CHAPTER XXI

Christian strolled aimlessly about for a long time in the closely

packed congeries of streets, little and big, behind St. Paul’s. It

happened to be all new ground to him, and something novel was welcome to

his troubled and restless mind. He loitered from one window to another,

examining their contents gravely; at the old book stalls he took down

numbers of volumes and looked laboriously through them, as if conducting

an urgent search for something.

His jumbled thoughts were a burden to him. He could get nothing coherent

from them, It was not even clear to his perception whether he was really

as dejected and disconsolate as he ought to be.

He had only recently been plunged into despairing depths of sadness, and

it was fitting that he should still be racked with anguish. Yet there

was no actual pain--there was not even a dogged insensibility to the

frivolous distractions of the moment. He became exceedingly interested

in an old copy of Boutell, for example, and hunted eagerly through the

multitude of heraldic cuts to see if the white bull on a green ground

of the Torrs was among them. His disappointment at not finding it was so

keen that for the instant it superseded his abiding grief. His discovery

of this fact entertained him; he was almost capable of laughing in

amusement at it. Then, in self-condemnation, he sought to call up before

his mental vision the picture of Frances, as she had looked when they

had said good-bye. The image would not come distinctly. Her face eluded

him; he could only see her walking away, instead, under the feeble green

of the young trees. None the less, he said deliberately to himself that

he was unhappy beyond the doom of most men, and that the hope had gone

out of his life.

The day had turned out unexpectedly warm. In the middle of his shapeless

musings, the ornate sign of a Munich brewery on a cool, shaded doorway

suddenly attracted him. The dusky, restful emptiness of the place inside

seemed ideally to fit his mood. He went in, and seated himself with a

long sigh of satisfaction at one of the tables. Here, in this mellow

quiet, over the refreshing contents of the big, covered stone mug, he

could think peacefully and to advantage. He lit a cigar, and leaning

back in comfort, gave the signal to his thoughts to arrange and

concentrate themselves.

What should he do next? Yes--that was far more to the point than mooning

over the irrevocable past. He had left Duke Street with hardly any plan

beyond not returning thither. Luggage of some sort he would have to

have--changes of linen and the like, and the necessary articles of the

toilet. It was his intention to buy these as the need of them arose--and

the character of his purchases would also depend a good deal, of course,

upon the decision he should come to concerning his movements. He had

said that he would leave England--and now he asked himself whether there

was anything to prevent his departure that very evening. One of the

deepest charms of travel must be to start off on the instant, upon the

bidding of the immediate whim, and descend upon your destination before

there has been time to cheapen it by thinking about it. Why should he

not eat the morrow’s breakfast in the Hague--and dine at Amsterdam?

Similarly, he could within twenty-four hours be watching the marriage of

Mosel and Rhine at Coblenz--or gazing upon the wide, wet, white sands of

the Norman shore from the towering battlements of St. Michel. A hundred

storied towns, vaguely pictured in his imagination, beckoned to him

from across the Channel. Upon reflection, it seemed to him that Holland

offered the most wooing invitation. He asked the waiter for Bradshaw,

and noted the salient points of the itinerary from Queen borough.

It was now three o’clock. There was plenty of time for all purchases,

and a leisurely dinner before going to Victoria. It occurred to him that

the dinner must be very good--a luxurious kind of farewell repast.

He would make a memorandum now of the things he ought to buy here in

London. Holland was by all accounts a dear place--and moreover he had

heard that the Dutch customs examination was by no means troublesome.

It would be more intelligent to complete practically his outfit here.

He took out a pencil, and began feeling in his coat-pocket for a bit of

paper. The hand brought out, beside Lady Milly’s note about the Private

View, three or four unopened letters. He had entirely forgotten their

existence--and stared at them now in puzzled indecision. It was not a

sensible thing, or a fair thing either, to tear up and destroy unread

the message which some one else had been at pains to transcribe for

you. But on the other hand, these missives belonged to the stupid and

intolerable life in Duke Street, with which he had definitely parted

company. It might even be said, in one sense, that he was not the person

to whom they were addressed.

By some whimsical freak of the brain, he suddenly asked himself whether

he should not go to Greece instead of Holland, and enlist as a volunteer

in the war against the Turks. He became on the instant immersed in

adventurous military speculations. He had not fallen into the English

habit of following the daily papers with regularity, and he was

conscious of no responsibility whatever toward the events of the world

at large, as Reuter and the correspondents chronicled them. Something

of this new war in Thessaly, however, he had perforce read and heard. Of

the circumstances and politics surrounding this latest eruption of

the Eastern Question he knew little more than would any of the young

Frenchmen of education among whom he had spent his youth. But in an

obscure way, he comprehended that good people in Western Europe always

sympathized with the Christian as against the Moslem. It seemed that

some generous-minded young Englishmen were already translating this

sympathy into action; somewhere he had seen an account of a party of

volunteers leaving London for Athens, and being cheered by their friends

at the station. Now that he thought of it, the paper in which he had

read the report had ridiculed the affair as an undesirable kind of a

joke--but the impulse of the volunteers seemed fine to him, none the

less.

There ought to be some martial blood in his veins; the soldier-figure of

his father rose before him in affirmation of the idea.

But no--what nonsense it was! If ever there had been a youth bred and

narrowed to the walks of peace, he was that young person. He who

had never struck another human being in his life, that he could

remember--what would such a tame sheep be doing in the open field,

against the unknown, ferocious Osmanli Turk? The gross absurdity of the

picture flared upon him, momentarily--and then the whole notion of armed

adventure had vanished from his mind.

His attention reverted to the letters--and now it seemed quite a

matter of course that he should open them. The first three were of no

importance. The fourth he regarded with wide-open eyes, after he had

grasped the identity of the writer. He read it over slowly, more than

once:

“27A Ashley Gardens, S. W., Monday.

“My Dear Mr. Christian Tower: I have taken this little place in town for

the time being, and I shall be glad to see you when you are this way.

To-morrow, Tuesday, is a day when I shall not be at home to other

people--if you have nothing better to do.

“Yours very sincerely,

“Edith Cressage.”

Nothing better to do? Christian’s thoughts lingered rather blankly upon

the phrase--until all at once he perceived that there could not possibly

be anything better to do. He rose with decision, hurriedly gulped what

remained of his second pot of beer, paid his bill and marched out with

the air of a man with a mission.

In the hansom, he read the letter still again, and leaned backward to

see as much as possible of himself in the little mirror at the side.

His chin could not be described as closely shaven, and his garments were

certainly not those of the afternoon caller. The resource of stopping

at Duke Street occurred to him--but no! that would be too foolish. The

whole significance of the day would be abolished, wiped out, by such a

fatuous step. And he repeated to himself that it _was_ a day of supreme

significance. By comparison with the proceedings and experiences of this

long and crowded day, the rest of his life seemed colorless indeed. And

what was of most importance in it, he declared to himself, was not its

external happenings, but the fine and novel posture of his liberated

mind toward them. He was for the first time actually a free man. His

enfranchisement had not been thrown at him by outsiders; it proceeded

from within him--the product of his own individuality.

That was what people would discern in him hereafter--a complete and

self-sufficient personality. He would no longer be pointed out and

classified as somebody’s grandson--somebody’s cousin or grand-nephew.

The world would recognize him as being himself. He felt assured,

for example, upon reflection that Lady Cressage would not dream of

questioning the fashion of the clothes in which he came to see her. She

would perceive at once that he had developed beyond the silly pupilary

stage of subordination to his coat and hat. She was so clever and

sympathetic a woman, he felt intuitively, that these symbols of his

emancipated condition would delight her. It was true, he saw again from

the mirror that his collar might be a little whiter; his cuffs, too, had

lost their earlier glow of starched freshness. But these were trifles to

serious minds. And besides, was it not all in the family?

There was a momentary block at the corner of Parliament Street, and here

a newsboy thrust a fourth edition upon Christian with such an effect

of authority that he found a penny and took the paper. It was the

“Westminster Gazette,” and when he had looked upon the second page for

a possible drawing by Gould, and had skimmed the column of desultory

gossip on the last page, which always seemed to his alien conceptions of

journalism to be the kind of matter he liked in a newspaper, he laid the

sheet on his knee, and resumed his idle reverie. To his great surprise

the cabman’s shouts through the roof were necessary to awaken him at

Ashley Gardens. He shook himself, laughingly explained that he had been

up all night as he paid his fare, and ascended the steps of 27A, paper

in hand.

The servant seemed prepared for his coming, for upon giving his name in

response to her somewhat meaning inquiry, she led him in at once. He

sat waiting for a few moments in a small and conveniently appointed

drawing-room, and then stood up, at the rustle of rapid skirts which

announced Lady Cressage in the half-open doorway.

