He would arrive about five. She sent him word to dress early and come

to the tower. She knew that he would doubtless be detained by Cecil

in the library for a time, but she was in her boudoir before seven.

Her flutter of excitement was very agreeable. As it trembled along

her nerves it brought with it an admitted desire for a whole series

of sudden and brilliant changes. She wished that Randolph had come

straight from California, for she could have fancied the wild winds of

the Pacific blowing about him. She had learned to keep California out

of her mind for many months at a time, but to-night as she stood in

her tower looking through the narrow ancient window on the calm beauty

of the English landscape, she shook with homesickness for that land

which seemed to have all space just above it, and as many moods and

features as the imagination of Byron. The sudden nostalgia was as much

of the body as of the spirit. Her very veins seemed full of tears; in

her brain was a distinct sensation of nausea. She was a child of the

redwoods, not of the landscape garden.

Randolph came up the stair with a slower step than of old, but with as

light a foot. Lee was conventional at once.

“You have been long enough crossing the Channel to see me,” she said

gaily, and shaking him warmly by the hand; “but you know I never

harbour malice, and now--I am simply delighted to welcome you.”

“It was my mother that kept me in France after I got within crossing

distance of the Channel; her health is really broken, I am afraid.”

They talked of Mrs. Montgomery for some time, while studying each

other. Lee hoped that if he found her changed his surprise and approval

would equal her own. He had transformed himself into what he would

have become years since had his mother taken him to Europe while he was

still a boy, and kept him there. His restless Americanism, his careless

stoop, the nervous play of his features, even the lines about his eyes

and mouth had gone. His erect and graceful carriage made him look

almost as tall as Cecil Maundrell. He was a trifle stouter than when he

had left California; and he was, in his new habit, so handsome and so

distinguished, that Lee thrilled with the pride of the Montgomerys, and

of the South before the War. His manner was scarcely fraternal, nor did

it hint of the lover, discarded and tenacious; it was merely that of an

amiable man-of-the-world pleased to renew an intimate friendship with a

charming woman.

“Am I as much changed as you are?” asked Lee impulsively.

“Am I changed? You--I will tell you when I have been here a little

longer. There is a difference--although that gown makes you look very

natural. I cannot decide what it is. You are more beautiful than ever,

if that could be possible.”

It was so long since Lee had received a vigorous compliment that she

blushed with delight.

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Randolph,” she exclaimed. “Do talk to me

about old times and California, even if you do hate the thought of it.”

“I hate the thought of it?”

“Well, you hate America.”

“Why will even the cleverest of women add so many little frills? I am

immensely proud of the United States; I would have been born under

no other flag. What I do hate is the modern spirit of the country as

typified by New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. I love California,

and am beginning to get a little homesick for her. I fancy it won’t be

long before I shall suddenly pack my trunk and go back for a year.”

“Oh, if I could go! If I could go!”

“Couldn’t we all go back together next year?”

“Cecil cannot leave England. I suppose you have not heard----”

“That great things are expected of him. I take several London papers;

and, when travelling, they are always at the clubs. How proud you must

be of him.”

“I am;” but she was thinking of California; and there seemed to be a

hundred things to be talked about at once. There had been a time when

she had talked to Randolph about nearly everything that passed through

her mind. That time came sharply back to her.

“That is one of the changes in you,” he was saying. “You have the least

little more pride in your carriage. You never were very humble, but

this is a sort of double duplicated pride, as it were. And--yes--you

are more intellectual looking. It is that which has dissipated your

girlishness without ageing you a particle.”

“Oh, I am intellectual! I’ve been on one long intellectual orgie for

the last three years. I’m ready for a change. If you’ve been cramming

your brain, don’t you try to impress me; and don’t you dare to mention

politics.”

Randolph laughed. “I should not think of such a thing. My interest is

too cursory to burden my conversation. And as for books--I’ve read a

good many on rainy days since I saw you last, and am better for them;

but I have spent the greater part of the time living books of many

sorts.”

“Have you grown serious? You used to take life so lightly. So did

everybody. So did I.”

“I am afraid I still take life with reprehensible lightness. I have got

an immense amount of fun out of the old world.”

“Do you remember how we used to roar--you and Coralie and Tom and I?

And about nothing! We _were_ such good laughers!”

“I hope you haven’t forgotten how.”

“Not much! But I’m out of practice. Let’s go up on top of the fell

to-morrow, and sit down on the ground and shriek.”

Randolph threw back his head and laughed so heartily that Lee caught

the infection of it, and in a moment was leaping from peal to peal. She

caught herself up.

“I shall have hysterics. And it’s nearly dinner time. I’ve got to go

down and talk grouse prospects and the tantalising peculiarities of

that loathsome bird for two hours. I don’t know if I dare put you on my

other side. I’m afraid I’d giggle like an idiot all through dinner if I

did. I suppose it’s reaction, but I really feel on the verge of idiocy.”

“The result of my sudden appearance. I am immensely flattered.”

“Oh, you would be if you knew! Cecil is simply perfect; don’t think I

am casting the faintest reflection on him. It’s the life! Oh, I must!

I must! I always did tell you things, Randolph, and you always were so

sympathetic. Have you read many English novels that aim to initiate

the outside world into the life of our class--the truth without any

frills, and all that sort of thing? After I’d been here two years I

made a terrible mistake: out of curiosity--to see the influence of

England on the imagination circumscribed by conscience--I read, one

after the other, about twelve novels of that sort--the sort that might

be called the current history of social England. Then I realised what

I had got into--that unchanging, inevitable, mathematically precise

_mise en scène_, that wheel that goes round and round with never a

change of spoke nor of speed. You know--begin with the twelfth of

August: house-parties for grouse shooting. Men--same men--out all day.

Women--same women--at home. Sporting talk at luncheon. Sporting talk

varied with politics at dinner. Little gambling, little flirting,

a rowdy game or two in the evening. Next month same thing in other

houses for partridge and pheasant shooting. Next two months hunting

and hunting talk for a change; otherwise the same, only a little more

hard work for the women. Races and race talk thrown in all along the

line. Then the Riviera for some, and for me two months of life in

grime and fog and mud. Then the roasting crush of the London season,

in which everybody works like a horse, and the women are reduced to

a mere combination of bones and paint. Then more races, a few days’

breathing space, and again the Twelfth of August. I wish I hadn’t

read those books; I wouldn’t have realised it so soon. But really,

I’ve hardly admitted it before to-night. My own programme is slightly

varied. I shoot, and I don’t go to the Riviera, and I’ve had no chance

to get tired of London Society. But it surrounds me--that automatically

shifting _mise en scène. I know it is there._ I am a part of most of

it--a fly on its paint. I may get the whole thing any day. That is

one reason I don’t really rebel against being out of it in London.

Politics are the best there is in the whole thing, because there is

some variety, and there is always the promise of some tremendous

excitement--only there hasn’t been any yet.”

She sprang to her feet, overturning her chair.

“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” she cried, her eyes blazing, her voice

pitched high with delight. “Do you remember how you and Coralie and Tom

and I used to lock ourselves up in the schoolroom, and swear as loud

and as fast as we could when Tiny had been primmer than usual, or Aunty

had been holding forth on the South before the War? Well, that’s the

way I feel to-day, and I’ve been feeling that way for a long time, only

I didn’t know it.”

She stopped for want of breath. Randolph had risen too, but his back

was against the light. If his voice was not as steady as it had been

she was too excited to notice it.

“You certainly ought to return to California,” he said. “We are all

half savage--the strongest of us Californians. The great civilisations

fascinate us, but they don’t satisfy, and in time they pall.”

“I’d like to put dynamite under the whole business, and then take Cecil

and go and shoot bears with him in the Santa Lucia Mountains and sleep

under the redwoods without so much as a tent. I believe I’d be willing

to eat acorns.” She sat down and glanced up at him with all her old

coquetry.

“You don’t think I’ve made an idiot of myself, do you?” she asked

anxiously.

“You could never be other than the most charming woman in the world.”

“Will you pay me three compliments a day, Randolph?”

“I shall probably pay you twenty.”

“I hope to Heaven you will! I need them--I do really _need_ them. Now

go and wait for me in the library: I must go up and put some powder on;

I feel that I have the colour of a dairy-maid. It’s so nice to order

you about--and I couldn’t speak out to a soul on earth as I have to

you! I should have burst if you hadn’t come soon. If you get lost in

those everlasting corridors ring a bell.”

The promptness with which Randolph obeyed her command, with the little

laugh that had always saved his dignity, was the first of his signals

that the old Randolph still flourished within that mellowed and

polished exterior.

Lee ran up to her room. The door of the dressing-room was open; Cecil

was ready for dinner, and alone. Her conscience hurt her, and she was

still excited. With all her old impulsiveness she ran in, flung her

arms round her husband’s neck and kissed him.

The “Imp of the Perverse” is always hovering near to man awaiting the

more subtle climaxes of his life. Cecil adored his wife, but he liked

to do the love-making; and Lee, long since, had accepted the submissive

and responsive rôle her beloved autocrat demanded. And he was a man of

moods, which were deep and showed little on the surface. To-night he

was keen for the sport of the morrow, for a renewal of the brief and

congenial conversation he had had with his men guests before dinner;

and if his wife were to be too absorbed in her friends for several days

to give him a moment he should not miss her. He had had a hard Session

and the reaction to sport and open air was violent, that was all.

He returned Lee’s kiss politely, and took up a hair brush.

“You seem nervous,” he said. “Do calm yourself before dinner. It is

always a relief to me that you do not talk as loud as the rest of the

women.”

And when his wife rushed out and banged the door, he frowned, then

shrugged his shoulders, and went down to the library.

CHAPTER XIV

“In other words,” said Randolph, “loving an Englishman means hard work

and plenty of it.”

They were on top of the fell and had been roaming about all the

afternoon. Randolph had begun by amusing her and putting her into

the best of tempers, then he had led her on to speak of her long and

determined struggle to be many things foreign to her disposition and

habit, evincing so deep and genuine an interest that Lee’s ego, so long

the down-trodden subject of her imperious will, had leaped hilariously

to its own and confessed itself steadily for two hours.

“I’m not disloyal for a moment, and you’re really my brother; and I

could not speak to any one else living like this: the others I know as

well would not understand. I don’t see why I complain. I’ve got almost

everything I ever imagined myself wanting.”

“You’ve surrendered your individuality. It is that that gnaws, and

almost devitalises you.”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. I could be very quickly spoiled and get it all

back; but that would mean that I should not be happy in the same way,

nor Cecil either.”

“Are you happy?”

“I thought I was until lately--the last--oh, it is hard to say

exactly. But I never was intended for quite such hard and fast routine.

I feel positive that in certain conditions I should not mind being a

mere second self to Cecil. When you love a man nothing much matters up

to a certain point; and after that, nothing would matter at all if the

nerves could be made to hum occasionally to something like uncertainty.

This cut-and-dried life of England’s leisure class, which reminds me

of a grandfather’s clock in magnificent running order, may suit many

temperaments, but not mine. As you say, the old civilisations fascinate

us who are two-thirds made up of the unruly instincts of the new, but

they don’t satisfy, and they certainly do pall. Three years more of

this and I shall be a machine without a nerve, or--I shall hate Cecil

Maundrell. I’ve been horribly upset ever since you came; you actually

brought an earthquake with you, and I’ve thought and thought and

thought----”

“Well?” he said gently.

“If I’ve relapsed into the national monologue it’s your fault.”

“Have you been fashioning your mental habits on an up-to-date

novelette? People always monologue in private life. Do go on.”

