CHAPTER VI

Axensass is a little place on the Brenner Pass, consisting of about a

dozen cottages, a farm, and a hotel built of pitch-pine standing on the

slope of a hill.

In the valley the fields lie green and peaceful, and a great bounding

river runs between the grey rocks. The wind blows through the pass,

bringing with it a feeling of buoyant life and purity, and driving a

moving background of light cloud past the firs above. Midway between

hotel and river is the railway station, a few wooden houses squatted

down beside the line. The shining iron rails diminish in aggressive

perspective, then plunge into a tunnel which suggests a full-stop at the

end of a sentence.

On the platform a tall Englishman was loitering. He had a humorous, ugly

countenance, and, though his hair was so grey as to be almost white, his

face was the face of a young man. The station was very quiet, and the

river’s loud voice drowned any sound of an approaching train. But from

the tunnel’s mouth burst a sudden white puff, and the tall man took his

stand at a place from which he could see into each compartment as it

passed him. The train drew up with creaking brakes and several heads

appeared at the windows. The door of a first-class carriage opened, and

a small figure in neat brown, with its head and hat enveloped in a

voluminous gauze veil, descended. The tall man moved forward.

“Where’s Robert?” he asked, as he stood holding the little woman’s hand.

“He’s not coming after all,” said Lena. “I’ll tell you all about that as

we walk up to the hotel. Nat, I’m so glad to see you!”

When a colossal dressing-bag and sundry other possessions had been piled

upon a barrow, the husband and wife started slowly up the hill in their

wake. The fresh scenery around seemed to produce no effect upon Lena,

for she looked neither to the right nor to the left. She had too much to

say.

Now and then the couple stopped still, as people do when they come to a

knot in the conversation. It took them some time to reach the hotel at

this rate, and the luggage had disappeared from view long before they

got to the painted railing enclosing the garden. A smart, white-capped

waitress was standing on the verandah as they approached; at sight of

them she went into the house, and reappeared carrying a little tray.

She ran down the steps and presented it to Lena.

A blue envelope was lying on it. Mrs. Wylde snatched it up and tore it

open; then she held it out to Nat. The contents were these:

“It’s all right. Blundell.”

LÉONIE

Cyril Castleman was a young man without responsibilities; he had a touch

of foreign blood, a somewhat roving disposition, a large income, and an

appearance a little more than passable. He possessed no property on

which to spend his money and no near relations from whom to endure

advice. He had been educated expensively by the retired and very

retiring manufacturer who had made him an orphan; and now, though he was

accountable to no man, and had enjoyed many of the best opportunities of

being a first-class fool, he had just escaped from becoming one. But he

had never had to do what is commonly called “a hand’s turn.”

In spite of his income he knew few people, and a slight exaggeration of

manner was apt to put strangers against him. So it was that, though he

had been ten days in Cairo, his circle was represented by a handful of

hotel acquaintances. It was one of Castleman’s saving graces that he

went about the world with his eyes open, and, in order to see the face

of a new land--he had never been in Egypt before--he bought a Syrian

Arab pony with a wall eye.

He had been herded through the bazaars by an insufferable dragoman, seen

the Sphinx and the Pyramids, and done most of the sights that lurk

behind the scenes for the allurement of travelling bachelors; and had

begun to hate the dragoman almost to insanity. He now rode morning and

evening, and was in treaty with a biblical-looking horsedealer for

another animal.

On the northern outskirts of Cairo, where tramways cease and the first

of Ismail’s signal-towers comes into view, there stretches along the

desert-edge a heterogeneous colony of houses. The short railway line

ending at date-growing Marg seems to thread them together like beads on

a string, for their mud walls lie parallel with the rails for some

miles, broken only by the grounds of Khoubbeh Palace, and connecting the

villages of Zeitoun and Mattariah. The gardens of these flat-roofed,

skulking villas, with their tumbledown gates and discoloured whitewash

and infinite suggestion of squalor and secrecy, would be a revelation to

the trim-minded British florist. Pergolas, low and stuffy, weighted to

suffocation with vine, almost crowd out the straggling rose-bushes and

orange-trees; coloured glass balls raised on sticks supply that

incongruous barbarity of ornament dear to the quasi-oriental heart, and

zinnias wrestle with marigolds in the undergrowth. All is loaded,

luxuriant, breathless, cramped. In spring the heavy perfume from the

orange-groves of Khoubbeh hangs like a cloud over the huddled anomalies

of a place where desert, suburb, and railway line join hands and travel

on, so to speak, together. When the Khamseen blows, the dust smothers

and unifies them into one indistinguishable greyness.

The population of this quarter is composed of as many ingredients as a

Christmas pudding. Levantines, Jews, clerks, scoundrels, ‘Effendis,’ and

fat old women with under-bred lap-dogs compose the portion which

principally meets the eye. Some of the inhabitants are rich, and some

are poor; but, in either case, the female half is of that sort which, on

all but high occasions, lives in its dressing-gown. On Thursday it

emerges, heavily powdered and befeathered, to loll in a hired victoria

up and down the Abbassia road.

Towards this region Castleman turned his pony’s steps one heavenly

morning. Behind him on the Abbassia parade-ground, two companies of a

Sudanese regiment were moving briskly to a primitive but stirring tune.

The raw veil of morning mist, which, in these days of planting and

vegetation, will sometimes clothe the desert, was lifting back like a

curtain, and the white stones in the little Arab graveyard beyond

Zeitoun were catching the light against the dust-colour and distant

purple. He was soon cantering past a group of the larger houses

belonging to rich Egyptian officials that dot the fringe of the desert,

and considering their closed and latticed windows with all the curiosity

roused in the European male breast by the word ‘harem.’

As he went, the story that had interested him in the local paper

overnight came back to his mind, and he wondered whether some of it

might not have been enacted in these identical surroundings. It was

quite likely, he told himself, with some pleasure. Cyril had real

gallantry under his expensive silk shirt, though it is to be feared that

the exploits of the young foreigner of whose nationality the police

seemed uncertain had caught at the flashy side of it.

There had been a great scandal. A young man had, by hook or by crook,

contrived to get into the sacred family precincts of a pasha living on

the outskirts of Cairo, and, though discovered and chased by no less a

person than the outraged householder himself, had escaped, with

gratifying success. But, where one shouting, pot-bellied gentleman

heading a retinue of timorous servants may fail, the organised machinery

of the law may have better luck. The word “escape,” inspiriting on one

side of a frontier, only becomes triumphant upon the other. The pasha

was a rich man, and the intruder was arrested in a small shipping-office

in Alexandria, where he was very sensibly making arrangements to leave

the country, and brought back to Cairo for trial. Law and order were to

have their turn, apparently. The pity was that, while the train slowed

to a foot’s pace between two stations, some twenty miles off the

capital, the prisoner, who had lain in a state of exhaustion since his

sharp conflict with his captors, went out of the window like lightning,

leaving them to rue the misplaced mercy which had removed the handcuffs

for a season from the heap of half-dead humanity in the corner. It had

taken some time to bring the engine to a standstill, and to get the

astounded police started on the track. The search was proceeding yet,

and Cyril smiled, reflecting that the vanished hero would be a man worth

cultivating.

There is no place so suitable as the desert for dreams, and, when the

rhythmic plunge of hoofs beats time in the sand, you may ride on

indefinitely in the intoxication of monotony, with a mind revelling,

undisturbed, in the visions of your own creation. A puff of

orange-flower came on the hot wind--for it was spring--and Castleman,

lost in an imaginary kingdom of trellised walls, intrigue, and dark

eyes, idled along till midday, his face desertwards. When he turned

back, he crossed the line and made for the long thread of roofs; it

would be charming, he thought, to ride home alongside the mud walls and

try to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond them. The pony stepped

daintily on the rails, lying like tram-lines on the sand, descended one

side of the narrow, dry canal which separates the dwellings from the

permanent way, and scrambled up the other. When they got on to the

track, running under the jealous garden-walls, Cyril found that, from

the saddle, he could get an excellent view into the greenery.

All was very quiet, for noonday blazed, silencing what little labour is

ever visible in Egypt. From the few glimpses of life that he caught, the

semi-European element seemed to predominate. An occasional patch of pink

cotton dressing-gown showed on a verandah, an occasional movement by a

well; otherwise all was still. Sometimes a more than usually Western

establishment might be guessed from trim borders of rosemary or tidy

paths.

A small grove of eucalyptus-trees, planted between the canal and the

railings on his left, cut the sand a short way in front of him, and, in

line with it, topping a curve in the wall which was almost rubbing

Cyril’s right shoulder, a small arbour reared itself above the coping. A

tin crescent surmounted it, and the vine hung so heavily from its

dome-shaped roof that it looked almost solid. It was evidently reached

by a staircase inside the garden. Just as he passed the place a pariah

dog came scurrying out of the shadow of the eucalyptus-grove.

The wall-eyed pony had never yet shown any signs of nerves, but, at the

sudden movement, he whipped round like a rabbit, and, there being but a

couple of yards between the canal-bank and the wall, the sand began to

break away and his hind feet to slip over the edge. Cyril, who was a

fair horseman, gave him his head, and threw himself as far forward as he

could on his neck. Luckily, a tamarisk-root saved the situation and

offered a moment’s foothold, and, with a terrific pawing of dust, horse

and rider stood once more firm on the path. The pariah dog cantered away

towards Zeitoun.

