,&rdquo; replied the lady, awaking suddenly from a reverie. But
+      by the time she had turned round in her chair, the girl was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora crossed the lawn, passing between the sentinel pines and crossing the
+      moat by the narrow footbridge. She climbed the railing with all the ease
+      of nineteen years and struck a bee-line across the park. She never raised
+      her eyes from the ground, never paused in her swinging gait, until she
+      reached the brown hush of the beechwood which divided the Rectory garden
+      from the southern extremity of the park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having climbed the railing again she sat on a mossy mound at the foot of a
+      huge beech tree. Her manner of doing so subtly indicated that she did not
+      only know the spot, but was in the habit of sitting there, possibly to
+      think. A youthful privilege of doubtful value, for, as we get busier in
+      life we have to do the thinking as we go along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she muttered, &ldquo;oh, how awful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A new expression had come over her face. She looked older, and all the
+      vivacity had suddenly left her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she was still sitting there the crisp sound of footsteps on the
+      fallen leaves approached through the wood. Looking up she saw her father,
+      following the winding path through the spinney towards his home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A grave man was the Rector of Stagholme in his declining years;
+      hopelessly, wisely pessimistic, with sudden youthful returns of interest
+      in matters literary and theological. As he came he read a book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly the expression of Dora's face changed. She rose and went towards
+      him, smiling contemptuously towards his lowering gravity. He looked up,
+      gave a little grunt of recognition, and closed his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I've just heard a piece of news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bad, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I suppose we shall survive it. Jem has got his
+      commission, in a Goorkha regiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goorkha regiment? Nonsense!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Anna has just told me so. She is very pleased, and seems prepared
+      for the&mdash;best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the custom of fools, to be prepared for the best&mdash;only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector gave a despairing shrug of the shoulders. He was a man who
+      allowed himself, after the manner of the ancients with whom he lived
+      mentally, a few gestures. He smoked a very expressive cigarette. He was
+      smoking one at this moment, and threw it away half consumed. This divine
+      was possessed of a rooted conviction that the Almighty made a great
+      mistake whenever He invested temporal power in a woman, whom he was
+      ungallantly inclined to classify under a celebrated dictum of Mr.
+      Carlyle's respecting the population of these happy Isles, who, truth to
+      tell, care not one jot what Mr. Carlyle may think of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Reverend Thomas Glynde and his daughter walked all the way home
+      without exchanging another word. In the Rectory drawing-room they found
+      Mrs. Glynde, small, nervous, worried. She had evidently devoted
+      considerable thought and attention to the preservation of the hot buttered
+      toast. Poor humble little soul, she was quite content to minister to the
+      bodily requirements of her spouse, having long been convinced of the
+      inferiority of her own sex in every respect except a certain limited
+      knowledge of housekeeping matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was vaguely conscious of inferiority to Dora from a literary point of
+      view, and talked with abject humility to her own daughter of all things
+      appertaining to books. But on all other points connected with the child of
+      her old age this quiet little woman was absolute mistress. Years before
+      the Rector had made a great mistake; he had, as the plain-spoken East
+      Burgen doctor put it, made an ass of himself on the matter of a childish
+      illness, thereby imperilling Dora's half-fledged little life. Mrs. Glynde
+      had then, like a diminutive tigress, stood up boldly before her awesome
+      lord and master, saying such things to him that the remembrance of them
+      made her catch her breath even now. From that time forth the Rector was
+      allowed to hold forth on symptoms to his heart's content, to take down
+      from his library shelf a stout misguided book of medical short-cuts to the
+      grave, but nothing more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He never referred to the asinine business, and in the course of years he
+      forgave the doctor (having in view the fact that that practitioner had
+      been carried away by a right and proper sense of the importance of the
+      case), but he tacitly acknowledged that in the practice of
+      home-administered medical assistance, his knowledge was second to a
+      mother's instinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It appears,&rdquo; he said sharply, while he was stirring his tea, &ldquo;that Jem
+      Agar has got his commission in a Goorkha regiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Mrs. Glynde knew more about the organisation of the heavenly bands
+      than of the administration of the Indian army. She did not know whether to
+      rejoice or lament, and having been sharply pulled up&mdash;any time during
+      the last twenty years&mdash;for doing one or the other in the wrong place,
+      she meekly took soundings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that, dear?&rdquo; she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Goorkhas are native Indian soldiers,&rdquo; explained the Rector. &ldquo;Very
+      good fellows, no doubt. They get all the hard knocks in small frontier
+      wars and none of the half-pence. What the woman can have been thinking of,
+      I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde was anxiously glancing towards Dora, who was nicking the nose
+      of a sportive kitten with the tassel of the tea-cosy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And will he go to India?&rdquo; she asked, with laudable mental grovellings in
+      the mire of her own ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Course he will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; added Dora cheerfully, &ldquo;he will come home covered with glory and
+      medals, with a weakness for strong pickles and hot language&mdash;I mean
+      hot pickles and strong language.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Mrs. Glynde rather breathlessly, &ldquo;are they never stationed in
+      England?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;never,&rdquo; replied her husband snappishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde had a pink patch on each cheek&mdash;precisely on the spot
+      whore two such patches had appeared years ago when the doctor spoke so
+      strongly. Those patches were maternal, and only appeared when Dora's
+      affairs, spiritual or temporal, were concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; put in Dora again, &ldquo;but I have a sort of lurking
+      conviction that Jem will have to wear a turban and red morocco boots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; pursued Mrs. Glynde, with that courage which cometh with a red
+      patch on either cheek, &ldquo;I always thought these Indian regiments were meant
+      for people who are badly off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector gave a short laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not so very far wrong, my dear,&rdquo; he admitted. &ldquo;And no one can say
+      that Jem is badly off. He will be very rich some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector assumed an air of superior discretion, to which he usually
+      treated his women-folk when he thought fit to consider that they were
+      touching on matters beyond their jurisdiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some more tea, please, mother,&rdquo; put in Dora appropriately. &ldquo;Excuse my
+      appetite. I suppose it is the autumn air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a short silence, during which Mrs. Glynde sought to propitiate
+      her angered spouse with sodden toast and a second brew of tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always said,&rdquo; observed the Rector at last, &ldquo;that your cousin was a
+      fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in some indefinite way Mrs. Glynde felt that she was once more
+      responsible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. FOR HIS COUNTRY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Shall I forget on this side of the grave? I promise nothing; you must wait
+      and see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the train arriving at East Burgen station at eight o'clock that same
+      evening there alighted a youth who seemed suddenly to have taken manhood
+      upon his shoulders. He stood on the platform and pointed out to a porter,
+      who called him Master James, a large Gladstone bag and a new sword-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although he could have carried the luggage under one arm and the porter
+      under the other, he carefully refrained from offering to convey anything
+      except his own walking-stick. Such is the force of education. This boy had
+      been brought up to expect service. He was to be served all his life, and
+      so the sword-case had to be left to the porter whom he envied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the journey down&mdash;between the farthest-removed stations&mdash;the
+      sword had flashed more than once in the dim light of the carriage lamp.
+      Ah! those first swords! Not Toledo nor Damascus can produce their equal in
+      after years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porter, honest father of two private soldiers of the line himself, saw
+      it all&mdash;at once. He carried the sword-case with an exaggerated
+      reverence and forbore from remark just then. Afterwards, beneath the
+      station-lamp, he looked at the shilling&mdash;the first of its kind from
+      that quarter&mdash;with a pathetic, meaning smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Saturday night. The streets of East Burgen were rather crowded, and
+      Jem Agar&mdash;with elbows well in and the whip at the regulation angle
+      across old Lasher's face, who could not help squinting at the pendant
+      thong&mdash;shouted to the country-folk in a new voice of mighty deep
+      register.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He carried his boyish head stiffly, and had for ever discarded a turn-down
+      collar. At first he kept old Lasher at a respectful distance, asking in a
+      somewhat curt and business-like manner after the stables. Then gradually,
+      as they bowled along the country road in the familiar hush of an April
+      evening, he thawed, and proceeded to vouchsafe to that steady coachman a
+      series of very interesting details of military matters in general and the
+      Indian army in particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm sure, Mas&mdash;sir,&rdquo; opined Mr. Lasher at length; &ldquo;if there's
+      any one as has got into his right rut, so to speak, in this world, it's
+      you. I always said you was a born soldier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;then you've heard that I've got my commission?&rdquo; inquired Jem
+      airily, as if he had had many such in bygone years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, sir! Miss Dora it was that told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow this caused a little silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truth to tell, Dora had lost her rank as the most beautiful and
+      accomplished maiden in Christendom. This situation was at that moment
+      occupied by a young person hight Evelina Louisa Barmond, sister to Billy
+      Barmond of the Hundred and second, a veteran fellow-soldier and comrade
+      who had jumped five feet six at the Sandhurst sports a year before. Miss
+      Evelina Louisa was twenty-four, five years Dora's senior, and only three
+      years and two months older than Jem Agar himself. He had spoken to her
+      twice, and thought about her in the intervals allowed by such weighty
+      matters as uniform and the new sword, which, however, required almost
+      constant consideration at that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Jem, with exaggerated nonchalance, &ldquo;I am afraid I should
+      never be fit for anything else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereat Lasher laughed and touched his hat. He made it a rule to salute a
+      joke in that manner, either from a general respect for humour, or looking
+      at it in the light of a mental gratuity offered by his betters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's one thing you can do, Master Jem, sir&mdash;leastwise, which you
+      can do as well as any man in the British army,&rdquo; he said, with pardonable
+      pride, &ldquo;and that is sit a 'orse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks to you, Lasher,&rdquo; Jem was kind enough to say with a flourish of his
+      whip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dignity was now ebbing fast, and by the time that the clever little
+      cob swung round the gate-post into the avenue of Stagholme, Jem and Lasher
+      were fully re-established on the old familiar footing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a bright moon overhead, and at the end of the avenue beyond the
+      dip where the lake gleamed mysteriously, the gables and solid towers of
+      Stagholme stood peacefully confessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar was firmly convinced that England only contained one Stagholme,
+      and perhaps he was right. Six miles from the nearest station, the great
+      house stands self-sufficient, self-contained. The moat, now dry and
+      cultivated, is still traceable, and requires bridging in two places.
+      Surrounded by vast park-like meadowland, where huge trees guard against
+      cutting wind or prying modern journalistic instinct, the house is only
+      approached by a private road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inside the gates of this road there is something ancient and feudal in the
+      very scent of the air. The tones of the big bell striking the hour over
+      the wide portico die away over the lands that still belong to Stagholme,
+      despite the vicissitudes through which all ancient families run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem, however, whose childhood and youth had been passed amidst companions
+      with names as good as his, had learnt long ago to keep his pride to
+      himself. He was Jem Agar, and the family name seemed somehow to belong
+      exclusively to his father still, although that thorough old sportsman had
+      lain for three years and more beneath the quiet turf of the little
+      churchyard within his own park gates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he pulled up at the door this was thrown open, and within its frame of
+      light he saw the gracious form of his stepmother waiting to welcome him.
+      Behind her, in the shadow, and amidst the decoration of staghorns, ancient
+      pike and hanger, loomed a tall dark figure startlingly in keeping with the
+      semi-monastic architecture of the house. This was Sister Cecilia. She was
+      always thus&mdash;behind Mrs. Agar, with clasped hands and a vaguely
+      approving smile, as if Mrs. Agar conferred a benefit upon suffering
+      humanity by the mere act of existing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A slightly bored expression came into Jem's patient eyes. It was not that
+      he had very much in common with his stepmother, although he had an honest
+      affection for her; but he instinctively disliked Sister Cecilia and all
+      her works. These latter were of the class termed &ldquo;good.&rdquo; That is to say,
+      this lady, the spinster daughter of a former rector in the neighbourhood,
+      considered that the earthly livery of a marvellous black bonnet which was
+      almost a cap, and quite hideous, justified a shameless interference in the
+      most intimate affairs of her neighbours, rich and poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the cover of charity she committed a thousand social sins. She
+      constituted herself mother-confessor to all who were weak enough to
+      confide in her or seek her advice, and in soul she was the most arrant
+      time-server who ever flattered a rich woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem distrusted her soft and &ldquo;holy&rdquo; ways, more especially her speech, which
+      had the lofty condescension of the saved towards the damned in
+      prospective. In his calmly commanding way he had, months before, forbidden
+      Dora Glynde to kiss Sister Cecilia, because that ostentatiously virtuous
+      person was in the habit of kissing the maids when she met them; and he
+      maintained that this Christian practice, if very estimable theoretically,
+      was socially an insult either to the mistress or the maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In view of the important changes in his own life which were about to
+      supervene, that is to say, firstly, his departure for India, and secondly,
+      his coming of age before he could hope to return from that land of
+      promise, he had counted on a quiet evening with his mother. Moreover, he
+      was vaguely conscious of the fact that a right-minded person would have
+      carefully abstained from accepting the most pressing invitation to form a
+      third that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In view of this Jem Agar had recourse to the last refuge of the simple. He
+      retired within himself, and, so to speak, shut the door. He had dined with
+      these women before, and knew that the conversation would follow its usual
+      mazy course through a forest of cross-questions upon all subjects, and
+      notably upon those intimate matters which were essentially his own
+      business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia, good mistaken soul that she was, tried her best. She was
+      lively in a Sunday-school-tea style. She was by turns tender and warlike
+      as occasion seemed to demand; but no scrap or tittle of personal
+      information did she extract from Jem, stiffly on guard behind his high
+      collar. Mrs. Agar was excited and failed utterly to follow the wiser
+      footsteps of her bosom friends. She talked such arrant nonsense about
+      India, the Goorkhas, and matters military, that more than once Jem glanced
+      at the imperturbable servants with misgiving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day was Sunday, and after morning service Jem eagerly accepted an
+      invitation to have supper at the Rectory after evening church. Sister
+      Cecilia was staying from Saturday till Monday, which alone was sufficient
+      reason for this young soldier to pass his last evening in Stagholme under
+      another than his own historic roof. With her in the house he knew that the
+      chances of serious conversation were small; for she encouraged such topics
+      as the possibility of sending fresh eggs packed in lime to the Goorkhas of
+      his prospective half-company. So Jem retired within himself, and finally
+      left England without having said many things which should have been said
+      between stepmother and son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Rectory he found a very different atmosphere&mdash;that air of
+      cheerful intellectuality which comes from the presence of cultivated men
+      and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector held strong views on the rare virtue of minding one's own
+      business, and in loyalty to such, deemed it right to refrain from
+      mentioning his opinion as to the wisdom of selecting a native branch of
+      the military service for the heir to Stagholme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The supper passed pleasantly enough in the discussion of general topics
+      all bordering on the great question they had at heart. They were like
+      people seeking for each other in the dark around the edge of a pit&mdash;the
+      pit being India. Dora, and Dora alone, laughed and treated matters
+      lightly. Mrs. Glynde blundered several times, and stepping backwards over
+      an abyss of years, called the new soldier &ldquo;darling&rdquo; more than once. Twice
+      she required helping out by Dora, and on the second occasion something was
+      said which Jem remembered afterwards with a stolid British memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem,&rdquo; said the girl, buttering a biscuit with a light hand, &ldquo;you should
+      write a diary. All great men write diaries which their friends publish
+      afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think,&rdquo; replied Jem, with that contempt for the pen which the
+      possession of a new sword ever justifies, &ldquo;that writing a diary is much in
+      my line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you can never tell till you try. Of course it would not be published
+      straight off. Some literary person would be hired to cross the t's and dot
+      the i's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause. Dora glanced at Jem Agar, and something made him
+      say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I'll try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who knows?&rdquo; said the Rector, with a smile of indulgent affection. &ldquo;There
+      may be great literary capacity lying dormant in Jem. The worst of a diary
+      is that one may come to look at it in after years, when one finds a very
+      different story has been written from what one intended to write.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Dora, lightly skipping over the chasm of gravity, &ldquo;that is
+      Providence. We must blame Providence for these little <i>contretemps</i>.
+      Some one must be blamed, and Providence obviously does not mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem laughed&mdash;somewhat lamely; but still it was a laugh. Supper was
+      despatched somehow&mdash;as last meals are. Some of us never forget the
+      flavour of those cups of tea gulped down in the gorgeous steamer-saloon
+      while the stewards get the hand luggage on board. It was a late meal on
+      Sunday evening at the Rectory, and the servants soon followed their
+      betters into the drawing-room for prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Rector lighted his last cigarette, and Mrs. Glynde began to show
+      symptoms of a patch of pink in either cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Jem rose&mdash;awkwardly&mdash;in the midst of a sally from Dora,
+      who seemed afraid to stop speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must be going,&rdquo; he said; and he shook hands with the Rector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde, with nervous deliberation, kissed him and squeezed his hand
+      jerkily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora&mdash;will open the door for you,&rdquo; she said, with an apprehensive
+      glance towards her husband, who, however, showed no inclination to move
+      from his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora not only opened the door, but left it open, and walked with him
+      across the lawn towards the stile. When they reached it there was a little
+      pause. He vaulted over and she quietly followed&mdash;without his
+      proffered assistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at last Jem spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't seem to care!&rdquo; he said gruffly&mdash;with his new voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>don't!&rdquo;</i> she whispered imploringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they walked on beneath the murmuring trees where the yellow moonlight
+      stole in and out between the trunks. It was not cheerful. For when Nature
+      joins her sadness to the sad libretto of life she usually breaks a heart
+      or two. Fortunately for us we mostly act our tragedies in the wrong
+      scenery&mdash;the scenery that was painted for a comedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand it,&rdquo; said the girl at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it is in order to save money for Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I don't, go,&rdquo; replied Jem, &ldquo;it will be a question of letting
+      Stagholme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora knew of the ancient horror of such a necessity, handed down from one
+      Agar to another, like a family tradition. Moreover, women seem to respect
+      men who have some simple creed and hold to it simply. Are they not one of
+      our creeds themselves, though by seeking for rights instead of contenting
+      themselves with privileges, some of them try to make atheists of us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; she said nevertheless, &ldquo;you are being sacrificed to Arthur!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered nothing, but he had forgotten for ever Miss Evelina Louisa
+      Barmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do you go?&rdquo; asked Dora suddenly, with something in her voice which
+      no one had ever heard before. She was startled at it herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited until the soft old church bell finished striking ten, then he
+      answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached the farthest limit of the wood and stood at the park
+      railing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;,&rdquo; she paused, and seemed to collect herself as if for a leap;
+      &ldquo;then good-bye, Jem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the outstretched hand; his large grasp seemed to swallow it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He climbed the rail without agility, paused for a moment, and the
+      moonlight happened to gleam on his face through the gently waving branches
+      as he looked down at her in dumb distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned and walked away across the shimmering grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes later Dora re-entered the drawing room. Her father and
+      mother were seated close together, closer than she had seen them for
+      years. Mrs. Glynde was pale, with two scarlet patches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora collected her belongings, preparatory to going to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;is absurdly proud of his new honours. It affects
+      his chin, which has gone up exactly one inch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she went to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&mdash;hi!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As no one replied to this summons either, by voice or approach, the young
+      man subsided into occupied silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a very large young man, with a fair moustache which looked almost
+      flaxen against the deep tan of his face. This last, like the rest of him,
+      was ludicrously typical of that race which has wandered farther than the
+      Jews, and has hitherto managed, like them, to retain a few of its
+      characteristics. The Anglo-Saxonism of this youth was almost aggressive.
+      It lurked in the neat droop of moustache, which was devoid of that untidy
+      suggestion of a beer-mug characterising the labial adornment of a northern
+      flaxen nation of which we wot. It shone calmly in the glance of a pair of
+      reflectively deep blue eyes&mdash;it threw itself at one from the pockets
+      of an old tweed jacket worn in conjunction with regulation top-boots and
+      khaki breeches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover, it gave birth to a quiet sense of being as good as any one else,
+      and possibly better, which sat without conceit on his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would seem that he really did not want to be answered just then, for he
+      did not raise a voice accustomed to dominate the clatter of horses' feet,
+      nor did he pass any comment on the carelessness or criminal absence of
+      some person or persons unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He merely took up his pen again, and proceeded to handle that mighty
+      weapon with an awkwardness suggestive of a greater skill with another
+      instrument only less powerful. He was seated on two reversed buckets,
+      pyramidally balanced, at a small table which had the air of wide
+      capabilities in some other sphere of usefulness. There was a weird cunning
+      in the legs of this table indicative of subtle change into a camp-bed or
+      possibly a canoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The writing materials consisted of a vaseline bottle (fourpenny size) full
+      of ink, and two weary pieces of blotting-paper. The paper upon which he
+      was writing had a travelled and somewhat jaundiced air, the penholder was
+      of gold. In the furniture of the tent, as in the canvas thereof, there was
+      that mournful suggestion of better days which is held to be a virtue in
+      furnished apartments. But over all there hovered that sense of
+      well-scrubbed cleanliness which comes from the touch of a native military
+      servant. An indulgence in this habit of rubbing and scrubbing was indeed
+      accountable for much dilapidation; for that silent little Ghoorka man, Ben
+      Abdi, had rubbed and scrubbed many things not intended by an ingenious
+      camp-furnisher for such treatment. James Edward Makerstone Agar was
+      engaged in the compilation of a diary, which volume there is reason to
+      believe is still preserved in a woman's jewel drawer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has not run through any editions&mdash;indeed, no compositor's finger
+      has up to this time defiled its pages. This, in fact, was one of those
+      literary works, ground slowly out from the millstones of the brain, of
+      which the style fails to please the taste of the present day. To catch the
+      fancy of a slang-loving and thoughtless generation the writer must throw
+      off his works. This is an age of &ldquo;throwing off,&rdquo; and it is to be presumed
+      that future ages will throw the result away. One must be brilliant,
+      shallow, slightly unpleasant and very unwholesome, to acquire nowadays
+      that best of all literary reputations which leaveth a balance at one's
+      bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      J.E.M. Agar&mdash;or &ldquo;Jem&rdquo; as his friends call him to his face and his
+      servants behind his back&mdash;Jem Sahib to wit&mdash;was no Pepys. His
+      literary style was disjointed, heavy, and occasionally illiterate. This
+      last peculiarity, by the way, is of no consequence nowadays, but it is
+      mentioned here for ulterior motives. In the pages of this little
+      black-bound volume there were no scintillating thoughts scribbled there
+      with suspicious neatness of diction, such as one finds in the diaries of
+      great men who, it would seem, are not above post-mortem vanity. The diary
+      was a chronicle of solid facts&mdash;Jem being essentially solid and a man
+      of the very plainest facts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking as an impartial critic, one would incline to the opinion that
+      Agar devoted too much thought to his work&mdash;in strong contrast,
+      perhaps, to the literary tendency of his day. He nibbled the leisure end
+      of his penholder too much, and allowed the business extremity thereof to
+      dry in inky conglomeration. The result was a distinct sense of labour in
+      the style of the work. After having called in vain, perhaps for
+      assistance, the scribe returned to the contemplation of his latest effort.
+      The book was one of Letts's diaries, three days in a page, which are in
+      themselves fatal to a finished style of literature. There is always too
+      much to say or too little. One's thoughts never fit the rhomboid
+      apportioned by Mr. Letts for their accommodation. Great men who have
+      thoughts when the diary is handy do not, of course, patronise Letts,
+      because he could not be expected to know when there would be a sunset
+      likely to stir up poetic reflections, or a moonrise comparable with the
+      cold light cast by some unsympathetic young woman's eyes upon the poet's
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For such men, however, as Agar, Mr. Letts is a guardian angel. The space
+      is there, and facts must be forthcoming to fill it. Agar was, and is still&mdash;thank
+      Heaven&mdash;a conscientious man. He had promised to keep this diary and
+      keep it he did. And surely he hath his reward&mdash;remembering the jewel
+      drawer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the moment under consideration he was filling in yesterday's rhomboid,
+      and paused at the conclusion of the following remarks:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Seven</i> A.M. Turned out, and shot a Ghilzai. Saw him sneaking up the
+      valley. Long shot&mdash;should put it down at a hundred and seventy-five
+      yards. Hit him in the stom&mdash;abd&mdash;chest. Looked like rain until
+      two o'clock. Then cleared up. Walter caught a mongoose and brought him in
+      with much triumph. He got conceited afterwards and slept on my bed till
+      kicked off by Ben Abdi. I see it's Sunday. Church four hundred odd miles
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This, my masters, is not the stuff to quote <i>in extenso</i>, and yet in
+      its day this diary was cried over&mdash;before it was put away in the
+      jewel drawer. Truly women are strange&mdash;one can never tell how a thing
+      will present itself to them. Honest Jem Agar, nibbling his penholder and
+      jerking these lucid observations out of his military brain by mere force
+      of discipline, never suspected the heart that was in it all&mdash;that
+      minute particle of himself that lay in the blot in the corner carefully
+      absorbed by the exhausted blotting-paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sunday, egad!&rdquo; he muttered, leaning his arms on the cunning table, and
+      gazing out across the pine-clad valley that lay below him in a deep blue
+      haze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared into the haze, and there he saw those whom he called &ldquo;his
+      people&rdquo; walking across a neat English park toward a peaceful little
+      English church. To them came presently a young person; a young person clad
+      in pink cotton, who walked with a certain demure sureness of tread, as if
+      she knew her own mind and other things besides. Her path came into the
+      park from the left, and among the trees into which it disappeared behind
+      her there stood the red chimneys of a long low house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly these visions vanished before something more tangible in the haze
+      of the valley. This was the flutter of a dirty white rag which seemed to
+      come and go among the fir trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar rose from his temporary seat and walked to the door of the tent&mdash;exactly
+      two strides. A rifle lay against the canvas, and this he took up, slowly
+      cocking it without taking his eyes from the belt of fir trees across the
+      valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he threw the rifle up and fired instantaneously. He had been
+      musketry instructor in his time and held views upon quick firing. The
+      smoke rose lazily in the ambient air, and he saw a figure all fluttering
+      rags and flying turban running down the slope away from him. At the same
+      moment there was a crashing volley, followed by two straggling reports.
+      The figure stopped, seemed to hesitate, and then slowly subsided into the
+      grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar put his head out of the tent and saw half a company of Goorkhas, keen
+      little sportsmen all standing in line at the edge of the plateau,
+      reloading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the force at the disposal of Major J. E. M. Agar, at that time
+      occupying and holding for Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of
+      India a very advanced position on the northern frontier of India. And in
+      this manner he spent most of his days and some of his nights. In addition
+      to the plain Major he had several other titles attached to his name at
+      that time, indicative of duties real and imaginary. He was &ldquo;deputy
+      assistant&rdquo; several things and &ldquo;acting&rdquo; one or two; for in military titles
+      one begins in inverse ratio in a large way, and ends in something short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar was thought very highly of by almost all concerned, except
+      himself, and it had not occurred to him to devote much thought to this
+      matter. He was one of the very few men to whom a senior officer or a
+      pretty girl could say, &ldquo;You are a nice man and a clever fellow,&rdquo; without
+      doing the least harm. Men who thought such things of themselves laughed at
+      him behind his back, and wondered vaguely why he got promotion. It never
+      occurred to them to reflect that &ldquo;old Jem&rdquo; invariably acquitted himself
+      well in each new position thrust upon him by a persistently kind fortune;
+      they contented themselves with an indefinite conviction that each
+      severally could have done better, as is the way of clever young men. One
+      of the many mysteries, by the way, which will have to be cleared up in a
+      busy hereafter is that appertaining to brilliant boys, clever
+      undergraduates, and gifted young men. What becomes of them? There are
+      hundreds at school at this moment&mdash;we have it from their own parents;
+      hundreds more at Oxford and Cambridge&mdash;we have it from themselves. In
+      a few years they will be absorbed in a world of men very much inferior to
+      themselves (by their own showing), and will be no more seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar had never been a clever boy. He was not a clever man. But&mdash;and
+      mark ye this&mdash;he knew it. The result of this knowledge was that he
+      did what he could in the present with the present, and did not
+      indefinitely postpone astonishing the universe, as most of us do, until
+      some future date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time he was banished, as some would take it. Banished to the top
+      of a pass which was nought else than a footway between two empires. Forty
+      miles from men of his own race, this man was one of those who either have
+      no thoughts or no wish to impart them; for this racial solitude, which is
+      an emotion fully explored by many in India, in no way affected his nerves.
+      Some say that they get jumpy, others aver that they begin to lose their
+      national characteristics and develop barbarous proclivities, while one
+      Woods-and-Forests man known to some of us resigned because he had a
+      buzzing in the head during the long solitary, silent evenings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Major Agar made no statements on this point, though he listened with
+      sympathy to the assertions of others. If the sympathy were subtly mingled
+      with non-comprehensive wonder, the seeker after a purer form of
+      commiseration attributed the alloy to natural density, and turned
+      elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accompanied by a handful of Goorkhas, Major J. E. M. Agar had occupied the
+      key to this narrow pass for more than a week, vaguely admiring the
+      scenery, illustrating upon living &ldquo;running deer&rdquo; in turbans his views upon
+      quick firing to his diminutive soldiers, who worshipped him as second only
+      to the gods, and possessing his soul with that trustful patience which is
+      rapidly becoming old-fashioned and effete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During that same week the newspapers at home had been very busy with his
+      name. Some had gone so far as to lay before a greedy public a short and
+      succinct account of his life, compiled from the Army List and a
+      journalistic imagination, finishing the record on the Monday, six days
+      previously, with the usual three-line regret that England should in future
+      be compelled to limp along the path to glory without the assistance of so
+      brilliant a young officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a word as brilliant had never been coupled with the name of Jem even
+      by his best friend in earnest or his worst enemy in irony. Such sarcasm
+      were too shallow to be worth sounding even in disparagement. But we never
+      know what an obituary notice may bring. Not only had he been endowed with
+      many virtues, manly qualities, and the record of noble deeds, but more
+      substantial honours had been heaped upon his fallen crest or pinned upon
+      his breathless bosom. To some of his distant countrymen he was the proud
+      possessor of the Victoria Cross, awarded him post-mortem in the heat of
+      obituary enthusiasm by more than one local paper. To others he was held up
+      by what is called a Representative Press as a second Crichton. And all
+      this because he was dead. Such is glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All unconscious of these honours, honest Jem Agar sat in his little tent,
+      nibbling the end of his penholder&mdash;the gift, by the way, of his
+      father&mdash;and wishing that he had bought a Letts's diary with six days
+      in a page instead of three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. RELIEVED
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Well waited is well done.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&mdash;hi!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This time some one heard him, and that small, silent man, Ben Abdi, stood
+      in the doorway of the tent at attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you keeping a good look-out down the valley?&rdquo; asked Major Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ee yess, sar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No signs of any one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar shut up the diary, which book Ben Abdi had been taught to regard as
+      strictly official, laid it aside, and passed out of the tent, the little
+      Goorkha following close upon his heels with a quick intelligent interest
+      in his every movement which somehow suggested a dusky and faithful little
+      dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some moments they stood thus on the edge of the small plateau, the big
+      man in front, the little one behind&mdash;alert, with twinkling, beady
+      eyes. Behind them towered a bleak grey slope of bare rock, like a cliff
+      set back at a slight angle, so treeless, so smooth was the face of it. In
+      front the great blue-shadowed valley lay beneath them, stretching away to
+      the south, until in a distant haze the sharp hills seemed to close in and
+      cut it short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perched thus, as it were, upon the roof of the world, these two men looked
+      down upon it all with a calm sense of possession, and to him of the
+      dominant race standing there some thousands of miles from his native land&mdash;alone&mdash;master
+      of this great stretch of an alien shore, there must have come some passing
+      thought of the strangeness of it all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something wrong&mdash;he knew that. His orders had been to press
+      forward and occupy this little ridge, which was vaguely marked on the
+      service maps as Mistley's Plateau, named after an adventurous soul, its
+      discoverer. He had been instructed to hold this against all comers, and if
+      possible to prevent communication between the two valleys, connected only
+      by this narrow pass. All this Agar had carried out to the letter; but some
+      one else had failed somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be three days at the most,&rdquo; his chief had said, &ldquo;and the main
+      body of the advance guard will join you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar had been in occupation a week, and it seemed that he and his
+      little band of men were forgotten of the world. Still this soldier held
+      on, saying nothing to his men, writing his intensely practical diary, and
+      trusting as a soldier should to the <i>Deus ex machina</i> who finally
+      allows discipline to triumph. He looked down into the valley, piercing the
+      shimmer of its hazes with his gentle blue eyes, looking to his chief, who
+      had said, &ldquo;In three days I will join you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not the first time that Agar and the little non-commissioned native
+      officer, Ben Abdi, had stood thus together. They had taken their stand in
+      this same spot in the keen air of the early morning, with the white frost
+      crystallising the stones around them; in the glow of midday; and when the
+      moon, hanging over the sharp-pointed hills, cast the valley into an opaque
+      shade dark and fathomless as the valley of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scanning the distant hills, Agar presently raised his eyes, noting the
+      position of the sun in the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you tried the heliograph a second time this morning?&rdquo; he asked
+      without looking round, which informality of manner warmed the little
+      soldier's heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sar. Three times since breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time that Ben Abdi had found himself in a position of
+      some responsibility, in immediate touch with one of the white-skinned
+      warriors from over seas whose methods of making war had for him all the
+      mystery and the infinite possibilities of a religion. This silent looking
+      out for relief partook in some small degree of the nature of a council of
+      war. Jem Sahib and himself were undoubtedly the chiefs of this
+      expeditionary force, and to whom else than himself, Ben Abdi, should the
+      Major turn for counsel and assistance? The little Goorkha preferred,
+      however, that it should be thus; that Agar Sahib should say nothing,
+      merely allowing him to stand silent three paces behind. He was a modest
+      little man, this Goorkha, and knew the limit of his own capabilities,
+      which knowledge, by the way, is not always to be found in the hearts of
+      some of us boasting a fairer skin. He knew that for hard fighting, snugly
+      concealed behind a rock at two hundred yards, or in the open, with cunning
+      bayonet or swinging kookery, he was as good as his fellows; but for
+      strategy, for the larger responsibilities of warfare, he was well pleased
+      that his superior officer should manage these affairs in his quiet way
+      unaided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During a luncheon more remarkable for heartiness of despatch than delicacy
+      of viand, James Edward Makerstone Agar devoted much thought to the affairs
+      of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress of India. After luncheon he lighted a
+      cheroot, threw himself on his bed, and there reflected further. Then he
+      called to him Ben Abdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more promiscuous shooting,&rdquo; he said to him. &ldquo;No more volley firing at
+      a single Ghilzai or a stray Bhutari. It seems that they do not know we are
+      here, as we are left undisturbed. I do not want them to know&mdash;understand?
+      If you see any one going along the valley, send two men after him; no
+      shooting, Ben Abdi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he pointed with his cheroot towards the evil-looking curved knife
+      which hung at the Goorkha's side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Abdi grinned. He understood that sort of business thoroughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then followed many technical instructions&mdash;not only technical in good
+      honest English, but interlarded with words from a language which cannot be
+      written with our alphabet for the benefit of such as love details of a
+      realistic nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result of this council was that sundry little dusky warriors were busy
+      clambering about the rocky slope all that day and well into the short
+      hill-country evening, working in twos and threes with the <i>alacrity</i>
+      of ants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar, in his own good time, was proceeding to further fortify, as well
+      as circumstances allowed, the position he had been told to hold until
+      relief should come. In addition to the magic of the master's eye he lent
+      the assistance of his strong right arm, laying his lithe weight against
+      many a rock which his men could not move unaided. By the evening the
+      position was in a fairly fortified state, and, after a copious dinner in
+      the chill breeze that rushed from the mountain down to the valley after
+      sunset, he walked placidly up and down at the edge of the plateau,
+      watching, ever watching, but with calmness and no sign of anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such it is to be an Englishman&mdash;the product of an English public
+      school and country life. Thick-limbed, very quiet; thick-headed if you
+      will!&mdash;that is as may be&mdash;but with a nerve of iron, ready to
+      face the last foe of all&mdash;Death, without so much as a wink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his ear came at times the low cautious cry of some night-bird sailing
+      with heavy wing down to the haunt of mouse or mole; otherwise the night
+      was still as only mountain night-seasons are. Far down below him, the
+      jungle and forest were rustling with game and beasts of prey seeking their
+      meat from God, but the larger beasts of India, unlike their African
+      brethren, move in silence, stealthy yet courageous; and the distance was
+      too great for the quickly stifled cry of the victim of panther or tiger to
+      reach him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the moon rose he made the round of his pickets&mdash;a matter of ten
+      minutes&mdash;and then to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning of the ninth day he thought he detected signs of uneasiness
+      in the faces of the men. He found their keen little visages ever turned
+      towards him, watching his every movement, noting the play of every
+      feature. So in his simplicity he practised a simple diplomacy. He hummed
+      to himself as he went his rounds and while he sat over his diary. He only
+      knew one song&mdash;&ldquo;A Warrior Bold&rdquo;&mdash;which every mess in India
+      associated with old Jem Agar, for no evening was considered complete
+      without the Major's one ditty if he were present. He had stood up and
+      roared it in many strange places, quite without sentiment, without
+      self-consciousness, without afterthought. He never thought it a matter of
+      apology that he should have failed to learn another song. The smile with
+      which many ladies of his acquaintance sat down to play the accompaniment
+      <i>by heart</i> conveyed nothing to him. He did not pretend to be a singer&mdash;he
+      knew that one song, and if they liked it he would sing it. Moreover, they
+      did like it, and that was why they asked for it. It did some of them good
+      to see honest Jem get on his legs and shout out, in a very musical voice,
+      with perfect truth to air, what seemed to be a plain statement of his
+      creed of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, far up on Mistley Plateau, nine thousand feet above the level of the
+      sea, Jem Agar advised his little dark-visaged fighters, <i>sotto voce</i>,
+      while he puzzled over his diary, that his love had golden hair, with eyes
+      so blue and heart so true, that none with her compared; moreover, that he
+      didn't care if death were nigh, because he had fought for love, and for
+      love would die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not very deep or very subtle, but it served the purpose. It kept up
+      the hearts of his handful of warriors, who, in common with their chief,
+      had something child-like and simple in their honest, sporting souls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after tiffin Ben Abdi came to the Major's tent, speaking hurriedly
+      in his own tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the men had seen the sunlight gleam on white steel far down in the
+      valley. He had seen it several times&mdash;a long spiral flash, such as
+      the sun would make on a fixed bayonet carried over the shoulder. Such a
+      flash as this will carry twenty miles through a clear atmosphere; the spot
+      pointed out by the sharp-eyed Goorkha was not more than ten miles distant.
+      They stood in a group, this isolated little band, and gazed down into the
+      depth below them. They gazed in vain for some time, then a little murmur
+      of excitement told that the sun had glinted again on burnished steel. This
+      time there were several flashes close together. These were men marching
+      with fixed bayonets through an enemy's country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heliograph,&rdquo; said Agar quietly, without taking his eyes from the spot far
+      down in the valley; and soon the little mirror was flashing out its
+      question over the vale. After a few anxious moments the answering gleam
+      sprang to life among the trees far below. Agar gave a quick little sigh of
+      relief&mdash;that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then followed a short conversation flickered over ten miles of space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you beset?&rdquo; asked the Valley,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the Hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the enemy in sight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the Mountain, again, with a sharp click.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you all well?&rdquo; flashed from below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; from above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; and the glimmer of the bayonets began again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two hours later Major Agar drew his absurd little force in line, and thus
+      they received the relieving column, grimly conscious of dangers past but
+      not forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head of the new-comers rode a little man with a prominent chin and
+      a long drooping nose; such a remarkable-looking little man that the
+      veriest tyro at physiognomy would have turned to look at him again. His
+      black eyes, beaming with intelligence, moved so quickly beneath the steady
+      lashes that it was next to an impossibility to state what he saw and what
+      he failed to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned Agar's salute hurriedly, with a preoccupied air. He wore a
+      quiet uniform tunic almost hidden by black braiding, a pith helmet which
+      had seen brighter days and likewise fouler, and the leg that he threw over
+      his horse's head was cased in riding trousers and a neat little top-boot
+      of brown leather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He slipped from the saddle with a litheness which contrasted strangely
+      with his closely cropped grey hair and white moustache and Imperial. He
+      walked towards Agar's tent after the manner of one who had sat in the
+      saddle for many hours. His spurs clanked with a sharp, business-like ring,
+      and his every movement had that neat finish which indicates the soldier
+      born and bred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wheeling round he faced Agar, who had followed him with a more leisurely
+      gait based on longer legs, looking up keenly into the quiet fair face.
+      Turning he shot his sword home into its scabbard with a click.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you're safe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar awaited for further observations. This was not the man whom he had
+      expected, but another, far greater, far higher up in the military scale&mdash;a
+      man whom he had only met once before, and that at an official reception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing that his guest was unbuckling his sword, he presumed that the task
+      of continuing this conversation lay with himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M' yes!&rdquo; he replied, rubbing his pannikin out clean with the corner of a
+      towel, and proceeding to mix some brandy and water; &ldquo;why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why!&rdquo; answered the little man scornfully, &ldquo;WHY! damn it, sir, Stevenor's
+      command has been cut off by the enemy in force&mdash;massacred to a man.
+      That is why I say 'Thank God, you're safe!' It is more than I expected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. RE-CAST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Our deeds still travel with us from afar, And what, we have been makes us
+      what we are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a momentary pause; then Major Agar spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case,&rdquo; he observed, &ldquo;the British force occupying this country for
+      the last week has consisted of myself and thirty Goorkhas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely so! And it was by the merest chance that I found out that you
+      were here. It was only guesswork at the best. A bazaar report reached me
+      that poor old Stevenor had been cut to pieces. I hate blaming a dead man,
+      but I really don't know what he can have been about. He made some hideous
+      mistake somewhere. We buried him yesterday. On hearing the report, I
+      thought it better to come up myself, having a little knowledge of the
+      country. Brought two companies, and half a squadron to act as scouts. We
+      reached Barkoola yesterday, and found the poor chaps as they had fallen.
+      And some of those carpet-warriors at home say that a black man can't
+      fight! Can't he! Not so much brandy this time, please. Yes, fill it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar set the regulation water-bottle down on his gifted table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the Devil's own luck!&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;While they were burying I
+      missed you from among the officers; and then it struck me that you might
+      have got away before the disaster. We counted the men, and found
+      thirty-four short, so we came on here. By God! what a chap Mistley was! We
+      came here without a check. His maps are perfect!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; admitted Agar, &ldquo;that man knew his business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in his tone that might have been envy or perhaps mere
+      admiration; for this man knew himself to be inferior in many ways to him
+      who had first crossed the mountain pass on which he stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The worst of it is,&rdquo; went on the great officer, &ldquo;that you are telegraphed
+      home as killed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused on the last word, watching its effect. It would seem that,
+      behind the busy black eyes, there was the beginning of a thought hatched
+      within the grey close-cut head which, <i>en fait de têtes,</i> was without
+      its rival in the Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is soon remedied,&rdquo; opined the Major with a cheerful laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye&mdash;es!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The great man was thoughtfully rubbing his chin with the tips of the first
+      and second fingers, drawing in his under lip at the same time, and
+      apparently taking pleasure in the rasping sound caused by the friction
+      over the shaven chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is usually something written in the human countenance&mdash;some
+      single virtue, vice, or quality which dominates all petty characteristics.
+      Most faces express weakness&mdash;the faces that pass one in the streets.
+      Some are the incarnation of meanness, some pleasanter types verge on
+      sensuality. The face of the man who sat watching Agar expressed
+      indomitable, invincible determination, and <i>nothing else</i>. It was the
+      face of one who was ready to sacrifice any one, even himself, to a single
+      all-pervading purpose. In this respect he was a splendid commander, for he
+      was as nearly heartless as men are made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The big fair Englishman who had occupied Mistley's Plateau for a week,
+      exactly one hundred and seventy miles from assistance of any description,
+      and in the heart of the enemy's country, smiled down at his companion with
+      a simple wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got something up your sleeve, sir?&rdquo; he inquired softly, for he knew
+      somewhat of his superior officer's ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; replied the other curtly. &ldquo;A trump card!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued to look at Jem Agar with a cold and calculating scrutiny, as
+      a jockey may look at his horse or a butcher at living meat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like this,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You're dead. I want you to stay dead for a
+      little while&mdash;say six months to a year!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar seated himself on the corner of the table, which creaked under the
+      weight of his spare muscular person, and then, true to his cloth, he
+      awaited further orders; true to his nature, he waited in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a short pause the other proceeded to explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You frontier men,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;are closely watched; we know that. There
+      will be great rejoicing over there, in Northern Europe, over this mishap
+      to Stevenor, although, God knows, he was not a very dangerous man. Not so
+      dangerous as you, Agar. They will be delighted to hear that you are out of
+      the way. Stay out of the way for a year, and during that twelve months you
+      will be able to do more than you could get done in twelve years when you
+      were being watched by them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; answered Agar quietly. &ldquo;Not dead, but gone&mdash;up country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely so; where they certainly will not be on the look-out for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bright black eyes were shining with suppressed excitement. The great
+      man was afraid that his tool would refuse to work under this exacting
+      touch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what about my people?&rdquo; asked Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I will put that right. You see, they have got over the worst of it by
+      this time. It is wonderful how soon people do get over it. They have known
+      it for a week now, and have bought their mourning and all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a look into Agar's face which the little officer did not
+      understand. We never do understand what we could not feel ourselves, and
+      it is not a matter of wonder that the lesser intelligence should foil the
+      greater in this instance. There was a depth in Jem Agar which was beyond
+      the fathom of his keen-witted companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going home,&rdquo; continued General Michael, &ldquo;almost at once. The first
+      thing I do on landing is to go straight to your people and tell them. We
+      cannot afford to telegraph it. Telegraph clerks are only human, and it is
+      worth the while of the newspapers in these days of large circulation to
+      pay a heavy price for their news. We all know that some items, published
+      <i>can</i> only have been bought from the telegraph clerks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar was making a mental calculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;two months before they hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The expression on the face of the little man was scarcely human in its
+      heartless cunning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hardly,&rdquo; he answered carelessly. &ldquo;And when they hear the reason they will
+      admit that the result is worth the sacrifice. It will be the making of
+      you!&mdash;and of me!&rdquo; added the black eyes with a secretive gleam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; went on the General, &ldquo;such a chance as only comes once to a man
+      in his lifetime. I wish I had had it at your age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice was a pleasant one, with that ring of friendliness and
+      familiarity which is usually heard in the tones of an educated Jew; for
+      General Michael was that rare combination, a Jew and a soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like leaving them so long under the mistake,&rdquo; answered Agar, half
+      yielding to authoritative persuasion, half tempted by ambition and a love
+      of adventure. &ldquo;I don't like it, General. The straight thing would be to
+      telegraph home at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the wavering smile that crossed the dark face there was suggested a
+      fine contempt for the straight thing unaccompanied by some tangible
+      advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are they?&rdquo; inquired the General almost affectionately. &ldquo;Who are your
+      people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar walked to the tent door and looked out. There was some clatter of
+      swords going on outside, and as commander of this post it was his duty to
+      know all that was passing. He turned, and standing in the doorway, quite
+      filling it with his bulk, he answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father died three years ago. I have a step-mother and a step-brother,
+      that is all&mdash;besides friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General stooped to loosen the strap of his spur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he said in that attitude, &ldquo;I know you are not a married man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath the brim of the helmet, which he had not laid aside, the Jew's
+      keen black eyes were watching, watching. But they saw nothing; for there
+      is no one so impenetrable as a man with a clear conscience and a large
+      faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My idea was,&rdquo; continued General Michael, &ldquo;that two, or at the most three,
+      people besides you and I be let into the secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three,&rdquo; said Agar, with quiet decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General tacitly allowed this point and passed on with characteristic
+      promptitude to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a man of property?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I inherit my father's place down in Hertfordshire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you why I ask. There are those beastly lawyers to think of. At
+      your death it is to be presumed that the estate comes to your brother. The
+      legal operations must be delayed somehow. I will see to it,&rdquo; he added in a
+      concise, almost snappish way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar smiled, although he was conscious of a vague feeling of discomfort.
+      He was not a highly sensitive or a nervous man, and this feeling was more
+      than might have been expected to arise from an attendance, as it were, at
+      one's own obituary arrangements. The General seemed to be remarkably well
+      informed on these smaller points, and something prompted Jem Agar to ask
+      him if the idea he had just propounded was a suddenly conceived one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the General with a singular pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I once knew a man who did the same thing for a different purpose, but
+      the idea was identical. I do not claim to be the originator.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there was no hitch? It was successful?&rdquo; inquired Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the older soldier in a far-away voice, as if he had
+      mentally gone back to the results of that man's deception. &ldquo;Yes, it was
+      successful. By the way, you say your people live down in Hertfordshire?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I once knew a girl&mdash;long ago, in my younger days&mdash;who married a
+      man called Agar, and went to live in Hertfordshire. The name did not
+      strike me until you mentioned the county. I wonder if the lady is now your
+      step-mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My step-mother's name was Hethbridge,&rdquo; replied Jem Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The same. How strange!&rdquo; said the General indifferently. &ldquo;Well, she has
+      probably forgotten my existence these thirty years. She has one son, you
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Arthur. He is twenty-three&mdash;five years younger than myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shifty black eyes excelled themselves at this moment in rapidity of
+      observation. They seemed to be full of question, of many questions, but
+      none were forthcoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said General Michael indifferently. &ldquo;He is,&rdquo; pursued Jem Agar, &ldquo;a
+      delicate fellow; does nothing; though I believe he is going to be called
+      to the Bar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General, having passed most of his life in India, where men work or
+      else go home, did not take in the full meaning of this; but he was keen as
+      a ferret, and he saw easily that Jem Agar despised his step-brother with
+      that cruel contempt which strong men feel for weak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother's darling?&rdquo; he suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is about it,&rdquo; replied Agar. He was too simple, too innately
+      upright and honest to perceive the infinite possibilities opened up by the
+      fact upon which General Michael had pounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In case you decide to accept my offer,&rdquo; the older man went on, &ldquo;you would
+      wish your stepmother and step-brother to be told?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and one other person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, and another person. You could not limit it to two?&rdquo; urged the
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; replied Agar with a decision which the other was wise enough to
+      consider final. Moreover, the General omitted to ask the name of this
+      third person, urged thereto by one of those strokes of instinct which
+      indicate the genius of the commander of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Michael, moreover, deemed it prudent to carry the matter no
+      further at that moment. He rose from his seat on the bed, stretched his
+      lithe limbs, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this won't do! We must get to work. I propose retreating to-morrow
+      morning at daylight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed out of the tent together and proceeded to give their orders,
+      moving in and out among the busy men. There was a subtle difference in
+      their reception which was perhaps patent to both, though neither deemed it
+      necessary to make any comment. Wherever Agar went the eager little black
+      faces of his Goorkhas met him with a smile or a grin of delight; when
+      General Michael passed by, the dusky features hardened suddenly to a
+      marble stillness, and the beady eyes were all soldier-like attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They feared and loved the one because they felt that there was something
+      in him which they could not understand; they feared and hated the other
+      because his nature was nearer to their own, and they defined the evil in
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover, each had his reputation&mdash;that of General Michael dating
+      from the Mutiny; the other, a younger and a cleaner record.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is considered the proper thing to talk in England of the unvoiced
+      millions of India. No greater mistake could be made. These millions have a
+      voice, but it does not reach to us because they do not raise it. They talk
+      with it among themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had talked of General Michael for thirty years, and all that there
+      was in him had been discussed to its very dregs. Thus their impenetrable
+      faces hardened when he passed, their shadowy secretive eyes looked beyond
+      him with a vacancy which was not the vacancy of dulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. A LAST THROW
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Get place and wealth; if possible, with grace; If not, by any means get
+      wealth and place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daylight broke next morning in a snow-storm, and a thin sprinkling lay
+      over all the hills, clothing them in spotless white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Michael was among the first astir, seeing in person to all the
+      details of the retreat. The men looked in vain towards the tent where
+      their late youthful leader had been wont to sit, nibbling the end of his
+      golden pocket-penholder, wrestling manfully in the throes of literary
+      composition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at last the order was given to strike tents the faces of the rank and
+      file fell like the face of one man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Major James Edward Makerstone Agar had simply disappeared. His limited
+      baggage was attached to the smaller belongings of General Michael, and no
+      explanation was offered by that dreaded officer. To him the cold seemed to
+      be a matter of indifference; for he stood about watching every movement of
+      the men with a supreme disregard for the driving snow or the knife-like
+      wind that whistled over the northern scarp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under his calculating eye they worked to such effect that by nine o'clock
+      the little column was on the downward march. Again General Michael rode
+      through that lone, lorn country lying between India and Russia. Again his
+      melancholy face with keen but hopeless eyes passed through the darksome
+      valleys where, if legend be true, a race as old as his has lived since the
+      children of Abraham set forth to wander over the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For twenty years this man had haunted these vales and hills, seeking, ever
+      seeking, his own aggrandisement and nothing else. Accounted a patriot, he
+      was no patriot; for the homeless blood was mingled in his veins. Held to
+      be a hero by some, he was none; for he hated danger for its own sake, just
+      as some men love it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his lines had been cast in this unpleasant place, from whence flight
+      or retreat was rendered almost impossible, by the laws of discipline and
+      the freak of circumstance. Despite his titles, in face of his great
+      reputation, he knew himself to be a failure, and as he rode southward
+      through the mountain barrier that frowns down over India he was conscious
+      of the knowledge that in all human probability he would never look upon
+      this drear land again. His time was up, he was about to be set on the
+      shelf, life was over. And he had all his powers yet&mdash;all his
+      marvellous quickness at the mastery of tongues, all the restless energy
+      which had urged him on to overrun the race, to dodge and bore and break
+      his stride instead of holding steadily on the straight course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He it was who had discovered Jem Agar's talent for this rough, peculiar
+      soldiering of the frontier. He it was to whom the simple-minded young
+      officer had owed promotion after promotion. General Michael had fixed upon
+      Agar as his last hope&mdash;his last chance of doing something brilliant
+      in this deathly country, which moved with a slowness that nearly drove him
+      mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last attempt was thrown down like a defiance in the face of Fortune;
+      but still the risk was not his own. It never had been. Men had been sent
+      to their certain death by this sallow-faced commander, for no other object
+      than his own aggrandisement. It would almost seem that a just Providence
+      had ever turned away in loathing from the schemes of this man who would
+      have all and risk nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should Jem Agar succeed in the dangerous secret mission on which he had
+      been sent by a subtle underhand pressure of discipline, the glory would
+      never be his. This, under the grasping fingers of General Michael, would
+      never appear to the world as the wonderful individual feat of an intrepid
+      man, but as a masterly stroke of strategy dealt by a great general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael had long ago found out that Jem Agar was the step-son of
+      the woman whom he had wronged in bygone years. But the name failed to
+      touch his conscience, partly because that conscience was not of much
+      account, and partly because time heals all things, even a sore sense of
+      wrong. Truth to tell, he had not thought much of Anna Agar during the last
+      twenty years, and the mere coincidence that this simple tool should be her
+      step-son was insufficient to deter him from making use of Agar. But with
+      that careful attention to detail which in such a man betrayed innate
+      weakness, he took care to make sure that Jem Agar had learnt nothing of
+      the past from the lips of his father's second wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Michael did not disguise from himself the fact that the mission on
+      which he had despatched Jem Agar was what the life insurance companies
+      call hazardous. But he had lived by the sword, and that mode of gaining a
+      livelihood makes men wondrously indifferent to the lives of others.
+      Moreover, this was in a sense a speciality of his. He was getting hardened
+      to the game, and played it with coolness and precision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All through that day the little band retreated through an enemy's country,
+      watchful, alert, almost nervous. There were absurdly few of them&mdash;a
+      characteristic of that frontier warfare which the sallow, silent leader
+      had waged nearly all his life. And in the evening there was not peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortune is a playful soul. She keeps men waiting a lifetime, and then,
+      when it is too late, she suddenly opens both her hands. Seymour Michael
+      had waited twenty years for one of those chances of easy distinction which
+      seemed to fall to the lot of all his comrades in arms. This chance was
+      vouchsafed to him on the last evening he ever passed in an enemy's country&mdash;when
+      it was too late&mdash;when that which he did was no more than was to be
+      expected from a man of his experience and fame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little band was attacked at sunset by the victorious savages who had
+      annihilated the advance column three days earlier, and with half the
+      number of men, fatigued and hungry, Seymour Michael beat them back and cut
+      his way to the south. He knew that it was good, and the men knew it. They
+      looked upon this keen-faced little man as something approaching a
+      demi-god; but they had no love for him as they had for Major Agar. The
+      knowledge was theirs that to him their lives were of no account&mdash;they
+      were not men, but numbers. He brought them out of a dire strait by sheer
+      skill, by that heartless grip of discipline which a true general exercises
+      over his troops even at that critical moment when a common death seems to
+      reduce all lives to an equal value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the thick of it the Goorkhas&mdash;keen little Highlanders of the
+      Indian army&mdash;looked in vain for the fighting light in their leader's
+      eyes. They listened in vain for the encouraging voice&mdash;now low and
+      steady in warning, now trumpet-like and maddening with the infection of
+      excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of that wild, apparently disorderly <i>mêlée</i> in the
+      narrow valley, while the hush of mountain sunset settled over the battle,
+      the leader sat imperturbable, cold, and infinitely wise. He was pale, and
+      his lips were quite colourless, but his eyes were vigilant, ready,
+      resourceful. An ideal general but no soldier. He played this game with a
+      skill that never faced the possibility of failure&mdash;and won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Far overhead, many miles to the northward, a solitary wanderer heard the
+      sound of firing and paused to listen. He was a big man, worthy to be
+      accounted such even among the strapping mountaineers of that district, and
+      as he leant on the long barrel of his quaintly ornamental rifle his
+      sheepskin cloak fell back from a long sinewy arm of deep-brown hue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he listened to the far-off rumble of independent firing he muttered to
+      himself indications of anxiety. Strange to say, the eyes that looked out
+      over the hollow of the gorge-like valley were blue. They were, however,
+      hardly visible through the tangle of unkempt hair and raw wool that fell
+      over his forehead. The high sheepskin cap was dragged forward, and the
+      lower part of his face was almost hidden by the indiscriminate folds of
+      hood, cloak, and scarf affected by the shepherds hereabout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James Agar was perfectly happy. There must have been somewhere in his
+      sporting soul that love of Nature which drives men into solitude&mdash;making
+      gamekeepers and fishermen and explorers of them. It was in this man's
+      character to wait passive until responsibility came to him, when he
+      accepted it readily enough; but he never went out to meet it. He was not
+      as the sons of Levi, who took too much upon themselves; but rather was he
+      happiest when he had only his own life and his own self to take care of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he was now an outcast, an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand raised
+      against him. It was not the first time. For this quiet-going man had
+      unobtrusively learnt many tongues, and, while no one heeded him, he had
+      studied the ways of this Eastern land with no mean success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited there during an hour while the firing still continued, and then,
+      when at last silence reigned again and the wind whispered undisturbed
+      through the dark pines, he turned his wandering footsteps northward to a
+      land where few white men have passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So night fell upon these two men thus hazardously brought together, and
+      every moment stretched longer the distance between them&mdash;James Agar
+      going north, Seymour Michael passing southward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar wondered vaguely whether his toilsome diary would ever reach home,
+      but he was not anxious as to the result of the fight which had evidently
+      taken place in the valley. He too seemed to share the belief of all who
+      came in contact with him that General Michael could not do wrong in
+      warfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night the Master of Stagholme laid him down to rest in the shadow of
+      a big rock, strong in himself, strong in his faith. And as he slumbered,
+      those who slumber not nor cease their toil by day or night sat with
+      crooked backs over a little ticking, spitting, restless machine that spelt
+      out his name across half the world. While the moon rose over the
+      mountains, and looked placidly down upon this strange man lying there
+      peacefully sleeping in a world of his own, two men who had never seen each
+      other talked together with nimble fingers over a thousand miles of wire.
+      And one told the other that James Edward Makerstone was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sleeper slept on. He smiled quietly beneath the moon. Perhaps he
+      dreamt of the home-coming, of that time when he could say at last, &ldquo;I have
+      fought my fight, and now I come with a clear conscience to enjoy the good
+      things given to me.&rdquo; He never dreamt of treason. He never knew that for
+      their own gain men will sacrifice the happiness of their neighbours
+      without so much as a pang of self-reproach. There are some people, thank
+      Heaven, who never learn these things, who go on believing that men are
+      good and women better all their lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. A CARPET KNIGHT
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      First door on the right after passing into New Court, Trinity College,
+      Cambridge, by the river door. It is a small door, leading directly on to a
+      narrow, winding stone staircase. For some reason, known possibly to the
+      architect responsible for New Court (may his bones know no rest!), the
+      ground-floor rooms have a door of their own within the archway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the first floor Arthur Agar, to use the affected phraseology of an
+      affected generation, &ldquo;kept&rdquo; in the days with which we have to deal. What
+      he kept transpireth not. There were many things which he did not keep, the
+      first among these being his money. In these rooms he dispensed an
+      open-handed, carefully considered hospitality which earned for him a
+      certain bubble popularity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are, one finds, always plenty of men (and women too) ready to lick
+      the blacking off one's boots provided always that that doubtful fare be
+      varied by champagne or truffles at appropriate intervals. Men came to
+      Arthur Agar's rooms, and brought their friends. Mark well the last item.
+      They brought their friends. There is more in that than meets the eye.
+      There is a subtle difference between the invitation for &ldquo;Mr. Jones&rdquo; and
+      the invitation for &ldquo;Mr. Jones and friends&rdquo;&mdash;a difference which he who
+      runs the social race may read. If Jones is worth his salt he will discern
+      the difference in a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come to Agar's,&rdquo; one man (save the mark) would say to another.
+      &ldquo;Ripping coffee, topping cigarettes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they went; they drank the ripping coffee, smoked the topping cigarette,
+      and if they happened to be men of stomach ventured on a clinking cigar.
+      Moreover, they were made welcome. Agar was like a vain woman who loved to
+      see a full saloon. And he paid for his pleasure in more honourable coin
+      than many a vain woman has laid down since daughters of Eve commenced
+      drawing fops around them&mdash;namely, the adjectived items of hospitality
+      above mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did not matter much who the guests were, provided that they filled the
+      diminutive room in those spaces left vacant by <i>bric-a-brac</i> and
+      furniture of the spindle-legged description. So the men came. There were
+      freshmen who fell over the footstools and bumped their heads against the
+      painted sabots on the wall containing ever-fresh flowers, as per florist's
+      bill; who were rather over-powered by the profusion of painted photograph
+      frames, fans, and fal-lals. There was the man who sang a comic song and
+      dined out on it at least twice a week. There was the calculating son of a
+      poor North-country parson, who liked coffee after dinner and knew the
+      value of sixpence. There was the man who came to play his own valse, and
+      he who came to hear his own voice, <i>und so weiter</i>. Do we not know
+      them all? Have we not run against them in after-life, despite many
+      attempts to pass by on the other side? The habitual acceptors of
+      hospitality have no objection to crossing the road through the thickest
+      mud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By their rooms ye shall know them,&rdquo; might well, if profanely, be written
+      large over any college gate. Arthur Agar's rooms were worthy of the man.
+      There was, even on the little stone staircase, a faint odour of pastille
+      or scent spray, or something of feminine suggestion. The unwary visitor
+      would as likely as not catch some part of his person against a silk
+      hanging or a lurking <i>portière</i> on crossing the threshold; and the
+      impression which struck (as all rooms do strike) from the threshold was
+      one of oppressive drapery. A man, by the way, should never know anything
+      about drapery or draping. Such knowledge undermines his virility. This is
+      an age of undermining knowledge. We all, from the lowest to the highest,
+      learn many things of which we were better ignorant. The school-board
+      infant acquires French; Arthur Agar and his like bring away from Cambridge
+      a pretty knack of draping chair-backs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were little screens in the room, with shelves specially constructed
+      to hold little gimcracks, which in their turn were specially shaped to
+      stand upon the little shelves. There was a portentous standing-lamp, six
+      feet high in its bare feet, with a shade like a crinoline. There were
+      settees and <i>poufs</i> and <i>des prie-Dieu</i>, and strange things
+      hanging on the wall without rhyme, reason, or beauty. And nowhere a pipe,
+      or a tennis racket, or even a pair of boots&mdash;not so much as a single
+      manly indiscretion in the way of a cricket-bat in the corner, or a
+      sporting novel on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of this the temporary proprietor of the rooms sat
+      disconsolately at an inlaid writing-table with his face buried in his arms&mdash;weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The outer door was shut. Arthur Agar had sported his rare oak, not to work
+      but to weep. It sometimes does happen to men, this shedding of the idle
+      tear, even to Englishmen, even to Cambridge men. Moreover, it was
+      infinitely to the credit of Arthur Agar that he should bury his face in
+      the sleeve of his perfectly-fitting coat thus and sob, for he was weeping
+      (quietly and to himself) the advent of three thousand pounds per annum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At his elbow lay a telegram&mdash;that flimsy pink paper which, with all
+      our progress, all our knowledge, the bravest of us fear still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem killed in India; come home at once.&mdash;AGAR.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Honour to whom honour. Arthur Agar's only thought had been one of sudden
+      horror. He had read the telegram over twice before going out to close his
+      outer door. Then he came back and sat weakly down at the table where he
+      had written more scented notes than noted themes, deliberately, womanlike,
+      to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his credit be it noted that he never thought of Stagholme, which was
+      now his. He only thought of Jem&mdash;his no longer&mdash;Jem the
+      open-handed, elder brother who tolerated much and said little. Having had
+      everything that he wanted since childhood, Arthur Agar had never been in
+      the habit of thinking about money matters. His florist's bills (and
+      Cambridge horticulturists seem to water their flowers with Château
+      Lafitte), his confectioner's account, and his tailor's little note had
+      always been paid without a murmur. Thus, want of money&mdash;the chief
+      incentive to crime and criminal thought&mdash;had never come within
+      measurable distance of this gentle undergraduate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truth to tell, he had never devoted much thought to the future. He had
+      always vaguely concluded that his mother and Jem would &ldquo;do something&rdquo;; and
+      in the meantime there were important matters requiring his attention.
+      There was the <i>menu</i> to prepare for an approaching little dinner.
+      There was always an approaching dinner, and always a <i>menu</i> in
+      execrable French on a satin-faced card with the college arms in a coat of
+      many colours. There was the florist to be interviewed and the arrangement
+      of the table to be superintended; the finishing touch to be given to the
+      floral decoration thereof by the master-hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem's death seemed to knock away one of the supports of the future, and
+      Arthur Agar even in his grief was conscious of the impending necessity of
+      having to act for himself some day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length he lifted his head, and through the intricate pattern of the
+      very newest design in art muslins the daylight fell on his face. It was a
+      face which in France is called <i>chiffonné</i>; but the term is never
+      applied to the visage masculine. A diminutive and slightly <i>retrousse</i>
+      nose, gentle grey eyes of the drowning-fly description, and a sensitive
+      mouth scarcely hidden by a fair moustache of downward tendency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a man made to be ruled all his life&mdash;probably by a woman.
+      With a little more strength it might have been a melancholy face; as it
+      stood, it was suggestive of nothing stronger than fretfulness. There was a
+      vague distress in the eyes and in the whole countenance which mistaken and
+      practical souls would probably put down to a defective digestion or a
+      feeble vitality. More than one enthusiastic disciple of Aesculapius
+      studying at Caius professed to have discovered the evidence of some
+      internal disease in Arthur Agar's distressed eyes; but his complaint was
+      not of the body at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the necessity for action forced itself upon his understanding,
+      and he rose with a jerk. It is worth noting that his first thought was
+      connected with dress. He passed into the inner room and there exchanged
+      his elegant morning suit for a black one, replacing a delicate heliotrope
+      necktie by another of sombre hue. He mentally reviewed his mourning
+      wardrobe while doing so, and gathered much spiritual repose from the
+      diversion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime the Rector of Stagholme, having breakfasted, proceeded to
+      light a cigarette and open the <i>Times</i> with the leisurely sense of
+      enjoyment of one who takes an interest in all things without being keenly
+      concerned in any.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God help us!&rdquo; he exclaimed suddenly; and Mrs. Glynde, who alone happened
+      to be present, dropped a handful of housekeeping money on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, dear?&rdquo; she gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; was the answer; &ldquo;read that. 'Disaster in Northern India.' Not
+      there&mdash;higher up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her eagerness Mrs. Glynde had plunged headlong into the consumption of
+      Wesleyan missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. Then she had to find her
+      glasses, and considerable delay was incurred by putting them on upside
+      down. All this while the Rector sat glaring at her as if in some occult
+      way she were responsible for the disaster in Northern India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last she read the short article, and was about to give a sigh of relief
+      when her eyes travelled to a diminutive list of names appended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;What! Jem! Oh, Tom, dear, this can't be true!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no reason,&rdquo; answered the Rector grimly, &ldquo;to suppose that it is
+      untrue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde was one of those unfortunate persons who seem only to have the
+      power of aggravating at a crisis. In their way they are useful as serving
+      to divert the mind; but they usually come in for more than their need of
+      abuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor little woman laid the newspaper gently down by her husband's
+      elbow, and looked at him with a certain air of grandeur and strength. The
+      instinct that arouses the mother wren to peck at the schoolboy's hand at
+      her nest was strong in this subdued little old lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;must be done. How are we going to tell Dora?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector was a man who never went straight at the fence, before him. He
+      invariably pulled up and rode alongside the obstacle before leaping, and
+      when going for it he braced himself mentally with the reflection that he
+      was an English gentleman, and as such had obligations. But these
+      obligations, like those of many English gentlemen, ceased at his own
+      fireside. He, like many of us, was apt to forget that wife, sister, and
+      daughter are nevertheless ladies to whom deference is due.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;Dora,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;she will have to bear it like the rest of
+      us. But here am I with fresh legal complications laid upon me. I foresee
+      endless trouble with the lawyers and that woman. Why the Squire made me
+      his executor I can't tell. Parsons know nothing of these matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a patient sigh Mrs. Glynde turned away and went to the window, where
+      she stood with her back to him. Even to the duller masculine mind the
+      wonder sometimes presents itself that our women-folk take us so patiently
+      as we are. If Mrs. Glynde had turned upon her husband (who was not so
+      selfish as he would appear), presenting him forthwith in the plainest
+      language at her command with a piece of her mind, the treatment would have
+      been surprising at first, and infinitely beneficial afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Reverend Thomas sat staring into the fire&mdash;a luxury which he
+      allowed himself all through the year&mdash;with troubled eyes. There was a
+      fence in front of him, but he could not bring himself up to it. In his
+      mistaken contempt for women he had never taken his wife fully into his
+      confidence in those things&mdash;great or small, according to the capacity
+      of the producing machine&mdash;which are essentially a personal property&mdash;namely
+      his thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All else he told her openly and at once, as behoved an English gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should he tell all that he had hoped and thought and rethought respecting
+      Jem Agar and Dora? Should he; should he not? And the loving little woman
+      stood there almost daring to break the great silence herself; but not
+      quite. Strong as was her mother's heart, the habit of submission was
+      stronger. She longed, she yearned to hear the deeper, graver tone of voice
+      which had been used once or twice towards her&mdash;once or twice in
+      moments of unusual confidence. The Reverend Thomas Glynde was silent, and
+      the voice that they both heard was Dora's, singing as she came downstairs
+      towards them. It was only a matter of moments, and when we have no more
+      than that wherein to act we usually take the wrong turning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde turned and gave one imploring look towards her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same instant the door opened and Dora entered, singing as she came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;You both look depressed. Stocks
+      down, or something else has gone up? I know! Papa has been made a bishop!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a cheery laugh she went to the table and took up the newspaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. BAD NEWS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Sa manière de souffrir est le témoignage qu'une âme porte sur elle-même.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      There was a horrid throbbing silence while Dora read, and her parents
+      calculated the seconds which would necessarily elapse before she reached
+      the bottom line. Such moments as these are scored up as years in the span
+      of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde did not know what she was doing. It happened that she was
+      trying to rub away a flaw in the window-glass with her pocket
+      hand-kerchief&mdash;a flaw which must have been an old friend, as such
+      things are in quiet lives. At this occupation she found herself when her
+      heart began to beat again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said Dora in a terribly calm voice, &ldquo;that the <i>Times</i>
+      never makes a mistake&mdash;I mean they never publish anything unless they
+      are quite sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the English gentleman of parts who ever and anon peeped out through
+      the veneer of the parson asserted himself&mdash;the English gentleman
+      whose sense of fair play and honour told him that it is better to strike
+      at once a blow that must be struck than to keep the victim waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such is their reputation,&rdquo; answered Dora's father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde turned with that pathetic yearning movement of a punished dog
+      which waits to be called. But Dora had some of her father's sternness, her
+      father's good British reserve, and she never called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning, she walked quietly out of the room. And all the light had gone
+      out of her life. So we write, and so ye read; but do we realise it? It is
+      not many of us who have suddenly to look at life without so much as a
+      glimmer in its dark recesses to make it worth the living. It is not many
+      of us who come to be told by the doctor: &ldquo;For the rest of your existence
+      you must give up eyesight,&rdquo; or, &ldquo;For the remainder of life you must go
+      halt.&rdquo; But these are trifles. Everything is a trifle, if we would only
+      believe it. Riches and poverty, peace and war, fame and obscurity, town
+      and country, England and the backwoods&mdash;all these are trifles
+      compared with that other life which makes our own a living completeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silently she went, and left silence behind her. The Rector was abashed.
+      For once a woman had acted in a manner unexpected by him; for he was
+      ignorant enough of the world to keep up the old fallacy of treating women
+      as a class. True, it was Dora, whom he held apart from the rest of her
+      sex; but still he was left wondering. He felt as if he had been found
+      walking in a holy place with shoes upon his feet&mdash;those gross shoes
+      of Self with which most of us tramp through the world, not heeding where
+      we tread or what we crush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the hardest things we have to bear is the helpless standing by
+      while one dear to us must suffer. When Mrs. Glynde turned round and came
+      towards her husband she had become an old woman. Her face had suddenly
+      aged while her frame was yet in its full strength, and such a change is
+      not pleasant to look on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tom,&rdquo; she said, in a dry, commanding voice, &ldquo;you must go up to the Holme
+      at once and hear what news they have. There may be some chance&mdash;it
+      may please God to spare us yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the Rector meekly; &ldquo;I will go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was lacing his boots with all speed Mrs. Glynde took up the
+      newspaper again, and reread the brief account of the disaster. They were
+      spared comment; that blow came later, when the warriors of Fleet Street
+      set about explaining why the defeat was sustained and why it should never
+      have happened. In due course these carpet tacticians proved to their own
+      satisfaction that Colonel Stevenor was incompetent for the service on
+      which he had been dispatched. But the reek of printing-ink never was good
+      for the better feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In due course the Rector set off across the park; very grave, and
+      distinctly aware of the importance of his mission. He had somewhere in his
+      composition a strong sense of the dramatic, to which the situation
+      appealed. He felt that had he been a younger man he would have stored up
+      many details during the morning's work worthy of reproduction in the
+      narrative form during years to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he reached the great house he was aware that the grim pleasure of
+      imparting bad news was not to be his, for the blinds were all lowered&mdash;a
+      detail likely to receive early attention in a feminine household, for it
+      is only men who can hear of a death without thinking of mourning and the
+      blinds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The butler opened the door and took the Rector's hat and stick with a
+      silent <i>savoir-faire</i> indicative of experience in well-bred grief.
+      His chaste demeanour said as plainly as words that this was right and
+      proper, the Rector being no more than he expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's your mistress?&rdquo; asked Mr. Glynde, who had strong views upon
+      butlers in general and Tims in particular&mdash;said Tims being so sure of
+      his place that he did not always trouble to know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Library, sir,&rdquo; replied Tims in an appropriately sepulchral voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector went to the library without waiting to be announced. He was a
+      man well versed in human nature, as most parsons are, and it is possible
+      that he had caught a glimpse of Mrs. Agar watching his advent from the
+      dining-room window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady of the house was standing by the writing-table when he entered,
+      and beneath her ill-concealed excitement there was something subtly
+      observant, like the glance of an untruthful child, which he never forgot
+      nor forgave, despite his cloth and the impossibilities popularly expected
+      therefrom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;it is you. I have telegraphed for Arthur. I have&mdash;telegraphed
+      for Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a nervous, almost a guilty little laugh, and looked at him with
+      puzzled discomfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; he repeated, looking at her with a cold scrutiny much dreaded of
+      the parish ne'er-do-wells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;it is only natural that I should want him at
+      home in such a time as this&mdash;such a terrible affliction. Besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; suggested the Rector imperturbably, &ldquo;he is now master of
+      Stagholme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; she said, with a simulated surprise which would scarcely have
+      deceived the most guileless Sunday-school teacher. &ldquo;I had not thought of
+      that. I suppose something must be done at once&mdash;those horrid lawyers
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were dancing with breathless excitement. To this woman excitement
+      even in the form of a death was better than nothing. The bourgeois mind,
+      with its love of a Crystal Palace, a subscription dance, or even a
+      parochial bazaar, was unquenchable even after years of practice as the
+      county lady of position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector did not answer. He stood squarely in front of her with a
+      persistence that forced her to turn shiftily away with a pretence of
+      looking at the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a bad business,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That boy ought never to have gone out
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar had her handkerchief ready and made use of it, with as much
+      effect upon Mr. Glynde as might have been produced upon a granite sphinx.
+      There is no man harder to deceive than the innately good and conscientious
+      man of the world who has tried to find good in human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor boy!&rdquo; sobbed the lady. &ldquo;Dear Jem! I could not keep him at home.&rdquo;
+       Thus proving herself a fool, and worse, before those wise eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When occasion demanded Mr. Glynde could wield a very strong silence&mdash;stronger
+      than he thought. He wielded it now, and Mrs. Agar shuffled before it, her
+      eyes glittering with suppressed communicativeness. She was obviously
+      bubbling over with talk relevant and irrelevant, but the Rector had the
+      chivalry to check it by his cold silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause it was he who spoke, in a quiet, unemotional voice which
+      aggravated while it cowed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did you hear this news?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, last night. It was so late that I did not send down. I&mdash;it was
+      so sudden. I was terribly upset.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M&mdash;yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I telegraphed to Arthur first thing this morning,&rdquo; the mistress of
+      Stagholme went on eagerly, &ldquo;and I was just going to write to you when you
+      came in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that nervous desire for corroborative evidence which arouses the
+      suspicion of the observant whenever it appears, Mrs. Agar indicated the
+      writing-table with open blotter and inkstand. Instantly, but too late, she
+      regretted having done so, for a volume playfully called &ldquo;Every Man his own
+      Lawyer&rdquo; lay confessed beside the writing-case, and its home on the
+      bookshelf stared vacantly at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And from whom did you hear it?&rdquo; pursued the Rector, heartlessly looking
+      at the book with an air of recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, from a Mr. Johnson&mdash;at the War Office, or the India Office, or
+      somewhere. I suppose I ought to write and thank him. Let me see&mdash;where
+      is the telegram?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shuffled among the papers on the writing-table, and made the hideous
+      mistake of pushing &ldquo;Every Man his own Lawyer&rdquo; behind the stationery case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here it is!&rdquo; she exclaimed at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long document. Mr. Johnson, not having to pay for telegraphic
+      expenses out of his own pocket, had done his task thoroughly. He stated
+      clearly that the advance column under Colonel Stevenor, Major Agar, and
+      another British officer had been surprised and annihilated. There were no
+      particulars yet, nor could reliable details be expected, as it was quite
+      certain that not one man of the ill-fated corps had survived. General
+      Seymour, added the official, missing out in his haste the commanding
+      officer's surname, had promptly repaired to the scene of the disaster, to
+      punish the victors, and, if possible, recover the effects of the slain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was one of those persons who are incapable of reading a letter
+      or a telegram thoroughly. She was one of those for whose comprehension the
+      wrong end of the story must have been specially created. Had the official
+      put Seymour Michael's name in full, it is probable that in her infantile
+      excitement she would have failed to take it in or to connect it with the
+      man who had wronged her twenty years before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not thought much about that little affair during late years, her
+      feeling for Seymour Michael having settled down into a passive hatred. The
+      longing to do him some personal injury had died away fifteen years before.
+      She was, as a matter of fact, quite incapable of a lasting feeling of any
+      description. Hers was a life lived for the present only. A tea-party next
+      week was of more importance to her than a change in fortune next year.
+      Some people are thus, and Heaven help those whose lives come under their
+      fickle influence!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The one permanent motive of her existence was her son Arthur&mdash;the
+      puny little infant who had been prematurely ushered into a world that
+      seemed full of hatred twenty years before&mdash;and even his image faded
+      from mind and thought before the short Cambridge terms were half expired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment she was thinking less of the death of Jem than of the
+      approaching arrival of Arthur. There must have been something wrong with
+      her mental focus, to which trifles presented themselves as of the first
+      importance, to the obliteration of larger matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is all the news you have had?&rdquo; inquired the Rector, rather
+      hurriedly. He saw Sister Cecilia coming up the avenue, and that lady was
+      for him the embodiment of the combination of those feminine failings which
+      aggravated him so intensely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved towards the door, and standing there he turned, holding up a
+      warning finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be very careful,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You must not consult any lawyer or
+      take any steps in this matter. So far as you are concerned the state of
+      affairs is unchanged. I, as the Squire's executor, am the only person
+      called upon to act in any way if that poor boy has died without making a
+      will. You must remember that your son is under age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that he left her, rather precipitately, for Sister Cecilia, like all
+      busybodies, was a quick walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments Miss Cecilia Harbottle entered the library. She glided
+      forward as if afloat on a depth of the milk of human kindness, and folded
+      Mrs. Agar in an emotional embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Dear Anna, how I feel for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In illustration of this sympathy she patted Mrs. Agar's somewhat flabby
+      hands, and looked softly at her. She could hardly have failed to see a
+      glitter in the bereaved one's eyes, which was certainly not that of grief.
+      It was the gleam of pure, heartless excitement and love of change. But
+      Sister Cecilia probably misread it; for, like all excesses, that of
+      charity seems to dull the comprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, dear,&rdquo; she urged gently, &ldquo;all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How many of us imagine the satisfaction of our own curiosity to be
+      sympathy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Mrs. Agar told her all about it, and presently they sat down, with a
+      view to fuller discussion. There was, however, a point beyond which even
+      Mrs. Agar would not go. This point Sister Cecilia scented with the
+      instinct of the terrier, so keen was her nose in the sniffing of other
+      people's business. When that point was reached a third time she gently led
+      the way over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, with a resigned glance at the curtain poles, &ldquo;one
+      cannot help sometimes feeling that a wise Providence does all for the
+      best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratifying as this must have been to the power in question, no miraculous
+      manifestation of joy was forthcoming, and Mrs. Agar cunningly confined
+      herself to a non-committing &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a sigh, Sister Cecilia further expatiated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot but think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that Stagholme will be in better hands
+      now. Of course dear Jem was very nice, and all that&mdash;a dear, good
+      boy. But do you not think that Arthur is more suited to the position in
+      some ways?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he is,&rdquo; allowed Mrs. Agar, with ill-concealed pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is,&rdquo; continued Sister Cecilia, with a broader brush, &ldquo;so refined, so
+      gentlemanly, so ideal a country squire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And after that she had no difficulty in supplying herself with
+      information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. ON THIN ICE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? For if it prosper, none
+      dare call it treason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later a gentleman, whose clean-shaven face had a habit of beaming
+      suddenly into a professional smile, was seated at a huge writing-table in
+      his office in Gray's Inn, when a clerk announced to him the arrival of
+      Mrs. Agar, who desired to see him at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg beamed instantaneously, and the clerk, who knew his master,
+      waited until the paroxysm had passed. In the meantime Mrs. Agar was fuming
+      in the waiting-room, wherein lay a copy of the <i>Times</i> and nothing
+      else. The window looked out upon the neatly kept but depressing garden,
+      where five antiquated rooks looked in vain for sustenance. Mrs. Agar
+      watched these intelligent birds, but all her soul was in her ears. She had
+      already set Mr. Rigg down in her own mind as a stupid because, forsooth,
+      he had dared to keep her waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the truth is that they are accustomed to ladies in Gray's Inn,
+      especially ladies in deep mourning, with a chastely important air which
+      seems to demand that advice and sympathy be carefully mingled. <i>Connues</i>,
+      these ladies whose deep crape and quite exceptional bereavement plead (not
+      always dumbly) for a special equity, home-made and superior to any law,
+      and infer that the ordinary foes are in their case more than any gentleman
+      would think of accepting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clerk presently passed into an inner room and fetched therefrom a tin
+      box, upon which were painted in dingy white the letters &ldquo;J. E. M. A.,&rdquo; and
+      underneath &ldquo;Stagholme Estate.&rdquo; This the embryo lawyer carefully wiped with
+      a duster, and set it up on some of its fellows immediately behind Mr.
+      Rigg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no hurry displayed in this scenic arrangement. Mr. Rigg made a
+      practice of keeping ladies, especially those wearing crape, for a few
+      minutes in the waiting-room. It calmed them down wonderfully, and
+      introduced into their mental chambers a little legal atmosphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marks,&rdquo; he said, when that youth was taking his last look round at the <i>mise
+      en scène</i> before, as it were, raising the curtain, &ldquo;eh&mdash;er&mdash;just
+      go round to Corbyn's and get them to make up these pills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the mention of the medicinal term he beamed, as if to intimate that
+      between themselves no secret need be observed that he, Mr. Rigg, was
+      subject to the usual anatomical laws of mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;er&mdash;just call at the fishmonger's as you come back and get
+      a parcel for me, ordered this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; answered the faithful Marks, taking the prescription as if it
+      were a will or a transfer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew his part so well that he moved towards the door and opened it as
+      if Mrs. Agar's existence and attendance in the waiting-room were matters
+      of the utmost indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door was open, so that the lawyer's voice carried well down the
+      passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will see Mrs. Agar now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mrs. Agar was shown in, all bustling with excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Rigg,&rdquo; she said, with some dignity, &ldquo;has Mr. Glynde been here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lawyer beamed again&mdash;literally all over his parchment-coloured
+      face, except the eyes, which remained grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When, my dear madam?&rdquo; he asked, as he brought forward a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, lately&mdash;since my son's death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lawyer opened a large diary, and proceeded to trace back each day with
+      his finger. It promised to be a question of time, this ascertaining
+      whether Mr. Glynde had called within the last week. It was marvellous how
+      well this man of deeds knew his clients. Mrs. Agar had never persevered in
+      any inquiry or project that required time all through her life. Mr. Rigg,
+      behind his disarming smile, could see as far into a crape veil as any man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must have been quite lately,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, leaning forward and
+      trying visibly to read the diary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg turned back a few pages, as if to go over the ground a second
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see!&rdquo; he said leisurely. &ldquo;What was the precise date of the&mdash;er&mdash;sad
+      event?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last Tuesday, the fourteenth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure,&rdquo; reflected Mr. Rigg, fixing his eyes sadly on an engraving of
+      London Bridge in the seventeenth century&mdash;a spot specially reserved
+      for the sadder moments of probate and other testamentary work. &ldquo;Very sad,
+      very sad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he rose with the mental brushing-away of unshed tears of a man who
+      has never yet had time in life for idle lamentation. He turned towards the
+      tin box, jingling his keys in a most practical and business-like way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I presume,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you have come to consult me about the late
+      Captain Agar's will?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was there a will?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Agar, with audible alarm. She had not
+      studied &ldquo;Every Man his own Lawyer&rdquo; quite in vain, although most of the
+      legal technicalities had conveyed nothing whatever to her mind. She did
+      not notice that her question regarding Mr. Glynde had never been answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg turned upon her beaming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no will,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I thought that perhaps you were aware of
+      the existence of one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar's face lighted up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, with ill-concealed delight; &ldquo;I am certain there is no
+      will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed! And why, my dear madam?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;oh, well, because Jem was just the sort of person to forget
+      such matters. Besides, when he left England he was under age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lawyer was looking at her with his usual sympathetic smile spread over
+      his face like an actor's make-up, but his eyes were very keen and clever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he observed, &ldquo;he may have made one out there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think that it is likely,&rdquo; replied the lady, whose small thoughts
+      always came into the world in charge of a very obvious father in the shape
+      of a wish. &ldquo;There are no facilities out there&mdash;no lawyers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are quite a number of lawyers in India,&rdquo; said Mr. Rigg, with sudden
+      gravity. His face was only grave when he wished to fend off laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; persisted Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;I am <i>sure</i> Jem did not make a will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg bowed and resumed his seat. He took up a penholder and smiled,
+      presumably at his own sunny thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was one of those fatuous ladies who think themselves capable of
+      tricking a professional man out of his fee. She had a vague notion that if
+      one asks a lawyer a question the price of his answer is at least six
+      shillings and eightpence. Up to this point in the interview she was
+      serenely conscious of having eluded the fee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presume,&rdquo; she remarked carelessly, in pursuance of this economical
+      policy, &ldquo;that in such a case the property would go unconditionally to the
+      second son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are contingent possibilities,&rdquo; replied the man of subterfuge
+      blandly. He did not mean anything at all, but shrewdly guessed that Mrs.
+      Agar would not credit him with so simple a design.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady smiled in a subtly commiserating manner, indicative of the fact
+      that on some family matters the ignorance of all except herself was
+      somewhat pitiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;as regards the present case, I know perfectly well
+      that both Jem and his father would wish everything to go to Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was picking a thread from the corner of her jacket with an air of
+      nonchalance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg was silent. He had some thirty years before this period given up
+      attaching importance to the wishes of the deceased as interpreted by
+      disinterested survivors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And <i>I</i> should imagine that the necessary transfers&mdash;and&mdash;and
+      things would be much better put in hand at once. Delay seems to me quite
+      unnecessary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused for Mr. Rigg's opinion&mdash;quite a friendly opinion, of
+      course, without price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; said that lawyer, driven into a corner at last, &ldquo;but are you
+      consulting me on behalf of the late Squire's executor, Mr. Glynde, or on
+      your own account?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; replied Mrs. Agar, drawing herself up with a deprecating little
+      laugh, &ldquo;I did not intend it to be a consultation at all. I happened to be
+      passing, that was all. You see, Mr. Rigg, Mr. Glynde does not know
+      anything about these matters. Clergymen are so stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems to be afraid,&rdquo; Mr. Rigg was reflecting behind his pleasant mask,
+      &ldquo;of the young man coming alive again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was like a child in many ways, more especially in her unbounded
+      belief in her own cunning. She actually imagined herself to be a match for
+      this man, who had been trained in the ways of duplicity all his life. She
+      saw nothing of his mind, and fatuously ignored the fact that from the
+      moment she had entered the room he had begun the interview with a mental
+      hypothesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This woman,&rdquo; he had reflected, &ldquo;has always hated her step-son. She got
+      him a commission in an Indian regiment for the primary purpose of getting
+      him out of the way while she saved money on her life-interest in the
+      estate for her second son. The secondary purpose was little more than a
+      hope. She hoped for the best. The best has come off, and she is not clever
+      enough to let things take their course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every word Mrs. Agar had uttered, every silence, every glance had gone to
+      confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He did
+      not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor in
+      the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to
+      probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the
+      elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one
+      domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law.
+      And in one as in the other the finer susceptibilities grow dull. The
+      doctor almost forgets the pain he inflicts. The lawyer gradually loses his
+      sense of right and wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg was an honest man&mdash;as honesty is understood in the law. He
+      was keenly alive to all the motives of this woman, who, in the law of
+      humanity, was a criminal. He had started from a lawyer's standpoint&mdash;<i>id
+      est</i>, personal advantage. &ldquo;To whose advantage?&rdquo; they ask, and there
+      they assign the action. But Mr. Rigg was also a good lawyer, and therefore
+      he kept his own counsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things must be allowed,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to take their course. You know, Mrs.
+      Agar, we are proverbially slow in moving, but we are sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now it happened that this was precisely the position assumed by Mr.
+      Glynde, whose respect for legal routine was enormous. He rarely moved in
+      any matters wherein the law could by hook or crook be introduced without
+      consulting Mr. Rigg, whom he vaguely called his &ldquo;man.&rdquo; And it was
+      precisely this delay that Mrs. Agar disliked. She had no definite reason
+      for so doing; but this stroke of good fortune presented itself to her mind
+      more in the light of an opportunity to be seized than as a just
+      inheritance to be thankfully received in its due time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was awake to the fact that Arthur was not the man to seize any
+      opportunity, however obviously it might be thrust into his grasp, and her
+      knowledge of the world tended to exaggerate its dishonesty in her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia and she had talked this matter over with that small modicum
+      of learning which is a dangerous thing, and they had arrived at the
+      conclusion that Mr. Glynde was not competent to carry out the duties thus
+      suddenly thrust upon him. Wrapped up as was her heart in the welfare of
+      her weakling son, the one lasting motive of her life had been to secure
+      for him the largest possible portion of earthly goods. Now that success
+      seemed to be within measurable distance, she gave way to the baneful panic
+      of the weak conspirator, and fancied that the whole world was allied
+      against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not keep her fingers off &ldquo;Every Man his own Lawyer,&rdquo; and
+      consulted that boon to the legal profession to such good effect that she
+      placed a handsome fee in the pocket of one of its brightest ornaments at
+      the earliest opportunity. Mr. Rigg continued to beam and to keep his own
+      counsel, merely notifying that things must be allowed to take their own
+      course, and presently he bowed Mrs. Agar out of his office, dissatisfied,
+      and with an uncomfortable feeling of having been somewhat indiscreet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur was waiting for her in a hansom cab in Holborn, and with a sigh of
+      relief they drove westward to a shop in Regent Street to order a supply of
+      the newest procurable mode of signifying grief on paper and envelopes.
+      Arthur Agar was an expert in such matters, and indeed both mother and son
+      were more at home in the graceful pastime of spending money than in the
+      technicalities of making or keeping the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur was already beginning to taste the sweetness of his adversity, and
+      being intensely sensitive to the influence of those with whom he happened
+      to be at the moment, he was already beginning to look back with mild
+      surprise to the first burst of grief to which he had given way on hearing
+      that Jem was killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <i>There is one that keepeth silence and is found wise.</i>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia received&mdash;nay, she almost welcomed&mdash;the news of
+      Jem Agar's death in an intensely Christian spirit. She looked upon it in
+      the light of a chastening-a sort of moral cold bath, unpleasant at the
+      time, but cleanly and refreshing in its effect. Intense goodness and
+      virtue of the jubby-jubby order seem frequently to produce this result.
+      Trouble&mdash;provided that it be not personal&mdash;is elevated to a
+      position which it was never intended to occupy by an all-seeing
+      Providence. There are some people who step into the troubles of others as
+      into the chastening bath above referred to, and splash about. They pretend
+      to feel deeply bereavements which cannot reasonably be expected to affect
+      them, and go about the world with a well-scrubbed air of conscious virtue,
+      saying in manner if not in words, &ldquo;Look at me; my troubles compass me
+      about, but my innate goodness enables me to take them in the proper spirit
+      and to be cheerful despite all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was precisely Sister Cecilia's attitude towards her small world of
+      Stagholme, after the news of the young Squire's death had cast a gloom
+      over the whole neighbourhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she would say to some honest cottage mother who had more true
+      feeling in her rough little finger than Sister Cecilia possessed in her
+      whole heart. &ldquo;These trials are sent to us for our good. The ways of
+      Providence are strange, Mrs. Martin&mdash;strange to us now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, miss; that they be,&rdquo; Mrs. Martin replied, looking at her with the
+      hard and far-seeing gaze of a poor mother who has known trouble in its
+      least romantic form. And Sister Cecilia, with that blindness which comes
+      from systematically closing the eyes to the earthly side of earthly
+      things, never realised that the small change of sympathy is often slightly
+      aggravating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this period she took to calling Jem Agar her &ldquo;poor boy.&rdquo; The grave
+      seems to have the power of completely altering the past, and with persons
+      of the stamp of Sister Cecilia death appears not only to wipe out all sin,
+      but to impair the memory of the living to such an extent that the
+      individuality of the deceased is no longer recognisable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem never had in any sense of the word been her boy. His feelings for her
+      had passed from the distrust of childhood to the lofty contempt of a
+      schoolboy for all things preternaturally virtuous, finally settling down
+      into the more tolerant contempt of manhood. The dead, however, have
+      perforce to accept much affection which they scornfully refused in life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Jem!&rdquo; said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar the day after that lady's
+      visit to Gray's Inn. &ldquo;I always thought that perhaps he and dear Dora would
+      come to&mdash;to some understanding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stirred her tea with patient, suffering head inclined at a resigned
+      angle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think there <i>was</i> any understanding between them?&rdquo; inquired
+      Mrs. Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;I should not like to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which, being translated, meant that she would like to say, but did not
+      know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had always been a pet scheme of Mrs. Agar's that Dora should marry
+      Arthur; firstly, because she would have nearly two thousand pounds a year
+      on the death of her parents; and, secondly, because she was a capable
+      person with plenty of common-sense. These two adjuncts&mdash;namely, money
+      and common-sense&mdash;Mrs. Agar wisely looked for in candidates for the
+      flaccid hand of her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try and find out,&rdquo; said Sister Cecilia after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar said nothing. She was meditating over this last stroke of fate
+      in favour of her scheme, and her thoughts were disturbed by that distrust
+      in the continuance of good fortune which usually spoils the enjoyment of
+      the unscrupulous in those good things which they have obtained for
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Sister Cecilia took it for granted that she was doing the will of the
+      mistress of Stagholme when she wrote a note that same evening inviting
+      Dora to have tea with her the following afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the hour appointed Dora arrived, and was duly shown into the little
+      cottage drawing-room, of which the decoration hovered between the avowedly
+      devout and the economo-aesthetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia swept down upon her with a speechless emotion which, in the
+      nature of things (and Sister Cecilia), could not well be of long duration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;God will give you strength to bear this awful
+      trial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora recovered her breath and re-arranged her crushed habiliments before
+      inquiring, with just sufficient feeling to save her from downright
+      rudeness, &ldquo;What is the matter; has something else happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia drew back. She was vaguely conscious of having run mentally
+      against a brick wall. There was something new and unusual about Dora which
+      she could not understand&mdash;something, if she could only have seen it,
+      suggestive of the quiet, strong man in whose honour the whole parish wore
+      mourning. But Sister Cecilia was not a subtle woman. She had had so little
+      experience of the world, of men and of women, that she fell easily into
+      the error of thinking that they were all to be treated alike and with
+      equal success by little maxims culled from fourpenny-halfpenny devotional
+      books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, dear,&rdquo; she exclaimed; &ldquo;I was referring to our terrible loss. My heart
+      has been bleeding for you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very kind, I'm sure,&rdquo; said Dora quietly; &ldquo;I forgot that I had not
+      seen you since the news reached us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that her self-control cost her more than she suspected. Her
+      lips were drawn and dry. She wore a thick veil, which she carefully
+      abstained from lifting above the level of her eyes. &ldquo;I am sure,&rdquo; moaned
+      Sister Cecilia, &ldquo;it has been a most trying time for us all. I wonder that
+      Mrs. Agar has borne up so bravely. Her health is wonderful, considering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora sat looking straight in front of her. She was withdrawing her gloves
+      slowly. Her face was that of a person whose mind was made up for the
+      endurance of an operation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The twaddling voice, the characteristic reference to health, were
+      intensely aggravating. There are some women who talk of their own health
+      before the dead are buried. They do not seem to be able to separate grief
+      from bodily ill. Clad in crape, they rush to the seaside, and there,
+      presumably because grief affects their legs, they hire a man to wheel
+      themselves and Sorrow in a bath-chair. Why&mdash;oh, why! does bereavement
+      drive women into bath-chairs on the King's Road, or the Lees, or the Hoe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderful!&rdquo; said Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia, busying herself with the teapot, proceeded to blow her own
+      trumpet with the bare-facedness of true virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been with her constantly,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I think it is better for us
+      all to tell of our grief; I think that we are given speech for that
+      purpose. For although one may only be able to offer sympathy and perhaps a
+      little advice, it is always a relief to speak of one's sorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it is,&rdquo; admitted Dora from her strong-hold of reserve, &ldquo;for
+      some people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; exclaimed Sister Cecilia, all heedless of the sarcasm. For
+      extreme charity is proof against such. It covers other things besides a
+      multitude of sins. Wielded foolishly it runs amuck like a too luxuriant
+      creeper, and often kills commonsense. &ldquo;And that is why I asked you to
+      come, dear. I thought that you might want to confide in some one&mdash;that
+      you might want to unburden your heart to one who feels for you as if this
+      sorrow were her own&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only one piece of sugar, thank you,&rdquo; interrupted Dora. &ldquo;Thank you. No.
+      Bread and butter, please. It is very kind of you, Sister Cecilia. But, you
+      see, when I have any unburdening to do there is always mother, and if I
+      want any advice there is always father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear. But sometimes even one's parents are not quite the persons to
+      whom one would turn in times of grief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; observed Dora, without much enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unconsciously Sister Cecilia was doing the very best thing possible for
+      Dora, She was arousing in her the spirit of antagonism&mdash;hardening a
+      stricken heart, as it were, by a fresh challenge. She was teaching Dora to
+      fight for what we learn to deem most sacred&mdash;namely, the right to
+      monopolise our own thoughts and feelings. Sister Cecilia is not, one may
+      assume, the only good woman in the world who cannot draw a definite line
+      between sympathy and mere curiosity. With many the display of sympathy is
+      nothing but a half-conscious bait to attract a shoal of further details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Self-reliance was lurking somewhere in this girl's character, but it had
+      never been developed by the pressure of circumstances. Reserve she had
+      seen practised by her father, but the actual advantages thereof were only
+      now beginning to be apparent to her. The body, we are told, adapts itself
+      to abnormal circumstances; so is it with the mind. Already Dora was
+      beginning, as they say at sea, to find her feet; to take that stand amidst
+      her environments which she was forced to hold, practically alone,
+      thereafter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Sister Cecilia, with that blind faith in a good motive which gives
+      almost as much trouble as actual vice, floundered on in the path she had
+      mapped out for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, dear,&rdquo; she said, looking out of the window with a sentimental
+      droop of her thin, inquisitive lips, &ldquo;I cannot help feeling that this&mdash;this
+      terrible blow means more to you than it does to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; inquired Dora practically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia was silent, with one of those aggravating silences which do
+      not allow even the satisfaction of a flat contradiction. A meaning silence
+      is a coward's argument. She was beginning to feel slightly nervous before
+      this child, ignorant that childhood is not always a matter of years and
+      calendar months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Dora again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia looked rather bewildered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear, I thought perhaps&mdash;I always thought that my poor boy
+      entertained some feeling&mdash;you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Dora, borrowing for the moment her father's most crushing
+      deliberation of manner, &ldquo;I cannot say I do. When you say your 'poor boy,'
+      are you referring to Jem?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia assented with a resigned nod worthy of the very earliest
+      martyr.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, as every one has discovered so many virtues in him&mdash;quite
+      suddenly&mdash;we had better emulate one of them, and have at the least
+      the good feeling to hold our tongues about any feelings he may have
+      entertained. Do you not think so, Sister Cecilia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear, I only thought to act as might be best for you,&rdquo; said the
+      well-intentioned meddler, with the drawl of the professionally
+      misunderstood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no doubt of that,&rdquo; returned Dora, with an equanimity which was
+      again strangely suggestive of Jem Agar. &ldquo;But in future you will be
+      consulting my welfare much more effectively by refraining from action on
+      my behalf at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you will, dear; as you will,&rdquo; in the hopeless tone of age, experience,
+      and wisdom forced to stand idle while youth and folly rush headlong down
+      the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; returned Dora calmly; &ldquo;I know that, thank you. And now, I think, we
+      had better change the subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The subject was therefore changed; but Sister Cecilia, having, as it were,
+      whetted her appetite for details, was not at her ease with other food for
+      the mind, and presently Dora left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl went back into her small world with a new knowledge gained&mdash;the
+      knowledge that in all and through all we are really quite alone. There can
+      be only one companion, and if that one be absent, there are only so many
+      talking-machines left to us. And many of us pass the whole of our lives in
+      conversation with them. So it is; and we know not why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a subtle way she felt stronger for this little tussle&mdash;a fight is
+      always exhilarating. She felt that from henceforth the memory of Jem was
+      hers, and hers alone, to defend and to cherish. It was not much of a
+      consolation. No. But then this is a world of small mercies, where some of
+      us get an hour or some mean portion of a day when we want a lifetime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. THE TOUCH OF NATURE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A sense, when first I fronted him, Said, &ldquo;Trust him not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After successfully carrying through the purchase of mourning stationery
+      and attending to other important items connected with sorrow in its
+      worldly shape, Arthur Agar went back to Cambridge. There was enough of the
+      woman in his nature to enable him to cherish grief and nurse it lovingly,
+      as some women (not the best of them) do. In this attitude towards the
+      world there was none of that dogged going about his business which
+      characterises the ordinary man from whose life something has slipped out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wandered by the banks of the Cam with mourning in his mien, and his
+      cherished friends took sympathetic coffee with him after Hall. They spoke
+      of Jem with that fervid admiration which University men honestly feel for
+      one a few years their senior who has already &ldquo;done something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A ripping soldier&rdquo; they called him and some of them entertained serious
+      doubts as to whether they had done wisely in choosing the less glorious
+      paths of peace. And Arthur Agar settled down into the old profitless life,
+      with this difference&mdash;that he could not dine out, that he used
+      blackedged notepaper, and that his delicate heliotrope neckties were
+      folded away in a drawer until such time as his grief should be assuaged
+      into that state of resignation technically called half-mourning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon well towards the end of the term Arthur Agar's &ldquo;gyp&rdquo; crept
+      in with that valet-like confidential air which seems to be bred of too
+      intimate a knowledge of the extent of one's wardrobe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a gentleman, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;as wants to see you. But in no wise
+      will he give his name, which, he says, you don't know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he selling engravings?&rdquo; asked Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;gyp&rdquo; looked mildly offended. As if he didn't know that sort!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. Military man, I should take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar had met the Scotch Balaclava veteran in his time too. He
+      hesitated, and the &ldquo;gyp,&rdquo; who felt that his reputation was at stake,
+      spoke:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is eminently a gentleman, sir,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, show him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later a man who might have been the wandering Jew <i>fin de
+      siècle</i> stood in the doorway. His smart military moustache was small
+      and evidently trimmed, his face was sunburnt, and in his eyes there
+      gleamed the restlessness of India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed, and awaited the exit of the man. Then, coming forward, he was
+      able for the first time to see Arthur Agar's face distinctly, and his
+      glance wavered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Arthur Agar was staring at him with something in his face
+      that was almost strong. When this man had entered the room, Arthur felt
+      his heart give one great bound which almost choked him. There was a
+      strange physical feeling of vacuity in his breast which seemed to paralyse
+      his breathing powers, and his temples throbbed painfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar's life had been passed in eminently pleasant places. The seamy
+      side of existence had always been carefully hidden from his eyes. He
+      therefore did not recognise this strange sense which had leapt into his
+      being&mdash;the sense of superhuman, physical, mortal revulsion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was divided between two instincts. One side of his nature urged him to
+      shriek like a woman. Had he followed the other, he would have rushed at
+      this man, whom he had never seen before, seeking to do him bodily harm. He
+      would not have paused to reason that in anything like a struggle he would
+      stand no chance against the sinewy, dark-eyed soldier who stood watching
+      him. For there are moments even in this age of self-suppression when we do
+      not pause to think, when he who cannot swim will leap into deep water to
+      save another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This sudden unreasoning hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed to
+      stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease
+      lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the
+      spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. The stranger it was
+      who spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presume,&rdquo; he said, with a pleasant smile, in a voice so musical that
+      his hearer breathed suddenly as if his head had been lifted from water, &ldquo;I
+      presume that you are Mr. Arthur Agar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he spoke he looked past Arthur, out of the silken-draped window. He
+      did not seem to like the glance of this young man, for even the most
+      practical of us have a conscience at times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The new-comer laid his walking-stick on the table, and turned to make sure
+      that the door was closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew your step-brother,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;Jem Agar, in India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the instinct of the gentleman and the host asserted itself over and
+      above the throbbing hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Will you sit down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger took the proffered chair and laid aside his hat. But neither
+      of them was at ease. There was a subtle suggestion that they had met
+      before and quarrelled&mdash;vague, unreasoning, quite impossible if you
+      will; but it was there. They were as men meeting again with a past between
+      them (too full of strong passions ever to be forgotten) which each was
+      trying in vain to ignore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought home a few belongings of his,&rdquo; the stranger went on to
+      explain. &ldquo;Just a port-manteau with some clothes and things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, and drew a small packet from the pocket of a covert-coat which
+      he carried over his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;are some papers of his&mdash;a diary and one or two
+      letters. The rest of the things are at my hotel in town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur took the packet, and, still in the same dreamy, unreal way, opened
+      it. He turned to the last entry&mdash;dated six weeks back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got out of bed at five, but nothing to be seen in the valley. I feel a
+      bit chippy this morning. If nothing turns up to-day shall begin to feel
+      uneasy. The men seem all right. They are plucky little fellows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a self-consciousness about Jem Agar's diary, a selection of the
+      right word, which conveyed nothing to Arthur. But it fell into other hands
+      later on, where it was understood better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Michael was watching the undergraduate with the same critical
+      attention which he had brought to bear on the writer of the diary not two
+      months before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you see much of your step-brother?&rdquo; he asked abruptly, feeling his
+      way towards his purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur looked up. He was getting accustomed to the loathing that he felt
+      for this man, as one gets accustomed to an evil odour or a physical pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw enough of him to be very fond of him,&rdquo; he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your mother&mdash;was she attached to him? Excuse my asking; I have a
+      reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little pause was enough. Seymour Michael had expected as much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had never forgiven Mrs. Agar the insults she heaped upon his head in
+      the drawing-room of Jaggery House. It is very difficult to bring shame
+      home to a Jew, and on that occasion this son of the modern Ishmaelites had
+      been thoroughly ashamed of himself. The sting of that past ignominy was
+      with him still, and would remain within his heart until such time as he
+      could revenge himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With that mean, underhand watchfulness for an opportunity which is almost
+      excusable in one of the unfortunates against whom every man's hand is
+      raised to-day, he had never parted with his thirst for revenge. The moment
+      seemed propitious. It was within his power to lay for Anna Agar one of
+      those spiteful feminine traps of which a woman can only fully appreciate
+      the sting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He determined to leave Mrs. Agar in ignorance of the real facts respecting
+      her step-son. His vengeance was to allow her to rejoice&mdash;almost
+      openly, as she did&mdash;in the stroke of fortune by which her own son,
+      Arthur, had become possessed of Stagholme. He knew the woman well enough
+      to foresee that in a hundred ways she would heap up ignominy, meanness,
+      deception, which would crumble in one vast wreck about her head when Jem
+      Agar returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a vengeance worthy of the man, and spiteful enough to be fully
+      comprehended by its victim. But, like others handling petards, Seymour
+      Michael grew somewhat careless, and forgot that the wrong man is sometimes
+      hoist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew his position well enough to make all safe as regarded Jem Agar on
+      his return. It was absolutely necessary to tell Arthur Agar&mdash;necessary
+      for his own safety in the future. The other two persons to whom the secret
+      was to be imparted were Mrs. Agar and Dora Glynde. From Mrs. Agar Seymour
+      Michael determined to withhold the news for his own reasons. Dora was to
+      be kept in the dark because she was a woman, and therefore unsafe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the plan in its original shape with which Michael sought out
+      Arthur Agar at his rooms in college at Cambridge. It was further assisted
+      and elaborated by a circumstance which the originator could scarcely have
+      been expected to foresee&mdash;the fact of Arthur Agar's love for Dora,
+      which was at this time beginning to take to itself a definite existence.
