PART V

VICTORY

*PART I*

*THE GOAD*

"I have not, as some do, bought penitence with pleasure!"--SHELLEY.

"When the soul arms for battle she goes forth alone."--LYTTON.

*FARQUHARSON OF GLUNE*

*CHAPTER I*

"The potter, also tempering soft earth, with labour fashioneth every

vessel for our service, and of the same clay he maketh both vessels that

are for clean uses, and likewise such as serve to the contrary; but what

is the use of these, the potter is the judge."--_Wisdom_ (Douay

Version).

Two men, leisurely climbing a steep moor in the north of Perthshire,

stopped near the summit to read a sign-post which pointed out the way to

Glune.

No one was in sight. Poverty held Glune in bondage, and such

attractions as she yet could offer were not of the type which appeal to

casual trippers and excursionists, eager for gossip and refreshment

after a stiff walk up-hill. For a solitary shop, from which emerged the

pervading smells of leather, peppermint and onions, represented all that

local enterprise could compass, even at Bruchill, the nearest village.

Cottage upon cottage was empty, and those that were still inhabited,

showed evidence of neglect. Women standing at their doors, stared dully

at the unaccustomed travellers; children playing in the ill-kept gardens

were heavy-eyed and pallid. No joy of life, no hospitality was offered.

The most persevering Bohemian or antiquarian, drawn to the desolate spot

by love of adventure or tradition, was eventually pulled up short at

sight of the empty lodge, the impenetrable castle gates, high and with

narrow grilles, which shut in the vast wilderness of tangled growth and

ruin.

Grief and sorrow had concentrated about Glune, until, for Scotsmen, it

had become a second Escorial. Inanimate things are as tragic in their

way as human beings. A man or woman, however crushed and broken, has

moments of quickened vitality in which hope springs, even if mockingly.

Otherwise brains would snap. But a room which a strong personality has

made vital with its presence, becomes temporarily as a place of the

dead. The Escorial does not depend on shape or colouring for its

impression of gloom; its air breathes tragedy on the tenderest April

morning. Glune had something of that same relentless force of character

which makes the Escorial one with the relentless character of its

founder. But whereas jolting trains and the pitiless volubility of

Cook's guides bring the palace in view a full hour before you reach it,

there was but a single point from which Glune actually could be seen, so

sheltered was it from inquisitive eyes by the reserve and mystery of

wood and hill.

Had there been one to see, he might have wondered what freak of fate had

led the present travellers to a spot so lonely and obscure, and again,

what chances had combined in fellowship two men outwardly quite

incompatible. Each of them had the hall-mark of the public school upon

him, but there their likeness ended. For the elder was of the type

which willingly pays a guinea to advertise its arrivals and departures

in the _Morning Post_; while the younger was a mere boy, whose heart as

yet stirred only to the love of sport. Explorers, shooters of big game,

men who had dared and done, were Cummings' models. Where Brand, his

companion, was hourly handicapped by ill-health, the young man's

greatest trial as yet was his total inability to achieve what could be

called a moustache by any but the most biassed relative.

Brand was indeed insignificant, one degree only removed from actual

deformity. His mouth twisted uncontrollably when he smiled, and one

shoulder was higher than the other, although a well-known tailor had

done his best to remedy the defect. His eyes, set close together, were

unusually light in tone, and apt to evade the glance direct. He had a

trim Vandyke beard, and was dressed neatly and well. His complexion was

pale, and he bore his single eye-glass as one who tolerates the defects

it magnifies, because he is convinced that his Creator's designs are

generally crude. Some women found him interesting; the more refined

shrank back from him instinctively, and wondered why. On the other

hand, his knowledge of great cities and their haunts at nightfall, and

an unusual memory and gift of tongues lent him an air of distinction

which was admired and imitated by younger men within his circle.

Cummings, for instance, thought he leaned upon a stick rather from

choice than necessity, and would have given a fortune to exchange his

own stereotyped courtesies for Brand's easy assurance.

For the lad, tall and athletic, with a trick of blushing, had yet to

find himself. The pages of his life, so far, were singularly blank. He

had the sensitive nostrils and frank gaze of a man susceptible--almost

too susceptible--to influence and impressions, yet good breeding had

often made him elude opportunities which less artistic natures coveted.

That beauty of any kind would sway him you saw at a glance; beauty of

soul and shape, Divine and human. Had he not in certain instances been

kept back by the fitness of things, he would have invariably given

himself joyously to its influence, as a swimmer to the sea, playing with

it, while knowing that it had the power to drown. His eyes were a

dreamer's eyes, able to see the Beatific Vision on Clapham Common--a

faculty not often met with in a man so broad of chest and lean of flank.

So far as personal courage went, Cummings' might have carried him

through almost any form of mediaeval torture, except the deprivation of

his means of washing. At Eton and Sandhurst he had passed through many

dubious escapades unscathed, delightfully blind to "scum and rot," as he

mentally summed up certain vagaries of his companions.

But he was now of the age which believes worldly experience to be a

necessary factor of life. In the last few days he had begun to be

ashamed of his own ignorance of inessential things.

It diverted Brand to play with, some said corrupt, such natures. He had

won the lad as tactfully as a woman might have done, luring him step by

step until confidence was established. Once that was done, the rest was

easy. Little by little the sanctuary of Cummings' thoughts was invaded;

his circumstances, his surroundings, his hopes betrayed, until his soul

lay naked in the day. Another man, with so definite an end in view as

Brand had, might have hastened matters and spoilt all. He made no such

mistake.

"Looks and means," he said now dreamily, in the quiet high-bred voice,

which was one of his most valuable assets. "You ought to do well in

life, with both in your grasp. Few women withstand either, and none

both; and later on you'll realize that success in life nearly always

augurs a swish of frills and furbelows in the background." He looked at

Cummings critically. "Remember what wins women wins fame. She's wanton

too. You have more than your share of good things, my dear fellow. The

only point you really lack is confidence, the recognition that you can

hold your own as well in a crowd as in a _tete-a-tete_. If a man

doesn't believe in himself he'll never get even a woman to believe in

him."

"Oh, come now, I always think I'm such an awful ass," Cummings

protested. His conversation was still in the ejaculatory stage. But he

was pleasantly excited. What boy of his age would be unsusceptible to

the flattery of being sought after by an older man? A chance meal in an

anglers' inn, where space and table-cloths were equally limited, had

given Brand his looked-for opportunity; a glass or two of Burgundy, and

the discovery of a remote connection, warmed the acquaintance into

friendship. Across the border such kinship made a closer tie than south

of the Tweed, Brand asserted. The two men joined forces on the strength

of the statement. Long walks and rides were the result--the first links

in a chain which was to rivet more than one future.

"Men of my age are not apt to make mistakes in character," the elder man

continued, after a pause. Cummings, eagerly listening, failed to see

the irony of his tone. "You say you haven't brains enough for

diplomacy; I beg to differ. That's a career worthy of a man of

influence, like you. With a good private income such as you have, and

Calvert to back you--why, you could pull the strings of the world, if

some one showed you how to set about it, and incidentally have a good

time."

"We've always gone in for the Army or the Church in our family, you

see," said Cummings, simply disposing of the question. "As to what I've

got in the money line it isn't worth speaking of; two thousand a year

doesn't go very far in the Cavalry. Besides, of course my uncle might

marry, and he's not absolutely bound to leave me his money; in any case

I never count on it, though I'm supposed to be his heir. Rather a

low-down game waiting for a dead man's shoes, don't you think?" He

stopped awkwardly, finding it rather difficult to frame the right words

in the face of Brand's mocking smile.

By now they had left the main road, striking a sheep track across the

narrow pass which separated Glune from distant Bruchill. Even the broad

road had been singularly deserted; here, neither browsing cattle nor

sheep broke the gloomy lines of the spurs, deepening from purple to

indigo. Grey clouds hung low, heavy with tears. The silence was eerie;

one of the two men felt its spell. To detach yourself from man is often

to come near to God, but there was something sinister in this unsmiling

landscape, which savoured more of the powers of darkness than of light.

So far the two had walked in close companionship, but now, quickened by

the wider life of the hills, and lashed by the mountain air, Cummings

unconsciously set a pace which kept time with his rapid thoughts.

Brand's words fell meaninglessly in his ears, like pebbles thrown to

lure a terrier but sucked in by the tide before the dog had time to

reach them.

Brand tried to keep up with his companion, but failed. His forehead

grew clammy with the effort. He broke down at last, catching his breath

with a choking cry that pulled up Cummings abruptly in his hot pursuit

of fugitive visions.

The boy turned, scarlet and confused. "I'm awfully sorry I dashed off

like that. Here, take a pull from the flask. Do forgive me, old chap.

It was beastly bad form of me forgetting----" He stopped in

embarrassment, taken aback by the curious change that broke out in dull

white patches on Brand's face at his words.

But Brand was of the world worldly, not likely to lose the object he had

in view because of a temporary obstacle which tact could bridge. There

was no trace of resentment in his answer.

"You must remember my grey hairs. I'm quite ready to rest if you are.

There's lots of time, and you've had rather a strenuous week, I gather?

Although I'm a distant relation, I've only actually met Martin Calvert

once, and then I found him a tough customer. Isn't a visit there rather

a test of endurance? A bit of a bore between ourselves, eh? No

leniency to one's little failings to be met with in that quarter.

People say blood is thicker than water; one's relations always think it

means that one is thicker-skinned."

"My uncle has been most awfully good to me, you know," Cummings said,

with some embarrassment.

Brand flicked his cigar ash lightly.

"A millionaire's virtues can be seen with the naked eye, my good fellow.

Once you step into the dead man's shoes of which we were speaking just

now, your friends and enemies alike will find you possessed of a

thousand admirable qualities, to whose existence they were blind before.

'To him that hath shall be given' is about the only scriptural

injunction that society ever lays to heart, you know."

"Oh, come now, that's a bit satirical," cried Cummings impatiently,

flushing again. The pass had narrowed into a gloomy gorge, through

which it was impossible for two to walk abreast. The younger man

stopped short, glad of an excuse to change the conversation.

"What extraordinary country! Nothing but waste land. What's wrong with

the soil? It was right enough by Bruchill. Whom on earth does this

belong to?"

It was said of Henry Brand in Pall Mall clubs, that were he hurled

headlong into the heart of Central Africa he would know the name and sum

up the exact precedence of any tribe he came across.

He answered deliberately. "There are about thirty thousand acres of

this desert all told. And it belongs to Farquharson of Glune.

"Farquharson of Glune," Cummings repeated. The name rang familiarly.

"Didn't a Farquharson once marry one of the Kilmaurs? Stay--I seem to

remember some story--wasn't there a rumour----" He broke off abruptly,

knitting his brow.

"Stories! There have always been stories about Glune and its inmates,

past and present," said Brand. "Tragedies mostly. The Farquharsons of

Glune are all men of violence; leaders of forlorn hopes; knights-errant

to distressed damsels, saints or outcasts; fierce heroes from whose

doings tiresome bards make tiresome music--you know the sort of thing."

Cummings not only knew "the sort of thing," but held it very sacred, so

he kept his peace.

"Well, what's the present Farquharson of Glune thinking about to let

good land lie fallow like this?" he asked.

"Farquharson of Glune is about ten years old," said Brand. He gave his

explanations complacently, with the air of a broker propitiating his

client with some valuable tip. "He lives with his mother, and they're

poor. There are two kinds of poverty as you know, the poverty of the

man who sells one or two horses out of his racing stud, and stops

playing bridge if the points are more than half-a-crown a hundred, and

the poverty which slowly starves itself to death to keep inviolate the

terraces and gardens and bedchambers which Royalty has--honoured with

its presence."

He stopped to cut and light another cigar; he was a connoisseur in

cigars, the bill for which was paid by other men.

"The last is the kind of poverty the Farquharsons could tell you all

about--if they told anybody anything."

"Poor souls! And, meantime, this all runs to waste. The timber's

excellent--why don't they sell it? Does Kilmaurs know anything about it

all? I thought Scotch people prided themselves on hanging together.

The clan's rich enough. Why can't somebody buy----"

The elder man interrupted with a laugh.

