XIV

That night had also been one of triumph for Elton Gwynne. He had dined

at the castle, and--his Julia having flitted to another

country-house--spent the greater part of the evening in the smoking-room

with half a score of the most eminent men in political England; and

others whose recognition was not to be despised.

As there were many guests at the castle the dinner took place in the

banquet-hall, but at six or eight round tables, and Gwynne had found

himself distinguished above all the other young men present by being

seated at that of the duchess. The prime-minister, the chancellor of the

exchequer, two other members of the cabinet, and an ambassador were his

companions. All the women were of exalted station, but for this fact

Gwynne cared nothing, being entirely free of that snobbery which so

often agitates even the best-born of the world; indeed, would have been

resentful of the ripe age of the ladies--accumulated with their

political values--had it not been for the tremendous compliment paid to

his personal achievement.

He could not sit beside her grace in that nest of titles, but at the

suggestion of the duke he had been placed as nearly opposite her as the

round table permitted, and he soon forgot the broken circle of

immemorial bosoms in the manifest disapproval of the Conservative

premier towards himself, and in the attitude of the other men, which,

whether hostile or friendly, evinced a recognition of the rising star

and a tolerance of his ideas.

There is always a glamour about a very young man who has given

cumulative evidence of genius and compelled the attention of the world,

always distrustful of youth. His enemies had long since--and he was but

thirty--admitted his gift for letters, fiercely as they might scoff at

his conclusions; and his rewards for bravery in the field had aroused no

adverse comment. But while his most persistent critics had never

discovered him truthless and corruptible, his political sincerity had

been called into question even by his colleagues, and almost unanimously

by the opposition. His principles were by no means so rigidly outlined

as those of the great Whig families, nor of the men who belonged to the

Liberal party as a natural result of their more modest station and

protesting spirit. He was strong on the fundamental principles of the

party, and far more energetic in his advocacy of the rights and needs of

the working-man than any Liberal of his own class, but he rarely, if

ever, alluded to the question of Home Rule; a question somnolent but by

no means dead; and the omission savored of Unionism, in spite of his

avowed scorn of all compromises.

These facts, taken in connection with the pride and arrogance of the

young scion of the house of Strathland and Zeal, generated the suspicion

that he had allied himself with the Liberal party for two reasons only:

its weakness in first-class men, and his passion for self-advertising.

No one disputed his pre-eminence in this branch of industrial art, for

although he never descended to commonplace methods, and the interviewer,

far from being sought, rather dreaded him than otherwise, there was no

man in England who was such a mine for "copy," nor of a perennially

greener growth in the select front lawn of "news." When he attacked the

government he was eminently quotable, and this endeared him to both

reporters and editors. When he was interviewed, fearsome in manner as he

was, he sent the worm away packed with ideas and phrases. But although

he was almost continuously on the tongue, and the object of more

acrimonious discussion than any young man in England, distrust of him

had grown to such proportions that he had been dropped after one brief

sojourn in the House; and to regain his seat had taken two years of the

hardest and most brilliant fighting Great Britain had seen since the

Conservative majority of 1874 permitted Disraeli to rest on his prickly

laurels. But this memorable battle of one young man against a mighty

phalanx of enemies and doubting friends had battered down the prejudices

of his own party, and won a meed of applause from even those of stout

old Tory principles. The humbler class, upon whom the election largely

depended, were captivated by his eloquence, his insidious manipulation

of the best in their natures, filling them with a judicious mixture of

ideals and self-approval; while the phenomenon he invariably presented

on the platform of the gradual awakening into life of a warm-blooded

generous magnetic and earnest inner man, so effectually concealed at

other times within a repellent exterior, never failed to induce in them

the belief that something responsive in their own personalities awakened

that rare spirit from its stifled sleep. That the glamour of his birth

and condescension to their plane had aught to do with the dazzling

quality of his charm, they might have admitted had their minds been

driven by the enemy into the regions of self-analysis, but in any case

he was the theme of two-thirds of the "pubs" and reading-rooms in

England. He had achieved a sweeping victory that loomed portentously as

a forerunner of greater triumphs in the future; for the personal

popularity he had achieved, the gift for leadership he had demonstrated,

the self-control he showed at all times, and the fatally adhesive

quality of his biting wit, had strengthened the Liberal party and caused

the Conservative to wish that he had never been born.

And flushed with self-love and the conquest of the woman of his desire,

he had never talked better than on that night at Arcot; nor less

offensively, for his arrogance and assertiveness were tempered by the

warm high tide of his emotions. It was a magnificent room, the

banquet-hall at Arcot, as large as that of many royal palaces, hung with

old Gobelins and frescoed by a pupil of Giotto. It was a fit setting for

the triumphant hour of the "most remarkable young man since the younger

Pitt," a phrase which, if not notably suave, at least possessed an

astonishing vigor, and was almost as familiar in American and

continental newspapers as in his own proud nation; a nation always so

keen to possess the first in all departments of excellence--creating

them out of second-class material when the first is lacking--that the

wonder was she had been so long accepting Elton Gwynne. Nothing,

perhaps, but a noble desire for a really great man restrained her.

Opposite Gwynne, the duchess, sweet and tactful, if little more than an

ornamental husk in which the juices of her race possibly recuperated to

invigorate the future generations, was as fair and stately as her castle

demanded; and if her gown was shabby her jewels were not. On either

side of her table, which occupied the central position in the great

room, were some of the most beautiful women in England, the smartest,

the most politically important; all, without exception, of an inherited

status that brought them once a year as a matter of course within the

sternly guarded portals of Arcot. Gwynne did not know that Mrs. Kaye had

knocked at these sacred portals in vain; for such gossip, if by chance

he heard it, made no impression upon him whatever. But he was by no

means insensible to the salient fact that he was one among the chosen of

Earth to-night, and that it was good to be the hero of such an assembly.

For that he was the hero there was no manner of doubt, and when the

dinner was over he spent but half an hour in the drawing-room,

preferring the conversation of the heads of state, who so seldom

gratified the vanity of a man of his years, but whom he had the power to

interest whether they approved of him or not. He had many friends among

women, some conquered by the magic of notoriety, others, like Flora

Thangue, sensible of his finer side, or tolerant of him through

life-long intimacy; and there were times when he was as alive to the

pleasures of their society as any young sprig about town; but to-night

their admiration was too illogical to administer to the self-love which

in the last few days had palpitated with so exquisite a sense of

fruition. Moreover, it gave him the keenest satisfaction to read in the

manner of these older and long-tried men the grudging belief in his own

sincerity.

In reality his motives for joining a party at war with every tradition

of his house had been, primarily, as mixed as are all motives that bring

about great voluntary changes in a man's life. It was quite true that

he was inordinately ambitious, that he had a distinct preference for the

sensational method, as productive of speedier results; for he had no

intention of waiting until middle-age for the activities and honors he

craved in his insatiable youth; and it was also true that he was even

more of an aristocrat than many of his class, with whom a simpler

attitude had become the fashion, even if it were not marrow-deep. But

the ruling motive had been his passionate love of battle, a trait

inherited perhaps from his pioneer ancestors, whose roots were in the

soil. This desire to prove his mettle and fill his life with the only

excitement worthy of his gifts, would alone have made him turn from the

broad ancestral paths, but, like a lawyer fascinated by his brief, he

had long since been heart and soul with the party he had chosen, and,

with the exercise of his faculties, become possessed of a mounting

desire not only to be of genuine use to his country, but to lift the

family name from the comparative obscurity where it had rested during

the half of a century.

The present head of the family had been an invalid in his early life,

and Italy had withered whatever ambitions may have pricked him in his

youth. When he finally found himself able to live the year round in

England he saw no fault in a nation so superior to any of his exile, and

he had settled down to the life of a country squire, devoted to sport,

and supremely satisfied with himself. His eldest son, an estimable young

man, who had worked at Christ Church as if he had been qualifying for a

statesman or a don, died of typhoid-fever before the birth of his boy.

The present heir, brilliant, weak, cynical, absolutely selfish, had

rioted to such an extent that he had fatally injured his health and

incurred the detestation of his grandfather; Lord Strathland was not

only a virtuous old gentleman but was also inclined to be miserly. The

subjects upon which they did not quarrel bitterly every time they met

were those relating to Elton Gwynne, whom both loved, in so far as they

loved any one but themselves. Deeply as they disapproved of his

politics, they respected his independence and were inordinately proud of

him. Zeal's daughters, who bored him inexpressibly, were parcelled out

among relatives, and he led a roving life in search of beneficent air

for his weary lungs. All women had become hateful to him since he had

been forced to sit in the ashes of repentance, but he had consented to

enter upon a second marriage through the most disinterested sentiment of

his life, his love of his cousin, whose haunting fear of being shelved

in his youth had been poured into his ears many times. That he also

enraged his grandfather, who wanted nothing so much as the assurance

that his favorite should inherit the territorial honors of his house,

may have given zest to his act of renunciation. Not that he had the

least intention of giving his cousin a solid basis for despair for many

years to come, for no mother ever nursed her babe more tenderly than he

his weak but by no means exhausted chest. During his last interview with

Elton in London he had assured his anxious relative that he was taking

the best of care of himself, and that, in spite of blood-shot eyes and

haggard cheeks, his disease was quiescent; although he had decided to

start for Davos or some other popular climate before the advent of harsh

weather. Davos is a word of hideous portent in English ears, but Gwynne

had expelled it with all other cares from his mind, and on this night

when he returned from Arcot feeling a far greater man than any of his

house had ever dreamed of being, and with a song in his heart, the

awful face of his cousin, whom in the shock of the moment he thought

stricken with death, gave him the first stab of terror and doubt that he

had experienced in his triumphant life.

