Produced by David Widger
THE TRESPASSER
By Gilbert Parker
CONTENTS:
Volume 1
I. ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM
II. IN WHICH HE CLAIMS HIS OWN
III. HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE
IV. AN HOUR WITH HIS FATHER’S PAST
V. WHEREIN HE FINDS HIS ENEMY
Volume 2.
VI. WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
VII. WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET
VIII. HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION
IX. HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS
X. HE COMES TO “THE WAKING OF THE FIRE”
XI. HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST
Volume 3.
XII. HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
XIII. HE JOURNEYS AFAR
XIV. IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED
XV. WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE GARDEN
XVI. WHEREIN LOVE SNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN’S
XVII. THE MAN AND THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE
XVIII. “RETURN, O SHULAMITE!”
INTRODUCTION
While I was studying the life of French Canada in the winter of 1892,
in the city of Quebec or in secluded parishes, there was forwarded to me
from my London home a letter from Mr. Arrowsmith, the publisher, asking
me to write a novel of fifty thousand or sixty thousand words for what
was called his Annual. In this Annual had appeared Hugh Conway’s ‘Called
Back’ and Anthony Hope’s ‘Prisoner of Zenda’, among other celebrated
works of fiction. I cabled my acceptance of the excellent offer made
me, and the summer of 1893 found me at Audierne, in Brittany, with some
artist friends--more than one of whom has since come to eminence--living
what was really an out-door literary life; for the greater part of ‘The
Trespasser’ was written in a high-walled garden on a gentle hill, and
the remainder in a little tower-like structure of the villa where I
lodged, which was all windows. The latter I only used when it rained,
and the garden was my workshop. There were peaches and figs on the
walls, pleasant shrubs surrounded me, and the place was ideally quiet
and serene. Coffee or tea and toast was served me at 6.30 o’clock A.M.,
my pad was on my knee at 8, and then there was practically uninterrupted
work till 12, when ‘dejeuner a la fourchette’, with its fresh sardines,
its omelettes, and its roast chicken, was welcome. The afternoon was
spent on the sea-shore, which is very beautiful at Audierne, and there
I watched my friends painting sea-scapes. In the late afternoon came
letter-writing and reading, and after a little and simple dinner at 6.30
came bed at 9.45 or thereabouts. In such conditions for many weeks I
worked on The Trespasser; and I think the book has an outdoor spirit
which such a life would inspire.
It was perhaps natural that, having lived in Canada and Australia, and
having travelled greatly in all the outer portions of the Empire, I
should be interested in and impelled to write regarding the impingement
of the outer life of our far dominions, through individual character,
upon the complicated, traditional, orderly life of England. That feeling
found expression in The Translation of a Savage, and I think that
in neither case the issue of the plot or the plot--if such it may be
called--nor the main incident, was exaggerated. Whether the treatment
was free from exaggeration, it is not my province to say. I only know
what I attempted to do. The sense produced by the contact of the outer
life with a refined, and perhaps overrefined, and sensitive, not to say
meticulous, civilisation, is always more sensational than the touch
of the representative of “the thousand years” with the wide, loosely
organised free life of what is still somewhat hesitatingly called the
Colonies, though the same remark could be applied to all new lands,
such as the United States. The representative of the older life makes
no signs, or makes little collision at any rate, when he touches the new
social organisms of the outer circle. He is not emphatic; he is typical,
but not individual; he seeks seclusion in the mass. It is not so with
the more dynamic personality of the over-sea citizen. For a time
at least he remains in the old civilisation an entity, an isolated,
unabsorbed fact which has capacities for explosion. All this was in my
mind when The Trespasser was written, and its converse was ‘The Pomp of
the Lavilettes’, which showed the invasion of the life of the outer land
by the representative of the old civilisation.
