Dick, having "cleaned" and "stoked" himself with tea and toast,
vouchsafed for further information:
"Anglemere's in Hampshire. It's a tremendous place, so a fellow at the
works says, who's seen it; one of the show places, you know; 'a
venerable pile,' with a collection of pictures, and a famous library,
and all that. Lord Angleford----"
"I remember!" Nell broke in, "I met Lady Angleford at Wolfer House; a
little woman, and very pretty. She was exceedingly kind to me."
"Sensible as well as pretty," murmured Falconer. He had drawn his chair
to the window, and was gazing down at the crowded street rather absently
and sadly. In a fortnight the girl who had brightened his life, who had
transformed Beaumont Buildings into an earthly paradise for him, would
be gone!
"Oh!" said Dick. "That would have been the late earl's wife. The present
one isn't married. He's a young chap--lucky bargee! The late earl died
about eighteen months ago, suddenly. I heard old Bardsley talking about
it while I was in the office with him. He's been away traveling----"
"Who--old Bardsley?" asked Nell.
"No, brainless one," said Dick; "the young earl, Lord Angleford. Rather
a curious sort of customer, I should fancy, for nobody seems to know
where he has been, or where he is. Left England suddenly--kind of
disappearance. They couldn't find him in time for the funeral, and he's
away still; but he's sent orders that this place--the beggar's got
three or four others in England and elsewhere, I believe--should be put
in fighting trim--water supply, new stables, electric light--the whole
bag of tricks. And I--I who speak to you--am going to be a kind of clerk
of the works. No need to go on your knees to me, Falconer; just simply
bow respectfully. You will find no alteration in me. I shall be as
pleasant and affable as ever. No pride in me."
"Thank you--thank you," said Falconer, with exaggerated meekness.
"But--pardon the curiosity of an humble friend--I don't quite see where
Miss Lorton comes in."
"Oh, it's this way," said Dick, reaching for his pipe--for your
engineer, more even than other men, must have his smoke immediately
after he has stoked: "the place is empty--nobody but caretakers and a
few servants--and the agent has offered me the use of one of the lodges.
There is no accommodation at the inn, I understand."
"I see," said Falconer.
"Just so, perspicacious one. It happens to be a tiny-sized lodge, with
two or three bedrooms. My idea is that Nell and I could take possession
of the lodge, hire a slavey from the village, and have a good time of
it."
"Pleasure and business combined," said Falconer. "And it will be nice,
when the Buildings are as hot as--as a baker's oven, to think of Miss
Lorton strolling through the woods--there must be woods, of course--or
sitting with a book beside the stream--for equally, of course, there is
a stream."
"Get your fiddle and play us a 'Te Deum' for the occasion," said Dick
suddenly.
When Falconer had left the room, Nell told Dick of Lady Wolfer's visit.
"Oh!" he said, by no means delightedly. "And wants you to go and live
with her; or offered to make us an allowance, I suppose? At any rate, I
won't have anything of that kind, Nell," he added, with fraternal
despotism.
"You need not be afraid. I shall not go--there are reasons----" She
turned away to hide the sudden blush. "And I am as proud as you, Dick. I
should like to ask Mr. Falconer to come down to us at this place. He has
not been looking well lately."
Dick shook his head.
"No, poor beggar! I'm afraid he's in a bad way. Do you hear him cough at
night? It's worse than he pretends."
"Hush!" said Nell warningly, as the musician reentered, his violin held
lovingly under his arm.
Soon the small room was filled with the strains of jubilant music--a "Te
Deum" of thanksgiving and rejoicing.
"That's for you," he said.
Then suddenly the tune changed to a sad yet delicious melody whose
sweetness thrilled through Nell, and made her think of Shorne Mills--and
Drake; and as he played on she turned her face away from him and to the
open window through which the wailing of the music floated, causing more
than one of the passers-by in the street beneath to pause and look up with
wistful eyes.
"And that is for me," said Falconer; "for me--and the rest of us--whom
you will leave behind. Good night." And with an abrupt nod he left the
room.
As a rule he played, in his own room, late into the night; but to-night
the piano and violin were silent, and he sat by the window looking at
the stars, in each of which he saw the beautiful face of the girl in the
room below.
