The two brothers had drawn near, and settled uneasily into the very

chairs which Lord Julius and Emanuel had occupied some hours before.

Again Christian half seated himself upon the corner of the table,

but this time he swung his leg lightly as he surveyed his guests. It

flattered his prophetic judgment to note that Augustine seemed the first

to apprehend the meaning of his words, but that Edward, upon pondering

them, appeared the more impressed by their magnanimity. Between them,

as they regarded him and each other doubtfully, the family likeness was

more striking than ever. Christian remembered having heard somewhere

that their father, Lord Edward, had been a dark man, as a Torr

should be. Their flaxen hair and dull blue eyes must come from

that unmentionable mother of theirs, who was living in indefinite

obscurity--if she was living at all--upon the blackmail Julius paid

her for not using the family name. The thought somehow put an added

gentleness into his voice.

“How old are you--Eddy?” he asked, forcing himself into the use of the

diminutive as a necessary part of the patriarchal rôle he had assumed.

“Nine-and-twenty in October,” answered the Captain, poutingly. It seemed

on the tip of his tongue to add something else, but he did not.

“There’s two years and a month between us,” remarked Augustine, with

more buoyancy.

“And you’ve been out of the army for five years,” pursued Christian. “It

seems that you became a Captain very early. Would there be any chance of

your taking it up again, where you left off?”

Edward shook his head. “It couldn’t be done twice. I got it by a lucky

fluke--a friend of my father’s, you know. But they’re deuced stiff now,”

he answered. “You have to do exams and things. An old johnnie asks you

what bounds Peru on the northeast, and if you can’t remember just at the

minute, why, you get chucked. Out you go, d’ye see?”

“What is your idea, then? What would you like to do?”

Captain Edward knitted his scanty, pale brows over this question, and

regarded the prospect through the window in frowning perplexity. “Oh,

almost anything,” he remarked at last, vacuously.

Christian permitted himself the comment of a smiling sniff. “Think it

over,” he said, and directed his glance at the younger brother. “You’re

in Parliament,” he observed, with a slight difference in tone. “I’m not

sure that I quite understand-What is it that attracts you in a--in a

Parliamentary career?”

Augustine lifted his pale, scanty brows in surprise. The right kind

of answer did not come readily to him. “Well,” he began with

hesitation--“there was that seat in Cheshire where we still had a good

bit of land--and Julius didn’t object--and I had an idea it would help

me in the City.” He recovered confidence as he went on. “But it is

pretty well played out now, I came in too late. The Kaffir boom spoiled

the whole show. Five years ago an M P. could pick and choose; I knew

fellows who were on twenty boards at a time, and big blocks of stock

were flying about them like--like hailstones. But you can’t do that now.

M. P.s are as cheap as dirt; they won’t have ’em at any price. A

fellow hardly makes his cab-fares in the City nowadays. And even if you

get the very best inside tips, brokers have got so fearfully nasty about

your margins being covered----”

“Oh, well,” interposed Christian, “it isn’t necessary that we should go

into all that. I do not like to hear about the City. If you get money

for yourself there, you have taken it away from somebody else. I would

rather that people of our name kept away from such things.”

“If you come to that, everybody’s money is taken from somebody else,”

said Edward, unexpectedly entering the conversation. His brother

checked him with a monitory hand on his arm. “No, you don’t understand,”

Augustine warned him. “I quite see what the Duke means.”

“If you see what I mean,” returned Christian, quietly, “perhaps you

will follow the rest that I have to say; Do you care very much about

remaining in Parliament?” Augustine’s face reflected an eager mental

effort to get at his august interlocutor’s meaning. “Well--that’s

so hard to say,” he began, anxiously. “There are points about it, of

course--but then--when you look at it in another way, why of course----”

“My idea is this,” Christian interposed once more. “I hope you won’t

mind my saying it--but there seems to me something rather ridiculous

about your being in the House. Parliament ought not to be treated as a

joke, or a convenience. It is a place for men who will work hard in the

service of the country, and who have the tastes and the information and

the judgment and the patriotic devotion to make their work of value to

their country. I dare say that there are members who do not entirely

measure up to this standard, but after all there _is_ a standard, and

I do not like to be a party to lowering it. England has claims upon us

Torrs; it deserves something better at our hands than that. So I think I

would like you to consider the idea of resigning your seat--or at least,

dropping out at the end of this Parliament. Or no--that would be waiting

too long. You would better think of retiring now.”

“Do you mean that _I_ am to stand for the seat, instead?” asked Edward,

looking up with awakened interest.

Christian stared, then sighed smilingly and shook his head.

“No, that doesn’t seem to have been in my mind,” he replied with

gentleness. He contemplated the elder brother afresh.

“Have you thought yet what you would like to do?” he asked again, almost

with geniality.

“How d’ye mean ‘do’?” inquired Edward, with a mutinous note in his

voice. “Is it something about a business? If you ask me straight, I’m

not so fearfully keen about doin’ anything. No fellow wants to do

things, if he can rub along without.”

Christian found himself repressing a gay chuckle with effort. He had not

dreamed he should like this one of his kinsmen so much.

“No--no; you shall not do things,” he promised him, with a sparkling

eye. “That would be too bad.”

Captain Edward turned in his chair, and recrossed his legs. “It’s a

trifle awkward, all this, you know,” he declared, with an impatient

scowl. “It doesn’t suit me to be made game of. You’ve got the whip hand,

and you can give me things or not, as you like, and I’ve got to be civil

and take what you offer, because I can’t help myself--but damn me if I

like to be chaffed into the bargain! I wouldn’t do it to you, d’ye see,

if it was the other way about.”

Christian’s face lapsed into instant gravity. A fleeting speculation as

to that problematical reversal of positions rose in his mind, but he

put it away. “Ah, you mustn’t think that,” he urged, with serious tones.

“No, Cousin Edward, this is what I want to say to you.” And then, all

unbidden, the things he really wished to say, yet which he had not

thought of before, ranged themselves in his mind.

“Listen to me,” he went on. “You have been a soldier. You were a soldier

when you were a very young man. Now, you had an uncle who was also

a soldier when he was a mere youth--a very loyal and distinguished

soldier, too. He died a soldier when he was in his fortieth year--far

away from his family, from his wife and son, and much farther away still

from the place and country of his birth. Once, in his youth, he was

mixed up in an unpleasant and even disgraceful affair. How much to blame

he personally was--that I do not know. It was very long ago--and he was

so young a man--really I refuse to consider the question. I could insist

to myself that he was innocent--if I felt that it mattered at all, one

way or the other--and if I did not feel that by doing so, somehow he

would not be then so real a figure to me as he is now. And he is very

real to me; he has been so all my life.”

He paused, with a momentary break in his voice, to blink the tears

from his eyes. It was not ducal, but he put the back of his hand to his

cheeks, and dried them.

“I show you how it affects me,” he continued, simply. “No matter what he

did in some stupid hour in London, he was a brave soldier before that,

and after that. He fought for many losing causes; he died fighting for

one which was most hopeless of all. I am proud that I am his son. I am

proud for you, that you are his nephew. And something has occurred to

me that I think you will like to do--for me and for him. When I stood

to-day over our vault--where we are all buried--it cut me to the heart

to remember that one of us lies alone, a great way off--in a strange

land by himself. I propose to you that you go to Spain for me--it is at

Seo de Urgel, in the mountain country of the Catalans--and that you find

his grave, and that you bring him back here to sleep with his people. He

would not return in his lifetime--but I think he would be pleased with

us for bringing him back now.”

Edward had looked fixedly up at his cousin, then glanced away, then

allowed his blank gaze to return, the while these words were being

spoken. It was impossible to gather from his reddened, immobile face,

now, any notion of their effect upon him. But after a moment’s pause,

he rose to his feet, squared his shoulders and put out his hand to

Christian.

“Quite right; I’ll go,” he said, abruptly.

The two men shook hands, with a sense of magnetic communion which

could have amazed no one more than themselves. Then, under a recurring

consciousness of embarrassed constraint, they turned away from each

other, and Edward wandered off awkwardly toward the door.

“Oh--a moment more,” called Christian, with a step in his cousin’s

direction. Then on second thoughts he added: “Or shall we let that wait?

I will see you again--some time to-day or to-morrow. Yes--leave me now

for a minute with your brother.”

When the door had closed upon Edward, Christian turned slowly to

Augustine, and, as he leaned once more against the table, regarded him

with a ruminating scrutiny.

