The Peacock Feather
The Jester
The Wiser Folly

“FOR ALL HIS OUTWARD CALM, FOR ALL HIS LEVEL, EASY, CARELESS
VOICE, HIS HEART WAS IN A TUMULT.”
Drawn by D. C. Hutchison    (See page 179.)

BY

LESLIE MOORE

AUTHOR OF “THE PEACOCK FEATHER,” ETC.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1916

BY
LESLIE MOORE

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

When the Delancey affair had been brought to a conclusion, it was not uninteresting to note the various opinions set forth regarding its happy termination.

Biddy, at once autocrat and indulger of at least three generations of juvenile Delanceys, maintained, and stoutly, it was entirely due to her own prayers to her patron saint. She took, so to speak, a monopoly of the business as far as any human agency was concerned. But, as one cannot, with any degree of modesty, parade one’s private devotions to the world at large, it was hardly probable that this view of the matter would be universal.

The village in general, with the exception of Mrs. Trimwell, laid the whole credit at the feet of [Pg 2]Lady Mary Delancey. Doubtless this was on account of the wave of relief which had surged over it, and which exalted her ladyship, for the time being at least, to a pinnacle of almost giddy height.

Mrs. Trimwell had her own private views on the matter. What they were, will, no doubt, be realized later.

Corin Elmore believed the whole thing due to karma, though it is true that this particular arrangement of karma puzzled him not a little.

John Mortimer, while maintaining on the whole a strictly neutral attitude, allowed his opinion of the credit due to sway slightly, if it swayed at all, in the direction of his sister Elizabeth. And in so doing, he swayed nearer the mark, if you will believe me, than the majority of folk with opinions on the subject.

Father Maloney was heard to announce that “surely to goodness the fella himself might be allowed a taste of the credit.” The “fella” was David Delancey. But more of him anon. Father Maloney made the announcement with a twinkle in his eye, and a slight exchange of glances with Lady Mary. That exchange of glances puzzled [Pg 3]more than one of those who had happened to surprise it. Its meaning, however, was never fathomed. There was no question but that Lady Mary and the priest were past masters in keeping their own counsel when they chose. He would be a bold man who put any question savouring of impertinence to Lady Mary. For my part, I had sooner face a whole battery of artillery than have Lady Mary’s tortoiseshell-rimmed lorgnettes turned slowly upon me, her grey eyes glinting through them with steely courtesy. The courtesy was never absent, you may be sure, but then neither—on occasions—was the steeliness. Nor would it be well, if you wished to retain the smallest atom of self-respect, to question Father Maloney unduly. That soft tongue and speech of his could shrivel your complacency to the likeness of a withered leaf when you deserved it. And you may be very sure that, when they did shrivel it, you were left in no manner of doubt as to your deserts in the matter.

Lady Mary herself never ventured the smallest hint of an opinion as to whom the credit was due. In fact from first to last she kept a dignified [Pg 4]silence on the whole affair, save when sheer necessity demanded speech from her. Her silence and dignity alone prevented it from sinking to melodrama, and truth obliges me to confess that it had more than once a distinctly suspicious flavour of that obnoxious quality.

But this is beginning at the wrong end of the skein, a proceeding which will indubitably result in a most fearsome tangle. Therefore, with your permission, I will break off and start anew.

“Your idea,” said John meditatively, “as far as I can elucidate it from your somewhat wordy discourse, is that I should accompany you to this exceedingly out-of-the-way, this on your own showing entirely remote, secluded, and sequestered spot, for the sole purpose of affording you amusement in your so to speak out of work hours.”

“That,” returned Corin admiringly, “is the idea in toto. It is marvellous with what ease and skill you have grasped and summed up the entire situation.”

John sighed.

“And might one be allowed to question what are the advantages to be gained from such a sojourn? What manner of recreation can the place afford? In a word, where do I come in?”

“Advantages!” Corin raised his eyes to the [Pg 6]cobwebby rafters. “Heavens above! Isn’t my companionship an advantage? And for recreation what more can you desire than the contemplation of country lanes and wide moorland this glorious summer weather? Think of it, man! The earth ablaze with purple heather, the sea blue and golden,—breathing, living, colour. Anon there will be blackberries, great luscious clusters of blue-black fruit hanging ready for the plucking in every hedgerow. Again, I ask, what more can you desire?”

John smiled grimly.

“I am not, I would have you observe, either an artist or a boy. Your inducements fail to move me.”

“My companionship,” urged Corin.

“The blatant conceit of the man,” sighed John.

Corin changed his tone, descended to wheedling. “Consider my loneliness,” he remarked pathetically. “From six o’clock—I can’t put in more than an eight-hour day—till midnight alone and unoccupied. Six hours!”

“Go to bed at nine and reduce the six hours by a simple process of subtraction to three, or play patience,” returned John unsympathetically.

[Pg 7]

“Inhuman brute,” mourned Corin.

John merely laughed.

He was a tall young man, thirty or thereabouts, clean-shaven, bronzed, grey-eyed, and with a thin hooked nose. His mouth, below it, was slightly grim in repose. But, when he smiled, you forgot the grimness, and smiled involuntarily in response. Also, you found yourself watching for the smile to come into play a second time. It had a curious manner of leaping first to his eyes in a sudden and illuminating flash. Deserting them, it passed equally suddenly to his mouth, leaving the eyes sad. It was a disconcerting trick, a baffling magician’s trick, and left you wondering. In the matter of dress he was fastidious to a degree. At the moment his attire was the most immaculate suit of London clothes, grey trousers, frock coat, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. His silk hat, exceeding glossy, reposed on a worm-eaten oak chair near him. He had removed a pile of sketch books and a bunch of dilapidated lilies to make place for the hat. They lay now on the floor.

With Corin, by contrast, clothes were a matter of necessity as mere covering, and no more. His [Pg 8]tweed trousers and Norfolk jacket had an out-all-night-in-the-wet-and-then-sat-upon air. In two words they looked loosely crumpled. Paint spots adorned the left sleeve, in the crook of the elbow where his palette was wont to rest. His soft collar, attached to his shirt, was unbuttoned, and merely held together by a smoke-grey tie. Briefly, in the matter of clothes, he was the prototype of the modern novelist’s art-student,—the type that emerges paint-stained, careless-clad, cheerfully Bohemian, from the chapters of such novels as deal with the art world in Chelsea.

But here it behoves me to walk warily lest I should hear a whisper of “glass houses,” for does not this very Corin himself dwell in that most fascinating region of London? Is not his studio within a bare five minutes of the dirty, muddy, grey, but wholly adorable Thames, where it drifts past Carlyle’s statue, smoke-grimed and weather-worn, and on past the old herbalist’s garden set back across the street?

In face, this same Corin was plump, smooth-skinned, rosy-cheeked, fair-haired, with short-sighted blue eyes that gazed at you kindly from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. His own [Pg 9]appearance caused him moments of acute anguish.

“Look at me!” he would cry on occasions, having met his reflection in some unexpected mirror in a friend’s house or studio, “Look at me! The soul of an artist, and the appearance of a benign and grown-up baby! If I didn’t know my own nature and character, I vow I’d be taken in. I am taken in when I come upon myself in this disgusting and unexpected fashion. Who’s that odd, kindly, little pink-faced man? I ask myself. And then I realize it’s me, me, ME! And, even while I’m swearing at the sight of myself, I look no more than a cross baby yelling for its feeding bottle. Talk of purgatory! I get ten years of it every time I come opposite a looking-glass. The things ought to be abolished. They ought to be ground to powder, scattered like dust to the four winds of heaven. They merely pander to woman’s vanity. No man wants to look into one. If he looks like a man he doesn’t bother about it. If he looks like me—” At this juncture his anguish would become too acute for further speech.

There was a pause in the conversation, quite an [Pg 10]appreciable pause, seeing that it lasted at least two and three-quarter minutes. Then:

“So the matter is definitely settled,” announced Corin with an air of finality, “and on Tuesday next you and I, a couple of boon companions, wend our way to the charming, the altogether adorable and old-world village of Malford, situated, so the guide-books tell us, precisely seven miles from Whortley station, as the crow flies. Why as the crow flies,” he continued ruminatively, “I have never been able to fathom. The information is of remarkably small use to the feathered species, and I have not yet been able to grasp what precise and particular use it is to mankind at large.”

John, whose attention had been wandering, roused himself.

“For sheer pertinacity,” he remarked suavely, “commend me to one, Corin Elmore, painter, poet, musician, theosophist, and fortune-teller; in short, dabbler in the arts and the occult sciences.”

“At all events you can hear Mass at Malford,” retorted Corin succinctly. It would appear that “dabbler in the occult sciences” had pricked.

“Truly?” John’s tone was politely interrogative. “At what distance from Malford, as the crow flies?”

[Pg 11]

“You can hear Mass in Malford, in the Chapel, in Delancey Castle.” The statement was triumphant.

“Delancey Castle!” ejaculated John. For the first time interest, genuine interest, stirred in his voice. He began, in a manner of speaking, to sit up and take notice.

“Delancey Castle,” reiterated Corin. And then suspiciously, “But why this sudden interest?”

“Merely that I have heard of the place,” said John nonchalantly.

“Who hasn’t?” Corin’s voice was faintly edged with scorn. “One of the oldest baronial castles in England; situated in a park famed for its oaks and copper beeches; Norman in origin, enlarged during the Tudor period; minstrel’s gallery, secret chambers, terraced gardens. From all accounts it breathes the very essence of romance and bygone forgotten days. Heavens above! were there indeed tongues in trees, and sermons in stones, I’ll swear there’s many a tale those old walls and the trees around them might disclose.”

“It is a matter for devout thanks,” returned [Pg 12]John piously, “that the tongue of Nature wags, in a manner of speaking, rather in accordance with our mood of the moment than by any actual physical volition of its own. We have quite enough to do to stop our ears to the human tongues around us. But, seriously, I had no idea that Delancey Castle was situated in this sequestered spot of yours.”

“Sequestered spot of mine!” ejaculated Corin. “I lay no claim to the spot. It exists not for my benefit, save in so far, I would have you note, as certain pecuniary advantages will accrue to me for work done in its lonely regions. Nevertheless Delancey Castle is situated there, unless some good or evil genius has seen fit to remove it piecemeal since last Thursday week. I saw it on that date with my own eyes, ‘set on an eminence’—again the guide-books—‘above the small village of Malford. Glimpses of its rugged grey towers may be observed among the lordly oaks and magnificent copper beeches for which the park is justly famed.’ I refer you to page one hundred and twenty-two of Sanderson’s Guide to Country Houses for the accuracy of my quotation.” He broke off to light a fresh cigarette, [Pg 13]then looked at John, challenging him through his gold-rimmed spectacles.

“Oh, I’ll not question the accuracy of your quotation,” retorted John. “But how about your former statement regarding the situation of the Castle? You stated it was in the village. Now I learn it is on an eminence above it.”

“Hark to the quibbler!” cried Corin.

“Not at all,” returned John. “A Castle on an eminence is a very different pair of shoes from a Castle in a village, especially when it is incumbent upon one to seek that said Castle in order to fulfil one’s devotional obligations.”

“If,” said Corin reflectively, “I were a Catholic—don’t get excited, there’s no smallest prospect of your ever claiming me as a convert—but if I were a Catholic, I should not be so disgustingly slack about my religion as to object to walking up a small hill in order to attend my religious services.”

“I never said I objected to walking up a small hill,” remarked John. “I was merely pointing out the inaccuracy of your former statement.”

Corin sighed patiently. “You make me tired with your quibbling. And that last remark distinctly wanders from the truth.”

[Pg 14]

John smiled, not deigning further reply. It began as a small pitying smile for Corin’s weakness of retort, it continued with a hint of pleasure, a tiny secret excitement as at the possibility of the fulfilment of some concealed desire. His heart had beaten at least three degrees quicker at the mention of Delancey Castle, and it had not yet resumed its normal gentle throbbing.

He waited silent. There was now but one thought uppermost in his mind. Yet he could not voice it. The renewed suggestion—it surely would be renewed—must come from Corin. For John to give spontaneous hint of yielding in the matter of recent discussion would be to run the risk—though possibly merely a faint risk—of giving himself away. Faint or blatant, the risk was to be avoided at all cost. He smoked on, therefore, imperturbable, his eyes for the most part on a desk in a corner of the studio, an extremely untidy desk, covered with papers that looked for all the world as if they had been tossed thereon by a whirlwind, and then stirred by an exceedingly vigorous arm wielding a pitchfork. Yet, for all that his eyes were upon the desk, his thoughts were upon Corin.

[Pg 15]

“Speak, man, speak,” he was urging him by that mental process which is termed “willing.” “Renew your persuasions; beg me again to accompany you on your lonely sojourn.”

But either Corin was no medium, or John was no medium,—I have never been fully able to fathom whether the willer, or the willed, or both must be possessed of the mediumistic faculties for satisfactory results to accrue,—certain it is that Corin sat placidly silent, apparently entirely oblivious of John’s mental efforts in his direction.

Willing can be an exhausting process, at all events to one who is not an adept in the art. In John’s case, as the vigour of his efforts increased, his muscles grew tighter and tighter, till his very toes curled with spasmodic tension inside his shiny, polished, patent-leather boots, while a portentous frown drew his eyebrows firmly together till they practically met above his thin hooked nose.

Corin, glancing suddenly in his direction, surprised an almost anguished expression of countenance.

“Are you ill?” he ejaculated dismayed, and with a swift half-movement towards the cupboard where the brandy decanter was situated.

[Pg 16]

John’s face relaxed on the instant.

“Not in the least, thank you.”

“Then what on earth were you making such faces about?” demanded Corin.

“I was not aware that I was making faces,” said John with some dignity. “I was merely thinking.”

“Thinking!” Corin’s light arched eyebrows rose nearly to his fair hair. “Then, man, for Heaven’s sake don’t do it again. It’s—it’s really dangerous.”

John heaved himself out of his chair, bitterly conscious of the futility of his efforts.

“Going?” said Corin. And then solicitously, “Sure you’re really all right?”

“Quite, thanks,” returned John with faint asperity.

Corin strolled with him to the door. John was half-way down the stairs when he heard a voice call after him:

“I’ll let you know about the train on Tuesday.”

John halted, turned.

“Well, really!” he ejaculated.

That evening John wrote a letter to his sister, Mrs. Darcy, who lived in Ireland. The letter contained the following paragraphs:

[Pg 18]

The morning before he left town John received a reply to his letter.

John glanced up at a small statue of Our Lady, which stood on his mantelpiece.

“Blessed Lady,” he said aloud in a tone at once respectful, fervent, and charmingly friendly, “join your prayers to her hopes.”

It was midday in the month of August, the sun ablaze upon wood and field. Only under the trees and hedges the shadows lay blue and still,—intensely, deeply blue, the warm restful blue of summer shadows. Overhead stretched another blue, a vault of brilliant azure, a vast cup-shaped dome, spreading downwards from the illimitable space above, to the hazy distant hills, to the far-off peacock-blue sea, sun-kissed and radiant. The warm earth breathed forth the languorous yet wide-eyed repose of perfect summer. Here was Nature at the maturest moment of her beauty,—the fields golden with full-eared corn, waiting in the richness of their dower for the first stroke of the sickle; the moors purple with heather, and rich with a hidden wealth of whortleberries; the hedges hung with clusters of scarlet brambleberries, even now tinged with the deeper hue of ripeness.

[Pg 21]

On a gate, set, after the general manner of gates in the west of England, between two hedges, one to the right and another to the left, sat our friend John. From the gate, a view stretched before him, which many an artist might have been excused for attempting to seize and transfer to canvas.

In the foreground stood a birch tree, a slender, dainty, silver-barked thing, rising straight out of a purple mass of heather. Its fairy lightness was backgrounded by a wood of firs, while past it, to the right, you got a stretch of undulating moorland across a valley, a strip of blue sea, and a hazy coast line of white cliffs.

“It really might be called a fine view,” said John aloud. And then he broke off, for a voice had sounded behind him,—a very young voice, a clear treble.

“There’s a man sitting on the gate.” The statement was made with the frank obviousness of childhood.

John swung himself off the said gate, and turned. This latter proceeding was distinctly simpler to accomplish from the safety of solid earth than from the topmost of five bars. Doubtless[Pg 22] his guardian angel prompted the action, for, on the moment of turning, his heart jumped, leaped, and pounded in a manner peculiarly perilous. Picture his danger with a heart in this condition had he retained his former attitude.

On the other side of the gate, coming across the grass, and not more than twenty paces from him, was a lady accompanied by two small boys.

She was a young lady, tall and slender, in a white linen frock, and a big shady straw hat. Her hair beneath it was red gold, like burnished copper, a vivid note of colour. The two boys, one on either side of her, were clad in emerald green knickerbockers, and soft white shirts. Floppy straw hats were on their heads. Beneath the hats you caught a glimpse of copper-coloured hair. A vivid, vital enough picture they presented. The smaller boy, four years old or thereabouts, gazed solemn-eyed towards the gate; the other, some two years or so his senior, pointed towards our John, his face eager, alive. A stranger was a bit of a rarity in those parts, it would appear.

John saw the woman turn towards the child, caught a hint of murmured words. The boy dropped the pointing hand. Doubtless she had [Pg 23]made the suggestion—delicately put of course—that it is not altogether the best of manners to point at strangers, however unexpected their appearance, as if they were some curious beast newly escaped from the Zoo.

The lapse of time, from the first acclamation of John’s position on the gate, to the dropping of that accusing finger, had been of the briefest, nevertheless it had allowed for a few further steps to be taken across the grass, and the distance between John and the three had, at the outset, been none so great. It was clearly obvious that the intention of the three was to pass through the gate. Seeing this, John bent to the fastening. By good luck it was not padlocked. Had it been, it would have spoiled the dainty march of the procession, actually as well as figuratively. He swung the gate open, raising his hat at the same moment. She bent her head, a slight though entirely courteous gesture, gave “thank-you” in a low round voice.

“Now Heaven be praised,” murmured John, “that she did not say ‘thanks.’” By which token it will be seen that John was a trifle fastidious as to modes of expression.

[Pg 24]

The two boys, having defeated the difficulties of elastic beneath the chin, had likewise removed their hats. They accomplished the restoration of them to their heads with extraordinary dignity. John, beholding the feat, marvelled. Then the little cavalcade of three passed on across the heather.

John gazed after them.

John gazed after them with longing in his eyes and resentment in his heart. The longing was for the unattainable; the resentment that it should be unattainable.

What a crassly idiotic, what an altogether blindly stupid, doltish, and utterly mulish thing was convention! Here were three young, gay, and delightful creatures enjoying the summer day in company, together revelling in the glowing sun, the caress of the air soft as thistledown upon one’s face, the scent of the flowers and the warm earth, while he—John—was condemned to loneliness, because, forsooth, of the lack of four words. “May I introduce you.”

There was the password, the magic utterance which would have smoothed away all difficulties. It could be spoken carelessly as you please. It could be spoken by his worst enemy with as great [Pg 26]effect as by his dearest friend. Without it a barrier, high as the highest peaks of the Andes, loomed between him and them, a barrier to him insurmountable, indestructible, and named, labelled, and placarded in letters at least a foot long, Convention. Small wonder that John fumed inwardly, the while his eyes gazed after the vanishing three, distilled essence of concentrated longing in their depths.

Chance alone could destroy the barrier,—Chance, the freakish, puckish sprite, who sits with watchful eyes, smiling softly, impishly, till the chosen moment arrives. Then, heigh presto! Chance springs light-footed to your aid, is caught by you laughing, or in deadly earnest, according to your needs. And if the latter, and your grasp is sure, you will find it is no longer an impish, freakish sprite you hold, but a very little demon, battling for you, trampling upon well-nigh incredible difficulties, leading you triumphant to victory.

We cannot see Chance coming in deadly earnest to John at the moment. The imp came mischievous, laughing, and perched, if you will believe me, between the horns of a goat,—a [Pg 27]large, a black and white, an over-playful goat. It came prancing over the purple crest of the hill, and bounded, curved, and gavotted in the direction of the momentarily unconscious three.

The younger boy was the first to see it. He turned, startled atom, to clutch at the lady’s white dress, thereby causing her to become aware of the presence of the intruder on the scene. The elder boy, likewise made aware of its presence, seized a small stick from among the heather, a fragile enough weapon, but with it he stood his ground, a veritable small champion, facing the enemy boldly.

But think you that Chance, perched between those horns, was to be daunted by a small boy in green knickerbockers, and holding a flimsy stick? Not a bit of it! For no such paltry pretext would he desert our John. I am very sure he but urged the goat forward, its advance in the face of this defence lending greater colour to the danger.

“Oh!” breathed the white-robed lady, her hands going out protectingly to the little figure clutching at her skirts. And then, “Take care, Tony,” on a note of intense anxiety.

[Pg 28]

Here was the moment supplied by the mischievous imp. John recognized the sprite’s wiles with fine intuition, cried him a fervent word of thanks, and sprang to the rescue.

That Chance had never intended the slightest peril to the three, you may be certain; since, once seized laughing from his perch by John, he joined with him in ordering the goat to retire. Slightly bewildered at this change of front, the goat gazed for a moment with reproachful eyes.

“I was but playing the game you told me to play,” you could fancy him murmuring. Nevertheless, perceiving that the game was indubitably at an end, he indulged in something very akin to a shake of his head, and retired disconsolate whence he had come.

“Oh, thank you,” breathed the lady in white fervently. “Boys, thank—” she paused. “This gentleman” savours too largely of the shop-walker; the word has long since lost its rightful meaning. “Our preserver” smacks of the pedant.

“My name is John Mortimer,” announced John, with one of his inimitable smiles.

“Mr. Mortimer,” she concluded, the word supplied. “I am Rosamund Delancey, and this—”[Pg 29] she indicated the whilom champion, “is Antony, and this is Michael. It was very good of you to come to our rescue.”

John murmured the usual polite formula. For the life of him he could find no original observation to make.

“Possibly,” continued Rosamund, half-meditative, a trifle rueful, “the goat intended mere play. But as Biddy, our old nurse, often used to say—and still does, for that matter—‘There’s play and play, and if one of the parties ceases to be liking it, it will be no play at all.’” The little laugh in her eyes found reflection in John’s.

“A very sound maxim,” quoth he. And inwardly he found himself ejaculating, “What an adorable voice, what an altogether flexible, musical and charming voice.”

Rosamund was looking down the heather-covered slope. At the further side, a quarter of a mile or so away, was a hedge, and in the hedge a gate. Beyond the gate was a lane, which, after a series of turns, would lead one eventually to the village and Delancey Castle. This latter, it is perhaps somewhat obvious to remark, was her goal, and the way across the [Pg 30]heather towards the gate by far the nearest route to it. Yet how attempt that route with the black and white goat still at large adown the hill, eating sprays of heather—or what appeared to be sprays of heather—in a deceitfully placid and amicable manner?

“I wonder if that goat—” she began, her eyes vaguely troubled, her brow slightly puckered.

“Which way do you want to go?” demanded John promptly, the promptitude mingled with a nice degree of deferential courtesy,—the courtesy quite apparent, the deference a tiny subtle flavour.

“To that gate.” She indicated it.

“Then,” said John, “please allow me to accompany you. I think Antony and I between us will prove a match for goats. I dare to boast on our behalf, since we have already proved our prowess in the matter.”

He threw Antony a glance, a little friendly, understanding glance. By such glances are bonds established that will last a lifetime.

“Me too,” quoth Michael, breaking silence for the first time.

“In very sooth, you too,” said John. “Antony as advance guard,—not more than a couple of [Pg 31]paces advance, mind you,—Michael and I on either side. Are we ready? Then, quick march.”

This last was mere pandering to accepted custom. You cannot well say, “Slow march,” though it is what your whole soul intends. Here is a fine illustration of the fact that speech is but a poor mode of expressing a man’s thoughts. And then an inspiration came to him.

“Not too quickly,” said he to the advance guard. “If he thinks we are attempting to elude him, he may pursue us. A nonchalant, a mere careless strolling, will be our wisest course.”

“Oh, do you think he might follow?” cried Rosamund. The suggestion had evidently given cause for renewed anxiety.

“It is possible,” returned John gravely, “though, I fancy, not probable. However, we will take no risks.”

Slowly, therefore, in mere dilatory fashion, they set forth. The goat raised his read to look at them; but, having his orders, he dropped it again towards the heather.

Some hundred yards or so they walked in silence, two, at least, of the party casting occasional furtive glances to the right. John was the first to speak.

[Pg 32]

“This,” he said, with the air of a man who has just made a discovery, “is really beautiful country.”

“It is your first visit to this neighbourhood?” queried Rosamund.

“My first,” returned John, “but I dare swear it will not be my last. My friend, Corin Elmore, dragged me down here, somewhat against my will at the outset, I’ll allow. He’s uncovering the mural paintings in the church down yonder.”

“Ah!” Rosamund turned towards him, a light of interest in her eyes. “Has he found much?”

“He only started on the job this morning,” returned John. “We arrived last night. But he’s full of confidence. There must be a curious fascination in the work,—delving into the past, bringing traces of bygone, forgotten ages into the light of day.”

“And a certain sadness,” she suggested.

“And a certain sadness,” echoed John, “though I doubt me if Corin experiences it greatly. He’s an anomaly. For all that he’s a poet and a bit of a dreamer, there’s a strain of the scientific dissector running through him. It finds its outlet in theosophic tendencies.” John pulled a wry face.

[Pg 33]

He had forgotten that he was talking to an absolute stranger. Yet was she a stranger in the true sense of the word? One afternoon—six months ago as we crudely count and label time, though to John it was centuries ago—he had had sight of her, a mere passing glimpse, truly, since it was of length only sufficient to allow of her mounting the steps of the Brompton Oratory, at a moment when John was about to descend them. He had put a question to a friend who was with him. And thenceforth John’s dreams had been coloured—I might almost say suffused—by one subject, a face with dark eyes, framed in copper-coloured hair, and shadowed by a largish black hat. Being, therefore, no stranger to his dreams in spirit, it was small wonder that he regarded her as no stranger to his perceptions in the flesh.

Rosamund looked at him, half amused, half questioning.

“But why theosophic tendencies?” she demanded. “I am,” she added, “peculiarly ignorant of that trend of thought.”

John laughed.

“Nor am I vastly learned, for that matter. If I were to attempt to define I think I should [Pg 34]say that, where your scientist pure and simple may deny the existence of God at all, your man, like Corin, with the curious intermixture of a dreamer, acknowledges the existence of this Supreme Power, even endows that Power with a certain mysticism, but at the same time reduces—or attempts to reduce—all the actions and manifestations of the Power to terms comprehensible by the finite understanding.”

“Yes?” she queried. It was evident she desired to hear more.

“Oh,” smiled John, “it’s too complicated an affair to compress into a sentence or two. But take, for instance, pain—the apparently undeserved and ghastly suffering with which one is sometimes brought in contact. Instead of saying, as we do, that there are endless mysteries of pain and suffering which our finite minds cannot possibly understand, they wish to find some quite definite and tangible solution, therefore they adopt the Buddhistic theory of reincarnation and karma. We work out, they say, our karma in each succeeding incarnation for the sins of the last. There is, in their eyes, no such thing as an innocent victim—with one exception. All suffering,[Pg 35] even that of the veriest babe, is the suffering it has deserved for former sins.”

“Oh!” A moment she was silent. “How about the exception?”

“The exception, in their eyes, is any great teacher, who, having fulfilled all his own karma, voluntarily returns to teach and aid those in a lower state of evolution. You understand that, according to their theory, a man is bound to return to this earth, whether he will or no, till his debt of karma has been paid. It is only when that debt is paid, that the return becomes voluntary; and, when sought, is purely for the good of mankind.”

She looked across the heather.

“It would seem,” said she reflective, “that even that theory makes something of a call upon faith.”

“It does,” returned John. “And yet you must see that it reduces the mystery of pain to terms capable of being grasped by the human intelligence. It’s the same with every other mystery. There’s the makeshift in the whole business. On the one hand they allow the existence of a God presumably infinite; but, on the other hand, they wish to reduce Him, and His dealings with creation, [Pg 36]to terms capable of understanding by their finite intelligence. But I forgot, strictly speaking they would not, I suppose, consider their intelligence finite, since, according to them, there is in every man the potential divinity.”

“What do they mean?” she asked. “Are they talking about the soul?”

“In a sense, yes,” returned John. “But the soul, apparently, has no exact individuality of its own; at least, not a lasting individuality. It is a spark, an atom, of the Great Whole, which when it has developed to its utmost, and finished all its work, including possible return in the body to the earth as a teacher, will eventually receive its reward by becoming merged and absorbed in the Divine Whole from whence it proceeded. Apparently, also, if a soul refuses to develop, it can eventually be extinguished, or what is equivalent to being extinguished.”

“It doesn’t seem exactly a pleasant creed,” said she meditative. “Absorption or extinction, as the two final alternatives, are not what one might term precisely satisfactory to contemplate. It is certainly nicer to believe that one retains one’s individuality.”

[Pg 37]

“That,” John assured her, “is merely our unconquerable egotism.”

“Then,” she retorted smiling, “let us hope that it is an egotism your friend will shortly acquire.”

There was a little silence. Monsieur le Chèvre had been, for the moment, forgotten. Certainly his own quiet self-effacement was conducive to their forgetfulness of him. They were almost at the gate before she spoke again.

“I suppose,” she remarked tentatively, “your friend is not perverting you to his theories.”

“I trust not,” said John solemnly. And then he added, “I am a Catholic.”

“Oh!” The ejaculation held the tiniest note of pleasure. Then, after a second’s pause. “You know that we have a chapel at the Castle.”

They had gained the lane by now. Antony, who had felt the full responsibility of defence to rest on his shoulders from the moment John’s attention had been occupied by a wholly unintelligible—and probably, in Antony’s eyes, unintelligent—conversation, heaved a deep sigh.

“Goats,” said he, “are horrid things.”

[Pg 38]

“Do you know,” quoth John, “I really have a slight partiality towards goats myself.”

Which speech would have savoured more strongly of truth had the partiality remained unqualified.

John walked up the flagged path of the churchyard. Sounds of work came to him through the little Norman doorway—the beating of hammers, the rasping of saws, the jangle of buckets.

Arrived at the doorway he paused for a moment to look at the scene before him. It would seem almost incredible that order should ever be abstracted from the present chaos, at all events in the space of time proposed. Doorless, windowless,—in the matter of glass,—it was a mere shell of a church, filled with scaffolding, planks, barrows, buckets; echoing with the ceaseless sound of hammering, sawing, chiselling, planing; while, within the shell, the creators of the various noises moved and worked like a handful of restless ants.

John looked towards the scaffolding surrounding the east window. Perched high on a narrow [Pg 40]planked platform was Corin, absorbed in his work, entirely lost to the sounds around him.

John picked his way among the scattered débris made for the chancel. Here there was a ladder roped against a lower platform, from whence, by means of a second ladder placed thereon, Corin’s eyrie might be gained. John had his foot on a rung of the first ladder in a trice, swarmed up it, and a second or so later was giving Corin warning of his approach by:

“Behold the little cherub perched aloft.”

Corin turned.

“Oh, it’s you, is it? Well, just come and look.” There was suppressed exultation in his voice.

John scrambled on to the platform, came alongside Corin,—Corin who pointed with a triumphant chisel.

Some half-dozen or so square yards of wall had been cleared of many coats of plaster, and there, on the original groundwork, stood out thin red lines vertical and horizontal, flowers in bold outline.

“Masonry, they call it,” announced Corin, “and the flower is the herb Robert. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

[Pg 41]

Now to the purely uninitiated, to the mere casual observer, the adverb might have appeared unduly extravagant. What, such a one might have demanded, was there in a few crude brush lines to justify this mode of speech? Yet John, artist though he was not, understood, and not only understood, but endorsed to the full Corin’s rapture. Here was the work of age-old centuries, the frank expression of some long-ago-forgotten painter, brought once more to the light of day. Fresh as when first limned the simple lines glowed crimson from the cream-coloured surface of the wall.

“It’s—it’s fine,” said John simply.

Corin, radiant, beaming, waved his chisel in a comprehensive sweep around the walls.

“And think,” cried he exultant, “what more there may be, there assuredly is, to find. Think what further glories this plaster hides. Man, it’s hard to restrain one’s impatience and not hack, which would be a truly disastrous proceeding.”

John laughed.

Then, “Try another spot,” he urged. “Here, close by the east window. I’ll not divert the stroke of the chisel by the faintest whisper.”

[Pg 42]

Pretending to a half-reluctance, though at heart, truly, he was nothing loath to consent, Corin let himself be persuaded. He shifted his position. By the outer edge of the window splay he raised his chisel and set himself to work.

The outer coats of plaster fell in thick flakes before that same remorseless chisel; they crumbled on to the platform upon which Corin stood. Below the plaster was a thin substance lying on the wall like a film. Here the chisel came lightly into play; that film must be removed carefully, with touch as delicate as the touch of a butterfly’s wing. It entailed a suspension of breath, an excited prevention of the merest involuntary quivering of a muscle. The film broke and powdered at the lightest stroke, covering Corin’s hand and wrist with a soft grey dust. Breathless he pursued his work; then, suddenly, he stopped, his eyes gleaming with pleasure.

John bent forward. Here assuredly was novelty,—no longer the crimson masonry, but black chevrons set within two narrow black lines showed on the cream-coloured wall, and extending, it was evident, around the whole window.

“Ah!” breathed John.

[Pg 43]

Corin nodded, his chisel again raised.

In places the plaster adhered like glue to the walls; it had to be chipped away inch by inch, and through sheer force. Here it was that the work required the greatest skill and dexterity. The pressure of the chisel by an extra hair’s breadth would have meant the cutting through of the film below the plaster, and destroying the painting that lay beneath. It required a fine strength of wrist, the calculation to a nicety of the depth to which to cut, above all, an infinity of patience. Yet, again, there were patches where not only the plaster, but the film with it, flaked away at the lightest stroke, and here the painting was at its freshest.

For full twenty minutes John gave close eye to the proceedings. At the end of that time he sighed, a mere tiny sigh. If Corin heard, he heeded not. Stepping back a pace he regarded his work, head on one side, soul absorbed.

John took him firmly by the arm.

“I vowed I’d not divert the stroke of the chisel by the faintest whisper,” he announced. “At the moment shouting would be harmless. Therefore let me tell you in merely normal tones that I’m hungry.”

[Pg 44]

“Hungry!” Corin blinked at him. “What’s the time?”

“Long past the luncheon hour,” John assured him. “Come!”

Corin reluctantly laid down his chisel, turned for a final look at masonry, herb Robert, and chevrons.

“And to think,” he ejaculated, “that the plaster hides all this! There must be ten coats of plaster or thereabouts. After the first Goth, the first horrible Philistine, plastered, no one can have known what was hidden, and they just went on plastering at intervals. I’ve made out six plasters for certain,—grey, green, white adorned with awful scroll-work, purple, green again with more scroll-work, and then this dingy brown,” he waved his hand towards the walls. “There are other plasters so stuck together no one can distinguish them, and underneath it all, this.” He touched a flower in a kind of subdued and dreamy ecstasy.

John took him once more kindly but firmly by the arm.

“It’s extremely beautiful,” he said in a tone conciliatory. “Presently you shall rhapsodize [Pg 45]again to your heart’s content and I’ll help you. At the moment,” he propelled him gently towards the ladder, “we leave ecstasy for the mundane, the mere sordid occupation of eating.”

Mrs. Trimwell, brisk, black eyed, white-aproned, entered with a covered dish.

Corin, deep in an armchair, was smoking a cigarette.

“I wonder,” said he meditative, between the inhalations of smoke, “what the old painter of the church down yonder thinks of our proceedings. It would be interesting to hear his own reflections on the subject. Presumably he does reflect. If his spirit haunts the church, possibly some fine evening I shall see him. Then I shall put a question or two.”

John merely laughed, and approached the table. Mrs. Trimwell, raising a dish-cover, disclosed two golden-brown soles, perfect samples of her culinary art.

“I have never,” continued Corin, still reflective, “seen a spirit, but I firmly believe that one might be seen under favourable conditions.”

[Pg 47]

“Come and eat,” laughed John.

