Except to Sir Joseph, Mrs. Delarayne had revealed nothing about the
nature of her journey to Ashbury to any member of the party at
Brineweald. Lord Henry's visit was to be a surprise. She wished to
safeguard Cleopatra from all suspicion that his arrival that evening
might be connected with her indisposition, and contented herself with
assuring her child that, having heard that he was overworked and very
much run down, she had gone over to him in order to urge him to take a
holiday. She merely hoped, she said, that he would be able to follow her
advice and come to Brineweald.
The afternoon was spent by the whole of the two households in paying a
visit to Canterbury. Under Mrs. Delarayne's vigilant eye, Leonetta and
Denis Malster had therefore been very discreet, and as the cars returned
in the evening, Sir Joseph was firmly of the opinion that his idol had,
with her customary art, slightly exaggerated the attentions which his
private secretary was paying to her younger daughter.
Dinner at Brineweald Park was over, the younger people, except
Cleopatra, who had gone to bed, had dispersed themselves over the
grounds as usual and Mrs. Delarayne, Miss Mallowcoid, and Sir Joseph
were sitting on the terrace finishing their coffee, when Sir Joseph's
head chauffeur was seen walking towards the steps with his junior,
bearing Lord Henry's Gladstone bag and suit-case.
"Where did you leave Lord Henry?" Mrs. Delarayne cried.
"He told me to drive straight to the garage, ma'am," replied the man,
"and bring the luggage here by hand."
"Yes," Sir Joseph exclaimed, in the bullying tones he usually adopted
with his servants; "but can't you answer a question? Where did you leave
his lordship?"
"He left the car at the Brineweald Gate," the man answered, "and said he
would take a walk in the grounds, sir."
"Oh, that's all right!" Mrs. Delarayne remarked, and the men moved on
with their load.
It was twilight. The lady scanned the stretch of park that lay before
her, and discovering no sign of life, turned to Sir Joseph.
"I hope he will find his way," she said.
"Couldn't possibly help it, I should have thought," snapped Miss
Mallowcoid.
"Oh, but he's so tiresome sometimes," replied the widow. "He's so
incorrigibly absent-minded."
Brineweald Park was one of the largest in the whole of the West Kent
districts. Its confines stretched to the straggling outskirts of four
villages: Brineweald to the south-west, Hedlinge to the north,
Headstone to the east, and Sandlewood to the south-east. Paths cutting
diagonally through the Park, at a respectful distance from the house,
joined all these outlying places one to another, and the inhabitants of
all four villages were allowed a right of way, provided they conducted
themselves with due propriety and did no damage. It was a favourite
recreation ground for the children of the locality, but it was so vast
that it was but seldom a stranger was ever encountered in the grounds.
The house, which was a large white building, three stories high, of
Georgian design, stood on an eminence overlooking the whole
country-side; and to the south a series of terraced lawns flanked by
steps descended as far as the broad drive leading to the Brineweald
Gate.
A large wild and wooded tract lay in the direction of Sandlewood, where
Sir Joseph preserved his game, and where there were rabbits in
abundance; while joining Brineweald to Hedlinge there was a small
fast-running stream, called the Sprigg, which at certain points in its
course, fell in picturesque cascades, surmounted by rockeries and
ornamental foot-bridges. In the neighbourhood of these, on either bank,
Sir Joseph had also built seats and bowers, and in the summer these
resting-places were the coolest in the whole park.
It was towards one of these cascades that, on the evening in question,
Lord Henry idly wandered. The vast and peaceful expanse of the grounds
delighted him, and knowing the pertinacity and loquacity of his fair
admirer, he wished to have both his walk and his first view of his new
abode alone, before presenting himself at the house.
Dimly in the gathering dusk, he discerned the outline of a rustic
bridge, and guided by the sound of plashing waters, directed his
footsteps towards it. Then above the murmur of the stream he heard the
ripple of a girl's ecstatic laughter, followed by what appeared to be
high words between two men, and then more laughter, followed by more
high words.