“You know I never had a morbid nor a hysterical moment; but there must

come a time to all strong natures when all they have inherited and all

they have been in their plastic years finds itself in violent conflict

with an alien present. The problem would be solved if we could get

away, if Cecil’s genius could make a leap into other lines. If I could

only have had a finger in the moulding of our two destinies Cecil

would have been a great pioneer, an ‘Empire-maker,’ like Cecil Rhodes.

There would have been no stagnation then; I should have felt all the

stimulation of trampling down obstacles and defying the prejudices

of a million little minds in opening up a new and savage country by

the sheer insolent force of one great man’s personality. And then the

excitement of not knowing what would happen next, where we or the whole

country would be this time next year! And in a new country, where

civilisation is still in the making, man is greater than the State, and

he is much more alive and individual, much more primitive and at the

same time many-sided than when he is the slow and logical result of a

rounded and fagged civilisation which has caught him fast. But there

is no hope.... Even if Cecil discovered the instinct of the pioneer in

him he would not listen to it, for he is very proud and very ambitious.

When a man towers in an isolated field like Mr. Rhodes, every man who

plants his heels in the same field in the same epoch is a moon to

Jupiter. And no two men in a century will ever have all the gifts of

the Empire-maker united in one brain. Cecil is highly gifted, and he

has enormous energy, but his gifts are on the old conservative lines.”

Randolph, who had been absently tearing up the heather by the roots,

his eyes apparently absorbed in his task, extended himself at her feet.

“What are you going to do about it?” he asked.

“What can I do? It has been an unspeakable relief to talk to you--have

I bored you?”

“I’ll not answer such a foolish question. Do you still love your

husband?”

“Oh, I’m sure I do, down deep; but my brain is in a chaotic state; the

whole of me in an ugly rebellious temper. We’ve had our first real

misunderstanding these last two days, and Cecil is so absorbed in

grouse he doesn’t even know it.”

Randolph laughed so heartily that Lee was forced to smile. “If that

were all,” she said with a sigh.

“I can think of no better temporary remedy than that you should come

back to California with us for a year. You might find that England had

weaned you after all, and California was an idealised memory. And as

for your husband--there is nothing like an occasional vacation. Mother

is already homesick: we’ll return this year.”

“Cecil would never consent. He’s really devoted to me.”

“I should hope so. But English wives are not slaves, I suppose. If you

asserted yourself he would neither tie you up nor divorce you.”

“He really needs me tremendously. If I were not a little beast I’d be

contented with my lot. And as I’ve tried to make him happy for purely

selfish reasons for three years, I don’t see that I have the right to

make him miserable because I have wheeled about and want something that

he can’t give me.”

“Or awakened?”

“It’s not only that. I shut my eyes deliberately to a great deal at the

first--that I could not be everything to him, that there were depths in

his nature that were way beyond me.”

“My dear child, no woman can be everything to a man; that would be

Utopia.”

“He could at least be more to me.”

“Ah, that is another matter,” said Randolph softly.

They returned to the subject many times. Randolph spent but a part

of the day on the moors. He was an admirable shot, and took care

to distinguish himself, but was at no pains to conceal his lack of

enthusiasm. On the fourth day of his visit, as Lee was showing him over

the Abbey, she said abruptly:

“Did you ever get a letter I wrote to you the day after I arrived here?”

“The day after----”

“It was all about the Abbey. I told you that Emmy might leave nothing,

and that everybody had expected Cecil to marry a fortune, or else lose

his inheritance. They wanted him to marry that Miss Pix, and they all

seemed to think I was a criminal for not being worth a million. I felt

a fool, I can assure you, for not investing in the Peruvian mine.”

“And you wrote to your old slave to make a million for you. I did not

get the letter, but I can see every word of it.”

“I don’t think I should have the same assurance to-day, but I’d be very

thankful if you’d advise me.”

“Oh, you have changed! It’s really tragic!”

They were in the crypt of the Abbey, an immense rambling and shadowy

vault. Lee put her hands to her face suddenly and began to cry.

Randolph took her in his arms and patted her gently.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to make love to you. I’m only

your big brother. But you must come back with me to California.”

“Oh, I want to go--the more I think of it, the more I want to go. The

first time I have a chance I’ll speak to Cecil about it; but he comes

home just in time to dress and is so tired he’s asleep before he’s

fairly in bed and in the morning he’s gone before I’m awake.”

“You were certainly never intended for a sportsman,” said Randolph

dryly. “I have written to mother to urge you to return with us. And as

for the other matter, we’ll see to it when we get there----”

“I am serious about that. I love the Abbey. I should think I had been

born to some purpose if I could save it. And I look upon it as almost

my mission; for should Cecil lose it, it would be through me. I’d never

forgive myself.”

“It strikes me that Cecil would have no one to blame but himself. He

was no raw stripling when he married you, but a man with a remarkably

mature mind----”

“But he was frightfully in love.”

“And never wiser. However, if you wish to make the Abbey your mission

in life you can command my services, as always. I will take the matter

in hand as soon as I get back.”

“_Will_ you?”

“Yes, but you must come too. It takes a month to get a letter answered

from here, and business secrets cannot be cabled.”

“I will go then. A double object gives me double courage. But I’ve

bored you long enough. You listen to my woes by the yard, and you never

talk about yourself except to amuse me----”

“I came to England for no other purpose but to see you and to hear you

talk.”

“Well, I can tell you then, that you were inspired by the real

missionary spirit, for I needed you badly.”

CHAPTER XV

After dinner that night, Lee and Lady Mary Gifford, instead of

following the other women, strolled along the corridors for a quiet

chat. They were not intimate, for they had too little in common,

but they admired each other and Lee had seen something more of Lady

Mary than of any of the Englishwomen whom she received in her little

drawing-room on Tuesdays or maintained a community of interests with

during that division of the year allotted to house-parties.

“I like your cousin, or whatever he is,” announced Lady Mary, clasping

her hands behind her. “He doesn’t talk through his nose and he’s quite

at his ease. As a rule I detest American men as much as I like the

women. Of course he’s rich--you can always tell.”

“He’s very rich.”

“Now don’t jump--I’d like you to marry me to him.”

Lee did jump. “Really?” she said dryly.

“I’d rather never marry: if I had a talent I’d go and set up a studio

in Kensington, or take chambers and write a popular novel. Of course

I could make hats or open a florist’s shop, but neither is to my

taste; and I really can’t hang on any longer--twenty-seven and my

ninth season--it’s positively sickening. I have had one or two good

offers--in the long ago--but I hated the thought of marrying then more

than I do now--when a thing has to be it never seems quite so bad. Of

course I could get any numbers of parvenus, and I’d almost made up my

mind to Mr. Pix, but I should feel quite reconciled to Mr. Montgomery.”

“That is very amiable of you, but I don’t see what you are offering

to Mr. Montgomery; and as he is almost my oldest friend I have his

happiness to consider. He would not care a rap for your title----”

“Wouldn’t he? How very odd. But I’d make him quite happy. You know I am

fascinating. Some men have gone quite off their heads about me.”

“If you send Randolph off his head he’ll undoubtedly propose to you.

You will have plenty of opportunity.”

“I see you don’t like the idea----”

“You are quite mistaken. I have had no time to think it over. Of course

if I thought you would be happy together----”

“Oh, I’m sure we’d arrange everything quite amicably. I have immense

tact, you know, and American men are said to make such indulgent

husbands; and he’s really distinguished-looking. And of course he’d be

quite sure of me. I’d scorn to do the things most women do. That’s one

reason why I like you so much--you haven’t a lover.”

Lee laughed. “I can’t see the superior virtue of selling oneself.”

“My dear, we must each do what is best for ourselves, whether it is

money we want or love. Standards have never insured happiness yet.

We must do our own thinking and try for what we most want. Here is a

secret for you to keep--until a year ago I expected my godmother’s

fortune. She had all but promised it to me and that is the real reason

I never married. She died without a will. I _can’t_ be a stranded old

maid living off my alternate relations. And perhaps you can imagine

what it would mean to me to marry a man like Mr. Pix.”

Lady Mary had drawn in her wide voice, and it vibrated slightly. It was

the first time Lee had known her to display anything like feeling, and

she softened at once.

“I’ll do what I can,” she said. “Randolph is a gentleman, and very

clever. Try to fall in love with him, and make him fall in love with

you.”

“You _are_ good. And Emmy can keep her Pix and welcome; by the way, I

suppose you have noticed, there’s not so smart a crowd here this year

as usual--except the Beaumanoirs, and Larry Monmouth and the other

single men.”

“I had not--there is not, come to think of it.”

“The Launcesters and Regents can be got by anybody that will feed

them----”

“What are you driving at?”

“I mean that Emmy has been a little too careless this last year. People

simply won’t swallow Pix--the men hate him so. There was a little

doubt before, but of course there’s none now. She let him go to the

Riviera with her.”

“Are you trying to make me believe that Mr. Pix is Emmy’s lover?”

“You don’t mean to say you are an infant in arms?”

“Of course I’m well enough used to women and their lovers, by this

time; but somehow one never thinks that sort of thing can happen in

one’s own family. It is plain enough, I suppose. She might at least

have chosen a gentleman.”

“She might indeed; that’s her crime. Pick up with the wrong man, and

Society is on its hind legs in no time. I’ve seen it coming for an age.

She certainly must know that she’s got off the track as well as any

one can tell her, and considering the way she’s worked for one thing

for five-and-twenty years, it’s rather surprising; but the trouble is,

she’s in love with him, I fancy.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about it; but if her original

commonness demanded a mate she certainly could have found a bounder

with a little more gilding. There are one or two with the title she

adores.”

Lee spoke with heat and bitterness. She had the indifference of

familiarity to many things that had horrified her youthful ideals, but

a lover under the family roof filled her with protest.

“Emmy’s a curious contradiction----” began Lady Mary.

“What’s to be done? Of course it can’t go on. Lord Barnstaple or Cecil

could put a stop to it, but I can’t tattle on any woman----”

“My dear, I don’t advise you to put a stop to it unless you want to see

the Abbey put up at public auction.”

“Mary Gifford!”

“Now don’t shriek out; but I have more than one reason to think that

I’m right.”

“And perhaps we’re eating his bread?”

“I don’t know that it’s as bad as that, but I am positive that she

borrowed from him first and mortgaged her properties heavily--he

was over in America last year. Now, he is certainly in love with

her. He would marry me, of course, because I could give him what

Emmy cannot--but--however! Better not say anything, my child. Lord

Barnstaple has always been too indifferent to give two thoughts to his

wife’s private affections; but if he were made to know anything, of

course he’d have to kick the man out. And he and Cecil would have to

break the entail, and the Abbey would go to the highest bidder--who

would probably be one of the Pixes. Victoria the Silent has never

stopped wanting it from the day she first saw it; nor Cecil Maundrell

either, for that matter.”

“Well, she won’t get it. What a ghastly business! I wish you hadn’t

told me.”

“I wish I hadn’t, but it never occurred to me that you couldn’t see the

length of your nose.”

“Something has to be done; it’s a horrible position for Lord Barnstaple

and Cecil.”

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them--it is though. What’s the use of

platitudinising? Everybody else knows--or guesses, and it _is_ rough

on them. But let things drift along for a little. Who knows what may

happen?”

“If you don’t mind, and if you will make an excuse for me, I’ll go up

to my room. I’m tired out, and I’d like to be alone.”

“Do go, that’s a dear; and don’t bother too much about other people.

Almost everybody’s too selfish to be worth it!”

