IX

Arthur received a letter from Somers by the second post. It was still

raining, and he was playing billiards with Turner when the letter

arrived, so he did not open it until after tea.

Somers had written in a mood of depression. Bates, Arthur's successor

at the Peckham surgery, was not a success. "The fool means well, too

well," Somers wrote; "but I was wrong in anticipating that the panel

patients would like him. They don't. They have taken his measure,

and all his good intentions can't disguise the fact that he is

pudden-headed. When are you going to Canada? If you _are_ going? Isn't

that visit of yours being amazingly protracted? I suppose you're lapped

in luxury and can't tear yourself away. Or have you got a permanent job

there as tame medico to the old man? Or is it a girl? I wish to God you

would write and tell me in any case. I can't keep Bates (he has got on

my nerves) and I should like to know for certain if there is the least

hope of your coming back. I can't see you marrying for money, and if

the hypothecated girl is the right sort, she would face the world with

you on five hundred a year. I might make it up to that. The private

practice is better than it was. Sackville, who has been here so long,

is getting too old. You and I between us would get pretty nearly all

the new people. And if my first guess was the right one and you've got

some sort of sinecure in the Hartling household, the sooner you chuck

it the better, my son. For one thing you'll get soft, and for another

you'll get no experience. If you were doing hospital work (which you

ought to be), I should not try to tempt you away, but if you are just

letting your mind rot, I shall think it is my duty to save you at any

cost."

As he read, Arthur lost the sense of his surroundings. He visualised

the narrow sitting-room of the little Peckham house, and heard Somers's

voice telling him that he ought to be doing hospital work or getting

varied experience in a general practice; that he was becoming soft,

going to pieces from a professional point of view. He blushed like a

student under the rebuke of the demonstrator.

Then he looked up and the illusion vanished. He saw that all his

circumstances were now changed. All that advice would be sound enough

if he were forced to return to such a general practice as Peckham. But

if the old man left him, say £10,000, he might have a shot for his

Fellowship; try for a registrarship at one of the bigger hospitals;

perhaps get on the staff of one and set up in Wimpole Street. With a

certain amount of capital, this would be so much easier, and the war

had given him a taste for minor surgery. Indeed, it had always appealed

to him more than medicine. Meanwhile, it was true that he must not let

himself get rusty. He ought to go on reading, order some books from

town; or at least have the _Lancet_ sent to him every Friday. He must

keep himself up to date while he was waiting. At the outside, he could

not have to wait more than five years. He would only be thirty-three

then....

He paused doubtfully on that thought, but just then Hubert came in,

and the moment of uneasiness passed and was forgotten. It had stopped

raining and Hubert thought that they might put in nine holes before

dinner.

It was made clear on the way up to the links, however, that golf was

not Hubert's goal on this occasion. He had a wild hope that Miss Martin

might be found at the Club House. He had wanted, naturally enough,

to tell her at once that the engagement was to be permitted, but his

grandfather had sent him up to the farm on a job that had kept him busy

all the afternoon.

"Probably did it just to tantalise me a bit," Hubert complained; "teach

me that I couldn't have everything my own way."

"Oh, surely not!" Arthur protested. He was offended, again, by this

imputation of unworthy motives to old Mr Kenyon. "I don't believe any

of you understand him," he continued warmly. "We had quite a long talk

this morning and he rather came out of his shell. He may seem a bit

hard and inhuman at times, you know, but underneath, I'm certain he's

trying to do the best for everybody."

Hubert looked faintly surprised. "Oh! that was the way he took you, was

it?" he remarked.

"There you go again," Arthur said. "You, all of you, seem to have made

up your minds that--that--I don't know----"

He could not complete his sentence. He could see that they all feared

the old man, but they never brought any explicit charge against him

unless it were that he bullied them into staying on at Hartling. And

all that had been explained. Arthur, remembering his conversation of

the morning, was strongly inclined now to take the old man's side. He

knew their weaknesses. They were a poor lot obviously. They lacked

independence of spirit; if they were allowed to go out into the world

they would come awful croppers like the unfortunate, hot-headed James,

Eleanor's father. The old man had learnt a lesson in the course of that

affair. He was a bit of an autocrat, no doubt; but he had good reason

to be, with a family that could not be trusted.

Hubert appeared either unwilling or unable to provide a definition of

the family's attitude. "Oh, well," he said, "no good discussing that,

is it? Here we are and we've got to put up with it. And, personally,

you know, I don't care much now--partly thanks to you, old man."

Only "partly," Arthur reflected, but he made no comment on that.

"That's all right, then," was all he said.

Hubert was in luck, for Miss Martin was at the Club House, drawn

thither, no doubt, by the same hope that had stimulated her lover, and

although they cheerfully proposed a foursome, Arthur knew that they

would sooner be alone, and declined. The proposed fourth player in the

case was Fergusson, the general practitioner from the village, to whom

reference had been made when the post of medical attendant had been

first offered to Arthur. He and Fergusson had met once or twice on the

links, but their brief conversations had so far been limited to golf.

The doctor was a man of sixty or so, with thick gray hair and moustache

and a strong, clumsy figure. Arthur had formed the opinion that he was

rather a surly fellow.

"Care to take me on for nine holes--haven't time for more?" Arthur

asked him.

Fergusson nodded. "Not that I'm particularly anxious to play," he said.

"The ground will be very wet, I'm thinking, after all the rain we've

had to-day. I just looked in on my way home, without much idea of

getting a game. Indeed, to be honest, I've had a very long day and am

not so anxious to exert myself."

"Scattered sort of practice, I expect," Arthur commented. "Have a

cigar."

Fergusson accepted the cigar with a nod of thanks. "One of your

perquisites?" he asked, smiling rather grimly.

Arthur stiffened. "Never thought of it like that," he said. "They're

all over the shop up there. You just take 'em as you want 'em."

"No need to get ruffled," Fergusson replied quietly. "I know. I used to

be up there once a week or so before you came. Nice little sinecure."

"But I say, look here," Arthur said, suddenly conscious for the first

time that he might have been guilty of a breach of medical etiquette,

"you don't mean to tell me that I've taken away one of your cases?"

Fergusson laughed dryly. "Well, you have and you haven't," he said.

"But your conscience is no doubt clear enough and everything was done

in proper form. The old man wrote to me and explained, and I went

up and talked it all over with him. You were playing golf on that

occasion, I'm thinking. However, it'll be a soft job for you."

Arthur still looked uneasy. "I never once thought about you in that

connection, you know," he said. "I ought, anyhow, to have come and seen

you."

"Oh, no need to fash yourself," Fergusson returned. "Mr Kenyon was very

considerate about the affair. I'm not complaining."

"Yes, he is very considerate," Arthur agreed, automatically. Had

Fergusson been promised a place in that untidy will as compensation?

was the thought that flashed across his mind, a thought that was in

some indefinable way unpleasant. He did not grudge the doctor his

possible legacy, he sincerely hoped that it might be a big one, but he

had a feeling of vague distaste for the principle involved. Why should

the old man trade on these rather equivocal promises of future reward?

He had given convincing reasons with regard to his own family, but they

did not apply to Fergusson, nor to Scurr, the chauffeur, and the other

servants. Arthur decided to try a "feeler."

"But hang it," he said, "I've done you out of a certain amount of

income. All the consideration in the world doesn't make up for that."

Fergusson, looking slightly self-conscious, studied the ash of his

cigar. "He's a queer old customer in some respects," he remarked

illusively.

Arthur chose to overlook that comment. "I think you ought to know," he

said, "that I'm not being paid any salary for my job. There's my keep,

of course, but in a house like that one person more or less can't make

any difference."

"Eh! Is that so?" Fergusson said. "And are you staying on indefinitely?"

"Well ..." Arthur explained, with a wave of his hand.

"I take you," Fergusson acknowledged. "I was on much the same terms.

And how d'you think the old man's looking? I've known him for

twenty-five years, and he has hardly changed a hairsbreadth in that

time. He'll be ninety-two this year, I'm told; but it wouldn't surprise

me to learn that he was seventy or a hundred and ten. Indeed, it's come

to me lately that I'd have been better advised to have sent him in a

whacking account when he turned me off, for it's likely enough that

he'll outlive me. However, you stand a better chance than I do, for I

presume you can give me thirty years."

