BOOK IV

LA VILLA DE LA MER

*BOOK I*

*TRAXELBY*

*BOOK I*

_Wednesday, September_ 5, 1906.

What on earth is the matter with Susan? Up to yesterday morning I have

hardly had to find fault with her more than twice or thrice in four

years. Yet, since last night, she has richly deserved a dozen sharp

scoldings at the very least.

After all, poor Grandmamma must have been right. "My pet," grannie used

to say whenever I told her that Susan was a treasure of pure gold; "My

pet, I have had thirty or forty treasures myself, and I give you my word

that even the best of them are only plated. Off the worst ones the

plating wears soon. Off the better ones it wears late. But wait long

enough, and sooner or later you shall see the copper or the pewter."

No doubt I ought to be grateful that Susan has lasted so well. All the

same, it is maddening that the gilding should choose to come off just as

I'm on the eve of starting for Sainte Veronique-sur-mer. Susan says

everything is packed: but I can't risk it. Probably she has filled a

trunk with opera-glasses and fans, and forgotten towels and soap. First

thing in the morning she must unpack, and we must both go through

everything with a list. But it's tiresome beyond words.

_Thursday, September_ 6.

Susan is worse than ever. Instead of toast, she brought me this morning

two chunks of bread hardly browned, and, instead of tea, a tepid potion

as black as night. I have asked her if she is ill, but she says she

isn't. And, certainly, I never saw her look better in her life. The

worst of it is that she keeps coming and going with such an air of--how

shall I describe it? Not insolence: not even indifference. It is hard

to find the word. When I blame her for some blunder, she looks, for the

moment, duly meek and sorry; and when I send her off on some errand she

departs as if she really wants to do her best in her old way. And in

less than half an hour I am scolding her again.

On one point I've made up my mind. No starting for Sainte Veronique

till Susan's either mended or ended. I'll wire Dupoirier not to expect

us till Monday. Gibson shall take the telegram to the village at once.

And, if there's no change for the better before post-time to-night, I'll

write to Alice and borrow that pale little slip of a French maid of hers

for the time I shall be in Sainte Veronique. Alice said something last

week about sending her back to France for a change. Perhaps I'll take

Susan too. Or perhaps I'll let her go to her friends till I come home

again. She's been too good a girl all these years for me to part with

her just because of what may be no more than a passing slackness and

staleness. Besides, Susan is the only creature I really like to have

about me. She is as wholesome and sweet as country cream and

rosy-cheeked apples.

The word I couldn't think of has flashed upon me all of a sudden. It's

a simple enough word and an obvious; and it would have come to me at

once if I had had the grace to remember sooner that Susan, after all, is

a human being.

Susan is merely preoccupied. I ought to have divined it hours ago, if I

hadn't been so disgustingly devoted to my own right worshipful ease and

comfort. I've never thought about it before: but, without doubt,

Susan's cousins and uncles and aunts are as much to Susan as my own

cousins and uncles and aunts are to me. Indeed, I hope and expect that

they are vastly more. I wonder what is wrong? Is Susan's cousin going

to be married? Or has her aunt joined the Salvation Army? Or has her

uncle tumbled off a hayrick? Perhaps it's something far worse. Anyhow,

the poor soul must think me adorably sympathetic when I reward her

admirable reticence by shrewing her for every insignificant lapse. And,

after the loving fidelity with which she has served me and cherished me

so much over and above the best-paid hireling's duty, she must find me

most consolingly grateful.

I will make her tell me. Probably it is something wherein I can give a

bit of practical help.

_Later_.

I've tackled Susan.

She didn't make it too easy. While she was brushing my hair, I said

abruptly, but quite cordially:

"By the way, Susan, I sha'n't go to Sainte Veronique to-night. Gibson's

gone to the village with a telegram. I've told Monsieur Dupoirier to

meet me on Monday."

By peeping through my hair I could see Susan's face in the glass,

although she couldn't see mine.

"Very well, Miss Gertrude," Susan answered.

She called me "Miss Gertrude" in precisely the tone she has always used

ever since she first came to Traxelby, before Alice was married and when

Grandmamma was still alive; and she went on brushing my hair without a

pause. But I noticed that her cheeks, reflected in the glass, first

paled and then flamed. I flung my hair from my eyes and looked up at

Susan without ado.

"Susan," I said, "you are unhappy about something. You ought to have

told me. Perhaps I could have helped you. In any case I would have been

less exacting in my wants and less sharp in my complaints."

"Thank you, Miss," said Susan unsarcastically and thankfully. But she

only went on brushing my hair.

"You are unhappy?" I asked again.

"Oh, no, Miss, no," Susan answered quickly and warmly. And she brushed

my hair harder than ever.

Looking at her once more in the glass, I saw that she was speaking the

truth. Her face was still the playground of contending emotions, but,

through her pretty, blue eyes, her spirit gazed out radiantly at the

genial tourney. Altogether, Susan looked bewitching. In her country

print, and with her yellow hair and rosy-red cheeks, she was just the

sort of sweet, shy, rustic English beauty to fall head over ears in love

with at first sight. The truth blazed upon me like a flash of

lightning.

It was a few moments before I found my tongue. That some young man or

other should begin to plague my bright-eyed Susan was the most natural

thing in the world; and yet I had no more taken such a thing into my

calculations than I had speculated as to what I should do if a burglar

broke in by night and walked off with my silver combs and brushes. At

last I said, rather lamely and stiffly:

"At any rate, Susan, you've got something on your mind."

Susan did not reply.

"What is it?" I asked. "Or rather, who is it?"

Susan's breath came and went more quickly. But still she did not answer.

I turned over the possibilities in my mind, and then put a question

pointblank.

"Is it Gibson?"

"Oh, no, Miss, not Gibson." Her response was prompt, decisive, almost

reproachful.

"I'm rather sorry," I said. "Gibson's a thoroughly decent, steady young

fellow, and he will get on. I hope it's nobody worse than Gibson."

"Oh, no, Miss," said Susan swiftly and softly, "Not worse than Gibson."

As she did not offer the swain's name, or an account of his person, or

any further information whatsoever, I sat dumb and began to feel a bit

sulky. Apart from my personal loss of the best maid a woman ever had, I

was aggrieved on Susan's own account. No doubt some small farmer's son

had turned her silly little head and won her unguarded little heart.

And after the rude delights of a rural courtship, my neat-handed, dainty

pink-and-white Susan would have to settle down for forty years to drudge

among kine and swine and turnips, and, most likely, a pack of lusty and

highly dislikable children. The prospect so revolted me that I decided

to do my whole duty.

"Susan."

"Yes, Miss?"

"Have you told your people--your relations--about all this?"

"No, Miss."

"Why not?"

"There's only my aunt, Miss," said Susan dutifully, "and she doesn't

care. I've wrote----"

"Written. Not wrote. Say written."

"Yes, Miss. I've written to her twice since Christmas, not to speak of

sending a coloured post-card from Malvern, and she hasn't answered never

so much as a word."

This pricked me. I had heard it before; and, knowing as I did that

Susan had neither father nor mother, nor brother nor sister, I ought to

have put two and two together, and deduced the fact that Susan was alone

in the world. But I had not been interested or unselfish enough to work

it out.

"Of course, of course," I said. "I'd forgotten. But, Susan, why have

you not spoken about it to me? When I found you had no parents, didn't

I tell you that if you were in any doubt or trouble you were always to

come to me?"

"Yes, Miss," answered Susan as dutifully as before. And she went on

brushing my hair. I got up impatiently, and went and sat in my big chair

by the window.

"No," I said. "Never mind my hair for a minute. Susan, I'm very much

disappointed and put out. You are not treating either me or yourself

fairly. With things as they are, I feel responsible for you. All this

is very serious. You are young, and you have no experience."

Susan standing three feet away with lowered head, heard me out

deferentially, although she knows quite well that I am six months her

junior, and that it is hardly a year since I began to look after my own

affairs. She simply said:

"Yes, Miss."

"Susan, look at me. Don't hang your head. Is this man respectable?"

"Oh, yes, Miss!"

"He says so himself, no doubt. But the world's full of very strange

people. Who is he? Where does he come from? What is his name?"

Susan hung her head again, and did not answer. I saw that she had

something to hide, so I tried another way.

"How far has it gone?"

"Well, Miss," she faltered after a pause. "He--he's asked me."

"When?"

"Yesterday, Miss."

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything, Miss."

"Susan, don't be ridiculous. You mean, you didn't say 'No.' You

encouraged him?"

"Oh, no, Miss."

"Susan, I won't be trifled with. Either you encouraged him or you

didn't. Which was it? You surely don't expect me to believe that,

after he'd asked you, he was content to walk away again without any kind

of an answer?"

"Please, Miss, he didn't ask me that way. It was in a letter."

"A letter! Susan, I hope you've said 'No.' Have nothing at all to do

with him. A letter, indeed! Why didn't he speak out like a man to your

face?"

"Please, Miss, he couldn't."

"Couldn't? Why not?"

"Because I've never seen him."

I burst out laughing. The affair was a trifle after all. At the most

and worst it was some village moon-calf's clumsy wooing; at the least

(and likeliest) it was a practical joke. But Susan thought otherwise. I

stopped laughing at the sight of her proud flush and pain.

"Come, Susan," I coaxed, "be a sensible girl. It's some stupid joke."

"No, Miss," said Susan firmly.

"Then what have you done? Have you sent a reply?"

"Yes, Miss. No, Miss; I mean, no. That is, I've written the answer,

but I haven't posted it."

"That's a good thing. What have you said?"

Susan was silent quite a long time. At length she looked at me

plaintively, and answered:

"I've wrote----"

"Written."

"I've written two letters and torn them up again. I think the third one

is the best. But somehow, Miss, it doesn't seem quite right. I'm

wondering, Miss----"

"Yes."

"I'm wondering whether ... if I brought you his letter, Miss...?"

"Of course I will, Susan. If it's a letter that ought to be answered,

I'll do whatever I can. Bring it me after lunch."

"Thank you, Miss," said Susan warmly. But her face darkened again as

quickly as it had brightened. I could see that a great doubt or fear

had her in its grip.

It was unkind of me; but I had had enough of the whole business for one

morning. "Finish my hair, Susan," I said; and I sat down again before

the glass.

Susan resumed the work. But she had hardly taken one of my tresses into

her hand before she flung it from her almost madly, and fell on her

knees at my feet.

"Miss Gertrude," she cried. "Promise! Swear before God that you will

not take him away from me!"

I was thunderstruck. But she was still crouched at my side, gripping my

knees.

"Susan," I said sternly, "you are forgetting yourself. Get up. You are

not well. Go to your room. I shall manage my hair somehow. Go to your

room and lie down."

She gripped me fiercelier than before. "Before God, Miss Gertrude," she

repeated. "Promise! Swear! Swear you won't drive him away."

"Drive" was a more endurable word. Besides, her fear and anguish were so

sincere that my mere dignity shrivelled away like scorched paper in

their blaze. For a second or two it was impossible to be mistress and

maid. We were two women.

"Susan," I said very kindly, "if I must swear anything I will swear

this. Like you, I am fatherless and motherless. And I swear that I

will do my whole duty by you. If I honestly fear that there is misery

lurking for you in this offer of marriage, I'll work and fight against

it even if you kneel here weeping and praying all day for a year. But

if I can honestly believe that it is for your happiness, there's nothing

in reason that I won't do to bring it to pass. Now go to your room."

She has gone.

