UNCONQUERED
"The stars are threshed and the souls
are threshed from their husks."
_Blake._
"Men and angels, ye
Whom stain of strife befouls,
A light to kindle souls
Bear, radiant, in the stain."
_Meredith._
UNCONQUERED
_A Romance_
BY
MAUD DIVER
_Author of "The Strong Hours," "Far to Seek,"
"Lonely Furrow," etc._
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY MAUD DIVER
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE * MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
To
MARY
IN REMEMBRANCE
OCTOBER 10TH, 1901
"A turn, and we stand in the heart of things..."
_Browning._
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The chapters dealing with France, and the incidents connected with
these, are founded on fact. I merely mention this because it seems
to me that the main incident gains in effect from the knowledge that
it is not mere invention.--M. D.
CONTENTS
BOOK I.--BEL
BOOK II.--THE UTTER PRICE
BOOK III.--VIA CRUCIS
BOOK IV.--VIA LUCIS
BOOK I
BEL
CHAPTER I
"Whom does love concern save the lover and the beloved? Yet its
impact deluges a thousand shores."--E. M. FORSTER.
Sir Mark Forsyth pushed back his chair, left the dinner-table, and
strolled over to the bay-window. He drew out his cigarette-case, but
apparently forgot to open it. He stood there, looking out across the
garden, that merged into rocky spaces of heather and bracken, and
culminated in an abrupt descent to Loch Etive. Low above the
darkening hills the sunset splendour flamed along the horizon, and
all the waters beneath were alight with the transient glory. But the
man's face wore the abstracted air of one who dwells upon an inner
vision. Though the subdued flow of talk behind him entered his ears,
it did not seem to reach his brain. "Bobs," his devoted Irish
terrier, crept out from under the table, and joining his master, made
sundry infallible bids for attention, without success.
Presently alluring whiffs of cigarette smoke, intruding on his
dreams, reminded Sir Mark of the unopened case in his hand.
"I vote for coffee on the terrace, Mother," he said, turning his eyes
from the glory without to the dimness of the unlighted dining-room.
"Then we'll have the boats out. There's going to be an afterglow and
a half presently."
"I told Grant about the coffee two minutes ago, dear," Lady Forsyth
answered, smiling; but her eyes dwelt a little anxiously on the
silhouetted view of her son's profile, as he set a match to his
cigarette. The straight, outstanding nose and square chin vividly
recalled his dead father. But the imaginative brow was of her
bestowing and a splash of light on his hair showed the reddish
chestnut tint of her own people: the tint she loved.
"Come along, children," she added, including in that category four
out of her five guests--two girls, unrelated to herself, Ralph
Melrose, a Gurkha subaltern, and Maurice Lenox, an artist friend of
Mark's.
Keith Macnair, professor of philosophy--his rugged face lined with
thought, his dark hair lightly frosted at the temples--was the only
genuine grown-up of her small house-party. A connection of her own,
and devoted to both mother and son, he was so evenly placed between
them in the matter of age that he could play elder brother to Mark or
younger brother to Lady Forsyth as occasion required. And, whenever
professional claims permitted, occasion usually did require his
presence, in some capacity, either at Wynchcombe Friars or Inveraig.
Between times, he lived and lectured and wrote philosophical books in
Edinburgh; and never, if he could help it, did he fail to spend most
of his summer holiday at Inveraig.
When the party rose from the table he joined Mark in the window; and
as the two girls stood back to let Lady Forsyth pass out, she slipped
an arm round each. Her love of youth and young things seemed to
deepen with her own advancing years. But she had her preferences;
and it was the arm round Sheila Melrose that tightened as they passed
through the long drawing-room to the terrace, where coffee was set
upon a low stone table in full view of the illumined lake and sky.
"It's splendid to have you safe back again, child," she said,
releasing Monica Videlle and drawing Sheila down to the seat beside
her. "India's monopolised you quite long enough. There's some
mysterious magnetism about that country. People seem to catch it
like a disease. And I was getting alarmed lest you might succumb to
the infection."
Miss Melrose smiled thoughtfully at the sunset. "I'm not sure _I_
haven't succumbed already!" she said in her low, clear-cut voice. "I
have vague tempting dreams of going back with Ralph when his furlough
is up; or with Mona, to help doctor her Indian women. But probably
they'll never materialise----"
"More than probably, if I have any say in the matter!"
Lady Forsyth spoke lightly, but under the lightness lurked a note of
decision. She had her own private dreams concerning this girl with
the softly shining eyes under level brows, and the softly resolute
lips that never seemed quite to leave off smiling even in repose.
At mention of India, Miss Videlle's thoughtful face came suddenly to
life. "It would be lovely for me," she said. "Too good to be true!"
"Never mind, Miss Videlle," Maurice consoled her almost tenderly.
"This ripping evening's not too good to be true. And _I_ can put you
up to some tips for squaring Lady Forsyth--in strict confidence of
course!"
He bent towards her with a slightly theatrical offer of his arm, and
they moved off to a seat near the ivy-covered wall, looking towards
the distant rapids.
Lady Forsyth glanced after them with a passing twinge of concern.
The girl--a fairly recent acquisition of Sheila's--was shy and
clever, with a streak of dark blood in her veins. She had done
brilliantly at Oxford, and was now qualified to take up the medical
work in India on which she had set her heart. Sheila had acquired
her while going through a course of massage and magnetic healing, for
which she showed so distinct a gift that she had serious thoughts of
taking it up in earnest. A vague idea of going out with Monica
Videlle had been simmering in her brain for the past week; but she
had not spoken of it till to-night.