Arthur shivered slightly. His suspicion had been fully confirmed,

and the thought of it troubled him. Still, from one point of view,

it was reasonable enough that Mr Kenyon should have this particular

eccentricity. All his life he had been wrestling with a family that

could not be trusted with money, and the habit had possibly grown into

an obsession. He looked at Fergusson, who was somewhat grimly enjoying

his cigar. He had all the appearance of an honest man. "Known him

twenty-five years, have you?" he commented.

"Ay!" Fergusson said. "I came to this damned place when I was

thirty-seven, and I thought I was in luck to get hold of a rich patient

like Kenyon. Well, as you can judge from what I told you, he looked

an oldish man then. Not so withered naturally, but if he was only

sixty-six at that time I should say that he looked more than his age.

But there you are. I knew an old chap of the name of Simon--he has been

dead God knows how long--who was a contemporary of Kenyon's, used to do

business with him in the 'sixties, and he has told me that Kenyon was

always a dry stick--one of those men who look old at forty and never

change afterwards.

"And there's another queer thing he told me," Fergusson went on,

after a slight pause, "a thing you'll be disinclined to credit, which

is, that Kenyon was never a good business man--not really able or

far-sighted, that is."

"But he made a pile of money," Arthur put in.

"He did," Fergusson said, "but Simon used to say that he got it by

sheer luck; that he never touched an investment that didn't go right by

some fluke or another, though by all the laws of probability, it ought

to have gone just the other way. Maybe Simon was a bit jealous, but he

had a mighty poor opinion of Kenyon as a business man--though begob,

I'm inclined to differ from him, myself."

"He has been most frightfully decent to me," Arthur commented uneasily;

and remembered that he had made the same remark to Turner a few hours

earlier.

"Ay, he would be that," Fergusson said. "There have been times when

I have liked him very well myself; but I always had the feeling that

there was something queer about him--a trifle uncanny, if you know what

I mean."

"Oh, well! Perhaps. I don't know," Arthur said. "He seems sometimes to

be extraordinarily detached; as if he were living a sort of life of his

own."

"Hm! Likely enough," Fergusson agreed. "Simon told me that Kenyon had

a hell of a time when he was a young man. His father, who was in the

business before him, was one of your old-fashioned bullies. Used to

treat his son like a dog, Simon said. So no doubt Kenyon got the habit

of keeping things to himself then, and it stuck to him after his father

was dead."

"Yes, that might account for it, in a way," Arthur admitted.

Arthur's thoughts went back to that conversation as he dressed for

dinner. He was inclined to trust Fergusson. Fergusson had been very

decent about his supersession at Hartling, and it did not seem likely

that his rather disparaging attitude had been designed to frighten his

rival out of the field. Indeed, a few weeks ago such a suspicion would

not have crossed Arthur's mind; but there was some influence in the

air of Hartling that bred suspicions of that kind, and he put them from

him now with a just perceptible sense of self-approval.

The trouble that still faced him was that even when he had deliberately

cleared his mind of any doubts concerning the good-faith of all the

many potential legatees, he was thrust back upon a doubt of the man

who appeared in the rôle of his benefactor. A few hours ago he had

whole-heartedly advised and trusted him. When he had come away from

his interview that morning, he had definitely ranged himself on the

old man's side, had, as he believed, learnt at last to understand and

approve the old man's motives.

But then, as always, he had been induced by various influences to

doubt again. It seemed so impossible in this place to arrive at any

certainty. No theory he had been able to formulate accounted for all

the facts, not even the far-reaching, comfortable theory that there was

a certain amount of right--and wrong--on both sides. There appeared to

be some secret, some key to the whole situation, that was as yet beyond

his reach.

Could Eleanor put it in his hands? His thought turned towards her with

a leap of hopeful anticipation. She had given him no sign so far that

she had repented her manifest disapproval of him that morning. She,

too, perhaps, was being continually swayed by the uncertainties bred of

the Hartling condition. But it might be that she had not yet heard of

the unsigned agreement that he had made in imitation of her own method?

In any case, he had an excuse for asking her to have a little quiet

talk with him. She owed him an explanation. He could even demand it....

He might be able to judge by her expression at dinner whether she had

changed her opinion of his motives since the morning, and if he found

the least evidence of her softening towards him, he would ask her to

listen to what he had to say; to the reasons that had decided him to

stay on at Hartling until her grandfather died.

But he received no sign from Eleanor in the course of dinner. She

would not look at him. Though he persistently stared at her, trying

to attract her attention, she managed to avoid his glance with a

steadiness which could not have been accidental. She talked more than

usual both to Hubert and his father who sat on her other side, but so

far as he was able to overhear her conversation, the subject of it had

no relation to his own plans or doings. Most of her talk seemed to be

concerned with Hubert's fiancée, Dorothy Martin.

And Arthur's own attention was continually being distracted by

Elizabeth. Never before had she been so ready to flirt with him.

It seemed that she had dressed for the part. She was wearing a gown

that he had not seen before, and that was something too elaborate for

a family dinner. Her plump, well-developed bust and shoulders emerging

with an effect of challenge from a foam of pink chiffon, looked almost

startlingly naked. Nevertheless, if it were a trifle theatrical, the

dress suited her brunette prettiness, and gave value to the air of

vivacity that she had, also, assumed. This was one of Elizabeth's most

effective moods. He had seen her pert and rather forward on other

occasions but never quite so daring as she was to-night.

Yet he lacked the least inclination to flirt with her. He recognised

her feminine attractions, but they failed to arouse him. Indeed, when

he compared her with her cousin, dressed as usual in a soft, simple

white frock, he found Elizabeth's forwardness vulgar, almost to him in

his present mood repulsive. He responded to the best of his ability,

he had no wish to snub her, but he felt that she must be distressingly

conscious of her failure to strike fire from him.

Miss Kenyon on his other side gave no indication of cherishing any

ill-will against him for having defeated her that morning. He and she

rarely talked to each other at the dinner table. They had nothing to

say. And to-night her manner discovered no shade of difference from her

habitual attitude towards him.

Nevertheless, it was Miss Kenyon who, whether deliberately or not,

thwarted him as they were leaving the table. She addressed some

unnecessary remark to him as they were getting up, and thus gave

Eleanor time to leave the room in front of them. When he was able to

escape and follow her into the hall, she was half-way up the stairs.

He paused in the hall, staring after her, and when she reached the

second landing he caught her eye for an instant looking down at him.

But she turned away again at once, and he had not the courage either to

attempt to address her from that distance, or to follow her upstairs.

He avoided Elizabeth when he went into the drawing-room and almost

immediately haled Turner out into the billiard-room. Elizabeth did not

follow them. No doubt she believed that her attractions had no power

over him in his present mood. Arthur himself would have declared that

they had not at that moment, and yet little more than an hour later he

was seriously debating whether he would or would not propose to her.

Billiards was a failure so far as he was concerned that evening. He

could not get a shot himself and Turner's slick facility began to

irritate him. He had to keep himself firmly in hand in order to hide

his annoyance. And as the game went on his spirits sank lower and lower

into a mood of profound depression.

"You're off your game to-night," Turner commented jauntily, when Arthur

rather impatiently refused to play again. "Anything the matter?"

They were alone in the billiard-room--Hubert had not joined them

to-night as usual--and Turner suddenly dropped into a mood of

confidence.

"Feel a bit doubtful about settling down here?" he went on. "You

needn't. We've all passed through that stage, but you soon become

reconciled; why shouldn't you? Get everything you can possibly want

here except a certain measure of freedom, and no one's really free.

It's one sort of slavery or another for every one of us. If I were you,

my boy, I'd marry Elizabeth and make up my mind to it. Then you won't

be continually on tenterhooks as to whether the old man's going to last

one year more or ten."

"Oh! Good Lord!" Arthur gesticulated. "It isn't that. I'm a bit out of

sorts, that's all, touch of indigestion, I expect. No need to resort to

desperate remedies for that."

Turner smiled. "I won't tell Elizabeth," he commented dryly. "And if

you take my advice you'll think it over. Coming back into the other

room?"

"No, I've got a letter to write," Arthur said, remembering that Somers

would expect an answer to his main question. "I'll go upstairs, I

think, good-night."

He had wanted, savagely, to get away from Turner just then, but when he

was upstairs in his bedroom he was oppressed by a sense of loneliness.