She returned to the great drawing-room of the Abbey, where people were

hovering about many little tables, smiled brilliantly on Randolph, and

marched him off to a charming boudoir where she detained him agreeably

for the rest of the evening. Her young blue eyes were very keen and she

took pains at once to assure him that Lee would be visible no more that

night.

CHAPTER XVI

Lee went to her bedroom, and, in accord with some curious feminine

sympathy of mental and material habit, immediately took off her gown

and put on a wrapper. Then she sat down, and, to use her own phrase,

endeavoured to take hold of herself. It was the first time that she had

been alone for several days, and she had a good deal of thinking to do.

The most gifted of men are successful in analysing women up to a

certain point only; when they find themselves confronted with utter

unreasonableness, perversity, and erratic curvatures of temper, they

solve the problem with a baby, and pass on. A woman may be in superb

condition, she may be leading the most normal of lives, she may not

have a care worthy of mention, and yet she may find herself in a state

of nervous and rebellious antagonism to the whole scheme of creation.

The women who work and exhaust their brain vitality with a certain

regularity are less prone to such attacks, but the woman of leisure

is liable to them at any moment. For the feminine imagination is a

restless and virile quantity, and a clever woman is often its victim to

an extent which no man can appreciate. That men are, on the whole, so

patient with what must often confound and incense them, constitutes

their chief claim to the forgiveness of many sins.

If Lee was by nature neither morbid nor hysterical, she felt that she

was doing her best to overcome the deficiency. Randolph’s appearance

had shattered the routine of her married life, and with it her

self-control. She was aghast, and she was furious with herself. Cecil

had ceased to be an ideal for whom no sacrifice was too great: he

merely represented a sudden and violent change in the order of her

inner life; and if his personal fascination and his incalculable

advantage of a previous ten years’ sojourn in her imagination had

accomplished this revolution and kept him master of the field for

three additional years, the reaction to a strong and long-fostered

individuality was but the more violent. What she wanted she was

scarcely able to define, but she felt sure that she wanted several

dozen things that she would never have as the wife of Cecil Maundrell.

She searched diligently for his faults, and was obliged to confess that

they were few and would play a small part in the balancing of accounts.

He was, if exacting, the kindest of husbands; if not amusing, he was

always interesting; although moody, he showed no sign of ceasing to

be a lover; if devoted to sport, she had never, in her most feminine

moments, been able to persuade herself that he was not several times

more devoted to her; and she had the most profound admiration for him

both as a man and as an intellect. His only imperfection was that he

was a strong and dominating personality with whom a woman must live

as a second self or not at all; and Lee felt herself a fool. But,

unfortunately, the supreme tragedies in the lives of two people who

love and are happy have often their genesis in no facts that can be

analysed and disposed of.

Of one desire, Lee was acutely conscious; to get away from her husband

for a time and return to California--to that stupendous country of many

parts where she had been Herself, where she had stood alone, where

she had munched consecutively for twenty-one years those sweets of

Individuality so dear to the American soul. And, this desire suddenly

defined itself, she wanted to be volatile, she wanted to be free from

every responsibility; she wanted, in short, to get out of the rôle of a

serious factor in the life of a serious man.

And Cecil? She made no excuses for herself, attempted no self-delusion:

she looked down steadily, although with eyes of horror and disgust, at

those depths of selfishness peculiar to the soul of woman--more so to

the souls of women of the younger civilisations. He was practically

blameless, and she was meditating a punishment meet for a brute of

a husband. He loved her and needed her, and she was condemning him

to the acutest suffering she could devise, short of her own death.

Nevertheless, if the situation were to be saved at all, she must get

away from him, she must be Herself for a time--for a year. After that?

Doubtless she would love him the better. Certainly she would never

love any other man. Her prediction that hatred of her husband might

be the result of three more uninterrupted years of him and of England

had been a mere verbal expression of nervous tension; even in the

present adventurous and overworked state of her imagination she knew

that she loved him, and would so long as consciousness survived in her.

If she could have had that most plausible of all excuses, the death

of affection and passion, she would have felt quite ready to justify

herself. As it was, there were no limits to her self-abasement And,

logically, there were no limits to her unreasoning anger with her

husband.

She wanted her Individuality back; that was the long and the short of

it.

Regarding Randolph, she felt a certain disquiet He had not betrayed

himself by so much as a glance, but her woman’s instinct told her

that he still loved her. There was nothing to apprehend, however,

beyond a possible scene at a remote period. If he was playing a big

game it was for heavy stakes, and he would not show his cards for

many a day. It was more than possible that he hoped everything from

a return to the scene of her girlish freedom and triumphs, and from

her withdrawal from her husband’s influence; but he would watch and

wait for the crucial moment before suggesting the facile American

specific for matrimonial jars. He was very clever, and she did not

doubt that if he were playing for the supreme desire of his life he

would be sufficiently unscrupulous. But he was a gentleman and he

would not demand her hand as the price of the Abbey’s rescue. If she

had never met Cecil Maundrell she believed that she could have loved

him, for he understood her. He was, now that he had found himself, a

charming and companionable man, with no raw edges to irritate the most

sensitive romanticism; and her Individuality would have flourished like

a green bay-tree. And he had plenty of brains and was just serious

enough. She could never have given him the half of what she had given

Cecil Maundrell, but there would have been no violent and humiliating

reactions from too much high-thinking and attempting to realise a

serious man’s ideal. Now, neither he nor any other man but her husband

could satisfy her for a moment; but as she had no desire to do Randolph

any more harm than she had done him already she determined to take Mary

Gifford to California with her and give that odd and attractive young

person all the advantages of propinquity and comparison.

Emmy’s peccancy was but a final reason for her desire to separate

herself for a time from her present life. She was charitable, but she

was fastidious. Had Emmy been an outsider she might have had twenty

lovers; but the proximity disgusted her.

CHAPTER XVII

Of course Cecil did the worst thing possible for himself: he appeared

just as she had finished elaborating her case and before she had

started upon the argument between her higher and her pettier self which

she had dimly contemplated. As he ran up the stair she rose nervously

to her feet, regretting for the first time that she had not a room of

her own in which she could lock herself. They had continued to put up

with the trifling inconveniences of the tower because its isolation and

historic associations made it a tenacious symbol in their own romance.

She sat down as he entered.

“I just missed you,” he said anxiously, “and some one told me that you

had not been in the drawing-room since dinner. Are you ill?”

“No; and I am glad you have come up. I want to ask you something.”

He sat down beside her and took her hand.

“What is it?” he asked. “Something has gone wrong?”

“I want to go back to California for a year.”

“But, my dear, I can’t get away. I should be mad--”

“But you can let me go. Mrs. Montgomery wants to take me back with

her.”

If he had given her time she would doubtless have approached the

subject with tact and many delicate subterfuges; but her mind was

wearied and possessed.

He stared at her incredulously.

“I really mean it. The only reasons I can put into shape are that I

am desperately tired of this everlasting round of English life, and

homesick for California.”

“Are you tired of me?”

“No; but I believe that a short separation would be better for us both.

I can’t make you understand, for you have never cared to understand me.

I adapted myself, and you took me for granted--”

“Have you been playing a part?”

“Heaven knows I have been serious enough. It is that as much as

anything else--I want to cease being serious for a while.”

Cecil continued to stare at her. His tan had worn off, and he paled

slightly. When a man after several years of married life is suddenly

informed that he does not understand his wife the shock is trying to

his mental faculties and to his patience.

“I do not know you to-night,” he said coldly. “I have seen you in a

number of moods, and occasionally in a temper, but I have never before

seen you when you were not--sweet.”

“I don’t feel sweet. I wish I did. I hate to hurt you.”

Cecil seized the suggestion. “You have certainly hurt me; and nobody

could know better than you how much. What _is_ the matter with you?”

“I want a change, that is all.”

“I’m afraid I’ve really done something quite abominable, although I

don’t remember--and it isn’t like you not to speak out.”

“I haven’t a fault in the world to find with you. I wish I had!”

“I don’t understand you,” he said helplessly. “And as I am so dense,

perhaps you will be good enough to explain. I really think I have the

right to demand it.” He would have liked to shake her, for he had not

yet been made to realise that she was in anything but a surprisingly

nasty temper.

Lee was quite sure that he had the right to demand a full explanation,

and she cast about for the phrases which would point it best. But her

reasons put their tails between their legs and scampered to the back of

her brain, where they looked petty enough. So she began to cry instead.

Cecil took her in his arms instantly, excoriating himself for his

desire to shake her. “You are ill; I know you are ill,” he whispered,

“and you are so unused to it that it has quite demoralised you.” Then,

his knowledge of women being primitive indeed, he descended to bribery.

“I am going to ask father to give you my mother’s jewels; I never knew

he had them--that there were any--till the other day. There are some

wonderful pieces.”

Lee pricked up her ears, then despised herself and sobbed the harder.

Suddenly, she shrank visibly from him, slipped from his embrace and

walked over to the fireplace, turning her back to her husband. It had

flashed into her mind that Randolph’s arms had been round her that

morning. She had thought no more of it at the time than if they had

been Mrs. Montgomery’s or Coralie’s; but of a sudden her quiescence

seemed an act of infidelity, if for no other reason than because Cecil

would be furious if he knew it. She decided that she certainly must be

growing morbid, and she resigned herself to being just as unpleasant as

her resources permitted.

Cecil went over to her and wheeled her about sharply. There was no

question about his pallor now; his very lips were white. “That was the

first time you ever shrank from me,” he said. “What does it mean?”

“I mean that I _will_ go to California.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I simply can’t explain, but I’ll try to in my letters. I promise that

if you don’t understand me now you shall before I get back.”

“I have no time to read a woman’s novels about herself. I once read

several volumes of women’s ‘letters.’ There never yet was a woman who

could write about herself unself-consciously; she is always addressing

an imaginary audience. Say what you’ve got to say now, and have done

with it. If I’ve failed in anything I love you well enough to do all I

can--you know that.”

“You told me when you proposed to me that you would hate understanding

a woman’s complexities, that she had no right to have any, that a woman

must become a mere adjunct of her husband.”

“I don’t remember ever having said anything of the sort. But if I

did--I very dimly realised at that time all that you would become to

me. Now I would do anything in my power to keep you as you have been

these three years.”

Lee almost relented; but her conscience was in a state of abnormal

activity. It had reminded her that she had talked her husband over

with another man, and that the act was both disloyal and in bad taste.

She would have given all she possessed to return her confidences where

they belonged, much as she had needed the relief. She hated Randolph

Montgomery and she hated herself. So she stamped her foot at Cecil.

“I _wish_ you would let me alone,” she exclaimed. “If I feel like it

later I’ll explain, but I won’t say another word to-night.”

There was really nothing for Cecil to do but to go out and bang the

door, so he went out and banged it.

CHAPTER XVIII

Lee slept more soundly that night than she had expected, and awoke the

next morning feeling very much ashamed of herself. Her determination

to leave England for a time was unaltered, but she would have given a

great deal to have come to an amicable understanding with Cecil. She

had treated him abominably, and he was the last person she desired to

wound. When she was in exactly the right temper she would make herself

as legible to him as she could, and, as he was the quickest of men, he

would understand as much as any mere man could, and would agree that

the separation--she might reduce it to six months--was advisable for

them both. He would do a good deal of thinking during her absence and

the result could not fail to be happy.

She went out on the moor to luncheon and was so amiable and charming

and so pointedly bent upon charming no man but her husband that

Cecil’s brow cleared and he sunned himself in her presence. But he

was seriously disturbed, and she saw it. She had awakened him roughly

out of what was doubtless beginning to look like a dream, and he was

not the man to close his eyes again until he had quite determined of

what stuff his dreams were made. But when they were alone he pointedly

avoided the subject.