"She doesn't even guess it," he murmured. "She will never know that I--I
love her. And that's all right; for though she wouldn't laugh at the
love of a pauper with one leg in the grave, she'd pity me, and I
couldn't stand that. She'd pity me and make herself unhappy over my--my
folly; and she's unhappy enough as it is. I wonder what it is? As I
watch her eyes, with that sad, wistful look in them, I feel that I would
give the world to know, and another world on top of it to be able to
help her. Sometimes I fancy that the look is a reflection of that in my
own eyes, and that would mean that she loved some one as I love her. Is
that the meaning? Is there some one of whom she is always thinking as I
think of her? The look was in her eyes while I was playing to-night; I
saw it as I have seen it so often."
He sighed, and hid his face in his long, thin hands.
"They paint love as a chubby, laughing child," he mused bitterly. "They
should draw him as a cruel, heartless monster, with a scourge instead of
a toy dart in his hands. If I wrote a love song, it should be the wail
of a breaking heart. Only two months! It seems as if I had known her for
years. Was that look always in her eyes? Will it always remain there?
Oh, God! if I could change it, if I could be the means----Yes; I'd ask
for nothing more, nothing better, but just to see her happy. They might
carry my coffin down the stairs as soon as they pleased afterward."
He stretched out his hand for his violin, but drew his hand back.
"Not to-night. They are talking over the brother's slice of luck, and I
won't break in upon their joy. Good night, my love--who never will be
mine."
* * * * *
Every evening Dick came home with fresh items of information about the
work to be done at Anglemere, and Nell began to catch something of the
excitement of his anticipation.
Sometimes Falconer came down to listen, and he tried to hide the pain
the prospect of their departure cost him, as now and again he joined in
the discussion of their plans; but more often he sat gazing out of the
window, and stealing glances at the beautiful face as it bent over some
needlework for Dick or herself--more often for Dick.
But one night--it was the night before they were to start--he almost
betrayed himself.
"To-morrow you will have escaped the piano and violin, Tommy's squeals
and the yowling of the cats, the manifold charms of Beaumont Buildings,
and the picturesque cabbages of the costers' barrows, Miss Lorton. I
wonder whether you will ever come back?"
"Why, of course," said Nell, smiling. "Dick is not going to spend the
remainder of his life at Anglemere. Oh, yes; we shall be back almost
before you have missed us, Mr. Falconer."
"Think so?" he said, smiling, too, but with a strange look in his eyes,
and a tremulous quiver of the thin and too-red lips. "Then you will have
to be back in a very few minutes after the cab has left the door. No;
somehow I fancy that Beaumont Buildings is seeing the last of you. Tommy
must share my dread, for he howled with more than his accustomed
vehemence when he said 'Good-by' just now."
"That was because you said I ought not to kiss him, because he was so
dirty," said Nell. "Poor little Tommy! Yes, I think he'll miss me!"
"It's not improbable," he said, in his ironical way. "I wish I were
seven years old, with a smudgy face and a perpetual sniff. Who knows!
You might have some pity to spare for me."
Nell laughed with the unconscious heartlessness of the woman who does
not suspect that the man she is laughing at loves her better than life
itself.
"Oh, I hope you will miss us, too," she said. "But you will be freer to
get on with your work. I'm afraid Dick--and I, too!--have often
interrupted you and interfered with your composing. You must set at the
cantata while we are away, and have it finished for us to hear when we
come back. And, Mr. Falconer, you will take care of yourself, won't you?
You are so careless, you know--about going out in the rain and at night
without an umbrella or overcoat. I heard you coughing last night."
"Did you?" he said. "I hope I didn't keep you awake! I kept my head
under the bedclothes as much as I could! Yes, I'll take care, though I
don't think it matters very much."
Nell looked up at him, startled and rather shocked.
"Why do you say that?" she said reproachfully. "Do you think that
Dick--and I--wouldn't be sorry if you were ill?"
"Yes," he said, smiling gravely, "you would be sorry. So you would be if
Tommy got the measles, or the black cat opposite were to slip off the
tiles and break its neck, or Giles came home sober enough one night to
kill his wife. There! I've hurt you! I didn't mean to! It's sheer
cussedness on my part, and I'm an ill-conditioned cur to say a word."
Then suddenly the smile vanished, and his misery showed itself in his
dark eyes. "Ah! can't you see what your going means to me--can't you
see?" He caught his emotion by the throat and checked it. "That--that I
shall miss you--and Dick; that I shan't have any one to come to with my
cantata and my cough. There's Dick calling, and good-by. I--I shall be
out at a music lesson when you start to-morrow."