XV

"Come up-stairs," said Zeal. "We are liable to interruption here."

"Have they put you up decently?" asked Gwynne, with his mind's surface.

"The house is rather full."

"I shall leave by the seven-o'clock train, and it must be three now. I

have no intention of going to bed."

"Is that wise? You look pretty seedy, old man. You haven't had a

hemorrhage?" He almost choked as he brought the word out, and yet he was

not in the least surprised when Zeal replied, tonelessly, "I had

forgotten I ever had a chest;" for his mind was vibrating with a

telepathic message which his wits attacked fiercely and without avail.

As they entered his room he pushed his cousin into an easy-chair and

turned up the lamp on the writing-table. Then he planted his feet on the

hearth-rug with a blind instinct to die standing.

"Fire away, for God's sake," he said. "Something has happened. You know

you can count on me, whatever it is."

Zeal, who was sitting stiffly forward, his hands gripping the arms of

his chair, laughed dryly. "You will be the chief sufferer. The others

don't count."

"Has my grandfather speculated once too often? Are we gone completely

smash?" Gwynne was rapidly assuring himself that he was now prepared for

the worst, that nothing should knock the props from under him again,

that it was the sight of Zeal's face that had upset him; he was not one

to collapse before the stiff blows of life.

"It is likely. Anyhow, if he lives long enough he'll make a mess of what

is left." He raised his head slowly, and once more Gwynne, as he met

those terrible haunted eyes, felt as Adam may have felt when he was

being bundled towards the exit of Eden. He braced himself unconsciously,

and after Zeal's next words did not relax his body, although his lips

turned white and stiff.

"I am going to kill myself some time to-day," said Zeal, in a voice so

emotionless that Gwynne wondered idly if all his capacity for expression

had gone to his eyes. "I should have done it several hours earlier, but

I felt that I owed you an explanation. You can pass it on to my

grandfather when the time comes."

He paused a moment, and then he too seemed to brace himself.

"I killed Brathland," he said.

Gwynne moistened his lips. "Poor old Zeal," he muttered. "It must be a

horrid sensation--"

"To be a murderer? I can assure you it is."

Gwynne's mind seemed to darken until only one luminous point confronted

it, the visible tormented soul of his kinsman. He walked over to the

table and mixed two tumblers of whiskey-and-soda, wondering why he had

not thought of it before. They drank without haste, and then Gwynne took

the chair opposite Zeal's.

"Tell me all about it," he said.

"Brathland and I had not been friends for some years. He was a bounder,

and an ass in the bargain. I never, even when we were on speaking

terms, made any particular effort to hide what I thought of him--it

wasn't worth while. Of course, with every mother firing her girls at his

head, and the flatterers and toadies from whom a prospective duke cannot

escape if he would, he had an opinion of himself that would have made me

the object of his particular rancor, even if I hadn't cut him out with

three different women that couldn't marry either of us. When I got the

verdict that I must pull up or go under, he chose that particular moment

to take up with Stella Starr, the only woman I ever cared a pin for.

Somehow, he got wind of my condition, and knowing that I would prefer to

retire as gracefully as possible, it struck him as the refinement of

vengeance to make a laughing-stock of me when I was no longer in a

condition to play the game out; to advertise me as a worn-out rake for

whom the world of Stella Starrs had no further use. We never spoke again

until Friday night."

He paused, then mixed and drank another whiskey-and-soda, lit a

cigarette, and resumed.

"I had objected to his being let into the mine, which Vanneck's agent

and private letters had persuaded the rest of us would make our

fortunes; but I was helpless, for he was not only Vanneck's cousin, but

his brother is out in Africa and also interested in the mine. I

therefore consented to attend the dinner at which the whole business was

to be discussed, fully intending to treat him as I should any stranger

to whom I had just been introduced.

"At first all went well enough. We had the private dining-room and

smoking-room on the second floor at the Club, the dinner was excellent,

and Brathland, although nearly opposite me, behaved as decently as he

always did when sober. It was champagne that let loose the bounder in

him, and that was one reason I always so thoroughly despised him: the

man that is not a gentleman when he is drunk has no right to be alive at

all.

"We were not long discussing the mine threadbare, for we did not know

enough about it to enlarge into any picturesque details, and the agent,

who had seen each of us separately, was not present. Raglin read a

personal letter from Vanneck, and Brathland another from Dick. Then, the

subject being exhausted long before we reached the end of dinner, we

drifted off to other topics; and went into the smoking-room with the

coffee.

"It was at least six years since I had tasted anything stronger than

whiskey-and-water, and what devil entered into me that night to drink a

quart of champagne, and liqueurs, and pour port and brandy on top, the

devil himself only knows. Perhaps the old familiar sight of a lot of

good fellows; most likely the vanity of forcing Brathland to believe

that he beheld a rival as vigorous and dangerous as of old--I had gained

ten pounds and was looking and feeling particularly fit. At all events

the mess affected me as alcohol never had done in even my salet days,

and although my thoughts seemed to be moving in a crystal procession, I

became slowly obsessed with the desire to kill Brathland; whose face,

chalky white, as it always was when he was drunk--and he always got

drunk on less than any one else--filled me with a fury of disgust and

hatred. My mind kept assuring this thing that straddled it that I had

not the least intention of making an ass of myself; and that procession

of thought, in order to support its confidence, entered into an argument

with my conscience, which was in a corner and looked like a codfish

standing on its tail and grinning impotently. A jig of words escaped

from the mouth of the codfish: copy-book maxims, Bible admonitions, the

commandments, legal statutes; all in one hideous mess that annoyed me so

I slipped out, went up to my room, and pocketed a pistol. That logical

procession of thought in my mind assured me that this unusual move at a

friendly business dinner was merely in the way of self-protection, for

Brathland had once been heard to say that he wished we were both

cow-boys on an American ranch so that he could put a bullet into me

without taking the consequences--he never had a brain above shilling

shockers. My thoughts, as they visibly combined and recombined in the

crystal vault of my skull, asserted confidently that he had been reading

such stuff lately, and that, ten to one, he had a pistol in his pocket.

"When I returned Brathland was standing by the hearth, supporting

himself by the chimney-piece. The rest were lying about in long chairs,

smoking, and drinking whiskey-and-sodas. They were all sober enough, and

Brathland looked the more of a beast by contrast.

"I took a chair opposite him and ordered my thoughts to arrange

themselves in phrases that should pierce his mental hide and wither the

very roots of his self-esteem--his vanity was the one big thing about

him. But he took his doom into his own hands and built it up like a

house of cards.

"'How does it feel to be drunk once more?' he asked, with his damnable

sneer. 'It makes you look less of a hypochondriac, anyhow. "Granny

Zeal"--that's what the girls call you.'

"'If they do I've no doubt you taught them,' I replied, in tones as low

as his own. Several men were seated not far off, but neither of us hung

out a storm signal.

"'I did,' he said. 'Not but that I had had revenge enough. I had made

you ridiculous--you with your damned superior airs--like that infant

phenomenon cousin of yours who is making the family ass of himself over

Julia Kaye--'

"Those were his last words. I pulled the pistol and fired straight into

his abdomen--knew I couldn't miss him there.

"God! what a commotion there was. He doubled up with a yell--just like

him. The men fairly bounded out of their chairs. There were two waiters

in the room--just come in with Apollinaris. Raglin slammed the doors to,

and, while Ormond and Hethrington laid Brathland out on a sofa, asked

the servants if they would hold their tongues until it was known whether

he would die or not. They assented readily enough, knowing how damned

well worth their while it was. Then he went off for a surgeon--didn't

dare telephone--went straight for a young fellow named Ballast he

happened to know, and asked him if he would probe for a bullet and call

it appendicitis, for a thousand pounds. Apparently there was no time

wasted in argument, for he returned in half an hour with his man. The

surgeon probed for the bullet, but without success. Then he bandaged

Brathland, had him carried up to Raglin's room, and sent for a nurse

that he could trust.

"We all regathered in the smoking-room, shut the waiters in the

dining-room, and talked the matter over. By this time I was more

hideously sober than I ever had been in my life. What they thought of me

I neither knew nor cared, and it is doubtful if they knew themselves;

their one thought was to keep the matter from getting out and dragging

the Club into a scandal; and of course Raglin was equally keen on

sheltering the family, whether Brathland lived or died. Anyhow, I fancy

they would have stood by me, for if we have no other virtue we do stand

by each other.