"Buy Glune! Mrs. Farquharson would starve first. Probably will. She's

got the old Covenanter blood in her veins. It leaves taints. The elder

son--did you ever hear how Douglas Farquharson died?" He paused

significantly.

Cummings hesitated. "Something about it; not a pretty story."

Brand shrugged his shoulders. "Suicide is seldom artistic. Douglas was

always a bungler; he tried several means before he was successful. Mrs.

Farquharson turned off the whole staff of servants and labourers on the

estate (with the exception of her own old nurse, who had lived with her

since childhood) on the day of the funeral. Everything that could be

sold with decency was sold; everything, that is to say, that could be

taken from the house by night. To the best of my belief neither friend

nor relation has been inside Glune since, nor is Richard allowed outside

the gates, except to go to the kirk on Sunday. You know how

entertaining that is--black gown, tuning fork, and

paraphrases--damnation measured out by the square yard. A cheerful

outlook for a lad, isn't it?"

"Cheerful!" Cummings echoed the word with a deep breath. It struck him

for the first time that he took too many things in this world for

granted, that there were indeed a hundred and one good times in such a

life as his which he failed to appreciate fully. He had imagination; he

could enter into the lonely boy's revolt at the betrayal of his

childhood, his indignation at the grey life Glune demanded, alike

tributes to its power. Memories of his own pleasant childhood came back

to him in vivid contrast, recalling its sunshine and glow: competition

and excitement, friendly rivalries in work and play; small sacrifices

for sport that brought their own reward; his father's pride in him, his

mother's love, their rooted--if delightfully absurd--conviction that he

was bound to excel in anything he undertook, his personal ardour and

ambition, the thrill of success....

He turned impulsively. "There must be something to do? Surely one

could do something?"

Brand laughed again.

"It's hardly your business, is it?" he asked in a calm philosophical

tone that shamed the young man's enthusiasm into silence. "Besides, it

would be interference in what parsons tell us is the great scheme."

The boy winced. His father had come into the family living as a matter

of course; a genial atmosphere of piety had sweetened the limited

disappointments of Cummings' youth.

"That bugbear of religion," Brand went on, "what atrocities are

committed in its name! 'God made all men equal.' What a lie! Some men

are born to go under. In the fight for mere existence no allowance is

made for frailty. Unless a man can keep up with his fellows, he must

drop out of life's race. Some of us are doomed at the outset, fashioned

and shaped and moulded in God's image, only to be ground down to powder

by the great Juggernaut of circumstance, like that beetle under your

heel."

He pointed contemptuously to the road.

"The days of miracles are passed, if they ever existed. Unless Richard

Farquharson gets away from his surroundings, he will never have a chance

in life. Stunted in mind and doubtless in growth, half starved,

friendless, and unloved, pent up all day with a mad mother and an old

woman of seventy--what can he do? It wasn't only in the much abused

Herod's time that innocents were massacred. Take the police records of

to-day.... No! don't, they're ugly reading." He stopped again.

"Richard Farquharson's next-of-kin is now at Oxford. He has a father

who moves with the times. He'll get on. The patriots of old bought

titles with their blood, but gold is cheaper. This man wiped off one of

a prince's debts, and got a knighthood for the privilege."

"Look," said Cummings suddenly. The two men stopped near the summit of

a heather-covered spur, overlooking the castle. Cummings took a few

steps forward, mounting to the crest, and then with that instinctive

reverence, which one must be very young or very pure instantly to

respond to, raised his cap.

Bleak, barren, desolate, perched like an eyrie upon the peak of a lonely

moor, Glune held herself against the winds of heaven. Storms might

come, storms did come, thunder would break, lightning and gales destroy,

this or that avenue of trees. The spaces in the forest, the gaps and

rents in the more cultivated landscape of the drive only served to give

a clearer view of the severe outline of the grey building, about which

such green things as strove to grow were ruthlessly cut down.

Some houses are almost human in their characters and impressions. In an

English hospital Cummings had once seen the death of a veteran

pensioner, a corporal who had served at Balaclava under his grandfather.

Something in the look of the rugged stone, defaced but defiant in its

pride and poverty, recalled the light in the old man's dying eyes as he

said, "I've served my time, sir, eighty years of it all told, and I've

got my faculties to the end, which is more than many a man can boast."

Glune seemed as if it would keep its faculties to the end too.

The young man looked across to the further hills and down at the castle

soberly. The grey of the afternoon had broken; the long, narrow windows

opposite had captured the reflected light, a blood-red light which

flamed out dazzlingly. The shadows of the pines and firs cut the rank

grass of a neglected lawn immediately in front of the house; the glow of

the sky was repeated in the running water of a little burn at the base

of the hill. So far as eye could see, a chain of purple hills stretched

loftily. Hills full of warmth and colour, and the mystery which compels

a man's attention. So infinite, so eternal they seemed, that facing

them the petty jars of daily life took their true value; and young as he

was, Cummings realized in a flash that only what children call "big

things" are of account in Heaven's reckoning--love, penitence, and

sacrifice.

"I'm not with you," he cried, stammering and stumbling over the hasty

words. "What you say can't be true. A boy who lives here has got his

chance. I bet you anything you like he'll make something of it.

Stunted! narrow! He needn't be! Why, if the boy is only strong enough

to climb these hills and look about him, he'll educate himself

instinctively. Not in book lore, of course, but book lore isn't all,

nor even much. Learning from Nature is like learning at your mother's

knee, you can't forget it." He caught his breath uncomfortably, and

then ran headlong on, as though he were ashamed of being ashamed to

speak. "Both make one feel--why, more, they make one know--that there's

a God in the machine somewhere."

His companion had moved away. His limp showed very perceptibly at that

moment. The western windows of Glune were dull red now, flushing and

scintillating like rubies in a curious setting.

Cummings stood still for a moment, obviously discomforted, his face

brick-red from the rare effort of wrestling with unaccustomed thoughts.

Then he ran on lightly for a yard or two, and joined his companion.

"Rotten luck, the whole thing," he said good-naturedly. "Let's stop at

the inn at Bruchill, and drink the poor little chap's health as we pass,

eh? I'm sick to death of all this arguing."

Brand raised his eyebrows. His face was livid, except where an angry

smear of red had broken out below the cheek-bone.

"Oh--were you arguing?" he asked.

*CHAPTER II*

"Suffering of body and soul is civil war."--MAUD STEPNEY RAWSON.

Thrown upon his own resources practically from four years old, Richard

Farquharson at ten was older than many boys of his age. His memories

grouped themselves into scenes, one was his nightmare.

That dreadful day! Did he really remember it, I wonder, or was it

merely a mental landmark in that valley of vision to which his old nurse

had taught him the way of escape from the harshness and austerities of

his life at Glune?

He thought of it sometimes with that strange sort of pride which very

sensitive children, and children of a larger growth who have gone

forward in spite of inward shrinking, feel when recalling at a safe

distance an experience which at the time had strained their courage to

breaking-point. A raw, cold day, the first of days which were all raw

and cold; a line of dark shadows clustered together in the gloomy hall,

forming an impenetrable circle about one central shadow deeper than the

rest, across which heavy drapery, a pall, was thrown. Upon this unknown

object the look of all was fixed; child as he was Richard shrank back

from it. He longed and feared to know what was beneath. And presently

strangers appeared, six figures, which formed into a rigid line led by

one familiar shape, which for the first time struck terror into his

heart--his mother.

The circle broke, pierced by strangers; there was a dreadful grating

sound as the men bent beneath the weight of a heavy burden. Then all

filed out, and Richard, a tiny child, was left forgotten, in a silence

that frightened him so that he could not cry out nor move, a paralyzing

silence that clutched him with ghostly fingers and strengthened its grip

as the massive door clanged against him with an echo that mocked the

four-year-old child, left alone in a place where dishonoured Death had

just held revel.

His nurse remembered him, and ran back to fetch him five minutes later.

But that five minutes of mental agony had done a work which was never to

be effaced. The powers of evil had come paralyzingly close, and nothing

can compare with the terrors of helpless childhood. Like dying saints,

children have eyes to see what is invisible to others. Children's

dreams are not necessarily pleasant. There are some whose souls are

laid bare to the onslaughts of devils as well as angels. Even the deaths

of good men and women are not always, nor even often, peaceful.

To Richard, cowed and trembling--picture him; a small boy in a white

sailor suit, with tiny fingers battering vainly at the great oak door

whose latch was beyond his reach!--the five minutes of desertion spelled

eternity. The Bible had already taught him that a day might be as a

thousand years. His momentary vision as to the real meaning of the

verse was kept alive in him thereafter by the weekly sermons of the

Forbeggie minister, who loved to dilate--under some fifteen or sixteen

headings--upon the torture of impenitents by cheerful means of "worms of

the damned that dieth not and fire that is never to be quenched."

So much for the dark side of the picture, but Richard had many

compensations.

_Fide et Fortitudine_ was the motto of his race; he learnt its lessons

early. Let him but keep his inheritance, and he would not grudge one of

those many supperless occasions which helped to retain the mere

necessities of a clan deriving from Macduff, Thane of Fife. He loved

his land, and throve quite joyously upon austerities that would have

broken the spirit of a less hardy lad.

His natural reserve was fostered by enforced solitude. The days went

swiftly. To be more or less alone in the world, except for a collie

dog, is certainly not to be unhappy when every other bird comes to your

call, when stoats and ferrets even are familiar friends. Richard's

mind, dependent upon nature for its amusements, was seldom called upon

to translate the word disappointment. The peace which wrapped him round

became his dear possession, and was peopled with invisible playmates.

There was a hut in the park near the river, some three miles away, where

Dan, the collie, and he played the parts of settlers in a land full of

enemies. He knew the range of every object within view. He altered the

defences day after day, laying down wire entanglements, building rough

stockades, or primitive trenches, with loopholes and head cover, in all

of which Dan took a profound interest.

Richard was his own stern critic, and yesterday's work was pulled down

on the morrow, until a day came when, after subjecting it to the

severest tests he knew, he found it good.

Continually burrowing in dirt, growing in experience, could the heart of

boy ask more?

Nature is a jealous mistress, but she gives openly of her best to the

lover who lives with her as whole-heartedly as did Richard. He never

felt the want of toys or ordinary amusements. The elation that came to

him at times was very sweet and bore him far.

His eye and ear presently became so well trained that from a great

distance he could detect a moving object, and with the wind blowing

gently towards him, and his ear to the ground, could distinguish a

single footfall on a path nearly a mile away, like any scout.

Blindfold, or in the dark, he made his way across Glune without a slip.

Books of travels in far countries, stories of Burnham and other members

of the brotherhood of the intrepid, taught him to destroy the tracks of

his incoming and outgoing, so that every step of the way to special

places of concealment had in it the thrill, the enchantment of an

adventure.

To one who has never been to a theatre, a country life becomes a

beautiful play of birth and death; things move and have their being,

that he may see them pass to their appointed end. The green earth is

the stage, Nature the playwright, and God Himself the Great Scene

Painter.

Richard's tutor, a half-blind village schoolmaster who came for three

hours daily when Mrs. Farquharson could afford to pay his meagre fees,

was the only "outside" person whom he ever saw. Between the boy and his

mother, there was neither freedom nor confidence. He shrank away if he

heard the rustle of her dress. Her presence in the house acted upon him

like the presence of death. It was as if she stood with uplifted hand

always ready to strike some covert blow at one of his innocent

pleasures. He told her nothing; what was there to tell? She looked

upon the things he loved with terror.

Morning and evening found him bidden to stand, mute and resentful,

beside her erect form in its accustomed place, a high-backed chair in

the study where his father's papers and diaries were collected. Her

frozen lips--lips tightened into a line so hard that he always thought

it must hurt her to move them, would touch his forehead stiffly in

greeting, as one touches a thing with loathing and abhorrence. Of bosom

throbbing at his approach, and the light of motherhood in her eyes,

which she stifled as she heard him coming, he knew nothing. He would

leave her rejoicing at a hard duty again accomplished. That she longed

for him hungrily all day long, that she stealthily followed him to his

play, that her spare tense figure was often shaken by passionate longing

to clasp the slender limbs that had once lain warm and quiet beneath her

heart, he never knew.