I must take care not to be dragged into any ridiculous positions. If

Susan were a novelette-reader, it would be a different thing. No doubt a

weekly orgy of sentiment by proxy is generally effective in making the

average young woman immune. But Susan is still a child of nature; and

if this letter-writing suitor is a scoundrel (as I expect he is), the

poor child has some bad hours ahead. I wish most heartily it hadn't

happened! And to think that by this time to-morrow I was to have been

settled down cosily at Sainte Veronique!

_Two o'clock_.

How lovely lunching alone once again! Somehow a visitor always begins to

send my spirits down and down and down after the first two or three

days. When I saw her off yesterday I felt I couldn't have stood even

Alice much longer. How different we are! If Alice knew that I wasn't

going to France till Monday, she would worry about my loneliness just as

she would worry over my neuralgia or my influenza. I expect that at

this very moment she is writing a long letter to Sainte Veronique on the

old text--begging me to go into a smaller house, and to look out for a

companion, or to spend the winter with them. And I would make a large

bet that she'll redeliver her solemn warning about my solitariness

making me morbid. Yet there may be a little in it. Who knows? If

Susan doesn't stay, I may be awfully glad to go to Alice's for a month

or two after all.

Now for Susan and her precious letter.

_After dinner_.

Alice is right. Solitude is a mistake. If I hadn't the diary-habit, I

should explode like a shell into little bits.

Still, for Susan's sake and her incredible adorer's, it's a good thing

there's no one here, not even Alice. If there was anybody at hand to

listen, I don't see how I could contrive to hold my tongue. As it is,

it only relieves me a very little to scribble it all down in this book.

No wonder Susan under-toasted the toast and over-brewed the tea! I

don't wonder any longer even at her heroics and melodramatics while she

was doing my hair.

When she brought me her letter, addressed in a strong and distinguished

hand to Miss Susan Briggs, The Grange, Traxelby, I saw at a glance that

we hadn't to deal with a village bumpkin. Indeed, when I took the sheet

of thick, good paper from the envelope and saw that it was embossed with

the heading "Ruddington Towers," I wasn't surprised. I concluded

instantly that Susan's pursuer was one of the three young artists of

whom I've heard till I'm tired to death of them--the artists Lord

Ruddington is said to have found starving in a Chelsea studio. I forget

whether they've come down here to paint the hall or the chapel.

"Susan," I said, meaning to let her down gently, "I hope it isn't one of

those young artists from London? An artist is interesting; but he's too

impulsive, too vain, too unreliable. I hope----"

"Oh, no, Miss," said Susan hurriedly. "It isn't any of the young

gentlemen that's doing the painting and decorating."

"Whoever he is," I answered, "he makes himself at home with Lord

Ruddington's best stationery. Let me see."

I turned over the sheet and looked for the signature. Half-way down the

third page I found it. The writer had signed himself with the single

word "Ruddington."

"Susan," I demanded almost roughly, "why didn't you tell me about this

at once?"

"If you please, Miss----"

"There's no if you please about it. Why, this creature, whoever he may

be, is pretending to be Lord Ruddington."

Susan burst out crying, suddenly and copiously.

"Oh, Miss Gertrude," she sobbed; "I--I never thought it was pretending.

I never dreamed any one could be so cruel. I thought it was real."

As I had begun to read the letter, I didn't take much notice. But Susan

sobbed and talked on.

"Oh, Miss," she moaned, "to think I was nearly going to post the answer!

I should never have been able to look the parish in the face again."

"Keep quiet, Susan," I said irritably. "Let me read it through."

And while Susan cried to herself softly, I read it straight through;

turned back again and again to sentences here and there; and at last

read it from beginning to end once more. This is what I read:--

RUDDINGTON TOWERS,

September 4, 1906.

I discard the ordinary forms of beginning because this is an

extraordinary letter.

Since I came to Ruddington last Wednesday, I have seen you three times.

For the second and for the third times, I am thankful; but the first

sufficed to open my eyes to the truth. There is not now, and cannot

ever be anywhere, any woman in the world save you whom I shall seek for

a wife.

Although I did not need to ponder this step for more than a moment on my

own account, I have considered it long and well on yours. I recognize

the many and great difficulties in the way; but not one of them is

insurmountable.

The person from whom I have learned your name and address has not the

faintest notion of what is in my mind.

If your answer must be that I am too late, or that you feel you could

not establish my happiness without losing your own, no third party need

ever know that this has passed between us. But if your affection is

still yours to give, then I shall beg for the earliest possibility of

trying to convince you that, in bestowing it upon me, you would at least

not be throwing it away on some one fickle or ungrateful, or wilfully

unworthy.

Until you give me leave, I must not say more.

RUDDINGTON.

When I finally laid the letter down, I became aware of the abundance of

Susan's tears and the heartiness of her sobs. A plan occurred to me. I

got up and gave Susan a key.

"Don't be silly, Susan," I said. "See. Take this key. Go to the

library. Unlock the deep drawer in the cabinet by the window. Bring me

that violet leather scrap-book with all the letters and cuttings about

Lady Traxelby's funeral."

Susan dried her eyes and went.

While she was away, I tried to think. Of course the letter would prove

to be a forgery. But, fortunately, there was a quick way of making

assurance sure. The week after Grandmother died, Lord Ruddington, who

had only just come of age, wrote his condolences to Alice from Oxford.

He knew Grandmamma rather well as a boy, and he had met Alice once in

town. I felt sure we had kept the letter. What I meant to do was,

first, to make poor Susan look at the real Lord Ruddington's handwriting

with her own eyes; and, second, to tease or soothe her into a good

humour till she could laugh at the practical joke. At the same time I

made up my mind that if I could identify the joker, who was clearly a

person of sufficient education to know better, he should smart for his

insolence and cruelty.

Susan came back hugging the great violet book. I opened it in my lap

and turned the leaves, hating the practical joker more bitterly than

ever for reviving these sad and sacred memories in a connection so

contemptible. Susan watched me eagerly. She had divined that I was

searching for something that bore upon her rosy hopes and ashen

disappointment. At last I found it. There was the heading, "Christ

Church."

My heart almost stood still. The bold, stylish, interesting handwriting

was unmistakable. The real Lord Ruddington and Susan's were one and the

same man.

It was Susan who broke the silence.

"Oh, Miss," she murmured in awestruck tones, "I believe it's real after

all!"

"Yes, Susan," I answered slowly; "it is real. I'm sorry, truly sorry,

that I hurt you by my doubts. But it is so very extraordinary. And it's

so very serious and important. Surely it was best to suspect it till we

were certain."

"Oh, yes, Miss," protested Susan gratefully. And when I did not speak,

she glanced coyly towards a second loaded envelope which had been lying

on the table beside Lord Ruddington's.

"What!" I said. "Surely there isn't another letter, is there?"

"No, Miss. It's only mine--the letter I nearly posted in answer."

"Show it to me--that is, of course, if you want me to see it."

Susan pulled out a folded sheet, opened it, and laid it on my knee.

The first thing about the document that struck me was the fact that it

represented a prodigal consumption of ink. In the ordinary course,

Susan doesn't write very badly. But, in answering Lord Ruddington, she

had formed the characters slowly and hugely and singly, as a child does

at school. In two places it was evident that sandpaper or a penknife

had removed blots. Altogether it was the sort of handwriting in which

one might have expected the milkman to declare to the kitchen-maid,

"The rose is red, the violet's blue,

Honey is sweet, and so are you."

Susan's answer ran:--

Care of the Honourable Miss Langley,

THE GRANGE,

TRAXELBY, September 6, 1906.

SIR,--It was with the most various and lively emotions that I perused

your Letter to which I am now endeavouring, though imperfectly, to

reply.

I will have you know, Sir, that the first sentiment provoked in my bosom

by your Epistle was one of Humiliation and Chagrin. "Better die," I

cried, "a thousand deaths, than have lived to forget that Modesty which

is the ornament of my Sex!" But I protest that after diligently

examining my Conscience and ransacking my Memory, I cannot recall a

single occasion in our casual intercourse when I have so far fallen from

my duty as to offer you encouragement or to invite your present

Advances.

Nevertheless, Sir, I am not blind to my woman's frailty; and, at the

risk of forfeiting your Esteem, I will to-day indulge a boldness which I

have never practised in the past, and will confess (shameless that I

am!) that your conversation and person have not been distasteful to me.

I perceive that my weakness has discovered to you the secret which I

fondly hoped to conceal; and that I have succeeded but ill in my

attempts to dissemble my Partiality from eyes and an Understanding,

alas! too well accustomed to the sensibility of the female Heart.

You entreat me to despatch my answer by the hand of your courier, or, at

the latest, by to-morrow's coach; and you affirm, Sir, that in the

meantime you are consumed by the ardours of Impatience, and that you

will partake neither refreshment nor rest. Far be it from me to prolong

Sufferings which do me so much Honour, especially when they are endured

by one for whom I have Regard and Esteem. But, Sir, I will have you

bear with me while I remind you that this is a Business too weighty for

haste; and that your present protestations of undying Fidelity and

Adoration will be dearly purchased if I must endure in the future the

bitter frosts of Indifference or the icy blasts of Reproach and Scorn.

I beseech you, Sir, to temper Passion with Patience, and not to increase

by your Importunity the insupportable Distraction of happy, thrice

unhappy

SUSAN.

"Goodness gracious, Susan!" I said, after I had got to the end of this

amazing document; "in the name of everything, what on earth is all

this?"

"It is my answer to his Lordship, Miss," Susan answered penitently.

"But, Susan, I don't understand. What is this about a courier and

to-morrow's coach? And what do you mean by saying that his person and

conversation are not distasteful to you? Didn't you assure me this

morning that you'd never even seen him? Yet here you are writing to him

about 'occasions in your casual intercourse.' Susan, I don't like to

say it, but I'm very much afraid that----"

I pulled myself up. What I had been on the point of saying was that

Susan had grossly deceived me, and that her case confirmed all I had

ever heard as to the deepness of still waters and the duplicity that

invariably underlies an appearance of baby innocence. But I remembered

just in time that, with all the duplicity in the world to help her, the

letter she had shown me would still be beyond Susan's powers. So I

screwed a new tail to my unfinished speech and said:

"I'm afraid this won't do."

"I thought it didn't seem quite right, Miss," said Susan meekly. "More

especially the piece about the coach. That was why I didn't post it."

"Susan, don't prevaricate," I said sternly. "It isn't like you, and I

won't put up with it. If I am to have any more to do with this affair,

you must really begin to treat me with perfect candour. Why did you

tell me you had never seen Lord Ruddington?"

"If you please, Miss, I never _have_ seen him."

"Never?"

"Not that I know of. I've seen----"

Susan paused and blushed.

"Go on, go on," I said impatiently. "You have seen--whom?"

"Please, Miss, there was a young gentleman in a dark green suit when we

were at the post-office on Saturday. He stared at me as we went in; and

when we came out he followed us as far as the Golden Eagle, looking at

me all the time."

"It was very wrong of you to encourage him, Susan. But how do you know

it was Lord Ruddington?"

"I don't, Miss. Maybe it's only my fancy."

"Susan, look here. Look at your own letter. Goodness knows where you

got all this grand old-fashioned language from. It's the sort of

language they used when Lord Ruddington's great-grandmother wasn't a day

older than you are now. But that isn't my point. What I want to know

is why you write to Lord Ruddington in this letter about 'occasions'

when you have met?"

"I know it sounds wrong, Miss," replied Susan, more humbly than ever.

"But that was just the way it was in the book. Those were the very

words."

"The book?" I echoed, bewildered.