+      It began, as all love does, with a want more or less elevated according to
+      the nature of the wanter. Arthur Agar required some one for whom to buy
+      those small and feminine luxuries which he could not for manly shame
+      purchase to himself. He delighted in spending money in those
+      establishments tersely called <i>magasins de luxe</i> in the country from
+      whence their contents do emanate. He therefore got into the habit of
+      &ldquo;picking up little things&rdquo; for Dora, with the result that she in her turn
+      picked up that very small object, his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael had seen enough of Arthur Agar during this short interview to
+      endow him with the same need of contempt which he had entertained towards
+      Anna Agar, the mother. The strong personal resemblance, the obvious
+      weakness of the boy's face, and, above all, that sense of having the upper
+      hand, which makes brave men out of cowards, gave him confidence. It seemed
+      that he had only to play the cards thrust into his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;Jem Agar very well. He was a peculiar man: very
+      quiet, very reserved, and just the man to make a difficult position rather
+      more difficult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur's intelligence was not keen enough to follow the drift of this
+      remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hinted to me once or twice,&rdquo; went on Seymour Michael, &ldquo;that things
+      were not very harmonious at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not aware of it,&rdquo; answered Arthur, whose innate gentlemanliness
+      told him that this should be held sacred ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General shifted his position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was a first-rate soldier,&rdquo; he said warmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was obvious to both that they were not getting on. Something seemed to
+      hold them both back, paralysing the <i>savoir-faire</i> which both had
+      acquired in their intercourse with the world. Seymour Michael was puzzled.
+      He was not afraid of this boy. He knew himself to be stronger&mdash;capable
+      of over-mastering him entirely. But for the first time in his life he felt
+      awkward and ill at ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar only wanted this man to go. He felt that he could forego the
+      news which he must undoubtedly be in a position to give if only he could
+      be rid of this hated presence. At moments the loathing came to him again,
+      like a cold hand laid upon his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you with him,&rdquo; inquired the undergraduate, &ldquo;at the time of his&mdash;death?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I was at head-quarters, forty miles to the rear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause, then suddenly Seymour Michael leant forward with
+      his two hands on the table that stood between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Agar,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;are you able to keep a secret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; answered Agar apprehensively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I am going to tell you something which you must swear by all that
+      you hold most sacred to keep a strict secret until such time as I give you
+      leave to reveal it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur looked at him with a vague fear in his face. It seemed suddenly as
+      if this man had always been in his life&mdash;as if he would never go out
+      of it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not sure that I care to hear it,&rdquo; he wavered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must hear it. Almost the last words that Jem Agar spoke to me were
+      requesting me to tell you this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You promise that that is true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur was surprised at his own suspicions. It was so unlike him, whose
+      nature, too weak to compass vice, had never allowed the suspicion of vice
+      or deceit in others to trouble him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise,&rdquo; replied Seymour Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur gathered himself together for an effort. His distrust of this man
+      was almost a panic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell me,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael leant back in his chair, fixing his pleasant eyes on Arthur's pale
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The estate is not yours,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Your step-brother, Jem Agar, is not
+      dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not dead!&rdquo; repeated Arthur, without any joy in his voice. &ldquo;Not dead! Then
+      who are you? Tell me who you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! That I cannot tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Seymour Michael sat smiling quietly on Anna Agar's son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes ill deeds done!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is a wise liar who makes use of the truth at times. Seymour Michael was
+      clever enough to stay his fantastic tongue in his further explanation to
+      Arthur Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a long story,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and in order to fully state the case to
+      you I must go into some matters of which perhaps you have heard little. Do
+      you happen to be anything of a politician? Are you, I mean, interested in
+      foreign affairs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur confessed that he knew nothing of foreign affairs, a fact of which
+      Michael had become fully aware on entering the narrow-minded,
+      characteristic room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You perhaps know,&rdquo; Seymour Michael went on, in a tone of which the
+      sarcasm was lost upon its victim, &ldquo;that Russia is living in hopes of some
+      day possessing India?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;ah&mdash;yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar was obviously not at all interested. There were so many things
+      of a similar nature to be remembered&mdash;things which did not really
+      interest him&mdash;and those nearer home had precedence in his mind. He
+      knew, for instance, that Trinity Hall lived in hopes of heading the river
+      that year, and that the Narcissus Club were going to give a
+      narcissus-coloured dance in May week, at which entertainment even the
+      jellies were to be yellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General now launched into an explanation, couched carefully in
+      language suitable to his hearer's limited knowledge of the facts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Russia,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is now so large that, unless they make it larger still
+      and get tropical resources to draw upon, it will fall to pieces. They want
+      India. Some day there will be a fight, a very large fight. But not yet. In
+      the meantime it is a question of learning every inch of that country where
+      the battle-fields will be, and every thought in the minds of those men who
+      will look on at the fight. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, recollecting that the fame of his own name might have
+      penetrated even to this out-of-the-way spot. &ldquo;Some of us have been at this
+      all our lives. Over there, on the Frontier, there are certain numbers of
+      us, on both sides, playing a very deep game. Your brother is one of the
+      players, a prominent man on the field; a half-back, one might call him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a strong temptation to continue the allegory&mdash;to say that
+      he himself was goal-keeper; but Seymour Michael was one of the few men who
+      can in need make even their own vanity subservient to convenience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We watch each other,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;like cats. We always know where the
+      others are, and what they are doing. Your brother was one of the most
+      closely watched by the other side. For some time we have been aware of an
+      influence at work with a tribe of Hillmen who have hitherto been friendly
+      to us, and we have not been able to find what this influence is, or how it
+      is brought to bear upon them. We were so closely watched that we could not
+      penetrate to the affected country. But at last the chance came. Your
+      brother was gazetted as killed. We allowed the report to remain
+      uncontradicted. We let the other side think that Jem Agar was dead, and
+      therefore incapable of doing any more harm, and now he has gone up into
+      that country to find out what they are after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said. He was rather vague about it all, and had not quite
+      realised yet that this was all true, that this man whom he still hated and
+      distrusted without any apparent reason was real and living, speaking to
+      him in real waking life and not in a dream. Moreover, he had not nearly
+      realised that Jem was alive. The evidence of his own black clothes, of the
+      sombre-edged stationery, of his mourning habit of life this term, was too
+      strong upon a mind like his to be suddenly thrown aside. Perhaps he had
+      discovered that the consolation of inheritance was greater than was at
+      first apparent. In six weeks he had slipped very comfortably into Jem's
+      shoes, and it seemed only right and proper that his life should have a
+      background of the noble proportions of Stagholme. Also, now Stagholme
+      meant Dora; for he was worldly-wise enough to know that his own personal
+      value in the world's estimation had undergone a great change in six short
+      weeks. He knew that the man with the money usually wins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would almost seem that Seymour Michael divined his thoughts, at least
+      in part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are two reasons,&rdquo; he went on to say, &ldquo;why absolute secrecy is
+      necessary; first, for Agar's own sake. He is, of course, in disguise. No
+      one suspects that he is there, and that is his only safeguard in the
+      country where he is. Secondly&mdash;but I want your whole attention,
+      please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am listening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael leant forward and emphasised his remark by tapping on the
+      table with his gloved finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mission is so extremely dangerous that it comes almost to the same
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; inquired Arthur Agar, whose gentle intellect only
+      compassed subtleties of the drawing-room type.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that Jem Agar is almost as good as a dead man, although he was not
+      killed at Pregalla.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who had wept in this same room six weeks before looked up with a
+      gleam of something very like hope in his troubled eyes. Such is the power
+      of love. For Arthur Agar had not been ignorant of the probability that in
+      his step-brother, once dead but now living, he had had a rival. Sister
+      Cecilia had seen to that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But when shall we know? When will he come back?&rdquo; inquired he. And Seymour
+      Michael, the subtle, began to see his way more clearly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not for six months, probably not for nine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One may take it that no man is sent into the world a ready-made scoundrel.
+      It all depends upon the circumstances of life. No one is safe right up to
+      the end, and events may combine to make the very best of us into that
+      thing which the world calls a villain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar, all inexperienced, weak, hereditarily handicapped, suddenly
+      found himself on the balance. And the scales were held, not by the hand of
+      Justice, blind and clement, but by Seymour Michael, very open-eyed, with a
+      keen watchfulness for his own purpose; biassed; unscrupulous. It must be
+      admitted that circumstances were against Arthur Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing to be done,&rdquo; added Seymour Michael, with a smile which
+      his companion could not be expected to fathom, &ldquo;but to keep very quiet,
+      and to make the best of your opportunities while you occupy the position
+      of heir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur smiled in a sickly way. He felt suddenly as if this man could see
+      right through him, and all the while he hated him. Seymour Michael meant
+      &ldquo;debts&rdquo;&mdash;it was only natural that one of his race should think of
+      money before all things&mdash;Arthur's thoughts were fixed on Dora. And
+      guiltily he imagined himself to be detected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be doing no harm to Jem,&rdquo; said the tempter, with his pleasant
+      laugh. &ldquo;You are called upon to act the part well for his sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es, I suppose I am,&rdquo; answered Arthur. &ldquo;And I must tell no one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Absolutely no one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Despite his credulous nature, Arthur Agar was singularly suspicious on
+      this occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are these Jem's own instructions?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His own instructions,&rdquo; replied Seymour Michael callously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur paused in deep reflection. It was evident, he argued to himself,
+      that Jem could not have cared for Dora, or he would never have left her in
+      ignorance of the truth. If, therefore, during Jem's absence, he could win
+      Dora for himself, he could not in any way be accused of wronging his
+      step-brother. And we all know that a conscience which argues with itself
+      is lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To make things easier for us both,&rdquo; pursued Seymour Michael, &ldquo;I propose
+      that this interview remain a strict secret between ourselves, and for that
+      purpose I have suppressed my own name. It is a fairly well-known name. I
+      may mention that in guarantee of good faith. As, however, you do not know
+      me, it will be easier for you to suppress the fact that we have ever met.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur almost laughed at these last words. It seemed as if he had known
+      this man all his life&mdash;as if his whole existence had merely been a
+      period of waiting until he should come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my mother must not know?&rdquo; he said. He kept harking back to this
+      question with a singular persistence. There are a few men and many women
+      for whom a secret is a responsibility to be transferred to the first-comer
+      without hesitation. One half of the world takes pleasure in divulging a
+      secret&mdash;for the other half it is positive pain to keep one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael never dreamt that the secret might be in unsafe hands. To
+      a secretive man like himself the incapacity to keep a counsel never
+      suggested itself. There is no doubt that where we all err is in
+      persistently judging others by ourselves. Arthur Agar was keenly aware of
+      his own incompetence in many things&mdash;he was one of those promising
+      undergraduates who hire a man to water six small plants in a window-box.
+      Incompetence was by him reduced to a science. There were so many things
+      which he could not do, that he was forced to find occupations for a very
+      extensive leisure, and these were usually of the petty accomplishment
+      order, which are graceful in young girls and very disgraceful in young
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the doctrine of incompetence is a very dangerous one. Already in the
+      criminal courts we are beginning to hear of men and women who do not feel
+      competent to keep the law. There were many laws of social procedure and a
+      few of schoolboy honour which Arthur Agar felt to be beyond him, and he
+      considered that in making confession he was acquiring a right to
+      absolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not tell General Michael that he was not good at keeping secrets,
+      chiefly because that gentleman was not of the trivial confession type; but
+      he made a mental reservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael had risen and was walking backwards and forwards slowly
+      between the window and the door. He seemed quite at home in the small
+      room, and his manner of taking three strides and then wheeling round
+      suggested the habit of living in tents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you must say is that you have received your brother's effects,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;If they ask from whence&mdash;from the War Office. I am the War
+      Office to all intents and purposes. The affair is almost forgotten. All
+      the details have been published&mdash;the usual newspaper details, with
+      Fleet Street local colouring. You should have no difficulty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Arthur meekly, but with another mental reservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are, of course, certain legal formalities in progress,&rdquo; went on the
+      General, &ldquo;relative to the estate. Those must be allowed to go on. We may
+      trust the lawyers to go slowly. And afterwards they can amuse themselves
+      by undoing what they have done. That is their trade. Half of them make a
+      living by undoing what the others have done. You are ...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael so far forgot himself as to pause and make a mental
+      calculation. Arthur saw him do it and never thought of being surprised. It
+      seemed quite natural that this man should possess data upon which to base
+      mental calculations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... not twenty-one yet?&rdquo; Michael finished the sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that, you see, they cannot make over the estate to you before the time
+      your brother comes or&mdash;should&mdash;come&mdash;back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur understood the emphasis perfectly this time. He was getting on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are,&rdquo; continued Michael, who was eminently methodical, &ldquo;a few
+      military formalities, which have had my attention. In fact, I think that
+      everything has been attended to. In case you should require any
+      information, or perhaps advice, write to C 74, Smith's Library, Vigo
+      Street. That is the address on that envelope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur rose too. The thought that his visitor might be about to depart
+      thrilled through him with the warmth of relieved suspense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For your own information,&rdquo; said Michael, looking straight into the
+      wavering, colourless eyes, &ldquo;I may tell you that in my opinion&mdash;the
+      opinion of an expert&mdash;this expedition is exceedingly hazardous. We&mdash;we
+      must be prepared for the worst.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar turned away. He had felt the deep eyes probing his very soul&mdash;looking
+      right through him. A sickening sense of weakness was at his heart. He felt
+      that in the presence of this man he did not belong to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; he muttered awkwardly, &ldquo;that Jem will never come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it most probable. And then&mdash;when we have to abandon all
+      hope, I mean&mdash;we shall be glad that we kept this thing to ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael held out his hand, and pressed the boy's weak fingers in a
+      careless grip. Then he turned, and with a short &ldquo;Good-bye&rdquo; left him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur stood looking at the closed door with the frightened eyes of a
+      woman. He looked round at the familiar objects of his room&mdash;the
+      futile little gimcracks with which he had surrounded an existence worthy
+      of such environments&mdash;the invitation cards on the draped mantelpiece,
+      the little glass vases of fantastic shape with a single bloom of
+      stephanotis, the hundred and one fantasies of a finicking generation
+      wherein Art sappeth Manhood. And his eyes were suddenly opened to a new
+      world of things which he could not do. He gazed&mdash;not without a vague
+      shame&mdash;into a perspective of incompetencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the <i>laissez-aller</i> of the unreflective he had assumed that life
+      would be a continuance of small pleasures and refined enjoyments, little
+      dinners and pleasant converse, Dora and a comfortable home, mutual mild
+      delight in flowers and table decoration. Into this assumption Seymour
+      Michael had suddenly stepped&mdash;strong, restless, and mysterious&mdash;and
+      Arthur became uneasily conscious of possibilities. There might be
+      something in his own life, there might even be something within himself,
+      over which he could have no control. There was something within himself&mdash;something
+      connected with the man who had gone, leaving unrest behind him, as he left
+      it wherever he passed. What was this? whither would it lead?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar rang the bell, and kept the &ldquo;gyp&rdquo; in the room on some trivial
+      pretext. He was afraid of solitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. TWO MOTIVES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute shadow
+      watching all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh! the girl is happy enough!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Glynde jerked his newspaper up and read an advertisement of steamships
+      about to depart to the West Coast of Africa. His wife&mdash;engaged in
+      cutting out a scarlet flannel garment of diminutive proportions (an
+      operation which she made a point of performing on the study table)&mdash;gave
+      two gentle snips and ceased her occupation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at the back of her husband's head, where the hair was getting a
+      little thin, and said nothing. No one argued with the Reverend Thomas
+      Glynde.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl is happy enough,&rdquo; he repeated, seeking contradiction. There are
+      times when an autocrat would very much like to be argued with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is always lively and gay,&rdquo; he continued defiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too gay,&rdquo; Mrs. Glynde whispered to the scissors, with a flash of the only
+      wisdom which Heaven gives away, and it is not given to all mothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The winter had closed over Stagholme, the isolating, distance-making
+      winter of English country life, wherein each house is thrown upon its own
+      resource, and the peaceful are at rest because their neighbours cannot get
+      at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was out. She was out a good deal now; exceedingly busy in good works
+      of a different type from those affected by Sister Cecilia. The winter air
+      seemed to invigorate her, and she tramped miles with a can of soup or an
+      infant's flannel wrapper. And always when she came in she was gay, as her
+      father described it. She gave amusing descriptions of her visits among the
+      cottagers, retailed little quaint conceits such as drop from rustic lips
+      declared unto them by their fathers from the old time before them, and in
+      it all she displayed a keen insight into human nature. At times she was
+      brilliant; which her father noticed with grave approval, ignorant or
+      heedless of the fact that brilliancy means friction. Happy people are not
+      brilliant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She suddenly developed a taste for politics, and read the newspaper with a
+      keen interest. Several half-forgotten duties were revived, and their
+      performance became a matter of principle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Glynde did not notice these subtle changes. Old men are generally
+      selfish, more so, if possible, than young ones, and Mr. Glynde was
+      eminently so. He only saw other people in relationship to himself. He
+      looked at them through himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde had taken the opportunity of a &ldquo;cutting out&rdquo; to mention that
+      she thought a change would do Dora good. During the three months that had
+      elapsed since the announcement of Jem's death, Stagholme had necessarily
+      been a somewhat dull abode. The winter had not come on well, but in fits
+      and starts, with trying winds and much rain. She said these things while
+      she cut into her roll of red flannel&mdash;the scissors seemed to give her
+      courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector of Stagholme had awful visions of a furnished house at Brighton
+      or a crammed hotel on the Riviera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you want to go to?&rdquo; he inquired, with a gruffness which meant
+      less than it conveyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To town, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Mr. Glynde loved London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime Dora was standing at the gate of the gamekeeper's little
+      cottage-garden which adjoined the orchard at Stagholme. There were certain
+      women with whom Sister Cecilia did not &ldquo;get on,&rdquo; and these were by tacit
+      understanding relegated to Dora. This same inability to &ldquo;get on&rdquo; was one
+      of the crosses which Sister Cecilia carried in a magnified condition
+      through life. The gamekeeper's wife was one of the failures&mdash;a hardy
+      mother of several hardy little embryo gamekeepers, who held that she knew
+      her own business of motherhood best, and intimated as much to Sister
+      Cecilia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora went there very frequently, and the pathos of her way with little
+      children is one of the things which cannot be touched upon here. It is
+      possible that she went there because the cottage was near the Holme, and
+      the way took her past the great house. She had never laid aside her old
+      girlish habit of passing through the rooms, unannounced, to exchange a few
+      words with Mrs. Agar. It was not that she held that lady in great
+      veneration or respect; but in the country people learn to take their
+      neighbours as they are, remembering that they are neighbours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went through the orchard and in at the side-door, which stood always
+      open to the turn of the handle. She had fallen into a singular habit of
+      always using this entrance, and of glancing as she passed at the
+      stick-rack, where a rough mountain-ash was wont to stand&mdash;a stick
+      which Jem had cut, while she stood by, years before. There was, perhaps,
+      something characteristically suggestive of Jem in this stick&mdash;something
+      strong and simple. She was not the person to indulge in sentimental
+      thoughts; she could not afford to do that, Indeed, she often looked into
+      the stick-rack without thinking, but she never passed it without looking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the library she found Mrs. Agar, talking to her maid, who withdrew with
+      a pinched salutation. Mrs. Agar was one of those unfortunate women who
+      level all ranks in their sore need of a listener. The expression of her
+      face was decidedly lachrymose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Arthur!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Dora, dear, something so dreadful has
+      happened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; returned Dora, with the indifference of one who has tasted of the
+      worst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Arthur has received Jem's papers and diaries and things, and I can
+      see from his letter that it has quite upset him. He is so sympathetic, you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora had turned quite away. She usually carried a stick in her country
+      rambles, and it seemed suddenly to have suggested itself to her to lay
+      this on a table near the door. The stick fell off again, and some moments
+      elapsed while she picked it up from the floor. When she turned, her veil
+      had slipped from the brim of her hat down over her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it could not have been a surprise to him,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;He must
+      have known that there would probably be something of the sort sent home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes. But you know, dear, how keenly he feels everything. These
+      highly-strung, artistic temperaments&mdash;but I need not tell you; you
+      know Arthur almost as well as I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora answered nothing. It was not the first time that Mrs. Agar had
+      charged some remark with that weight of significance which, in her
+      vulgar-minded subtlety, she considered delicate and exceptionally clever.
+      And each time that Dora heard it she was conscious of a vague discomfort,
+      as at the approach of some danger, of some interference in her life which
+      would be too strong for her to resist. It was one of those mean feminine
+      thrusts to parry which is to acknowledge, to ignore is to admit fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he sent them on to you?&rdquo; she asked after a little pause, resisting
+      only by a great effort the temptation to look towards the writing-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;It appears that they have been in his possession
+      for some time. He kept them back for some reason&mdash;I cannot think
+      why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Providence is sometimes unexpectedly kind. Had Mrs. Agar been a different
+      woman, had she, perhaps, been a better woman, less aggravating, more
+      discreet, more honourable, she would not have done at this moment
+      precisely that which Dora was silently praying that she would do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; continued the mistress of Stagholme, going to the writing-table,
+      &ldquo;is his diary; perhaps you would care to look through it? Poor Jem! I am
+      afraid it will not be very interesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora took the little dark-coloured book almost indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It was always an effort to him to write the very
+      shortest letter, was it not? Papa would like to see it, I know, if I may
+      show it to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Being rather taller than Mrs. Agar, she could see over that lady's
+      shoulder as she stood turning over with some curiosity a score or so of
+      bundles evidently containing letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;seem to be letters; probably our letters to him.
+      Shall we burn them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora reflected for a moment. She knew that many of the bundles must
+      contain letters from herself to Jem&mdash;letters which could have been
+      read from the housetops without conveying anything to the populace. But
+      some of them&mdash;almost between the lines&mdash;had been intended to
+      convey, and had conveyed, something to Jem. She reflected&mdash;without
+      anger, as women do on such matters&mdash;that if curiosity moved her, Mrs.
+      Agar would not scruple to open all these letters and read them. The
+      packets had evidently not been opened, and a momentary feeling of grateful
+      recognition of Arthur's gentlemanly honour passed through her mind. There
+      was about the faded papers that dim, mysterious odour which ever clings to
+      packages that have been packed in India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;let us burn them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar seemed to hesitate for a moment, but it was only for effect. She
+      dreaded the packages, for one of them might contain the will which haunted
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so these two women, so very different, from such very different
+      motives, carried the letters to the fire, and there they burnt them. In
+      the curling flames Dora saw her own handwriting. She could not understand
+      the suppressed excitement of Mrs. Agar's manner; she only knew that the
+      mistress of Stagholme seemed to be afraid of looking at the burning
+      papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all was consumed both women heaved a sigh of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;I am glad we have been able to save poor Arthur
+      that. These things are so very painful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora looked rather as if she could not understand why the painful things
+      of life should be harder for Arthur to bear than for other people. But she
+      said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will be glad,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;to hear that it was you who
+      helped me. I know he would rather that it had been you than any one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this with the horrid meaning, the sly significance, of her kind; for
+      there are women for whom there is absolutely nothing sacred in the whole
+      gamut of human feelings. There are women who will talk of things upon
+      which the lips of even the most depraved men are silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with it there was nothing that Dora could take exception to&mdash;nothing
+      that she could answer without running the risk of bringing upon herself
+      questions to which she had no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said cheerfully, &ldquo;it is done now, so we can dismiss it from
+      our minds. Of course you know that mother is getting out of hand
+      altogether. I cannot hold her in. Her plans are simply kittenish. She
+      wants to take a flat in town for two months, to take Boulton and one maid,
+      to hire a cook, and to go generally to the bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar's eyes glistened. She liked to hear of other people seeking
+      excitement because she felt more justified in doing so herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think she is very sensible. I am sure you all want a change. I
+      feel I do. It is so depressing here all alone with one's thoughts. Sister
+      Cecilia was just saying the other day that I ought to go away to Brighton
+      or somewhere&mdash;that I owed it to Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see why you should not pay it to yourself, whoever you owe it
+      to,&rdquo; said Dora. &ldquo;This is an age of going away for changes. Life is like
+      old Martin's trousers&mdash;so patched up with changes that the original
+      pattern has disappeared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear,&rdquo; replied Mrs. Agar, with a vague laugh. In conversation with
+      Dora she invariably felt clumsy and unable to protect herself, like a
+      stout fencer conscious of many vulnerable outlying points. She did not
+      understand this girl, and never knew which was carte and which tierce. &ldquo;So
+      you are going away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect so. Mother usually carries through her little schemes, and in
+      his inward soul papa is rather a fast old gentleman. He loves the
+      pavement, and&mdash;I don't object to the shops myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will like it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes!&rdquo; replied Dora, rising to go. &ldquo;Like Mr. Martin, I am not sure that
+      the old pattern is worth preserving.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could go with you,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, holding up her cheek in an
+      absent way for the farewell kiss; &ldquo;I have not been to town for ages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last week,&rdquo; amended Dora mentally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not come too?&rdquo; she said aloud, gathering together stick, basket, and
+      gloves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is Arthur,&rdquo; replied the lady. &ldquo;I am afraid he will not care to
+      leave home just now, after so great a blow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the more reason why he should go to town for a little and forget&mdash;himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar smiled sadly and waited for further persuasion. She had fully
+      made up her mind to go to Brighton, but was anxious first that the whole
+      parish should press her to do so against her will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be very nice,&rdquo; continued Dora, &ldquo;to have you to help me to keep my
+      flighty progenitors in order. Now I <i>must</i> go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a nod and a light laugh she closed the library door behind her,
+      having apparently forgotten the sadder events of the visit. But in her
+      basket she had the diary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Be as one that knoweth, and yet holdeth his tongue.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, of course, you know every one in the room?&rdquo; Dora was saying to her
+      cousin as the orchestra struck suddenly into &ldquo;God bless the Prince of
+      Wales.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious, no!&rdquo; Miss Mazerod replied; and both young ladies stood up
+      to curtsey to the Royal party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the great artistic <i>soirée</i> of the year, and crowds of
+      nobodies jostled each other in their mad desire to deceive whosoever might
+      be credulous into the belief that they were somebodies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Dora, when they were seated again, and the strains of
+      the Welsh air had been suppressed &ldquo;by desire,&rdquo; &ldquo;they may be very great
+      swells; I have no doubt they are in their particular way; but they do not
+      look it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mazerod looked round critically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of them,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;are frame-makers, a good many of them, with big
+      bills in high places. Others are actresses&mdash;very great actresses off
+      the stage. Do you see that tall girl there, with a supercilious expression
+      which she does not know is apt to remind one of a housemaid scorning a
+      milkman's love on the area steps? She is a great actress, who will not
+      take small engagements, and is not offered large ones. She is an actress
+      'pour se faire photographier.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is the cream of London society?&rdquo; said Dora, looking round her
+      with considerable amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Society,&rdquo; returned her cousin, &ldquo;is not allowed to stand for cream now. It
+      is stirred up with a spoon, silver-gilt, and the skim milk gets hopelessly
+      mixed up with the cream. That young man who is now talking to the actress
+      person is not what he looks. He is, as a matter of fact, the scion of a
+      noble house, who models in clay atrociously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the gorgeous person he is turning his back upon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of his models.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of clay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Essentially so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Miss Mazerod broke off into a happy laugh. Hers was not the bitterness
+      of plainness or insignificance, but something infinitely more suggestive.
+      It was, indeed, not bitterness at all, but light-hearted contempt, which
+      is, perhaps, the deepest contempt there is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is the wretched woman with no backbone draped in rusty black?&rdquo; asked
+      Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear! That is one of the great lady artists of the age. She lectures
+      to factory girls or something, and she paints limp females snuffling over
+      tiger-lilies. Her ideal woman has that sort of droop of the throat&mdash;I
+      imagine she-tries to teach it to the factory. She objects to backbone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mazerod, who possessed a very firm little specimen of the adjunct
+      mentioned, drew herself up and smiled commiseratingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Dora, &ldquo;I feel quite consoled about my sketches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time Miss Mazerod looked serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I often wonder whether it would be profane to mention
+      in one's prayers a little gratitude for not having an artistic soul. There
+      are lots of women like that in the world, especially in London. They
+      pretend that they think themselves superior to men, but they know in their
+      hearts that they are inferior to women. For they have not something that
+      women ought to have&mdash;No, Dolly, no brown studies here; you must not
+      dream here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora, with a light laugh, came back from her mental wanderings to find
+      herself looking at a face which caught her attention at once. It was the
+      face of a man&mdash;brown, self-contained, with unhappy eyes and a long
+      drooping nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is <i>that</i> man?&rdquo; she inquired at once. &ldquo;Now, he is quite
+      different from the rest. He is about the only person who is not furtively
+      finding out how much attention he has succeeded in attracting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is a man with a purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What purpose?&rdquo; inquired Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; I shouldn't think any one knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>He</i> knows,&rdquo; suggested Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, <i>he</i> knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mazerod was looking at the mechanism of her fan with a demure
+      expression on lips shaped for happiness. A dark young man was elbowing his
+      way through the mixed crowd towards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is his name?&rdquo; asked Dora, who was still looking at the man with a
+      purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General Seymour Michael.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Indian man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause, during which Miss Mazerod glanced in the
+      direction of the younger man, who had been detained by a stout lady with a
+      purple dress and a depressed daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to know him,&rdquo; said Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing easier,&rdquo; replied her cousin, still absorbed in the fan. &ldquo;I know
+      him quite well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is looking at you now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mazerod looked up and bowed with a little jerk, as if she felt too
+      young to be stately; one of those bows that say &ldquo;Come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the younger man came up and shook hands effusively with
+      Dora, slowly with Miss Mazerod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jack,&rdquo; said that young lady, &ldquo;I have just beamed on General Michael, who
+      is behind you. I want to introduce him to Dora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack seemed to think this an excellent idea, and stepped aside with
+      alacrity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile. He certainly was one
+      of the most distinguished-looking men in the room, with a brilliant ribbon
+      across his breast, and that smart, well-brushed general effect which
+      stamps the successful soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did you come back to England?&rdquo; inquired Edith Mazerod, whose father
+      had worked with this man in India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;oh! I have been home six months,&rdquo; he replied, shaking hands with
+      a subtle <i>empressemant</i> which was more effective than words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Laid on the shelf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood upright, drawing himself up with ironical emphasis, as if to show
+      as plainly as possible that there were many years of life and work in him
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith Mazerod laughed, the careless passing laugh of inattention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;may I introduce General Michael? My cousin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose, and Seymour Michael prepared to take the vacant seat. The youth
+      called Jack was making signs with his eyebrows, and in attempting to
+      decipher his meaning she forgot to mention Dora's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be sorry for this,&rdquo; said Seymour Michael, sitting down. &ldquo;You
+      will not thank your cousin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; inquired Dora, prepared to like him, possibly because he had a
+      brown face and wore his hair cut short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I am hopelessly new to this work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; replied Dora; &ldquo;I don't even know what pictures to look at and
+      what to ignore. So I dare not look at the walls at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is precisely my position, only I am worse. You know how to behave in
+      polite circles; I don't. You have a slightly tired look, as if this sort
+      of thing wearied you by reason of its monotony.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I? I am sorry for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, there is no reason to be sorry. They all have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; protested Dora, &ldquo;I am not one of them. I am only aping the Romans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do it well; I shall study your method. You do it better than Edith
+      Mazerod.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith is young&mdash;hopelessly, enviably young. Do you know them well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I knew them in India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course; I forgot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and looked at her sharply. Sometimes his own reputation, far
+      from being a happiness, gave him cause for misgiving. A man with an
+      unclean record cannot well be sure that all the details he would wish
+      suppressed have been suppressed. There was a little pause, during which
+      they both watched the self-satisfied throng moving in and out, here and
+      there, full of a restless desire to be observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Seymour Michael who spoke first. True to his mixed blood, he sought
+      to make himself safe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but Edith Mazerod did not mention your name; may I
+      ask it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora Glynde!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw him start. She saw a sudden wavering gleam in his eyes which in
+      another man she would have set down to fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Dora Glynde,&rdquo; he repeated; and the expression of his face was so
+      serene again that the look which had passed away from it began already to
+      present itself to her memory as a conception of her own brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was younger and shyer,&rdquo; he said, with a singular haste, &ldquo;I was
+      afraid to ask a lady her name when I did not catch it, and&mdash;and I
+      frequently regretted not having had the courage to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She recollected it all afterwards&mdash;every word, every pause. But then,
+      as so frequently happens, knowledge aided her memory, and added
+      significance to every detail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you staying with the Mazerods?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am being shown life. I am doing a season. To-night is part of my
+      education. To-morrow, I believe, we go to Hurlingham; the next day to a
+      charity bazaar, and so on. I believe I am getting on very well. Aunt Mary
+      is pleased with me. But I still stare about me, and show visible
+      disappointment when I am presented to a literary celebrity or some other
+      person of newspaper renown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Celebrities in the flesh <i>are</i> disappointing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not only that, but I find that many of them are just a little common. Not
+      quite what we in the country call gentlemen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Miss Glynde, you forget that Art rises superior to class
+      distinctions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but artists don't; and artists' wives don't rise at all. I think you
+      are to be congratulated. In your profession there are fewer persons
+      'superior to class distinction.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a subject which Seymour Michael dreaded. He was ignorant of how
+      much Dora might know. He had suspected from the first that Jem Agar's
+      desire that she should know the truth had been a mere matter of sentiment;
+      but the fact of meeting her at this public festivity, gay and in colours,
+      shook this theory from its foundation. He disliked Edith Mazerod, because
+      he suspected that his own early career had probably been discussed in her
+      hearing, and her easy lightness of heart was to him as incomprehensible as
+      it was suspicious. Dora he rather feared without knowing why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you know India well?&rdquo; she said, looking straight in front of
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too well,&rdquo; was the reply, with a sharp sidelong glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was right. At that moment Dora might have been one of these <i>habituées</i>
+      of rout and ballroom. She was very pale and looked tired out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went out there thirty years ago,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;into the Mutiny. From
+      that time to this India has been killing my friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause. She knew that in the natural course of events it
+      was almost certain that this man knew Jem personally. It would have been
+      easy to mention his name; but the wound was too fresh, her heart was too
+      sore to bear the sting of hearing him discussed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a second Seymour Michael hovered on the brink. His lips almost framed
+      the name. Good almost triumphed over evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the girl sitting there&mdash;broken-hearted, quiet and strong, as only
+      women can be&mdash;never knew how near she was. Sometimes it seems as if
+      the cruelty of fate were unnecessary, as if the word too little or the
+      word too much, which has the power to alter a whole life, were withheld or
+      spoken merely to further a Providential experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Michael, &ldquo;I hate India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the spell was broken, the moment lost for ever. Seymour Michael had
+      kept silence, and elsewhere, perhaps, at that very moment his doom was
+      spoken. Who can tell? We are offered chances&mdash;we are, if you will,
+      the puppets of an experiment&mdash;and surely there must be a moment which
+      decides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was conscious of having miscalculated her own strength. She had led
+      him on to the dangerous ground, but it was with relief that she saw him
+      step back. She did not dare to lead him to it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not long before he left her, on the timely arrival of another
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The introduction brought about by Miss Mazerod did not seem to have been
+      an entire success, for they parted gravely and without a word expressing
+      the hope of meeting again. And yet Dora liked him, for he was strong and purposeful,
+      such as she would have had all men. She wanted to know more of him. She
+      wanted to be admitted further into the knowledge which she knew to be his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael was conscious of a feeling of discomfort, no less
+      disquieting by reason of its vagueness. He had a nervous sensation of
+      being surrounded by something&mdash;something in the nature of a chain,
+      piecing itself together, link by link&mdash;something that was slowly
+      closing in upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. AT HURLINGHGAM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      I must be cruel only to be kind.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is not your deep person who succeeds in carrying out a set purpose, but
+      one who is just profound enough to be fathomed of the multitude. For,
+      after all, the multitude is ready enough to help, in a casual, parenthetic
+      way, in the furtherance of a design; and a little depth, serving to
+      flatter that vanity which taketh delight in a sense of superior
+      perspicacity, only adds to the zest. There are plenty of people ready to
+      pull on a rope or shove at a wheel, but there are more eager to do so if
+      they are offered the direction of affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde was one of those easily-fathomed persons who often succeed in
+      their designs by the very transparency of their method. She had come to
+      London with the purpose of leaving Dora there under the care of her sister
+      Lady Mazerod, and before she had talked to that amiable widow for half an
+      hour the design was as apparent as if it had been spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In due course Dora and Miss Mazerod renewed a childish love, and at the
+      end of April Mr. And Mrs. Glynde went back to Stagholme alone. It is
+      probable that neither Mrs. Glynde nor Providence could have chosen a
+      better companion for Dora at this time than Edith Mazerod. There was a
+      breezy simplicity about this young lady's view of life which seemed to
+      have the power of simplifying life itself. There are some people like this
+      to whom is vouchsafed a limited comprehension of evil and an unlimited
+      belief in good. A very shrewd author, who is, perhaps, not so much read
+      to-day as he ought to be, said that &ldquo;to the pure all things are pure.&rdquo; He
+      often said less than he meant. For he knew as well as we do that the
+      pure-minded are just so many moral filters who clear the atmosphere and
+      take no harm themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora Glynde required some one like this; for she had, as the French say,
+      &ldquo;found herself.&rdquo; The little world of Stagholme&mdash;the world of this
+      Record&mdash;was intensely human. There was nobody very good in it and
+      nobody very bad. Jem, with that quicker perception of evil which is wisely
+      included in the mental outfit of men, had warned her against Sister
+      Cecilia. And she had begun to understand his meaning now. Mrs. Agar she
+      had found out for herself. Her father she respected and loved, but she had
+      reached that age wherein we discover that father and mother are but as
+      other men and women. Her mother she loved with that half-patronising
+      affection which is found where a daughter is mentally superior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only person whom she had ever really respected and looked up to
+      without reserve was Jem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Altogether life was too complicated, subtle, difficult, hopeless, when
+      Edith Mazerod came into it, and by her presence seemed to clear the
+      atmosphere of daily existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the constant round of visiting and gaiety was a supreme effort;
+      then came tolerance, and finally that business-like acceptance which is
+      mistaken by many for enjoyment. The human machine is not constructed to go
+      always at high pressure, either in happiness or in misery. We cannot exist
+      all day and all night with a living care on our shoulders&mdash;the
+      greatest misery slips off-sometimes. With men it can be lubricated by hard
+      work, and likewise by alcohol, but the latter method is not always to be
+      advised. With women there is much consolation to be extracted from a new
+      dress or several new dresses and a hat. Even a new pair of gloves may help
+      a breaking heart, and a glass of bitter beer taken at the right moment
+      (with or without faith) has power to change a man's view of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Dora, who had at no time been tragic, began to find that Academy <i>soirées</i>
+      and similar entertainments assisted her in preserving towards the world
+      that attitude which she had elected to assume. And if there be any who
+      blame her, they are at liberty to do so. It is not worth while to pause
+      for the purpose of writing&mdash;on the ground or elsewhere&mdash;for
+      their edification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only one such alleviation did she repent of in after life. The day after
+      the Academy <i>soirée</i> the Mazerods took her to Hurlingham. And
+      Hurlingham became one of the pages of her life which she would have wished
+      to tear completely out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they drove in through the simple gateway and round by the winding
+      drive, it was evident that a great afternoon was to be expected. The
+      blue-and-white club flag fluttered over a pavilion crammed from roof to
+      terrace. The teams were already out in their bright colours, curveting
+      about, each with a practice ball, on their stiff little ponies, moving
+      with that singular cramped action only seen on the polo ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one of those brilliant days in early May when only gardeners,
+      grumbling, talk or think of rain. A few fleecy white clouds seemed
+      painted. So motionless were they, on the sky, reproducing the Hurlingham
+      colours far above the ground. A gentle breeze coming up from the river
+      brought with it the odour of lilac and budding things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chairs were crowded with a well-dressed throng, the larger majority of
+      which seemed to be unaware that polo was the object of the afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mazerods and Dora had scarcely taken chairs when Arthur Agar presented
+      himself. His tailor had apparently told him that after a lapse of six
+      months it was permissible to assume habiliments of a slightly resigned
+      tenour. His grey suit was one of the most elegant on the ground, his Suède
+      gloves fitted perfectly, his tie was unique. And Arthur Agar was as happy
+      as the best-dressed girl there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reception accorded him was not exactly enthusiastic. Having in view
+      the fact that the young man called Jack was entirely satisfactory, Lady
+      Mazerod treated all other young men with indifference. Edith despised
+      Arthur Agar because Jack was athletic in his tendencies; and Dora was
+      sorry to see him, because she had not answered his three last letters.
+      There were also numerous small but expensive presents for which she had
+      failed to tender thanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately the young man called Jack turned up at tea-time, carrying
+      one of the heavy chairs, which never fail to spoil the gloves of some of
+      us, with unconscious ease. Owing to the activity and enterprise of this
+      young gentleman, tea was soon procured, and consequently despatched before
+      the interval was over and before the band had wet its whistle with
+      something of a different nature from that in vogue on the lawn. A stroll
+      through the gardens was proposed, and Lady Mazerod sent the young people
+      off alone. There was no choice; but Dora had probably no thought of making
+      a choice, had such been offered to her. She, like many another young lady,
+      erred in placing too great a confidence in her own powers of staving
+      things off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no doubt whatever about Edith and the energetic John. They led
+      the way round by the river path and the tennis-courts with a sublime
+      disregard for the eye of the multitude, leaving Dora and Arthur to follow
+      at such speed as their discretion might dictate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before they had left the tennis-lawn Arthur plunged. It may have been the
+      desperation of diffidence, or perhaps that the new grey suit and the
+      unique tie lent him confidence. One sees a young lady completely carried
+      off her mental status by the success of a dress or the absence of a
+      dreaded competitor, and Arthur Agar had enough of the woman in him to give
+      way to this dangerous vertigo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you have not answered my last three letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;because they struck me as a little ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ridiculous!&rdquo; he repeated, with such sincere dismay that she was moved to
+      compassion. &ldquo;Ridiculous, Dora, why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His horror-struck, almost tearful voice gave her a pang of self-reproach,
+      as if she had struck some defenceless dumb animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there were things in them that I did not understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I could make you understand them,&rdquo; he said, with a sudden
+      self-assertion which startled her. The weakest man is, after all, a man&mdash;so
+      far as women are concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you had better not,&rdquo; she said, hurrying her steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he refused to alter his pace, and he disregarded her warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They meant,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I wanted you to know that I love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause. Dora was struck dumb by a chill sense of
+      foreboding. It was like a momentary glance into a future full of trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for that. I hope&mdash;that you may find that it
+      is a mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is not a mistake. I don't see why it should be one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora paused. She was afraid to strike. She did not know yet that it is
+      less cruel to be cruel at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is best to look at these things practically,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And if we
+      look at it practically we shall find that you and I are not at all likely
+      to be happy together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However I look at it, I only see that I should never be happy without
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, Arthur, you are not looking at it practically.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, and I don't want to,&rdquo; he replied doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a mistake. A little bit of life may not be practical, but all the
+      rest of it is; and for the gratification of that little bit, there is all
+      the rest to be lived through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur looked puzzled. He rearranged the orchid in his coat before
+      replying. He had found time to think of the orchid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand all that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I only know that I love you, and
+      that I should be miserable without you. Besides, if that little bit is
+      love&mdash;I suppose you admit there is such a thing as love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora winced. She was looking through the trees across the peaceful evening
+      river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered gently. &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar had been brought up in an atmosphere of futile discussion, but
+      he had never wanted anything in vain. There are women&mdash;fools&mdash;who
+      dare to bring up children thus in a world where wanting in vain is the
+      chief characteristic of daily life. Arthur was ready enough to go on
+      discussing his future thus, but never doubted that it would all come to
+      his desire in the end. He was like a woman in so much as he failed to
+      understand an argument which he could not meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked on amidst the flowering shrubs, and Dora was filled with a
+      disquieting sense of having failed to convince him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not want to hurry you,&rdquo; said Arthur presently, with a maddening
+      equanimity. &ldquo;You can give me your answer some other time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have given it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur was engaged in taking off his hat to a passing lady, and made no
+      acknowledgment of this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody at home would be pleased,&rdquo; he observed, after a pause occupied
+      by the adjustment of his hat. &ldquo;They all want it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not that he refused to take No when it was given to him, but rather
+      that he did not recognise it, never having encountered it before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were now coming round by the pigeon-shooting enclosure, and the
+      strains of the band announced that the interval for tea had elapsed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the distance Lady Mazerod and Edith, attended by the indefatigable
+      Jack, were keeping a chair for Dora. She slackened her pace. To her the
+      knowledge had come that the difficulties of life have usually to be met
+      single-handed. She was not afraid of Arthur, but this was a distinct
+      difficulty because of the influence he had at his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I think we had better understand each other <i>now</i>.
+      It may save us both something in the future. I cannot help feeling rather
+      sorry that I must say No. Every girl must feel that. I do not know from
+      whence the feeling comes. It is a sort of regret, as if something good and
+      valuable were being wasted. But, Arthur, it <i>is</i> No, and it must
+      always be No. I am not the sort of person to change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; he replied, <i>en vrai fils de sa mère</i>, &ldquo;that there is
+      some one else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned as he spoke, but Dora's parasol was too quick for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please do not let us be like people in books,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;There is no
+      necessity to go into side issues at all. You have asked me to marry you. I
+      can never marry you. There is the whole question and the whole answer. I
+      say nothing to you about finding somebody worthier, or any nonsense of
+      that sort. Please spare me the usual&mdash;impertinences&mdash;about there
+      being somebody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The word found its mark. Arthur Agar caught his breath, but made no
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were among the well-dressed throng now crowding back to the chairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Arthur had handed Dora over to the care of Lady Mazerod he lifted his
+      hat and took his departure with that perfect <i>savoir faire</i> which was
+      his <i>forte</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. IN A SIDE PATH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To sum up all, he has the worst fault-a husband can have, he's not my
+      choice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There is something doubtful in a love-making that is in more than two
+      pairs of hands. This is a day of syndicates. The strength that lies in
+      union is cultivated nowadays with much assiduity. But in matters of love
+      the case is not yet altered, and never will be. It is a matter for two
+      people to decide between themselves, and all interference is mistaken and
+      deplorable. It is usually, one notices, those persons who are incapable of
+      the feeling themselves who seek to interfere in the affairs of others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That one of the principals should seek aid in such interference proves
+      without appeal that he does not know his business. Such aid as this Arthur
+      Agar had sought. He had, as Dora suspected, written to his mother, with
+      full particulars of the conversation beneath the Hurlingham trees. He had
+      laid before her many arguments, which, by reason of their effeminacy,
+      appealed to her illogical mind, proving that Dora could not do better than
+      marry him. The arrangement, he argued, was satisfactory from whatever
+      point of view it might be taken; and, finally, he begged his mother to try
+      and succeed where he had failed. He did not propose that Mrs. Agar should
+      appeal to Dora; not because such a course was repellent, but merely
+      because he knew a better. He suggested that Mrs. Agar should sound Mr.
+      Glynde upon the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This suggestion was in itself a stroke of diplomacy. The astute have no
+      doubt found out by this time that the Reverend Thomas Glynde loved money;
+      and a man who loves money has not the makings of a good father within him,
+      whatever else he may have. Whether Arthur was aware of this it would be
+      hard to say. Whether he had the penetration to know that, in the nature of
+      things, Mr. Glynde would urge Dora to marry Arthur Agar and Stagholme,
+      without due regard to her own feelings in the matter, is a question upon
+      which no man can give a reliable opinion. Certain it is that such a course
+      was precisely what the Reverend Thomas had marked out for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had an exaggerated respect for money and position&mdash;a title was a
+      thing to be revered. Clergymen, like artists, are dependent on patronage,
+      and must swallow their pride. It is therefore, perhaps, only natural that
+      Mr. Glynde should be quite prepared to make some sacrifice of feeling or
+      sentiment (especially the feeling and sentiment of another) in order to
+      secure a position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar simply followed the spirit of the age. He could not succeed
+      alone, and therefore he proceeded to form a syndicate to compel Dora to
+      love him, or in the meantime to marry him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar, when the matter was first
+      under discussion, &ldquo;she would soon learn to care for him. Women <i>always</i>
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which shows how much Sister Cecilia knew about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And besides, I believe she cares for him already,&rdquo; added Mrs. Agar, who
+      never did things by halves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia dropped her head on one side and looked convinced&mdash;to
+      order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; pursued Mrs. Agar vaguely, &ldquo;I am very fond of Dora; no one
+      could be more so. But I must confess that I do not always understand her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even to Sister Cecilia it would not do to confess that she was afraid of
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interview was easily brought about. Mrs. Agar wrote a note to the
+      Rector and asked him to luncheon. The Rector, who had not had many legal
+      affairs to settle during his uneventful life, was always pleased to be
+      consulted upon a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing. Besides,
+      they gave one a good luncheon at Stagholme in those days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had a letter from dear Arthur,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, at a moment which
+      she deemed propitious, namely, after a third glass of the Stagholme brown
+      sherry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I hope he is well. The boy is not strong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he is quite well, thank you. But of course he has had a great shock,
+      and one cannot expect him to get over it all at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector did not hold much by sentiment, so he contented himself with a
+      grave sip of sherry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now I am afraid there is fresh trouble,&rdquo; added Mrs. Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Been running into debt?&rdquo; suggested Mr. Glynde.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it is not that. No, it is Dora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora! What has Dora been doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was polishing the rim of a silver salt-cellar with her
+      forefinger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have seen it going on for a long time. My poor
+      boy has always&mdash;well, he has always admired Dora.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and of course I should like nothing better. I am sure they would be
+      most happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector looked doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must not forget,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that Arthur is constitutionally delicate.
+      That extreme repugnance to active exercise, the love of ease and&mdash;er&mdash;indoor
+      pursuits, show a tendency to enfeeble the organisation which might&mdash;I
+      don't say it will, but it might&mdash;turn to decline.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the doctors say that he is quite strong. Everybody cannot be robust
+      and&mdash;and massive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was thinking of Jem, against whom she had always borne a grudge,
+      because his inoffensive presence alone had the power of making Arthur look
+      puny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; and of course with care one may hope that Arthur will live to a ripe
+      old age,&rdquo; said the Rector, who was only coquetting with the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar played with a biscuit. She had a rooted aversion to the query
+      direct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that you or her mother would have seen
+      that such an attachment was likely to form itself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth was that the Reverend Thomas did not devote very much thought to
+      any subject which did not directly influence his own well-being. He had at
+      one time thought that an attachment between Jem and Dora might
+      conveniently result from a childhood's friendship, but Arthur had not
+      entered into his prognostications at all. He rather despised the youth, as
+      much on his own account as that he was Anna Agar's son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't say,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;that the thing ever entered my head. Of course,
+      if the young people have settled it all between themselves, I suppose we
+      must give them our blessing, and be thankful that we have been saved
+      further trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought it rather strange that Dora should have fixed her affections on
+      such an unlikely object as Arthur Agar; but it was part of his earthly
+      creed that the feelings of women are as incomprehensible as they are
+      unimportant. Which, by the way, serves to show how very little the Rector
+      of Stagholme knew of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; protested Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;they have <i>not</i> settled it between
+      themselves. That is just it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the difficulty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately Mr. Glynde's face fell to its usual degree of set depression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they want me to do?&rdquo; he inquired, with that air of resignation
+      which is in reality no resignation at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar volubly, &ldquo;it appears that Arthur spoke to Dora at
+      Hurlingham, and for some reason she said No. I can't understand it at all.
+      I am sure she has always appeared to like him very much. It may have been
+      some passing fancy or something, you know. When she is told that it would
+      please us all, perhaps she will change her mind. Poor Arthur is terribly
+      cut up about it. Of course a man in his position does not quite expect to
+      be treated cavalierly like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Glynde smiled. Behind the parson there was somewhat even better; there
+      was a just and honest English gentleman, which, in the way of human
+      species, is very hard to beat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid Arthur will have to manage such affairs for himself. When a
+      girl is settling a question involving her whole life she does not usually
+      pause to consider the position of the man who asks her to be his wife. He
+      would have no business to ask her had he no position, and the rest is
+      merely a matter of degrees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don't care about the match?&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, to whose mind the
+      earliest rudiments of logic were incomprehensible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not say that,&rdquo; replied the Rector, with the patience of a man who
+      has had dealings with women all his life; &ldquo;but I should like it to be
+      understood that Dora is quite free to choose for herself. I am willing to
+      tell her that the match would be satisfactory to me. Arthur is a
+      gentleman, which is saying a good deal in these days. He is affectionate,
+      and, so far as I know, a dutiful son. I have little doubt he would make a
+      good husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar wiped away an obvious tear, which ran off Mr. Glynde's mental
+      epidermis like water off the back of the proverbial fowl. This also he had
+      learnt in the course of his dealings with the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has been a good son to me,&rdquo; sniffed the fond and foolish mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of these persons was capable of understanding that &ldquo;goodness&rdquo; is
+      not all we want in husband or wife. These good husbands&mdash;heaven help
+      their wives!&mdash;break as many hearts as those who are labelled by the
+      world with the black ticket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I may tell Arthur that you will help him?&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, with a
+      sudden access of practical energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may tell him that he has my good wishes, and that I will point out to
+      Dora the advantages of&mdash;acceding to his desire. There are, of course,
+      advantages on both sides, we know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As usual, Mrs. Agar overdid things. The airiness of her indifference might
+      have deceived a child of eight, provided that its intellect was not <i>de
+      première force.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es,&rdquo; she murmured, &ldquo;I suppose Dora would bring her little&mdash;eh&mdash;subscription
+      towards the household expenses. Sister Cecilia gave me to understand that
+      there was a little something coming to her under her mother's marriage
+      settlement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was not clever enough to see that she had made a mistake. The
+      mention of Sister Cecilia's name acted on the Rector like a mental douche.
+      He was just beginning to give way to expansiveness&mdash;probably under
+      the suave influence of the brown sherry&mdash;and the name of Sister
+      Cecilia pulled him together with a jerk. The jerk extended to his
+      features; but Mrs. Agar was one of those cunning women whom no man need
+      fear. She was so cunning that she deceived herself into seeing that which
+      she wished to see, and nothing else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that,&rdquo; said the Rector gravely, &ldquo;can be discussed when Arthur has
+      persuaded Dora to say Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was in the position of an unfortunate person who, having come into
+      controversy with the police, is warned that every word he says may be used
+      in evidence against him. He had been reminded that every detail of the
+      present conversation would be repeated to Sister Cecilia, with
+      embellishments or subtractions as might please the narrator's fancy or
+      suit her purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dangerous woman&rdquo; he called Sister Cecilia in his most gloomy voice, and
+      a parson must perforce fear dangerous women. That is one of the trials of
+      the ministry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar laughed in a forced manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said&mdash;she had a habit of beginning her remarks with
+      these two words&mdash;&ldquo;of course, we need not think of such questions yet.
+      I am sure all <i>I</i> want is the happiness of the dear children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Umph!&rdquo; ejaculated Mr. Glynde, who was not always a model of politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, I am sure,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Agar, with a dabbing
+      pocket-handkerchief, &ldquo;is the dearest wish of us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When does the boy come home?&rdquo; inquired the Rector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in a week. I am so longing for him to come. He has to go to town to
+      get some clothes, which will delay his return by one night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he doing any good this term?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar looked slightly hurt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he always works very hard, I am only afraid that he should overdo
+      it. You know, I suppose, that he did not get through his examination this
+      term. Of course it is no good <i>my</i> saying anything, but I am quite
+      convinced that they are not dealing fairly by him. I have seen some of
+      those examination papers, and some of the questions are simply spiteful.
+      They do it on purpose, I know. And Sister Cecilia tells me that that <i>does</i>
+      happen sometimes. For some reason or other&mdash;because they have been
+      snubbed, or something like that&mdash;the masters, the examiners, or
+      whatever they are called, make a dead set at some men, and simply keep
+      them back. They don't give them the marks that they ought to have. Why
+      should Arthur always fail? Of course the thing is unfair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This theory was not quite new to the Rector. He had given up arguing about
+      it, and usually took refuge in flight. He did so on this occasion. But as
+      he walked home across the park, smoking a cigarette, he reflected that to
+      the owner of Stagholme such a small matter as a college career was, after
+      all, of no importance. These broad acres, the stately forests, the grand
+      old house, raised Arthur Agar above such considerations, indeed above most
+      considerations. And Mr. Glynde made up his mind to put it very strongly to
+      Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. ALONE
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The name of the slough was Despond.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When Dora returned to Stagholme a fortnight later she was relieved to find
+      that Arthur had not yet come down from Cambridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a strange thing that in the spring-time those who are happy&mdash;<i>pro
+      tempore</i>, of course, we know all that&mdash;are happier, while those
+      who carry something with them find the burden heavier. Stagholme in the
+      spring came as a sort of shock to Dora. There were certain adjuncts to the
+      growth of things which gave her actual pain. After dinner, the first
+      night, she walked across the garden to the beechwood, but before long she
+      came back again. There is a scent in beech forests in the spring which is
+      like no other scent on earth, and Dora found that she could not stand it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father and mother were sitting in the drawing-room with open windows,
+      for it was a warm May that year. She came in through the falling curtains,
+      and something warned her to keep her face averted from the furtive glance
+      of her mother's eyes. She had learnt something of the world during her
+      brief season in town, and one of the lessons had been that the world sees
+      more than is often credited to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The worst,&rdquo; she said cheerfully, &ldquo;of a season in town is that it makes
+      one feel aged and experienced. Middle age came upon me suddenly, just now,
+      in the garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Glynde was looking at her almost critically over his newspaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo; he asked curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In some indefinite way the question jarred horribly. Dora was conscious of
+      a faint doubt in the infallibility of her father's judgment. She knew that
+      in a worldly sense he was more experienced, more thoughtful, cleverer than
+      her mother, but in some ways she inclined towards the maternal opinion on
+      questions connected with herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Mrs. Glynde was called from the room, and went reluctantly,
+      feeling that the time was unpropitious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Glynde's life had been eminently uneventful. Prosperous, happy in a
+      half-hearted, almost negative, way, somewhat selfish, he had never known
+      hardship, had never faced adversity. It is such men as this who love what
+      they call a serious talk, summoning the subject thereof with exaggerated
+      gravity to a study, making a point of the <i>mise en scène</i>, and
+      finally saying nothing that could not have been spoken in course of
+      ordinary conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora detected the odour of a serious talk in the atmosphere, and she found
+      that something had taken away the awe which such conversations had
+      hitherto inspired. It may have been the season in town, but it was more
+      probably that confidence which comes from the knowledge of the world.
+      There were things in life of which she consciously knew more than her
+      father, and one of these was sorrow. There is nothing that gives so much
+      confidence as the knowledge that the worst possible has happened. It
+      raises one above the petty worries of daily existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora knew that her acquaintance with sorrow was more intimate, more
+      thorough, than that of her father, who sat looking as if the hangman were
+      at the door. She awaited the serious talk with some apprehension, but none
+      of that almost paralysing awe which she had known in childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am getting an old man,&rdquo; he said, with supreme egotism, &ldquo;and you cannot
+      expect to have me with you much longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I do expect it,&rdquo; replied Dora cheerfully. &ldquo;I am sorry to disappoint
+      you, papa, but I do expect it most decidedly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This rather spoilt the lugubrious gravity of the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, thank Heaven! I am a hearty man yet,&rdquo; admitted the Rector rather
+      more hopefully; &ldquo;but still you cannot expect to have your parents with you
+      all your life, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is wiser not to look too far into the future,&rdquo; replied Dora,
+      warding off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should look much more happily into the future,&rdquo; replied the Rector,
+      with the deliberation of the domestic autocrat, &ldquo;if I knew that you had a
+      good husband to take care of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a flash of thought Dora traced it all back to Arthur, through Mrs.
+      Agar; and her would-be lover fell still further in her estimation. He
+      seemed to be fated to show himself at every turn the very antitype to her
+      ideal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;but suppose I got a bad one? You are always saying
+      that marriage is a lottery, and I don't believe the remark is original.
+      Suppose I drew a blank; fancy being married to a blank! Or I might do
+      worse. I might draw minus something&mdash;minus brains, for instance. They
+      are in the lottery, for I have seen them, nicely done up in faultless
+      linen&mdash;both blanks and worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away towards the window, and the moment her face was averted it
+      changed suddenly. The face that looked out towards the beech-wood, where
+      the shadows were creeping from the darkening east, was piteous,
+      terror-stricken, driven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is an ever-living question why people&mdash;honest, well-meaning
+      parents and others&mdash;should be set to ride rough-shod over all that is
+      best and purest in the human mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector went on, in his calmly self-satisfied voice, with a fatuous
+      ignorance of what he was doing which must have made the very angels wince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great many girls,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;have thrown away a chance of happiness
+      merely to serve a passing fancy. Mind you don't do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little laugh, quite natural and easy, but her face was grave,
+      and more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think there is any fear of that,&rdquo; she replied lightly. &ldquo;You must
+      confess, papa, that I have always displayed a remarkable capacity for the
+      management of my own affairs&mdash;with the assistance of Sister Cecilia,
+      <i>bien entendu</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was rather a forlorn hope, but Dora was driven into a corner. The
+      Rector was in the habit of preaching a good methodical sermon, and usually
+      finished up somewhere in the neighbourhood of the text from whence he
+      started. He allowed himself to deviate, but he never turned his back upon
+      his text and went for a vague ramble through scriptural meadows, as some
+      have been heard to do. He deviated on this occasion for a moment, but
+      never lost sight of the main question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister Cecilia,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is a busybody, and, like all busybodies, a
+      fool. It is always people who cannot manage their own affairs who are so
+      anxious to help their neighbours. I have no doubt that you are as capable
+      of looking after yourself as any girl; but, child, you must remember that
+      experience goes a long way in the world, and in the nature of things I
+      must know better than you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you do, papa dear. I know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not know it, and he knew that she did not. This knowledge is
+      certain to come, sooner or later, to men and women who have lived for
+      themselves and in themselves alone. They are mental hermits, whose opinion
+      of things connected with the lives of others cannot well be of value
+      because they have only studied their own existences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector of Stagholme suddenly became aware of this. He suddenly found
+      that his advice was no longer law. There are plenty of us ready to confess
+      that we cannot play billiards or whist or polo, but no man likes it to be
+      known that he cannot play the game of life. Mr. Glynde did not like this
+      subtle feeling of incompetency. He prided himself on being a man of the
+      world, and frequently applied the vague term to himself. We are all men of
+      a world, but it depends upon the size of that world as to what value our
+      citizenship may be. Mr. Glynde's world had always been the Reverend Thomas
+      Glynde. He knew nothing of Dora's world, and lost his way as soon as he
+      set his foot therein. But rather than make inquiries he thought to support
+      paternal dignity by going further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; he said, with inevitable egotism, &ldquo;unnecessary for me to tell you
+      that I have only your interests at heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite, papa dear. But do not let us talk about these horrid things. I am
+      quite happy at home, and I do not want to go away from it. There is
+      nowhere in the world where I should sooner be than here, even taking into
+      consideration the fact that you are sometimes the most dismal old
+      gentleman on the face of the earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he answered, with a grim smile, &ldquo;I am sure I have enough to make
+      me dismal. I am thankful to say that there will be no difficulty about
+      money. You will be well enough off to have all that you might desire. But
+      wealth is not all that a woman wants. She cannot turn it to the same
+      account as a man. She wants position, a household, a husband. Otherwise
+      the world only makes use of her; she is a prey to charity humbugs and bad
+      people who do good works badly. I am not speaking as a parson, but as a
+      man of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;as a parson, tell me if it would not be wrong to marry
+      a man for whom one did not care, just for the sake of these things&mdash;a
+      household and a husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it would,&rdquo; answered Mr. Glynde. &ldquo;And that is a wrong which is
+      usually punished in this life. But there are cases where it is difficult
+      to say whether there be love or not. Unless you actually despise or hate a
+      man, you may come to care for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And in the meantime the position and the advantages mentioned are worth
+      seizing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So says the world,&rdquo; admitted Mr. Glynde.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what says the parson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to him and laid her two arms upon his broad chest, standing
+      behind him as he sat in his arm-chair and looking down affectionately upon
+      his averted face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what says the parson?&rdquo; she repeated, with a loving tap of her fingers
+      on his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;A better parson than I says that what is
+      natural is right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and that means follow the dictates of your own heart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; admitted the Hector, taking her two hands in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the dictates of my heart are all for staying at home and looking
+      after my ancient parents and worrying them. Am I to be sent away? Not yet,
+      old gentleman, not yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Reverend Thomas Glynde laughed, somewhat as if a weight had been
+      lifted from his heart. In his way he was a conscientious man. It was his
+      honest conviction that Dora would do well to marry Arthur, who was a
+      gentleman and essentially harmless. In persuading her to do so covertly,
+      as he had thought well to do, he was honestly performing that which he
+      thought to be his duty towards her. Presently Mrs. Glynde came back, and
+      shortly afterwards Dora left the room. The Rector was not reading the book
+      he held open on his knee, but gazed instead absently at the pattern of the
+      hearthrug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A change had come in this quiet household. Dora had gone away a child. She
+      had come back a woman, with that consciousness of life which comes
+      somewhere between twenty and thirty years of age&mdash;a consciousness
+      which is partly made up of the knowledge that life is, after all, given to
+      each one of us individually to make the best of as well as we may; and no
+      one knows what that best is except ourselves. What is happiness for one is
+      misery for another, and while human beings vary as the clouds of heaven,
+      no life can be lived by set rule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over these things the Rector pondered. He felt the difference in Dora. She
+      was still his daughter, but no longer a child. Her existence was still his
+      chief care, but he could only stand by and help a little here and there;
+      for the dependency of childhood was left behind, and her evident intention
+      was to work out her own life in her own way. So do those who are dependent
+      by nature upon the advice and sympathy of others learn to lean only upon
+      their own strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the room overhead, standing by the window with weary eyes, Dora was
+      murmuring: &ldquo;I wonder&mdash;I wonder if I shall be able to hold out against
+      them all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Across the years you seem to come.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just what I can't do. I cannot afford to wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar drew in his neatly-shod little feet, and leant back in the
+      deep chair which was always set aside as his in the Stagholme
+      drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother and son were alone in the vast, somewhat gloomy apartment. Arthur
+      had been home six hours, and the subject of their conversation was, of
+      course, Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia was absent, only in obedience to a very unmistakable hint
+      in one of Arthur's recent letters to his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only a little while,&rdquo; pleaded Mrs. Agar. &ldquo;Of course, dear, it will all
+      come right. I feel convinced of that. Only you see, dear, girls do not
+      like to be hurried in such an important step. I am quite sure she cares
+      for you; only you <i>must</i> give her a little time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can't, I can't,&rdquo; he repeated anxiously. And his face wore that
+      strangely accentuated look of trouble which almost amounted to dread&mdash;dread
+      of something in life which had not come yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; inquired Mrs. Agar. &ldquo;You are both young enough, I am sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, we are young enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stirred his tea with an effeminate appreciation of fine Coalport and a
+      dainty Norwegian spoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why should you not wait?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur was silent; he looked very small and frail, almost childlike, in
+      his silk-faced evening coat. Spoilt boy was writ large all over his
+      person. &ldquo;Arthur,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;you are keeping something from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his feeble head feebly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are, I know you are. What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the only person in all the world who had stirred the heart of
+      Anna Agar to something like a lasting affection. Once&mdash;years before&mdash;she
+      had loved Seymour Michael with a sudden volcanic passion which had as
+      suddenly turned to hatred. But under no circumstances could such a love
+      have endured. Consistency, constancy, singleness of purpose were quite
+      lacking in this woman's composition. It is rare, but when a woman does
+      fail in this respect, her failure is more complete, more miserable than
+      the failure of men, inconstant as they are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her affection for Arthur, coupled with that suspicion which always goes
+      with a cheap cunning, had put her on the right scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I insist on knowing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still he held his peace, with the obstinate silence of the weak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;don't ask me to help you to win Dora, that is
+      all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause; in the silence of the great house the wind moaned
+      softly. It always moaned in the drawing-room, whether in calm or storm,
+      from some undiscovered draught in the high ventilated ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sometimes think,&rdquo; said Arthur at length, in an awestruck voice, &ldquo;that
+      Jem may not be dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not dead! Arthur, how can you be so stupid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not at all awestruck. Her denser, more sordid nature was proof
+      against the silence or the humming wind. The greed of gain has power to
+      kill superstition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face puzzled her. Suddenly he cast himself back and hid his face in
+      his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he muttered, &ldquo;I can't do it, I can't do it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In an instant his mother was standing over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur,&rdquo; she hissed, &ldquo;you <i>know</i> something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he confessed in a whisper at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem is not dead?&rdquo; she hissed again. Her voice was hoarse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was not killed in the disaster,&rdquo; admitted Arthur. In his heart he was
+      still clinging to the other hope subtly held out by Seymour Michael&mdash;the
+      hope that in his simple intrepidity Jem had gone to his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then where is he&mdash;where is he, Arthur? Tell me quickly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was white and breathless. It was as if she had bartered her
+      soul, and after payment, had been tricked out of her share of the bargain.
+      She trembled with a fear which seemed to fill her world and extend to the
+      other world to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He escaped from that action,&rdquo; said Arthur, who, now that the truth was
+      out, grew voluble like a child making a confession, &ldquo;by being sent on in
+      front with a few men. They escaped notice, while the larger body was
+      attacked and massacred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. I cannot tell you his name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Agar nervously, &ldquo;are you going mad? Do you know
+      what you are saying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In reply he gave a little laugh like a sob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;it is all right. I know what I am saying, though
+      sometimes I scarcely believe it myself. If it was a hundred years ago one
+      might believe it easily enough, but now it seems unreal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then where is Jem? Was he taken prisoner? Those men are savages, aren't
+      they? They kill&mdash;people when they take them prisoners.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he was not taken prisoner,&rdquo; said Arthur. Sometimes he lost patience
+      in a snappy, feminine way with his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! tell me, tell me, Arthur dear! You are killing me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, if you will let me. It appears that Jem had made himself a name
+      out there for knowing the country and the people, which is useful to the
+      Government, because Russia and England both want the country, or something
+      like that; I don't quite understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, never mind! Go on!&rdquo; interrupted Mrs. Agar, with characteristic
+      impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And at any rate the men on the other side&mdash;the Russians or some one,
+      I don't know who&mdash;were in the habit of watching Jem so as to prevent
+      his going up into this unexplored country. Well, when the report of his
+      death was put in the newspapers it was left uncontradicted, so that these
+      men should think he was dead, and not be on the look-out for him. Do you
+      understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar had raised her head, with listening, attentive eyes. It seemed
+      as if a voice had come to her across the years from the distant past. A
+      voice telling an old story, which had never been forgotten, but merely
+      laid aside in the memory among those things that never are forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finding Arthur's troubled gaze upon her, she seemed to recollect herself
+      with a little gesture of her hand to her breast as if breathing were
+      difficult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That does not sound like a thing Jem would do,&rdquo; she said, with one of
+      those flashes of shrewd observation which sometimes come to inconsequent
+      people, and make it difficult for those around them to be sure how much
+      they see and how much passes unobserved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not Jem, it was this other man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which other man?&rdquo; Mrs. Agar gave a little gasp, as if she had found
+      something she feared to find.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man who told me&mdash;he was Jem's superior officer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did he tell you&mdash;where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came to see me at Cambridge, and brought those things of Jem's,&rdquo;
+       replied Arthur. So far from feeling guilty at thus revealing all that he
+      had promised to keep secret, he was now beginning to experience some pangs
+      of conscience at the recollection of a concealment which, by a supreme
+      effort, had been made to extend to four months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sly gleam in Mrs. Agar's eyes. A close observer knowing her
+      well could have seen the cunning written on her face, for it was cheap and
+      obvious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said indifferently, &ldquo;and what sort of man was he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur pondered with a deliberation that almost maddened her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he replied at length, &ldquo;a small man, dark, with a sunburnt face; a
+      Jew, I should think. He was rather well dressed&mdash;in the military
+      style, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; muttered Mrs. Agar. &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Agar reflected, as deeply,
+      perhaps, as she had ever reflected in her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she discovered something for herself which had of necessity been
+      pointed out to her son&mdash;a subtle divergence of character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;of course Jem may never come back from this expedition.
+      It <i>must</i> be very dangerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very dangerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar's sigh of relief was quite audible. It is thus that nature
+      sometimes betrays human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did <i>he</i> say that? Did <i>he</i> think that of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael's opinion still had value in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the reply came slowly; &ldquo;he said that we might almost look upon Jem
+      as a dead man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother and son looked at each other and said nothing. Heredity is a
+      strange thing, and one alternately aggrandised and slighted. Blood is a
+      very powerful force, but the little lessons taught in childhood's years
+      bear a wondrous crop of good or evil fruit in later days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left alone, Arthur Agar's natural tendency was towards good. Probably
+      because he was timid, and goodness seems the safer course. There are many
+      who have not the courage to forsake goodness, even for a moment. But under
+      the influence of a stronger will&mdash;that is to say, under the influence
+      of four out of every five persons crossing his path&mdash;Arthur was
+      liable to be led in any direction. He would rather have sinned in company
+      than have cultivated virtue in the solitude usually accorded to that
+      state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow, in his mother's presence it did not seem so very wrong to keep
+      back the truth respecting Jem and to turn it to his own ends. It did not
+      seem either mean or cowardly to take advantage of a rival's absence and
+      gain his object, by deception. So, perhaps, it was in the beginning, when
+      the world was young. In those days also a mother and son helped each other
+      in deception, and so since then have many thousands of mothers
+      (incompetent or vicious) led their children to ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;if Jem goes and does things of that
+      description he must take the consequences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur said nothing in reply to this. The thought had been his for some
+      months, but he had never put it into shape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are perfectly justified,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;in acting as if Jem were dead
+      until he deigns to advise us to the contrary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This also was putting a long-cherished thought into form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur knew that he ought to have told his mother then and there that Jem
+      had taken every step in his power to advise him as soon as possible of the
+      falseness of the news transmitted to the newspapers. But something held
+      him silent, some taint of hereditary untruthfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not see,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that this news can, therefore, make much
+      difference. There is no reason to alter any of our plans. To begin with, I
+      am certain that he is dead. We must have heard by this time if he had been
+      living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur gave a little nod of acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And also,&rdquo; pursued Mrs. Agar, with characteristic inconsistency, &ldquo;he
+      evidently does not care about us or our feelings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur knew what she meant, and he descended as low in the moral scale as
+      ever he went during his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;there is, all the same, no time to lose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed his hand over his sleek, lifeless hair with a weary look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear,&rdquo; said his mother soothingly, &ldquo;I will see Ellen Glynde
+      to-morrow, and try to make her say something to Dora. A girl's mother has
+      always more influence than her father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This idiotic axiom seemed to satisfy Arthur, probably because he knew no
+      better, and he rose to take his bedroom candlestick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was a person utterly incapable of harbouring two thoughts at the
+      same moment. She never even got so far as to place two sides of a question
+      upon an equal footing in her mind. All her questions had but one side. She
+      was not thinking of Arthur when she went to her room. She was not thinking
+      of him when she lay staring at the daylight, which had crept up into the
+      sky before she closed her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tossed and turned and moaned aloud with a childish impatience. Her
+      mind could find no rest; it could not throw off the deadly knowledge that
+      Seymour Michael had come back into her life. And somehow she was no longer
+      Anna Agar, but Anna Hethbridge. She was no longer the fond mother whose
+      whole world was filled by thoughts of her son&mdash;a miserable,
+      thoughtless, haphazard world it was&mdash;but again she was the wronged
+      woman, moved by the one great passion that had stirred her sordid soul, a
+      fearsome hatred for Seymour Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not an analytical woman; she had never thought about her own
+      thoughts; she was as superficial as human nature can well be. That is to
+      say, she was little more than an animal with the gift of speech, added to
+      one or two small items of knowledge which divide men from beasts. But she
+      <i>knew</i> that this was not the end. She never doubted for a moment that
+      it was merely a beginning, that Seymour Michael was coming back into her
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a child she tossed and tumbled in her bed, muttering
+      half-consciously, &ldquo;Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      For two days Mrs. Glynde had been going about the world with a bright red
+      patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely,
+      the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning
+      service her fervour was something astonishing&mdash;the quaver in her
+      voice was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to
+      silent prayer after the blessing was so abnormally long that Stark, the
+      sexton, had to rattle the keys twice, with all due respect and for the
+      sake of his Sunday dinner, before she rose from her knees; whereas once
+      usually sufficed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the devout practice that all the Rectory servants should go to
+      evening service, while Mrs. Glynde, or Dora, or both, remained at home to
+      take care of the house. On this particular evening Mrs. Glynde proposed
+      that Dora should stay with her, and what her mother proposed Dora usually
+      acceded to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear,&rdquo; said the elder lady, with a nervous little jerk of the head which
+      was habitual or physical, &ldquo;I have heard about Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting in the drawing-room, with windows open to the ground,
+      and the fading light was insufficient to read by, although both had books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, mother,&rdquo; answered the girl in rather a tired voice, quite forgetting
+      to be cheerful. &ldquo;I should like to know exactly what you heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Anna told me,&rdquo; and there was a whole world of distrust in the
+      little phrase, &ldquo;that Arthur had asked you to be his wife, and that you had
+      refused without giving a reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave him a reason,&rdquo; replied Dora; &ldquo;the best one. I said that I did not
+      love him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause. The two women looked out on to the quiet lawn.
+      They seemed singularly anxious to avoid looking at each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that might come, dear; I think it would come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it would not,&rdquo; replied Dora quietly. There was a dreaminess in her
+      voice, as if she were repeating something she had heard or said before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Mrs. Glynde rose from her chair, and going towards her daughter,
+      she knelt on the soft carpet, still afraid to look at her face. There was
+      something suggestive and strange in the attitude, for the elder woman was
+      crouching at the feet of the younger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling,&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;I know, I <i>know!</i> I have known all
+      along. But mind, no one else knows, no one suspects! <i>It</i> can never
+      come to you again in this life. Women are like that, it never comes to
+      them twice. To some it never comes at all; think of that, dear, it never
+      comes to them at all! Surely that is worse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora took the nervous, eager hands in her own quiet grasp and held them
+      still. But she said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have prayed night and morning,&rdquo; the elder woman went on in the same
+      pleading whisper, &ldquo;that strength might be given you, and I think my
+      prayers were heard. For you have been strong, and no one has known except
+      me, and I do not matter. The strength must have come from somewhere. I
+      like to think that I had something to do with it, however little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again there was a silence. Across the quiet garden, from the church that
+      was hidden among the trees, the sound of the evening hymn came rising and
+      falling, the harshness of the rustic voices toned down by the whispering
+      of the leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; Mrs. Glynde went on, speaking perhaps out of her own experience,
+      &ldquo;that now it must seem that there is nothing left. I know that It can
+      never come to you, but something else may&mdash;a sort of alleviation;
+      something that is a little stronger than resignation, and many people
+      think that it is love. It is not love; never believe that! But it is
+      surely sent because so many women have&mdash;to go through life&mdash;without
+      that&mdash;which makes life worth living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush, dear!&rdquo; said Dora; and Mrs. Glynde paused as if to collect herself.
+      Perhaps her daughter stopped her just in time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is,&rdquo; she went on in a calmer voice, &ldquo;a sort of satisfaction in the
+      duties that come and have to be performed. The duties towards one's
+      husband and the others&mdash;the others, darling&mdash;are the best. They
+      are not the same, not the same as if&mdash;as they might have been, but
+      sometimes it is a great alleviation. And the time passes somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not the clever people who make all the epigrams; but sometimes those
+      who merely live and feel, and are perhaps objects of ridicule. Mrs. Glynde
+      was one of these. She had unwittingly made an epigram. She had summed up
+      life in five words&mdash;the time passes somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, dear,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;it is not wise, perhaps it is not quite right,
+      to turn one's back upon an alleviation which is offered. Arthur would be
+      very kind to you. He is really fond of you, and perhaps the very fact of
+      his not being clever or brilliant or anything like that might be a
+      blessing in the future, for he would not expect so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would have to expect nothing,&rdquo; said Dora, speaking for the first time,
+      &ldquo;because I could give him nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke in rather an indifferent voice, and in the gloom her mother
+      could not see her face. It was a singular thing that neither of them
+      seemed to take Arthur Agar's feelings into account in the very smallest
+      degree; and this must be accounted to them for wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was, as her mother had said, very strong. She never gave way. Her
+      delicate lips never quivered, but she took care to keep them close
+      pressed. Only in her eyes was the pain to be seen, and perhaps that was
+      why her mother did not dare to look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no hurry,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;You need not decide now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; answered Dora, &ldquo;I have decided now, and he knows my decision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps after some time&mdash;some years?&rdquo; suggested Mrs. Glynde.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great many years,&rdquo; put in Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he asks you again&mdash;oh! I know it would be better, dear; better
+      for you in every way. I do not say that you would be quite happy. But it
+      would be a sort of happiness; there would be less unhappiness, because you
+      would have less time to think. I do not say anything about the position
+      and the wealth and such considerations, for they are not of much
+      importance to a good woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After a great many years,&rdquo; said Dora, in that calm and judicial voice
+      which fell like ice on her mother's heart, &ldquo;I will see&mdash;if he chooses
+      to wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but&mdash;&rdquo; began Mrs. Glynde, but she did not go on. That which she
+      was about to say would scarcely have been appropriate. But so far as the
+      facts were concerned she might just as well have said it. For Dora knew as
+      well as she did that Arthur Agar would not wait. Women are not blind to
+      manifest facts. They know us, my brothers, better than we think. And they
+      are not quite so romantic as we take them to be. Their love is a better
+      thing than ours, because it is more practical and more defined. They do
+      not seek an ideal of their own imagination; but when something approaching
+      to it crosses their path in the flesh they know what they want, and they
+      do not change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the silence was again broken the murmur of voices told them that
+      the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female
+      form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia,
+      walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the outward
+      and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the remainder
+      of womanhood. Good women&mdash;those mistaken females who move in an
+      atmosphere of ostentatious good works&mdash;usually walk like this. Like
+      this they enter the humble cot with a little soup and a lot of advice.
+      Like this they smilingly step, where angels would fear to tread, upon
+      feelings which they are incapable of understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde got quietly up and left the room. As the door closed behind
+      her Sister Cecilia's gently persuasive voice was heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora! Dora dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the girl without any enthusiasm, rising and going to the
+      window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you walk with me a little way across the fields? It is such a lovely
+      evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Dora passed out of the open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; said Sister Cecilia after a few paces, &ldquo;that you were not in
+      church. We had such a bright service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora, like some more of us, wondered vaguely where the adjective applied,
+      especially on a gloomy evening without candles, but she said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I stayed at home with mother,&rdquo; she explained practically. &ldquo;The servants
+      were all out.&rdquo; Sister Cecilia was not listening. She was gazing up at the
+      sky, where a few stars were beginning to show themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One feels,&rdquo; she murmured with a sigh, &ldquo;on such an evening as this, that,
+      after all, nothing matters much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the servants do you mean? They are going on better now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, dear, about life. I mean that at times one feels that this cannot be
+      the end of it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we ought to feel that, I suppose, being Christians.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And some day we shall see the meaning of all our troubles,&rdquo; pursued
+      Sister Cecilia. &ldquo;It is so hard for us older ones, who have passed through
+      it, to stand by helpless, only guessing at the pain and anguish of it all,
+      whereas, perhaps, we could help if we only knew. A little more candour, a
+      little more confidence might so easily lead to mutual help and
+      consolation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly,&rdquo; admitted Dora, without any encouragement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so sorry for poor Arthur!&rdquo; whispered Sister Cecilia, apparently to
+      the evening shades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was silent. She knew how to treat Sister Cecilia. Jem had taught her
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been such a terrible blow. His letters to his mother are quite
+      heartbroken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora reserved her opinion of grown-up men who write heartbroken letters to
+      their mothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know all about it,&rdquo; Sister Cecilia went on, quite regardless of the
+      truth, as some good people are. &ldquo;Dora, dear, I know all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence, a silence which reminded Sister Cecilia of a sense of
+      discomfiture which had more than once been hers in conversation with Jem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you nothing to tell me, dear?&rdquo; she inquired. &ldquo;Nothing to say to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; replied Dora pleasantly. &ldquo;Especially as you know all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you never change your mind?&rdquo; persuasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am not the sort of person to change my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause, and again Sister Cecilia whispered to the
+      evening shades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot help hoping that some day it may be different. It is not as if
+      there were any one else&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say,&rdquo; added Sister Cecilia, after waiting in vain for an answer to
+      her implied question, &ldquo;that I am wrong, but I cannot help being in favour
+      of a little more candour, a little mutual confidence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot help feeling,&rdquo; replied Dora quietly, &ldquo;that we are all best
+      employed when we mind our own business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear, I know. But it is very hard to stand idly by and see young
+      people make mistakes which can only bring them sorrow. I want to tell you
+      to think very deeply before you elect to lead the life of a single woman.
+      It is a life full of temptation to idleness and self-indulgence. There are
+      many single women who, I am really afraid, are quite useless in the world.
+      They only gossip and pry into their neighbours' affairs and make mischief.
+      It is because they have nothing to do. I have known several women like
+      that, and I cannot help thinking that they would have been happier if they
+      had married. Perhaps they did not have the chance. One does not understand
+      these things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia cast her eyes upwards toward the tree-tops to see if
+      perchance the explanation was written there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she went on complacently, drawing down her bonnet-strings,
+      &ldquo;there are many useful lives of single women. Lives which the world would
+      sadly miss should it please God to take them. Women who live, not for
+      themselves, but for others; who go about the world helping their
+      neighbours with advice and the fruits of their own experience; ever the
+      first to go to the afflicted and to those who are in trouble. They do not
+      receive their reward here, they are not always thanked. The ignorant are
+      sometimes even rude. They have only the knowledge that they are doing
+      good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That <i>must</i> be a satisfaction,&rdquo; murmured Dora fervently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, dear; it is. But&mdash;you will excuse me, Dora dear, if I say
+      this?&mdash;I do not think you are that sort of woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Dora, &ldquo;I don't think I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that is why I have said this to you. Now, don't answer me, dear. Just
+      think about it quietly. I think I have done my duty in telling you what,
+      was on my mind. It is always best, although it is sometimes difficult, or
+      even painful; but then, it is one's duty. Kiss me, dear! Good-night!&mdash;<i>good</i>-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so Sister Cecilia left Dora&mdash;mincing away into the gloom of the
+      overhanging trees. And so she leaves these pages. Verily the good have
+      their reward here below in a coat of self-complacency which is as
+      impervious to the buffets of life as to the sarcasm of the worldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. A STAB IN THE DARK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Slander, meanest spawn of Hell; And women's slander is the worst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was a person incapable of awaiting that vague result called the
+      development of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur had never been forced to wait for anything in his life. No longer
+      at least than tradespeople required, and in many cases not so long, for
+      Mrs. Agar had an annoying way of refusing to listen to reason. She never
+      allowed that laws applying to ordinary people, served more or less
+      faithfully by tailor or dressmaker, applied to herself or to Arthur. And
+      tradespeople, one finds are not always of the same mind as the Medes and
+      Persians&mdash;they square matters quietly in the bill. They had to do it
+      very quietly indeed with Mrs. Agar, who endeavoured strenuously to get the
+      best value for her money all through life; a remnant of Jaggery House,
+      Clapham Common, which the placid wealth of Stagholme never obliterated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the luncheon, specially prepared and laid before the Rector, this
+      second Rebecca awaited the result impatiently. But nothing came of it.
+      Although Mrs. Agar now looked upon Dora as the latest whim of the
+      not-to-be-denied Arthur, she could hardly consider Mr. Glynde in the light
+      of a tradesman retailing the said commodity, and, therefore, to be bullied
+      and harassed into making haste. She reflected with misgiving that Mr.
+      Glynde was an exponent of the tiresome art of talking over and thinking
+      out matters which required neither words nor thought, and saw no prospect
+      of an immediate furtherance of her design.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a mistaken and much practised desire of striking when the iron was
+      hot, Mrs. Agar, like many a wiser person, began, therefore, to bang about
+      in all directions, hitting not only the iron but the anvil, her own
+      knuckles and the susceptibilities of any one standing in the
+      neighbourhood. She could not leave things to Mr. Glynde, but must needs
+      see Dora herself. She had in her mind the nucleus of a simple if
+      scurrilous scheme which will show itself hereafter. Her opportunity
+      presented itself a few days later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A neighbouring family counting itself county, presumably on the strength
+      of never being able to absent themselves from the favoured neighbourhood
+      on account of monetary incapacity, gave its annual garden-party at this
+      time. To this entertainment the whole countryside was in the habit of
+      repairing&mdash;not with an idea of enjoying itself, but because everybody
+      did it. To be bidden to this garden-party was in itself a <i>cachet</i> of
+      respectability. This indeed was the only satisfaction to be gathered from
+      the festivity. If the honour was great, the hospitality was small. If the
+      condescension was vast, the fare provided was verging on the stingy. Here
+      were served by half-starved domestic servants, in the smallest of
+      tumblers, &ldquo;cups&rdquo; wherein were mixed liquors, such as cider, usually
+      consumed by self-respecting persons in the undiluted condition and in
+      mugs. Upon cucumber-cup, taken in county society, as on a dinner of herbs,
+      one hardly expects the guest to grow convivial. Therefore at this
+      garden-party those bidden to the feast were in the habit of wandering
+      sadly through the shrubbery seeking whom they might avoid, and in the
+      course of such a perambulation, with a young man conversant of himself,
+      Dora met Mrs. Agar. Even the mistress of Stagholme was preferable to the
+      young man from London, and besides&mdash;there were associations. So Dora
+      drew Mrs. Agar into her promenade, and presently the young man got his <i>congé</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first they talked of local topics, and Mrs. Agar, who had a fine sense
+      of hospitality, said her say about the cider-cup. Then she gave an awkward
+      little laugh, and with an assumption of lightness which did not succeed
+      she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope, dear, you do not intend to keep my poor boy in suspense much
+      longer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean Arthur?&rdquo; asked Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear. I really don't see why there should be this absurd reserve
+      between us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite willing,&rdquo; replied the girl, &ldquo;to hear what you have to say
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but not to talk of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I suppose Arthur has told you all there is to tell. If there is
+      anything more that you want to know I shall be very glad to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, of course, I don't understand it at all,&rdquo; burst out Mrs. Agar
+      eagerly. This was quite true; neither she nor Arthur could understand how
+      any one could refuse such a glorious offer as he had made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I can explain. Arthur asked me to marry him. I quite appreciated
+      the honour, but I declined it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but why? Surely you didn't mean it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did mean it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; explained Mrs. Agar, with a little toss of the head, &ldquo;I am sure I
+      cannot see what more you want. There are many girls who would be glad to
+      be mistress of Stagholme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And it must be remembered that she said this knowing quite well that Jem
+      was probably alive. There are some crimes which women commit daily in the
+      family circle which deserve a greater punishment than that meted out to a
+      legal criminal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is precisely what I ventured to point out to Arthur,&rdquo; said Dora,
+      unconsciously borrowing her father's ironical neatness of enunciation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why shouldn't you take the opportunity? There are not many estates
+      like it in England. Your position would be as good as that of a titled
+      lady, and I am sure you could not want a better husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like Arthur as a friend, but I could never marry him, so it is useless
+      to discuss the question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; persisted Mrs. Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I do not care for him in the right way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that would come,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar. It was only natural that she should
+      use an argument which is accountable for more misery on earth than mothers
+      dream of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it would never come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar gave a cunning little laugh, and paused so as to lend additional
+      weight to her next remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a dangerous thing for a girl to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; inquired Dora indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, because they can never be sure, unless&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless what? I am quite sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless there is some one else,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, with an exaggerated
+      significance suggestive of the servants' hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora did not answer at once. They walked on for a few moments in silence,
+      passing other guests walking in couples. Then Dora replied with a
+      succinctness acquired from her father:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Generalities about women,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;are always a mistake. Indeed, all
+      generalities are dangerous. But if you and Arthur care to apply this to
+      me, you are at liberty to do so. Whatever generalities you apply and
+      whatever you say will make no difference to the main question. Moreover,
+      you will, perhaps, be acting a kinder part if you give Arthur to
+      understand once for all that my decision is final.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you like, dear, as you like,&rdquo; muttered Mrs. Agar, apparently
+      abandoning the argument, whereas in reality she had not yet begun it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do, dear Mrs. Martin?&rdquo; she went on in the same breath, bowing
+      and smiling to a lady who passed them at that moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, returning in a final way to the question after a
+      few moments' silence, &ldquo;of course I do not believe all I hear; in fact, I
+      contradict a good deal. But I have been told that gossips talked about you
+      a good deal last year, at the time of Jem's death. I think it only fair
+      that you should know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Dora curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, dear, <i>I</i> didn't believe anything about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Dora again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have been sorry to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Dora turned upon her suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, Aunt Anna?&rdquo; she asked with determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing, dear, nothing. Don't get flurried about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not at all flurried,&rdquo; replied Dora quietly. &ldquo;You said that you would
+      be sorry to have to believe what gossips said of me last year at the time
+      of Jem's death&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora,&rdquo; interrupted Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;I never said anything against you in any
+      way; how can you say such a thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; continued Dora, with an unpleasant calmness of manner, &ldquo;I must ask
+      you to explain. What did the gossips say, and why should you be sorry to
+      have to believe it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar's reluctance was not quite genuine nor was it well enough
+      simulated to deceive Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if you insist, they said that there had been
+      something between you and Jem&mdash;long, long ago, of course, before he
+      went out to India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora shrugged her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are welcome to say what they like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was silent, awaiting a second question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why should you be sorry to believe that?&rdquo; inquired the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I hardly like to tell you,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora waited in silence, without appearing to heed Mrs. Agar's reluctance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid, dear,&rdquo; went on the elder lady, when she saw that there was
+      no chance of assistance, &ldquo;that we have been all sadly mistaken in Jem. He
+      was not&mdash;all that we thought him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what way?&rdquo; asked Dora. She had turned quite white, and her lips were
+      suddenly dry and parched. She held her parasol a little lower, so that
+      Mrs. Agar could not see her face. She was sure enough of her voice. She
+      had had practice in that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what way was Jem not all that we thought him?&rdquo; she repeated evenly,
+      like a lesson learnt by heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar stammered. She tried to blush, but she could not manage that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot very well give you details. Perhaps, when you are older. You
+      know, dear, in India people are not very particular. They have peculiar
+      ideas, I mean, of morals&mdash;different from ours. And perhaps he saw no
+      harm in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what?&rdquo; inquired Dora gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in the life they lead out there. It appears that there was some
+      unfortunate attachment. I think she was married or something like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you this?&rdquo; asked Dora, in a voice like a threat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man told Arthur at Cambridge&mdash;one of poor Jem's fellow-officers.
+      The man who brought home the diary and things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Having once begun Mrs. Agar found herself obliged to go on. She had not
+      time to pause and reflect that she was now staking everything upon the
+      possibility of Jem's death subsequent to the disaster in which he was
+      supposed to have perished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora did not believe one word of this story, although she was quite
+      without proof to the contrary. Jem's letters had not been frequent, nor
+      had they been remarkable for minuteness of detail respecting his own life.
+      Mrs. Agar had done her best to put a stop to this correspondence
+      altogether, and had succeeded in bringing about a subtle reserve on both
+      sides. She had persistently told Jem that Dora was evidently attached to
+      Arthur, and that their marriage was only the question of a few years. Of
+      this Jem had never found any confirmatory hint in Dora's letters, and from
+      some mistaken sense of chivalry refrained from writing to ask her
+      point-blank if it were true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why,&rdquo; said Dora, &ldquo;do you tell me this? In case what the gossips said
+      might be true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es, dear, perhaps it was that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So as to save me from cherishing any mistaken memory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it may have been that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mrs. Agar was surprised to see Dora turn her back upon her as if she
+      had been something loathsome to look upon, and walk away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      When the heart speaks, Glory itself is an illusion.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Mahanaddy</i> had just turned her blunt prow out westward from the
+      harbour of Port Said, sniffing her native north wind, with a gentle rising
+      movement to that old Mediterranean eastward-tending swell. The lights of
+      the most iniquitous town on earth were fading away in the mist of the
+      desert on the left hand, and on the right the gloom of the sea merged into
+      a grey sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner-hour had passed, and the passengers were lolling about on the
+      long quarter-deck, talking lazily after the manner of men and women who
+      have little to say and much time wherein to say it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite easy to perceive that they had left a voyage of many days
+      behind them, for the funny man had exhausted himself and the politicians
+      were asleep. The lifeless, homeward-bound flirtations had waned long ago,
+      and no one looked twice at any one else. They all knew each other's
+      dresses and vices and little aggravating habits, and only three or four of
+      them were aware that human nature runs deeper than such superficial
+      details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Away forward, behind the sheep-pens, an Italian gentleman in the ice
+      industry was scraping on a yellow fiddle which looked sticky. But like
+      many things of plain exterior this unprepossessing instrument had
+      something in it, something that the Italian gentleman knew how to extract,
+      and all the ship was hushed into listening. Such as had conversation left
+      spoke in low tones, and even the stewards in the pantry ceased for a time
+      to test the strength of the dinner-plates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a small clear space of deck between the door of the doctor's cabin and
+      the saloon gangway two men were walking slowly backwards and forwards.
+      They were both tall men, both large, and consequently both inclined to
+      taciturnity. They had said, perhaps, as little as any two persons on
+      board, which may have accounted for the fact that they were talking now,
+      and still seemed to have plenty to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One was dark and clean-shaven, with something of the sea in his mien and
+      gait. His nose and chin were singularly clean cut, and suggestive of an
+      ancestral type. This was the ship's doctor, a man who probed men's hearts
+      as well as their bodies, and wrote of what he found there. His companion
+      was an antitype&mdash;a representative of the fair race found in England
+      by the ancestors of the other when they came and conquered. He wore a
+      beard, and his face was burnt to the colour of mahogany, which had a
+      strange effect in contrast to the bluest of Saxon eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor was talking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; he was saying, &ldquo;who the devil are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other smiled, a gentle, triumphant smile. The smile of a man who,
+      humbly recognising himself at a just estimation, is conscious of having
+      outwitted another, cleverer than himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You finish your pipe,&rdquo; he said, and he walked away with long firm strides
+      towards the saloon stairs. The Doctor went to the rail, where, resting his
+      arms on the solid teak, he leant, gazing thoughtfully out over the sea,
+      which was part of his life. For he knew the great waters, and loved them
+      with all the quiet strength of a slow-tongued man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before very long some one came behind and touched him on the shoulder. He
+      turned, and in the fading light looked into the smiling face of his late
+      companion&mdash;the same and yet quite different, for the beard was gone,
+      and there only remained the long fair moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Dr. Mark Ruthine, &ldquo;Jem Agar. I was a fool not to know you at
+      first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sort of shyness flickered for a moment in the blue eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been practising so hard during the last ten months to look like
+      some one else that I hardly feel like myself,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Um-m! There was something uncanny about you when you first came on board.
+      I used to watch you at meals, and wonder what it was. By God, Agar, I <i>am</i>
+      glad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; replied Jem Agar. He was looking round him rather nervously.
+      &ldquo;You don't think there is anybody on board who will know me, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one, barring the Captain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Agar calmly, &ldquo;he is all right. He can keep his mouth shut.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no doubt about that,&rdquo; replied the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little pause followed, during which they both listened involuntarily to
+      the ice-cream merchant's musical voice, which was now floating over the
+      silent decks, raised in song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to hear all about it some day,&rdquo; said the ship's surgeon at
+      last. He knew his man, and no detail of the strange lives that passed the
+      horizon of his daily existence was ever forgotten. Only he usually found
+      that those who had the most to tell required a little assistance in their
+      narration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is rather a rum business,&rdquo; answered Jem Agar, not displeased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the ship's bell rang four clear notes into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten o'clock,&rdquo; said the Doctor. &ldquo;Come into my cabin and have a smoke; the
+      Captain will be in soon. He would like to hear the story too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they passed into the cabin, and before they had been there many minutes
+      the Captain joined them. For a moment he stood in the doorway, then he
+      came forward with outstretched hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;all that I can say is that you ought to be dead. But
+      it's not my business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had seen too many freaks of fortune to be surprised at this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that there was something familiar about the
+      back of your head. Back of a man's head never changes. It's a funny
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down in his usual chair, and looked with a cheery smile upon him
+      who had risen from the death column of the <i>Times</i>. Then he turned to
+      his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, Agar,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I was beastly sorry about that&mdash;death of
+      yours. Cut me up wonderfully for a few minutes. That is saying a lot in
+      these days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very kind of you to say so,&rdquo; he said rather awkwardly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I,&rdquo; added Dr. Ruthine from behind the whisky and soda tray, in the
+      deliberate voice of a man who is saying something with an effort, &ldquo;felt
+      that it was a pity. That is how it struck me&mdash;a pity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, very disjointedly, and in a manner which could scarcely be set down
+      here, Major James Agar told his singular story. There are&mdash;thank
+      heaven!&mdash;many such stories still untold; there are, one would be
+      inclined to hope, many such still uncommenced. As a nation we may be on
+      the decline, but there is something to go on with in us yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once when the narrator paused, Dr. Ruthine went to the side table and
+      opened some bottles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whisky?&rdquo; he inquired, with curt hospitality, &ldquo;or anything else your fancy
+      may paint, down to tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar rose to pour out his own allowance, and for a moment the two men
+      stood together. With the critical eye of a soldier, which seems to weigh
+      flesh and blood, he looked his host for the time being up and down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don't make men like you and me on tea,&rdquo; he said, reaching out his
+      hand towards a tumbler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the story went on. At first the ship's doctor listened to it with
+      interest but without absorption, then suddenly something seemed to catch
+      his attention and hold it riveted. When a pause came he leant forward,
+      pointing an emphasising finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you spoke just now of the chief,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;did you mean Michael?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Seymour Michael?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain tapped his pipe against his boot and leant back with the shrug
+      of the shoulders awaiting further developments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you mean to tell me that you put yourself entirely in the hands of
+      Seymour Michael?&rdquo; pursued the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine shook his head with a little laugh. &ldquo;I always thought, Agar,
+      that you were a bit of a fool!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have sometimes suspected it myself,&rdquo; admitted the soldier meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, man,&rdquo; said Ruthine, &ldquo;Seymour Michael is one of the biggest rascals
+      on God's earth. I would not trust him with fourpence round the corner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor would I,&rdquo; put in the Captain, &ldquo;and the sum is not excessive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar was sipping his whisky and soda with the placidity of a giant who
+      fears no open fight and never thinks of foul play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see,&rdquo; he muttered, &ldquo;what harm he can do me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more do I, at the moment,&rdquo; replied the Doctor; &ldquo;but the man is a liar
+      and an unscrupulous cad. I have kept an eye on him for years because he
+      interests me. He has never run a straight course since he came into the
+      field; he has consistently sacrificed truth, honour, and his best friend
+      to his own ambition ever since the beginning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar smiled at the Doctor's vehemence, although he was aware that such
+      a display was far from being characteristic of the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he admitted, &ldquo;in the matter of honour and glory I expect to
+      be swindled. But I don't care. I know the chap's reputation, and all that,
+      but he can hardly get rid of the fact that I have done the thing and he
+      has not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not thinking so much of that,&rdquo; replied the other. &ldquo;Men sell their
+      souls for honour and glory and never get paid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused; then with the sure touch of one who has dabbled with pen and
+      ink in the humanities, he laid his finger on the vulnerable spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking more,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;of what you had trusted him to do&mdash;telling
+      certain persons, I mean, that you were not dead. He is just as likely as
+      not to have suppressed the information.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar was looking very grave, with a sudden pinched appearance about
+      the lips which was only half concealed by his moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he do that?&rdquo; he asked sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would do it if it suited his purpose. He is not the man to take into
+      consideration such things as feelings&mdash;especially the feelings of
+      others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a bit hard on him, Ruthine,&rdquo; said Jem doubtfully. &ldquo;Why should it
+      suit his convenience?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Secrecy was essential for your purpose and his; in telling a secret one
+      doubles the risk of its disclosure each time a new confidant is admitted.
+      Besides, the man's nature is quite extraordinarily secretive. He has
+      Jewish and Scotch blood in his veins, and the result is that he would
+      rather disseminate false news than true on the off chance of benefiting
+      thereby later on. For men of that breed each piece of accurate
+      information, however trivial, has a marketable value, and they don't part
+      with it unless they get their price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There followed a silence, during which Jem Agar went back in mental
+      retrospection to the only interview he had ever had with Seymour Michael,
+      and the old lurking sense of distrust awoke within his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said the Captain, who was an optimist&mdash;he even applied that
+      theory to human nature&mdash;&ldquo;I suppose it is all right now. Everybody
+      knows now that you are among the quick&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Jem, &ldquo;only Michael; it was arranged that I should telegraph
+      to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; the Doctor hastened to say, for he had perceived a change in
+      Agar's demeanour, &ldquo;all this is the purest supposition. It is only a theory
+      built upon a man's character. It is wonderful how consistent people are.
+      Judge how a man would act and you will find that he has acted like it
+      afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As if in illustration of the theory Jem Agar looked gravely determined,
+      but uttered no threat directed towards Seymour Michael. His quiet face was
+      a threat in itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, rising, &ldquo;I am keeping you fellows from your slumbers. I
+      am still sleeping on deck; can't get accustomed to the atmosphere below
+      decks after six months' sleeping in the open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded and left them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rum chap!&rdquo; muttered the Captain, looking at his watch when the footsteps
+      had died away over the silent decks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the queerest specimens I know,&rdquo; retorted Dr. Mark Ruthine, who was
+      fingering a pen and looking longingly towards the inkstand. The Captain&mdash;a
+      man of renowned discretion&mdash;quietly departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no more distrustful man than the simple gentleman of honour who
+      finds himself deceived and tricked. It is as if the bottom suddenly fell
+      out of his trust in all mankind, and there is nothing left but a mocking
+      void. Jem Agar lay on his mattress beneath the awning, and stared hard at
+      a bright star near the horizon. He was realising that life is, after all,
+      a sorry thing of chance, and that all his world might be hanging at that
+      moment on the word of an untrustworthy man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before morning he had determined to telegraph from Malta to Seymour
+      Michael to meet him at Plymouth on the arrival of the <i>Mahanaddy</i> at
+      that port.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI. BALANCING ACCOUNTS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      And yet God has not said a word.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      One fine morning in June the <i>Mahanaddy</i> steamed with stately
+      deliberation into the calm water inside Plymouth breakwater. Many writers
+      love to dwell with pathetic insistence on incidents of a departure; but
+      there is also pathos&mdash;perhaps deeper and truer because more subtle&mdash;in
+      the arrival of the homeward-board ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who can tell? There may have been others as anxious to look on the green
+      slopes of Mount Edgecumbe as the man with the mahogany-coloured face who
+      stood ever smoking&mdash;smoking&mdash;always at the forward starboard
+      corner of the hurricane deck. His story had not leaked out, because only
+      two men on board knew it&mdash;men with no conversational leaks whatever.
