BOOK III

THE

INVISIBLE FOE

A STORY ADAPTED FROM THE PLAY

BY WALTER HACKETT

BY

LOUISE JORDAN MILN

(MRS. GEORGE CRICHTON MILN)

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

_Copyright, 1918, 1920, by_

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

_All rights reserved_

* * * * *

“_Blind, blind, blind_”

* * * * *

CONTENTS

BOOK I The Children

BOOK II The Dark

BOOK III The Quest

BOOK IV The Light

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

BOOK I

THE CHILDREN

CHAPTER I

Stephen lay on his stomach, one sharp elbow comfortable in a velvet bed

of moss, his chin cupped in his palm, his beautifully shaped head thrown

back, his alert face lifted to the sky, his eager eyes following

hungrily the flight of a bird.

Hugh, crunched up against the big oak tree, was making a chain of

blossoms, and making it awkwardly enough, with many a restless boy-sigh,

many a destruction of delicate spring wild flower.

Helen was playing by herself.

Nothing could have been more characteristic of the three children than

their occupations of the moment.

Stephen usually was watching birds fly, when he was out of doors, and

birds were to be seen. And the only time his uncle Richard had ever laid

a hand (except in rare caress or in approbation) on the orphan boy, had

been when Stephen, three months after his arrival at Deep Dale, had

opened its cage, and lost Helen her pet canary—all because he “wanted

to see just how he flies.”

“And I did see, too,” he had told Hugh an hour after his stoically

endured caning. “It was worth more than a few smacks. Bet I can fly too,

some day. You wait.”

Hugh had said nothing. He was used to Stephen and Stephen’s vivid

ambitions. And he was stolid.

Stephen had suffered his slight chastisement proudly—if not quite

gladly—but with each faltering fall of his uncle’s cane a seed of

bitterness had entered the child’s soul. He never had felt the same to

“Uncle Dick” since—which was no small pity, for the orphan boy was

love-hungry, and Richard Bransby his best friend.

The small punishment bred deceit but worked no cure. The men in the

fowl-yard could have told sad tales of staid hens aggravated to

indignant, fluttering flight, and the old gardener of peacocks goaded to

rise from their self-glorified strutting and preening to fly stiff and

screaming the few spaces which were their farthest. But neither the farm

hands nor the gardener told. Why—it is not easy to say. They did not

particularly like Stephen—few people did. But they feared him. He

mastered their wills. A solitary child, not half so happy as childhood

has every right to be, the boy met few he did not influence sharply. His

was a masterful nature. Little altogether escaped his subtle dominance.

Stephen was not essentially cruel. His cruelty was corollary and

accessory to his passion—a passion for power and for the secrets of

aerial skill. He bore the birds no ill-will. He simply was obsessed to

see their flight, and to study it, garnering up in his odd, isolated,

accretive child’s mind—and heart—every vibrant curve and beat of their

wings, every angle and bend of their bodies.

Stephen usually was watching the flight of a bird, or scheming some

mechanical imitation of it.

Hugh usually was doing something for wee Helen, doing it with perspiring

and sighful awkwardness and for scant thanks—or for none.

Helen usually was playing by herself, and pretending, as now, to be

sharing the sport of some playfellow, perfectly tangible to her, but

invisible, non-existent to the boys—a form of persistent “make believe”

which greatly amused Hugh and as greatly irritated Stephen.

“Don’t pretend like that; it’s a simpleton way of going on,” the older

boy called to her now, without moving his head or his eyes.

“It’s nothing of the kind,” the girl replied scornfully. “You’re blind,

that’s what’s the matter—blinder’n a bat, both of you.” And she

continued to laugh and chat with her “make-believe” playmates.

An elfin child herself, the children of her own delicate myth did seem

the more suitable fellows for her dainty frolic than either queer

Stephen or stolid, clumsy Hugh.

The little girl was very pretty, a queenly little head heavy with vivid

waves of gold-red hair, curved red lips eloquent of the history of

centuries of womanhood, wide blue eyes, and the prettiest hands and arms

that even feminine babyhood (and English babyhood, Celtic-dashed at

that) had ever yet achieved; every pink-tipped finger a miracle, and

each soft, beautifully molded elbow, dimpled and dented with witching

chinks that simply clamored for kisses—and often got them; a sunny,

docile child, yielding but unafraid, quiet and reserved, but hiding

under its rose and snow robe of provocatively pretty flesh, a will that

never swerved: the strongest will at Deep Dale—and that says everything

of it—for both Stephen Pryde, fourteen years old, and his uncle,

nearing fifty, had stronger wills than often fall to us weak mortals of

drift and vacillation. These two masculine strengths of will lay rough

and prominent on the surface and also sank soul-deep. The uncle’s never

abated. Circumstances and youth curbed the boy’s, at times—but neither

chilled nor softened it. Helen’s will lay deep and still. Her pretty,

smiling surface never showed it by so much as a gentle ripple. She kept

it as a sort of spiritual “Sunday best” laid away in the lavender and

tissue of her secret self. As yet only her old Scotch nurse even

suspected its existence and of all her little, subservient world, only

that old Scotch nurse neither laughed at Helen’s dream friends—nor

scoffed. In her sweet six years of life her father’s will and hers had

never clashed. That, when the almost inevitable clash of child and

parent, old and young, cautious experience and adventurous inexperience,

came, Helen’s should prove the stronger will, and hers the victory,

would have seemed absurd and incredible to all who knew them—to every

one except the nurse.

Stephen and Hugh, in their different boyish ways, loved the girl-child,

and wooed her.

She tolerated them both, patronized, tyrannized, and cared little for

either.

Hugh was thick-set and had sweaty hands. Often he bored her.

Stephen’s odd face, already at fourteen corrugated by thought, ambition

and strident personality painfully concealed, repelled her—even

frightened her a little, a very little; for her cherished life and

serene soul gave her little gift of fear.

Their wills clashed daily—but almost always over things about which she

cared little or less than little, and did not trouble to be insistent.

She yielded over such trifles—out of indifference and almost

contemptuous good-nature sheerly. And the boy, “blind” here at least,

misread it. But on one point Stephen never could prevail against her.

She would neither renounce her invisible playmates nor even concede him

that they were indeed “make-believe.”

Her will and Hugh’s never clashed. How could they? He had no will but

hers.

Hugh was her slave.

Stephen, loving her as strongly and as hotly, sought to be her master.

No conscious presumption this: it was his nature.

Deep Dale was all simmering blue and green to-day—with softening

shadows and tones of gray; blue sky, green grass, trees green-leafed,

gray-trunked—green paths, gray and green-walled, blue roofed, the early

spring flowers (growing among the grasses but sparsely as yet, and being

woven, too often broken-necked, into Hugh’s devoted jewelering) too tiny

of modest bud and timid bloom to speck but most minutely the picture

with lemon, violet or rose. The little girl’s wealth of red hair made

the glory and the only emphatic color of the picture. Hugh’s hair was

ash brown and dull—Stephen’s darker, growing to black—but as dull.

Even the clothes of these three children painted in perfectly with the

blue and green of this early May-day, Nature’s spring-song. The lads,

not long out of mourning, were dressed in sober gray. Helen’s frocks

came from Hanover Square, when they did not come from the _Rue de

Rivoli_, and to-day her little frock of turquoise cashmere was

embroidered and sashed with green as soft and tender as the pussy

willows and their new baby leafage.

But the sun—a pale gray sun at best all day—was slipping down the

sky’s blue skirt. Helen, tiring of her elvish play, or wholesomely

hungry for “cambric” tea and buns, slid off the tree trunk, smiled back

and waved her hand—to nothing, and turned towards the house. Hugh

trotted after her, not sorry to suspend his trying toil, not sorry to

approach cake and jam, but carrying his stickily woven tribute with him.

But Stephen, enthralled, almost entranced, lay still, his fine chin

cupped in his strong hand, his eyes—and his soul—watching a flock of

birds flying nestward towards the night.

CHAPTER II

Richard Bransby had few friends because he tolerated few. Unloving

towards most, rather than unlovable, his life and his personality cut

deep, but in narrow channels. To him pictures were—canvas and paint,

and a considerable item of expense; for he was too shrewd a business man

to buy anything cheap or inferior. Knowing his own limitations as few

men have the self-searching gift to do, he took no risks with his

strenuously earned sovereigns, lavishly as he spent them. He spent

magnificently, but he never misspent. He had too much respect to do

that—respect for his money and for himself and for the honest,

relentless industry with which that self had amassed that same money. He

never selected the pictures for which he paid, nor even their frames.

Latham did all that for him. Horace knew almost as much about pictures

and music as he did about nerves, and could chat with as much suave

authority about Tintoretto and Liszt, _motif_ and _chiaro-oscuro_ as he

could about diphtheria or Bell’s palsy, and was as much at his old

friend’s service in matters of art as in matters of cerebellum and

aorta. Bransby cared nothing for horses, and liked dogs just “well

enough”—out of doors. He was a book-worm—with one author, scarcely

more. He was indifferent to his dinner, and he cared nothing at all for

flowers. This last seems strange and contradictory, for the women he had

loved had each been peculiarly flowerlike. But who shall attempt to

gauge or plumb the contradictorinesses of human nature, or be newly

surprised at them?

Richard Bransby had loved three women passionately, and had lost them

all. He was no skeptic, but he was rebel. He could not, or he would not,

forgive God their death, and he grudged the Heaven, to which he doubted

not they had gone, their presence. Nothing could reconcile or console

him—although two strong affections (and beside which he had no other)

remained to him; and with them—and his books—he patched his life and

kept his heart just alive.

He loved the great ship-building business he had created, and steered

through many a financial tempest, around rocks of strikes and quicksands

of competition, into an impregnably fortified harbor of millionairedom,

with skill as devoted and as magnificent as the skill of a Drake or the

devotion of a Scott, steering and nursing some great ship or tiny bark

through the desperate straits of battle or the torture perils of polar

ice floes.

And he loved Helen whom he had begotten—loved her tenderly for her own

sweet, lovable sake, loved her more many times, and more quickly, for

the sake of her mother.

He cared nothing for flowers, but he had recognized clearly how markedly

the three women he had adored (for it had amounted to that) had

resembled each a blossom. His mother had been like a “red, red rose that

blooms in June”—a Jacqueminot or a Xavier Olibo. And it was from her he

had inherited the vivid personality of his youth. She had died

suddenly—when he had been in the City, chained even then to the great

business he was creating—boy of twenty-three though he was—and his hot

young heart was almost broken; but not quite, for Alice, his wife, had

crept into it then, a graceful tea-rose-like creature, white,

pink-flushed, head-heavy with perfume. Violet, his only sister, had been

a pale, pretty thing, modest and sweet as the flower of her name. Helen

he thought was like some rare orchid, with her elusive piquant features,

her copper-red hair, her snow face, her curved crimson lips, her

intangible, indescribable charm—irregular, baffling.

Alice had died at Helen’s birth, but he blamed God and turned from Him,

blamed not or turned from the small plaintive destroyer who laughed and

wailed in its unmothered cradle. The young wife’s death had unnerved,

and had hardened him too. It injured him soul-side and body: and the

hurt to his physical self threatened to be as lasting and the more

baneful. A slight cardiac miscarriage caught young Dr. Latham’s trained

eye on the very day of Alice Bransby’s death—and the disturbance it

caused, controlled for six silent years by the one man’s will and the

other man’s skill, had not disappeared or abated. Very slowly it grimly

gained slight ground, and presaged to them both the possibility of worse

to come.

Only yesterday Richard Bransby had taken little Helen on his knee, and

holding her sunny head close to his heart had talked to her of her

mother. He often held the child so—but he rarely spoke to her of the

mother—and of that mother to no one else did he ever speak. Only his

own angry heart and the long hungry nights knew what she had been to

him—only they and his God. God! who must be divine in pity and

forgiveness towards the rebel rage of husbands so sore and so faithful.

Yesterday, too, he had told the child of how like a flower his Alice,

her mother, had been, and seeing how she caught at the fancy (odd in so

prosaic a man) and liked it, he had gone on to speak of his own mother,

her “granny,” for all the world like a deep, very red rose, and of

Violet, her aunt.

Helen wriggled her glowing head from the tender prison of his hands,

looked up into his sharp, tired face, clapped her own petal-like little

palms, and said with a gurgling laugh and a dancing wink of her fearless

blue eyes, “And you—Daddy—are just like a flower, too!”

He shook her and called her “Miss Impudence.”

“Oh! but yes, you are. I’ll tell you, you are that tall ugly cactus that

Simmons says came from Mexicur—all big prickles and one poor little

lonely flower ’way up at the top by itself, grown out of the ugly leaves

and the ugly thorns, and not pretty either.”

Bransby sighed, and caught her quickly closer to him again—one poor

insignificant attempt of a blossom lonely, alone; solitary but for

thorns, and only desirable in comparison with them, and because it was

the flowering—such as it was—of a plant exotic and costly: a magenta

rag of a flower that stood for much money, and for nothing else!

The baby went on with the parable—pretty as he had made it, grotesqued

now by her. “An’ Aunt Carline’s anover flower, too. She’s a daleeah.”

Bransby laughed. Caroline Leavitt was rather like a dahlia; neat,

geometrically regular, handsome, cut and built by rule, fashionable,

prim but gorgeous, as far from poetry and sentiment as anything a flower

could be.

Mrs. Leavitt was his widowed cousin and housekeeper—called “Aunt” by

the children. Richard and Violet had been the only children of John and

Cora Bransby.

Violet, several years younger than Richard, had married six years

earlier—married a human oddity, half-genius, half-adventurer,

impecunious, improvident, vain. He had misused and broken her. His death

was literally the only kindness he had ever done her—and it had killed

her—for weak-womanlike she had loved him to the end. Perhaps such

weakness is a finer, truer strength—weighed in God’s scales—than

man-called strength.

Violet Pryde, dying five years after Alice’s death, left two children;

the boys playing with six-year-old Helen under the oak trees. Bransby

had been blind to his sister’s needs while Pryde had lived; but indeed

she had hidden them with the silence, the dignity and the deft, quiet

subterfuge of such natures—but at her husband’s death Bransby had

hastened to ask, as gently as he could (and to the women he loved he

could be gentleness itself), “How are you off? What do you need? What

would you like best? What may I do?” pressing himself to her as suitor

rather than almoner. But she had refused all but friendship, indeed

almost had refused it, since it had never been given her dead. Her

loyalty survived Pryde’s disloyal life, and even dwarfed and stunted her

mother-instinct to do her utmost for her boys: her boys and Pryde’s. But

her own death had followed close upon her husband’s, and then Richard

Branbsy had asserted himself. He had gathered up into his own capable

hands the shabby threads of her affairs—mismanaged for years, but—even

so—too scant to be tangled, and the charge of her two orphaned boys.

He had brought Stephen and Hugh at once to Deep Dale and had established

them there on an almost perfect parity with Helen—a parity impinged by

little else than her advantage of sex and charm and presumable heirship.

Such was—in brief—the home and the home folk of Deep Dale, the

millionaire shipbuilder’s toy estate a mile or two from Oxshott.

And Helen ruled it—and them.

Caroline Leavitt housekept, but small Helen reigned. Her reign was no

ephemeral sovereignty—not even a constitutional queenship; it was

autocracy gracious and sunshiny, but all of autocracy for all that.

Helen ruled.

CHAPTER III

Richard Bransby had amassed a fortune and perfected a fad, but he had

amassed no friends. In the thirty-five years in which he had gathered

and nursed his fortune (for he began at fifteen) he had made but the one

friend—Latham. And even this sole friendship was largely professional

and in small degree quick or vibrant.

Helen might have had twenty playmates, but she greatly cared for none

but her dear “make believes,” and tolerated no others but her cavalierly

treated cousins.

Mrs. Leavitt gave tea to the well-to-do of the neighborhood, and took it

of them. Very occasionally she and Richard dined with them alternately

as hosts and guests. But none of it ran to friendship, or shaped towards

intimacy. She was too fussy a woman for friendship, he too embittered

and too arrogant a man.

The vicinity of Claygate and Oxshott teemed with the stucco and ornate

wood “residences” of rich stockbrokers and successful business

men—living elaborately in the lovely countryside—but not of it: of

London still, train-catching, market-watching, silk-hatted,

bridge-playing.

Bransby rarely hatted in silk, and he preferred Dickens to bridge. He

nodded to his rich fellow-villagers, but he clasped them no hand-clasp.

He, too, was in the country but not of it, he too was Londoner to the

core; but both in a sense quite different from them.

Deep Dale was a beautiful excrescence—but an excrescence—an elaborate

florescence of his wealth, but he had never felt it “home,” except

because Alice had rather liked it, and never would feel it “home” again

except as Helen and his books might grow to make it so.

There was a flat, too, in Curzon Street Alice had liked it rather more

than she had Deep Dale, and while she lived he had too; except that they

had been more alone, and in that much more together, at Oxshott, and for

that he had always been grateful to Deep Dale, and held it, for that, in

some tenderness still. And Helen had been born there.

But to him “Home” meant a dingy house in Marylebone, in which he had

been born and his mother died. He avoided seeing it now (an undertaker

tenanted the basement and the first floor, a dressmaker, whose

_clientèle_ was chiefly of the slenderly-pursed _demimonde_, the other

two floors), but he still held it in his stubborn heart for “home.”

In business Bransby was hard, cold and implastic. He had great talent in

the conduct of his affairs, indefatigable industry, undeviating

devotion. Small wonder—or rather none—that he grew rich and steadily

richer. But had he had the genius to rule kindlier, to be friend as well

as master, to win, accept and use the friendship of the men he employed

(and now sometimes a little crushed of their best possibility of service

by the ruthlessness of his rule and by the unsympathy of his touch), his

might well have grown one of the gigantic, wizard fortunes.

Even as things were, Morton Grant, head and trusted clerk, probably

attained nearer to friendship with Richard Bransby than did any one else

but Latham.

For Grant nothing was relaxed. He was dealt with as crisply and treated

as drastically as any office boy of the unconsidered and driven all.

Bransby’s to order; Grant’s to obey. But, for all that, the employer

felt some hidden, embryonic kindliness for the employee. And the clerk

was devoted to the master: accepted the latter’s tyranny almost

cordially, and resented it not even at heart or unconsciously.

The two men had been born within a few doors of each other on the same

long, dull street. That was a link.