While they scrambled to safety a head rose above the wall and a woman

entered the arbour, pulling the yashmak hastily across her mouth as

Castleman looked up. She wore the usual enveloping black draperies of an

Egyptian lady, and the white lawn covering the lower part of her face

was thickly and richly embroidered. Above it shone the most enchanting

pair of hazel eyes under straight brows, that looked all the darker for

the powder thick upon the small piece of forehead and cheekbone visible.

A heavy streak of paint lay under her lower lashes. There was no doubt

that the unseen mouth was smiling, for he could see in the lady’s glance

a fire of amusement, caused by his ridiculous struggles. She had not the

doll-like appearance of such Egyptian beauties as he had met driving in

closed carriages round Gezira in the afternoon, though she was evidently

as much smothered in paint as they. He was a little hurt in his dignity

by the episode of which she had been witness, and the fascination of her

eyes lent the wound an additional smart.

He rode on, throwing into his seat all the nonchalance he could

command, and, when he came to a gap in the bank a few yards farther, he

turned again over the railway line. She should see that he was no

tourist, in the saddle for the first time! He spurred the Arab into a

gallop, and circled once round in the sand before putting his head

homewards, that he might observe, without turning obviously, whether she

was watching his progress. Yes, there she remained, a dark spot in the

arbour, leaning out over the wall and gazing intently after him.

That happened on a Monday.

On Tuesday, before noon, Castleman rode in the same direction; this time

he did not go into the desert, but made straight for the line of houses,

and proceeded at a foot’s pace along the path below the garden-walls. As

he neared the arbour his heart began to beat. All yesterday he had

thought of that hazel-eyed houri sitting among the vines, of the

fascination of her look, of the invitation that had seemed to lurk

behind it. He wondered how that arch-sportsman of whom he had read with

so much gusto had begun his affair. No doubt, much in this sort of way.

He sat up and settled his tie as the heavy contour of the summer-house

rose against the sky.

Passing under it, he looked up to meet the eyes again; she had come

farther forward this time. Cyril half pulled up, lifting his hat; and,

from the dark folds of her draperies, there came forward a hand holding

a spray of orange-flower. It dropped at the horse’s feet.

In one moment he was out of the saddle and had picked it up; but, while

he put it rather melodramatically to his lips, the lady drew back and

disappeared down the staircase. There was nothing for him to do but to

remount and return by the way he had come. “These things take time,” he

said to himself as he did so.

On Wednesday he trod on air. How the business was going to end, or

whether it would entail anything, or everything, or even nothing, was a

detail to him. He understood so little of the class differences of the

country he was in that he had no notion whether he was dealing with a

lady of rank, a professionally light woman, or a member of some decent

middle-class household. In any case, he did not care; the situation

appealed to his vanity, and the eyes to his senses.

He longed to write her a letter, though he was aware that such an act

was out of the question, seeing that he neither knew her name nor in

what tongue to address her; but he was an observant youth, and had

decided that the embroidered yashmak pointed to a refinement which would

probably include a knowledge of French--the language of polite Egypt.

All the same, to write was impossible, and he had mother-wit enough to

be sure that, were the difficulty to be solved, she would solve it

herself.

He approached the place for the third time under cover of the

eucalyptus-grove, and, standing half concealed among the trees, he could

see her looking out anxiously along the path for something that he

smiled to the very soul to think was himself. He waited a few minutes to

enjoy the scene and then rode slowly out of the shadow, crossed the

canal-bed, and drew up below the arbour.

A glance of such allurement rewarded him that he cursed the wall, the

yashmak, the daylight--everything, in short, but the ravishing creature

above his head. All the high-flown eulogies of Eastern beauty which had

once raised such scepticism in him, how gospel-true they were! He opened

his mouth to speak. Should he say “Madame” or “Mademoiselle?” He said

neither, for the lady, seeing his intention, threw a startled look into

the garden beneath her, and, putting one hand to her lips, made a

violent signal to him with the other to depart. As she stretched it

imperiously forward, there fell from it another little branch of orange.

Castleman sprang off and snatched it from the sand; the dismissal he had

received was tempered by the discovery of a slip of paper tied to the

flowers.

In the still vastness of the desert he unfolded the precious thing. The

fact that it was written in ink sent the blood leaping to his face;

people do not find inkpots awaiting their pleasure in gardens, so the

note must have been penned in the house before she took her place among

the trellised leaves. She had expected him! There were only a few

words, but they were enough for Cyril:

“_Ce soir, Neuf heures. Le midi trop dangereux._--L.”

He had been right about the French, and the gratifying knowledge that he

was no fool was agreeable, though not quite unexpected. Well--the grass

should not grow under his feet! He rode back to Cairo.

That afternoon he summoned the dragoman. “Mahommed Achmed,” he said, “I

have had a letter from my brother, who is anxious to get the dress of an

Egyptian countryman to wear at a fancy ball. I want you to go to the

bazaar and buy the whole thing--_tarboosh_, _galabiyeh_, shoes, and

all--and bring them to me at once, as I must have them packed to-night.”

Nothing suited the dragoman better, and he departed towards that den of

thieves behind the Mousky with the money in his hand. Of fancy-dress

balls he had seen a plenty while he hung, with other knaves, round the

door of Shepheard’s Hotel. Englishmen liked to make greater fools of

themselves than they were already, and the Westernising influences of

Cairo had given him a sort of contemptuous understanding of the feeling.

He smelt the usual backsheesh, and reflected, in addition, that, as a

third of the sum given him would be sufficient, the balance would come

very handy. Cyril watched his retreating figure, feeling almost too

clever to live.

That evening, a short time before the hour named in the letter, he

emerged from the train at Khoubbeh station with a bag in his hand.

Few people were about, and he made towards the houses, looking like a

respectable young fellow who had done his day’s work in Cairo and was

returning rather late. Once out of observation, he went down into the

canal-bed, where, as it was pretty dark, he was as much lost to the

world as if he had been Korah, Dathan, or Abiram.

There he divested himself of hat, coat, and collar, and opened the bag,

drawing from it a pair of yellow leather shoes, which he substituted for

his boots, a blue _galabiyeh_, and a _tarboosh_. He rolled up the ends

of his trousers and the sleeves of his shirt, and then struggled into

the voluminous garment, which fell almost to his feet. It was

comfortable enough, even over the shirt, for he was slight and not above

middle height, and he had told the dragoman to buy the largest size. He

put on the _tarboosh_, shaking his head to see if it sat firm, and the

tassel hit him on the eyeball. The tears poured down while he groped for

his handkerchief, cursing as he realised that it was in his coat pocket

inside the bag. The bag had rolled into a prickly bush.

However, he emerged from his lair at last, looking, had it been possible

to see him in the gloom, wonderfully natural. He was rather dark and he

did not walk badly in petticoats. At a certain distance, even by

daylight, he might have passed muster, but for his hands and the colour

of his neck where his collar had protected it; at night, he was a figure

whose presence would be natural anywhere in Egypt.

Impatience having made him early, he had to wait some time till his star

should rise. Not a sound stirred, and the desert lay like a vast sea;

against the sky, which was black and moonless, rose the blurred

silhouette of the arbour. At last he heard a step on the inside stair,

and held his breath as a figure leaned over the coping.

“_Mademoiselle!_” he called softly.

There was a slight rustle, as though the lady had started, and something

very like a giggle.

“_Mon Dieu, monsieur! Parlez bas_,” said the voice from above.

Castleman spoke French quite admirably, and, emboldened by the darkness

and a changed personality, began to pour forth his admiration and the

gratitude he felt for the notice bestowed on him.

“_Monsieur parle bien_,” said she, at the first full stop. Then she

complimented him on his horsemanship, and expressed a gratifying horror

of his venturesome character. Cyril began to enjoy himself immensely.

She impressed upon him the necessity of speaking low; her own voice

scarcely rose above a whisper, and, the wall being high, it was

sometimes all he could do to hear; but he heard quite enough to make his

chest expand under the blue _galabiyeh_.

She asked a thousand questions. How old was he? Where did he live? Was

he married? Her innocence of the outer world was very charming, and the

remembrance of her alluring eyes lent it an unrivalled piquancy. She

seemed to have humour, too. The notion of the dragoman buying the

costume for the ball-going brother who did not exist transported her

with merriment.

“_Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! on voit que vous comprenez bien l’intrigue. Quelle

vie--la vie des hommes!_” And she sighed tremulously.

There was a silence.

When she spoke again, it was in a choked voice.

“_Je pensais à ma vie à moi_,” she whispered, in response to his

concern.

It was now Cyril’s turn to ask questions; he felt as if the risk he was

running gave him the right to do that; and by her trustful candour the

lady seemed to feel the same thing. Her name was Léonie, she told him,

and her mother--dead for some years--was a Frenchwoman. It was a sordid

story. As the wife of a Levantine trader her mother had lived in Syria,

and settled near Beyrout on becoming a widow, and she had survived her

husband only to become fascinated by the handsome appearance of an

Egyptian officer, with whom she was mad enough to throw in her lot. She

had forsworn everything for him, and he had promised to forswear a

certain amount for her. He did so, for a couple of months, and then the

inevitable set in upon the unhappy woman, who died, after a martyrdom

lasting three years, leaving herself--Léonie--to the tender mercies of a

Mohammedan stepfather.