"Yes, Miss. I copied it out of the old book that's been lying in the

lumber-room ever since I came to Traxelby. Perhaps you haven't seen it,

Miss?"

Light was breaking over me, but I couldn't make out the full truth till

Susan went on:

"The back is torn off, Miss. It has a picture of a young lady in a

short-waisted muslin frock looking very sad and writing at a table.

There's a wicked little boy in the corner of the room with nothing on

but wings, and a and arrow, just going to shoot the young lady. The

book's called The Complete Letter-Writer."

It took all my self-control and all my solicitude for poor worried Susan

to restrain me from laughing loud and long. But, after the first shock

of comicality, I was soon steadied again by the hard facts which still

rose up before me. At another time this clearing up of the mystery of

Susan's Late Georgian grammar and Johnsonian vocabulary would have been

droll past resistance. But Lord Ruddington's letter was lying on the

table.

Happily the beckoning hands of Fortune had not spoiled Susan yet. The

prospect of wealth and rank had confused her brains, but it had not

dazzled her inmost, sound self or altered her sterling principles or

shaken her out of her well-worn ways. The mistress-elect of Ruddington

Towers and my social superior of the near future still addressed me with

the simple, respectful openness for which I have always liked her so

well. After I had sat I don't know how long, silently trying to work

out a solution, she said for the third time:

"I knew it didn't sound right, Miss. I will tear it up and burn it.

And perhaps ... when you're not too busy ... perhaps, Miss Gertrude, you

would tell me what I ought to say."

"Of course, Susan, of course," I answered. "I've promised you already.

But it isn't easy."

Susan accepted the situation, and stood patiently awaiting the end of my

meditations.

"Sit down, Susan," I said at last.

She sat down.

"I am obliged to ask you a few plain questions."

"Yes, Miss."

"If it turns out that he is really in earnest, do you wish to marry Lord

Ruddington?"

"Oh yes, Miss, please!"

"You don't understand. In his letter he asks if you are free--if your

affection is still yours to give. Now, is there anybody else that

you're promised to already?"

"Oh no, Miss!"

"Not Gibson?"

Susan looked troubled. When she answered, it was falteringly, and

without her usual openness.

"No, Miss." And she added uneasily, "I have never promised to be

engaged to Gibson."

"But does Gibson expect that some day you will?"

"He oughtn't to, Miss," rejoined Susan, making shockingly quick progress

in cunning.

"I mean, has Gibson talked to you in that way? And have you listened?

Come, Susan, don't be silly. I am forced to ask these things. I've

never seen Lord Ruddington, but from all I've heard of him he isn't the

sort that would want to make himself happy by making another man

miserable for life--not even if the other man is only Gibson. Lord

Ruddington's letter is strange. For instance, it's rather stiff and

dry, and like the letter of a much older man. But it rings true; it

rings honourable. You must be honourable too. Otherwise the whole

business will end in misery for everybody. Come, Susan. I don't want to

preach a sermon, but you know as well as I do that if you and Gibson

truly care for one another you will be a happier and better woman in a

four-roomed cottage with Gibson than with Lord Ruddington at the Towers.

Tell me how things stand."

After a struggle Susan blurted out:

"Yes, Miss, Gibson _has_ asked me."

"When?"

"Well, Miss, the last time was last week."

"You didn't accept him. I've gathered that already. But did you give

him a plain refusal?"

"Well, Miss----"

"Answer Yes or No, Susan, straight out. Have you let Gibson think that,

if he gets on, some day you will marry him?"

Susan's eyes filled with tears. Her cheeks burned red.

"Come, Susan, tell me."

She broke into weeping.

"Oh, no, Miss, no!" she moaned between her sobs. "Not Gibson. Truly,

Miss. I've never said a single word to encourage Gibson."

"Very good," I said. "But don't go on like that. There's nothing to

cry about. If you can't be sensible, we must talk about it some other

time."

I confess that, for a minute or two, I had indulged a hope that Gibson

would prove to be Susan's favoured lover, and that, accordingly, Lord

Ruddington's monstrous infatuation could be nipped in the bud. And when

my hope was found to be groundless, I felt more than a little nettled.

I foresee endless annoyance and inestimable losses of time and temper

over this unheard-of madness of my preposterous young neighbour. We've

been told for years that we shall see wonders when Lord Ruddington comes

to live at the Towers; and, seeing he's only been here a week, I must

admit he hasn't lost much time.

When Susan stopped crying she was less tractable. I suppose she

resented my catechising her about Gibson. After all, I shouldn't have

liked it myself. As soon as she was dry-eyed, she became a little more

dry-hearted, and a good deal more dry-witted as well. She was more

defiant, less dependent: much more the prospective lady of the Towers

and much less the actual lady's-maid at the Grange. I noticed this in

her answer to my first remark after her tears had ceased to flow.

"Susan," I said, "this is a matter which won't be any the worse of a

night's delay. I will sleep on it, and so must you. Understand, I say

_sleep_. I don't mean that you're to lie awake and let it worry you.

We shall write Lord Ruddington a better answer to-morrow than we can

to-day. Meanwhile, it won't do him any harm to be kept waiting a few

hours longer."

"No," said Susan, "it won't. I've always heard it said that it does

them no good to throw yourself at their heads."

For once she did not call me "Miss," and both the matter and the manner

of her speech jarred on me. From Susan it sounded hard and vulgar. It

was as if my rare and sweet Susan had suddenly descended to live a

moment of her life two or three planes lower down.

I sent her off with some messages about dinner, and with enough plain

work to occupy her for the rest of the day. And, now that I have put

the whole thing down in black and white, I begin to understand how

cordially I dislike it.

_Friday, September_ 7, 5 _a.m._

Such a wretched night! I hope Lord Ruddington has had a still worse

one. He deserves it, and I don't. Besides, he has something to gain

(or thinks he has), while I only have something to lose. Even if he

rushes out of his infatuation as precipitately as he rushed into it,

Susan can never be the same nice girl again.

I have thought about it all the many hours of this blessed night that I

have been awake; and I have dreamt about it all the few nightmarish

minutes I have been asleep--twisty, scary, jumpy dreams that I can't

half remember.

Heaven knows I was vexed enough when Alice would persist in teasing me

last Sunday about Lord Ruddington. What would Alice not have said if

she had known that he was hardly three miles away at the very time she

was plaguing me? On Wednesday, at the station, her last words were,

"Gertie, don't be a fool." From Alice's point of view, Gertie will be a

fool if Gertie doesn't so play her cards as to become Lady Ruddington.

I did so hate it. If I am happy, why can't people leave me alone?

Alice will be dreadfully indignant if ever she finds out that I knew

Lord Ruddington was coming at once to the Towers. But if I had told her,

she would only have fought against me going off to Sainte Veronique.

Yet, why in the world should I be going to a place like Sainte Veronique

at the fag-end of the season? I'm going simply and solely because I was

determined not to give the tiniest scrap of opportunity to the gossips

and matchmakers who would have been so ready to connect the young

spinster of Traxelby Grange with the young bachelor of Ruddington

Towers.

But I'm wandering away from my own point. I say, Alice's chaff and hints

and coaxings were bad enough; but this farce of Susan's is a million

times worse. I admit I'm weak enough to care what people say and think;

and what sort of a position will it be when all the world knows that his

noble lordship of Ruddington is come to the Grange a-wooing, not me but

my maid? It's perfectly hateful.

_Noon_.

Susan is herself again. I don't mean that she isn't still burdened with

the worries and anxieties of her amazing good luck. Indeed, she

confesses that she has had a wakeful night. But in her work and her

behaviour she's once more as good as gold.

After all, it was lean and ungenerous of me yesterday to be jarred by

her one low-class remark. We are none of us at our best every single

minute of our lives.

When I'd written in this diary, with my teeth chattering, at five

o'clock this morning, I crawled back into bed in a very sour temper; and

if Susan had come in sulky with a second lot of weak toast and strong

tea, it would have finished me off. As it was, I lay trying to get

warm, and wondering whether it mightn't be better to leave Susan and

Ruddington to patch up their ridiculous match in their own unthinkable

way.

At a quarter to seven Susan brought me three perfect square inches of

toast, and a perfect tablespoonful of China tea in that sweet little

thin birds'-egg-coloured porcelain cup which I thought was broken. She

saw at once that I hadn't slept; and, in her quiet, untoadying, genuine

old way, she was ever so much concerned. But I didn't let her begin

talking.

I must do my duty by Susan.

Haven't I often felt inwardly virtuous on the strength of my compassion

(more sentimental than practical!) for Susan's motherlessness? How do I

know that the poor good creature has not consciously pitied me on the

same account? It isn't too much to say that Susan has been almost a

mother to me over and over again. Surely, then, it is my duty to be a

mother to her in this big, sudden strain on her simple wits.

Rumour says that Ruddington is all right. But Rumour sometimes has a

lying tongue even when she speaks in a man's praise. I have no

guarantee whatever that Lord Ruddington intends to treat Susan

honourably. If he doesn't, I know I shall be a poor defender of Susan,

and that I can't hope to be his match in worldly knowledge and cunning.

But I don't mean to fail for want of doing my best.

This is the reply I have drafted:--

THE GRANGE,

TRAXELBY, Friday.

Your letter of Tuesday was not one to be answered, or even acknowledged,

in a hurry.

Indeed, it is only after hesitation that I decide to answer it at all.

How do I know that this unaccountable flame of passion has not died down

as quickly as it sprang up?

But there is a reason why, if I am to reply at all, I ought to do so

to-day. To-morrow we are going to France. We shall be away a month.

You ask me if I am free to bestow my affection where I will. The answer

is--Yes.

Deeply disturbed though I am by your surprising letter, I will not make

a difficult situation more difficult still by anything like coyness. In

fairness to both of us, I will speak as plainly and shortly and

practically as I can.

There is only one direct question in your letter, and I have answered it

above. But there is an indirect question also. You want to know if the

affection which I have not given elsewhere can be given to Lord

Ruddington. The answer is--I do not know.

You have seen _me_, but I have not seen _you_. Again, if I consent, you

will remain in your old rank and station, while I must make a great and

exacting and perilous change. Above all, you declare that you have the

fullest possible inward light on this matter, whereas I have nothing of

the kind. Thus you have a threefold advantage over me.

Reading your letter as an offer of marriage, the most I can say to-day

is that, for the present, I do not refuse it.

Will you write to me once a week (not more) while I am at Sainte

Veronique? Our address will be at the Hotel du Dauphin.

Meanwhile, I beg most earnestly that you will not try to see me before

we leave to-morrow. This journey to France is surely providential, and

we must not throw its advantages away.

I am going to be very frank indeed. To a poor girl, with her living to

earn, your offer is so tempting and marvellous that, if you pressed it

immediately and in person, I fear I might be swept off my feet into

acceptance long before I could be sure that love will exist on both

sides. For your own sake, if not for mine, do not put me to such proof.

What would my consent be worth if you won it solely through the powers

of your wealth and birth to dazzle my eyes and confuse my brain?

My month abroad will serve two ends. By correspondence we shall know

one another better; and our first meeting will thereby be made less

embarrassing and formidable--especially to me. Again (and you must

forgive me for saying it), time and absence may reveal to you more of

your own heart and mind. Perhaps you will repent most bitterly of your

letter which I am now answering, and, if so, it will surely be better to

admit that you have been the victim of a passing madness rather than to

fasten life-long unhappiness upon us both.

SUSAN BRIGGS.

I can hardly say I am proud of this production. Quite the contrary.