"Practically the only question was the amount to be paid in blackmail,

for every trace of the affair had been removed; even the smell of

antiseptics and ether had gone. We finally called the waiters in and

offered them four hundred each for their silence, or in the case of

Brathland's death--the surgeon held out hopes--a thousand. They coolly

replied they would take a thousand apiece before noon on the following

day, and ten thousand each in case of death. We--or rather Raglin and

one or two others--jawed for an hour; but the wretches never yielded an

inch. They had us on the hip and were not likely to be put off by any

amount of eloquence. Of course we caved in and God knows what amount of

future blackmail the Club is in for. Then there was the thousand for the

surgeon, and the nurse would expect a thousand more. Of course I made

myself responsible for the entire amount. Raglin insisted for a time

upon going halves--blood may be blood, but he had despised Bratty as

much as I ever did--but of course I would not hear of it.

"The next afternoon the surgeon probed again, and Brathland died under

the ether. The wound after probing looked sufficiently like an ordinary

incision to deceive any one. Raglin and Harold Lorcutt--who, of course,

was told the truth--naturally had the body sealed up in lead before

taking it north. The old duke and the women of the family are in a fair

way to know nothing."

He paused abruptly and lifted his eyes once more to Gwynne's, bursting

into a laugh that sounded like the crackling of fire under dry leaves.

"Lovely story, ain't it?"

But Gwynne made no reply. His mind, released, was working abnormally,

and his face was as livid as his cousin's had been.

Zeal rose. The narrative had excited him out of his apathy and physical

exhaustion, the confession shaken the rigidity from his mind. He planted

himself on the hearth-rug with an air that approached nonchalance. His

thin clever face had a burning spot on either cheek, his sunken eyes

were no longer haunted, but brilliant and staring; his thin high nose

and fine hands twitched slightly, as if his nerves were enjoying a too

sudden release.

"Heavenly sensation--to be a murderer. What beastly names things have

and how we are obsessed by them! The word rings in my brain night and

day--I haven't slept three hours since it happened, and I never had the

remotest hope that he would live. It's the second time in my life I've

been up against a cold ugly fact that stands by itself in a region where

rhetoric doesn't enter. I believe I could tolerate the situation if I'd

done it in cold blood, if I'd thought it out, determined to gratify my

hatred of the man; if, in short, the deed had been the offspring of my

intelligence, for which I have always had a considerable respect. But to

have been under the control of a Thing, like any navvy, to be a criminal

without the consent of my will--

"I don't know that that fact alone would make life insupportable. But

there are other and sufficient reasons. I shall never get the hideous

sight of Brathland as he doubled up, and his horrid gurgling shriek, out

of my mind this side of the grave. And I am practically cleaned out. You

know how much I have left of my mother's property! It barely covers

what I paid out to-day. There isn't a penny for the girls. They will be

dependent on Strathland--as I should be if I lived; a position for which

I have as little relish as for that of a murderer on the loose. And

should I ever be really safe? If this stinking quartet takes it into its

head to levy annual blackmail, where is the money coming from? I won't

have the others let in while I'm alive. If it did come to that--and of

course it would--I'd get out anyhow, so I may as well go now and save

myself further horrors. Besides, with all our precautions, we may have

overlooked some significant detail, there may have been an eavesdropper,

the undertakers may have had their suspicions--for all I know I may be

arrested to-morrow--well, Jack, what would you do in my place?"

Gwynne shook himself and stood up. "I don't know. I have been feeling as

if I had killed Bratty myself. But I cannot imagine myself committing

suicide--talk about ugly words! In the first place I don't think that

one crime is any reason for committing another, and in the second--"

"It is cowardly! You don't suppose that old standby slipped my mind, do

you? Well, I am a coward. There you have my dispassionate opinion of

myself. I don't see myself in the prisoner's dock, in the graceful act

of dangling from the end of a rope; or, if the judge was inclined to

have pity on the family, of dying in a prison hospital. Even if I

trumped up the necessary fortitude I should be a blacker villain than I

am to bring disgrace upon my five poor girls and the woman that has

promised to marry me, to say nothing of Vicky and yourself. Nor, on the

other hand, do I see myself skulking in some hole abroad with the hue

and cry after me. I have just as little appetite for the role of the

haunted man in comparative security. Well, what would you do yourself?"

Gwynne shuddered. His own eyes were hunted. "How, in God's name, can any

man tell what he would do until he is in the same hole? I should like to

think that I would speak out and take the consequences. There is little

danger of your swinging, and as for imprisonment--one way or another

you've got to answer for your crime, and it seems to me that the honest

thing is to accept the penalty of the law you live under."

"Well, it doesn't to me," said Zeal, coolly, and lighting another

cigarette. "I asked the question merely out of curiosity, as the

workings of your mind always interest me. But I have quite made up my

own mind. The only reason I hesitated a moment--to be exact, it was half

a day--was on your account. Of course I know what my death will mean to

you."

"It was for that reason I was almost coward enough not to remonstrate."

Gwynne scratched a match several times before he succeeded in getting a

light. "Nevertheless, I meant it."

"Don't doubt it. And I am sorry--it is about the only regret I shall

take with me, that and some remorse on account of the girls. I suppose

Strathland will throw them a bone each--"

"I will look out for them. But you are not bent on this horror!" he

burst out. Wild plans of drugging his cousin, of locking him up, chased

through his mind, and at the same time he was sick with the certainty of

his own impotence. He knew his cousin, and he had the sensation that an

illuminated scroll of fate dangled before his eyes.

Zeal nodded. His excitement, his fears, had left him. He felt something

of the swagger in calm peculiar to the condemned in their final hour,

that last great rally of the nerves to feed the fires of courage. He

finished his cigarette and flung himself on the sofa.

"Wake me at twenty to seven, will you?" he asked. "I have ordered the

trap."

XVI

The young Marquess of Strathland and Zeal sat alone in the smoking-room

at Capheaton--the guests, with the exception of Flora Thangue and Isabel

Otis had departed six days ago--sunk in a melancholy so profound that

his brain was mercifully inactive: if the history of the past week was

dully insistent the future was not.

He had witnessed the descent of his grandfather and cousin into the

vault of the chapel at Strathland Abbey two days before, and after the

necessary interviews with stewards and family solicitors had returned

this afternoon to Capheaton with his mother. Lady Victoria, even her

dauntless soul sick with grief and horrors, had gone to bed at once, and

after a funereal dinner, where he had made no response whatever to the

feeble efforts of the girls to illuminate the darkness in which he

moved, had gone to the smoking-room alone, wishing to think and plan,

yet grateful that he could not.

He had known nothing of the weakness of his grandfather's heart, and the

old gentleman, as ruddy and debonair as ever, had just come in from the

coverts when he arrived at the Abbey a few hours after Zeal's departure

from Capheaton. Always vain of his health and appearance since his

complete recovery, now many years ago, Lord Strathland had turned a

haughty back upon the one physician that had dared to warn him; not even

his valet was permitted to suspect that he had been forced to pay to

Time any debt beyond bleaching hair and an occasional twinge of gout.

The care he had taken of himself in his delicate youth had given him a

finer constitution than he would have been likely to enjoy had he been

able to go the wild way of many of his family; and it was his familiar

boast that he intended to live until ninety.

Elton's visit roused no curiosity in his complacent breast, for the

favorite seldom announced his coming, and it was quite in order that he

should run down for congratulations, and delight his affectionate if

disapproving relative with personal details of the great fight. He had

come with the intention of being the one to break the news of his

cousin's death to his grandfather, should it be necessary; but he

permitted himself to hope that Zeal would rise above his type. He had

driven him to the station himself, dispensing with the groom as well,

and pleaded with him to wait at least a month; to consider the matter

more coolly and carefully than had hitherto been possible; begged him to

return to Capheaton; offered to travel with him if he preferred to leave

England. Whatever might threaten in the future there could be no

immediate danger of arrest, for if the shot had carried beyond the

private rooms of the Club there would have been evidence of the fact at

once, and if the undertakers had suspected the truth and delayed giving

information, their purpose was blackmail and could be dealt with.

And while he argued and pleaded he wondered, as he had during the hours

he watched beside his cousin sleeping, if, in spite of certain

principles which he had believed to be immutable, he could have found

any other solution himself. Honor has many arbitrary inflections, and

Zeal's act, being wholly abominable, there must seem, in his code, to be

no place for him among men. To walk among them unscathed, punished only

by a conscience that time would inevitably dull, and the loss of a small

fortune that his promised wife would more than replace, while some

passionate creature without powerful friends or money for blackmail went

to the noose, was an outrage abroad in the secret regions of the spirit

even if it made no assault upon public standards. He deserved

extinction, one way or another, and it would be almost as great an

outrage were he to cover his family with his own disgrace. Certain men

might, after such a lesson, live on to devote their lives to repentance

and beneficent works, but not Zeal; and Gwynne had no great respect for

a character made over after some terrifying explosion among its baser

parts. And the question would always remain if the highest honor would

not have commanded confession.