Grant cherished and doted on the business of which he was but a servant

as much as Bransby did—not more, because more was an impossibility. He

rose for it in the morning. He lay down for it at night. He rested—so

far as he did rest—on the Sabbath and on perforced holidays for it. He

ate for it. He dressed for it. He went to Margate once a year, second

class, for it. That was a link.

Unless it involves some form of rivalry—as cricket, competitive

business, acting, popular letters, desire for the same woman, two men

cannot live for the selfsame thing without it in some measure breeding

in them some tinge of mutual liking.

And these two reserved, uncommunicative men _had_ loved the same woman,

and contrary to rule, that too was a link—perhaps the strongest of the

three—though Bransby had never even remotely suspected it.

Morton Grant could not remember when he had not loved Violet Bransby. He

had yearned for her when they both wore curls and very short dresses. He

had loved her when, short-sighted and round-shouldered then as now, he

had been in her class at dancing school and in the adjacent class at the

Sunday School, in which the pupils, aged from four to fourteen, had been

decently and discreetly segregated of sex. He had loved her on her

wedding-day, and wept the hard scant tears of manhood defeated, denied

and at bay, until his dull, weak eyes had been bleared and red-rimmed,

and his ugly little button of a nose (he had almost none) had flamed

gin-scarlet. And for that one day the beloved business had been to him

nothing. He had loved her when she lay shrouded in her coffin—and now,

a year after, he loved her dust in its grave—and all so silently that

even she had never sensed it. For the old saying is untrue: a woman does

not _always_ know.

This poor love of his was indeed a link between the man and his

master—and all the stronger because Richard had been as suspicionless

as Violet herself. For Bransby would have resented it haughtily, but

less and less hotly than he had resented her marriage with that

“mountebank” (the term is Bransby’s and not altogether just)—but of the

two he would greatly have preferred Grant as a brother-in-law.

Under Helen’s sway, Grant had never come. She was not Violet’s child. He

would rather even that Bransby were childless and his fortune in entire

keeping for Violet’s boys. For herself he neither liked nor disliked the

little girl. But he was grateful to her for being a girl. That left the

business undividedly open for Stephen and Hugh—for their future

participation and ultimate management at least. And he hoped that of so

large a fortune an uncle so generous to them, and so fond of Violet,

would allot the brothers some considerable share.

Unlike Mr. Dombey and many other self-made millionaires, Richard Bransby

had never wished for a son. Not for treble his millions would he have

changed her of sex: Helen satisfied him—quite.

And perhaps unconsciously he was some trifle relieved that no son,

growing up to man’s assertion, could rival or question his sole headship

of “Bransby’s.”

CHAPTER IV

As Helen and Hugh came singing up the path, Bransby was driving Grant

from the door. It was no friendliness that had led him to speed his

visitor so far, but a desire to see if Helen were not coming. The sun

was setting, and the father thought it high time she came indoors.

Grant was in disgrace. He had come unbidden, forbidden, in fact—and so

unwelcome.

Advised by Latham (still a youthful, but daily growing famous physician)

and enforced by his own judgment, Bransby was taking a short holiday.

Thorough in all things, the merchant had abandoned his business affairs

and their conduct entirely—for the moment. Grant had been ordered to

manage and decide everything unaided until the master’s return, and by

no means to intrude by so much as a letter or a telegram.

He had disobeyed.

That it was the first turpitude of thirty years of implicit, almost

craven, fealty in no way tempered its enormity. “Preposterous!” had been

Bransby’s greeting. “Preposterous,” was his good-by.

Something had gone wrong at the office, or threatened to go wrong, so

important that the faithful old dog had felt obliged to come for his

master’s personal and immediate decision. But he had come trembling. For

his pains he had had abuse and reprimand. But he had gained his point.

He had got his message through, and learned Bransby’s will. And he was

going away—back to his loved drudgery, not trembling, but alert and

reassured.

And though Bransby abused, secretly he approved. The link was

strengthened.

Bransby was angry—but also he was flattered. He was not, concerning his

business at least, and a few other things, altogether above flattery.

Who is? Are you?

In his quaint way he had some interior warm liking for his commonplace

factotum. He trusted him unreservedly; and trust begets liking more

surely and more quickly than pity begets love. After Horace Latham,

Morton Grant stood to Bransby for all of human friendship and of living

comradeship.

Bransby had adopted Violet’s boys, out of love for her and out of a

nepotism that was conscience rather than instinct—and, too, it was

pride.

They had been with him nearly a year now, and because he counted them as

one of his assets, possible appanages of his great business—and because

of their daily companionship with Helen—he watched them keenly. He did

not suspect it, as yet, but both little fellows were creeping slowly

into a corner of the heart that still beat true enough and human under

his surface of granite and steel. And Stephen began to interest him

much. Indisputably Stephen Pryde was interesting. He had personality

beyond Nature’s average dole to each individual of that priceless though

dangerous quality. And the personality of the boy, in its young way, had

no slight resemblance to that of the uncle. Stephen was an eccentric

in-the-making, Richard an eccentric made and polished. Each hid his

eccentricity under intense reserve and a steely suavity of bearing. That

this should be so in the experienced man of fifty, disciplined by time,

by experience and by personal intention, was natural, and not unusual in

such types. That it was so in the small boy untried and untutored was

extraordinary—it spoke much of force and presaged of his future large

things good or bad, whichever might eventuate, and one probably as apt

to eventuate as the other, and, whichever came, to come in no small

degree. And truly the lad had force even now: perhaps it was his most

salient quality, and stood to him for that useful gift—magnetism—which

he somewhat lacked.

As Grant went out the two children came in. Helen took her father’s

hand, and led him back to the room he had just left—and Hugh followed

her doglike. The word is used in no abject sense, but in its noblest.

“Ring the bell,” Richard said to the boy, sitting down in the big chair

to which his tiny mistress had propelled him. She climbed into her

father’s lap and snuggled her radiant head against his arm.

“Light the fire,” Bransby ordered the maid who answered the bell almost

as it rang. Bells always were answered promptly in Richard Bransby’s

house. In some ways Deep Dale was more of the office or counting-house

type than of the home-type, and had been so, at least, since Alice

Bransby’s death.

But it was a pleasant place for all that, if somewhat a stiff, formal

casket for so dainty a jewel as the red-headed child who reigned there,

and life ran smoothly rather than harshly in its walls and its gates.

Certainly this was a pleasant room; and it was the master’s own room.

The fire took but an instant to catch. It was well and truly laid, and

scientifically nice in its proportions and arrangement of paper,

anthracite and ship’s-logs.

If the novels of Charles Dickens had pride of place as Bransby’s one

fad, as they certainly had pride of place on his room’s book-full

shelves, open fires came near to being a minor fad. He was inclined to

be cold.

But the late afternoon was growing chilly, and little Helen watched the

red and orange flames approvingly as they licked and leapt through the

chinks of the fuel.

Hugh, a stocky, tweed-clad boy, as apt to be too warm as was his uncle

to be too cold, lay down on the floor at a discreet distance from the

hearth, but not unsociably far from the armchair.

He did not move when Mrs. Leavitt came in, but he smiled at her

confidently, and she smiled back at him.

Stephen, had he been there, would have risen and moved her chair, or

brought her a footstool, and she would have thanked him with a smile a

little less affectionate than the one she had just given negligent Hugh.

As she sat down she glanced about the large room anxiously. Then she

sighed happily and fell to crocheting contentedly. Really the room was

quite tidy. One book lay open—face down—on a table, but nothing else

was awry, and that she would put in its place presently, when Richard

carried Helen up to the nursery, as at bedtime he always did. Two dolls,

one very smart, one very shabby, lay in shockingly latitudinarian

attitudes on the chesterfield. But those she could not touch: it was

forbidden.

Caroline Leavitt was a notable housewife, but sadly fussy. But she

curbed her own fussiness considerably in Richard’s presence, and what of

it she could not curb he endured with a good humor not commonly

characteristic of him, for he appreciated its results of order and

comfort. He was an orderly man himself, and it was only by his books

that they often annoyed each other. He rarely left anything else about

or out of place.

She very much wished that he strewed those on chair and window-seat less

often, and he very much wished that she would leave them alone. But they

managed this one small discord really quite admirably and amicably. To

do him justice he never was reading more than one volume at a time. To

do her justice she never moved that one except to put it primly where it

belonged on the shelves. And he knew the exact dwelling-spot of every

book he owned—and so did she. They were many, but not too many—and he

read them all—his favorites again and again. She never opened one of

them, but she kept their covers burnished and pleasant to touch and to

hold. There were five editions of Dickens, and Bransby was reading for

the tenth time his favorite author from the great-hearted

wizard-of-pathos-and-humor’s Alpha of “Boz” to his unfinished Omega of

“Edwin Drood”—Bransby’s book of the moment was “David Copperfield.” He

had been reading a passage that appealed to him particularly when he had

been interrupted by Grant’s intrusion. That had not served to soften the

acerbity of the employer’s “Preposterous!”

“And what have you been doing?” Richard asked the dainty bundle on his

knee.

“Playing.”

“With your cousins?”

She shook an emphatic head, and her curls glowed redder, more golden in

the red and gold of the fire’s reflection. “Wiv Gertrude.”

Mrs. Leavitt stirred uncomfortably. But the father laughed tolerantly.

He regarded all his daughter’s vagaries (she had several) as part of the

fun of the fair, and quite charming. She rarely could be led to speak of

her “make-believe” playmates, but he knew that they all had names and

individualities, and that “Gertrude” was first favorite. And he knew

that many children played so with mates of their own spirit’s finding.

Gertrude seemed a virtuous, well-behaved young person, quite a suitable

acquaintance for his fastidious daughter.

Servants carried high-tea in just then, and Stephen slipped into the

room with it.

Caroline Leavitt rolled up her crocheting disapprovingly. She detested

having food carried all over the house and devoured in inappropriate

places, and she disliked high-tea. Crumbs got on the Persian carpet and

cream on the carved chairs, and once, when the hybrid refection had been

served in the drawing-room, jam had encrusted the piano. Caroline had

gained a prize for “piano proficiency” in her girlhood’s long-ago. Every

day at four-fifteen it was her habit to commemorate that old victory by

playing at least a few bars of the Moonlight Sonata. For some time after

the episode of the jam, whenever she touched the instrument’s ivory,

small bubbles of thickly boiled blackberry and apple billowed up on to

her manicured nails and her rings. No—she did not approve of

“high-tea”—and _such_ high-tea “all over the house.” But this was the

children’s hour at Deep Dale, and the children’s feast—and wherever

Helen chanced to be at that hour, there that meal was served. Helen

willed it so. Richard Bransby willed it so. Against such an adamant

combine of power and of will-force determined and arrogant, Caroline

knew herself a mere nothing, and she wisely withheld a protest she

realized hopeless.

So now, she laid her lace-work carefully away, and addressed herself to

the silver tea-pot. And she did it in a cheerful manner. She was not a

profound woman, but she was a wise one. The unprofound are often very

wise. And this is especially true of women.

CHAPTER V

It was not a boisterous meal. There was not a naturally noisy person

there. Bransby was too cold, Stephen too sensitive, Hugh too heavy, to

be given to the creation of noise. Mrs. Leavitt thought it bad form, and

she was just lowly enough of birth to be tormentedly anxious about good

form. And she was inclined to be fat. Helen was ebullient at times, but

never noisily so; her voice and her motions, her mirth and her

reprovings, were all silvery.

It was a homely hour, and they were all in homely and friendly mood. But

it was Stephen who made himself useful. It was Stephen who remembered

that Aunt Caroline preferred buttered toast to cream sandwiches, and he

carried her the plate on which the toast looked hottest and crispest.

And it was Stephen who checked her hand unobtrusively when she came near

to putting sugar in Bransby’s tea.

Helen had slipped from her father’s knee—she was a hearty little

thing—and motioned Hugh to put one of a nest of tables before the chair

she had selected, and dragged close to Richard’s.

“And what have you been doing all afternoon?” he asked Stephen, as the

boy brought him the cake.

“Thinking.”

“Story,” Helen said promptly, through a mouthful of cream and cocoanut

“You wus just watching the birds.”

“Yes, so I was,” the boy said gently, “and thinking about them.”

“What?” demanded Bransby.

“Thinking how stupid it was to be beaten by birds.”

“Beaten?”

“They fly. We can’t.”

“I see. So you’d like to fly.”

“I’m not sure. I think I might. But I’d jolly well like to be _able_

to.”

The man followed the theme up with the boy. In his stern heart Hugh had

already found a warmer place than Stephen had, and Bransby’s kindliness

to the brothers was as nothing compared to his love of Helen. But it

was—of the three—to Stephen that he talked most often and longest, and

with a seriousness he rarely felt or showed in talk with the others.

Stephen Pryde interested his uncle keenly. Bransby did not think Hugh

interesting, and Helen not especially so—charming (he felt her charm,

and knew that others did who lacked a father’s prejudiced

predisposition), but not notably interesting as a mentality or even as a

character.

She was not an over-talkative child. Bransby suspected that also she was

not over-thoughtful. And he was quite right. She felt a great deal: she

thought very little. And her small thinkings were neither accurate,

searching nor synthetic.

But Stephen thought much and keenly, and the boy talked well, but not

too well. Stephen Pryde made few mistakes. When he did he would probably

make bad ones. He was not given to small blunders. And such few mistakes

as he did make he was gifted with agility to cover up and retrieve

finely. Richard enjoyed talking with Stephen.

Helen was not interested in the flight of birds, and still less in its

possible application to affairs of mercantile profit, or of national

power. She interrupted them at a tense and interesting turn, and neither

the man nor the boy resented it.

“What have you been doing?” she demanded of her father.

“Reading ‘David Copperfield’ until Grant came.”

“Is it a nice book?”

“Yes—very.”

“Is it a story book?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll let you read me some, and see if I like it.”

Bransby pointed to the volume, and Stephen brought it to him, still open

at the passage he had been reading when his clerk had interrupted him.

“Shall I begin at the beginning?”

“No—I mayn’t like it. Do a bit just where you wus. Wait, till I get

back,” and she climbed daintily on to his knee.

And Bransby read, smiling:—“‘“We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I

know,” I replied, “and I dare say we say and think a good deal that is

rather foolish. But we love one another truly, I am sure. If I thought

Dora could ever love anybody else, or cease to love me; or that I could

ever love anybody else, or cease to love her; I don’t know what I should

do—go out of my mind, I think?” “Ah, Trot!” said my aunt, shaking her

head, and smiling gravely, “blind, blind, blind!” “Some one that I know,

Trot,” my aunt pursued, after a pause, “though of a very pliant

disposition, has an earnestness of affection in him that reminds me of

poor Baby. Earnestness is what that Somebody must look for, to sustain

him and improve him, Trot. Deep, downright, faithful earnestness.” “If

you only knew the earnestness of Dora, aunt!” I cried. “Oh, Trot!” she

said again; “blind, blind!” and without knowing why, I felt a vague

unhappy loss or want of something overshadow me like a cloud.’”

“Silly man!” exclaimed Helen. She was bored. “No one shouldn’t be blind.

I’m not blind—not a bit. I see.”

“You! you’ve eyes in the back of your head,” Hugh said, speaking for the

first time in half an hour. In those early days he had a talent for

silence. It was by way of being a family gift.

It seems a pity to feel obliged to record it of the one remark of a

person who so infrequently made even that much conversational

contribution, but Hugh was wrong. Helen was not a particularly observing

child. She felt, she dreamed; but she was as lax of observation as she

was indolent of thought. Perhaps she realized or sensed this, for she

said promptly, “I have not. I see with my front.”

“What do you see now?” her father asked idly.

She pointed to the glowing fire, and sighed dreamily: “I see things, in

there. I see Gertrude. Her face is in there all smiley. And she looks

sleepy.”

Bransby smiled indulgently and cuddled the pretty head nestling in the

crook of his arm.

“David Copperfield” slid to the floor. The opportunity was too good to

be neglected—too inviting. The volume was bound in calf, full limp

calf, and had all the Cruikshank’s illustrations finely reproduced.

Caroline got up very carefully and took up the book. Bransby saw her,

but he only smiled indulgently, and she seized the license of his humor,

and carried volume xi. to its own space on the shelves.

Encouraged craftily by her amused father, Helen chatted on to her friend

Gertrude, and of her. Mrs. Leavitt was shocked, but did not dare show

it, and what would have been the use? Nothing! she knew. But she did so

disapprove of Richard’s encouraging the child in the habit of telling

“stories”—to name very mildly such baseless and brazen fabrications.

Hugh was puzzled, but not unsympathetically so, and less puzzled than

might have been expected of so stolid a boy, and at so self-absorbed an

age.

Stephen was uneasy and angry. _He_ thrilled somewhat to Helen’s fancy,

but he disliked both her claim and his own emotion to it.

All three of these children (for why beat longer about our bush?) in

ways totally, almost antagonistically different, were somewhat

“psychic.”

No one suspected it, much less knew it—and they themselves least of

all. Hugh could not. Stephen would not. Helen was too young.

Psychic science or revelation had not, in those days, had much of a look

in socially. And in Oxshott it had barely been heard of—merely heard of

enough to give Ignorance a meaningless laugh. Spiritual planes and

delicate soul-processes would seem to have little vibration with that

environment of mundane interests and financial aggrandizement. But the

souls of the other plane peep in through odd nooks, and work in

seemingly strange ways. And, too, this one group of people, for all

their wealth and their luxuries, lived rather “apart”—they were in the

social swim—to an extent, and in the commercial ether up to their

necks, but even so, in it, they were in another, and perhaps a more real

and significant, way “cloistered” in it: apart.

“Gertrude is sleepy. I am sleepy too. Gertrude says: ‘Good-night,

Helen.’ Good-night, Gertrude.”

Bransby swung her up to his shoulder and carried her off to bed. And

Hugh, at a gesture of an imperious little hand, gathered up the two

dolls, and followed after with them carefully. Helen was a motherly

little thing—intermittently, and had her children to sleep with

her—sometimes. The chain of flowers lay dying and forgotten.

CHAPTER VI

Stephen was not happy. He was loving but not lovable—on the surface at

least. He was sensitive to a fault, brooding, secretive. He had loved

his mother dearly, and Hugh had been her favorite. But that had soured

and twisted him less than had the marriage-misery of her last years. He

had seen and understood most of it; and it had aged and lined his young

face almost from his perambulator days. His two earliest memories were

of her face blistered with tears, and a tea-table on which there had

been no jam, and not too much bread. Secure at Deep Dale, he had jam,

and all such plenties, to spare. And he intended to command jam of his

very own—and cut-glass dishes to serve it in—before he was much older,

and as long as he lived. His days of jam-shortage were past. And they

had left but little scar—if only he could forget that she had shared

and hated it. But the tear-scars on her face, and on her heart, could

never be erased—or from his—or forgotten.