Only the exceptional man or woman bears the strain of a great shame and

sorrow with no outside help. Mrs. Farquharson's pride in her son went

side by side with ceaseless fear. Richard's fatal likeness to her dead

firstborn, dearer far than Richard because he was the child of early

wifehood, stabbed her heart. She had loved that child too well;

forgetfulness of God by the mother had been visited by God upon the son,

she told herself. And to watch another pay the price of your own sin is

sin's most bitter penalty.

In Douglas Farquharson's case, there had been that sudden extraordinary

return to a vicious type which occurs occasionally in a family that has

for centuries bred fine men and fair women. When, page by page, after

his death the record that proved his guilt was spelled out by his

mother, the only plea she could urge in his defence was that the

selfishness of her own love, given to man instead of God, had marred and

distorted the human image by its very fervour.

She had "counted it a glory to make vain things." Her care had been,

like the potter, "to strive with the goldsmiths and silversmiths." The

voices of husband and child had made such triumphant music in her ears,

that God's sublime call was drowned; she had bartered Heaven for a brief

hour of human rapture, to find that God was a God of vengeance as well

as love and love a two-edged sword which can wound or kill.

That very night, on her bedroom wall, she thought she saw a warning

written in letters of flame. "His heart is ashes and his hope vain

earth, his life more base than clay." ... "Being himself mortal, he

fashioneth a dead thing with his hands."

Day after day, as Richard grew stronger and more handsome, she asked

herself if he were born only to inherit his brother's legacy of

dishonour. He looked frank and open enough, but eyes that shone as

purely as his had been the casket of lies, and lips which had met hers

more easily had given themselves to what was incredibly base.

The dead are often nearer to us than the living. Mrs. Farquharson's dead

were scourges. When Douglas killed himself the shock broke his father's

heart. By day and night his mother made silent pilgrimage to two lonely

graves.

One morning, drawn early to the cool solitude of the river after a

sleepless night, she saw her boy bathing, a slim white figure without an

ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, with every muscle developed,

and skin like satin, shining purely against the deep banks and

undergrowth; a picture framed by pines, through which the light of the

autumn dawn came slowly. Hidden from him, she watched with look wide

and tender, with eyes as moist as the supple limbs from which he shook

the water of the burn, standing strong and vigorous, breathing quickly

after his swim, unconsciously rejoicing in his power. Bone of her bone,

flesh of her flesh, she thrilled again with proud remembrance that she

had borne pain for him and given him life.... Then his characteristic

gesture the impatient pushing of the wet hair from his forehead,

reminded her suddenly of his brother. She shrank back as if a spirit of

evil pursued her.

Between herself and God there was a wall too high for mercy or prayers

to pierce. Her religion forbade her to pray for her dead--prayers for

the dead were heresy. In the blindness of her despair she invented a

species of soul crucifixion striking with almost frenzied agony at the

root of her love for Richard.

He at least should never know how she loved him; discipline and duty

should be the twin lights to guide his way, never the false light of a

selfish love.

After this she instituted a new and more terrible rule of discipline,

both for herself and her son. Richard came to her daily as before, but

now even the conventional kiss was denied him, and three hours' study of

complicated points of doctrine took its place. The fate of sinners was

the prevailing theme, the punishment of sins of whose very existence he

was unaware. In the narrow hot room he would stand rebellious, either

answering at random or not answering at all. Outside, bees hummed and

birds sang, and insect life was joyous. The world he loved stretched

very far in infinite fairness, God's exquisite world that had hitherto

raised his thoughts to its Maker. "His brother the wind, his sister the

earth," had seemed to point the way to a God worth loving. But how

could he but hate the dreadful God of the ancient law into whose power

it was so terrible to fall, the God who raised His hands only to strike,

who broke the heart of His children as men break stones by the wayside,

and had so little pity for the innocent child of shame?

Yet this was the God with whom he was brought in hourly contact, this

Being who saw evil where Richard was convinced no evil was. Why was it

wrong, for instance, to love inanimate things so passionately, to weep

at a bird's death and rejoice at its birth? Why should not his face

light up at sight of the small furred and feathered things, which were

his only friends? He would escape for hours to be in their company, and

pay the penalty for such adventures later, when, sought for with terror,

he was met with punishment and humiliation.

Only when he was alone would passionate tears come, choking sobs that

shook the boy's body and were succeeded by stoniness. Sorrow may melt

the heart like dew; rebellion breaks it.

Night after night, prostrate upon the floor of her room, Mrs.

Farquharson would pray for her son with tears of blood, as one who would

wrest grace from the Almighty. And night after night, in his attic,

Richard would lie awake, lonely and impenitent, thinking himself

loveless and neglected while love was burning at his very door.

*CHAPTER III*

"Not

So much as even the lifting of a latch,

Merely a step into the outer air."--LONGFELLOW.

The picture-gallery ranked high in Richard's list of compensations.

Although it was the sanctuary of fine records, he always associated it

with the last definite memory of his elder brother. Two or three days

before Douglas chose that easy way of shifting responsibilities which it

takes a brave man or woman to evade, Richard had been carried

pick-a-back by his elder brother down the long gallery; had been shown,

with a certain solemnity, pathetic in view of what was so soon to occur,

portrait upon portrait of their ancestors, notably men who were famous

for good rather than great deeds.

There were two especial portraits before which they lingered, Richard

remembered afterwards--that of their great-great-grandfather, upon whose

tomb, by the wish of his country and his tenantry, the motto, "Noble by

birth, noble in all things else," had been engraved; and one of his

wife, known in her day as "The Ivory Mayde," because of the dazzling

fairness of her skin. A contemporary poet wrote of her--

"Snow her fayre body--snowier white her soul."

"Something worth while, old chap, to have that said of one," Douglas had

commented, and Richard, bored at the delay, overcome by the gloom and

seclusion of the gallery, and long array of still figures in

unaccustomed clothes; remembered butting at him with his head until his

brother cried out for mercy and moved on.

The portraits--the knights in armour who guarded the entrance to the

rooms so jealously, awed him still, but not as of old. They were his

friends now, like the squirrels, and passionate love and pride thrilled

him each time he entered the gallery. The deeds they had done, the

records they had left, few even in Scotland could match. The blood they

shed made a sea of glory which reflected the light of God; merely to

cross the threshold was an act of faith.

Richard could have prayed to some of these more easily than to an

unknown God. He knew their histories, man for man, woman for woman.

Before some he habitually paused longer than before others. Had the

veil invisible between that world and his been rent, and the familiar

shades taken fleshly form before his eyes, and called to him, he would

not have known fear. He was theirs and they were his; he faced them

buoyantly, with head erect.

His mother and nurse shunned the gallery, believing it to be haunted--so

much the better!

Time after time, generally at dead of night, but sometimes even in the

day, Richard himself had fancied he heard the stir and rustle of a

silken skirt close beside him, and saw the flash of some dead soldier's

dirk. Whereupon, the moment being critical, a cold draught from some

open door would generally blow in upon him, keen and sharp like the wind

in mountain heather, to announce some ill-timed interruption of his

nurse. Afterwards--a shrill scolding and imprisonment in a room from

whose window he would immediately get out. Richard had no compunction

as to flight when it was thus forced upon him, but by the time he

returned the dream unfortunately, like many a later dream, would have

had time to break.

"Do you think that is what dreams are made for, Dan--only to break?" he

asked his collie sometimes. Whereupon Dan would look up with the

profoundly wistful negation of one who, although dumb, is wiser than his

master.

Eight--nine--ten--eleven.

The old clock on the stairs in the west wing clanged asthmatically,

hesitating between the strokes as one who doubted its ability to make

the final effort. It was out of repair and past use, like most of the

furniture of Glune. But Richard loved it. In Prince Charlie's days the

worn clock-case had sheltered one of his forbears, a Farquharson who,

while carrying despatches to the Prince, was tracked and discovered by

the enemy. Richard loved to poke his fingers into breathing holes which

had been hastily bored at the back of the case, while armed men were

clamouring for admittance at the very gates of Glune.

From the first, it was to the call of valour and endurance that the

boy's heart leapt. Hunting about in an old lumber-room he had once come

upon a box of marvels--forgotten papers and documents which he looked

at, and went back to, and wept salt tears over, time after time. Every

relic in the house was dear to him. The torn plaid upon which Charlie

Stuart's bonny head had lain, in the days before that brave heart had

turned to water, and innocence was drowned in a flood of despair and

shame--the tattered fragment of silk, once a flag, which a Farquharson

had died upholding, a century before; a sporran stained quite lately

with the blood of his grandfather--and a host of like treasures,

witnesses of what a man should do, and of what alone was worth

attempting.

Richard slept in a little attic near the tower, far from his mother's

and the nurse's rooms. Bare as a monk's cell, it was "all his own." He

swept it out and tidied it for himself daily; no woman's foot, so far as

he knew, had ever trod the staircase which led to it since he was first

moved there four years before.

Eight--nine--ten--eleven--midnight at last.

The boy, with a start, shook himself free from his dreams and woke, as

was his habit, to full and immediate consciousness of his surroundings.

This eve of his twelfth birthday was a crisis in his life, high time for

one who had made up his mind to be a leader of men to turn his back on

childish things. And Richard, true to that unconsciously dramatic

instinct of imaginative childhood which inspires children in the little

plays they make from common incidents of every-day life, set about his

task dramatically enough.

For years he had kept nightly tryst with a certain portrait in the

gallery; an image which kept alive in him the only spark of tenderness

that remained after long months of frozen silence and reserve. It was

an unnatural tryst for a boy of twelve, but Richard's life was all

unnatural. And love, which craves so passionately for outlet, has

sometimes to content itself with the inanimate, instead of what is

living and responsive.

We have our favourites, even among ancestors. It was a certain Margaret

Cunningham, daughter of that Earl of Glencairn who, being of the Privy

Council of James V, was taken prisoner by the English in the year 1542,

at the battle of Solway, who had won Richard's heart. Marrying a

Farquharson, she died six months later, "whereat," tradition said, "she

waxed exceedingly joyful, since her whole heart's love had been given

since childhood to her cousin of Kilmaurs, but her parents, being

worldly, would not permit the marriage, since Farquharson of Glune had

more land and a finer heritage."

True to his sex, Richard had been vanquished by the most tender, the

most lovable little face in the whole gallery. It was to this picture

that he confided his dreams, his ambitions; it was to this one of all

others that he found it so infinitely hard to say farewell. But say

farewell he would, notwithstanding, for the hardening process had

already begun in him. He had to make his way in life; and such a way

could not be carried out at home. Beyond the park gates and the empty

lodge lay a world from which he meant to wrest power to restore Glune to

her former beauty. Tragic and broken, she was to him as a living woman,

who needed his help and claimed it as her due. And the one way he could

really help her was to go.

He had packed a chosen few of his belongings; of money he had none. But

he was strong on the bread of hardship. Dan would, of course, be his

companion; no one else. Richard had guessed the secret of this life's

success. Unhampered by ties of kinship or love, alone, a man may hope

to find the key of that secret cupboard in which the world conceals her

few prizes.

Richard pushed the door of the picture-gallery wide, and stood on the

threshold for a moment, a look of resolve on his stern young face.

These--his best loved--would understand what it cost him to leave them.

The older faces seemed to turn to him, expectant. Through the stained

glass windows with their emblazoned coat-of-arms, a steady stream of

moonlight flowed triumphantly, taking the colour of the glass it came

through--now rose and now pallid green. Not less steadfast the light in

the painted eyes of some of the men he looked upon, martyrs in their

way--men who had fought and died for a Cause--whose purposes, like his,

nor tears, nor smiles, nor force could turn.

With his hands clenched very firmly and an uncomfortable tightening of

the throat, Richard looked straight and long at the portrait of his

ancestress to-night, and thought again, as he had often thought before,

how strange it was that God did not make mothers in a mould like this.

And in that moment he committed every line of the portrait to memory,

never to be erased--the oval face, and soft hair, a dark curtain, banded

over the low white forehead; the grave eyes that pursued you to the

door, eyes painted with a hint of tears, a favourite trick in a certain

school of art; the turn of the proud head, the white neck visible

beneath a veil of drapery. The moonlight fell upon all lovingly. One

little beam of light travelled upwards and tried to linger in the

shadows of the misty eyes.