There was evidently a party round the bridge, and they seemed to be
engaged in a fairly acrimonious discussion. He distinctly heard the
words, Inner Light, Incandescence, Spiritualism, God-head, First Cause.
The argument was evidently religious, and it was conducted chiefly by
the men, with the rest of the party as audience and occasional chorus.
He approached stealthily. A big dark shadow against the moonlit sky
gradually assumed definition on the other side of the stream. And from
the depths of that shadow came the voices to which he had been
listening.
As he drew nearer, he recognised the shape of a bower in the mass of
shadow he had seen, and within it vaguely guessed the form of human
faces. It was evidently a large party. He could distinguish at least
half-a-dozen different voices.
He stepped on to the bridge, and leant against the rail. There was a
momentary pause in the discussion in the bower. Evidently its occupants
were taking stock of him. The subject of their argument, however,
interested him, and he stood motionless, hoping they would resume. He
could have represented but a shadow to them, even though the steadily
waxing light of the moon fell directly upon his head and shoulders; and
he rightly divined that, as other people besides the inhabitants of
Brineweald Park would probably enjoy the right of using the grounds,
they could not possibly tell who he was.
Gradually the discussion was resumed.
"What you don't seem to see," said a voice, which to Lord Henry appeared
to reveal the arrogance of its owner, "is that your Inner Light is but a
vague and vapid abstraction, a mere whiff of the whisky bottle, but not
the whisky itself."
Here followed a delighted feminine laugh, full of music and malice.
"And how do you hope," continued the arrogant voice, "ever to be able to
build anything upon a vaporous abstraction? What authority can a spook
have? What appeal to love, to fear, to reverence, to worship?"
"Come to bed, Gerald!" said a rather sweet feminine voice, which was
half-drowned in the general laughter it seemed to provoke. "These
discussions never lead to anything, and I'm sick of them. They only
disturb your sleep."
"Half a minute, Mrs. Tribe," said another man's voice, which Lord Henry
had not heard before, "we have reached an interesting point here. Do let
us just settle that!"
"But my husband can only feel these things," continued the soft sweet
female voice, "he cannot argue about them. You only laugh at him, so
what's the good?"
"I'm not laughing, am I?" said the arrogant voice.
"No, but you make others laugh," persisted the soft sweet voice.
"Leave them to me," interposed a weak male voice, which Lord Henry
recognised immediately as that of the Incandescent Gerald. And there was
a note so pathetic in the feeble strains of it, that the listener could
not help thinking of a hare being overtaken by harriers.
"How can you invite the enlightened nineteenth century to accept the
idea of a godhead that is anything else than an abstraction?" continued
the weak male voice. "Why, to personify your god is to limit him. How
can a god be limited?"
"Bravo, old Tribe!" cried a boy's voice, "that's a jolly good point. Now
what have you got to say to that, Malster?"
"To understand him at all," replied the arrogant voice, which Lord Henry
now concluded must be Denis Malster's, "is in any case to limit him to
the compass of your understanding, even if that can only grasp a monkey
on a stick; so why not proceed to personal limitations at once? It
makes things much easier for the bulk of humanity, and it also makes
love and fear, and therefore morality possible. Without a personal god
you feel as if you are dealing only with a natural element, or natural
law. But who minds if the sea watched him while he picks his neighbour's
pocket? Who cares that the sky is overhearing him when he courts and
kisses his neighbour's wife?"
The remark provoked wild outbursts of laughter, followed by the weak
voice, which said, "Don't, Agnes, don't fidget! Leave my coat-sleeve
alone!"
Lord Henry having formed a fairly accurate estimate of the situation,
and realising that little Mrs. Tribe was evidently miserable, felt he
could endure it no longer. In any case Malster was having it too much
his own way with his chorus of sympathetic females, and so, turning
towards the group in the bower, the young nobleman advanced a few paces
towards them.
"Forgive me," he began, "but the subject of your discussion, which I
could scarcely help overhearing, interests me enormously. Might I be
allowed to join in it too?"