Small boy as he was, all the future lines of his character were clearly

drawn, and Time had but to give them light and shade—and color: there

was nothing more to be done—the outline and the proportions were

complete and unalterable. And at fourteen and a few months he was the

victim of two gnawing wants: heart-hunger and ambition. Few boys of

fourteen are definitely and greatly ambitious, or, if they are, greatly

disturbed as to the feasibility and the details of its fulfillment.

Fourteen is not an age of masculine self-distrust. Masculine

self-depreciation and under-apprisement come slowly, and fairly late in

life. There are rare, notable men to whom they never come. Such men

carry on them a visible and easily-to-be-recognized hall-mark. Their

vocabulary may be scant or Milton-much, but invariably its every seventh

word is “I” or “me” or “my” or “mine.”

Stephen Pryde had no doubt of his own ability to earn success. But his

mind was wide-eyed and clear-eyed, and he doubted if circumstances would

not thwart, much less abet him. Already he saw that he could gain a

great deal through his uncle and in his uncle’s way. The man had said as

much. But Stephen was no disciple, and he was ill-content to win even

success itself in subordination to any other, or in imitation of others

or of their methods. He longed to carve and to climb unaided and alone.

He wished to cleave uncharted skies—as the birds did. Ah! yes, there he

was meek to imitate—to follow and imitate the birds, but not any other

man.

Partly was this ingrained; firm-rooted independence, egoism, partly it

came from the poor opinion he had already formed of his own sex. He

thought none too well of men: his own father had done that to him.

Towards all women he had a sort of pitying, tender chivalry. That his

mother had done to him. He did not over-rate female intellect or

character (like the uncle, whom he resembled so much, intellect in

womenkind did not attract him, and he prized them most when their

virtues were passive and not too diverse), but he bore them one and all

good-will, and the constant small attentions he paid Mrs. Leavitt, and

even the maid-servants, were almost as much a native tenderness as a

calculated diplomacy. Mrs. Leavitt and the maids were not ungrateful.

Women of all sorts and of all conditions are easiest purchased, and

held, with small coins. A husband may break all the commandments, and

break them over his wife’s very back roughly, and be more probably

forgiven than for failing to raise his hat when he meets her on the

street. Stephen was very careful about his hat, indoors and out. He had

seen his father wear his in his mother’s sitting-room, and by her very

bedside. The lesson had sunk, and it stuck.

But his love of his mother, and its jealous observance of her, had

trained him to feel for women rather than to respect them. He had seen

her sicken and shiver under the storm, and bow down and endure it

patiently, when he would have had her breast and quell it. He had not

heard Life’s emphatic telling—he was too young to catch it—that

strength is strongest when it seems weak and meek, that great loyalty is

the strongest of all strength as well as the highest of all virtues, and

that often Loyalty for ermine must wear a yoke,—and always must it bear

uncomplainingly a “friend’s infirmities.”

The boy was a unique, and a blend of his father and his “Uncle Dick.” He

was wonderfully like each. From his mother he had inherited nothing but

a possibility, an aptitude, a predisposition even, towards great

loyalty, which in her had crystallized and perfected into everlasting

and invincible self-sacrifice. In her son it was young yet, plastic and

undeveloped. In maturity it might match, or even exceed, her own; or, on

the other hand, experiences sufficiently rasping and deforming might

wrench and transmute it, under the black alchemy of sufficient tragedy,

even into treachery itself.

If few boys of fourteen are tormented by ambition, very many such

youngsters suffer from genuine heart-hunger. We never see or suspect or

care. They scarcely suspect themselves, and never understand. But the

canker is there, terribly often, and it eats and eats. The heart-ache of

a little child is a hideous tragedy, and when it is untold and unsoothed

it twists and poisons all after life and character. Angels _may_ rise

above such spiritual catastrophe—men don’t.

Even more than Stephen longed to succeed, he longed to be loved. And in

a hurt, dumb boy-way he realized that he did not, as a rule, attract

love.

“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; ’tis woman’s whole

existence.” Hum? There are men _and_ men. (There are even women and

women.) Stephen longed to be very rich, and planned to do it. He longed

to contrive strange, wonderful things that would cleave the air as birds

clove it, revolutionize both Commerce and her servant and master

Transport, make travel a dance and a melody, redraw the map of the

world, carry armies across the hemispheres with a breath, hurl kings

from their thrones, annihilate peoples in an hour—and he planned to do

it: planned as he lay on the grass and watched the birds, planned as he

sat in the firelight, planned as he lay in bed. But more than all this

he longed to be loved: longed but could not plan it. The child knew his

own limitations; and that he did was at once his ability and inability:

it was equipment and drag-chain.

He ached for love. He longed to feel his uncle’s hand in caress on his

shoulder. Once in the twilight he cuddled Helen’s doll to him, in fierce

longing and loneliness of heart. And night after night he prayed that in

his dreams he might hear his mother’s voice. And sometimes he did.

Science asserts that we never _hear_ in our sleep. Science still has

some things to learn.

Stephen loved Hugh, and this affection was returned. But Stephen wanted

more than that; Hugh loved every one. Their mutual fondness was placid

and moderate. And it lacked novelty.

If Hugh loved every one, every one loved Hugh—unless Helen did not. And

Helen was merely a baby, and cared for no one but her father—unless it

was “Gertrude,” whom Stephen hated.

Even Richard Bransby himself, hard and impassive, began to warm to the

younger boy, and Stephen sensed it. He was keen to such things, and read

his uncle the more readily because they resembled each other in so much.

But, much as he desired to be loved, Stephen was not jealous of Hugh.

Jealousy had as yet no hand in his hopes, his fears or his plans:

Jealousy, sometimes Love’s horrid bastard-twin, sometimes Love’s

flaming-sworded angel.

Possibly Stephen’s as-yet escape from jealousy and all its torments he

owed in no small part to Helen’s indifference to Hugh, and to the fact

that Hugh’s fondness of every one made Hugh’s fondness of Helen somewhat

inconspicuous.

For odd Stephen loved wee Helen with a great love—greater than the love

he had given his mother.

The day the boys had first come to Deep Dale Helen, running at play, had

lost a tiny blue shoe in the grounds. Stephen had found and had kept it.

Helen liked her “pretty blue shoes,” and Mrs. Leavitt was sensibly

frugal. The grounds had been searched until they had been almost dug up,

and the entire servant-staff had been angrily wearied of blue kid shoes

and of ferns and geraniums. But Stephen had kept it. He had it still.

And he would have fought any man-force, or the foul fiend himself,

before he would have yielded that bit of sky-blue treasure.

No one understood Stephen, not even the uncle he so resembled. He was

alone and unhappy, only fourteen years old—a quivering personality

concealed beneath a suave mask of ice, and young armor of steel.

Stephen had a tutor.

Helen and Hugh shared a governess.

Both instructors were “daily,” one coming by train from Guildford, the

other by train from London.

Stephen was going to public school in a year or two, Hugh then falling

heir to the tutor.

How long the governess would retain her present position had never been

considered. Probably she would do so for some time. Helen liked her.

* * * * *

BOOK II

THE DARK

CHAPTER VII

The years sped.

In the autumn of 1916 Helen was twenty.

The governess had left three years ago. Helen had found her a curate,

and had given her her silver abundant.

Already that curate had had preferment. Richard Bransby had contrived

that, but Helen had instigated.

Stephen and Hugh had gone, in due course, from the tutor to Harrow, from

Harrow to Oxford.

Stephen would have preferred education more technical, and Hugh would

have preferred none.

Hugh was not lazy, but he had little thirst for learning and none for

tables, declensions or isms.

Stephen, might he have followed his own bent, would have studied only

those things which promised to coach him toward aviation in all its

branches and corollaries. But Richard was not to be handled, and to the

school and the ’varsity he chose the boys went.

Being there, Stephen worked splendidly—took honors and contrived to

gain no little of the very things he desired. He had carpentry at

Harrow—and excelled in it. And at Magdalen he bent physics and

chemistry to his particular needs. At both places his conduct and his

industry were exemplary.

Hugh barely passed into Harrow, and barely stayed there. He ran and he

boxed, and at that glorified form of leap-frog which public schools

dignify as “hurdles” he excelled. But he was lax and mischievous, and

twice he only just escaped expulsion. His stay at Oxford was brief and

curtailed. The authorities more than hinted to Bransby that his younger

nephew was not calculated to receive or to give much benefit at Oxford.

Hence the brothers began on the same day a severe novitiate at the great

shipbuilding and shipping offices.

Strangely enough they both did well. Hugh had a happy knack of jumping

to the right conclusions, and he got his first big step up from dreaming

in his sleep the correct solution of a commercial tangle that was vexing

his uncle greatly.

That Hugh’s mind had worked so in his sleep, accomplishing what it had

failed to finish when normally awake, as human minds do now and then,

proved that at core he was interested in the business his careless

manner had sometimes seemed to indicate that he took too lightly. And

this pleased and gratified Richard Bransby even more than the

elucidation of a business difficulty did. As an evidence of the peculiar

psychological workings of human intelligence it interested Bransby not

at all.

Stephen worked hard and brilliantly. From the first he had dreams of

inducing his uncle to add the building of aircraft to their already

enormous building of ships. He nursed his dream and it nursed his

patience and fed his industry. Morton Grant watched over both young men

impartially and devotedly. All his experience was sorted and furbished

for them. All his care and solicitude were shared between them and the

business.

At the first beat of Kitchener’s drum Hugh begged to follow the flag.

And when Bransby at last realized that the war would not “be over by

Christmas” he withdrew his opposition, and Hugh was allowed to join the

army. He had not done ill in the O. T. C. at Harrow. He applied for a

commission and got it. But it was understood that at the end of the war

he would return to the firm. Richard Bransby would tolerate nothing

else.

There had been no talk—no thought even—of soldiering for Stephen. He

was nearly thirty, and seemed older. Never ill, he was not too robust.

He was essential now to his uncle’s great business concern. And

“Bransby’s” was vitally essential to the Government and to the

prosecution of the war: no firm in Britain more so. Stephen was no

coward, but soldiering did not attract him. He had no wish to join the

contemptible little army, destined saviors of England. Had he wished to

do so, the Government itself and the great soldier-dictator would have

forbidden it. Emphatically Hugh belonged in the army. As emphatically

Stephen did not; but did, even more emphatically, belong in the great

shiphouse.

Time and its passing had changed and developed the persons with whom

this history is concerned—as time usually does—along the lines of

least resistance.

Helen had “grown up” and, no longer interested, even intermittently, in

dolls—“Gertrude” and her band quite forgotten—introduced a dozen new

interests, a score of new friends into the home-circle. Guests came and

went. Helen flitted from function to function, and took her cousins with

her, and sometimes even Bransby himself. Aunt Caroline was a sociable

creature for all her Martha-like qualities. She was immensely proud of

the ultra-nice gowns Helen ordered and made her wear, and quite enjoyed

the dinners and small dances they occasionally gave in return for the

constant hospitalities pressed upon the girl and her cousins.

Helen was as flower-like as ever. She loved her father more than all the

rest of the world put together, or had until recently—but after him her

keenest interest, until recently, was in her own wonderful frocks. She

had a genius for clothes, and journeyed far and wide in quest of new and

unusual talent in the needlework line. But above all, her personality

was sweet and womanly. In no one way particularly gifted, she had the

great general, sweeping gift of charm. And her tender, passionate

devotion to her father set her apart, lifted her above the average of

nice girlhood—perfumed her, added to her charm of prettiness and

gracefulness, a something of spiritual charm not to be worded, but

always felt and delightful to feel.

Between the girl and the father was one of the rare, beautiful

intimacies, unstrained and perfect, that do link now and then just such

soft, gay girl-natures to fathers just so rigid and still. And, as it

usually is with such comrades, in this intimate and partisan comradeship

Helen the gentle was the dominant and stronger ruling, with a gay

tyranny, that sometimes swung to a sweet insolence and a caressing

defiance that were love-tribute and flattery, the man of granite and

quiet arrogance.

Wax to Helen, Richard Bransby was granite and steel to others. Grant,

still his man Friday and, even more than indispensable Stephen, his good

right-hand, trusted but ruled, still stood, as he always had and always

would, in considerable awe of him. But the years had sweetened

Bransby—the Helen-ruled years. He had always striven to be a just

man—in justice to himself—but his just-dealing was easier now and

kindlier, and he strove to be just to others for their sakes rather than

for his own. It was less a duty and more an enjoyment than it had been:

almost even a species of stern self-indulgence. Once it had been a

penance. It was penance no longer. With good men penances

conscientiously practised tend to grow easy and even agreeable. The

devout penitent and the zealot need to find new substitutes periodically

for old scourges smooth-worn.

Caroline’s fussinesses amused Richard more than they irritated him. And

Helen no longer was sole in his love. He loved the boys—both of them.

Stephen he loved with pride and some reservation. Their wills clashed

not infrequently, and on one matter always. Hugh, who often compelled

his disapproval, he loved almost as an own son.

Latham found him a more tractable patient than of old. Horace Latham had

reached no slight professional importance now; owned his place on Harley

Street, made no daily rounds, studied more than he practised, had an

eloquent bank account, and “consulted” more often than he directly

practised.

Helen’s little coterie of friends and acquaintances found him an

amiable, if not a demonstrative, host. Even Angela Hilary he suffered

suavely, if not eagerly.

A Mrs. Hilary had bought a bijou place near theirs a few years ago, and

cordial, if not intimate, relations had been established quickly between

Helen Bransby and the rich, volatile American widow in accordance with

the time-honored rule that opposites attract. But some things they had

in common, if only things of no higher moment than chiffons and a pretty

taste in hospitality. Both danced through life—rather. But theirs was

dancing with all the difference. Helen never romped. Her dancing, both

actual and figurative, was seemly and slow as the dance on a Watteau

fan—thistle-down dignified—minuet. Angela’s, fine of its sort, was

less art and more impulse, and yet more studied, less natural. It almost

partook of the order of skirt-dancing. Both dancings were pretty to

watch, Helen’s the prettier to remember. For the matter of that both

dancers were pretty to watch. Helen Bransby at twenty was full as lovely

as her childhood had promised. She had been exquisitely loved, and love

feeds beauty and adds to it. Angela Hilary had the composite comeliness

so characteristic of the well-circumstanced American woman: Irish eyes,

a little shrewder, a little harder, than the real thing, hands and feet

Irish-small, skin Saxon-fair, soft, wayward hair Spanish-dark, French

_chic_, a thin form Slavic-svelt and Paris-clad, the wide red mouth of

an English great-grandmother, and a self-confidence and a social

assurance to which no man ever has attained, or ever will, and no woman

either not born and bred between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate—a

daring woman, never grotesque; daring in manner, more daring in speech,

most daring of all in dress; but never too daring—for her; fantastic,

never odious—least of all gross. Each of her vagaries suited her, and

the most surprising of all her unexpected gowns became and adorned her:

an artificial, hot-house creature, she was the perfectly natural product

of civilization at once extravagant, well-meaning and cosmopolitan, if

insular too, and she had a heart of gold. A great many people laughed at

Mrs. Hilary, especially English people, and never suspected how much

more she laughed at them, or how much more shrewdly and with how much

more cause—some few liked her greatly, and every one else liked her at

least a little; every one except Horace Latham. Latham was afraid of

her.

CHAPTER VIII

One evening, early in the autumn of 1916, Morton Grant passed nervously

by the lodge of Deep Dale, and along the carriage drive that twisted and

curled to the house.

He had cause enough to be nervous. For the second time in thirty years

he was disobeying his chief grossly; and the cause of his present

turpitude could scarcely have been more unpleasant or less reassuring.

Under one arm he carried a large book carefully wrapped in brown paper.

He carried it as if he feared and disliked it, and yet it and its

fellows had been the vessels of his temple and his own dedication for

years.

Grant barely came to Deep Dale. Richard Bransby dealt with his

subordinates not meanly. A turkey at Christmas, a suitable sum of money

on boxing-day, leniency at illness, and a coffin when requisite, were

always forthcoming—but an invitation to dinner was unheard and

unthought of, and even Grant, in spite of the responsibility and

implicit trustedness of his position, and of the intimacy of their

boyhood, scarcely once had tasted a brew of his master’s tea.

A nervous little maid, palpably a war-substitute either for the spruce

man-servant or the sprucer parlor-maid, one of whom had always admitted

him heretofore, answered his ring, and showed him awkwardly into the

library. She collided with him as they went in, and collided with the

door itself as she went out to announce his presence.

“Tell Mr. Bransby I should be most grateful if he would see me when he

is disengaged, and—er—you might add that the matter

is—er—urgent—er—that is, as soon as they have quite finished dinner.

Just don’t mention my being here until he has left the

dining-room—er—in fact, not until he is disengaged—er—alone.”

Left by himself Grant placed his top hat on a table and laid his parcel

beside it. He unfastened the string, and partly unwrapped the ledger.

Walking to the fireplace, he rolled up the string very neatly and put it

carefully in his waistcoat pocket; ready to his hand should he carry the

ledger back to London with him; ready to some other service for “Bransby

and Co.”—if the ledger remained with his chief.

The clerk glanced about the room—and possibly saw it—but he never

turned his back on the big buff book, or his eyes from it long.

It was a fine old-fashioned room, paneled in dark oak. Not in the least

gloomy, yet even when, as now, brilliantly lit, fire on the hearth, the

electric lamps and wall-lights turned up, it seemed invested with

shadows, shadows lending it an impalpable suggestion of mystery. The

room was not greatly changed since the spring evening thirteen years ago

when Helen had sat on her father’s knee here and grown sleepy at his

reading of Dickens. The curtains were new, and two of the pictures. The

valuable carpet was the same and most of the furniture. The flowers

might have been the same—Helen’s favorite heliotrope and carnations.

The dolls were gone. But the banjo on the chesterfield and the box of

chocolates on the window-seat scarcely spoke of Bransby, unless they

told of a subjugation that had outlasted the dollies.

In the old days the room had been rather exclusively its master’s “den,”

more than library, and into which others were not apt to come very

freely uninvited. Helen had changed all that, and so had the years’ slow

mellowing of Bransby himself. “Daddy’s room” had become the heart of the

house, and the gathering-place of the family. But it was _his_ room

still, and in his absence, as his presence, it seemed to breathe of his

personality.