He made a deliberate effort to put himself in Zeal's place, and after

several failures accomplished the feat. He was willing to believe that

his first impulse would have been to destroy himself, not so much

through fear as through a blind sense of atonement, for when he

endeavored to argue that the crime belonged to the law and the public,

he swore at himself for a prig. Either way was suicide, and if the more

deliberate might damn a man's soul, no doubt he deserved nothing less,

and at least he had done his duty by his family and his class. Gwynne

had in the base of his character a puritanical stratum by no means mined

as yet, but with too many outcroppings to have been overlooked. But the

very strength it gave him served to confuse the simplicity of the

religious instinct; and duty, like the code of honor, endures many

interpretations in complex minds. He was quite sure that ultimately he

would have decided with his cold intelligence; and he was equally sure

that if he had doggedly determined to conquer life and be conquered by

nothing, that the best part of his mental existence would have gone into

the grave with his ideals.

Although there was still some confusion in his mind, he kept it out of

his words, and as he drove home from the station he was sanguine enough

to hope that he had at least dissuaded Zeal from precipitancy; for his

cousin, flippant, cynical, appeared to be quite his usual self, and as

he nodded from the window of the train bore little resemblance to the

demoralized wretch of the night.

Nevertheless, he hastened to his grandfather, for he knew how little the

mood of the moment may presage that of an hour hence; although he was

reasonably sure that if Zeal lived until the following morning it would

be some time before he brought himself to the sticking-point again. He

announced to his mother and his guests that it was his duty to spend

twenty-four hours with his grandfather, promising to return in time for

two hours' shooting on the morrow.

He took for granted that Zeal had gone to London. What then was his

foreboding horror when Lord Strathland, as they sat alone at

luncheon--the unmarried aunts were visiting--remarked with acerbity:

"Zeal arrived on the train before yours--went straight to his room,

giving orders he was not to be called until dinner--has not honored me

with so much as an intimation that he was in the house--Where are you

going?"

Gwynne had half risen. He sat down hastily.

"I was afraid he might be ill," he replied, coolly. "But doubtless he

merely had a bad night and wants sleep."

In a flash he had understood. It was like Zeal's cynicism to die as

close to the family vault as possible.

No meal had ever seemed as long as that last luncheon with his

grandfather, who promptly dismissed the subject of his detested heir and

asked a hundred questions about the campaign. A fierce sense of

protecting the two men he loved best enabled Gwynne to answer as

collectedly as if he had not been possessed with the sickening idea that

the very bones had gone out of him. When luncheon was over he

accompanied his grandfather to the library, then after smoking a third

of a cigar, left him to his nap, frankly stating that he thought he had

better look up Zeal, who had been rather seedy of late; he would risk

being unwelcome.

He walked slowly up the stair and along the corridor to his cousin's

suite; he was in no hurry to reach it, but neither could he wait for the

possible discovery of the servants at the dinner-hour.

He knocked at the door of the sitting-room. There was no answer. He

turned the handle. The door was locked. Then he pounded and called. He

was about to fling himself against the door when he heard a quick step

in the corridor, and before he could retreat Lord Strathland was beside

him. There was no defect in the old gentleman's eyesight nor in his

perceptions. Zeal's abrupt arrival without servant or luggage, and his

more than usual rudeness, had charged him with vague suspicions as well

as annoyance. When Gwynne, in spite of his self-control, had turned

livid upon hearing that Zeal was in the Abbey, and had risen as if to

fly to his rescue, a dark if undefined foreboding had entered his

grandfather's mind. But Lord Strathland respected the reserve of his

guests, no matter how nearly related, and, dismissing the subject, had

forgotten his apprehension until Gwynne revived it by his untimely

pilgrimage. Then Lord Strathland thought the time had come to hear the

truth.

"Well?" he demanded, sharply. "What is it? What's up? Why doesn't Zeal

open? I saw him in Piccadilly on Saturday and he stared at me as if he

had never seen me before. I thought at the moment it was some of his

damned impertinence, but concluded that he had something on his mind. He

looked more dead than alive."

Gwynne's back was to the light, and he controlled his voice, although

his heart was thumping. "Well, he has been, poor chap--awfully seedy--I

am really worried. He may have anticipated a final hemorrhage, and

crawled home to die." He cherished the hope that Zeal had been at pains

to procure an untraceable drug.

"Ah! Well--I hope that is it if the poor fellow is dead. He looked as if

he had more than ill-health on his mind. I thought he had pulled up, but

no doubt he went to pieces over some wretched woman again. Come, let us

get in. I don't want the servants to know anything of this at present."

They threw themselves against the door. The old gentleman was heavy and

Gwynne sound and wiry in spite of his delicate appearance. The door was

stout but its hinges were old, and after several attempts they drove it

in. Lord Strathland's face was pale and he was panting, but he led the

way rapidly through the sitting-room into the bedroom.

Zeal had undressed, extended himself on the bed, and covered his body

with an eider-down quilt. Lord Strathland jerked it off, and both saw

what they had expected to see, for a faint odor of burnt powder lingered

in the rooms.

Lord Strathland's face was ghastly, almost blue. He had anticipated

death, not with the imagination of the young, but dully, through the

atrophied faculties of his age, and the shock could hardly have been

greater had he found his grandson without warning.

"What does this mean?" he demanded, thickly. "You know and I will know."

Gwynne took him firmly by the arm and turned him about. "Not here," he

said. "Come to the library. I will tell you, but I am no more fit to

talk just now than you are to listen."

His grandfather submitted, and Gwynne dropped his arm and rearranged the

quilt over his cousin's body. At the same moment Lord Strathland's eyes

lit on a sealed letter addressed to himself. Before Gwynne could

interfere he had broken the seal. It ran:

MY LORD,--I murdered Brathland. In cold blood--saving the fact

that I was drunk. My entire private fortune has gone for purposes

of blackmail. Even that might not have saved me eventually from the

hangman, we have grown so damned democratic. All things considered,

I am sure you will agree that it is quite proper I should make the

exit of a gentleman while there is yet time. Jack will give you

further particulars, should you care to listen to them. ZEAL."

He too had known nothing of the condition of his grandfather's heart,

and it had amused him to plan a last shock to the perennial optimism

and complacency of the person he disliked most on earth. The smile was

still on his frozen lips that expressed the amused anticipation of his

brain. Death, to do him justice, he had met with none of the cowardice

he had vaunted, and consistently with his arid cynical soul.

"Don't read it! Don't!" Gwynne had exclaimed, in agony, and forgetting

the awful figure on the bed in his alarm at the sight of his

grandfather's face. "If you must know the truth let me tell it in my own

way."

But Lord Strathland read, and fell at his feet like a bundle of old

clothes.

XVII

Gwynne wondered if he should ever shake off the pall-like memories of

the past week: the testimony before the coroner, in which every word had

to be weighed as carefully as if life instead of the honor of the

worthless dead were at stake, the reporters from the less dignified of

the British newspapers, and the American correspondents, two of whom

dodged the vigilance of the servants, entered the Abbey by a window, and

took snap shots of the lower rooms and of the coffins in the

death-chamber; the painful scenes with the women of the family, who had

descended in a body; the wearisome interview with the family solicitor,

in the course of which he had learned that he was heir to little more

than the entailed properties; which must be let in order to insure an

income for his three unmarried aunts, Zeal's five girls, and himself;

the hideous reiteration of "your lordship" by the obsequious servants,

that reproduced in his mind the slow deep notes of the passing bell,

tolled in the village for his grandfather and cousin.

A letter from Julia Kaye had fluttered in like a dove of promise, but he

had never been able to recall anything in the six pages of graceful

sympathy but her allusions to the dead as "the marquess" and "the earl."

He told himself angrily that his brain must have weakened to notice a

solecism at such a time, but it is in moments of abnormal mental strain

that trifles have their innings; and during the beautiful service in the

chapel he caught himself wondering if any woman of his own class could

have made such a slip. Always deaf to gossip, he had no suspicion that

his Julia had been laughed at more than once for her inability to grasp

all the unwritten laws of a world which she had entered too late. With

an ear in which a title lingered like a full voluptuous note of music,

she was blunt to certain of the democratic canons of modern society.

Although it gave her the keenest pleasure to address the highest

bulwarks of the peerage off-handedly as "duke" and "duchess," there had

been moments of confusion when she had lapsed naturally into "your

grace." And it would have seemed like a lost opportunity to have alluded

to a titled foreigner without his "von" or "de," even where there was a

more positive title to use as often as she pleased. It was the one weak

spot in a singularly acute and accomplished mind.

But of all this Gwynne knew nothing, and he was dully wondering if a

great love could be affected by trifles, and if his brain and character

were of less immutable material than he had believed, his mental vision

still straying through the insupportable gloom of the past week, when he

heard a light foot-fall beyond the door. He sprang to his feet, cursing

his nerves, and was by no means reassured upon seeing the long figure of

a woman, dressed entirely in white, a candle in her hand, approaching

him down the dark corridor. He had never given a moment's thought in his

active life to psychic phenomena, but he was in a state of mind where

nothing would have surprised him, and he had turned cold to his

finger-tips when a familiar voice reassured him.