She entered with outstretched hand, and a radiant welcome upon her face.

Christian noted that beyond the hand there was a forearm, shapely and

cream-hued, disclosed by the lace of her flowing sleeve. There were

billows of this lace, and of some fragile, light fabric which seemed

sister to it, enveloping the lady, yet her tall, graceful figure was in

some indefinable way molded to the eye beneath them all. The pale hair

was as he had first seen it, loosely drawn across her temples; there

were warm shadows in it which he had not thought to see. The face, too,

had some unexpected phase, here in the subdued light of the curtained

room. There was a sense of rosiness in the rounded flesh, a certain

reposeful elation in the regard of the blue eyes, which put quite at

fault the image of harrowed restlessness and nerves he had retained from

Caermere. It was in an illuminating second that he saw all this,

and perceived that she was very beautiful, and flushed with the deep

consciousness that she read his thoughts like big print.

“It was the greatest cheek in the world--my summoning you like this,”

she said, as they shook hands. “Yes--sit here. Put your hat and paper

on the sofa. This is my only reception room--but we might have a little

more light.”

She moved to the window, to pull back the curtains, and then about the

room, lightly rearranging some of the chairs and trinkets--all with a

buoyant daintiness of motion which inexpressibly charmed him. “These

are not my things, you know,” she explained over her shoulder. “I am

not trying in the least to live up to them, either. I take the place,

furnished, for three months, from the widow of an Indian officer. You

would think she would have some Indian things--but it might have all

come direct from Tottenham Court Road. It’s impossible to get the

slightest sensation of being at home, here. One could really extract

more domesticity out of four bare cottage walls. Or no, what am I

saying?”--she had returned, and sinking into the low chair opposite him,

pointed her words with a frank smile into his face---“it _is_ a bit like

home--to see you here!”

“I am very glad to be here,” he assured her, nodding his unfeigned

pleasure. “But it seemed as if you would never tell me I might come.”

“Oh, I was worried to death. There were all sorts of things to see about

when I first came up,” she explained with animation. “And I had the

feeling that I didn’t want you to come till I had smoothed some of my

wrinkles out, and had achieved a certain control over my nerves. It was

not fair to myself--the view you had of me at Caermere.”

The view of her that was afforded him here brought a glow of admiration

to his eyes.

“To think of your being my cousin!” he said, with some remote echo in

his own voice of the surprise which he recalled in Dicky Westland’s

tone. It seemed wonderful indeed as he looked at her, and smiled. He

shook his head presently, in response to her question whether he had

any recent news from Caermere, and continued to observe her with a rapt

sense of the miraculous being embodied before his eyes.

“But the duke is very low indeed,” she told him in a hushed voice. “I

had it yesterday from--from one of the household.”

The tidings barely affected him. That side of his mind was still fast in

the rut of last night’s mutiny.

“I have quite decided to go away,” he announced, calmly. “I get no good

out of the life here. It does not suit me. Whatever comes to me, why,

that I shall accept, but to use it in my own way, living my own life.

Now that I am a free man, it astonishes me that I did not rebel long

ago.”

“Rebel--against what?” she asked him, with a kind of confidential candor

which put him even more at his ease.

“Oh, against everything,” he smiled back at her. “This existence

that they arranged for me--it is like being embalmed and wrapped in

mummy-cloths. Personally I do not survive a thousand years--but I am but

one link in a long chain of respectable people who have lived like that,

without living at all, for many thousands. It is being buried alive.

Why, you will see what I mean--a man is a creature different from other

human creatures. He has an individual nature of his own. His tastes, his

inclinations, his impulses and ideas, are not quite like those of the

people about him. He would be happy to follow these according to his own

wishes. But then everybody seizes upon him and says: ‘No, you must

be and do just like the rest. You will be noticed and disliked if you

indulge in even the slightest variation. These are the coats you are to

wear, and the hats and caps and neckties. This is Duke Street, which

you must live in. This is the hour to get up, this is the hour to make

calls, this is the corner of your card to turn down, this is the list of

people at whose houses you must dine, these are your friends ready-made

for you out of a book.’ And truly what is it all?--utter, utter

emptiness. You are really not alive at all! You have no more personal

sensation of your own existence than an insect. It is all this that I

rebel against.”

She reclined a little in her chair, and covered him with a meditative

gaze. “I know the feeling,” she commented thoughtfully. “I used to

have sharp spasms of it--oh, ages ago--whenever a shopwoman showed me

something, and said, ‘This is very much worn just now,’ or, ‘We are

selling a great deal of this.’ Then I would not have that particular

thing if I died for it. But do you really feel so earnestly about it?”

She put the question in deference to a gesture by which he had signified

the inadequacy of her comparison. “Ah, the real life, as you call it, is

a more complicated thing than one fancies.”

“But that is precisely the point,” with vivacity. “I have thought much

about that. Is it not the artificial life which is complicated instead?

Do we not confound the two? If you consider it, what can be more simple

that the natural life of a man? If an astronomer, for example, has a

difficult problem to work out, he first busies himself in discovering

and putting aside all the things which seem to be factors in it but

really are not. One by one he gets rid of them, until at last he has the

naked equation before him--and then a result is possible. But with us,

it seems that we go quite the other way about it. We take the problem of

life--which is extraordinarily simple to begin with--and we pile upon it

and around it thousands of outside rules and conventions and traditions,

and we confuse it with other thousands of prejudices, and insincerities,

and old mistakes that no one has had the industry to examine--and then

we look with embarrassment at what we have done, and shake our heads,

and say that the problem is too hard, that it passes the wisdom of man

to solve it.”

“I wish you joy of solving it,” she remarked, after another reflective

survey of his face. “I am sure I wish some one would do it. But you

spoke of going away. How would that help matters?”

The recurrence of the question startled him. He looked at her with

lifted head, recalling swiftly meanwhile the tone in which Frances

had uttered those same words. A blurred, imperfect retrospect of the

morning’s events and talks passed fleetingly across his mind--and its

progress disquieted him. Some tokens of perturbation on his face seemed

to warn her, for she went on without waiting for an answer.

“I am not surprised to find you feeling like this,” she said. “It is

quite the effect that I imagined London would produce upon you. I have

no right to say so, perhaps, but it seemed to me from the start that it

was being badly managed--I mean the way you were sent here by yourself,

and given nothing to do except follow about where Lord Lingfield led.

It is not what I should have done--but the truth is that Emanuel knows

nothing at all about the characters and temperaments of human beings.

If men agree with him, he thinks they are good men, and if they disagree

with him, they are bad men--or at least not worth thinking about at

all.”

“I had quite resolved not to commit myself to his System,” Christian

informed her, “even before I made up my mind to--to take other steps.”

His closing euphemism seemed to attract her attention. “What is it you

intend to do?” she asked of him, softly. She sat upright again, with an

air of friendly curiosity.

In the face of this query, he discovered that his intentions were by no

means so clear to himself as they had been. “It is still rather in the

air,” he said vaguely. “But we talk always of myself! Tell me, instead,

about yourself! It is an infinitely more pleasing subject. You are here

in London for only three months? And you are alone here?”

She smiled in an indefinite fashion, and leaned back in her chair.

“Ought I to have a chaperon? I dare say. But there is no room for her

here. The flat accommodates just one solitary elderly lady and here you

behold her. Oh, I am a hundred years old, I assure you!”

He could only wave his hand at her in genial deprecation. “Oh, who is

younger than you?” he murmured.

She sighed. “By the almanac I am four-and-twenty,” she went on, with a

new note of gentle melancholy. “But by my own feelings, I seem to have

been left over from the reign of William the Fourth. And really, it is

not my own feelings alone--when I go out, I observe that very old

men take me down to dinner, and talk to me precisely as if I were a

contemporary of theirs.”

“When we were together at Caermere,” interposed Christian, “you

confessed to me that you were not happy--and it was my great delight to

pledge myself that if ever there was anything I could do--”

“Oh, there is nothing at all,” she interrupted him to declare. “My

case will not come up. It has all been settled. The accounts, or

settlements--or whatever you call them--have been made up, and my share

of my husband’s share of his father’s interest in _his_ father’s estate

has been ascertained. I have six hundred a year for life. It is a mild

and decorous competence. I do not complain. It will keep a genteel roof

over my head here in London, or a small house and a pony-trap in the

country. It will run to a month at a pension in the cheaper parts of

Switzerland, or perhaps even to a lodging and a bath-chair at Brighton,

when it is not quite the season. Oh, I shall get on very well indeed--at

all events,” she added with a touch of bitterness, “much better than I

deserve to do.”