I do not know whether I had the thought that the treatment of such
themes was interesting or not. The idea of The Trespasser was there in
my mind, and I had to use it. At the beginning of one’s career, if one
were to calculate too carefully, impulse, momentum, daring, original
conception would be lost. To be too audacious, even to exaggerate, is
no crime in youth nor in the young artist. As a farmer once said to me
regarding a frisky mount, it is better to smash through the top bar than
to have spring-halt.
The Trespasser took its place, and, as I think, its natural place, in
the development of my literary life. I did not stop to think whether
it was a happy theme or not, or whether it had popular elements. These
things did not concern me. When it was written I should not have known
what was a popular theme. It was written under circumstances conducive
to its artistic welfare; if it has not as many friends as ‘The Right
of Way’ or ‘The Seats of the Mighty’ or ‘The Weavers’ or ‘The Judgment
House’, that is not the fault of the public or of the critics.
TO DOUGLAS ROBINSON, Esq.,
AND
FRANK A. HILTON, Esq.
My dear Douglas and Frank:
I feel sure that this dedication will give you as much pleasure as it
does me. It will at least be evidence that I do not forget good days
in your company here and there in the world. I take pleasure in linking
your names; for you, who have never met, meet thus in the porch of a
little house that I have built.
You, my dear Douglas, will find herein scenes, times, and things
familiar to you; and you, my dear Frank, reflections of hours when we
camped by an idle shore, or drew about the fire of winter nights, and
told tales worth more than this, for they were of the future, and it is
of the past.
Always sincerely yours,
GILBERT PARKER.
THE TRESPASSER
CHAPTER I. ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM
Why Gaston Belward left the wholesome North to journey afar, Jacques
Brillon asked often in the brawling streets of New York, and oftener in
the fog of London as they made ready to ride to Ridley Court. There was
a railway station two miles from the Court, but Belward had had enough
of railways. He had brought his own horse Saracen, and Jacques’s broncho
also, at foolish expense, across the sea, and at a hotel near Euston
Station master and man mounted and set forth, having seen their worldly
goods bestowed by staring porters, to go on by rail.
In murky London they attracted little notice; but when their hired guide
left them at the outskirts, and they got away upon the highway towards
the Court, cottagers stood gaping. For, outside the town there was no
fog, and the fresh autumn air drew the people abroad.
“What is it makes ‘em stare, Jacques?” asked Belward, with a humorous
sidelong glance.
Jacques looked seriously at the bright pommel of his master’s saddle and
the shining stirrups and spurs, dug a heel into the tender skin of his
broncho, and replied:
“Too much silver all at once.”
He tossed his curling black hair, showing up the gold rings in his ears,
and flicked the red-and-gold tassels of his boots.
“You think that’s it, eh?” rejoined Belward, as he tossed a shilling to
a beggar.
“Maybe, too, your great Saracen to this tot of a broncho, and the grand
homme to little Jacques Brillon.” Jacques was tired and testy.
The other laid his whip softly on the half-breed’s shoulder.
“See, my peacock: none of that. You’re a spanking good servant, but
you’re in a country where it’s knuckle down man to master; and what they
do here you’ve got to do, or quit--go back to your pea-soup and caribou.
That’s as true as God’s in heaven, little Brillon. We’re not on the
buffalo trail now. You understand?”
Jacques nodded.
“Hadn’t you better say it?”
The warning voice drew up the half-breed’s face swiftly, and he replied:
“I am to do what you please.”
“Exactly. You’ve been with me six years--ever since I turned Bear Eye’s
moccasins to the sun; and for that you swore you’d never leave me. Did
it on a string of holy beads, didn’t you, Frenchman?”
“I do it again.”
He drew out a rosary, and disregarding Belward’s outstretched hand,
said:
“By the Mother of God, I will never leave you!” There was a kind of
wondering triumph in Belward’s eyes, though he had at first shrunk from
Jacques’s action, and a puzzling smile came.
“Wherever I go, or whatever I do?”
“Whatever you do, or wherever you go.”
He put the rosary to his lips, and made the sign of the cross.
