CHAPTER XVI

A GAME OF GOLF

Golf at Moretown is "by favor of the Lord of the Manor" played across a

corner of the home park, so remote from Melbourne Hall that you have a

vista of that fine old house but rarely from the trees, and nowhere at

all if you be an ardent player.

Such a description could in all sincerity have been applied to either

of our old friends Dr. Philips and the Rev. Harry Fillimore, the vicar

of the parish. They played the game as though all their worldly hope

depended upon it. The best of friends at common times, difficulty

could provoke them to such violent hostilities that they did not speak

a word to each other until the after-luncheon glass of port had been

slowly sipped. Intimate in their knowledge each of the other, the

Vicar knew exactly when to cough that the Doctor's forcible

exclamations might not be overheard by the caddies. The Doctor, upon

his part, sympathized very cordially with the Vicar when that worthy

found himself in a bunker. "Harry, my dear boy, pray remember where

you are," he would say, and to give him his due, the Vicar rarely

forgot the number of strokes necessary to extract himself from one of

these many vales of tears which abounded at Moretown.

Other moments, it should be observed, were those of mutual admiration.

"If you could only putt as well as you can drive, you might play

Vardon," the Vicar would tell the Doctor.

To which the reply would be:

"My dear Harry, Taylor could not play a better approach than that.

You'll be down to scratch if you go on improving in this way."

Needless to say, such enthusiasm demanded complete absorption in the

game and tolerated no liberties. If anyone had told the Doctor of the

fall of Port Arthur at the moment of his playing an approach, that man

assuredly would have deserved any fate that overtook him. When the

stove in the vestry set fire to the chancel roof and did five hundred

pounds worth of damage to Moretown Church, no one had the courage to

tell the Vicar until he had holed out on the eighteenth, green. "Words

won't put the roof on again," the sexton wisely said, "and a precious

lot of words you'll get from 'ee while 'ee's playin' with his ball."

So the doleful news was reserved for the Club House. "I really fear I

ought not to play a second round," the Vicar exclaimed when he heard

it; "most vexing, I must say."

These being the circumstances of the weekly duel _a outrance_, it

certainly was astonishing to discover the Vicar and the Doctor talking

of any other subject but golf on a day of July some three weeks after

Count Odin's arrival at Melbourne Hall. Strange to say, however, they

discussed neither the merits of the cut nor the doubtful wisdom of

running up approach; but playing their strokes with some indifference

as to the attending consequences, they spoke of my lord of Melbourne

and of the turn affairs at the Hall were taking. To be entirely

candid, the Vicar left the main part of the talk to the Doctor; for the

secret which he carried he had as yet no courage to tell to anyone.

"Most extraordinary--not the same man, sir, by twenty years. If he

were a woman, I would call it neurasthenia and back my opinion for a

Haskell. What do you think of a sane human being letting a lot of

dirty gypsies have the free run of the Hall; in and out like rabbits in

a warren--drinking his best wines and riding his horses, and lots more

besides that the servants hint at but won't talk about? Why, they tell

me that he's up half the night with the scum sometimes, as wild as the

rest of them when they fiddle and caper in the Long Gallery. What's

common sense to make of it? What do you make of it, leaving common

sense out of the matter?"

The Vicar looked somewhat askance at the dubious compliment; nor did it

encourage him to tell of the strange sights he had seen in Melbourne

Park some twelve hours before this epoch-making encounter.

"I hear the men are Roumanians," he said, taking a brussie from his bag

and making an atrocious shot with it. "Of course the Earl--this is

miserable--the Earl was in Roumania as a young man. Perhaps he is

returning some courtesy these wild fellows showed to him. You play the

odd, I think."

"Odd or the like, I don't care a--that is to say, it is most

extraordinary. Why, they're bandits, Harry--bandits, I tell you, and,

unless Mrs. Fillimore looks out, they'll carry her off to Matlock Tor

and hold her out to ransom--perhaps while we're on the links. A pretty

advertisement you'd get if that came off. A Vicar's wife stolen by

brigands. The Reverend Gentleman on the Q. Tee. Think of it in the

evening papers! How some of them would chaff you!"

The Vicar played an approach shot and said, "This is really

deplorable." He would have preferred to talk golf; but the Doctor gave

him no rest, and so he said presently:

"I wonder what Lady Evelyn thinks of it all? She went by me in the car

yesterday and Bates was driving her. Now, I've never seen that

before.... God bless me, what a shocking stroke!"

He shook his head as the ball went skimming over the ground into the

deepest and most terrible bunker on Moretown Links--the Doctor

following it with that sympathetic if hypocritical gaze we turn upon an

enemy's misfortunes. Impossible not to better such a miserable

exhibition, he thought. Unhappy man, game of delight, the two were

playing from the bunker together before a minute had passed!

"You and I would certainly do better at the mangle if this goes on,"

the Doctor exclaimed with honest conviction; "the third bunker I've

found to-day. A man cannot be well who does that."

"Rheumatism, undoubtedly," the Vicar said slyly.

A boyish laugh greeted the thrust.

"Shall we call it curiosity? Hang the game! What does it matter? You

put a bit of india-rubber into a flower-pot and think you are a better

man than I am. But you're not. I'd play you any day for the poor-box.

Let's talk of something else--Lady Evelyn, for instance."

"Will she marry him, Frederick?"

"Him--the sandy-haired foreigner with the gypsy friends?"

"Is there any other concerned?"

"Oh, don't ask me. Do I keep her pocket-book?"

"I wish you did, my dear fellow. From every point of view, this

marriage would be deplorable."

"From every point of view but that of the two people concerned,

perhaps. She is a girl with a will of her own--do you think she would

marry him if she didn't like him?"

"She might, from spite. There are better reasons, perhaps worse. You

told me at their first meeting that you believed her to be in love with

him."

"I was an idiot. Let's finish the round. The man will probably live

to be hanged--what does it matter?"

"Well, if it doesn't matter to you, it matters to nobody. I'll tell

you something queer--a thing I saw last night. It's been in my head

all day. I'll tell you as we go to the next green."

They drove a couple of good balls and set out from the tee with lighter

hearts. As they went, the Vicar unburdened himself of that secret

which golf alone could have prevented him disclosing an hour ago.

"I told you that I dined with Sir John Hall last night," he said in a

low voice; "well, young John drove me home, and, of course, he went

through the Park. Poor boy, his case is quite hopeless. He drives his

horse to death round and round the house on the off chance of seeing

the flash of her gown between the trees. Well, he drove me home and

just as we entered the Park, what do you think--why, three or four men

passed us at the gallop--soldiers, I say, in white uniforms with gold

sashes and gold sword-hilts. I saw them as plainly as I see you

now--the Earl was one of them--the young Count another. Now, what do

you think of it? Are they mad, or is some great jest being played? I

give it up. This sort of thing is beyond my experience--it should be a

case for you, Frederick, though if you can make anything of it, I'm a

Dutchman."

The Doctor shook his head. He did not doubt the truth of the Vicar's

story, but he made believe to doubt it.

"You dined with John Hall, Harry?"

"I have told you so."

"Sixty-three port, I suppose, on the top of champagne?"

"That is mere foolishness, Frederick."

"Admittedly, forgive me--I can be serious and am. Here's an affair

which a man might write about in text-books. This grown man puts on a

coat he may have worn in his youth and rides like a steeplechaser

through the Park. Why does he do it? What's he after? I'll tell you,

his lost youth, that's what he's after. Trying to catch up Time and

give the fellow the go-by. I've seen that disease in many shapes, but

this is a new one. Try to think it out. This young Count comes over

from Roumania; he brings these gypsy rascals with him. Their tongue,

their dress, their music, speak to the Earl as his youth used to speak

to him. He's living for a moment a life he lived thirty years ago. I

can see him grasping at the straws of youth every time I go up to the

Hall. These midnight carousals are so much midnight madness. The man

is saying to Age, you shall not have me. Ten years of respectability

go at one fell swoop. He'd sell those he loved best on earth to win

back one year of the days which have been. That's my diagnosis. The

bacillus, _La Jeunesse_! And that's a bacillus you cannot cure, Harry."

He was in deadly earnest and the Vicar looked grave enough. In his dim

way, he understood the Doctor and believed him to be speaking the

truth. Lord Melbourne had been an enigma to him from the first; an

aristocrat and not an aristocrat; one of the Melbournes and yet an

alien; a man whose mask of reservation the keenest eyes could not

pierce; a silent man when one asked for that key by which alone the

secret chambers of his mind could be entered. Of such a one any fable

might be told and believed. The Vicar understood that he had come face

to face with some mystery; but of its witnesses he could make nothing.

"I do believe you are right," he said at length; "there have been tales

as strange in the story of the house--generally concerning a lady, I

fear At least Evelyn can know nothing of this," he added a little

thoughtfully; "it would be a great misfortune for her."

"Heritage has little regard for the fortunes of others," said the

Doctor. "I don't suppose she would have married an Englishman--she's

not the girl to do it. That comes of educating them abroad--I would

sooner send a daughter of mine to fight the Russians than to a school

in Paris. Make Englishwomen of them, I say, and leave the fal-de-lals

alone. What's it worth to a girl if she can jabber French and has lost

her English heart! No, my dear Vicar, England for me and English roses

for my home. Evelyn will marry this man because France taught her to

think well of foreigners. If she had gone to a Derbyshire school, he

might as well have proposed to Cleopatra's monument on the Thames

Embankment. I'm sorry for her, truly, but words won't change the

thing, and that's the end of it. Let's go and lunch. We have done

nothing ill for one morning, any way."

They went to lunch and afterward to the business of a common day. As

it fell out, they did not meet again until after church upon the

following Sunday, when the Vicar, still wearing his surplice as he

crossed from the vestry to the parsonage, found the Doctor waiting for

him with the air of one who has important tidings and must impart them

quickly.

"No bad news from the Hall?" he exclaimed, so much was that great house

now in his mind.

The Doctor, however, drew him aside and told him in a word.

"The Count's gone," he said quickly. "He comes back in October. The

Earl told me so himself. She's to marry him in the winter, and that's

the end of it, Harry."

The Vicar shook his head gravely.

"The beginning of it, Frederick, the beginning," he said wisely.

BOOK II

THE ENGLISHMAN

CHAPTER XVII

GAVIN ORD BEGINS HIS WORK

In what manner Gavin Ord arrived at Melbourne Hall and took up his

residence there has already been recorded in the early pages of this

narrative.

He came upon a night in August, three weeks precisely after the

departure of Count Odin for Bukharest. Of the people of the Hall he

knew little save that which common gossip and the tittle-tattle of the

newspapers had taught him; nor was his the temperament to be troubled

over-much by the strange hallucination which had attended his journey

from Moretown to the Manor. That which some people would have called

an apparition, he attributed to fatigue and the hour of the night; and

while an uneasy feeling that this simple account of it might not

ultimately satisfy him was not to be lightly dismissed, the

hospitalities of the great house and the work to which he had been

called there quickly dispelled the impression of it, and left him with

some shame that he had been such an easy victim to a vulgar delusion.

For the rest, curiosity remained the only intruder between him and the

work he had been summoned to do.

The Lady Evelyn! Where had he seen her before? How came it that her

face was so familiar to him?

Every hour that he lived at the Hall quickened this impression of

familiarity. Her very voice could make him start, as though one whom

he knew well were speaking to him. Her stately movements, her

gestures, tormented his memory as though inciting it to recall

forgotten scenes for him. At the luncheon table, upon the second day,

he made bold to tell her of his immovable idea.

"We have met somewhere, Lady Evelyn," he said, "I cannot tell where;

but it was in some such house as this--in the gardens of such a house.

And that is odd, for to my knowledge I was never in a Tudor house

before. Now, say that I am dreaming it; that it is just one of those

foolish ideas which come to one in sleep and are remembered when

waking. It could hardly be anything else, of course."

Evelyn flushed crimson while he was speaking; but she retained her

composure sufficiently to declare that she had no recollection of such

an occasion.

"We rarely go from here," she said evasively. "I cannot recollect

visiting any Tudor house in England--you see so many, Mr. Ord. It

would be natural to have such an idea, I think."

"Oh, perfectly and perhaps foolish. Our brains play us strange tricks,

and, often enough, the wildest of them have the least meaning. I know

a man in Paris who dreamed three nights running that he would be thrown

out of a motorcar on his way to Monte Carlo. He put off the visit in

consequence and was knocked down next day by a cab in the Rue Quatre

Septembre. I don't mean to say that he was killed, but he had a nasty

fall, and that was the price he paid for dreaming. I try to dismiss

these things as soon as they come to me. Here's a case in point. You

and I clearly have never met--unless it were in London," he added, with

another keen glance at her.