Grant had waited some minutes, but he still stood nervously, when the

employer came in. He eyed Grant rather sourly. Grant stood confused and

tongue-tied.

The master let the man wait long enough to grow still more

uncomfortable, and then said crisply, “Good-evening, Grant.”

The clerk moved then—one eye in awe on Bransby, one in dread on the

ledger. He took a few steps towards Bransby, and began apologetically,

“Good—er—ahem—good-evening, Mr. Bransby. I—er—I trust I am not

disturbing you, but——”

Bransby interrupted sharply, just a glint of wicked humor in his eye,

“Just come from town, eh?”

“Yes, sir—er—quite right——”

“Come straight here from the office, I dare say?” Bransby spoke with a

harshness that was a little insolent to so old, and so tried, a servant.

Morton Grant’s pitiful uneasiness was growing. “Well—er—yes, sir, as a

matter of fact, I did.”

“I knew it,” Bransby said in cold triumph. It was one of the

ineradicable defects of his nature that he enjoyed small and cheap

triumphs, and irrespective of what they cost others.

Grant winced. His uneasiness was making him ridiculous, and it

threatened to overmaster him. “Er—ahem—” he stammered, “the matter on

which I have come is so serious——”

“Grant,” Bransby’s tone was smooth, and so cold that its controlled

sneer pricked, “when my health forced me to take a holiday, what

instructions did I give you?”

“Why, sir—er—you said that you must not be bothered with business

affairs upon any account—not until you instructed me otherwise.”

“And have I instructed you otherwise?” The tone was absolutely sweet,

but it made poor Morton Grant’s veins curdle.

“Well, sir,” he said wretchedly—“er—no, sir, you haven’t.”

Bransby looked at his watch. Almost the tyrant was smiling. “There’s a

train leaving for town in about forty-five minutes—you will just have

time to catch it.” He turned on his heel—he had not sat down—and went

towards the door.

Grant began to feel more like jelly than like flesh and bone, but he

pulled himself together, remembering what was at stake, and spoke more

firmly than he had yet done—more firmly than his employer had often

heard him speak. “I beg your pardon,”—he took a step towards

Bransby—“sir”—there was entreaty in his voice, and command too—“but

you must not send me away like this.”

His tone caught Bransby’s attention. It could not well have failed to do

so. The shipbuilder turned and looked at the other keenly. “Why not?” he

snapped.

“The thing that brought me here is most important.”

“So important that you feel justified in setting my instructions aside?”

“Yes, sir!” holding his ground now.

Bransby eyed him for a long moment.

Grant did not flinch.

“Sit down.”

Grant did so, and with a sigh of relief—the tension a little eased.

What he had before him was hard enough, Heaven knew—but the first point

was gained: Bransby would hear him.

“I always thought,” moving towards his own chair beside the

writing-table, “that obeying orders was the most sacred thing in your

life, Grant. I am anxious to know what could have deprived you of that

idea.”

Anxious to know! And when he did know!—Morton Grant began to tremble

again, and was speechless.

Bransby studied him thoughtfully. “Well?” he spoke a shade more kindly.

“The matter I—I—I——”

“Yes—yes?” impatience and some sympathy for the other’s distress were

struggling.

Well—it had to be told. He had come here to tell it—and to tell it had

braved and breasted Bransby’s displeasure as he had never done before.

But he could not say it with his eyes on the other’s. He hung his head,

ashamed and broken. But he spoke—and without stammer or break: “We’ve

been robbed of a large sum of money, sir.”

CHAPTER IX

Bransby watched Grant under beetling brows, his thin lips set, stiff and

angry. He valued his money. He had earned it hard, and to be robbed of a

farthing had always enraged him. But more than any money—much more, he

valued the prestige of his business and the triumphant working of his

own business methods. Its success was the justification of his

arbitrariness and his egoism.

He was angry now, in hot earnest—very angry. “Robbed?” he said at last

quietly. It was an ominous quietude. When he was angriest, invariably he

was quietest.

“Ten thousand pounds, sir,” Grant said wearily.

“Ten thousand pounds. Have you reported it to the police?”

“No, sir.”

“Why do you come to me instead of them?”

“Well, sir, you see it only came to light this afternoon. You know the

war has disturbed all our arrangements—made us very backward.”

Richard Bransby knew nothing of the sort. His business prevision and his

business arrangements were far too masterly to be greatly disarranged by

a mere war, had Heaven granted him subordinates with half his own grit

and devise. But he let that pass.

And Grant continued. “The accountants have been unable to make their

yearly audit of our books until this week. It was during their work

to-day that they discovered the theft. So I thought before taking any

action I had best come straight to you.”

“Who stole it?”

Morton Grant’s terrible moment had come—his ordeal excruciating and

testing. He looked piteously toward his hat. He felt that it might help

him to hold on to it. But the hat was too far to reach, and alone,

without prop, he braced himself for his supreme moment of loyalty.

“Who stole it?” Bransby’s patience was wearing thin. The fumbling man

prayed for grit to take the plunge clean and straight. But the deep was

too cold for his nerve. He shivered and slacked.

“Why—er—the fact of the matter is—we are not quite sure.”

“Yes, you are—who stole it?”

“Mr. Bransby, I—” the dry old lips refused their office.

Even in his own impatience, tinged with anxiety now (it disturbed him to

have trusted and employed untrustworthy servants), Bransby was sorry for

the other’s painful embarrassment. And for that he said all the more

roughly, “Come, come, man. Out with it.”

“Well, sir,” Grant’s voice was nervously timid, almost craven—and not

once had he looked at Richard Bransby—“all the evidence goes to prove

that only one man could have done it.”

“And who is that man?” demanded the quick, hard voice.

With a supreme effort of courage, which a brave man never knows—it is

reserved for the cowards—Grant lifted his eyes square to the other, and

answered in a voice so low that Bransby scarcely could have heard the

words had they not rung clear with desperation and resolve, “Your—your

nephew, Mr. Hugh Pryde.”

For a moment Richard Bransby yielded himself up to amazement,

over-sweeping and numb. Then his face flushed and he half rose. For that

one instant Morton Grant was in danger of his employer’s fingers

fiercely strangling at his throat—and he knew it. His eyes filled with

tears—not for himself, pity for Bransby.

Then Bransby laughed. It was a natural laugh—he was genuinely

amused—but full of contempt. “My nephew Hugh?” he said good-humoredly.

“Yes, sir.” The low words were emphatic. Grant was past flinching now.

“Grant, you must be out of your senses——”

“It’s the truth, sir; I am sorry, but it’s the truth.”

Bransby disputed him roughly. “It can’t be. He is my own flesh and

blood. I love the boy. Why, he’s just received his commission, Grant.

And you come sneaking to me accusing him like this—” He threw his head

up angrily and his eyes encountered Helen’s eyes in the portrait of her

that hung over the fireplace: a breathing, beautiful thing, well worth

the great price he had paid for it. As he looked at it his words died on

his lips, and then rushed on anew in fresh and uncontrolled fury—“How

dare you say he’s a thief—how dare you?”

Grant rose too. He was standing his ground resolutely now. The worst was

over for him: the worst for Richard Bransby was just to come. Pity made

the clerk brave and direct. “I’ve only told you the truth, sir,” he said

very quietly.

Grant’s calmness checked Bransby’s rage. For a moment or two he wavered

and then, reseating himself quietly, he said in a voice quiet and

restrained, “What evidence do you base this extraordinary charge on?” As

he spoke he picked up from the table a little jade paper-weight and

fingered it idly. He had had it for years and often handled it so. No

one else ever touched it—not even Helen. He dusted it himself, with a

silk handkerchief kept for that purpose in a drawer to his hand. It was

worth its weight in pure gold, a moon-faced, green Chinese god squatted

on a pink lotus flower.

Grant answered him immediately. “The shortage occurred in the African

trading account.”

“Well?”

“That was entirely in charge of Mr. Hugh; except for him,” Grant

continued, with the kind relentlessness of a surgeon, “no one has access

to those accounts but his brother, Mr. Stephen, and myself. I do not

think that you will believe that either Mr. Stephen Pryde or myself

tampered——”

Bransby brushed that aside with a light sharpness that was something of

an apology, and completely a vote of credit. “Of course not. Go on.”

“Those accounts have been tampered with.”

“But Hugh has not been at the office for months,” Bransby said eagerly,

the hopefulness of his voice betraying how sharp his fear had been in

spite of himself. Acute masters do not easily doubt the conviction of

the word of this world’s rare Morton Grants—“not for months. He’s been

training.”

“The theft occurred before he left us.”

“Oh!” trying to conceal his disappointment, but succeeding not too well.

“Drafts made payable to us are not entered in the books. The accounts

were juggled with so that the shortage would escape our notice.”

Bransby’s teeth closed on his lip. “Is that the entire case against

Hugh?” he demanded sharply, clutching at any hope.

Grant stood up beside the ledger, and opened it remorselessly. What the

remorse at his old heart was only the spirit of a dead woman knew—_if_

the dead know. “The alterations in the books are in his handwriting,” he

said.

“I don’t believe it.”

“I brought the ledger down so that you might see for yourself, sir.” He

placed the volume on the table before Bransby, took a memorandum from

his waistcoat pocket, and consulted it. “The irregularities occur on

pages forty-three——”

Bransby put on his glasses and opened the book scornfully. He believed

in Hugh, and now his belief would be vindicated. Grant was faithful, no

question of that, but a doddering old blunderer. Well, he must not be

too hard on Grant, and he would not, for really he had been half

afraid—from the so-far evidence—himself for a breath or two.

“Page forty-three—yes.” He looked at it. “Yes.” His face was

puzzled—his voice lacked triumph.

“Fifty-nine,” Grant prompted.

Bransby turned to it. “Fifty-nine—yes.”

“Eighty-eight.”

“Eighty-eight.” He looked at it steadily. Slowly belief in Hugh was

sickened into suspicion. Bransby put down the jade toy held till now

idly, and took up a magnifying glass. Suspicion was changing to

conviction. “Yes,” he said grimly. Just the one word—but the one word

was defeat. He was convinced, convinced with the terrible conviction of

love betrayed and outraged—loyalty befouled by disloyalty. Violet

seemed to stand before him—Violet as a child. A lump sobbed in his

throat.

“One hundred and two.”

Staring straight before him, “What number?” he said.

“One hundred and two,” Grant repeated.

“One hundred and two—yes.” But he did not look at the page, he was

still staring straight before him, looking through the long years at the

sister he had loved—Violet in her wedding dress. “Yes.” Still it was

Violet he saw—he had no sight for the page of damnation and treachery.

Violet as he had seen her last, cold in her shroud. Slowly he closed the

book—slowly and gently. He needed it no more. He had nothing more to

fear from it, nothing more to hope. He was convinced of his nephew’s

guilt. “My God.” It was a cry to his Maker for sympathy—and rebuke

rather than prayer.

“The alterations are unmistakably in Mr. Hugh’s handwriting, sir,” Grant

said sorrowfully.

“But why,” Richard Bransby cried with sudden passion, “why should he

steal from me, Grant? Answer me that. Why should he steal from me?”

“Some time ago, sir—after Mr. Hugh had joined the army—it came to my

ears—quite by accident, as a matter of fact—through an anonymous

letter——”

Bransby uttered a syllable of contempt.

Grant acquiesced, “Yes, sir, of course—_but_—I—er—verified its

statements that while Mr. Hugh was still with us—he had been gambling

rather heavily and for a time was in the hands of the money-lenders.”

“Certain of this?”

“Quite.”

“And I trusted that boy, Grant. I would have trusted him with

anything”—his eyes turned to the pictured face over the

fireplace—“anything”—and his hand playing with the jade paper-weight

trembled.

“I know.” And Grant did know. Had not he trusted him too—and loved

him—and for the same woman’s sake?

The hand on the little jade god grew steady and still. The man gripped

it calmly; he had regained his grip of self. “Except yourself, who has

any knowledge of this affair?”

“Only the accountants, sir. Mr. Stephen Pryde has not been at the office

for the past few days.”

“I know. He is staying here with me.” Then the mention of Stephen’s name

suggested to him a pretext and a vent to give relief to his choking

feelings, and he added in querulous irritation, “He’s down here to worry

me again about that cracked-brain scheme of his for controlling the

world’s output of aeroplane engines. He’s as mad as the Kaiser, and

about as ambitious and pig-headed. I’ve told him that Bransby and Co.

built ships and sailed ’em, and that was enough. But not for him. He’s

the first man I’ve ever met who thinks he knows how to conduct my

business better than I do—the business I built up myself. Of course I

know he has brains—but he should have ’em—he’s my nephew—that’s why I

left him the management of my business at my death—fortunate,

fortunate——”

“Yes, sir. But about Mr. Hugh?”

“Ah!” In his irritation over Stephen—an old irritation—the thought of

Hugh had for a moment escaped their uncle. It returned to him now, and

his face fell from anger to brooding sorrow, “Yes, yes, about Hugh.” He

stared in front of him in deep thought, his face working a little.

“I think that, perhaps——” the clerk began timidly.

But Bransby silenced him with an impatient gesture. “The accountants?

Can you trust them?”

“Absolutely.”

“They won’t talk?”

“Not one word.”

“I know there is no need to caution you.”

“Thank you.”

“I must think this over for a day or two—I must think what is best to

be done. Go back to town and have everything go on as if nothing had

happened. Go back on the next train. And, Grant, you’d best leave the

house at once. Hugh is staying here with me, too. I don’t want him to

know you’ve been here.”

“Very good, Mr. Bransby,” Grant said, picking up his hat, and turning to

the ledger.

But Bransby stayed him. “I’ll keep the ledger here with me. I shall want

to look over it again.”

Grant took the memorandum slip from the pocket to which he had restored

it when Bransby shut the book, and held it towards his employer in

silence. In silence Bransby took it.

“I am—er—I am very sorry, sir,” Grant faltered, half afraid to voice

the sympathy that would not be stifled.

“Yes, yes, Grant, I know,” Richard Bransby returned gently. They looked

in each other’s eyes, two old men stricken by a common trouble, a common

disappointment, and for the moment, as they had not been before, in a

mutual sympathy. “You shall hear from me in a day or two.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And, Grant——”

Grant turned back, nearly at the door, “Yes, sir?”

With a glint of humor, a touch of affection, and a touch of pathos,

Bransby said, “You were quite justified in setting aside my orders.”

CHAPTER X

The two stricken men parted then, one going down the road with slouched

shoulders and aimless gait, feeling more than such a type of such years

and so circumstanced often has to feel, but devising nothing, suffering

but not fighting. There was no fight in him—none left—his interview

with Bransby had used it all up—to the last atom.

Richard Bransby sat alone with his trouble, cut, angry, at bay—already

devising, weighing, fighting, twisting and turning the bit of jade in

his nervous fingers. He rose and pulled open a drawer of his table and

laid the ledger in it with a quiet that was pathetic. For a moment he

stood looking at the book sadly.

How much that book had meant to this man only just such men could gauge.

It was his _libra d’ora_, his high commission in the world’s great

financial army, and his certificate of success in its far-flung battle

front. It was his horoscope, predicted and cast in his own keen boy’s

heart and head, fulfilled in his graying old age. It was the record of

over forty years of fierce fight, always waged fairly, of a business

career as stiff and sometimes as desperate and as venturesome as

Napoleon’s or Philip’s, but never once smirched or touched with

dishonor—no, not with so much as one shadow of shame. He had

fought—ah! how he had fought, from instinct, for Alice, for Helen—and,

by God! yes, lately for Violet’s boys too—he had fought, and always he

had fought on and on to success: bulldog and British in tenacity, he had

been Celtic-skillful, and many a terrible corner had he turned with a

deft fling of wrist and a glow in his eye that might have been

envied—and certainly would have been applauded and loved—on Wall

Street, or that fleeter, less scrupulous street of high-finance—La

Salle. It was his escutcheon—all the blazon he had ever craved—and

now——He closed the drawer swiftly and softly. Many a coffin lid has

been closed with pain less profound.

Then his quiet broke, and for a moment the frozen tears melted down his

trembling face, and the terrible sobs of manhood and age thwarted and

hurt to the quick shook his gaunt body. A cry broke from him—a cry of

torture and love. “Hugh—Hugh!”

For a few moments he let the storm have its will of him; he had to. Then

his will took its turn, asserted itself and he commanded himself again.

Bransby turned quietly away with a sigh. For a space he stood in deep

thought. Quite suddenly a pain and a faintness shot through him,

bullet-quick, nerve-racking. He forgot everything else—everything:

which is perhaps the one pleasant thing that can be said of such

physical pain; it banishes all other aches, and shows heart and head who

is their master.

White to his lips, pure fright in his eyes, Bransby contrived to reach a

chair by a side-table on which a tantalus stood unobtrusively. It always

was there. There was one like it in his bedroom, and another in his

private room at the office. And Richard Bransby was an abstemious man,

caring little for his meat, nothing at all for his drink. Tobacco he had

liked once, but Latham had stinted him of tobacco. With the greatest

difficulty he managed to pour out some brandy—and to gulp it. For a

short space he sat motionless with closed eyes. But some one was coming.

With a tremendous effort he pulled himself together. He got out of the

chair, tell-tale near that tantalus, and with the criminal-like

secretiveness of a very sick man, pushed his glass behind the decanter.

He had sauntered to another seat, moving with a lame show of

nonchalance, and taking up his old plaything, when the footsteps he had

heard came through the door.

It was Horace Latham. “Alone?”

“Oh! is that you, doctor? Come in—come in. Have a cigar?”

The physician stood behind his host, smiling, debonair, groomed to a

fault, suspiciously easy of manner, lynx-eyes apparently unobservant, he

himself palpably unconcerned. “Thanks,” he said—“I find a subtle joy in

indulging myself in luxuries which my duties compel me to deny to

others.” He chose a cigar—very carefully—from the box Bransby had

indicated. But he diagnosed those Havanas with his touch-talented

finger-tips. His microscope eyes were on Bransby.

Bransby knew this, or at least feared it, though Latham stood behind

him.

Still fighting desperately against his weakness (he had much to do just

now; Latham must not get in his way), he said, doing it as well as he

could, “Oh, I—I don’t mind—next to smoking myself—I like to watch

some one else enjoying a good cigar.”