“I am puzzled about you,” he remarked, thoughtfully.

Augustine returned the gaze with visible perturbation.

“I think,” pursued Christian, “that it rather annoys me that you don’t

tell me to puzzle and be damned.”

The other took the words with a grimace, and an unhappy little laugh.

He, too, rose to his feet. “I funked it,” he said with rueful candor.

“Well, don’t funk things with me,” Christian advised him, with a

testiness of which, upon the instant, he was ashamed. “Look here,” he

continued, less brusquely, “I could take it from your brother that he

did not want to do things. That fits him: he is not the kind of man

to apply himself in that way. But I have the feeling that you are

different. There ought to be performance--capacity--of some sort in you,

if I could only get to know what it is. You are only my age. Isn’t there

something that particularly appeals to you?”

Augustine balanced himself meditatively upon his heels. “You say you bar

the City”--he remarked with caution. “Would you have any objection to

Johannesburg? It’s not what it was, by any means, but it’s bound to pick

up again. I might do myself very well there--with a proper start.”

“But you are thinking always of money!” broke in Christian, sharply once

again. “Suppose that there was no question of money--suppose, what shall

I say? that you had twelve hundred a year, secure to you without any

effort of your own--what would you do then?”

This seemed very simple to Augustine. “I would do whatever you wanted me

to do,” he replied, with fervor.

Christian shrugged his shoulders, and dismissed him with a gesture. “We

will speak again about it,” he said coldly, and turned away.

Descending the great staircase a few minutes later, Christian entered

the door which Barlow had been waiting to open for him--and made his

first public appearance as the dispenser of Caermere’s hospitality.

The guests, after the old mid-day fashion of the place, were already

for the most part gathered in the large dining-hall, and stood or sat in

groups upon the side pierced by the tall windows. These guests did

not dissemble the interest with which they from time to time directed

glances across to the other side, where a long table, laid for luncheon,

put in evidence a grateful profusion of cold joints and made-dishes.

A pleased rustle of expectancy greeted Christian’s advent, but it seemed

that this did not, for the moment at least, involve food and drink. He

strolled over to the company, and, as he exchanged words here and there,

kept an attentive eye busy in taking stock of its composition. There

were some forty persons present, of whom three-fourths, apparently, were

county people. A few casual presentations forced themselves upon him,

but the names of the new acquaintances established no foothold in his

memory. He smiled and murmured words which he hoped were seasonable--but

all the while he was scanning the assemblage with a purpose of his own.

At last he came to Kathleen, and was able to have a private word in her

ear. “I do not see her anywhere,” he whispered.

“I could not prevail upon her to come in to lunch,” she answered; “I

imagine it is partly a question of clothes. But she is being looked

out for. And afterward I will take charge of her again, if you

like--though----”

The sentence remained unfinished, as she took the arm Christian offered

her, at Barlow’s eloquent approach.

CHAPTER XXV

During the progress of the luncheon, Christian found no opportunity for

intimate conversation with Emanuel’s wife. The elderly and ponderously

verbose Lord Chobham sat upon her right; there was the thin-faced,

exigeant wife of some clerical person in gaiters--a rural dean, was it

not?--full of dogmatic commonplaces, on his left. The other people did

not seem to talk so much. The scene down the table--with so much black

cloth offset garishly against the white linen in the daylight--presented

an effect of funereal sobriety, curiously combined with a spontaneous

reaction of the natural man against this effect. The guests ate

steadily, and with energy; Christian noted with interest how freely they

also drank. For himself, he could not achieve an appetite, but thirst

was in the air. He lifted his glass bravely to Lord Julius, whose

massive bulk and beard confronted him at the other end of the table--and

then to others whose glance from time to time caught his.

Once he found the chance to murmur to Kathleen: “When this is over, I

hope you will manage it so that I may speak with you.”

She nodded slow assent, without looking at him. He, observing her

profile, realized all at once that something was amiss with her. It came

back to him now that a certain intensity of sadness had dwelt in the

first glance they had exchanged that morning, upon meeting. At the time

he had referred it to the general aspect of woe which people put on at

funerals. He saw now that it was a grief personal to herself. And now

that he thought of it, too, there had been much the same stricken look

upon Emanuel’s face. It was incredible that they should be thus devoured

by grief at the fact of his grandfather’s death. No one had liked that

old man overmuch--but surely they least of all. The emotion of Lord

Julius was more intelligible--and yet even this had a quality of

broken dejection in it which seemed independent of Caermere’s cause for

mourning.

The disquieting conviction that these dearly beloved cousins of

his--these ineffably tender and generous friends of his--were writhing

under some trouble unknown to him, took more definite shape in his mind

with each new glance that he stole at her.

Once the thought sprang up that they might be unhappy because such a

huge sum of money had been given to him, but on the instant he hated

himself for being capable of formulating such a monstrous idea. The

wondering solicitude which all this raised within him possessed his

thoughts for the rest of the meal. He was consumed with impatience to

get away so that he might question Kathleen about it.

Yet when at last he found himself beside her, standing before an old

portrait in one of the chain of big rooms through which the liberated

company had dispersed itself, this was just the question for which it

seemed that no occasion would offer.

She began speaking to him at once. “The young lady--Miss Bailey, I

should say--has gone for a walk--so Falkner learns from some of the

women. They have the impression that she is coming back--but I don’t

know that I feel quite so sure about it.” Christian’s face visibly

lengthened. “It’s very awkward,” he said, with vague annoyance. “They do

not arrange things in a very talented fashion, these people of mine.”

“But what could they arrange?” she argued. An indefinable listlessness

in her tone struck him. “It is a free country, you know, and this is the

nineteenth century. They cannot bodily capture a young woman and keep

her in the Castle against her will. As I told you, I had difficulty in

persuading her to come at all.”

“Ah, what did you say to her?” he asked, eagerly.

“I can hardly tell you. She is not an ordinary person--and I know only

that I tried not to say ordinary things to her. But what it was that I

did say----” She broke off with an uncertain gesture, and a sigh.

“Ah, you saw that she was not ordinary!” said Christian, admiringly. “I

should love dearly to hear what you really think of her--the impression

that she makes upon you.” Kathleen roused herself and turned to him. “Do

you truly mean it, Christian?” she asked him, gravely.

“Do you blame me?” he rejoined, with uneasy indirection.

She pressed her lips together, and stared up at the picture with a

troubled face. “I know so little of her,” she protested. “You put too

big a responsibility upon me. It is more than I am equal to.”

With a sudden gust of self-reproach, he perceived afresh the marks of

suffering in her countenance, and recalled his anxiety. “Take my arm,”

he said, softly, “and let us go on into the next room. There is a

terrace there, I think. Forgive me for troubling you,” he added, as they

moved forward. “I ought to have seen that you are not well--that you

have something on your mind.”

She did not answer him immediately. “It is Emanuel who is not well.” she

said, after a pause.

Christian uttered a formless little exclamation of grieved astonishment.

“Oh, it is nothing serious?” he whispered imploringly.

She shook her head in a doubtful way. “No, I think not--that is, not

irrevocably. But he has worked too hard. He has broken down under the

strain. We are going away for a long journey--to rest, and forget about

the System.”

He bent his head to look into her eyes--trusting his glance to say the

things which his lips shrank from uttering. A window stood open, and

they passed out upon a broad stone terrace, shaded and pleasant under a

fresh breeze full of forest odors.

“Oh--the System”--he ventured to say, as they stood alone here, and she

lifted her head to breathe in the revivifying air--“I felt always that

it was too much for one man. The load was too great. It would crush the

most powerful man on earth.”

She nodded reflective assent. “Oh, yes--I’m afraid I hated it,” she

confessed to him, in a murmur full of contrition.

“But he is going away now,” urged Christian, hopefully. “You will

have him to yourself--free from care, seeing strange and beautiful new

places--as long as you like. Ah, then soon enough that gaiety of yours

will return to you. Why, it is such a shock to me to think of you as

sad, depressed--you who are by nature so full of joy and high spirits.

Ah, but be sure they will all return to you! I make no doubt whatever of

that. And Emanuel, too--he will get rested and strong, and be happy as

he never was before--the dear fellow!”

She smiled at him in wan, affectionate fashion. “All the courage has

gone out of me,” she said. “Will it be coming back again? God knows!”

“But surely----” Christian began, with hearty confidence.