Evelyn could not suppress the high color in her cheeks, and they were

crimson when she found her father's eyes watching her curiously as

though some train of thought had been set in motion by the argument.

Perfectly well did she know that Gavin Ord had seen her in London, on

the stage of the Carlton Theatre; and that discovery had looked her in

the face twice in as many months. This time, however, she feared it

less; for she had come to believe by this time that she would presently

be compelled to tell her story to all the world before many weeks had

passed.

"We are not often in London," the Earl said dryly; "with such a house

as this, why should we be? Lady Evelyn cares nothing for society. I

regard it as the refuge of the mentally destitute. If I travel, it is

from one solitude to another. A man is never so much master of himself

and of the world as when he is alone. Can we consider the modern life

as anything but a glorification of the aggregate and not of the

individual? Your profession is the best friend you have, Mr. Ord.

Those who follow noble ends establish nobility in their own characters.

That's a creed I wish I had known twenty years ago. You are a young

man and should recite it every day while your youth remains to you."

Gavin replied that a man was neither older nor younger than his ideas;

and the drift of the conversation being changed, to Evelyn's evident

relief, they fell again to their plans for the restoration of the Hall

and that which must be done before the wet weather set in. Until this

time, Evelyn had scarcely noticed Gavin or taken any interest in his

coming to the Manor. The truce between her father and herself left her

in a dream-world from which there appeared to be no gate of escape

whatever. She had neither counsellor nor friend. To Count Odin she

had said, "You shall have my answer in three months' time." Her

father's almost passionate desire for this marriage, which his own

youth had contrived, won from her no promise more definite than that

which she had given to the Count. The time had passed for any but the

frankest expressions upon either side. In the plainest words, the Earl

told her that this Roumanian had crossed Europe to demand the liberty

of a man who had long been but a number in a prison upon the shores of

the Black Sea.

"Let Georges Odin be released," he had said, "and unless you are his

son's wife, he will kill me."

Lady Evelyn knew this to be no chimera of weakness or fear. The

vengeance of the mountains would follow Robert Forrester even to the

glades of Derbyshire. Witnesses to the truth still pitched their tents

beneath the giant yews--the smoke of the gypsy camp drifted day by day,

blue and lingering over the waters of the river. From these there was

no escape, for they were the sentinels of the absent Count's honor, and

they dogged the Earl's footsteps wherever he turned. When Gavin Ord

appeared at the Manor, their suspicions were instantly aroused. They

hid from him, and yet watched him every hour. Who was he; whence had

he come? And was he also the enemy of the man who had been Zallony's

friend? This they made it their purpose to discover, entering even

Gavin's bedroom for that purpose.

He was very far from being a timid man or the episode referred to would

quickly have driven him from Derbyshire, despite the engrossing

interest of the work to which he had been called there. This was the

third day of his residence at the Hall. Being left to himself

immediately after dinner, he continued to draw for an hour and to read

for another before courting sleep in the great black bed which

tradition, loving the slumbers of kings, had allotted in its accustomed

way to that very wakeful person, James II. His bedroom was high up in

the northern tower of the house; a low-pitched spacious apartment with

some fine Chippendale chairs in it and a dressing-table for which any

Bond Street dealer would cheerfully have paid a thousand pounds. Gavin

delighted in these things because he was an artist; while the attendant

luxury, the service of man and valet, the superb fittings of the

bathroom adjoining his bedroom, the fruit, the cigarettes, the books

which decorated the apartment, seemed in some way to be the reward of

his own labors, not to speak of the attainments of long-cherished

ambitions.

To this historic chamber he retired on the evening of the third day,

and having added a little to his plans, read some pages of a county

history and smoked a final and contemplative pipe, he undressed and got

into bed, and for an hour or more slept that refreshing sleep which

attends judicious success and a mind little given to trivialities.

From this, against all habit, he passed to dreams, at first welcome and

pleasing; dreams of broad acres and sheltering trees and a land of

plenty--then to visions more disturbing, and to one, chiefly of a storm

passing over the woods and his own spirit abroad in the storm and

unable to find harborage. As a weary bird that can reach no shelter

and is buffeted by every wind, so did he, in his dream, appear to be

cast out from the world and unable to return to his home and kindred; a

wanderer through a tempestuous night, beyond whose horizon, far beyond

it but ever growing more distant, there arose the crimson light of day

and the dawning beams of the hidden sun. Strive as he would he could

not cast the darkness from him or shut out the sounds of wild winds

blowing in his ears. Unseen hands held him back; voices mocked him; he

heard the rustling of wings and was conscious of the movements of

unknown figures. And then he awoke to find a light shining full in his

face and to see two black eyes peering down at him beyond it. But for

an instant he saw them; then the light was blown out swiftly and utter

darkness fell. He knew that he was not alone; but feared nothing, he

knew not why.

Some man had entered his room while he slept and stood, he imagined,

even at that moment so close to his bedside that he had but to put out

a hand to touch him. Who the man was or what his errand might be,

Gavin did not attempt even to guess. More by force of habit than from

any other reason, he asked aloud, "Who is there, what do you

want?"--but he did not expect to be answered, nor did any sound follow

his question. Lying quite still upon the bed and beginning to be a

little alarmed as his senses came back to him, he listened intently for

an echo of footsteps across the polished floor, arguing that the

unknown man would wear no boots and must turn the handle of a door to

go. This was no burglar, he felt sure; and he was half willing to

believe that he had dreamed the whole episode when a footfall made

itself plainly audible, and was followed by a deep breath as of one who

until that time had been afraid to breathe at all. Again Gavin asked,

"What is it, what do you want?" The silence continued unbroken, and

the fear of things unknown robbed him for the moment of the voice to

repeat the question. This he set down afterward to the traditions of

Melbourne Hall and his intimate knowledge of them. He would not have

been afraid in any other house.

Gavin stretched out his hand and tried to switch on the electric light.

A clumsy effort in an unfamiliar room found him passing his fingers

idly over a wainscoted wall; and when he felt for the reading lamp by

his bedside, he overturned it with his elbow and could not replace the

plug which his maladroitness had detached. Alarmed now as he never

believed that any situation could alarm him, he sprang from his bed and

felt with both hands extended for the figure which the room concealed.

Hither, thither, with an oath upon his clumsiness, he sought the

unknown, his hands touching unfamiliar objects, the darkness seeming

almost to mock him. That the unknown man was still in the room he had

no doubt whatever; for the interludes repeated the sound of quick

breathing and he heard a garment rustling just as he had heard it in

his sleep. Once, indeed, he felt the warm breath upon his cheek and

struck savagely at an enemy of sounds, who still uttered no word nor

would acknowledge his presence. Had he been calmer, he might have

known that the darkness also deceived the intruder and that he too was

at a loss to escape; but this Gavin did not discover until the door

opened suddenly and a flash of light from the corridor struck across

the room like a sunbeam suddenly admitted by a lifted blind. Then he

saw the face of the escaping man for the second time and stood amazed

at its familiarity.

"The old gypsy I saw in the park yesterday walking with the Earl," he

said, astounded, and then, "What in the devil's name is he doing here?"

That should not have been a difficult question to answer, and Gavin

instantly determined to make no mention of it until the morning. The

fellow was probably a thief, who had the run of the house and had taken

advantage of its master's forbearance. It would be sufficient to name

the circumstance at the breakfast table and to leave the rest to the

Earl, who could act in the matter as he pleased. None the less, Gavin

found his nerves much shaken and sleep for the remainder of the night

was out of the question. Switching on every lamp in his room, and

locking and bolting the heavy door, he sat by the open window and asked

himself into what house of mysteries he had stumbled and what secrets

it was about to reveal to him. But chiefly he asked where he had met

the Lady Evelyn before ... and memory befriending him suddenly, as

memory will at a crisis, he exclaimed aloud:

"The Carlton Theatre--Haddon Hall--Etta Romney, by all that's amazing!"

Was the thought also a chimera of the night? He knew not what to

think. The dawn found him still at his window debating it.

CHAPTER XVIII

A DUEL OVER THE TEA-CUPS

Gavin had always been an early riser and one who flouted the modern

idea that the world should be aired before men went abroad. Faithful

to his habit, the following morning found him riding in the park a

little after seven o'clock; and not until the sweet cold air of the

highlands had recompensed him for a waking night did he return to the

Hall and the generous breakfast table there spread for him. A

professed disciple of the simple life, Gavin confessed that the Earl's

lavish hospitalities were altogether too much for his philosophy; and

he ate and drank with the hearty relish of one to whom these unending

luxuries were both a revelation in the art of living and a satire upon

the habits of the rich.

What vast quantities of food were heaped upon that priceless

sideboard--in dishes of shining silver, each warmed by the clear flame

of a silver lamp beneath. Lift a lid of one of those granaries and

there you would espy an omelet which none but a man from Paris could

cook. Peep into another and there are eggs prepared so cunningly that

they would melt the heart of Master Fastidity himself. Fish and fowl

and flesh, great red joints upon the buffet, exquisite peaches from the

hothouses, bunches of grapes that would have taken prizes in any

show--how ironical to remember the class of man who usually sat to such

a table, his ennui, his distaste, and the abstinence cure the

physicians compelled him to practise. Gavin was just a hearty

Englishman, fit and strenuous and needing no "waters" to make life

endurable. He took what came to him and made no bones about it. Had

he been a rich man himself, he would have done the same, he thought.

Humbug was no part of his creed, and he never mistook necessity for

self-sacrifice.

The Earl had not come down when he entered the famous breakfast-room,

and, not a little to his satisfaction, he found himself alone with Lady

Evelyn for the first time since his arrival at the Manor. A student of

faces always, he studied this face to-day with a curiosity which he set

down to his own delusions rather than to an absolute interest in the

personality of a stranger. A beautiful woman he had admitted her to be

when first he saw her by her father's side upon the night which carried

him to the Hall. But now his scrutiny went deeper, and, so far as

opportunity served, he looked at her as one seeking a woman's secret,

and seeking it with a man's desire to help her.

And first he said that it was an English face in repose, and yet not an

English face when the repose was lost. The masses of jet black hair

would have excited no surprise upon the Corso at Rome or shining in an

aureole cast out from a Florentine window. Here, in England, the

tresses spoke of the South and its suns--and yet, in flat

contradiction, the perfect skin, smooth and silky as the leaf of a pink

white rose, could tell of English lanes and sunless days and the kinder

climate of the North. Character he read in the firm contour of her

chin--romance and passion in the deep blue of her eyes and the

modulations of a voice whose music had not been lost in the roaring

Saturnalia of the modern _salon_. That he himself had so far failed to

attract her notice was a fact which neither wounded his vanity nor

abated his interest. It had been the first maxim of his life to hasten

slowly, and to no pursuit was this maxim more necessary than to that of

friendship.

This, then, was the estimate which one strong personality formed of

another; the man saying to himself, "I would read this woman's heart!"

the woman asking herself if she must talk architecture until the Earl

came to her assistance. Breaking the ice with a common observation,

she remarked that she had seen him galloping across the park and

regretted the dilatory habit which kept her in bed.

"Getting up is a foreign art," she said. "It lives in kitchens and

places where they scrub. The doctors positively forbid it nowadays.

And, of course, life is too short to disobey the doctors."

Gavin looked at her with the air of a man who has too much common sense

to deal in frivolities and rarely troubled to say the thing which was

not.

"They talk nonsense," he said quietly; "the profession is becoming far

too commercial. It lives and thrives upon the credulity of fools.

Just consider--man is the only animal which does not glory in the

Creator's gift, the dawning day and all its wonders. For what do we

change it! For the electric light and the champagne which disagrees

with us? We borrow of the night and then grumble because we have

nothing to offer the day. If men could get up at five o'clock and go

to bed at ten, they would begin to understand the realities of living."

Evelyn, much amused at his earnestness and quite understanding that

some pleasant originality of character dictated the outburst, looked at

him a little mischievously from beneath her long lashes while she said:

"In winter--surely not five o'clock then, Mr. Ord?"

"Not at all," was the quick reply; "we are expected to use our common

sense in the matter. A winter's dawn is distinctly unpleasant; have

nothing to do with it. A true benefactor of mankind would help us to

hibernate. Imagine how splendid it would be to sleep from the

twenty-sixth day of December until the first day of April. Those are

the months of the income tax--of no interest to you, Lady Evelyn, but

of great importance to poor people who are unable to help the

Government to throw hay into the sea from the shores of South Africa.