Christian lifted his brows in protesting inquiry. “You always speak in

that tone of yourself! It pains me to hear you. I cannot think of any

one who deserves the kindness and friendly good offices of fortune more

than you.”

Lady Cressage gave an uncertain little laugh. “You are too

generous-minded--too innocent. You do not know. Me? My dear friend--I

have committed the unpardonable sin! I humiliated and degraded myself

to win a great prize in the world’s lottery--and I did not bring it off.

That is my offense. If I had won the trick--why, they would be burning

incense before me! But I lost instead--and they leave me quite by myself

to digest my own disgust. I don’t talk about it--I have never said as

much to any living soul as I am saying to you--I don’t know why I am

telling you--”

“Is there any one else who would listen with such sympathy?” Christian

heard himself interjecting.

“But it is too cruel,” continued Lady Cressage, “too shameful a story! I

was not happy at home. It was nobody’s fault in particular; I don’t know

that we were more evil-tempered and selfish among ourselves than most

other middle-class households with four hundred a year, and three

daughters to marry off. I was the youngest, and I had the sort of good

looks which were in fashion at the moment, and mamma worked very hard

for me--pretending to idolize me before people though we yapped at

each other like fox-terriers in private--and I was lucky in making

friends--and so I went swimming out on the top of the wave that season,

the most envied poor fool of a girl in London. And when Cressage wanted

to marry me--I was dizzy with the immensity of what seemed to be offered

me. My parents were mad with pride and ecstasy. Everybody around me

pretended a kind of holy joy at my triumph. I give you my word!--never

so much as a whisper came to my ears of any shadow of a reason why I

should hesitate--why I should think a second time! Do you see? There

was not an honest person--a single woman or a man with decency enough to

warn an ignorant girl of her danger--within reach of me anywhere. They

all kept as silent as the grave--with that lying grin of congratulation

on their mean faces--and they led me to be married to the beast!”

She had sat erect in her chair as she spoke, and now she rose to her

feet, motioning him not to get up as she did so. She took a restless

step or two, her shoulders trembling with excitement, and her hands

clenched. “Ah-h! I will never forgive them the longest day of my life!”

she called out.

Then, with a determined shake of her head, she seemed to master herself.

Standing before a small mirror in the panel of a cabinet against the

wall, she busied her beautiful hands in correcting the slight disorder

of her hair. When she turned to him, it was with a faint, tremulous

smile surmounting the signs of stress and agitation upon her face. She

sank into the chair again, with a long-drawn breath of resignation.

“But it isn’t nice to abuse the dead,” she remarked, striving after an

effect of judicial fairness in her voice. “I didn’t mean to speak like

that. And for that matter, why should I speak at all of him? One

doesn’t blame a wolf for man-eating. You execrate instead the people

who deliberately throw a helpless human being to the wolf. I even say to

myself that I have no quarrel with Cressage. He was as God made him--if

the thought isn’t blasphemous. He was a great, overgrown, bullying,

blubbering, ignorant boy, who never got beyond the morals of the stables

and kennels, and the standards of taste of the servants’ hall. One could

hardly call him vicious; that is to say, he did not deliberately set

out to cause suffering. He did not do anything on deliberation. He acted

just as his rudimentary set of barbaric impulses prompted him to act.

Some of these impulses would have been regarded as virtues in a more

intelligent man. For example, he was wildly, insanely jealous of me. It

took the most impossible and vulgar forms, it is true, but still----”

“Oh, need we talk of him?” It was with almost a groan of supplication

that Christian stopped her. “He is too unpleasant to think about.

Nothing that I had heard of him before made me sorry that he was

dead--but this--it is too painful. But now you are a free woman--you see

your path well before you, to travel as you choose. And what will you

do?”

She sighed and threw up her hands with a gesture of contemptuous

indifference. “What does any English lady with six hundred a year do?

Devote her energies to seeing that she gets--let me see, what is the

sum?--to seeing that she gets twelve thousand shillings’ worth of

respectable discomfort, and secures reasonable opportunities for making

those about her uncomfortable also. Oh, I don’t in the least know what

I shall do. The truth is,” she added, with a sad smile, “I have lived

alone with my dislikes so long, and I have nourished and watered them

so carefully, that now they fill my whole garden. They have quite choked

out the flowers of existence--these thick, rank, powerful weeds. And I

haven’t the energy--perhaps I haven’t even the desire--to pull them up.

They seem appropriate, somehow--they belong to the desolation that has

been made of my life.”

Christian bent forward, and made a movement as if to take one of the

hands which lay dejectedly in her lap. He did not do this, but touched a

projecting bit of lace upon one of the flounces of her gown, and twisted

it absent-mindedly in his fingers instead.

“You are still unhappy!” he said reproachfully, his eyes glowing with

the intensity of his tender compassion. “I do not forgive myself for

my inability to be of help to you. It is incredible that there is not

something I can do.”

“But you are going away,” she reminded him, in a soft monotone. “You

have your own unpleasantnesses to think of--and you are occupied with

plans for rearranging your life on new lines. I only hope that you will

find the happiness you are setting out in search of. But then men can

always get what they want, if they are only sufficiently in earnest

about it.”

“It is not entirely settled that I shall go away,” said Christian.

He twisted the lace in the reverse direction, and hesitated over his

further words. “That was only one of several alternatives. I am clear

only about my resolve to make a stand--to break away. But if I remained

here in England--in London?”--He looked with mingled trepidation and

inquiry into her face. “If I did not go abroad--is there anything I

could do?”

She regarded with attentiveness the hand which was playing havoc with

her flounce--and it straightway desisted. She continued to study the

little screwed-up cone of lace, in meditative silence. At last she shook

her head. “You must not give it another thought,” she said, but with no

touch of dictation in her musing tone. Her eyes dwelt upon him with a

remote and ruminating gaze. “I belong to a past generation. My chances

in the lottery are all exhausted--things of the past. You must not

bother about me. And I think you ought to give up those ideas of yours

about breaking away, as you call it. London hasn’t been made pleasant

for you, simply because the wrong people have gone the wrong way about

it to arrange matters for you. But there are extremely nice people among

the set you know, if you once understood them. With your position, you

can command any kind of associations you wish to have. After it is all

said and done, I think England has its full share of cultivated and

refined people of intelligence. I have not seen much of the Continent,

but I do not believe that it possesses any superiority over us in that

respect.”

“But in your own case,” urged Christian, somewhat hazily; “you said that

there were no honest people about you to warn you--though you were in

the best society. That is my feeling--that you do not get the truth from

them. They do not lie to you--but they are silent about the truth.”

“Is it different elsewhere?” she asked, gravely. “Is not the young

girl sold everywhere? Do you think that marriage is a more sacred and

ethereal thing among the great families of France or Austria or Germany

than it is with us? I have heard differently.”

“Oh, we are all equally uncivilized about women,” he admitted. “I feel

very strongly about that. But you, who have such knowledge and such

clear opinions--would you not love to do something to alter this

injustice to women? The thought has been much in my mind, of late.” He

paused to reflect in fleeting wonderment upon the fact that only this

morning he had been absorbed in it. “And my meaning is,” he stumbled

on, “there is nothing I would rather devote my life to than the task of

making existence easier and broader and more free for young women. Could

there be any finer work than that? I know that it appeals to you.”

She looked at him with an element of doubt in her glance. “Nothing

appeals very much to me--and I’m afraid my sex least of all. I do not

like them, to tell the truth. I never get over the surprised disgust of

waking up in the morning and finding that I am one of them. But this is

rather wandering from the point, isn’t it? I was urging you to give

over the notion of making a demonstration. You have waited thus long; be

content to wait just a little longer. My private belief is that the Duke

will not live the week out.”

Still, the assurance seemed to suggest nothing to him. “But if he dies,”

he protested, “how then will I be different? I am lonely--I am like a

forlorn man escaped on a raft from a shipwreck--I eat my heart out in

friendless solitude. And if I have a great title--why, then I shall be

more alone than ever. It is that way with such men--I have seen that

they hold themselves aloof--and others do not come freely near them.

It frightens me--the thought of living without friends. I say to you

solemnly that I would give it all--the position, the authority and

dignity, the estates, Caermere, everything--for the assurance of one

warm, human heart answering in every beat to mine! Has friendship

perished out of the world, then? Or has it never existed, except in the

books?”