+      He had made no other friends. But many watched him half interestedly, and
+      perhaps a few divined the great calm impatience beneath the suppressed
+      quiet of his manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That man&mdash;Jem Agar&mdash;is dangerous,&rdquo; the Doctor had said to the
+      Captain more than once, and Mark Ruthine was not often egregiously
+      mistaken in such matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Um!&rdquo; replied the Captain of the <i>Mahanaddy</i>. &ldquo;There is an uncanny
+      calm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were talking about him now as the Captain&mdash;his own pilot for
+      Plymouth and the Channel&mdash;walked slowly backwards and forwards on the
+      bridge. It seemed quite natural for the Doctor to be sitting on the rail
+      by the engine-room telegraph. The passengers and the men were quite
+      accustomed to it. This friendship was a matter of history to the homeless
+      world of men and women who travelled east and west through the Suez Canal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has asked me,&rdquo; the Doctor was saying, &ldquo;to go ashore with him at
+      Plymouth; I don't know why. I imagine he is a little bit afraid of
+      wringing Seymour Michael's neck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as likely as not,&rdquo; observed the Captain. &ldquo;It would be a good thing
+      done, but don't let Agar do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I leave the ship at Plymouth?&rdquo; asked Mark Ruthine, with a quiet air
+      of obedience which seemed to be accepted with the gravity with which it
+      was offered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see why you should not,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;Everybody goes ashore
+      there except about half a dozen men, who certainly will not want your
+      services.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should rather like to do it. We come from the same part of the country,
+      and Agar seems anxious to have me. He is not a chap to say much, but I
+      imagine there will be some sort of a <i>denouement</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain was looking through a pair of glasses ahead, towards the
+      anchorage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he continued to attend to his business with that watchful care which
+      made the <i>Mahanaddy</i> one of the safest boats afloat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Mark Ruthine left the bridge and went to his cabin to pack. As
+      he descended he paused, and retracing his steps forward he went and
+      touched Jem Agar on the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'll go with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar nodded. He was gazing at the green English hills and far faint valley
+      of the Tamar with a curious gleam of excitement in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later they landed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You stick by me,&rdquo; said Jem Agar, when they discerned the small wiry form
+      of Seymour Michael awaiting them on the quay. &ldquo;I want you to hear
+      everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This man was, as Ruthine had said, dangerous. He was too calm. There was
+      something grand and terrifying in that white heat which burned in his eyes
+      and drove the blood from his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile, waving his hand in
+      greeting to Jem and to Ruthine, whom he knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem shook hands with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm all right, thanks,&rdquo; he said curtly, in answer to Seymour Michael's
+      inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business&mdash;good business,&rdquo; exclaimed the General, who seemed
+      somewhat unnecessarily excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Mark Ruthine too!&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;You look as fit as ever. Still
+      turning your thousands out of the British public&mdash;eh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Ruthine, &ldquo;thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just run ashore for half an hour, I suppose?&rdquo; continued Seymour Michael,
+      looking hurriedly out towards the <i>Mahanaddy</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Ruthine, &ldquo;I leave the ship here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small man glanced from the face of one to the other with something sly
+      and uneasy in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar had altered since he saw him last in the little tent far up on
+      the slopes of the Pamir. He was older and graver. There was also a wisdom
+      in his eyes&mdash;that steadfast wise look that comes to eyes which have
+      looked too often on death. Mark Ruthine he knew, and him he distrusted,
+      with that quiet keenness of observation which was his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he said eagerly to Jem, &ldquo;what I thought we might do was to have a
+      little breakfast and catch the eleven o'clock train up to town. If Ruthine
+      will join us, I for one shall be very pleased. He won't mind our talking
+      shop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine was attending to the luggage, which was being piled upon a
+      cab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you not had breakfast?&rdquo; asked Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I have had a little, but I don't mind a second edition. That waiter
+      chap at the hotel got me out of bed much too soon. However, it is worth
+      getting up the night before to see you back, old chap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there not an earlier train than the eleven o'clock?&rdquo; asked Agar,
+      looking at his watch. There was a singular constraint in his manner which
+      Seymour Michael could not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there is one at nine forty-five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let us go by that. We can get something at the station, if we want
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it a bottle of champagne to celebrate the return of the explorer,
+      and I am your man,&rdquo; said Michael heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it anything you like,&rdquo; answered Agar, in a gentler voice. He was
+      beginning to come under the influence of Seymour Michael's sweet voice,
+      and of that fascination which nearly all educated Jews unconsciously
+      exercise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and beckoned to Mark Ruthine, who presently joined them, after
+      paying the boatmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The nine forty-five is the train,&rdquo; he said to him. &ldquo;We may as well walk
+      up. The streets of Plymouth are not pleasant to drive through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the cab was sent on with the luggage, and the three men turned to the
+      slope that leads up to the Hoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was some sort of constraint over them, and they reached the summit
+      of the ascent without having exchanged a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they stood on the Hoe, where the old Eddystone lighthouse is now
+      erected, Seymour Michael turned and looked out over the bay where the
+      ships lay at anchor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The good old <i>Mahanaddy</i>,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the finest ship I have ever
+      sailed in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither man answered him, but they turned also and looked, standing one on
+      each side of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at last Jem Agar spoke, breaking a silence which had been brooding
+      since the <i>Mahanaddy</i> came out of the Canal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;exactly how things stand with my people at
+      home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued to look out over the bay towards the <i>Mahanaddy</i>, but
+      Mark Ruthine was looking at Seymour Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the General, &ldquo;I wanted to talk to you about that. That was
+      really my reason for proposing that we should wait till the second train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There cannot be much to say,&rdquo; said Jem Agar rather coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I wanted to tell you all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was what the Captain had called an uncanny calm in the voice.
+      General Michael did not answer, and Jem turned slowly towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presume,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I am right in taking it for granted that you
+      have carried out your share of the contract?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow, it has been perfectly wonderful. The secret has been kept
+      perfectly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By all concerned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&mdash;yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael was glancing furtively at Mark Ruthine, as the fox glances back
+      over his shoulder, not at the huntsman, but at the hounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you tell them personally, or did you write?&rdquo; pursued Jem Agar
+      relentlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; replied Michael, pulling out his watch, &ldquo;it is a long
+      story, and we must get to the train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Agar, in the calm voice which raised a sort of &ldquo;fearful joy&rdquo;
+       in Ruthine's soul, &ldquo;we need not be getting to the train yet, and there is
+      no reason for it to be a long story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael gave an uneasy little laugh, which met with no response
+      whatever. The two taller men exchanged a glance over his head. Up to that
+      moment Jem Agar had hoped for the best. He had a greater faith in human
+      nature than Mark Ruthine had managed to retain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you or have you not told those people whom you swore to me that you
+      would tell, out there, that night?&rdquo; asked Jem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told your brother,&rdquo; answered the General with dogged indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an ugly gleam in the blue eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't tell him not to tell the others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you suggested it to him,&rdquo; put in Mark Ruthine, with the knowledge of
+      mankind that was his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has it got to do with you, at any rate?&rdquo; snapped Seymour Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; replied Ruthine, looking across at Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did not tell Dora Glynde?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      General Michael shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Jem hoarsely. It was singular, that sudden hoarseness, and
+      the Doctor, whose business such things were, made a note of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't dare to do it. Why, man, it was too dangerous to tell a single
+      soul. If it had leaked out you would have been murdered up there as sure
+      as hell. There would have been plenty of men ready to do it for
+      half-a-crown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was <i>my</i> business,&rdquo; answered Jem coolly. &ldquo;You promised, you <i>swore</i>,
+      that you would tell Dora Glynde, my step-mother, and my brother Arthur.
+      And you didn't do it. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have given you my reasons&mdash;it was too dangerous. Besides, what
+      does it matter? It is all over now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Jem, &ldquo;not yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock struck nine at that moment; and from the harbour came the sound
+      of the ship's bells, high and clear, sounding the hour. The Hoe was quite
+      deserted; these three men were alone. A silence followed the ringing of
+      the bells, like the silence that precedes a verdict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jem Agar spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked Mark Buthine,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to come ashore with me, because I had
+      reason to suspect your good faith. I can't see now why you should have
+      done this, but I suppose that people who are born liars, as Ruthine says
+      you are, prefer lying to telling the truth. You are coming down now with
+      Ruthine and myself to Stagholme. I shall tell the whole story as it
+      happened, and then you will have to explain matters to the two ladies as
+      best you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden unreasoning terror took possession of Seymour Michael. He knew
+      that one of the ladies was Anna Agar, the woman who hated him almost as
+      much as he deserved. He was afraid of her; for it is one consolation to
+      the wronged to know that the wronger goes all through his life with a
+      dull, unquenchable fear upon his heart. But this was not sufficient, this
+      could not account for the mighty terror which clutched his soul at that
+      moment, and he knew it. He felt that this was something beyond that&mdash;something
+      which could not be reasoned away. It was a physical terror, one of those
+      emotions which seem to attack the body independently of the soul, a terror
+      striking the Man before it reaches the Mind. His limbs trembled; it was
+      only by an effort that he kept his teeth clenched to prevent them from
+      chattering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; said Jem Agar, &ldquo;if I find that any harm has been done&mdash;if any
+      one has suffered for this, I will give you the soundest thrashing you have
+      ever had in your life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both his hearers knew now who Dora Glynde was, what she was to him. He
+      neither added to their knowledge nor sought to mislead. He was not, as we
+      have said, <i>de ceux qui s'expliquent</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he added, and turning he led the way across the Hoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael followed quietly. He was cowed by the inward fear which
+      would not be allayed, and the judicial calmness of these two men paralysed
+      him. Once, in the train, he began explaining matters over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will hear all that at Stagholme,&rdquo; said Jem sternly, and Mark Ruthine
+      merely looked at him over the top of a newspaper which he was not reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII. AT BAY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      To thine own self be true; And it must follow as the night the day Thou
+      canst not then be false to any man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Human nature is, after all, a hopeless failure. Not even the very best
+      instinct is safe. It will probably be turned sooner or later to evil
+      account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The best instinct in Anna Agar was her maternal love, and upon this strong
+      rock she finally wrecked her barque. She was one of those women who hold
+      that, so long as the object is unselfish, the means used to obtain it
+      cannot well be evil. She did not say this in so many words, because she
+      was quite without principle, good or bad, and she invariably acted on
+      impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her impulse at this time was to turn as much of heaven and earth as came
+      under her influence to compel Dora to marry Arthur. That Arthur should be
+      unhappy, and should be allowed to continue in that common condition, was a
+      thought that she could not tolerate or allow. Something must be done, and
+      it was characteristic of the woman that that something should present
+      itself to her in the form of the handy and useful lie. In a strait we all
+      naturally turn to that accomplishment in which we consider ourselves most
+      proficient. The blusterer blusters; the profane man swears; the tearful
+      woman weeps&mdash;and weeping, by the way, is no mean accomplishment if it
+      be used at the right moment. Mrs. Agar naturally meditated on that form of
+      diplomacy which is sometimes called lying. The truth would not serve her
+      purpose (not that she had given it a fair trial), and therefore she would
+      forsake the straight path for that other one which hath many turnings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora absolutely refused to come to Stagholme while Arthur was there&mdash;a
+      delicacy of feeling, which, by the way, was quite incomprehensible to Mrs.
+      Agar. It was necessary for Arthur's happiness that he should see Dora
+      again and try the effect of another necktie and further eloquence.
+      Therefore, Dora must be made by subterfuge to see Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Dora,&rdquo; she wrote, &ldquo;it will be a great grief to me if this
+      unfortunate attachment of my poor boy's is allowed to interfere with the
+      affection which has existed between us since your infancy. Come, dear, and
+      see me to-morrow afternoon. I shall be quite alone, and the subject which,
+      of course, occupies the first place in my thoughts will, if you wish it,
+      be tabooed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your affectionate old Friend,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;ANNA AGAR.&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be quite easy,&rdquo; reflected this diplomatic lady as she folded the
+      letter&mdash;almost illegible on account of its impetuosity&mdash;&ldquo;for
+      Arthur to come back from East Burgen earlier than I expected him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest she left to chance, which was very kind but not quite necessary,
+      for chance had already taken possession of the rest, and was even at that
+      moment making her arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora read the letter in the garden beneath the laburnum-tree, where she
+      spent a large part of her life. Before reaching the end of the epistle she
+      had determined to go. She was a young person of spirit as well as of
+      discrimination, and in obedience to the urging of the former was quite
+      ready to show Mrs. Agar, and Arthur too, if need be, that she was not
+      afraid of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was distinctly conscious of the increasing power of her own strength
+      of purpose as she made this resolution, and as she walked across the park
+      the next afternoon her feeling was one very near akin to elation. It is
+      only the strong who mistrust their own power. Dora Glynde had always
+      looked upon herself as a somewhat weak and easily led person; she was
+      beginning to feel her own strength now and to rejoice in it. From the
+      first she half-suspected a trap of some sort. Such a subterfuge was
+      eminently characteristic of Mrs. Agar, and that lady's manner of welcoming
+      her only increased the suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mistress of Stagholme was positively crackling with an excitement
+      which even her best friend could not have called suppressed. There was no
+      suppression whatever about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So good of you,&rdquo; she panted, &ldquo;to come, Dora dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she searched madly for her pocket handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; replied Dora, very calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, dear,&rdquo; went on the lady of the house, &ldquo;are we going to talk
+      about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question was somewhat futile, for it was easy to see that she was not
+      in a condition to talk of anything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not,&rdquo; replied Dora. She had a way of using the word &ldquo;think&rdquo; when
+      she was positive. &ldquo;The question was raised the last time I saw you, and I
+      do not think that any good resulted from it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar's face dropped. In some ways she was a child still, and a
+      childish woman of fifty is as aggravating a creature as walks upon this
+      earth. Dora remembered every word of the interview referred to, while Mrs.
+      Agar had almost forgotten it. It is to the common-minded that common
+      proverbs and sayings of the people apply. Hard words had not the power of
+      breaking anything in Mrs. Agar's being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;<i>I</i> don't wish to talk about it, if you
+      don't. It is most painful to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had dragged forward a second chair, only separated from that occupied
+      by Dora by the tea-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur,&rdquo; she said, with a lamentable assumption of cheerfulness, &ldquo;has
+      driven over to East Burgen to get some things I wanted. He will not be
+      back for ever so long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reflected that he was overdue at that moment, and that the butler had
+      orders to send him to the library as soon as he returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sorry to hear,&rdquo; said Dora, quite naturally, &ldquo;that he had not passed
+      his examination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar glanced at her cunningly; she was always looking for second
+      meanings in the most innocent remarks, hardly guilty of an original
+      meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the door leading through a smaller library into the
+      dining-room opened and Arthur came quietly in. He changed colour and
+      hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he remembered that before all
+      things a gentleman must be a gentleman. He came forward and held out his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do?&rdquo; he said, and for a moment he was quite dignified. &ldquo;I am
+      glad to see you here with mother. I did not know that I was going to
+      interrupt a <i>téte-à-téte</i>, tea. No tea, thanks, mother; no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you brought the things I wanted? You are earlier than I expected,&rdquo;
+       blurted out the lady of the house unskillfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have brought them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must go and see if they are right,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, rising, and before
+      he could stop her she passed out of the door by which he had entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment there was an awkward silence, then Dora spoke&mdash;after the
+      door had been reluctantly closed from without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that this was done on purpose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by me, Dora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She merely bowed her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you believe me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to sip her tea, and he actually handed her a plate of
+      biscuits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it still No?&rdquo; he asked abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps her fresh youthful beauty moved him, perhaps it was merely
+      opposition that raised his love suddenly to the dignity of a passion that
+      made him for once forget himself, his clothes, his personal appearance,
+      and the gentlemanly modulation of his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he was almost a man. He almost touched the height of a man's
+      ascendency over woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may say No now,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;but I shall have you yet. Some day you
+      will say Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then for the first time that Dora realised that this man did
+      actually love her according to his lights. But never for an instant did
+      she admit in her own mind the possibility of succumbing to Arthur's will.
+      It is not by words that men command women. They must first command their
+      respect, and that is never gained by words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was conscious of a feeling of sudden, unspeakable pain. Arthur had
+      only succeeded in convincing her that she could have submitted to a man's
+      will, wholly and without reserve; but not to the will of Arthur Agar. He
+      had only showed her that such a submission would in itself have been a
+      greater happiness than she had ever tasted. But she knew at once that only
+      one man ever had, ever could have had, the power of exacting such
+      submission; and he commanded it, not by word of mouth (for he never seemed
+      to ask it), but by something strong and just and good within himself,
+      before which her whole being bowed down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We never know how we appear in the eyes of our neighbours, friends or
+      lovers. Arthur was at that moment in Dora's eyes a mere sham, aping
+      something he could never attain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had seized her two hands in his nervous and delicate fingers, from
+      which she easily withdrew them. The action was natural enough, strong
+      enough. But he completely spoiled the effect by the words he spoke in his
+      thin tenor voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Arthur,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;No, Arthur; since you mention the future, I may
+      as well tell you <i>now</i> that my answer will never be anything but No.
+      At one time I thought that it might be different. I told my mother that
+      possibly, after a great many years, I might think otherwise; but I retract
+      that. I shall never think otherwise. And if you imagine that you can force
+      me to do so, please lay aside that hope at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there is some one else!&rdquo; cried Arthur, with an apparent irrelevance.
+      &ldquo;I know there is some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora seemed to be reflecting. She looked over his head, out of the window,
+      where the fleecy summer clouds floated idly over the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned and looked deliberately at the door by which Mrs. Agar had
+      disappeared. It was standing ajar. Then again she reflected, weighing
+      something in her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied half-dreamily at length. &ldquo;I think you have a right to
+      know&mdash;there is some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was,&rdquo; corrected Arthur, with the womanly intuition which was given to him
+      with other womanly traits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was and is,&rdquo; replied Dora quietly. &ldquo;His being dead makes no difference so
+      far as you are concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it <i>was</i> Jem! I was sure it was Jem,&rdquo; said a third voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the excitement of the moment Mrs. Agar forgot that when ladies and
+      gentlemen stoop to eavesdropping they generally retire discreetly and
+      return after a few moments, humming a tune, hymns preferred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew that you were there,&rdquo; said Dora, with a calmness which was not
+      pleasant to the ear. &ldquo;I saw your black dress through the crack of the
+      door. You did not stand quite still, which was a pity, because the
+      sunlight was on the floor behind you. I was not surprised; it was worthy
+      of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take God to witness,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;that I only heard the last
+      words as I came back into the room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't,&rdquo; said Dora, &ldquo;that is blasphemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;will you hear your mother called names?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not wrangle,&rdquo; said Dora, rising with something very like a smile
+      on her face. &ldquo;Yes, if you want to know, it <i>was</i> Jem. I have only his
+      memory, but still I can be faithful to that. I don't care if all the world
+      knows; that is why I told <i>you</i> behind the door. I am not ashamed of
+      it. I always did care for Jem.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause, for mother and son had nothing to answer. Dora
+      turned to take her gloves, which she had laid on a side table, and as she
+      did so the other door opened, the principal door leading to the hall.
+      Moreover, it was opened without the menial pause, and they all turned in
+      surprise, knowing that there were only servants in the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the doorway stood Jem, brown-faced, lean, and anxious-looking. There
+      was something wolf-like in his face, with the fierce blue eyes shining
+      from beneath dark lashes, the fair moustache pushed forward by set lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind him the keen face of Seymour Michael peered nervously, restlessly
+      from side to side. He was distinctly suggestive of a rat in a trap. And
+      beyond him, in the gloom of the old arras-hung hall, a third man,
+      seemingly standing guard over Seymour Michael, for he was not looking into
+      the room but watching every movement made by the General&mdash;tall man,
+      dark, upright, with a silent, clean-shaven face, a total stranger to them
+      all. But his manner was not that of a stranger, he seemed to have
+      something to do there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LAST LINK
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A thing hereditary in the race comes unawares.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Jem came straight into the room, and there seemed to be no one in it for
+      him but Dora. She went to meet him with outstretched hand, and her eyes
+      were answering the questions that she read in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took her hand and he said no word, but suddenly all the misery of the
+      last year slipped back, as it were, into a dream. She could not define her
+      thoughts then, and they left no memory to recall afterwards. She seemed to
+      forget that this man had been dead and was living, she only knew that her
+      hand was within his. Jem looked round to the others present, his attitude
+      a judgment in itself, his face, in its fierce repose, a verdict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine had gently pushed Seymour Michael into the room and was
+      closing the door behind them. Mrs. Agar did not see the General, who was
+      half-concealed by his junior officer. She could not take her eyes from
+      Jem's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is fortunate,&rdquo; he said; and the sound of his voice was music in
+      Dora's ears. &ldquo;This is fortunate, every one seems to be here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused for a moment, as if at a loss, and drew his brown hand down over
+      his moustache. Perhaps he felt remotely that his position was strong and
+      almost dramatic; but that, being a simple, honest Englishman, he was
+      unable to turn it to account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood behind, uncomfortably
+      conscious of Mark Ruthine at his heels. It was not in Jem to make an
+      effective scene. Englishmen are so. We do not make our lives superficially
+      picturesque by apostrophising the shade of a dead mother. Jem gave way to
+      the natural instinct of a soldier by nature and training. A clear
+      statement of the facts, and a short, sharp judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This man,&rdquo; he said, laying his hand on the General's shoulder, and
+      bringing him forward, &ldquo;has been brought here by us to explain something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      White-lipped, breathless, in a ghastly silence Anna Agar and Seymour
+      Michael stared at each other over the dainty tea-table, across a gulf of
+      misused years, through the tangle of two unfaithful lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jem Agar began his story, addressing himself to Dora, then, and until
+      the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not with Stevenor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when his force was surprised and
+      annihilated. I had been sent on through an enemy's country into a position
+      which no man had the right to ask another to hold with the force allowed
+      me. This man sent me. All his life has he been seeking glory at the risk
+      of other men's lives. After the disaster he came to me and relieved my
+      little force; but he proposed to me a scheme of exploration, which I have
+      carried through. But even now I shall not get the credit; <i>he</i> will
+      have that. It was a low, scurrilous thing to do; for he was my commanding
+      officer, and I could not say No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave you the option,&rdquo; blurted out Michael sullenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem took no notice of the interruption, which only had the effect of
+      making Mark Ruthine move up a few paces nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He made a great point of secrecy,&rdquo; continued Agar, &ldquo;which at the time I
+      thought to be for my safety. But now I see otherwise; Ruthine has pointed
+      it out to me. If I had never come back he would have said nothing, and
+      would thus have escaped the odium of having sent a man to certain death. I
+      only made one condition&mdash;namely, that three persons should be
+      informed at once of my survival, after the disaster to Stevenor's force.
+      Those three persons were my brother Arthur, my step-mother, and Miss
+      Glynde.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused for a moment, and Dora's clear, low voice took up the narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I met General Michael,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;in London, some months ago. I met him
+      more than once. He knew quite well who I was, and he never told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus was the first link of the chain riveted. Seymour Michael winced. He
+      never raised his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine moved forward again. He did so with a singular rapidity, for
+      he had seen murder flash from beneath Jem Agar's eyebrows. He was standing
+      between them, his left hand gripping Jem's right arm with an undeniable
+      strength. Dora, looking at them, suddenly felt the tears well to her eyes.
+      There was something that melted her heart strangely in the sight of those
+      two men&mdash;friends&mdash;standing side by side; and at that moment her
+      affection went out towards Mark Ruthine, the friend of Jem, who understood
+      Jem, who knew Jem and loved him, perhaps, a thousandth part as well as she
+      did; an affection which was never withdrawn all through their lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Ruthine's voice that broke the silence, giving Jem time to master
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is to his credit,&rdquo; he said, also addressing Dora, &ldquo;that for very shame
+      he did not dare to tell you that he had sent Agar on a mission which was
+      as unnecessary as it was dangerous. When he sent him he must have known
+      that it was almost a sentence of death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jem spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as I got back to civilisation,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I wrote to him as
+      arranged, and I enclosed letters to&mdash;the three persons who were
+      admitted into the secret. Those letters have, of course, never reached
+      their destination. General Michael will be required to explain that also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Arthur Agar gave a strange little cackling laugh, which
+      drew the general attention towards him. He was looking at his
+      half-brother, with a glitter in his usually soft and peaceful eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are a good many things which he will have to explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Jem. &ldquo;That is why we have brought him here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It fell to Arthur Agar's lot to forge the second link.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When,&rdquo; he asked Jem, &ldquo;did he know that you had got back to safety and
+      civilisation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two months ago, by telegram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The half-brothers turned with one accord towards Seymour Michael, who
+      stood trying to conceal the quiver of his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He promised,&rdquo; said Arthur Agar, &ldquo;to tell me at once when he received news
+      of your safety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was singular that Seymour Michael should give way at that moment to a
+      little shrinking movement of fear&mdash;back and away, not from Jem, who
+      towered huge and powerful above him, but from the frail and delicate
+      younger brother. Mark Ruthine, who was standing behind, saw the movement
+      and wondered at it. For it would appear that, of all his judges, Seymour
+      Michael feared the weakest most.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the second link was welded on to the first, while only Anna Agar
+      knew the motive that had prompted Michael to suppress the news. She
+      divined that it was spite towards herself, and for once in her life, with
+      that intuition which only comes at supreme moments, she had the wisdom to
+      bide her time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at last Seymour Michael spoke. He did not raise his eyes, but his
+      words were evidently addressed to Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I acted,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;as I thought best. Secrecy was necessary for Agar's
+      safety. I knew that if I told you too much you would tell your mother, and&mdash;I
+      know your mother better than either you or Jem Agar know her. She is not
+      fit to be trusted with the most trifling secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, you were quite wrong,&rdquo; burst out Mrs. Agar, with a
+      derisive laugh. &ldquo;For I knew it all along. Arthur told me at the first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice came as a shock to them all. It was harsh and common, the voice
+      of the street-wrangler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; cried Seymour Michael, as sharp as fate, &ldquo;why did you not tell
+      Miss Glynde?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his arm, pointing one lean dark finger into her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; he hissed, &ldquo;that the boy would tell you. I counted on it. Why
+      did you not tell Miss Glynde? Come! Tell us why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine's face was a study. It was the face of a very keen sportsman
+      at the corner of a &ldquo;drive.&rdquo; In every word he saw twice as much as simple
+      Jem Agar ever suspected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Agar, wavering, &ldquo;because I thought it better not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Dora said, &ldquo;you kept it from me because you wanted me to marry
+      Arthur. And you thought that I should do so because he was master of
+      Stagholme. You wanted to trick me into marrying Arthur before&rdquo;&mdash;she
+      hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;before&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before I came back,&rdquo; added Jem imperturbably. &ldquo;That was it, that was it!&rdquo;
+       cried Seymour Michael, grasping at the straw which might serve to turn the
+      current aside from himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the attempt failed. No one took any notice of it. Jem was looking at
+      Dora, and she was looking anywhere except at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Jem who spoke, with the decisiveness of the president of a
+      court-martial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will come afterwards,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And now, perhaps,&rdquo; he went on,
+      turning towards Seymour, &ldquo;you will kindly explain why you broke your word
+      to me. Explain it to these l&mdash;&mdash; [sic.] to Miss Glynde.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what is the good of making all this fuss about it now?&rdquo; he
+      explained. &ldquo;It has all come right. I acted as I thought best. That is all
+      the explanation I have to offer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you not do better than that?&rdquo; inquired Jem, with a dangerous suavity.
+      &ldquo;You had better try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was looking at Jem now, appealingly. She knew that tone of voice, and
+      feared it. She alone suspected the anger that was hidden behind so calm an
+      exterior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael preserved a dogged silence, glancing from side to side
+      beneath his lowered lashes. He had not forgotten Jem's threat, but he felt
+      the safeguard of a lady's presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can offer an explanation,&rdquo; put in Mark Ruthine. &ldquo;This man is mentally
+      incapable of telling the truth and of doing the straight thing. There are
+      some people who are born liars. This man is one. It is not quite fair to
+      judge him as one would judge others. I have known him for years, have
+      watched him, have studied him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All eyes turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood half-cringing,
+      trembling with fear and hatred towards his relentless judges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Years ago,&rdquo; pursued Ruthine, &ldquo;at the outset of life, he committed a
+      wanton crime. He did a wrong to a poor innocent woman, whose only fault
+      was to love him beyond his deserts. He was engaged to be married to her,
+      and meeting a richer woman he had not the courage to ask to be released
+      from his engagement. It happened that by a mistake he was gazetted 'dead'
+      at the time of the Mutiny. He never contradicted the mistake&mdash;that
+      was how he got out of his engagement. He played the same trick with Jem
+      Agar's name. I recognised it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the last link of the chain was forged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So did I,&rdquo; said Anna Agar. &ldquo;I was the woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the words were well out of her mouth Mark Ruthine's voice was
+      raised in an alarmed shout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Hold that man; he is mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one had been noticing Arthur Agar&mdash;no one except Seymour Michael,
+      who had never taken his eyes from his face during Ruthine's narration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a groan, unlike a human sound at all, Arthur Agar had rushed forward
+      when his mother spoke, and for a few seconds there was a wild confusion in
+      the room, while Seymour Michael, white with dread, fled before his doom.
+      In and out among the people and the furniture, shouting for help, he leapt
+      and struggled. Then there came a crash. Seymour Michael had broken through
+      the window, smashing the glass, with his arms doubled over his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A second later Arthur wrenched open the sash and gave chase across the
+      lawn. In the confusion some moments elapsed before the two heavier men
+      followed him over the smooth turf, and the ladies from the window saw
+      Arthur Agar kneeling over Seymour Michael on the stone terrace at the end
+      of the lawn. They heard with cruel distinctness the sharp crackling crash
+      of the Jew's head upon the stone flags, as Arthur shook him as a terrier
+      shakes a rat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instinctively they followed, and as they came up to the group where
+      Ruthine was kneeling over Seymour Michael, while Jem dragged Arthur away,
+      they heard the Doctor say&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Agar, get the ladies away. This man is dead. Look sharp, man! They
+      mustn't see this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Jem barred their way with one hand, while he held his half-brother
+      with the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX. SETTLED
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      For love in sequel works with fate.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The four walked back to the library together. Mrs. Agar looked back over
+      her shoulder at every other footstep. She took no notice of her son. Her
+      affection for him seemed suddenly to have been absorbed and lost in some
+      other emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem was half supporting, half carrying Arthur, whose eyes were like those
+      of a dead man, while his lips were parted in a vacant, senseless way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already Ruthine could be heard giving his orders to the gardeners and
+      other servants who had gathered round him in a wonderfully short space of
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora passed into the library first, treading carefully over the broken
+      glass, and Mrs. Agar followed her without appearing to notice the sound of
+      breakage beneath her feet. No one had spoken a word since Mark Ruthine had
+      told them that Seymour Michael was dead. There are some situations in life
+      wherein we suddenly realise what an inadequate thing human speech is.
+      There are some things that others know which we have never told them, and
+      would ever be unable to tell them. There are some feelings within us for
+      which no language can find expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was simply stupefied. When God does mete out punishment here on
+      earth, He does so with an overflowing measure. This devoted mother did not
+      even evince anxiety as to the welfare of her son, for whose sake she had
+      made so many blunders, so many futile plots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem brought Arthur into the room, and led him to an arm-chair. There was
+      that steady masterfulness in his manner which comes to those who have
+      looked on death in many forms and whom nothing can dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered no unnecessary assistance or advice, did not fussily loosen
+      Arthur's necktie, or perform any of those small inappropriate offices
+      which some would have deemed necessary under the circumstances. He knew
+      quite well that this was no matter of a necktie or a collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar seated herself on a sofa opposite, and slowly swayed her body
+      backwards and forwards. She was one of those persons who can never
+      separate mental anguish from physical pain. They have but one way of
+      expressing both, and possibly of feeling both. Her hands were clasped on
+      her lap, her head on one side, her lips drawn back as if in agony. She
+      even went so far as to breathe laboriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus they remained; Jem watching Arthur, Dora watching Jem, who seemed to
+      ignore her presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mrs. Agar who spoke first, angrily and bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the good of standing there?&rdquo; she said to Jem. &ldquo;Can't you find
+      something more useful to do than that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem looked at her, first with surprise and then with something very nearly
+      approaching contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am waiting,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;for Ruthine. He is a doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who wants a doctor now? What is the good of a doctor now&mdash;now that
+      Seymour is dead? I don't know what he is doing here, at any rate,
+      meddling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur wants a doctor,&rdquo; replied Jem. &ldquo;Can you not see that he is in a
+      sort of trance? He hears and sees nothing. He is quite unconscious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar seemed only half to understand. She stared at her son, swaying
+      backwards and forwards in imbecile misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear! oh dear!&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;what have we done to deserve this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few seconds she repeated the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have we done to deserve this? What have we done ...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice died away into a whisper, and when that became inaudible her
+      lips went on moving, still framing the same words over and over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this manner they waited, with that dull senselessness to the flight of
+      time which follows on a great shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all heard the clatter of horses' feet on the gravel of the avenue,
+      and probably they all divined that Mark Ruthine had sent for medical help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Dora the sound brought a sudden boundless sense of relief. Amidst this
+      mental confusion it came as a practical common-sense proof that the
+      tension of the last year was over. The burden of her own life was by it
+      lifted from her shoulders; for Jem was here, and nothing could matter very
+      much now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Ruthine came into the room. As he went towards Arthur he glanced
+      at Dora and then at Mrs. Agar, but the young fellow was evidently his
+      first care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was kneeling by the low chair examining Arthur's eyes and face,
+      Mrs. Agar suddenly rose and crossed the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he dead?&rdquo; she said abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; inquired Mark Ruthine, without looking round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seymour Michael.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Arthur killed him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this while Arthur was lying back in the chair, white and lifeless. His
+      eyes were open, he breathed regularly, but he heard nothing that was said,
+      nor saw anything before his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;that was a murder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was looking out of the window, towards the stone terrace, already
+      conscious that the scene that she had witnessed there would never be
+      effaced from her memory while she had life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a little pause Mark Ruthine spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;it was not that. Your son was not responsible for his
+      actions when he did it. I think I can prove that. I do not yet know what
+      it was. It was very singular. I think it was some sort of mental
+      aberration&mdash;temporary, I hope, and think. We will see when he
+      recovers himself&mdash;when the circulation is restored.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he spoke he continued to examine his patient. He spoke in his
+      natural tone, without attempting to lower his voice, for he knew that
+      Arthur Agar had no comprehension of things terrestrial at that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;the action of a sane man. Besides, he could not
+      have done it. In his right mind he could not have killed Seymour Michael,
+      who was a strong man. As it is, I think that there was some sort of
+      paralysis in Seymour Michael&mdash;a paralysis of fear. He seemed too
+      frightened to attempt to defend himself. Besides, why should your son do
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was born hating him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine slowly turned, still upon his knees. He rose, and in his dark
+      face there was that strange eagerness again, like the eagerness of a
+      sportsman approaching some unknown quarry in the jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, Mrs. Agar?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that he was born with a hatred for that man stronger than anything
+      that was in him. His soul was given to him full of hate for Seymour
+      Michael. Such things are when a woman bears a child in the midst of great
+      passion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mark Ruthine, &ldquo;I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The night he was born,&rdquo; Mrs. Agar went on, &ldquo;I first saw and spoke to that
+      man after he had come back from India&mdash;after I had learnt what he had
+      done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruthine turned round towards Jem and Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear that,&rdquo; he said to them. &ldquo;This is not the story of a mother
+      trumped up in court to save her son. It is the truth. There are some
+      things which we do not understand even yet. Don't forget what you have
+      heard. It will come in usefully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Mrs. Agar again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he know the story?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never heard it until you told it just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you swear to that, Mrs. Agar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Ruthine, &ldquo;he does not know now that you are the woman whom
+      Seymour Michael wronged. He need never know it. The paroxysm had come on
+      before you spoke&mdash;that was why I shouted. He was mad with hate,
+      before you opened your lips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was now beginning to realise what was at stake. The mother's
+      love was re-awakening. The old cunning look came into her eyes, and her
+      quick, truthless mind was evidently on the alert. There was something
+      animal-like in Mrs. Agar; but she was of the lower order of animal, that
+      seeks to defend its young by cunning and not by sheer bravery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruthine must have guessed at something, for he said at once:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember what you have told me. You will have to repeat that exactly. Add
+      nothing to it, take nothing from it, or you will spoil it. Tell me, has
+      your son seen this man more than once?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, only once; at Cambridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; I think I shall be able to prove it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he went towards the writing-table and, sitting down, he wrote
+      out a prescription. Dora followed him and held out her hand for the paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send for that at once, please,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he beckoned to Jem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have sent for the local doctor,&rdquo; he said to him. &ldquo;But I should advise
+      having some one else&mdash;Llandoller from Harley Street. This is far
+      above our heads.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Telegraph for him,&rdquo; answered Jem Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Ruthine wrote he went on speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must get him upstairs at once,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I should like to have him in
+      bed before the doctor comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to the bell, rung a second time, the servant came, looking white
+      and scared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Show Dr. Ruthine Mr. Arthur's room,&rdquo; said Jem; and Ruthine took Arthur up
+      in his arms like a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had gone there was a silence. Mrs. Agar made no attempt to
+      follow. She sat down again on the sofa, swaying backwards and forwards.
+      Perhaps she was dimly aware that there remained something still to be
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar crossed the room and stood in front of her. Dora, from the
+      background, was pleading with her eyes for this woman. There were the
+      makings of a very hard man in James Edward Makerstone Agar, and seven
+      years of the grimmest soldiering of modern days had done nothing to soften
+      him. He was strictly just; but it is not justice that women want. To all
+      men there comes a time when they recognise the fact that all their time
+      and all their energies are required for the taking care of <i>one</i>
+      woman, and that all the rest must take care of themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may stay,&rdquo; he said to his step-mother, &ldquo;until Arthur is removed from
+      this house&mdash;but no longer. I shall never pretend to forgive you, and
+      I never want to see you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar made no answer, nor did she look up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go,&rdquo; said Jem, with a little jerk of his head towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly she rose, and without looking at either of them she passed out of
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, at last, they were left alone in the quiet library where they had
+      played together as children, where the happiest moments of his life and
+      the most miserable of hers had been lived through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora did not seem to know quite what to do. She was standing by the
+      writing-table, with one hand resting on it, facing him, but not looking at
+      him. She suddenly felt unable to do that&mdash;felt at a loss, abashed,
+      unequal to the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jem seemed to have no hesitation. He was quite natural and very
+      deliberate. He seemed to know quite well what to do. He closed the door
+      behind Mrs. Agar, and then he came across the room and took Dora in his
+      arms, as if there were no question about it. He said nothing. After all,
+      there was nothing to be said.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE END
+    </h3>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of From One Generation to Another, by
+Henry Seton Merriman
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+</pre>
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+  </body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's From One Generation to Another, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: From One Generation to Another
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8805]
+This file was first posted on August 10, 2003
+Last Updated: May 4, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
+
+
+By Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I. THE SEED
+
+    II. SUBURBAN
+
+   III. MERCURY
+
+    IV. FREIGHTED
+
+     V. AFTER NINETEEN YEARS
+
+    VI. FOR HIS COUNTRY
+
+   VII. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
+
+  VIII. RELIEVED
+
+    IX. RE-CAST
+
+     X. A LAST THROW
+
+    XI. A CARPET KNIGHT
+
+   XII. BAD NEWS
+
+  XIII. ON THIN ICE
+
+   XIV. THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION
+
+    XV. THE TOUCH OF NATURE
+
+   XVI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY
+
+  XVII. TWO MOTIVES
+
+ XVIII. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA
+
+   XIX. AT HURLINGHAM
+
+    XX. IN A SIDE PATH
+
+   XXI. ALONE
+
+  XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS
+
+ XXIII. AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW
+
+  XXIV. A STAB IN THE DARK
+
+   XXV. FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH
+
+  XXVI. BALANCING ACCOUNTS
+
+ XXVII. AT BAY
+
+XXVIII. THE LAST LINK
+
+  XXIX. SETTLED
+
+
+
+
+FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SEED
+
+Il faut se garder des premiers mouvements, parce qu'ils sont presque
+toujours honnetes.
+
+
+"Dearest Anna,--I see from the newspaper before me of March 13, that I am
+reported dead. Before attempting to investigate the origin of this
+mistake, I hasten to write to you, knowing, dearest, what a shock this
+must have been to you. It is true that I was in the Makar Akool affair,
+and was slightly wounded--a mere scratch in the arm--but nothing more. I
+have not written to you for some months past because I have been turning
+something over in my mind. Anna, dearest, there is no chance of my being
+in a position to marry for some years yet, and I feel it incumbent upon
+me ..."
+
+This letter, half written, lay on a camp table before a keen-faced young
+officer. He ceased writing suddenly, and, leaping to his feet, walked to
+the door of his bungalow, which was open to the four winds of heaven. In
+doing this he passed from the range of the lazy punkah flapping
+somnolently over table and bed. It may have been this sudden change to
+hotter air that caused him to raise his hand to his forehead, which was
+high and strangely rounded.
+
+"By George!" he said, "suppose I do it that way!"
+
+He walked rapidly backwards and forwards with the lithe actions of a man
+of steel, a light weight, of medium height, keen and quick as a monkey.
+His black eyes flitted from one object to another with such restlessness
+that it was impossible to say whether he comprehended what he saw or
+merely looked at things from force of habit.
+
+He was dark of hair with a sallow complexion and a long drooping
+nose--the nose of Semitic ancestors. A small mouth, and the chin
+running almost to a point. A face full of interest, devoid of distinct
+vice--heartless. Here was a man with a future before him--a man whose
+vices were all negative, whose virtues depended entirely upon expediency.
+Here was a man who could be almost anything he liked; as some men can. If
+expediency prompted he could be a very depot of virtues; for his body,
+with all the warmer failings of that part of humanity, was in perfect
+control. On the other hand, there was no love of good for goodness'
+sake--no conscience behind the subtle eyes. All this, and more, was
+written in the face of Seymour Michael, whose handwriting had dried some
+moments before on the half-filled sheet of letter-paper.
+
+He returned and stood at the table with slightly bowed legs--not the
+result of much riding, although he wore top-boots and breeches as if of
+daily habit--but a racial defect handed down like the nasal brand from
+remote progenitors. He looked at letter and newspaper as they lay side by
+side--not with the doubtfulness of warfare between conscience and
+temptation, but with a calculating thoughtfulness. He was not wondering
+what was best to do, but what the most expedient.
+
+Those were troublesome times in India, for the Mutiny was not quelled,
+and each mail took home a list of killed, slowly compiled from news that
+dribbled in from outlying stations, forts, and towns. Those were days
+when men's lives were made or lost in the Eastern Empire, for it seems to
+be in Fortune's balance that great danger weighs against great gain. No
+large wealth has ever been acquired without proportionate risk of life or
+happiness. To the tame and timorous city clerk comes small remuneration
+and a nameless grave, while to more adventurous spirits larger stakes
+bring vaster rewards. The clerk, pure and simple, has, within these later
+years, found his way to India, sitting side by side with the Baboo, and
+consequently it is as easy to make a fortune in London as in Calcutta and
+Madras. The clerk has carried his sordid civilisation and his love of
+personal safety with him, sapping at the glorious uncertainty from which
+the earlier pioneers of a hardier commerce wrested quick-founded
+fortunes.
+
+Seymour Michael had come into all this with the red coat of a soldier and
+the keen, ambitious heart of a Jew, at the very nick of time. He saw at
+once the enormous possibilities hidden in the near future for a man who
+took this country at its proper value, handling what he secured with
+coolness and foresight. He know that he only possessed one thing to risk,
+namely, his life; and true to his racial instinct, he valued this very
+highly, looking for an extortionate usury on his stake.
+
+At this moment he was like Aladdin in the cave of jewels: he did not know
+which way to turn, which treasure to seize first.
+
+Anna--dearest Anna--to whom this half-completed letter was addressed, was
+a person for whom he had not the slightest affection. At the outset of
+his career he had paused, decided in haste, and had resolved to make use
+of the passing opportunity. Anna Hethbridge had therefore been annexed
+_en passant_. In person she was youthful and rather handsome--her fortune
+was extremely handsome. So Seymour Michael went out to India engaged to
+be married to this girl who was unfortunate enough to love him.
+
+In India two things happened. Firstly, Seymour Michael met a second young
+lady with a fortune twice as large as that of Miss Anna Hethbridge.
+Secondly, the Mutiny broke out, and India lay before the ambitious young
+officer a very land of Ophir. He promptly decided to cut the first string
+of his bow. Anna Hethbridge was now useless--nay, more, she was a
+burthen. Hence the letter which lay half-written on the table of his
+bungalow.
+
+He paused before this wrong to a blameless woman, and contemplated the
+perpetration of a greater. He weighed pro and con--carefully withholding
+from the balance the casting weight of Right against Wrong. Then he took
+up the letter and slowly tore it to small pieces. He had decided to leave
+the report of his death uncontradicted. It was morally certain that five
+weeks before that day Anna Hethbridge had read the news in the printed
+column lying before him. He resolved to leave her in ignorance of its
+falseness. Seymour Michael was not, however, a selfish man. All that he
+did at this time, and later in life--all the lives that he ruined--the
+hearts he broke--the men he sacrificed were not offered upon the altar of
+Self (though the distinction may appear subtle), but sold to his career.
+Career was this man's god. He wanted to be great, and rich, and powerful;
+and yet he was conscious of having no definite use for greatness, or
+riches, or power when acquired.
+
+Here again was the taint of the blood that ran in his veins. The curse
+had reached him--in addition to the long, sad nose and the bandy legs.
+The sense of enjoyment was never to be his. The greed of gain--gain of
+any sort--filled his heart, and _ennui_ secretly nestling in his soul
+said: "Thou shalt possess, but not enjoy."
+
+He was conscious of this voice, but did not understand it then. He only
+burned to possess; looking to possession to provide enjoyment. In this he
+was not quite alone--with him in his error are all men and women. And so
+we talk of Love coming after marriage--and so women marry without Love,
+believing that it will follow. God help them! That which comes afterwards
+is not even the ghost of Love, it is only Custom. This was the spirit of
+Seymour Michael. He had already acquired one or two objects of a vague
+ambition; and, possessing them, had only learnt to be accustomed to
+them--not to value them.
+
+There was no elation in the thought that he was freed from the
+encumbrance of Anna Hethbridge by a chance misprint. Neither was there
+hesitation in turning accident ruthlessly to his own advantage. There was
+only a steady pressing forward--an unceasing, unwearying attention to his
+own gain.
+
+In those days news travelled slowly, and the personal had not yet taken
+precedence in journalism. In the anxiety for the State, the Individual
+was apt to be overlooked. Seymour Michael counted on six months of
+oblivion at the least--he hoped for more, but with characteristic caution
+acted always in anticipation of the worst.
+
+He had scarcely thrown the newspaper aside when a comrade entered the
+bungalow carrying another copy of the same journal.
+
+"I say, Michael," exclaimed this man, "do you see that you're put in
+among the killed?"
+
+"Yes," replied Seymour Michael, without haste, without hesitation. "I
+have already written to contradict it. Not that there is any one to care
+whether I am dead or alive. But it might do me harm in Leadenhall Street.
+I can't afford to be dead even for a week when so much promotion is going
+forward."
+
+This was artistic. Most of us forget to preserve our own characteristics
+in diverging from the truth. The tangled web is only woven when _first_
+we practise to deceive. Later on the facility is greater, the handling
+superior, and the web runs smooth and straight. Seymour Michael was
+apparently no novice at this sort of thing. He was even at that moment
+making mental note of the fact that up-country mails were in a state of
+disorganisation, and a letter which was never written may easily be made
+to have miscarried later on.
+
+But even he could not foresee everything--no one can. Not even the
+righteous man, much less the liar.
+
+"Do you mean to say," pursued the newcomer, "that you are not writing to
+your family about it--only to the Company?"
+
+"That is all."
+
+"Rum chap you are, Michael," said the other, lighting a cheroot.
+"Heartless beggar I take it."
+
+"Not at all. The simple fact is that I have no one to write to. I only
+possess one or two distant relatives, and they would probably be rather
+sorry than otherwise to have the report contradicted."
+
+The younger officer--a mere boy--with a beardless, happy face, walked to
+the door of the bungalow.
+
+"Of course there is always this in it," he said carelessly. "By the time
+the contradiction reaches home the news may be true."
+
+Seymour Michael laughed lamely. A joke of this description made him feel
+rather sick, for a Jew never makes a soldier or a sailor, and they are
+rarely found in those positions unless great gain is holden up.
+
+With this pleasantry the youth departed, leaving Michael to write the
+letter which he had advised as written. As he drew the writing materials
+towards him he cursed his brother officer quietly and politely for a
+meddling young fool. He wrote a formal letter to the Company--the
+old East India Company which administered an empire with ledger and
+daybook--calling their attention to the mistake in the newspaper, and
+begging them not to trouble to give the matter publicity, as he had
+already advised his friends.
+
+This done, he proceeded with the ordinary routine of his daily life. Such
+men as this are case-hardened. They carry with them a conscience like the
+floor of an Augean stable, but they know how to walk thereon. Moreover,
+he was one of those who assign to their dealings with men quite a
+different code of morals to that reserved for women. His was the code of
+"not being found out." Men are more suspicious--they find out sooner:
+_ergo_ the morals to be observed _vis a vis_ to them are of a stricter
+order. Railway companies and women are by many looked upon as fair game
+for deception. Consciences tender in many other respects have a subtle
+contempt for these two exceptions. Many a so-called honest man travels
+gaily in a first-class carriage with a second-class ticket, and lies to a
+woman at each end of his journey without so much as casting a shadow upon
+his conscience.
+
+Seymour Michael carried this code to the farthest limit of safety. All
+through the months that followed he went about his business with a clear
+conscience and a heart slightly relieved by the removal of Anna
+Hethbridge from his path to prosperity. He served his country and the
+Company with a keenness of foresight and a soldierly exposure of the
+lives of others which did not fail, in the course of time, to bring him
+in a harvest of honours and rewards. Neither did he put his candle under
+a bushel, but set it in the very highest candlestick available.
+
+But, as has been previously stated, he could not foresee everything. He
+did not know, for instance, that his cheroot-smoking subaltern--a
+youth as guileless as he was indiscreet, for the two usually go
+together--possessed a memory like a dry-plate. He did not foresee that a
+passing conversation in an Indian bungalow might perchance photograph
+itself on the somewhat sparsely covered tablets of a man's mind, to be
+reproduced at the wrong moment with a result lying twenty-six years ahead
+in the womb of time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SUBURBAN
+
+_L'amour fait tout excuser, mais il faut etre bien sur qu'il y a de i
+amour._
+
+
+Miss Anna Hethbridge loved Seymour Michael with as great a love as her
+nature could compass.
+
+When the news of his death reached her, at the profusely laden
+breakfast-table at Jaggery House, Clapham Common, her first feeling was
+one of scornful anger towards a Providence which could be so careless.
+Life had always been prosperous for her, in a bourgeois, solidly wealthy
+way, entirely suited to her turn of mind. She had always had servants at
+her beck and call, whom she could abuse illogically and treat with an
+utter inconsequence inherent in her nature. She had been the spoilt child
+of a ponderous, thick-skinned father and a very suburban mother, who, out
+of her unexpected prosperity, could deny her daughter nothing.
+
+Three months after the receipt of the news Anna Hethbridge went down into
+Hertfordshire, where, in the course of a visit at Stagholme Rectory, she
+met and became engaged to the Squire of Stagholme, James Edward Agar.
+
+A month later she became the second wife of the simple-minded old country
+gentleman. It would be hard to say what motives prompted her to this
+apparently heartless action. Some women are heartless--we know that. But
+Anna Hethbridge was too impulsive, too excitable, and too much given to
+pleasure to be devoid of heart. Behind her action there must have been
+some strange, illogical, feminine motive, for there was a deliberation in
+every move--one of those motives which are quite beyond the masculine
+comprehension. One notices that when a woman takes action in this
+incomprehensible way her lady friends are never surprised; they seem to
+have some subtle sympathy with her. It is only the men who look puzzled,
+as if the ground beneath their feet were unstable. Therefore there must
+be some influence at work, probably the same influence, under different
+forms, which urges women to those strange, inconsequent actions by which
+their lives are rendered miserable. Men have not found it out yet.
+
+Anna Hethbridge was at this time twenty-four years of age, rather pretty,
+with a vivacity of manner which only seemed frivolous to the more
+thoughtful of her acquaintances. The idea of her marrying old Squire Agar
+within six months of the untimely death of her clever lover, Seymour
+Michael, seemed so preposterous that her hostess, good, sentimental Mrs.
+Glynde, never dreamt of such a possibility until, in the form of a fact,
+it was confided to her by Miss Hethbridge, one afternoon soon after her
+arrival at the rectory.
+
+"Confound it, Maria," exclaimed the Rector testily, when the information
+was passed on to him later in the evening. "Why could you not have
+foreseen such an absurd event?"
+
+Poor Mrs. Glynde looked distressed. She was a thin little woman, with an
+unsteady head, physically and morally speaking; full of kindness of
+heart, sentimentality, high-flown principles, and other bygone ladylike
+commodities. Her small, eager face, of a ruddy and weather-worn
+complexion--as if she had, at some early period of her existence, been
+left out all night in an east wind--was puckered up with a sense of her
+own negligence.
+
+She tried hard, poor little woman, to take a deep and Christian interest
+in the welfare of her neighbours; but all the while she was conscious of
+failure. She knew that even at that moment, when she was sitting in her
+small arm-chair with clasped, guilty hands, her whole heart and soul were
+absorbed beyond retrieval in a small bundle of white flannel and pink
+humanity in a cradle upstairs.
+
+The Rector had dropped his weekly review upon his knees and was staring
+at her angrily.
+
+"I really can't tell," he continued, "what you can have been thinking
+about to let such a ridiculous thing come to pass. What are you thinking
+about now?"
+
+"Well, dear," confessed the little woman shamedly, "I was thinking of
+Baby--of Dora."
+
+"Thought so," he snapped, with a little laugh, returning to his paper
+with a keen interest. But he did not seem to be following the printed
+lines.
+
+"I suppose she was all right when you were up just now!" he said
+carelessly after a moment, and without lowering his paper.
+
+"Yes, dear," the lady replied. "She was asleep."
+
+And this young mother of forty smiled softly to herself as if at some
+recollection.
+
+This happiness had come late, as happiness must for us to value it fully,
+and Mrs. Glynde's somewhat old-fashioned Christianity was of that school
+which seeks to depreciate by hook or by crook the enjoyment of those
+sparse goods that the gods send us. The stone in her path at this time
+was an exaggerated sense of her own unworthiness--a matter which she
+might safely have left to another and wiser judgment.
+
+Presently the Rector laid aside the newspaper, and rose slowly from his
+chair.
+
+"Are you going upstairs, dear?" inquired his tactless spouse.
+
+"Um--er. Yes! I am just going up to get--a pocket-handkerchief."
+
+Mrs. Glynde said nothing; but as she knew the creak of every board
+in the room overhead she became aware shortly afterwards that the
+Rector had either diverged slightly from the path of which he was the
+ordained finger-post, or that he had suddenly taken to keeping his
+pocket-handkerchiefs in the far corner of the room where the cradle
+stood.
+
+It will be readily understood that in a household ruled, as this rectory
+was, by a sleepy little morsel of humanity, Anna Hethbridge was in no way
+hindered in the furtherance of her own personal purposes--one might
+almost add periodical purposes, for she never held to one for long.
+
+The Squire was very lonely. His boy Jem, aged four, would certainly be
+the happier for a mother's care. Above all, Miss Hethbridge seemed to
+want the marriage, and so it came about.
+
+If Anna Hethbridge had been asked at that time why she wanted it, she
+would probably have told an untruth. She was rather given, by the way, to
+telling untruths. Had she, in fact, given a reason at all, she would
+perforce have left the straight path, because she had no reason in her
+mind.
+
+The real motive was probably a love of excitement; and Miss Anna
+Hethbridge is not the only woman, by many thousands, who has married for
+that same reason.
+
+The wedding was celebrated quietly at the Clapham parish church. A
+humiliating day for the stiff-necked old Squire of Stagholme; for he was
+introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought up
+Stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter "h."
+The bourgeois ostentation and would-be high-toned graciousness of the
+ladies, jarred on his nerves as harshly as did the personal appearance of
+their respective husbands.
+
+Altogether it was just possible that Squire Agar began to realise the
+extent of his own foolishness before the effervescence had left the
+champagne that flowed freely to the health of bride and bride-groom.
+
+The event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the course
+of a few days a copy of the _Times_ containing the insertion started
+eastward to meet Seymour Michael on his way home from India.
+
+Anna Agar came home to Stagholme to begin her new life; for which
+peaceful groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she
+had breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth. This atmosphere is
+terribly impregnated with the microbe of bourgeoisie.
+
+But the novelty of the great house had that all-absorbing fascination
+exercised over shallow minds by anything that is new. At first she
+maintained excitedly that there was no life like a country life--no
+centre more suited for such an ideal existence than Stagholme. For a time
+she forgot Seymour Michael; but love is eminently deceitful. It lies in a
+comatose silence for many years and then suddenly springs to life.
+Sometimes the long period of rest has strengthened it--sometimes the time
+has been passed in a chrysalis stage from which Love awakens to find
+itself changed into Hatred.
+
+Little Jem, her stepson--sturdy, fair, silent--was her first failure.
+
+"Come to your mother, dear," she said, with unguarded enthusiasm one
+afternoon when there were callers in the room.
+
+"I cannot go to my mother," replied the youthful James, with his mouth
+full of cake, "because she is dead."
+
+There was an uncompromising matter-of-factness about this simple
+statement, made in all good faith and honesty, which warned the second
+Mrs. Agar to press the matter no farther just then. But she was so intent
+upon exhibiting to her neighbours the maternal affection which she
+persuaded herself that she felt for the plain-spoken heir to Stagholme,
+that she took him to task afterwards. With great care and an utter lack
+of logic she devoted some hours to the instruction of Jem in the somewhat
+crooked ways of her social creed.
+
+"And when," she added, "I tell you to come to your mother, you must come
+and kiss me."
+
+This last item she further impressed upon him by the gift of an orange,
+and then asked him if he understood.
+
+After scratching his head meditatively for some moments, he looked into
+her comely face with very steady blue eyes and said:
+
+"I don't think so--not quite."
+
+"Then," replied his stepmother angrily, "you are a very stupid little
+boy--and you must go up to the nursery at once."
+
+This puzzled Jem still more, and he walked upstairs reflecting deeply.
+Years afterwards, when he was a man, the sunlight falling on the wall
+through the skylight over the staircase had the power of bringing back
+that moment to him--a moment when the world first began to open itself
+before him and to puzzle him.
+
+It happened that at that precise time when Mrs. Agar was endeavouring
+To teach her little stepson the usages of polite society, a small,
+keen-faced man was standing near the table in the smoking-room in the
+Hotel Wagstaff at Suez. He was idly turning over the newspapers lying
+there in the hopes of finding something comparatively recent in date.
+
+Presently he came upon a copy of the _Times_, with which he repaired to
+one of the long chairs on that verandah overlooking the desert which some
+of us know only too well.
+
+After idly conning the general news he glanced at the births, deaths, and
+marriages, and there he read of the recent ceremony in the parish church
+of Clapham.
+
+"D----n it!" he muttered, with that racial love of an expletive which
+makes a Jew a profane man.
+
+In addition to a strong feeling of wounded vanity that Anna Hethbridge
+should so soon have forgotten him, Seymour Michael was distinctly
+disappointed that this heiress should no longer be within his reach. The
+truth was, that the young lady in India had transferred her valuable
+affections, with all solid appurtenances attaching thereto, to a young
+officer in the Navy who had been invalided at Calcutta.
+
+To men who intend, despite all and at any cost, to get on in the world
+the first failures are usually very bitter. It is only those who press
+stolidly forward without expecting much, who profit from a check. Seymour
+Michael was just the man to fail by being too acute, too unscrupulous. He
+was usually in such a hurry to help himself that he never allowed another
+the very fruitful pleasure of giving.
+
+In India his zeal had led him into one or two small mistakes to which he
+himself attached no importance, but they were remembered against him. He
+had cruelly thrown aside Anna Hethbridge when a richer marriage offered
+itself. Now he had missed both bone and reflection, and he sat with a
+smile on his dark face, looking out over the dreary desert.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MERCURY
+
+_The evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come._
+
+
+James Edward Makerstone Agar was not at the age of five the material
+from which the heroes of children's stories are evolved. He was not a
+good boy, nor a clean, nor particularly interesting. He was, however,
+honest--and that is _deja quelque chose_. He was as far removed from the
+"misunderstood" type as could be wished; and he was quite happy.
+
+Before his stepmother had laid aside the title and glory of a bride, he
+had, by his deadly honesty, made her understand that even a child of five
+requires what she could not give him--namely, logic. Had she been clever
+enough to reason logically she might have undermined the little fellow's
+innate honesty of character, despite the fact that he lacked a child's
+chief incentive to learn from its mother, namely, the sympathy of
+heredity.
+
+Gradually and steadily Mrs. Agar "gave him up," to make use of her own
+expression. She was one of those women who either fear or despise that
+which they do not understand. She could scarcely fear Jem, so she
+persuaded herself that he was stupid and unattractive. At this time there
+came another influence to militate against any excess of love between Jem
+and his stepmother. It came to her, for he was ignorant of it. And this
+was the knowledge that before long the little heir's undisputed reign in
+the nursery would come to an end.
+
+With a suburban horror of being a long distance from the chemist, Mrs.
+Agar protested that she could not possibly remain at Stagholme during the
+ensuing winter, and that her child must be born at Clapham. It was vain
+to argue or reason, and at last the Squire was forced to swallow this
+second humiliation, which was quite beyond his wife's comprehension. He
+only dared to hint that all the Agars had seen the light at Stagholme
+since time immemorial; but feelings of this description found no
+answering note in her practical and essentially commonplace mind. So Mr.
+And Mrs. Agar emigrated to Clapham, leaving Jem behind them.
+
+It happened that a few days after their arrival at the stately house
+overlooking the Common, a young officer called to see Mr. Hethbridge,
+who was at that time one of the Directors of the East India Company.
+Now it furthermore happened that this young soldier was he whom we last
+saw smoking a cheroot in the doorway of Seymour Michael's bungalow in
+India. As chance would have it, he called in the evening, and the
+estimable Mr. Hethbridge, warmed into an unusual hospitality by the
+fumes of his own port wine, pressed him to pass into the drawing-room and
+take a dish of tea with the ladies. The subaltern accepted, chiefly
+because it was the Director's self that pressed, and presently followed
+that short-winded gentleman into the drawing-room--thereby shaping lives
+yet uncreated--thereby unconsciously helping to work out a chain of
+events leading ultimately to an end which no man could foresee.
+
+"Yes," he said, in reply to Mrs. Agar's question, "I am just back from
+India."
+
+It happened that these two were left almost beyond earshot at the far end
+of the room. The old people, among whom was Mrs. Agar's husband, were
+settling down to a game of whist. Mrs. Agar was leaning forward with
+considerable interest. This was not a mere passing curiosity to hear
+further of a country and of an event which have not lost their glamour
+yet.
+
+The very word "India" had stirred something up within her heart of the
+presence of which she had been unsuspicious. She was as one who, having a
+closed room in her life, and thinking the door thereof securely barred,
+suddenly finds herself within that room.
+
+"Whereabouts in India were you?" she asked, with a sudden dryness of the
+lips.
+
+"Oh--I was north of Delhi."
+
+"North of Delhi--oh, yes."
+
+She moistened her lips, with a strange, sidelong glance round the room,
+as if she were preparing to jump from a height.
+
+"And--and I suppose you saw a great deal of the Mutiny?"
+
+Even then--after many months, in a drawing-room in peaceful Clapham--the
+young man's eyes hardened.
+
+"Yes, I saw a good deal," he answered.
+
+Mrs. Agar leant back in her chair, drawing her handkerchief through her
+fingers with jerky, unnatural movements.
+
+"And did you lose many friends?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," answered the young fellow, "in one way and another."
+
+"How? What do you mean?" She had a way of leaning forward and listening
+when spoken to, which passed very well for sympathy.
+
+"Well, a time like the Mutiny brings out all that is in a man, you
+know. And some men had less in them than one might have thought, while
+others--quiet-going fellows--seemed to wake up."
+
+"Yes," she said; "I see."
+
+"One or two," he continued, "betrayed themselves. They showed that there
+was that in them which no one had suspected. I lost one friend that way."
+
+"How?"
+
+It was marvellous how the merest details of India interested this woman,
+who, like most of us, did not know herself. Moreover, she never learnt to
+do so thoroughly, thereby being spared the horrid pain of knowing oneself
+too late.
+
+"I made a mistake," he explained. "I thought he was a gentleman and a
+brave man. I found that he was a coward and a cad."
+
+Something urged her to go on with her pointless questions--the same
+inevitable Fate which, according to the Italians, "stands at the end of
+everything," and which had prompted Mr. Hethbridge to bring this stranger
+into the drawing-room.
+
+"But how did you find it out?"
+
+"Oh, I did not do it all at once. I first began by a mere trifle. It
+happened that this man was reported dead in the Gazette--I showed it to
+him myself."
+
+The young officer, who was not accustomed to ladies' society, and felt
+rather nervous at his own loquaciousness, kept his eyes fixed on his
+boots, and did not notice the deathly pallor of Mrs. Agar's face, nor the
+convulsive clutch of her fingers on the velvet arm of the chair.
+
+She turned right round, with a peculiar movement of the throat as if
+swallowing something, and made sure that the whist-players were
+interested in their game. In that position she heard the next words.
+
+"He did not even take the trouble to write home to his friends. I thought
+it rather strange at the time, and told him so. Later on I heard the
+truth of it. I heard him tell some one else that he was engaged to a girl
+in England, and he thought it a very good way of getting out of the
+engagement."
+
+"You heard him tell that, with your own ears?"
+
+"Yes; and he seemed to think it a good joke."
+
+Mrs. Agar was shuffling about in the chair as if in pain.
+
+Then she asked again in a strangely metallic voice, "Did he say that
+he--did not love her?"
+
+"Yes, the cad!"
+
+"He cannot have been a nice man," she said, with that evenness of
+enunciation which betrays that the tongue is speaking without the direct
+aid of the mind.
+
+The young officer rose with a glance towards the clock.
+
+"No," he said, "he was not. He did other things afterwards which made it
+quite impossible for a man with any self-respect whatever to look upon
+him as a friend."
+
+"Did he," asked Mrs. Agar, "say anything about her personal appearance?
+Was it that?"
+
+The subaltern looked puzzled. It was as well for Mrs. Agar that he was
+not a man of deep experience. Instead of being puzzled he might suddenly
+have seen clear.
+
+"No--no," he replied. "It was not that. It was merely a matter of
+expediency, I believe."
+
+But, womanlike, Mrs. Agar did not believe him. She sat while he made his
+farewell speech over the whist-table, but as he went to the door she rose
+and followed him slowly.
+
+In the hall she watched the servant help him on with his coat--her
+features twisted into a stereotype smile of polite leave-taking.
+
+"By the way," she said, with a sickening little laugh, "what was the
+man's name--your friend, whom you lost?"
+
+"Michael--Seymour Michael."
+
+"Ah! Good-night--good-night."
+
+Then she turned and walked slowly upstairs.
+
+We are apt to read indifferently of human ills, whether of the flesh or
+the soul. We are apt to overlook the fact that what we read may apply to
+us. Some of us even bear upon us the mark of hereditary disease and
+refuse to believe in it. Then suddenly comes a day when a pain makes
+itself felt--a dumb, little creeping pain, which may mean nothing. We sit
+down and, so to speak, feel ourselves. Before long all doubt goes. We
+have it. The world darkens, and behold we are in the ranks of those upon
+whom we looked a little while back with a semi-indifferent pity.
+
+It was thus with Mrs. Agar. As some play with nature, so had she played
+with her own heart. She had heard of a consuming love which is near akin
+to hatred. She had read of passion which is stronger than the strongest
+worldliness. She had smilingly doubted the existence of the broken heart
+pure and simple. And now she sat in her own room, numbly, blindly feeling
+herself, like one to whom the first warning of an internal deadly disease
+has been manifested. She was conscious of something within herself which
+she could not get at, over which she had no control.
+
+With quivering lips she sat and wondered what she could do to hurt this
+man. She did not only want to inflict bodily pain, but that other
+gnawing pain of the heart which she herself was now feeling for the first
+time. And through it all there ran the one thought that he must die. It
+was strange that hate should first teach her that love is a living,
+undeniable reality in the lives of all of us. She had never realised
+this before. Her bringing-up, her surroundings, all her teaching had
+been that money and a great house, and servants, and carriages were the
+good things of this life, the things to be sought after.
+
+She had been conscious of a vague admiration for Seymour Michael, and
+that was the full extent of her knowledge of herself. This admiration
+took the worldly form of a conviction that he was destined one day to be
+a great man, and she had a strongly developed, common-minded desire to be
+a great lady.
+
+There are some things in this life which to a moderate intelligence are
+quite unmistakable. Most of us, having left childhood behind, recognise
+at once an earthquake, and death. Love is as unmistakable when it really
+comes. And Anna Agar, having suddenly learnt to hate Seymour Michael,
+knew that she had loved him with that one all-absorbing love which comes
+but once to a woman.
+
+She was not a deep-thinking or a subtle woman. Her actions were usually
+based upon impulse, and her one all-absorbing desire now was to see him,
+to speak to him face to face. In this indefinite longing there was
+probably a vulgar love of vituperation--the taint of her low-born
+ancestors.
+
+She wanted to shout and shriek her hatred into the evil face of the man
+who had tricked her. She wanted to frighten him, to threaten, to lash him
+with her tongue. For she was conscious all the while of her own inability
+to harm him. Without defining the thought, her common-sense taught her
+one lamentable, unjust fact; namely, that unless a woman is loved by the
+object of her wrath she can hardly make him suffer.
+
+She rose at last, and, lighting the candles on the writing-table, she
+proceeded to write to Seymour Michael. Even in this epistle the natural
+cunning of her nature appeared.
+
+"DEAR SEYMOUR "--she wrote on a sheet of paper bearing the address of the
+house in which she was staying, the roof under which Seymour Michael had
+first paid his careless tribute to her wealth--"I learnt by accident this
+evening that your regiment has returned to England. If you are in London,
+I hope you will make time to come and see me. Come to-morrow evening at
+four, if that time is convenient to you. ANNA."
+
+She purposely signed her Christian name only, purposely refrained from
+vouchsafing any personal news. She did not know how much or how little he
+might know.
+
+Ringing for her maid, she sent the letter to the post, addressed to
+Seymour Michael, at the Service Club, of which she knew him to be a
+member. Then she went to bed to toss and turn all night. The doctors,
+good, portly Clapham practitioners, had warned her in the usual way to
+spare herself all bodily fatigue and mental worry for the sake of the
+little one. It is so easy to urge each other to spare all mental worry,
+and so eminently useful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+FREIGHTED
+
+I shall remember while the light lives yet,
+And in the darkness I shall not forget.
+
+
+Seymour Michael was no coward where hard words and no hard knocks were to
+be exchanged. His faith in his own keenness of intellect and
+unscrupulousness of tongue was unbounded.
+
+He smiled when he read Anna Agar's letter over a dainty breakfast at his
+club the next morning. The cunning of it was obvious to his cunning
+comprehension, and the fact of her suppressing her newly-acquired surname
+only convinced him that she knew but little about himself.
+
+That same evening at four o'clock he presented himself at the lordly
+hall-door of Mr. Hethbridge. Since first he had raised his hand to this
+knocker, fingering his letter of introduction to the East India director,
+Seymour Michael had learnt many things, but the knowledge was not yet his
+that indiscriminate untruths are apt to fly home to roost.
+
+Anna Agar had easily managed to send her mother out of the house; her
+husband spent his days as far from Clapham as circumstances would allow.
+She was seated on a sofa at the far end of the room when Seymour Michael
+was shown in, and the first thing that struck her was his diminutiveness.
+After the hearty country gentlemen who habitually carried mud into the
+Stagholme drawing-room, this small-limbed dapper soldier of fortune
+looked almost puny. But there is a depth in every woman's heart which is
+only to be reached by one man. Whatever betide them both, that one is
+different from the rest all through life.
+
+Neither of these two persons spoke until the servant had closed the door.
+Then, as is usual in such cases, the more indifferent spoke first.
+
+"Why did you never write to me?" said Seymour Michael, fixing his
+mournful glance on her face.
+
+"Because I thought you were dead."
+
+"You never got my letter contradicting the report?"
+
+"No," she answered, with so cheap a cunning that it deceived him.
+
+"And," he went on, with the heartlessness of a small man, for large men
+respect woman with a deeper chivalry than every puny knight yet
+compassed, "and you did not trouble to inquire. You did not even give me
+six months' grace to cool in my grave."
+
+"How did you send your letter?" she asked, with a suppressed excitement
+which he misread entirely.
+
+"By the usual route. I wrote off at once."
+
+"Liar! liar! liar!" she shrieked.
+
+She had risen, and stood pointing an accusatory finger at him. Then
+suddenly the dramatic force of the situation seemed to fail, and she
+burst out laughing. For some seconds it seemed as if her laughter was
+getting beyond her control, but at last she checked it with a gurgle.
+
+The complete success of the trap which she had laid for him almost
+disappointed her. Few things are more disappointing than complete
+success. She hated him, and yet for the sake of the one gleam of good
+love that had flickered once in her essentially sordid heart, she had
+nourished a vague hope that he would clear himself--that at all events he
+would have the cleverness to see through her stratagem.
+
+"Liar!" she repeated. "In this room last night--not twenty-four hours
+ago--Mr. Wynderton told me all about it. He said that you told several
+men in his presence that you did not love me, and that your death
+reported in the papers was the best way of breaking off the engagement."
+
+Seymour Michael's eyes never wavered. For once they were still, with
+that solemn depth of gaze which tells of the curse laid on a smitten,
+miserable race. It was strange that before honest men and women his
+glance wavered ever--he could never meet honest eyes; but looking at Anna
+Agar they were as steady as those of a true man.
+
+"Wynderton," ho said, "the man whose promotion I stopped, by a report
+against him for looting."
+
+When Nature makes a fool in the guise of a woman she turns out a finished
+work. Mrs. Agar's eyes actually lighted up. Seymour Michael saw; but he
+knew that he had no case. Nevertheless, in view of the Squire's advanced
+age (a fact of which he had made sure), he attempted to carry through a
+forlorn hope.
+
+"And you believe this man before you believe me?" said Michael. It is
+strange how often one hears the word "believe" on the lips of those whose
+veracity is doubtful.
+
+Now it happened that Mr. Hethbridge had spoken of Wynderton at breakfast
+that morning in terms which left no doubt as to the untruth of the
+statement just made in regard to him. But even this would have been
+passed over by the woman who had a natural tendency towards falsehood
+herself, had not Seymour Michael made a hideous mistake. A wiser man than
+any of us has said that there is a time for all things. Most distinctly
+defined is the time for making love. More men come to grief by making too
+much love than too little. Seymour Michael, being heartless, deemed
+erroneously that this was a propitious moment to essay the power which
+had once been his over this woman.
+
+He accompanied his reproachful speech with a tender glance, which in
+olden times had never failed to call forth an answering look of love in
+her eyes. Now, it suddenly aroused her to realise the extent of her
+hatred. In some subtle way it humiliated her; for she looked back into
+the past, and saw herself therein a dupe to this man.
+
+"No!" she cried, and her raised voice had a sudden twang in
+it--suggestive of the streets; of the People. "No--you needn't trouble to
+make soft eyes at me. I know you now--I know that what that man said was
+true. He called you a coward and a cad. You are worse! You are a Jew--a
+mean, lying Jew."
+
+There are few greater trials to a man's dignity than vituperation from
+the lips of a woman. She walked towards him, clumsily, menacingly and
+raised her hand as if to strike him.
+
+Seymour Michael's brown face turned yellow beneath her blazing anger.
+
+"Sit down!" he commanded, "and don't make a fool of yourself."
+
+He was mean enough to pay her back in her own coin--the paltry,
+loud-ringing coin which is all that a woman has.
+
+"I do not mean to wrangle," he said coolly; "but I may as well tell you
+now that I never cared a jot for you. I was laughing at you in my sleeve
+all the time. I did not want you but your money. I concluded that the
+money would be too dear at the price, so I determined to throw you over.
+The way I chose to do it was as good as any other, because it saved me
+the trouble of writing to you."
+
+Anna Agar had obeyed him. She was sitting down in a stiff-backed
+arm-chair, looking stupidly at the pattern of the carpet as if it were
+something new to her. Between physical pain and mental excitement she
+was beginning to wander. She was the sort of woman to lose control over
+her mind with a temperature of one hundred and one.
+
+Michael looked keenly at her. He had a racial terror of physical ailment.
+He saw that something was wrong, but his knowledge went no further. He
+had never seen a woman faint, so limited had been his experience of the
+sex.
+
+"Come," he said consolingly, "it is all for the best. We made a mistake.
+In a few years we shall look back to this, and thank Heaven for saving us
+many years of unhappiness. We are not suited to each other, Anna. We
+never should have been happy."
+
+It was characteristic of the man to be more afraid of a fainting fit than
+of a broken heart.
+
+He went to her side and stood, not daring to touch her, for fear of
+arousing another of those fits of passion in her which neither of them
+seemed to understand. At length she spoke in a singular monotonous tone
+which an experienced doctor would have recognised at once as the speech
+of a tongue unguided for the time being. She did not look up, but kept
+her eyes fixed on the carpet as if reading there.
+
+"Some day," she said, "I will pay you back. Some day--some day. I do not
+know how, but I feel that you will be sorry you ever did this."
+
+Twenty-five years afterwards these words came back to him in a flash.
+They passed through his brain--conglomerate--in a flash, in a hundredth
+part of the time required to speak them.
+
+Even at the time of hearing them, spoken in that voice which did not seem
+to belong to Anna Hethbridge at all, he turned pale. For all the hatred
+that burnt within her like a fire smouldered in the deliberate tones of
+her voice. Hatred and love can teach us more in a moment than the
+experience of a lifetime; for through either of them we see ourselves
+face to face. This hatred made Anna Agar in twenty-four hours, and the
+woman thus created went through a lifetime unchanged.
+
+Michael went towards the bell.
+
+"I am going to ring," he said, "for your maid."
+
+"Twice," she muttered in the same vague way.
+
+He obeyed her, ringing twice.
+
+Presently the woman came.
+
+"Your mistress," said Michael in a low voice to her at the door, "has
+been suddenly seized with faintness. I leave her to you."
+
+Without looking round he passed through the doorway and out into his own
+self-seeking life. But Anna Agar's revenge began from that moment. To a
+man of his nature, in whose veins ran the taint of a semi-superstitious
+Oriental blood, there was a nameless terror in the hatred of a human
+being, however helpless. Surely the hell of the coward will be a twilight
+land of vague shadowy dangers ever approaching and receding.
+
+In such a land Seymour Michael moved for some months, until he returned
+to India; and there, in the daily round of a new life, he gradually
+learnt to shake off the past. The world is very large despite chance
+meetings. It is easy enough to find room for two even in the same county,
+with the exercise of a little care.
+
+Twenty-five years elapsed before these two met again, and then they only
+had time to exchange a glance. By that time the result of their own
+actions had passed beyond their control.
+
+Seymour Michael walked across the Common, which was in those days still
+wild and almost beautiful; and on the whole he was pleased with the
+result of this interview. He knew that it was destined to come sooner or
+later--he had known that all along; and it might have been worse. It is
+characteristic of an untruthful nature to be impervious to the shame of
+mere detection. In Eastern countries the liar detected smiles in one's
+face. Detection is to an Oriental no punishment; something more tangible
+is required to pierce his mental epidermis.
+
+Being quite incapable of a strong love this man was innocent of consuming
+hatred. He therefore vaguely wondered whether the day might come wherein
+he would once more lay siege to the affections of Anna Agar, a rich
+widow.
+
+Had he seen the face of the woman whom he had just left as it lay
+at that moment, hardly less pale than the pillow between the fluted
+mahogany pillars of a huge four-post bed, he would not have understood
+its meaning. He would never have divined that the dull gleam shining
+between her half-closed eyelids was simple hatred of himself, that the
+restless, twitching lips were whispering curses upon his head, that the
+half-stunned brain was struggling back to circulation and thought for
+the sole purpose of devising hurt to him.
+
+Seymour Michael, ignorant of all this, went peaceably back to his club,
+where he dressed, dined, and proceeded to pass the evening at a theatre.
+
+That night, while he was displaying his diamond studs in the stalls of
+Drury Lane Theatre, was born into the world--long before his time--a
+child, Arthur Agar, destined to walk the smoothest paths of life,
+literally in silk attire; for he grew up to love such things.
+
+But the ways of Nature are strange. She is very quiet; patient as death
+itself. She holds her hand for years--sometimes for a generation--but she
+strikes at last.
+
+She is more cruel than man, or even than woman which is saying much, She
+is the best friend we have, and the worst foe, for she never forgives an
+outrage.
+
+Nature raised her hand over this puny, whimpering child, Arthur Agar. She
+never forgot a mother's selfish passion. She forgets nothing. When first
+he opened his little pink lids upon the world he looked round with a
+scared wonder in a pair of colourless blue-grey eyes; and that vague look
+of expectation never left his eyes in later life. It almost seemed as if
+the infant orbs could see ahead into the future--could discern the
+lowering hand of outraged Nature.
+
+This hand was suspended over the ill-fated, poorly-endowed head for
+years, then Nature struck--hard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+AFTER NINETEEN YEARS
+
+A sharp judgment shall be to them that be in high places.
+
+
+"Yes, dear. I have great news for you to take back to your mother. Jem
+has got his commission--in a Goorkha regiment!"
+
+The lady who spoke leant back in her chair, half turning her head, but
+not looking entirely round in the direction of the only other occupant of
+the room--a girl of nineteen.
+
+"In a Goorkha regiment, Aunt Anna?" repeated the girl; "what is that? It
+sounds as if he would have to black his face and wear a turban. It
+suggests curry and gymkhanas (whatever they may be) and pyjamas and
+bananas and other pickles. A Goorkha regiment."
+
+There was a faint drop in her tone--on the last three words, which to
+very keen ears might have signified reproach, but the hearer was not
+keen--merely cunning, which is quite a different matter.
+
+"Yes, dear. They tell me that these Indian regiments are much the best
+for a young man who is likely to get on. There are so many more chances
+of promotions and--er--er--distinction."
+
+The girl was standing by the open window, and she turned her head without
+otherwise moving, looking at the speaker with a pair of exceedingly
+discriminating eyes.
+
+"Bosh, my dear aunt!" she whispered confidingly to the blind-cord.
+
+"Yes," pursued the lady, with the eager credulity of her first mother,
+ever ready to believe the last speaker when belief is convenient--"Yes.
+Sister Cecilia tells me that all the great men began in the Indian
+Service."
+
+"Oh! I wonder where they finished. Royal Academy--finishing Academy.
+Regimentals and a gold frame--leaning heroically on a mild-looking cannon
+with battles in the background."
+
+"Yes, dear," replied Mrs. Agar, who only half understood Dora Glynde at
+all times; "it is such a good thing for Jem. Such a splendid opportunity,
+you know!"
+
+"Yes," echoed the girl, with a twist of her humorous lips. "Splendid!"
+
+She had turned again, and was looking out of the window across a soft old
+lawn where two Wellingtonians towered side by side like sentries. Without
+glancing in the direction of her companion she knew the expression of
+Mrs. Agar's face, the direction of her gaze; the very thought in her
+shallow mind. She knew that Mrs. Agar was sitting with her arms on the
+little davenport, gazing rapturously at the photograph of an insipid
+young man with a silk-faced smoking jacket; with clean linen, clean
+countenance, clean hands, immaculate hair, and a general air of being too
+weak to be mean.
+
+"Sister Cecilia," went on the elder lady, "seems to know all about it."
+
+It is useless to attempt concealment of the fact that at this juncture
+Dora Glynde made a face--an honest schoolgirl behind-your-back
+Face--indicative of supreme scorn for some person or persons unspecified.
+
+Hers was a countenance which lent itself admirably to the purpose, with
+lips full of humour, and capable, as such lips are, of expressing a great
+and wonderful tenderness. The face, _du reste_, was that of a healthy,
+fair-skinned English girl, liable to honest change from pale to pink,
+according to the dictates of an arbitrary climate. Her eyes were of a
+dark grey-blue, straightforward and steady, with a shadow of thought in
+them which made wise people respect her presence. She was not painfully
+beautiful, like the heroine of a novel--nor abnormally plain, like the
+antitype who has found her way into fiction, and there (alone) brings all
+hearts to her feet.
+
+"Is Jem glad?" she asked cheerfully. "Is he thirsting for gore and
+glory?"
+
+"Oh, delighted! Arthur will be so pleased too. Dear boy, _he_ is so
+interested in soldiers, but of course he could not go into the army! He
+is too delicate--besides, the life is rough, and the risks are very
+great."
+
+Mrs. Agar was speaking with her head slightly inclined to one side, and
+she never raised her adoring eyes from the photograph of the insipid
+young man. Had she done so she would have seen a look of patient, if
+comic, resignation come over the face of her youthful companion at the
+mention of her son's name.
+
+"I will tell mother," said Dora Glynde, purposely ignoring Arthur Agar,
+whose name was always dragged sooner or later into every conversation.
+"Fancy Jem in a helmet, or a turban, with his face blacked! All the same,
+if I were a man I should be a soldier. When does he go--to join his
+regiment?"
+
+"Oh, almost at once."
+
+The girl winced, quietly, between herself and the blind-cord.
+
+"And in the meantime," she said lightly, "I suppose he is fully engaged
+in buying swords and guns and bomb-shells, or whatever the Goorkhas use
+in warfare."
+
+"He is coming home to-morrow for Sunday," replied Jem Agar's stepmother
+absently. She was thinking of her own son, and therefore did not hear the
+quick sigh which was almost a gasp; did not note the sudden light in the
+girl's eyes.
+
+Dora Glynde was rather a solitary-minded young person. The only child of
+elderly parents, she had never learnt in the nursery to indulge in the
+indiscretions of confiding girlhood. She had the good fortune to be
+without a bosom-friend who related her most sacred secrets to other bosom
+friends and so on, as is the way of maidens. From her father she had
+inherited a discriminating mind and a most admirable habit of reserve.
+She was quite happy when alone, which, according to La Bruyere, is a
+great safeguard against all evil.
+
+She wanted to be alone now, and therefore passed out of the open window
+with a non-committing "Good-bye, Aunt Anna!"
+
+"Good-bye, dear," replied the lady, awaking suddenly from a reverie. But
+by the time she had turned round in her chair, the girl was gone.
+
+Dora crossed the lawn, passing between the sentinel pines and crossing
+the moat by the narrow footbridge. She climbed the railing with all the
+ease of nineteen years and struck a bee-line across the park. She never
+raised her eyes from the ground, never paused in her swinging gait, until
+she reached the brown hush of the beechwood which divided the Rectory
+garden from the southern extremity of the park.
+
+Having climbed the railing again she sat on a mossy mound at the foot of
+a huge beech tree. Her manner of doing so subtly indicated that she did
+not only know the spot, but was in the habit of sitting there, possibly
+to think. A youthful privilege of doubtful value, for, as we get busier
+in life we have to do the thinking as we go along.
+
+"Oh!" she muttered, "oh, how awful!"
+
+A new expression had come over her face. She looked older, and all the
+vivacity had suddenly left her lips.
+
+While she was still sitting there the crisp sound of footsteps on the
+fallen leaves approached through the wood. Looking up she saw her father,
+following the winding path through the spinney towards his home.
+
+A grave man was the Rector of Stagholme in his declining years;
+hopelessly, wisely pessimistic, with sudden youthful returns of interest
+in matters literary and theological. As he came he read a book.
+
+Instantly the expression of Dora's face changed. She rose and went
+towards him, smiling contemptuously towards his lowering gravity. He
+looked up, gave a little grunt of recognition, and closed his book.
+
+"Father," she said, "I've just heard a piece of news."
+
+"Bad, I suppose."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Well," she answered, "I suppose we shall survive it. Jem has got his
+commission, in a Goorkha regiment."
+
+"Goorkha regiment? Nonsense!"
+
+"Aunt Anna has just told me so. She is very pleased, and seems prepared
+for the--best."
+
+"That is the custom of fools, to be prepared for the best--only."
+
+The Rector gave a despairing shrug of the shoulders. He was a man who
+allowed himself, after the manner of the ancients with whom he lived
+mentally, a few gestures. He smoked a very expressive cigarette. He was
+smoking one at this moment, and threw it away half consumed. This divine
+was possessed of a rooted conviction that the Almighty made a great
+mistake whenever He invested temporal power in a woman, whom he was
+ungallantly inclined to classify under a celebrated dictum of Mr.
+Carlyle's respecting the population of these happy Isles, who, truth to
+tell, care not one jot what Mr. Carlyle may think of them.
+
+The Reverend Thomas Glynde and his daughter walked all the way home
+without exchanging another word. In the Rectory drawing-room they found
+Mrs. Glynde, small, nervous, worried. She had evidently devoted
+considerable thought and attention to the preservation of the hot
+buttered toast. Poor humble little soul, she was quite content to
+minister to the bodily requirements of her spouse, having long been
+convinced of the inferiority of her own sex in every respect except a
+certain limited knowledge of housekeeping matters.
+
+She was vaguely conscious of inferiority to Dora from a literary point of
+view, and talked with abject humility to her own daughter of all things
+appertaining to books. But on all other points connected with the child
+of her old age this quiet little woman was absolute mistress. Years
+before the Rector had made a great mistake; he had, as the plain-spoken
+East Burgen doctor put it, made an ass of himself on the matter of a
+childish illness, thereby imperilling Dora's half-fledged little life.
+Mrs. Glynde had then, like a diminutive tigress, stood up boldly before
+her awesome lord and master, saying such things to him that the
+remembrance of them made her catch her breath even now. From that time
+forth the Rector was allowed to hold forth on symptoms to his heart's
+content, to take down from his library shelf a stout misguided book of
+medical short-cuts to the grave, but nothing more.
+
+He never referred to the asinine business, and in the course of
+years he forgave the doctor (having in view the fact that that
+practitioner had been carried away by a right and proper sense of the
+importance of the case), but he tacitly acknowledged that in the practice
+of home-administered medical assistance, his knowledge was second to a
+mother's instinct.
+
+"It appears," he said sharply, while he was stirring his tea, "that Jem
+Agar has got his commission in a Goorkha regiment."
+
+Now Mrs. Glynde knew more about the organisation of the heavenly bands
+than of the administration of the Indian army. She did not know whether
+to rejoice or lament, and having been sharply pulled up--any time during
+the last twenty years--for doing one or the other in the wrong place, she
+meekly took soundings.
+
+"What is that, dear?" she inquired.
+
+"The Goorkhas are native Indian soldiers," explained the Rector. "Very
+good fellows, no doubt. They get all the hard knocks in small frontier
+wars and none of the half-pence. What the woman can have been thinking
+of, I don't know."
+
+Mrs. Glynde was anxiously glancing towards Dora, who was nicking the nose
+of a sportive kitten with the tassel of the tea-cosy.
+
+"And will he go to India?" she asked, with laudable mental grovellings in
+the mire of her own ignorance.
+
+"Course he will."
+
+"And," added Dora cheerfully, "he will come home covered with glory and
+medals, with a weakness for strong pickles and hot language--I mean hot
+pickles and strong language."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Glynde rather breathlessly, "are they never stationed in
+England?"
+
+"No--never," replied her husband snappishly.
+
+Mrs. Glynde had a pink patch on each cheek--precisely on the spot whore
+two such patches had appeared years ago when the doctor spoke so
+strongly. Those patches were maternal, and only appeared when Dora's
+affairs, spiritual or temporal, were concerned.
+
+"I don't know," put in Dora again, "but I have a sort of lurking
+conviction that Jem will have to wear a turban and red morocco boots."
+
+"But," pursued Mrs. Glynde, with that courage which cometh with a red
+patch on either cheek, "I always thought these Indian regiments were
+meant for people who are badly off."
+
+The Rector gave a short laugh.
+
+"You are not so very far wrong, my dear," he admitted. "And no one can
+say that Jem is badly off. He will be very rich some day."
+
+The Rector assumed an air of superior discretion, to which he usually
+treated his women-folk when he thought fit to consider that they were
+touching on matters beyond their jurisdiction.
+
+"Some more tea, please, mother," put in Dora appropriately. "Excuse my
+appetite. I suppose it is the autumn air."
+
+There was a short silence, during which Mrs. Glynde sought to propitiate
+her angered spouse with sodden toast and a second brew of tea.
+
+"I always said," observed the Rector at last, "that your cousin was a
+fool."
+
+And in some indefinite way Mrs. Glynde felt that she was once more
+responsible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FOR HIS COUNTRY
+
+Shall I forget on this side of the grave?
+I promise nothing; you must wait and see.
+
+
+From the train arriving at East Burgen station at eight o'clock that same
+evening there alighted a youth who seemed suddenly to have taken manhood
+upon his shoulders. He stood on the platform and pointed out to a porter,
+who called him Master James, a large Gladstone bag and a new sword-case.
+
+Although he could have carried the luggage under one arm and the porter
+under the other, he carefully refrained from offering to convey anything
+except his own walking-stick. Such is the force of education. This boy
+had been brought up to expect service. He was to be served all his life,
+and so the sword-case had to be left to the porter whom he envied.
+
+During the journey down--between the farthest-removed stations--the sword
+had flashed more than once in the dim light of the carriage lamp. Ah!
+those first swords! Not Toledo nor Damascus can produce their equal in
+after years.
+
+The porter, honest father of two private soldiers of the line himself,
+saw it all--at once. He carried the sword-case with an exaggerated
+reverence and forbore from remark just then. Afterwards, beneath the
+station-lamp, he looked at the shilling--the first of its kind from that
+quarter--with a pathetic, meaning smile.
+
+It was Saturday night. The streets of East Burgen were rather crowded,
+and Jem Agar--with elbows well in and the whip at the regulation angle
+across old Lasher's face, who could not help squinting at the pendant
+thong--shouted to the country-folk in a new voice of mighty deep
+register.
+
+He carried his boyish head stiffly, and had for ever discarded a
+turn-down collar. At first he kept old Lasher at a respectful distance,
+asking in a somewhat curt and business-like manner after the stables.
+Then gradually, as they bowled along the country road in the familiar
+hush of an April evening, he thawed, and proceeded to vouchsafe to that
+steady coachman a series of very interesting details of military matters
+in general and the Indian army in particular.
+
+"Well, I'm sure, Mas--sir," opined Mr. Lasher at length; "if there's any
+one as has got into his right rut, so to speak, in this world, it's you.
+I always said you was a born soldier."
+
+"Ah--then you've heard that I've got my commission?" inquired Jem airily,
+as if he had had many such in bygone years.
+
+"Oh yes, sir! Miss Dora it was that told me."
+
+Somehow this caused a little silence.
+
+Truth to tell, Dora had lost her rank as the most beautiful and
+accomplished maiden in Christendom. This situation was at that moment
+occupied by a young person hight Evelina Louisa Barmond, sister to Billy
+Barmond of the Hundred and second, a veteran fellow-soldier and comrade
+who had jumped five feet six at the Sandhurst sports a year before. Miss
+Evelina Louisa was twenty-four, five years Dora's senior, and only three
+years and two months older than Jem Agar himself. He had spoken to her
+twice, and thought about her in the intervals allowed by such weighty
+matters as uniform and the new sword, which, however, required almost
+constant consideration at that time.
+
+"Well," said Jem, with exaggerated nonchalance, "I am afraid I should
+never be fit for anything else."
+
+Whereat Lasher laughed and touched his hat. He made it a rule to salute a
+joke in that manner, either from a general respect for humour, or looking
+at it in the light of a mental gratuity offered by his betters.
+
+"There's one thing you can do, Master Jem, sir--leastwise, which you can
+do as well as any man in the British army," he said, with pardonable
+pride, "and that is sit a 'orse."
+
+"Thanks to you, Lasher," Jem was kind enough to say with a flourish of
+his whip.
+
+The dignity was now ebbing fast, and by the time that the clever little
+cob swung round the gate-post into the avenue of Stagholme, Jem and
+Lasher were fully re-established on the old familiar footing.
+
+There was a bright moon overhead, and at the end of the avenue beyond the
+dip where the lake gleamed mysteriously, the gables and solid towers of
+Stagholme stood peacefully confessed.
+
+Jem Agar was firmly convinced that England only contained one Stagholme,
+and perhaps he was right. Six miles from the nearest station, the great
+house stands self-sufficient, self-contained. The moat, now dry and
+cultivated, is still traceable, and requires bridging in two places.
+Surrounded by vast park-like meadowland, where huge trees guard against
+cutting wind or prying modern journalistic instinct, the house is only
+approached by a private road.
+
+Inside the gates of this road there is something ancient and feudal in
+the very scent of the air. The tones of the big bell striking the hour
+over the wide portico die away over the lands that still belong to
+Stagholme, despite the vicissitudes through which all ancient families
+run.
+
+Jem, however, whose childhood and youth had been passed amidst companions
+with names as good as his, had learnt long ago to keep his pride to
+himself. He was Jem Agar, and the family name seemed somehow to belong
+exclusively to his father still, although that thorough old sportsman had
+lain for three years and more beneath the quiet turf of the little
+churchyard within his own park gates.
+
+As he pulled up at the door this was thrown open, and within its frame of
+light he saw the gracious form of his stepmother waiting to welcome him.
+Behind her, in the shadow, and amidst the decoration of staghorns,
+ancient pike and hanger, loomed a tall dark figure startlingly in keeping
+with the semi-monastic architecture of the house. This was Sister
+Cecilia. She was always thus--behind Mrs. Agar, with clasped hands and a
+vaguely approving smile, as if Mrs. Agar conferred a benefit upon
+suffering humanity by the mere act of existing.
+
+A slightly bored expression came into Jem's patient eyes. It was not that
+he had very much in common with his stepmother, although he had an honest
+affection for her; but he instinctively disliked Sister Cecilia and all
+her works. These latter were of the class termed "good." That is to say,
+this lady, the spinster daughter of a former rector in the neighbourhood,
+considered that the earthly livery of a marvellous black bonnet which was
+almost a cap, and quite hideous, justified a shameless interference in
+the most intimate affairs of her neighbours, rich and poor.
+
+Under the cover of charity she committed a thousand social sins. She
+constituted herself mother-confessor to all who were weak enough to
+confide in her or seek her advice, and in soul she was the most arrant
+time-server who ever flattered a rich woman.
+
+Jem distrusted her soft and "holy" ways, more especially her speech,
+which had the lofty condescension of the saved towards the damned in
+prospective. In his calmly commanding way he had, months before,
+forbidden Dora Glynde to kiss Sister Cecilia, because that ostentatiously
+virtuous person was in the habit of kissing the maids when she met them;
+and he maintained that this Christian practice, if very estimable
+theoretically, was socially an insult either to the mistress or the maid.
+
+In view of the important changes in his own life which were about to
+supervene, that is to say, firstly, his departure for India, and
+secondly, his coming of age before he could hope to return from that land
+of promise, he had counted on a quiet evening with his mother. Moreover,
+he was vaguely conscious of the fact that a right-minded person would
+have carefully abstained from accepting the most pressing invitation to
+form a third that evening.
+
+In view of this Jem Agar had recourse to the last refuge of the simple.
+He retired within himself, and, so to speak, shut the door. He had dined
+with these women before, and knew that the conversation would follow its
+usual mazy course through a forest of cross-questions upon all subjects,
+and notably upon those intimate matters which were essentially his own
+business.
+
+Sister Cecilia, good mistaken soul that she was, tried her best. She was
+lively in a Sunday-school-tea style. She was by turns tender and warlike
+as occasion seemed to demand; but no scrap or tittle of personal
+information did she extract from Jem, stiffly on guard behind his high
+collar. Mrs. Agar was excited and failed utterly to follow the wiser
+footsteps of her bosom friends. She talked such arrant nonsense about
+India, the Goorkhas, and matters military, that more than once Jem
+glanced at the imperturbable servants with misgiving.
+
+The next day was Sunday, and after morning service Jem eagerly accepted
+an invitation to have supper at the Rectory after evening church. Sister
+Cecilia was staying from Saturday till Monday, which alone was sufficient
+reason for this young soldier to pass his last evening in Stagholme under
+another than his own historic roof. With her in the house he knew that
+the chances of serious conversation were small; for she encouraged such
+topics as the possibility of sending fresh eggs packed in lime to the
+Goorkhas of his prospective half-company. So Jem retired within himself,
+and finally left England without having said many things which should
+have been said between stepmother and son.
+
+At the Rectory he found a very different atmosphere--that air of cheerful
+intellectuality which comes from the presence of cultivated men and
+women.
+
+The Rector held strong views on the rare virtue of minding one's own
+business, and in loyalty to such, deemed it right to refrain from
+mentioning his opinion as to the wisdom of selecting a native branch of
+the military service for the heir to Stagholme.
+
+The supper passed pleasantly enough in the discussion of general topics
+all bordering on the great question they had at heart. They were like
+people seeking for each other in the dark around the edge of a pit--the
+pit being India. Dora, and Dora alone, laughed and treated matters
+lightly. Mrs. Glynde blundered several times, and stepping backwards over
+an abyss of years, called the new soldier "darling" more than once. Twice
+she required helping out by Dora, and on the second occasion something
+was said which Jem remembered afterwards with a stolid British memory.
+
+"Jem," said the girl, buttering a biscuit with a light hand, "you should
+write a diary. All great men write diaries which their friends publish
+afterwards."
+
+"I do not think," replied Jem, with that contempt for the pen which the
+possession of a new sword ever justifies, "that writing a diary is much
+in my line."
+
+"Ah, you can never tell till you try. Of course it would not be published
+straight off. Some literary person would be hired to cross the t's and
+dot the i's."
+
+There was a little pause. Dora glanced at Jem Agar, and something made
+him say:
+
+"All right. I'll try."
+
+"Who knows?" said the Rector, with a smile of indulgent affection. "There
+may be great literary capacity lying dormant in Jem. The worst of a diary
+is that one may come to look at it in after years, when one finds a very
+different story has been written from what one intended to write."
+
+"Oh," said Dora, lightly skipping over the chasm of gravity, "that is
+Providence. We must blame Providence for these little _contretemps_. Some
+one must be blamed, and Providence obviously does not mind."
+
+Jem laughed--somewhat lamely; but still it was a laugh. Supper was
+despatched somehow--as last meals are. Some of us never forget the
+flavour of those cups of tea gulped down in the gorgeous steamer-saloon
+while the stewards get the hand luggage on board. It was a late meal on
+Sunday evening at the Rectory, and the servants soon followed their
+betters into the drawing-room for prayers.
+
+Then the Rector lighted his last cigarette, and Mrs. Glynde began to show
+symptoms of a patch of pink in either cheek.
+
+At last Jem rose--awkwardly--in the midst of a sally from Dora, who
+seemed afraid to stop speaking.
+
+"Must be going," he said; and he shook hands with the Rector.
+
+Mrs. Glynde, with nervous deliberation, kissed him and squeezed his hand
+jerkily.
+
+"Dora--will open the door for you," she said, with an apprehensive glance
+towards her husband, who, however, showed no inclination to move from his
+chair.
+
+Dora not only opened the door, but left it open, and walked with him
+across the lawn towards the stile. When they reached it there was a
+little pause. He vaulted over and she quietly followed--without his
+proffered assistance.
+
+Then at last Jem spoke.
+
+"You don't seem to care!" he said gruffly--with his new voice.
+
+"Oh, _don't!"_ she whispered imploringly.
+
+And they walked on beneath the murmuring trees where the yellow moonlight
+stole in and out between the trunks. It was not cheerful. For when Nature
+joins her sadness to the sad libretto of life she usually breaks a heart
+or two. Fortunately for us we mostly act our tragedies in the wrong
+scenery--the scenery that was painted for a comedy.
+
+"I don't understand it," said the girl at length.
+
+"I suppose it is in order to save money for Arthur."
+
+"If I don't, go," replied Jem, "it will be a question of letting
+Stagholme."
+
+Dora knew of the ancient horror of such a necessity, handed down from one
+Agar to another, like a family tradition. Moreover, women seem to respect
+men who have some simple creed and hold to it simply. Are they not one of
+our creeds themselves, though by seeking for rights instead of contenting
+themselves with privileges, some of them try to make atheists of us?
+
+"So," she said nevertheless, "you are being sacrificed to Arthur!"
+
+He answered nothing, but he had forgotten for ever Miss Evelina Louisa
+Barmond.
+
+"When do you go?" asked Dora suddenly, with something in her voice which
+no one had ever heard before. She was startled at it herself.
+
+He waited until the soft old church bell finished striking ten, then he
+answered:
+
+"To-morrow!"
+
+They had reached the farthest limit of the wood and stood at the park
+railing.
+
+"Then--," she paused, and seemed to collect herself as if for a leap;
+"then good-bye, Jem!"
+
+He took the outstretched hand; his large grasp seemed to swallow it up.
+
+"Good-bye!" he said.
+
+He climbed the rail without agility, paused for a moment, and the
+moonlight happened to gleam on his face through the gently waving
+branches as he looked down at her in dumb distress.
+
+Then he turned and walked away across the shimmering grass.
+
+A few minutes later Dora re-entered the drawing room. Her father and
+mother were seated close together, closer than she had seen them for
+years. Mrs. Glynde was pale, with two scarlet patches.
+
+Dora collected her belongings, preparatory to going to bed.
+
+"Jem," she said quietly, "is absurdly proud of his new honours. It
+affects his chin, which has gone up exactly one inch."
+
+Then she went to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
+
+The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people.
+
+
+"Here--hi!"
+
+As no one replied to this summons either, by voice or approach, the young
+man subsided into occupied silence.
+
+He was a very large young man, with a fair moustache which looked almost
+flaxen against the deep tan of his face. This last, like the rest of him,
+was ludicrously typical of that race which has wandered farther than the
+Jews, and has hitherto managed, like them, to retain a few of its
+characteristics. The Anglo-Saxonism of this youth was almost aggressive.
+It lurked in the neat droop of moustache, which was devoid of that untidy
+suggestion of a beer-mug characterising the labial adornment of a
+northern flaxen nation of which we wot. It shone calmly in the glance of
+a pair of reflectively deep blue eyes--it threw itself at one from the
+pockets of an old tweed jacket worn in conjunction with regulation
+top-boots and khaki breeches.
+
+Moreover, it gave birth to a quiet sense of being as good as any one
+else, and possibly better, which sat without conceit on his brow.
+
+It would seem that he really did not want to be answered just then, for
+he did not raise a voice accustomed to dominate the clatter of horses'
+feet, nor did he pass any comment on the carelessness or criminal absence
+of some person or persons unknown.
+
+He merely took up his pen again, and proceeded to handle that mighty
+weapon with an awkwardness suggestive of a greater skill with another
+instrument only less powerful. He was seated on two reversed buckets,
+pyramidally balanced, at a small table which had the air of wide
+capabilities in some other sphere of usefulness. There was a weird
+cunning in the legs of this table indicative of subtle change into a
+camp-bed or possibly a canoe.
+
+The writing materials consisted of a vaseline bottle (fourpenny size)
+full of ink, and two weary pieces of blotting-paper. The paper upon which
+he was writing had a travelled and somewhat jaundiced air, the penholder
+was of gold. In the furniture of the tent, as in the canvas thereof,
+there was that mournful suggestion of better days which is held to be a
+virtue in furnished apartments. But over all there hovered that sense of
+well-scrubbed cleanliness which comes from the touch of a native military
+servant. An indulgence in this habit of rubbing and scrubbing was indeed
+accountable for much dilapidation; for that silent little Ghoorka man,
+Ben Abdi, had rubbed and scrubbed many things not intended by an
+ingenious camp-furnisher for such treatment. James Edward Makerstone Agar
+was engaged in the compilation of a diary, which volume there is reason
+to believe is still preserved in a woman's jewel drawer.
+
+It has not run through any editions--indeed, no compositor's finger has
+up to this time defiled its pages. This, in fact, was one of those
+literary works, ground slowly out from the millstones of the brain, of
+which the style fails to please the taste of the present day. To catch
+the fancy of a slang-loving and thoughtless generation the writer must
+throw off his works. This is an age of "throwing off," and it is to be
+presumed that future ages will throw the result away. One must be
+brilliant, shallow, slightly unpleasant and very unwholesome, to acquire
+nowadays that best of all literary reputations which leaveth a balance at
+one's bank.
+
+J.E.M. Agar--or "Jem" as his friends call him to his face and his
+servants behind his back--Jem Sahib to wit--was no Pepys. His literary
+style was disjointed, heavy, and occasionally illiterate. This last
+peculiarity, by the way, is of no consequence nowadays, but it is
+mentioned here for ulterior motives. In the pages of this little
+black-bound volume there were no scintillating thoughts scribbled there
+with suspicious neatness of diction, such as one finds in the diaries of
+great men who, it would seem, are not above post-mortem vanity. The diary
+was a chronicle of solid facts--Jem being essentially solid and a man of
+the very plainest facts.
+
+Speaking as an impartial critic, one would incline to the opinion that
+Agar devoted too much thought to his work--in strong contrast, perhaps,
+to the literary tendency of his day. He nibbled the leisure end of his
+penholder too much, and allowed the business extremity thereof to dry in
+inky conglomeration. The result was a distinct sense of labour in the
+style of the work. After having called in vain, perhaps for assistance,
+the scribe returned to the contemplation of his latest effort. The book
+was one of Letts's diaries, three days in a page, which are in themselves
+fatal to a finished style of literature. There is always too much to say
+or too little. One's thoughts never fit the rhomboid apportioned by Mr.