Blot out the winter, by all means; but leave us the summer, and do not

expect us to spend the best hours of it in bed."

"Am I, then, personally guilty in the matter? Frankly, you will never

convert me. I am hateful before ten o'clock, and if I go riding before

that time, the very horses tremble. Consider what going to bed at ten

o'clock would mean to us in the season?"

"I have considered it often. We should be spared a large number of

very indifferent plays; a great many falsehoods would not be told to

our acquaintances; old gentlemen would not, under such circumstances,

need to go to Carlsbad to be scrubbed. You would save vast quantities

of good food; learn what the country is to those who really know it;

and, perhaps, discover that strange personality, yourself. Why should

we be so frightened of such an excellent companion? Men and women tell

you that they do not like to be alone. Is not that to say that they

desire to keep self at a distance. The fellow would be troublesome,

ask questions, and that sort of thing. But let others always be

shouting in our ears (and modern society has excellent lungs), then we

keep the stranger out and are glad to be quit of him. Some achieve the

same end by work. I am one of them. When my work gets hold of me I

cannot answer a common question decently. Sometimes I wake up suddenly

and say, 'My dear Gavin, how are you getting on and what have you been

doing all this time?' I become solicitous for the fellow and want to

peep into his private books. That is often at dawn, Lady Evelyn, just

when the sun is shooting up over the horizon. Then a man may not be

ashamed to meet himself. For the rest of the time he is often

play-acting."

A faint blush came to her cheeks and she turned away her head.

"Why not if play-acting amuses us? Perhaps we are not all contented

with that amiable stranger, ourselves. Some other figure of the

present or the past may seem more desirable as a friend. Is there any

law of Nature which compels us to take one personality rather than

another? Cannot you imagine a man or a woman living years of

make-believe--play-acting always, if by play-acting they can discover a

world more desirable than the one they live in? We speak of

imagination as a rare gift. I doubt if it is so. Even little children

have their dream-worlds, and they are more remarkable than any books.

I would say that your outlook is too limited. You see one side of

life, Mr. Ord, and quarrel with those who can look tolerantly upon

both."

Gavin was honest enough to admit that it might be so.

"Yes," he said, "I grant you that the world is sometimes better for

make-believe. If we did not deceive ourselves, some of us would commit

suicide. The age is to blame for the necessity. We have not color

enough in our lives, and even our devotions are often entirely selfish.

Witness the case of a modern millionaire who is proud of being called

'a hustler.' This rogue tells his friends that he has no time for

ordinary social intercourse. My answer is that he ought to be hanged

out of hand. Such a fellow never comes face to face with himself once

in twenty years. Men envy him and yet despise him. Take the meanest

hero of mediaeval fiction and place him side by side with a Gould or a

Vanderbilt. What a very monarch he becomes! Total up the riches of a

trust and remember Mozart died of starvation. Vulgarity

everywhere--none of us is free from it. Our very ambitions are

advertised."

"And we have not even the courage to hide ourselves in nunneries."

"They would come here with cameras and photograph our habits. No, we

must accept the position frankly and make the best of it. That carries

me round the circle. By getting up with the sun we see something of

ourselves sometimes. Our work is not then the whole occupation of the

day."

"But yours, surely, is not work you despise, Mr. Ord?"

"So little that I fear it on that very account. Just imagine how this

house is going to make a captive of me. I shall know every stone of it

before a month has passed. I will tell you then all its truths and all

its fables. The dead will become my intimate friends. I shall

reconstruct from the beginning. I must do it, for how shall I dare to

touch the hallowed walls unless something of the builder's secret is

known to me. In six months' time I will show the harvest of dreams.

In six months' time----"

"In six months' time! What an age to wait! I may not be in England

then."

"You will return to be my critic."

"I may never return."

"Never return! my dear lady, you could not possibly desert Melbourne

Hall. The very stones would cry out upon you."

"Oh," she said, looking straight into his face; "my husband may not

like England, you know."

"I will believe it when he has the courage to tell me so."

"Men are generally courageous when it is a question of telling a woman

what they do not like. I am to live in Bukharest, be it known. My

summers will be spent in the Carpathians. I shall become a child of

the primitive colors--the red, the blue, and the orange--which Menie

Muriel Dowie tells us are an eternal delight to the eyes. I am

promised glorious weeks on the Black Sea, and more glorious weeks on

seas which are not black. The sun is always shining there--why should

one want to come back to England?"

Had anyone asked Evelyn why she spoke in this way to a stranger, a man

of whose existence she had hardly been aware yesterday, she would

certainly have been unable to give a satisfactory answer. To no other

in all her life had she spoken so openly and so readily as to this

fair-haired, blue-eyed Englishman, who did not appear to have one grain

of humbug in all his body. Her surprise was not greater than her

pleasure; she would not deny that it pleased her thus to confess

intimate thoughts which she had not shared even with her own father.

Gavin, upon his part, a servant of candor always, observed nothing

unusual in her freedom; but he could ask himself already if she were in

love with the man to whom her future was pledged.

"We are forgetting how to be serious," he rejoined; "that is also one

of the vices of the age. People chatter away as though words were

enough and the truth of words nothing at all. You do not mean anything

you say, and you expect me to listen to you in the same spirit. I

decline to do so. If you go to Bukharest, you will come back again

before the year is out. As for the blue, red and orange, well, I could

as soon imagine you buying an early Victorian sideboard. That is my

frank opinion. You must forgive me if it offends?"

He looked straight into her eyes and she did not turn away. Gavin Ord

was unlike any man she had known--not by mere cleverness alone, but by

that strength of will and character which could not fail to assert

itself in any company, whatever its nature. Here sat one whom, were he

to command her, she would certainly obey. Such a possibility of

docility astonished Evelyn beyond measure--but it also encouraged her

to put a question to him.

"Frank opinions need no forgiveness," she said. "I am longing for

more, Mr. Ord. You told me last night that you believed you had met me

in London. Please tell me where it was."

She asked the question with some pretty pretence of indifference which

did not deceive him for an instant. It is better, he thought, that I

should tell her, and so he said, without any affectation whatever:

"I am quite wrong, of course; but when I thought the matter over I

remembered that a young actress, who made a great sensation at the

Carlton Theatre in May, might have been named for your own sister.

That is what gave me the idea that I had seen you before."

"How strange! Do you also remember the lady's name?"

"Perfectly. All London went mad over her. She called herself Etta

Romney, and the play showed just such a house as this. It was the old

story of Di Vernon retold, Lady Evelyn."

"You were much taken with the play, it appears?"

"Not with the play at all. But I thought Etta Romney one of the

cleverest women I have ever seen on the stage."

"Is she playing still, may I ask?"

"You know that she is not, Lady Evelyn."

"I know it--are you serious?"

"So serious that I shall forget the subject until you choose to speak

of it again."

"But it interests me greatly," she pleaded, with that insistence which

often attends the discussion of things better avoided. "If I am really

so like somebody else, ought I not to be curious? You say----"

"Indeed, I say nothing," he exclaimed quickly, and then in a lower

voice--"at least until the Earl has breakfasted."

She did not reply. The Earl entered the room and began at once to

speak of Gavin's work and the arrangements which must be made for it.

CHAPTER XIX

FROM THE BELFRY TOWER

Gavin's little band of workmen ran up a light scaffold of ladders and

boards for him against the belfry tower, and had it finished upon the

morning of the conversation with the Lady Evelyn. To this height he

climbed early in the day, when began an examination of the decaying

fabric and set down the first lines of the report he had to make to the

Earl. The old building was in a shocking state certainly; the

plumb-line declared surprising departures from that stately grace of

perpendicularity the text-books had taught him to esteem. Gavin should

have taken the greatest interest in all this, but he did not. Had you

spoken to him yesterday, he would have been ready to declare that

nothing on earth could be more fascinating than the very task he now

pretended to be engaged upon; but his habitual candor came to his

rescue to-day and he now pronounced the work to be almost distasteful.

For, in truth, he had discovered a secret as old as man, and the

delight of that new knowledge surpassed the worker's dreams by far.

He stood upon a dizzy height, but custom had staled the peril of his

employment, and, in this aspect, fear was unknown to him. A high

trembling ladder permitted him to climb up to a couple of boards

suspended from the parapet above by frail ropes cunningly wound about

the embrasures of the battlements. He stood with his back to a mossy

wall; beneath him lay the fair domain of Melbourne Hall; its ancient

trees so many children's fretted toys; its grass lands supremely green;

pool and lake and river ablaze with the golden light of an Autumn sun.

But more to Gavin than these was the figure of the Lady Evelyn herself,

clearly to be seen in the glade where the gypsies had pitched their

camp--the figure of an English girl divinely tall, of one whom the

splendid woods might well choose for their divinity.

She rode through the glade and by her side their walked a rough fellow,

who, Gavin thought, would have been much better in Derby jail than

idling in the home park at Melbourne. Some chance observations which

had fallen from servants' lips had made him acquainted with the

circumstances under which these apparent vagrants had come to

Derbyshire; and he was quick enough to perceive the connection between

the Earl's younger days and this odd visitation.

"He knew these fellows in Roumania and they have come here to blackmail

him," was the unspoken comment. "Their master is a shady Roumanian

Count--one of the long-haired brand, who ogle the women. I take it

that she had promised to marry this man, not altogether at her father's

bidding, but just because he is romantic liar enough to appeal to one

side of her imagination. That's what sent her to London play-acting.

She had to escape from this monotony or it would have killed her.

Well, I think I know the temperament--a very dangerous temperament

which has sent many a woman the wrong way and will send many more

before the world is done with."

He turned again to the crumbling stone work and passed his hand idly

over it. This old house, how many women's hearts had it not imprisoned

and stilled! What stories of woman's love and passion could it not

unfold if these rotting stones might speak? Many a Di Vernon had gone

forth from secret doors to meet her lover; many a one had lived and

died with her girlish secret unspoken. Study in those records and the

true story of Evelyn, my Lord of Melbourne's daughter, would be read.

A brave girl, a lonely girl, full of the stuff of which dreams are

made, such he believed her to be. And she had come suddenly into his

life, bidding him turn from his work to gaze after her, impotently as a

man may look upon a precious thing he may never possess. For even if

she loved him, what right had he to speak to her; what position or name

had he to give her? He was a worker in clay. Bricks and mortar were

not the tokens in which a woman's imagination deals.

"If I built a cathedral," he said to himself ironically, "she would

merely say, 'How draughty!' It is necessary to be a brigand or a

musician to reach the heart of her desires."

So the work went on a little savagely. He had the scaffold shifted to

the tower of the chapel where the clock face records the deeds of that

Lord of Melbourne who fell with Picton's troop at Waterloo. "Time

passed above his head but will turn to look at him..." the inscription

went. Gavin was cleaning the dust of the century from it when he heard

a voice upon the parapet above, and looking up he perceived my Lady

Evelyn there, standing by the battlement and watching him curiously.

"Is not that dreadfully dangerous?" she asked him, indicating the frail

scaffold upon which he stood.

He answered at once by another question.

"Do you refer to Time? If so, yes, it is always dangerous. Time never

sleeps, remember."

She laughed and leaned over, a little afraid of the height, but

desiring, she knew not why, to hear him talk.

"You will not look Time in the face, then?" she said; "or does the bell

of Time speak to you? I know people in France who always cross

themselves when the clock chimes the hour."

"The bells chime eternity--oh, yes. Time rarely laughs if it is not

ironically. Here's a clock which tries to tell all the world how a

brave man died. Time passed him by, but returns twice a day to have a

look at him. The dirt of nearly a hundred years is cast upon his

monument by Time. The ages used to be cleaner, Lady Evelyn. Nowadays

we trample mud on every tomb. There is always an 'if' for the best of

our friends."

"Meaning that some disappointment has made a cynic of you, Mr. Ord?"

"Perhaps, I cannot tell you. What is the good of ideals in this

twentieth century? We have learned to scoff at simple things, faith,

honesty, even courage. Rich men try to believe that they were never

poor and the poor believe that they are rich--and go through the

Bankruptcy Court accordingly. I could do great work in the world, but

my enemy is an estimate. A man no longer builds a temple to the glory

of God; he builds it to the memory of John Snooks, hog-merchant. Most

of our ailments are the penalty of soullessness. If we lived and

strived toward an end, the mind would not smart so often as the body.

That saps our courage as well. I can work upon a scaffold like this

because I have the past all round about me. But directly I cease to

work I become a coward. Time is dangerous because Time is truth; one

of the few truths our modern life permits us to recognize."