Nobody recognised him. From the refined, gentle manner of his speech, he
might have been one of the local vicars taking a stroll. Only Malster
stirred, as if he felt there was something oddly familiar about the
speaker, but seeing that he had no reason to suppose that Lord Henry was
anywhere within twenty miles of the place, the identity of the stranger
did not immediately occur to him. There was a pause, and then Malster
said:
"Move up a bit, Leo! Yes, certainly, sir; we should be glad if you
would."
"I'm tired," said the sweet soft female voice, which Lord Henry, as he
sat down, realised that he had rightly ascribed to Mrs. Tribe, "I want
to go indoors."
"One moment," said the weak voice, which had now become more than
usually agitated.
"To begin with," Lord Henry said, "I should like to join issue most
violently with the gentleman who has been arguing in favour of a
personal god. Nothing,--in the last two centuries has been more fatal to
Europe and humanity than this."
There was a general movement as if the whole party wished to draw closer
to the speaker, and Stephen Fearwell, who was leaning against one of the
outside uprights of the bower, swung round until his head was well
inside the shelter.
"Good man!" he ejaculated enthusiastically, as he performed this
movement. And Lord Henry recognised his voice as that of the boy who had
previously endeavoured to support Gerald Tribe. It was evident that he
could feel no deep concern about the issue. He merely wanted Gerald
Tribe to get an innings for once against Malster.
"You see, as the supporter of a personal god has very truly pointed
out," continued Lord Henry, "the morality of any race, or nation, or
group of nations, who believe in a personal god, comes ultimately to
derive its authority from the will of that personal god."
"Quite so!" said Denis in the same arrogant tone he had used all the
time.
"Yes, but with what result?" Lord Henry demanded.
"With the result--" began the Incandescent Gerald.
"Leave it to him, you silly!" whispered the soft, sweet, female voice
with some eagerness. It was clear that Mrs. Tribe had suddenly changed
her mind about going to bed.
"With the result," continued Lord Henry emphatically, "that the moment
the belief in the personal god declines, as on analysis it must decline,
morality declines with it. For morality in such cases is bound up, as
you say, with the belief in a personal god. Civilisation, in fact, is
once again on the rocks and society is no longer safe--why? Because by
making your moral code issue from the lips of your personal god, it has
become so much waste paper now that your personal god is beginning to be
felt as an absurdity. Thus in a religion with a personal god, heresy
always kills two birds with one stone. But once the bird morality is
killed, it takes a new civilisation and a new culture to hatch another
one. Man can survive without a belief in a personal god; he cannot
survive without a morality."
"But a personal god," objected Denis, "is omniscient, all-seeing. He is
assumed to know all men's actions, and they dare not do wrong precisely
because they know he is watching them. That surely is the best safeguard
to decent conduct; it is in fact the meaning of conscience!"
"Yes, I was coming to that point," said Lord Henry gravely, "and what is
the outcome of the thousands of years of belief in this omniscient god,
who can see all men's action? Why, sir, whoever you are," Lord Henry
exclaimed, his voice swelling with indignation, "the result is that
to-day things have come to such a pass that it is scarcely possible to
trust one man or woman in the whole of these islands to do the right
thing against their own interests, when your god, and your god alone is
their witness. That is the state to which your belief in an omniscient
personal god has reduced us, and you know that what I say is true."
The Incandescent Gerald was so jubilant that he wished to laugh
outright; but his keen eager wife prevented him. She had no wish to save
the feelings of her husband's tormentor, but she was too much fascinated
and spellbound by what she had been able to divine of Lord Henry's
personality to brook the coarse interruption. Leonetta and Vanessa were
beginning to be conscious of this feeling too, and stared eagerly
through the darkness to try to catch a glimpse of the powerful stranger.
"People have got so used to violating even the most elementary
principles of savage morality," continued Lord Henry, "without the
thunder of your almighty descending on their heads, that there is
scarcely a man or woman in Europe to-day who really fears your god as
their only witness, who really troubles about your god as their only
witness, or who even gives him a passing thought, when they stand
absolutely alone before the temptation to perpetrate some mean,
despicable or dishonourable action."
