PART III

GLORIA MUNDI

By Harold Frederic

Author Of “The Damnation Of Theron Ware,” “March Hares,” Etc.

New York: International Book And Publishing Company

1899

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[Illustration: 0007]

TO MY FRIEND

THE HON. ALTON B. PARKER

CHIEF JUDGE OF THE COURT OF APPEALS, N. Y.

PART I

CHAPTER I

The meeting of the man and the woman--it is to this that every story in

the world goes back for its beginning.

At noon on a day late in September the express train from Paris rested,

panting and impatient, on its brief halt in the station at Rouen. The

platform was covered with groups of passengers, pushing their way into

or out of the throng about the victualer’s table. Through the press

passed waiters, bearing above their heads trays with cups of tea and

plates of food. People were climbing the high steps to the carriages, or

beckoning to others from the open windows of compartments. Four minutes

of the allotted five had passed. The warning cries of the guards had

begun, and there was even to be heard the ominous preliminary tooting of

a horn.

At the front of the section of first-class carriages a young woman

leaned through the broad window-frame of a coupé, and held a difficult

conversation with one of the waiters. She had sandwiches in one hand,

some loose coin in the other. Her task was to get at the meaning of a

man who spoke of sous while she was thinking in centimes, and she smiled

a little in amused vexation with herself at the embarrassment.

“Deux sandwich: combien si vous plait, monsieur?” she repeated, with

an appealing stress of courtesy. More slowly she constructed a second

sentence: “Est un franc assez?” She proffered the silver coin to help

out her inquiry, and the waiter, nodding, put up his hand for it.

On the instant, as the noise of slamming doors and the chorus of “Au

coupé, s’il-v’-plait!” grew peremptory, one in authority pushed the

waiter aside and pulled open the coupé door upon which she had been

leaning. “Permettez moi, madame!” he said curtly.

Close at his back was a young man, with wraps upon his arm and a

traveling bag in his hand, who was flushed and breathing hard with the

excitement of hurry, and who drew a long sigh of relief as he put his

foot on the bottom step of the coupé.

The young woman had grasped the door and was striving stoutly to drag

it to her. “Mais non, monsieur!” she shouted, her voice quivering with

vehemence. “Cette compartement est tout reserveé-engageé! J’ai donné

sank franc soisante, en Paris, pour moi seulement! Je proteste!”

Sharp blasts from a horn at the rear of the train broke in upon her

earnest if uncertain remarks. The official held up one warning hand,

while with the other he wrenched the door wide open. He said something

of which the girl comprehended only its arbitrary harshness of spirit.

Brusquely thrusting a ticket into the young man’s hand, he pushed him

up the steps into the compartment, and closed the door upon him with

a clang. Arms were waving outside; the tin horn screamed; a throb of

reawakened energy thrilled backward through the train.

“I assure you--I am so sorry,” the young man began, still standing by

the door. His voice was gentle and deprecatory. His words were English,

but the tone was of some other language.

“But I have taken the whole compartment-I paid for it all!” she burst

out at him, her voice shaking with indignation. “It is an outrage!”

“I am afraid you are mistaken,” he started to speak again; “you obtained

only one seat--I have a ticket for another. If there had been time,

I beg you to believe--” The train was moving, and a swift plunge into

utter darkness abruptly broke off his speech. After a few moments it

became possible to discern vague outlines in the black compartment. The

girl had huddled herself on the end cushion at the right. The young

man took his seat in the corner to the left, and for three incredibly

protracted minutes the tunnel reared its uncanny barrier of bogus

night between them. The dim suggestion of light which remained to them

revealed constrained and motionless figures drawn rigidly away from each

other, and pale averted countenances staring fixedly into the gloom.

All at once they were blinking in a flood of sunshine, and drawing

welcome breaths of the new, sweet air which swept through from window

to window. The young man’s gaze, decorously turned to his left, was of a

sudden struck with the panorama as by a blow. He uttered a little cry of

delight to himself, and bent forward with eagerness to grasp as much as

he might of what was offered. The broad, hill-rimmed basin of the Seine;

the gray towers and shining spires of the ancient town; the blue films

of smoke drifting through the autumn haze; the tall black chimneys, the

narrow, high poplars, the splashes of vivid color with which the mighty

moving picture painted itself--all held him, rapt and trembling, with

his face out of the window.

Summarily the darkness descended upon them again. He drew back, settled

himself in his seat and recalled the circumstance that he was not alone.

It occurred to him to pull up the window, and then instinctively he

turned to see if she had taken the same precaution on her side. Thus

when the short second tunnel unexpectedly ended, he found himself

regarding his companion with wideeyed and surprised intentness.

There were two vacant seats between them, and across this space she

returned his scrutiny for a moment; then with a fine show of calm she

looked away, out through the broad, rounded panes which constituted the

front of the compartment.

To the eye of the young man, she was above all things English. Her

garments, her figure, the pose of her head, the consciously competent

repose of her profile, the very angle at which the correct gray hat,

with its fawn-colored ribbon, crossed the line of the brow above--these

spoke loudly to him of the islander. From this fact alone would be

inferred a towering personal pride, and an implacable resentment toward

those who, no matter how innocently and accidentally, offered injury to

that pride. He knew the English well, and it hardly needed this partial

view of her face to tell him that she was very angry.

Another young man, under these conditions, might have more frankly asked

himself whether the face was a beautiful one. He was conscious that the

query had taken shape in his mind, but he gave it no attention. It was

the character of the face, instead, which had powerfully impressed him.

He recalled with curious minuteness the details of his first glimpse of

it--the commanding light in the gray eyes, the tightened curves of the

lip, the mantling red on the high, smooth cheek. Was it a pretty face?

No--the question would not propound itself. Prettiness had nothing to do

with the matter. The personality which looked through the face--that was

what affected him.

The compartment seemed filled in some subtle way with the effect of this

personality. He looked out of his window again. A beautiful deep valley

lay below him now, with densely wooded hills beyond. The delicate tints

of the waning season enriched the tracery of foliage close at hand;

still the tall chimneys, mixed with poplars, marked the course of the

enslaved river, but the factories themselves were kindly hidden here by

dark growths of thicket in the shadowed depths.

It was surpassingly beautiful, but its contemplation left him restless.

He moved about on his seat, partially lowered the window, put it up

again and at last turned his head.

“I am afraid that all the charming landscape is on this side,” he made

bold to say. “I will change places with pleasure, if--if you would be so

kind.”

“No, thank you,” was her spontaneous and decisive reply. Upon reflection

she added in a more deliberate tone: “I should be obliged if you would

take the view that conversation is not necessary.”

Some latent strain of temerity amazed the young man by rising to the

surface of his mind, under the provocation of this rebuff, and shaping

his purpose for him.

“It is only fair to myself, first, however,” he with surprise heard

himself declaring, “that I should finish my explanation. You can satisfy

yourself readily at Dieppe that your ticket is for only one seat. It

is very, easy to make errors of that kind when one does not--that is to

say, is not--well, _entirely_ familiar with the language of the country.

As to my own part, you will remember that I came only at the last

moment. I took my coupé seat a half hour before, because I also wished

to be alone, and then I went out to see Jeanne d’Arc’s tower again, and

I was nearly too late. If there had been time, I would have found a seat

elsewhere--but you yourself saw--”

“Really, I think no more need be said,” broke in his companion. She

looked him frankly, coldly in the face as she spoke, and her words

seemed in his ears to have metallic edges. “It is plain enough that

there was a mistake. As you have suggested, my French is very faulty

indeed, and no doubt the misunderstanding is entirely my own. So, since

it is unavoidable, there surely need be no more words about it.”

She opened a book at this, put her feet out to the stool in front and

ostentatiously disposed herself for deep abstraction in literature.

The young man in turn got out some pamphlets and papers from the pockets

of his great-coat, and pretended to divide his attention between these

and the scenery outside. In truth, he did not for a moment get the face

of this girl out of his thoughts. More than ever now, since she had

looked him fully in the eye, it was not a face to be pictured in the

brain as other faces of women had been. The luminous substance of the

individuality behind the face shone out at him from the pages he

stared at, and from the passing vistas of lowland meadows, streams and

mill-towns that met his gaze through the window.

He knew so little of women that his mind was quite devoid of materials

for any comparative analysis of the effect she produced upon him. He

evolved for himself, indeed, the conviction that really this was the

first woman, in the genuine and higher meaning of the word, that he had

ever met. The recognition of this brought with it an excitement as novel

to him as the fact itself. Before ever he had seen her, clinging to

the coupé door with her gloved hands and so bravely doing hopeless and

tongue-tied battle with the guard, there had been things which had made

this the greatest day of his life. He was in truth finishing the last

stage of a journey into the unknown, the strange possibilities of which

had for a week kept his nerves on the rack. The curtain of only one more

night hung now between him and the revealed lineaments of destiny. To

be alone with his perturbed thoughts, on this culminating day of anxious

hopes and dreads, had been his controlling idea at Rouen. It was for

this that he had bought the coupé seat, upon the rumor of the station

that solitude was thus to be commanded. And now how extraordinary was

the chance!

There had stepped into this eventful day, as from the clouds, a stranger

whose mysterious appeal to his imagination seemed more remarkable than

all else combined.

He worked this out, painstakingly, with little sidelong glances from

time to time toward where she sat buried in her book, to check the

progression of his reasoning. When he reached the conclusion that she

was really playing this predominant part in the drama of the day, its

suggestion of hysterical folly rather frightened him. He looked with

earnestness out of the window, and even be gan to count the chimneys of

the landscape as an overture to returning sanity. Then he looked less

furtively at her and said to himself with labored plausibility that she

was but an ordinary traveling Englishwoman, scarcely to be

differentiated from the Cook’s-tourist type that he knew so well; she

had not even a governess’ knowledge of French, and there had been

nothing in her words and tone with him to indicate either mental

distinction or kindliness of temper. Why should he bestow so much as

another thought upon her? He squared his slender shoulders, and turned

with resolution to his book.

A minute later the impossibility of the situation had mastered every

fiber of his brain. He put down the volume, feeling himself to be a fool

for doing so, yet suffering himself with an unheard-of gladness.

“If I anger you, I shall be much pained,” he said, with a set face

turned not quite toward her, and a voice that he kept from breaking

by constant effort, “but I am going to England for the first time, and

there are some things that I am very anxious to ask about.”

She seemed to reflect a little before she lifted her head. Now again he

was priviledged to look squarely into her face, and he added swiftly

to his store a new impression of her. The ruling characteristic of the

countenance was a certain calm and serious reasonableness. The forehead

was broad and comely; the glance of the eyes was at once alert and

steady. The other features were content to support this controlling

upper part of the face; they made a graceful and fitting frame for the

mind which revealed itself in the eyes and brow--and sought to do no

more. Studying her afresh in this moment of her silence, he recalled the

face of a young Piedmontese bishop who had come once to his school.

It had the same episcopal serenity, the same wistful pride in youth’s

conquest of the things immortal, the same suggestion of intellectuality

in its clear pallor.

“I should dislike to seem rude,” she said, slowly. “What is it that you

want to ask?” What was it indeed? He searched confusedly about in his

mind for some one question entitled to precedence among the thousand to

which answers would come in good time. He found nothing better than a

query as to the connection between New Haven and Brighton.

“In this little book,” he explained, “there is a time for New Haven and

for London, but I cannot find a mention of Brighton, yet I am expected

there this evening, or perhaps, early to-morrow morning.”

“I am sure I cannot tell you,’” she answered. “However, the places are

not far apart. I should say there would certainly be trains.”

She lifted the book again as she spoke, and adjusted her shoulders to

the cushions. He made haste to prevent the interview from lapsing.

“I have never seen England,” he urged dolefully, “and yet I am all

English in my blood--and in my feelings, too.”

A flicker of ironical perception played for an instant in her eye and at

the corner of her lip. “I have heard that a certain class of Americans

adopt that pose,” she remarked. “I dare say it is all right.”

He did not grasp her meaning all at once, though the willingness to give

umbrage conveyed in her tone was clear enough. He looked doubtfully at

her, before he spoke again. “Oh,” he began, with hesitation--“yes,

I see--you thought I was American. I am not in the least--I am all

English. And it affects me very much--this thought that in a few hours

now I am to see the real England. I am so excited about it, in fact,” he

added with a deprecatory little laugh, “that I couldn’t bear it not to

talk.”

She nodded comprehendingly. “I thought that your accent must be

American--since it certainly isn’t English.”

“Oh, I have too facile an ear,” he answered readily, as if the subject

were by no means new to him. “I pick up every accent that I hear. I

have been much with English people, but even more with Americans and

Australians. I always talk like the last family I have been in--until

I enter another. I am by profession a private tutor--principally in

languages--and so I know my failings in this matter very well.” She

smiled at some passing retrospect. “You must have had an especially

complete sense of my shortcomings as a linguist, too. I have often

wondered what effect my French would produce upon an actual professor,

but I should never have had the courage to experiment, if I had known.”

He waved his hand--a pale hand with veined, thin, nervous fingers, which

she looked at in its foreign gesture. “Too much importance is attached

to languages,” he declared. “It is the cheapest and most trivial of

acquirements, if it stands alone, or if it is not put to high uses.

Parents have so often angered me over this: they do not care what is in

their children’s minds and hearts, but only for the polish and form of

what is on their tongues. I have a different feeling about education.”

She nodded again, and laid the book aside. “You are coming to a country

where everything will shock you, then,” she said. “I would rather do

scullery work, or break stones by the roadside, than be a schoolteacher

in England.”

“Oh, it’s the same everywhere,” he urged. “I would not think that the

English were worse than the others. They are different, that is all.

Besides, I do not think I shall be a teacher in England. Of course, I

speak in the dark; for a few hours yet everything is uncertain. But as

the old American senator at Monte Carlo used to say, ‘I feel it in my

bones’ that I will not have to teach any more.”

The expression of her face seemed somehow not to invite autobiography

at the moment. “The prospect of not having to work any more for one’s

living,” she mused at him--“how curiously fascinating it always is! We

know perfectly well that it is good for us to work, and that we should

be woefully unhappy if we did not work, and yet we are forever charming

our imagination with a vision of complete idleness.”

“I would not be idle!” the young man broke forth, enthusiastically. He

leaned forward in his seat, and spoke with eager hands as well as words

against the noise that filled the swaying carriage. “I have that same

feeling--the longing to escape from the dull and foolish tasks I have

to do--but I never say to myself that I would be idle. There are such a

host of things to do in the world that are worth doing! But the men

who have the time and the money, who are in the position to do these

things--how is it, I ask myself, that they never think of doing them? It

is the greatest of marvels to me. Then sometimes I wonder, if the chance

and the power came to me, whether I also would sit down, and fold my

hands, and do nothing. It is hard to say; who can be sure what is in

him till he has been tested? Yet I like to think that I would prove

the exception. It is only natural,” he concluded, smilingly, “that one

should try to think as well as possible of oneself.”

The young lady surveyed his nervous, mobile face with thoughtful

impassivity. “You seem to think, one way or another, a good deal about

yourself,” she remarked.

He bowed to her, with a certain exaggeration in his show of quite

sincere humility which, she said to herself, had not been learned from

his English-speaking connections.

“What you say is very true,” he admitted with candor. “It is my

fault--my failing. I know it only too well.”

“_My_ fault is bad manners,” she replied, disarmed by his

self-abasement. “I had no business to say it at all.”

“Oh, no,” he urged. “It is delightful to me that you did say it. I could

not begin to tell you how good your words sounded in my ears. Honest and

wise criticism is what I have not heard before in years. You do not get

it in the South; there is flattery for you, and sneering, and praise as

much too high as blame is too cruel--but no candid, quiet judgments. Oh,

I loved to hear you say that! It was like my brother--my older brother

Salvator. He is in America now. He is the only one who always said the

truth to me. And I am glad, too, because--because it makes you seem like

a friend to me, and I have been so agitated this whole week, so anxious

and upset, and all without a soul to talk to, or advise with--and the

pressure on me has been so great----”

He let the wandering sentence lose itself in the clamor of the train,

and put the rest of his meaning into the glance with which he clung to

hers. The appeal for sympathetic kindliness of treatment glowed in his

eyes and shone upon his eager face.

She took time for her answer, and when she spoke it was hardly in direct

reply. “Your business in England,” she said, as unconcernedly as might

be--“it is that, I take it, which causes so much anxiety. Fortunately it

is soon to be settled--to-morrow, I think you said.”

“I wish I might tell you about it,” he responded with frank fervency. “I

wish it--you cannot imagine how much!”

The look with which she received his words recalled to him her earlier

manner. “I’m afraid--” she began, in a measured voice, and then stopped.

Intuition helped him to read in her face the coming of a softer mood.

Finally she smiled a little. “Really, this is all very quaint,” she

said, and the smile crept into her voice. “But the train is slowing

down--there is no time now.”

They were indeed moving through the street of a town, at a pace which

had been insensibly lowered while they talked. The irregular outlines

of docks and boat-slips, overhanging greenish water, revealed themselves

between dingy houses covered with signs and posters. At the barriers

crossing the streets were clustered groups of philosophic observers,

headed by the inevitable young soldier with his hands in the pockets of

his red trousers, and flanked by those brown old women in white caps

who seem always to be unoccupied, yet mysteriously do everything that is

done.

“This is Dieppe, then?” he asked, with a collecting hand put out for his

wraps.

The train had halted, and doors were being opened for tickets.

“We sit still, here, and go on to the wharf,” she explained.

“And then to the boat!” he cried. “How long is it?--the voyage on the

boat, I mean. Three hours and over! Excellent!”

She laughed outright as she rose, and got together her books and papers.

“I thought you were a Frenchman when I first saw you,” she confided

to him over her shoulder. “But no Frenchman at Dieppe ever yet shouted

‘Excellent!’ with his face turned toward the New Haven steamers.”

The mirth in her tone was so welcome to him that he laughed in turn,

without any clear idea of her words. He gathered her handbag up along

with his own, and when she demurred he offered her gay defiance.

“It is the terrible boldness of a timid person,” he prattled, as he

helped her down the steps, “but you must perceive that in the face of it

you are quite helpless. Since I was born, I have never really had my own

way before. But now I begin to believe in my star. After all, one is not

an Englishman for nothing.”

“Oh, it is comparatively easy to be an Englishman in Dieppe,” she made

answer.

CHAPTER II

The sky was dappled azure overhead, the water calm and fresh-hued

below. When the ship’s company had disposed itself, and the vessel was

making way outside, there were numerous long gaps of unpeopled space on

the windy side, and to one of these the young couple tacitly bent their

steps. They leaned against the rail, standing close together, with their

faces lifted to the strong sweet breeze.

Viewed thus side by side, it could be seen that of the two the young man

was just perceptibly the taller, but his extreme fragility excused his

companion’s conception of him as a small man. On his head he had pulled

tight for the voyage a little turban of a cap, which accentuated the

foreign note of his features and expression. He was dark of skin and

hair, with deep-brown eyes both larger and softer than is common with

his sex, even in the South. The face, high and regular in shape, had

in repose the careworn effect of maturer years than the boyish figure

indicated. In the animation of discussion this face took on, for the

most part, the rather somber brilliancy of a strenuous earnestness.

Now, as it confronted the stiff Channel wind, it was illumined by the

unaccustomed light of a frivolous mood. The ends of his slight mustache

were lifted in a continuous smile.

“It is my gayest day for many, many years,” he told her, after a little

pause in the talk. They had become great friends in this last half-hour.

In the reaction from the questionable restraint of the coupé to the

broad, sunlit freedom of the steamer’s deck, the girl had revealed

in generous measure a side of her temperament for which he had been

unprepared. She had a humorous talent, and, once she had gained a clew

to his perceptive capacities in this direction, it had pleased her to

make him laugh by droll accounts of her experiences and observations in

Paris. She had been there for a fortnight’s holiday, quite by herself,

she told him, and there was something in her tone which rendered it

impossible for him to ask himself if this was at all unusual among

English young ladies. His knowledge of Paris was also that of a

stranger, and he followed her whimsical narrative of blunders and odd

mistakes with a zest heightened by a recollection of his own.

“When have I laughed so much before?” he cried now. A long sigh, as of

surprised relief, followed his words. “Well--I had looked forward to

coming in a different spirit to England. With some hopes and a good

courage--yes. But with a merry heart--how could I have foretold that? It

was my good angel who put that coupé ticket into my head, and so brought

me to you. Ah, how angry you were! I see you now, pulling at that door.”

“Ah, well,” she said in extenuation, “how could I know? I never dreamed

that the whole coupé was not mine--and when I saw that odious guard

opening the door, to force in some wretched little Continental

creature--I mean, that was my momentary thought--and naturally I--”

An involuntary sidelong glance of his eyes upward toward the crown of

her hat, passed mute comment on her unfinished remark. She bit her lip

in self-reproof at sight of the dusky flush on his cheek.

“It is the only un-English thing about me,” he said, with a pathetically

proud attempt at a smile. “My father was a tall, big man, and so is my

brother Salvator.”

A new consciousness of the susceptibility of this young man to slights

and wounds spread in the girl’s mind. It was so cruelly easy to prick

his thin skin! But it was correspondingly easy to soothe and charm

him--and that was the better part. His character and temperament mapped

themselves out before her mind’s eye. She read him as at once innocent

and complicated. He could be full of confidence in a stranger, like

herself, but his doubts about his own values were distressing.

The uneased antennæ of his self-consciousness were extended in all

directions, as if to solicit injury. She had caught in his brown eyes

the suggestion of an analogy to a friendless spaniel--the capacity for

infinite gratitude united with conviction that only kicks were to be

expected. It was more helpful to liken him to a woman. In the gentle and

timid soul of a convent-bred maiden he nourished the stormy ambitions

of a leader of men. It was a nun who boldly dreamed of commanding on the

field of battle.

“I had a feeling,” she said to him, so softly that the tone was almost

tender, “that you must be like your mother.”

She rightly judged him to be her elder, but for the moment her mood was

absorbingly maternal. “Let us sit down here,” she added, moving toward

the bench facing the rail. “You were going to tell me--about her, was

it?”

He spread his rugs over their knees as they sat together in the fresh

wind.

“No, it was not so much of her,” he said.

“I have much to think about her--not much to put into words. She died

five years ago--nearly six now--and I was so much at school that I saw

very little of her in the latter years. Salvator was with her

always, though, to the end, although he was not her own son. We are

half-brothers, but no one could have been fonder than he was of my

mother, or a better son to her. After she died, he still kept me in

school, and this was curious too, because he hated all my teachers

bitterly. Salvator is fierce against the church, yet he kept me where

I had been put years before, with the Christian Brothers at the Bon

Rencontre, in Toulon. When at last I left them, Salvator took me with

him for a period--he is an expert and a dealer in gems--and then I

became a private tutor. Four years or so of that--and now I am here.”

He added, as upon an afterthought: “You must not think that I failed

to love my mother. She was sweet and good, and very tender to me, and I

used to weep a great deal after I left her, but it was not my fortune

to be so much with her as Salvator was. I think of her, but there is not

much to say.”

The repetition of this formula suggested no comment to his companion,

and he went on.

“The real memory of my childhood is my father, although I saw him only

once. Salvator says I saw him oftener, but if so all the recollections

jumble themselves together in my mind, to make a single impression. I

was five years old; it was in the early summer, in 1875. My father had

been fighting against the Prussians when I was born. By the time I was

old enough to know people, he was away in Spain with Don Carlos. He

died there, of wounds and fever, at Seo de Urgel, in August of that same

year, 1875. But first he came to see us--it would have been in June,

I think--and we were living at Cannes. He had some secret Carlist

business, Salvator says. I knew nothing of that. I know only that I saw

him, and understood very well who he was, and fixed him in my mind so

that I should never, never forget him. How strange a thing it is about

children! I have only the dimmest general idea of how my mother looked

when I was that age; I cannot remember her at all in the odd clothes

which her pictures show she wore then, though I saw them constantly. Yet

my father comes once and I carry his image till Judgment Day.”

“Poor mothers!” sighed the girl, under her breath. “No, it was nothing.

Go on.”

“I knew that he was a soldier, and that wherever there were wars he went

to have his share of fighting. I suppose it was this which gripped my

imagination, even as a baby. I could read when I was five, and Salvator

had told me about our father’s battles. He had been in the Mutiny in

India, and he was in Sicily against Garibaldi, and he was with the

Austrians four years before I was born, and in the French Foreign Legion

afterward. I think I knew all this when I saw him--and if I did not,

then I feel that I could have learned it from just looking at him. He

was like a statue of War. Ah, how I remember him--the tall, strong,

straight, dark, hardfaced, silent man!”

“And you loved _him!_” commented his companion, with significance.

He shook his head smilingly. The analysis in retrospect of his own

childish emotions had a pleasant interest for him. “No; there was no

question of love, at all. For example, he liked Salvator--who was then a

big boy of fifteen--and he took him off to Spain with him when he left.

I cannot remember that he so much as put his hand on my head, or paid

the slightest attention to me. He looked at me in a grave way if I put

myself in front of his eyes, just as he looked at other things, but he

would not turn his eyes to follow me if I moved aside. Do you know that

to my fancy that was superb? I was not in the least jealous of Salvator.

I only said to myself that when I was his age, I also would march to

fight in my father’s battles. And I was proud that he did not bend to

me, or put himself out to please me, this huge, cold-eyed, lion-like

father of mine. If he had ever kissed me I should have been ashamed--for

us both. But nothing was farther from his thoughts. He went away, and at

the door he spoke for the first time in my hearing of me. He twisted

his thumb toward me, where I stood in the shelter of my mother’s skirts.

Mind, he’s an Englishman! he said--and turned on his heel. I have the

words in my ears still. ‘Mind, he’s an Englishman!’”

“There _is_ England!” she cried.

They stood up, and his eager eye, following the guidance of her finger,

found the faint, broken, thin line of white on the distant water’s edge.

Above it, as if they were a part of it, hung in a figured curtain soft

clouds which were taking on a rosy tint from the declining sun. He gazed

at the remote prospect in silence, but with a quickened breath.

“It is the first time that _I_ have seen it like this--coming toward it,

I mean, from somewhere else,” she remarked at last. “I had never been

outside England before.”

He did not seem to hear her. With another lingering, clinging gaze at

the white speck, he shook himself a little, and turned. “And now I want

to tell you about this new, wonderful thing--about why I am this minute

within sight of England. You will say it is very strange.”

They moved to their bench again, and he spread the wraps once more, but

this time they did not sit quite so close together. It was as if the

mere sight of that pale, respectable slip of land on the horizon had in

some subtle way affected their relation to each other.

“A week ago,” he began afresh, “at Nice, a messenger from the Crédit

Lyonnais brought me a note saying they wished to see me at the bank.

They had, it seems, searched for me in several towns along the Riviera,

because I had been moving about. It was demanded that I should prove

my identity by witnesses, and when that was done I was given a sum of

money, and a sealed letter addressed to me, bearing simply my name, Mr.

Christian Tower--nothing more. I hurried outside and read its contents.

I was requested to get together all my papers--”

He stopped short, arrested by a sharp, half-stifled exclamation from her

lips. She had continued looking at him after his mention of his name--at

first absent-mindedly, as if something in his talk had sent her thoughts

unconsciously astray; then with lifted head, and brows bent together in

evident concentration upon some new phase of what he had been saying.

Now she interrupted him with visible excitement.

“You say Christian Tower!” She pushed the words at him hurriedly. “What

was your father’s name?”

“He was always known as Captain Tower, but I have read it in my

papers--his first name was Ambrose.”

She had risen to her feet, in evident agitation, and now strode across

to the rail. As he essayed to follow her, she turned, and forced the

shadow of a smile into her lips; her eyes remained frightened. “It is

all right,” she said with a gasping attempt at reassurance. “I was queer

for just an instant; it’s all right. Go on, please. You were to get

together your papers--”

“And bring them to Brighton,” he said, much disconcerted. “That is all.

But won’t you sit down?”

“I think I would rather stand,” she answered. Her composure was

returning, and with it the power to view altogether, and in their proper

relation to one another, the several elements of the situation his words

had revealed to her. Upon examination, it was curiosity that she felt

rather than personal concern--an astonished and most exigent curiosity.

But even before this, it grew apparent to her as she thought, came her

honorable duty to this young man who had confided in her.

“I think I ought to tell you,” she began, beckoning him nearer where she

stood; “yes, you should be told that in all human probability I know the

story. It is impossible that I should be mistaken--two such names never

got together by accident. And I can assure you that the whole thing is

even more extraordinary and astounding than you can possibly imagine.

There are people in England who will curl up like leaves thrown on

the fire when they see you. But for the moment”--she paused, with a

perplexed face and hesitating voice--“go on; tell me a little more.

It isn’t clear to me--how much you know. Don’t be afraid; I will be

entirely frank with you, when you have finished.”

He patted the rail nervously with his hand, and stared at her in pained

bewilderment and impatience. “How much do I know?” he faltered vaguely.

“Very little; almost nothing. There was no explanation in the letter.

The bankers said nothing, save that they were to give me a thousand

francs. But one does not get a thousand francs merely because the wind

has changed. There must be a reason for it; and what reason is possible

except that there is some inheritance for me? So I argued it out--to

myself. I have thought of nothing else, awake or asleep, for the whole

week.”

He halted, with anxious appeal in his eyes, and his hands outspread to

beseech enlightenment from her. She nodded to show that she understood.

“In a minute or two, when I have got it into shape in my mind,” she said

soothingly. “But meantime go on. I want you to talk. What have you done

during the week?”

Christian threw his hands outward.

“Done?” he asked plaintively. “Murdered time some way or the other. I

was free to move an hour after I had read the letter. The money was more

than I had ever had before. It was intolerable to me--the thought of not

being in motion. In the ‘Indicateur’ I got the times of trains, and I

formed my plan. Avignon I had never seen, and then Le Puy--there was a

wonderful description of it in a magazine I had read--and then to Paris,

and next to Rouen. It was at Rouen that I slept last night. It was my

first night’s good sleep--I had tired myself out so completely. Always

walking with the map in my mind, going from one church to another,

talking to the Suisse, bending back my head to examine capitals and

arches, forcing myself to take an interest in what I saw every little

minute--so I have come somehow through the week. But now here is rich

England within plain sight, and here are you, my new friend--and all my

life I have been so poor and without friends!”

He tightened his hand upon the rail, and abruptly turned his face away.

She saw the shine of tears in his eyes.

“Come and sit down again,” she said, with a sisterly hand on his arm. “I

know how to tell it to you now.”

“But you truly know nothing about the Towers--or Torrs--your father’s

family?” she continued, when they were once again seated. “It sounds

incredible! I can hardly realize how you could have lived all these

years and not--but how old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“--And not got some inkling of who--of who your father was?”

“My mother never told me. Perhaps she did not know altogether, herself.

I cannot say as to that. And if Salvator knew--that I cannot tell,

either. He is a curious man, my brother Salvator. He talks so you would

think you saw him inside out--but he keeps many things to himself none

the less.”

“Yes--that brother of yours,” she said abstractedly. “I have been

thinking about him. But it can’t be that he has any importance in the

game, else the Jews would have sent for him instead of you. They waste

no time,--they make no errors.”

“The Jews!” he murmured at her, with no comprehension in his eyes.