She interrupted him. “What I am fearful of--it is not so much his

health, strictly speaking--but the terrible unsettling blow that all

this means to him. It is like the death of a beautiful only child to the

fondest of fathers. It tears his heart to pieces. He loved his work so

devotedly--it was so wholly a part of his life--and to have to give it

up! He says he is reconciled. Poor man, he tried with all his strength to

make himself believe that he is. I catch him forcing a smile on his face

when he sees me looking at him--and that is the hardest of all for me

to bear. But I don’t know”--she drew a long breath, and gazed with a

wistful brightening in her eyes at the placid hills and sky--“it

may work itself out for the best. As you say--when we get away alone

together, ah, that is where love like ours will surely tell. I do wrong

to harbor any doubts at all. When two people love each other as we

do--ah, Christian, boy, there’s nothing else in all the world to equal

that!”

He inclined his head gravely, to mark his reverential sympathy with her

mood.

“Ah, but you know nothing of it at all,” she went on. “You’re just a

lad--and love is no more to be understood by instinct than any other

great wisdom. Millions of people pass through life talking about

love--and they would stare with surprise if you told them they never had

had so much as a glimmer of the meaning of it. They use the name of

love in all the matings of young couples--and there’s hardly once in a

thousand times that it isn’t blasphemy to mention it. Do you know what

most marriages are? Life-sentences! If you have means and intelligence,

you make your prison tolerable; you can get used to it, and even grow

dependent upon it--but it is a prison still. The best-behaved convict

eyes his warder with a cruel thought somewhere at the back of his mind.

Do you remember--when you left us the first time, I begged you to be in

no haste to marry?”

He bowed again. “Oh, yes, I remember it all,” he said, soberly.

“I have come to feel so strongly upon that subject,” she explained.

“It seems to me more important than all others combined. It is the last

thing in the world that should be decided upon an impulse, or a passing

fancy--yet that is just what happens all about us. The books are greatly

to blame for that. They talk as if only boys and girls knew what love

meant. They flatter the young people, and turn their empty heads, with

the notion that their idlest inclinations are very probably sacred

emotions--which they may trust to burn brightly in a pure flame all

their lives. The innocent simpletons rush to light this penny dip that

is warranted to blaze eternally, and in a week or a month they are in

utter darkness. We trembled lest you, coming so suddenly into a new

life, should meet with that misfortune.”

He smiled faintly at her. “You see, I have not,” he commented.

She regarded him thoughtfully. “It is impossible to make rules for

others in these matters,” she observed, “but there is this thing to be

said. True love must be built upon absolutely true friendship; there can

be no other foundation for it You will often see two men who are fond

of each other. They delight in being together. Very often you cannot

imagine what is the tie between them--and they would not be able to tell

you. They just like to be together--even though they may not speak for

hours, and may be as different in temperament as chalk and cheese. That

is the essence of friendship--and you cannot have love without it.

The man and the woman must have the all-powerful sense of ideal

companionship between them. They must be able to say with truth to

themselves that the world will always be richer to them together than

apart. There may be many other elements in love, but there can be no

love at all without this element. But you wonder why I am saying all

this to you.”

He made a deprecatory gesture of the hands. “I am always charmed when

you talk to me. I have been remembering that dear home of yours, and how

inexpressibly good you were to me. I prize that memory so fondly!”

She smiled with an approach to her old gaiety of manner. “You were

like a son of our own to us. And so we think of you now--as if you were

ours.”

“And with what munificence you have treated me!” he exclaimed,

fervently.

“And why not? For whom else would we be laying up our money? Oh, there

was no difference of opinion about that. Months ago it was decided that

when you came into Caermere you should come into everything.”

“I feared that Emanuel would be angry--disappointed--at my not taking

up his work--but truly I could not. It wouldn’t be easy to explain to

you--but----”

“No--let us not go into reasons. He had no feeling about it whatever.

How should he? It would have been as reasonable to be vexed because

the lenses of his spectacles did not fit your eyes. And Emanuel is

reasonableness itself. No--the experiment was quite personal to himself.

Without him, it could not have gone on at all. It will not go on now,

when he leaves it to others. We make some little pretense that it

will--but we know in our hearts that it won’t. And there was a fatal

fault in it. To begin with, that would have killed it sooner or later,

in any case.”

“I know what you mean,” he interposed, with sensitive intuition. “There

was no proper place in it for women. ‘The very corner-stone of the

System was the perpetual enslavement of women’--or rather, I should

say”--he stumbled awkwardly as the sweeping form of the quotation

revealed itself to him--“I should say, it did not provide women with the

opportunities which--which----”

Kathleen also had her intuitions. “May I ask?--it sounds as if you

were repeating a remark--was it Miss Bailey who said that about the

corner-stone?”

Christian bit his lip and flushed confusedly. “Yes--I think those were

her words,” he confessed. “But you must remember,” he added, eager to

minimize-the offense--“it was in the course of a long discussion on the

whole subject, and she----”

“The dear girl!” said Kathleen, with a sigh of relief.

“Ah, but you would love her!” he cried, excitedly perceiving the

significance of her words. “She has the noblest mind--calm and broad and

serene--and so fine a nature--I know you would love her!”

Kathleen put a hand on his arm, with motherly directness. “But do _you_

love her?” she asked.

To his own considerable surprise he hesitated. “I have that feeling

of deep friendship that you described,” he said, slowly. “The charm of

being where she is is like nothing else to me. I cannot think that it

would ever lose its force for me. I get the effect of drawing strength

and breadth of thought and temper from her, when I am with her. I would

rather spend my life with her for my companion than any other woman I

have ever seen. That is what you mean, is it not?”

“Partly,” she made enigmatic response. “But--now you mustn’t answer

me if I ask what I’ve no business to ask--but the suspicion came to me

while you were speaking--I am right, am I not, in thinking that you have

said all this to her?”

“Yes,” he admitted with palpable reluctance, “and she would not listen

to me. Only a few hours before I heard the news of my grandfather’s

death, I asked her to be my wife, and she refused. She seemed very

resolute. And yet she has some of that same feeling of friendship for

me. She said that she had always a deep interest in me. She had read

books--very serious books--in order to be able to advise me, if the

chance ever came. All that bespeaks friendship, surely! And her coming

here, to look on and still not be seen--you said yourself that she was

distressed at being discovered--is not that the act of warm friendship?”

Kathleen pondered her reply. She looked away at the nearest hills across

the river for some moments, with her gaze riveted fixedly as if in an

absorption of interest. Without moving her head, she spoke at last: “You

have a good deal to say about friendship. It is my fault--I introduced

the word and insisted on it--but did you also lay such stress upon this

‘friendship’ to her?”

“You do not know her nature,” he assured her. “There is nothing weak or

commonplace in it. One does not talk to her as to an ordinary woman--as

you yourself said. I begged her to join her life to mine, and I put the

plea on the highest possible grounds. All that I have repeated to you,

and much more, I said to her--how great was my need of her, how lofty

her character seemed to me, how all my life I should revere her, and

gain strength and inspiration from being with her.”

“H--m,” said Kathleen.

“Do you mean--?” he began, regarding his companion wonderingly--“was

that not enough? Remember the kind of woman she is--proud of her

independence, occupied with large thoughts, not to be appealed to by

any but the highest motives--a creature who disdains the sentimental

romances of inferior women--do you mean that there should have been

something more? I do love her--and should I have told her so in so many

words?”

“I’m afraid that’s our foible,” she made answer. On the face that she

turned to him, something like the old merry light was shining. “You

goose!” she scolded at him, genially.

His eyes sparkled up as with a light from her own. “Oh, I will make some

excuse, and get away from these people, and find her,” he cried. “She

will be returning, if not here, then to the inn, down below the church,

don’t you think? There would be nothing out of the way in my riding

down, would there? Or if I sent a man down with a letter, appealing to

her not to go away--telling her why? There is no earthly reason why she

should not stop here at the Castle. Her sister is here--why, of course,

she belongs quite to the family party. How dull of me not to have

thought of that! Of course, Cora can go and fetch her.”

“I think I would leave Cora out of it,” Kathleen advised him. “There is

nothing that you cannot do better yourself. Come here! Do you see that

patch of reddish stain on the hill there, above the poplars where the

iron has colored the rock? Well, look to the right, on the ledge just a

bit higher up--there is Miss Bailey. I have been watching her for some

minutes. She has been round the hill; the path she is on will lead her

to the Mere Copse--and to the heath beyond the orchards.”

His eyes had found the moving figure, microscopic yet unmistakable in

the sunshine against the verdant face of the hill--and they dwelt upon

it for a meditative moment.