The Gearys arrived next morning, and it seemed to Lee that the whole

Abbey was filled with Coralie’s light laughter. She wanted to see

everything at once, and the four Californians spent the entire day

moving restlessly over the house and grounds.

“Just think,” cried Coralie, flitting about the ghostly gloom of the

crypt. “I’m in an _Abbey_--an old stone thing a thousand years old--oh!

well, never mind, a few hundred years more or less don’t matter.

It’s _old_, and it’s stone, and it’s carved, and it’s haunted, and

grey-hooded friars were once just where I am. I think it’s lovely.

Isn’t it, Ned? Isn’t it?”

But Mr. Geary smiled with the true Californian’s mere toleration of all

things non-Californian. Coralie knew that smile, and tossed her head.

“Well, thank Heaven I’m not quite so provincial as that!” she cried

with sarcasm. “I’m going to keep you abroad three years. _I never in my

life_ saw any one so improved as Randolph.”

Whereupon Mr. Geary coloured angrily and strode off in a huff.

“Tell me some more,” demanded Coralie. “Don’t slam the door, Teddy.

Hasn’t there ever really been a hooded friar seen stalking through this

crypt at night?”

“They do say--You know all the dead earls lie here for a week; and on

alternate nights the tenantry and the servants sit up. Those people

are superstitious, and they vow that they see shadowy forms way over

there; of course lamps are hung on the columns near by--perhaps I can

show you a whole chest full of the silver lamps that have been used

for centuries. They make the rest of the crypt fairly black, and it

is easy enough to imagine anything. The interment always takes place

at midnight, by torchlight, even when there is a moon; and there is

popularly supposed to be an old abbot telling his beads just behind the

procession.”

“How simply gorgeous! Of course I don’t want Lord Barnstaple to die,

but I should _love_ to be in at that sort of thing. When Mr. Geary died

of course he was just laid out in the back parlour--drawing-room I

shall always call it hereafter; poor Mrs. Geary has never been out of

California since she left the immortal South--and he really did look

so uninteresting, and his casket was so hideously expensive. But an

earl--laid out in a crypt--of an ancient Abbey--with tenantry kneeling

round and shivering at hooded friars in the background--I’m really

alive for the first time! Is there an Abbey we could rent anywhere? I’d

only want it for about six months, but I’d have a simply heavenly time

so long as the novelty lasted.”

“It would take you six months to get used to the size of it,” said

Randolph, “and by the time it had begun to fit perhaps you would feel

that everything else was commonplace.” He spoke to Coralie, but he

looked at Lee.

She smiled and brought her lashes together. “Sometimes there are things

one wants more than magnificence,” she said. “Well--Emmy must be

awake. I’ll go and speak to her about Tom.”

For Tom was in London and had asked his sister to make known that he

desired an invitation to the Abbey, and had come to England merely to

look upon its future _châtelaine_.

Lee found Lady Barnstaple in one of her freshest and fluffiest wrappers

and in one of her ugliest tempers--attributable doubtless to the fact

that Mr. Pix, after three days of hard shooting, had been obliged to go

to London on business, and had not yet returned.

“Ask all California if you like,” she said crossly, “but tell them to

keep out of my way. I know their airs of old.”

“It’s not at all likely that your guests would put on airs with you.

For the matter of that you have the rank that all good Americans

approve of--”

“Some people are putting on airs with me,” said Lady Barnstaple darkly.

This was an obvious opportunity to approach a delicate subject, but Lee

shrank from it. Moreover, the thing would have run its natural course

before her return and one more unpleasantness been avoided. Lady Mary’s

advice was wise and appealed to her present craving for a long period

of irresponsibility. So she said instead:

“I think of going to California for a visit--with Mrs. Montgomery,

about the middle of October.”

Lady Barnstaple raised her eyes and stared at her daughter-in-law. Even

in the pink light it was evident that she changed colour. She dropped

her eyes suddenly.

“California is a long way off,” she said dryly. “I wonder Cecil

consents; but these little separations are always advisable. How long

shall you stay?”

“A year, possibly. I am going to take Mary Gifford with me if Mrs.

Montgomery will invite her--as of course she will.”

“Oh, do marry her to Randolph Montgomery! It would be an act of

charity.”

“How pleased she would be! But I think it can be managed, particularly

as Tiny likes her; and Mrs. Montgomery would be sure to fall in love

with her and conceive it her mission to modify her voice.”

“Well, I hope she’ll stay in California. I’m sick of her. I’m sick of

the rudeness of English people, anyhow.”

“You have cultivated their rudeness with a good deal of energy.

It seems to me that most Americans cultivate that attribute more

successfully than they cultivate any others of the many English

attributes they admire so profoundly,” Lee observed.

“Well, I wish you’d let me alone!” shrieked Lady Barnstaple. “Don’t

speak another word to me to-day.”

Lee hastily retreated and sent off a telegram to Tom, then went out in

search of the others. She found them by the lake feeding the swans.

“The swans and the peacocks make it all just perfect!” cried Coralie.

“I want Ned to sit up all night with me in the crypt to see if there

won’t be a ghost, and he won’t do it.”

“As if there were such things,” said Mr. Geary disdainfully.

Lee turned to Randolph. “You look a whole generation older than Ned,”

she said, with the sensation of having just made the discovery of how

much improved he was. “I believe you could almost bring yourself to

believe in a ghost.”

He smiled and opened her parasol. “And you, I am afraid, have taken on

at least a century--without being aware of the fact. I am afraid you

will realise it when you return to California.”

“I want California more and more every day.”

“We shall see. The changes of association are very subtle. I can only

hope they are not so deeply wrought in you as they sometimes appear to

be--that you will really enjoy your year in California, I mean.”

They were walking toward the fell, and the others were some distance

behind.

“I am going to ask Aunty to invite Mary Gifford to go back with us. She

is my best friend here and she is simply dying for a change.”

“I am sure mother will be delighted. She will undertake her reformation

at once.”

“That is what I told Emmy. How do you like her--Mary, I mean?”

“She interests me very much, if only to see how wide she can open her

mouth.”

“No, but seriously--Mary is such a problem to me.”

“Well, she’s a beauty, like a blue and white moonlight in mid-winter;

and has a tantalising sort of elusiveness. I detest Englishwomen as

a rule, but I never met a woman before who talked so loud and at the

same time suggested an almost exaggerated shrinking and modesty. The

combination is certainly striking.”

“It isn’t that she’s really cold,” said Lee, with the deep subtlety of

her sex, “but she’s never met the right man. I only hope she won’t fall

in love with you, but she admires you tremendously.”

“Ah!”

“Do pay her a lot of compliments and show her a lot of little

attentions; Englishwomen get so tired of doing all the work. But don’t

make love to her.”

“I have no intention of making love to her,” said Randolph; but if he

had a deeper meaning he kept it out of his eyes--those eyes which had

lost their nervous facility of expression, and rarely looked otherwise

than cold and grey and thoughtful.

Tom arrived next morning, talkative, restless, and irresponsible; but

although he frankly avowed himself as much in love as ever, he hastened

to add that he would not mention it any oftener than he could help. For

several days Lee neglected the other guests and devoted herself to her

old friends. The last three had certainly brought the breezes of the

Pacific with them, and they talked California until Lady Mary, who had

joined them several times, declared she could stand it no longer.

“I’ll go with you gladly if Mrs. Montgomery will take me; and I intend

to make love to her, you may be sure,” she said to Lee, “but I really

can’t stand feeling so out of it. And besides you are all so intimate

and happy together, it’s almost a sin to intrude. You’re looking much

brighter since they came.”

“It has done me good to see them again, and it’s made me want to go

back more than ever.”

“I can understand. But it’s a pity Cecil can’t go with you. He’s

looking rather glum. Is that what’s the matter with him?”

“I am not sure,” said Lee uneasily. “I’m going to have a talk with

him on Sunday. I did say something about it on Monday night, but of

course--well----”

“It’s hard to persuade an English husband that he’s got to conform

to the American habit of matrimonial vacations and plenty of them.”

Lady Mary laughed. “Speaking of vacations, Mr. Pix is taking rather a

long one, but I believe he returns on Monday. I can’t quite make out,

but I fancy the men have rather snubbed him--as much as they decently

can. He must feel frightfully out of it. I only hope he won’t lose his

temper. He’s got a nasty one, and if he let it go he’s underbred enough

to shriek out anything. I saw with my own eyes that Lord Barnstaple

avoided playing with him the night before he left. Of course Lord

Barnstaple carried it off as he does everything, but I think the man

noticed it all the same.”

“Then I wish he had pride enough to keep out of the house, but of

course he hasn’t.”

“Your Californians now are so different. They are quite _comme il

faut_----”

“Mary Gifford, you are really intolerably rude!”

“Upon my word I don’t mean to be. And as you know, I want to marry

one.” She paused a moment, then raised her cold blue eyes to Lee’s.

“I too have a will of my own,” she announced, “and when I make up my

mind to do a thing I do it. I am going to marry Mr. Montgomery, and

whether you go back to California or not I am going with my future

mother-in-law.”

“Of course I shall go; and it is seldom that a woman--particularly

a beauty--fails to get a man if she makes up her mind to it. He is

interested; there’s that much gained.”

CHAPTER XIX

Mrs. Montgomery arrived the next day without Tiny, whose children were

ailing. As the following day was Sunday, and as Mrs. Montgomery would

hardly let Lee out of her sight, the definite understanding with Cecil

had to be postponed. She had seen practically nothing of him since

Tuesday. Mr. Geary and Mr. Brannan laughed at the bare idea of tramping

about all day carrying a heavy gun, nor did they, nor Coralie, fancy

the idea of luncheon on the moor. They wanted Lee to themselves, and

they had a little picnic every day. Mrs. Montgomery was too old for

picnics, and Lady Mary announced her intention of taking the good lady

on her own hands. Before sunset she had bewildered and fascinated her

victim, and by noon the next day had received the desired invitation.

“I wish I could have had the bringing up of her,” said Mrs. Montgomery

earnestly to Lee. “She’s really very peculiar, and has shockingly bad

manners, but with it all she is high-bred; it’s really very strange.

With us it’s either one thing or the other. And she’s so sweet. I’m

sure if I scold her a little after a while she won’t mind it a bit.”

“I’m sure she’ll take it like an angel,” said Lee, who had told Mary

what she was to expect, and could still hear that young lady’s loud

delighted laugh. “And be sure you’re good to her. She’s very much alone

in the world.”

Lee’s conscience hurt her less at this deliberate scheming than it

might have done a few weeks since, for she had by this time convinced

herself that Mary was really in love with Randolph; and she was

certainly a wife of whom any man might be proud.

On Tuesday evening as Lee and her friends were descending the fell--on

whose broad summit they had laughed the afternoon away, and Lee had

been petted and flattered to her heart’s content--she paused suddenly

and put her hand above her eyes. Far away, walking slowly along the

ridge of hillocks that formed the southeastern edge of the moor, was

a man whose carriage, even at that distance, was familiar. She stared

hard. It was certainly Cecil. He was alone, and, undoubtedly, thinking.

She made up her mind in an instant.

“I see Cecil,” she said. “I’m going to bring him home. You go on to the

Abbey.” And she hurried away.