Lord Henry was at his best. His words were uttered with extreme
precision, his manner was emphatic and passionate, and his mysterious
presence in the party only magnified the impression that these
characteristics made upon his listeners.
"May I ask who you are?" Denis Malster demanded, leaning forward in the
darkness.
"Certainly," replied Lord Henry suavely. "I am Lord Henry Highbarn. I
have come here this evening for a rest and a change."
A stillness as of death fell on the party, and the excited breathing of
all present could be heard.
"I thought I knew you," Denis exclaimed at last, recovering from the
unpleasant shock the announcement had given him. "But I couldn't for the
life of me think who you could be."
"Do they know you are here?" Leonetta gasped.
"I presume so," said Lord Henry, "my luggage was taken up about an hour
ago."
He rose, and immediately the rest of the party did likewise. Out on the
bank of the Sprigg, in the moonlight, Denis then proceeded to introduce
all those present, and the whole gathering slowly crossed the bridge and
moved towards the house.
Lord Henry, with Denis on his left and Leonetta on his right, was in the
van, but the others clustered round as closely as they could, and
conversation was general.
Women of whatever station in life and from whatever clime, have a very
acute sense of strength and power in the opposite sex. If modern society
has dispensed with the arena and with the tilting jousts of chivalry, it
has nevertheless not deadened either women's passion for the tournament,
or the keenness with which they divine the merits of their respective
knights. And if argument is the only remaining form in which that clash
of arms of olden times is witnessed by them to-day, it is with no
diminished interest or perspicuity that they register its results.
Ordinary games hardly meet all the demands of the true joust; for, in
the first place, they do not include to the same extent as argument,
that formidable element in modern knightly equipment, the intellect;
and, secondly, because to the most thick-skinned there is something so
much more mortifying, ignominious, and humiliating in being beaten in
argument than in losing a game, that argument still retains, though in
an attenuated and spiritualised form, something of the excitement and
gravity of armed conflict.
Denis Malster was well aware of all this,--indeed had he not thrown
down his gauntlet every night to the Incandescent Gerald precisely
because he knew how well he himself looked in the lists, and how well he
tilted? But perhaps Lord Henry was even better aware than Denis of the
important part played by intellectual male conflict in the presence of
women; and he moreover realised more certainly than Denis could possibly
have guessed, the precise effect on the female mind of repeated
victories in this modern and polite form of tournament.
Certainly as Leonetta, Vanessa, Agatha, and Mrs. Tribe hastened their
footsteps to catch every word that fell from Lord Henry's lips, they
were largely animated by the natural curiosity provoked by the presence
of a distinguished stranger; but in their eagerness to get close up to
him and to be in constant earshot of his voice, there was also the tacit
admission, possibly unrealised by any of them as yet, that in him they
had recognised a knight of peculiar power and of brilliant style.
They had not concerned themselves with the merits of the actual point
that had been at issue. All they felt was that a certain speaker had
spoken, not as one of the scribes, but as one having authority, and that
the former champion of the lists had for once been worsted in their
presence.
All this was in the air, unuttered, and even imperfectly present in
unconsciousness. Only Denis Malster, a little uneasy and a little
resentful, and Lord Henry, as usual perfectly serene and urbane, could
have accurately explained what had taken place.
* * * * *
Lord Henry had been right. Cleopatra had given up. Jaded by the
unremitting exertions of a week's struggle for supremacy with her
sister, quite unable to face another week of similarly exhausting
effort, and unwilling to acknowledge herself defeated, illness had come
almost as a boon, almost as an angel of mercy. Something seemed to have
snapped inside her,--her main-spring it appeared to be; and now she
hugged her ailment, her weakness, or whatever it was, because it seemed
to offer her the chance of a graceful retreat before her ebbing forces
compelled her to surrender.
She did not come to breakfast now, and retired early. She half hoped,
perhaps, that the very air of fragility and pathetic languor, which she
had half consciously adopted, would draw even keener attention than had
her former attitude of robust equality with her sister. Vanity is full
of resources when it is wounded. But her attacks of sudden faintness she
could not control; they represented the only genuine feature of her
indisposition,--at least they, and the continued insomnia which was an
important symptom.