Her beauty had never been so manifest to him, as now while he gazed at

her, and she did not speak. There seemed the faint, delicate hint of

a tenderness in the classical lines of the face that he had not seen

before. It was as if his appeal had brought forth some latent aptitude

of romance, to mellow the direct glance of her eyes, and soften in some

subtle way the whole charm of her presence. A new magic was visible in

her loveliness--and the sense that his words had conjured it into

being thrilled him with a wistful pride. No woman had thus moved

him heretofore. The perception that she was plastic to his mental

touch--that this flower-like marvel of comeliness and grace, of

exquisite tastes and pure dignity of soul, could be swayed by his

suggestion, would vibrate at the tone of his voice--awed him as if he

were confronted by a miracle. His breath came and went under a dull

consciousness of pain--which was yet more like pleasure. A bell sounded

somewhere within the house, and its brief crystal resonance seemed

somehow to clarify the ferment of his thoughts. All at once, as by the

flooding of sunlight into a darkened labyrinth, his mind was clear to

him. He knew what he wanted--nay, what all the years had been leading

him up to desire.

With his gaze maintained upon her face--timidly yet with rapturous

intentness, as if fearful of breaking the spell--he rose to his feet,

and stood over her. A confusion of unspoken words trembled on his lips,

as her slow glance lifted itself to his.

“It was like the pleasantry of a beautiful, roguish little girl”--he

began, smiling nervously down at her--“your saying that you belonged

to a generation earlier than mine. Do you think I do not know my

generation? And am I blind, that I do not see what is most precious in

it? This is what----”

An extraordinary outburst of disputing voices, in the little hallway

close at hand, broke in upon his words. He stopped, stared inquiringly

at Lady Cressage, and beheld her rise, frowning and hard-eyed, and step

toward the door. A vague sense of the familiar came to him from the

louder of the accents outside.

The door was opened, and the domestic, red-faced, and spluttering with

wrath, began some stammered explanation to her mistress. What she sought

to say did not appear, for on the instant the door was pushed farther

back, and a veiled lady took up her energetic stand upon the threshold.

“Don’t blame her,” this lady cried, in high, rapid tones. “I forced my

way in--something told me that you were at home. And when you hear my

news----”

“Oh, since you are here”--Lady Cressage began, coldly. “But, really,

Mrs. Torr----”

“Oh, no--call me Cora!” the other interrupted, vivaciously.

She went further, and bustling her arms against Edith’s shoulders,

purported to kiss her on both cheeks. Then, drawing back her head, she

went on: “My dear, the duke died at two this morning! It’s in all the

papers. But what isn’t in any of the papers is that the heir is missing.

It’s a very curious story. Mr. Westland here”--by her gesture it seemed

that Dicky was behind her in the hallway--“went to Duke Street this

noon, and found Christian’s man in great alarm. The youngster had

bolted, leaving a note saying merely that he was called away. Mr.

Westland’ then hunted me up, and we started out, for I had a kind

of clue, don’t you see. I knew where he was at ten o’clock this

forenoon--and we drove to Arundel Street, and there we found----”

Christian hurriedly stepped forward. “Oh, I think you may take it that

I am not lost,” he called out, revealing himself to the astonished Cora.

For the moment the chief thing in his mind was satisfaction at having

interrupted her disclosures about Arundel Street.

Then, as other thoughts crowded in upon him, he straightened his

shoulders and lifted his chin. “It’s all right,” he said, with a

reassuring wave of the hand toward the womenfolk of his family.

PART IV

CHAPTER XXII

On the morning of the funeral, six days later, Christian rose very

early, and took coffee in his library shortly after seven. Then,

lighting a cigarette, he resumed work upon several drawers full of

papers, open on the big table, where it had been left off the previous

evening. The details of the task seemed already familiar to him. He

scanned one document after another with an informed eye, and put it

in its proper pile without hesitation. He made notes suggested by the

contents of each, on the pad before him, with a quill pen and corrected

the vagaries of this unaccustomed implement, in the matter of blots and

inadequate lines, with painstaking patience. There were steel nibs in

abundance, and two gold stylographic pens, but he clung resolutely to

the embarrassing feather.

After a time he rested from his labors, and rang the bell beside his

desk; almost upon the instant Falkner appeared in the doorway.

“If Mr. Westland is up,” said Christian, “you may ask him to join me

here.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” the smooth-voiced, soft-mannered man replied, and

vanished.

The young duke rose, yawned slightly and moved to the window nearest

him. It opened, upon examination, and he stepped out on a narrow balcony

of stone which skirted the front of the square tower he had quitted. The

outlook seemed to be to the northeast, for a patch of sunshine lay upon

the outer edge of the balcony at the right. Breathing in delightedly the

fresh Maymorning air, he gazed upon the bold prospect of hills receding

in lifted terraces high against the remote sky-line. He had not seen

just this view from Caermere before--and he said to himself that it was

finer than all the others. Above each lateral stretch of purplish-gray

granite, to the farthest distance, there ran a band of cool green

foliage--the inexpressibly tender green of young birch trees; their

thin, chalk-white stems were revealed in delicate tracery against

indefinable sylvan shadows.

Through the early stillness, he could hear the faint murmur of the

Devon, gurgling in the depths of the ravine between him and the nearest

hill. “To-morrow,” he thought, “will begin the true life! All this will

be my home--mine! mine! and before anybody is up in the morning I will

be down where that river of black water runs, and fish in the deep pools

for trout.”

Some one touched his elbow. He turned with a quick nod and smile to

greet Dicky Westland. “I am up ages before you, you see,” he said

genially. “It was barely daylight when I woke--and I suffered tortures

trying to remain in bed even till six. Oh, this is wonderful out here!”

“Awfully jolly place, all round,” commented Dicky. He blinked to

exorcise the spirit of sleep and gazed at the prospect with determined

enthusiasm. “I haven’t looked about much, but I’ve found out one thing

already. There’s a ghost in my room--and I think he must have been a

professional pedestrian in life.”

“Splendid!” cried Christian, gaily. “Have you had coffee--or it is tea

you people drink, isn’t it? Then shall we get to work? I want the papers

out of the way before Emanuel comes. They will all be here between nine

and ten. I wanted to send carriages to Craven Arms, but it seemed there

were not horses enough, so hired traps are to be brought up from the

station.”

“Do you know who are coming?”

“Lord Julius, and Emanuel and his wife; the captain and his wife and

brother; Lord Chobham, and Lord Lingfield--I don’t know if any of their

women will come--and Lady Cressage. Then there are some solicitors,

and perhaps some old acquaintances of my grandfather’s. At all events,

Welldon has ordered four carriages and a break. There is to be breakfast

at ten, and I shall be glad when it is all over--when everything is

over. Do you know?--I have never been to a funeral in my life--and I

rather funk it.”

“Oh, they’re not so bad as you always think they’re going to be,” said

the secretary, consolingly. “The main thing is the gloves. I never could

understand it--but black gloves are invariably about two sizes smaller

than ordinary colors. You want to look out for that. But I dare say your

man is up to the trick--he looks a knowing party, does Falkner.”

“I fancy I shall give him back to Emanuel,” remarked Christian,

thoughtfully.

“He is an excellent servant, but he reminds me too much of Duke Street.

Did you notice the old butler yesterday afternoon?--he stood at the head

of the steps to meet us--that is old Barlow. I have a great affection

for him. I shall have him valet me, I think.”

“Isn’t he rather venerable for the job?” suggested the other. “And

wouldn’t it be rather a come-down for a head butler? They’re awfully

keen about their distinctions among themselves, you know.”

Christian smiled with placidity. “I think that the man whom I pick out

to be nearest me will feel that he has the best place in the household.

I shall be very much surprised indeed if that isn’t Barlow’s view. And

of course he will have his subordinates. But now let us take Welldon’s

statement for the last half of ’95, and the two halves of ’96.

Then we can get to the mine. Unless I am greatly mistaken, that is most

important. I find that the mining company’s lease falls in early next

year. And won’t you ring the bell and have Welldon sent up when he

comes?”

*****

Upon mature reflection Christian decided not to descend to meet his

guests at breakfast. When he had dismissed the estate agent, Welldon,

after a prolonged and very comprehensive interview, he announced this

decision to Westland. “You must go down and receive them in my place,”

he said.

“I will say that you have a cold,” suggested Dicky.

“By no means,” returned Christian, promptly.

“It is not necessary to enter into details. You receive them--that is

all. I have spoken with Barlow; he knows what to do with them in the

matter of rooms and so on. I am breakfasting here. And afterward--say at

eleven o’clock--I will see some of them here. There is an hour to spare

then, before we go to the church. I am not clear about this--which ones

to see first. There is that stupid reading of the will after we get

back----”

“By George! do they do that still?” interrupted Dicky. “I know they did

in Trollope and George Eliot--but I thought it had gone out.”

“It is kept up in old families,” replied Christian, simply. “In this

case it is a pure formality, of course. There is no mystery whatever.

