She was in the drawing-room with Rosalie, and was full of her subject

and the emotion suitable to the occasion. She had even attained a

certain modified dampness of handkerchief. Rosalie's handkerchief,

however, was not damp. She had not even attempted to use it, but sat

still, her eyes brimming with tears, which, when she saw Betty, brimmed

over and slipped helplessly down her cheeks.

“Betty!” she exclaimed, and got up and went towards her, “I believe you

have heard.”

“In the village, I heard something--yes,” Betty answered, and after

giving greeting to Mrs. Brent, she led her sister back to her chair, and

sat near her.

This--the thought leaped upon her--was the kind of situation she must be

prepared to be equal to. In the presence of these who knew nothing,

she must bear herself as if there was nothing to be known. No one but

herself had the slightest knowledge of what the past months had brought

to her--no one in the world. If the bell tolled, no one in the world but

her father ever would know. She had no excuse for emotion. None had been

given to her. The kind of thing it was proper that she should say and do

now, in the presence of Mrs. Brent, it would be proper and decent that

she should say and do in all other cases. She must comport herself as

Betty Vanderpoel would if she were moved only by ordinary human sympathy

and regret.

“We must remember that we have only excited rumour to depend upon,” she

said. “Lord Mount Dunstan has kept his village under almost military

law. He has put it into quarantine. No one is allowed to leave it, so

there can be no direct source of information. One cannot be sure of the

entire truth of what one hears. Often it is exaggerated cottage talk.

The whole neighbourhood is wrought up to a fever heat of excited

sympathy. And villagers like the drama of things.”

Mrs. Brent looked at her admiringly, it being her fixed habit to admire

Miss Vanderpoel, and all such as Providence had set above her.

“Oh, how wise you are, Miss Vanderpoel!” she exclaimed, even devoutly.

“It is so nice of you to be calm and logical when everybody else is so

upset. You are quite right about villagers enjoying the dramatic side of

troubles. They always do. And perhaps things are not so bad as they say.

I ought not to have let myself believe the worst. But I quite broke down

under the ringers--I was so touched.”

“The ringers?” faltered Lady Anstruthers

“The leader came to the vicar to tell him they wanted permission to

toll--if they heard tolling at Dunstan. Weaver's family lives within

hearing of Dunstan church bells, and one of his boys is to run across

the fields and bring the news to Stornham. And it was most touching,

Miss Vanderpoel. They feel, in their rustic way, that Lord Mount Dunstan

has not been treated fairly in the past. And now he seems to them a hero

and a martyr--or like a great soldier who has died fighting.”

“Who MAY die fighting,” broke from Miss Vanderpoel sharply.

“Who--who may----” Mrs. Brent corrected herself, “though Heaven grant he

will not. But it was the ringers who made me feel as if all really

was over. Thank you, Miss Vanderpoel, thank you for being so practical

and--and cool.”

“It WAS touching,” said Lady Anstruthers, her eyes brimming over again.

“And what the villagers feel is true. It goes to one's heart,” in a

little outburst. “People have been unkind to him! And he has been lonely

in that great empty place--he has been lonely. And if he is dying

to-day, he is lonely even as he dies--even as he dies.”

Betty drew a deep breath. For one moment there seemed to rise before

her vision of a huge room, whose stately size made its bareness a more

desolate thing. And Mr. Penzance bent low over the bed. She tore her

thought away from it.

“No! No!” she cried out in low, passionate protest. “There will be

love and yearning all about him everywhere. The villagers who are

waiting--the poor things he has worked for--the very ringers themselves,

are all pouring forth the same thoughts. He will feel even ours--ours

too! His soul cannot be lonely.”

A few minutes earlier, Mrs. Brent had been saying to herself inwardly:

“She has not much heart after all, you know.” Now she looked at her in

amazement.

The blue bells were under water in truth--drenched and drowned. And yet

as the girl stood up before her, she looked taller--more the magnificent

Miss Vanderpoel than ever--though she expressed a new meaning.

“There is one thing the villagers can do for him,” she said. “One thing

we can all do. The bell has not tolled yet. There is a service for those

who are--in peril. If the vicar will call the people to the church, we

can all kneel down there--and ask to be heard. The vicar will do that I

am sure--and the people will join him with all their hearts.”

Mrs. Brent was overwhelmed.

“Dear, dear, Miss Vanderpoel!” she exclaimed. “THAT is touching, indeed

it is! And so right and so proper. I will drive back to the village at

once. The vicar's distress is as great as mine. You think of everything.

The service for the sick and dying. How right--how right!”

With a sense of an increase of value in herself, the vicar, and the

vicarage, she hastened back to the pony carriage, but in the hall she

seized Betty's hand emotionally.

“I cannot tell you how much I am touched by this,” she murmured. “I did

not know you were--were a religious girl, my dear.”

Betty answered with grave politeness.

“In times of great pain and terror,” she said, “I think almost everybody

is religious--a little. If that is the right word.”

There was no ringing of the ordinary call to service. In less than an

hour's time people began to come out of their cottages and wend their

way towards the church. No one had put on his or her Sunday clothes. The

women had hastily rolled down their sleeves, thrown off their aprons,

and donned everyday bonnets and shawls. The men were in their corduroys,

as they had come in from the fields, and the children wore their

pinafores. As if by magic, the news had flown from house to house, and

each one who had heard it had left his or her work without a moment's

hesitation. They said but little as they made their way to the church.

Betty, walking with her sister, was struck by the fact that there were

more of them than formed the usual Sunday morning congregation. They

were doing no perfunctory duty. The men's faces were heavily moved,

most of the women wiped their eyes at intervals, and the children looked

awed. There was a suggestion of hurried movement in the step of each--as

if no time must be lost--as if they must begin their appeal at once.

Betty saw old Doby tottering along stiffly, with his granddaughter and

Mrs. Welden on either side of him. Marlow, on his two sticks, was to be

seen moving slowly, but steadily.

Within the ancient stone walls, stiff old knees bent themselves with

care, and faces were covered devoutly by work-hardened hands. As

she passed through the churchyard Betty knew that eyes followed her

affectionately, and that the touching of foreheads and dropping of

curtsies expressed a special sympathy. In each mind she was connected

with the man they came to pray for--with the work he had done--with

the danger he was in. It was vaguely felt that if his life ended, a

bereavement would have fallen upon her. This the girl knew.

The vicar lifted his bowed head and began his service. Every man, woman

and child before him responded aloud and with a curious fervour--not in

decorous fear of seeming to thrust themselves before the throne, making

too much of their petitions, in the presence of the gentry. Here and

there sobs were to be heard. Lady Anstruthers followed the service

timorously and with tears. But Betty, kneeling at her side, by the round

table in the centre of the great square Stornham pew, which was like a

room, bowed her head upon her folded arms, and prayed her own intense,

insistent prayer.

“God in Heaven!” was her inward cry. “God of all the worlds! Do not let

him die. 'If ye ask anything in my name that I will do.' Christ said it.

In the name of Jesus of Nazareth--do not let him die! All the worlds are

yours--all the power--listen to us--listen to us. Lord, I believe--help

thou my unbelief. If this terror robs me of faith, and I pray

madly--forgive, forgive me. Do not count it against me as sin. You made

him. He has suffered and been alone. It is not time--it is not time yet

for him to go. He has known no joy and no bright thing. Do not let him

go out of the warm world like a blind man. Do not let him die. Perhaps

this is not prayer, but raging. Forgive--forgive! All power is gone from

me. God of the worlds, and the great winds, and the myriad stars--do not

let him die!”

She knew her thoughts were wild, but their torrent bore her with them

into a strange, great silence. She did not hear the vicar's words, or

the responses of the people. She was not within the grey stone walls.

She had been drawn away as into the darkness and stillness of the night,

and no soul but her own seemed near. Through the stillness and the dark

her praying seemed to call and echo, clamouring again and again. It must

reach Something--it must be heard, because she cried so loud, though to

the human beings about her she seemed kneeling in silence. She went on

and on, repeating her words, changing them, ending and beginning again,

pouring forth a flood of appeal. She thought later that the flood must

have been at its highest tide when, singularly, it was stemmed. Without

warning, a wave of awe passed over her which strangely silenced her--and

left her bowed and kneeling, but crying out no more. The darkness had

become still, even as it had not been still before. Suddenly she cowered

as she knelt and held her breath. Something had drawn a little near. No

thoughts--no words--no cries were needed as the great stillness grew and

spread, and folded her being within it. She waited--only waited. She did

not know how long a time passed before she felt herself drawn back from

the silent and shadowy places--awakening, as it were, to the sounds in

the church.

“Our Father,” she began to say, as simply as a child. “Our Father who

art in Heaven--hallowed be thy name.” There was a stirring among the

congregation, and sounds of feet, as the people began to move down the

aisle in reverent slowness. She caught again the occasional sound of a

subdued sob. Rosalie gently touched her, and she rose, following her out

of the big pew and passing down the aisle after the villagers.

Outside the entrance the people waited as if they wanted to see her

again. Foreheads were touched as before, and eyes followed her. She was

to the general mind the centre of the drama, and “the A'mighty” would

do well to hear her. She had been doing his work for him “same as his

lordship.” They did not expect her to smile at such a time, when she

returned their greetings, and she did not, but they said afterwards, in

their cottages, that “trouble or not she was a wonder for looks, that

she was--Miss Vanderpoel.”

Rosalie slipped a hand through her arm, and they walked home together,

very close to each other. Now and then there was a questioning in Rosy's

look. But neither of them spoke once.

On an oak table in the hall a letter from Mr. Penzance was lying. It

was brief, hurried, and anxious. The rumour that Mount Dunstan had been

ailing was true, and that they had felt they must conceal the matter

from the villagers was true also. For some baffling reason the fever

had not absolutely declared itself, but the young doctors were beset

by grave forebodings. In such cases the most serious symptoms might

suddenly develop. One never knew. Mr. Penzance was evidently torn by

fears which he desperately strove to suppress. But Betty could see the

anguish on his fine old face, and between the lines she read dread and

warning not put into words. She believed that, fearing the worst, he

felt he must prepare her mind.

“He has lived under a great strain for months,” he ended. “It began long

before the outbreak of the fever. I am not strong under my sense of the

cruelty of things--and I have never loved him as I love him to-day.”

Betty took the letter to her room, and read it two or three times.

Because she had asked intelligent questions of the medical authority she

had consulted on her visit to London, she knew something of the fever

and its habits. Even her unclerical knowledge was such as it was not

well to reflect upon. She refolded the letter and laid it aside.

“I must not think. I must do something. It may prevent my listening,”

she said aloud to the silence of her room.

She cast her eyes about her as if in search. Upon her desk lay a

notebook. She took it up and opened it. It contained lists of plants,

of flower seeds, of bulbs, and shrubs. Each list was headed with an

explanatory note.

“Yes, this will do,” she said. “I will go and talk to Kedgers.”

Kedgers and every man under him had been at the service, but they had

returned to their respective duties. Kedgers, giving directions to some

under gardeners who were clearing flower beds and preparing them for

their winter rest, turned to meet her as she approached. To Kedgers the

sight of her coming towards him on a garden path was a joyful thing. He

had done wonders, it is true, but if she had not stood by his side with

inspiration as well as confidence, he knew that things might have “come

out different.”

“You was born a gardener, miss--born one,” he had said months ago.

It was the time when flower beds must be planned for the coming year.

Her notebook was filled with memoranda of the things they must talk

about.

It was good, normal, healthy work to do. The scent of the rich, damp,

upturned mould was a good thing to inhale. They walked from one end to

another, stood before clumps of shrubs, and studied bits of wall. Here

a mass of blue might grow, here low things of white and pale yellow. A

quickly-climbing rose would hang sheets of bloom over this dead tree.

This sheltered wall would hold warmth for a Marechal Niel.

“You must take care of it all--even if I am not here next year,” Miss

Vanderpoel said.

Kedgers' absorbed face changed.

“Not here, miss,” he exclaimed. “You not here! Things wouldn't grow,

miss.” He checked himself, his weather-toughened skin reddening because

he was afraid he had perhaps taken a liberty. And then moving his hat

uneasily on his head, he took another. “But it's true enough,” looking

down on the gravel walk, “we--we couldn't expect to keep you.”

She did not look as if she had noticed the liberty, but she did not look

quite like herself, Kedgers thought. If she had been another young lady,

and but for his established feeling that she was somehow immune from all

ills, he would have thought she had a headache, or was low in her mind.

She spent an hour or two with him, and together they planned for the

changing seasons of the year to come. How she could keep her mind on a

thing, and what a head she had for planning, and what an eye for colour!