+Letts for their accommodation. Great men who have thoughts when the diary
+is handy do not, of course, patronise Letts, because he could not be
+expected to know when there would be a sunset likely to stir up poetic
+reflections, or a moonrise comparable with the cold light cast by some
+unsympathetic young woman's eyes upon the poet's life.
+
+For such men, however, as Agar, Mr. Letts is a guardian angel. The space
+is there, and facts must be forthcoming to fill it. Agar was, and is
+still--thank Heaven--a conscientious man. He had promised to keep this
+diary and keep it he did. And surely he hath his reward--remembering the
+jewel drawer.
+
+At the moment under consideration he was filling in yesterday's rhomboid,
+and paused at the conclusion of the following remarks:
+
+"_Seven_ A.M. Turned out, and shot a Ghilzai. Saw him sneaking up the
+valley. Long shot--should put it down at a hundred and seventy-five
+yards. Hit him in the stom--abd--chest. Looked like rain until two
+o'clock. Then cleared up. Walter caught a mongoose and brought him in
+with much triumph. He got conceited afterwards and slept on my bed till
+kicked off by Ben Abdi. I see it's Sunday. Church four hundred odd miles
+away."
+
+This, my masters, is not the stuff to quote _in extenso_, and yet in its
+day this diary was cried over--before it was put away in the jewel
+drawer. Truly women are strange--one can never tell how a thing will
+present itself to them. Honest Jem Agar, nibbling his penholder and
+jerking these lucid observations out of his military brain by mere force
+of discipline, never suspected the heart that was in it all--that minute
+particle of himself that lay in the blot in the corner carefully absorbed
+by the exhausted blotting-paper.
+
+"Sunday, egad!" he muttered, leaning his arms on the cunning table, and
+gazing out across the pine-clad valley that lay below him in a deep blue
+haze.
+
+He stared into the haze, and there he saw those whom he called "his
+people" walking across a neat English park toward a peaceful little
+English church. To them came presently a young person; a young person
+clad in pink cotton, who walked with a certain demure sureness of tread,
+as if she knew her own mind and other things besides. Her path came into
+the park from the left, and among the trees into which it disappeared
+behind her there stood the red chimneys of a long low house.
+
+Suddenly these visions vanished before something more tangible in the
+haze of the valley. This was the flutter of a dirty white rag which
+seemed to come and go among the fir trees.
+
+Jem Agar rose from his temporary seat and walked to the door of the
+tent--exactly two strides. A rifle lay against the canvas, and this he
+took up, slowly cocking it without taking his eyes from the belt of fir
+trees across the valley.
+
+Presently he threw the rifle up and fired instantaneously. He had been
+musketry instructor in his time and held views upon quick firing. The
+smoke rose lazily in the ambient air, and he saw a figure all fluttering
+rags and flying turban running down the slope away from him. At the same
+moment there was a crashing volley, followed by two straggling reports.
+The figure stopped, seemed to hesitate, and then slowly subsided into the
+grass.
+
+Agar put his head out of the tent and saw half a company of Goorkhas,
+keen little sportsmen all standing in line at the edge of the plateau,
+reloading.
+
+This was the force at the disposal of Major J. E. M. Agar, at that time
+occupying and holding for Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of
+India a very advanced position on the northern frontier of India. And in
+this manner he spent most of his days and some of his nights. In addition
+to the plain Major he had several other titles attached to his name at
+that time, indicative of duties real and imaginary. He was "deputy
+assistant" several things and "acting" one or two; for in military
+titles one begins in inverse ratio in a large way, and ends in something
+short.
+
+Jem Agar was thought very highly of by almost all concerned, except
+himself, and it had not occurred to him to devote much thought to this
+matter. He was one of the very few men to whom a senior officer or a
+pretty girl could say, "You are a nice man and a clever fellow," without
+doing the least harm. Men who thought such things of themselves laughed
+at him behind his back, and wondered vaguely why he got promotion. It
+never occurred to them to reflect that "old Jem" invariably acquitted
+himself well in each new position thrust upon him by a persistently kind
+fortune; they contented themselves with an indefinite conviction that
+each severally could have done better, as is the way of clever young men.
+One of the many mysteries, by the way, which will have to be cleared up
+in a busy hereafter is that appertaining to brilliant boys, clever
+undergraduates, and gifted young men. What becomes of them? There are
+hundreds at school at this moment--we have it from their own parents;
+hundreds more at Oxford and Cambridge--we have it from themselves. In a
+few years they will be absorbed in a world of men very much inferior to
+themselves (by their own showing), and will be no more seen.
+
+Jem Agar had never been a clever boy. He was not a clever man. But--and
+mark ye this--he knew it. The result of this knowledge was that he did
+what he could in the present with the present, and did not indefinitely
+postpone astonishing the universe, as most of us do, until some future
+date.
+
+At this time he was banished, as some would take it. Banished to the top
+of a pass which was nought else than a footway between two empires. Forty
+miles from men of his own race, this man was one of those who either have
+no thoughts or no wish to impart them; for this racial solitude, which is
+an emotion fully explored by many in India, in no way affected his
+nerves. Some say that they get jumpy, others aver that they begin to lose
+their national characteristics and develop barbarous proclivities, while
+one Woods-and-Forests man known to some of us resigned because he had a
+buzzing in the head during the long solitary, silent evenings.
+
+Major Agar made no statements on this point, though he listened with
+sympathy to the assertions of others. If the sympathy were subtly mingled
+with non-comprehensive wonder, the seeker after a purer form of
+commiseration attributed the alloy to natural density, and turned
+elsewhere.
+
+Accompanied by a handful of Goorkhas, Major J. E. M. Agar had occupied
+the key to this narrow pass for more than a week, vaguely admiring the
+scenery, illustrating upon living "running deer" in turbans his views
+upon quick firing to his diminutive soldiers, who worshipped him as
+second only to the gods, and possessing his soul with that trustful
+patience which is rapidly becoming old-fashioned and effete.
+
+During that same week the newspapers at home had been very busy with his
+name. Some had gone so far as to lay before a greedy public a short and
+succinct account of his life, compiled from the Army List and a
+journalistic imagination, finishing the record on the Monday, six days
+previously, with the usual three-line regret that England should in
+future be compelled to limp along the path to glory without the
+assistance of so brilliant a young officer.
+
+Such a word as brilliant had never been coupled with the name of Jem even
+by his best friend in earnest or his worst enemy in irony. Such sarcasm
+were too shallow to be worth sounding even in disparagement. But we never
+know what an obituary notice may bring. Not only had he been endowed with
+many virtues, manly qualities, and the record of noble deeds, but more
+substantial honours had been heaped upon his fallen crest or pinned upon
+his breathless bosom. To some of his distant countrymen he was the proud
+possessor of the Victoria Cross, awarded him post-mortem in the heat of
+obituary enthusiasm by more than one local paper. To others he was held
+up by what is called a Representative Press as a second Crichton. And all
+this because he was dead. Such is glory.
+
+All unconscious of these honours, honest Jem Agar sat in his little
+tent, nibbling the end of his penholder--the gift, by the way, of his
+father--and wishing that he had bought a Letts's diary with six days in a
+page instead of three.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+RELIEVED
+
+Well waited is well done.
+
+
+"Here--hi!"
+
+This time some one heard him, and that small, silent man, Ben Abdi, stood
+in the doorway of the tent at attention.
+
+"Are you keeping a good look-out down the valley?" asked Major Agar.
+
+"Ee yess, sar."
+
+"No signs of any one?"
+
+"No, sar."
+
+Agar shut up the diary, which book Ben Abdi had been taught to regard as
+strictly official, laid it aside, and passed out of the tent, the little
+Goorkha following close upon his heels with a quick intelligent interest
+in his every movement which somehow suggested a dusky and faithful little
+dog.
+
+For some moments they stood thus on the edge of the small plateau, the
+big man in front, the little one behind--alert, with twinkling, beady
+eyes. Behind them towered a bleak grey slope of bare rock, like a cliff
+set back at a slight angle, so treeless, so smooth was the face of it. In
+front the great blue-shadowed valley lay beneath them, stretching away to
+the south, until in a distant haze the sharp hills seemed to close in and
+cut it short.
+
+Perched thus, as it were, upon the roof of the world, these two men
+looked down upon it all with a calm sense of possession, and to him of
+the dominant race standing there some thousands of miles from his native
+land--alone--master of this great stretch of an alien shore, there must
+have come some passing thought of the strangeness of it all.
+
+There was something wrong--he knew that. His orders had been to press
+forward and occupy this little ridge, which was vaguely marked on the
+service maps as Mistley's Plateau, named after an adventurous soul, its
+discoverer. He had been instructed to hold this against all comers, and
+if possible to prevent communication between the two valleys, connected
+only by this narrow pass. All this Agar had carried out to the letter;
+but some one else had failed somewhere.
+
+"It will be three days at the most," his chief had said, "and the main
+body of the advance guard will join you!"
+
+Jem Agar had been in occupation a week, and it seemed that he and his
+little band of men were forgotten of the world. Still this soldier held
+on, saying nothing to his men, writing his intensely practical diary, and
+trusting as a soldier should to the _Deus ex machina_ who finally allows
+discipline to triumph. He looked down into the valley, piercing the
+shimmer of its hazes with his gentle blue eyes, looking to his chief, who
+had said, "In three days I will join you."
+
+It was not the first time that Agar and the little non-commissioned
+native officer, Ben Abdi, had stood thus together. They had taken their
+stand in this same spot in the keen air of the early morning, with the
+white frost crystallising the stones around them; in the glow of midday;
+and when the moon, hanging over the sharp-pointed hills, cast the valley
+into an opaque shade dark and fathomless as the valley of death.
+
+Scanning the distant hills, Agar presently raised his eyes, noting the
+position of the sun in the heavens.
+
+"Have you tried the heliograph a second time this morning?" he asked
+without looking round, which informality of manner warmed the little
+soldier's heart.
+
+"Yes, sar. Three times since breakfast."
+
+It was the first time that Ben Abdi had found himself in a position of
+some responsibility, in immediate touch with one of the white-skinned
+warriors from over seas whose methods of making war had for him all the
+mystery and the infinite possibilities of a religion. This silent looking
+out for relief partook in some small degree of the nature of a council of
+war. Jem Sahib and himself were undoubtedly the chiefs of this
+expeditionary force, and to whom else than himself, Ben Abdi, should the
+Major turn for counsel and assistance? The little Goorkha preferred,
+however, that it should be thus; that Agar Sahib should say nothing,
+merely allowing him to stand silent three paces behind. He was a modest
+little man, this Goorkha, and knew the limit of his own capabilities,
+which knowledge, by the way, is not always to be found in the hearts of
+some of us boasting a fairer skin. He knew that for hard fighting, snugly
+concealed behind a rock at two hundred yards, or in the open, with
+cunning bayonet or swinging kookery, he was as good as his fellows; but
+for strategy, for the larger responsibilities of warfare, he was well
+pleased that his superior officer should manage these affairs in his
+quiet way unaided.
+
+During a luncheon more remarkable for heartiness of despatch than
+delicacy of viand, James Edward Makerstone Agar devoted much thought to
+the affairs of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress of India. After luncheon
+he lighted a cheroot, threw himself on his bed, and there reflected
+further. Then he called to him Ben Abdi.
+
+"No more promiscuous shooting," he said to him. "No more volley firing
+at a single Ghilzai or a stray Bhutari. It seems that they do not
+know we are here, as we are left undisturbed. I do not want them to
+know--understand? If you see any one going along the valley, send two men
+after him; no shooting, Ben Abdi."
+
+And he pointed with his cheroot towards the evil-looking curved knife
+which hung at the Goorkha's side.
+
+Ben Abdi grinned. He understood that sort of business thoroughly.
+
+Then followed many technical instructions--not only technical in good
+honest English, but interlarded with words from a language which cannot
+be written with our alphabet for the benefit of such as love details of a
+realistic nature.
+
+The result of this council was that sundry little dusky warriors were
+busy clambering about the rocky slope all that day and well into the
+short hill-country evening, working in twos and threes with the
+_alacrity_ of ants.
+
+Jem Agar, in his own good time, was proceeding to further fortify, as
+well as circumstances allowed, the position he had been told to hold
+until relief should come. In addition to the magic of the master's eye he
+lent the assistance of his strong right arm, laying his lithe weight
+against many a rock which his men could not move unaided. By the evening
+the position was in a fairly fortified state, and, after a copious dinner
+in the chill breeze that rushed from the mountain down to the valley
+after sunset, he walked placidly up and down at the edge of the plateau,
+watching, ever watching, but with calmness and no sign of anxiety.
+
+Such it is to be an Englishman--the product of an English public
+school and country life. Thick-limbed, very quiet; thick-headed if you
+will!--that is as may be--but with a nerve of iron, ready to face the
+last foe of all--Death, without so much as a wink.
+
+To his ear came at times the low cautious cry of some night-bird sailing
+with heavy wing down to the haunt of mouse or mole; otherwise the night
+was still as only mountain night-seasons are. Far down below him, the
+jungle and forest were rustling with game and beasts of prey seeking
+their meat from God, but the larger beasts of India, unlike their African
+brethren, move in silence, stealthy yet courageous; and the distance was
+too great for the quickly stifled cry of the victim of panther or tiger
+to reach him.
+
+When the moon rose he made the round of his pickets--a matter of ten
+minutes--and then to bed.
+
+On the morning of the ninth day he thought he detected signs of
+uneasiness in the faces of the men. He found their keen little visages
+ever turned towards him, watching his every movement, noting the play of
+every feature. So in his simplicity he practised a simple diplomacy. He
+hummed to himself as he went his rounds and while he sat over his diary.
+He only knew one song--"A Warrior Bold"--which every mess in India
+associated with old Jem Agar, for no evening was considered complete
+without the Major's one ditty if he were present. He had stood up and
+roared it in many strange places, quite without sentiment, without
+self-consciousness, without afterthought. He never thought it a matter of
+apology that he should have failed to learn another song. The smile with
+which many ladies of his acquaintance sat down to play the accompaniment
+_by heart_ conveyed nothing to him. He did not pretend to be a singer--he
+knew that one song, and if they liked it he would sing it. Moreover, they
+did like it, and that was why they asked for it. It did some of them good
+to see honest Jem get on his legs and shout out, in a very musical voice,
+with perfect truth to air, what seemed to be a plain statement of his
+creed of life.
+
+So, far up on Mistley Plateau, nine thousand feet above the level of the
+sea, Jem Agar advised his little dark-visaged fighters, _sotto voce_,
+while he puzzled over his diary, that his love had golden hair, with eyes
+so blue and heart so true, that none with her compared; moreover, that he
+didn't care if death were nigh, because he had fought for love, and for
+love would die.
+
+It was not very deep or very subtle, but it served the purpose. It kept
+up the hearts of his handful of warriors, who, in common with their
+chief, had something child-like and simple in their honest, sporting
+souls.
+
+Shortly after tiffin Ben Abdi came to the Major's tent, speaking
+hurriedly in his own tongue.
+
+One of the men had seen the sunlight gleam on white steel far down in the
+valley. He had seen it several times--a long spiral flash, such as the
+sun would make on a fixed bayonet carried over the shoulder. Such a flash
+as this will carry twenty miles through a clear atmosphere; the spot
+pointed out by the sharp-eyed Goorkha was not more than ten miles
+distant. They stood in a group, this isolated little band, and gazed down
+into the depth below them. They gazed in vain for some time, then a
+little murmur of excitement told that the sun had glinted again on
+burnished steel. This time there were several flashes close together.
+These were men marching with fixed bayonets through an enemy's country.
+
+"Heliograph," said Agar quietly, without taking his eyes from the spot
+far down in the valley; and soon the little mirror was flashing out its
+question over the vale. After a few anxious moments the answering gleam
+sprang to life among the trees far below. Agar gave a quick little sigh
+of relief--that was all.
+
+Then followed a short conversation flickered over ten miles of space.
+
+"Are you beset?" asked the Valley,
+
+"No," replied the Hill.
+
+"Is the enemy in sight?"
+
+"No," replied the Mountain, again, with a sharp click.
+
+"Are you all well?" flashed from below.
+
+"Yes," from above.
+
+Then the "Good-bye," and the glimmer of the bayonets began again.
+
+Two hours later Major Agar drew his absurd little force in line, and thus
+they received the relieving column, grimly conscious of dangers past but
+not forgotten.
+
+At the head of the new-comers rode a little man with a prominent chin and
+a long drooping nose; such a remarkable-looking little man that the
+veriest tyro at physiognomy would have turned to look at him again. His
+black eyes, beaming with intelligence, moved so quickly beneath the
+steady lashes that it was next to an impossibility to state what he saw
+and what he failed to see.
+
+He returned Agar's salute hurriedly, with a preoccupied air. He wore a
+quiet uniform tunic almost hidden by black braiding, a pith helmet which
+had seen brighter days and likewise fouler, and the leg that he threw
+over his horse's head was cased in riding trousers and a neat little
+top-boot of brown leather.
+
+He slipped from the saddle with a litheness which contrasted strangely
+with his closely cropped grey hair and white moustache and Imperial. He
+walked towards Agar's tent after the manner of one who had sat in the
+saddle for many hours. His spurs clanked with a sharp, business-like
+ring, and his every movement had that neat finish which indicates the
+soldier born and bred.
+
+Wheeling round he faced Agar, who had followed him with a more leisurely
+gait based on longer legs, looking up keenly into the quiet fair face.
+Turning he shot his sword home into its scabbard with a click.
+
+"Thank God," he said, "you're safe!"
+
+Agar awaited for further observations. This was not the man whom he
+had expected, but another, far greater, far higher up in the military
+scale--a man whom he had only met once before, and that at an official
+reception.
+
+Seeing that his guest was unbuckling his sword, he presumed that the task
+of continuing this conversation lay with himself.
+
+"M' yes!" he replied, rubbing his pannikin out clean with the corner of a
+towel, and proceeding to mix some brandy and water; "why?"
+
+"Why!" answered the little man scornfully, "WHY! damn it, sir, Stevenor's
+command has been cut off by the enemy in force--massacred to a man. That
+is why I say 'Thank God, you're safe!' It is more than I expected."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+RE-CAST
+
+Our deeds still travel with us from afar,
+And what, we have been makes us what we are.
+
+
+There was a momentary pause; then Major Agar spoke.
+
+"In that case," he observed, "the British force occupying this country
+for the last week has consisted of myself and thirty Goorkhas."
+
+"Precisely so! And it was by the merest chance that I found out that you
+were here. It was only guesswork at the best. A bazaar report reached me
+that poor old Stevenor had been cut to pieces. I hate blaming a dead man,
+but I really don't know what he can have been about. He made some hideous
+mistake somewhere. We buried him yesterday. On hearing the report, I
+thought it better to come up myself, having a little knowledge of the
+country. Brought two companies, and half a squadron to act as scouts. We
+reached Barkoola yesterday, and found the poor chaps as they had fallen.
+And some of those carpet-warriors at home say that a black man can't
+fight! Can't he! Not so much brandy this time, please. Yes, fill it up."
+
+Agar set the regulation water-bottle down on his gifted table.
+
+"I have the Devil's own luck!" he murmured. "While they were burying I
+missed you from among the officers; and then it struck me that you
+might have got away before the disaster. We counted the men, and found
+thirty-four short, so we came on here. By God! what a chap Mistley was!
+We came here without a check. His maps are perfect!"
+
+"Yes," admitted Agar, "that man knew his business!"
+
+There was something in his tone that might have been envy or perhaps mere
+admiration; for this man knew himself to be inferior in many ways to him
+who had first crossed the mountain pass on which he stood.
+
+"The worst of it is," went on the great officer, "that you are
+telegraphed home as killed."
+
+He paused on the last word, watching its effect. It would seem that,
+behind the busy black eyes, there was the beginning of a thought hatched
+within the grey close-cut head which, _en fait de tetes,_ was without its
+rival in the Empire.
+
+"That is soon remedied," opined the Major with a cheerful laugh.
+
+"Ye--es!"
+
+The great man was thoughtfully rubbing his chin with the tips of the
+first and second fingers, drawing in his under lip at the same time, and
+apparently taking pleasure in the rasping sound caused by the friction
+over the shaven chin.
+
+There is usually something written in the human countenance--some single
+virtue, vice, or quality which dominates all petty characteristics. Most
+faces express weakness--the faces that pass one in the streets. Some are
+the incarnation of meanness, some pleasanter types verge on sensuality.
+The face of the man who sat watching Agar expressed indomitable,
+invincible determination, and _nothing else_. It was the face of one who
+was ready to sacrifice any one, even himself, to a single all-pervading
+purpose. In this respect he was a splendid commander, for he was as
+nearly heartless as men are made.
+
+The big fair Englishman who had occupied Mistley's Plateau for a week,
+exactly one hundred and seventy miles from assistance of any description,
+and in the heart of the enemy's country, smiled down at his companion
+with a simple wonder.
+
+"Got something up your sleeve, sir?" he inquired softly, for he knew
+somewhat of his superior officer's ways.
+
+"Yes!" replied the other curtly. "A trump card!"
+
+He continued to look at Jem Agar with a cold and calculating scrutiny, as
+a jockey may look at his horse or a butcher at living meat.
+
+"It's like this," he said. "You're dead. I want you to stay dead for a
+little while--say six months to a year!"
+
+Agar seated himself on the corner of the table, which creaked under the
+weight of his spare muscular person, and then, true to his cloth, he
+awaited further orders; true to his nature, he waited in silence.
+
+After a short pause the other proceeded to explain.
+
+"You frontier men," he said, "are closely watched; we know that. There
+will be great rejoicing over there, in Northern Europe, over this mishap
+to Stevenor, although, God knows, he was not a very dangerous man. Not so
+dangerous as you, Agar. They will be delighted to hear that you are out
+of the way. Stay out of the way for a year, and during that twelve months
+you will be able to do more than you could get done in twelve years when
+you were being watched by them."
+
+"I see," answered Agar quietly. "Not dead, but gone--up country."
+
+"Precisely so; where they certainly will not be on the look-out for you."
+
+The bright black eyes were shining with suppressed excitement. The great
+man was afraid that his tool would refuse to work under this exacting
+touch.
+
+"But what about my people?" asked Agar.
+
+"Oh, I will put that right. You see, they have got over the worst of it
+by this time. It is wonderful how soon people do get over it. They have
+known it for a week now, and have bought their mourning and all that."
+
+There came a look into Agar's face which the little officer did not
+understand. We never do understand what we could not feel ourselves, and
+it is not a matter of wonder that the lesser intelligence should foil the
+greater in this instance. There was a depth in Jem Agar which was beyond
+the fathom of his keen-witted companion.
+
+"I am going home," continued General Michael, "almost at once. The first
+thing I do on landing is to go straight to your people and tell them. We
+cannot afford to telegraph it. Telegraph clerks are only human, and it is
+worth the while of the newspapers in these days of large circulation to
+pay a heavy price for their news. We all know that some items, published
+_can_ only have been bought from the telegraph clerks."
+
+Agar was making a mental calculation.
+
+"That means," he said, "two months before they hear."
+
+The expression on the face of the little man was scarcely human in its
+heartless cunning.
+
+"Hardly," he answered carelessly. "And when they hear the reason they
+will admit that the result is worth the sacrifice. It will be the making
+of you!--and of me!" added the black eyes with a secretive gleam.
+
+"It is," went on the General, "such a chance as only comes once to a man
+in his lifetime. I wish I had had it at your age."
+
+The voice was a pleasant one, with that ring of friendliness and
+familiarity which is usually heard in the tones of an educated Jew; for
+General Michael was that rare combination, a Jew and a soldier.
+
+"I don't like leaving them so long under the mistake," answered Agar,
+half yielding to authoritative persuasion, half tempted by ambition and a
+love of adventure. "I don't like it, General. The straight thing would be
+to telegraph home at once."
+
+In the wavering smile that crossed the dark face there was suggested a
+fine contempt for the straight thing unaccompanied by some tangible
+advantage.
+
+"Who are they?" inquired the General almost affectionately. "Who are your
+people?"
+
+Agar walked to the tent door and looked out. There was some clatter of
+swords going on outside, and as commander of this post it was his duty to
+know all that was passing. He turned, and standing in the doorway, quite
+filling it with his bulk, he answered:
+
+"My father died three years ago. I have a step-mother and a step-brother,
+that is all--besides friends."
+
+The General stooped to loosen the strap of his spur.
+
+"Of course," he said in that attitude, "I know you are not a married
+man."
+
+"No."
+
+Beneath the brim of the helmet, which he had not laid aside, the Jew's
+keen black eyes were watching, watching. But they saw nothing; for there
+is no one so impenetrable as a man with a clear conscience and a large
+faith.
+
+"My idea was," continued General Michael, "that two, or at the most
+three, people besides you and I be let into the secret."
+
+"Three," said Agar, with quiet decision.
+
+"Three?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The General tacitly allowed this point and passed on with characteristic
+promptitude to another.
+
+"Are you a man of property?"
+
+"Yes, I inherit my father's place down in Hertfordshire."
+
+"I'll tell you why I ask. There are those beastly lawyers to think of. At
+your death it is to be presumed that the estate comes to your brother.
+The legal operations must be delayed somehow. I will see to it," he added
+in a concise, almost snappish way.
+
+Agar smiled, although he was conscious of a vague feeling of discomfort.
+He was not a highly sensitive or a nervous man, and this feeling was more
+than might have been expected to arise from an attendance, as it were, at
+one's own obituary arrangements. The General seemed to be remarkably well
+informed on these smaller points, and something prompted Jem Agar to ask
+him if the idea he had just propounded was a suddenly conceived one.
+
+"No," replied the General with a singular pause.
+
+"No, I once knew a man who did the same thing for a different purpose,
+but the idea was identical. I do not claim to be the originator."
+
+"And there was no hitch? It was successful?" inquired Agar.
+
+"Yes," replied the older soldier in a far-away voice, as if he had
+mentally gone back to the results of that man's deception. "Yes, it was
+successful. By the way, you say your people live down in Hertfordshire?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I once knew a girl--long ago, in my younger days--who married a man
+called Agar, and went to live in Hertfordshire. The name did not strike
+me until you mentioned the county. I wonder if the lady is now your
+step-mother."
+
+"My step-mother's name was Hethbridge," replied Jem Agar.
+
+"The same. How strange!" said the General indifferently. "Well, she has
+probably forgotten my existence these thirty years. She has one son, you
+say?"
+
+"Yes, Arthur. He is twenty-three--five years younger than myself."
+
+The shifty black eyes excelled themselves at this moment in rapidity of
+observation. They seemed to be full of question, of many questions, but
+none were forthcoming.
+
+"Ah!" said General Michael indifferently. "He is," pursued Jem Agar, "a
+delicate fellow; does nothing; though I believe he is going to be called
+to the Bar."
+
+The General, having passed most of his life in India, where men work or
+else go home, did not take in the full meaning of this; but he was keen
+as a ferret, and he saw easily that Jem Agar despised his step-brother
+with that cruel contempt which strong men feel for weak.
+
+"Mother's darling?" he suggested.
+
+"Yes, that is about it," replied Agar. He was too simple, too innately
+upright and honest to perceive the infinite possibilities opened up by
+the fact upon which General Michael had pounced.
+
+"In case you decide to accept my offer," the older man went on, "you
+would wish your stepmother and step-brother to be told?"
+
+"Yes, and one other person."
+
+"Ah, and another person. You could not limit it to two?" urged the
+General.
+
+"No!" replied Agar with a decision which the other was wise enough to
+consider final. Moreover, the General omitted to ask the name of this
+third person, urged thereto by one of those strokes of instinct which
+indicate the genius of the commander of men.
+
+General Michael, moreover, deemed it prudent to carry the matter no
+further at that moment. He rose from his seat on the bed, stretched his
+lithe limbs, and said:
+
+"Well, this won't do! We must get to work. I propose retreating
+to-morrow morning at daylight."
+
+They passed out of the tent together and proceeded to give their orders,
+moving in and out among the busy men. There was a subtle difference in
+their reception which was perhaps patent to both, though neither deemed
+it necessary to make any comment. Wherever Agar went the eager little
+black faces of his Goorkhas met him with a smile or a grin of delight;
+when General Michael passed by, the dusky features hardened suddenly to a
+marble stillness, and the beady eyes were all soldier-like attention.
+
+They feared and loved the one because they felt that there was something
+in him which they could not understand; they feared and hated the other
+because his nature was nearer to their own, and they defined the evil in
+it.
+
+Moreover, each had his reputation--that of General Michael dating from
+the Mutiny; the other, a younger and a cleaner record.
+
+It is considered the proper thing to talk in England of the unvoiced
+millions of India. No greater mistake could be made. These millions have
+a voice, but it does not reach to us because they do not raise it. They
+talk with it among themselves.
+
+They had talked of General Michael for thirty years, and all that there
+was in him had been discussed to its very dregs. Thus their impenetrable
+faces hardened when he passed, their shadowy secretive eyes looked beyond
+him with a vacancy which was not the vacancy of dulness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A LAST THROW
+
+Get place and wealth; if possible, with grace;
+If not, by any means get wealth and place.
+
+
+Daylight broke next morning in a snow-storm, and a thin sprinkling lay
+over all the hills, clothing them in spotless white.
+
+General Michael was among the first astir, seeing in person to all the
+details of the retreat. The men looked in vain towards the tent where
+their late youthful leader had been wont to sit, nibbling the end of his
+golden pocket-penholder, wrestling manfully in the throes of literary
+composition.
+
+When at last the order was given to strike tents the faces of the rank
+and file fell like the face of one man.
+
+Major James Edward Makerstone Agar had simply disappeared. His limited
+baggage was attached to the smaller belongings of General Michael, and no
+explanation was offered by that dreaded officer. To him the cold seemed
+to be a matter of indifference; for he stood about watching every
+movement of the men with a supreme disregard for the driving snow or the
+knife-like wind that whistled over the northern scarp.
+
+Under his calculating eye they worked to such effect that by nine o'clock
+the little column was on the downward march. Again General Michael rode
+through that lone, lorn country lying between India and Russia. Again his
+melancholy face with keen but hopeless eyes passed through the darksome
+valleys where, if legend be true, a race as old as his has lived since
+the children of Abraham set forth to wander over the earth.
+
+For twenty years this man had haunted these vales and hills, seeking,
+ever seeking, his own aggrandisement and nothing else. Accounted a
+patriot, he was no patriot; for the homeless blood was mingled in his
+veins. Held to be a hero by some, he was none; for he hated danger for
+its own sake, just as some men love it.
+
+But his lines had been cast in this unpleasant place, from whence flight
+or retreat was rendered almost impossible, by the laws of discipline and
+the freak of circumstance. Despite his titles, in face of his great
+reputation, he knew himself to be a failure, and as he rode southward
+through the mountain barrier that frowns down over India he was conscious
+of the knowledge that in all human probability he would never look upon
+this drear land again. His time was up, he was about to be set on the
+shelf, life was over. And he had all his powers yet--all his marvellous
+quickness at the mastery of tongues, all the restless energy which had
+urged him on to overrun the race, to dodge and bore and break his stride
+instead of holding steadily on the straight course.
+
+He it was who had discovered Jem Agar's talent for this rough, peculiar
+soldiering of the frontier. He it was to whom the simple-minded young
+officer had owed promotion after promotion. General Michael had fixed
+upon Agar as his last hope--his last chance of doing something brilliant
+in this deathly country, which moved with a slowness that nearly drove
+him mad.
+
+This last attempt was thrown down like a defiance in the face of Fortune;
+but still the risk was not his own. It never had been. Men had been sent
+to their certain death by this sallow-faced commander, for no other
+object than his own aggrandisement. It would almost seem that a just
+Providence had ever turned away in loathing from the schemes of this man
+who would have all and risk nothing.
+
+Should Jem Agar succeed in the dangerous secret mission on which he had
+been sent by a subtle underhand pressure of discipline, the glory would
+never be his. This, under the grasping fingers of General Michael, would
+never appear to the world as the wonderful individual feat of an intrepid
+man, but as a masterly stroke of strategy dealt by a great general.
+
+Seymour Michael had long ago found out that Jem Agar was the step-son of
+the woman whom he had wronged in bygone years. But the name failed to
+touch his conscience, partly because that conscience was not of much
+account, and partly because time heals all things, even a sore sense of
+wrong. Truth to tell, he had not thought much of Anna Agar during the
+last twenty years, and the mere coincidence that this simple tool should
+be her step-son was insufficient to deter him from making use of Agar.
+But with that careful attention to detail which in such a man betrayed
+innate weakness, he took care to make sure that Jem Agar had learnt
+nothing of the past from the lips of his father's second wife.
+
+General Michael did not disguise from himself the fact that the mission
+on which he had despatched Jem Agar was what the life insurance companies
+call hazardous. But he had lived by the sword, and that mode of gaining a
+livelihood makes men wondrously indifferent to the lives of others.
+Moreover, this was in a sense a speciality of his. He was getting
+hardened to the game, and played it with coolness and precision.
+
+All through that day the little band retreated through an enemy's
+country, watchful, alert, almost nervous. There were absurdly few of
+them--a characteristic of that frontier warfare which the sallow, silent
+leader had waged nearly all his life. And in the evening there was not
+peace.
+
+Fortune is a playful soul. She keeps men waiting a lifetime, and then,
+when it is too late, she suddenly opens both her hands. Seymour Michael
+had waited twenty years for one of those chances of easy distinction
+which seemed to fall to the lot of all his comrades in arms. This chance
+was vouchsafed to him on the last evening he ever passed in an enemy's
+country--when it was too late--when that which he did was no more than
+was to be expected from a man of his experience and fame.
+
+The little band was attacked at sunset by the victorious savages who had
+annihilated the advance column three days earlier, and with half the
+number of men, fatigued and hungry, Seymour Michael beat them back and
+cut his way to the south. He knew that it was good, and the men knew it.
+They looked upon this keen-faced little man as something approaching a
+demi-god; but they had no love for him as they had for Major Agar. The
+knowledge was theirs that to him their lives were of no account--they
+were not men, but numbers. He brought them out of a dire strait by sheer
+skill, by that heartless grip of discipline which a true general
+exercises over his troops even at that critical moment when a common
+death seems to reduce all lives to an equal value.
+
+But in the thick of it the Goorkhas--keen little Highlanders of the
+Indian army--looked in vain for the fighting light in their leader's
+eyes. They listened in vain for the encouraging voice--now low and steady
+in warning, now trumpet-like and maddening with the infection of
+excitement.
+
+In the midst of that wild, apparently disorderly _melee_ in the narrow
+valley, while the hush of mountain sunset settled over the battle, the
+leader sat imperturbable, cold, and infinitely wise. He was pale, and his
+lips were quite colourless, but his eyes were vigilant, ready,
+resourceful. An ideal general but no soldier. He played this game with a
+skill that never faced the possibility of failure--and won.
+
+Far overhead, many miles to the northward, a solitary wanderer heard the
+sound of firing and paused to listen. He was a big man, worthy to be
+accounted such even among the strapping mountaineers of that district,
+and as he leant on the long barrel of his quaintly ornamental rifle his
+sheepskin cloak fell back from a long sinewy arm of deep-brown hue.
+
+As he listened to the far-off rumble of independent firing he muttered to
+himself indications of anxiety. Strange to say, the eyes that looked out
+over the hollow of the gorge-like valley were blue. They were, however,
+hardly visible through the tangle of unkempt hair and raw wool that fell
+over his forehead. The high sheepskin cap was dragged forward, and the
+lower part of his face was almost hidden by the indiscriminate folds of
+hood, cloak, and scarf affected by the shepherds hereabout.
+
+James Agar was perfectly happy. There must have been somewhere in his
+sporting soul that love of Nature which drives men into solitude--making
+gamekeepers and fishermen and explorers of them. It was in this man's
+character to wait passive until responsibility came to him, when he
+accepted it readily enough; but he never went out to meet it. He was not
+as the sons of Levi, who took too much upon themselves; but rather was he
+happiest when he had only his own life and his own self to take care of.
+
+Here he was now an outcast, an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand raised
+against him. It was not the first time. For this quiet-going man had
+unobtrusively learnt many tongues, and, while no one heeded him, he had
+studied the ways of this Eastern land with no mean success.
+
+He waited there during an hour while the firing still continued, and
+then, when at last silence reigned again and the wind whispered
+undisturbed through the dark pines, he turned his wandering footsteps
+northward to a land where few white men have passed.
+
+So night fell upon these two men thus hazardously brought together, and
+every moment stretched longer the distance between them--James Agar going
+north, Seymour Michael passing southward.
+
+Agar wondered vaguely whether his toilsome diary would ever reach home,
+but he was not anxious as to the result of the fight which had evidently
+taken place in the valley. He too seemed to share the belief of all who
+came in contact with him that General Michael could not do wrong in
+warfare.
+
+That night the Master of Stagholme laid him down to rest in the shadow of
+a big rock, strong in himself, strong in his faith. And as he slumbered,
+those who slumber not nor cease their toil by day or night sat with
+crooked backs over a little ticking, spitting, restless machine that
+spelt out his name across half the world. While the moon rose over the
+mountains, and looked placidly down upon this strange man lying there
+peacefully sleeping in a world of his own, two men who had never seen
+each other talked together with nimble fingers over a thousand miles of
+wire. And one told the other that James Edward Makerstone was dead.
+
+The sleeper slept on. He smiled quietly beneath the moon. Perhaps he
+dreamt of the home-coming, of that time when he could say at last, "I
+have fought my fight, and now I come with a clear conscience to enjoy the
+good things given to me." He never dreamt of treason. He never knew that
+for their own gain men will sacrifice the happiness of their neighbours
+without so much as a pang of self-reproach. There are some people, thank
+Heaven, who never learn these things, who go on believing that men are
+good and women better all their lives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A CARPET KNIGHT
+
+As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
+
+
+First door on the right after passing into New Court, Trinity College,
+Cambridge, by the river door. It is a small door, leading directly on to
+a narrow, winding stone staircase. For some reason, known possibly to the
+architect responsible for New Court (may his bones know no rest!), the
+ground-floor rooms have a door of their own within the archway.
+
+On the first floor Arthur Agar, to use the affected phraseology of an
+affected generation, "kept" in the days with which we have to deal. What
+he kept transpireth not. There were many things which he did not keep,
+the first among these being his money. In these rooms he dispensed an
+open-handed, carefully considered hospitality which earned for him a
+certain bubble popularity.
+
+There are, one finds, always plenty of men (and women too) ready to lick
+the blacking off one's boots provided always that that doubtful fare be
+varied by champagne or truffles at appropriate intervals. Men came to
+Arthur Agar's rooms, and brought their friends. Mark well the last item.
+They brought their friends. There is more in that than meets the eye.
+There is a subtle difference between the invitation for "Mr. Jones" and
+the invitation for "Mr. Jones and friends"--a difference which he who
+runs the social race may read. If Jones is worth his salt he will discern
+the difference in a week.
+
+"Oh, come to Agar's," one man (save the mark) would say to another.
+"Ripping coffee, topping cigarettes."
+
+So they went; they drank the ripping coffee, smoked the topping
+cigarette, and if they happened to be men of stomach ventured on a
+clinking cigar. Moreover, they were made welcome. Agar was like a vain
+woman who loved to see a full saloon. And he paid for his pleasure in
+more honourable coin than many a vain woman has laid down since daughters
+of Eve commenced drawing fops around them--namely, the adjectived items
+of hospitality above mentioned.
+
+It did not matter much who the guests were, provided that they filled the
+diminutive room in those spaces left vacant by _bric-a-brac_ and
+furniture of the spindle-legged description. So the men came. There were
+freshmen who fell over the footstools and bumped their heads against the
+painted sabots on the wall containing ever-fresh flowers, as per
+florist's bill; who were rather over-powered by the profusion of painted
+photograph frames, fans, and fal-lals. There was the man who sang a comic
+song and dined out on it at least twice a week. There was the calculating
+son of a poor North-country parson, who liked coffee after dinner and
+knew the value of sixpence. There was the man who came to play his own
+valse, and he who came to hear his own voice, _und so weiter_. Do we not
+know them all? Have we not run against them in after-life, despite many
+attempts to pass by on the other side? The habitual acceptors of
+hospitality have no objection to crossing the road through the thickest
+mud.
+
+"By their rooms ye shall know them," might well, if profanely, be written
+large over any college gate. Arthur Agar's rooms were worthy of the man.
+There was, even on the little stone staircase, a faint odour of pastille
+or scent spray, or something of feminine suggestion. The unwary visitor
+would as likely as not catch some part of his person against a silk
+hanging or a lurking _portiere_ on crossing the threshold; and the
+impression which struck (as all rooms do strike) from the threshold was
+one of oppressive drapery. A man, by the way, should never know anything
+about drapery or draping. Such knowledge undermines his virility. This is
+an age of undermining knowledge. We all, from the lowest to the highest,
+learn many things of which we were better ignorant. The school-board
+infant acquires French; Arthur Agar and his like bring away from
+Cambridge a pretty knack of draping chair-backs.
+
+There were little screens in the room, with shelves specially constructed
+to hold little gimcracks, which in their turn were specially shaped to
+stand upon the little shelves. There was a portentous standing-lamp, six
+feet high in its bare feet, with a shade like a crinoline. There were
+settees and _poufs_ and _des prie-Dieu_, and strange things hanging on
+the wall without rhyme, reason, or beauty. And nowhere a pipe, or a
+tennis racket, or even a pair of boots--not so much as a single manly
+indiscretion in the way of a cricket-bat in the corner, or a sporting
+novel on the table.
+
+In the midst of this the temporary proprietor of the rooms sat
+disconsolately at an inlaid writing-table with his face buried in his
+arms--weeping.
+
+The outer door was shut. Arthur Agar had sported his rare oak, not to
+work but to weep. It sometimes does happen to men, this shedding of the
+idle tear, even to Englishmen, even to Cambridge men. Moreover, it was
+infinitely to the credit of Arthur Agar that he should bury his face in
+the sleeve of his perfectly-fitting coat thus and sob, for he was weeping
+(quietly and to himself) the advent of three thousand pounds per annum.
+
+At his elbow lay a telegram--that flimsy pink paper which, with all our
+progress, all our knowledge, the bravest of us fear still.
+
+"Jem killed in India; come home at once.--AGAR."
+
+Honour to whom honour. Arthur Agar's only thought had been one of sudden
+horror. He had read the telegram over twice before going out to close his
+outer door. Then he came back and sat weakly down at the table where he
+had written more scented notes than noted themes, deliberately,
+womanlike, to cry.
+
+To his credit be it noted that he never thought of Stagholme, which was
+now his. He only thought of Jem--his no longer--Jem the open-handed,
+elder brother who tolerated much and said little. Having had everything
+that he wanted since childhood, Arthur Agar had never been in the habit
+of thinking about money matters. His florist's bills (and Cambridge
+horticulturists seem to water their flowers with Chateau Lafitte), his
+confectioner's account, and his tailor's little note had always been paid
+without a murmur. Thus, want of money--the chief incentive to crime and
+criminal thought--had never come within measurable distance of this
+gentle undergraduate.
+
+Truth to tell, he had never devoted much thought to the future. He had
+always vaguely concluded that his mother and Jem would "do something";
+and in the meantime there were important matters requiring his attention.
+There was the _menu_ to prepare for an approaching little dinner. There
+was always an approaching dinner, and always a _menu_ in execrable French
+on a satin-faced card with the college arms in a coat of many colours.
+There was the florist to be interviewed and the arrangement of the table
+to be superintended; the finishing touch to be given to the floral
+decoration thereof by the master-hand.
+
+Jem's death seemed to knock away one of the supports of the future, and
+Arthur Agar even in his grief was conscious of the impending necessity of
+having to act for himself some day.
+
+At length he lifted his head, and through the intricate pattern of the
+very newest design in art muslins the daylight fell on his face. It was a
+face which in France is called _chiffonne_; but the term is never applied
+to the visage masculine. A diminutive and slightly _retrousse_ nose,
+gentle grey eyes of the drowning-fly description, and a sensitive mouth
+scarcely hidden by a fair moustache of downward tendency.
+
+Here was a man made to be ruled all his life--probably by a woman. With a
+little more strength it might have been a melancholy face; as it stood,
+it was suggestive of nothing stronger than fretfulness. There was a vague
+distress in the eyes and in the whole countenance which mistaken and
+practical souls would probably put down to a defective digestion or a
+feeble vitality. More than one enthusiastic disciple of Aesculapius
+studying at Caius professed to have discovered the evidence of some
+internal disease in Arthur Agar's distressed eyes; but his complaint was
+not of the body at all.
+
+Presently the necessity for action forced itself upon his understanding,
+and he rose with a jerk. It is worth noting that his first thought was
+connected with dress. He passed into the inner room and there exchanged
+his elegant morning suit for a black one, replacing a delicate heliotrope
+necktie by another of sombre hue. He mentally reviewed his mourning
+wardrobe while doing so, and gathered much spiritual repose from the
+diversion.
+
+In the meantime the Rector of Stagholme, having breakfasted, proceeded to
+light a cigarette and open the _Times_ with the leisurely sense of
+enjoyment of one who takes an interest in all things without being keenly
+concerned in any.
+
+"God help us!" he exclaimed suddenly; and Mrs. Glynde, who alone happened
+to be present, dropped a handful of housekeeping money on the floor.
+
+"What is it, dear?" she gasped.
+
+"There," was the answer; "read that. 'Disaster in Northern India.' Not
+there--higher up!"
+
+In her eagerness Mrs. Glynde had plunged headlong into the consumption of
+Wesleyan missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. Then she had to find her
+glasses, and considerable delay was incurred by putting them on upside
+down. All this while the Rector sat glaring at her as if in some occult
+way she were responsible for the disaster in Northern India.
+
+At last she read the short article, and was about to give a sigh of
+relief when her eyes travelled to a diminutive list of names appended.
+
+"What!" she exclaimed. "What! Jem! Oh, Tom, dear, this can't be true!"
+
+"I have no reason," answered the Rector grimly, "to suppose that it is
+untrue."
+
+Mrs. Glynde was one of those unfortunate persons who seem only to have
+the power of aggravating at a crisis. In their way they are useful as
+serving to divert the mind; but they usually come in for more than their
+need of abuse.
+
+The poor little woman laid the newspaper gently down by her husband's
+elbow, and looked at him with a certain air of grandeur and strength. The
+instinct that arouses the mother wren to peck at the schoolboy's hand at
+her nest was strong in this subdued little old lady.
+
+"Something," she said, "must be done. How are we going to tell Dora?"
+
+The Rector was a man who never went straight at the fence, before him. He
+invariably pulled up and rode alongside the obstacle before leaping, and
+when going for it he braced himself mentally with the reflection that he
+was an English gentleman, and as such had obligations. But these
+obligations, like those of many English gentlemen, ceased at his own
+fireside. He, like many of us, was apt to forget that wife, sister, and
+daughter are nevertheless ladies to whom deference is due.
+
+"Oh--Dora," he answered; "she will have to bear it like the rest of us.
+But here am I with fresh legal complications laid upon me. I foresee
+endless trouble with the lawyers and that woman. Why the Squire made me
+his executor I can't tell. Parsons know nothing of these matters."
+
+With a patient sigh Mrs. Glynde turned away and went to the window, where
+she stood with her back to him. Even to the duller masculine mind the
+wonder sometimes presents itself that our women-folk take us so patiently
+as we are. If Mrs. Glynde had turned upon her husband (who was not so
+selfish as he would appear), presenting him forthwith in the plainest
+language at her command with a piece of her mind, the treatment would
+have been surprising at first, and infinitely beneficial afterwards.
+
+The Reverend Thomas sat staring into the fire--a luxury which he allowed
+himself all through the year--with troubled eyes. There was a fence in
+front of him, but he could not bring himself up to it. In his mistaken
+contempt for women he had never taken his wife fully into his confidence
+in those things--great or small, according to the capacity of the
+producing machine--which are essentially a personal property--namely his
+thoughts.
+
+All else he told her openly and at once, as behoved an English gentleman.
+
+Should he tell all that he had hoped and thought and rethought respecting
+Jem Agar and Dora? Should he; should he not? And the loving little woman
+stood there almost daring to break the great silence herself; but not
+quite. Strong as was her mother's heart, the habit of submission was
+stronger. She longed, she yearned to hear the deeper, graver tone of
+voice which had been used once or twice towards her--once or twice in
+moments of unusual confidence. The Reverend Thomas Glynde was silent, and
+the voice that they both heard was Dora's, singing as she came downstairs
+towards them. It was only a matter of moments, and when we have no more
+than that wherein to act we usually take the wrong turning.
+
+Mrs. Glynde turned and gave one imploring look towards her husband.
+
+At the same instant the door opened and Dora entered, singing as she
+came.
+
+"What is the matter?" she exclaimed. "You both look depressed. Stocks
+down, or something else has gone up? I know! Papa has been made a
+bishop!"
+
+With a cheery laugh she went to the table and took up the newspaper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+BAD NEWS
+
+Sa maniere de souffrir est le temoignage qu'une ame porte sur elle-meme.
+
+
+There was a horrid throbbing silence while Dora read, and her parents
+calculated the seconds which would necessarily elapse before she reached
+the bottom line. Such moments as these are scored up as years in the span
+of life.
+
+Mrs. Glynde did not know what she was doing. It happened that she
+was trying to rub away a flaw in the window-glass with her pocket
+hand-kerchief--a flaw which must have been an old friend, as such things
+are in quiet lives. At this occupation she found herself when her heart
+began to beat again.
+
+"I suppose," said Dora in a terribly calm voice, "that the _Times_ never
+makes a mistake--I mean they never publish anything unless they are quite
+sure?"
+
+Then the English gentleman of parts who ever and anon peeped out through
+the veneer of the parson asserted himself--the English gentleman whose
+sense of fair play and honour told him that it is better to strike at
+once a blow that must be struck than to keep the victim waiting.
+
+"Such is their reputation," answered Dora's father.
+
+Mrs. Glynde turned with that pathetic yearning movement of a punished dog
+which waits to be called. But Dora had some of her father's sternness,
+her father's good British reserve, and she never called.
+
+Turning, she walked quietly out of the room. And all the light had gone
+out of her life. So we write, and so ye read; but do we realise it? It is
+not many of us who have suddenly to look at life without so much as a
+glimmer in its dark recesses to make it worth the living. It is not many
+of us who come to be told by the doctor: "For the rest of your existence
+you must give up eyesight," or, "For the remainder of life you must go
+halt." But these are trifles. Everything is a trifle, if we would only
+believe it. Riches and poverty, peace and war, fame and obscurity, town
+and country, England and the backwoods--all these are trifles compared
+with that other life which makes our own a living completeness.
+
+Silently she went, and left silence behind her. The Rector was abashed.
+For once a woman had acted in a manner unexpected by him; for he was
+ignorant enough of the world to keep up the old fallacy of treating women
+as a class. True, it was Dora, whom he held apart from the rest of her
+sex; but still he was left wondering. He felt as if he had been found
+walking in a holy place with shoes upon his feet--those gross shoes of
+Self with which most of us tramp through the world, not heeding where we
+tread or what we crush.
+
+One of the hardest things we have to bear is the helpless standing by
+while one dear to us must suffer. When Mrs. Glynde turned round and came
+towards her husband she had become an old woman. Her face had suddenly
+aged while her frame was yet in its full strength, and such a change is
+not pleasant to look on.
+
+"Tom," she said, in a dry, commanding voice, "you must go up to the Holme
+at once and hear what news they have. There may be some chance--it may
+please God to spare us yet."
+
+"Yes," answered the Rector meekly; "I will go."
+
+While he was lacing his boots with all speed Mrs. Glynde took up the
+newspaper again, and reread the brief account of the disaster. They were
+spared comment; that blow came later, when the warriors of Fleet Street
+set about explaining why the defeat was sustained and why it should never
+have happened. In due course these carpet tacticians proved to their own
+satisfaction that Colonel Stevenor was incompetent for the service on
+which he had been dispatched. But the reek of printing-ink never was good
+for the better feelings.
+
+In due course the Rector set off across the park; very grave, and
+distinctly aware of the importance of his mission. He had somewhere in
+his composition a strong sense of the dramatic, to which the situation
+appealed. He felt that had he been a younger man he would have stored up
+many details during the morning's work worthy of reproduction in the
+narrative form during years to come.
+
+Before he reached the great house he was aware that the grim pleasure of
+imparting bad news was not to be his, for the blinds were all lowered--a
+detail likely to receive early attention in a feminine household, for it
+is only men who can hear of a death without thinking of mourning and the
+blinds.
+
+The butler opened the door and took the Rector's hat and stick with a
+silent _savoir-faire_ indicative of experience in well-bred grief. His
+chaste demeanour said as plainly as words that this was right and proper,
+the Rector being no more than he expected.
+
+"Where's your mistress?" asked Mr. Glynde, who had strong views upon
+butlers in general and Tims in particular--said Tims being so sure of his
+place that he did not always trouble to know it.
+
+"Library, sir," replied Tims in an appropriately sepulchral voice.
+
+The Rector went to the library without waiting to be announced. He was a
+man well versed in human nature, as most parsons are, and it is possible
+that he had caught a glimpse of Mrs. Agar watching his advent from the
+dining-room window.
+
+The lady of the house was standing by the writing-table when he entered,
+and beneath her ill-concealed excitement there was something subtly
+observant, like the glance of an untruthful child, which he never forgot
+nor forgave, despite his cloth and the impossibilities popularly expected
+therefrom.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, "it is you. I have telegraphed for Arthur. I
+have--telegraphed for Arthur."
+
+"Why?"
+
+She gave a nervous, almost a guilty little laugh, and looked at him with
+puzzled discomfort.
+
+"Why?" he repeated, looking at her with a cold scrutiny much dreaded of
+the parish ne'er-do-wells.
+
+"Oh, well," she replied, "it is only natural that I should want him at
+home in such a time as this--such a terrible affliction. Besides--"
+
+"Besides," suggested the Rector imperturbably, "he is now master of
+Stagholme."
+
+"Yes!" she said, with a simulated surprise which would scarcely have
+deceived the most guileless Sunday-school teacher. "I had not thought of
+that. I suppose something must be done at once--those horrid lawyers
+again."
+
+Her eyes were dancing with breathless excitement. To this woman
+excitement even in the form of a death was better than nothing. The
+bourgeois mind, with its love of a Crystal Palace, a subscription dance,
+or even a parochial bazaar, was unquenchable even after years of practice
+as the county lady of position.
+
+The Rector did not answer. He stood squarely in front of her with a
+persistence that forced her to turn shiftily away with a pretence of
+looking at the clock.
+
+"This is a bad business," he said. "That boy ought never to have gone out
+there."
+
+Mrs. Agar had her handkerchief ready and made use of it, with as much
+effect upon Mr. Glynde as might have been produced upon a granite sphinx.
+There is no man harder to deceive than the innately good and
+conscientious man of the world who has tried to find good in human
+nature.
+
+"Poor boy!" sobbed the lady. "Dear Jem! I could not keep him at home."
+Thus proving herself a fool, and worse, before those wise eyes.
+
+When occasion demanded Mr. Glynde could wield a very strong
+silence--stronger than he thought. He wielded it now, and Mrs. Agar
+shuffled before it, her eyes glittering with suppressed
+communicativeness. She was obviously bubbling over with talk relevant and
+irrelevant, but the Rector had the chivalry to check it by his cold
+silence.
+
+After a pause it was he who spoke, in a quiet, unemotional voice which
+aggravated while it cowed her.
+
+"When did you hear this news?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, last night. It was so late that I did not send down. I--it was so
+sudden. I was terribly upset."
+
+"M--yes."
+
+"I telegraphed to Arthur first thing this morning," the mistress of
+Stagholme went on eagerly, "and I was just going to write to you when you
+came in."
+
+With that nervous desire for corroborative evidence which arouses the
+suspicion of the observant whenever it appears, Mrs. Agar indicated the
+writing-table with open blotter and inkstand. Instantly, but too late,
+she regretted having done so, for a volume playfully called "Every Man
+his own Lawyer" lay confessed beside the writing-case, and its home on
+the bookshelf stared vacantly at them.
+
+"And from whom did you hear it?" pursued the Rector, heartlessly looking
+at the book with an air of recognition.
+
+"Oh, from a Mr. Johnson--at the War Office, or the India Office, or
+somewhere. I suppose I ought to write and thank him. Let me see--where is
+the telegram?"
+
+She shuffled among the papers on the writing-table, and made the hideous
+mistake of pushing "Every Man his own Lawyer" behind the stationery case.
+
+"Here it is!" she exclaimed at length.
+
+It was a long document. Mr. Johnson, not having to pay for telegraphic
+expenses out of his own pocket, had done his task thoroughly. He stated
+clearly that the advance column under Colonel Stevenor, Major Agar, and
+another British officer had been surprised and annihilated. There were no
+particulars yet, nor could reliable details be expected, as it was quite
+certain that not one man of the ill-fated corps had survived. General
+Seymour, added the official, missing out in his haste the commanding
+officer's surname, had promptly repaired to the scene of the disaster, to
+punish the victors, and, if possible, recover the effects of the slain.
+
+Mrs. Agar was one of those persons who are incapable of reading a letter
+or a telegram thoroughly. She was one of those for whose comprehension
+the wrong end of the story must have been specially created. Had the
+official put Seymour Michael's name in full, it is probable that in her
+infantile excitement she would have failed to take it in or to connect it
+with the man who had wronged her twenty years before.
+
+She had not thought much about that little affair during late years, her
+feeling for Seymour Michael having settled down into a passive hatred.
+The longing to do him some personal injury had died away fifteen years
+before. She was, as a matter of fact, quite incapable of a lasting
+feeling of any description. Hers was a life lived for the present only. A
+tea-party next week was of more importance to her than a change in
+fortune next year. Some people are thus, and Heaven help those whose
+lives come under their fickle influence!
+
+The one permanent motive of her existence was her son Arthur--the puny
+little infant who had been prematurely ushered into a world that seemed
+full of hatred twenty years before--and even his image faded from mind
+and thought before the short Cambridge terms were half expired.
+
+At this moment she was thinking less of the death of Jem than of the
+approaching arrival of Arthur. There must have been something wrong with
+her mental focus, to which trifles presented themselves as of the first
+importance, to the obliteration of larger matters.
+
+"And this is all the news you have had?" inquired the Rector, rather
+hurriedly. He saw Sister Cecilia coming up the avenue, and that lady was
+for him the embodiment of the combination of those feminine failings
+which aggravated him so intensely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He moved towards the door, and standing there he turned, holding up a
+warning finger.
+
+"You must be very careful," he said. "You must not consult any lawyer or
+take any steps in this matter. So far as you are concerned the state of
+affairs is unchanged. I, as the Squire's executor, am the only person
+called upon to act in any way if that poor boy has died without making a
+will. You must remember that your son is under age."
+
+With that he left her, rather precipitately, for Sister Cecilia, like all
+busybodies, was a quick walker.
+
+In a few moments Miss Cecilia Harbottle entered the library. She glided
+forward as if afloat on a depth of the milk of human kindness, and folded
+Mrs. Agar in an emotional embrace.
+
+"Dear!" she exclaimed. "Dear Anna, how I feel for you!"
+
+In illustration of this sympathy she patted Mrs. Agar's somewhat flabby
+hands, and looked softly at her. She could hardly have failed to see a
+glitter in the bereaved one's eyes, which was certainly not that of
+grief. It was the gleam of pure, heartless excitement and love of change.
+But Sister Cecilia probably misread it; for, like all excesses, that of
+charity seems to dull the comprehension.
+
+"Tell me, dear," she urged gently, "all about it."
+
+How many of us imagine the satisfaction of our own curiosity to be
+sympathy!
+
+So Mrs. Agar told her all about it, and presently they sat down, with a
+view to fuller discussion. There was, however, a point beyond which even
+Mrs. Agar would not go. This point Sister Cecilia scented with the
+instinct of the terrier, so keen was her nose in the sniffing of other
+people's business. When that point was reached a third time she gently
+led the way over it.
+
+"Of course," she said, with a resigned glance at the curtain poles, "one
+cannot help sometimes feeling that a wise Providence does all for the
+best."
+
+Gratifying as this must have been to the power in question, no miraculous
+manifestation of joy was forthcoming, and Mrs. Agar cunningly confined
+herself to a non-committing "Yes."
+
+After a sigh, Sister Cecilia further expatiated.
+
+"I cannot but think," she said, "that Stagholme will be in better hands
+now. Of course dear Jem was very nice, and all that--a dear, good boy.
+But do you not think that Arthur is more suited to the position in some
+ways?"
+
+"Perhaps he is," allowed Mrs. Agar, with ill-concealed pleasure.
+
+"He is," continued Sister Cecilia, with a broader brush, "so refined, so
+gentlemanly, so ideal a country squire."
+
+And after that she had no difficulty in supplying herself with
+information.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ON THIN ICE
+
+Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason?
+For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
+
+
+Two days later a gentleman, whose clean-shaven face had a habit of
+beaming suddenly into a professional smile, was seated at a huge
+writing-table in his office in Gray's Inn, when a clerk announced to him
+the arrival of Mrs. Agar, who desired to see him at once.
+
+Mr. Rigg beamed instantaneously, and the clerk, who knew his master,
+waited until the paroxysm had passed. In the meantime Mrs. Agar was
+fuming in the waiting-room, wherein lay a copy of the _Times_ and nothing
+else. The window looked out upon the neatly kept but depressing garden,
+where five antiquated rooks looked in vain for sustenance. Mrs. Agar
+watched these intelligent birds, but all her soul was in her ears. She
+had already set Mr. Rigg down in her own mind as a stupid because,
+forsooth, he had dared to keep her waiting.
+
+But the truth is that they are accustomed to ladies in Gray's Inn,
+especially ladies in deep mourning, with a chastely important air which
+seems to demand that advice and sympathy be carefully mingled. _Connues_,
+these ladies whose deep crape and quite exceptional bereavement plead
+(not always dumbly) for a special equity, home-made and superior to any
+law, and infer that the ordinary foes are in their case more than any
+gentleman would think of accepting.
+
+The clerk presently passed into an inner room and fetched therefrom a tin
+box, upon which were painted in dingy white the letters "J. E. M. A.,"
+and underneath "Stagholme Estate." This the embryo lawyer carefully wiped
+with a duster, and set it up on some of its fellows immediately behind
+Mr. Rigg.
+
+There was no hurry displayed in this scenic arrangement. Mr. Rigg made a
+practice of keeping ladies, especially those wearing crape, for a few
+minutes in the waiting-room. It calmed them down wonderfully, and
+introduced into their mental chambers a little legal atmosphere.
+
+"Marks," he said, when that youth was taking his last look round at the
+_mise en scene_ before, as it were, raising the curtain, "eh--er--just go
+round to Corbyn's and get them to make up these pills."
+
+At the mention of the medicinal term he beamed, as if to intimate that
+between themselves no secret need be observed that he, Mr. Rigg, was
+subject to the usual anatomical laws of mankind.
+
+"And--er--just call at the fishmonger's as you come back and get a parcel
+for me, ordered this morning."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the faithful Marks, taking the prescription as if it
+were a will or a transfer.
+
+He knew his part so well that he moved towards the door and opened it as
+if Mrs. Agar's existence and attendance in the waiting-room were matters
+of the utmost indifference.
+
+"Marks!"
+
+The door was open, so that the lawyer's voice carried well down the
+passage.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I will see Mrs. Agar now."
+
+And Mrs. Agar was shown in, all bustling with excitement.
+
+"Mr. Rigg," she said, with some dignity, "has Mr. Glynde been here?"
+
+The lawyer beamed again--literally all over his parchment-coloured face,
+except the eyes, which remained grave.
+
+"When, my dear madam?" he asked, as he brought forward a chair.
+
+"Well, lately--since my son's death."
+
+The lawyer opened a large diary, and proceeded to trace back each day
+with his finger. It promised to be a question of time, this ascertaining
+whether Mr. Glynde had called within the last week. It was marvellous how
+well this man of deeds knew his clients. Mrs. Agar had never persevered
+in any inquiry or project that required time all through her life. Mr.
+Rigg, behind his disarming smile, could see as far into a crape veil as
+any man.
+
+"It must have been quite lately," said Mrs. Agar, leaning forward and
+trying visibly to read the diary.
+
+Mr. Rigg turned back a few pages, as if to go over the ground a second
+time.
+
+"Let me see!" he said leisurely. "What was the precise date of
+the--er--sad event?"
+
+"Last Tuesday, the fourteenth."
+
+"To be sure," reflected Mr. Rigg, fixing his eyes sadly on an engraving
+of London Bridge in the seventeenth century--a spot specially reserved
+for the sadder moments of probate and other testamentary work. "Very sad,
+very sad."
+
+Then he rose with the mental brushing-away of unshed tears of a man who
+has never yet had time in life for idle lamentation. He turned towards
+the tin box, jingling his keys in a most practical and business-like way.
+
+"And I presume," he said, "that you have come to consult me about the
+late Captain Agar's will?"
+
+"Was there a will?" asked Mrs. Agar, with audible alarm. She had not
+studied "Every Man his own Lawyer" quite in vain, although most of the
+legal technicalities had conveyed nothing whatever to her mind. She did
+not notice that her question regarding Mr. Glynde had never been
+answered.
+
+Mr. Rigg turned upon her beaming.
+
+"I have no will," he answered. "I thought that perhaps you were aware of
+the existence of one."
+
+Mrs. Agar's face lighted up.
+
+"No," she said, with ill-concealed delight; "I am certain there is no
+will."
+
+"Indeed! And why, my dear madam?"
+
+"Well--oh, well, because Jem was just the sort of person to forget such
+matters. Besides, when he left England he was under age."
+
+The lawyer was looking at her with his usual sympathetic smile spread
+over his face like an actor's make-up, but his eyes were very keen and
+clever.
+
+"Of course," he observed, "he may have made one out there."
+
+"I do not think that it is likely," replied the lady, whose small
+thoughts always came into the world in charge of a very obvious father in
+the shape of a wish. "There are no facilities out there--no lawyers."
+
+"There are quite a number of lawyers in India," said Mr. Rigg, with
+sudden gravity. His face was only grave when he wished to fend off
+laughter.
+
+"Well," persisted Mrs. Agar, "I am _sure_ Jem did not make a will."
+
+Mr. Rigg bowed and resumed his seat. He took up a penholder and smiled,
+presumably at his own sunny thoughts.
+
+Mrs. Agar was one of those fatuous ladies who think themselves capable of
+tricking a professional man out of his fee. She had a vague notion that
+if one asks a lawyer a question the price of his answer is at least six
+shillings and eightpence. Up to this point in the interview she was
+serenely conscious of having eluded the fee.
+
+"I presume," she remarked carelessly, in pursuance of this economical
+policy, "that in such a case the property would go unconditionally to the
+second son."
+
+"There are contingent possibilities," replied the man of subterfuge
+blandly. He did not mean anything at all, but shrewdly guessed that Mrs.
+Agar would not credit him with so simple a design.
+
+The lady smiled in a subtly commiserating manner, indicative of the fact
+that on some family matters the ignorance of all except herself was
+somewhat pitiful.
+
+"Of course," she said, "as regards the present case, I know perfectly
+well that both Jem and his father would wish everything to go to Arthur."
+
+She was picking a thread from the corner of her jacket with an air of
+nonchalance.
+
+Mr. Rigg was silent. He had some thirty years before this period given up
+attaching importance to the wishes of the deceased as interpreted by
+disinterested survivors.
+
+"And _I_ should imagine that the necessary transfers--and--and things
+would be much better put in hand at once. Delay seems to me quite
+unnecessary."
+
+She paused for Mr. Rigg's opinion--quite a friendly opinion, of course,
+without price.
+
+"Pardon me," said that lawyer, driven into a corner at last, "but are you
+consulting me on behalf of the late Squire's executor, Mr. Glynde, or on
+your own account?"
+
+"Oh!" replied Mrs. Agar, drawing herself up with a deprecating little
+laugh, "I did not intend it to be a consultation at all. I happened to be
+passing, that was all. You see, Mr. Rigg, Mr. Glynde does not know
+anything about these matters. Clergymen are so stupid."
+
+"Seems to be afraid," Mr. Rigg was reflecting behind his pleasant mask,
+"of the young man coming alive again."
+
+Mrs. Agar was like a child in many ways, more especially in her unbounded
+belief in her own cunning. She actually imagined herself to be a match
+for this man, who had been trained in the ways of duplicity all his life.
+She saw nothing of his mind, and fatuously ignored the fact that from the
+moment she had entered the room he had begun the interview with a mental
+hypothesis.
+
+"This woman," he had reflected, "has always hated her step-son. She got
+him a commission in an Indian regiment for the primary purpose of getting
+him out of the way while she saved money on her life-interest in the
+estate for her second son. The secondary purpose was little more than a
+hope. She hoped for the best. The best has come off, and she is not
+clever enough to let things take their course."
+
+Every word Mrs. Agar had uttered, every silence, every glance had gone to
+confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He
+did not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor
+in the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to
+probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the
+elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one
+domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law.
+And in one as in the other the finer susceptibilities grow dull. The
+doctor almost forgets the pain he inflicts. The lawyer gradually loses
+his sense of right and wrong.
+
+Mr. Rigg was an honest man--as honesty is understood in the law. He was
+keenly alive to all the motives of this woman, who, in the law of
+humanity, was a criminal. He had started from a lawyer's standpoint--_id
+est_, personal advantage. "To whose advantage?" they ask, and there they
+assign the action. But Mr. Rigg was also a good lawyer, and therefore he
+kept his own counsel.
+
+"Things must be allowed," he said, "to take their course. You know, Mrs.
+Agar, we are proverbially slow in moving, but we are sure."
+
+Now it happened that this was precisely the position assumed by Mr.
+Glynde, whose respect for legal routine was enormous. He rarely moved in
+any matters wherein the law could by hook or crook be introduced without
+consulting Mr. Rigg, whom he vaguely called his "man." And it was
+precisely this delay that Mrs. Agar disliked. She had no definite reason
+for so doing; but this stroke of good fortune presented itself to her
+mind more in the light of an opportunity to be seized than as a just
+inheritance to be thankfully received in its due time.
+
+She was awake to the fact that Arthur was not the man to seize any
+opportunity, however obviously it might be thrust into his grasp, and her
+knowledge of the world tended to exaggerate its dishonesty in her mind.
+
+Sister Cecilia and she had talked this matter over with that small
+modicum of learning which is a dangerous thing, and they had arrived at
+the conclusion that Mr. Glynde was not competent to carry out the duties
+thus suddenly thrust upon him. Wrapped up as was her heart in the welfare
+of her weakling son, the one lasting motive of her life had been to
+secure for him the largest possible portion of earthly goods. Now that
+success seemed to be within measurable distance, she gave way to the
+baneful panic of the weak conspirator, and fancied that the whole world
+was allied against her.
+
+She could not keep her fingers off "Every Man his own Lawyer," and
+consulted that boon to the legal profession to such good effect that she
+placed a handsome fee in the pocket of one of its brightest ornaments at
+the earliest opportunity. Mr. Rigg continued to beam and to keep his own
+counsel, merely notifying that things must be allowed to take their own
+course, and presently he bowed Mrs. Agar out of his office, dissatisfied,
+and with an uncomfortable feeling of having been somewhat indiscreet.
+
+Arthur was waiting for her in a hansom cab in Holborn, and with a sigh of
+relief they drove westward to a shop in Regent Street to order a supply
+of the newest procurable mode of signifying grief on paper and envelopes.
+Arthur Agar was an expert in such matters, and indeed both mother and son
+were more at home in the graceful pastime of spending money than in the
+technicalities of making or keeping the same.
+
+Arthur was already beginning to taste the sweetness of his adversity, and
+being intensely sensitive to the influence of those with whom he happened
+to be at the moment, he was already beginning to look back with mild
+surprise to the first burst of grief to which he had given way on hearing
+that Jem was killed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION
+
+_There is one that keepeth silence and is found wise._
+
+
+Sister Cecilia received--nay, she almost welcomed--the news of Jem
+Agar's death in an intensely Christian spirit. She looked upon it in
+the light of a chastening-a sort of moral cold bath, unpleasant at the
+time, but cleanly and refreshing in its effect. Intense goodness and
+virtue of the jubby-jubby order seem frequently to produce this result.
+Trouble--provided that it be not personal--is elevated to a position
+which it was never intended to occupy by an all-seeing Providence. There
+are some people who step into the troubles of others as into the
+chastening bath above referred to, and splash about. They pretend to feel
+deeply bereavements which cannot reasonably be expected to affect them,
+and go about the world with a well-scrubbed air of conscious virtue,
+saying in manner if not in words, "Look at me; my troubles compass me
+about, but my innate goodness enables me to take them in the proper
+spirit and to be cheerful despite all."
+
+This was precisely Sister Cecilia's attitude towards her small world of
+Stagholme, after the news of the young Squire's death had cast a gloom
+over the whole neighbourhood.
+
+"Ah!" she would say to some honest cottage mother who had more true
+feeling in her rough little finger than Sister Cecilia possessed in her
+whole heart. "These trials are sent to us for our good. The ways of
+Providence are strange, Mrs. Martin--strange to us now."
+
+"Yes, miss; that they be," Mrs. Martin replied, looking at her with the
+hard and far-seeing gaze of a poor mother who has known trouble in its
+least romantic form. And Sister Cecilia, with that blindness which comes
+from systematically closing the eyes to the earthly side of earthly
+things, never realised that the small change of sympathy is often
+slightly aggravating.
+
+At this period she took to calling Jem Agar her "poor boy." The grave
+seems to have the power of completely altering the past, and with persons
+of the stamp of Sister Cecilia death appears not only to wipe out all
+sin, but to impair the memory of the living to such an extent that the
+individuality of the deceased is no longer recognisable.
+
+Jem never had in any sense of the word been her boy. His feelings for her
+had passed from the distrust of childhood to the lofty contempt of a
+schoolboy for all things preternaturally virtuous, finally settling down
+into the more tolerant contempt of manhood. The dead, however, have
+perforce to accept much affection which they scornfully refused in life.
+
+"Poor Jem!" said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar the day after that lady's
+visit to Gray's Inn. "I always thought that perhaps he and dear Dora
+would come to--to some understanding."
+
+She stirred her tea with patient, suffering head inclined at a resigned
+angle.
+
+"Do you think there _was_ any understanding between them?" inquired Mrs.
+Agar.
+
+"Well--I should not like to say."
+
+Which, being translated, meant that she would like to say, but did not
+know.
+
+It had always been a pet scheme of Mrs. Agar's that Dora should marry
+Arthur; firstly, because she would have nearly two thousand pounds a year
+on the death of her parents; and, secondly, because she was a capable
+person with plenty of common-sense. These two adjuncts--namely, money and
+common-sense--Mrs. Agar wisely looked for in candidates for the flaccid
+hand of her son.
+
+"I will try and find out," said Sister Cecilia after a pause.
+
+Mrs. Agar said nothing. She was meditating over this last stroke of fate
+in favour of her scheme, and her thoughts were disturbed by that distrust
+in the continuance of good fortune which usually spoils the enjoyment of
+the unscrupulous in those good things which they have obtained for
+themselves.
+
+So Sister Cecilia took it for granted that she was doing the will of the
+mistress of Stagholme when she wrote a note that same evening inviting
+Dora to have tea with her the following afternoon.
+
+At the hour appointed Dora arrived, and was duly shown into the little
+cottage drawing-room, of which the decoration hovered between the
+avowedly devout and the economo-aesthetic.
+
+Sister Cecilia swept down upon her with a speechless emotion which, in
+the nature of things (and Sister Cecilia), could not well be of long
+duration.
+
+"My dear," she whispered, "God will give you strength to bear this awful
+trial."
+
+Dora recovered her breath and re-arranged her crushed habiliments before
+inquiring, with just sufficient feeling to save her from downright
+rudeness, "What is the matter; has something else happened?"
+
+Sister Cecilia drew back. She was vaguely conscious of having run
+mentally against a brick wall. There was something new and unusual about
+Dora which she could not understand--something, if she could only have
+seen it, suggestive of the quiet, strong man in whose honour the whole
+parish wore mourning. But Sister Cecilia was not a subtle woman. She had
+had so little experience of the world, of men and of women, that she fell
+easily into the error of thinking that they were all to be treated alike
+and with equal success by little maxims culled from fourpenny-halfpenny
+devotional books.
+
+"No, dear," she exclaimed; "I was referring to our terrible loss. My
+heart has been bleeding for you--"
+
+"It is very kind, I'm sure," said Dora quietly; "I forgot that I had not
+seen you since the news reached us."
+
+It is probable that her self-control cost her more than she suspected.
+Her lips were drawn and dry. She wore a thick veil, which she carefully
+abstained from lifting above the level of her eyes. "I am sure," moaned
+Sister Cecilia, "it has been a most trying time for us all. I wonder that
+Mrs. Agar has borne up so bravely. Her health is wonderful, considering."
+
+Dora sat looking straight in front of her. She was withdrawing her gloves
+slowly. Her face was that of a person whose mind was made up for the
+endurance of an operation.
+
+The twaddling voice, the characteristic reference to health, were
+intensely aggravating. There are some women who talk of their own health
+before the dead are buried. They do not seem to be able to separate grief
+from bodily ill. Clad in crape, they rush to the seaside, and there,
+presumably because grief affects their legs, they hire a man to wheel
+themselves and Sorrow in a bath-chair. Why--oh, why! does bereavement
+drive women into bath-chairs on the King's Road, or the Lees, or the Hoe?
+
+"Wonderful!" said Dora.
+
+Sister Cecilia, busying herself with the teapot, proceeded to blow her
+own trumpet with the bare-facedness of true virtue.
+
+"I have been with her constantly," she said. "I think it is better for us
+all to tell of our grief; I think that we are given speech for that
+purpose. For although one may only be able to offer sympathy and perhaps
+a little advice, it is always a relief to speak of one's sorrow."
+
+"I suppose it is," admitted Dora from her strong-hold of reserve, "for
+some people."
+
+"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Sister Cecilia, all heedless of the sarcasm. For
+extreme charity is proof against such. It covers other things besides a
+multitude of sins. Wielded foolishly it runs amuck like a too luxuriant
+creeper, and often kills commonsense. "And that is why I asked you to
+come, dear. I thought that you might want to confide in some one--that
+you might want to unburden your heart to one who feels for you as if this
+sorrow were her own--"
+
+"Only one piece of sugar, thank you," interrupted Dora. "Thank you. No.
+Bread and butter, please. It is very kind of you, Sister Cecilia. But,
+you see, when I have any unburdening to do there is always mother, and if
+I want any advice there is always father."
+
+"Yes, dear. But sometimes even one's parents are not quite the persons to
+whom one would turn in times of grief."
+
+"Oh!" observed Dora, without much enthusiasm.
+
+Unconsciously Sister Cecilia was doing the very best thing possible for
+Dora, She was arousing in her the spirit of antagonism--hardening a
+stricken heart, as it were, by a fresh challenge. She was teaching Dora
+to fight for what we learn to deem most sacred--namely, the right to
+monopolise our own thoughts and feelings. Sister Cecilia is not, one may
+assume, the only good woman in the world who cannot draw a definite line
+between sympathy and mere curiosity. With many the display of sympathy is
+nothing but a half-conscious bait to attract a shoal of further details.
+
+Self-reliance was lurking somewhere in this girl's character, but it had
+never been developed by the pressure of circumstances. Reserve she had
+seen practised by her father, but the actual advantages thereof were only
+now beginning to be apparent to her. The body, we are told, adapts itself
+to abnormal circumstances; so is it with the mind. Already Dora was
+beginning, as they say at sea, to find her feet; to take that stand
+amidst her environments which she was forced to hold, practically alone,
+thereafter.
+
+And Sister Cecilia, with that blind faith in a good motive which gives
+almost as much trouble as actual vice, floundered on in the path she had
+mapped out for herself.
+
+"You know, dear," she said, looking out of the window with a sentimental
+droop of her thin, inquisitive lips, "I cannot help feeling that
+this--this terrible blow means more to you than it does to us."
+
+"Why?" inquired Dora practically.
+
+Sister Cecilia was silent, with one of those aggravating silences which
+do not allow even the satisfaction of a flat contradiction. A meaning
+silence is a coward's argument. She was beginning to feel slightly
+nervous before this child, ignorant that childhood is not always a matter
+of years and calendar months.
+
+"Why?" asked Dora again.
+
+Sister Cecilia looked rather bewildered.
+
+"Well, dear, I thought perhaps--I always thought that my poor boy
+entertained some feeling--you understand?"
+
+"No," replied Dora, borrowing for the moment her father's most crushing
+deliberation of manner, "I cannot say I do. When you say your 'poor boy,'
+are you referring to Jem?"
+
+Sister Cecilia assented with a resigned nod worthy of the very earliest
+martyr.
+
+"Then, as every one has discovered so many virtues in him--quite
+suddenly--we had better emulate one of them, and have at the least the
+good feeling to hold our tongues about any feelings he may have
+entertained. Do you not think so, Sister Cecilia?"
+
+"Well, dear, I only thought to act as might be best for you," said the
+well-intentioned meddler, with the drawl of the professionally
+misunderstood.
+
+"I have no doubt of that," returned Dora, with an equanimity which was
+again strangely suggestive of Jem Agar. "But in future you will be
+consulting my welfare much more effectively by refraining from action on
+my behalf at all."
+
+"As you will, dear; as you will," in the hopeless tone of age,
+experience, and wisdom forced to stand idle while youth and folly rush
+headlong down the hill.
+
+"Yes," returned Dora calmly; "I know that, thank you. And now, I think,
+we had better change the subject."
+
+The subject was therefore changed; but Sister Cecilia, having, as it
+were, whetted her appetite for details, was not at her ease with other
+food for the mind, and presently Dora left.
+
+The girl went back into her small world with a new knowledge gained--the
+knowledge that in all and through all we are really quite alone. There
+can be only one companion, and if that one be absent, there are only so
+many talking-machines left to us. And many of us pass the whole of our
+lives in conversation with them. So it is; and we know not why.
+
+In a subtle way she felt stronger for this little tussle--a fight is
+always exhilarating. She felt that from henceforth the memory of Jem was
+hers, and hers alone, to defend and to cherish. It was not much of a
+consolation. No. But then this is a world of small mercies, where some of
+us get an hour or some mean portion of a day when we want a lifetime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE TOUCH OF NATURE
+
+A sense, when first I fronted him,
+Said, "Trust him not!"
+
+
+After successfully carrying through the purchase of mourning stationery
+and attending to other important items connected with sorrow in its
+worldly shape, Arthur Agar went back to Cambridge. There was enough of
+the woman in his nature to enable him to cherish grief and nurse it
+lovingly, as some women (not the best of them) do. In this attitude
+towards the world there was none of that dogged going about his business
+which characterises the ordinary man from whose life something has
+slipped out.
+
+He wandered by the banks of the Cam with mourning in his mien, and his
+cherished friends took sympathetic coffee with him after Hall. They spoke
+of Jem with that fervid admiration which University men honestly feel for
+one a few years their senior who has already "done something."
+
+"A ripping soldier" they called him and some of them entertained serious
+doubts as to whether they had done wisely in choosing the less glorious
+paths of peace. And Arthur Agar settled down into the old profitless
+life, with this difference--that he could not dine out, that he used
+blackedged notepaper, and that his delicate heliotrope neckties were
+folded away in a drawer until such time as his grief should be assuaged
+into that state of resignation technically called half-mourning.
+
+One afternoon well towards the end of the term Arthur Agar's "gyp" crept
+in with that valet-like confidential air which seems to be bred of too
+intimate a knowledge of the extent of one's wardrobe.
+
+"There is a gentleman, sir," he said, "as wants to see you. But in no
+wise will he give his name, which, he says, you don't know it."
+
+"Is he selling engravings?" asked Arthur.
+
+The "gyp" looked mildly offended. As if he didn't know that sort!
+
+"No, sir. Military man, I should take it."
+
+Arthur Agar had met the Scotch Balaclava veteran in his time too. He
+hesitated, and the "gyp," who felt that his reputation was at stake,
+spoke:
+
+"He is eminently a gentleman, sir," he said.
+
+"Well, then, show him up."
+
+A moment later a man who might have been the wandering Jew _fin de
+siecle_ stood in the doorway. His smart military moustache was small and
+evidently trimmed, his face was sunburnt, and in his eyes there gleamed
+the restlessness of India.
+
+He bowed, and awaited the exit of the man. Then, coming forward, he was
+able for the first time to see Arthur Agar's face distinctly, and his
+glance wavered.
+
+At that moment Arthur Agar was staring at him with something in his face
+that was almost strong. When this man had entered the room, Arthur felt
+his heart give one great bound which almost choked him. There was a
+strange physical feeling of vacuity in his breast which seemed to
+paralyse his breathing powers, and his temples throbbed painfully.
+
+Arthur Agar's life had been passed in eminently pleasant places. The
+seamy side of existence had always been carefully hidden from his eyes.
+He therefore did not recognise this strange sense which had leapt into
+his being--the sense of superhuman, physical, mortal revulsion.
+
+He was divided between two instincts. One side of his nature urged him to
+shriek like a woman. Had he followed the other, he would have rushed at
+this man, whom he had never seen before, seeking to do him bodily harm.
+He would not have paused to reason that in anything like a struggle he
+would stand no chance against the sinewy, dark-eyed soldier who stood
+watching him. For there are moments even in this age of self-suppression
+when we do not pause to think, when he who cannot swim will leap into
+deep water to save another.
+
+This sudden unreasoning hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed
+to stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease
+lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the
+spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. The stranger it was
+who spoke.
+
+"I presume," he said, with a pleasant smile, in a voice so musical that
+his hearer breathed suddenly as if his head had been lifted from water,
+"I presume that you are Mr. Arthur Agar?"
+
+While he spoke he looked past Arthur, out of the silken-draped window. He
+did not seem to like the glance of this young man, for even the most
+practical of us have a conscience at times.
+
+"Yes."
+
+The new-comer laid his walking-stick on the table, and turned to make
+sure that the door was closed.
+
+"I knew your step-brother," he explained, "Jem Agar, in India."
+
+Then the instinct of the gentleman and the host asserted itself over and
+above the throbbing hatred.
+
+"Ah! Will you sit down?"
+
+The stranger took the proffered chair and laid aside his hat. But neither
+of them was at ease. There was a subtle suggestion that they had met
+before and quarrelled--vague, unreasoning, quite impossible if you will;
+but it was there. They were as men meeting again with a past between them
+(too full of strong passions ever to be forgotten) which each was trying
+in vain to ignore.
+
+"I have brought home a few belongings of his," the stranger went on to
+explain. "Just a port-manteau with some clothes and things."
+
+He paused, and drew a small packet from the pocket of a covert-coat which
+he carried over his arm.
+
+"Here," he went on, "are some papers of his--a diary and one or two
+letters. The rest of the things are at my hotel in town."
+
+Arthur took the packet, and, still in the same dreamy, unreal way, opened
+it. He turned to the last entry--dated six weeks back.
+
+"Got out of bed at five, but nothing to be seen in the valley. I feel a
+bit chippy this morning. If nothing turns up to-day shall begin to feel
+uneasy. The men seem all right. They are plucky little fellows."
+
+There was a self-consciousness about Jem Agar's diary, a selection of the
+right word, which conveyed nothing to Arthur. But it fell into other
+hands later on, where it was understood better.
+
+General Michael was watching the undergraduate with the same critical
+attention which he had brought to bear on the writer of the diary not two
+months before.
+
+"Did you see much of your step-brother?" he asked abruptly, feeling his
+way towards his purpose.
+
+Arthur looked up. He was getting accustomed to the loathing that he felt
+for this man, as one gets accustomed to an evil odour or a physical pain.
+
+"I saw enough of him to be very fond of him," he replied.
+
+"And your mother--was she attached to him? Excuse my asking; I have a
+reason."
+
+The little pause was enough. Seymour Michael had expected as much.
+
+He had never forgiven Mrs. Agar the insults she heaped upon his head in
+the drawing-room of Jaggery House. It is very difficult to bring shame
+home to a Jew, and on that occasion this son of the modern Ishmaelites
+had been thoroughly ashamed of himself. The sting of that past ignominy
+was with him still, and would remain within his heart until such time as
+he could revenge himself.
+
+With that mean, underhand watchfulness for an opportunity which is almost
+excusable in one of the unfortunates against whom every man's hand is
+raised to-day, he had never parted with his thirst for revenge. The
+moment seemed propitious. It was within his power to lay for Anna Agar
+one of those spiteful feminine traps of which a woman can only fully
+appreciate the sting.
+
+He determined to leave Mrs. Agar in ignorance of the real facts
+respecting her step-son. His vengeance was to allow her to
+rejoice--almost openly, as she did--in the stroke of fortune by which her
+own son, Arthur, had become possessed of Stagholme. He knew the woman
+well enough to foresee that in a hundred ways she would heap up ignominy,
+meanness, deception, which would crumble in one vast wreck about her head
+when Jem Agar returned.
+
+It was a vengeance worthy of the man, and spiteful enough to be fully
+comprehended by its victim. But, like others handling petards, Seymour
+Michael grew somewhat careless, and forgot that the wrong man is
+sometimes hoist.
+
+He knew his position well enough to make all safe as regarded Jem Agar on
+his return. It was absolutely necessary to tell Arthur Agar--necessary
+for his own safety in the future. The other two persons to whom the
+secret was to be imparted were Mrs. Agar and Dora Glynde. From Mrs. Agar
+Seymour Michael determined to withhold the news for his own reasons. Dora
+was to be kept in the dark because she was a woman, and therefore unsafe.
+
+This was the plan in its original shape with which Michael sought out
+Arthur Agar at his rooms in college at Cambridge. It was further assisted
+and elaborated by a circumstance which the originator could scarcely have
+been expected to foresee--the fact of Arthur Agar's love for Dora, which
+was at this time beginning to take to itself a definite existence. It
+began, as all love does, with a want more or less elevated according to
+the nature of the wanter. Arthur Agar required some one for whom to buy
+those small and feminine luxuries which he could not for manly shame
+purchase to himself. He delighted in spending money in those
+establishments tersely called _magasins de luxe_ in the country from
+whence their contents do emanate. He therefore got into the habit of
+"picking up little things" for Dora, with the result that she in her turn
+picked up that very small object, his heart.
+
+Michael had seen enough of Arthur Agar during this short interview to
+endow him with the same need of contempt which he had entertained towards
+Anna Agar, the mother. The strong personal resemblance, the obvious
+weakness of the boy's face, and, above all, that sense of having the
+upper hand, which makes brave men out of cowards, gave him confidence. It
+seemed that he had only to play the cards thrust into his hand.
+
+"I knew," he pursued, "Jem Agar very well. He was a peculiar man: very
+quiet, very reserved, and just the man to make a difficult position
+rather more difficult."
+
+Arthur's intelligence was not keen enough to follow the drift of this
+remark.
+
+"Yes," he said gently.
+
+"He hinted to me once or twice," went on Seymour Michael, "that things
+were not very harmonious at home."
+
+"I was not aware of it," answered Arthur, whose innate gentlemanliness
+told him that this should be held sacred ground.
+
+The General shifted his position.
+
+"He was a first-rate soldier," he said warmly.
+
+It was obvious to both that they were not getting on. Something
+seemed to hold them both back, paralysing the _savoir-faire_ which
+both had acquired in their intercourse with the world. Seymour Michael
+was puzzled. He was not afraid of this boy. He knew himself to be
+stronger--capable of over-mastering him entirely. But for the first time
+in his life he felt awkward and ill at ease.
+
+Arthur Agar only wanted this man to go. He felt that he could forego the
+news which he must undoubtedly be in a position to give if only he could
+be rid of this hated presence. At moments the loathing came to him again,
+like a cold hand laid upon his heart.
+
+"Were you with him," inquired the undergraduate, "at the time of
+his--death?"
+
+"No. I was at head-quarters, forty miles to the rear."
+
+There was a little pause, then suddenly Seymour Michael leant forward
+with his two hands on the table that stood between them.
+
+"Mr. Agar," he said, "are you able to keep a secret?"
+
+"I suppose so," answered Agar apprehensively.
+
+"Then I am going to tell you something which you must swear by all that
+you hold most sacred to keep a strict secret until such time as I give
+you leave to reveal it."
+
+Arthur looked at him with a vague fear in his face. It seemed suddenly as
+if this man had always been in his life--as if he would never go out of
+it again.
+
+"I am not sure that I care to hear it," he wavered.
+
+"You must hear it. Almost the last words that Jem Agar spoke to me were
+requesting me to tell you this."
+
+"You promise that that is true?"
+
+Arthur was surprised at his own suspicions. It was so unlike him, whose
+nature, too weak to compass vice, had never allowed the suspicion of vice
+or deceit in others to trouble him.
+
+"I promise," replied Seymour Michael.
+
+Arthur gathered himself together for an effort. His distrust of this man
+was almost a panic.
+
+"Then tell me," he said.
+
+Michael leant back in his chair, fixing his pleasant eyes on Arthur's
+pale face.
+
+"The estate is not yours," he said. "Your step-brother, Jem Agar, is not
+dead."
+
+"Not dead!" repeated Arthur, without any joy in his voice. "Not dead!
+Then who are you? Tell me who you are!"
+
+"Ah! That I cannot tell you."
+
+And Seymour Michael sat smiling quietly on Anna Agar's son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE SPIDER AND THE FLY
+
+How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
+Makes ill deeds done!
+
+
+He is a wise liar who makes use of the truth at times. Seymour Michael
+was clever enough to stay his fantastic tongue in his further explanation
+to Arthur Agar.
+
+"It is a long story," he said, "and in order to fully state the case to
+you I must go into some matters of which perhaps you have heard little.
+Do you happen to be anything of a politician? Are you, I mean, interested
+in foreign affairs?"
+
+Arthur confessed that he knew nothing of foreign affairs, a fact of which
+Michael had become fully aware on entering the narrow-minded,
+characteristic room.
+
+"You perhaps know," Seymour Michael went on, in a tone of which the
+sarcasm was lost upon its victim, "that Russia is living in hopes of some
+day possessing India?"
+
+"Oh--ah--yes!"
+
+Arthur Agar was obviously not at all interested. There were so many
+things of a similar nature to be remembered--things which did not really
+interest him--and those nearer home had precedence in his mind. He knew,
+for instance, that Trinity Hall lived in hopes of heading the river that
+year, and that the Narcissus Club were going to give a narcissus-coloured
+dance in May week, at which entertainment even the jellies were to be
+yellow.
+
+The General now launched into an explanation, couched carefully in
+language suitable to his hearer's limited knowledge of the facts.
+
+"Russia," he said, "is now so large that, unless they make it larger
+still and get tropical resources to draw upon, it will fall to pieces.
+They want India. Some day there will be a fight, a very large fight. But
+not yet. In the meantime it is a question of learning every inch of that
+country where the battle-fields will be, and every thought in the minds
+of those men who will look on at the fight. I--"
+
+He paused, recollecting that the fame of his own name might have
+penetrated even to this out-of-the-way spot. "Some of us have been at
+this all our lives. Over there, on the Frontier, there are certain
+numbers of us, on both sides, playing a very deep game. Your brother is
+one of the players, a prominent man on the field; a half-back, one might
+call him."
+
+There was a strong temptation to continue the allegory--to say that he
+himself was goal-keeper; but Seymour Michael was one of the few men who
+can in need make even their own vanity subservient to convenience.
+
+"We watch each other," he went on, "like cats. We always know where the
+others are, and what they are doing. Your brother was one of the most
+closely watched by the other side. For some time we have been aware of an
+influence at work with a tribe of Hillmen who have hitherto been friendly
+to us, and we have not been able to find what this influence is, or how
+it is brought to bear upon them. We were so closely watched that we could
+not penetrate to the affected country. But at last the chance came. Your
+brother was gazetted as killed. We allowed the report to remain
+uncontradicted. We let the other side think that Jem Agar was dead, and
+therefore incapable of doing any more harm, and now he has gone up into
+that country to find out what they are after."
+
+Arthur nodded.
+
+"I see," he said. He was rather vague about it all, and had not quite
+realised yet that this was all true, that this man whom he still hated
+and distrusted without any apparent reason was real and living, speaking
+to him in real waking life and not in a dream. Moreover, he had not
+nearly realised that Jem was alive. The evidence of his own black
+clothes, of the sombre-edged stationery, of his mourning habit of life
+this term, was too strong upon a mind like his to be suddenly thrown
+aside. Perhaps he had discovered that the consolation of inheritance was
+greater than was at first apparent. In six weeks he had slipped very
+comfortably into Jem's shoes, and it seemed only right and proper that
+his life should have a background of the noble proportions of Stagholme.
+Also, now Stagholme meant Dora; for he was worldly-wise enough to know
+that his own personal value in the world's estimation had undergone a
+great change in six short weeks. He knew that the man with the money
+usually wins.
+
+It would almost seem that Seymour Michael divined his thoughts, at least
+in part.
+
+"There are two reasons," he went on to say, "why absolute secrecy is
+necessary; first, for Agar's own sake. He is, of course, in disguise. No
+one suspects that he is there, and that is his only safeguard in the
+country where he is. Secondly--but I want your whole attention, please."
+
+"Yes, I am listening."
+
+Seymour Michael leant forward and emphasised his remark by tapping on the
+table with his gloved finger.
+
+"The mission is so extremely dangerous that it comes almost to the same
+thing."
+
+"What do you mean?" inquired Arthur Agar, whose gentle intellect only
+compassed subtleties of the drawing-room type.
+
+"I mean that Jem Agar is almost as good as a dead man, although he was
+not killed at Pregalla."
+
+The man who had wept in this same room six weeks before looked up with a
+gleam of something very like hope in his troubled eyes. Such is the power
+of love. For Arthur Agar had not been ignorant of the probability that in
+his step-brother, once dead but now living, he had had a rival. Sister
+Cecilia had seen to that.
+
+"But when shall we know? When will he come back?" inquired he. And
+Seymour Michael, the subtle, began to see his way more clearly.
+
+"Certainly not for six months, probably not for nine."
+
+One may take it that no man is sent into the world a ready-made
+scoundrel. It all depends upon the circumstances of life. No one is safe
+right up to the end, and events may combine to make the very best of us
+into that thing which the world calls a villain.
+
+Arthur Agar, all inexperienced, weak, hereditarily handicapped, suddenly
+found himself on the balance. And the scales were held, not by the hand
+of Justice, blind and clement, but by Seymour Michael, very open-eyed,
+with a keen watchfulness for his own purpose; biassed; unscrupulous. It
+must be admitted that circumstances were against Arthur Agar.
+
+"There is nothing to be done," added Seymour Michael, with a smile which
+his companion could not be expected to fathom, "but to keep very quiet,
+and to make the best of your opportunities while you occupy the position
+of heir."
+
+Arthur smiled in a sickly way. He felt suddenly as if this man could see
+right through him, and all the while he hated him. Seymour Michael meant
+"debts"--it was only natural that one of his race should think of money
+before all things--Arthur's thoughts were fixed on Dora. And guiltily he
+imagined himself to be detected.
+
+"You will be doing no harm to Jem," said the tempter, with his pleasant
+laugh. "You are called upon to act the part well for his sake."
+
+"Ye-es, I suppose I am," answered Arthur. "And I must tell no one?"
+
+"Absolutely no one."
+
+Despite his credulous nature, Arthur Agar was singularly suspicious on
+this occasion.
+
+"Are these Jem's own instructions?" he asked.
+
+"His own instructions," replied Seymour Michael callously.
+
+Arthur paused in deep reflection. It was evident, he argued to himself,
+that Jem could not have cared for Dora, or he would never have left her
+in ignorance of the truth. If, therefore, during Jem's absence, he could
+win Dora for himself, he could not in any way be accused of wronging his
+step-brother. And we all know that a conscience which argues with itself
+is lost.
+
+"To make things easier for us both," pursued Seymour Michael, "I propose
+that this interview remain a strict secret between ourselves, and for
+that purpose I have suppressed my own name. It is a fairly well-known
+name. I may mention that in guarantee of good faith. As, however, you do
+not know me, it will be easier for you to suppress the fact that we have
+ever met."
+
+Arthur almost laughed at these last words. It seemed as if he had known
+this man all his life--as if his whole existence had merely been a period
+of waiting until he should come.
+
+"And my mother must not know?" he said. He kept harking back to this
+question with a singular persistence. There are a few men and many
+women for whom a secret is a responsibility to be transferred to the
+first-comer without hesitation. One half of the world takes pleasure in
+divulging a secret--for the other half it is positive pain to keep one.
+
+Seymour Michael never dreamt that the secret might be in unsafe hands. To
+a secretive man like himself the incapacity to keep a counsel never
+suggested itself. There is no doubt that where we all err is in
+persistently judging others by ourselves. Arthur Agar was keenly aware of
+his own incompetence in many things--he was one of those promising
+undergraduates who hire a man to water six small plants in a window-box.
+Incompetence was by him reduced to a science. There were so many things
+which he could not do, that he was forced to find occupations for a very
+extensive leisure, and these were usually of the petty accomplishment
+order, which are graceful in young girls and very disgraceful in young
+men.
+
+Now the doctrine of incompetence is a very dangerous one. Already in the
+criminal courts we are beginning to hear of men and women who do not feel
+competent to keep the law. There were many laws of social procedure and a
+few of schoolboy honour which Arthur Agar felt to be beyond him, and he
+considered that in making confession he was acquiring a right to
+absolution.
+
+He did not tell General Michael that he was not good at keeping secrets,
+chiefly because that gentleman was not of the trivial confession type;
+but he made a mental reservation.
+
+Seymour Michael had risen and was walking backwards and forwards slowly
+between the window and the door. He seemed quite at home in the small
+room, and his manner of taking three strides and then wheeling round
+suggested the habit of living in tents.
+
+"What you must say is that you have received your brother's effects," he
+said. "If they ask from whence--from the War Office. I am the War Office
+to all intents and purposes. The affair is almost forgotten. All the
+details have been published--the usual newspaper details, with Fleet
+Street local colouring. You should have no difficulty."
+
+"No," answered Arthur meekly, but with another mental reservation.
+
+"There are, of course, certain legal formalities in progress," went on
+the General, "relative to the estate. Those must be allowed to go on. We
+may trust the lawyers to go slowly. And afterwards they can amuse
+themselves by undoing what they have done. That is their trade. Half of
+them make a living by undoing what the others have done. You are ..."
+
+Seymour Michael so far forgot himself as to pause and make a mental
+calculation. Arthur saw him do it and never thought of being surprised.
+It seemed quite natural that this man should possess data upon which to
+base mental calculations.
+
+"... not twenty-one yet?" Michael finished the sentence.
+
+"No."
+
+"So that, you see, they cannot make over the estate to you before the
+time your brother comes or--should--come--back."
+
+Arthur understood the emphasis perfectly this time. He was getting on.
+
+"There are," continued Michael, who was eminently methodical, "a few
+military formalities, which have had my attention. In fact, I think that
+everything has been attended to. In case you should require any
+information, or perhaps advice, write to C 74, Smith's Library, Vigo
+Street. That is the address on that envelope."
+
+Arthur rose too. The thought that his visitor might be about to depart
+thrilled through him with the warmth of relieved suspense.
+
+"For your own information," said Michael, looking straight into the
+wavering, colourless eyes, "I may tell you that in my opinion--the
+opinion of an expert--this expedition is exceedingly hazardous. We--we
+must be prepared for the worst."
+
+Arthur Agar turned away. He had felt the deep eyes probing his very
+soul--looking right through him. A sickening sense of weakness was at his
+heart. He felt that in the presence of this man he did not belong to
+himself.
+
+"You mean," he muttered awkwardly, "that Jem will never come back?"
+
+"I think it most probable. And then--when we have to abandon all hope, I
+mean--we shall be glad that we kept this thing to ourselves."
+
+Seymour Michael held out his hand, and pressed the boy's weak fingers in
+a careless grip. Then he turned, and with a short "Good-bye" left him.
+
+Arthur stood looking at the closed door with the frightened eyes of a
+woman. He looked round at the familiar objects of his room--the futile
+little gimcracks with which he had surrounded an existence worthy of such
+environments--the invitation cards on the draped mantelpiece, the little
+glass vases of fantastic shape with a single bloom of stephanotis, the
+hundred and one fantasies of a finicking generation wherein Art sappeth
+Manhood. And his eyes were suddenly opened to a new world of things
+which he could not do. He gazed--not without a vague shame--into a
+perspective of incompetencies.
+
+In the _laissez-aller_ of the unreflective he had assumed that life would
+be a continuance of small pleasures and refined enjoyments, little
+dinners and pleasant converse, Dora and a comfortable home, mutual mild
+delight in flowers and table decoration. Into this assumption Seymour
+Michael had suddenly stepped--strong, restless, and mysterious--and
+Arthur became uneasily conscious of possibilities. There might be
+something in his own life, there might even be something within himself,
+over which he could have no control. There was something within
+himself--something connected with the man who had gone, leaving unrest
+behind him, as he left it wherever he passed. What was this? whither
+would it lead?
+
+Arthur Agar rang the bell, and kept the "gyp" in the room on some trivial
+pretext. He was afraid of solitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+TWO MOTIVES
+
+Making vain pretence
+Of gladness, with an awful sense
+Of one mute shadow watching all.
+
+
+"Pooh! the girl is happy enough!"
+
+Mr. Glynde jerked his newspaper up and read an advertisement of
+steamships about to depart to the West Coast of Africa. His wife--engaged
+in cutting out a scarlet flannel garment of diminutive proportions (an
+operation which she made a point of performing on the study table)--gave
+two gentle snips and ceased her occupation.
+
+She looked at the back of her husband's head, where the hair was getting
+a little thin, and said nothing. No one argued with the Reverend Thomas
+Glynde.
+
+"The girl is happy enough," he repeated, seeking contradiction. There are
+times when an autocrat would very much like to be argued with.
+
+"She is always lively and gay," he continued defiantly.
+
+"Too gay," Mrs. Glynde whispered to the scissors, with a flash of the
+only wisdom which Heaven gives away, and it is not given to all mothers.
+
+The winter had closed over Stagholme, the isolating, distance-making
+winter of English country life, wherein each house is thrown upon its own
+resource, and the peaceful are at rest because their neighbours cannot
+get at them.
+
+Dora was out. She was out a good deal now; exceedingly busy in good works
+of a different type from those affected by Sister Cecilia. The winter air
+seemed to invigorate her, and she tramped miles with a can of soup or an
+infant's flannel wrapper. And always when she came in she was gay, as her
+father described it. She gave amusing descriptions of her visits among
+the cottagers, retailed little quaint conceits such as drop from rustic
+lips declared unto them by their fathers from the old time before them,
+and in it all she displayed a keen insight into human nature. At times
+she was brilliant; which her father noticed with grave approval, ignorant
+or heedless of the fact that brilliancy means friction. Happy people are
+not brilliant.
+
+She suddenly developed a taste for politics, and read the newspaper with
+a keen interest. Several half-forgotten duties were revived, and their
+performance became a matter of principle.
+
+Mr. Glynde did not notice these subtle changes. Old men are generally
+selfish, more so, if possible, than young ones, and Mr. Glynde was
+eminently so. He only saw other people in relationship to himself. He
+looked at them through himself.
+
+Mrs. Glynde had taken the opportunity of a "cutting out" to mention that
+she thought a change would do Dora good. During the three months that had
+elapsed since the announcement of Jem's death, Stagholme had necessarily
+been a somewhat dull abode. The winter had not come on well, but in fits
+and starts, with trying winds and much rain. She said these things while
+she cut into her roll of red flannel--the scissors seemed to give her
+courage.
+
+The Rector of Stagholme had awful visions of a furnished house at
+Brighton or a crammed hotel on the Riviera.
+
+"Where do you want to go to?" he inquired, with a gruffness which meant
+less than it conveyed.
+
+"To town, dear."
+
+Now Mr. Glynde loved London.
+
+In the meantime Dora was standing at the gate of the gamekeeper's little
+cottage-garden which adjoined the orchard at Stagholme. There were
+certain women with whom Sister Cecilia did not "get on," and these were
+by tacit understanding relegated to Dora. This same inability to "get on"
+was one of the crosses which Sister Cecilia carried in a magnified
+condition through life. The gamekeeper's wife was one of the failures--a
+hardy mother of several hardy little embryo gamekeepers, who held that
+she knew her own business of motherhood best, and intimated as much to
+Sister Cecilia.
+
+Dora went there very frequently, and the pathos of her way with little
+children is one of the things which cannot be touched upon here. It is
+possible that she went there because the cottage was near the Holme, and
+the way took her past the great house. She had never laid aside her old
+girlish habit of passing through the rooms, unannounced, to exchange a
+few words with Mrs. Agar. It was not that she held that lady in great
+veneration or respect; but in the country people learn to take their
+neighbours as they are, remembering that they are neighbours.
+
+She went through the orchard and in at the side-door, which stood always
+open to the turn of the handle. She had fallen into a singular habit
+of always using this entrance, and of glancing as she passed at the
+stick-rack, where a rough mountain-ash was wont to stand--a stick which
+Jem had cut, while she stood by, years before. There was, perhaps,
+something characteristically suggestive of Jem in this stick--something
+strong and simple. She was not the person to indulge in sentimental
+thoughts; she could not afford to do that, Indeed, she often looked into
+the stick-rack without thinking, but she never passed it without looking.
+
+In the library she found Mrs. Agar, talking to her maid, who withdrew
+with a pinched salutation. Mrs. Agar was one of those unfortunate women
+who level all ranks in their sore need of a listener. The expression of
+her face was decidedly lachrymose.
+
+"Poor Arthur!" she exclaimed. "Dora, dear, something so dreadful has
+happened!"