Then he turned to Kathleen, and took her hand, and almost wrung it in

his own. “Do let us go in!” he urged her, with exultant eagerness.

CHAPTER XXVI

Christian, professing to himself momentarily that the chance to get

away from his guests was at hand, discovered that his escape, all the

same, was no easy matter.

Kathleen had disappeared somewhere, and without her he seemed curiously

helpless. He did not as yet know the house well enough to be sure about

its exits. The result of one furtive attempt at flight was to find

himself in the midst of a group of county people, who fell back

courteously at his approach and, as if by design, let him become

involved in a quite meaningless conversation with a purple-faced,

bull-necked old gentleman whose name he could not remember. This person

talked at tremendous length, producing his words in gurgling spasms; his

voice was so husky and his manner so disconcerting--not to mention the

peculiarities of the local dialect in which he spoke--that Christian

could make literally nothing of his remarks. He maintained a vapid

listener’s-smile, the while his eyes roamed despondently about the room,

and what he could see of the next apartment, in search of some relief.

If he could hit upon Dicky Westland--or even Edward or Augustine!

It became apparent to him, at last, that his interlocutor was

discoursing on the subject of dogs. Of course--it would be about the

Caermere hounds. On the grave faces of those about him, who stood near

enough to hear the sounds of this mysterious monologue, he read signs

that they considered themselves a party to it. It was on their behalf

as well as his own that the old gentleman was haranguing him--and he

swiftly perceived the necessity of paying better attention.

“The hounds--yes,” he said, after a little. “I have been making

inquiries about them. I am advised that they cannot be kept up properly

for less than four thousand five hundred a year.”

“Up to Lord Porlock’s death, we had something like twenty-four hundred

pounds from the Castle, and we made a whip-round among ourselves,” the

other replied, “for the rest. With corn what it is, and rents what

they are, we’re all so poor now that it’ll be harder than ever to get

subscriptions, but we’ll try to do our share if the Castle’ll meet us

half-way.”

Christian felt that he liked being referred to as “the Castle.”

Moreover, an idea suddenly took shape in his mind. “My uncle, Lord

Porlock, was the Master,” he said. “And before him my grandfather, I

believe. But what has been done since Lord Porlock’s death--about a new

Master, I mean?”

Out of the complicated response made to this question he gathered

vaguely that nothing had been done--that nothing could have been done.

“My cousin, Captain Torr, is a hunting man, I think.” He threw out the

question with some diffidence, and was vastly relieved to see the faces

brighten about him.

“None better, by God!” affirmed the old gentleman, with vehemence,

and there followed a glowing and spluttering eulogium of Edward’s

sportsmanlike qualities and achievements, in the middle of which

Christian recalled that the speaker was Sir George Dence.

“I like the Mastership to continue in the family, Sir George,” he

replied, suavely proud of the decision he had leaped to. “I think I

shall suggest to you that Captain Edward take the hounds, and that, for

a time at least, you allow the Castle to be at the entire expense. At

all events, you have my annual subscription of five thousand pounds to

begin upon.”

He made a dignified half-bow in the silence which ensued, and boldly

moved away. The murmur of amazed admiration which rose behind him was

music in his ears.

Visions of possible escape rose for the moment before him. He walked

with an air of resolution through the next room, trying to remember

whither the corridor outside led--but at the doorway he stopped face to

face with Lord Lingfield.

“Ah,” said his cousin, amiably, “I did not know if I should see you

again. I thought perhaps that you had gone to lie down. Funerals take

it out of one so, don’t they? My father is quite seedy since lunch, and

poor Lady Cressage has the most wretched headache! I think myself she’d

do better not to travel while it lasts, but she’s anxious to get away,

and so we’re all off by the evening train.”

“Oh, I didn’t dream of your hurrying off like this,” exclaimed

Christian, sincerely enough. “But if you are set upon it--come, let’s

find your father. It will seem as if I had neglected him.”

“He’s in his room,” explained Lord Lingfield, as they moved away

together, “getting into some heavier clothes. The evenings are chilly

here in the hills, and we’re to start almost immediately, and take the

long drive round through the forest. Lady Cressage has talked so much of

it, and we’ve never seen it, you know.”

“But this is all too bad!” urged Christian. “You rush away before I have

had time to have a word with any of you. There is no urgent reason for

such haste, is there now, really?”

“Lady Cressage seems anxious to go,” answered the other, with a kind of

significance in his solemn voice. “And of course--since she came with

us----”

Christian stole a quick glance at his kinsman, and as swiftly looked

away. “If she prefers it--of course,” he commented with brevity.

“Do you think she is very strong?” asked Lord Lingfield. “I have a kind

of fear, sometimes, that her health is not altogether robust. She seemed

very pale to-day.” There was a note of obvious solicitude in his voice.

“She has a headache,” Christian reminded him.

“Yes, that would account for it, wouldn’t it?” The young man was visibly

relieved by this reflection. “They may say what they like,” he went on,

“she is the most beautiful woman in London to-day, just as she was when

she was married. Let me see--I am not sure that I ever knew her precise

age. Do you happen to know?”

“She is four-and-twenty.”

“Not more! I should have said six, or at least five. Hm-m!

Four-and-twenty!” The reiteration, for some reason, seemed to afford him

pleasure. “I am nearly thirty myself,” he added meditatively, “and I’m

practically sure of being in the next Government. Shall you go in much

for politics, do you think? It wouldn’t be of any great use to you,

except the Garter, perhaps, and it’s so fearfully slow waiting for that.

My father had the promise of it as long ago as Lord John Russell’s time,

and it hasn’t come off yet. But then that Home Rule business was so

unfortunate--it sent us all over to the Tory side, where there were

already more people waiting for things than there were things to go

round. If I were you, I would keep very quiet for a year or two--not

committing myself openly to either side. I can’t help thinking there

will be a break-up. It’s a fearful bore to have only twenty or thirty

people on one side and five hundred on the other. They won’t stand it

much longer. It doesn’t make a fair distribution of things. Of course,

I’m a Unionist, but if I were in your shoes, I’d think it over very

carefully. The Liberals haven’t got a single Duke--and mind you, though

people don’t seem to notice it, it is a fact that a party practically

never succeeds itself. The Liberals are bound to come in, sooner or

later--and then, if you were their only Duke, why, you’d get your

Garter shot at you out of a gun--so to speak. Of course,

I mustn’t be mentioned as saying this--but you think it over! And it

needn’t matter in the least--our being in different parties.. We can

help each other quite as well--indeed, sometimes I’m tempted to think

even better. Of course, I dare say there won’t be much that I can do

for you--for the next two or three years, at least--except in the way of

advice, and tips, and that sort of thing--but there may be a number of

matters that you can help me in.”

Christian nodded wearily--with a nervous thought upon the time being

wasted. “I am not likely to forget your kindness--or our family ties,”

he said, consciously evasive.

“You never saw Cressage, of course; awful beast!” remarked the other,

with an irrelevancy which still struck the listener as having a certain

method in it. “It makes a man furious to think what she must have

suffered with him. And a mere child, too, when she was married. Only

four-and-twenty now! These early marriages are a great mistake. Of

course, when a man gets to be nearly thirty, and there is a family and

property and so on to be handed along, why, then marriage becomes a

duty. That has always been my view. And I try invariably to do my duty,

as I see it. I think a man ought to, you know.”

Christian sighed, and restrained an impulse to look at his watch. They

had sauntered forward into the central hallway; through the open door

could be seen a carriage and pair drawn up before the steps. A rustle on

the stairs behind him caught his ear, and turning, Christian beheld Lady

Cressage descending toward him, with Lord Chobham looming, stately and

severe, in the shadows above her.

Christian moved impulsively to her. “It was the greatest surprise to

me--and disappointment, too--to hear that you were going like this,” he

declared, with outstretched hand.

She smiled feebly, and regarded him with a pensive consideration. Her

heavy mourning of an earlier hour had been exchanged for a black

garb less ostentatiously funereal, yet including the conventional

widow’s-fall, which he had not seen her wear before. The thought that

here at Caermere, last autumn, she had not even worn a widow’s-cap, rose

in his mind. It carried with it a sense of remissness, of contumacy as

against the great family which had endowed her with one of its names.

But at least now she exhibited a consciousness that her husband was less

than a year dead. And her pallid face was very beautiful in its frame of

black--a delicately strong face, meditative, reserved, holding sadness

in a proud restraint. “I am not very well,” she said to him, in tones

to reach his ear alone. “The crowd here depressed me. I could not bring

myself to appear at luncheon. It seems better that I should go away.”