Both in matter and style, it's altogether too un-Susanish. Indeed, now

that I've tried and failed, I'm beginning to have more respect for the

effusion of the young lady in the short-waisted muslin frock. Perhaps if

I'd taken out the bits about the coach and the casual intercourse her

letter would have been better than mine.

Heaven knows what Susan will make of it! I'm positively nervy every time

I hear her on the stairs.

All the same, I've said the best thing to Lord Ruddington, even if I've

said it in the worst way. Going to Sainte Veronique bright and early

to-morrow morning is quite a good scheme. If the noble lord comes

hot-foot after us, I can certainly manage him better at Sainte Veronique

than here at the Grange. Besides, I'm half persuaded that the poor

boy's paroxysm won't last long. If needs be, we'll go to Alice's when

we come back to England.

I think we'll travel by Dieppe. It means more train-journey on the

other side, but he's less likely to track us and bother us that way. Of

course, if he did anything of the kind, it would be abominable. But one

never knows where a madman will draw the line.

_Before dinner_.

Susan isn't happy.

I can see she doesn't like my draft. But she's docile, and she's going

to use it.

I made the poor thing sit beside me at my desk while we went through it

together. At the end she said:

"Thank you, Miss. But I hate to think I've caused so much trouble."

"That's nothing, Susan," I said. "Just tell me plainly if you think

it'll do."

"It's beautiful, Miss," said Susan. "Only..."

"Only what?"

"Well, Miss, very likely I'm wrong. But it seems to leave him a way of

backing out again."

I was prepared for this. So I said, severely:

"Susan, what do you mean?"

"About going away," answered Susan doggedly. "About being a month in

France, and not saying Good-bye, and only having him write once a week.

It seems to give him a chance of changing his mind."

"Very well, Susan. Shall we tear this up? How will it be to write and

tell Lord Ruddington that you will be disengaged to-morrow morning at

eleven o'clock?"

"Oh no, Miss, please no!" gasped Susan, turning pale. "I couldn't,

really I couldn't. I could never face him."

"Why not?"

Tears came into Susan's eyes.

"I should be as dumb as a fish, Miss. I should just sit and sit and

never be able to say a word--and then he'd think I was stupid and he'd

go away."

"So I think myself," I said. "That's why this letter is sensible.

After he's written to you two or three times, you'll feel less strange

and more able to meet him."

"Yes, Miss. But it's such a long way and such a long time. He might

change his mind."

"Susan," I began, with all the grown-up, worldly-wise solemnity I could

muster, "listen to me. If he's going to change his mind as easy as

that, won't you be better without him?"

Susan looked dubious. "I don't think I would go as far as that, Miss,"

she said candidly.

Evidently it was necessary to rub the truth well in.

"Susan," I said, "I admit that lords don't marry lady's-maids every day.

This case is unusual. But it isn't the first. Before we were born,

dukes have married dairy-maids and earls have married their cooks. A

few of them have been happy all their lives long. Most of them have been

miserable before the end of the honeymoon."

Susan began to pout. I piled it on thicker.

"I won't mention names," I said. "But I know a case myself. The son of

a duke took a fancy to a poor governess, and married her for her looks.

He was infatuated with her at first sight, he followed her everywhere,

he wouldn't take her refusal, he quarrelled with his father for her

sake: and at last he got her. What happened? Although she was as well

educated as he was, he tired of her in a year."

"But I suppose, Miss, she has all she wants?" said Susan, pouting harder

than ever.

"She has all she wants," I replied scornfully, "in the way of house and

clothes and food. But, Susan, think. What if she wants _him_?"

Susan was silent. I drove it home.

"What if she wants _him_? And what if she hardly ever sees him? Susan,

I don't care to talk to you about such things; but this affair of Lord

Ruddington is too serious for mincing words. The reason why the woman

I'm telling you about never sees her husband is that he's the slave of

another woman--a woman neither so pretty nor so clever nor so

good-tempered nor even so well-born as his poor wife. Susan, would you

like a life like that, even if you could live it in silks and old laces

amidst all the luxury of Ruddington Towers?"

Susan was blushing hotly, as I had intended and hoped she would.

"Oh no, Miss," she said eagerly, all her honest blood and good training

coming to the rescue. "But I don't think Lord Ruddington would do those

sort of things."

"You think. But you don't know. Susan, I'm going to put you an

old-fashioned question. Do you think it would be right to marry a

man--never mind whether it's Lord Ruddington, or Gibson, or any other

man--if you didn't love him?"

I was trying my poor, honest Susan too searchingly. Tears again shone

in her blue eyes. Her colour came and went. She turned away her head.

"Never mind, Susan," I said, very much more kindly. "I can guess your

answer. And I can read your mind. You don't love Lord Ruddington. It

isn't possible you should, at present. But you think it will be so

lovely to be Lady Ruddington that you mean to make yourself love him

whatever happens."

"Yes. That's it, Miss," sobbed Susan. "I don't deserve that you should

be so kind to me, Miss."

"The danger is, Susan, that we can't depend on Love coming whenever we

beckon to it. Perhaps Lord Ruddington is cold and unlovable. Perhaps

he's too passionate to be affectionate. Unless you can love him in

return, his love will only torture you. Susan, make quite sure of your

ground. You are not like other girls. A mistake of this kind would

first sour you and then kill you. Think of it all in this light, and

you will understand my answer to Lord Ruddington better."

"I do, Miss," said Susan urgently. "I understand it quite well now.

And I know it's best. Please, Miss Gertrude, if you'll show me how to

address it I'll send it to-night."

I took up an envelope and addressed it to Lord Ruddington.

"You know best, Miss," said Susan, glancing at the draft once more.

"But ... but oughtn't a girl like me to say 'your lordship'?

Besides----"

She checked herself. It was a new thing for Susan to question my

judgment on any point, however small.

"Besides what?" I asked.

"Well, Miss, it seems to look strange beginning the letter without

anything to start off, like."

"Lord Ruddington set us the example," I explained. "I thought it was

rather clever and delicate of him. He couldn't write in the third

person, could he? And he couldn't very well call you 'Madam,' or 'Dear

Miss Briggs,' or 'Dear Susan.' No. It's far better for both the

letters to be as they are."

"Thank you, Miss," said Susan, as humbly and teachably as she had ever

spoken in her life.

She has gone to her own room. I do hope she won't write it out in that

frightful, blotty school-girl hand. I ought to have told her to write

more quickly and freely, and less as if she's doing it with a

paint-brush. Still, I'm deeply thankful we're getting on so nicely.

To-morrow, the glorious sea, and the cider, and dear old Sainte

Veronique!

9.30 _p.m._

More worry and tangle. I feel all bruised and weak, as if I'd been

battered about in the surf on a stony beach.

While I was walking in the garden after dinner, Gibson came across from

the stables and began hanging about. I had a presentiment as to what he

wanted, and I nearly bolted back into the house. Susan had been quite

enough for one day. But, although it was dusk, I could see his trouble

sitting, so to speak, on Gibson's shoulders. There was nothing for it

but to face it out.

"Good-evening, Gibson," I said. "Do you want to speak to me?"

"I do, Ma'am," Gibson answered. His manner was perfectly respectful,

but his tone was almost imperative.

"What is the matter?"

"You told me, Ma'am, I could have a holiday, beginning Monday. Hughes

is well able now to look after the horses. If I couldn't trust him, I

wouldn't go."

"But, Gibson, we talked over all this on Tuesday, and it was settled you

should go. Why do you want me to discuss it again?"

Gibson looked awkward; shifted his cap from one hand to the other;

shifted it back again. Suddenly he demanded bluntly:

"Will you mind, Ma'am, if I go to France?"

"To France?" I said, bewildered. "Why France?"

Gibson floundered through an unconvincing explanation. He affected to

have doubts as to the Future of the Horse. He declared that, until

lately, he had clung to a belief that "these here motor-cars would die

out, same as the bicycles did;" but, tardily and bitterly, he has

changed his mind. It seems the Horse will not become extinct. There

will always be a few horses in the country, just as there will always be

a few bows and arrows. But the number of horse-owners in the near

future as compared with the horse-owners of the near past is to be in

pretty much the same proportion as the archery-club amateurs of to-day

in comparison with the English bowmen at Crecy and Agincourt. Gibson

didn't put it exactly in this way, but his point is that the Horse, as

the Psalmist says, is a vain thing for safety when a young man is

looking well ahead for his bread and butter. Gibson wants to stay at

Traxelby as long as I will keep him: but, "begging pardon, Ma'am, with a

single lady one never knows," and therefore he thinks it is high time he

should put himself in the way of qualifying as a chauffeur. Hence

France.

"You do right to improve yourself, Gibson," I said. "But why France?

Nowadays you can learn to be a chauffeur far better in England."

His face darkened.

"Asking pardon, Ma'am," he said obstinately, "I have a fancy for

learning in France."

"Very well," I said. "It's your holiday, and you can spend it wherever

you like. If you can manage the language, go to France by all means."

"Then you haven't any objection, Ma'am?"

"Why should I?"

Gibson hesitated. Then he stammered:

"I was afraid, Ma'am, that ... that me goin' to France the same time as

you, Ma'am, wouldn't be ... I mean, it would look like taking a

liberty."

I perceived that Gibson, like many others of his class, conceives France

as a territory about the size of the Isle of Wight, with Paris in the

middle.

"But France is a very big country, Gibson," I said. "Far larger than

England. Even if I did object to you, we shouldn't be likely to meet.

You couldn't learn to be a chauffeur at Saint Veronique. It's the last

place in the world. That's why I go there."

Gibson looked at me narrowly.

"I thank you, Ma'am," he said curtly and proudly. And he made room for

me to pass.

In his own fashion, Gibson is as good and as likable as Susan. Never

till this week has either of them caused me the slightest anxiety. I saw

in a flash how matters stood; and I felt in my heart that Gibson

deserved the more sympathy of the two. He was deeper-natured than

Susan: prouder and capable of a grand passion which my sweeter and

shallower Susan could neither receive nor return. His clean-shaven face

was almost as handsome as Susan's was pretty; and if he had enjoyed

Susan's advantages instead of being brought up among grooms and

stable-boys, he might have been as refined. Rather rashly, I let myself

go and said:

"No, Gibson, I'm not going in yet. You have not told me what it is that

is really troubling you. There is something on your mind."

He stood stock-still at the path-side and vouchsafed no answer for a

long time. At last he said abruptly:

"Then you won't prevent me, Ma'am, coming to France?"

"How could I stop you? France is a free country. I couldn't make the

French army shoot you, or the French police lock you up. But I'd better

say plainly, Gibson, that I object to you coming to Sainte Veronique

unless I send for you."

The colour mounted to Gibson's cheeks. He drew himself up and seemed to

take some sudden decision. He was about to speak, when the clatter of

buckets at the pump, where Hughes was gone for water, drew his gaze to

the beloved stables. I followed his eyes as they ranged over the red

roofs which had sheltered him at work and at play, at bed and at board,

both in Grandma's time and mine, ever since he came to Traxelby as a

half-fed boy of fourteen. He heard Nero's neighing and Boxer's

answering bark; and I could see that he suffered. But these dear old

sights and sounds did not soften his face for long. He pulled himself

together again, and began decisively:

"Then if you please, Ma'am, with all respect----"

"No, Gibson," I said, like lightning; "don't finish. Let me finish for

you. You were going to say that you give me notice, that you will leave

this old place, that you'll give up everything, just to be a free man.

No. Don't interrupt. Above all, do have just a little bit of common

sense. For instance, instead of giving up Traxelby simply so that you

can come to Sainte Veronique, how would it be if you told me like a

sensible man what you want to come to Sainte Veronique for?"