"I am not Lady Macbeth," said Isabel, with a tremor in her own voice, as

she entered and blew out the candle. "But I felt like her as I braved

the terrors of all those dark corridors and that staircase in my wild

desire to talk to a living person. I had arrived at that stage where all

your ancestors gibbered at the foot of my bed. Flora has been sleeping

with me, but your mother wanted her to-night, and I am deserted."

"What a lot of babies you are!" Gwynne was delighted to wreak his

self-contempt on some one else, but glad of the interruption, and

unexpectedly mellowed by the sight of a pretty woman after the red noses

and sable plumage of the past week. It was true that he had seen Isabel

at dinner, but like Flora she had worn a black gown out of respect to

the family woe, and he hated the sight of black.

Now she wore a gown of soft white wool fastened at the throat and waist

with a blue ribbon; and even her profile, whose severity he had

disapproved, having a masculine weakness for pugs, was softened by the

absence of the coils or braids that commonly framed it: her hair hung in

one tremendous plait to the heels of her slippers.

"I see that you have no more sleep in you than I have," he said. "Let us

make a night of it."

It had rained all day and he was suddenly alive to a sense of physical

discomfort. He rang and ordered a servant to make a fire and bring the

tea-service.

"How did you know I was here?" he asked Isabel, when they were alone

again.

"I felt that you were, but I went first to your room and tapped. I was

quite capable of waking you up. Thank heaven I summoned the courage to

come down. This is delightful."

The fire was crackling in the grate, the water boiling in the big silver

kettle. Isabel made his tea almost black, but diluted her own, lest she

should be left alone before she too was ready for sleep.

"You have had a beastly time these last days," he said, for he was

genuinely hospitable. "I am sorry you did not happen to come a month

earlier. Have you seen anything of Hexam? He was going on to Arcot."

"He rode over, or walked over, every day. We should have fallen a prey

to melancholy without him, although you may believe me when I assure you

that we thought more of you than we did of ourselves. I am your own

blood-relation, so I have a right to feel dreadfully sympathetic--may I

have a cigarette?"

"What a brick you are to smoke! I don't mind being sympathized with for

a change. I have had to do so much sympathizing with others in the last

week that I have not had time to pity myself. Even my mother went to

pieces, for she was fond of Zeal, poor old chap, and her conscience

scorched her because she was always rather nasty to my grandfather--she

likes and dislikes tremendously, you know; although to most people she

is merely indifferent. But when she dislikes--" He blew the ashes from

the tip of his cigarette with a slight whistling sound.

Flora Thangue had extracted all the particulars of the death and suicide

from Lady Victoria--who knew nothing, however, of the tragic cause of

both--and imparted them to Isabel, whose mind, in consequence, was free

of morbid curiosity. She had also read the newspapers. The speculations

and veiled hints of the sensational sheets had not interested her, but

she had pondered deeply over leaders in the more dignified organs, which

had abounded in comment upon the changed conditions in the meteoric

career of the young man who was no longer Elton Gwynne, but a peer of

the realm.

"Do you mind it so awfully much?" she asked, after a short silence

during which they had both smoked absently and gazed at the fire.

"What?" Gwynne turned the cold surprise of his eyes upon her. "Losing

two of the four people I cared most for on earth?"

"Of course not. Being suddenly made a peer and having to begin all over.

You never will be called Elton Gwynne again, and you will have as much

trouble educating the public up to your new name as if you were emerging

from obscurity for the first time."

The words, brutally direct, rolled away the last clouds of his lethargy.

He vividly realized that he had been skulking before the closed shutters

of his understanding, accepting the new conditions with but the dulled

surface of his brain.

Now his naked soul stared at her out of his white face and tortured

eyes, and she looked away. She had not believed that he could be racked

with feeling of any sort, and it was as if she heard him cry: "Oh, God!

Oh, God!" although his lips were silent.

But she did not change the subject.

"I suppose you haven't seen the newspapers," she said. "I cut out all

the editorials and paragraphs I thought would interest you. One of the

big dailies, I forget which, said that the interruption of your career

was a greater political tragedy than Parnell's or Lord Randolph

Churchill's."

"Do they say that?" asked Gwynne, eagerly. "Well, God knows, it is a

tragedy for me."

"Don't you like being a peer the least little bit? I am too feminine,

possibly too American, not to see a certain picturesqueness in a title,

especially in such a pretty one as yours; and there is no doubt that you

are a more imposing figure in the eyes of the world to-day than you were

a week ago. Are you really indifferent to that side of it?"

"Am I? One does such a lot of self-posing and self-imposition. There are

few things in this world that gratify a man's vanity more than being a

peer of Great Britain, and, no doubt, had I happened to be born without

what you might call a fighting ambition, and certain abilities, I

should--barring natural grief--feel that I was one of the favorites of

destiny--that is to say if I had a commensurate income. The fact that I

must let the Abbey and Capheaton, and after portioning off all the

unmarried women of the family, shall have barely enough left to keep up

my flat in Charles Street, may have something to do with my absence of

enthusiasm. But--yes--I _am_ sure of myself!" he burst out. "I am the

most miserable man on earth to-night, and the reason is not that I have

lost two good friends, but because my career is ruined, broken off in

the middle."

"You could become a militant Liberal peer."

"Paradoxes don't happen to appeal to me. And the only chance for a

genuine fighter is the House of Commons. Besides, it is impossible for a

man to be a peer and remain a true Liberal. Power, and inherited

influence, and exalted social position have a deadly insinuation. I

don't believe any man is strong enough to withstand them. There is never

an hour that a peer is not reminded of his difference from the mass of

humanity; and human nature is too weak to resist complacency in the

end--long before the end. And complacency is the premature old age of

the brain and character. If this tragedy had not occurred, even if my

grandfather had lived on for fifteen years more, as there was every

reason to believe he would, I might have gone on that much longer before

discovering weak points in my character. Now God knows what I shall

develop."

"Have you made any plans?"

"Plans? I hadn't faced the situation until you spoke."

"You have weak spots like other people, of course. You would be a horrid

prig if you hadn't. But you surely must know if your Liberalism is

sincere, ingrained. There is no question that you are a hopeless

aristocrat in essentials. But so have been certain of America's greatest

patriots--Washington and Hamilton, for instance. I do not see that it

matters. One can hold to what seems to me the first principles of

advanced civilization--that hereditary monarchy is an insult to

self-respecting and enlightened men--without wishing to associate with

those that offend grammar and good taste. Education, intellect,

breeding, would create an aristocracy among anarchists on a desert

island--supposing any possessed them; and in time it would become as

intolerant of liberties as if it harked back to the battle of Hastings.

There is no plant that grows so rapidly in the human garden as

self-superiority, and it is ridiculous only when watered by nothing more

excusable than the arbitrary social conditions that exist in the United

States. I don't see that the qualities you have inherited should

interfere with your ability to see the justice and rationality of

self-government."

"They do not!" She seemed to beat his thoughts into their old coherent

and logical forms. "Whatever may have been the various motives that

impelled me into the Liberal party in the beginning, there is no

question that I have become even more extreme and single-minded than I

have let the world know. Perhaps it is my American blood, although I

never thought of that before. At all events, had the time been ripe I

should have devoted all the gift for leadership I now possess, and all

the power I could build up, to overturning monarchy in this country and

establishing a republic. There! I never confessed as much to a living

soul, but I think you have bewitched me, for I never have been less--or

more--myself!"

"With yourself as President?"

"Sooner or later--the sooner the better. But I waste no time in dreams,

my fair cousin--although I have something of a tendency that way. It was

enough that I had a great and useful career before me and might have

gone into history as the prime factor of the great change."

"Well, that is over," said Isabel, conclusively. "There is only one

thing left you and that is to come over and be an American."

"What?" He stared, and then laughed. "Ah!"

"You will have all the fighting you want over there. You will have to

work twenty times harder than you ever did here, for your accent, your

personality, the thirty years you have lived out of the country you were

born in, all will be against you. You will have to be naturalized in

spite of your birth--I happen to know of a similar case in my father's

practice--and that will take five years. In those five years you will

encounter all the difficulties that strew the way of the foreigner who

would gain the confidence of the shrewd American people--they are most

characteristic in the small towns and farming districts. You will win

because you were born to win, but you will learn for the first time what

it is to stand and fight absolutely alone--for if they learn of your

exalted birth they will but distrust you the more; and you will taste

the sweets of real success for the first time in your life. In spite of

your youth and enthusiasm, there is in you a vein of inevitable

cynicism, for you have had far too much experience of the flatterer and

the toady. You are too honest not to confess that if you had been born

John Smith there would have been no editorial comments of any sort upon

the tragic end of your relatives, and the great world would have taken

as little notice of your abilities until you had compelled its unwilling

attention by many more years of hard work. America will take you for

exactly what you are and no more. But you will have to become more

American than the Americans; although you may continue to say 'ain't it'

and 'it's me' and drop your final gs, because those are all the

hall-marks of the half-educated in the United States, and will rather

help you than otherwise. Of course you will assume charge of your own

ranch, for that will not only give you plenty to do, but it will be the

quickest way of becoming one of the people; and after you have been out

in all weathers for a year or two, turned a dark brown down to your

chest, ridden a loping horse on a Mexican saddle, talked politics on

street corners and in saloons, left your muddy or dusty wagon once a

week at the Rosewater hitching-rail while you transact business in a

linen duster, or yellow oil-skin overalls and rubber boots, you will

feel so American--Californian, to be exact--that the mere memory of this

formal cut-and-dried Old World will fill you with ennui."