Mrs. Trimwell eyed Corin for a moment in hesitating fashion. Then she spoke with the air of one embarking on a weighty question, though addressing herself to John.

“There’s never no knowing, sir, what it mightn’t be given you nor any one to see. I seed an angel myself once.”

Corin paused in the act of handing John a plate on which reposed one of the soles.

“An angel!” he ejaculated.

John took the plate.

“An angel!” he echoed dubious.

“I seed it,” reiterated Mrs. Trimwell, “as plain as I see you. I was doing my bit of ironing, the baby—that’s the youngest, sir—asleep in the cradle under the table, so as I could give the rocker a jog with my foot now and again, and the angel comed in.”

She paused, watching the effect of her words.

“But how?” queried John busy with the sole. “Through the window, the ceiling, or the floor? Angels, you know, are spirits, not corporeal weighty humans like ourselves. They’d never,” concluded John gravely, “make an ordinary, an expected entrance.”

[Pg 48]

Corin glanced at him sternly.

“I should have imagined you would have held the matter too sacred for joking about,” he remarked.

John smiled gently.

“This one,” said Mrs. Trimwell firmly, “came through the door. I heard the outer door click, and said I to myself, ‘That’s Robert for sure.’ I thought he’d come home a bit earlier. Then the kitchen door clicked. It opened just a little ways, and the beautifullest angel you ever seed comed in all floaty-like. I was that scared I dropped my iron—there’s the heat mark on the baby’s robe to this day—and I made a clean bolt for the back door. I never thought of the baby nor nothing. And as I bolted I squinnied over my shoulder, and I seed that angel by the table all white and shiny.”

Again she stopped, and regarded John, who was eating steadily. To Corin, who was all agog for a continuance of the story, she perversely paid no heed.

“But—” began John dubious.

“You may doubt me as much as you like, sir. I wasn’t going back to that kitchen without a neighbour. I told Vicar myself, sir, and he didn’t [Pg 49]believe me neither, though I’m a truthful woman. For as I says to my children: ‘You tell the truth at all costs. If you’re in a hole don’t tell a lie to try and get out of it. Truth will always give you the surest hand up even though her clutch is a bit severe.’ I’d not deceive you, sir, and ’tis the truth I’ve spoken as I spoke it to Vicar. I seed that angel.”

Finality in her tone she stood there, slightly challenging, yet respectful withal.

“Hmm!” mused John. “Your integrity, Mrs. Trimwell, is, I am convinced, above suspicion. Yet why, do you imagine, should the angel come? What, do you take it, was the motive for his visit?”

Mrs. Trimwell approached a step nearer. She lowered her voice to a confidential whisper.

“’Twas that day to the minute, sir, as my uncle died.”

“Ah!” John’s eyes, non-committal in expression, sought the window. Corin cast a look of scorn at him; then turned, eager, to Mrs. Trimwell.

“Did you tell the Vicar that?” he demanded.

“I did, sir,” replied Mrs. Trimwell, including [Pg 50]him for the first time within her range of vision. “But, Lor’, where’s the use of telling things to he! He don’t understand no more than a Bishop.”

“Why a Bishop?” thought John in parenthesis.

“When my Tilda was down with pneumony,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell reminiscent, “and the doctor said there wasn’t no chance for her, ‘I’ll see about chances,’ says I. Vicar, he talked about the Will of the Lord and submitting. ‘It’s not the minute to be talking about submitting yet,’ says I to him. ‘The Lord may do the willing, and I’m not one to deny it, but ’tis we do the doing, and it kind of fits in. And if you think I’m going to leave off fighting for my Tilda till the time comes as she’s ready to lay out, you’re much mistook.’ He was mistook, sir, for she’s in the kitchen now a-minding of the baby.” She ended on a note gloriously triumphant.

The triumph found quick response in John’s eyes. I fancy he saw here reflected the attitude of that old-time king, who strove in prayer for his child, till striving and prayer were no longer of avail.

“The fighting chance,” murmured Corin, swallowing his last mouthful of sole.

[Pg 51]

Mrs. Trimwell removed the plates and placed cold chicken and salad on the table.

“In a manner of speaking it was,” said she, eyeing him with approval. She moved towards the door, then turned.

“You will take coffee after lunch?” she asked.

John looked his assent, yet left it to Corin, as in a manner host, to give verbal reply to the query.

“By all means,” replied Corin. “I need,” he assured her, “every atom of support at your avail.”

Mrs. Trimwell looked at him commiseratingly.

“I’ll be bound it’s hard work down there,” said she sympathetically. “How do you find it, sir?”

“Interesting,” returned Corin, “distinctly interesting. I feel like an explorer of bygone centuries penetrating through modern hideousity, early Victorian crudeness, Puritan dreariness, and various other glooms, to the sweet, kindly simplicity, the grace, the freshness, the love of beauty, appertaining to the olden days. I am,” concluded Corin, helping himself to salad, “crumbling to pieces that which has hidden beauty, and exposing beauty to the light of day. In other words, I’m scraping the plaster off the walls of the church, and enjoying myself.”

[Pg 52]

Mrs. Trimwell nodded, frank approbation plainly visible on her face.

“And time it was scraped, too. A mucky looking place it was with them walls all stained and chipped and mildewed. Not that it hurt me much, seeing as I never go inside it, except it’s for a christening or a burial.”

“Oh!” remarked Corin, and somewhat feebly, be it stated.

John cast a whimsical look in his direction.

“I don’t hold with church-going,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell calmly. “Say your prayers at home if you want to say them, says I. And as for sermons,—if you’ve heard Vicar talk out of the pulpit whether you will or no, you don’t run off smiling to hear him talk in it. Leastways I don’t. There’s some as does, I know.”

“Oh!” said Corin again, and this time more feebly. (John, I fear me, was laughing inwardly.) To disagree with Mrs. Trimwell would, Corin felt, be tantamount to calling her a black kettle, setting up himself the while as a shiny brass pot, to which title he knew he possessed no manner of right. Yet to agree!—Well, Corin’s conscience, some hidden fragment of convention—call it what [Pg 53]you will—felt a slight hint of repugnance at her sentiments.

There is your man, your male individual, all over. Dogmatic religion—however vague the dogma—church-going is often outside his own category, yet for his women folk—any women folk—to speak against it holds for him a hint of distaste. It just serves to destroy that soft light of idealism with which he loves to surround women. Every man has one woman, at least, in this idealistic shrine, or, if he has not, he is of all men most miserable. And here it is that your adherents to the old Faith—the oldest Faith in Christendom—have a pull over your so-called enlightened individual. There is always One Woman to whom those of that old Faith can turn, one for whom no shrine is too fair, too lofty,—can be bedecked with no too costly wealth of love and homage. Here, in this shrine, at her feet, may every idealistic thought of man towards woman be placed, preserved, and cherished.

Corin, as already stated, said “Oh!” an ejaculation at once feeble, utterly lacking in significance of any kind, a mere signal that his ears had received the speech.

[Pg 54]

“Miss Rosamund don’t hold with my views,” went on Mrs. Trimwell, while John’s heart gave a sudden throb. “Not that I pays over-much heed to her, being a Papist what’s bound to go to Church and obey their priests if they don’t want any little unpleasantness in the next world, which I takes it may be a considerable more unpleasantness than you nor I would suppose. Still I will say she has a wonderful way of talking a thing clear, and if I didn’t know that popery was no better than a worshipping of graven images, I might go for to believe her.”

Corin glanced anxiously in the direction of John,—John who was eating chicken with an expressionless face, though I’ll not vouch that his shoulders didn’t shake a little now and then.

“Not that Miss Rosamund talks goody talk,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell, “which is a thing I never could abide in grown-up or child, and burnt them little tracty books they give my Tilda up to Sunday-school, setting of her off to talk texes to me and her father, which we didn’t smack her for though she deserved it. But there, she’d have been thinking she was an infant prodigal and a Christian martyr if we had. No; I just said how if she [Pg 55]was so fond of texes she could learn a few more instead of going along blackberrying with the other children, and I sets her down to get a chapter of the Gospels by heart. We didn’t hear no more of texes after that, didn’t me and her father,” concluded Mrs. Trimwell dryly.

Indubitably the corners of John’s mouth were twitching now. Then Mrs. Trimwell’s eye caught his. Laughter came, whole-heartedly to John, to Mrs. Trimwell first with a note of half apology, over which the entire humour of the reminiscence presently got the upper hand. Corin joined in somewhat relieved. He had feared lest John’s feelings might be hurt.

“When I thinks of Tilda setting there not knowing whether to sulk or pretend she liked it!” ejaculated Mrs. Trimwell after a moment. She wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes with her apron. “But there, it was coffee I was going after, and not memories of my Tilda.”

Mrs. Trimwell vanished.

Corin looked dubiously at John.

“She talks a good deal,” quoth he tentatively.

“I have,” returned John, “conceived a great affection for Mrs. Trimwell. Her ideas are original. She has, also, a distinct prejudice in favour of speaking her mind with a candour and verve which I find undeniably refreshing. Yes; certainly I have conceived an affection for her.”

Corin snorted.

“Every man to his own taste,” said he. “For my part I find her over-fluent of speech.”

“That,” replied John, “arises merely from a tendency I have frequently noted in you to monopolize the whole conversation; to mop it, so to speak, into your own sponge, thereby leaving the sponges of others bone dry.”

“I have never,” retorted Corin, “observed that your sponge lacked moisture, if you will use terms [Pg 57]of parable instead of straightforward words. But to leave Mrs. Trimwell for the moment. How did you enjoy the morning? Did I expand one whit too freely on the glories of the surrounding country? Is there not colour,—radiant, vital colour at every turn?”

“I’ll allow there’s sufficient beauty hereabouts,” conceded John.

“And you had a pleasant time? Own to the truth. It was worth while sacrificing sun-baked streets for wide stretches of glorious moorland?”

“Oh, I’ll own to the worth whileness of it,” laughed John, hugging a delicious secret to his heart.

Corin shrugged his shoulders.

“You might be a trifle more expansive,” he grumbled. “You might give me an epitome of your morning’s experiences. There was I, perched like a hen on a henroost, slaving my life out for four hours, while you were enjoying glorious freedom. I said to myself, he’ll return enthusiastic. I’ll have, at least, a second-hand experience of purple moorland, sun-kissed sea, and cool green woods. And all the man has done is to smile oracularly, and admit to beauty when the admission[Pg 58] was fairly dragged from his lips. No; don’t begin to rhapsodize now. It’s too late. I wanted spontaneity, a first fine careless rapture. And by dragging, pulling, and tugging, I get a bare admission of beauty grudgingly made.”

John laughed again. It must be confessed that he was in a peculiarly lighthearted mood.

“I’ll attempt no rhapsody, no poetic flights of fancy, since the psychological moment for so doing has, according to you, passed. I’ll give you the mere salient facts of the morning, the chiefest being that I played St. George to the dragon.”

Corin eyed him suspiciously.

“I have an idea I heard you remark ‘no poetic flights of fancy,’ a moment agone,” he suggested.

“I did,” retorted John, “and I adhere to that remark. Here is fact pure and simple. But, for your better convincing, I will state that the dragon had for the moment disguised itself as a goat,—a large, a playful, black and white goat. The disguise was good, I’ll allow, but,” concluded John dramatically, “I penetrated it.”

Corin sighed.

“If you could divest your speech of symbolism,” [Pg 59]said he pathetically, “and give me facts in plain English.”

“No symbolism I assure you,” protested John. “It was a goat,—a black and white goat. It curved, it gavotted, it gambolled, thereby causing much distress to a fair lady and her two attendant knights, who were, believe me, hardly of an age to deal convincingly with either goats or dragons. Then, behold, enter St. George.” He struck himself upon the chest.

“Oh!” Corin began to find a thread of reasonableness among the nonsense. “Who was the lady, I wonder?”

“She told me,” said John, “that her name was Miss Rosamund Delancey.” He experienced a strange sensation of pleasure in pronouncing the words.

“Oh!” said Corin a second time. “From the Castle.”

“From the Castle,” echoed John.

Corin reflected, mused. Finally, seeing that John had come to an end of the repast, he pushed back his chair, rose from the table, and lighted a cigarette.

“I have heard a rumour,” said he, the cigarette [Pg 60]lighted, “that they are shortly leaving the Castle on account of some claimant who has turned up. I can’t remember the whole story. I know it struck me as sufficiently melodramatic at the moment,—murders, missing documents, and little Adelphi touches of that kind were mixed up in it. But I daresay it’s nothing but a rumour.”

“Let us trust so,” said John devoutly.

Father Maloney was in a mood, which, it must be confessed, was distinctly unfavourable to his peace of mind. And not only his peace of mind, but his appetite had suffered considerably thereby. Cold corned beef and plum tart had been so much sawdust between his lips, flavourless and exceeding dry. Even his after-luncheon pipe failed to rouse him to a cheerier outlook on life in general. Now, when the joys of tobacco had ceased to woo him, matters had, indeed, come to a pretty pass. Anastasia, his housekeeper, clearing away the débris of the meal, eyed him solicitously.

“You’re not ill, Father?” she asked, her black eyes snapping anxiety in his direction.

For a moment he roused himself.

“Not at all, not at all,” he responded with a show of briskness, only to relapse once more into gloom.

[Pg 62]

Anastasia shook her head.

“It’ll be that moidering business up to the Castle, I’m thinking,” quoth she to herself, her lips tightening in a manner that would have augured ill for the author of the business had he been anywhere within sighting distance.

Returning to the kitchen she addressed a fervent, and, it must be confessed, slightly authoritative decade of the rosary to Our Blessed Lady, before beginning to wash up plates and dishes. To her mind something had to be done. Herein her mind and that of old Biddy the nurse up at the Castle were distinctly in accord.

For one hour—two hours, perhaps—Father Maloney sat in his old armchair. During that time he endeavoured, with some degree of success, to say his office with attention. Then he once more lapsed into gloomy retrospection and anticipation.

Since midday the world—the pleasant, material, sunny world—had been turned upside down for him. It is true that this inversion had been looked for, feared, for the last six months, but that fact did not prevent the present phenomenon [Pg 63]from being any the less unpleasant when it actually occurred. It requires a peculiarly level head, not to say a certain degree of something almost akin to callousness, to regard matters from so totally different a point of view. It is a position to which you cannot readily adjust yourself. At all events Father Maloney found it one to which he could not readily adjust himself. It required a supreme effort on his part merely to hang on, so to speak.

“Sure, and I ought to have been more prepared for it,” he muttered to himself.

Getting out of his chair he went into the little hall, reached down his hat, and took his stick from the stand. Anastasia saw him through the open door of the kitchen. She came to it, a small dried-up woman.

“You’re not going out without your tea, Father,” she protested. “The water in the kettle is boiling this very minute.”

“I’ll not be wanting any tea,” returned Father Maloney opening the front door.

Anastasia went back into the kitchen, shaking her head sorrowfully at the steaming kettle on the stove.

[Pg 64]

Father Maloney went slowly down the lane. It was powdered thickly with white dust, since, for a fortnight past at least, the sky by day had been blue and brazen, at night starlit and cloudless.

Two small girls passed him, belonging to his own flock. They dipped him profound curtseys, glancing at him with bright bird-like eyes. He gave but abstracted response to their salutation, which fact elicited from them surprised and regretful comment as soon as he was out of earshot. Though, for that matter, they might, at the moment, have reproached him under his very nose, and gained no hearing.

Leaving the lane presently, he turned through a gate, and up the slope of a grassy field. He had need of wider expanses than the hedged-in lane afforded him.

He climbed slowly, pausing every now and then to take breath. At last he gained the summit. Finding the sun distinctly warm, and being heated by the ascent, he lowered himself slowly on to the short dry grass. So busy was he with his own reflections, that he did not perceive a young man lying in the shade of a blackberry bush some hundred or so paces to his right. But it is very [Pg 65]certain that the young man saw him; and, seeing him, observed him intently.

When Corin had returned to his work, John had again betaken himself to the open.

It was fairly obvious, so concluded John shrewdly, that a route chosen for a morning ramble was not likely to be again sought in the afternoon. The proceeding would savour too strongly of unoriginality of ideas. But, so he pondered within his mind, it was just possible that some other route might be chosen, and that by the favour of the gods he might hit upon it. Therefore he had set out, leaving matters to those same gods.

Having, after circumlocutious and disappointed walking, gained his present post of eminence, he had lain down in the shadow of a blackberry bush to muse over, and carp at, the fickleness of the gods to whom he had trusted, and incidentally to survey the surrounding country for a moving white-robed figure.

Till this present, no figure of any kind had come within his range of vision; then, five minutes or so agone, turning his eyes leftwards, he had perceived [Pg 66]a stout elderly priest climbing the hillside towards him.

Here was some solace. If it were not the rose herself, it was at least one who, it might pretty safely be concluded, was tolerably well acquainted with the rose. A small backwater of a place, such as Malford, does not, he might suppose, yield many priests, nor even, presumably, more than one. There was little doubt in his mind but that the approaching figure was the priest who officiated at Delancey Chapel.

John observed him intently, as I have said. He saw him lower himself on to the grass with the slow deliberate movement of a stoutish man, saw him gazing straight in front of him. From his position John had a view of his face in something less than profile, but it was the dejection of his attitude, rather than his face, that at the moment impressed our John. He watched him, intent, absorbed.

“Something,” observed John mentally, “has recently upset his equilibrium. Like a wise man he has come into the open to gain restoration of balance.”

Which mental observation showed John to be [Pg 67]possessed of no little shrewdness, as you will perceive. And then, by a really marvellous leap of intuition, he bounced straight into the heart of affairs, went in with a splash, and came up gasping.

“Oh!” cried John to his soul, “that rumour, that obnoxious and detestable rumour is true, and he has just been made aware of the unassailable fact. The poor old fellow!”

No wonder he looked dejected, no wonder he gazed with all his eyes in the direction of the towers of Delancey Castle plainly visible above the distant trees. If the rumour were true, and John was now very certain of its truth, it was enough to wring tears from the heart of a flint, to call forth protestation from the tongueless trees and mute stones of the old Castle itself.

An American claimant to that place! that utterly and entirely English place! Its very walls, its surrounding trees and fields, were so unmistakably and undeniably English. You might have taken up the whole thing and planted it down in any remote and unexpected quarter of the globe that you had chosen, and its whole atmosphere would have shrieked its English origin dumbly, but quite, quite explicitly, at you. At any time [Pg 68]its origin would have been unassailable, and truly fifty times more so at this present moment, as it lay serene and peaceful in the blue and golden warmth of an August afternoon.

And now it was to be claimed by an American.

John suffered from no racial prejudice, I would have you to believe; but there were some things that could be, and some things that could not be. And for Delancey Castle to be in any but English hands would be, to his way of thinking, a thing as incongruous and impossible as that a Chinese should don the kilt of the Highlander, or that a South Sea Islander should assume the Irish brogue. Oh, it was preposterous, preposterous, preposterous. It was altogether unthinkable and unimaginable.

And then suddenly he was aware of a difference in the old priest’s attitude. It was a tiny difference, a subtle and quite inexplicable difference, nevertheless it existed. And all at once John felt himself a bit of an intruder, looking at what he had no atom of right to see. Had he not feared that movement would make his presence known, he would have moved on the instant. As it was he became absorbed in pulling up small blades of [Pg 69]grass from the ground. He pulled at them fiercely, his eyes fixed upon them, the while he was most intensely aware of that motionless old figure a hundred paces from him.

At length a sound—it might have been a half cough—caused him to raise his eyes again. He saw the old priest pulling a pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket.

John watched him. The pipe filled, and the pouch replaced, Father Maloney still fumbled at his pockets. It would appear that something was missing.

“Matches!” said John. And cautiously he heaved himself to his feet. Softly he advanced some steps, came to a line directly behind the old priest, then marched boldly forward.

“Can I be of any use?” John held out a box towards him.

Father Maloney looked up surprised.

“I’m much obliged. Where did you appear from?”

“From over there.” John waved his hand in a backward and non-committal direction. “I saw you intended lighting your pipe, but your intentions were being frustrated.”

[Pg 70]

“Can’t think how I forgot them,” said Father Maloney pulling at his pipe.

John dropped on to the ground beside him.

“What a view!” he announced in a pleasantly conversational tone. “And what a day!”

“It is that indeed,” returned Father Maloney cheerfully.

John hugged himself inwardly.

“He’s got the hang of things again, brave old fellow!” he ejaculated mentally. “But I’d give a very great deal to know the veritable standpoint of affairs.”

Aloud he said. “Am I right in imagining that you are the chaplain of Delancey Castle?”

“I am,” said Father Maloney. “What made you think so?”

“Well,” said John airily, “one does not expect to see a superabundance of priests in a Protestant country, and when it comes to a minute spot such as this, where you happen to know there is one priest,—well, when you see him, you imagine he’s the one,” concluded John explicitly.

Father Maloney’s eyes twinkled.

“Under the circumstances, as stated by you, the inference might be drawn,” quoth he.

[Pg 71]

And then followed a little silence. Both men were looking towards Delancey Castle, and it may be pretty safely conjectured that the thoughts of both were occupied by that same Castle.

John, if the truth be known, was longing—fervently longing—that the old priest should give voice to that matter, which, he was fully aware, was uppermost in their minds. For him to broach the subject would, he feared, savour too strongly of impertinence on the part of a complete stranger. Yet it is very certain that, without any undue curiosity on his part, he desired intensely to know the actual rights of the case, to arrive at the veritable truth of the rumour which had twice reached his ears.

Now whether John’s desire was sufficiently intense to communicate itself to Father Maloney, or whether it was that the subject which so absorbed the old priest’s mind was bound to find an outlet in speech, you may settle as best pleases you. For my part, I have no definite opinion to offer on the matter, though I sway slightly in favour of the latter conclusion. When every nook and cranny of the mind is filled with a thought which increases in volume the more it is absorbed, [Pg 72]there comes a point when an outlet in speech is practically a necessity, and, to my thinking, this point had been reached in the present case of Father Maloney’s mind. Also it is quite possible that he recognized the silent and unobtrusive sympathy of John. Certain it is that he began to speak.

“I suppose you’ll have heard the news of yonder Castle?” he asked, pulling at his pipe.

“I’ve heard rumours,” acquiesced John, “which I devoutly trusted were nothing more.”

“I trusted that myself,” said Father Maloney grimly. “But the truth of them is clinched now, and that’s a fact.”

“Ah!” said John quietly. And then, “Would you tell me the story? I should like to hear it, if you wouldn’t mind telling it.”

“Not at all, since you’d be caring to hear it But it’s a longish tale, and a bit complicated at that. It might be boring you.”

“Not a bit of it,” declared John fervently. “I’ve been wanting to hear the truth of the matter ever since the first rumour reached my ears. Honestly,” he continued smiling, “it has been nothing but the fear of a snub that prevented me [Pg 73]from broaching the subject the first moment I dropped on the grass beside you.”

Father Maloney smiled.

“Ah, well,” he said.

After a moment, during which Father Maloney was, I imagine, sorting his ideas, seeking for the best beginning to the promised complicated story, he began to speak.

“Well, you’ll know, of course, that the Delanceys are a very old family. The baronetcy dates back to the time of the Crusaders. The family have never lost the Faith, as we Catholics say. The matter which has given rise to the present upset happened in the year seventeen hundred and thirteen. The then baronet was one Sir Michael Delancey, his wife, Helen, née Montgomery. But sure that’s nothing to do with the tale at all. There were three children by the marriage, Henry, Antony, and Rosamund. It was with Henry that the difficulty arose. He was—well, I fear there’s no denying that he was a rogue, with no decent feeling in him at all. A card-playing,[Pg 75] drinking fella he was, and not above doing a thought of cheating if it happened that the luck was going against him. Well, it was in one of these card routs that things came to a crisis. There was cheating and quarrelling and what not, and at the end a duel. Henry killed his man, and raced off to his home to lie low a bit in hiding. The old man—Sir Michael—was sick of him and his ways by that time, I’m thinking. Anyhow he agreed to smuggle him out of the country, but on one condition, and here’s the first, and, for that matter, the whole point of the business. Before he was shipped off he had to sign some paper or other renouncing all claim to the property, indeed disinheriting himself in favour of his younger brother, Antony. Somehow it seems that the old man had not the right to disinherit him himself.”

“Entail, I suppose,” said John lighting a fresh cigarette.

“Something of the kind, I’ve no doubt,” returned Father Maloney. “Legally, I’m thinking, he’d still have inherited the title, but the bargain was that he was to go off for ever, be, in a manner of speaking, dead to the heritage of his forebears in any shape or form. And his heirs to [Pg 76]be dead to it likewise. Be that as may be, he went off, having renounced all claim to the property. Five years later his brother Antony succeeded to it.”

Father Maloney paused, then a moment later resumed his tale.

“Antony married Margaret de Courcey, a fine woman from all accounts, and by her he had four children, Antony, Richard, Rosamund, and Michael. Now comes along the next point of interest. Ten years after Sir Antony had succeeded to the property and title, Henry reappeared upon the scene. There’s no doubt but that he had it in his mind to make matters as unpleasant for Antony as might be. He was married, so he said, and had two sons. Margaret was away from home at the time, and the whole business is clearly shown in letters she received from her husband, Sir Antony. The letters are still in existence. In them Sir Antony tells her of Henry’s reappearance, and sets forth his reluctance to do the obvious thing and inform the law his brother has returned,—which would have been mightily unpleasant for Henry, I’m thinking. Sure, he must have been a daring fella to have come back to England at all. [Pg 77]Sir Antony tells her, too, clearly enough, Henry’s motive in coming, and it’s one a blind man might be seeing without over-much difficulty. It was the paper he’d signed he was after. If he could destroy that, why, it would leave his son free to inherit the title and property at his death. He couldn’t think to be getting them himself without more of a boggle than he’d have a liking for. But it would be another matter for his son. You’ll be finding all this in the first two letters Sir Antony wrote to Margaret, as well as the whole history of the signing of the paper. Perhaps after a fashion she knew of that before, but not over-definitely. Anyhow Sir Antony writes it all down, and it is from that letter we know of the matter. A third letter, and a shorter one, shows that Sir Antony is getting a trifle uneasy with Henry hanging around, and that he means to remove the paper from the strong box, where it was kept, to some hiding-place of sorts. But never a hint did he give of where that hiding-place would be at all.”

“Possibly,” remarked John shrewdly, “he had no mind to put his ideas on paper.”

“’Tis more than likely,” returned Father Maloney grimly, “but it’s a deal of trouble he’d [Pg 78]have been saving if he’d given the merest suspicion of a hint. A fourth letter was sent to Margaret Delancey, written by one Francis Raymond, a priest. ’Tis a sad letter, and a fine letter too, for that matter. He begs her to come home without delay, and tells her of her husband’s death. He goes straight at what he has to say, and then gives her the comfort the poor soul would be needing,—though it’s plain he knows the manner of woman she is, and the courage of her. There’s a hint in his letter of foul play of some kind. Other papers, Margaret’s own diary among them, tell what that foul play was. Sir Antony had been found in the park, under an oak tree, shot through the head. Henry was lying near him, a pistol not ten inches from his hand, and his throat torn out by Sir Antony’s wolf-hound.”

“What a ghastly business!” ejaculated John, as Father Maloney stopped.

“You may well say that,” remarked Father Maloney. “The matter was plain enough. Henry had shot his brother with the idea of getting hold of that precious paper unhindered, but he had forgotten—or, maybe, never realized—the presence of Sir Antony’s wolf-hound, Gelert. The [Pg 79]dog wasn’t one to let his master’s murderer go unpunished.”

Again there was a little pause. Father Maloney refilled his pipe.

“Well,” he said after a minute, “after Sir Antony’s death, his son Antony came into possession. But—” Father Maloney emphasized the word with an emphatic movement of his pipe, “that paper desired by Henry had vanished. Wherever Sir Antony had hidden it, the hiding-place was a bit too good. It has never been found.”

“Perhaps,” suggested John tentatively, “Henry had destroyed it.”

Father Maloney shook his head.

“Not a bit of it. If Henry had destroyed it before he shot his brother there’d have been no need for the shooting at all. He shot his brother to get at the paper, but Gelert was one too many for him. And never a scrap of paper was found upon, or near him.”

“And,” said John ruminatively, “that has proved an awkward business.”

“It has that,” said Father Maloney drily. “A claimant has turned up.”

“Yes,” said John quietly.

[Pg 80]

“Oh, ’tis a pretty boggle,” went on Father Maloney, “it is that. This fella, this David Delancey arrives from Africa——”

“Africa!” interrupted John. “I heard he was an American?”

“Well, ’tis Africa he has come from,” said Father Maloney. “He arrives as cool as a cucumber. ‘I’m the rightful owner of this place,’ says he in a letter to Lady Mary. ‘I’ve every proof, and send copies of them.’ ’Tis a long rigmarole how he got hold of them. Of course there was a lawyers’ investigation. That’s been going on for months. But ’tis proved now beyond no manner of doubt that he is the direct descendant of that scoundrel Henry, and not a scrap of legal proof have we got on our side that Henry ever renounced the claim to the property. There’s the whole business. Lady Mary got the letter from the lawyer fellas this morning. ’Tis full of their jargon, but the meaning is plain enough through it all. David Delancey is the rightful heir, and no vestige of right has this little Antony here to stick or stone of the old place.”

Father Maloney stopped.

“It’s—it’s preposterous!” ejaculated John hotly.

[Pg 81]

Father Maloney smiled, an untranslatable, an enigmatic smile.

“When does he take possession?” demanded John.

“Oh, he’s written a decent enough letter,” responded Father Maloney. “He says there can be time enough taken for the handing over of the property. ‘Take six months, or a year about it, for that matter,’ says he. He’ll be coming down here in a day or so to the inn to look around and get the hang of affairs, though he’s in no way anxious to intrude.”

“Intrude!” snorted the wrathful John.

“Well, well,” interpolated Father Maloney soothingly, “he’ll be within his rights according to those lawyer fellas.”

John gazed sternly before him.

“I don’t believe he has an atom of right,” he announced emphatically.

Again Father Maloney smiled.

“Well, I’ll allow we’re all of us for that way of thinking ourselves. But private opinion has never overridden the law yet, without proof in the plainest black and white to back it up.”

[Pg 82]

John heaved a portentous sigh.

Here, at least, was fact indisputable. Matters for the present inhabitants of Delancey Castle were at a deadlock, a deadlock of the tightest and most emphatic kind. There was no denying that a stoic philosophy was the only course open to them.

But stoic philosophy on such a matter! How was any living human creature possessed of a drop of warm tingling blood in his veins to encompass such a state of being? He saw the trio as they had come towards him in the August sunshine that morning,—the girl tall, graceful, breathing vitality, temperament; the merest casual observer must have felt her extraordinary capacity for feeling things intensely. Oh, it was no imagination on his part, imagination fed by the white light of idealism with which he had surrounded her. Verily was there no imagination on his part. She would suffer in every fibre of her being. It would be to her like tearing her heart from her. And she would suffer smiling, he knew that. That’s where the pain would be the more intense. Those who can bedew a wound with tears bring easing to its [Pg 83]agony. And he told himself she would never shed one tear. He knew he wasn’t being sentimental. It was the hard bed-rock truth.

And the boys too! Antony, gay, debonair, valiant little champion! Michael, a mere clinging, cuddlesome baby! And there was Delancey Castle before him in the sunlight.

Of course he didn’t know the place, he was perfectly aware of that fact, but imagination could well make up for lack of knowledge. In imagination he saw the gardens, the terraces, the old grey walls, the dark interior lit by diamond-paned casement windows; he saw the blend of harmonious colours; he smelt the old-time smell of century-mellowed oak and leather, the fragrant scents of lavender and pot-pourri. And it was this—this absolutely perfect and fitting frame for that adorable trio (he had forgotten Lady Mary for the moment) that was to be snatched from them, and made the frame for a modern, hustling, nasal-voiced American.

“What do you think about it?” demanded John sternly, his eyes towards the distant Castle, but his words intended for the old priest.

“Sure, I was thinking every bit the same as [Pg 84]you’re thinking, till twenty minutes or so agone,” responded Father Maloney.

“And now?” demanded John.

“Glory be to God, is it a sermon you’re wanting?” asked Father Maloney with a little twinkle in his eyes.

Corin, from the depths of one armchair, regarded John in the depths of another.

“For sheer, racy, brilliant conversation commend me to you,” he remarked sarcastically. “For the last hour at least—I’ve had my eye on the clock—you’ve uttered no single word. You’ve rivalled the immortal William’s lover in your sighs. Talk of a furnace, it’s like ten furnaces you’ve been. Sigh, sigh, and again sigh. What’s the matter with you, man? Is it love, sorrow, or remorse for an ill-spent youth? Come, out with it. Disburden your soul of the worm i’ the bud which is feeding on your damask cheek. Speak, I implore you.”

John roused himself.

“Oh,” he responded airily enough, “in the matter of conversation I fancied we’d had enough [Pg 86]of it at dinner—supper—whatever the original, but wholly appetizing meal might be called. We conversed pretty tolerably, I fancy.”

“Conversation!” Corin’s voice expressed a depth of utter scorn. “Conversation! If that’s what he calls the airy, frothy, soap-bubble words which fell from his lips! Oh, you didn’t deceive me. I saw in them the mere cloak to an aching heart. You just over-did the lighthearted careless rôle. You’ve said fifty times more in the last hour. But now I want the translation, the interpretation. Where’s the use of first frivolling, and then glooming? Strike the happy medium. Come, consider me a confidant,” he ended on a note of coaxing.

John laughed. Then he relapsed into gloom, frowning.

“It’s no laughing matter,” he said.

“It wasn’t I who laughed,” urged Corin gently. “Come, tell me.”

“Oh, well,” said John stretching out his legs. And forthwith he set himself to speak, succinctly, concisely.

“Bless the man!” cried Corin at the end of the recital, “so it’s that that’s weighing on his mind.”

[Pg 87]

“Well?” demanded John surprised, and not a little injured. “And isn’t it enough to weigh on a man’s mind? Isn’t it an entirely unparalleled situation? Isn’t it an unthinkable, inconceivable situation?”

Corin waved his cigarette in the air.

“Oh, I’ll grant you all that. But you’re too susceptible. You’re too—too ultra-sympathetic. It isn’t your Castle. It isn’t your relation that has appeared unwanted from the other side of Nowhere. It isn’t you who have got to take a back seat and see Americans vault over your head into the position you have just vacated.” He stopped.

“Oh, well,” said John frigidly, “if that’s the way you look at things.”

Corin sighed.

“It’s the only sensible way.”

“Hang sense,” muttered John.

“My dear fellow,” urged Corin soothingly, “look at matters in a reasonable light. Here are you sighing, frowning, suffering real mental pain on behalf of a family—a quite picturesque and interesting family, I’ve no doubt, but one with which you have the barest bowing acquaintance,[Pg 88] the merest superficial knowledge. Your attitude isn’t reasonable, it’s altogether exaggerated and beside the mark.”

“It’s merely ordinary decent human sympathy,” retorted John.

Corin raised his light arched eyebrows till they nearly touched his light straight hair.

“Then,” he remarked coolly, “defend me from your company when you are suffering from extraordinary human sympathy. Seriously, though,” he went on, “aren’t you being a trifle exalté in the matter? Aren’t you plunging the sword of sympathy a bit too deeply into your heart? For a moment—just for one brief infinitesimal moment—consider facts as they are. Here are we two, dropped by the merest chance upon this place, fallen upon it by the merest freak of fortune—three weeks ago I’d never even heard of its existence—and we’ve really no more individual connection with it than with—with Mount Popocatepetl. What possible reason, or, I might say, what right or justification, has either one of us to take to heart the private and personal trials of a family living here. It’s—it’s almost an impertinence. We aren’t in the picture at all. We’re [Pg 89]altogether superfluous to them. Look at the whole thing from the point of view of an audience,” continued Corin blandly. “A month or two hence the curtain will have fallen on this little drama, as far as we are concerned. We aren’t on the stage at all.”

John smiled, a little grim smile, provoked, no doubt, by the eminent common-sense of Corin’s statement.

“You have a really wonderfully level way of regarding matters,” he remarked.

“Isn’t it common-sense?” demanded Corin.