He struggled hard with his pride. I helped him out.

"Surely you can trust me, Gibson?"

"I don't say I can't, Ma'am."

"Very well, Gibson," I answered shortly "I've done my best.

Good-night."

"No!" cried Gibson, springing across my path. "Miss Gertrude, I ask

your pardon It would break my heart to leave this place. But ... good

God, this is too hard for me to bear!"

"Speak less loudly," I said. "Now, tell me. Is it about Susan?"

He bent his head.

"You mean," I said, "you've fallen in love with Susan." And then,

although my spirit was quailing and failing at the desperate sight of

the poor lad's agony, I actually forced myself to try and laugh him out

of it, as if it had been no more than a mild attack of calf-love.

"Really, Gibson," I said, as banteringly and gaily as I could, "I'm

surprised at you. You're behaving as if Susan's going to Siberia for

life instead of to France for a month. No doubt it's very painful and

upsetting to be head over ears in love, though I confess I don't know

much about it. But surely, Gibson, you can manage to exist without

seeing Susan for four little weeks? Be more of a man."

"It's because I'm a man, Ma'am," he rejoined firmly, "that my right

place is at Sinn Veeronik. You talk of four little weeks, Ma'am. When

them four little weeks are over, shall I see the same Susan as went

away?"

His earnestness was so terrible that I could not maintain my hollow

banter, and I was silent.

"I put it plain, Ma'am. When them four little weeks are over, shall I

ever see Susan any more?"

I couldn't answer. Worse still, I guessed that his next move would be

to ask me how much I knew. So I clung fast to the one hope that buoys

me up in all this outrageous business--the hope that Time and Separation

will restore Lord Ruddington to such senses as he may possess, and that

Susan, like a ruffled dove, will home back to Gibson's faithful heart

after all.

"You can't answer, Ma'am," he said almost fiercely.

"Of course I can't, you foolish fellow," I said, recovering my wits and

making a show of irritation. "I can't answer for Susan any more than I

can for you. How do I know that, when we come back in four weeks' time,

poor Susan won't find you consoling yourself with somebody else?"

He brushed my trifling aside.

"Then I'll tell you, Ma'am, something you don't know," he almost hissed

in my ear. "God knows who it is: but some one's turned Susan's head.

She doesn't do no more than give me hints. It's driving me mad. She

doesn't name the party: but it's somebody richer'n a lord."

Gibson flung down his cap and lifted his right hand.

"Hark ye, Miss Gertrude," he said harshly and chokily. "Hark ye while I

swear. This is my Bible oath. If he touches a hair on Susan's head,

saving what's honest, I'll break every bone in his body! Don't matter

to me if it's the king himself. Whoever he is, I'll wring his neck, and

swing for it gladly. If I don't, may I be struck dead!"

"Silence, Gibson!" I said sternly. "Don't speak like this to me."

"Then how shall I speak, Ma'am? Answer me that. Me that's worshipped

every inch of ground that Susan's trod on for years and years! Me that

would go through fire and water and hell----"

"Gibson, listen. You think you've told me what I don't know. What if I

knew it already?"

He faced me, startled.

"I say, what if I knew it already? I've never seen this man; but what

if I can give you my word that Susan has only written to him once in her

life? What if her only letter was to say that she does not love this

man, and that she does not know she ever can or will, and that, if she

cannot, all the money in the world won't bribe her into marrying him?

What if she has told him that she is glad she is going to France? What

if she has forbidden him to try and see her till she comes back to

England? What if she will see you again, Gibson, before she sees him?

Most important of all, what if I tell you that I have made up my mind to

look after Susan in this affair as if she were my own younger sister?

What if I promise you that she shall not come to harm?"

Gibson drank in my words with greedy ears and devoured me with searching

eyes.

"God bless you, Miss Gertrude, God bless you!" he faltered; "and God

grant it may be true!"

"So you think I would tell you lies, Gibson?"

"No, Ma'am, no. You're dealing with me fair. But how long will you be

able to manage Susan if her head gets any more turned? And oh, Miss

Gertrude ... I ask pardon--but this isn't no job for a young lady like

you, as pure as an angel, that doesn't know this wicked world. Ma'am,

if he's a scoundrel, he'll deceive Susan and he'll deceive you, Ma'am,

as easy as looking at you! Oh, Ma'am, you don't understand! I can put

up with losing Susan, though it'll kill me. I can put up with her being

took away honest. But----"

He brought his lips to my ear and finished his sentence:

"If there's any devil's work, it'll be murder for him and hanging for

me. Miss Gertrude, may I come to France?"

I drew a step away.

"No, Gibson," I answered, assuming a calmness and a mastery which I did

not feel. "You can't come to France. There is no need. I am sorry for

you--deeply sorry--and I respect you for some of the things you have

said. But you are excited. You have been brooding. You've got morbid,

exaggerated fears."

He came towards me again.

"Gibson, wait till I've finished. You stopped me saying something that

ought to satisfy you. It is this. At Sainte Veronique, Susan will be

under my eye all the time. If this man follows her, I shall know. And

I pledge you my word that, if he comes, I will write to you--no, I will

telegraph--and then you can do whatever you please."

"You pledge me your word, Ma'am?"

"I said so."

For at least five seconds he scrutinized my face. Then he stooped down

low, as if he was going to kneel at my feet, and began hunting for the

cap which he had thrown down among the nasturtiums. He was a long time

finding it. When he got up again, he said in clear, low, sad tones:

"Miss Gertrude, I pray to God that I may live to do one half as much for

you as you have done this night for me."

"Cheer up, Gibson," I said; "things are hardly ever as bad as they look.

Enjoy your holiday all you can. Write down your address and give it me

in the morning. It's getting chilly. Good-night."

I hadn't moved twenty yards before he was at my heels once more.

"I beg your pardon, Ma'am," he said breathlessly, "but there's just one

other thing."

"Yes?"

"I'm thinking, Ma'am, perhaps you won't name it to Susan that I've spoke

like this to-night?"

"You may be easy in mind, Gibson, I'm not likely to say a word about it.

And be careful that you never name it to her yourself that we've had

this talk."

"Never, Ma'am, as long as I live," said Gibson fervently. And so I

managed to get away. On the whole, the Gibson part of this drama of ours

has tried me more than Susan's. That Susan should marry a lord, and

become mistress of Ruddington Towers, is no more than an oddity, an

awkwardness. But it is a very different thing to look on while an

honest lad like Gibson sees the girl he worships bribed away from him

with money.

To say that I feel like a bather banged about on the stones by the

breakers is to put it too weakly. My brains feel like a battlefield,

where Greeks and Trojans, Hector and Achilles, have been trampling, and

slashing, and charging all the long day. And for Helen and Paris, I

have a lady's-maid and a groom!

_Bed-time_.

Another thunderbolt--the loudest and horriblest and most abominable yet!

Susan must be stark mad.

Instead of copying out my draft, she has simply tucked it inside the

specimen envelope I addressed, and has posted it to Ruddington!

I'm too utterly sick and tired and disgusted to write down in this diary

all that Susan said--which wasn't much--and all that I said--which was

even less, but entirely to the point. Susan has gone off, crying--as if

she's the one with the grievance!

Thank God for bed!

*BOOK II*

*DIEPPE*

*BOOK II*

_Saturday night_.

The sight, and smell, and sound of the glittering, tumbling sea must

have done me good. After last night's and Thursday night's bad dreams

and worse wakings, I ought to be as sleepy as a dormouse. Yet I feel

quite fresh and keen.

Not that to-day has been any great improvement on yesterday and the day

before. To begin with, it put me quite out of temper, at Traxelby

station, to see how Susan was far too nasty to Gibson, and how Gibson

was far too nice to Susan. And Gibson couldn't possibly have been

clumsier in his attempt to give me his address on the sly. It was a

miracle that Susan didn't see.

I kept Susan beside me all the way to Newhaven, and also on the boat.

It was a turbine steamer, and the sea was smooth, and I ought to have

enjoyed the crossing immensely. But I didn't.

Of course, the reason was Susan. We hadn't fairly lost sight of that

blinding, towering white cliff above Seaford before Susan said

tragically in my ear:

"Oh, Miss, I have such a dreadful feeling!"

Never before have I been cruel to the sea-sick. But it was altogether

too much that Susan, who has always been the best sailor in the world,

should begin to work up a squeamishness on a turbine, with the sun

shining and the sea as calm as a pond, and no one ill, not even the

trippers in ready-made yachting-suits. I felt she was doing it just to

be important, and interesting, and difficult.

"Nonsense, Susan!" I said, quite roughly: "it's perfectly ridiculous.

Don't think about it, and you'll be all right."

"I don't mean that I'm took bad, Miss," said Susan. And she looked

aggrieved. Probably it was my fancy; but, in her injured dignity, there

seemed to be a blend of Susan Briggs with the future Lady Ruddington.

"What do you mean, then?" I asked grudgingly.

She did not answer at once. When she did, she said mysteriously:

"I've got the feeling, Miss, that ... that it's him!"

"Him?"

"Yes, Miss. He's kept looking at me ever since we landed on the ship."

Susan shot a swift glance to her right, and then, with a modest blush,

resumed her scrutiny of the pattern on the rug across her knees. I

affected to take an interest in a fishing-smack which was fast dropping

astern of us; and, in this way, I was able to examine the part of the

boat whither Susan's glance had winged its coy flight.

No doubt, ever so many people have stayed in town for the Harvard and

Cambridge Boat-race. Anyhow, there weren't many crossing this morning.

We were sitting abaft the funnel, and there was hardly anybody between

our two chairs and the gate leading to the second-class.

The second-class deck was fairly full. There the poor "seconds" sat,

like animals in a zoo, behind a bar, for us superior mortals to stare

at. They were seated oddly, on bags or undersized stools, so that they

looked like wrong-doers in the stocks. The very funnel (which soared up

from the midst of the first-class deck) showed its contempt by visiting

them with a copious and increasing plague of large black grits, until

they were sootier than the damned in hell. And after all, had not each

and every one of them committed the deadly sin of being either unwilling

or unable to pay the extra half-crown or so which would have made them,

for three or four glorious hours, the equals of such notables as myself

and the future Lady Ruddington? They had the air of accepting their

punishment as just.

I picked out two unabashed and unassociated males, either of whom might

be Susan's "Him." Keeping my eyes still on the second-class deck, but

directing my voice towards Susan's cheek, I asked:

"Which?"

"The gentleman that's staring so, Miss."

"Can't you see there are two staring?" I said. "Which do you mean? Is

it the one with the peaked cap and the gilt buttons--the one that's

rubbing the back of his head against the side of the life-boat?"

"Oh, no, Miss! It's the gentleman with the cigar and the thick

stockings."

The fact that the puffer of the cigar was staring at us without the

slightest attempt at dissimulation made it easier for me to take him in

from top to toe. The top was hidden in a grey cloth cap, and the toe in

a brown boot of a large size. The creature was large-handed,

large-featured, and (as I afterwards found) large-laughed and

large-voiced. He wore a grey Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers,

continued downwards by the thick grey stockings which had vied with the

cigar in Susan's regard. There was a bold ring on the little (or,

rather, on the smallest) finger of his left hand. His whole port and

mien were idle and evil; and never in my life have I seen more horrid

legs.

At a first glance his coarseness was so evidently the coarseness of a

low-bred shopman or bookie, that I nearly turned on Susan to rebuke her

sharply for wasting my time. But, at a second glance, I became

conscious of a sickening doubt. Had I not seen this identical

coarseness before, in very high places?