But yes--there was something a bit wrong somehow. Now and then she would

stop and stand still for a moment, and suddenly it struck Kedgers that

she looked as if she were listening.

“Did you think you heard something, miss?” he asked her once when she

paused and wore this look.

“No,” she answered, “no.” And drew him on quickly--almost as if she did

not want him to hear what she had seemed listening for.

When she left him and went back to the house, all the loveliness of

spring, summer and autumn had been thought out and provided for. Kedgers

stood on the path and looked after her until she passed through the

terrace door. He chewed his lip uneasily. Then he remembered something

and felt a bit relieved. It was the service he remembered.

“Ah! it's that that's upset her--and it's natural, seeing how she's

helped him and Dunstan village. It's only natural.” He chewed his lip

again, and nodded his head in odd reflection. “Ay! Ay!” he summed her

up. “She's a great lady that--she's a great lady--same as if she'd been

born in a civilised land.”

During the rest of the day the look of question in Rosalie's eyes

changed in its nature. When her sister was near her she found herself

glancing at her with a new feeling. It was a growing feeling, which

gradually became--anxiousness. Betty presented to her the aspect of one

withdrawn into some remote space. She was not living this day as her

days were usually lived. She did not sit still or stroll about the

gardens quietly. The consecutiveness of her action seemed broken. She

did one thing after another, as if she must fill each moment. This was

not her Betty. Lady Anstruthers watched and thought until, in the end,

a new pained fear began to creep slowly into her mind, and make her feel

as if she were slightly trembling though her hands did not shake. She

did not dare to allow herself to think the thing she knew she was on the

brink of thinking. She thrust it away from her, and tried not to think

at all. Her Betty--her splendid Betty, whom nothing could hurt--who

could not be touched by any awful thing--her dear Betty!

In the afternoon she saw her write notes steadily for an hour, then she

went out into the stables and visited the horses, talked to the coachman

and to her own groom. She was very kind to a village boy who had been

recently taken on as an additional assistant in the stable, and who was

rather frightened and shy. She knew his mother, who had a large family,

and she had, indeed, given the boy his place that he might be trained

under the great Mr. Buckham, who was coachman and head of the stables.

She said encouraging things which quite cheered him, and she spoke

privately to Mr. Buckham about him. Then she walked in the park a

little, but not for long. When she came back Rosalie was waiting for

her.

“I want to take a long drive,” she said. “I feel restless. Will you

come with me, Betty?” Yes, she would go with her, so Buckham brought the

landau with its pair of big horses, and they rolled down the avenue,

and into the smooth, white high road. He took them far--past the

great marshes, between miles of bared hedges, past farms and scattered

cottages. Sometimes he turned into lanes, where the hedges were closer

to each other, and where, here and there, they caught sight of new

points of view between trees. Betty was glad to feel Rosy's slim body

near her side, and she was conscious that it gradually seemed to draw

closer and closer. Then Rosy's hand slipped into hers and held it softly

on her lap.

When they drove together in this way they were usually both of them

rather silent and quiet, but now Rosalie spoke of many things--of

Ughtred, of Nigel, of the Dunholms, of New York, and their father and

mother.

“I want to talk because I'm nervous, I think,” she said half

apologetically. “I do not want to sit still and think too much--of

father's coming. You don't mind my talking, do you, Betty?”

“No,” Betty answered. “It is good for you and for me.” And she met the

pressure of Rosy's hand halfway.

But Rosy was talking, not because she did not want to sit still and

think, but because she did not want Betty to do so. And all the time she

was trying to thrust away the thought growing in her mind.

They spent the evening together in the library, and Betty read aloud.

She read a long time--until quite late. She wished to tire herself as

well as to force herself to stop listening.

When they said good-night to each other Rosy clung to her as desperately

as she had clung on the night after her arrival. She kissed her again

and again, and then hung her head and excused herself.

“Forgive me for being--nervous. I'm ashamed of myself,” she said.

“Perhaps in time I shall get over being a coward.”

But she said nothing of the fact that she was not a coward for herself,

but through a slowly formulating and struggled--against fear, which

chilled her very heart, and which she could best cover by a pretence of

being a poltroon.

She could not sleep when she went to bed. The night seemed crowded with

strange, terrified thoughts. They were all of Betty, though sometimes

she thought of her father's coming, of her mother in New York, and of

Betty's steady working throughout the day. Sometimes she cried, twisting

her hands together, and sometimes she dropped into a feverish sleep, and

dreamed that she was watching Betty's face, yet was afraid to look at

it.

She awakened suddenly from one of these dreams, and sat upright in bed

to find the dawn breaking. She rose and threw on a dressing-gown, and

went to her sister's room because she could not bear to stay away.

The door was not locked, and she pushed it open gently. One of the

windows had its blind drawn up, and looked like a patch of dull grey.

Betty was standing upright near it. She was in her night-gown, and a

long black plait of hair hung over one shoulder heavily. She looked all

black and white in strong contrast. The grey light set her forth as a

tall ghost.

Lady Anstruthers slid forward, feeling a tightness in her chest.

“The dawn wakened me too,” she said.

“I have been waiting to see it come,” answered Betty. “It is going to be

a dull, dreary day.”

CHAPTER XLVII

“I HAVE NO WORD OR LOOK TO REMEMBER”

It was a dull and dreary day, as Betty had foreseen it would be. Heavy

rain clouds hung and threatened, and the atmosphere was damp and chill.

It was one of those days of the English autumn which speak only of the

end of things, bereaving one of the power to remember next year's spring

and summer, which, after all, must surely come. Sky is grey, trees are

grey, dead leaves lie damp beneath the feet, sunlight and birds seem

forgotten things. All that has been sad and to be regretted or feared

hangs heavy in the air and sways all thought. In the passing of these

hours there is no hope anywhere. Betty appeared at breakfast in short

dress and close hat. She wore thick little boots, as if for walking.

“I am going to make visits in the village,” she said. “I want a basket

of good things to take with me. Stourton's children need feeding after

their measles. They looked very thin when I saw them playing in the road

yesterday.”

“Yes, dear,” Rosalie answered. “Mrs. Noakes shall prepare the basket.

Good chicken broth, and jelly, and nourishing things. Jennings,” to the

butler, “you know the kind of basket Miss Vanderpoel wants. Speak to

Mrs. Noakes, please.”

“Yes, my lady,” Jennings knew the kind of basket and so did Mrs. Noakes.

Below stairs a strong sympathy with Miss Vanderpoel's movements had

developed. No one resented the preparation of baskets. Somehow they were

always managed, even if asked for at untimely hours.

Betty was sitting silent, looking out into the greyness of the

autumn-smitten park.

“Are--are you listening for anything, Betty?” Lady Anstruthers asked

rather falteringly. “You have a sort of listening look in your eyes.”

Betty came back to the room, as it were.

“Have I,” she said. “Yes, I think I was listening for--something.”

And Rosalie did not ask her what she listened for. She was afraid she

knew.

It was not only the Stourtons Betty visited this morning. She passed

from one cottage to another--to see old women, and old men, as well as

young ones, who for one reason or another needed help and encouragement.

By one bedside she read aloud; by another she sat and told cheerful

stories; she listened to talk in little kitchens, and in one house

welcomed a newborn thing. As she walked steadily over grey road and

down grey lanes damp mist rose and hung about her. And she did not walk

alone. Fear walked with her, and anguish, a grey ghost by her side. Once

she found herself standing quite still on a side path, covering her face

with her hands. She filled every moment of the morning, and walked until

she was tired. Before she went home she called at the post office,

and Mr. Tewson greeted her with a solemn face. He did not wait to be

questioned.

“There's been no news to-day, miss, so far,” he said. “And that seems

as if they might be so given up to hard work at a dreadful time that

there's been no chance for anything to get out. When people's hanging

over a man's bed at the end, it's as if everything stopped but

that--that's stopping for all time.”

After luncheon the rain began to fall softly, slowly, and with a

suggestion of endlessness. It was a sort of mist itself, and became a

damp shadow among the bare branches of trees which soon began to drip.

“You have been walking about all morning, and you are tired, dear,” Lady

Anstruthers said to her. “Won't you go to your room and rest, Betty?”

Yes, she would go to her room, she said. Some new books had arrived from

London this morning, and she would look over them. She talked a little

about her visits before she went, and when, as she talked, Ughtred came

over to her and stood close to her side holding her hand and stroking

it, she smiled at him sweetly--the smile he adored. He stroked the hand

and softly patted it, watching her wistfully. Suddenly he lifted it to

his lips, and kissed it again and again with a sort of passion.

“I love you so much, Aunt Betty,” he cried. “We both love you so much.

Something makes me love you to-day more than ever I did before. It

almost makes me cry. I love you so.”

She stooped swiftly and drew him into her arms and kissed him close and

hard. He held his head back a little and looked into the blue under her

lashes.

“I love your eyes,” he said. “Anyone would love your eyes, Aunt Betty.

But what is the matter with them? You are not crying at all, but--oh!

what is the matter?”

“No, I am not crying at all,” she said, and smiled--almost laughed.

But after she had kissed him again she took her books and went upstairs.

She did not lie down, and she did not read when she was alone in her

room. She drew a long chair before the window and watched the slow

falling of the rain. There is nothing like it--that slow weeping of the

rain on an English autumn day. Soft and light though it was, the park

began to look sodden. The bare trees held out their branches like

imploring arms, the brown garden beds were neat and bare. The same rain

was drip-dripping at Mount Dunstan--upon the desolate great house--upon

the village--upon the mounds and ancient stone tombs in the churchyard,

sinking into the earth--sinking deep, sucked in by the clay beneath--the

cold damp clay. She shook herself shudderingly. Why should the thought

come to her--the cold damp clay? She would not listen to it, she would

think of New York, of its roaring streets and crash of sound, of the

rush of fierce life there--of her father and mother. She tried to force

herself to call up pictures of Broadway, swarming with crowds of black

things, which, seen from the windows of its monstrous buildings,

seemed like swarms of ants, burst out of ant-hills, out of a thousand

ant-hills. She tried to remember shop windows, the things in them, the

throngs going by, and the throngs passing in and out of great, swinging

glass doors. She dragged up before her a vision of Rosalie, driving

with her mother and herself, looking about her at the new buildings and

changed streets, flushed and made radiant by the accelerated pace and

excitement of her beloved New York. But, oh, the slow, penetrating

rainfall, and--the cold damp clay!

She rose, making an involuntary sound which was half a moan. The long

mirror set between two windows showed her momentarily an awful young

figure, throwing up its arms. Was that Betty Vanderpoel--that?

“What does one do,” she said, “when the world comes to an end? What does

one do?”

All her days she had done things--there had always been something to do.

Now there was nothing. She went suddenly to her bell and rang for her

maid. The woman answered the summons at once.

“Send word to the stable that I want Childe Harold. I do not want Mason.

I shall ride alone.”

“Yes, miss,” Ambleston answered, without any exterior sign of emotion.

She was too well-trained a person to express any shade of her internal

amazement. After she had transmitted the order to the proper manager she

returned and changed her mistress's costume.

She had contemplated her task, and was standing behind Miss Vanderpoel's

chair, putting the last touch to her veil, when she became conscious of

a slight stiffening of the neck which held so well the handsome head,

then the head slowly turned towards the window giving upon the front

park. Miss Vanderpoel was listening to something, listening so intently

that Ambleston felt that, for a few moments, she did not seem to

breathe. The maid's hands fell from the veil, and she began to listen

also. She had been at the service the day before. Miss Vanderpoel rose

from her chair slowly--very slowly, and took a step forward. Then she

stood still and listened again.

“Open that window, if you please,” she commanded--“as if a stone image

was speaking”--Ambleston said later. The window was thrown open, and for

a few seconds they both stood still again. When Miss Vanderpoel spoke,

it was as if she had forgotten where she was, or as if she were in a

dream.

“It is the ringers,” she said. “They are tolling the passing bell.”

The serving woman was soft of heart, and had her feminine emotions.

There had been much talk of this thing in the servant's hall. She turned

upon Betty, and forgot all rules and training.

“Oh, miss!” she cried. “He's gone--he's gone! That good man--out of this

hard world. Oh, miss, excuse me--do!” And as she burst into wild tears,

she ran out of the room.

. . . . .

Rosalie had been sitting in the morning room. She also had striven to

occupy herself with work. She had written to her mother, she had read,

she had embroidered, and then read again. What was Betty doing--what was

she thinking now? She laid her book down in her lap, and covering her

face with her hands, breathed a desperate little prayer. That life

should be pain and emptiness to herself, seemed somehow natural since

she had married Nigel--but pain and emptiness for Betty--No! No! No! Not

for Betty! Piteous sorrow poured upon her like a flood. She did not know

how the time passed. She sat, huddled together in her chair, with hidden

face. She could not bear to look at the rain and ghost mist out of

doors. Oh, if her mother were only here, and she might speak to her! And

as her loving tears broke forth afresh, she heard the door open.