“And I am a Christian,” she concluded. “_Ah, monsieur!_ if you knew the

hell in which I live!”

He could hear her crying softly.

“And where is your stepfather?” inquired Castleman, greatly interested.

“Here--here--behind these walls!”

(This last sentence rather startled him.)

They talked undisturbed for nearly an hour. At this time of night the

path on which he stood was as much deserted as the Sahara itself, those

who moved about keeping to the road on the farther side of the houses.

When they parted, his head was in a whirl, and he reproached fate for

making the morrow a Thursday. On that day of the week the Mohammedan

world would be much in evidence, and she forbade him to return till

Friday at the same time.

“I shall come on horseback,” he remarked; for he had reflected that,

from the saddle, he could at least hold her hand.

But this she implored him not to do. The present arrangement was so much

quieter, so much safer; Arabs neigh frightfully, and a white pony would

make a patch against the dark wall in a way that might be seen, even at

night. Who troubles about the actions of a man in a blue _galabiyeh_?

And who is there who would not notice a white horse which is not

tethered, yet never moves from one spot? Reluctantly he agreed.

For the following week the same scene was enacted every night. Once or

twice a stray individual had gone by, but as Léonie, from her eminence

at the curve of the wall, had a better view of approaching figures than

Castleman, there was always time for him to stroll forward and pass the

intruder innocently. Once or twice, also, he had ridden out again at

noon and snatched a moment’s gaze at his divinity. He had fallen so

deep into the spell wrought by her eyes and the charm of her

conversation that he looked neither forward nor back. As for the eyes,

he had never seen their equal, and they haunted him after his midday

visits, as those strange glances we see in dreams haunt us long after

the substance of the vision has flown. At last the dark half of the moon

went by, and the crescent that seemed to hang emblematically over the

Mohammedan city began to make matters more difficult.

One horrible evening he found the summer-house empty. Ten o’clock

passed, eleven, twelve, while he watched from the eucalyptus-grove, to

the shelter of which he had retired to keep his vigil. He returned home

in the small hours almost beside himself.

As evening approached next day, he grew sick with terror lest his last

night’s experience should be repeated, and, when he heard the rustle

over his head and the thrill of her whisper, he could have fallen on his

knees and given thanks aloud.

But, for all that, his joy was short-lived. Léonie, stifling her sobs,

gave him but too pertinent a reason for her absence.

“I could not escape last night,” she said; “my stepfather was with us

till late, giving his orders. For some time we have had hints of his

intentions, and now he tells us that this house is sold, and that we

leave it in a week. He has bought one in the centre of Cairo. In seven

days from now, _mon ami_, we shall be gone, and you will never see me

again.”

Castleman was speechless. He knew, without being told, that, once in the

heart of the city, beset on all sides by walls and windows and crowding

humanity, she was as much lost to him as though she were dead.

“And that is not all,” she continued, as he stood silent; “there is

more. I am to be married a month after our arrival.”

His lips were dry. “Married!” he almost shouted.

“_St--st! Que voulez-vous? Au nom de Dieu, ne criez pas si fort!_”

“Who? Who is it?” he asked.

“A friend of my stepfather. I have never seen him, but I believe he is

rich. No doubt I shall be happy enough.”

Cyril groaned.

“And I?” he asked at last. “What am I to do? Oh, Léonie! Have you no

pity for me? You know I would sell my soul for you!”

He began to walk up and down like a madman. In the arbour she was

weeping piteously and softly. Nothing could be done, she told him; her

stepfather had a will of iron. To see it he need only look at the

yashmak she wore--she, who was a Christian!

“Darling--come away with me,” he implored. “I beg of you, I entreat you!

You shall never repent it, and we will live so far from here that he

will never hear of you.” (It was useless to name other countries to

Léonie; the outside world conveyed so little to her.) “I will arrange

everything. Don’t refuse, dearest Léonie, or I shall break my heart. I

cannot lose you now.”

But she would hardly listen, for the bare thought seemed to terrify her.

How could such a thing be? She had no strength, no courage. She had

never been so far as the Pyramids--no, not even in a closed carriage!

Cyril protested and argued. He would arrange everything. All would be

well, and some day she would look back, shuddering, at her own

hesitation to accept life and love and freedom. He would have scaled the

wall in his eagerness, had not the coping been absolutely out of his

reach.

When he returned home he took with him her promise to consider the

matter, and tell him her decision on the following night. He was

thankful to have gained so much.

* * * * *

Thirty-six hours afterwards Castleman was rushing about Cairo. Léonie

had screwed up her courage to the sticking-point, and he was scouring

the second-hand shops in the Mousky for a lady’s riding-habit. He could

not take the dragoman into his confidence this time. When he had got

what he wanted, he added a felt hat and a thick veil to the collection,

and returned to his hotel to pack them into a bundle; for to-night he

was to don the blue _galabiyeh_ for the last time, and toss the whole

outfit up the side of the wall to his love.

He had constructed a workable plan; namely, to reach the coast by the

desert, as travellers had done before the days of railways. Eastward

from the signal-tower lay the remains of the old Suez road; abandoned,

and, in some places, impassable for wheels, it ran across the sandy

waste, a sure guide to the seaport eighty miles away. A rider doing

stages of twenty miles might reach Suez with three changes of horses;

but for a woman totally unused to exercise it would be a tremendous

undertaking, even were it to be done in twice the time Cyril would allow

for himself. But he could see no other solution.

There was an Indian liner due which they could catch, should they start

two days hence, and he would have time to send on the relays. The

wall-eyed Syrian was temperate, and would not, in common parlance, shake

an egg off his back, and he now possessed another pony. It remained for

him to lay hands on six other horses. The getting of them together would

probably be difficult, but to a full purse all things are possible.

Having once faced the situation, Léonie had consented to the desperate

remedy more easily than he expected. She had ridden much in her youth at

Beyrout, and, though she seemed to think her own death by the way quite

a likely occurrence, she had decided to make the attempt. Since first

mentioning her intended husband to Castleman she had heard more about

him. It was the certainty of misery on one side against the possibility

of salvation on the other.

The eventful evening came; Cyril had wound up his affairs and sent on

his horses, and there was not a detail of which he had not thought.

Léonie, dressed in the habit, was to let herself down from the arbour by

an ingenious contrivance of ropes which her lover had packed into the

bundle of clothes. She was to tie these securely to the trellis and do

her best. The idea of this part of the performance alarmed Cyril, but

she assured him that she could manage the descent; and though, for fear

of tell-tale footprints, he dared not be below to receive her in his

arms, he was to come along the canal-bed and watch her from it, in case

of accidents. She was to throw the ends of the rope-ladder over the

wall, and they were to walk--he in the ditch, and she on the path--to

the road where the horses would be waiting. No one meeting them would

take them for anything but an English couple starting for the usual

moonlight ride, and no one was likely to enter the dark garden till

morning and see the incriminating rope.

It was as though the stars in their courses fought for the lovers,

everything went so well. Castleman’s heart banged against his side as he

found himself standing with Léonie by the ponies. In her English clothes

she looked taller than she had done in the arbour, and the British

suggestion of her covert coat, which, being unable to find a whole

costume, he had bought with the riding-skirt, was transforming; she had

wound the black veil in double thickness round her head and hat.

She sat awkwardly in her saddle, but Castleman was relieved to see that

she evidently remembered something of her youthful experiences, for she

seemed to have quite a respectable idea of guiding her horse. Not a soul

was to be seen, and they kept close to the old road. The wall-eyed

pony’s canter did not appear to tire her at all. On they went, steadily,

till, half-way to the second signal-tower, they pulled into a walk.

“And I have never even kissed you!” he exclaimed, drawing his pony

nearer.

But from the muffled wrappings of her veil she protested. There would be

plenty of time for that afterwards, she said faintly. Her shyness

charmed him.

Soon they were cantering on again, this time a little faster. She did

the first stage wonderfully.

When they had changed horses, Cyril began to think even better than he

had done before of intrigue and adventure. To begin with, it was so

easy. The man with the fresh ponies was instructed to camp where he was,

and the liberal supply of food and blankets his employer had sent with

him, added to his own natural sloth, settled the matter. Castleman did

not want his tongue to be wagging in Cairo a moment sooner than was

necessary.

But about the middle of the next stage Léonie’s strength gave out. Her

saddle was not comfortable, she said; and, indeed, there was small

wonder in that, for, after an absence from it of ten years, nobody’s

saddle ever is. She assured him that, if she might only rest for a

little, she would get on very well. He consented in a moment. As it was,

she had done wonders.

They had arrived at the foot of an eruption of hilly rock. The road was

their guide and they seldom left it; Castleman had camped out in

America, and, between the stars and the little compass on his

watch-chain, he had so far kept their heads pretty straight. At the foot

of the rocks they pulled up; he helped her off and she sat down,

exhausted, waving him from her. She was quite breathless and complained

of a stitch in her side. He stood by, much concerned.

“Darling, take off your veil,” he said, as she recovered.

This time she complied, suggesting that, while she did so, he should go

up to one of the jutting rocks above their heads and thence make a

careful survey of their surroundings. So far, they had met no one.

The prospect pleased Cyril, and he began to climb the eminence

cheerfully; the survey once made, an agreeable hour was before him.