He held her hand for a moment or two, half raised it slowly, but, with a
wistful smile and a tightening of his lips, let it fall.
He was not out when they drove away next morning, but his door was
closed, and he watched them from behind the ragged curtains drawn
closely over the grimy window. Then, when the cab had rattled away, he
went out on the landing and found Tommy seated on the stairs, bewailing
his desertion, with his two chubby, sooty fists kneading his swollen
eyes.
"Come inside, Tommy," he said. "Let us mingle our tears together. You
ungrateful young sweep, how dare you cry! She kissed you!"
Nell, of the tender heart, had grown somewhat fond of Beaumont
Buildings, and she sighed rather wistfully as she looked back at it, and
thought of the humble friends who would, she knew, miss her; but her
spirits rose as the train left the tops of the houses and carried Dick
and her into the fresh air of the great Hampshire downs.
"It seems years, ages, since I saw the country!" she exclaimed. "Dick,
do you see those sheep? They are white! Think of it! Think of the grimy
ones in the parks! Couldn't we have a Society for Washing the Poor
London Sheep, Dick? And look at that farmhouse! Oh, Dick, it isn't
Devonshire and--and Shorne Mills, but it is the country at last!"
"All right; keep your hair on, young woman," said Dick, looking out of
the window in a patronizing fashion. "This is all very well; but wait
until you get to Anglemere. Then you can shout and carry on if you
like. Old Bardsley--nice old chap when he steps off his perch--says it
is one of the most delightful 'seats' in England; as if it were a kind
of armchair! Lucky beggar, this young lord! Nell, I've a kind of feeling
that I ought to have been the heldest son of an hearl, but that I was
changed in the cradle, don't you know. I should advise you not to stick
your head too far out of the window, or one of these tunnels will knock
it off. A brainless sister I can bear with, but one without any head at
all would be rather too much."
He was pretty jubilant himself, though, boylike, he tried to play the
cynic; and when the ramshackle fly drove through the picturesque
village, and they came in sight of a huge palace of a house which
gleamed redly through the trees of an English park, and the flyman,
pointing with his whip, informed them that it was Anglemere, Dick
emitted a whistle of surprise and admiration.
"I say, that is something like! What signifies the Maltbys' and the
other places we know, after that?"
But Nell's eyes, after a glance at the great house, were fixed upon the
lodge at which the fly had stopped.
"Oh, Dick, how pretty!" she exclaimed, her beautiful face radiant with
delight as she gazed at the ivy-covered little house with its latticed
windows and Gothic porch.
A young girl--the village slavey Dick had engaged--stood under the porch
to welcome them, and demurely conducted Nell over the lodge.
They scrambled through a hasty meal, and Dick invited Nell--with a touch
of importance and dignity which made her smile, to "come up and see the
house."
They walked up a magnificent avenue, and stood for a moment or two
looking upon one of the finest specimens of Gothic domestic architecture
in England.
"Fine, isn't it?" said Dick, with bated breath. "Like a picture in a
Christmas number, eh, Nell? See the carving along the front, and the
terrace? And there's the peacock, there, perched behind that stone lion.
Fancy such a place as this belonging to you, your very own. Yes, Lord
Angleford's a lucky chap!"
They went up the stone steps to the terrace steps, up which Queen Bess
had ascended with stately stride, and, crossing the terrace, into the
hall.
The staircase, broad enough for a coach and four, had sheets of brown
holland hanging from it, and the pictures, statuary, cabinets, and
figures in armor were swathed in protecting covers; but enough was
visible of the magnificence, the antiquity of the grand old hall to
impress Nell.
Some men were at work, whitewashing and decorating, and they stopped
their splashing to permit Nell and Dick to go upstairs; and one or two
of them touched their hats respectfully to the pretty young lady and her
brother.
The corridors were wide and newly decorated, and lined with priceless
pictures which Nell longed to linger over; but Dick led her on from one
room to another; from suites in which the antique furniture had been
suffered to remain to others furnished with modern luxury.