Doubtless he had been there for some time, and had sought the solitude

deliberately: the men were shooting miles away; apparently even

sport had failed him. She made tight little fists of her hands. Her

morbidity had not outlasted the night of her momentous interview with

her husband, but her old friends had both satisfied her longings for

previous conditions, and rooted her desire for a few months’ freedom.

It was true that, with the exception at Randolph, they bored her a

little at times, but the fact remained that they symbolised the freest

and most brilliant part of her life, and that they were in delightful

accord with the lighter side of her nature. Cecil, outlined against the

sky over there in the purple, alone, and, beyond a doubt, perturbed and

unhappy, made her feel as cruel and selfish as she could feel in her

present mood. She rebelled against the serious conversation before her,

and wondered if she had slipped from her heights forever. They had been

very pleasant.

Cecil saw her coming and met her half-way. She smiled brilliantly,

slipped her hand in his, and kissed him.

“You are thinking it over,” she said, with the directness that he liked.

“I have been thinking about a good many things. I have been wondering

how I could have lived with you for three years and known you so

little. I hardly knew you the other night at all, and I never believed

that you would care to leave me.”

“Cecil! You are so serious. You take things so tragically. I _can’t_

look at it as you do, because I have seen women going to Europe all my

life without their husbands. One would think I was wanting to get a

divorce!”

“Are you trying to make me feel that I am making an ass of myself? I

think you know that I have my own ideas about most things, and that

I am not in the least ashamed of them. I married you to live with

you, to keep you here beside me so long as we both lived. I have no

understanding of and no patience with any other sort of marriage. And

I think you knew when you accepted me that I had not the making of an

American husband in me.”

“I never deluded myself for a moment. And you must admit that I have

been English enough! Believe me when I say that a brief relapse on my

part is necessary----”

“I cannot understand your having a ‘relapse’ unless you are tired of

me.”

“I am not in the least tired of you; no one could ever tire of you. It

is all so subtle----”

“Don’t talk verbiage, please. There are no subtleties that can’t

be turned into black and white if you choose to do it. I can quite

understand your being homesick for California, and I’ve fully intended

to take you back some day. But you might wait. I have kept you pretty

hard at the grind, and if it were not for all the political work I’ve

got to do this autumn and winter, I’d take you over to the Continent

for a few months. And after a year or two we shall do a great deal of

travelling, I hope: I want more and more to study the colonies.”

“That is one reason I thought it best to go now--you are going to be so

busy you won’t miss me at all. When you’re travelling about, speaking

here and speaking there, you’ll be surrounded by men all the time. You

won’t need me in the least.”

“It is always the greatest possible pleasure to me to know that you are

where I can see you at any moment, and that you have no interests apart

from my own.”

“That is just the point. I should like a few trifling ones for a time.

If you want it in plain English, here it is--I want to be an Individual

for just one year. I made a great effort to surrender all I had to you,

and you must admit that I was a success. But reaction is bound to come

sooner or later, and that is what is the matter with me.”

Cecil stood still and looked at her. “Oh,” he remarked. “That is it?

Why didn’t you say so at once? I ought to have expected it, I suppose.

I saw what you were before I married you--about the worst spoiled woman

I had ever met in my life. But you had brains and character, and you

loved me. I hoped for everything.”

“And you can’t be so ungrateful as to say that you have been

disappointed.”

“No. I certainly have not been--up to a week ago: I thought you the

most perfect woman God ever made.”

Lee flushed with pleasure and took his hand again.

“I wouldn’t make you unhappy for the world,” she said. “Only I thought

I could show you that it was for the best. We are what we are. Brain

and will and love can do a great deal, an immense amount, but it can’t

make us quite over. We bolt our original self under and he gnaws at

the lock and gets out sooner or later. The best way is to give him his

head for a little and then he will go back and be quiet for a long time

again. But----” she hesitated for so long a time that Cecil, who had

been ramming his stick into the ground, turned and looked at her. “If

I can’t make you agree with me,” she said, “I won’t go.”

“But you would stay unwillingly.”

“Oh, I do want to go!”

“Then go, by all means,” he said.

CHAPTER XX

During the following week Lee was not so absorbed in her friends that

she would have been oblivious to a certain discomposure of the Abbey’s

atmosphere, even had Mary Gifford not called her attention to it. Some

of the guests had given place to others, but the Pixes, Lady Mary, and

the Californians still remained. Of course they were all scattered

during the day, but the evenings were spent in the great drawing-room

and adjoining boudoirs and billiard-room, and it was obvious to the

most indifferent that there was a discord in the usual harmony of the

Abbey at this season. Lady Barnstaple’s temper had never been more

uncertain, but no one minded that: Emmy was always sure to be amusing,

whether deliberately or otherwise; that was her rôle. Nor was any one

particularly disturbed by the increased acidity of Lord Barnstaple’s

remarks; for when a man is clever he must be given his head, as Captain

Monmouth had remarked shortly before he left; “and some pills are

really cannon balls,” he had added darkly.

Mr. Pix was the disturbing element. He had managed to keep an effective

shade over the light of his commonness in London, for he did not go

out too much and was oftener in Paris. Moreover, Victoria, who was

painfully irreproachable, had provided a sort of family reputation

on which he travelled. But in the fierce and unremitting light of a

house-party he revealed himself, and it was evident that he was aware

of the fact; his assumption of ease and of the manner to which his

fellow-guests were born grew more defiant daily, and there were times

when his brow was dark and heavy. Everybody wondered why he did not

leave. He handled his gun clumsily, and with manifest distaste, and it

was plain that he had not so much as the seedling of the passion for

sport. Nevertheless he stuck to it, and asserted that he longed for

October that he might distinguish himself in the covers.

If the man had succeeded in giving himself an acceptable veneer, or if

he had had the wit to make himself useful financially to the men with

whom he aspired to associate, he would have gone down as others of his

gilded ilk had gone down; but, as it was, every man in the Abbey longed

to kick him, and they snubbed him as pointedly as in common courtesy to

their host they could.

“I am actually uneasy,” said Lady Mary to Lee one evening as they stood

apart for a moment in the drawing-room. The guests looked unconcerned

enough. They were talking and laughing, some pretending to fight for

their favourite tables; while in the billiard-room across the hall a

half-dozen of the younger married women were romping about the table,

shrieking their laughter. But Victoria Pix, looking less like a marble

than usual, stood alone in a doorway intently regarding her brother,

who was also conspicuously alone. And although Emmy was flitting about

as usual, there was an angry light in her eyes and an ugly compression

of her lips.

“I wish it were the last of September,” replied Lee.

“So do I--or that we were in California. I feel as if some one had a

lighted fuse in his hand and was hunting for dynamite. It’s really

terrible to think what might happen if that man lost his temper and

opened his mouth.”

“I don’t want to think of it. And where there are so many people

nothing is really likely to happen; there are so many small diversions.”

But she broached the subject to Cecil as they were walking along the

corridors to their tower some hours later. Apparently they were the

best of friends again, for Cecil was not the man to do anything by

halves. He had not even returned to the subject; and if he were still

wounded and unquiet he gave no sign.

“I wish that horrid Mr. Pix would go,” said Lee tentatively. “He’s so

out of it, I wonder he doesn’t.”

“I can’t imagine what he came for. I never saw a man look such an ass

on the moors.”

“He must get on your father’s nerves.”

“I fancy he does. I suppose Emmy asked him here. She could hardly avoid

it, she’s so intimate with Miss Pix. By the way, that woman actually

talked at dinner to-night; you may not have noticed, but I had her

on my left; I suppose I’m in Emmy’s bad graces for some reason or

other. But she really seemed bent on making herself entertaining. She

has something in her head, I fancy. If less of it were snobbery she

wouldn’t be half bad.”

“Fancy what you escaped. If you had never come to America they might

have married you to the Pixes.”

“The person has yet to be born who could do my marrying for me,” said

Cecil; and there was no doubt that he knew himself.

CHAPTER XXI

The next afternoon as Lee was taking tea with the other guests

in the library she happened to glance out of the window, and saw

Lord Barnstaple returning from the moors, alone. It was an unusual

occurrence, for he was an ardent and vigorous sportsman. Ten minutes

later she became aware that a servant in the corridor was endeavouring

to attract her attention. She went out at once and closed the door. The

servant told her that Lord Barnstaple desired an interview with her in

his own sitting-room; he feared interruptions in her boudoir.

Lee went rapidly to his rooms, curious and uneasy. She felt very much

like running away, but Lord Barnstaple had been consistently kind to

her, and was justified in demanding what return she could give him.

He was walking up and down, and his eyebrows were more perturbed than

supercilious.

“I want to know if you will give me a little help,” he said abruptly.

“Of course I will do anything I can.”

“I want that bounder, Pix, put out of this house. I can’t stand him

another day without insulting him, and of course I don’t want to do

that. But he is Emmy’s guest and she can get rid of him--I don’t

care how she does it. Of course I can’t speak to her; she would be in

hysterics before I was half through; and would keep him here to spite

me.”

“And you want me to speak to her?”

“I’m not asking you to undertake a very pleasant task; but you’re the

only person who has the least influence over her, except Cecil--and I

don’t care to speak to him about it.”

“But what am I to say to her? What excuse?”

Lord Barnstaple wheeled about sharply. “Can’t you think of any?” he

asked.

Lee kept her face immobile, but she turned away her eyes.

Lord Barnstaple laughed. “Unless you are blind you can see what is

becoming plain enough,” he said harshly. “I’ve seen him hanging about

for some time, but it never occurred to me that he might be her lover

until lately. I don’t care a hang about her and her lovers, but she

can’t bring that sort to the Abbey.”

“I can tell her that everybody is talking and that the women are

hinting that unless she drops him she’ll be dropped herself.”

“Quite so. You’ll have a nasty scene. It is good of you to undertake it

without making me argue myself hoarse.”

“I am one of you; you must know that I would willingly do anything for

the family interests that I could.”

“You do belong to us,” said Lord Barnstaple with some enthusiasm.

“And that is what Emmy has never done for a moment. By the way,” he

hesitated, “I hate to mention it now, it looks as if I were hastening

to reward you; but the fact is I had made up my mind to give you my

wife’s jewels. They are very fine, and Emmy does not even know of their

existence. I suppose it would have been rather decent of me to have

given them to you long ago: but----”

Lee nodded to him, smiling sympathetically.

“Yes,” he said, “I hated to part with them. But I shan’t mind your

having them. I’ll write to my solicitors at once to send them down;

I’ve got to pass the time somehow. For Heaven’s sake come back and tell

me how she takes it.”

“I don’t suppose I shall be long. I haven’t thanked you. Of course I

shall be delighted to have the jewels.”

“You ought to have the Barnstaple ones, but she’s capable of outliving

the whole of us.”

CHAPTER XXII

As Lee walked along the many corridors to her mother-in-law’s rooms she

reflected that she was grateful Lord Barnstaple had not refrained from

mentioning the diamonds: their vision was both pleasing and sustaining.

She was obliged to give serious thought to the coming interview, but

they glittered in the background and poured their soothing light along

her nerves.

Lady Barnstaple had but just risen from her afternoon nap and was

drinking her tea. She looked cross and dishevelled.

“Do sit down,” she said, as Lee picked up a porcelain ornament from the

mantel and examined it. “I hate people to stand round in spots.”

Lee took a chair opposite her mother-in-law. She was the last person to

shirk a responsibility when she faced the point.

“You have seemed very nervous lately,” she said. “Is anything the

matter?”

“Yes, everything is. I wish I could simply hurt some people. I’d go a

long ways aside to do it. What right have these God-Almighty English to

put on such airs, anyhow? One person’s exactly as good as another. I

come from a free country and I like it.”