There was not a single human being in that house in whom he could

confide. He had, for instance, to write to Somers; he had to say that

there was no chance of his returning to Peckham, and although he had

given his promise and had really no option, he would have liked to talk

it over with some one before making an irrevocable decision. Had not

Turner been right after all? If Elizabeth was willing to marry him,

would not her companionship alleviate the occasional tediousness and

loneliness of life at Hartling? If they were married they might become

friends. It was impossible to be on terms of real confidence with a

girl of that sort until you were married to her. She was always too

conscious of her sex and doubtful about your intentions.

Now that he came to think of it, she had certainly looked very tempting

in that pink frock. She was one of the prettiest girls he had ever

known--though she might run to flesh in a few years' time.

He got up from the table at which he had been sitting before a still

virgin sheet of Hartling note-paper, and began to walk up and down the

room. How familiar, even commonplace, that room had become to him, he

reflected. A few weeks ago it had been a delicious enticement, a thing

ardently desired. But he would have missed it horribly if he had had

to go back to Peckham. Would his marriage with Elizabeth produce a

like development of sensation, beginning with enticements and ardent

luxuries that would gradually become familiar, a matter of habit? He

was not in love with her, but he might be when he knew her better. At

present he knew absolutely nothing about her inner life. They had never

talked about anything but games for more than a minute at a time....

One thing was certain, he must write that letter and announce his

decision. No other had been possible. Apart from his promise to Mr

Kenyon, no sane man would hesitate a moment between the alternatives of

Hartling and Peckham. He would ask Somers to recommend him some modern

works on surgery. He would not allow himself to rust, although it was

the practical experience that was most useful. Still, he would get that

in hospital--later. No one could say how long he would have to wait,

but Fergusson had been talking through his hat when he had said that

the old man would probably outlive him. Fergusson was good for at least

another ten or fifteen years, probably more; and people did not live to

over a hundred. Give the old man five years at the outside. He would

probably collapse quite suddenly at the end.

But suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the old man left

him, Arthur, nothing after all? No! he would not consider that. It

was disloyal. He had had what amounted to a promise from him, and in

common justice some compensation would have to be made for taking the

best years of his life. The very fact that he was getting no salary

was a guarantee--an absolute guarantee. Old Kenyon might have various

eccentricities, they were only to be expected at his age, but he was a

good sort, and if anything a shade too impartial in his administration

of justice.

And then, what about the idea of marrying Elizabeth if she would have

him? He walked over to the window and leaned out. It was raining

again, a light, steady rain. It looked as if they might be in for a lot

of rain. Getting engaged to and marrying Elizabeth would be something

to do, an excitement that would be a pleasant change from golf,

billiards, croquet, and tennis. Should he go down now and try his luck?

She had looked rather ripping in that pink frock. He would be able to

put more ardour into his proposal when she was dressed like that. And,

unless she had changed since dinner, she was in just the right mood.

Still leaning out of the window, he began to picture the proposal.

He saw himself alone with Elizabeth somewhere--he might make some

excuse to take her into the library--and then, beginning to overcome

her levity and caprice by his earnestness--he would say that he had

been in love with her from the first, but that he had been afraid to

tell her--no prospects--that sort of thing. He imagined her becoming

suddenly serious, reciprocating his seriousness, confessing that she,

too, had always--liked him. They would be quite close together when she

admitted that, and he would put his arms round her waist or over her

shoulders--she had lovely shoulders--and kiss her....

He came back into the room at that point of his dream and began to walk

impatiently up and down. It was very queer, he couldn't in any way

account for it; but he did not in the least want to kiss Elizabeth. He

had just done the thing in imagination, very vividly and realistically,

and it had not stirred him in the least degree. On the contrary, it had

produced a sense of being mean and contemptible. He had often kissed

girls in the past, and had always liked doing it. Did he feel like that

now because Elizabeth was in a different class of life, or because

that kiss would be the seal of his engagement to her? He conjured up

the image of her as he had seen her that night at dinner, held it

before him and studied it. No, the whole truth of the matter was that

he did not want to kiss her, and that was the end of it. She was not,

for some reason or other, his sort.

He would now write his letter to Somers, and then go to bed.

To-morrow he might make an opportunity to have that talk with Eleanor.

He would like her to understand his reasons for staying on at Hartling.

She ought to know that, as he had just written to Somers, he meant to

go in for a serious course of study....

He could not conjure up the image of Eleanor at will, for some reason,

but sometimes it came unexpectedly with amazing vividness when he was

not thinking of her--some such picture of her as her swift glance down

at him in the hall when she had been going upstairs that evening.

X

The arrangements for breakfast at Hartling were in keeping with

Arthur's early estimate of the place as a first-class hotel. The

members of the family came down when they chose, and between eight

and ten o'clock there were rarely more than two people in the

breakfast-room at the same time. Miss Kenyon and Hubert came first.

Hubert had a habit of getting up at six in the summer, and Miss

Kenyon was a precisian. Arthur succeeded them between half-past eight

and nine and sometimes had his aunt for a companion. The other four

straggled in uncertainly--Joe Kenyon or his sister was always the

last--and occasionally their meals overlapped. So much Arthur knew from

experience, and as he had never seen Eleanor in the morning, he had

inferred that she probably breakfasted with her grandfather upstairs.

He was greatly surprised, therefore, to find her at the table when he

entered the room at half-past eight the next morning, surprised and for

a minute or two distinctly embarrassed. He was never now in the mood

for conversation so early in the day.

Until he had come to Hartling he had always been fresh and eager in the

morning, but the Kenyons were taciturn and inclined to be irritable at

that time, and by degrees their example had influenced him. He presumed

that it was their example, but he was not sure whether or not he could

attribute to the same source the sense of dissatisfaction with himself

that commonly haunted him now when he first woke; dissatisfaction and

a strange feeling of staleness and of disinclination to begin his easy,

amusing day.

He addressed her as he might have addressed a casual acquaintance in a

hotel.

"Don't often see you down here in the morning," he remarked vapidly, as

he rang the bell.

"I've been given a holiday to-day," she said, without looking up. "And

I was to tell you that you needn't go up this morning. My grandfather

says he's feeling a little tired."

"He had rather an exciting day," Arthur agreed; investigated the

cold dishes on the sideboard, and then crossed the room and sat down

opposite her.

Eleanor went on quietly with her breakfast. She seemed prepared, he

thought, to sit there in silence for the rest of the meal, while he

on his part could think of no reasonably intelligent conversation.

After the interval provided by the entrance of the butler, however, an

opening presented itself to him.

"What are you going to do with your holiday?" he asked. "It'll be

rather too wet for tennis, won't it?"

"I'm going for a long walk into Sussex," she said.

His first thought was that he would now find no opportunity for a quiet

talk alone with her that day.

"All alone?" he asked.

"I long to be alone, sometimes," she murmured.

"It seems to me that you spend most of your time alone," he said. "We

don't see much of you." She looked up at him with an expression that

seemed to indicate both surprise and disappointment. "One can never be

alone in the house," she said.

He did not understand. "Are you always with your grandfather?" he

asked.

She shook her head and looked down again at her plate, as she said, "I

meant that I couldn't think my own thoughts here."

"And what do you think about when you're out all by yourself in

Sussex?" he inquired. He felt that his tone was not right, that it held

a suggestion of the jocular; but he felt shy and ill at ease, afraid of

being too serious.

"Just my own thoughts," she said quietly.

He wanted to say something rather profound to show that he understood

and sympathised, but every sentence he tried over in his mind appeared

trivial and banal. He kept his head down as he muttered finally. "I've

often wondered what you think about things."

She made no reply to that, and he was afraid to look at her. His speech

had sounded rather surly, he thought, and with the idea of amending it,

he continued, "I mean that every one seems to take things for granted

here, except you."

"What sort of things?" she asked in a low voice.

"Oh, well! speculations about life in general," he tried.

"Yes, I don't think any of us are much given to that sort of thing,"

she replied.

There had been some effect of a smile in her tone as she spoke, and he

looked up and saw that she was indeed smiling, if a trifle ruefully.

"Not even you?" he asked.

She disregarded the implied flattery that distinguished her from all

the other members of the family. "Have you done much speculating about

life in general since _you've_ been here?" she returned.