"Then you do really believe that the old glory of achievement lingers

somewhere?"

"In the imagination of men who would be artists but remain the servants

of Mammon. Let me interrupt you to beg a favor. Your arm is shifting

the rope and if it gave way----"

"The rope--the one I am leaning against? Does that go down to your

scaffolding? I never noticed it."

"There is no damage done," he said quietly; "please pull it down over

the stone-work. No, hardly that way. Let me come up and show you."

A short ladder led up from the scaffold to the roof of the clock tower.

The foothold of planks was held up by stout ropes wound about the

embrasures of the parapets. Unconsciously as she talked to him, Evelyn

had shifted the right-hand rope from its place and Gavin's heart leaped

when he perceived that in another instant boards and man and ladder

must go headlong to the stone terrace below. In truth, the climax came

while the light words were still upon his lips, and the rope, slipping

away from the girl's weak hand, the scaffold swung out in an instant

and Gavin was left above the abyss, his fingers twined about the second

rope and his feet vainly seeking a hold against the time-worn stone.

Men fight for their lives in many ways--the cowards desperately and

without reason, brave men with a quick apprehension of the

circumstances and a bold course from which fear does not divert them.

Desperate as Gavin's situation had become, he realized the whole truth

of it in an instant. Forty feet below him was the square flagged

pavement built about the belfry door. Above him a single rope swayed

and strained against the stone of the parapet, here bulging outward and

difficult to climb. If the rope held, Gavin believed that he might

touch the parapet, but to mount it would be an acrobat's task. Other

help seemed impossible to bring. His assistants had gone down to the

outer stables to load up the permanent scaffold. His quick eye could

not detect the presence of a single human being in the vicinity of the

gardens. Evelyn herself stood as one petrified by the battlements,

afraid for the instant to lift a hand or utter a word lest the spell of

his momentary safety would be broken. She had never possessed that

particular courage which stands upon a height unflinchingly, and this

dreadful accident found all her nervous impulse paralyzed and

shattered. She listened, as in a trance of terror beyond all words to

describe, for the broken cry which would speak of death; for the sound

of a body falling upon the flags below. Infinitely beyond Gavin Ord's,

her imagination added its darkest picture to her handiwork. She

clinched her hands, fearing their clumsiness, and with eyes half-closed

drew back from the battlements. Never until this day had she seen a

man die; never had she been asked to take an instantaneous resolution

wherein the measure of her own peril might be the measure of another

man's safety. If for the briefest instant she failed to answer the

call, cowardice had no part in her irresolution. Few would have acted

otherwise.

Gavin climbed the rope almost inch by inch, seeking as he did so a

foothold upon the rotting stone and careful always to bring no sudden

jerk upon the trembling cord. It seemed an eternity before he reached

the forbidding parapet where the graver danger must be faced; but when

he did so and tried to put an arm over the bulging stone, then he

understood that if none came to his assistance, he was most certainly

doomed. Beneath him, the crumbling cornice became so much powdered

dust whenever his feet touched it--he could find no foothold there, nor

so much as feel a single projection upon the buttress by which he might

pull himself up to safety. And his wrists now ached with a pain which

threatened to become intolerable, the rope cut his hands until drops of

blood trickled from them to his face. Salvation depended upon that

which he could do while a man might count twenty, and with death

looking up at him exultingly, he made a last effort to surmount the

bulging parapet and in the same instant told himself that it was

impossible.

"My God," he cried aloud; "I cannot do it--I cannot do it!"

Perhaps he no longer feared death. There is this merit of exhaustion

in danger that it blinds the imagination and leaves indifference to the

ultimate issue. Gavin was just at that point when a man is incapable

of further effort, even in the cause of his own safety, when, looking

up, he perceived Evelyn at the balustrade, her face deathly white, her

eyes shining terror; but her acts were as cool and collected as they

had been when first he met her in the long gallery of Melbourne Hall.

Waked from the trance of fear by the words he had spoken, she cast one

quick glance at the figure swaying upon the rope; then turned about her

and, stooping, she picked up the long rope which her own maladroitness

had displaced from the battlements. Methodically and without a

blunder, she made a noose in this and passed it over the parapet.

"Slip your arm over it," she said, in a voice that betrayed no emotion

whatever. "I will tie it to the weather-vane--please, please try. I

can help you--I am very strong, Mr. Ord. Yes, that is the way--now

take my hand--don't be afraid to hurt me--yes, yes, like that."

He slipped one arm over the noose and changing hands cleverly upon the

other rope and digging his feet deep into the rotting stone, he drew

the noose around his body while she caught up the slack of the cord and

bound it round and round the great iron pillar of the weather-vane

which crowns the Belfry Tower of Melbourne Hall. His position was such

in this instant that he hung out clear above the abyss with his face

upon a level with the parapet and his body backward to the flags below.

All depended upon the iron pillar of the weather-vane and the stuff of

which the rope was made. Gavin had no alternative but to trust to it,

and he swung himself out fearlessly with one earnest prayer for safety

upon his lips. So near to him that he wondered that his arms could not

touch her was the figure of Evelyn, seeming to beckon him to salvation.

He felt the noose draw tight about his body, and for some instants he

swung to and fro almost with the content of one who has waged a good

fight and would sleep. Then her voice came welcomely to his ears once

more, bidding him make an effort; and at this he pulled himself up

almost with superhuman will and touched the round of the stone-work

with his hands laid flat upon it and his knees bent upon the

balustrade. Would he fall back once more or had she the strength to

save him? Her little hands had caught him by the wrists now; and,

kneeling, she exerted a strength she had never known herself to

possess. Must they go crashing together to the flags shining in the

sunlight below? In vain he supplicated her to release her hold and

leave him to do battle for himself.

"I shall pull you over," he cried madly. "For God's sake, leave me to

myself!"

She scarcely heard him; her eyes were closed, her lips were hard set;

she had thrown her whole weight backward from the hips and with every

muscle straining, every danger forgotten, but that of the man whose

safety she had imperilled, she drew him to her side and fell fainting

before him.

Gavin was dizzy and sick from fear. His hands were cut and bleeding;

his clothes torn to ribbons; he could hear the heavy pulsation of his

heart when he bent to lift Evelyn in his strong arms as one who,

henceforth, had some right to do so.

"The worst may become the best," he said to himself quietly; "she will

tell me her story now."

And so he carried her down to the Long Gallery and Melbourne Hall heard

of the accident for the first time.

CHAPTER XX

LOVERS

Gavin's belief that Evelyn would now make a confidant of him rested

largely upon a knowledge of human nature, which the great and

successful school of endeavor had revealed to him. Nor was he in any

way mistaken. The intimacy of a peril, mutually dared and overcome,

brought the man and the woman together as years of social intercourse

could not have done. That very night they walked in the Italian

Gardens of Melbourne Hall and spoke as freely as brother and sister

might have done.

"I like your guest," Gavin began--and he referred to a young solicitor

by name Gilbert Ray, who had come down from London by the afternoon

train--"I like your guest. The fact that he is losing his hair is a

point in his favor. When you think how much the head of a prosperous

lawyer must carry, it is a wonder that there is room for any of the

commoner emotions at all. Not a month ago, Sir Francis Button told me

that he could lock up half the great people in town, politicians

included, by one turn of a little key in his safe. My fingers would be

itching all day to open that safe if I were he. Just think of the

blessings I should confer upon the halfpenny papers. A Cabinet

Minister in the police court. They would leave the war out altogether

next day. After all, the world takes nothing very seriously nowadays."

"Not even itself," said Evelyn, almost as one speaking with regret.

"We are growing too cynical even to deceive ourselves, and that used to

be the most pleasant of all amusements. But I agree with you about Mr.

Ray. His face is an honest one. I wonder if it is any drawback to him

in his business."

Gavin laughed, wondering perhaps at the flippancy of their talk and

their mutual desire to avoid any reference to that which had befallen

them earlier in the day. By common consent they would not speak of the

accident; each believed that some self-applause must attend the recital

of it, and, save for a few brief words when Evelyn had recovered that

morning, their resolution of silence remained unshaken. Out here upon

the open lawns with the deep crimson shades of the dining-room making a

fairy scene behind them; out here where the night breeze was like a

breath of a tired sleeper and the river below droned a lullaby, it was

difficult enough to realize that death had been so recently their

neighbor. Nor had they the desire to do so. This new intimacy of

association was a gracious gift to them both; and Evelyn, not less than

he, understood that it might yet influence the years to come.

"Honesty is always a drawback in certain professions," Gavin said, as

they wandered away from the open windows to the darker shades beneath

the yews; "an honest doctor would be in danger of starving, while an

honest photographer would certainly go to the workhouse. Mr. Ray, at

least, was honest in his desire to get rid of us. His remarks upon the

beauty of the evening I found quite superfluous."

"My father is very anxious to talk to him," Evelyn said quickly. "I am

sure you have remarked his abstracted manner since you came here. A

stranger would notice such things at once. He is not well, and I fear

is in great trouble, Mr. Ord. Perhaps he will tell Mr. Ray. I hope

sincerely that he will do so."

"Then he has said nothing to you, Lady Evelyn?"

"He has said that which I find great difficulty in understanding. I

wish it were otherwise. A woman is never able to estimate a man's

danger correctly. There are so many things of which she takes no

account."

"When she will not permit a man to help her. I am asking you to tell

me the story, you see. It has been in my mind to do so for some hours

past. Of course, I have known that there is a story. I should never

regret coming to Melbourne Hall if I could be of the slightest use to

you, Lady Evelyn. Will you not make me your friend?"

He drew her still farther apart, down to that very bridge he had

crossed the night he came to the Hall; that night of weird

hallucination and childish phantoms. Standing by the low balustrade

(she half-sitting upon it and watching the eddies in the pool below),

she spoke of Etta Romney and of a young girl whose dreams had sent her

to London.

"I have always delighted to live in a world of my own making," she said

frankly. "There are days together when I believe myself to be some one

else and act and do that which I believe they would have acted and

done. The theatre stood to me for a very heaven of self-deceptions. I

read of it in books, dreamed of it in my sleep, tried to picture it as

it must be. Oh, yes, I have spoken my own plays aloud beneath the

trees of this Park so many days. I was Di Vernon, my Lady Beatrice,

Viola, Desdemona, all the young girls you can name in the books.

Sometimes I had the idea to run away and hide myself from everyone in

that great picture land my visions showed to me. No one here could

share my thoughts. My father adored me, but has never understood me.

To him, I am the child of the woman he loved beyond anything on earth.

He guards me as though some change would come upon me if he ceased his

vigilance. Then irony appears and says it is my father who is

changing. I have been aware of it ever since Count Odin visited us.

These wild men have brought misfortune to our house and God knows where

we are drifting. I thought at one time that if I married the Count

that would be the end of everything. I can believe it no longer. My

father is tempted to sacrifice me; but he would regret it all his life

if he did so. Can you blame me if I think of London again--seriously

and forever!"

Gavin answered her with difficulty. He knew so few of the facts of her

story as yet that his common sense warned him to speak guardedly.

"I should be the last to blame you," he said slowly; "but surely there

is an alternative? We take a desperate step when other and wiser roads

are closed to us. Let me try to understand it better. Count Odin, you

say, has some hold upon your father----"

"I did not say so, surely----"

"Then I imagine as much. He has some hold upon your father, obtained

by that which happened in Bukharest many years ago. Do you know

precisely what his claim is?"

"His father's liberty. The old Chevalier Georges Odin is a prisoner in

one of the mines on the borders of the Black Sea. The Count declares

that this is my father's work. I cannot tell you if it be true or

false. If it is true, I will see that we leave no stone unturned to

set Georges Odin free. I wish I could be so sure that his liberty will

bring no peril upon my father."

"The men were enemies, then?"

"I have understood as much. They were rivals for my dead mother's

hand."

"And your father profited by his enemy's political misfortune?"

"I must believe it, since he is afraid to give this man his liberty."

"A natural fear--in Roumania; not, I think, in England. Will you let

me ask how your marriage with the young Count would help your father in

his difficulty?"

"I do not know, unless it is assumed that as Georges Odin's

daughter-in-law, I should pay the debt my father owes."

"And save him from a purely imaginary danger?"

"Would you think it purely imaginary when you remember the guests we

entertain in our Park?"

"The gypsies--could the police say nothing to them? Remember we are

living in England, where all the fine sentiments preached in Southern

Europe are so many heroics to be laughed at. If a Roumanian were to

challenge me to avenge the honor of my ancestors by cutting his throat

in the Carpathians, I should put his letter among my curiosities.