She smiled. “I have been arranging it in my mind. The thing was like a

black fog to me when you first spoke. I had to search about for a light

before I could make a start. But when I stumbled across the thought, ‘It

is the Jews’ work,’ then it was not very hard to make out the rest. I

could almost tell you who it is that is to meet you at Brighton. It is

Mr. Soman. Is it not?”

He assented with an impulsive movement of head and hands. The gaze that

he fixed upon her sparkled with excitement.

“He is Lord Julius’ man of business,” she explained to his further

mystification. “No doubt he has had one of those green eyes of his on

you ever since you were a fortnight old. It frightens one to think

of it--the merciless and unerring precision of their system. Is there

anything they _don’t_ know?”

“I am afraid of Jews myself,” he faltered, striving to connect himself

with what he dimly perceived of her mood. “But what have they

against me? What can they do to me? I owe nothing; they can’t make me

responsible for what other people, strangers to me, have done, can they?

And why should they give me a thousand francs? It is I,” he finished

hopelessly, “I who am in the black fog. Tell me, I beg you, what is it

that they want with me?”

She put a reassuring hand upon his arm, and the steady, genial light

in her calm eyes brought him instantaneous solace. “You have not the

slightest cause for fear,” she told him, gently. “Quite the contrary.

They are not going to hurt you. So far from it, they have taken you

up; they will wrap you in cotton-wool and nurse you as if you were the

Koh-i-noor diamond. You may rest easy, my dear sir; you may close your

eyes, and fold your hands, and lean back against Israel as heavily

as you like. It is all right so far as you are concerned. But the

others”--she paused, and looked seaward with lifted brows and a

mouth twisted to express sardonic comment upon some amazing new

outlook--“eye-ee! the others!”

“Still you do not tell me!” For the first time she caught in his

voice the hint of a virile, and even an imperious note. Behind the

half-petulant entreaty of the tired boy, there was a man’s spirit of

dictation. She deferred to it unconsciously.

“The Lord Julius that I spoke of is--let me see--he is your

great-uncle--your grandfather’s younger brother.”

“But if _he_ is a Jew--” began Christian, in an awed whisper.

“No--no; he is nothing of the sort. That is to say, he is not Jewish

in blood. But he married a great heiress of the race--whole millions

sterling came to him from the huge fortune of the Aronsons in

Holland--and he likes Jewish people--of the right sort. He is an old man

now, and his son, Emanuel, has immense influence over him. You should

see them sitting together like two love-birds on a perch. They idolize

each other, and they both worship Emanuel’s wife. If they weren’t the

two best men in the world, and if she weren’t the most remarkable woman

anywhere, they would utterly spoil her.”

“He--this lord--is my great-uncle,”

Christian recalled her to his subject. “He and his son are good men.”

“They are the ones I referred to as the Jews. That is how they are

spoken of in the family--to distinguish them from the senior branch--the

sons and grandsons of your grandfather. Fix that distinction in you

mind. There is the elder group, who have titles and miles of mortgaged

estates, no money to speak of and still less brains--”

“That is the group that I belong to?” He offered the interruption with

a little twinkle in his eyes. It was patent that his self-possession had

returned. Even this limited and tentative measure of identification with

the most desirable and deep-rooted realities in that wonderful island

that he could see coming nearer to meet him, had sufficed to quell the

restless flutter of his nerves.

She nodded with a responsive gleam of sportiveness on her face. “Yes,

your place in it is a very curious one. But first get this clear in your

mind--that the younger group, whom they speak of as the Jews, have money

beyond counting, and have morals and intelligence moreover. Between

these two groups no love is lost. In fact, they hate each other. The

difference is the Christians go about cursing the Jews, whereas the Jews

wisely shrug their shoulders and say nothing. No one suspected that

they would _do_ anything, either--but--oh, this is going to be an awful

business!”

He held himself down to a fine semblance of dignified calm. “Tell me

more,” he bade her, with an effect of temperate curiosity.

“Now comes tragedy,” she went on, and the hint of sprightliness

disappeared from her face and tone. “It is really one of the most

terrible stories that could be told. There is a very aged man--he must

be nearly ninety--lying at death’s door in his great seat in Shropshire.

He is at death’s door, I said, but he has the strength and will of a

giant, and though he is half paralyzed, half blind, half everything,

still he has his weight against the door, and no one knows how long he

can hold it closed. It is your grandfather that I am speaking of. His

name also is Christian.”

The young man nodded gravely. “My father would have fought death that

way too, if they had not shot him to pieces, and heaped fever on top of

that,” he commented.

The girl bit her lip and flushed awkwardly for an instant “Let me go

on,” she said then, and hurried forward. “This old man had three

sons--not counting the priest, Lord David, who doesn’t come into the

thing. The first of these sons, also Christian, had three sons, and he

and they were all alive six months ago. They are all dead now, two

drowned in their yacht, one lost in the ‘Castle Drummond,’ one killed in

Matabeleland. Lord David, the priest, the next brother, died last

year--childless of course. There remained in England two sons of another

brother who died some years ago, Lord Edward, and this horrible mowing

down of human lives left them apparently nearest to the very aged man,

your grandfather. Do you follow all that?”

“I think I do,” said Christian. “If I don’t I will pick it up afterward.

In mercy’s name, do not stop!”

“The Jews, saying nothing, had lost sight of nothing. There was still

another brother who had lived abroad for many years, who died abroad

twenty years ago. You are getting to the climax now. The Jews must have

kept an eye on this wandering cousin of theirs; it is evident they knew

he left a son capable of inheriting, and that they did not let this son

escape from view. Because Lord Ambrose Torr was older than Lord Edward,

his brother, it happens now that the son of that Ambrose--”

The young man abruptly rose, and moved along to the rail. He had

signified by a rapid backward gesture of the hand his momentary craving

for solitude; he stretched this hand now slowly, as if unconsciously,

toward the sunset glow on sky and sea, in the heart of which lay

imbedded a thick line of cream-colored cliffs, escalloped under a close

covering of soft olive-hued verdure. The profile of his uplifted face,

as he gazed thus before him into the light, seemed to the eyes of the

girl transfigured.

He stood thus, rapt and motionless, for minutes, until her mind had time

to formulate the suspicion that this was all intolerable play-acting,

and to dismiss it again as unworthy. Then he returned all at once to her

side, apparently with a shamefaced kind of perception of her thoughts.

He was flushed and uneasy, and shuffled his hands in and out of the

pockets of his great-coat. He did not seat himself, but stood looking

down at her.

“What is my grandfather?” he asked, with a husky, difficult voice.

“The Duke of Glastonbury.”

“I do not understand,” he began, hesitatingly; “it is not clear to me

about my father. Why should he--”

She rose in turn, with swift decision, as if she had been alertly

watching for the question. “That is what you must not ask me,” she said,

hurriedly. “I think I will move about a little. The wind is colder here.

I am getting chilled.”

They strolled about together, conducting a fitful conversation, but

as often gazing in silence at the bulk of the headlands they were

approaching, gray and massive now in the evening light. She answered

freely enough the queries he put, but between these he lapsed into

an abstraction which she respected. More than once he spoke of the

extraordinary confusion into which her story had thrown his thoughts,

and she philosophically replied that she could well understand it.

An hour later they had passed the fatuous inspection of the customs

people, and confronted the imminence of leave-taking. Constraint

enveloped them as in a mantle.

It occurred suddenly to him to say: “How strange! You possess the most

extraordinary knowledge of me and my--my people, and yet the thought

just comes to me--I have not so much as asked your name.”

She smiled at him with a new light in her eyes, half kind, half

ironically roguish. “If I may confess it, there have been times today

when I was annoyed with you for being so persistently and indefatigably

interested in yourself--for never dreaming of wondering, speculating,

inquiring something about me. But that was very weak of me--I see it

now--and very wise of you, because--what does it matter about a nobody

like me?--but next week the whole world will be bearing witness that you

are the most interesting young man in England.”

He gave a swift glance down the train toward the guards noisily shutting

the doors. “No, it is too bad,” he said, nervously. “You will always be

my first friend in England--my very deeply prized friend everywhere. I

know you only to-day--but that day is more to me than all the rest of

my life--and it is full of you. They are closing the doors--but you will

tell me? The notion of not seeing you again is ridiculous. You are in

London--yes?--then how do you think I could come to London without first

of all, before everything else, wanting to call upon you?”

“Oh, I daresay we shall meet again,” she answered, as perforce he

stepped into the compartment. Her smile had a puzzling quality in

it--something compounded, it seemed to him, of both fear and fun. “In a

remote kind of way I am mixed up with the story myself.”

There was no time for any hope of further explanation. He put his head

out of the window, and shook hands again. “Remember!” he called out

fervently. “You are my first friend in England. Whenever--whatever I can

do--”

“Even to the half of your kingdom!” she laughed at him, as the movement

of the carriage drew him past her.

The tone of these last words, which he bore away with him, had been

gay--almost jovial. But the girl, when she had watched him pass out of

sight, turned and walked slowly off in the direction of her own train

with a white and troubled face.

CHAPTER III

Many builders in their day have put a hand to the making of Caermere

Hall. Though there were wide differences of race and language among

them and though the long chain of time which binds them together has

generations and even centuries for its links, they seem to have had thus

much in common: they were all at feud with the sunlight.

On the very pick of summer days, when the densest thickets of Clune

Forest are alive to the core with moving green reflections of the outer

radiance, and hints of the glory up above pierce their way to the bottom

of the narrowest ravine through which the black Devon churns and frets,

somehow Caermere remains wrapped in its ancient shadows.

The first men, in some forgotten time, laid its foundations with no

thought save of the pass at the foot to be defended. Later artificers

reared thick walls upon these foundations, pushed out towered curtains,

sank wells, lifted the keep, cut slits of corner windows or crowned the

fabric with new turrets for watchmen, each after the need or fashion of

his age, but all with minds single to the idea of blocking the path

that Caermere overhung. In due time came the breath of the king’s peace,

blowing equably over the vexed marches, albeit loaded with the scent of

gunpowder, and my lords slowly put aside their iron harness for silken

jackets, and unslung the herses in their gateways. Men of skill set now

about the task of expanding the turfed spaces within the inclosure, of

spreading terraces and forming gardens, of turning stone chambers into

dames’ apartments, and sullen guard-rooms into banquet-halls. Their

grandsons, in turn, pulled down even more than they erected; where the

mightiest walls had shouldered their huge bulk, these men of Elizabeth

and James left thin façades of brickwork, and beams of oak set in a

trivial plaster casing. The old barbican was not broad enough to span

their new roadway, stretching to the valley below over the track of the

former military path, and they blew it up; the pleasure-ground, which

they extended by moving far backward the wall of the tilting yard, was

bare of aspect to their eye, and they planted it with yews and, later,

with cedars from the Lebanon.

Through all these changes, Caermere remained upon its three sides

shadowed by great hills, and the thought of making wide windows in

the walls on the open fourth side came to no one. When at last, in the

earlier Georgian time, the venerable piles of bastioned masonry here

were replaced by a feebly polite front of lath and stucco, windows were

indeed cut to the very floor, in the French style, but meanwhile the

trees had grown into a high screen against the sky, and it was not in

the Torr blood to level timber.

When a house and family have lived together for a thousand years, it is

but reasonable that they should have come to an understanding with each

other. Was Caermere dark because the mood of the Torrs, its makers and

masters, had from the dawn of things been saturnine? Or did the Torrs

owe their historic gloom and dourness of temperament to the influence

of this somber cradle of their race? There is record of the query having

been put, in a spirit of banter, by a gentleman who rode over Clune

bridge in the train of King John. Of convincing answer there is none

to this latest day. The Torrs are a dark folk, and Caermere is a dark

house. They belong to one another and that is all.

Thus, on the first morning of October, a gray and overcast morning even

on the hilltops, and though it was past the half-hour towards nine,

there was barely light enough to see one’s way about by in the big

breakfast-room.

A tall young man in rough, light-brown clothes stood at one of the

windows, drumming idly on the glass and staring at the black cedars

beyond the lawn. At intervals he whistled under his breath, in a sulky

fashion, some primitive snatches of an unknown tune. Once or twice he

yawned, and then struck a vicious ring from the panes with his hard

nails, in protesting comment upon his boredom.

About the large fireplace behind him were dishes huddled for heat, and

their metallic gleam in the flicker of the flames was repeated farther

away in the points of red on the plate and glass of the long breakfast

table spread in the center of the room. From time to time a white-faced

youngster in livery entered the room, performed some mysterious service

at the hearth or the table in the dim twilight and went out again.

The man at the window paid no heed to the goings and comings of the

servant, but when the door opened presently and another tweed-clad

figure entered, his ear told him the difference on the instant, and he

half turned his head.

“In God’s name, what are you all doing?” he growled angrily. “I said

eight--you heard me!--sharp eight!”

“What _does_ it matter?” protested the newcomer, stooping at the

fire-place to lift the covers from the dishes in a languid inspection of

their contents. He yawned as he spoke. “If you won’t let fellows go to

bed till four, how the devil do you expect them to be down at eight?”

“Oh, is that you, Pirie?” said the man at the window. “I thought it was

my brother.” The other stood for a moment, with his back to the fire.

Then he lounged to the window, stretching his arms as he moved. He also

was tall, but with a scattering of gray in his hair.

“Beastly black morning,” he commented in drowsy tones, after a prolonged

observation of the prospect. “Might as well stopped in bed.”

“Well, go back then!” snapped the other. “I didn’t make the rotten

weather, did I?” This was wanton ill-temper. The elder man also

began drumming with his nails on the window. “Turn it up, Eddy,” he

remonstrated, smoothly enough, but with a latent snarl in his tone. “I

don’t like it.”

The younger man moved his head, as if he would have looked his companion

in the face. Then he stared away again, out of the window.

“Beaters been waitin’ half an hour already,” he grumbled, sulkily.

“What’s the good of makin’ a time if you don’t keep it?”

“I didn’t make any time,” responded Major Pirie with curtness. Upon

reflection, he added: “What does it matter about the beaters?”

There seemed no answer to this, and for several minutes nothing was

said. Finally the younger man thought of something. “I say,” he began,

and after an instant’s pause went on: “It’d suit me better not to be

called ‘Eddy’ among the men, d’ye see? That fellow Burlington began it

last night--he got it from you--and I don’t like it. When we’re alone,

of course, that’s different.”

Major Pirie laughed--a dry, brief, harsh laugh--and swung around on his

heels. “Your man didn’t get those sausages I asked for, after all,” he

remarked, going back to the dishes at the fender.

“Probably couldn’t,” said Mr. Edward, “or else,” he added, “wouldn’t. I

never saw such a houseful of brutes and duffers. I’m keen to shunt the

lot of ‘em, and they know it, the beggars. You’d think they’d try to

suck up to me, but they don’t, they haven’t got brains enough.”

The major had brought a plate from the table, and was filling it from

under the covers on the hearth. “Shall I ring for the tea?” he asked.

Mr. Edward moved across to the chimney corner and pulled the cord

himself. “Do you know what that old ass, Barlow--the butler, you

know--had the face to say to me yesterday? ‘I’--God, you couldn’t

believe it! ‘I ’ope, sir,’ he says, ‘you’ll think better of shootin’

on the First, for His Grace’ll hear the guns in the covers, and it won’t

do His Grace no good.’ Fancy the beggar’s cheek!”

“Well, do you know, Torr,” said Major Pirie, slowly, speaking with his

mouth full but contriving to give a significantly nice emphasis to the

name, “I was thinkin’ much the same myself. For that matter, several

of the fellows were mentionin’ it. It doesn’t look quite the thing, you

know.”

The entrance of the servant created an interval of silence, during which

Mr. Edward in his turn rummaged among the dishes before the fire.

“It’s Gus, is it?” he demanded, from where he knelt on one knee, plate

in hand.

“He thought it would be funny to queer my game, eh?”

“Your brother hasn’t said a word, so far’s I know,” replied the major,

pouring his tea. “It was merely some of the fellows, talkin’.”

“God Almighty!” cried Mr. Edward, springing to his feet. “Here’s a

precious outfit of pals for you! You come down here, so help me--”

“Don’t say ‘you’; say ‘they,’ if you’ve got to say anything,” interposed

the major, quietly.

“Well, they, then,” the other went on, in loud heat. “They come down

here, and take my mounts, by God; they drink my wine, they win my money,

they drain me dry--and then they go behind my back and whisper to one

another that I’m an outsider. And you too, Pirie,” he continued, with

defiance and deprecation mingled in his tone, “you admit yourself that

you talked with them.”

“My dear Torr,” replied the major, “it’s a mistake for you to turn out

so early. You’ve tried to quarrel before breakfast every day I’ve been

here. It’s the worst morning temper I ever heard of in my life. You

ought to have tea and eggs and things brought to you in your room, and

not show yourself for at least two hours afterward--you really ought. It

isn’t fair to your friends.”

The door opened and still another tall man came in. He nodded to Pirie

as he passed him, with a tolerant “Well, major,” and went straight to

the dishes by the fire.

“Pirie’s got it into his head we oughtn’t to shoot to-day, Gus,” said

Mr. Edward.

The other rose with a dish in his hands.

“It _is_ dark,” he assented, glancing toward the window. “Afraid of

pottin’ a beater, major?”

“No--it’s about the duke,” explained Edward. “It seems some of the

fellows funk the thing--they think he’ll hear the guns--they want to go

to church instead, or something of that sort.”

Augustine Torr, M.P., looked at his brother inquiringly. The tie of

blood between them was obvious enough. They were both slender as well

as tall; their small round heads merging indistinguishably behind into

flat, broad necks, seemed identical in contour; they had the same

light coarse hair, the same florid skins, even the same little yellow

mustaches. The differences were harder to seek. Edward, though he had

borne Her Majesty’s commission for some years, was not so well set up

about the shoulders as his younger and civilian brother. Augustine, on

the other hand, despite his confident carriage of himself, produced the

effect of being Edward’s inferior in simple force of character. It was

at once to his credit and his disparagement that he had the more amiable

nature of the two.

“How do you mean--the duke?” he asked. “Is there a change?”

Edward put out his closed lips a little, and shook his head. Major Pirie

sprinkled salt on his muffin while he explained.

“All there is of it is this,” he said. “There was just an idea that with

the--with your grandfather--dyin’ in the house--it might look a little

better to give the first the go-by. Nobody’d have a word to say against

shootin’ to-morrow.”

“Well, but what the hell”--Augustine groped his way with hesitancy--“I

don’t understand--we’ve been shootin’ partridges for a month, and how

are pheasants any different? And as for the duke--why, of course one’s

sorry and all that--but he’s been dyin’ since June, and the birds have

some rights--or rather, I should say--what I mean is--”

“That’s what I said,” put in Edward, to cover the collapse of his

brother’s argument.

Major Pirie frowned a little. “Partridges are another matter,” he said

testily.

“Damned if I know what you’re driving at,” avowed Augustine. He

paused with fork in air at his own words. “Drivin’ at,” he repeated

painstakingly. “Drivin’ at pheasants, eh? Not bad, you know. Pass the

mustard, Pirie.”

“God!” said the major, with gloom. “You know well enough what I mean.

To work through fields miles off--that’s one thing. To shoot the covers

here under the duke’s nose, with the beaters messin’ about--that’s quite

another. However that’s your affair, not mine.”

“But don’t you see,” urged Augustine, “what difference does a day

make? There’ll be just as much racket to-morrow as to-day. It isn’t

reasonable, you know.”

“It was merely what you might call a sentiment,” said the major, in

the half apologetic tone of a man admitting defeat. He looked the least

sentimental of warriors as he went on with his breakfast--a longfaced,

weather-beaten, dull-eyed man of the late forties.

Four other men who came in now at brief intervals, with few or no words

of salutation to the company, and who lounged about helping themselves

to what caught their fancy in the breakfast, were equally removed from

the suspicion of adding a sentimental element to the atmosphere. They

made little talk of any kind, and no mention whatever of that absurd

qualm about the First which had been reported to have germinated among

them.

Edward had reached the stage of filling his pipe. Walking to the mantel

for a light, it occurred to him to ring the bell first. “Her ladyship

breakfastin’ in her room?” he asked the youngster who answered the

summons.

“Her ladyship’s woman has just gone up with it, sir,” he replied.

“_That’s_ all right,” said Edward, and forthwith struck the match. “Send

in Davis and Morton to me, and ask Barlow for those Brazilian cigars

of mine--the small huntin’ ones. What wheels were those I heard on the

gravel? If it’s the traps we shan’t want them to-day. We’re walkin’

across.”

“I will make inquiries, sir,” said the domestic, and went out.

The room had brightened perceptibly, and Captain Edward was in a better

temper. He moved over to the sideboard and filled a pocket-flask from

one of the decanters in the old-fashioned case. As an afterthought, he

also filled a small glass, and gulped its contents neat. “We’re off in

ten minutes now,” he called out to the men about the table, some of whom

had already lit their pipes. “What do you fellows want to take with you?

My tip is this rum.”

“Hardly cold enough for rum, is it?” asked one, drifting languidly

toward the sideboard. Most of the others had risen to their feet.

A slender, sad-faced, gentlemanly-looking old man in evening clothes had

entered the room, and stood now at Captain Edward’s elbow and touched it

with his hand. “I--beg--your--pardon--sir,” he said, in the conventional

phrase.

Edward, listening to what a companion was saying, turned absent-mindedly

to the butler. Then he happened to remember something. “Damn you,

Barlow, you get duller every day!” he snapped. “You know perfectly well

what cigars I take out of doors!”

“I--beg--your--pardon--sir,” repeated the elderly person. He spoke in a

confidential murmur. “I thought you would like to know, sir--Lord Julius

has come.”

The young man looked at him, silently revolving the intelligence,

a puzzled frown between his pale brows. A furtive something in the

butler’s composed expression struck him. “What of it?” he demanded,

angrily. “What are you whispering for? He’s old enough to take care of

himself, isn’t he?”

The butler thrust out his dry underlip a trifle. “I thought you would

like to know, sir,” he reiterated.

“Well, you’re wrong. I don’t like to know!” The man’s tone--an

indefinable, lurking suggestiveness in his face and eyes and

voice--vexed Mr. Edward exceedingly. It annoyed him still more to note

that his companions had tacitly turned their backs, and were affecting

great preoccupation in something else.

He kept a wrathful eye on Barlow, as the latter bowed, turned, moved

to the door and opened it. Of course, a man musn’t slang servants, his

irritated thought ran, but the covert impertinence in this old menial’s

manner was something no longer to be borne. The impulse to call the

elderly fool back and send him packing on the instant, tingled hotly in

the young man’s blood. He even opened his lips to speak, but reflection

checked his tongue. It would be bad form, for one thing; for another,

perhaps he was not quite in the position to dismiss his grandfather’s

servants. He would speak to Welldon, the estate steward, instead--a

sensible and civil man, by the way, who seemed to know which side his

bread was buttered on. At the merest hint from the heir, Welldon would

give Barlow the sack, and that would teach the rest a lesson. But

all this would keep until Lord Julius had gone. Being an aged duffer

himself, he would probably side with Barlow--and there was no point in

offending Lord Julius. Very much to the contrary, indeed.

Mr. Edward’s meditations, unwontedly facile in their movements for him,

had reached this point, when his mind reverted to the fact that he was

still regarding the back of Barlow, who, instead of going out, stood

holding the door open, his lean figure poised in ceremonious expectancy.

Even as the surprised Edward continued looking, the butler made a staid

obeisance.

A stalwart, erect, burly old gentleman came in, and halted just over

the threshold to look about him. He had the carriage, dress and general

aspect of a prosperous and opinionated farmer. The suggestion of acres

and crops was peculiarly marked in the broad, low soft hat on his

head, and in the great white beard which spread fan-wise over his

ample breast. He had the face of one who had spent a life in commanding

others, and had learned meanwhile to master himself--a frank,

high-featured, ruddy face, with a conspicuously prominent and

well-curved nose, and steady, confident eyes. He folded his hands over

his stick and, holding his head well back, glanced about the room at his

ease. It was a glance from which the various eyes that it encountered

somehow turned away.

“How-do, Eddy? How-do, Gus?” the newcomer said impassively to the two

young men who, with palpable constraint, came up to greet him. He shook

hands with each, but seemed more interested in viewing the company at

large. His appearance had produced a visible effect of numbness upon the

group of guests, but he seemed not to mind this.

“Quite a party!” he observed. His voice was full and robust, and not

unamiable. “All military?”

Edward nodded. “All but Gus, here. Glad to introduce ’em, if you like,”

he murmured, with a kind of sullen deference.

“Presently, presently,” said Lord Julius, with an effect of heartiness

at which Edward lifted his head.

“Drive over from Clune this morning?” the young man asked. “Then you’ll

want breakfast. Ring the bell, Gus. We’re just starting for the Mere

copse. Glad to have you make an eighth gun, if you’ll come to us after

you’ve eaten. You still shoot, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I still shoot,” said the other.

Edward had a sense of embarrassment at his great-uncle’s immobility in

the doorway. “Well, we’ll get along to the gun-room now,” he said to

the others. Then to Lord Julius he remarked with an air of making

conversation, “I always say to the fellows that I ask nothing better in

this world than to be as fit as you are when I’m your age. Let’s see,

seventy-six, isn’t it?”

The elder man nodded. “I’m sure that’s a modest enough ambition,” he

observed. His steady gray eyes dallied with the young man’s countenance

for a moment. “I’m relieved to learn that you want nothing more than

that.”

Edward looked up swiftly, and braved an instant’s piercing scrutiny of

the other’s face. Then he laughed, uneasily. “Oh, I want a few other

things, too.”

Lord Julius lowered his voice. “I would put among your wants a trifling

matter of good taste, Eddy,” he said, not unkindly.

Captain Edward flushed. “If I could see that it really made any

difference between the First and the Second,” he answered with dogged

civility, “I wouldn’t shoot until tomorrow. If you’re keen about it now,

I’ll--”

“Oh, damn your First and Second,” broke in the old man, keeping his

voice down below the hearing of the others, but letting impatience glow

in his eyes; “you had no business bringing these men here at all. No--I

see that you don’t understand me. You needn’t explain. It’s entirely a

question of feeling.”

“I’m sorry you take that view of it, sir,” said Edward, gloomily.

“You know that I’m willing enough to meet your views--if only--if

only because I’m going to need your help.” Lord Julius gave a snort of

contemptuous laughter, and nodded to himself with lifted brows. “Really

something in the way of consideration is due to such frankness as that,”

he said, with a pretense of reverie. “Send your friends out of the room,

Eddy,” he went on, more gently--“make what excuse you like--or take them

out and come back to me--that’s better. I did intend to have no secrets

from them, but I’ve relented. And yes--by the way--instead of coming

here--you’ll find me in the small morning room I will breakfast there.

You’ve filled this room with smoke.”

“Would you--would you mind my bringing Gus?” Edward asked, doubtfully.

The other thought for an instant. “Oh, yes, Gus may come,” he said, and

with that left the room.

“Rum old beggar, isn’t he?” said Augustine to the company, with the

sense that something had to be said.

“Gad! he seemed to think he was in a synagogue!” laughed Captain

Burlington. “Kept his hat on, you know,” he explained in the next breath

to the surprised and attentive faces about him.

“But he isn’t a Jew,” said one of the others with gravity. “He married

one, but that doesn’t make him one, you know.”

“It was a joke! Can’t you see a joke?” protested Burlington.

“Well, I don’t think much of it,” growled Edward, sourly. “Come along to

the gunroom.”

*****

“What’s up?” asked Mr. Augustine, in an anxious murmur, a few minutes

later, as the two brothers walked along the wide central hallway toward

the appointed place.

“Can’t think for the life of me,” replied Edward. “Unless Craven babbled

about the baccarat when he got up to town. He’s rather that sort, you

know. He kicked about the stakes at the time.”

“Yes--after he’d been hit,” said Augustine. “But if it’s only that,

you’ll be an ass to let the old man rot you about it. Just stand up to

him, and let him see you feel your position.”

“That’s all right,” rejoined Edward, dubiously, “but what’s the

position without money? If anybody could have foreseen what was going to

happen--damn it all, I could have married as much as I needed. But as it

is, I’ve got Cora on my back, and the kid, and--my God! fancy doing the

duke on four thou, a year net! Welldon tells me it can’t be screwed a

bit above that. Well, then, how can I afford to cheek Julius? When you

come to that he isn’t half a bad sort, you know. He stood my marriage

awfully well. Gad, you know, we couldn’t have lived if he hadn’t drawn a

check.”

“Let us hope he’ll draw another,” said Augustine. “It’s bad enough to be

a pauper duke, but it’s a bailey sight worse to be his brother.”

“What rot!” said Edward. “My kid’s a girl, and you’re free to marry.”

They had come to the door of the morning room. It stood ajar, and Edward

pushed it open. Before the fireplace was visible the expected bulk and

vast beard of Lord Julius, but the eyes of the brothers intuitively

wandered to the window beyond, against which was outlined the figure of

a much smaller man.

“Secretary,” whispered the quicker-minded Augustine out of the corner of

his mouth as they advanced. The thought brought them a tempered kind

of comfort. The same instinct which had prompted Edward to crave his

brother’s support led them both to welcome the presence of a fourth

party.

They looked again toward the stranger, and Lord Julius, as he caught

their returning glance, smiled and nodded significantly. “Come here,

Christian!” he said, and the brothers saw now that it was a slender

young man with a dark, fine face and foreign-looking eyes who moved

toward them.

Lord Julius put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Christian,” he

said, and gave his full voice a new note of gravity, “these are your two

cousins, Mr. Edward Torr, a captain in the Hussars until recently, and

Mr. Augustine Torr, a member of Parliament. Your coming will make some

difference in their affairs, but I know that you will be good to them.”

The brothers had shaken hands with the new-comer automatically, while

their minds were in the first stage of wonderment as to what the words

being spoken about him meant. Now that silence fell, they stared slowly

at him, at their great-uncle, at each other.

“How--cousin?” Edward managed to ask. He spoke as if his tongue filled

his mouth.

“The son of your uncle, Lord Ambrose Torr,” the old man made quiet,

carefully distinct answer.

Another period of silence ensued, until Christian turned abruptly. “It

is very painful to me,” he said hurriedly to the old man, and walked to

the window.

“It is painful to everybody,” said Lord Julius.

“Not so damned particularly painful to you, sir, I should say,” put in

Edward, looking his great-uncle in the face. The young man had slowly

pulled himself together, and one could see the muscles of his neck being

stiffened to keep his chin well in the air. His blue eyes had the effect

of summoning all their resources of pride to gaze with dignity into the

muzzle of a machine-gun.

Augustine was less secure in the control of his nerves. He stood a

little behind his brother, and the elbow which he braced against him for

support trembled. His eyes wandered about the room, and he moistened

his lips with his tongue several times before he contrived to whisper

something into Edward’s ear. The latter received the suggestion,

whatever it was, with an impatient shake of the head.

“You scarcely do me justice,” said Lord Julius, quietly, “but that’s

not worth mentioning at the moment. I must say you are taking it very

well--much better than I expected.”