He had hardly begun his breakfast yet, but he laid his napkin on the

table and pushed back his chair. "I wish you would let me come with

you to-day," he said. "There are a heap of things I want to talk to

you about. I know you don't like me, but it would be a real kindness if

you would let me talk to you a little sometimes. There's simply no one

here I can explain things to."

"Why me?" she replied.

"You're so different from all the others," he said.

"And are you?" she asked.

"Different from the others?" he repeated, staggered by the suggestion

that he could be thought to resemble, in any particular, the other

members of the Hartling circle.

"Yes," she prompted him quietly.

He stared at her frowning. "Am I the least like them?" he inquired with

a faint trepidation in his voice.

"Not yet, perhaps; but you will be," she said.

"But they aren't like each other," he remonstrated. "Which of them

shall I be like if I stay long enough, Uncle Joe, or Mr Turner, or

Hubert ...?"

"Aren't they all rather alike in one way?" she asked.

He saw at once that they were; that there was some characteristic

common to every one of them, even Miss Kenyon. Seen as individuals

they were as different from each other as are the ears of wheat in a

cornfield, but they all bowed the same way to the prevailing wind. In

their attitude towards the head of the house they could all be relied

upon to present the same face.

"But you've been here fourteen years," he said, "and you're still

different. Or do you think it takes longer than that to get

assimilated?"

"I'm not different," she replied. "Or I shouldn't be here still."

"Of course, I don't know you," he said. "I've hardly seen you since the

first three or four days I was here. But--well--I can't agree with you

about that."

She just perceptibly shrugged her shoulders.

"You haven't said whether you will let me come with you on your walk,"

he began again, after a short pause.

"I would sooner you didn't," she told him. "It can't do any good. There

can be nothing new that you want to ask my advice about. I said all I

had to say to you about that five weeks ago, and you took no notice. I

can only repeat what I said then."

"But I can't go now," he protested. "I've given my promise. I made a

sort of bargain in fact."

She shook her head impatiently. "You needn't keep it," she said.

"That's absurd," he remonstrated, getting to his feet. "Of course I

must keep my promise in any circumstances."

"I suppose you do really believe that?" she asked, looking up at him.

"Would you keep it just the same, for instance, if you knew for certain

that it meant staying on here for ten years and getting nothing,

absolutely nothing, at the end of it? Would you, honestly? Or don't you

think you'd ask to be let off?"

"I might ask to be let off," he admitted, after a few seconds' thought.

"Then you'll only be keeping your promise or bargain or whatever it is

because you want to stay--or because you've got to," she said.

"Perhaps," he agreed. "But I've never said that I _didn't_ want to

stay. I do."

She sighed. "Precisely, and now we're back again to what I said just

now. Whatever is the good of talking to _me_ about it?"

"We might talk about other things," he suggested. "I should very much

like to get away, too, for a few hours."

She hid her face in her hands, leaning her elbows on the table, and he

waited patiently for her answer.

"Why don't you finish your breakfast?" she asked, when she looked up

after what seemed to him a long interval of silence.

"I have. I don't want anything more," he said.

She got up then, and he thought she was going to leave him without

deigning to take any further notice of his request, but when she was

half-way across the room, she looked back and said, "Can you be ready

in ten minutes?"

He started forward with the eagerness of a dog beckoned by its

mistress. "Do you really mean that?" he asked, hardly understanding his

own excitement.

She stood still regarding him with an expression that was half-amused

and half-disdainful. "I didn't know you were so keen on long walks,"

she remarked, "or on getting away from here. Isn't this rather a new

departure for you?"

The look of eagerness left his face. "Perhaps it is," he said stiffly.

"And it's hardly likely to be much of a success if--if you're going to

take that sort of tone."

"I told you that I didn't want you to come," she replied, and there was

something of defiance in her tone and in the pose of her firm, upright

figure.

"I should at least like to know why you have taken such a dislike to

me," he said. "But you might not feel inclined to tell me that in any

case."

"Oh! dislike," she responded, almost contemptuously. "That's much too

strong a word."

He had a sense of hopeless frustration. All her half-unwilling

responses appeared now to have been nothing more than a condescension

to his ineptitude. And he was all too horribly conscious of the fact

that he deserved nothing better than her contemptuous opinion of him.

He was just an average young man of twenty-eight. He had done nothing

that thousands of other young men had not done as well or better. The

only boast he could have made would have been that of ambition, a

boast that was no longer possible for him after his recent admission

that he meant to stay on at Hartling and liked being there. He knew

intuitively what her reply would be, if he told her that he meant to

study, to prepare himself for the work of a specialist. Indeed, he

himself saw that project, now, as little more than a fatuous piece of

self-deception. Practice was what he wanted: book-work would be no good

without that. And in five years he would be soft and over-fed; his

nerve would be gone.

He looked down and began to trace the pattern of the carpet with his

toe. "Yes, I'm not worth hating," he muttered.

She turned away with a gesture of impatience. "Well, shall you be ready

in ten minutes?" she threw at him over her shoulder.

"But if you would so much sooner I didn't come ..." he conceded humbly.

"I'll meet you in the hall," she said, as she went out.

He hesitated again while he was putting on his shoes. If she merely

despised him, as she obviously did, what was the use of trying to win

her confidence? Nothing he could say or do would alter her opinion of

him. He had nothing to say. There was nothing he could do. The most

he could hope for would be to defend his position by argument. He had

little doubt that her contempt for him was based on the fact that he

had consented to stay on at Hartling; and it might be well that she had

not, as yet, a proper understanding of his reasons. She might not have

heard of his verbal compact with the family made the previous day? Was

it worth while attempting his own defence?

He was still weighing that question when she joined him in the hall.

He continued to weigh it as they walked together in silence down the

length of the garden.

The clouds were lifting, and before they reached the big gates the

sun broke through. He looked up, noted the promise of a hot, fine

day, and his spirits began to rise. What did it matter whether or not

she despised him? He was a free man. He was not in any way dependent

upon her opinion. If she chose to snub him, he could leave her to

continue her walk alone. He could be perfectly happy without her. He

was twenty-eight, in perfect health, and without a care in the world.

Why shouldn't he enjoy life in his own way? If he had a regret at that

moment, it was that he had eaten hardly any breakfast.

He began to whistle softly under his breath. He had no intention of

beginning the conversation. He was content to enjoy the day and the

adventure of this walk--the first he had undertaken since he had come

to Hartling. Except for the path to the links and the links themselves,

he knew nothing of the country round about. None of the family ever

seemed to bother about going outside the grounds. They had this

amazing garden and were, presumably, satisfied with that.

How little Eleanor was satisfied with it, however, was shown the moment

they passed through the gates into the dusty high-road. She set back

her shoulders, lifted her head, and gave a sigh of relief. "It's going

to be fine, after all," she said. "I think we'll strike across country

to a place I know where we can look right over to the South Downs. It's

so big and open there."

There was no hint of embarrassment or restraint in her manner. She

might have forgotten everything that had passed between them that

morning; and Arthur, on his side, was quite willing to postpone his

arguments and explanations, or even to omit them altogether. If she

were going to treat him decently for the time being, that was all he

asked.

"Sounds jolly," he said.

"It's seven or eight miles," she warned him.

"Oh! that's nothing," he returned. "_I'm_ good for all that and more.

But are _you_?"

"I've done it twice in the last ten days," she said.

"This holiday of yours is not altogether an exception to the general

rule, then?" he asked.

"I've been out several times--lately," she admitted.

He thought he detected the suggestion of some reservation in her

answer, and said, "Only lately? Do you mean that this is a new freedom

for you?"

She manifestly hesitated before she replied to that, and her "Oh, no!

not new exactly," still left him in doubt as to what was in her mind.

They had left the main road now, and were walking in an olive-green

twilight along a deep, narrow lane, its banks lush with fern

luxuriating in the warm shade afforded by high banks, topped by

hornbeam and hazel hedges that nearly met overhead.

Arthur lifted his hat, and wiped his forehead. "It's exactly like being

in a hothouse down here," he said. "Rather ripping though."

"We shall come out on to the common a few yards farther on," Eleanor

replied. "It's almost too hot to talk here, isn't it?"

He conceded that, but when they had walked on in silence for fifty

yards or so she suddenly said, "I know I'm not being honest with you,

but I will be presently, even if it does mean talking about things I

would so much sooner forget. Forgetting isn't being honest, even with

oneself. Only not till we're right out in the open if you don't mind."