As they went downstairs again they were met by a dignified old lady who
introduced herself as the housekeeper; and who, upon being informed that
Dick was "the gentleman from Bardsley & Bardsley," graciously conducted
them over the state apartments. Most of us know Anglemere, either from
having visited it, or from the innumerable photographs of it, but Nell
had not seen any pictorial representation of it, and its glories broke
upon her with all the force of freshness. In silent wonder she followed
the stately dame as she led them from one magnificent room to another,
remarking with a pleasant kind of condescension:
"This is the great drawing-room. Designed by Onigo Jones. Pictures by
Watteau. Queen Elizabeth sat in that chair near the antique mantelpiece
of lapis-lazuli; this chair is never moved. This, the adjoining room, is
the ballroom. Pictures by Bouchier; notice the painted ceiling, the
finest in Europe, and costing over twenty thousand pounds. The next room
is the royal antechamber, so called because James II. used it for
writing letters while visiting Anglemere. We now pass into the banquet
hall. Carved oak by Grinling Gibbings. You will remark the lifesized
figures along the dado. It was here that Charles I., the Martyr, dined
with his consort, Henrietta. That buffet, large as it is, will not hold
the service of gold plate. That painted window's said to be the oldest
of any, not ecclesiastic, in Europe. It is priceless. The pictures round
the room are by Van Dyck and Carlo Dolci. The one over the mantelpiece
is a portrait of the seventh Earl of Angleford."
Nell looked up at it. She was half confused by the splendors of the
place and her efforts to follow the descriptions and explanations of the
stately housekeeper; but as she raised her eyes to the portrait she was
conscious of a sensation of surprise. For in some vague way the portrait
reminded her of Drake. The pictured Angleford wore a ruff, and was
habited in satin and armor, but the face----
"Come on! What are you staring at?" said Dick, impatiently; and she
followed the cicerone into another room, and listened to the monotonous
voice repeating the well-learned lesson.
"We have here the library, the famous Angleford library. There are
twenty thousand volumes, many of them unique. They are often consulted
by savants--with the permission of the earl. Many of them are priceless.
That portrait is Lord Bacon," et cetera, et cetera.
"Let us go," whispered Nell, in Dick's ear. "The greatness of the house
of Angleford is getting on my nerves! I--I can't help thinking of
Beaumont Buildings! It is too great a contrast!"
"Shut up!" retorted Dick, who was intensely interested.
Nell went through the remainder of the inspection with a vague feeling
of dissatisfaction. What right had any one man to such luxury, to such
splendor, while others were born to penury and suffering?
While she was asking herself this question, the housekeeper had led them
to the picture gallery, the gallery which artists came from all corners
of the world to visit.
"Portraits of the earls of Angleford," she said, waving a black-clad,
condescending arm.
"Is the portrait of the present Earl of Angleford here?" asked Dick,
with not unnatural interest.
"No, sir. The present earl is not here. You see, it was not thought that
he would be the earl. That is the late earl. Would you like to see the
stables? If so, I will call the head coachman----"
But they had seen enough for one day, and, almost in silence, walked
back to the lodge.
"I wonder whether Lord Angleford knows, realizes, how big a man he is?"
said Dick, as he smoked his last pipe that night in the sitting room of
the lodge. "We've seen the house, but we haven't seen the park or the
estates or the farms, which extend for miles around. Fancy owning all
this, and a title, a name, which every boy and girl learns about when
they read their English history!"
"I decline to fancy to realize anything more," said Nell, with a laugh.
"That old woman's voice rings in my ears, and I feel as if I were
intoxicated with, overwhelmed by, the grandeur of the Anglefords. I am
going to bed now, Dick. To bed in a house in the country, with the scent
of the flowers stealing in at the windows! Oh, think of it! and think
of--Beaumont Buildings! Dick, would it be possible to obtain the post of
lodgekeeper to Anglemere House? I envy the meanest laborer on the
estate. Next to being the earl himself, I think I would like to be
keeper of one of the lodges, or--or chief of the laundry!"
She went up to her room--a room in which the ceiling was "covered" to
the shape of the thatched roof.
She was brushing the long tresses of soft, fluffy black hair which
Drake had loved to kiss, when she heard the sound of a horse trotting up
the avenue.
She went to the window, and, screened by the curtain, looked out. A full
moon was shining and flooding the avenue With light.
She waited, looking out absently. The sound came nearer, and suddenly
the horseman came in sight. Holding the muslin curtain for a screen, she
still waited and watched for him. Then, with a faint cry--a cry almost
of terror--she shrank back.
For the man who was riding up the avenue to Anglemere was strangely like
Drake!
He had passed in an instant; his head was bowed, his face only for a
moment in the moonlight, and yet--and yet! Was she dreaming--was fancy
only trifling with her--or was it indeed and in truth Drake himself?