[Illustration: "GRAVE EYES THAT PURSUED YOU TO THE DOOR"]

Richard turned, his heart throbbing convulsively. Was that a footfall?

He crept for shelter to the picture of a malignant-looking gentleman of

the tenth century, whose full-length portrait moved on pulleys, and

which was now drawn out to an acute angle, half across the gallery, as

Dan started forward. Both waited in silence for some time, but the

sound--if sound it were--was light at best, and did not return.

Richard came back to Margaret Cunningham. Sentimentality was childish,

the sort of thing a future empire-builder must infallibly renounce.

"Good-bye," Richard said gravely; "Dan and I shan't be here again for

ever so long. We're going away--both of us--but we mean some day to

come back. I'm growing up, you see; I'm going to make my name, and a

big future, and keep Glune."

In spite of the brave words he walked away from the picture drearily

enough, fancying that Margaret's eyes were extraordinarily misty,

because his own were drowned in tears.... He shivered. How cold it had

become! He must have been there far longer than he intended; his bare

feet on the parquet floor were cold as death. He whistled to Dan, who

had, contrary to his usual custom, scampered away to snuffle anxiously

at the door.

Outside, through one light pane of glass, Richard could see the snow

thick on the white stone balustrade. How silently and swiftly it must

have fallen! When he came in there were only a few flakes. Eager to be

off, he ran down the gallery. But Dan, evading his master's hand with a

whine, leapt forward again, scenting eagerly, and then scratched at the

door with a low whine of terror.

Something had fallen in the corridor beyond the gallery, something heavy

and dark. Something that pressed against the door that Richard strove

to open, at first gently, then with a sudden sickening dread that taxed

his self-control. As the door gave way at last, it pressed the unknown

obstacle back with it slowly--the unknown obstacle at the sight of which

the boy fell on his knees with a cry. For it was a woman's figure--his

mother's--which lay prone in the moonlight, with thin arms stretched

towards him, giving way too late to the longing they had crushed for

years.

Face to face with death for the second time, Richard found himself more

wondering than pitiful, more perplexed than sad. How swiftly God's

arrows struck--how unerringly! The terrified, staring eyes were fixed

in their last challenge of the Almighty Power. Even in death there was

no peace.

The hand--cold as of old--fell from his grasp.

He tried to close the dreadful eyes, but failed; tried once again, and

failed, and then rose, panting. His cry had awakened his old nurse.

She came to him feebly, candle in hand, with Dan sniffing at her ankles.

At sight of his master the dog ran forward, and then, as if aware of

mourning, crouched quietly on the floor beside the dead. And Richard,

looking down upon his mother, and hearing Nurse Ailsa's lamentation

shrill out of the silence, realized that this was indeed the end of the

old hampering life, that he had put away "childish things" once and for

all.

*PART II*

*THE SPUR*

"He had stamped with steady hand God's arrow-mark

Of dedication to the human need;

He thought it should be so, too, with his love.

He, passionately loving, would bring down

His love, his life, his best (because the best),

His bride of dreams, who walked so still and high

Through flowery poems as through meadow-grass,

The dust of golden lilies on her feet,

That she should walk beside him on the rocks,

In all that clang, and hewing out of men,

And help the work of help which was his life,

And prove he kept back nothing--not his soul."

E. B. BROWNING.

*CHAPTER I*

"You and I are the only mortals that I know of who ever found a way to

each other's inner being by the touch of the hands."--GEORGE DU MAURIER.

Making as it does for desultory conversation and tempered criticism of

your neighbour's failings, the half-hour after tea in a country house is

one of the most pleasant of the day. Confidences spring from it, and

intimacies ripen. Lovers drift happily away from their chaperones,

knowing their absence will be unnoticed. The elder folk, who find

interest and joy in each other's company, move together with no

conscious effort into friendly nooks and corners where they are

unobserved. Silences fall quite naturally on such occasions. Nobody

minds them. They are, indeed, keys of that deeper confidence which is

one of life's most beautiful gifts.

The five or six members of Lord Creagh's house-party who collected in

his study day after day at the same hour, ostensibly to admire the

tropical plants for whose cultivation he was famed, had come to look

upon this reunion as the most vital of the day.

"Wit and brilliance depend almost as much on the furniture of a room as

on the furniture of a mind," thought Evelyn Brand, one of the two women

in the group, giving herself up, as Celts do, to the characteristic

atmosphere. "Even Lady Mary Wortley-Montague herself could never have

made her brilliant epigrams on a black horse-hair sofa backed by magenta

curtains and stuffed birds in glass cases. The Nonconformist

conscience, if it did but know it, owes quite half of its solidity to

the mahogany four-poster in which it came to life. 'Victorian suites'

make you formal and stilted, just as chintz and lavender and lattice

windows compel discretion and a modest blush. How I love lavender!

Why, age itself would fall quite tenderly upon the occupant of such a

house as I would furnish if I could--a tender place of peace and

perfume. Grey hair and gentle influences go together; old age should

win one as a lover instead of capturing one as an enemy."

Under the spell of her idea, Evelyn fell into one of those quiet

abstractions which her husband had found so convenient before marriage

and so melancholy after.

And yet discriminating eyes looking at her for the first time would have

seen mystery rather than melancholy in her gaze, thought the man who was

sitting beside her watching the progress of her dream with a gentle

smile. Creagh, many years before, had lost the woman whom he loved so

well that for her sake all other women could count upon his friendship.

But he had his favourites. He was, for instance, one of Evelyn's

staunchest admirers. Belonging to the type of man who achieves nothing

very vital himself, he was always the cause of achievement in others.

Many years ago Evelyn's husband, who had a dangerous habit of epigram,

nicknamed Lord Creagh "The Holy Freak," and the name stuck.

Creagh's head and body looked like two balls, one large, one little.

They grew together with no perceptible join. He had so short a neck as

to make a turn-down collar appear positively high, whilst his legs were

as out of proportion to his body as most men's incomes are to their

desires. His plain face was withal so genial that a woman must have been

prejudiced indeed to look upon it without pleasure; his words took

weight from their sincerity.

Each member of the little group which had gathered in the study was, in

his way, a celebrity. Creagh's invitations attracted interesting

persons. As the head of one of the oldest families in Great Britain, his

rank secured him from small aims, even in friendship. Unlike most men,

he chose his acquaintances with more care than his dinner. Himself an

ardent Roman Catholic, he took the widest pleasure in the companionship

of those whose openly professed beliefs ran absolutely counter to his

own. Your next-door neighbour at his table was as likely to be a Parsee

as a Protestant, and his widowed sister, who kept house for him at

Creagh, had once been present at a luncheon where one of the guests was

a small Brixton tradesman (captured in the very act of trespassing on

the estate), and the other the new British Minister at Rome.

Beadon, Colonial Secretary in the late Ministry, sitting on the left of

Mrs. Brand, was probably the best known man present. Comic papers made

him familiar to the public; he had a clever face, which lent itself to

caricature. Clean shaven and wiry, he looked rather like a dapper

priest. His eyes were alert and keen; his friends said that upon one

occasion only had his judgment been proved to be false. His enemies

were naturally as the sands of the sea; they bit and snapped at him in

the House of Commons like so many angry curs, but generally withdrew the

worse for the fray. His heel of Achilles was his only child, Dora, a

lady who had received more proposals than the average American

heiress--partly because of her mother's fortune, and partly because of

her father's position--and complacently believed them all to be the

tribute of her personal charms.

Short and squat, sallow, and of bad figure, with colourless hair, which

the products of the hairdresser and the attention of a maid alone made

passable, Miss Beadon was one of those extremely plain women whom men

call "a good sort" for lack of a more distinctive term; a type which too

often after marriage proves the exact antithesis of early promise. A

woman is not necessarily amiable because she has no personal

attractions. Miss Beadon was chattering just now with much animation to

Lord Meavy, a new-comer, home on leave for the first time since his

appointment as Governor of South Africa. Long experience had shown her

the advantage of being first in the field with a possible "lion."

Meavy was more like a poet than a statesman. Slender and romantic, with

pointed beard, he had the tired eyes of a man who has persistently cut

short his sleep until Nature, in revenge, denies him rest in the few

remaining hours he might otherwise snatch. He liked Miss Beadon; she

was negative, so did not tax his brain, and he was susceptible, like

most men, to her obvious appreciation of his society.

Washington Hare, who had the fourth seat in the circle, leading literary

critic of the _Times_, was a complete contrast in type to Meavy.

Seventy-three years old, gaunt and rugged, his intellect was as mature,

his judgment as virile, as that of a man in the prime of life. He

called his art a trade, with a grim smile, and loved it passionately.

Bad craftsmen fled his presence as if it conjured before them a grim

array of the infinitives they had split and the phrases they had worn

too well.

His voice, breaking in raucously upon a discussion in which he had

hitherto taken no part, attracted Mrs. Brand's attention.

"Carlyle summed up the question," he said, "when he called universal

history the history of great men who had worked in the world. The

nation needs great men just now. Mediocrity and indifference are the

curses of the empire. Mediocrity produces cheap content with small

successes, and indifference is deadly poison--a kind of gangrene of the

soul. Indifference is infectious. Unluckily, the men who catch its

breath do not die swiftly. Themselves immeasurably corrupt, they live

to corrupt others."

"Come now, I can recall the names of three great men, all living,"

suggested Creagh good-humouredly.

"Oh--well--you are indulgent," said Beadon dryly. "Two of them are

bitter enemies, and the third celebrated his seventieth birthday

lately."

"I suppose there are some younger men somewhere," Dora Beadon put in

gaily. "Father won't let them come to our parties because he's so

afraid they will all want to marry me! But surely they exist."

"Take our young politicians," Hare continued, ignoring Miss Beadon's

interruption, and warming to his subject as the babble of talk died

down. "Not an ounce of stamina in the lot. One particularly young

gentleman in the Ministry happens to have pushed himself to the fore,

but he won't stay there. The party, as a whole, is hypnotized by those

of its members who have a few sparks of magnetic force. On our own side

it's as bad. We've got men of average intelligence, and average

intelligence is a most stultifying quality. Two-thirds of sublime folly

and a fraction of wisdom produce a better leader than any amount of

average intelligence can compass. And as for the sacred fount, immortal

fire, food of the gods, call it what you will, that undefined quality

that leads men on to dare forlorn hopes and brave martyrdom--the House

of Commons would not recognize it if it were there. And yet without it,

men are impotent. They themselves move and have their being, but cannot

produce life in others."

"Isn't your vital element patriotism?" asked Evelyn. "I always think a

man should love his country like his wife, with knowledge and tenderness

and passion and forbearance. In nine cases out of ten, nations fail

just as women do, for trivial causes. Both may slur common duties, but

the big crisis finds them ready. If her husband's love is waning a

woman will strain every nerve to keep it, just as a nation will appeal

to her sons when the enemy has issued his ultimatum."

"Very soon the nation's appeal will be vain," said Meavy. "We forget as

no other nation does."

"Is that because, as every Englishman is an embryo hero, we count upon

him in our hour of need?"

Meavy laughed.

"Tactfully turned, Mrs. Brand. It sounds very nice, but I'm afraid it's

not really the case. As for patriotism, it's a lost art. Love is not

love at all without an element of passion, and passion is a fire which

must have fuel to be kept alive. Most modern men and women are

incapable of loving anything with ardour, except themselves. If they

swear by a special county it's merely because they happen to be

landowners, not from tradition nor history. Men back the merits of a

manufacturing town, because it gives them daily bread. There is a man

on the St. Pancras Board of Guardians now who boasts, 'I made my money

'ere, and 'ere I'll spend it.' The fact of being British does not stir

a man; one doubts if he remembers it unless he is on the Continent."

"There are those who say England is doomed," said Beadon. "Since we

left Gordon to his fate the old fighting spirit waxes more and more

frail. For heaven's sake don't quote the South African War as a proof to

the contrary. Quite half of that wild enthusiasm was a phase of social

hysteria. We are all mad on excitement now; we prostitute our very

ardour. If we can't get recreation by one means we get it by another.

Drink, drugs, lovers--all come under the same category. At times these

fail to allay us. We see red then, like other nations, but we have no

national outlet like Southerners, with their bull-fights and the like.