“I wonder you have deserted it for five-and-twenty years. But it is

still there.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt you’d like to get rid of me. But you won’t. I’ve

worn myself out getting to the top, and on the top I’ll stay. I’d be

just nothing in New York. And Chicago--_good_ Lord!”

“You’ve stepped down two or three rungs, and if you’re not careful

you’ll find yourself at the foot--”

“What do you mean?” screamed Lady Barnstaple. “I’ve half a mind to

throw this teacup at you.”

“Don’t you dare to throw anything at me. I should have a right to

speak even if I did not consider your own interest--which I do; please

believe me. Surely you must know that Mr. Pix has hurt you.”

“I’d like to know why _I_ can’t have a lover as well as anybody else.”

“Do you mean to acknowledge that he is your lover?”

“It’s none of your business whether he is or not! And I’m not going to

be dictated to by you or anybody else.”

Lady Barnstaple was too nervous and too angry to be cowed by the cold

blue blaze before her, but she asserted herself the more defiantly.

“I have no intention of dictating to you, but it certainly is my

business. And it’s Lord Barnstaple’s and Cecil’s--”

“You shut up your mouth,” screamed Lady Barnstaple; her language always

revealed its pristine simplicity when her nerves were fairly galloping.

“The idea of a brat like you sitting up there and lecturing me. And

what do you know about it, I’d like to know? You’re married to the

salt of the earth and you’re such a fool you’re tired of him already.

If you’d been tied up for twenty years to a cold-blooded brute like

Barnstaple you might--yes, you might have a little more charity----”

“I am by no means without charity, and I know that you are not happy.

I wish you were; but surely there are better ways of consoling

oneself----”

“_Are_ there? Well, I don’t know anything about them and I guess you

don’t know much more. I was pretty when I married Barnstaple, and I

was really in love with him, if you want to know it. He was such a

real swell, and I was so ambitious, I admired him to death; and he was

so indifferent he fascinated me. But he never even had the decency

to pretend he hadn’t married me for my money. He’s never so much as

crossed my threshold, if you want to know the truth.”

“People say he was in love with his first wife, and took her death very

much to heart. Perhaps that was it.”

“That was just it. He’s got her picture hanging up in his bedroom;

won’t even have it in his sitting-room for fear somebody else might

look at it. I went to see him once out of pure charity, when he was

ill in bed and he shouted at me to get out before I’d crossed the

threshold. But I saw _her_.”

“I must say I respect him more for being perfectly honest, for

not pretending to love you. After all, it was a square business

transaction: he sold you a good position and a prospective title.

You’ve both got a good deal out of it----”

“I hate him! I hate a good many people in England, but I hate him the

most. I’m biding my time, but when I do strike there won’t be one ounce

of starch left in him. I’d do it this minute if it wasn’t for Cecil.

What right has he got to stick his nose into my affairs and humiliate

the only man that ever really loved me----”

“If you mean Mr. Pix, it seems to me that Lord Barnstaple has

restrained himself as only a gentleman can. He is a very fastidious

man, and you surely cannot be so blind as not to see how an

underbred----”

“Don’t you dare!” shrieked Lady Barnstaple. She sprang to her feet,

overturning the tea-table and ruining her pink velvet carpet. “He’s

as good as anybody, I tell you, and so am I. I’m sick and tired

of airs--that cad’s that’s ruined me and your ridiculous Southern

nonsense. I’m not blind! I can see you look down on me because I ain’t

connected with your old broken aristocracy! What does it amount to,

I’d like to know? There’s only one thing that amounts to anything on

the face of this earth and that’s money. You can turn up your nose at

Chicago but I can tell you Chicago’d turn up its nose at you if it had

ever heard of you. You’re just a nonentity, with all your airs, and all

your eyes too for that matter, and I’m known on two continents. I’m the

Countess of Barnstaple, if I was--but it’s none of yours or anybody

else’s business who I was. I’m somebody now and somebody I’m going to

stay. If I’ve gone down three rungs I’ll climb up again--I will! I

will! I will! And I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I haven’t a penny left!

Not a penny! Not a penny! I’m going to kill myself----”

Lee jumped up, caught her by the shoulders and literally shook the

hysterics out of her. Then she sat her violently into a chair.

“Now!” she said. “You behave yourself or I’ll shake you again. I’ll

stand none of your nonsense and I have several things to say to you

yet. So keep quiet.”

Lady Barnstaple panted, but she looked cowed. She did not raise her

eyes.

“How long have you been ruined?”

“I don’t know; a long while.”

“And you are spending Mr. Pix’s money?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Do the Abbey lands pay the taxes and other expenses?--and the expenses

of the shooting season?”

“They pay next to nothing. The farms are too small. It’s all woods and

moor.”

“Then Mr. Pix is running the Abbey?”

“Yes he is--and he knows it.”

“And you have no sense of responsibility to the man who has given you

the position you were ready to grovel for?”

“He’s a beastly cad.”

“If he were not a gentleman he could have managed you. But that has

nothing to do with it. You have no right to enter a family to disgrace

it. I suppose it’s not possible to make you understand; but its honour

should be your own.”

“I don’t care a hang about any such high-falutin’ nonsense. I entered

this family to get what I wanted, and when it’s got no more to give me

it can be the laughing-stock of England for all I care.”

“I thought you loved Cecil.”

The ugly expression which had been deepening about Lady Barnstaple’s

mouth relaxed for a moment.

“I do; but I can’t help it. He’s got to go with the rest. I don’t know

that I care much, though; you’re enough to make me hate him. What I

hate more than everything else put together is to give up the Abbey.

And you can be sure that after the way Mr. Pix has been treated----”

“Mr. Pix will leave this house to-night. If you don’t send him I shall.”

“You’re a fool. If you knew which side your bread was buttered on

you’d make such a fuss over him that everybody else would treat him

decently----”

“I have fully identified myself with my husband’s family, if you have

not, and I shall do nothing to add to its dishonour. There are worse

things than giving up the Abbey--which can be rented; it need not be

sold. The Gearys would rent it to-morrow.”

“If you think so much of this family I wonder you can make up your mind

to leave it.”

Lee hesitated a moment. Then she said: “I shall never leave it so long

as it needs me. And it certainly needs somebody just at present. Mr.

Pix must leave; that’s the first point. Lord Barnstaple and Cecil must

be told just so much and no more. Don’t you dare tell them that Mr. Pix

has been running the Abbey. You can have letters from Chicago to-morrow

saying that you are ruined.”

“If Mr. Pix goes I follow. Unless I can keep the Abbey--and if I’ve got

to drop out----”

“You can suit yourself about going or remaining. Only don’t you tell

Lord Barnstaple or anybody else whose money you have been spending.”

“I’d tell him and everybody else this minute if it weren’t for Cecil.

He’s the only person who’s ever really treated me decently. And as for

the Abbey----”

She paused so long that Lee received a mental telegram of something

still worse to come. As Lady Barnstaple raised her eyes slowly and

looked at her with steady malevolence she felt her burning cheeks cool.

“He wouldn’t have the Abbey, anyhow, you know,” said Lady Barnstaple.

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you jabbering with Barnstaple and Cecil not long since about

the Abbey and its traditions, but either they hadn’t told you or you

hadn’t thought it worth remembering--that there is a curse on all Abbey

lands and that it has worked itself out in this family with beautiful

regularity.”

“I never heard of any curse.”

“Well, the priests, or monks, or whatever they were, cursed the Abbey

lands when they were turned out. And this is the way the curse works.”

She paused a moment longer with an evident sense of the dramatic. “They

never descend in the direct line,” she added with all possible emphasis.

“I am too American for superstition,” but her voice had lost its

vigour.

“That hasn’t very much to do with it. I’m merely mentioning facts. I

haven’t gone into other Abbey family histories very extensively, but

I know this one. Never, not in a single instance, has Maundrell Abbey

descended from father to son.”

Lee looked away from her for the first time. Her eyes blazed no longer;

they looked like cold blue ashes.

“It is time to break the rule,” she said.

“The rule’s not going to be broken. Either the Abbey will go to a

stranger, or Cecil will die before Barnstaple is laid out in the

crypt----”

Lee rose. “It is an interesting superstition, but it will have to

wait,” she said. “I am going now to speak to Mr. Pix--unless you will

do it yourself.”

“I’ll do it myself if you’ll be kind enough to mind your business that

far.”

“Then I shall go and tell Lord Barnstaple that you have consented----”

“Ah! He sent you, did he? I might have known it.”

Lee bit her lip. “I am sorry--but it doesn’t matter. If to-day is

a sample of your usual performances, you can’t expect him to court

interviews with you.”

“Oh, he’s afraid of me. I could make any man afraid of me, thank

Heaven!”

CHAPTER XXIII

Lee returned to her father-in-law more slowly than she had advanced

upon the enemy. She longed desperately for Cecil, but he was the last

person in whom she could confide.

Lord Barnstaple opened the door for her.

“How pale you are!” he said. “I suppose I sent you to about the

nastiest interview of your life.”

“Oh. I got the best of her. She was screaming about the room and I got

tired of it and nearly shook the life out of her.”

Lord Barnstaple laughed with genuine delight. “I knew she’d never get

the best of you,” he cried. “I knew you’d trounce her. Well, what else?”

“She promised to tell Mr. Pix he must go to-night.”

“Ah, you did manage her. How did you do it?”

“I told her I’d tell him if she didn’t.”

“Good! But of course she’ll get back at us. What’s she got up her

sleeve?”

“I don’t think she knows herself. She’s too excited. I think she’s

upset about a good many things. She seems to have been getting bad news

from Chicago this last week or two.”

“Ah!” Lord Barnstaple walked over to the window. He turned about in a

moment.

“I have felt a crash in the air for a long time,” he said pinching

his lips. “But this last year or two her affairs seemed to take a new

start, and of course her fortune was a large one and could stand a good

deal of strain. But if she goes to pieces----” he spread out his hands.

“If Cecil and I could only live here all the year round we could keep

up the Abbey in a way, particularly if you rented the shootings; but

our six months in town take fully two thousand----”

“There’s no alternative, I’m afraid: we’ll all have to get out.”

“But you wouldn’t sell it?”

“I shall have to talk it over with Cecil. The rental would pay the

expenses of the place; but I can’t live forever, and when I give place

to him the death duties will make a large hole in his private fortune.

I have a good many sins to repent of when my time comes.”

He had turned very pale, and he looked very harassed. Lee did not fling

her arms round his neck as she might once have done, but she took his

hand and patted it.

“You and Cecil and I can always be happy together, even without the

Abbey,” she said. “If Emmy really loses her money she will run away

with Mr. Pix or somebody. We three will live together, and forget all

about her. And we won’t be really poor.”

Lord Barnstaple kissed her and patted her cheek, but his brow did not

clear.

“I am glad Cecil has you,” he said, “the time may come when he will

need you badly. He loves the Abbey--more than I have done, I suppose,

or I should have taken more pains to keep it.”

Lee felt half inclined to tell him of Randolph’s promise; but sometimes

she thought she knew Randolph, and sometimes she was sure she did not.

She had no right to raise hopes, which converse potentialities so

nicely balanced. Then she bethought herself of Emmy’s last shot, which

had passed out of her memory for the moment. She must speak of it to

some one.

“She said something terrible to me just before I left. I’d like to ask

you about it.”

“Do. Why didn’t you give her another shaking?”

“I was knocked out: it took all my energies to keep her from seeing it.

She said that Abbey lands were cursed, and never descended from father

to son.”

Lord Barnstaple dropped her hand and walked to the window again.