"Of course I don't mind," Arthur responded warmly. "And I'd like you to

do exactly what you want to about--being honest. If you'd sooner not

talk about the other affair, we won't."

She nodded her agreement, but he was uncertain whether or not she meant

to revert to Hartling as a topic of conversation when they were "in the

open." And, when presently they came out on to the common, it seemed

that she was still skirting that topic, for she began to talk about the

war.

"I was only fifteen when it began," she said, in answer to some comment

of Arthur's. "And I really didn't understand all that it meant until

it was nearly over. My grandfather used to keep the papers away from

me, and told my governess--Elizabeth and I shared a governess then--not

to tell us about it. But we all shirked it; tried to pretend that we

couldn't do anything. And in a way it never touched us. Hubert would

have gone if my grandfather had let him, and at that time I thought

Hubert was being silly about it." She paused and drew in her breath

with an effect of lamenting her own blindness.

"But you couldn't have helped if you'd known, you, personally, I mean,"

Arthur said.

"I might have been a nurse," she protested.

"If you had you couldn't have come in till right at the end," he

returned, "and, Lord, we had quite enough amateurs at that game as it

was. Though, as it happens, it crossed my mind that you would make a

good nurse the first time I saw you."

"_I_ believe I should, too," she agreed. "I hope I may be some day."

He made no comment on that though he was aware that something within

him resented the thought of her ever becoming a professional nurse.

"You _did_ go through the war, at all events," she went on, rather as

if she sought an excuse for him.

"I, and about five million other men," he put in, determined to take no

credit on that score.

"It makes a difference, all the same," she returned.

"To what?" he asked.

"Oh! everything comes back to the same place," she said, looking out

straight in front of her. "I knew it would, when you asked to come with

me. When I'm alone I'm dishonest enough to forget--deliberately. I

can--generally. I lose myself in other thoughts."

"Meaning that I'm spoiling your day," he put in. "But I don't see why

we should talk about--_that_--if you'd sooner not. I can forget too."

"No, no, we _must_ talk about it," she said, "only I find it so

difficult to begin. There are some things--one thing at all events

that you don't know and that I find it very hard to tell you. But let's

wait until after lunch. You had no breakfast, and I know a funny little

lost place on our way, where we can get something to eat. It won't be

anything but ham and eggs, and bread and cheese, of course."

Arthur felt that he wanted nothing better just then, and said so.

"Afterwards," she concluded, "we will go to that place where you look

across to the South Downs, and--and--have it all out."

He was quite content with that. Whatever "having it all out" might

portend, she was treating him now frankly and with a certain

confidence. Her manner since they had left Hartling behind them, had

completely changed. She might presently criticise him in a way that he

would find intolerable. They might openly quarrel. But anything would

be better to endure than that air of contempt and reserve she had

displayed at breakfast. He would, at least, be given the opportunity to

defend himself. He felt sure that she had not understood his attitude,

as yet.

Their immediate difficulty was to find a topic of conversation that

would avoid any kind of reference to the affairs of Hartling, and a

few experiments further demonstrated how the thought of those affairs

was, just then, obsessing them to the exclusion of all other interests.

All that seemed possible were disjointed scraps of comment upon the

scenery, or the wild flowers and ferns of that luxuriant Sussex

country--until they reached Eleanor's little wayside inn, and could

drop into the familiar interchanges of two rather hungry young people

awaiting the inevitable fried ham and eggs that was being prepared for

them.

The inn lay in a valley, and as soon as they finished their meal,

Eleanor pointed to the hill in front of them.

"We have to climb that and then we are there," she said. "Shall we go

now?"

Arthur agreed willingly enough. He was both eager and apprehensive;

at once anxious to hear what she had to say and a little fearful of

the effect. So long as they could walk together in silence he had a

pleasant feeling of content in her company. Surely she liked him better

since they had been alone together? She had not given the least sign of

despising him in the course of the past two hours.

Yet even when they had reached the summit of the hill that marked the

limit of their journey, Eleanor still hesitated.

She was sitting on the grass, leaning a little backward and supporting

herself on the out-thrown struts of her arms and hands. Arthur lay on

the ground a few feet away from her. Both of them were looking out

across the weald to the broad, blue contours of the South Downs that

determined their horizon, and hid the foundations of the massed and

shining range of cumulus, slowly setting beyond. A light, cool wind was

blowing up from the invisible sea, and the heat of the early July sun

was screened by a thin veil of haze that trailed an immense scarf of

almost transparent cloud across the sky.

Arthur was enjoying a sense of great comfort. He wanted neither to move

nor to speak, and he seemed to be aware that Eleanor's inclination ran

with his own. Yet he knew that the crisis could not be much longer

postponed. If they merely enjoyed their pleasant idleness and returned

to Hartling without having approached the important issue that had

been impending ever since he had made his decision on the previous

day, they would only continue in their present impossible relations.

What the alternative might be he could not guess, though he had a

premonition that it would not, in any case, be entirely agreeable. Some

conflict was inevitable, and it must be faced. It might well be, he

thought, that here on this Sussex hill, he would be confronted with a

choice that would prove the turning point of his whole life.

They had sat there in absolute silence for more than ten minutes when

Arthur at last said,--

"Well, shall we talk now and--and get it over?"

She did not change her position nor turn her gaze from the distances of

the South Downs as she replied,--

"We will talk, but you mustn't think that we can ever 'get it over.' It

will go on just the same--perhaps for years and years."

"In one sense, perhaps," he admitted, his eyes admiringly intent on

her steady profile; "but it will get over this--this misunderstanding

between you and me, I hope."

"It may," she said; "but you don't in the least understand yet. You

don't understand, for instance, that after this, either you or I will

have to leave Hartling."

He sat up with a start of surprise, and moved a little nearer to

her. "But, good Lord; _why_?" he asked in a voice that sufficiently

expressed the depth of his incomprehension.

"Because of that thing you don't know," she said, still without turning

her head; "because my grandfather wants to--to throw us together."

And then, having unburdened herself of this difficult essential, she

continued quickly before he had time to reply, "That's why I've been

given so many holidays lately, though that isn't my chief reason for

knowing. Not that that matters, does it? I do know for certain; never

mind how. And I have known, oh! for a month or more, though he has

never said a word to me directly. So you see now, don't you, that

that's a fact which makes all the difference to our talk, and how

impossible it was for me to say anything to you until you knew it too?"

He waited for a few seconds after she had finished before he said

quietly, "I ought to have guessed really; but I didn't. He said

something to me about it yesterday morning--that he had hoped you and I

would be friends, or something of the sort."

"And you, what did you say?" she put in.

"I told him that I was afraid you didn't like me, and then he said that

in that case there was nothing more to be done. We didn't mention it

again. It was before I told him about Hubert."

"Though, whether I like you or not has nothing whatever to do with it,

of course," she commented thoughtfully.

"Hasn't it?" he asked, as if he doubted that inference.

"Nothing whatever," she insisted.

"Still if--I mean--it seems to me that ..." he began; but she cut him

short by saying with an impatient lift of her chin,--

"I know what you mean, perfectly well. You needn't try to put it into

words. That isn't really the point at all."

"What is the point then?" he asked in bewilderment. "I may be

frightfully stupid, but I can't quite see...."

She turned her face still farther away from him as she said in a

scarcely audible voice, "Nothing should ever induce me to be a bait for

you."

A bait! He saw in a flash the peculiar implications of the word she had

used, but hesitated to accept them.

"You can't mean that Mr Kenyon has deliberately tried to--throw us

together, in order to keep me in the house?" he urged, his tone

apologising for the unlikelihood of such a wild deduction.

"Of course I mean that," she returned bitterly.

"But why?" he pressed her. "Why should he want to keep me as much as

all that?"

"He does," she said, and then as he was manifestly still doubtful,

continued, "I can't tell you why. I don't know. I only know that he

wants to keep us all there till he dies. But you--you were different.

I wondered when he first invited you what he meant to do. There was

something I disliked, instinctively, in the way he asked about you. It

was just as if he--he was trying to catch you then. And when I saw you

that first night I tried to warn you. I daren't say very much. We none

of us dare because we know that he's--oh! inhuman in a way; that he

would turn any one of us out to-morrow without a penny if he thought

that we were working against him.