“Oh, yes, it’s common-sense right enough,” conceded John airily.

“You see,” continued Corin, secretly immensely pleased with what he considered the success of his theorems, “you see it is absolutely and entirely impossible for us as individuals to take to heart, deeply to heart, each individual grief of each individual person in the world. Consider, man, if one did, every perusal of the daily papers would be fraught with soul-agonizings, with horrible heart-burnings. It would become a sheer wasting of the nervous tissues, an utter and entire uneconomic expenditure of the sympathies. Also,” concluded[Pg 90] Corin, speaking now at top speed, “though you, in your isolated superiority of an orthodox religion, refuse to admit my theories, it is nevertheless a fact that all suffering is the outcome of justice, in a word, of karma, the inevitable demand for the payment of those debts which every individual has at one time or another voluntarily contracted.”

John grinned.

“I’ve heard that theory of yours before,” he remarked.

“Oh, I know your didymusical tendencies,” retorted Corin.

John laughed.

“I should have supposed,” quoth he, “that the shoe fitted another foot.”

But in his heart he was considering three points—three questions raised by a previous speech in the foregoing conversation. Firstly, was it a mere freak of fortune that had brought him to Malford? Secondly, would the curtain presently fall on the drama so far as he was concerned? Thirdly, had Father Maloney considered his palpable sympathy in the business an impertinence?

[Pg 91]

To firstly and secondly his heart cried an emphatic negative. Thirdly, after all, was a minor consideration; but, having in mind Father Maloney’s shrewd old eyes, John was disposed to answer that question likewise in the negative.

The next two days were dies non as far as John was concerned, since never a glimpse did he obtain of white-robed figure or attendant knights, despite sun-baked rambles along dusty roads, deep lanes, and over purple moorland.

He began to carp at that freakish sprite Chance. Matters might have been so differently arranged by him. Taking them in hand at all, they could have been conceived with so infinitely greater diplomacy. Where, after all, had been the use of a mere goat? Why could not a bull—a ferocious, snorting, pawing bull—have been brought on to the stage. A bull must have entailed some further acknowledgment of the heroic rescue. He might even have been slightly injured in the course of that same rescue. In that case inquiries would have followed as a matter of course, maybe even a visit of sympathetic and grateful condolence. [Pg 93]But a goat! a mere goat! With time and safety in which to consider the situation, it had doubtless presented itself to the lady’s mind as one of ridiculous insignificance. Her alarm was, probably, by now almost laughable in her own eyes; and, in the face of this calm consideration, John’s advance to the rescue would, therefore, have savoured somewhat what of an intrusion. Verily had Chance been freakish and ill-advised.

“Could I but build me a willow cabin at her gates,” sighed John. “But to sit on the sun-baked road would undoubtedly gain one the reputation of a madman in these prosaic, self-contained days.”

Nevertheless he wandered past those same gates more times than I will venture to record, and gazed ardently along the avenue of oaks and beeches, but with no reward for his pains.

To bring solace to his soul, he bethought himself of Sunday. Sight of her, at least, must be then permitted him; speech with her, though a good devoutly to be desired, was not probable of consummation. Also, with distinct and genuine success he interested himself in Corin’s labours.

The work in the church progressed. Daily the [Pg 94]plaster fell before that remorseless chisel, daily new delights shone forth to the light of day. The tracery of the east window was uncovered; showing brilliant blue-green, with glowing ruby eyes. Great splashes of colour, bold yet simple outline, transformed the dreary, hitherto plastered place into a thing of mediæval beauty. The progress of time vanished with the falling plaster. You found yourself back in the old centuries, the dead years revitalized.

John sought the church most willingly when the workmen’s hours were over, when silence lay upon the place, when the only sounds that came to him were the falling of fragments from the walls, the echo of Corin’s foot upon the plank as he shifted his position, and the twittering and chirping of the birds from the bushes in the sunny churchyard without.

At such time imagination ran riot.

He pictured the village folk coming up the path among the lengthening shadows, saw them entering by the little Norman doorway, taking holy water from the stoup, then kneeling before Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. To him the church was no longer an empty shell, but a place of crimson [Pg 95]draperies, dark oak pews, scattered shrines; with here and there a kneeling figure; and above all, superseding all, the quiet strength and peace of the Hidden Presence.

Presently he began to individualize his village folk. There was a fair-haired girl who came to pray for her lover, to commend him specially to Our Lord and St. Joseph, since he—her man—was a carpenter. There was a dark-eyed woman who came to plead for the life of her child lying sick of a fever; there was a young man who came to dedicate his youth and strength to God; and there was an old, old woman, who, having no living to pray for, came daily to pray for the holy dead. The present had vanished, merged and absorbed in the past. Despite all that has been lost, removed, abandoned, despite the denial of entry to that Gracious Presence, does there not still linger in these old churches some faint sweet breath, some hidden fragrance of that which once has been?

You would never have imagined, seeing John sitting there in his most immaculate suit of grey flannels, that such thoughts as these were passing through his mind. But I have observed, and you [Pg 96]may take my observation for what it is worth, that to attempt to guess at the minds of one’s fellow humans by their clothes and their superficial appearance, is a distinctly dangerous task. To do so must inevitably result in a series of vast surprises when the truth becomes known.

To my thinking it would be not unlike marching into some great clothing emporium to examine coats. There they hang,—tweed coats, frieze coats, fur coats, silk coats, velvet coats, satin coats, tinsel coats, even second-hand and shop-worn coats. You turn them to look at the linings. Now, here the shock begins. Where you expected to find warm linings you find calico; where good material, rags; where flimsy useless linings, cloth of gold and soft fur; where soiled linings, the most exquisite satins. Therefore, if you desire to make a guess at the substance of these coats, without actual knowledge of their linings, take them from their peg and weigh them. A discrepancy between their weight and your expectation of it may lead you nearer a fair guess at the lining.

I’ll be bound, that, on mere superficial observation, you’d have taken our John for a mere summer coat of little substance and no weight; but [Pg 97]assuredly you’d find your mistake when you had examined a bit closer. It is an idiosyncrasy of human nature, perhaps intentional on the part of the individual, perhaps unavoidable, that the vast majority invariably deceives the casual observer. No doubt this lends interest to our acquaintanceships and friendships; often, too, lends disappointment; and occasionally unexpected pleasure; but interest certainly.

Here, however, I have advanced somewhat with John’s meditations, carried them beyond those first days of which I began to speak. Therefore to return on our traces.

That first Saturday afternoon John, sitting on an overturned wheelbarrow, began something of those thoughts of which I have given you the greater elaboration. I don’t believe for a moment that he knew that he was thinking them. There’s the curious joy of such thoughts. There is no conscious effort on your part. You don’t map out a route in your mind resolving your progress along it, a conscientious observance of the milestones you may pass. Insensibly you drift into peaceful glades, silent and very sweet. Their atmosphere steals upon you, holding your spirit in a breathless [Pg 98]charm. Happiness, a strange wonderful happiness, falls upon you. You accept it in its entirety, taking, at the moment, no note of details. Later, returning to more material consciousness and surroundings, the details present themselves to your memory, and you then realize your awareness of them, even while they were submerged in the whole.

It was cool in the church, in marked contrast to the heat without. Being Saturday afternoon, John and Corin had the place to themselves. Corin, up aloft, chiselled with vigour, or with suspended breath, as the exigencies of the work demanded; John, on the overturned wheelbarrow, was lost in thought.

Suddenly a slight sound made him raise his head. For a moment, for one brief instant, he still remained in the past, almost believing his thoughts to have materialized before him.

In the shadow of the little Norman doorway stood a white-robed figure. Still half dreaming he looked to see her take holy water from the stoup. Then actualities rushed upon him. His heart jumped; pleasure, undeniable radiant pleasure, shone from his face. He got to his feet.

[Pg 99]

“Oh,” said Rosamund perceiving him. And she stopped, half hesitating.

John made her a little courtly bow.

“I thought,” said she smiling, “I should have found the place deserted. It is Saturday afternoon.”

“It is deserted,” John assured her, “but for me and Corin.” He indicated the indefatigably industrious figure aloft.

She smiled.

“I came,” said she, “with the intention of having a private view, a little secret examination of the paintings Mr. Elmore was uncovering.”

“Oh!” said John. And then dubiously, “The uncovered paintings are, as you see, at a goodly height above us.”

“Yes.” Her voice was regretful.

John heard the regret.

“I wonder—” he began.

“I could,” she assured him, with swift realization of his unspoken thought.

He glanced towards the ladder.

“Really?” he queried.

She nodded. “Really. I am sure I could.”

“Come then,” said John.

[Pg 100]

They advanced towards the ladder. At the foot thereof she paused.

“Shan’t we be disturbing him?” she queried.

“Not a bit of it,” laughed John. “He’ll merely be flattered at your interest. He’ll adore an audience.”

The situation had for him the hint of an adventure. To have told her curtly,—or suavely, for that matter,—that it was impossible for her to see those paintings would have resulted in her leaving the church. There could have been no possible excuse for her remaining. This thought justified him in suggesting the venture. Naturally it was an infinitely greater venture in his eyes than in Rosamund’s. That is probably understood without need of my mentioning the fact.

John, in advance, reached the first platform; turned, took her hand firmly in his, and drew her to safety. A second time was this feat accomplished in like manner.

“Hullo!” exclaimed Corin, surprised at the double apparition.

“Allow me,” said John, “to present my friend, Mr. Elmore. Miss Delancey wanted to see the paintings.”

[Pg 101]

“Therein,” quoth Corin bowing, “she shows her judgment. Behold!” He waved his chisel towards the wall.

“Oh!” breathed Rosamund. Just that, and no more.

Corin hugged himself with delight.

“Isn’t it gorgeous!” he ejaculated. “Isn’t it superb, adorable, and dreamy! And heaven knows what more this plaster hides. The unutterable Philistines who smeared and daubed it over from the light of day!”

“Is it not,” suggested Rosamund, “a matter for thankfulness that they did merely smear and daub? It is possible, it is quite conceivable, that they might have scraped.”

Corin shuddered.

“Don’t suggest such a possibility,” he implored. “I’ll confess my thankfulness for the daubing.”

She barely heard him. She was engrossed in the work before her,—red, black, turquoise blue, and crimson, she revelled in its colour. Daring enough it was in parts, in others almost crude in its simplicity. She was drawn, as John had been drawn, back into the bygone ages. Their atmosphere enfolded her, enwrapped her. She saw in [Pg 102]the work before her, almost without realizing her thoughts, the interpretation of the mind of the painter. Here was nothing petty, nothing niggled; it was frank, simple, childlike. It was extraordinarily unselfconscious. Therein lay its subtle charm. There was no intricacy of expression; nothing laboured; almost, one might say, nothing preconceived.

“Well?” queried John at last.

“Oh,” she cried, turning towards him, “it’s—it’s so deliciously simple, so utterly unstudied. It’s almost untutored in its crudeness, and yet—I wonder wherein exactly the charm lies?”

“In its simplicity,” returned Corin promptly. “Whoever painted this worked for pure pleasure. There’s—well, there’s so extraordinarily little hint of even the thought of an audience. Do you know what I mean?”

“Isn’t it,” she said laughing, “the entire expression of ‘when the world was so new and all’?”

“Exactly!” cried Corin. “In those eight little words Kipling carried us back into a clean fresh world with its face all washed and smiling; when we laughed for the mere joy of laughter; when we wept if we wanted to weep—only I believe we [Pg 103]didn’t want to; when the tiresome stupid phrases ‘What will people think? What will people say?’ were unknown in the language; when we danced, and ate, and played in the sunshine for the mere joy of living.”

“Only that?” she queried, her eyebrows raised.

“Only that,” said Corin firmly. “Kipling is a glorious pagan.”

“Oh!” She was dubious. “I wonder.”

“And this painter,” pursued Corin unheeding, “splashed his colours on the walls, his blacks, his reds, his blues, his lines and curves, and he laughed as he worked, and I think he sang too, and he didn’t care one jot what people thought about him or his painting. He loved it, and so—” He broke off with a gesture.

“But,” quoth she demurely, “I suppose you don’t intend to infer that he was a pagan?”

“Oh, you can call him what you like,” returned Corin magnanimously, “I only know that his mind was as untrammelled as his work.”

“I see.” She shot him a little quizzical glance.

Ten minutes later, standing once more on the floor of the church, she said to John, smiling:

“I suppose Mr. Elmore considers your mind, [Pg 104]and my mind, and, for the matter of that, the mind of every Catholic in a kind of strait-jacket?”

“You’re not far beside the mark,” returned John laughing.

He went with her to the door. A moment she stood there; and, turning, looked back into the church.

“After all, it’s sad,” she said.

“I know,” replied John.

“It’s—it’s the sense of loss.”

“I know,” said John again, “the sense of loss, in spite of the faint fragrance that still lingers.”

She nodded, then turned towards the sunshine without.

“By the way,” said she suddenly reminiscent, “I left a note for you at the White Cottage. My grandmother would be very pleased if you and Mr. Elmore would lunch with us tomorrow at one o’clock. She would like to thank you in person for your intervention on our behalf the other day. Can you come?”

“With the greatest pleasure in the world,” returned John. And there is no question but that his heart was in his voice.

You perceive, therefore, that Chance had truly played the game well. John—a radiant John—apologized within his soul for his one-time doubt of the Sprite’s arrangement of affairs. The sun immediately shone brighter, the sky was bluer, the earth an altogether fairer and lovelier place.

He made his way swiftly back to the White Cottage. There, in the parlour, he found what he sought, a pale grey envelope lying on the table. Quickly he broke the seal, perused the opening words:

“My grandmother desires me....”

John’s heart thumped madly. It was exactly as he had hoped,—her handwriting, her signature! The faintest scent of lavender was wafted to him from the paper.

“We shall be lunching at Delancey Castle tomorrow,” said John, with a fine air of casualness,[Pg 106] to Mrs. Trimwell, who was setting out the tea-things. Inwardly he was aware that an almost idiotic smile of pleasure was wreathing itself about his lips.

Mrs. Trimwell beamed. You might have fancied, seeing her, that the invitation had been extended to herself.

“I’m glad,” said she, heartily and concisely. “You need cheering up a bit.”

“I do?” John was surprised.

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Trimwell. “I’ve noticed well enough that you’ve been down on your luck like these last three days, and no wonder with not a soul to speak to except Mr. Elmore, and him everlasting on ladders chiselling of the walls, which it isn’t the easiest way to be talking at the same time, I’ll be bound. You’ve done nothing but wear yourself out a-trapezing round the country in the heat, and come home that tired you’ve no stomach for your food. I’ve eyes in my head.” Mrs. Trimwell nodded emphatically.

“Oh, but really—” began John feebly, and with something like a queer sense of guilt, “I haven’t——”

“You’ve been dull,” reiterated Mrs. Trimwell [Pg 107]firmly, “and if you say you haven’t you don’t deceive me, no more than my Tilda did when she come into the house half an hour agone looking for all the world like a choir boy a-singing of hymns. ‘Where ha’ you been, Tilda?’ says I. Tilda, she glinted at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘Oh, round and about, mother,’ says she. ‘And ’tis round and about with Molly Biddulph you’ve been then,’ I says. And Tilda, she begins to snivel, knowing I’ve told her times out of number I won’t have her going around with Molly, who’s the worst young limb of mischief to the village. There’s nothing that child won’t do, from getting unbeknownst into Jane Kelly’s shop and changing the salt and sugar in the jars, to tampering with the very books in the church itself. Did I ever tell you about her and the banns of marriage, sir?”

“You did not,” replied John.

“It was her cousin from Dublin what helped her, I know,” announced Mrs. Trimwell, “being a boy, and good at writing, and old enough to think of the wickedness. But ’twas Molly stole the key, as Father Maloney got her to own, and seeing she goes to his church, being Irish papists, I wonder [Pg 108]he don’t keep her in better order. Vicar, he was away for a Sunday or two, and got another parson what he called a lokomtinum to come down. Molly, she stole the key of the vestry from Henry Davies what’s the verger, and used to keep the key in a china cat on his parlour mantelpiece, but has carried it tied to his watch chain ever since, and her and Patsie sneaked off down to the church when Vicar had gone, and got the book of banns to be called. There wasn’t but one bann to be called, Lily Morton’s, her that married the blacksmith over to Bradbury three months agone. Patsie and Molly wrote down the rest. They coupled off Mr. Healy and Miss Sweeting, and Mr. Porter and Miss Janet Cray, and Mr. Lethbury and Miss Martha Bridges, what’s all over fifty if they’re a day, and the respectablest spinsters for miles round, and Mr. Healey he’s in his dotage, and Mr. Porter what’s afraid to look a woman in the face, and Mr. Lethbury a married man with a wife a bit of a termagent. They said afterwards—Molly and Patsie—they had to give Miss Martha Bridges to somebody, and there wasn’t no unmarried men but Mr. Healey and Mr. Porter, and they’d fixed them to Miss Sweeting and Miss Janet [Pg 109]Cray. Well, the lokomtinum he don’t know no more than Adam who the people in the village are, and when it come to the banns, out he reads the sinfulness them two have written down. Mrs. Morton, the butcher’s wife, she was there, and she told me afterwards you might ha’ heard the gasp that went round the church up to the Castle. Mr. Porter took and bolted, and hasn’t been seen outside his gates yet. Mr. Healey wasn’t there, and Mr. Lethbury he sat with his jaw dropped and his eyes a-sticking out of his head. Miss Martha Bridges had hysterics, and the only ones that seemed a bit pleased and fluttery-like was Miss Sweeting and Miss Janet Cray, specially Miss Janet. Suppose them two thought it was a new kind o’ way of proposing, not having the courage to do it otherways.” Mrs. Trimwell stopped.

“What happened?” asked John trying to keep his voice steady.

“Happened!” said Mrs. Trimwell. “There was talk enough in the village that Sunday and a week after to last most people for a lifetime and then them feel a bit of chatterboxes. Henry Davies he was mad, feeling responsible like as verger. He guessed ’twas Molly at the bottom of it as she’s [Pg 110]at the bottom of all the mischievousness in the place and her only eleven. But he couldn’t prove nothing finding the key in the china cat Sunday morning same as it always was, Molly having put it back. He ask her, and she up and lied straight. She’ll tell you a lie and look you in the face as innocent as a dove. But I knows when she’s lying for that she always turns her toes in when she lies. But I don’t think other folk have noticed that, and for all she’s a bad child I’ll not give her away that much. Henry Davies he went up to Father Maloney, and he sent for Molly and Patsie, being a knowing man like, and the sinfulness a bit beyond Molly’s years. They told him the truth fast enough. I’ll say that for Molly, she don’t never lie to Father Maloney, that I knows. And then all they’d say, as brazen as you please, was that they were sorry they couldn’t have heard the banns read, because ’twould be a sin in them to go to a Protestant church. Henry Davies said Father Maloney was that angry with them for such a speech he just turned his back straight on them and walked over to the window. And presently he said in a queer sort of voice that if Henry Davies would go away for a bit he’d talk to [Pg 111]Patsie and Molly. Henry Davies was sure he was so upset at the wickedness of them being responsible for their souls like that he couldn’t abide to have any one see what he was feeling.”

“It would be a grief to him,” announced John gravely. “Did—did his lecture have any effect?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Trimwell, “in a manner of speaking you might say it had. Father Maloney went with Molly and Patsie to them six they’d insulted—Father Maloney said ’twas an insult—and to Henry Davies and the lokomtinum, and they apologized. Though Molly said afterwards that Miss Janet and the lokomtinum were the only ones it had been worth while apologizing to. She said it in Henry Davies’s hearing, which it wasn’t pleasant for him to hear, and he’d have gone to Father Maloney again but that Mrs. Davies persuaded him to let well alone seeing he might ha’ been a bit to blame for not keeping the key safer. Father Maloney made them own up to Vicar too, and say they were sorry. But sorriness with Molly is water on a duck’s back and no more and no less. And I’ve told my Tilda fifty times if I’ve told her once, that I’ll not have her go with [Pg 112]Molly. But it’s awful the way Molly gets a hold on children with her coaxing ways.”

John shook his head in commiseration. Words, it would appear, failed him at the moment.

Two minutes later, Mrs. Trimwell having departed, he betook himself to a careful re-perusal of that pale grey letter.

“I saw a new man in the park today.”

This statement, clear, emphatic, came from Antony’s lips. Sheer courtesy had suppressed it long enough to allow of Father Maloney’s saying grace, then it had shot forth, somewhat after the manner of a stone from a catapult.

The hour was one of the clock; the place was the dining hall at Delancey Castle. John, on entering it, had swept it with a comprehensive glance. It was old-world, supremely, superbly old-world. He had taken in the atmosphere in one delicious draught.

It was a dark place, oak-panelled, yet, so he assured himself, it was utterly devoid of grimness. It was mellow, harmonious, softly shadowed. High up on the oak walls, set against their darkness, were splashes of colour,—shields of the houses with which the Delanceys had married. Over [Pg 114]the great fireplace was the Delancey shield itself, Arg. a pile azure between six and charged with three escallops counterchanged. The sunlight fell through long casement windows, patterning the floor with diamond-shaped splotches of gold. At one end of the hall were two steps leading to a little arched door. Through this you entered the chapel. At the other end was the minstrels’ gallery. John could fancy it peopled with musicians, heard in imagination the soft strains of the harp and lute.

The table, uncovered, shone with the polishing of generations; silver, glass, and red roses, were reflected in its glossy surface. At one end sat Lady Mary. Her white hair, covered with lace, cobwebby, filmy, was backgrounded by the darkness of her chair. Facing her was Rosamund, white-robed, lovely, cordial. Opposite to John was Corin flanked on either side by Antony and Michael; on his right was Father Maloney.

To John’s mind, he and Corin alone brought the twentieth century into the dark old place; yet, bringing it, they failed to destroy the abiding atmosphere. Of course the other five at the table did not date back to their setting itself,—they[Pg 115] were somewhere about eighteenth century he conjectured,—but they linked on without a break to the remoter ages; his thoughts ran smoothly from them to the past. In a word, they and their setting “belonged,” and that, to him, summed up the whole essence of harmony. He felt himself in a new old world,—new to him, and yet old as Time itself. The day was centuries old, caught out of the forgotten past, set down, sweet, fragrant with memories, into the midst of this twentieth century. And the twentieth century with all its movement, with all its modern innovations, fell away from him, dissolved, vanished like fog wreaths before the sun.

“I saw a new man in the park today.”

The remark dropped into the harmony like a pebble into a still lake. Why the simile presented itself to his mind at the moment, John could not have told you; nevertheless it did present itself.

“And what manner of man may a new man be?” demanded Father Maloney.

Antony knitted his brows.

“Mr. Mortimer was a new man on Wednesday,” quoth he serious. “Mr. Elmore is the newest of all.”

[Pg 116]

“Ah!” said Father Maloney, his eyes twinkling, “now we see daylight. And what was this other new man doing in the park at all?”

“I think,” quoth Antony solemn, “he was trying to look at the Castle, but he didn’t want any one to see him. Least I don’t think he did.”

“Hum!” said Father Maloney. “What makes you think that?”

“’Cos,” said Antony calmly, “when I said ‘Hullo,’ he jumped an’ said ‘Great snakes!’ I told him,” he continued carefully, “that there weren’t any snakes in the park. Least not big ones anyway. An’ he said he hadn’t concluded there were. He’d said ‘Great snakes!’ ’cos I made him jump. S’pose it was same as Biddy says ‘Saints alive!’ an’ you say ‘Glory be to God!’”

Father Maloney looked down the table at Lady Mary. The glance was a trifle grim.

“Did he say anything else?” asked Lady Mary in a level voice.

“He asked me who I was. An’ I told him my name was Antony Joseph Delancey. An’ he said he reckoned I was the owner of the place. An’ I said no, it was Granny’s place now, but [Pg 117]I was going to have it when I was a man. An’ he said, ‘Oh, you are, are you?’ An’ then he whistled.”

There was a little curious silence. As we calculate time it endured, perhaps, not longer than two or three seconds, yet to John it seemed interminable. It was broken by Antony’s voice, pursuing his reminiscences the while he was busy with roast chicken and bread sauce.

“He talked quite a lot,” pursued Antony, cheerfully reflective. “He asked me how old I was, an’ how long I’d lived here, an’ if I liked it. An’ he wanted to know why we had a chapel built on to the Castle, an’ he said he hadn’t been inside a church for years, ’cos there weren’t any churches where he lived, an’ when he came into a town he felt like a fish out of water if he went inside one. An’ he lives in a house that hasn’t got any stairs, an’ there’s mountains round it, an’ there’s baboons what come down from the mountains to steal the mealies. Mealies are Indian corn, he says. An’ he says lilies grow in the ditches in his country, an’ great tall flowers grow in his garden,—I don’t remember the name,—an’ wild canaries fly about among them. An’ he [Pg 118]says the sunshine out there is all hot an’ gold, an’ the shadows are blue as blue. An’ he says we don’t know what sunshine is in England, ’cos even when it’s sunny it’s like a gauze veil hung over the sun. An’ he’s shot leopards, an’ little tiny deer, an’ killed big snakes. An’ he asked me honest injun what I thought about him, an’ I said I liked him. An’ he said perhaps I wouldn’t like him very long. An’ I said ‘Why?’ An’ he laughed, an’ shook hands, an’ went away. An’ that,” concluded Antony with satisfaction, “is all.”

Again there fell a little silence. It was probably infinitely more poignant to John than to the other members of the luncheon table. That is the worst of being possessed of a sensitive and imaginative temperament. Your suffering is invariably duplex. You suffer for yourself and the other, or others, as the case may be. And, in suffering for others, your imagination, as often as not, passes the bounds of actualities, for the very excellent reason that you possess no real knowledge to bring it to a halt.

Corin, though certainly less imaginative, felt the slight tension. He leaped to break it, in a [Pg 119]manner highly praiseworthy, if slightly abrupt. What his remark was precisely, John did not fully grasp, but it certainly had his work in the church for a foundation. The leap taken, he burbled joyously, expounding, theorizing. There was no egotistical note in his expounding. After all, as he assured them, the work was not his. He was, in a manner of speaking, but a digger, a scraper. The fact left him free to be enthusiastic at will, and enthusiastic he veritably was.

Possibly mere politeness first urged three of the elder members of the party to suitable rejoinders. I omit John from the number. Later they may have been fired by Corin’s exceeding enthusiasm. Be that as it may, the tension was distinctly relieved. Conversation flowed easily, smoothly. Dessert had been reached before it was suddenly jerked back to dangerous quarters.

“I wonder,” said Antony, surveying a bunch of raisins on his plate, “who he is?” There was, you can guess, no need for a more detailed explanation.

“I think,” said Lady Mary quietly, “it was Sir David Delancey.”

It was out now. The words were spoken. [Pg 120]To John, they somehow struck the last nail in the coffin of his hopes.

“Same name as us?” queried an astonished Antony.

“Yes,” said Lady Mary.

“I liked him,” said Antony cheerfully. “Do you s’pose he’s staying here? Do you s’pose I shall see him again?”

John caught his breath. Once more there was the fraction of a pause, a little tense silence.

Then came Lady Mary’s well-bred voice.

“I think you will see him again. I shall ask him to come and see the Castle before long.”

John looked up, amazed.

“Of course,” said John to himself, “I see her point of view.”

It was, be it stated, at least the fiftieth time in the course of the last four and twenty hours that he had assured himself of the perspicacity of his vision. Also, it must be observed, it was because his own point of view was so diametrically opposed to hers that he found the assurance necessary. It emphasized, in a measure, his own broadness of mind, his ability to perceive another’s standpoint even while he disagreed with it in toto. You will doubtless have observed this attitude of mind in such persons as are fully determined to adhere to their own opinions.

Of course he realized Lady Mary’s point of view, her quixotic determination to recognize the interloper as one of the family, now that his claim to recognition had been fully established. [Pg 122]Of course it was noble, chivalrous, Christian to a very fine degree of nicety; but it was, to John’s way of thinking, ultra-quixotic, unnecessary, save to aspirers after saintship. And John, from a delightfully human standpoint, saw no reason to imagine Lady Mary as an aspirer to this exalted degree of perfection. Therefore, from a human standpoint, her determination was tinged, distinctly tinged, with absurdity.

It was one thing, argued John, to bear a treacherous dog’s bite with courage and equanimity, it was quite another to welcome and caress the dog that has bitten you. There was treachery, unfairness, in the whole business as far as the interloper was concerned; that fact made John’s point of view the justifiable, and, indeed, the only sane one. He saw precisely how he would have acted in the matter. He would have given a dignified refusal to permit the interloper to put so much as his nose inside the Castle, till such time as he himself and his belongings had made a dignified exit from it. There was dignity enough in John’s attitude, you may be sure. In fact it was a dignity which, for the time being, entirely overrode his quite abundant sense of humour. [Pg 123]Therefore, you perceive, that the dignity was coloured by a very decided sense of ill-temper. This last quality and self-appreciation—and I believe our John was modest enough—alone are capable of subordinating such humour.

“Of course,” said John again, “I see her point of view, but it’s such a confoundedly quixotic one. It isn’t level; it isn’t sane; it—it won’t work.” And then John frowned fiercely, and gazed glumly before him.

He was sitting in the shadow of a haystack, the afternoon being intensely hot. The sleepy air was curiously still. Had John not been entirely engrossed in his own reflections, it is possible he might have read something ominous in this stillness. It is certain that he would have done so had he looked past the haystack behind him, and seen the purple-black clouds gradually massing up on the distant horizon. Before him, however, all was serene, sunny, and drowsy; therefore he continued to dream.

His thoughts leaving, for a time at least, a subject at once unfruitful and irritating, they rambled over the incidents of the last few days. Undercurrently, as a kind of connecting link [Pg 124]to the scattered beads of incident, was a half-wondering reflection on the inscrutable leadings of Fate, Providence,—call it what you will. And if it wasn’t Fate which had led him here, it was Providence, and if it was Providence there was no gainsaying the plan, and so—and so— He broke off.

Oh, he’d follow up the leading fast enough. It was his one whole and sole desire. Hadn’t he had this desire for months past? Hadn’t it been his one dream since five minutes to four precisely one windy March afternoon? He’d follow hot afoot fast enough. The whole question was, Would she come the merest fraction of a step towards him? Would she even pause to await his coming? Or would he come to the end of the pathway to find that she had eluded him,—a locked gate the end of his quest? And there must be no stumbling, no clumsy blundering on that pathway. Despite his desire for swiftness, he must walk warily. And then his thoughts came to a halt, overcome, I fancy, by some suspicion of their presumption. For a moment he staggered mentally, yet but for a moment. Courage called high-handed to his heart. “On, [Pg 125]man, and take the risk,” she cried. “Cowardice and false modesty never yet led to a fair goal.”

Now his thoughts went back slowly step by step, dwelling with interest on each little incident that had brought him to his present vantage point. It being a vantage point, this method of thought had its fascination. It was pleasant enough to give mental fingering to each little bead of incident, to marvel at their connection with each other. Truly there are times when such a process brings pain, when each bead will hold a tiny poisoned prick. But why think of such times? To John, each bead was carved in happiness.

And then, suddenly, he was aware that the physical sunshine around him had dimmed. Glancing upwards he saw the edge of a dark cloud. He got to his feet and came out from the shelter of the haystack.

Rolling up from the westward, thunderous, leaden, were great massive clouds. The air below was extraordinarily still; he was aware now of something electric in its stillness. Overhead there was unquestionably wind, since the clouds rolled up and spread with rapidity.

[Pg 126]

“We’re in for a deluge,” said John, making for the high road.

It led downhill, straight, dusty, and very white, flanked on either side by high hedges, dust-sprinkled. John made his way down it at a fine pace. A thin flannel suit would be poor enough protection against the torrent that was at hand.

Nearing the bottom of the hill, he heard the sharp ting of a bicycle bell behind him. The next instant the bicycle and its rider flashed past.

“Crass idiot to ride at that pace,” ejaculated John against the hedge. The machine had been within a couple of inches of his arm.

And then came the first drops of rain, splashing down, splotching dark spots on the dusty road. White a moment agone, in a second it was brown. The rain hissed down upon the earth. Truly there was the sound of its abundance.

John took to his heels and ran. As he turned at the bottom of the hill, he came to a sudden halt. By the roadside, half sitting, half lying, was a man; a bicycle, wheels in the air, reposed disconsolately in a ditch.

“Hurt?” demanded John as he came abreast of him.

[Pg 127]

“Twisted my ankle,” was the laconic response.

John glanced along the road. A hundred yards or so ahead, through the downpour, he could see the White Cottage.

“I can give you an arm to shelter if you can manage to hobble,” he announced, indicating the house.

The man scrambled to his feet with a grimace of pain. Together, in halting fashion, they made their way towards the cottage. Conversation there was none. John expressed a consolatory remark or two at intervals, to which his companion replied, “All right. Not much. Brake broke,” as the case might be.

Even in these few words there was something in the inflexion of his voice which perplexed John. Undercurrently he found himself demanding what it was, but the exigencies of the moment disallowed of the query coming uppermost. Also, at the moment, John happened to be suffering from one of those lapses into obtuseness to which even the most intelligent of us are liable on occasions.

It was with a sigh of relief that he pushed open the door of his sitting-room.

There is no question but that Mrs. Trimwell could rise to an emergency when it presented itself before her. In fifteen, perhaps no more than ten, minutes from their entry, she had the drenched couple into dry garments; the injured ankle was bound in soft bandages, tea was in preparation.

But why, marvelled John, should her beneficent services have been dispensed with a face as sour as a crab-apple? Why should her whole mien have been as stiff, unbending, and unyielding as the proverbial poker? The disapproval of her attitude was so marked as to be impossible to ignore. John, in the position of host, felt some sort of an apology necessary. Mrs. Trimwell departed, he stumbled one forth, wondering, as he endeavoured at lightness, whether he were not, after all, a bit of a fool for his pains; whether, by remarking on her [Pg 129]taciturn grimness, he were not emphasizing it more crudely.

“She doesn’t mean to be abrupt,” he concluded, holding his cigarette case towards the stranger.

The man took a cigarette, and glanced at John.

“Oh, yes, I guess she does,” he remarked drily.

John looked at him. Obtuseness still had him in her clutch.

“She knows who I am,” said the man coolly, “and—well, I fancy most folk round here are not predisposed in my favour. My name, by the way, is David Delancey.”

John gasped, frankly gasped. He was amazed, dumbfounded. Running through the amazement was, I fancy, something like annoyance; though superseding it was a sense of the ludicrous, a realization of the absurdity of the situation. And this brought him to something perilously near a titter.

The man looked at him.

“Look here,” he said deliberately, though with a gleam of amusement in his own eyes, “if you feel the same way about things, I’ll move on now. [Pg 130]I’ll make shift to hobble to the inn if you’ll lend me a couple of sticks.”

John experienced a sudden sensation of shame. Perhaps it was by reason of the quick interpretation of his unspoken thoughts, perhaps it was something in the other’s steady grey eyes.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” he said quickly. And then he laughed.

“What’s funny?” demanded David.

“Oh, the whole blessed kaboodle,” returned John, still laughing softly. “Here was I half an hour agone inveighing against you for all I was worth, and now—well, the rôle of good Samaritan strikes me as a bit humorous, that’s all.”

He held a lighted match towards his guest. David took it. After a moment he spoke.

“Then you know them up at the Castle?”

“I do,” said John.

David glanced at him, then turned to a contemplation of his cigarette.

“I had a note from the old lady today,” he said ruminatively. “She has asked me to dine on Thursday. Now, I call that sporting of her. I guess I’d be more like sticking a knife into me than asking me to share her salt. It’s the way [Pg 131]she’s worded the note, too, that I’m stuck on. I’d give a good many dollars to get my tongue and pen around words in that fashion. I reckon I shall shake hands with her cordially.”

John eyed him curiously. His preconceived notions of hostility were undergoing an extraordinary change, a change at once rapid, and, to him, amazing, incomprehensible. I fancy he tried to rein them back, to bring them to a standstill, while he took a calmer survey of the situation, but, for all his endeavours, he found they had suddenly got beyond his control.

“I wonder,” hazarded he, “if you’d mind my asking you something. What gave you the first clue—the idea of starting out on this quest of yours?”