The will was made in 1859, after the entail was broken, and merely

bequeaths everything in general terms to the heir-at-law. My grandfather

covenanted, at the same time, to Lord Julius to make no subsequent will

save by his advice and consent--so that there can be no complications

of any kind. I am thinking whether it would be better to see Lord Julius

and Emanuel before the reading of this will or after. Really it makes no

difference--perhaps it is better to get it over with. Yes--say to them

that I beg they will come to me here at eleven. You might bring them up

and then leave us together--or no, they know the way. Let them come up

by themselves.”

Through the open window there came the grinding sound of wheels upon

the gravel of the drive, around at the east front. At a gesture from the

other, Dicky hurried away.

Left to himself, Christian wandered again to the casement, and regarded

the spacious view with renewed interest. Falkner entered presently,

bearing a large tray, and spread some covered dishes upon a cloth on the

library table.

“How many carriages have come?” the master asked from his place at the

window.

“Four, Your Grace--and a break with some wreaths and Lord Chobham’s man

and a maid--I think it is Lady Cressage’s maid.”

“Who has come--outside the family?”

“Three gentlemen, Your Grace--one of them is Mr. Soman. Barlow thinks

they are all solicitors.”

Christian mused briefly upon the presence of Lord Julius’s man of

business. Since that first evening of his on English soil, at Brighton,

he had not seen this Mr. Soman. He remembered nothing of him, indeed,

save his green eyes. And now that he thought of it, even this was not a

personal recollection. It was the remark of the girl on the boat, about

his having green eyes, which stuck in his memory. He smiled, as he

looked idly out on the hills.

The girl on the boat! Was it not strange that his mind should have

applied to her this distant and chilling designation? Only a few days

ago--it would not be a week till to-morrow--she had seemed to him the

most important person in the world. A vision of his future had possessed

him, in which she alone had a definite share. How remote it seemed--and

how curious!

He recalled, quite impersonally, what he had heard in one way or another

about her family. Her father was some sort of underling in the general

post office--a clerk or accountant, or something of the kind. There was

a son--of course, that would be the brother Cora had spoken of--and

the ambition of the family had expended itself in sending this boy to

a public school, and to the university. The family had made great

sacrifices to do this--and apparently these had been wasted. He had the

distinct impression of having been told that the son was a worthless

fellow. How often that occurred in England--that everything was done

for the son, and nothing at all for the daughters! Then in fairness he

reflected that it was even worse in France. Yes, but somehow Frenchwomen

had a talent for doing for themselves. They were cleverer than their

brothers--more helpful, resourceful--in spite of the fact that the

brothers had monopolized the advantages. Images of capable, managing

Frenchwomen he had known rose before his mind’s eye; he saw them again

accomplishing wonders of work, diligent, wise, sensible, understanding

everything that was said or done. Yet, oddly enough, these very paragons

of feminine capacity had a fatal unfeminine defect; they did not know

how to bring up their sons. Upon that side they were incredibly weak and

silly; it was impossible to prevent their making pampered fools of their

boys.

Suddenly his vagrant fancies were concentrated upon the question of how

Frances Bailey would bring up a boy--a son of her own. It was an absurd

query to have raised itself in his mind--and he put it away from him

with promptitude. There remained, however, a kind of mental protest

lodged on her behalf among his thoughts. He perceived that in his

ruminations he had done her an injustice. She was not inferior in

capability or courage to any of the self-sufficient Frenchwomen he had

been thinking of, and in the matter of intellectual attainments was

she not immeasurably superior to them all? The translucent calm of her

mind--penetrating, far-reaching, equable as the starlight--how queer

that it should be coupled with such a bad temper! She always quarreled

with him, and bullied him, when they were together. Even when she was

exhibiting to him the sunniest aspects of her mood, there was always a

latent defiance of him underneath, ready to spring forth at a word. He

remembered how, at the close of their first meeting, she had refused to

tell him her name. He saw now that this obstinacy of hers had annoyed

him more than he had imagined. For an instant it assumed almost the

character of a grievance--but then his attention fastened itself at

random upon the remarkable fact that he had seen her only twice in his

life. Upon reflection, this did seem very strange indeed. But it was the

fact--and in the process of readjusting his impressions of the past six

months to fit with it, the figure of her receded in his mind, grew less

as she moved away under a canopy of dull yellowish-green, which vaguely

identified itself with the trees on the Embankment. She dwindled thus

till he thought of her again, with a dim impulse of insistence upon the

phrase, as the girl on the boat. The transition to thoughts of other

things gave his mind no sort of trouble.

He pondered some of these other things--formlessly and

light-heartedly--while he stood at the library table, and picked morsels

here and there from the dishes laid for him. His absence of appetite he

referred tacitly to the warmth of the day, as it was sunnily developing

itself outside. Here on this shaded side of the castle, it was cool

enough, but there was the languor of spring in the air. He scrutinized

this new library of his afresh. Until Barlow had opened it for him,

shortly after his arrival yesterday, it could not have been used for

years. Most of its appointments had a very ancient look; no doubt they

must date back at least to the seventh Duke’s time. It was incredible

that his grandfather, the eighth Duke, should have been inspired to

furnish a library. There were many shelves of apparently very old books

as well, but there was also a vast deal of later rubbish--stock and

sporting annuals, veterinary treatises, county directories and the

like--which he would lose no time in putting out. He saw already how

delightful a room could be made of it. It had the crowning merit of

being connected with the suite of apartments he had chosen for his own.

From the door at the side, opposite the fine old fireplace, one entered

the antechamber to his dressing-room. This gave to the library an

intimate character, upon which he reflected with pleasure. Here he would

come, secure from interruption, and spend among his books the choicest

and most fruitful hours of his leisure. It was plain to him that

henceforth he would do a great deal of reading, and perhaps--why

not?--of writing too.

There was a rap upon the door, and then Falkner, opening it, announced

Lord Julius and his son. They came in together, diffusing an impalpable

effect of constraint. The elder man seemed in Christian’s eyes bigger

than ever; his white beard spread over the broad chest like a vine run

wild. Emanuel, who lapsed in the wake of his father, was unexpectedly

small by comparison. The shadows, where the two stood, emphasized the

angular peculiarities of his bald head. His thin face took an effect of

sallow pallor from his black clothes. Already he had his black gloves in

his hands.

Christian stepped forward to meet them--and was suddenly conscious of

the necessity for an apology. “I did not come down,” he murmured, as he

shook hands with a grave smile--“I am not quite master of myself yet. It

is still strange to me. But come to the window, and let us sit down.”

They followed him, and took the chairs he pushed out for them. He

perched himself on the corner of the big table, and lightly stroked the

glazed boot of the foot which was not on the floor. “I am glad to hear

that Kathleen has come,” he said to his cousin. “I hope she is very

well.”

“Extremely so,” replied Emanuel. Then, upon reflection, he added, “We

had hoped that you would come to us, on your way down from London.”

“There was so much to do in town,” explained Christian, hazily. “My

grandfather’s lawyers came up at once from Shrewsbury, and it was

necessary to see a good deal of them--and then there were the tailors

and outfitters. It was all I could do to get away yesterday morning. And

of course--by that time I was needed here.” He turned to the other. “And

you are very well, Uncle Julius?”

“I am well,” said the elder man, with what Christian suspected for the

instant to be significant brevity. The father and son had exchanged a

look, as well, which seemed to have a meaning beyond his comprehension.

But then he forgot these momentary doubts in the interest of the

discovery that there were tears in his great-uncle’s eyes.

Lord Julius unaffectedly got out a handkerchief, and wiped them away.

He looked up at the young man as through a mist. “I never dreamed that

I should feel it so much,” he said, huskily. “I am amazed at myself--and

then ashamed at my amazement--but Kit’s death has somehow put me about

and upset me to a tremendous extent. There was thirteen years between

us--but when you get to be an old man, that seems no more than as many

weeks. And Emanuel”--he addressed his son with the solemnity befitting a

revelation--“I am an old man.”

Emanuel frowned a little in his abstracted fashion. “You are less old

than any other man of your years in England,” he protested.

Christian, listening, somehow found no conviction in these reassuring

words. It dawned upon him suddenly that Lord Julius had in truth aged a

great deal. The perception of this disarranged the speech he had in his

mind.

“There are a thousand things to be talked over,” he began, with an eye

upon Emanuel, “but I do not know if this is quite the opportune time. I

wished to lose no time in seeing you both, of course--but you will not

be hurrying away. No doubt there will be a better opportunity.”

“I don’t think it will be found that there is so very much to say,”

remarked Emanuel. A gentle but persistent melancholy seemed to pervade

his tone.