Latham’s face did not change in the least, nor did his eyes shift. He

came carelessly around the table, facing his host now, never relaxing a

covert scrutiny, as bland as it was keen. “In order,” he said, “to give

you as much pleasure as possible I shall enjoy this one thoroughly. Can

you give me a match?”

“Of course. Stupid of me.” Bransby caught up a match-stand with an

effort and offered it. Latham pretended not to see it. Bransby was

forced to light a match. He contrived to, and held it towards Latham, in

a hand that would shake. The physician threw his cigar aside with a

quick movement, and caught his friend’s wrist, seized the flaming match

and blew it out.

“I knew it,” Latham said sternly. “Bransby, you are not playing fair

with me. You’ve just had another of those heart attacks.”

“Nonsense,” the other replied with uneasy impatience.

“Then why are you all of a tremble? Why is your hand shaking? Why is

your pulse jumping?”

“I had a slight dizziness,” Bransby admitted wearily.

“What caused it?” Latham asked sharply.

“Grant brought me some bad news from the office.”

“Well—what of it? The air is full of bad news now. You can afford to

lose an odd million now and then. But what business had Grant here? What

business had you to see him? You promised me that you would not even

think of business, much less discuss it with any one, until I gave you

leave.”

“This was exceptional.”

The physician sat down, his eyes still on his patient, and said, his

voice changed to a sudden deep kindness, “Bransby, I am going to be

frank with you—brutally frank. You’re an ill man—a very ill man

indeed. A severe attack of this—‘dizziness’ as you call it—will—well,

it might prove fatal. Your heart’s beat shown by the last photograph we

had taken by the electric cardigraph was bad—very bad.”

“I’ve heard all this before.”

“And have paid no heed to it. Bransby, unless you give me your word to

obey my instructions absolutely, I will wash my hands of your case.”

“Don’t say that.” In spite of himself Bransby’s voice shook.

“I mean it.” Latham’s voice came near shaking too, but professional

training and instinct saved it. “Well?”

“This—this news I have just had—I must make a decision concerning it.

It can’t cause me any further shock. As soon as I have dismissed it, and

I will very soon, I give you my word, I’ll do precisely as you say.”

CHAPTER XI

“Here you are! I thought you were coming back to the billiard room,

Daddy.”

As Helen Bransby came gayly in, her father threw Latham an appealing

look, and shifted a little from the light.

Latham stepped between them. “So he was, Miss Bransby. Forgive me, I

kept him.”

“Our side won, Daddy,” said the glad young voice.

“Did we, dear? Then old Hugh owes me a bob.” As the words left his lips,

a sudden spasm of memory caught him. Helen saw nothing, but Latham took

a quick half-step towards him.

“Are you and Dr. Latham having a confidential chat, Daddy?”

The father contrived to answer her lightly, more lightly than Latham

could have done at the moment. That physician was growing more and more

anxious.

“What on earth do you think Latham and I could be having a confidential

chat about?”

Helen laughed. She had the prettiest laugh in the world. And her

flower-like face brimmed over with mischief. “I thought perhaps he was

asking your advice about matrimony.”

“Latham?” exclaimed Bransby, so surprised that he almost dropped his

precious jade god with which he was still toying.

Latham was distinctly worried—Latham the cool, imperturbable man of the

world. “Now, really, Miss Bransby,” he began, and then halted lamely.

“You don’t mean to say that he is contemplating marrying? Latham the

adamant bachelor of Harley Street?”

Helen wagged her pretty head impishly. “I can’t say whether he is

contemplating it or not, but I know he is face to face with it.”

“Well, upon my word!” Bransby was really interested now.

Latham was intensely uncomfortable. “I am afraid,” he began again, “Miss

Bransby exaggerates the danger——”

“Danger?” the girl mocked at him. “That’s not very gallant, is it?”

“And who is the happy woman?” demanded Bransby.

“Angela Hilary.”

Bransby laughed unaffectedly. “Mrs. Hilary? Our American friend, eh?

Glad to see you are helping on Anglo-American friendship, my dear

fellow. That’s exactly what we need now. I congratulate you, Latham.”

“Please don’t.”

“Oh! he hasn’t proposed _yet_, Daddy,” said the pretty persistent.

“He has not!” assented Latham briskly.

“But it’s coming!” taunted Helen wickedly.

“It is not!” Latham exclaimed hotly. “I haven’t the slightest intention

of proposing to Mrs. Hilary.”

“But what if she should propose to you?” demanded his tormentor.

“I should refuse,” insisted Latham, beside himself with embarrassment.

“And if she won’t take ‘No’ for an answer?”

“You don’t really think it will come to that?” He was really

considerably alarmed.

Helen was delighted. “I think it may.”

“Good heavens!”

“I had no idea, Latham,” joined in Bransby, playing up to Helen (he

always did play up to Helen), “that you were so attractive to the

opposite sex.”

Latham groaned.

“Oh!” Helen said with almost judicial gravity, “I don’t know that it is

entirely due to Dr. Latham’s charm that the present crisis has come

about. I think Angela’s sense of duty is equally to blame.”

“Mrs. Hilary’s sense of duty!” Latham muttered.

“Really?” quizzed Bransby.

“Yes, Daddy, she feels that bachelorhood is an unfit state for a

physician; and because she has a high regard for Dr. Latham she has

nobly resolved to cure him of it.”

“But I don’t wish to be cured.”

“Nonsense!” Bransby rebuked him, adding dryly, “what would you say to a

patient of yours who talked like that?”

Latham turned to Helen desperately. “I say, Miss Bransby, does she know

I am staying with you?”

“No—I think not. I think she’s still in town.”

“That’s a relief.”

“But she’ll find out,” Helen assured him, nodding sagely her naughty red

head.

But respite was at hand. “Can we come in?” asked a voice at which

Richard Bransby winced again.

“Yes, Hugh, come along,” Helen said cheerfully. “Dr. Latham will be glad

to see you; he has finished his delicate confidences.”

“It’s all right, Stephen, we won’t be in the way,” Hugh called over his

shoulder as he strolled through the doorway, a boyish, soldierly young

figure, sunny-faced, frank-eyed. He wore the khaki of a second

lieutenant. He went up to his uncle. Bransby’s fingers tightened at the

throat of the green god, and imperiled the delicately cut pink lotus

leaves.

“I suppose Helen told you that she beat us,” the young fellow said,

laying a coin near Bransby’s hand. “There’s the shilling I owe you,

sir—the last of an ill-spent fortune.”

“Thanks,” Bransby spoke with difficulty. But the boy noticed nothing. He

already was moving to the back of the room where Helen was sitting.

“Have you told him?” Hugh said in a low voice as he sat down beside her.

“No, not yet.”

Stephen Pryde threw one quick glance to where they sat as he came

quickly in, but only one, and he went at once to his uncle. “I hope

Grant didn’t bring you any bad news, sir?” he said.

Bransby was sharply annoyed. He answered quickly, with a swift furtive

look at his nephew. “How did you know Grant was here?”

“Barker told me. I hope there is nothing wrong, sir?”

“Wrong? What could be wrong?” The impatience of Bransby’s tone brooked

no further questioning.

Latham had joined Helen, and Hugh had left her then and had been

strolling about the room unconcernedly. He came up to his uncle

chuckling.

“Old Grant is a funny old josser,” he said. “He is like a hen with one

chick around the office. Why, if one is ten minutes late in the morning,

he treats it as if it was a national calamity.”

Bransby lifted his head a little and looked Hugh straight in the face.

It was the first time their eyes had met—since Grant’s visit. “Grant

has always had great faith in you, Hugh,” the uncle said gravely.

Hugh responded cheerfully. “He’s been jolly kind to me, too. He is a

good old sport, when you get beneath all the fuss and feathers.” And he

strolled back to Helen, Richard’s eyes following him sadly. Latham gave

way to Hugh and wandered over to a bookcase and began examining its

treasures.

Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle again. “The business that brought

him—Grant—can I attend to it for you, Uncle Dick?”

“No, thank you, Stephen, it—it is purely a personal matter.”

Pryde helped himself to a cigarette, saying, “Did he say whether he had

heard from Jepson?” and trying to speak carelessly.

Bransby answered him impatiently. “No; I was glad to find out, however,

that Grant agrees with me that your scheme for controlling the output of

aeroplane engines is an impossible one for us.”

Pryde’s face stiffened. “Then he is wrong,” he said curtly.

Bransby angered. “He is not wrong. Haven’t I just said he agreed with

me?”

“If you gave the matter serious attention, instead of opposing it

blindly, simply because it came from me——”

But this was too much. Bransby stopped him hotly, “I don’t oppose it

because it comes from you. I am against it because it isn’t sound. If it

were, I would have thought of it.”

“You don’t realize the possibilities.” Stephen spoke as hotly as the

elder had, but there was pleading in his voice.

Latham was watching them now—closely.

“There are no possibilities, I tell you,” Bransby continued roughly,

“and that should be sufficient—it always has been for every one in my

establishment but you”—he turned to Latham: “Stephen is trying to

induce me to give up shipbuilding for aeroplane engines—and not only

that, he wants to spend our surplus in buying every plant we are able

that can be turned to that use.”

“Yes,” Stephen urged, “because after the war the future of the world

will be in the air.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“And no one believed in steel ships.”

“That has nothing to do with this.” Bransby was growing testy, and

always his troubled eyes would turn to Hugh—to Hugh and Helen.

“It has,” Stephen insisted, “for it shows how the problem of

transportation has evolved. The men of the future are the men who

realize the chance the conquest of the air has given them.”

“Well, let who wishes go in for it. I am quite satisfied with our

business as it is, and at my time of life I am not going to embark on

ambitious schemes. We make money enough.”

“Money!” Pryde said with bitter scorn. “It isn’t the money that makes me

keen. It’s the power to be gained—the power to build and to destroy.”

The tense face was fierce and transfigured. The typical face of a seer,

Latham thought, watching him curiously. “I tell you, sir, that from now

on the men who rule the air are the men who will rule the world.” The

voice changed, imperiousness cast away, it was tender, caressingly

pleading—“Uncle Dick——”

But Bransby’s irritation was now beyond all control. The day, and its

revelation and pain, had tortured him enough; his nerves had no

resistance left with which to meet petty annoyance largely. “And I tell

you,” he said heatedly, getting on to his feet, “that I have heard all

about the matter I care to hear, now or ever. I’ve said ‘No,’ and that

ends it. Once I make a decision I never change it, and—I—I—I——”

Latham laid a hand on his wrist. “Tut, tut, Bransby, you _must not_

excite yourself.”

Bransby sank back wearily into his chair—putting the paper-weight down

with an impatient gesture; it made a small clatter.

Stephen Pryde shrugged his shoulders and turned away drearily with a

half-muttered apology, “I’m sorry, I forgot,” and an oath unspoken but

black. There was despair on his face, misery in his eyes.

CHAPTER XII

The same group was gathered in the same room just twenty-three hours

later. But Mrs. Leavitt, detained last night on one of her many domestic

cares (she never had learned to wear her domestic cares lightly, and

probably would have enjoyed them less if she had) was here also

to-night: an upright, satin-clad figure very busy with an elaborate

piece of needlework. She made no contributions to the chat—the new

stitch was difficult—but constantly her eye glanced from her needle,

here, there and everywhere—searching for dust.

Richard Bransby had not yet readied his decision, and the self-suspense

was punishing him badly. Latham was anxious. His keen eyes saw a dozen

signs he disliked.

Stephen sat apart smoking moodily, but watchful—a dark, well-groomed

man, with but one beauty: his agile hands. They looked gifted, deft and

powerful. They were all three.

Again Helen and Hugh were together at a far end of the big room,

chatting softly. Bransby watched them uneasily. (Stephen was glad to

notice that.)

Bransby stood it a little longer, and then he called, “Helen!”

She rose and came to him at once, “Yes, Daddy?”

Bransby fumbled rather—at a loss what to say—what excuse to make for

having called her. He even stammered a little. “Why—why—” then

glancing by accident towards the book-shelves, a ruse occurred to him

that would answer, that would keep her from Hugh, as his voice had

called her from him. “I don’t think,” he said, “that Latham has seen

that new edition of Dickens of mine. Show it to him. Show him the

illustrations especially.”

Latham raised a hand in mock horror. “_Another_ edition!”

But even a better diversion was to hand. Barker stood palpitating in the

door with which she had just collided, her agitation in no way soothed

by the fact that Hugh winked at her encouragingly. “Mrs. Hilary,” she

announced, crimsoning. The girl could scarcely have blushed redder if

she had been obliged to read her own banns.

Angela Hilary came in with almost a run; seeing Helen, she rushed on her

and embraced her dramatically with a little cry. She was almost

hysterical—but prettily so, quite altogether prettily so. She wore the

unkempt emotion as perfectly as she did her ravishing frock—you

couldn’t help thinking it suited her—not the frock—though indeed that

did, too, to a miracle.

“Helen! Oh, my dear!” Seeing Bransby, she released the smiling Helen,

and dashed at him, seizing his hand. “Mr. Bransby, oh—I am so glad!

Dear Mrs. Leavitt, too: I am so relieved”—which was rather more than

Caroline could have said. She disliked being hugged, especially just

after dinner, and she had lost count, and dropped her fine crochet-hook.

Mrs. Hilary turned to Stephen and wrung his hand warmly, half sobbing,

“It is Mr. Pryde?”

“Yes,” he told her gravely, “I have not changed my name since last

week.”

But Angela paid no attention to what he said. She rarely did pay much

attention to what other people said. “Dear Mr. Pryde,” she bubbled on at

him, “oh! and you are quite all right.” Hugh came strolling down the

room. Angela Hilary was a great favorite of his. She rushed to him and

caught him by the shoulder, “Lieutenant Hugh. Oh, how do you do?” Then

she caught sight of Latham. She pounced on him. He edged away, a little

embarrassed. She followed the closer—“Dr. Latham! Now my cup _is_ full.

Oh! this is wonderful.”

“Yes, isn’t it!” he stammered, greatly embarrassed. Through the back of

his head he could see Helen watching him. What a nuisance the woman was,

and how fiendishly pretty! Really, American women ought to be locked up

when they invaded London, at least if they were half as lovely and a

quarter as incalculable as this teasing specimen. Interning Huns seemed

fatuous to him, when such disturbers of Britain’s placidity as this were

permitted abroad. Positively he was afraid of this bizarre creature.

What would she say next? What do?

What she did was to seize him by his beautifully tailored arm. Latham

hated being hugged, and at any time, far more than Mrs. Leavitt did.

Indeed he could not recall that he ever had been hugged. He was

conscious of no desire to be initiated into that close procedure—and,

of all places to suffer it, this was about as undesirable as he could

imagine. And this woman respected neither places nor persons. She had

hugged poor Mrs. Leavitt unmistakably. What if——He flushed and tried

to extricate his coat sleeve.

Angela held him the tighter and looked tenderly into his eyes with her

great Creole eyes, surely inherited from some southern foremother. He

thought he heard Helen giggle softly. “My _dear_ Dr. Latham! Oh!”—then,

with a sudden change of manner, that was one of her most bewildering

traits, an instant change this time from the hysterical to the

commonplace—“You will have lunch with me to-morrow—half-past one.” It

was not a question, but simply an announcement.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Latham began. “I am returning to town on an early

train.” Yes, he _did_ hear Helen smother a laugh?—hang the girl! and

that was Hugh’s chuckle.

“Pouf!” Angela Hilary blew his words aside as if they had been a wisp of

thistledown. “Then you’ll have to change your plans and take a later

one.”

“But really I——”

“We’ll consider it settled. You men here all need reforming,” she added

severely to Hugh, catching his eye. “In America we women bring up our

men perfectly: they do us great credit.”

“But this is not America,” Stephen Pryde interposed indolently.

Angela Hilary drew herself up to all her lovely, graceful height. “But I

am American—an American woman.” She said it very quietly. No English

woman living could have said it more quietly or more coldly. It was all

she said. But it was quite enough. Horace Latham took out his

engagement-book, an entirely unnecessary bit of social by-play on his

part, and he knew it. He knew in his startled bachelor heart that he

would not forget that engagement, or arrive late at the tryst. But he

was not going to marry any one, much less be laughed into it by Helen

Bransby, or witched into it by bewildering personality and composite

loveliness. And as for marrying an American wife—he, Horace Latham,

M.D., F.R.C.P.—the shades of all his ancestors forbid! But what was the

tormenting thing doing now?

Suddenly remembering the object of her visit, she pushed an easy-chair

into the center of the room (claiming and taking the stage as it were)

and sank into it hysterically.

Mrs. Leavitt looked up uneasily; she hated the furniture moved about.

“Oh! thank Heaven,” cried Angela, “you are all here.”

“Why shouldn’t we be all here?” laughed Helen.

“I’ve seen all my friends in the neighborhood now,” Angela answered,

relaxing and lying back in relief, “and every one is all right.”

Even Bransby was amused. “Why shouldn’t they be all right?” he asked,

laughing, and motioning Latham towards the cigars.

“Don’t jest, Mr. Bransby,” she implored him. “I have had a very solemn

communication this afternoon.”

“Good gracious!” Hugh said.

“Communication?” Helen queried.

They all gathered about her now—with their eyes—in amused

bewilderment. Even Aunt Caroline looked up from her lace-making.

Angela nodded gravely. “Yes.”

“A—er—communication from whom?” Stephen asked lazily.

“From Wah-No-Tee.”

“Who in the world is Wah-No-Tee?” Pryde demanded.

“Why, my medium’s Indian control.”

Hugh chuckled—his laugh always was a nice boyish chuckle. Mrs. Leavitt

looked shocked—Stephen winked at his cigarette as he lit it. Latham

laid down the cigar he had selected but not yet lit.

“Indian control?” Bransby said—quite at a loss.

Helen explained. “Mrs. Hilary is interested in spiritualism, Daddy.”

“Oh!” Bransby was frankly disgusted. Either Angela did not notice this,

or was perfectly indifferent.

Stephen was greatly amused. A charming smile lit his sharp face. “Is it

permitted to ask what Wah-No-Tee’s communication was, Mrs. Hilary?” he

said—almost caressingly.

“She told me——”

“Oh—” interjected Stephen—“Wah-No-Tee is a lady?”

“Oh! Quite. She told me this morning that one of my dearest friends was

just ‘passing over.’ I was so worried. I hurried back from town as

quickly as I could, and ever since dinner I have been rushing about

calling on every dear friend I have”—she gave Latham a soft look. “And,

as I said—they are all quite all right. Silly mistake!”