"Oh! surely not," Arthur protested.

She laughed scornfully. "He seems to have made you believe in him," she

said.

"He has been most frightfully decent to me, you see," Arthur replied

emphatically.

"Did he say anything to you about my father yesterday?" she asked,

turning to face him for the first time.

"Something," he acknowledged.

"Did he tell you how my father pleaded with him, offered to do or to

be anything, if only he might be allowed to marry my mother?"

Arthur shook his head. "No, he didn't tell me that. What was his

objection?" he said.

"My father never knew--unless it was that my mother had no money of her

own. I only know what Uncle Joe told me, of course, but he heard all

about it at the time. I don't believe that he had any real objection.

You can never be sure whether he will say yes or no to anything, but

you may be quite certain whichever it is, that he will stick to it

afterwards whatever happens. And he said 'No' to my father, and turned

him out of the house because he was willing to give up anything in the

world rather than my mother. And when he had been gone about a month he

sent that elephant's foot that stands in the hall. He meant it as an

insult. Uncle Joe says that they were afraid to tell him. They all knew

what it meant, of course; that it was a sort of symbol of his methods.

But he wasn't the least bit insulted. He seemed to be proud of it, and

had it put where it is now, for every one to see."

She had been speaking rapidly, almost fiercely, with an excitement

completely unlike her usual rather staid manner.

"But why have you gone on staying there if you feel like that?" Arthur

asked.

She put her hands up to her face for a moment and then looked at him

with a whimsical smile. "You aren't the only person who has been

blind," she said.

"Do you mean that you have only been feeling like that just lately?" he

asked.

"I was only seven when I came," she said, "and I was brought up there.

I never went to school. And you take things for granted when you're

brought up in a place because it's the only world you know, and you

think the others must be much about the same. I did begin to wake up a

little in the last year of the war, but even then it all seemed natural

enough in a way. He was so old, and one made all sorts of excuses for

him. And then, of course, for months or even years at a time he seems

to be as sweet and gentle as any one could be. He can be most awfully

kind to people...." She paused on a reflective note, as if she still

sought excuses for him.

"But what happened to make you change your mind just lately?" Arthur

prompted her.

She blushed vividly, and again turned her eyes towards the lavender

distances of the downs. "I've really seen the thing happening for

myself," she said in a low voice. "I'd had hints from Uncle Joe before,

plenty of them; but like you I didn't believe them. There was more

excuse for me. I had been brought up with it. I believed he was odd,

eccentric. He might seem rather cruel sometimes; but I thought, as I

suppose you do still, that he was really trying to do the best for

every one."

"But you don't now?" Arthur asked.

"I've been watching him--and thinking--since you came," she said

slowly, hesitating between her phrases. "And it has seemed--as if I had

got the key of a puzzle that had been worrying me. It--it worked. It

accounted for so much that had been just a little mysterious. I have

had, sometimes, a horrid feeling of uneasiness and have been angry with

myself for doubting him. But after you came--I suppose it was just an

accident that it was connected with you, more particularly; it would

have been just the same with any one else, of course--well after that,

as I said just now, I saw it all happening."

She paused, but Arthur made no reply. He was leaning on his elbow

looking down over the broken sweep of the weald. For him, the "key"

of which she had spoken was not yet plain. There were traits in the

character of the old man, that Arthur believed were not consistent with

Eleanor's judgment of him as "inhuman."

His mind was busy with the search for excuses and extenuations, when

Eleanor began in a new voice, "I suppose you think it very rotten of me

to have said all that about him, and, in any case, you don't believe

me."

"I do; I do," Arthur protested, rousing himself from his abstraction.

"I don't think it's rotten of you in the very least. What I'm doubting

is whether your deductions are sound."

She appeared now to have given up any hope of persuading him, and

looked at him with a frank smile as she said, "Well, I suppose we ought

to be setting our faces towards home?"

"Oh, no! not yet," Arthur replied, with such evident distress in his

voice that she laughed outright.

"But surely you must be pining to get back to your golf and billiards

and croquet?" she suggested. "Or, if we start now, we might get in some

tennis after tea."

"I don't believe I have ever heard you laugh before to-day," was

Arthur's answer.

"It isn't exactly a gay house, is it?" she replied.

"My Lord, no, it isn't," Arthur agreed, after a moment's reflection;

"though I don't think I'd thought of it like that before. Elizabeth

always laughs as if she had been wound up inside and set going, and

none of the others really laugh at all. Certainly Hubert doesn't. I

wonder if Miss Martin will?"

Eleanor's face grew grave again. "Oh! the poor dear," she exclaimed.

"She'll probably get my job."

"Your job?" Arthur ejaculated. "But you're not going to give it up, are

you?"

She smiled tolerantly. "Didn't I begin by saying that?" she reminded

him. "Either you or I will have to go, and it's quite clear that you

can't."

"Can't?" he repeated "If _you_ go...."

She gave him no time to complete his sentence. "As you pointed out this

morning," she put in quickly, "you've promised to stay. My conscience

is clear of promises, at any rate."

"But, good Lord, where could you _go to_? What could you do?" he

remonstrated.

"I could go to the Paynes," she said, "the people who brought me over

from Rio. He has retired from the Cable Company and they're living at

a place called Northwood, somewhere near London, I think. I couldn't

stay with them indefinitely, of course, but they would help me to get

something to do. I'm quite well educated for a commercial career.

Grandfather didn't want me to learn typewriting and shorthand, but he's

glad now, because they're so useful to him. _My_ job isn't a sinecure,

you know. I do really work quite hard. You'd be surprised what a big

correspondence my grandfather has about his money affairs. And then

I've got French, and I can read German, though I write it rather badly.

I should think I ought to be worth about three pounds a week."

"Oh, no!" Arthur exclaimed in despair. He could not endure the thought

of her working in a city office.

"But oh, yes!" she said. "I was thinking about it all before you

came. The war made me dissatisfied. We none of us did anything, and I

couldn't help feeling what empty, useless lives we were living here."

"I don't see that you'd be doing anything more by working for a

millionaire in the city than by working for Mr Kenyon," Arthur put in.

"I know. That weighed with me," she agreed. "What I really want is to

be a nurse. Only I don't quite know how to begin. But you can tell me

about that, can't you?"

He pushed her inquiry on one side. "I can't see," he said, "why either

you or I have to leave. I can't really."

She had been talking to him freely, almost gaily, but now her manner

took on the air of constraint with which she had begun the conversation.

"Need we go back to that?" she asked.

"Why, of course we must," he said in an aggrieved tone. "As far as I

can see that's what we came out to talk about."

"But we settled it," she returned. "I'm going!"

"And if I went? If I broke my promise and went instead, would you stay?"

"I might for the sake of the others," she said. "I do help them a

little. And in spite of everything, I'm sorry for him--for that wicked

old man upstairs." She dropped her voice and looked down at her clasped

hands as she concluded, "He _is_ wicked, although you may not believe

it."

"Even so," Arthur argued, choosing to ignore that point for the

moment, "I don't in the least understand why my going should make any

difference one way or the other."

She bent her head a little lower as she said, "No doubt it's very

quixotic and sentimental of me, but I can't bear to watch your life

being ruined. It's different with the others. They're so helpless.

Hubert is not fit to earn his own living, and Ken--if he comes--would

probably be safer there than he would in town. He is very wild. If he

comes, he'll probably marry Elizabeth and settle down."

Arthur saw that at last the time had come to set out his defence.

"Yes, but why take it for granted that I should be wasting my life?"

he began, and then, with one or two pauses at first, but gathering

confidence in his own argument as he went on, he laid before her his

plans for studying at Hartling and his hope for the future.

She listened to him attentively, attempting no comment, either by word

or gesture until he had finished. He believed that he had convinced

her, until she said gently,--

"And if my grandfather lives more than five years? What then?"

"He can't," Arthur expostulated. "People don't live as long as that."

"A few do," she said, "I saw in one of the papers a day or two ago,

that Miss Spurgeon, the preacher's aunt, would be one hundred and one

next month."

Arthur shrugged his shoulders. "Frightfully exceptional case," he

muttered.

"This might be a frightfully exceptional case, too," she insisted.