On the first evening of his visit, therefore, Lord Henry did not see
her, neither did she know as she tossed about in her bed at "The
Fastness" that he was anywhere within call. Instinctively she felt that
her mother's deep sympathy and anxiety to help were with her, but it
never occurred to her that the maternal devotion to her would ever
extend to extreme measures.
Meanwhile Lord Henry was quietly taking stock of everybody at Brineweald
Park. An hour in the drawing-room there, after his walk in the grounds,
supplied him with much useful information; and by the time the car
arrived to take the Delarayne household back to "The Fastness," he had
already formed certain very valuable conclusions.
It was clear to him that Denis Malster was head and shoulders above the
other men of the party, and but for a certain priggishness of manner
which, though offensive, was not altogether unamenable to correction, by
far the most attractive English male he had seen for some time. He had
almost forgotten their first encounter at the Inner Light meeting, and
was more favourably impressed than he had expected to be by the young
man who had quite evidently been the cause of Mrs. Delarayne's domestic
troubles.
Conversely, the impression Lord Henry had made upon Denis Malster had
been unfavourable in the extreme. Here was a man who could not be relied
upon to be the same two days running. On the occasion of his first visit
to Bullion Ltd. he had looked a vagabond; his clothes had hung in
shapeless folds about his body, completely concealing whatever symmetry
it might have possessed.
Denis remembered the faded green tie and the badly fitting collar he
had seen Lord Henry wearing at the Inner Light meeting, the same green
tie and badly fitting collar in which the young nobleman had had the
simplicity to be photographed for the _Bystander_ only a few weeks
previously,--and filled with consternation at the unaccountable
metamorphosis compared it with Lord Henry's present elegant neck-gear.
It was monstrous to be so unreliable, monstrous to be so saltatory, so
capricious, as to upset other people's surest reckonings.
On the following morning it was obvious that Denis had made a supreme
effort. It was an effect in white flannels with a superb foulard tie of
navy blue and wonderful white buckskin shoes. He reached the
breakfast-table at Brineweald Park unusually early, so eager was he to
discover what further sartorial devilry Lord Henry would be guilty of,
and he was not a little disappointed to find only Guy Tyrrell down.
"Hullo Malster!" cried Guy, looking up from a partly consumed dish of
pork chop. "What the hell's up,--are you going to be married?"
"Don't be an ass!" Denis replied, helping himself to devilled kidneys.
"You're looking a howling swell this morning," continued the junior
secretary.
"Oh, you mean my rig-out?" Denis enquired with a feeble pretence at not
having understood the meaning of Guy's remarks. "That's nothing. As a
matter of fact I hadn't tried these on since they were made, and I was
wondering what they were like."
"Oh, tell us what you think of Lord Henry!" Guy pursued after a while.
"What do you?" Denis retorted, endeavouring to show indifference.
"He's rather wonderful," Guy exclaimed.
"What do you mean--wonderful?" the other demanded with an unmistakable
sinking feeling in his stomach.
"Well, you know, smart in every sense of the word, brains and
everything."
If Guy had deliberately intended to give Denis indigestion he could not
have set about his task with greater scientific understanding.
In a moment Miss Mallowcoid appeared. Breakfast to her was an important
meal only when she was visiting. At other times she was satisfied with a
minute fish-cake, or a mere postage-stamp of thin bacon, particularly
when she had to show by example how megalosaurian was the appetite of
the frail Mrs. Gerald Tribe. She was quickly followed by Sir Joseph and
Mr. and Mrs. Tribe, and a few minutes later by Lord Henry himself.
At the sight of Lord Henry, Denis grew unusually silent and the Tribes
exceptionally voluble. Sir Joseph asked the conventional questions of
his new guest, and on receiving the customary conventional replies,
serenely continued his meal. Miss Mallowcoid, on the other hand,
insisted on attending with scrupulous unselfishness to the latest
arrival's wants, and encouraging him in every way to partake as
plentifully as she herself of the generous board.