“The clue?” David laughed. “It’s a bit of a yarn, I can tell you. You want it? Sure?”

John nodded.

“Well,” quoth David, “you can call it luck, chance if you like. We’ve always known we hailed as a family originally from England. That knowledge has been handed down to us as a bit of tradition. I was born in Philadelphia, and riz there, as they say in the States, till I was going [Pg 132]ten. Then my father made for Africa. There’s no need to enter into the details of that move; they’re beside the mark. He took a small farm in the Hex River Valley. He had a few old things that belonged to his father and grandfather before him. They were stored away in a chest. I used to look inside it when I was a youngster, and see coats, and waistcoats, and neck stocks, and a fusty old book or two lying in it. I never smell camphor without thinking of that chest.

“As I grew older, I left it alone, didn’t think about it. I guess my father hadn’t bothered about it much more than I did. He died when I was fifteen, and my mother ran the farm. She was a capable woman. I helped her all I could, and there were men to do the work. But she was boss till I was one and twenty. Then she turned it over to me to run,—root, stock, and barrel. She was cute, though, the way she’d talk things over with me, telling me all the time what was best to do, and making me think that I had figured out the plans. Later on she left it really to me, not just in the name of it. That was when I’d got the right hang of things.

[Pg 133]

“Then she dropped suddenly out of all the man way of thinking, and just sat knitting and smiling in the chimney corner, or letting me drive her around in the buggy, with never a talk of business unless I began the subject. It’s seven years ago that she died.” He stopped.

John was silent.

“I missed her,” went on David presently, “I missed her badly. The place wasn’t the same. I went roving around trying to think she wasn’t gone—but I’ll get maudlin if I go on with that. It wasn’t the bit I set out to tell you, anyway. One afternoon I was in the lumber room feeling lonesomer than ever. I don’t know what took me there if it wasn’t just fate. Then I looked at that chest again. I opened it, and the smell of camphor rushed out at me, making me think more than ever of my mother. She was mad after camphor, putting it among everything to keep away the moth.

“To get away from my thoughts I began pulling out the things in the box, stuffy books, coats, waistcoats, and all. There was one coat, a snuff-coloured one, that might have been worn in the time of the Georges, I calculated. I sat looking [Pg 134]at it, and wondering which of my grandparents had worn it, and what kind of a man he was, and all the things a fellow does think when he’s got his grandsire’s stuff before him. After a bit I began going through the pockets. I found a tiny horn snuff-box in one, and that set me off searching closer. I’d come to the last pocket, when I found what gave me that clue you were asking about. I found a letter.”

John looked up quickly.

“It was torn, and not over-easy to read,” went on David. “I’ve got it here. You can read it if you like.”

He felt in his waistcoat pocket and pulled out his pocket-book. From it he took a letter.

John took the yellow paper with its faded ink lines. As he touched it he thought of the queer twists fate gives to the wheel of our life. Less than a fortnight ago he had set eyes but momentarily upon one of the Delancey family, and now here he was, thrown into their midst, made participator even in their extraordinary history. It was, so mused John, a bit of a marvel.

Here is the letter he read.

[Pg 135]

John slowly deciphered the faint lines. Silently he tendered the letter again.

“It set me thinking,” said David reminiscently. “I was in that lumber room for more than two hours reading that letter again and again. It was clear that there was something belonging to us that we hadn’t got; something that, as far as I could see, we had the right to have, though I didn’t just know what it was. It struck me as queer that the Richard who had had the letter hadn’t had a try for it. I know now that he died [Pg 136]of some kind of fever after his father had been gone six weeks. His father didn’t return.” David’s voice was grim.

“I know,” said John.

“You’ve heard the story?” demanded David.

“That part of it. But go on.”

“Well,” continued David, “whether no one else knew of the letter, or whether they thought that trying for their rights was a fool game, I don’t know. There were times when I was after it that I thought it a fool game myself. But I’d set out on it, and somehow I never find it easy to turn back on any job I’ve set out on. If the others didn’t think our birthright worth a bit of a fight I did. It took me five years to trace up the family, but I got on the track, back to the certificate of Henry Delancey’s marriage to Marie Courtoise, daughter of a Brussels lace merchant. It was their grandson who first settled in the States. With that I came to England, and followed up the clue here. Then I understood exactly what I was after. They can’t deny that Henry was the eldest son, and though they say he signed away the property from himself and his heirs they haven’t got that document. This letter, too,” he tapped it gently, [Pg 137]“shows that though he may have signed it away from himself, he did not touch the birthright of his heirs. See?”

“Yes, I see,” returned John a trifle drily.

Oh, he saw fast enough. Also, he saw pretty plainly that Henry Delancey had been no fool in the game of swindling.

David looked at him.

“You’re on the side of the occupants of the Castle,” he said. It was statement rather than query.

“I am,” said John coolly. His eyes held something of a challenge.

“Hum,” remarked David.

And then Mrs. Trimwell entered with the tea, and an aspect of rigid disapproval.

“I like that man,” announced Corin succinctly.

John grunted.

“I like him,” announced Corin again, stirring his coffee.

“I’ve heard you make that remark at least ten times since his departure,” quoth John, and somewhat sarcastically, be it stated.

“It is possible,” returned Corin coolly, “that you will hear me make it at least ten times more. Of course I’ll allow that he isn’t in the picture. In fact he’s entirely out of the picture; he strikes an incongruous note. It requires a readjustment of all one’s preconceived notions to see him in that old-world setting up yonder.”

John groaned inwardly.

“Yet you cannot deny,” pursued Corin, “that there is a pleasing strength and virility about him. I had allowed myself to imagine him as a small [Pg 139]hustling man, a cross between the brisk commercial traveller and the hard-headed mechanic, with perhaps a touch of the oily waiter thrown in. And now,” went on Corin musingly, “I perceive that he is a big man——”

“Your eyesight would be strangely deficient if you didn’t perceive it,” broke in John.

“A silent man——”

“He hadn’t a chance of getting a word in edgeways when you appeared upon the scene,” interpolated John.

“A thoughtful man——”

“It is to be hoped he was able to assimilate a few of the thoughts you thrust down his throat,” quoth John grimly.

“Hang the stupid little complications of life,” he was thinking. There was a tiny note of trouble in his eyes.

“If you mean that I thrust my ideas upon him unwanted,” said Corin with dignity, “allow me to remark that you are mistaken. I observed interest, intelligent interest, in his face.”

“And you pretend to being short-sighted,” interposed John.

“The idea,” continued Corin, “of his having [Pg 140]worked out his debt of karma for sins committed in former lives, and being, therefore, now able to enter upon his birthright, appealed to him. It distinctly appealed to him. He said, ‘I guess that’s a new handle to take hold of,’ more than once.”

“That doesn’t say it was an inviting one,” retorted John.

“I’m a fool to be worried about such a trifling absurdity,” he thought.

“There is much,” said Corin didactically, “that is uninviting at the outset, but which, on further acquaintance, proves of extraordinary interest. Also, for my part, rather let me grasp Truth however uninviting she may appear, than dally with the most pleasing of lies.”

John laughed.

“I wonder,” went on Corin, “what precise debt of karma the family at the Castle owes this man, that he is to be the instrument for their unseating.”

“According to you,” returned John, “since he has paid off his own debt, and gained reward, he is obliged to unseat someone.”

Corin sighed.

“I fear,” he said, “that I shall never be able [Pg 141]to make you perceive the law and order, the strict justice in the universe. If reward is gained at the expense of another, it is merely because that other deserves that the reward should be so gained.”

John laughed a second time. Argument in this quarter was futile, and he knew it. His friendship with Corin was always a matter of some slight amusement and puzzlement to him, when he chanced to consider the subject. It is certainly somewhat difficult to conceive wherein precisely the attraction between them existed, having in view their diametrically opposite opinions.

“Confound the man,” thought John, and it was not on Corin those thoughts were centred, “why couldn’t he have been all that I had pictured him?”

“You can laugh,” said Corin severely, “but it is very certain that you can bring no arguments to refute mine.”

“My dear man,” responded John, “I could bring twenty million, but it’s like pouring water into a sieve to propound them to you. I believe I have heard a tale of a monk being once sent by a saint to fetch water in a sieve; and when, at the end of several journeys, he ventured to remonstrate at [Pg 142]the futility of the journey, it was pointed out to him that at all events the sieve had been cleansed by the process. I don’t know whether my arguments would have a like effect on your mind, but I confess I am too lazy to try.”

“Your simile savours of an insult,” retorted Corin. “But I’ll leave you to your own mode of thought. I know it to be hide-bound, iron-cast. Now, in this man I see plastic material; he needs but careful moulding. I shall pursue my acquaintance with him with interest.”

John laughed a third time. But behind the laughter in his eyes was still that little indefinable note of trouble.

Now, to your calm, collected, and reasonable individual, John’s little trouble may appear nothing but rank absurdity. It probably will appear nothing but rank absurdity, seeing that it had existence merely in the fact that he had felt a certain attraction towards the man, whom fate had that evening thrown in his path.

And why on earth shouldn’t he feel attraction!—so your reasonable individual may exclaim.

But John was not reasonable. He was one of your ultra-sensitive characters, to whom the merest dust speck may prove, at moments, a source of perpetual annoyance. He desired to feel nothing but a whole-hearted detestation of this interloper.

I am not defending John’s desires,—they certainly cannot be termed precisely Christian,—I merely state them as existing. Their fulfilment would have left him entirely free to draw a line [Pg 144]between himself and the one who had arisen to harass the inhabitants of Delancey Castle. He would have felt utterly and entirely established beside them. He was established beside them, yet this tiny attraction sent forth an irritating little lay across the barrier. He felt it, in a measure, disloyal. He disliked it; and yet, for the life of him, he could not prevent its existence.

I am well aware of the absurdity of his annoyance; but it merely characterizes John. It shows him to be what he was,—ultra-quixotic in his friendships, sensitive to a degree of fastidiousness where he fancied his loyalty to be in the smallest measure at fault.

Not that John was blind to the imperfections of his friends (and here I use the word in its full meaning),—those few—they were few—whom he had admitted, or who had somehow found entrance, to the inner shrine of his heart. But I could fancy him shielding those imperfections from the eyes of the world with his own body; standing between them and the gaze of a curious multitude; suffering death, if need be, in the shielding.

Call him absurd, if you will; but, for my part, I like this rare absurdity.

Father Maloney was pottering in his garden. I use the word pottering advisedly, since assuredly the cutting off of a dead rose here and there can hardly be termed work.

It was a minute place, this garden of his, a mere pocket handkerchief of a garden, yet every conceivable flower possible to bloom in a garden bloomed in it according to the season. At the moment it was ablaze with African marigolds, escoltia, asters, salvias, stocks, summer chrysanthemums, and all the rest of the August flowers, fragrant with the scent of roses, heliotrope, carnations, and mignonette.

In the centre of the garden was a tiny square of grass, smooth and trim. A gravel path surrounded it; beyond it were the many-coloured flower borders backgrounded by a close-clipped yew hedge. You could see over the hedge to the lane [Pg 146]on the one side, and the field on the other. The field sloped upwards to a sparse wood, carpeted with primroses and bluebells in the springtime. Later there was a lordly array of foxgloves on its margin, stately purple fellows, standing straight against the trees.

Beyond the lane and the wild-rose hedge, which bordered it on the further side, you had a glimpse of the sea. Its voice was never absent from the garden. In its softly sighing moods it lay as an under-note to the fragrant scents, and the humming of the insects. In its sterner moods it dominated the little place, filled it with a note of sadness. And always there was that strange bitter-sweetness in its sound.

Father Maloney was conscious of it now. He looked up from the rosebush towards the distant shimmering strip of blue.

“’Tis like the far-off voice of a multitude longing for peace yet unknowing of their desire,” he said, “it is that.” And there was pain in his old eyes.

Then he looked round the garden.

“Sure, ’tis happy I’ve been here; and now—” he sighed. “The fella is no Catholic at all, they [Pg 147]say. But if he were it would not be the same thing, it would not.”

He cut off a couple more roses, and pocketed them. Later Anastasia would empty his pockets of the dead leaves. Also she would suggest—more as a command than a suggestion—that there were plenty of baskets in the house if he wanted to be cutting off withered roses and suchlike. To which Father Maloney would make his usual shame-faced reply:

“Sure, and a basket slipped my mind entirely, it did.”

Whereupon Anastasia would sniff. By force of habit she had gained a certain air of command, which most assuredly he did not permit to many.

“She’s an example to all of us, is Lady Mary,” said Father Maloney, pursuing his reflections. “It’s more than I would do to invite the fella to the house. It’s not uncharitable towards him, I am, but he’d not put his foot across my threshold till I’d cleared out. No; it’s not uncharitable I am, but I’ll have a job to be civil to him I’m thinking.”

He stuffed a handful of dead roses into his pocket, and sat down on a rustic-seat.

[Pg 148]

It was three of the afternoon. It was still; it was very hot. If I have often mentioned heat in the course of this chronicle, I must crave for indulgence. An almost unprecedented summer was reigning over this England of ours. Morning after morning you woke to blue skies and golden sunshine; night after night you slept beneath clear heavens star-sprinkled. Day and night the earth sang the Benedicite; and men, I fancy, echoed the blessings. In spite of the inclusive terms of the hymn, it is infinitely easier to respond to it in sunshine and starlight, than in fog and darkness.

Father Maloney sat facing the lane and the distant strip of sea. Two poplars in the field across the lane rose spirelike against the blue sky. Bees droned around him among the flowers; butterflies flitted from blossom to blossom. Every now and again a bird twittered and then was silent. Their song was over for the year. Only the robin would ring later its sweet sad lament.

Through the open kitchen window he heard the clink of plates, telling of Anastasia busy within. At intervals she hummed in a thin cracked voice:

[Pg 149]

“Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiæ, vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra salve,...”

You could have recorded each of the Church’s seasons by Anastasia’s humming of the antiphons of Our Lady. At first Father Maloney had suffered the humming with what patience he might. It now affected him no more than the droning of the bees in his garden.

For twenty minutes, half an hour, perhaps, he sat motionless, his thoughts very far away. Suddenly he came back to the present. He was conscious, in some subtle fashion, that he was not alone. It was a moment or so before the consciousness found articulation in his brain. He looked up. The garden was as empty of any human presence but his own as it had been hitherto.

He turned.

In the field, on the other side of the yew hedge, a tall man was standing. He was big, he was loose-limbed, he was red-headed. His face, squarish and short-chinned, had a somewhat doggy expression. He was looking at the flowers, seemingly unconscious, for the moment at all events, of the presence of the owner of the garden.

Father Maloney coughed. The stranger’s eyes [Pg 150]left the flowers, and turned towards Father Maloney.

“I was looking at the flowers,” quoth he, and a trifle shame-facedly, after the manner of a schoolboy caught in some venial offence.

“You’re welcome,” said Father Maloney genially. “Looking is free to all.” And then a sudden idea struck him, and he stiffened imperceptibly, or perhaps he fancied it was imperceptibly, for the stranger spoke.

“I’ll be off,” said he. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

A little odd shadow had passed over his face, the expression of a child who has been snubbed. It sat oddly, and a trifle pathetically on him. He turned, limping slightly.

“It’s not disturbing me at all you are,” said Father Maloney quickly. The honour of his hospitality had been pricked. The merest touch will suffice for an Irishman.

And then he looked at the stranger again. There was an odd commotion stirring in his heart, something that baffled him in its interpretation.

“Glory be to God, what’s come over me,” [Pg 151]he muttered inwardly. Aloud he said, and the words surprised himself, “Will you be coming in, and having a look around. There’s a wicket gate in yonder corner.”

If this—his own voluntary invitation—had surprised Father Maloney, twenty minutes later he was more surprised still. His mind was in one chaotic state of surprise. It had entirely lost its bearings; it had drifted into an extraordinary geniality with, apparently, no volition on his own part. As surely as he contracted it momentarily into a state of astonished frigidity, so surely it expanded, thawed again, into an altogether untoward hospitality.

“Sure, it’s entirely bewitched I am,” he muttered sternly, bewildered at one moment, and the next expatiating on the individual beauties of some rose, as a mother expatiates on the virtues of her child, provided, of course, that her audience be sufficiently sympathetic.

“’Tis in June you should have been seeing them,” he said at length, tenderly fingering a [Pg 153]Madame Abel Chatenay, salmon pink, pale, and graceful, “’tis in June you should have been seeing them. For every one rose on the bushes now, there were ten then. Sure, I never know which of them I’m for loving best. At times I think ’tis this fair lady, then I’m for thinking ’tis yonder creamy Devonionsis, or that drooping white Niphetos, or Caroline Testout smiling away over there. But for the most I’m always coming back to General Jacqueminot. ’Tis the old-fashionedness of him, and his sturdy ways, and, more than all, the sweet scent of him. If you’re down on your luck, and take a good sniff at him, why, the world’s a different place that very minute. There’s all the sunshine of the summer, and the humming of the bees, and the laughter of children, and your mother’s voice, and all the memories of your boyhood in the scent, there is that. And you’d laugh yourself, the while there’s a queer tenderness is catching at your heart for happy tears.”

“I know,” nodded David. (I have not insulted your intelligence by giving him a former and formal introduction.) “I know. There are scents like that. They are alive. They are worth [Pg 154]a million words, or a million pictures. I could be taken blindfold across the world, and if I were set down on the veldt I would know the scent in an instant. It’s hot, pungent, aromatic. I’d see the scrubby bushes, the scarlet everlastings, the flame-coloured heaths, and the straggling blue lobelia. I’d see the mountains, blue against the sun, and golden facing it. I’d feel the great spaces, and the vast distances. I’d—” he broke off with a laugh. “There I am trying to give you in words what only the scent of the place can really give you.”

“Words are poor things,” said Father Maloney smiling, “when you come to wanting to express what lies closest to your heart. I’m thinking ’tis like the Tower of Babel over again, after a fashion. We can talk fast enough when our thoughts are down near the earth, but the moment they get up a bit, for the most of us our tongue is halting and stammering, and there’s confusion. I’m thinking it’s as well, or we might get a bit above ourselves with glibness of speech, and be fancying ourselves embryo prophets and visionaries, and getting others to fancy it along with us.”

David flicked an insect off a rose.

[Pg 155]

“There’s not much need for speech if you happen to be with the right person, is there?” said he thoughtfully.

Father Maloney’s eyes twinkled.

“There is not,” quoth he. “Or, at all events, your stammering will stand you in good stead.”

And then Anastasia rang the tea-bell.

Father Maloney started almost guiltily. Time had stolen a march on him, it would appear. He looked uneasily towards the house.

“That’s your tea-bell,” said David calmly, voicing the obvious.

“It is that,” said Father Maloney. “I—will you be having a cup,” he blurted out.

For one instant, for just one brief instant, David hesitated, then,

“Thanks,” he said.

“’Tis altogether bewitched I am,” groaned Father Maloney inwardly, as he accompanied his guest towards the house.

A whalebone Anastasia brought a second cup for “this gentleman.” She heard well enough the trace of guilt in Father Maloney’s voice, knew also well enough who the gentleman was, of that you may be very sure. You cannot, believe me, pass two days, or even one day, in Malford without the majority of the population becoming fully and miraculously acquainted with your whole previous history and antecedents. I’ll not vouch for the entire accuracy of the information; to do so would be mere rashness on my part, but certain it is that the information collected by Anastasia was more than sufficient to account for her whalebone rigidity of bearing, and also for an unpleasant little sniff on receiving Father Maloney’s order.

If she imagined that this obvious disapproval of manner would affect Father Maloney, she was vastly mistaken, at all events as to the manner [Pg 157]of effect produced. You might have imagined that twelve years in his service might have gained her some experience. But not a bit of it. Her own preconceived notions of what should be were infinitely too deeply engraven to be eradicated by what was. If I desired to be trite, I might discourse for a chapter and more on this common state of affairs.

Father Maloney’s sitting-room was a small, shabby place. There was nothing artistic about it; there was nothing even particularly comfortable, with the exception of two large armchairs, which, having been much sat in, had become remarkably adapted to the human form. Anastasia having had a field day therein that morning, it smelt both clean and bare. It had that peculiar, tidy, empty smell of a newly cleaned room.

After such a day, Father Maloney uttered inward prayers for patience. Long experience had shown him that it was useless to inform her that a desk was specially constructed to hold scattered papers; that chairs were an infinitely preferable receptacle for books than the top shelf of a lofty bookcase; that a tobacco jar was intended[Pg 158] to stand on the piano, rather than in a cupboard behind a waste-paper basket, a coal-scuttle, a broken chair, and a screen; that the bottom drawer of a bureau, which opened only by sheer physical force, was not the place he would ordinarily choose for his pipes. Such information fell on ears as deaf as the ears of the proverbial adder, despite the wise charm of its utterance. Therefore, having in view Anastasia’s other, and excellent, qualities, Father Maloney merely prayed for patience, as I have indicated.

David looked round the room. In a manner of speaking, he weighed, judged and appraised the mental atmosphere from that which he noted.

Firstly, he observed the shabbiness, which I have mentioned; secondly, he smelt the almost aggressive cleanliness, which I have also mentioned; thirdly, he noted a curiously combined homeliness and discomfort; fourthly, he took in various details,—a prie-dieu in one corner, with a cheap Crucifix above it; a large framed photogravure of Pope Pius X over the mantelpiece; a small, badly coloured statue of the Sacred Heart on one wooden bracket, and an equally badly coloured statue of Our Lady on another; gilt-framed [Pg 159]oleographs of saints scattered about the walls, the gilt poor and rubbed, the oleographs horribly crude; a thumbed office-book lying on a crimson plush-covered sofa, the broken corner of a lace-edged card protruding from it.

It was all amazingly artificial, and yet—well, it was real. There was the extraordinary paradox. On one side the artificiality was utterly apparent; on the other it stood for something, and that something was neither artificial, imaginary, nor even commonplacely real, but vividly, vitally real. It was like recognizing a soul in a wax-work, or finding life in a daguerreotype.

David sniffed the mental atmosphere, so to speak, vainly endeavouring to arrive at an understanding thereof, gave it up as a bad job, and then suddenly received a flash of illumination.

“It’s because it’s all real to him,” he concluded. But felt, nevertheless, that somehow the conclusion did not absolutely reach the mark.

Arriving at his second cup of tea, David spoke. The conversation so far had been more or less trivial. Here, it would appear, was a weightier matter.

“I’ve been asked to dine at the Castle on Thursday.”

[Pg 160]

“Yes?” From Father Maloney’s voice one might have judged the information as not altogether a surprise.

“I’ve accepted,” said David.

“Yes?” said Father Maloney again. He perceived that there was something further to come.

David reddened slightly beneath his tan.

“The fact is,” he blurted out, “I’d forgotten all about dress clothes. I know people do wear the things. I haven’t got such a suit to my name.”

Father Maloney cut a slice of cake.

“Sure, such things are not obligatory in the country at all, they are not,” quoth he calmly. “In the town now—but the country, ’tis quite another matter.” He looked straight at David’s anxious eyes.

“Sure?” demanded David.

“It’s dead certain I am,” returned Father Maloney.

David fetched a big sigh.

“I’m awfully glad I mentioned it to you,” he responded. “The matter was sitting on my chest a bit.”

“Glory be to God!” laughed Father Maloney.

Half an hour later Father Maloney was wending his way towards Delancey Castle.

“I’m thinking she’ll not altogether understand,” mused he ruefully, “but ’twas the child’s eyes of him, ’twas just that. Though if he hasn’t a will at the back of them, my name’s not Dan Maloney.”

An hour later he was bearing a note in the direction of the White Cottage. It was addressed to John Mortimer, Esq. It contained a sentence which may be of interest to you.

“Please will you both wear morning dress at dinner on Thursday.”

Father Maloney tramped along the road looking at the hedges and the trees. Finally he raised his eyes to the sky.

“She’s a wonderful woman is Lady Mary!” he ejaculated, “A wonderful woman!”

But underneath the wonderfulness there was a heartache. You can hardly expect it to have been otherwise; and, for my part, I would not have had it otherwise. She wouldn’t have been one quarter the adorable old lady she was, if there hadn’t been that heartache.

If, from some lofty and ascetic perch, she could have calmly contemplated her approaching departure from Delancey Castle with never a tremor, with never a soul-stabbing, then, very assuredly, she would have been one of a genus of human beings that I would find it in vain to attempt to comprehend. It is through the very humanity of the saints that one feels their lovableness. They felt intensely; they had their loves and their hates, their likes and their dislikes, their joys and their sorrows; they were living, sensitive, human creatures, not masses of granite, nor insensible [Pg 163]lumps of putty. And it wasn’t one atom because they didn’t care for happiness and pleasure, and possibly even for luxury, that they became saints, but just because they did care, and caring gave all these things as a free and generous gift to God.

Of course you know this every bit as well as I do, but I like to remind myself of it every now and then. And sometimes God may have given them back their own actual gifts to Him, even while they were still on earth,—gifts refined, transmuted by some wonderful purifying process in His hands. But most often it would seem that He gave them another gift in exchange,—that wonderful gift, Sorrow, of which only a saint can see the true beauty. Yet always He gave them back in full and overflowing measure one gift that must of necessity have been offered with the other gifts,—the gift of love towards Him.

I don’t mean to infer from this that Lady Mary was a saint. That would be a matter on which I naturally should not venture to express an opinion. One leaves such decisions to God and the Holy Fathers. But she was very assuredly a wonderful woman, as Father Maloney had remarked.

[Pg 164]

If her heart was old in years, it was young in immortal youth. She revelled in the sunshine, she revelled in happiness; I am not sure that she didn’t bask in it. I fancy there would be little real gratitude if we accepted these gifts timorously, fearing lest their removal should follow quickly. To my thinking, the truest gratitude, the fullest trust, is to accept them with whole-hearted enjoyment, to say a real “thank You” for the loan, when the time comes that God asks us to give it back again. Naturally our manners would be as disagreeable as those of a badly brought-up child if we clung to the gift lent us till it had to be taken from us by force. The first hint is sufficient for a nicely brought-up child. But never be grudging or timorous of enjoyment during such time as the happiness is lent.

Truly I believe this was Lady Mary’s attitude. Now, of course, there was a big sense of loss, a pretty heavy heartache, and even the tiniest question, Why? At the first, I don’t think that she had realized that the happiness had been merely a loan. She had looked upon it as hers by right. There’s the danger with prolonged loans. You begin to forget that they aren’t actually yours. [Pg 165]But, if she had forgotten, it was only for a moment; and now, in spite of the heartache, her “thank You” was genuinely spoken.

Lady Mary was sitting by a window facing towards the sea. It shone pearly iridescent, in the evening light. The sky beyond reflected the glory of the sunset; grey near the water, it merged upwards into soft rose-colour, and thence to blue-green. The earth was bathed in soft, glowing light.

Only the faintest whisper of air came through the open window,—a faint, cool sigh of relief after the heat of the day. Below, in the garden, were golden splotches of colour—beds of great African marigolds, a vivid contrast to the cool green of the close-dipped grass. Through the silence came the musical dripping of a fountain.

Overhead a door opened. She heard a child’s voice, and then a little burst of laughter. Again there was silence. And slowly the rose-colour faded in the sky, till only a pale lavender-grey haze covered land and water.

The gold of the marigolds became softly blurred; the green of the grass lost its colour.

A little haunting melody came suddenly into her [Pg 166]mind,—one she had often played in childhood. It was a melody by Heller. There is a footnote at the bottom of the page on which it is written, which designates it “Twilight,” or “Le crépuscule.” The latter word came into her mind at the moment. It held greater significance to her than the English word. It represented more clearly the onward stealing of the grey shadows, the soft sweet evening sadness, the slow passing of the day’s glory.

And then, once more, overhead a door opened. There was a pattering of footsteps along the corridor, a child’s voice, clear, demanding:

“Granny, prayers!”

Lady Mary got up from her chair. If there was something of the evening shadows in her eyes, I fancy there was also the aftermath of the sunset’s glory.

“Tomorrow I must tell Antony,” she said.

John was walking over the moorland. He had been walking for the last hour and more. It was nearing five o’clock. He had made a great circle, and was now somewhere near the place where he had first had sight of a fair lady and her two attendant knights.

At the moment there was no human being in sight. He had the earth, it would appear, entirely to himself. Only furze-chats and yellow-hammers twittered in the gorse around him; little blue butterflies and brown underwings flitted over the heather. To the right it lay one great purple sheet, broken only by the gorse bushes. Their golden glory of April had long since passed away, but yellow flowers still lingered among their prickly shields. You know the old adage:

[Pg 168]

To the left lay a stretch of long brown grass, dry and coarse. The wind, rustling softly through it, whispered of summer secrets. It came blowing softly, faintly, from the distant blue sea. Truly it was a day for whole-hearted enjoyment, for content, for reposefulness, for each thing and everything that goes to sum up entire happiness.

But if you imagine John to be in this restful mood, you are vastly mistaken. Three thoughts repeated themselves with about equal recurrence in his mind. The first was merely a name—Rosamund.

The birds twittered it, the wind whispered it, the faint understirrings in the heather took it up and repeated it with tantalizing insistence.

Rosamund, Rosamund, Rosamund.

A fair name truly; a poetical name. John, at the moment, might have emulated Orlando, who hung a very similar name on every tree. Only here there were no trees at hand, merely gorse bushes, and purple heather.

The second thought was a quotation. It ran through his head again and again.

“Never the time, and the place, and the loved one altogether.”

[Pg 169]

“He knew what he was talking about,” sighed John. “Unquestionably, at the moment, it would seem the veritable time and place,—the sunniest most desirable time, the sweetest-scented most gorgeous place. But she isn’t here. And, if she were, I’d bet anything the time and place would seem all wrong. The time would jump to about a million of years ahead, and as far the place——”

To tell the truth he hadn’t much idea as to what would happen to the place. His thoughts were hardly what might be termed precisely coherent, but perhaps you can arrive at some kind of a guess at them.

The third thought was neither fair, nor poetical. It was summed up in the one short, pithy phrase,

“Drat the man!”

By which token it will be seen that John had not yet recovered from his Monday’s mood.

Now, I don’t intend to attempt any detailed explanation as to why both John and Father Maloney had found themselves in this curious state of unwilling perturbation after one meeting with David Delancey, but it is very certain that the perturbation had not only arrived, but remained.[Pg 170] Of course you will say sagely that it was the man’s personality, and equally of course you will be right. But what was there in his personality to cause this perturbation in two such entirely dissimilar minds? There’s the question! And I, for my part, can find no satisfactory verbal explanation of it. It is one thing to have the explanation in one’s mind, knowing the man; it is quite another to set it forth coherently in words. Therefore I will content myself with your sage remark that it was his personality.

“Drat him!” said John again.

And then he stopped short, looking towards the heather to his right

His attention had been attracted by a curious little mound of stones. Now it is not in the least unusual to see stones lying on a moorland among the heather. But to John’s eye there was something unusual about these stones. They had unquestionably been placed there by human agency; they were not the haphazard arrangement of mere chance.

John went across the heather towards them. They were built up in a small rough circle; a large flat stone formed a kind of roof or lid to them. John bent towards the mound.

[Pg 171]

A sound, a very slight sound, made him raise his head. There was no one in sight. He had the earth, as I have told you, to himself. Only the wind whispered among the heather and grass, and rustled softly through the gorse bushes.

John went down on his knees and raised the flat stone. Sheer idle curiosity prompted the action. He hadn’t the faintest expectation of seeing anything beneath. He peered within; and then gave vent to a tiny chuckle of amazed surprise. He put his hand within the circle of stones, and drew forth three objects,—firstly, a piece of green ribbon; secondly, a small, a very small, thimble; and thirdly, a rosary of red beads.

“Oh, ho!” quoth he to himself, “if fairies have been at work here, they are Catholic fairies, it would seem.”

He fitted the thimble on the top of his little finger, where it sat in an insecure and ludicrous position.

“A cache,” said John, “but whose?”

He looked before him down the sloping moorland. And now, far off, he descried a small black speck. The black speck was a figure. It was coming towards him.

[Pg 172]

“There’s just the faintest conceivable chance,” said John.

He removed the thimble from its ridiculous position. He put it, the ribbon, and the rosary once more within their hiding-place, replaced the flat stone, and withdrew himself to a post of vantage, couched behind a gorse bush. Therefrom he awaited possible developments.

As the black speck drew nearer, it defined itself as a girl child, some eleven years old or thereabouts. A gypsy-looking elf she was. Coming nearer still, he saw that she was dark-haired, smutty-eyed. Her head was uncovered; she was clad in a faded green frock; her brown legs were bare, her feet cased in old shoes. She was walking quickly; eagerness, expectation, were in her bearing. To John’s mind the possibility already resolved itself into something akin to certainty. The next moment he saw that his surmise had been correct.

She came straight across the heather to the small circle of stones, and went down on her knees beside it. The flat stone was pushed aside; the small brown hand dived within the circle.

“Ah!”

[Pg 173]

John heard the little gasp of pleasure.

She came to a sitting posture, the treasures gathered on to her lap. John saw her face plainly. The ribbon and thimble were examined with sheer and palpable delight. The rosary was handled gravely; there was the tiniest hint of question in the handling. Then suddenly she lifted it to her lips. The next moment she was on her knees again, telling the beads devoutly.

“If,” quoth John to himself, “I am not much mistaken, ’tis that young limb of mischief, Molly Biddulph.”

And there she knelt in the sunshine, among the heather, looking, for all the world, a young, rapt devotee of prayer, the scarlet beads falling through her small brown fingers. Her eyes were closed; her lips moved rapidly. Here was matter for a poet’s pen; a subject for an artist’s brush. The soft wind stirred the dark hair on her forehead, the sun kissed her bronzed cheeks. A butterfly flitted to her shoulder, lighted a moment, circled round her head, and flew away.

Coming to an end of her orisons, she made a great Sign of the Cross, got to her feet, and sped away down the hill, clutching her treasures tightly.

[Pg 174]

John came from behind the gorse bush.

“Well!” said he aloud.

“It might be called a pretty little scene,” said a voice behind him.

Turning, amazed, he met a pair of laughing eyes, saw a white-robed figure, and two attendant knights.

“You!” quoth John.

She laughed.

“We were afraid, so dreadfully afraid, lest you should decamp with the treasures,” said she. “I had the greatest difficulty in restraining these two from rushing to the rescue.”

“I thought I heard a sound!” ejaculated John.

“It was me,” said Michael. “I squeaked, but Aunt Rosamund held my mouf.”

“Then,” said John, “you are the fairies?”

“It is our cache,” quoth Antony magnificently.

“So I am beginning to perceive,” responded John. “But why, if I may ask without undue curiosity, is Molly in the matter? I imagined it was Molly. And, if all accounts be correct, she would appear hardly a subject for especial favours.”

[Pg 175]

Rosamund’s eyes danced. John had a mental image of sunlight suddenly sparkling on still waters.

“It is just,” she explained, “that she appears, as you say, hardly a subject for favours, that she gets them.”

“Oh!” John was frankly a trifle bewildered by the explanation.

“It was Tony’s idea,” smiled Rosamund.

She had seated herself on the heather, and John had followed her example. The boys were some paces ahead of them, examining the cache.

“Tony,” pursued Rosamund, “discovered that pleasant anticipation is conducive to good behaviour. He solemnly assured me of the fact one day. Therefore we—or, at least, I—conceived the idea of putting the theory to the test.”

“Therefore,” said John, “you established a cache for Molly.”

“We established a cache for Molly,” echoed she. “We lured her to it in the most innocent way imaginable. Of course she hasn’t the remotest notion as to who has established it. That would be to spoil the joy of it. It is the hint of secret magic about it that is half its delight. The contents[Pg 176] are dependent on conduct, you understand. At least a fortnight’s exemplary behaviour brings the kind of reward you perceived today. Often there may be merely a flower found. If the fairies are dissatisfied, I have known them to put a couple of snails within the cache.” Again her eyes danced.

“Brown pools that have caught and held a sunbeam,” thought John.

Aloud he said ruminatively, “I wonder what becomes of the snails.”

Rosamund gave a little shiver.

“I fear me,” said she, “that once at least, they were—squashed!”