The opalescent mystery of sand and moonlight swam round him as he looked

over the solemn spaces. Nothing stirred; only the breathing and movement

of the horses made the silence more profound. North and south, east and

west, the desert spread. The lights of Cairo had long gone down behind

the contours that rise, however flat the ground, to thrust the old

horizon under a new one. He turned, satisfied, to descend again.

After one step he stood rooted; the most extraordinary things were

happening below. Léonie’s hat and veil lay on the sand, and he could see

her pulling up the girths of his pony, which he had loosened on

dismounting. He could hear the squeak of the buckle. Another moment, and

she was tearing off her coat and skirt with the hasty indecency of a

quick-change clown at a circus.

She stood in the brilliancy of the sailing moon, unashamed, even as

himself, in shirt and breeches!

He gave a cry.

At the sound she swung herself into his empty saddle, pulled the rein

of her own pony over her arm, and gave it a cut with the whip he had

left on the ground. She had put on his cap too--heavens! her hair was

nearly as short as his own! She lifted the cap high to him, and, with a

shout like a street boy’s, was off with the two horses.

It was all over in a minute. He dashed down over the stones, raving.

* * * * *

For a black half hour he sat on a sand-heap, spent with his own wrath.

He tried to remember all the foolish things he had said in the last

deplorable fortnight, and he groaned at each of them. How well he

understood the devilry in those eyes--_now_! Never, never would he be

attracted by devilry any more! He knew too much about it. As he sat,

with his hands round the back of his bowed head, like a man protecting

himself from a downpour, there shot through his mind the remembrance of

that young foreigner who was wanted by the police, and who, he had told

himself, would be worth cultivating. _Worth cultivating!_ How the young

ruffian’s friends in that gardened house (for he was certain he had

been hiding among friends) must have enjoyed hearing of the blue

_galabiyeh_! Where were the Mohammedan stepfather, the deceased and

suffering mother, the imminent bridegroom?

Their creator was now in process of leaving the country at his, Cyril’s,

expense.

Meanwhile, here he was, sitting in the dust thirty-five miles from

Cairo. Of all the ...!

* * * * *

The P. & O. Company’s steamship _Mesopotamia_ was leaving Suez, and the

official and semi-official persons who had boarded her were preparing to

take to their flotilla of boats, when the young Frenchman described in

the captain’s list as M. Alphonse le Duc, of Paris, stopped one of the

latter at the head of the gangway.

“I shall be infinitely obliged if you will despatch this, sir,” he said

in excellent English, putting a telegram and its money equivalent into

the man’s hand.

Its contents were these:

Castleman, Hôtel Continental, Cairo.

“_Mille souhaits affectueux._

“LÉONIE.”

He had hesitated to the last about the sending of this message, for he

was anxious to leave no traces. But two facts made him risk it--one,

that he was a born gambler; and the other, that, whoever might proclaim

his escape, he was certain it would not be Castleman.

THE BLACK MAN’S HAND

I was quite a young man when I first made the acquaintance of my Aunt

Bessie Arnot thirty years ago, and went to stay with her at Bank Villa.

I had never met any of my Scotch relations, and Aunt Bessie, my mother’s

sister, seldom left the Scotch country town in which I was to spend the

next three months as her guest. I had finished my last university term

and was preparing to read for the Bar, but my plans were brought to a

standstill when I strained my heart in a cross-country race, and

everything had to be left to slide in the general collapse which

followed. The doctor said that I must make up my mind to rest in some

bracing place.

My home was in the west of England, and to myself and my parents, who

were anything but rich, the question of where I was to go was a

difficult one to answer. But Aunt Bessie answered it by suggesting that

I should come to Bank Villa, where I should get strong lowland air and

the good feeding I needed. Accordingly I started for the north.

My aunt, who met me on the platform of Dalbraith station, was as much

unlike the hard-featured Scotswoman dear to fiction as any one could be.

Everything about her was soft. She had soft eyes, a soft voice, soft

grey hair, and she wore an old-fashioned Indian shawl with a pattern of

soft colours. She looked at me with interest as we walked together to

our destination, and I know now she was debating how much good food she

would be able to cram down my throat.

We took our way across a tiny public pleasure-ground and up a road

ascending between a long wall and the deep cleft laid out in nursery

gardens which formed the east boundary of the town.

“That’s Bank Villa,” said my aunt.

We were passing under a small stone house, standing on a mound which

rose so steeply on the other side of the wall that the villa was perched

above our heads. It was an odd-looking little place, and the horrid

word ‘villa’ had prepared me for something much more modern and less

solid. On that grey afternoon its dark stone and the dark shrubs

surrounding it were all merged into a damp monotone of colour, and its

laurel-bushes pressed close about it in a way that was both exclusive

and protecting; a few larger trees surrounded it too, and it had a slice

of garden which crowned the bank and ended in a double row of gnarled

apple-trees. It was dull, sombre, and early Victorian, and though it

stood at right angles to the road, and I could not see its windows, I

somehow knew by instinct that it had Venetian blinds. What made it

unusual was the small semi-classic porch supported by Paladian pillars

which sprang from its side, looking down upon us through the tree-stems.

It reminded me of a mausoleum I had once seen in a wood. I thought how

badly my aunt and her house matched each other.

I went upstairs early that night, for my journey had tired me more than

I fancied; but though my belongings were unpacked, and everything was in

order, I did not get into bed at once. My little room was very

comfortable, and I sat down at the fire, as tired people so often do, to

enjoy the pleasant feeling that my next move would land me between the

sheets.

Every room worth the name, whether ancient or modern, has its own

expression, its distinctive atmosphere. Some rooms are churlish, some

perky, some tragic, some stimulating. This one was both snug and

uncouth. There were hobs on either side of the grate, and the one window

was hidden by dull red moreen curtains. The armchair that I sat in would

fetch, nowadays, a large sum at a sale; and the bed, which stood along

the wall opposite to the window, had a chintz valance with a curious

pattern of pagodas. The paper had an old-fashioned, nondescript design

which I cannot now recall, but which wore the quiet, non-committal look

of everything else. The dominant suggestion of it all was an unobtrusive

secrecy.

There was only one object between the four walls which made any demand

on the occupant, and that was the picture hanging above the mantelpiece.

I lay back against my cushions, and, stretching out my feet into the

fender, began to study it.

It was a three-quarter-length portrait of two people--one of those

pictures which, as paintings, are neither very good nor very

bad--representing an Englishman and an Indian, whom, from his

subordinate position behind the former’s chair, I took to be his

servant. The master sat squarely on his red velvet seat, a stout,

hard-mouthed individual wearing the large neckcloth of the early

nineteenth century. His eyes were small and set close to a large nose,

and his gold watch-chain with a tassel of hanging seals stretched

ostentatiously across his stomach. He did not attract me much.

I knew enough about Indian types to guess that the native was a

Madrassi, for, though he was only moderately black, the cut of his smug

mutton-chop whiskers and his _pugaree_ bore the stamp of southernmost

India as I had seen it in the Indian picture-books, those delights of my

youth, which had been sent home by my mother’s father, who was a Madras

merchant. I wondered if it were he who hung on the wall, though the

portrait did not tally with any descriptions of him that I had heard.

The servant was gazing into space with his dull liquid eyes; his left

hand was on the back of his master’s chair, and he pointed with his

right to something outside the picture--something which ought to be

standing just where my bed stood. There was a heavy gold ring on his

little finger set with a red stone which was remarkable from its conical

shape, for it stood up in a high point above the setting. Behind the

pair was a landscape, with a white building that looked like a palace

and a row of palm-trees. The date on the painting was 1833.

Imaginative people, and those who are in a nervous state, have no

business to sit with their minds fixed on one particular object the last

thing at night. If my aunt had only known how late it was when I turned

my eyes from the couple in the tarnished gilt frame, she would, I verily

believe, have come up and put me to bed like a naughty child. I lay down

at last still thinking of them, and when I fell asleep I dreamed of them

all night--at least, I _think_ I dreamed, for I dropped into one of

those fitful slumbers in which one can never be quite sure whether one

sleeps or wakes. But all night long I saw the man and his Indian

servant. The strange thing was that the native no longer pointed to my

bed, but to the window.

I did not strike a light in my wakeful intervals, for I was wearied out

with the perpetual vision of the two men, and had no desire to give it

reality. But my over-wrought nerves strove the whole time with them, not

from the effort to banish them, but from a futile attempt to get the

black man’s hand into its right place. I slept normally towards morning,

and awoke saner and a little refreshed.

Aunt Bessie had forbidden me to appear at breakfast, and she came

upstairs, when her own was over, to see how many eggs she could make me

eat.

“That’s your great-uncle Julius,” she said, when I questioned her about

the picture.

“I’m glad he’s not my grandfather--nor your father, either,” said I,

“for I don’t like him.”

(By this time I was sure that I liked my aunt very much.)

“Well, I’m afraid nobody did,” replied she, laughing, “except, possibly,

that man standing behind him; and I only guess he did because he came

all the way back to Scotland with him. How he managed to exist in this

climate I cannot understand, and why, having served his master

faithfully for so many years, he ended as he did, I cannot imagine

either.”

“What did he do?” I asked eagerly.