His master looked at him curiously, intently. Here was a vain,
naturally indolent half-breed, whose life had made for selfishness and
independence, giving his neck willingly to a man’s heel, serving with
blind reverence, under a voluntary vow.
“Well, it’s like this, Jacques,” Belward said presently; “I want you,
and I’m not going to say that you’ll have a better time than you did
in the North, or on the Slope; but if you’d rather be with me than not,
you’ll find that I’ll interest you. There’s a bond between us, anyway.
You’re half French, and I’m one-fourth French, and more. You’re half
Indian, and I’m one-fourth Indian--no more. That’s enough. So far, I
haven’t much advantage. But I’m one-half English--King’s English, for
there’s been an offshoot of royalty in our family somewhere, and there’s
the royal difference. That’s where I get my brains--and manners.”
“Where did you get the other?” asked Jacques, shyly, almost furtively.
“Money?”
“Not money--the other.”
Belward spurred, and his horse sprang away viciously. A laugh came back
on Jacques, who followed as hard as he could, and it gave him a feeling
of awe. They were apart for a long time, then came together again, and
rode for miles without a word. At last Belward, glancing at a sign-post
before an inn door, exclaimed at the legend--“The Whisk o’ Barley,”--and
drew rein. He regarded the place curiously for a minute. The landlord
came out. Belward had some beer brought.
A half-dozen rustics stood gaping, not far away. He touched his horse
with a heel. Saracen sprang towards them, and they fell back alarmed.
Belward now drank his beer quietly, and asked question after question of
the landlord, sometimes waiting for an answer, sometimes not--a kind of
cross-examination. Presently he dismounted.
As he stood questioning, chiefly about Ridley Court and its people, a
coach showed on the hill, and came dashing down and past. He lifted his
eyes idly, though never before had he seen such a coach as swings away
from Northumberland Avenue of a morning. He was not idle, however; but
he had not come to England to show surprise at anything. As the coach
passed his face lifted above the arm on the neck of the horse, keen,
dark, strange. A man on the box-seat, attracted at first by the uncommon
horses and their trappings, caught Belward’s eyes. Not he alone, but
Belward started then. Some vague intelligence moved the minds of both,
and their attention was fixed till the coach rounded a corner and was
gone.
The landlord was at Belward’s elbow.
“The gentleman on the box-seat be from Ridley Court. That’s Maister Ian
Belward, sir.”
Gaston Belward’s eyes half closed, and a sombre look came, giving his
face a handsome malice. He wound his fingers in his horse’s mane, and
put a foot in the stirrup.
“Who is ‘Maister Ian’?”
“Maister Ian be Sir William’s eldest, sir. On’y one that’s left, sir.
On’y three to start wi’: and one be killed i’ battle, and one had
trouble wi’ his faither and Maister Ian; and he went away and never was
heard on again, sir. That’s the end on him.”
“Oh, that’s the end on him, eh, landlord? And how long ago was that?”
“Becky, lass,” called the landlord within the door, “wheniver was it
Maister Robert turned his back on the Court--iver so while ago? Eh, a
fine lad that Maister Robert as iver I see!”
Fat laborious Becky hobbled out, holding an apple and a knife. She
blinked at her husband, and then at the strangers.
“What be askin’ o’ the Court?” she said. Her husband repeated the
question.
She gathered her apron to her eyes with an unctuous sob:
“Doan’t a’ know when Maister Robert went! He comes, i’ the house ‘ere
and says, ‘Becky, gie us a taste o’ the red-top-and where’s Jock?’ He
was always thinkin’ a deal o’ my son Jock. ‘Jock be gone,’ I says, ‘and
I knows nowt o’ his comin’ back’--meanin’, I was, that day. ‘Good for
Jock!’ says he, ‘and I’m goin’ too, Becky, and I knows nowt o’ my comin’
back.’ ‘Where be goin’, Maister Robert?’ I says. ‘To hell, Becky,’ says
he, and he laughs. ‘From hell to hell. I’m sick to my teeth o’ one, I’ll
try t’other’--a way like that speaks he.”