“Hum!” quoth John. “I have an idea that if I were seeking—say a rose, and found a snail instead, that the snail might possibly be subjected to a like fate.”

“But it wasn’t the poor snails’ fault,” she objected.

“We have frequently,” said John sententiously, “to suffer for the sins of others. If I might offer a suggestion, I would point out that the fairies’ displeasure might be equally well marked by coal, stones, or even a copybook maxim. How does [Pg 177]‘Be good and you’ll be happy,’ or ‘Gifts are the reward of virtue,’ strike you?”

She shook her head.

“Fairies,” she assured him, “never indulge in moral reflections. They merely act.”

“‘Deeds, not words,’ being their motto,” laughed John. “But coal, now!”

“Yes,” she conceded, “I think coal might answer our purpose.”

There was a little pause.

“To a mere casual observer,” remarked John reflectively, “the young person in question might have appeared an embryo saint. From which we perceive the truth of the adage that appearances are deceitful.”

“Not in every case,” she retorted. “How do you know that she isn’t an embryo saint? Very much in embryo, I’ll allow. Oh, but there’s stuff in Molly. But do you suppose she’s understood among the village folk? Not a bit of it! It’s respectability they admire, wooden respectability.”

“Hum,” said John.

“And Molly isn’t wooden.”

“No,” acquiesced John fervently.

[Pg 178]

Rosamund laughed.

“And therefore,” she continued, “they see downright sin in her—well, her unwooden escapades. And they haven’t a notion, the faintest notion of her possibilities.”

“As either sinner or saint,” suggested John.

“Well, there’s the stuff for either there,” she agreed.

“I own,” said John somewhat irrelevantly, “that there’s a certain attraction in sinners.”

“Of course there is,” she retorted, “if it’s brilliant enough sinning. It’s the personality that attracts, though the material has run off the rails. Only people so often make the mistake of contrasting brilliant sinning with commonplace goodness. If you want your contrasts, you should place commonplace goodness alongside commonplace sinning—pettiness, meanness, drunkenness, hateful little detractions, and all the rest of the sordid category. And then put brilliant sinning alongside the impetuous ardour of St. Peter, or the mystic sweetness of St. John.”

“You speak sagely,” quoth John. “It is, I fear, a matter of contrasts which one is extremely apt to overlook.”

[Pg 179]

Again there fell a little silence. And the birds twittered, and the sun shone, and the butterflies flitted over the heather, and a thousand words rose to John’s lips, only to remain unspoken, because the time had somehow leaped to about a million of years ahead. It was not the moment, he knew it was not the moment, and yet—and yet— Well, at any rate she was there beside him on the heather. The faintest scent of perfume—violets, perhaps? came to him from her garments. For all his outward calm, for all his level, easy, careless voice, his heart was in a tumult.

“You and Mr. Elmore are dining with us tonight,” she reminded him on a sudden.

“I had not forgotten.” John’s voice was full of assurance.

“You know,” quoth she tentatively, “that you are to meet—Sir David Delancey.” There had been the fraction of a pause before the name.

“I know,” said John, his eyes clouding.

“My grandmother felt it might ease the situation,” she explained. There was a sudden little note of confidence in the words. “A dinner en famille might be, indeed must be, a trifle difficult.”

“I quite understand.”

[Pg 180]

She pulled at a sprig of heather.

“Father Maloney has seen him,” she said abruptly. “He—he seems favourably impressed.”

“I, too, have seen him,” owned John. It was not altogether easy to make the statement.

“You!” She was frankly surprised.

He gave her a brief account of the meeting.

“And—and he was passable?”

“Oh,” said John grudgingly, honesty forcing the truth from him, “he is really quite a decent fellow.”

She glanced up quickly, understanding his tone.

“You would rather,” said she, “dislike him quite frankly.”

“You have stated the case,” said John.

“I quite understand,” she nodded.

And then Antony and Michael came towards them from the cache. The two on the heather bestirred themselves.

When John, with Corin in his wake, entered the drawing-room of Delancey Castle that evening, he glanced anxiously around. He had no real cause for anxiety. He was a good ten minutes in advance of the hour mentioned, having led a protesting Corin up the hill at a fine pace.

Mrs. Trimwell had seen them depart, her face an amazed and horrified note of interrogation.

“You’re dining with her ladyship!” she had gasped.

“We are,” John had assured her.

“You aren’t never going up to dine at the Castle in them clothes!” she had ejaculated.

“We dine,” John had said smiling, “in these very clothes that you now perceive upon us.”

“Land sakes!” Mrs. Trimwell had gasped. And words failing her, either from horror, or lack of imagination, she had mutely watched them depart.

[Pg 182]

They had started betimes; they had also, as I have stated, walked at a fine pace; and now, somewhat heated, they found themselves shaking hands with Lady Mary, while the clock yet wanted some ten minutes of seven-thirty.

But, so argued John, surveying the said clock, half an hour, even an hour too soon, was infinitely preferable to one minute too late. It was the first moment of meeting that would set the keynote to the whole evening. It was at that first psychological moment that the easement of his presence was necessary. Corin, he considered as quite beside the mark, you perceive.

Father Maloney was already present. He was seated in the window-seat with Antony and Michael, who had been granted half an hour’s furlough from bed.

And now came the moments of suspense,—an anxious waiting. Corin and the two boys alone were absolutely at their ease. Corin, having engaged Rosamund in conversation, was expatiating on his day’s work. John, his eyes on the clock, his ear alert for the opening of a door, talked to Lady Mary. It is fairly certain that her eyes and her ears were likewise occupied.

[Pg 183]

“I hear from the boys that you were present at the cache this afternoon,” said she smiling.

John laughed.

“It was a fairy-tale scene,” quoth he. “I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. It isn’t often an imaginative conception works so successfully.”

“In this instance,” she reminded him, “there was the Celtic temperament to deal with. Nothing is beyond the imagination of a Celt, I fancy.”

“No,” said John musingly. And then, “Not as criticism, but merely as query, I wonder how far it is justifiable to play upon it?”

“You mean that Molly’s imagination was played upon?”

“Yes.”

“I fancy,” said Lady Mary, “that the human element comes into most of our material rewards. It is the agency by which they are worked. In this case the human agency merely hid itself beneath a fantastic garb, thereby adding a subtle pleasure to the reward. I don’t know whether Molly believes in her heart of hearts that the fairies had been at work, any more than I’ll vouch for Tony’s and Michael’s belief in Santa Claus filling their stockings. I fancy there are many things the [Pg 184]pleasure of which is enhanced by their being shrouded in the soft light of imagination, rather than by their being dragged forth to the somewhat garish light of fact. There’s no lack of truth in keeping them shrouded. There is, after all, no necessity to be merely blatant.”

“No,” laughed John.

“Most children,” went on Lady Mary, “have a subtle power of imagination. If you were to bring them to hard bed-rock fact, they’d own to the imagination, though probably reluctantly.”

“I know,” said John, “a willow wand is not a spear, neither is a broomstick a horse, nor a twisted tree-trunk a dragon, and you know it. But when you ride forth on the horse, armed with the spear, to kill the dragon, you suffer some terrible and indefinable loss when the actual facts of the case are set before you in faultless English by an all too-truthful aunt.”

“You see,” smiled Lady Mary.

“I see,” said John, “and I withdraw my query, or, rather, you have answered it.”

There was a silence, and again they both waited. They made no attempt to break the silence. It could only have been broken now by some entirely [Pg 185]futile remark, and neither John nor Lady Mary was in the mood for such remarks.

John looked in the direction of Rosamund and Corin. He saw that the former glanced towards the door every now and again, and back from it to the clock. The minutes seemed interminably slow in their passing. And then, suddenly, footsteps were heard in the hall without. John’s heart leaped; Lady Mary’s face was pale; Rosamund was smiling; Father Maloney looked up from the little tin soldier he was examining.

The door opened and the butler appeared on the threshold. He muttered something. Certainly his speech was not his usual clear enunciation. John, seeing his solemnly injured expression, felt a sudden desire to laugh. Lady Mary certainly smiled. And then David Delancey entered the room.

Of course the actuality wasn’t half, or a quarter, as bad as the anticipation. In two minutes the introductions were over. John had shaken hands; everyone had shaken hands; Antony, in a clear treble, had informed the guest that it was on his account alone that he and Michael had been granted half an hour’s furlough from bed. The [Pg 186]announcement broke the ice, so to speak; if, indeed, there had been any to break. Probably there wasn’t any. There had been a sudden thaw the moment the solemnly injured butler had appeared upon the threshold.

And David himself was so utterly simple. To his direct mind the invitation alone had conveyed sufficient assurance of his welcome. Why on earth should it have been issued else? There you have your child all over. He may hesitate to intrude for fear of a snub; but, once let an invitation be given, snubbing does not enter into the category at all. Such conventionalities as enforced politeness do not enter his mind. Of course Lady Mary was as pleased to welcome him as David was to make her acquaintance. It was sine qua non to the present situation.

I don’t say it hadn’t surprised him. He had been extremely surprised. It wasn’t in the least the way he saw himself acting had he been in Lady Mary’s place. Nevertheless he saw entire genuineness in her action.

Yet, in spite of what might be called a good beginning, the dinner party was not a success. John was certain it hadn’t been a success. He reviewed it, walking home with Corin in the starlight; he continued to review it sitting in an armchair with a pipe, since he was in little mood for sleep.

And yet, wherein precisely did its failure lie?

It did not lie with Lady Mary; nor with Rosamund; nor with Father Maloney; nor, he was certain, with himself. (Corin, as already mentioned, he left outside the category.) They had each and all of them been courteous, friendly, charming. They had kept the ball of conversation tossing lightly from one to the other; they had given David his full share of the game. Certainly the fault did not lie with any of the four. He could not, also, have said precisely [Pg 188]that there was any fault at all. Outwardly, at least, there was none. Yet there had been a subtle atmosphere, an indefinable hint of something lacking.

They had discussed books—standard authors—with which David was well acquainted. They had mentioned classical composers, with whom he was certainly less familiar. They had talked of flowers, birds, animals, sunsets, storms, and ships, and here he was in his element.

He had talked well. John had received a vivid impression of a land hot beneath the noonday sun, of wine-red sunsets, the atmosphere aglow with palpitating colour, the on-stealing of the darkly purple night, the stars big and luminous looking down with ever-watchful eyes upon the lonely veldt. He saw the vivid reds of the flame-coloured heaths and everlasting flowers, the brilliant blue of the lobelias, the waxen whiteness of the arum lilies. He heard the countless voices of the grasshoppers, the low booming note of the frogs, the muffled beating of the buzzards’ wings. And above all he felt the vast illimitable spaces, the great loneliness of the veldt. David had talked of Muizenberg, and the white sands stretching for [Pg 189]forty miles towards the mountains,—mountains gold and orange in the sunshine, blue in the evening twilight, the green sea bordering the sands, emerald set against pearl.

He had talked of Cape Town,—of the Malay men with their great baskets of flowers, of Table Mountain with its silver-leaved trees, with the rolling cloth of white cloud covering it. But here he touched civilization; his speech was less fluent than when he held them in the vast solemnity of the lonely veldt.

And here John made a discovery. He perceived all at once, not merely the loneliness of the veldt, but the lonely spirit of the man who had dwelt on it. It was that which had caused the subtle incongruity in the atmosphere. He no more belonged to his surroundings than did a hermit to a London Club; and, so thought John, carrying his discovery further, he—David—was, in a measure, aware of that fact himself. He had been a fish out of water, and however kindly, however charmingly, landsmen may treat it, a fish on land is certainly in an element in which it cannot by any possibility be at ease. It is true that this particular fish had entered the element of its own free will; but, so [Pg 190]surmised John, it is equally true that he was not at home in it. And yet, so John perceived with a fine subtlety of perception, it was not the material surroundings alone which were at the root of the mischief. It lay deeper; it was in the mental atmosphere that the uneasiness lay.

Now, he also perceived, or thought he perceived, that while David was aware of the incongruity of the situation, he had not fully recognized it to lie, as John saw it to lie, in this same mental atmosphere. This fact in itself increased the man’s loneliness. He was not only isolated in mind from those with whom he found himself, but he was isolated from himself, because he did not understand himself. It is the most bewildering kind of loneliness. It is almost useless to attempt to describe it in terms of speech. There are no precise words for it. I, at least, can find none, and John could not, though it is certain that he recognized it in a measure.

And then by one of those sudden flashes of inspiration which come to all men at times, or which come, at all events, to those given to a certain quality of mental analysis, John saw that the more material drama, of which he was at [Pg 191]present an audience, sank into insignificance before the mental drama he had perceived. The man had come, so he believed, into his material birthright, but, regarding his mental birthright, he was utterly ignorant. How, in what fashion would he find it? if, indeed, he ever found it at all.

I do not say that John said all this to himself in words, even in the somewhat clumsy manner in which I have tried to express it. He perceived it vaguely that night. The actual articulation of his thoughts did not, I fancy, come till later.

“It’s never a bit of good losing your temper,” remarked Mrs. Trimwell sagely. “You can say much more telling things if you don’t.”

She was clearing the luncheon table. John, from the depths of an armchair, made a sound slightly indicative of doubt.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Trimwell firmly, in reply to the sound, “you can. Losing your temper you never know what you are going to say, and as like as not you’ll say something as’ll hit back on yourself, and you be sorry you said later. Keeping it you can have an eye to your neighbour’s weaknesses, and pull them out to show, so to speak.”

John seemed to recognize some truth in this statement.

“Whose weaknesses,” he demanded, “have you been exposing?”

“He’s a captious man, is Vicar,” said Mrs. [Pg 193]Trimwell, and John perceived that her remark was not irrelevant. “He’s never been what you’d call pleased like in his mind that the biggest house to the place is a papist house, and yet now when they’re leaving he’s for railing against the new occupant that is to be, and him no papist at all, they say.”

“Oh!” said John. He had fancied, be it stated, that Mrs. Trimwell herself was not what might have been termed cordial towards the interloper.

“I don’t say I’m wanting him at the Castle myself,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell, in reply, it would seem, to John’s unspoken thought, “but Lor’ bless you, ’tisn’t exactly his fault if he is the rightful heir, and it’s little more’n a child he is for all he’s a man grown. He come in here yesterday when I was stoning raisins for a cake. I don’t say at first I was pleased for to see him. But, ‘Mrs. Trimwell,’ says he, ‘I want to thank you for seeing to my foot. It’s a real doctor you are, for I’d never but a limp the next day.’ And he sat down, and watched me stoning of them raisins, eating one now and again for all the world like a great boy. And his eyes—have you seen his eyes, sir? You couldn’t no more say a harsh word to [Pg 194]him than you could to my baby. He stayed chatting an hour and more, and I declare I thought ’twas only ten minutes.”

John laughed,—a curious little laugh.

“Then this morning,” went on Mrs. Trimwell, “Vicar come in. He’d seen him yesterday afternoon at the front door. Wanted to know what he’d come for. As if a visitor can’t come to the house without me answering a penny catechism from Vicar. I up and as good as told him that. And he began talking about loyalty to the family at the Castle, and it’s never a word of loyalty he’s had for them, and I can tell you. We got to words a bit, and Vicar’s temper isn’t never sweetened with the best sugar, but I kept mine. I called to mind a thing or two as he’d said of the family, and I let fall a hint now and again that I hadn’t forgotten it neither. It’s wonderful the way it riles a person if you’ve a good memory and let them know it.”

John grinned.

“I’ll not be repeating all he said,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell with dignity, “but I will say there were some things I didn’t expect to hear a parson say. But they’ll come back to himself. You can’t ever [Pg 195]be real spiteful but they does. Did I ever tell you about Mrs. Ashby and Lydia Ponsland?”

John intimated that she had not

“Them two always had their knife into me, seeing that I gave them short shrift when they come here with gossiping lies of my husband drinking at the Blue Dragon over to Whortley. Lord love you, sir, he’s never touched a drop more’n was good for him since the day we married. I’ll not swear to before that, seeing as young men will be young men all the world over. Anyhow I wasn’t going to listen to no lies from Mrs. Ashby and Lydia Ponsland, and told them they was liars to their face, which wasn’t perhaps the pleasantest hearing for them, though the truth. My words stuck, I’m thinking, and turned a trifle sour, and they planned a bit of revenge. ’Twas the silliest thing they did, though cruel at that, and you’d never believe folks could have been that childish, if I didn’t tell you ’twas the gospel truth. ’Twas Christmas Eve, and I was over to Whortley for a bit of shopping. My husband was at home with the children, when five o’clock or thereabouts there come a ring at the front door. Robert he goes to see what ’tis. There’s a man there, and a [Pg 196]cart outside. ‘’Tis the coffin for your wife,’ says he. Robert, he fails all of a tremble, and never thinking, like a man, I couldn’t ha’ ordered my coffin anyhows if I’d been dead. He don’t understand it, and stays arguefying, and mortal frightened. In the middle of their speechifying I comes home, and I tell you it took me ten minutes and more to make him believe I hadn’t no call for a coffin yet awhile. ’Twas them two as had ordered it, as I knew well enough, though couldn’t never bring it clear home to them. But they was paid for their evilness. Mrs. Ashby, she’s lost her money, and is in a two shilling attic at Whortley this very day, and Lydia’s down with rheumatic fever what the doctor says she’ll not be getting over this side of next Christmas. When God pays He don’t pay in halfpence.”

The vigour with which Mrs. Trimwell brushed the crumbs from the cloth served to emphasize her statement.

“It was,” said John, “an astonishingly idiotic thing for them to do.”

“Idiotic!” ejaculated Mrs. Trimwell, “I should think it was idiotic. But there, they’d lost their tempers and kept them lost for weeks; and if you [Pg 197]mislay your temper like that it turns that sour you’d be surprised. I’m for thinking Vicar hasn’t found his yet, nor will be finding it for a bit. But as I says to him, if a man finds his chance like this one has, you can’t be surprised if he takes it. If he don’t he’s a fool, and no more and no less. If you get a chance, take it, says I, if you don’t it goes off in a huff to somebody else.”

“Then,” remarked John ruminatively, “it would be your advice that a chance should be taken at all hazards, even at the expense of someone else?”

Mrs. Trimwell looked dubious. It would appear that this aspect of affairs had not previously struck her.

“Well, sir,” quoth she reflective, “I’ll own you have me there. I couldn’t give you no clear answer to that. It seems to me that the world’s all a bit of shoving and pushing, and slipping through gaps to the front when you see them. And if you don’t do the slipping, someone else will. I reckon it’s right enough if you’re not pushing your own folk and friends aside. When it comes to them, well, matters do get a bit awkward, I’ll allow. What do you think, sir?”

[Pg 198]

John shook his head.

“Frankly, Mrs. Trimwell, I don’t know.”

“Well, to tell you the honest truth, sir, no more don’t I. It’s one thing to talk o’ the common-sense point of view, but when you come straight up to it, well, you sometimes wonders if it isn’t a bit more edgey and cornery than you cares about. ’Tis a funny world.”

“It is,” said John fervently.

Oh, it was a funny world, fast enough, John knew that. He’d known it in fits and starts all his life, but somehow the last ten days had emphasized the fact more fully.

Ten days! To John it seemed a lifetime since he, in company with Corin, had stepped upon Whortley platform, had taken his seat in the rickety bus that had conveyed him at its own shaky pace to the White Cottage. A lifetime! And yet reason, that firm indicator of common-sense, emphasized to the contrary. Anyhow, a lifetime or ten days, the time had been long enough for him to know his mind. He had known it for weeks past. But for her? There was the question. And it was one which common-sense, modesty, and every other thought but his own wish, answered firmly in the negative. He had seen her precisely seven times, and two out of the number obviously [Pg 200]went for nothing, seeing that the first time she had been totally unaware of his presence, and the third time, if she had seen him, it would have been merely as one of a small congregation of worshippers, his individuality entirely unnoticed.

Therefore, argued John, if what he so ardently desired was, by any possible manner of means, to be brought about by an increased number of meetings, the sooner he set about increasing them the better. Obviously the proper, the correct thing to do, after lunching at a house, was to pay a respectful call upon one’s hostess. He had no need to consult an etiquette book to remind himself of that fact.

True, he had lunched on Thursday, and this was only Saturday, therefore the call might be considered somewhat precipitate. But, argued John, endeavouring to find some plausible excuse for the precipitancy of the call, with the practical certainty in view of meeting the family in the cloisters after Mass the following day, the most desirable course, the only correct and proper course, was to call that very afternoon.

No sooner thought than decided on. John left the White Cottage, betaking himself in the direction[Pg 201] of the church, from which he intended to drag a possibly reluctant Corin, and insist on his mounting the hill in his company.

But his intentions and his insistence came to nought.

A dusty, untidy, and wholly absorbed Corin utterly refused to accompany him. Objection number one, it was too soon to pay a call; objection number two, it was Saturday afternoon, the one afternoon in the week on which he enjoyed solitude; objection number three, would John kindly look at the discovery he had just made, and then see if he—Corin—was likely to leave it for the purpose of paying a merely conventional visit.

John looked. Corin was, at the moment, on terra firma, be it stated.

On either side of where the altar would have stood, had there been one, and some five feet or so from the ground, the wall was partially uncovered. A border in brilliant blue, red, black, and yellow was disclosed,—a bold, simple pattern. Below it, in the upper loops of a painted curtain, were animals,—dragons, twisted of tail, forked of tongue; a leveret, a deer, and a fox, each of these last courant, to use the parlance of heraldry. For [Pg 202]the most part the animals were washed in boldly in red; two of the dragons were a gorgeous yellow.

“I am certain,” said Corin enthusiastically, “that they are after Geraldius Cambrensis. It’s the best find of the lot. I’m not coming with you. Nothing, no power on earth, can drag me from this till dark. If you must go today, make my excuses.”

Therefore John departed.

The excuse was valid. It also gave a raison d’être for his somewhat precipitate call. Miss Delancey was interested in the discoveries in the church. It would be merely friendly to let her know of this new discovery as soon as possible. Therefore, I say, John departed. Of course he grumbled a moment or so before departing. Equally of course the grumbling was of a merely perfunctory nature.

And then he turned into the sunshine.

His heart beat high as he walked up the hill. Of course he was doing the right and obvious thing. It would be absurd to wait till next week to pay the visit. The day after tomorrow! How could such a delay be contemplated? It would have been impossible, unthinkable.

[Pg 203]

The eighth meeting! And surely there must follow the ninth and the tenth, and heaven alone knew how many more. And which, which, WHICH would be The Meeting? Of course it was absolutely absurd to surmise on this point. It was impossible to fix the moment beforehand. To come, as John would have it to come, it must be almost inspirational, heaven-sent. It couldn’t be arranged, planned. It couldn’t be calculated over, preconceived. But—and here John’s spirits went down to zero with a sudden run—would it ever come? Wasn’t he a presumptuous ass even to dream of such a moment as possible? or—granting the moment—to dream of its fruition? Wouldn’t it be nipped in the bud instantly? frozen to a mere shrivelled atom of a miserable moment? John shivered at the thought. Then consolation took him kindly by the hand. At all events here was the eighth meeting, with the moment not yet even in bud. Who could tell as to that budding?

And so he turned into the avenue.

He passed under the oaks and copper beeches, the roadway now dappled with gold among shadows, as the sunlight penetrated the branches overhead. To the right, in the distance, were [Pg 204]undulating stretches of moorland. He fancied he could descry the silver-stemmed birch he had seen on his first morning’s walk. Before him he had a view of smooth green lawns, of brilliant flowerbeds, backgrounded by the old grey Castle itself. To the left the parkland sloped gently upwards to a wood of beeches,—a serene, cool, silent place, a veritable haunt of dryads.

Between the avenue and the wood was a great oak tree, stretching wide branches above the rough grass. Rumour had it that here was the scene of that old-time tragedy. Though unknowing of this rumour, John yet felt something almost sinister about the twisted, gnarled branches, and massive trunk of the great tree. There was a hint of secrecy about it, the dumb knowledge of some tragedy. Almost involuntarily he turned across the grass towards it.

There was no question as to its great age. For generations it must have stood there, weathering storm and sunshine. Some seven feet or so from the ground there was a hole in the trunk, large enough to admit of the passage of a man’s head. Scanning the hole, John noticed a rusty nail at one side. He wondered, idly enough, why it had [Pg 205]been placed there. From the hole, he glanced up at the branches. Truly there was something almost sinister in the great limbs. They were distorted, twisted, as if in agony. Again he had the unreasoning sensation of secrecy. It was an extraordinary sensation, an absurd sensation.

He could fancy the spirit of the tree striving to find expression in speech. There was a curious feeling that somewhere, just beyond, in the spirit world, perhaps, there was the key to some riddle. It was an almost impalpable feeling; he barely realized it; only somewhere, in his deepest inner consciousness, it stirred slightly.

Below the tree was a small mound. Rumour also had it that here Gelert, the wolf-hound, faithful as his ancient namesake, was buried. Again, John had had no hint of this rumour. But he looked at the mound with curiosity. Then, suddenly, he threw off the slight oppression that was upon him, retraced his steps to the avenue.

Arrived at the big door, John pulled the bell, a twisted iron thing whose voice sounded faintly in some remote region. The door was opened, and John saw into the hall, dark and shadowed. He had a glimpse of bowls of roses, of a big straw hat [Pg 206]lying on a table, green chiffon around the crown. A pair of long crinkled gloves lay near it. So, for an instant, John stood, his foot ready to cross the threshold.

“Her ladyship is not at home.” The butler’s bland voice fell like a douche of cold water on John’s heart.

Now, I don’t know whether John’s face fell in proportion to his heart, and the butler, more human than the majority of butlers, saw the falling, or whether his next statement came in the mere ordinary routine of matters. Anyhow,

“But Miss Delancey is at home, and her ladyship will return shortly,” followed closely on the former speech.

John’s heart leaped to at least ten degrees above the point from which it had fallen. The speech had not even come as a query regarding his desire to enter, it had come as simple statement of fact.

John stepped across the threshold.

She came to him in the hall.

Underneath her cordial ease of manner was the tiniest hint of shyness, a sort of half-forgotten breath of extreme youngness, I might almost say of childishness. Yet, very assuredly, there was nothing gauche about the reception. The hint merely served to emphasize her youth. If John thought about her age at all, he probably placed her at about twenty-two or thereabouts, which, I take it, was pretty near the mark. But I don’t fancy the thought entered his mind. It was enough for him that there she was, sitting opposite to him in the dusky hall. A ray of sunlight, falling through an open window, caught the burnished copper of her hair, turning it to vivid flame. It looked a thing alive and palpitating, a burning aureole around her face.

And now that the eighth meeting was accomplished,[Pg 208] John found himself suddenly tongue-tied, at a loss for any of those suitable little phrases fitting to the occasion. Nothing is so infectious as embarrassment, however slight, more particularly if there be any degree of sympathy between the two. Certainly it proved infectious in this case. Words halted, phrases came disjointedly, disconnectedly.

John cursed himself inwardly for a fool, a procedure which, you may rightly guess, did not vastly aid matters. And then, suddenly, Rosamund got up from her chair.

“Won’t you come and see the garden,” she suggested.

It was an inspiration. John followed her with alacrity.

They came out on to a wide terrace. A stone balustrade ran its full length, a balustrade covered with climbing roses,—crimson, pink, white, yellow, and a pale purple-lavender. A queer rose this last, reminding one of the print gowns worn by one’s grandmothers. Beyond the balustrade was a sunk lawn, and beyond that again the parkland, while further still was the shimmering blue of the distant sea.

[Pg 209]

“How you must love it!”

The words escaped almost involuntarily from John’s lips. The next moment he would have recalled them. To remind her of the beauty of what she was about to lose, must surely be to emphasize the sense of that loss.

“Love it!” She turned towards him with a little laugh. “It—it just belongs.”

John was silent. Rosamund leaned upon the balustrade, half-sitting, half-standing.

“You needn’t mind saying what is in your thoughts,” said she. And there was a little whimsical smile in her eyes. “Of course you can’t help thinking about the fact that we are going to lose it all, any more than I can help thinking about it. It makes freedom of speech just a trifle difficult, if all the time you are feeling it is a subject to be carefully avoided. Granny and I speak of it quite naturally now.”

“I’d like to tell you how sorry I am,” said John.

“Thank you,” she said simply.

There was a little pause. She gazed out towards the sea. To the right, a headland jutted out into its blueness. Sea-gulls circled in the quiet air, [Pg 210]tiny specks in the distance. Boats, white and red sailed, made lazy way with the tide.

Suddenly she turned impulsively towards him.

“I fancy,” said she, “that I’m going to tell you something.”

“Do!” said he, his eyes upon her.

“You’ll laugh.”

“Not a smile even.”

“Hmm!” she debated. “An over-dose of seriousness might be even worse to face than laughter.”

“This is not fair,” protested John. “I can’t measure a smile to the hundredth part of an inch. I can, at least, promise not to mock at you. Won’t that do?”

She laughed.

“Yes; I believe it will. Well, it’s this.” Her voice dropped to seriousness. “I have a quite unreasoning feeling that we shan’t leave here after all. I can’t explain the feeling, and I am fully aware of the almost absurdity of it. I haven’t spoken of it to any one else. I can’t tell my grandmother, or Father Maloney. It might raise a faint hope which reason tells me will be doomed to disappointment. And yet—well, it seems almost that if one could only stretch out [Pg 211]one’s hand a little way, through a kind of fog, one would find the key to the whole riddle. It must sound absurd to you, of course.”

John’s mind swung instantly to his own sensation of less than twenty minutes ago.

“No,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t sound at all absurd.”

She looked at him quickly.

“You speak almost as if you thought—” She broke off. After all it was an absurd imagination.

“I have thought the same,” said John smiling.

“You!” She was amazed.

“Yes; as I came across the park just now.”

“Oh!”

Again there was a little silence.

“I wonder—” she said musingly. “Do you think there’s the faintest possible chance?”

“There’s always the faintest possible chance,” John assured her. “Oh, I’ll grant it’s the faintest possible, and heaven alone knows where it will spring from. But it’s there, I know it’s there. And we’ve both felt it.”

She nodded.

“I’m glad you’ve felt it too. It adds a little [Pg 212]bit more hope, even while I’m almost laughing at myself. Only—what is it we’ve both felt?”

“I don’t know,” said John. “I don’t know an atom. I think I get nearest the mark when I say that it seems as if, somewhere, there’s a dumb voice striving for expression. At least that is the only way I can describe the sensation to myself.”

“And all the time,” she added, “there’s a feeling of quietness in the atmosphere, the quietness that precedes something very important happening.”

“I know,” said John.

“Ah, it’s tantalizing,” she sighed, “the inward knowledge of that, and yet the knowledge of one’s own impotence.”

Her brow was wrinkled in a little frown, half of annoyance, half of something like regretful amusement. It was an adorable little frown, and John longed, ardently longed, to smooth it away. His heart beat and thumped, the while it cried warningly that the time was not yet. And from somewhere near at hand came the liquid note of a pigeon.

“Go slow slowly, go slow slowly,” it seemed to remind him.

[Pg 213]

“Oh, yes, we’re impotent enough,” assented John, and a trifle gloomily.

“Isn’t it all melodramatic?” she laughed.

“Horribly,” agreed John.

“It’s an extraordinary conglomeration,” she pursued. “Setting, old-world; drama, early Victorian; period, twentieth century. Do you suppose that any one who didn’t know about it, would believe it?”

“Not an atom,” John assured her promptly. “If any one, I for instance, were to write a novel dealing with it, I’ll be bound I’d be considered to have strained the long arm of coincidence to breaking point. That’s the queer thing about truth. It’s always a thousand times, a million times, queerer than fiction.”

“It’s from precisely that—the very queerness of it,—that I can derive some small modicum of consolation,” she assured him gravely. “I feel, on occasions, that I am not myself at all, but merely a heroine in a book. Only, if I were, I might be tolerably certain of a happy-ever-after ending. I might say indisputably certain, considering the style of the plot. Here it is nothing but a toss-up.”

[Pg 214]

“Oh, no.” John shook his head. “I wouldn’t give mere chance quite such a free hand.”

“You mean that there’s a real plan behind it all?” she demanded point blank.

“Oh, well!” said John. There was a slightly quizzical smile in his eyes.

“Of course I know there is truly,” responded she, smiling in her turn. “But——”

“But me no buts,” retorted John. “Chance isn’t a free agent, and you know it; though I’ll allow he has an extraordinary appearance of acting on his own account now and again. But that’s merely his guise. If he didn’t appear clad in that fashion, we’d misname him; and I’ve an idea he’s curiously tenacious of his personality. People, you know,” continued John slyly, “are apt to believe in his omnipotence.”

She laughed.

“I’ve believed in him myself before now,” owned John, having a sudden memory of a black and white goat. “Only subsequent reflection invariably shows one that he isn’t acting on his own account, as he would have us believe.”

“I fancy you’re right,” said she reflectively. “If one really considers the seemingly haphazard[Pg 215] happenings, one does see that there is always a connecting link backwards and forwards. Nothing—no happening—is entirely isolated.”

“It is not,” said John. “Only sometimes the connecting link is so fine as to be almost imperceptible.”

John had in mind a tiny faint link, so faint that it was only in the light of subsequent events that it had become visible. If, on a certain March afternoon, he had not yielded to a sudden inspiration to enter the Brompton Oratory, would he now have been standing in this garden? Was not that the tiny, almost imperceptible link with all the events of the last ten days? Oh, he had reason enough for his assured statement, he had proved it to the hilt.

He wanted, he badly wanted, to tell her, to speak of that tiny connecting link. But reason again assuring him that to do so would be to drag the moment too abruptly forward, he thrust the desire aside. And then, from the distance, came the sound of a silver gong.

Rosamund got up from the balustrade.

“Tea,” said she. “Granny must have returned.”

John sat down to breakfast at about nine o’clock, or thereabouts, the following Wednesday morning. It was the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption; he had been to Mass at Delancey Chapel.

A letter was lying in his place. He took it up, and opened it. Here are its contents.

Now, it is very certain that, from the time of our Mother Eve, women have played an important part [Pg 217]in the affairs of mankind, either for good or ill. But it is equally certain that John had not the faintest conception of the part Elizabeth would play in the life of at least one person by this her proposed visit.

“Elizabeth suggests coming down for a few days,” said John tentatively, and helping himself to bacon.

“Elizabeth?” echoed Corin, gazing enquiringly at John.

“My sister, Mrs. Darcy. I forgot you didn’t know her.”

“By all means advocate her coming,” quoth Corin. “I shall be delighted to make her acquaintance.”

“I wonder—” began John, and stopped.

“Well?” queried Corin.

“I wonder whether Mrs. Trimwell has another room. Elizabeth suggests that I should take rooms for her. She wants an early reply.”

“Then my suggestion,” remarked Corin calmly, “is that you ask Mrs. Trimwell. On the whole it would be simpler and more practical than merely wondering.”

“Brilliant man!” responded John genially. And he rang the bell.

[Pg 218]

Mrs. Trimwell, it appeared, had not. She was profuse in her apologies for the lack of accommodation. You would have imagined that she was entirely to blame for the fact that the White Cottage possessed merely three bedrooms and a cupboard, so to speak. Tilda and Benny—aged four—slept in the cupboard.

“But there’s the Green Man what isn’t seven minutes’ walk from here, and though I’ll not vouch for the cooking myself, a bit of bacon and a cup of coffee for breakfast is what any idiot might rise to, it being pleasanter for the lady not to be afoot too early, and the beds I believe is clean, while for other meals she’ll natural take them along of you.”

Of course Chance—so-called—had a hand in the arrangement. If Elizabeth had both slept and breakfasted at the White Cottage, I’ll vouch for it that matters would not have happened precisely as they did; indeed, they would probably have been totally different.

John finished his breakfast, and then took a telegram to the post-office.