“If you please, my lady--I beg your pardon, my lady,” as she started and

uncovered her face.

“What is it, Jennings?”

The figure at the door was that of the serious, elderly butler, and he

wore a respectfully grave air.

“As your ladyship is sitting in this room, we thought it likely you

would not hear, the windows being closed, and we felt sure, my lady,

that you would wish to know----”

Lady Anstruthers' hands shook as they clung to the arms of her chair.

“To know----” she faltered. “Hear what?”

“The passing bell is tolling, my lady. It has just begun. It is for

Lord Mount Dunstan. There's not a dry eye downstairs, your ladyship, not

one.”

He opened the windows, and she stood up. Jennings quietly left the room.

The slow, heavy knell struck ponderously on the damp air, and she stood

and shivered.

A moment or two later she turned, because it seemed as if she must.

Betty, in her riding habit, was standing motionless against the door,

her wonderful eyes still as death, gazing at her, gazing in an awful,

simple silence.

Oh, what was the use of being afraid to speak at such a time as this?

In one moment Rosy was kneeling at her feet, clinging about her knees,

kissing her hands, the very cloth of her habit, and sobbing aloud.

“Oh, my darling--my love--my own Betty! I don't know--and I won't

ask--but speak to me--speak just a word--my dearest dear!”

Betty raised her up and drew her within the room, closing the door

behind them.

“Kind little Rosy,” she said. “I came to speak--because we two love each

other. You need not ask, I will tell you. That bell is tolling for the

man who taught me--to KNOW. He never spoke to me of love. I have not one

word or look to remember. And now---- Oh, listen--listen! I have been

listening since the morning of yesterday.” It was an awful thing--her

white face, with all the flame of life swept out of it.

“Don't listen--darling--darling!” Rosy cried out in anguish. “Shut your

ears--shut your ears!” And she tried to throw her arms around the high

black head, and stifle all sound with her embrace.

“I don't want to shut them,” was the answer. “All the unkindness and

misery are over for him, I ought to thank God--but I don't. I shall

hear--O Rosy, listen!--I shall hear that to the end of my days.”

Rosy held her tight, and rocked and sobbed.

“My Betty,” she kept saying. “My Betty,” and she could say no more. What

more was there to say? At last Betty withdrew herself from her arms, and

then Rosalie noticed for the first time that she wore the habit.

“Dearest,” she whispered, “what are you going to do?”

“I was going to ride, and I am going to do it still. I must do

something. I shall ride a long, long way--and ride hard. You won't try

to keep me, Rosy. You will understand.”

“Yes,” biting her lip, and looking at her with large, awed eyes, as she

patted her arm with a hand that trembled. “I would not hold you back,

Betty, from anything in the world you chose to do.”

And with another long, clinging clasp of her, she let her go.

Mason was standing by Childe Harold when she went down the broad steps.

He also wore a look of repressed emotion, and stood with bared head

bent, his eyes fixed on the gravel of the drive, listening to the heavy

strokes of the bell in the church tower, rather as if he were taking

part in some solemn ceremony.

He mounted her silently, and after he had given her the bridle, looked

up, and spoke in a somewhat husky voice:

“The order was that you did not want me, miss? Was that correct?”

“Yes, I wish to ride alone.”

“Yes, miss. Thank you, miss.”

Childe Harold was in good spirits. He held up his head, and blew the

breath through his delicate, dilated, red nostrils as he set out with

his favourite sidling, dancing steps. Mason watched him down the avenue,

saw the lodge keeper come out to open the gate, and curtsy as her

ladyship's sister passed through it. After that he went slowly back to

the stables, and sat in the harness-room a long time, staring at the

floor, as the bell struck ponderously on his ear.

The woman who had opened the gate for her Betty saw had red eyes. She

knew why.

“A year ago they all thought of him as an outcast. They would have

believed any evil they had heard connected with his name. Now, in every

cottage, there is weeping--weeping. And he lies deaf and dumb,” was her

thought.

She did not wish to pass through the village, and turned down a side

road, which would lead her to where she could cross the marshes, and

come upon lonely places. The more lonely, the better. Every few moments

she caught her breath with a hard short gasp. The slow rain fell upon

her, big round, crystal drops hung on the hedgerows, and dripped upon

the grass banks below them; the trees, wreathed with mist, were like

waiting ghosts as she passed them by; Childe Harold's hoof upon the

road, made a hollow, lonely sound.

A thought began to fill her brain, and make insistent pressure upon it.

She tried no more to thrust thought away. Those who lay deaf and dumb,

those for whom people wept--where were they when the weeping seemed to

sound through all the world? How far had they gone? Was it far? Could

they hear and could they see? If one plead with them aloud, could they

draw near to listen? Did they begin a long, long journey as soon as they

had slipped away? The “wonder of the world,” she had said, watching life

swelling and bursting the seeds in Kedgers' hothouses! But this was a

greater wonder still, because of its awesomeness. This man had been, and

who dare say he was not--even now? The strength of his great body, the

look in his red-brown eyes, the sound of his deep voice, the struggle,

the meaning of him, where were they? She heard herself followed by the

hollow echo of Childe Harold's hoofs, as she rode past copse and hedge,

and wet spreading fields. She was this hour as he had been a month

ago. If, with some strange suddenness, this which was Betty Vanderpoel,

slipped from its body----She put her hand up to her forehead. It was

unthinkable that there would be no more. Where was he now--where was he

now?

This was the thought that filled her brain cells to the exclusion of all

others. Over the road, down through by-lanes, out on the marshes. Where

was he--where was he--WHERE? Childe Harold's hoofs began to beat it out

as a refrain. She heard nothing else. She did not know where she was

going and did not ask herself. She went down any road or lane which

looked empty of life, she took strange turnings, without caring; she did

not know how far she was afield.

Where was he now--this hour--this moment--where was he now? Did he know

the rain, the greyness, the desolation of the world?

Once she stopped her horse on the loneliness of the marsh land, and

looked up at the low clouds about her, at the creeping mist, the dank

grass. It seemed a place in which a newly-released soul might wander

because it did not yet know its way.

“If you should be near, and come to me, you will understand,” her clear

voice said gravely between the caught breaths, “what I gave you was

nothing to you--but you took it with you. Perhaps you know without my

telling you. I want you to know. When a man is dead, everything melts

away. I loved you. I wish you had loved me.”

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE MOMENT

In the unnatural unbearableness of her anguish, she lost sight of

objects as she passed them, she lost all memory of what she did. She did

not know how long she had been out, or how far she had ridden. When the

thought of time or distance vaguely flitted across her mind, it seemed

that she had been riding for hours, and might have crossed one county

and entered another. She had long left familiar places behind. Riding

through and inclosed by the mist, she, herself, might have been a

wandering ghost, lost in unknown places. Where was he now--where was he

now?

Afterwards she could not tell how or when it was that she found herself

becoming conscious of the evidences that her horse had been ridden too

long and hard, and that he was worn out with fatigue. She did not know

that she had ridden round and round over the marshes, and had passed

several times through the same lanes. Childe Harold, the sure of foot,

actually stumbled, out of sheer weariness of limb. Perhaps it was this

which brought her back to earth, and led her to look around her with

eyes which saw material objects with comprehension. She had reached the

lonely places, indeed and the evening was drawing on. She was at

the edge of the marsh, and the land about her was strange to her and

desolate. At the side of a steep lane, overgrown with grass, and seeming

a mere cart-path, stood a deserted-looking, black and white, timbered

cottage, which was half a ruin. Close to it was a dripping spinney,

its trees forming a darkling background to the tumble-down house, whose

thatch was rotting into holes, and its walls sagging forward perilously.

The bit of garden about it was neglected and untidy, here and there

windows were broken, and stuffed with pieces of ragged garments.

Altogether a sinister and repellent place enough.

She looked at it with heavy eyes. (Where was he now--where was he

now?--This repeating itself in the far chambers of her brain.) Her sight

seemed dimmed, not only by the mist, but by a sinking faintness which

possessed her. She did not remember how little food she had eaten during

more than twenty-four hours. Her habit was heavy with moisture, and

clung to her body; she was conscious of a hot tremor passing over her,

and saw that her hands shook as they held the bridle on which they had

lost their grip. She had never fainted in her life, and she was not

going to faint now--women did not faint in these days--but she must

reach the cottage and dismount, to rest under shelter for a short time.

No smoke was rising from the chimney, but surely someone was living in

the place, and could tell her where she was, and give her at least water

for herself and her horse. Poor beast! how wickedly she must have been

riding him, in her utter absorption in her thoughts. He was wet, not

alone with rain, but with sweat. He snorted out hot, smoking breaths.

She spoke to him, and he moved forward at her command. He was trembling

too. Not more than two hundred yards, and she turned him into the lane.

But it was wet and slippery, and strewn with stones. His trembling and

her uncertain hold on the bridle combined to produce disaster. He set

his foot upon a stone which slid beneath it, he stumbled, and she could

not help him to recover, so he fell, and only by Heaven's mercy not

upon her, with his crushing, big-boned weight, and she was able to drag

herself free of him before he began to kick, in his humiliated efforts

to rise. But he could not rise, because he was hurt--and when she,

herself, got up, she staggered, and caught at the broken gate, because

in her wrenching leap for safety she had twisted her ankle, and for a

moment was in cruel pain.

When she recovered from her shock sufficiently to be able to look at the

cottage, she saw that it was more of a ruin than it had seemed, even

at a short distance. Its door hung open on broken hinges, no smoke rose

from the chimney, because there was no one within its walls to light

a fire. It was quite empty. Everything about the place lay in dead and

utter silence. In a normal mood she would have liked the mystery of

the situation, and would have set about planning her way out of her

difficulty. But now her mind made no effort, because normal interest

in things had fallen away from her. She might be twenty miles from

Stornham, but the possible fact did not, at the moment, seem to concern

her. (Where is he now--where is he now?) Childe Harold was trying to

rise, despite his hurt, and his evident determination touched her. He

was too proud to lie in the mire. She limped to him, and tried to steady

him by his bridle. He was not badly injured, though plainly in pain.

“Poor boy, it was my fault,” she said to him as he at last struggled to

his feet. “I did not know I was doing it. Poor boy!”

He turned a velvet dark eye upon her, and nosed her forgivingly with

a warm velvet muzzle, but it was plain that, for the time, he was done

for. They both moved haltingly to the broken gate, and Betty fastened

him to a thorn tree near it, where he stood on three feet, his fine head

drooping.

She pushed the gate open, and went into the house through the door which

hung on its hinges. Once inside, she stood still and looked about her.

If there was silence and desolateness outside, there was within the

deserted place a stillness like the unresponse of death. It had been

long since anyone had lived in the cottage, but tramps or gipsies had

at times passed through it. Dead, blackened embers lay on the hearth, a

bundle of dried grass which had been slept on was piled in the corner,

an empty nail keg and a wooden box had been drawn before the big chimney

place for some wanderer to sit on when the black embers had been hot and

red.

Betty gave one glance around her and sat down upon the box standing on

the bare hearth, her head sinking forward, her hands falling clasped

between her knees, her eyes on the brick floor.

“Where is he now?” broke from her in a loud whisper, whose sound was

mechanical and hollow. “Where is he now?”

And she sat there without moving, while the grey mist from the marshes

crept close about the door and through it and stole about her feet.

So she sat long--long--in a heavy, far-off dream.

Along the road a man was riding with a lowering, fretted face. He had

come across country on horseback, because to travel by train meant

wearisome stops and changes and endlessly slow journeying, annoying

beyond endurance to those who have not patience to spare. His ride would

have been pleasant enough but for the slow mist-like rain. Also he had

taken a wrong turning, because he did not know the roads he travelled.

The last signpost he had passed, however, had given him his cue again,

and he began to feel something of security. Confound the rain! The best

road was slippery with it, and the haze of it made a man's mind feel

befogged and lowered his spirits horribly--discouraged him--would worry

him into an ill humour even if he had reason to be in a good one. As for

him, he had no reason for cheerfulness--he never had for the matter

of that, and just now----! What was the matter with his horse? He was

lifting his head and sniffing the damp air restlessly, as if he

scented or saw something. Beasts often seemed to have a sort of second

sight--horses particularly.

What ailed him that he should prick up his ears and snort after his

sniffing the mist! Did he hear anything? Yes, he did, it seemed. He gave

forth suddenly a loud shrill whinny, turning his head towards a rough

lane they were approaching, and immediately from the vicinity of

a deserted-looking cottage behind a hedge came a sharp but

mournful-sounding neigh in answer.