“It’s a long story,” said Aunt Bessie, sitting down on the foot of my

bed. “Uncle Julius was my father’s eldest brother, and I can remember

him as an old man living in this house. He had gone out to India in his

youth and settled in Madras, as your grandfather did, where he made a

moderate fortune. I was dreadfully afraid of him as a child, I remember.

He had a loud voice, and used Indian expressions that I did not

understand, and that frightened me, because they seemed, to my childish

mind, like some sort of magic.”

“And did you know the black man?” I broke in.

“No,” said Aunt Bessie; “he was gone years before I knew Uncle Julius,

and the only person I ever saw when I came to visit him was a man called

Thomas, who seemed to be the sole creature about the place. I suppose

there was a cook somewhere, but the black man had done all the cooking

until he disappeared, for his master liked Indian dishes. Thomas was

short and strong, with a scar on his face, which went down from one

cheekbone, and gave his mouth the look of being caught up at one side in

a wry smile.

“When Uncle Julius came home for good, he brought a box with him

containing a number of very valuable pieces of Indian jewellery, which

he lodged in the bank here. They were not his own property, but had been

sent home with him by a friend who had died in India, to be kept until

the owner’s daughter should come of age. Once a year he used to take

them from the bank to examine them, for there were many unset stones,

which he would make a list of and count over, to satisfy himself that

all were safe. The black man was the only creature who knew where he

kept them; for Uncle Julius trusted him implicitly, and had been served

by him ever since he landed in India. People said that he never forgave

himself for this mistake; for one night, when the box was in his

possession here, the Indian disappeared, and the jewels with him.

“Your great-uncle was a sour, hard man, but he grew sourer and harder

still after the catastrophe. What humanity he had seemed to go from him;

his own honesty had been unimpeachable, and it was said that the blow

struck him to the earth. He shut himself up here and led the life of a

hermit. He would be seen pacing about under the windows, or sitting

alone in the porch looking down over the bank; and at last he did not

even do that, but took what exercise he needed among those old

apple-trees at the end of the garden, where he could be unseen from the

road. It was as though he loathed humanity after the treachery of the

person he had believed in. When he died at last--nearly eighty years

old--his brain was tormented by the idea that the black man was pointing

at him; for this was his room, and the picture hung where it does now.

You see that the hand is stretched this way.”

I made no comment as my aunt stopped, for a strange feeling was creeping

over my skin, which even the sunlight coming into the room did not

dispel. The hours in which I had tossed about, trying to get the hand of

that native into its proper place in the picture, came back to my mind

with an added horror. Uncle Julius had some justification for supposing

that he pointed at him; but why had I, to whom the Indian was nothing,

been perturbed half the night by the _contrary direction_ of his hand?

It was too foolish, too senseless, and I felt that I could not make

myself ridiculous by telling my aunt about it. Had I experienced no

thrill of misgiving, I might have spoken, but the goose-skin on my body

kept me silent from shame. Because I knew myself for a fool, I would not

share the knowledge.

I got up, dressed, and went out of the house as quickly as I could, for

I wanted to be away from any influence which could remind me of

great-uncle Julius and his servant; and, with the clean air, the

feverish notions of night slackened their hold upon me, and I was ready

to jeer at my own folly. It was not till bedtime that my uncomfortable

feelings came back.

There was nothing for it but to put away the silly creepiness which the

thought of that picture gave me, by force of will. Even could I have

brought myself to tell my aunt of my difficulty, there was no other room

in the little house that she could have given me. I must make up my mind

to live with the black man and his master for the next three months, and

the sooner I got used to doing so the better. When I turned in that

night, I avoided so much as glancing at the wall while I undressed.

Perhaps it was the fatigue of my sleepless hours, perhaps the day I had

spent out of doors--in any case, I slept without waking; and having, as

I thought, overcome my nerves and my nonsense, went to bed at night

without misgivings. For a whole week I ate, thought, and rested like the

healthy man I hoped soon to be again. But I took care to look at the

picture as little as possible.

I suppose by the end of that time I had grown over-bold. I was so much

stronger, and the walks I took daily were clearing the cobwebs out of my

head. I was able to catch the black man’s inscrutable eye unmoved, and

to look at his ring-decked hand as if it had never come between me and

sanity. It was in this comfortable mood that I put my head on the pillow

one night and blew out the candle.

It must have been some time after midnight when I awoke with a jerk. The

flickering firelight was dancing over the room, and something stronger

than myself directed my eyes to the wall above it. The native was

looking towards me as he always did, but my heart almost stopped as I

saw his hand.

_It was pointing straight at the window._

I say it to my shame, but, without another look in the fatal direction

of the mantelpiece, I fell back in bed and drew the clothes over my

head. One o’clock struck, and then two, and still I lay, with only a

little corner of the sheet turned back near my mouth that I might

breathe. I was damp all over, and, when at last I ventured to look out,

the fire had died down, and I felt easier, because there was nothing

now to reveal those figures on the wall to my terrified sight. A patch

of light shone in the window, but the moon, whose beam I took it to be,

would show me nothing through the moreen curtains. I turned over to

sleep, and sleep found me at last.

All next day I wrestled with my fears. I did not believe I had dreamed,

and could not convince the logical part of my brain that what I had seen

was reality. I had so far mastered myself as to determine to spend one

more night in my room before proclaiming myself a coward, and drawing

upon me the probable wrath and derision of my aunt. I bolstered up my

courage, and went to rest with a heart which beat like a drum until I

slept.

My next sensation was of waking with the same jerk, and, as I had

submerged my head in the sheets, as before, I peeped out from under

them. A light was again showing in a patch behind the curtains, and as I

saw it I remembered with a pang that the moon was but three days old,

and that I had seen the crescent go down in a rift of cloud as I walked

home in the dusk. God only knew what that light might be! It was not the

moon, because there was no moon there; and then the certainty rushed

over me that, whatever it was, the native was pointing _at it_.

They say that despair makes cowards brave, but, be that as it may, it is

suspense that makes many people mad. I struck a light and sat up.

One glance at the wall was enough to show me what I dreaded to see.

_He was pointing steadily at the curtains._

There is no terror so appalling as that of the unknown, and, driven by

it, I sprang out of bed, dashed to the window, and, pulling back the

heavy moreen, I saw that there were people in the garden.

The reality of the sight struck a new note, and almost banished the

superstitious miasma that had gathered round me. In tangible things I do

not think I was a coward, and the notion that some unprincipled persons

had broken into my aunt’s little domain stirred my wrath. I never

doubted that the light under the apple-trees was the light of a lantern,

though there was no lantern to be seen, and I merely took its presence

for granted. A mist seemed to have arisen at the bottom of the garden

which made a diffused shine through the apple-boughs, and their arms

stood in sharp angles above the luminous haze.

In the midst of it the figures of two men were working at something in

the ground. Their backs were towards me, and their movements made me

fancy they were digging; but I could form no idea of what manner of men

they were, nor could I be absolutely certain of their occupation. But,

in any case, they were after no good.

The reaction from my morbid fears caused by the sharp surprise was

strong on me, and I slipped on my shoes and an overcoat, and let myself

softly out of the house. The luminous haze under the trees was so steady

that I crept forward, guided by it and taking cover from bush to bush,

till I reached the grass on which the trees stood.

A heap lay on the ground, hidden under what looked like a table-cover,

and the strange suggestions of its outline made me pause, taken by a

sudden panic. I stood stock still, my knees shaking under me, and the

cry that rose from my lungs was choked in my throat.

The men were stooping, but they turned towards me. A deep hole yawned

behind them at the foot of the largest tree, and I saw that they worked

neither by torch nor by lantern, but by the subdued glare of the

luminous mist. It was by that light that I knew their faces. One was my

great-uncle Julius, and the other was a man scarred from lip to

cheekbone. I remember the sound of my own voice as I fell--nothing more.

When the world stirred next morning, I was picked up from the grass,

where I lay insensible, and carried in, and for many weeks I hung

between life and death. My aunt nursed me, and, when I was able to

speak, my one prayer to her was that she would have the ground under the

apple-trees dug up. It was the doctor who persuaded her to consent,

assuring her that her refusal might cost me my life.

Three feet under the surface they uncovered a man’s skeleton, which lay

with one hand outstretched. On the little finger was a gold ring with a

conical red stone.

* * * * *

I never went back to Bank Villa after my recovery, and five years later

Aunt Bessie died, leaving everything to me. All her possessions are mine

now, except that one portrait, which I burnt with my own hands, and Bank

Villa, which I sold. It was when the new owner was doing up the house

that he discovered a strange thing. Just behind the bed I had slept

in--Uncle Julius’s bed--they came upon a hole in the wall which had been

papered up.

It contained a box of Indian jewels.

PROVIDENCE AND COLONEL DORMER

Carborough is a small midland manufacturing town. It is hideous in

winter and very little better in summer, and goodness only knows why I

go on living in it. All the same, I _do_ know. It is because of

Theodora.

There seems to be a dull sameness in my reasons for doing things, for I

settled in Carborough originally so as to be near Harsdown, where my old

friend Musgrave lived. But Musgrave is dead now, and his widow, to whom

Harsdown was left for her life-time, has since married a very offensive

individual called Purefoy. Theodora is Musgrave’s daughter by his first

wife; for he, like that miserable snippet of femininity who survives

him, married twice. (I suppose I am rather free with my epithets, but,

after all, I am accountable to nobody, and I shall be seventy next

birthday.) Musgrave was a good deal younger than I.