+
+"Yes," returned Dora, with the indifference of one who has tasted of the
+worst.
+
+"Poor Arthur has received Jem's papers and diaries and things, and I can
+see from his letter that it has quite upset him. He is so sympathetic,
+you know."
+
+Dora had turned quite away. She usually carried a stick in her country
+rambles, and it seemed suddenly to have suggested itself to her to lay
+this on a table near the door. The stick fell off again, and some moments
+elapsed while she picked it up from the floor. When she turned, her veil
+had slipped from the brim of her hat down over her face.
+
+"But it could not have been a surprise to him," she said quietly. "He
+must have known that there would probably be something of the sort sent
+home."
+
+"Yes, yes. But you know, dear, how keenly he feels everything. These
+highly-strung, artistic temperaments--but I need not tell you; you know
+Arthur almost as well as I do."
+
+Dora answered nothing. It was not the first time that Mrs. Agar had
+charged some remark with that weight of significance which, in her
+vulgar-minded subtlety, she considered delicate and exceptionally clever.
+And each time that Dora heard it she was conscious of a vague discomfort,
+as at the approach of some danger, of some interference in her life which
+would be too strong for her to resist. It was one of those mean feminine
+thrusts to parry which is to acknowledge, to ignore is to admit fear.
+
+"Has he sent them on to you?" she asked after a little pause, resisting
+only by a great effort the temptation to look towards the writing-table.
+
+"Yes," was the reply. "It appears that they have been in his possession
+for some time. He kept them back for some reason--I cannot think why."
+
+Providence is sometimes unexpectedly kind. Had Mrs. Agar been a different
+woman, had she, perhaps, been a better woman, less aggravating, more
+discreet, more honourable, she would not have done at this moment
+precisely that which Dora was silently praying that she would do.
+
+"Here," continued the mistress of Stagholme, going to the writing-table,
+"is his diary; perhaps you would care to look through it? Poor Jem! I am
+afraid it will not be very interesting."
+
+Dora took the little dark-coloured book almost indifferently.
+
+"Thanks," she said. "It was always an effort to him to write the very
+shortest letter, was it not? Papa would like to see it, I know, if I may
+show it to him."
+
+Being rather taller than Mrs. Agar, she could see over that lady's
+shoulder as she stood turning over with some curiosity a score or so of
+bundles evidently containing letters.
+
+"These," said Mrs. Agar, "seem to be letters; probably our letters to
+him. Shall we burn them?"
+
+Dora reflected for a moment. She knew that many of the bundles must
+contain letters from herself to Jem--letters which could have been read
+from the housetops without conveying anything to the populace. But some
+of them--almost between the lines--had been intended to convey, and had
+conveyed, something to Jem. She reflected--without anger, as women do on
+such matters--that if curiosity moved her, Mrs. Agar would not scruple to
+open all these letters and read them. The packets had evidently not been
+opened, and a momentary feeling of grateful recognition of Arthur's
+gentlemanly honour passed through her mind. There was about the faded
+papers that dim, mysterious odour which ever clings to packages that have
+been packed in India.
+
+"Yes," she said, "let us burn them."
+
+Mrs. Agar seemed to hesitate for a moment, but it was only for effect.
+She dreaded the packages, for one of them might contain the will which
+haunted her.
+
+And so these two women, so very different, from such very different
+motives, carried the letters to the fire, and there they burnt them. In
+the curling flames Dora saw her own handwriting. She could not understand
+the suppressed excitement of Mrs. Agar's manner; she only knew that the
+mistress of Stagholme seemed to be afraid of looking at the burning
+papers.
+
+When all was consumed both women heaved a sigh of relief.
+
+"There," said Mrs. Agar, "I am glad we have been able to save poor Arthur
+that. These things are so very painful."
+
+Dora looked rather as if she could not understand why the painful things
+of life should be harder for Arthur to bear than for other people. But
+she said nothing.
+
+"He will be glad," continued Mrs. Agar, "to hear that it was you who
+helped me. I know he would rather that it had been you than any one."
+
+All this with the horrid meaning, the sly significance, of her kind; for
+there are women for whom there is absolutely nothing sacred in the whole
+gamut of human feelings. There are women who will talk of things upon
+which the lips of even the most depraved men are silent.
+
+And with it there was nothing that Dora could take exception to--nothing
+that she could answer without running the risk of bringing upon herself
+questions to which she had no reply.
+
+"Well," she said cheerfully, "it is done now, so we can dismiss it from
+our minds. Of course you know that mother is getting out of hand
+altogether. I cannot hold her in. Her plans are simply kittenish. She
+wants to take a flat in town for two months, to take Boulton and one
+maid, to hire a cook, and to go generally to the bad."
+
+Mrs. Agar's eyes glistened. She liked to hear of other people seeking
+excitement because she felt more justified in doing so herself.
+
+"Well, I think she is very sensible. I am sure you all want a change. I
+feel I do. It is so depressing here all alone with one's thoughts. Sister
+Cecilia was just saying the other day that I ought to go away to Brighton
+or somewhere--that I owed it to Arthur."
+
+"I don't see why you should not pay it to yourself, whoever you owe it
+to," said Dora. "This is an age of going away for changes. Life is like
+old Martin's trousers--so patched up with changes that the original
+pattern has disappeared."
+
+"Yes, dear," replied Mrs. Agar, with a vague laugh. In conversation with
+Dora she invariably felt clumsy and unable to protect herself, like a
+stout fencer conscious of many vulnerable outlying points. She did not
+understand this girl, and never knew which was carte and which tierce.
+"So you are going away?"
+
+"I expect so. Mother usually carries through her little schemes, and in
+his inward soul papa is rather a fast old gentleman. He loves the
+pavement, and--I don't object to the shops myself."
+
+"Then you will like it?"
+
+"Oh yes!" replied Dora, rising to go. "Like Mr. Martin, I am not sure
+that the old pattern is worth preserving."
+
+"I wish I could go with you," said Mrs. Agar, holding up her cheek in an
+absent way for the farewell kiss; "I have not been to town for ages."
+
+"Last week," amended Dora mentally.
+
+"Why not come too?" she said aloud, gathering together stick, basket, and
+gloves.
+
+"There is Arthur," replied the lady. "I am afraid he will not care to
+leave home just now, after so great a blow."
+
+"All the more reason why he should go to town for a little and
+forget--himself."
+
+Mrs. Agar smiled sadly and waited for further persuasion. She had fully
+made up her mind to go to Brighton, but was anxious first that the whole
+parish should press her to do so against her will.
+
+"It will be very nice," continued Dora, "to have you to help me to keep
+my flighty progenitors in order. Now I _must_ go."
+
+With a nod and a light laugh she closed the library door behind her,
+having apparently forgotten the sadder events of the visit. But in her
+basket she had the diary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA
+
+Be as one that knoweth, and yet holdeth his tongue.
+
+
+"And, of course, you know every one in the room?" Dora was saying to her
+cousin as the orchestra struck suddenly into "God bless the Prince of
+Wales."
+
+"Good gracious, no!" Miss Mazerod replied; and both young ladies stood up
+to curtsey to the Royal party.
+
+It was the great artistic _soiree_ of the year, and crowds of nobodies
+jostled each other in their mad desire to deceive whosoever might be
+credulous into the belief that they were somebodies.
+
+"Of course," said Dora, when they were seated again, and the strains of
+the Welsh air had been suppressed "by desire," "they may be very great
+swells; I have no doubt they are in their particular way; but they do not
+look it."
+
+Miss Mazerod looked round critically.
+
+"Some of them," she said, "are frame-makers, a good many of them, with
+big bills in high places. Others are actresses--very great actresses off
+the stage. Do you see that tall girl there, with a supercilious
+expression which she does not know is apt to remind one of a housemaid
+scorning a milkman's love on the area steps? She is a great actress, who
+will not take small engagements, and is not offered large ones. She is an
+actress 'pour se faire photographier.'"
+
+"And this is the cream of London society?" said Dora, looking round her
+with considerable amusement.
+
+"Society," returned her cousin, "is not allowed to stand for cream now.
+It is stirred up with a spoon, silver-gilt, and the skim milk gets
+hopelessly mixed up with the cream. That young man who is now talking to
+the actress person is not what he looks. He is, as a matter of fact, the
+scion of a noble house, who models in clay atrociously."
+
+"And the gorgeous person he is turning his back upon?"
+
+"One of his models."
+
+"Of clay?"
+
+"Essentially so."
+
+And Miss Mazerod broke off into a happy laugh. Hers was not the
+bitterness of plainness or insignificance, but something infinitely more
+suggestive. It was, indeed, not bitterness at all, but light-hearted
+contempt, which is, perhaps, the deepest contempt there is.
+
+"Who is the wretched woman with no backbone draped in rusty black?" asked
+Dora.
+
+"My dear! That is one of the great lady artists of the age. She lectures
+to factory girls or something, and she paints limp females snuffling over
+tiger-lilies. Her ideal woman has that sort of droop of the throat--I
+imagine she-tries to teach it to the factory. She objects to backbone."
+
+Miss Mazerod, who possessed a very firm little specimen of the adjunct
+mentioned, drew herself up and smiled commiseratingly.
+
+"Then," said Dora, "I feel quite consoled about my sketches."
+
+For the first time Miss Mazerod looked serious.
+
+"Dora," she said, "I often wonder whether it would be profane to mention
+in one's prayers a little gratitude for not having an artistic soul.
+There are lots of women like that in the world, especially in London.
+They pretend that they think themselves superior to men, but they know in
+their hearts that they are inferior to women. For they have not something
+that women ought to have--No, Dolly, no brown studies here; you must not
+dream here!"
+
+Dora, with a light laugh, came back from her mental wanderings to find
+herself looking at a face which caught her attention at once. It was the
+face of a man--brown, self-contained, with unhappy eyes and a long
+drooping nose.
+
+"Who is _that_ man?" she inquired at once. "Now, he is quite different
+from the rest. He is about the only person who is not furtively finding
+out how much attention he has succeeded in attracting."
+
+"Yes, that is a man with a purpose."
+
+"What purpose?" inquired Dora.
+
+"I don't know; I shouldn't think any one knows."
+
+"_He_ knows," suggested Dora.
+
+"Yes, _he_ knows."
+
+Miss Mazerod was looking at the mechanism of her fan with a demure
+expression on lips shaped for happiness. A dark young man was elbowing
+his way through the mixed crowd towards them.
+
+"What is his name?" asked Dora, who was still looking at the man with a
+purpose.
+
+"General Seymour Michael."
+
+"The Indian man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a little pause, during which Miss Mazerod glanced in the
+direction of the younger man, who had been detained by a stout lady with
+a purple dress and a depressed daughter.
+
+"I should like to know him," said Dora.
+
+"Nothing easier," replied her cousin, still absorbed in the fan. "I know
+him quite well."
+
+"He is looking at you now."
+
+Miss Mazerod looked up and bowed with a little jerk, as if she felt too
+young to be stately; one of those bows that say "Come here."
+
+At this moment the younger man came up and shook hands effusively with
+Dora, slowly with Miss Mazerod.
+
+"Jack," said that young lady, "I have just beamed on General Michael, who
+is behind you. I want to introduce him to Dora."
+
+Jack seemed to think this an excellent idea, and stepped aside with
+alacrity.
+
+Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile. He certainly was
+one of the most distinguished-looking men in the room, with a brilliant
+ribbon across his breast, and that smart, well-brushed general effect
+which stamps the successful soldier.
+
+"When did you come back to England?" inquired Edith Mazerod, whose father
+had worked with this man in India.
+
+"I--oh! I have been home six months," he replied, shaking hands with a
+subtle _empressemant_ which was more effective than words.
+
+"On leave?"
+
+"No. Laid on the shelf."
+
+He stood upright, drawing himself up with ironical emphasis, as if to
+show as plainly as possible that there were many years of life and work
+in him yet.
+
+Edith Mazerod laughed, the careless passing laugh of inattention.
+
+"Dora," she said, "may I introduce General Michael? My cousin."
+
+She rose, and Seymour Michael prepared to take the vacant seat. The youth
+called Jack was making signs with his eyebrows, and in attempting to
+decipher his meaning she forgot to mention Dora's name.
+
+"You will be sorry for this," said Seymour Michael, sitting down. "You
+will not thank your cousin."
+
+"Why?" inquired Dora, prepared to like him, possibly because he had a
+brown face and wore his hair cut short.
+
+"Because," he replied, "I am hopelessly new to this work."
+
+"So am I," replied Dora; "I don't even know what pictures to look at and
+what to ignore. So I dare not look at the walls at all."
+
+"That is precisely my position, only I am worse. You know how to behave
+in polite circles; I don't. You have a slightly tired look, as if this
+sort of thing wearied you by reason of its monotony."
+
+"Have I? I am sorry for that."
+
+"No, there is no reason to be sorry. They all have it."
+
+"But," protested Dora, "I am not one of them. I am only aping the
+Romans."
+
+"You do it well; I shall study your method. You do it better than Edith
+Mazerod."
+
+"Edith is young--hopelessly, enviably young. Do you know them well?"
+
+"Yes, I knew them in India."
+
+"Of course; I forgot."
+
+He turned and looked at her sharply. Sometimes his own reputation, far
+from being a happiness, gave him cause for misgiving. A man with an
+unclean record cannot well be sure that all the details he would wish
+suppressed have been suppressed. There was a little pause, during which
+they both watched the self-satisfied throng moving in and out, here and
+there, full of a restless desire to be observed.
+
+It was Seymour Michael who spoke first. True to his mixed blood, he
+sought to make himself safe.
+
+"Excuse me," he said, "but Edith Mazerod did not mention your name; may I
+ask it?"
+
+"Dora Glynde!"
+
+She saw him start. She saw a sudden wavering gleam in his eyes which in
+another man she would have set down to fear.
+
+"Miss Dora Glynde," he repeated; and the expression of his face was so
+serene again that the look which had passed away from it began already to
+present itself to her memory as a conception of her own brain.
+
+"When I was younger and shyer," he said, with a singular haste, "I was
+afraid to ask a lady her name when I did not catch it, and--and I
+frequently regretted not having had the courage to do so."
+
+She recollected it all afterwards--every word, every pause. But then, as
+so frequently happens, knowledge aided her memory, and added significance
+to every detail.
+
+"Are you staying with the Mazerods?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I am being shown life. I am doing a season. To-night is part of my
+education. To-morrow, I believe, we go to Hurlingham; the next day to a
+charity bazaar, and so on. I believe I am getting on very well. Aunt Mary
+is pleased with me. But I still stare about me, and show visible
+disappointment when I am presented to a literary celebrity or some other
+person of newspaper renown."
+
+"Celebrities in the flesh _are_ disappointing."
+
+"Not only that, but I find that many of them are just a little common.
+Not quite what we in the country call gentlemen."
+
+"Ah! Miss Glynde, you forget that Art rises superior to class
+distinctions."
+
+"Yes, but artists don't; and artists' wives don't rise at all. I think
+you are to be congratulated. In your profession there are fewer persons
+'superior to class distinction.'"
+
+This was a subject which Seymour Michael dreaded. He was ignorant of how
+much Dora might know. He had suspected from the first that Jem Agar's
+desire that she should know the truth had been a mere matter of
+sentiment; but the fact of meeting her at this public festivity, gay and
+in colours, shook this theory from its foundation. He disliked Edith
+Mazerod, because he suspected that his own early career had probably been
+discussed in her hearing, and her easy lightness of heart was to him as
+incomprehensible as it was suspicious. Dora he rather feared without
+knowing why.
+
+"I suppose you know India well?" she said, looking straight in front of
+her.
+
+"Too well," was the reply, with a sharp sidelong glance.
+
+He was right. At that moment Dora might have been one of these
+_habituees_ of rout and ballroom. She was very pale and looked tired out.
+
+"I went out there thirty years ago," he continued, "into the Mutiny. From
+that time to this India has been killing my friends."
+
+There was a little pause. She knew that in the natural course of events
+it was almost certain that this man knew Jem personally. It would have
+been easy to mention his name; but the wound was too fresh, her heart was
+too sore to bear the sting of hearing him discussed.
+
+For a second Seymour Michael hovered on the brink. His lips almost framed
+the name. Good almost triumphed over evil.
+
+And the girl sitting there--broken-hearted, quiet and strong, as only
+women can be--never knew how near she was. Sometimes it seems as if the
+cruelty of fate were unnecessary, as if the word too little or the word
+too much, which has the power to alter a whole life, were withheld or
+spoken merely to further a Providential experiment.
+
+"Yes," said Michael, "I hate India."
+
+And the spell was broken, the moment lost for ever. Seymour Michael had
+kept silence, and elsewhere, perhaps, at that very moment his doom was
+spoken. Who can tell? We are offered chances--we are, if you will, the
+puppets of an experiment--and surely there must be a moment which
+decides.
+
+Dora was conscious of having miscalculated her own strength. She had led
+him on to the dangerous ground, but it was with relief that she saw him
+step back. She did not dare to lead him to it again.
+
+It was not long before he left her, on the timely arrival of another
+friend.
+
+The introduction brought about by Miss Mazerod did not seem to have been
+an entire success, for they parted gravely and without a word expressing
+the hope of meeting again. And yet Dora liked him, for he was strong and
+purposeful, such as she would have had all men. She wanted to know more
+of him. She wanted to be admitted further into the knowledge which she
+knew to be his.
+
+Seymour Michael was conscious of a feeling of discomfort, no less
+disquieting by reason of its vagueness. He had a nervous sensation of
+being surrounded by something--something in the nature of a chain,
+piecing itself together, link by link--something that was slowly closing
+in upon him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AT HURLINGHGAM
+
+I must be cruel only to be kind.
+
+
+It is not your deep person who succeeds in carrying out a set purpose,
+but one who is just profound enough to be fathomed of the multitude. For,
+after all, the multitude is ready enough to help, in a casual,
+parenthetic way, in the furtherance of a design; and a little depth,
+serving to flatter that vanity which taketh delight in a sense of
+superior perspicacity, only adds to the zest. There are plenty of people
+ready to pull on a rope or shove at a wheel, but there are more eager to
+do so if they are offered the direction of affairs.
+
+Mrs. Glynde was one of those easily-fathomed persons who often succeed in
+their designs by the very transparency of their method. She had come to
+London with the purpose of leaving Dora there under the care of her
+sister Lady Mazerod, and before she had talked to that amiable widow for
+half an hour the design was as apparent as if it had been spoken.
+
+In due course Dora and Miss Mazerod renewed a childish love, and at the
+end of April Mr. And Mrs. Glynde went back to Stagholme alone. It is
+probable that neither Mrs. Glynde nor Providence could have chosen a
+better companion for Dora at this time than Edith Mazerod. There was a
+breezy simplicity about this young lady's view of life which seemed to
+have the power of simplifying life itself. There are some people like
+this to whom is vouchsafed a limited comprehension of evil and an
+unlimited belief in good. A very shrewd author, who is, perhaps, not so
+much read to-day as he ought to be, said that "to the pure all things are
+pure." He often said less than he meant. For he knew as well as we do
+that the pure-minded are just so many moral filters who clear the
+atmosphere and take no harm themselves.
+
+Dora Glynde required some one like this; for she had, as the French say,
+"found herself." The little world of Stagholme--the world of this
+Record--was intensely human. There was nobody very good in it and nobody
+very bad. Jem, with that quicker perception of evil which is wisely
+included in the mental outfit of men, had warned her against Sister
+Cecilia. And she had begun to understand his meaning now. Mrs. Agar she
+had found out for herself. Her father she respected and loved, but she
+had reached that age wherein we discover that father and mother are but
+as other men and women. Her mother she loved with that half-patronising
+affection which is found where a daughter is mentally superior.
+
+The only person whom she had ever really respected and looked up to
+without reserve was Jem.
+
+Altogether life was too complicated, subtle, difficult, hopeless, when
+Edith Mazerod came into it, and by her presence seemed to clear the
+atmosphere of daily existence.
+
+At first the constant round of visiting and gaiety was a supreme effort;
+then came tolerance, and finally that business-like acceptance which is
+mistaken by many for enjoyment. The human machine is not constructed to
+go always at high pressure, either in happiness or in misery. We cannot
+exist all day and all night with a living care on our shoulders--the
+greatest misery slips off-sometimes. With men it can be lubricated by
+hard work, and likewise by alcohol, but the latter method is not always
+to be advised. With women there is much consolation to be extracted from
+a new dress or several new dresses and a hat. Even a new pair of gloves
+may help a breaking heart, and a glass of bitter beer taken at the right
+moment (with or without faith) has power to change a man's view of life.
+
+So Dora, who had at no time been tragic, began to find that Academy
+_soirees_ and similar entertainments assisted her in preserving towards
+the world that attitude which she had elected to assume. And if there be
+any who blame her, they are at liberty to do so. It is not worth while to
+pause for the purpose of writing--on the ground or elsewhere--for their
+edification.
+
+Only one such alleviation did she repent of in after life. The day after
+the Academy _soiree_ the Mazerods took her to Hurlingham. And Hurlingham
+became one of the pages of her life which she would have wished to tear
+completely out.
+
+When they drove in through the simple gateway and round by the winding
+drive, it was evident that a great afternoon was to be expected. The
+blue-and-white club flag fluttered over a pavilion crammed from roof to
+terrace. The teams were already out in their bright colours, curveting
+about, each with a practice ball, on their stiff little ponies, moving
+with that singular cramped action only seen on the polo ground.
+
+It was one of those brilliant days in early May when only gardeners,
+grumbling, talk or think of rain. A few fleecy white clouds seemed
+painted. So motionless were they, on the sky, reproducing the Hurlingham
+colours far above the ground. A gentle breeze coming up from the river
+brought with it the odour of lilac and budding things.
+
+The chairs were crowded with a well-dressed throng, the larger majority
+of which seemed to be unaware that polo was the object of the afternoon.
+
+The Mazerods and Dora had scarcely taken chairs when Arthur Agar
+presented himself. His tailor had apparently told him that after a lapse
+of six months it was permissible to assume habiliments of a slightly
+resigned tenour. His grey suit was one of the most elegant on the ground,
+his Suede gloves fitted perfectly, his tie was unique. And Arthur Agar
+was as happy as the best-dressed girl there.
+
+The reception accorded him was not exactly enthusiastic. Having in view
+the fact that the young man called Jack was entirely satisfactory, Lady
+Mazerod treated all other young men with indifference. Edith despised
+Arthur Agar because Jack was athletic in his tendencies; and Dora was
+sorry to see him, because she had not answered his three last letters.
+There were also numerous small but expensive presents for which she had
+failed to tender thanks.
+
+Unfortunately the young man called Jack turned up at tea-time, carrying
+one of the heavy chairs, which never fail to spoil the gloves of some of
+us, with unconscious ease. Owing to the activity and enterprise of this
+young gentleman, tea was soon procured, and consequently despatched
+before the interval was over and before the band had wet its whistle with
+something of a different nature from that in vogue on the lawn. A stroll
+through the gardens was proposed, and Lady Mazerod sent the young people
+off alone. There was no choice; but Dora had probably no thought of
+making a choice, had such been offered to her. She, like many another
+young lady, erred in placing too great a confidence in her own powers of
+staving things off.
+
+There was no doubt whatever about Edith and the energetic John. They led
+the way round by the river path and the tennis-courts with a sublime
+disregard for the eye of the multitude, leaving Dora and Arthur to follow
+at such speed as their discretion might dictate.
+
+Before they had left the tennis-lawn Arthur plunged. It may have been the
+desperation of diffidence, or perhaps that the new grey suit and the
+unique tie lent him confidence. One sees a young lady completely carried
+off her mental status by the success of a dress or the absence of a
+dreaded competitor, and Arthur Agar had enough of the woman in him to
+give way to this dangerous vertigo.
+
+"Dora," he said, "you have not answered my last three letters."
+
+"No," she replied, "because they struck me as a little ridiculous."
+
+"Ridiculous!" he repeated, with such sincere dismay that she was moved to
+compassion. "Ridiculous, Dora, why?"
+
+His horror-struck, almost tearful voice gave her a pang of self-reproach,
+as if she had struck some defenceless dumb animal.
+
+"Well, there were things in them that I did not understand."
+
+"But I could make you understand them," he said, with a sudden
+self-assertion which startled her. The weakest man is, after all, a
+man--so far as women are concerned.
+
+"I think you had better not," she said, hurrying her steps.
+
+But he refused to alter his pace, and he disregarded her warning.
+
+"They meant," he said, "that I wanted you to know that I love you."
+
+There was a little pause. Dora was struck dumb by a chill sense of
+foreboding. It was like a momentary glance into a future full of trouble.
+
+"I am sorry," she said, "for that. I hope--that you may find that it is a
+mistake."
+
+"But it is not a mistake. I don't see why it should be one."
+
+Dora paused. She was afraid to strike. She did not know yet that it is
+less cruel to be cruel at once.
+
+"It is best to look at these things practically," she said. "And if we
+look at it practically we shall find that you and I are not at all likely
+to be happy together."
+
+"However I look at it, I only see that I should never be happy without
+you."
+
+"Then, Arthur, you are not looking at it practically."
+
+"No, and I don't want to," he replied doggedly.
+
+"That is a mistake. A little bit of life may not be practical, but all
+the rest of it is; and for the gratification of that little bit, there is
+all the rest to be lived through."
+
+Arthur looked puzzled. He rearranged the orchid in his coat before
+replying. He had found time to think of the orchid.
+
+"I don't understand all that," he said. "I only know that I love you, and
+that I should be miserable without you. Besides, if that little bit is
+love--I suppose you admit there is such a thing as love?"
+
+Dora winced. She was looking through the trees across the peaceful
+evening river.
+
+"Yes," she answered gently. "I suppose so."
+
+Arthur Agar had been brought up in an atmosphere of futile discussion,
+but he had never wanted anything in vain. There are women--fools--who
+dare to bring up children thus in a world where wanting in vain is the
+chief characteristic of daily life. Arthur was ready enough to go on
+discussing his future thus, but never doubted that it would all come to
+his desire in the end. He was like a woman in so much as he failed to
+understand an argument which he could not meet.
+
+They walked on amidst the flowering shrubs, and Dora was filled with a
+disquieting sense of having failed to convince him.
+
+"I do not want to hurry you," said Arthur presently, with a maddening
+equanimity. "You can give me your answer some other time."
+
+"But I have given it now."
+
+Arthur was engaged in taking off his hat to a passing lady, and made no
+acknowledgment of this.
+
+"Everybody at home would be pleased," he observed, after a pause occupied
+by the adjustment of his hat. "They all want it."
+
+It was not that he refused to take No when it was given to him, but
+rather that he did not recognise it, never having encountered it before.
+
+They were now coming round by the pigeon-shooting enclosure, and the
+strains of the band announced that the interval for tea had elapsed.
+
+In the distance Lady Mazerod and Edith, attended by the indefatigable
+Jack, were keeping a chair for Dora. She slackened her pace. To her the
+knowledge had come that the difficulties of life have usually to be met
+single-handed. She was not afraid of Arthur, but this was a distinct
+difficulty because of the influence he had at his back.
+
+"Arthur," she said, "I think we had better understand each other _now_.
+It may save us both something in the future. I cannot help feeling rather
+sorry that I must say No. Every girl must feel that. I do not know from
+whence the feeling comes. It is a sort of regret, as if something good
+and valuable were being wasted. But, Arthur, it _is_ No, and it must
+always be No. I am not the sort of person to change."
+
+"I suppose," he replied, _en vrai fils de sa mere_, "that there is some
+one else?"
+
+He turned as he spoke, but Dora's parasol was too quick for him.
+
+"Please do not let us be like people in books," she said. "There is no
+necessity to go into side issues at all. You have asked me to marry you.
+I can never marry you. There is the whole question and the whole answer.
+I say nothing to you about finding somebody worthier, or any nonsense of
+that sort. Please spare me the usual--impertinences--about there being
+somebody else."
+
+The word found its mark. Arthur Agar caught his breath, but made no
+answer.
+
+They were among the well-dressed throng now crowding back to the chairs.
+
+When Arthur had handed Dora over to the care of Lady Mazerod he lifted
+his hat and took his departure with that perfect _savoir faire_ which was
+his _forte_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IN A SIDE PATH
+
+"To sum up all, he has the worst fault-a husband can have, he's not my
+choice."
+
+
+There is something doubtful in a love-making that is in more than two
+pairs of hands. This is a day of syndicates. The strength that lies in
+union is cultivated nowadays with much assiduity. But in matters of love
+the case is not yet altered, and never will be. It is a matter for two
+people to decide between themselves, and all interference is mistaken and
+deplorable. It is usually, one notices, those persons who are incapable
+of the feeling themselves who seek to interfere in the affairs of others.
+
+That one of the principals should seek aid in such interference proves
+without appeal that he does not know his business. Such aid as this Arthur
+Agar had sought. He had, as Dora suspected, written to his mother, with
+full particulars of the conversation beneath the Hurlingham trees. He had
+laid before her many arguments, which, by reason of their effeminacy,
+appealed to her illogical mind, proving that Dora could not do better than
+marry him. The arrangement, he argued, was satisfactory from whatever
+point of view it might be taken; and, finally, he begged his mother to try
+and succeed where he had failed. He did not propose that Mrs. Agar should
+appeal to Dora; not because such a course was repellent, but merely
+because he knew a better. He suggested that Mrs. Agar should sound Mr.
+Glynde upon the matter.
+
+This suggestion was in itself a stroke of diplomacy. The astute have no
+doubt found out by this time that the Reverend Thomas Glynde loved money;
+and a man who loves money has not the makings of a good father within
+him, whatever else he may have. Whether Arthur was aware of this it would
+be hard to say. Whether he had the penetration to know that, in the
+nature of things, Mr. Glynde would urge Dora to marry Arthur Agar and
+Stagholme, without due regard to her own feelings in the matter, is a
+question upon which no man can give a reliable opinion. Certain it is
+that such a course was precisely what the Reverend Thomas had marked out
+for himself.
+
+He had an exaggerated respect for money and position--a title was a thing
+to be revered. Clergymen, like artists, are dependent on patronage, and
+must swallow their pride. It is therefore, perhaps, only natural that Mr.
+Glynde should be quite prepared to make some sacrifice of feeling or
+sentiment (especially the feeling and sentiment of another) in order to
+secure a position.
+
+Arthur Agar simply followed the spirit of the age. He could not succeed
+alone, and therefore he proceeded to form a syndicate to compel Dora to
+love him, or in the meantime to marry him.
+
+"Of course," said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar, when the matter was first
+under discussion, "she would soon learn to care for him. Women _always_
+do."
+
+Which shows how much Sister Cecilia knew about it.
+
+"And besides, I believe she cares for him already," added Mrs. Agar, who
+never did things by halves.
+
+Sister Cecilia dropped her head on one side and looked convinced--to
+order.
+
+"Of course," pursued Mrs. Agar vaguely, "I am very fond of Dora; no one
+could be more so. But I must confess that I do not always understand
+her."
+
+Even to Sister Cecilia it would not do to confess that she was afraid of
+her.
+
+The interview was easily brought about. Mrs. Agar wrote a note to the
+Rector and asked him to luncheon. The Rector, who had not had many legal
+affairs to settle during his uneventful life, was always pleased to be
+consulted upon a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing. Besides,
+they gave one a good luncheon at Stagholme in those days.
+
+"I have had a letter from dear Arthur," said Mrs. Agar, at a moment which
+she deemed propitious, namely, after a third glass of the Stagholme brown
+sherry.
+
+"Ah! I hope he is well. The boy is not strong."
+
+"Yes, he is quite well, thank you. But of course he has had a great
+shock, and one cannot expect him to get over it all at once."
+
+The Rector did not hold much by sentiment, so he contented himself with a
+grave sip of sherry.
+
+"And now I am afraid there is fresh trouble," added Mrs. Agar.
+
+"Been running into debt?" suggested Mr. Glynde.
+
+"No, it is not that. No, it is Dora."
+
+"Dora! What has Dora been doing?"
+
+Mrs. Agar was polishing the rim of a silver salt-cellar with her
+forefinger.
+
+"Of course," she said, "I have seen it going on for a long time. My poor
+boy has always--well, he has always admired Dora."'
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Yes, and of course I should like nothing better. I am sure they would be
+most happy."
+
+The Rector looked doubtful.
+
+"We must not forget," he said, "that Arthur is constitutionally
+delicate. That extreme repugnance to active exercise, the love of ease
+and--er--indoor pursuits, show a tendency to enfeeble the organisation
+which might--I don't say it will, but it might--turn to decline."
+
+"But the doctors say that he is quite strong. Everybody cannot be robust
+and--and massive."
+
+She was thinking of Jem, against whom she had always borne a grudge,
+because his inoffensive presence alone had the power of making Arthur
+look puny.
+
+"No; and of course with care one may hope that Arthur will live to a ripe
+old age," said the Rector, who was only coquetting with the question.
+
+Mrs. Agar played with a biscuit. She had a rooted aversion to the query
+direct.
+
+"I should have thought," she said, "that you or her mother would have
+seen that such an attachment was likely to form itself."
+
+The truth was that the Reverend Thomas did not devote very much thought
+to any subject which did not directly influence his own well-being. He
+had at one time thought that an attachment between Jem and Dora might
+conveniently result from a childhood's friendship, but Arthur had not
+entered into his prognostications at all. He rather despised the youth,
+as much on his own account as that he was Anna Agar's son.
+
+"Can't say," he replied, "that the thing ever entered my head. Of course,
+if the young people have settled it all between themselves, I suppose we
+must give them our blessing, and be thankful that we have been saved
+further trouble."
+
+He thought it rather strange that Dora should have fixed her affections
+on such an unlikely object as Arthur Agar; but it was part of his earthly
+creed that the feelings of women are as incomprehensible as they are
+unimportant. Which, by the way, serves to show how very little the Rector
+of Stagholme knew of the world.
+
+"But," protested Mrs. Agar, "they have _not_ settled it between
+themselves. That is just it."
+
+"Just what?"
+
+"Just the difficulty."
+
+Immediately Mr. Glynde's face fell to its usual degree of set depression.
+
+"What do they want me to do?" he inquired, with that air of resignation
+which is in reality no resignation at all.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Agar volubly, "it appears that Arthur spoke to Dora at
+Hurlingham, and for some reason she said No. I can't understand it at
+all. I am sure she has always appeared to like him very much. It may have
+been some passing fancy or something, you know. When she is told that it
+would please us all, perhaps she will change her mind. Poor Arthur is
+terribly cut up about it. Of course a man in his position does not quite
+expect to be treated cavalierly like that."
+
+Mr. Glynde smiled. Behind the parson there was somewhat even better;
+there was a just and honest English gentleman, which, in the way of human
+species, is very hard to beat.
+
+"I am afraid Arthur will have to manage such affairs for himself. When a
+girl is settling a question involving her whole life she does not usually
+pause to consider the position of the man who asks her to be his wife. He
+would have no business to ask her had he no position, and the rest is
+merely a matter of degrees."
+
+"Then you don't care about the match?" said Mrs. Agar, to whose mind the
+earliest rudiments of logic were incomprehensible.
+
+"I do not say that," replied the Rector, with the patience of a man who
+has had dealings with women all his life; "but I should like it to be
+understood that Dora is quite free to choose for herself. I am willing to
+tell her that the match would be satisfactory to me. Arthur is a
+gentleman, which is saying a good deal in these days. He is affectionate,
+and, so far as I know, a dutiful son. I have little doubt he would make a
+good husband."
+
+Mrs. Agar wiped away an obvious tear, which ran off Mr. Glynde's mental
+epidermis like water off the back of the proverbial fowl. This also he
+had learnt in the course of his dealings with the world.
+
+"He has been a good son to me," sniffed the fond and foolish mother.
+
+Neither of these persons was capable of understanding that "goodness" is
+not all we want in husband or wife. These good husbands--heaven help
+their wives!--break as many hearts as those who are labelled by the world
+with the black ticket.
+
+"Then I may tell Arthur that you will help him?" said Mrs. Agar, with a
+sudden access of practical energy.
+
+"You may tell him that he has my good wishes, and that I will point out
+to Dora the advantages of--acceding to his desire. There are, of course,
+advantages on both sides, we know that."
+
+As usual, Mrs. Agar overdid things. The airiness of her indifference
+might have deceived a child of eight, provided that its intellect was not
+_de premiere force._
+
+"Ye-es," she murmured, "I suppose Dora would bring her
+little--eh--subscription towards the household expenses. Sister Cecilia
+gave me to understand that there was a little something coming to her
+under her mother's marriage settlement."
+
+Mrs. Agar was not clever enough to see that she had made a mistake. The
+mention of Sister Cecilia's name acted on the Rector like a mental
+douche. He was just beginning to give way to expansiveness--probably
+under the suave influence of the brown sherry--and the name of Sister
+Cecilia pulled him together with a jerk. The jerk extended to his
+features; but Mrs. Agar was one of those cunning women whom no man need
+fear. She was so cunning that she deceived herself into seeing that which
+she wished to see, and nothing else.
+
+"All that," said the Rector gravely, "can be discussed when Arthur has
+persuaded Dora to say Yes."
+
+He was in the position of an unfortunate person who, having come into
+controversy with the police, is warned that every word he says may be
+used in evidence against him. He had been reminded that every detail of
+the present conversation would be repeated to Sister Cecilia, with
+embellishments or subtractions as might please the narrator's fancy or
+suit her purpose.
+
+"A dangerous woman" he called Sister Cecilia in his most gloomy voice,
+and a parson must perforce fear dangerous women. That is one of the
+trials of the ministry.
+
+Mrs. Agar laughed in a forced manner.
+
+"Of course," she said--she had a habit of beginning her remarks with
+these two words--"of course, we need not think of such questions yet. I
+am sure all _I_ want is the happiness of the dear children."
+
+"Umph!" ejaculated Mr. Glynde, who was not always a model of politeness.
+
+"That, I am sure," continued Mrs. Agar, with a dabbing
+pocket-handkerchief, "is the dearest wish of us all."
+
+"When does the boy come home?" inquired the Rector.
+
+"Oh, in a week. I am so longing for him to come. He has to go to town to
+get some clothes, which will delay his return by one night."
+
+"Is he doing any good this term?"
+
+Mrs. Agar looked slightly hurt.
+
+"Well, he always works very hard, I am only afraid that he should overdo
+it. You know, I suppose, that he did not get through his examination this
+term. Of course it is no good _my_ saying anything, but I am quite
+convinced that they are not dealing fairly by him. I have seen some of
+those examination papers, and some of the questions are simply spiteful.
+They do it on purpose, I know. And Sister Cecilia tells me that that
+_does_ happen sometimes. For some reason or other--because they have been
+snubbed, or something like that--the masters, the examiners, or whatever
+they are called, make a dead set at some men, and simply keep them back.
+They don't give them the marks that they ought to have. Why should Arthur
+always fail? Of course the thing is unfair."
+
+This theory was not quite new to the Rector. He had given up arguing
+about it, and usually took refuge in flight. He did so on this occasion.
+But as he walked home across the park, smoking a cigarette, he reflected
+that to the owner of Stagholme such a small matter as a college career
+was, after all, of no importance. These broad acres, the stately forests,
+the grand old house, raised Arthur Agar above such considerations, indeed
+above most considerations. And Mr. Glynde made up his mind to put it very
+strongly to Dora.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ALONE
+
+The name of the slough was Despond.
+
+
+When Dora returned to Stagholme a fortnight later she was relieved to
+find that Arthur had not yet come down from Cambridge.
+
+It is a strange thing that in the spring-time those who are happy--_pro
+tempore_, of course, we know all that--are happier, while those who carry
+something with them find the burden heavier. Stagholme in the spring came
+as a sort of shock to Dora. There were certain adjuncts to the growth of
+things which gave her actual pain. After dinner, the first night, she
+walked across the garden to the beechwood, but before long she came back
+again. There is a scent in beech forests in the spring which is like no
+other scent on earth, and Dora found that she could not stand it.
+
+Her father and mother were sitting in the drawing-room with open windows,
+for it was a warm May that year. She came in through the falling
+curtains, and something warned her to keep her face averted from the
+furtive glance of her mother's eyes. She had learnt something of the
+world during her brief season in town, and one of the lessons had been
+that the world sees more than is often credited to it.
+
+"The worst," she said cheerfully, "of a season in town is that it makes
+one feel aged and experienced. Middle age came upon me suddenly, just
+now, in the garden."
+
+Mr. Glynde was looking at her almost critically over his newspaper.
+
+"How old are you?" he asked curtly.
+
+"Twenty-five."
+
+In some indefinite way the question jarred horribly. Dora was conscious
+of a faint doubt in the infallibility of her father's judgment. She knew
+that in a worldly sense he was more experienced, more thoughtful,
+cleverer than her mother, but in some ways she inclined towards the
+maternal opinion on questions connected with herself.
+
+At this moment Mrs. Glynde was called from the room, and went
+reluctantly, feeling that the time was unpropitious.
+
+Mr. Glynde's life had been eminently uneventful. Prosperous, happy in a
+half-hearted, almost negative, way, somewhat selfish, he had never known
+hardship, had never faced adversity. It is such men as this who love what
+they call a serious talk, summoning the subject thereof with exaggerated
+gravity to a study, making a point of the _mise en scene_, and finally
+saying nothing that could not have been spoken in course of ordinary
+conversation.
+
+Dora detected the odour of a serious talk in the atmosphere, and she
+found that something had taken away the awe which such conversations had
+hitherto inspired. It may have been the season in town, but it was more
+probably that confidence which comes from the knowledge of the world.
+There were things in life of which she consciously knew more than her
+father, and one of these was sorrow. There is nothing that gives so much
+confidence as the knowledge that the worst possible has happened. It
+raises one above the petty worries of daily existence.
+
+Dora knew that her acquaintance with sorrow was more intimate, more
+thorough, than that of her father, who sat looking as if the hangman were
+at the door. She awaited the serious talk with some apprehension, but
+none of that almost paralysing awe which she had known in childhood.
+
+"I am getting an old man," he said, with supreme egotism, "and you cannot
+expect to have me with you much longer."
+
+"But I do expect it," replied Dora cheerfully. "I am sorry to disappoint
+you, papa, but I do expect it most decidedly."
+
+This rather spoilt the lugubrious gravity of the situation.
+
+"Well, thank Heaven! I am a hearty man yet," admitted the Rector rather
+more hopefully; "but still you cannot expect to have your parents with
+you all your life, you know."
+
+"I think it is wiser not to look too far into the future," replied Dora,
+warding off.
+
+"I should look much more happily into the future," replied the Rector,
+with the deliberation of the domestic autocrat, "if I knew that you had a
+good husband to take care of you."
+
+In a flash of thought Dora traced it all back to Arthur, through Mrs.
+Agar; and her would-be lover fell still further in her estimation. He
+seemed to be fated to show himself at every turn the very antitype to her
+ideal.
+
+"Ah," she laughed, "but suppose I got a bad one? You are always saying
+that marriage is a lottery, and I don't believe the remark is original.
+Suppose I drew a blank; fancy being married to a blank! Or I might do
+worse. I might draw minus something--minus brains, for instance. They
+are in the lottery, for I have seen them, nicely done up in faultless
+linen--both blanks and worse."
+
+She turned away towards the window, and the moment her face was averted
+it changed suddenly. The face that looked out towards the beech-wood,
+where the shadows were creeping from the darkening east, was piteous,
+terror-stricken, driven.
+
+It is an ever-living question why people--honest, well-meaning parents
+and others--should be set to ride rough-shod over all that is best and
+purest in the human mind.
+
+The Rector went on, in his calmly self-satisfied voice, with a fatuous
+ignorance of what he was doing which must have made the very angels
+wince.
+
+"A great many girls," he said, "have thrown away a chance of happiness
+merely to serve a passing fancy. Mind you don't do that."
+
+She gave a little laugh, quite natural and easy, but her face was grave,
+and more.
+
+"I do not think there is any fear of that," she replied lightly. "You
+must confess, papa, that I have always displayed a remarkable capacity
+for the management of my own affairs--with the assistance of Sister
+Cecilia, _bien entendu_."
+
+This was rather a forlorn hope, but Dora was driven into a corner. The
+Rector was in the habit of preaching a good methodical sermon, and
+usually finished up somewhere in the neighbourhood of the text from
+whence he started. He allowed himself to deviate, but he never turned his
+back upon his text and went for a vague ramble through scriptural
+meadows, as some have been heard to do. He deviated on this occasion for
+a moment, but never lost sight of the main question.
+
+"Sister Cecilia," he said, "is a busybody, and, like all busybodies, a
+fool. It is always people who cannot manage their own affairs who are so
+anxious to help their neighbours. I have no doubt that you are as capable
+of looking after yourself as any girl; but, child, you must remember that
+experience goes a long way in the world, and in the nature of things I
+must know better than you."
+
+"Of course you do, papa dear. I know that."
+
+But she did not know it, and he knew that she did not. This knowledge is
+certain to come, sooner or later, to men and women who have lived for
+themselves and in themselves alone. They are mental hermits, whose
+opinion of things connected with the lives of others cannot well be of
+value because they have only studied their own existences.
+
+The Rector of Stagholme suddenly became aware of this. He suddenly found
+that his advice was no longer law. There are plenty of us ready to
+confess that we cannot play billiards or whist or polo, but no man likes
+it to be known that he cannot play the game of life. Mr. Glynde did not
+like this subtle feeling of incompetency. He prided himself on being a
+man of the world, and frequently applied the vague term to himself. We
+are all men of a world, but it depends upon the size of that world as to
+what value our citizenship may be. Mr. Glynde's world had always been the
+Reverend Thomas Glynde. He knew nothing of Dora's world, and lost his way
+as soon as he set his foot therein. But rather than make inquiries he
+thought to support paternal dignity by going further.
+
+"It is," he said, with inevitable egotism, "unnecessary for me to tell
+you that I have only your interests at heart."
+
+"Quite, papa dear. But do not let us talk about these horrid things. I am
+quite happy at home, and I do not want to go away from it. There is
+nowhere in the world where I should sooner be than here, even taking into
+consideration the fact that you are sometimes the most dismal old
+gentleman on the face of the earth."
+
+"Well," he answered, with a grim smile, "I am sure I have enough to make
+me dismal. I am thankful to say that there will be no difficulty about
+money. You will be well enough off to have all that you might desire. But
+wealth is not all that a woman wants. She cannot turn it to the same
+account as a man. She wants position, a household, a husband. Otherwise
+the world only makes use of her; she is a prey to charity humbugs and bad
+people who do good works badly. I am not speaking as a parson, but as a
+man of the world."
+
+"Then," she said, "as a parson, tell me if it would not be wrong to marry
+a man for whom one did not care, just for the sake of these things--a
+household and a husband."
+
+"Of course it would," answered Mr. Glynde. "And that is a wrong which is
+usually punished in this life. But there are cases where it is difficult
+to say whether there be love or not. Unless you actually despise or hate
+a man, you may come to care for him."
+
+"And in the meantime the position and the advantages mentioned are worth
+seizing?"
+
+"So says the world," admitted Mr. Glynde.
+
+"And what says the parson?"
+
+She went to him and laid her two arms upon his broad chest, standing
+behind him as he sat in his arm-chair and looking down affectionately
+upon his averted face.
+
+"And what says the parson?" she repeated, with a loving tap of her
+fingers on his breast.
+
+"Nothing," was the reply. "A better parson than I says that what is
+natural is right."
+
+"Yes, and that means follow the dictates of your own heart?"
+
+"I suppose so," admitted the Hector, taking her two hands in his.
+
+"And the dictates of my heart are all for staying at home and looking
+after my ancient parents and worrying them. Am I to be sent away? Not
+yet, old gentleman, not yet."
+
+The Reverend Thomas Glynde laughed, somewhat as if a weight had been
+lifted from his heart. In his way he was a conscientious man. It was his
+honest conviction that Dora would do well to marry Arthur, who was a
+gentleman and essentially harmless. In persuading her to do so covertly,
+as he had thought well to do, he was honestly performing that which he
+thought to be his duty towards her. Presently Mrs. Glynde came back, and
+shortly afterwards Dora left the room. The Rector was not reading the
+book he held open on his knee, but gazed instead absently at the pattern
+of the hearthrug.
+
+A change had come in this quiet household. Dora had gone away a child.
+She had come back a woman, with that consciousness of life which comes
+somewhere between twenty and thirty years of age--a consciousness which
+is partly made up of the knowledge that life is, after all, given to each
+one of us individually to make the best of as well as we may; and no one
+knows what that best is except ourselves. What is happiness for one is
+misery for another, and while human beings vary as the clouds of heaven,
+no life can be lived by set rule.
+
+Over these things the Rector pondered. He felt the difference in Dora.
+She was still his daughter, but no longer a child. Her existence was
+still his chief care, but he could only stand by and help a little here
+and there; for the dependency of childhood was left behind, and her
+evident intention was to work out her own life in her own way. So do
+those who are dependent by nature upon the advice and sympathy of others
+learn to lean only upon their own strength.
+
+In the room overhead, standing by the window with weary eyes, Dora was
+murmuring: "I wonder--I wonder if I shall be able to hold out against
+them all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+ACROSS THE YEARS
+
+Across the years you seem to come.
+
+
+"That is just what I can't do. I cannot afford to wait."
+
+Arthur Agar drew in his neatly-shod little feet, and leant back in the
+deep chair which was always set aside as his in the Stagholme
+drawing-room.
+
+Mother and son were alone in the vast, somewhat gloomy apartment. Arthur
+had been home six hours, and the subject of their conversation was, of
+course, Dora.
+
+Sister Cecilia was absent, only in obedience to a very unmistakable hint
+in one of Arthur's recent letters to his mother.
+
+"Only a little while," pleaded Mrs. Agar. "Of course, dear, it will all
+come right. I feel convinced of that. Only you see, dear, girls do not
+like to be hurried in such an important step. I am quite sure she cares
+for you; only you _must_ give her a little time."
+
+"But I can't, I can't," he repeated anxiously. And his face wore that
+strangely accentuated look of trouble which almost amounted to
+dread--dread of something in life which had not come yet.
+
+"Why not?" inquired Mrs. Agar. "You are both young enough, I am sure."
+
+"Oh, yes, we are young enough."
+
+He stirred his tea with an effeminate appreciation of fine Coalport and a
+dainty Norwegian spoon.
+
+"Then why should you not wait?"
+
+Arthur was silent; he looked very small and frail, almost childlike, in
+his silk-faced evening coat. Spoilt boy was writ large all over his
+person. "Arthur," said Mrs. Agar, "you are keeping something from me."
+
+He shook his feeble head feebly.
+
+"You are, I know you are. What is it?"
+
+This was the only person in all the world who had stirred the heart of
+Anna Agar to something like a lasting affection. Once--years before--she
+had loved Seymour Michael with a sudden volcanic passion which had as
+suddenly turned to hatred. But under no circumstances could such a love
+have endured. Consistency, constancy, singleness of purpose were quite
+lacking in this woman's composition. It is rare, but when a woman does
+fail in this respect, her failure is more complete, more miserable than
+the failure of men, inconstant as they are.
+
+Her affection for Arthur, coupled with that suspicion which always goes
+with a cheap cunning, had put her on the right scent.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "I insist on knowing."
+
+Still he held his peace, with the obstinate silence of the weak.
+
+"Well, then," she cried, "don't ask me to help you to win Dora, that is
+all!"
+
+There was a pause; in the silence of the great house the wind moaned
+softly. It always moaned in the drawing-room, whether in calm or storm,
+from some undiscovered draught in the high ventilated ceiling.
+
+"I sometimes think," said Arthur at length, in an awestruck voice, "that
+Jem may not be dead."
+
+"Not dead! Arthur, how can you be so stupid?"
+
+She was not at all awestruck. Her denser, more sordid nature was proof
+against the silence or the humming wind. The greed of gain has power to
+kill superstition.
+
+His face puzzled her. Suddenly he cast himself back and hid his face in
+his hands.
+
+"Oh!" he muttered, "I can't do it, I can't do it!"
+
+In an instant his mother was standing over him.
+
+"Arthur," she hissed, "you _know_ something?"
+
+"Yes," he confessed in a whisper at length.
+
+"Jem is not dead?" she hissed again. Her voice was hoarse.
+
+"He was not killed in the disaster," admitted Arthur. In his heart he was
+still clinging to the other hope subtly held out by Seymour Michael--the
+hope that in his simple intrepidity Jem had gone to his death.
+
+"Then where is he--where is he, Arthur? Tell me quickly!"
+
+Mrs. Agar was white and breathless. It was as if she had bartered her
+soul, and after payment, had been tricked out of her share of the
+bargain. She trembled with a fear which seemed to fill her world and
+extend to the other world to come.
+
+"He escaped from that action," said Arthur, who, now that the truth was
+out, grew voluble like a child making a confession, "by being sent on in
+front with a few men. They escaped notice, while the larger body was
+attacked and massacred."
+
+"Who told you this?"
+
+"I do not know. I cannot tell you his name."
+
+"Arthur!" exclaimed Mrs. Agar nervously, "are you going mad? Do you know
+what you are saying?"
+
+In reply he gave a little laugh like a sob.
+
+"Oh yes," he replied, "it is all right. I know what I am saying, though
+sometimes I scarcely believe it myself. If it was a hundred years ago one
+might believe it easily enough, but now it seems unreal."
+
+"Then where is Jem? Was he taken prisoner? Those men are savages, aren't
+they? They kill--people when they take them prisoners."
+
+"No, he was not taken prisoner," said Arthur. Sometimes he lost patience
+in a snappy, feminine way with his mother.
+
+"Oh! tell me, tell me, Arthur dear! You are killing me!"
+
+"I will, if you will let me. It appears that Jem had made himself a name
+out there for knowing the country and the people, which is useful to the
+Government, because Russia and England both want the country, or
+something like that; I don't quite understand it."
+
+"Oh, never mind! Go on!" interrupted Mrs. Agar, with characteristic
+impatience.
+
+"And at any rate the men on the other side--the Russians or some one, I
+don't know who--were in the habit of watching Jem so as to prevent his
+going up into this unexplored country. Well, when the report of his death
+was put in the newspapers it was left uncontradicted, so that these men
+should think he was dead, and not be on the look-out for him. Do you
+understand?"
+
+Mrs. Agar had raised her head, with listening, attentive eyes. It seemed
+as if a voice had come to her across the years from the distant past. A
+voice telling an old story, which had never been forgotten, but merely
+laid aside in the memory among those things that never are forgotten.
+
+Finding Arthur's troubled gaze upon her, she seemed to recollect herself
+with a little gesture of her hand to her breast as if breathing were
+difficult.
+
+"That does not sound like a thing Jem would do," she said, with one of
+those flashes of shrewd observation which sometimes come to inconsequent
+people, and make it difficult for those around them to be sure how much
+they see and how much passes unobserved.
+
+"It was not Jem, it was this other man."
+
+"Which other man?" Mrs. Agar gave a little gasp, as if she had found
+something she feared to find.
+
+"The man who told me--he was Jem's superior officer."
+
+"When did he tell you--where?"
+
+"He came to see me at Cambridge, and brought those things of Jem's,"
+replied Arthur. So far from feeling guilty at thus revealing all that he
+had promised to keep secret, he was now beginning to experience some
+pangs of conscience at the recollection of a concealment which, by a
+supreme effort, had been made to extend to four months.
+
+There was a sly gleam in Mrs. Agar's eyes. A close observer knowing her
+well could have seen the cunning written on her face, for it was cheap
+and obvious.
+
+"Oh!" she said indifferently, "and what sort of man was he?"
+
+Arthur pondered with a deliberation that almost maddened her.
+
+"Oh!" he replied at length, "a small man, dark, with a sunburnt face; a
+Jew, I should think. He was rather well dressed--in the military style,
+of course."
+
+"Yes," muttered Mrs. Agar. "Yes."
+
+There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Agar reflected, as deeply,
+perhaps, as she had ever reflected in her life.
+
+Then she discovered something for herself which had of necessity been
+pointed out to her son--a subtle divergence of character.
+
+"But," she said, "of course Jem may never come back from this expedition.
+It _must_ be very dangerous."
+
+"It is very dangerous."
+
+Mrs. Agar's sigh of relief was quite audible. It is thus that nature
+sometimes betrays human nature.
+
+"Did _he_ say that? Did _he_ think that of it?"
+
+Seymour Michael's opinion still had value in her eyes.
+
+"Yes," the reply came slowly; "he said that we might almost look upon Jem
+as a dead man."
+
+Mother and son looked at each other and said nothing. Heredity is a
+strange thing, and one alternately aggrandised and slighted. Blood is a
+very powerful force, but the little lessons taught in childhood's years
+bear a wondrous crop of good or evil fruit in later days.
+
+Left alone, Arthur Agar's natural tendency was towards good. Probably
+because he was timid, and goodness seems the safer course. There are many
+who have not the courage to forsake goodness, even for a moment. But
+under the influence of a stronger will--that is to say, under the
+influence of four out of every five persons crossing his path--Arthur was
+liable to be led in any direction. He would rather have sinned in company
+than have cultivated virtue in the solitude usually accorded to that
+state.
+
+Somehow, in his mother's presence it did not seem so very wrong to keep
+back the truth respecting Jem and to turn it to his own ends. It did not
+seem either mean or cowardly to take advantage of a rival's absence and
+gain his object, by deception. So, perhaps, it was in the beginning, when
+the world was young. In those days also a mother and son helped each
+other in deception, and so since then have many thousands of mothers
+(incompetent or vicious) led their children to ruin.
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Agar, "if Jem goes and does things of that
+description he must take the consequences."
+
+Arthur said nothing in reply to this. The thought had been his for some
+months, but he had never put it into shape.
+
+"We are perfectly justified," she went on, "in acting as if Jem were dead
+until he deigns to advise us to the contrary."
+
+This also was putting a long-cherished thought into form.
+
+Arthur knew that he ought to have told his mother then and there that Jem
+had taken every step in his power to advise him as soon as possible of
+the falseness of the news transmitted to the newspapers. But something
+held him silent, some taint of hereditary untruthfulness.
+
+"I do not see," she said, "that this news can, therefore, make much
+difference. There is no reason to alter any of our plans. To begin with,
+I am certain that he is dead. We must have heard by this time if he had
+been living."
+
+Arthur gave a little nod of acquiescence.
+
+"And also," pursued Mrs. Agar, with characteristic inconsistency, "he
+evidently does not care about us or our feelings."
+
+Arthur knew what she meant, and he descended as low in the moral scale as
+ever he went during his life.
+
+"But," he said, "there is, all the same, no time to lose."
+
+He passed his hand over his sleek, lifeless hair with a weary look.
+
+"Well, dear," said his mother soothingly, "I will see Ellen Glynde
+to-morrow, and try to make her say something to Dora. A girl's mother has
+always more influence than her father."
+
+This idiotic axiom seemed to satisfy Arthur, probably because he knew no
+better, and he rose to take his bedroom candlestick.
+
+Mrs. Agar was a person utterly incapable of harbouring two thoughts at
+the same moment. She never even got so far as to place two sides of a
+question upon an equal footing in her mind. All her questions had but one
+side. She was not thinking of Arthur when she went to her room. She was
+not thinking of him when she lay staring at the daylight, which had crept
+up into the sky before she closed her eyes.
+
+She tossed and turned and moaned aloud with a childish impatience. Her
+mind could find no rest; it could not throw off the deadly knowledge that
+Seymour Michael had come back into her life. And somehow she was no
+longer Anna Agar, but Anna Hethbridge. She was no longer the fond mother
+whose whole world was filled by thoughts of her son--a miserable,
+thoughtless, haphazard world it was--but again she was the wronged woman,
+moved by the one great passion that had stirred her sordid soul, a
+fearsome hatred for Seymour Michael.
+
+She was not an analytical woman; she had never thought about her own
+thoughts; she was as superficial as human nature can well be. That is to
+say, she was little more than an animal with the gift of speech, added to
+one or two small items of knowledge which divide men from beasts. But she
+_knew_ that this was not the end. She never doubted for a moment that it
+was merely a beginning, that Seymour Michael was coming back into her
+life.
+
+Like a child she tossed and tumbled in her bed, muttering
+half-consciously, "Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW
+
+His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.
+
+
+For two days Mrs. Glynde had been going about the world with a bright red
+patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely,
+the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning
+service her fervour was something astonishing--the quaver in her voice
+was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to
+silent prayer after the blessing was so abnormally long that Stark, the
+sexton, had to rattle the keys twice, with all due respect and for the
+sake of his Sunday dinner, before she rose from her knees; whereas once
+usually sufficed.
+
+It was the devout practice that all the Rectory servants should go to
+evening service, while Mrs. Glynde, or Dora, or both, remained at home to
+take care of the house. On this particular evening Mrs. Glynde proposed
+that Dora should stay with her, and what her mother proposed Dora usually
+acceded to.
+
+"Dear," said the elder lady, with a nervous little jerk of the head which
+was habitual or physical, "I have heard about Arthur."
+
+They were sitting in the drawing-room, with windows open to the ground,
+and the fading light was insufficient to read by, although both had
+books.
+
+"Yes, mother," answered the girl in rather a tired voice, quite
+forgetting to be cheerful. "I should like to know exactly what you
+heard."
+
+"Well, Anna told me," and there was a whole world of distrust in the
+little phrase, "that Arthur had asked you to be his wife, and that you
+had refused without giving a reason."
+
+"I gave him a reason," replied Dora; "the best one. I said that I did not
+love him."
+
+There was a little pause. The two women looked out on to the quiet lawn.
+They seemed singularly anxious to avoid looking at each other.
+
+"But that might come, dear; I think it would come."
+
+"I know it would not," replied Dora quietly. There was a dreaminess in
+her voice, as if she were repeating something she had heard or said
+before.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Glynde rose from her chair, and going towards her daughter,
+she knelt on the soft carpet, still afraid to look at her face. There was
+something suggestive and strange in the attitude, for the elder woman was
+crouching at the feet of the younger.
+
+"My darling," she whispered, "I know, I _know!_ I have known all along.
+But mind, no one else knows, no one suspects! _It_ can never come to you
+again in this life. Women are like that, it never comes to them twice. To
+some it never comes at all; think of that, dear, it never comes to them
+at all! Surely that is worse?"
+
+Dora took the nervous, eager hands in her own quiet grasp and held them
+still. But she said nothing.
+
+"I have prayed night and morning," the elder woman went on in the same
+pleading whisper, "that strength might be given you, and I think my
+prayers were heard. For you have been strong, and no one has known except
+me, and I do not matter. The strength must have come from somewhere. I
+like to think that I had something to do with it, however little."
+
+Again there was a silence. Across the quiet garden, from the church that
+was hidden among the trees, the sound of the evening hymn came rising and
+falling, the harshness of the rustic voices toned down by the whispering
+of the leaves.
+
+"I know," Mrs. Glynde went on, speaking perhaps out of her own
+experience, "that now it must seem that there is nothing left. I know
+that It can never come to you, but something else may--a sort of
+alleviation; something that is a little stronger than resignation, and
+many people think that it is love. It is not love; never believe that!
+But it is surely sent because so many women have--to go through
+life--without that--which makes life worth living."
+
+"Hush, dear!" said Dora; and Mrs. Glynde paused as if to collect herself.
+Perhaps her daughter stopped her just in time.
+
+"There is," she went on in a calmer voice, "a sort of satisfaction in the
+duties that come and have to be performed. The duties towards one's
+husband and the others--the others, darling--are the best. They are not
+the same, not the same as if--as they might have been, but sometimes it
+is a great alleviation. And the time passes somehow."
+
+It is not the clever people who make all the epigrams; but sometimes
+those who merely live and feel, and are perhaps objects of ridicule. Mrs.
+Glynde was one of these. She had unwittingly made an epigram. She had
+summed up life in five words--the time passes somehow."
+
+"And, dear," she went on, "it is not wise, perhaps it is not quite right,
+to turn one's back upon an alleviation which is offered. Arthur would be
+very kind to you. He is really fond of you, and perhaps the very fact of
+his not being clever or brilliant or anything like that might be a
+blessing in the future, for he would not expect so much."
+
+"He would have to expect nothing," said Dora, speaking for the first
+time, "because I could give him nothing."
+
+She spoke in rather an indifferent voice, and in the gloom her mother
+could not see her face. It was a singular thing that neither of them
+seemed to take Arthur Agar's feelings into account in the very smallest
+degree; and this must be accounted to them for wisdom.
+
+Dora was, as her mother had said, very strong. She never gave way. Her
+delicate lips never quivered, but she took care to keep them close
+pressed. Only in her eyes was the pain to be seen, and perhaps that was
+why her mother did not dare to look.
+
+"There is no hurry," she pleaded. "You need not decide now."
+
+"But," answered Dora, "I have decided now, and he knows my decision."
+
+"Perhaps after some time--some years?" suggested Mrs. Glynde.
+
+"A great many years," put in Dora.
+
+"If he asks you again--oh! I know it would be better, dear; better for
+you in every way. I do not say that you would be quite happy. But it
+would be a sort of happiness; there would be less unhappiness, because
+you would have less time to think. I do not say anything about the
+position and the wealth and such considerations, for they are not of much
+importance to a good woman."
+
+"After a great many years," said Dora, in that calm and judicial voice
+which fell like ice on her mother's heart, "I will see--if he chooses to
+wait."
+
+"Yes, but--" began Mrs. Glynde, but she did not go on. That which she was
+about to say would scarcely have been appropriate. But so far as the
+facts were concerned she might just as well have said it. For Dora knew
+as well as she did that Arthur Agar would not wait. Women are not blind
+to manifest facts. They know us, my brothers, better than we think. And
+they are not quite so romantic as we take them to be. Their love is a
+better thing than ours, because it is more practical and more defined.
+They do not seek an ideal of their own imagination; but when something
+approaching to it crosses their path in the flesh they know what they
+want, and they do not change.
+
+Before the silence was again broken the murmur of voices told them that
+the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female
+form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia,
+walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the
+outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the
+remainder of womanhood. Good women--those mistaken females who move in an
+atmosphere of ostentatious good works--usually walk like this. Like this
+they enter the humble cot with a little soup and a lot of advice. Like
+this they smilingly step, where angels would fear to tread, upon feelings
+which they are incapable of understanding.
+
+Mrs. Glynde got quietly up and left the room. As the door closed behind
+her Sister Cecilia's gently persuasive voice was heard.
+
+"Dora! Dora dear!"
+
+"Yes," replied the girl without any enthusiasm, rising and going to the
+window.
+
+"Will you walk with me a little way across the fields? It is such a
+lovely evening."
+
+"Yes, if you like."
+
+And Dora passed out of the open window.
+
+"I am sorry," said Sister Cecilia after a few paces, "that you were not
+in church. We had such a bright service."
+
+Dora, like some more of us, wondered vaguely where the adjective applied,
+especially on a gloomy evening without candles, but she said nothing.
+
+"I stayed at home with mother," she explained practically. "The servants
+were all out." Sister Cecilia was not listening. She was gazing up at the
+sky, where a few stars were beginning to show themselves.
+
+"One feels," she murmured with a sigh, "on such an evening as this, that,
+after all, nothing matters much."
+
+"About the servants do you mean? They are going on better now."
+
+"No, dear, about life. I mean that at times one feels that this cannot be
+the end of it all."
+
+"Well, we ought to feel that, I suppose, being Christians."
+
+"And some day we shall see the meaning of all our troubles," pursued
+Sister Cecilia. "It is so hard for us older ones, who have passed through
+it, to stand by helpless, only guessing at the pain and anguish of it
+all, whereas, perhaps, we could help if we only knew. A little more
+candour, a little more confidence might so easily lead to mutual help and
+consolation."
+
+"Possibly," admitted Dora, without any encouragement.
+
+"I am so sorry for poor Arthur!" whispered Sister Cecilia, apparently to
+the evening shades.
+
+Dora was silent. She knew how to treat Sister Cecilia. Jem had taught her
+that.
+
+"It has been such a terrible blow. His letters to his mother are quite
+heartbroken."
+
+Dora reserved her opinion of grown-up men who write heartbroken letters
+to their mothers.
+
+"I know all about it," Sister Cecilia went on, quite regardless of the
+truth, as some good people are. "Dora, dear, I know all about it."
+
+Silence, a silence which reminded Sister Cecilia of a sense of
+discomfiture which had more than once been hers in conversation with Jem.
+
+"Have you nothing to tell me, dear?" she inquired. "Nothing to say to
+me?"
+
+"Nothing," replied Dora pleasantly. "Especially as you know all about
+it."
+
+"Will you never change your mind?" persuasively.
+
+"No, I am not the sort of person to change my mind."
+
+There was a little pause, and again Sister Cecilia whispered to the
+evening shades.
+
+"I cannot help hoping that some day it may be different. It is not as if
+there were any one else--?"
+
+Silence again.
+
+"I dare say," added Sister Cecilia, after waiting in vain for an answer
+to her implied question, "that I am wrong, but I cannot help being in
+favour of a little more candour, a little mutual confidence."
+
+"I cannot help feeling," replied Dora quietly, "that we are all best
+employed when we mind our own business."
+
+"Yes, dear, I know. But it is very hard to stand idly by and see young
+people make mistakes which can only bring them sorrow. I want to tell you
+to think very deeply before you elect to lead the life of a single woman.
+It is a life full of temptation to idleness and self-indulgence. There
+are many single women who, I am really afraid, are quite useless in the
+world. They only gossip and pry into their neighbours' affairs and make
+mischief. It is because they have nothing to do. I have known several
+women like that, and I cannot help thinking that they would have been
+happier if they had married. Perhaps they did not have the chance. One
+does not understand these things."
+
+Sister Cecilia cast her eyes upwards toward the tree-tops to see if
+perchance the explanation was written there.
+
+"Of course," she went on complacently, drawing down her bonnet-strings,
+"there are many useful lives of single women. Lives which the world would
+sadly miss should it please God to take them. Women who live, not for
+themselves, but for others; who go about the world helping their
+neighbours with advice and the fruits of their own experience; ever the
+first to go to the afflicted and to those who are in trouble. They do not
+receive their reward here, they are not always thanked. The ignorant are
+sometimes even rude. They have only the knowledge that they are doing
+good."
+
+"That _must_ be a satisfaction," murmured Dora fervently.
+
+"It is, dear; it is. But--you will excuse me, Dora dear, if I say
+this?--I do not think you are that sort of woman."
+
+"No," answered Dora, "I don't think I am."
+
+"And that is why I have said this to you. Now, don't answer me, dear.
+Just think about it quietly. I think I have done my duty in telling you
+what, was on my mind. It is always best, although it is sometimes
+difficult, or even painful; but then, it is one's duty. Kiss me, dear!
+Good-night!--_good_-night!"
+
+And so Sister Cecilia left Dora--mincing away into the gloom of the
+overhanging trees. And so she leaves these pages. Verily the good have
+their reward here below in a coat of self-complacency which is as
+impervious to the buffets of life as to the sarcasm of the worldly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A STAB IN THE DARK
+
+Slander, meanest spawn of Hell;
+And women's slander is the worst.
+
+
+Mrs. Agar was a person incapable of awaiting that vague result called the
+development of things.
+
+Arthur had never been forced to wait for anything in his life. No longer
+at least than tradespeople required, and in many cases not so long, for
+Mrs. Agar had an annoying way of refusing to listen to reason. She never
+allowed that laws applying to ordinary people, served more or less
+faithfully by tailor or dressmaker, applied to herself or to Arthur. And
+tradespeople, one finds are not always of the same mind as the Medes and
+Persians--they square matters quietly in the bill. They had to do it very
+quietly indeed with Mrs. Agar, who endeavoured strenuously to get the
+best value for her money all through life; a remnant of Jaggery House,
+Clapham Common, which the placid wealth of Stagholme never obliterated.
+
+After the luncheon, specially prepared and laid before the Rector, this
+second Rebecca awaited the result impatiently. But nothing came of it.
+Although Mrs. Agar now looked upon Dora as the latest whim of the
+not-to-be-denied Arthur, she could hardly consider Mr. Glynde in the
+light of a tradesman retailing the said commodity, and, therefore, to be
+bullied and harassed into making haste. She reflected with misgiving that
+Mr. Glynde was an exponent of the tiresome art of talking over and
+thinking out matters which required neither words nor thought, and saw no
+prospect of an immediate furtherance of her design.
+
+With a mistaken and much practised desire of striking when the iron was
+hot, Mrs. Agar, like many a wiser person, began, therefore, to bang about
+in all directions, hitting not only the iron but the anvil, her own
+knuckles and the susceptibilities of any one standing in the
+neighbourhood. She could not leave things to Mr. Glynde, but must needs
+see Dora herself. She had in her mind the nucleus of a simple if
+scurrilous scheme which will show itself hereafter. Her opportunity
+presented itself a few days later.
+
+A neighbouring family counting itself county, presumably on the strength
+of never being able to absent themselves from the favoured neighbourhood
+on account of monetary incapacity, gave its annual garden-party at this
+time. To this entertainment the whole countryside was in the habit of
+repairing--not with an idea of enjoying itself, but because everybody did
+it. To be bidden to this garden-party was in itself a _cachet_ of
+respectability. This indeed was the only satisfaction to be gathered from
+the festivity. If the honour was great, the hospitality was small. If the
+condescension was vast, the fare provided was verging on the stingy. Here
+were served by half-starved domestic servants, in the smallest of
+tumblers, "cups" wherein were mixed liquors, such as cider, usually
+consumed by self-respecting persons in the undiluted condition and in
+mugs. Upon cucumber-cup, taken in county society, as on a dinner of
+herbs, one hardly expects the guest to grow convivial. Therefore at this
+garden-party those bidden to the feast were in the habit of wandering
+sadly through the shrubbery seeking whom they might avoid, and in the
+course of such a perambulation, with a young man conversant of himself,
+Dora met Mrs. Agar. Even the mistress of Stagholme was preferable to the
+young man from London, and besides--there were associations. So Dora drew
+Mrs. Agar into her promenade, and presently the young man got his
+_conge_.
+
+At first they talked of local topics, and Mrs. Agar, who had a fine sense
+of hospitality, said her say about the cider-cup. Then she gave an
+awkward little laugh, and with an assumption of lightness which did not
+succeed she said:
+
+"I hope, dear, you do not intend to keep my poor boy in suspense much
+longer?"
+
+"Do you mean Arthur?" asked Dora.
+
+"Yes, dear. I really don't see why there should be this absurd reserve
+between us."
+
+"I am quite willing," replied the girl, "to hear what you have to say
+about it."
+
+"Yes, but not to talk of it."
+
+"Well, I suppose Arthur has told you all there is to tell. If there is
+anything more that you want to know I shall be very glad to tell you."
+
+"Well, of course, I don't understand it at all," burst out Mrs. Agar
+eagerly. This was quite true; neither she nor Arthur could understand how
+any one could refuse such a glorious offer as he had made.
+
+"Perhaps I can explain. Arthur asked me to marry him. I quite appreciated
+the honour, but I declined it."
+
+"Yes, but why? Surely you didn't mean it?"
+
+"I did mean it."
+
+"Well," explained Mrs. Agar, with a little toss of the head, "I am sure I
+cannot see what more you want. There are many girls who would be glad to
+be mistress of Stagholme."
+
+And it must be remembered that she said this knowing quite well that Jem
+was probably alive. There are some crimes which women commit daily in the
+family circle which deserve a greater punishment than that meted out to a
+legal criminal.
+
+"That is precisely what I ventured to point out to Arthur," said Dora,
+unconsciously borrowing her father's ironical neatness of enunciation.
+
+"But why shouldn't you take the opportunity? There are not many estates
+like it in England. Your position would be as good as that of a titled
+lady, and I am sure you could not want a better husband."
+
+"I like Arthur as a friend, but I could never marry him, so it is useless
+to discuss the question."
+
+"But why?" persisted Mrs. Agar.
+
+"Because I do not care for him in the right way."
+
+"But that would come," said Mrs. Agar. It was only natural that she
+should use an argument which is accountable for more misery on earth than
+mothers dream of.
+
+"No, it would never come."
+
+Mrs. Agar gave a cunning little laugh, and paused so as to lend
+additional weight to her next remark.
+
+"That is a dangerous thing for a girl to say."
+
+"Is it?" inquired Dora indifferently.
+
+"Yes, because they can never be sure, unless--"
+
+"Unless what? I am quite sure."
+
+"Unless there is some one else," said Mrs. Agar, with an exaggerated
+significance suggestive of the servants' hall.
+
+Dora did not answer at once. They walked on for a few moments in silence,
+passing other guests walking in couples. Then Dora replied with a
+succinctness acquired from her father:
+
+"Generalities about women," she said, "are always a mistake. Indeed, all
+generalities are dangerous. But if you and Arthur care to apply this to
+me, you are at liberty to do so. Whatever generalities you apply and
+whatever you say will make no difference to the main question. Moreover,
+you will, perhaps, be acting a kinder part if you give Arthur to
+understand once for all that my decision is final."
+
+"As you like, dear, as you like," muttered Mrs. Agar, apparently
+abandoning the argument, whereas in reality she had not yet begun it.
+
+"How do you do, dear Mrs. Martin?" she went on in the same breath, bowing
+and smiling to a lady who passed them at that moment.
+
+"Of course," she said, returning in a final way to the question after a
+few moments' silence, "of course I do not believe all I hear; in fact, I
+contradict a good deal. But I have been told that gossips talked about
+you a good deal last year, at the time of Jem's death. I think it only
+fair that you should know."
+
+"Thank you," said Dora curtly.
+
+"Of course, dear, _I_ didn't believe anything about it."
+
+"Thank you," said Dora again.
+
+"I should have been sorry to do so."
+
+Then Dora turned upon her suddenly.
+
+"What do you mean, Aunt Anna?" she asked with determination.
+
+"Oh, nothing, dear, nothing. Don't get flurried about it."
+
+"I am not at all flurried," replied Dora quietly. "You said that you
+would be sorry to have to believe what gossips said of me last year at
+the time of Jem's death--"
+
+"Dora," interrupted Mrs. Agar, "I never said anything against you in any
+way; how can you say such a thing?"
+
+"And," continued Dora, with an unpleasant calmness of manner, "I must ask
+you to explain. What did the gossips say, and why should you be sorry to
+have to believe it?"
+
+Mrs. Agar's reluctance was not quite genuine nor was it well enough
+simulated to deceive Dora.
+
+"Well, dear," she said, "if you insist, they said that there had been
+something between you and Jem--long, long ago, of course, before he went
+out to India."
+
+Dora shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"They are welcome to say what they like."
+
+Mrs. Agar was silent, awaiting a second question.
+
+"And why should you be sorry to believe that?" inquired the girl.
+
+"I--I hardly like to tell you," said Mrs. Agar, in a low voice.
+
+Dora waited in silence, without appearing to heed Mrs. Agar's reluctance.
+
+"I am afraid, dear," went on the elder lady, when she saw that there was
+no chance of assistance, "that we have been all sadly mistaken in Jem. He
+was not--all that we thought him."
+
+"In what way?" asked Dora. She had turned quite white, and her lips were
+suddenly dry and parched. She held her parasol a little lower, so that
+Mrs. Agar could not see her face. She was sure enough of her voice. She
+had had practice in that.
+
+"In what way was Jem not all that we thought him?" she repeated evenly,
+like a lesson learnt by heart.
+
+Mrs. Agar stammered. She tried to blush, but she could not manage that.
+
+"I cannot very well give you details. Perhaps, when you are older. You
+know, dear, in India people are not very particular. They have peculiar
+ideas, I mean, of morals--different from ours. And perhaps he saw no harm
+in it."
+
+"In what?" inquired Dora gravely.
+
+"Well, in the life they lead out there. It appears that there was some
+unfortunate attachment. I think she was married or something like that."
+
+"Who told you this?" asked Dora, in a voice like a threat.
+
+"A man told Arthur at Cambridge--one of poor Jem's fellow-officers. The
+man who brought home the diary and things."
+
+Having once begun Mrs. Agar found herself obliged to go on. She had not
+time to pause and reflect that she was now staking everything upon the
+possibility of Jem's death subsequent to the disaster in which he was
+supposed to have perished.
+
+Dora did not believe one word of this story, although she was quite
+without proof to the contrary. Jem's letters had not been frequent, nor
+had they been remarkable for minuteness of detail respecting his own
+life. Mrs. Agar had done her best to put a stop to this correspondence
+altogether, and had succeeded in bringing about a subtle reserve on both
+sides. She had persistently told Jem that Dora was evidently attached to
+Arthur, and that their marriage was only the question of a few years. Of
+this Jem had never found any confirmatory hint in Dora's letters, and
+from some mistaken sense of chivalry refrained from writing to ask her
+point-blank if it were true.
+
+"And why," said Dora, "do you tell me this? In case what the gossips said
+might be true?"
+
+"Ye-es, dear, perhaps it was that."
+
+"So as to save me from cherishing any mistaken memory?"
+
+"Yes, it may have been that."
+
+And Mrs. Agar was surprised to see Dora turn her back upon her as if she
+had been something loathsome to look upon, and walk away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH
+
+When the heart speaks, Glory itself is an illusion.
+
+
+The _Mahanaddy_ had just turned her blunt prow out westward from the
+harbour of Port Said, sniffing her native north wind, with a gentle
+rising movement to that old Mediterranean eastward-tending swell. The
+lights of the most iniquitous town on earth were fading away in the mist
+of the desert on the left hand, and on the right the gloom of the sea
+merged into a grey sky.
+
+The dinner-hour had passed, and the passengers were lolling about on the
+long quarter-deck, talking lazily after the manner of men and women who
+have little to say and much time wherein to say it.
+
+It was quite easy to perceive that they had left a voyage of many days
+behind them, for the funny man had exhausted himself and the politicians
+were asleep. The lifeless, homeward-bound flirtations had waned long ago,
+and no one looked twice at any one else. They all knew each other's
+dresses and vices and little aggravating habits, and only three or four
+of them were aware that human nature runs deeper than such superficial
+details.
+
+Away forward, behind the sheep-pens, an Italian gentleman in the ice
+industry was scraping on a yellow fiddle which looked sticky. But like
+many things of plain exterior this unprepossessing instrument had
+something in it, something that the Italian gentleman knew how to
+extract, and all the ship was hushed into listening. Such as had
+conversation left spoke in low tones, and even the stewards in the pantry
+ceased for a time to test the strength of the dinner-plates.
+
+On a small clear space of deck between the door of the doctor's cabin and
+the saloon gangway two men were walking slowly backwards and forwards.
+They were both tall men, both large, and consequently both inclined to
+taciturnity. They had said, perhaps, as little as any two persons on
+board, which may have accounted for the fact that they were talking now,
+and still seemed to have plenty to say.
+
+One was dark and clean-shaven, with something of the sea in his mien and
+gait. His nose and chin were singularly clean cut, and suggestive of an
+ancestral type. This was the ship's doctor, a man who probed men's hearts
+as well as their bodies, and wrote of what he found there. His companion
+was an antitype--a representative of the fair race found in England by
+the ancestors of the other when they came and conquered. He wore a beard,
+and his face was burnt to the colour of mahogany, which had a strange
+effect in contrast to the bluest of Saxon eyes.
+
+The Doctor was talking.
+
+"Then," he was saying, "who the devil are you?"
+
+The other smiled, a gentle, triumphant smile. The smile of a man who,
+humbly recognising himself at a just estimation, is conscious of having
+outwitted another, cleverer than himself.
+
+"You finish your pipe," he said, and he walked away with long firm
+strides towards the saloon stairs. The Doctor went to the rail, where,
+resting his arms on the solid teak, he leant, gazing thoughtfully out
+over the sea, which was part of his life. For he knew the great waters,
+and loved them with all the quiet strength of a slow-tongued man.
+
+Before very long some one came behind and touched him on the shoulder. He
+turned, and in the fading light looked into the smiling face of his late
+companion--the same and yet quite different, for the beard was gone, and
+there only remained the long fair moustache.
+
+"Yes," said Dr. Mark Ruthine, "Jem Agar. I was a fool not to know you at
+first."
+
+A sort of shyness flickered for a moment in the blue eyes.
+
+"I have been practising so hard during the last ten months to look like
+some one else that I hardly feel like myself," he said.
+
+"Um-m! There was something uncanny about you when you first came on
+board. I used to watch you at meals, and wonder what it was. By God,
+Agar, I _am_ glad!"
+
+"Thanks," replied Jem Agar. He was looking round him rather nervously.
+"You don't think there is anybody on board who will know me, do you?"
+
+"No one, barring the Captain."
+
+"Oh," said Agar calmly, "he is all right. He can keep his mouth shut."
+
+"There is no doubt about that," replied the Doctor.
+
+A little pause followed, during which they both listened involuntarily to
+the ice-cream merchant's musical voice, which was now floating over the
+silent decks, raised in song.
+
+"I should like to hear all about it some day," said the ship's surgeon at
+last. He knew his man, and no detail of the strange lives that passed the
+horizon of his daily existence was ever forgotten. Only he usually found
+that those who had the most to tell required a little assistance in their
+narration.
+
+"It is rather a rum business," answered Jem Agar, not displeased.
+
+At this moment the ship's bell rang four clear notes into the night.
+
+"Ten o'clock," said the Doctor. "Come into my cabin and have a smoke; the
+Captain will be in soon. He would like to hear the story too."
+
+So they passed into the cabin, and before they had been there many
+minutes the Captain joined them. For a moment he stood in the doorway,
+then he came forward with outstretched hand.
+
+"Well," he said, "all that I can say is that you ought to be dead. But
+it's not my business."
+
+He had seen too many freaks of fortune to be surprised at this.
+
+"I thought," he continued, "that there was something familiar about the
+back of your head. Back of a man's head never changes. It's a funny
+thing."
+
+He sat down in his usual chair, and looked with a cheery smile upon him
+who had risen from the death column of the _Times_. Then he turned to his
+pipe.
+
+"You know, Agar," he said, "I was beastly sorry about that--death of
+yours. Cut me up wonderfully for a few minutes. That is saying a lot in
+these days."
+
+Agar laughed.
+
+"It is very kind of you to say so," he said rather awkwardly.
+
+"And I," added Dr. Ruthine from behind the whisky and soda tray, in the
+deliberate voice of a man who is saying something with an effort, "felt
+that it was a pity. That is how it struck me--a pity."
+
+Then, very disjointedly, and in a manner which could scarcely be set down
+here, Major James Agar told his singular story. There are--thank
+heaven!--many such stories still untold; there are, one would be inclined
+to hope, many such still uncommenced. As a nation we may be on the
+decline, but there is something to go on with in us yet.
+
+Once when the narrator paused, Dr. Ruthine went to the side table and
+opened some bottles.
+
+"Whisky?" he inquired, with curt hospitality, "or anything else your
+fancy may paint, down to tea."
+
+Agar rose to pour out his own allowance, and for a moment the two men
+stood together. With the critical eye of a soldier, which seems to weigh
+flesh and blood, he looked his host for the time being up and down.
+
+"They don't make men like you and me on tea," he said, reaching out his
+hand towards a tumbler.
+
+Then the story went on. At first the ship's doctor listened to it with
+interest but without absorption, then suddenly something seemed to catch
+his attention and hold it riveted. When a pause came he leant forward,
+pointing an emphasising finger.
+
+"When you spoke just now of the chief," he said, "did you mean Michael?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What! Seymour Michael?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Captain tapped his pipe against his boot and leant back with the
+shrug of the shoulders awaiting further developments.
+
+"And you mean to tell me that you put yourself entirely in the hands of
+Seymour Michael?" pursued the Doctor.
+
+"Yes, why not?"
+
+Mark Ruthine shook his head with a little laugh. "I always thought, Agar,
+that you were a bit of a fool!"
+
+"I have sometimes suspected it myself," admitted the soldier meekly.
+
+"Why, man," said Ruthine, "Seymour Michael is one of the biggest rascals
+on God's earth. I would not trust him with fourpence round the corner."
+
+"Nor would I," put in the Captain, "and the sum is not excessive."
+
+Jem Agar was sipping his whisky and soda with the placidity of a giant
+who fears no open fight and never thinks of foul play.
+
+"I don't see," he muttered, "what harm he can do me."
+
+"No more do I, at the moment," replied the Doctor; "but the man is a liar
+and an unscrupulous cad. I have kept an eye on him for years because he
+interests me. He has never run a straight course since he came into the
+field; he has consistently sacrificed truth, honour, and his best friend
+to his own ambition ever since the beginning."
+
+Jem Agar smiled at the Doctor's vehemence, although he was aware that
+such a display was far from being characteristic of the man.
+
+"Of course," he admitted, "in the matter of honour and glory I expect to
+be swindled. But I don't care. I know the chap's reputation, and all
+that, but he can hardly get rid of the fact that I have done the thing
+and he has not."
+
+"I was not thinking so much of that," replied the other. "Men sell their
+souls for honour and glory and never get paid."
+
+He paused; then with the sure touch of one who has dabbled with pen and
+ink in the humanities, he laid his finger on the vulnerable spot.
+
+"I was thinking more," he said, "of what you had trusted him to
+do--telling certain persons, I mean, that you were not dead. He is just
+as likely as not to have suppressed the information."
+
+Jem Agar was looking very grave, with a sudden pinched appearance about
+the lips which was only half concealed by his moustache.
+
+"Why should he do that?" he asked sharply.
+
+"He would do it if it suited his purpose. He is not the man to take into
+consideration such things as feelings--especially the feelings of
+others."
+
+"You're a bit hard on him, Ruthine," said Jem doubtfully. "Why should it
+suit his convenience?"
+
+"Secrecy was essential for your purpose and his; in telling a secret one
+doubles the risk of its disclosure each time a new confidant is admitted.
+Besides, the man's nature is quite extraordinarily secretive. He has
+Jewish and Scotch blood in his veins, and the result is that he would
+rather disseminate false news than true on the off chance of benefiting
+thereby later on. For men of that breed each piece of accurate
+information, however trivial, has a marketable value, and they don't part
+with it unless they get their price."
+
+There followed a silence, during which Jem Agar went back in mental
+retrospection to the only interview he had ever had with Seymour Michael,
+and the old lurking sense of distrust awoke within his heart.
+
+"But," said the Captain, who was an optimist--he even applied that theory
+to human nature--"I suppose it is all right now. Everybody knows now that
+you are among the quick--eh?"
+
+"No," replied Jem, "only Michael; it was arranged that I should telegraph
+to him."
+
+"Of course," the Doctor hastened to say, for he had perceived a change in
+Agar's demeanour, "all this is the purest supposition. It is only a
+theory built upon a man's character. It is wonderful how consistent
+people are. Judge how a man would act and you will find that he has acted
+like it afterwards."
+
+As if in illustration of the theory Jem Agar looked gravely determined,
+but uttered no threat directed towards Seymour Michael. His quiet face
+was a threat in itself.
+
+"Well," he said, rising, "I am keeping you fellows from your slumbers. I
+am still sleeping on deck; can't get accustomed to the atmosphere below
+decks after six months' sleeping in the open."
+
+He nodded and left them.
+
+"Rum chap!" muttered the Captain, looking at his watch when the footsteps
+had died away over the silent decks.
+
+"One of the queerest specimens I know," retorted Dr. Mark Ruthine, who
+was fingering a pen and looking longingly towards the inkstand. The
+Captain--a man of renowned discretion--quietly departed.
+
+There is no more distrustful man than the simple gentleman of honour who
+finds himself deceived and tricked. It is as if the bottom suddenly fell
+out of his trust in all mankind, and there is nothing left but a mocking
+void. Jem Agar lay on his mattress beneath the awning, and stared hard at
+a bright star near the horizon. He was realising that life is, after all,
+a sorry thing of chance, and that all his world might be hanging at that
+moment on the word of an untrustworthy man.
+
+Before morning he had determined to telegraph from Malta to Seymour
+Michael to meet him at Plymouth on the arrival of the _Mahanaddy_ at that
+port.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+BALANCING ACCOUNTS
+
+And yet God has not said a word.
+
+
+One fine morning in June the _Mahanaddy_ steamed with stately
+deliberation into the calm water inside Plymouth breakwater. Many writers
+love to dwell with pathetic insistence on incidents of a departure; but
+there is also pathos--perhaps deeper and truer because more subtle--in
+the arrival of the homeward-board ship.
+
+Who can tell? There may have been others as anxious to look on the green
+slopes of Mount Edgecumbe as the man with the mahogany-coloured face who
+stood ever smoking--smoking--always at the forward starboard corner of
+the hurricane deck. His story had not leaked out, because only two men on
+board knew it--men with no conversational leaks whatever. He had made no
+other friends. But many watched him half interestedly, and perhaps a few
+divined the great calm impatience beneath the suppressed quiet of his
+manner.
+
+"That man--Jem Agar--is dangerous," the Doctor had said to the Captain
+more than once, and Mark Ruthine was not often egregiously mistaken in
+such matters.
+
+"Um!" replied the Captain of the _Mahanaddy_. "There is an uncanny calm."
+
+They were talking about him now as the Captain--his own pilot for
+Plymouth and the Channel--walked slowly backwards and forwards on the
+bridge. It seemed quite natural for the Doctor to be sitting on the rail
+by the engine-room telegraph. The passengers and the men were quite
+accustomed to it. This friendship was a matter of history to the homeless
+world of men and women who travelled east and west through the Suez
+Canal.
+
+"He has asked me," the Doctor was saying, "to go ashore with him at
+Plymouth; I don't know why. I imagine he is a little bit afraid of
+wringing Seymour Michael's neck."
+
+"Just as likely as not," observed the Captain. "It would be a good thing
+done, but don't let Agar do it."
+
+"May I leave the ship at Plymouth?" asked Mark Ruthine, with a quiet air
+of obedience which seemed to be accepted with the gravity with which it
+was offered.
+
+"I don't see why you should not," was the reply. "Everybody goes ashore
+there except about half a dozen men, who certainly will not want your
+services."
+
+"I should rather like to do it. We come from the same part of the
+country, and Agar seems anxious to have me. He is not a chap to say much,
+but I imagine there will be some sort of a _denouement_."
+
+The Captain was looking through a pair of glasses ahead, towards the
+anchorage.
+
+"All right," he said. "Go."
+
+And he continued to attend to his business with that watchful care which
+made the _Mahanaddy_ one of the safest boats afloat.
+
+Presently Mark Ruthine left the bridge and went to his cabin to pack. As
+he descended he paused, and retracing his steps forward he went and
+touched Jem Agar on the arm.
+
+"It's all right," he said. "I'll go with you."
+
+Agar nodded. He was gazing at the green English hills and far faint
+valley of the Tamar with a curious gleam of excitement in his eyes.
+
+Half an hour later they landed.
+
+"You stick by me," said Jem Agar, when they discerned the small wiry form
+of Seymour Michael awaiting them on the quay. "I want you to hear
+everything."
+
+This man was, as Ruthine had said, dangerous. He was too calm. There was
+something grand and terrifying in that white heat which burned in his
+eyes and drove the blood from his lips.
+
+Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile, waving his hand in
+greeting to Jem and to Ruthine, whom he knew.
+
+Jem shook hands with him.
+
+"I'm all right, thanks," he said curtly, in answer to Seymour Michael's
+inquiry.
+
+"Good business--good business," exclaimed the General, who seemed
+somewhat unnecessarily excited.
+
+"Old Mark Ruthine too!" he went on. "You look as fit as ever. Still
+turning your thousands out of the British public--eh!"
+
+"Yes," said Ruthine, "thank you."
+
+"Just run ashore for half an hour, I suppose?" continued Seymour Michael,
+looking hurriedly out towards the _Mahanaddy_.
+
+"No," replied Ruthine, "I leave the ship here."
+
+The small man glanced from the face of one to the other with something
+sly and uneasy in his eyes.
+
+Jem Agar had altered since he saw him last in the little tent far up on
+the slopes of the Pamir. He was older and graver. There was also a wisdom
+in his eyes--that steadfast wise look that comes to eyes which have
+looked too often on death. Mark Ruthine he knew, and him he distrusted,
+with that quiet keenness of observation which was his.
+
+"Now," he said eagerly to Jem, "what I thought we might do was to have a
+little breakfast and catch the eleven o'clock train up to town. If
+Ruthine will join us, I for one shall be very pleased. He won't mind our
+talking shop."
+
+Mark Ruthine was attending to the luggage, which was being piled upon a
+cab.
+
+"Have you not had breakfast?" asked Agar.
+
+"Well, I have had a little, but I don't mind a second edition. That
+waiter chap at the hotel got me out of bed much too soon. However, it is
+worth getting up the night before to see you back, old chap."
+
+"Is there not an earlier train than the eleven o'clock?" asked Agar,
+looking at his watch. There was a singular constraint in his manner which
+Seymour Michael could not understand.
+
+"Yes, there is one at nine forty-five."
+
+"Then let us go by that. We can get something at the station, if we want
+it."
+
+"Make it a bottle of champagne to celebrate the return of the explorer,
+and I am your man," said Michael heartily.
+
+"Make it anything you like," answered Agar, in a gentler voice. He was
+beginning to come under the influence of Seymour Michael's sweet voice,
+and of that fascination which nearly all educated Jews unconsciously
+exercise.
+
+He turned and beckoned to Mark Ruthine, who presently joined them, after
+paying the boatmen.
+
+"The nine forty-five is the train," he said to him. "We may as well walk
+up. The streets of Plymouth are not pleasant to drive through."
+
+So the cab was sent on with the luggage, and the three men turned to the
+slope that leads up to the Hoe.
+
+There was some sort of constraint over them, and they reached the summit
+of the ascent without having exchanged a word.
+
+When they stood on the Hoe, where the old Eddystone lighthouse is now
+erected, Seymour Michael turned and looked out over the bay where the
+ships lay at anchor.
+
+"The good old _Mahanaddy_," he said, "the finest ship I have ever sailed
+in."
+
+Neither man answered him, but they turned also and looked, standing one
+on each side of him.
+
+Then at last Jem Agar spoke, breaking a silence which had been brooding
+since the _Mahanaddy_ came out of the Canal.
+
+"I want to know," he said, "exactly how things stand with my people at
+home."
+
+He continued to look out over the bay towards the _Mahanaddy_, but Mark
+Ruthine was looking at Seymour Michael.
+
+"Yes," replied the General, "I wanted to talk to you about that. That was
+really my reason for proposing that we should wait till the second
+train."
+
+"There cannot be much to say," said Jem Agar rather coldly.
+
+"Well, I wanted to tell you all about it."
+
+"About what?"
+
+There was what the Captain had called an uncanny calm in the voice.
+General Michael did not answer, and Jem turned slowly towards him.
+
+"I presume," he said, "that I am right in taking it for granted that you
+have carried out your share of the contract?"
+
+"My dear fellow, it has been perfectly wonderful. The secret has been
+kept perfectly."
+
+"By all concerned?"
+
+"Eh!--yes."
+
+Michael was glancing furtively at Mark Ruthine, as the fox glances back
+over his shoulder, not at the huntsman, but at the hounds.
+
+"Did you tell them personally, or did you write?" pursued Jem Agar
+relentlessly.
+
+"My dear fellow," replied Michael, pulling out his watch, "it is a long
+story, and we must get to the train."
+
+"No," replied Agar, in the calm voice which raised a sort of "fearful
+joy" in Ruthine's soul, "we need not be getting to the train yet, and
+there is no reason for it to be a long story."
+
+Seymour Michael gave an uneasy little laugh, which met with no response
+whatever. The two taller men exchanged a glance over his head. Up to that
+moment Jem Agar had hoped for the best. He had a greater faith in human
+nature than Mark Ruthine had managed to retain.
+
+"Have you or have you not told those people whom you swore to me that you
+would tell, out there, that night?" asked Jem.
+
+"I told your brother," answered the General with dogged indifference.
+
+"Only?"
+
+There was an ugly gleam in the blue eyes.
+
+"I didn't tell him not to tell the others."
+
+"But you suggested it to him," put in Mark Ruthine, with the knowledge of
+mankind that was his.
+
+"What has it got to do with you, at any rate?" snapped Seymour Michael.
+
+"Nothing," replied Ruthine, looking across at Agar.
+
+"You did not tell Dora Glynde?"
+
+General Michael shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Why?" asked Jem hoarsely. It was singular, that sudden hoarseness, and
+the Doctor, whose business such things were, made a note of it.
+
+"I didn't dare to do it. Why, man, it was too dangerous to tell a single
+soul. If it had leaked out you would have been murdered up there as
+sure as hell. There would have been plenty of men ready to do it for
+half-a-crown."
+
+"That was _my_ business," answered Jem coolly. "You promised, you
+_swore_, that you would tell Dora Glynde, my step-mother, and my brother
+Arthur. And you didn't do it. Why?"
+
+"I have given you my reasons--it was too dangerous. Besides, what does it
+matter? It is all over now."
+
+"No," said Jem, "not yet."
+
+The clock struck nine at that moment; and from the harbour came the sound
+of the ship's bells, high and clear, sounding the hour. The Hoe was quite
+deserted; these three men were alone. A silence followed the ringing of
+the bells, like the silence that precedes a verdict.
+
+Then Jem Agar spoke.
+
+"I asked Mark Buthine," he said, "to come ashore with me, because I had
+reason to suspect your good faith. I can't see now why you should have
+done this, but I suppose that people who are born liars, as Ruthine says
+you are, prefer lying to telling the truth. You are coming down now with
+Ruthine and myself to Stagholme. I shall tell the whole story as it
+happened, and then you will have to explain matters to the two ladies as
+best you can."
+
+A sudden unreasoning terror took possession of Seymour Michael. He knew
+that one of the ladies was Anna Agar, the woman who hated him almost as
+much as he deserved. He was afraid of her; for it is one consolation to
+the wronged to know that the wronger goes all through his life with a
+dull, unquenchable fear upon his heart. But this was not sufficient,
+this could not account for the mighty terror which clutched his soul at
+that moment, and he knew it. He felt that this was something beyond
+that--something which could not be reasoned away. It was a physical
+terror, one of those emotions which seem to attack the body independently
+of the soul, a terror striking the Man before it reaches the Mind. His
+limbs trembled; it was only by an effort that he kept his teeth clenched
+to prevent them from chattering.
+
+"And," said Jem Agar, "if I find that any harm has been done--if any one
+has suffered for this, I will give you the soundest thrashing you have
+ever had in your life."
+
+Both his hearers knew now who Dora Glynde was, what she was to him. He
+neither added to their knowledge nor sought to mislead. He was not, as we
+have said, _de ceux qui s'expliquent_.
+
+"Come," he added, and turning he led the way across the Hoe.
+
+Seymour Michael followed quietly. He was cowed by the inward fear which
+would not be allayed, and the judicial calmness of these two men
+paralysed him. Once, in the train, he began explaining matters over
+again.
+
+"We will hear all that at Stagholme," said Jem sternly, and Mark Ruthine
+merely looked at him over the top of a newspaper which he was not
+reading.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+AT BAY
+
+To thine own self be true;
+And it must follow as the night the day
+Thou canst not then be false to any man.
+
+
+Human nature is, after all, a hopeless failure. Not even the very best
+instinct is safe. It will probably be turned sooner or later to evil
+account.
+
+The best instinct in Anna Agar was her maternal love, and upon this
+strong rock she finally wrecked her barque. She was one of those women
+who hold that, so long as the object is unselfish, the means used to
+obtain it cannot well be evil. She did not say this in so many words,
+because she was quite without principle, good or bad, and she invariably
+acted on impulse.
+
+Her impulse at this time was to turn as much of heaven and earth as came
+under her influence to compel Dora to marry Arthur. That Arthur should be
+unhappy, and should be allowed to continue in that common condition, was
+a thought that she could not tolerate or allow. Something must be done,
+and it was characteristic of the woman that that something should present
+itself to her in the form of the handy and useful lie. In a strait we all
+naturally turn to that accomplishment in which we consider ourselves most
+proficient. The blusterer blusters; the profane man swears; the tearful
+woman weeps--and weeping, by the way, is no mean accomplishment if it be
+used at the right moment. Mrs. Agar naturally meditated on that form of
+diplomacy which is sometimes called lying. The truth would not serve her
+purpose (not that she had given it a fair trial), and therefore she would
+forsake the straight path for that other one which hath many turnings.
+
+Dora absolutely refused to come to Stagholme while Arthur was there--a
+delicacy of feeling, which, by the way, was quite incomprehensible to
+Mrs. Agar. It was necessary for Arthur's happiness that he should see
+Dora again and try the effect of another necktie and further eloquence.
+Therefore, Dora must be made by subterfuge to see Arthur.
+
+"Dear Dora," she wrote, "it will be a great grief to me if this
+unfortunate attachment of my poor boy's is allowed to interfere with the
+affection which has existed between us since your infancy. Come, dear,
+and see me to-morrow afternoon. I shall be quite alone, and the subject
+which, of course, occupies the first place in my thoughts will, if you
+wish it, be tabooed.
+
+"Your affectionate old Friend,
+
+"ANNA AGAR."
+
+"It will be quite easy," reflected this diplomatic lady as she folded the
+letter--almost illegible on account of its impetuosity--"for Arthur to
+come back from East Burgen earlier than I expected him."
+
+The rest she left to chance, which was very kind but not quite necessary,
+for chance had already taken possession of the rest, and was even at that
+moment making her arrangements.
+
+Dora read the letter in the garden beneath the laburnum-tree, where she
+spent a large part of her life. Before reaching the end of the epistle
+she had determined to go. She was a young person of spirit as well as of
+discrimination, and in obedience to the urging of the former was quite
+ready to show Mrs. Agar, and Arthur too, if need be, that she was not
+afraid of them.
+
+She was distinctly conscious of the increasing power of her own strength
+of purpose as she made this resolution, and as she walked across the park
+the next afternoon her feeling was one very near akin to elation. It is
+only the strong who mistrust their own power. Dora Glynde had always
+looked upon herself as a somewhat weak and easily led person; she was
+beginning to feel her own strength now and to rejoice in it. From the
+first she half-suspected a trap of some sort. Such a subterfuge was
+eminently characteristic of Mrs. Agar, and that lady's manner of
+welcoming her only increased the suspicion.
+
+The mistress of Stagholme was positively crackling with an excitement
+which even her best friend could not have called suppressed. There was no
+suppression whatever about it.
+
+"So good of you," she panted, "to come, Dora dear!"
+
+And she searched madly for her pocket handkerchief.
+
+"Not at all," replied Dora, very calmly.
+
+"And now, dear," went on the lady of the house, "are we going to talk
+about it?"
+
+The question was somewhat futile, for it was easy to see that she was not
+in a condition to talk of anything else.
+
+"I think not," replied Dora. She had a way of using the word "think" when
+she was positive. "The question was raised the last time I saw you, and I
+do not think that any good resulted from it."
+
+Mrs. Agar's face dropped. In some ways she was a child still, and a
+childish woman of fifty is as aggravating a creature as walks upon this
+earth. Dora remembered every word of the interview referred to, while
+Mrs. Agar had almost forgotten it. It is to the common-minded that common
+proverbs and sayings of the people apply. Hard words had not the power of
+breaking anything in Mrs. Agar's being.
+
+"Of course," she said, "_I_ don't wish to talk about it, if you don't. It
+is most painful to me."
+
+She had dragged forward a second chair, only separated from that occupied
+by Dora by the tea-table.
+
+"Arthur," she said, with a lamentable assumption of cheerfulness, "has
+driven over to East Burgen to get some things I wanted. He will not be
+back for ever so long."
+
+She reflected that he was overdue at that moment, and that the butler had
+orders to send him to the library as soon as he returned.
+
+"I was sorry to hear," said Dora, quite naturally, "that he had not
+passed his examination."
+
+Mrs. Agar glanced at her cunningly; she was always looking for second
+meanings in the most innocent remarks, hardly guilty of an original
+meaning.
+
+At this moment the door leading through a smaller library into the
+dining-room opened and Arthur came quietly in. He changed colour and
+hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he remembered that before all
+things a gentleman must be a gentleman. He came forward and held out his
+hand.
+
+"How do you do?" he said, and for a moment he was quite dignified. "I am
+glad to see you here with mother. I did not know that I was going to
+interrupt a _tete-a-tete_, tea. No tea, thanks, mother; no."
+
+"Have you brought the things I wanted? You are earlier than I expected,"
+blurted out the lady of the house unskillfully.
+
+"Yes, I have brought them."
+
+"I must go and see if they are right," said Mrs. Agar, rising, and before
+he could stop her she passed out of the door by which he had entered.
+
+For a moment there was an awkward silence, then Dora spoke--after the
+door had been reluctantly closed from without.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "that this was done on purpose?"
+
+"Not by me, Dora."
+
+She merely bowed her head.
+
+"Do you believe me?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+She continued to sip her tea, and he actually handed her a plate of
+biscuits.
+
+"Is it still No?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Perhaps her fresh youthful beauty moved him, perhaps it was merely
+opposition that raised his love suddenly to the dignity of a passion that
+made him for once forget himself, his clothes, his personal appearance,
+and the gentlemanly modulation of his voice.
+
+For a moment he was almost a man. He almost touched the height of a man's
+ascendency over woman.
+
+"You may say No now," he cried, "but I shall have you yet. Some day you
+will say Yes."
+
+It was then for the first time that Dora realised that this man did
+actually love her according to his lights. But never for an instant did
+she admit in her own mind the possibility of succumbing to Arthur's will.
+It is not by words that men command women. They must first command their
+respect, and that is never gained by words.
+
+Dora was conscious of a feeling of sudden, unspeakable pain. Arthur had
+only succeeded in convincing her that she could have submitted to a man's
+will, wholly and without reserve; but not to the will of Arthur Agar. He
+had only showed her that such a submission would in itself have been a
+greater happiness than she had ever tasted. But she knew at once that
+only one man ever had, ever could have had, the power of exacting such
+submission; and he commanded it, not by word of mouth (for he never
+seemed to ask it), but by something strong and just and good within
+himself, before which her whole being bowed down.
+
+We never know how we appear in the eyes of our neighbours, friends or
+lovers. Arthur was at that moment in Dora's eyes a mere sham, aping
+something he could never attain.