Edward squared his shoulders still more. “I wouldn’t say that we’re

takin’ it at all,” he replied, with studied deliberation. “You offer it,

d’ye see--but it doesn’t follow that we take it. You come and bring this

young fellow--this young gentleman, and you tell me that he is Ambrose’s

son. What good is that to me? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Ambrose may

have had twenty sons, for all I know. I should be sorry to be one of

them--but they’re not to blame for that. I don’t mind being civil to

them--if they come to me in the right spirit--” He stopped abruptly, and

listened with a frown to more whispering from Augustine.

“You don’t seem to understand, Eddy--” began Lord Julius.

“Oh, perfectly!” broke in the young man. “I had an uncle who had to

leave England before I was born. His name couldn’t even be mentioned in

the family--but I know all about him. God knows I’ve had him flung in my

face often enough.”

“Don’t let us go into that,” urged Lord Julius, softly, and with

a sidelong nod toward the window. “It’s needless cruelty to other

people--and surely we can discuss this like gentlemen. You are really

behaving splendidly, Eddy.”

“God! he thought we were cads!” cried Edward, in husky indignation.

“No--no--no--no,” murmured the older man, soothingly. “I only want you

to grasp the thing as it is. You know me. You do not regard me as a

foolish person who goes off half-cock. Well, I tell you that Christian

here is the son of my nephew Ambrose, born in lawful wedlock, and that

there is not a shadow of doubt about it. The proofs are all open to your

inspection; there is not a flaw in them. And so I say to you, in all

kindness--take it calmly and sensibly and like a gentleman. It is to

your own interest to do so, as well. If you think, you will see that.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” said Augustine, strenuously, from

behind his brother’s shoulder.

A faint smile fluttered about the old man’s eyelids. “It was the advice

of a born statesman,” he said, dryly. “You are the political hope of the

family.”

The stiffening had melted from Edward’s neck and shoulders. He turned

irresolutely now, and looked at the floor. “Of course I admit nothing;

I reserve all my rights, till my lawyers have satisfied themselves,” he

said in a worn, depressed mutter.

“Why, naturally,” responded Lord Julius, with relieved cordiality. “And

now please me--do it all handsomely to the end--come and shake hands

again with Christian, both of you.”

The brothers stood for a hesitating instant, then turned toward the

window and began a movement of reluctant assent.

To the surprise of all three, Christian forestalled their approach by

wrenching open one half of the tall window, and putting a foot over the

sill to the lawn outside.

“If you will excuse me,” he said, in his nervous, high voice, “I am

taking a little walk.”

CHAPTER IV

Upon the garden side of Caermere is a very large conservatory, built

nearly fifty years ago, at the close of the life of the last duchess.

The poor lady left no other mark of her meek existence upon the

buildings, and it was thought at the time that she would never have

ventured upon even this, had it not been that every one was mad for

the moment about the wonderful palace of glass reared in London for the

First Exhibition.

In area and height, and in the spacious pretensions of its dome, the

structure still suggests irresistibly the period of its inception. It is

as ambitious as it is self-conscious; its shining respectability remains

superior to all the wiles of climbers and creeping vines. The older

servants cherish traditions of “Her Grace’s glass,” as it used to be

called. She had the work begun on her fortieth birthday, and precisely

a year later it happened that she was wheeled in from the big morning

room, and left at her own desire to recline in solitude under the palms

beneath the dome, and that when they went to her at last she was dead.

The circumstance that Shakespeare is supposed also to have died on the

anniversary of his birth, has somehow come to be an integral part of

the story, as it is kept alive now in the humbler parts of the Caermere

household, but the duchess had nothing else in common with the poet.

The very face of her, in her maturer years, is but dimly remembered. The

portrait in the library is of a young Lady Clarissa, with pale ringlets

and a childishly sweet countenance, and clad in the formal quaintness of

the last year of King George the Fourth. She became the duchess, but in

turn the duchess, seemed to become somebody else. That was the way with

the brides brought home to Caermere. The pictures in the library

show them all girlish, and innocently pretty, and for the most part

fair-haired. Happily there is no painted record of what they were

like when, still in middle life, they bade a last goodbye to the

dark-skinned, big-shouldered sons they had borne, and perhaps made a

little moan that no daughters were ever given to mothers at Caermere,

and turned their sad faces to the wall.

The crystal house had memories of another and more recent mistress, the

countess. She had come six years after the other went, she had lived

for twelve years--a silent, colorless, gently unhappy life--and then

had faded away out of sight. It was this Lady Porlock who had caused the

orchid houses to be built at the inner side of the conservatory, and it

was in her time, too, that the gifted Cheltnam was fetched from her own

father’s house in Berkshire to be head gardener at Caermere. Her fame

is indeed irrevocably linked with his, for the tea-rose of his breeding,

bearing her maiden-name of the Hon. Florence Denson, is scarcely less

well known than this hybrid sweet-briar the Countess of Porlock.

And now, in the third generation, still another lady had for some years

enjoyed special property rights in this great glass apartment.

Lady Cressage came into the conservatory from the large morning room,

with a large volume in her hand, and an irresolute look on her face. She

glanced about at the several couches piled with cushions and furs, at an

easy-chair beyond--and yawned slightly. Then she wandered over to a row

of early chrysanthemums, and, putting the book under her arm, occupied

herself with the destruction of a few tiny beginnings of buds in the

lower foliage. In this she employed as pincers the delicately tinted

nails of a very shapely finger and thumb, and at the sign of some slight

discoloration of these she stopped the work. From a glance at the nails,

she went to a musing scrutiny of this whole right hand of hers, holding

it up, and turning it from one composition of graceful curves to

another. It had been called the most beautiful hand in England, but this

morning its owner, upon a brief and rather listless inspection of its

charms, yawned again. Finally she seated herself in the chair and, after

a languid search for the place in her book, began to read.

Half reclining thus, with the equable and shadowless light of the glass

house about her, the young widow made a picture curiously different from

any in the library within. All the dead and gone brides of the Torrs had

been painted in bright attire; Lady Cressage wore a belted gown of black

cloth, unrelieved save by a softened line of white at the throat and

wrists. The others, without exception, had signified by elaborate

hair-dressing not less than by dutifully vacuous facial expressions,

their comprehension of the requirements of the place they had been

called upon to fill; Lady Cressage’s bistre hair was gathered in

careless fashion to a loose knot at the back of the head, and in her

exquisitely modeled face there was no hint whatever of docility or awed

submission to any external claims. The profile of this countenance,

outlined for the moment against a cluster of vividly purple pleroma

blossoms, had the delicacy of a rare flower, but it conveyed also the

impression of resolute and enduring force. If the dome above could have

generated voices of its own, these would have murmured to one another

that here at last was a woman whom Caermere could not break or even

easily bend.

In the season of 1892, London had heard a good deal of this lady. She

was unknown before, and of her belongings people to this day knew and

cared very little. There was a General Kervick enumerated in the retired

list, who had vegetated into promotion in some obscure corner of

India, and now led an equally inconspicuous existence somewhere in

the suburbs--or was it in West Kensington? He had never belonged to a

service club, but an occasional man encountered him once in a while

at the Oriental, where he was supposed by the waiters to have an

exceptional knowledge of peppers and chutneys. The name of his wife

had been vaguely associated with charitable committees, or subscription

committees, and here and there some one remembered having heard that she

was distantly related to somebody. The elder Kervicks never secured a

much more definite place in London’s regard--even after this remarkable

daughter had risen like a planet to dim the fixed stars of the season.

The credit for having discovered and launched Miss Kervick came

generally to be ascribed to Lady Selton, but perhaps this turned upon

the fact that she lent her house in Park Lane for the culminating scene

in the spectacular triumph of that young person. No doubt there were

others who would have placed still bigger houses at the disposal of a

bride whose wedding was, in many respects, the most interesting of the

year, and some of these may have had as good a claim to the privilege as

Lady Selton. As matters turned out, however, they were given no cause to

repine. The marriage was not a success, and within one short year Lady

Selton herself had grown a little shy about assuming responsibility for

it. A year later she was quite prepared to repudiate all share in it,

and after that people ceased to remember about it all, until the shock

of the tragedy came to stir polite London into startled whisperings.

Hardly within the memory of living folk had a family been dealt such

a swift succession of deadly blows as these which were rained upon the

Torrs in the first half of 1896.

The Earl of Porlock had been the heir of dukedom since most people could

remember, and had got himself called to the House of Lords in his

own right, apparently as a kind of protest against his father’s

unconscionable longevity, at least a dozen years before his own end

came. It was not to be supposed that he desired a peerage for any

other reason, since he had never chosen to seek a seat in the House of

Commons, and indeed, save upon one occasion connected with ground game,

made no use whatever of his legislative powers after they had been

given to him. He cared nothing for politics, and read scarcely more in

newspapers than in books. Up to middle life, he had displayed a certain

tendency toward interest in fat stock and a limited number of allied

agricultural topics, but the decline in farming values had turned him

from this. In his earlier years, too, he had enjoyed being identified

with the sporting set of his class in London, and about the racing

circuit, but this association he also dropped out of as he grew older,

partly because late nights bored him, partly because he could no longer

afford to jeopardize any portion of his income. He came at last to think

of his mastership of hounds as his principal tie to existence on land.

He liked it all, from the sailing sweep over the highest barrier in an

exceptionally rough country, to the smell of the kennels of an early

morning across the frozen yards. This life with the horses and dogs,

and with the people who belonged to the horses and dogs, offered fewer

temptations to the evil temper in his blood than any other, and with

growing years his dislike for the wear and tear of getting angry had

become a controlling instinct. He continued to use bad language with an

appropriate show of fervency, when occasion required, but he had got out

of the way of scalding himself with rage inside. He even achieved a

grim sort of jocularity toward the close. In the last year of his life

a tenant-farmer, speaking to a toast, affirmed of him that “a truer

sportsman, nor yet a more humorous and affable nobleman, has never taken

the chair at a puppy-walk luncheon within my recollection,” and this

tribute to his geniality both pleased and impressed the earl. He was

then in his sixty-second year, and he might have lived into a mellowed,

and even jovial old age, under the influence of this praise, had there

been no unwritten law ending the hunting season in the early spring.

The earl cared very little for otters and rats, and almost nothing at

all for salmon, so that when April came he usually went to his yacht,

and practically lived aboard it until November. Sometimes he made long

cruises in this substantial and comfortable vessel, which he delighted

in navigating himself. He was lying in at Bremerhaven, for example, in

May, when one of a sheaf of telegrams scattered along the line of North

Sea ports in search of him, brought the news that his youngest son

Joseph, who had drifted into Mashonaland after the collapse of the

Jameson adventure, had been killed in the native rebellion. Upon

consideration, the earl could not see that a post-haste return to

England would serve any useful end. He sailed westward, however, after

some telegraphic communication with England, and made his leisurely way

down the Channel and round Cornwall to Milford Haven, where his wont was

to winter his yacht, and where most of his crew were at home. The fact

that he and the vessel were well known in this port rendered it possible

to follow in detail subsequent events.

It was on the 10th of June that Lord Porlock came to anchor in Milford,

and went ashore, taking the afternoon train for Shrewsbury. He returned

on the 14th, accompanied by his eldest son and heir, Lord Cressage.

This latter personage was known only from hearsay at Milford, and local

observation of him was therefore stimulated by a virgin curiosity. It

was noted that Viscount Cressage--a stalwart and rubicund young man of

more than his father’s height, but somewhat less swarthy of aspect--was

laboring under very marked depression. He hung about the hotel, during

the delay incident upon cleaning up the yacht, taking on new stores

and altering some of the sailing gear, in a plainly moping mood, saying

little to his father and never a word to any one else. A number of

witnesses were able to make it clear that at first he did not intend to

sail forth, but was merely bearing his father company while the latter

remained in harbor.

The fact of their recent bereavement accounted in a general way for

their reticence with each other, but it was impossible not to see that

the younger man had something besides the death of a brother on his

mind. When, on the second day of their waiting, the tide began to

fill in which on its turn was to bear out the yacht, his nervous

preoccupation grew painfully manifest. He walked across many times to

the headland; he fidgeted in and out of the bar, taking drinks for

which he obviously had no relish, and looking over and over again in the

railway time-tables for information which he seemed incapable of fixing

in his memory. At last, when everything was ready, and the earl stood

with his hand out to say good-bye to his son, the latter had suddenly,

and upon the evident impulse of the moment, declared with some

excitement that he also would go. People remembered that he had said,

as if in defensive explanation of his hasty resolve: “Perhaps that will

teach her a lesson!” His father had only remarked “Rot!”--and with that

the yacht sailed off, a heaving white patch against the blackening west.

But what followed was too grossly unreasoning to afford a lesson to

anybody. The morning newspapers of the 18th contained in one column

confirmation of the earlier report that the Hon. Anselm Torr, second son

of the earl of Porlock, had been a passenger on the ill-fated “Drummond

Castle,” and had gone down with the rest in the night off Ushant; and in

another column a telegram from Porthstinian, announcing the total loss

of a large yacht, on the rocks known as the Bishop and Clerks, with all

on board. The evening papers followed with the rumor that the lost yacht

was the “Minstrel,” with both Lord Porlock and his son, Lord Cressage,

on board; but it was not until the next afternoon that the public

possessed all the facts in this extraordinary affair. Then it happened

that the edge was rather taken off the horror of the tragic coincidence,

by the announcement that these sudden deaths brought forward as next

heir to the dukedom Captain Edward Torr, late of the --th Hussars,

who was better known, perhaps, as the husband of Miss Cora Bayard. The

thought of Cora as a prospective duchess made such a direct appeal

to the gayer side of the popular mind, that the gruesome terrors

surrounding her advancement were lost to sight. When, a few days later,

it was stated that the venerable Duke of Glastonbury had suffered a

stroke of paralysis, and lay at Caermere in a critical state, the news

only made more vivid the picture of the music-hall dancer turned into

Her Grace which the public had in its mind’s eye. Her radiant portrait

in the photographic weeklies and budgets was what remained uppermost in

the general memory.

For a time, however, in that little fraction of the public which is

called Society, the figure of another woman concentrated interest upon

itself, in connection with the Torr tragedy. The fact that a music-hall

person was to wear a great title had no permanent hold upon the

imagination of this class. They would probably see rather less of her

then than now--and the thing had no longer the charm of the unusual. But

they had known Lady Cressage. They had admired her, followed after her,

done all sorts of nice things for her, in that season of her wonderful

triumph as the most beautiful girl, and the most envied bride, in

London. After her marriage she had been very little in evidence, it

was true; one hardly knew of any other reigning beauty who had let the

sceptre slip through her fingers so promptly and completely. What was

the secret of it all? It could not be said that she had lost her good

looks, or that she was lacking in cleverness. There was no tangible

scandal against her; to the contrary, she seemed rather surprisingly

indifferent to men’s company. Of course, it was understood that her

marriage was unhappy, but that was scarcely a reason for allowing

herself to be so wholly snuffed out of social importance. Everybody knew

what the Torrs were like as husbands, and everybody would have been

glad to be good to her. But in some unaccountable way, without quite

producing the effect of rebuffing kindness, she had contrived to lapse

from the place prepared for her. And now those last words from the lips

of poor young Cressage--“Perhaps that will teach her a lesson!”--sifted

their way from the coroner’s inquest in a Welsh village up to London,

and set people thinking once more. Who could tell? It might be that the

fault was not all on one side. According to the accounts of Milford, he

was in a state of visible excitement and mental distress. The very

fact of his going off alone in a yacht with his father, of whom he

notoriously saw as little as possible on dry land, showed that he must

have been greatly upset. And his words could mean nothing save that it

was a quarrel with his wife which had sent him off to what proved to be

his death. What was this quarrel about? And was it the woman, after all,

who was to blame? Echoes of these questions, and of their speculative

and varied answers, kept themselves alive here and there in London till

Parliament rose in August. They were lost then in the general flutter

toward the moors.

Lady Cressage, meantime, had not quitted Caermere or disclosed any

design of doing so, and it is there we return to her, where she sat at

her ease under the palms in the glass-house, with a book open before

her.

The spattering reports of a number of guns, not very far away, caused

her presently to lift her head, but after an instant, with a fleeting

frown, she went back to her book. The racket continued, and finally she

closed the volume, listened with a vexed face for a minute or two and

then sprang to her feet.

“Positively this is too bad!” she declared aloud, to herself.

Unexpectedly, as she turned, she found confronting her another young

woman, also clad in black, even to the point of long gloves, and a

broad hat heavy with funereal plumes. In her hand she held some unopened

letters, and on her round, smooth, pretty countenance there was a

doubtful look.

“Good-mornin’, dear,” said this newcomer. Her voice, not unmusical in

tone, carried the suggestion of being produced with sedulous regard to a

system. “There were no letters for you.”

There was a momentary pause, and then Lady Cressage, as if upon

deliberation, answered, “Good-morning--Cora.” She turned away listlessly

as she spoke.

“Ah, so it _is_ one of my ‘Cora’ days, after all,” said the other, with

a long breath of ostentatious reassurance. “I never know in the least

where to have you, my dear, you know--and particularly this mornin’; I

made sure you’d blame me for the guns.”

“Blame”--commented Lady Cressage, musingly--“I no longer blame anybody

for anything. I’ve long since done with my fancy for playing at being

God, and distributing judgments about among people.”

“Oh, you’re quite right about this shootin’ the home covers,” protested

the other. “I gave Eddy a fair bit of my mind about it--but you know

what he is, when once he’s headed in a given direction. You might

as well talk soft to the east wind. And, for that matter, I was dead

against his bringin’ these men down here at all--though it may surprise

you to hear it.”

Lady Cressage, still looking away, shook her head very slightly. “No--I

don’t find myself particularly surprised,” she said, with an effect of

languor. “Really, I can’t be said to have given the matter a thought,

one way or the other. It is neither my business nor my wish to form

opinions about your husband’s friends. We were speaking of something

else, were we not?”

“Why, yes,” responded Mrs. Edward; “I mentioned that sometimes I’m

‘Cora,’ and sometimes it’s very much the other way about. I merely

mentioned it--don’t think I mean to complain--only I began calling _you_

Edith from the start--from the first day I came here, after the--after

the----”

“I know you did. It was very kind of you,” murmured Edith, but with no

affectation of gratitude in her voice. Then, slowly, she turned her eyes

toward her companion, and added in a more considerate tone: “But then

you are by nature a much kindlier person than I am.”

“Oh, yes, you say that,” put in the other, “but it isn’t true, you know.

It’s only that I’ve seen more of the world, and am so much older than

you are. That’s what tells, my dear--it’s years that smooths the temper

down, and rubs off one’s sharp corners--of course, if one has some sense

to start with. I assure you, Edith, that when I was your age I was a

perfect tiger-cat.”

Lady Cressage smiled in a wan fashion, as if in despite of her mood.

“You always make such a point of your seniority,” she said, not

unamiably, “but when I look at you, I can never believe you’re of any

age at all. I seem a thousand years old beside you.” Mrs. Edward showed

some dazzling teeth in her pleased appreciation of the compliment. Her

smile was as characteristic as her voice, in its studiously regular and

equable distribution. The even parting of her bright lips, with

their symmetrical inner lines of white, was supported to a nicety of

proportional value by eyelashes and eyes.

“It’s what I’ve been saying,” she commented, with frank enjoyment. “It’s

good temper that does the trick.”

To tell the truth, Mrs. Edward’s was a face which bore no visible

relation to years. It was of rounded oval in contour, with beautifully

chiseled small features, a faultless skin which was neither fair nor

dark and fine large eyes that seemed sometimes blue, and as often

something else. In these eyes there lay always, within touch of the

surface, a latent smile, ready to beam, to sparkle, to dance, to

languish in mellow softness or glitter in cool abstract recognition of

pleasantries afloat, all at the instant bidding of the lips below. These

lips, delicately arched and of vivid warmth of color, were as restricted

in their movements as is the mercury in a thermometer. They did not curl

sidewise upon occasion; they never pouted, or pulled themselves inward

together under the stress of sudden emotion. They did nothing but

separate, in perfectly balanced measure, sometimes by only a hair’s

breadth, again in the freest fashion, but always in painstaking harmony

with the spirit of the glance above. Students of this smile, or rather

of this range of graded smiles, ordinarily reached the conclusion that

it was the lips which gave the signal to the eyes. Certain it is that

they worked together in trained accord, and that the rest of the face

did nothing at all. The white forehead furrowed itself with no lines of

puzzled thought; there was not the shadow of a wrinkle at the corners

of the little mouth, or about the shapely brown lashes--and it seemed

incredible that time should ever bring one.

Beside this serene and lovely mask--in the placidity of which one

found the pledge of an easy temper along with the promise of unfailing

youth--the face of Lady Cressage was still beautiful, but in a restless

and strenuous way. If she did produce the effect of being the older of

the two, it was because Mrs. Edward’s countenance had nothing to do with

any such standard of comparison.

“When you come to think of it,” the latter went on now, “you _do_

seem older than I do, dear--I mean you seem so to me. Of course I

know there’s a good six years’ difference between us--and as far as

appearance goes, I needn’t say that you’d be the belle of the ball in

London as easily as you were four years ago--but all the same you have

the knack of making me feel as if I were the youngster, and you the

grown-up. I’ve a sister--five years younger than me--and she does the

same thing. When she looks at me--just quietly turns her eyes full on

me, you know--it seems as if I ought to have a pinafore on, and she have

spectacles and a cap. Oh, she used to give me the jumps, that girl did.

We haven’t seen much of each other, these last few years; we didn’t hit

it off particularly well--but--why, hello! this _is_ odd, if you like!”

“What is it?” asked the other, perfunctorily.

Mrs. Edward had been, shuffling the envelopes in her hand the while she

spoke, and idly noting their superscriptions. She held up one of them

now, in explanation of her remark.

“Well, talk of the devil, you know--I was speaking of my sister Frank,

and here’s a letter from her. She hasn’t written a line to me in--how

long is it?--why, it must be--well, certainly not since I was married.

Funny, isn’t it? I wonder if it’s anything about the pater.”

She continued to regard the sealed missive absent-mindedly, as if the

resource of opening it had not yet suggested itself to her. In the

meantime, something else occurred to her, and she turned to face Lady

Cressage, who had seated herself again.

“I meant what I said about these men Eddy’s brought down,” she declared.

“I didn’t want them to be asked, and I don’t like their being here, any

more than you do. Yes, I want to have you understand,” she persisted, as

the other offered a gesture of deprecation, “I hope I’m the last person

in the world to round on old pals, but really, as I told Eddy, a man in

his position must draw the line somewhere. I don’t mind giving a leg-up

to old Pirie--in a quiet way, of course--for he’s not half a bad sort

by himself; but as for the rest, what are they? I don’t care for their

families or their commissions--I’ve seen too much of the world to be

taken in by kid of that sort--I say they’re bounders. I never was what

you might call keen about them as the right friends for Eddy, even

before--I mean in the old days, when it didn’t matter so much what

company he kept. But now, with everything so altered, he ought to see

that they’re not in his class at all. And that’s just what I can’t get

him to do in the least.”

“Men have their own views in these matters. They are often rather

difficult to understand,” commented Edith, sententiously.

“I should think so!” began Mrs. Edward. “Why, if I were a man, and in

Eddy’s place--”

Her words had ended aimlessly, as her eyes followed the lines of the

letter she had at last opened and begun to read. She finished the brief

task, and then, going back to the top of the single page, went over it

again more attentively. There was something indefinably impressive about

the silence in which she did this, and Lady Cressage presently raised

an inquiring glance. Mrs. Edward’s face exhibited no marked change of

expression, but it had turned deathly pale. The unabated redness of the

lips gave this pallor a ghastliness which frightened Edith, and brought

her to her feet.

“What in the name--” she began, but the other held up a black-gloved

hand.

“Is this something you know about?--something you’ve been putting up?”

Cora demanded, in a harsh, ungoverned voice, moving forward as she

spoke. “Look at this. Here’s what my sister writes.” She did not offer

to show the letter, but huskily read forth its contents:

“‘London, September 30.

“‘My dear Cora: I don’t know whether you will thank me or not, but I

feel that some one ought to warn you, if only that you may pull yourself

together to meet what is coming. Your house is built of cards, and it is

only a question of days, perhaps of hours, when it will be pushed over.

Your husband is not the heir, after all. I am truly in great grief at

the thought of what this will mean to you, and I can only hope that you

will believe me when I sign myself,

“‘Your sincerely affectionate sister,

“‘Frances.’”

The two women exchanged a tense look in which sheer astonishment

encountered terror, and mingled with it.

“No, I know nothing of this,” faltered Edith, more in response to the

other’s wild eyes than to the half-forgotten inquiries that had prefaced

the reading of the letter.

“No trick of a child, eh? What do they call it, posthumous?” Cora

panted, still with the rough voice which had shaken off the yoke of

tuition.

Edith lifted her head. “That is absurd,” she answered, curtly.

As they confronted each other thus, a moving shadow outside caught their

notice. Instinctively turning their eyes, they beheld through the glass

a stranger, a slender young man with a soft hat of foreign fashion,

striding across the lawn away from the house. He held his head high in

the air, and they could see that the hands carried stiffly outstretched

at his sides were clenched.

“He struts across the turf as if he owned it,” said Edith, clutching

vaguely at the meaningless relief which this interruption seemed to

offer.

But Mrs. Edward had sunk info the chair, and buried her face in her

black-gloved hands.

CHAPTER V

Christian began his walk with swift, energetic steps, and a guiding

eye fixed resolutely on a distinguishing mark in the distant line of

tree-tops beyond, as if both speed and directness of course were

of utmost urgency to his purpose. While his body moved forward thus

automatically, however, his mind remained engrossed with what had been

said and done in the room he was leaving behind.

His brain reproduced over and over again the appearance of the two young

brothers, their glances at each other, their sneering scowls at him. The

picture of Augustine whispering in Edward’s ear, and of Edward shaking

his sulky head, stuck in his memory as a living thing. He had continued

to see it after he had turned his back on them and gone to the window.

The infamous words which had been spoken about his father were a part

of this picture, and their inflection still rang in his ears just as the

young men still stood before his eyes, compact of hostility to him and

his blood.

The noise of guns in the wood he approached was for a time subordinated

in his mind to those bitter echoes of Edward’s speech. When at last

these reports of firing attracted his attention, he had passed out of

sight of Caermere, and found himself on a vaguely defined path at the

end of a broad heath, much overgrown with heather and broom and low,

straggling, inhospitable-looking shrubs novel to his eye. Curious

movements among this shaggy verdure caught his wandering notice, and

he stopped to observe them more closely. A great many rabbits--or would

they be hares?--were making their frightened escape from the wood in

front of him, and darting about for cover in this undergrowth. He became

conscious now of an extraordinary tumult in the wood itself--a confused

roar of men’s voices raised in apparently meaningless cries, accompanied

by an unintelligible pounding of sticks on timber and crackling brush.

This racket almost drowned the noise of the remote firing; its effect

of consternation upon the small inhabitants of the thicket was only less

than the bewilderment that it caused in Christian’s mind. Forgetting

altogether his own concerns, he pushed cautiously forward to spy out the

cause of the commotion.

Somewhat later, he emerged from the wood again, having obtained a

tolerable notion of what was going on. He had caught a view of one

line of beaters making their way through a copse, diagonally away from

him--rough men clad for the most part in white jackets, who shouted and

thrashed about them with staves as they went--and it was easy enough to

connect their work, and the consequent rise and whirring rush of birds

before it, with the excited fusillade of guns farther on. Christian did

not get a sight of the sportsmen themselves. Albeit with some doubts

as to the dignity of the proceeding, he made a detour of the piece of

woodland, with the idea of coming out upon the shooting party, but when

he arrived at the barrier it was to find on the spot only a couple of

men in greenish corduroys, whom he took to be underkeepers. They were at

work before a large heap of pheasants, tying the birds in pairs by the

necks, and hanging them over a long stick, stretched between two

trees, which already bent under its burden. They glanced up from their

employment at Christian, and when he stooped to pick up one of the

cartridge cases with which the ground at his feet was strewn, they

exchanged some muttered comment at which both laughed aloud. He

instinctively threw the little tube down, and looked away from the men.

The thought occurred to him that if they only knew who he was their

confusion would be pathetic, but as it was, they had the monopoly of

self-possession, and it was he who shyly withdrew.

The whole diversion, however, had cleared and sweetened his mood.

He retraced his steps through the wood and then struck off in a new

direction across the heath, at a more leisurely pace than he had come,

his mind dwelling pleasurably upon the various picturesque phases of

what he had witnessed. The stray glimpses of _la chasse_ which had

been afforded him in the South had had nothing in common with this.

The unkempt freedom of the growths about him appealed to his senses

as cultivated parks and ordered forests had never done. It was all so

strong and simple and natural--and the memory of the beaters smashing

along in the thicket, bawling and laying about them with their clubs,

gave it a primitive note which greatly pleased his fancy.

The heath was even finer, in his eyes, than the wood. The air stirring

across it, for one thing, had a quality which he seemed never to have

known before--and the wild, almost savage, aspect of its squat gray

and russet herbage, the sense of a splendidly unashamed idleness and

unproductiveness suggested by its stretches of waste land, charmed his

imagination. He said to himself, as he sauntered here, that he would

gallop every day across this wonderful plain, with a company of big dogs

at his horse’s heels. The thought of the motion in the saddle inspired

him to walk faster. He straightened himself, put his hands to his coat

at the breast as he had seen young Englishmen do on their pedestrian

tours, and strode briskly forward, humming to himself as he moved. The

hateful episode of the morning had not so much faded from his thoughts,

as shaken itself into a new kaleidoscopic formation. Contact with

these noble realities out of doors had had the effect, as it were, of

immeasurably increasing his stature. When he thought of those paltry

cousins of his, it was as if he looked down upon their insignificance

from a height.

He came at last face to face with a high stone wall, the pretensions and

obvious antiquity of which told him at once that he had returned to

the vicinity of the castle. Sure enough, there were discernible at a

considerable distance down to the right some of the turrets and roofs of

Caermere, and he turned his course in that direction. It seemed to him a

long way that he walked by the side of this great wall, marveling as he

did so at its size and at the ambitious views of the persons who built

it. The reflection that they were ancestors of his own came to his mind,

and expanded therein. He also would build like a great nobleman in his

time! What was there so grand as building?--he mused as he looked about

him--unless it might be the heath and the brownish-purple hills beyond,

and these also one intuitively thought of as having been built.

Presently a small doorway appeared in the massive wall, and Christian,

finding it unlocked, passed through it into a vast garden. The inner and

sunny side of the wall, as far as he could see in either direction, was

veined with the regularly espaliered branches of dwarf trees flattened

against it, from which still depended here and there belated specimens

of choice fruit. On the other side of the path following close this

wall, down which he proceeded, were endless rows of small trees and

staked clumps of canes, all now bereft of their season’s produce. The

spectacle did not fit with what had been mentioned to him of the poverty

of Caermere. Farther on, a tall hedge stretching at right angles from

the wall separated this orchard from what he saw now, by glimpses

through an open arch, to a be a flower garden. He quickened his pace at

the sight, for flowers were very near his heart.