There was a glint of laughter in Gwynne's eyes, but they were widely

open and very bright.

"I see! You are determined to make a convert of me. You began the night

of your arrival. I suspect you of having come over on a crusade."

"That was the moment of inspiration--that first night. I won't deny that

I have thought a great deal about it since--of little else since I read

those editorials."

He leaned back and regarded the sole of his shoe as if it were a

familiar. "That is a large order," he said, in a moment. "Colossal!

There might be worse solutions. And the life of a cow-boy, for a while

at least--"

"Don't delude yourself. You would not be the least bit of a cow-boy.

You wouldn't even look picturesque--if you did you might be sorry.

You would just be a plain northern California rancher. Of course

you would have all the riding you wanted, but there are no round-ups

worth speaking of on a ranch the size of Lumalitas. And probably you

would continue to let sections of it to men that wanted to raise cattle

or horses on a small scale. You had better devote yourself to the dairy

and to raising hay and grain, and turn about five hundred acres into a

chicken-ranch--nothing pays like that."

He threw back his head and laughed as heartily as if death and disaster

had never been.

"From the English hustings and the greatest parliamentary body the world

has ever known to chickens and butter in California! From Capheaton to

Rosewater, oil-skin overalls and a linen 'Duster!' Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!

But give me a comprehensive idea of the place, in your own inimitable

unvarnished diction. That will keep the ghosts off, at all events."

XVIII

Julia Kaye was one of those women designed by nature for the role of a

Valerie Marneffe, or of that astute Parisian's bourgeoise and more

romantic daughter, Emma Bovary; but tossed, in the gamble of the fates,

into a setting of respectable opulence, where her instincts for prey

were trimmed of their crudities, and the vehemence of her passions

subdued by the opportunity to gratify all other whims and desires.

Her father, born in the sooty alley of a manufacturing town in the north

of England, had run away to sea in his boyhood, deserted in the port of

New York, starved, stolen, peddled, washed dishes in cheap restaurants,

shovelled snow, tramped to Chicago, starved and peddled and shovelled

again, finally found a position with a firm of wholesale druggists. He

attended a night school, proved himself a lad of uncommon sharpness, and

in less than a year was first packing and then dispensing drugs. Five

years later he was drawing a large salary, and at the age of thirty he

had opened a retail drug store of his own.

It was during his earlier period of comparative leisure and peace of

mind that he began to test the inventive faculty that had pricked him in

small but significant ways during his boyhood. His first inventions were

of a minor importance, although they increased his income and were

permanently remunerative; but when he turned the torch of his genius

upon the fatal antipathies of vermin, his success was so deservedly

rewarded that he was a millionaire in less than three years. He returned

to England, and, avoiding the alley of inglorious memory, courted and

won the daughter of a manufacturer, his ambition driving him to compel

social recognition in his native city. It soared no higher, but his

wife, now no longer one of a large family, but with the income of a

generous millionaire at her disposal, was open to higher promptings; and

he to conversion. They moved to London and laid their plans with some

skill.

But although London can stand a good deal in the cause of resupply and

novelty, the violence of Mrs. Tippett's accent, and the terrible

solecisms of a gentleman whose education had begun in a Lancashire alley

and finished in the business purlieus of Chicago, who had acquired the

American vice of brag in its acutest form, and who, when in his cups,

shouted and spat and swore, were more than the most enterprising among

them had been called upon to endure. The social ambitions of the

Tippetts were so definitely quenched that the indignant millionaire

threatened to return to Chicago. But Mrs. Tippett moved him firmly to

Brighton, where, in the course of time, she toned him down. They made

their way slowly into society of a sort, and attracted the attention of

the public. There was no law to prevent them from dining at the

fashionable hotels, where Paris gowns could not pass unobserved; and

their turnouts were irreproachable.

Mrs. Tippet, an astute woman, by this time had realized that hers was

not the destiny of the social star, and she concentrated her hopes and

ambitions upon her one child, an uncommonly clever little girl. This

child grew up in a luxury that would have stifled even her precocious

mind had it not been for the rigid laws of the school-room. Her

governesses and tutors were selected with a sharp eye to the number of

titles in their reference-books, but dismissed promptly if they were

unworthy of their hire. Later, the little Julia was sent to a

distinguished school near Paris, where, with an eye to her future

well-being, remarkable in one so young, she divided her affectionate

affluence among the few whose exalted station made them worth the while

of a maiden with an indefinite future.

These friends did not prove as useful as she had hoped. At home there

were her parents to terrify theirs, and although she visited at several

chateaux, and more than one title was laid at her gilded feet, she made

up her mind to read her name in Burke.

She took her parents for a tour round the world with a view to polishing

off their lingering idiosyncrasies, and her chance came in India, where

she buried them both. They succumbed to cholera, and the kindly wife of

the viceroy, to whom she had had the forethought to secure a letter,

sent for her to come to Simla and remain as her guest until she found

courage and a chaperon for the return to England. Here she met Captain,

the Honorable Augustus Kaye, heir to an ancient barony, chivalrous,

impressionable, and hard-up. They were married with the blessings of old

friends and new, and, to do her full justice, she made him a good wife

according to her lights. She was quite insanely in love with him at

first, for he looked like one of Ouida's guardsmen, and his pedigree was

so long, and so varied with romantic historic episode, that she was

fully a week committing it to memory.

When he left the army and they had returned to England--via Paris--she

had the wardrobe and establishment of a princess, the right to dine at

the Queen's table, and not a relative in London. She was immoderately

happy, and during the five years of her wedded life she exhausted the

first strength of her affections, buried her feminine caprice, and

whatever of impulse youth may have clung to as its right. When Gussy

Kaye died, the predominant feeling in her bosom was rage at his

inconsiderateness in leaving the world before his father, and nothing

behind him but a courtesy prefix which she could not even use on her

cards.

She opened her soul to searching, and decided that five years of love

were quite enough for any woman, and that her attentions hereafter

should be directed towards the highest worldly success obtainable with

brains, talents, and wealth. To be merely a rich woman in the right set

did not come within measurable distance of her ambition's apex, and she

determined to gratify her passionate self-love by becoming a

personality.

She had long since simulated the repose of the high-born Englishwoman,

until, like all imitators, she far surpassed her models, and her manners

were marked not so much by the caste of Vere de Vere as by an almost

negative stolidity. This at least provided her with an unruffled front

for trying occasions--others besides the Arcots were insensible of her

offerings--which in the United States of America would have been

admiringly characterized as "nerve." This manner became solidified after

her popular husband's death, and if it was generally referred to as

"aplomb" or "poise," allowances must be made for the poverty of the

average vocabulary.

It is not difficult for a clever, handsome, correct, and wealthy woman

to reach and hold a distinctive position even in London, that world's

headquarters of individualities. In addition to a judiciously lavish

hospitality, it is only necessary to personalize intelligently, and this

Mrs. Kaye did with an industry that would have carried her to greatness

had she been granted a spark of the divine fire. She cultivated the

great and the fashionable in art, letters, and the drama, mixed them

tactfully with her titles, attended the banquets of the ruling class in

Bohemia attired flatteringly in her best, and founded a society for the

study of Leonardo da Vinci. She became intimate with several royal

ladies, who were charmed with her endless power to amuse them and her

magnificent patronage of their charities; and she formed close relations

with other dames but a degree less exalted, and generally more

discriminating. She cultivated a witty habit of speech, the society of

cabinet ministers, and her _chef_ was a celebrity. Her gowns would have

been notable in New York, and she was wise enough to avoid eccentricity

and openly to regard all forms of sensationalism with a haughty disdain.

Her attitude to men was equally well-advised. Detrimentals and

ineligibles never so much as came up for inspection; she had a

far-reaching sense of selection and a proper notion of the value of

time. Therefore, the many that had the run of her luxurious mansion

contributed personally to her prestige, and she flattered herself that

her particular band was little less distinguished than the Royal

Household. And they invariably found her witty, entertaining, or, like

Madame Recamier, ready to listen "avec seduction." Her knowledge of

politics was practically unbounded.

In such moments as she happened to be alone with any of her swains, she

became distractingly personal, inviting, gently repelling, afforded

dazzling glimpses of possibilities awaiting time and the man: so

accomplishing the double purpose of agreeably titillating her own depths

and wearing the halo of a well-behaved Circe. Altogether her success was

what it always must be when brains and ambition, money and a cold heart

are allied; but it was small wonder if the head of the daughter of the

House of Tippett was a trifle turned and certain of her perceptions were

blunted.

Although ofttimes large with complacency, she by no means lost sight of

her original purpose to wed a coronet, and if she endured four years of

widowhood it was merely because she knew that she could afford to wait

for transcendence. This she had finally run to earth in Lord Brathland,

imminent heir to a dukedom, and personally more agreeable to her than

any man in London. That he was notoriously inconstant but added zest to

the chase, and it was, perhaps, the illusion she at times achieved of a

certain resemblance to the ladies of his preference that finally

overcame his intense aversion from respectability. He had offered

himself to her on the day of his undoing.