"Wonder what's come to old Mark," mused Ralph pensively, stirring his
coffee. "Thought this picnic arrangement was all for his benefit----"
"Rather so!" Mark's voice answered him, as he and Macnair strolled
round the corner of the house. "Hurry up with the coffee, Mums. I
love dabbling my oars in the sunset. Lenox, old chap, you two might
go on ahead and give the word."
They went on readily enough; and the rest soon followed them through
the wilder spaces of the garden, down rocky steps to the bay, where
sand and rough grass shelved gently to the water's edge. Here they
found two boats already afloat, with Maurice and Monica--she was
commonly called Mona--established in one of them.
Lady Forsyth, nothing if not prompt, privately consigned Ralph to
that boat, Mark and Keith to her own. It was a heavenly evening, and
she thanked goodness they were going to have it to themselves: quite
a rare event since Maurice Lenox had discovered that superfluous Miss
Alison.
"Coming to row stroke for us?" she asked as Mark handed her in.
He shook his head, smiling down at her.
"That's to be Keith's privilege! I'm for the other boat." But
neither his smile nor the light pressure of her arm could atone for
the refusal.
"Pointed and purposeless," she denounced it mentally; but within a
very few moments his purpose was revealed.
"Down Connel way first, Keith," he called out, as he pushed off his
own boat and sprang lightly in. "I want to run up to the village.
Miss Alison and her friend might like to join us."
So they rowed towards Connel at his command: and for Lady Forsyth the
pleasure of the outing was gone; the peace and beauty of the evening
spoilt by fierce resentment against these intrusive strangers who had
no authorised position in the scheme of things. And her natural
vexation was intensified by concern for Sheila: though whether the
girl took Mark's sudden and strange defection seriously it was
impossible to tell. She wore that smiling, friendly graciousness of
hers like a bright veil, that seemed to baffle attempts at intimacy,
while it enhanced her charm. Even with Lady Forsyth, who loved her
as a daughter, she had her reserves, notably on matters nearest her
heart.
"After all, she knows the real Mark almost as well as I do," Mark's
mother reflected by way of consolation. "And she's wiser than I am,
in many ways, though she _is_ nearly thirty years younger. I'm
probably racing on miles too fast. He's barely known the girl a
fortnight. He _couldn't_ be so crazy!-- All the same, he's no
business to--it's distracting!" she concluded, her irritation flaming
up again at sight of the two figures that were now approaching the
shore, escorted by Mark.
Miss Alison, the taller one, had unquestionably height and grace to
recommend her. Mark, who stood six feet in his socks, could barely
give her a couple of inches; and the languid deliberation of her
movements had, on Lady Forsyth, the same maddening effect as a drawl
in speech. Her own brain and body were too quick, in the original
sense of the word, not to make her a trifle intolerant towards the
"half-alive"; and, rightly, or wrongly, Miss Alison was apt to
produce that impression even on her admirers, though no doubt they
expressed it differently.
Personal prejudice apart, Lady Forsyth preferred the girl's
companion, Miss O'Neill, in spite of her wrong-headed zeal for the
Suffrage and Home Rule. Had Bel Alison been out in search of a foil,
she could have discovered none better than this big-hearted,
fanatical woman of five-and thirty, shortish, and squarely built,
with an upward nose, an ugly, humorous mouth, and a quantity of rough
brown hair in a chronic state of untidiness. Lady Forsyth gathered
that she was an active philanthropist, and that the incongruous pair
shared a flat somewhere in Earl's Court. To outward seeming they had
certainly nothing beyond the same address in common.
If Bel's movements were over-deliberate, Miss O'Neill's were apt to
be sudden; and she strode into the boat with the decision of one
given to putting her foot down to some purpose.
"Steady on! You evidently don't do things by halves!" Sir Mark
remonstrated, laughing, and consigning her to a cushion in the bows.
Bel had already usurped Maurice's seat astern, and Mark rowed
stroke--this time without need of invitation. Then they turned about
and moved slowly up the loch, dabbling their oars in the sunset fires
and shivering the purple shadows of the hills.
And if for Helen Forsyth the pleasure of the evening was over, for
Mark it had but just begun. And she knew it. Therein lay the sting.
Though "the boy" was now very much a man, she could honestly have
said, two weeks ago, that nothing beyond minor differences and mutual
flashes of temper had marred the deep essential unity of their
relation--a unity the more inestimably precious since he was now all
she had left of her nearest and dearest on earth. Husband, daughter
and younger son had all passed on before her into the Silence, and of
her own people one brother alone remained. At the moment he was High
Commissioner of New Zealand, and seemed disposed to stay on there
indefinitely when his term of office expired. The Empire, he wrote,
was a saner, sweeter, more spacious place of abode than
twentieth-century England, which seemed temporarily given over to the
cheap-jack, the specialist, and the party politician. And she--while
loving every foot of her husband's country and her own--understood
too well the frequent disappointment of those who came, on rare and
hardly earned leave, from the ends of the earth and failed to find,
in picture-palaces and music-halls, in the jargon of Futurists and
demagogues, the England of their dreams.
For this cause, her sole remaining brother had become little more
than a memory and a monthly letter. Yet, could she never account
herself a lonely woman, while she had Keith for friend and mentor,
Mark for son, and Sheila for--more than possible--daughter. What
business had this unknown girl to step into their charmed circle and
unsettle the very foundation of things? Never, till to-night, had it
seemed possible to Mark's mother that she could arrive at dreading
the fulfilment of his heart's desire. Yet that was what it amounted
to. Dread lurked behind her surface irritation. The touch of second
sight in her composition made her vaguely conscious of danger in the
air. Small wonder if she anathematised Maurice Lenox for his knack
of picking up promiscuous strangers, and, in this case, aggravating
his offence by failing to appropriate his own discovery.