At first there was not much to move his admiration. The sunlit profusion

of his boyhood’s home had given him standards of size and glowing color

which were barely approached, and nowhere equaled, here. Suddenly he

came upon something, however, before which he perforce stopped. It was

the beginning of a long row of dahlias, rounded flowers on the one side

of him, pointed and twisted cactus varieties on the other, and he had

imagined nothing like this before in his life. Apparently no two of the

tall plants, held upright to the height of his breast by thick stakes,

were alike, and he knew not upon which to expend the greater delight,

the beauty of their individual blossoms or the perfection of skill

exhibited in the color-arrangement of the line.

He moved slowly along, examining the more notable flowers in detail with

such ardor that a young lady in a black gown, but with a broad hat of

light straw on her pale hair, advanced up the path, paused, and stood

quite near him for some moments before he perceived her presence. Then

with a little start, he took off his hat, and held it in his hands while

he made a stiff bow.

“You are fond of flowers?” Lady Cressage said, more as a remark than an

inquiry. She observed him meanwhile with politely calm interest.

“These dahlias are extraordinary!” he exclaimed, very earnestly. “I have

never seen such flowers, and such variety. It surprises me a great deal.

It is a spécialité in England, n’est ce pas?”

“I think I have heard that we have carried the dahlia further than other

countries have done,” responded the lady, courteously giving the name

the broad-voweled sound he had used. She added with a pleasant softening

of eyes and lips: “But you ought not to begrudge us one little triumph

like this--you who come from the very paradise of flowers.”

The implication in her words caused him to straighten himself, and to

regard her with a surprised new scrutiny. He saw now that she was very

beautiful, and he strove to recall the few casual remarks Lord Julius

had dropped, concerning the two ladies at the castle, as a clue to

her identity. One had been an actress, he remembered--and this lady’s

graceful equanimity had, perhaps, something histrionic in it. But if she

happened not to be the actress, then it would no doubt anger her very

much to be taken for one. He knew so little of women--and then his own

part in the small drama occurred to him.

“It is evident that you understand who I am,” he said, with another bow.

The further thought that in either case she was related to him, was a

part of the family of which he would soon be the head, came to give him

fresh confidence. “It is not only dahlias that are carried to unrivaled

heights of beauty in England,” he added, and bowed once more.

She smiled outright at this. “That is somewhat too--what shall I

say?--continental for these latitudes,” she remarked. “Men don’t

say such glowing things in England. We haven’t sun enough, you know,

properly to ripen rose-hips--or compliments. I should like to introduce

myself, if I may--I am Edith Cressage--and Lord Julius has told me the

wonderful story about you.”

She held out her hand as she spoke, with a deliberate gesture, which

afforded Christian time to note its exquisite modeling, if he had had

the eyes for it. But he took the hand in his own rather cursorily,

and began speaking with abruptness before he had finished his bow and

relinquished it.

“It is much too wonderful,” he said, hastily. “It frightens me. I cannot

get used to it. I have the feeling that I should go away somewhere, and

live by myself, till it became all familiar to me. But then I see it

would be just as painful, wherever I went.”

“Oh, let us hope it would be least painful here, of all places,” urged

the lady, in gentle deprecation of his tone. “Caermere is not gay, but

it can be soothing and restful--to those who stand in need of solace. It

has come to be my second home--I never thought one could grow so deeply

attached to a place. It has been to me like a tender old nurse and

confidante--in times when--when its shelter and consolation were very

welcome”--she faltered for an instant, with averted face, then raised

her moist eyes to his, and let them sparkle--“and oh, you will grow to

love Caermere with all your heart.”

Christian felt himself much moved. He had put on his hat, and stepped

now to her side.

“I have seen nothing of it at all,” he said. “I am going to ask that you

shall show it to me--you who love it so much. But if I shall remain here

now, that I cannot in the least tell. Nothing is arranged, so far as I

know. I am quite in Lord Julius’ hands--thus far.”

They had tacitly begun to move down the path together, loitering to look

at plants on either side which particularly invited notice.

“Lord Julius is a remarkable man,” she said. “If one is fortunate enough

to enlist his friendship, there is no end to what he can do for him. You

can hardly imagine what a difference it makes for you in everything--the

fact that he is warmly disposed towards you.”

“Yes, that I have been told,” said Christian, “and I see it for myself,

too. I do not feel that I know him very well, as yet. It was only

yesterday morning that I met him for the first time at an hotel in

Brighton. We breakfasted together, we looked through papers together and

then we began a long railway journey together, which only ended a few

hours ago. We have talked a great deal in this time, but, as I have

said, the man himself is not very clear to me yet. But no one could have

been kinder--and I think he likes me.”

“Oh, of course he does,” affirmed Lady Cressage, as if anything

else would have been incredible. “And--talking with him so much, so

continuously, you no doubt understand the entire situation. I am glad

that he at least left it to me to show you over Caermere; there is

apparently nothing else in which I can be of use.”

Christian, though he smiled in kindly recognition of her attitude,

offered no verbal comment, and after a wandering digression about

dahlias, she returned to the subject.

“If there _is_ anything I can tell you--about the family, the position

of affairs in general, and so on--you should not stand on ceremony with

me. Has he, for example, explained about money affairs?”

The young man looked keenly at her for an instant, as if the question

took him by surprise. Then he answered frankly enough: “Nothing

definite. I only gather that it will be made easier for me than it would

have been for--for other members of the family, if they--had been in my

place. But perhaps that is not what I should say to you.”

Lady Cressage smiled on him reassuringly.

“Oh, don’t think of me in that light,” she pleaded. “I stand quite

outside the--what shall I say?--the interested family circle. I have

no ax of any description to grind. You, of course, have been told my

position in the castle--that is, so far as it can be told by others. It

is a simple enough story--I was to have been everything, and then

the wind happens to change off the Welsh coast and lo! I am

nothing--nothing! It is not even certain that I am not a beggar--living

here on alms. Legally, everything is in such confusion that no one knows

how he stands. But so far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter. My cup

has been filled so full--so long:--that a little more or less trouble is

of no importance. Oh, I assure you, I do not desire to be considered in

the matter at all.”

She made this last declaration with great earnestness, in immediate

response to the sympathetic look and gesture with which Christian had

interrupted her narrative.

His gentle eyes regarded her troubled beauty with compassionate

softness. “I venture to think that you will be considered a good deal,

none the less,” he remarked, in a grave yet eager tone. The sense of

elation at being able to play the part of Providence to such a lady

spread through his mind and possessed his being. The lofty possibilities

of the powers devolving upon him had never been so apparent before. He

instinctively put out his arm toward her, in such overt fashion that she

could but take it. She did not lean upon it, but imparted to the contact

instead a kind of ceremonial reserve which directly ministered to the

patrician side of his mood.

They walked, if possible, still more slowly now, pausing before almost

every stake; their talk was of the flowers, with occasional lapses into

the personal.

“What you said about Lord Julius,” she remarked, in one of these

interludes, “is quite true. He has it in his power to say whether the

duke shall be a rich man or a pauper, and until yesterday he was all for

the pauper. If poor Porlock and his sons had lived, they knew very well

that Lord Julius was no friend of theirs, and would starve the

title whichever of them had it. And so with these others--Edward and

Augustine--only with them, it isn’t merely dislike but loathing that

Lord Julius has for them.”

“I met those young gentlemen this morning,” said Christian stiffly. “It

seemed to me that Lord Julius went quite out of his way to be kind with

them. I should never have gathered that he hated them.”

“Oh, not personally,” she explained. “I don’t think he dislikes anybody

personally. But in what you may call their representative capacity he

is furious with people if they don’t measure up to his idea of what they

should be. I never heard of any other family that had such a man in it.

I used to admire him very much--when I was newly married--I thought his

ideals for the family were so noble and fine--but I don’t know--”

“Do you have suspicions of Julius, then?” asked Christian, hurriedly.

“Oh, no, no!” she protested. “Nothing is farther from my thoughts. Only

I have seen it all, here. I have lived in the very heart of it--and

much as I sympathize with his feelings, I can’t help feeling that he is

unjust--not willfully, but still unjust. He and his son are men of great

intelligence and refined tastes; they would do honor to any position.

But is it quite fair of them to be so hard on cousins of theirs who

were not given great intelligence, and who had no capacity whatever for

refinement? That is what I mean. You saw those young men this morning.

They are not up to much, certainly; their uncle Porlock and his sons

averaged, perhaps, even a shade lower--you see I am speaking quite

frankly--but when it is all said and done, they were not so remarkably

worse than other men of their class. If any of the six had succeeded

to the title, he would not have been such a startling anomaly in the

peerage. I doubt if he would have attracted attention, one way or the

other. But it became a fixed idea with Lord Julius years ago to get

control of the estates, and to use this control to bully the elder

line into the paths of sweetness and light. It didn’t succeed in

the least--and I think he grew a little spiteful. That is all. And

besides--what does it matter? It is all ancient history now.”

Christian was looking straight before him, with a meditative gaze. They

walked for some moments in silence before he spoke. “And how did he

know that he would like me?” he demanded, musingly. “How should he be

confident that I was better than the others? Perhaps--do you know?--was

he very fond of my father?”

“I have no idea,” she responded. It was impossible not to note the

brevity of her tone.

“No one speaks willingly of my father,” he broke forth with impulsive

bitterness. “Even Lord Julius would tell me nothing of him. And the

young lady on the boat--she too--”

He paused, and his companion, who had been looking away, glanced

again at him. “The young lady on the boat,” she said, more by way of

suggesting to him a safe topic than as an inquiry.

“Oh, I much want to know who she can be,” he cried, unconsciously

accepting the diversion. He described the meeting at Rouen, the

conversation and, after a fashion of his own, the girl herself. “She

said,” he went on, “that she had personally something to do with the

story--‘remotely’ was the word she used. I asked Lord Julius, but he

could not think who she might be. She earns her own living--she told

me that--and she had never been out of England before. She is not well

educated--in the school sense, I mean--her French was ridiculous. But

she spoke very beautifully her own language, and her mind filled me

with charm, but even more so her good heart. We swore friendship for all

time--or at least I did.”

“Dear me!” said Lady Cressage. Her thoughts had not been idle, and they

brought to her now on the instant a satisfactory clue. She pondered

it for a little, before she decided to speak. “I think I know who this

remarkable young lady must be,” she observed then. “This Captain Edward

whom you met this morning--he has a wife.”

“Yes, I know,” put in Christian abruptly--“the actress-lady; Julius told

me of her.”

“I suppose ‘actress’ would cover the thing,” she answered, with an air

of amiable indifference. “She danced more than she acted, I believe,

but ‘actress’ is a very general term. Well, your eternal friend is, I

suspect, her younger sister. ‘I have never seen her, but by accident I

happen to know that she is aware of your coming to England.”

Christian’s mobile face had lengthened somewhat. “Is she also an--an

‘actress’?” he asked, dolefully.

Lady Cressage looked skyward, with halfclosed eyes, in an effort

of memory. “I really seem to have heard what she did,” she mused,

hesitatingly. “I know her sister has often spoken of her. Is it

‘barmaid’? No. ‘Telegraph’? No, it’s her father who’s in the General

Post Office. Why, now, how stupid of me! She can’t be a nurse, of

course, or there would have been her uniform. Oh, now I remember--she’s

a typewriter.”

It was not clear to her whether Christian wholly comprehended the term,

now that she had found it. She perceived, however, that he disliked

something in what she had said, or in her manner of saying it. The

remarkable responsiveness of his countenance to passing emotions and

moods within him had already impressed her. She regarded his profile now

with a sidelong glance, and reconstructed some of her notions about him

by the help of what she saw. Nothing was said, until suddenly he paused,

gazing with kindled eye upon the prospect opened before him.

They had come to the end of the garden, and stood at the summit of a

broad stone-kerbed path descending in terraces. Above them, the dense

foliage of the yews rising at either side of the gap in the hedge

had been trained and cut into an arched canopy. From under this green

gateway Christian looked down upon a Caermere he had not imagined to

himself before.

The castle revealed itself for the first time, as he beheld it now,

in its character as a great medieval fortress. On his arrival in the

morning, emerging from the shadowed driveway into the immediate precinct

of the house, he had seen only its variously modernized parts; these,

as they were viewed from this altitude, shrank to their proper

proportions--an inconsiderable fraction of the mighty whole. All

about, the massive shoulders of big hills shelved downward to form the

basin-like hollow in which the castle seemed to stand, but their large

bulk, so far from dwarfing Caermere, produced the effect of emphasizing

its dimensions. Its dark-gray walls and towers, with their bulging

clumps of chimneys and turrets, and lusterless facets of many-angled

roofings, all of somber slate, were visibly the product, the very child,

of the mountains. A sensation of grim, adamantine, implacable power took

hold of the young man’s brain as he gazed. For a long time he did

not want to talk, and felt vaguely that he was signifying this by the

slight, sustained pressure of his arm against hers. At all events, she

grasped his wish, and preserved silence, holding herself a little behind

him, so that he might look down, without distraction, upon his kingdom.

“These Torrs,” he burst forth all at once, with a nervous uncertainty in

his tones as of one out of breath, “these ancestors of mine--the family

I belong to--did they produce great men? You must know their history.

Julius says we are the most ancient family in England. I have not had

the time yet to learn anything of what we did. Were there heroes and

famous soldiers and learned scholars among us? To look at that wonderful

castle there at our feet, it seems as if none but born chiefs and rulers

of mankind could ever have come out of it.”

“Captain Edward and his brother Augustine were both born there,” she

permitted her own over-quick tongue to comment.

He let her arm drop from his with a swift gesture, and wheeled round to

look her in the face. The glance in his eyes said so much to her that

she hastened to anticipate his speech.

“Forgive me!” she urged hastily. “It was silly thoughtlessness of mine.

I do not know you at all well as yet, you know, and I say the wrong

things to you. Do tell me you forgive me! And it is only fair to myself

to say, too, that I have been in a bad school these last few years.

Conversation as one practices it at Caermere is merely the art of making

everything pointed and sharp enough to pierce thick skins. I should have

remembered that you were different--it was unpardonable of me! But I

have really angered you!”

Christian, still looking at her, found himself gently shaking his head

in reassurance. It was plain enough to him that this beautiful young

woman had suffered much, and that at the hands of his own people. What

wonder that acrid memories of them should find their way to her lips? He

also had been unhappy. He smiled gravely into her face at the softening

recollection.

“We were speaking of different things, I think,” he commented, and

nodded approval at sight of the relieved change which his tone brought

to her countenance. “I know very well there are many disagreeable and

unpleasant matters close about us--when we are down below, there. But

now we are up above them, and we forget them all, or ignore them--and I

was asking you about the history of the family--its ancient history.”

She put her hand lightly upon his arm again. “Lord Julius is right about

it being a very, very long history,” she said, putting into her voice a

tacit recognition of his magnanimity. “I know it, in a certain way, but

I can hardly make a good story of it, I’m afraid. The family is

Keltic, you know. That is what is always said about it, as its most

distinguishing characteristic. It is the only large English one which

managed to survive through the Saxon period, and then the Norman period,

and keep its name and its estates and its territorial power. This makes

it very interesting to historians and archaeologists. There are many

stone circles and Druidic monuments about here, some of which are said

to be connected with the introduction of Christianity into Britain. You

will see them another day, and read the legends about them. Well, it is

said that the chief who possessed this land here, and who had some kind

of a stronghold there where the castle is, at that time, was a Torr. Of

course, there were no surnames then, but it would have been his tribal

appellation, or something of the sort. The fact itself, I believe, is

generally accepted--that the family that was here in St. David’s time is

here now. It is a tradition that there should always be a David in the

family; it used to be the leading name, but now Christian is usually

the duke’s name, and the others are all saints, like Anselm, Edward,

Augustine and--and so forth.”

The young man looked down in meditation upon the gloomy, historic pile.

“It is a very grand beginning,” he said, thoughtfully.

“Perhaps it was too grand for mere mortals to live up to,” she ventured,

with a cautious sidelong eye on him.

“I see your meaning,” he assented, nodding. “Yes, no doubt it is

natural. It is as if a boy were named Napoleon. He would be frightened

to think what he had done to make his name and himself fit together--and

very likely he would never do anything at all.”

“Yes, that is it,” she answered, and drew a long, consolatory breath.

They had begun to move down the wide winding path, and when they paused

presently at one of the steps to note a new view of the buildings, she

called his attention to something by a little exclamation and a pointing

finger.

“Do you see the balcony there, up above and to the left of the

flat-topped tower--no, this side of the highest chimneys--there are

figures coming out on it from the window.”

“There is some one in a reclining chair, n’est ce pas?” he asked,

following her finger.

“It is your grandfather,” she said softly. “Those are his

apartments--the rows of windows with the white woodwork. When the

sun gets round to them, they bring him out--if he is strong enough.

Evidently this is one of his good days.”

Christian, gazing eagerly, made out beyond the attendants and the couch

they bore, another figure, with a splash of white like a shield upon its

front.

“Is it not Julius?” he asked swiftly, pressing her arm. “Oh, then by

this time my grandfather knows of me--knows that I am here! Should you

not think so? And no doubt, since it is his good day, they will take me

to see him. Is that not probable?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” she responded, after a momentary pause,

“either as to what Lord Julius has told him, or as to how much he is

capable of understanding. Except from this distance, I have not seen him

since he was struck down with paralysis. I know nothing of his condition

beyond a stray, guarded word now and then from the doctors. If I were

a professional thief and he a crown jewel, I could not have been more

securely shut out from him!”

The melancholy bitterness of her words, and tone appealed to the young

man. He drew her hand closer to his side by a delicate pressure of

the arm. “I can see that you have been very unhappy,” he said,

compassionately.

“Oh-h-h!” she murmured, with a shuddering sigh. “Don’t--don’t speak of

it, I beg of you!”

“I also have had a sad youth,” he went on, unconsciously tightening his

arm. “But now”--and he lifted his head and smiled--“who knows? Who shall

say that the bad days are not all gone--for both of us?”

Only the flutter of the hand against his arm made answer. They walked oh

together down the broad sunlit path.

CHAPTER VI

At the foot of the terraced slope, the wide, graveled path down which

Lady Cressage had led Christian described a formal curve to the right,

across a lawn which he recognized as belonging to his morning’s

experiences. The angle of the high, domed conservatory recalled itself

to him. Beyond it, on the same side, would be the window from which he

had quitted the house.

To the left, a smaller footpath turned into still another garden, and

he was glad that his companion moved this way. They were in a relatively

small inclosure, hedged upon three sides by closely knit high walls of

box; the straggling, untrimmed profusion of this tall growth, through

which a multitude of sweet-briers thrust still farther upward their

dipping and interlaced green rods, gave the place a homely if unkempt

aspect. On the fourth side rose the blue-gray masonry of the castle

itself--an ancient curtain stretched between two towers. The autumn

sunlight lay upon this stained old wall, and warmed it, and glowed

softly among the leaves and saffron blossoms of the great rose-tree

trained upon it. This garden preserved the outlines of some former

quaint arrangement of walks and beds, but these were comfortably

softened everywhere, and in part obscured, by the untrammeled freedom

of vegetation. Even over the moldering red tiles of the paths mosses had

been suffered to creep unmolested. A few late roses were in bloom here

and there, and at one corner there rose a colony of graceful white

lilies, the scent of which filled the air. It was all very restful

and charming, and Christian, pausing to gaze about him, gave little

exclamations of pleasure at what he saw.

In the center of the garden, surrounded by a low seat of weather-worn

woodwork, was what seemed to be a fountain, culminating in a piece of

statuary, so blackened and battered by time and storm that little could

be made out of its creator’s intentions. Christian, with some murmured

inquiry, led the way toward this--and then perceived that Lord Julius,

who had been sitting at the other and sunny side of the statue, was

standing now in the path, confronting the new-comers with a friendly

smile.

“This is _my_ particular haunt at Caer-mere,” he explained to the young

man.

“In so huge a place, one is lost if he does not fasten upon a special

corner or nook of some sort, and send down roots in it and make it his

own. This was my mother’s garden, and for over fifty years now I have

bargained with one generation of head gardeners after another to leave

it alone--as she left it. When Cheltnam came, he was so famous a person

that I submitted to his budding some new varieties on the old wall-rose

there--but, bless me, even that is thirty years ago--before either

of you was born. I see you young people have lost no time in becoming

acquainted.”

Edith Cressage looked into the old gentleman’s eyes for a moment before

she replied. They had exchanged this same glance--on her side at once

puzzled, suspicious, defiant; on his full of a geniality possibly

pointed with cynicism--very often during the last four years, without

affecting by it any prepossession or prejudice in either’s mind. “We met

by accident in the upper fruit-walk, and I introduced myself. It must

be quite luncheon time. Shall we go in?” She added, as upon an

afterthought, and with another steadfast look into his face, “I have

promised to show him over the house and the castle.”

“Admirable!” said Lord Julius, cordially.

He looked at his watch. “We will follow you in a very few moments, if we

may. I dare say he is as ready for luncheon as I am, but I want to show

him my old garden first.”

“Oh, let me stop too!” she exclaimed, without an instant’s hesitation.

“May I confess it?--when you’re not here I call it _my_ garden, too. I

knew it was your mother’s--and I was always going to ask you to tell

me about her, but the opportunity never offered. It is the one

really perfect spot at Caermere, even to me. And I can understand how

infinitely these old associations add to its charms for you! I shall

truly not be in the way if I stop?”

The elder man regarded her with a twinkling eye from under his broad

hat-brim as he shook his head. “To the contrary, we are both delighted,”

he answered, amiably enough. He began leading the way at this, and the

two young people, walking perforce very close together on the narrow

path, followed at his heels.

He pointed out to them that the fountain, which he could not remember

being in working order even in his boyhood, was built over the ancient

well of the castle. The statue apparently dated from William and Mary’s

time; at least, it was very like the objects they set up at Hampton

Court. Part of its pedestal was made of three Ogham stones, which were

said to have stood by the well in former times. Flint knives and other

primitive weapons had been found in the garden. Antiquaries were not

agreed as to the possibility of the well having been in existence at

any very remote period, but it was not unlikely that this small

garden had been the center of interest--perhaps the scene of Druidical

sacrifices, or even of the famous conversion of the tribe resident

here by St. David--at the beginning of things. These speculations as to

precise localities were interesting, but scarcely convincing. The wall

at the end was a more definite affair. It had been built after the Third

Crusade by Stephen de la Tour, as the Normanized name went then.

“Ah, the name has not always been spelled the same then?” interrupted

Christian here. He spoke with an eagerness which the abstract interest

of the query seemed hardly to warrant.

“Heavens, no!” said Lord Julius. “It has been Tor with one ‘r’ and with

two; it has been de la Tour, as I said, and Tour without the ‘de la,’

and Toure, and I know of at least one branch of the people of the name

of Tower who are undoubtedly of our stock. It is quite conceivable that

many others of them are, too.”

“Then the forms of names can be altered at will?” pursued Christian. “If

a man says, ‘I will spell it so and so,’ then it is all right?”

“Oh, yes,” explained the other. “Often two spellings exist side by side.

Witness the Seymours a few years ago. You had one brother writing

it Seymour and another St. Maur. The latter is now the official

spelling--for the present, at least.”

“This is extremely interesting to me,” the young man cried. “So I may

keep my name as I have always borne it! I may write myself ‘Christian

Tower’! That lifts a load from my mind. I had been unhappy to think

of abandoning the name my father liked. He always both spelled and

pronounced it ‘Tower,’ and that is why I shall be so glad to do the

same.”

An acute kind of silence rested upon the group for an awkward minute.

“Oh, don’t let us have anymore archaeology before luncheon, Lord

Julius,” put in the lady then. “Caermere so reeks with history that one

must take it in small installments or be overwhelmed altogether. You

were going to tell us about your mother, Lord Julius, and how you

remember her, here in this dear old garden. And positively nothing has

been changed since!”

“I mustn’t go quite so far as that,” said the old man, smilingly.

He seemed grateful to her for the digression. “A certain systematic

renovation has, of course, been necessary; I have arranged with the

gardeners to manage that. I dare say there are scarcely any plants or

roots here now which were individually in existence in my mother’s time;

but their children, their descendants, are here in their places. Except

for Cheltnam’s buds on the wall there, I don’t think any novelties

have been introduced. If so, it was against my wish. The lilies in that

corner, for example, are lineal progeny, heaven knows how many times

removed, of the lilies my mother planted there. These roses are slips

from other slips of the old cabbage and damask and moss roses she used

to sit and look at with her crewel-work in her lap. The old flowers are

gone, and yet they are not gone. In the same way, my mother has been

dead for sixty years, and yet this is still her garden, and she is

still here--here in the person of me, her son, and of Christian, her

great-grandson.”

“And I,” commented Lady Cressage, upon a sudden smiling impulse, “I

alone am an intruding new species--like one of Cheltnam’s ‘niphetos’

buds on the old rose. I hasten to extricate myself.” And with a bright

little nod and mock half-courtesy, she caught her gown in one hand,

wheeled round and moved quickly down the path and through the hedge.

The two men watched her till she vanished.

“She is a beautiful lady,” observed Christian, with enthusiasm; “and

very courteous, too.”

Lord Julius offered no remark upon this, but stood for a little with

his gaze apparently fixed on the point whence she had disappeared. Then,

without turning his head, he said in a gently grave way:

“If I were you, Christian, I would make as few allusions, in mixed

company, to my father as possible.”

“Ah, yes! this is what I desired to discuss with you!” said the young

man, stoutly. He swung round to face the other, and his eyes sparkled

with impatience. “Everybody avoids mention of him; they turn to

something else when I speak his name--all but those abominable young

men who offered him insult. That is what I should very much like to talk

about!”

“I had thought it might not be necessary,” replied Lord Julius. “At

least, I had hoped you would pick up the information for yourself--a

harmless little at a time, and guess the rest, and so spare everybody,

yourself included. But that is precisely what you seem not to do; and I

dare say I was wrong in not talking frankly with you at the start. But

let me understand first: what do you know about your father?”

“Only that he was a soldier, a professional soldier. That I have told

you,” panted Christian.

“Yes, and a very notable soldier,” responded the other. “He won the

Victoria Cross in the Mutiny--the youngest man in all India to do so.

That is for you to remember always--in your own mind--for your own pride

and consolation.”

“Ah, yes, always!” murmured the son.

“And in other services, too, after he left England,” the elder man went

on, “I have understood that he was a loyal and very valuable officer to

those he fought for. This also is something for you to be proud of---but

still inside your own mind! That it is necessary to remember--that you

must keep it to yourself. Forgive my repeating the injunction.”

“Go on!” said Christian.

“Well,” Lord Julius began, speaking with more hesitation, “Ambrose as

a soldier was magnificent, but you know enough from your books to know

that splendid soldiers may easily be--how shall I say?--not so splendid

in other walks of life. It is to be said for him that he was bare

twenty-three--poor boy. It was in 1859; and, as misery would have it, I

was in Syria, traveling with my wife. Perhaps if I had been in England,

I could have done something. As it was, there was no one to help him;

and of course it may be that he couldn’t have been helped. It was a case

of a young man returning to London, with honors and flattery enough to

turn even an old head, and walking blindfold into the worst company in

Europe. I have no intention of going into details. You must take my word

for it that suddenly four or five young men of great families fled to

the Continent; and that, without much publicity in the papers, there was

a very miserable sort of scandal after their flight. Other names were

mentioned--but I needn’t go into that. It was to the interest of

many influential people to hush the thing up, and to some extent they

succeeded. After a while it became even possible for the others to come

back to England--there are many ways of managing such matters--but there

was one of them who never returned.”

Christian gazed into the old man’s face with mute, piteous fixity of

concentration.

“This one, of course,” Lord Julius pursued, picking his words still more

cautiously, and liking his task less than ever, “was your father. The

way was smoothed for the rest to come back, but not for him--that is, at

first. Later, when he could have returned, he would not. Ambrose had

a stubborn and bitter temper. He was furious with his father, with his

family--with all England. He would touch none of us. Why, I myself went

to Sicily many years ago--it was as soon as I had got back from the

East--and learned the facts, and found out what could be done; and I

tried to see him, and bring him home with me, but he would not speak

with me, or even remain under the same roof with me--and so I could do

nothing. Or yes, there was one thing--that is to maintain some kind of

watch over you--after his death, and that we did. My own idea was to

have brought you over to England years ago--as soon as your mother

died--but Emanuel thought otherwise.”

He paused here in his narrative, for the reason that his companion was

obviously no longer listening to him.

Christian had moved a step or two away, and with a white, set face was

looking off over the hill-tops. His profile showed brows knitted and

lips being bitten, under the stress of an internal tempest. It seemed

to the old man a long time that he stood thus, in dry-eyed, passionate

battle with his own mind. Then, with a sudden, decisive gesture he

spread out his hands and turned impulsively to Lord Julius.

“You are an old man, and a wise one, and you were my father’s friend and

you are my friend!” he said, with trembling earnestness. “I should be

a fool not to pay heed to what you tell me. You advise that I do not

mention my father more than is necessary. Eh bien, I take your advice.

Without doubt it is right--just as it is right that I should speak less

of my brother Salvator. I have remembered that since you warned me,

and now I will remember this. But I should like”--he came forward as he

spoke, still with extended hands, and looked with entreating earnestness

up into the other’s face--“I should like to have you understand that

Salvator is my brother not any the less, and that I love and honor and

have pride in my father more than before. This I keep in my own mind,

as you advise--but one thing I will do for every one to take note of. I

will write my name always ‘Tower.’”

The great-uncle put a big, comforting hand on his shoulder. “I should

not dream of blaming you,” he said, gently. “But there is a man to tell

us luncheon is ready.”

He nodded comprehension to the servant who had appeared at the opening

in the hedge, and, still with his hand on Christian’s shoulder, began to

move in that direction.

“One other matter,” said the young man in lowered tones and

hurriedly--“from the hill above, awhile ago, I saw my grandfather--in

his chair, on the balcony. You said just now that my father hated

him--was furious with him. Did he behave cruelly to my father?”

“Oh, no-o,” replied Julius, with an indefinite upward inflection on the

deliberate negative. “Not cruelly.”

“But unjustly?”

“Oh, no, not unjustly, either--if only because he never in his life

possessed the dimmest inkling of what justice meant. The duke is my

brother, and I know him much better than any one else living, and so

I am free to speak frankly about him. He has been a duke nearly eighty

years--which is, I believe, unprecedented--but he has been an ass still

longer than that.” After a pause he added: “I am going to take you to

him this afternoon.”

Christian hung his head as they walked along, and framed in his

depressed mind more than one further inquiry about this grandsire

of his, who held so august a station, and yet had been dismissed so

contemptuously, but they did not translate themselves into speech.

Nor, later, during the luncheon, was this great personage more than

indirectly alluded to.

The way to this luncheon had led through three or four large rooms,

opening one upon the other by small doors, the immediate approaches to

which were given the effect of passageways by means of screens. What

these apartments were used for, or how the residents of the castle

distinguished them apart in their own minds, Christian could not

imagine. To his rapid and curious inspection, they seemed all

alike--each with its bare, indifferently polished floor, its huge stone

fireplace, its wainscoting, walls and ceiling of dark, umber-hued

wood, and its scant store of furniture which only heightened the ruling

impression of big empty spaces. An occasional portrait was dimly to be

discerned up in the duskiness of the oak panels, but the light from the

narrow and small-paned windows was too faint to examine them by. More

cheerless or apparently useless rooms the young man had never seen.