So war--in countries to which we can be transported with all the latest

comforts of civilization--breaks the monotony."

"Aren't you too pessimistic?" said Creagh thoughtfully. "Personally I

believe in the hour and the man. We are at a critical point just now, I

admit, both individually and as a nation, but I believe that a man will

come with the need, as he has always come since the world began."

"Oh, England's merely superficially corrupt," said Hare. "If the right

surgeon were to operate she would be cured."

"And which of us is skilful enough to perform the operation? No one in

the present Ministry. We've only got two sound men--men whom we trust.

Both have had their day."

"England may be corrupt," said Evelyn, "but she's not ignoble. Like a

woman, again, she finds herself and loses herself, and then has to find

herself once more. Do you remember Borrow's prayer? I found it in some

old book as a child, and learnt it by heart; it's wonderful. It seems

to apply now. 'If thy doom be at hand, may that doom be a noble one....

May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst blood and flame with a mighty

noise, causing more than one nation to participate in thy downfall. Of

all fates, may it please God to preserve thee from a slow decay,

becoming, ere extinct, a scorn and mockery for those self-same foes,

who, though they envy and abhor thee, still fear and honour thee even

against their will.'"

There was a pause.

"In England's extremity oughtn't we to pray that prayer each day?"

"'May more than one nation participate in thy downfall,'" repeated

Beadon gravely. "Amen to that."

"Now, do say it all over again, slowly," said Dora Beadon, who had a

knack of reducing any serious conversation to a commonplace level. "Have

you got a pencil, Lord Meavy? Oh, thanks so much; how good of you!--and

some paper? Now again, Evelyn; don't hurry so, there's a dear; I really

like it, and I'm so short of quotations for my extract book just now."

But Evelyn was leaning forward. Throughout the little interlude her

look, slightly narrowed and anxious, had been fixed on Creagh. She

touched his arm suddenly, in triumph.

"You spoke of the hour and the man--and you are keeping both from us.

You've planned the one already, my dear Dick, and you've arranged that

the other should appear. It's no use denying it. I've been cudgelling

my brains ever since you spoke last, wondering who on earth you could

possibly have in view."

Hare frowned at her beneath his heavy eyebrows.

"There you are again, Mrs. Brand, with your visions and dreams. And

you're so horribly right too, as a rule! I don't like your uncanny

ways. Not so many years ago you would have been burned as a witch, and

you'd have richly deserved it."

"It's her Celtic blood," Creagh explained, patting her hand

affectionately. "I might have talked to you sordid English until

doomsday and you would never have guessed what she has just stated as a

fact. You're quite right, Evelyn; I've heard of a man who might do. A

man of very high intelligence and power. He's young, and has made his

way already, out of England. Some of you may even have heard of him; he

specializes in the rather uncommon line of empire building."

"Well, that's a useful characteristic," said Meavy enviously, thinking

of South Africa's many needs.

"Not a soldier, I hope," Hare grumbled, true to civilian prejudice.

"His name is Farquharson," said Creagh. "He was once Farquharson of

Glune; his brother's story must be familiar to you all. I fancy things

have always gone dramatically with him. He ran away from home at twelve

years old; just how he kept body and soul together for the next few

years no one knows. Then--through some accident--he came across and was

of service to Martin Calvert, the millionaire who had just disinherited

his heir, Jack Cummings, for becoming a Catholic."

Beadon whistled.

"The man who did so well in the last Indian famine business? A secular

priest, isn't he? Self-exiled to the most fever-stricken district in the

country?"

"Yes." Creagh hesitated. "It was a case of what is so often called

'The foolishness of the Cross.' Well, from a human point of view it

certainly resulted in one man's loss and another man's gain. Calvert,

like David, was cursing God in his heart when he met Farquharson. As

for the lad--well, you know some of you how he was brought up in that

stern Scotch school which begets defiance of God and enmity of man under

some circumstances. I think the fact that Farquharson had thrown off

every scrap of faith in things Divine and human appealed to Calvert

doubly at that moment, and strengthened his desire to keep him. The

Cummings episode was a bad blow."

"So he put Mr. Farquharson in his nephew's place?" said Evelyn.

Creagh nodded.

"He carried him off, then and there, put him through his paces with some

elementary work to see what he was capable of, then gave him the lowest

place in the office, kept him at the mill, ground from him his last

grain of work, like the hardest taskmaster, led him on by successive

rises to his own private secretaryship, and then shipped him to Taorna

and gave him a magnificent chance of making name and fortune."

Hare rose, grumbling.

"Don't pin your faith on such a broken reed. You'll make a mistake. The

man's had things too easily. What age is he? Thirty? I thought so.

Why, a man worth calling a man ought to contest every inch of the way

until he's forty; the law of the survival of the fittest obtains in

politics as elsewhere. There ought to be an injunction to prevent

people coming into money easily--money, in any case, mars ten men for

the one it makes. While Calvert's alive to keep him in order, your

young man may possibly play the game for a bit, and even achieve a

certain success. Mark my words, after Calvert's death his _protege_

will marry some designing woman, who will use him as the means to a

title, and gratify her ambition at the cost of his career."

"Or one who makes him happy," said Beadon grimly. "That's quite as bad,

although more rare."

Creagh shrugged his shoulders.

"What a cynical lot you are! So far as Farquharson's methods go, I have

had to take them on trust. I only know the results of his work; I

should advise you to read them for yourselves in a blue-book which will

be out very shortly. But Calvert we all know is as shrewd as any

Scotsman, and just as little liable to err. Ask him what he thinks of

the man; make him tell you what means Farquharson employed to annex that

little island whose pearl fisheries quadrupled Calvert's income." His

eyes twinkled. "It's an Arabian Night's tale in its way."

"Pearl fisheries! that sounds attractive," said Dora Beadon, her eyes

gleaming so far as such pale eyes could gleam.

"May we really ask Mr. Calvert about it? You expect him to-day, don't

you?" asked Evelyn quietly.

Creagh looked at his watch.

"They should be here now. By the way, my dear, Farquharson hates your

sex as well as all religion. Both men were on their way up north, so of

course I asked them to stay; but their rooted antipathy to Papists won't

allow them to spend a night under my roof." He smiled good-humouredly.

"They'll dine here instead, and put up at the inn." He looked around at

the group. "Seriously, I believe Farquharson to be a great man in his

way. I want you all to help him if you can."

"I think they have arrived. Hark! they are coming along now," said

Evelyn.

Creagh, with a startled exclamation, hurried forward to meet the

new-comers. The study door opened upon a long corridor, down which

footsteps were heard approaching. A little wave of expectation stirred

those who stayed behind, but no one spoke.

Each member of the group was intent on his own thoughts and conjectures.

Meavy watched eagerly; the man might be useful to him, he wanted new

blood for South Africa. Beadon's smile was non-committal; he had his

doubts of Farquharson's capacity. He knew Lord Creagh's weakness for

hero worship, and his new brooms occasionally left more dust behind them

than they cleared away. Dora Beadon was interested in the stranger

because of his youth and sex and chance of making money. It was perhaps

the last factor which weighed heaviest in the scale of her regard. Hare,

an acute observer, was the most interested of all; men of character

appealed to him; he looked to them to uphold the traditions of the race.

Evelyn, with perceptions quickened by the dramatic setting of the scene,

followed the young man every step of the way, wondering how its beauty

would affect him.

The entrance to this house would be for Farquharson the threshold of his

career; surely he could not pass along the lovely lanes which led to it

hedges festooned with wild blossom, unmoved. Rising, always rising, the

way was one of pleasant scents and sounds, its foliage brilliant with

the stir of butterflies, and spring's caress. Past deep gorges, and

ever winding circuitously up the hill, it opened out at length upon the

moor. Evelyn wondered if Farquharson, too, would feel its power, to her

as magnetic as that of the Karroo of South Africa, which most people

call barren and desolate. Evelyn had given herself up to the Karroo; its

immensity, its pathos, had flooded her soul and left traces which would

never be washed away. Its wide spaces and streaks of crude colour, the

lines of hills in the distance, now curved and rounded as delicately as

a woman's breast, now straight and slim, like an index finger pointing

to the sky, the peace and awe broken at intervals by a flight of

ostriches from a tiny farm, or by the figure of a solitary rider

abruptly outlined against the strong yellows and browns and purples and

greens which blossomed for such eyes as could distinguish them--all

touched her infinitely. She felt as if God's Voice must penetrate the

silence, and that to hear the Voice was to obey.

But where the Karroo had calmed, Dartmoor always frightened her. She

loved Creagh itself, but the moor which one must cross to come to it was

surely, as a whole, more cruel than peaceful. It wantonly played with

men and women whom it bred, who looked to it for protection. Its bogs

had buried little harmless children; it cheated and deceived prisoners

trying to escape in the fog, walking round and round in ever-widening

circles, only to fall at last, starved and exhausted, to find a cordon

of warders drawn about them, and the prison walls in view.

She wondered if Farquharson would leave it as gladly as she had done for

the valley, to which they must presently descend again.

Creagh itself lay low; one came upon it through one of the finest fir

plantations in England. There was a natural opening in the hills

beyond, and within sight of the study window the little ribbon of water

widened to the sea, and was itself lost in the greater power, an augury

of life.

"Up to the hills, down to the valley, and then Eternity," thought

Evelyn.

Creagh, Farquharson and Calvert stood talking together at the open door

for a moment or two more before entering. Calvert's brow was riddled

with lines; one would have called him a stern man until his face lit up

and became transfigured at some casual remark of Farquharson's. This

was a man who had worked hard for his money, you could see; if life had

brought him much, it exacted full payment for its every gift.

Calvert had begun to help Farquharson because he foresaw that the latter

was one who would get on, Evelyn decided quickly; but he helped him now

from love, not charity. The world which only knew him in his aspect as

a shrewd business man would never divine the later motive. But Evelyn's

heart went out to him impulsively, as it always went out to those who

gave, whatever the bestowal.

Farquharson himself, the prominent factor in the group of figures, alone

was in the shadow. Between him and Evelyn, Hare, Beadon and Dora stood;

it was not until he was actually within a few feet of her that she saw

him clearly. And then it was rather of his mental than of his physical

aspect that she received the real impression. Tall and well made, dark

and pale, he had presence and distinction, and remarkable composure.

Supremely conscious of himself, the knowledge did not disturb him for a

moment. Most men depend upon the external view for an effective entry;

Farquharson's was attractive. But it was actually the singleness of the

man's aim, his sincerity and sense of grip that carried conviction to

the critical little group which concentrated its interest in his

approach. It saw that he was born to succeed. For he not only had his

goal in view, but would attain it.

"Wait, though," thought Hare. "No strong man yet but can be turned by a

slight obstacle."

Steady and resourceful, knowing that he was being weighed in the

balance, Farquharson busied himself with weighing others. No single

detail of his surroundings was lost upon him. Evelyn watched him

rapidly gauge and sum up one after another, the character of each person

present.

In Beadon he recognized a man who might help, for whose favour he must

in any case bid openly. He was a necessary factor in

his--Farquharson's--career; without him nothing could be done. Between

the young man and Hare, the rugged critic, an odd kind of attraction

would exist; loyalty even in antagonism. Meavy, the idealist,

Farquharson passed over with a cursory glance; a weak man, this,

whatever the world might say. Creagh's cordiality he could appreciate,

but native caution made him fear to trust it. People did not usually

give without some adequate return, and for the moment he did not see how

he could serve Creagh. Miss Beadon, as a woman, he ignored; his glance

simply disposed of her. Her presence or non-presence meant nothing to

him. As for Evelyn, he knew her name, and she had influence. He

distrusted women with influence, but they were worth conciliating.

Their eyes met. He started slightly.

Before him stood a woman whose face changed indescribably, but who

always possessed fascination. Slender and pale, Evelyn's one real beauty

lay in the shape of her features, the modelling of her face; in the

extraordinary light and shadows that made her eyes profound, her look a

spur to flick a man's blood into action, or a caress in which he might

find peace. And as Farquharson looked another picture rose suddenly

before him, a vision of his childhood. The oval face, the dusky hair

that waved back from the forehead, the turn of the rounded throat, the

shape of the small head, all were familiar. He recognized them. They

were his own--he had loved them long ago. He had stood before them

night after night in the picture-gallery at Glune.