Apart from his one unilluminating letter to Susan, all my meagre

knowledge of Lord Ruddington has been collected at second or third hand.

Both Alice and I have heard that he is reticent, aloof, rather studious;

and the stray reports of him which have reached Traxelby have been

pretty much to the same effect. But our informants may have been wrong.

Or, as our information is a year old, Lord Ruddington may have changed

for the worse. If so, he has galloped downhill at the devil's own pace.

When I had seen a good deal more than enough, I turned my back on him

pointedly, and said to Susan:

"Move your chair a little--the way the boat's going. The wind can't

hurt you."

Visibly loth, Susan shifted her chair.

"What makes you think it is he, Susan?" I demanded.

"I don't know, Miss," said Susan.

"Come, now. There must be something."

"No, Miss," answered Susan. "It's just a dreadful feeling that keeps

coming over me."

"Then the sooner you put the dreadful feeling on one side, the better,"

I said unpleasantly. "I hardly call it complimentary to Lord Ruddington

that you should mistake him for a man like that."

Susan began her new pout--the bride-elect pout that was never in Susan's

world till last Thursday. It annoyed me.

"Why," I said, "if that's Lord Ruddington, all I can say is that poor

Gibson is fit to be a duke or a prince beside him."

Susan was touched in a raw place. She pouted worse than ever. I

couldn't help saying:

"One has only to look at his legs!"

"I was thinking, Miss," said the bride-elect, "that they was rather

nice."

She actually turned her head, and had begun to take quite a deliberate

peep at the rather nice legs, when I addressed her sharply.

"Susan," I said, "so long as you're with me, you'll be so good as to

behave yourself properly. I'm surprised."

She recalled her wanton glance at once, and blushed suitably and

sufficiently. Gibson is only partly right about Susan's head being

turned. If it were turned more than a very, very little, she wouldn't

be able to obey so fully and promptly and shamefacedly when I whistle

her straying fancy back to heel.

"What have you done with those two magazines?" I asked. "Why don't you

read them? If you don't look at him, he won't look at you."

My dutiful Susan did her best. So did I. But my best was no better than

Susan's. Try as I would, I couldn't restrain myself from darting an

occasional glance at the brute in grey to see if he was still staring;

and, try as I might, I couldn't ignore the fact that Susan was doing the

same. At the end of about ten minutes, we did it at the same moment.

"You're looking again, Susan," I snapped angrily. It was mean of me and

dishonest, I know. Besides, it was taking an ungenerous advantage of my

powers as Susan's mistress. But I had to save my dignity. And Susan

would have done the same in my place.

Susan hung her head.

"I'm very sorry, Miss," she said. "I was really trying not to, Miss.

But it's such a dreadful feeling. I feel as if I _must_ look."

"Susan," I said ingeniously, "we will suppose, just for a moment, that

the creature is Lord Ruddington. For your sake, and his own sake, and

everybody's sake, I hope and believe he isn't. But let us suppose he

is."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan patiently.

"Susan, I put it to you. If he _is_ Lord Ruddington, what will he think

of you for casting sheep's eyes at him, and looking up and looking down,

and blushing, and all the rest of it?"

"I don't think it's him as ought to complain, Miss," said Susan, "seeing

it's him that's making me do it."

"You don't see what I mean. If he's Lord Ruddington, he knows that

you're Susan, and he can hardly help looking at you, though I must say

he isn't treating you as he would a lady. But when it's a case of _you_

looking at him, it's different. You see, you're not supposed to have

any idea it's Lord Ruddington. All you've got to go by is 'a dreadful

feeling'--which is nothing at all. So what must he think of you, when

he sees you making eyes at a perfect stranger? He must think you've got

glances and blushes for every man who chooses to stare at you."

Susan did not see my point clearly. Indeed, the more I laboured it, the

less clearly I saw it myself. Besides, if this was really and truly

Lord Ruddington, my attempt at crediting him with superfine feelings was

either hypothetical or ludicrous.

"I'm very sorry, Miss," said Susan from the depths of her immeasurable

docility. And then we got through another half-hour of pretending to

look at magazines, while we were cunningly looking at the creature who

was fixedly looking at us.

When it became intolerable, I said to Susan:

"I'm determined not to move. One mustn't even seem to be beaten by such

rudeness. But do, for goodness' sake, put it out of your head that it

can possibly be Lord Ruddington. What would Lord Ruddington be doing,

travelling second-class?"

"I suppose, Miss," answered Susan, so promptly that she must have

already thought it out, "he's come after Me. And he thought we

shouldn't guess it was him if he rode in the second-class."

I suddenly felt that I had had heaps more than enough of the whole

sordid business. I had felt for an hour that Susan knew a little more

than she cared to admit. Probably she was right, and this was indeed

Lord Ruddington. If so, everything was plain. This coarse-grained young

rake's desire of Susan's country freshness and innocence was something

even more detestable than the familiar infatuation of some weedy young

lordling with a dressy and exuberant and altogether outrageous

chorus-girl in town. I felt as if a rosy veil of illusion had been

drawn away from life, and it almost turned me faint and sick. The worst

of the affair was that Susan, with her wholesome instincts, was not

revolted as she ought to have been, even by that which she did not

understand.

"Susan," I said abruptly, "I'm not at all satisfied. You keep talking

about a dreadful feeling, which is all sheer nonsense. I feel perfectly

certain you know something about that man down there that you haven't

told me."

"The only thing, Miss----"

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I didn't think there was anything much in it, Miss."

"What? In what?"

"Only that he came out through that little gate when you were

downstairs, Miss, changing the money. It was before they locked the

gate--before the guard looked at the tickets, just after the boat

started."

"What did he say to you?"

"He didn't say anything, Miss," replied Susan regretfully. "All he did

was he looked at these bags, Miss, and stood over them till he'd read

the names on the labels enough to learn them by heart, and where we were

going as well. It was that that gave me such a dreadful feeling. Then

the guard came and asked him what he was doing in the first-class, and

looked at his ticket, and said it would be four-and-six more; and, with

that, he went back again through the gate."

"Susan," I said, "I am really very angry. You ought to have told me this

at once. Help me to put these things together. You know how I hate it;

but we are going below."

We didn't go below; but we went as far forward as we could, and sat

gazing southward until a little low moan of joy from a French-woman at

my side told me that she had caught sight of the faint white ramparts of

France.

As the cliffs rose higher from the sea and spread widelier to the east

and west, my spirits rose and expanded with them. If Lord Ruddington

was following us, there was his insult to me as well as his designs upon

Susan to be dealt with. So long as we were cramped up on a ship, he had

the advantage of us; but with the hugeness of France unfolding before

me, I felt myself his match, and began spoiling for a fight.

I didn't have to wait long. As we entered Dieppe harbour, a sailor

unlocked the gate of the second-class pen, and the inmates streamed out

all over the main deck. Susan was for hurrying to swell the serried

mass of Britons who invariably fight like Bushmen to be first on the

gangway. But I kept her in her place, and we were among the last to

disembark.

Ruddington--if it's truly he--was waiting for us at the Customs. He had

got his own bag passed and chalk-marked already. I was prepared for

developments, but not for what actually followed. Ignoring me, with the

coolest insolence, he marched straight up to Susan, clawed carelessly at

his cloth cap, and said:

"Can I be of any assistance?"

Susan shrank under my wing, all crimson confusion. I turned on him

sharply.

"What is it you want?" I demanded.

He coloured up; having, I suppose, some poor remnant of shame after all.

Then he stammered:

"I thought I might be of some assistance."

"Thank you," I said. "None is needed." And I turned my back.

When we had got everything through, we went into the buffet, and drank

thin tea out of thick cups, while He stood at the bar with a long glass

of something-and-soda. Susan had been so thoroughly cowed into

speechlessness and good behaviour that I was able to take counsel with

myself in peace.

We had deposited the trunks in the _consigne_ until Monday, the day I

had intended to resume the journey to Sainte Veronique. The bags were

piled up at Susan's feet, labelled with the labels He had so coolly

looked at. I wished my writing wasn't so legible. No doubt he had

memorized the address--Hotel du Cheval d'Or, Dieppe.

All the way to Newhaven in the train, my poor little week-end time-table

had seemed so lovely. Saturday, 4 P.M., arrive at the Cheval d'Or; 4.15

P.M., a bath and change; 5 P.M., a peep into St. Jacques and _une petite

promenade_ along the front; 6.30 P.M., a short and early dinner, with a

_sole Normande_, a _caneton Rouennais_, a bit of Neufchatel cheese, some

wild strawberries, and a broad-based, high-soaring, unemptiable carafe

of cider; 8 P.M., this diary (with, I devoutly hoped, not a word in it

about Susan); 9 P.M., bed; Sunday, a little dash upon Rouen, a run round

the churches, and back for seven-o'clock dinner at the Cheval d'Or;

Monday, 8.30 A.M., depart for Sainte Veronique. But now the dream was

shattered. The gilt was off the Cheval d'Or, and he was the one horse

in all France that I might not mount.

I sat and debated whether it would be best to go to one of the other

Dieppe hotels, sending the Cheval d'Or the price of the rooms by post,

or to climb straight into the Paris train and spend the night in Rouen.

At last I decided that we had better stick to Dieppe and go to the

Astor, where their idea of welcoming you to Normandy is to try and make

you believe you're at the Carlton, and where you can't drink cider

without feeling that you're a perfect monster of parsimony. It was

maddening. But it had to be faced.

He drained the last drop of his something-and-soda and strode out

quickly with his bag--doubtless to entrench himself in good time at the

Cheval d'Or. When He was safely off the premises, I went to the

platform door to find a porter. Behind the excited crowd of officials

who implore you to take your seat for Paris, I espied their rivals--that

silent band, with the names of hotels gilt-lettered on their caps, whose

dumb eloquence pleads with you to remain in Dieppe. I had almost caught

the "Astor" man's eye, when a face I dimly remembered pushed itself into

sight. The face looked at me from under a cap inscribed "Hotel du

Cheval d'Or." It was Pierre, that best of porters. He knew me. I was

too late.

I've learned a lesson and drawn a moral. Whenever I've forgotten, or

been too lazy, to write beforehand to an hotel, I never once remember

coming to the smallest harm. But whenever I've been a paragon of

methodicalness and have given two or three days' notice, how often

haven't I found myself shoved away into a back room or an annexe? If

only I hadn't wired to the Cheval d'Or last night, I could have tossed

Pierre a pleasant look and have gone off to the Astor, leaving

Ruddington all alone in his glory.

Pierre had us and our bags in his omnibus in a twinkling; and, five

minutes later, we were in the very muzzle of the Cheval d'Or. Out flew

Madame Legendre, all smiles and hearty welcomes, and it is the

simple-literal truth that, at the same moment, Justine was haling a

perfectly adorable new-plucked _caneton_ into her kitchen by his neck.

Something forced me to glance up to the sunny stuccoed walls and

snowy-curtained casements of the main hotel building on the left-hand

side of the court. A man was leaning out of a second-floor window.

When he caught sight of me, he swiftly drew in his head. It was He!

My mind made itself up in a moment. I plunged boldly into an extensive

and variegated falsehood. I declared that when I telegraphed last

night, I didn't know that some great friends of mine were at the Astor.

It was the greatest disappointment to me not to stay, as arranged, at

the Cheval d'Or. On my way back to England from Sainte Veronique, I

would be sure to pay Madame Legendre at least a week's visit. Meanwhile,

could Madame, as an exceptional favour, allow Pierre to carry us round

to the Astor?