He was genuinely, undeniably pleased that Elizabeth was coming. He had a sensation of [Pg 219]something like exultation in the thought. She was so extraordinarily reliable. Never under any circumstances did Elizabeth “let you down,” to use a slang phrase. There was never the smallest occasion to remind Elizabeth that the intimate remarks you made to her were confidences. It was a foregone conclusion in her eyes. She would no more dream of repeating them than she would dream of tampering with another person’s letters. Also, so reflected John, she never reminded you that you had made them, unless it was entirely obvious that you desired to be so reminded. She never glossed over any difficulty, but faced it squarely with you. The only people who were ever disappointed in Elizabeth were those who looked for a maudlin sympathy from her, who desired her to fight their battles, when she was fully aware that they alone could fight them. Yet Elizabeth was entirely feminine, from the top of her glossy brown hair, to the tip of her dainty shoes. John, perhaps more than any one else in the world, understood and appreciated both her strength and her femininity. It was therefore with a feeling of intense satisfaction that he dispatched his telegram.

[Pg 220]

“Things move when Elizabeth’s around,” reflected John.

And then he walked on to the Green Man.

John, on the platform of Whortley station, surveyed the people there collected with idle interest.

It was market day in Whortley. Stout market women, clutching empty, or partially empty, baskets, sat on benches, their feet squarely planted on the ground. Leather-gaitered men, whose clothes gave forth a powerful aroma of horses and cattle, strolled up and down, and talked in groups. Children, hot and tired, and consequently slightly irritable, bickered with each other, or poked sticks at bewildered and exhausted hens in crates. Somewhere in the back regions of the station a couple of refractory oxen were being driven into trucks. An atmosphere of almost aggressive patience pervaded the much-tried porters.

“’Eat may be mighty good for the ’arvest,” remarked one motherly looking woman, wiping her face with a large white handkerchief, “but I do say as ’ow it’s a bit trying to the spirit, and likewise the body.”

[Pg 221]

“It’s the tempers of most people it gets at,” replied her neighbour succinctly.

To which remark John responded with an inward and fervent acquiescence. There was no denying the heat; there was no denying the sultriness of the dusty platform.

John strolled down to its further end.

Behind the town the sky was crimsoning to sunset. The roofs of the dingy houses were being painted red-gold in its light. The smoke from a factory hung like a veil in the still air, lending mystery to the atmosphere. The buildings lay in a web of colour,—blue, grey, purple, and gold. A cynic might have likened the sunset glory to the glamour with which some foolish people endow a merely sordid existence. In a measure, too, his simile might have been justifiable; but, whereas he would have scoffed, John, with something of the same simile in mind, thanked God for the gift of imagination.

And then, far to the right, he caught a glimpse of white smoke above a dark serpent of an oncoming train.

“Ruralizing,” quoth Elizabeth, “agrees with you.”

They were driving in a vehicle politely termed a Victoria. It was not unlike a good-sized bath-chair. It was driven by a one-armed boy. Seeing the driver, Elizabeth had had a moment’s qualm of heart. Then she had seen the horse.

“Oh, it’s a pleasant enough spot,” responded John, “and—and restful.” He coloured the merest trifle beneath his tan.

“Restfulness,” said Elizabeth gravely, “is delightful.”

But she wasn’t deceived, not a bit of it. Neither the pleasantness of Malford, nor its restfulness was accountable for that particular exuberance in John. It was a subtle, indefinable exuberance, which no amount of mere bodily health could cause. It emanated from his mind, his spirit; [Pg 223]it surrounded him; he was bathed in it. He might pretend to its non-existence; he might pretend—allowing it—that it was the mere outcome of a country life, but Elizabeth was not deceived.

“Have you met the Delanceys?” she demanded.

“Oh, yes,” he responded airily enough. “They’re—you’ll like them. That rumour you got hold of was correct enough, by the way. There is a claimant. He’s proved his claim. It’s a mere matter of courtesy on his part that he is not already in possession. He will be by the end of the autumn.”

Elizabeth sat up.

“An American?” she said.

“An American,” said John. “At least he hailed originally from the States. He has been living in Africa since his boyhood.”

“I suppose he’s quite impossible?” said Elizabeth frowning.

“On the contrary,” owned John reluctantly, “he isn’t at all impossible, at any rate not in one way. Of course he’ll be entirely unsuited to his surroundings, but he is quite a decent fellow in himself.”

“Brr!” breathed Elizabeth, and there was a [Pg 224]hint of impatience in the sound. “A kangaroo is a decent animal in itself, but you don’t want it in your drawing-room. What do the Delanceys think about it?”

“Oh,” quoth John, “they accept the inevitable. There’s a strong hint of the French aristocrats’ attitude towards the guillotine, in their manner; lacking, however, the scorn.”

“I see.” Elizabeth fell into meditation.

“I don’t think even you can reconstruct matters,” said John smiling. “You see, the whole thing turns on that missing document.”

“The whole thing,” said Elizabeth, “is so blatantly melodramatic as to be barely respectable.”

John laughed.

“Wait till you see Lady Mary,” he said. “She saves the situation completely.”

Elizabeth was silent. Then:

“Where is the man now?” she asked.

“Staying at the Green Man,” said John. “I’ve had to take a room there for you. You’ll breakfast at the inn, and have the rest of your meals with us. I am sorry there isn’t another room at the White Cottage.”

[Pg 225]

“Don’t apologize,” said Elizabeth gaily. “I came down to picnic. It’s I who should apologize for thrusting myself upon you.”

“That,” said John decidedly, “is pure nonsense.”

They were ascending a hill by now. Twilight was falling rapidly. Bats flew through the dusk, their shrill queer note breaking the silence. A great white owl flew noiselessly, like a huge moth, across a field. The road was a white line between dark hedges.

Coming to the top of the hill, wide stretches of moorland lay around them. Far off on the horizon was a strip of silver-grey sea. In the middle distance was a hill, wood-covered, dark towers rising among the trees.

“Delancey Castle,” said John.

If, as I remarked at the beginning of a preceding chapter, John thought it a funny world, it is very certain that David would have fully endorsed his opinion; and, further, he would have considered himself the queerest person in it.

Now, this was purely owing to the fact that he had suddenly found himself a stranger to himself. It was, in a manner, as if he had lived in blindness with a man for years, having, perhaps, without fully recognizing the fact, some mental conception of him. Then, on being miraculously restored to sight, he had discovered that the reality was totally at variance with that same mental conception.

The recovery of sight had come gradually. It had not been an instantaneous miracle. At the first he thought, doubtless, if he considered the fact at all, and he was probably only partially [Pg 227]aware of it, that the variance between the reality and what his partially restored sight beheld, was due to his own faulty vision. Now, with clear sight restored, he beheld a complete stranger, and it left him bewildered. He didn’t know the man at all. He didn’t even recognize his speech. It is small wonder that he was bewildered; it is small wonder that he spent solitary hours in a futile attempt to reconstruct his preconceived notions of the man.

I believe that the moment when David got a first blurred glimpse of this stranger, was in Father Maloney’s odd little parlour. He had had another glimpse of him at the Castle; and since then, little by little, the glimpses had resolved themselves into full vision. And through it all, with it all, was a queer sense of vibratory forces at work.

It was in the parlour, also, that the first vibration had struck upon him—a quite definite vibration, though inexplicable. It had rung clearly for a brief space, gradually growing fainter, till he wondered if it had indeed rung, or was merely imagination on his part. It had been repeated at the Castle, and had left no doubt in his mind. [Pg 228]Since then it had been renewed at intervals, ringing each time longer and louder. I can best describe it as some kind of mental telephone call, though he was, at present, at a complete loss as to the message waiting to be delivered.

“The fact is, David P. Delancey,” he remarked more than once, “that somehow your moorings have been cut, and the Lord only knows where you are drifting.”

Very early in the morning, the sun not far above the horizon, and the trees casting long shadows on the grass, David set out for a walk.

It was by no means the first time that he had risen thus betimes. The clean, fresh spirit of the morning appealed to him, also its detachment. It seemed, at that hour, so extraordinarily aloof from the affairs of men, wrapped, in a sense, in its own quiet meditations. Later the sun, the little breezes, the sweet earth scents seemed to give forth warmth, freshness, and fragrant odours for the benefit of mankind. At this hour it was wrapped in meditation, a meditation approaching ecstasy.

He went softly, fearing almost to disturb the [Pg 229]stillness, yet he did not altogether feel himself an intruder. There was, in a strange sense, something of communion between his spirit and the spirit of the silent morning, in spite of its detachment.

The route he had chosen led first across the moorland,—wide stretches of purple heather. He walked without indulging in any special train of thought. His eyes were open to the details of nature around him, his brain alert to absorb them in pure pleasure.

Gorse bushes, scattered among the heather, showed golden blossoms backgrounded by a blue sky. Their sweet scent came faintly to him. Later in the stronger warmth of the sun, the scent would gain in power and fulness. In the distance, scattered copses lay misty blue patches on sun-gold hillsides. Both far and near was an all-absorbing peace.

He hadn’t a notion how far he walked, nor for how long. Unconsciously he circled, coming at length to a gate, leading into a larch wood.

David turned through it. Here the sun filtered through the branches, flung spots of gold on the red-brown earth of the pathway, on the emerald of the moss lying in great patches among bracken, [Pg 230]fern, and bramble. Twigs and branches, at one time wind-torn from the trees, lay in the path, silver-grey, lichen-covered. It was all intensely silent, intensely still. David, stepping by chance on a dried twig, heard it snap with the report of a small pistol in the silence. The loneliness appealed to him; the enchantment of the quiet wood led him on.

Gradually, imperceptibly, his thoughts left externals, turned inwards. Still aware of all that lay around him, they were no longer merely idly diffused upon it; they drew together, focussed. Accustomed to think, though vaguely, in terms of simile rather than in words, he saw in the quiet of the wood something of the quiet which at present held his own life and being. In a sense he suddenly felt himself sleeping, his eyes closed on all that lay behind him. Yet while sleeping, he knew, too, that presently must come awakening. It was in his power, he now felt, to awake at the moment to the old life, as he knew it, to reconstruct his mental conception of that stranger, as it was in his power to retrace his steps. Yet it was almost as if something external to himself waited with him, to withdraw gently should he turn back, to remain [Pg 231]with him should he go forward. So for a space of time—a space not measured by the ticking of a clock—David waited. Then suddenly he moved onward down the glade.

And now he knew that his heart was beating fast, pulsing with some curious excitement, though he had not realized it before. His breath, too, was coming rather quickly, like that of a man who has been running. Gradually breathing and heart-beating became normal; yet still the dream sense lingered with him, and he did not want to dispel it.

The path led him into a cuplike hollow among the trees, a moss-grown place, full of deep shadows and a pleasant coolness. On the other side of the hollow the path ascended, through a beech-wood here, silver-green trunks in strong contrast to the deep red of the pathway. Though quiet, this wood was vivid, full of stronger colour than was that on the other side of the hollow.

Coming out at last from among the trees, David found himself on an expanse of grass, on one side skirted by the wood, on the other bordered by a hedge of yew, close and thick and dark. Turning to the left, he walked over the grass, till presently [Pg 232]the hedge gave place to a low wicket gate. Here he paused, looking over.

Beyond the hedge was a grey stone building, and beyond the building were grey towers. He knew now where he was. It was the chapel of Delancey Castle facing him. He stood for a moment or so, his hand resting on the gate.

Suddenly the chapel bell broke the silence.

The bell rang three strokes, with a pause between each. There was a longer pause. Then once more came its threefold note.

The sound struck strangely on David’s ear, and more strangely still on his heart. With the sound he became extraordinarily aware of some vital Presence near at hand. Something that suffused the whole atmosphere with Its Personality.

Somehow the quiet of the morning, its meditation, its silent ecstasy, seemed to have been leading up to that moment. It seemed to him now that here was the moment for which the morning had been waiting, and he with the morning. Neither did the moment pass; it remained, prolonged, expanded. Time again vanished; there was no time, there was nothing but himself and that extraordinary mystical sense which was suffusing the atmosphere.

[Pg 234]

He made no attempt to explain it; he couldn’t have explained it had he tried. It was something beyond words, beyond reason, beyond feeling, even, in the ordinary sense of the term. It was not actually in his mind that he was aware of it at all, but in something far deeper. In one way it was as if the notes of that bell had struck on some deep recess of his soul, setting free some tiny spring of hidden knowledge and sweetness; and yet he knew that it was not by virtue of that knowledge and sweetness that the mystical sense suffusing the atmosphere had been translated into terms of fact. It was external to them; it was actual, real, palpitating. He knew that it would have been there had the well of his inner consciousness remained untouched. Only somehow, in some extraordinary manner, it had sprung up to meet it; and the tiny freed spring had been caught into great waters, submerging him in a sweetness he could not understand.

I don’t know how long David stood by the wicket gate; but, at last, barely conscious of his surroundings, he turned from it along the grass sward.

The parlour at the Green Man is the parlour pure and simple. It calls itself by no grand-sounding title. You eat there, you sit there to smoke and talk—if you do not sit in the garden, and you write there.

It has five round tables, deal, and covered with strong white cloths. It has rush-bottomed chairs; it has casement windows; it has a great fireplace with oak settles on either side of it. For the rest, the walls are buff-washed, and hung with coloured prints, mainly of a sporting nature. The floor is red stone, with three mats on it. The mats are made of small loose strips of coloured stuff. The window curtains are of highly coloured chintz.

The front door of the Green Man stands flush with the cobbled pavement. Above the door swings the square sign with the name painted [Pg 236]thereon. It is a question, in Malford, from whence that name has originated. The oldest inhabitants of the place, in particular Mrs. Joan Selby, who has passed her ninetieth birthday, will tell you that it is in honour of the Little People, who, long years since, footed it in the moonlight on the grassy hill behind the house. She will declare that she had it from the present owner’s great-grandfather himself, that the first visitor to the house, when it was yet unnamed, was a little man, clad in green, red-capped, who promised luck in his own name and that of his Tribe.

This, you may believe, is looked upon as sheer superstition by the younger and more enlightened of the inhabitants of Malford. There is one ribald wag, who declares that the name originated through the verdant propensities of a former owner.

But for my part I lean to the first theory. And if you had ever sat in the moonlight on the grassy hill behind the house, had seen the dark green of the fairy rings among the brighter green of the field, had heard the rippling of the stream at the foot of the hill, had seen the pale gold of the massed primroses, had smelled their sweet fragrant scent, [Pg 237]had seen the misty shimmer of countless bluebells, then, I fancy, you also would have been of my way of thinking.

Elizabeth sat at one of the round tables by an open casement window.

It looked on to a grass terrace bordered by brilliant galadias. Beyond the galadias was a tiny stream, rippling, amber-coloured, over rounded stones. Beyond the stream was a grassy hill, sloping upwards to a beech-wood. Beyond that again was the blue sky.

“It really is extraordinarily pleasant,” said Elizabeth.

And then she turned to her coffee pot. The coffee poured into a blue and white cup, she was stirring it thoughtfully, when the door opened.

A man paused for the merest fraction of a second on the threshold. It evidently came as a bit of a surprise to him to find the room already occupied.

Elizabeth looked at the man. The man looked at Elizabeth.

She saw a big man in loose tweeds, shabby tweeds, which had seen much service. She saw a square-faced man, with a mat of darkish red hair.

[Pg 238]

He saw a glossy-haired, brown-haired woman, a woman with a palely bronzed skin, beneath which there was an underglow of red, a woman with red lips finely moulded, with a square chin, with a delicately chiselled nose, with steady grey eyes in which there was an under-note of something akin to laughter. She wore a cream-coloured cotton dress. A pink la France rose was tucked into the front of her gown.

David, used to the rapid assimilation of details, saw all this at a glance. Then he crossed to the table in the other window. It had been laid so that it faced hers, and fearing lest he should appear guilty of an obtrusive staring, he gazed out of the window.

The arrival of his breakfast providing occupation for hands and eyes, David turned to the table. A moment later he found that the sugar had been forgotten.

Now, the Green Man is devoid of bells. In some ways it is distinctly primitive. A brass knocker on the front door announces the arrival of visitors. For the rest your own vocal cords are employed.

Ordinarily David would have gone to the door [Pg 239]and shouted, but the presence of Elizabeth causing some absurd little diffidence in his mind, he sipped his coffee unsweetened. To a sweet-toothed man non-sugared coffee is peculiarly unpalatable. He set down his cup with a half-grimace, and glanced round the room. By good luck there might be a sugar bowl on an unoccupied table. There was not.

Elizabeth had noticed the former hesitation; she had likewise noticed the slight grimace, and the present unavailing glance around the room. Two and two were put rapidly together in her mind. She gave her own sugar bowl a slight push.

“Here is some sugar,” said she in her pleasant voice.

It was a most trifling incident. At the moment David merely said “Thank you,” and availed himself of the proffered bowl. Twenty minutes later, meeting in the garden by the stream, it gave a slight excuse for speech. It gave Elizabeth the excuse for speech. You may be sure David would never have ventured on it.

“What a dreamy spot!” said she, turning with a smile.

If you knew Elizabeth well, you would know that this was one of her favourite adjectives. It [Pg 240]summed up at once beauty, picturesqueness, colour, and entire enjoyment of anything.

“It is good,” said David briefly.

Elizabeth’s eyes twinkled. She liked the speech. It was in this fashion, so we are told, that God regarded His Creation,—that is before Mother Eve, beguiled by the old Serpent, had upset matters. Yet after all, in spite of his upsettings, there are times and places which yet fill us with some faint sense of that pristine perfection.

Of course Elizabeth knew perfectly well who he was. That may well go without saying. But, in spite of John having said that he was a decent fellow, he wasn’t in the remotest degree like her mental conception of him.

She had pictured him a big man—which he truly was, also a bluff man, a jovial man, a talker, a bit loud-voiced, perhaps a trifle assertive, at all events very confident of himself, and all these things he was not. It had not taxed Elizabeth’s intuition very vastly to perceive that, contrary to all her expectations, there was an extraordinary diffidence about him. He wasn’t the least certain of himself, he wasn’t the least jovial nor loud-voiced, while something in his eyes,—well, I have [Pg 241]mentioned his eyes before. Somehow Elizabeth’s mind swung to her little dusty-haired, grey-eyed Patrick in Ireland. She saw him in the throes of grappling with one of those world problems to which the cleverest of us can find but a poor answer, heard a small voice say wearily:

“Mummy, there is some things what is very difficult to understand.”

Of course it was an absurd comparison. What had this big man in common with the perplexities of a childish mind? Nevertheless for a brief space she had thought of Patrick.

“You can almost,” said Elizabeth, “see the Good Folk come trooping down that hill.

she quoted.

“I like that,” Said David, “what is it? Is there any more?”

[Pg 242]

Patrick had once said nearly these very words.

“It’s called,” said Elizabeth below her breath, “‘The Fairies,’ and it is by William Allingham. Of course he ought never to have called it that. The Little People hate that name. It’s a marvel, understanding as much as he did, that he didn’t know. And there are five more verses.”

“Tell me,” said David.

“Oh!” laughed Elizabeth. But she went on.

“They don’t sound altogether friendly,” said David as she stopped.

“Oh,” she assured him, “they are only unfriendly towards those who dislike and fear them. Those who fear them have to be constantly propitiating them. There’s nothing they hate like fear, and therefore they demand toll from cowards. For those who love the Little People—you should hear my small son Patrick talk about them,” she ended.

David looked a trifle bewildered.

“Do you truly believe—” he began.

She looked at him, half-laughing, half-serious.

“Honestly I don’t know,” she said. “I’m living in the depths of Ireland, and all that kind of thing is infectious. Sometimes I laugh at myself for giving it a moment’s thought, and the next I’m saying, there must be something in it. As for Patrick, you’d as easily shake his belief in me as his belief in the Good People. After all, who knows? He says he does. But then children [Pg 245]may have the key to a door of which we know nothing, or, at the best, but fancy we have caught a glimpse.”

There was a little silence, broken only by the sound of running water.

“And now,” said Elizabeth, “I must unpack. I was too lazy last night. My evening frock will be crushed out of all recognition.”

David pricked up his ears.

“I didn’t know people wore evening dress in the country,” said he.

Elizabeth laughed.

“John—my brother, Mr. Mortimer—does,” she replied. “I believe he’d sooner go without his dinner than omit dressing for it.”

“Mr. Mortimer!” ejaculated David. “Do you mean that?” The gravity of his tone seemed unwarranted by the triviality of the question.

“Mean it? Of course I do,” replied Elizabeth.

And then she saw his face.

“What on earth does it mean?” thought Elizabeth to herself.

“Glory be to God, you’ve done it now!” Father Maloney would have exclaimed.

Already her presence was making itself felt.

“I’ve seen the interloper,” said Elizabeth.

She was walking with John by the river. He had called for her at the Green Man, and had proposed a walk.

“Yes?” said John. There was enquiry in his tone.

“He isn’t,” said Elizabeth, “in the remotest degree what I imagined him, except for his size. He—well, it is extraordinarily difficult to describe him.”

“You feel that?”

“There’s something so childlike about him,” pursued Elizabeth. “If I were to attempt to put into words what I mean, he seems to me like a child, who had started out to get something, entirely sure that he wanted it; and then, when he found it in his grasp, he discovered it to be totally different from what he imagined it. He expected [Pg 247]a sort of toy, and he has found an enormous responsibility. He doesn’t know what to make of it. He is utterly perplexed, and it hasn’t occurred to him that the simplest plan would be to renounce it.”

John opened eyes of wonder.

“I always knew you were shrewd, my dear Elizabeth,” he remarked, “but how you have arrived at these conclusions in so brief a space of time, beats me altogether.”

“Then you think I’m right?” she demanded.

“I am pretty sure of it. But the thing is, that he sees the responsibility without exactly recognizing it, and, as you say, the simple way out of the difficulty hasn’t occurred to him in consequence.”

Elizabeth mused, looking at the running water.

“But that’s not all,” she went on. “There’s more I can’t fathom. These are merely material difficulties to grapple with. He is faced with something deeper. You can call me absurd if you like. I daresay I am being a little exalté, but he has a look in his eyes as if he had caught a glimpse of the Vision Beautiful, and he is a bit bewildered.”

“Oh, no,” said John quietly, “I’ll not call you absurd.”

Elizabeth cast a quick look at him and lapsed [Pg 248]into silence. The second problem was already absorbing her vastly more than the first. It was infinitely greater, the issue infinitely more important. To the first problem, when David had once grasped it fairly, there was so simple a solution, did he but choose to take it. In any case, however, it was, to her mind, on another plane. It didn’t belong to the same category as this second problem. Of course you may say that the mental problem existed solely in Elizabeth’s imagination. But then she did not think it did; nor, you will realize, did John.

Suddenly she spoke again, and quite irrelevantly to her former remarks.

“What particular interest has—Sir David, I suppose I must call him, in dress clothes?”

“Dress clothes?” queried John bewildered.

“Dress clothes,” reiterated Elizabeth. “I happened to say—quite idly, you understand,—that you’d sooner go without your dinner than not dress for it. He asked me if I meant that, and when I replied that I did, I saw at once that, far from being the little trivial matter I had believed it, it was, to him, of the most vital and grave importance.”

[Pg 249]

“Oh, my dear Elizabeth!” John’s eyebrows went up. He gazed at his sister in comical dismay.

“Well?” demanded Elizabeth. “You would.”

“Oh, I daresay,” said John ruefully. “But—well, the man hasn’t a dress suit. Apparently he doesn’t possess such a thing, and Father Maloney swore that it was an entirely unnecessary article in the country. Corin and I dined at Delancey Castle in morning dress to keep him in countenance. And now you—” he broke off.

Contrition, profound and utter contrition, wrote itself on Elizabeth’s face.

“I ought to have guessed there was something momentous in the question,” she said remorsefully, “and yet how could I! How small I must have made him feel!”

“And what a cheat he must think Father Maloney!” said John grimly. “He’ll believe we were all laughing at him in our sleeves.”

“You needn’t rub it in,” groaned Elizabeth. “These kind of horrid little contretemps make one feel guiltier and more remorseful than quite a good-sized venial sin. You needn’t tell me I’ve no business to feel like that. Of course I haven’t. But kindly remember it’s only in my feelings and not [Pg 250]in my reason, I’m experiencing the sensation. What can I do? Tell him I was only joking?”

“He’ll not believe you,” John assured her, “though certainly your remark was, I trust, not intended to be taken in deadly earnest. Perhaps,” continued John hopefully, “it may open his eyes a little more to his unsuitability for the position of head of Delancey Castle.”

“It may,” said Elizabeth succinctly, “but all the same I wish I hadn’t lent a hand to the operation. It’s nearly as bad as forcing open the eyes of a two-days-old kitten. I’d far sooner have left the business to time.”

“Time,” remarked John gloomily, “is an old cheat. You never know what he will be up to. He has a way of contracting hours into briefest seconds when you want their full value, and of expanding them into an eternity when you’ve no use for them. Oh! he’s a wily beggar is Time.”

Elizabeth laughed.

“What is it?” she asked. “Hadn’t you better make a clean breast of it?”

“Of what?” demanded John evasively.

“The exact manner of Time’s trickery,” responded Elizabeth. “Or anything else you please. [Pg 251]Of course I know there’s something on your mind.”

“You profess to be a reader of minds?”

“Not a bit of it,” smiled Elizabeth. “Only, having eyes in my head, I use them. Also, having been endowed with a certain amount of intelligence I use that also. And adding the two together——”

“You have guessed?” queried John.

“A dim guess,” said Elizabeth, “and one which will find no outlet in speech without further proof.”

She sat down on a tree trunk.

“Let us rest,” said she.

John stretched himself on the grass at her feet.

“Well,” he said, “perhaps your guess is right.”

“There is someone?” she demanded, promptly forgetting her former announcement.

John nodded.

“Ah!” Elizabeth’s eyes gleamed. “And of course it can only be the one someone. I am glad.”

“So would I be,” returned John, “if it weren’t such a one-sided affair.”

“You mean that she doesn’t—” Elizabeth broke off, dismay in voice and eyes.

[Pg 252]

“Oh, I don’t know,” said John gloomily. “How can I tell? She’s friendly, she’s—she’s adorable, but—” He flung out his hand, as who should say, “And there’s the whole of it.”

“You haven’t asked her?”

“Asked her!” John’s tone was almost scornful. “Where’s your intuition, my dear sister? Wouldn’t you see me in permanent radiant joy, or black despair, if I had? As it is, I am swinging from the one to the other, and the swing of the pendulum stays down infinitely longer than it stays up. There’s old Time at his games.” He pulled at the rushes by the river bank.

“But,” quoth Elizabeth calmly, “why don’t you ask her?”

“Ask her! I have not known her a fortnight yet. I have only seen her eight times.”

“It has been enough for you,” said Elizabeth, still calmly.

“For me, yes,” allowed John. “But for her! There’s the crux of the matter. What have I got to offer her?” His tone was despairing.

Elizabeth looked at him. There was the gleam of a tender smile in her eyes.

[Pg 253]

“Just the one thing,” she said softly, “that is of the smallest value. Yourself.”

“But—” began John.

Elizabeth interrupted him.

“Listen,” she said, and there was a curious earnestness in her voice, “if she doesn’t care for you yourself, nothing else you could offer would have the smallest value in her eyes. At least, not if she’s the woman I take her to be. And she must be that woman, or I don’t for a moment believe you would love her. Oh, John, dear, don’t you understand that women, the right kind of women, don’t want the external things a man can give? They want him himself, and the things that are part of him, the things without which he wouldn’t be himself at all. I mean love, loyalty, friendship. I don’t believe the majority of people have a notion how important the last is. That is why there are so few ideal marriages.”

“Hum!” mused John.

“It’s true,” said Elizabeth.

“Then what is your advice?” demanded John.

“Ask her, of course.” Elizabeth’s tone was refreshingly certain. “You can’t expect her to propose, can you? How do you know that Time [Pg 254]isn’t playing exactly the same tricks with her? Ask her,” reiterated Elizabeth, “at the very first opportune moment.”

“That,” said John laughing ruefully, “is precisely what I have been waiting for.”

Of course you will have realized that Elizabeth’s surmise regarding David was entirely correct.

When he made his material embarkation at Cape Town he hadn’t the faintest conception of the mental voyage on which he was embarking, or I am pretty sure he would never have set foot on the ship’s deck, or, at all events would have done so with misgiving. And he had had none. Gay as a schoolboy in quest of adventure, and determined as that youngster, he had watched the African coast recede from his sight, had seen Table Mountain dwindle to a mere speck, had turned his face in the direction of his new enterprise.

First had come the tracing up of his family in America, a tedious enough job, leading him eventually to Brussels.

[Pg 256]

His arrival in London had brought further business in its train, interviewing solicitors; producing the proofs collected through months of research; answering endless, and what appeared to him totally irrelevant, questions. Next there had been waiting,—waiting in shabby little rooms in Chelsea, when he beguiled the weary hours by walks on the Embankment, in Battersea Park, or on Hampstead Heath, anywhere away from the interminable hum of traffic, from the ceaseless stream of people.

More than once he had asked himself what on earth he had done it for? Why he had left the quiet, the sunshine, the colour, the wide spaces of the veldt, for the noise, the fog, the greyness, the confinement of London. More than once he had called himself a fool for his pains, cursed the day idleness had taken him to rummage in the old chest in the storeroom.

Then, the swing of the pendulum lifting him towards the anticipation of fulfilled hope, his gloom would be dispelled. After all, he would assure himself, it was his birthright for which he was enduring hardship. Only a fool or a weakling would have refused to take up the clue he had [Pg 257]inadvertently discovered. Then, gloom once more overwhelming him, he would demand of himself: Was it his birthright? After all didn’t this same birthright lie in the wide untrammelled spaces of the veldt, the unconventional surroundings, the life of freedom? Wasn’t he attempting to exchange it for a mess of red pottage?

But, with the arrival of the long-looked-for document, legal phrases and all, doubts again dispersed. He had laboured, he had toiled, he had achieved. There was no question now about that birthright. It was his. He held it as surely in his grasp as he held that piece of foolscap paper.

Naturally the first thing to do was to go and have a look at it. He had refrained from so doing till his rights thereto had been assured. He bade a far from reluctant farewell to his shabby rooms, and a not overclean landlady, took the train forthwith to Whortley, arrived at Malford, and the Green Man.

And then gradually, imperceptibly, all his doubts had returned, returned, too, in so subtle a manner, that he hardly recognized them for doubts. He was merely bewildered, non-understanding of himself.

[Pg 258]

It seemed to him totally absurd that he should not be entirely delighted at the thought of his inheritance, yet, if the truth be known, it was beginning to hang like a somewhat weighty millstone round his neck. And the exceeding simple solution of cutting the string that held it there, never dawned upon him.

Perhaps, unconsciously, he felt that to do so would be to shirk responsibility; but it is very certain that he was already devoutly wishing that he had never sought responsibility. Elizabeth’s careless little remark had added quite an appreciable weight to it. It is astonishing how the merest fragment added to an already heavy load will make it almost insupportable. It was, too, the absurdest fragment, the most ridiculous fragment, but there it was, flung carelessly upon him. Mentally, though vaguely, he saw a million other like fragments, which he told himself shudderingly would be added. He saw at least another ton load waiting for him. To those used to these burdens of conventionality they would be a mere featherweight. But to him!

He began to enumerate the list, to drag forth to clearer vision what he was vaguely perceiving. [Pg 259]To this end he recalled his dinner at Delancey Castle.

Dress clothes headed the list. True, they had not been present, but then they should have been. His own ignorance would evidently be a very formidable fragment. Well then, number one, dress clothes, stiff collars and shirt fronts, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. Number two, servants standing in the room while you eat. An abomination! Number three, servants handing you food in silver dishes. An idiotic custom! Why couldn’t they put the things on the table? Number four, accept everything offered you as indifferently as possible. Avoid thanking a servant. Well, with a bit of practice he might manage that. Number five, water placed before you in glass dishes, which water you were evidently not intended to drink,—he had grasped that much. A purely silly convention. Number six, coffee in minute cups that slid about on the saucers, and nowhere to put the elusive fragile things. David went hot and cold at the remembrance. Number seven, no pipes in the drawing-room. He groaned. This much his own experience had taught him, and taught him within the space of a couple of [Pg 260]hours. And Heaven alone knew how many more fragments there might not be.

Of course you might argue, and justly, why think of these conventions at all? Brush them aside. Treat them as non-existent. He was his own master. That is logical and sound reasoning.

But no. To David’s mind it behooved him, in accepting the responsibility, to accept with it all that appertained thereto. Herein lay that touch of simplicity, that touch of childlikeness, which, perhaps you may have perceived in him. Therefore it is small wonder that civilization was bearing heavily upon him.

Truly a sorry state for a man.

Elizabeth was talking to Mrs. Trimwell.

She was sitting in a low chair by the open back door. The baby lay in her lap, peacefully sucking a small pink thumb, round eyes gazing at Elizabeth’s face the while. The baby was as at home with Elizabeth, as Elizabeth was at home with the baby.

Before them lay the garden,—cabbages, potatoes, and onions neatly surrounded by flower borders. On a clothes-line, white pinafores and little blue and pink cotton frocks swung gently in the breeze.

Mrs. Trimwell was at the ironing-table, but it is very certain that the work of her hands in no way impeded the action of her tongue. Every now and then she turned from the table to the stove, exchanging a cooling iron for one which she would [Pg 262]momentarily hold in what appeared to be dangerous proximity to her cheek. Then down it would go on to the crumpled linen, which smoothed to snowy whiteness beneath the magic of her touch.

“I wouldn’t have said it to no one but you, ma’am,” remarked Mrs. Trimwell, in conclusion, it would appear, to some foregoing speech, “but I do say as how a helping hand at the moment would be a godsend to the poor young gentleman.”

Elizabeth looked entire agreement.

“Yes,” quoth she. “But then, what right have I to interfere.”

“Lor’ bless you, ma’am,” ejaculated Mrs. Trimwell, “if we was all to wait for our rights to make a move, I reckon there’d be precious little moving. When you think you’ve got a right there’s a dozen folk will tell you you haven’t got none. And when you’re for letting a job be, they’ll all be giving you a shift towards it. And spending the time arguing about it is mostly like talking over who’s got the best right to throw a rope to a drowning man. It’s the handiest has got to do it, I’m thinking, and let rights take their chance.”

“But,” said Elizabeth, and her eyes were [Pg 263]smiling, though her voice was sufficiently grave, “supposing he doesn’t want any interference.”

“There’s a deal of folk as don’t know what’s good for them,” remarked Mrs. Trimwell dryly, “and maybe he’s one of the number, though I’m not for that way of thinking myself. To my mind he has got hisself into a bit of a boggle, and don’t know the way out, though ’tis as plain as the nose on my face.”

She folded a table-cloth with rapid dexterity.

“But,” argued Elizabeth, and she patted the baby gently, “if I broach the subject when he doesn’t want it broached, what will he think of me?”

“Same as most men,” returned Mrs. Trimwell calmly, whisking a handkerchief from a basket, “that women’s for ever busy over what ain’t no concern of theirs. But Lor’ bless you, what does that matter! If we’re so everlasting prudent as to wait for chances to be certainties, we’ll miss giving a sight of help. There’s fifty chances in a month to one certainty, and the chances want a friend’s hand to them a precious sight more than the certainties.”

Elizabeth looked down the garden. Slowly she [Pg 264]patted the tranquil baby; slowly she pondered on this last statement. She was disposed to see quite a fair amount of truth in it. But then——

“What exactly do you advise?” Her eyes held a gleam of amusement.

“Talk to him straight,” said Mrs. Trimwell briefly. “I’ll own I wasn’t for having him miss his chances myself at first, but now—Lor’ bless you! I see ’tis no chance but a trap he’s laid hold on, and he’ll be caught sure enough before he’s done, if someone doesn’t speak.”

“Y-yes,” demurred Elizabeth, the little gleam lighting to laughter, “but how? What, for instance, would you say under the circumstances?”

Mrs. Trimwell put her iron on the stove. She turned deliberately to Elizabeth. Brows frowning she sought for inspiration.

“Well, I can’t rightly say as I’m a good hand at fashioning speeches. Leastways not the kind as’ll take with gentle-folk. But I reckon it’s something after this way I’d speak.”

One hand on hip, the other shaking an admonitory finger at an imaginary young man, Mrs. Trimwell proceeded.