"A woman to dream of and to work beside." As Kilmaurs had written about

Margaret Cunningham, in a lyric the ink of which had faded many years

before, so Richard Farquharson felt now for the woman of his dreams.

Here, in the flesh she stood before him, perfect companion, perfect

lover and wife. He looked half smiling at her hands--the hands he had

loved in the picture--and for the first time wondered what it would be

to a man to feel such hands about his throat, drawing him down in mute

surrender.

"_Non so dirvi la sensasione che mi danno._" A scene in D'Annuncio's

play came back to him; the sight of the slender figure recalled Bianca

Maria's passionate appeal to Anna, when the blind woman's hands were

passing, feature by feature, across the girl's face, feeling for the

beauties which she could not see, but for which others hungered....

"_Sembra che le vostre dita vedano.... E come uno sguardo che insista,

che prema, sembra die tutta l' anima discenda all' estremita delle

vostre dita._"

"_Sembra che tutta l' anima discenda all' estremita delle vostre dita._"

He could not have spoken the words aloud, for no one heard them. But

there are thoughts which have wings, like birds, which fly home to

nestle in their natural sanctuary. Evelyn drew back, disturbed and

tremulous, like a child who stands hesitating at the door of a room

which it has always wanted to enter, but which has been barred until

now.

In the music-room beyond, a professional pianist was playing the opening

chords of one of Brahms' preludes. The notes echoed like the

accompaniment of powerful thought. Evelyn, moving back unconsciously,

swayed with sudden vertigo.

Farquharson turned to answer some question of Beadon's. Hare crossed to

Evelyn; it seemed to her afterwards that he must have interposed his

massive figure between her and Farquharson. He spoke, and the sense of

his words came to her vaguely, like a dream.

"A strong personality--that. The man sees clearly and acts promptly,

and will usually get what he wants."

*CHAPTER II*

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He lives most

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

And he whose heart beats quickest ...

Lives in one hour more than in years do some

Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins."

PHILIP JAMES BAILY.

"Is that all I can do for you, ma'am?"

"You might put another little pearl pin at the back of my bodice,

please, Emily; I can't quite reach it. Thank you; that's very nice."

The third housemaid--Mrs. Brand had never had a maid of her own in her

life--withdrew with a last gratified glance at her handiwork. She

thought her "lady" in an inexpensive gown had a better appearance than

any other member of the house party. All servants liked Evelyn; she

treated them as human beings, not automatons.

Mrs. Brand looked at her watch. Yes, there was still a quarter of an

hour's grace before dinner. She switched off the electric light, and,

drawing a chair beside the open window, leant out to the night and drank

in its wonderful perfume. There was never a place so full of sweet

scents and sounds as Creagh.

Some one else had dressed quickly too. The echo of men's voices rose

presently from the verandah below. She recognized them with a start as

Creagh's unmistakable chuckle of delight broke out at something

Farquharson said. Then the younger man pulled his chair forward--she

heard the sound grate on the stone--and took up the thread of talk again

with an alert and interested air. Evelyn, curiously tired, listened for

a moment to the murmur of voices without taking in the full significance

of words which occasionally reached her. Creagh seemed to be unfolding

some plan of campaign, to which Farquharson said but little in reply.

His tone was deliberate and extraordinarily final; one or two words

reached Evelyn clearly. She drew back further into the shadow, fearful

of playing the part of eavesdropper.

The frayed edge of her gown, mended and adapted almost beyond

recognition, caught her eye. She went to her work-basket and mended it

mechanically. It was draped with the lace of her mother's and her own

wedding veil, and sweet with the scent of lavender bags where it had

been laid. The skirt was made from the fifteen-year-old Court train of

her bridal gown; a pearl spray clasping the flowers at her breast was

one of Creagh's numerous wedding gifts, her fan and handkerchief

another. Every appointment of her dress to-night recalled her marriage.

The maid had put out another gown upon the bed, which Mrs. Brand had

discarded, choosing by preference that which she had worn the night

before. Evelyn had to practise every pitiful little shift of poverty

"to keep up an appearance."

Only Henry Brand knew the precise amount of their income. Its

fluctuations and diminutions were a constant terror to his wife. There

were times when money, obtained how she did not know, seemed fairly

plentiful; again, at other times, her desk was laden with unpaid bills,

and she worked far into the night to make the money wherewith to meet

them. She photographed and painted, and could turn her hand to

journalism as easily as to upholstery. Accustomed to do without from

childhood, she had limited her personal wants to absolute necessities;

she was, moreover, a practical woman who could cook and sew or do

housework better than most of the people she employed.

A world which generally expels its social paupers was singularly lenient

to the Brands. Some of the great ladies of the land drove down at night

to the tiny flat in West Kensington, where Evelyn dispensed hock-cup and

home-made cakes, without a murmur; it was said that two young duchesses,

rival beauties, had come incognita on one occasion behind thick veils

inside a motor 'bus. The latest explorer, the coming man, gravitated

naturally to a place where every guest was made to feel individually

welcome. Evelyn's reunions recalled something of the famous _salons_ of

the past. Her tact and sympathy drew opposing bodies together; the

little circle had grown from a mere gathering of intimate friends to be

the coveted goal of those who wished to meet important persons on an

easy and natural footing. Converging opinions met and mixed here like

rivers in the sea.

Mighty political battles had been fought out in Evelyn's presence. A

famous K.C., with more truth than gallantry, boasted openly that she was

the one woman in England who was just and temperate in argument, and the

present Prime Minister had said he would drive willingly four miles

farther out of London to be welcomed by such a hostess at the end.

Unlike most women, technicalities did not alarm her. Men who came to

discuss their business investments found in her as ready a listener as

men of action. Nor did she shun, although she never actually invited,

the confidences of her own sex. The pain of others hurt her physically;

to give real sympathy is, after all, to let "virtue go out of one."

Most men and women shun sorrow as if it were leprosy. But in the bank

of feeling Evelyn's account was always overdrawn.

It was certainly a point in Henry Brand's favour that he had so early

foreseen his wife's possibilities.

His one brief hour of popularity had long since passed. There were

unpleasant stories about him. He was, for instance, sole trustee under

his father's will, and the money was equally divided between himself and

the two unmarried daughters, at whose deaths it would revert to him,

failing their marriages, in which case the husbands would have

life-interests in the estate, and, if there were issue, the children

would eventually succeed. The younger of the two Miss Brands was

fragile and delicate; a course of the systematic bullying and petty

tyrannies by which a man can make his sisters' lives unbearable, made

her run away one night and take refuge in a convent, whose stern

_regime_ presently brought about her death. The elder sister, stronger

in will and brain, was more difficult to deal with; but there are many

forms of cruelty practised by those amongst whom we live unrecognized by

the law, and which the law has so far never punished. Brand made this

woman's life a martyrdom; her every action was thwarted, and every

pleasure arrested midway towards its fulfilment. In time her spirit

broke. She lived with him because she could never break away; unluckily

for her, she had none of that special knowledge which enables a better

educated woman to make her own way in the world, and defy those enemies

of the household who can be the most bitter and unyielding. Marian

Brand was found in bed one morning dead, with a broken bottle of chloral

at her side. Brand was the first to break into the room. Accustomed to

come down late he had missed his sister's usual preparations for his

comfort. The frightened servants at his heels never saw him pick up a

letter addressed to himself which lay upon the bed, and which he

presently destroyed.

But trustees who benefit by certain deaths under a will must needs go

warily, and facts like these leak out in time, however carefully

concealed. Brand, pleasantly aware of the world's forgetfulness found it

advisable to travel abroad for a while.

It was not, indeed, until after his marriage that he was again

universally received. Even now he was only allowed access to the houses

where Evelyn was a popular guest because from the first she had refused

all invitations which did not include him. The position galled him,

although he made the best of it; he had aged of late years, his limp

becoming daily more prominent, and the stoop from the shoulders

stiffening with time.

Evelyn herself seldom looked back or forward, but to-night, for some

unknown reason, as she sat in the dusk by the open window, a tide of

memory swept her along to the shore of her youth. Past days of dreams

and personal ambitions--how far she had drifted from them lately! The

red and black days which marked special epochs, beginning with her

childhood in the convent and ending with her marriage, came before her

in a series of pictures. She looked at her dead youth, and felt anew the

shocks that killed it.

The prim convent parlour, the chairs set staidly with their backs to the

wall, the discreet solemnity of the drab curtains, the precision with

which each book, each print was arranged, how well she knew them all!

Entry into those solemn precincts was a matter of reflection. Evelyn

remembered rushing in once, as a child--the subsequent correction....

Fortunately perhaps for her, her personal visitors were few and far

between at that time. When she was two years old her mother died. She

scarcely knew her father. Her uniform, the air of repression with which

she had been taught to receive guests, raised a high wall of separation

between the handsome, easy-going Indian officer, whose interest in life

was bounded by polo and "shikar," and the decorous child, whose

passionate revolt against her surroundings he was not wise enough to

guess. It was not his fault. He knew nothing of children, and Evelyn's

weekly mail letters, written under the personal supervision of the

Reverend Mother, were scarcely valuable as evidences of character.

Colonel Harcourt usually wrote to announce his return to England, but,

on Evelyn's fourteenth birthday, he arrived unexpectedly. She found him

the parlour, nervously dog's-earing the pages of one of Lady Georgina

Fullerton's novels. He looked unusually big and ill-at-ease, even for

him. Evelyn saw with horror that the _Catholic Times_ and _Universe_,

the Reverend Mother's personal property, which were invariably folded in

their original folds when read, to be posted to a poorer French

community, had been crushed almost out of shape by his nervous fingers,

and lay in an untidy heap upon the floor.

In one hand Colonel Harcourt convulsively clutched a large brown-paper

parcel. Evelyn tried to turn her eyes from it in vain. She knew it was

for her--her birthday present, and her heart leapt. What a day of days

it would be! Perhaps--her eyes glowed at the thought--her father might

even take her to some place of amusement.

Colonel Harcourt started as she ran towards him. Something about her

reminded him of her mother. Her look was so gay, her cheeks so flushed,

and, in her hurried obedience to the lay sister's call, a long tress of

dark hair had escaped from its restraining ribbon.

He stared her up and down, disconcerted, suddenly conscious of

difficulty in his self-appointed task.

"Time passes very quickly," he complained; "how you've grown! I've

brought you a present for your birthday, and, now I see you again, I'm

not quite sure you'll like it. And I chose it so carefully too!"

"Whatever it is, I shall love it," Evelyn cried ecstatically. To unwrap

her own parcel was in itself a joy to one to whom parcels were

practically unknown. In her heart of hearts she thought the presents

given her by her companions in the convent were dreadfully pious and

dull. She had had a mother-of-pearl rosary from her godmother--the

fourth given her in six months--a rosary-bag from a school-fellow, a

coloured lithograph of "Nostra Signora del Perpetuo Succorso," from the

Reverend Mother, framed in perforated card by a nun who was quite

wrongfully supposed to be an artist of merit, and four printed

"_Mottoes_" from the sisters, the "Virtues" of which were heavily

underlined, to point no doubt a needed moral.... Evelyn felt guilty as

to the personal significance of many, such as, "_Venial sin,

persistently indulged in, becomes mortal,_" and "_Never forget your vile

body will at last be food for worms._" Evelyn was constantly being

corrected by the nuns for disorderly habits and impatient words.

Under the outer covering of brown paper, sheets of tissue were closely

folded. The girl unwrapped each more tenderly than the last. The shape

was odd, unwieldy, and cumbersome--what could it be? A vase? Too light,

surely; but then Indian pottery was not really heavy. Something in

filagree, perhaps? None of the other girls had a father who lived in

India; this present would be unlike any of the others. She tore back

the last covering--to disclose a wax doll, dressed in purple velvet and

tinsel and imitation Valenciennes lace.

"The eyes open and shut," her father said complacently. "And if you

press it here"--he groped with some diffidence in the lower region of

the blue satin sash--"it says 'good-morning,' and 'how are you?' quite

like a gramophone."

"It must have been dreadfully expensive," Evelyn answered. Her voice

was low. The disappointment was acute. Then she pulled herself

together, and faced him bravely. "Thank you so much, dear father. How

kind of you to choose it all yourself."