“But it is such a fatiguing journey--for one who does not feel wholly up

to it!” he urged upon her. “All these strangers will be going--I think

some of them have gone already. I don’t know what their rule is here

about stopping after luncheon--but surely they must clear out very soon.

Then we shall be quite by ourselves--so that if that is your only reason

for going--why, I can’t admit that it is a reason at all.”

He paused, and strove to cover with a halting smile his sudden

perception that they were not talking with candor to each other. There

were things in her mind, things in his mind, which bore no relation to

the words they uttered. She was looking at him musingly--and he felt

that he could read in her glance, or perhaps gather from what there

was not in her glance, that she would not go if he begged her with

sufficient earnestness to remain. Nay, the conviction flashed vividly

uppermost in his thoughts that even a tolerable simulation of this

earnestness would be enough. It was as if a game were being played, in

which he was not quite the master of his moves. In this mere instant

of time, while they had stood facing each other, he had been able to

reproduce the whole panorama of his contact with this beautiful woman.

From that first memorable day when she had come into his wondering,

distraught vision of the new life before him, to that other day but a

week ago when he had stood trembling with passionate emotions in her

presence, his mental pictures of her rose connectedly about him. They

exerted a pressure upon his will. They left him no free agency in the

matter. By all the chivalric, tenderly compassionate memories they

evoked, he must bid her to remain.

“I am very sorry that you feel you must go,” was what he heard himself

say instead.

“Good-bye,” she answered simply, and gave him her gloved hand with an

impassive face. “Lord Chobham and Lord Lingfield are good enough to see

me back to London again. We are driving round through the forest. Our

people are to join us at the station with the luggage. Goodbye.”

He accompanied the party out to the carriage door, despite some formal

doubts about its being the proper thing to do. Both father and son made

remarks to him, to which he seemed to himself to be making suitable

answers, but what they were about he never knew. The tragedy of Edith’s

final departure from Caermere--she who had been the hostess here when

he came; she who was to have worn the coronet on her lovely brow as the

mistress of it all--seized upon his mind and harrowed it. A vehement

self-reproach that his thoughts should have done her even momentary

injustice stung him, as he beheld her seated in the carriage. She smiled

at him--that wistful, subdued smile of the headache--and then, as the

horses moved, his eyes were resting upon another smile instead--the

beaming of fatuous content upon the countenance of Lord Lingfield, who

sat facing her.

Christian, regarding this second cousin of his as the carriage receded

from view, suddenly breathed a long sigh of relief.

All at once remembering many things, he wheeled with the impulse to run

up the steps. Upon reflection, he ascended them sedately instead,

and gave orders in the hall that Mr. Westland should be sent to him

forthwith. Two or more groups of departing guests came upon him, while

he stood irresolutely here, and he bade them farewell with formal

gravity. The two parsons whom he had seen at the church were among

them--attired now in black garments with curiously ugly little round,

flat hats--and he noted with interest that their smirking deference now

displeased him less than it had done in the morning. He perceived that

his lungs were becoming accustomed to the atmosphere of adulation, and

smiled tolerantly at himself. How long would it be, he wondered with

idle amusement, before it would stifle him to breathe any other air?

Augustine had sauntered out from some unknown quarter into the hall,

and Christian beckoned to him. A shapeless kind of suspicion, born of a

resemblance now for the first time suggesting itself, had risen in his

brain. He took the young man by the arm, and strolled aside with him.

“Am I wrong,” he asked carelessly, “or did I see you at the supper at

the Hanover Theater? Let us see--it would be a week ago to-night? I

thought so. Why I asked--I was curious to know whom you were with. It

was a young man; you were standing together between some scenery as I

passed you.”

“Oh!” said Augustine, with visible reassurance. “That was Tom

Bailey--Cora’s brother, you know.”

“What sort is he?” Christian pursued, secretly astonished at the

inspired accuracy of his intuition.

“Well”--replied the other, hesitatingly--“it’s rather hard to say. He

got sent down from Cambridge for something or other, and his governor

got the needle over it, and put him on an allowance of a pound a week,

or something like that, and so what could he do? It’s jolly hard on a

young fellow round town to have less money than anybody else. He’s bound

to get talked about, if he only owes half-a-crown to some outsider or

other, and that makes other fellows turn shirty. But I think he always

pays when he can.”

“You like him, then, do you?”

“Oh, yes--I like Tom well enough,” answered Augustine, dubiously

pondering the significance of the interrogatory. “He’d be all right

if--if he had a proper chance.” With a sigh, he ventured to add: “He’s

like the rest of us--that way.”

At sight of Dicky Westland’s approach. Christian dropped his inquiries

abruptly. “All right,” he said, with enigmatic brevity, and turned to

his secretary with a meaning gesture. “I want to get away from here--out

of the Castle,” he murmured to the newcomer, “without a minute’s delay.

I have a--kind of appointment, and I am already late. If you will get

our hats, we will walk out together, as if we were discussing some

private matter, and then no one will interrupt us.”

This confidence was only partially justified by events. The two made

their way unmolested into the open air, and across some long stretches

of lawn to the beginning of the series of gardens. It was within

Christian’s memory that one reached the orchards and the opening upon

the heath by traversing these gardens. But in the second of them, where

remarkable masses of tulips in gorgeous effulgence of bloom occupied

the very beds in which he believed the dahlias must have been last year,

there was some one on the well-remembered path in front of him.

A little child of two or three years, still walking insecurely at least,

was being led along the edge of the flower-border by a woman in black

whose back was turned.

The infant had caught the notion of bending over the hyacinths, one by

one, laboriously to smell their perfume, and the woman indulgently lent

herself to the pastime, halting and supporting the little one by the

hand.

Christian wondered vaguely what child this could be, before observation

told him that the person they were approaching was a lady. He took

Dicky’s arm then, and quickened their step. “We will be very much

engaged as we pass,” he admonished him. After a few paces, however,

the futility of this device made itself apparent. The lady, glancing

indifferently over her shoulder at the sound, of their tread, turned on

the instant with a little cry of pleasure.

It was Cora who came toward them, now radiant of face and with an

extended hand. She dragged the surprised child heedlessly along at her

side with the other arm.

“Oh, Duke!” she cried. “I did so long to burst in upon you, wherever you

were to be found, and thank you when I heard. It was Sir George Dence

who told us. And Eddy, he’s quite off his head with joy! He wanted to

look you up, too, but I told him to put off thanking you till to-morrow;

between ourselves, I don’t fancy he’ll be seen quite to the best

advantage later on to-day. But I know you’ll think none the worse of

him for that; and there’s a good bit to be done, he says, in the way of

pulling the Hunt together again to work like one man. He’s begun already

promoting the right sort of feeling. He’s got Sir George and old General

Fawcett and about a dozen more of ’em in the billiard-room, and I

told him everything would be all right so long as they didn’t sing. On

account of the funeral, you know. And--why, you’ve never seen my oldest

unmarried daughter! Look up and say, ‘How-de-do?’ Chrissy. Why, she’s

your namesake! Yes, her baptismal name is Christiana or Christina--which

is it? We always call her Chrissy. And you haven’t told me what an

effective family group I make. You never would have believed that I

could be so domestic, now, would you?”

She had gathered the child up into her arms, and under the influence of

her jocund mood Christian smiled cheerfully. “You are very wonderful

as a mother,” he assured her, and extended a tentative finger toward

Chrissy, who, huddled in awkward and twisted discomfort under her

mother’s elbow, regarded him with unconcealed repulsion.

“She seems an extremely healthy child,” he remarked, and the words were

not so perfunctory as they sounded. The robust, red cheeked heartiness

of Chrissy raised musing reflections in his mind. If this infant, with

its stout mottled arms and legs, had been a boy, it would be at this

moment his heir. No one could ask for a finer child--and she was very

closely akin to him. And Cora was her mother--and Cora’s sister!

“Oh, but where _are_ we going to live?” she broke in upon his

meditations. “I said to Eddy that I’d lay odds you were thinking of

David’s Court for us. You know the kennels used to be there before

Porlock’s time.”

“All that we can arrange,” said Christian, shaking off his reverie, and

lifting his hat. “Rest easy in your mind about everything.”