Belward was impatient, and to hurry the story he made as if to start on.
Becky, seeing, hastened. “Dear a’ dear! The red-top were afore him, and
I tryin’ to make what become to him. He throws arm ‘round me, smacks me
on the cheek, and says he: ‘Tell Jock to keep the mare, Becky.’ Then he
flings away, and never more comes back to the Court. And that day one
year my Jock smacks me on the cheek, and gets on the mare; and when I
ask: ‘Where be goin’?’ he says: ‘For a hunt i’ hell wi’ Maister Robert,
mother.’ And from that day come back he never did, nor any word. There
was trouble wi’ the lad-wi’ him and Maister Robert at the Court; but I
never knowed nowt o’ the truth. And it’s seven-and-twenty years since
Maister Robert went.”
Gaston leaned over his horse’s neck, and thrust a piece of silver into
the woman’s hands.
“Take that, Becky Lawson, and mop your eyes no more.”
She gaped.
“How dost know my name is Becky Lawson? I havena been ca’d so these
three-and-twenty years--not since a’ married good man here, and put
Jock’s faither in ‘s grave yander.”
“The devil told me,” he answered, with a strange laugh, and, spurring,
they were quickly out of sight. They rode for a couple of miles without
speaking. Jacques knew his master, and did not break the silence.
Presently they came over a hill, and down upon a little bridge. Belward
drew rein, and looked up the valley. About two miles beyond the roofs
and turrets of the Court showed above the trees. A whimsical smile came
to his lips.
“Brillon,” he said, “I’m in sight of home.”
The half-breed cocked his head. It was the first time that Belward had
called him “Brillon”--he had ever been “Jacques.” This was to be a part
of the new life. They were not now hunting elk, riding to “wipe out” a
camp of Indians or navvies, dining the owner of a rancho or a deputation
from a prairie constituency in search of a member, nor yet with
a senator at Washington, who served tea with canvas-back duck and
tooth-picks with dessert. Once before had Jacques seen this new
manner--when Belward visited Parliament House at Ottawa, and was
presented to some notable English people, visitors to Canada. It had
come to these notable folk that Mr. Gaston Belward had relations at
Ridley Court, and that of itself was enough to command courtesy. But
presently, they who would be gracious for the family’s sake, were
gracious for the man’s. He had that which compelled interest--a
suggestive, personal, distinguished air. Jacques knew his master better
than any one else knew him; and yet he knew little, for Belward was of
those who seem to give much confidence, and yet give little--never more
than he wished.
“Yes, monsieur, in sight of home,” Jacques replied, with a dry cadence.
“Say ‘sir,’ not ‘monsieur,’ Brillon; and from the time we enter the
Court yonder, look every day and every hour as you did when the judge
asked you who killed Tom Daly.”
Jacques winced, but nodded his head. Belward continued:
“What you hear me tell is what you can speak of; otherwise you are
blind and dumb. You understand?” Jacques’s face was sombre, but he said
quickly: “Yes--sir.”
He straightened himself on his horse, as if to put himself into
discipline at once--as lead to the back of a racer.
Belward read the look. He drew his horse close up. Then he ran an arm
over the other’s shoulder.
“See here, Jacques. This is a game that’s got to be played up to the
hilt. A cat has nine lives, and most men have two. We have. Now listen.
You never knew me mess things, did you? Well, I play for keeps in this;
no monkeying. I’ve had the life of Ur of the Chaldees; now for Babylon.
I’ve lodged with the barbarian; here are the roofs of ivory. I’ve had
my day with my mother’s people; voila! for my father’s. You heard what
Becky Lawson said. My father was sick of it at twenty-five, and got out.
