Ian was leaning against the high mantel-piece of his study. Above it,
let into the panelling, was an eighteenth-century painting of the Bridge
and Castle of St. Angelo, browned by time. He was wondering how to tell
Mildred about the child, and whether she would resent its presence. She,
too, was meditating, chin on hand. At length she looked up with a sudden
smile.
"What about the baby, Ian? Don't you take any notice of it yet?"
He was surprised.
"How do you know about him?"
She frowned thoughtfully.
"I seem to know things that have happened in a kind of way--rather as
though I had seen them in a dream. But they haven't happened to me, you
know."
"Was it the same last time?"
"No; but the first time I came, and especially just at first, I seemed
to remember all kinds of things--" She paused as though trying in vain
to revive her impressions--"Odd things, not a bit like anything in
Oxford. I can't recall them now, but sometimes in London I fancy I've
seen places before."
"Of course you have, dear."
"And the first time I saw that old picture there I knew it was Rome, and
I had a notion that I'd been there and seen just that view."
"You've been seeing pictures and reading books and hearing talk all your
life, and in the peculiar state of your memory, I suppose you can't
distinguish between the impressions made on it by facts and by ideas."
Mildred was silent; but it was not the silence of conviction. Then she
jumped up.
"I'm going to see Baby. You needn't come if you don't want."
He hesitated.
"I'm afraid it's too late. Milly doesn't like--" He broke off with a
wild laugh. "What am I talking about!"
"I suppose you were going to say, Milly doesn't like people taking a
candle into the room when Baby is shut up for the night. I don't care
what Milly likes. He's my baby now, and he's sure to look a duck when
he's asleep. Come along!"
She put her arm through his and together they climbed the steep
staircase to the nursery.
Mildred had returned to the world in such excellent spirits at merely
being there, that she took those awkward situations which Milly had
inevitably bequeathed to her, as capital jokes. The partial and external
acquaintance with Milly's doings and points of view which she had
brought back with her, made everything easier than before; but her
derisive dislike of her absent rival was intensified. It pained Ian if
she dropped a hint of it. Tims was the only person to whom she could
have the comfort of expressing herself; and even Tims made faces and
groaned faintly, as though she did not enjoy Mildred's wit when Milly
was the subject of it. She gave Milly's cook notice at once, but most
things she found in a satisfactory state--particularly the family
finances. More negatively satisfactory was the state of her wardrobe,
since so little had been bought. Mildred still shuddered at the
recollection of the trousseau frocks.
Once more Mrs. Stewart, whose social career had been like that of the
proverbial rocket shot up into the zenith. But a life of mere amusement
was not the fashion in the circle in which she lived, and her active
brain and easily aroused sympathies made her quick to take up more
serious interests.
It seemed wiser, too, to make no sudden break with Milly's habits.
Still, Emma, the nurse, opined that Baby got on all the better since
Mrs. Stewart had become "more used to him like"--wasn't always changing
his food, taking his temperature, wanting him to have bandages and
medicine, forbidding him to be talked to or sung to, and pulling his
little, curling-up limbs straight when he was going to sleep. He was a
healthy little fellow and already pretty, with his soft dark
hair--softer than anything in the world except a baby's hair--his
delicate eyebrows and bright dark eyes. Mildred loved playing with him.
Sometimes when Ian heard the tiny shrieks of baby laughter, he used to
think with a smile and yet with a pang of pity, how shocked poor Milly
would have been at this titillation of the infant brain. But he did not
want thoughts of Milly--so far as he could he shut the door of his mind
against them. She would come back, no doubt, sooner or later; and her
coming back would mean that Mildred would be robbed of her life, his own
life robbed of its joy.
At the end of Term the Master of Durham sent a note to bid the Stewarts
to dine with him and meet Sir Henry Milwood, the rich Australian, and
Maxwell Davison, the traveller and Orientalist. Ian remarked that
Davison was a cousin, although they had not met since he was a boy.
Maxwell Davison had gone to the East originally as agent for some big
firm, and had spent there nearly twenty years. He was an accomplished
Persian and Arabic scholar, and gossip related that he had run off with
a fair Persian from a Constantinople harem and lived with her in Persia
until her death. But that was years ago.
When the Stewarts entered the Master's bare bachelor drawing-room, they
found besides the Milwoods, only familiar faces. Maxwell Davison was
still awaited, and with interest. He came, and that interest did not
appear to be mutual, judging from the Oriental impassivity of his long,
brown face, with its narrow, inscrutable eyes. He was tall, slight,
sinewy as a Bedouin, his age uncertain, since his dry leanness and the
dash of silver at his temples might be the effect of burning desert
suns.
Mildred was delighted at first at being sent into dinner with him, but
she found him disappointingly taciturn. In truth, he had acquired
Oriental habits and views with regard to women. If a foolish Occidental
custom demanded that they should sit at meat with the lords of creation,
he, Maxwell Davison, would not pretend to acquiesce in it. Mildred, to
whom it was unthinkable that any man should not wish to talk to her,
merely pitied his shyness and determined to break it down; but Davison's
attitude was unbending.