It was I who taught Theodora to ride. How I used to trot her out on a

leading-rein in the old days at Harsdown, when she was a little creature

with flying hair! Poor Tom Musgrave had a long time of ill-health before

he died--the belated result of a wound he had brought back from

Afghanistan--and he used to lie smoking and watching us from his long

chair on the lawn, while the little girl and I galloped about the park

on the other side of the sunk fence. How proud he was of her! How, in

the name of fortune he could have ... but these whys and wherefores are

profitless, and I must go on to the main point.

I can’t bear to think of the life that Theodora led after her stepmother

remarried, and Major Middleton Purefoy came to swagger about in Tom’s

place--an undersized, red-faced man, with a bridge to his nose as thin

and sharp as a knife-blade. I dined there soon after they came back from

their wedding tour (Mrs. Purefoy made it impossible for me to refuse),

and I shall never forget him, nor the airs of possession that he gave

himself at dinner. Theodora sat at the table like a stone image, her

eyes on the tablecloth and her thick brows drawn into a line. She caught

my hand suddenly, as I said good night to her in the hall at the end of

the evening.

“Don’t, my dear--don’t,” I remember imploring her. “There are things you

must not say....”

(However, that’s some little time ago now, and, as I said before, I must

keep to the point.)

In the suburb of Carborough in which I live, there is a high

old-fashioned house enclosed by a wall; it stands not far up the road,

and the boughs of its beech-trees send a pleasant shadow over the way.

It is grey and severe-looking, and it has belonged for generations to

the Slaters, a family of mill-owners whose long connection with the

place has almost landed them in the ranks of county society. Some of the

county big-wigs know them, and some do not; and no one seems able to

understand why old Slater, who is rich enough to do as he pleases about

anything, has not bought or built himself a country place. But he seems

to have no idea of doing so; perhaps he doesn’t care to go far from his

business; perhaps he likes the solid old mansion in which his father and

his grandfather first saw the light.

Until a couple of years ago, when the events I am going to speak of

happened, I had never had a glimpse inside those walls, unless I chanced

to be passing when the gates opened to let some one out--old Slater on

his way to his office; his wife, a plain, charitable woman, in her heavy

landau; or Dick with his terrier. I was not acquainted with any member

of this family of three; and the independence with which they pursued

their way, seeking nothing of any man, and taking the world as they

found it, raised a barrier as thick as their own garden-wall between

them and inquisitive strangers, while it increased the respect with

which people spoke of them. Dick was the only one who came in for

criticism, for some called him a “lout”; principally, I suppose, because

he has a dark, heavy face, and is strongly built. Theodora, who is

nothing if not hasty, called him a “lout” too.

Tom Musgrave had a purely business acquaintance with old Slater, and

respected him as much as every one else did, also he had invested a

small sum in his mills; this money Theodora has inherited, and when, a

few years ago, some new arrangements were made in the business, it

became necessary for her, as a shareholder, to sign certain papers.

When it is a matter of business affairs, Theodora always comes to me--at

least, she did in those days--for nothing would have induced her to

consult Purefoy. Mrs. Purefoy was as ignorant and unpractical as a woman

can be, and any dealings with her would have meant interference from her

husband, who dominated every detail of the establishment at Harsdown,

like the beggar on horseback he was. So, one afternoon, when Theodora

rode in to see me (as she did about twice a week), she asked me if she

might interview old Slater at my house. Explanations were necessary, and

he was to show her the documents himself. But, when the time came, he

was called unexpectedly to London, and Dick, who had just returned from

Cambridge and was in the business with his father, took his place. Old

Slater was punctilious, and would no more have sent an underling to meet

the young lady than he would have flown.

Theodora and I sat on for some time after Dick had gone, discussing our

new acquaintance. As luncheon had been announced before his talk with

her came to an end, I had asked him to stay for it. Personally he did

not strike me as a “lout,” and I was a good deal interested to find that

he had been in the Cambridge boat. Theodora liked him too.

“It’s odd we should never have met him before,” she observed. “I have

seen his mother at garden-parties often enough.”

“I fancy he works pretty hard,” said I, “and he probably likes something

more energetic after being shut up in the office. I loathe

garden-parties.”

“So do I, Uncle Charles,” she said (she always calls me Uncle Charles).

“We’ll go to no more, shall we--you and I?”

She had slipped her arm through mine, and we were going down my front

door steps, for her horse was waiting outside.

“Never,” said I. “Come back soon, my dear.”

I watched her as she disappeared up the tree-bordered road. It was early

spring, and the leafless twigs were like pencilling against the pure

clearness of the declining afternoon. A blackbird, who was sitting on a

bough, was trying his voice with a view to the future, and a little ring

of purple crocuses had come up by my gate. Everything looked new and

interesting, as it is apt suddenly to do when the earth is on the verge

of re-awakening; and Vanity, Theodora’s horse, was shaking his head and

sidling a little as he went along. Perhaps things looked interesting to

him too.

I think, after myself, that Vanity was the creature Theodora loved best

in the world. Poor Tom had given him to her only a month before his

death. Also, he was three-parts thoroughbred, had a mouth like silk, and

the best manners in the world. He was a dark bay with black points.

Any pleasure she had in her life at home she owed to Vanity; and I owed

a good deal to him too, for without him I should never have been able

to see as much of her as I did. Mrs. Purefoy hated me, and I abominated

Purefoy, and certainly neither of them would have done anything towards

facilitating our meetings. Besides which, there would probably have been

no means of transport; for Purefoy, who seemed to have a genius for

making economies with other people’s money, had cut down the stable in

the most drastic manner. His own steed was a tricycle. I suppose he felt

safe on it.

Spring broke into summer and things jogged on in the usual way. Theodora

came and went, and it struck me, as time passed by, that omnipresence,

as a quality, seemed to be growing upon Dick Slater. Scarcely a day

passed but I ran against him somewhere, and the proximity in which our

respective houses stood appeared hardly to furnish a satisfactory

explanation, considering the years we had lived within a stone’s-throw

of each other without its happening once in a blue moon. The solution

dawned upon me one afternoon, as I was going home rather later than

usual from my walk, and saw him coming to meet me. Theodora was in

front, riding slowly along the road towards my house. In a moment they

had met, and, though she did not stop, it was easy to guess by Dick’s

face that that greeting had been the event of his day. He did not

observe me till we passed each other in a few paces. Then he turned

scarlet.

I was rather annoyed, but it was some time before I said anything to the

girl. I knew that they had met a couple of times since their

introduction in my house--once at a horse-show, and once when they found

themselves in the same railway carriage coming from London; and Theodora

admitted that she very seldom came into Carborough without catching

sight of him. All the same, I treated the matter as a huge joke, and

chaffed her unmercifully about it. But one day the thunderbolt fell.

It was a soft autumn morning, and, as I had been fool enough to sit up

the night before into the small hours, I had got up very late, and I was

tying my tie when the parlourmaid informed me from the other side of the

door that Miss Musgrave was in the sitting-room. I hurried downstairs,

wondering what could possibly have brought her at such an hour, and as I

entered the room she ran to meet me like a hurricane.

“My dear child,” said I, “what on earth is the matter?”

“Oh! Uncle Charles! Uncle Charles!” she cried, “I have hardly slept a

wink all night--I couldn’t rest till I had come to tell you! Oh! you

will be so angry--I have got into _such_ a scrape, and you must get me

out!”

“But what----”

“I didn’t mean it,” she broke in, “indeed, I never, _never_ meant it!

But he----”

“_He?_” I shouted--“who? What is it? Have you had a row with Major

Purefoy?”

“It was Mr. Slater!” cried Theodora--“Dick Slater! How could he?--how

could he? Oh, what a fool I have been!”

I was staggered.

I took her by the arm and forced her to sit down. She was on the verge

of tears.

I got the story from her at last. I cannot give it in the incoherent

torrent of her words, and I must do the best I can to put it into

consecutive form. Looking back calmly now, I must admit that I was a

good deal disturbed.

This is what had happened.

Behind the High Street of Carborough, and connected with it by a long,

covered-in alley, there was a certain tumbledown colony of houses called

‘Gask’s Row,’ which was inhabited (it is gone now) by a few families of

the very poorest class. A faint scent of cabbages pervaded it, emanating

from over the battered wooden palings, for the spot was the site of an

old market-garden which had been sold for building purposes during the

early commercial growth of the town, and the walls of the surrounding

houses seemed to stare down in contempt on this forlorn remnant of a

less ambitious era. A thriving publican named Gask was the owner of the

place.

Among the dwellers in Gask’s Row was an old widow-woman, whose crippled

son precariously supported both her and himself by basket-making.

Theodora had been interested in the pair for some time, and often, when

she had come to see me, she would ride on into the High Street, and

having left Vanity at the stables of the Crown Hotel, disappear down

Gask’s Alley to visit her friends; and once or twice--so I discovered

afterwards--she had come face to face with Dick as she emerged again,

and he had fetched her horse and put her into the saddle.

Well, on the previous day she had knocked at the widow’s door to find a

dismal scene awaiting her. It was the usual story. The old woman’s rent

was long overdue, and Gask had sent the day before to tell her that if

it was not forthcoming in twenty-four hours he would put her and her son

into the street. There was one-and-twopence in the house, and the debt

amounted to nearly four pounds.