This was the woman with whom Elton Gwynne was infatuated at the most

critical moment of his career. Of her profound aybsses he suspected

nothing. She reigned in his imagination as the unique woman in whom

intellect and passion, tenderness and all the social graces united in an

exquisite harmony. There had been a time when, dazzled by the brilliancy

of his ascending star, and Brathland being but a name to her, she had

considered marriage with a man who assuredly would be the next leader of

a Liberal House, and was no less certain of being prime-minister. She

was under no delusion that she could one day induce him to accept a

peerage, but she was reasonably sure that Zeal would not marry again,

and there were times when the heir looked so ill that she tightened her

bonds about the heir-presumptive, while assuring him that she was too

much in love with liberty to think of marriage. Even when Zeal came back

from Norway or Sorrento looking almost well, she never permitted Gwynne

to escape, to see so much as a corner of her ego that might disturb the

image of herself she had created in his mind; and when she met Brathland

and her senses swam with the subtle scent of strawberry leaves, she saw

no reason for losing the stimulating society and flattering attentions

of the brightest star in the political firmament. Therefore, when he was

ready to hand, in the crushing hour of her riven ambitions, and his own

of serenest effulgence, she promptly reflected that the distance between

a marquisate and a dukedom was quickly traversed by a powerful

statesman. Meanwhile, although Elton Gwynne would no doubt be a hideous

trial as a husband, his wife's position, supported by a million in the

funds and another in Chicago, would be one of the most brilliant in

England. And she too had seen Lord Zeal in Piccadilly on Saturday.

XIX

The sudden elevation of her Jack to a marquisate, beside whose roots,

gripping the foundations of Britain's aristocracy, and ramifying the

length and breadth of its society, the lost dukedom was a mere mushroom,

created for a favorite of the last George, and notorious for its

_mesalliances_, did not cost Mrs. Kaye a moment's loss of poise. She

merely wondered that she had ever questioned her star. People that

disliked her found a subtle suggestion of arrogance in her manner, and

the slight significant smile on her large firm lips was a trifle more

stereotyped. Those that she favored with the abundance of her offerings

remembered afterwards that she had never been so brilliant as during the

month that followed the announcement of her bethrothal, and attributed

the fact to the electrified springs of affection.

Gwynne and she had been invited to the same houses for the rest of the

autumn, but he cancelled his engagements while begging her to fulfil

hers, as he should be too busy to entertain her were she so sweet as to

insist upon coming to Capheaton. This she had not the least intention of

doing, for she not only yearned for the additional tribute due to her,

but she always avoided long sojourns in Lady Victoria's vicinity,

knowing her as a woman of caprice, who often dropped people as abruptly

as she took them up. Susceptible to the charm of novelty, so far Mrs.

Kaye had wholly pleased her; but the clever Julia gauged the depths of

her future mother-in-law's credulity and kept her distance. With all her

reason for self-gratulation, in the depths of her cynical soul she was

quite aware of her natural inferiority to the women she emulated in all

but their license. That prerogative, with the wisdom that had marked her

upward course, she had flagrantly avoided, knowing that the world is

complacent only to those that fire its snobbishness, never to those that

fan the flame; and while she bitterly envied these women, she never

forgot the market value of her own unimpeachable virtue. She could not

in any case have been the slave of her passions, but her serenity was

sometimes ruffled as she reflected that, in spite of eminence achieved,

her caution in this and in other respects branded her in her secret soul

as second rate.

But if she tactfully did not insist upon flying to Capheaton, she wrote

such charming letters, happily free of solecisms, that Gwynne wondered

at his failure to sound the depths of her charm. But he refrained from

meeting her, and the reason was that he was slowly working towards a

momentous decision, and wished to arm himself at all points before

braving her possible disapproval. When he was his cool normal collected

self again, he gave way to his impatience to see the woman he had every

reason to believe was deeply in love with him. He telegraphed her a

peremptory appeal to go up to her house in London, and she was too wise

to refuse. It was now October and London quite bearable. She telegraphed

to her servants to strip her house of its summer shroud, and returned

early on the day of his choice.

It is hardly necessary to state that Mrs. Kaye lived in Park Lane. She

had cultivated half-tones with a notable success, but to symbolize her

new estate was a temptation it had not occurred to her to resist.

Shortly after her return from India she had bought a large house in the

facade of London, and furnished it with a luxury that satisfied one of

the deepest cravings of her being, while her admirable sense of balance

saved her from the peculiar extravagances of the cocotte.

She had seen Lady Victoria's expressive boudoir at Capheaton, and its

mate in Curzon Street, and relieved the envy they inspired in a caustic

epigram that happily did not reach the insolent beauty's ear. "These old

coquettes," she had lisped, with an amused uplift of one eyebrow. "They

surround themselves with the atmosphere of the demi-monde and forget

that a wrinkle is as fatal as a chaperon."

The pictures in her own house were as correct as they were costly, and

she had no boudoir. She invariably received her guests in the

drawing-room, an immense and unique apartment, with a frieze of dusky

copies of old masters, all of a size, and all framed in gilt as dim with

time. From them depended a tapestry of crimson silk brocade of

uncheckered surface. By a cunning arrangement of furniture the great

room was broken up into a semblance of smaller ones, each with its group

of comfortable chairs, its tea-table, or book case, or cabinet of

bibelots, or open hearth. And all exhaled the inviting atmosphere of

occupation.

Mrs. Kaye, rested, and more self-possessed than if the hastening lover

had been the late Lord Brathland, but agreeably stirred nevertheless,

awaited the new peer in a charming corner before a screen of dull gold,

the last reviews on a table beside her, the afternoon sun shining in on

her healthy unworn face. When he entered and advanced impetuously across

the room she decided that he certainly was a dear, even if he lacked the

fascination of Brathland and his kind. And his halo was almost visible.

She therefore yielded enchantingly when he enveloped her, smothered her,

stormed her lips, and even pulled her hair. She finally got him over to

the little sofa--she had advanced to meet him--but remained in his arm,

the very picture of tender voluptuous young womanhood. Indeed, she was

well pleased, and found her Jack, with that light blazing in his eyes,

quite handsome, and fascinating in his own boyish imperious

self-confident way.

It was half an hour before she rang for tea, and then she looked so

pretty and domestic on the other side of the little table, with its

delicate and costly service, that Gwynne was obliged to pause and summon

all his resolution before proceeding to another subject that possessed

him as fully as herself; but he succeeded, for not even passion could

turn him from his course; and she gave him his opening.

"Poor Lord Strathland!" she exclaimed, with a tear in her throat. "He

was always so jolly and amusing, quite the most cheerful person I ever

met. And before your cousin became--lost his health--we were great

friends. Indeed he never quite forgot me. But it was for you I was so

horribly cut up. I cried for two nights."

"Did you? But I was positive you did not make those tears in your first

letter with your hair-brush." He laughed like a happy school-boy, while

she protested with a roughish expression that made her look like a very

young girl.

"It need not prevent our immediate marriage," he said. "What do you say

to the last of this month?"

"I could get ready. Only girls, who never have any clothes, poor things,

get trousseaux in these days. I had set my heart upon spending the

honeymoon at the Abbey, but it would be rather indecent yet awhile;

don't you think so?"

He had not an atom of tact and rushed upon his doom. "We shall have to

cut the Abbey," he said, firmly. "I start for California three weeks

from to-day."

"Indeed?" she said, stiffly. "I should have thought you would have

consulted me. Not but that I shall be enchanted to visit California,

but--well, you _are_ rather lordly, you know."

"My dear girl, I have been too harassed to consider the amenities. And

when a man is rearranging his whole life he must isolate himself or run

the risk of clouds in his judgment."

He paused. She disguised her mortification and answered, kindly: "I can

understand that in this sudden demand for readjustment you have had many

bad moments. It was far too soon for you to go up to the Peers'. But

with your marvellous energies, your genius--there is no other word for

it--you can soon astonish the world anew with a patent for

defossilization. At all events the Peers' will enter upon a new life as

a sort of mastodon cave swept out and illuminated by the most energetic

and aspiring of knights-errant."

Gwynne laughed dryly. "The role does not appeal to me; nor any other in

the same setting. I have done a month of the hardest thinking of my

life. Everything that went before looks like child's play. I have

arrived at the definite conclusion that my career in England has come

to a full stop, and I have made up my mind to create another--out of

whole cloth--in the United States."

She stared at him, her face not yet unset, but her eyes expanding with

incredulous apprehension. "You mean to desert England?" she asked,

quietly.

"Forever. Absolutely. It is all or nothing. I cannot become an American

citizen until five years after entering the country, and I do not wish

to lose any valuable time. Having made up my mind, I have ceased to

wonder if I shall like it. That is now beside the question. I shall drop

my title as a matter of course, and hope that I shall pass undiscovered

as John Gwynne. In short, I shall begin life all over again--as if I

were a criminal in disguise instead of the sport of circumstances. I

have ceased to regret the inevitable and begun to be stimulated by the

thought of a struggle to which all that I have had here was a mere game,

and I am sure that you, with your brains and energy, will enjoy the

fight as much as I. I am not going into the wilderness. We shall be only

two hours from San Francisco, which I am told is the only city in

America that in the least suggests Europe; it should be very attractive.