After dinner the Master, his mortar-board cap on his head, opened the
drawing-room door and invited them to come across to the College Library
to see some bronzes and a few other things that Mr. Davison had
temporarily deposited there. He had divined that Maxwell Davison would
be willing to sell, and in his guileful soul the little Master may have
had schemes of persuading his wealthy friend Milwood to purchase any
bronzes that might be of value to the College or the University. Of the
ladies, only Mildred and Miss Moore, the archæologist, braved the chill
of the mediæval Library to inspect the collection. Davison professed to
no artistic or antiquarian knowledge of the bronzes. They had come to
him in the way of trade and had all been dug up in Asia Minor--no, not
all, for one he had picked up in England. Nevertheless he had succeeded
in getting a pretty clear notion of the relative value of his
bronzes--the Oriental curios with them it was his business to
understand. He could not help observing the sure instinct with which
Mrs. Stewart selected what was best among all these different objects.
She had the _flair_ of the born collector. The learned archæologists
present leaned over the collection discussing and disputing, and took no
notice of her remarks as she rapidly handled each article. But Davison
did, and when at length she took up a small figure of Augustus--the
bronze that had not come from Asia Minor--and looked at it with a
peculiar doubtful intentness, he began to feel uncomfortable.
"Anything wrong with that?" he asked, in spite of himself.
She laughed nervously.
"Oh, Mr. Davison, please ask some one who knows! I don't. Only I--I seem
to have seen something like it before, that's all."
Sanderson, roaming around the professed archæologists, took the bronze
from her hands.
"I'll tell you where you've seen it, Mrs. Stewart. It's engraved in
Egerton's _Private Collections of Great Britain_. I picked that up the
other day--first edition, 1818. I dare say the book's here. We'll see."
Sanderson took a candle and went glimmering away down the long, dark
room.
"What can this be?" asked Mildred, taking up what looked like a glass
ball.
"Please stand over here and look into it for five minutes," returned
Davison, evasively. "Perhaps you'll see what it is then."
He somehow wanted to get rid of Mildred's appraisal of his goods.
"Mr. Davison, your glass ball has gone quite cloudy!" she exclaimed, in
a minute or two.
"That's all right. Go on looking and you'll see something more," he
returned.
Presently she said:
"It's so curious. I see the whole room reflected in the glass now, but
it's much lighter than it really is, and the windows seem larger. It all
looks so different. There is some one down there in white."
Sanderson came up the room carrying a large quarto, open.
"Here's your bronze, right enough," he said, putting the book down on
the table. "It's under the heading, _Hammerton Collection_."
He pointed to a small engraving inscribed, "Bronze statuette of
Augustus. _Very rare._"
"But some fellow's been scribbling something here," continued Sanderson,
turning the book around to read a note written along the margin. He read
out: "'A forgery. Sold by Lady Hammerton to Mr. Solomons, 1819. See case
Solomons _versus_ Hammerton, 1820.'"
The turning of the book showed Mildred a full-page engraving entitled,
"The Gallery, Hammerton House." It represented a long room somewhat like
the one in which they stood, but still more like the room she had seen
in the crystal; and in the middle distance there was a slightly sketched
figure of a woman in a light dress. Half incredulous, half frightened,
she pored over the engraving which reproduced so strangely the image she
had seen in Maxwell Davison's mysterious ball.
"How funny!" she almost whispered.
"You may call it funny, of course, that Lady Hammerton succeeded in
cheating a Jew, which is what it looks like," rejoined Sanderson, bent
on hunting down his quarry; "but it was pretty discreditable to her
too."
"Not at all," Maxwell Davison's harsh voice broke in. "That was
Solomons's look out. I sha'n't bring a lawsuit against the fellow who
sold me that Augustus, if it is a forgery. A man's a fool to deal in
things he doesn't understand."
"What is this glass ball, Mr. Davison?" asked Miss Moore, in her turn
taking up the uncanny thing Mildred had laid down.
"It's a divining-crystal. In the East certain people, mostly boys, look
in these crystals and see all sorts of things, present, past, and to
come."
Miss Moore laughed.
"Or pretend they do!"
"Who knows? It isn't of any interest, really. The things that have
happened have happened, and the things that are to happen will happen
just as surely, whether we foresee them or not."
Miss Moore turned to the Master.
"Look, Master--this is a divining-crystal, and Mr. Davison's trying to
persuade me that in the East people really see visions in it."
The Master smiled.
"Mr. Davison has a poor opinion of ladies' intelligence, I'm afraid. He
thinks they are children, who will believe any fairy tale."
Davison had drawn near to Mildred as the Master spoke; his eyes met hers
and the impassive face wore a faint, ironical smile.
"The Wisdom of the West speaks!" he exclaimed, in a low voice. "I'd
almost forgotten the sound of it."
Then scrutinizing her pale face: "I'm afraid you've had a scare. What
did you see?"
"I saw--well, I fancy I saw the Gallery at Hammerton House and my
ancestress, Lady Hammerton. It was burned, you know, and she was burned
with it, trying to save her collections. I expect she condescended to
give me a glimpse of them because I've inherited her mania. I'd be a
collector, too, if I had the money."
She laughed nervously.
"You should take Ian to the East," returned Davison. "You could make
money there and learn things--the Wisdom of the East, for instance."
Mildred, recovering her equanimity, smiled at him.
"No, never! The Wisdom of the West engrosses us; but you'll come and
tell us about the other, won't you?"