Lord Julius seemed to guess his thoughts. “This is all an old part--what

might be called mid-Plantagenet,” he explained, as they went along. “My

father had these rooms pulled about a good deal, and done up according

to Georgian standards, but it was time and money wasted. Even if big

windows were cut through they would be too dark for comfort, to our

notions. The men who made them, of course, cared nothing at all about

daylight, at least inside a house. They spent as little time as possible

under roofs, to begin with; they rose at daybreak and went to bed at

dark. When they were forced to be under cover, they valued security

above all things, and the fewer openings there were in the walls, the

better they liked it. They did no reading whatever, but after they had

gorged themselves with food, sat around the fire and drank as much as

they could hold, and listened to the silly rubbish of their professional

story-tellers and ballad-singers till they fell asleep. If it happened

that they wanted to gamble instead, a handful of rush-lights or a torch

on the wall was enough to see the dice by.

“Really, what did they want more? And for that matter, what do most of

their lineal descendants want more either? Light enough to enable them

to tell a spade from a heart, and perhaps to decipher the label on

a bottle now and then. Nothing more. The fashion of the day builds

plate-glass windows round them, but it is truly a gross superfluity.”

The room in which Lady Cressage and the luncheon-table awaited them was

of a more hospitable aspect. A broad expanse of lawn, and of distant

trees and sky-line fading away in the sunny autumn haze, made a luminous

picture of the high embrasured window stretching almost from corner to

corner across one side. By contrast with the other apartments, the light

here was brilliant. Christian, with a little apologetic bow and gesture

to the others, dallied before the half-dozen portraits on the walls,

examined the modeling of the blackened oak panels about them, and

lingered in admiring scrutiny of the great carved chimney-piece above

the cavernous hearth, on which a fire of logs crackled pleasantly. This

chimney-piece was fairly architectural in its dimensions. It was as full

of detail, and seemed almost as big, as the west front of a church, and

he tipped his head back to look up at its intricate, yet flowing scheme

of scrollwork, its heraldic symbolism used now for decoration, now to

point the significance, as it were, of the central escutcheon--and all

in old wood of so ripe a nut-brown color that one seemed to catch a

fragrance exhaled from it.

“That is the best thing here,” said Edith Cressage, moving over to

stand beside him. “It came from Ludlow Castle. Those are the arms of the

Mortimers. It _is_ the Mortimers, isn’t it?” She turned to Lord Julius

for support. “I always confuse them with the De Lacys.”

“Yes, the Mortimers,” answered Julius, as servants entered, and they

took their seats. “But almost every other family of the Marches is

represented in the devices scattered about. You can see the arrows of

the Egertons, the eagles of the Grandisons, and up above, the corbies or

ravens of the Corbets, and so on. That was the period when the Marches

ruled England, and their great families, all married and intermarried

and bolstered up by the feudal structure, were like a nation by

themselves. The Mortimers, you know,” he added, turning to Christian,

“became practically kings of England. At least they had their grandsons

on the throne--but they couldn’t hold it after they had got it. The day

of these parts was really over before Bosworth Field. The printing press

and Protestantism finished the destruction of its nobility. Only a house

here and there has survived among us. Some few of the old names are

preserved, like flies in amber, over in Ireland, but I should not know

where to look to-day for a De Lacy, or a Tregoz, or a west country Le

Strange, let alone a Mortimer. I suppose, in fact, we have more of the

Mortimer blood among us than there is anywhere else.”

Christian, seated so that he faced the great armorial pageant spread

as a background to the fair head of the lady, smiled wistfully at his

companions, but said nothing. The words about his sharing the blood of

kings were like some distant, soft music in his ears. He looked at

the escutcheons and badges, and sought in a dreamy way to familiarize

himself with the fact that they were a part of his own history--that the

grandeur they told of was in truth his personal heritage.

There was some talk going on between the others--conversation which,

for a time, he scarcely strove to follow. Lord Julius had begun by

expressing his joy at the absence from luncheon of the physician whom

circumstances kept on the premises, and from this he drifted to an

attack upon doctors as a class. He denounced them root and branch,

as impostors and parasites, who darkened and embittered human life by

fostering all the mean cowardices of smallbrained people, in order that

they might secure a dishonest livelihood by pretending to dispel the

horrors their own low tricks had conjured up. The robust old gentleman

developed these violent theories without heat or any trace of

excitement, and even maintained a genial expression of countenance

while he spoke. Lady Cressage seemed entertained, and even helped on the

diatribe now and again with pertinent quips of her own. But Christian

could see very little sense in such an assault upon a respectable

profession, and his attention wandered willingly again to the splendid

chimney-piece. He resolved to learn all there was to learn of the

heraldry and local history embodied in this sumptuous decoration,

without delay. But then, on every conceivable side there was so much to

learn!

Suddenly he became aware that his thoughts had concentrated themselves

on the extraordinary badness of the luncheon he was eating. Here at

least was something Caermere could not teach him about--nor, for that

matter, as it seemed, all England either. Since his arrival in the

country, he reflected, he had not encountered one even tolerable dish.

Vegetables and fish half raw, meats tasteless and without sauce or

seasoning, bread heavy and sour, coffee unrecognizable, the pastry a

thing too ridiculous for words--so his indictment shaped itself. He felt

it his duty to argue to himself that quite likely this graceless and

repellent diet was the very thing which made the English such physical

and temperamental masters of the world, but the effort left him sad. He

made a resolution that if ever Caermere were his a certain white-capped

Agostino, in Cannes, should be imported forthwith. Then he became

conscious again of what was being said at the table.

“If you could only imagine,” Lady Cressage was saying to Lord Julius,

“what a boon your coming has been! I had positively almost forgotten

what intelligent conversation was like. It seems ages since I last heard

ten consecutive words strung together on a thought of any description.

Let me see--it was June when you were last down, with Sir Benjamin

Alstead; he has been here once since--but in your absence he put on such

a pompous ‘eminent-physician’ manner that really I oughtn’t to count him

at all--and with that exception, from June to October, civilization has

left poor me entirely out of its reckoning. But perhaps”--they had risen

now, and there was a certain new frankness, almost confidence of appeal

in her glance into his face--“perhaps, as matters have turned, you will

come oftener henceforth?”

Lord Julius nodded. “It is quite likely,” he said, and stretched forth

his hand significantly to Christian’s shoulder. “But you were going to

show him the house--and I suppose I may come along too. There is half an

hour before we go to my brother--and our train does not leave Clune till

nearly six.”

“You are not going to-day! and he too?” she exclaimed, hurriedly.

The old man nodded again. “We are expected at Emanuel’s to-night,” he

answered. Then, as Christian had moved toward the window and seemed

beyond hearing, he added, in a smiling aside, “There is one reason for

dragging him away that is comical enough. It wouldn’t do for him to

dine at Caermere in morning clothes, and so far as I can see he has no

others.”

“He could be too tired to dine,” she suggested, quickly, in a

confidential murmur. “Or, for that matter, there is a room full of

Porlock’s things--I suppose--I suppose poor Cressage’s--would be too big

for him. Oh, it’s too dreadful to have him whisked off like this! Can’t

you send a telegram instead?”

Her tone was as frank as her speech--and on the instant her glance at

his face made keen inquiry whether it had not been too frank.

He smiled in a tolerant, almost amused way. “Oh, he will return all in

good time,” he assured her, gently enough. “Caermere will see plenty of

him, later on.”

“Yes, but who can tell where I shall be then?” The necessity for

speaking in an undertone gave her words an added intensity of feeling.

“And it isn’t only him--I had hoped you would be stopping some days at

least--for I wanted to speak with you about this very thing. My position

here--the uncertainty of everything--is intolerable to bear.” She lifted

her head, and turned her direct gaze into his eyes.

“If only you liked me a little better, I could discuss the matter more

freely with you.”

“Humbug!” replied Lord Julius, with a geniality which was at least

superficially reassuring. “You shouldn’t say such things, much less

think them. I can understand your impatience--but it will be possible to

straighten out affairs very soon now. I don’t think you will be found to

have suffered by the delay.”

“Oh, that is all right,” she answered, almost pettishly. “Everybody

assures me of the most magnanimous intentions--but in the meantime”--she

checked herself, tossed her head in resentment, apparently, at the

tears which had started to her eyes, and forced herself to smile--“in

the meantime, you must forgive my tantrums. It is so depressing

here--all alone--or worse than alone! I’m really no longer fit to

receive anybody. But now”--she raised her voice in an eager simulation

of gaiety--“shall the personally conducted tour begin?”

Caermere had been inaccessible to so many generations of sightseers that

no formula for its exhibition remained. The party seemed to Christian to

wander at haphazard through an interminable succession of rooms, many of

them small, some of them what he could only think of as over-large,

but all insufficiently lighted, and all suggesting in their meager

appointments and somber dejection of aspect a stage of existence well

along on the downward path to ruin. He had only to look about him

to perceive why Caermere had long ago been removed from the list of

England’s show-places. His companions between them kept his attention

busy with comments upon the history and purpose of the apartments they

passed through, but beyond a general sense of futile and rather shabby

immensity he gained very little from the inspection. The mood to

postpone comprehension of what he was seeing to another and a more

convenient time was upon him, and he almost willfully yielded to it.

Once, when impulse prompted him to climb a little ladder-like staircase,

and push open a door from which the black dust fell in a shower, and he

discerned in the gloom of the attic chamber piles of armor and ancient

weapons, a thrill of fleeting excitement ran through his veins.

“They say that Prince Llewelyn’s armor is there,” called up Lord Julius

from the landing below. “Some day we will have it all out, and cleaned

and furbished up. But don’t go in now! You’ll get covered with dirt. I

used to venture in there and rummage about once in a while when I was a

boy,” he added as Christian came down. “But even then one came out black

as a sweep.”

There were fine broad stretches of rugged landscape to be seen here and

there from narrow casements in the older, higher parts they were now

traversing, and occasionally Christian was able to interest himself as

well in details of primitive, half-obliterated ornamentation over arches

and doorways of early periods, but he was none the less almost glad when

they came out at last into a spacious upper hallway, and halted in tacit

token that the journey was at an end.

“Now I will leave you,” said the lady, with lifted skirt and a foot

poised tentatively over the first step of the broad descending stairs.

“I shall have tea in the conservatory when you come down.”

Christian felt that something must be said. “It has all been very

wonderful to me,” he assured her. “I am afraid I did not seem very

appreciative--but that is because the place is too huge, too vast, to be

understood quite at once. And I am so new to it all--you will understand

what I mean. But I thank you very much.”

She smiled brightly on him and nodded to them both, and passed down the

stairway. Christian was all at once conscious, as his eyes followed her,

that there was a novel quickening or fluttering of his heart’s action.

For a brief second, the sensation somehow linked itself in his thoughts

with the tall, graceful figure receding from him, and he bent forward

to grasp more fully the picture she made, moving sedately along, with a

hand like a lily on the wide black rail. Then he suddenly became aware

that this was an error, and that he was trembling instead because the

moment for confronting his grandfather had come.

Lord Julius, indeed, had already opened a massive mahogany door at the

right of the stairs, and signaled to him now to follow.

CHAPTER VII

What Christian first perceived about the duke’s apartments was that

they had an odor quite peculiar to themselves. The series of small and

badly lighted anterooms through which he followed Lord Julius--rooms

with pallet-beds, clothes hung against the walls, and other somewhat

squalid signs of domestic occupation--were full of this curiously

distinctive smell. It was not so obvious in the larger and

better-lighted chamber beyond, which the doctor in residence had

converted to his own uses, and where he sat now reading a book, merely

rising momentarily to bow as they passed. But in the next room--the

big sleeping apartment, with its faded pretensions of stateliness of

appointment, and its huge, high-posted bed, canopied by old curtains

embroidered with heraldic devices in tarnished gilt threads--the odor

was more powerful than ever, despite the fact that a broad window-door

was open upon the balcony beyond. The young man’s keen sense was baffled

by this pervasive scent--compounded as it seemed to be of all the

ancient castle’s mustiness, of sharp medicinal vapors and of something

else at once familiar and unknown. He sniffed inquiringly at it, as they

neared the window, and apparently Lord Julius heard him, for he remarked

over his shoulder:

“It is the dogs that you smell. They’ve practically removed the kennel

up here.”

On the stone floor of the balcony outside there were to be seen, indeed,

some dozen old hounds, for the most part lying sleepily in the sunshine,

with their heads pointed toward a large, half-covered reclining chair

placed near the balustrade, and occasionally opening a drowsy eye to

regard its occupant. There were a few dogs of other kinds as well,

Christian noted upon a second glance, and one of these, a bulky black

creature with a broad snout and hair curled tight like astrakhan fur,

sat close to the chair and was thrusting its muzzle against a hand at

its side.

This hand was what Christian saw first of his grandfather--an immense

limp hand, with thick fingers twisted and misshapen, and skin of an

almost greenish pallor. The dog’s nose, thrust under it, moved this

inert hand about, and the young man felt himself thrill unpleasantly,

for some reason, at the spectacle.

At the further end of the balcony two men in livery lounged against

the wall, but upon a signal from Lord Julius they went in. The latter,

threading his way among the hounds, led Christian round to the side of

the chair.

“This is Ambrose’s boy,” he said, bending a little and raising his

voice. “He is Christian, too.”

Upon the chair was stretched, in a halfsitting posture, the gigantic

frame of a very old man. The grandson looked upon him in silence for a

long time, his mind confused with many impressions. The vast shoulders

and high, bullet-like head, propped up by pillows in the partial shadow

of the hood, seemed vaguely to recall the vision his baby memory had

preserved of his own father. But in detail there was no resemblance.

Or yes, there were resemblances, but they were blurred almost beyond

recognition by the rough touch of time. The face, with its big, harsh

features and bushing brows, and its frame of stiff white whiskers under

the jaws and chin, had something in it which for an instant the young

man seemed to identify; then the unnatural effect of its uniform

yellow-clay color drove all thoughts of its human relationships from

his mind, and he saw nothing but a meaningless mask. It was as devoid of

significance, indeed, as if it had been in a coffin. The eyes were open

and they seemed to be fixed upon the distant rolling prospect of hills

and forest, but whether they were seeing anything, Christian could not

imagine. They certainly had not been turned to include him in their

survey. The livid right hand, swaying as the black dog pushed it with

its nose, was the only thing about the duke that moved.

“He does not know I am here,” said Christian, at last. He spoke

instinctively, with the ceremonious affectation of awe which one puts on

in the presence of death. His grandfather hardly impressed him as being

alive and still less made any appeal to his sense of kinship. He had

expected to be overwhelmed with emotion at the meeting, but he found

himself barely interested. His wandering glance chanced to take note of

some of the dogs’ faces about the chair. They were all alertly watching

him, and the profoundly wise look in their eyes caught his attention.

No doubt they were dreadful fools, if the truth could be known, but

the suggestion of cultured sagacity in their gaze was extraordinary. He

looked back again at his grandfather, and tried to say to himself that

he was a great noble, the head of an ancient and proud line, and the

actual father of _his_ father--but the effort failed to spur his fancy.

He turned to Lord Julius and lifted his brows in wearied interrogation.

“Move round in front of him,” counseled the other. “Get yourself in the

range of his eyes.”

Christian obeyed, and, flushing a little with self-consciousness, strove

to intercept the aged man’s gaze. There was no change upon the ashen

face under the hood to tell him whether he had succeeded or not. The

impulse to grimace, to wave his arms about, to compel attention by

any wild and violent device, forced him to smile in the midst of his

perplexed constraint. He stared for a few moments longer at the gaunt,

immovable figure--then shrugged his shoulders, and, stepping over a dog

or two, made bold to rejoin Lord Julius.

“I do not see that it is of any use,” he said, with annoyance. “If you

wish to go, I am quite ready.”

Lord Julius lifted his brows in turn, and looked at his grand-nephew

with curiosity. “I said nothing about going, that I recall,” he began,

with an effect of reproof in his tone. But then he seemed to think

better of it, and gave an abrupt little laugh. “It isn’t very

invigorating, I’m bound to admit,” he confessed, cheerfully enough.

“Wait a moment, and I’ll stir him up a bit.”

He bent forward again, with his head at the edge of the hood, and

shouted into it: “If you want to see Ambrose’s boy, here he is! If you

don’t want to see him, say so, and waste no more of our time!”

To Christian’s surprise, the duke took instant cognizance of this

remark. His large face brightened, or at least altered its aspect, into

something like animation; his eyes emerged from their cover of lethargy,

and looked alive.

“My back is very bad to-day,” he remarked, in a voice which, though

it bore the querulous note of the invalid, was unexpectedly robust in

volume. “And I cannot make out whether the numbness is passing down

below my knee or not.”

Lord Julius nodded, as if confirming to himself some previous suspicion.

“I thought as much,” he commented in an aside to the young man. “It’s

merely his endearing little way. Have patience, and we’ll draw the

badger yet.”

He bawled once more into the hood, with an added peremptoriness of tone:

“I explained it all to you, hours ago, and I’m sure you understand it

perfectly. Christian naturally wished to pay his respects to you, but if

your back is too bad, why, there’s no more to be said--and we’ll be off.

Goodbye to you!”

“Did I know his mother? Who was his mother? I have no recollection of

her.” The duke spoke peevishly, twitching his sunken lips in what was

plainly an effort to pout them. Christian noted with curiosity that as

he surrendered himself to such mental exertion as the talk demanded,

the aged man’s face grew disagreeably senile in effect. An infinity

of gossamer-like wrinkles showed themselves now, covering the entire

countenance in a minute network.

“No, you didn’t know his mother!” replied Lord Julius, with significant

curtness. “It is more to the point that you should know _him_, since he

is to be your successor. Look at him--and say something to him!”

The duke managed to testify on his stiffened lineaments the reluctance

with which he did what he was told, but he shifted his eyes in a

sidelong fashion to take a brief survey of the young man. “Cressage

could have given you five stone ten,” he said to him, brusquely, and

turned his eyes away.

Christian cast a look of bewildered inquiry up at Lord Julius, but

encountered only a smile of contemptuous amusement. He summoned the

courage to declare, in a voice which he hoped was loud enough: “I am

glad to hear, sir, that this is one of your good days. I hope you will

have many more of them!”

Of this assurance His Grace seemingly took no note. After a short pause

he began speaking again. “There’s a dog up here,” he said, with the

gravity befitting a subject to which he had given much thought, “that

I’m sure falls asleep, and yelps in her dreams, and disturbs me most

damnably, and I believe it’s that old bitch Peggy, and when I mention

it the fellows swear that she’s been taken away, but I suspect that she

hasn’t.”

“We will look to it,” put in Lord Julius perfunctorily. He added, upon

an afterthought, “Did the guns annoy you, this forenoon?”

The duke’s thoughts were upon something else. He turned his eyes again,

and apparently spoke to Christian. “A good hearty cut across the face

with a whip,” he said, with kindling energy, “is what’d teach-swine like

Griffiths their place--and then let ’em summons you and be damned.

A farmer who puts up barbed-wire--no gentleman would listen to his

evidence for a minute. Treat them like the vermin they are--and they’ll

understand that. Cressage had the proper trick with them--a kick in the

stomach first and reasons afterward. That’s the only way this country

can be hunted. When I got to riding over eighteen stone, and couldn’t

take anything, that ruffian Griffiths screwed up his gates and sent me

round the turnpike like a damned peddler, and Ambrose--it was

Ambrose, wasn’t it?--or am I thinking of Cressage? But they weren’t

together--here, Julius! It was you who were speaking of Ambrose! What

about him? By God, I wish he had my back!”

Lord Julius, with the smile in his beard hardening toward scorn, took

Christian by the arm. “I think you’ve had enough grandfather to go on

with,” he said, quietly. “Never mind making your adieux. They would be

quite wasted on him.”

Without further words, they turned and moved away through the dogs to

the window, and so into the house. The doctor, still at his book, rose

once more upon their approach, and this time Lord Julius halted to speak

with him.

“His Grace seems to ramble in his mind a good deal more than he did

before luncheon. Do you see a change in this respect--say week by week?”

“It is not observable in gradations, Lord Julius,” answered the

physician, a stout, sandy young man, who assumed his air of deference

with considerable awkwardness; “sometimes he recovers a very decided

lucidity after what had seemed to be a prolonged lapse in the other

direction. But on the whole I should say there was a perceptible--well,

loss of faculty. He knows the dogs, however, quite as well as

ever--distinguishes them apparently by touch, remembers all their names,

and recalls anecdotes about them, and, very often, about their mothers

too. Fletcher tells me His Grace hasn’t once miscalled a hound.”

“They make an abominable atmosphere up here,” commented the other.

The doctor smiled lugubriously. “I can’t deny that, Lord Julius,” he

replied, “but all the same they are the most important part of the

treatment. If we took them away, His Grace would die within the week.”

“Unhappy dogs!” mused Lord Julius, partly to himself, and walked on. It

was not until they were half-way down the big staircase that Christian

felt impelled to speak.

“I should much like to know,” he began, with diffident eagerness--“you

have already spoken so plainly about my grandfather--the question

will not seem rude to him, I hope--but when he was well, before the

paralysis, was he in any respect like what he is now?”

“I should say,” answered Lord Julius, in a reflective way, “that he is

at present rather less objectionable than formerly. One can make the

excuse of illness for him now--and that covers a multitude of sins. But

when he was in health--and he had the superb--what shall I say?--riotous

health of a whale--he was very hard to bear. You have seen him and you

have observed his mental and moral elevation. He remembers his dogs more

distinctly than he does his children. In the Almanach de Gotha he is

classed among princes, but what he dwells upon most fondly among his

public duties is the kicking of tenant-farmers in the stomach when they

try to save their crops from being ruined by the hunt. I may tell you,

I was in two minds about taking you to him at all, and now I think I

regret having done so.”

“No-o,” said Christian, thoughtfully. “It is better as it is. I am glad

to have seen him, and to have you tell me about him, frankly, as you

have done. It all helps me to understand the position--and it seems that

there is a great deal that needs to be understood. I can see already

that there is strange blood in the Torrs.” He paused on the bottom step

as he spoke, and turned to his companion with a wistful smile. “There

is an even bolder question I should like to ask--how does it happen that

_you_ are so different? How do you account for yourself?”

Lord Julius laughed. “Oh, that is a long story,” he said, “but I can

put it into a word for you. I was made by my wife. I married a woman

so noble and clever and wise and strong that I couldn’t help becoming a

decent sort of fellow in spite of myself. But I am going to talk to you

about all that, later on. It is better worth talking about than anything

else under the sun. Oh--Barlow, please!”

The old butler had passed from one door to another in the hall, and

turned now as he was called, with a hand behind him upon the knob. Lord

Julius, approaching, exchanged some words with him upon the subject of

his afternoon’s plans.

Christian, watching this venerable servant with curiosity, as a type

novel to his experience, discovered suddenly that his scrutiny was being

returned. Barlow, while listening attentively and with decorously slow

nods of comprehension to what was being said to him, had his eyes fixed

aslant, beyond his interlocutor’s shoulder, upon the young stranger.

Christian encountered this gaze, and saw it waver and flutter aside,

as from force of polite habit, and then creep back again. This happened

more than once, and Christian began to feel that it had some meaning.

He observed that the butler inclined his head at last and whispered

something--his pale, wan old face showed it to be an inquiry--into the

other’s ear. The action explained itself so perfectly that Christian was

in no way surprised to see Lord Julius turn smilingly, and nod toward

himself.

“Yes, he is Ambrose’s son,” he said. “He has come to take his place. I

know you for one won’t be sorry--eh, Barlow?”

It was clear to the young man’s perceptions that Lord Julius spoke as

to one who was a friend as well as a servant. The note of patriarchal

kindness in the tone appealed gratefully to him, and the affectionate

mention of his father’s name was sweet in his ears. A strange thrill of

emotion, a kind of aimless yet profound yearning, possessed him as

he moved forward. On the instant he realized that this was how he had

expected to feel in the presence of his grandfather. The fact that the

tenderness within him was appealed to instead by this gentle, sad-eyed

old family dependant seemed to him to have something beautiful and very

touching in it. Tears came into his eyes.

“You remember my father, then,” he said, and the breaking of his voice

carried him into the heart of this sudden new mood of self-abandonment.

“You would have known him as a little child--yes?--and you--you--” he

paused, to dash away the tears with his hand, and strive to regain some

control over his facial muscles--“you will have in your memory the good

things about him--the boyish, pleasant things--and you loved him for

them, did you not?”

Old Barlow, trembling greatly, and with a faint flush upon his white

cheeks, stared confusedly at the young man as he advanced. “I held him

on his first pony, sir,” he stammered forth, and then shook his head in

token that he could utter no more. His glistening eyes said the rest.

Christian flung his arms round the surprised old man’s neck, and kissed

him on both cheeks, and then, with head bowed upon his shoulder, sobbed

aloud.

PART II

CHAPTER VIII

The music of a spirited and tireless band of robins helped Christian to

wake next morning. The character of their cheerful racket defined itself

very slowly to his drowsy consciousness. He lay for a long time with

closed eyes, listening to it, and letting his mind drift quite at random

among the thoughts which it suggested. He knew they were robins because

his hostess had said he would hear them; he lazily pictured to himself

the tiny red-breasts gathered in the shrubbery outside, in obedience to

some mysterious signal of hers, and singing to order thus briskly and

unwearyingly to make good her promise.

In what gay, high spirits the little fellow sang! The sun must be

shining, to account for so much happiness. He accepted the idea with

a sense of profound pleasure, and appropriated it to his own wonderful

case.

For him, it was as if happiness had never existed before.

“‘Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays,

And twenty cagéd nightingales do sing.’”

He murmured the lines in indolent reverie, then opened his eyes, and

smiled to think where he was, and what he had become a part of. Lifting

himself on his elbow, he looked about him. The beauties of the apartment

had not been lost upon him the previous evening. He had carried them

with him in vague processional magnificence on his devious march through

dreamland; he surveyed them again now in the morning light, rising after

a while to pull aside the curtains, and bring in the full sunshine.

The room was, he said over and over to himself, ‘the most exquisite

thing he had ever seen. The ruling color was of some blue which

could almost be thought a green, and which, embraced as complementary

decoration many shades of ocher and soft yellowish browns in woodwork,

and in the thick, fleecy rugs underfoot. Around the four sides, at

the level of his eyes, ran a continuous band of portraits--the English

drawings of Holbein reproduced in the dominant tint of the room, set

solidly into the wall, and separated from one another only by thin

strips of the same tawny oak which framed them at top and bottom.

The hooded, high-bosomed ladies, the cavaliers in hats and plumes and

pointed beards, the smoothfaced, shrewd-eyed prelates and statesmen in

their caps and fur, all knew him this morning for one of their own, as

he went along, still in his nightshirt, and inspected them afresh. They

appeared to greet him, and he beamed at them in response.

A dim impression of the earlier morning, which had seemed a shadowy

passing phase of his dreams, revealed itself now to him as a substantial

fact. Some one _had_ been in the room, moving noiselessly about, and had

spread forth for his use a great variety of articles of clothing and of

the toilet, most of which he beheld for the first time. Overnight, his

cousin Emanuel’s insistence upon his regarding everything in the house

as his own for the time being, had had no definite significance to

his mind. He looked now through the array of silks and fine cloths, of

trinkets in ivory and silver and polished metals, and began dressing

himself with a long sigh of delight.

Recollections of the leave-taking at Caermere straggled into his

thoughts as he pursued the task. He had seen Lady Cressage again in the

conservatory, where she wore another dress, and had her beautiful hair

carefully arranged as if in his honor, and poured out tea for him and

Lord Julius in wonderful little cups which his great-grandfather, a

sailor, had brought from China. Of her conversation he recalled little,

and still less of the talk of the other lady, the actress-person, Mrs.

Edward, who had joined the party, but whose composed pretty face had

been too obviously a mask for anguish not to dampen everybody’s spirits.

He wondered now, as he plied his razor on the strap, what had become of

her husband, and of that poor-spirited brother of his. Had they joined

the pheasant-shooters, after their interview with him? The temptation to

fire upon themselves instead of the birds must have sorely beset them.

But it was pleasanter to begin the retrospect some hours later, when the

rough country of the Marches, and even Bristol, had been left behind.

Lord Julius had explained to him then, as darkness settled upon the low,

pasture-land levels they were swinging along past, that Somerset was

also a county of the Torrs; two of their three titles were derived from

it, indeed, and Somerset marriages had brought into the family, in

the days following the downfall of the monasteries, some of the most

important of its estates. If the dukes had turned their backs on

Caermere two centuries ago, and made their principal seat here in this

gentler and more equable land, perhaps the family history might have

been different. Christian had absorbed the spirit rather than the letter

of his companion’s remarks. English counties were all one to him, but

intuitively he had felt that he was getting into a kindlier and more

congenial atmosphere. Although it was a black night, he had stared a

good deal at the window, trying to discern some tokens of this change

in the dimly lighted, empty stations they glided through, or paused

reluctantly in.

When they had finally quitted the train at Bridgewater, and had got

under way inside the carriage waiting for them there, Christian had

asked whether it was not true that the railway servants here were more

courteously obliging than they had been in other parts.

Lord Julius had lightly remarked that it might be so; very likely,

however, it was some indirect effect of the general psychical change the

family underwent in shifting its territorial base. Then he had gone on

more gravely, alluding for the first time to the episode of the butler.

“You must be prepared to find everything very different, here,” he had

said. “There is such a thing as having too much past--especially when

it is of the wrong sort. Caermere is as tenacious of its memories as a

prison--and they are as unpleasant. It forces upon you its air of never

forgetting a single one of its miseries and injuries--and you feel that

it cannot remember any compensating joys. I could see how the effect

of it got into your blood, and broke your nerve. Under ordinary

circumstances men do not kiss their butlers, or even sob on their

bosoms. But I understood perfectly how old Barlow appealed to you. As

you beheld him he might have stood as model for a statue of the Family

Grief, choking down its yearning to wail over the generations gone to

the bad. It was all right, what you did. For that matter, I was precious

near raising a howl of lamentation myself. One is always alternating

between tears and curses in that criminal old coalmine of a castle.

But now you are over a hundred miles away from it all--and if it was

a thousand the difference couldn’t be greater. You will find nothing

whatever to cry about down here. Nobody has any bad dreams. There isn’t

a cupboard that ever sheltered a skeleton even overnight. In these

parts, remarkable as it may seem, the Torrs are actually regarded with

admiration--quite the salt of the earth--a trifle eccentric, perhaps,

but splendid landlords, capable organizers, uncommonly good masters--and

above all, happy people who insist that everybody about them shall be

happy too. It was important to show you the other side first--at least

that was what we decided upon, but you are done with that now--and we’ll

give you something to take the taste out of your mouth.”

Christian recalled these assurances, now, with a delicious sense of

being already enfolded and upheld by the processes of their fulfillment.