“There is the complication”--Christian began again, and hesitated. “That

is to say--you know even better and more fully than I do, to what a

great extent I am in your hands. And there the complication, as I said,

arises. I have been working very hard on the figures--with the lawyers

in London, and here since I arrived--but before we touch those at all,

I ought to tell you frankly, Emanuel: I do not see my way to meeting the

conditions which you suggested to me last autumn, when we met first.”

Emanuel seemed in no wise perturbed by the announcement. His nervous

face maintained its unmoved gravity. “It was never anything more than a

pious hope that you would,” he commented. “I may add,” he went on,

“that even this hope cannot be said to have survived your first visit.

Otherwise, I should have tried to have you see London under different

auspices--through different eyes.”

The calmness with which the decision he had regarded as so momentous

met acceptance disconcerted Christian. He had mentally prepared for

the defense of his hostile attitude toward the System--and, lo! not a

syllable of challenge was forthcoming.

“But there remains, all the same, the principal difficulty,” he said,

thinking hard upon his words. “It does not lessen my obligations to

you as my chief creditors.” He looked from one to the other, as if in

uncertainty as to which was the master mind. “You have both been very

open with me. You have told me why it was that you devoted a large

fortune to buying up the mortgages on the estate which is now mine--and

to lending always more money upon it--until now the interest eats up

the income like a visitation of locusts. But my knowledge of the motives

does not help me. And you must not think, either,” his confidence was

returning now, and with it a better control over his phrases--“that I

am begging for help. I look the situation in the face, and I do not feel

that I am afraid of it. I see already many ways in which I can make a

better fight of it than my grandfather made.”

Lord Julius held up a hand. “Is there not a misconception there?”

he asked, pleasantly enough. “A fight involves antagonists--and I

intervened in poor Kit’s affairs as a protector, not as an assailant.”

Christian stood erect, and knitted his brows in puzzled thought upon

both the manner and the matter of these words.

“But it is still the same,” he persisted. “You were his good friend--as

I know you are mine--or hope very sincerely that you are--but none the

less you were his overwhelmingly big creditor, as now you are mine. If

one is greatly in debt, then one struggles to get out. It is in that

sense that I meant the word ‘fight.’ And, to repeat, I see many ways of

making progress. I find that Welldon is not exclusively my man. He is

the agent of three other estates as well, because we could not pay him

enough here for all of his services. That I will alter at once. I find

that we have no mineral bailiff. The company at Coalbrook has paid such

royalties as it pleased, without check of any sort. We have the right

to examine their books, but it has never been exercised. Next week my

secretary and Welldon go to Coalbrook. I find that the company’s lease

of twenty-one years expires next February. Eh bien! It will be strange

if I do not get ten thousand pounds hereafter, where less than four has

come in hitherto. My lawyers already know of capitalists who desire to

bid for the new lease--and the estimate of increase is theirs, not mine.

But these are details. I mention them to you only to show you that I am

not afraid. But anxious, I do not deny that I am. I have not been bred

to these things--and I may easily make mistakes. It would take a great

load off my mind if--if, in some measure, you would be my advisers as

well as my creditors.”

“Why should you ever have doubted that?” asked Emanuel, in a tone of

somber kindliness.

“Ah, but I do not mean advice about the management of the estate,” put

in Christian, with an over-eager instinct of self-defense. “I do not

shrink from taking that completely on my own shoulders. I would not

trouble you with anything of that sort. But of larger matters----”

“There is one large matter,” interrupted Lord Julius, speaking with

great deliberation, “which I find outweighing all others in my mind. It

is not new to my mind--but to-day it pushes everything else aside. It

is the thought of the family itself. I have told you this before--let

me say it to you again. Everything that I have done--every penny that I

have laid out--has been with this one end in view--the family. Yet this

morning I have been thinking of it--and I am frightened. While poor old

Kit lingered along, it was not so easy to grasp it, somehow--but his

going off makes it glaring. There are too few of us. I am alone in my

generation--and so is Emanuel in his--and so are you in yours, save for

those rowdy simpletons Eddy and Gus. And beyond you, there is only that

little girl baby of Cora Bayard’s! I want you to marry, Christian. I

want to see sons of yours growing up here at Caermere--hearty, fine boys

to carry the name of Torr along. That I am really in earnest about. By

comparison with it, nothing else on earth matters--for us.”

“Oh, I shall marry,” Christian replied, in smiling seriousness. “Of

course, that is the obvious thing to be done. And now”--he looked at his

watch--“it is time for me to dress. It is arranged that you and Emanuel

and Kathleen drive to the church in the carriage with me. It is not

quite orthodox precedence, I know, but I could not bear to--to have it

otherwise. And we will think no more about those other matters until

tomorrow.”

“Other matters,” repeated Lord Julius, and exchanged a look with his son

as they rose. “My dear Christian, there are no other matters.”

“No--not till to-morrow,” answered Christian, with a doubtful smile.

“But then I am afraid there are a good many.”

Emanuel filled in the pause. “Mr. Soman has brought all the papers,” he

said, with a flitting return to his lighter manner. “It is my father’s

meaning that the mortgages are extinguished.”

Christian gazed from one to the other with a face full of stupefaction.

His knees shook and sought to bend under him. Tremblingly he essayed to

speak--and his lips would make no sound.

Lord Julius laid his big hand on the young man’s shoulder--and

Christian, dimly recalling the effect of this touch in the days when

he had first known it, thrilled at the novel restfulness it somehow now

conferred.

“Only show me a son of yours,” said the old man, with tender gravity.

“Let me see an heir before I die.”

Without further words, the two left him. Christian, staring at the

shadowed door through which they had vanished, remained standing. His

confused brain quailed in the presence of thoughts more stupendous than

the ancient hills outside.

CHAPTER XXIII

Several thousand people caught that day their first curious glimpse of

the new master of Caermere. At the most there were but a handful of aged

persons, in the throng clustered along the sides of the road winding

down from the Castle to the partially restored medieval collegiate

church in the valley, who could remember any other duke than the one

being borne now to lie among his fathers. The fact that these venerable

folk, without exception, were in the enjoyment of a day’s holiday from

the workhouse, might have interested a philosopher, had it been pressed

upon his attention.

Quite two hundred horsemen, mounted in their own saddles on their own

beasts, rode in the long procession which descended from Caermere toward

the close of the noon hour. Clad in decent black for the greater part,

with old silk hats or other formal and somber headgear, they jogged

sedately in unison as the curbed horses stepped with caution down the

hill. Their browned and large-featured faces wore a uniform mask of

solemnity--distinguished chiefly by a resolute contraction of brows and

lips, and eyes triumphantly cleared of all traces of speculation. They

looked down, as they passed, upon the humbler dalesmen and laborers

of the hillsides, and their womenfolk and swarming children, with an

impassive, opacated gaze.

On the green, before the little covered gateway to the churchyard, dull

murmurs spread through this cortege, propelled sidelong from mouths

which scorned to open; the main principles of a proposed evolution came

slowly, in some mysterious way, to be comprehended among them: after

almost less backing and pushing into one another than might have

been expected, they perceived themselves emerging into an orderly

arrangement, by which they lined the two sides of the carriage-way

crossing the green. They regarded each other across this significant

strip of gravel with a gloomy stolidity of pride: the West Salop

Yeomanry could scarcely have done it better. Then another rustle of

whispered sounds along their ranks toward the church--and the civic side

of their demonstration came uppermost. With a tightened left hand upon

the reins, they removed their hats, and held them so that they could

most readily read the names of the makers inside.

The carriages bearing the family of Torr, preceded by the curtained

hearse, and followed by a considerable number of broughams and closed

landaus recognizable as the property of the neighboring gentry, moved

silently forward along this lane of uncovered horsemen. The distant

swelling moan of the organ floated on the May air, in effect a comment

upon the fact that the tolling of the bell in the tower had ceased.

The intermittent noise of carriage-doors being sharply shut, and of

wheels getting out of the way, proceeded from the head of the procession

at the gate--and tenants and other undistinguished people on foot began

to press forward between the ranks. The horsemen, with furtive glances

to right and left, put on their hats again, and let the restive animals

stretch their muscles in the path. A few, dismounting, and giving their

bridles over to boys, joined those who were moving toward the church.

The majority, drawing their horses aside into groups formed at random,

and incessantly shifting, lent their intellects, and in some restrained

measure their tongues, to communion upon the one great problem of the

day:--would the new Duke set the Hunt on its legs again?