“Young sir, seeing as how you ain’t got no [Pg 265]friends handy to tell you the truth, which may be unpalatable, but which I’m thinking you needs the taste of, I’m speaking in the friend’s place. It don’t require no mighty sharp sight to see that you’re as uneasy as a cat on hot bricks in contemplating the situation before you, the situation being one which you ain’t been brought up to, and as different from the life you’ve led as chalk is from cheese. It ain’t no use trying to bend a tree to new shapes when it’s full-growed, leastways if you do, you run a pretty fair risk of breaking it, and that’s what’s going to happen to you. ’Tisn’t as though you’d been took in childhood, when the bending to new ways can be done without over much harm. Lor’ bless you, can’t you see what you’re trying to do with yourself? ’Twill be like putting a sea fish in one of them little glass bowls you see in shops for you to try and get used to the ways of folks like them at the Castle. They’s born to it, and don’t feel all the finiky little things that comes as easy to them as breathing. It’s bigger things you’re wanting, and by that I’m not meaning the size of the rooms, for you’ll find them big enough at the Castle. It’s your mind you’ll be shutting up, and your body too, for all the size [Pg 266]of the place. You’ve found a cage, that’s what you’ve found, and partly because it’s a glittery thing, and partly because it’s yours, you’re feeling bound to live in it. Turn your back on it, I says; leave it to them as doesn’t know the caging. ’Tis God’s earth is your heritage, and not the castles men folk have built on it.”

Mrs. Trimwell paused.

“That’s the manner of talk I’d be giving him,” she announced. “It’ll put things clear to him, and he’s not got them over clear in his mind yet. ’Tis what he’s seeing though, half-blind like, and it’s a friend he needs to open his eyes before ’tis too late.”

Elizabeth gazed at her. There was admiration, frank and genuine admiration, in her eyes. Of course Mrs. Trimwell had merely voiced her own entire opinion, but quite probably it was on this very account that the admiration was thus unstinted. There is the same curious pleasure in finding another at one with you on a matter even slightly near your heart, as there is in finding your own unexpressed and half-articulate thoughts in the pages of some book. Also there was admiration for the fact that Mrs. Trimwell had arrived at so [Pg 267]rapid a conclusion. Elizabeth totally forgot that her own conclusion had been even more rapid.

“I shall never,” said Elizabeth, “be able to speak with half your verve.”

Though totally ignorant of the last word, Mrs. Trimwell was aware that same compliment was intended.

“You’ll put it a sight more polished than I can,” she remarked bluntly.

“He’d prefer the original speech,” smiled Elizabeth.

“But he’ll not get it,” Mrs. Trimwell’s voice was grim. “I knows my place.”

Elizabeth raised amused eyebrows.

“And all the time you’ve been assuring me that it isn’t a question of rights,” she protested.

“There’s rights and rights,” announced Mrs. Trimwell, “and ’tis you’ve the bigger right than me. You’re gentle-folk, same as he, and he’ll take it better from you. I’d speak fast enough, Lor’ bless you, if there wasn’t you to do it.”

She turned again to her ironing.

Elizabeth again took to patting the small bundle of warmth in her lap. Over the low hedge of the garden, she could see the churchyard, and the [Pg 268]white and grey headstones of the graves. From the old church came the intermittent sound of hammering, and the occasional clinking of metal. Pigeons wheeled against the blue sky, alighting now and again on the church tower. Beyond the church stretched meadows, and the silver line of a river twisting among them past rushes and pollard willows.

A heat haze covered the landscape; it shimmered, elusively golden, above the red-flagged path of the garden. A cat dozed on a bit of sun-baked earth; it appeared the embodiment of feline contentment. Elizabeth felt something of the same contentment. There was still that little gleam of amusement in her eyes.

Unquestionably she was a conspirator.

It is, however, one thing to be a conspirator in intention, and quite another to put your conspiracy into action. The opportunity perversely refused to present itself, or, at any rate, to Elizabeth’s eyes it refused to present itself, and that, after all, came to the same thing. A dozen times at least she went over her prepared formula in her mind, intending at each meeting to put it into words.

And there were meetings enough. You might have imagined that David sought them; that he knew, by some uncanny instinct, the exact moments when Elizabeth would approach the Green Man. Of course, too, there were the meetings at breakfast, but to Elizabeth’s mind these barely counted. It was not a subject to be served up with coffee and eggs and bacon; the hour, also, [Pg 270]was unpropitious. She was never glib of speech in the early morning. But then every hour seemed unpropitious.

The whole difficulty of the matter lay in the fact that she was on the outlook for an opportunity, that her formula was prepared. I defy any one—at all events any one of Elizabeth’s truthful nature—to introduce a pre-arranged subject casually and naturally. If you have ever tried to do so yourself, you will hear the instant ring of falsity in your words.

“Oh, by the way——”

And if you don’t begin in this fashion, how on earth are you going to begin, I ask?

Every meeting which passed without the subject being broached, lent further difficulty to its broaching. And the moment the opportunity had gone by, Elizabeth would upbraid herself for cowardice, would speak confidently to her heart of next time. And when next time came, the little dumb devil would sit maliciously on guard before her lips allowing every word to pass them but those she desired to speak.

The matter became almost farcical; it would have been farcical, but that the days were slipping by.

[Pg 271]

“It’s positively absurd,” Elizabeth told herself, half-laughing, half-angry.

But absurd or not, the little dumb devil was keeping close watch.

And here it was that Fate or Providence stepped in in a purely unexpected manner. Doubtless you, according to your views, will give the credit to whichever pleases you.

The intervention can hardly be termed direct. But then, that is frequently the case. It is the side issues, which in themselves appear of little or no importance, which have a momentous influence on the graver and deeper questions of life.

And here I am minded to quote the words reflected upon by the sunny-hearted Pippa.

Yet, if you should reply boldly in refutation of these words, Here, in my life, is one deed, one action at least, which stands paramount above all others, I would answer, True; but what of the [Pg 272]so-called tiny influences, the so-called minute events which led to it? Can you eliminate any one of them, and then say with certainty that, without it, the result would have been the same? And if you can not, how can you declare that the apparently tiny event was of less importance than the one you call great?

However, let’s on to the matter in hand.

Corin found the joys of scraping plaster off walls beginning to pall. Apparently he had come to an end of discovery.

It is one thing to delve for new treasures, it is another to scrape for hours on end to find a mere repetition of design. However delightful masonry and herb Robert may be when it dawns freshly on the sight, its continued contemplation waxes somewhat stale. To his judging, and no doubt he judged rightly, there were still yards and yards of it to be uncovered. Monotony, therefore, crept upon his soul. With a view, then, to relaxing the monotony, and taking into consideration that the sunshine without the church appeared infinitely preferable to the gloom within, he laid down his tools this particular afternoon a full [Pg 273]hour before his customary time, and came out into the open.

And here, for a moment, he paused.

Before him, eight miles distant, lay Whortley, to be reached by road or field, according to inclination. He ruled out that notion promptly. To the right lay the river, the silver ribbon bordered by pollard willows; to the left lay wood and moorland; behind him and the church lay the sea. It was distant a mile or thereabouts, and the sun was distinctly hot. But what of that! Wouldn’t the music of its voice on the shore, the colour of its sparkling waters, the coolness of the little breeze that would sweep across its surface, be well worth the tramp?

“The sea for me!” cried Corin to his heart. “And that’s rhyme, and I’m not sure that it isn’t poetry if you take into consideration the vision it conjures up. In fact, taking that into consideration, I am sure that it is poetry.”

Whereupon he wheeled around.

First the route lay uphill towards Delancey Castle. It was a stiffish climb. The sun, beating upon the white roadway, flung waves of heat up from it. They shimmered before his spectacled, [Pg 274]short-sighted eyes in an irritating glaring dance. His round, cherubic face was glowing to a deep crimson before he was half-way up the ascent. The vision he had conjured up of the seashore might truly be poetical, but I question the poetry in the appearance of the little man trudging towards that vision. Yet this is unkind. Who are we to judge from appearances? Truly may poetic aspirations be hidden beneath the most unlikely exteriors.

At the top of the hill, Corin paused, looking reflectively down the long avenue. Exhaustion rather than reflection prompted the pause, nevertheless he gave vent to a sage one.

“Omne ignotum pro magnifico,” he remarked, “by which token, I fancy, our young American friend down yonder had a very different conception of what he was going to find up here. He has found less magnificence than irksomeness, I take it. Now, I wonder why karma——”

But I refuse to follow Corin in his meditative flights in this direction. It is sufficient to note that we see him, from the remark I have given you, in like mind with three at least of our other characters herein mentioned.

[Pg 275]

His meditation on the mysteries of karma completed, and his exhaustion being in part, at least, lessened, Corin pursued his way. His route was level now, leading presently to a footpath across an expanse of short grass. Here he came upon full view of the sea—blue, sparkling, radiant, dotted with white- and red-winged sailing boats.

Coming at length to a rough, descending track, he made his way down it. It brought him into a cove, a place of white sand, smooth and gleaming.

Truly here was all that his vision had expected. The grass-crowned cliffs sloped down to the cove in rugged grey walls, samphire-covered. Nor did the grey rocks stop abruptly on reaching the white sand, but ran out into it, as if eager to gain to the sun-kissed water. Little pools lay among them, mirrors reflecting the blue of the sky. In the pools waved feathery fronds of sea-weed—pink, crimson, and brown; tiny silver fish darted hither and thither; sea anemones stretched forth dainty flower-like tentacles.

“This,” remarked Corin to his soul, “was worth the tramp.”

And he sat down on the warm white sand.

There wasn’t a soul in sight; nothing but those [Pg 276]white- and red-winged boats, making a lazy headway with the tide, to remind him of his fellow mortals, and they but added to the beauty of the picture. The water broke in baby waves on the shore, with the faintest musical ripple. Sea-gulls dipped to the shining surface, or floated smoothly in the blueness above. Now and again a cormorant flew, black and long-necked across the water.

Some half-hour or so Corin sat there, basking and dreaming in the sun, thinking, you may be pretty certain, of nothing, or at all events with thoughts too diffused to be worthy of the name.

And then, all at once, the antics of two birds roused him to sudden interest. Gulls, he would have called them, yet assuredly their manners were perplexing. Winging rapidly for a moment or so, they dropped suddenly like stones to the water. Up again, they repeated the manœuvre, and again, and yet again.

“Now what,” remarked Corin aloud, addressing the apparent solitude, “do those things call themselves?”

“They,” said a voice behind him, “are gannets.”

Corin turned.

Seated on a rock, some half-dozen yards or so in his rear, was David Delancey, calmly gazing out to sea.

“How long have you been there?” demanded an astonished Corin.

“Oh, twenty minutes or thereabouts,” returned David. He got up from the rock and came to seat himself nearer Corin. “I thought you were dozing.”

“I was wide awake,” returned Corin with some dignity.

It is not certain whether the imputation of sleepiness had hurt his susceptible feelings, or whether it was merely irritation at finding himself observed when he thought himself alone, at all events there was the faintest trace of asperity in his manner.

[Pg 278]

David regarded him perplexed. The slight asperity was obvious. But what on earth had caused it?

And then, whatever the cause, Corin felt a trifle ashamed.

“But what,” he demanded, waving his hand seawards, “are the mad things up to? What possible pleasure or profit can they find in tumbling head first into the water? If it weren’t,” concluded Corin solemnly, “that I conceive them to be brainless, I should imagine that they would be suffering by now from violent headaches.”

“Oh,” responded David laughing, “they are just diving.”

“Just diving?” echoed Corin. “But why from such a height? Why don’t they get lower to the water, first, if they want to dive?”

“Ask me another,” said David, smiling lazily. “I suppose it’s habit, nature, whatever you like to call it.”

Corin shook his head, as who should say, given a free hand he’d instil vastly better habits. Aloud he said:

“This is an extraordinarily pleasant spot.”

“It’s so jolly lonely,” said David musingly.

[Pg 279]

“Therein,” remarked Corin, “lies one of its greatest attractions.” And he quoted softly, “Il y a toujours dans le monde quelque chose de trop—l’homme.”

“What’s that?” demanded David bluntly.

Corin obligingly translated.

“Humph!” Obviously David demurred at this statement. “I don’t altogether see what would be the good of the world being pleasant if there weren’t someone to enjoy it.”

“There would be,” said Corin, still softly, “always oneself.”

David’s eyes twinkled.

“I guess a world run for one individual alone would prove a bit over isolated,” he remarked dryly. “Also, the question of which individual might crop up.”

Corin sighed. The man was really a little too literal. He shifted his ground.

“If,” he said didactically, “men lived together in harmony, the soul would not crave for isolation.”

Had John been present, it is probable that ribald laughter had greeted this remark. He knew these moods. David did not.

“That’s true enough,” he responded gravely, [Pg 280]“but who is to set the keynote? where’s your conductor of the band?”

“If,” said Corin, addressing himself to the sparkling water, “each man lived to the highest within him, there would be no need for any conductor.”

David frowned. He granted the high-soundingness of the statement, you may be sure, but somehow it did not strike him as altogether practical. He fell back on his band simile.

“A fellow,” he remarked, “may fancy he’s got a jolly good tune to play, and go at it for all he’s worth, but if it doesn’t fit in with the rest, it stands to reason a jumble will follow. If you could get hold of the right conductor, I fancy you’d do a precious deal better by playing second fiddle, or even by striking a note on a triangle every now and then, than by rattling off the best tune ever invented on your own.”

“My dear man,” cried Corin eagerly, “your theory is sound enough in a way; but if a man really lives to the highest in him, he’ll merely strike notes on a triangle if that’s his job.”

David shook his head.

“Maybe,” he said deliberately, “but there’s [Pg 281]always human nature to reckon with, and there’s a good bit of difference between a man thinking a thing the highest, and it being the highest. You set out to do a thing thinking it’s the right thing to do, and when you get a good clinch on it, I’m blamed if you don’t begin to wonder if it was your job after all.”

Again Corin sighed, and with an almost aggressive patience.

“If you have honestly believed it to be the right thing to do,” he remarked carefully, “it is the right thing to do. Shakespeare never made a truer statement than when he said, ‘There’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ There’s the sum of all religion.”

“Then,” said David dryly, “religion is a mighty elusive thing to tackle. There are some Indians—I forget which brand their religion is—think it right to treat the poor little widows as scum on the face of the earth, but I don’t fancy any amount of thinking can make it right to treat any woman that way. There’s injustice somewhere if that’s the way to deal with them.”

“It’s karma,” said Corin succinctly.

David pitched a pebble seawards.

[Pg 282]

“I’ve heard you use that word before,” he remarked, “but for the life of me I don’t know what you’re driving at.”

Here was Corin’s chance. You may be sure he jumped at it. I’ve vowed I’ll not follow his meditative flights in this direction, but I fear me I’ll be bound to transcribe his speeches.

“Karma,” quoth he, “shows us clearly the justice of the whole of the so-called injustice of the world.”

David grinned.

“It’s not what you might call a little subject,” he remarked.

“Yet,” retorted Corin, “it is simplicity itself. No evil suffered by man, woman, or child is undeserved. It is suffered as punishment for sin committed.”

David looked down towards the sea.

“A baby can’t sin,” he said quietly, “yet I’ve seen some poor little beggars mishandled in a way that would make your blood boil.”

Corin shrugged his shoulders.

“I’ll allow that there are brutes in the world,” he admitted, “but there’s no undeserved suffering. What such a child suffered, it suffered for sins committed in a past life.”

[Pg 283]

David turned an amazed face upon him.

“Past life!” he ejaculated.

“Of course,” said Corin calmly. “How do you interpret such suffering if it isn’t inflicted for sins committed in a past life? Wouldn’t it be horrible injustice otherwise? You don’t, I suppose, imagine the Powers above to be unjust?”

“No,” said David simply. “I’ve never gone as far as that.”

“Then how on earth are you going to explain the apparent injustice of the world?” cried Corin. “Can’t you see that it apparently reeks with injustice?”

“Oh, Lord, yes! I see that fast enough,” said David grimly.

“Then how do you explain it?” demanded Corin.

“I’ve never tried to,” said David quietly.

“But, good heavens, man, what’s your intellect given you for if you don’t use it?” almost shouted Corin. “Why, if I couldn’t see some plan in what the Powers above had arranged, I’d have chucked up the sponge long ago.”

David looked silently towards the far-off horizon. There was a queer little smile on his lips.

[Pg 284]

“Well?” demanded Corin.

David turned.

“I guess,” he said slowly, “you’d think a soldier a mighty poor sort of fellow who chucked up fighting because he didn’t understand the plans of his general. I guess God isn’t going to give each of us a special interview, and explain His plan of campaign, any more than a general is going to call each private to his tent and explain his before he sends him into battle. Of course if you figure out a plan in your own mind, and fight thinking it’s the right one, it’s a precious deal better than chucking up the sponge, but all the same, if you’re stuck on your own plan, you may go beyond your job by a long chalk, and it’s best to leave plans to your general. The only thing that matters is to get your orders clear, and with the muddle around you that’s not over easy. Anyhow, I don’t find it over easy.”

“But,” remarked Corin coolly, “if, as you maintain, no private is supposed to understand his general’s plan, and he is not to follow his own judgment, from whom is he to receive orders?”

“Officers,” returned David promptly.

[Pg 285]

Corin snorted. It was not exactly an ill-bred snort, you understand; nevertheless it was one.

“And will you kindly tell me where those officers are to be found?” he questioned loftily. “Look here, man, let’s drop simile for the moment. If you maintain that we human beings are incapable of understanding the plans of the Powers that be, how are we going to shape the course of our actions? We’ve got to work on some scheme, if we don’t drift. Who’s going to interpret that scheme to us, if we don’t interpret it for ourselves?”

“That,” returned David, “is exactly what I’m trying to figure out.”

Corin looked at him commiseratingly.

“My dear man,” he said gently, “you’ll find that your figuring will bring you to but one conclusion. You’ve got to interpret for yourself. If you go off to ask other people, what will you find? Every man will tell you that his way is the right way. A Calvinist will talk of predestination, a Congregationalist will talk of conversion, a Catholic will tell you to go and confess your sins to a priest, and a member of the established Church of England—well, the Lord only knows [Pg 286]what he’ll tell you. It’ll be a toss-up on the special species you light on.”

“But,” said David firmly, “there must be truth somewhere.”

“Of course there is,” returned Corin magnificently. “There’s a modicum of truth in every religion. Divest them of their forms and you’ll get vastly nearer the whole truth. I tell you, there’s the Divine in every man. The various churches have set up God as a kind of bogey wherewith to frighten naughty children. God exists, but not separate from us, as the churches teach, a judge to allot punishment or reward to a feeble humanity; He exists in each one of us. Each one of us is an actual part of the Divine, and thereby is his own arbitrator, ruler, and judge. And, that being so, it is absurd to imagine that we are incapable of understanding the Divine plan. Of course we understand it. To believe, to know, that, is merely common-sense.”

David was silent.

“Isn’t it?” urged Corin.

David turned towards him.

“Well, if you really want my opinion,” he said slowly, “I’m blamed if I don’t call it merely pride.”

[Pg 287]

Corin stared.

“Well, of all the—” he began.

He got no further. Where was the use of arguing with a man who voluntarily padlocked his intellect within an iron box, so to speak. It would be mere waste of breath, a futile expenditure of his energies. Yet, so reflected Corin, he had thought so much better of him. Ah, well, the advance guard of a movement cannot expect to have the ruck too closely in his wake. It is only when the path through superstition has been laid fair and open, that one can expect the common herd to follow.

“You’re a very young soul,” he said indulgently.

David gazed imperturbably out to sea.

Of course there had been nothing out of the way about the meeting, nothing particularly extraordinary about the conversation, for all that Corin, in spite of terming the matter simple, was convinced of its depth. Yet, in some inexplicable way, it was a momentous meeting to David. And the kernel of the whole thing lay, neither in what Corin had said, nor in what he had said, but somehow in his own unspoken thoughts during the conversation.

I don’t believe he could have put the actual thoughts into words. He could not even formulate them very distinctly in his own mind, but all the same there had been a curious crystallizing process going on within him. Little half-formed thoughts, tiny almost insignificant incidents of the past ten days, had drawn together with a strange magnetic [Pg 289]attraction into a concrete whole, though he was not, even now, fully aware what that concrete whole represented to him.

But there it was, a tangible, definite something awaiting explanation. He could handle it now, so to speak, without knowing to what purpose it was to be put; it was massed together, where formerly it had been mere particles, each too minute and separate to be caught and fingered. Yet, lying where it did, in the inmost recesses of his soul, the question was whether he could ever bring it sufficiently to the surface to show it to another, and he believed that, without some external aid, he would never arrive at its full significance.

Those who possess the gift of words are truly to be envied. With a few brief sentences they are able to elicit sympathy, criticism, judgment, understanding, whatever their need may be. The dumb dog is helpless. At the best, he has but a few stammering phrases to his tongue, perhaps but an inarticulate word or two, often no word at all.

You can’t blame his fellow mortals if they fail to understand his need: it is given to few to interpret the language of the mute.

Elizabeth came into the garden of the Green Man the morning following the aforementioned conversation, with determination in her heart, and her formula on her lips.

She saw David sitting on a wooden bench near the stream. He had left the parlour some ten minutes previously.

He was looking at the running water. Even at the distance he was from her, Elizabeth was aware of a certain tenseness, a certain keyedness in his attitude. He seemed waiting, expectant.

She went across the grass towards him, her step making no sound on the soft turf. She was within a couple of yards from him before he saw her. He got up from the bench.

“Mrs. Darcy,” he said in a queer hesitating voice, “if I can, I want to talk to you.”

Elizabeth noticed that he did not say, “If I may.”

Elizabeth sat down on the bench beside him. Her whole demeanour said as plainly as speech:

“Take your own time. I have nothing on earth to do but listen to you. Nothing will give me greater pleasure. This is what I have been wanting.”

It is astonishing what confidence such an attitude will give. Confidences—hesitating confidences, at all events—will take flight before the least trace of urgency. If you think you’ve got to be in a hurry to show them, they hide like shy children in the inmost recesses of your soul, and no amount of coaxing will bring them forth to the light of day. You may, by dint of violent effort, force them forth, so to speak; but, coming unwillingly, they show no trace of their true personality. You barely recognize them yourself; [Pg 292]a stranger will not recognize them at all, unless he be the one in a million endowed with an almost uncanny gift of insight. And such a one, to my thinking, will never hurry confidences.

“Do you mind my smoking?” asked David.

“Not a bit,” returned Elizabeth cheerily.

David pulled pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket. Busy with them, he spoke.

“I am a bad hand at talking,” said he. “Words are slippery kind of things, and slide out of my mind as soon as I think I’ve got them fixed there; so, if I talk in a muddle, perhaps you’ll forgive me. I can’t even get what I want to say very clearly to myself.”

He paused to light his pipe. Then went on:

“I fancy I’ll have to talk a bit in kind of symbols. I see things that way myself better than in actual descriptive words. You know, of course, my reason for being here?”

“I do,” responded Elizabeth.

David was silent for a moment.

“Well,” he said presently, pulling at his pipe, “when I set out on this job, I didn’t think much about the right or wrong of it. It was simply there. It got up and stood before me suddenly, [Pg 293]and I said to myself, That’s what I’m going for. I went for it. There’s no need to go into details. It wasn’t an easy undertaking, but I brought it through. What I set out to get is mine. It’s there. I’ve only got to put out my hand and take it.”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, as he stopped.

“Well,” said David frowning, “now comes the difficult part to put into words. What I’m going to say may sound rubbish; but, for the life of me, I don’t think it is. I’m going to get to symbols now. Can you figure to yourself a man finding a mighty powerful telescope; and, looking through it, he sees a sack of gold lying in a place some thousands of miles away, and he knows that the sack is his for the seeking. Well, he doesn’t think much about the wisdom of the search, or its difficulties, or what he’s going to do with the gold when he gets it. He just knows it’s there, and it’s his if he can get to it. It isn’t easy to find, and there are other people who think they’ve got the right to it. But anyhow he gets there, and establishes his claim. He’s got nothing to do now, but put in his hand and take everything that is in the sack. It seems simple enough, doesn’t it?”

[Pg 294]

“It does,” said Elizabeth smiling. The naïveté of his words amused her.

“But,” went on David, “just as he’s waiting to take possession of the whole thing, he suddenly gets a glimpse of something else, a bit further on. Now, he doesn’t for the life of him know exactly what it is, or what use he’s going to make of it, only there’s some kind of voice telling him all the time that it’s worth going for. That’s pretty nearly all he knows about it. Common-sense seems to say to him, ‘Empty your sack first, and then go on and have a look.’ But way back in his mind he has three thoughts,—one is that he hasn’t any darned use for the gold in the sack, he doesn’t know what to make of it—you remember I’m speaking in symbols; the second is that somehow it will be a bother carrying it along with him on this other quest; and the third is a queer sort of idea as to whether the gold is really his after all. Of course everybody tells him it is. Even the folk, who originally had the handling of it, are bound to say it must be, and yet he doesn’t feel dead sure. Do you see what I’m driving at?”

“Perfectly,” said Elizabeth.

[Pg 295]

“Well,” he demanded, “what does it all mean?”

For a moment Elizabeth was silent.

“Can’t you tell me a little more?” she suggested. “Haven’t you the smallest idea what this other quest is?”

David hesitated.

“Not an atom clearly,” he said slowly, “at least—” he stopped.

Again there was a silence. There was no sound but the rippling of the water, and the humming of insects. Occasionally a dragon-fly darted across the surface of the stream with a flash of silver wings. Beyond the grassy slope of the fields opposite them stood the trees of the wood, dark green, deep shadows lying beneath them.

And in the silence Elizabeth waited.

Presently David began to speak, shyly, difficultly.

“When I was a very little chap, I used to read Tennyson. Do you know the bit,

Elizabeth nodded.

Her words fell softly into the silence.

“That’s it,” said David, his cheeks flushing. “I used to care for that a lot,” he went on slowly. “I used to play I was one of those knights going in search. But it’s years since I’ve thought of the poem, or had any of those fancies. Perhaps working around knocks them out of one’s head. Now, what I am going to say will sound pure nonsense. One day, here, in a wood, the whole thing came back to me.”

“Yes?” said Elizabeth gently.

“I came up through the wood to the edge of the park,” said David, “and I found myself by the Castle Chapel. A bell rang. I can’t in the least explain what happened then, but I might have been a little chap again, fancying myself near the end of my quest, only it was about a thousand times more real. Well, it’s just that. What I played at as a little fellow has got hold of me again.” He stopped.

[Pg 297]

“Yes,” said Elizabeth again, and very softly.

“I’ve tried to tell myself it’s nonsense,” went on David, “but it’s no good. And it doesn’t seem like play now. I can’t explain. Of course reason tells me I’m being a bit mad, but the thought has got hold of me and won’t let me go. Mr. Elmore talked to me yesterday, down on the beach. He talked what seemed to me a good deal of rubbish, though I’ll grant it sounded all right in one way. I told him what I thought about it. But what we both said is beside the matter. It’s just that all the time this idea was gripping me tighter and tighter. It was as if the quest was real. Everything—the sea, the rocks, the birds, the sun, the wind—was telling me so. I wanted to speak to someone about it. Somehow I felt I could tell you. It seems so real, and yet— What do you make of a fantastic idea like that?” There was almost a wistful note in his voice.

Elizabeth’s eyes were shining. Perhaps there was the faintest hint of tears in them.

“I don’t think it is fantastic,” she said quietly. “I—I know it isn’t.”

“You know it is real?” asked David wonderingly.

[Pg 298]

“I know it is real,” she said. “There are others who could tell you probably a great deal better than I can; yet you’ve asked me, so I will do my best. The story of King Arthur and his knights seeking the Holy Grail, is a beautiful story, a wonderful story. It was a marvellous quest. It was the quest far the holiest purely material thing that ever existed. And yet there is Something more wonderful even than it, Something always present upon the earth which may be found by all who seek It. I think you have been given a glimpse of that Quest.”

David looked at her silently.

Elizabeth drew in her breath.

“Christ in the Blessed Sacrament,” she said.

A silence fell on the words. Elizabeth’s heart was beating quickly. David was looking at the water.

“When the bell rang,” went on Elizabeth, speaking simply, almost as she would have spoken to a child, “it meant that Christ had come to the altar within the chapel. He was lying there as helpless as when He was nailed to the Cross. It needs, perhaps, as great faith to see Him there, under His white disguise, as it did to see God in [Pg 299]the Man nailed to the tree of shame. Yet the one stupendous marvel is as true as the other. Up there, in the wood, you recognized the miracle, without realizing what it was that you recognized.”

Once again fell silence. The wonder had been spoken, the miracle, which day by day, at countless altars, is silently performed, before which the very angels themselves stand watching in reverent awe.

It was a long time before David spoke again. At last he said:

“Yet what bearing has—has that on the other question,—the question of my accepting this inheritance? Why do I imagine that my acceptance might, in a measure, hinder this quest? There are, by the way, quite a dozen ordinary reasons which have cropped up to make me dislike the thought of accepting. I’ll grant that they are, no doubt, stupid reasons, which most people would consider barely worth consideration, but there they are. By themselves I might face them fairly, weigh them, and come to a decision; but added to them, all the time, has been this other thought. Now the point is,” went on David, leaning forward, and speaking with frowning[Pg 300] deliberation, in the effort to make his meaning clear, “which is really influencing me? Am I making this queer thought the pretext for wanting to be rid of the whole business, when it’s really that I shirk the thought of the restrictions this new mode of life must bring? Or is the thought of these restrictions merely a side issue, which should be ignored while I figure out the other question? And, from every reasonable standpoint, it hasn’t the smallest bearing on the case. It seems absurd to suppose that it has. Then there’s the third idea that I mentioned, the idea that the whole thing is a mistake, and that I haven’t any right to the place at all. But that can really be ruled out; there’s so much proof to the contrary. It’s odd to me to analyse like this; and yet, for the life of me, I can’t help doing it.”

Elizabeth listened, turned the matter in her mind, and spoke.

“Let’s get hold of the business from a purely reasonable and sensible standpoint first,” quoth she. “You’ve made a bid for this inheritance which you believed to be yours. It is proved, from a legal point of view, that it is yours. Now [Pg 301]tell me what you think of it,—from the merely sensible standpoint, remember.”

“There isn’t one,” laughed David. “At least, I don’t believe any one would dream of calling it sensible. But we’ll call it the material standpoint. The fact is that I’m not in the least dead sure that I want the thing now. It would mean a mode of life entirely foreign to me. I should feel cramped and caged.”

“Well?” smiled Elizabeth triumphantly.

His statement so entirely coincided with her own and Mrs. Trimwell’s views. Also Mrs. Trimwell’s exceeding simple solution of the problem was before her mind.

“Well,” echoed David, “naturally the simple solution of the difficulty would be to chuck the whole thing.”

“Exactly,” nodded Elizabeth, delightedly, encouragingly.

“But,” continued David, “there’s another side to the matter. Supposing I marry— I don’t feel drawn to marriage I own,—but supposing I do, supposing I have a son, won’t he possibly turn on me? Won’t he ask what earthly right I had to renounce what wasn’t mine alone, but which [Pg 302]belonged to him as well? Won’t he ask why on earth I raked up the whole business if I was going to funk it in the end? Won’t he say, ‘You made a fight for a thing which was yours and mine. You got it. If it had been yours alone you would have had every right to chuck it up. But it wasn’t. You had no right to throw away what belonged to me.’”

Elizabeth was dumb. Truly had this aspect of affairs not dawned upon her. For a minute, for two minutes, she was faced with a new problem. Then suddenly, eagerly, she sprang at its solution.

“Legally,” she announced, “in strict justice, the inheritance may be yours. In equity I don’t believe it is at all.”

“What do you mean?” asked David.

“The whole thing,” said Elizabeth firmly, “turned on that missing document. Those old letters—my brother has told me about them—proved that there had been such a document. From the legal point of view those letters were worthless, but only from the legal point of view. Taking them into consideration, you could renounce the property at once with a clear conscience. Indeed,” pursued Elizabeth judicially, [Pg 303]“if you want to act from the merely conscientious point of view, disregarding the strict legality of the matter, it would be, to my mind, the only thing to do.”

David gazed at her.

“I never thought of those letters,” he said slowly.

“Never thought of them!” cried Elizabeth. “Why they were the crux of the whole business, the only standpoint the present owners had to work from.”

“Oh, I see that now you’ve said it,” replied David. “But, honest injun, I’ve only just seen it clearly. Perhaps you will hardly believe me, but it’s true. I left the details of the affair to the solicitors. I began to get a bit sick of the job after I’d got hold of the clues. I gave them all I’d collected, and told them to bring the matter through. I knew of the letters, of course, but somehow never thought of the point of view you’ve put forward. It seems incredible, but I didn’t.”

“I can quite believe that,” said Elizabeth thoughtfully.

Oh, she understood fast enough. She could understand the nature that went hot-foot to the [Pg 304]vital issue, disregarding side lights on it, not from callousness, but merely because they sank into insignificance before the one big thought.

“Well?” demanded David.

“Oh,” smiled Elizabeth, “are you asking me to be judge? Well, at all events, you must be jury. If I sum up, you’ve got to weigh the case and give the casting vote, remember.”

She stopped, collecting her thoughts.

“Well,” she said after a minute, “you’ll allow that now you are seeing matters from a different standpoint. You could—at least you think you could—say to this imaginary son of yours: ‘My dear boy, legally I had the possession in my hands. Morally there was sufficient ground for me to give it up if I chose.’ You see I am not driving home the moral necessity of renouncement. I am leaving a choice.”

“I see,” smiled David.

“Well,” pursued Elizabeth, “given the freedom in that choice, we find the matter a trifle less complicated. Let’s deal first with the purely sensible side. Could you get used to the restrictions you fancy the possession would entail? Is the possession worth it?”

[Pg 305]

“In a measure it is,” said David, answering the last question first. “It isn’t the title, or the place for the grandeur of the thing. It’s the linking up with the past. That holds me,—the oldness of it. I suppose, too, I could get used to the restrictions in time.”

“Well,” said Elizabeth slowly, “now we come to the more subtle aspect of affairs. You’ve an idea that the possession may hinder you in your quest. You must grant the quest real. I know it is. Now, I can’t see the smallest reason why it should prevent you actually finding what you seek. It couldn’t. But I fancy,” went on Elizabeth thoughtfully, “that there may be two reasons for that idea of yours. The first, and most obvious, seems that there is probably a bigger moral obligation to give up the possession than appears on the surface of things, in fact that the possession isn’t yours, and that this queer idea is a sort of inner voice telling you so. The other reason—well, that’s only an idea of mine. You can leave it at the first reason.”

“Why don’t you tell me the second reason?” demanded David.

“Because it isn’t a reason,” said Elizabeth. [Pg 306]“At least it isn’t properly one. It’s an idea. And—well, anyhow I couldn’t exactly explain it to you.”

“All right,” laughed David. “Well then, it comes to this,—legally the thing is mine. Morally even, I’m not bound to give it up—we’ve allowed that, remember,—but weighing against it is a quite absurd feeling that I’d better give it up. I’m putting aside mere material inclinations. That sums up the case, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” said Elizabeth.

David knocked the ashes from his pipe.

“What would you do?” he asked.

“No,” protested Elizabeth, “that isn’t fair. You’re trying to shift the rôles. Your summing up is merely a repetition of mine. I refuse to act as jury, and pronounce the verdict.”

“The jury always talk the matter over,” said David aggrievedly. “There’s never a jury of one man.”

Elizabeth sighed.

“Oh, well,” she said resignedly.

“Doesn’t it seem an absurd thing to do—to give it up?” queried David.

“Y-yes,” she hesitated.

[Pg 307]

“Wouldn’t any one say I was pretty mad to do it?” he demanded.

“The world would,” said Elizabeth loftily.

“Well, we live in it,” announced David calmly. “Doesn’t the reason for giving it up appear far-fetched?”

“To those who don’t understand,” allowed Elizabeth. She was feeling rather disappointed at his arguments.

“Then the common-sense point of view would be to hang on to it?” argued David.

“I suppose so,” agreed Elizabeth depressed.

“I am glad you agree with me,” reflected David.

“But I don’t,” protested Elizabeth.

“Oh!” David raised amazed eyebrows. “You’ve agreed to everything I’ve said.”

“I know,” said Elizabeth. “I can’t help it. It’s true. It is common-sense. And yet——”

“Well?” queried David.