She nodded with an expansive geniality which freely included Dicky as

well, and then walked away. It slowly occurred to Christian that she had

said nothing about her sister’s presence in the neighborhood, although

it was impossible to suppose her ignorant, of it. Upon consideration, he

decided that her reticence was delicate. He felt that he liked Cora, and

then uneasily speculated upon the seeming probability that his liking

for her was in excess of her sister’s.

“Westland,” he said, with a new thought in his busy brain, “you know

about geography--about where the different British colonies are on

the map, and what they are distinguished for. I want to know of a good

place, a very long way off, where two young men with a moderate capital

might do well, or-at least have the chance to do well.”

“Fellows like that generally go to South Africa, nowadays,” replied

Dicky, “though I believe it’s gone off a bit. It’s not as far away as

Australia, but it’s livelier, apparently. They don’t seem to come back

as much.”

“No; I have a prejudice against that Johannesburg. It is not a good

atmosphere, and it is too easy to get into trouble there.”

“There are great reports about British Columbia just now. They’ve found

wonderful new gold-fields, and they’re a fearful distance from anywhere.

It takes you months to get to them, so I’m told. But it depends so much

on what the fellows themselves are like. If I may ask, do I know them?”

“It is Augustine Torr that I have in mind, and a young friend of

his--Bailey his name is. By the way, a brother of the lady we just

left.”

“I know _of_ him,” commented Dicky sententiously.

“Well, it has occurred to me that these young men, for whom there seems

no specially suitable foothold in England, might accomplish something in

the colonies. That is the way Greater Britain, as they call it, has been

made--by young men who might have done nothing at all worth doing at

home. Life is really very difficult and complicated in this crowded

island, unless one has exactly the temperament to succeed. But in the

colonies it is different. Men who are of no use here may become valuable

there. I have heard that there are many instances of this. And these

young men, it seems to me that very possibly, if they found themselves

on new ground, they might do as others have done and get on. We do not

quite know what to do with them here, but we send them out, and they

make the Empire.”

“It’s rather rough on the Empire, though, isn’t it?” said Dicky.

Christian frowned and drew himself up a little. “One is my cousin,”

he said coldly, “and the other is the brother of--is the brother of my

cousin’s wife.”

There was a moment of silence, and then the secretary, as upon a sudden

resolution, stopped. “It’s no good my going on,” he said, nervously, but

with decision. “I daresay you don’t mean it, but all the same it’s too

much for me. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn it up and catch the

evening-train. I don’t mind going to the station in the brake with the

servants and the luggage. It certainly won’t take anybody by surprise.”

Christian regarded him with open-eyed astonishment. “I don’t know what

you’re talking about,” he said, in obvious candor.

Dicky restlessly threw out his hands. “Oh, I can’t stand this Dukeness

of yours,” he declared. “You put it on too thick. I know Gus Torr, and

I know as much as I want to of Tom Bailey, and I know they’re no good,

and you know it, too--although I don’t say they mayn’t get on in the

colonies. God knows what won’t get on there! But when I make some

perfectly civil and natural remark on the subject, you flame up at

me, and blow yourself out like a pouter pigeon, and say

they’re--haw-haw!--relations of yours. Well, that be damned, you know!

It may do once in a way with outsiders, but it isn’t good enough to live

with.”

“Dicky!” said Christian, in a voice of awed appeal. His brown face

distorted itself in lines of painful bewilderment as he gazed at his

companion. “Have I done that? Is it as bad as that?” He gasped the

questions out in a frightened way and tears sprang into his eyes. “Then

it is not you who should catch the evening train, but me. I am not fit

to be here!” He finished with a groan of bitter dejection and bowed his

head.

Westland, as much scared as surprised at the violent result of his

protest, moved impetuously to his friend and put a hand on his shoulder.

“No-no! No-no,” he said, in a soothing voice. “It’s all right! I said

you didn’t mean it, you know. Truly, old man, I _knew_ you didn’t mean

it! Upon my word, it’s all right!”

Christian lifted his head, and tried to choke down his agitation. “But

you go away from me!” he said in despairing tones. “It is the same as

ever! Nothing is changed for me! I do not make friends--much less keep

them!”

“But I _am_ your friend! You _are_ keeping me!” Dicky insisted, raising

his voice. An odd impulse to laugh aloud struggled confusedly with the

concern the other’s visible suffering gave him. “I take it all back. I’m

stopping with you, right enough!”

Christian accepted the assurance in a dazed way, and after he had

silently shaken the other’s hand, began walking on again, studying the

ground with a troubled frown. “I am a weak and dull fool!” he growled at

last, in rage at himself. “I have not sense enough to behave properly!

It is a mistake that I should he put over anybody else! I make myself

ridiculous, like any _parvenu_.”

“No--that’s all rot,” the other felt it judicious to urge. “You’re

perfectly all right, only--only----”

“Only I’m not!” Christian filled in the gap of hesitation with an angry

laugh.

Gradually a calmer view of himself pervaded his mind. “It is more

difficult than you think, Dicky,” he affirmed, after a pause. “It is not

easy at all--at first--to--what shall I say?--to keep feeling your feet

under you on the solid ground. The temptation to soar, to think you are

lifted up, is upon you every minute. It catches you unawares. Ah! I see

one must watch that without ceasing. Oh, I am glad--more glad than I can

tell you--that you stopped me. Ah! that was a true friend’s service.”

Dicky chuckled softly: “It’s much nicer, if you can take it that way,”

he admitted.

“If I am ever anything but nice to _yoo_,” Christian began, gravely,

and then stopped as if he had bitten his tongue. “Oh, there is patronage

again!” he cried with vexation--and then let himself be persuaded to

join in the frank laughter that the other set up.

“Oh, we shall hit it off all right,” Dicky assured him as a final word

on the subject. “It’s merely a question of time. You’ve got to get

accustomed to your new job, and I to mine: that’s all there is of it.

We shall learn the whole bag of tricks in a week or so, and be happy

ever afterward.”

The joking refrain struck some welcome chord in Christian’s thoughts. He

looked up, and noted that they were very near the door leading out from

the fruit-garden to the heath beyond the wall. Halting, he smiled into

his companion’s face.

“No one will follow me now,” he said with sparkling eyes. “I will let

you turn back here, if you don’t mind.”

CHAPTER XXVII

Christian realized blankly, all at once, as’ he stood and gazed out

over the moor, that he did not know his way.

The spring had laid upon this great rolling common a beauty of its own.

Everywhere, on thorns and furze and briars, the touch of the new life

had hung emeralds to bedeck and hide the dun waste of winter. The

ashen-gray carpets of old mosses were veined with the vivid green of

young growths; out from the dry brown litter of lifeless ferns and

bracken were rising the malachite croziers of fresh fronds. The

brilliant yellow of broom and gorse blooms caught the eye in all

directions, blazing above the vernal outburst of another year’s

vegetation, and the hum of the bees in the sunlight, and the delicately

mingled odors in the May air were a delight to the senses. But under

this exuberance of re-awakened nature, welcome though it might be,

somehow the landmarks of last autumn seemed to have disappeared.

The path which had led along the wall, for example, was now nowhere

discernible. Or had there really been a path at any time?

It was clear enough, at all events, that his course for some distance

lay beside this massive line of ancient masonry, even if no track was

marked for him. At some farther point it would be necessary to turn

off at a right angle toward the Mere Copse--and here he could recall

distinctly that there had been a path. But then he came upon several

paths, or vaguely defined grassy depressions which might be paths, and

the divergent ways of these were a trouble to him. At last, he decided

to strike out more boldly into the heath, independently of paths, and

try to get a general view of the landscape. He made his way through

creepers and prickly little bushes toward an elevation in the distance,

realizing more and more in his encumbered progress that his quest was

like that of one who should search the limitless sea for a small boat.

There seemed no boundaries whatever to this vast tract of waste land.

As he began at length the ascent of the mound toward which his course

had been directed, he scanned the moor near and far, but no human figure

was visible. No signs could he discover of any beaten track across it;

of the several patches of woodland beyond, in the distance to the left,

he could not even be sure which was the Mere Copse. Below, on the edge

of the sky-line at the right, he could see the tops of the towers

and chimneys of Caermere. Wheeling round from this point, then, he

endeavored to identify that portion of the hill, on the opposite side of

the river-chasm, which Kathleen had pointed out to him from the terrace.

But, viewed from here, there were so many hills! The hopelessness of

his errand became more apparent with each glance round. Despondently, he

sauntered up the few remaining yards to the top.

He stood upon the ridge of a grass-grown wall of stones and earth, which

in a somewhat irregular circle enclosed perhaps a quarter-acre of land.