“What horse is that?” said Nigel Anstruthers, drawing in at the

entrance to the lane and looking down it. “There is a fine brute with a

side-saddle on,” he added sharply. “He is waiting for someone. What is a

woman doing there at this time? Is it a rendezvous? A good place----”

He broke off short and rode forward. “I'm hanged if it is not Childe

Harold,” he broke out, and he had no sooner assured himself of the fact

than he threw himself from his saddle, tethered his horse and strode up

the path to the broken-hinged door.

He stood on the threshold and stared. What a hole it was--what a hole!

And there SHE sat--alone--eighteen or twenty miles from home--on a

turned-up box near the black embers, her hands clasped loosely between

her knees, her face rather awful, her eyes staring at the floor, as if

she did not see it.

“Where is he now?” he heard her whisper to herself with soft weirdness.

“Where is he now?”

Sir Nigel stepped into the place and stood before her. He had smiled

with a wry unpleasantness when he had heard her evidently unconscious

words.

“My good girl,” he said, “I am sure I do not know where he is--but it

is very evident that he ought to be here, since you have amiably put

yourself to such trouble. It is fortunate for you perhaps that I am here

before him. What does this mean?” the question breaking from him with

savage authority.

He had dragged her back to earth. She sat upright and recognised him

with a hideous sense of shock, but he did not give her time to speak.

His instinct of male fury leaped within him.

“YOU!” he cried out. “It takes a woman like you to come and hide herself

in a place of this sort, like a trolloping gipsy wench! It takes a New

York millionairess or a Roman empress or one of Charles the

Second's duchesses to plunge as deep as this. You, with your golden

pedestal--you, with your ostentatious airs and graces--you, with your

condescending to give a man a chance to repent his sins and turn over

a new leaf! Damn it,” rising to a sort of frenzy, “what are you doing

waiting in a hole like this--in this weather--at this hour--you--you!”

The fool's flame leaped high enough to make him start forward, as if to

seize her by the shoulder and shake her.

But she rose and stepped back to lean against the side of the

chimney--to brace herself against it, so that she could stand in her

lame foot's despite. Every drop of blood had been swept from her face,

and her eyes looked immense. His coming was a good thing for her, though

she did not know it. It brought her back from unearthly places. All her

child hatred woke and blazed in her. Never had she hated a thing so, and

it set her slow, cold blood running like something molten.

“Hold your tongue!” she said in a clear, awful young voice of warning.

“And take care not to touch me. If you do--I have my whip here--I shall

lash you across your mouth!”

He broke into ribald laughter. A certain sudden thought which had cut

into him like a knife thrust into flesh drove him on.

“Do!” he cried. “I should like to carry your mark back to Stornham--and

tell people why it was given. I know who you are here for. Only such

fellows ask such things of women. But he was determined to be safe, if

you hid in a ditch. You are here for Mount Dunstan--and he has failed

you!”

But she only stood and stared at him, holding her whip behind her,

knowing that at any moment he might snatch it from her hand. And

she knew how poor a weapon it was. To strike out with it would only

infuriate him and make him a wild beast. And it was becoming an agony

to stand upon her foot. And even if it had not been so--if she had been

strong enough to make a leap and dash past him, her horse stood outside

disabled.

Nigel Anstruthers' eyes ran over her from head to foot, down the side of

her mud-stained habit, while a curious light dawned in them.

“You have had a fall from your horse,” he exclaimed. “You are lame!”

Then quickly, “That was why Childe Harold was trembling and standing on

three feet! By Jove!”

Then he sat down on the nail keg and began to laugh. He laughed for a

full minute, but she saw he did not take his eyes from her.

“You are in as unpleasant a situation as a young woman can well be,” he

said, when he stopped. “You came to a dirty hole to be alone with a man

who felt it safest not to keep his appointment. Your horse stumbled and

disabled himself and you. You are twenty miles from home in a deserted

cottage in a lane no one passes down even in good weather. You are

frightened to death and you have given me even a better story to play

with than your sister gave me. By Jove!”

His face was an unholy thing to look upon. The situation and her

powerlessness were exciting him.

“No,” she answered, keeping her eyes on his, as she might have kept them

on some wild animal's, “I am not frightened to death.”

His ugly dark flush rose.

“Well, if you are not,” he said, “don't tell me so. That kind of

defiance is not your best line just now. You have been disdaining me

from magnificent New York heights for some time. Do you think that I am

not enjoying this?”

“I cannot imagine anyone else who would enjoy it so much.” And she knew

the answer was daring, but would have made it if he had held a knife's

point at her throat.

He got up, and walking to the door drew it back on its crazy hinges

and managed to shut it close. There was a big wooden bolt inside and he

forced it into its socket.

“Presently I shall go and put the horses into the cowshed,” he said.

“If I leave them standing outside they will attract attention. I do

not intend to be disturbed by any gipsy tramp who wants shelter. I have

never had you quite to myself before.”

He sat down again and nursed his knee gracefully.

“And I have never seen you look as attractive,” biting his under lip

in cynical enjoyment. “To-day's adventure has roused your emotions and

actually beautified you--which was not necessary. I daresay you have

been furious and have cried. Your eyes do not look like mere eyes,

but like splendid blue pools of tears. Perhaps _I_ shall make you cry

sometime, my dear Betty.”

“No, you will not.”

“Don't tempt me. Women always cry when men annoy them. They rage, but

they cry as well.”

“I shall not.”

“It's true that most women would have begun to cry before this. That is

what stimulates me. You will swagger to the end. You put the devil into

me. Half an hour ago I was jogging along the road, languid and bored to

extinction. And now----” He laughed outright in actual exultation. “By

Jove!” he cried out. “Things like this don't happen to a man in these

dull days! There's no such luck going about. We've gone back five

hundred years, and we've taken New York with us.” His laugh shut off in

the middle, and he got up to thrust his heavy, congested face close to

hers. “Here you are, as safe as if you were in a feudal castle, and here

is your ancient enemy given his chance--given his chance. Do you think,

by the Lord, he is going to give it up? No. To quote your own words,

'you may place entire confidence in that.'”

Exaggerated as it all was, somehow the melodrama dropped away from it

and left bare, simple, hideous fact for her to confront. The evil in him

had risen rampant and made him lose his head. He might see his senseless

folly to-morrow and know he must pay for it, but he would not see

it to-day. The place was not a feudal castle, but what he said was

insurmountable truth. A ruined cottage on the edge of miles of marsh

land, a seldom-trodden road, and night upon them! A wind was rising

on the marshes now, and making low, steady moan. Horrible things had

happened to women before, one heard of them with shudders when they were

recorded in the newspapers. Only two days ago she had remembered that

sometimes there seemed blunderings in the great Scheme of things. Was

all this real, or was she dreaming that she stood here at bay, her back

against the chimney-wall, and this degenerate exulting over her, while

Rosy was waiting for her at Stornham--and at this very hour her father

was planning his journey across the Atlantic?

“Why did you not behave yourself?” demanded Nigel Anstruthers, shaking

her by the shoulder. “Why did you not realise that I should get even

with you one day, as sure as you were woman and I was man?”

She did not shrink back, though the pupils of her eyes dilated. Was it

the wildest thing in the world which happened to her--or was it not?

Without warning--the sudden rush of a thought, immense and strange,

swept over her body and soul and possessed her--so possessed her that

it changed her pallor to white flame. It was actually Anstruthers

who shrank back a shade because, for the moment, she looked so near

unearthly.

“I am not afraid of you,” she said, in a clear, unshaken voice. “I am

not afraid. Something is near me which will stand between us--something

which DIED to-day.”

He almost gasped before the strangeness of it, but caught back his

breath and recovered himself.

“Died to-day! That's recent enough,” he jeered. “Let us hear about it.

Who was it?”

“It was Mount Dunstan,” she flung at him. “The church-bells were tolling

for him when I rode away. I could not stay to hear them. It killed me--I

loved him. You were right when you said it. I loved him, though he never

knew. I shall always love him--though he never knew. He knows now.

Those who died cannot go away when THAT is holding them. They must stay.

Because I loved him, he may be in this place. I call on him----” raising

her clear voice. “I call on him to stand between us.”

He backed away from her, staring an evil, enraptured stare.

“What! There is that much temperament in you?” he said. “That was what I

half-suspected when I saw you first. But you have hidden it well. Now it

bursts forth in spite of you. Good Lord! What luck--what luck!”

He moved to the door and opened it.

“I am a very modern man, and I enjoy this to the utmost,” he said. “What

I like best is the melodrama of it--in connection with Fifth Avenue.

I am perfectly aware that you will not discuss this incident in the

future. You are a clever enough young woman to know that it will be more

to your interest than to mine that it shall be kept exceedingly quiet.”

The white fire had not died out of her and she stood straight.

“What I have called on will be near me, and will stand between us,” she

said.

Old though it was, the door was massive and heavy to lift. To open it

cost him some muscular effort.

“I am going to the horses now,” he explained before he dragged it back

into its frame and shut her in. “It is safe enough to leave you here.

You will stay where you are.”

He felt himself secure in leaving her because he believed she could not

move, and because his arrogance made it impossible for him to count

on strength and endurance greater than his own. Of endurance he knew

nothing and in his keen and cynical exultance his devil made a fool of

him.

As she heard him walk down the path to the gate, Betty stood amazed at

his lack of comprehension of her.

“He thinks I will stay here. He absolutely thinks I will wait until he

comes back,” she whispered to the emptiness of the bare room.

Before he had arrived she had loosened her boot, and now she stooped and

touched her foot.

“If I were safe at home I should think I could not walk, but I can walk

now--I can--I can--because I will bear the pain.”

In such cottages there is always a door opening outside from the little

bricked kitchen, where the copper stands. She would reach that, and,

passing through, would close it behind her. After that SOMETHING would

tell her what to do--something would lead her.

She put her lame foot upon the floor, and rested some of her weight upon

it--not all. A jagged pain shot up from it through her whole side it

seemed, and, for an instant, she swayed and ground her teeth.

“That is because it is the first step,” she said. “But if I am to be

killed, I will die in the open--I will die in the open.”

The second and third steps brought cold sweat out upon her, but she told

herself that the fourth was not quite so unbearable, and she stiffened

her whole body, and muttered some words while she took a fifth and sixth

which carried her into the tiny back kitchen.

“Father,” she said. “Father, think of me now--think of me! Rosy, love

me--love me and pray that I may come home. You--you who have died, stand

very near!”

If her father ever held her safe in his arms again--if she ever awoke

from this nightmare, it would be a thing never to let one's mind hark

back to again--to shut out of memory with iron doors.

The pain had shot up and down, and her forehead was wet by the time she

had reached the small back door. Was it locked or bolted--was it? She

put her hand gently upon the latch and lifted it without making any

sound. Thank God Almighty, it was neither bolted nor locked, the latch

lifted, the door opened, and she slid through it into the shadow of the

grey which was already almost the darkness of night. Thank God for that,

too.

She flattened herself against the outside wall and listened. He was

having difficulty in managing Childe Harold, who snorted and pulled

back, offended and made rebellious by his savagely impatient hand. Good

Childe Harold, good boy! She could see the massed outline of the trees

of the spinney. If she could bear this long enough to get there--even

if she crawled part of the way. Then it darted through her mind that he

would guess that she would be sure to make for its cover, and that he

would go there first to search.

“Father, think for me--you were so quick to think!” her brain cried out

for her, as if she was speaking to one who could physically hear.

She almost feared she had spoken aloud, and the thought which flashed

upon her like lightning seemed to be an answer given. He would be

convinced that she would at once try to get away from the house. If she

kept near it--somewhere--somewhere quite close, and let him search the

spinney, she might get away to its cover after he gave up the search and

came back. The jagged pain had settled in a sort of impossible anguish,

and once or twice she felt sick. But she would die in the open--and she

knew Rosalie was frightened by her absence, and was praying for her.

Prayers counted and, yet, they had all prayed yesterday.

“If I were not very strong, I should faint,” she thought. “But I have

been strong all my life. That great French doctor--I have forgotten his

name--said that I had the physique to endure anything.”

She said these things that she might gain steadiness and convince

herself that she was not merely living through a nightmare. Twice she

moved her foot suddenly because she found herself in a momentary respite

from pain, beginning to believe that the thing was a nightmare--that

nothing mattered--because she would wake up presently--so she need not

try to hide.

“But in a nightmare one has no pain. It is real and I must go

somewhere,” she said, after the foot was moved. Where could she go?

She had not looked at the place as she rode up. She had only

half-consciously seen the spinney. Nigel was swearing at the horses.

Having got Childe Harold into the shed, there seemed to be nothing

to fasten his bridle to. And he had yet to bring his own horse in and

secure him. She must get away somewhere before the delay was over.