Vendettas and secret societies and such absurdities have no place among

us outside the theatre. That's why I say that this matter should be

dealt with in an English way. If your father has done any man a wrong,

he, as an English gentleman, will do his best to put it right. All the

rest is merely tall talk. It should not even be taken into account,

and would not be, I think, unless there are circumstances of which I

know nothing. That is why I speak with reservation. I know so little

of your father, and he is one of the most difficult men to know that I

have met."

Evelyn shook her head.

"Every man is difficult to know and every woman," he said

philosophically; "those who seem most superficial are often the people

we understand least. Here am I talking to you as I have never talked

to anyone in all my life, and yet you know nothing about me whatever."

"I differ from that entirely."

"Indeed, it is true. If it were not, you would not have asked me why I

let them say that I am going to marry Count Odin."

"You let them say it because it is too foolish to contradict."

"Nothing of the kind. I let them say it because my mother would have

married his father had her wishes been consulted. Oh, I know that so

well. Every day my inheritance speaks to me. I am afraid of him, and

yet am drawn toward him. I detest him and yet go to him. Do you

wonder that London seems my only way of escape--the theatre where Etta

Romney can come to life again and Evelyn be forgotten?"

She spoke with some excitement as she always did when the silent voice

within told her again of those triumphs awaiting her upon the stage in

London whenever she had the mind to seek them. Gavin thought that he

understood her; but her confession troubled him none the less. Almost

formal as their conversation had been, there was that in the timbre of

their voices, in their steps, their gestures, their looks, which

declared the pleasure of their intimacy and would have betrayed the

mutual secret to any who might have overheard them. Love, indeed,

laughed aside at the prim phrases and the mock sophistries--and none

realized this more surely than Gavin.

"I hope it would be as a last resource," said Gavin presently, still

thinking of her threat to return to the theatre. "You must not forget

that your friends may have something to say in the matter."

"My friends! Who are my friends?" she exclaimed hotly. "The

chattering doctor, who is always looking for an excuse to feel my

pulse. The vicar, who is so dreadfully afraid of his wife hearing the

nonsense he talks to me. Young John Hall, who can speak of nothing

else but Yorkshire cricket scores. I have no friends--unless it be the

dogs."

Gavin drew a little nearer to her, and confronting her suddenly, he

said:

"Then here is a new breed of hound and one that will be faithful."

She turned away her head, forgetting that the darkness hid her crimson

cheeks from him.

"I must not listen to you--I, who am to be Count Odin's wife," she said.

"You will never be Count Odin's wife," he rejoined. "I forbid it, you

have given me the right. Listen to me, Evelyn. The night I came to

Melbourne Hall, I heard a voice calling to me as I crossed this very

bridge. It was your voice. I looked over and I saw a face down there

in the river and it was your face. That night I did not know why

Destiny had sent me to this house. But I know it now, and it makes me

say to you, 'I love you--I love you, Evelyn, and my love will save

you.' When you tell me that you must not hear me, it is not yourself

speaking but another. I love you, and, before God, I will not rest day

or night until I have saved your father and you from this shadow which

has come upon your lives. It is yours to give me the right to do

so--here and now, the right your heart bids you give me and you will

not deny."

He took her hands in both of his and drew her toward him. She resisted

him a brief moment; then suddenly, as though disguise were idle, she

lifted her lips to his and kissed him.

"From myself," she said; "save me from myself."

CHAPTER XXI

ZALLONY'S SON

Gavin permitted her to escape his arms when he heard the Earl calling

to them from the Italian garden above the river. A sense of

exultation, of ecstasy no words could measure, possessed him as he

watched the slim white-clad figure, here disappearing, there showing

itself again between the ramparts of the splendid trees. She was his,

henceforth and forever. All her beauty, her charm, her intellect,

every grace of speech and manner had passed to his possession.

This stately girl of whom the countryside spoke as of some wondrous

divinity, she had promised to become his wife; for him the warm kisses

of her lips, the declared secrets of her eloquent eyes, the passionate

ardor of her embraces. Yesterday he would have called himself a madman

to have dared the meanest of the hopes which now might be regarded with

equanimity. To-night he could recall them with that kind incredulity

which even attends the first hours of such an avowal as this. What act

or purpose of his life had brought him such a reward; why had she

deemed him worthy? he asked himself. He was neither a vain man nor a

fool. If he contemplated his good fortune with a just trepidation,

none the less he believed himself to merit it. She loved him, and

henceforth might claim his life. This was the whole lesson of the

first brief moments of delight.

Gavin was far too excited to think of returning to the Castle; nor had

he any wish to speak to the Earl until his own story presented itself

to him in some reasonably plausible shape. Under other circumstances,

he could have understood the anger and the impatience which such a

declaration might bring upon him; but these he did not expect at

Melbourne Hall. Robert Forrester seemed to him rather an aristocrat by

accident than by birth. He, himself, would not in any case consider

the dignity of his own life and calling as beneath that of one whose

ancestors had been the jest of London in the days of the Stuarts. He

had the right of an honored name, of considerable achievement, and of

his youth; and by these he claimed her. Moreover, the secrets of the

Hall were now his own; and he understood that the forgotten years

stalked as ghosts through the splendid chambers, speaking of passions

outlived and of the aftermath to be garnered from their fields. Father

and daughter alike were reaping that which had been sown in Bukharest

more than twenty years ago. From his just judgment, from her

birthright, it lay upon the stranger to save them. Gavin determined to

begin his work that very night.

He had lighted a pipe when Evelyn left him, and with this glowing in

the darkness, he set out, with no definite purpose in his mind, toward

the gypsy encampment down in the hollow by the river. Behind him,

Melbourne Hall stood up as a glittering palace of a wonder-world, its

windows casting out their brilliant jets to make blacker darkness in

the gardens, and many a picture revealed to speak of ancient centuries

and the momentous history of the house. Ahead of him lay the moonlit

park, the giant yews and elms, the matchless oaks, glades and dells,

where from the elves should come unsurpassable avenues and all the

beauty of the forest scene. Gavin walked on, however, oblivious of the

night or its wonders. He had a vague idea that he might learn

something from the rogues and vagabonds who had followed Count Odin to

Melbourne Hall; and, with this idea indicating his path, he came

presently to the thicket beyond which the encampment lay. There a

sound of voices arrested his attention. Plainly, he said, a woman was

speaking; and while the surprise of this discovery was still upon him,

the music of a violin, weird and echoing, began to accompany the

speaker in a song so plaintive that the very spirit of sorrow appeared

to breathe in every note of it.

Gavin listened to the music spell-bound, and yet a little ashamed of

his position. No possible advantage to himself or others would have

induced him to play an eavesdropper's part at Melbourne or elsewhere.

If he lingered in the shadow of the thicket, it was because the music

compelled him and he could not escape its fascinations. When the sound

of the voice died away, he turned about to come at the encampment by

another road; and then he became aware for the first time that he did

not stand there alone. A pair of black eyes, shining like a cat's in

the darkness, looked up at him as it were from his very shoulder.

Returning their gaze, but not without a quickening pulse and some

apprehension of danger, he could, at length, outline the figure of a

man, slim and agile, and yet not without a certain grace to be

perceived even in such a light. That this fellow was one of the

gypsies he had no doubt at all. The clear moonlit night revealed the

oval face, the restless eyes, the long, tapering hands of a Romany.

Gavin remarked the hands particularly, for one of them was thrust into

the bosom of a spotlessly white and clinging shirt--and that hand, he

said, covered the hilt of a gypsy's knife. So it was to be a hazardous

encounter after all. He understood too well that if he moved so much

as a foot, this gypsy would stab him.

"Why do you watch us, sir?"

The English was execrable but the meaning quite plain. Gavin answered

as abruptly:

"I am listening to your music."

The gypsy, utterly lost in his attempts to continue in a tongue of

which he knew so little, stammered for an instant and then asked curtly:

"Do you speak German, sir?"

"Possibly as well as you do; I have been three years in that excellent

country."

"Please to tell me who you are, then, and why you come to his

Excellency's house?"

Gavin laughed at the impertinence of it. Speaking in fluent German, he

said:

"I might very well put that question to you. Shall I say, then, that I

am not here to answer your questions. Come, we had better be frank

with each other. I may be able to help you."

This was a new idea to the gypsy and one that caused him some

perplexity. A little reflection convinced him that the stranger was

right.

"Very well," he said, "we will talk about it. Come to my tent and

Djala shall make us coffee. Why not be friends? Yes, we might help

each other, as you say. Let us talk first and then we can quarrel."

He led the way through a path of the dell, powdering the ground with

the golden dust of wild flowers as he went. The encampment had been

enlarged considerably since Evelyn discovered it on the gypsies first

coming to Moretown. There were no less than seven tents; and the

biggest of these, the one to which Gavin's guide now conducted him, had

been furnished with lavish generosity. Old silver lamps from the Hall

cast a warm, soft light upon the couches and rugs about; there were old

tapestries hung against the canvas; tables glittering with silver

ornaments; a buffet laden with bottles and silver boxes. But the chief

ornament was Djala, a little Hungarian girl, and such a perfect picture

of wild beauty that Gavin stared at her amazed.

"Here is Djala," the guide said, with a gesture of his hand toward her.

"I am known as Zallony's son. His Excellency may have spoken of me."

"I know nothing," said Gavin simply. "Permit me to tell the young lady

that she has a charming voice. I have never heard music that

fascinated me so much."

"It is the music of a nation of musicians, sir. Please to sit down.

Djala will serve us cigarettes and coffee."

The girl laughed pleasantly, showing a row of shining white teeth and

evidently understanding that a compliment had been paid her by the

stranger. When she had served the coffee and cigarettes, she ran away

with a coquette's step and they heard her singing outside to the soft

accompaniment of a zither. Zallony's son smoked meanwhile with the

contemplative silence of the Oriental; and Gavin, waiting for him,

would not be the first to break the truce.

"So you have been in Germany, sir?"

"I was there three years," said Gavin.

"You know Bukharest, it may be?"

"Not at all, though a lady's book was on the point of sending me to the

Carpathians."

"You should go and see my country; it is the finest in the world."

"I will take care to do so on the earliest opportunity."

"Make friends with my people and they will be your friends. We never

forget, sir. That is why I am here in this English country, because we

never forget."

"The best of qualities.... They tell me that your father was his

Excellency's friend in Roumania many years ago."

The gypsy looked at him questioningly.

"It is as you say, sir. They were brothers of the hills. When the

houses burned and the women ran from the soldiers, then men said it is

Zallony and the English lord. There was another with them. He is in

prison now--he who was my father's friend. Sir, I come to England to

give him liberty."

Gavin was greatly interested. He drained the little cup of coffee,

and, filling a pipe slowly, he said:

"What forbids your success?"

Zallony's son looked him straight in the face.

"A lady known to us--she may forbid it, sir."

"You cannot mean the Lady Evelyn?"

"We will not speak of names. You have her confidence. Say to her that

when she is false to my friend, Count Odin, I will kill her."

"But that is nonsense. What has she to do with it? Your affair is

with the Earl, her father. Why do you speak of her?"

"Because there is only one door by which my father's friend can win his

liberty. Let Georges Odin's son marry an Englishwoman and my

Government will release him."

"That is your view. Do you forget his Excellency's influence? Why

should he not petition the Government at Bukharest for this man's

liberty?"

"Because, in that case, his own life would be in danger. We are a

people that never forgets. I have told you so. If Georges Odin were

at liberty, he would cross the world to find his enemy. That is our

nature. We love and hate as an Eastern people should. The man who

does us a wrong must repay, whoever he is. It would be different if

the young Count had an English wife. That is why I wish it."

Gavin smiled almost imperceptibly.

"It is quite clear that you know little of England," he said. "This

language suits your own country very well. Permit me to say that it is

ridiculous in ours. If Lord Melbourne had any hand in your friend's

imprisonment, which I doubt, he is hardly likely to be influenced by

threats. I should say that you are going the wrong way to work. As to

the Lady Evelyn, I will tell you that she will never be the wife of one

of your countrymen. If you ask a reason, it is a personal one, and

before you now. She is going to marry me. It is just as well that we

should understand as much at once."

The gypsy heard the news as one who had expected to hear it. He smoked

for a little while in silence. Then he said:

"I appreciate the courtesy of your admission. That which I thought it

necessary to tell you at first, I must now repeat ... this lady is the

betrothed of my friend, Count Odin. I remain in England as the

guardian of his honor. If you are wise, you will leave the house

without further warning. My friend is absent, and until he is here I

must speak for him. We do not know you and wish you no harm. Let this

affair end as it began. You would be foolish to do otherwise."