This wall on its best preserved side, where he found himself, was some

dozen feet in height. Across the ring it seemed lower, and at three

or four points was broken down altogether. He realized that he was

surveying a very ancient structure--no doubt, prehistoric. Would it

have been a fortress or a temple, or the primitive mausoleum of some

chieftain-ruler in these wilds? One of the openings seemed to suggest by

its symmetry an entrance to the enclosure. It was all very curious, and

he promised himself that very soon he would examine it in detail. Some

vague promptings of a nascent archaeological spirit impelled him now,

upon second thoughts, to walk round on the crest of the wall to the

other side.

Suddenly he stopped, stared sharply downward with arrested breath, and

then, while his face wreathed itself with amused smiles, tip-toed along

a few paces farther. Halting here, his eyes dancing with suppressed

gaiety, he regarded at his leisure the object of his expedition.

Upon the sunny outer side of the sloping embankment, only a few feet

below, was seated Frances Bailey. Her face was turned from him, and she

was apparently engrossed in the study of a linen-backed sectional map

spread on her knees. A small red book lay in the grass at her side,

and he was so close that he could decipher the legend “Shropshire and

Cheshire” on its cover.

After a minute’s rapturous reflection he turned and noiselessly retraced

his steps, till he could descend from the wall without being seen. There

was a kind of miniature dry moat surrounding it at this point, and this

he lightly vaulted. Then, straightening himself, he strolled forward

with as fine an assumption of unsuspecting innocence as he could

contrive. It occurred to him to whistle some negligent tune very softly

as he came, but, oddly enough, his lips seemed recalcitrant--they made

no sound.

At the obtrusion of his shadow upon the map she was examining she looked

swiftly up. For a moment, with the afternoon sun in her eyes, she seemed

not to recognize him. There followed another pause, infinitesimal in

duration, yet crowded with significance, in which she appeared clearly

at a loss what to say or do, now that she realized the fact of his

presence. Then she smiled at him with a kind of superficial brightness

and tossed the map aside.

“I am fortunate indeed to find you,” he said, as he came up, and they

shook hands formally. A few moments before, when he had looked down upon

her from the mound, he had been buoyantly conscious of his control of

the situation; but now that he stood before her it was she who looked

down upon him from her vantage-ground on the side of the bank, and

somehow this seemed to make a great deal of difference. The sound of his

voice in his own ears was unexpectedly solemn and constrained. He felt

his deportment to be unpleasantly awkward.

She ignored the implication that he had been looking for her. “I suppose

this must be the place that is marked ‘tumulus’ on the map here,” she

observed, with what seemed to be a deliberately casual tone. “But

I should think it is more like a rath, such as one reads about in

Ireland--a fortified place to defend one’s herds and people in. As I

understand it, a tumulus was for purposes of burial, and this seems to

be a fort rather than a tomb. What is your idea about it?” She rose to

her feet as she put the question, and turned to regard the earthworks

above and about her with a concentrated interest.

He tried to laugh. “I’m afraid I’m more ignorant about them than anybody

else,” he confessed. “I have never been here before. I suppose all one

can really say is that the people who did these things knew what they

were for, but that since they had no alphabet they could not leave a

record to explain them to us, and so we are free to make each his own

theory to suit himself.”

“That is a very indolent view to take,” she told him over her shoulder.

“Scientists and archaeologists are not contented with that sort of

reply. They examine and compare and draw deductions, and get at the

meaning of these ancient remains. They do not sit down and fold their

hands and say, ‘Unfortunately those people had no alphabet.’ Why don’t

you dig this thing up and find out about it?”

He smiled to himself doubtfully, “I have only been in possession of it

for about three hours,” he reminded her. Then an inspiration came

to, him. “Would _you_ like to dig it up?” he asked, with an effect

of eagerness shining through the banter of his tone. “I mean, to

superintend the excavations. You shall have forty men out here with

picks and shovels to-morrow if you say the word.” Instead of answering,

she stooped to get her book and map, and then moved with a preoccupied

air to the top of the bank. After an instant’s hesitation he scrambled

up to join her.

“I suppose that would have been the entrance there,” she observed,

pointing across the circle. “And in the center, you see, where the grass

is so thin, there are evidently big stones there. That _does_ suggest

interment after all, doesn’t it? Yet the Silurians are said to have

buried only in dolmens. It is very curious.”

“I do not find that I care much about Silurians this afternoon,” he

ventured to say. There was a gentle hint of reproach in his voice.

“Why, you’re one yourself! That is the principal point about the Torrs;

that is what makes them interesting.”

“But what good does it do me to be a Silurian and interesting,” he

protested with a whimsical gesture, “if I--if I do not get what I want

most of all in the world?”

“It seems to me that you have got more things already than most people

on this planet.” She went on reflectively: “I had no idea at all what it

meant till I saw these hills and the valleys below them, and the forests

and the villages and the castle, and the people coming out from heaven

knows what holes in the rocks--all with your collar round their necks.

I should think it would either send you mad with the sense of power or

frighten you to death.”

“I am really very humble about it, I think,” he assured her simply. “And

there is not so much power as you seem to imagine. It is all a great

organized machine, like some big business. The differences are that it

works very clumsily and badly as it is at present managed, and that it

hardly pays any dividend at all. The average large wholesale grocer’s

or wine merchant’s estate would pay a bigger succession duty than my

grandfather’s. He died actually a poor man.” The intelligence did not

visibly impress her. “But it was not because he helped others,” she

remarked. “Those about him grew poorer also. It is a hateful system!”

“There is something you do not know,” he began with gravity. “I said

that my grandfather died a poor man. But since his death a tremendous

thing has happened. A great gift has been made to me. The enormous debts

which encumbered his estates have been wiped out of existence. It is

Lord Julius and Emanuel who have done this--done it for me! I do not

know the figures yet--to-morrow Mr. Soman is to explain them to me--but

the fact is I am a very rich man indeed. I do not owe anybody a penny.

Whatever seems to be mine, _is_ mine. There are between seventy-five and

eighty thousand acres. By comparison with other estates, it seems to me

that there will be a yearly income of more than fifty thousand pounds!”

She drew a long breath and looked him in the face. “I am very sorry for

you,” she said soberly.

“Ah, no; I resist you there,” he exclaimed. “I quote your own words

to you: ‘It is an indolent view to take.’ There is a prodigious

responsibility! Yes! But all the more reason why I should be brave.

Would you have me lose my nerve, and say the task is too great for me? I

thought you did not like people who solved difficulties by turning tail

and running away. Well, to confess oneself afraid--that is the same

thing.”

She smiled thoughtfully, perhaps at the quaint recurrence to foreign

gestures and an uncertain, hurried use of book-English which her company

seemed always to provoke in him. “I meant only that it was a terrible

burden you had had fastened upon your shoulders,” she made answer

softly. “I did not suggest that you were afraid of it. And yet I should

think you would be!”

“I think,” he responded, with a kind of diffident conviction, “I think

that if a man is honest and ambitious for good things, and has some

brains, he can grow to be equal to any task that will be laid upon him.

And if he labors at it with sincerity and does absolutely the best that

there is in him to do, then I do not think that his work will be wasted.

A man is only a man after all. He did not make this world, and he cannot

do with it what he likes. It is a bigger thing, when you come to think

of it, than he is. At the end there is only a little hole in it for him

to be buried in and forgotten, as these people who raised this wall

that we stand on are forgotten. They thought in their day that the whole

world depended upon them; when there was thunder and lightning, they

said it was on their account, because their gods in the sky were angry

with them. But to us it is evident that they were not so important as

they supposed they were. We look at the work of their hands here, and

we regard it with curiosity, as we might an ant’s nest. We do not know

whether they made it as a tomb for their chief or as a shelter for their

cows. And if they had left records to explain that, and it does not

matter how much else, it would be the same. We learn only one thing from

all the numberless millions who have gone before us--that man is less

important than he thinks he is. I have a high position thrust upon me.

_Eh bien!_ I am not going to command the sun to stand still. I am not

going to believe that I ought to revolutionize human society before I

die. There will be many men after me. If one or two of them says of me

that I worked hard to do well, and that I left things a trifle better

than I found them, then what more can I desire?”

She nodded in musing abstraction, but answered nothing. Her gaze was

fastened resolutely upon the opposite bank.

“I am truly so fortunate not to have missed you!” he repeated after a

small interval of silence.