The long and short of it is that, so far, I have outwitted him; and here

I am, spending my first French night in an English hotel. As one might

as well be damned for fifty fibs as for one, I have told Madame Legendre

that I want to pass all my time with my friends here at the Astor; and

that if any one who knows me inquires, ever so pressingly, she isn't to

acknowledge that she has the faintest idea where I've gone. She's

promised. As for Pierre, I have bought him body and soul for ten

francs, cash down; and if Ruddington begins asking questions he'll be

told that the English lady and her maid have changed their minds and

gone on to Paris.

Alas, poor dreams! I have just eaten a Paris dinner and have sent it

down with London claret. And I'm going to sleep in an English bedroom,

instead of in a French one. I did so want a French one, with a

curtained bed and a pudgy quilt, and an Empire mirror over the

mantelpiece, to say nothing of a gilt clock, and two bronze horses, and

four or five nice pious pictures of martyrs all stuck full of arrows.

But one can't have everything; and it's enough for me that I've beaten

Ruddington to-day, as I shall beat him to-morrow and every other day

until I can believe that he's something better than a libertine cad.

He's done me one good turn, at any rate. Scribbling down all this has

made me deliciously drowsy. So now to make up all those arrears of

sleep.

_Sunday_, 9 _a.m._

I've slept like baby twins.

Such a sweet morning! I got up at seven and took Susan with me to Low

Mass. The sunlight streaming through the windows of the choir was

divine.

How different this Latin mass in France from last Sunday morning's

service in Traxelby church! At Traxelby we are always so orderly, so

dignified. Here at Dieppe the people grab each a chair and put it down

where they like, so that they're all higgledy-piggledy instead of

sitting in decorous ranks and rows. And, except for the Gospel and

Credo and the Canon, they make no pretence at sitting and standing and

kneeling according to any fixed usage or principle. Some seem to be

following the Proper in their missals, while others just pray, or think,

or finger their beads. Susan says they behaved dreadfully, and that it

didn't seem a bit like proper Church.

I felt differently. The roughness and freedom and individuality were

less soothing than our elegant orderliness at Traxelby; but the

realities that underlie religion seemed nearer and warmer. These

faithful Dieppois looked more like the men and women of old who thronged

the hillsides of Palestine and sat down entranced upon the grass; and

they looked less like that chilly, respectable, dull-souled thing----

How shall I put it? Perhaps it's this. They looked more like "the

multitude" of the Gospels, and less like "a congregation."

If I were not already an excommunicate heretic and schismatic, I should

have surely lost my soul for my inattention to Mass. I couldn't help

comparing this Sunday with last. Last Sunday, Alice was with me as in

the old days. And Susan hadn't had her letter. And Gibson hadn't

talked to me in the garden. Everything was orderly, dignified,

low-pulsed, soothing, like last Sunday's matins in Traxelby church. But

to-day, Susan's letter is a fact. So is Gibson's oath. And Ruddington

is at the Cheval d'Or. My life is suddenly disordered--just as Traxelby

church would be if these Dieppois were suddenly turned loose among the

chairs. Yet I'm not sure that last Sunday was better. Realities,

glowing human realities, have suddenly began to crowd, living and

breathing, all around me--just as I felt reality, warm and near, in the

rough and unpunctiliously celebrated Mass.

I couldn't help thinking some odd thoughts as I looked at one little

panel of a stained window over my head. It showed a kneeling girlish

figure, in white, with long yellow hair. On her right was a Bishop,

coped and mitred, extending his hand; and on her left was a loutish

leering fellow with a steel cap and a sword. I'm not ecclesiologist

enough to know what it was all about. Possibly it meant the Soul being

strengthened by the Sacraments against the onslaughts of the World.

More probably it was in praise of some virgin martyr. But the odd thing

was that if the yellow-haired, rather insipid damsel had had more colour

in her cheeks she would have been the image of Susan. The

large-mouthed, large-eared, large-limbed brute who was tempting or

threatening her was not wholly unlike the cur at the Cheval d'Or. Most

amazing and haunting of all, the Bishop, with his youthful, keen,

honest, manly, wholesome, clean-shaven face, was simply a coped and

mitred--Gibson!

Here they are, bringing the coffee in cups! Never mind. On Tuesday I

shall be drinking it with a big Normandy soup-spoon out of a little

Normandy bowl.

_Noon_.

He has tracked us down.

Coming away from High Mass at St. Remi, we walked slap into him in the

Grande Rue.

I could have boxed Susan's ears for her ridiculous goings-on. Such

flushings and flutterings and scurryings can't possibly have been seen

in the town before. Yet, as we came back to the Astor by the zigzaggest

route I could find, she positively turned her head twice. Of course he

was following.

I'm quite prepared to find he's secured the next table to mine for

lunch.

What worries me isn't so much to-day's meetings. It's to-morrow's. If

we can't dodge him at Dieppe, how shall we manage at Sainte Veronique?

Then there's my ridiculous promise to our poor young Bishop Gibson.

I'm forced to acknowledge that Alice is right. I'm neither old enough

nor wise enough to keep up Traxelby and go travelling abroad with no

companion save Susan. It looks strange, and it doesn't work.

If this creature is indeed Lord Ruddington, I don't trust him to deal

honestly by Susan. In that case, Gibson is just the man for the job.

Once let me be sure that it's Ruddington and Gibson shall have his

telegram within half an hour.

_Half-past three_.

I've laughed and I've cried.

To think that all last night and all this morning I fully believed we

were deep in Act III. of a tragedy (Act I.: Miss Langley's Boudoir at

Traxelby Grange. Act II.: The Grange Garden); and that when I walked

into the _salle-a-manger_ for _dejeuner_ and saw the Brute in Grey at a

corner table, my mind was so prepared for an ultimate Act V., that the

only uncertainty was as to whether Gibson would do it with a revolver or

with a knife!

It isn't Act III., and there isn't any tragedy. It turns out to be

merely the comic relief of a melodrama.

He was already lunching when I sat down with Susan at my table. Of

course I placed Susan with her back to him; but I didn't notice at first

that I had also placed her opposite a mirror wherein she could look at

him far better than I could myself.

He was too far off for me to hear him clearly; but I made out that he

insistently addressed his English waiter in lamentable French. I hung

my head for my country and its aristocracy, and thought more meanly than

ever of its public schools. He consumed a succession of expensive

dishes, and his plate was ostentatiously flanked by a bottle of

champagne.

"It's a whole bottle, Miss," whispered Susan, regarding it with

reverence in the mirror; "not one of those little ones."

"If you can see him, he can see you, Susan," I said severely. "Whoever

he is, he can be no gentleman to follow you like this. Eat your cutlet,

and keep your eyes on your plate. And don't dawdle. I want to go

upstairs again as quick as we can."

For one nasty moment, Susan hung on the very brink of rebellion. But

habit or coquetry, or self-interest or pure obedience, or genuine

modesty, prevailed; and she answered with perfect meekness:

"Very well, Miss, I'm ready now."

It spoilt my lunch; but I got up and we both went out. I asked for

coffee and the French time-table to be brought into the drawing-room,

where he wasn't likely to come. There, I sat down to work out plans in

quiet.

But the quiet didn't last. Within five minutes, his large voice broke

out angrily in the hall. Susan shivered on the lounge beside me. His

clamour was like the vicious baying of an extra-sized wolf newly cheated

of a nice young lamb.

"Oh, Miss!" moaned Susan, as white as a sheet. "He's coming in here!

Whatever shall I do?"

"Sit still," I snapped. "Hold your tongue. Let us listen."

Straining my ears, I discerned that the noise was a composite one, and

that the three chief contributors were the Brute in Grey, the waiter,

and some third party--probably the manager.

"It's a [----] swindle!" roared the Grey One. (The blank stands for

something far worse than "damned.")

"I told the gentleman it was _a la carte_," put in the waiter.

"You're a common impostor!" said the manager.

I edged along the lounge and peeped through the half-open door. The

Grey One was standing with his legs apart, like the Colossus of Rhodes.

Too much meat and drink had combined with anger and fear to turn his

evil face nearly purple. At a safe distance stood the waiter, pale and

excited, with the Grey One's bill on a silver salver. Two other waiters

and the porter were massed across the doorway in case the Grey One

should take to his long, horrid legs. The manager, implacable and

contemptuous, leaned against his office door.

"What's all this beastly row about?" asked one of the guests of the

hotel, a young Englishman, coming irritably out of the _salle-a-manger_.

"I'm deeply sorry, sir. This ... gentleman," said the manager, with a

withering look at the Grey One, "has eaten his luncheon and doesn't want

to pay for it."

"He won't pay," echoed the waiter feebly.

"It's a [----] lie," bellowed the Grey One. "I _will_ pay. I want to

pay. But I'm not going to be [----] well swindled. It's the same as

knocking me down and going through my [----] pockets, and I'll see you

in hell before I stand it!"

Another young Englishman came out and joined the first.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Dunno exactly," answered his friend. "Waiter says this chap's trying on

a bilk. Chap himself says they've rooked him on his lunch."

"The gentleman _would_ talk French," said the pale waiter, gaining

courage. "I don't know French, nor 'e don't neither. I told 'im it was

_a la carte_ as soon as 'e pointed to the canteloup."

"It's a barefaced robbery," cried the Grey One, swearing dreadfully.

"But it's no use trying it on _me_. My uncle knows France as well as he

knows Battersea Park. And what did he tell me? That you don't pay more

than three or four francs in France for a dinner fit for a lord! Why,

even in the French resteronts in Soho, you don't pay more than

eighteenpence for five courses."

The manager made a gesture of scorn and despair.

"Perhaps you'll tell us why you ordered a cigar and a whole bottle of

_Veuve Clicquot_?" he asked.

"Don't go cross-examining _me_," roared the Grey One. "I know the

ropes, so don't you forget it. Everybody knows that, in France, wine's

cheaper than beer."

"That's it!" chuckled one of the young Englishmen gaily. "Wine's

cheaper than beer, and therefore fizz is cheaper than bottled ale!"

"There you are!" cried the Grey One in triumph. "And as for your [----]

old cigar, you don't have me there either. One of the fellows at our

place came back from France only last week. At least, it was Holland

he'd been to, but it's all the same. And what did he pay for the cigars

he smuggled back? Three for tuppence! Beauties! Yet here it is in

your [----] bill, 'Cigars, one franc.' I say it's----"

"You've said all I'm willing to listen to," retorted the manager, as the

two young Englishmen went back to their feeding. "For the last time,

are you going to pay?"

"I'll pay six francs and not a penny more," muttered the Grey One,

distinctly frightened.

"You'll pay your bill," said the manager decidedly. "The total is

thirty-one francs, seventy-five centimes. I can't have our guests

annoyed by a minute's further argument. I recommend you to save

yourself from very unpleasant consequences."

All the fight went out of the Grey One suddenly. He gazed wistfully at

the door, which was still held in force by the menials. Then he fumbled

in his pockets.

"I can't," he muttered sulkily. "I haven't got the money. I've only

got twenty-four francs. And there'll be my bill at the Shevvle Daw."

"The Cheval d'Or!" echoed the manager. "If you're at the Cheval d'Or,

what the deuce have you come lunching here for?"

"To meet some friends," said the Grey One brazenly. "They're staying in

the hotel."

The manager was perturbed.

"What friends?" he asked.

"Two ladies," the Grey One replied.

Within the next minute the two ladies' names would have been asked for,

and, no doubt, the hard-pressed brute would have given mine. I pulled

the door open wide, and stepped into the hall.