Gavin heard the threat without any sign of resentment whatever.

"You are talking the language of the Carpathians, not of London," he

said, with a new note of determination in his tone. "I will answer you

in my English way. I have asked Lady Evelyn to marry me, and she will

do so before the year is out. That is final. For the rest, I remind

you again that you are not in Bukharest."

He rose, laughing, and offered his hand.

"Good-night," he said. "They will be anxious about me at the Castle."

It was the gypsy's turn to smile.

"I have dealt fairly with you," he said; "for that which is now to

come, do not blame me when it comes."

"Too late is often never," replied Gavin lightly; and with that he left

him.

The gypsy girl, Djala, had ceased to sing as he quitted the tent and

the rest of the encampment was in darkness. But as he crossed the home

park, a burly figure upon a black horse loomed up suddenly from the

shadows and there was still moonlight enough for him to recognize the

Earl.

"He is going to his gypsy friends," Gavin said to himself. "Then he

knows that this brigand's son has spoken to me--ah, I wonder!"

CHAPTER XXII

A SPY FROM BUKHAREST

It is an English characteristic to deride the Europe code of social

ethics and especially those fine heroics which attended the vindication

of what is so often miscalled "honor." Whatever else Gavin Ord lacked,

sound common sense he had abundantly; and that came to his aid when he

returned from the gypsy's tent to the Manor and debated the odd

interview which he had so abruptly terminated. These men, he said,

were mere bravadoes; but they might be dangerous none the less. Of

Count Odin he knew nothing; but his antipathy to all counts was

ineradicable, and he had come to number them together as so many

impostors, valiants, and bankrupts. This habit of thinking first led

him to the supposition that Lord Melbourne, his host, had been the

victim of a little band of swindlers and was about to be blackmailed by

them as few even of the most unfortunate degenerates are blackmailed,

even in this age of accomplished roguery.

"It is a hundred to one old Georges Odin is dead," he argued; "this son

of his got the story somehow and came over here to make what he could

by it. The Earl has lost his nerve, and his love for Evelyn is

betraying him into cowardice. I shall see him and tell him the truth.

If they fire off pistols at me, I must take my luck in my hand. There

may be a deeper story--if so, I shall find it out when the time comes.

I am now to act for Evelyn's sake and think of no consequences which do

not concern her. Very well, I will begin to-morrow and the Earl is my

first step. He shall hear everything. When he has done so, I shall

know what to do."

He slept upon this, but it was a broken sleep whose interludes found

him sitting up in bed listening for any sounds in the house, and

repeating in spite of himself the gypsy threats. He could not forget

that some one had watched him in his sleep when first he came to

Melbourne Hall; and this unforgotten figure his imagination showed to

him again, telling him that it crossed the room with cat-like steps or

breathed upon his face whenever his eyes were closed. His natural

courage made nothing of the darkness; but the suggestion of unknown and

undisclosed danger became intolerable as the night advanced; and at the

very first call of dawn, he drew the curtains back and waited with a

child's longing for the day. When this at length broke above the

night's mists floating up from the river, Gavin rose and put on his

dressing-gown, being quite sure that sleep had, for the time being,

deserted him. True, his odd hallucination that some one was in the

room with him no longer troubled him; but certain facts disquieted him

none the less; and of these, the belief that his wallet and his papers

had been ransacked during the night was not the least alarming. He

felt sure that he could not be mistaken. A man of method, he

remembered clearly how he had placed his papers and in what order he

had left them. Whoever had played the spy's part had done so clumsily,

forgetting to reclasp the wallet and leaving the dressing-table in some

disorder. This troubled Gavin less than the knowledge that some one

had, after all, watched him while he slept and that his dream had not

deceived him. "They take me for a spy from Bukharest," he said ... and

he could laugh at the delusion.

It would have been about five o'clock of the morning by this time; a

glorious hour, full of the sweet breath of day and of that sense of

life and being which is the daydawn's gift. Gavin knew little of the

habits of grooms, save that they were the people who were supposed to

rise with the sun; but when an hour had passed he went out impatiently

to the stables, and there the excellent William found him a "rare ould

divil of a hoss" and one that "came just short of winnin' the National,

to be sure he did." This raw-boned cantankerous brute carried him at a

sound gallop twice round the home park; and, greatly refreshed, he

returned to the Hall and asked the apologetic Griggs if the Earl were

yet down. The answer that "his lordship was awaiting him in the Long

Gallery," hardly surprised him. He felt sure that the recognition last

night had been mutual.

"Zallony's son has told him," he said; "very well, I will go and ask

him to give me Evelyn."

* * * * *

The Earl sat at a little table placed in one of the embrasures of the

Gallery. He had aged greatly these last few weeks, and there were

lines upon his face that had not been there when Gavin first came to

Moretown. A close observer would have said that the habit of sleep had

long deserted him. This his eyes betrayed, being glassy in their

abstracted gaze and rarely resting upon any object as though to observe

it for more than an instant. When Gavin entered, a tremulous hand

indicated a chair drawn up near by the table. The Earl was the first

to speak and he did so with averted gaze and in a loud voice which

failed to conceal the hesitation of his words.

"I hear of your unfortunate accident for the first time, Mr. Ord," he

said slowly. "Let me implore you to run no more risks of the kind.

The Belfry Tower is too old to write new histories."

Gavin replied with an immediate admission of that which he owed to

Evelyn's bravery.

"But for your daughter, my lord," he said, "I should not be here this

morning to speak to you of very grave things. Please do not think me

insensible of your kindness if I mention that at once. I have asked

Lady Evelyn to be my wife and she has given her consent. Naturally I

tell you of this upon the first possible occasion. You know something

of my story, or you would not have paid me the compliment of asking me

here. I have an assured income of some two thousand a year, and, with

your friendship, I should double it in as many years. That is a vulgar

statement, but necessary. My father was Lord Justice Ord, as you

possibly knew; my dear mother is the daughter of Sir Francis

Winnington, of Audley Court, Suffolk. These things, I know, must be

talked about at such times, so please bear with me. I am sure that

Evelyn would wish me to continue in the profession I have chosen; and,

with your consent, I shall do so. There is nothing else I can tell you

if it is not to say how very deeply I love your daughter and that I

believe her love for me is not less."

The Earl heard him without remark. When he had finished he made no

immediate response, seeming to lack words rather than decision.

"Mr. Ord," he said at length, "you had every right to speak to Evelyn.

I make no complaint of it. But she cannot be your wife, for if she is

not already the betrothed of another, there is at least an honorable

understanding that she will make no marriage until he has been heard

again. This affair must begin and end to-day. If I am no longer able

to ask you to remain my guest here, you will understand my difficulty.

I cannot answer you in any other way. For your sake I wish indeed that

I could."

Gavin had fully expected this; but it did not disconcert him in any

way. The battle which he must wage for Evelyn's sake had but begun.

Settling himself in his chair and looking the Earl full in his face, he

said:

"Does Lady Evelyn know of this, my lord? Is this the answer she wishes

you to give me?"

"In no sense. But I speak as one who consults her interests before all

things."

Gavin smiled perceptibly.

"Forgive me, Lord Melbourne," he said; "but all this is so very

characteristic of your house and its history. A hundred years ago it

would have sounded well enough and I should have called a coach

obediently as any gentleman of those days would have felt obliged to

do. But we live in the twentieth century, my lord, when men and women

have learned the meaning of the word liberty ... when the desires and

schemes of other people----"

"Schemes, Mr. Ord----"

"No other word is possible. You do not desire the marriage for purely

selfish reasons. I am not impertinent enough to inquire into them, but

Evelyn has told me something, and the rest I deduce from the answer you

have just given me. To save yourself, my lord, you would marry your

daughter to a scoundrel, who is known for such in his own country and

ours; and, when you did it, some false logic would try to tell you that

it was for the sake of your home and name; while all the time it is

done to save you some inconvenience, some penalty you should in justice

pay to the past. I am not so blind that I cannot see the things which

are happening all around me. Evelyn's consent to my proposal gives me

this right to speak plainly to you, in her interests and my own. Would

you not be wiser, my lord, to deal with me as I am dealing with you--to

tell me in a word why this stranger can coerce you when an Englishman

is answered in a word? I think that you would. I think it would be

well if you said, 'Here is a man who wishes to be my friend and will be

so regardless of the consequences.'"

The boldness of his utterance found the Earl altogether unarmed. Under

other circumstances he would have wrung the bell and ordered a carriage

for Mr. Gavin Ord; but the whole problem was too full of perplexities

for that. It may be that Lord Melbourne was fully alive both to the

truths and falsehoods of his position. He had done a man a great wrong

and that man's son had crossed Europe to bid him right the wrong and

act justly. How easy would it all have been if Evelyn had loved this

son and married him! No story then to delight a scandal-loving

multitude; no fear, growing upon weak nerves, that the man who had

suffered might avenge his wrong. Yes, Evelyn could save him ... and

here was a stranger who forbade her to do so.

"You speak very freely," he said to Gavin presently. "I will do you

the justice to believe that you also speak honestly. If Evelyn has

told you anything, it will be that Count Odin is the son of one of my

oldest friends."

"I have learned that from two sources," said Gavin. "Will you let me

add, my lord, that you are probably speaking of a man who is dead?"

The Earl started and looked up quickly.

"Have you any knowledge of that?"

"None whatever, but I have heard of Count Odin's story."

"He is as other young men, I suppose; neither better nor worse----"

"While, for the daughter you love, you would have chosen just such a

man. Is that so, my lord?"

Here was a shrewd hit, going straight to the heart of one who, for

fifteen long years, had striven to shield his daughter from that which

her dead mother's genius had bequeathed to her--the life and passion of

the East; the nomad's craving for change and excitement; the gilt and

tinsel of the theatre. Yes, truly, they had been years of

self-sacrifice and of ceaseless vigil--to end in this spectre of youth

reborn and of vengeance awake.

"Mr. Ord," he said, "I perceive that my story is known to you. Your

judgment of me is what the world's judgment would be if half the truth

were known--and, remember, it is rarely more than half a truth that the

world comes to possess. I am acting, you say, not from a desire to do

the best for my daughter, but to shield myself. It may be so, for men

are blind enough when their own salvation is at stake. At the same

time, there are reasons other than these, and such that you will hardly

discover. I believe it is very necessary to Evelyn's happiness that

this story shall be hushed up, for the time being at any rate. But I

have made no promise to Count Odin other than those you know. If his

father is still a prisoner in the mines at Yoliska, then I will do my

best to obtain his liberty when I have assurances that such liberty

will not be used to my disadvantage or to Evelyn's. I tell you upon my

word as an Englishman that I am guiltless of such knowledge. When he

fought with me in Bukharest, more than twenty years ago, I met him as a

man of honor and nearly paid with my life for the folly. They now

assert that my friends laid the complaint which induced the Roumanian

Government to arrest him. I do not believe it to be true. Georges

Odin, the records say, died in the fortress prison of Krajova nearly

ten years ago. Prince Charles' Government arrested him, I admit, on

the score of the duel he fought with me; but they had been trying to

arrest him for many years, and that was their excuse. Of the rest I

knew nothing. If he is dead----"

"My lord, have you taken no steps to ascertain the truth of his death?"

"My solicitors are now making all inquiries at Bukharest and Krajova."

"I should have thought that solicitors were scarcely the people to

employ."

"Who else is to be trusted with such a story as this?"

"I am, Lord Melbourne."

"You--but you are a stranger to me and my house."

"A stranger who is willing to become a friend. Say that you will put

no opposition in my way and I will begin my task at once."

"I appreciate your offer, but must decline it. Acceptance would imply

an obligation I am unwilling to recognize."

"I ask for no recognition. To-night, my lord, I leave London for

Bukharest. In a month or less I will return to tell you whether

Georges Odin is alive or dead."

The Earl stared at him amazed.

"Bring me news of Georges Odin's death," he said, "and you shall marry

my daughter."

Gavin rose and offered him his hand.

"I will start directly I have seen the Lady Evelyn," he said.

BOOK III

THE LIGHT

CHAPTER XXIII

BUKHAREST

"In America, my dear Gavin, they would certainly name you for a very

prince of hustlers."

The speaker, a lad of twenty-two years of age, leaned back indolently

in his chair and sipped a tiny cup of Turkish coffee with lazy

satisfaction. Gifted with brown curly hair, ridiculously blue eyes,

and a beardless chin, Cambridge had named him ironically "the Lamb."