“Oh,” sighed Elizabeth, “where’s the use of arguing the matter if you feel like that about it.”

“Only I don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t feel like that at all,” announced David [Pg 308]calmly. “The points of view I’ve put forward express the workings of my intellect, not my feelings.”

“Yes?” queried Elizabeth.

“And on the whole I prefer my feelings.”

“You mean——?”

“That I’m going to give up the whole thing.”

Elizabeth looked at him.

He really was rather an amazing young man.

And then the door in the house behind them opened. Elizabeth turned.

“Why!” said she surprised. “It’s Father Maloney.”

He came quickly across the grass. It was obvious that something was amiss.

“Forgive me for troubling you,” he began breathlessly. “I have come to ask your help. Antony is lost.”

“Antony!” exclaimed David and Elizabeth in one breath.

Half a dozen words from Father Maloney sufficed as explanation; half a dozen more from the two promised all possible aid.

Father Maloney returned to the Castle. David and Elizabeth set off on the search.

That which is frequently termed coincidence is, as everyone knows, seldom an isolated event; it is the fact that two or more events, neither of them, perhaps, of any precise and definite importance, occur simultaneously, each event having some particular bearing on the other. If the events should chance to be more than two, the coincidence is termed extraordinary; and if they should chance to be several, and, also, individually of some importance—well, then I pity the man who narrates them to an unsympathetic audience. If he isn’t branded a liar out and out, he will, at least, be thought to be possessed of an imagination which is first cousin to one. If he isn’t despised, he will be pitied,—pitied, too, with a patronizing commiseration which will make his blood boil. Asseveration of the truth of his statement will be worse than useless. It will merely call forth a [Pg 310]smile, a kindly condescending smile, which says plainer than spoken words:

“Oh, yes, we know you believe it to be true. But these things don’t happen.”

And if, in the face of that exasperating smile he should venture on protest, he will at once receive the gently amazed reply:

“My dear fellow, I never said I doubted your word.”

A reply which will leave him helpless, though fuming.

Of course it is foolish to care. Truth is truth, and there’s the end on’t. But he does care. He knows his statement has been marvellous, incredulous; he knows, too, that he has probably been a fool to mention it. But having done so, he wants belief. The man who will remark with inner conviction, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” would be a godsend to him at the moment. But the man who will say that of another’s narrative is a rara avis. He reserves it as the Amen to his own.

Yet, in spite of knowing all this, it is my lot to narrate certain extraordinary coincidences in the forthcoming pages. Therefore I can only trust [Pg 311]that my audience will be a trifle less incredulous than the majority of audiences. Perhaps if it weren’t for one of the events, which certainly smacks of the miraculous, I might have more hope.

However, to proceed.

You have been given one event in the preceding chapter.

The second concerns Antony.

It was the nursemaid who did the mischief, since, in one sense, it must certainly be termed mischief. It all arose from an ill-advised remark. Possibly exasperation caused it. We’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. It is true that Biddy being, at the moment, a victim to severe toothache, extra work had been laid on Louisa’s shoulders. Had Biddy been present, you may be very sure that the remark had not been made.

Antony had taken the loss of his title calmly. This was hardly surprising. After all, it made extraordinarily little difference. It was seldom that he heard it, and then only from the lips of comparative strangers. “The little master,” was infinitely more familiar to him, and there was still no earthly reason for changing that mode of address. The prospect of a new home was also [Pg 312]taken philosophically; there was, indeed, a certain amount of excitement about it.

But one Friday morning—to be accurate, it was the very morning of the somewhat momentous conversation recently referred to—further enquiry entered his mind.

“If I aren’t Sir Antony, what are I?” he demanded of a busy nursemaid.

“Nobody particular,” replied Louisa, who, hunting for some mislaid article, had no mind to give to problems.

Antony demurred.

“I must be somebody,” he argued.

“Everybody is somebody,” retorted Louisa, “but it don’t mean they’re anybody of importance.”

Antony pricked up his ears.

“What’s importance?” he demanded.

“Bless the child!” cried Louisa, “why, you was important when you was Sir Antony. Now you’re of no more account than a beggar boy.”

Antony flushed. Resentment rose hot within his soul.

“I aren’t a beggar boy,” he announced with dignity.

[Pg 313]

“Precious like one,” muttered Louisa, rummaging in a drawer.

Antony planted himself squarely in front of her.

“Louisa, I aren’t a beggar boy. Say I aren’t a beggar boy.”

Now at that precise moment Louisa ran a pin into her finger. It must be confessed that it was a painful prick.

“You are a beggar boy,” she retorted, her finger to her mouth. “Nothing but a beggar boy.” The tone of the concluding words verged on the malicious. Then she bounced out of the room to seek elsewhere for what she had lost.

Antony walked over to the window.

His face was flushed, and his eyes were troubled; indeed there was a suspicion of moisture about them. He felt a distinct uneasiness at the statement. The only modicum of comfort lay in the fact that it had certainly been prompted by ill-temper. Yet even that fact brought but small assurance with it. Two or three experiences had shown him that crossness occasionally urged truth to the fore, when kindness would shield you from its unpleasantness.

Memory, stirring uneasily, awoke.

[Pg 314]

There was the time when Buffey died. Buffey was the Irish terrier. At first he had been merely told that Buffey had gone away. Continual, and perhaps over-persistent questioning, had elicited the fact of Buffey’s demise. Biddy had been cross when she told him, and she was sorry afterwards. But, still, it had been the truth. No subsequent regret could alter that fact. Possibly this was the truth now.

From possibility, the thing became a certainty. He remembered glances at him, whispers—unnoticed at the time—of “poor little Antony”; conversations checked at his approach. They came back to him now, not fully, but vaguely, holding significance. Probably Granny couldn’t prevent this any more than she could prevent Buffey dying. And she had told him she couldn’t help that.

He began to experience a strange terror.

There is no dread as terrible as the dread a child suffers at the hint of some unknown calamity. He feels it must strike, but does not know at which moment, nor from which quarter the blow will fall. In most childish sufferings there is always a certain consolation in the knowledge of protection[Pg 315] by some older person. But when there is reason to suppose that these natural protectors are powerless to aid, terror indeed presses hard.

It pressed hard on Antony now.

The room seemed too small to hold it. Blindly he turned from the window, ran stumbling from the nursery, down the stairs, and out into the garden. He ran past the flower beds, and the sun-dial, and the close-clipped yew hedges, till he found himself in a small paddock. There he sat down under the hedge and began to review the situation.

A beggar boy!

He had no precise understanding of what the words meant, nevertheless he fancied they were closely akin to the description of Hans Anderson’s little match girl, who warmed her blue fingers at the matches till she died. The story was at once fascinating and terrifying. Aunt Rosamund had read it to him only once. After the one reading she had suggested the Little Tin Soldier, Thumbelina, or the Ugly Duckling. Nevertheless the story had remained with him.

Rags, cold, and burnt matches, and finally dying! His lips quivered, and tears came into his eyes.

“Hullo!” said a voice.

Antony turned.

Molly’s dark head appeared above the bushes behind him.

“What are you crying for?” demanded Molly.

“I aren’t crying,” said Antony. And we may hope that the Recording Angel turned a deaf ear.

“You—” began Molly. But, after all, she was tactful. “I ’spect it’s just the sun in your eyes,” she remarked airily.

“It’s—it’s very sunny,” said Antony blinking.

Molly continued to look at him over the hedge. He looked at Molly.

And then Antony took a resolve. Perhaps instinct told him that a burden shared is a burden half-lightened.

“I’m a beggar boy,” he announced succinctly.

[Pg 317]

“A beggar boy!” shrilled Molly. She was frankly amazed.

Antony nodded. He was experiencing a kind of gloomy joy at her astonishment.

Molly gazed at him. Then:

“Indeed you’re not at all,” she snorted incredulously.

“I am,” said Antony, gloomily cheerful.

Molly cogitated, puzzled. Then her fertile imagination leaped to the solution. Of course it was make-believe!

“What fun,” cried she, on a top note of pleasure. “But what are you sitting there for if you are? Beggars go along the roads and beg.”

Antony looked alarmed.

“Oh, but perhaps I needn’t begin just yet,” he protested.

“Why not!” cried Molly. You may be sure that she saw herself assisting in the rôle. “It’s a lovely day. Let’s start off at once.”

Antony had qualms of conscience. It was forbidden to go beyond the grounds.

“P’raps Granny wouldn’t like it,” he demurred. “P’raps I’d better ask her first. I think I haven’t got to be one this d’rectly minute, you know.”

[Pg 318]

Again Molly was frankly puzzled.

Then, once more, her brow cleared. She saw in the matter, though vaguely, some threat of possible punishment for misdemeanours. But here, assuredly, was actual opportunity to hand. It was too good to be let slip.

“Indeed, never mind,” she urged. “If they’ll be making you into a beggar any time, let’s just be beggars now, to show them we like it. We do like it,” she concluded, loftily magnificent.

“But,” argued Antony, “it won’t be nice to be a beggar.”

“Nice!” echoed Molly ecstatic. “Nice! why ’twill be real beautiful, it will. We’ll go in bare feet, and we’ll eat blackberries,—there’s a few ripe already,—and we’ll get apples from the orchards. Sure, it’s flint-hearted they’d be,” cried she on a note pathetic, “if they’d begrudge the bite of an apple to two hungry children. And we’ll be sleeping under a haystack, and we’ll paddle in the river, and—oh, we’ll have fine times, we will that.”

The river won the day.

Have you, I wonder, the faintest conception of its allurement? Can you see the water, clear as [Pg 319]amber, rippling past mossy stones, feel its delicious freshness against bare feet, hear the gurgling music of its voice? Can you see the dragon-flies skimming its surface, the ragged-robin massed on its banks, the rushes standing proud and spearlike at its edge?

Anyhow Antony could.

He saw it all at a glance,—an irresistible, alluring prospect. He got up from the ground. After all, he would not be alone.

“Come down to the gate,” said Molly, her eyes gleaming. And then she slithered back into the field.

Going across the field two minutes later, she spoke.

“After we’ve paddled, we’ll walk to Stoneway, and beg along the road.”

“All right,” said Antony, but without much enthusiasm.

Anyhow there was the river first.

It is, of course, impossible for a small boy to disappear from the face of the earth without a good deal of uneasiness being felt regarding his disappearance.

By midday the uneasiness had approached to something like alarm. The gardens, the paddocks, the park, had been searched unavailingly; inquiry had been made of every villager. No clue was forthcoming; no possible reason for the disappearance.

A conscience-stricken Louisa kept a discreet silence on the matter. There was, to her mind, no occasion to incriminate herself unnecessarily. The cause could afford no solution of the effect; or, at any rate she told herself it could not, which, after all, came to the same thing as far as her silence was concerned.

A distraught Rosamund finally made swift way [Pg 321]to the White Cottage, there to seek aid from John.

Father Maloney went off to the Green Man to find David. He saw the scouting propensities he conceived men of his type to possess, standing them in good stead at the moment. Having enlisted his services, and likewise those of Elizabeth, as already seen, he set off once again for the Castle.

The day was as hot as the previous days had been. The earth lay panting and breathless. There was something almost ominous about the brazen blueness of the sky, the extraordinary stillness that hung over the earth.

Father Maloney, breasting the hill, wondered vaguely whether the world would ever again breathe in comfort. Personally he considered asphyxiation a not remote possibility.

And then, all at once, he became aware of a subtle change in the atmosphere. It wasn’t that the sky was less blue, or the air less heavy, or the sun less brilliant. And, having said what it was not, I find myself at a loss to say what it was. It lay more in a curious foreboding, a certain indefinable prescience of change.

[Pg 322]

“I believe,” said Father Maloney, addressing himself to the sky, “that we are going to have a storm.”

An hour later he was certain of the fact.

Sitting in the hall with Lady Mary he saw the clouds covering the sky. Black, ominous, they rolled swiftly up, blown, it would appear, before a strong wind. Down below the air was breathless. There was a curious feeling of suspense in the atmosphere.

“There’s going to be a heavy storm,” said Lady Mary, following the direction of his eyes.

“Well, I’m thinking there’ll be a—” he began. And then he stopped. A heavy rumble had broken the stillness.

“It’s coming,” said Lady Mary. And she got up, crossing to the window.

“Glory be to God!” muttered Father Maloney watching her.

Once more came the growl, like the low roar of [Pg 324]some angry beast. There was a pause. And then in one sudden flash the gloom of the hall was turned to a blinding white light, a light appalling, terrible. It was followed by a thunderous crash, a crash that shook the whole place, echoing and reverberating in the distance.

Lady Mary turned a white face from the window.

Then came a sound of steps in the gallery overhead, the steps descended the stairs. Biddy appeared, white and shaking.

“My Lady,” she stammered, “’tis the great oak is struck. I saw it fall from the nursery window. And the child—” She broke off. Her face was working.

“Tut, tut, tut,” said Father Maloney.

“The storm,” said John, “will be upon us in a moment.”

Rosamund had found him by the gate of the White Cottage. Half a dozen words had put the happening before him. Two minutes had sufficed to inform Mrs. Trimwell that his return might be delayed. Three minutes saw him again beside Rosamund.

With no earthly clue to guide them, with north, south, east, west, to choose from, it was, so it seemed, a pure toss-up which route they should pursue.

After a moment’s consultation they set out for the willows and the river, deciding to take their way down stream. It was no less unlikely than any other road, though it certainly cannot be termed more likely.

[Pg 326]

Conversation, you may well believe, was non-existent; eyes and ears alert, they pursued their way. Hope at first held some sway in their hearts, but an hour’s fruitless walking brought it to a low ebb.

“I think we had better turn back,” said Rosamund. “He would never have come further than this.”

It was then that John made the aforementioned remark.

“The storm will be upon us in a moment.”

As he spoke came the first low growl of thunder; a moment later a louder, deeper growl. A gust of wind swept the river, bending the rushes, breaking the still surface of the water into a thousand moving fragments. Then two or three big raindrops fell.

John glanced round quickly. Some three hundred yards lower down the river was a rough shed, a thing built of logs, and roofed with corrugated iron. Possibly it was used as a shelter for the men who cut the willows, which abounded in the sedgey meadows.

“Quick,” he cried indicating it. And they set off at a run.

They weren’t a moment too soon. They had [Pg 327]barely reached it, when the sky, seen through the opening of the shed, became a sea of white light, through which tore a blinding zig-zag, a veritable river of fire; a reverberating crash broke above them. And then the rain came down. It fell like bullets on the iron roof of the shed, deafening, terrifying. The wind tore with insensate fury at the wooden walls, rushed through the opening in a swirl of madness, lashing the rain before it.

“Oh, Tony!” cried Rosamund. And she hid her face in her hands.

John saw the gesture, though the words were lost in the deafening noise around them.

Wisdom, prudence, waiting, fled out into the storm, escaped on the wings of the gale.

He caught her hands in his.

What he said was as lost as her own cry. But, after all, perhaps there was no need to hear the words.

“It really was a providential storm,” said John.

The clouds had broken; the rain, though still falling, was descending in a silver shower, sparkling in sunlight. The wind had sunk to a cool fresh breeze.

“Providential!” Rosamund raised amazed eyebrows.

“Providential,” echoed John firmly. “You are thinking of Antony, who is by this time, I trust, safely returned to the bosom of his family, or at all events in some shelter as friendly as ours. I am thinking of the courage the storm brought in its wake.”

“Oh?” she queried.

“You mustn’t,” said John pathetically, “pretend that you don’t understand me. Explanations would be painful. I should stand confessed as a coward of the deepest dye.”

[Pg 329]

“Nonsense,” she smiled. And then she looked towards the opening of the shed. “Come,” she laughed; “the rain has nearly stopped.”

They came out into the open.

“The country,” said John, “has had its face washed, and is thankful.” Then he pointed to the northeast. “Look,” he said, “our benediction!”

A double-arched rainbow stretched across the sky, brilliant, luminous, backgrounded by the retreating clouds. They paused, to look. Scientists may find excellent explanations of this wonder; but to some, at least, it will ever stand for what it has stood through age-old centuries—the symbol of hope.

John might have remained gazing indefinitely, or, at all events, until the brilliant arc had faded had not Rosamund brought him to a remembrance of things present.

“Come,” she said. “Antony.”

John turned.

“The rogue!” he laughed. “But, all the same, I am enormously in his debt.”

They made their way back along the river bank. Eyes were still alert, ears open to any sound. But there was no longer the same anxiety, the same [Pg 330]foreboding. Doubtless the storm had been, in a measure, responsible for both. Physical conditions have a way of intermingling themselves so closely with mental conceptions, that you are really at a loss to separate the two. Indeed, you don’t attempt to separate them; you don’t perceive the physical conditions as existent, you perceive only the mental conceptions. Hence arises depression, that slate-grey state of the soul, in which the mind puts on black spectacles, and through them views the world in general, and its friends in particular.

Now, with the fresh breeze fanning their faces, with the world around them emerald green, silver, blue, and gold, with, above all, declared love singing joyously in their hearts, the two viewed the prospect through the most rose-coloured spectacles imaginable. Tragedy, even the remotest hint of tragedy, seemed unthinkable, impossible.

Doubtless you, also, will be of their way of thinking.

Strictly speaking the discovery of the truant was due to Mrs. Trimwell. David and Elizabeth were merely her agents in the matter.

It came about in this way.

They had set off hot-foot on the search. Passing the White Cottage, they had seen Mrs. Trimwell at the garden gate. She greeted their approach with eagerness. It was obvious that she had certain information to impart, information which she considered of the first importance. Therefore, with politely restrained impatience, they paused to hear it.

“Them two,” she announced, with a faint trace of injury in her voice, and meaning John and Rosamund, “was gone before I could as much as get a word in edgeways, else I’d have given them a notion on the matter. You mark my words there ain’t never no mischiefness nor troublesomeness[Pg 332] afoot but what Molly Biddulph ain’t at the bottom of it. Find Molly and you’ll be finding the little master.”

Elizabeth smiled patiently.

“Exactly,” she remarked, “but, without wishing to be pessimistic, I really cannot see that it will be in the smallest degree easier to find Molly than to find Master Antony.”

Mrs. Trimwell looked at her pityingly.

“Bless you, ma’am, I wasn’t going to give you a notion what was that jumbled there wasn’t no end to take hold of to unwind it by, so to speak. It’s little use a notion of that sort would be. I see Molly going by here about half-past seven or thereabouts, with a tin can, a brown paper parcel, a willow stick with a bit of string to it, and saying her prayers out of a morsel of a book.”

“Yes?” queried Elizabeth; while David looked his doubts. For the life of them they could see no connection between Molly passing the cottage at that hour, and any possible clue to the matter on hand.

Mrs. Trimwell smiled oracularly. She perceived their doubts well enough.

“The little book,” quoth she “meant that [Pg 333]Molly was off to Mass. I ain’t known Molly from babyhood for nothing. The parcel meant as she was taking her dinner with her, being off on the spree like for the day. The tin and the willow stick means fishing in the river. Not that she ever catches anything as I knows on.”

“Oh!” said Elizabeth. She was beginning to see light. David laughed.

“Like as not she’ll have happened on the little master,” announced Mrs. Trimwell, “and took him along with her. Leastways I for one don’t believe he’s ever gone off on his own account. You try the river, and up the river, mind. I see Miss Rosamund and Mr. Mortimer going off down the river. ’Tis too wide and open there for Molly. She’ll go for the shallower parts up to Hurst Lea Woods, I’ll be bound.”

Here at least was something to go on, some conceivable possibility. Nay, to Elizabeth’s mind, and to David’s mind, it began to present itself in the light of a probability. At all events for present purposes it might be desirable to regard it as such.

“You go to Hurst Lea Woods,” nodded Mrs. Trimwell emphatically once more.

[Pg 334]

“We will,” agreed David briefly.

A moment later they were on their way.

Taking their route first through the village, they presently turned sharply to the right, past a smith’s forge, where a big cart horse was being newly shod, and down a lane. Here, again to the right, they came upon a stile set in a blackberry hedge. Surmounting it, they found themselves in a meadow, while facing them, blue and hazy in the distance lay Hurst Lea Woods. So far, at least, their course was clear.

A quarter of an hour’s walking brought them to the river, and the woods on its opposite bank. To the left lay the moorland which it skirted; to the right lay meadows through which it flowed; and, some mile or so distant, the high road between Malford and Whortley. Here the river passed beneath a stone bridge, again seeking the meadows, through which it made a great bend southwards. Bending again to the left along its meadow route, it finally, with another southward bend, emptied itself into the sea, at a small village some five miles to the east of Malford.

Here, below the woods, it ran amber-coloured and shallow, brown stones cropping up above its [Pg 335]surface. Rushes and ferns bordered it; ragged-robin grew in great pink patches in the meadows lying along its southern bank. On its northern bank were the woods stretching upwards, dark, shadowed, mysterious.

Elizabeth and David came to a simultaneous halt, and looked around.

“Apparently,” remarked Elizabeth, “they are not here.”

The remark seemed somewhat over-obvious.

David went across the short grass to the very margin of the river, and looked right and left.

“It would seem,” said he smiling, “that you are right.”

All around lay the drowsy summer silence, broken only by the faint humming of insects, and the ripple of water against the stones.

“What,” demanded Elizabeth, “is the next move?”

“Up stream,” said David promptly.

“Why so certain?” asked Elizabeth.

David looked at her with something of the smile one might give to an inquiring child.

“Will you,” he said, “look down stream, and [Pg 336]then look up stream; and I fancy you will perceive the answer yourself.”

Elizabeth looked down stream.

Here, as already mentioned, the river ran smoothly, bordered by the flat meadow and the wood. Some hundred yards distant the wood gave place to grass land, flat and open. Up stream the ground became uneven, rough, covered with blackberry bushes and small trees. The river itself was interspersed with little rocks, while sight of it extended not more than fifty yards ahead.

“You mean that up stream there are possible surprises,” suggested Elizabeth.

“Precisely,” said David. “No one, man, woman, or child, turns to the obvious when there is the unknown to explore, possible adventure ahead.”

Elizabeth laughed.

“I bow to your judgment,” said she.

They turned up stream.

It was rough enough walking here. The river lay in a sort of gorge, the wood on one side, the moorland on the other. A mere track ran along its right bank, a narrow grass path. There was [Pg 337]no sign of footprints. The grass was short and springy, taking no definite impress on its surface.

David was obviously the leader of the expedition. He had taken complete control of it, not masterfully, you understand, but merely because it belonged to him by right to do so. He was in his natural element.

Elizabeth was conscious of totally new characteristics in him. All trace of the child in false surroundings had vanished. The man element had appeared in him, and had appeared strongly. There was a new strength in him, a new decision. There was a curious air of confidence about him, also a certain indefinable joyousness. It seemed an almost incredible change, considering the brief space of time in which it had been accomplished, nevertheless it was actual, real.

For the most part they pursued their way in silence. The sky, as you may well guess, was gradually growing darker. Clouds had already blotted out the sun.

Suddenly David gave a little exclamation. He bent to the ground, and picked up something from beneath a blackberry bush. He turned it [Pg 338]over, then held it triumphantly towards Elizabeth. After all, it was only a piece of brown paper.

“But,” demurred Elizabeth, “is it the piece?”

David pointed to writing upon it.

“Mr. Murphy Biddulph, Malford,” read Elizabeth aloud. And then she laughed.

David lifted up his voice and coo-ed, a long, far-reaching note. Striking some distant rock, it was flung back to him in echo, but no other cry came in response.

“They’ve gone a pretty tramp,” said David.

He looked around. A short distance ahead the wood levelled and thinned. A gateway into it led to a wider path. A tree-trunk fallen across the river, which here was nothing but a fair-sized stream, made approach to the gate easy. David made for the tree-trunk. Giving Elizabeth a hand across it, they went towards the gate.

David looked at the ground, then pointed silently. A dark patch on the earth, just under the gate, showed where water had been recently spilt.

“Molly has upset some of the contents of her can in climbing the gate,” laughed David.

There was triumph in his eyes. There is a [Pg 339]good deal of pleasure to be found in successful scouting, let alone the importance, or non-importance of its issue.

They surmounted the gate and made off down the path. After some five minutes or so walking, it led to a second gate, this one giving on to a road. David opened it and they went through. Here, in the dust, were small footprints, easily discernible as going leftwards.

“Who would have dreamed of their coming this distance!” exclaimed Elizabeth.

“It seems to me,” quoth David succinctly, “that from all accounts it is wiser to dream vividly and extensively where Miss Molly Biddulph is concerned.”

And they set off down the road.

They hadn’t gone more than a hundred paces, when the first low mutter of thunder broke upon their ears. There was a second rumble, louder, more insistent. Then came the wind. It swept the dust along the road in a cloud, thick and blinding, and a few drops of rain fell.

The next instant the sky was transformed into a sea of fire, and a crash like the crash of cannon-balls broke above them. Then the rain came down.

[Pg 340]

David caught hold of Elizabeth dragging her beneath a hedge.

“Is it safe?” gasped Elizabeth.

“It would strike the trees first,” said David, “and there are none on this side of the road.”

Elizabeth crouched down. The rain slashed upon the roadway, churning the dust into a sea of mud. To right and left all vision was blotted out in the downpour, even the hedge opposite was almost obliterated.

“Are you getting very wet?” asked David solicitously.

“Hardly at all,” said Elizabeth cheerfully. “This hedge seems specially constructed to give shelter.”

“Then,” said David, “I am off in search.”

As he spoke there came the sound of pattering feet on the road, and the next instant, abreast them, came two flying, drenched, little figures, the girl with white scared face, the boy frankly sobbing aloud.

David darted towards them.

“Antony, Molly,” he cried.

At the sound of his voice the two came to a halt. Joy, rapturous joy, illumined their woe-begone faces.

[Pg 341]

“Oh, it’s you, it’s you,” cried Antony.

The next moment they were beneath the friendly shelter of the hedge; while Molly, with a marvellously rapid transition from depression to confidence, was taking a lively interest in the storm.

“Isn’t it splendid!” she cried exultantly. “Isn’t the rain just hitting the earth!”

“It’s hit you pretty considerably, I fancy,” said David coolly.

“Oh, I’ll be drying,” responded Molly calmly. “Is Master Antony wet?”

“You can hardly imagine him to be dry,” remarked David. “If you stand under a shower-bath you generally get a trifle damp. And this—I guess fifty shower-baths would be nearer the reckoning than one.”

“A million I think,” said Molly, snuggling a wet hand through Elizabeth’s arm. “Isn’t it lovely!”

“To speak candidly,” said Elizabeth, “I could admire it better in a less cramped position, and if the rain were a little, just a trifle, less—wet.”

“Isn’t rain,” demanded Antony interested, “always wet?”

[Pg 342]

He was beginning to take a cheerier outlook on life.

“I believe it is,” remarked David reflectively, “but there are times when it appears infinitely wetter than others. This is one of them. Are you very wet?” he asked Elizabeth.

“On the contrary,” returned Elizabeth cheerfully, “owing to the position I mentioned, I am quite dry. If I were to relax it, however, I should doubtless become excessively wet.”

“We are all like beggars now,” said Molly gleefully.

David pricked up his ears.

“Beggars?” he queried politely.

Molly looked a trifle embarrassed. In a manner of speaking she had given herself away.

“Well, we are,” she replied airily, after a moment. “Sitting under hedges and things, you know.”

“It isn’t very nice,” said Antony.

“Nobody sensible could ever imagine it was,” remarked Elizabeth. She fancied she saw a glimmer of light on the escapade.

“Must it always be horrid?” asked Antony. There was an ominous quaver in his voice.

“Always,” said Elizabeth firmly.

[Pg 343]

She had, you will realize, no intention of aiding a repetition of today’s little drama.

David was watching Antony’s face.

“What’s the trouble?” he demanded.

Antony choked.

“Tell me,” urged David.

Antony was silent.

“Tell me,” coaxed David again.

“I—I are a beggar,” owned Antony.

David laughed, a laugh at once incredulous and consoling.

“Now who,” he demanded, “has been telling you that nonsense?”

“Isn’t it true?” asked Antony.

“Not a bit of it. Who on earth made you think it was?”

“L-Louisa,” stammered Antony.

David said something under his breath.

“Tell us all about it,” he said consolingly.

Then the whole story came forth, aided in the telling by a dexterous question or two.

“Idiot,” muttered David, arriving at the kernel of the matter.

“I didn’t mean to be naughty,” said Antony quaveringly.

[Pg 344]

“You weren’t naughty.” David’s voice was assuring. “It was Louisa who didn’t understand. You aren’t a beggar boy; you never were a beggar boy. You are,” David’s voice was firm, “exactly the same as you always have been.”

Elizabeth’s heart was singing a curiously joyful song, considering what extraordinarily little difference the announcement made to her individually.

“Exactly,” said David again, “as you always have been.”

“Deo gratias,” whispered Elizabeth below her breath.

“And here,” said David, “comes the sun, to laugh at you for your fears, and dry us all.”

The clouds had broken. Through the rifts between them the sun poured forth, sparkling on diamond-hung hedges and trees, turning the pools in the roadway to little mirrors of fire. The rain became the thinnest veil of silver, presently mere scattered drops.

Elizabeth unbent herself, and stood upright.

“I wonder,” she said smiling, “if my back will ever feel quite straight again.”

And then she pointed to the sky.

“Look,” said she, “the rainbow!”

Father Maloney came down the steps of Delancey Castle. News of the wanderers might by this time have reached the village. With a view to making inquiries, he had taken his departure.

The storm had passed; only leaves and twigs scattered on the lawn, battered rose bushes, marigolds beaten to the earth, showed what its fury had been.

He turned into the park. As he came abreast the great oak, he paused. Split from apex to base it lay upon the ground, its branches strewn for yards around,—the oldest tree in the park, the king of centuries, a devastated wreck.

A lump rose in Father Maloney’s throat. He was not given to superstitions, but I fancy he saw an omen in the fallen monarch. Considering [Pg 346]the happenings of the last few weeks, it was hardly surprising.

He crossed the grass, picking his way among the fallen branches, till he came to the very base of the tree itself,—a jagged, deplorable stump, a pitiable remnant.

“Sic transit gloria mundi,” he said sorrowfully. And then he stopped.

“Glory be to God!” he ejaculated, and stood staring at the débris before him.

It was some seconds before his brain began to take in the possible significance of what he saw, and even when the significance dawned on him, it is certain that he did not grasp its probable magnitude.

“Glory be to God!” he ejaculated again, and bent towards the ground.

Two minutes later he was trotting, with vastly more haste than dignity, once more in the direction of the Castle, a small iron box tightly tucked under his arm.

“’Tis a miracle! ’Tis nothing but a miracle!” cried Father Maloney, for perhaps the fiftieth time.

He stared at the yellow parchment upon the table in front of him. It was real, it was tangible. He could touch it, finger it, even read the crabbed writing upon it; and yet, for the life of him, he could hardly bring his brain to believe that he was not dreaming.

“To think,” he ejaculated, “that it has lain there under our very noses, so to speak, and us wondering and worrying all these weeks. Well, well!”

Lady Mary looked silently at the yellow parchment. Words, so far, had failed her. The bigness of the thing, gripping her, had held her silent.

“’Tis plain enough what the old Sir Antony [Pg 348]was up to, when Henry came upon him, the scoundrel,” said Father Maloney. “And the secret kept all these years! ’Tis a miracle has brought it to light now.”

Lady Mary raised her head.

“And perhaps too late,” she said quietly, voicing the fear at her heart; a fear which, with the last hour, had been waxing stronger.

“Too late!” cried Father Maloney cheerily, “not a bit of it. If it’s two miracles is needed, God will be working them; though I’m thinking there’ll be no miracle in bringing the boy home. He’s hiding safe enough somewhere, and will be found before sun-down, I’ll be bound.”

“Perhaps,” said Lady Mary very low, and unheeding his words, “I didn’t give up everything whole-heartedly. Perhaps I still held to it in my mind. If I did, it was for him, and not for myself. And now he is gone.”

“Rubbish,” said Father Maloney.

“Is it?” asked Lady Mary.

Father Maloney put his hands upon the table and looked across at her.

“Weren’t you doing your best to accept God’s will in the matter?” he demanded.

[Pg 349]

Lady Mary smiled faintly.

“I believe so,” she said.

“Then if you did your best, you may be sure God took it as such, and wasn’t holding you to account for any little weakness which was but part and parcel of human nature. I’m thinking He knows the human side of us well enough, and doesn’t look at it too closely when we’re trying to do His will. He’ll not have been taking a trifle of fretting into consideration, when your heart was set the right way. You needn’t be thinking He was waiting to pounce down and punish you because you didn’t throw the Castle over to that young fella with devil a bit may care in your heart. Sure, it’s giving Him the things the human side of us is fretting after that counts. Don’t you go fearing God likes punishing people. Where’s your faith at all?”

“But supposing—” began Lady Mary.

“I’m not supposing at all,” broke in Father Maloney. “The child’s safe enough. And if he isn’t—though surely ’tis in my heart he is—’tis no punishment to you. Glory be to God! Who do you think loves him best, our Blessed Lord, or you? I tell you he’s as safe in His [Pg 350]keeping, storm or no storm, as if he was in his bed this very minute with you on one side of him, and Biddy on the other. ’Tis all for talking about the Love of Christ we are, and when it comes to the test, it’s precious little believing we show. And I’m as bad as any of ye.”

“Then you are anxious,” said Lady Mary quietly.

Father Maloney blew his nose.

“Anxious! of course I’m anxious,” he said half-testily. “Who wouldn’t be anxious with a bit of a boy out in the weather we’ve had. ’Tis against all sense I shouldn’t be anxious. But he’ll come home right enough,” he ended obstinately.

And then suddenly the cloak of quiet dignity, the gentle control, fell from Lady Mary.

“Oh, Father,” she cried, “go on saying that. Say it again and again. I don’t mind how often you say it. Somehow,” her lips were trembling piteously, “it makes it seem true.”

For the moment she was nothing but a frightened old woman, fear gripping her close.

“There, there,” said Father Maloney soothingly speaking as he would speak to a child, “aren’t I understanding every bit of what you’re feeling. [Pg 351]But remember you’ve got Michael, whatever happens. And whatever happens is the very best thing possible; though, for that matter, as I’ve told ye—” He broke off, listening.

And then, through the open window, came the sound of voices, Rosamund’s plainly distinguishable, and a child laughing.

“Glory be to God!” cried Father Maloney, the laugh finding triumphant echo in his voice. “What did I tell you, at all!”

“And that,” said David, concluding a little speech, “is all.”

A curious silence fell upon the room. Rosamund and John looked at each other; Lady Mary had her hands folded over an old piece of parchment; Elizabeth was watching her; Father Maloney looked at David.

“You mean,” said Father Maloney, breaking the silence, “that you wish to give up your claim to the whole thing?”

“That’s so,” said David pleasantly.

“And what,” demanded Father Maloney, “has brought you to this conclusion?”

“Simply,” said David smiling, “that I have seen that fishes live best in water, as birds live best on land. This,” he waved his hand around the hall, “isn’t my element.”

[Pg 353]

Lady Mary rose quietly from her chair, and thrust something into a drawer of her desk. Then she turned to David.

“Is that your sole reason?” she asked.

David coloured.

“For practical purposes,” he replied.

Lady Mary looked straight at him.

“In my grandson’s name,” she said, a little smile trembling on her lips, “I accept your generous offer in the spirit in which you make it.”

Father Maloney stared.

“Glory be to God!” he ejaculated inwardly, “she doesn’t mean to tell him. She’s a wonderful woman, is Lady Mary. A wonderful woman!”

And then suddenly a bell rang out, pulled by the stalwart arm of the under gardener.

Father Maloney started.

“Bless my soul,” he cried, “’tis time for Benediction.”

And he bolted towards the dining-hall, which, as I told you long ago led to the chapel.

Lady Mary looked at the little group.

“We’re all coming,” said Elizabeth with fine assurance.

And then Lady Mary led the way.

[Pg 354]

Said John in a low voice to Rosamund:

“I have at least three thanksgivings to make.”

“I think,” she replied, looking at him, “that so have I.”

Said David in a low voice to Elizabeth:

“What are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking,” quoth she smiling, “that there is a folly which is very very wise.”

And then they all went in to Benediction.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

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