How dark it was growing! Thank God for that again! What was the rather

high, dark object she could trace in the dimness near the hedge? It was

sharply pointed, is if it were a narrow tent. Her heart began to beat

like a drum as she recalled something. It was the shape of the sort

of wigwam structure made of hop poles, after they were taken from the

fields. If there was space between it and the hedge--even a narrow

space--and she could crouch there? Nigel was furious because Childe

Harold was backing, plunging, and snorting dangerously. She halted

forward, shutting her teeth in her terrible pain. She could scarcely

see, and did not recognise that near the wigwam was a pile of hop poles

laid on top of each other horizontally. It was not quite as high as the

hedge whose dark background prevented its being seen. Only a few steps

more. No, she was awake--in a nightmare one felt only terror, not pain.

“YOU, WHO DIED TO-DAY,” she murmured.

She saw the horizontal poles too late. One of them had rolled from its

place and lay on the ground, and she trod on it, was thrown forward

against the heap, and, in her blind effort to recover herself, slipped

and fell into a narrow, grassed hollow behind it, clutching at the

hedge. The great French doctor had not been quite right. For the

first time in her life she felt herself sinking into bottomless

darkness--which was what happened to people when they fainted.

When she opened her eyes she could see nothing, because on one side

of her rose the low mass of the hop poles, and on the other was the

long-untrimmed hedge, which had thrown out a thick, sheltering growth

and curved above her like a penthouse. Was she awakening, after all? No,

because the pain was awakening with her, and she could hear, what seemed

at first to be quite loud sounds. She could not have been unconscious

long, for she almost immediately recognised that they were the echo of

a man's hurried footsteps upon the bare wooden stairway, leading to

the bedrooms in the empty house. Having secured the horses, Nigel had

returned to the cottage, and, finding her gone had rushed to the upper

floor in search of her. He was calling her name angrily, his voice

resounding in the emptiness of the rooms.

“Betty; don't play the fool with me!”

She cautiously drew herself further under cover, making sure that no

end of her habit remained in sight. The overgrowth of the hedge was

her salvation. If she had seen the spot by daylight, she would not have

thought it a possible place of concealment.

Once she had read an account of a woman's frantic flight from a murderer

who was hunting her to her death, while she slipped from one poor hiding

place to another, sometimes crouching behind walls or bushes, sometimes

lying flat in long grass, once wading waist-deep through a stream, and

at last finding a miserable little fastness, where she hid shivering for

hours, until her enemy gave up his search. One never felt the reality of

such histories, but there was actually a sort of parallel in this. Mad

and crude things were let loose, and the world of ordinary life seemed

thousands of miles away.

She held her breath, for he was leaving the house by the front door. She

heard his footsteps on the bricked path, and then in the lane. He went

to the road, and the sound of his feet died away for a few moments. Then

she heard them returning--he was back in the lane--on the brick path,

and stood listening or, perhaps, reflecting. He muttered something

exclamatory, and she heard a match struck, and shortly afterwards he

moved across the garden patch towards the little spinney. He had thought

of it, as she had believed he would. He would not think of this place,

and in the end he might get tired or awakened to a sense of his lurid

folly, and realise that it would be safer for him to go back to Stornham

with some clever lie, trusting to his belief that there existed no girl

but would shrink from telling such a story in connection with a man who

would brazenly deny it with contemptuous dramatic detail. If he would

but decide on this, she would be safe--and it would be so like him that

she dared to hope. But, if he did not, she would lie close, even if she

must wait until morning, when some labourer's cart would surely pass,

and she would hear it jolting, and drag herself out, and call aloud

in such a way that no man could be deaf. There was more room under her

hedge than she had thought, and she found that she could sit up, by

clasping her knees and bending her head, while she listened to every

sound, even to the rustle of the grass in the wind sweeping across the

marsh.

She moved very gradually and slowly, and had just settled into utter

motionlessness when she realised that he was coming back through the

garden--the straggling currant and gooseberry bushes were being trampled

through.

“Betty, go home,” Rosalie had pleaded. “Go home--go home.” And she had

refused, because she could not desert her.

She held her breath and pressed her hand against her side, because her

heart beat, as it seemed to her, with an actual sound. He moved with

unsteady steps from one point to another, more than once he stumbled,

and his angry oath reached her; at last he was so near her hiding place

that his short hard breathing was a distinct sound. A moment later he

spoke, raising his voice, which fact brought to her a rush of relief,

through its signifying that he had not even guessed her nearness.

“My dear Betty,” he said, “you have the pluck of the devil, but

circumstances are too much for you. You are not on the road, and I have

been through the spinney. Mere logic convinces me that you cannot be far

away. You may as well give the thing up. It will be better for you.”

“You who died to-day--do not leave me,” was Betty's inward cry, and she

dropped her face on her knees.

“I am not a pleasant-tempered fellow, as you know, and I am losing my

hold on myself. The wind is blowing the mist away, and there will be a

moon. I shall find you, my good girl, in half an hour's time--and then

we shall be jolly well even.”

She had not dropped her whip, and she held it tight. If, when the

moonlight revealed the pile of hop poles to him, he suspected and sprang

at them to tear them away, she would be given strength to make one

spring, even in her agony, and she would strike at his eyes--awfully,

without one touch of compunction--she would strike--strike.

There was a brief silence, and then a match was struck again, and almost

immediately she inhaled the fragrance of an excellent cigar.

“I am going to have a comfortable smoke and stroll about--always within

sight and hearing. I daresay you are watching me, and wondering what

will happen when I discover you, I can tell you what will happen. You

are not a hysterical girl, but you will go into hysterics--and no one

will hear you.”

(All the power of her--body and soul--in one leap on him and then a lash

that would cut to the bone. And it was not a nightmare--and Rosy was

at Stornham, and her father looking over steamer lists and choosing his

staterooms.)

He walked about slowly, the scent of his cigar floating behind him.

She noticed, as she had done more than once before, that he seemed to

slightly drag one foot, and she wondered why. The wind was blowing the

mist away, and there was a faint growing of light. The moon was not

full, but young, and yet it would make a difference. But the upper part

of the hedge grew thick and close to the heap of wood, and, but for her

fall, she would never have dreamed of the refuge.

She could only guess at his movements, but his footsteps gave some clue.

He was examining the ground in as far as the darkness would allow. He

went into the shed and round about it, he opened the door of the tiny

coal lodge, and looked again into the small back kitchen. He came

near--nearer--so near once that, bending sidewise, she could have put

out a hand and touched him. He stood quite still, then made a step or so

away, stood still again, and burst into a laugh once more.

“Oh, you are here, are you?” he said. “You are a fine big girl to be

able to crowd yourself into a place like that!”

Hot and cold dew stood out on her forehead and made her hair damp as she

held her whip hard.

“Come out, my dear!” alluringly. “It is not too soon. Or do you prefer

that I should assist you?”

Her heart stood quite still--quite. He was standing by the wigwam of hop

poles and thought she had hidden herself inside it. Her place under the

hedge he had not even glanced at.

She knew he bent down and thrust his arm into the wigwam, for his fury

at the result expressed itself plainly enough. That he had made a fool

of himself was worse to him than all else. He actually wheeled about and

strode away to the house.

Because minutes seemed hours, she thought he was gone long, but he was

not away for twenty minutes. He had, in fact, gone into the bare front

room again, and sitting upon the box near the hearth, let his head drop

in his hands and remained in this position thinking. In the end he got

up and went out to the shed where he had left the horses.

Betty was feeling that before long she might find herself making that

strange swoop into the darkness of space again, and that it did

not matter much, as one apparently lay quite still when one was

unconscious--when she heard that one horse was being led out into the

lane. What did that mean? Had he got tired of the chase--as the other

man did--and was he going away because discomfort and fatigue had cooled

and disgusted him--perhaps even made him feel that he was playing the

part of a sensational idiot who was laying himself open to derision?

That would be like him, too.

Presently she heard his footsteps once more, but he did not come as near

her as before--in fact, he stood at some yards' distance when he stopped

and spoke--in quite a new manner.

“Betty,” his tone was even cynically cool, “I shall stalk you no more.

The chase is at an end. I think I have taken all out of you I intended

to. Perhaps it was a bad joke and was carried too far. I wanted to prove

to you that there were circumstances which might be too much even for

a young woman from New York. I have done it. Do you suppose I am such

a fool as to bring myself within reach of the law? I am going away and

will send assistance to you from the next house I pass. I have left

some matches and a few broken sticks on the hearth in the cottage. Be

a sensible girl. Limp in there and build yourself a fire as soon as you

hear me gallop away. You must be chilled through. Now I am going.”

He tramped across the bit of garden, down the brick path, mounted his

horse and put it to a gallop at once. Clack, clack, clack--clacking

fainter and fainter into the distance--and he was gone.

When she realised that the thing was true, the effect upon her of her

sense of relief was that the growing likelihood of a second swoop into

darkness died away, but one curious sob lifted her chest as she leaned

back against the rough growth behind her. As she changed her position

for a better one she felt the jagged pain again and knew that in the

tenseness of her terror she had actually for some time felt next to

nothing of her hurt. She had not even been cold, for the hedge behind

and over her and the barricade before had protected her from both wind

and rain. The grass beneath her was not damp for the same reason. The

weary thought rose in her mind that she might even lie down and sleep.

But she pulled herself together and told herself that this was like the

temptation of believing in the nightmare. He was gone, and she had a

respite--but was it to be anything more? She did not make any attempt to

leave her place of concealment, remembering the strange things she had

learned in watching him, and the strange terror in which Rosalie lived.

“One never knows what he will do next; I will not stir,” she said

through her teeth. “No, I will not stir from here.”

And she did not, but sat still, while the pain came back to her body

and the anguish to her heart--and sometimes such heaviness that her

head dropped forward upon her knees again, and she fell into a stupefied

half-doze.

From one such doze she awakened with a start, hearing a slight click of

the gate. After it, there were several seconds of dead silence. It was

the slightness of the click which was startling--if it had not been

caused by the wind, it had been caused by someone's having cautiously

moved it--and this someone wishing to make a soundless approach had

immediately stood still and was waiting. There was only one person who

would do that. By this time, the mist being blown away, the light of

the moon began to make a growing clearness. She lifted her hand and

delicately held aside a few twigs that she might look out.

She had been quite right in deciding not to move. Nigel Anstruthers

had come back, and after his pause turned, and avoiding the brick path,

stole over the grass to the cottage door. His going had merely been an

inspiration to trap her, and the wood and matches had been intended to

make a beacon light for him. That was like him, as well. His horse he

had left down the road.

But the relief of his absence had been good for her, and she was able

to check the shuddering fit which threatened her for a moment. The next,

her ears awoke to a new sound. Something was stumbling heavily about the

patch of garden--some animal. A cropping of grass, a snorting breath,

and more stumbling hoofs, and she knew that Childe Harold had managed

to loosen his bridle and limp out of the shed. The mere sense of his

nearness seemed a sort of protection.

He had limped and stumbled to the front part of the garden before Nigel

heard him. When he did hear, he came out of the house in the humour of

a man the inflaming of whose mood has been cumulative; Childe Harold's

temper also was not to be trifled with. He threw up his head, swinging

the bridle out of reach; he snorted, and even reared with an ugly

lashing of his forefeet.

“Good boy!” whispered Betty. “Do not let him take you--do not!”

If he remained where he was he would attract attention if anyone passed

by. “Fight, Childe Harold, be as vicious as you choose--do not allow

yourself to be dragged back.”

And fight he did, with an ugliness of temper he had never shown

before--with snortings and tossed head and lashed-out heels, as if he

knew he was fighting to gain time and with a purpose.

But in the midst of the struggle Nigel Anstruthers stopped suddenly. He

had stumbled again, and risen raging and stained with damp earth. Now

he stood still, panting for breath--as still as he had stood after the

click of the gate. Was he--listening? What was he listening to? Had she

moved in her excitement, and was it possible he had caught the sound?

No, he was listening to something else. Far up the road it echoed,

but coming nearer every moment, and very fast. Another horse--a big

one--galloping hard. Whosoever it was would pass this place; it could

only be a man--God grant that he would not go by so quickly that his

attention would not be arrested by a shriek! Cry out she must--and if

he did not hear and went galloping on his way she would have betrayed

herself and be lost.

She bit off a groan by biting her lip.

“You who died to-day--now--now!”

Nearer and nearer. No human creature could pass by a thing like this--it

would not be possible. And Childe Harold, backing and fighting, scented

the other horse and neighed fiercely and high. The rider was slackening

his pace; he was near the lane. He had turned into it and stopped. Now

for her one frantic cry--but before she could gather power to give it

forth, the man who had stopped had flung himself from his saddle and was

inside the garden speaking. A big voice and a clear one, with a ringing

tone of authority.