Bransby gave a short grunt. “Surely, Mrs. Hilary,” he said irritably,

“you’re not serious.”

“I am always serious,” she told him emphatically. “I love being

serious.”

Bransby picked up the paper-weight and shook it irritably, god, lotus

and all. “But you can’t believe in such rubbish.”

Helen caught his hand warningly. “Daddy! you’ll break poor old Joss!”

For a moment his hand and her young hand closed together over the costly

toy, and then she made him put it down, prying under his heavy fingers

with her soft ones.

“Of course, I believe in it,” Angela said superiorly. “Why, there have

been quite a number of books written about it lately.”

“Foolish books,” snapped Bransby.

Mrs. Hilary answered him most impressively. “There are more

what-you-may-call-’ems in Heaven and Earth, Horatio——” she said

earnestly.

Bransby interrupted her, absently in his irritation taking up “Joss”

again. “But, my dear lady——”

“Even men of science believe.” Angela Hilary could interrupt as well as

the next.

“Now-a-days men of science believe anything—even such stuff as this.”

Again Helen gently rescued the bit of jade.

“‘Stuff!’ Mr. Bransby; it is not ‘stuff’!”

“But your own words prove that it is,” Bransby continued the duel.

“My own words?”

“You’ve just admitted your—‘communication’ I think you called it—was a

silly mistake.”

For one time in her life she was completely non-plused. There had not

been many such times.

“Well—well——” she began, but she could find no useful words. Her

annoyance was so keen that Helen feared she was going to cry. She could

cry, too—Helen had seen her do it. Helen caught up a box of cigarettes

and carried them to Angela, hoping to divert her.

“Do have a cigarette,” she urged.

Mrs. Hilary shook her head violently, but sadly. Helen threw Hugh a look

of despair.

That warrior was no diplomatist, but a beautifully obedient lover. He

hurried to Mrs. Hilary and bent over her almost tenderly, and said,

“Ripping weather—what?”

Mrs. Hilary gave him a baleful look—almost a glare—and turned her

shoulder on him. Hugh shrugged his shoulders helplessly, throwing Helen

an apologetic look.

Helen, in despair, nodded imploringly at Stephen. He smiled, lowered his

cigarette, and addressed their volatile guest. “What a charming frock

that is, Mrs. Hilary.”

The delightful comedienne threw him a sharp look—and melted. “Do you

think so really?”

“It’s most becoming,” he said enthusiastically.

A smile creamed sunnily over the petulant, delicate face. “I think it

does suit me,” she said joyfully.

They all gave a sigh of relief.

“Who made it for you, Angela?” Helen asked hurriedly.

“Clarice—you know, in Albemarle Street.” The cure was complete.

But Helen repeated the dose. “She does make adorable things. I am going

to try her. You know Mrs. Montague goes to her, and she says——”

But what Mrs. Montague said was never told, for at the Verona-like name

Angela Hilary sprang to her feet with a scream of “Good Heavens!”

“Why, what’s up?” Hugh exclaimed.

“I forgot to call on the Montagues—and poor dear Mr. Montague has such

dreadful gout. How could I be so heartless as to forget the Montagues?

Such perfectly dreadful gout. Oh, well, one never knows—one never

knows. Good-night, everybody. I am sure you won’t mind my rushing off

like this”—both Bransby and Caroline looked resigned—“but I am so

worried. Good-night—good-night.” She paused in the door, “Don’t forget,

Dr. Latham, to-morrow at half-past one sharp.” She threw him a sweet,

imperative look, and was gone—as she had come—in a silken whirl and a

jangle of jewels and chains.

CHAPTER XIII

Richard Bransby looked after her sourly.

“Humph,” he said. “What a foolish woman.”

“Yes, silly,” Stephen agreed.

“So foolish she dares to believe—in things,” Horace Latham said slowly.

They all looked at him in amazement. “Latham!” Bransby exclaimed.

The physician turned and met his gaze. “Yes?”

“You don’t mean to tell me that you believe in all this hopeless drivel

of ‘mediums’ and ‘control’ and spirit communications.”

“I don’t know,” Latham said musingly.

“Well, upon my word!”

“Of course,” Latham continued, “some of it—much of it—sounds

incredible—beyond belief—and yet—well, some years ago wireless

telegraphy, the telephone, a hundred other things that we have seen

proved, would have seemed quite as incredible. With those things in

mind, how can we absolutely deny this thing? How can we be sure that

these people—foolish as some of them certainly appear—are not upon the

threshold of a great truth?”

The hand that held the paper-weight tightened angrily. “And you, a

sensible man, tell me that you believe that the spirits of those who

have gone before us come back to earth, and spend their time knocking on

walls, rocking tables, whirling banjos, and giving silly women silly

answers to silly questions!”

“No—not that exactly.” Latham was smiling. “But my profession—it

brings me very close to death—I’ve seen so much suffering lately.

Well—if one believes in God—how can we believe that death is the end?

I know I don’t.”

Helen’s hand lay on the table, she was standing near her father. He laid

his palm on hers—and sat musing.

“No,” he said after a pause, “neither do I.”

“I’m sure it isn’t!” the girl said.

“This is getting a bit over my head,” Stephen Pryde said with a shrug,

rising. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take a stroll.”

Latham looked at him with a smile of apprisement, “I take it you don’t

share our belief, Pryde?”

Stephen smiled in return, and a little contemptuously.

“I am afraid I am what you would call a rank materialist. To me death is

the end—complete annihilation. That’s why I mean to get everything I

can out of life.”

“Oh, Stephen—no!” his cousin cried. “You mustn’t believe that! You

can’t! Think! What becomes of the mind, the heart, the soul, the thing

that makes us think, and love and hate and eat and move, quite aside

from muscles and bones and veins? The thing that is we, and drives us,

the very life of us?”

“Just what becomes of an aeroplane when it flies foul, or is _killed_,

and comes crashing down to earth: done, killed, I tell you, just as much

as a dead man is killed—and no more. Last week, near Hendon, I saw a

biplane, a single seater, fighter, die. Something went wrong when she

was high, going beautifully, she side-slipped abruptly to port, and

trembled on her wing-tip just as I’ve seen a bird do a thousand times,

and she sickened and staggered down to her doom, faint, torn and

bleeding, twisted and moaned on the grass, gave a last convulsive groan,

a last shudder, and then lay still, a huddled mass of oil, broken

struts, smashed propeller, petrol dripping slowly from her shattered

engine, her sectional veins bleeding, her rudder gone, her ailerons

useless, forever, her landing-gear ruined: killed—dead—a corpse—for

the rubbish heap.”

“Oh! Stephen,” whispered Helen, “and the pilot?”

“The pilot?” Pryde said indifferently. “Oh! he was dead too, of course.”

He picked up a fresh cigarette and sauntered from the room.

Of the injured and destroyed machine he had spoken with more emotion

than any one of them had ever heard in his voice before. And there was a

long pause before Bransby, turning again to Latham, said:

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow your argument, Doctor. Surely one can

believe in immortality without believing in spiritualism?”

“I don’t know that that is my argument. But lately one has thought a

great deal over such things. The war has brought them very close to all

of us.”

“Yes,” Bransby concurred thoughtfully. And Caroline Leavitt laid down

her work a moment and echoed sadly, “Yes.”

And Latham continued: “Those lives that were given out there—so

unselfishly—surely that cannot be the end—and, if we don’t really die,

how can we be certain that the spiritual power—the _driving_ force,

that continues to exist, cannot come back and make its existence felt?

Oh! I don’t mean in rocking tables, or ringing bells, or showing lights,

or in ghostly manifestations at séances.”

“What do you mean, then?” Bransby was half fascinated, half annoyed.

“They might make an impression upon the consciousness of the living.”

But Bransby was unimpressed by that.

“A sort of supernatural telepathy, eh?”

Latham pondered a moment. “I dare say I can explain best by giving you

an example.”

“Well?”

“Suppose a man—a man whose every instinct was just and generous—had

done another man a great wrong and found it out too late. If his

consciousness remained, isn’t it possible—isn’t it probable, that he

would try to right that wrong and, since he had cast away all material

things, he couldn’t communicate in the old way—yet he’d try—surely he

would try——”

“You believe that?” Bransby exclaimed.

“I believe,” Latham said very slowly, “that he’d try—but whether he’d

succeed or not—I don’t know.”

“Oh!” Helen cried with a rapt, glowing face, laying a pleading hand on

the hand holding the jade, “it must be so—it’s beautiful to believe it

is so.”

“And if,” Latham continued, “one would try for the sake of justice,

can’t you think that others would try, because of the love they had for

the living they had left behind—who still needed them? I dare say that

every one of us has at one time or another been conscious of some

impalpable thing near us—some of us have believed it was a spirit

guarding us.”

“Yes,” Helen whispered.

“If we knew,” Latham went on, “the way, we might understand what they

wanted to tell us—if only we knew the way——”

Again there was a pause. Bransby shifted impatiently, and put his toy

down with a slight clatter, but kept his hand on it still.

Latham spoke, his manner completely changed. He got up, and he spoke,

almost abruptly. “Well, I am afraid I have bored you people sufficiently

for to-night, and I have some rather important letters to write—if you

will excuse me.”

“Of course,” Helen said, as he moved to the door, “but oh! you haven’t

bored us, Dr. Latham.”

Latham smiled at her. “Thanks. I’ll take my cigar,” he added, picking it

up.

“I shan’t be able to enjoy seeing you enjoy it,” Bransby protested.

“Try telepathy,” was the smiling rejoinder. “Good-night.”

CHAPTER XIV

Mrs. Leavitt had not noticed the physician go. She had not been

listening for some time, the turn of her pattern had been at its most

difficult point. But she had managed it, and now sat counting

contentedly. Helen was gazing into the fire, her face all tender and

tense. Bransby had watched the door close, a queer purse on his lips.

Presently he said grimly—half in jest, half in earnest—

“Well, he’s a queer kind of a doctor. I shall have to consult some one

else.”

Mrs. Leavitt rose with a startled cry. Glancing up from the endless

pattern, at an easy stage now, the dust-searching eye had discovered

much small prey. She gathered up her work carefully and bustled about

the room.

“If that dreadful Barker didn’t forget to straighten out this room while

we were at dinner. Dr. Latham and Mrs. Hilary will think I am the most

careless housekeeper. I do hope, Helen, that you explain to our friends

how the war has taken all our servants. You should tell everybody that

before it began Barker was only a tweeny, and now she is all we have in

the shape of a butler and parlor-maid and three-quarters of our staff.

And she is so careless and clumsy.” She went from cushion to vase, from

fireplace to table, straightening out the room somewhat to her

satisfaction: the father and the daughter watching her with resigned

amusement.

A book lay open, face down on the writing-table. She pounced on the

volume. Bransby’s amusement vanished. “Careful there, Caroline, I am

reading that book.”

“Not now, you’re not—and books belong in book-cases.” She closed it

with a snap.

“Now you’ve lost my place!”

“Well, the book’s in its proper place,” she said, thrusting it into its

shelf. “There, that’s better. Now I wonder how the drawing-room is. I

must see. Dear me, this war has been a great inconvenience,” she sighed

as she went from the room—taking Hugh, none too willing, with her.

Caroline Leavitt was not an unpatriotic woman. Simply, to her home and

house were country and universe too—her horizon enclosed nothing beyond

them. She loved England, because her home and her housekeeping, this

house and her vocation, were in it; and not her home, as some do,

because it was in England. England was a frame, a background. Her

emotions began at Deep Dale’s front door, and ended in its kitchen

garden. There are many such women in the world.

“Your aunt is a martinet, Helen,” Bransby grumbled smilingly. “She never

lets me have my books about as I like them—and she is always losing my

place.”

Helen laughed.

“Do you know,” her father continued, “I have found rare good sport in my

books? Some of those chaps there—and Dickens especially—now—he _was_

a card. Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Well, when I’m a bit low in my mind, I like to read it—more than any

other book, I think—I find it sort of comforting. A man is never really

lonely when he has books about him. Ah! I remember my place now—where

Copperfield passes the blind beggar. It goes—let me see—yes: ‘He made

me start by muttering as if he were an echo of the

morning—“Blind—blind—blind.”’”

“I’m glad you find your books good company, Daddy.”

“Are you? Why?”

“Well—well—if—if we were ever parted, it would make me happy to think

you had friends near you.”

Bransby laid his paper-weight down quickly and looked at his girl

anxiously. “If we were ever parted? What do you mean, Helen?”

She turned from him a little as she replied softly, “Haven’t

you—haven’t you ever looked forward to a time when we might be?”

“No—of course not!”

“Sure?” she whispered.

“Oh!”—her father’s breath came quickly—“You mean that some day you

might marry?”

“Well—you want me to marry—some day—don’t you, Daddy?”

“Why—why, yes. Yes, of course I do. It would be a wrench, a bad wrench,

but—I should feel safer, if I knew there was some good man to take care

of you.”

The girl came to him then, and he reached and took her hand and held it

to his cheek.

“There is a good man who wants to—now.” She spoke very low—only just

said it. But Richard Bransby heard every word; and every word cut him.

“Who is he?” There was fear in his voice and fear on his face. He

dropped her hand.

“Can’t you guess?”

“Not—not Hugh?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

He turned and walked as if groping his way towards the window.

Helen watched him, surprised and disappointed. “Why—why—Daddy!”

“Helen,” he said, still turned from her, “suppose—suppose I didn’t

approve of your marrying Hugh—what would you do?”

The girl pouted a little. “Daddy dear,” she rebuked him, “do be

serious.”

“I am serious.” He turned and faced her, sadly and gravely, far the more

troubled of the two.

And she took a step towards him, and spoke clearly. “But why suppose

such a thing? You would never refuse your consent to my marrying Hugh.

You have loved him better than any one else in the world—except

me—always since they came. Why, it has been almost as if he were your

very own son.”

Her words affected him keenly. It was with a stern effort that he kept

traces of his emotion from his voice. “But, if I didn’t approve?” he

insisted.

Helen looked at him with startled eyes, realizing for the first time

that he was serious. “You mean—you mean—you don’t!”

“Yes,” he told her.

“Why?” she cried.

The question was very, very difficult for him, so difficult that for a

moment he could find no answer. At last he said slowly, “I don’t believe

Hugh is the man to make you happy.”

“Don’t you think I am the best judge of that?” Helen said

gently—quickly.

His answer was quicker: “No.”

The girl lost something of her self-control then, and there was a

pitiful note in the young voice saying: “Daddy, this isn’t all a silly

joke? You aren’t trying to tease me?”

“I’m not joking, Helen.” There were tears in his voice.

“Then,” she cried, “why have you suddenly changed towards Hugh? Our

house has always been his home—all these years. I can only just

remember when he came: I can’t remember when he was not here. You have

purposely thrown us together.” There was accusation in her tone, but no

anger.

She had pricked him, and he answered sharply: “I never said that it was

my wish that you should marry him.”

“Not in words—no—but in a hundred other ways. Why have you changed?

Why?”

“I don’t want to answer that question.”

“I have the right to know.”

Richard Bransby was suffering terribly—and physically too. He yearned

over her, and he ached to get it over and done. But he could not bring

himself to denounce the boy he had loved so—so loved still.

But Helen, at bay too, would give him no respite: how could she? “You

haven’t answered me—yet,” she said, more coldly. Her tone was still

gentle; but her fixed determination was quite evident—unmistakable.

“Very well, then, I will,” and he gathered himself for the ordeal,

his—and hers. Then again he hesitated. “Helen,” he pleaded, “won’t you

accept my decision? You—you know a little—just a little—what you are

to me—how all the world—ah! my Helen—you wouldn’t break my old heart,

would you? Say that you could not—would not—say it——”

“Daddy! My daddy,” she whispered.

“Say it,” he cried.

“Daddy,” her tears had come now—near; but she held them—“I mean to

marry Hugh,” she said very quietly—even in his distressed agitation he

recognized and honored her grit—the wonderful grit of such delicate

creatures—“with your approval, I hope—but, in any case, I mean to

marry him.”

“Think how I’ve loved you, child,” the father cried, catching her wrists

in his hands, “you wouldn’t set my wishes aside?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Helen.” It was a sob in his throat.

“Just think for a moment,” she said, “he has given up everything to join

the army. Any day, now, he may go—out there. He loves me, Daddy—and I

love him.”

“He is not worthy of you—” Bransby was commanding himself—at what cost

only he knew—and Horace Latham might partly have guessed.

After a pause—painful to him—she was too indignant to suffer much

now—at last she spoke—sternly. “Why do you say that?”

“Don’t press the question,” he pleaded, “you know how much I care for

you—how dear you are to me. Surely you must know that I would not come

between you and your happiness if I hadn’t a good reason.”

“But I must know that reason.”

“You won’t give him up—for me?”

Pity for his evident distress welled over her, and she answered him

tenderly: “I can’t, dear.”

She waited. He waited too. He could count his heart thump, and almost

she might have counted it too.

At last he nerved himself desperately, went to his desk and pulled the

ledger from the drawer. He put it down ready to his hand, if he had to

show it to her at last; then turned and laid his hands on her shoulders.

When he could command himself—it was not at once—he said, speaking

more gently than in all his long, gentle loving of her he had ever

spoken to her before, “Helen, Hugh is a thief.”

There was silence between them; a silence neither could ever forget. It

punctuated their mutual life.

She broke it. For a while she stood rigid and dazed—and then she

laughed.

No lash in his face—even from her hand—could have hurt him so.

Again she waited: haughty and outraged now.

“He has stolen ten thousand pounds from me.”

She neither spoke nor stirred.

“That is why Grant came here last night—to tell me.”

The girl made a gesture of infinite scorn, of unspeakable rebuke.

“My dear, I would have spared you this—if I could.”

She answered him then, contempt in her voice, no faintest shadow of fear

in her brave young eyes. “I don’t believe it.”

“I didn’t believe it—at first. But the proof,”—he went to the desk and

laid one hand sorrowfully on the big buff book—“well, it’s too strong

to be denied. You shall see it yourself.”

“I will not look. I would not believe it if Hugh told me himself.” She

turned quietly and left him, and he dared not stay her.

But he heard her sob as she passed along the hall.

At the sound his white face quivered and he crouched down in a chair and

laid his tired face on the table. He sat so for a long time—perfectly

still. Presently a wet bead of something salt lay in the heart of the

rose lotus flower.

CHAPTER XV

“What a fashion plate!” Angela Hilary exclaimed as she came across her

ornate little morning room to greet her guest.