Theodora had not been to the cottage for some time, and it is probable

that, had she gone there every day, she would have heard nothing of

their trouble from either mother or son. At four o’clock Gask’s man was

to return.

The girl put her hand in her pocket. The little she found there was not

worth counting, and, at that moment, she owed every penny of her

quarter’s money; for Vanity’s keep ran away with a good deal of it, as

Major Purefoy saw to it that he was not groomed for nothing. She was

dismayed. The widow sat, with her hands clasped on her knee, waiting for

the inevitable as best she might, and Jim, her son, was collecting their

trumpery possessions into a heap. It was past a quarter to three and

Gask’s man might come at any minute, he said. The cripple listened for

his step with trepidation, for the man was a rough customer, and there

had been rough times with him on the previous day. He entreated Theodora

to go. There was no good in her staying.

She rushed out of the house blinded by her own tears, and, coming up the

alley, she met Gask’s man, very drunk.

Her heart smote her as she saw his condition and thought of those two

poor creatures waiting for him in the cottage.

“Go back!” she exclaimed, “it is not time yet!”

For answer he thrust heavily past her.

“Stop! Stop!” she called after him, between her sobs.

But he took no heed. She turned away in despair, and half-way up the

dark passage she nearly ran into Dick Slater’s arms.

“What is it? Oh, what has that brute been saying to you?” cried he, as

his eyes fell upon her face. “I saw him turn in here, and I came because

I was afraid you might meet him.”

She was struggling with her tears.

“What has he done? What has he done?” reiterated the young man angrily.

“Let me go after him--I’ll teach him to frighten you like that!”

“No, no--you don’t understand!” cried Theodora, clinging to his arm;

“it’s not that--it’s nothing to do with me!”

And then she poured out the whole story.

Dick is a much more excitable man than he looks, and he was head over

heels in love, and maddened, no doubt, by her touch. And her distress, I

suppose, must have been the last straw.

“Don’t, don’t be so unhappy,” he burst out, as she ended; “and for

Heaven’s sake don’t cry. Don’t you know that I would do anything in the

whole world for you? Only let me help them, and let me do it for your

sake! I will make everything right, if you will only love me a little;

there is nothing on this earth I will not do. Say that I may.”

At this moment a sound fell upon Theodora’s ear. It was the town clock

in the High Street striking four. She lost her head utterly.

“Oh, yes, yes--anything! if you will only go!” she cried. “Oh, please,

please, stop him before it’s too late--now--at once! Go, and I will stay

here till you come back. Oh, thank goodness you are here!”

“Go and wait for me at the Library,” said Dick very quietly. “I will

settle everything and bring your horse to you there.”

And, with that, he disappeared down the squalid alley.

It is to be hoped that Jim and his mother slept peacefully that night in

their hovel; but Theodora, in her bed at Harsdown, was in a very

different plight. Dick had returned to her some time later, and, though

he made no allusion to what had passed between them in Gask’s Alley, and

had merely told her that all was made straight with the landlord, she

had recognised vividly that he had not forgotten it, and, as he put her

on Vanity’s back, there came over her the realisation of what she had

done. He did not so much as speak of their next meeting--so she told me

afterwards--but, for all that, she recognised what she had let herself

in for. Out of her own mouth she had condemned herself, and he had every

right to hold her to her words. The idea was terrific.

It makes me laugh now, to look back and see myself and Theodora sitting,

one at either side of my untouched breakfast-table, with the

eggs-and-bacon growing cold between us. But I did not laugh then. I was

very angry with Dick, and angry with her, too.

I made her drink some coffee, and, when breakfast was done, we went into

my study.

“I suppose I shall have to write to him,” I said, as I lit my pipe.

We sat down to concoct the letter. Theodora was humble and penitent

enough to disarm an ogre, but I was not going to be mollified. I was

very stern with her.

“I really don’t know _what_ I said to him, Uncle Charles,” protested

she, as I interrogated her, pen in hand. “I was in such a state of mind

that I hardly knew what I was doing. If you had only seen that horrible

drunken fellow, Uncle Charles, you would understand--I know you would. I

don’t even remember whether I promised anything. I only know that he

said he’d do it for my sake, and I begged him to help. It’s all too

dreadful!” wailed Theodora, looking at me with miserable, beautiful

eyes. I suppose she looked at Dick like that.

We had got no further when Maria, the parlourmaid, brought in a note for

her. I had never seen the handwriting before, but, all the same, we both

knew by instinct that it came from the house up the road. She read it,

and then passed it to me.

“DEAR MISS MUSGRAVE [it began],--

“I know you are at Colonel Dormer’s, so I am sending this over by

hand. I am writing to tell you that I see now how badly I behaved

yesterday, and to ask your forgiveness for it. I have no excuse to

offer for letting my feelings run away with me as I did, and taking

such unpardonable advantage of your distress. But I only spoke the

truth, and I am not going to take back one word of it. What I want

to assure you is that anything you said in your agitation shall be

as if it had never been spoken. If you will do me one kindness, to

show that you have forgiven me, you will let me help that woman

permanently.

“I am,

“Very truly yours,

“R. SLATER.”

“Well,” began Theodora, when I had finished reading, “what do you think

of it, Uncle Charles?”

“What do I think of it?” said I. “There’s only one thing to think of it.

The boy’s a gentleman. All the same, the next time you meet him, you had

better remember that he’s a man too!”

But there was no next time for several months to come, for winter was

soon upon us, and Theodora went away to pay a couple of visits. I met

Dick occasionally when I was out, and, when I did, I made a point of

speaking to him. Once I asked him to luncheon, and I was certain that he

guessed how much I knew by the steady way in which his eyes met mine

when Theodora’s name was mentioned. “I don’t care if you _do_ know,”

they said. I must say I liked him.

It was when Theodora came back from her visits that a thing happened

which put the affair of Dick Slater into the background. I was reading

one afternoon by the fire when she walked in, rather to my surprise,

for, though I knew she was due back at Harsdown that day, I did not

expect her to look in so soon. She wore a long coat, and a little

leather bag was in her hand.

“Why, you’ve come straight from the station,” I remarked, as I noticed

it.

She shook her head, and looked at me rather strangely; and my mind went

back to that other time when she had suddenly rushed in.

“Tell me,” was all I could say. “Surely it’s not Dick Slater this time!”

“No,” she answered--“it’s worse. I’m never going home again.”

I stared.

“But, my dear child, what are you going to do?” I exclaimed. “What in

Heaven’s name----”

“I’m coming here,” she announced. “Uncle Charles, you must take me

in--you will, won’t you? If not, of course I can go to the Crown----”

“Don’t talk nonsense about the Crown,” I said sharply. “Really,

Theodora, you are too silly.”

It seemed she had arrived at home before luncheon, and, when that meal

was over, she was told that Major Purefoy would be glad to speak to her

in the smoking-room. It was not often he desired her company, and she

opened the door, with an apprehension of coming trouble. The fellow was

sitting at his writing-table with a little pile of money and notes

before him. He plunged into his subject at once. There were great

retrenchments necessary at Harsdown, he said; he and his wife had been

looking very carefully into things since she went away, and they had

come to the decision that expenses must be cut down yet further in the

stable. They meant to keep no more horses; nothing but a pony to draw

the mowing-machine and go in the message-cart.

Theodora told me that the suspicion of what he had done had entered her

mind with his first words, and that his nervousness as he approached

the point was not needed to make her sure of what was coming. She knew

that when she went to the stables she would find Vanity’s box empty. She

stood looking at him, dumb, as he finished his speech.

“But,” he concluded, “as you paid for his keep and his share of my

groom’s attention (though nothing towards his actual stabling), I have

decided that it is right to give you the whole of the price he fetched

from the dealer. Here it is.”

And he pushed the pile of notes and sovereigns towards her.

“You have sold my horse!” cried she, “you have sold my father’s last

present to me! How dared you do such a thing?”

“I have given you my reasons,” said Major Purefoy.

And Theodora gathered the whole heap of money into her hand and threw it

in his face.

“Never, never, _never_ will I go back!” she said, throwing out her

hands. “You needn’t ask me, Uncle Charles.”

“My dear, I’m not going to,” said I.

And so Theodora and I set up house together.

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and my age gave me the

advantage of being able to offer her a home. We were extremely happy

too--at least, I know I was--and all went well until the biting days of

March set in, and I took to my bed and lay at death’s door with double

pneumonia.

I was nearly sixty-seven, and at sixty-seven pneumonia is no joke; but,

nevertheless, Theodora and a hospital nurse managed between them to drag

me from that uncomfortable spot on the borderland of the next world back

into my old place in this one. And the experience, as I recovered by

slow steps, brought me up short against a fact which both she and I

seemed to have overlooked; and I realised that my fag-end of a life was

indeed a frail thing to stand between a highly impulsive and very

good-looking young woman and the world. She had cut herself adrift from

the Purefoys, and, though she had a good many friends, there was not one

relation who could be expected to give her a home when my time should

come. Her mother had been an only child; Tom Musgrave’s one sister was

married to an Australian, and his surviving brother--the man to inherit

Harsdown after Mrs. Purefoy’s death--was a bachelor, who spent his life

in exploring Africa.