"I can't help hearing," I said. "You talk so loud. What ladies do you

mean?"

He jumped. Then he stood stark, as if he had been struck by lightning.

"Perhaps Madame knows something of this affair," the manager began in

French.

"Only a little," I replied in English. "All I know is that this---- By

the way, hadn't you better ask his name and address?"

"My name," he said wretchedly, "is Lamb--John Lamb. I'm head clerk at

Phipps Brothers, the timber-merchants, Amelia Road, Shepherd's Bush.

You'll have heard of Phipps Brothers?" he added imploringly.

"All I know of Mr. John Lamb," I went on, "is this. He stared at us all

the way from Newhaven. He spied about, reading the names on our labels.

He pushed himself on us at the Customs. He followed us to the Cheval

d'Or, and practically drove us out of the rooms we had taken. He has

dogged us through half the streets in Dieppe this morning. Lastly, he

has given us the honour of his company at lunch."

The manager was about to work up, for my benefit, a polite adequacy of

fiery indignation. But Mr. John Lamb forestalled him. Plucking up

courage, he retorted impudently:

"Well, and what if it's true? We aren't in England, are we? Everybody

knows they're more free-and-easy in France."

The manager was loaded and primed for an explosion. But I got in

another word.

"Didn't I give you a broad enough hint at the Customs?" I asked.

"Yes," he said coarsely. "You did. But what about the other young

lady? Let her come out here, fair and square, and say if she didn't egg

me on. 'Tisn't my fault for thinking I was in for a soft thing.

_You_'re not to blame, of course. _You_'ve snubbed me right enough all

along, no error. To tell the truth, Ma'am, I thought you were sick

because it was the other young lady I was struck with, and not _you_."

What possessed him to add this insult to injury, when he was actually in

the lion's mouth, only himself knows. It wasn't courage; for he had

suddenly gone paler and shakier than before. Probably he was clinging

in desperation to a last mad hope that he had indeed made a conquest of

"the other young lady," and that she would rush out in my wake to

intercede for him, and to set him free.

As I turned round and took my first step back to the drawing-room, the

manager exploded like a thousand bombs. How the Grey One managed to

stand unconsumed amidst those lightnings of wrath and thunderings of

menace, I can't conceive. As to his past, the Grey One learned that he

was directly descended from a long line of cads, rogues, gaol-birds, and

impostors; and as to his future, it appeared that the greater part of it

(after he had been soundly kicked, thrashed, and horse-whipped) was to

be spent in a French prison. While this fiery storm was blazing and

smashing around his grey cloth cap, I neither saw Mr. John Lamb, of

Phipps Brothers, nor heard him. He took it lying down.

In the end, it turned out that Mr. Lamb was possessed of an English

sovereign and the return half of a week-end ticket as well as his

twenty-four francs. He paid; and was flung forth into the sunshine with

just enough to face Madame Legendre and to keep himself alive until the

boat starts for England, in the dark and the cold, a little after

midnight.

From his final and ardent, but fruitless, plea that the manager should

accept the deposit of his watch and ring, and allow him to send a

post-office order from England to redeem them, I gathered that this was

Mr. Lamb's first visit to France; that he has got leave from Phipps

Brothers till Wednesday morning; and that Mrs. Lamb doesn't expect him

back to Amelia Road until Tuesday night.

I'm sick of writing about the creature, so I'll stop. Yet, if I chance

to wake up about three o'clock to-morrow morning, with the air nipping

and the wind blustery and the moon overcast, I'm not sure that I sha'n't

think of Mr. John Lamb, and feel just a tiny, wee bit sorry for him.

*BOOK III*

*SAINTE VERONIQUE*

*TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE*

Some of the Letters printed in Book III. are found in the MS. of

the Diary only in abridgments, and one is missing altogether.

The Transcriber has copied them from the originals _in extenso_,

and has inserted them in their proper places.

*BOOK III*

_Monday_, 4 _p.m._

At last!

It's like coming home. I'm in my dear old room; with the front window

looking over the beck and the willows to the sea, and the side window

opening on the orchard. The trees have grown since last year; and, if I

leaned out far enough, there are three rosy apples that I could pluck

straight from the branch as it sways in the soft wind.

The Dupoiriers are delighted I've come. Poor things, considering the

gorgeous summer, they haven't been doing over well. Yet the hotel is

sweeter than ever. Those stuffy velvet curtains, that I always loathed,

have been taken out of the salon. It was a bit of a shock to see the

summer-house stripped of creepers and painted white: but, if it's less

picturesque, it is also more possible. Last year I didn't dare to sit

in it because of the earwigs.

There's a new Marie. The old Marie, with the red hair, who wouldn't

more than half-fill my water-jugs, left only last week. The new Marie

is a black-haired, black-eyed one, and far nicer. There's a letter for

me from Alice. And, of course, there's a letter for Susan from the

regrettable Ruddington. But I'm not going to bother with either of them

till I've had a peep at the path that winds along the beck to the sea.

_In the summer-house_.

I do wish Alice wouldn't!

She's found out somehow that Ruddington was at the Towers all through

the last week of her visit. She's quite vicious about my running away.

According to her first three pages, I "must get married some day," and

Lord Ruddington has been, so to speak, restored to the county by Divine

Providence for the express purpose of taking pity on my old-maidhood. To

scamper off to Sainte Veronique is, therefore, to fly in Providence's

face. Yet, according to Alice's fourth page, my flight to France looks

"far more pointed" than if I'd stolidly stuck at home.

If a mere logical triumph were worth a single drop of ink, I might twit

Alice with the inconsistency. If it's true that the calculating coyness

of my maiden flight has already put it into His Highness's head that I

am one of the candidates, I might fairly claim Alice's praise instead of

her blame.

I shouldn't care so much if Alice weren't so insistently practical. She

positively wants me to race back next week; and she says she can even

manage Hugh, so that he'll bring her with him, and do his

bird-slaughtering at Traxelby instead of at Maxfield. No doubt she is

confident that, by October the 2d, the bag will be twenty pheasants, a

dozen partridges, and one Lord.

I wonder what Alice would say if I wrote straight off and told her that

Lord Ruddington, to my certain knowledge, has already disposed of his

charms elsewhere? I wish I could tell her. It would be such hollow,

tiresome work arguing with her on every ground save the solid fact.

_Monday night_.

The Lamb in Wolf's Clothing gave me a bad twenty-four hours on the boat

and in Dieppe; but he has certainly done a power of good to Susan. She

hasn't got over her surprise at my not giving her a lecture and a mighty

scolding; and she's brimming over with silent gratitude.

Ruddington's letter is irritating, but, in a sense, rather nice. I

didn't ask Susan to show it to me. I thought it would keep very well

till to-morrow. But Susan has laid it inside my blotting-case. Rather

graceful of her--unless she's afraid that a personal delivery of it

would remind me of Mr. John Lamb, and wake up a dormant volcano! Here

is the letter:--

RUDDINGTON TOWERS,

Saturday, September 8, 1906.

MY DEAR SUSAN,--I may begin this way, may I not?

Your letter this morning has brought me unspeakable relief and

happiness. When Thursday's and Friday's posts were blank, I hardly

restrained myself from waylaying you at Traxelby.

As it's utterly beyond me to thank you enough for your letter, I'll try

a little grumbling instead. Is it not rather cruel to say that I must

not write more than once a week? Once a week for a month means only four

letters in all. Sha'n't we be almost as much strangers when you come

back as when you went away?

When you come back! The words make my blood, run faster. They're like

the refrain of a song. When you come back! They're the music I shall

march by, and live my life by, till you come.

I enter into all you say about giving you a quiet month to think and to

decide. I understand, and I admire it. And yet it's almost more than I

can stand. To know where you are, to have the power to join you in a

few hours, and yet to be forced to serve a month's imprisonment in

England, is well-nigh too much for flesh and blood. As I laid down your

letter this morning, I realized that by riding hard across Ruddington

Heath I could have caught you for a moment at the station. But I set

your sovereign command before my eyes ... and stayed at home! Ought you

not to be very nice to me for being so good and obedient? For example,

don't I deserve a long letter on Tuesday?

Till you come back, and for ever,

RUDDINGTON.

P.S.--Do not be angry with me for what I am going to say. Although I

put it in a postscript, it is uppermost in my thoughts.

Pray don't think I'm about to try and coax you out of your month's

reflection. Long and hard though I shall find it, I say. Have the

month by all means. But is it necessary that you should pass the month

in your present conditions?

It tortures me to know that while I will live this month in comfort and

leisure, you will often find it difficult even to snatch the time for

one weekly letter. Now that I know that no one else has won you, take

my word for it, dearest, that no one else ever shall! Susan is going to

be _my_ Susan, even if I've to take her by storm.

What follows? This. From the moment of reading your letter, I promoted

myself to be your protector to our lives' end. How then can I tolerate

you remaining for another hour in a servile position for which you were

never born--into which some hateful freak of Fate has thrust you, and

out of which it is the greatest honour of my life to rescue you? It

maddens me that, perhaps at this very moment, you are being ordered

about, and made to fetch and carry for somebody who isn't fit to lace

your shoes.

Reading this, you can easily be angry. But bear with me. There are so

many ways in which a thing like this could be arranged without

unseemliness. And, surely, nothing can be more unfitting than that you

should be distracted from so solemn a decision by a fussy pressure of

petty tasks. I entreat you to give me the great happiness of setting

you free.

R.

His gentle Lordship does not condescend to state whether, in the event

of Susan being "set free," he will forthwith send me, carriage paid, a

new maid as fanciable and wholesome as Susan, with feet that move about,

like Susan's, as quietly as two mice. But, of course, as I'm merely

"somebody not fit to lace Susan's shoes," I don't count.

To-morrow there'll be the worry of sending off an answer. What will he

say when he sees Susan's own handwriting? And how shall we explain the

first letter being in mine? I suppose Susan had better make a clean

breast of it. I expect his infatuation is proof even against Susan's

blots and pot-hooks.

Now for bed.

_Mardi; midi moins quart_.

I have drunk coffee, with a big bright soup-spoon, out of a little white

bowl with pink rosebuds inside and out. Also, I have eaten four

_croissants_ and a shameful quantity of Normandy butter. This was at

eight o'clock. Since then I have followed the beck all the way to the

sea; have bathed; have climbed the cliff; and have been to the

post-office for stamps. Through the window I can see Georgette placing

a blinding cut-glass decanter of fresh-drawn, foamy cider, full in the

sun, on my table in the orchard. As Susan would say, "a feeling came

over me" where the beck runs past the poplars. I couldn't help stamping

my heel on the ground and saying, "It is true that I am back in

Normandy."

After lunch, there'll be my letter to Alice. I sha'n't say anything

about Ruddington, except that she mustn't go on being a tease. Then

there'll be Susan's letter to the Lord of Burleigh. It would be inhuman

to make him wait for it any longer.

Georgette has just brought out a melon. Its minutes are numbered. I

haven't felt so hungry for ages.

I wonder what Mr. Lamb is doing, and what yarn he has spun at Amelia

Road? Poor Gibson, too! If I were Susan, I think I'd send him just a

Sainte Veronique post-card.

_Deo gratias!_ "_C'est servi!_"

_Tuesday night_.

I am like a bird in a net.

After lunch, Susan came to me and begged pardon for asking if I "hadn't

forgotten the post."

"No," I answered, "it doesn't go out for five hours. By the way, Susan,

what are you going to say to Lord Ruddington?"

Her face fell.