We’ll see what my father’s son will do.... I’m going to say my say to
you, and have done with it. As like as not there isn’t another man that
I’d have brought with me. You’re all right. But I’m not going to rub
noses. I stick when I do stick, but I know what’s got to be done here;
and I’ve told you. You’ll not have the fun out of it that I will, but
you won’t have the worry. Now, we start fresh. I’m to be obeyed; I’m
Napoleon. I’ve got a devil, yet it needn’t hurt you, and it won’t. But
if I make enemies here--and I’m sure to--let them look out. Give me your
hand, Jacques; and don’t you forget that there are two Gaston Belwards,
and the one you have hunted and lived with is the one you want to
remember when you get raw with the new one. For you’ll hear no more
slang like this from me, and you’ll have to get used to lots of things.”
Without waiting reply, Belward urged on his horse, and at last paused
on the top of a hill, and waited for Jacques. It was now dusk, and the
landscape showed soft, sleepy, and warm.
“It’s all of a piece,” Belward said to himself, glancing from the trim
hedges, the small, perfectly-tilled fields and the smooth roads, to
Ridley Court itself, where many lights were burning and gates opening
and shutting. There was some affair on at the Court, and he smiled to
think of his own appearance among the guests.
“It’s a pity I haven’t clothes with me, Brillon; they have a show going
there.”
He had dropped again into the new form of master and man. His voice was
cadenced, gentlemanly. Jacques pointed to his own saddle-bag.
“No, no, they are not the things needed. I want the evening-dress which
cost that cool hundred dollars in New York.”
Still Jacques was silent. He did not know whether, in his new position,
he was expected to suggest. Belward understood, and it pleased him.
“If we had lost the track of a buck moose, or were nosing a cache of
furs, you’d find a way, Brillon.”
“Voila,” said Jacques; “then, why not wear the buckskin vest, the
red-silk sash, and the boots like these?”--tapping his own leathers.
“You look a grand seigneur so.”
“But I am here to look an English gentleman, not a grand seigneur, nor
a company’s trader on a break. Never mind, the thing will wait till we
stand in my ancestral halls,” he added, with a dry laugh.
They neared the Court. The village church was close by the Court-wall.
It drew Belward’s attention. One by one lights were springing up in it.
It was a Friday evening, and the choir were come to practise. They saw
buxom village girls stroll in, followed by the organist, one or two
young men and a handful of boys. Presently the horsemen were seen, and a
staring group gathered at the church door. An idea came to Belward.
“Kings used to make pilgrimages before they took their crowns, why
shouldn’t I?” he said half-jestingly. Most men placed similarly would
have been so engaged with the main event that they had never thought
of this other. But Belward was not excited. He was moving deliberately,
prepared for every situation. He had a great game in hand, and he had no
fear of his ability to play it. He suddenly stopped his horse, and threw
the bridle to Jacques, saying:
“I’ll be back directly, Brillon.”
He entered the churchyard, and passed to the door. As he came the group
under the crumbling arch fell back, and at the call of the organist went
to the chancel. Belward came slowly up the aisle, and paused about the
middle. Something in the scene gave him a new sensation. The church was
old, dilapidated; but the timbered roof, the Norman and Early English
arches incongruously side by side, with patches of ancient distemper
and paintings, and, more than all, the marble figures on the tombs, with
hands folded so foolishly,--yet impressively too, brought him up with
a quick throb of the heart. It was his first real contact with England;
for he had not seen London, save at Euston Station and in the north-west
district. But here he was in touch with his heritage. He rested his hand
upon a tomb beside him, and looked around slowly.
The choir began the psalm for the following Sunday. At first he did not
listen; but presently the organist was heard alone, and then the choir
afterwards sang:
“Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech:
And to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar.”