“It has been a curious series of coincidences in our case,” he said,

“but as our lands were not cursed more vigorously than the others,

and as a good many of the others have gone scot free or nearly so,

we always hope for better luck next time. There is really no reason

why our luck shouldn’t change any day. The old brutes ought to be

satisfied, particularly as we’ve taken such good care of their bones.”

“Well, if the Abbey has to go, I hope the next people will be haunted

out of it,” said Lee viciously. “I must go and dress for dinner. Don’t

worry; I have a fine piece of property, and it is likely to increase

in value any day.” She felt justified in saying this much.

“You had an air of bringing good luck with you when you came. It was a

fancy, of course, but I remember it impressed me.”

“That is the reason you didn’t scold me for not bringing a million, as

Emmy did?”

“_Did_ she? The little beast! Well, go and dress.”

CHAPTER XXIV

As Cecil and Lee were descending the tower stair an hour later he said

to her:

“Don’t look for me to-night when you are ready to come home; I am

coming straight here after dinner. It’s high time I got to work on my

speeches.”

She slipped her hand into his. “Shall I come too and sit with you?”

He returned her pressure and did not answer at once. Then he said: “No;

I think I’d rather you didn’t. If I am to lose you for a year I had

better get used to it as soon as possible.”

She lifted her head to tell him that she had no intention of leaving

him for the present, then felt a perverse desire to torment him a

little longer. She intended to be so charming to him later that she

felt she owed that much to herself. But she was dressed to-night for

his special delectation. If Cecil had a preference in the matter of

her attire it was for transparent white, and she wore a gown of white

embroidered mousseline de soie flecked here and there with blue.

They were still some distance from the door which led into the first

of the corridors, for the stair was winding, worn, and steep, and, in

spite of several little lamps, almost dark. Cecil paused suddenly and

turned to her, plunging his hands into his pockets. She could hardly

see his face, for a slender ray from above lay full across her eyes;

but she had thought, as she had joined him in the sitting-room above a

few moments since, that he had never looked more handsome. He grew pale

in London, but a few days on the moors always gave him back his tan;

and it had also occurred to her that the past two weeks had given him

an added depth of expression, robbed him of a trifle of that serenity

which Circumstance had so persistently fostered.

“There is something I should like to say,” he began, with manifest

hesitation. “I shouldn’t like you to go on thinking that I have not

appreciated your long and unfailing sacrifice during these three years.

I was too happy to analyse, I suppose, and you seemed happy too;

but of course I can see now that you were making a deliberate--and

noble--attempt--to--to make yourself over, to suppress an individuality

of uncommon strength in order to live up to a man’s selfish ideal.

Of course when I practically suggested it, I knew what I was talking

about, but I was too much of a man to realise what it meant--and I had

not lived with you. I can assure you that, great as your success was, I

have realised, in this past week, that I had absorbed your real self,

that I understood you as no man who had lived with you and loved you

as much as I--no man to whom you had been so much, could fail to do.

I am expressing myself about as badly as possible, but the idea that

you should think me so utterly selfish and unappreciative after all

you have given up--have given me--has literally tortured me. I don’t

wonder you want a fling. Go and have it, but come back to me as soon as

you can.”

She made no reply, for she wanted to say many things at once. But it is

possible that he read something of it in her eyes--at least she prayed

a few hours later that he had--for he caught her hard against him and

kissed her many times. Then he hurried on, as if he feared she would

think he had spoken as a suppliant.

When she joined him in the corridor the Gearys were waiting for them,

and Coralie immediately began to chatter. Her conversation was like

a very light champagne, sparkling but not mounting to the brain. Lee

felt distinctly bored. She would have liked to dine alone with Cecil

and then to spend with him a long evening of mutual explanation and

reminiscence, and many intervals. She answered Coralie at random, and

in a few moments her mind reverted with a startled leap to the pregnant

hours of the afternoon. Could she keep Cecil ignorant of the disgrace

which had threatened him? Had Pix gone? Would Emmy hold her counsel?

She had forgotten to ask Lord Barnstaple to keep away from her; but

such advice was hardly necessary.

“Where on earth did you disappear to this afternoon?” Coralie was

demanding. “I hunted over the whole Abbey for you and I got lost and

then I tried to talk to _that_ Miss Pix and she asked me all about

divorce in the United States--of all things! I wonder if she’s got

a husband tucked away somewhere--those monumental people are often

bigger fools than they look. I told her that American divorces were

no good in England unless they were obtained on English statutory

grounds--we’d known some one who’d tried it. She looked as mad as a

hornet, just like her brother for a minute. And he fairly makes me ill,

Lee. Just fancy _our_ having such people in the house. I must say that

the English with all their blood----”

“Oh, do keep quiet!” said Lee impatiently. Then she apologised

hurriedly. “I have a good deal to think about just now,” she added.

Coralie was gazing at her with a scarlet face. “Well, I think it’s

about time you came back to California,” she said sarcastically. “Your

manners need brushing up.”

But Lee only shrugged her shoulders and refused to humble herself

further. She was beset with impatience to reach the library and

ascertain if Pix had gone.

He was there. And he was standing apart with his sister. His set thick

profile was turned to the door. He was talking, and it was evident that

his voice was pitched very low.

As the company was passing down the corridor which led to the stair

just beyond the dining-room, Lady Barnstaple’s maid came hastily from

the wing beyond and asked Lee to take her ladyship’s place at the table.

It seemed to Lee as the dinner progressed that with a few exceptions

every one was in a feverish state of excitement. The exceptions were

the Pixes, who barely made a remark, Cecil, who seemed as usual and

was endeavouring to entertain his neighbour, and Lord Barnstaple,

whose brow was very dark. Mary Gifford’s large laugh barely gave its

echoes time to finish, and the others certainly talked even louder

and faster than usual. Randolph alone was brilliant and easy, and, to

Lee, was manifestly doing what he could to divert the attention of his

neighbours. Before the women rose it was quite plain that they were

really nervous; and that the influence emanated from Pix. His silence

alone would have attracted attention, for it was his habit to talk

incessantly in order to conceal his real timidity. And he sat staring

straight before him, scarcely eating, his heavy features set in an ugly

sneer.

“I’m on the verge of hysterics,” said Mary Gifford to Lee as they

entered the drawing-room. “That man’s working himself up to something.

He’s a coward and his courage takes a lot of screwing, but he’s getting

it to the sticking point as fast as he can, and I met him coming out of

Emmy’s rooms about an hour before dinner. I ran over to speak to her

about something, but I was not admitted. He looked as if they’d been

having a terrible row and he was ready to murder some one. I’m in a

real funk. But if he’s meditating a _coup de théâtre_ we can baulk him

for to-night at least. It’s a lovely night. Get everybody out-of-doors

and then I’ll see that they scatter. I’ll start a romp the moment the

men come out.”

“Good. I’ll send up for shawls at once. I’ll tell Coralie to look after

Lord Barnstaple; she always amuses him. Then--I’ll dispose of Mr. Pix.”

“Oh, I wish I could be there to see. He’ll sizzle and freeze at once,

poor wretch. Well, let’s get them out. I’ll deposit Mrs. Montgomery in

the Sèvres room, and tell her to look at the crockery and then go to

bed.”

Lee had intended to return with Cecil to the tower and inform him that

his bitter draught was to be sweetened for the present, but Pix must be

dealt with summarily. If she did not get him out of the house before

Lord Barnstaple lost his head there would be consequences which even

her resolute temper, born of the exigencies of the hour, refused to

contemplate.

The women, pleased with the suggestion of a romp on the moor, strolled,

meanwhile, about the lake, looking rather less majestic than the

swans, who occasionally stood on their heads as if disdainful of the

admiration of mere mortals. When the men entered the drawing-room Lee

asked them to go outside immediately, and Coralie placed her hand in

Lord Barnstaple’s arm and marched him off.

Lee went down to the crypt with them, then slipped back into the

shadows and returned to the drawing-room. Pix had greeted her

suggestion with a sneer and a scowl, but it was evident that his plans

had been frustrated, and that he was not a man of ready wit. He had

sat himself doggedly in a chair, obviously to await the return of

Lord Barnstaple and his guests. He sat there alone as Lee re-entered,

looking smaller and commoner than usual in the great expanse of the

ancient room, with its carven roof that had been blessed and cursed,

and the priceless paintings on the panels about him. The Maundrells

of Holbein, and Sir Joshua, and Sir Peter seemed to have raised their

eyebrows with supercilious indignation. He was in accord with nothing

but the electric lights.

As Lee entered he did not rise, but his scowl and his sneer deepened.

She walked directly up to him, and as he met her eyes he moved

slightly. When Lee concentrated all the forces of a strong will in

those expressive orbs, the weaker nature they bore upon was liable

to an attack of tremulous self-consciousness. She knew the English

character; its upper classes had the arrogance of the immortals;

millions might bury but could never exterminate the servility of

the lower. Let an aristocrat hold a man’s plebeianism hard against

his nostrils and the poor wretch would grovel with the overpowering

consciousness of it. Lee had determined that nothing short of insolent

brutality would dispose of Mr. Pix. And for sheer insolence the true

Californian transcends the earth.

“Why haven’t you gone?” she asked as if she were addressing a servant.

Pix too had his arrogance, the arrogance of riches. Although he turned

pale, he replied doggedly:

“I’m not ready to go and I don’t go until I am. I don’t know what you

mean.” He spoke grammatically, but his accent was as irritating as only

the underbred accents of England can be.

“You know what I mean. You saw Lady Barnstaple this afternoon. She told

you you must go. We don’t want you here.”

“I’ll stay as long as I----”

“No, my good man, you will not; you will go to-night. I have ordered

the carriage for the eleven-ten train to Leeds, where you can stay the

night. Your man is packing your box.”

“I won’t go,” he growled, but his chest was heaving.

“Oh yes you will, if you have to be assisted into the carriage by two

footmen.”

He pulled himself together, although it was evident that his nerves,

subjected to a long and severe strain, were giving way, and that the

foundations of his insolence were weakened by the position in which she

had placed him. He said quite distinctly:

“And who’s going to feed this crowd?”

“My husband and myself; and I’ll trouble you for your bill.”

“It’s a damned big bill.”

“I think not. I have no concern with what you may have spent elsewhere.

I shall ascertain exactly when my mother-in-law’s original income

ceased and I know quite as well as you do what is spent here; so be

careful you make no mistakes. Now go, my good man, and see that you

make no fuss about it.”

The situation would unquestionably have been saved, for the man was

confounded and humiliated, but at that moment Lord Barnstaple entered

the room.

“My dear child,” he said, “I was a brute to leave this to you. Go out

to the others. I will follow in a moment.”

Lee, who was really enjoying herself, wheeled about with a frown. “Do

go,” she said emphatically. “Do go.”

“And leave you to be insulted by a cur who doesn’t know enough to stand

up in your presence. I am not quite so bad as that.” He turned to Pix,

whose face had become very red; even his eyeballs were injected.

“I believe you have been told that you cannot stay here,” he said. “I

am sorry to appear rude, but--you must go. There are no explanations

necessary, and I should prefer that you did not reply. But I insist

upon you leaving the house to-night.”

Pix jumped to his feet with hard fists. “Damn you! Damn you!” he

stuttered hysterically, but excitement giving him courage as he went

on: “and what’s going to become of you? Where’ll you and all this land

that makes such a h--l of a difference between you and me be this

time next year? It’ll be mine as it ought to be now! And where’ll

you be? Who’ll be paying for your bread and butter? Who’ll be paying

your gambling debts? They’ve made a nice item in my expenses, I can

tell you! If you’re going to make your wife’s lover pay your debts of

honour--as you swells call them--you might at least have the decency to

win a little mor’n you do.”