The details of his reception at the broad, hospitably lighted door of

Emanuel’s house crowded in upon his memory, and merged themselves with

other recollections of the later evening hours--the supper, the long,

calm, sweetly intimate talk before the fire, the honest, wise, frankly

affectionate faces into which he had looked to say “good-night”--it

almost overwhelmed him with its weight of unimagined happiness. He had

hardly guessed before what other men might mean when they gave a loving

sound to the word “home.” Yet now the doors of such a home as he could

never have dreamed of had opened to him--to him, the homeless, lonely

one! and he was nestled securely in the warm heart of its welcome. He

could have groaned aloud under the burden of his rapture at the thought.

At last he went downstairs, his misgivings about the hour not quite

allayed by recollection of the parting injunction to sleep his fill and

get up when he liked. There were beautiful things to note and linger

over on every side as he made his way--pictures and armor and

wonderful inlaid work and tapestries, all subordinating themselves with

distinguished good breeding to the fact that they were in a home and not

a museum--but he moved along in rather conscience-stricken haste toward

the part of the house which had seemed to him the previous night to

be the center of domestic life. He formed a sudden resolution, as

he explored the lower hallway, that when he got some money his first

purchase should be of a watch.

After looking into a couple of rooms which were clearly not what

he sought, Christian opened the right door, and confronted a

breakfast-table, shining in its snowy attractiveness midway between a

window full of sunlight and a brightly tiled chimney-place, with a

fire on the hearth. There was no one in the room, and he stood for

some minutes looking about him, liking very much the fresh, light-hued

cheerfulness of everything, but still wishing that some one would

come to pour his coffee. By degrees, he assimilated the idea that the

ingredients of breakfast were all here to hand. There were dishes beside

the fire, and this was apparently the coffee-pot on the table--a covered

urn, with a thin spirit-flame trembling beneath it. He had reached

the point of deciding to help himself--or should he ring the bell

instead?--when the door opened and the lady of the house came bustling

in.

Mrs. Emanuel, as he styled her in his thoughts, looked the very spirit

of breakfast--buoyant, gay-hearted and full of the zest of life. Last

night, to the young man’s diffident though strenuous inspection, she

had seemed the embodiment of tender hospitality in general. Though his

glances were more confident now, in the brilliant morning light, she

still gave the impression of personifying the influences which she made

felt about her, rather than exhibiting a specific personal image. She

was not tall, nor yet short; her face pleased the eye without suggesting

prettiness; she had the dark, clear skin and rounded substance of figure

which the mind associates with sedate movements and even languor, but

she herself moved, thought, spoke with alert vivacity. Above all things,

a mellow motherliness in her had struck the forlorn youth the previous

evening. Now it seemed much more like the sweet playfulness of a fond

elder sister.

“You took me at my word; that’s right,” she said to him, as they shook

hands. “I was afraid the man might disturb you, or give you the idea you

were expected to get up. And do you feel perfectly rested now? A day or

two more will do it, at all events. If I’d known how they were dragging

you about, by night and by day! But your Uncle Julius has no knowledge

of even the meaning of the word fatigue. Sit here, won’t you--and now

here’s bacon for you, and here’s fish taken this very morning, and eggs

I’ll ring for to be done as you like them, and how much sugar to your

coffee? You mustn’t think this has been boiling ever since morning. It

was made when you were heard moving about in your room.”

“I should be so sorry to have kept anybody waiting,” he began, in shy

comment upon the discovery that he was eating alone.

She laughed at him with cordial frankness. “Waiting?” she echoed

merrily. “Why, it’s about three o’clock. Lord Julius is nearly in

London by this time, and the rest of us have not only breakfasted, but

lunched.”

“Lord Julius gone?” he asked with wide-open eyes.

She nodded, and raised a reassuring hand. “It’s nothing but business.

Telegrams came early this morning which took him away by the first

train. He would have gone later in the day in any case. He left the

most fatherly adieux for you--and of course you’ll be seeing him soon in

London.”

Christian was puzzled. “But this is his home here, is it not?” he asked.

“Not at all--more’s the pity,” she replied. “We wish for nothing so much

as that he might make it so--but he elects instead to be the slave of

the family, and to work like a bank-clerk in Brighton instead of cutting

himself free and living his own life like the rest of us, in God’s fresh

air. But he comes often to us--whenever the rural mood seizes him.” She

seemed to comprehend the doubtful expression on the youth’s face, for

she added smilingly: “And you mustn’t be frightened to be left alone

with us. You’re as much our blood as you are his--and--”

“Oh, don’t think that!” he pleaded impulsively. “I was never so glad to

be anywhere in my life as I am to be here.”

Her gray eyes regarded him with kindly softness. He saw that they were

only in part gray eyes--that they were both blues and browns in their

beautiful coloring, and that the outer edge of the iris deepened in tint

almost to the black of the splendid lashes. He returned her look, and

held it with a tentative smile, that he might the longer observe the

remarkable eyes. All at once it flashed upon him that there was a

resemblance.

“Your eyes are like my mother’s,” he said, as if in defensive

explanation of his scrutiny.

“Tell me about your mother,” she rejoined, putting her arms on the table

and resting her chin upon a finger. “I do not think I ever heard her

name.”

“It was Coppinger--Mary Coppinger. I never saw the name anywhere

else.” He added hesitatingly: “My brother told me that her father was

a soldier--an officer--who became in his old age very poor, and was at

last a gardener for some rich man at Malta, and my mother gave lessons

as a governess to support herself, and it was there she met my father.”

The lady seemed most interested in the name. “Coppinger, is it!” she

exclaimed, nodding her head at him. “No wonder my heart warmed at the

sight of you. Why, now, to look at you--of course you’re County Cork.

You’re our slender dark type to perfection.”

“I am afraid I do not understand,” he murmured.

“Why, she could not have that name and be anything but a County

Cork woman. Who ever heard of a Coppinger anywhere else? Only it is

pronounced with a soft ‘g,’ not hard, as you speak it. I wonder--but

that can wait; her father will be easily enough traced. And so you are

an Irishman, too!”

Christian looked abashed at the confusing suggestion. “I think I am all

English,” he said vaguely.

She laughed again. “Are you turning your back on us? Did you not know

it? I also am Irish. No doubt I am some sort of cousin of yours on my

own account, as well as on Emanuel’s. There are Coppingers in my own

family, and in most of those that we have intermarried with. Your mother

was a Protestant, of course.”

He shook his head apprehensively, as if fearful that his answer must

give pain. “No, she went to mass like other people, and I was sent to

the Brothers of the Christian School. But she was not in any degree a

_dévotée_, and for that matter,” he added in a more confident tone, “I

myself am still less _dévot_.”

“Ah!” was her only comment, and he quite failed to gather from it any

clue to her sentiments on the subject. “Well,” she began again, “I’ll

not put you through any more of your catechism now. Are you finished?

Then come with me and we will find Emanuel, and incidentally you will

see the place--or portions of it. It will take you a long time to see it

all. Do you want to smoke? Put some of these cigars in your pocket--or

here are cigarettes if you prefer them. Oh, we smoke everywhere. There

is nothing on earth that we want to do that we don’t do--and there’s

nothing we don’t want to do that any mortal power can make us do. There

you have the sum of our philosophy.”

He had followed her into the hallway, where the doors were open wide to

the mellow autumn afternoon. He put on the soft shapeless hat she gave

him from a collection on the antlers, and was inspired to select a stick

for himself out of the big standful at the door.

“Now I shall walk about,” he said, gaily, “quite as if I had never been

out of England in my life. Is your husband--perhaps-shooting?”

She seemed always to laugh at him. Her visible merriment at his question

dashed his spirits for an instant. Then he saw how genial and honest was

her mirth, and smiled himself in spontaneous sympathy with it.

“Don’t dream of suggesting it to him!” she adjured the young man,

with mock solemnity. “He has a horror of the idea of killing living

creatures. He does not even fish for sport--though I confess I hardly

follow him to that length. And don’t speak of him in that roundabout

way, but call him Emanuel, and call me Kathleen or Kit--whichever comes

easiest. Merely because Thom’s directory swears we’re forty years old,

we’re not to be made venerable people by you. All happy folk belong to

the same generation, no matter when they were born--and--but here is

Emanuel now.

“I have been telling Christian,” she continued, addressing her husband

as he paused at the foot of the steps, “that he is to be happy here,

even in spite of himself.”

Emanuel shook hands with his cousin, and nodded pleased approval of his

wife’s remark. His smile, however, was of a fleeting sort. “Nothing

has come of the Onothera experiments,” he announced to her in a serious

tone. “I’m afraid we must give up the idea of the yellow fuchsia.”

CHAPTER IX

Emanuel Torr, at the age of forty, was felt by those who knew and loved

him almost to have justified the very highest of the high hopes which

his youth had encouraged. This intimate circle of appreciation was

rendered a small one by the circumstances of his temperament and choice

of career; but beyond this his name was familiar to many who had

never seen him, or who remembered him at best as a stripling, yet who

habitually thought and spoke of him as an example and model to his

generation.

At Oxford, twenty years before, he had attracted attention of a sort

rather peculiar to himself. Those who took note of him saw foreshadowed

the promise, not so much of great achievements as of the development and

consolidation of a great influence. He was not specially distinguished

in his work at the University, and he made no mark at the Union, where

there happened at the time to be glittering a quite exceptional galaxy

of future front bench men, judges and bishops. In Emanuel’s case, the

interest he aroused was perhaps more sentimental than intellectual. His

mind was seen to be of a fine order, but his character was even more

attractive to the observant eye. The facts that he was half Jewish in

blood, and that in time he would be the possessor of enormous wealth,

no doubt lent an added suggestion of romance to the picture of delicate,

somewhat coldly modeled features, of ivory skin and serious, musing dark

eyes, and of a rare smile of wonderful sweetness, which Oxford men of

the mid-seventies still associate with his name. It was in the days

when Disraeli’s remarkable individuality was a part of England’s current

history, and when the English imagination, in part from the stimulus

of this fact, dwelt upon the possibilities of a new Semitic wave of

inspiration and ethical impetus. The dreams, the aspirations, the

mysterious “perhaps” of Daniel Deronda were in men’s minds, and

Johannesburg had not been so much as heard of.

What the University recognized in the youth standing upon the threshold

of manhood, had been an article of faith within his home since his

childhood. It is as well to recount at this place the brief story of

that home.

At the age of twenty-five Lord Julius Torr, engaged in the listless

pursuit of that least elusive of careers, called diplomacy, found

himself at The Hague, and yawned his way about its brightly scrubbed

solitudes for some months, until, upon the eve of his resolve to have

done with the whole business, and buy a commission in a line regiment,

he encountered a young woman who profoundly altered all his plans in

life. It was by the merest and unlikeliest of accidents that he came

to know the Ascarels, father and daughter, and at the outset his

condescension had seemed to him to be involved as well. They were of

an old family in the Netherlands, Jewish in race but now for

some generations estranged from, the synagogue, and reputed to be

extraordinarily wealthy. It was said of them too that they were sternly

exclusive, but to the brother of an English duke this had not appeared

to possess much meaning. He had previously been of some official service

to the father, in a matter wherein Dutch and English interests touched

each other at Sumatra; from this he came to meet the daughter. He had

been told by the proud father that she was of the blood of the immortal

Spinoza, and had been so little impressed that he had not gone to the

trouble of finding out who Spinoza was.

The marriage of young Torr, of the Foreign Office, to some Dutch-Jewish

heiress a half-year later, received only a trifle more notice in England

than did the news of his retirement from his country’s diplomatic

service. The duke had already four sons, and the brother, when it seemed

that he intended to live abroad, was not at all missed. Nearly fifteen

years elapsed before a mature Lord Julius reappeared in England--a Lord

Julius whom scarcely any one found recognizable. He bore small visible

relation to the aimless and indolent young attaché whom people, by

an effort of memory, were able to recall; still less did he resemble

anything else that the Torr family, within recollection, had produced.

He took a big old house in Russell Square, and in time it became

understood that very learned and intellectual people paid pilgrimages

thither to sit at the feet of Lady Julius, and learn of her. Smart

London rarely saw this Lady Julius save at a distance--in her carriage

or at the opera. The impression it preserved of her was of a short,

swarthy woman, increasingly stout as years went on, who peered with

near-sighted earnestness through a large pince-nez of unusual form.

On her side, it seemed doubtful if she had formed even so succinct an

impression as this of smart London. She was content with Bloomsbury to

the end of her days; and made no effort whatever to establish relations

with the West End. Indeed, tales came to be told of the effectual

resistance she offered, in later years, to amiable interested advances

from that quarter. It grew to be believed that she had made an eccentric

will, and would leave untold millions to Atheist charities. The rumor

that she was among the most highly cultivated women of her time, and

that the most illustrious scientists and thinkers would quit the society

of kings to travel post-haste across Europe at her bidding, did not, it

must regretfully be added, seem incompatible with this theory about a

crazy will. Finally, when she died in 1885, something was printed by the

papers about her philanthropy, and much was said in private speculation

about her disposition of her vast fortune, but it did not come out that

any will whatever was proved, and London ceased to think of the matter.

The outer world had in truth been wrong from the beginning. Lady Julius

was not a deeply learned woman, and the limited circle of friends she

gathered about her contained hardly one distinguished figure, in the

popular use of the phrase; her opinions were not notably advanced or

unconventional; she did not shun society upon philosophic principles,

but merely because it failed to attract a nature at once shy and

practical; so far from being rich in her own right, she had insisted

many years before her death upon transferring every penny of her fortune

to her husband.

Inside her own household, this dark, stout little woman with the

eye-glasses was revered as a kind of angel. She was plainfaced almost to

ugliness in the eyes of strangers. Her husband and her son never doubted

that she was beautiful. Now, when she had been a memory for ten years

and more, these two talked of her lovingly and with no constraint of

gloom, as if she were still the pivot round which their daily life

turned.

The elder man particularly delighted in dwelling upon the details of

that earlier change in him, under her influence, to which allusion

has been made. Emanuel had in his mind, from boyhood, no vision more

distinct or familiar than this selfpainted picture of his father--the

idle, indifferent, unschooled, paltry-ideaed young gentleman of

fashion--meeting all unawares this overpowering new force, and kneeling

in awed yet rapturous submission before it. To the boy’s imagination

it became a historical scene, as fixed and well known in its lines

of composition as that of Nelson’s death in the cockpit. He saw his

beardless father in dandified clothes of the Corn-Laws-caricature

period, proceeding along the primrose path of dalliance, like some

flippant new Laodicean type of Saul of Tarsus--when “suddenly there

shined around him a light from heaven.” Lord Julius, indeed, thought and

spoke of it in much that same spirit. The recollection that he had not

known who Spinoza was tenderly amused him: it was the symbol of his vast

oceanic ignorance of all things worth knowing.

“Ah, yes,” the son used to say, “but if you had not had within yourself

all the right feelings--only lacking the flash to bring them out--you

would not have seen how wonderful she was. You would not have understood

at all, but just passed on, and nothing would have happened.”

And the father, smiling in reverie, and stroking his great beard, would

answer: “I don’t see that that follows. I remember what I was like quite

vividly, and really there was nothing in me to explain the thing at all.

I was a young blood about town, positively nothing more. No, Emanuel, we

may say what we like, but there are things supernatural--that is,

beyond what we can see, and are prepared for, in nature. It was as

unaccountable as magic, the effect your mother produced upon me from the

beginning. At the end of a few hours, when it was time for me to take

my leave, and I turned--there was a gulf in front of me, cutting me off

from where I had been before I came to her, that very day. It was so

wide, it seemed that I could barely see across it.”

To any listener but Emanuel such language must have been extravagant. To

him there were no words for overpraise of his mother. It was not alone

that he had never seen her in anger or even vexation; that he had

never known her to be in error in any judgment, or suspected in her an

uncharitable or unkindly thought. These were mere negations, and the

memory of her was full of positive influences, all wise and pure and

lofty. Very early in life, when he began to look about the world he

found himself in, he learned to marvel that there were no other such

women anywhere to be seen. She had been so perfect, with seemingly no

effort to herself! Why should other women not even try?

Emanuel had been born some ten years after the marriage of his parents,

and they thus came into his baby consciousness as persons of middle age,

in appearance and its suggested authority at least, by comparison with

the parents of other children he saw about him. Nowhere else, however,

either then or in later years, did he see another home so filled from

center to circumference with love, and tender gentleness of eye and word

and deed. The perception that this environment was unique colored all

his boyhood. It became a habit with him to set in contrast his own

charmed existence against the unconsidered and uneven experiences of

other children, and to ponder the meaning of the difference. As he

grew up, the importance of this question expanded in his mind and

took possession of it. He was consumed with the longing to make

some effective protest against the peevish folly with which humanity

mismanaged its brief innings of life. From the cradle to the grave the

race swarmed stupidly along, elbowing and jostling in an aimless bustle,

hot and ill-tempered through exertions which had no purpose; trampling

down all weaker than themselves and cursing those who, in turn, had the

strength to push them under; coming wearily at the end to the gate and

the outer darkness of extinction, a futile and disappointed mob--having

seen nothing, comprehended nothing, profited nothing.

The progress of a generation across the span of life might be made so

serene and well-ordered and fruitful an affair! What else had man to

concern himself about than this one thing--that “peace on earth, good

will to men,” should rule in his time? And how was it that this alone,

of all possible problems, received from him no attention at all?

The impulse toward a mission was discernible in the lad; it altogether

dominated the young man. His parents, regarding him lovingly and yet

with wise inquiry, were fascinated by what they saw. A sense of lofty

responsibility in their trusteeship for this beneficent new force formed

a fresh bond between them, which grew to absorb within itself all their

other ties. They came to regard themselves in no other light than as

the parents of Emanuel. To preserve him from vitiating and stunting

suggestions; richly to nourish, yet with an anxious avoidance of

surfeit, both the soul and the mind within him; to give him strength

and means and single-hearted courage adequate to the task he yearned to

undertake--they asked nothing better of life than this.

After Oxford, he went abroad for a couple of years, having as a

companion a young Fellow of Swithin’s, a trifle older than himself, who

shared his moral attitude if not his passionate aspirations. He saw many

parts of the world, and scrutinized closely in each the working of those

portions of the social mechanism which interested him. Returning with a

mass of notes and a mind packed with impressions and theories, he set

to work to write a big book. At the end of a year he produced instead a

small volume, dealing with one little phase of the huge, complex theme

he had at heart. It was a treatise on the relations between parents and

children, and it received very favorable reviews indeed. University men

felt that it was what they had had the foresight to expect from this

serious and high-minded young fellow, who was lucky enough to have the

means and leisure for ethical essay-writing. Evidently he was going in

for that sort of thing, and they noted with approbation that he had been

at great pains with his style. Much to Emanuel’s surprise, only some

three hundred copies of the work were sold; upon reflection, he saw that

it was no part of his plan to sell books, and he forthwith distributed

the remainder of the edition, and another edition as well, among the

libraries of the Three Kingdoms. Within the next three years two

other brochures went through much the same experiences. They treated

respectively of primary education and of public amusements. Again the

reviews were extremely cordial; again the men who had always predicted

that Torr would do something regarded their prophetic intuition with

refreshed complacency; again Emanuel drew considerable checks in favor

of his publisher. What had been hinted at rather vaguely heretofore was

now, however, announced with confidence in “literary” columns: these

small volumes were merely chapters of a vast and comprehensive work to

which the author had dedicated his life--the laborious exposition of

a whole new philosophy of existence, to be as complete in its way as

Herbert Spencer’s noble survey of mankind.

Not long after came the death of Emanuel’s mother--an unlooked-for

event which altered everything in the world to the bereaved couple left

behind. They went away together in the following month, with a plan of

a prolonged tour in the Orient, but came back to England after a few

weeks’ absence, having found their proposed distraction intolerable.

Lord Julius promptly invented for his own relief the device of taking

over upon himself the drudgery of caring for his millions, which

heretofore had been divided among a banker, a broker, a solicitor and

two secretaries. Emanuel saw his way less directly, but at last he found

the will to begin a tentative experiment with some of his theories

of life on a Somersetshire farm which his father gave him. The work

speedily engrossed him, and expanded under his hands. He became

conscious of growth within himself as well. The conviction that life is

a thing not to be written about, but to be lived, formulated itself in

his mind, and he elaborated this new view in an argument which persuaded

his father. The Somersetshire estates of the family, which had been

bought by Lord Julius in 1859, when the duke and his son Porlock joined

to set aside the entail, were placed now unreservedly at Emanuel’s

disposal. What he did with them is to be seen later on.

At the moment, it was of the first importance that he should decide for

himself the great question of celibacy v. marriage. The far-reaching

projects which possessed his brain would, beyond doubt, be multiplied

infinitely in value if precisely the right woman were brought in to

share his enthusiasm and devotion. It was no whit less clear that they

would dwindle into failure and collapse under the blight of the wrong

woman. The dimensions of the risk so impressed him, as he studied them,

that for more than two years he believed himself to be irrevocably

committed to the cold middle course of bachelorhood.

Then, by a remarkable stroke of good fortune, he met, fell in love with

and married the sister of Lord Rosbrin, a young Irish peer whom he had

known at Oxford. No one has ever doubted, he least of all, that she was

the right woman.

He wrote no more books, in the years following this event, but gradually

he became the cause of writing in others. A review article upon the

character and aims of his experiment in Somersetshire, written in an

appreciative spirit by an economist of position, attracted so much

attention that the intrusion of curious strangers and inquisitive

reporters threatened to be a nuisance. After this, his name was always

mentioned as that of an authority, when sociological problems were

discussed. There was even a certain flurry of inquiry for his books,

though this did not turn out to have warranted the printing of the new

popular edition. Sundry precepts in them became, however, the stock

phrases of leader-writers. People of culture grew convinced that they

were familiar with his works, and only a few months before the period

at which we meet him, his university had conferred upon him an honorary

D.C.L., which gratified him more deeply than any other recognition his

labors and attainments had ever received.

CHAPTER X

Christian, observing his celebrated cousin by daylight for the first

time, perceived the necessity of revising some of the previous night’s

impressions.

Under the illumination of the shaded lamp and the glowing bank of peat

on the study hearth, Emanuel in his velvet jacket and slippered ease had

seemed a delicately refined creature, of so ethereal a type that life

for it outside the atmosphere of books, and of a library’s thought

and talk, would be unnatural, or even impossible. With his back to the

afternoon sunshine, however, and with rough, light clothes suggesting

fresh-air exercise, Emanuel was a different person.

In stature he was a trifle taller than Christian; perhaps he was also

something heavier, but what the newcomer noted most about the figure

was the wiry vigor of muscular energy indicated in all its lines and

movements. There was apparent no trace of any physical resemblance

to his father, the massive Lord Julius, and Christian, as this fact

occurred to him, remembered what he had heard about the race from which

the mother had come. He could not say that Emanuel’s face was like

anything which he had thought of as distinctively Jewish. The forehead

was both broad and prominent, and at the top, where early baldness

exposed the conformation of the skull, there were curious sutural

irregularities of surface which attracted attention. The rest of the

face was indefinably distinguished in effect, but not so remarkable.

Christian thought now that it was a more virile countenance than he had

imagined it to be. Vague suggestions of the scholarly dreamer flitted

through its expressions now and again, but it was still above all things

the face of a man of action.

Christian had said to himself, in that crowded instant of analysis, that

he had never seen any Jewish face which at all resembled this of his

cousin’s. Yet somewhere he had seen a face so like it!--the memory

puzzled and absorbed his mind. The same crisping, silky black-brown

hair; the same full line of brow and nose; the same wide-open dark eyes,

intently comprehending in their steady gaze--how strangely familiar they

were to him! He saw them again in his mind’s eye, and they had the same

shadow-casting background of sunlight--only as he looked at the mental

picture, this sunlight was fiercer and hotter, and there was a golden,

hazy distance of purple-blue sea. Suddenly he laughed aloud, and his

brain was alive with recollections.

“I never recognized you last night,” he declared. “Is it not strange

that I should have been so blind? But seeing you in the sunlight--ah, I

remember you well enough.”

Emanuel smiled too, a little awkwardly. “Of course I was not making

any secret of it,” he said. “It would have come up naturally, sooner or

later, in the course of talk.”

But Christian had turned to the lady, and was speaking with gay

animation. “He it is whom I have so often thought of, for years now, as

the ‘mysterious stranger’ of my poor little romance. How long is it ago?

Oh, ten years perhaps, since I saw him first. It was at Toulon, and I

was walking along the quai in the late afternoon, and he stopped me to

ask some question, and we fell to walking together and talking--at first

about the old town, then of myself, because he wished it so. A long

time passed, and lo! I saw him again. This time he came into Salvator’s

little shop at Cannes--it was in the Rue d’Oran--and I was alone, and

we talked again--it seems to me for more than an hour. And I wondered

always who he could be--because he made me feel that he had friendly

thoughts about me. And then, once more--it was a year ago last

summer--he met me again, and came and sat beside me on a seat in the

Jardin Public, at Nice. It must have been in June, for the season was

ended, and it surprised me that he should be there.”

“Oh, yes, I know all about it,” put in Kathleen. “He told me of his

seeing you, and what he thought of you, almost as soon as your back was

turned. But at that time, of course--things hadn’t happened.”

“Ah, but he wanted to be kind to me, even then,” the young man broke

forth, with a glow in his eyes. “I felt that in his tone, the very first

time, when I was the young boy at school. Oh, I puzzled my brain very

often about this young English gentleman who liked to talk to me.

And here is a curious thing, that when the Credit Lyonnais gave me my

summons to come to England, it was of him that I thought first of all,

and wondered if he had not some part in it. And then I was so dull--I

come to his own house, and sit at his own table with him as my cousin,

and do not know him at all! It is true that he had no beard then--but

none the less I am ashamed.” He spread his hands out and smiled a

deprecatory gesture at them both as he added: “But then everything has

been upside down in my mind since I came to England. It has been as if

I were going up the side of a straight cliff in a funicular railway--my

heart throbbing in terror, my brain whirling--afraid to look down, or

out, or to realize where I was. But to-day I am happily at the end of

the journey, and the good safe ground is well under my feet--and so I am

not confused any more, but only very, very glad.”

The elder couple exchanged a frankly delighted smile over the

enthusiast’s head. “You take him for a stroll about the place,” said the

wife. “Perhaps I will come and find you, later on.”

In obedience to the suggestion, the two men turned, and went off

together across the lawn.

Emanuel began speaking at once. “My father,” he said, “has given me a

rough outline of what you have seen and heard. In the nature of things,

it could not all be pleasant.”

“Oh, I have quite forgotten the unhappy parts,” the young man declared.

“I resolved to do that; it would be folly to remember them.”

“They have their uses, though,” persisted the other. “I wanted you to

start out with just that impression of the family’s seamy side. We have

an immense deal to make up to the people about us, and to humanity in

general, have we Torrs. It seemed to me that you could not realize this

too early in your experience here. What impressions did Caermere itself

make upon you?”

Christian hesitated a little, to give form to his thoughts. “I am

imagining it in my mind,” he said at last, slowly, and with extended

hands to shape his meaning to the eye, “as a huge canvas, one of the

very biggest. As it happens, there is an unpleasant picture on it now,

but that can be wiped out, covered over, and then on the vast blank

surface a new and splendid picture may be painted--if I have the skill

to do it.” He paused, as his companion nodded comprehension of the

figure, and then added abruptly: “I have not put the question

direct before--but it is really the case that I am to succeed my

grandfather--to be duke of Glastonbury, is it not?”

“Yes,” answered Emanuel, gravely. “That is the case.”

“Lord Julius told me to ask you everything,” Christian went on in

defense of his curiosity. “But, grand Dieu! there is so much to ask!

Shall I be a rich man, also? There are dukes in France who can scarcely

give a dinner to a friend--and in Italy who are often in doubt

about even their own dinners. I understand that English dukes are

different--but it has been said to me that my grandfather, for example,

is not a rich man. He would be rich, no doubt, in some other station,

but as a duke he is poor. Shall I also be poor?”

Emanuel smiled, more, it seemed, to himself than for the benefit of the

young man. With amusing deliberation he took from his pocket a little

oblong book with flexible covers. “Have you ever owned a checkbook?” he

asked drily.

Christian shook his head.

“Well, this is yours. It came from London this morning. I have written

here on the back of the first check, on the part that remains in the

book, these figures. They show what the bank holds at your disposal at

the present moment.”

Christian took the book, and stared with awe at the figures indicated.

“Three thousand pounds! That is to say, seventy-five thousand francs!

But--I do not understand. What portion is this of my entire fortune?

There is more besides--to come at some future period--n’est ce pas?”

The sum itself had seemed at first glance to be of bewildering

dimensions. Soberer second thoughts, however, told him that he had been

lifted into a social stratum where such an amount might easily come and

go a number of times during one’s life.

“Well,” Emanuel began, hesitating in turn over his phrases, “strictly

speaking, you have no fortune at all. This money has been placed to

your credit by my father--or if you like, by us both--to put you in a

position of independence for the time being. You are quite free to spend

it as you like. But--this is a somewhat delicate matter to explain--but

we look to you in turn to be more or less guided by us in, say, your

mode of life, your choice of associates and--and so on. Don’t think that

we wish in the least to hamper your individual freedom. I am sure you

will feel that that is not our way. But we have formed very high hopes

indeed for your career and--how shall I make you understand?--it rests a

good deal with us to say how far the realization of these hopes warrants

us in going on. That isn’t plain to you, I see. Well, to put it frankly,

you have nothing of your own, but we turn our money over to you because

we believe in you. If unhappily--let us suppose the very improbable

case--we should find ourselves no longer believing in you, why then we

should feel free to reconsider our financial responsibilities towards

you. That is stating it very baldly--not at all as I should like to have

put it--but it gives you the essence of the situation.”

They had paused, and Christian regarded him with a troubled face. “Then

if you come not to like me, or if I make mistakes, you take everything

away from me again? I have never heard of a system like that. It seems

to place me in a very strange position.”

The youth’s mobile countenance expressed such wistful dejection, as he

faltered out these words, that Emanuel hastened to reassure him.

“No, no,” he urged, putting a brotherly hand on his shoulder, “it is the

fault entirely of the way I explained it. No one will ever take anything

away from you. In all human probability you will live and die a wealthy

and powerful nobleman--and perhaps something a good deal more than that.

But let me show you the situation in another way. You have seen your

grandfather--so I need say little about him. When he had reached the age

of fifty or thereabouts he had come to the end of his resources. Since

the estates were entailed, nothing could be sold or mortgaged, and debts

of all sorts were crowding in upon him and his eldest son, Lord Porlock.

They were at their wits’ end to keep going at all; Porlock could not

hold his head up in London, much less marry, as he was expected to

do. If it had not been for the invention of life insurance, they could

hardly have found money to live from week to week. That was in 1858

or ’9, when I was two or three years old. It was then that my father

adopted his policy toward the older branch of the family. As you perhaps

know, he was a very rich man. He came forward at this juncture, and

saved the duke and his household from ruin.”

“That was very noble of him. It is what I should have thought he would

do,” interposed Christian. They had begun walking again.