The question was so intimately connected with their tenderest emotions

and convictions, that no one liked to speak of it thoughtlessly or upon

hasty impulse. Even those who doubted most, shrank from hearing the

prophecies of evil they felt prone to utter. Men who nourished almost

buoyant hopes still hesitated to create a confidence which must be so

precarious. While the faint sustained recitative of the priest in the

church could be heard, insistent and disturbing like the monotone of

a distant insect, and then the sounds of the organ once more, and of

singing, fell upon the sunlit green, the horsemen spoke cautiously about

the hounds. Even before Lord Porlock’s death, things had not been what

they should have been. The pack was even then, as one might say, falling

between two stools. The Torrs hadn’t the money to keep the thing up

properly themselves, but they showed their teeth savagely the minute

mention was made of getting in some outside help. But since Porlock’s

death--well, the condition of affairs had been too painful for words.

The horsemen shook their heads in dumb eloquence upon this tragic

interval. The Kennels had lapsed into a state hardly to be thought of,

much less discussed. There had been no puppy-walk. Were there any young

dogs at all? And, just heavens! if there were, what must they be like!

And yet the country-side, outraged as it felt itself to be in its finest

feelings, beheld itself helpless. The old Duke--but really this was not

just the time and place for saying what they felt about the old Duke

They glanced uneasily toward the church when this theme suggested

itself, and nodded with meaning to one another. It could be taken for

granted that there were no illusions among them concerning _him_. But

what about the new man? Eyes brightened, lips quivered in beseeching

inquiry, at the mention of this omnipotent stranger. What was he like?

Had anybody heard anything that Welldon had said about him? It seemed

that he was French bred, and that, considered by itself, might easily

involve the worst. But then, was there not a story that he had ridden

to the hounds in Derbyshire? Perhaps the younger generation of Frenchmen

were better fellows than their fathers--but then, there was the reported

fact that the Duke of Orleans fell off his horse and broke his leg

whenever he tried to ride. Sir George had been informed in Paris that he

would have been King of France by this time if he had been able to

stick in a saddle. Yet, when one thought of it, did not this very

fact indicate a fine new public sentiment in France, on the subject of

horsemanship--and perhaps even of sport in general?

Christian, at the door of the church, had thought most of clenching

his teeth, and straining his upper-arms against his sides, to keep from

trembling. He had not pictured himself, beforehand, as entering this

burial place of his ancestors alone. Yet, in the churchyard, that was

how the matter arranged itself. His first idea had been to lead,

with Kathleen on his arm--but she had said her place was with Emanuel

instead. Then the alternative of walking arm-in-arm with Lord Julius

had seemed to him even more appropriate--but this too, in the

confused constraint of the moment, had gone wrong. Stealing an anxious

half-glance over his shoulder, he discovered that Lord Julius had

placed himself at Kathleen’s other side. The slight gesture of appealing

invitation which he ventured upon did not catch the old man’s eye. There

was nothing for it but to stand alone.

To be the strange, unsupported central figure in such a pageant unnerved

him. He stood tremulously behind the pall--a burden draped with a

great purple embroidered cloth, and borne upon the shoulders of eight

peasant-laborers from the estate--and noted fleetingly that, so stunted

and mean of stature were these poor hinds, he looked with ease above

them, over their load, into the faces of the two priests advancing down

the walk toward him.

These persons, an elderly, dark man, with a red hood folded upon his

shoulders, and a thin-faced fair young man, seemed to return the gaze

with meaning. He caught himself feeling that their eyes deferred to

him; yes, if they had bowed to the ground, the effect of their abasement

before him could not have been more palpable. Looking perfunctorily

across the chasm of death, their glances sought to, make interest with

the living. He hated them both on the instant. As they wheeled, and by

their measured steps forward drew slowly in their wake the bearers

of the pall, the chant of the elder--“I am the Resurrection and the

Life”--came vaguely to his ears, and found them hostile.

The interior of the old church--dim, cool, cloistral--was larger than

Christian had assumed from its outer aspect. Many people were present,

crowded close in the pews nearest the door--and strangely enough, it was

his perception that these were chiefly women, of some unlabeled

class which at least was not his own, that brought to him of a sudden

self-command. He followed the bier up the aisle to its resting-place

before the rail, took tacit cognizance of the place indicated to him by

some man in professional black, and stood aside to let Kathleen pass in

before him, all with a restored equanimity in which he was himself much

interested. Through the reading of the Psalm and the Epistle he gave but

the most vagrant attention to their words. The priests read badly, for

one thing; the whining artificiality of their elocution annoyed

and repelled him. But still more, his thoughts were diverted by the

suggestiveness of everything about him.

Especially, the size of the funeral gathering, and of the mounted and

wheeled procession, had impressed him. There need be no pretense that

affection or esteem for the dead man had brought out, from the sparsely

populated country round about, this great multitude. Precisely for that

reason, it became a majestic fact. The burial of a Duke of Glastonbury

had nothing to do with, personal qualities or reputation. It was

like the passing away of a monarch. People who cared nothing for the

individual were stirred and appealed to by the vicissitudes of an

institution. Inset upon the walls around him were marble tablets, and

more archaic canopies of stone over little carved effigies of kneeling

figures; beyond, at the sides of the chancel, he could see the dark,

rectangular elevations of the tombs, capped by recumbent mail-clad

statues, with here and there a gleam of gilt or scarlet retained from

their ancient ornamentation; even as he had walked slowly up the aisle,

his downcast eyes had noticed the chiseled heraldry of stones beneath

his feet. Everywhere about him was the historic impact of the Torrs.

Their ashes were here--their banners and shields and tilting-helmets,

their symbolical quarterings of the best arms of the West, their

own proudest device of all. Their white bull on the green ground was

familiar in England long before the broom-corn of the Angevins had been

thought of. The clerkly pun on Tor and Taurus was as like as not older

than the English language itself. All this made something mightier,

more imposing and enduring, than any edifice to be reared by man alone.

It was only in part human, this structure of the family. The everlasting

hills were a part of it, the dark ranges of forests, the spirits and

legends of the ancient Marches.

“_In the morning it is green, and groweth up; but in the evening it is

cut down, dried up and withered,_” droned the young clergyman.

But if man seemed to count for but little in this tremendous, forceful

aggregation of tradition and custom, yet again he might be all in all.

The tall old man under the purple pall, there--it was easy to think

contemptuously of him. Christian recalled, in a kind of affrighted

musing, that one view of his grandfather that he had had. The disgust

with which he had heard the stupid, violent words from those aged lips

revived within him--then changed to wonder. Was it not, after all, the

principle of strength which most affected men’s minds? There had been

discernible in that grandfather of his a certain sort of strength--dull,

unintelligent, sinister, half-barbarous, but still strength. Was it not

that which had brought forth the two hundred horsemen? And if this

one element, of strength--yes, you might call it brute strength--were

lacking, then would all the other fine qualities in the world avail to

hold the impalpable, intangible combination together?

“‘_He shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and power_.’” It

was the old parson who was reading now.

“‘_For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet_.’”

Yes, even in this Protestant religion to which he had passively become

committed, force was the real ideal! Christian’s wandering mind fastened

itself for a moment upon the ensuing words of the lesson, but got

nothing from their confusing reiterations. He lapsed into reverie again,

then started abruptly with the sudden perception that everybody in the

church behind him must be looking at him. In the pew immediately behind,

there would be Captain Edward and his wife, and Augustine; in the one

behind that Lady Cressage, Lord Chobham and his son; beyond them scores

and scores of others seated in rows, and then a throng in the aisle and

the doorway--all purporting to think of the dead, but fixing their eyes

none the less on the living. And it was not alone in the church, but

through the neighborhood, for miles round about: when men spoke of the

old Duke who was gone, their minds would in truth be dwelling upon

the new Duke who was come. A thrill ran through his veins as the words

spelled themselves out before his inner vision. The new Duke! He seemed

never to have comprehended what it meant before.

No; and till this moment no genuine realization had come to him of this

added meaning--this towering superstructure which the message of Julius

and Emanuel had reared. It was only now that he hit upon the proper

mental focus with which to contemplate this amazing thing. Not only was

he a territorial ruler, one of the great nobles of Europe, but he was

the master of wealth almost beyond counting as well!

Those nearest to him were rising now, and he, obeying imperative

impulses within him, lifted himself proudly to his feet. While the air

throbbed with deep-voiced organ notes, in the pause which here

ensued, his gaze rested upon the pall before him. There was a sense

of transfiguration in the spectacle. The purple mantle became imperial

Tyrian to his eyes--and something which was almost tenderness, almost

reverence, yearned within him toward that silent, incased figure hidden

beneath it. The mystic, omnipotent tie of blood gripped his heart.

With a collected sidelong look he surveyed the profiles of Emanuel and

Lord Julius to his left. Theirs were the lineaments of princes. As if

he had eyes in the back of his head, he beheld Edward and Augustine,

as fancy revealed them standing in the pew behind him. Tall, slim,

athletic, fair--the figures his imagination made of them appealed to the

new patriarchal spirit in his heart. Perhaps they were not wholly nice,

these young men, but they also were princes, and they were of his race,

and no one should persecute them, or despitefully use them.