+
+He had seized her two hands in his nervous and delicate fingers, from
+which she easily withdrew them. The action was natural enough, strong
+enough. But he completely spoiled the effect by the words he spoke in his
+thin tenor voice.
+
+"No, Arthur," she said. "No, Arthur; since you mention the future, I may
+as well tell you _now_ that my answer will never be anything but No. At
+one time I thought that it might be different. I told my mother that
+possibly, after a great many years, I might think otherwise; but I
+retract that. I shall never think otherwise. And if you imagine that you
+can force me to do so, please lay aside that hope at once."
+
+"Then there is some one else!" cried Arthur, with an apparent
+irrelevance. "I know there is some one else."
+
+Dora seemed to be reflecting. She looked over his head, out of the
+window, where the fleecy summer clouds floated idly over the sky.
+
+She turned and looked deliberately at the door by which Mrs. Agar had
+disappeared. It was standing ajar. Then again she reflected, weighing
+something in her mind.
+
+"Yes," she replied half-dreamily at length. "I think you have a right to
+know--there is some one else."
+
+"Was," corrected Arthur, with the womanly intuition which was given to
+him with other womanly traits.
+
+"Was and is," replied Dora quietly. "His being dead makes no difference
+so far as you are concerned."
+
+"Then it _was_ Jem! I was sure it was Jem," said a third voice.
+
+In the excitement of the moment Mrs. Agar forgot that when ladies and
+gentlemen stoop to eavesdropping they generally retire discreetly and
+return after a few moments, humming a tune, hymns preferred.
+
+"I knew that you were there," said Dora, with a calmness which was not
+pleasant to the ear. "I saw your black dress through the crack of the
+door. You did not stand quite still, which was a pity, because the
+sunlight was on the floor behind you. I was not surprised; it was worthy
+of you."
+
+"I take God to witness," cried Mrs. Agar, "that I only heard the last
+words as I came back into the room."
+
+"Don't," said Dora, "that is blasphemy."
+
+"Arthur," cried Mrs. Agar, "will you hear your mother called names?"
+
+"We will not wrangle," said Dora, rising with something very like a smile
+on her face. "Yes, if you want to know, it _was_ Jem. I have only his
+memory, but still I can be faithful to that. I don't care if all the
+world knows; that is why I told _you_ behind the door. I am not ashamed
+of it. I always did care for Jem."
+
+There was a little pause, for mother and son had nothing to answer. Dora
+turned to take her gloves, which she had laid on a side table, and as she
+did so the other door opened, the principal door leading to the hall.
+Moreover, it was opened without the menial pause, and they all turned in
+surprise, knowing that there were only servants in the house.
+
+In the doorway stood Jem, brown-faced, lean, and anxious-looking. There
+was something wolf-like in his face, with the fierce blue eyes shining
+from beneath dark lashes, the fair moustache pushed forward by set lips.
+
+Behind him the keen face of Seymour Michael peered nervously, restlessly
+from side to side. He was distinctly suggestive of a rat in a trap. And
+beyond him, in the gloom of the old arras-hung hall, a third man,
+seemingly standing guard over Seymour Michael, for he was not looking
+into the room but watching every movement made by the General--tall man,
+dark, upright, with a silent, clean-shaven face, a total stranger to them
+all. But his manner was not that of a stranger, he seemed to have
+something to do there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE LAST LINK
+
+A thing hereditary in the race comes unawares.
+
+
+Jem came straight into the room, and there seemed to be no one in it for
+him but Dora. She went to meet him with outstretched hand, and her eyes
+were answering the questions that she read in his.
+
+He took her hand and he said no word, but suddenly all the misery of the
+last year slipped back, as it were, into a dream. She could not define
+her thoughts then, and they left no memory to recall afterwards. She
+seemed to forget that this man had been dead and was living, she only
+knew that her hand was within his. Jem looked round to the others
+present, his attitude a judgment in itself, his face, in its fierce
+repose, a verdict.
+
+Mark Ruthine had gently pushed Seymour Michael into the room and was
+closing the door behind them. Mrs. Agar did not see the General, who was
+half-concealed by his junior officer. She could not take her eyes from
+Jem's face.
+
+"This is fortunate," he said; and the sound of his voice was music in
+Dora's ears. "This is fortunate, every one seems to be here."
+
+He paused for a moment, as if at a loss, and drew his brown hand down
+over his moustache. Perhaps he felt remotely that his position was strong
+and almost dramatic; but that, being a simple, honest Englishman, he was
+unable to turn it to account.
+
+He turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood behind, uncomfortably
+conscious of Mark Ruthine at his heels. It was not in Jem to make an
+effective scene. Englishmen are so. We do not make our lives
+superficially picturesque by apostrophising the shade of a dead mother.
+Jem gave way to the natural instinct of a soldier by nature and training.
+A clear statement of the facts, and a short, sharp judgment.
+
+"This man," he said, laying his hand on the General's shoulder, and
+bringing him forward, "has been brought here by us to explain something."
+
+White-lipped, breathless, in a ghastly silence Anna Agar and Seymour
+Michael stared at each other over the dainty tea-table, across a gulf of
+misused years, through the tangle of two unfaithful lives.
+
+Then Jem Agar began his story, addressing himself to Dora, then, and
+until the end.
+
+"I was not with Stevenor," he said, "when his force was surprised and
+annihilated. I had been sent on through an enemy's country into a
+position which no man had the right to ask another to hold with the force
+allowed me. This man sent me. All his life has he been seeking glory at
+the risk of other men's lives. After the disaster he came to me and
+relieved my little force; but he proposed to me a scheme of exploration,
+which I have carried through. But even now I shall not get the credit;
+_he_ will have that. It was a low, scurrilous thing to do; for he was my
+commanding officer, and I could not say No."
+
+"I gave you the option," blurted out Michael sullenly.
+
+Jem took no notice of the interruption, which only had the effect of
+making Mark Ruthine move up a few paces nearer.
+
+"He made a great point of secrecy," continued Agar, "which at the time I
+thought to be for my safety. But now I see otherwise; Ruthine has pointed
+it out to me. If I had never come back he would have said nothing, and
+would thus have escaped the odium of having sent a man to certain death.
+I only made one condition--namely, that three persons should be informed
+at once of my survival, after the disaster to Stevenor's force. Those
+three persons were my brother Arthur, my step-mother, and Miss Glynde."
+
+He paused for a moment, and Dora's clear, low voice took up the
+narrative.
+
+"I met General Michael," she said, "in London, some months ago. I met him
+more than once. He knew quite well who I was, and he never told me."
+
+Thus was the first link of the chain riveted. Seymour Michael winced. He
+never raised his eyes.
+
+Mark Ruthine moved forward again. He did so with a singular rapidity, for
+he had seen murder flash from beneath Jem Agar's eyebrows. He was
+standing between them, his left hand gripping Jem's right arm with an
+undeniable strength. Dora, looking at them, suddenly felt the tears well
+to her eyes. There was something that melted her heart strangely in the
+sight of those two men--friends--standing side by side; and at that
+moment her affection went out towards Mark Ruthine, the friend of Jem,
+who understood Jem, who knew Jem and loved him, perhaps, a thousandth
+part as well as she did; an affection which was never withdrawn all
+through their lives.
+
+It was Ruthine's voice that broke the silence, giving Jem time to master
+himself.
+
+"It is to his credit," he said, also addressing Dora, "that for very
+shame he did not dare to tell you that he had sent Agar on a mission
+which was as unnecessary as it was dangerous. When he sent him he must
+have known that it was almost a sentence of death."
+
+Then Jem spoke again.
+
+"As soon as I got back to civilisation," he said, "I wrote to him as
+arranged, and I enclosed letters to--the three persons who were admitted
+into the secret. Those letters have, of course, never reached their
+destination. General Michael will be required to explain that also."
+
+At this moment Arthur Agar gave a strange little cackling laugh,
+which drew the general attention towards him. He was looking at his
+half-brother, with a glitter in his usually soft and peaceful eyes.
+
+"There are a good many things which he will have to explain."
+
+"Yes," answered Jem. "That is why we have brought him here."
+
+It fell to Arthur Agar's lot to forge the second link.
+
+"When," he asked Jem, "did he know that you had got back to safety and
+civilisation?"
+
+"Two months ago, by telegram."
+
+The half-brothers turned with one accord towards Seymour Michael, who
+stood trying to conceal the quiver of his lips.
+
+"He promised," said Arthur Agar, "to tell me at once when he received
+news of your safety."
+
+It was singular that Seymour Michael should give way at that moment to a
+little shrinking movement of fear--back and away, not from Jem, who
+towered huge and powerful above him, but from the frail and delicate
+younger brother. Mark Ruthine, who was standing behind, saw the movement
+and wondered at it. For it would appear that, of all his judges, Seymour
+Michael feared the weakest most.
+
+And so the second link was welded on to the first, while only Anna Agar
+knew the motive that had prompted Michael to suppress the news. She
+divined that it was spite towards herself, and for once in her life, with
+that intuition which only comes at supreme moments, she had the wisdom to
+bide her time.
+
+Then at last Seymour Michael spoke. He did not raise his eyes, but his
+words were evidently addressed to Arthur.
+
+"I acted," he said, "as I thought best. Secrecy was necessary for Agar's
+safety. I knew that if I told you too much you would tell your mother,
+and--I know your mother better than either you or Jem Agar know her. She
+is not fit to be trusted with the most trifling secret."
+
+"Well, you see, you were quite wrong," burst out Mrs. Agar, with a
+derisive laugh. "For I knew it all along. Arthur told me at the first."
+
+Her voice came as a shock to them all. It was harsh and common, the voice
+of the street-wrangler.
+
+"Then," cried Seymour Michael, as sharp as fate, "why did you not tell
+Miss Glynde?"
+
+He raised his arm, pointing one lean dark finger into her face.
+
+"I knew," he hissed, "that the boy would tell you. I counted on it. Why
+did you not tell Miss Glynde? Come! Tell us why."
+
+Mark Ruthine's face was a study. It was the face of a very keen sportsman
+at the corner of a "drive." In every word he saw twice as much as simple
+Jem Agar ever suspected.
+
+"Well," answered Mrs. Agar, wavering, "because I thought it better not."
+
+"No," Dora said, "you kept it from me because you wanted me to marry
+Arthur. And you thought that I should do so because he was master of
+Stagholme. You wanted to trick me into marrying Arthur before"--she
+hesitated--"before--"
+
+"Before I came back," added Jem imperturbably. "That was it, that was
+it!" cried Seymour Michael, grasping at the straw which might serve to
+turn the current aside from himself.
+
+But the attempt failed. No one took any notice of it. Jem was looking at
+Dora, and she was looking anywhere except at him.
+
+It was Jem who spoke, with the decisiveness of the president of a
+court-martial.
+
+"That will come afterwards," he said. "And now, perhaps," he went on,
+turning towards Seymour, "you will kindly explain why you broke your word
+to me. Explain it to these l---- [sic.] to Miss Glynde."
+
+Seymour Michael shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Why, what is the good of making all this fuss about it now?" he
+explained. "It has all come right. I acted as I thought best. That is all
+the explanation I have to offer."
+
+"Can you not do better than that?" inquired Jem, with a dangerous
+suavity. "You had better try."
+
+Dora was looking at Jem now, appealingly. She knew that tone of voice,
+and feared it. She alone suspected the anger that was hidden behind so
+calm an exterior.
+
+Seymour Michael preserved a dogged silence, glancing from side to side
+beneath his lowered lashes. He had not forgotten Jem's threat, but he
+felt the safeguard of a lady's presence.
+
+"I can offer an explanation," put in Mark Ruthine. "This man is mentally
+incapable of telling the truth and of doing the straight thing. There are
+some people who are born liars. This man is one. It is not quite fair to
+judge him as one would judge others. I have known him for years, have
+watched him, have studied him."
+
+All eyes turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood half-cringing,
+trembling with fear and hatred towards his relentless judges.
+
+"Years ago," pursued Ruthine, "at the outset of life, he committed a
+wanton crime. He did a wrong to a poor innocent woman, whose only fault
+was to love him beyond his deserts. He was engaged to be married to her,
+and meeting a richer woman he had not the courage to ask to be released
+from his engagement. It happened that by a mistake he was gazetted 'dead'
+at the time of the Mutiny. He never contradicted the mistake--that was
+how he got out of his engagement. He played the same trick with Jem
+Agar's name. I recognised it."
+
+Then the last link of the chain was forged.
+
+"So did I," said Anna Agar. "I was the woman."
+
+Before the words were well out of her mouth Mark Ruthine's voice was
+raised in an alarmed shout.
+
+"Look out!" he cried. "Hold that man; he is mad!"
+
+No one had been noticing Arthur Agar--no one except Seymour Michael, who
+had never taken his eyes from his face during Ruthine's narration.
+
+With a groan, unlike a human sound at all, Arthur Agar had rushed forward
+when his mother spoke, and for a few seconds there was a wild confusion
+in the room, while Seymour Michael, white with dread, fled before his
+doom. In and out among the people and the furniture, shouting for help,
+he leapt and struggled. Then there came a crash. Seymour Michael had
+broken through the window, smashing the glass, with his arms doubled over
+his face.
+
+A second later Arthur wrenched open the sash and gave chase across the
+lawn. In the confusion some moments elapsed before the two heavier men
+followed him over the smooth turf, and the ladies from the window saw
+Arthur Agar kneeling over Seymour Michael on the stone terrace at the end
+of the lawn. They heard with cruel distinctness the sharp crackling crash
+of the Jew's head upon the stone flags, as Arthur shook him as a terrier
+shakes a rat.
+
+Instinctively they followed, and as they came up to the group where
+Ruthine was kneeling over Seymour Michael, while Jem dragged Arthur away,
+they heard the Doctor say--
+
+"Agar, get the ladies away. This man is dead. Look sharp, man! They
+mustn't see this."
+
+And Jem barred their way with one hand, while he held his half-brother
+with the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+SETTLED
+
+For love in sequel works with fate.
+
+
+The four walked back to the library together. Mrs. Agar looked back over
+her shoulder at every other footstep. She took no notice of her son. Her
+affection for him seemed suddenly to have been absorbed and lost in some
+other emotion.
+
+Jem was half supporting, half carrying Arthur, whose eyes were like those
+of a dead man, while his lips were parted in a vacant, senseless way.
+
+Already Ruthine could be heard giving his orders to the gardeners and
+other servants who had gathered round him in a wonderfully short space of
+time.
+
+Dora passed into the library first, treading carefully over the broken
+glass, and Mrs. Agar followed her without appearing to notice the sound
+of breakage beneath her feet. No one had spoken a word since Mark Ruthine
+had told them that Seymour Michael was dead. There are some situations in
+life wherein we suddenly realise what an inadequate thing human speech
+is. There are some things that others know which we have never told them,
+and would ever be unable to tell them. There are some feelings within us
+for which no language can find expression.
+
+Mrs. Agar was simply stupefied. When God does mete out punishment here on
+earth, He does so with an overflowing measure. This devoted mother did
+not even evince anxiety as to the welfare of her son, for whose sake she
+had made so many blunders, so many futile plots.
+
+Jem brought Arthur into the room, and led him to an arm-chair. There was
+that steady masterfulness in his manner which comes to those who have
+looked on death in many forms and whom nothing can dismay.
+
+He offered no unnecessary assistance or advice, did not fussily loosen
+Arthur's necktie, or perform any of those small inappropriate offices
+which some would have deemed necessary under the circumstances. He knew
+quite well that this was no matter of a necktie or a collar.
+
+Mrs. Agar seated herself on a sofa opposite, and slowly swayed her body
+backwards and forwards. She was one of those persons who can never
+separate mental anguish from physical pain. They have but one way of
+expressing both, and possibly of feeling both. Her hands were clasped on
+her lap, her head on one side, her lips drawn back as if in agony. She
+even went so far as to breathe laboriously.
+
+Thus they remained; Jem watching Arthur, Dora watching Jem, who seemed to
+ignore her presence.
+
+It was Mrs. Agar who spoke first, angrily and bitterly.
+
+"What is the good of standing there?" she said to Jem. "Can't you find
+something more useful to do than that?"
+
+Jem looked at her, first with surprise and then with something very
+nearly approaching contempt.
+
+"I am waiting," he replied, "for Ruthine. He is a doctor."
+
+"Who wants a doctor now? What is the good of a doctor now--now that
+Seymour is dead? I don't know what he is doing here, at any rate,
+meddling."
+
+"Arthur wants a doctor," replied Jem. "Can you not see that he is in a
+sort of trance? He hears and sees nothing. He is quite unconscious."
+
+Mrs. Agar seemed only half to understand. She stared at her son, swaying
+backwards and forwards in imbecile misery.
+
+"Oh dear! oh dear!" she whispered, "what have we done to deserve this?"
+
+After a few seconds she repeated the words.
+
+"What have we done to deserve this? What have we done ..."
+
+Her voice died away into a whisper, and when that became inaudible her
+lips went on moving, still framing the same words over and over again.
+
+In this manner they waited, with that dull senselessness to the flight of
+time which follows on a great shock.
+
+They all heard the clatter of horses' feet on the gravel of the avenue,
+and probably they all divined that Mark Ruthine had sent for medical
+help.
+
+To Dora the sound brought a sudden boundless sense of relief. Amidst this
+mental confusion it came as a practical common-sense proof that the
+tension of the last year was over. The burden of her own life was by it
+lifted from her shoulders; for Jem was here, and nothing could matter
+very much now.
+
+Presently Ruthine came into the room. As he went towards Arthur he
+glanced at Dora and then at Mrs. Agar, but the young fellow was evidently
+his first care.
+
+While he was kneeling by the low chair examining Arthur's eyes and face,
+Mrs. Agar suddenly rose and crossed the room.
+
+"Is he dead?" she said abruptly.
+
+"Who?" inquired Mark Ruthine, without looking round.
+
+"Seymour Michael."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Quite?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then Arthur killed him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+All this while Arthur was lying back in the chair, white and lifeless.
+His eyes were open, he breathed regularly, but he heard nothing that was
+said, nor saw anything before his eyes.
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Agar, "that was a murder?"
+
+She was looking out of the window, towards the stone terrace, already
+conscious that the scene that she had witnessed there would never be
+effaced from her memory while she had life.
+
+After a little pause Mark Ruthine spoke.
+
+"No," he answered, "it was not that. Your son was not responsible for his
+actions when he did it. I think I can prove that. I do not yet know what
+it was. It was very singular. I think it was some sort of mental
+aberration--temporary, I hope, and think. We will see when he recovers
+himself--when the circulation is restored."
+
+While he spoke he continued to examine his patient. He spoke in his
+natural tone, without attempting to lower his voice, for he knew that
+Arthur Agar had no comprehension of things terrestrial at that time.
+
+"It was not," he went on, "the action of a sane man. Besides, he could
+not have done it. In his right mind he could not have killed Seymour
+Michael, who was a strong man. As it is, I think that there was some sort
+of paralysis in Seymour Michael--a paralysis of fear. He seemed too
+frightened to attempt to defend himself. Besides, why should your son do
+it?"
+
+"He was born hating him."
+
+Mark Ruthine slowly turned, still upon his knees. He rose, and in his
+dark face there was that strange eagerness again, like the eagerness of a
+sportsman approaching some unknown quarry in the jungle.
+
+"What do you mean, Mrs. Agar?" he asked.
+
+"I mean that he was born with a hatred for that man stronger than
+anything that was in him. His soul was given to him full of hate for
+Seymour Michael. Such things are when a woman bears a child in the midst
+of great passion."
+
+"Yes," said Mark Ruthine, "I know."
+
+"The night he was born," Mrs. Agar went on, "I first saw and spoke to
+that man after he had come back from India--after I had learnt what he
+had done."
+
+Ruthine turned round towards Jem and Dora.
+
+"You hear that," he said to them. "This is not the story of a mother
+trumped up in court to save her son. It is the truth. There are some
+things which we do not understand even yet. Don't forget what you have
+heard. It will come in usefully."
+
+He turned to Mrs. Agar again.
+
+"Did he know the story?" he asked.
+
+"He never heard it until you told it just now."
+
+"Can you swear to that, Mrs. Agar?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then," said Ruthine, "he does not know now that you are the woman whom
+Seymour Michael wronged. He need never know it. The paroxysm had come on
+before you spoke--that was why I shouted. He was mad with hate, before
+you opened your lips."
+
+Mrs. Agar was now beginning to realise what was at stake. The mother's
+love was re-awakening. The old cunning look came into her eyes, and her
+quick, truthless mind was evidently on the alert. There was something
+animal-like in Mrs. Agar; but she was of the lower order of animal, that
+seeks to defend its young by cunning and not by sheer bravery.
+
+Ruthine must have guessed at something, for he said at once:
+
+"Remember what you have told me. You will have to repeat that exactly.
+Add nothing to it, take nothing from it, or you will spoil it. Tell me,
+has your son seen this man more than once?"
+
+"No, only once; at Cambridge."
+
+"All right; I think I shall be able to prove it."
+
+As he spoke he went towards the writing-table and, sitting down, he wrote
+out a prescription. Dora followed him and held out her hand for the
+paper.
+
+"Send for that at once, please," he said.
+
+Then he beckoned to Jem.
+
+"I have sent for the local doctor," he said to him. "But I should advise
+having some one else--Llandoller from Harley Street. This is far above
+our heads."
+
+"Telegraph for him," answered Jem Agar.
+
+While Ruthine wrote he went on speaking.
+
+"We must get him upstairs at once," he said. "I should like to have him
+in bed before the doctor comes."
+
+In answer to the bell, rung a second time, the servant came, looking
+white and scared.
+
+"Show Dr. Ruthine Mr. Arthur's room," said Jem; and Ruthine took Arthur
+up in his arms like a child.
+
+When they had gone there was a silence. Mrs. Agar made no attempt to
+follow. She sat down again on the sofa, swaying backwards and forwards.
+Perhaps she was dimly aware that there remained something still to be
+said.
+
+Jem Agar crossed the room and stood in front of her. Dora, from the
+background, was pleading with her eyes for this woman. There were the
+makings of a very hard man in James Edward Makerstone Agar, and seven
+years of the grimmest soldiering of modern days had done nothing to
+soften him. He was strictly just; but it is not justice that women want.
+To all men there comes a time when they recognise the fact that all their
+time and all their energies are required for the taking care of _one_
+woman, and that all the rest must take care of themselves.
+
+"You may stay," he said to his step-mother, "until Arthur is removed from
+this house--but no longer. I shall never pretend to forgive you, and I
+never want to see you again."
+
+Mrs. Agar made no answer, nor did she look up.
+
+"Go," said Jem, with a little jerk of his head towards the door.
+
+Slowly she rose, and without looking at either of them she passed out of
+the room.
+
+When, at last, they were left alone in the quiet library where they had
+played together as children, where the happiest moments of his life and
+the most miserable of hers had been lived through.
+
+Dora did not seem to know quite what to do. She was standing by the
+writing-table, with one hand resting on it, facing him, but not looking
+at him. She suddenly felt unable to do that--felt at a loss, abashed,
+unequal to the moment.
+
+But Jem seemed to have no hesitation. He was quite natural and very
+deliberate. He seemed to know quite well what to do. He closed the door
+behind Mrs. Agar, and then he came across the room and took Dora in his
+arms, as if there were no question about it. He said nothing. After all,
+there was nothing to be said.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of From One Generation to Another, by
+Henry Seton Merriman
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      From One Generation to Another, by Henry Seton Merriman
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
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+               text-align: right;}
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's From One Generation to Another, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: From One Generation to Another
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8805]
+This file was first posted on August 10, 2003
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
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+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER ***
+
+
+
+
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+HTML file produced by David Widger
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+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Henry Seton Merriman
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER I. THE SEED </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER II. SUBURBAN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER III. MERCURY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER IV. FREIGHTED </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER V. AFTER NINETEEN YEARS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VI. FOR HIS COUNTRY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VII. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER VIII. RELIEVED </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER IX. RE-CAST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER X. A LAST THROW </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XI. A CARPET KNIGHT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XII. BAD NEWS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIII. ON THIN ICE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XIV. THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XV. THE TOUCH OF NATURE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVII. TWO MOTIVES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XVIII. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XIX. AT HURLINGHGAM </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XX. IN A SIDE PATH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXI. ALONE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIII. AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXIV. A STAB IN THE DARK </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXV. FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVI. BALANCING ACCOUNTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVII. AT BAY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LAST LINK </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXIX. SETTLED </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. THE SEED
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Il faut se garder des premiers mouvements, parce qu'ils sont presque
+      toujours honnétes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dearest Anna,&mdash;I see from the newspaper before me of March 13, that
+      I am reported dead. Before attempting to investigate the origin of this
+      mistake, I hasten to write to you, knowing, dearest, what a shock this
+      must have been to you. It is true that I was in the Makar Akool affair,
+      and was slightly wounded&mdash;a mere scratch in the arm&mdash;but nothing
+      more. I have not written to you for some months past because I have been
+      turning something over in my mind. Anna, dearest, there is no chance of my
+      being in a position to marry for some years yet, and I feel it incumbent
+      upon me ...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter, half written, lay on a camp table before a keen-faced young
+      officer. He ceased writing suddenly, and, leaping to his feet, walked to
+      the door of his bungalow, which was open to the four winds of heaven. In
+      doing this he passed from the range of the lazy punkah flapping
+      somnolently over table and bed. It may have been this sudden change to
+      hotter air that caused him to raise his hand to his forehead, which was
+      high and strangely rounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;suppose I do it that way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked rapidly backwards and forwards with the lithe actions of a man
+      of steel, a light weight, of medium height, keen and quick as a monkey.
+      His black eyes flitted from one object to another with such restlessness
+      that it was impossible to say whether he comprehended what he saw or
+      merely looked at things from force of habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was dark of hair with a sallow complexion and a long drooping nose&mdash;the
+      nose of Semitic ancestors. A small mouth, and the chin running almost to a
+      point. A face full of interest, devoid of distinct vice&mdash;heartless.
+      Here was a man with a future before him&mdash;a man whose vices were all
+      negative, whose virtues depended entirely upon expediency. Here was a man
+      who could be almost anything he liked; as some men can. If expediency
+      prompted he could be a very depôt of virtues; for his body, with all the
+      warmer failings of that part of humanity, was in perfect control. On the
+      other hand, there was no love of good for goodness' sake&mdash;no
+      conscience behind the subtle eyes. All this, and more, was written in the
+      face of Seymour Michael, whose handwriting had dried some moments before
+      on the half-filled sheet of letter-paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned and stood at the table with slightly bowed legs&mdash;not the
+      result of much riding, although he wore top-boots and breeches as if of
+      daily habit&mdash;but a racial defect handed down like the nasal brand
+      from remote progenitors. He looked at letter and newspaper as they lay
+      side by side&mdash;not with the doubtfulness of warfare between conscience
+      and temptation, but with a calculating thoughtfulness. He was not
+      wondering what was best to do, but what the most expedient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those were troublesome times in India, for the Mutiny was not quelled, and
+      each mail took home a list of killed, slowly compiled from news that
+      dribbled in from outlying stations, forts, and towns. Those were days when
+      men's lives were made or lost in the Eastern Empire, for it seems to be in
+      Fortune's balance that great danger weighs against great gain. No large
+      wealth has ever been acquired without proportionate risk of life or
+      happiness. To the tame and timorous city clerk comes small remuneration
+      and a nameless grave, while to more adventurous spirits larger stakes
+      bring vaster rewards. The clerk, pure and simple, has, within these later
+      years, found his way to India, sitting side by side with the Baboo, and
+      consequently it is as easy to make a fortune in London as in Calcutta and
+      Madras. The clerk has carried his sordid civilisation and his love of
+      personal safety with him, sapping at the glorious uncertainty from which
+      the earlier pioneers of a hardier commerce wrested quick-founded fortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael had come into all this with the red coat of a soldier and
+      the keen, ambitious heart of a Jew, at the very nick of time. He saw at
+      once the enormous possibilities hidden in the near future for a man who
+      took this country at its proper value, handling what he secured with
+      coolness and foresight. He know that he only possessed one thing to risk,
+      namely, his life; and true to his racial instinct, he valued this very
+      highly, looking for an extortionate usury on his stake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment he was like Aladdin in the cave of jewels: he did not know
+      which way to turn, which treasure to seize first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna&mdash;dearest Anna&mdash;to whom this half-completed letter was
+      addressed, was a person for whom he had not the slightest affection. At
+      the outset of his career he had paused, decided in haste, and had resolved
+      to make use of the passing opportunity. Anna Hethbridge had therefore been
+      annexed <i>en passant</i>. In person she was youthful and rather handsome&mdash;her
+      fortune was extremely handsome. So Seymour Michael went out to India
+      engaged to be married to this girl who was unfortunate enough to love him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In India two things happened. Firstly, Seymour Michael met a second young
+      lady with a fortune twice as large as that of Miss Anna Hethbridge.
+      Secondly, the Mutiny broke out, and India lay before the ambitious young
+      officer a very land of Ophir. He promptly decided to cut the first string
+      of his bow. Anna Hethbridge was now useless&mdash;nay, more, she was a
+      burthen. Hence the letter which lay half-written on the table of his
+      bungalow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused before this wrong to a blameless woman, and contemplated the
+      perpetration of a greater. He weighed pro and con&mdash;carefully
+      withholding from the balance the casting weight of Right against Wrong.
+      Then he took up the letter and slowly tore it to small pieces. He had
+      decided to leave the report of his death uncontradicted. It was morally
+      certain that five weeks before that day Anna Hethbridge had read the news
+      in the printed column lying before him. He resolved to leave her in
+      ignorance of its falseness. Seymour Michael was not, however, a selfish
+      man. All that he did at this time, and later in life&mdash;all the lives
+      that he ruined&mdash;the hearts he broke&mdash;the men he sacrificed were
+      not offered upon the altar of Self (though the distinction may appear
+      subtle), but sold to his career. Career was this man's god. He wanted to
+      be great, and rich, and powerful; and yet he was conscious of having no
+      definite use for greatness, or riches, or power when acquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here again was the taint of the blood that ran in his veins. The curse had
+      reached him&mdash;in addition to the long, sad nose and the bandy legs.
+      The sense of enjoyment was never to be his. The greed of gain&mdash;gain
+      of any sort&mdash;filled his heart, and <i>ennui</i> secretly nestling in
+      his soul said: &ldquo;Thou shalt possess, but not enjoy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was conscious of this voice, but did not understand it then. He only
+      burned to possess; looking to possession to provide enjoyment. In this he
+      was not quite alone&mdash;with him in his error are all men and women. And
+      so we talk of Love coming after marriage&mdash;and so women marry without
+      Love, believing that it will follow. God help them! That which comes
+      afterwards is not even the ghost of Love, it is only Custom. This was the
+      spirit of Seymour Michael. He had already acquired one or two objects of a
+      vague ambition; and, possessing them, had only learnt to be accustomed to
+      them&mdash;not to value them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no elation in the thought that he was freed from the encumbrance
+      of Anna Hethbridge by a chance misprint. Neither was there hesitation in
+      turning accident ruthlessly to his own advantage. There was only a steady
+      pressing forward&mdash;an unceasing, unwearying attention to his own gain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days news travelled slowly, and the personal had not yet taken
+      precedence in journalism. In the anxiety for the State, the Individual was
+      apt to be overlooked. Seymour Michael counted on six months of oblivion at
+      the least&mdash;he hoped for more, but with characteristic caution acted
+      always in anticipation of the worst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had scarcely thrown the newspaper aside when a comrade entered the
+      bungalow carrying another copy of the same journal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Michael,&rdquo; exclaimed this man, &ldquo;do you see that you're put in among
+      the killed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Seymour Michael, without haste, without hesitation. &ldquo;I have
+      already written to contradict it. Not that there is any one to care
+      whether I am dead or alive. But it might do me harm in Leadenhall Street.
+      I can't afford to be dead even for a week when so much promotion is going
+      forward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was artistic. Most of us forget to preserve our own characteristics
+      in diverging from the truth. The tangled web is only woven when <i>first</i>
+      we practise to deceive. Later on the facility is greater, the handling
+      superior, and the web runs smooth and straight. Seymour Michael was
+      apparently no novice at this sort of thing. He was even at that moment
+      making mental note of the fact that up-country mails were in a state of
+      disorganisation, and a letter which was never written may easily be made
+      to have miscarried later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even he could not foresee everything&mdash;no one can. Not even the
+      righteous man, much less the liar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say,&rdquo; pursued the newcomer, &ldquo;that you are not writing to
+      your family about it&mdash;only to the Company?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rum chap you are, Michael,&rdquo; said the other, lighting a cheroot.
+      &ldquo;Heartless beggar I take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. The simple fact is that I have no one to write to. I only
+      possess one or two distant relatives, and they would probably be rather
+      sorry than otherwise to have the report contradicted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The younger officer&mdash;a mere boy&mdash;with a beardless, happy face,
+      walked to the door of the bungalow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there is always this in it,&rdquo; he said carelessly. &ldquo;By the time
+      the contradiction reaches home the news may be true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael laughed lamely. A joke of this description made him feel
+      rather sick, for a Jew never makes a soldier or a sailor, and they are
+      rarely found in those positions unless great gain is holden up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this pleasantry the youth departed, leaving Michael to write the
+      letter which he had advised as written. As he drew the writing materials
+      towards him he cursed his brother officer quietly and politely for a
+      meddling young fool. He wrote a formal letter to the Company&mdash;the old
+      East India Company which administered an empire with ledger and daybook&mdash;calling
+      their attention to the mistake in the newspaper, and begging them not to
+      trouble to give the matter publicity, as he had already advised his
+      friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This done, he proceeded with the ordinary routine of his daily life. Such
+      men as this are case-hardened. They carry with them a conscience like the
+      floor of an Augean stable, but they know how to walk thereon. Moreover, he
+      was one of those who assign to their dealings with men quite a different
+      code of morals to that reserved for women. His was the code of &ldquo;not being
+      found out.&rdquo; Men are more suspicious&mdash;they find out sooner: <i>ergo</i>
+      the morals to be observed <i>vis à vis</i> to them are of a stricter
+      order. Railway companies and women are by many looked upon as fair game
+      for deception. Consciences tender in many other respects have a subtle
+      contempt for these two exceptions. Many a so-called honest man travels
+      gaily in a first-class carriage with a second-class ticket, and lies to a
+      woman at each end of his journey without so much as casting a shadow upon
+      his conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael carried this code to the farthest limit of safety. All
+      through the months that followed he went about his business with a clear
+      conscience and a heart slightly relieved by the removal of Anna Hethbridge
+      from his path to prosperity. He served his country and the Company with a
+      keenness of foresight and a soldierly exposure of the lives of others
+      which did not fail, in the course of time, to bring him in a harvest of
+      honours and rewards. Neither did he put his candle under a bushel, but set
+      it in the very highest candlestick available.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as has been previously stated, he could not foresee everything. He
+      did not know, for instance, that his cheroot-smoking subaltern&mdash;a
+      youth as guileless as he was indiscreet, for the two usually go together&mdash;possessed
+      a memory like a dry-plate. He did not foresee that a passing conversation
+      in an Indian bungalow might perchance photograph itself on the somewhat
+      sparsely covered tablets of a man's mind, to be reproduced at the wrong
+      moment with a result lying twenty-six years ahead in the womb of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. SUBURBAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>L'amour fait tout excuser, mais il faut être bien sûr qu'il y a de i
+      amour.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Anna Hethbridge loved Seymour Michael with as great a love as her
+      nature could compass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the news of his death reached her, at the profusely laden
+      breakfast-table at Jaggery House, Clapham Common, her first feeling was
+      one of scornful anger towards a Providence which could be so careless.
+      Life had always been prosperous for her, in a bourgeois, solidly wealthy
+      way, entirely suited to her turn of mind. She had always had servants at
+      her beck and call, whom she could abuse illogically and treat with an
+      utter inconsequence inherent in her nature. She had been the spoilt child
+      of a ponderous, thick-skinned father and a very suburban mother, who, out
+      of her unexpected prosperity, could deny her daughter nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three months after the receipt of the news Anna Hethbridge went down into
+      Hertfordshire, where, in the course of a visit at Stagholme Rectory, she
+      met and became engaged to the Squire of Stagholme, James Edward Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month later she became the second wife of the simple-minded old country
+      gentleman. It would be hard to say what motives prompted her to this
+      apparently heartless action. Some women are heartless&mdash;we know that.
+      But Anna Hethbridge was too impulsive, too excitable, and too much given
+      to pleasure to be devoid of heart. Behind her action there must have been
+      some strange, illogical, feminine motive, for there was a deliberation in
+      every move&mdash;one of those motives which are quite beyond the masculine
+      comprehension. One notices that when a woman takes action in this
+      incomprehensible way her lady friends are never surprised; they seem to
+      have some subtle sympathy with her. It is only the men who look puzzled,
+      as if the ground beneath their feet were unstable. Therefore there must be
+      some influence at work, probably the same influence, under different
+      forms, which urges women to those strange, inconsequent actions by which
+      their lives are rendered miserable. Men have not found it out yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna Hethbridge was at this time twenty-four years of age, rather pretty,
+      with a vivacity of manner which only seemed frivolous to the more
+      thoughtful of her acquaintances. The idea of her marrying old Squire Agar
+      within six months of the untimely death of her clever lover, Seymour
+      Michael, seemed so preposterous that her hostess, good, sentimental Mrs.
+      Glynde, never dreamt of such a possibility until, in the form of a fact,
+      it was confided to her by Miss Hethbridge, one afternoon soon after her
+      arrival at the rectory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Confound it, Maria,&rdquo; exclaimed the Rector testily, when the information
+      was passed on to him later in the evening. &ldquo;Why could you not have
+      foreseen such an absurd event?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Mrs. Glynde looked distressed. She was a thin little woman, with an
+      unsteady head, physically and morally speaking; full of kindness of heart,
+      sentimentality, high-flown principles, and other bygone ladylike
+      commodities. Her small, eager face, of a ruddy and weather-worn complexion&mdash;as
+      if she had, at some early period of her existence, been left out all night
+      in an east wind&mdash;was puckered up with a sense of her own negligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried hard, poor little woman, to take a deep and Christian interest
+      in the welfare of her neighbours; but all the while she was conscious of
+      failure. She knew that even at that moment, when she was sitting in her
+      small arm-chair with clasped, guilty hands, her whole heart and soul were
+      absorbed beyond retrieval in a small bundle of white flannel and pink
+      humanity in a cradle upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector had dropped his weekly review upon his knees and was staring at
+      her angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really can't tell,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;what you can have been thinking
+      about to let such a ridiculous thing come to pass. What are you thinking
+      about now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear,&rdquo; confessed the little woman shamedly, &ldquo;I was thinking of Baby&mdash;of
+      Dora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought so,&rdquo; he snapped, with a little laugh, returning to his paper with
+      a keen interest. But he did not seem to be following the printed lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose she was all right when you were up just now!&rdquo; he said
+      carelessly after a moment, and without lowering his paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear,&rdquo; the lady replied. &ldquo;She was asleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this young mother of forty smiled softly to herself as if at some
+      recollection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This happiness had come late, as happiness must for us to value it fully,
+      and Mrs. Glynde's somewhat old-fashioned Christianity was of that school
+      which seeks to depreciate by hook or by crook the enjoyment of those
+      sparse goods that the gods send us. The stone in her path at this time was
+      an exaggerated sense of her own unworthiness&mdash;a matter which she
+      might safely have left to another and wiser judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the Rector laid aside the newspaper, and rose slowly from his
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going upstairs, dear?&rdquo; inquired his tactless spouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Um&mdash;er. Yes! I am just going up to get&mdash;a pocket-handkerchief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde said nothing; but as she knew the creak of every board in the
+      room overhead she became aware shortly afterwards that the Rector had
+      either diverged slightly from the path of which he was the ordained
+      finger-post, or that he had suddenly taken to keeping his
+      pocket-handkerchiefs in the far corner of the room where the cradle stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be readily understood that in a household ruled, as this rectory
+      was, by a sleepy little morsel of humanity, Anna Hethbridge was in no way
+      hindered in the furtherance of her own personal purposes&mdash;one might
+      almost add periodical purposes, for she never held to one for long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Squire was very lonely. His boy Jem, aged four, would certainly be the
+      happier for a mother's care. Above all, Miss Hethbridge seemed to want the
+      marriage, and so it came about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Anna Hethbridge had been asked at that time why she wanted it, she
+      would probably have told an untruth. She was rather given, by the way, to
+      telling untruths. Had she, in fact, given a reason at all, she would
+      perforce have left the straight path, because she had no reason in her
+      mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The real motive was probably a love of excitement; and Miss Anna
+      Hethbridge is not the only woman, by many thousands, who has married for
+      that same reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wedding was celebrated quietly at the Clapham parish church. A
+      humiliating day for the stiff-necked old Squire of Stagholme; for he was
+      introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought up
+      Stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter &ldquo;h.&rdquo;
+       The bourgeois ostentation and would-be high-toned graciousness of the
+      ladies, jarred on his nerves as harshly as did the personal appearance of
+      their respective husbands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Altogether it was just possible that Squire Agar began to realise the
+      extent of his own foolishness before the effervescence had left the
+      champagne that flowed freely to the health of bride and bride-groom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the course
+      of a few days a copy of the <i>Times</i> containing the insertion started
+      eastward to meet Seymour Michael on his way home from India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna Agar came home to Stagholme to begin her new life; for which peaceful
+      groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she had
+      breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth. This atmosphere is
+      terribly impregnated with the microbe of bourgeoisie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the novelty of the great house had that all-absorbing fascination
+      exercised over shallow minds by anything that is new. At first she
+      maintained excitedly that there was no life like a country life&mdash;no
+      centre more suited for such an ideal existence than Stagholme. For a time
+      she forgot Seymour Michael; but love is eminently deceitful. It lies in a
+      comatose silence for many years and then suddenly springs to life.
+      Sometimes the long period of rest has strengthened it&mdash;sometimes the
+      time has been passed in a chrysalis stage from which Love awakens to find
+      itself changed into Hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Jem, her stepson&mdash;sturdy, fair, silent&mdash;was her first
+      failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to your mother, dear,&rdquo; she said, with unguarded enthusiasm one
+      afternoon when there were callers in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot go to my mother,&rdquo; replied the youthful James, with his mouth
+      full of cake, &ldquo;because she is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an uncompromising matter-of-factness about this simple
+      statement, made in all good faith and honesty, which warned the second
+      Mrs. Agar to press the matter no farther just then. But she was so intent
+      upon exhibiting to her neighbours the maternal affection which she
+      persuaded herself that she felt for the plain-spoken heir to Stagholme,
+      that she took him to task afterwards. With great care and an utter lack of
+      logic she devoted some hours to the instruction of Jem in the somewhat
+      crooked ways of her social creed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;I tell you to come to your mother, you must come
+      and kiss me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This last item she further impressed upon him by the gift of an orange,
+      and then asked him if he understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After scratching his head meditatively for some moments, he looked into
+      her comely face with very steady blue eyes and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think so&mdash;not quite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; replied his stepmother angrily, &ldquo;you are a very stupid little boy&mdash;and
+      you must go up to the nursery at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This puzzled Jem still more, and he walked upstairs reflecting deeply.
+      Years afterwards, when he was a man, the sunlight falling on the wall
+      through the skylight over the staircase had the power of bringing back
+      that moment to him&mdash;a moment when the world first began to open
+      itself before him and to puzzle him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened that at that precise time when Mrs. Agar was endeavouring To
+      teach her little stepson the usages of polite society, a small, keen-faced
+      man was standing near the table in the smoking-room in the Hotel Wagstaff
+      at Suez. He was idly turning over the newspapers lying there in the hopes
+      of finding something comparatively recent in date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he came upon a copy of the <i>Times</i>, with which he repaired
+      to one of the long chairs on that verandah overlooking the desert which
+      some of us know only too well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After idly conning the general news he glanced at the births, deaths, and
+      marriages, and there he read of the recent ceremony in the parish church
+      of Clapham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D&mdash;&mdash;n it!&rdquo; he muttered, with that racial love of an expletive
+      which makes a Jew a profane man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition to a strong feeling of wounded vanity that Anna Hethbridge
+      should so soon have forgotten him, Seymour Michael was distinctly
+      disappointed that this heiress should no longer be within his reach. The
+      truth was, that the young lady in India had transferred her valuable
+      affections, with all solid appurtenances attaching thereto, to a young
+      officer in the Navy who had been invalided at Calcutta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To men who intend, despite all and at any cost, to get on in the world the
+      first failures are usually very bitter. It is only those who press
+      stolidly forward without expecting much, who profit from a check. Seymour
+      Michael was just the man to fail by being too acute, too unscrupulous. He
+      was usually in such a hurry to help himself that he never allowed another
+      the very fruitful pleasure of giving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In India his zeal had led him into one or two small mistakes to which he
+      himself attached no importance, but they were remembered against him. He
+      had cruelly thrown aside Anna Hethbridge when a richer marriage offered
+      itself. Now he had missed both bone and reflection, and he sat with a
+      smile on his dark face, looking out over the dreary desert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. MERCURY
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <i>The evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come.</i>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      James Edward Makerstone Agar was not at the age of five the material from
+      which the heroes of children's stories are evolved. He was not a good boy,
+      nor a clean, nor particularly interesting. He was, however, honest&mdash;and
+      that is <i>déjà quelque chose</i>. He was as far removed from the
+      &ldquo;misunderstood&rdquo; type as could be wished; and he was quite happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before his stepmother had laid aside the title and glory of a bride, he
+      had, by his deadly honesty, made her understand that even a child of five
+      requires what she could not give him&mdash;namely, logic. Had she been
+      clever enough to reason logically she might have undermined the little
+      fellow's innate honesty of character, despite the fact that he lacked a
+      child's chief incentive to learn from its mother, namely, the sympathy of
+      heredity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually and steadily Mrs. Agar &ldquo;gave him up,&rdquo; to make use of her own
+      expression. She was one of those women who either fear or despise that
+      which they do not understand. She could scarcely fear Jem, so she
+      persuaded herself that he was stupid and unattractive. At this time there
+      came another influence to militate against any excess of love between Jem
+      and his stepmother. It came to her, for he was ignorant of it. And this
+      was the knowledge that before long the little heir's undisputed reign in
+      the nursery would come to an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a suburban horror of being a long distance from the chemist, Mrs.
+      Agar protested that she could not possibly remain at Stagholme during the
+      ensuing winter, and that her child must be born at Clapham. It was vain to
+      argue or reason, and at last the Squire was forced to swallow this second
+      humiliation, which was quite beyond his wife's comprehension. He only
+      dared to hint that all the Agars had seen the light at Stagholme since
+      time immemorial; but feelings of this description found no answering note
+      in her practical and essentially commonplace mind. So Mr. And Mrs. Agar
+      emigrated to Clapham, leaving Jem behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened that a few days after their arrival at the stately house
+      overlooking the Common, a young officer called to see Mr. Hethbridge, who
+      was at that time one of the Directors of the East India Company. Now it
+      furthermore happened that this young soldier was he whom we last saw
+      smoking a cheroot in the doorway of Seymour Michael's bungalow in India.
+      As chance would have it, he called in the evening, and the estimable Mr.
+      Hethbridge, warmed into an unusual hospitality by the fumes of his own
+      port wine, pressed him to pass into the drawing-room and take a dish of
+      tea with the ladies. The subaltern accepted, chiefly because it was the
+      Director's self that pressed, and presently followed that short-winded
+      gentleman into the drawing-room&mdash;thereby shaping lives yet uncreated&mdash;thereby
+      unconsciously helping to work out a chain of events leading ultimately to
+      an end which no man could foresee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, in reply to Mrs. Agar's question, &ldquo;I am just back from
+      India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened that these two were left almost beyond earshot at the far end
+      of the room. The old people, among whom was Mrs. Agar's husband, were
+      settling down to a game of whist. Mrs. Agar was leaning forward with
+      considerable interest. This was not a mere passing curiosity to hear
+      further of a country and of an event which have not lost their glamour
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very word &ldquo;India&rdquo; had stirred something up within her heart of the
+      presence of which she had been unsuspicious. She was as one who, having a
+      closed room in her life, and thinking the door thereof securely barred,
+      suddenly finds herself within that room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whereabouts in India were you?&rdquo; she asked, with a sudden dryness of the
+      lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;I was north of Delhi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;North of Delhi&mdash;oh, yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She moistened her lips, with a strange, sidelong glance round the room, as
+      if she were preparing to jump from a height.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;and I suppose you saw a great deal of the Mutiny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even then&mdash;after many months, in a drawing-room in peaceful Clapham&mdash;the
+      young man's eyes hardened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw a good deal,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar leant back in her chair, drawing her handkerchief through her
+      fingers with jerky, unnatural movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did you lose many friends?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the young fellow, &ldquo;in one way and another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How? What do you mean?&rdquo; She had a way of leaning forward and listening
+      when spoken to, which passed very well for sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, a time like the Mutiny brings out all that is in a man, you know.
+      And some men had less in them than one might have thought, while others&mdash;quiet-going
+      fellows&mdash;seemed to wake up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One or two,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;betrayed themselves. They showed that there
+      was that in them which no one had suspected. I lost one friend that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was marvellous how the merest details of India interested this woman,
+      who, like most of us, did not know herself. Moreover, she never learnt to
+      do so thoroughly, thereby being spared the horrid pain of knowing oneself
+      too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I made a mistake,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;I thought he was a gentleman and a
+      brave man. I found that he was a coward and a cad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something urged her to go on with her pointless questions&mdash;the same
+      inevitable Fate which, according to the Italians, &ldquo;stands at the end of
+      everything,&rdquo; and which had prompted Mr. Hethbridge to bring this stranger
+      into the drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how did you find it out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I did not do it all at once. I first began by a mere trifle. It
+      happened that this man was reported dead in the Gazette&mdash;I showed it
+      to him myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young officer, who was not accustomed to ladies' society, and felt
+      rather nervous at his own loquaciousness, kept his eyes fixed on his
+      boots, and did not notice the deathly pallor of Mrs. Agar's face, nor the
+      convulsive clutch of her fingers on the velvet arm of the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned right round, with a peculiar movement of the throat as if
+      swallowing something, and made sure that the whist-players were interested
+      in their game. In that position she heard the next words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not even take the trouble to write home to his friends. I thought
+      it rather strange at the time, and told him so. Later on I heard the truth
+      of it. I heard him tell some one else that he was engaged to a girl in
+      England, and he thought it a very good way of getting out of the
+      engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You heard him tell that, with your own ears?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and he seemed to think it a good joke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was shuffling about in the chair as if in pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she asked again in a strangely metallic voice, &ldquo;Did he say that he&mdash;did
+      not love her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the cad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He cannot have been a nice man,&rdquo; she said, with that evenness of
+      enunciation which betrays that the tongue is speaking without the direct
+      aid of the mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young officer rose with a glance towards the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;he was not. He did other things afterwards which made it
+      quite impossible for a man with any self-respect whatever to look upon him
+      as a friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he,&rdquo; asked Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;say anything about her personal appearance?
+      Was it that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The subaltern looked puzzled. It was as well for Mrs. Agar that he was not
+      a man of deep experience. Instead of being puzzled he might suddenly have
+      seen clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;It was not that. It was merely a matter of
+      expediency, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, womanlike, Mrs. Agar did not believe him. She sat while he made his
+      farewell speech over the whist-table, but as he went to the door she rose
+      and followed him slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the hall she watched the servant help him on with his coat&mdash;her
+      features twisted into a stereotype smile of polite leave-taking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way,&rdquo; she said, with a sickening little laugh, &ldquo;what was the man's
+      name&mdash;your friend, whom you lost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael&mdash;Seymour Michael.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Good-night&mdash;good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she turned and walked slowly upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are apt to read indifferently of human ills, whether of the flesh or
+      the soul. We are apt to overlook the fact that what we read may apply to
+      us. Some of us even bear upon us the mark of hereditary disease and refuse
+      to believe in it. Then suddenly comes a day when a pain makes itself felt&mdash;a
+      dumb, little creeping pain, which may mean nothing. We sit down and, so to
+      speak, feel ourselves. Before long all doubt goes. We have it. The world
+      darkens, and behold we are in the ranks of those upon whom we looked a
+      little while back with a semi-indifferent pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was thus with Mrs. Agar. As some play with nature, so had she played
+      with her own heart. She had heard of a consuming love which is near akin
+      to hatred. She had read of passion which is stronger than the strongest
+      worldliness. She had smilingly doubted the existence of the broken heart
+      pure and simple. And now she sat in her own room, numbly, blindly feeling
+      herself, like one to whom the first warning of an internal deadly disease
+      has been manifested. She was conscious of something within herself which
+      she could not get at, over which she had no control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With quivering lips she sat and wondered what she could do to hurt this
+      man. She did not only want to inflict bodily pain, but that other gnawing
+      pain of the heart which she herself was now feeling for the first time.
+      And through it all there ran the one thought that he must die. It was
+      strange that hate should first teach her that love is a living, undeniable
+      reality in the lives of all of us. She had never realised this before. Her
+      bringing-up, her surroundings, all her teaching had been that money and a
+      great house, and servants, and carriages were the good things of this
+      life, the things to be sought after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been conscious of a vague admiration for Seymour Michael, and that
+      was the full extent of her knowledge of herself. This admiration took the
+      worldly form of a conviction that he was destined one day to be a great
+      man, and she had a strongly developed, common-minded desire to be a great
+      lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some things in this life which to a moderate intelligence are
+      quite unmistakable. Most of us, having left childhood behind, recognise at
+      once an earthquake, and death. Love is as unmistakable when it really
+      comes. And Anna Agar, having suddenly learnt to hate Seymour Michael, knew
+      that she had loved him with that one all-absorbing love which comes but
+      once to a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not a deep-thinking or a subtle woman. Her actions were usually
+      based upon impulse, and her one all-absorbing desire now was to see him,
+      to speak to him face to face. In this indefinite longing there was
+      probably a vulgar love of vituperation&mdash;the taint of her low-born
+      ancestors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wanted to shout and shriek her hatred into the evil face of the man
+      who had tricked her. She wanted to frighten him, to threaten, to lash him
+      with her tongue. For she was conscious all the while of her own inability
+      to harm him. Without defining the thought, her common-sense taught her one
+      lamentable, unjust fact; namely, that unless a woman is loved by the
+      object of her wrath she can hardly make him suffer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose at last, and, lighting the candles on the writing-table, she
+      proceeded to write to Seymour Michael. Even in this epistle the natural
+      cunning of her nature appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR SEYMOUR &ldquo;&mdash;she wrote on a sheet of paper bearing the address of
+      the house in which she was staying, the roof under which Seymour Michael
+      had first paid his careless tribute to her wealth&mdash;&ldquo;I learnt by
+      accident this evening that your regiment has returned to England. If you
+      are in London, I hope you will make time to come and see me. Come
+      to-morrow evening at four, if that time is convenient to you. ANNA.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She purposely signed her Christian name only, purposely refrained from
+      vouchsafing any personal news. She did not know how much or how little he
+      might know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ringing for her maid, she sent the letter to the post, addressed to
+      Seymour Michael, at the Service Club, of which she knew him to be a
+      member. Then she went to bed to toss and turn all night. The doctors,
+      good, portly Clapham practitioners, had warned her in the usual way to
+      spare herself all bodily fatigue and mental worry for the sake of the
+      little one. It is so easy to urge each other to spare all mental worry,
+      and so eminently useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. FREIGHTED
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I shall remember while the light lives yet, And in the darkness I shall
+      not forget.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael was no coward where hard words and no hard knocks were to
+      be exchanged. His faith in his own keenness of intellect and
+      unscrupulousness of tongue was unbounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled when he read Anna Agar's letter over a dainty breakfast at his
+      club the next morning. The cunning of it was obvious to his cunning
+      comprehension, and the fact of her suppressing her newly-acquired surname
+      only convinced him that she knew but little about himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That same evening at four o'clock he presented himself at the lordly
+      hall-door of Mr. Hethbridge. Since first he had raised his hand to this
+      knocker, fingering his letter of introduction to the East India director,
+      Seymour Michael had learnt many things, but the knowledge was not yet his
+      that indiscriminate untruths are apt to fly home to roost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna Agar had easily managed to send her mother out of the house; her
+      husband spent his days as far from Clapham as circumstances would allow.
+      She was seated on a sofa at the far end of the room when Seymour Michael
+      was shown in, and the first thing that struck her was his diminutiveness.
+      After the hearty country gentlemen who habitually carried mud into the
+      Stagholme drawing-room, this small-limbed dapper soldier of fortune looked
+      almost puny. But there is a depth in every woman's heart which is only to
+      be reached by one man. Whatever betide them both, that one is different
+      from the rest all through life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of these two persons spoke until the servant had closed the door.
+      Then, as is usual in such cases, the more indifferent spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you never write to me?&rdquo; said Seymour Michael, fixing his mournful
+      glance on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I thought you were dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never got my letter contradicting the report?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, with so cheap a cunning that it deceived him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; he went on, with the heartlessness of a small man, for large men
+      respect woman with a deeper chivalry than every puny knight yet compassed,
+      &ldquo;and you did not trouble to inquire. You did not even give me six months'
+      grace to cool in my grave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you send your letter?&rdquo; she asked, with a suppressed excitement
+      which he misread entirely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the usual route. I wrote off at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Liar! liar! liar!&rdquo; she shrieked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had risen, and stood pointing an accusatory finger at him. Then
+      suddenly the dramatic force of the situation seemed to fail, and she burst
+      out laughing. For some seconds it seemed as if her laughter was getting
+      beyond her control, but at last she checked it with a gurgle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The complete success of the trap which she had laid for him almost
+      disappointed her. Few things are more disappointing than complete success.
+      She hated him, and yet for the sake of the one gleam of good love that had
+      flickered once in her essentially sordid heart, she had nourished a vague
+      hope that he would clear himself&mdash;that at all events he would have
+      the cleverness to see through her stratagem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Liar!&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;In this room last night&mdash;not twenty-four hours
+      ago&mdash;Mr. Wynderton told me all about it. He said that you told
+      several men in his presence that you did not love me, and that your death
+      reported in the papers was the best way of breaking off the engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael's eyes never wavered. For once they were still, with that
+      solemn depth of gaze which tells of the curse laid on a smitten, miserable
+      race. It was strange that before honest men and women his glance wavered
+      ever&mdash;he could never meet honest eyes; but looking at Anna Agar they
+      were as steady as those of a true man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wynderton,&rdquo; ho said, &ldquo;the man whose promotion I stopped, by a report
+      against him for looting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nature makes a fool in the guise of a woman she turns out a finished
+      work. Mrs. Agar's eyes actually lighted up. Seymour Michael saw; but he
+      knew that he had no case. Nevertheless, in view of the Squire's advanced
+      age (a fact of which he had made sure), he attempted to carry through a
+      forlorn hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you believe this man before you believe me?&rdquo; said Michael. It is
+      strange how often one hears the word &ldquo;believe&rdquo; on the lips of those whose
+      veracity is doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now it happened that Mr. Hethbridge had spoken of Wynderton at breakfast
+      that morning in terms which left no doubt as to the untruth of the
+      statement just made in regard to him. But even this would have been passed
+      over by the woman who had a natural tendency towards falsehood herself,
+      had not Seymour Michael made a hideous mistake. A wiser man than any of us
+      has said that there is a time for all things. Most distinctly defined is
+      the time for making love. More men come to grief by making too much love
+      than too little. Seymour Michael, being heartless, deemed erroneously that
+      this was a propitious moment to essay the power which had once been his
+      over this woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He accompanied his reproachful speech with a tender glance, which in olden
+      times had never failed to call forth an answering look of love in her
+      eyes. Now, it suddenly aroused her to realise the extent of her hatred. In
+      some subtle way it humiliated her; for she looked back into the past, and
+      saw herself therein a dupe to this man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she cried, and her raised voice had a sudden twang in it&mdash;suggestive
+      of the streets; of the People. &ldquo;No&mdash;you needn't trouble to make soft
+      eyes at me. I know you now&mdash;I know that what that man said was true.
+      He called you a coward and a cad. You are worse! You are a Jew&mdash;a
+      mean, lying Jew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There are few greater trials to a man's dignity than vituperation from the
+      lips of a woman. She walked towards him, clumsily, menacingly and raised
+      her hand as if to strike him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael's brown face turned yellow beneath her blazing anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down!&rdquo; he commanded, &ldquo;and don't make a fool of yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was mean enough to pay her back in her own coin&mdash;the paltry,
+      loud-ringing coin which is all that a woman has.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not mean to wrangle,&rdquo; he said coolly; &ldquo;but I may as well tell you
+      now that I never cared a jot for you. I was laughing at you in my sleeve
+      all the time. I did not want you but your money. I concluded that the
+      money would be too dear at the price, so I determined to throw you over.
+      The way I chose to do it was as good as any other, because it saved me the
+      trouble of writing to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna Agar had obeyed him. She was sitting down in a stiff-backed
+      arm-chair, looking stupidly at the pattern of the carpet as if it were
+      something new to her. Between physical pain and mental excitement she was
+      beginning to wander. She was the sort of woman to lose control over her
+      mind with a temperature of one hundred and one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael looked keenly at her. He had a racial terror of physical ailment.
+      He saw that something was wrong, but his knowledge went no further. He had
+      never seen a woman faint, so limited had been his experience of the sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said consolingly, &ldquo;it is all for the best. We made a mistake.
+      In a few years we shall look back to this, and thank Heaven for saving us
+      many years of unhappiness. We are not suited to each other, Anna. We never
+      should have been happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was characteristic of the man to be more afraid of a fainting fit than
+      of a broken heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to her side and stood, not daring to touch her, for fear of
+      arousing another of those fits of passion in her which neither of them
+      seemed to understand. At length she spoke in a singular monotonous tone
+      which an experienced doctor would have recognised at once as the speech of
+      a tongue unguided for the time being. She did not look up, but kept her
+      eyes fixed on the carpet as if reading there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I will pay you back. Some day&mdash;some day. I do
+      not know how, but I feel that you will be sorry you ever did this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty-five years afterwards these words came back to him in a flash. They
+      passed through his brain&mdash;conglomerate&mdash;in a flash, in a
+      hundredth part of the time required to speak them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even at the time of hearing them, spoken in that voice which did not seem
+      to belong to Anna Hethbridge at all, he turned pale. For all the hatred
+      that burnt within her like a fire smouldered in the deliberate tones of
+      her voice. Hatred and love can teach us more in a moment than the
+      experience of a lifetime; for through either of them we see ourselves face
+      to face. This hatred made Anna Agar in twenty-four hours, and the woman
+      thus created went through a lifetime unchanged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael went towards the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to ring,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for your maid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twice,&rdquo; she muttered in the same vague way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He obeyed her, ringing twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the woman came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mistress,&rdquo; said Michael in a low voice to her at the door, &ldquo;has been
+      suddenly seized with faintness. I leave her to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without looking round he passed through the doorway and out into his own
+      self-seeking life. But Anna Agar's revenge began from that moment. To a
+      man of his nature, in whose veins ran the taint of a semi-superstitious
+      Oriental blood, there was a nameless terror in the hatred of a human
+      being, however helpless. Surely the hell of the coward will be a twilight
+      land of vague shadowy dangers ever approaching and receding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In such a land Seymour Michael moved for some months, until he returned to
+      India; and there, in the daily round of a new life, he gradually learnt to
+      shake off the past. The world is very large despite chance meetings. It is
+      easy enough to find room for two even in the same county, with the
+      exercise of a little care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty-five years elapsed before these two met again, and then they only
+      had time to exchange a glance. By that time the result of their own
+      actions had passed beyond their control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael walked across the Common, which was in those days still
+      wild and almost beautiful; and on the whole he was pleased with the result
+      of this interview. He knew that it was destined to come sooner or later&mdash;he
+      had known that all along; and it might have been worse. It is
+      characteristic of an untruthful nature to be impervious to the shame of
+      mere detection. In Eastern countries the liar detected smiles in one's
+      face. Detection is to an Oriental no punishment; something more tangible
+      is required to pierce his mental epidermis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being quite incapable of a strong love this man was innocent of consuming
+      hatred. He therefore vaguely wondered whether the day might come wherein
+      he would once more lay siege to the affections of Anna Agar, a rich widow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had he seen the face of the woman whom he had just left as it lay at that
+      moment, hardly less pale than the pillow between the fluted mahogany
+      pillars of a huge four-post bed, he would not have understood its meaning.
+      He would never have divined that the dull gleam shining between her
+      half-closed eyelids was simple hatred of himself, that the restless,
+      twitching lips were whispering curses upon his head, that the half-stunned
+      brain was struggling back to circulation and thought for the sole purpose
+      of devising hurt to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael, ignorant of all this, went peaceably back to his club,
+      where he dressed, dined, and proceeded to pass the evening at a theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, while he was displaying his diamond studs in the stalls of
+      Drury Lane Theatre, was born into the world&mdash;long before his time&mdash;a
+      child, Arthur Agar, destined to walk the smoothest paths of life,
+      literally in silk attire; for he grew up to love such things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the ways of Nature are strange. She is very quiet; patient as death
+      itself. She holds her hand for years&mdash;sometimes for a generation&mdash;but
+      she strikes at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She is more cruel than man, or even than woman which is saying much, She
+      is the best friend we have, and the worst foe, for she never forgives an
+      outrage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nature raised her hand over this puny, whimpering child, Arthur Agar. She
+      never forgot a mother's selfish passion. She forgets nothing. When first
+      he opened his little pink lids upon the world he looked round with a
+      scared wonder in a pair of colourless blue-grey eyes; and that vague look
+      of expectation never left his eyes in later life. It almost seemed as if
+      the infant orbs could see ahead into the future&mdash;could discern the
+      lowering hand of outraged Nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This hand was suspended over the ill-fated, poorly-endowed head for years,
+      then Nature struck&mdash;hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. AFTER NINETEEN YEARS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A sharp judgment shall be to them that be in high places.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear. I have great news for you to take back to your mother. Jem has
+      got his commission&mdash;in a Goorkha regiment!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady who spoke leant back in her chair, half turning her head, but not
+      looking entirely round in the direction of the only other occupant of the
+      room&mdash;a girl of nineteen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a Goorkha regiment, Aunt Anna?&rdquo; repeated the girl; &ldquo;what is that? It
+      sounds as if he would have to black his face and wear a turban. It
+      suggests curry and gymkhanas (whatever they may be) and pyjamas and
+      bananas and other pickles. A Goorkha regiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a faint drop in her tone&mdash;on the last three words, which to
+      very keen ears might have signified reproach, but the hearer was not keen&mdash;merely
+      cunning, which is quite a different matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear. They tell me that these Indian regiments are much the best for
+      a young man who is likely to get on. There are so many more chances of
+      promotions and&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;distinction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl was standing by the open window, and she turned her head without
+      otherwise moving, looking at the speaker with a pair of exceedingly
+      discriminating eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bosh, my dear aunt!&rdquo; she whispered confidingly to the blind-cord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; pursued the lady, with the eager credulity of her first mother,
+      ever ready to believe the last speaker when belief is convenient&mdash;&ldquo;Yes.
+      Sister Cecilia tells me that all the great men began in the Indian
+      Service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I wonder where they finished. Royal Academy&mdash;finishing Academy.
+      Regimentals and a gold frame&mdash;leaning heroically on a mild-looking
+      cannon with battles in the background.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear,&rdquo; replied Mrs. Agar, who only half understood Dora Glynde at
+      all times; &ldquo;it is such a good thing for Jem. Such a splendid opportunity,
+      you know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; echoed the girl, with a twist of her humorous lips. &ldquo;Splendid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had turned again, and was looking out of the window across a soft old
+      lawn where two Wellingtonians towered side by side like sentries. Without
+      glancing in the direction of her companion she knew the expression of Mrs.
+      Agar's face, the direction of her gaze; the very thought in her shallow
+      mind. She knew that Mrs. Agar was sitting with her arms on the little
+      davenport, gazing rapturously at the photograph of an insipid young man
+      with a silk-faced smoking jacket; with clean linen, clean countenance,
+      clean hands, immaculate hair, and a general air of being too weak to be
+      mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister Cecilia,&rdquo; went on the elder lady, &ldquo;seems to know all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is useless to attempt concealment of the fact that at this juncture
+      Dora Glynde made a face&mdash;an honest schoolgirl behind-your-back Face&mdash;indicative
+      of supreme scorn for some person or persons unspecified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hers was a countenance which lent itself admirably to the purpose, with
+      lips full of humour, and capable, as such lips are, of expressing a great
+      and wonderful tenderness. The face, <i>du reste</i>, was that of a
+      healthy, fair-skinned English girl, liable to honest change from pale to
+      pink, according to the dictates of an arbitrary climate. Her eyes were of
+      a dark grey-blue, straightforward and steady, with a shadow of thought in
+      them which made wise people respect her presence. She was not painfully
+      beautiful, like the heroine of a novel&mdash;nor abnormally plain, like
+      the antitype who has found her way into fiction, and there (alone) brings
+      all hearts to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Jem glad?&rdquo; she asked cheerfully. &ldquo;Is he thirsting for gore and glory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, delighted! Arthur will be so pleased too. Dear boy, <i>he</i> is so
+      interested in soldiers, but of course he could not go into the army! He is
+      too delicate&mdash;besides, the life is rough, and the risks are very
+      great.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was speaking with her head slightly inclined to one side, and
+      she never raised her adoring eyes from the photograph of the insipid young
+      man. Had she done so she would have seen a look of patient, if comic,
+      resignation come over the face of her youthful companion at the mention of
+      her son's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell mother,&rdquo; said Dora Glynde, purposely ignoring Arthur Agar,
+      whose name was always dragged sooner or later into every conversation.
+      &ldquo;Fancy Jem in a helmet, or a turban, with his face blacked! All the same,
+      if I were a man I should be a soldier. When does he go&mdash;to join his
+      regiment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, almost at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl winced, quietly, between herself and the blind-cord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And in the meantime,&rdquo; she said lightly, &ldquo;I suppose he is fully engaged in
+      buying swords and guns and bomb-shells, or whatever the Goorkhas use in
+      warfare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is coming home to-morrow for Sunday,&rdquo; replied Jem Agar's stepmother
+      absently. She was thinking of her own son, and therefore did not hear the
+      quick sigh which was almost a gasp; did not note the sudden light in the
+      girl's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora Glynde was rather a solitary-minded young person. The only child of
+      elderly parents, she had never learnt in the nursery to indulge in the
+      indiscretions of confiding girlhood. She had the good fortune to be
+      without a bosom-friend who related her most sacred secrets to other bosom
+      friends and so on, as is the way of maidens. From her father she had
+      inherited a discriminating mind and a most admirable habit of reserve. She
+      was quite happy when alone, which, according to La Bruyère, is a great
+      safeguard against all evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wanted to be alone now, and therefore passed out of the open window
+      with a non-committing &ldquo;Good-bye, Aunt Anna!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, dear,&rdquo; replied the lady, awaking suddenly from a reverie. But
+      by the time she had turned round in her chair, the girl was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora crossed the lawn, passing between the sentinel pines and crossing the
+      moat by the narrow footbridge. She climbed the railing with all the ease
+      of nineteen years and struck a bee-line across the park. She never raised
+      her eyes from the ground, never paused in her swinging gait, until she
+      reached the brown hush of the beechwood which divided the Rectory garden
+      from the southern extremity of the park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having climbed the railing again she sat on a mossy mound at the foot of a
+      huge beech tree. Her manner of doing so subtly indicated that she did not
+      only know the spot, but was in the habit of sitting there, possibly to
+      think. A youthful privilege of doubtful value, for, as we get busier in
+      life we have to do the thinking as we go along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she muttered, &ldquo;oh, how awful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A new expression had come over her face. She looked older, and all the
+      vivacity had suddenly left her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she was still sitting there the crisp sound of footsteps on the
+      fallen leaves approached through the wood. Looking up she saw her father,
+      following the winding path through the spinney towards his home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A grave man was the Rector of Stagholme in his declining years;
+      hopelessly, wisely pessimistic, with sudden youthful returns of interest
+      in matters literary and theological. As he came he read a book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly the expression of Dora's face changed. She rose and went towards
+      him, smiling contemptuously towards his lowering gravity. He looked up,
+      gave a little grunt of recognition, and closed his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I've just heard a piece of news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bad, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I suppose we shall survive it. Jem has got his
+      commission, in a Goorkha regiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goorkha regiment? Nonsense!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Anna has just told me so. She is very pleased, and seems prepared
+      for the&mdash;best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the custom of fools, to be prepared for the best&mdash;only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector gave a despairing shrug of the shoulders. He was a man who
+      allowed himself, after the manner of the ancients with whom he lived
+      mentally, a few gestures. He smoked a very expressive cigarette. He was
+      smoking one at this moment, and threw it away half consumed. This divine
+      was possessed of a rooted conviction that the Almighty made a great
+      mistake whenever He invested temporal power in a woman, whom he was
+      ungallantly inclined to classify under a celebrated dictum of Mr.
+      Carlyle's respecting the population of these happy Isles, who, truth to
+      tell, care not one jot what Mr. Carlyle may think of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Reverend Thomas Glynde and his daughter walked all the way home
+      without exchanging another word. In the Rectory drawing-room they found
+      Mrs. Glynde, small, nervous, worried. She had evidently devoted
+      considerable thought and attention to the preservation of the hot buttered
+      toast. Poor humble little soul, she was quite content to minister to the
+      bodily requirements of her spouse, having long been convinced of the
+      inferiority of her own sex in every respect except a certain limited
+      knowledge of housekeeping matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was vaguely conscious of inferiority to Dora from a literary point of
+      view, and talked with abject humility to her own daughter of all things
+      appertaining to books. But on all other points connected with the child of
+      her old age this quiet little woman was absolute mistress. Years before
+      the Rector had made a great mistake; he had, as the plain-spoken East
+      Burgen doctor put it, made an ass of himself on the matter of a childish
+      illness, thereby imperilling Dora's half-fledged little life. Mrs. Glynde
+      had then, like a diminutive tigress, stood up boldly before her awesome
+      lord and master, saying such things to him that the remembrance of them
+      made her catch her breath even now. From that time forth the Rector was
+      allowed to hold forth on symptoms to his heart's content, to take down
+      from his library shelf a stout misguided book of medical short-cuts to the
+      grave, but nothing more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He never referred to the asinine business, and in the course of years he
+      forgave the doctor (having in view the fact that that practitioner had
+      been carried away by a right and proper sense of the importance of the
+      case), but he tacitly acknowledged that in the practice of
+      home-administered medical assistance, his knowledge was second to a
+      mother's instinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It appears,&rdquo; he said sharply, while he was stirring his tea, &ldquo;that Jem
+      Agar has got his commission in a Goorkha regiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Mrs. Glynde knew more about the organisation of the heavenly bands
+      than of the administration of the Indian army. She did not know whether to
+      rejoice or lament, and having been sharply pulled up&mdash;any time during
+      the last twenty years&mdash;for doing one or the other in the wrong place,
+      she meekly took soundings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that, dear?&rdquo; she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Goorkhas are native Indian soldiers,&rdquo; explained the Rector. &ldquo;Very
+      good fellows, no doubt. They get all the hard knocks in small frontier
+      wars and none of the half-pence. What the woman can have been thinking of,
+      I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde was anxiously glancing towards Dora, who was nicking the nose
+      of a sportive kitten with the tassel of the tea-cosy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And will he go to India?&rdquo; she asked, with laudable mental grovellings in
+      the mire of her own ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Course he will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; added Dora cheerfully, &ldquo;he will come home covered with glory and
+      medals, with a weakness for strong pickles and hot language&mdash;I mean
+      hot pickles and strong language.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Mrs. Glynde rather breathlessly, &ldquo;are they never stationed in
+      England?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;never,&rdquo; replied her husband snappishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde had a pink patch on each cheek&mdash;precisely on the spot
+      whore two such patches had appeared years ago when the doctor spoke so
+      strongly. Those patches were maternal, and only appeared when Dora's
+      affairs, spiritual or temporal, were concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; put in Dora again, &ldquo;but I have a sort of lurking
+      conviction that Jem will have to wear a turban and red morocco boots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; pursued Mrs. Glynde, with that courage which cometh with a red
+      patch on either cheek, &ldquo;I always thought these Indian regiments were meant
+      for people who are badly off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector gave a short laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not so very far wrong, my dear,&rdquo; he admitted. &ldquo;And no one can say
+      that Jem is badly off. He will be very rich some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector assumed an air of superior discretion, to which he usually
+      treated his women-folk when he thought fit to consider that they were
+      touching on matters beyond their jurisdiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some more tea, please, mother,&rdquo; put in Dora appropriately. &ldquo;Excuse my
+      appetite. I suppose it is the autumn air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a short silence, during which Mrs. Glynde sought to propitiate
+      her angered spouse with sodden toast and a second brew of tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always said,&rdquo; observed the Rector at last, &ldquo;that your cousin was a
+      fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in some indefinite way Mrs. Glynde felt that she was once more
+      responsible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. FOR HIS COUNTRY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Shall I forget on this side of the grave? I promise nothing; you must wait
+      and see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the train arriving at East Burgen station at eight o'clock that same
+      evening there alighted a youth who seemed suddenly to have taken manhood
+      upon his shoulders. He stood on the platform and pointed out to a porter,
+      who called him Master James, a large Gladstone bag and a new sword-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although he could have carried the luggage under one arm and the porter
+      under the other, he carefully refrained from offering to convey anything
+      except his own walking-stick. Such is the force of education. This boy had
+      been brought up to expect service. He was to be served all his life, and
+      so the sword-case had to be left to the porter whom he envied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the journey down&mdash;between the farthest-removed stations&mdash;the
+      sword had flashed more than once in the dim light of the carriage lamp.
+      Ah! those first swords! Not Toledo nor Damascus can produce their equal in
+      after years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porter, honest father of two private soldiers of the line himself, saw
+      it all&mdash;at once. He carried the sword-case with an exaggerated
+      reverence and forbore from remark just then. Afterwards, beneath the
+      station-lamp, he looked at the shilling&mdash;the first of its kind from
+      that quarter&mdash;with a pathetic, meaning smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Saturday night. The streets of East Burgen were rather crowded, and
+      Jem Agar&mdash;with elbows well in and the whip at the regulation angle
+      across old Lasher's face, who could not help squinting at the pendant
+      thong&mdash;shouted to the country-folk in a new voice of mighty deep
+      register.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He carried his boyish head stiffly, and had for ever discarded a turn-down
+      collar. At first he kept old Lasher at a respectful distance, asking in a
+      somewhat curt and business-like manner after the stables. Then gradually,
+      as they bowled along the country road in the familiar hush of an April
+      evening, he thawed, and proceeded to vouchsafe to that steady coachman a
+      series of very interesting details of military matters in general and the
+      Indian army in particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm sure, Mas&mdash;sir,&rdquo; opined Mr. Lasher at length; &ldquo;if there's
+      any one as has got into his right rut, so to speak, in this world, it's
+      you. I always said you was a born soldier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;then you've heard that I've got my commission?&rdquo; inquired Jem
+      airily, as if he had had many such in bygone years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, sir! Miss Dora it was that told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow this caused a little silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truth to tell, Dora had lost her rank as the most beautiful and
+      accomplished maiden in Christendom. This situation was at that moment
+      occupied by a young person hight Evelina Louisa Barmond, sister to Billy
+      Barmond of the Hundred and second, a veteran fellow-soldier and comrade
+      who had jumped five feet six at the Sandhurst sports a year before. Miss
+      Evelina Louisa was twenty-four, five years Dora's senior, and only three
+      years and two months older than Jem Agar himself. He had spoken to her
+      twice, and thought about her in the intervals allowed by such weighty
+      matters as uniform and the new sword, which, however, required almost
+      constant consideration at that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Jem, with exaggerated nonchalance, &ldquo;I am afraid I should
+      never be fit for anything else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereat Lasher laughed and touched his hat. He made it a rule to salute a
+      joke in that manner, either from a general respect for humour, or looking
+      at it in the light of a mental gratuity offered by his betters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's one thing you can do, Master Jem, sir&mdash;leastwise, which you
+      can do as well as any man in the British army,&rdquo; he said, with pardonable
+      pride, &ldquo;and that is sit a 'orse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks to you, Lasher,&rdquo; Jem was kind enough to say with a flourish of his
+      whip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dignity was now ebbing fast, and by the time that the clever little
+      cob swung round the gate-post into the avenue of Stagholme, Jem and Lasher
+      were fully re-established on the old familiar footing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a bright moon overhead, and at the end of the avenue beyond the
+      dip where the lake gleamed mysteriously, the gables and solid towers of
+      Stagholme stood peacefully confessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar was firmly convinced that England only contained one Stagholme,
+      and perhaps he was right. Six miles from the nearest station, the great
+      house stands self-sufficient, self-contained. The moat, now dry and
+      cultivated, is still traceable, and requires bridging in two places.
+      Surrounded by vast park-like meadowland, where huge trees guard against
+      cutting wind or prying modern journalistic instinct, the house is only
+      approached by a private road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inside the gates of this road there is something ancient and feudal in the
+      very scent of the air. The tones of the big bell striking the hour over
+      the wide portico die away over the lands that still belong to Stagholme,
+      despite the vicissitudes through which all ancient families run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem, however, whose childhood and youth had been passed amidst companions
+      with names as good as his, had learnt long ago to keep his pride to
+      himself. He was Jem Agar, and the family name seemed somehow to belong
+      exclusively to his father still, although that thorough old sportsman had
+      lain for three years and more beneath the quiet turf of the little
+      churchyard within his own park gates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he pulled up at the door this was thrown open, and within its frame of
+      light he saw the gracious form of his stepmother waiting to welcome him.
+      Behind her, in the shadow, and amidst the decoration of staghorns, ancient
+      pike and hanger, loomed a tall dark figure startlingly in keeping with the
+      semi-monastic architecture of the house. This was Sister Cecilia. She was
+      always thus&mdash;behind Mrs. Agar, with clasped hands and a vaguely
+      approving smile, as if Mrs. Agar conferred a benefit upon suffering
+      humanity by the mere act of existing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A slightly bored expression came into Jem's patient eyes. It was not that
+      he had very much in common with his stepmother, although he had an honest
+      affection for her; but he instinctively disliked Sister Cecilia and all
+      her works. These latter were of the class termed &ldquo;good.&rdquo; That is to say,
+      this lady, the spinster daughter of a former rector in the neighbourhood,
+      considered that the earthly livery of a marvellous black bonnet which was
+      almost a cap, and quite hideous, justified a shameless interference in the
+      most intimate affairs of her neighbours, rich and poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the cover of charity she committed a thousand social sins. She
+      constituted herself mother-confessor to all who were weak enough to
+      confide in her or seek her advice, and in soul she was the most arrant
+      time-server who ever flattered a rich woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem distrusted her soft and &ldquo;holy&rdquo; ways, more especially her speech, which
+      had the lofty condescension of the saved towards the damned in
+      prospective. In his calmly commanding way he had, months before, forbidden
+      Dora Glynde to kiss Sister Cecilia, because that ostentatiously virtuous
+      person was in the habit of kissing the maids when she met them; and he
+      maintained that this Christian practice, if very estimable theoretically,
+      was socially an insult either to the mistress or the maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In view of the important changes in his own life which were about to
+      supervene, that is to say, firstly, his departure for India, and secondly,
+      his coming of age before he could hope to return from that land of
+      promise, he had counted on a quiet evening with his mother. Moreover, he
+      was vaguely conscious of the fact that a right-minded person would have
+      carefully abstained from accepting the most pressing invitation to form a
+      third that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In view of this Jem Agar had recourse to the last refuge of the simple. He
+      retired within himself, and, so to speak, shut the door. He had dined with
+      these women before, and knew that the conversation would follow its usual
+      mazy course through a forest of cross-questions upon all subjects, and
+      notably upon those intimate matters which were essentially his own
+      business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia, good mistaken soul that she was, tried her best. She was
+      lively in a Sunday-school-tea style. She was by turns tender and warlike
+      as occasion seemed to demand; but no scrap or tittle of personal
+      information did she extract from Jem, stiffly on guard behind his high
+      collar. Mrs. Agar was excited and failed utterly to follow the wiser
+      footsteps of her bosom friends. She talked such arrant nonsense about
+      India, the Goorkhas, and matters military, that more than once Jem glanced
+      at the imperturbable servants with misgiving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day was Sunday, and after morning service Jem eagerly accepted an
+      invitation to have supper at the Rectory after evening church. Sister
+      Cecilia was staying from Saturday till Monday, which alone was sufficient
+      reason for this young soldier to pass his last evening in Stagholme under
+      another than his own historic roof. With her in the house he knew that the
+      chances of serious conversation were small; for she encouraged such topics
+      as the possibility of sending fresh eggs packed in lime to the Goorkhas of
+      his prospective half-company. So Jem retired within himself, and finally
+      left England without having said many things which should have been said
+      between stepmother and son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Rectory he found a very different atmosphere&mdash;that air of
+      cheerful intellectuality which comes from the presence of cultivated men
+      and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector held strong views on the rare virtue of minding one's own
+      business, and in loyalty to such, deemed it right to refrain from
+      mentioning his opinion as to the wisdom of selecting a native branch of
+      the military service for the heir to Stagholme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The supper passed pleasantly enough in the discussion of general topics
+      all bordering on the great question they had at heart. They were like
+      people seeking for each other in the dark around the edge of a pit&mdash;the
+      pit being India. Dora, and Dora alone, laughed and treated matters
+      lightly. Mrs. Glynde blundered several times, and stepping backwards over
+      an abyss of years, called the new soldier &ldquo;darling&rdquo; more than once. Twice
+      she required helping out by Dora, and on the second occasion something was
+      said which Jem remembered afterwards with a stolid British memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem,&rdquo; said the girl, buttering a biscuit with a light hand, &ldquo;you should
+      write a diary. All great men write diaries which their friends publish
+      afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think,&rdquo; replied Jem, with that contempt for the pen which the
+      possession of a new sword ever justifies, &ldquo;that writing a diary is much in
+      my line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you can never tell till you try. Of course it would not be published
+      straight off. Some literary person would be hired to cross the t's and dot
+      the i's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause. Dora glanced at Jem Agar, and something made him
+      say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I'll try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who knows?&rdquo; said the Rector, with a smile of indulgent affection. &ldquo;There
+      may be great literary capacity lying dormant in Jem. The worst of a diary
+      is that one may come to look at it in after years, when one finds a very
+      different story has been written from what one intended to write.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Dora, lightly skipping over the chasm of gravity, &ldquo;that is
+      Providence. We must blame Providence for these little <i>contretemps</i>.
+      Some one must be blamed, and Providence obviously does not mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem laughed&mdash;somewhat lamely; but still it was a laugh. Supper was
+      despatched somehow&mdash;as last meals are. Some of us never forget the
+      flavour of those cups of tea gulped down in the gorgeous steamer-saloon
+      while the stewards get the hand luggage on board. It was a late meal on
+      Sunday evening at the Rectory, and the servants soon followed their
+      betters into the drawing-room for prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Rector lighted his last cigarette, and Mrs. Glynde began to show
+      symptoms of a patch of pink in either cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Jem rose&mdash;awkwardly&mdash;in the midst of a sally from Dora,
+      who seemed afraid to stop speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must be going,&rdquo; he said; and he shook hands with the Rector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde, with nervous deliberation, kissed him and squeezed his hand
+      jerkily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora&mdash;will open the door for you,&rdquo; she said, with an apprehensive
+      glance towards her husband, who, however, showed no inclination to move
+      from his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora not only opened the door, but left it open, and walked with him
+      across the lawn towards the stile. When they reached it there was a little
+      pause. He vaulted over and she quietly followed&mdash;without his
+      proffered assistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at last Jem spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't seem to care!&rdquo; he said gruffly&mdash;with his new voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>don't!&rdquo;</i> she whispered imploringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they walked on beneath the murmuring trees where the yellow moonlight
+      stole in and out between the trunks. It was not cheerful. For when Nature
+      joins her sadness to the sad libretto of life she usually breaks a heart
+      or two. Fortunately for us we mostly act our tragedies in the wrong
+      scenery&mdash;the scenery that was painted for a comedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand it,&rdquo; said the girl at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it is in order to save money for Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I don't, go,&rdquo; replied Jem, &ldquo;it will be a question of letting
+      Stagholme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora knew of the ancient horror of such a necessity, handed down from one
+      Agar to another, like a family tradition. Moreover, women seem to respect
+      men who have some simple creed and hold to it simply. Are they not one of
+      our creeds themselves, though by seeking for rights instead of contenting
+      themselves with privileges, some of them try to make atheists of us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; she said nevertheless, &ldquo;you are being sacrificed to Arthur!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered nothing, but he had forgotten for ever Miss Evelina Louisa
+      Barmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do you go?&rdquo; asked Dora suddenly, with something in her voice which
+      no one had ever heard before. She was startled at it herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited until the soft old church bell finished striking ten, then he
+      answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached the farthest limit of the wood and stood at the park
+      railing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;,&rdquo; she paused, and seemed to collect herself as if for a leap;
+      &ldquo;then good-bye, Jem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the outstretched hand; his large grasp seemed to swallow it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He climbed the rail without agility, paused for a moment, and the
+      moonlight happened to gleam on his face through the gently waving branches
+      as he looked down at her in dumb distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned and walked away across the shimmering grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes later Dora re-entered the drawing room. Her father and
+      mother were seated close together, closer than she had seen them for
+      years. Mrs. Glynde was pale, with two scarlet patches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora collected her belongings, preparatory to going to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;is absurdly proud of his new honours. It affects
+      his chin, which has gone up exactly one inch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she went to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&mdash;hi!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As no one replied to this summons either, by voice or approach, the young
+      man subsided into occupied silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a very large young man, with a fair moustache which looked almost
+      flaxen against the deep tan of his face. This last, like the rest of him,
+      was ludicrously typical of that race which has wandered farther than the
+      Jews, and has hitherto managed, like them, to retain a few of its
+      characteristics. The Anglo-Saxonism of this youth was almost aggressive.
+      It lurked in the neat droop of moustache, which was devoid of that untidy
+      suggestion of a beer-mug characterising the labial adornment of a northern
+      flaxen nation of which we wot. It shone calmly in the glance of a pair of
+      reflectively deep blue eyes&mdash;it threw itself at one from the pockets
+      of an old tweed jacket worn in conjunction with regulation top-boots and
+      khaki breeches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover, it gave birth to a quiet sense of being as good as any one else,
+      and possibly better, which sat without conceit on his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would seem that he really did not want to be answered just then, for he
+      did not raise a voice accustomed to dominate the clatter of horses' feet,
+      nor did he pass any comment on the carelessness or criminal absence of
+      some person or persons unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He merely took up his pen again, and proceeded to handle that mighty
+      weapon with an awkwardness suggestive of a greater skill with another
+      instrument only less powerful. He was seated on two reversed buckets,
+      pyramidally balanced, at a small table which had the air of wide
+      capabilities in some other sphere of usefulness. There was a weird cunning
+      in the legs of this table indicative of subtle change into a camp-bed or
+      possibly a canoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The writing materials consisted of a vaseline bottle (fourpenny size) full
+      of ink, and two weary pieces of blotting-paper. The paper upon which he
+      was writing had a travelled and somewhat jaundiced air, the penholder was
+      of gold. In the furniture of the tent, as in the canvas thereof, there was
+      that mournful suggestion of better days which is held to be a virtue in
+      furnished apartments. But over all there hovered that sense of
+      well-scrubbed cleanliness which comes from the touch of a native military
+      servant. An indulgence in this habit of rubbing and scrubbing was indeed
+      accountable for much dilapidation; for that silent little Ghoorka man, Ben
+      Abdi, had rubbed and scrubbed many things not intended by an ingenious
+      camp-furnisher for such treatment. James Edward Makerstone Agar was
+      engaged in the compilation of a diary, which volume there is reason to
+      believe is still preserved in a woman's jewel drawer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has not run through any editions&mdash;indeed, no compositor's finger
+      has up to this time defiled its pages. This, in fact, was one of those
+      literary works, ground slowly out from the millstones of the brain, of
+      which the style fails to please the taste of the present day. To catch the
+      fancy of a slang-loving and thoughtless generation the writer must throw
+      off his works. This is an age of &ldquo;throwing off,&rdquo; and it is to be presumed
+      that future ages will throw the result away. One must be brilliant,
+      shallow, slightly unpleasant and very unwholesome, to acquire nowadays
+      that best of all literary reputations which leaveth a balance at one's
+      bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      J.E.M. Agar&mdash;or &ldquo;Jem&rdquo; as his friends call him to his face and his
+      servants behind his back&mdash;Jem Sahib to wit&mdash;was no Pepys. His
+      literary style was disjointed, heavy, and occasionally illiterate. This
+      last peculiarity, by the way, is of no consequence nowadays, but it is
+      mentioned here for ulterior motives. In the pages of this little
+      black-bound volume there were no scintillating thoughts scribbled there
+      with suspicious neatness of diction, such as one finds in the diaries of
+      great men who, it would seem, are not above post-mortem vanity. The diary
+      was a chronicle of solid facts&mdash;Jem being essentially solid and a man
+      of the very plainest facts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking as an impartial critic, one would incline to the opinion that
+      Agar devoted too much thought to his work&mdash;in strong contrast,
+      perhaps, to the literary tendency of his day. He nibbled the leisure end
+      of his penholder too much, and allowed the business extremity thereof to
+      dry in inky conglomeration. The result was a distinct sense of labour in
+      the style of the work. After having called in vain, perhaps for
+      assistance, the scribe returned to the contemplation of his latest effort.
+      The book was one of Letts's diaries, three days in a page, which are in
+      themselves fatal to a finished style of literature. There is always too
+      much to say or too little. One's thoughts never fit the rhomboid
+      apportioned by Mr. Letts for their accommodation. Great men who have
+      thoughts when the diary is handy do not, of course, patronise Letts,
+      because he could not be expected to know when there would be a sunset
+      likely to stir up poetic reflections, or a moonrise comparable with the
+      cold light cast by some unsympathetic young woman's eyes upon the poet's
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For such men, however, as Agar, Mr. Letts is a guardian angel. The space
+      is there, and facts must be forthcoming to fill it. Agar was, and is still&mdash;thank
+      Heaven&mdash;a conscientious man. He had promised to keep this diary and
+      keep it he did. And surely he hath his reward&mdash;remembering the jewel
+      drawer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the moment under consideration he was filling in yesterday's rhomboid,
+      and paused at the conclusion of the following remarks:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Seven</i> A.M. Turned out, and shot a Ghilzai. Saw him sneaking up the
+      valley. Long shot&mdash;should put it down at a hundred and seventy-five
+      yards. Hit him in the stom&mdash;abd&mdash;chest. Looked like rain until
+      two o'clock. Then cleared up. Walter caught a mongoose and brought him in
+      with much triumph. He got conceited afterwards and slept on my bed till
+      kicked off by Ben Abdi. I see it's Sunday. Church four hundred odd miles
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This, my masters, is not the stuff to quote <i>in extenso</i>, and yet in
+      its day this diary was cried over&mdash;before it was put away in the
+      jewel drawer. Truly women are strange&mdash;one can never tell how a thing
+      will present itself to them. Honest Jem Agar, nibbling his penholder and
+      jerking these lucid observations out of his military brain by mere force
+      of discipline, never suspected the heart that was in it all&mdash;that
+      minute particle of himself that lay in the blot in the corner carefully
+      absorbed by the exhausted blotting-paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sunday, egad!&rdquo; he muttered, leaning his arms on the cunning table, and
+      gazing out across the pine-clad valley that lay below him in a deep blue
+      haze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared into the haze, and there he saw those whom he called &ldquo;his
+      people&rdquo; walking across a neat English park toward a peaceful little
+      English church. To them came presently a young person; a young person clad
+      in pink cotton, who walked with a certain demure sureness of tread, as if
+      she knew her own mind and other things besides. Her path came into the
+      park from the left, and among the trees into which it disappeared behind
+      her there stood the red chimneys of a long low house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly these visions vanished before something more tangible in the haze
+      of the valley. This was the flutter of a dirty white rag which seemed to
+      come and go among the fir trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar rose from his temporary seat and walked to the door of the tent&mdash;exactly
+      two strides. A rifle lay against the canvas, and this he took up, slowly
+      cocking it without taking his eyes from the belt of fir trees across the
+      valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he threw the rifle up and fired instantaneously. He had been
+      musketry instructor in his time and held views upon quick firing. The
+      smoke rose lazily in the ambient air, and he saw a figure all fluttering
+      rags and flying turban running down the slope away from him. At the same
+      moment there was a crashing volley, followed by two straggling reports.
+      The figure stopped, seemed to hesitate, and then slowly subsided into the
+      grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar put his head out of the tent and saw half a company of Goorkhas, keen
+      little sportsmen all standing in line at the edge of the plateau,
+      reloading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the force at the disposal of Major J. E. M. Agar, at that time
+      occupying and holding for Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of
+      India a very advanced position on the northern frontier of India. And in
+      this manner he spent most of his days and some of his nights. In addition
+      to the plain Major he had several other titles attached to his name at
+      that time, indicative of duties real and imaginary. He was &ldquo;deputy
+      assistant&rdquo; several things and &ldquo;acting&rdquo; one or two; for in military titles
+      one begins in inverse ratio in a large way, and ends in something short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar was thought very highly of by almost all concerned, except
+      himself, and it had not occurred to him to devote much thought to this
+      matter. He was one of the very few men to whom a senior officer or a
+      pretty girl could say, &ldquo;You are a nice man and a clever fellow,&rdquo; without
+      doing the least harm. Men who thought such things of themselves laughed at
+      him behind his back, and wondered vaguely why he got promotion. It never
+      occurred to them to reflect that &ldquo;old Jem&rdquo; invariably acquitted himself
+      well in each new position thrust upon him by a persistently kind fortune;
+      they contented themselves with an indefinite conviction that each
+      severally could have done better, as is the way of clever young men. One
+      of the many mysteries, by the way, which will have to be cleared up in a
+      busy hereafter is that appertaining to brilliant boys, clever
+      undergraduates, and gifted young men. What becomes of them? There are
+      hundreds at school at this moment&mdash;we have it from their own parents;
+      hundreds more at Oxford and Cambridge&mdash;we have it from themselves. In
+      a few years they will be absorbed in a world of men very much inferior to
+      themselves (by their own showing), and will be no more seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar had never been a clever boy. He was not a clever man. But&mdash;and
+      mark ye this&mdash;he knew it. The result of this knowledge was that he
+      did what he could in the present with the present, and did not
+      indefinitely postpone astonishing the universe, as most of us do, until
+      some future date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time he was banished, as some would take it. Banished to the top
+      of a pass which was nought else than a footway between two empires. Forty
+      miles from men of his own race, this man was one of those who either have
+      no thoughts or no wish to impart them; for this racial solitude, which is
+      an emotion fully explored by many in India, in no way affected his nerves.
+      Some say that they get jumpy, others aver that they begin to lose their
+      national characteristics and develop barbarous proclivities, while one
+      Woods-and-Forests man known to some of us resigned because he had a
+      buzzing in the head during the long solitary, silent evenings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Major Agar made no statements on this point, though he listened with
+      sympathy to the assertions of others. If the sympathy were subtly mingled
+      with non-comprehensive wonder, the seeker after a purer form of
+      commiseration attributed the alloy to natural density, and turned
+      elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accompanied by a handful of Goorkhas, Major J. E. M. Agar had occupied the
+      key to this narrow pass for more than a week, vaguely admiring the
+      scenery, illustrating upon living &ldquo;running deer&rdquo; in turbans his views upon
+      quick firing to his diminutive soldiers, who worshipped him as second only
+      to the gods, and possessing his soul with that trustful patience which is
+      rapidly becoming old-fashioned and effete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During that same week the newspapers at home had been very busy with his
+      name. Some had gone so far as to lay before a greedy public a short and
+      succinct account of his life, compiled from the Army List and a
+      journalistic imagination, finishing the record on the Monday, six days
+      previously, with the usual three-line regret that England should in future
+      be compelled to limp along the path to glory without the assistance of so
+      brilliant a young officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a word as brilliant had never been coupled with the name of Jem even
+      by his best friend in earnest or his worst enemy in irony. Such sarcasm
+      were too shallow to be worth sounding even in disparagement. But we never
+      know what an obituary notice may bring. Not only had he been endowed with
+      many virtues, manly qualities, and the record of noble deeds, but more
+      substantial honours had been heaped upon his fallen crest or pinned upon
+      his breathless bosom. To some of his distant countrymen he was the proud
+      possessor of the Victoria Cross, awarded him post-mortem in the heat of
+      obituary enthusiasm by more than one local paper. To others he was held up
+      by what is called a Representative Press as a second Crichton. And all
+      this because he was dead. Such is glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All unconscious of these honours, honest Jem Agar sat in his little tent,
+      nibbling the end of his penholder&mdash;the gift, by the way, of his
+      father&mdash;and wishing that he had bought a Letts's diary with six days
+      in a page instead of three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. RELIEVED
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Well waited is well done.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&mdash;hi!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This time some one heard him, and that small, silent man, Ben Abdi, stood
+      in the doorway of the tent at attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you keeping a good look-out down the valley?&rdquo; asked Major Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ee yess, sar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No signs of any one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar shut up the diary, which book Ben Abdi had been taught to regard as
+      strictly official, laid it aside, and passed out of the tent, the little
+      Goorkha following close upon his heels with a quick intelligent interest
+      in his every movement which somehow suggested a dusky and faithful little
+      dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some moments they stood thus on the edge of the small plateau, the big
+      man in front, the little one behind&mdash;alert, with twinkling, beady
+      eyes. Behind them towered a bleak grey slope of bare rock, like a cliff
+      set back at a slight angle, so treeless, so smooth was the face of it. In
+      front the great blue-shadowed valley lay beneath them, stretching away to
+      the south, until in a distant haze the sharp hills seemed to close in and
+      cut it short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perched thus, as it were, upon the roof of the world, these two men looked
+      down upon it all with a calm sense of possession, and to him of the
+      dominant race standing there some thousands of miles from his native land&mdash;alone&mdash;master
+      of this great stretch of an alien shore, there must have come some passing
+      thought of the strangeness of it all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something wrong&mdash;he knew that. His orders had been to press
+      forward and occupy this little ridge, which was vaguely marked on the
+      service maps as Mistley's Plateau, named after an adventurous soul, its
+      discoverer. He had been instructed to hold this against all comers, and if
+      possible to prevent communication between the two valleys, connected only
+      by this narrow pass. All this Agar had carried out to the letter; but some
+      one else had failed somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be three days at the most,&rdquo; his chief had said, &ldquo;and the main
+      body of the advance guard will join you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar had been in occupation a week, and it seemed that he and his
+      little band of men were forgotten of the world. Still this soldier held
+      on, saying nothing to his men, writing his intensely practical diary, and
+      trusting as a soldier should to the <i>Deus ex machina</i> who finally
+      allows discipline to triumph. He looked down into the valley, piercing the
+      shimmer of its hazes with his gentle blue eyes, looking to his chief, who
+      had said, &ldquo;In three days I will join you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not the first time that Agar and the little non-commissioned native
+      officer, Ben Abdi, had stood thus together. They had taken their stand in
+      this same spot in the keen air of the early morning, with the white frost
+      crystallising the stones around them; in the glow of midday; and when the
+      moon, hanging over the sharp-pointed hills, cast the valley into an opaque
+      shade dark and fathomless as the valley of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scanning the distant hills, Agar presently raised his eyes, noting the
+      position of the sun in the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you tried the heliograph a second time this morning?&rdquo; he asked
+      without looking round, which informality of manner warmed the little
+      soldier's heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sar. Three times since breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time that Ben Abdi had found himself in a position of
+      some responsibility, in immediate touch with one of the white-skinned
+      warriors from over seas whose methods of making war had for him all the
+      mystery and the infinite possibilities of a religion. This silent looking
+      out for relief partook in some small degree of the nature of a council of
+      war. Jem Sahib and himself were undoubtedly the chiefs of this
+      expeditionary force, and to whom else than himself, Ben Abdi, should the
+      Major turn for counsel and assistance? The little Goorkha preferred,
+      however, that it should be thus; that Agar Sahib should say nothing,
+      merely allowing him to stand silent three paces behind. He was a modest
+      little man, this Goorkha, and knew the limit of his own capabilities,
+      which knowledge, by the way, is not always to be found in the hearts of
+      some of us boasting a fairer skin. He knew that for hard fighting, snugly
+      concealed behind a rock at two hundred yards, or in the open, with cunning
+      bayonet or swinging kookery, he was as good as his fellows; but for
+      strategy, for the larger responsibilities of warfare, he was well pleased
+      that his superior officer should manage these affairs in his quiet way
+      unaided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During a luncheon more remarkable for heartiness of despatch than delicacy
+      of viand, James Edward Makerstone Agar devoted much thought to the affairs
+      of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress of India. After luncheon he lighted a
+      cheroot, threw himself on his bed, and there reflected further. Then he
+      called to him Ben Abdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more promiscuous shooting,&rdquo; he said to him. &ldquo;No more volley firing at
+      a single Ghilzai or a stray Bhutari. It seems that they do not know we are
+      here, as we are left undisturbed. I do not want them to know&mdash;understand?
+      If you see any one going along the valley, send two men after him; no
+      shooting, Ben Abdi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he pointed with his cheroot towards the evil-looking curved knife
+      which hung at the Goorkha's side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Abdi grinned. He understood that sort of business thoroughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then followed many technical instructions&mdash;not only technical in good
+      honest English, but interlarded with words from a language which cannot be
+      written with our alphabet for the benefit of such as love details of a
+      realistic nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result of this council was that sundry little dusky warriors were busy
+      clambering about the rocky slope all that day and well into the short
+      hill-country evening, working in twos and threes with the <i>alacrity</i>
+      of ants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar, in his own good time, was proceeding to further fortify, as well
+      as circumstances allowed, the position he had been told to hold until
+      relief should come. In addition to the magic of the master's eye he lent
+      the assistance of his strong right arm, laying his lithe weight against
+      many a rock which his men could not move unaided. By the evening the
+      position was in a fairly fortified state, and, after a copious dinner in
+      the chill breeze that rushed from the mountain down to the valley after
+      sunset, he walked placidly up and down at the edge of the plateau,
+      watching, ever watching, but with calmness and no sign of anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such it is to be an Englishman&mdash;the product of an English public
+      school and country life. Thick-limbed, very quiet; thick-headed if you
+      will!&mdash;that is as may be&mdash;but with a nerve of iron, ready to
+      face the last foe of all&mdash;Death, without so much as a wink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his ear came at times the low cautious cry of some night-bird sailing
+      with heavy wing down to the haunt of mouse or mole; otherwise the night
+      was still as only mountain night-seasons are. Far down below him, the
+      jungle and forest were rustling with game and beasts of prey seeking their
+      meat from God, but the larger beasts of India, unlike their African
+      brethren, move in silence, stealthy yet courageous; and the distance was
+      too great for the quickly stifled cry of the victim of panther or tiger to
+      reach him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the moon rose he made the round of his pickets&mdash;a matter of ten
+      minutes&mdash;and then to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning of the ninth day he thought he detected signs of uneasiness
+      in the faces of the men. He found their keen little visages ever turned
+      towards him, watching his every movement, noting the play of every
+      feature. So in his simplicity he practised a simple diplomacy. He hummed
+      to himself as he went his rounds and while he sat over his diary. He only
+      knew one song&mdash;&ldquo;A Warrior Bold&rdquo;&mdash;which every mess in India
+      associated with old Jem Agar, for no evening was considered complete
+      without the Major's one ditty if he were present. He had stood up and
+      roared it in many strange places, quite without sentiment, without
+      self-consciousness, without afterthought. He never thought it a matter of
+      apology that he should have failed to learn another song. The smile with
+      which many ladies of his acquaintance sat down to play the accompaniment
+      <i>by heart</i> conveyed nothing to him. He did not pretend to be a singer&mdash;he
+      knew that one song, and if they liked it he would sing it. Moreover, they
+      did like it, and that was why they asked for it. It did some of them good
+      to see honest Jem get on his legs and shout out, in a very musical voice,
+      with perfect truth to air, what seemed to be a plain statement of his
+      creed of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, far up on Mistley Plateau, nine thousand feet above the level of the
+      sea, Jem Agar advised his little dark-visaged fighters, <i>sotto voce</i>,
+      while he puzzled over his diary, that his love had golden hair, with eyes
+      so blue and heart so true, that none with her compared; moreover, that he
+      didn't care if death were nigh, because he had fought for love, and for
+      love would die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not very deep or very subtle, but it served the purpose. It kept up
+      the hearts of his handful of warriors, who, in common with their chief,
+      had something child-like and simple in their honest, sporting souls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after tiffin Ben Abdi came to the Major's tent, speaking hurriedly
+      in his own tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the men had seen the sunlight gleam on white steel far down in the
+      valley. He had seen it several times&mdash;a long spiral flash, such as
+      the sun would make on a fixed bayonet carried over the shoulder. Such a
+      flash as this will carry twenty miles through a clear atmosphere; the spot
+      pointed out by the sharp-eyed Goorkha was not more than ten miles distant.