His name was Arthur Kenyon, and there had been no prettier athlete in

all London when he was there, precisely ten days ago.

"Yes," he went on, "you lure me to this place, which might be half a

mile at the most from the infernal regions, and promise me a ripping

holiday. I come like a sheep to the shearing and what is my reward?

Hours of self-contemplation--long musings upon an innocent past, and

the thermometer at 112 deg. Fahrenheit in the shade. Ye gods, what a thing

to be a travelling Englishman!"

They sat in the restaurant of the Hotel Moskowa at Bukharest, justly

famous, as the English boy had said, for its historic prices and

ancient meats, long matured. Gavin Ord, grown a little older since he

left Derbyshire some fifteen days ago, had a map of Roumania before him

and all his intentions appeared to be concentrated upon this. The

restaurant, despite the season of the year, could show a fair array of

pretty women in Vienna gowns and of little gold-laced officers who

chaperoned them. The heat of the night had become intense and a great

block of ice upon a marble pedestal melted visibly as though despairing

of the effort to exist. Energy might have been deemed a forgotten art

but for the frantic exertions of a typical gypsy band which fiddled as

though its very salvation depended upon the marvels of its presto.

"My dear Arthur," said Gavin at length, folding up his map and lighting

a cigarette with the air of one who is thinking of anything but a

smoker's pleasure, "I am a beast, certainly. Exit, then, I am a

successful beast."

"Do you mean to say that you have found him?"

"Good Master Indiscretion--I have found the house which Cook built and

I am going to visit it to-morrow."

"Yes, yes, of course, that ancient and interesting Roman building ...

well, I always wanted to see Roumania, and, of course, we shall do

Buda-Pesth going back. By the way, do you notice that acrobat playing

the 'cello over there? Don't turn round yet. He's been watching you

ever since we sat down just as though he loved you dearly."

Gavin smoked for a little while without shifting his position in any

way. Presently he said:

"I don't know why he should. Unless they watched me from London, which

is not improbable, they are hardly likely to know of my arrival yet.

When you have drunk your coffee, we'll go and take a turn on the Corso.

The 'cellist certainly likes me. I see what you mean."

Half Bukharest seemed to have flocked to the Corso, or public park, by

the time they arrived there. Even the innumerable gaming tables, which

are the chief fame of the pretentious city, were deserted upon such a

night as this; while the open-air cafes were so many illuminated

ice-houses, thronged by perspiring civilians and equally perspiring

soldiers, whose talk began and ended with an anathema upon the heat.

Gavin Ord had travelled but little; his one real friend, Arthur Kenyon,

had already been half across the world and back; but for both the

interests of this strange scene, with its babble of excited tongues,

its Hungarians, Servians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, and by no means least

numerous, its sallow-faced Turks, were beyond any within their

experience.

"No wonder the people at the Ministry tell you to be careful," said

Kenyon amiably, as he pointed to a great Bashi-Bazouk whose very

mustache might have been inflammable. "I would sooner meet a Chinese

mandarin than that fellow anywhere. And there are plenty more of the

kind, you see. All sorts, shapes and sizes, ready to cut your throat

for a golden coin any day you may be wanting the job done."

"All sham, my dear Arthur. Knives made in Birmingham and pistols in

Germany! Don't worry your head about them. We start for Okna at seven

o'clock to-morrow."

"Oh, you've found out where it is, then?"

"I wanted to tell you before dinner, but these fellows were listening.

Cecil Chesny was at the Ministry to-day and he could not have done more

for me. Okna means a stiff ride into the mountains and some hunting

when we get there. If the old man, Georges Odin, is alive, he is at

Okna. Our task is to persuade him that London is a healthier place----"

"And the son, this man they call the Count, what of him?"

"I can learn little. He has evidently been living on his wits for a

long time. He was here a fortnight ago throwing promises to his

creditors right and left. The local papers announce his engagement to

Lord Melbourne's daughter--they spell it, "Sir Lord Milbawn," and

declares that he is going up to buy the old Castle at Gravitza. I

don't believe he is in Bukharest to-day--if he is, well, I must look

out for myself, and you must help to look out for me. The rest depends

upon his father. I could go back to England to-night and tell the Earl

that Georges Odin was released four years ago from the mines at

Prahova, but that would not help me. The Count would go back and

blackmail them again on the score of what his friends, the gypsies,

meant to do. No, I shall bring the father if he is to be brought, and

carry my purchase back to England. That's my plan, Arthur. Time will

prove whether it's clever or foolish."

Arthur Kenyon listened as one listens to the tale of an Eastern

romance. Gavin had told him the whole story before they left London;

but here in Bukharest it seemed so much easier to comprehend, amid a

people careless of life and little unacquainted with death. All the

gauds of passion, of love, and hatred were known to this mean city.

Here, at least, it did not appear difficult to understand how Count

Odin, the adventurer, having heard the history of Robert Forrester's

youth and of his present wealth, had set out for England determined to

profit by his knowledge.

"We have no color in our roguery in London," Arthur said presently.

"It's all just one drab tint--the same color as the yellow press that

delights in it. Here one begins to understand why the fittest survive.

You are a pretty plucky chap, Gavin, or you would not take it so

easily----"

"Not for a woman's sake, Arthur!"

"Oh, well, I suppose if one is sufficiently in love, one would hack at

Cerberus for a woman's sake. I am less fettered. Here in Bukharest I

begin to wonder whether I shall die for the charming Lucy or the

equally beautiful Lucinda. You have no doubts. My dear old fellow,

I'm afraid you're in deadly earnest."

"So much in earnest, Arthur, that if I cannot go back to make Evelyn my

wife, I will never go back at all."

"Eros living in a dirty Roumanian hotel on ancient meats! No, by all

the gods. But, tell me, does your friend Chesny think you are unwise

to go to Okna?"

"He says I am mad. I told him as much as I had the right to tell.

Odin, the son, is a swindler; but his gypsy friends are honest. They

believe that an Englishman shut up one of their heroes for twenty

years; and if they can find the man who did it, they will kill him.

There's the Count's chance. I am going one better by offering to take

his father to England to meet the man who wronged him and say that the

vendetta is at an end. A mad scheme! Yes. Well, possibly, mad

schemes are better than the others sometimes, and this may be the

particular instance. I will tell you when we get to Okna, if ever we

get there."

"Then you are plainly not an optimist."

"Hush--there's your old friend the 'cellist, going home it appears. A

gypsy to the finger tips, Arthur. Let us talk of the weather!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PRICE OF WISDOM

An Eastern sun, monstrous and molten and blinking tears of fire, dwelt

an instant in the West ere it sank beneath the rim of the mountains,

beyond which lies the river Danube. Instantly, as though by a wizard's

enchantment, the heat spell passed from the face of the withered land

and the sweetness of the night came down. All the woods were alive

now, as though the voice of Even had bidden them rejoice. Birds

appeared, flitting from the swaying boughs of oak and elm and sycamore.

Springs bubbled over as though rejoicing that their enemy slept. Life

that had been dormant but ten minutes ago answered to the reveille of

twilight and added a note musical to the song. Men breathed a full

breath of the soft breezes and said that it was good to live. The very

landscape, revealing new beauties in the mellow light, might have been

sensible of the hour and its meaning.

It was the evening of the second day after Gavin Ord and his friend

Arthur Kenyon had dined together in the Hotel Moskowa at Bukharest. A

railway and twelve hours' abuse of its tardiness had carried them a

stage upon this journey. Willing Hungarian ponies, mules, in whose

eyes the negative virtues might be read, brought them to the foot of

the mountains and left them there to camp with what luxury they might.

Attended by a sleek Turk they had discovered in the Capital, their

escort boasted no less than four heroes of the line--for this had been

Cecil Chesny's unalterable determination, that they should not go to

the mountains alone.

"It's a fool's errand and may be dangerous," said he; "these soldiers

are thieves, but they will see that no one else robs you. I will ask

the Ministry to pick out as good specimens as he can. Don't complain

when you see them. They are much less harmless than they look."

Gavin did not like the business at all, but as Chesny's good-will was

necessary to the expedition, he put up with it, and the four shabby

soldiers accompanied him from Bukharest. They were ill-mannered

fellows enough, raw-boned, high-cheeked, sallow-faced ruffians, whose

"paradise enow" could be found wherever good comely, plump girls and

bad tobacco might be found. Their energy at meal-times became truly

prodigious. They were as ravenous wolves, seeking what they might

devour; and, as Arthur Kenyon remarked, they would have eaten his boots

if he had taken them off.

Now, this pretty company, Englishmen, Roumanians, a Greek and a Turk,

encamped in the woods together upon the evening of the second day, and

found what comfort they could beneath the sheltering leaves of a

spacious beech. It had been Gavin's intention to put up at a

guest-house named by the guide-book he had purchased in Vienna; but

when they came to the place where the inn should have stood, they

discovered nothing but charred ruins and cinerous relics; and, "by all

the gods," said Arthur Kenyon, "the red cock has crowed here before

us." A romantic ear would have listened greedily at such a time to the

guide's tales of border pleasantries--girls carried shrieking to the

mountains, roofs blazing, priests burned in their holy oils, babes

hoist on bayonets--for such they would have made a simple affair in

which a drunken herdsman and a paraffin lamp had figured notably; but

Gavin was in no mood for narratives, and he sent them to the right

about, one for wood, another for water, a third to hunt a cot or

homestead, if such were to be discovered.

"The Hotel of the Belle Etoile after all," he said gloomily; "well, it

might have been worse, Arthur."

"Just so. If I had not stocked your larder at Slavitesti, you would

now be doing what the amiable Foulon advised the French people to do a

hundred years ago--eating hay with relish, my dear boy. Well, there's

red wine strong enough to poison White Bull, and maize bread tough

enough for a guinea set of ready-made grinders, to say nothing of

cheese, sausage, and biscuits. Fall on, Macduff, and damned be he who

eats enough!"

"I don't care twopence about the food," said Gavin savagely; "it's the

delay I fret over. We may be within riding distance of the place for

all I know. They could have told us at this inn."

"The boy on the burning deck grown eloquent. We might have put out the

fire for them or comforted some of the ladies. Are you really in such

a hurry, Gavin?"

"Judge for yourself. From the Castle at Okna I can write to Evelyn and

tell her the truth. Until it is told, she will be the daily victim of

a rogue's plausible suggestions. Why, the man may have returned to

Derbyshire by this time--all that is possible and more."

"And there was a great square moon in the sky and thereon the people

read the story of the Jaberwock. Tell me frankly, would Evelyn listen

to the man now?"

"Evelyn would not, but Etta Romney might. Enigmas--I shall not explain

them. Let us go to supper. The day will come after the centuries."

"Gavin, my dear fellow--this is the ancient fever. I bow to it. Pass

the wine and I'll drink to your enigma. We are people of importance

and our escort is a royal one. It is also musical. That song suggests

Seigfried or is it the 'Belle of New York'? My musical education was

completed at Magdalen College within Cambridge and is incomplete."

He frivolled on as young men will, not without purpose, for Gavin's

anxiety was potent to all about him. It had seemed an easy thing in

England to visit the near East and learn for himself the simple truth

of Georges Odin's fate. Here on the slopes of the mountains he began

to understand his difficulties, perhaps the danger, of his pursuit.

For this, he remembered, had been the scene of Robert Forrester's

youth, this the home of Zallony, the revolutionary brigand upon whose

head three countries had set a price. Time had not changed the

disposition of the mountain people, nor had civilization influenced its

social creeds. Beware of Zallony's gypsies, they had said to him at

Bukharest. This night had brought him within a post of his goal. It

would be hard enough if any mischance should send him back to England

empty-handed; to say to Evelyn, "I have failed; I can tell you nothing."

Arthur Kenyon, for his part, had begun to enjoy the whole adventure

amazingly. Especially he liked the four merry soldiers who ate and

drank as though they had been fasting and athirst for a week, and lay

down afterwards to fall instantly to sleep. In this the Greek muleteer

and the Turkish robber of all trades imitated them without loss of

time; so that by nine o'clock nothing but the red glow of two English

pipes and the sonorous nasal thank-offerings of the sleepers would have

betrayed the camp or its occupants. Such conversation as passed

between Gavin and Arthur was in fitful whispers, the talk of men

thoroughly fatigued and wistful for the day. They, too, dropped to

sleep over it at last, and when they awoke it was to such a scene as

neither would ever forget, however long he might live.