“What are you doing here? And what is the matter with Miss Vanderpoel's

horse?” it called out.

Now there was danger of the swoop into the darkness--great

danger--though she clutched at the hedge that she might feel its thorns

and hold herself to the earth.

“YOU!” Nigel Anstruthers cried out. “You!” and flung forth a shout of

laughter.

“Where is she?” fiercely. “Lady Anstruthers is terrified. We have been

searching for hours. Only just now I heard on the marsh that she had

been seen to ride this way. Where is she, I say?”

A strong, angry, earthly voice--not part of the melodrama--not part of a

dream, but a voice she knew, and whose sound caused her heart to leap

to her throat, while she trembled from head to foot, and a light, cold

dampness broke forth on her skin. Something had been a dream--her wild,

desolate ride--the slow tolling; for the voice which commanded with such

human fierceness was that of the man for whom the heavy bell had struck

forth from the church tower.

Sir Nigel recovered himself brilliantly. Not that he did not recognise

that he had been a fool again and was in a nasty place; but it was not

for the first time in his life, and he had learned how to brazen himself

out of nasty places.

“My dear Mount Dunstan,” he answered with tolerant irritation, “I have

been having a devil of a time with female hysterics. She heard the bell

toll and ran away with the idea that it was for you, and paid you the

compliment of losing her head. I came on her here when she had ridden

her horse half to death and they had both come a cropper. Confound

women's hysterics! I could do nothing with her. When I left her for a

moment she ran away and hid herself. She is concealed somewhere on

the place or has limped off on to the marsh. I wish some New York

millionairess would work herself into hysteria on my humble account.”

“Those are lies,” Mount Dunstan answered--“every damned one of them!”

He wheeled around to look about him, attracted by a sound, and in the

clearing moonlight saw a figure approaching which might have risen from

the earth, so far as he could guess where it had come from. He strode

over to it, and it was Betty Vanderpoel, holding her whip in a clenched

hand and showing to his eagerness such hunted face and eyes as were

barely human. He caught her unsteadiness to support it, and felt her

fingers clutch at the tweed of his coatsleeve and move there as if the

mere feeling of its rough texture brought heavenly comfort to her and

gave her strength.

“Yes, they are lies, Lord Mount Dunstan,” she panted. “He said that he

meant to get what he called 'even' with me. He told me I could not get

away from him and that no one would hear me if I cried out for help. I

have hidden like some hunted animal.” Her shaking voice broke, and she

held the cloth of his sleeve tightly. “You are alive--alive!” with a

sudden sweet wildness. “But it is true the bell tolled! While I was

crouching in the dark I called to you--who died to-day--to stand between

us!”

The man absolutely shuddered from head to foot.

“I was alive, and you see I heard you and came,” he answered hoarsely.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her into the cottage. Her cheek

felt the enrapturing roughness of his tweed shoulder as he did it. He

laid her down on the couch of hay and turned away.

“Don't move,” he said. “I will come back. You are safe.”

If there had been more light she would have seen that his jaw was set

like a bulldog's, and there was a red spark in his eyes--a fearsome one.

But though she did not clearly see, she KNEW, and the nearness of the

last hours swept away all relenting.

Nigel Anstruthers having discreetly waited until the two had passed into

the house, and feeling that a man would be an idiot who did not remove

himself from an atmosphere so highly charged, was making his way toward

the lane and was, indeed, halfway through the gate when heavy feet were

behind him and a grip of ugly strength wrenched him backward.

“Your horse is cropping the grass where you left him, but you are not

going to him,” said a singularly meaning voice. “You are coming with

me.”

Anstruthers endeavoured to convince himself that he did not at that

moment turn deadly sick and that the brute would not make an ass of

himself.

“Don't be a bally fool!” he cried out, trying to tear himself free.

The muscular hand on his shoulder being reinforced by another, which

clutched his collar, dragged him back, stumbling ignominiously through

the gooseberry bushes towards the cart-shed. Betty lying upon her bed of

hay heard the scuffling, mingled with raging and gasping curses. Childe

Harold, lifting his head from his cropping of the grass, looked after

the violently jerking figures and snorted slightly, snuffing with

dilated red nostrils. As a war horse scenting blood and battle, he was

excited.

When Mount Dunstan got his captive into the shed the blood which had

surged in Red Godwyn's veins was up and leaping. Anstruthers, his collar

held by a hand with fingers of iron, writhed about and turned a livid,

ghastly face upon his captor.

“You have twice my strength and half my age, you beast and devil!” he

foamed in a half shriek, and poured forth frightful blasphemies.

“That counts between man and man, but not between vermin and

executioner,” gave back Mount Dunstan.

The heavy whip, flung upward, whistled down through the air, cutting

through cloth and linen as though it would cut through flesh to bone.

“By God!” shrieked the writhing thing he held, leaping like a man who

has been shot. “Don't do that again! DAMN you!” as the unswerving lash

cut down again--again.

What followed would not be good to describe. Betty through the open door

heard wild and awful things--and more than once a sound as if a dog were

howling.

When the thing was over, one of the two--his clothes cut to ribbons,

his torn white linen exposed, lay, a writhing, huddled worm, hiccoughing

frenzied sobs upon the earth in a corner of the cart-shed. The other man

stood over him, breathless and white, but singularly exalted.

“You won't want your horse to-night, because you can't use him,” he

said. “I shall put Miss Vanderpoel's saddle upon him and ride with her

back to Stornham. You think you are cut to pieces, but you are not, and

you'll get over it. I'll ask you to mark, however, that if you open your

foul mouth to insinuate lies concerning either Lady Anstruthers or her

sister I will do this thing again in public some day--on the steps of

your club--and do it more thoroughly.”

He walked into the cottage soon afterwards looking, to Betty

Vanderpoel's eyes, pale and exceptionally big, and also more a man than

it is often given even to the most virile male creature to look--and he

walked to the side of her resting place and stood there looking down.

“I thought I heard a dog howl,” she said.

“You did hear a dog howl,” he answered. He said no other word, and she

asked no further question. She knew what he had done, and he was well

aware that she knew it.

There was a long, strangely tense silence. The light of the moon was

growing. She made at first no effort to rise, but lay still and looked

up at him from under splendid lifted lashes, while his own gaze fell

into the depth of hers like a plummet into a deep pool. This continued

for almost a full minute, when he turned quickly away and walked to the

hearth, indrawing a heavy breath.

He could not endure that which beset him; it was unbearable, because her

eyes had maddeningly seemed to ask him some wistful question. Why did

she let her loveliness so call to him. She was not a trifler who

could play with meanings. Perhaps she did not know what her power was.

Sometimes he could believe that beautiful women did not.

In a few moments, almost before he could reach her, she was rising, and

when she got up she supported herself against the open door, standing

in the moonlight. If he was pale, she was pale also, and her large eyes

would not move from his face, so drawing him that he could not keep away

from her.

“Listen,” he broke out suddenly. “Penzance told me--warned me--that

some time a moment would come which would be stronger than all else in a

man--than all else in the world. It has come now. Let me take you home.”

“Than what else?” she said slowly, and became even paler than before.

He strove to release himself from the possession of the moment, and in

his struggle answered with a sort of savagery.

“Than scruple--than power--even than a man's determination and decent

pride.”

“Are you proud?” she half whispered quite brokenly. “I am not--since I

waited for the ringing of the church bell--since I heard it toll. After

that the world was empty--and it was as empty of decent pride as of

everything else. There was nothing left. I was the humblest broken thing

on earth.”

“You!” he gasped. “Do you know I think I shall go mad directly perhaps

it is happening now. YOU were humble and broken--your world was empty!

Because----?”

“Look at me, Lord Mount Dunstan,” and the sweetest voice in the world

was a tender, wild little cry to him. “Oh LOOK at me!”

He caught her out-thrown hands and looked down into the beautiful

passionate soul of her. The moment had come, and the tidal wave rising

to its height swept all the common earth away when, with a savage sob,

he caught and held her close and hard against that which thudded racing

in his breast.

And they stood and swayed together, folded in each other's arms, while

the wind from the marshes lifted its voice like an exulting human thing

as it swept about them.

CHAPTER XLIX

AT STORNHAM AND AT BROADMORLANDS

The exulting wind had swept the clouds away, and the moon rode in a dark

blue sea of sky, making the night light purely clear, when they drew

a little apart, that they might better see the wonderfulness in each

other's faces. It was so mysteriously great a thing that they felt near

to awe.

“I fought too long. I wore out my body's endurance, and now I am quaking

like a boy. Red Godwyn did not begin his wooing like this. Forgive me,”

Mount Dunstan said at last.

“Do you know,” with lovely trembling lips and voice, “that for

long--long--you have been unkind to me?”

It was merely human that he should swiftly enfold her again, and answer

with his lips against her cheek.

“Unkind! Unkind! Oh, the heavenly woman's sweetness of your telling me

so--the heavenly sweetness of it!” he exclaimed passionately and

low. “And I was one of those who are 'by the roadside everywhere,' an

unkempt, raging beggar, who might not decently ask you for a crust.”

“It was all wrong--wrong!” she whispered back to him, and he poured

forth the tenderest, fierce words of confession and prayer, and she

listened, drinking them in, with now and then a soft sob pressed against

the roughness of the enrapturing tweed. For a space they had both

forgotten her hurt, because there are other things than terror which

hypnotise pain. Mount Dunstan was to be praised for remembering it

first. He must take her back to Stornham and her sister without further

delay.

“I will put your saddle on Anstruthers' horse, or mine, and lift you to

your seat. There is a farmhouse about two miles away, where I will take

you first for food and warmth. Perhaps it would be well for you to

stay there to rest for an hour or so, and I will send a message to Lady

Anstruthers.”

“I will go to the place, and eat and drink what you advise,” she

answered. “But I beg you to take me back to Rosalie without delay. I

feel that I must see her.”

“I feel that I must see her, too,” he said. “But for her--God bless

her!” he added, after his sudden pause.

Betty knew that the exclamation meant strong feeling, and that somehow

in the past hours Rosalie had awakened it. But it was only when, after

their refreshment at the farm, they had taken horse again and were

riding homeward together, that she heard from him what had passed

between them.

“All that has led to this may seem the merest chance,” he said. “But

surely a strange thing has come about. I know that without understanding

it.” He leaned over and touched her hand. “You, who are Life--without

understanding I ride here beside you, believing that you brought me

back.”

“I tried--I tried! With all my strength, I tried.”

“After I had seen your sister to-day, I guessed--I knew. But not at

first. I was not ill of the fever, as excited rumour had it; but I was

ill, and the doctors and the vicar were alarmed. I had fought too long,

and I was giving up, as I have seen the poor fellows in the ballroom

give up. If they were not dragged back they slipped out of one's hands.

If the fever had developed, all would have been over quickly. I knew

the doctors feared that, and I am ashamed to say I was glad of it. But,

yesterday, in the morning, when I was letting myself go with a morbid

pleasure in the luxurious relief of it--something reached me--some slow

rising call to effort and life.”

She turned towards him in her saddle, listening, her lips parted.

“I did not even ask myself what was happening, but I began to be

conscious of being drawn back, and to long intensely to see you again. I

was gradually filled with a restless feeling that you were near me, and

that, though I could not physically hear your voice, you were surely

CALLING to me. It was the thing which could not be--but it was--and

because of it I could not let myself drift.”

“I did call you! I was on my knees in the church asking to be forgiven

if I prayed mad prayers--but praying the same thing over and over. The

villagers were kneeling there, too. They crowded in, leaving everything

else. You are their hero, and they were in deep earnest.”

His look was gravely pondering. His life had not made a mystic of

him--it was Penzance who was the mystic--but he felt himself perplexed

by mysteriously suggestive thought.

“I was brought back--I was brought back,” he said. “In the afternoon

I fell asleep and slept profoundly until the morning. When I awoke, I

realised that I was a remade man. The doctors were almost awed when I

first spoke to them. Old Dr. Fenwick died later, and, after I had

heard about it, the church bell was tolled. It was heard at Weaver's

farmhouse, and, as everybody had been excitedly waiting for the sound,

it conveyed but one idea to them--and the boy was sent racing across the

fields to Stornham village. Dearest! Dearest!” he exclaimed.

She had bowed her head and burst into passionate sobbing. Because she

was not of the women who wept, her moment's passion was strong and

bitter.

“It need not have been!” she shuddered. “One cannot bear it--because it

need not have been!”

“Stop your horse a moment,” he said, reining in his own, while, with

burning eyes and swelling throat, he held and steadied her. But he did

not know that neither her sister nor her father had ever seen her in

such mood, and that she had never so seen herself.