Latham smiled amiably. No one dressed more carefully than he, and he had

no mock shyness about having it noted.

“You don’t look especially dowdy yourself,” he returned, as he took in

his hand one of her proffered hands and eleven of her rings.

The visit was an unqualified success, and more than once Horace Latham

thought ruefully what an ass he had been to fight shy of so delightful a

morning.

He was the only guest: it goes without saying, and Latham himself had

hoped for nothing else. That he foreknew that it would be a function

strictly for two had both assuaged and augmented his maiden nervousness.

If this dominant and seductively pretty young widow was determined to

press her suit (and quite aside from Helen Bransby’s tormenting

prompting he had an odd, fluttering feeling that it was a suit, and not

to be side-tracked easily), her opportunities to do so would be

tenfolded under her own roof—and they alone. On the other hand, he

thought that he could manage himself better, and far more smoothly, safe

from the disconcerting flicker of Helen’s mocking eyes, and the not

improbable comments, aside and otherwise, of her impish tongue. And, if

it came to such stress of issue between them (himself and the widow)

that he had no strategical escape left short of brutality, he felt that

he would find the exercise of such brutal harshness somewhat less

abominable and repugnant when no third one was present to witness

Angela’s discomfiture.

But he had misjudged his lady—and soon he sensed it.

Under all her flare for willfulness, and her disconcerting blend of

dainty atrocities and personal aplomb, Mrs. Hilary had sound instincts

and inherited good taste. She fluttered her skirts with some rumpus of

silken _frou-frou_ (to speak in metaphor), but she never lifted them

above her ankles. Her home was her temple, she, its goddess, was chaste

as erratic, and to her half-southern blood a guest was very sacred.

She gave him an exquisite meal and a thoroughly good time, but she never

once made love to him or even gave him a provocative opening to make

love to her. And with admirable masculine consistency almost he felt

that had she done either or both he might have borne

it—yes—cheerfully.

But she did not. She was grave. She was gay. She showed him her

_cloisonné_ and her ivories, her etchings and her Sargent, she played to

him, and she sang a little. She flattered him, and she gave him some

rare dole of subtle petting, but she did no wooing, and seemed inclined

to brook none.

What a woman! She set him to thinking. And he thought.

Next to his profession, in which he was deeply absorbed—but not

narrowly so, for this dapper, good-looking man was a great physician,

and not in-the-making—Horace Latham cared more for music, and needed it

more, than he did for anything else—even pictures. All that was most

personal to him, all that was strongest and finest in him, quivered and

glowed quickest, surest, longest, at the side of a dissecting table, and

to the sound of music, violin-sweetness, harp-magic, the song of a

piano, the invocation of an organ, the lyric lure of a voice.

But it had to be good music. Helen played prettily, and bored him. Hugh

was everlastingly discoursing rag-time with his two first fingers, and

Latham itched to chloroform him.

He had never heard Mrs. Hilary attempt music. And when, after lunch,

uninvited she sat down at her piano he winced.

She played wonderfully. What a surprising woman! She played Greig to him

and Chopin, and then she sang just twice: “Oft in the Stilly Night”—his

mother had sung that to him in the dear long-ago, and then a quaint

pathetic darky melody that he had never heard before.

“Oh! please,” he begged as she rose.

“No more—to-day,” she told him, “enough is better than too much feast.”

“And what a feast!” he said sincerely.

“Do you like Stephen Pryde?” she demanded abruptly, closing the piano.

“I’ve known him since he was a child.”

She accepted the evasion, or rather, to be more exact, spared him

putting its admission into cruder wording.

“Well—you’re wrong. You’re all wrong. I like him. No one else does,

except Hugh, and Hugh doesn’t count. But I do: and I like Stephen Pryde

immensely.”

“You certainly do count, very much,” Latham told her emphatically. And

she did not contradict him by so much as a gesture of her ring-covered

hands or a lift of the straight black eyebrows. “Why doesn’t Hugh

count?” he asked.

“Because he likes every one. The people who like every one never do

count. It is silly. It’s too silly. Now, Stephen Pryde does no such

thing.”

“No,” agreed Latham, “he does not; and certainly ‘silly’ is the last

word I should employ to describe him.”

“Silly!” Angela said with high scorn. “There isn’t a silly hair on his

head. He’s a genius—and he’s hungry—oh! so hungry.”

“Geniuses usually are,” Latham interrupted.

Angela ignored this as it deserved, and he himself thought it feeble and

regretted it as soon as he had perpetrated it.

“He’s a genius—and his uncle throttles it. Now, I want you to make

Richard Bransby behave—you and Helen. You can, you two; together you

can do anything with him.”

“Oh, Mrs. Hilary, please listen to me,” the physician was genuinely

alarmed, “on no account must Mr. Bransby be bothered or

irritated—positively _on none_.”

She studied him for a moment. “So,” she said slowly—“as ill as

that—poor Helen.”

She did not say, “Poor Mr. Bransby,” and Latham liked her for the nice

justice of her differentiation.

“And that’s why you stay here so much.”

Latham made no reply—and she seemed to expect none. She had affirmed;

she had asked no question. Really she had some very satisfactory

points—most satisfactory!

Then she gave a surprising little cry. “Oh! I am so sorry—so sorry for

Helen.”

“I hope,” the doctor began, but she paid no attention to him whatever.

“Don’t you remember?—Wah-No-Tee told me. How wonderful! How stupid of

me not to have understood! Oh! I must ’phone for another appointment

to-morrow. I mustn’t forget,” and she made a dash for her engagement

book, and began to scribble something in it. As she wrote she said to

him over her shoulder, “Won’t Helen look just too lovely in mourning?”

What a woman! He gazed at her speechless. What would the incalculable

creature say next—what do?

What she did was to move a stool near to his chair, and seat herself.

What she said was, “Well—then—of course—that makes a difference. Let

me see—yes—I have it—I’ll lend Stephen the money—lots of money; I

can, you know, just as easy as not.”

“Lend Stephen the money!” Latham said dumb-foundedly.

“Oh—of course,” Angela added impatiently; “Stephen Pryde wouldn’t

borrow money of me—of course not. That’s where you come in.”

“Oh! where I come in——”

“Yes, of course, don’t you see——”

“No, I certainly do not.”

“How stupid! It’s perfectly simple. I think a blind man would see it—if

he was fair-to-middling smart. You are to lend him the money.”

“I!”

“Yes, stupid—_you_: my money.”

“Oh!”

“Listen—don’t sit there staring and just say, ‘I! Oh! Ah!’ as if you

were trying to sing: ‘Do—re—mi—fa—sol—la.’ You are to manage

Stephen.”

“Instead of handling Bransby,” Latham said with light sarcasm.

But Mrs. Hilary beamed on him approvingly. “Exactly.”

“It occurs to me,” Latham remarked softly, “that you intend me to

renounce medicine for diplomacy.”

“They’re much the same thing—but—oh! I’ll manage it all really.”

“Yes—I inferred that. Now, please, the details. To begin at the

beginning, you wish to endow Pryde with your fortune.”

“I wish to do nothing of the sort,” she said severely. “I am going to

lend him part of it; or rather invest it in him. I shall get it all back

a thousand times.”

“Good interest!”

“Oh—be quiet——”

Latham sat in smiling silence.

“You will do it? You must!”

“I begin to see. I am to lend Pryde a slice—shall we say?—of your

fortune. Now, just that I may act intelligently, may I enquire how

much?”

“That’s what you are to find out.”

“Oh! that’s what I am to find out——”

“Of course.”

“May I—dare I ask, what he wishes it for—or needs it—or is to have

it?”

“To build aircraft. You ought to know that. I think you are dense

to-day, Dr. Latham.”

“I think you are very charming—to-day, Mrs. Hilary.”

“_And_ you will help me? Say you will. Say it now!”

“I am thinking——”

“Don’t think. Just promise.”

Latham was minded to tell her, “Some one must think,” but he refrained,

and said instead, “We’ll talk it over at least, several times, if we

may. Yes, I’ll come soon again and talk it over, if you’ll let me.”

She seemed quite satisfied at that. Probably she foresaw several

_tête-à-tête_ luncheons. Perhaps Latham did also.

He would have stayed to tea, but Angela did not ask him; and at last he

got up slowly. Even then she might ask him, he thought, but she did not.

But she gave him a deep red rose—at his request.

Just as he was going he turned back to say, “I do know, of course, that

Pryde is obsessed about aviation, and that Bransby will have none of

it—and, between you and me, I think that Bransby is wrong—but why do

you care? Are you interested in the air?”

“Good gracious, no. I love the earth—and indoors for choice. Give me a

good rocking-chair. I’d rather have that than the best horse that ever

was driven or ridden, though I like horses too. I’m just sheer sorry for

Stephen Pryde. I like him. And I’d just love to help him. He’ll succeed

too, I think; but that’s not the point. I want him to have his own way.

He never has—in anything. Only think, how horrid, never to have your

own way.”

“Much you know about it.”

She ignored that. Angela was terribly in earnest. “He is very intense.

He is strong too. And with all his strength he has desired two things

intensely. Hugh, his own brother, has thwarted him in one; Richard

Bransby in the other. One we can’t give him. The other we can. And we

are going to—you and I.” She held out her hand in “good-by,” but Latham

knew she meant it even more in compact.

He was thoughtful all his way back to Deep Dale, and silent at dinner.

Undressing for sleep—if sleep came—he looked at his red rose with an

odd rueful smile, and put it carefully in water.

At that moment Angela Hilary laughed softly as she let her dark hair

fall free to the white hem of her nightgown. Then she threw a kiss to

herself in the mirror.

The first thing Latham saw the next morning when he woke was a deep

crimson rose. He lay very still for a long time watching it.

CHAPTER XVI

Morton Grant had delivered his sorry news on Monday. Dr. Latham had

lunched with Mrs. Hilary on Wednesday.

Thursday was bleak and cold, and a slow chilly rain fell all day.

Helen and her father were alone in the library when the brothers joined

them. She felt that her father meant to “have it out” then, and she was

glad. For him and for her the tension was already too cruel. And it was

Hugh’s due to know, and to know without longer delay. Once or twice she

had felt that she herself must tell him. But the girlish lips he had

kissed refused the words and the office; and she had an added instinct

of reticence, part a reluctance to tale-bear, part a hurt, angry

determination to leave her father to do his own “dirty work.”

“Stephen says you want to have a chat with me, Uncle Dick.”

So—her father had sent for Hugh; had sent Stephen.

“Yes, Hugh,” Bransby said gently.

“Righto,” the boy replied. In several senses he was not “sensitive,” and

nothing of his uncle’s strain, or of Helen’s, had reached him.

Bransby turned to his daughter. “Helen, will you leave us for a little

while?”

“I’d rather stay, Daddy.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

Helen met his gaze quietly, and sat down. She had been standing near the

fire when her cousins came in.

Bransby sighed. But he saw it was useless to command her. She would not

go.

Stephen had been looking at the books in the case. He turned sharply now

and eyed them all intently. He was “sensitive,” and keenly so where

Helen was concerned.

Hugh turned to Helen, smiling and happy: “I say, have you told him,

then, Helen?”

“Yes—Tuesday night.”

Hugh turned to Bransby with a boyish laugh, a very slight flush of

embarrassment on his young face, love, pride and victory in his eyes. “I

suppose I am in for a wigging, eh?”

“Hugh,” Helen broke in, “Daddy has refused his consent.”

Hugh took a sharp step forward and threw up his head. “Refused his

consent? Why?”

She gestured towards her father. _She_ could not say it.

“Why, sir?”

Bransby answered him sadly: “Don’t you know, Hugh?”

“No, sir. Of course I know I am not good enough for her—who could be?

But you know I love her very dearly.”

“Hugh,” Bransby said more sorrowfully and sternly, “didn’t you realize

that some day you were certain to be found out?”

Stephen Pryde started, but controlled himself instantly.

Hugh gazed at his uncle blankly. “Found out? What in the world—I don’t

know what you mean, sir.”

“Can’t you think why Grant came here on Monday?”

“No. How could I?”

“Why did he come, sir?” Stephen interposed.

“A shortage has been discovered in the accounts at the office.”

“A shortage in our accounts?” Stephen spoke incredulously. “Impossible.”

“I’m most awfully sorry, sir,” Hugh said sympathetically, taking a step

nearer his uncle.

“Some one has stolen ten thousand pounds.”

“Who?” Stephen asked quickly.

“The money was taken from the African trading account.”

“From the African trading account?” Stephen echoed. “But that’s

impossible—Hugh has always had charge of that.”

“I know,” Bransby said dully.

“Uncle Dick,” Hugh cried, suddenly realizing that he was being

accused—“Uncle Dick, you don’t mean that you think that I——” The

passionate voice choked and almost broke.

Stephen stopped him. “Quiet, Hugh; of course he can’t mean anything so

absurd as that. Besides, you’ve not been at the office for months.”

Helen threw toward Stephen a look full of gratefulness.

But her father said despairingly, “The money was taken while he was

still at the office.”

“How do you know that, sir?” Stephen spoke almost sternly to his uncle.

But the older man did not resent that. “Certain alterations were made in

the ledger during the time he had charge of it,” he explained drearily.

Hugh broke in hotly, “I know nothing of them.”

“Of course not,” his brother said cordially. “You see, sir——” turning

to Bransby.

“The alterations are in Hugh’s handwriting.”

“Impossible,” Hugh cried indignantly—contemptuously too.

Stephen said very quietly, “I don’t believe it.”

“I can convince you.” Their uncle opened the ledger, one hand on its

pages, the other on the jade weight.

Helen sat proudly apart, but the brothers hurried to him. Hugh threw

himself in a chair at the table where the book lay, Stephen stood behind

his brother, his hand on his shoulder.

There was a significant pause.

Stephen shook his head. “It is very like,” he said slowly.

Bransby turned to another page. “And this?”

“Oh, yes, it is. It is very like too.” Stephen’s reluctance was apparent

and deep. And a hint of conviction escaped him.

“There is no need to go further,” Bransby said wearily. “These were made

when the money was taken.”

Hugh sat gazing at the open ledger in bewilderment. “It—it,” he

stammered—“it seems to be my handwriting—but”—he was not stammering

now—“I swear I never wrote it.”

“I believe you, Hugh,” Stephen said simply.

Bransby said sternly—but not altogether without a subcurrent of hope in

his tired voice, “Besides you, only Stephen and Grant had access to that

ledger. Will you accuse either of them of making these alterations?”

Hugh laughed. “Of course not. Old Stephen and Grant—why, you know, sir,

that that’s absurd. But what have I ever done that you should think me

capable of being a thief?”

The old man shook his head. But Stephen answered, his hand on Hugh’s

shoulder, “Nothing, Hugh, nothing! You’ve known my brother always,

sir”—turning to their uncle, speaking with passionate earnestness. “You

_know_ he’s not a thief. If he has been a bit wild—it was only the

wildness of youth.” There was anxious entreaty in face and in voice, and

the face was very white and drawn. Of the four Stephen Pryde

unmistakably was not suffering the least.

But Bransby was despairingly relentless now. “While he was at the office

he was gambling—he borrowed from money-lenders.”

“It isn’t true,” cried Stephen hotly.

Bransby swung to his younger nephew. “Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Hugh!” the elder brother said in quick horror.

“But I won enough to clear myself, and that’s why I——”

“Hugh,” Stephen’s voice broke, “I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Hugh turned on his brother in dismay: “Stephen! you don’t mean that

_you_ think——”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were in trouble?” Pryde said sorrowfully. “I

would have helped you, if I could.”

“But I wasn’t in trouble,” the boy protested impatiently. “I tell you

I’m innocent.”

With a gesture of infinite sadness and his face quivering Stephen Pryde

laid his hand on Hugh’s shoulder. “Hugh,” he said, and now his voice

broke as a mother’s might have broken, “Hugh, I am your brother—I love

you—can’t you trust me?” he pleaded. “Even now we may find a way out of

this, if you will only tell the truth.”

“But I have told the truth,” Hugh asserted helplessly. His voice broke,

too, as he said it.

Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle and they exchanged a slow look—a look

of mutual sorrow and despair. Hugh saw the look, shrugged his shoulders

and crossed to Helen’s chair.

“Helen, you don’t believe this, do you?”

Stephen turned and watched them intently.

The girl smiled. “No, Hugh.”

“Thank you, dear.” And he smiled back at her.

“I would give a great deal not to believe it, Hugh”—there was entreaty

in Bransby’s voice, if not in his words, almost too a slight something

of apology—“but the evidence is all against you.”

Hugh had grown angry a few moments ago, but at Helen’s smile all his

anger had died, and even the very possibility of anger. And he answered

Bransby as sadly and as gently as the older man himself had spoken, “I

realize that, sir; but there must be some way to prove my innocence—and

I’ll find it.”

“And in the meantime?” Bransby demanded.

“In the meantime,” his nephew echoed—“oh—yes—what do you want me to

do?”

“The right thing.”

Helen sprang to her feet—but quietly, and even yet she said nothing. Of

them all she was the least disturbed. But perhaps she was also the most

intent. Hers was a watching brief. She held it splendidly.

“The right thing?” Hugh asked, puzzled but fearful.

“You must tell Helen that no marriage can take place between

you—unless—until you have cleared yourself of this—this suspicion.”

Stephen protested. “But, sir—” He was watching and listening almost as

sharply as the girl was; but for the life of him he could not tell

whether or not his uncle had indeed given up all hope. At the elder’s

last words he had winced—for some reason.

Helen looked only at Hugh now. “No, Hugh, no,” she cried proudly—and

then at the look on his face, “No—no,” she pled.

Hugh Pryde’s face was the grimmest there now. But he answered her

tenderly. “He’s right, dear. It can’t take place until I have cleared

myself. Oh, don’t look startled like that. Of course it can’t. But I’ll

do that. Helen, listen, somehow I’ll do that.”

“Oh!” she almost sobbed, both hands groping for his—and finding

them—“but, my dear——”

Bransby broke in, and, to hide his own rising and threatening emotion,

more harshly than he felt: “And until then you must not see each other.”

For a moment Hugh held her hands to his face—and then he put them away

from him and said, smiling sadly but confidently, and speaking to her

and not to her father, answering the cry in her eyes, the rebellion in

the poise of her head, “No—until then we must not see each other.”

She drew herself up, almost to his own height, and laid her arms about

his neck, folding and holding him. “I can’t let you go from me like

this, Hugh, I can’t let you.”