+      They stood in a group, this isolated little band, and gazed down into the
+      depth below them. They gazed in vain for some time, then a little murmur
+      of excitement told that the sun had glinted again on burnished steel. This
+      time there were several flashes close together. These were men marching
+      with fixed bayonets through an enemy's country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heliograph,&rdquo; said Agar quietly, without taking his eyes from the spot far
+      down in the valley; and soon the little mirror was flashing out its
+      question over the vale. After a few anxious moments the answering gleam
+      sprang to life among the trees far below. Agar gave a quick little sigh of
+      relief&mdash;that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then followed a short conversation flickered over ten miles of space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you beset?&rdquo; asked the Valley,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the Hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the enemy in sight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the Mountain, again, with a sharp click.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you all well?&rdquo; flashed from below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; from above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; and the glimmer of the bayonets began again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two hours later Major Agar drew his absurd little force in line, and thus
+      they received the relieving column, grimly conscious of dangers past but
+      not forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head of the new-comers rode a little man with a prominent chin and
+      a long drooping nose; such a remarkable-looking little man that the
+      veriest tyro at physiognomy would have turned to look at him again. His
+      black eyes, beaming with intelligence, moved so quickly beneath the steady
+      lashes that it was next to an impossibility to state what he saw and what
+      he failed to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned Agar's salute hurriedly, with a preoccupied air. He wore a
+      quiet uniform tunic almost hidden by black braiding, a pith helmet which
+      had seen brighter days and likewise fouler, and the leg that he threw over
+      his horse's head was cased in riding trousers and a neat little top-boot
+      of brown leather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He slipped from the saddle with a litheness which contrasted strangely
+      with his closely cropped grey hair and white moustache and Imperial. He
+      walked towards Agar's tent after the manner of one who had sat in the
+      saddle for many hours. His spurs clanked with a sharp, business-like ring,
+      and his every movement had that neat finish which indicates the soldier
+      born and bred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wheeling round he faced Agar, who had followed him with a more leisurely
+      gait based on longer legs, looking up keenly into the quiet fair face.
+      Turning he shot his sword home into its scabbard with a click.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you're safe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar awaited for further observations. This was not the man whom he had
+      expected, but another, far greater, far higher up in the military scale&mdash;a
+      man whom he had only met once before, and that at an official reception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing that his guest was unbuckling his sword, he presumed that the task
+      of continuing this conversation lay with himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M' yes!&rdquo; he replied, rubbing his pannikin out clean with the corner of a
+      towel, and proceeding to mix some brandy and water; &ldquo;why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why!&rdquo; answered the little man scornfully, &ldquo;WHY! damn it, sir, Stevenor's
+      command has been cut off by the enemy in force&mdash;massacred to a man.
+      That is why I say 'Thank God, you're safe!' It is more than I expected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. RE-CAST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Our deeds still travel with us from afar, And what, we have been makes us
+      what we are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a momentary pause; then Major Agar spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case,&rdquo; he observed, &ldquo;the British force occupying this country for
+      the last week has consisted of myself and thirty Goorkhas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely so! And it was by the merest chance that I found out that you
+      were here. It was only guesswork at the best. A bazaar report reached me
+      that poor old Stevenor had been cut to pieces. I hate blaming a dead man,
+      but I really don't know what he can have been about. He made some hideous
+      mistake somewhere. We buried him yesterday. On hearing the report, I
+      thought it better to come up myself, having a little knowledge of the
+      country. Brought two companies, and half a squadron to act as scouts. We
+      reached Barkoola yesterday, and found the poor chaps as they had fallen.
+      And some of those carpet-warriors at home say that a black man can't
+      fight! Can't he! Not so much brandy this time, please. Yes, fill it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar set the regulation water-bottle down on his gifted table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the Devil's own luck!&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;While they were burying I
+      missed you from among the officers; and then it struck me that you might
+      have got away before the disaster. We counted the men, and found
+      thirty-four short, so we came on here. By God! what a chap Mistley was! We
+      came here without a check. His maps are perfect!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; admitted Agar, &ldquo;that man knew his business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in his tone that might have been envy or perhaps mere
+      admiration; for this man knew himself to be inferior in many ways to him
+      who had first crossed the mountain pass on which he stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The worst of it is,&rdquo; went on the great officer, &ldquo;that you are telegraphed
+      home as killed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused on the last word, watching its effect. It would seem that,
+      behind the busy black eyes, there was the beginning of a thought hatched
+      within the grey close-cut head which, <i>en fait de têtes,</i> was without
+      its rival in the Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is soon remedied,&rdquo; opined the Major with a cheerful laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye&mdash;es!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The great man was thoughtfully rubbing his chin with the tips of the first
+      and second fingers, drawing in his under lip at the same time, and
+      apparently taking pleasure in the rasping sound caused by the friction
+      over the shaven chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is usually something written in the human countenance&mdash;some
+      single virtue, vice, or quality which dominates all petty characteristics.
+      Most faces express weakness&mdash;the faces that pass one in the streets.
+      Some are the incarnation of meanness, some pleasanter types verge on
+      sensuality. The face of the man who sat watching Agar expressed
+      indomitable, invincible determination, and <i>nothing else</i>. It was the
+      face of one who was ready to sacrifice any one, even himself, to a single
+      all-pervading purpose. In this respect he was a splendid commander, for he
+      was as nearly heartless as men are made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The big fair Englishman who had occupied Mistley's Plateau for a week,
+      exactly one hundred and seventy miles from assistance of any description,
+      and in the heart of the enemy's country, smiled down at his companion with
+      a simple wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got something up your sleeve, sir?&rdquo; he inquired softly, for he knew
+      somewhat of his superior officer's ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; replied the other curtly. &ldquo;A trump card!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued to look at Jem Agar with a cold and calculating scrutiny, as
+      a jockey may look at his horse or a butcher at living meat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like this,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You're dead. I want you to stay dead for a
+      little while&mdash;say six months to a year!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar seated himself on the corner of the table, which creaked under the
+      weight of his spare muscular person, and then, true to his cloth, he
+      awaited further orders; true to his nature, he waited in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a short pause the other proceeded to explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You frontier men,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;are closely watched; we know that. There
+      will be great rejoicing over there, in Northern Europe, over this mishap
+      to Stevenor, although, God knows, he was not a very dangerous man. Not so
+      dangerous as you, Agar. They will be delighted to hear that you are out of
+      the way. Stay out of the way for a year, and during that twelve months you
+      will be able to do more than you could get done in twelve years when you
+      were being watched by them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; answered Agar quietly. &ldquo;Not dead, but gone&mdash;up country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely so; where they certainly will not be on the look-out for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bright black eyes were shining with suppressed excitement. The great
+      man was afraid that his tool would refuse to work under this exacting
+      touch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what about my people?&rdquo; asked Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I will put that right. You see, they have got over the worst of it by
+      this time. It is wonderful how soon people do get over it. They have known
+      it for a week now, and have bought their mourning and all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a look into Agar's face which the little officer did not
+      understand. We never do understand what we could not feel ourselves, and
+      it is not a matter of wonder that the lesser intelligence should foil the
+      greater in this instance. There was a depth in Jem Agar which was beyond
+      the fathom of his keen-witted companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going home,&rdquo; continued General Michael, &ldquo;almost at once. The first
+      thing I do on landing is to go straight to your people and tell them. We
+      cannot afford to telegraph it. Telegraph clerks are only human, and it is
+      worth the while of the newspapers in these days of large circulation to
+      pay a heavy price for their news. We all know that some items, published
+      <i>can</i> only have been bought from the telegraph clerks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar was making a mental calculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;two months before they hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The expression on the face of the little man was scarcely human in its
+      heartless cunning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hardly,&rdquo; he answered carelessly. &ldquo;And when they hear the reason they will
+      admit that the result is worth the sacrifice. It will be the making of
+      you!&mdash;and of me!&rdquo; added the black eyes with a secretive gleam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; went on the General, &ldquo;such a chance as only comes once to a man
+      in his lifetime. I wish I had had it at your age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice was a pleasant one, with that ring of friendliness and
+      familiarity which is usually heard in the tones of an educated Jew; for
+      General Michael was that rare combination, a Jew and a soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like leaving them so long under the mistake,&rdquo; answered Agar, half
+      yielding to authoritative persuasion, half tempted by ambition and a love
+      of adventure. &ldquo;I don't like it, General. The straight thing would be to
+      telegraph home at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the wavering smile that crossed the dark face there was suggested a
+      fine contempt for the straight thing unaccompanied by some tangible
+      advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are they?&rdquo; inquired the General almost affectionately. &ldquo;Who are your
+      people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar walked to the tent door and looked out. There was some clatter of
+      swords going on outside, and as commander of this post it was his duty to
+      know all that was passing. He turned, and standing in the doorway, quite
+      filling it with his bulk, he answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father died three years ago. I have a step-mother and a step-brother,
+      that is all&mdash;besides friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General stooped to loosen the strap of his spur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he said in that attitude, &ldquo;I know you are not a married man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath the brim of the helmet, which he had not laid aside, the Jew's
+      keen black eyes were watching, watching. But they saw nothing; for there
+      is no one so impenetrable as a man with a clear conscience and a large
+      faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My idea was,&rdquo; continued General Michael, &ldquo;that two, or at the most three,
+      people besides you and I be let into the secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three,&rdquo; said Agar, with quiet decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General tacitly allowed this point and passed on with characteristic
+      promptitude to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a man of property?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I inherit my father's place down in Hertfordshire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you why I ask. There are those beastly lawyers to think of. At
+      your death it is to be presumed that the estate comes to your brother. The
+      legal operations must be delayed somehow. I will see to it,&rdquo; he added in a
+      concise, almost snappish way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar smiled, although he was conscious of a vague feeling of discomfort.
+      He was not a highly sensitive or a nervous man, and this feeling was more
+      than might have been expected to arise from an attendance, as it were, at
+      one's own obituary arrangements. The General seemed to be remarkably well
+      informed on these smaller points, and something prompted Jem Agar to ask
+      him if the idea he had just propounded was a suddenly conceived one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the General with a singular pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I once knew a man who did the same thing for a different purpose, but
+      the idea was identical. I do not claim to be the originator.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there was no hitch? It was successful?&rdquo; inquired Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the older soldier in a far-away voice, as if he had
+      mentally gone back to the results of that man's deception. &ldquo;Yes, it was
+      successful. By the way, you say your people live down in Hertfordshire?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I once knew a girl&mdash;long ago, in my younger days&mdash;who married a
+      man called Agar, and went to live in Hertfordshire. The name did not
+      strike me until you mentioned the county. I wonder if the lady is now your
+      step-mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My step-mother's name was Hethbridge,&rdquo; replied Jem Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The same. How strange!&rdquo; said the General indifferently. &ldquo;Well, she has
+      probably forgotten my existence these thirty years. She has one son, you
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Arthur. He is twenty-three&mdash;five years younger than myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shifty black eyes excelled themselves at this moment in rapidity of
+      observation. They seemed to be full of question, of many questions, but
+      none were forthcoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said General Michael indifferently. &ldquo;He is,&rdquo; pursued Jem Agar, &ldquo;a
+      delicate fellow; does nothing; though I believe he is going to be called
+      to the Bar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General, having passed most of his life in India, where men work or
+      else go home, did not take in the full meaning of this; but he was keen as
+      a ferret, and he saw easily that Jem Agar despised his step-brother with
+      that cruel contempt which strong men feel for weak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother's darling?&rdquo; he suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is about it,&rdquo; replied Agar. He was too simple, too innately
+      upright and honest to perceive the infinite possibilities opened up by the
+      fact upon which General Michael had pounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In case you decide to accept my offer,&rdquo; the older man went on, &ldquo;you would
+      wish your stepmother and step-brother to be told?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and one other person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, and another person. You could not limit it to two?&rdquo; urged the
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; replied Agar with a decision which the other was wise enough to
+      consider final. Moreover, the General omitted to ask the name of this
+      third person, urged thereto by one of those strokes of instinct which
+      indicate the genius of the commander of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Michael, moreover, deemed it prudent to carry the matter no
+      further at that moment. He rose from his seat on the bed, stretched his
+      lithe limbs, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this won't do! We must get to work. I propose retreating to-morrow
+      morning at daylight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed out of the tent together and proceeded to give their orders,
+      moving in and out among the busy men. There was a subtle difference in
+      their reception which was perhaps patent to both, though neither deemed it
+      necessary to make any comment. Wherever Agar went the eager little black
+      faces of his Goorkhas met him with a smile or a grin of delight; when
+      General Michael passed by, the dusky features hardened suddenly to a
+      marble stillness, and the beady eyes were all soldier-like attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They feared and loved the one because they felt that there was something
+      in him which they could not understand; they feared and hated the other
+      because his nature was nearer to their own, and they defined the evil in
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover, each had his reputation&mdash;that of General Michael dating
+      from the Mutiny; the other, a younger and a cleaner record.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is considered the proper thing to talk in England of the unvoiced
+      millions of India. No greater mistake could be made. These millions have a
+      voice, but it does not reach to us because they do not raise it. They talk
+      with it among themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had talked of General Michael for thirty years, and all that there
+      was in him had been discussed to its very dregs. Thus their impenetrable
+      faces hardened when he passed, their shadowy secretive eyes looked beyond
+      him with a vacancy which was not the vacancy of dulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. A LAST THROW
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Get place and wealth; if possible, with grace; If not, by any means get
+      wealth and place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daylight broke next morning in a snow-storm, and a thin sprinkling lay
+      over all the hills, clothing them in spotless white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Michael was among the first astir, seeing in person to all the
+      details of the retreat. The men looked in vain towards the tent where
+      their late youthful leader had been wont to sit, nibbling the end of his
+      golden pocket-penholder, wrestling manfully in the throes of literary
+      composition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at last the order was given to strike tents the faces of the rank and
+      file fell like the face of one man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Major James Edward Makerstone Agar had simply disappeared. His limited
+      baggage was attached to the smaller belongings of General Michael, and no
+      explanation was offered by that dreaded officer. To him the cold seemed to
+      be a matter of indifference; for he stood about watching every movement of
+      the men with a supreme disregard for the driving snow or the knife-like
+      wind that whistled over the northern scarp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under his calculating eye they worked to such effect that by nine o'clock
+      the little column was on the downward march. Again General Michael rode
+      through that lone, lorn country lying between India and Russia. Again his
+      melancholy face with keen but hopeless eyes passed through the darksome
+      valleys where, if legend be true, a race as old as his has lived since the
+      children of Abraham set forth to wander over the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For twenty years this man had haunted these vales and hills, seeking, ever
+      seeking, his own aggrandisement and nothing else. Accounted a patriot, he
+      was no patriot; for the homeless blood was mingled in his veins. Held to
+      be a hero by some, he was none; for he hated danger for its own sake, just
+      as some men love it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his lines had been cast in this unpleasant place, from whence flight
+      or retreat was rendered almost impossible, by the laws of discipline and
+      the freak of circumstance. Despite his titles, in face of his great
+      reputation, he knew himself to be a failure, and as he rode southward
+      through the mountain barrier that frowns down over India he was conscious
+      of the knowledge that in all human probability he would never look upon
+      this drear land again. His time was up, he was about to be set on the
+      shelf, life was over. And he had all his powers yet&mdash;all his
+      marvellous quickness at the mastery of tongues, all the restless energy
+      which had urged him on to overrun the race, to dodge and bore and break
+      his stride instead of holding steadily on the straight course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He it was who had discovered Jem Agar's talent for this rough, peculiar
+      soldiering of the frontier. He it was to whom the simple-minded young
+      officer had owed promotion after promotion. General Michael had fixed upon
+      Agar as his last hope&mdash;his last chance of doing something brilliant
+      in this deathly country, which moved with a slowness that nearly drove him
+      mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last attempt was thrown down like a defiance in the face of Fortune;
+      but still the risk was not his own. It never had been. Men had been sent
+      to their certain death by this sallow-faced commander, for no other object
+      than his own aggrandisement. It would almost seem that a just Providence
+      had ever turned away in loathing from the schemes of this man who would
+      have all and risk nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should Jem Agar succeed in the dangerous secret mission on which he had
+      been sent by a subtle underhand pressure of discipline, the glory would
+      never be his. This, under the grasping fingers of General Michael, would
+      never appear to the world as the wonderful individual feat of an intrepid
+      man, but as a masterly stroke of strategy dealt by a great general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael had long ago found out that Jem Agar was the step-son of
+      the woman whom he had wronged in bygone years. But the name failed to
+      touch his conscience, partly because that conscience was not of much
+      account, and partly because time heals all things, even a sore sense of
+      wrong. Truth to tell, he had not thought much of Anna Agar during the last
+      twenty years, and the mere coincidence that this simple tool should be her
+      step-son was insufficient to deter him from making use of Agar. But with
+      that careful attention to detail which in such a man betrayed innate
+      weakness, he took care to make sure that Jem Agar had learnt nothing of
+      the past from the lips of his father's second wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Michael did not disguise from himself the fact that the mission on
+      which he had despatched Jem Agar was what the life insurance companies
+      call hazardous. But he had lived by the sword, and that mode of gaining a
+      livelihood makes men wondrously indifferent to the lives of others.
+      Moreover, this was in a sense a speciality of his. He was getting hardened
+      to the game, and played it with coolness and precision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All through that day the little band retreated through an enemy's country,
+      watchful, alert, almost nervous. There were absurdly few of them&mdash;a
+      characteristic of that frontier warfare which the sallow, silent leader
+      had waged nearly all his life. And in the evening there was not peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortune is a playful soul. She keeps men waiting a lifetime, and then,
+      when it is too late, she suddenly opens both her hands. Seymour Michael
+      had waited twenty years for one of those chances of easy distinction which
+      seemed to fall to the lot of all his comrades in arms. This chance was
+      vouchsafed to him on the last evening he ever passed in an enemy's country&mdash;when
+      it was too late&mdash;when that which he did was no more than was to be
+      expected from a man of his experience and fame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little band was attacked at sunset by the victorious savages who had
+      annihilated the advance column three days earlier, and with half the
+      number of men, fatigued and hungry, Seymour Michael beat them back and cut
+      his way to the south. He knew that it was good, and the men knew it. They
+      looked upon this keen-faced little man as something approaching a
+      demi-god; but they had no love for him as they had for Major Agar. The
+      knowledge was theirs that to him their lives were of no account&mdash;they
+      were not men, but numbers. He brought them out of a dire strait by sheer
+      skill, by that heartless grip of discipline which a true general exercises
+      over his troops even at that critical moment when a common death seems to
+      reduce all lives to an equal value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the thick of it the Goorkhas&mdash;keen little Highlanders of the
+      Indian army&mdash;looked in vain for the fighting light in their leader's
+      eyes. They listened in vain for the encouraging voice&mdash;now low and
+      steady in warning, now trumpet-like and maddening with the infection of
+      excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of that wild, apparently disorderly <i>mêlée</i> in the
+      narrow valley, while the hush of mountain sunset settled over the battle,
+      the leader sat imperturbable, cold, and infinitely wise. He was pale, and
+      his lips were quite colourless, but his eyes were vigilant, ready,
+      resourceful. An ideal general but no soldier. He played this game with a
+      skill that never faced the possibility of failure&mdash;and won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Far overhead, many miles to the northward, a solitary wanderer heard the
+      sound of firing and paused to listen. He was a big man, worthy to be
+      accounted such even among the strapping mountaineers of that district, and
+      as he leant on the long barrel of his quaintly ornamental rifle his
+      sheepskin cloak fell back from a long sinewy arm of deep-brown hue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he listened to the far-off rumble of independent firing he muttered to
+      himself indications of anxiety. Strange to say, the eyes that looked out
+      over the hollow of the gorge-like valley were blue. They were, however,
+      hardly visible through the tangle of unkempt hair and raw wool that fell
+      over his forehead. The high sheepskin cap was dragged forward, and the
+      lower part of his face was almost hidden by the indiscriminate folds of
+      hood, cloak, and scarf affected by the shepherds hereabout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James Agar was perfectly happy. There must have been somewhere in his
+      sporting soul that love of Nature which drives men into solitude&mdash;making
+      gamekeepers and fishermen and explorers of them. It was in this man's
+      character to wait passive until responsibility came to him, when he
+      accepted it readily enough; but he never went out to meet it. He was not
+      as the sons of Levi, who took too much upon themselves; but rather was he
+      happiest when he had only his own life and his own self to take care of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he was now an outcast, an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand raised
+      against him. It was not the first time. For this quiet-going man had
+      unobtrusively learnt many tongues, and, while no one heeded him, he had
+      studied the ways of this Eastern land with no mean success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited there during an hour while the firing still continued, and then,
+      when at last silence reigned again and the wind whispered undisturbed
+      through the dark pines, he turned his wandering footsteps northward to a
+      land where few white men have passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So night fell upon these two men thus hazardously brought together, and
+      every moment stretched longer the distance between them&mdash;James Agar
+      going north, Seymour Michael passing southward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar wondered vaguely whether his toilsome diary would ever reach home,
+      but he was not anxious as to the result of the fight which had evidently
+      taken place in the valley. He too seemed to share the belief of all who
+      came in contact with him that General Michael could not do wrong in
+      warfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night the Master of Stagholme laid him down to rest in the shadow of
+      a big rock, strong in himself, strong in his faith. And as he slumbered,
+      those who slumber not nor cease their toil by day or night sat with
+      crooked backs over a little ticking, spitting, restless machine that spelt
+      out his name across half the world. While the moon rose over the
+      mountains, and looked placidly down upon this strange man lying there
+      peacefully sleeping in a world of his own, two men who had never seen each
+      other talked together with nimble fingers over a thousand miles of wire.
+      And one told the other that James Edward Makerstone was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sleeper slept on. He smiled quietly beneath the moon. Perhaps he
+      dreamt of the home-coming, of that time when he could say at last, &ldquo;I have
+      fought my fight, and now I come with a clear conscience to enjoy the good
+      things given to me.&rdquo; He never dreamt of treason. He never knew that for
+      their own gain men will sacrifice the happiness of their neighbours
+      without so much as a pang of self-reproach. There are some people, thank
+      Heaven, who never learn these things, who go on believing that men are
+      good and women better all their lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. A CARPET KNIGHT
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      First door on the right after passing into New Court, Trinity College,
+      Cambridge, by the river door. It is a small door, leading directly on to a
+      narrow, winding stone staircase. For some reason, known possibly to the
+      architect responsible for New Court (may his bones know no rest!), the
+      ground-floor rooms have a door of their own within the archway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the first floor Arthur Agar, to use the affected phraseology of an
+      affected generation, &ldquo;kept&rdquo; in the days with which we have to deal. What
+      he kept transpireth not. There were many things which he did not keep, the
+      first among these being his money. In these rooms he dispensed an
+      open-handed, carefully considered hospitality which earned for him a
+      certain bubble popularity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are, one finds, always plenty of men (and women too) ready to lick
+      the blacking off one's boots provided always that that doubtful fare be
+      varied by champagne or truffles at appropriate intervals. Men came to
+      Arthur Agar's rooms, and brought their friends. Mark well the last item.
+      They brought their friends. There is more in that than meets the eye.
+      There is a subtle difference between the invitation for &ldquo;Mr. Jones&rdquo; and
+      the invitation for &ldquo;Mr. Jones and friends&rdquo;&mdash;a difference which he who
+      runs the social race may read. If Jones is worth his salt he will discern
+      the difference in a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come to Agar's,&rdquo; one man (save the mark) would say to another.
+      &ldquo;Ripping coffee, topping cigarettes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they went; they drank the ripping coffee, smoked the topping cigarette,
+      and if they happened to be men of stomach ventured on a clinking cigar.
+      Moreover, they were made welcome. Agar was like a vain woman who loved to
+      see a full saloon. And he paid for his pleasure in more honourable coin
+      than many a vain woman has laid down since daughters of Eve commenced
+      drawing fops around them&mdash;namely, the adjectived items of hospitality
+      above mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did not matter much who the guests were, provided that they filled the
+      diminutive room in those spaces left vacant by <i>bric-a-brac</i> and
+      furniture of the spindle-legged description. So the men came. There were
+      freshmen who fell over the footstools and bumped their heads against the
+      painted sabots on the wall containing ever-fresh flowers, as per florist's
+      bill; who were rather over-powered by the profusion of painted photograph
+      frames, fans, and fal-lals. There was the man who sang a comic song and
+      dined out on it at least twice a week. There was the calculating son of a
+      poor North-country parson, who liked coffee after dinner and knew the
+      value of sixpence. There was the man who came to play his own valse, and
+      he who came to hear his own voice, <i>und so weiter</i>. Do we not know
+      them all? Have we not run against them in after-life, despite many
+      attempts to pass by on the other side? The habitual acceptors of
+      hospitality have no objection to crossing the road through the thickest
+      mud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By their rooms ye shall know them,&rdquo; might well, if profanely, be written
+      large over any college gate. Arthur Agar's rooms were worthy of the man.
+      There was, even on the little stone staircase, a faint odour of pastille
+      or scent spray, or something of feminine suggestion. The unwary visitor
+      would as likely as not catch some part of his person against a silk
+      hanging or a lurking <i>portière</i> on crossing the threshold; and the
+      impression which struck (as all rooms do strike) from the threshold was
+      one of oppressive drapery. A man, by the way, should never know anything
+      about drapery or draping. Such knowledge undermines his virility. This is
+      an age of undermining knowledge. We all, from the lowest to the highest,
+      learn many things of which we were better ignorant. The school-board
+      infant acquires French; Arthur Agar and his like bring away from Cambridge
+      a pretty knack of draping chair-backs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were little screens in the room, with shelves specially constructed
+      to hold little gimcracks, which in their turn were specially shaped to
+      stand upon the little shelves. There was a portentous standing-lamp, six
+      feet high in its bare feet, with a shade like a crinoline. There were
+      settees and <i>poufs</i> and <i>des prie-Dieu</i>, and strange things
+      hanging on the wall without rhyme, reason, or beauty. And nowhere a pipe,
+      or a tennis racket, or even a pair of boots&mdash;not so much as a single
+      manly indiscretion in the way of a cricket-bat in the corner, or a
+      sporting novel on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of this the temporary proprietor of the rooms sat
+      disconsolately at an inlaid writing-table with his face buried in his arms&mdash;weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The outer door was shut. Arthur Agar had sported his rare oak, not to work
+      but to weep. It sometimes does happen to men, this shedding of the idle
+      tear, even to Englishmen, even to Cambridge men. Moreover, it was
+      infinitely to the credit of Arthur Agar that he should bury his face in
+      the sleeve of his perfectly-fitting coat thus and sob, for he was weeping
+      (quietly and to himself) the advent of three thousand pounds per annum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At his elbow lay a telegram&mdash;that flimsy pink paper which, with all
+      our progress, all our knowledge, the bravest of us fear still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem killed in India; come home at once.&mdash;AGAR.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Honour to whom honour. Arthur Agar's only thought had been one of sudden
+      horror. He had read the telegram over twice before going out to close his
+      outer door. Then he came back and sat weakly down at the table where he
+      had written more scented notes than noted themes, deliberately, womanlike,
+      to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his credit be it noted that he never thought of Stagholme, which was
+      now his. He only thought of Jem&mdash;his no longer&mdash;Jem the
+      open-handed, elder brother who tolerated much and said little. Having had
+      everything that he wanted since childhood, Arthur Agar had never been in
+      the habit of thinking about money matters. His florist's bills (and
+      Cambridge horticulturists seem to water their flowers with Château
+      Lafitte), his confectioner's account, and his tailor's little note had
+      always been paid without a murmur. Thus, want of money&mdash;the chief
+      incentive to crime and criminal thought&mdash;had never come within
+      measurable distance of this gentle undergraduate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truth to tell, he had never devoted much thought to the future. He had
+      always vaguely concluded that his mother and Jem would &ldquo;do something&rdquo;; and
+      in the meantime there were important matters requiring his attention.
+      There was the <i>menu</i> to prepare for an approaching little dinner.
+      There was always an approaching dinner, and always a <i>menu</i> in
+      execrable French on a satin-faced card with the college arms in a coat of
+      many colours. There was the florist to be interviewed and the arrangement
+      of the table to be superintended; the finishing touch to be given to the
+      floral decoration thereof by the master-hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem's death seemed to knock away one of the supports of the future, and
+      Arthur Agar even in his grief was conscious of the impending necessity of
+      having to act for himself some day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length he lifted his head, and through the intricate pattern of the
+      very newest design in art muslins the daylight fell on his face. It was a
+      face which in France is called <i>chiffonné</i>; but the term is never
+      applied to the visage masculine. A diminutive and slightly <i>retrousse</i>
+      nose, gentle grey eyes of the drowning-fly description, and a sensitive
+      mouth scarcely hidden by a fair moustache of downward tendency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a man made to be ruled all his life&mdash;probably by a woman.
+      With a little more strength it might have been a melancholy face; as it
+      stood, it was suggestive of nothing stronger than fretfulness. There was a
+      vague distress in the eyes and in the whole countenance which mistaken and
+      practical souls would probably put down to a defective digestion or a
+      feeble vitality. More than one enthusiastic disciple of Aesculapius
+      studying at Caius professed to have discovered the evidence of some
+      internal disease in Arthur Agar's distressed eyes; but his complaint was
+      not of the body at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the necessity for action forced itself upon his understanding,
+      and he rose with a jerk. It is worth noting that his first thought was
+      connected with dress. He passed into the inner room and there exchanged
+      his elegant morning suit for a black one, replacing a delicate heliotrope
+      necktie by another of sombre hue. He mentally reviewed his mourning
+      wardrobe while doing so, and gathered much spiritual repose from the
+      diversion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime the Rector of Stagholme, having breakfasted, proceeded to
+      light a cigarette and open the <i>Times</i> with the leisurely sense of
+      enjoyment of one who takes an interest in all things without being keenly
+      concerned in any.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God help us!&rdquo; he exclaimed suddenly; and Mrs. Glynde, who alone happened
+      to be present, dropped a handful of housekeeping money on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, dear?&rdquo; she gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; was the answer; &ldquo;read that. 'Disaster in Northern India.' Not
+      there&mdash;higher up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her eagerness Mrs. Glynde had plunged headlong into the consumption of
+      Wesleyan missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. Then she had to find her
+      glasses, and considerable delay was incurred by putting them on upside
+      down. All this while the Rector sat glaring at her as if in some occult
+      way she were responsible for the disaster in Northern India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last she read the short article, and was about to give a sigh of relief
+      when her eyes travelled to a diminutive list of names appended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;What! Jem! Oh, Tom, dear, this can't be true!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no reason,&rdquo; answered the Rector grimly, &ldquo;to suppose that it is
+      untrue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde was one of those unfortunate persons who seem only to have the
+      power of aggravating at a crisis. In their way they are useful as serving
+      to divert the mind; but they usually come in for more than their need of
+      abuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor little woman laid the newspaper gently down by her husband's
+      elbow, and looked at him with a certain air of grandeur and strength. The
+      instinct that arouses the mother wren to peck at the schoolboy's hand at
+      her nest was strong in this subdued little old lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;must be done. How are we going to tell Dora?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector was a man who never went straight at the fence, before him. He
+      invariably pulled up and rode alongside the obstacle before leaping, and
+      when going for it he braced himself mentally with the reflection that he
+      was an English gentleman, and as such had obligations. But these
+      obligations, like those of many English gentlemen, ceased at his own
+      fireside. He, like many of us, was apt to forget that wife, sister, and
+      daughter are nevertheless ladies to whom deference is due.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;Dora,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;she will have to bear it like the rest of
+      us. But here am I with fresh legal complications laid upon me. I foresee
+      endless trouble with the lawyers and that woman. Why the Squire made me
+      his executor I can't tell. Parsons know nothing of these matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a patient sigh Mrs. Glynde turned away and went to the window, where
+      she stood with her back to him. Even to the duller masculine mind the
+      wonder sometimes presents itself that our women-folk take us so patiently
+      as we are. If Mrs. Glynde had turned upon her husband (who was not so
+      selfish as he would appear), presenting him forthwith in the plainest
+      language at her command with a piece of her mind, the treatment would have
+      been surprising at first, and infinitely beneficial afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Reverend Thomas sat staring into the fire&mdash;a luxury which he
+      allowed himself all through the year&mdash;with troubled eyes. There was a
+      fence in front of him, but he could not bring himself up to it. In his
+      mistaken contempt for women he had never taken his wife fully into his
+      confidence in those things&mdash;great or small, according to the capacity
+      of the producing machine&mdash;which are essentially a personal property&mdash;namely
+      his thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All else he told her openly and at once, as behoved an English gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should he tell all that he had hoped and thought and rethought respecting
+      Jem Agar and Dora? Should he; should he not? And the loving little woman
+      stood there almost daring to break the great silence herself; but not
+      quite. Strong as was her mother's heart, the habit of submission was
+      stronger. She longed, she yearned to hear the deeper, graver tone of voice
+      which had been used once or twice towards her&mdash;once or twice in
+      moments of unusual confidence. The Reverend Thomas Glynde was silent, and
+      the voice that they both heard was Dora's, singing as she came downstairs
+      towards them. It was only a matter of moments, and when we have no more
+      than that wherein to act we usually take the wrong turning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde turned and gave one imploring look towards her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same instant the door opened and Dora entered, singing as she came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;You both look depressed. Stocks
+      down, or something else has gone up? I know! Papa has been made a bishop!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a cheery laugh she went to the table and took up the newspaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. BAD NEWS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Sa manière de souffrir est le témoignage qu'une âme porte sur elle-même.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      There was a horrid throbbing silence while Dora read, and her parents
+      calculated the seconds which would necessarily elapse before she reached
+      the bottom line. Such moments as these are scored up as years in the span
+      of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde did not know what she was doing. It happened that she was
+      trying to rub away a flaw in the window-glass with her pocket
+      hand-kerchief&mdash;a flaw which must have been an old friend, as such
+      things are in quiet lives. At this occupation she found herself when her
+      heart began to beat again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said Dora in a terribly calm voice, &ldquo;that the <i>Times</i>
+      never makes a mistake&mdash;I mean they never publish anything unless they
+      are quite sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the English gentleman of parts who ever and anon peeped out through
+      the veneer of the parson asserted himself&mdash;the English gentleman
+      whose sense of fair play and honour told him that it is better to strike
+      at once a blow that must be struck than to keep the victim waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such is their reputation,&rdquo; answered Dora's father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde turned with that pathetic yearning movement of a punished dog
+      which waits to be called. But Dora had some of her father's sternness, her
+      father's good British reserve, and she never called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning, she walked quietly out of the room. And all the light had gone
+      out of her life. So we write, and so ye read; but do we realise it? It is
+      not many of us who have suddenly to look at life without so much as a
+      glimmer in its dark recesses to make it worth the living. It is not many
+      of us who come to be told by the doctor: &ldquo;For the rest of your existence
+      you must give up eyesight,&rdquo; or, &ldquo;For the remainder of life you must go
+      halt.&rdquo; But these are trifles. Everything is a trifle, if we would only
+      believe it. Riches and poverty, peace and war, fame and obscurity, town
+      and country, England and the backwoods&mdash;all these are trifles
+      compared with that other life which makes our own a living completeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silently she went, and left silence behind her. The Rector was abashed.
+      For once a woman had acted in a manner unexpected by him; for he was
+      ignorant enough of the world to keep up the old fallacy of treating women
+      as a class. True, it was Dora, whom he held apart from the rest of her
+      sex; but still he was left wondering. He felt as if he had been found
+      walking in a holy place with shoes upon his feet&mdash;those gross shoes
+      of Self with which most of us tramp through the world, not heeding where
+      we tread or what we crush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the hardest things we have to bear is the helpless standing by
+      while one dear to us must suffer. When Mrs. Glynde turned round and came
+      towards her husband she had become an old woman. Her face had suddenly
+      aged while her frame was yet in its full strength, and such a change is
+      not pleasant to look on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tom,&rdquo; she said, in a dry, commanding voice, &ldquo;you must go up to the Holme
+      at once and hear what news they have. There may be some chance&mdash;it
+      may please God to spare us yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the Rector meekly; &ldquo;I will go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was lacing his boots with all speed Mrs. Glynde took up the
+      newspaper again, and reread the brief account of the disaster. They were
+      spared comment; that blow came later, when the warriors of Fleet Street
+      set about explaining why the defeat was sustained and why it should never
+      have happened. In due course these carpet tacticians proved to their own
+      satisfaction that Colonel Stevenor was incompetent for the service on
+      which he had been dispatched. But the reek of printing-ink never was good
+      for the better feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In due course the Rector set off across the park; very grave, and
+      distinctly aware of the importance of his mission. He had somewhere in his
+      composition a strong sense of the dramatic, to which the situation
+      appealed. He felt that had he been a younger man he would have stored up
+      many details during the morning's work worthy of reproduction in the
+      narrative form during years to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he reached the great house he was aware that the grim pleasure of
+      imparting bad news was not to be his, for the blinds were all lowered&mdash;a
+      detail likely to receive early attention in a feminine household, for it
+      is only men who can hear of a death without thinking of mourning and the
+      blinds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The butler opened the door and took the Rector's hat and stick with a
+      silent <i>savoir-faire</i> indicative of experience in well-bred grief.
+      His chaste demeanour said as plainly as words that this was right and
+      proper, the Rector being no more than he expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's your mistress?&rdquo; asked Mr. Glynde, who had strong views upon
+      butlers in general and Tims in particular&mdash;said Tims being so sure of
+      his place that he did not always trouble to know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Library, sir,&rdquo; replied Tims in an appropriately sepulchral voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector went to the library without waiting to be announced. He was a
+      man well versed in human nature, as most parsons are, and it is possible
+      that he had caught a glimpse of Mrs. Agar watching his advent from the
+      dining-room window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady of the house was standing by the writing-table when he entered,
+      and beneath her ill-concealed excitement there was something subtly
+      observant, like the glance of an untruthful child, which he never forgot
+      nor forgave, despite his cloth and the impossibilities popularly expected
+      therefrom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;it is you. I have telegraphed for Arthur. I have&mdash;telegraphed
+      for Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a nervous, almost a guilty little laugh, and looked at him with
+      puzzled discomfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; he repeated, looking at her with a cold scrutiny much dreaded of
+      the parish ne'er-do-wells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;it is only natural that I should want him at
+      home in such a time as this&mdash;such a terrible affliction. Besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; suggested the Rector imperturbably, &ldquo;he is now master of
+      Stagholme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; she said, with a simulated surprise which would scarcely have
+      deceived the most guileless Sunday-school teacher. &ldquo;I had not thought of
+      that. I suppose something must be done at once&mdash;those horrid lawyers
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were dancing with breathless excitement. To this woman excitement
+      even in the form of a death was better than nothing. The bourgeois mind,
+      with its love of a Crystal Palace, a subscription dance, or even a
+      parochial bazaar, was unquenchable even after years of practice as the
+      county lady of position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector did not answer. He stood squarely in front of her with a
+      persistence that forced her to turn shiftily away with a pretence of
+      looking at the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a bad business,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That boy ought never to have gone out
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar had her handkerchief ready and made use of it, with as much
+      effect upon Mr. Glynde as might have been produced upon a granite sphinx.
+      There is no man harder to deceive than the innately good and conscientious
+      man of the world who has tried to find good in human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor boy!&rdquo; sobbed the lady. &ldquo;Dear Jem! I could not keep him at home.&rdquo;
+       Thus proving herself a fool, and worse, before those wise eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When occasion demanded Mr. Glynde could wield a very strong silence&mdash;stronger
+      than he thought. He wielded it now, and Mrs. Agar shuffled before it, her
+      eyes glittering with suppressed communicativeness. She was obviously
+      bubbling over with talk relevant and irrelevant, but the Rector had the
+      chivalry to check it by his cold silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause it was he who spoke, in a quiet, unemotional voice which
+      aggravated while it cowed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did you hear this news?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, last night. It was so late that I did not send down. I&mdash;it was
+      so sudden. I was terribly upset.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M&mdash;yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I telegraphed to Arthur first thing this morning,&rdquo; the mistress of
+      Stagholme went on eagerly, &ldquo;and I was just going to write to you when you
+      came in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that nervous desire for corroborative evidence which arouses the
+      suspicion of the observant whenever it appears, Mrs. Agar indicated the
+      writing-table with open blotter and inkstand. Instantly, but too late, she
+      regretted having done so, for a volume playfully called &ldquo;Every Man his own
+      Lawyer&rdquo; lay confessed beside the writing-case, and its home on the
+      bookshelf stared vacantly at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And from whom did you hear it?&rdquo; pursued the Rector, heartlessly looking
+      at the book with an air of recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, from a Mr. Johnson&mdash;at the War Office, or the India Office, or
+      somewhere. I suppose I ought to write and thank him. Let me see&mdash;where
+      is the telegram?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shuffled among the papers on the writing-table, and made the hideous
+      mistake of pushing &ldquo;Every Man his own Lawyer&rdquo; behind the stationery case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here it is!&rdquo; she exclaimed at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long document. Mr. Johnson, not having to pay for telegraphic
+      expenses out of his own pocket, had done his task thoroughly. He stated
+      clearly that the advance column under Colonel Stevenor, Major Agar, and
+      another British officer had been surprised and annihilated. There were no
+      particulars yet, nor could reliable details be expected, as it was quite
+      certain that not one man of the ill-fated corps had survived. General
+      Seymour, added the official, missing out in his haste the commanding
+      officer's surname, had promptly repaired to the scene of the disaster, to
+      punish the victors, and, if possible, recover the effects of the slain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was one of those persons who are incapable of reading a letter
+      or a telegram thoroughly. She was one of those for whose comprehension the
+      wrong end of the story must have been specially created. Had the official
+      put Seymour Michael's name in full, it is probable that in her infantile
+      excitement she would have failed to take it in or to connect it with the
+      man who had wronged her twenty years before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not thought much about that little affair during late years, her
+      feeling for Seymour Michael having settled down into a passive hatred. The
+      longing to do him some personal injury had died away fifteen years before.
+      She was, as a matter of fact, quite incapable of a lasting feeling of any
+      description. Hers was a life lived for the present only. A tea-party next
+      week was of more importance to her than a change in fortune next year.
+      Some people are thus, and Heaven help those whose lives come under their
+      fickle influence!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The one permanent motive of her existence was her son Arthur&mdash;the
+      puny little infant who had been prematurely ushered into a world that
+      seemed full of hatred twenty years before&mdash;and even his image faded
+      from mind and thought before the short Cambridge terms were half expired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment she was thinking less of the death of Jem than of the
+      approaching arrival of Arthur. There must have been something wrong with
+      her mental focus, to which trifles presented themselves as of the first
+      importance, to the obliteration of larger matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is all the news you have had?&rdquo; inquired the Rector, rather
+      hurriedly. He saw Sister Cecilia coming up the avenue, and that lady was
+      for him the embodiment of the combination of those feminine failings which
+      aggravated him so intensely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved towards the door, and standing there he turned, holding up a
+      warning finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be very careful,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You must not consult any lawyer or
+      take any steps in this matter. So far as you are concerned the state of
+      affairs is unchanged. I, as the Squire's executor, am the only person
+      called upon to act in any way if that poor boy has died without making a
+      will. You must remember that your son is under age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that he left her, rather precipitately, for Sister Cecilia, like all
+      busybodies, was a quick walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments Miss Cecilia Harbottle entered the library. She glided
+      forward as if afloat on a depth of the milk of human kindness, and folded
+      Mrs. Agar in an emotional embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Dear Anna, how I feel for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In illustration of this sympathy she patted Mrs. Agar's somewhat flabby
+      hands, and looked softly at her. She could hardly have failed to see a
+      glitter in the bereaved one's eyes, which was certainly not that of grief.
+      It was the gleam of pure, heartless excitement and love of change. But
+      Sister Cecilia probably misread it; for, like all excesses, that of
+      charity seems to dull the comprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, dear,&rdquo; she urged gently, &ldquo;all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How many of us imagine the satisfaction of our own curiosity to be
+      sympathy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Mrs. Agar told her all about it, and presently they sat down, with a
+      view to fuller discussion. There was, however, a point beyond which even
+      Mrs. Agar would not go. This point Sister Cecilia scented with the
+      instinct of the terrier, so keen was her nose in the sniffing of other
+      people's business. When that point was reached a third time she gently led
+      the way over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, with a resigned glance at the curtain poles, &ldquo;one
+      cannot help sometimes feeling that a wise Providence does all for the
+      best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gratifying as this must have been to the power in question, no miraculous
+      manifestation of joy was forthcoming, and Mrs. Agar cunningly confined
+      herself to a non-committing &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a sigh, Sister Cecilia further expatiated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot but think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that Stagholme will be in better hands
+      now. Of course dear Jem was very nice, and all that&mdash;a dear, good
+      boy. But do you not think that Arthur is more suited to the position in
+      some ways?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he is,&rdquo; allowed Mrs. Agar, with ill-concealed pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is,&rdquo; continued Sister Cecilia, with a broader brush, &ldquo;so refined, so
+      gentlemanly, so ideal a country squire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And after that she had no difficulty in supplying herself with
+      information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. ON THIN ICE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? For if it prosper, none
+      dare call it treason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later a gentleman, whose clean-shaven face had a habit of beaming
+      suddenly into a professional smile, was seated at a huge writing-table in
+      his office in Gray's Inn, when a clerk announced to him the arrival of
+      Mrs. Agar, who desired to see him at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg beamed instantaneously, and the clerk, who knew his master,
+      waited until the paroxysm had passed. In the meantime Mrs. Agar was fuming
+      in the waiting-room, wherein lay a copy of the <i>Times</i> and nothing
+      else. The window looked out upon the neatly kept but depressing garden,
+      where five antiquated rooks looked in vain for sustenance. Mrs. Agar
+      watched these intelligent birds, but all her soul was in her ears. She had
+      already set Mr. Rigg down in her own mind as a stupid because, forsooth,
+      he had dared to keep her waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the truth is that they are accustomed to ladies in Gray's Inn,
+      especially ladies in deep mourning, with a chastely important air which
+      seems to demand that advice and sympathy be carefully mingled. <i>Connues</i>,
+      these ladies whose deep crape and quite exceptional bereavement plead (not
+      always dumbly) for a special equity, home-made and superior to any law,
+      and infer that the ordinary foes are in their case more than any gentleman
+      would think of accepting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clerk presently passed into an inner room and fetched therefrom a tin
+      box, upon which were painted in dingy white the letters &ldquo;J. E. M. A.,&rdquo; and
+      underneath &ldquo;Stagholme Estate.&rdquo; This the embryo lawyer carefully wiped with
+      a duster, and set it up on some of its fellows immediately behind Mr.
+      Rigg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no hurry displayed in this scenic arrangement. Mr. Rigg made a
+      practice of keeping ladies, especially those wearing crape, for a few
+      minutes in the waiting-room. It calmed them down wonderfully, and
+      introduced into their mental chambers a little legal atmosphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marks,&rdquo; he said, when that youth was taking his last look round at the <i>mise
+      en scène</i> before, as it were, raising the curtain, &ldquo;eh&mdash;er&mdash;just
+      go round to Corbyn's and get them to make up these pills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the mention of the medicinal term he beamed, as if to intimate that
+      between themselves no secret need be observed that he, Mr. Rigg, was
+      subject to the usual anatomical laws of mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;er&mdash;just call at the fishmonger's as you come back and get
+      a parcel for me, ordered this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; answered the faithful Marks, taking the prescription as if it
+      were a will or a transfer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew his part so well that he moved towards the door and opened it as
+      if Mrs. Agar's existence and attendance in the waiting-room were matters
+      of the utmost indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door was open, so that the lawyer's voice carried well down the
+      passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will see Mrs. Agar now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mrs. Agar was shown in, all bustling with excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Rigg,&rdquo; she said, with some dignity, &ldquo;has Mr. Glynde been here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lawyer beamed again&mdash;literally all over his parchment-coloured
+      face, except the eyes, which remained grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When, my dear madam?&rdquo; he asked, as he brought forward a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, lately&mdash;since my son's death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lawyer opened a large diary, and proceeded to trace back each day with
+      his finger. It promised to be a question of time, this ascertaining
+      whether Mr. Glynde had called within the last week. It was marvellous how
+      well this man of deeds knew his clients. Mrs. Agar had never persevered in
+      any inquiry or project that required time all through her life. Mr. Rigg,
+      behind his disarming smile, could see as far into a crape veil as any man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must have been quite lately,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, leaning forward and
+      trying visibly to read the diary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg turned back a few pages, as if to go over the ground a second
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see!&rdquo; he said leisurely. &ldquo;What was the precise date of the&mdash;er&mdash;sad
+      event?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last Tuesday, the fourteenth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure,&rdquo; reflected Mr. Rigg, fixing his eyes sadly on an engraving of
+      London Bridge in the seventeenth century&mdash;a spot specially reserved
+      for the sadder moments of probate and other testamentary work. &ldquo;Very sad,
+      very sad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he rose with the mental brushing-away of unshed tears of a man who
+      has never yet had time in life for idle lamentation. He turned towards the
+      tin box, jingling his keys in a most practical and business-like way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I presume,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you have come to consult me about the late
+      Captain Agar's will?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was there a will?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Agar, with audible alarm. She had not
+      studied &ldquo;Every Man his own Lawyer&rdquo; quite in vain, although most of the
+      legal technicalities had conveyed nothing whatever to her mind. She did
+      not notice that her question regarding Mr. Glynde had never been answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg turned upon her beaming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no will,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I thought that perhaps you were aware of
+      the existence of one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar's face lighted up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, with ill-concealed delight; &ldquo;I am certain there is no
+      will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed! And why, my dear madam?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;oh, well, because Jem was just the sort of person to forget
+      such matters. Besides, when he left England he was under age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lawyer was looking at her with his usual sympathetic smile spread over
+      his face like an actor's make-up, but his eyes were very keen and clever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he observed, &ldquo;he may have made one out there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think that it is likely,&rdquo; replied the lady, whose small thoughts
+      always came into the world in charge of a very obvious father in the shape
+      of a wish. &ldquo;There are no facilities out there&mdash;no lawyers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are quite a number of lawyers in India,&rdquo; said Mr. Rigg, with sudden
+      gravity. His face was only grave when he wished to fend off laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; persisted Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;I am <i>sure</i> Jem did not make a will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg bowed and resumed his seat. He took up a penholder and smiled,
+      presumably at his own sunny thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was one of those fatuous ladies who think themselves capable of
+      tricking a professional man out of his fee. She had a vague notion that if
+      one asks a lawyer a question the price of his answer is at least six
+      shillings and eightpence. Up to this point in the interview she was
+      serenely conscious of having eluded the fee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presume,&rdquo; she remarked carelessly, in pursuance of this economical
+      policy, &ldquo;that in such a case the property would go unconditionally to the
+      second son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are contingent possibilities,&rdquo; replied the man of subterfuge
+      blandly. He did not mean anything at all, but shrewdly guessed that Mrs.
+      Agar would not credit him with so simple a design.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady smiled in a subtly commiserating manner, indicative of the fact
+      that on some family matters the ignorance of all except herself was
+      somewhat pitiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;as regards the present case, I know perfectly well
+      that both Jem and his father would wish everything to go to Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was picking a thread from the corner of her jacket with an air of
+      nonchalance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg was silent. He had some thirty years before this period given up
+      attaching importance to the wishes of the deceased as interpreted by
+      disinterested survivors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And <i>I</i> should imagine that the necessary transfers&mdash;and&mdash;and
+      things would be much better put in hand at once. Delay seems to me quite
+      unnecessary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused for Mr. Rigg's opinion&mdash;quite a friendly opinion, of
+      course, without price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; said that lawyer, driven into a corner at last, &ldquo;but are you
+      consulting me on behalf of the late Squire's executor, Mr. Glynde, or on
+      your own account?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; replied Mrs. Agar, drawing herself up with a deprecating little
+      laugh, &ldquo;I did not intend it to be a consultation at all. I happened to be
+      passing, that was all. You see, Mr. Rigg, Mr. Glynde does not know
+      anything about these matters. Clergymen are so stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems to be afraid,&rdquo; Mr. Rigg was reflecting behind his pleasant mask,
+      &ldquo;of the young man coming alive again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was like a child in many ways, more especially in her unbounded
+      belief in her own cunning. She actually imagined herself to be a match for
+      this man, who had been trained in the ways of duplicity all his life. She
+      saw nothing of his mind, and fatuously ignored the fact that from the
+      moment she had entered the room he had begun the interview with a mental
+      hypothesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This woman,&rdquo; he had reflected, &ldquo;has always hated her step-son. She got
+      him a commission in an Indian regiment for the primary purpose of getting
+      him out of the way while she saved money on her life-interest in the
+      estate for her second son. The secondary purpose was little more than a
+      hope. She hoped for the best. The best has come off, and she is not clever
+      enough to let things take their course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every word Mrs. Agar had uttered, every silence, every glance had gone to
+      confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He did
+      not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor in
+      the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to
+      probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the
+      elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one
+      domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law.
+      And in one as in the other the finer susceptibilities grow dull. The
+      doctor almost forgets the pain he inflicts. The lawyer gradually loses his
+      sense of right and wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rigg was an honest man&mdash;as honesty is understood in the law. He
+      was keenly alive to all the motives of this woman, who, in the law of
+      humanity, was a criminal. He had started from a lawyer's standpoint&mdash;<i>id
+      est</i>, personal advantage. &ldquo;To whose advantage?&rdquo; they ask, and there
+      they assign the action. But Mr. Rigg was also a good lawyer, and therefore
+      he kept his own counsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things must be allowed,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to take their course. You know, Mrs.
+      Agar, we are proverbially slow in moving, but we are sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now it happened that this was precisely the position assumed by Mr.
+      Glynde, whose respect for legal routine was enormous. He rarely moved in
+      any matters wherein the law could by hook or crook be introduced without
+      consulting Mr. Rigg, whom he vaguely called his &ldquo;man.&rdquo; And it was
+      precisely this delay that Mrs. Agar disliked. She had no definite reason
+      for so doing; but this stroke of good fortune presented itself to her mind
+      more in the light of an opportunity to be seized than as a just
+      inheritance to be thankfully received in its due time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was awake to the fact that Arthur was not the man to seize any
+      opportunity, however obviously it might be thrust into his grasp, and her
+      knowledge of the world tended to exaggerate its dishonesty in her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia and she had talked this matter over with that small modicum
+      of learning which is a dangerous thing, and they had arrived at the
+      conclusion that Mr. Glynde was not competent to carry out the duties thus
+      suddenly thrust upon him. Wrapped up as was her heart in the welfare of
+      her weakling son, the one lasting motive of her life had been to secure
+      for him the largest possible portion of earthly goods. Now that success
+      seemed to be within measurable distance, she gave way to the baneful panic
+      of the weak conspirator, and fancied that the whole world was allied
+      against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not keep her fingers off &ldquo;Every Man his own Lawyer,&rdquo; and
+      consulted that boon to the legal profession to such good effect that she
+      placed a handsome fee in the pocket of one of its brightest ornaments at
+      the earliest opportunity. Mr. Rigg continued to beam and to keep his own
+      counsel, merely notifying that things must be allowed to take their own
+      course, and presently he bowed Mrs. Agar out of his office, dissatisfied,
+      and with an uncomfortable feeling of having been somewhat indiscreet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur was waiting for her in a hansom cab in Holborn, and with a sigh of
+      relief they drove westward to a shop in Regent Street to order a supply of
+      the newest procurable mode of signifying grief on paper and envelopes.
+      Arthur Agar was an expert in such matters, and indeed both mother and son
+      were more at home in the graceful pastime of spending money than in the
+      technicalities of making or keeping the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur was already beginning to taste the sweetness of his adversity, and
+      being intensely sensitive to the influence of those with whom he happened
+      to be at the moment, he was already beginning to look back with mild
+      surprise to the first burst of grief to which he had given way on hearing
+      that Jem was killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <i>There is one that keepeth silence and is found wise.</i>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia received&mdash;nay, she almost welcomed&mdash;the news of
+      Jem Agar's death in an intensely Christian spirit. She looked upon it in
+      the light of a chastening-a sort of moral cold bath, unpleasant at the
+      time, but cleanly and refreshing in its effect. Intense goodness and
+      virtue of the jubby-jubby order seem frequently to produce this result.
+      Trouble&mdash;provided that it be not personal&mdash;is elevated to a
+      position which it was never intended to occupy by an all-seeing
+      Providence. There are some people who step into the troubles of others as
+      into the chastening bath above referred to, and splash about. They pretend
+      to feel deeply bereavements which cannot reasonably be expected to affect
+      them, and go about the world with a well-scrubbed air of conscious virtue,
+      saying in manner if not in words, &ldquo;Look at me; my troubles compass me
+      about, but my innate goodness enables me to take them in the proper spirit
+      and to be cheerful despite all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was precisely Sister Cecilia's attitude towards her small world of
+      Stagholme, after the news of the young Squire's death had cast a gloom
+      over the whole neighbourhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she would say to some honest cottage mother who had more true
+      feeling in her rough little finger than Sister Cecilia possessed in her
+      whole heart. &ldquo;These trials are sent to us for our good. The ways of
+      Providence are strange, Mrs. Martin&mdash;strange to us now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, miss; that they be,&rdquo; Mrs. Martin replied, looking at her with the
+      hard and far-seeing gaze of a poor mother who has known trouble in its
+      least romantic form. And Sister Cecilia, with that blindness which comes
+      from systematically closing the eyes to the earthly side of earthly
+      things, never realised that the small change of sympathy is often slightly
+      aggravating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this period she took to calling Jem Agar her &ldquo;poor boy.&rdquo; The grave
+      seems to have the power of completely altering the past, and with persons
+      of the stamp of Sister Cecilia death appears not only to wipe out all sin,
+      but to impair the memory of the living to such an extent that the
+      individuality of the deceased is no longer recognisable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem never had in any sense of the word been her boy. His feelings for her
+      had passed from the distrust of childhood to the lofty contempt of a
+      schoolboy for all things preternaturally virtuous, finally settling down
+      into the more tolerant contempt of manhood. The dead, however, have
+      perforce to accept much affection which they scornfully refused in life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Jem!&rdquo; said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar the day after that lady's
+      visit to Gray's Inn. &ldquo;I always thought that perhaps he and dear Dora would
+      come to&mdash;to some understanding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stirred her tea with patient, suffering head inclined at a resigned
+      angle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think there <i>was</i> any understanding between them?&rdquo; inquired
+      Mrs. Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;I should not like to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which, being translated, meant that she would like to say, but did not
+      know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had always been a pet scheme of Mrs. Agar's that Dora should marry
+      Arthur; firstly, because she would have nearly two thousand pounds a year
+      on the death of her parents; and, secondly, because she was a capable
+      person with plenty of common-sense. These two adjuncts&mdash;namely, money
+      and common-sense&mdash;Mrs. Agar wisely looked for in candidates for the
+      flaccid hand of her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try and find out,&rdquo; said Sister Cecilia after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar said nothing. She was meditating over this last stroke of fate
+      in favour of her scheme, and her thoughts were disturbed by that distrust
+      in the continuance of good fortune which usually spoils the enjoyment of
+      the unscrupulous in those good things which they have obtained for
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Sister Cecilia took it for granted that she was doing the will of the
+      mistress of Stagholme when she wrote a note that same evening inviting
+      Dora to have tea with her the following afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the hour appointed Dora arrived, and was duly shown into the little
+      cottage drawing-room, of which the decoration hovered between the avowedly
+      devout and the economo-aesthetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia swept down upon her with a speechless emotion which, in the
+      nature of things (and Sister Cecilia), could not well be of long duration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;God will give you strength to bear this awful
+      trial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora recovered her breath and re-arranged her crushed habiliments before
+      inquiring, with just sufficient feeling to save her from downright
+      rudeness, &ldquo;What is the matter; has something else happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia drew back. She was vaguely conscious of having run mentally
+      against a brick wall. There was something new and unusual about Dora which
+      she could not understand&mdash;something, if she could only have seen it,
+      suggestive of the quiet, strong man in whose honour the whole parish wore
+      mourning. But Sister Cecilia was not a subtle woman. She had had so little
+      experience of the world, of men and of women, that she fell easily into
+      the error of thinking that they were all to be treated alike and with
+      equal success by little maxims culled from fourpenny-halfpenny devotional
+      books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, dear,&rdquo; she exclaimed; &ldquo;I was referring to our terrible loss. My heart
+      has been bleeding for you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very kind, I'm sure,&rdquo; said Dora quietly; &ldquo;I forgot that I had not
+      seen you since the news reached us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that her self-control cost her more than she suspected. Her
+      lips were drawn and dry. She wore a thick veil, which she carefully
+      abstained from lifting above the level of her eyes. &ldquo;I am sure,&rdquo; moaned
+      Sister Cecilia, &ldquo;it has been a most trying time for us all. I wonder that
+      Mrs. Agar has borne up so bravely. Her health is wonderful, considering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora sat looking straight in front of her. She was withdrawing her gloves
+      slowly. Her face was that of a person whose mind was made up for the
+      endurance of an operation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The twaddling voice, the characteristic reference to health, were
+      intensely aggravating. There are some women who talk of their own health
+      before the dead are buried. They do not seem to be able to separate grief
+      from bodily ill. Clad in crape, they rush to the seaside, and there,
+      presumably because grief affects their legs, they hire a man to wheel
+      themselves and Sorrow in a bath-chair. Why&mdash;oh, why! does bereavement
+      drive women into bath-chairs on the King's Road, or the Lees, or the Hoe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderful!&rdquo; said Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia, busying herself with the teapot, proceeded to blow her own
+      trumpet with the bare-facedness of true virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been with her constantly,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I think it is better for us
+      all to tell of our grief; I think that we are given speech for that
+      purpose. For although one may only be able to offer sympathy and perhaps a
+      little advice, it is always a relief to speak of one's sorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it is,&rdquo; admitted Dora from her strong-hold of reserve, &ldquo;for
+      some people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; exclaimed Sister Cecilia, all heedless of the sarcasm. For
+      extreme charity is proof against such. It covers other things besides a
+      multitude of sins. Wielded foolishly it runs amuck like a too luxuriant
+      creeper, and often kills commonsense. &ldquo;And that is why I asked you to
+      come, dear. I thought that you might want to confide in some one&mdash;that
+      you might want to unburden your heart to one who feels for you as if this
+      sorrow were her own&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only one piece of sugar, thank you,&rdquo; interrupted Dora. &ldquo;Thank you. No.
+      Bread and butter, please. It is very kind of you, Sister Cecilia. But, you
+      see, when I have any unburdening to do there is always mother, and if I
+      want any advice there is always father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear. But sometimes even one's parents are not quite the persons to
+      whom one would turn in times of grief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; observed Dora, without much enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unconsciously Sister Cecilia was doing the very best thing possible for
+      Dora, She was arousing in her the spirit of antagonism&mdash;hardening a
+      stricken heart, as it were, by a fresh challenge. She was teaching Dora to
+      fight for what we learn to deem most sacred&mdash;namely, the right to
+      monopolise our own thoughts and feelings. Sister Cecilia is not, one may
+      assume, the only good woman in the world who cannot draw a definite line
+      between sympathy and mere curiosity. With many the display of sympathy is
+      nothing but a half-conscious bait to attract a shoal of further details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Self-reliance was lurking somewhere in this girl's character, but it had
+      never been developed by the pressure of circumstances. Reserve she had
+      seen practised by her father, but the actual advantages thereof were only
+      now beginning to be apparent to her. The body, we are told, adapts itself
+      to abnormal circumstances; so is it with the mind. Already Dora was
+      beginning, as they say at sea, to find her feet; to take that stand amidst
+      her environments which she was forced to hold, practically alone,
+      thereafter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Sister Cecilia, with that blind faith in a good motive which gives
+      almost as much trouble as actual vice, floundered on in the path she had
+      mapped out for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, dear,&rdquo; she said, looking out of the window with a sentimental
+      droop of her thin, inquisitive lips, &ldquo;I cannot help feeling that this&mdash;this
+      terrible blow means more to you than it does to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; inquired Dora practically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia was silent, with one of those aggravating silences which do
+      not allow even the satisfaction of a flat contradiction. A meaning silence
+      is a coward's argument. She was beginning to feel slightly nervous before
+      this child, ignorant that childhood is not always a matter of years and
+      calendar months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Dora again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia looked rather bewildered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear, I thought perhaps&mdash;I always thought that my poor boy
+      entertained some feeling&mdash;you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Dora, borrowing for the moment her father's most crushing
+      deliberation of manner, &ldquo;I cannot say I do. When you say your 'poor boy,'
+      are you referring to Jem?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia assented with a resigned nod worthy of the very earliest
+      martyr.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, as every one has discovered so many virtues in him&mdash;quite
+      suddenly&mdash;we had better emulate one of them, and have at the least
+      the good feeling to hold our tongues about any feelings he may have
+      entertained. Do you not think so, Sister Cecilia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear, I only thought to act as might be best for you,&rdquo; said the
+      well-intentioned meddler, with the drawl of the professionally
+      misunderstood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no doubt of that,&rdquo; returned Dora, with an equanimity which was
+      again strangely suggestive of Jem Agar. &ldquo;But in future you will be
+      consulting my welfare much more effectively by refraining from action on
+      my behalf at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you will, dear; as you will,&rdquo; in the hopeless tone of age, experience,
+      and wisdom forced to stand idle while youth and folly rush headlong down
+      the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; returned Dora calmly; &ldquo;I know that, thank you. And now, I think, we
+      had better change the subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The subject was therefore changed; but Sister Cecilia, having, as it were,
+      whetted her appetite for details, was not at her ease with other food for
+      the mind, and presently Dora left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl went back into her small world with a new knowledge gained&mdash;the
+      knowledge that in all and through all we are really quite alone. There can
+      be only one companion, and if that one be absent, there are only so many
+      talking-machines left to us. And many of us pass the whole of our lives in
+      conversation with them. So it is; and we know not why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a subtle way she felt stronger for this little tussle&mdash;a fight is
+      always exhilarating. She felt that from henceforth the memory of Jem was
+      hers, and hers alone, to defend and to cherish. It was not much of a
+      consolation. No. But then this is a world of small mercies, where some of
+      us get an hour or some mean portion of a day when we want a lifetime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. THE TOUCH OF NATURE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A sense, when first I fronted him, Said, &ldquo;Trust him not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After successfully carrying through the purchase of mourning stationery
+      and attending to other important items connected with sorrow in its
+      worldly shape, Arthur Agar went back to Cambridge. There was enough of the
+      woman in his nature to enable him to cherish grief and nurse it lovingly,
+      as some women (not the best of them) do. In this attitude towards the
+      world there was none of that dogged going about his business which
+      characterises the ordinary man from whose life something has slipped out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wandered by the banks of the Cam with mourning in his mien, and his
+      cherished friends took sympathetic coffee with him after Hall. They spoke
+      of Jem with that fervid admiration which University men honestly feel for
+      one a few years their senior who has already &ldquo;done something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A ripping soldier&rdquo; they called him and some of them entertained serious
+      doubts as to whether they had done wisely in choosing the less glorious
+      paths of peace. And Arthur Agar settled down into the old profitless life,
+      with this difference&mdash;that he could not dine out, that he used
+      blackedged notepaper, and that his delicate heliotrope neckties were
+      folded away in a drawer until such time as his grief should be assuaged
+      into that state of resignation technically called half-mourning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon well towards the end of the term Arthur Agar's &ldquo;gyp&rdquo; crept
+      in with that valet-like confidential air which seems to be bred of too
+      intimate a knowledge of the extent of one's wardrobe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a gentleman, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;as wants to see you. But in no wise
+      will he give his name, which, he says, you don't know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he selling engravings?&rdquo; asked Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;gyp&rdquo; looked mildly offended. As if he didn't know that sort!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. Military man, I should take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar had met the Scotch Balaclava veteran in his time too. He
+      hesitated, and the &ldquo;gyp,&rdquo; who felt that his reputation was at stake,
+      spoke:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is eminently a gentleman, sir,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, show him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later a man who might have been the wandering Jew <i>fin de
+      siècle</i> stood in the doorway. His smart military moustache was small
+      and evidently trimmed, his face was sunburnt, and in his eyes there
+      gleamed the restlessness of India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed, and awaited the exit of the man. Then, coming forward, he was
+      able for the first time to see Arthur Agar's face distinctly, and his
+      glance wavered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Arthur Agar was staring at him with something in his face
+      that was almost strong. When this man had entered the room, Arthur felt
+      his heart give one great bound which almost choked him. There was a
+      strange physical feeling of vacuity in his breast which seemed to paralyse
+      his breathing powers, and his temples throbbed painfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar's life had been passed in eminently pleasant places. The seamy
+      side of existence had always been carefully hidden from his eyes. He
+      therefore did not recognise this strange sense which had leapt into his
+      being&mdash;the sense of superhuman, physical, mortal revulsion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was divided between two instincts. One side of his nature urged him to
+      shriek like a woman. Had he followed the other, he would have rushed at
+      this man, whom he had never seen before, seeking to do him bodily harm. He
+      would not have paused to reason that in anything like a struggle he would
+      stand no chance against the sinewy, dark-eyed soldier who stood watching
+      him. For there are moments even in this age of self-suppression when we do
+      not pause to think, when he who cannot swim will leap into deep water to
+      save another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This sudden unreasoning hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed to
+      stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease
+      lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the
+      spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. The stranger it was
+      who spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presume,&rdquo; he said, with a pleasant smile, in a voice so musical that
+      his hearer breathed suddenly as if his head had been lifted from water, &ldquo;I
+      presume that you are Mr. Arthur Agar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he spoke he looked past Arthur, out of the silken-draped window. He
+      did not seem to like the glance of this young man, for even the most
+      practical of us have a conscience at times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The new-comer laid his walking-stick on the table, and turned to make sure
+      that the door was closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew your step-brother,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;Jem Agar, in India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the instinct of the gentleman and the host asserted itself over and
+      above the throbbing hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Will you sit down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger took the proffered chair and laid aside his hat. But neither
+      of them was at ease. There was a subtle suggestion that they had met
+      before and quarrelled&mdash;vague, unreasoning, quite impossible if you
+      will; but it was there. They were as men meeting again with a past between
+      them (too full of strong passions ever to be forgotten) which each was
+      trying in vain to ignore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought home a few belongings of his,&rdquo; the stranger went on to
+      explain. &ldquo;Just a port-manteau with some clothes and things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, and drew a small packet from the pocket of a covert-coat which
+      he carried over his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;are some papers of his&mdash;a diary and one or two
+      letters. The rest of the things are at my hotel in town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur took the packet, and, still in the same dreamy, unreal way, opened
+      it. He turned to the last entry&mdash;dated six weeks back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got out of bed at five, but nothing to be seen in the valley. I feel a
+      bit chippy this morning. If nothing turns up to-day shall begin to feel
+      uneasy. The men seem all right. They are plucky little fellows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a self-consciousness about Jem Agar's diary, a selection of the
+      right word, which conveyed nothing to Arthur. But it fell into other hands
+      later on, where it was understood better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Michael was watching the undergraduate with the same critical
+      attention which he had brought to bear on the writer of the diary not two
+      months before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you see much of your step-brother?&rdquo; he asked abruptly, feeling his
+      way towards his purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur looked up. He was getting accustomed to the loathing that he felt
+      for this man, as one gets accustomed to an evil odour or a physical pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw enough of him to be very fond of him,&rdquo; he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your mother&mdash;was she attached to him? Excuse my asking; I have a
+      reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little pause was enough. Seymour Michael had expected as much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had never forgiven Mrs. Agar the insults she heaped upon his head in
+      the drawing-room of Jaggery House. It is very difficult to bring shame
+      home to a Jew, and on that occasion this son of the modern Ishmaelites had
+      been thoroughly ashamed of himself. The sting of that past ignominy was
+      with him still, and would remain within his heart until such time as he
+      could revenge himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With that mean, underhand watchfulness for an opportunity which is almost
+      excusable in one of the unfortunates against whom every man's hand is
+      raised to-day, he had never parted with his thirst for revenge. The moment
+      seemed propitious. It was within his power to lay for Anna Agar one of
+      those spiteful feminine traps of which a woman can only fully appreciate
+      the sting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He determined to leave Mrs. Agar in ignorance of the real facts respecting
+      her step-son. His vengeance was to allow her to rejoice&mdash;almost
+      openly, as she did&mdash;in the stroke of fortune by which her own son,
+      Arthur, had become possessed of Stagholme. He knew the woman well enough
+      to foresee that in a hundred ways she would heap up ignominy, meanness,
+      deception, which would crumble in one vast wreck about her head when Jem
+      Agar returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a vengeance worthy of the man, and spiteful enough to be fully
+      comprehended by its victim. But, like others handling petards, Seymour
+      Michael grew somewhat careless, and forgot that the wrong man is sometimes
+      hoist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew his position well enough to make all safe as regarded Jem Agar on
+      his return. It was absolutely necessary to tell Arthur Agar&mdash;necessary
+      for his own safety in the future. The other two persons to whom the secret
+      was to be imparted were Mrs. Agar and Dora Glynde. From Mrs. Agar Seymour
+      Michael determined to withhold the news for his own reasons. Dora was to
+      be kept in the dark because she was a woman, and therefore unsafe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the plan in its original shape with which Michael sought out
+      Arthur Agar at his rooms in college at Cambridge. It was further assisted
+      and elaborated by a circumstance which the originator could scarcely have
+      been expected to foresee&mdash;the fact of Arthur Agar's love for Dora,
+      which was at this time beginning to take to itself a definite existence.
+      It began, as all love does, with a want more or less elevated according to
+      the nature of the wanter. Arthur Agar required some one for whom to buy
+      those small and feminine luxuries which he could not for manly shame
+      purchase to himself. He delighted in spending money in those
+      establishments tersely called <i>magasins de luxe</i> in the country from
+      whence their contents do emanate. He therefore got into the habit of
+      &ldquo;picking up little things&rdquo; for Dora, with the result that she in her turn
+      picked up that very small object, his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael had seen enough of Arthur Agar during this short interview to
+      endow him with the same need of contempt which he had entertained towards
+      Anna Agar, the mother. The strong personal resemblance, the obvious
+      weakness of the boy's face, and, above all, that sense of having the upper
+      hand, which makes brave men out of cowards, gave him confidence. It seemed
+      that he had only to play the cards thrust into his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;Jem Agar very well. He was a peculiar man: very
+      quiet, very reserved, and just the man to make a difficult position rather
+      more difficult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur's intelligence was not keen enough to follow the drift of this
+      remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hinted to me once or twice,&rdquo; went on Seymour Michael, &ldquo;that things
+      were not very harmonious at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not aware of it,&rdquo; answered Arthur, whose innate gentlemanliness
+      told him that this should be held sacred ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General shifted his position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was a first-rate soldier,&rdquo; he said warmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was obvious to both that they were not getting on. Something seemed to
+      hold them both back, paralysing the <i>savoir-faire</i> which both had
+      acquired in their intercourse with the world. Seymour Michael was puzzled.
+      He was not afraid of this boy. He knew himself to be stronger&mdash;capable
+      of over-mastering him entirely. But for the first time in his life he felt
+      awkward and ill at ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar only wanted this man to go. He felt that he could forego the
+      news which he must undoubtedly be in a position to give if only he could
+      be rid of this hated presence. At moments the loathing came to him again,
+      like a cold hand laid upon his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you with him,&rdquo; inquired the undergraduate, &ldquo;at the time of his&mdash;death?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I was at head-quarters, forty miles to the rear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause, then suddenly Seymour Michael leant forward with
+      his two hands on the table that stood between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Agar,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;are you able to keep a secret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; answered Agar apprehensively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I am going to tell you something which you must swear by all that
+      you hold most sacred to keep a strict secret until such time as I give you
+      leave to reveal it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur looked at him with a vague fear in his face. It seemed suddenly as
+      if this man had always been in his life&mdash;as if he would never go out
+      of it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not sure that I care to hear it,&rdquo; he wavered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must hear it. Almost the last words that Jem Agar spoke to me were
+      requesting me to tell you this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You promise that that is true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur was surprised at his own suspicions. It was so unlike him, whose
+      nature, too weak to compass vice, had never allowed the suspicion of vice
+      or deceit in others to trouble him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise,&rdquo; replied Seymour Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur gathered himself together for an effort. His distrust of this man
+      was almost a panic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell me,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael leant back in his chair, fixing his pleasant eyes on Arthur's pale
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The estate is not yours,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Your step-brother, Jem Agar, is not
+      dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not dead!&rdquo; repeated Arthur, without any joy in his voice. &ldquo;Not dead! Then
+      who are you? Tell me who you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! That I cannot tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Seymour Michael sat smiling quietly on Anna Agar's son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes ill deeds done!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is a wise liar who makes use of the truth at times. Seymour Michael was
+      clever enough to stay his fantastic tongue in his further explanation to
+      Arthur Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a long story,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and in order to fully state the case to
+      you I must go into some matters of which perhaps you have heard little. Do
+      you happen to be anything of a politician? Are you, I mean, interested in
+      foreign affairs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur confessed that he knew nothing of foreign affairs, a fact of which
+      Michael had become fully aware on entering the narrow-minded,
+      characteristic room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You perhaps know,&rdquo; Seymour Michael went on, in a tone of which the
+      sarcasm was lost upon its victim, &ldquo;that Russia is living in hopes of some
+      day possessing India?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;ah&mdash;yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar was obviously not at all interested. There were so many things
+      of a similar nature to be remembered&mdash;things which did not really
+      interest him&mdash;and those nearer home had precedence in his mind. He
+      knew, for instance, that Trinity Hall lived in hopes of heading the river
+      that year, and that the Narcissus Club were going to give a
+      narcissus-coloured dance in May week, at which entertainment even the
+      jellies were to be yellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General now launched into an explanation, couched carefully in
+      language suitable to his hearer's limited knowledge of the facts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Russia,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is now so large that, unless they make it larger still
+      and get tropical resources to draw upon, it will fall to pieces. They want
+      India. Some day there will be a fight, a very large fight. But not yet. In
+      the meantime it is a question of learning every inch of that country where
+      the battle-fields will be, and every thought in the minds of those men who
+      will look on at the fight. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, recollecting that the fame of his own name might have
+      penetrated even to this out-of-the-way spot. &ldquo;Some of us have been at this
+      all our lives. Over there, on the Frontier, there are certain numbers of
+      us, on both sides, playing a very deep game. Your brother is one of the
+      players, a prominent man on the field; a half-back, one might call him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a strong temptation to continue the allegory&mdash;to say that
+      he himself was goal-keeper; but Seymour Michael was one of the few men who
+      can in need make even their own vanity subservient to convenience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We watch each other,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;like cats. We always know where the
+      others are, and what they are doing. Your brother was one of the most
+      closely watched by the other side. For some time we have been aware of an
+      influence at work with a tribe of Hillmen who have hitherto been friendly
+      to us, and we have not been able to find what this influence is, or how it
+      is brought to bear upon them. We were so closely watched that we could not
+      penetrate to the affected country. But at last the chance came. Your
+      brother was gazetted as killed. We allowed the report to remain
+      uncontradicted. We let the other side think that Jem Agar was dead, and
+      therefore incapable of doing any more harm, and now he has gone up into
+      that country to find out what they are after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said. He was rather vague about it all, and had not quite
+      realised yet that this was all true, that this man whom he still hated and
+      distrusted without any apparent reason was real and living, speaking to
+      him in real waking life and not in a dream. Moreover, he had not nearly
+      realised that Jem was alive. The evidence of his own black clothes, of the
+      sombre-edged stationery, of his mourning habit of life this term, was too
+      strong upon a mind like his to be suddenly thrown aside. Perhaps he had
+      discovered that the consolation of inheritance was greater than was at
+      first apparent. In six weeks he had slipped very comfortably into Jem's
+      shoes, and it seemed only right and proper that his life should have a
+      background of the noble proportions of Stagholme. Also, now Stagholme
+      meant Dora; for he was worldly-wise enough to know that his own personal
+      value in the world's estimation had undergone a great change in six short
+      weeks. He knew that the man with the money usually wins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would almost seem that Seymour Michael divined his thoughts, at least
+      in part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are two reasons,&rdquo; he went on to say, &ldquo;why absolute secrecy is
+      necessary; first, for Agar's own sake. He is, of course, in disguise. No
+      one suspects that he is there, and that is his only safeguard in the
+      country where he is. Secondly&mdash;but I want your whole attention,
+      please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am listening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael leant forward and emphasised his remark by tapping on the
+      table with his gloved finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mission is so extremely dangerous that it comes almost to the same
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; inquired Arthur Agar, whose gentle intellect only
+      compassed subtleties of the drawing-room type.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that Jem Agar is almost as good as a dead man, although he was not
+      killed at Pregalla.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who had wept in this same room six weeks before looked up with a
+      gleam of something very like hope in his troubled eyes. Such is the power
+      of love. For Arthur Agar had not been ignorant of the probability that in
+      his step-brother, once dead but now living, he had had a rival. Sister
+      Cecilia had seen to that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But when shall we know? When will he come back?&rdquo; inquired he. And Seymour
+      Michael, the subtle, began to see his way more clearly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not for six months, probably not for nine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One may take it that no man is sent into the world a ready-made scoundrel.
+      It all depends upon the circumstances of life. No one is safe right up to
+      the end, and events may combine to make the very best of us into that
+      thing which the world calls a villain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar, all inexperienced, weak, hereditarily handicapped, suddenly
+      found himself on the balance. And the scales were held, not by the hand of
+      Justice, blind and clement, but by Seymour Michael, very open-eyed, with a
+      keen watchfulness for his own purpose; biassed; unscrupulous. It must be
+      admitted that circumstances were against Arthur Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing to be done,&rdquo; added Seymour Michael, with a smile which
+      his companion could not be expected to fathom, &ldquo;but to keep very quiet,
+      and to make the best of your opportunities while you occupy the position
+      of heir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur smiled in a sickly way. He felt suddenly as if this man could see
+      right through him, and all the while he hated him. Seymour Michael meant
+      &ldquo;debts&rdquo;&mdash;it was only natural that one of his race should think of
+      money before all things&mdash;Arthur's thoughts were fixed on Dora. And
+      guiltily he imagined himself to be detected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be doing no harm to Jem,&rdquo; said the tempter, with his pleasant
+      laugh. &ldquo;You are called upon to act the part well for his sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es, I suppose I am,&rdquo; answered Arthur. &ldquo;And I must tell no one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Absolutely no one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Despite his credulous nature, Arthur Agar was singularly suspicious on
+      this occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are these Jem's own instructions?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His own instructions,&rdquo; replied Seymour Michael callously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur paused in deep reflection. It was evident, he argued to himself,
+      that Jem could not have cared for Dora, or he would never have left her in
+      ignorance of the truth. If, therefore, during Jem's absence, he could win
+      Dora for himself, he could not in any way be accused of wronging his
+      step-brother. And we all know that a conscience which argues with itself
+      is lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To make things easier for us both,&rdquo; pursued Seymour Michael, &ldquo;I propose
+      that this interview remain a strict secret between ourselves, and for that
+      purpose I have suppressed my own name. It is a fairly well-known name. I
+      may mention that in guarantee of good faith. As, however, you do not know
+      me, it will be easier for you to suppress the fact that we have ever met.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur almost laughed at these last words. It seemed as if he had known
+      this man all his life&mdash;as if his whole existence had merely been a
+      period of waiting until he should come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my mother must not know?&rdquo; he said. He kept harking back to this
+      question with a singular persistence. There are a few men and many women
+      for whom a secret is a responsibility to be transferred to the first-comer
+      without hesitation. One half of the world takes pleasure in divulging a
+      secret&mdash;for the other half it is positive pain to keep one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael never dreamt that the secret might be in unsafe hands. To
+      a secretive man like himself the incapacity to keep a counsel never
+      suggested itself. There is no doubt that where we all err is in
+      persistently judging others by ourselves. Arthur Agar was keenly aware of
+      his own incompetence in many things&mdash;he was one of those promising
+      undergraduates who hire a man to water six small plants in a window-box.
+      Incompetence was by him reduced to a science. There were so many things
+      which he could not do, that he was forced to find occupations for a very
+      extensive leisure, and these were usually of the petty accomplishment
+      order, which are graceful in young girls and very disgraceful in young
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the doctrine of incompetence is a very dangerous one. Already in the
+      criminal courts we are beginning to hear of men and women who do not feel
+      competent to keep the law. There were many laws of social procedure and a
+      few of schoolboy honour which Arthur Agar felt to be beyond him, and he
+      considered that in making confession he was acquiring a right to
+      absolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not tell General Michael that he was not good at keeping secrets,
+      chiefly because that gentleman was not of the trivial confession type; but
+      he made a mental reservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael had risen and was walking backwards and forwards slowly
+      between the window and the door. He seemed quite at home in the small
+      room, and his manner of taking three strides and then wheeling round
+      suggested the habit of living in tents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you must say is that you have received your brother's effects,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;If they ask from whence&mdash;from the War Office. I am the War
+      Office to all intents and purposes. The affair is almost forgotten. All
+      the details have been published&mdash;the usual newspaper details, with
+      Fleet Street local colouring. You should have no difficulty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Arthur meekly, but with another mental reservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are, of course, certain legal formalities in progress,&rdquo; went on the
+      General, &ldquo;relative to the estate. Those must be allowed to go on. We may
+      trust the lawyers to go slowly. And afterwards they can amuse themselves
+      by undoing what they have done. That is their trade. Half of them make a
+      living by undoing what the others have done. You are ...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael so far forgot himself as to pause and make a mental
+      calculation. Arthur saw him do it and never thought of being surprised. It
+      seemed quite natural that this man should possess data upon which to base
+      mental calculations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... not twenty-one yet?&rdquo; Michael finished the sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that, you see, they cannot make over the estate to you before the time
+      your brother comes or&mdash;should&mdash;come&mdash;back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur understood the emphasis perfectly this time. He was getting on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are,&rdquo; continued Michael, who was eminently methodical, &ldquo;a few
+      military formalities, which have had my attention. In fact, I think that
+      everything has been attended to. In case you should require any
+      information, or perhaps advice, write to C 74, Smith's Library, Vigo
+      Street. That is the address on that envelope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur rose too. The thought that his visitor might be about to depart
+      thrilled through him with the warmth of relieved suspense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For your own information,&rdquo; said Michael, looking straight into the
+      wavering, colourless eyes, &ldquo;I may tell you that in my opinion&mdash;the
+      opinion of an expert&mdash;this expedition is exceedingly hazardous. We&mdash;we
+      must be prepared for the worst.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar turned away. He had felt the deep eyes probing his very soul&mdash;looking
+      right through him. A sickening sense of weakness was at his heart. He felt
+      that in the presence of this man he did not belong to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; he muttered awkwardly, &ldquo;that Jem will never come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it most probable. And then&mdash;when we have to abandon all
+      hope, I mean&mdash;we shall be glad that we kept this thing to ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael held out his hand, and pressed the boy's weak fingers in a
+      careless grip. Then he turned, and with a short &ldquo;Good-bye&rdquo; left him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur stood looking at the closed door with the frightened eyes of a
+      woman. He looked round at the familiar objects of his room&mdash;the
+      futile little gimcracks with which he had surrounded an existence worthy
+      of such environments&mdash;the invitation cards on the draped mantelpiece,
+      the little glass vases of fantastic shape with a single bloom of
+      stephanotis, the hundred and one fantasies of a finicking generation
+      wherein Art sappeth Manhood. And his eyes were suddenly opened to a new
+      world of things which he could not do. He gazed&mdash;not without a vague
+      shame&mdash;into a perspective of incompetencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the <i>laissez-aller</i> of the unreflective he had assumed that life
+      would be a continuance of small pleasures and refined enjoyments, little
+      dinners and pleasant converse, Dora and a comfortable home, mutual mild
+      delight in flowers and table decoration. Into this assumption Seymour
+      Michael had suddenly stepped&mdash;strong, restless, and mysterious&mdash;and
+      Arthur became uneasily conscious of possibilities. There might be
+      something in his own life, there might even be something within himself,
+      over which he could have no control. There was something within himself&mdash;something
+      connected with the man who had gone, leaving unrest behind him, as he left
+      it wherever he passed. What was this? whither would it lead?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar rang the bell, and kept the &ldquo;gyp&rdquo; in the room on some trivial
+      pretext. He was afraid of solitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. TWO MOTIVES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute shadow
+      watching all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh! the girl is happy enough!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Glynde jerked his newspaper up and read an advertisement of steamships
+      about to depart to the West Coast of Africa. His wife&mdash;engaged in
+      cutting out a scarlet flannel garment of diminutive proportions (an
+      operation which she made a point of performing on the study table)&mdash;gave
+      two gentle snips and ceased her occupation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at the back of her husband's head, where the hair was getting a
+      little thin, and said nothing. No one argued with the Reverend Thomas
+      Glynde.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl is happy enough,&rdquo; he repeated, seeking contradiction. There are
+      times when an autocrat would very much like to be argued with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is always lively and gay,&rdquo; he continued defiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too gay,&rdquo; Mrs. Glynde whispered to the scissors, with a flash of the only
+      wisdom which Heaven gives away, and it is not given to all mothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The winter had closed over Stagholme, the isolating, distance-making
+      winter of English country life, wherein each house is thrown upon its own
+      resource, and the peaceful are at rest because their neighbours cannot get
+      at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was out. She was out a good deal now; exceedingly busy in good works
+      of a different type from those affected by Sister Cecilia. The winter air
+      seemed to invigorate her, and she tramped miles with a can of soup or an
+      infant's flannel wrapper. And always when she came in she was gay, as her
+      father described it. She gave amusing descriptions of her visits among the
+      cottagers, retailed little quaint conceits such as drop from rustic lips
+      declared unto them by their fathers from the old time before them, and in
+      it all she displayed a keen insight into human nature. At times she was
+      brilliant; which her father noticed with grave approval, ignorant or
+      heedless of the fact that brilliancy means friction. Happy people are not
+      brilliant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She suddenly developed a taste for politics, and read the newspaper with a
+      keen interest. Several half-forgotten duties were revived, and their
+      performance became a matter of principle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Glynde did not notice these subtle changes. Old men are generally
+      selfish, more so, if possible, than young ones, and Mr. Glynde was
+      eminently so. He only saw other people in relationship to himself. He
+      looked at them through himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde had taken the opportunity of a &ldquo;cutting out&rdquo; to mention that
+      she thought a change would do Dora good. During the three months that had
+      elapsed since the announcement of Jem's death, Stagholme had necessarily
+      been a somewhat dull abode. The winter had not come on well, but in fits
+      and starts, with trying winds and much rain. She said these things while
+      she cut into her roll of red flannel&mdash;the scissors seemed to give her
+      courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector of Stagholme had awful visions of a furnished house at Brighton
+      or a crammed hotel on the Riviera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you want to go to?&rdquo; he inquired, with a gruffness which meant
+      less than it conveyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To town, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Mr. Glynde loved London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime Dora was standing at the gate of the gamekeeper's little
+      cottage-garden which adjoined the orchard at Stagholme. There were certain
+      women with whom Sister Cecilia did not &ldquo;get on,&rdquo; and these were by tacit
+      understanding relegated to Dora. This same inability to &ldquo;get on&rdquo; was one
+      of the crosses which Sister Cecilia carried in a magnified condition
+      through life. The gamekeeper's wife was one of the failures&mdash;a hardy
+      mother of several hardy little embryo gamekeepers, who held that she knew
+      her own business of motherhood best, and intimated as much to Sister
+      Cecilia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora went there very frequently, and the pathos of her way with little
+      children is one of the things which cannot be touched upon here. It is
+      possible that she went there because the cottage was near the Holme, and
+      the way took her past the great house. She had never laid aside her old
+      girlish habit of passing through the rooms, unannounced, to exchange a few
+      words with Mrs. Agar. It was not that she held that lady in great
+      veneration or respect; but in the country people learn to take their
+      neighbours as they are, remembering that they are neighbours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went through the orchard and in at the side-door, which stood always
+      open to the turn of the handle. She had fallen into a singular habit of
+      always using this entrance, and of glancing as she passed at the
+      stick-rack, where a rough mountain-ash was wont to stand&mdash;a stick
+      which Jem had cut, while she stood by, years before. There was, perhaps,
+      something characteristically suggestive of Jem in this stick&mdash;something
+      strong and simple. She was not the person to indulge in sentimental
+      thoughts; she could not afford to do that, Indeed, she often looked into
+      the stick-rack without thinking, but she never passed it without looking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the library she found Mrs. Agar, talking to her maid, who withdrew with
+      a pinched salutation. Mrs. Agar was one of those unfortunate women who
+      level all ranks in their sore need of a listener. The expression of her
+      face was decidedly lachrymose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Arthur!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Dora, dear, something so dreadful has
+      happened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; returned Dora, with the indifference of one who has tasted of the
+      worst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Arthur has received Jem's papers and diaries and things, and I can
+      see from his letter that it has quite upset him. He is so sympathetic, you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora had turned quite away. She usually carried a stick in her country
+      rambles, and it seemed suddenly to have suggested itself to her to lay
+      this on a table near the door. The stick fell off again, and some moments
+      elapsed while she picked it up from the floor. When she turned, her veil
+      had slipped from the brim of her hat down over her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it could not have been a surprise to him,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;He must
+      have known that there would probably be something of the sort sent home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes. But you know, dear, how keenly he feels everything. These
+      highly-strung, artistic temperaments&mdash;but I need not tell you; you
+      know Arthur almost as well as I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora answered nothing. It was not the first time that Mrs. Agar had
+      charged some remark with that weight of significance which, in her
+      vulgar-minded subtlety, she considered delicate and exceptionally clever.
+      And each time that Dora heard it she was conscious of a vague discomfort,
+      as at the approach of some danger, of some interference in her life which
+      would be too strong for her to resist. It was one of those mean feminine
+      thrusts to parry which is to acknowledge, to ignore is to admit fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he sent them on to you?&rdquo; she asked after a little pause, resisting
+      only by a great effort the temptation to look towards the writing-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;It appears that they have been in his possession
+      for some time. He kept them back for some reason&mdash;I cannot think
+      why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Providence is sometimes unexpectedly kind. Had Mrs. Agar been a different
+      woman, had she, perhaps, been a better woman, less aggravating, more
+      discreet, more honourable, she would not have done at this moment
+      precisely that which Dora was silently praying that she would do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; continued the mistress of Stagholme, going to the writing-table,
+      &ldquo;is his diary; perhaps you would care to look through it? Poor Jem! I am
+      afraid it will not be very interesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora took the little dark-coloured book almost indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It was always an effort to him to write the very
+      shortest letter, was it not? Papa would like to see it, I know, if I may
+      show it to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Being rather taller than Mrs. Agar, she could see over that lady's
+      shoulder as she stood turning over with some curiosity a score or so of
+      bundles evidently containing letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;seem to be letters; probably our letters to him.
+      Shall we burn them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora reflected for a moment. She knew that many of the bundles must
+      contain letters from herself to Jem&mdash;letters which could have been
+      read from the housetops without conveying anything to the populace. But
+      some of them&mdash;almost between the lines&mdash;had been intended to
+      convey, and had conveyed, something to Jem. She reflected&mdash;without
+      anger, as women do on such matters&mdash;that if curiosity moved her, Mrs.
+      Agar would not scruple to open all these letters and read them. The
+      packets had evidently not been opened, and a momentary feeling of grateful
+      recognition of Arthur's gentlemanly honour passed through her mind. There
+      was about the faded papers that dim, mysterious odour which ever clings to
+      packages that have been packed in India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;let us burn them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar seemed to hesitate for a moment, but it was only for effect. She
+      dreaded the packages, for one of them might contain the will which haunted
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so these two women, so very different, from such very different
+      motives, carried the letters to the fire, and there they burnt them. In
+      the curling flames Dora saw her own handwriting. She could not understand
+      the suppressed excitement of Mrs. Agar's manner; she only knew that the
+      mistress of Stagholme seemed to be afraid of looking at the burning
+      papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all was consumed both women heaved a sigh of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;I am glad we have been able to save poor Arthur
+      that. These things are so very painful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora looked rather as if she could not understand why the painful things
+      of life should be harder for Arthur to bear than for other people. But she
+      said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will be glad,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;to hear that it was you who
+      helped me. I know he would rather that it had been you than any one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this with the horrid meaning, the sly significance, of her kind; for
+      there are women for whom there is absolutely nothing sacred in the whole
+      gamut of human feelings. There are women who will talk of things upon
+      which the lips of even the most depraved men are silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with it there was nothing that Dora could take exception to&mdash;nothing
+      that she could answer without running the risk of bringing upon herself
+      questions to which she had no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said cheerfully, &ldquo;it is done now, so we can dismiss it from
+      our minds. Of course you know that mother is getting out of hand
+      altogether. I cannot hold her in. Her plans are simply kittenish. She
+      wants to take a flat in town for two months, to take Boulton and one maid,
+      to hire a cook, and to go generally to the bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar's eyes glistened. She liked to hear of other people seeking
+      excitement because she felt more justified in doing so herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think she is very sensible. I am sure you all want a change. I
+      feel I do. It is so depressing here all alone with one's thoughts. Sister
+      Cecilia was just saying the other day that I ought to go away to Brighton
+      or somewhere&mdash;that I owed it to Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see why you should not pay it to yourself, whoever you owe it
+      to,&rdquo; said Dora. &ldquo;This is an age of going away for changes. Life is like
+      old Martin's trousers&mdash;so patched up with changes that the original
+      pattern has disappeared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear,&rdquo; replied Mrs. Agar, with a vague laugh. In conversation with
+      Dora she invariably felt clumsy and unable to protect herself, like a
+      stout fencer conscious of many vulnerable outlying points. She did not
+      understand this girl, and never knew which was carte and which tierce. &ldquo;So
+      you are going away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect so. Mother usually carries through her little schemes, and in
+      his inward soul papa is rather a fast old gentleman. He loves the
+      pavement, and&mdash;I don't object to the shops myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will like it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes!&rdquo; replied Dora, rising to go. &ldquo;Like Mr. Martin, I am not sure that
+      the old pattern is worth preserving.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could go with you,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, holding up her cheek in an
+      absent way for the farewell kiss; &ldquo;I have not been to town for ages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last week,&rdquo; amended Dora mentally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not come too?&rdquo; she said aloud, gathering together stick, basket, and
+      gloves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is Arthur,&rdquo; replied the lady. &ldquo;I am afraid he will not care to
+      leave home just now, after so great a blow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the more reason why he should go to town for a little and forget&mdash;himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar smiled sadly and waited for further persuasion. She had fully
+      made up her mind to go to Brighton, but was anxious first that the whole
+      parish should press her to do so against her will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be very nice,&rdquo; continued Dora, &ldquo;to have you to help me to keep my
+      flighty progenitors in order. Now I <i>must</i> go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a nod and a light laugh she closed the library door behind her,
+      having apparently forgotten the sadder events of the visit. But in her
+      basket she had the diary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Be as one that knoweth, and yet holdeth his tongue.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, of course, you know every one in the room?&rdquo; Dora was saying to her
+      cousin as the orchestra struck suddenly into &ldquo;God bless the Prince of
+      Wales.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious, no!&rdquo; Miss Mazerod replied; and both young ladies stood up
+      to curtsey to the Royal party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the great artistic <i>soirée</i> of the year, and crowds of
+      nobodies jostled each other in their mad desire to deceive whosoever might
+      be credulous into the belief that they were somebodies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Dora, when they were seated again, and the strains of
+      the Welsh air had been suppressed &ldquo;by desire,&rdquo; &ldquo;they may be very great
+      swells; I have no doubt they are in their particular way; but they do not
+      look it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mazerod looked round critically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of them,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;are frame-makers, a good many of them, with big
+      bills in high places. Others are actresses&mdash;very great actresses off
+      the stage. Do you see that tall girl there, with a supercilious expression
+      which she does not know is apt to remind one of a housemaid scorning a
+      milkman's love on the area steps? She is a great actress, who will not
+      take small engagements, and is not offered large ones. She is an actress
+      'pour se faire photographier.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is the cream of London society?&rdquo; said Dora, looking round her
+      with considerable amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Society,&rdquo; returned her cousin, &ldquo;is not allowed to stand for cream now. It
+      is stirred up with a spoon, silver-gilt, and the skim milk gets hopelessly
+      mixed up with the cream. That young man who is now talking to the actress
+      person is not what he looks. He is, as a matter of fact, the scion of a
+      noble house, who models in clay atrociously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the gorgeous person he is turning his back upon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of his models.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of clay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Essentially so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Miss Mazerod broke off into a happy laugh. Hers was not the bitterness
+      of plainness or insignificance, but something infinitely more suggestive.
+      It was, indeed, not bitterness at all, but light-hearted contempt, which
+      is, perhaps, the deepest contempt there is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is the wretched woman with no backbone draped in rusty black?&rdquo; asked
+      Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear! That is one of the great lady artists of the age. She lectures
+      to factory girls or something, and she paints limp females snuffling over
+      tiger-lilies. Her ideal woman has that sort of droop of the throat&mdash;I
+      imagine she-tries to teach it to the factory. She objects to backbone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mazerod, who possessed a very firm little specimen of the adjunct
+      mentioned, drew herself up and smiled commiseratingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Dora, &ldquo;I feel quite consoled about my sketches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time Miss Mazerod looked serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I often wonder whether it would be profane to mention
+      in one's prayers a little gratitude for not having an artistic soul. There
+      are lots of women like that in the world, especially in London. They
+      pretend that they think themselves superior to men, but they know in their
+      hearts that they are inferior to women. For they have not something that
+      women ought to have&mdash;No, Dolly, no brown studies here; you must not
+      dream here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora, with a light laugh, came back from her mental wanderings to find
+      herself looking at a face which caught her attention at once. It was the
+      face of a man&mdash;brown, self-contained, with unhappy eyes and a long
+      drooping nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is <i>that</i> man?&rdquo; she inquired at once. &ldquo;Now, he is quite
+      different from the rest. He is about the only person who is not furtively
+      finding out how much attention he has succeeded in attracting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is a man with a purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What purpose?&rdquo; inquired Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; I shouldn't think any one knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>He</i> knows,&rdquo; suggested Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, <i>he</i> knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mazerod was looking at the mechanism of her fan with a demure
+      expression on lips shaped for happiness. A dark young man was elbowing his
+      way through the mixed crowd towards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is his name?&rdquo; asked Dora, who was still looking at the man with a
+      purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General Seymour Michael.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Indian man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause, during which Miss Mazerod glanced in the
+      direction of the younger man, who had been detained by a stout lady with a
+      purple dress and a depressed daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to know him,&rdquo; said Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing easier,&rdquo; replied her cousin, still absorbed in the fan. &ldquo;I know
+      him quite well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is looking at you now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mazerod looked up and bowed with a little jerk, as if she felt too
+      young to be stately; one of those bows that say &ldquo;Come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the younger man came up and shook hands effusively with
+      Dora, slowly with Miss Mazerod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jack,&rdquo; said that young lady, &ldquo;I have just beamed on General Michael, who
+      is behind you. I want to introduce him to Dora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack seemed to think this an excellent idea, and stepped aside with
+      alacrity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile. He certainly was one
+      of the most distinguished-looking men in the room, with a brilliant ribbon
+      across his breast, and that smart, well-brushed general effect which
+      stamps the successful soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did you come back to England?&rdquo; inquired Edith Mazerod, whose father
+      had worked with this man in India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;oh! I have been home six months,&rdquo; he replied, shaking hands with
+      a subtle <i>empressemant</i> which was more effective than words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Laid on the shelf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood upright, drawing himself up with ironical emphasis, as if to show
+      as plainly as possible that there were many years of life and work in him
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith Mazerod laughed, the careless passing laugh of inattention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;may I introduce General Michael? My cousin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose, and Seymour Michael prepared to take the vacant seat. The youth
+      called Jack was making signs with his eyebrows, and in attempting to
+      decipher his meaning she forgot to mention Dora's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be sorry for this,&rdquo; said Seymour Michael, sitting down. &ldquo;You
+      will not thank your cousin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; inquired Dora, prepared to like him, possibly because he had a
+      brown face and wore his hair cut short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I am hopelessly new to this work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; replied Dora; &ldquo;I don't even know what pictures to look at and
+      what to ignore. So I dare not look at the walls at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is precisely my position, only I am worse. You know how to behave in
+      polite circles; I don't. You have a slightly tired look, as if this sort
+      of thing wearied you by reason of its monotony.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I? I am sorry for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, there is no reason to be sorry. They all have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; protested Dora, &ldquo;I am not one of them. I am only aping the Romans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do it well; I shall study your method. You do it better than Edith
+      Mazerod.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith is young&mdash;hopelessly, enviably young. Do you know them well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I knew them in India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course; I forgot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and looked at her sharply. Sometimes his own reputation, far
+      from being a happiness, gave him cause for misgiving. A man with an
+      unclean record cannot well be sure that all the details he would wish
+      suppressed have been suppressed. There was a little pause, during which
+      they both watched the self-satisfied throng moving in and out, here and
+      there, full of a restless desire to be observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Seymour Michael who spoke first. True to his mixed blood, he sought
+      to make himself safe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but Edith Mazerod did not mention your name; may I
+      ask it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora Glynde!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw him start. She saw a sudden wavering gleam in his eyes which in
+      another man she would have set down to fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Dora Glynde,&rdquo; he repeated; and the expression of his face was so
+      serene again that the look which had passed away from it began already to
+      present itself to her memory as a conception of her own brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was younger and shyer,&rdquo; he said, with a singular haste, &ldquo;I was
+      afraid to ask a lady her name when I did not catch it, and&mdash;and I
+      frequently regretted not having had the courage to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She recollected it all afterwards&mdash;every word, every pause. But then,
+      as so frequently happens, knowledge aided her memory, and added
+      significance to every detail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you staying with the Mazerods?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am being shown life. I am doing a season. To-night is part of my
+      education. To-morrow, I believe, we go to Hurlingham; the next day to a
+      charity bazaar, and so on. I believe I am getting on very well. Aunt Mary
+      is pleased with me. But I still stare about me, and show visible
+      disappointment when I am presented to a literary celebrity or some other
+      person of newspaper renown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Celebrities in the flesh <i>are</i> disappointing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not only that, but I find that many of them are just a little common. Not
+      quite what we in the country call gentlemen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Miss Glynde, you forget that Art rises superior to class
+      distinctions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but artists don't; and artists' wives don't rise at all. I think you
+      are to be congratulated. In your profession there are fewer persons
+      'superior to class distinction.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a subject which Seymour Michael dreaded. He was ignorant of how
+      much Dora might know. He had suspected from the first that Jem Agar's
+      desire that she should know the truth had been a mere matter of sentiment;
+      but the fact of meeting her at this public festivity, gay and in colours,
+      shook this theory from its foundation. He disliked Edith Mazerod, because
+      he suspected that his own early career had probably been discussed in her
+      hearing, and her easy lightness of heart was to him as incomprehensible as
+      it was suspicious. Dora he rather feared without knowing why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you know India well?&rdquo; she said, looking straight in front of
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too well,&rdquo; was the reply, with a sharp sidelong glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was right. At that moment Dora might have been one of these <i>habituées</i>
+      of rout and ballroom. She was very pale and looked tired out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went out there thirty years ago,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;into the Mutiny. From
+      that time to this India has been killing my friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause. She knew that in the natural course of events it
+      was almost certain that this man knew Jem personally. It would have been
+      easy to mention his name; but the wound was too fresh, her heart was too
+      sore to bear the sting of hearing him discussed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a second Seymour Michael hovered on the brink. His lips almost framed
+      the name. Good almost triumphed over evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the girl sitting there&mdash;broken-hearted, quiet and strong, as only
+      women can be&mdash;never knew how near she was. Sometimes it seems as if
+      the cruelty of fate were unnecessary, as if the word too little or the
+      word too much, which has the power to alter a whole life, were withheld or
+      spoken merely to further a Providential experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Michael, &ldquo;I hate India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the spell was broken, the moment lost for ever. Seymour Michael had
+      kept silence, and elsewhere, perhaps, at that very moment his doom was
+      spoken. Who can tell? We are offered chances&mdash;we are, if you will,
+      the puppets of an experiment&mdash;and surely there must be a moment which
+      decides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was conscious of having miscalculated her own strength. She had led
+      him on to the dangerous ground, but it was with relief that she saw him
+      step back. She did not dare to lead him to it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not long before he left her, on the timely arrival of another
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The introduction brought about by Miss Mazerod did not seem to have been
+      an entire success, for they parted gravely and without a word expressing
+      the hope of meeting again. And yet Dora liked him, for he was strong and purposeful,
+      such as she would have had all men. She wanted to know more of him. She
+      wanted to be admitted further into the knowledge which she knew to be his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael was conscious of a feeling of discomfort, no less
+      disquieting by reason of its vagueness. He had a nervous sensation of
+      being surrounded by something&mdash;something in the nature of a chain,
+      piecing itself together, link by link&mdash;something that was slowly
+      closing in upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. AT HURLINGHGAM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      I must be cruel only to be kind.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is not your deep person who succeeds in carrying out a set purpose, but
+      one who is just profound enough to be fathomed of the multitude. For,
+      after all, the multitude is ready enough to help, in a casual, parenthetic
+      way, in the furtherance of a design; and a little depth, serving to
+      flatter that vanity which taketh delight in a sense of superior
+      perspicacity, only adds to the zest. There are plenty of people ready to
+      pull on a rope or shove at a wheel, but there are more eager to do so if
+      they are offered the direction of affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde was one of those easily-fathomed persons who often succeed in
+      their designs by the very transparency of their method. She had come to
+      London with the purpose of leaving Dora there under the care of her sister
+      Lady Mazerod, and before she had talked to that amiable widow for half an
+      hour the design was as apparent as if it had been spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In due course Dora and Miss Mazerod renewed a childish love, and at the
+      end of April Mr. And Mrs. Glynde went back to Stagholme alone. It is
+      probable that neither Mrs. Glynde nor Providence could have chosen a
+      better companion for Dora at this time than Edith Mazerod. There was a
+      breezy simplicity about this young lady's view of life which seemed to
+      have the power of simplifying life itself. There are some people like this
+      to whom is vouchsafed a limited comprehension of evil and an unlimited
+      belief in good. A very shrewd author, who is, perhaps, not so much read
+      to-day as he ought to be, said that &ldquo;to the pure all things are pure.&rdquo; He
+      often said less than he meant. For he knew as well as we do that the
+      pure-minded are just so many moral filters who clear the atmosphere and
+      take no harm themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora Glynde required some one like this; for she had, as the French say,
+      &ldquo;found herself.&rdquo; The little world of Stagholme&mdash;the world of this
+      Record&mdash;was intensely human. There was nobody very good in it and
+      nobody very bad. Jem, with that quicker perception of evil which is wisely
+      included in the mental outfit of men, had warned her against Sister
+      Cecilia. And she had begun to understand his meaning now. Mrs. Agar she
+      had found out for herself. Her father she respected and loved, but she had
+      reached that age wherein we discover that father and mother are but as
+      other men and women. Her mother she loved with that half-patronising
+      affection which is found where a daughter is mentally superior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only person whom she had ever really respected and looked up to
+      without reserve was Jem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Altogether life was too complicated, subtle, difficult, hopeless, when
+      Edith Mazerod came into it, and by her presence seemed to clear the
+      atmosphere of daily existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the constant round of visiting and gaiety was a supreme effort;
+      then came tolerance, and finally that business-like acceptance which is
+      mistaken by many for enjoyment. The human machine is not constructed to go
+      always at high pressure, either in happiness or in misery. We cannot exist
+      all day and all night with a living care on our shoulders&mdash;the
+      greatest misery slips off-sometimes. With men it can be lubricated by hard
+      work, and likewise by alcohol, but the latter method is not always to be
+      advised. With women there is much consolation to be extracted from a new
+      dress or several new dresses and a hat. Even a new pair of gloves may help
+      a breaking heart, and a glass of bitter beer taken at the right moment
+      (with or without faith) has power to change a man's view of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Dora, who had at no time been tragic, began to find that Academy <i>soirées</i>
+      and similar entertainments assisted her in preserving towards the world
+      that attitude which she had elected to assume. And if there be any who
+      blame her, they are at liberty to do so. It is not worth while to pause
+      for the purpose of writing&mdash;on the ground or elsewhere&mdash;for
+      their edification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only one such alleviation did she repent of in after life. The day after
+      the Academy <i>soirée</i> the Mazerods took her to Hurlingham. And
+      Hurlingham became one of the pages of her life which she would have wished
+      to tear completely out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they drove in through the simple gateway and round by the winding
+      drive, it was evident that a great afternoon was to be expected. The
+      blue-and-white club flag fluttered over a pavilion crammed from roof to
+      terrace. The teams were already out in their bright colours, curveting
+      about, each with a practice ball, on their stiff little ponies, moving
+      with that singular cramped action only seen on the polo ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one of those brilliant days in early May when only gardeners,
+      grumbling, talk or think of rain. A few fleecy white clouds seemed
+      painted. So motionless were they, on the sky, reproducing the Hurlingham
+      colours far above the ground. A gentle breeze coming up from the river
+      brought with it the odour of lilac and budding things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chairs were crowded with a well-dressed throng, the larger majority of
+      which seemed to be unaware that polo was the object of the afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mazerods and Dora had scarcely taken chairs when Arthur Agar presented
+      himself. His tailor had apparently told him that after a lapse of six
+      months it was permissible to assume habiliments of a slightly resigned
+      tenour. His grey suit was one of the most elegant on the ground, his Suède
+      gloves fitted perfectly, his tie was unique. And Arthur Agar was as happy
+      as the best-dressed girl there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reception accorded him was not exactly enthusiastic. Having in view
+      the fact that the young man called Jack was entirely satisfactory, Lady
+      Mazerod treated all other young men with indifference. Edith despised
+      Arthur Agar because Jack was athletic in his tendencies; and Dora was
+      sorry to see him, because she had not answered his three last letters.