The uncouth little bearers of the dead had come forward again, and taken

up their burden. In a small lady-chapel, extending from the transept

at the left, the interment was to take place, and thither Christian now

followed the pall, leading the menfolk of his family and the male guests

of position who attached themselves to the group. Thus some score of

black-clad figures clustered round the oblong opening in the old stone

floor, and Christian, standing at its head, glanced impassively over the

undefined throng of spectators gathered at the doorway.

“‘_Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full

of misery_,’” proclaimed the younger priest, with a sudden outburst

of high-pitched, nasal tones which pierced the unexpectant ear. “‘_He

cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow,

and never continueth in one stay._’”

Christian, watching abstractedly the impersonal wedge of faces at the

door, all at once caught his breath in a sharp spasm of bewildered

amazement. The little book he had been holding fell from his hands,

balanced on its edge for an instant and toppled over into the dark vault

below. He seemed unconscious of the incident--but stared fixedly, with

parted lips and astonished eyes, at the image of something he had seen

outside of the chapel. The thing itself had apparently vanished. He

perceived vaguely that people were looking at him--and with a determined

effort regained control of his face and bearing. The puzzling thought

that it might have been an illusion--that perhaps he had seen nothing at

all--brought mingled confusion and solace to his mind. He put his hand

to the open book which Lord Julius at his side held toward him, and

pretended to look at it.

The coffin, now bereft of its purple covering, had been lowered to its

final place. One of the bearers, standing over the cavity, crumbled

dry earth from his tanned and clumsy fingers, and it fell with a faint

rattle upon some resonant, unseen surface.

The phrase, “‘_Our dear brother, here departed_,’” stuck out with

awkward obtrusiveness from among the words of the priest. “‘_Earth to

earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust_.’” the sing-song went on. Then they

were repeating the Lord’s Prayer together in a buzzing, fitful murmur.

There were other prayers--and then Christian read in the faces of those

about him that the ceremony was finished. Accepting the suggestion of

Lord Julius’s movement, he also bent over, and looked blankly down into

the obscurity of the vault. But when he lifted his head again, it was to

throw a more searching and strenuous glance than ever over the knot

of people outside the door. And yes!--he had not been deceived. He

distinctly saw the face again, and with lightning swiftness verified its

features. Beyond a shadow of doubt it was Frances Bailey whom he beheld,

mysteriously present in this most unlikely of places.

He withdrew his eyes and did not look that way again. The question

whether she knew that he had recognized her, occupied his mind to the

exclusion of all else, as he returned at the head of his followers to

the body of the church. It still possessed his thoughts when he had

joined the family group of chief mourners, loosely collecting itself

in the aisle before the front pews, in waiting for the summons to the

carriages. To some one he ought to speak at once, and for the moment his

eye rested speculatively upon Cora. He identified her confidently, not

only by her husband’s proximity, but by the fact that her mourning

veil was much thicker and longer than any of the others. Some unshaped

consideration, however, restrained him, and on a swift second thought he

turned to Kathleen.

“I want you to look,” he whispered to her, inclining his head--“on the

other side of the church, just in a line between the second pillar and

the white-bearded figure in the window--there is a tall young woman,

with the gray and black hat. Do you see her? In a kind of way she

belongs to us--she is Cora’s sister, but I’m afraid if Cora asked her,

she would not come to the Castle.”

“Yes--once you talked to me about her,” Kathleen reminded him.

“Well, will you do this for me?” he continued, in an eager murmur. “Go

to her, and make sure that she promises to come up with the rest. It

would be unforgivable--if we let her go away.”

He had an uneasy feeling that Mrs. Emanuel’s veil did not prevent her

shrewd glance from reading him through and through--but he did not seek

to dissemble the breath of relief with which he heard her assent.

CHAPTER XXIV

It was not a very easy task,” Kathleen found opportunity to say to

Christian, half an hour later, as the family were assembling in his

library. They stood together by the window nearest the table, and

watched the embarrassed deportment of Lord Lingfield under the

conversational attentions of Cora, as they talked in low tones.

“But she is here in the Castle: that is the principal thing.” He did not

shrink now from the implication of his words.

“Yes, she finally consented to come,” explained the other. “I told her

that you insisted upon it--and then--then I used some persuasion of my

own.”

“I thank you, Kathleen,” he said, simply. “It seems that she is to write

an account of the funeral for some London newspaper. She said frankly,

however, that that of itself did not account for her coming. It will

pay her expenses--so she said--but the paper would not have sent her

specially. And there is no doubt about it--she was really annoyed at

being discovered.”

The solicitors from Shrewsbury, entering the room now, gave at once

an official air to everything. The elder of them, with oppressive

formality, drew a formidable parchment from a bag held by his junior,

and bowed elaborately to Christian. Then, as if he had received some

mandate to do so from His Grace, he untied the tape, and cleared his

throat. Those who had been seated, rose to their feet.

The will came to them unaltered from 1859--and contained, wrapped in a

surprising deal of pompous verbiage, a solitary kernel of essential

fact. No legatee was mentioned save an impersonal being called

the heir-at-law. The absolutism of dynastic rule contemplated no

distribution or division of power. This slender, dark-eyed young man,

standing with head inclined and a nervous hand upon the table, had not

come into being until long after that will was made, and for other long

years thereafter his very existence had been unknown to the family at

large. Yet, as the lawyer’s reading ended, there he stood before their

gaze, the unquestioned autocrat.

“This may be the best time to say it.” Christian straightened himself,

and addressed his family for the first time, with a grave smile, and a

voice which was behaving itself better than he feared it would. “There

are no minor bequests, owing to the circumstances under which the will

was drawn, but I have taken it upon myself to supply such omissions, in

this matter, as shall commend themselves to my consideration. Upon this

subject we may speak among ourselves at our leisure, later on.” With

distinguished self-possession he looked at his watch. “I think luncheon

is at two.”

There followed here an unrehearsed, and seemingly unpremeditated,

episode. Lord Julius advanced with impressive gravity across the little

open space, and taking the hand which Christian impulsively extended to

him, bent over it in a formal and courtly bow. When Emanuel, following

his father, did the same, it was within the consciousness of all that

they had become committed to a new ceremonial rite. Kathleen, coming

behind her husband, gave her cheek to be kissed by the young chief of

her adopted clan--and this action translated itself into a precedent as

well.

Edward and Augustine, after the hesitation of an awkward instant,

came forward together, and in their turn, with a flushed stiffness of

deportment, made their salutation to the head of the house. To them,

conjointly, Christian said something in a whisper. He kissed Cora upon

each cheek, with a faint smile in his eyes at her preference for the

foreign method. His remoter cousins, the Earl of Chobham and Lord

Lingfield, passed before him, and he vaguely noted the reservation

expressed in their lifeless palms and frigid half-bow. They seemed to

wish to differentiate themselves from the others--to express to him the

Pickwickian character of their homage. They were not Torrs; they did not

salaam to him as their over-lord. They had a rival dynasty of their own,

and their appearance here involved nothing but the seemly courtesy of

distant relationship. He perceived in a dim way that this was what their

manner was saying to him--but it scarcely diverted his attention. His

glance and his thoughts passed over their heads, to fasten upon the

remaining figure.

Lady Cressage, unlike the other two women, had retained the bonnet

and heavy veil of mourning. The latter she held drawn aside with

a black-gloved hand as she approached. It flashed suddenly across

Christian’s brain that the year of her mourning for her own dead was not

over--yet in her own house she wore gay laces and light colors. But it

was unkind to remember this--and senseless, too. He strove to revivify,

instead, the great compassionate impulse which formerly she had stirred

within him. A pallid shadow of it was all that he could conjure up--and

in the chill of this shadow he touched her white temple with his lips,

and she moved away. There lingered in his mind a curious, passive

conflict of memories as to whether their eyes had met or not. Then this

yielded place to the impression some detached organ of perception had

formed for him, that in that somber setting of crape her face had looked

too small for the rest of her figure.

Then, as the whole subject melted from his mind, he turned toward the

two young men who, upon his whispered request, had remained in the

library after the departure of the others. He looked at his watch, and

beckoned them forward with a friendly wave of his hand.

“Pray come and sit down,” he said, with affability upon the surface of

his tone. “We have a quarter of an hour, and I felt that it could not be

put to better use than in relieving your minds a little--or trying to do

so. Let me begin by saying that I do not think I have met either of

you before. In fact, now that I reflect, I am sure that we have not met

before. I am glad to see you both.”