Gavin slept without dreaming, the first night he had done so since he

left England. He could remember afterwards that his friend's voice

awoke him from his heavy slumber; and that, when he sat up and stared

about him, Arthur Kenyon was the first person his eyes rested upon.

Instantaneously, as one sees a picture in a vision, the scene of the

camp presented itself to his view--the great trunks of the oaks and

beeches, the hollow, wherein the horses were tethered, the tangle of

grass and undergrowth. Just as he had seen it when he fell asleep, so

the reddening embers of the camp-fire showed it to him now--unchanged,

and yet how different! He was, for this brief instant, as a sleeper

who wakes in a familiar room and wonders why he has been awakened.

Then, just as rapidly, the scales fell from his eyes and he knew.

Arthur Kenyon stood with his back against the trunk of a beech, his

revolver drawn and about him such a motley crowd that only a comic

opera could have reproduced it. Gypsies chiefly, the fire-light

flashed upon sallow faces which a man might see in an evil dream; upon

arms that a mediaeval age should have forged; upon limbs that forest

labor had trained to hardiness. Crying together in not unmusical

exclamations, the raiders appeared in no way desirous of injuring their

man, but only of disarming him. One of their number lay prone already,

hugging a wounded thigh and muttering imprecations which should have

brought the heavens upon his head--a second had the Englishman by the

legs and would not be beaten off; while of the rest, the foremost aimed

heavy blows at the extended pistol and demanded its delivery in

sonorous German. Such was the scene which the picture presented to

Gavin as he awoke. He was on his feet before the full meaning of it

could be comprehended.

"Halt!" he cried, for lack of any other word to serve. His tone, his

manner, drew all eyes toward him. "What do you want?" he continued,

with the same air of authority. Twenty voices answered him, but he

could make nothing of their reply. He was about to speak for the third

time when rough hands pinioned his arms and feet from behind and

instantly deprived him of the power to move a step from the place where

he stood.

"To conduct your excellency to the Castle of Okna--we have come for

that, excellency."

"You are aware that I am an Englishman?"

The gypsy pointed smilingly to his wounded friend.

"We are perfectly aware of it, excellency."

"Then you know the consequences of that which you are doing?"

"Pardon, excellency--there are no consequences in the mountains. Let

your friend be wise and put up his pistol. We shall shoot him if he

does not."

Gavin, doubting the nature of the situation no longer, shrugged his

shoulders and invited Kenyon by a gesture to put up his pistol.

"We can do nothing, Arthur, let them have their way."

"I beg your pardon, Gavin; I could make holes in two or three of them."

"It would not help us. They are evidently only agents. Let's hear

what the principal has to say."

"Very well, if you think so. It's poor fun, though--almost like

shooting sheep in the Highlands. But, of course, I bow to wisdom."

He held out his hands to the gypsy who bound them immediately with a

leather thong taken from the saddle-bow of the excellent pony he had

ridden. Silently and methodically now, the men secured their prisoners

and produced their gyves of heavy rope. To resist would have been just

that madness which Gavin named it--and but for Evelyn the scene had

been one to jest at.

"Do you treat all your guests at the Castle of Okna in this way?" he

asked the leader of the men suddenly.

The reply was delivered with a suavity delightful to hear.

"When they come to us with soldiers and Turks, then we speak plainly to

them, excellency."

"True, I had forgotten the soldiers. Where are those noble men now?"

"Half-way back to Slavitesti, excellency."

"And the muleteer?"

"Oh, my friends are warming his feet for him. We are not fond of

Greeks, here in the mountains, excellency."

Gavin started as the man spoke, for a wild shriek broke upon his ears

and becoming louder until it sounded like some supreme cry of human

agony, ended at last in a fearful sobbing, as it were the weeping of a

child in pain. When he dared to look, he saw the gypsies had dragged

the wretched Greek to the camp-fire and pouring oil from a can upon his

bare feet, they thrust them into the flames and held them there with

that utter indifference to human suffering which, above all others, is

the characteristic of the people of the Balkans. Worming in their

embrace, his eyes starting from his head, his voice paralyzed by the

fearful cries he raised, the wretched man suddenly fainted and lay

inanimate in the flame. Then, and not until then, they drew him back

and left him quivering upon the green grass.

"He was warned," the gypsy leader muttered sullenly; "he should have

known better."

But Arthur, showing Gavin his bleeding wrists, said with a shrug.

"I think very little of wisdom, Gavin."

The rope had cut the flesh almost to the bone in his efforts to go to

the help of the wretched Greek.

CHAPTER XXV

THE HOUSE ABOVE THE TORRENT

Some one upon the outskirts of the wood whistled softly and the gypsies

stood with ears intent listening, alarmed, to the signal. When it had

been twice repeated, they appeared to become more confident, and,

untethering their ponies, or calling, with low, whining voices, those

that grazed, they turned to their prisoners and bade them prepare to

march.

"To the Castle of Okna, excellency----"

A shout of laughter greeted the saying, and Gavin, had he been

credulous until this time, would have remained credulous no more. A

philosopher always, he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the ropes

which bound him.

"I am no acrobat," he said; "I cannot ride with a rope about my legs."

"We are about to remove it, excellency. Be careful what you do--my men

are hasty. If you are wise, you will be followed by so many laughing

angels. If, however, we should find you obstinate, then,

excellency----"

He touched the handle of a great knife at his girdle significantly, and

some of the others, as though understanding him, closed about the pony

significantly while Gavin mounted. A similar attention being paid to

Arthur Kenyon was not received so kindly; for no sooner did they

attempt to lift him roughly to the saddle than he turned about and

dealt the first of them a rousing blow which stretched the fellow full

length upon the grass and left him insensible there. The act was

within an ace of costing him his life. Knives sprung from sheathes,

antique pistols were flourished--there were cries and counter-cries;

and then, as though miraculously, a louder voice from some one hidden

in the wood commanding them to silence. In that moment, the gypsy

chief flung himself before Kenyon and protected him with hands uplifted

and curses on his lips.

"Dogs and carrion--do you forget whom you obey?" he almost shrieked,

and then to the Englishman, "You are mad, _mein herr_--be wise or I

will kill you."

Kenyon, strangely nonchalant through it all, shrugged his shoulders and

clambered upon the back of the pony. Gavin turned deadly pale in spite

of himself, breathed a full breath again, and desired nothing more of

fate than that they should quit the cursed wood without further loss of

time. As though enough evil had not come to him there, he espied, as

they rode from the place, the dead body of his servant, the Turk, face

downwards with the knife that killed him still protruding from his

shoulders. And he doubted if the wretched Greek, so brutally maimed in

the fire, still lived or must be numbered a second victim of the night.

Had he been a fool to leave England upon such an errand at all, or did

the circumstances of his visit justify him? Of this he did not believe

that he was the best judge. That which he had done had been done for

the sake of one whose sweet voice seemed to speak of courage even at

such an hour--Evelyn, the woman who first had taught him what man's

love could be; whose fair image went with him as he rode, the stately

figure of his dreams, the gentle Evelyn for whom the supreme adoration

and pity of his life were reserved. If ignominy were his ultimate

reward, he cared nothing--no danger, no peril of the way, must be set

against the happiness, nay, the very soul's salvation, of her who had

said to him, "I love you!"

This had been the whole spirit of his journey, and it did not desert

him now when the gypsies set out upon the mountain road and he

understood that he was a helpless hostage in their hands. As for

Arthur Kenyon, he, with English stolidity, still chose to regard the

whole scene as a jest and to comment upon it from such a standpoint.

To him the picturesque environment of height and valley, forests of

pine and sleeping pastures, were less than nothing at all. He did not

care a blade of grass for the first roseate glow of dawn in the Eastern

sky; for the shimmer of gold upon the majestic landscape, or the jewels

sprayed by the stream below them. He had met an adventure and he

gloried in it. Begging a cigarette from the nearest gypsy, he thanked

the fellow for a light, and so fell to the thirty words of German

bequeathed to him by that splendid foundation of one William at

Winchester. There were "havenzie's" and "Ich Wimsche's" enough to have

served a threepenny manual of traveller's talk here. Neither

understood the other and each was happy.

"The man's a born idiot," Arthur said to Gavin at last. "I ask him

where the road leads to and he says 'half-an-hour.'"

"Meaning we are half-an-hour from our destination."

"Then why the deuce can't he say so in plain English?"

"He might ask you why the deuce you can't ask him in plain Hungarian."

"That's so--but how these fellows don't break their jaws over this

gabble, I can't make out. Well, I suppose we shall get breakfast

somewhere, Gavin."

"Are you hungry, Arthur?"

"Not much; I'm thinking of that poor devil of a Greek."

"Yes, they are brutes enough. What could we do?"

"Oh, I knew that! What I am hoping is that they will get it hot after

we have told the tale at Bukharest. The authorities----"

"Authorities, in the Balkans, Arthur! Do you forget our escort?"

"Oh, those blackguards. They ought to enter for the mile championship

at the L.A.C. In the matter of running, they are a glory to their

country."

"They will tell some cock-and-bull story and make it out that we

dismissed them. Chesny told me not to put too much reliance upon them.

Well, they're no loss. We can see it through without them."

"Good old pronoun. Would you define that 'it' for my benefit?"

"Oh, there I'm beaten. We are going up a mountain and may go down

again. That's evident. Two Jacks and no Jills to speak of. There's a

house also, I perceive--across the torrent yonder. That must have been

built when the witches were young. The flat tiles speak of Julius

Caesar, don't they? I wonder if they know we're coming?"

"We might have cabled 'coffee and the nearest approach to cold grouse.'

Do you like cold grouse for breakfast, Gavin? There's nothing to beat

it on the list, to my way of thinking. Cold grouse and nice, crisp,

hot toast. Some Cambridge squash afterwards, and then a great big

round pipe. That's what you think of when you've been ten hours in the

saddle and can't find an inn. I wish I could discern it now, as the

curate says."

Gavin smiled, but his gaze was set upon the ancient ruin his quick eye

had observed upon a height of the green mountain above them. He

wondered if the path would carry them by it, or pierce the hills and

leave the castle, for such it plainly had been, upon their left hands.

But for the circumstances in which he approached it, the scene had been

wild and strange enough to have awakened all an artist's dormant

capacities for admiration. They were well above the pine woods by this

time and could look back upon a fertile valley, exquisitely green, and

bordered by shining rivers. Villages, churches, farms were so many

dolls' houses planted upon mighty fields while midget beasts awakened

to the day. The bridle-track itself wound about a considerable

mountain whose slopes were glorious with heather and mountain ash;

there were other peaks beyond, rising in a crescendo of grandeur to the

distant vista of the eternal snows, where the gods of solitude had been

enthroned and melancholy uplifted an icy sceptre.

Gavin could not but be sensible of the majesty of this scene; nor did

he find the old castle out of harmony with its beauties. The building,

which he now perceived that they were approaching, had been built in a

cleft of the hills, at a point where the torrent fell in a thunder of

silver spray to a deep blue pool far down in the valley below.

Clinging, as it were, to the very face of a precipitous cliff, a

drawbridge spanned the torrent and gave access to the mountain road

upon the further side of the pass; but so narrow was the river and so

perpendicular the rocks that it seemed as though men might clasp hands

across the abyss or a good horse take it in the stride of a gallop.

For the rest, the black frowning walls, the iron-sheathed doors, the

pint-houses, the barbicon, the quaint turrets thrust out here and there

above the chasm, spoke of many centuries and many arts--here of

Saracen, there of Turk, of the reign of the rounded arch, and even of

glorious Gothic. A building to study, Gavin said, to scan with

well-schooled eyes from some opposing height, whence every phase of its

changing wonders might be justly estimated by him who would learn and

imitate. Even his own predicament was forgotten when his guides

stopped upon its threshold and demanded in loud tones that the

drawbridge should be let down.

"This is the place, by Mahomet," said Arthur dryly ... and he added,

"What a devil of a house for a week-end!"

Gavin bade him listen. A voice across the chasm replied to the gypsy

hail.

"Don't you recognize that?" he asked; "it's the voice we heard in the

wood."

"When this crowd desired to agitate my heirs, executors and assigns?

You're right for a ransom. I wonder if they'll introduce us."

"We shall soon know. Here's the bridge coming down. What have you

done with your armor, Arthur?"

"Left it in the cab, perhaps--don't speak, that ancient person yonder

engrosses me. I wonder what Tree would pay for the loan of his

make-up."

"I'll put the question when I return. This evidently is where we get

down. Well, I'm glad of that anyhow."