Simple, dusty, ancient church, thick with effigies and tombs; with
inscriptions upon pillars to virgins departed this life; and tablets
telling of gentlemen gone from great parochial virtues: it wakened in
Belward’s brain a fresh conception of the life he was about to live--he
did not doubt that he would live it. He would not think of himself as
inacceptable to old Sir William Belward. He glanced to the tomb under
his hand. There was enough daylight yet to see the inscription on the
marble. Besides, a single candle was burning just over his head. He
stooped and read:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF
SIR GASTON ROBERT BELWARD, BART.,
OF RIDLEY COURT, IN THIS PARISH OF GASTONBURY,
WHO,
AT THE AGE OF ONE AND FIFTY YEARS,
AFTER A LIFE OF DISTINGUISHED SERVICE FOR HIS KING
AND COUNTRY,
AND GRAVE AND CONSTANT CARE OF THOSE EXALTED WORKS
WHICH BECAME A GENTLEMAN OF ENGLAND;
MOST NOTABLE FOR HIS LOVE OF ARTS AND LETTERS;
SENSIBLE IN ALL GRACES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS;
GIFTED WITH SINGULAR VIRTUES AND INTELLECTS;
AND
DELIGHTING AS MUCH IN THE JOYS OF PEACE
AS IN THE HEAVY DUTIES OF WAR:
WAS SLAIN BY THE SIDE OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS,
THE BELOVED AND ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE RUPERT,
AT THE BATTLE OF NASEBY,
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD MDCXLV.
“A Sojourner as all my Fathers were.”
“‘Gaston Robert Belward’!”
He read the name over and over, his fingers tracing the letters.
His first glance at the recumbent figure had been hasty. Now, however,
he leaned over and examined it. It lay, hands folded, in the dress of
Prince Rupert’s cavaliers, a sword at side, and great spurs laid beside
the heels.
“‘Gaston Robert Belward’!”
As this other Gaston Robert Belward looked at the image of his dead
ancestor, a wild thought came: Had he himself not fought with Prince
Rupert? Was he not looking at himself in stone? Was he not here to show
England how a knight of Charles’s time would look upon the life of the
Victorian age? Would not this still cold Gaston be as strange at
Ridley Court as himself fresh from tightening a cinch on the belly of a
broncho? Would he not ride from where he had been sojourning as much a
stranger in his England as himself?
For a moment the idea possessed him. He was Sir Gaston Robert Belward,
Baronet. He remembered now how, at Prince Rupert’s side, he had sped on
after Ireton’s horse, cutting down Roundheads as he passed, on and on,
mad with conquest, yet wondering that Rupert kept so long in pursuit
while Charles was in danger with Cromwell: how, as the word came to
wheel back, a shot tore away the pommel of his saddle; then another, and
another, and with a sharp twinge in his neck he fell from his horse. He
remembered how he raised himself on his arm and shouted “God save the
King!” How he loosed his scarf and stanched the blood at his neck, then
fell back into a whirring silence, from which he was roused by feeling
himself in strong arms, and hearing a voice say: “Courage, Gaston.” Then
came the distant, very distant, thud of hoofs, and he fell asleep; and
memory was done.
He stood for a moment oblivious to everything: the evening bird
fluttering among the rafters, the song of the nightingale without, the
sighing wind in the tower entry, the rustics in the doorway, the group
in the choir. Presently he became conscious of the words sung:
“A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.
“Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.”
He was himself again in an instant. He had been in a kind of dream. It
seemed a long time since he had entered the church--in reality but a few
moments. He caught his moustache in his fingers, and turned on his heel
with a musing smile. His spurs clinked as he went down the aisle; and,
involuntarily, he tapped a boot-leg with his riding-whip. The singing
ceased. His spurs made the only sound. The rustics at the door fell back
before him. He had to go up three steps to reach the threshold. As he
stood on the top one he paused and turned round.
So, this was home: this church more so even than the Court hard by. Here
his ancestors--for how long he did not know, probably since the time of
Edward III--idled time away in the dust; here Gaston Belward had been
sleeping in effigy since Naseby Field. A romantic light came into his
face. Again, why not? Even in the Hudson’s Bay country and in the Rocky
Mountains, he had been called, “Tivi, The Man of the Other.” He had been
counted the greatest of Medicine Men--one of the Race: the people of the
Pole, who lived in a pleasant land, gifted as none others of the race of
men. Not an hour before Jacques had asked him where he got “the other.”