"I'm afraid you've got a cold, my dear," said Colonel Harcourt,

withdrawing apprehensively. His glance wandered to the wall in search of

distraction from the sight of his sick child, successfully evading the

picture of St. Lawrence on the grid-iron, only to light upon the

martyrdom of St. Agnes, from the details of which he visibly shrank.

"Good God, what awful pictures! How you can----" He stopped abruptly

and seized his hat. "Well I've some news for you. I'm sorry I can't

take you out to-day." It struck him that the delicate oval face might

have found a more suitable frame than the stiff black sailor hat which

the nuns had chosen for it. "You won't mind, I know; I've got an

engagement I can't break. I'm going to give you a new mother, my dear;

I'll bring her to see you some day, and then we'll take you to the Zoo?"

He halted again, inwardly convinced the future Mrs. Harcourt, to whom he

had described Evelyn as "only a baby," would resent the inconvenient

size of his offspring. "Now good-bye, my dear; you'll be wanting to

play with your doll. God bless you."

The last unintelligible ejaculation was intended to convey his strict

observance of that piety which is demanded of all who pass through

convent gates.

He was gone. Evelyn heard his footsteps die away, and caught his

relieved farewell to the sour-faced portress before the front-door

clanged. She could almost hear the breath of relief he would draw as

the tension of the last few uneasy moments snapped.... What did he know

of her? What did he care to know? A new mother!--A new _mother_!

She ran down the corridor, sweeping aside the restraining hand of a nun

who tried to stop her. She wanted Sister Veronica; Sister Veronica would

understand; Sister Veronica was still young. Sister Veronica was daily

corrected for evil-doing; Sister Veronica's heart had not yet turned to

stone.

"That's well over," Colonel Harcourt congratulated himself complacently,

hailing a hansom. "What a prison it is--harder to escape from each time.

They'll make a nun of the child eventually, I suppose. Perhaps it would

be the best thing, after all."

But Evelyn was not of the material which makes nuns. The convent

appealed to her neither as an escape from sin, nor a barrier to

temptation. She loved part of the life, and turned from much in

loathing. When she was seventeen it frightened her no longer. Her

childish rebellion at petty penances, at the narrow outlook of women

whose breasts had never thrilled at the touch of a child's lips, yet who

pathetically demanded the title of "Mother" as a cherished claim, had

changed to pity. Each grim line that repression had seared on brow or

cheek seemed now to Evelyn as a wound received in mortal combat against

the glowing, ardent youth that leaped so fearlessly in her own veins at

sight and sound of growing things, green shoots of trees, showing

timidly, early violets lifting shy heads, the twittering of the mother

bird teaching her young to spread her wings. She knew and understood no

more of her own nature than this--that it was good to live in spring and

summer and early autumn, while even some winter days had their own

stinging joy--that the blood which was daily wet on Mother Veronica's

discipline, the hair-sheet by which that young and tender flesh was

lacerated, were alike protests against intoxicating dreams.... Yet

dreams were sweet, and why should they be broken?

Another picture. The convent chapel this time; the hour of Benediction

which she loved. Warm glow from the altar, warm glow about her heart. A

suffused radiance from the lamps that burned day and night before the

Body of the Lord; a wave of light, from the candles upon the altar, that

seemed to roll upward as the incense soared, a vivid golden cloud that

changed its shape momentarily, and was always beautiful, carrying your

eye higher and higher until its glance rested at last in perfect peace

upon the jewelled monstrance and pyx that held the Sacred Host. The

nun's song stilled--that swan-song of dead womanhood--the hush of

concentrated prayer--silence--the tinkling of a bell--the blessing that

bathed one in a sea of light....

Music again; the organ only. The sense of human breath, temporarily

suspended, returning simultaneously to a vast crowd that had for a short

while been swayed by an eternal mystery. The shuffling of feet, the

changed poise of many bodies, the jingle of rosaries, hastily kissed and

put away, the rhythmic filing out of obedient convent boarders, outer

air flowing in. But for some time afterwards Evelyn would move in a

dream-world, a little detached from, a little unaware of, the gay

chatter and talk of her companions in their recreation hour. One day,

when in this mood, she was called to the parlour. Her father and

stepmother awaited her with a strange man. It had been suggested that

Evelyn was to sail with her parents for India, three months later, but

Mrs. Harcourt, who, though no longer in her first youth, possessed some

charm still for the other sex, had dreaded the rivalry of the younger

woman, and was in consequence untiring in her efforts to alter the

arrangement. Henry Brand, an acquaintance of her husband's, had been

struck by Evelyn's beauty when visiting the convent in a friend's

company one day to hear the music. He offered himself now as a solution

to the problem.

"Would you like to be married, Evelyn?" her stepmother demanded

abruptly. Something in the rapt look of the girl's face showed her that

direct methods would be best. "Your father and I are anxious about you;

we feel sure that you are much too delicate for India. Mr. Brand says

that he wants to marry you, and we should like to leave you in his

care."

"Why--should I mind? Yes, of course I'll marry him if you wish me to,"

said Evelyn dazedly. She had never cared to dwell on the thought of

India in her stepmother's company; marriage with any one--the veriest

stranger--would be better. She looked at Henry Brand gravely and

sedately as he came to her and took her hand. The expression of her

father's face, half-ashamed, and half-relieved, perplexed her; as her

stepmother sprang forward, she shrank back from the hilarious embrace.

The woman glanced at her husband and nodded. All three conspirators had

counted upon Evelyn's obedience. Convent training does its work, and

the moment had been especially propitious.

"Quite a leading of Providence, in fact," said Mrs. Harcourt, summing up

the situation to everybody's satisfaction.

The last picture--the last, at least, upon which Evelyn chose to linger.

Her wedding, hastened to fit in with her parents' autumn visits, and to

prevent the possibility of a change.

The Oratory this time, large and massive; it felt very grey and cold

after the convent chapel. A short Mass and no music--Henry Brand was

avowedly a Protestant, but had no fixed belief. There were strangers in

the congregation. Some one sobbing--why should Sister Veronica cry?

Distractions pouring in; Evelyn pondered as to the meaning of certain

directions given her by her confessor; she wondered if she would be

allowed to visit the different altars of the church after the ceremony;

she noticed a brilliant feather in a lady's hat; for the first time she

felt a little shy and lonely. She wished that every one would not look

at her; there were some pretty people to look at! She hoped she would

be happy; she thought how nice it would be to be married, to have a

man--even if his back were not quite straight--to go about with, instead

of a mere nun. In future she would be able to wear nice clothes, to

move freely in the world, to read what she liked, and be taken to public

places where she might even meet some of the people she had crowned with

laurels--Chamberlain, Curzon, Kitchener.

How wicked she was! She shut her eyes and knelt up very straight,

practising every art she knew against the onslaught of distraction.

Above the altar was a picture of the Blessed Virgin and the Eternal

Father, painted by a French father of the community, after a design by

Sebastian Concha of Turin. She looked from it to the cartouche above,

the gilt heart surrounded by rays; then on again to the central picture.

Little, forgotten stories of St. Philip Neri came back to her; little,

forgotten maxims. She remembered how, on one occasion, a rich noble had

come to St. Philip, full of his worldly plans and ambitions. The saint

had listened patiently to the confidences, as was his habit. But at the

end--"And then?" ... he asked.

Her dreams of happiness, her hopes of success, both seemed to sweep her

towards the mysterious shore of marriage--that Sacrament which Catholics

approach with prayer and fasting. So far so good. But--then? ...

The church faded; she was lost in the whirl and confusion of amused

spectators, who pelted her with rose leaves and confetti, praising her

beauty till she blushed. She drove off with her husband, still

half-intoxicated with excitement. Then came a picture to which she shut

her eyes, the first of a long series, blackening with time.

*CHAPTER III*

"They should take who have the power."

Martin Calvert was a business man, pure and simple. But he had withal a

certain clairvoyance which enabled him to detect in others such

qualities as would produce the most marketable and satisfactory results.

Starting life with a fairly large income, he had slowly but surely added

to it, by effective, if unsensational, means. He had travelled in many

countries, discarding the methods of the Yellow Press and its like,

comparatively early in his career. It seemed to him that a man only

reached permanent fame by being sincere himself and dealing sincerely

with human problems. His sense of honour was so acute that it entered

even into his business transactions. He had, of course, to make use of

the weakness of others to a certain extent, to bend opportunity to his

will on occasions; but he set about his work with a straightness not

always, nor even often, found in Wall Street. Yet he had learned

something from America, although it was said of him in that country that

he missed more chances of making fortunes in a day than most men did in

a lifetime.

But his round million of money satisfied him after all. He had no near

kith or kin to work for, and, patriotic as a man may be at heart,

impersonal ties seldom stir his blood so deeply as do those of family.

Evelyn was right, he had learned by now to look upon Farquharson almost

as his son. He had recognized him from the first as being a man of

power, and the incident of their meeting was dramatic. A big

ecclesiastical procession was marching one Easter down the Rambla at

Barcelona; Calvert, standing at a street corner, was watching it with

immense disapprobation. The crowd surged onward, sweeping all before it

like a mighty flood; a child, running suddenly across the path of the

procession, slipped, and was trampled out of sight almost without a cry,

lost in the religious exaltation that is so often blind to human claims.

From the opposite side of the road a man dashed forward; so sudden was

his movement that it arrested even the half-dazed crowd. The child was

saved. He had borne it away before more than the first ranks of the

spectators knew what had happened.

The promptness, the surety of the action, appealed to a man to whom

swift decisions came naturally. The rescuer was neat, but shabby.

Calvert invited him to his hotel.

Farquharson made no claim on Calvert's pity or patronage. But, after a

few judicious questions, the older man discovered that the stranger was

of some social significance, and had been out of employment for about

three weeks. The secretary for whom he had last worked in an office had

absconded with the contents of the till. Calvert had important business

letters to send to England that evening. He hired Farquharson's services

then and there for the night, and presently gave him a place in his

office.

And now, fifteen years later, he looked back upon this act of impulse as

being the wisest of his life. From a commercial point of view,

Farquharson had paid his way. More than that, he had healed an old sore

in Calvert's heart; he had renewed the man's lost faith and hope. And

Calvert was old enough to realize that in life the things we can touch

and lay hold of are not always or even often the most valuable.

The dinner hour, usually a propitious moment in which to discuss claims

and urge the need of benefactions, was almost always a cause of

annoyance to Calvert. He hated ostentation; the very men who were

anxious to gain his favour frequently lost it by offering him

out-of-season delicacies on gold plate. Once, at a small dinner party

in New York, where over a thousand dollars had been spent on table

decorations alone, Calvert rose at the fourth course and struck the

table with a blow which shook the gay, luxurious crowd from its apathy.

"You have got starving men outside," he said. "Every dish you have set

before me, to my mind, is wholesale murder. You and your ways remind me

of Babylon; beware lest her fate overtakes you."

But the startled guests broke in here with hilarious shrieks of

laughter. The episode was supposed to have been got up by the host as a

new form of entertainment to pique their jaded palates.

Conforming to custom in his own house, Calvert always offered his guests

champagne at dinner, but he himself invariably drank ale. Democrat as

he was, he could complain of nothing in the meal that had just been

served at Creagh. It was characteristic of his host; good and simple

without display. And the talk through the dinner was genial and

unaffected; something in the atmosphere of a room which has grown warm

with human kindness calls for a like response from those of its

occupants who are sensitive to influences.

Calvert felt his own mind expand. He had talked openly, as he seldom

talked, and Farquharson was at his best. The elder man took a pride in

watching this child of his deliberate choice, who never failed him.

Farquharson was a man who had from the first seen two moves ahead in the

game of life, and Calvert, himself a skilled player, gladly acknowledged

himself beaten by a pupil to whom he had taught the rudiments of hazard.

The drawing-room at Creagh was essentially a pleasant room. Innumerable

flowers, books and reviews, Lady Ennly's spinning-wheel and lace pillow,

kept in constant use, gave it a homely, old-fashioned appearance.

Calvert, aware of comfort, although unable to analyze its cause, crossed

the room to Mrs. Brand, who withdrew to a distant corner as the men

entered the room.