+      There were also numerous small but expensive presents for which she had
+      failed to tender thanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately the young man called Jack turned up at tea-time, carrying
+      one of the heavy chairs, which never fail to spoil the gloves of some of
+      us, with unconscious ease. Owing to the activity and enterprise of this
+      young gentleman, tea was soon procured, and consequently despatched before
+      the interval was over and before the band had wet its whistle with
+      something of a different nature from that in vogue on the lawn. A stroll
+      through the gardens was proposed, and Lady Mazerod sent the young people
+      off alone. There was no choice; but Dora had probably no thought of making
+      a choice, had such been offered to her. She, like many another young lady,
+      erred in placing too great a confidence in her own powers of staving
+      things off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no doubt whatever about Edith and the energetic John. They led
+      the way round by the river path and the tennis-courts with a sublime
+      disregard for the eye of the multitude, leaving Dora and Arthur to follow
+      at such speed as their discretion might dictate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before they had left the tennis-lawn Arthur plunged. It may have been the
+      desperation of diffidence, or perhaps that the new grey suit and the
+      unique tie lent him confidence. One sees a young lady completely carried
+      off her mental status by the success of a dress or the absence of a
+      dreaded competitor, and Arthur Agar had enough of the woman in him to give
+      way to this dangerous vertigo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you have not answered my last three letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;because they struck me as a little ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ridiculous!&rdquo; he repeated, with such sincere dismay that she was moved to
+      compassion. &ldquo;Ridiculous, Dora, why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His horror-struck, almost tearful voice gave her a pang of self-reproach,
+      as if she had struck some defenceless dumb animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there were things in them that I did not understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I could make you understand them,&rdquo; he said, with a sudden
+      self-assertion which startled her. The weakest man is, after all, a man&mdash;so
+      far as women are concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you had better not,&rdquo; she said, hurrying her steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he refused to alter his pace, and he disregarded her warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They meant,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I wanted you to know that I love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause. Dora was struck dumb by a chill sense of
+      foreboding. It was like a momentary glance into a future full of trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for that. I hope&mdash;that you may find that it
+      is a mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is not a mistake. I don't see why it should be one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora paused. She was afraid to strike. She did not know yet that it is
+      less cruel to be cruel at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is best to look at these things practically,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And if we
+      look at it practically we shall find that you and I are not at all likely
+      to be happy together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However I look at it, I only see that I should never be happy without
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, Arthur, you are not looking at it practically.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, and I don't want to,&rdquo; he replied doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a mistake. A little bit of life may not be practical, but all the
+      rest of it is; and for the gratification of that little bit, there is all
+      the rest to be lived through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur looked puzzled. He rearranged the orchid in his coat before
+      replying. He had found time to think of the orchid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand all that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I only know that I love you, and
+      that I should be miserable without you. Besides, if that little bit is
+      love&mdash;I suppose you admit there is such a thing as love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora winced. She was looking through the trees across the peaceful evening
+      river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered gently. &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar had been brought up in an atmosphere of futile discussion, but
+      he had never wanted anything in vain. There are women&mdash;fools&mdash;who
+      dare to bring up children thus in a world where wanting in vain is the
+      chief characteristic of daily life. Arthur was ready enough to go on
+      discussing his future thus, but never doubted that it would all come to
+      his desire in the end. He was like a woman in so much as he failed to
+      understand an argument which he could not meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked on amidst the flowering shrubs, and Dora was filled with a
+      disquieting sense of having failed to convince him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not want to hurry you,&rdquo; said Arthur presently, with a maddening
+      equanimity. &ldquo;You can give me your answer some other time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have given it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur was engaged in taking off his hat to a passing lady, and made no
+      acknowledgment of this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody at home would be pleased,&rdquo; he observed, after a pause occupied
+      by the adjustment of his hat. &ldquo;They all want it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not that he refused to take No when it was given to him, but rather
+      that he did not recognise it, never having encountered it before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were now coming round by the pigeon-shooting enclosure, and the
+      strains of the band announced that the interval for tea had elapsed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the distance Lady Mazerod and Edith, attended by the indefatigable
+      Jack, were keeping a chair for Dora. She slackened her pace. To her the
+      knowledge had come that the difficulties of life have usually to be met
+      single-handed. She was not afraid of Arthur, but this was a distinct
+      difficulty because of the influence he had at his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I think we had better understand each other <i>now</i>.
+      It may save us both something in the future. I cannot help feeling rather
+      sorry that I must say No. Every girl must feel that. I do not know from
+      whence the feeling comes. It is a sort of regret, as if something good and
+      valuable were being wasted. But, Arthur, it <i>is</i> No, and it must
+      always be No. I am not the sort of person to change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; he replied, <i>en vrai fils de sa mère</i>, &ldquo;that there is
+      some one else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned as he spoke, but Dora's parasol was too quick for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please do not let us be like people in books,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;There is no
+      necessity to go into side issues at all. You have asked me to marry you. I
+      can never marry you. There is the whole question and the whole answer. I
+      say nothing to you about finding somebody worthier, or any nonsense of
+      that sort. Please spare me the usual&mdash;impertinences&mdash;about there
+      being somebody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The word found its mark. Arthur Agar caught his breath, but made no
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were among the well-dressed throng now crowding back to the chairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Arthur had handed Dora over to the care of Lady Mazerod he lifted his
+      hat and took his departure with that perfect <i>savoir faire</i> which was
+      his <i>forte</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. IN A SIDE PATH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To sum up all, he has the worst fault-a husband can have, he's not my
+      choice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There is something doubtful in a love-making that is in more than two
+      pairs of hands. This is a day of syndicates. The strength that lies in
+      union is cultivated nowadays with much assiduity. But in matters of love
+      the case is not yet altered, and never will be. It is a matter for two
+      people to decide between themselves, and all interference is mistaken and
+      deplorable. It is usually, one notices, those persons who are incapable of
+      the feeling themselves who seek to interfere in the affairs of others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That one of the principals should seek aid in such interference proves
+      without appeal that he does not know his business. Such aid as this Arthur
+      Agar had sought. He had, as Dora suspected, written to his mother, with
+      full particulars of the conversation beneath the Hurlingham trees. He had
+      laid before her many arguments, which, by reason of their effeminacy,
+      appealed to her illogical mind, proving that Dora could not do better than
+      marry him. The arrangement, he argued, was satisfactory from whatever
+      point of view it might be taken; and, finally, he begged his mother to try
+      and succeed where he had failed. He did not propose that Mrs. Agar should
+      appeal to Dora; not because such a course was repellent, but merely
+      because he knew a better. He suggested that Mrs. Agar should sound Mr.
+      Glynde upon the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This suggestion was in itself a stroke of diplomacy. The astute have no
+      doubt found out by this time that the Reverend Thomas Glynde loved money;
+      and a man who loves money has not the makings of a good father within him,
+      whatever else he may have. Whether Arthur was aware of this it would be
+      hard to say. Whether he had the penetration to know that, in the nature of
+      things, Mr. Glynde would urge Dora to marry Arthur Agar and Stagholme,
+      without due regard to her own feelings in the matter, is a question upon
+      which no man can give a reliable opinion. Certain it is that such a course
+      was precisely what the Reverend Thomas had marked out for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had an exaggerated respect for money and position&mdash;a title was a
+      thing to be revered. Clergymen, like artists, are dependent on patronage,
+      and must swallow their pride. It is therefore, perhaps, only natural that
+      Mr. Glynde should be quite prepared to make some sacrifice of feeling or
+      sentiment (especially the feeling and sentiment of another) in order to
+      secure a position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar simply followed the spirit of the age. He could not succeed
+      alone, and therefore he proceeded to form a syndicate to compel Dora to
+      love him, or in the meantime to marry him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar, when the matter was first
+      under discussion, &ldquo;she would soon learn to care for him. Women <i>always</i>
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which shows how much Sister Cecilia knew about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And besides, I believe she cares for him already,&rdquo; added Mrs. Agar, who
+      never did things by halves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia dropped her head on one side and looked convinced&mdash;to
+      order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; pursued Mrs. Agar vaguely, &ldquo;I am very fond of Dora; no one
+      could be more so. But I must confess that I do not always understand her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even to Sister Cecilia it would not do to confess that she was afraid of
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interview was easily brought about. Mrs. Agar wrote a note to the
+      Rector and asked him to luncheon. The Rector, who had not had many legal
+      affairs to settle during his uneventful life, was always pleased to be
+      consulted upon a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing. Besides,
+      they gave one a good luncheon at Stagholme in those days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had a letter from dear Arthur,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, at a moment which
+      she deemed propitious, namely, after a third glass of the Stagholme brown
+      sherry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I hope he is well. The boy is not strong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he is quite well, thank you. But of course he has had a great shock,
+      and one cannot expect him to get over it all at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector did not hold much by sentiment, so he contented himself with a
+      grave sip of sherry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now I am afraid there is fresh trouble,&rdquo; added Mrs. Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Been running into debt?&rdquo; suggested Mr. Glynde.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it is not that. No, it is Dora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora! What has Dora been doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was polishing the rim of a silver salt-cellar with her
+      forefinger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have seen it going on for a long time. My poor
+      boy has always&mdash;well, he has always admired Dora.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and of course I should like nothing better. I am sure they would be
+      most happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector looked doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must not forget,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that Arthur is constitutionally delicate.
+      That extreme repugnance to active exercise, the love of ease and&mdash;er&mdash;indoor
+      pursuits, show a tendency to enfeeble the organisation which might&mdash;I
+      don't say it will, but it might&mdash;turn to decline.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the doctors say that he is quite strong. Everybody cannot be robust
+      and&mdash;and massive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was thinking of Jem, against whom she had always borne a grudge,
+      because his inoffensive presence alone had the power of making Arthur look
+      puny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; and of course with care one may hope that Arthur will live to a ripe
+      old age,&rdquo; said the Rector, who was only coquetting with the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar played with a biscuit. She had a rooted aversion to the query
+      direct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that you or her mother would have seen
+      that such an attachment was likely to form itself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth was that the Reverend Thomas did not devote very much thought to
+      any subject which did not directly influence his own well-being. He had at
+      one time thought that an attachment between Jem and Dora might
+      conveniently result from a childhood's friendship, but Arthur had not
+      entered into his prognostications at all. He rather despised the youth, as
+      much on his own account as that he was Anna Agar's son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't say,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;that the thing ever entered my head. Of course,
+      if the young people have settled it all between themselves, I suppose we
+      must give them our blessing, and be thankful that we have been saved
+      further trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought it rather strange that Dora should have fixed her affections on
+      such an unlikely object as Arthur Agar; but it was part of his earthly
+      creed that the feelings of women are as incomprehensible as they are
+      unimportant. Which, by the way, serves to show how very little the Rector
+      of Stagholme knew of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; protested Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;they have <i>not</i> settled it between
+      themselves. That is just it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the difficulty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately Mr. Glynde's face fell to its usual degree of set depression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they want me to do?&rdquo; he inquired, with that air of resignation
+      which is in reality no resignation at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar volubly, &ldquo;it appears that Arthur spoke to Dora at
+      Hurlingham, and for some reason she said No. I can't understand it at all.
+      I am sure she has always appeared to like him very much. It may have been
+      some passing fancy or something, you know. When she is told that it would
+      please us all, perhaps she will change her mind. Poor Arthur is terribly
+      cut up about it. Of course a man in his position does not quite expect to
+      be treated cavalierly like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Glynde smiled. Behind the parson there was somewhat even better; there
+      was a just and honest English gentleman, which, in the way of human
+      species, is very hard to beat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid Arthur will have to manage such affairs for himself. When a
+      girl is settling a question involving her whole life she does not usually
+      pause to consider the position of the man who asks her to be his wife. He
+      would have no business to ask her had he no position, and the rest is
+      merely a matter of degrees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don't care about the match?&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, to whose mind the
+      earliest rudiments of logic were incomprehensible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not say that,&rdquo; replied the Rector, with the patience of a man who
+      has had dealings with women all his life; &ldquo;but I should like it to be
+      understood that Dora is quite free to choose for herself. I am willing to
+      tell her that the match would be satisfactory to me. Arthur is a
+      gentleman, which is saying a good deal in these days. He is affectionate,
+      and, so far as I know, a dutiful son. I have little doubt he would make a
+      good husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar wiped away an obvious tear, which ran off Mr. Glynde's mental
+      epidermis like water off the back of the proverbial fowl. This also he had
+      learnt in the course of his dealings with the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has been a good son to me,&rdquo; sniffed the fond and foolish mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of these persons was capable of understanding that &ldquo;goodness&rdquo; is
+      not all we want in husband or wife. These good husbands&mdash;heaven help
+      their wives!&mdash;break as many hearts as those who are labelled by the
+      world with the black ticket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I may tell Arthur that you will help him?&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, with a
+      sudden access of practical energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may tell him that he has my good wishes, and that I will point out to
+      Dora the advantages of&mdash;acceding to his desire. There are, of course,
+      advantages on both sides, we know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As usual, Mrs. Agar overdid things. The airiness of her indifference might
+      have deceived a child of eight, provided that its intellect was not <i>de
+      première force.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es,&rdquo; she murmured, &ldquo;I suppose Dora would bring her little&mdash;eh&mdash;subscription
+      towards the household expenses. Sister Cecilia gave me to understand that
+      there was a little something coming to her under her mother's marriage
+      settlement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was not clever enough to see that she had made a mistake. The
+      mention of Sister Cecilia's name acted on the Rector like a mental douche.
+      He was just beginning to give way to expansiveness&mdash;probably under
+      the suave influence of the brown sherry&mdash;and the name of Sister
+      Cecilia pulled him together with a jerk. The jerk extended to his
+      features; but Mrs. Agar was one of those cunning women whom no man need
+      fear. She was so cunning that she deceived herself into seeing that which
+      she wished to see, and nothing else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that,&rdquo; said the Rector gravely, &ldquo;can be discussed when Arthur has
+      persuaded Dora to say Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was in the position of an unfortunate person who, having come into
+      controversy with the police, is warned that every word he says may be used
+      in evidence against him. He had been reminded that every detail of the
+      present conversation would be repeated to Sister Cecilia, with
+      embellishments or subtractions as might please the narrator's fancy or
+      suit her purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dangerous woman&rdquo; he called Sister Cecilia in his most gloomy voice, and
+      a parson must perforce fear dangerous women. That is one of the trials of
+      the ministry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar laughed in a forced manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said&mdash;she had a habit of beginning her remarks with
+      these two words&mdash;&ldquo;of course, we need not think of such questions yet.
+      I am sure all <i>I</i> want is the happiness of the dear children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Umph!&rdquo; ejaculated Mr. Glynde, who was not always a model of politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, I am sure,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Agar, with a dabbing
+      pocket-handkerchief, &ldquo;is the dearest wish of us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When does the boy come home?&rdquo; inquired the Rector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in a week. I am so longing for him to come. He has to go to town to
+      get some clothes, which will delay his return by one night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he doing any good this term?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar looked slightly hurt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he always works very hard, I am only afraid that he should overdo
+      it. You know, I suppose, that he did not get through his examination this
+      term. Of course it is no good <i>my</i> saying anything, but I am quite
+      convinced that they are not dealing fairly by him. I have seen some of
+      those examination papers, and some of the questions are simply spiteful.
+      They do it on purpose, I know. And Sister Cecilia tells me that that <i>does</i>
+      happen sometimes. For some reason or other&mdash;because they have been
+      snubbed, or something like that&mdash;the masters, the examiners, or
+      whatever they are called, make a dead set at some men, and simply keep
+      them back. They don't give them the marks that they ought to have. Why
+      should Arthur always fail? Of course the thing is unfair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This theory was not quite new to the Rector. He had given up arguing about
+      it, and usually took refuge in flight. He did so on this occasion. But as
+      he walked home across the park, smoking a cigarette, he reflected that to
+      the owner of Stagholme such a small matter as a college career was, after
+      all, of no importance. These broad acres, the stately forests, the grand
+      old house, raised Arthur Agar above such considerations, indeed above most
+      considerations. And Mr. Glynde made up his mind to put it very strongly to
+      Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. ALONE
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The name of the slough was Despond.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When Dora returned to Stagholme a fortnight later she was relieved to find
+      that Arthur had not yet come down from Cambridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a strange thing that in the spring-time those who are happy&mdash;<i>pro
+      tempore</i>, of course, we know all that&mdash;are happier, while those
+      who carry something with them find the burden heavier. Stagholme in the
+      spring came as a sort of shock to Dora. There were certain adjuncts to the
+      growth of things which gave her actual pain. After dinner, the first
+      night, she walked across the garden to the beechwood, but before long she
+      came back again. There is a scent in beech forests in the spring which is
+      like no other scent on earth, and Dora found that she could not stand it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father and mother were sitting in the drawing-room with open windows,
+      for it was a warm May that year. She came in through the falling curtains,
+      and something warned her to keep her face averted from the furtive glance
+      of her mother's eyes. She had learnt something of the world during her
+      brief season in town, and one of the lessons had been that the world sees
+      more than is often credited to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The worst,&rdquo; she said cheerfully, &ldquo;of a season in town is that it makes
+      one feel aged and experienced. Middle age came upon me suddenly, just now,
+      in the garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Glynde was looking at her almost critically over his newspaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo; he asked curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In some indefinite way the question jarred horribly. Dora was conscious of
+      a faint doubt in the infallibility of her father's judgment. She knew that
+      in a worldly sense he was more experienced, more thoughtful, cleverer than
+      her mother, but in some ways she inclined towards the maternal opinion on
+      questions connected with herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Mrs. Glynde was called from the room, and went reluctantly,
+      feeling that the time was unpropitious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Glynde's life had been eminently uneventful. Prosperous, happy in a
+      half-hearted, almost negative, way, somewhat selfish, he had never known
+      hardship, had never faced adversity. It is such men as this who love what
+      they call a serious talk, summoning the subject thereof with exaggerated
+      gravity to a study, making a point of the <i>mise en scène</i>, and
+      finally saying nothing that could not have been spoken in course of
+      ordinary conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora detected the odour of a serious talk in the atmosphere, and she found
+      that something had taken away the awe which such conversations had
+      hitherto inspired. It may have been the season in town, but it was more
+      probably that confidence which comes from the knowledge of the world.
+      There were things in life of which she consciously knew more than her
+      father, and one of these was sorrow. There is nothing that gives so much
+      confidence as the knowledge that the worst possible has happened. It
+      raises one above the petty worries of daily existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora knew that her acquaintance with sorrow was more intimate, more
+      thorough, than that of her father, who sat looking as if the hangman were
+      at the door. She awaited the serious talk with some apprehension, but none
+      of that almost paralysing awe which she had known in childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am getting an old man,&rdquo; he said, with supreme egotism, &ldquo;and you cannot
+      expect to have me with you much longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I do expect it,&rdquo; replied Dora cheerfully. &ldquo;I am sorry to disappoint
+      you, papa, but I do expect it most decidedly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This rather spoilt the lugubrious gravity of the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, thank Heaven! I am a hearty man yet,&rdquo; admitted the Rector rather
+      more hopefully; &ldquo;but still you cannot expect to have your parents with you
+      all your life, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is wiser not to look too far into the future,&rdquo; replied Dora,
+      warding off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should look much more happily into the future,&rdquo; replied the Rector,
+      with the deliberation of the domestic autocrat, &ldquo;if I knew that you had a
+      good husband to take care of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a flash of thought Dora traced it all back to Arthur, through Mrs.
+      Agar; and her would-be lover fell still further in her estimation. He
+      seemed to be fated to show himself at every turn the very antitype to her
+      ideal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;but suppose I got a bad one? You are always saying
+      that marriage is a lottery, and I don't believe the remark is original.
+      Suppose I drew a blank; fancy being married to a blank! Or I might do
+      worse. I might draw minus something&mdash;minus brains, for instance. They
+      are in the lottery, for I have seen them, nicely done up in faultless
+      linen&mdash;both blanks and worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away towards the window, and the moment her face was averted it
+      changed suddenly. The face that looked out towards the beech-wood, where
+      the shadows were creeping from the darkening east, was piteous,
+      terror-stricken, driven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is an ever-living question why people&mdash;honest, well-meaning
+      parents and others&mdash;should be set to ride rough-shod over all that is
+      best and purest in the human mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector went on, in his calmly self-satisfied voice, with a fatuous
+      ignorance of what he was doing which must have made the very angels wince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great many girls,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;have thrown away a chance of happiness
+      merely to serve a passing fancy. Mind you don't do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little laugh, quite natural and easy, but her face was grave,
+      and more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think there is any fear of that,&rdquo; she replied lightly. &ldquo;You must
+      confess, papa, that I have always displayed a remarkable capacity for the
+      management of my own affairs&mdash;with the assistance of Sister Cecilia,
+      <i>bien entendu</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was rather a forlorn hope, but Dora was driven into a corner. The
+      Rector was in the habit of preaching a good methodical sermon, and usually
+      finished up somewhere in the neighbourhood of the text from whence he
+      started. He allowed himself to deviate, but he never turned his back upon
+      his text and went for a vague ramble through scriptural meadows, as some
+      have been heard to do. He deviated on this occasion for a moment, but
+      never lost sight of the main question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister Cecilia,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is a busybody, and, like all busybodies, a
+      fool. It is always people who cannot manage their own affairs who are so
+      anxious to help their neighbours. I have no doubt that you are as capable
+      of looking after yourself as any girl; but, child, you must remember that
+      experience goes a long way in the world, and in the nature of things I
+      must know better than you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you do, papa dear. I know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not know it, and he knew that she did not. This knowledge is
+      certain to come, sooner or later, to men and women who have lived for
+      themselves and in themselves alone. They are mental hermits, whose opinion
+      of things connected with the lives of others cannot well be of value
+      because they have only studied their own existences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rector of Stagholme suddenly became aware of this. He suddenly found
+      that his advice was no longer law. There are plenty of us ready to confess
+      that we cannot play billiards or whist or polo, but no man likes it to be
+      known that he cannot play the game of life. Mr. Glynde did not like this
+      subtle feeling of incompetency. He prided himself on being a man of the
+      world, and frequently applied the vague term to himself. We are all men of
+      a world, but it depends upon the size of that world as to what value our
+      citizenship may be. Mr. Glynde's world had always been the Reverend Thomas
+      Glynde. He knew nothing of Dora's world, and lost his way as soon as he
+      set his foot therein. But rather than make inquiries he thought to support
+      paternal dignity by going further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; he said, with inevitable egotism, &ldquo;unnecessary for me to tell you
+      that I have only your interests at heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite, papa dear. But do not let us talk about these horrid things. I am
+      quite happy at home, and I do not want to go away from it. There is
+      nowhere in the world where I should sooner be than here, even taking into
+      consideration the fact that you are sometimes the most dismal old
+      gentleman on the face of the earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he answered, with a grim smile, &ldquo;I am sure I have enough to make
+      me dismal. I am thankful to say that there will be no difficulty about
+      money. You will be well enough off to have all that you might desire. But
+      wealth is not all that a woman wants. She cannot turn it to the same
+      account as a man. She wants position, a household, a husband. Otherwise
+      the world only makes use of her; she is a prey to charity humbugs and bad
+      people who do good works badly. I am not speaking as a parson, but as a
+      man of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;as a parson, tell me if it would not be wrong to marry
+      a man for whom one did not care, just for the sake of these things&mdash;a
+      household and a husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it would,&rdquo; answered Mr. Glynde. &ldquo;And that is a wrong which is
+      usually punished in this life. But there are cases where it is difficult
+      to say whether there be love or not. Unless you actually despise or hate a
+      man, you may come to care for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And in the meantime the position and the advantages mentioned are worth
+      seizing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So says the world,&rdquo; admitted Mr. Glynde.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what says the parson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to him and laid her two arms upon his broad chest, standing
+      behind him as he sat in his arm-chair and looking down affectionately upon
+      his averted face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what says the parson?&rdquo; she repeated, with a loving tap of her fingers
+      on his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;A better parson than I says that what is
+      natural is right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and that means follow the dictates of your own heart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; admitted the Hector, taking her two hands in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the dictates of my heart are all for staying at home and looking
+      after my ancient parents and worrying them. Am I to be sent away? Not yet,
+      old gentleman, not yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Reverend Thomas Glynde laughed, somewhat as if a weight had been
+      lifted from his heart. In his way he was a conscientious man. It was his
+      honest conviction that Dora would do well to marry Arthur, who was a
+      gentleman and essentially harmless. In persuading her to do so covertly,
+      as he had thought well to do, he was honestly performing that which he
+      thought to be his duty towards her. Presently Mrs. Glynde came back, and
+      shortly afterwards Dora left the room. The Rector was not reading the book
+      he held open on his knee, but gazed instead absently at the pattern of the
+      hearthrug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A change had come in this quiet household. Dora had gone away a child. She
+      had come back a woman, with that consciousness of life which comes
+      somewhere between twenty and thirty years of age&mdash;a consciousness
+      which is partly made up of the knowledge that life is, after all, given to
+      each one of us individually to make the best of as well as we may; and no
+      one knows what that best is except ourselves. What is happiness for one is
+      misery for another, and while human beings vary as the clouds of heaven,
+      no life can be lived by set rule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over these things the Rector pondered. He felt the difference in Dora. She
+      was still his daughter, but no longer a child. Her existence was still his
+      chief care, but he could only stand by and help a little here and there;
+      for the dependency of childhood was left behind, and her evident intention
+      was to work out her own life in her own way. So do those who are dependent
+      by nature upon the advice and sympathy of others learn to lean only upon
+      their own strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the room overhead, standing by the window with weary eyes, Dora was
+      murmuring: &ldquo;I wonder&mdash;I wonder if I shall be able to hold out against
+      them all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Across the years you seem to come.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just what I can't do. I cannot afford to wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur Agar drew in his neatly-shod little feet, and leant back in the
+      deep chair which was always set aside as his in the Stagholme
+      drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother and son were alone in the vast, somewhat gloomy apartment. Arthur
+      had been home six hours, and the subject of their conversation was, of
+      course, Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia was absent, only in obedience to a very unmistakable hint
+      in one of Arthur's recent letters to his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only a little while,&rdquo; pleaded Mrs. Agar. &ldquo;Of course, dear, it will all
+      come right. I feel convinced of that. Only you see, dear, girls do not
+      like to be hurried in such an important step. I am quite sure she cares
+      for you; only you <i>must</i> give her a little time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can't, I can't,&rdquo; he repeated anxiously. And his face wore that
+      strangely accentuated look of trouble which almost amounted to dread&mdash;dread
+      of something in life which had not come yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; inquired Mrs. Agar. &ldquo;You are both young enough, I am sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, we are young enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stirred his tea with an effeminate appreciation of fine Coalport and a
+      dainty Norwegian spoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why should you not wait?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur was silent; he looked very small and frail, almost childlike, in
+      his silk-faced evening coat. Spoilt boy was writ large all over his
+      person. &ldquo;Arthur,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;you are keeping something from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his feeble head feebly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are, I know you are. What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the only person in all the world who had stirred the heart of
+      Anna Agar to something like a lasting affection. Once&mdash;years before&mdash;she
+      had loved Seymour Michael with a sudden volcanic passion which had as
+      suddenly turned to hatred. But under no circumstances could such a love
+      have endured. Consistency, constancy, singleness of purpose were quite
+      lacking in this woman's composition. It is rare, but when a woman does
+      fail in this respect, her failure is more complete, more miserable than
+      the failure of men, inconstant as they are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her affection for Arthur, coupled with that suspicion which always goes
+      with a cheap cunning, had put her on the right scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I insist on knowing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still he held his peace, with the obstinate silence of the weak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;don't ask me to help you to win Dora, that is
+      all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause; in the silence of the great house the wind moaned
+      softly. It always moaned in the drawing-room, whether in calm or storm,
+      from some undiscovered draught in the high ventilated ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sometimes think,&rdquo; said Arthur at length, in an awestruck voice, &ldquo;that
+      Jem may not be dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not dead! Arthur, how can you be so stupid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not at all awestruck. Her denser, more sordid nature was proof
+      against the silence or the humming wind. The greed of gain has power to
+      kill superstition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face puzzled her. Suddenly he cast himself back and hid his face in
+      his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he muttered, &ldquo;I can't do it, I can't do it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In an instant his mother was standing over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur,&rdquo; she hissed, &ldquo;you <i>know</i> something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he confessed in a whisper at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jem is not dead?&rdquo; she hissed again. Her voice was hoarse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was not killed in the disaster,&rdquo; admitted Arthur. In his heart he was
+      still clinging to the other hope subtly held out by Seymour Michael&mdash;the
+      hope that in his simple intrepidity Jem had gone to his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then where is he&mdash;where is he, Arthur? Tell me quickly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was white and breathless. It was as if she had bartered her
+      soul, and after payment, had been tricked out of her share of the bargain.
+      She trembled with a fear which seemed to fill her world and extend to the
+      other world to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He escaped from that action,&rdquo; said Arthur, who, now that the truth was
+      out, grew voluble like a child making a confession, &ldquo;by being sent on in
+      front with a few men. They escaped notice, while the larger body was
+      attacked and massacred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. I cannot tell you his name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Agar nervously, &ldquo;are you going mad? Do you know
+      what you are saying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In reply he gave a little laugh like a sob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;it is all right. I know what I am saying, though
+      sometimes I scarcely believe it myself. If it was a hundred years ago one
+      might believe it easily enough, but now it seems unreal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then where is Jem? Was he taken prisoner? Those men are savages, aren't
+      they? They kill&mdash;people when they take them prisoners.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he was not taken prisoner,&rdquo; said Arthur. Sometimes he lost patience
+      in a snappy, feminine way with his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! tell me, tell me, Arthur dear! You are killing me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, if you will let me. It appears that Jem had made himself a name
+      out there for knowing the country and the people, which is useful to the
+      Government, because Russia and England both want the country, or something
+      like that; I don't quite understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, never mind! Go on!&rdquo; interrupted Mrs. Agar, with characteristic
+      impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And at any rate the men on the other side&mdash;the Russians or some one,
+      I don't know who&mdash;were in the habit of watching Jem so as to prevent
+      his going up into this unexplored country. Well, when the report of his
+      death was put in the newspapers it was left uncontradicted, so that these
+      men should think he was dead, and not be on the look-out for him. Do you
+      understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar had raised her head, with listening, attentive eyes. It seemed
+      as if a voice had come to her across the years from the distant past. A
+      voice telling an old story, which had never been forgotten, but merely
+      laid aside in the memory among those things that never are forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finding Arthur's troubled gaze upon her, she seemed to recollect herself
+      with a little gesture of her hand to her breast as if breathing were
+      difficult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That does not sound like a thing Jem would do,&rdquo; she said, with one of
+      those flashes of shrewd observation which sometimes come to inconsequent
+      people, and make it difficult for those around them to be sure how much
+      they see and how much passes unobserved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not Jem, it was this other man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which other man?&rdquo; Mrs. Agar gave a little gasp, as if she had found
+      something she feared to find.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man who told me&mdash;he was Jem's superior officer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did he tell you&mdash;where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came to see me at Cambridge, and brought those things of Jem's,&rdquo;
+       replied Arthur. So far from feeling guilty at thus revealing all that he
+      had promised to keep secret, he was now beginning to experience some pangs
+      of conscience at the recollection of a concealment which, by a supreme
+      effort, had been made to extend to four months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sly gleam in Mrs. Agar's eyes. A close observer knowing her
+      well could have seen the cunning written on her face, for it was cheap and
+      obvious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said indifferently, &ldquo;and what sort of man was he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur pondered with a deliberation that almost maddened her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he replied at length, &ldquo;a small man, dark, with a sunburnt face; a
+      Jew, I should think. He was rather well dressed&mdash;in the military
+      style, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; muttered Mrs. Agar. &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Agar reflected, as deeply,
+      perhaps, as she had ever reflected in her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she discovered something for herself which had of necessity been
+      pointed out to her son&mdash;a subtle divergence of character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;of course Jem may never come back from this expedition.
+      It <i>must</i> be very dangerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very dangerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar's sigh of relief was quite audible. It is thus that nature
+      sometimes betrays human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did <i>he</i> say that? Did <i>he</i> think that of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael's opinion still had value in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the reply came slowly; &ldquo;he said that we might almost look upon Jem
+      as a dead man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother and son looked at each other and said nothing. Heredity is a
+      strange thing, and one alternately aggrandised and slighted. Blood is a
+      very powerful force, but the little lessons taught in childhood's years
+      bear a wondrous crop of good or evil fruit in later days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left alone, Arthur Agar's natural tendency was towards good. Probably
+      because he was timid, and goodness seems the safer course. There are many
+      who have not the courage to forsake goodness, even for a moment. But under
+      the influence of a stronger will&mdash;that is to say, under the influence
+      of four out of every five persons crossing his path&mdash;Arthur was
+      liable to be led in any direction. He would rather have sinned in company
+      than have cultivated virtue in the solitude usually accorded to that
+      state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow, in his mother's presence it did not seem so very wrong to keep
+      back the truth respecting Jem and to turn it to his own ends. It did not
+      seem either mean or cowardly to take advantage of a rival's absence and
+      gain his object, by deception. So, perhaps, it was in the beginning, when
+      the world was young. In those days also a mother and son helped each other
+      in deception, and so since then have many thousands of mothers
+      (incompetent or vicious) led their children to ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;if Jem goes and does things of that
+      description he must take the consequences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur said nothing in reply to this. The thought had been his for some
+      months, but he had never put it into shape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are perfectly justified,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;in acting as if Jem were dead
+      until he deigns to advise us to the contrary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This also was putting a long-cherished thought into form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur knew that he ought to have told his mother then and there that Jem
+      had taken every step in his power to advise him as soon as possible of the
+      falseness of the news transmitted to the newspapers. But something held
+      him silent, some taint of hereditary untruthfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not see,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that this news can, therefore, make much
+      difference. There is no reason to alter any of our plans. To begin with, I
+      am certain that he is dead. We must have heard by this time if he had been
+      living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur gave a little nod of acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And also,&rdquo; pursued Mrs. Agar, with characteristic inconsistency, &ldquo;he
+      evidently does not care about us or our feelings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur knew what she meant, and he descended as low in the moral scale as
+      ever he went during his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;there is, all the same, no time to lose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed his hand over his sleek, lifeless hair with a weary look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear,&rdquo; said his mother soothingly, &ldquo;I will see Ellen Glynde
+      to-morrow, and try to make her say something to Dora. A girl's mother has
+      always more influence than her father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This idiotic axiom seemed to satisfy Arthur, probably because he knew no
+      better, and he rose to take his bedroom candlestick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was a person utterly incapable of harbouring two thoughts at the
+      same moment. She never even got so far as to place two sides of a question
+      upon an equal footing in her mind. All her questions had but one side. She
+      was not thinking of Arthur when she went to her room. She was not thinking
+      of him when she lay staring at the daylight, which had crept up into the
+      sky before she closed her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tossed and turned and moaned aloud with a childish impatience. Her
+      mind could find no rest; it could not throw off the deadly knowledge that
+      Seymour Michael had come back into her life. And somehow she was no longer
+      Anna Agar, but Anna Hethbridge. She was no longer the fond mother whose
+      whole world was filled by thoughts of her son&mdash;a miserable,
+      thoughtless, haphazard world it was&mdash;but again she was the wronged
+      woman, moved by the one great passion that had stirred her sordid soul, a
+      fearsome hatred for Seymour Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not an analytical woman; she had never thought about her own
+      thoughts; she was as superficial as human nature can well be. That is to
+      say, she was little more than an animal with the gift of speech, added to
+      one or two small items of knowledge which divide men from beasts. But she
+      <i>knew</i> that this was not the end. She never doubted for a moment that
+      it was merely a beginning, that Seymour Michael was coming back into her
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a child she tossed and tumbled in her bed, muttering
+      half-consciously, &ldquo;Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      For two days Mrs. Glynde had been going about the world with a bright red
+      patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely,
+      the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning
+      service her fervour was something astonishing&mdash;the quaver in her
+      voice was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to
+      silent prayer after the blessing was so abnormally long that Stark, the
+      sexton, had to rattle the keys twice, with all due respect and for the
+      sake of his Sunday dinner, before she rose from her knees; whereas once
+      usually sufficed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the devout practice that all the Rectory servants should go to
+      evening service, while Mrs. Glynde, or Dora, or both, remained at home to
+      take care of the house. On this particular evening Mrs. Glynde proposed
+      that Dora should stay with her, and what her mother proposed Dora usually
+      acceded to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear,&rdquo; said the elder lady, with a nervous little jerk of the head which
+      was habitual or physical, &ldquo;I have heard about Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting in the drawing-room, with windows open to the ground,
+      and the fading light was insufficient to read by, although both had books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, mother,&rdquo; answered the girl in rather a tired voice, quite forgetting
+      to be cheerful. &ldquo;I should like to know exactly what you heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Anna told me,&rdquo; and there was a whole world of distrust in the
+      little phrase, &ldquo;that Arthur had asked you to be his wife, and that you had
+      refused without giving a reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave him a reason,&rdquo; replied Dora; &ldquo;the best one. I said that I did not
+      love him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause. The two women looked out on to the quiet lawn.
+      They seemed singularly anxious to avoid looking at each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that might come, dear; I think it would come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it would not,&rdquo; replied Dora quietly. There was a dreaminess in her
+      voice, as if she were repeating something she had heard or said before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Mrs. Glynde rose from her chair, and going towards her daughter,
+      she knelt on the soft carpet, still afraid to look at her face. There was
+      something suggestive and strange in the attitude, for the elder woman was
+      crouching at the feet of the younger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling,&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;I know, I <i>know!</i> I have known all
+      along. But mind, no one else knows, no one suspects! <i>It</i> can never
+      come to you again in this life. Women are like that, it never comes to
+      them twice. To some it never comes at all; think of that, dear, it never
+      comes to them at all! Surely that is worse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora took the nervous, eager hands in her own quiet grasp and held them
+      still. But she said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have prayed night and morning,&rdquo; the elder woman went on in the same
+      pleading whisper, &ldquo;that strength might be given you, and I think my
+      prayers were heard. For you have been strong, and no one has known except
+      me, and I do not matter. The strength must have come from somewhere. I
+      like to think that I had something to do with it, however little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again there was a silence. Across the quiet garden, from the church that
+      was hidden among the trees, the sound of the evening hymn came rising and
+      falling, the harshness of the rustic voices toned down by the whispering
+      of the leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; Mrs. Glynde went on, speaking perhaps out of her own experience,
+      &ldquo;that now it must seem that there is nothing left. I know that It can
+      never come to you, but something else may&mdash;a sort of alleviation;
+      something that is a little stronger than resignation, and many people
+      think that it is love. It is not love; never believe that! But it is
+      surely sent because so many women have&mdash;to go through life&mdash;without
+      that&mdash;which makes life worth living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush, dear!&rdquo; said Dora; and Mrs. Glynde paused as if to collect herself.
+      Perhaps her daughter stopped her just in time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is,&rdquo; she went on in a calmer voice, &ldquo;a sort of satisfaction in the
+      duties that come and have to be performed. The duties towards one's
+      husband and the others&mdash;the others, darling&mdash;are the best. They
+      are not the same, not the same as if&mdash;as they might have been, but
+      sometimes it is a great alleviation. And the time passes somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not the clever people who make all the epigrams; but sometimes those
+      who merely live and feel, and are perhaps objects of ridicule. Mrs. Glynde
+      was one of these. She had unwittingly made an epigram. She had summed up
+      life in five words&mdash;the time passes somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, dear,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;it is not wise, perhaps it is not quite right,
+      to turn one's back upon an alleviation which is offered. Arthur would be
+      very kind to you. He is really fond of you, and perhaps the very fact of
+      his not being clever or brilliant or anything like that might be a
+      blessing in the future, for he would not expect so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would have to expect nothing,&rdquo; said Dora, speaking for the first time,
+      &ldquo;because I could give him nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke in rather an indifferent voice, and in the gloom her mother
+      could not see her face. It was a singular thing that neither of them
+      seemed to take Arthur Agar's feelings into account in the very smallest
+      degree; and this must be accounted to them for wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was, as her mother had said, very strong. She never gave way. Her
+      delicate lips never quivered, but she took care to keep them close
+      pressed. Only in her eyes was the pain to be seen, and perhaps that was
+      why her mother did not dare to look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no hurry,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;You need not decide now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; answered Dora, &ldquo;I have decided now, and he knows my decision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps after some time&mdash;some years?&rdquo; suggested Mrs. Glynde.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great many years,&rdquo; put in Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he asks you again&mdash;oh! I know it would be better, dear; better
+      for you in every way. I do not say that you would be quite happy. But it
+      would be a sort of happiness; there would be less unhappiness, because you
+      would have less time to think. I do not say anything about the position
+      and the wealth and such considerations, for they are not of much
+      importance to a good woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After a great many years,&rdquo; said Dora, in that calm and judicial voice
+      which fell like ice on her mother's heart, &ldquo;I will see&mdash;if he chooses
+      to wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but&mdash;&rdquo; began Mrs. Glynde, but she did not go on. That which she
+      was about to say would scarcely have been appropriate. But so far as the
+      facts were concerned she might just as well have said it. For Dora knew as
+      well as she did that Arthur Agar would not wait. Women are not blind to
+      manifest facts. They know us, my brothers, better than we think. And they
+      are not quite so romantic as we take them to be. Their love is a better
+      thing than ours, because it is more practical and more defined. They do
+      not seek an ideal of their own imagination; but when something approaching
+      to it crosses their path in the flesh they know what they want, and they
+      do not change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the silence was again broken the murmur of voices told them that
+      the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female
+      form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia,
+      walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the outward
+      and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the remainder
+      of womanhood. Good women&mdash;those mistaken females who move in an
+      atmosphere of ostentatious good works&mdash;usually walk like this. Like
+      this they enter the humble cot with a little soup and a lot of advice.
+      Like this they smilingly step, where angels would fear to tread, upon
+      feelings which they are incapable of understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Glynde got quietly up and left the room. As the door closed behind
+      her Sister Cecilia's gently persuasive voice was heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora! Dora dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the girl without any enthusiasm, rising and going to the
+      window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you walk with me a little way across the fields? It is such a lovely
+      evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Dora passed out of the open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; said Sister Cecilia after a few paces, &ldquo;that you were not in
+      church. We had such a bright service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora, like some more of us, wondered vaguely where the adjective applied,
+      especially on a gloomy evening without candles, but she said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I stayed at home with mother,&rdquo; she explained practically. &ldquo;The servants
+      were all out.&rdquo; Sister Cecilia was not listening. She was gazing up at the
+      sky, where a few stars were beginning to show themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One feels,&rdquo; she murmured with a sigh, &ldquo;on such an evening as this, that,
+      after all, nothing matters much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the servants do you mean? They are going on better now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, dear, about life. I mean that at times one feels that this cannot be
+      the end of it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we ought to feel that, I suppose, being Christians.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And some day we shall see the meaning of all our troubles,&rdquo; pursued
+      Sister Cecilia. &ldquo;It is so hard for us older ones, who have passed through
+      it, to stand by helpless, only guessing at the pain and anguish of it all,
+      whereas, perhaps, we could help if we only knew. A little more candour, a
+      little more confidence might so easily lead to mutual help and
+      consolation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly,&rdquo; admitted Dora, without any encouragement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so sorry for poor Arthur!&rdquo; whispered Sister Cecilia, apparently to
+      the evening shades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was silent. She knew how to treat Sister Cecilia. Jem had taught her
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been such a terrible blow. His letters to his mother are quite
+      heartbroken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora reserved her opinion of grown-up men who write heartbroken letters to
+      their mothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know all about it,&rdquo; Sister Cecilia went on, quite regardless of the
+      truth, as some good people are. &ldquo;Dora, dear, I know all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence, a silence which reminded Sister Cecilia of a sense of
+      discomfiture which had more than once been hers in conversation with Jem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you nothing to tell me, dear?&rdquo; she inquired. &ldquo;Nothing to say to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; replied Dora pleasantly. &ldquo;Especially as you know all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you never change your mind?&rdquo; persuasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am not the sort of person to change my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause, and again Sister Cecilia whispered to the
+      evening shades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot help hoping that some day it may be different. It is not as if
+      there were any one else&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say,&rdquo; added Sister Cecilia, after waiting in vain for an answer to
+      her implied question, &ldquo;that I am wrong, but I cannot help being in favour
+      of a little more candour, a little mutual confidence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot help feeling,&rdquo; replied Dora quietly, &ldquo;that we are all best
+      employed when we mind our own business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear, I know. But it is very hard to stand idly by and see young
+      people make mistakes which can only bring them sorrow. I want to tell you
+      to think very deeply before you elect to lead the life of a single woman.
+      It is a life full of temptation to idleness and self-indulgence. There are
+      many single women who, I am really afraid, are quite useless in the world.
+      They only gossip and pry into their neighbours' affairs and make mischief.
+      It is because they have nothing to do. I have known several women like
+      that, and I cannot help thinking that they would have been happier if they
+      had married. Perhaps they did not have the chance. One does not understand
+      these things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Cecilia cast her eyes upwards toward the tree-tops to see if
+      perchance the explanation was written there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she went on complacently, drawing down her bonnet-strings,
+      &ldquo;there are many useful lives of single women. Lives which the world would
+      sadly miss should it please God to take them. Women who live, not for
+      themselves, but for others; who go about the world helping their
+      neighbours with advice and the fruits of their own experience; ever the
+      first to go to the afflicted and to those who are in trouble. They do not
+      receive their reward here, they are not always thanked. The ignorant are
+      sometimes even rude. They have only the knowledge that they are doing
+      good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That <i>must</i> be a satisfaction,&rdquo; murmured Dora fervently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, dear; it is. But&mdash;you will excuse me, Dora dear, if I say
+      this?&mdash;I do not think you are that sort of woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Dora, &ldquo;I don't think I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that is why I have said this to you. Now, don't answer me, dear. Just
+      think about it quietly. I think I have done my duty in telling you what,
+      was on my mind. It is always best, although it is sometimes difficult, or
+      even painful; but then, it is one's duty. Kiss me, dear! Good-night!&mdash;<i>good</i>-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so Sister Cecilia left Dora&mdash;mincing away into the gloom of the
+      overhanging trees. And so she leaves these pages. Verily the good have
+      their reward here below in a coat of self-complacency which is as
+      impervious to the buffets of life as to the sarcasm of the worldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. A STAB IN THE DARK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Slander, meanest spawn of Hell; And women's slander is the worst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was a person incapable of awaiting that vague result called the
+      development of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur had never been forced to wait for anything in his life. No longer
+      at least than tradespeople required, and in many cases not so long, for
+      Mrs. Agar had an annoying way of refusing to listen to reason. She never
+      allowed that laws applying to ordinary people, served more or less
+      faithfully by tailor or dressmaker, applied to herself or to Arthur. And
+      tradespeople, one finds are not always of the same mind as the Medes and
+      Persians&mdash;they square matters quietly in the bill. They had to do it
+      very quietly indeed with Mrs. Agar, who endeavoured strenuously to get the
+      best value for her money all through life; a remnant of Jaggery House,
+      Clapham Common, which the placid wealth of Stagholme never obliterated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the luncheon, specially prepared and laid before the Rector, this
+      second Rebecca awaited the result impatiently. But nothing came of it.
+      Although Mrs. Agar now looked upon Dora as the latest whim of the
+      not-to-be-denied Arthur, she could hardly consider Mr. Glynde in the light
+      of a tradesman retailing the said commodity, and, therefore, to be bullied
+      and harassed into making haste. She reflected with misgiving that Mr.
+      Glynde was an exponent of the tiresome art of talking over and thinking
+      out matters which required neither words nor thought, and saw no prospect
+      of an immediate furtherance of her design.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a mistaken and much practised desire of striking when the iron was
+      hot, Mrs. Agar, like many a wiser person, began, therefore, to bang about
+      in all directions, hitting not only the iron but the anvil, her own
+      knuckles and the susceptibilities of any one standing in the
+      neighbourhood. She could not leave things to Mr. Glynde, but must needs
+      see Dora herself. She had in her mind the nucleus of a simple if
+      scurrilous scheme which will show itself hereafter. Her opportunity
+      presented itself a few days later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A neighbouring family counting itself county, presumably on the strength
+      of never being able to absent themselves from the favoured neighbourhood
+      on account of monetary incapacity, gave its annual garden-party at this
+      time. To this entertainment the whole countryside was in the habit of
+      repairing&mdash;not with an idea of enjoying itself, but because everybody
+      did it. To be bidden to this garden-party was in itself a <i>cachet</i> of
+      respectability. This indeed was the only satisfaction to be gathered from
+      the festivity. If the honour was great, the hospitality was small. If the
+      condescension was vast, the fare provided was verging on the stingy. Here
+      were served by half-starved domestic servants, in the smallest of
+      tumblers, &ldquo;cups&rdquo; wherein were mixed liquors, such as cider, usually
+      consumed by self-respecting persons in the undiluted condition and in
+      mugs. Upon cucumber-cup, taken in county society, as on a dinner of herbs,
+      one hardly expects the guest to grow convivial. Therefore at this
+      garden-party those bidden to the feast were in the habit of wandering
+      sadly through the shrubbery seeking whom they might avoid, and in the
+      course of such a perambulation, with a young man conversant of himself,
+      Dora met Mrs. Agar. Even the mistress of Stagholme was preferable to the
+      young man from London, and besides&mdash;there were associations. So Dora
+      drew Mrs. Agar into her promenade, and presently the young man got his <i>congé</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first they talked of local topics, and Mrs. Agar, who had a fine sense
+      of hospitality, said her say about the cider-cup. Then she gave an awkward
+      little laugh, and with an assumption of lightness which did not succeed
+      she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope, dear, you do not intend to keep my poor boy in suspense much
+      longer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean Arthur?&rdquo; asked Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear. I really don't see why there should be this absurd reserve
+      between us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite willing,&rdquo; replied the girl, &ldquo;to hear what you have to say
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but not to talk of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I suppose Arthur has told you all there is to tell. If there is
+      anything more that you want to know I shall be very glad to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, of course, I don't understand it at all,&rdquo; burst out Mrs. Agar
+      eagerly. This was quite true; neither she nor Arthur could understand how
+      any one could refuse such a glorious offer as he had made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I can explain. Arthur asked me to marry him. I quite appreciated
+      the honour, but I declined it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but why? Surely you didn't mean it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did mean it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; explained Mrs. Agar, with a little toss of the head, &ldquo;I am sure I
+      cannot see what more you want. There are many girls who would be glad to
+      be mistress of Stagholme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And it must be remembered that she said this knowing quite well that Jem
+      was probably alive. There are some crimes which women commit daily in the
+      family circle which deserve a greater punishment than that meted out to a
+      legal criminal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is precisely what I ventured to point out to Arthur,&rdquo; said Dora,
+      unconsciously borrowing her father's ironical neatness of enunciation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why shouldn't you take the opportunity? There are not many estates
+      like it in England. Your position would be as good as that of a titled
+      lady, and I am sure you could not want a better husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like Arthur as a friend, but I could never marry him, so it is useless
+      to discuss the question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; persisted Mrs. Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I do not care for him in the right way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that would come,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar. It was only natural that she should
+      use an argument which is accountable for more misery on earth than mothers
+      dream of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it would never come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar gave a cunning little laugh, and paused so as to lend additional
+      weight to her next remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a dangerous thing for a girl to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; inquired Dora indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, because they can never be sure, unless&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless what? I am quite sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless there is some one else,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, with an exaggerated
+      significance suggestive of the servants' hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora did not answer at once. They walked on for a few moments in silence,
+      passing other guests walking in couples. Then Dora replied with a
+      succinctness acquired from her father:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Generalities about women,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;are always a mistake. Indeed, all
+      generalities are dangerous. But if you and Arthur care to apply this to
+      me, you are at liberty to do so. Whatever generalities you apply and
+      whatever you say will make no difference to the main question. Moreover,
+      you will, perhaps, be acting a kinder part if you give Arthur to
+      understand once for all that my decision is final.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you like, dear, as you like,&rdquo; muttered Mrs. Agar, apparently
+      abandoning the argument, whereas in reality she had not yet begun it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do, dear Mrs. Martin?&rdquo; she went on in the same breath, bowing
+      and smiling to a lady who passed them at that moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, returning in a final way to the question after a
+      few moments' silence, &ldquo;of course I do not believe all I hear; in fact, I
+      contradict a good deal. But I have been told that gossips talked about you
+      a good deal last year, at the time of Jem's death. I think it only fair
+      that you should know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Dora curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, dear, <i>I</i> didn't believe anything about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Dora again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have been sorry to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Dora turned upon her suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, Aunt Anna?&rdquo; she asked with determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing, dear, nothing. Don't get flurried about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not at all flurried,&rdquo; replied Dora quietly. &ldquo;You said that you would
+      be sorry to have to believe what gossips said of me last year at the time
+      of Jem's death&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dora,&rdquo; interrupted Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;I never said anything against you in any
+      way; how can you say such a thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; continued Dora, with an unpleasant calmness of manner, &ldquo;I must ask
+      you to explain. What did the gossips say, and why should you be sorry to
+      have to believe it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar's reluctance was not quite genuine nor was it well enough
+      simulated to deceive Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if you insist, they said that there had been
+      something between you and Jem&mdash;long, long ago, of course, before he
+      went out to India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora shrugged her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are welcome to say what they like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was silent, awaiting a second question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why should you be sorry to believe that?&rdquo; inquired the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I hardly like to tell you,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora waited in silence, without appearing to heed Mrs. Agar's reluctance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid, dear,&rdquo; went on the elder lady, when she saw that there was
+      no chance of assistance, &ldquo;that we have been all sadly mistaken in Jem. He
+      was not&mdash;all that we thought him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what way?&rdquo; asked Dora. She had turned quite white, and her lips were
+      suddenly dry and parched. She held her parasol a little lower, so that
+      Mrs. Agar could not see her face. She was sure enough of her voice. She
+      had had practice in that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what way was Jem not all that we thought him?&rdquo; she repeated evenly,
+      like a lesson learnt by heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar stammered. She tried to blush, but she could not manage that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot very well give you details. Perhaps, when you are older. You
+      know, dear, in India people are not very particular. They have peculiar
+      ideas, I mean, of morals&mdash;different from ours. And perhaps he saw no
+      harm in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what?&rdquo; inquired Dora gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in the life they lead out there. It appears that there was some
+      unfortunate attachment. I think she was married or something like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you this?&rdquo; asked Dora, in a voice like a threat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man told Arthur at Cambridge&mdash;one of poor Jem's fellow-officers.
+      The man who brought home the diary and things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Having once begun Mrs. Agar found herself obliged to go on. She had not
+      time to pause and reflect that she was now staking everything upon the
+      possibility of Jem's death subsequent to the disaster in which he was
+      supposed to have perished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora did not believe one word of this story, although she was quite
+      without proof to the contrary. Jem's letters had not been frequent, nor
+      had they been remarkable for minuteness of detail respecting his own life.
+      Mrs. Agar had done her best to put a stop to this correspondence
+      altogether, and had succeeded in bringing about a subtle reserve on both
+      sides. She had persistently told Jem that Dora was evidently attached to
+      Arthur, and that their marriage was only the question of a few years. Of
+      this Jem had never found any confirmatory hint in Dora's letters, and from
+      some mistaken sense of chivalry refrained from writing to ask her
+      point-blank if it were true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why,&rdquo; said Dora, &ldquo;do you tell me this? In case what the gossips said
+      might be true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es, dear, perhaps it was that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So as to save me from cherishing any mistaken memory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it may have been that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mrs. Agar was surprised to see Dora turn her back upon her as if she
+      had been something loathsome to look upon, and walk away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      When the heart speaks, Glory itself is an illusion.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Mahanaddy</i> had just turned her blunt prow out westward from the
+      harbour of Port Said, sniffing her native north wind, with a gentle rising
+      movement to that old Mediterranean eastward-tending swell. The lights of
+      the most iniquitous town on earth were fading away in the mist of the
+      desert on the left hand, and on the right the gloom of the sea merged into
+      a grey sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner-hour had passed, and the passengers were lolling about on the
+      long quarter-deck, talking lazily after the manner of men and women who
+      have little to say and much time wherein to say it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite easy to perceive that they had left a voyage of many days
+      behind them, for the funny man had exhausted himself and the politicians
+      were asleep. The lifeless, homeward-bound flirtations had waned long ago,
+      and no one looked twice at any one else. They all knew each other's
+      dresses and vices and little aggravating habits, and only three or four of
+      them were aware that human nature runs deeper than such superficial
+      details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Away forward, behind the sheep-pens, an Italian gentleman in the ice
+      industry was scraping on a yellow fiddle which looked sticky. But like
+      many things of plain exterior this unprepossessing instrument had
+      something in it, something that the Italian gentleman knew how to extract,
+      and all the ship was hushed into listening. Such as had conversation left
+      spoke in low tones, and even the stewards in the pantry ceased for a time
+      to test the strength of the dinner-plates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a small clear space of deck between the door of the doctor's cabin and
+      the saloon gangway two men were walking slowly backwards and forwards.
+      They were both tall men, both large, and consequently both inclined to
+      taciturnity. They had said, perhaps, as little as any two persons on
+      board, which may have accounted for the fact that they were talking now,
+      and still seemed to have plenty to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One was dark and clean-shaven, with something of the sea in his mien and
+      gait. His nose and chin were singularly clean cut, and suggestive of an
+      ancestral type. This was the ship's doctor, a man who probed men's hearts
+      as well as their bodies, and wrote of what he found there. His companion
+      was an antitype&mdash;a representative of the fair race found in England
+      by the ancestors of the other when they came and conquered. He wore a
+      beard, and his face was burnt to the colour of mahogany, which had a
+      strange effect in contrast to the bluest of Saxon eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor was talking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; he was saying, &ldquo;who the devil are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other smiled, a gentle, triumphant smile. The smile of a man who,
+      humbly recognising himself at a just estimation, is conscious of having
+      outwitted another, cleverer than himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You finish your pipe,&rdquo; he said, and he walked away with long firm strides
+      towards the saloon stairs. The Doctor went to the rail, where, resting his
+      arms on the solid teak, he leant, gazing thoughtfully out over the sea,
+      which was part of his life. For he knew the great waters, and loved them
+      with all the quiet strength of a slow-tongued man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before very long some one came behind and touched him on the shoulder. He
+      turned, and in the fading light looked into the smiling face of his late
+      companion&mdash;the same and yet quite different, for the beard was gone,
+      and there only remained the long fair moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Dr. Mark Ruthine, &ldquo;Jem Agar. I was a fool not to know you at
+      first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sort of shyness flickered for a moment in the blue eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been practising so hard during the last ten months to look like
+      some one else that I hardly feel like myself,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Um-m! There was something uncanny about you when you first came on board.
+      I used to watch you at meals, and wonder what it was. By God, Agar, I <i>am</i>
+      glad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; replied Jem Agar. He was looking round him rather nervously.
+      &ldquo;You don't think there is anybody on board who will know me, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one, barring the Captain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Agar calmly, &ldquo;he is all right. He can keep his mouth shut.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no doubt about that,&rdquo; replied the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little pause followed, during which they both listened involuntarily to
+      the ice-cream merchant's musical voice, which was now floating over the
+      silent decks, raised in song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to hear all about it some day,&rdquo; said the ship's surgeon at
+      last. He knew his man, and no detail of the strange lives that passed the
+      horizon of his daily existence was ever forgotten. Only he usually found
+      that those who had the most to tell required a little assistance in their
+      narration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is rather a rum business,&rdquo; answered Jem Agar, not displeased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the ship's bell rang four clear notes into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten o'clock,&rdquo; said the Doctor. &ldquo;Come into my cabin and have a smoke; the
+      Captain will be in soon. He would like to hear the story too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they passed into the cabin, and before they had been there many minutes
+      the Captain joined them. For a moment he stood in the doorway, then he
+      came forward with outstretched hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;all that I can say is that you ought to be dead. But
+      it's not my business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had seen too many freaks of fortune to be surprised at this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that there was something familiar about the
+      back of your head. Back of a man's head never changes. It's a funny
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down in his usual chair, and looked with a cheery smile upon him
+      who had risen from the death column of the <i>Times</i>. Then he turned to
+      his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, Agar,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I was beastly sorry about that&mdash;death of
+      yours. Cut me up wonderfully for a few minutes. That is saying a lot in
+      these days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very kind of you to say so,&rdquo; he said rather awkwardly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I,&rdquo; added Dr. Ruthine from behind the whisky and soda tray, in the
+      deliberate voice of a man who is saying something with an effort, &ldquo;felt
+      that it was a pity. That is how it struck me&mdash;a pity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, very disjointedly, and in a manner which could scarcely be set down
+      here, Major James Agar told his singular story. There are&mdash;thank
+      heaven!&mdash;many such stories still untold; there are, one would be
+      inclined to hope, many such still uncommenced. As a nation we may be on
+      the decline, but there is something to go on with in us yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once when the narrator paused, Dr. Ruthine went to the side table and
+      opened some bottles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whisky?&rdquo; he inquired, with curt hospitality, &ldquo;or anything else your fancy
+      may paint, down to tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar rose to pour out his own allowance, and for a moment the two men
+      stood together. With the critical eye of a soldier, which seems to weigh
+      flesh and blood, he looked his host for the time being up and down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don't make men like you and me on tea,&rdquo; he said, reaching out his
+      hand towards a tumbler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the story went on. At first the ship's doctor listened to it with
+      interest but without absorption, then suddenly something seemed to catch
+      his attention and hold it riveted. When a pause came he leant forward,
+      pointing an emphasising finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you spoke just now of the chief,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;did you mean Michael?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Seymour Michael?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain tapped his pipe against his boot and leant back with the shrug
+      of the shoulders awaiting further developments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you mean to tell me that you put yourself entirely in the hands of
+      Seymour Michael?&rdquo; pursued the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine shook his head with a little laugh. &ldquo;I always thought, Agar,
+      that you were a bit of a fool!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have sometimes suspected it myself,&rdquo; admitted the soldier meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, man,&rdquo; said Ruthine, &ldquo;Seymour Michael is one of the biggest rascals
+      on God's earth. I would not trust him with fourpence round the corner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor would I,&rdquo; put in the Captain, &ldquo;and the sum is not excessive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar was sipping his whisky and soda with the placidity of a giant who
+      fears no open fight and never thinks of foul play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see,&rdquo; he muttered, &ldquo;what harm he can do me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more do I, at the moment,&rdquo; replied the Doctor; &ldquo;but the man is a liar
+      and an unscrupulous cad. I have kept an eye on him for years because he
+      interests me. He has never run a straight course since he came into the
+      field; he has consistently sacrificed truth, honour, and his best friend
+      to his own ambition ever since the beginning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar smiled at the Doctor's vehemence, although he was aware that such
+      a display was far from being characteristic of the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he admitted, &ldquo;in the matter of honour and glory I expect to
+      be swindled. But I don't care. I know the chap's reputation, and all that,
+      but he can hardly get rid of the fact that I have done the thing and he
+      has not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not thinking so much of that,&rdquo; replied the other. &ldquo;Men sell their
+      souls for honour and glory and never get paid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused; then with the sure touch of one who has dabbled with pen and
+      ink in the humanities, he laid his finger on the vulnerable spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking more,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;of what you had trusted him to do&mdash;telling
+      certain persons, I mean, that you were not dead. He is just as likely as
+      not to have suppressed the information.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar was looking very grave, with a sudden pinched appearance about
+      the lips which was only half concealed by his moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he do that?&rdquo; he asked sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would do it if it suited his purpose. He is not the man to take into
+      consideration such things as feelings&mdash;especially the feelings of
+      others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a bit hard on him, Ruthine,&rdquo; said Jem doubtfully. &ldquo;Why should it
+      suit his convenience?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Secrecy was essential for your purpose and his; in telling a secret one
+      doubles the risk of its disclosure each time a new confidant is admitted.
+      Besides, the man's nature is quite extraordinarily secretive. He has
+      Jewish and Scotch blood in his veins, and the result is that he would
+      rather disseminate false news than true on the off chance of benefiting
+      thereby later on. For men of that breed each piece of accurate
+      information, however trivial, has a marketable value, and they don't part
+      with it unless they get their price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There followed a silence, during which Jem Agar went back in mental
+      retrospection to the only interview he had ever had with Seymour Michael,
+      and the old lurking sense of distrust awoke within his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said the Captain, who was an optimist&mdash;he even applied that
+      theory to human nature&mdash;&ldquo;I suppose it is all right now. Everybody
+      knows now that you are among the quick&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Jem, &ldquo;only Michael; it was arranged that I should telegraph
+      to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; the Doctor hastened to say, for he had perceived a change in
+      Agar's demeanour, &ldquo;all this is the purest supposition. It is only a theory
+      built upon a man's character. It is wonderful how consistent people are.
+      Judge how a man would act and you will find that he has acted like it
+      afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As if in illustration of the theory Jem Agar looked gravely determined,
+      but uttered no threat directed towards Seymour Michael. His quiet face was
+      a threat in itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, rising, &ldquo;I am keeping you fellows from your slumbers. I
+      am still sleeping on deck; can't get accustomed to the atmosphere below
+      decks after six months' sleeping in the open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded and left them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rum chap!&rdquo; muttered the Captain, looking at his watch when the footsteps
+      had died away over the silent decks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the queerest specimens I know,&rdquo; retorted Dr. Mark Ruthine, who was
+      fingering a pen and looking longingly towards the inkstand. The Captain&mdash;a
+      man of renowned discretion&mdash;quietly departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no more distrustful man than the simple gentleman of honour who
+      finds himself deceived and tricked. It is as if the bottom suddenly fell
+      out of his trust in all mankind, and there is nothing left but a mocking
+      void. Jem Agar lay on his mattress beneath the awning, and stared hard at
+      a bright star near the horizon. He was realising that life is, after all,
+      a sorry thing of chance, and that all his world might be hanging at that
+      moment on the word of an untrustworthy man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before morning he had determined to telegraph from Malta to Seymour
+      Michael to meet him at Plymouth on the arrival of the <i>Mahanaddy</i> at
+      that port.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI. BALANCING ACCOUNTS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      And yet God has not said a word.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      One fine morning in June the <i>Mahanaddy</i> steamed with stately
+      deliberation into the calm water inside Plymouth breakwater. Many writers
+      love to dwell with pathetic insistence on incidents of a departure; but
+      there is also pathos&mdash;perhaps deeper and truer because more subtle&mdash;in
+      the arrival of the homeward-board ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who can tell? There may have been others as anxious to look on the green
+      slopes of Mount Edgecumbe as the man with the mahogany-coloured face who
+      stood ever smoking&mdash;smoking&mdash;always at the forward starboard
+      corner of the hurricane deck. His story had not leaked out, because only
+      two men on board knew it&mdash;men with no conversational leaks whatever.
+      He had made no other friends. But many watched him half interestedly, and
+      perhaps a few divined the great calm impatience beneath the suppressed
+      quiet of his manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That man&mdash;Jem Agar&mdash;is dangerous,&rdquo; the Doctor had said to the
+      Captain more than once, and Mark Ruthine was not often egregiously
+      mistaken in such matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Um!&rdquo; replied the Captain of the <i>Mahanaddy</i>. &ldquo;There is an uncanny
+      calm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were talking about him now as the Captain&mdash;his own pilot for
+      Plymouth and the Channel&mdash;walked slowly backwards and forwards on the
+      bridge. It seemed quite natural for the Doctor to be sitting on the rail
+      by the engine-room telegraph. The passengers and the men were quite
+      accustomed to it. This friendship was a matter of history to the homeless
+      world of men and women who travelled east and west through the Suez Canal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has asked me,&rdquo; the Doctor was saying, &ldquo;to go ashore with him at
+      Plymouth; I don't know why. I imagine he is a little bit afraid of
+      wringing Seymour Michael's neck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as likely as not,&rdquo; observed the Captain. &ldquo;It would be a good thing
+      done, but don't let Agar do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I leave the ship at Plymouth?&rdquo; asked Mark Ruthine, with a quiet air
+      of obedience which seemed to be accepted with the gravity with which it
+      was offered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see why you should not,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;Everybody goes ashore
+      there except about half a dozen men, who certainly will not want your
+      services.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should rather like to do it. We come from the same part of the country,
+      and Agar seems anxious to have me. He is not a chap to say much, but I
+      imagine there will be some sort of a <i>denouement</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain was looking through a pair of glasses ahead, towards the
+      anchorage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he continued to attend to his business with that watchful care which
+      made the <i>Mahanaddy</i> one of the safest boats afloat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Mark Ruthine left the bridge and went to his cabin to pack. As
+      he descended he paused, and retracing his steps forward he went and
+      touched Jem Agar on the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'll go with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agar nodded. He was gazing at the green English hills and far faint valley
+      of the Tamar with a curious gleam of excitement in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later they landed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You stick by me,&rdquo; said Jem Agar, when they discerned the small wiry form
+      of Seymour Michael awaiting them on the quay. &ldquo;I want you to hear
+      everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This man was, as Ruthine had said, dangerous. He was too calm. There was
+      something grand and terrifying in that white heat which burned in his eyes
+      and drove the blood from his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile, waving his hand in
+      greeting to Jem and to Ruthine, whom he knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem shook hands with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm all right, thanks,&rdquo; he said curtly, in answer to Seymour Michael's
+      inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business&mdash;good business,&rdquo; exclaimed the General, who seemed
+      somewhat unnecessarily excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Mark Ruthine too!&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;You look as fit as ever. Still
+      turning your thousands out of the British public&mdash;eh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Ruthine, &ldquo;thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just run ashore for half an hour, I suppose?&rdquo; continued Seymour Michael,
+      looking hurriedly out towards the <i>Mahanaddy</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Ruthine, &ldquo;I leave the ship here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small man glanced from the face of one to the other with something sly
+      and uneasy in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar had altered since he saw him last in the little tent far up on
+      the slopes of the Pamir. He was older and graver. There was also a wisdom
+      in his eyes&mdash;that steadfast wise look that comes to eyes which have
+      looked too often on death. Mark Ruthine he knew, and him he distrusted,
+      with that quiet keenness of observation which was his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he said eagerly to Jem, &ldquo;what I thought we might do was to have a
+      little breakfast and catch the eleven o'clock train up to town. If Ruthine
+      will join us, I for one shall be very pleased. He won't mind our talking
+      shop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine was attending to the luggage, which was being piled upon a
+      cab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you not had breakfast?&rdquo; asked Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I have had a little, but I don't mind a second edition. That waiter
+      chap at the hotel got me out of bed much too soon. However, it is worth
+      getting up the night before to see you back, old chap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there not an earlier train than the eleven o'clock?&rdquo; asked Agar,
+      looking at his watch. There was a singular constraint in his manner which
+      Seymour Michael could not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there is one at nine forty-five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let us go by that. We can get something at the station, if we want
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it a bottle of champagne to celebrate the return of the explorer,
+      and I am your man,&rdquo; said Michael heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it anything you like,&rdquo; answered Agar, in a gentler voice. He was
+      beginning to come under the influence of Seymour Michael's sweet voice,
+      and of that fascination which nearly all educated Jews unconsciously
+      exercise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and beckoned to Mark Ruthine, who presently joined them, after
+      paying the boatmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The nine forty-five is the train,&rdquo; he said to him. &ldquo;We may as well walk
+      up. The streets of Plymouth are not pleasant to drive through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the cab was sent on with the luggage, and the three men turned to the
+      slope that leads up to the Hoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was some sort of constraint over them, and they reached the summit
+      of the ascent without having exchanged a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they stood on the Hoe, where the old Eddystone lighthouse is now
+      erected, Seymour Michael turned and looked out over the bay where the
+      ships lay at anchor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The good old <i>Mahanaddy</i>,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the finest ship I have ever
+      sailed in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither man answered him, but they turned also and looked, standing one on
+      each side of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at last Jem Agar spoke, breaking a silence which had been brooding
+      since the <i>Mahanaddy</i> came out of the Canal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;exactly how things stand with my people at
+      home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued to look out over the bay towards the <i>Mahanaddy</i>, but
+      Mark Ruthine was looking at Seymour Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the General, &ldquo;I wanted to talk to you about that. That was
+      really my reason for proposing that we should wait till the second train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There cannot be much to say,&rdquo; said Jem Agar rather coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I wanted to tell you all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was what the Captain had called an uncanny calm in the voice.
+      General Michael did not answer, and Jem turned slowly towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presume,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I am right in taking it for granted that you
+      have carried out your share of the contract?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow, it has been perfectly wonderful. The secret has been kept
+      perfectly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By all concerned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&mdash;yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael was glancing furtively at Mark Ruthine, as the fox glances back
+      over his shoulder, not at the huntsman, but at the hounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you tell them personally, or did you write?&rdquo; pursued Jem Agar
+      relentlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; replied Michael, pulling out his watch, &ldquo;it is a long
+      story, and we must get to the train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Agar, in the calm voice which raised a sort of &ldquo;fearful joy&rdquo;
+       in Ruthine's soul, &ldquo;we need not be getting to the train yet, and there is
+      no reason for it to be a long story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael gave an uneasy little laugh, which met with no response
+      whatever. The two taller men exchanged a glance over his head. Up to that
+      moment Jem Agar had hoped for the best. He had a greater faith in human
+      nature than Mark Ruthine had managed to retain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you or have you not told those people whom you swore to me that you
+      would tell, out there, that night?&rdquo; asked Jem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told your brother,&rdquo; answered the General with dogged indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an ugly gleam in the blue eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't tell him not to tell the others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you suggested it to him,&rdquo; put in Mark Ruthine, with the knowledge of
+      mankind that was his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has it got to do with you, at any rate?&rdquo; snapped Seymour Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; replied Ruthine, looking across at Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did not tell Dora Glynde?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      General Michael shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Jem hoarsely. It was singular, that sudden hoarseness, and
+      the Doctor, whose business such things were, made a note of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't dare to do it. Why, man, it was too dangerous to tell a single
+      soul. If it had leaked out you would have been murdered up there as sure
+      as hell. There would have been plenty of men ready to do it for
+      half-a-crown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was <i>my</i> business,&rdquo; answered Jem coolly. &ldquo;You promised, you <i>swore</i>,
+      that you would tell Dora Glynde, my step-mother, and my brother Arthur.
+      And you didn't do it. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have given you my reasons&mdash;it was too dangerous. Besides, what
+      does it matter? It is all over now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Jem, &ldquo;not yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock struck nine at that moment; and from the harbour came the sound
+      of the ship's bells, high and clear, sounding the hour. The Hoe was quite
+      deserted; these three men were alone. A silence followed the ringing of
+      the bells, like the silence that precedes a verdict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jem Agar spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked Mark Buthine,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to come ashore with me, because I had
+      reason to suspect your good faith. I can't see now why you should have
+      done this, but I suppose that people who are born liars, as Ruthine says
+      you are, prefer lying to telling the truth. You are coming down now with
+      Ruthine and myself to Stagholme. I shall tell the whole story as it
+      happened, and then you will have to explain matters to the two ladies as
+      best you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden unreasoning terror took possession of Seymour Michael. He knew
+      that one of the ladies was Anna Agar, the woman who hated him almost as
+      much as he deserved. He was afraid of her; for it is one consolation to
+      the wronged to know that the wronger goes all through his life with a
+      dull, unquenchable fear upon his heart. But this was not sufficient, this
+      could not account for the mighty terror which clutched his soul at that
+      moment, and he knew it. He felt that this was something beyond that&mdash;something
+      which could not be reasoned away. It was a physical terror, one of those
+      emotions which seem to attack the body independently of the soul, a terror
+      striking the Man before it reaches the Mind. His limbs trembled; it was
+      only by an effort that he kept his teeth clenched to prevent them from
+      chattering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; said Jem Agar, &ldquo;if I find that any harm has been done&mdash;if any
+      one has suffered for this, I will give you the soundest thrashing you have
+      ever had in your life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both his hearers knew now who Dora Glynde was, what she was to him. He
+      neither added to their knowledge nor sought to mislead. He was not, as we
+      have said, <i>de ceux qui s'expliquent</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he added, and turning he led the way across the Hoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael followed quietly. He was cowed by the inward fear which
+      would not be allayed, and the judicial calmness of these two men paralysed
+      him. Once, in the train, he began explaining matters over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will hear all that at Stagholme,&rdquo; said Jem sternly, and Mark Ruthine
+      merely looked at him over the top of a newspaper which he was not reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII. AT BAY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      To thine own self be true; And it must follow as the night the day Thou
+      canst not then be false to any man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Human nature is, after all, a hopeless failure. Not even the very best
+      instinct is safe. It will probably be turned sooner or later to evil
+      account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The best instinct in Anna Agar was her maternal love, and upon this strong
+      rock she finally wrecked her barque. She was one of those women who hold
+      that, so long as the object is unselfish, the means used to obtain it
+      cannot well be evil. She did not say this in so many words, because she
+      was quite without principle, good or bad, and she invariably acted on
+      impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her impulse at this time was to turn as much of heaven and earth as came
+      under her influence to compel Dora to marry Arthur. That Arthur should be
+      unhappy, and should be allowed to continue in that common condition, was a
+      thought that she could not tolerate or allow. Something must be done, and
+      it was characteristic of the woman that that something should present
+      itself to her in the form of the handy and useful lie. In a strait we all
+      naturally turn to that accomplishment in which we consider ourselves most
+      proficient. The blusterer blusters; the profane man swears; the tearful
+      woman weeps&mdash;and weeping, by the way, is no mean accomplishment if it
+      be used at the right moment. Mrs. Agar naturally meditated on that form of
+      diplomacy which is sometimes called lying. The truth would not serve her
+      purpose (not that she had given it a fair trial), and therefore she would
+      forsake the straight path for that other one which hath many turnings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora absolutely refused to come to Stagholme while Arthur was there&mdash;a
+      delicacy of feeling, which, by the way, was quite incomprehensible to Mrs.
+      Agar. It was necessary for Arthur's happiness that he should see Dora
+      again and try the effect of another necktie and further eloquence.
+      Therefore, Dora must be made by subterfuge to see Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Dora,&rdquo; she wrote, &ldquo;it will be a great grief to me if this
+      unfortunate attachment of my poor boy's is allowed to interfere with the
+      affection which has existed between us since your infancy. Come, dear, and
+      see me to-morrow afternoon. I shall be quite alone, and the subject which,
+      of course, occupies the first place in my thoughts will, if you wish it,
+      be tabooed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your affectionate old Friend,
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;ANNA AGAR.&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be quite easy,&rdquo; reflected this diplomatic lady as she folded the
+      letter&mdash;almost illegible on account of its impetuosity&mdash;&ldquo;for
+      Arthur to come back from East Burgen earlier than I expected him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest she left to chance, which was very kind but not quite necessary,
+      for chance had already taken possession of the rest, and was even at that
+      moment making her arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora read the letter in the garden beneath the laburnum-tree, where she
+      spent a large part of her life. Before reaching the end of the epistle she
+      had determined to go. She was a young person of spirit as well as of
+      discrimination, and in obedience to the urging of the former was quite
+      ready to show Mrs. Agar, and Arthur too, if need be, that she was not
+      afraid of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was distinctly conscious of the increasing power of her own strength
+      of purpose as she made this resolution, and as she walked across the park
+      the next afternoon her feeling was one very near akin to elation. It is
+      only the strong who mistrust their own power. Dora Glynde had always
+      looked upon herself as a somewhat weak and easily led person; she was
+      beginning to feel her own strength now and to rejoice in it. From the
+      first she half-suspected a trap of some sort. Such a subterfuge was
+      eminently characteristic of Mrs. Agar, and that lady's manner of welcoming
+      her only increased the suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mistress of Stagholme was positively crackling with an excitement
+      which even her best friend could not have called suppressed. There was no
+      suppression whatever about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So good of you,&rdquo; she panted, &ldquo;to come, Dora dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she searched madly for her pocket handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; replied Dora, very calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, dear,&rdquo; went on the lady of the house, &ldquo;are we going to talk
+      about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question was somewhat futile, for it was easy to see that she was not
+      in a condition to talk of anything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not,&rdquo; replied Dora. She had a way of using the word &ldquo;think&rdquo; when
+      she was positive. &ldquo;The question was raised the last time I saw you, and I
+      do not think that any good resulted from it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar's face dropped. In some ways she was a child still, and a
+      childish woman of fifty is as aggravating a creature as walks upon this
+      earth. Dora remembered every word of the interview referred to, while Mrs.
+      Agar had almost forgotten it. It is to the common-minded that common
+      proverbs and sayings of the people apply. Hard words had not the power of
+      breaking anything in Mrs. Agar's being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;<i>I</i> don't wish to talk about it, if you
+      don't. It is most painful to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had dragged forward a second chair, only separated from that occupied
+      by Dora by the tea-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur,&rdquo; she said, with a lamentable assumption of cheerfulness, &ldquo;has
+      driven over to East Burgen to get some things I wanted. He will not be
+      back for ever so long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She reflected that he was overdue at that moment, and that the butler had
+      orders to send him to the library as soon as he returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sorry to hear,&rdquo; said Dora, quite naturally, &ldquo;that he had not passed
+      his examination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar glanced at her cunningly; she was always looking for second
+      meanings in the most innocent remarks, hardly guilty of an original
+      meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the door leading through a smaller library into the
+      dining-room opened and Arthur came quietly in. He changed colour and
+      hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he remembered that before all
+      things a gentleman must be a gentleman. He came forward and held out his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do?&rdquo; he said, and for a moment he was quite dignified. &ldquo;I am
+      glad to see you here with mother. I did not know that I was going to
+      interrupt a <i>téte-à-téte</i>, tea. No tea, thanks, mother; no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you brought the things I wanted? You are earlier than I expected,&rdquo;
+       blurted out the lady of the house unskillfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have brought them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must go and see if they are right,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, rising, and before
+      he could stop her she passed out of the door by which he had entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment there was an awkward silence, then Dora spoke&mdash;after the
+      door had been reluctantly closed from without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that this was done on purpose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by me, Dora.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She merely bowed her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you believe me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued to sip her tea, and he actually handed her a plate of
+      biscuits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it still No?&rdquo; he asked abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps her fresh youthful beauty moved him, perhaps it was merely
+      opposition that raised his love suddenly to the dignity of a passion that
+      made him for once forget himself, his clothes, his personal appearance,
+      and the gentlemanly modulation of his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he was almost a man. He almost touched the height of a man's
+      ascendency over woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may say No now,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;but I shall have you yet. Some day you
+      will say Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then for the first time that Dora realised that this man did
+      actually love her according to his lights. But never for an instant did
+      she admit in her own mind the possibility of succumbing to Arthur's will.
+      It is not by words that men command women. They must first command their
+      respect, and that is never gained by words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was conscious of a feeling of sudden, unspeakable pain. Arthur had
+      only succeeded in convincing her that she could have submitted to a man's
+      will, wholly and without reserve; but not to the will of Arthur Agar. He
+      had only showed her that such a submission would in itself have been a
+      greater happiness than she had ever tasted. But she knew at once that only
+      one man ever had, ever could have had, the power of exacting such
+      submission; and he commanded it, not by word of mouth (for he never seemed
+      to ask it), but by something strong and just and good within himself,
+      before which her whole being bowed down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We never know how we appear in the eyes of our neighbours, friends or
+      lovers. Arthur was at that moment in Dora's eyes a mere sham, aping
+      something he could never attain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had seized her two hands in his nervous and delicate fingers, from
+      which she easily withdrew them. The action was natural enough, strong
+      enough. But he completely spoiled the effect by the words he spoke in his
+      thin tenor voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Arthur,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;No, Arthur; since you mention the future, I may
+      as well tell you <i>now</i> that my answer will never be anything but No.
+      At one time I thought that it might be different. I told my mother that
+      possibly, after a great many years, I might think otherwise; but I retract
+      that. I shall never think otherwise. And if you imagine that you can force
+      me to do so, please lay aside that hope at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there is some one else!&rdquo; cried Arthur, with an apparent irrelevance.
+      &ldquo;I know there is some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora seemed to be reflecting. She looked over his head, out of the window,
+      where the fleecy summer clouds floated idly over the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned and looked deliberately at the door by which Mrs. Agar had
+      disappeared. It was standing ajar. Then again she reflected, weighing
+      something in her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied half-dreamily at length. &ldquo;I think you have a right to
+      know&mdash;there is some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was,&rdquo; corrected Arthur, with the womanly intuition which was given to him
+      with other womanly traits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was and is,&rdquo; replied Dora quietly. &ldquo;His being dead makes no difference so
+      far as you are concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it <i>was</i> Jem! I was sure it was Jem,&rdquo; said a third voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the excitement of the moment Mrs. Agar forgot that when ladies and
+      gentlemen stoop to eavesdropping they generally retire discreetly and
+      return after a few moments, humming a tune, hymns preferred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew that you were there,&rdquo; said Dora, with a calmness which was not
+      pleasant to the ear. &ldquo;I saw your black dress through the crack of the
+      door. You did not stand quite still, which was a pity, because the
+      sunlight was on the floor behind you. I was not surprised; it was worthy
+      of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take God to witness,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;that I only heard the last
+      words as I came back into the room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't,&rdquo; said Dora, &ldquo;that is blasphemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;will you hear your mother called names?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not wrangle,&rdquo; said Dora, rising with something very like a smile
+      on her face. &ldquo;Yes, if you want to know, it <i>was</i> Jem. I have only his
+      memory, but still I can be faithful to that. I don't care if all the world
+      knows; that is why I told <i>you</i> behind the door. I am not ashamed of
+      it. I always did care for Jem.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause, for mother and son had nothing to answer. Dora
+      turned to take her gloves, which she had laid on a side table, and as she
+      did so the other door opened, the principal door leading to the hall.
+      Moreover, it was opened without the menial pause, and they all turned in
+      surprise, knowing that there were only servants in the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the doorway stood Jem, brown-faced, lean, and anxious-looking. There
+      was something wolf-like in his face, with the fierce blue eyes shining
+      from beneath dark lashes, the fair moustache pushed forward by set lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind him the keen face of Seymour Michael peered nervously, restlessly
+      from side to side. He was distinctly suggestive of a rat in a trap. And
+      beyond him, in the gloom of the old arras-hung hall, a third man,
+      seemingly standing guard over Seymour Michael, for he was not looking into
+      the room but watching every movement made by the General&mdash;tall man,
+      dark, upright, with a silent, clean-shaven face, a total stranger to them
+      all. But his manner was not that of a stranger, he seemed to have
+      something to do there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LAST LINK
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A thing hereditary in the race comes unawares.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Jem came straight into the room, and there seemed to be no one in it for
+      him but Dora. She went to meet him with outstretched hand, and her eyes
+      were answering the questions that she read in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took her hand and he said no word, but suddenly all the misery of the
+      last year slipped back, as it were, into a dream. She could not define her
+      thoughts then, and they left no memory to recall afterwards. She seemed to
+      forget that this man had been dead and was living, she only knew that her
+      hand was within his. Jem looked round to the others present, his attitude
+      a judgment in itself, his face, in its fierce repose, a verdict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine had gently pushed Seymour Michael into the room and was
+      closing the door behind them. Mrs. Agar did not see the General, who was
+      half-concealed by his junior officer. She could not take her eyes from
+      Jem's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is fortunate,&rdquo; he said; and the sound of his voice was music in
+      Dora's ears. &ldquo;This is fortunate, every one seems to be here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused for a moment, as if at a loss, and drew his brown hand down over
+      his moustache. Perhaps he felt remotely that his position was strong and
+      almost dramatic; but that, being a simple, honest Englishman, he was
+      unable to turn it to account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood behind, uncomfortably
+      conscious of Mark Ruthine at his heels. It was not in Jem to make an
+      effective scene. Englishmen are so. We do not make our lives superficially
+      picturesque by apostrophising the shade of a dead mother. Jem gave way to
+      the natural instinct of a soldier by nature and training. A clear
+      statement of the facts, and a short, sharp judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This man,&rdquo; he said, laying his hand on the General's shoulder, and
+      bringing him forward, &ldquo;has been brought here by us to explain something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      White-lipped, breathless, in a ghastly silence Anna Agar and Seymour
+      Michael stared at each other over the dainty tea-table, across a gulf of
+      misused years, through the tangle of two unfaithful lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jem Agar began his story, addressing himself to Dora, then, and until
+      the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not with Stevenor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when his force was surprised and
+      annihilated. I had been sent on through an enemy's country into a position
+      which no man had the right to ask another to hold with the force allowed
+      me. This man sent me. All his life has he been seeking glory at the risk
+      of other men's lives. After the disaster he came to me and relieved my
+      little force; but he proposed to me a scheme of exploration, which I have
+      carried through. But even now I shall not get the credit; <i>he</i> will
+      have that. It was a low, scurrilous thing to do; for he was my commanding
+      officer, and I could not say No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave you the option,&rdquo; blurted out Michael sullenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem took no notice of the interruption, which only had the effect of
+      making Mark Ruthine move up a few paces nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He made a great point of secrecy,&rdquo; continued Agar, &ldquo;which at the time I
+      thought to be for my safety. But now I see otherwise; Ruthine has pointed
+      it out to me. If I had never come back he would have said nothing, and
+      would thus have escaped the odium of having sent a man to certain death. I
+      only made one condition&mdash;namely, that three persons should be
+      informed at once of my survival, after the disaster to Stevenor's force.
+      Those three persons were my brother Arthur, my step-mother, and Miss
+      Glynde.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused for a moment, and Dora's clear, low voice took up the narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I met General Michael,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;in London, some months ago. I met him
+      more than once. He knew quite well who I was, and he never told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus was the first link of the chain riveted. Seymour Michael winced. He
+      never raised his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine moved forward again. He did so with a singular rapidity, for
+      he had seen murder flash from beneath Jem Agar's eyebrows. He was standing
+      between them, his left hand gripping Jem's right arm with an undeniable
+      strength. Dora, looking at them, suddenly felt the tears well to her eyes.
+      There was something that melted her heart strangely in the sight of those
+      two men&mdash;friends&mdash;standing side by side; and at that moment her
+      affection went out towards Mark Ruthine, the friend of Jem, who understood
+      Jem, who knew Jem and loved him, perhaps, a thousandth part as well as she
+      did; an affection which was never withdrawn all through their lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Ruthine's voice that broke the silence, giving Jem time to master
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is to his credit,&rdquo; he said, also addressing Dora, &ldquo;that for very shame
+      he did not dare to tell you that he had sent Agar on a mission which was
+      as unnecessary as it was dangerous. When he sent him he must have known
+      that it was almost a sentence of death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jem spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as I got back to civilisation,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I wrote to him as
+      arranged, and I enclosed letters to&mdash;the three persons who were
+      admitted into the secret. Those letters have, of course, never reached
+      their destination. General Michael will be required to explain that also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Arthur Agar gave a strange little cackling laugh, which
+      drew the general attention towards him. He was looking at his
+      half-brother, with a glitter in his usually soft and peaceful eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are a good many things which he will have to explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Jem. &ldquo;That is why we have brought him here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It fell to Arthur Agar's lot to forge the second link.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When,&rdquo; he asked Jem, &ldquo;did he know that you had got back to safety and
+      civilisation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two months ago, by telegram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The half-brothers turned with one accord towards Seymour Michael, who
+      stood trying to conceal the quiver of his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He promised,&rdquo; said Arthur Agar, &ldquo;to tell me at once when he received news
+      of your safety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was singular that Seymour Michael should give way at that moment to a
+      little shrinking movement of fear&mdash;back and away, not from Jem, who
+      towered huge and powerful above him, but from the frail and delicate
+      younger brother. Mark Ruthine, who was standing behind, saw the movement
+      and wondered at it. For it would appear that, of all his judges, Seymour
+      Michael feared the weakest most.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the second link was welded on to the first, while only Anna Agar
+      knew the motive that had prompted Michael to suppress the news. She
+      divined that it was spite towards herself, and for once in her life, with
+      that intuition which only comes at supreme moments, she had the wisdom to
+      bide her time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at last Seymour Michael spoke. He did not raise his eyes, but his
+      words were evidently addressed to Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I acted,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;as I thought best. Secrecy was necessary for Agar's
+      safety. I knew that if I told you too much you would tell your mother, and&mdash;I
+      know your mother better than either you or Jem Agar know her. She is not
+      fit to be trusted with the most trifling secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, you were quite wrong,&rdquo; burst out Mrs. Agar, with a
+      derisive laugh. &ldquo;For I knew it all along. Arthur told me at the first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice came as a shock to them all. It was harsh and common, the voice
+      of the street-wrangler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; cried Seymour Michael, as sharp as fate, &ldquo;why did you not tell
+      Miss Glynde?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his arm, pointing one lean dark finger into her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; he hissed, &ldquo;that the boy would tell you. I counted on it. Why
+      did you not tell Miss Glynde? Come! Tell us why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine's face was a study. It was the face of a very keen sportsman
+      at the corner of a &ldquo;drive.&rdquo; In every word he saw twice as much as simple
+      Jem Agar ever suspected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Agar, wavering, &ldquo;because I thought it better not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Dora said, &ldquo;you kept it from me because you wanted me to marry
+      Arthur. And you thought that I should do so because he was master of
+      Stagholme. You wanted to trick me into marrying Arthur before&rdquo;&mdash;she
+      hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;before&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before I came back,&rdquo; added Jem imperturbably. &ldquo;That was it, that was it!&rdquo;
+       cried Seymour Michael, grasping at the straw which might serve to turn the
+      current aside from himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the attempt failed. No one took any notice of it. Jem was looking at
+      Dora, and she was looking anywhere except at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Jem who spoke, with the decisiveness of the president of a
+      court-martial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will come afterwards,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And now, perhaps,&rdquo; he went on,
+      turning towards Seymour, &ldquo;you will kindly explain why you broke your word
+      to me. Explain it to these l&mdash;&mdash; [sic.] to Miss Glynde.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what is the good of making all this fuss about it now?&rdquo; he
+      explained. &ldquo;It has all come right. I acted as I thought best. That is all
+      the explanation I have to offer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you not do better than that?&rdquo; inquired Jem, with a dangerous suavity.
+      &ldquo;You had better try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora was looking at Jem now, appealingly. She knew that tone of voice, and
+      feared it. She alone suspected the anger that was hidden behind so calm an
+      exterior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seymour Michael preserved a dogged silence, glancing from side to side
+      beneath his lowered lashes. He had not forgotten Jem's threat, but he felt
+      the safeguard of a lady's presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can offer an explanation,&rdquo; put in Mark Ruthine. &ldquo;This man is mentally
+      incapable of telling the truth and of doing the straight thing. There are
+      some people who are born liars. This man is one. It is not quite fair to
+      judge him as one would judge others. I have known him for years, have
+      watched him, have studied him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All eyes turned towards Seymour Michael, who stood half-cringing,
+      trembling with fear and hatred towards his relentless judges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Years ago,&rdquo; pursued Ruthine, &ldquo;at the outset of life, he committed a
+      wanton crime. He did a wrong to a poor innocent woman, whose only fault
+      was to love him beyond his deserts. He was engaged to be married to her,
+      and meeting a richer woman he had not the courage to ask to be released
+      from his engagement. It happened that by a mistake he was gazetted 'dead'
+      at the time of the Mutiny. He never contradicted the mistake&mdash;that
+      was how he got out of his engagement. He played the same trick with Jem
+      Agar's name. I recognised it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the last link of the chain was forged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So did I,&rdquo; said Anna Agar. &ldquo;I was the woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the words were well out of her mouth Mark Ruthine's voice was
+      raised in an alarmed shout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Hold that man; he is mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one had been noticing Arthur Agar&mdash;no one except Seymour Michael,
+      who had never taken his eyes from his face during Ruthine's narration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a groan, unlike a human sound at all, Arthur Agar had rushed forward
+      when his mother spoke, and for a few seconds there was a wild confusion in
+      the room, while Seymour Michael, white with dread, fled before his doom.
+      In and out among the people and the furniture, shouting for help, he leapt
+      and struggled. Then there came a crash. Seymour Michael had broken through
+      the window, smashing the glass, with his arms doubled over his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A second later Arthur wrenched open the sash and gave chase across the
+      lawn. In the confusion some moments elapsed before the two heavier men
+      followed him over the smooth turf, and the ladies from the window saw
+      Arthur Agar kneeling over Seymour Michael on the stone terrace at the end
+      of the lawn. They heard with cruel distinctness the sharp crackling crash
+      of the Jew's head upon the stone flags, as Arthur shook him as a terrier
+      shakes a rat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instinctively they followed, and as they came up to the group where
+      Ruthine was kneeling over Seymour Michael, while Jem dragged Arthur away,
+      they heard the Doctor say&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Agar, get the ladies away. This man is dead. Look sharp, man! They
+      mustn't see this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Jem barred their way with one hand, while he held his half-brother
+      with the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX. SETTLED
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      For love in sequel works with fate.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The four walked back to the library together. Mrs. Agar looked back over
+      her shoulder at every other footstep. She took no notice of her son. Her
+      affection for him seemed suddenly to have been absorbed and lost in some
+      other emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem was half supporting, half carrying Arthur, whose eyes were like those
+      of a dead man, while his lips were parted in a vacant, senseless way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already Ruthine could be heard giving his orders to the gardeners and
+      other servants who had gathered round him in a wonderfully short space of
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora passed into the library first, treading carefully over the broken
+      glass, and Mrs. Agar followed her without appearing to notice the sound of
+      breakage beneath her feet. No one had spoken a word since Mark Ruthine had
+      told them that Seymour Michael was dead. There are some situations in life
+      wherein we suddenly realise what an inadequate thing human speech is.
+      There are some things that others know which we have never told them, and
+      would ever be unable to tell them. There are some feelings within us for
+      which no language can find expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was simply stupefied. When God does mete out punishment here on
+      earth, He does so with an overflowing measure. This devoted mother did not
+      even evince anxiety as to the welfare of her son, for whose sake she had
+      made so many blunders, so many futile plots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem brought Arthur into the room, and led him to an arm-chair. There was
+      that steady masterfulness in his manner which comes to those who have
+      looked on death in many forms and whom nothing can dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered no unnecessary assistance or advice, did not fussily loosen
+      Arthur's necktie, or perform any of those small inappropriate offices
+      which some would have deemed necessary under the circumstances. He knew
+      quite well that this was no matter of a necktie or a collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar seated herself on a sofa opposite, and slowly swayed her body
+      backwards and forwards. She was one of those persons who can never
+      separate mental anguish from physical pain. They have but one way of
+      expressing both, and possibly of feeling both. Her hands were clasped on
+      her lap, her head on one side, her lips drawn back as if in agony. She
+      even went so far as to breathe laboriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus they remained; Jem watching Arthur, Dora watching Jem, who seemed to
+      ignore her presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mrs. Agar who spoke first, angrily and bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the good of standing there?&rdquo; she said to Jem. &ldquo;Can't you find
+      something more useful to do than that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem looked at her, first with surprise and then with something very nearly
+      approaching contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am waiting,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;for Ruthine. He is a doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who wants a doctor now? What is the good of a doctor now&mdash;now that
+      Seymour is dead? I don't know what he is doing here, at any rate,
+      meddling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur wants a doctor,&rdquo; replied Jem. &ldquo;Can you not see that he is in a
+      sort of trance? He hears and sees nothing. He is quite unconscious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar seemed only half to understand. She stared at her son, swaying
+      backwards and forwards in imbecile misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear! oh dear!&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;what have we done to deserve this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few seconds she repeated the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have we done to deserve this? What have we done ...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice died away into a whisper, and when that became inaudible her
+      lips went on moving, still framing the same words over and over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this manner they waited, with that dull senselessness to the flight of
+      time which follows on a great shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all heard the clatter of horses' feet on the gravel of the avenue,
+      and probably they all divined that Mark Ruthine had sent for medical help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Dora the sound brought a sudden boundless sense of relief. Amidst this
+      mental confusion it came as a practical common-sense proof that the
+      tension of the last year was over. The burden of her own life was by it
+      lifted from her shoulders; for Jem was here, and nothing could matter very
+      much now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Ruthine came into the room. As he went towards Arthur he glanced
+      at Dora and then at Mrs. Agar, but the young fellow was evidently his
+      first care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was kneeling by the low chair examining Arthur's eyes and face,
+      Mrs. Agar suddenly rose and crossed the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he dead?&rdquo; she said abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; inquired Mark Ruthine, without looking round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seymour Michael.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Arthur killed him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this while Arthur was lying back in the chair, white and lifeless. His
+      eyes were open, he breathed regularly, but he heard nothing that was said,
+      nor saw anything before his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Mrs. Agar, &ldquo;that was a murder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was looking out of the window, towards the stone terrace, already
+      conscious that the scene that she had witnessed there would never be
+      effaced from her memory while she had life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a little pause Mark Ruthine spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;it was not that. Your son was not responsible for his
+      actions when he did it. I think I can prove that. I do not yet know what
+      it was. It was very singular. I think it was some sort of mental
+      aberration&mdash;temporary, I hope, and think. We will see when he
+      recovers himself&mdash;when the circulation is restored.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he spoke he continued to examine his patient. He spoke in his
+      natural tone, without attempting to lower his voice, for he knew that
+      Arthur Agar had no comprehension of things terrestrial at that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;the action of a sane man. Besides, he could not
+      have done it. In his right mind he could not have killed Seymour Michael,
+      who was a strong man. As it is, I think that there was some sort of
+      paralysis in Seymour Michael&mdash;a paralysis of fear. He seemed too
+      frightened to attempt to defend himself. Besides, why should your son do
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was born hating him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mark Ruthine slowly turned, still upon his knees. He rose, and in his dark
+      face there was that strange eagerness again, like the eagerness of a
+      sportsman approaching some unknown quarry in the jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, Mrs. Agar?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that he was born with a hatred for that man stronger than anything
+      that was in him. His soul was given to him full of hate for Seymour
+      Michael. Such things are when a woman bears a child in the midst of great
+      passion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mark Ruthine, &ldquo;I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The night he was born,&rdquo; Mrs. Agar went on, &ldquo;I first saw and spoke to that
+      man after he had come back from India&mdash;after I had learnt what he had
+      done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruthine turned round towards Jem and Dora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear that,&rdquo; he said to them. &ldquo;This is not the story of a mother
+      trumped up in court to save her son. It is the truth. There are some
+      things which we do not understand even yet. Don't forget what you have
+      heard. It will come in usefully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Mrs. Agar again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he know the story?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never heard it until you told it just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you swear to that, Mrs. Agar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Ruthine, &ldquo;he does not know now that you are the woman whom
+      Seymour Michael wronged. He need never know it. The paroxysm had come on
+      before you spoke&mdash;that was why I shouted. He was mad with hate,
+      before you opened your lips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar was now beginning to realise what was at stake. The mother's
+      love was re-awakening. The old cunning look came into her eyes, and her
+      quick, truthless mind was evidently on the alert. There was something
+      animal-like in Mrs. Agar; but she was of the lower order of animal, that
+      seeks to defend its young by cunning and not by sheer bravery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruthine must have guessed at something, for he said at once:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember what you have told me. You will have to repeat that exactly. Add
+      nothing to it, take nothing from it, or you will spoil it. Tell me, has
+      your son seen this man more than once?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, only once; at Cambridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; I think I shall be able to prove it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he went towards the writing-table and, sitting down, he wrote
+      out a prescription. Dora followed him and held out her hand for the paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send for that at once, please,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he beckoned to Jem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have sent for the local doctor,&rdquo; he said to him. &ldquo;But I should advise
+      having some one else&mdash;Llandoller from Harley Street. This is far
+      above our heads.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Telegraph for him,&rdquo; answered Jem Agar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Ruthine wrote he went on speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must get him upstairs at once,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I should like to have him in
+      bed before the doctor comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to the bell, rung a second time, the servant came, looking white
+      and scared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Show Dr. Ruthine Mr. Arthur's room,&rdquo; said Jem; and Ruthine took Arthur up
+      in his arms like a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had gone there was a silence. Mrs. Agar made no attempt to
+      follow. She sat down again on the sofa, swaying backwards and forwards.
+      Perhaps she was dimly aware that there remained something still to be
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jem Agar crossed the room and stood in front of her. Dora, from the
+      background, was pleading with her eyes for this woman. There were the
+      makings of a very hard man in James Edward Makerstone Agar, and seven
+      years of the grimmest soldiering of modern days had done nothing to soften
+      him. He was strictly just; but it is not justice that women want. To all
+      men there comes a time when they recognise the fact that all their time
+      and all their energies are required for the taking care of <i>one</i>
+      woman, and that all the rest must take care of themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may stay,&rdquo; he said to his step-mother, &ldquo;until Arthur is removed from
+      this house&mdash;but no longer. I shall never pretend to forgive you, and
+      I never want to see you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Agar made no answer, nor did she look up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go,&rdquo; said Jem, with a little jerk of his head towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly she rose, and without looking at either of them she passed out of
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, at last, they were left alone in the quiet library where they had
+      played together as children, where the happiest moments of his life and
+      the most miserable of hers had been lived through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dora did not seem to know quite what to do. She was standing by the
+      writing-table, with one hand resting on it, facing him, but not looking at
+      him. She suddenly felt unable to do that&mdash;felt at a loss, abashed,
+      unequal to the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jem seemed to have no hesitation. He was quite natural and very
+      deliberate. He seemed to know quite well what to do. He closed the door
+      behind Mrs. Agar, and then he came across the room and took Dora in his
+      arms, as if there were no question about it. He said nothing. After all,
+      there was nothing to be said.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE END
+    </h3>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+  </body>
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