“Oh, I don’t know that noble is quite the word,” said Emanuel. “The

element of generosity was not very conspicuous in the transaction. The

truth is that the duke and his son were not people that one could be

generous to. They had to be bound to a hard-and-fast bargain. They

agreed between them to break the entail, so that all the estates could

be dealt with as was deemed best, and bound themselves to sell or

mortgage nothing except to my father, unless with his consent. He on

his side settled seventy thousand pounds on Porlock and his heirs,

thus enabling him to marry, and he not only purchased from the duke the

Somerset properties, of which this is a part, but he bought up his debts

at the sacrifice of a good many thousands of pounds, so that in practice

he became his brother’s only creditor. No doubt there _was_ generosity

in that--since he cut down the rate of interest to something almost

nominal by comparison with the usury that had been going on--but his

motive was practical enough. It was to get complete financial mastery

of the family estates. Nearly forty years have passed since he began;

to-day he holds mortgages on practically every acre. If it were not

for the mine near Coalbrook, which latterly yields the duke a certain

surplus over the outlay at Caermere, my father would probably own it all

outright. Well, you have followed it so far, haven’t you?”

Christian thoughtfully nodded his head. “These are not affairs that

I have been brought up to understand,” he commented, “but I think I

comprehend. Only this--you speak of your father’s adopted policy;

that means he has a purpose--an aim. The lady at the castle--Lady

Cressage--spoke to me about this, and I wish--”

“Ah, yes, you met her,” interposed

Emanuel. “I am not sure she was the best fitted to expound our policy to

you.”

“Oh, she was very sympathetic,” the young man hastened to insist. “She

had the warmest praises for both you and your father. And I could not

but feel she wished me well, too.”

Emanuel made no immediate reply, but walked slowly along, revolving

silent thoughts, with a far-away, deliberative look in his eyes. When

he spoke at last, it was to revert with abruptness to the earlier topic.

“The policy, as we are calling it,” he said, “can be put in a nutshell.

We take that kind of pride in the family which impels us to resolve

that, if we cannot induce it to do great things, we will at least

prevent it doing base things. The position which your grandfather

inherited was one of remarkable opportunities, and also of exceptional

responsibilities. He was unfit to do anything with the opportunities,

and as for the responsibilities, he regarded them with only ignorant

contempt. His immediate heirs were very little better. It became a

problem with us, therefore, how best to limit their power for harm.

Money was the one force they could understand and respect, and we have

used it accordingly. I say ‘we’ because as the situation has gradually

developed itself, it is hard to say which part of it is my father’s and

which mine--and still more impossible to imagine what either of us would

have done independently of my mother. I will tell you more about her

sometime. It was she, of course, who brought the money to us, but she

brought much else besides. However, we will not enter upon that at the

moment. Well, suddenly, last summer, the deaths changed everything.

Up to that time, what we had been doing had had, so to speak, only a

negative purpose. We had been keeping unfit people from parading their

unfitness in too scandalously public a fashion. But all at once the

possibility of doing something positive--something which might be very

fine indeed--was opened up before us. As you know now, we were aware of

your existence, but there were inquiries to be made as to--well, as to

the formal validity of your claim. After that, there was some slight

delay in tracing your whereabouts--but now you are here, at last.”

“Now I am here, at last!” Christian repeated softly. He looked up into

the sky; somewhere from the blue an invisible lark filled the air with

its bubbling song. He drew a long breath of amazed content, then turned

to his companion.

“That men like you and your father should be making plans and sacrifices

for one like myself,” he said--“it is hard for me to realize it. There

is nothing for me to say but this--that I will spare no thought or labor

to be what you want me to be. And you will make it all clear to me, will

you not? in every detail what it is I am to do?”

“Oh, hardly to that length,” said Emanuel. He smiled once more--that

grave, sweet, introspective smile of his, which suggested humor as

little as it did flippancy--and spoke more freely, as if conscious that

the irksome part of his task lay behind him. “We dream a great dream of

you, but it would be folly to attempt to dictate to you at every stage

of its realization. That would do you more harm than good, and it would

be unfair to both parties, into the bargain. No, what I desire is to

show you the practical workings of a system, and to fill you with the

principles and spirit of that system. I think it will interest you

deeply, and I hope you will see your way to making it, in its essentials

at least, your own. It has taken me many years to build it up, and I

can’t pretend to suppose that you will grasp it in a week or a year. But

you will see at least the aim I have in view, and you will get a notion

of how I progress toward it. I shall be satisfied, for the time being,

merely to commend it to your judgment as the aim which you might do well

to set before you. It occurs to me to ask you: have you decided opinions

in politics?”

Christian shrugged his shoulders diffidently. “In France my friends were

of many parties, but since I thought never of myself as a Frenchman,

I did not take sides with any of them. My brother Salvator is very

advanced indeed; he is a Free Mason, and his friends are Carbonari in

Italy and Socialists in France. But to me, these things had not much

meaning. I said always to myself that I was English, and I read journals

from London when I could, to learn about English parties. But it was

not easy to learn. I stood in the streets often at Cannes in the early

spring to see Mr. Gladstone when he passed, and to take off my hat to

him, because I read that he was the greatest Englishman. But then I

talked with English people on the Riviera about him, and they all cursed

and ridiculed him, and told me that in England no respectable

people would so much as speak to him. So it is very hard to know the

truth--when you are born and bred in another country.”

“Even those who are born here do not invariably agree upon definitions

of the truth,” commented Emanuel. “But I was not speaking of parties

or politicians, so called. Politics, in its bigger sense, means

the housekeeping of humanity--the whole mass of interests that the

individuals of the human race have in common. But I don’t want to

generalize to you. Let us stop here for a few minutes; I have brought

you to this point that you may get the view.”

Their leisurely stroll through pastures and meadows, and latterly

across a strip of grassy common dotted with sheep, had brought them by

a gradual ascent to the summit of a knoll, crowned by a group of

picturesquely gnarled and twisted old trees, the boughs of which

were all pointed backward in the direction whence the men had come.

Christian, coming to the ridge and halting, confronted the unexpected

breeze, steady and sustained as an ocean swell, which he could hear

murmuring through the land-ward bent branches overhead. In front of him,

at the distance of a stone’s throw, the sloping heath abruptly ended in

what for the instant he supposed was the sky-line--and then saw to be

a vast glittering expanse of water, stretching off to an illimitable

horizon.

“Oh, the sea!” he cried out, in surprised delight. “I had never dreamed

that we were near it.”

He could distinguish now the faint intermittent rustle of the waves on

the hidden beach far below. Perhaps a mile out the profile of a craft

under full sail shone magically white in the sunlight. He knew it to

be a yacht, and began watching it with an intuitive appreciation of its

beauty of line and carriage. Then in a sudden impulse he swung around

and faced his companion. “I do not like to look at it,” he broke out

nervously. “I am afraid to see the ghosts of those cousins who were

drowned--killed to make room for me. Where their yacht went down on the

rocks--was that close by here?”

“At least sixty miles away--in that direction,” and Emanuel gave an

indifferent nod towards the west. “I wouldn’t encourage ghosts of any

sort, if I were you, but theirs would be least of all worth while. I

wanted you to look about you from here--not specially seaward, but in

all directions. There is a small village at the water’s edge, almost

directly under our feet, which can’t be seen from above--we will get

round to it, perhaps to-morrow--but look in other directions. As far

as you can see along the coast to right and left--and inland, too--the

system I spoke of is in operation. It is all my land. Get the scope of

it into your mind. Roughly speaking, you can see over some nine or ten

thousand acres. Imagine that multiplied by seven or eight, and you will

have, an idea of the territory that your grandfather still owns--at

least nominally.”

Christian kept a rapt gaze upon the prospect, and strove in silence to

grasp the meaning of the words.

“On the land that you see before you,” Emanuel went on, “in one capacity

or another, nearly two thousand human beings have homes. On your

grandfather’s estates there must be nearly if not quite ten times that

number. Think what this means. You will be in a position to affect the

prosperity, the happiness, the well-being, body and soul, of fifteen or

twenty thousand people. It is a little nation--a small kingdom--of which

you will be the head.”

The young man turned slowly and forced himself to look out upon the

deep, but still said nothing.

“This position you may make much of, or little, or worse than nothing at

all,” the other continued. “It is a simple enough matter to put the work

and the responsibility upon other shoulders, if you choose to do it.

Many very respectable men born to such positions do wash their hands

of the worry and labor in just that fashion. They lead idle lives, they

amuse themselves, they take all that is yielded to them and give nothing

in return--and because they avoid open grossness and scandal their

behavior attracts no particular attention. In fact, it is quite taken

for granted that they have done the natural thing. Being born to

leisure, why should they toil? Possessing the title to wealth and

dominion and the deference of those about them, why should they be

expected to go to work and earn these things which they already own?

That is the public view. Mine is very different. I hold that a man who

has been born to a position of power among his fellows, and neglects the

duties of that position while he accepts its rewards, is disgraced. It

is as dishonest as any action for which less fortunate persons go to

prison.”

“Yes, that is my feeling, also,” said Christian in low, earnest tones.

“It’s all true--but--”

“Ah, yes, the ‘But,’” commented Emanuel, with his perceptive smile. “Now

let me explain to you that I have met this ‘But,’ and done battle with

it, and put it under my feet. I began planning for this struggle when I

was very young. All the good people I knew admitted frankly the evils

I speak of; they saw them quite clearly, and talked with eloquence and

fine feeling about them, and at the finish they said ‘But!’--and changed

the subject, and everything went on as before. It became apparent to me

that this eternal ‘But’ is the enemy of the human race. There it

stood forever in the path, blocking every attempt of benevolent and

right-minded people to advance in real progress. So I said: at least one

life shall be given to the task of proving that there need be no ‘But.’

I have been working here now for years, upon lines which were carefully

thought out during other years of preparation. The results are in most

respects better than I could have expected; they are certainly many-fold

better than any one who had not my faith could have believed possible.

Sundry limitations in the system I have, no doubt, discovered. Some

things which seemed axiomatic on paper do not work themselves out the

same way in practice--but as a whole the system is recognized now as

having justified itself. There was an article in the ‘Fortnightly’ on

it last November which I will give you to read. I have written some

chapters upon certain phases of it, myself, which you might also look

at. But the principal thing is that you should see the system itself in

full operation.”

“I am eager to begin,” declared the young man, with fervor.

They had turned by tacit consent, and were sauntering back again over

the short, soft grass of the heath.

Emanuel paused and picked from a furze-bush a belated spray of bright

yellow blossoms. As he continued his walk, he pulled one of these

flowers to pieces, and attentively examined the fragments.

“I gather that you are much interested in flowers,” said Christian, to

make conversation.

The other laughed briefly, as he threw the stuff aside, then sighed a

little. “Too much so,” he answered. “I wish I had the courage to give it

up altogether. It murders my work. I spend sometimes whole hours in my

greenhouses when I ought to be doing other things. The worst of it is

that I realize perfectly the criminal waste of time--and still I persist

in it. There is something quite mysterious in plants--especially if you

have grown them yourself. You can go and stand among them by the hour,

and look from one to another, with your mind entirely closed to thoughts

of any description. I used to assume that this mental rest had a

recuperative value, but as I get older I suspect that it is a kind

of lethargy instead--a mere blankness that can grow upon one. I find

myself, for example, going incessantly to see certain pans of my own

hybridized seedlings--and staring aimlessly at them till I get quite

empty-headed. Now, I am too busy a man to be able to afford that.”

“But if you get pleasure from it,” expostulated Christian, gently.

“We have no right to think of our pleasure,” Emanuel asserted with

decision, “while any duty remains unperformed. And rightly considered,

duty _is_ pleasure, the very highest and noblest pleasure. The trouble

is that even while our minds quite recognize this, our senses play us

tricks. For example, when I saw how much time I was wasting on flowers,

I tried to turn the impulse into a useful channel. The blossoms of fruit

trees, for instance; the growth and flowering and seeding processes of

melons and broad-beans and potatoes and so on, are just as interesting

and worthy of study, and they mean value to humanity into the bargain.

So I said I would concentrate my attention upon them, instead--but there

was some perverse element in me somewhere; I couldn’t do it. The mere

knowledge that these excellent vegetables were of practical utility

threw me off altogether. They bored me--so I went shamefacedly back to

the roses and fuchsias and dahlias.”

“They have wonderful dahlias at Caermere,” interposed Christian. “I

walked for a long time among them with Lady Cressage, and she told me

all their names. Poor lady, she is very sad, in spite of the flowers.

I--I think I should like to say it to you--I find myself very sorry for

her. And--such a bewildering number of things are to be done for me--is

there not something that can be done for her?”

Emanuel walked slowly on in silence for some moments, regarding his

companion’s profile out of the corner of his eye, his own face showing

signs of preoccupation meantime. When at last he spoke, the question

seemed to have lost itself in convolution of his thoughts.

“Considering their northern exposure,” he said meditatively, “they grow

an extraordinary amount of fruit at Caermere.”

CHAPTER XI

At the end of a fortnight Christian found himself able to confront the

system, and even look it in the face, with a certain degree of mental

composure. He was far from imagining that he had comprehended it all,

but the thought of it no longer made his brain whirl by the magnitude of

its scope, or frightened him by its daring. The implication that he

was expected to do still more with it than Emanuel, its inventor and

evangel, had done, possessed its terrors, no doubt, but one is not

young for nothing. The buoyancy of youth, expanding genially amid these

delightful surroundings, thrust these shadows off into the indefinite

future, whenever they approached.

This system need not detain us long, or unnerve us at all. Lord Julius

had spoken figuratively of it as the Pursuit of Happiness; perhaps that

remains its best definition.

Like other systems, it was capable of explanation by means of formulas;

but the most lucid and painstaking presentation of these could not hope

to convey complete meaning to the mind. Stated in words, Emanuel’s plan

hardly appealed to the imagination. Save for a few innovations, not

of primary importance, it proceeded by arguments entirely familiar to

everybody, and which indeed none disputes. Most of its propositions were

the commonplaces of human speech and thought. The value of purity, of

cheerfulness, of loyalty, of mercy--this is not gainsaid by any one. The

conception of duty as the mainspring of human action is very old indeed.

For this reason, doubtless, Emanuel’s efforts to expound his System

by means of books had failed to rivet public attention. He could only

insist afresh upon what was universally conceded, and Mr. Tupper before

him had done enough of this to last several generations.

Viewed in operation, however, the System was another matter. Our

immemorial platitudes, once clothed in flesh and blood, informed with

life, and set in motion under the sympathetic control of a master mind,

became unrecognizable.

Emanuel as a lad had thought much of the fact that he was of the blood

of the Spinozas. When he learned Latin in his early boyhood, the task

was sweetened and ennobled to his mind by the knowledge that it would

bring him into communion with the actual words of the great man, his

kinsman. Later, when he approached with veneration the study of these

words, the discovery that they meant little or nothing to him was almost

crushing in its effects. Eventually it dawned upon his brain that the

philosopher’s abstractions and speculations were as froth on the top

of the water; the great fact was the man himself--the serene, lofty,

beautiful character which shines out at us from its squalid setting like

a flawless gem. To be like Spinoza, but to give his mind to the real

rather than the unreal, shaped itself as the goal of his ambitions.

It was at this period that he became impressed by the thought that

he was also of the blood of the Torrs. On the one side the poor

lens-grinder with the soul of an archangel; on the other the line of

dull-browed, heavy-handed dukes, with a soul of any sort discoverable

among them nowhere. Slowly the significance of the conjunction revealed

itself to him. To take up the long-neglected burden of responsibilities

and possibilities of the Torrs, with the courage and pure spirit of a

Spinoza--there lay the duty of his life, plainly marked before him.

Ensuing years of reading, travel and reflection gave him the frame, so

to speak, in which to put this picture. He had from his childhood been

greatly attracted by the glimpses which his father’s library gave him of

what is called the Mediaeval period. As he grew older, this taste became

a passion. Where predilection ended and persuasion began, it would be

hard to say, but when he had arrived at man’s estate, and stood upon

the threshold of his life-work, it was with the deeply rooted conviction

that the feudal stage had offered mankind its greatest opportunities

for happiness and the higher life. That the opportunities had been

misunderstood, wasted, thrown away, proved nothing against the soundness

of his theory. He had masses of statistics as to wages, rent-rolls,

endowments and the like at his fingers’ ends, to show that even on its

reverse side, the medieval shield was not so black as it was painted.

As for the other side--it was the age of the cathedrals, of the Book

of Kells, of the great mendicant orders, of the saintly and knightly

ideals. It was in its flowering time that craftsmanship attained its

highest point, and the great artisan guilds, proud of their talents and

afraid of nothing but the reproach of work ill-done, gave the world its

magnificent possessions among the applied arts. Sovereigns and princes

vied with one another to do honor to the noblest forms of art, and

to bow to the intellect of an Erasmus, who had not even the name of a

father to bear. Class caste was the rule of the earth, yet the son of a

peasant like Luther could force himself to the top, and compel emperors

to listen to him, more readily then than now. The bishop-princes of

feudal England were as often as not the sons of swineherds or starveling

clerks, whereas now no such thing could conceivably happen to the

hierarchy. Above all things, it was the age of human character. Men

like Thomas More, with their bewildering circle of attainments and their

extraordinary individual force, were familiar products. In a thousand

other directions, Emanuel saw convincing proofs that mankind then and

there had come closest to the possibilities of a golden age. True, it

had wandered off miserably again, into all manner of blind lanes

and morasses, until it floundered now in a veritable Dismal Swamp of

individualism, menaced on the one side by the millionaire slave-hunter,

on the other by the spectral anarchist, and still the fools in its ranks

cried out ceaselessly for further progress. Oh, blind leaders of the

blind!

No. Emanuel saw clearly that humanity could right itself by retracing

its steps, and going back to the scene of its mistaken choice of roads.

It had taken the wrong turning when it forsook the path of coherent and

interdependent organization--that marvelously intricate yet perfectly

logical system called feudalism, in which everybody from king to serf

had service to render and service to receive, and mutual duty was the

law of the entire mechanism.

Though Christian heard much more than this, enough has been said to

indicate the spirit in which Emanuel had embarked upon the realization

of his plan. The results, as Christian wonderingly observed them, were

remarkable.

The estate over which the System reigned was compact in shape, and

enjoyed the advantage of natural boundaries, either of waste moorland or

estuaries, which shut it off from the outside world, and simplified the

problem of developing its individual character. In area it comprised

nearly fifteen square miles, and upon it, as has been said, lived some

two thousand people. About half of these were employed in, or dependent

upon, the industrial occupations Emanuel had introduced; the others

were more directly connected with the soil. Whether artisans or farmers,

however, they lived almost without exception in some one of the six

little villages on the property.

In each of these hamlets there were conserved one or more old timbered

houses; the newer cottages had been built, not in servile imitation

of these, but after equally old models, no two quite alike. As the

“Fortnightly Review” article said, if the System had done nothing else

it had “gathered for the instruction and delight of the intelligent

observer almost a complete collection of examples of early English

domestic architecture of the humbler sort.” The numerous roads upon the

estate were kept in perfect order, and were for the most part lined with

trees; where they passed through the villages they were of great width,

with broad expanses of turf, shaded by big oaks or elms, some of which

had been moved from other spots only a few years before, to the admiring

surprise of the neighborhood. Each village had a small church edifice of

its own, quaintly towered and beautiful in form, and either possessing

or simulating skillfully the graces of antiquity as well. Beside

the church was a building presenting some one or another type of the

tolsey-house of old English towns, devoted to the communal uses of the

villagers. About the church and the tolsey was the public garden and

common, with a playground with swings and bars for the children at

the back--and there was no grave or tombstone in sight anywhere. A

hospitable, ivy-clad, low-gabled inn, with its long side to the street,

was a conspicuous feature on each village green.

Christian retained a vivid recollection of entering one of these taverns

with Emanuel, very early in his tour of observation. Above the broad,

open door, as they went in, swung the cumbrous, brightly painted sign

of “The Torr Arms.” Two or three laborers in corduroys were seated on

benches at the table, with tankards before them; they dragged their

heavily shod feet together on the sanded floor, and stood up, when they

saw Emanuel, touching their hats with an air of affectionate humility

as he smiled and nodded to them. There was a seemingly intelligent and

capable landlady in the bar, who drew the two glasses of beer which

Emanuel asked for, and answered cheerfully the questions he put to her.

Two brightfaced young women, very neatly dressed, were seated sewing in

this commodious bar, and they joined in the conversation which Emanuel

raised. Christian gathered from what he heard and saw that his cousin

took an active interest in the fortunes of this tavern and of both its

inmates and its patrons, and that the interest and liking were warmly

reciprocated. The discovery gave him a more genial conception of

Emanuel’s character than he had hitherto entertained.

“That is one of my most satisfactory enterprises,” Emanuel had said when

they came out. “We brew our own beer, as well as the few cordials which

take the place of spirits, and I really feel sure it’s the best beer

obtainable in England. I am very proud of it--but I am proud of

these taverns of ours too. That was one of the hardest problems to be

solved--but the solution satisfies me better, perhaps, than anything

else I have done. Nobody ever dreams of getting drunk in these ‘pubs’

of ours. Nobody dreams of being ashamed to be seen going into them or

coming out. The women and children enter them just as freely, if they

have occasion to do so, as they would a dairy or grocer’s shop. They

are the village clubs, so to speak, and they are constantly open to the

whole village, as much as the church or the tolsey. But here is one of

my parsons. I want you to take note of him--and I will tell you about

his part in the System afterward. He is as interesting a figure in it as

my publican.”

A tall, fresh-faced, fair young man approached them as Emanuel spoke,

and was presented to the stranger as Father William. Christian observed

him narrowly, as he had been bidden, but beyond the fact that he was

clad in a somewhat outlandish fashion, and seemed a merry-hearted

fellow, there was nothing noteworthy in the impression he produced. He

stood talking for a few minutes, and then, with affable adieux, passed

on.

“That is wholly my invention,” commented Emanuel, as they resumed their

walk. “There is one of them in each of the six villages, and a

seventh who has a kind of general function--and really I have been

extraordinarily fortunate with them all. They come from my college at

Oxford--Swithin’s--and when you think that twenty years ago it was the

most bigoted hole in England, the change is most miraculous. These young

men fell in with my ideas like magic. I don’t suppose you know much

about the Church of England. Well, it drives with an extremely loose

rein. You can do almost anything you like inside it, if you go about the

thing decorously. I didn’t even have the trouble with the bishop which

might have been expected. These young men--my curates, we may call

them--have among themselves a kind of guild or confraternity.

They are called Father William, or Father Alfred; they wear the sort of

habit you have seen; they are quite agreed upon an irreducible minimum

of dogmatic theology, and an artistic elaboration of the ritual, and,

above all, upon an active life consecrated to good works. They have

their own central chapter-house, where they live when they choose and

feel like enjoying one another’s society, but each has his own village,

for the moral and intellectual health of which he feels responsible.

Without their constant and very capable oversight, the System would have

a good many ragged edges, I’m afraid. But what they do is wonderful.

They have made a study of all the different temperaments and natures

among the people. They know just how to smooth away possible friction

here, to encourage dormant energy there, to keep the whole thing

tight and clean and sound. They specially watch the development of the

children, and make careful notes of their qualities and capacities. They

decide which are to be fully educated, and which are to be taught only

to read and do sums.”

“I am not sure that I understand,” put in Christian. “Is not universal

education a part of your plan?”

Emanuel smiled indulgently. “There was never grosser nonsense talked

in this world,” he said, with the placid air of one long since familiar

with the highest truths, “or more mischievous rubbish into the bargain,

than this babble about universal education. The thing we call modern

civilization is wrong at so many points that it is hard to say where

it sins most, but often I think this is its worst offense. The race

has gone fairly mad over this craze for stuffing unfit brains with

encumbering and harmful twaddle. In the Middle Ages they knew better.

The monks of a locality picked out the children whose minds would repay

cultivation, and they taught these as much as it was useful for them to

know. If the system was in honest operation, it mattered nothing whether

these children belonged to the lord of the manor or the poorest peasant.

Assume, for example, that there was a nobleman and one of his lowest

dependents, and that each of them had a clever son and a dull one. The

monks would take the two clever ones, and educate them side by side--and

if in the end the base born boy had the finer mind of the two, and the

stronger character, he would become the bishop or the abbot or the judge

in preference to his noble school-fellow. On the other hand, the two

dull boys were not wearied by schooling from which they could get no

profit. The thick-headed young-noble, very often without even learning

his alphabet, was put on a horse, and given a suit of armor and a sword;

the heavy-witted young churl was given a leathern shirt and a pike or

a bow, and bidden to follow behind that horse’s tail--and off the two

happy dunces went, to fulfill in a healthful and intelligent fashion

their manifest destiny. Those were the rational days when human

institutions were made to fit human beings--instead of this modern

lunacy of either shaving down and mangling the human being, or

else blowing him up like a bladder, to make him appear to fit the

institutions. Of course, you must understand, I don’t say that this

medieval system worked uniformly, or perfectly, even at its best--and,

of course, for a variety of reasons, it eventually failed to work

altogether. But its principle, its spirit, was the right one--and it is

only by getting back to it, and making another start with the light of

experience to guide us this time, that we can achieve real progress.

Fortunately, my parsons entered fully, and quite joyfully, into my

feelings on this point. They couldn’t have labored harder, or better, to

make the System a success if it had been of their own invention.”

“I have seen English parsons often,” said Christian, vaguely. “They are

always married, n’est ce pas?”

“Oh, no--no!” answered Emanuel, with impatient emphasis. “That would

never do here. It is difficult enough to find men fit to carry on the

task we have undertaken. It would be asking too much of the miracle to

expect also unique women who would bring help rather than confusion to

such men. Oh, no--we take no risks of that sort. Celibacy is the very

basis of their guild. It is very lucky that their own tastes run in that

direction--because in any case it would have had to be insisted upon.”

Christian wondered if he ought to put into words the comment which rose

in his mind. “But you, and your father,” he ventured--“you personally--”

“Ah,” interposed Emanuel, with a rapt softening of expression in face

and tone, “when women like my mother and my wife appear--that lifts us

away from the earth and things earthly, altogether. But they are as rare

as a great poem--or a comet. If they were plentiful there would be no

need of any System. The human race would never have fallen into the mud.

We should all be angels.”

After a little pause he added: “The woman question here has been a very

hard nut to crack. We have made some progress with it--but it is still

one of the embarrassments. Of course there are others. The restless

young men who leave the estate, for example, and having made a failure

of it elsewhere, come back to make mischief here: That is an awkward

subject to deal with. The whole problem of our relations to outsiders

is full of perplexities. To prevent intercourse with them is out of the

question. They come and go as they like--and of course my own people are

equally free. I can’t see my way to any restrictions which wouldn’t do

more harm than good--if indeed they could be enforced at all. I have to

rely entirely upon the good sense and good feeling of my people, to show

them how much better off they are in every way than any other community

they know of, and how important it is for them to keep themselves to

themselves, and continue to benefit by their good fortune. If they fail

to understand this, I am quite powerless to coerce them. And that is

where the women give us trouble. It is the rarest thing for us to have

any difficulty with the men. They comprehend their advantages, they take

a warm interest in their work, and we have developed among them a really

fine communal spirit. They are proud of the System, and fond of it, and

I can trust them to defend it and stand by it. But this isn’t true of

all the women. You have always the depressing consciousness that there

are treacherous malcontents among them, who smile to your face but are

planning disturbance behind your back. It is not so much a matter of

evil natures as of inferior brains. Let a soldier in a red coat come

along, for example--an utterly ignorant and vulgar clown from heaven

knows what gutter or pigsty--and we have girls here who would secretly

value his knowledge of the world, and his advice upon things in general,

above _mine!_ How _can_ you deal with that sort of mind?”

Christian smiled drolly, and disclaimed responsibility with a playful

outward gesture of his hands. “It is not my subject,” he declared.

“But it has to be faced,” insisted Emanuel. “My wife has devoted

incredible labor and pains to it--and on the surface of things she has

succeeded wonderfully. I say the surface, because that is the sinister

peculiarity of the affair; you can never be sure what is underneath.

When you go up to London, you must do as I have done since I was a

youth: take a walk of a bright afternoon along Regent Street and Oxford

Street, where the great millinery and drapers’ and jewelers’ shops are,

and study the faces of the thousands of well-dressed and well-connected

women whom you will see passing from one show-window to another.

There will be many beautiful faces, and many more which are deeply

interesting. But one note you will catch in them all--or at least in the

vast majority--the note of furtiveness. Once you learn to recognize

it you will find it everywhere--the suggestion of something hidden,

something artfully wrapped up out of sight. God knows, I don’t suggest

they all have guilty secrets--or for that matter secrets of any sort.

But they have the trained facial capacity for concealment; it is their

commonest accomplishment; their mothers’ fingers have been busy kneading

their features into this mask of pretense from their earliest girlhood.”

“Would you not find it also on the men’s faces?” demanded Christian,

with a dissolving mental vision of sly masculine visages before him as

he spoke. “That is to say, when once you had learned to detect the male

variation of the mask? And even if it is so, then is not the reason of

it this--that men have long been their own masters, making their own

laws, doing freely what they choose, and there is no one before whom

they must dissemble?”

Emanuel had not the temperament which is attracted by contradiction. He

listened to his cousin’s eager words, seemed to ponder them for a space,

and then began talking of something else.

Those whom Emanuel called “his people” were for the most part

descendants of families who had been on the soil for centuries--since

before the Torrs came into possession of it. In a few cases, their stock

had been transplanted from the Shropshire estates of the same house.

Emanuel had discerned it to be an essential part of the System that

its benefits should be reaped by those to whom his family had historic

responsibilities. The reflection that the Torrs in Somerset only went

back at the farthest to Henry VIII.’s time, and became large landlords

there so recently as Charles II.’s reign, saddened him when he dwelt

upon it. He would have given much to have been able to establish

the System at Caermere instead, where the relations between lord and

retainer had subsisted from the dawn of tribal history. He dwelt a good

deal upon this aspect of the matter in his talks with Christian. “If you

take up the idea,” he would say, “you will have the enormous advantage

of really ancient ties between you and your people. Here in Somerset

we are, relatively speaking, new-comers--merely lucky bridegrooms or

confiscating interlopers of a few generations’ standing. I have had

to create my feudal spirit here out of whole cloth. But you at

Caermere--you will find it ready-made to your hand.”

Emanuel had created much more besides.

The villages hummed with the exotic industries he had brought into

being. The estate produced most of its raw material--food, wool, hides,

peat for domestic fuel, stone in several varieties for building, and

numerous products of the sea. It drew coal, wood and iron across the

channel from the Caermere properties. The effort of the System had been

from the outset to expand its self-sufficiency. Christian saw now the

remarkable results of this effort on both sides. One village had its

leather workers, beginning with the tanners at one end and finishing

with the most skillful artificers--glovers, saddlers and shoemakers--at

the other. A second village possessed its colony of builders--masons

and carpenters alike--and with them guiding architects and designers of

furniture and carving. Here also were the coopers, who served not only

the brewery, but the butter-makers. These latter formed in turn a link

with the great dairy establishment, which had for its flank the farming

lands. The gardens, nurseries, orchards and long glasshouses were

nearest to Emanuel’s residence, and their workers made up the largest of

the hamlets. This was in other senses the metropolis of the state, for

here were the printing-press, the bindery, the chemical laboratory,

the electric-light plant, the photographic and drawing departments, the

clergy house and the estate office. The smallest of the villages was in

the center of the stock farm, where scientific breeding and experimental

acclimatization had attained results of which the staid “Field” spoke in

almost excited terms.