Stephen Pryde watched them grimly—torture in his eyes; but Bransby

turned his eyes away, and saw nothing, unless he saw the green and rose

bauble he held and handled nervously.

Very gently Hugh Pryde took her arms from his neck, and half led, half

pushed her to the door. “You must.”

She turned back to him with outstretched arms. “Oh, Hugh, Hugh,” she

begged.

Still he smiled at her, and shook his head.

For a moment longer she pleaded with him—mutely; then, with a little

hurt cry, she ran from the room.

Hugh stood looking after her sadly until Stephen spoke. “Hugh, my boy,

be frank with me. Let me help you.”

At that the younger grew petulant, and answered shortly, “There’s

nothing to be frank about.” Then his irritation passed as quickly as it

had come. “Oh! why won’t you believe that I never did this thing?”

Stephen hung his head sadly. But Bransby was wavering. “Hugh,” he said,

“if you can prove yourself innocent, no one will be happier than I—but

until you do——”

“I understand, sir. But—oh—I say—what about—what about

my—commission?” His face twitched, and he could scarcely control

himself to utter the last word with some show of calmness. He was very

young—and very driven.

“You will have to relinquish that,” Bransby replied pityingly. “You can

leave the matter in my hands—my boy. I will arrange it.”

Hugh could hardly speak. But he managed. “Very good, sir. Then I—may

go?”

Bransby could not look at him. “You will leave here to-night?”

“At once.”

“That would be best.”

“Good-by,” Hugh said abruptly.

Stephen held out his hand, and after an instant Hugh clasped it. He

turned to his uncle.

Bransby rose stiffly from his chair. He was trembling. Neither seemed

able to speak. For a bad moment neither moved. Then Richard Bransby held

out—both hands. Hugh flushed, then paled, and took the proffered hands

in his. There was pride as well as regret in his gesture, affection even

more than protest. Then without a word—a thick sound in his throat was

not a syllable—with no other look—he went.

Bransby caught at the back of his chair. He motioned Stephen to follow

Hugh. “See that he has money—enough,” he said hoarsely.

Stephen nodded and left him.

Richard Bransby looked about the silent room helplessly. “My poor

Helen,” he said presently—“Violet! Violet!”—but he pulled himself

together and moved towards the bookcase. Perhaps he could find

distraction there.

He sat down again, the volume he had selected on his knee, and opened it

at random, turning the pages idly—one hand on the jade joss, that as it

lay on the table; seemed to blink in the firelight.

The printed words evaded him. To focus his troubled mind he began to

read aloud softly:—

“‘There was a beggar in the street, when I went down; and as I turned my

head towards the window, thinking of her calm seraphic eyes, he made me

start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning: “Blind! Blind!

Blind!”’”

CHAPTER XVII

Richard Bransby was breaking. He could not bear much more, and he knew

it. He had felt very faint at lunch. Latham would have driven him to his

bed, but Latham had been again lunching at Mrs. Hilary’s.

Now he was alone in the library. The room seemed to his tired, tortured

mind haunted by Hugh and by trouble.

He looked up at the clock. The boy had been gone just twenty-four hours.

Where had he gone? What was he doing? Violet’s boy!

The sick man felt alone and deserted. Helen had scarcely spoken to him

all day. Indeed she had stayed in her room until nearly dinner-time, and

at dinner she and Latham had almost confined their chat to each other.

He picked up “David Copperfield,” opened it at random—then shook his

head and laid it down, still open. He’d read presently; he could not

now.

A step at the door was welcome. It was Stephen.

Bransby began abruptly: “Last night, when you saw him off—he protested

his innocence to the last?”

“Yes, sir. Oh! yes.”

“Oh! why didn’t he tell me the truth. If he had confessed, I could have

found it in my heart to forgive him.”

Stephen sighed, and sat down near his uncle. “I told him that. I begged

him to throw himself on your mercy. But he wouldn’t even listen.”

Bransby’s face changed suddenly. “You told him that—that you were sure

I’d forgive it, let it pass even, and he still persisted that he was

innocent.”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Stephen,” Bransby said anxiously, rising in his agitation and looking

down on the other almost beseechingly, “have you thought—thought that

we may be mistaken?”

“Mistaken? In what way?”

“About Hugh, of course. When he was here, even though everything was

against him, his attitude was that of an innocent man. Then his refusal

to you to confess even when mercy—forgiveness—were promised—that,

too, is the action of an innocent man.” Bransby spoke more in entreaty

for confirmation than in his usual tone of conviction and personal

decision.

Stephen responded musingly, “Yes—it is. And I believe he is innocent. I

can’t quite believe that he isn’t, at least—only——”

“Only what?”

Pryde hesitated—and then reluctantly, “It was such a shock to have

discovered that he deceived us about his gambling. I had never thought

Hugh deceitful. He always seemed so frank—so open—as he seemed last

night in this room.”

“Yes,” Bransby groaned. “Yes—he did deceive us about his gambling—and

he knew it was contrary to my orders—how I hated it.”

“But that doesn’t _prove_,” the nephew said promptly, “that he did this

other thing” (his uncle looked up quickly, gratefully). “Of course, it’s

true that gambling sometimes tempts men to steal.”

“It always does.” Bransby lapsed back into despair, and shrank back into

his chair.

“But Hugh seemed so innocent,” Stephen added reflectively.

“He seemed innocent, too, when he was gambling,” the other retorted.

“Yes—that’s true.”

“And I loved him—I trusted him—I—he was always my favorite. Even now,

I’m not treating you fairly. You must be suffering horribly—my poor

Stephen.”

“I am suffering, sir. On your account, on my own, on poor misguided

Hugh’s, I loved him too, I always shall love him; but I am suffering

more, a thousand times more, for—Helen.”

Bransby gave him a startled look. He had spoken her name in a tone

unmistakable. “Yes, Uncle Dick, it’s just that. It has always been that.

It will never be anything else, any other way than that with me.”

In his surprise Bransby picked up his joss and put it down again several

times, beating with it a nervous tattoo on the table. “Does she know?”

“Helen? No. It would only have hurt her to know. It has always been Hugh

with her. But now——”

Bransby checked him—not unkindly—he sensed something of what it must

have cost him, this unanswered affection; he knew Stephen’s nature ran

deep and keen—but he spoke decidedly, feeling, too, that there was

something callous, almost something of treachery, in a brother who could

hint at hope so quick on a brother’s ruin, and Helen’s heart newly hurt

and raw. “Put it out of your mind, Stephen. Helen will never change;

least of all now. The women of our family are constant forever. Now we

must act—you and I. We must arrange that there shall be no scandal

about Hugh’s disappearance. We must protect his name—on Helen’s

account—and the firm’s. About his commission—almost I regret saying he

must throw it up. It might—it might have been the way out. Have you any

idea where he is?”

“None.”

“Well—then—we must act at once. Already I’ve let a day slip—I—I’m

not well—I said I’d attend to it. We’ll attend to it now. I don’t think

there’ll be any trouble about that. Oh! he ought to have written his

resignation, though, before he went. My fault—my fault. However, I’ll

do it now. No! I can’t.” He held out the hand with the Chinese curio in

it. The hand was trembling so that the jade thing winked and rainbowed

in the light of the fire. “You must write it. That will do. Sit there

and do it now. Make it brief and formal as possible. I’ll go to town

to-morrow and see his Colonel myself, if necessary—Latham willing or

no.”

Stephen crossed to the writing-table thoughtfully. He began to

write—Bransby walking about still carrying the paper-weight

absent-mindedly—and thinking aloud as he moved. “His leave isn’t up for

another three days. Yes—I think that gives us time. Yes—we’ll get into

touch with his Colonel to-morrow and find out just how to proceed. I

hope I shan’t have to tell the real reason.”

“Will this do?” Pryde had finished, and passed his uncle the sheet.

Bransby glanced at it carelessly at first. “Yes, yes.” He held it

towards Pryde—then something prompted—a strong impulse—he drew it

back, looked at it, then he fell to studying it. A terrible change

passed over his face. He gazed at the paper in amazement, then looked in

horror from it to the man who had written it—then back at the note,

crimson flooding his neck, a gray shadow darkening his rigid face. He

raised his haggard eyes and stared at Stephen thunderstruck.

Stephen felt the fierce eyes, and looked up. “Why—why—what is it,

sir?”

But even as he spoke Stephen Pryde knew—as Bransby himself had learned

in a flash—one of those terrible forked flashes of illumination that

come to most of us once in life.

Bransby answered slowly, coldly, carefully. “You have signed Hugh’s name

to this, and it is Hugh’s handwriting. If I didn’t _know_ otherwise, I

would have sworn he wrote it himself.”

Stephen lost his head. His hand shook, and his tongue. “That’s odd,” he

stammered with a sick laugh, “I—I didn’t realize.” He put his hand out

for the letter—Bransby drew it back, looking him relentlessly in the

eyes. The brain that had made and controlled one of the greatest

businesses ever launched, and complicated in its immense ramifications,

was working now at lightning speed, rapier-sharp, sledge hammer in

force, quick, clear and sure.

“It was no accident. You can’t patch it up that way—or in any—I _see_.

You have practiced his handwriting. You have done this before.”

Stephen gathered himself together feebly. “Of what do you accuse me?” he

fumbled.

“Tell me the truth—I must know the truth.”

Then Stephen added blunder to blunder. He pointed to the ledger. “I know

nothing of it—nothing.”

“You’re lying.”

“Uncle Dick!”

“You are lying, Stephen Pryde—it’s as plain on your face as the truth

was on Hugh’s—and, God forgive me, I wouldn’t believe him.”

“I didn’t do it, I tell you!” Stephen was blustering fiercely now.

“You had access to that ledger as well as Hugh. You can’t deny the

damnable evidence of this you’ve just written before my eyes. Oh! how

blind I’ve been—blind—blind! Stephen,” he panted in his fury, “unless

you tell me the truth now, by the mother that bore you, I’ll show you no

mercy—none.”

For a space Stephen stared at him, fascinated—caught. All at once his

courage quite went, and he sagged down in his chair, crumpled and

beaten. “I did it,” he said hoarsely. “I had to.”

“You made the alteration in the ledger after Hugh left?”

“Yes.”

“My God! and you wrote the anonymous letter to Grant, too! Why?”

“I wanted power—dominion—they are all that make life worth living. You

drove me to it. You never cared for me—not as you did for Hugh—you

thwarted me always. I wanted power, I tell you. I would have given it to

you—such power as you never dreamed of—such power as few men ever have

had. But you always stood in my way. You kept me a subordinate—and I

hated it. You threw Helen and Hugh together, and I could have killed

you. When the war broke out I saw my chance. I meant to take for myself

the place I could have won for you—and would have won—for you—and for

her—but I needed money—so—I speculated—and lost.”

“And then you put the crime on your brother’s shoulder. You would have

ruined his life—destroyed his happiness.”

“What does the life and happiness of any one matter, if they stand in

the way? Hugh! Hugh meant nothing to the world—Hugh’s a fool. I could

have done great things—I could have given England the Air—The Air.”

“Yes,” Bransby said piteously. “Yes, I believed in you. I have left the

control of my business to you—after my death. Thank God for

to-morrow—to alter that, to——”

Stephen shrugged an insolent shoulder, and said coldly—he was cool

enough now, “Well, what are you going to do—with me?”

The answer was ready. “Take up that pen again—write—and see to it that

the handwriting’s your own.”

Pryde glowered at Bransby with rebel eyes, and then—almost as if

hypnotized—did as he was told—writing mechanically, his face

twitching, but his hand moving slowly, to Richard Bransby’s slow

dictation.

The dictation was relentless: “I confess that I stole”—the quivering

face of the younger man looked up for an instant, but Bransby did not

meet the look (perhaps he, too, was suffering), his eyes were on space,

his fingers lifting and falling on his carved toy. Stephen looked up,

but his pen moved mechanically on—“ten thousand pounds from my uncle,

Richard Bransby—and I forged my brother Hugh’s handwriting in the

ledger.” Pryde laid down the pen.

“Sign it.”—He did.

“Date it.”—He did.

“Give it to me.” The hand that took the paper shook more than the hand

that had written it.

“Do you know where your brother has gone? Have a care that you tell me

the truth from this on—it’s your only chance. Do you know where he has

gone?”

“No!”

“Go find him—if you hope for mercy. Bring him back here by to-morrow.”

Stephen rose with a shrug. For an evil moment Richard Bransby’s life was

in peril. Stephen stood behind him, murder hot in his heart, insane in

his eyes, and clenched in his fist: all the hurt and the thwart of years

joined with the rage and dilemma of the moment, ready to spring, to

avenge and to kill. Bransby saw nothing—not even the jade he still

fingered. Then with a gesture of scorn he tore into bits the note of

resignation he had made Stephen write. “I’ll see the Colonel myself.

That will be best,” he said.

At that instant, Bransby’s head bowed, Pryde’s hand still raised, Mrs.

Leavitt’s voice rose in the hall, fussed and querulous, “Who left this

here? Barker!” Bransby did not hear her, but Pryde did. His arm fell to

his side, he forced a mask of calm to his face, and then without a word

he went. He did not even look towards his uncle again; but at the door

he turned and looked bitterly, hungrily, at the picture over the

fireplace. Poor Stephen!

In the hall Caroline Leavitt hailed him. “Not going out, Stephen?”

“Yes; I’ve to run up to London for Uncle Dick,” he told her lightly. She

exclaimed at the hour, followed him with sundry advice about a rug and a

warmer coat, and he answered her cordially. Perhaps he was not

ungrateful for so much creature kindliness, such small dole of

mothering—just then.

Presently the front door slammed. “Dear me, that’s not like Stephen,”

she said aloud.

Richard Bransby heard nothing. For a little he sat lost in his own

bitter thoughts. Then he read Stephen’s confession over with scrupulous

care. “Blind—Blind—Blind,” he murmured as he folded it. Ah! that

terrible faintness was coming on again. He dropped the paper; it fell on

the still open pages of “David Copperfield.” For once the book astray

had escaped Caroline’s eye. This was torture. Could he get to the

brandy? Where was Latham? Helen—he wanted Helen. He thought he was very

ill. Helen must know the truth—about Hugh—and they must put the proof

in safe keeping before—before anything happened to him. Helen’s

happiness—yes, he must secure that—and Hugh—Hugh whom he had so

wronged—he must atone to Hugh.

In his effort to conquer his spasm he caught hold of the volume of

Dickens, and it closed in his convulsive fingers. Helen—he must get to

Helen. He staggered to his feet, the book forgotten on the table, the

paper-weight forgotten too, but still gripped close in one unconscious

hand. For a space he stood swaying—then he contrived to turn, and

staggered to the door, calling, “Helen—Helen!”

His voice rang through the house with the far-carrying of fright and

despair.

Barker reached him first, and began to cry and moan hysterically.

Caroline Leavitt pushed her aside. “He has fainted. Call Dr. Latham.”

But Latham had heard Bransby’s cry, and so, too, had Helen. They came

together from the billiard room hurriedly. The girl threw herself down

by her father, all the bitterness gone, only the old love and gratitude

left. Latham knelt by him, too, and after a touch of Bransby’s hand, a

look at his face, said, “Mrs. Leavitt—you and Miss Bransby wait in the

library.”

“No, I want to stay here,” Helen insisted.

“You must do as I say.”

“Come, dear,” and Caroline led her away, and put her into her father’s

chair.

“Poor Daddy—poor Daddy.”

“He will be all right in a few moments,” the older woman said feebly.

But Helen was not attending to her. Caroline stood looking pitifully at

the shaken girl, and then turned away sadly. The disorder of the table

caught her eye. Not thinking, not caring now, but obeying the habit of

her lifetime, she took up the volume of “David Copperfield,” and carried

it to the bookcase. As she replaced it on its shelf Latham came in. He

went to Helen and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“Daddy?”

The physician met her eyes pityingly. He had no healing—for her.

With a shudder the girl rose and turned to the hall.

“Helen,” Mrs. Leavitt pled.

“He would want me near him,” the girl said quite calmly. And the

physician neither stayed nor followed her; and he motioned Mrs. Leavitt

to do neither.

CHAPTER XVIII

Three days later they laid him down by his wife.

Until then Helen scarcely left him. And not once did her pitiful young

calm break or waver.

Stephen came from London. Latham’s telephone message had reached Pont

Street before Pryde had.

No word came of Hugh, no word or sign from him.

They laid him in his coffin almost as they found him. Helen insisted

that it be so. Much that when dead we usually owe to strange hands, to

professional kindliness, the girl, who had not seen death before, did

for this dead.

The blackdraped trestle, the casket on it, was placed in the room where

the tragedy that had killed him had fallen.

He lay as if he slept, all the pain and doubt gone from his still face.

Only one flower was with him—just one in his hand. And in the other

hand he still held the odd Chinese carving. Helen had intended the

costly trifle he had so affected—so often handled—it seemed almost a

part of him—to remain with him. But, at last, something, some new

vagary of Grief’s many piteous, puzzling vagaries, impelled her to take

it from him.

She scarcely left him all the hours he lay in his favorite room and took

there his last homekeeping, there where he had lived so much of his

life, done so much of his thinking, welcomed such few friends as he

valued, read again and again the books he liked.

He rested with Helen’s picture, radiant, gay-clad, smiling down on him

serene and immovable, and Helen black-clad, pallid, almost as

quiet,—moving only to do him some new little service, to give him still

one more caress.

It was their last tryst—kept tenderly in the old room where they had

kept so many. Such trysts are not for chronicling.

At the last—alone for the “good-by” that must be given—but never to be

quite ended or done, live she as long as she may—Helen unclenched the

cold—oh! so cold—fingers, and drew away the bit of jade.

Sobbing—she had scarcely cried until now—she carried it to the

writing-table, and put it just where it had always stood.

“I want it, Daddy,” she said, smiling down wet-eyed on the still face.

“You don’t know how much you handled it. I seem always to have seen it

in your hand. No one shall touch it again but me—just yours and mine,

Daddy—our little jade doll, in a pink cradle. Stay there!” she told the

joss, and then sobbing, but pressing back her tears, and wiping them

away when they _would_ come, that her sight might be clear for its last

loving of that dear, dead face, she bent over the coffin, spending their

last hour together, saying—good-by.

“Oh, Daddy—my Daddy——” The sobs came then, long and louder. Latham,

watching in the hall, heard them, but he did not go to the girl; nor let

any one else do so.

* * * * *

BOOK III

THE QUEST