Meanwhile covertly and methodically Denis Malster was busy confirming
his worst suspicions of this scion of the house of Highbarn, and his
final conclusion was that the young man was behaving with deliberate
malice.
Clad in a perfect grey flannel suit of graceful design in which even the
seams in black thread were made an attractive feature, and with a collar
and tie that had evidently been selected with taste, there was yet that
character of artless unconsciousness in his attire which gave Lord Henry
at once the appearance and the ease, without any of the traces of
effort, of a well-groomed man. Denis felt that no one could pertinently
have asked Lord Henry whether he was going to be married that day, and
yet there was a glamour about his person which was unmistakable.
"There is no means of anticipating the wiles of charlatans," he thought
as he finished his breakfast; and he braced himself for a difficult day.
Thus his imagination played with the new element that chance seemed to
have dropped in his path, and as he smoked his after-breakfast cigarette
on the terrace with Guy Tyrrell he was not in the happiest of moods.
Sir Joseph, the Tribes, Miss Mallowcoid, and Lord Henry were discussing
the programme of the day.
"I suppose I had better consult Mrs. Delarayne," said Lord Henry,
"before I dispose of any of my time. She will naturally----"
"Oh, don't trouble to do that!" Miss Mallowcoid exclaimed. "You are down
here for a rest, and must do just as you like, Lord Henry."
Sir Joseph, who was the only member of the party in Mrs. Delarayne's
secret, understood however what the young man meant. He might possibly
have to remain with Cleopatra.
"Quite right, Lord Henry," he said. "We really cannot do anything before
you see Mrs. Delarayne."
At that moment a thumping noise from the direction of Brineweald
announced the usual morning visit of young Stephen Fearwell, and sure
enough, up the main drive, at top speed, there appeared the familiar
silhouette of the youth on his motor-cycle. This time, however, he did
not seem to be alone, fair arms seemed to be clinging to him, and the
flutter of a dress and a sun-bonnet seemed outlined at his back.
The party on the terrace concentrated into a group at the top of the
steps, and the motor-cycle swung like a rocket round the last bend of
the drive.
"Why, if it's not that little terror, Leonetta!" cried Miss Mallowcoid.
Denis Malster made an impulsive movement to descend the steps and
checked himself. Never before had Leonetta accompanied Stephen like
this. What could it signify?
The cycle stopped, and in a moment the children were running up the
steps.
"Peachy has sent me for the morning at least," announced Leonetta, as
Sir Joseph greeted her, "and she wants Lord Henry to go to "The
Fastness" with Stephen at once, if he doesn't mind."
"Anything wrong?" Sir Joseph demanded.
It was difficult to imagine that such a sunny, happy messenger could
bring sad tidings, and Sir Joseph had to smile as he contemplated her.
"I believe Cleo has had another fall, or something," replied the girl.
"Anyhow, Agatha and Vanessa will be here in a minute, and Stephen of
course will come back. Peachy and Cleo will stay at home."
Leonetta eyed Lord Henry up and down as she spoke in that solemn
searching way in which virgins take stock of men. It was Nature
measuring the worth of one of her own products through the medium of
another of her own products.
"Am I to go at once?" Lord Henry enquired, glancing for a moment at
Leonetta, and then turning to Sir Joseph.
"Yes, please," said Leonetta and Stephen together.
Lord Henry descended the steps while Stephen and Leonetta both assured
him that he could make himself quite comfortable on the back of the
motor-cycle. It was noticeable, however, that he paid more attention to
Stephen than to the girl.
"I can order the car, and we can all go to the beach," said Sir Joseph.
Denis Malster was jubilant. There stood Leonetta, a dream of beauty in
her simple cotton dress and sun-bonnet, magnetic in her grace and
luxuriant health, and Lord Henry was to be out of the way for at least
three hours.
At last the couple on the motor-cycle were ready. "Sorry you're leaving
us," cried Sir Joseph. "But we'll see you later."
Leonetta remained at the foot of the steps waving her hand, but Lord
Henry took no notice; he merely flourished his hat to Sir Joseph and
Miss Mallowcoid on the terrace.