No man can live in the North for any time without getting the strain of
its mystery and romance in him. Gaston waved his hand to the tomb, and
said half-believingly:
“Gaston Robert Belward, come again to your kingdom.”
He turned to go out, and faced the rector of the parish,--a bent,
benign-looking man,--who gazed at him astonished. He had heard the
strange speech. His grave eyes rested on the stalwart stranger with
courteous inquiry. Gaston knew who it was. Over his left brow there was
a scar. He had heard of that scar before. When the venerable Archdeacon
Varcoe was tutor to Ian and Robert Belward, Ian, in a fit of anger, had
thrown a stick at his brother. It had struck the clergyman, leaving a
scar.
Gaston now raised his hat. As he passed, the rector looked after him,
puzzled; the words he had heard addressed to the effigy returning. His
eyes followed the young man to the gate, and presently, with a quick
lifting of the shoulders, he said:
“Robert Belward!” Then added: “Impossible! But he is a Belward.”
He saw Gaston mount, then entered and went slowly up the aisle. He
paused beside the tomb of that other Belward. His wrinkled hand rested
on it.
“That is it,” he said at last. “He is like the picture of this Sir
Gaston. Strange.”
He sighed, and unconsciously touched the scar on his brow. His dealings
with the Belwards had not been all joy. Begun with youthful pride and
affectionate interest, they had gone on into vexation, sorrow, failure,
and shame. While Gaston was riding into his kingdom, Lionel Henry Varcoe
was thinking how poor his life had been where he had meant it to be
useful. As he stood musing and listening to the music of the choir, a
girl came softly up the aisle, and touched him on the arm.
“Grandfather, dear,” she said, “aren’t you going to the Court? You have
a standing invitation for this night in the week. You have not been
there for so long.”
He fondled the hand on his arm.
“My dearest, they have not asked me for a long time.”
“But why not to-night? I have laid out everything nicely for you--your
new gaiters, and your D. C. L. coat with the pretty buttons and cord.”
“How can I leave you, my dear? And they do not ask you!”
The voice tried for playfulness, but the eyes had a disturbed look.
“Me? Oh! they never ask me to dinner-you know that. Tea and formal
visits are enough for Lady Belward, and almost too much for me. There
is yet time to dress. Do say you will go. I want you to be friendly with
them.”
The old man shook his head.
“I do not care to leave you, my dearest.”
“Foolish old fatherkins! Who would carry me off?--‘Nobody, no, not I,
nobody cares for me.’” Suddenly a new look shot up in her face.
“Did you see that singular handsome man who came from the church--like
some one out of an old painting? Not that his dress was so strange; but
there was something in his face--something that you would expect to find
in--in a Garibaldi. Silly, am I not? Did you see him?”
He looked at her gravely.
“My dear,” he said at last, “I think I will go after all, though I shall
be a little late.”
“A sensible grandfather. Come quickly, dear.” He paused again.
“But I fear I sent a note to say I could not dine.”
“No, you did not. It has been lying on your table for two days.”
“Dear me--dear me! I am getting very old.”
They passed out of the church. Presently, as they hurried to the rectory
near by, the girl said:
“But you haven’t answered. Did you see the stranger? Do you know who he
is?”
The rector turned, and pointed to the gate of Ridley Court. Gaston and
Brillon were just entering. “Alice,” he said, in a vague, half-troubled
way, “the man is a Belward, I think.”
“Why, of course!” the girl replied with a flash of excitement. “But he’s
so dark, and foreign-looking! What Belward is he?”
“I do not know yet, my dear.”
“I shall be up when you come back. But mind, don’t leave just after
dinner. Stay and talk; you must tell me everything that’s said and
done--and about the stranger.”