“You shall not remember it,” he said to her.

“I will not,” she answered, recovering herself. “But for one moment all

the awful hours rushed back. Tell me the rest.”

“We did not know that the blunder had been made until a messenger from

Dole rode over to inquire and bring messages of condolence. Then we

understood what had occurred and I own a sort of frenzy seized me. I

knew I must see you, and, though the doctors were horribly nervous, they

dare not hold me back. The day before it would not have been believed

that I could leave my room. You were crying out to me, and though I did

not know, I was answering, body and soul. Penzance knew I must have my

way when I spoke to him--mad as it seemed. When I rode through Stornham

village, more than one woman screamed at sight of me. I shall not be

able to blot out of my mind your sister's face. She will tell you what

we said to each other. I rode away from the Court quite half mad----”

his voice became very gentle, “because of something she had told me in

the first wild moments.”

Lady Anstruthers had spent the night moving restlessly from one room

to another, and had not been to bed when they rode side by side up the

avenue in the early morning sunlight. An under keeper, crossing the

park a few hundred yards above them, after one glance, dashed across

the sward to the courtyard and the servants' hall. The news flashed

electrically through the house, and Rosalie, like a small ghost, came

out upon the steps as they reined in. Though her lips moved, she could

not speak aloud, as she watched Mount Dunstan lift her sister from her

horse.

“Childe Harold stumbled and I hurt my foot,” said Betty, trying to be

calm.

“I knew he would find you!” Rosalie answered quite faintly. “I knew you

would!” turning to Mount Dunstan, adoring him with all the meaning of

her small paled face.

She would have been afraid of her memory of what she had said in the

strange scene which had taken place before them a few hours ago, but

almost before either of the two spoke she knew that a great gulf had

been crossed in some one inevitable, though unforeseen, leap. How it had

been taken, when or where, did not in the least matter, when she clung

to Betty and Betty clung to her.

After a few moments of moved and reverent waiting, the admirable

Jennings stepped forward and addressed her in lowered voice.

“There's been little sleep in the village this night, my lady,” he

murmured earnestly. “I promised they should have a sign, with your

permission. If the flag was run up--they're all looking out, and they'd

know.”

“Run it up, Jennings,” Lady Anstruthers answered, “at once.”

When it ran up the staff on the tower and fluttered out in gay answering

to the morning breeze, children in the village began to run about

shouting, men and women appeared at cottage doors, and more than one

cap was thrown up in the air. But old Doby and Mrs. Welden, who had been

waiting for hours, standing by Mrs. Welden's gate, caught each other's

dry, trembling old hands and began to cry.

The Broadmorlands divorce scandal, having made conversation during a

season quite forty years before Miss Vanderpoel appeared at Stornham

Court, had been laid upon a lower shelf and buried beneath other stories

long enough to be forgotten. Only one individual had not forgotten it,

and he was the Duke of Broadmorlands himself, in whose mind it remained

hideously clear. He had been a young man, honestly and much in love

when it first revealed itself to him, and for a few months he had even

thought it might end by being his death, notwithstanding that he was

strong and in first-rate physical condition. He had been a fine,

hearty young man of clean and rather dignified life, though he was not

understood to be brilliant of mind. Privately he had ideals connected

with his rank and name which he was not fluent enough clearly to

express. After he had realised that he should not die of the public

humiliation and disgrace, which seemed to point him out as having been

the kind of gullible fool it is scarcely possible to avoid laughing

at--or, so it seemed to him in his heart-seared frenzy--he thought it

not improbable that he should go mad. He was harried so by memories of

lovely little soft ways of Edith's (his wife's name was Edith), of

the pretty sound of her laugh, and of her innocent, girlish habit of

kneeling down by her bedside every night and morning to say her prayers.

This had so touched him that he had sometimes knelt down to say his,

too, saying to her, with slight awkward boyishness, that a fellow who

had a sort of angel for his wife ought to do his best to believe in the

things she believed in.

“And all the time----!” a devil who laughed used to snigger in his ear

over and over again, until it was almost like the ticking of a clock

during the worst months, when it did not seem probable that a man could

feel his brain whirling like a Catherine wheel night and day, and still

manage to hold on and not reach the point of howling and shrieking and

dashing his skull against wails and furniture.

But that passed in time, and he told himself that he passed with it.

Since then he had lived chiefly at Broadmorlands Castle, and was spoken

of as a man who had become religious, which was not true, but, having

reached the decision that religion was good for most people, he paid a

good deal of attention to his church and schools, and was rigorous in

the matter of curates.

He had passed seventy now, and was somewhat despotic and haughty,

because a man who is a Duke and does not go out into the world to rub

against men of his own class and others, but lives altogether on a great

and splendid estate, saluted by every creature he meets, and universally

obeyed and counted before all else, is not unlikely to forget that he is

a quite ordinary human being, and not a sort of monarch.

He had done his best to forget Edith, who had soon died of being a shady

curate's wife in Australia, but he had not been able to encompass it. He

used, occasionally, to dream she was kneeling by the bed in her childish

nightgown saying her prayers aloud, and would waken crying--as he had

cried in those awful young days. Against social immorality or village

light-mindedness he was relentlessly savage. He allowed for no

palliating or exonerating facts. He began to see red when he heard of or

saw lightness in a married woman, and the outside world frequently said

that this characteristic bordered on monomania.

Nigel Anstruthers, having met him once or twice, had at first been much

amused by him, and had even, by giving him an adroitly careful lead,

managed to guide him into an expression of opinion. The Duke, who

had heard men of his class discussed, did not in the least like him,

notwithstanding his sympathetic suavity of manner and his air of being

intelligently impressed by what he heard. Not long afterwards, however,

it transpired that the aged rector of Broadmorlands having died, the

living had been given to Ffolliott, and, hearing it, Sir Nigel was not

slow to conjecture that quite decently utilisable tools would lie ready

to his hand if circumstances pressed; this point of view, it will be

seen, being not illogical. A man who had not been a sort of hermit would

have heard enough of him to be put on his guard, and one who was a man

of the world, looking normally on existence, would have reasoned coolly,

and declined to concern himself about what was not his affair. But a

parallel might be drawn between Broadmorlands and some old lion wounded

sorely in his youth and left to drag his unhealed torment through the

years of age. On one subject he had no point of view but his own,

and could be roused to fury almost senseless by wholly inadequately

supported facts. He presented exactly the material required--and that in

mass.

About the time the flag was run up on the tower at Stornham Court a

carter, driving whistling on the road near the deserted cottage, was

hailed by a man who was walking slowly a few yards ahead of him. The

carter thought that he was a tramp, as his clothes were plainly in

bad case, which seeing, his answer was an unceremonious grunt, and it

certainly did not occur to him to touch his forehead. A minute later,

however, he “got a start,” as he related afterwards. The tramp was a

gentleman whose riding costume was torn and muddied, and who looked

“gashly,” though he spoke with the manner and authority which Binns,

the carter, recognised as that of one of the “gentry” addressing a

day-labourer.

“How far is it from here to Medham?” he inquired.

“Medham be about four mile, sir,” was the answer. “I be carryin' these

'taters there to market.”

“I want to get there. I have met with an accident. My horse took fright

at a pheasant starting up rocketting under his nose. He threw me into a

hedge and bolted. I'm badly enough bruised to want to reach a town and

see a doctor. Can you give me a lift?”

“That I will, sir, ready enough,” making room on the seat beside him.

“You be bruised bad, sir,” he said sympathetically, as his passenger

climbed to his place, with a twisted face and uttering blasphemies under

his breath.

“Damned badly,” he answered. “No bones broken, however.”

“That cut on your cheek and neck'll need plasterin', sir.”

“That's a scratch. Thorn bush,” curtly.

Sympathy was plainly not welcome. In fact Binns was soon of the opinion

that here was an ugly customer, gentleman or no gentleman. A jolting

cart was, however, not the best place for a man who seemed sore from

head to foot, and done for out and out. He sat and ground his teeth, as

he clung to the rough seat in the attempt to steady himself. He became

more and more “gashly,” and a certain awful light in his eyes alarmed

the carter by leaping up at every jolt. Binns was glad when he left him

at Medham Arms, and felt he had earned the half-sovereign handed to him.

Four days Anstruthers lay in bed in a room at the Inn. No one saw him

but the man who brought him food. He did not send for a doctor, because

he did not wish to see one. He sent for such remedies as were needed by

a man who had been bruised by a fall from his horse. He made no remark

which could be considered explanatory, after he had said irritably that

a man was a fool to go loitering along on a nervous brute who needed

watching. Whatsoever happened was his own damned fault.

Through hours of day and night he lay staring at the whitewashed beams

or the blue roses on the wall paper. They were long hours, and filled

with things not pleasant enough to dwell on in detail. Physical misery

which made a man writhe at times was not the worst part of them. There

were a thousand things less endurable. More than once he foamed at the

mouth, and recognised that he gibbered like a madman.

There was but one memory which saved him from feeling that this was the

very end of things. That was the memory of Broadmorlands. While a man

had a weapon left, even though it could not save him, he might pay up

with it--get almost even. The whole Vanderpoel lot could be plunged neck

deep in a morass which would leave mud enough sticking to them, even

if their money helped them to prevent its entirely closing over their

heads. He could attend to that, and, after he had set it well going, he

could get out. There were India, South Africa, Australia--a dozen places

that would do. And then he would remember Betty Vanderpoel, and curse

horribly under the bed clothes. It was the memory of Betty which outdid

all others in its power to torment.

On the morning of the fifth day the Duke of Broadmorlands received a

note, which he read with somewhat annoyed curiosity. A certain Sir Nigel

Anstruthers, whom it appeared he ought to be able to recall, was in the

neighbourhood, and wished to see him on a parochial matter of interest.

“Parochial matter” was vague, and so was the Duke's recollection of the

man who addressed him. If his memory served him rightly, he had met

him in a country house in Somersetshire, and had heard that he was the

acquaintance of the disreputable eldest son. What could a person of that

sort have to say of parochial matters? The Duke considered, and then, in

obedience to a rigorous conscience, decided that one ought, perhaps, to

give him half an hour.

There was that in the intruder's aspect, when he arrived in the

afternoon, which produced somewhat the effect of shock. In the first

place, a man in his unconcealable physical condition had no right to be

out of his bed. Though he plainly refused to admit the fact, his manner

of bearing himself erect, and even with a certain touch of cool swagger,

was, it was evident, achieved only by determined effort. He looked like

a man who had not yet recovered from some evil fever. Since the meeting

in Somersetshire he had aged more than the year warranted. Despite his

obstinate fight with himself it was obvious that he was horribly shaky.

A disagreeable scratch or cut, running from cheek to neck, did not

improve his personal appearance.

He pleased his host no more than he had pleased him at their first

encounter; he, in fact, repelled him strongly, by suggesting a degree

of abnormality of mood which was smoothed over by an attempt at entire

normality of manner. The Duke did not present an approachable front as,

after Anstruthers had taken a chair, he sat and examined him with bright

blue old eyes set deep on either side of a dominant nose and framed over

by white eyebrows. No, Nigel Anstruthers summed him up, it would not be

easy to open the matter with the old fool. He held himself magnificently

aloof, with that lack of modernity in his sense of place which, even at

this late day, sometimes expressed itself here and there in the manner

of the feudal survival.

“I am afraid you have been ill,” with rigid civility.

“A man feels rather an outsider in confessing he has let his horse throw

him into a hedge. It was my own fault entirely. I allowed myself to

forget that I was riding a dangerously nervous brute. I was thinking of

a painful and absorbing subject. I was badly bruised and scratched, but

that was all.”

“What did your doctor say?”

“That I was in luck not to have broken my neck.”

“You had better have a glass of wine,” touching a bell. “You do not look

equal to any exertion.”

In gathering himself together, Sir Nigel felt he was forced to use

enormous effort. It had cost him a gruesome physical struggle to endure

the drive over to Broadmorlands, though it was only a few miles from

Medham. There had been something unnatural in the exertion necessary to

sit upright and keep his mind decently clear. That was the worst of it.

The fever and raging hours of the past days and nights had so shaken him

that he had become exhausted, and his brain was not alert. He was not

thinking rapidly, and several times he had lost sight of a point it was

important to remember. He grew hot and cold and knew his hands and

voice shook, as he answered. But, perhaps--he felt desperately--signs of

emotion were not bad.

“I am not quite equal to exertion,” he began slowly. “But a man cannot

lie on his bed while some things are undone--a MAN cannot.”