She swept her skirt aside, and pointed to the seat beside her.

"How nice of you to come and speak to me! I thought you meant to," she

said.

Calvert smiled.

"Lord Creagh told me you were just like that. 'Confide in Mrs. Brand,

tell her everything you want; the more direct you are the more she'll

like you,' he said. Now, I'm a plain man, Mrs. Brand, and have never

been used to women and their ways. I deal with facts, not illusions."

He seated himself more comfortably in his chair, obviously preparing for

an intimate talk. "I'm commercial through and through, you know; if I

want a thing I like to pay its proper price. Now, I want something from

you, and you're not the sort of woman to take any price at all. That

annoys me, because I haven't the faintest shadow of a claim upon your

interest."

Evelyn was silent for a moment.

"Women aren't very active powers in the world as a rule," she said; "I'm

a dabbler. I paint little pictures, I write little stories and do fancy

work, for money--that's all. I think I could have been a good mother,

but I've never had a child. There's nothing in this world of my very

own I can shape and mould as I should love to shape it. I suppose I

like to play with lives as other women do with stocks and shares. It's

just another form of speculation. So when men who can do things--there

aren't many of them!--are good enough to trust me, to confide in me even

the tiniest inkling of their plans and hopes, I'm very proud." She

waited. "I've always had one big ambition. I've wanted to do something

to help on, even in the smallest way, some one who'll do big things; to

show that I believed in him before the world had the least knowledge of

what he was capable. I think you re going to give me my opportunity--I

know what you want, of course; any one would, who saw you with Mr.

Farquharson. You want every scrap of help for him that you can get.

Now, mind, I don't really see where I come in, for he's a man who won't

need even you for long. He stands alone; he'd always like to, wouldn't

he?"

"You're right; he'd always like to," Calvert admitted slowly. There was

some sadness in his tone.

Evelyn put out her hand.

"It's a good trait, isn't it? It hurts other people, of course. I

think no one gets on in the world without hurting some one else in the

process. But there are times when one thanks God that one was just the

person who was called upon to make that special sacrifice which was

counted on and taken, so very simply. Not that I see there should be

any sacrifice in Mr. Farquharson's case. He is your _protege_.

Everything he does will tell for you. He came to you with a handful of

irons, and you gave him fuel and lit the fire, and you'll be even

prouder of the fact some day than you are now. Well, if you can let me

put in even one tiny piece of wood to keep that fire alight, you may

guess how delighted I shall be."

Calvert gave a sigh of relief.

"Thank you. You're right, of course. I'm acting the part of beggar for

the boy's sake. You are--forgive me, I don't mean it rudely--a sort of

fashionable cult. You know a great many persons, and everybody likes

you. Some one once said of you that if a man really wanted the key of

the Foreign Office secrets he would hunt for it in your flat. And they

said, too, that you were as straight as a die: it's a quality one

doesn't invariably find in political women. I want it to be under your

wing that Richard"--he was unconscious of the lapse--"meets people. I'd

like him to go into the world as a friend of yours. Oh yes, Creagh can

do a lot for him, I know; but Creagh's religion puts off many people.

You're a Romanist, too; but, then, one lets a woman have her little

failings. Now, in many ways I'm broad-minded; Farquharson's political

opinions and mine are at opposite poles, for instance; but I want him to

have a free hand. There'll be a change in the Ministry soon. I give our

present Government six months. We've decimated the Army, and the Navy's

at boiling-point; the Labour candidates and Irish members are aggrieved

as usual. You know what all parties think about the Education Bill--one

needn't go into that; and I hear hints of so-called Licensing reforms,

which will set the country by the ears."

He waited.

"Yes?" said Evelyn.

"During the winter I want Farquharson to meet men who are likely to form

the next Ministry," said Calvert deliberately, lowering his voice. "To

meet them intimately and often--under convenient auspices. I should

like them all to forgather at your house. You bring the right people

together, and you make them talk."

"I only listen."

Calvert laughed again.

"The music of a man's voice is very sweet in his ears. You're a born

diplomat, Mrs. Brand. You and Richard have a quality in common--you're

both 'masters of the unspoken word and slaves of the word you have

spoken.' I don't want a cheap success for Richard. He's a man of men;

in my heart I believe him to be the one man who can save our country in

its crisis." There was a little pause. "It sounds sentimental to say

it, but I love England. So does he. His pulses beat to music which most

men only hear once in a lifetime. Things must come to him in time. He

mustn't eat his heart out wanting them. For the country's sake as well

as his I'm in a hurry. He ought to have a place in the next Cabinet."

Music was seldom permitted at Creagh, the conversation was usually too

good for it. But a French opera singer was amongst the guests that

night, and the words of her song came to them, clear and pathetic, in

the pause that followed--

"Cet espoir, helas! d'un avenir dore

Ces apparitions, ces reves ont dure,

Le temps d'une aube boreale,

Et mon esprit partit aux fabuleux

Ou l'on pense cueillir les camelias bleus

Et trouver l'amour ideale."

How long would Calvert's dream last?

"I should like to know Mr. Farquharson better," said Evelyn presently.

With the exception of Farquharson and his host, the remaining guests had

gathered round Madame de Mirelle. Not to have paid for a professional

entertainment is the surest factor in its enjoyment. As her voice died

away, tenderly, like a caress, the buzz of talk rose and fell easily,

and drifted to them at intervals. Presently the accompanist began a few

modulations, preparatory to the prelude of the next song.

"I will do what you say, of course; I will gladly make opportunities, if

Mr. Farquharson will take them."

"He only needs a chance," said Calvert. "Look at me." He rose heavily

from his chair and stood before her: a man of loose build, large and

solid; the type of man whom a photographer would pose beside a

writing-table, with right hand extended on an open book, against a "good

library background," like some suburban mayor. "I'm not a romantic

figure, am I? but I've had my dreams, as romantic as any lover's, and

Farquharson materialized one of them. I want to materialize his now as

a thank-offering."

Evelyn said nothing. She looked up with eyes quick with sympathy, that

drew him gently to her side again.

"I wanted an island to play with--to administrate," said Calvert after a

pause. "It was the first definite plan that came to me after a blow

which shook my world. You know about that, probably. I had nothing of

my own left to care for. Kith and kin had either died or left me--they

cared for nothing but my money. I wanted some one thing--in default of

a person--a place I could do as I liked with--could run on my own

lines--make in my own image, as you would have made your child. They

were Utopian lines, maybe, which I meant to follow, but I wanted a

commercial success too. There were plenty of useless places to be had as

a mere matter of barter; some of them even carried titles with them!

They didn't do. Hobbies--as hobbies--don't appeal to me. I went to

Stamford's and bought maps; spent hours at the Geographical Society in

Savile Row, groping in Parliamentary Reports, and so forth, until I

found a spot which seemed to be all I wanted. And one day, very shortly

after, Farquharson and I set sail for Taorna."

His eyes softened as a man's eyes soften when he recalls a splendid

vision.

"If you could see it," he said impulsively, "you'd understand then all

that the first glimpse of it meant to me. It's as dear to me now as it

was then. It was Farquharson's first voyage. We got there early one

morning, soon after dawn. Our bagahalow drew in to the shore as slowly

and rhythmically as a gondola. There was light and colour everywhere.

Bamboo skiffs, their decks flush with the sides, floated by, steered by

negro slaves, singing. The oil of their skins gleamed like polish. The

whole scene----" He stopped, seeking for the right expression. "It

throbbed with the sunlight. Naked boys near the shore were diving into

the water, not for pennies as they do in Madeira, but to catch shining

fish in their hands, or in bright nets. A herd of little black babies

with big stomachs were rolling over and over in the lemon-coloured

sands, under the charge of atoms of three and four years old, twirling

tops made out of whelk shells."

"For nobody knew what the bagahalow was bringing," said Evelyn softly.

"Unconscious, all," said Calvert grimly. "That was what touched me--and

their patience. On the shore a group of slaves stood chained together;

they had unhealed wheals across their shoulders, and the fetters had cut

into their arms and made festering sores. I've lived too long out in

the East to call black men my brothers, but injustice sticks in my

gorge. All the voyage I'd been digesting a volume of evidence as to the

Sheikh's ways of dealing with offenders."

He knocked the ashes off his cigarette with care. Lady Ennly, more

accustomed to the society of men than women, allowed her guests to smoke

in the drawing-room.

"Well, that's not pretty, and the scenery was," he said. "I can see it

all now. A hill like a tower standing over five hundred feet high faced

us, and dotted all over the islands were groups of Wanabi mosques with

minarets. At the base of the hill there were the remains of the old

capital, a white stone city, so brilliant in the sunshine that we had to

shade our eyes. But everything was brilliant. Taornian sportsmen

hunting gazelle in the distance, I remember, were riding horses with

gold and crimson trappings, and in the east some women, unconscious of

our field-glasses, had pushed back their masks; they carried baskets of

citrons on their heads, and wore upper garments rather like red

chemises, with flapping orange-coloured trousers. But all the colour

concentrated in the gardens; hibiscus, pomegranates, plumbago, every

tropical fruit and flower almost that you can think of grew in

profusion."

Madame de Mirelle was singing again, a Bedouin love song this time.

"They were chanting something not unlike that song she's singing," said

Calvert, jerking his broad thumb in the direction of the music-room.

"It had a sort of droning note--pathetic almost. I suppose a

sentimental man would have taken it as a call ... it meant a lot to me

somehow."

"It must have meant still more to Richard Farquharson," said Evelyn

slowly.

"He knew all along I was making him ready for some trial of strength;

what it was he didn't know. I'm not the man to speak of dreams until

they are within an ace of realization. He scored off me on one point, I

remember. I'd made arrangements for our landing; amongst other items

I'd ordered suitable conveyances. They sent us white donkeys of the

swift Taornian breed, for which they're famous. Their tails and manes

were very smart with henna, but they had neither reins nor stirrups.

Our choice lay between them and camels. I chose a donkey, because it

was less far to fall from." He paused.

"Go on, please," said Evelyn.

Calvert nodded.

"Curious how such details stay with one. I remember the very words I

used to Farquharson at that moment, the look on his face as he listened.

I purposely gave my order as though I were telephoning for a restaurant

table. I said, 'I mean to have this island. You must get it for me.

I'll give you a free hand, but everything must be fixed up before I

leave for the next meeting of the Kimbala Mines in a week's time.' And

Farquharson"--his eyes narrowed, and he smiled the slow smile of a man

who looks back on a pleasant memory--"Farquharson turned very sharply;

it was a savage place, you know, and he would have to deal with savages.

So far he hadn't come across them. He said----"

Evelyn leant forward.

"Yes?"

Calvert laughed.

"He said, 'Right, sir. Look out, or you'll be off that donkey in

another moment.' And that was all we ever said about the matter till

the thing was done."

Dora Beadon swept across the room, a pair of youthful members of the

Upper House in her train.

"Evelyn, your behaviour at parties is simply execrable. You've kept

this corner all the evening, and everybody wants it, it's so comfy."

Then in an undertone--"Now, do be grateful to me, there's a dear. I

felt I must in common charity relieve you of that dreadful old fogey.

And, besides, you haven't told me yet how you like my gown. Felice sat

up all night giving the finishing touches, and was as cross as fourteen

hundred sticks all day in consequence. Maids are so utterly

unbearable."

"It's a lovely frock," said Evelyn, honestly admiring the beautiful

material which no art could drape in graceful folds upon Miss Beadon's

short, fat body. "Let off Felice to-night, Dora dear. I'll come and put

you to bed if you'll let me. You don't know what a good maid I am."

"You'd ruin any decent maid in a month," said Dora shortly, her mouth

twisting into curves which always showed displeasure. "It's a good

thing you're never likely to have one. Felice is paid to wait on me;

you aren't. Don't talk nonsense, Evelyn. Servants are made for us, not

we for servants. If they fall ill they can go, and more fools they,

when you think of the wages we give them. Oh"--with a brilliant

smile--"isn't that Mr. Farquharson? Do come here, won't you? We've kept

a place for you in this corner. Evelyn, isn't that Lady Wereminster

calling? I wouldn't keep her waiting if I were you."

*CHAPTER IV*

"Thou shalt do a deed and abide it."--LEWIS MORRIS.