But to Christian’s mind by far the most interesting village was that

nestled on the sea-shore, under the protection of the cliffs. When he

had once seen this place, his cousin found if difficult to get him away

from it, or to enlist his attention for other branches of the System.

There was a small but sufficient wharf here, to which colliers of a fair

burden could have access; shelter was secured for the home-built fishing

craft in the little harbor by means of a breakwater. The red-roofed,

gray-stone cottages clustered along the winding roadway which climbed

the cliff made a picture fascinating to the young man’s eye, but his

greater delight was in something not at first visible. Around a bend in

the cove, out of sight of the village, was a factory for the manufacture

of glass, and beyond this were pointed out to him other buildings, near

the water’s edge, which he was told were used for curing, pickling and

otherwise preserving fish. “We make our own glass for the gardens and

forcing houses, ‘and for all the dwellings on the estate,” Emanuel had

told him, “and for another use as well.”

The statement had not aroused his curiosity at the moment, but a little

later, when he confronted the embodiment of its meaning, he murmured

aloud in his astonishment. He found himself walking in a spacious

corridor, beneath a roof of semi-opaque, greenish glass, and between

walls that seemed of solid crystal, stretching onward as far as the eye

could reach. A bar of sunlight, striking through aslant from somewhere

outside, painted a central glowing prismatic patch of color, which

reflected itself in countless wavering gleams of orange and purple all

about him. A curious moving glitter, as of fountains noiselessly at

play, traversed the upper surface of these glass walls, and flashed

confusion at his first scrutiny. Then he gave a schoolboy’s shout of joy

and rushed forward to the nearest side. He was in a giant aquarium--and

these were actual fishes of the sea swimming placidly before him! Even

as he stared in bewildered pleasure, with his nose flattened against the

glass, there lounged toward him, across the domed back of a king-crab,

the biggest conger he had ever imagined to himself. He put up a hand

instinctively to ward off the advance of the impassive eel--then laughed

aloud for glee.

“Oh, this is worth all the rest!” he cried to Emanuel.

“Yes, good idea, isn’t it?” said the other. “It was my wife who

suggested it. We had started making our own glass--and really this was

a most intelligent way of using it. In time I think it will be of great

value, too. We have some clever men down here, from time to time, to

study the specimens. I’m sorry no one is here for the moment. I thought

at first of building a residence for them, and putting it all at their

disposal in a regular way as a kind of marine observatory, like that at

Naples. But after all, it would hardly be fair to the system. My first

duty is to my own people, and we’ve got some young men of our own who

are making good use of it. There are a hundred or more of these tanks,

and we are fitting up electrical machinery to get automatic control

of the water supply, and to regulate the temperature more exactly. But

beyond the spectacle of the fishes themselves--our people make holiday

excursions here every fortnight or so--and certain things we learn about

food and fecundation and so on, I don’t know that there’s much to be

said for the practical utility of this department. Further on you will

see the oyster and mussel beds, and the lobsters and crabs. I attach

much more importance to the experiments we are making out there. There

seems almost no limit to what can be done in those fields, now that

we have learned how to go to work. It is as simple a matter to rear

lobsters as it is to rear chickens.”

“But it is all wonderful!” cried Christian, once more. “But tell

me--this costs a great sum of money. I am afraid to think how much. Is

it your hope--shall you ever get a profit from it?”

Emanuel smiled. “There is no question of profits,” he explained, gently.

“The System as a whole supports itself--or rather is entirely capable of

doing so. The capital that I have spent in putting the System upon its

feet, so to speak, I count as nothing. It belonged to the people who had

been with us all these centuries and I have merely restored it to them.

In the eyes of the law it is all mine, and from that point of view I am

a much richer man than I was before the System began. But in practice

it belongs to all my people. I take enough to live as befits my

station; each of the others has enough to maintain him in _his_ station,

comfortably and honorably. Whatever the surplus may be, that is devoted

to the objects which we all have in common. You see it is simplicity

itself.”

“But that is like my brother Salvator’s doctrine,” said Christian.

“It is socialism, is it not?” Emanuel’s fine brows drew together in an

impatient frown. “Please do not use that word,” he said, with a shade of

annoyance in his tone. “The very sound of it affronts my ears. Nothing

vexes me more than to have my work unthinkingly coupled with that

monstrous imposture. If you will think of it, I am more opposed to what

is called socialism than anybody else on earth. I have elaborated the

one satisfactory system, on lines absolutely opposed to it. I furnish

the best weapon for fighting and slaying that pernicious delusion that

the whole world offers. So you see, I have a right to protest when

people confuse me with my bitterest antagonist.”

“Pardon!” said Christian, with humility. “I am so badly informed upon

all these matters!”

“Ah, well, you will understand them perfectly, all in good time,” his

cousin reassured him in a kindly way.

Christian drew a furtive sigh as they moved along. To his fancy the

large fishes in the tanks regarded him with a sympathetic eye.

CHAPTER XII

It has done Emanuel a world of good to have you here,” said Kathleen,

on the morning of Christian’s leave-taking. “Of course it has been a

delight to us both--but he has had a personal benefit from it, too.

He works too hard. He carries such a burden of details about in his

mind--by day and by night, for he sleeps badly and is forever dreaming

of his work--that companionship with some new and attractive mind is of

the greatest rest and help to him. And he is very fond of you.”

Christian nodded gratified acknowledgment of the words and their spirit,

with a glow in his dark eyes. In little more than an hour he would be

on his way to London--that mighty, almost fabulous goal of his lifelong

dreams. He was already dressed for the journey, in a traveling-suit of

rough, fawn-colored cloth, and as he sat at ease in the breakfast-room

with his cousin’s wife, his glance wandered very often from her face

to a pleased contemplation of these garments. They were what he

individually liked best in the wonderful collection of clothes for which

a fashionable tailor had come from London to measure him, and which were

this moment being packed by the man up-stairs in bags and portmanteaus

equally new. The tweeds enabled him to feel more like an Englishman than

he had succeeded in doing before.

He smiled diffidently at her. “I am so excited about going,” he said,

his voice wavering between exuberance and appeal--“and yet I ought to be

thinking of nothing but my sorrow in leaving you dear people. But that

will come to me soon enough--in a storm of homesickness--when once I

find myself really alone.”

“Oh, I’ll not deny we expect a _little_ homesickness,” she replied to

him, cheerfully--“but it must not be enough to at all take the edge off

your spirits. Oh, you’ll be vastly entertained and interested by all

you see and hear. Young Lord Lingfield--you’ll be seeing him to-night

at dinner--he will be greatly pleased to take you about, and properly

introduce you; He will do it better than any other we can think of. He

is not by any means an intellectual gladiator, but he is good-looking

and amiable and he goes everywhere.”

“He is my relation, too, I think Emanuel said?”

“Let’s work it out--his grandfather’s sister was your grandmother. Yes,

that is it. She was the Lady Clarissa Poynes, the sister of the old earl

of Chobham, who used to wear the blue coat and brass buttons to the

end of his days. So she would be the aunt of the present earl, and

the grand-aunt of young Lingfield. You stand in exactly the same

relationship to Lord Lingfield that you would to a son of Emanuel’s--if

he had one, poor man!”

Christian had long since become sensible of the pathos which colored

these references to the childlessness of the house. A tender instinct

impelled him to hasten a diversion.

“And how strange it is!” he cried. “They are as close to me, these

people, in blood as Emanuel is--and yet I care nothing for them

whatever. I shall meet them, and know them, and not feel that I am bound

to them at all--whereas Emanuel is like a brother to me, whom I have

been with and loved all my life. And you,” he added, with a smile in his

eyes--“you are more than any sister to me.”

“Well, then, let me talk to you like a sister,” she rejoined.

He thought he had not seen her before in precisely the mood which was

discernible in her face and tone this morning. Outwardly she was as

gay and light-hearted as ever, and certainly she had not seemed on any

previous day to come so near being beautiful as well. The sense of sheer

pleasure in being where she was, in listening to her and looking’

at her, and holding her affectionately bright attention for his own

thoughts, was peculiarly strong in him to-day. But there was also the

consciousness of a new gravity in her attitude toward him--a kind of

yearning apprehension of dangers threatening him. He saw again in her

eyes when she looked at him that likeness to his mother’s glance--a

wistfully sad glance as he most often recalled it. And yet Kathleen

smiled merrily with it all, when occasion required.

“You are entering upon the great experience now,” she said to him: “I

think it was very wise of Emanuel to show you first what we may call

his ideal state of society. By all the rules, it ought to help you

to understand in the right way what you will see of the society

which--well, which isn’t in an ideal state. But there are certain things

which get to be understood, not so much by brains, as by years. That

is to say, the very cleverest youth may not be able to see, in this one

respect, what is plain enough to most dull persons at forty. Emanuel

tells me that he has talked with you about women in general.”

“He does not like them very much,” said Christian, laughingly.

She twisted the corners of her mouth in a droll little grimace, which

seemed to express approval of his mirth, and something more besides.

“He takes them with tremendous seriousness,” she answered. “That is his

way with everything. He makes all sorts of classifications--the bigger

they are and the more complicated the better he likes them--and then he

treats each one as a problem, and he worries at it with all his energy

until he works out a satisfactory solution. It is only in that sense

that he has a grievance against women. He has proceeded upon the theory

that the sex is a unit, for philosophical purposes at least, and that

he ought to be able to get at the rules which govern its actions. But we

continue to baffle him,” she added, again with the playful curl of the

lips.

“Oh, you--you are not in the problem,” protested Christian. “For you

and his mother he has only the veneration one gives to one’s favorite

saints.”

“His mother was a great woman,” said Kathleen, serious once more. “I

never saw her, but she is my patron saint, as you put it, quite as much

as his. I never permit myself to doubt that we should have loved each

other deeply--and it is the sweetest thing any one can think of me,

or say to me--to link us together. But even the saints have their

specialties--and that implies limitations. I have a notion that

Emanuel’s mother did not know many women, and so fell into a way of

generalizing about them. Emanuel has that same tendency. I, who work

among them daily, and make it my business to be teacher and mistress and

mother and sister to some five hundred of them, young and old, foolish

and wise--I come to believe that these generalizations are entirely

mistaken. If a woman is brought up like a man, and circumstanced

precisely like a man, and knows nothing of any conventions save those

which control a man--why, then you can’t tell the difference between

her opinions and actions and those of her brother. But you never get the

chance to view a woman under those conditions.”

“But here we shall see them!” cried Christian, with premature

enthusiasm. “You will change all that!”

“Oh, no, I shan’t,” she answered abruptly. “It is not being tried--it is

not desirable. What I am doing proceeds quite on orthodox lines. We

make a point of developing them in the way of usefulness--material

usefulness, I mean. We teach them the useful accomplishments--spinning,

weaving, sewing, dairy and poultry work, and above all things good

cooking.”

“That I can well believe,” he declared. “I have never eaten so many good

dishes in my life as here.”

“Yes, I _have_ a talent in that direction,” she assented. “And I

am prouder of it because it represents a triumph over my ancestral

prejudices. You will get nothing good to eat in Ireland. The Irish have

never respected food as a proper subject for serious human thought.

It is the rarest thing to hear them mention it. There may be some fine

spiritual quality in that--but at all events we cook well here, and I

have worked a complete revolution in that respect on the estate. There

are certainly no such cooks and housekeepers anywhere else in England as

my women. But you see what I mean. There is no effort to take women away

from the work they have always been doing, but only to make them do it

better.”

“But that in itself is very much,” urged Christian. Somehow he had the

feeling that he was defending the System against a critic.

“Undoubtedly,” she admitted. “And of course we do something more than

that. In a good many cases, when it was not inconvenient, I have put

young girls of aptitude forward to learn designing and other arts. Some

of them have made me some very tolerable tapestry, and a few of them are

as intelligent and valuable in the greenhouses as our best men. In the

matter of music they really beat them. Emanuel insists on a choir of

glee singers in each village--and at Christmas time we have a

competition of ‘waits’ which will be worth your while coming to hear.

For my part, I have a string orchestra of girls that I should not be

ashamed to have play in London.”

The word seemed to bring them back, “You were going to speak to me,”

Christian ventured, “about London. One thing--I shall see you there

often, shall I not?”

She slowly shook her head. “No, we have outgrown London, I’m afraid. It

can be proved, I believe, that it is the biggest town in the world--but

to us it is too small for comfort. It is now more than a year since we

have been up at all. Why should we go? We have the National Gallery by

heart, and the year’s pictures are rather distressing than otherwise.

The theaters are intellectually beneath notice. There is the opera of

course, and the concerts, but the people annoy us by talking loudly,

and besides, we have our own music, and occasionally we bring down a

Paderewski or a Sarasate for our people to hear. At the houses where

we would naturally go, the women talk about matters of which I know

absolutely nothing, and Emanuel either quarrels with the men about what

they call their politics, or chokes silently with rage and disgust.

And then the spectacle of the people in the streets--the poor of

London!--that fairly sickens our hearts. We have no joy of going at all.

Occasionally we have guests down here, but it is not a very happy

time they have of it. Everything is so strange to them that they are

confused, and walk about with constraint, as if they were being shown

around an asylum. So it happens that I see very few women of my own

class--and really know less about them than most people. And yet,” she

added, with a twinkle in her eye, “so naturally audacious a race are the

Irish--it is precisely about ladies in London society that I am going to

read you a lecture.”

Christian drew up his feet, and assumed an air of delighted

anticipation.

“First of all, you are six and twenty, and you will be thinking of

marrying. What is more, you are what is called a great match, and for

every thought that you give to the subject of a wife, others will give

ten thousand to the subject of you as a possible husband.”

The young man looked into her kindly eyes with a sustained glance of

awakening thought. This dazzling and princely position which she had

thus outlined--sure enough, it was his! How extraordinary that this

had not suggested itself to him before! Or had the perception of it not

really lain dormant in his consciousness all the while? This question

propounded itself to a mind which was engrossed in something else--for

of a sudden there rose upon the blank background of his thoughts

the luminous face of a lady, beautiful, distinguished, exquisitely

sensitized, and as by the trick of a dream she first wore a large garden

hat, and then was bare-headed, her fair hair gathered loosely back into

a careless knot. The mental picture expanded, to show the full length of

her queenly figure as she descended a broad staircase, with one lovely

hand like a lily against the oak of the rail. Then it contracted, and

underwent a strange metamorphosis, for it was another face which he saw,

a pale, earnest, clever face, and instead of the great stairway, there

was the laced tawdriness of a French railway compartment.

Then, with a start, and a backward movement of the head, he was free of

dreamland, and blushingly conscious of having stared his cousin out of

countenance. He laughed with awkward embarrassment. “I--I suppose it is

true--what you say,” he remarked, stumblingly.

She had perhaps some clew to the character of his reverie. She smiled

in a gently quizzical way, but went on soberly enough. “The thing of all

things,” she said, “is to be clearly and profoundly convinced in your

own mind that your marriage will be the most important event of your

life--that it will indeed affect, for good or for bad, every conceivable

element of your life. You have the kind of temperament which would be

peculiarly susceptible to such intimate influences. There are great

numbers of men--the vast majority--to whom it does not matter so much.

They accommodate themselves to their burdens, and shuffle along somehow,

with the patience of a cart-horse. But you--the wrong wife would wreck

you and kill you. I am speaking frankly, laddie,”--she gave the novel

word an intonation which made it music in his ears--“because you have

no mother, and because you are going into a very trying and delicate

situation with what I feel to be a pathetic lack of preparation.”

Christian drew his chair nearer to her, and crossed his knees, and

leaned back in an attitude of intimate ease. The conversation appealed

powerfully to him as having more of the atmosphere of domesticity and

sweet home influences in it than any he had ever heard.

“I know almost nothing at all of women,” he said, quite simply. “The

mothers of my pupils I saw sometimes and occasionally a sister, but they

were not in any sense my friends. As to marriage--of course that has

never been in my head. Until only the other day, the idea of a wife

would have been absurd. But now--as you say--it is not any longer

absurd.” He paused and gazed absently past her, as if in pursuit of

the thoughts his own words had set in motion. “I wonder--I wonder”--he

murmured, and then turned his bright eyes to her, full of wistful

expectancy. “Have you, par exemple, some one in your mind for me?” he

asked.

She laughed and shook her head. The implication in his tone, of entire

readiness to accept the bride of her selection, had its amusing and its

flattering sides; upon a second glance, however, it contained something

else not so much to her liking. She frowned a little at this something.

“Oh, you must not approach the subject in that spirit,” she adjured him.

“It is the one affair of all others on earth in which you must be guided

absolutely by your own heart and your own mind. We speak of the heart

and mind as distinct from each other; I don’t know that they are not

one and the same. Perhaps I would put it this way--when your heart _and_

your mind are completely agreed, when your personal liking and your

deliberate judgment pull together in exactly the same direction--so that

it seems to you that they _are_ one and the same thing--then--then-----”

“Then what?” demanded Christian, bending forward.

“Oh, I am not fortunate in expressing myself to-day,” Kathleen declared,

with a gesture of playful impatience. “But in general, this is what I

wanted to say: Do not be betrayed into haste in this matter of deciding

about a girl. You will see a large number of extremely attractive young

ladies. They will certainly not be looking or behaving their worst for

your benefit, and you on your side will be lacking the experience to

tell precisely what it is all worth. So walk quietly along, with your

wits about you, and see what there is to be seen for a time, and commit

yourself to nothing. A year hence, for example, you will look back

upon your present condition of mind with surprise. You will not seem

to yourself at all the same person. I can’t promise that you’ll be

happier,” she added, with a little smiling sigh, “but you will know a

great deal more about what you want--or rather about making sure that

you are getting what you want.”

“I know what I shall do,” he declared, after a moment’s reflection. “I

shall come always to you, and beg your wise and good advice. You will

tell me if I am making a bad choice.”

“You talk as if you were entering upon a lifelong series of

experiments,” she laughed at him. “No, I’ll undertake no such

responsibility as that, young man.” She explained, more gravely: “It

is never quite possible for a friend, no matter how wise and fond the

friend may be, to advise upon this matter. To give information upon the

subject, that is another affair. But specific advice, no. But let me

finish what I had in mind to say. You have seen here, during this past

fortnight, what great hopes are built upon your administration of your

affairs when you come into the title. No, don’t speak yet. You must not

pledge yourself at all to the System. It would be unfair to let you do

it. But at all events you have seen it, and you will think it all over,

and, whether you take it up altogether or not, I know it will have its

effect on you. You will set an ideal of usefulness and duty before

you, and you will have your heart fixed on realizing it. Well, then,

I counsel you above all things to keep that idea in mind whenever you

think of marriage. A man has a good many sides to his life, but the side

which is most vital to him is that of the work he wants to do in the

world. If the wife fits perfectly on that side, the discrepancies

elsewhere are of small account by comparison. They smooth away,

they adjust themselves. But the misfit on the side of the man’s

ambitions--that never effaces itself. And so, just in proportion as the

work you want to do becomes clear in your mind, you ought to define

to yourself the type of woman who will be most sympathetic toward that

work, and who will best help you in it--or rather, who will help you in

it in the way you like best. I don’t say you will find the perfect type

of that woman--but you should have the type before you, and be able to

measure people by its standards. But I have harangued you long enough!

There is something in the atmosphere here: we all deliver lectures to

each other at the most unscrupulous length. Poor boy! We’ve done nothing

but make speeches to you since you showed in sight.”

Christian deprecated her suggestion with persuasive hands. “I have

learned here, I think, all that I know,” he protested. He did not,

however, insist upon further generalizations. “One thing you said,” he

remarked, thoughtfully, “puts a question into my head. You said it was

better to give information than advice. Now there is so much that I am

in ignorance about. Perhaps I do wrong to ask you--but I am curious to

know more about the people of the family--our own family. There are no

ladies of my own blood? I mean, all I have seen or heard of come to us

by marriage, like yourself.”

“You hit upon the weakest and unhappiest point,” she replied. “There has

not been a daughter born in the Torr family for over a hundred years. I

have always insisted that this has operated like a curse on the family.

The beautiful humanizing charm of little girls about the house--this

they have never felt. The mothers have had no daughters to lean upon,

the men have never known what a sister was like. That one fact, it seems

to me, is enough to account for everything that is hard and rough and

cruel in their story.”

Christian bowed his head in silent token of comprehension.

“I am always more grieved than angry, when I’m thinking of the black

sheep in the family fold,” she went on. “They had never a chance. It was

like a tradition in the family that the father should be a brute and

the mother a fool. A daughter here and there might have softened the

combination--but with little boys alone face to face with it--what could

they do? They grew up in the stables and the kennels. Think of those two

young men whom you met at Caermere, for example. Lord Julius told me of

their scene with you, and I’m far from blaming you--but think of their

bringing up! Their father, Lord Edward, I remember very well. I saw him

when I was a girl, at the Punchestown races, and my brother told me his

name. Even without it, I should have remembered his face as the coarsest

and meanest I ever saw. He married a woman out of some vile gambling set

that he was in as a young man. She is still alive somewhere, and has an

allowance from Lord Julius for suppressing herself, and not using the

family name. Well, when I think of the blood in those two boys, and

of the horrors of their childhood till they were taken away from their

mother, and sent into the country to school--upon my soul I can only

wonder that they come so near decency as they do. Your encounter with

them happened to strike out sparks, but you must remember what a blow it

represented to them.”

The young man gave a somewhat perfunctory nod. His sympathies were

somehow obdurate upon this particular point.

“Oh, and that reminds me,” she went on. “I said that the family was

daughterless--but Eddy has a little girl. It is very quaint to think

what she will grow up like, under the maternal wing of Cora Bayard.

Yet I am told there are worse mothers than Cora. I’ve never seen her,

myself.”

“I saw her at Caermere,” Christian remarked. “She seemed very frightened

and sad--and since it was because of me, I did not look much at her. I

remember only the effect of a likeness to Pierrot--the red lips on the

white face. But”--he drew his chair still nearer, and betrayed by

manner and tone alike his approach to a subject of more than casual

interest--“the other lady whom I saw there--Lady Cressage--I had much

conversation with her. I feel that she and I are friends. I liked her

very much indeed--but I have no information about her whatever. If I am

permitted to confess it--I tried to talk about her with Lord Julius

and with Emanuel, but they at once spoke of other things. You see how

frankly I am telling you everything; that is because you make me feel

so wonderfully at home. But perhaps you do not like to talk about her,

either.”

She smiled pleasantly enough in comment upon his faltering conclusion.

“Oh, I think you exaggerate the conspiracy of silence,” she answered.

“Neither Lord Julius nor Emanuel has anything hostile to say about Edith

Cressage, but she doesn’t quite appeal to their imagination, and so they

find nothing of any sort to say. But it is only fair to remember that

they are both men with peculiar and exacting standards for women. They

would be equally silent about a hundred other ladies of unblemished

character, and of beauty and wit untold. It is nothing at all against

her that she hasn’t excited their enthusiasm. I do not know her at all

well, but I think she is very nice. Now--is that what you wanted me to

say?”

The mild note of banter which informed her words put Christian if

possible even more at his ease. He stood up, with his hands in the sleek

pockets of his new coat, and bent down upon her a joyous smile.

“No, ever so much more!” he insisted, gaily. “She is very beautiful;

she has the air and the distinction of a grande dame; she speaks like a

flute, and what she says is clever and apropos; she is unhappy, and yet

with no bitterness toward any one; she seemed to like me very much, and,

mind you, she was the first fine lady whom I had ever met. Enfin, she is

my cousin, and the fact impresses me. What is more natural than that I

should be eager to know all about her?”

Kathleen did not respond readily to his mood. She knitted her brows

slightly once more, and looked away from him toward the window. “It is

rather hard for me to explain,” she began at last, doubtfully. “From

a good many points of view--her own included--I dare say we do her an

injustice. Don’t misunderstand me; we are all sorry for her--and I for

one have my moments of doubt whether we oughtn’t to be something more

than sorry.”

“Yes, that is the phrase,” put in Christian, strenuously. “I think that

I myself am something more than sorry for her.”

She looked up at him, at first with a shadow of apprehension in her

eyes. Then she estimated aright his enthusiasm with a gentle smile. “I

will explain as well as I can,” she said, softly. “As you say, you are

entitled to be told. The feeling, then, is--I am speaking of Lord Julius

and Emanuel, and more or less of myself too--the feeling is that she

ought not to have made the marriage she did. Everybody knew that the

young man she married was a worthless creature--a violent, ignorant,

low-minded fellow. You could not see him, much less talk with him,

without recognizing this. One knows perfectly well that she must have

hated the very thought of him as a lover or a companion. But he is

the heir to a dukedom, and so she marries him. You see what I mean; it

seemed an unpleasant thing to us.”

Christian considered with a puzzled air the situation thus defined.

“But,” he commented, with hesitation, “it is the metier of a young woman

to get a husband, and to get the best one for herself that she can. If

she is so beautiful that a man wishes to make her a duchess, why, that

is her triumph. Would you have her forego it? And if she says ‘no’,

why, then the next one he asks says ‘yes’--and it is merely that the

first one has waived her place in the queue for another. The queue

remains the same. And if this were not so, why, then, young men who are

not very good, they would get no wives at all. But,” he added, in

extenuation of his dissent, “all these matters are so differently regarded,

you know, in France.” She did not look altogether pleased with him.

“I thought you would have caught my meaning more readily,” she said,

“despite your Continental point of view. For that matter, it is the

common English point of view also. There is a matrimonial market, of

course, and girls offer themselves in it to the highest bidder, and

nothing that we can do will change it. But at least we are free to think

what we like of the wretched business--and to hold our own opinions of

the people who traffic in it.”

Kathleen had stated her position with a certain argumentative warmth,

which gave her tone a novel effect of reproof. The sight now of the

young man’s saddened and surprised expression sent her mood up with

a rebound. She put a hand on his arm, as he stood before her, and

reassured him by a kindly laugh. “Ah, now,” she said, with genial

pleading in her soft voice, “don’t be making a mountain of my molehill.

I only wanted you to understand how we felt. And as I have told you, we

have our reservations about even that feeling. The poor girl did only

what she was expected to do--what her mother and her family and all the

friends that surrounded her took it quite as a matter of course that

she should do. Probably she never once encountered the opinion that she

should do otherwise. No doubt that is to be said for her. In fact, I

should never have dreamed of blaming her to you, if you had not pressed

me. And after it’s all said and done, you may take it from me that

perhaps I don’t blame her so very much. She was poor, and not over

comfortable at home, I think, and she was very young, and people ran

after her to an extraordinary extent--and to be the beauty of the season

in London is enough to turn any one’s head. Poor creature--it’s bitterly

enough she’s paid for her whistle!”

He smiled down into her eyes. “That is how I knew you would end by

speaking of her,” he said. “It is in that same way that she moves me--by

my compassion. And this is my fancy”--he began, in a more vivacious

tone--“I should like to tell it to you--it seems that I am to have the

power to do so many such wonderful things--well, then, nothing would

delight me more than to be very good to her. It is my _fantaisie_--and

there is no harm in it, _is_ there?--to atone to her for some of the

unhappiness she has suffered. I have thought about it much since I left

Caermere. It seems that it would be a good thing for me to do--like an

act of piety. You must remember--she was the first lady who spoke kindly

to me in England. And I think you will be pleased with me for being

grateful. But, of course, if Emanuel tells me ‘no’----”

“Oh, no one will tell you ‘no,’” she assured him, rising as she spoke,

and looking into his face with beaming eyes. “It is the kind of spirit

we like in you. Never imagine that we will be obstacles in its way. Only

be on your guard against the soft heart running away with you. The

world is full of clever and adroit people who practice upon innocent

generosity. It is not so much the worth of what they wheedle from you,

as the shock of your discovery of their tricks. That hurts a young

nature, and very often callouses and hardens it. But here I am,

lecturing you again!”

Christian had not, in truth, been following her remarks with complete

attention. Something had come up in his mind, which by the time she

stopped he seemed to have turned over and over, and examined from many

standpoints, and finally decided to speak about.

“I was not wholly exact,” he began, with constraint, “when I said that

Lady Cressage was the first lady who spoke kindly to me in England. I

mentioned it to Lord Julius--there was a very charming and good young

lady who traveled with me from Rouen, and crossed on the boat--and it is

a very curious thing, but when we became acquainted, and I hinted to her

about my story, she knew who I was. Indeed, it was she who told me who I

was. I had the whole wonderful tale from her--and the kindness and sweet

sympathy with which she told it to me, a little at a time--ah, that is

what I will never forget! I am bound to remember her with gratitude

all my life. And that is another _fantaisie_ of mine--that I shall do

something good for her. Oh, she has no selfish thoughts! She would not

even tell me her name!”

Kathleen’s comment was prefaced by a mirthful chuckle. “I can’t

deny that gratitude is a very active and resourceful element in your

composition,” she declared, and laughed again. “Oh, we’ll advertise for

her. How would this do: ‘The young lady who meets returning lost heirs

to the British nobility at Rouen, and lets them down easily’? Or we

might----”

“Ah,” Christian interrupted, pleadingly, “I am really very sincere

about her. You cannot imagine anything finer or more delicate than her

character. And besides,”--he added this with visible reluctance--“I have

learned since who she is. Lady Cressage told me. She is the sister of

the lady you call Cora--the wife of that young man Edward--but she is

not an actress! It is not in the least her _type!_ She earns her

own living--she has some work to do--I think it is with a

writing-machine--that is, a type-writer, n’est-ce pas?”

Mrs. Emanuel did not immediately reply, but moved to the window, looked

out and then walked slowly back to where he stood. “I am not going to

suggest an unkind thought about this girl,” she said, deliberately.

“I would not want you to think differently of her, or of the grateful

impulse you have toward her. Indeed, I have heard something of her--and

it is much to her credit. But--this sounds a mean thing to say, and yet

it has its important true side--people should stick to their class. Bear

that always in mind. There seem to be brilliant exceptions to the rule,

whenever we look about us--but just the same, the rule exists. But--now

I _will_ stop, once for all!” She mused at him, with a twinkling eye.

“You poor lad, there’s something about you that draws down lectures as a

lightning-rod draws electricity. And here’s the trap!”

When Emanuel returned from London a few days later, to report that his

young cousin had been comfortably installed in chambers on Duke Street,

St. James’s, and seemed to get on capitally with Lord Lingfield, who

was showing him the ropes, Kathleen received the news with less than her

accustomed cheerfulness.

“I haven’t been quite happy, thinking of him alone in London,” she

admitted, in the course of their conversation. “I feel, somehow, as if

we should have gone up, and taken a house for the winter.”

“Ah, but, sweetheart,” he urged, almost reproachfully, “you see how I am

up to my eyes in all sorts of work. This is really about the most

trying and ticklish stage we have gone through yet. If the fibrous

silk processes are what is claimed for them, and your girls display the

aptitude that you count upon----”

But Kathleen for once seemed not to listen. She had turned, and moved a

few steps listlessly away. She took a flower from a vase, picked it to

pieces and gazed in a brown study at the meaningless fragments.

“Yes, I know,” she remarked at last, with a half sigh. Then she threw

the petals into the grate, and, with a decisive little shake of head and

shoulders, wheeled round, and came smilingly to her husband.

“And whom did you see in town?” she asked.

PART III