As the old Duke sat upright, the blue eyes under his bent brows were

startled, as well as curious. Was the man going out of his mind about

something? He looked rather like it, with the dampness starting out on

his haggard face, and the ugly look suddenly stamped there. The fact was

that the insensate fury which had possessed and torn Anstruthers as he

had writhed in his inn bedroom had sprung upon him again in full force,

and his weakness could not control it, though it would have been wiser

to hold it in check. He also felt frightfully ill, which filled him

with despair, and, through this fact, he lost sight of the effect he

produced, as he stood up, shaking all over.

“I come to you because you are the one man who can most easily

understand the thing I have been concealing for a good many years.”

The Duke was irritated. Confound the objectionable idiot, what did he

mean by taking that intimate tone with a man who was not prepared to

concern himself in his affairs?

“Excuse me,” he said, holding up an authoritative hand, “are you going

to make a confession? I don't like such things. I prefer to be excused.

Personal confidences are not parochial matters.”

“This one is.” And Sir Nigel was sickeningly conscious that he was

putting the statement rashly, while at the same time all better words

escaped him. “It is as much a parochial matter,” losing all hold on his

wits and stammering, “as was--as was--the affair of--your wife.”

It was the Duke who stood up now, scarlet with anger. He sprang from

his chair as if he had been a young man in whom some insult had struck

blazing fire.

“You--you dare!” he shouted. “You insolent blackguard! You force your

way in here and dare--dare----!” And he clenched his fist, wildly

shaking it.

Nigel Anstruthers, staggering on his uncertain feet, would have shouted

also, but could not, though he tried, and he heard his own voice come

forth brokenly.

“Yes, I dare! I--your--my own--my----!”

Swaying and tottering, he swung round to the chair he had left, and fell

into it, even while the old Duke, who stood raging before him, started

back in outraged amazement. What was the fellow doing? Was he making

faces at him? The drawn malignant mouth and muscles suggested it. Was

he a lunatic, indeed? But the sense of disgusted outrage changed all at

once to horror, as, with a countenance still more hideously livid and

twisted, his visitor slid helplessly from his seat and lay a huddling

heap of clothes on the floor.

CHAPTER L

THE PRIMEVAL THING

When Mr. Vanderpoel landed in England his wife was with him. This

quiet-faced woman, who was known to be on her way to join her daughter

in England, was much discussed, envied, and glanced at, when she

promenaded the deck with her husband, or sat in her chair softly wrapped

in wonderful furs. Gradually, during the past months, she had been told

certain modified truths connected with her elder daughter's marriage.

They had been painful truths, but had been so softened and expurgated

of their worst features that it had been possible to bear them, when one

realised that they did not, at least, mean that Rosy had forgotten or

ceased to love her mother and father, or wish to visit her home. The

steady clearness of foresight and readiness of resource which were often

spoken of as being specially characteristic of Reuben S. Vanderpoel,

were all required, and employed with great tenderness, in the management

of this situation. As little as it was possible that his wife should

know, was the utmost she must hear and be hurt by. Unless ensuing events

compelled further revelations, the rest of it should be kept from her.

As further protection, her husband had frankly asked her to content

herself with a degree of limited information.

“I have meant all our lives, Annie, to keep from you the unpleasant

things a woman need not be troubled with,” he had said. “I promised

myself I would when you were a girl. I knew you would face things, if

I needed your help, but you were a gentle little soul, like Rosy, and I

never intended that you should bear what was useless. Anstruthers was

a blackguard, and girls of all nations have married blackguards before.

When you have Rosy safe at home, and know nothing can hurt her again,

you both may feel you would like to talk it over. Till then we won't go

into detail. You trust me, I know, when I tell you that you shall hold

Rosy in your arms very soon. We may have something of a fight, but there

can only be one end to it in a country as decent as England. Anstruthers

isn't exactly what I should call an Englishman. Men rather like him are

to be found in two or three places.” His good-looking, shrewd, elderly

face lighted with a fine smile. “My handsome Betty has saved us a good

deal by carrying out her fifteen-year-old plan of going to find her

sister,” he ended.

Before they landed they had decided that Mrs. Vanderpoel should be

comfortably established in a hotel in London, and that after this was

arranged, her husband should go to Stornham Court alone. If Sir Nigel

could be induced to listen to logic, Rosalie, her child, and Betty

should come at once to town.

“And, if he won't listen to logic,” added Mr. Vanderpoel, with a dry

composure, “they shall come just the same, my dear.” And his wife put

her arms round his neck and kissed him because she knew what he said was

quite true, and she admired him--as she had always done--greatly.

But when the pilot came on board and there began to stir in the ship the

agreeable and exciting bustle of the delivery of letters and welcoming

telegrams, among Mr. Vanderpoel's many yellow envelopes he opened one

the contents of which caused him to stand still for some moments--so

still, indeed, that some of the bystanders began to touch each other's

elbows and whisper. He certainly read the message two or three times

before he folded it up, returned it to its receptacle, and walked

gravely to his wife's sitting-room.

“Reuben!” she exclaimed, after her first look at him, “have you bad

news? Oh, I hope not!”

He came and sat down quietly beside her, taking her hand.

“Don't be frightened, Annie, my dear,” he said. “I have just been

reminded of a verse in the Bible--about vengeance not belonging to mere

human beings. Nigel Anstruthers has had a stroke of paralysis, and it is

not his first. Apparently, even if he lies on his back for some months

thinking of harm, he won't be able to do it. He is finished.”

When he was carried by the express train through the country, he saw

all that Betty had seen, though the summer had passed, and there were

neither green trees nor hedges. He knew all that the long letters had

meant of stirred emotion and affection, and he was strongly moved,

though his mind was full of many things. There were the farmhouses,

the square-towered churches, the red-pointed hop oasts, and the village

children. How distinctly she had made him see them! His Betty--his

splendid Betty! His heart beat at the thought of seeing her high, young

black head, and holding her safe in his arms again. Safe! He resented

having used the word, because there was a shock in seeming to admit the

possibility that anything in the universe could do wrong to her. Yet one

man had been villain enough to mean her harm, and to threaten her

with it. He slightly shuddered as he thought of how the man was

finished--done for.

The train began to puff more loudly, as it slackened its pace. It was

drawing near to a rustic little station, and, as it passed in, he saw a

carriage standing outside, waiting on the road, and a footman in a

long coat, glancing into each window as the train went by. Two or three

country people were watching it intently. Miss Vanderpoel's father

was coming up from London on it. The stationmaster rushed to open the

carriage door, and the footman hastened forward, but a tall lovely thing

in grey was opposite the step as Mr. Vanderpoel descended it to the

platform. She did not recognise the presence of any other human

being than himself. For the moment she seemed to forget even the

broad-shouldered man who had plainly come with her. As Reuben S.

Vanderpoel folded her in his arms, she folded him and kissed him as he

was not sure she had ever kissed him before.

“My splendid Betty! My own fine girl!” he said.

And when she cried out “Father! Father!” she bent and kissed the breast

of his coat.

He knew who the big young man was before she turned to present him.

“This is Lord Mount Dunstan, father,” she said. “Since Nigel was brought

home, he has been very good to us.”

Reuben S. Vanderpoel looked well into the man's eyes, as he shook hands

with him warmly, and this was what he said to himself:

“Yes, she's safe. This is quite safe. It is to be trusted with the whole

thing.”

Not many days after her husband's arrival at Stornham Court, Mrs.

Vanderpoel travelled down from London, and, during her journey, scarcely

saw the wintry hedges and bare trees, because, as she sat in her

cushioned corner of the railway carriage, she was inwardly offering up

gentle, pathetically ardent prayers of gratitude. She was the woman who

prays, and the many sad petitions of the past years were being answered

at last. She was being allowed to go to Rosy--whatsoever happened, she

could never be really parted from her girl again. She asked pardon many

times because she had not been able to be really sorry when she had

heard of her son-in-law's desperate condition. She could feel pity for

him in his awful case, she told herself, but she could not wish for the

thing which perhaps she ought to wish for. She had confided this to her

husband with innocent, penitent tears, and he had stroked her cheek,

which had always been his comforting way since they had been young

things together.

“My dear,” he said, “if a tiger with hydrophobia were loose among a lot

of decent people--or indecent ones, for the matter of that--you would

not feel it your duty to be very sorry if, in springing on a group of

them, he impaled himself on an iron fence. Don't reproach yourself too

much.” And, though the realism of the picture he presented was such as

to make her exclaim, “No! No!” there were still occasional moments when

she breathed a request for pardon if she was hard of heart--this softest

of creatures human.

It was arranged by the two who best knew and loved her that her meeting

with Rosalie should have no spectators, and that their first hour

together should be wholly unbroken in upon.

“You have not seen each other for so long,” Betty said, when, on her

arrival, she led her at once to the morning-room where Rosy waited,

pale with joy, but when the door was opened, though the two figures were

swept into each other's arms by one wild, tremulous rush of movement,

there were no sounds to be heard, only caught breaths, until the door

had closed again.

The talks which took place between Mr. Vanderpoel and Lord Mount

Dunstan were many and long, and were of absorbing interest to both. Each

presented to the other a new world, and a type of which his previous

knowledge had been but incomplete.

“I wonder,” Mr. Vanderpoel said, in the course of one of them, “if

my world appeals to you as yours appeals to me. Naturally, from your

standpoint, it scarcely seems probable. Perhaps the up-building of large

financial schemes presupposes a certain degree of imagination. I

am becoming a romantic New York man of business, and I revel in it.

Kedgers, for instance,” with the smile which, somehow, suggested Betty,

“Kedgers and the Lilium Giganteum, Mrs. Welden and old Doby threaten to

develop into quite necessary factors in the scheme of happiness. What

Betty has felt is even more comprehensible than it seemed at first.”

They walked and rode together about the countryside; when Mount Dunstan

itself was swept clean of danger, and only a few convalescents lingered

to be taken care of in the huge ballroom, they spent many days in going

over the estate. The desolate beauty of it appealed to and touched Mr.

Vanderpoel, as it had appealed to and touched his daughter, and, also,

wakened in him much new and curious delight. But Mount Dunstan, with a

touch of his old obstinacy, insisted that he should ignore the beauty,

and look closely at less admirable things.

“You must see the worst of this,” he said. “You must understand that I

can put no good face upon things, that I offer nothing, because I have

nothing to offer.”

If he had not been swept through and through by a powerful and rapturous

passion, he would have detested and abhorred these days of deliberate

proud laying bare of the nakedness of the land. But in the hours he

spent with Betty Vanderpoel the passion gave him knowledge of the

things which, being elemental, do not concern themselves with pride and

obstinacy, and do not remember them. Too much had ended, and too much

begun, to leave space or thought for poor things. In their eyes, when

they were together, and even when they were apart, dwelt a glow which

was deeply moving to those who, looking on, were sufficiently profound

of thought to understand.

Watching the two walking slowly side by side down the leafless avenue on

a crystal winter day, Mr. Vanderpoel conversed with the vicar, whom he

greatly liked.

“A young man of the name of Selden,” he remarked, “told me more of this

than he knew.”

“G. Selden,” said the vicar, with affectionate smiling. “He is not aware

that he was largely concerned in the matter. In fact, without G. Selden,

I do not know how, exactly, we should have got on. How is he, nice

fellow?”

“Extremely well, and in these days in my employ. He is of the honest,

indefatigable stuff which makes its way.”

His own smiles, as he watched the two tall figures in the distance,

settled into an expression of speculative absorption, because he was

reflecting upon profoundly interesting matters.

“There is a great primeval thing which sometimes--not often, only

sometimes--occurs to two people,” he went on. “When it leaps into being,

it is well if it is not thwarted, or done to death. It has happened to

my girl and Mount Dunstan. If they had been two young tinkers by the

roadside, they would have come together, and defied their beggary. As

it is, I recognise, as I sit here, that the outcome of what is to be may

reach far, and open up broad new ways.”

“Yes,” said the vicar. “She will live here and fill a strong man's life

with wonderful human happiness--her splendid children will be born here,

and among them will be those who lead the van and make history.”

. . . . .

For some time Nigel Anstruthers lay in his room at Stornham Court,

surrounded by all of aid and luxury that wealth and exalted medical

science could gather about him. Sometimes he lay a livid unconscious

mask, sometimes his nurses and doctors knew that in his hollow eyes

there was the light of a raging half reason, and they saw that he

struggled to utter coherent sounds which they might comprehend. This he

never accomplished, and one day, in the midst of such an effort, he was

stricken dumb again, and soon afterwards sank into stillness and died.

And the Shuttle in the hand of Fate, through every hour of every day,

and through the slow, deep breathing of all the silent nights, weaves

to and fro--to and fro--drawing with it the threads of human life and

thought which strengthen its web: and trace the figures of its yet vague

and uncompleted design.