The thought of all this sat on my conscience like a load and got between

me and my rest at night; I had abetted the girl in leaving her home,

and, instead of it, I had provided her with a makeshift. Her high

spirit, her very moderate means, her rashness, her beauty, her generous

heart--all these stood round me like a row of accusers, like so many

possibilities of destruction. She was only twenty-six; old enough,

perhaps, to take care of herself ... perhaps not....

When I had got so far, I had a relapse, and Theodora and the nurse fell

to again in their uphill fight with the enemy. Then, having weighed many

things over and over again in my mind, I took my final resolution; and

on the very first day on which my two dragons consented to leave me

alone, I induced them both to go out for a walk. Then I sent for Dick

Slater.

We sat together for nearly an hour, he and I. Perhaps I did an

unwarrantable thing; perhaps I was clumsy, perhaps I was too out-spoken.

All the same, it did not seem to offend Dick. He sat straight and stiff

in his chair over against mine, like a schoolboy being lectured, and

with that rather disconcerting way he has of looking straight into one’s

eyes. He said but little, but it was pretty easy to see what he felt. I

gave him some fatherly advice, and I told him the story of Vanity. I

wished Purefoy had been in the room to see him, though it would hardly

have been a safe place for the little red-faced man.

“I can never thank you enough, sir,” said Dick, as he took up his hat.

“It isn’t a matter of thanks,” I rejoined, “it’s a matter of

transferring my responsibilities.”

“Call it what you like,” he answered, “so long as the result’s the

same.”

When I heard Theodora’s step in the hall, I felt like a traitor, and

when she found out that he had been with me she was furious.

“It was simply shameful of Maria to let him in,” she exclaimed, “and I

shall tell her so.”

I sat still, and prayed that Maria would not give me away.

But Maria is Maria (which is high praise), and the nurse said that the

visitor had done me good--as, indeed, he had--so Theodora’s wrath

melted; for it was no feeling against the young man which worried her,

but her fears for me. She had spoken to him once or twice since the

autumn, for she had felt--and rightly, I thought--that absolute

avoidance of him would be undignified after his letter. She did not want

him to think she was afraid of him.

As I grew stronger, my anxieties faded a little, and, reflecting on what

I had done when in their grip, I told myself that, in spite of my age, I

was as rash as Theodora herself. The part I had pledged myself to play

struck me as a much more difficult one than I had bargained for, and it

was with a feeling not much short of dismay that I attacked my companion

one evening after dinner. The nurse had gone and we were settling into

our old ways again.

“Don’t you think, my dear,” I began--and to my guilty mind my voice

seemed to vibrate with hypocrisy--“that we might ask young Slater to

dine one day? Maria has told me how good he was in coming to inquire for

me when I was ill. You don’t dislike him, do you--I mean, not to that

extent?”

“I don’t dislike him at all,” said she.

“And you aren’t afraid of him, surely, Theodora?”

“Afraid of him? Heavens, no!”

She tossed her head.

“Ask him to-morrow, if you like,” she said, with her chin in the air.

I did, and he came. After dinner I fell asleep.

At eleven o’clock I woke. A few minutes earlier Dick had taken his

leave; he would not disturb Colonel Dormer, he said, and he only hoped

he had not tired him. As a matter of fact, I _was_ rather tired, because

keeping in one position with one’s eyes shut for any length of time is a

strain. When I opened them, Theodora was standing with her foot on the

fender, gazing into the fire. She would have looked like a white statue

if her face had not been a little flushed. She made Dick’s excuses; she

had let him out quietly, so as not to awake me, she said.

I expressed shame for my rudeness, but she was not attentive. Suddenly

she faced round on me.

“Do you know where Vanity is?” she asked.

By this time I really was rather sleepy, and, I suppose, off my guard.

“I know,” I murmured--“I heard.”

“_What?_” cried she.

“That dealer was buying for Slater--I heard it ever so long ago,” I

exclaimed, terrified back into my wits. (Heaven forgive me for the lie!)

We went upstairs in silence.

A couple of days later a note came for me:

“DEAR COL. DORMER,

“I was telling Miss Musgrave the other night that I have got her

horse. So far, I have kept him out at Barnes’s Inn Farm, but now he

is here. There is a lot of business at the office this week and I

cannot use him for the next few days. Do you think she would care

for a ride? If so, a line to me will bring him at any hour she

likes. May I have an answer?

“Very truly yours,

“R. SLATER.”

Evidently I was not the only subtle person to be reckoned with.

Theodora was looking at me with sparkling eyes.

“Do you think I might?” she asked breathlessly.

She rode next day, and the day after, and the day after that; and on the

last occasion Dick came to fetch the horse himself; his groom was busy,

it appeared. As he led Vanity up a side road to the house behind the

walls, he kissed the beast’s neck. I know that, because an acquaintance

of mine was looking out of a back window and saw him do it. The

acquaintance was an old lady who was a member of the Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and she was much touched by the

incident.

“And I always thought he was such a lout,” she added irrelevantly, when

she told me.

Evidently that old idea was to die hard.

After this, we saw a good deal of him. What happened to his business in

those days I can’t imagine and have never asked; but I fancy now that

old Slater was in the secret, and gave his son his head.

But the climax did not come until May brought the warm weather which was

health to me; and I was going up my front door-steps one evening, when

the door opened, and Dick came rushing out. I caught him by the sleeve.

There was that in his expression which made me hurry into the

sitting-room. Theodora was there alone; but she did not look as if she

had been alone long.

“Did you meet him?” she said, coming up to me. “I have promised to marry

him. Oh, Uncle Charles, you _don’t know_ how good he is!”

I really could not help smiling; for I had known it perhaps longer than

she had. But it would have been too ungenerous to say so then.

And that is two years ago, and I am smiling still.

For we did not do so badly for Theodora--Providence and I.

THE WYTHAN TREE

The little holding of Wern Farm sat above one of those brook-threaded

dingles that run down from the Black Mountains to disappear in the

levels by the Wye; about half-way between valley and hill, it made an

unpretentious patch in the steep green fields which fell to the wooded

cleft. So modest a place was it that the low dwelling-house was a mere

thatched cottage, whose whitewashed wall only topped the bank of the

lane at its side by a few feet, showing a row of small windows sunk deep

into the thickness of the stone. The place had an odd personality, and a

stranger, condemned to climb mountainwards through the mud of the sunken

lane, might, with the least touch of imagination, hurry by, lest some

half-sinister face should peer at him from behind the dead-looking panes

on a level with his own.

A sturdy horse-chestnut stood just inside the gate, shadowing the small

yard, and exhibiting, in the smooth green bark of its trunk, the

initials of a couple of generations of labouring people. The

farm-buildings huddled together, low and dark; in the doorways of barn

and beast-house the fowls strolled, pecking, or sat in reserved-looking

groups to protest under their breath against the world, after the manner

of their kind.

Inside the house, an elderly woman was tending the hearth--a hot

business at the moment--for the late spring afternoon was warm. She was

a strong-featured body, with tightly banded hair, as grey as the little

knitted cross-over shawl which she wore, summer and winter alike. Lines

of temper framed a mouth already sunken by the loss of her teeth, and

her expression was the meanly preoccupied one of a person whose mental

outlook is definitely sordid. That is to say, that, in spite of her

fifty-four years, she was a woman to whom life had failed to teach

anything.

Jane Lewis had been her husband’s second wife and his heaviest trial;

she was now a widow of some dozen years’ standing, a fact which had

shifted the trial from the man’s shoulders to those of his son by his

first marriage.

No servant stayed long at the farm. The men might endure for a few

months under her rule before they shook the dust from their feet; but

the women, more exposed to her influence, went down the hill in a

never-ending procession; by the time the last one had departed, the

place had acquired such a reputation as prevented the appearance of a

successor. In this strait, Mrs. Lewis bethought her of an orphan

relation, who, in return for her living, might fill the gap. The idea

pleased her, as she foresaw that the girl’s dependence would be a weapon

in her hands in case of difficulties; and, as for her food and clothing,

she told herself, with a smile, that their cost should be an economy on

the wages of a hired servant. So the matter was settled and Zillah came.

It was now six and a half years since the girl had opened the gate by

the chestnut-tree, and six since, her few trumpery possessions in her

hand, she had fled valley-wards through the darkness. The world, she

thought, must be, at least, no worse a place than the one enclosed by

the four walls she had just left.

The only thing she regretted was Stephen--Stephen who, by befriending

her, had brought about the crisis. Zillah was proud and clean in body

and soul; she ran, panting, longing to put the span of the earth between

her and the echoes of hateful abuse still ringing in her ears. She loved

Stephen, and she knew that she should never see him again. When she

reached the high-road, she sat down by the milestone and cried as though

her heart would break, for he was gone to Abergavenny, on the other side

of the mountain, and when he returned, in a week, with the heifer he had

ridden away to buy, it would be too late for him to find her. Before

leaving, he had given her a pair of shoes he had bought her at Llangarth

fair. He was a generous fellow, and the sight of her little cold toes

peeping through the worn footgear that was all she possessed had been

more than he could bear. It was because of Jane’s discovery of his gift

that she was sitting by the milestone. Zillah dried her eyes at last,

rose, and having nothing to gain in one direction more than another,

turned to her left, at random, with her face towards the border of

Wales.

* * * * *