He finished and stood panting.

Lord Barnstaple stood like a stone for a moment, then he caught the man

by the collar, jerked him to an open window, and flung him out as if he

had been a rat. He was very strong, as are all Englishmen of his class

who spend two-thirds of their lives in the open air, and his face was

merely a shade paler as he turned to Lee. But she averted her eyes

hastily from his, nevertheless.

“Doubtless that man spoke the truth,” he said calmly, “but she must

corroborate it,” and he went towards the stair beyond the drawing-room

that led to his wife’s apartments.

Lee ran to the window. Pix was sitting up on the walk holding a

handkerchief to his face. No one else was in sight. Presently he got to

his feet and limped into the house. Lee went to the door opposite the

great staircase and saw him toil past: it was evident that he was quite

ready to slink away.

She sat down and put her hand to her eyes. It seemed to her that

they must ache forever with what they had caught sight of in Lord

Barnstaple’s. In that brief glance she had seen the corpse of a

gentleman’s pride.

What would happen! If Emmy lost her courage, or if her better nature,

attenuated as it was, conquered her spite, the situation might still

be saved. Lord Barnstaple would be only too willing to receive the

assurance that the man, insulted to fury, had lied; and, above all,

Cecil need never know. There was no doubt that Lord Barnstaple’s

deserts were largely of his own invoking, but she set her nails into

her palms with a fierce maternal yearning over Cecil. He was blameless,

and he was hers. One way or another he should be spared.

She waited for Lord Barnstaple’s return until she could wait no longer.

If he were not still with Emmy--and it was not likely that he would

prolong the interview--he must have gone to his rooms by the upper

corridors. She went rapidly out of the drawing-room and up the stair.

She could not be regarded as an intruder and she must know the worst

to-night. _What_ would Lord Barnstaple do if Emmy had confessed the

truth? She tried to persuade herself that she had not the least idea.

CHAPTER XXV

He was sitting at his desk writing; and as he lifted his hand at her

abrupt entrance and laid it on an object beside his papers she received

no shock of surprise. She went forward and lifted his hand from the

revolver.

“Must you?” she asked.

“Of course I must. Do you think I could live with myself another day?”

“Perhaps no one need ever know.”

“Everybody in England will know before a week is over. She gave me to

understand that people guessed it already.”

“_This_ seems such a terrible alternative to a woman--but----”

“But you have race in you. You understand perfectly. My honour has been

sold, and my pride is dead: there is no place among men for what is

left of me. And to face my son again! Good God!”

“Can nothing be done to keep it from Cecil?”

“Nothing. It is the only heritage I leave him and he’ll have to stand

it as best he can. It won’t kill him, nor his courage; he’s made of

stronger stuff than that. And if I’ve brought the family honour to

the dust, he has it in him to raise it higher than it has ever been.

Never let him forget that. You’ve played your part well all along, but

you’ve a great deal more to do yet. You’ll find that Fate didn’t steer

you into this family to play the pretty rôle of countess----”

“I am equal to my part.”

“Yes: I think you are. Now--I have an hour’s work before me. I can’t

let you go till I have finished. You are a strong creature--but you are

a woman, all the same. You must stay here until I am ready to let you

go.”

“I want to stay with you.”

“Thank you. Sit down.”

He handed her a chair, and returned to his writing.

Lee knew that if he had condemned her to the corridor under a vow of

secrecy she should have paced up and down with increasing nervousness.

But she felt calm enough beside him. He wrote deliberately, with a

steady hand, and out of the respect he commanded she felt as profound a

pity for him as she would feel when she stood beside him in the crypt.

The soul had already gone out of him: it did not even strike her as

eerie that the vigorous body beside her would demand its last rites in

an hour.

Although taught to forgive her father, she had been brought up in a

proper disapprobation of suicide. The impressions rooted in her plastic

years rose and possessed her for a moment: but she wisely refused to

consider what was none of her business. She did not even argue Lord

Barnstaple’s case, nor remind herself that she understood him. It was

exclusively his own affair, and to approve or condemn him was equally

impertinent.

Her chair faced the window. The crystal moon hung low above the park.

The woods looked old and dark: night gave them back their mystery. The

lovely English landscape was steeped in the repose which the centuries

had given it. The great forests and terrible mountains of California

may have been born in earlier throes, but they still brooded upon the

mysteries of the future. England was worn down to peace and calm by

centuries of passing feet. She had the repose of a great mind in the

autumn of its years.

Lee melted into sympathy with the country of her adoption. California

loomed darkly in the background, majestic but remote, and folding

itself in the mists of dreams. It had belonged to her, been a part of

her, in some bygone phase of herself. She was proud to have come out of

it and glad to have known it, but it would be silent to her hereafter.

She was as significantly a Maundrell as if she had been born in her

tower; for she was, and indivisibly, a part of her husband.

She was too sensible to waste time in upbraiding herself for her

conduct of the past fortnight. It had been as inevitable as exhaustion

after excitement, or mental rebellion after years of unremitting

study; and the suffering it had caused could easily be transformed

into gratitude. The important points were that her reaction had worn

itself out, and that the tremendous climax on its heels had forced her

prematurely into the consciousness that the three years’ effort to be

something she had not developed in the previous twenty-one, had changed

her character and her brain as indubitably as the constant action of

water changes the face of a rock. One month of her old life would have

bored her to extinction. Two months and she would have anathematised

the continents of land and water between herself and her husband. A

fortnight later she would have been in her tower. Solemn as the passing

moments were, she could not ignore the prick of ironical relief that

her future was to lack the determined effort of the past three years.

Her new self would fit her with the ease of a garment long worn. Love

had sustained her when she had desired nothing so much as happiness;

but she knew that she had hardly known the inchoation of love until

to-night. Cecil, in his terrible necessity, had taken her ego into his

own breast.

Her thoughts went to him in their tower, writing, like his father,

but with far less calm; for he grew nervous and impatient over his

work. It seemed a strange and terrible thing that he should sit there

unconscious of the double tragedy preparing for him, but she was glad

to prolong his unconsciousness as long as she could. And she would be

the one to tell him.

Lord Barnstaple laid down his pen and sealed his letters. He stood up

and held out his hand.

“Good-bye,” he said.

They shook hands closely and in silence. Then she went out and he

closed the door behind her. She stood still, waiting for the signal.

She could not carry the news of his death to his son until he was gone

beyond the shadow of a doubt. It was so long coming that she wondered

if his courage had failed him, or if he were praying before the picture

of his wife. It came at last.

CHAPTER XXVI

She walked rapidly along the corridor toward the tower. But in a moment

or two she turned back and went in the direction of the library. It

was Randolph’s habit to read there when the other guests were playing

and romping. To-night’s frolic would certainly not have appealed to

him. It was more than possible that he was there alone, or in his room;

and to-morrow he must go with the others. It might be years before she

would see him again, and it would be culpable not to make him a last

appeal. If the Abbey was lost it should not be for want of effort on

her part.

Randolph was in the library, and alone. He rose with a brilliant smile

of pleasure, then stood and looked hard at her.

“Something has happened,” he said. “You look as if you had just come

back from the next world.”

“You are not so far wrong. Lord Barnstaple has just killed himself.

Things had come to his knowledge that I hope you may never hear. But he

is dead, and to-morrow you will have gone.”

They were standing close together.

“You will not return to California with us.”

“I would never leave Cecil Maundrell for an hour again if I could help

it.”

They exchanged a long look, and when it was over each understood the

other. Lee looked down; then, in the unendurable silence, raised her

eyes again. She averted them hastily. His were the eyes of men who look

their last. It was the second time she had looked into a man’s soul

to-night, and she felt cold and faint. What should she see in Cecil’s?

And how was she to speak of the Abbey in the face of a tragedy like

this? She turned to go, but her feet clung to the floor. The Abbey

was Cecil’s, and Cecil’s it must remain if its rescue were within the

compass of her determined hands. But words were hard to find.

Then she remembered that she had very eloquent eyes, and that Randolph

was versed in their speech. She raised them slowly and let them travel

about the beautiful old room, then out to the cloisters under whose

crumbling arches hooded shadows seemed passing to and fro; then raised

them once more to his with an expression of yearning and appeal.

“Is it true that Lady Barnstaple is ruined?”

“She has not a penny.”

There was another silence, so intense that they heard the echo of a

laugh, far out on the moor.

Randolph picked up a book from the table, and examined its title, then

laid it down again, and turned it over.

“I have never yet broken my word,” he said.

Lee flashed him a glance full of tears and tribute. Then once more that

night she shook hands with a man who was sick with the bitterness of

life.

She left the library and went rapidly down the corridor. As she passed

Lord Barnstaple’s door she noted with gratitude that there was no sign

of discovery. If the blow could be softened it was by her alone.

She was traversing the last corridor but one when her eyes were

arrested by the chapel and the churchyard on the hill. She paused

a moment and regarded them intently. A week from to-night she and

her husband would follow Lord Barnstaple up that hill to the vault

beneath the chapel’s altar. She had hardly realised his death before,

but that solitary hill, cold under the moonlight, cold in its bosom,

coldly biding its Maundrells, generation after generation, century

after century, made the tragedy of the earl’s death one of the several

sharply-cut facts of her life. They were five; she counted them

mechanically: the violent death of her father, her meeting with Cecil,

the death of her mother, her union with her husband, the violent death

of her husband’s father. There was certainly a singular coincidence

between the first and the last.

As she continued to look out at the graveyard, dark even under the

moon, and wondering if the next great fact in her life would be the

birth of a child, to be borne up that hill supinely in his turn,

following the father who had gone long since, she became aware that

the word coincidence was swinging to and fro in her mind, although the

other words of its company had gone to their dust-heap. She frowned

and reproached herself for giving way to melancholy; then reflected

that she would be less than mortal if she did not ... the reiteration

of the word annoyed her, and in a moment she had fitted it into her

conversation with Lord Barnstaple that afternoon.

Her stiffening eyes returned to the hill, and their vision stabbed

through the mounds to the bones of the abbots, whose brothers had

cursed the Abbey. It had been but a coincidence perhaps, but it had

worked itself out with astonishing regularity.

Lee became conscious that she was as cold as ice. The Abbey was saved

to the Maundrells. Was Cecil dead? Had he died before his father?

Nothing could be more unlikely, for he was the healthiest of men, and

there was no one to murder him.

She shook herself violently and took her nerves in hand. Two years ago

she would have flung off the superstition as quickly, but to-day the

old world and all its traditions had taken her imagination into its

mould. Had Pix--or that silent, persistent, unfathomable woman, his

sister----

She ran towards the tower, gripping her nerves; for if Cecil were

there she would have need of all her faculties. It was no part of her

programme to burst in upon him and scream and stammer her terrible

bulletin. But she was a woman, frightened, horrified, overwrought with

hours of nervous tension. When she reached the stair her knees were

shaking, and she climbed the long spiral so slowly that she would have

called her husband’s name could she have found her voice. She wished

she had asked him to write in her boudoir, whose open door was as black

as the entrance to a cave; but he was--should be--in his own little

sitting-room above.

She climbed the next flight with something more of resolution; courage

comes to all strong natures as they approach the formidable moments

of their lives. At the last turning she saw a blade of light, but the

door was too thick to pass a sound. When she reached it her fear and

superstition, and the obsession they had induced, left her abruptly,

and she opened the door at once. Cecil was writing quietly.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.