“Why should you say that?” she asked almost with petulance. “You make

too much of me! I do not belong in this gallery at all. I am very angry

with myself for being here. I ought not to have allowed Mrs. Emanuel to

persuade me against my own judgment. It did not enter into my head that

I should be seen by anybody. I was on my vacation--I take it early,

because some of the girls like to get away at Whitsuntide--and at Bath

I saw in a paper some reference to the state with which your grandfather

would be buried, and the whim seized me to see the funeral. I came on

my bicycle most of the way, till the hills got too bad. I thought no one

would be the wiser for my coming and going. And one thing--you must not

ask me to come into the castle again. I am going to the inn to get my

machine, and go down to Craven Arms or Clun for the night. I have looked

both roads out on my map. Is Clun interesting, do you know?”

“I have not the remotest idea. In fact, there is only one idea of any

sort in my mind just now. It is that you are not to be allowed to go

away. Have you seen the dungeons in which we fasten up people whose

presence is particularly desired, and who will not listen to reason?”

The jesting tone of his words was belied by the glance in his eyes.

She frowned a little. “No, there is no reason in it at all.

What have I to do with these people? They are not my kind. It is the

merest accident that you and I happen to be acquainted. If you did not

know me now, nothing is more certain than that we should never meet in

the world. And our seeming to each other like friends on those other

occasions--that had nothing to do with the present. The circumstances

are entirely different. There is nothing in common between us now, or

hardly anything at all. You ought to understand that. And I look to you

to realize how matters are altered, and not to insist upon placing me

in a very undignified and unpleasant position.” She had spoken with

increasing rapidity of utterance, and with rising agitation. “Not

that your insisting would make any difference!” she added now, almost

defiantly.

He looked at her in silence. The face half turned from him, with its

broad brow, its shapely and competent profile, the commanding light

in its gray eyes, the firm lips drawn into tightened curves of proud

resistance to any weakness of quivering--it was the face that had made

so profound an impression upon him at the outset of that wonderful

journey from Rouen. The memory became on the instant inexpressibly

touching to him. She was almost as she had been then--it might well be

the same sober gray frock, the same hat, save that the ribbon now was

black instead of fawn. She would have no varied wardrobe, this girl who

earned her own bread, and gave her mind to the large realities of life.

But this very simplicity of setting, how notably it emphasized the

precious quality of what it framed! He recalled that in his first rapt

study of this face it had seemed to him like the face of the young

Piedmontese bishop who had once come to his school--pure, wise, sweet,

tender, strong. And now, beholding it afresh, it was beyond all these

things the face which woke music in his heart--the face of the woman he

loved.

With gentle slowness he answered her: “The position I seek to place you

in does not seem to me undignified. I should like to hope that you would

not find it unpleasant. You know what I mean--I offered it to you in

advance, before it was yet mine to give. I beg you again to accept it,

now when it _is_ mine to give. If you will turn, you can see Caermere

from where you stand. It has had in all its days no mistress like you.

Will you take it from my hands?”

She confronted him with a clear, steady gaze of disapproval. “All this

is very stupid!” she said, peremptorily. “Last week--it had its pretty

and graceful side then perhaps, but it is not nice at all now. It does

not flatter me; it does not please me in any way to-day. I told you

then, I had my own independence, my own personal pride and dignity,

which are dearer to me than anything else. If I had them then, I have

them very much more now. What kind of idea of me is this that you

have--that I am to change my mind because now you can talk of fifty

thousand a year? I like you less than I did when you had nothing at all!

For then we seemed to understand each other better. You would not have

rattled your money-box at me then! You had finer sensibilities--I liked

you more!”

He returned her gaze with a perplexed smile. “But I am asking you to be

my wife,” he pointed out.

She sniffed with a suggestion of contempt at the word. “Wife!” she told

him stormily. “You do not seem to know what the word ‘wife’ means! You

are not thinking of a ‘wife’ at all. It is a woman to play Duchess to

your Duke that you have in mind, and you feel merely that she ought to

be presentable and intelligent, and personally not distasteful to you;

we’ll even say that you prefer a woman towards whom you have felt a sort

of comrade’s impulse. But that has nothing to do with a ‘wife.’ And even

on your own ground how foolish you are! In heaven’s name, why hit on

_me_ of all women? There are ten thousand who would do it all vastly

better, and who, moreover, would leap at the chance. You have only to

look about you. England is full of beauties in training for just such a

place. They know the ways of your set--the small talk, the little jokes,

the amusements and social duties and distinctions, and all that. Go

and find what you want among them. What have I to do with such people?

They’re not in my class at all.”

Christian sighed, and then sought her glance again with a timid,

whimsical smile. “Ah, how you badger me always!” he said. “But I have

still something more to say.”

“Let me beg that it be left unsaid!” She folded up the map, and began

moving along the ridge as she spoke. “It is all as distressful to me as

can be. You cannot understand--or will not understand--and it puts me

in an utterly hateful position. I do not like to be saying unpleasant

things to you. I had only the nicest feelings towards you when we last

parted; and this noon, when I saw you in the church, you made a picture

in my mind that I had quite--quite a tenderness for. But now you force

me into disagreeable feelings and words, which I don’t like any more

than you do. I seem to be never myself when I am with you. I have

actually never seen you but three times, and you disturb me more--you

make me hate myself more--than everything else in the world.”

The exigencies of the path along the summit of the mound forced

Christian to walk behind her. In the voice which carried these words

backward to him the quavering stress of profound emotion was more to him

than the words themselves. He put out his hand and laid it lightly upon

her arm.

“It is because you feel in your heart of hearts that I love you,” he

said in a low, tremulous voice. “Can you not see? It is that that has

made all our meetings disturbed, full of misunderstandings as well as

pleasure. You wrong me, dear--or no, you could not do that, but it is

that you do not comprehend. I have loved you from that first day. Oh,

I have loved you always, since I can remember--long years before I saw

you. There is not any memory in my life, it seems, but of you--for

all the sweet things were a foretaste of you, and all the bitter are

forgotten because of you. And shall there not be an end now to our

hurting each other? For where you go I follow you, and I must always

be longing for you--and I do not believe that in your heart you hold

yourself away from me, but only in your mind.”

She had drawn her sleeve from his touch, and irresolutely quickened her

steps. She perforce paused now at a broken gap in the bank, and with

books and gathered skirts in one hand, lifted the other in instinctively

balancing preparation for a descent. He took this hand, and she made no

demur to his leading her down the steep slope to the level outer ground.

He retained the hand reverently, gently in his own as they walked in

silence across the heath. It seemed ever as if she would take it from

him, and that he consciously exerted a magic through his touch which

just sufficed to hold it.

With a bowed head, and cheek at once flushed and white, she began to

speak. “You are very young,” she said, lingering over the words with

almost dejection in her tone. “You know so little of what life is like!

You have such a place in the affairs of men to fill, and you come to it

with such innocent boyish good faith--and men are so little like

what you think they are. And as you learn the lesson--the hardening,

disillusionizing lesson of the world--and the soft, youthful places in

your nature toughen, and you are a man holding your own with other men,

and lording it over them where you can, then you will hate the things

which hamper you, and you will curse encumbrances that you took

on you in your ignorance. And you are all wrong about me!

It is because you do not know other women that you think well of me. I

am a very ordinary girl, indeed. There are thousands like me, and better

than me, with more courage and finer characters, and you do not know

them, that is all. And there are the young women of your own little

world, who are born and reared to be the wives of men in your place, and

you will see them----”

“I have seen them,” he interposed softly. “But it is not fair!” she

hurried on breathlessly. “It is the duty of a friend to hold a man back

when he is bent on a folly. And we pledged ourselves to be true friends,

and I implore you--or no, I insist! I will not have it. It is too

cruelly unfair to you--and--I am going now--no, not that way; in the

other direction. We will say good-bye.”

He would not relinquish the hand she strove to drag away. All the

calmness of confident mastery was in his hold upon this hand, and in the

gravely sweet cadence of his voice. “I love you,” he said. “I shall love

no one in my life, or in another life, but you. I will not live without

you. I will not willingly spend a day in all my years away from you. You

are truly my other half--the companion, the friend, the love, the wife,

without whom nothing exists for me. I am not young as you say I am,

and I shall never be old--for in this love there is no youth or age for

either of us. Try to look backward now! Can you see a time when we

did not love each other? And forward! Is it thinkable that we can be

parted?” Slowly she lifted her head.

“Look at me!” she bade him in a voice he seemed never to have heard

before.

THE END