"You don't find anything wrong with him, do you? And he lives such a

sheltered, detached sort of life. Nothing ever upsets him. He hasn't

altered the least little bit, all the years I have known him. And

you know, don't you, that thirty years ago it began in just the same

way with the others? They thought that he wouldn't live more than

five years, or ten at the outside." She could not look at him, as she

concluded gently, "Don't waste your life as they've done. Anything

would be better than that."

He saw it all quite clearly. He knew that she was right. But something

within him continued to protest fiercely against her advice. He could

no longer doubt that she was entirely disinterested. He was consoled,

even a trifle flattered, by the fact that she so evidently desired his

welfare. But he didn't want to leave Hartling, and he feverishly sought

excuses for staying. He could find half a dozen that would satisfy

himself, but he knew them for sophistries and dared not put them into

words.

She, on her side, seemed disinclined to add anything to what she

had already said, and for some minutes they sat in silence. Eleanor

returned to her study of the distant downs and Arthur, with his head in

his hands, furiously sought an escape from the dilemma imposed by her

two alternatives.

It was Eleanor who at last broke the long silence. "I must be going

now," she said--sighed, rose to her feet, and began to brush and shake

the grass from her skirt. "There is absolutely nothing more to be

said," she continued, "and in any case we shall have plenty of time to

say it on the way back."

He nodded rather resentfully and followed a pace or two behind her as

they made their way down the hill. He could not as yet overcome the

feeling that it was "hard lines" on him to be sent away from Hartling.

For that was what it all amounted to. _He_ would have to go--promise

or no promise. He could not possibly allow her to get work in some

city office, or enter herself as probationer at a hospital, while he

idled away his time at Hartling. Also he hated the thought of her

mixing either with city clerks or young medical students. They were

a coarse lot, and she would certainly meet with all kinds of beastly

advances. In imagination he could hear the men at the hospital talking

about her among themselves, and his face burnt with anger, first at the

intolerable familiarities of his hypothetical students, and then with

himself for thinking these thoughts in connection with her. Still she

would know how to protect herself. No one could be more aloof and cold

than she was sometimes. If that warm generosity of hers did not betray

her? Those silly young fools at the hospital would not understand.

They.... He found a relief in mentally cursing the particular type of

young medical student he had all too vividly pictured. He saw himself

taking one of them by the throat and choking the life out of him.

No, it was obvious that in no circumstances whatever, could she be

permitted to face that kind of life. Plenty of nice girls did, of

course; but she was different. And a city office would be just as bad,

or worse. It was impossible to imagine her mixing with a crowd of dirty

little Cockney clerks or greasy business men. Damn them.

After all, Peckham would not be so bad. Somers was one of the best

and would be tremendously glad to hear that he was coming back.

Only--that would be the end, so far as any hope of seeing Eleanor was

concerned--until the old man died--and it was perfectly true, as she

had said, that he might be an example of one of those exceptional cases

of longevity. He saw the probability more clearly now that his interest

was more detached. Up there at the house, they were compelled to cheat

themselves with the belief that it could not last much longer. Life

would not be endurable without that hope. They had been living on it,

some of them, for forty years....

He suddenly awoke to the fact that this might be the last time he would

be alone with Eleanor and that he was wasting it in these perfectly

detestable reflections, when he might be talking to her.

"I've made up my mind," he said, quickening his pace to catch her up.

"I'll go. You're quite right. I can't stay there now."

She looked up at him with a hint of question in her face.

"I couldn't stand the thought of your going into a hospital or an

office," he continued. "You've no idea of the sort of thing that you

have to put up with and the people that you have to mix with; no idea."

"Oh! but I don't want you to go in order to save _me_," she exclaimed.

"But _you'd_ go to save _me_," he returned.

She gave a little protesting laugh. "No, I shouldn't save you if I

went," she said. "You would stay on here then. All I said was that I

would not be used as an influence to make you stay. You remember what I

told you about my grandfather's plans. Well, sooner than that, I'd do

anything. It's purely selfish, I admit that. I don't mind your being

ruined, you see, but I won't take any sort of responsibility for it."

"But in that case," he submitted. "I might stop on for a time at all

events, if it was quite certain that _you_ weren't the case of my

staying.

"No, no; don't begin like that," she broke out passionately. "Once you

begin to procrastinate and find excuses there'll be no end to it. That

must have been how they all began."

"You're evidently most frightfully anxious to get rid of me," he

grumbled. He had seen a ray of hope and resented her instant extinction

of it.

"Oh! don't be so babyish!" she said petulantly. "You must know that it

hasn't anything to do with getting rid of you."

"I don't see what else it can be," he returned sulkily.

She shrugged her shoulders but attempted no other answer, and they did

not speak again until they were back in the deep, overhung lane and

within half a mile of Hartling. It was there that he made his last

effort.

"Would it be risking too much if I stayed on for just one more week?"

he asked. His spurt of temper had evaporated and he was once more

humble, conciliating.

"Why a week?" she replied doubtfully.

He braced himself to make the test he had been considering for the last

half-hour. "I should like to have one more talk with you before I go."

"And you wouldn't say anything to my grandfather in the meanwhile?"

"No. If I did he might sling me out."

"You believe he'd do that, then?"

"Oh, yes! I believe that."

"But not that he is--inhuman?"

"I find it difficult. No, I can't credit that."

"But you _would_ stick to your idea of going at the end of a week from

now?"

"Absolutely."

"I wonder if it's wise to let you stay a week?" she murmured half to

herself.

"Seven days surely can't make any difference," he pleaded.

"Exactly; so why have them?" she returned.

"No difference so far as my prospects are concerned," he said.

"Oh, no!" she replied quickly, as if she were afraid that he might go

on to elaborate his reasons for wanting his week's grace. "But are you

quite sure of yourself? Are you sure that at the end of the week you

won't want to put it off again?"

"I give you my word of honour," he said solemnly, and went on, "I've

made up my mind. I'll write to Somers as soon as I get in and tell him

to expect me next Tuesday."

They reached the gates of Hartling as he was speaking, and

automatically they both paused as if this agreement were one that must

necessarily be made outside that enclosure.

"Very well," she said, and gave him her hand.

He took it and held it as he replied. "And that other favour? You

haven't granted it yet. Will you give me at least one more chance to

talk to you alone before I go?"

"Oh! you're sure to have that," she said lightly.

"But will you promise?"

"If you like," she agreed.

It was as they were walking up the garden that they decided upon the

necessity for keeping the news of his departure from the rest of the

family. Some sense of freedom had left them as they passed through the

gates, and already Arthur was beginning to wonder at the comparative

ease with which he had made his decision to leave Hartling. Now that he

was back again in the garden that had become so familiar to him in the

course of the last five weeks he felt again the lure of its shelter.

The place was so secure, so rich with the promise of comfort and rest,

of freedom from all the struggles and responsibilities of the world.

Probably none of the Kenyons had ever wanted to leave it (Hubert was

happy enough now that he was going to marry Dorothy Martin. If he were

offered £5000 to go to Canada with her, he probably would not take

it). They pretended to be imprisoned, played with the idea of having

ambitions. It was a sort of boasting. No doubt they wanted their jailor

to die. He stood between them and the semblance of freedom. But when he

was dead and they were independent, they would almost certainly go on

living there just as they were doing now. They wouldn't want to change

their habits after all these years.

It was amazing how differently he saw the problem, now that he was back

again within the enclosure of those protecting walls.

Nevertheless, he wrote to Somers, even giving him the time of the

train by which he might be expected on the following Tuesday. He was,

he thought, being rather quixotic, but he meant to keep his promise

to Eleanor, and ask to be released from the one he had made to the

old man. And if that release were denied, what could he do? Insist?

Say calmly that he meant to go whether he were released or not? Allow

the old man to regard him as an ungrateful cad? Or make Eleanor bear

witness? Make a clean breast of everything and say that one or the

other of them had to go, and he preferred that it should be himself,

for excellent reasons? It was just possible that they might both be

turned out if the old man knew that they had been plotting against him

as it were. On the other hand, he might suggest that the difficulty

could be overcome--in another way.

Arthur jumped to his feet and began to pace fiercely up and down his

bedroom. Lord, if only that had been possible, what a difference it

might have made. She had been kind enough to him while they were out

together. He had some reason to believe that she did not, after all,

really dislike him. But it was absolutely futile to hope that she would

ever marry him. He was not good enough for her. She was the sort of

woman who would love with all her heart and soul, if she ever loved at

all. Probably she never would. There were not any men good enough for

her....