On the ranch you shall have every comfort and luxury. You must be sick

of London, anyhow. You have conquered everything here."

He paused and regarded her in some trepidation. In spite of his

self-confidence he had had his moments of doubt. And although he had

anticipated tears and remonstrance, he was unprepared for the more

subtle weapon of amusement, flickering through absolute calm. He

suddenly wished that she were younger. He had never given a thought to

her age before, but he remembered that she had lived for two years

longer than himself, and it made him feel even less than thirty.

"My dear boy," she said, wonderingly, "I never heard anything so

romantic and impossible. Of course it is the American cousin with whom

you have been shut up all these weeks that has been putting such

preposterous ideas into your head. I always said that nature just missed

making you a poet. But if you wish to work out your manifest destiny--to

be immortalized in history--you will remind yourself that England is the

one place on earth where an Anglo-Saxon can cut a really great figure.

Not only because he has the proper background of traditions, but because

he has an audience trained to recognize a man's greatness during his

lifetime. If you go in for those unspeakable American politics you will

never be given credit for anything higher than your medium; in other

words, should you develop into a statesman on American lines you would

never be recognized for anything but a successful politician. Even if

you survived in their hurly-burly of history, you would be judged by

contemporary standards--infused with a certain contempt because you were

not American-born."

"I have thought it all out. The obstacles to greatness, even more than

to success, have whetted my appetite for the struggle. I must fight!

fight! fight! I must exercise my powers of usefulness to some good end,

and now, now, when I am young and ardent. I should go mad sitting round

doing nothing. I have no temper for attacking the passive resistance of

inertia. I want to fight out in the open. If I fail I will take my

beating like a man. But I have not the least intention of failing. I am

acutely aware of the powers within me, and I can use them anywhere."

"Then why not in the Upper House?" she asked, quickly.

"For the reasons I have given you, and because I should fear the results

on my character. You know what it means to be a peer of Great Britain.

Flattery without accomplishment is demoralizing--would be to me, at all

events. It is wine to me when I am achieving, but it would drug me in

idleness. Are you so wedded to London?"

"London is the _raison d'etre_ of life. Has it occurred to you," she

asked, gently, "that I might refuse to go to America?"

"I was afraid the idea would be something of a shock, but I was sure you

would see the matter in my light."

"It is not wanting in power! But it seems that I am. I have never

aspired to the role of Amelia Sedley. I have, in fact, rather a

pronounced individuality; and yet you have taken upon yourself to

dispose of my future as if I were a slip of eighteen--delighted at the

prospect of a husband."

"Indeed you are wrong!" he cried, distressed to have bruised so beloved

an ego. "But, I repeat, it was a question I was forced to decide alone.

Nor would it have been fair to ask you to assume any part of so great a

responsibility. Do you suppose I did not think of that? Do you suppose I

have ever lost sight of your happiness? Let me think for both and you

shall not regret it."

She could have smiled outright at this evidence of the ingenuousness of

man, but her breast was raging with a fury of disappointment and

consternation. She kept her eyes down lest they should betray her. But

suddenly she had an inspiration. She controlled herself with a masterly

effort, flooded her eyes with tenderness, raised them, and said,

softly:

"I do love London, love it with what I called a passion before I--before

we met. And I cannot believe that this extraordinary resolution of yours

has had time to mature. Promise me at least that you will not apply for

letters of citizenship for at least a year after your arrival--"

"I shall apply the day after I arrive in Rosewater." He steeled himself,

for he had had his experience of woman's wiles; and his faith in

masculine supremacy as a habit did not waver. "I only regret that the

time of probation must be so long. I am on fire to throw myself into the

arena--however, there will be opportunities to make myself known and

felt. I have decided to study law meanwhile--and the law, it seems, is a

career in itself in America."

And then he watched her eyes, fascinated. They slowly hardened, until,

with the sun slanting into them, they looked like bronze. She was too

intent upon studying his own to hide them, and upon arriving at a final

conclusion. She reached it in a moment, for to her habit of rapid

thought and her understanding of the workings of the masculine mind she

owed no little of her supremacy among the clever women of London.

"I see that your decision is irrevocable," she said. "You are yourself;

no one could make or unmake you, and God forbid that I should try.

But--and I forbear to lead up to it artistically--I dissever myself from

your chariot wheels. I am not afraid of being crushed, for no doubt you

would always remember to be polite, if not considerate. I am not sure

that you would even permit me to become unrecognizable with dust. But I

am no longer plastic. I am thirty-two, and I am as much I as you are

you. I shall watch you from afar with great interest, and I sincerely

hope, for both your sakes, that Miss Otis will succeed in marrying you.

I cannot fancy anything more suitable."

He had turned white, but he looked at her steadily. He felt as if the

round globe were slipping from under him; and vaguely wondered if she

had gone about alluding to him as "the marquess." Then he sprang to his

feet, lifted her forcibly from her chair, deposited her on the sofa, and

taking her in his arms defied her to dismiss him, to live without him.

As the body, so yielding before, declined even to become rigid in

resistance, he poured out such a flood of pleading that, believing

passion had conquered reason, she flung her arms about his neck and

offered to marry him on the morrow if he would promise to remain in

England. But there was a crystal quality in Gwynne's intellect that no

passion could obscure. He merely renewed his pleadings; and then she

slipped out of his embrace and rose to her feet.

"We are wasting time," she said. "I always drive before dinner, and I

cannot go out in a tea-gown." She paused a moment to summon from her

resources the words that would humiliate him most and slake the desire

for vengeance that shrieked within her. She had never hated any one so

bitterly before, not even in her youth, when snubs were frequent. For

the third time she watched a coronet slip through her strong determined

impotent fingers. She could forgive her husband and Brathland their

untimely deaths, but for this young man, passionately in love with her,

who tossed the dazzling prize aside as an actor might a "property

crown," she felt such a rage of hatred that for almost a moment she

thought of giving her inherited self the exquisite satisfaction of

scratching his eyes out. But it was too late in her day to be wholly

natural, and, indeed, she preferred the weapons the world and her

ambitions had given her. As he rose and stared at her doubtingly, she

said, without a high or a sharp note, in her clear lisping voice:

"I think it wise to put an end to all this by telling you that I was

engaged to Lord Brathland when he died. I was more in love with him than

I ever shall be with any one again. You caught me in the violence of the

rebound, for I was confused with grief, and distraction was welcome: you

are always sufficiently amusing. I have not the least idea it would ever

have come off, for, to tell you the truth, my friend, you are too

hopelessly the _enfant gate_ for a woman who is neither young enough nor

old enough to crave youth on any terms. As a husband, I fear, not to put

too fine a point on it, you would be a bore. At the risk of being

thought a snob--to which I am quite indifferent--I will add that as

plain John Gwynne you seem to have so shrunk in size as to have become

as insignificant as most men are, no doubt, when you catch a glimpse of

their unmanufactured side. However"--with the air of a great lady

dismissing an object of patronage--"I wish you good-fortune, and

sincerely hope that we shall one day read of John Gwynne, senator, and

recall for a moment the brilliant Elton Gwynne so long forgotten in this

busy London of ours."

During quite half of her discourse Gwynne had felt his soul writhe under

a rain of hot metal, gibber towards some abyss where it could hide its

humiliation and its scars for ever. His brain seemed vacant and his very

nostrils turned white. But like many clever people goaded to words by a

furious sense of failure, she overshot her mark, and before she

finished his pride had made a terrified rebound and taken complete

possession of him. He still felt stripped, lashed, a presumptuous youth

before a scornful woman in the ripeness of her maturity, but it was

imperative for his future self-respect that he should reassert his

manhood and retire in good order. He let her finish, and then, as she

stood with a still impatience, he lifted his eyes and drew himself up.

His face was devoid of expression. His eyes did not even glitter; he

might have been listening with voluntary politeness to the speech of

majesty laying a corner-stone.

"You are quite right," he said. "You have given me the drubbing I

deserve, and I am grateful to you. It was the only thing I needed to

snap my last tie with England and brace me for the struggle in America.

It emboldens me to ask another favor--that you will regard what I have

told you of my plans as confidential. I shall give out that I am going

to travel for a time. As I believe I mentioned, I do not wish to be

recognized in the United States; and that by the time I have made my new

name my old one will be forgotten, is one of the sure points upon which

I have reckoned. Have I your promise?"

"My oath!" she said, flippantly; and although she was not generous

enough to admire, and still felt as if the world itself were a corpse,

every inherited instinct in her united in a visible respect for a poise

that was a gift of the centuries, not a deftly manufactured mask.

She rang the bell and extended her hand. Gwynne shook it politely; and a

moment later was walking down Park Lane in that singular state of

elation that in mercurial natures succeeds one of the brutal blows of

life, when all the forces of the spirit have leaped to the rescue.