He seemed to know her infinitely better since that walk. Before

that he had had a vision of her as a forlorn little child of seven,

but what she had told him this afternoon gave him the material to

follow her development up to the present day. He could see her as a

girl of sixteen, having lessons with her governess, and being kept

in comparative ignorance of the war; and again a year or two later,

beginning to guess at the true significance of that great catastrophe.

He had a new sense of having known her all her life. It was difficult

to imagine life without her. Yet, if this affair turned out as he had

every reason to expect it would, he might never see her again....

A man was so impotent. If she did not care for him, that was the end

of it. He could not make her care for him. The root of the whole

trouble probably was that she despised him for staying on there in the

first instance. She had classed him in her mind with all the others,

a hanger-on, a weak fool who preferred to inherit money rather than

to earn it! And, good God, she had been right! That was what he had

been, a cursed parasite, living on a friendly host. Commensalism.

Somers had guessed it too. Any one who had not been perverted by this

infernal Hartling atmosphere could see it. And Eleanor, who had not

been perverted, the one exception in that place, had judged him without

bias, had seen him as he was. Little wonder that she had despised him.

His one hope now was to prove that she had in effect misjudged him. He

must tell her that he had realised, however tardily, the kind of weak

fool that he had been, and he would support his confession by action.

He would not wait for a week, he would go the next day. He would see

her for a minute after dinner, and just announce his determination, ask

her to make sure of his appointment with the old man next morning....

Before he went, he would make an opportunity to say good-bye to her.

It was a heroic measure, but the only way by which he could hope to

recover her esteem.

In his bath, and while he was dressing for dinner, he deliberately took

his leave of luxury. He had lived the life of a millionaire for more

than five weeks; might live it, if he chose, for perhaps another five

years. But he was willing, eager, to renounce it all in order that he

might recover Eleanor's esteem. He would make still greater sacrifices

if he could win that reward.

And, oddly enough, there was another compensation which he had not

consciously sought, but which he was instantly aware of as a result

of his decision--he was a free man again. As he stood and looked at

his reflection in the glass before going down to dinner, he was aware

of that same feeling of release that had come to him when he had made

his petition on behalf of Hubert, the day before. He lifted his head

with a touch of arrogance and squared his shoulders. Good God! what a

damned fool he had been ever to dally with the thought of staying on

indefinitely at Hartling. He was an independent man now, in a kingdom

of slaves. The Kenyons, after all, were to be pitied rather than

condemned. What was the good of all this luxury if you were not the

captain of your own soul? Ambition, work, and independence were the

only things worth living for--if you could not have love.

But if it had not been for _her_....

He was so full of his new resolve and so anxious to tell Eleanor,

that he completely overlooked the unusually chastened air of the

dinner-table that evening. He was trying to make an appointment with

Eleanor by some almost invisible signal, and she persistently avoided

his eloquent stare. Only twice did she meet his eyes, and on both

occasions she turned away her head almost immediately. It seemed that

he had lost all that he believed he had gained at the conclusion of

their walk. Yet it was impossible that anything could have happened

since, to change her new opinion of him. In any case, he would see her

after dinner, even if he had to follow her upstairs. She would forgive

him when she heard what he had to say.

He hardly noticed that Elizabeth--who was dressed in black that

evening, a colour that did not suit her--was moody and depressed, or

that Miss Kenyon seemed to have temporarily lost something of her

autocratic, self-contained manner. And he was far too engrossed with

his own affairs to attempt any inferences from the slight indications

that he could not altogether overlook. He merely assumed that they were

a little duller than usual--and pitied them.

He looked up once or twice at the head of the table, turning over in

his mind the various approaches by which he might most gently break his

news the next morning, but the old man showed no sign of any unusual

disturbance.

The moment Miss Kenyon gave her sister-in-law the signal to rise,

Arthur jumped to his feet. He meant to allow no interference with his

plans on this occasion. He was ready, if Miss Kenyon spoke to him, to

pretend that he had not heard her. But no one intervened between him

and Eleanor. They actually left the dining-room together.

She turned towards the staircase as they entered the hall, and afraid

that she might run away, he began at once, "Could I speak to you for

one minute? It's important. I...."

"Yes, I saw your signals at dinner," she interrupted him, none too

graciously.

"Oh! did you? I'm sorry. I thought you didn't understand," he

apologised. "You see, the fact is that I have decided to go, to leave

here, to-morrow. I wanted to tell you, because I must see Mr Kenyon

before I go."

They had reached the foot of the staircase now and she went up two

stairs before she turned and looked at him, their eyes almost on a

level. Her forehead was puckered into a little anxious frown. "Why have

you changed your mind?" she asked.

He was warmed to a boldness that he had not dared hitherto. "I've been

thinking over all our talk this afternoon," he said, "particularly

yours, and I realised how absolutely right you were in despising me for

hanging on here, and I felt that I could not stay another twenty-four

hours."

She stretched out her arm and rested her fingers on the magnificent

width of the mahogany handrail. "Why?" she asked.

"I could not bear the thought that you despised me," he said.

"I never did," she replied gently; "only I was sorry."

He was too drunk with the vapours of his own resolve to catch the finer

significance of her answer. "It's frightfully kind of you to say that,"

he said, "but you've made me despise myself, and anyhow I'm going. So

will you ask Mr Kenyon if he can see me to-morrow morning?"

She smiled faintly at the impetuosity of his boasting.

"I'm afraid he can't," she said. "He won't be here to-morrow."

"Not here?" he repeated in astonishment, and then as the implications

of that unexpected news became clearer to him, he added, "Then it's

possible that I might--that we could have another walk or something?"

She smiled more openly now. "It is, just possible," she said. "If you

feel that you can, after all, put off your departure for another day."

"Oh, of course, in that case!" he said eagerly, and added, "Besides, I

must see him before I go. How long will he be away?"

"He'll be back to-morrow afternoon," she told him. "He's only going up

to town in the car for the day. Haven't you heard?"

"Heard? What? No, I don't believe I've spoken to any one hardly since

we came in. Has anything happened?"

"One of the periodical rumblings of the earthquake," she said.

He was alive now to this new issue. "Can't you tell me?" he asked.

She glanced round the hall and up the stairs before she said in a low

voice, "He had a letter from Ken by the second post, a defiant letter,

and rather rude. Ken's going to break away, he has borrowed the money

to pay the worst of his debts, and leave enough over to pay his passage

to South Africa. He knows some one who has a farm there and he's going

to join him. Uncle Charles and Aunt Catherine are fearfully upset, of

course, and it's one of those rare occasions when the foundations of

the house begin to shake. I've only seen it happen before in the case

of servants who have--well--broken away, but the effect is much the

same, though the rumblings are deeper this time."

"Is he very annoyed?" Arthur asked. "He didn't seem upset at dinner."

"He? Oh, no! He's as calm as Fate," Eleanor said, "and as cruel."

"But why is he going up to town? Is he going to see Ken himself?"

She shook her head, glanced once more round the hall, and then bending

towards him, whispered, "He's going to see his lawyer and alter the

will. He hasn't said so, but every one knows."

Arthur pursed his mouth. "Pity I couldn't see him before he goes," he

remarked. "Might save him another journey."

She looked at him with a frank approval, smiling her appreciation of

his humour. "You're not afraid of him, are you?" she said.

He was afraid of nothing, as long as he could win her smiles, but he

didn't brag. "There's no reason why I should be, is there?" he replied.

"Absolutely none," she said confidently. "But you may find him

difficult, harder to deal with than you think. It was different with

Ken. He didn't want to keep Ken. He does want to keep you. I must go

now. I've a heap of letters to do for him."

"But shall I see you to-morrow?" he said, as she turned and began to

ascend the shallow stairs.

She did not answer that, but when she was half-way up the second flight

she looked back at him and waved her hand.

He was more than content. That last glance of hers had again approved

him. He had won a measure of admiration from her by his decision. And

to-morrow, he would have her to himself--possibly for the whole day....

He was still standing at the foot of the stairs, and after a moment's

hesitation he went on up to his own room. He could not stand that

crowd downstairs to-night. They would be depressingly gloomy, full of

horrible forebodings about the impending alterations to that untidy

will. He wanted to be alone with his own glorious thoughts.